Larry Hancock

Thanks Paul, I think I was reacting to the fact that a number of researchers dug into DeMohrenschildt well before I showed up on the scene and built a very strong case for his long time connections with various intelligence organizations, as part of his own political interests - but also as part of his own business networking. He was a consummate "networker". I recall a Lancer conference at least a dozen years ago when a researcher (first name Carol, but I can't remember the full name at this point) presented for well over two hours, going into exhaustive detail on his life history and those connections. These days her work does not even get discussed and I don't thing she published it; a very hard thing to do back then. I can also recall getting a copy of DeMohrenschildt's own manuscript about Oswald where he clearly regrets his role in befriending Lee and Marina and not defending Lee before the investigations...its is striking and shows how complex a character he was and how conflicted he had become over Oswald. He is obviously a crucial part of the Oswald story and to me clearly shows that Oswald was "on the radar" for the CIA following his return from Russia - and suggests a set of domestic CIA documents and very possibly CIA/FBI correspondence that was suppressed. I expounded on that element to SWHT 2010 because I thought it was so revealing. At the moment I'm working with others on another aspect of the Oswald story in Dallas which once indicates a series of FBI reports that went missing and to me explains the remark from Hosty to the Secret Service agent about Oswald meeting with subversives. It may well have nothing to do with the attack in Dallas itself but it surely would reflect how entangled Oswald was with a variety of CIA and FBI counter intelligence and subversive unit activities and further illustrate how far Oswald was from being a loner, much less a lone nut.

Did I say I dismissed him Paul? If you study his extended business background you find he picked up many of his consulting and petroleum related jobs via his social network. That's not social climbing, that's business. As to his relationship with Oswald, it started with a CIA domestic ops officer asking George to watch for a returning couple who would be contacting the White Russian community, to gather information on him and report on his and his wife's activities. He was obviously known and had been of help to CIA domestic ops prior to that. I cover that in some detail in SWHT and I don't think that's minimizing things at all - I've also posted and previously discussed that George Bush was a high level CIA business asset and I've written about DeMorenschieldt being recruited to report on Oswald by the CIA. I don't think that is mysterious or that he is an enigma, DeM's intelligence contacts were extensive and I wrote about those as well...others have done far more, tracking such contacts back both pre and post WWII. Not sure what you want but I'm picking no arguments here...enough said from me.

I have no doubt they had mutual friends and associates in Texas, George was very much a social climber and very practically too as many of his business dealings worked through social introductions. My only point in all this was that not everything is necessarily mysterious, suspicious or related to the attack in Dallas. Much of business, corporate and political life is built around mutual interests that might be called conspiratorial in a sense...its the way the world works. My view is that the real challenge for all of us interested in the assassination is parsing out everything that does not relate directly to the shooting in Dallas and the associated framing of a patsy connected to ....fill in the blank. I've come to have a real respect for "focus".

So how was he related to LBJ David...grin...

Paul I'm really not going to return to this because it gets into the fact that the message was a routine communication from the FBI to the CIA, basically a notification from the FBI to the CIA liaison desk. To do a decent job I would have to go back into the whole matter and I don't try to do that sort of thing strictly from memory any longer. I suspect you can find it all with some searching, or at least my cut on it at least. Russ Baker and I have been through this same thing several times as well...without either convincing the other as I recall. As to the letter from DeM, he had a habit of writing high level people including President's about his thoughts and ideas, for example he had written to JFK previously. He had also written to Johnson about setting up meetings with his business partner, something discuss here ages ago. In the end Burris attended that meeting for Johnson. As I stated, there is no doubt the CIA had an association with Bush, they wanted use of his oil operations for a cover and in tern made business introductions for him and no doubt provided commercial exploitation information. That's documented and was far from unique in Agency operations. No mystery at all about that sort of relationship, That would be a much higher level association with more senior people at Agency HQ. They were always looking for cooperative business partners both for intel collection and for covers in covert operations. and in return most businessmen and professionals felt it their duty to assist.

