Larry Hancock

Agreed, I tend to think it was Phillips using Melton...

Thanks George, although I think I would still take the same position. The report proposed simulations, mock attacks and other activities that could be blamed on the Cubans. The intention would have been to do such things without causing American casualties - planning that sort of detail would have come later and might well have gone bad anyway, no doubt one of the reasons the proposals never really went anywhere, especially with JFK. What I would agree on is that the Joint Chiefs were all for open warfare with Cuba and what they wanted were orders to engage, they continued practicing large scale, undeniable invasions during the summer of 1963 - with JFK's full approval. And the Joint Chiefs warned the CIA about their Bay of Pigs invasion plans, telling them directly that if even a single Cuban aircraft remained destroyed and was in the air to challenge the landing it would likely be a disaster - which it was. I didn't post here to persuade anyone from their views, I posted to make the point that the provocation practices called out in Northwoods were not unique - and to emphasize the point that the CIA had been in the business of doing things such as provocations and political assassinations for years, they had highly experienced military personnel in operations who had studied the history of such assassinations, including deniable assassinations and didn't need any staff reports to tell them how to orchestrate provocations, or put together deniable assassination plots. We even know who some of those officers were and what they were doing in 1963 - and how much they hated JFK and considered him a security risk and probably a traitor.

Tracy, I don't think there is any doubt the CIA was in contact with Veciana however if you will check all the documents listed in the link below I think its pretty clear that they talked to him, they monitored him and they monitored Alpha 66. I don't see any sign of an "asset" type connection for him while in Cuba or while he was organizing Alpha 66. He appears to be very independent. I'm not sure about that JMATE sabotage thing, it seems inconsistent and might be a product of name confusion, even the CIA got confused with the multiple Cuban names. https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=AMSHALE-1 On the other hand, Phillips might have gone further with Veciana in Cuba (and even afterwards) on his own, if so its not reflected in the documents we have and normally it would be in Vecian's background file, no reason for it to be concealed. To Paul's question, Phillips used the alias Andrew Merton but never "Melton". On the other hand, operating on his own under commercial cover he could have used any number of names at his own discretion - operational cover names show up in project and activity reports but we don't have any of those on Phillips in Cuba. So, he may have used Melton and we just don't see it or he may have used it for his own purposes and not as part of any reporting - a fairly common practice.

Thanks Tracy, based on that I offer the following - strictly speculative and based on my own belief that Phillips did first contact Veciana in Cuba, where Phillips himself wrote that he used an alias to connect with counter revolutionary groups including one in particular which was seeking to assassinate Castro. Of course Phillips was working under commercial cover, as a contract CIA employee, not fully on staff as he had been previously and certainly not as a case officer. Basically he was collecting intelligence, particularly political intelligence on the Castro regime and its opposition. Given that, two things strike me. The first is that the level of contact with Veciana would have been more tenuous than what we see back in the states, Veciana would have been a source and not much more. That could mean some limited training, after all Phillips had previously been a case officer and had done recruiting and agent handling. How he could have handled polygraphing in Cuba eludes me but Phillips was an actor at heart, perhaps it was all staged - including the purported truth serum and poison pill - to impress and to test Veciana. So why would Veciana have held back on such information at the time of his HSCA interview....actually the reason might be quite simple. If he had decided not to identify Phillips, for whatever reason, he would have had to go with a story that the fellow he know in Cuba had represented himself as acting for commercial interests and not have been a CIA officer. Of course he would have looked incredibly stupid to mention the polygraph, truth serum, the training and the poison pill in that context. Obviously such things would have screamed CIA, even back in Cuba. Now that he has admitted he knew that Phillips was CIA, he can add that in... Of course all that is a guess on my part but it would make things more consistent. Larry

Tracy, could you elaborate on when and possibly where that training was supposed to have occurred. As far as I know the CIA did not officially train Cuban exiles until they had been formally vetted and brought into a program, which involved giving them a polygraph among other things. Then they were given a special classification as to their role and appropriate military training or intelligence trade-craft practice training would be provided - meaning there should have been a file on Veciana that showed his vetting process and he should have been assigned a case officer, all things the HSCA would have wanted to know. And of course if Phillips was assigned to be involved with him on projects that should have been documented. We have seen enough now to know how much the CIA practiced security and loved paperwork. Then it becomes a matter of what he was trained for...as an intelligence collection asset, as a spy on other exiles, or for some specific project (say running Alpha 66 as a deniable Agency asset) - we know it was routine for such things to happen but they were always heavily documented. Alberto Fernandez an the Tejauna is an example and there is extensive paperwork on him and the ship. All of this should have been brought to the attention of the HSCA - meaning one of three things, either it did happen and the Agency committed a major sin of not just obfuscation but a series of outright lies (OK, no surprise there), it happened unofficially with Phillips and possibly some of his reports doing things outside normal channels and control e.g. going rogue (which would possibly be even more interesting and suggestive given what Veciana has claimed Phillips was doing in Latin America) or Veciana is making his story more sensational to sell books which would not be good. Timing and location might give us some clues on which of the three is in play. ,

