Larry Hancock

I suspect there are (there was certainly a volume of them on the CompuServe JFK many years ago as well) but there are also a good number of older media interviews, newspaper and magazine and other articles that should surface with some work....he's been pretty vocal about his experiences for quite a long time. There a goodly number of FBI interviews and internal memoranda that will show up with some digging as well. Probably a lot easier to find now than when I had to dig them out of NARA and pay page by page...grin.

Ron, I think you may be thinking of the wrong fellow in your post, sounds like you have a certain gentleman from Los Angeles in mind rather than Plumlee the pilot.

Just for reference, those interested in Tosh might want to do some detailed searching to trace back his various interviews, articles an other remarks about both his activities and how he heard about the details of the assassination plot.

It would probably be good to resurface the detail as to how Witt became associated with the story in the first place. Someone here probably recalls it better than I but to my memory Witt really never discussed it widely but did make some sort of remark about it to a fellow worker. That individual was either in one of Jack White's assassination classes or it otherwise came to Jack's attention and he visited Witt at work and confronted Witt with the claim....at which time Witt either had to buy in and support the story or admit he had just made it up. He stuck with the story but if you examine his HSCA remarks in detail, including his self-described path to the sidewalk you begin to wonder if he had really even been there. Well at least it struck me that way after comparing them to pictures of the area. No doubt someone has more detail on how his story did come to public attention in the first place. I don't recall his having told anyone about it immediately following the assassination but perhaps he did...if he didn't he would be one of the very few not to remark about his experience in the days after November 22 - about having been right there on the street next to the president when he was shot. I'm certainly curious as to the earliest date he related his experience.

It would be interesting to hear Vince's response on whether any umbrella waving experiences occurred during other JFK public appearances. I don't recall any myself, usually protests against JFK were quite graphic and explicit, with signs or placards.

Try the photos on the following page Jim....I had all this on my web site before someone thoughtfully hacked us and wiped all the images in my photo section: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1128&bih=676&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=zXzCW7vCB6PPjwTloKuwAg&q=roy+hargraves+on+elm+street+jfk+photo+comparison&oq=roy+hargraves+on+elm+street+jfk+photo+comparison&gs_l=img.12...13708.24716..27039...0.0..0.110.2468.31j2......0....1..gws-wiz-img.wHwhT7t4AnA#imgrc=pyLzoq-kDlT0cM: https://www.google.com/search?biw=1128&bih=676&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=zXzCW7vCB6PPjwTloKuwAg&q=roy+hargraves+on+elm+street+jfk+photo+comparison&oq=roy+hargraves+on+elm+street+jfk+photo+comparison&gs_l=img.12...13708.24716..27039...0.0..0.110.2468.31j2......0....1..gws-wiz-img.wHwhT7t4AnA#imgrc=ySRwekG7JcXcIM:

Unfortunately we never seem to have the level of detailed timing we would like. Yates told the FBI (and passed a polygraph on his remarks) that Yates had talked to him about the young man and the encounter before the assassination. He also talked about the package and the young man speaking about the president being shot. However it was only after the assassination, although well before either man talked to the FBI, that Yates told Dempsey about the young man saying that the package had contain curtain coverings, or something to do with curtains. So..the package was described to Yates in advance - it seems that Dempsey might have wondered if it was a rifle...but the curtain remarks came later. I have no idea how soon curtain rods were discussed in the press but I suspect it would have been days later since that could only have come from the statements from Frazier and his sister....and shown up when Frazier was first interviewed by the press. Given the polygraphs I don't see any reason to question Dempsey on the matter and he clearly was told something by Yates in advance of the assassination....nor any reason to think the hitch hiker incident did not happen. Perhaps the most significant element is actually that Dempsey said that Yates told him he dropped the young man off at the intersection of Houston and Elm...and he said that before the assassination. That's way too much coincidence for me.

Just a quick response to David's question. My impression is that Martino knew of Oswald and that Oswald was going to be a patsy in terms of being associated with Castro - of course Castro was the real patsy - Oswald would have only been one lead towards him. Martino was aware of Oswald, had observed him leafleting in New Orleans and knew he was in Dallas. However Martino never exaggerated what he knew of the plot; he only stated nobody was expecting Oswald to actually shoot Kennedy and that the shooting of Tippet and capture of Oswald Oswald had aborted the full extent of the plan...what that was he never really claimed to know.

