Larry Hancock

Actually I think this may be a lot more significant than anything to do with the Sixth Floor Museum per se. The CIA does not play games. The CIA is not going to use an extremely expensive, former senior officer, under contract, and put him under commercial cover as a consultant to a design and display company for fun or simple curiosity. However we do have examples of how they have brought back retired officers to do some very specific debriefs and to work as liaison with investigative committees. This is the first case I can recall of going to far as to actually put them under cover with an element of deniablity....which Gary Mack repeated and Gary was really to sharp not to know what was going on with such an individual as Briggs....or certainly should have been. The appears to me to be one of the few absolutely concrete pieces of evidence that suggests there is an ongoing and very real national security concern relating to Lee Oswald or to something in regard to the assassination that would lead them to put not just a low level agent but a very long time and highly cleared officer in place to scan and examine everything going on display in a new public venue devoted to Oswald and the assassination. Sorry, I think in focusing on the museum its a case of not seeing the forest for the trees....

OK, the CIA brought a former very senior officer back on contract.....and one of his assignments was to be "hired" by the exhibit designers to fact check the designs and content? That's one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen. Was he double dipping? Or was it a standard Agency cover to have a view into what the Museum was showing and telling before it opened. I'm betting on the latter and that when his obit says "liaison" it implies a direct Agency relationship during his work with the Museum - and it was just that. A classic cover for domestic activities, just like putting Hunt in an Ad agency.

Well given that Wilson's sentence was ultimately overturned due to discovery of a host of communications with the CIA while he was engaged in his contract work that doesn't argue well for Briggs credibility....of course that would have all be compartmentalized so as usual a statement from a CIA headquarters type about anything can be perfectly sincere and also perfectly bogus. Its designed to work that way. I'm not even sure that Gary Mack was there during the initial formation of the Museum or in a position to know but did he deny that Briggs was involved or did he come up with some sort of innocent explanation?

That's a real leap for me Cliff.....I know you lean that direction but I just have to fall back on the view that if I am CIA and organize an assassination of the President the last thing I want to do us use my highest level covert weapons, which might or might not be traceable after the fact. But if I did it would certainly' be an untraceable poison delivered in a manner to produce effects very consistent with his preexisting health problems. Your choice though, we have a pretty good idea of what Tech Services was developing but automatically assuming it would be used in the Dallas attack is another story entirely. As far as I can tell it would not be at all strange to find military officers in SOD working for Army projects and assigned to support the CIA project - assuming that automatically makes them suspects in an attack in Dallas is something I'll have to leave to you.

Certainly could be Chris, the promotion sequence outlined at Sparticus seems reasonable but I can also see that a promotion could have occur ed later, perhaps in the reserves.

Well actually in that regard I'm only one of five board members...grin. I will definitely forward the suggestion to Rex and I suggest you do by email as well. I'll also bring it up since we will be at the Lancer conference as will he... Are you planning on being in Dallas, if so we could also discuss it there. -- will send Rex a message now, given that its Friday he might even get to read it this weekend.

Not as far as anyone has documented that I'm aware of Chris. His rank, Major, was gained for service in the Korean war. His medical and military background is on the Spartacus site and is as follows: Jose Rivera was born in Lima, Peru, in 1911. After studying medicine at the University of San Marcos he moved to the United States. He resumed his studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He earned his doctoral degree from Georgetown University in 1939. In 1942 Rivera joined the United States Army and served as first lieutenant in the medical corps. He was stationed at Walter Reed Army Hospital and later assigned to Halloran General Army Hospital in New York. In 1944 he was promoted to captain and went on a series of assignments in Italy and France and at the 198th General Army Hospital in Berlin. During the Korean War he served in the Medical Field Unit and was promoted to the rank of major. After the war, he was chief of laboratory service and pathology at the U.S. Army Hospital in Tokyo. In 1958, he was assigned to the Reserve Training Center in Washington. Rivera sat on the National Institute of Health Board of Directors. A fellow director in the early 1960s was Alton Ochsner. In 1963 Rivera was in New Orleans handing out research grants from NIH to the Tulane Medical School.

