Larry Hancock

That link seems to work fine as of five thirty central time on Thursday...

I'm trying to figure out how an "investigation" would change Baker's personal testimony. If Baker could not even be relied on to state where he encountered Oswald what does that say for the rest of Baker's statement? Sort of makes you wonder how many other witnesses observations had to be straightened out by the "investigation". It reminds me of at least one shooting witnesses who stated that he had heard five or six shots and was told that simply could not be true since there were only three.

That certainly would be reasonable, I mean how many people eat their lunch dry and then go for something to drink. Stopping for a coke coming from upstairs, getting your lunch, starting on the sandwich and then going out

front with the soda would make sense....then back upstairs to put the empty in the bottle rack by the machine (that's how it worked in the olden days). And if Fritz did not make notes about Oswald describing an encoungter

with one of his officers it would be pretty weak.

No idea how to prove it all but its indeed a very interesting interpretation.

The 1960's rise and activities of extremely well networked and violent Klan groups such as the White Knights of Mississippi is extremely well documented...including with the arrest, trial and conviction of their members. Certainly their activities from 64-64 are easy to find and the subject of everything from books to movies such as Mississippi burning.

Well once more I'm going to jump in having researched Robert Morrow at great length. For starters, I got to be good friends with Professor who had been very close to Morrow and had the opportunity to talk to him over an extended period of time. The net of those conversations was that Morrow was intensely interested in the assassination, his wife worked in DC and in the early 70's both of them collected a considerable amount of information from people who stated they had known something about the assassination (none of those individuals being people we normally discuss such as Ferrie). Morrows most explosive leads came from the son of an Air Force officer and his girlfriend; both of who suspected his father and another officer of having somehow been involved. You will find the two Col's mentioned in his Morrow's books. To make a long story short on that one, the son was not very stable, had a very poor relationship with his father and had seen some cash in the house that was most likely involved with pay offs to French officials for defense equipment sales - both Col's went on to work for aircraft industry companies after retiring.

Morrow himself did help stimulate interest in DC and got the attention of some individuals, one of whom helped lobby for the creation of a new investigation. The problem is, that Morrow admitted to my friend and to other researchers that what was in his books was extremely exaggerated - fiction in regard to most of his personal stories - written with the goal of stirring public interest in a new investigation. Anyone reading most of his books where he talks about his contacts with CIA officers and especially the fascinating deep bunker under one senior officers house has to suspect he is exaggerating even if its not totally fiction - the Cuban attack at Adam Clayton Powells island home is another example.

So after all that, I dug into his CIA files...which do exist...and the bottom line is that he did get involved with a counterfeiting project with a Cuban exile - who thought it had been approved after he met with a couple of US officials - State Dept no less. And later on he helped lobby and do political outreach for the guy in a couple of Latin American countries. The CIA files make it clear that the only reason for their interest is that he and the Cuban political figure kept stumbling though other activities they were carrying out in Latin America. Morrow may have belived the counterfeiting venture was CIA approved, perhaps it even got a head nod from somebody. But the rest of his story is pure exaggeration, perhaps with a good motive but still a major obstacle to real research.

And for full disclosure, his was the first assassination book I ever read, I was enthralled by it and it got me started in research on exile connections. In regard to his book on the RFK assassination, he did get sued and lost but it just may be that the the leads he was following there were far more significant than anything of his JFK books. Larry

Jim, could you give a reference for that offshore CIA fund, is it a particular Nation article, a book, I'd like to take a look......thanks, Larry

Uh, that would be a "quiet landing" with tanks, brought in by tank landing craft, thousands of troops along with heavy weapons brought in by landing craft and paratroop drops over the beach?

Its almost like there are two different operations still being discussed...

Yep, saw that already....and not just Ferrie but the "fellow traveler" private anti-communist groups as well. CAP and then Ferrie's own CAP.....no wonder our heads tend to explode.

