Larry Hancock

Well the thing is the SS agents literally got pushed out of the ambulance at the airport so it seems they were not really in charge. As you say I don't see Johnson micromanaging the effort

but he may very well have passed on word to Burkley to get JFK to a secure facility. That makes a lot of sense and as I recall there was some talk of that on the plane...and Burkley

would obviously think of Bethesda. According to Burkley it was his orders in Dallas that essentially took control of the body, he goes on at length about that in his statements taking

full blame because Jackie told him personally she would not leave Dallas otherwise. That makes some sense to me although I know there is a tendency to make it more suspicious

than that. But if true, that essentially put Burkley into the position as the guy who was taking charge of the body - which give his position as JFK's Doctor makes good sense. And

having him send it to a Naval hospital makes sense too. And there were widespread security fears and clearly diversionary measures taken in the transfer with multiple coffins and

multiple transfer groups involved. That seems to have come at least partially from JFK's friend and WH security aide whose name escapes me at the moment.

So the best I can give you is the thought that someone passed word to Burkley on the plane or he took the authority himself (not sure he was a big Johnson fan) to be responsible

for the body. Anyway, to make a long story short, I'm a believer in early exploratory surgery but I'm open to the fact that it occurred at Bethesda, with the Doctors proceeding

upon receipt of the body and before they were told they curtain was being opened and the official autopsy could begin....ooops. I think there is a case for that and Horne

makes it. As you know I favor an "iterative" cover up which left all sorts of loose ends. I also posit that the attack was supposed to look like a conspiracy, with multiple shooters

and both front and back entry wounds being no issue. That only became an issue when it became desirable for a lone nut to be introduced to abort an in depth conspiracy investigation.

Chris, its pure speculation but there an alternate scenario here.....it starts with Burkley telling the Bethesda commander that they do not need to do a full autopsy but rather just collect the bullets

as evidence. The commander turned him down on that but it seems that Burkley might have been sent there with marching orders. However as things proceeded Burkley may well have come to

realize that what was going on was not strictly legitimate. There is also some thought that he was close to the Kennedy family and that he might have taken the initiative to remove certain

key evidence to preserve it should RFK decide to launch an independent inquiry, either then as Attorney General or possibly even later if he became President. That is especially interesting in that

nobody including either Johnson or Clarke seem to have put a leash on him to retrieve the items listed - suggesting that Burkley himself had some sort of leverage or protection.

-- Just a thought

Chris, I cover Burkley and his activities on and following Nov. 22 in fair detail in SWHT and I would have to go back and look but I think your list is pretty good....not sure about the original autopsy notes becasue I think there is a separate narrative about how two separate sets of those were either destroyed or simply went missing... I seem to recall that Johnson and Clarke had an exchange about what Burkley had taken and how they might retrieve it but that came to naught. If you have the 2010 ed of SWHT check chapter 15 as I tried to include a good number of the evidentiary anomalies there including what Doug Horne had just written about from his ARRB work.

Burkley tried to go on record with information arguing conspiracy, he had his lawyer contact the HSCA to offer it and received no response at the time. Seeing which way the committee was being driven he later backed off and kept his head down. When the ARRB asked for his personal records to investigate what he might have had to offer, his lawyer was receptive but Burkley's daughter turned them down flat.

OK Paul, admittedly you do use IMHO a great deal but I did not see that in post #684; it reads as a firm statement and someone just lurking here might assume there were facts to support it. As long as its clear that its purely surmise and supposition then I won't pester you for factual corroboration.

I do think that since this is a thread on the Caufield book, it would be good for someone who has read it or reads all of it to chime in and tell us whether or not the book agrees with your Hoover/3pm Walker did it scenario and if so if he found something concrete to support it.

Paul, what evidence do you have that LBJ was telling people Walker wanted the US to invade Cuba?

That is almost as dramatic as:

"by 3pm CST Hoover telephoned RFK to announced that Lee Harvey Oswald was not an FPCC leader and not a Communist.

This proves that Hoover figured out Walker's plot very quickly. Hoover realized that Walker's gang wanted to blame Castro and invade Cuba."