I need to advise all those interested in attending the conference that Debra Conway has announced that the 2018 event will be her last JFK Lancer conference. I think we have a outstanding presenter line up, schedule of activities and structure for the conference. We will be ending the November in Dallas series in the fashion it deserves – if you were considering attending I thought I should bring this to your attention. For the most current information on speakers and schedule check: http://jfklancer.com/Dallas2018/index.html

Thanks, I have to admit its possible I should recontact everyone more frequently but there are some deep researchers - as David is of course - who I hesitate to press, especially if I know they have work in progress. I should also have mentioned that this year we decided to address all three assassinations - not just JFK but RFK and MLK as well and as part of that process I did seriously pester John Hunt, who has been digging deeply into the RFK evidence for over two decades. I'm very pleased that he will be speaking this year, he has some explosive information to share.

Actually I've invited David a couple of times over the past decade. We have also had intermittent correspondence by email when he was looking for some information I might have. The same goes for Peter Dale Scott. However I don't pester everyone every year if they have taken a pass on prior invitations - at this point pretty much everyone has my email and generally they contact me about the conference if they would like to present. Hopefully they don't take that as a sign disrespect or lack of interest. I certainly respect David's work but I assume he is pressing on with his book and that is his priority, certainly he has said that in his forum posts here. Its really as simple as that, no mysteries - I serve as speaker chair and have not for over a decade so if there is some fault in the matter I'm where it lies.

If you check the statements his friends provided to the HSCA you can see exactly how much and how little Martino knew, he was quite clear to them that his knowledge of the plan and the participants was very limited. Specifically he told them that Oswald was not supposed to be taken into custody and his capture ruined the rest of the plan. Not sure he knew exactly what that was but he did know Oswald was not supposed to be alive.

This is an important addition to our understanding of AMOT activity in Mexico City. We have known there was a compartmentalized station there, overseen by JMWAVE and with AMOT support...working very independently of the regular CIA station in the embassy. We also know personnel from Miami were sent down for independent CI operations against the Cuban embassy. My suspicion is that this visit - which appears to have involved a real focus on the admin personnel and on Azcue - was part of Phillip's effort to either suborn Azcue or to gain leverage over him. Phillips was in the midst of an serious ongoing CI effort against the Cuban embassy that summer and I'm guessing he needed assets totally unknown in Mexico to scout out the embassy and in particular begin character assessments, especially of Azcue. I'm not sure it was a prototype run for Oswald specifically but Oswald would certainly have been a great follow on to collect similar information...and further test Duran as well as Azcue.

Actually there were an ongoing series of propaganda articles planted in major papers, pointing fingers at Castro as a major drug dealer attempting to undermine the U .S. with shipments via Cuba. A search might find the articles, I came across a number of them which also showed up in Miami papers. In one neat twist Castro was serving as an intermediary for Red China. As I recall Hoover could always be counted on for a comment endorsing such fears.

It appears that both Staff D and the crypt QJWIN appear to have been used as financial covers for disbursements that were highly compartmentalized vest pocket operations involving only a handful of officers - largely shielded from the formal Branch and Directorate administrative procedures. You have someone very senior ordering an activity and then a couple of field officers involved, very peripheral CIA assets used, and then we only learn about it because somebody, somewhere had to sign off on travel expenses or payments. Certainly that is true for the Congo, its also true for the Harvey/Roselli Castro assassination project. Apparently John Newman knows of at least one other instance where QJWIN was used but I've been unable to get any detail on that. I don't really think there were QJ/WIN offices but it seems that the crypt was used by more than one office, both overseas and in the second phase of the Cuba project

Micah, I'm afraid you will need to direct a message to Larry Schnapf for those sorts of details; he has posted here on that model recently so you might find that thread or just message him directly - he is an Ed Forum member.

I wanted to call out a few additional speakers for the conference that I didn't mention last time. In addition to Jim Jenkins, from the events at Bethesda we will also have Hubert Clark who was on the honor guard with JFK's coffin. Ralph Ganis will be speaking to his new book and has promised some documents as handouts. John Or and Larry Schnapf will be joining us from CAPA to review the new 3D Plaza modeling tool which John has developed. John Newman will be speaking twice; his subjects and those of the other speakers are listed on the conference speaker page: http://jfklancer.com/Dallas2018/index.html

Its worth noting that the DRE and several groups inside Miami began circulating the story that Oswald had met with Fidel in Cuba, that he had met with Castro agents in Miami and that Ruby had also met with and been paid by Castro. They were spreading that story as widely as possible in the weeks right after the assassination.

