Larry Hancock

JFK Lancer published his extensive work on the RFK case in a book last year and its available on Amazon. I think Stu managed to recover a good amount of his JFK material but as far as I know its not been put online anywhere was a matter of recovering everything that could be found on his laptop which his sister did save and make available. I'll ask Stu about the CE 399 material. Anything he had up on the Lancer site has been archived as well, its just a matter of getting that site up again which has been a struggle but will be a priority after the upcoming conference.

Jim, to your question on Kellerman, I can't cite you the exact source, but it comes from Burkley and in it he takes the responsibility for telling the SS agents that Jackie has told him - in tears and in shock - that she will not leave JFK's body, ever (she did the same thing at the airport in DC) and if the Dallas people i.e. Rose who she does not know are going to hold the body then she will stay in Dallas. Burkley thinks that might well drive Jackie further into shock or worse and tells the agents all this - given their emotional state already they are not going to let Rose or any Dallas people (they mentally blame Dallas already) take the body from them - if they have to fight they will, if the have to shoot - well at that point they trust none of the locals. As it describes it the confrontation with Rose had nothing to do with legality but everything about remorse, extreme stress and emotion etc. Hopefully someone can find Burkley's statement, I don't know that I cited it but for some reason it never gets much attention. Perhaps it was in an oral history or interview but he takes full responsibility for the incident.

I certainly would agree about witness intimidation - self or otherwise - over the following days/weeks but I'm still maintaining that didn't happen instantaneously - certainly not to law enforcement nor would I consider Landis a "witness". I'm not even saying that part of what he says is not true (still would like a photo of him at or looking into the limo though). If he had said, hey I saw fragments, I found an entire bullet, I removed it and put it on a gurney and then realized I had screwed up and told - somebody in authority - then I could see it. As it is he just joins several other people in positions of legal authority who later anecdotally described fragments, holes in the windshield, bullets, pieces of bone, etc who handled evidence and failed to document it or report it. Its a wonder they didn't lose the body.... What I am saying is that I'm not giving him a break for doing something incredibly stupid with evidence and then implying that he was under some sort of immediate pressure not to immediately report or document what he had done/not done - because it might make waves. I would even have cut him a break if he had written a letter to the HSCA and tried to get on the record quietly as Burkley did.

Jim, I would have to know a lot more detail about who said that to Perry to accept that as "pressure" in respect to what I was talking about as far as some sort of self induced hesitance for law enforcement in respect to collecting and handling evidence within an hour or so of the attack. It is not unusual for law enforcement to try and shut down comments to the media in regard to the investigation (ie don't give away what we know or don't know, especially in regard to medical matters) but Landis does not say someone shut him up, he seems to imply he did it to himself for some unstated reason....or that he simply screwed up any standard evidence handling protocol strictly on his own (which is what it sounds like he is claiming).

Impaired judgement certainly could be a factor, although he says there was not drinking Debra Conway interviewed the club owner who freely admitted they kept liquor and served it at the club (I think he said something like "why would somebody be here at 3AM drinking coke"?) and all the patrons including the SS were drinking; he even said an agent came in some time afterwards and asked him not to say that since things had been really hard on the agents and they really didn't need charge that along with everything else... On the other hand, after the shooting and the car ride their systems should really have been peaked out by chemicals and if nothing else I'd expect them to be hyper - but diminished faculties would go nicely with incompetence if he wants to admit that - I'm just not willing to give him any sort of break in regard to some sort of special concern being in play about reporting and handling the evidence properly in order not to make waves in the first couple of hours after the attack....

I think I have to chime in here with what I think would be a critical point - that is the reality that within one to two hours of the attack on JFK there was no "pressure" at all on any law enforcement officer to "toe the line" media wise. At that point it was a totally open criminal investigation and many officers were collecting possible evidence of all types and documenting it - many very poorly - but I see no evidence of any innocent explanation for something as obvious as a bullet fragment or bullet not to being reported to a senior agent or officer, shown to a fellow officer, marked in place or officially collected as evidence and taken into custody. It is true that the Secret Service seems to have been very casual about handling evidence and you can explain that with poor training, bad supervision, or the chaos of the moment. In other words if you want to give Landis a pass you can treat him as incompetent or derelict in his duties but mishandling evidence so dramatically that early would not be a sign of pressure, or fear of rocking the boat since there was no official story and no LN artifice in place at that time. I would also encourage a through photo study to see if Landis ever shows up in the Parkland photos in the vicinity of the car or if any of his movements were documented in the news photography that afternoon.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me, the only thing I can offer with any certainty is that team members were in Dallas doing assessments and collecting details for the attack a week to two in advance. Exactly where and how they prepped the shooters on their positions and gave them ranges and markers is a separate question. As a side note I don't think there was any effort to disguise multiple weapons being in use since the whole MO was for it to be a multi-shooter, attack pointing towards Cuba. The hoops that had to be jumped through to conceal what the planners would have assumed to be obvious are what keeps us all perpetually running in different directions.

