Tipping Point is now beginning serialization on the Mary Ferrell Foundation site

[Larry Hancock]

It will be fully available for a free read and then later available in book form on Amazon as well.

I'm happy to take questions or chat about it here, on my Wordpress blog or via email at larryjoe@westok.net

Here is the link to get you started if you are interested:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

 

[Anthony Thorne]

Hi Larry, which section of the book do you think benefited most from the availability of new documentation? Or did the whole text - and your view of the assassination - benefit from the new info?

[Larry Hancock]

That's a fascinating question.  For starters I would say the Cuba Backstory stands out as we have learned so much more about the evolution of roles and the social networks that began with the Cuba Project and developed from 1960 though 1963.  The documents (and oral histories) give us details about about actual assignments and operations that we can see personalities develop among both CIA officers and the Cuban volunteers, creating what you might think of as "trusted networks",  the "band of brothers" type relationships which we can now understand in much more detail than when I was working on SWHT back in 2010. 

Going along with that is our expanded understanding of several Castro assassination efforts which were completely independent of the poison plots.  Ultimately that allows decoding Roselli's explosive disclosure that it was CIA Cuban assets from the Castro assassination project (shooters, not people from his poison attempts) who were actually turned against JFK. The question always was - how could he have known that and who would he have had in mind.

It is particularly important that we can now trace the very complex relationships of certain of the Cuban exiles as they moved from CIA activities, to anti-Castro activities and back. That demonstrates the limitations that the CIA had in controlling them and how independent they actually were....independent of the CIA but still aligned with individual CIA officers who they felt shared their own commitments. We knew those special relationships existed, now we can map them to specific individuals.

The details we have learned also allow mapping out some key associations in regard to Jack Ruby and Robert McKewon, a very much ignored figure who actually, with what we have learned, may allow us to know exactly who was in contact with Oswald as he left New Orleans. 

I would say the other major new area of discovery was a much deeper understanding of who was involved in exactly what roles and with what tasks by the fall of 1963,  both within the CIA and among the Cuban exiles.  That allowed setting up scenarios for Oswald's use (in person and simply as an identity) by several different groups within SAS, at JM WAVE, and within Domestic Operations.  It was something of a shock to find Oswald likely so well known that any conspiracy involving staff from JMWAVE would have easily picked him up as a useful aspect of the plot - not to kill JFK but to cast blame on Castro.  Again, we have had that view in concept for a long time, now we can tie it down to individuals.

Bottom line, there was no single "aha" document,  nor two or three, it was really the overall body of information that developed which allowed filling in blanks and connecting dots.  That and the possibility of actually coming up with a device for selecting and hiding the tactical team assets that were involved Dallas.

 

 

[Anthony Thorne]

That’s really fascinating, Larry, thank you. I’ll keep an eye on those details when I read the upcoming chapters.

[Larry Hancock]

Thinking about it just a bit more, the ability to more completely fill in the activities and movements of individuals was also a major step forward.  That was particularly true in regard to both the movement of CIA officers within various positions and to the movements and activities of the more activist Cuban exiles - especially those who transitioned back and fourth between CIA sponsored actions and totally independent actions, primarily moving between JMWAVE paramilitary operations and  DRE associated actions.

Understanding which individuals went into operations such as Commando Mambisis and AMWORLD, who, when, who recruited them and their status during the fall of 63 and early 64 was also quite key.  We were aware of those things in a general way before and thought we understood them but within the last couple of years we moved into a totally different level of granularity.

That all shows up in the People in Motion segment and of course the correlation of events going on at different levels only begins to show up with a comprehensive chronology - otherwise its impossible to actually connect individuals in DC with Miami and then with travels to Dallas. 

I would also say that establishing, based on other's research, an expanded view of Lee Oswald in New Orleans as being visible to parties in Miami who had operational tasking to target Cuban diplomats at both the UN and in Mexico City was a bit of a blockbuster.

 

[Anthony Thorne]

Larry, I'm looking forward to reading that, it sounds fascinating.

I read SWHT years ago (an earlier edition) and a few months ago read NEXUS on my Kindle, which I greatly enjoyed. Out of all your writing, which volume do you think contains your thoughts on the why of the event, as opposed to the what/when/how/where? NEXUS was informative but I'm just wondering if you've ever summarised why you think Kennedy was killed. I think NEXUS contained some material along those lines but I read it before lockdown here in Melbourne and my memory is frankly a bit frazzled.