George, actually the particular scenario you mention was based in the accidental explosion of a booster, in other words if Glen's launch did turn tragic then the scenario would have involved pointing figures and in that instance blaming the Russians since they had covert electronics ships stationed to monitor the flight. I don't find any of the Northwoods scenarios that involved American personnel intentionally causing injury or murder. Somebody correct me and give me a link if I'm wrong about that. My real point is that you don't need Northwoods to give you a conspiracy scenario; one of my purposes in researching and writing NEXUS was to look at real life CIA assassination projects and what their practices were. The common factor is that they either had to involve special poison and not be detected as murder or if they were more obvious...like a shooting...there had to be a patsy and the patsy would be linked to Communists and there would be a very solid back story, with documents, photos, etc showing how the patsy had been connected. All that was part of the operation and for that matter you can see it all in Harvey's notes on ZR/RIFLE. We also have other assassination plots against Castro later in Latin America, apparently carried out as rogue actions by Phillips using Cuban exiles that were part of his own private network. And they all involved sophisticated patsy linkages - they failed for various reasons. So, as everyone knows my own assessment is that an operation very much like several that had been organized against Castro - at least one involving shooting him while he traveled in an open vehicle - was organized by the same people who had been working on such operations for over two years. They didn't need any Joint Chief study, they were familiar with such practices and a couple of them them had been involved with writing manuals including assassination practices and and training assassination teams as far back as 1954.

Business as usual Paul, I was trying to point out that everything from contingency planning (including provocations and false flag tension and destabilization programs) are very real practices and occur constantly. And the US is not the only nation that practices them. All these things are quite serious and is important to know about them; however in my view just because they exist does not mean that they were associated with Dallas. On the other hand, we also know a great deal about assassination practices and in particular deniable practices - we have Harvey's exec action notes, we have examples of several CIA projects and for that matter a number of Russian deniable assassinations including some recent ones. The practices are laid out for us and pretty consistent. And in the case of Dallas its possible to connect the dots showing that CIA folks and for that matter exiles involved in assassination projects were involved in the JFK assassination. I know it sounds like I'm being repetitive but I fail to understand why when we have solid leads to people who were doing assassinations then and who considered JFK an imminent national security threat (the CIA types) and/or a traitor to their country (CIA assets and exiles) we continue to look further afield and wrestle around at the concept level when we already have well defined motives, people and timelines that connect everything together. But that's just me.

I've posted this before but I think it has to be considered that the strongest supporter for Lansdale in 1963 was JFK. Kennedy had been impressed by his understanding of Vietnam and even after Mongoose faded away after the missile crisis JFK wanted to place him back in Vietnam, either as CIA station chief or even possibly as ambassador. However if there was one thing State, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs agreed on it was that Lansdale had become untouchable. In the face of that broad opposition JFK was unable to move him over although who knows what he might have done eventually since he really felt Lansdale had some unique insights into the Vietnam problem and frankly he was becoming distrustful of all those individuals and groups who had a current stake in how things were being conducted there. I cover all this in Shadow Warfare although I would suggest some broader reader on Lansdale for context.

I know portions of it have been circulated on the internet periodically, as Bill noted all this seems to go in cycles. I don't know that I ever posted it myself, my impression was that what is available could either have been drafted for a book or very possibly for a TV or media program...at about that time Phillips was pursing the possibility of a TV series on the CIA like the one on the FBI. One of the things folks miss is that Phillips actually wrote several books, not just Nightwatch. I recommend reading them as they give a lot more insight into his thoughts and attitudes at different points in time. Honestly I didn't think anyone would ever take the few pages he drafted on this as any sort of confession....Phillips loved mind games though, its not out of reason that he was just playing with JFK conspiracy folks...

If you take a close look at the actual document and proposal you will see it proposes simulations, mock attacks and a variety of dirty tricks to make it appear that Cuban forces had performed attacks however in no way does it call for actual assaults on US personnel either military or civilian - see the reference to mock bodies. And there were a host of different options in the proposals: http://www.wanttoknow.info/010501operationnorthwoods Beyond that I could show you many instances of similar studies and proposals including plans for provocation attacks in conjunction with the Cuba project - for example David Morales went to Guantanamo for discussions with Naval intelligence officers for their proposals for staging a variety of provocations which would trigger US military action. As I said earlier Ike ordered a provocation plan in Dec 1960, either he was ignored he there was a response we have never even seen. I'm sure there were a number of similar proposals we don't know about because they were not documented as precisely as the staff studies in Northwoods. I'm sorry that folks see Northwoods as so unique, its not, we just happened to have it as part of the JFK assassination inquiry...but then I knew my bringing it up would be annoying.

