Larry Hancock

Yes, which takes you back to the point about the Hunt designation just being a type of commercial cover.....it would be interesting to see a list of exactly what activities Mullen conducted as a front beyond just being security vetted as a potential, on demand resource, does anyone have a list?

Jim, the way I read it the thing is actually very simple, there were others in the company (in its administration) already vetted and listed as contact points for the company. When Hunt joined the firm he was simply added to the list on something of an on call basis if they were not available. That would be the official position. In reality, it was more likely just a cover in order for him to work there with Agency personnel to be in contact with him as either he or they desired.

Paragraph 4 means that the company had been security checked and listed the company as a possible resource in the event the agency needed its services, the CIA did that with several types of domestic companies as well as professionals such as detectives, lawyers, medical doctors, psychiatrists etc (which is what QKENCHANT was all about). However only named individuals were to serve as contact points within those companies or people. Officially they are saying Hunt was added to the list of contact people went he went to work for the company, although there were previous contacts in place. Of course this is the standard cover you would expect, it gives authority for the Agency to continue talking to Hunt but looks administratively and bureaucratically innocent...if you are asked questions about it later.

I'm afraid I'm no help there - my original views on Ayers were shaped by my friend Bob Dorff who had used him as an investigator to locate David Morales and his friend Reuben. Which Ayers did, but Bob warned me that after that point it was all about more jobs and more money.....and that is when Ayers went after the Goldwater conspiracy. My own exchanges with Ayers were very limited but also of the same nature...and other than that just strange. I let it drop at that point but his follow on manuscript, book, etc didn't really didn't tell me anything I could get a handle on and the more I read and reread his first book (which I did again this last year) the more and more it didn't tally with what I had learned about WAVE operations during the period he was there (at least in his much expanded version of missions to Cuba and personal affairs). I basically took a pass at that point.

At this point about the only thing I find useful in Ayers work are his descriptions of personnel interactions at WAVE related to his training assignment - including his description of Morales. In addition the more we are able to actually compare WAVE operational documents of the period in which he was assigned the more some of his descriptions of his own training of Cuban volunteers becomes questionable as well. By the summer of 1963 WAVE was running so few missions that they had even laid off or detached many of the extensively trained and experienced paramilitary Cuban's that had been used in operations following the Bay of Pigs...and it would not be until Fall that JFK approved new sabotage missions. Bottom line is that I just don't find Ayers useful in the way I once hoped, even though I do have an autographed edition of his first book...sigh.

I don't think there is any doubt De Torres played a role as gatekeeper in Miami, he certainly did so when Garrison sent his investigators to look into the mysterious Cubans associating with Oswald in New Orleans. Given his brother's well established detective agency business De Torres was in an excellent position to monitor a good many things and he certainly sabotaged Garrison right out of the gate - and did so with the media without ever being challenged about his own claims and evidence of a conspiracy. His network within the Cuban community was extensive, not only via the detective agency but due to his major role with the revived Cuban brigade in 1963- where he assumed an intelligence role. Again, that made him a prime candidate to become involved when the Secret Service reached out to the CIA who in turned reached out to JMWAVE for protective measures in advance of the JFK trip to Miami - one trip in which we have documented proof of threats to JFK and Secret Service awareness of same - which was totally obfuscated during the assassination inquires. Its also easy enough to see how he could have been moved into a support role since we can directly connect him to both Hargraves and Vidal, he was working on boat missions with them in the summer of 1963, we even have photos of him with that clique and on at least one boat mission against Cuba with Commandos L. Any role for him directly in Dallas is much less clear - my inclination is that he did know details and even might have held photos from Dallas as Fonzi was told, it would have been great leverage in his role as gatekeeper. However he himself did not have the extensive paramilitary training nor was he an expert marksman, those folks were available for Dallas so his personal involvement would not have been mandatory.

Steve, you might find something interesting in this batch of information - if you have not already seen it: https://www.usarmygermany.com/Sont.htm?https&&&www.usarmygermany.com/Units/HqUSAREUR/USAREUR_HqUSAREUR.htm I wonder if strategically part of the change may have had to do that by 1957 worries were not so much about the Soviets rolling west to the Atlantic across a broad front but rather about the increasing chance of military engagement over Berlin. If that happened there would be no time to send signals intel back to DC for processing but you would need it right there on the front lines...strange that it would involve more red tape but then again you wonder how much got fed back from Washington the other way...grin. The other big change going along with that was the decision to field a "pentomic division" and to face up to nuclear exchanges on the battlefield, that was a relatively new thing...but even when JFK faced his Berlin challenge his military plan included escalation all the way up to tactical nukes.

