Larry Hancock

Thanks Ron, its just one of those things....honestly at one point in time the purported stand down was just as interesting to me as dozens of other items that were circulating....of course back then the place to get such things was on the Compuserve JFK forum (which shows I have been doing this way too long..grin). I pursued it as a lead for a good long time, as I did many of the others. But it required digging deeply (from Lawson's meeting and security planning reports that I originally obtained a copy of from AMKW) on to a pretty extensive study of the 112th and records from NARA and ultimately on to the ARRB materials which sealed the deal, at least for me. Lancer put all the documents I had obtained on CD and I'll edit in the link to the CD.. http://jfklancer.com/catalog/hancock/index.html I would recommend the same diligence about of digging on Chicago as well, I think I was the first one to actually put Vallees photo in a book, I obtained tons of documents on him, including both CPD and SS documents - some eleven years of follow up Secret Services interviews since he had ended up on a PRS list (arguably the dullest stuff I ever read, not to mention the cost). Followed up all the more sensational leads related to Vallee, Oswald and Chicago and found the HSCA had as well. Talked with some of Masen's relatives too. And again the ARRB documents on Chicago finally helped a great deal. And then there was the Bolden story, which turned out to have the most legs of anything about Chicago. All I'm really saying is that so many stories have been in play for so long that its hard not to get lost in them - it would be nice if the internet solved it all but at times it only makes it worse... For a list of prior attempts, not necessarily related to Dallas, you should definitely have LA in the spring and DC in the fall....both demonstrating that more than one set of folks were at least considering an attack on JFK well before Dallas came into the picture.

The stand down is simply a JFK myth Ron, it was something extensively explored by the ARRB. Everyone should simply read the ARRB interview with Prouty on the subject. I put all those ARRB documents on the 112th inquiry on a CD, its available from Lancer and I'll leave it at that...which I have here before but it never seems to stick...sigh.

It did strike me that it could explain a lot...I just don't have a copy of the book available at the moment or I would check. I can't recall the exact time the contact was supposed to have happened but it seems to me like Nagell first approached Oswald in Dallas in the spring and then later in the August time frame in New Orleans. Given that Oswald was approaching so many different groups he might have thought having various sorts of fake ID might make him more credible and just having ID to flash without using it in any official fashion would help him slide by without having professional grade stuff. Just a thought...

If someone has a copy of The Man Who Knew Too Much you might want to check into some remarks I think I recall Nagell having made to Russell. Its a vague recollection of Nagell saying that during his brief contacts with Oswald in 1963 he gave him some tutoring on forging documents. Not really good ones but training class stuff. Perhaps this card represents a rework, paste up, practice type effort just as the one with Nagell's photos does. Anyway, might be worth looking into if anyone wants to scan through Russell's book....I don't think I'm making that up but its been a very long time since my last read.

Andy for Sandy CID is the Criminal Investigative Service - which among other things does counter intelligence..these days its NCIS, one of my favorite TV shows..

Yes Chris, and I only mention it as it seems a bit of a mystery with Oswald being somewhere during his service that does not fit his known assignment record...

Chris, slightly off topic but this takes me back to one of Oswald's photos which shows a Marine base flight line - back in the day a former Marine Corps security officer researched it and found that the location of the Air unit indicated by the markings on the aircraft was in Wash State as I recall...someplace where Oswald was never officially staioned. It raised a big question because the photo indicates it was taken within or close to the alert aircraft area which means it was on base and in what would normally be access controlled at some level.. Just makes me wonder based on your analysis.

Agreed Sandy, they consume immense bandwidth and divert from the massive issues with the evidence related to the crime itself and the equally massive disconnects related to the Warren Commission and its official story line. People who enter this subject for the first time can easily be diverted by such things -- been there, done that - but it appears they will be with us forever.

Jim, that was my mistake and I intended to go back and correct it earlier....the individual involved directly with MB in writing the book was Ed Tatro not Walt Brown, Livingston worked with her on getting it actually published. Ed has discussed his work on the book with me before although I don't know the exact timeline of his work as compared to when Livingston got involved; my impression is that Ed was into it first.

Sandy, I would agree with Jim. First off there are some very basic problems with the timeline of Hoover's documented arrival in Fort Worth, his holding forth in his suite there and any late arrival...which would have to have been more like 2am. I should also point out that in the book MB says Johnson left the party to go to the Cellar...which is literally impossible. While there certainly may have been a party, a social gathering, the whole thing just makes no sense from any sort of conspiracy standpoint. None of these people were stupid, most were quite cunning if detestable morally and otherwise. If you want them all in a conspiracy it would sound far more sane without the party story.

Jim, the book is Texas in the Morning (Walt Brown and Harry LIvingston were both involved) and yes as time passed things got even more complex. All I am trying to do is to point out how with the actual involvement of a lot of other people including several JFK "researchers" the whole story about the party expanded....lots of folks began giving MB advice in her later years and a lot of it was not good for her. Don't really know about Penn and the party...or if I knew don't remember...