Do you have any actual proof for your statement that Hoover knew Walker was behind it by 3pm - as in anyone ever hearing something like

that from Hoover or any communication from Hoover on that. Could you also cite the wording from that RFK telephone call that you refer to, we went

through this once before with your claim about what Hoover was doing at 3pm and that proved to be a dead end; it appears that you are now

substituting the RFK call for your proof that Hoover was totally on top of it and launching the cover up as of 3pm Friday. Your criteria for "proof" is

pretty interesting so I'd just like to see a bit of elaboration or verification for your assertion. I'm gathering that claim is also not something anybody has

found in Caufield's book yet?

Ian, at the time of arrest Oswald was wearing a nice shiny metal ID bracelet on his left wrist...might take a look for that. Of course it was nice of him to make sure

to wear a personal ID bracelet when going to kill the President, makes things so much handier for the police. Of course that goes right along with

him immediately surrendering and claiming credit...or say tossing the bracelet and any other personal ID during his escape, something real criminals are

wont to do while on the run...

Chris, I would suggest you read his books, in particular Night Watch, which describes his Cuban contract work in detail....I cover it in some depth in SWHT and we have a number of documents about his work there including his departure after having been exposed. As far as funding Alpha, that is not what he was doing with Veciana and other anti-Castro groups in Cuba at that point. Later on Phillips began using his commercial contacts to fund a number of projects in a deniable manner, including the purchase of the Tejuna. That appears to be where much of the Alpha money came from as well, not out of some significant CIA budget but brokered as donations. As to the crypts, the documents on the MI contacts with them are fairly extensive and some of the dialog records that while Alpha trusts the Army, it has no use at all for the CIA.

Now I don't want to imply that there was not some covert, deeply buried CIA effort to support Alpha - vs. it being largely at Phillips personal discretion, what I'm saying is that if that exists it was so deeply buried we have no documents on it and it shows up nowhere in the various CIA documents that do mention Alpha 66, in fact those that do are just the opposite, describing them as highly independent. I'm putting this strictly in the context of the official HQ record that would have been consulted in preparing the PDB. As to the 66 reference, there are a lot better stories as to the origin of the name, many of them contradictory.

My only other comment is that if you have read Shadow Warfare, I give several examples of CIA field operations running soft files and preparing reports that give a quite different sotry to HQ than what is actually going on - often to carry out the mission without being constrained or micromanaged....hence a lot of the higher level documents and briefings are often way off the mark....on the other hand the PDB's given GWB before 9/11 were pretty darn accurate, that being another story entirely. .

Chris, I'm aware of his recent statements but of course if we accept them he has only known for certain since the HSCA that Bishop/Phillips was CIA and before that point he was always firm in stating that Bishop told him he worked for no agency at all but private interests. Now having said that its very possible he was not that naive but that is what he said and of course Veciana only represents himself, not Alpha 66 in general - and he was the finance guy, not one of the operational leaders. They were all adamant about being independent. If you trace it back Phillips first contact with him was when Phillips was a CIA contract employee in Cuba, not in the JMMATE project, under deep cover and not at all linked to the US.

Beyond that, I have the documents on the mil intel relationship, which actually assigns Veciana a crypt and on numerous contacts between MI and several Alpha members. And as I said, none of the actual CIA documents pertaining to Alpha imply any sort of direct association or control. Based on that, whatever relationship that may have existed was not being reported in the HQ docs so the Presidential Daily Brief is probably accurate. Thinking that the PDB was a full reflection of all the covert and deniable activity going on within the Agency would be unrealistic anyway and the much more egregious sins in the recent release have to do with the impression they were conveying about when and how much they knew about Oswald in MC...and that was clearly either witheld from the folks doing the PDB or a conscious decision to lie in it.

Chris, could you give me a reference for that Veciana statement? I've never seen any sign that the CIA was directly in contact with Alpha 66 as Alpha 66 was with military intelligence. I do believe that they were manipulated by Bishop/Phillips but that is a totally different story and we have no documents to verify that Phillips was not acting on his own at at most with total CIA deniability. I did find documents suggesting that some on the Special Group were interested in Alpha in the spring of 63 but after doing some checking and with CIA input concluded that they were not controllable and it never came to anything. I suspect if there was CIA deep penetration of Alpha 66 it was extremely compartmentalized; as far as I could find the only reason JMWAVE even knew of their boat missions was through exile informants like Fernandez.