I would think the interview would be on the MFF site; years ago I took the interview plus all the ARRB working papers relating to their military investigation, the 112th and to Prouty and put it on a CD that JFK Lancer makes available - the title is Keys to the Conspiracy.

Until you read Prouty's extended interview with the ARRB...at his own request...you really don't have the full picture. Read that and draw your conclusions in regards to his various remarks, especially in regard to security stripping in Dallas.

OK, so I won't ...grin. Actually I suspect that there was a head nod, but in studying a number of very real CIA assassination operations, it didn't even have to be that definitive. Eisenhower made a statement that Lemumba (sp) had to go and the CIA director took that to mean assassination. It was so confusing that when the poison showed up in the Congo the station chief was totally befuddled, he had gotten a telegram about removal but he thought it meant political action. I write about this at length in NEXUS in terms of how subtle things were in constant pursuit of deniability. But its important to note that in operations we do know about such directions also occurred way down the CIA chain of command, far below the Director, Assistant Director, Directorate head etc....and when the instruction was delivered everyone assumed it was backed up all the way to the top because names were never mentioned and nothing ever appeared in writing. In NEXUS I speculate on where the talk occurred and how it flowed downhill, pretty specifically....and really all that had to be expressed was that there was a national security issue and something had to be done. I will say though that in the assassination projects we know about, none of them were terribly complex, nothing more than described in Harvey's own notes on practices. Beyond that I have to say that Northwoods is not all that over the top, especially compared to other Lansdale era proposals like Celia Fantasma (sp?), the cigar stuff etc. Eisenhower clearly was talking about a pretext attack on Guantanamo or a Navy vessel back in 1960, with no limits set and a demand that it be quick and convincing. I don't bean to sound blase about it but when you start looking at these sorts of practices, not just by the US but by Britain and especially Russia - especially Russia - its not long before nothing sounds over the top.

Steve, I know I'm not going to make any friends with this but just as Northwoods was simply a contingency planning study by a staff group with no operational connections to anything. It was really just one more set of sensational plans that came of the Lansdale era psychological warfare approach and got no traction at all. Its very possible that something similar may have been generated in December of 1960 when President Eisenhower requested that the CIA give him some provocations that might be used immediately to kick off the Cuba project because it was falling way behind schedule. Northwoods is written about as if it were something very special while in reality its just one in a long line of psych warfare measures which were floated over time with almost all of them going absolutely nowhere. What I was trying to say in my post is that things like the provocation options called out in Northwoods are standard tactics - as much as we might dislike them - and have been in use for generations. As to the Gulf of Tonkin, we know so much more about that now - and studies have been made of the actual NSA intercepts and the cover up that Johnson and McNamara conducted that we know the second incident was a total mistake and Johnson just seized on the opportunity for political purposes. And then the cover up and reality alteration began, only confirmed decades later. If you really start studying covert and deniable operations outside the JFK focus, you see these practices - deniable provocations, false flags and a host of others - as being tactics and tradecraft, used by many agencies and groups and by most major nations....the British were adept at them and so were the Russians (even before the Soviet Union). But the problem is that they are all designed to be deniable which means they look like something they are not...and if you read them into any particular real world incident its just speculation without some corroboration. The risk with the JFK assassination is that looking at fingerprints of intelligence is a lot like looking at motive...its almost always possible to find a motive (actually dozens in this case) and with any major historical incident you can find patterns that suggest various types of conspiracies including intelligence involvement. Your world view and political outlook tends to drive which you pick - as we can see on this forum. Given that I am a CT and do see the involvement of intelligence officers and assets in the assassination I hope expressing these cautions will be taken as friendly input rather than debunking for the sake of being a devout skeptic (which I am, but not devout) All of which is my irritating way of saying that that there is a real risk in approaching this case - and any major historical event - at the level Sanandria does rather than at the level a criminal investigator would. If you start at a very high level and with a pretty strong idea of what you are going to find, you are very likely to find traces of what you expected. Heaven only knows we see enough of that in political views these days. So now I'll go away and stop being annoying...