Jim, actually I address this in at least five different blog entries so rather than that I would suggest folks start with the following links:

This one is an excellent chronology of the various meetings and briefings and sets a benchmark for who was told what, when:

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

The following link has an article that discusses the Navy Task Force Alpha at the Bay of Pigs and includes remarks from an interview

with the Navy officer who had served as landing liaison with the CIA for both the Trinidad operation and its sequel. I was able to

track down the author but the officer himself is deceased. I was also able to get more detail from a Naval history with Admiral Burke but

that is only on a rather expensive CD and I can't link to it. Some of the most important observations from the CIA liaison are in this

article:

www.history.navy.mil/museums/hrnm/files/daybook/pdfs/vol9issueone.pdf

One benchmark on this is that reportedly when Ike talked to JFK after the election he admonished JFK to do whatever it took to make the operation work...and in December, Ike went so far during

a briefing as to propose creating some sort of incident which would immediately engage the US with Cuba. But, given all that, Ike still referred to the project as a "guerrilla" operation when talking with

JFK. So even in December, when the Special Group had been briefed on the change in the operation, was Ike misled to the point that he did not realize that the landing had come to involve tanks, tank landing craft, a heavy weapons

unit and paratroop drops. Was that all withheld from the sitting President?

And per Jim's reference, in my blogs I've discussed remarks from the Navy liaison to the CIA which describe Navy destroyer and air cover for the Brigade into the landings itself, which certainly would

have led to Cuban engagement with American forces....those rules of engagement were rejected and changed repeatedly once JFK forced things to be documented and reviewed.

Downloaded and will be reading it over the next few days Greg, I have no doubt you have gone off the beaten path to turn up new material...

No doubt about that Chris, and honestly its hard to conclude that Ike felt deniablity was all that important a concern. He had agreed to proceed with Brigade style military effort, with all the support elements normally found in such operations. Even David Phillips was shocked to find out that the CIA had been assigned to conduct a "covert" operation which included tanks and tank landing craft. In one of the December meetings, Ike even expressed a desire to be more aggressive with the plan and asked if something could not be done to provoke an immediate military incident which would justify committing the force. In his post election meeting with JFK Ike urged doing whatever was necessary and no doubt JFK was surprised to find out that there was virtually noting in writing for his review - which of course was not that unusual for Eisenhower. You can trace things over first months of 1962, as more gets put in writing and reviewed, JFK continually applied more restraints and some of the dialog looks very much like he was offering the CIA the chance to back off and say they it would not work under those constraints. Even the Joint Chiefs study group advised CIA in its report that a single operational Cuban aircraft over the beach could well take out sufficient key ships to doom the effort; absolute total control of the air space was mandatory.

Chris, as I recently told Jim, having reviewed some new source material from Naval officers associated with the project its pretty clear that the planning assumption was that Ike had at least given a head nod to rules of engagement which would have allowed Naval support of the Brigade ships all the way into birthing at the docks at the original landing. There is virtually no doubt that would have led to attacks on American planes or ships and Ike would have allowed American combat to proceed from that point. There is little doubt you would have seen full engagement - which is why the fighter bombers were deployed on the command carrier in the first place (which sailed with ordinance for the aircraft). Once JFK demanded that such plans actually be written down and reviewed all that would have gone out the window and he continually demanded more restrictive rules of engagement. You will find posts on my blog which go into this information and sources in some detail. You also have to remember that the operation was supposed to have gone in before Ike left office. And to make matters worse, based on statements from the American brigade leaders - which they passed on to the exiles - Bissell kept giving them assurances of a level of air support over the landing that was simply never going to happen with JFK's directives. Perhaps somebody did expect JFK to cave but if so they did a terrible job of laying out the issues for him in real time even once they knew the initial strike had failed to produce the degree of Cuban air force losses everyone had agreed was necessary for the landing.

Thank you Gayle, I think I can promise there is indeed a lot of history in there (some 60 years worth) and much of it that the average person was never aware of as it happened...even in

the more recent years. The good wishes are most appreciated. Larry

The mystery has do do with the details of the SIOP guidance which was given to the senior commanders who were charged with any nuclear strike. Practically speaking in 1963/64 that guidance was an extension of the joint targeting committee work which was largely led by SAC. It should have been reviewed by the Secretary of Defense and by the President. Originally President Eisenhower had written the Guidance himself. The Joint Chiefs would not necessarily been involved. Its the sort of thing that should have been at least immediately reviewed and caught by the Secretary of Defense - and ultimately it was - but not for some time.