One of the things the guys at WAVE learned was that any operation they planned which involved the participants knowing any level of detail was quickly compromised - because the Cubans talked among each other. A cultural thing that they came to accept. So the practice became to keep them all on call, have them on the payroll, but since you were working with training people you only needed to give them the minimum logistics orders until they were assembled at the mission launch site. Not you might still find gossip that was something was going to happen.....but it would be all over the place. Just like the gossip we find about JFK being at risk starting in the late summer time frame. What I can't seem to get across is that this was not a new type mission, an infantry ambush against a soft target does which involves no more than a dozen or so people is not a massive operation and the trade off is always how much prep time is actually required balanced with the tolerance for leaks. In this case I suspect the tactical team had a few weeks notice in regard to a mission but that they were then isolated, transported and put under strict control in the Dallas area while all elements were finalized and rehearsed. I know everybody wants something more but its the small scale, special operations with highly trained people that actually work...the ambush/sniper attacks on Castro had required no more than half a dozen people with some minimal support by locals and then they more often failed due to leaks than anything else.

Steve, I would venture that it was a combination, almost all these guys got initial infantry training from Jenkins in Panama and then advanced guerilla training in Nicaragua. The when the project was changed from strictly guerilla action to the conventional Brigade they were pulled off for special infil/exfil training first at the camp south of New Orleans and then moved on for actual missions into Cuba from the maritime base in the Keys. Afterwards several of them worked occasional missions for WAVE or were on call but detached. I think they were hand picked and selected for Dallas the same way Robertson later picked guys to go to the Congo....then possibly not even pulled together until they arrived in Dallas a week or so early. Plenty of time to reconnoiter and dry run, especially if they had local info available from somebody like Ruby or even one or two of the Dallas local DRE types who knew the city and could play support roles. All very similar to the Cuban ops they had done previously. "Training" was long past for these sorts of folks, mission planning and prep was more the order of the day. But when you know the route, the starting and stopping point etc, too much time leads to leaks and sloppiness. Remember, their main advantage, as with all special ops, was going to be surprise - they get two to five minutes before anybody really begins to understand what just happened.

Eddy, if you read the last section of Tipping Point, which is free on Mary Ferrell, I do go into the actual process in considerable detail, even with references to standard infantry ambush manuals and tactics. I really would have hoped most folks would have read that by now...sigh. Its part of the material in Section 5 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

Mike as I recall it, yes the report was an FBI report discussing something that had come from DPD but the actual DPD report never surfaced - sort of the same situation as the Frazier polygraph. I don't know how it could have been debunked without the original report - which was supposedly just a call in to DPD from an unnamed citizen. For all we know that could have been just a test, a hoax, a mistake etc. The point I was trying to make was that even if it had been a hoax it was not passed on to SS nor were any special security measures taken because of it. Basically the Plaza area as well as almost all the motorcade route was a soft target where only traffic and crowd control measures were in place. The only evidence of what one would describe as "hard" security was at the Trade Mart. There was no security zone of control around the plaza or anywhere else to monitor people coming in or search them, show ID etc. That would all have been laughable to the guys who were used to making missions in and out of Cuba.

This would not be a deniable operation so tracing would not be an issue, weapons going back to the general commercial market would be just fine since Castro associated actors could easily pick them up in the US. As to rifles in Texas or the south in general, you put them in the trunk of the car or the bed of the station wagon and go, people carried them openly on the streets. There were gun shops downtown so if you really wanted to be cool put them in a gun case (there were multiple reports of that from Dallas that day) But more likely just park in the lot behind a building, put the gun inside a raincoat or jacket or have it in a package, take them out of the car, use them, throw them in the back of the vehicle as was described and drive off since nobody opened any trunks of the cars exiting the parking lot. A serious shooter is going to use a bolt action or a semi-automatic since they expect to hit where they aim and they will have a clearly defined target in the open, take a couple of shots at the most and be gone. I recall our arms instructor saying - when we were issued M16s - look at the full auto switch setting and forget it. You only use if for fire suppression - to stop people shooting at you, and you better have plenty of clips or they will just come on and kill you. If you actually have a target you want to kill you use single shot in semi-auto mode.