Good news on the book, if you want to chat about it as you read it drop me a note anytime...larryjoe@westok.net I will add a few things to this as I've been thinking about this thread for some time. First off Phillips trade-craft was reputedly quite good and he had a reputation for distancing himself from all his operations, leaving no "fingerprints". If you saw him, he probably intended you to see him and he was a master at reverse spin type disinformation. But more directly in regard to Veciana, I do have a number of concerns about any direct relationship between he, and for that matter Alpha 66, and the CIA. I've written about a number of those previously including the fact that the Army did indeed have a relationship with him (Army intel) and was very interested in obtaining info and samples of Russian weapons via Alpha 66. In the spring of 1963 the Army even proposed a sanctioned relationship with Alpha 66 as part of the transition planning against Cuba following Mongoose and under the SGA - and the CIA rejected that. One of the things we know is that at JMWAVE level the CIA was very well aware of the Alpha 66 raids against Russian targets in Cuba as well as other exile missions and did nothing to stop them - in direct opposition to White House policies of the time. I write about one source for such information on DRE but David Morales makes an interesting remark in one document about that type of information being available on Alpha 66, without their suspecting. That is one of the things that suggests to me Phillips may have been running his own agenda at times including with Alpha 66; the TILT mission suggests that approving missions contrary to JFK's policies certainly involved more CIA officers than just Phillips. Personally I do believe that Veciana was in contact with Phillips but I think the relationship may have been very compartmentalized. Phillips appears to me to have been involved in activities beyond his formal assignments, some of which appear sanctioned and others may not have been. I do cover that in SWHT 2010 and I think that much of what Veciana saw as Phillips might well have been not an official CIA relationship but Phillips setting up his own assets, with his own agenda. That same behavior can be found all the way through his later career in Latin American and even into his West Hemisphere position. Beyond that, it does appear to me that Veciana has considerably enhanced his story, while I have no means to determine if the enhancements are true or not I remain skeptical as what elements of that might have been pure David Phillips.

Yes, Paul, the investigation is something I mention in SWHT 2010 and it is documented - actually by a memo from an individual directed to particiapte. It describes a very comprehensive effort broader than just JMWAVE immediate contacts. The problem is that it appears that if an official report was produced then it has vanished. Sforza ordered it but that also raises a question about Shackley since he said under oath that JMWAVE conducted no post assassination JFK related inquires. Either man could have lied..or both. On Bush, I have gone into that before repeatedly so I'm not getting into it here again but that whole story has no legs, it was a routine communication to a desk officer named Bush and that's really all there is to it. The connection of Bush to the CIA have to do with the use of his company as a cover for covert ops in the Gulf of Mexico and a quid pro quo for some business introductions, nothing involving him operationally. That's my assessment at least but I've given it before so I'll just be repetitive here and let lie..grin.

If you look at Phillips career including a Presidential commendation and personal meeting with Eisenhower after his first major assignment you will find out that he was famous for his psych warfare work..which is why he was recruited very early into the Cuba project. Famous, or infamous is the call, also well known to keep his personal fingerprints off his covert political action and propaganda projects.

Felix said that he was there with Che at his capture and that is documented, he said he took the watch and apparently he has it so that seems pretty well settled. As to Sforza, yes there is actually a good bit of information on him including Agency files as to his assignments. Newman is writing about him and I wrote a good bit about him on both SWHT and more about his later assignments in Shadow Warfare....we also know he oversaw an investigation out of JMWAVE after the assassination into possible exile involvement...the report of that investigation disappeared, we only know it happened. Like many, he is not the mystery that he once was...