Yes he was Paul, it was a national convention and Nixon did legal work for Pepsi. He was there and photographed at various events, Johnson had been there earlier in the week. The convention brought a number of well known names into Fort Worth and peripherally to Dallas.

Kirk, I think my message was pretty clear in regard to the book and MB's reason for doing a book so I will leave that as stated. I did pull a copy of the book since I doubt anyone has taken the effort to buy a copy and the party is covered in about half of one page with no implication that it had anything to do with a conspiracy. MB described it as a social involving Murchison's friends, she did say she was told it had been been scheduled earlier was in honor of Hoover although she does not describe actually seeing him at the party - while she does describe seeing several of Murchison's wealthy oil friends - who she did know by sight. She was surprised by Johnson appearing although she knew he had been in town earlier in the week for the Pepsi convention - which was true. She simply describes Johnson as pulling some of the men briefly into the room, agitated and coming out red faced. And that's it....her other statements about his remarks was described in my other post. No I don't proscribe to the LBJ did it theory, although if you read SWHT you will find the evidence I picked up that he may have had some minor amount of general pre-knowledge and some of his immediate actions of the evening are still hard to explain even after all our research.

Sandy, I really do not remember when Hoover came into the story, as I said when I first heard it the party was no big deal and MB was simply surprised that Johnson even showed up, she was not expecting him. As I recall the party was mostly a reception for some of the well connected people in town in Fort Worth for the Pepsi convention. Johnson came in late and virtually hauled Murchison into another room, he was apparently upset and given how much he had opposed the trip and how badly it was going from his political viewpoint that's understandable. I've researched and written about Johnson in some depth and all the signs are he was just fed up with being VP and if anything was interested in going back to Texas and possibly making a Senate run; he had sent his head campaign down there months before. As to a plot, no, what I recall is simply a call that day early in the morning from an extremely upset Johnson shouting that Johnson would never embarrass him again - and he had just done so in the argument about limo seating. Then sometime later, months maybe, she said he made an off hand remark suggesting a conspiracy of some sort...but then we know he made several similar remarks to that effect. Separately I can say that a number of folks have tried to corroborate how Hoover could even have been there considering that the record shows him in a breakfast meeting in DC the following morning... All in all I think MB offered some interesting insights into Johnson character (or total lack of it) but if you want something truly suspicious I would look elsewhere....I give the best examples of possible Johnson foreknowledge, limited at best, that I could find in SWHT.

Kirk, having known MB fairly well and actually having helped fund the publication of her book I can tell you it was not nearly that simple. Her reason for doing the book was to tell her family history and primarily the story about Johnson and her son and his abandonment of them. That was a very emotional and personal thing for her. She was also sincerely convinced of Johnson's complicity, not by the party as that was a minor thing early on but rather by some personal remarks he made to her - which are classic Johnson and very possibly classic Johnson braggadocio and/or misinformation. Anybody who ever believed personal remarks from Johnson was just being played as a sucker. She was particularly convinced by his violently angry remarks on the day of the assassination - which we know related to Connolly and the car seating and which was a real event. However I can also tell you that her early remarks about a party and guests were very mild and far more limited than what they later came to be....certain people played on her as she became older and essentially manipulated her story to fit their agendas and to make it much more sensational and dramatic. I know that to be true. In the beginning it was not much more than being invited to a party, going and very late seeing LBJ arrive and immediately take a couple of folks behind closed doors. Actually given how the trip was going down, the fact that he had never been happy with it and that it was giving way too much political leverage to Connally - who he was competing with - could easily explain that. What the story became during the years after she began to work on her book was part MB and part a number of other people. Its yet another lesson to us all to be very cautious about sources, especially those that come very late and whose story evolves over time.

Two answers, first the MJ-12 papers documents were first made available to a couple of private individuals in 1984. Dr Hynek passed away in 1986 and never really become really involved with the subject as it took awhile for it to peculate - with additional documents emerging through the 90's and still coming out today! The FBI did become involved early on because as you can imagine if these were truly highly classified documents it would have been an intense security matter and people would have been locked up on Federal charges. Their investigation determined that the documents were false and not a security matter...and as I noted, hundreds of pages more continued to come out during a period of many years. It is pretty clear that the initial documents were part of a disinformation campaign which contained other, nastier elements and was intended to divert UFO researchers and groups (one long targeted by counter intelligence) from new technical developments not only of certain Star Wars tech but of stealth aircraft development. For the story on that read the book Project Beta by Greg Bishop and Mirage Men by Mark Pilkerington. Joe, for your second question, as Jim said, the intelligence community already had special groups and personnel for exactly that kind of work - with the appropriate classifications and compartmentalization...and resources. Over a period of time some of those groups and some very top notch scientific personnel did become involved, that is all in Unidentified. However due to the nature of things there was no ongoing, strategic analysis done by the one group that might have gotten their hands around the whole story - the indications/Warnings analysis group within the CIA. Many of the assumptions about MJ-12 were based in a Roswell craft recovery, however that story has largely collapsed over time as well. I would refer you to Kevin Randle, the long time guru on Roswell, and his most recent book Roswell in the 21th Century. Although Randle himself was involved in almost all the original story, he has now done his own homework and essentially deconstructed virtually all the elements of the original - exposing a number of hoaxers in the process.