Steve, you and I have discussed this before and I've written about it in detail so I hate to belabor it but - on the assumption the tactical team consisted of people that had been training for months and in some instances for years in infiltration, exfiltration and the tactics of a rifle ambush, it substantially reduces the preparation time and much of it would be done in Dallas, during the days before - given that you are attacking a soft target which in itself has some flexibility on time and even movement the best you could do is plan for a main route, a back up and be prepared to deal with some flexibility in the timing - which did happen (having the ambulance involved in a blocking move was part of that, a pickup stalled as a diversion for DPD security during the hour before hand another). Certainly they would have practiced routes and even caching of weapons, exfiltration exactly where they would occur and not stand out at all (recall the report of men in the parking lot putting a rifle in a car trunk...from women working in the Daltex in the evening and going home as I recall). As to exfiltration and infiltration, these guys had gone into and out of Cuba multiple times working against extremely tight security and making it - getting in out out of Dallas, into and out of the Plaza was child's play by comparison - walk towards the cops and don't run and you are good, which we saw happen with guys from behind the fence. Only runners get noticed, and the guy that ran down the railroad tracks did draw attention but then effectively vanishes off the DPD tapes....another diversion likely enough. All the movies you see about extensive mockups, training ranges, practice runs have to do with very "hard", fixed targets. This was very much different and like the soft target motorcade attacks they had practiced against Castro. Not even of the level of the sniper attack that had aborted before the BOP landings. As Martino said, the guys arrived in Dallas at least week in advance, reconnoitering the route, selected shooting sites and no doubt practiced elements of the exfiltration (remember the report of guys with a rifle on the knoll only days before and how slow DPD was to respond to that - just another test of timing and police routes and communications). Bottom line, this was an infantry ambush on a soft, mobile target operating on a known route and with a fixed destination. As to the the weapons, they could have sighted them in on range or out in the country. Takes maybe a dozen shots if you plan to use a scope, probably less with iron sites. -- sorry to repeat myself, I suspect you were looking for others to respond but I'm still here...grin

David makes a good point that the people in the communications related to the ship were not involved with AMWORLD, so the question is a good one. Perhaps it was like, "who me", hey I was at my desk, working hard, paying attention to my day job....certainly not off at loose ends trying to figure which of my buddies had just done what we had talked about over drinks or working on my own alibi....see, there are even memos...,

The Rex and Leda had nothing to do with the AMWORLD project, they were mother ships largely involved in supporting Commandos Mambises and by the fall of 63 had become increasingly visible, with even their docking locations under press scrutiny. For a reasonably detailed list of what assets were being procured for AMWORLD in terms of when, where and how I'm going to refer you back to Shadow Warfare. It was supposed to be a totally deniable, off shore operation and while WAVE did provide some support via training, but AMWORLD activities and staff were independent of WAVE. The obstacles involved in setting up a totally deniable, covert, quasi-military, even modest maritime military operation based entirely off shore were immense, which is why it took some 9-10 months before even the first minor mission was carried out in the spring of 64. Like the Cuba Project it was another lesson in overreach.

What was unusual about all these AMWORLD exfiltrations is that in the pursuit of total deniability all the Cuban exiles were being given brand new covers - specifically out of US covers. As your document notes Joanne was also equipped with a special below deck compartment that could be used to transport people but also a fairly considerable stash of weapons and special operations type gear. Certainly all agencies moved into a higher level of security after the assassination and since the Joanne was the only transport in hand at the moment if it has been thoroughly searched it could have undercut the whole project. Of course a related questions is that we now know WAVE was ordered to conduct a focused inquiry into Cubans and Cuban exiles who might have been involved in the assassination; not sure we know exactly when that directive was issued but perhaps someone did not want the Joanne to surface during that inquiry - compromising the compartmentalization of AMWORLD.