Well you caught me Joe, actually the forum photo is from a Lancer conference about eight years ago as far as I can figure; the one on my web page is a bit newer, only about three years ago. For the sake of full disclosure my plan is to stop there and just not have any further photos taken...grin. The "loss of trust" issue you mentioned is something that I encounter over and over again, whenever I work in areas that deal with national security in any form. I'd like to think of it as something relatively new but my suspicion is that its not, its simply became exacerbated when America truly moved into the global arena following WWI and began to act as a global power - seeing enemies and threats on that basis. In that perspective security beings to trump everything else and following WWII virtually everything was made worse by a new belief in the susceptibility of the public to foreign propaganda and psychological warfare. At one time I would have found those concerns overrated, and they probably were then - now with the advent of the global internet I'm becoming convinced that it is a serious contemporary concern. I think we often see "loss of trust" largely in the context of the political assassinations, but the further I looked the more I found it to be endemic, certainly following WWII. Two quick examples illustrate that. When Eisenhower was shown there was no bomber gap and no missile gap he made the decision to proceed with a gigantic military build up and compromise his budget goals for the sake of a threat that simply did not exist. But if he had backed down he would have had to disclose why he was rejecting the military build up and the SAGE system (which cost more than the Manhatten project) and the expansion of SAC. Eisenhower was not willing to compromise the unique intelligence collections assets the nation had at the time and so he endorsed the spending surge. Decades later, during the Contra years, the CIA became quite well aware that many of its surrogates among the exiles and rebels were becoming heavily involved in drug running. The problem was that covert operations always requires surrogates and without them you end up with no cover story and some real political problems missions that a President has ordered you to conduct. The result was that the Justice Department was asked for and granted an exemption allowing the CIA to essentially overlook those drug activities. When the CIA was pulled out of it and North took over he simply followed the same practice of looking the other way for the sake of the mission. I don't claim to have any answers in regard to this problem, all I can do is observe that when national security rears its head, the instinct is always to put the mission (and the national security) above all other considerations. And that means not sharing information - not just with the public but even internally within government agencies. Which of course takes you you to "loss of trust" both inside the government and out. As you can imagine, that same issue rears its head to quite an extent within Unidentified as well.

Thanks to everyone for their positive comments, I'm really trying not to abuse the JFK forum with my comments on this subject since it is very far off topic (well unless you were a fan of the short lived "Dark Skies" TV series - and no I most definitely do not go there). And Ron, it was the desert, no hot dogs, just a few Joshua trees. And Keyhoe would have loved to see the documents we can see now. Obviously I'm excited about the book, the culmination of some 15 years on and off beginning back in 2003. I'm blogging about what the book is and what it is not. Given the nature of the subject and the data available I was actually able to apply some analysis techniques that don't really work in regard to the Kennedy assassination. However I think the book does give a much more in depth understanding of the total national intelligence structure and exposes what should have been done if the Kennedy assassination had actually been treated as a national security matter. My friend John Williams did a Lancer presentation several years ago in which he examined the minutes of the Intelligence Advisory Committee, the body which serves the NSC and which would have been tasked with initial evaluation of the assassination if he had been treated as something beyond a simple crime. John was amazed to find it was never even considered as a subject - even with Soviet and Cuban implications at the height of the Cold War. At the time I was amazed by that but after researching Unidentified and finally understanding how the total system works, that makes sense in terms of the nature of the "choke points" in the system. Anyway, if you are interested, I will be doing a series of related posts on https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/ If you have not visited the blog please do, everyone is invited to post questions and I try to answer them promptly, if not briefly (Unidentified is 465 pages or so, clearly "brief" is not my style).

Well since you asked Ramon....grin....actually I'm already under contract with my friend Stu Wexler to get out a sequel to The Awful Grace of God on the MLK assassination by next summer. Beyond that I've floated the idea of a companion book to our Shadow Warfare (focused on covert political action) but I'm being told at the moment publishers are taking a real beating on anything that is not fiction, pop culture or any book that does not have a well known media or political name in the title. It appears that our current state of government and the daily news cycle being driven by the President is overriding interest in the sorts of history I'd like to address. With all that for free in the news, nobody is bothering with books. Also, as I had anticipated I'm already picking up negative press about Unidentified because I can be characterized as a JFK conspiracy nut and hence intrinsically questionable - even if my dog likes me. That's life. But it all comes together to make me hesitant for any project that would be towards the end of this decade. Hopefully the new book will be received well enough to restore some of my energy...will just have to see.

