Larry Hancock

Micah, the best advice I could give would be to start with number 4 in my series of essays on this which discuss the issues of evidence you are interested in:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Incomplete_Justice_-_No_there_were_no_other_guns.html

It will refer you to several additional sources for study on the specifics of the bullet holes and physical evidence but specifically I would suggest you get and dig though the two books by Phillip Melanson who did some exceptional independent research on specifically that area, far better than anything the LAPD or the FBI did (or would admit to).

Those sources should at least get you going in the right direction.

Actually the bullet cleanly penetrated the soft wood and embedded itself leaving only a small hole. In order to get the bullet out LAPD officers on the scene brought in a hotel maintenance man who literally dug out the bullets leaving the larger, gaping hole in the photo.  Both the police officers and the maintenance man described that to a researcher but after calls were made to superiors the police officers involved refused to comment further on confirm their earlier story in writing. I'm pretty sure I cover this in my essays and cite the source.  

Glen, absolutely Hunt was trusted with a lot of money and with some key political action jobs. He was old cadre with the agency and was internally valued for his spy novels which some of the senior guys felt were good PR for the Agency (you even find that mentioned in documents).  Not trying to underplay his position at all, just to define it. Hunt had actually run the Mexico City station early in its history but he did have a habit of annoying people he didn't like and that didn't last long.  If  you liked his politics and he liked yours it was all good but he was opinionated enough to actually take himself out of his job on the Cuba project just before the BOP and Phillips had to pick up his duties for him.  Definitely a man with strong opinions and a good opinion of himself as well - probably better than his actual job performance justified but he seems to have been sincere and quite convincing.

Hi Glen, good point but my take would be that in terms of Hunt's career at the CIA he had a day job and that was political action (normally as a money guy).  He was actually separated circa 64 to provide him with a special cover to operate over seas in support of the AM/WORLD Artime project - still political action rather than operations. And yes, it looks to me like his involvement with the Nixon White House was a very special sort of political action, probably intended more as a planted source for the Agency than anything else but to get deep inside Hunt needed to make himself really valuable hence his move into the plumbers.  Its probably good to point out that Hunt's tradecraft, even during his regular time at the Agency. was always poor...he held meetings in motel rooms and was overheard by the folks next door who reported it, he lost a briefcase. He consistently violated security protocols - so seeing him screw up so badly at the Watergate including leaving all sorts of traceable materials in his motel room is no big surprise.

Anyway, I take your point but my view is that Hunt always wanted to be a real spy and whenever he got a chance he played that role, although it was not really his assignment during most of his career.  He kept trying to be the kind of guy he wrote about his action novels though....and he talked a good enough game to convince some folks that he was when that was very far from reality....just my view of course.

Hunt was a CIA employee, primarily a political officer not operations.  Martinez was a CIA employee, the best boat guide for Cuban operations missions that they had.  Sturgis was an informant for the CIA, starting around 1962, we have the documents on that.  He was not an employee, he was a willing and valued source.  As to Hall, he was a talker....the closest he came to the CIA and the FBI was as a voluntary source who provided little information beyond street gossip.

As Chris said, job titles are very important, they tell you not only the roles but what an individual could be expected to know.

On Phillips manuscript, it was strictly fictional. I've gone into that before here but there is no reason to take it literally and actually it may have been intended as intimidation - to let certain parties in the CIA know that Phillips could tell a lot more than he did if somebody decided to make him a scapegoat.  Pure speculation on my part but having studied Phillips for a very long time the last thing I would expect would be for it to be literally the truth; if anything it would be 180 degrees from it since that was his specialty .

OK, a long winded reply to Tom's questions, sorry, there are no short answers for these sorts of questions and issues -

My take on the CIA's motives  is based on patterns of their behavior during the different investigations.  First off, we know that JM/WAVE conducted an internal investigation to determine if Cuban exiles of any stripe should be treated as suspects in the assassination.  That investigation was quite through, headed by Tony Sforza, and both the data collected and the report itself just disappeared. Whether that had been directed from HQ or initiated by Shackley himself is unknown; what we also know is that the lied in stating that no such inquiries were conducted at JM/WAVE.