Steve, I don't want to intrude into the thread any further, the only reason I personally got into the security services and the subject intercepts was because of my interest in a) military communications and b) specifically in regard to the JFK assassination with the Kirknewton incident which you find written up in detail in SWHT. That might be useful if you take a look. The overall all tasking was that the Air Force did what you would call strategic, long distance intercepts on radio and teletype traffic....with separate installations (requiring huge antenna farms) in Scotland and England. One for military intercepts and one for commercial. Both were NSA installations and focused on particular watch lists. As far as I know the Army focused on tactical intelligence, targeting Russian, East German and Eastern bloc forces with a special interest in force composition, movements, logistics chains....which get really dull and boring and involve what unit and type of force is using what radio frequency etc...which is one reason lots of very dull routine military comm traffic had to be recorded and shipped back for computer analysis. And of course Germany was still officially "occupied" through 1955 and the vast bulk of all overseas American Army personnel were stationed either in Germany or Korea until well into the 1960's. And that's enough from me.

I know that I'm always being a wet blanket but just for a sanity check I should say I've interviewed three people who worked for either the Air Force or Army Security services, they were either radio/telegraph intercept message operators, code translators or language translators. While they held high security clearances they certainly were not professional intelligence officers...when I talked to them two had served only one tour of duty and the other retired after a rather routine career. All had gone back to small towns, one working at a Walmart, one as a foster parent and the other at a similarly normal job. The same can be said for several of the crypto operators and operations guys that I knew in the Air Force, and they were all enlisted rank. Sorry, to intrude...but it may be a stretch to talk about "trusted with the highest military intelligence the nation possessed"....

Based on the original sources that Ralph provided it can be confirmed that Skorzeny was a "source" albeit only on some specific topics but primarily via the US Embassy and its CIA station to the Air Force who was looking for German rocket scientists. He was cultivated by embassy officers out of the Madrid office for several years specifically to assist in searches for targeted German personnel and assets who were considered to potentially hold valuable technological knowlegde. He also volunteered the use of former commandos for training, for American personnel, for French personnel and for others...the US. used him on one occasion and the Army officer involved was not overly impressed that the training was better than standard Ranger training of the time. It looks pretty likely that certain ultra right French officers may have used him for training more frequently. As far as the offer to kidnap Castro with approval, I don't find anything at all other than what I would consider wild newspaper sources to support that....and Ralph does a good job of showing that Skorzeny was doing a fine job of trying to market himself and his contacts to one and all....did he make such an offer, maybe, but I very much doubt the CIA took it seriously...the sources Ralph provided suggest the CIA was OK with his being cultivated as a source for limited purposes, but as an asset beyond that I'm just not seeing it. On the other hand, its my understating Hank plans to offer much more detail on such things...so I'll have to wait for that.

I'll let Larry S. respond to this since I've had no communication with CAPA about the 2019 conference but I figured I should reassure Ron that the "at my age" remarks were more in the nature of "at my age and with over 25 years of research on this subject" I hesitate to give detailed comments on anything strictly from memory..... Given that I had two books published in 2018, am deep into research and writing on yet another that is probably two years down the pike, am deeply involved in the ongoing Wheaton Names research, and will be addressing both the upcoming DPUK conference and the college course David is organizing in Alabama I'd like to think that age has not quite overwhelmed me yet...grin.

Paul, I spent about four months after the conference digging into Ralph's book and to various leads and sources he cites; we had hoped Stu Wexler was going to be able to work directly in Ralph's files (which Ralph was nice enough to offer) but the successful congressional passage of the Cold Case legislation which Stu and his class developed has completely consumed Stu...as has their upcoming trip to DC to pursue funding and implementation of that new law. That has largely taken Stu away from our joint projects including such as the Wheaton Names research, which has remained my highest JFK research priority. To cut to the chase, in my further work I found nothing in the Skorzeny material that was nearly as concrete or with the kinds of solid directions to a Dallas conspiracy as we have been finding with the Wheaton names work. I did investigate all the Cuban references in Ralph's book and found nothing much there beyond the fact that within the Cuban exile community almost all the individuals were approaching and talking to anyone who might offer any sort of advice or support over a several year period. It may just be me but I've seen so much of that by now that I didn't find it all that unique or especially suggestive. I'm staying open minded on the subject and and a Skorzeny connection and had planned to return to it again with the publication of new data and what I understood to be new sources in Hank's book, but now that it has been delayed once again until November I won't be jumping back this for a time it seems. I know this probably isn't what you wanted to hear and I understand that my conservatism on such things probably annoys folks at times but after more than 25 years the bar to hold my attention is pretty high - and at the moment the only thing that is passing over that bar for me is our Wheaton Names research and the increasing indications that the official story of Oswald in Mexico City is highly questionable.