In the interest of shameless self promotion I'm posting this on my new book, just out on Amazon - its not a JFK book so the moderators are welcome to punt this and I will not post further here on it. If it sounds interesting please visit my blog or as always email me at larryjoe@westok.net The following will give you plenty of introduction to the book... thanks... https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/ http://www.larry-hancock.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Unidentified-National-Intelligence-Problem-UFOs/dp/069289229X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Morales, not necessarily by name, was mentioned during the Garrison inquiry (as The Big Indian) from JM/WAVE and also during Gaeton Fonzi's work on activities at JM/WAVE. Fonzi's interest ultimately led to Bob Dorff connecting with a military trainer who had worked at JM/WAVE and who knew the man by name. However the HSCA had nothing definite and you need to remember that is SOP not to name CIA officers outside the highest ranks in DC nor officially acknowledge their connection to the Agency. Today we know so many names we take it for granted but that was not the case back in the seventies or even later up into the nineties. It should be noted that Morales exaggerated on occasion, while he was involved in the project to get Che, it was Felix Rodriquez who was on site and came up with Che's watch. However there is no doubt Morales hated JFK and felt it was a security risk. As to his being in Dallas, impossible to say although there are records showing him to be in Miami and actually involved in a major project to exfiltrate Castro's sister out of Cuba as of that date. His chief operations man, Rip Robertson, would be the more likely candidate to be in Dallas although its unlikely we will ever know for sure. I have no doubt he enjoyed the results, wherever he was. As to his death, given that Roselli was beginning to drop some names and that did get back to Miami, its certainly possible that someone thought Morales should be gone...

Mathias, its really hard to track this one down. I wrote about it in SWHT and it all comes back to a Dallas investigative newspaper report with the officers (I think we have names for two or three of them) about a box of materials that was recovered by the police after a tip. The recovery of the box is verified, even by the Assistant DA, but his comment was that there was nothing in it useful for the trial against Ruby so he had it destroyed. There was mention of phone calls from New Orleans and a lot of other tantalizing things that would have shown a Cuban linkage of some sort but there is really no chance that we are going to no more than what was in the officer's descriptions of what they saw while quickly going though the box...which had motel receipts, news articles, and a variety of other things. There is even the wild chance that it was material prepared to show Cuban involvement that didn't get used due to Oswald early arrest.

Just for reference, I published an extensive collection of Nagell documents from the archives a number of years ago, back in the day when you had to go to the archives to get them. Along with them I did a chronological analysis of Nagell's communications, related to what was going on at different times in his life. His activities were very situational, often determined by where he stood both in his legal affairs and especially during the periods when he was trying to recover and eventually did gain custody of his children. Looking at any particular document or communication without the big picture can be pretty misleading. The documents were published on CD by JFK Lancer.

Steve, I've been studying this area a good deal recently for a sequal for Shadow Warfare - it would focus on covert political action, both Russian and American. Don't know if that will ever happen but in regard to the regions of the Caucasus and Middle East I've gone all the way back to study the Great Game as played by Russia and the British...with a focus on Iran but also Afghanistan, Turkey and a host of small powers that don't exist today. Its amazing to see how constant things are in this region and how the external powers never learn. The extent to which we ignore the regional cultures, the tribal nature of much of the area and other truly basic facts (such as a somewhat unique form of nationalism) which seem so clear literally over centuries. The Iranians had no love for either the Russians or the Brits...or anybody else including us. Its always been a game of playing foreign powers against each other, and they are extremely good at it (given that they had empires whichlasted for centuries before any of today's super powers that might not be unexpected). One of the things that comes out of all of this is how astute and sanguine JFK was in regard to international affairs, to anti-colonialism, to nationalism...his strategic understanding is virtually unique (not even going to how badly we are just about to jump off the deep end now). To sum it all up simply, I'll put in this link to a favorite singer of mine who says it far too better than I do...and the song makes me shudder when I seriously listen to it.

