Larry Hancock

The lack of the Mather FBI interview....I am betting there was one....and the HSCA immunity in particular is striking and I am going to speculate it has to do with knowledge of Lee Oswald.  There is really no other good reason for it unless Tippett revealed something to him that would be pretty stunning. 

I agree we won't solve the case from documents but as PDS said long ago, holes in the document trail can be quite important and this is a striking one....comparable to the fact that the CIA had soft files on Roy Hargraves and Sylvia Odio which were denied to the HSCA but do show up in a very short list of soft files (which usually mean local office or operational files with copies not necessarily kept at HQ).

Would be interesting to post a short list of HSCA immunity testimonies, I only recall one off the top of my head and that was from the Miami Cuban who torpedoed Garrison's investigation.

Good find and this one probably deserves a thread of its own.

Amazon does indeed have the book slipping - four months or so more - to February 2020

https://www.amazon.com/Coup-Dallas-Wh

Ron, that's sort of what I expected but that's not really corroboration....especially if there is no detail as to how and why Wes knew that....did Mather tells Wes that...didn't that raise real issues with Wes as a newsman. Did he take it to the CIA or the FBI as a question?   I appreciate the citation but that was what I was afraid it was going to be and its just too weak for corroboration of what is really a serious claim.

I've always thought the Mather lead was quite important but I could never get any further than what Jim posted - beyond that it just gets to be word of mouth with incredibly little detail for something so seemingly sensational. 

On the other hand, if they interviewed the wife, there really is no excuse for an interview with the husband even if he pushed back...might be an interesting FOIA request given the wife's interview as a reference point.

That's exactly it Jim....and of course there should be a similar FBI report for her husband...and if he refused to give a statement on something like his movements and association with Tippett the FBI would have noted that, as well as his reasons why....and if he mentioned the CIA it would have been expected they would be on the distribution for the report.  Finding that one should tell the story one way or the other.

Ron is there a citation of the FBI interview with the wife...certainly it would be documented.

Its also hard for me to seen any sort of security clearance - which would have been related strictly to his engineering work - accepted by the FBI as justification not to testify in a crime; even his attempt to do that would have been recorded in documented form as well - and copied to the CIA for that matter. 

For that matter I'm not even coming up with what sort of "CIA security clearance" would apply....anything having to do with his employer would be standard security relating to his job or a specific project even if it was under a contract to the CIA and such things are normally done via the FBI, the military etc....not the CIA per se.

That's not ringing a bell for me Chuck but I'm afraid my close attention to Shaw is years in the past - certainly I couldn't offer anything positive on that.  I doubt that it would change what I did write about Shaw, Ferrie and Bannister in SWHT though.

As to friends of Shaw, its a tangent to your question but I recall  years ago one of the attendees at the Lancer conference (from Kansas, an amateur photographer and movie theater owner) came to the conference with a set of photos including one a couple which showed he and his wife and Shaw together in a club in New Orleans.   Shaw had been very friendly to them as tourists - and interestingly at the time of the introduction had been using his alias, which was written on the back of the photo.  Would have been quite valuable to Garrison if he had it during his investigation....long story but we could never obtain rights to use the photo and it was just one of those tantalizing pieces of evidence that faded away after a couple of years of his coming to Dallas. 

I asked Alan about it a few weeks ago and he said some other issues were being addressed before finalizing the publishing version of the manuscript; he didn't say more and I don't know that the November availability date is at risk but a limited slide would be understandable.

The Archivist at the Pogue library welcomed JFK related documents during his tenure there; he is gone now.  He routinely presented on their collection at the Lancer conferences - as I recall he took in much of Gary Shaw's work among others - including materials from Penn Jones.  You should be able to find an index to the collection on line in a search.

Agreed Ron - JFK had more vision for the nation (in a good way) than the vast majority of our presidents...IMHO obviously.  And Aldrin is an interesting fellow; I have a set of books on the NASA missions autographed by all the early astronauts and was fortunate enough to at least get close enough to Aldrin one time to take a photo with him.   We have a very good space museum near me here in Oklahoma - Stafford Air and Space  - founded by Stafford. 

As for me I watched the Apollo landing on a rented TV in an apartment during summer school in 1969....while building a model of the complete space craft - which I still have.  A year later I was in basic military training. Here's to the American spirit and to new frontiers. 