Yes, that was what I tried to say Cliff, they would have been officers assigned to the Fort Detrick bio/chem warfare developments as part of SOD and then tasked with supporting the CIA's MK/NAIOMI project. As you see in Shadow Warfare, military personnel are "detailed" to CIA which means they have to have additional security vetting but fundamentally its just an assignment for them. Ultimately, unless they decide to change careers, like David Morales did, they remain service personnel. Of course they may be repeatedly detailed at different times over the length of their service career to the point that it almost becomes a cover in itself. Given what these two officers were doing in supporting R&D I'm guessing that the CIA project was a fairly temporary assignment for them. Unless they decided to join CIA Tech Services of course. Of course everyone in that project was under horrendous security restrictions so I doubt either of them would talk about it in their old age. All this is not really that mysterous. There was a bio/chem warfare group at Fort Detrick, SOD was simply an organization that supported that work and the CIA project was "hidden" under military cover, buried under the rest of the work. If somebody got assigned out of SOD to MK/NAIOMI they effectively were working for the CIA its the project was funded by the CIA. I suspect they still retained their regular service connections - whose budget their salaries came out of is a guess but I suspect that remained military as well and only the project expenses - and CIA officers or civilians working for CIA on the project - were funded out of P600 funding. I'm not surprised to find both Army and Air Force involved because we have a pretty good view into the fact that weapons were being developed both for very personalized covert use but also for use on a larger scale....such as against livestock and crops. That would have almost certainly required some sort of aerial delivery.

Thanks Ramon, actually I only posted because I don't want you or anyone else to think that it is not a priority for MFF. The problem is that we only have Rex as a technical resource, the others of us involved try to help him with minor tasks as we can - right now we are checking out the new crypt engine which will allow a major addition to crypts and ultimately aliases and covers including a lot of work Simpich and Newman have been doing. In addition, we have been volunteered a literally gigantic series of FOIA document collections that should be added to the site but that is a massive piece of work and we are struggling with prioritizing it so as to get at least some of it up quickly. I'm particularly excited about your contribution since it will allow much quicker access for a lot of my searches - so is Jeff but all we can really do is encourage Rex and feel guilty as we chew up all his spare time on evenings and weekend.

Ramon, I have to point out that at present the Mary Ferrell foundation has one programmer - Rex Bradford - who has a full time day job, who works nights or weekends on the MFF site and who was already engaged in several projects including updates to the site and the publication of a new crypt database.. I think you have provided a great tool, I have endorsed it to the foundation and hope to see it available as soon as humanly possible I know its something Rex wants to do. I'm sort of surprised after participating in communications about your tool that you would still say that anybody is sitting on their hands or that Mary could publish it if she was still with us. You should realize that Mary would do just what she did with her original documents, hand them off to somebody who could get them available for the broadest possible access.....which turned out to be none other than Rex himself. Knowing how much one person has done, its more than a little frustrating to still see those sort of remarks.

Cliff, I suspect that the Army Colonel was either an admin officer or possibly an engineering officer assigned to the Army support group which was attached to the biological warfare work at Fort Detrick. Army personnel provided logistics, engineering and related technical support for the CIA development there, done under Sydney Gottlieb of CIA Technical Services. The Special Operations Division (SOD) actually produced toxins and did work on developing delivery systems for them. They were essentially loaned from the Army's biowarfare activities to do the same things for CIA development projects . As to the Air Force officer, the only reason I can think of that an AF officer would be there would be as a liaison for aerial delivery systems...either spray or dust systems etc. There have always been rumors of animal and plant toxins developed for covert introduction into Cuba... I write about this sort of work at Fort Detrick in NEXUS, if you have it check pages 36-38. The support would have been given to the CIA MKNAOMI project. A memo was located which confirmed that absolutely no written records were kept for that project, everything was verbal and depended on "human continuity". We do have names of CIA headquarters personnel who knew about the CIA projects but I think it would be virtually impossible to track down the military guys providing support via SOD. Unfortunately I know little more than that - however Hank Alberelli may have some further detail, as far as I can tell he is virtually the only researcher able to access records that relate to that sort of work, due to his participation in the inquiry into the CIA officers LSD related death.