Bill did look into it and I assisted; the answer depends on where the call was recorded. There were two options, one at the local safehouse doing the routine phone tap operation or off the consolidated system at the telephone central office where arrangements had been made for bulk tap recording. The CIA recorded tapes at both locations. The CIA itself would have quickly determined which of the two knowing where the tape was recorded. As I recall we felt that it was most likely the tape was from the local monitoring unit...which means the call was either made from inside the building...or actually from the safehouse itself using the bridge tap on the phone line. Unfortunately there was no way to be absolutely certain; however as I said, the CIA might well have determined that it was one of their on people or a contract employee who had done it based on the source of the tape.

Yes Tommy, and far more often and more successfully than the CIA...you will find the details in the books I referenced.

I do recognize it Steve but I should comment that it is normally just one element of larger psywar campaigns or programs, along with other familiar tactics of misinformation, disinformation, planting of false documents, etc. Certainly these were practices well known to many professional intelligence organizations...and in certainly in play even before the twentieth century (there was this book on dirty tricks by some Italian that they all read..grin). Elements such as false flags were used most normally for recruiting and for covert insertion of misinformation into legitimate channels. To get a much broader picture of how such things are done and to become less CIA-centric, I would recommend a reading of the two books on the Mitrokhin Archives, on the book KGB Today which has information from one of the most important KBG defectors of the Cold War era and Comrade J which deals with the senior Russian officer in New York post Cold War and takes you up to 2000. These folks gave us an incredible level of insight into how these games are played. The defection of the senior KGB archivist(Mitrokhin) brought over thousands of pages of documents on their actual operations. If you combine all that with the operational documents we have on the CIA, you begin to get a good picture of not only the practices themselves but what operations were actually carried out. Interestingly the documents do show that for a time at least the KGB really did make an effort to take advantage of the JFK assassination for psychological warfare during both the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Hi Thomas, as to the "corrections" Phillips was under cover in Havana from 1958 to 1960, after his departure - under pressure having been identified as an agent - he was assigned in 1961 to the Cuba project first in DC but with an extensive amount of travel. I normally don't put those sorts of details into posts because don't trust my memory and that's why I wrote the book...grin. If you have the 2010 version you find these dates on page148. As to Veciana, he was recontacted in Havana by Bishop when Veciana came out in 1961. Bishop focused him and Alpha 66 on raids against Russian targets in 1962. The exact dates and circumstances for his being outed and warned as well as the process by which he left Cuba is all documented in CIA files so those dates are available to, I cite them and some files should be on my web site associated with Chapter 10 documents.

If you look into the chain of evidence for CE399 as well as the witness interviews of people who saw it at Parkland you find that the sharp nosed hunting type round seen at Parkland morphs in to a MC round while in the possession of the Secret Service in Washington and that there are some serious conflicts in identification which occur at the point in time the round passes between agents, Rowley and into evidence. It is very consistent in timing and pattern with other activities at that point in time to eliminate or obfuscate evidence of multiple shooters....and as "sloppy" as the rest.

That all seems credible to me Steve, certainly the OAS was reaching out to the US and the CIA in order to undermine DeGaulle. Hunt was in Spain supporting the Artime project by 64, but probably not in 63...its just so easy to toss Hunt's name in anywhere and make things look suspicious...grin. If OAS reps met with somebody I certainly can see it being Angleton, especially since they were claiming Russian infiltration in Paris. Guerin Serac is new to me but through the fifties and into the sixties global warfare and nuclear warfare were just constants, you ran into it everywhere - well at least anybody my age did. .

Steve, I would be interested in seeing which of the points you find verifiable...and if they are really abnormal. What we do know is that the OAS, and Souetre were working against deGaulle...there were three assassination attempts on him in 1963, five in 1964 and three more in 1965. They also reached out to the CIA trying to sell the line about deGaulle's government being heavily penetrated by communists hence untrustworthy and dangerous. Angleton actually bit on the OAS accusations and spent time on them in 1963, with his usual enthusiasm and lack of success. Both the CIA and FBI had an interest in and files on Souetre. Check pages 367, 368 and 377 for what we do know about the OAS and Souetre in that period. I also mentioned other things discussed above as unverified...with what I learned later I wish I had just left them out but hey, researdh marches on...

Steve, looked into that long ago and found that he visited New Orleans in 1960 and that was it; not in 1963. https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/visits/france He was planning to visit Mexico in 1964 and did so in March of that year. That's about as close as you can get him..

Steve, I share your pain. I went on exactly that same quest and found what you are finding...nothing but third party information and in context nothing about his activities of that year or his travels which would have tended to make sense of it. Good hunting..

The officer was pretty clear about it and you find it on uniform sleeves; it might be worthwhile to query the DPD and see if they have a historian.

No problem, I was just responding to Jim....no more from me on this thread...