Larry Hancock

If you really want to examine the damage done by serious moles its almost entirely of fairly immediate value - providing either operational information or actual information on codes/ciphers, communications practices, weapons or equipment plans or something that is "actionable". The first time the CIA was seriously hurt by a mole was through the exposure of virtually all its team and agent infiltration into Eastern Europe and it was Angleton's British intelligence "buddy" who did that. A high level mole within the CIA could spread insecurity and discord (which is why Angleton himself was suspected) but most of America's covert operations programs were so obvious (even if officially deniable) that a mole would not be needed....although of course nobody was admitting that. The danger of a real high level mole would be more within the top levels of the military or somewhere within the National Security Council structure. And remember, moles are normally "recruited" (even if voluntarily) in place because they do have access of some sort of value....years of KGB effort to develop sources from the ground up in the U.S. produced relatively little and very low level intel. Check out some of the Russian moles that the U.S. recruited and it will give you a balanced picture.

Steve, its certainly an interesting subject and I recall my own time slaving over the recordings...back in the days where all were had were copies on cassette.. At this point I just can't come up with a scenario which would make messing with DPD comms in that fashion worth the trouble or risk. Interestingly something of that sort did happen in regard to the MLK assassination but that involved CB radio, and what proved to be a very effective police diversion.

Hi Eddy, I did recently comment on Steve's thread about possible jamming on the police frequencies - which I don't see happening since it would be really obvious, at a minimum static at an amplitude two to three times the volume of the regular police transmissions since it would have to totally override them. I'll go back and look at the other thread, while I certainly can see the possibility of radio communication in play among the tactical team I think it would be much more in the nature of very local "walkie talkie" class communications. Its more likely you have visual signaling among a tactical team, such as the fellow raising and lowering his arm on main street. In any event, I'm not sure I see the advantage of working with equipment which would intrude on police frequencies...what do you think would be the purpose?

Steve, you would need a very high powered transmitter, and I think the point is you would have to jam it with some with of noise, even if it were white noise...you could not simply damp it, you have to override with another transmission. Also, I think there has been much talk of cross talk, transmissions from one of the police channels to the other, as a possible explanation. Anyway, actually jamming the police transmissions would surely be a dead give away of a serious conspiracy as I think that would be quite obvious.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black....if you want a Deep State, look at Kissinger and his connections......

Certain of his activities, most especially the fact that he was left behind with the motorcade and almost denied admittance to Air Force One for the trip back to DC are documented by William Manchester in his book covering the assassination. Its worthwhile noting that apparently LBJ had no idea of his role or of what to do in regard to the use of the "football".

I did find something that confirms that Paul, looks like WI was indeed the crypt for the Congo, well done..

Paul, first off I have never seen WI/ROTH or for that matter another WI prefix so its quite unclear what it might relate to...certainly not one of our routine Cuba or other related crypts. Second, that final document is going to require some thought, for starters I would offer a few things as context. 1) Its pretty well documented that up to the Bay of Pigs, Bissell was indeed one of the two guys who signed off on assassination projects and of course there was a Castro assassination aspect in play in 1961. So finding Bissiell associated with assassinations is at least consistent; finding him aware of the Castro assassination plot is also consistent. . 2) Following the disaster at the BOP Bissell got signed lined and his role gets to be very unclear, certainly he was under a major cloud after that even though he tried to carry on as if he was not - constantly touting that all the blame should fall on the White House and JFK. 3) We now know that Bissell lied to both the White House and to his own staff officers in the Cuba project, repeatedly, baldly and disastrously. I think I cover that pretty well in Nexus but others have documented in much more detail. His behavior in that project raises extreme credibility problems with any of his subsequent remarks. 4) Bissell tried to blame everything and anything about the BOP failure on the WH and to some extent was allowed to continue such remarks by the CIA's Directors even in the fact of an IG report that concluded something far different...again, from that point on Bissell's reliability becomes very questionable. After reading this further it seems pretty consistent with what we know in regard to Harvey but to what extent the remarks purportedly coming from Bissell in regard to the WH are accurate is still questionable - especially since other sources tell us Harvey was getting his Magic Button directions from Helms. It's possible this internal CIA document is intended to shift attention from Helms to Bissell and on towards the WH. It also does a fine job of keeping Angleton out of the Harvey assassination program dialog and we know Angleton was far more involved than this suggests. I've also just finished reviewing another document where Bissell himself seems to be actively trying to point Congressional inquiries about assassination towards the WH; he definitely was a man to hold a grudge.