Additionally we know that the CIA was desperate to cover up the projects against Castro and in particular the assassination projects. That can be seen beginning with the Garrison investigation and continues through the Church committee and the HSCA. We have an example of a retired CIA operations officer being brought back in to debrief Cuban exiles leaving the agency who had been involved in covert assassination projects which still remain largely unknown – paramilitary projects run out of JM/WAVE with HQ level support,  completely independent of the phase 1 and phase 2 Roselli efforts. That move is in someways similar to what was done with Joannides.

Beyond that the CIA was desperate to cover up its Cuban penetration projects such as AM/SANTA…which may well have involved Oswald.  And everybody was desperate to cover up any trace of reported or known threats to JFK prior to the assassination.  Rumors circulated in the Cuban community about exile threats would have been poison and could have shown up in DRE or other group contact documents (most of which we have never seen since we don't even know who their case officers were).

Being realistic, it’s most likely that any documents directly covering any of the above hot buttons would either have simply been destroyed or classified as matters of national security and not turned over to the investigations - certainly never released to NARA or during the ARRB work.

But given the immense size and breadth of records,  pieces of information pertaining to any of the above could be contained in unrelated documents – and were, which is why we know some of the above.  My guess is that in tagging Joannides, Jeff hit upon some documents that nobody had thought to examine and that is suggestive information in there either on Oswald or threats to JFK.  FOIA's on other Cuban group case officers could be equally explosive.

Specifically to your question, as I understand it the 2017 release only applies to documents already collected at NARA, including through the work of the ARRB.  If you find something via FOIA at the Agency that means it was still held at CIA (or they would have sent you to NARA for it) and the only way you get it if they deny your request is to fight it out in court.  Same for FBI, NSA etc.  As to illegally withholding it from the ARRB, that’s an interesting question and the answer may well be based on what it is that seems to convince judges that the documents do have national security protection.  But let’s face it, the SS destroyed several sets of JFK related files during the initial work of the ARRB with no repercussions and those trip files may well have recorded known threats - that could be a common thread.  

Once you get beyond that things get way too complex for something as limited as a forum  post; I can only say that in Shadow Warfare Stu and I spent a good deal of time looking at the reality of the National Security legislation of 1947/48 and the legal code that goes with it. In general the research community really does not fully appreciate the legal restrictions that are in place (or if we do, we reject them and figure that government employees should go ahead and ignore them and give us what we want). We also fail to recognize that the existing legal code actually demands CIA personnel and others under national security oaths to obfuscate or even lie in court on certain matters.  To be more specific it forces them to choose between the national security codes, their oaths, the jurisdiction of a civil court, their careers and their conscious.

As to Trump, I’m not sure how it’s possible to get an informed decision of any sort about what he may do…if there was ever an example of “situational behavior” it resides in our President Elect.

Tom, I don't think that is a given since they will actually have to appeal each document now in the JFK collection at NARA to withhold it.  Of course the Joannides material is something rather special since it involves a CIA officer and suggests some pretty obvious shenanigans by the CIA in regard to the HSCA - regardless of what might be indicated about Oswald.  My guess is those documents do  contain some mention of Oswald.  There has to be something in there that continues to convince judges it has national security implications and I can't fathom what it would be if that's not it.  We have tons of DRE material already so it either has to be Oswald related or contain some suggestion of a JFK threat ..IMHO.

But more specifically, were not the Joannides documents identified separately under FOIA? If so and if they were never part of the JFK collection at NARA then that makes a big difference and it remains a matter of court decisions.  Someone else may have a much more accurate response on that.   

Certainly none of the real documents gurus at the conference suggested that all the CIA docs in the NARA JFK collection would be challenged for release in 2017; I think it will be on a case by case basis. And as with the Joannides documents, they would be telegraphing the importance of any document they do appeal as being something very special.  On a side note I suspect much of our discussion is missing the importance of what must be in the Joinnides documents and what the CIA fight over them implies. Jeff clearly has a real tiger by the tail there but it keeps fading into the background for some reason. 

No problem Chris, actually it occurred to me that I might have seemed to dismissive.  All of our speakers pointed out not only documents on the list but documents with extensive redaction that are also very significant.  The really interesting thing is that for a change we will have a good idea what to look for rather than just having everything dumped on us - or worse yet filtered into existing files as with an earlier release.

On the down side, I can't help but think there will be a number of appeals and we won't know about them until we parse through and see what doesn't show up after October.

