Larry Hancock

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!

There will be special rates and they should be available soon - the first contract the hotel sent to Gabriella was fine except they had the special rates on the wrong day so she has to get another version to sign; once that is complete the rates will be available. I will post as soon as I get word. One note on more speakers, John Newman and Alan Dale will be participating but John has some travel issues so the presentation will be taped and presented during the conference.

Interviews of Soviet Division officers, at least two, show the same suspicions but of course they had no direct knowledge or documents. I see no way this will ever be resolved for everyone, its just too hard to give up the idea and too much has been written about it as if it were proven (including by me) - and there is a plenty of evidence that he appears in the files of numerous agencies and in different areas even within the CIA so he was an object of interest - as he should have been given his actions. One of the more interesting things to me is how hard the State Dept tried to frustrate his return to the US, it pushed back against him for over a year and the files are full of objections and issues. He had a real battle getting back into the States, certainly nobody greased the rails there. Of course the other question relates to chronology, if he was witting in going to the USR does that imply he was witting after his return, not necessarily. Oswald himself made am ambiguous remark during his return that he would never allow himself to be "used" again.

The way its generally used the term applies to one officer running something directly and personally - outside the normal structure of the agency - which means they are themselves directly involved and using resources personally under their control. Yet it does not mean they have to be in direct contact with an asset, distance was always preferred (especially if it was truly vest pocket and unreported). Making use of what Oswald was doing on his own, perhaps manipulating him without his direct knowledge, otherwise taking advantage of him as a "useful idiot" or tool, would be preferable in either a vest pocket or sanctioned/re-portable action. that is another view. And of course that means the rest of the Agency would respond to him with standard practices - which seems to be what we see, including the domestic contact in Fort Worth. Personally I have come to follow Jonathan's view.

He certainly could have, although it would be pretty sloppy work for Domestic Contacts not to get handed off for indirect collections from someone like Oswald. Another interesting point is if that was done indirectly in Fort Worth, its a pretty good sign Oswald was not a voluntary asset. We know from other research that defectors like Webster were approached on their own and directly debriefed in some detail.

Thanks for the kind words Robert - and Gerry certainly the transition would have taken a considerable period of time, after all there were turf wars involved and who reports to whom and has how many staff is always a major factor (for a lighter note, the funniest version of that sort of thing I ever came across is in a SF book titled "When they came from space", it guts government bureaucracy in side splitting fashion). I suspect what was really going on was to give DDP some domestic reach it had not had before, especially in the area of covers, business, professional and personal for overseas covert ops. They wanted to do that themselves. Ditto for covert air support - which was becoming critical in SE Asia. And not that I would ever suspect CIA org charts, but they may have left contacts under DDI for a reason - Domestic Contacts had legitimate offices in major cities, offices even listed in the telephone directory. When DDO guys needed a place to work in New Orleans there was no station, so hang your hat in the contacts office. Which would indeed be a type of cover for Domestic Operations (trust me, I'm just here if you have something to report).

I'd like to thanks everyone on this thread - from Robert starting it through all the exchanges to David's eventually coming up with a document that is truly revealing as to the evolution of CIA Domestic operations - it makes me wish I could magically edit my books retroactively in real time and add or correct things, but at least I can still blog on Domestic Operations. And I think it really opens a window to the fact that a lot more historical research should be done on Domestic Operations in the sixties than has been done in the past: https://wordpress.com/post/larryhancock.wordpress.com/1836

Hi Paul, actually the most intrusive incidents were in the mid 60s at the first round of ICBM squadrons, and then in the mid-70s where all the MIRVed Minuteman III's were placed. SAC had its turn earlier with UAPs "stalking" SAC atomic bombers on ready airborne alert over Canada and before that it was intrustions at the first atomic weapons stockpie sites. Been going on for a long time...graphs on all that are in the pattern study link I posted. The problem is we have little to no data from the the late 70s on, it was never consolidated and if it still exists its in archives at the NMCC, NORAD and a few other locations including regional command headquarters for the Navy. At least as hard to dig that out as to get CIA documents.

Paul, its really challenging to tackle your question without our having a lot of context in common - such as the long history of UAP monitoring of our atomic weapons, intrusions at atomic weapons storage sites and with atomic bombers and missiles, actual interference with weapons systems related to both and more. This has noting to do with abductions, Roswell, gray aliens, lizard men, crashed saucers or anything of that ilk (or even Dark Skies the TV show which was built around JFK, RFK and Roswell)...its strictly related to national security. Read my book or study one of our papers (for free) and we can talk about it...somewhere else than here I would imagine. https://www.amazon.com/Unidentified-National-Intelligence-Problem-UFOs/dp/069289229X https://www.explorescu.org/post/uap-pattern-recognition-study-1945-1975-us-military-atomic-warfare-complex Pat, yes Harry Reid pushed though funding for a study and essentially forced it on an agency that really did not want it, which in turned sandbagged it into what ended up being a series of largely un-UFO related studies including paranormal elements related to Skinwalker Ranch (yes, that TV show) and was effectively a boondoggle without addressing the fundamental security problem - which no military agency has ever really wanted to fact as they are unable to deal with it... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html