Well since I got an introduction, Fleites was with the SNFE as far back as inside Cuba, a Menoyo group that for a time later joined in operations with Alpha 66. But by 1963 Alpha 66 and DRE as well as the other exile groups were under extreme pressure from the FBI, INS and even military intelligence. Only JURE was in a position to launch attacks and that was from a base in the Caribbean. All these groups other than DRE were what I call "outsiders" in SWHT. There were getting no funds, weapons buys dried up, operations ceased and they had become frustrated and outspoken. Only DRE was still in the mix with CIA and competing for support with Artime's new project - but everybody from Alpha 66 to DRE was desperate for money and talking about new attacks on Cuba to support the fund raising. At the same time Artime was talking to one and all in the US and Central America claiming US support (that was driving the CIA nuts) for new attacks on Cuba. The reason I go though all the above is that you would pick up rumors for new attacks throughout the Cuban community, some real based in the new Artime project, some being touted for fund raising, especially DRE and JURE and some just wishful thinking. The talk about new attacks on Cuba, with or without the US was all over the place and I relate a good deal of it in SWHT. Given that, the fact that Fleites would make such remarks does not reflect any special insider information (especially since no major US military operation was in the plans, only small scale deniable actions with Artime by 1964 and down the road with the CIA's Commando Mambieses being replaced by US covert military action). So my short answer should have been, no he was not in a position to know anything special, he was just channeling Cuban exile community gossip.

This would have had nothing to do with AMWORLD, none of these people were involved with it. When you look at the names this is a pretty classic mix of what I call "outsiders" in SWHT. All these groups were being highly frustrated by the Kennedy administration orders to shut down Cuban exile operations from the US and were frequently issuing radical statements during 1963, the CRC began it and then effectively folded and individual groups carried on the dialog and claims. At this time Commandos Mambisis was becoming active in raids against Cuba in missions run by JMWAVE and approved by SAS/Fitzgerald - using the Rex and LEDA motherships. AMWORLD was just beginning to recruit and bring on personnel and start buying what it was going to need for offshore missions, it did not begin those for another six months. It is true that Artime was shooting his mouth off in Central Ameican visits and beginning to get some attention but that was something entirely different, nobody could ever get him to stop making grandiose pronouncements.

This would have had nothing to do with AMWORLD, none of these people were involved with it. When you look at the names this is a pretty classic mix of what I call "outsiders" in SWHT. All these groups were being highly frustrated by the Kennedy administration orders to shut down Cuban exile operations from the US and were frequently issuing radical statements during 1963, the CRC began it and then effectively folded and individual groups carried on the dialog and claims. At this time Commandos Mambisis was becoming active in raids against Cuba in missions run by JMWAVE and approved by SAS/Fitzgerald - using the Rex and LEDA motherships. AMWORLD was just beginning to recruit and bring on personnel and start buying what it was going to need for offshore missions, it did not begin those for another six months.

In regard to Oswald, yes I think he was working his own personal agenda in Mexico. What might have been going on separately from either lies with CIA sanctioned operations or the Cuban exile contacts with him that we describe in the Red Bird leads. As far as AMWOLD goes, we have the list of officers and staff personnel involved with it including extended details on purchasing, funding and the logistics activities that were being set up during late 1963, the plans were very specific and involved a maritime base in the Caribbean as well as secret aircraft transit bases in Mexico arranged covertly with the Mexican government. We know the location of the Caribbean base and the details about setting it up, which did not come about until well into 1963 due to purchasing and logistics issues. King was certainly head of the Western Division but my reference to "in name only" relates to the Cuba project, otherwise he was in touch with things in 63, as with his involvement in TILT. However in regard to AMWORLD, a totally offshore, deniable operation he was not really in the loop, that was run by Fitzgerald and a highly compartmentalized group of only a handful of officers with Hecksher and Jenkins leading. As to AMWORLD, it was not at all an invasion plan (unfortunately Lamar got that wrong) but a plan simply to launch maritime raids and reestablish Artime as a military figure, optimistically available to support the coup efforts of AMTRUNK and AMWHIP. His boat operations were in no way ready to proceed until late spring 64, a matter of setting up a base and supplying it and putting all the pieces in place covertly. I don't recall anything going on with AMWORLD that would have involved New Orleans, in 63 or 64. Actually Johnson did not give up on AMWORLD immediately, he allowed it to run on over the next two years until it died its own death through media exposure, in the end by sinking the wrong freighter off Cuba. That story is in Shadow Warfare too.