As to Benghazi, obviously that gets really complex but the Ambassador himself and his visit look to have been at the heart of it - a target of opportunity to neutralize the CIA operations that the Ambassador was assisting. I go into great detail on the whole issue of diplomatic security overseas and at the time of the attack, there were four installations being carried under active threat, neither the embassy in Libya or the special mission in Benghazi were on that list. Its very unclear as to when we might know the full story but the attack very well disrupted an extremely covert CIA mission having to do not only with arms interdiction but arms supply to selected Syrian rebel groups. Both the CIA and AFRICOM/JSOC Trans Sahara were conducting highly secret missions in eastern Libya at the time.

I've read the same story Chris and both Larry Haapenan and I have tried to track it down for ages. I suspect that it is a derivative of the fact that the White House/Secret Service code book was apparently left off the SAM aircraft carrying the diplomatic mission to Japan. Those would have been the clear transmission voice codes to be used to identify senior administration civilians, the President's family etc. - most definitely not the sort of code used in an Emergency Action Message go code or strike authorization and not one of the SIOP codes. SAC was flying Chrome Dome fail safe missions daily and any aircraft commander going through his checklist and doing his communications preflight would have paid dearly for not having his authorization information on board - and we are not talking about one aircraft but over a dozen. The same would be true for the SAC airborne command posts and other alert units. And of course, it would also be true for the missile sites. What we do know is that SAC itself went to a higher level alert than the general Defcon bump which was issued by the Joint Chiefs - as did CINCPAC and the theater commander in Europe. They had the authority to do that and it appears that at least some of the missile sites went to an actual launch alert. Anyway, I probably just used half a dozen acronyms unfamiliar to most so I'll stop and say that there is no sign of the SAC code book that having happened in real life.

As a teaser I will say that there is something that remains mysterious to this day in regard to the nuclear strike plan in effect in 1963 and relating to an attack on the President and that is in the book.

Jon, I'm very much aware of Day of Deceit, I'd probably say it was the thing that peaked my attention in taking another look at the Pearl Harbor attack and of course led me to also review all the military history studies of the code breaking and more recent historical studies of the claims in the book itself. In doing so it became clear to me that the overall story was not just that of Pearl Harbor but had to include both the attacks of Dec 7/8. The loss of the strategic bombing force which the US had been desperately building up in the Philippines - consisting of many of the long range bombers which were originally planned to be used for long range patrol duty out of Hawaii - is an important part of the story. Especially since the commander of that force was not permitted to execute the war plan which would have led to an immediate bombing attack of the Japanese strike base in Formosa, very probably decimating a huge amount of Japanese air power.

As to who knew what and who didn't tell whom on Dec 7/8, that's way too complex for me to go into here but regardless of open questions there, each Pacific Command including Alaska, Canal Zone, Hawaii, and the Philippines had been issued a war warning well in advance of the attacks, advising them that the Japanese were initiating an attack, details unknown with Philippines being almost certainly a target. Each command was ordered to war alert, which should have meant 24/7 duty rosters and watches. There is an interesting book out now about how seriously even the Canal Zone took the warning.

As to 9/11, there is little doubt that a number of individuals and agencies within the government failed to fully disclose information - their was a move within the 9/11 Commission to actually bring criminal charges against several agencies and individuals and I discuss that in the book. I think I can safely say that I was neither gentle or vague about specific failures, including what appear to have been conscious decisions to a number of very specific warnings at the most senior levels of government.

On a side note, I do discuss the Gulf of Tonkin incident (not attack), the Liberty attack and Pueblo seizure - including the most current information relating to the cover ups related to all three of them. I mentioned to Brian that a lot of the research left me gritting my teeth and that included each of those.

In regard to your point on 9/11, in the early hours a terror threat alert level order was issued, normally that is done installation by installation, this one was issued globally. Not until 2pm was a jump in DefCon initiated but even now it is totally unclear who issued that order and to some extent what it really involved. From a military stand point, a far more egregious issue is that NORAD did not assume military control of American air space in the early hours, leaving all military aircraft literally under control of FAA civilian controllers who were totally unprepared for such duties. Even worse was that there were no rules of engagement in place even after multiple Air Force exercises over the previous three years had dealt with the use of aircraft as weapons. I'm going to stop at that since going any further just raises my blood pressure and all the details are in the book.

Thanks Brian, I'm pretty sure you will find some new things in it....although a few of them may make you grit your teeth; I did a good bit of that during my research.