Without "contaminating" the forum too much I'll try to give you simple answers here Joe, for support for these responses I just have to refer you to the book...which does study the second question in great detail. First, given the very real and evolving threats JFK had to deal with as Commander in Chief, I see not evidence that this was something that really ever got his attention other than in a couple of very peripheral ways in regard to the space program and the rather improbable possibility of some level of cooperation with the Russians. Certainly this puts me at odds with a considerable amount of what has been written about the subject. In comparison, in 1952 Truman was interested in the subject and took it quite seriously - from an air defense and possible preemptive Soviet attack perspective. Second, there a number of groups that took the subject very seriously, as they should have, and at one point it almost got kicked up to the national security council, why it did not is a story in and of itself since the CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence made that recommendation. I will also tell you that a number of very serious and qualified professionals have searched for special groups outside the ones I mentioned above and address in the book - and have not found them. Of course this puts me at odds with the entire MJ-12 community, a position I am happy to take. The other point that I would make in regard to the information Douglas Caddy relates is that your level of acceptance needs to be evaluated against Howard Hunt as a trusted source since he was originated what Doug is relaying. If you have read my books and blog posts you have seen my evaluation of Hunt so I'll leave it at that.

Well Joe, having just spent 15 years researching and writing a book on UFOs as a national intelligence problem (published only two months ago) - and obviously not dismissing them out of hand - I feel compelled to jump in and (no offense to Mr. Caddy) say that yes, I can indeed dismiss the JFK/UFO scenario it out of hand. It in itself is just another sensational diversion from something that does deserve serious study.

Paul, I think I posted a number of books that would be good sources for you to resolve your questions. Those works are from Russians, Ukrainians - people who can give an inside view of Putin's two periods in power - and by he way the second is not at all like the first which was far more open and very much unlike his second time in power circa 2008. Admittedly there is more a more simplistic, neocon oriented view of the whole matter which you will find in books I did not cite as sources (such as Douglas Schoen's Putin's Master Plan). As far as the financial aspects of the whole matter and Putin's massive skimming of financial resources, that is discussed in the books I mentioned but also in The Panama Papers by Bastian and Frederick Obermaier, very much recommended reading for understanding the full scope and nature of today's dark money networks. To be repetitive, one of the things that really confuses this matter is the evolution of Putin - Russia post 2008 is very much not the Russia it had been previously. Very important to make the distinction.

If you have not already read it I would recommend long time LA investigator Pete Noyes inquiry into Brading...it should give you some good background and context. https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Doubt-Did-Mafia-Kill/dp/1449998496

Well this is taking the thread off topic again but as does happen Jim D and I do disagree at times. Personally I find the remark that Putin " has done all he could to restore living standards, establish pensions, and improve respect for the law and stop the looting by the oligarchs" to be a bit too similar to remarks about trains running on time in Italy under Fascism - true in parts but far short of the full picture of Fascism in Italy and Germany - or of Putin's return to power in Russia. Especially the part about the oligarch looting, which is true but really applies to those oligarchs he could not bring under control and keep within his own domain. So for the sake of transparency, I offer the following sources as starters for those interested in this and with a counter view of Putin and affairs in Russia, especially since 2008. All the Kremlin's Men by Mikhail Zygar, The New Nobility by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov and Putin's War Against Ukraine by Taras Kuzio, published with the chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto. I admit to having certain political worldviews myself, both the US and Russia have been conducting political warfare for a good while now, with Russia having a far longer history with it, extending back to its Imperial days and the "great game" against the British Empire across Asia. I'm not willing to give either party much of a pass in terms of stirring the pot of world affairs.

Jim, I think we will just have to disagree again, my view is that you are being far too charitable towards Putin and Russian covert political action since 2008 - but that's another story entirely. Apart from that my post was with the intent of balance, further searches will provide other sources with contrarian views of Global Research. My point was simply that its good practice to do some background checking on any essay of that sort which comes from a policy oriented organization - something that is becoming more an more common with the internet as a major source of "news".

A couple of quick searches might provide some interesting context for the article...there seems to be some concern about GlobalResearch's agenda? https://www.quora.com/Journalistic-Ethics-and-Norms-How-legitimate-is-The-Centre-for-Global-Research

Very good dialog, now this is real research...thank you Robert and Gary. To raise one point, it might be interesting to ponder the alternative scenario of a whole bullet and at what point it could have been removed from evidence. Certainly it would not be the only whole bullet that may have either gone missing or been replaced by something more acceptable to the emerging official story of the day. Studies of exactly where, when and with who are especially interesting to me.

Ron, not sure if that was a question for me or for someone else....I think I described a couple of ways in which Sturgis was used - and not used - in an earlier post. Both Hemming and Sturgis were smart guys with their own agendas, I recall listening to a tape of Sturgis talking to his lawyer in later years, describing how he hoped to entrap people accusing him of things so he could file for slander.