Aha, sorry I missed that Steve....as Paul said, then its probably from his campaign....which obviously means it would focus on material that he felt his voters would find persuasive...and understandable.

Steve, not totally sure about Texas but out here on the frontier...grin...generally the Funeral home prepares the obituary with input from the family and then distributes it to newspapers, there may be a longer version and a shorter but in may cases they do show up as duplicates in multiple papers and other media.

Well I probably still have the video, there seem to be a variety of unusual if not historic videos in my file cabinet - not really sure what to do with them as many are VHS and I don't have a working VHS player left. I will say Files did a lot of talking and a lot of letter writing and a lot of self promotion while he was in prison - he even got married in the process (for a while at least, not sure it lasted). I always had the impression that a lot of it was simply something to pass the time in a very long sentence. One of my personal rules in vetting sources is that if someone claimed to be directly involved, kept silent about it for decades and then suddenly began talking to one and all (but not to the legal system) with no apparent concern, (and neither contrition nor self justification), that would be a bad indicator. I'm much more interested in someone who largely kept some limited knowledge to themselves, told someone safe like family or a lawyer or at best very close and trusted friend - with the expectation that nobody else, and certainly not the public, would ever know. Took me awhile to get to that level of skepticism, clearly I bought the Files table before I arrived there...grin

Jim, I talked to Vallee's family as well; and his brother had been hugely interested trying to see if he could make any of it hang together in terms of what they knew of his brother's movements and activities - which he could not. And yes its true that Vallee worked in an office building where a printing company was..but also that he was a printer by trade, which he had learned from his father in California and that's where he ended up, doing that same work. The Secret Service monitored him routinely for years as a PRS, a potential threat because of his mental instability.. The story also includes the fact that Black was so fixated that he literally stalked the Chicago PD officers who had taken Vallee into custody, accusing them of complicity in a conspiracy to kill the President and literally driving one out of Chicago, following him all the way to a trailer park in Texas to confront and accuse him. And this has nothing to do with Walther's report, which related to the Texas trip not Chicago - and was very likely triggered by by a warning from San Antonio that we do have documented, about an expressed threat to kill JFK when he came to Texas - by a member of the National States Rights Party. And yes I do think Hoover suppressed that. As I say in the third part of the posts, I do think their was a warning from the FBI about individuals traveling to Chicago - Cuban exiles who had been buying guns and who were very hostile to JFK - and I think that triggered the events Bolden heard about and I do accept that a couple of guys were picked up but released because their were no grounds to hold them. I even suspect that may have been in one of the trip reports that was destroyed as late as the early 90's. These things do seem to get mixed together in when the talk is about threats in Chicago. That's why I address all three incidents in three separate blog post. On the other hand, I have no intention of trying to argue anyone off their beliefs. What I posted is what I found, along with sources. I'll leave it at that.

The Vallee incident and the Bolden incident were totally separate, the HSCA investigated the "Lee report" and a variety of other rumors related to the Vallee incident including one about a New York license plate and determined them all to be untrue. The Vallee warning came from an individual Vallee had talked to in a Bowling Alley diner (not Lee Oswald). As I mentioned above, I give links to the HSCA investigation of all three incidents in my three blog posts on the subjects. Hopefully they do a lot to clear up what has turned into a lot of "urban legend" material have been floating around for years relating to the Chicago reports. Part 1 begins here: https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2018/12/26/the-chicago-threat-part-1/ If you have comments I'd prefer to respond to you on the blog rather than try to track them in two places.

The HSCA did inquire into the Bolden story at some length and the ARRB did collect additional records, or attempt to at least, not only on Bolden but also on the Vallee and Echeveria incidents....I provided links to some of their work in a recent series of posts about the Chicago plots on my word press blog.

I promised an update on the film at the Sixth Floor Museum film copy. The good news is that they now have new equipment and if you make arrangements you can indeed view thedigitized film on computer, stop it at any point, blow up any frame to the best of the available resolution and examine it in much more detail than simply seeing it run continuously. I'd encourage anyone who did view it there before to take another look or to at least contact them and find out what their current capabilities are in regard to viewing.