First, I would say Oswald was in Mexico City in the hopes of getting a travel visa to enter Cuba, based on a hardship claim for his wife and the argument that he was as a supporter of the Cuban revolution - which is why it took considerable support material with him and why he showed a good bit of it to Duran. He was well aware of the travel barrier he faced with the Russians, giving he had been making the case primarily for Marina since the first of the year and had been told as recently as July no permission would be granted until after the birth of their new baby. I make no claim to be able to get inside his head but he had success with convincing the Soviets on matters before, while being a pain to them in both entering and leaving Russia; perhaps he thought the Cubans would be easier to wear down or perhaps more sympathetic. Given his experience with Soviet bureaucracy he also may have thought he might have more luck going to a relatively small Russian diplomatic unit (as he had done before) where they might respond more to a personal appeal - at least getting something he could use to show the Cubans that would get him as far as Cuba, even if no further. We have taken for granted he was aware of the Cuban rule about transit visas but that was a relatively new thing (after the missile crisis in late 1062) and its possible that their solid stand on that was a surprise to him. From his reading I suspect he would have known that Americans did travel through Mexico to Cuba. Second, no not at all, my web site is woefully old and after having it hacked twice we have made no further attempt to update it, what I learned about AMWORLD as an operation is largely in Shadow Warfare, but in terms of associated personnel is extended in the Wheaton Leads monograph, the book In Denial, and in Tipping Point.

Just to be contrarian I don't see Mexico City as important in establishing an image for Oswald - by the time he left New Orleans he had been on radio, the newspapers, in Court and on TV as an activist Castro supporter. I've not been able to make much of an impression with the fact that we have learned the DRE was heavily propagandizing that in Miami in late August and September - including letters on Oswald to different exile groups and was even writing to Congress about Oswald as a perfect example of evil Cuban influence. I'm afraid a lot of Jeff Moreley's great work is not getting really registered - including confirmation from DRE senior officers that they were happy to be leveraging Oswald in propaganda as they is what the CIA was paying them to do. We also know that a record was being made that fall for use in propaganda against Castro based on his visibility in NO, it was ready for distribution at the time of the assassination and that INCA had a whole campaign built around it (possibly with Phillips support) and there were other elements of a campaign ready and in progress ( lay this all out in Tipping Point). Phillips had already prepared one of his private news sources for the story on Oswald as linked to Cuba and Russia - and on the day of the assassination reporters were being referred to him by AP. You did not need Mexico City to produce the newspaper headlines I put on the front of Tipping Point - if anything there had to be a lot of work to quickly shift the media away from the Cuba/Castro headline and to a lone nut image.

Its easy to find reason to suspect that Phillips was very much aware of Oswald, was involved in propaganda operations built on the image Oswald had developed for himself in New Orleans and that he lied about Oswald being "not even on the radar" in Mexico City. Its also pretty obvious that he jumped on the bandwagon with the story that Oswald was paid to kill Kennedy by the Cubans - Phillips was desperately anti-Castro - and tried to promote that immediately after the assassination. He also supported that scenario in multiple books (but that really was a stupid story, way below his standards so its hard not to see it as just a pick up play rather than something well planned and put in place before the fact). But none of that puts him directly into a plot to kill the president - however its unclear how much he trusted his fellow CIA officers (he was never really part of an old boy HQ CIA clique or and operations clique - he had come on board from being a contract employee) and by the time the HSCA came into play he may very well have figured that he might become disposable (ala Hunt). I have no problem at all seeing Phillips performing preemptive moves or firing a shot across the bow to protect himself.

Phillips was certainly a person of interest for the HSCA - Fonzi was all over him for various reasons and certainly Phillips felt the pressure. Generally speaking, when pressured Phillips was aggressive in his response, more than willing to push back. This article gives you a feel for that, and the AMLASH legacy might have represented a veiled threat to expose a number of things and people just in case things got more tense: https://www.jfk-online.com/dapcolumbia.html

Good one David, it appears that Phillips may have taken to using insider names to point people towards officers at JMWAVE....not something his fellow officers would miss - or appreciate - and a very interesting bit way to demonstrate he new names and things that he could toss towards the HSCA if someone sent them in his direction.