Larry Hancock

Mervyn, as you say a lot of the ex-pats did turn on each other, some got out entirely (Verona, the CRC leader went to NYC to sell used cars), others moved into smuggling but retained their associations with the Agency - a real problem by the seventies. However the most activist continued on with their crusade - and the most interesting to some of us ended up either out of action fairly quickly like Vidal or out of the country in the new CIA AMWORLD project or even off in the Congo.

Hi Mervyn, actually you can get a reading copy of Tipping Point off the Mary Ferrell site and that should give you some background on Vidal - there is just more detail in SWHT (paperback edition). https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

Vidal was a close friend of John Martino, and of Roy Hargraves - more importantly he was well established and regarded within the anti-Castro community in Miami and had been involved in plans for major boat missions against Cuba. He did not run drugs for anyone, but instead was killed on a high risk boat mission into Cuba, possibly outed to Cuban agents to make sure he was eliminated after the assassination. He was in Dallas "ostensibly" trying to get money from Walker - on the other hand that was the same story given by Hemming, Hall and basically anyone traveling to Dallas that year, even though Walker never appears to have donated any money and was short on funds for his own political campaigns. As to the roles of Vidal and Hargraves in Dallas, Noel Twyman revealed that in his interviews with Roy Hargraves; Noel gave me permission to include that with the very first spiral bound edition of SWHT but then it had to be removed in further editions based on objections from Hemming's brother who was serving as Hargrave's lawyer at the time.

Joe, I'm going to be very straight forward about this - I have written extensively on Filipe Vidal in SWHT, in NEXUS and in Tipping Point - including how is was connected to the Dallas attack and the tactical team that went from Miami to Dallas. That all goes back to the very first edition of SWHT in 2006. I'm not going to get into the debate about the radio, maybe, maybe not, but his presence there is the key point as well as his personal relationship to the fellow beside him, Roy Hargraves. Having researched and written about him repetitively I'll refer you to those works for the details in your questions.

We know a lot about him if, as I have written in considerable detail, he is Felipe Vidal Santiago (someone reported to the FBI as being in Dallas at the time). Other people have different identifications...

Yes, it was a strange set up with Bissell ostensibly conducting a project in J.C. Kings Western Hemisphere Directorate but in reality acting almost entirely independently. Then Barnes was under Bissell and the military officers under Barnes. Another problem with the organization chart was that Bissell insisted on keeping Brigade air and ground operations totally compartmentalized with separate chains of command to HQ. You can imagine how well that went when the amphibious operation actually launched.

It is shocking when you look back on the details but as the CIA's own IG and its own historian noted, Barnes' management of the project was literally atrocious - and he chose not to use the same sorts of covert contract and military assets the CIA had used in Guatemala and even in Indonesia. Its just a guess but given the extent to which he later gave JFK one story and his own commanders something totally different he may have done the same in the first round - its all good, until it clearly is not. You knew it was bad when in the after action inquiries even Dulles agreed the CIA should be removed from military covert action.

Jim, the first Cuba Project operation, the one Eisenhower approved, was to exfiltrate and train a cadre of a few dozen anti-Castro Cubans. They were then to be infiltrated again, to lead guerilla groups in a series of attacks moving towards Havana - much like the Guatemala operation. Those groups would be supplied with weapons, and some level of tactical air support to help them advance - again, like Guatemala. The assumption was that Castro had a substantial opposition and well led groups putting pressure on him would collapse his regime. The goal was to have him either ousted or with his back again the wall by September/October. By October a cadre of leaders had been trained but when the request was made to HQ to send them in it developed there was no way to do so, by sea or air. In addition there was no available tactical air, or transport air yet in place and the air drops that had occurred had been totally ineffective. At that point the first operation was abandoned, and the trainees were shifted from guerilla training, reformed into conventional army units, heavy weapons groups and a tank unit were added and by December the second operation had emerged - a full scale amphibious landing of a Brigade sized force with heavy weapons, tanks, trucks and a paratroop unit. That was nothing at all like what had been initially planned and the whole project essentially reset and started over in the November/December time frame.

That was only one of the long shots as it were, there was a very good chance of a strong on island upraising up to only a few weeks before - and there was the apparent false flag plan for an attack on Guantanamo....I really wish folks would dive into the complexity of events in the book....it really is misleading to make general statements about the Cuba Project, which was actually two separate projects over a bit more than a year. The Bay of Pigs landings are only one part of a very complex story, even though they get all the attention.