Thanks Ron...although I'm going to fail that test.  I'm from out in western Oklahoma where we have less rain and less history - maybe because much of it went to California during  the dust bowl.  We didn't even really get Bonnie and Clyde although the James boys did pass by and buried a little gold here and there.  You got me on that one.

Mark did a wonderful job on the film, including its cast.  We did preview it in its earliest form at the Lancer 2004 conference and it was most impressive.  However funding is key not in just doing a film but in getting it placed and released for commercial use - I know Mark tried that for some time.  No doubt it was a frustrating experience and he increasingly turned to RFK. It was during his RFK iwork with William Law that they were gracious enough to interrupt filming interviews on that to get the Wheaton interview on video. 

Some of the newer members who may not fully appreciate how long this all has been going on but it does wear people down.

I would second Michael,  for those of us who have been around for awhile it would be best to resurface the old thread and let us catch up...lest we just repeat ourselves.

Alan Kent has been working on the project with Hank for at least a couple of years now and actually has done considerable research for him....I can't think of anyone I would trust more to bring it to completion.

Well I led walking tours there for some 15 years during the November conferences so I do know the area...grin.  I even led tours of friends when I worked trade shows in Dallas.  Unfortunately I've come to truly hate downtown Dallas traffic...although getting to and from the Plaza parking lot on a weekend is perhaps the most painless version of it.  I'm a ways from I-35 though, Dallas is about a four hour drive one way for me.

 I still look in on a daily basis, I think I last posted a few days ago in response to a question.  These days most of my new posts are on my own WordPress blog, where I have more space and can monitor replies more easily without getting lost in threads. However that blog covers a lot broader scope of content since most of my current work and books go into military history and national security subjects that cover several decades. At the moment I'm deeply into a new work on the 1960/61 Cuba Project, which is really a much bigger and deeper story than simply the Bay of Pigs.

I also use my blog to post extensive material like the Wheaton names research which is really the only JFK area I've been involved in recently. I'm always happy to answer questions though and do comment when I have something to offer, however many of the current threads are simply outside my area of expertise/interest or honestly I've posted on them extensively in the past and would be repeating myself...

Anyway, I'm still here....

I think the question really is how his deputy knew Harvey was going to Dallas....unless for some strange reason he asked him that or Harvey volunteered it.  If his Deputy saw him in either Rome or New York (where there were direct flights) he would not just have guessed he was going to Dallas since Harvey would have been going back to headquarters.   Now if he saw him boarding a flight to Dallas you have an answer, but if he saw him in either Rome or New York how did he know he was going to Dallas?

There should be threads here on this in this forum since its come up many times, a search would give some details but to my recollection each time its boiled down to the fact that when the LaFontaines were working with Marina (at the time they did their book), and were quite close to her, they helped her do a request for Lee's tax returns and she did obtain them.  That makes sense given that she does have the legal right to them.  However she chose not to make the returns public at that time, possibly based on their advice. 

Its also worth noting that actual employees of the CIA as well as official informants of the FBI are required to be paid in the standard accounting fashion with appropriate records. However anyone simply serving as a source,  a voluntary asset or otherwise a cooperative individual is not in the payroll system and if they need money they are given cash....through appropriate generic cash accounts or thorough a chain of financial covers. Frank Sturgis has been documented as an official CIA source, not an employee; he was given cash but never in the payroll system.

In one fun CIA employment related  incident, a Cuban exile who had worked as a smuggler and been hired by the CIA as a boat guide for infiltration missions was targeted by Garrison for investigation and Garrison obtained records of a car loan the guy had taken listing the CIA as his employer - the CIA was not amused. In another David Phillips was actually convicted for check fraud for using a cover name while in the U.S....the Agency would not defend him or reimburse him and it did go on his legal record.

The national guard was called out around the nation,  we go into this a bit in our MLK books, as to how bad the riots were and how much destruction there was.....it was massive.  In fact the AG admitted later that the only reason they had issued the statement that Ray was the lone shooter was in an effort to suppress the growth in the riots to some extent.   You can readily find photos of armed national guardsmen controlling streets full of burned out buildings.

As to smaller cities, I doubt it.  I was in Albuquerque and I recall some police sirens but not much beyond the average night,  certainly no major violence and certainly no curfew.  Actually in a number of smaller cities and especially college towns there were student marches protesting his death and those were all peaceful.