Just wanted to let anyone interested to know that my newest study, Surprise Attack, is now available on Amazon and will be showing up on book store shelves and new non-fiction racks during September.

http://www.amazon.com/Surprise-Attack-Pearl-Harbor-Benghazi/dp/1619025663/ref=la_B004FOXTAK_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440531517&sr=1-1

As many of you know I've spent considerable time studying the national security response on Nov. 22, 1963 and in Surprise Attack I compare it to some fifty years of similar responses, allowing

a view into exactly how LBJ's and the national security leadership behaved as compared to other major crises. Given that the book is a study of warnings intelligence, command and control and

national security response - beginning with the attacks on Hawaii and Pearl Harbor I'm not going to promote it or discuss it here beyond this post, its not a conspiracy book per se and certainly not

a JFK focused book since it explores the performance of every President from Roosevelt on.

I'll be happy to discuss it with anyone who wants to in the books section of the forum but given the fact that Shadow Warfare didn't get any discussion there - and it was much more relevant to

the people and activities pertinent to the Kennedy assassination - I'm not sure it will get much reader conversation there. If you do read it and want to discuss it and make sure

you get my attention you are always welcome to email me at larryjoe@westok.net

Chris, I doubt that its the same person but the Belle Chasse camp was also used as a cover to take some candidates from the Brigade and run them though special training,

they were then sent back into a special covert teams which may have been intended to support the Op 40 group and Morales intelligence trainees if the landing had succeeded. Victor Hernandez was one of

those individuals. Apparently some individuals from that pool were actually inserted into Cuba during the very unstructured operations that followed in the interim between the

failure in the landings and the start up of the Mongoose project.

Excellent work...IMHO this and the Training Camp thread (and the short shot thread when it stays on track) are a credit to the forum are great examples of what peer research can accomplish...well done!

I do have photos that illustrate Sturgis, Ferrie and Ferrie's people involved in the camp that was being planned and may have operated for a time in late 1962. Ferrie was clearly involved in that, Bannister might well have been. The effort was even described in newspapers, however it seemed to fall apart after the missile crisis and with the Kennedy administration crackdown on exiles. Not sure how that relates to Newbrough but thought I should mention it. Personally having lots of problems with Davie Ferrie flying a B-25 over the Bay of Pigs landing...

On page 52 I discuss a Hernandez mentioned as an assassination suspect by Escalante, supposedly he had been a Castro supporter, had left Cuba via Mexico and then on into the U.S. He was very violent, had carried out actions against the Cubans in MC and was a friend of another generically named Cuba, a Garcia...which of course makes one think of Hermonio Diaz Garcia purportedly named by Tony Cuesta as having been involved in the Dallas attack.

Problem is that this is all interwoven and although its possible to use those names to connect dots which would be consistent...there is no way I've found to take it onto any firmer ground.

As much as I would love it to be I can't swear to it.....the name Hernandez is too common and shows up in a bunch of suspicious places....I think Victor was too young to have been the fellow McKeown describes having known in Cuba. But its certainly a possibility. Victor's whereabouts in the Fall of 63 are very unclear and the HSCA did a terrible job of pursuing that. If you check out Appendix I in SWHT you will find that I certainly speculate that Victor was either involved with the conspiracy or that he was close enough to those involved to have heard about it. He is also an ideal candidate for having carried word about Oswald back from New Orleans to Miami at the end of the summer and of being one of the "mysterious" out of town exiles in touch with Oswald in New Orleans.

Yes, that is definitely one of the documents I was referring to and its important to note that the Victor Espinosa mentioned in the report is actually Victor Espinosa Hernandez (one of the great problems in the FBI's

connecting dots with the exiles was their inability to always give full names so that individuals who are the same often appear not to be...sigh). He is the individual I write about at length in Appendix E of SWHT and actually

had been in the CIA pre-BOP Belle Chase training camp outside New Orleans for a period before the landings. His information is important because it is substantiated independently and in his own HSCA testimony where he provides

further remarks about the abortive McClaney bombing project.

Certainly I think a lot of the statements are less than forthright, but my suspicion is that its less about the particular incident being charged than a lot of other things they had been engaged in...Espinoza Hernandez was

more than willing to dump all over the McClaney project but in other areas I absolutely know he was telling less than the full story about his own activities.

-- Larry