Good point Chris,  I didn't mean to imply that there are not some very interesting documents in this release and a number of groups are making plans to get in, study them quickly and spread the word.  Rex even makes the point that MFF will be soliciting input on priority documents and also priority redactions in already released documents.  In some cases removal of some level of redaction in certain hot documents could be as important as brand new releases.

It is Paul, that is what is called for in the JFK records act.  Now it is possible that down the line agencies could go ahead and remove redactions or even release individual documents as they waive national security concerns - but that would be strictly voluntary on their part.  And of course this release is just for JFK records, the MLK records from the HSCA are still being held based on Blakey's directions and the lack of any Congressional effort to direct their release.

Of course none of this prohibits going after records outside the JFK collection at NARA but that is an individual fight document by document.  And there is always the point that the agencie's own retention guidelines may release security controlled sometime documents down the road - but that could be a very long wait. Twenty second century historians, take note. 

Anyway, that's the way I understand it - someone else may have a better insight.

There several different ways that documents get archived - for some decades now there have been formal guidelines in place for many types of agency and service documents to be saved internally and ultimately to go into the national archives.  That means that all sorts of documents are routinely and continually filed and stored at NARA.

Of course agencies and services maintain their own records themselves for long periods in organizational and headquarters storage - or even their own historical archives (with their own retention schedules and guidelines) and you can obtain them directly from them via FOIA. In many instances with older documents the agency/service will also be happy to tell you the material has already been released and sent to NARA - and send  you on your way to them for help in locating it.

Still, if you can be precise on what you want, where an agency or service might look for it and if no personnel or security restrictions are placed on them you may eventually get documents via FOIA. What is internally saved (and where) and what is not varies a great deal - the FBI became good at archiving headquarters documents but many field office collections were routinely destroyed to save space.  In the military, you might expect headquarters files to be more available but in many instances its the organizational level of files that were preserved and HQ files just seem to have gone away - at least as far as the military history offices can determine.

The JFK records are different in that several huge, related sets of documents were collected in the different official investigations and those collections were archived at NARA. The JFK Records act required the collection of other pertinent documents that could be discovered - or which had not been collected previously - and designated the rules for archiving them at NARA and releasing all the JFK records by a given point in time. That included removing redactions that were no longer necessary. Of course each agency or service can still appeal both documents and redactions based on security issues.

All that is a gross over simplification and no doubt others will correct and elaborate  - but hopefully it defines the playing field a bit.  Rex does a far better job in his overview but its important to realize the upcoming 2017 release has to do with records already collected and that the release of those documents can be appealed by whatever agency created them in the first place.  There is no new wave of documents coming directly out of the agencies or services themselves, its a matter of releasing what has already been collected at NARA.  At least that's my understanding. 

Its always risky trying to describe such a complex process, I'll leave it to others to critique or elaborate. 

We had an extensive panel discussion relating to this at the recent JFK Lancer November in Dallas conference.  Rex Bradford has offered up his presentation on this - which was given at the conference - and made it available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site.  I think many will find it educational in regard to what to expect late next year.

http://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Featured_Mark_the_Date.html

That's certainly true Jim, but of course if you want the full picture you really have to go more broadly, and beyond just JFK.  There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the overall Tibet/India affair, certainly including JFK's approach and his effort to change the total relationship with a neutral India. The State Department material is particularly important since it gets into not only the details of the funding, the casualties and but exposes internal administration debates over the project itself.  State Department records often discussed issues that the CIA preferred not to document for itself...imagine that.

I've come to appreciate JFK's international involvement more by being able to put it in comparative terms not at a high level but in regard to actual projects and interventions both before and after - since in most cases the areas where he was involved have been ones where the U.S. involved itself over and over...and over...and...

Jim, I covered it in considerable detail in Shadow Warfare which came out in 2014; Chapter 8 deals with The Tibet Project. There is extensive documentation available in The Foreign Relations of the State Department Vol XIX and one of the best books totally devoted to the subject is The CIA's Secret War in Tibet by Conboy and Morrison. Lots of relevant covert military support info is available as well.   I also go into the revival of relations with India, the airlift and the use of NATO deployed resources for that - but in less detail than the Tibet operations.