Interestingly while the CIA made a lot of preparations and took a lot of credit for the coup, several Iranian historical studies give a much more nuanced view, bringing both the Soviet and British activities into the mix as well as the complex Iranian internal politics of the time. Several good books on this, one being "Nationalism in Iran" by Richard Cottam. As with the CIA in Guatemala, other factors (including the harsh American naval blockade and a Navy task group with Marine landing craft poised offshore) came into play in these CIA "successes". Not to mention Rip Robertson's unsanctioned sinking of a freighter during that blockade. The Iranian coup is certainly more complex than it appeared to me when I first started studying it strictly from the CIA involvement.

Ron, for someone who was so mysterious that the CIA would not even acknowledge he existed to the HSCA, researchers have managed to learn a huge amount about Morales. His career was either unique or very close to it. Very few men have gone from being low enlisted rank in the Army to being a consultant on counterinsurgency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff - personally commended by a President for covert operations success along the way. As far as I can tell he was the only CIA officer also commended in writing for his work during the disastrous Cuba project, for training and preparing the Cuban exiles field intelligence groups, Simply from reading some of his operations reports you realize that he was not only well educated but professionally polished in his chosen career. But from talking to his associates its clear that he was also very emotional, passionately patriotic and rabidly anti-communist. He is also the only person whose job crossed paths in Miami with everyone from James Angleton and William Harvey to David Phillips, Tony Sforza, Manuel Artime and Henry Hecksher. I write more about his career in both NEXUS and Shadow Warfare, including Angleton's involvement with Morales Cuban exile trainees (who became an asset of the JM/WAVE station and worked domestically as well as in Mexico City) following the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. As to his death and his funeral, I've talked with his best friend about that - who had no doubts based on additional statements from Morales that he had been involved with the Kennedy assassination - and he again asserted that Morales had become nervous over some period of time, essentially isolating himself and his family. He was concerned about people he had worked with, without saying why. Its probably important to take a look at exactly what was going on with his former associates in the year or two before his death...as well as to consider both the possibility of poison and his last trip to Washinton DC.

Well now if you had SWHT 2010 you would know a lot about him, he is discussed throughout. Also in Shadow Warfare in regard to Guatemala, Laos, and the Artime project. Dick Russell also presents new research on him in his most recent book. There are really two independent (well maybe independent) lines of research on him, one in regard to Nagell's story, about Oswald in Japan and in MC where Hecksher was operating and very possibly the CIA cut out to Nagell in 62. Then there is the well documente4d story of Hecksher as chief of the AM/World operation in 63, Jenkin's boss and in charge of developing and supporting Artime in Am/World. Probably safe to say that a number of the most interesting folks from 1961 had become embedded in the Artime project by 63 - they would go on afterwards across Lation America, many ending up in North's phase of the Contra project. I also discuss him in regard to his Golden Triange assignment and in regard to the fact that it was he and his network who Garett Underhill was getting rumors about just before the assassination. So now you know were to look...grin. I'd say Hecksher is somewhat like Morales once was, a key player in CIA covert ops from Guatemala on but simply off the radar of most JFK related dialog.