I did get the second edition but I was focused on Hecksher because Dick and I had worked that lead...so I didn't pick up on any story about Nagell taking a boat trip to meet Raul..let me know where it is when you have time. About all I can say that is factually proven about his time in MC is that he did visit the US embassy, he did tell them he was prepared to renounce the US and prepared to provide information to a foreign power. The documents exist on that...but amazingly it appears that there was no action taken at all on him even though they verified his military intelligence background. It seems a shocking failure unless it was some sort of a test or dangle. Very similar to Oswald in the USSR. Its also totally inconsistent with how tightly the FBI was being called in to investigate Americans who appeared to be contacting the Cubans or Russians in MC. Was this something new in the second Russell book or had he mentioned it earlier? Certainly its something Dick has never discussed with me in our exchanges on Nagell. On the other hand I have constantly said that Nagell's remarks were situational so it would make a lot of difference as to where and when he told that to Dick, will certainly take a look at it when you get back - and I can always ask Dick himself for an elaboration.

Having immersed myself in the Nagell story for years (and having carried Dick's huge book on airplanes so I could reread it maybe 20 times during business travel...sigh) I'll go ahead and give an opinion... My cut is that Nagell did encounter Cubans talking about revenge against Kennedy while in MC in the fall, he was not there for that but rather doing something entirely different related to the US embassy at the time. He also crossed paths with Hecksher who was in Mexico City but none of that is relevant to Dallas other than it did bring him in contact with with Oswald again some months later. And yes Nagell had known both Oswald and Hecksher in Tokyo, again not directly relevant to Dallas. Oswald became known to so many people of interest that becomes a diversion in and of itself. In the summer of 1963 Nagell was in Miami and he was circling through the exile community and he did end up following leads about threats to JFK and then traveling to New Orleans. In New Orleans he did see Oswald in contact with exiles of various stripes including at least two misrepresenting themselves and talking to Oswald about some action in the Washington DC area...confirmed by Oswald's letters to SWP and CPUSA about a move. Nagell may indeed have reported that to the FBI - what is certain is that within 24 hours of the assassination some of the first questions the FBI asked Marina were about Oswald's travel to Mexico City and to Washington DC. Nagell got spotted in Mexico City, probably by guys who had seen him in Miami and he felt threatened and he ran....as he had in Florida for a time. From that point on his actions were his own, he was literally on the run; I don't see how he could have come into any further knowledge about the conspiracy or about plans for Dallas - which I personally don't think began to jell until after whatever was planned for Washington aborted i.e. in October. I view Nagell as another, independent, source of threats against JFK jelling within the Cuban exile community, specifically in Miami and among Cubans traveling to and from New Orleans and much later - in October/November - to Dallas. -- that's my take, since developing that opinion my main interest has been in researching who those people would have been, who their associates were and who might have brought them and/or their associates into the actual attack in Dallas.

Jim, all I know for sure is that it is a first generation copy off the NBC film. Debra and I have been on the phone a couple of times already today and we will pursue the particulars of both the format, if its been digitized (and if it has at what level) directly with the museum folks. I seem to recall them covering that in their presentation at the conference (they even had PowerPoint on it) but as usual I don't like quoting from memory. Deb will contact Mr Fagin directly at the museum and put forth several questions about that and also what advanced viewing options are available, not just screening the film but frame by frame, review, use of optical systems etc. Hopefully I can report back on that in a few days, somebody else may have taken notes on that sort of thing at the conference, I did not myself. As to NBC, I've seen comments that there has been outreach to them but I've never seen a copy of a formal request or for that matter a written response from NBC. My first thought would be a formalized letter to them specifying the access required and making some sort of legal statement that any material or findings derived from that would not be used commercially. Without that I expect "no" would be a routine answer to queries. That's pretty standard in the corporate world, especially in media. I think you would have to get a formal rejection before you could pursue it through legal channels, and of course the problem as always is that you would have to find some law enforcement office who considers it an open case wouldn't you?

I'm going to interject once again because I talked to the TSBD folks about the film availability before the conference, they committed to discuss it and were prepared to do so before Alan asked his question. They also gave a detailed explanation of it being a copy and of its quality - as well as their legal rights as to what they can do with it. Russ asked his questions during the question and answer period, and the archivists were very open about what access they could provide. They discussed both walk in and scheduled viewings but at that point I don't recall any specific questions about options. If someone has specific questions I can forward them to the archivist or make an introduction. As far as my experience goes they have been very open about the quality of the copy they hold as well as about options for slow motion and zooming if advance arrangements are made.

Got me Ron, I'd have to see something more than I've seen so far to go further with it....of course by its very nature the entire crypt system was developed to confuse any document readers who didn't already know what was being discussed.

John Newman found the same thing, as well as a couple of other instances of the crypt being used. I chatted with him about it and he felt it was used for different external contacts over quite a period of time and in different locations. The crypt was certainly not associated with a single individual but seemed to generally have been used for contacts with potential criminal assets. I think Hank had mentioned it in his second book and Newman mentioned it in the second book in his current series as well.