Paul, I know you want to go that direction, but to me all it really shows is that Berlin was the most important spot for post WWII intelligence and that it served as the beginning of a great many careers...in Shadow Warfare I follow them from Berlin to Guatemala then to SW Asia and ultimately back to Miami and then on again to SE Asia and Latin America. In all of their assignments they routinely used surrogates. At this point I'm pretty comfortable with Cuban exile surrogates in Dallas; I'll need something more definite to add any another party. I'm watching, just haven't seen that yet. I've edited this to add that if I were looking for someone who had some history with actually "contracting" for political assassinations, that had been associated with JMWAVE , who appears to have had a very bad history of telling his superiors and subordinates the whole truth and who clearly had serious personal with JFK I would look towards Tracy Barnes. He had a long standing reputation as being the guy at headquarters who had no hesitancy to approve extreme actions.

I would certainly expect that Paul, Cummings and Interarms/Interarmco did business with everyone globally and was one of the largest international arms dealers for at least a couple of decades. They were they place to go..literally. When Sturgis was buying weapons for Castro he went to Interarmco, when Masen could not come up with weapons to sell to DRE in Dallas the suggestion for them was to go to Interarmco, when AMWORLD was formed, Artime's people went to Europe to get weapons from Interarmco. I suspect it would be harder to find someone buying weapons from the fifties through the seventies not to have shopped with or bought from Cummings...I'm not sure if that carried into the Contra period or not but I suspect it did. Would have to check; I cite some good books on international arms sales in Shadow Warfare including one specifically on Cummings and his companies.

That's the same unit Steve, in 1963 the unit was regional and headquartered at Fort Sam Houston but with offices around Texas and in New Mexico and Louisiana as well. One of the reasons for that was that it was tasked with doing background checks on both Army and civilian personnel employed by the Army and that covered a lot of territory. That's also one of the reasons personnel were authorized civilian apparel for some activities.

I do know that Artime himself, in recruiting at Fort Benning and other locations, was using the cover story that his new sponsor's and trainers were going to be a combination of European donors and support from Nicaragua. In some of his remarks he was even adamant that the US would no longer support efforts against Castro so he had to turn to Europe and Latin America - all part of the cover. However related documents make it clear that was actually an authorized by the CIA as a cover given that AMWORLD had to be totally deniable and offshore from the US. Its also clear that a lot of his political contacts and organizing was to be done in France and Spain to move that offshore and that his weapons buys were to be though Interarmco and European suppliers...but the money was from the CIA and was going though offshore bank accounts in Switzerland. A number of the AM/LASH meetings were in France. I don't know what PDS was using as a source though for those remarks though, have never seen that.

Has Malcolm verified that he really was a Lt. in the 112th and if so where was he stationed? I know the ARRB interviewed a number of officers out of the Dallas office and I think Amarillo as well as the headquarters. Certainly they went to considerable length to locate and interview former members so if he was on record they should have been looking for him after this correspondence even though his information doesn't appear to actually have anything to do with that organization or 1963. His Army service record should have been available to them.

Debra has spoken on both and I think wrote articles in the JFK Chronicles magazine but I'm really dating myself with that given how long ago it was. Certainly the Bowers family thought his death was suspicious and his brother was convinced of it; he was adamant that Lee had been threatened and had seen things that he might be called on to testify later...posing a risk. He had talked just enough about things he had thought were suspicious to become a question, even if the WC had not pressed him or really explored the little he had mentioned. I'll get the daily rate for you and yes you just walk into the registration and pay there, it works well for students as well as for folks that can't devote themselves to the whole program (the schedule goes from 8am to around 10 pm each day). We are getting things ready to post, the speaker list is virtually complete but I'm still wrestling with the day by day schedule...

I've heard the same rumors but never discussed them with Deb. When she moved to Dallas she got very involved in some local investigations...her interviews with the bartender at the place in Fort Worth where all the SS agents were drinking the night before was enlightening and so were her interviews with Lee Bowers family. Don't recall the cabin ever coming up.