Brian, there have been efforts to contact some of the folks mentioned and the effort continues. To date all we can say for sure is that they are real people and in a couple of cases most definitely associated with Wheaton. But we need to be cautious, what we have is information that Jenkins had trained some of the individuals involved and that Quintero might have been part of that training or done some later himself during AM/WORLD. Keep in mind that Jenkins supported individuals like Quintero and Felix Quintero who had been involved in abortive paramilitary style attacks to kill Fidel Castro via ambush and sniper attacks circa 61. Chronology is critical and by 63 of course Jenkins was working for Hecksher and with Artime and Quintero...and working for them were folks like Felix Rodriquez. Names that show up again in the time frame where Wheaton is trying to get logistics/supply contracts for phase 2 Contra efforts. So we are talking about not what Jenkins and Quintero did but what the people associated with them knew in terms of the assassination and the tactical team - as well as what the team itself was told in order to get buy in for murdering a President. In NEXUS I lay out what I think is the most likely chain of events, with people higher up - at the level of Angleton and Helms - being concerned about Kennedy's emerging policies of negotiation, and acceptance of neutrality to turn back Soviet expansion. That was exacerbated by the news of his new back channel approach to Castro. And who was available to carry that message down to JM/WAVE, William Harvey with his connections to Morales and all the Castro assassination efforts via Roselli. That takes you back to exactly the same network of tactical paramilitary folks from 61. Your point is well taken, certainly the team going to Dallas would have to have been motivated, something more than just revenge being in play, and they would have needed assurances about support. That's where extreme caution is involved in using words like rogue, sanctioned, etc. Probably better to describe it than try to name it. As to Hecksher, he certainly was not connected in to the CIA power structure as Harvey via Angleton. But it is clear that he was bitter about JFK and bitter about his current assignment which nobody involved thought was going to work. Would he have given some sort of assent or support if approached by the right person, very possibly....but its unclear who that would be. Did he have the reach into the right community that Morales and Robertson did, I don't think so. At the moment some of us are still exploring Hecksher and his rather interesting role in MC during 1962, maybe we will learn something more about exactly how he got the AM/World assignment but right now its unclear as he had always been a wild card, even back in Laos not to mention Japan. One clue though, look at who bailed him out and sent him to the Golden Triangle when State wanted him fired as COS in Laos, there might be a clue there.

I thought his first book, 1,000 Years for Revenge, was good and tallied quite well with the other sources I found credible - the others seem to be a little repetitive in some areas but do have a more specific individual focus. As to Clarke I thought his personal take on what it took to get the FBI's attention was very much on target - but my endorsement there is specifically in regard to the comparison between FBI CT under Clinton and Bush. I think we can get some good insights on FBI and CT from these books, but I don't see anything that gives me a broad, objective view of everything the Burueau is doing these days. Then again I haven't looked really recently so I may be missing that. I do know I'm always more impressed by a book like that that reviews both successes and failures, losses and wins. That was one thing I liked about Clarke.

To Paul...I've seen nothing to suggest its real. On the other hand if somebody has a copy and wants to cite some sources, including anything that actually documents that DISC existed in a form that would support his story I'd be happy to pursue it. To David, actually I reviewed a lot of the more contemporary books on the FBI when I wrote Surprise Attack and I really was not satisfied by any of them, way too much attitude and agenda in most of it. Bashing is easy to do when you tackle these subjects but an even handed, objective inquiry is hard to find. I found more balance in the books dealing with counterterriorism across both the CIA and FBI, and those are what I used as sources. I would recommend The Art if Intelligence by Harry Crumpton and Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke. Also, as I have done before I for anyone who is serious and wants to see the larger picture of intelligence in the real world, I recommend The US Intelligence Community by Jeffrey Richelson but get the seventh edition which is most current. Actually the sheer fact that the man has written seven editions should tell you he knows what is real and what isn't. To

Paul, I have gone over that time and time again trying to find something real in it, most recently with Russ Baker who was looking to find something substantive on it and to date neither of us has and it seems like DISC is largely a myth. Certainly the FBI would have had internal security responsibilities under the Industrial Security Act of 1957 and more recently there is an agency with something of a similar name. If you find anything on it outside the Torbett document and the conspiracy community let me know. There is a DISCO which stores security and backround records on contractors but that is a far different thing.

David if you want to get away from that sort of sensationalism I would recommend the following book which relates some of the really nasty stuff that was done - but keeps it within the realm of reality. https://www.amazon.com/Spying-America-Domestic-Counterintelligence-Program/dp/0275934071/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=