Of course of you read Stu and my books you find our conclusion that the assassination conspiracy was to start a huge wave of race riots and black violence in turning triggering a virtual race war.  It got bad, not that bad, and not nearly as bad in the south as in major metropolitan areas which had already been experiencing serious race riots during the past two summers. 

The riots, curfew and fear across the nation was immense following MLK's death; there was nothing comparable at all for RFK at the time (saying this from personal experience).   RFK's murder was taken more as a personal tragedy (outside of LA where the Mayor immediately tried to blame it on the commies). Generally no single motive was immediately or widely assumed as far as I recall.

After RFK's death there was a huge reaction of sadness (and to some extent defeat for the anti-war movement, but of course there were other strong anti-war voices and candidates) - very much different from MLK where he had been the outstanding voice for non-violence and where a single motive was immediately assumed.

The best I can recommend is to try and be very specific, in this case rather than just just calling Mullen a CIA front first I'd try to clarify what type  (what services did they provide)...from the choices I gave above.  For starters its pretty clear Mullen was used to provide work/commercial covers for overseas CIA personnel. 

Then I'd suggest digging down and calling out who authorized that for the company, was it Mullen himself?  It appears that there might have been only a handful of senior Mullen administrative managers who know of an agreement with the CIA, who had been vetted and who could give orders inside the company to hire people, assign people etc...knowing the people in question were CIA.  In some instances we have actually found documents which show the relationship between a company and the Agency so you can figure out who the key individuals are....with real commercial companies as compared to media companies the vetted manages were able to not only provide jobs but to authorized cargo on to ships or planes and even route them appropriately, which takes some corporate clout. I've even seen documents relating how a senior company officer volunteered to travel or to send the companie's people on trips to collect open source intelligence through business contacts.

The point of all that would be to figure what Mullen was really doing for the Agency and if it was more than just providing job covers for people going overseas - did they do the same thing domestically,  suggesting Hunt was actually planted inside Mullen with some specific goal in mind.  Or did Mullen do much more, actually functioning to plant domestic news leaks, propaganda etc.  Or as a PR firm were their files used to prospect for CIA favorable (or unfavorable) media outlets. Its easy to figure out the role of lots of commercial "assets",  banks, air transport companies, maritime sales firms - and its often documented in their own operations files (Gary Murr found and shared lots of examples of such commercial assets in his AMWORLD work). 

And who could have made that agreements between the CIA and Mullen. Those sorts of details would really flesh out the story on Hunt....and for all I know somebody had done that and I missed it.  I've read several Watergate books and don't recall that level of detail, but I've not revisited it for some time now. I do find it fascinating that Hunt was apparently preparing and planting what were to be official documents blaming the Diem assassination on JFK personally....was that really his task, or just a Hunt thing. And how would that benefit the CIA to justify all the trouble getting him into the White House to do only that?

Anyway, its the same approach I would try to take in connecting the dots between the Agency and any particular company that appears to have had a relationship with it - in order to understand who provided access and the true role of the "front".

The reason I asked the question is that I dislike throwing terms like "front company" around casually as much as I dislike tossing out the "mafia" or even the "Cubans"...   The CIA had a host of different relationships with individuals and companies, they had proprietary "front" companies, companies they assigned people to who took jobs there and ran certain matters under business cover, they had partners who simply loaned them assets like aircraft, ships etc and also offered CIA personnel commercial covers, they vetted individual professionals for use if necessary for domestic incidents, they vetted detective agencies for use as covers and to do investigations domestically for them (as the FBI also did), they had commercial fronts who really were independent businesses but gave business transaction covers for leasing, purchases, etc, and they had domestic and off shore banks where they used cover accounts...some with individuals, others with companies.  And that's just part of it. So when I asked about Mullen I really was interested in what the Mullen public relations company was specifically doing for the CIA?  Was it just a matter of Mullen himself having a relationship, did the CIA use his company for species domestic public relations campaigns of some sort? Up to this point in time the only thing solid I have seen is that the company provided "commercial covers" for CIA personnel working abroad - in Europe and the Far East. Which was so common you could find a couple of dozen international companies (probably many more) doing the same thing upon request.  Supporting the CIA against the communist threat was considered to be highly patriotic and many high level business people volunteered their firms to be used as covers or even for intelligence collection. 
 

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.