Hugo, in regard to the RFK case in particular I really doubt the US government knew that much, simply because it was an LAPD investigation and a California criminal case.  The FBI did some work on it but in a support role and the interviews the FBI conducted were superficial at best.  If  you have not read it you might want to check out my essays on the subject, which focus on what the LAPD did and did not do as well as the evidence for a conspiracy.  You can find it on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website at:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Incomplete_Justice_-_At_the_Ambassador_Hotel.html

That would indeed be interesting Gene, my searching turned up some articles that suggest he remained devoted to the family for may years and I suspect he certainly has some thoughts about what happened in the pantry. 

I don't recall seeing anything where he commented on the events personally though.

Steve, its really too bad you don't have the 2010 edition; it goes into great deal in this area and cites a number of documents related to weapons dealing not only in this instance but in regard to Ruby in general.  Its not something I can replicate here. On your questions, as far as I can tell nobody was stockpiling anything in Dallas because the exiles didn't have much money, they talked a lot and put out a lot of feelers but little in the way of actual sales happened. Lots of talk but not much money. That applies to the exiles that were not being supported by the administration. AMWORLD and Artime had tons of money and were doing big weapons and equipment buys from mainstream weapons suppliers in Europe. Again, that's all in the 2010 edition plus in Shadow Warfare, much of the research courtesy of Gary Murr.  But because DRE and other groups operating independently (DRE was supported by the CIA to some extent but not with much money and they were really jealous with what was going on with Artime; the two groups were very antagonistic in 63/64) were talking so much and putting out so many feelers they certainly did get the attention of Ellsworth and the FBI for that matter. Remember, FBI was officially tasked with shutting down  military action against Cuba - but only the independents, Artime and his people were getting a free pass..

Not that there were some weapons sales, but they were in handfuls - like the trailer Howard had - and mostly light weapons. There was probably as more ultra right weapons traffic going on in Dallas than anything else, a lot of it courtesy of Mason.  The guys stopped in Dallas because Mason was well known for reworking weapons to full auto.

Its really important to understand the difference between the Artime project and the independents; most of the rumors about an invasion were either related to Artime or were street talk by the other groups who just hoped to do something and had no major financial support - they were being shut down by the FBI, Artime had free rein on his project but that was indeed moving offshore as quickly as possible. 

On intelligence sharing, that's always been a problem - actually the fact that ATF, FBI and DPD were working the same weapons effort in Dallas was pretty unusual, and had just come about.  That mornings meeting was one of the first coordination sessions and only came about because DPD had blown the sting being run by the others. As to Secret Service, they really had nothing to do with any of this and operated virtually independently; it was a different world back then and they really only responded to threats provided to them via the threat index and then only in cities directly mentioned in the threat - as if there were no mobile threats.  Amazing in retrospect but the SS has always been like that - and they are so secretive its hard to tell if they have improved.  Recent events suggest possibly not.

On the stolen car, that's really very typical so if somebody gets a license number or physical description it doesn't track to known suspects.

Chris, personally I think there definitely was a connection at that Jack was the cut out guy for the weapons deal from the Terrell theft...that was what I developed in the segment above that I referred Steve to...

Steve, the extended info on the gun deals is in the 2010 paperback edition of SWHT, that came out in 2010 so you may have it.  And yes, Masen was quite a piece of work and I'm pretty sure he had a lot more dealings with the Cuban exiles.  Given that he reworked semi auto into full auto weapons he was in great demand for customers on the radical right as well. What I can't figure out is why Dick Russell thought he looked like Oswald, there is no resemblance to me and pretty distinctive in his own right.  On a side note, my view is that Ruby had a lot of peripheral dealing with guns over the years and was involved in that again in 63, and those dealings had some connections he desperately wanted to cover up.  The two areas the WC really had to avoid were his vice connections and his weapons connections.  Neither were major but both made him a known name as a guy who was eager to make a buck on the side while being somewhat legitimate with his clubs. The fact that the WC actually dumped its only two real investigators, both looking into Ruby in Dallas, is quite telling.

If  you have trouble locating it let me know Steve, most of it is in Chapter 12.  The way I see it is that the exiles who were shopping put out feelers and Mason tried to fill their orders via Nonte who he had a weapons relations ship with..that fell through and the Terrell theft was on a separate track, very likely with Ruby as a middleman and cut out for the payments. Anyway, that's all in the book and their should be document citations that will help, the Nonte connection is really well documented.