Once the supply ships (manned by civilian crews - essentially shanghaied into the operation - refused to return to the beachhead even under escort the first night after the landing it was pretty much over). To your point, the military had said all along that a landing could be made but the beachhead would collapse in days without a massive civilian uprising to support it as well as highlighting the fact that CIA logistics were totally inadequate to support the force for any extended time after the landing. The CIA absolutely knew no uprising was not going to happen, made to effort to make it happen and ignored the whole point in meetings - and did not fully brief JFK on that issue. The Joint Chiefs then failed to go directly to JFK and make their points. So in the end everybody allowed it roll on and did what people always do, dump on somebody else.

My impression is that there really was no "loop", in the beginning it was a Guatemala scale project, totally covert with similiar assets as had been used in Guatemala successfully and Indonesia not so much. It had a short fuse, a six month time frame to put trained leaders on island to lead existing anti-Castro movements, do a lot of propaganda, and provide limited, contract air support. The leadership was Barnes serving under J.C. King. Dulles never involved himself operationally, just signed off on the project. There was little real reporting or oversight above the covert operations 40 Group. When Bissell changed the rules of the game from Guatemela, the whole time frame went out the window and apparently he raised few flags until Sept/Oct when it was obviously not happening (when the first groups were trained there was no sea or air logistics to get them into Cuba) and around November totally shifted to a large scale, conventional amphibious operation it took on a life of its own. Nobody wanted to stop it but then few realized what it had morphed into - there was no written plan or review process until JFK ordered something in writing for review by the JCS early in 62. We have no idea to what extent JFK was fully briefed, it appears his impression was that still essentially a plan to put Cuban exile volunteers into Cuba, and trigger a revolution - which is what the plan assumed. He was never told about the roll up of the Cuban groups weeks before.... When you read the inquiry panel material you get the impression that both Dulles and J.C. King were just totally ignorant of the issues....if not they did a great job of appearing so...and Dulles even agreed that the CIA should not be tasked with military operations in the future. Of course that idea died along with JFK.

Dulles had totally stepped away from decision making on the Cuba project, its hard to see how much he even knew about it. The thing is that deniability was SOP for CIA covert ops but once this thing became a conventional amphibious landing its like nobody took notice that it was a new game. Even Ike did not realize how the plan had foundered until election time, ditto Nixon. The original project was supposed to have an full fledged revolt against Castro going on by Sept. Ike's conversation was with Bissell, its like he tried to step back into the whole thing after the election and make something happen but Bissell had restructured the whole project - its unclear how much Ike even knew about it (which may explain why JFK was shocked Ike did not talk that much about Cuba in their transition meeting). You really get the impression that everybody but Bissell and Barnes were out of the loop....including J C King who as Western Hemisphere chief was actually at the top of the chain of command as the project was going on in his territory. In the follow on inquires he is embarrassingly clueless.

There is the official chain of command as you describe and the real life chain which is often real time with higher echelons being advised after the fact but not operationally involved.....as far as I can tell in regard to SE Asia, a great many decisions were made and implemented without much chain of command oversight, even on the military side - especially in regard to operations in Laos. And of course in Viet Nam Johnson himself often jumped the whole military chain of command, forcing himself into tactical decisions like the selection of bombing targets. I'd be way out of my depth to try and describe the real world, woefully entangled chain of command between CIA, State and MACV in Vietnam, in cross border operations in Laos....

Its hard to tell about the Lancer web site, especially the sales side. The reason it has been down for two years is that it was badly hacked multiple times. I hope Gabriella is able to get it back up and keep it up but that's going to entail a major effort on her part.

Thanks Cliff, obviously I can't say somebody did not have an agenda to get rid of Dulles - and essentially break the strangle hold that the Dulles brothers had on US policy during the fifties. I did forget to mention two really strange things about Bissell and the project though. First, if he had run the program the way he had the Guatemala project, making full use of American covert air and naval assets and bringing off an uprising by September it would have had a good chance at least of triggering a major insurgency and if not overthrowing Castro at least destabilizing his regime. But Bissell essentially threw away the playbook and decided that Cuban exiles had to do everything on their own...when that delayed the project past the point of no return the landing was essentially a hail Mary. But Eisenhower had even given him a last out, in December/January, after the election Ike twice proposed that the CIA stage a quick false flag that would allow him to send in the US military before JFK took office - there appears to have been no response at all to that offer from Bissell.