Keyvan, interesting documents but its also important to note that their personal relationship is well documented already and the Harvey/Roselli Castro assassination connection has been documented in released records for decades - since the Church committee..

Some of this is familiar David, I wrote about Villoldo in Shadow Warfare and the documents are certainly consistent and correct as far as I can see about him. In regard to the group mentioned, the episode with the ship is quite familiar and Artime did have some associates who left his particular program, especially in its last year or so. Gary Murr has extensive records on that and allowed me to use them in the chapter on Artime's program which is in Shadow Warfare. In reality the CIA was dealing with so many exiles as individuals and so many others were claiming to be supported by the CIA but at best had some second or third party connection that I'm often amazed that the CIA officers could determine who was on the inside and who was on the outside. I suspect these documents were withheld primarily due to the use of real names and personal history info than anything else; expecially for Villoldo who was a very serious military asset and who did work with Morales on projects.

Steve, one thing we do know for sure is that Angleton was very interested in the French and that point in time and worried about Communist infiltration (as he always was). Anyway, in May, 1963 Souetre was making a variety of approaches to American intelligence groups as the official contact for the OAS, that appears in CIA documents. There is a CIA 201 file on him as of early spring/summer there are also FBI documents including ones from the New York Bureau. A mail trace was placed on him in NYC and it appears he may have been extended some type of diplomatic privilege and immunity to travel to the US. in 1963. There is no detailed record of this travels inside the U.S. other than his visit to Texas and his departure...and that was to a long time friend in Houston. None of this appears to have been conducted surreptitiously, there are lots of both CIA and FBI documents on him. We just lack details on meetings and travel; there is reference to a soft file on him and if I were to guess it might have been a travel file - beyond that I suspect he was in Angleton's files; we do know that Angleton was personally working With SDECE officers, including one at their embassy in New York, and SDECE was most concerned about the assassination attempts OAS was attempting. There may be more documents available now, I have not looked into this area for some seven years.

Thanks Steve, anyone who has the 2010 edition of SWHT will find what I was able to dig up on both Souetre and Mertz beginning on page 366....I mention a couple of the points above as being reported by unverified and if I were rewriting it to day I'd probably just dump them unless someone has found something new because it appears they are just rumor. Actually we know a good bit about Souetre's outreach to American intelligence as of 1963 and its not all that mysterious, its well documented. What he was doing was trying to convince the CIA and any other intel group that would listen that the French government was thoroughly penetrated by communists and the US should break relations and support a coup against it - the basic OAS pitch. Mertz on the other hand was doing his drug thing but also occasionally assisting the French SDECE in countermoves against Souetre and the OAS. What we do know is that Souetre did come to the US and was in contact with the CIA but it was in New York City...not mysteriously with Hunt in Madrid. What is likely is that French intelligence was concerned that Souetre was traveling to the US and to Mexico as part of an OAS scheme to attack de Gaulle on a visit to Mexico. The thing is we continue to discuss very old talking points like this as if they had bee somehow corroborated...perhaps they have but if so I surely would like to see it.

Since I can't seem to help myself - I am familiar with what Dick wrote and gave a shot at trying to prove in much of it myself long ago and failed - ...could Chuck or Steve or Paul or anyone else please provide the corroboration for any (all actually) of the bullet points Paul listed?

Michael, I didn't endorse it nor do I....it would be a hugely unprofessional move by the sort of tactical team I've proposed as conducting the attack. What I did was to point out the issue with the size of the drain exit channel for that location - as compared to the drain at the back of the fence-line (the two are often confused) and then confirm that there was only street manhole access to the storm drain site. Which means inserting your shooter the night before directly off the sidewalk and extracting him the night after - both by opening a manhole in clear view of the traffic that goes by that location literally all day and all night long. Also, if anyone does any research, they will find that police patrols were in the plaza all that night long the evening before. My point was simply that anybody coming up with a scenario needs to check all their facts, I made no endorsement.