Nonte contacted his superiors about the approach and cooperated in a sting for several months, with ATF and FBI.  Yes he was working with Ellsworth.  We have extensive documentation on all of this and the process of the sting right up to the assassination, if you have SWHT you will find a detailed timeline of the activities and I probably have at least some of the documents on my web site.  Everything would be online at MFF now though.

Gene, quite the contrary.  You can find a good deal about their relationship and apparently Barry was quite close to Ethel too. My take on the remarks is that the Bureau stuff appears to be pure BS...  If you do some searching you find Barry remained close to the entire family for years after the murder.

But more directly to your point, according to witnesses if RFK had listened to Barry and gone off the stage into the auditoriaum and through the crowd as planned he would have avoided the pantry entirely. It appears rather than leading him there RFK chose that route - which he had preferred in the beginning, to avoid the crowds - and left Barry following along behind.

https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/bill-eppridge-on-rfk-assassination/

Actually I don't think all parts of the MSM always gets everything wrong....the following is a pretty decent article.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/26/opinions/fidel-castro-promise-and-betrayal-garcia/index.html

There was much blame on both sides in our relations with Cuba and Eisenhower jumped behind Dulles's program to overthrow Castro eagerly and with little hesitation even though he had pledged to wait and see....that didn't happen.  Regardless of that, Jim's point about the executions is a good one. Castro immediately brutalized his revolution and with a nationalization program that went far beyond American interests and even Cuban agriculture - it literally chewed up the thriving middle class in Cuba. And Castro's public security measures were draconian; on the Stalinist model...all that was initiated well before the Bay of Pigs. I do think JFK could have moved Castro towards neutrality if he had been allowed to proceed with dialogs; whether Congress or the American public would have supported that is pretty questionable unless it involved a dramatic break from Russia.

Did the U.S. give Castro a real chance, no.  Did it throw away an opportunity to keep him out of the Soviet camp just as it had in Vietnam, yes.  Does that justify the executions, the economic brutality and the suppression of what could actually have been a truly democratic revolution, nope - not in my view.

That certainly makes sense given that it was handed to him initially;  its interesting that it bears the same number as an actual  CE JFK document exhibit item related to Oswald, as you can see from the link i provided.  Just a curiosity of course.  My comments on a number of the Oswald related intelligence questions asked of Jones still stand though....

On the first question, it appears that JFK#94 is Oswald's unpublished manuscript:

https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh16/pdf/WH16_CE_94.pd

The obvious question is why give that to Jones?  The answer may be that they asked Jones a lot of questions about intelligence work, and about "spying", including his opinions on Oswald as an intelligence asset.  Almost all of that was outside Jone's experience - although he answered anyway - and above his pay grade not to mention in regard to matters which would have fallen either outside military intelligence or with counter intelligence at best. They were questions that should have been asked of the CIA or even the subversive unit of the FBI.  Which brings up the point once again that most of the staff in these investigations really had virtually no backgrounds for this sort of inquiry and should have had recourse to consultants to at least point them in the right direction as to both witnesses and questions.   Much of Jones' testimony is so far outside his expertise I sometimes wonder if calling him rather than more relevant witnesses was just stupid or actually a diversion.  Why not call the MIG people in Dallas if you are asking questions about 112th people in the Plaza, the ones the ARRB interviewed decades later?

As to the Central Records Facility, it would have been at Fort Holabird but the records there were central files on personnel security investigations, the major mission of intelligence groups like the 112th.  Any personnel security investigation file on Oswald would have been with the Navy or Marines.  As far as Jones response, a reference to those files doesn't make much sense to me.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ni7gk3-iY-EC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq=army+central+records+facility&source=bl&ots=sOFOP_wBDV&sig=flVnA2RN0gIFkDzPoy-59rc2oLc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih-qvdw8bQAhWL54MKHYKcDLIQ6AEIWTAJ#v=onepage&q=army%20central%20records%20facility&f=false

On an after action report, that is interesting since a report of that sort might have been written if there had been some specially requested field deployment but such a report would have been retained at the local MIG office in Dallas or at headquarters in San Antonio.  Since at one point in time Jones had served as ops officer for the 112th he should have known exactly where such files would be - but of course if there had been no security deployment there would be no after action report.

The ARRB did interview the commander of the 112th and its records and found nothing of that nature - that's another story in itself but fortunately its in the internal files and available.