Helliwell and the CIA crowd that was involved first in Burma in one of the Agencies earliest covert warfare projects, then were called in to provide support the the Guatemala program, are covered in considerable detail in Shadow Warfare. In fact one of my goals in Shadow Warfare was to trace the careers of all those folks through the early years of the CIA, tie them into the deniable weapons sourcing - which by the way spiked again with the Artime project in 63/64 and to the rumors that Gary Underhill heard at the time of the Kennedy assassination. It took a lot of work separating out fact from fiction on what they were and were not doing and also developing a picture of their actual "practices" related to covert action. And of course in the end it all connected to the same stories that Gene Wheaton heard from Carl Jenkins...

Good stuff Ernie, I think it should help everyone understand how much of an Umbrella organization COF was.....very much different from the true action oriented groups, although no doubt it had some very special cliques with their own plans. One of the things we had to learn was how sophisticated people like Stoner were, setting up very visible political groups like the NSRP to garner the broadest public support and then dialing down through sub groups to a handful of individuals trusted and vetted to carry out actual bombings and shootings. As I recall Milteer himself commented that the NSRP existed largely as a recruiting took and cover for Stoner's more violent activities. All of which shows the risk of six degree type associations until you are able to connect the dots for an actual tactical operation.

Paul, for a little more detail, could you specify when and to whom Sommersett identified Jackman as a DP shooter......it might be interesting for David Boylan to chime in on the COF, as I recall he collected a lot of background information on them. It's interesting to trace their membership and leaders over the years and also to separate out some of the subgroups that seem were having their own very private and possibly more "action" oriented meetings during the larger COF gatherings. As you continue if you could call out any actual attacks that the COF sponsored that would be interesting too.

There is no doubt that we took a close look at some of the same figures Paul, albeit with a different purpose. We also spent a lot of time on how the really dangerous ultra right groups operated - well compartmentalized from the ones you normally hear about because they talked but usually didn't act. I would also point out that both Stu and I felt that there was a serious ultra right NSRP goal of assassinating JFK and other leaders as well as Jewish financial figures. You probably recall there was an NSRP threat out of San Antonio reported to the SS during the Texas trip. The problem is that making the argument that those same people actually conducted the attack in Dallas is different than the argument that they wanted to and talked doing it...both messages that Sommersett and Milteer would readily have picked up through gossip within the ultra right network. But conspiracy to commit is not the same as accessories to the act and there were individuals such as H.L. Hunt who were rightly worried that some of their associates had been behind the assassination, they had no way of knowing for sure, simply that they had encouraged something of that nature. In any event, anyone who does have AGOG might want to refresh their memory on our research as they venture into any discussion of Sommersett and Milteer - don't know if Stoner comes up in his book but that was one deadly guy, who was extremely sophisticated in his plans and had a history of getting away with attacks of various sorts.

Just for balance I should probably note that I think Sommersett was reliable on some things, he certainly was on a Miami PD sting on a gun buy to kill MLK, but you have to keep in mind that he had been outed by none other than JB Stoner as an FBI source early on, well before 63. Stoner had cautioned those hanging with him about what to say and to give him only misleading information. In fact so much misleading info was passed to him (he continued to pass on everything he heard) - that ultimately the FBI dropped him as a credible source. That doesn't mean it isn't worth following what he was passing on but you have to weigh that against Stoners warning and the fact that Sommerset was given information that would not pan out upon investigation so as to discredit him as a credible source to the FBI. Anyone with a copy of AGOG can see how much Stu and I wrestled when to use his info and when it was dubious.

Ernie, I don't know if that is what they are called or not, the lawyer told they were collected by the HSCA as evidence for their investigation but never removed from the country. As to Paul's question, what I was told was that they included original, dated motel receipts from that period. We were working on Milteer in regard to MLK at that point and never went back to it. I'll have to leave it to someone else to take this further, I was just asking if the book had explored them.

The ones I mentioned are available for scrutiny, I have not looked at them personally so I'm only reporting hearsay on what is there but any lawyer or even legal aid can get access. We talked to a lawyer who was familiar with them and very familiar with Milteer himself. I know researchers have looked at them and was just asking if they were mentioned in the book; I will say that there are reportedly invoices and records in there of interest including motel receipts showing Milteer was several states away from Dallas on Nov. 22...traveling on the east coast. There legal status is one of ownership since he is dead the the HSCA acquired them and then failed to take them into physical possession.