On point 1, unfortunately all my research on the 112th was from paper documents directly from NARA. I supplied them all to JFK Lancer and we put them on a CD - The Research of Larry Hancock. The CD was available for years, the documents stayed with Lancer and no doubt are lost at this point, a victim of Debra's moves and medical problems. Gabriella has committed to putting the CD on memory sticks and making it available at the upcoming conference and offering it for sale. I hope that happens as I no longer have a Laptop that will even read my own single copy. On Point 2, as to other book recommendations specifically on the assassination, I would recommend the following as they largely shaped my views on why the crime scene and autopsy evidence could not be trusted and led me to go off on my own "backdoor" approach that you find in my books. William Law In the Eye of History Ian Griggs No Case to Answer Douglas Horne Volume 5 on the medical evidence Sherry Fiester Enemy of the Truth Beyond that I recommend much broader reading, outside the JFK genre, in the history of the period and in regard to the CIA on various books related to covert operations which I cite in my books Shadow Warfare, Creating Chaos and In Denial. Better yet the documents I give links for in all those books. -- that's about the best I can offer.

My impression is that Bissell did not do as well as his ambitions had led him - his hubris was immense, he wanted to be Director. And he was in direct competition with Helms for the job - Helms was smart, saw what a mess the Cuba Project was getting into early and backed away to give Bissell his head and bet he would do himself in, as he did. As for me, its no secret I don't go in for large scale conspiracy so I can absolutely see Bissell failing all on his own, being totally out of his depth and range of experience but never admitting it (a flawed wonder kid somewhat like McNamara in a way). But that's just me of course...

Bissell's actions are perplexing, I wrestle with them a good deal in the book and the CIA's own IG study (which was suppressed at the time and which we only see echos of in the later releases CIA historians study) did the same - coming down largely on the side of pure management incompetence and a refusal to take advice from professionals such as his own military advisors. The IG also argued that the entire area of logistics (as the JCS staff study had pointed out in advance) for support of the landing was totally inadequate. Two things that stand out are: a) Bissell was way over his head in terms of military experience - he might have been the right pick at the time the project started, when it was supposed to be a replay of the minimalist Guatemalan project and never anticipated anything beyond infiltrating a small guerilla force to lead an on island guerilla operation which would trigger a coup. When that effort failed circa October 1960 and the whole project was totally changed into a full fledged conventional amphibious operation he had no experience at all and didn't take the advice he got even from the Marine officer assigned to the project - and the one single Navy advisor brought into the project showed up only in the last three months of preparations. It all feels like hubris but of course might have been something more complex. b) He did have some really bad luck. He and the Navy admiral supporting the operation appear to have had a plan to stage a false flag attack on Guantanamo which would have triggered a full scale, two carrier assault in response - something which would have overwhelmed Castro's forces. Its pretty clear JFK was never told anything about it and it seemingly failed due to an accident with the explosives which were being taken out of Guantanamo to use in the attack. Beyond that the poison attack on Castro might well have succeeded, it was only aborted by the sequestration of the CRC leadership by Hunt. And finally, as bad luck had would have it, the possibility of an island wide uprising was gutted only weeks before by a leak which had caused an extensive round up of the leaders of multiple coup oriented groups. The whole story is even more complex than that but certainly a perfect storm was occurring at Bissell's level of command and JFK had no insight at all to it - nor did the officers under Bissell's command, much less the Brigade Cuban leadership.

I'm going to do this one more time...well probably more since few seem to listen to my objections on this subject. I document in my book In Denial, from actual government records, that JFK violated a number of guidelines JFK himself had set before the landings at the BOP - new orders issued to try and support the Brigade while they were on the beach. He allowed American pilots to fly bombing and ground attack strikes in Brigade aircraft, he authorized extended night time air drops to supply the beachhead with American personnel in the transports - and actually approved Air Force transports to carry out resupply missions, the CIA was just too unprepared to handle it. He authorized ground attack strikes with American aircraft to cover the evacuation of the Brigade - he had ordered plans for that before the landings - but the Navy had not prepared any such plans, the Brigade had not been prepared for such an eventuality and the Navy screwed up the timing of the air strike so badly it was totally ineffective (and so late that the American pilots over the beach in Brigade aircraft were shot down). This does not even go into other orders that he gave which would have prevented the disaster but which the CIA officers appear simply to have ignored - or as an alternative, Bissell never passed them on to those officers. This goes along with my other post about historiography being necessary to correct what initially goes into the "establishment" histories.

For reference, there is "history", which is written and formally accepted in what we used to call "establishment" (i.e. textbook) views of events, then there is "historiography" a separate discipline which inquires into how official history gets written: "History is the event or period and the study of it. Historiography is the study of how history was written, who wrote it, and what factors influenced how it was written." As an example we have the establishment view of the Bay of Pigs as briefly described in history books and the media...but based on research and investigations we know that official history was manipulated by the CIA and its media outlets to shift the blame to JFK and that events in the real world were entirely different - but we know that only thorough extensive inquiry and historical research including document collection. I think its fair to say that the establishment view of the JFK assassination also deserves historical research and investigation rather than simply being repeated as fact. I even recall my professor in a graduate historiography class cautioning us always to use multiple sources and to question not only the quality but the context and "intent" of previous official histories - but of course that as in the 60s.