OK Paul, so in regard to the quote from Caufield:

"there is an abundance of evidence that Director J. Edgar Hoover deliberately concealed from the Warren Commission a plot to murder the president by the radical right wing and segregationist elements."

at this point per Chapter 1 then its simply a statement of his belief/conclusion as he opens the book. That's fine, not unusual to have a strong, aggressive lead in the first chapter. I'll just wait for the answers to the questions which will help determine if he is able to maintain the assertion with details.

Certainly I'd be happy to see comments from Bill, Ernie, Paul B and anyone else reading it as to how he he supports the points in my specific questions, stated above, as the chapters proceed. Its a pretty strong claim not only to assert that such evidence exists but that Hoover an his agents assembled it and intentionally concealed it. Not to say that I don't think the Bureau concealed information about Lee Oswald, did not effectively pursue a number of leads and has other things to answer for but that quote goes a way good beyond that.

Paul, that's pretty strong stuff to start with so do we have any specifics yet - for example does he spell out at what point in time Hoover has that evidence in hand and is knowingly withholding it? It would make a great deal of difference just when the evidence was being concealed as against the chronology of when the FBI report was being prepared and presented to Johnson.

My next question would be where is it being concealed, is it in reports, files, testimony and how/where does he conceal it? And of course that leads to examples....does he provide specific examples of that evidence or has he found indications that the evidence was collected, assembled, withheld and then destroyed?

Or is this really just the lead in to the book - a thesis that not only was there such a conspiracy but Hoover and FBI agents accumulated an "abundance" of it, assembled it somewhere and withheld it. That would be a lot stronger statement than saying they all suspected a conspiracy but either decided not to pursue it or were unable to accumulate a substantive body of evidence. And of course if the FBI agents involved and Hoover himself were concealing such evidence it would also be a major crime in and of itself - which is a lot different than simply "missing" a right wing conspiracy.

I know all that might not be answered in the first chapter, but if not then I would suggest those would be benchmark questions to come back to as you progress though the book.

Personally I would never be able to deal with as deep a book as this sounds to be with electronic reading, I would need to be highlighting, marking notes etc and I can never find my way back and fourth in electronic copies fast enough to satisfy myself. But that's just me. Anyway, chapter by chapter would be fine...I'd just suggest that it is done within the book forum where it seems to fit best. Then again others may want it here.

Given the topic of this thread and how far it rambles, and the fact that Paul must have his copy of the new book now - Paul, how about some discussion of what you are reading in the book? You could do it here or even in the book forum. I'd be interested in some dialog from those actually involved with or reading the book itself. I don't have the time for it at the moment but seeing some discussion of what's new or what new dots have been connected would be real interest.

Jon, most teenagers growing up during the 50's and 60's would figure Tommy was talking about a vehicle gear shift and transmission, then again maybe you weren't a muscle car fan... don't know if its an

expression still in use or not?

Bill Kelly forwarded this new study to me last evening and I expect its something that will get a lot of attention here. The link is below.

Personally I'm glad tht it addresses a lot of issues I have had with the U-2 myth - in one place and thoroughly. It also digs into Epstein's

work which misled a lot of us in the early days. And it provides information from Jack Swike, a friend of mine whose work is little

discussed - and who surfaced a mystery concerning photos purported to be by Oswald of Marine fighters at a base in the northwest

where Oswald was never stationed nor traveled. That's not discussed in this report; you would have to go to his book for it.

The study can be reached at this link:

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster70/lob70-oswald-and-japan.pdf

Got you Greg and indeed its good work to tie down her connection. It's just that personally the things from Vol 2 that resonate the most with me are the CAP material, the connection to Ferrie and his role with Oswald early on as well as the College studies which extend George Michael Evica's work...that has always been very interesting to me and is a subject often ignored these days. By the way, Bill Kelley just sent me a link to a Lobster article on Oswald in Japan which I think is going to get a lot of discussion here. If he does not post it here soon I will put up the length. It seemed to me to be very well researched.

OK, so I did reread it and it appears that the studies she was associated with were basic research into profiling selection procedures for electronic maintenance techs.....determining what school, work and other experience would best fit with the sort of training they would do and work they would get. It seems to me that would apply to almost anyone being screened for electronic maintenance positions. Might have gone into some of the recruit proficiency/screening tests as well.

Again, I should really go read it but in lieu of that and for everyone who does not have it yet - what would that have to do with flying jets on reconnaissance missions? The prop aircraft would have had elint personnel on board, the FICON jet would most likely have had not much more than cameras. Of course you want to track the FICON jet and monitor what the defense is doing to detect it. Was she just looking at how to screen personnel for such recon missions, psych profiling or something like that. Sorry, will indeed go back and reread when I have a moment.