Actually I don't think the Milteer HSCA collection I'm thinking of was in Fulton country Paul (that's the county Atlanta is in) but rather Milteer's home county seat. Caufield would have needed a lawyer to access the Milteer collection as its still legally bound there, not in any public archive. When the HSCA collected it but failed to take it away it went into a sort of legal limbo. Perhaps Bill will recall something about it.

Paul, does Caufield give any notice that he has been through the Milteer papers now located in a Ga country courthouse? They were collected by the HSCA but never moved out of Georgia... there seems to be some important stuff in there including motel receipts for Nov 22....just curious as if he had reviewed that or talked to the lawyer that controls it?

That's good stuff Paul and I'm happy he did the debunking, more could be written in regard to PRS activities in DC....especially since Milteer had also threatened the Supreme Court in his remarks...but as Bill has noted you have to stop somewhere. This certainly makes the point that the SS was aware of Milteer and was following their normal practices of collecting data on him. Not like the FBI was hiding anything.

Paul, its fine to go forward but as I noted, there are a number of sources on Milteer and Sommersett beyond Don Adams and we actually have more detail in AGOG...and those clearly go to documents that Adams never tracked down or reviewed. Hopefully the book at least references other sources. But first I want to make sure that Caufield did debunk the point that Milteer's information was not passed from the FBI to the Secret Service and that it was indeed handled and put on record....not well or effectively but consistent with the very limited PRS practices of the time.

Ernie, some of the areas have to do with Cuban exile groups and their activities in Dallas, New Orleans and Miami. Others have to do with individual CIA officers or CIA assets. Some have to do with Cuban exile statements and outreach to the FBI, in several cases they are requests for further related documents that we already know about. Unfortunately in most cases the response is either very slow or negative. Of course this is just in the area of JFK. Some much more productive FOIA work is being done on Cold War history in general, intelligence projects, military projects, military operations, State Department activities. You find a lot of that showing up at either the National Security archive or in various military blogs and articles for the service magazines. I should have been more clear that I don't necessarily expect the JFK related requests to produce all that much at this point in time, its just the most interesting to me. As you can tell from my post, I don't think we are going to see a lot more than we have already, no matter how much we search for it. What I should have said is that "the most truly new information could come from FOIA activities", but that is on the optimistic side. What is more likely is that the reply will be that the documents we want have been routinely destroyed or in the case of the CIA are still witheld...which is what we most commonly hear.

For those following the release of the documents, a number of us "document geeks" have looked into it at length including extended discussions with the folks at NARA. I'm afraid Ernie is much more accurate in his expectations than Paul is...at this point most truly new information is coming from FOIA activities in areas outside the JFK collection - if anyone thinks the government has secretly held the real truth about the assassination in its collections of documents and will release that in 2017 - well it would be nice but... Now that the book is moving into Milteer and Sommersett it should be interesting since Stu and I researched both extensively in our work on the King assassination.....going well beyond 1963 and beginning when the FBI was working with Sommersett to sting a rifle deal in Miami for a weapon to be used on King. It was at that time that Sommersett became suspected within the ultra right community - though JB Stoner - as an informant. For starters I surely hope the book will put to bed the urban legend that the Milteer remarks were not reported to the Secret Service by the FBI; they most certainly were and those documents exist. The problem was that in his ramblings Milteer mentions an attack in DC (he also expresses a willingness to help folks blow up the Supreme Court) the report went to the SS DC protection file...and since the SS seems unable to have comprehended that a theat in one location could actually be relevant to another, the WHD would not have found the Milteer report in a search related to cities in Texas for the Texas trip.

That's great John, thanks. I guess that would have suggested to me that Oswald saw the Minutemen as just another force ready to seize the day and that he was looking to some alternative to all such forces, especially the military/capitalist oriented ones because he wanted some sort of counter to that. Pretty deep thinking for somebody that was supposed to be a puppet though - I'm pretty I recall writing college essays that were no better and probably worse...