Thanks Robert, of course I do dearly love new documents too..grin...so I appreciate the ones you are posting. Personally I've always made use of Prouty's book on Understanding Special Operations, it was an early educational text for me. And he along with a handful of former CIA operations officers were key in disclosing the details of how the CIA's covert operations infrastructure worked - or often didn't. As with many of the other people I've studied, the challenge is always to try and walk the tightrope between what they knew first hand as compared to what they heard though their connections..or simply inferred. Almost all our sources have such issues, the real work (and I do mean work) is getting past the tendency to deal with them on an all or none basis. A good example of that is what you mentioned in regard to the CIA effort to move the blame for the Bay of Pigs to the military - the real work with what we have documented now shows that the hurried JCS staff study (hurried because the CIA had not even put its plan in writing until JFK called them on it) on the landing plans called out each of the major problems that defeated the landing in advance, and put it in writing....the CIA just ignored what were being called out as fatal assumptions.

Its just a guess of course but the term "focal point" is sometimes used in reference to the JCS being the focal point for coordination between the services and the intelligence community: https://www.jcs.mil/Directorates/J2-Joint-Staff-Intelligence/ What I read in Robert's document seems to me to describe a senior military officer staff development course on the mission and operations of the CIA - designed to overcome misconceptions or misunderstanding of the CIA's role within the services. The language appears to be an endorsement of the program in terms of dispelling preconceptions or doubts about the Agency, its seen as successful from the CIA's perspective and is being lobbied for to either continue or be replaced by something with the same goal. It certainly makes sense that such a course would be coordinated out of the JCS since its multi-service and also because personnel selected would likely be on a potential fast track for expanded staff duties in the future. Having a staff officer like Prouty, who was experienced with both the CIA and the military, involved in something like that would make perfect sense. As a side note, finding Air Force officers "sheep dipped" for covert operations really started with operations like those against Tibet and later in the deniable air activities against Laos and Cambodia in SE Asia. not to mention that a number of the earliest pilots flying as advisors but actually on combat mission in Vietnam were AF personnel. Pilots selected for missions in Laos and Cambodia had to be detailed to CIA operations. -- just a few thoughts, Larry

Paul, specifically on AMWORLD, its not really been secret all that long - I was researching and writing on it two decades ago as were others. If have extensive details on it now and I put a great number of them into Shadow Warfare. However one of the reasons that it was likely held back is there were true names related a peripheral coup effort which would have disclosed Cubans still living up until the nineties at least. As to the safehouse in MC, the plan was to move Artime "off shore" along with the military operations of AMWORLD and MC was to be a neutral venue for him to operate from to grow political and regime support through Central America. The person directly charged with the safe-house in MC and who would have supported the Artime propaganda effort was David Phillips, who was seconded to SAS about the time the AMWORLD project kicked off. I certainly can't tell you everything Prouty might have been involved with in that period but one of the things he was doing during 60-61 was providing logistics support to the Cuba project and to the Brigade. We know that because CIA officers with the project actually mentioned him and were not at all happy with what they felt was his pace or responsiveness. David Boylan came across that in our research on the Cuba project.

I go deeply into who was doing what in Vietnam and Laos in Shadow Warfare - there were considerable operational differences between the two and things changed year by year...perhaps more in Laos than in Vietnam. The CIA played a much stronger role in actually running military operations in Laos, using large surrogate forces. Initially in Vietnam Lansdale did function as COS, during that period much of the focus was on covert ops and dirty tricks in the North...run by stay behind teams. Those were quickly rolled up. Then the shift was to covert ops against the North from the South, first coordinated by the CIA and then handed off to the US military for coordination after JFK ordered the "switchback" program following after action analysis of the Bay of Pigs. Its absolutely necessary to separate CIA covert operations in both areas from the military assistance programs which were sustained by State and the Army; in many early instances Air Force and Army personnel sent in with their own covers as advisors and even mail drop covers to conceal forces deployed - while actively engaging in combat. Thanks to David for the kind words but I would be foolish to try to give a simple answer to a very complex question here, other than Shadow Warfare I would really recommend Richard Schultz Jr's The Secret War Against Hanoi as a source on who was doing what when in terms of covert operations. That book (and mine) also contain some useful overview information on stay back teams and infiltration/guerilla warfare efforts in Europe following WWII, something being discussed in other threads going on at the present.

I'll pass that along to Gabriella...thanks!