Jim, as far as my thoughts go - obviously I think UFOs are a serious national security issue, if not I would not have written a book with that title. And they are a very contemporary issue. We all know that public opinion and the attention to Stone's movie played a major role in generating the ARRB and although the folks in this forum may not be aware of it there is something very similar going on now in DC, with whistle blowers, several Congresspersons and a huge public interest in the subject of UFOs. So to me its no surprise to see Schumer move on it - several others in Congress are already using it for political capital so that sort of thing does not shock me. As to the success of such a bill, it would take something of the scope and budgeting of the ARRB to shake out any of the documents I want - which are almost all from the last four decades and would reside at NORAD, the NMCC, and with several very specialized service intelligence groups. Since there was never any investigation of UFOs like the WC, the Church Committee, the HSCA etc you have to go get them from the sources and all of those places will offer a classification and access challenge. So do I want a UFO ARRB, yes but only if the legislation recognizes those issues. Otherwise its a waste of time and money - much like is going on with the DOD project in progress now - which was forced on it by Congress. https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3100053/dod-announces-the-establishment-of-the-all-domain-anomaly-resolution-office/ On our concern here, my current belief is that progress on the JFK assassination lies in new collections including forcing out films and photos and other material held privately, not just in document release and that that could only be accomplished by NARA accepting its role and restarting the aggressive collections as the ARRB did...which means reaching out to us and asking for guidance. So I would take an extended ARRB or a directive to NARA to step up and fulfill its obligation as successor to the first one.

Ron, it is - first put it up on Mary Ferrell in 2008 - hard to believe it was that long ago. One of the major features is that Debra Conway's sister Sherry Fiester worked from LAPD maps and diagrams I provided her and did some awesome graphics to illustrate the Ambassador hotel and the movement of the suspects in and around it the night of the assassination - something LAPD never did but which greatly enhances the picture of other suspects in and around Sirhan - actually following him to the pantry to intercept RFK (where he had been reported days early at an RFK rally). https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Incomplete_Justice_-_At_the_Ambassador_Hotel.html I think it fully exposes the conspiracy and LAPD's failure and of course it should really be read in conjunction with John Hunt's masterful study of the crime scene and related evidence - which deconstructs the premise of a single shooter: https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Plain-Site-Search-Murder-ebook/dp/B0BR5WWY3Y I think you will find Incomplete Justice (edited and with document links provided by Rex Bradford) an interesting read. Larry

Ron, I'm very much aware of Pena and Hernandez having worked for AID and have my separate problems with both of them - wrote about them at length in my essay Incomplete Justice on the RFK assassination. What we do know is that AID had as one of its sanctioned tasks the training of foreign police departments and they did use police as consultants so that finding police officers that worked for AID at times is not in itself especially anomalous. Despite several people looking at both of their backgrounds there is no sign that the two were actually CIA employees somehow put under AID cover and then sent into LAPD. We probably would never even know about them if it were not for the RFK assassination. Interestingly they and SUS actively pursued a conspiracy in the RFK assassination for several weeks, months even. It was only after they totally failed to crack it and the PDG became a major embarrassment that they appear to have caved to political pressure and turned back to destroy their own investigation by blatantly and knowingly destroying Serrano as a witness and then using that to destroy the credibility of a dozen different witnesses who supported her story. I related that all in my essay and it is totally provable that they knew what they were doing and there is evidence in the LAPD files that demonstrates that - they even ignored letters from an assistant LA District Attorney which totally repudiate their slandering of Serrano. Yet up to that time SUS was playing it straight and seriously pursuing leads. While it all leads us to question Pena and Hernandez's ethics, it seems to me to point towards political pressure from the Mayor and the LA DA rather than anything covert - in fact it is so blatant and so obvious in the LAPD's own records its hard to think of it as covert.

David it sounds like if they executed this plan they moved Domestic Contacts and their officers from DDI to DDP and integrated it into a Domestic Operations unit which included activities such as commercial covers as well as bringing in Air Proprietaries/Operations which had been a stand alone unit (and which Bissell had refused to use for the Cuba Project). Do I read that correctly? Of course Barnes would have been a perfect fit to run such a unit given his experience with proprietaries and covers for that if he had become head of a new, integrated Domestic Operations unit. If that is true Moore might indeed have been reporting up to a unit headed by Barnes but given what was going on in Laos and elsewhere overseas Barnes would have had a lot of really challenging missions on his plate in support of covers for covert operations.

State Department and AID covers were probably the most common for mid-level CIA officers while the lower level operations personnel and those from other sections generally used commercial covers. Morales used State Dept covers earlier in his career as did Phillips. It was assumed CIA personnel would be placed under diplomatic cover at embassies and consulates, same for KGB.

Bard states where it is obtaining its records and identified a public source - but then says it cannot find them in that public source. So it knows they exist and is excerpting information from them but then cannot locate them to support its information. It does not say it can locate them but they are classified and cannot be accessed. Given that the numbers it gives do not correspond to those known to be related to that source suggests its not a matter of release but rather a matter of such documents being real. Of course someone may have given the AI the ability to tease..? To be blunt, creating a mystery out of this as if there were some major source of searchable records that the AI can find and nobody else has - including NARA itself - deserves some confirmation before we jump into one more sensational mystery among those we already face. I'd suggest you contact NARA on Monday and get their opinion. Otherwise somebody might want to notify the FBI that a huge national security problem has emerged and the AI is compromising who knows what secret and unreleased files...surely someone should be concerned?