I certainly agree there Greg, it was an interesting adaptation of what was initially to be a parasite fighter defense for the bomber (actually bringing back a concept for fighter defense for blimps) and making use of

it for a short range high speed recon option....honestly I'm sort of perplexed as to why there would be a lot of special attention to selecting and preparing pilots other than the fact that they would be really at risk of being shot down. Or perhaps

somebody had the wild idea of preparing a FICON pilot to ostensibly defect if he was shot down? I'll have to read that part again, what was the point of her studies. I don't recall any special mention of later SAC penetration air crews for that but perhaps it was a hangover from the Korean war fears of pilots being brainwashed? I'm curious as to whether you say any similar projects

related to training U-2 pilots.

I will say though that the number of research projects related to all areas of national security was immense at that point in the Cold war; I keep stumbling across Universities, think tanks and professors engaged in

special studies for military branches or the CIA.

I'm going to jump in here since this is a subject I discuss at great length in Surprise Attack so at least its familiar to me. Aerial ferreting and reconnaissance of the Soviet Union started even before the treaty with Japan had been signed - as did planning for atomic strikes against Russia. The first aircraft considered for a major program of deep penetration missions (up to 5,000 miles) were propeller driven B-29 reconnaissance planes, however it would be the B-47's that would ultimately conduct multiple missions to Moscow and beyond. The FICON program was an option for extending penetration missions from prop engine reconnaissance bombers, especially with the sprint capability of a jet fighter. However the jet fighters would never have had the range to do deep photo missions across the Russian land mass.

I'd have to say that the real comparable predecessor to the U-2 was not an aircraft at all but rather the high level photo balloon project designated Genetrix, which began sending cameras across the breadth of Russia in 1956. Some 500 Genetrix balloons were launched, many were shot down and ultimately 50 cameras were recovered providing photo coverage of some 8% of the Soviet Union. That was indeed a predecessor program to the U-2.

Genetrix was complemented by the extensive SAC B-47 flights which began in 1954 and ultimately ended with the major operation designated as Project Homerun in 1956, One Homerun flight involved a formation of six B-47's which took off from Thule, Greenland and crossed the Pole, moving into and across Russia, exiting across the Bearing Strait and landing in Alaska. That was the sort of mission which SAC had anticipated as far back as 1948.

Thanks James, that's absolutely right. I was concerned about a review that was not really a review.... I'd encourage everybody to comment and discuss books per se in the books forum, that might help keep things discrete. Perhaps there should be a thread on Greg's new CAP research. Its pretty important to think an organization like CAP, which is officially linked to the Air Force and quite active even today, was taking it upon itself to essentially begin performing domestic intelligence and even counter intelligence. Quite a sign of those times. It just so happens I have a collection of Steve Canyon cartoons (yes I am that old) which all focus around Steve as an active Air Force officer and missions involving CAP cadets. Greg's research really rang a bell there because almost all those cartoon strip stories involved Communist spies and agents actively trying to collect information and the CAP cadets were often involved in helping thwart them.

Thanks for carrying on with that Vanessa, regardless of the alternative it seems to be a pretty stunning indictment of the only DPD officer to actually encounter Oswald at the scene. If the investigation does

not support Baker then you have to wonder about using him as a source at all...or equally, about the investigation itself. And of course nobody on the WC staff pursued that rather obvious point.

Well I don't know who the eminent member was but if he has seen the CAP material Greg presented as well as a number of other new points then its something I've surely missed. I might not totally agree with Greg on whether the CAP intelligence collection program was structurally tied to any formal OSI or CIA defector programs but it raises a lot of new thoughts about the extent to which civilians, corporations and groups were taking it on themselves to do counter intelligence work, domestically and overseas. To some extent that just adds to the confusion because we know that often people claimed CIA connections or claimed to be on CIA projects when they were actually working on their own - or even with at best tacit knowledge from someone. Regardless of that, it opens up a very important window into how Oswald might have been "launched" and to to what he himself might have thought was going on around him.

I will also agree with Greg that there seems to be a real tendency to visit and revisit the same subjects which have been argued for ages.

I second Tommy's bravo, a very well done piece of work on Delgado. Once again points up the fact that many FBI reports have to be evaluated in a broader context.