A quick search shows me that their is a manhole cover directly above the sewer drain and the scenario where someone could open it say the night before and get in place and then wait for some time...early morning say...and exit is at least doable. The exit is pretty problematic though since that area had people in it for hours and days not to mentione passing traffic. In any event, yes a manhole entrance is possible...

Chris, I don't have the plans at hand and don't want to do this from memory, Jerry Dealey made a lot of posts on this particular subject so perhaps a search would help. From memory I can't even tell you if there is a manhole directly above this street drain or if its further down the street, I would say the first step would be to verify that location before speculation about a shooter entering and leaving unseen from the street.

I think you may find that the channel was big enough up to the large entry up behind the fenceline, covered by a grill, but the feeder channel to that storm drain is a different story all together.

You all might want to check the sewer plans which have been posted and discussed here many times - the size of the feeder channel connection to what is a storm drain in the street would be pretty relevant to your discussion as well as the size of the cement casing behind that drain entry....

No David, the conference is one of the few sources of revenue that Lancer has and full DVDs of the conference are for sale, actually 2017 should be available by the end of this month or nor later than January. I've discussed the idea of fee based downloads of individual sessions with Debra and that might be something for the future.

Ron, that's why this sort of thing - which Bill and I spent an hour on and I cover in several pages in NEXUS - is so difficult to capture in a few lines here. Harvey and Angleton's personal relationship developed while Angleton ran Staff C and Harvey Staff D (well first time around Harvey had Staff D and Staff E). If you mean access to files I'm sure Angleton had access to personnel files and very likely Staff D operational files. As to ZR/RIFLE files, I'm not sure there was much other than what was hidden in various places, I doubt there were operational files for that as you would find in standard, sanctioned operations - for example you will find no Roselli/Castro assassination file per se and his work with Harvey would fall under ZR/RIFLE. That sort of stuff was all verbal and paid out of cover accounts, even internal cover accounts like that for QJ/WIN. Which probably leaves you as confused as ever...sigh. Message me and if you want perhaps we can talk about it over the holidays.

Paul, Bill Simpich and I presented on your question at the recent Lancer conference, I can't repeat the full hour long session here but the answer to your specific question no. When Harvey was given the directive to put together an executive action program his own notes tell us that his first thoughts were how/where to hide it inside the CIA (which he did within Staff D) but also how to obfuscate the identity of both the selected killer and the patsy who would be part of the equation in any such attack - most folks have seen Harvey's notes on this. He made a note to talk to Angleton (including I suspect about hiding multiple identities) and then went to Angleton after which Angleton also appears to have made some introductions for him and the two men clearly had an ongoing dialog on assassination. But ZR/RIFLE was created and funded inside Staff D, actually using the payroll record for QJ/WIN, already in existence, as part of the cover. People like Harvey and Angleton were experts in compartmentalizing elements of operations as part of burying them.

Jenkins was scheduled to appear along with Mike however he had airline problems on the day of the flight and was unable to rebook to make it and ended up not coming...he passed on his apologies for not being able to make it.

In the photo I have I really don't see anything but very large and high bushy eyebrows and that is not apparent. In the lower photo you show it does not appear to be that prominent. Have no idea whether it is actually a scar or not, I can say in talking with Reuben about his exploits and in reading of them I do not recall any discussion of an injury that might have left it and I don't recall any distinctive marks being mentioned on his personnel sheets. Still, it certainly could be...I just don't have anything to confirm it or when it might have happened although that photo and the one I have are from relatively late in his career/life. Mine is the later since his hair is even whiter in it.. Wish I could help.

Paul, the only known fact I have is looking at his photo, which is taken at the standard, relatively close up distance. Its in SWHT and on my website. Take a look and see if you see a scar; I don't. But that's the extent of what I can say about it. If there is a document confirming a scar I've forgotten it, all I have within arms reach is the photo.

No, I don't remember that and it is not at all obvious in his CIA separation photo...which is on my web site. If its there it has to be something you would see only really close up....at least from the best photos I've seen.