[Larry Hancock]

Prior to Tipping Point it was NEXUS which definitely projected what I felt to be the motive for the assassination - the "why".  SWHT 2010 added much more about nature of the suppression of any investigation of conspiracy, and some of the tangential agendas that supported what was essentially an unplanned cover up of what was suspected but not allowed to be actually investigated.  That could best be summarized by the phrase "we don't want to go there" (which we actually find in an internal inquiry into what happened to some of the medical evidence from the autopsy).  In Tipping Point is best expressed in a quote from a CIA officer who was serving at SAS/WAVE -  "you don't want to know".

Tipping Point digs into the "why" much more deeply in the section on context for conspiracy.  Clearly there were multiple elements in that context - JFK's history in refusing to be stampeded into major military actions, which made him appear weak and a national security risk to those who chose to interpret it that way, his willingness to explore options including neutrality (which he had pursued in Laos and elsewhere and might well have pursued in Vietnam), and his pursuit of compromise solutions to geopolitical problems. 

Beyond that it can be demonstrated that he was also at specific risk from certain groups of militant Cuban exiles - that is simply a matter of record and gets way to little attention.  We now see that concern even in CIA documents. But even though the CIA made a secret investigation of that area, it was never brought to the attention of the Warren Commission.

But the goal of Tipping Point (hence the title) is to tie that to a chronology,  to specific actions of individuals and to translate the more general "why" to the more specific "why in November" and "why in Dallas".   There was an urgency to act which correlates to the attack in Dallas.  So - rightly or wrongly - that's where Tipping Point differs from much of what had been written up to now in terms of specificity.

In other words, I decided not just to go out on a limb but hang on with one hand.

Oh, if things work well the first major segment should go up on Mary Ferrell in two or three days.

 

[Anthony Thorne]

That’s great, thank you Larry, looking forward to it. I’m also letting a Melbourne friend know about the serialisation. I’ll likely have more questions as each chapter goes up.

[Larry Hancock]

Posted just now

As it turns out Rex has been busy and Tipping Point Part 1 - The Cuba Backstory - is now live on the Mary Ferrell Foundation: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part1.html

This segment is a pretty large piece of the total material, some of the following segments will be much shorter.  It just comes out this way in trying to maintain some topical unity in dividing it serialization.  I urge those interested to give it a really detailed read, to check out the links and citations and especially to try and follow the chronology as it develops over some five years.

Certainly much of the content has been discussed in bits and pieces, but often without keeping it in proper chronological context.  Given how much people, assignments and agendas changed over that period of time, it is really a mistake not to discuss some of the key names in the conspiracy discussion without placing them in the right time frames (especially since some names appear multiple times, and in very different roles).

[Larry Hancock]

Part 2 is now available for reading:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part2.html

[Larry Hancock]

Segment 3 of Tipping Point is live on the Mary Ferrell Foundation now:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

It delves into the chronology of what I found to be especially significant events and movements of individuals during the Fall of 1963.  The commentary in the end notes also gives my opinions on topics of that period that are widely discussed and debated.

Segment 3 completes the background for the final two segments, which are both much longer and much more detailed - segments 4 and 5 explore what I see as the context in which the Dallas attack involved, the specifics of the personnel involved and the tactical aspects of the attack - and what followed President Kennedy's murder.

 

[Larry Hancock]

“Context for Conspiracy” / Segment 4 of Tipping Point is now available for reading online at the Mary Ferrell Foundation:

 

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part4.html

[Larry Hancock]

The fifth and final segment of Tipping Point is now available on the Mary Ferrell Foundation.

 

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Part5.html

 

This final segment focuses on the conspiracy in terms of its activities in Dallas, both on November 22, 1963 and during the weeks preceding the attack. It addresses the types of assets which were called into play and deployed in Dallas to support both the attack on President Kennedy, and the linkage of that attack to Cuba and Fidel Castro. Previous segments have developed the point that there the President was increasingly at risk during 1963. Active threats were known, both from the radical right (John Birch/NSRP rifle teams), and from radical Cuban exiles; those threats were reported to and communicated within the Secret Service. We now know that by October some of those threats were being taken seriously, but to date none of them show the range of assets, the level of local support activity, or the degree of planning which occurred in Dallas.  

 

How and why that level of support was uniquely available in Dallas emerges from the context laid out in the preceding segments, specifically in the connections between Jack Ruby, Cuban affairs, and certain members of the Havana and Las Vegas casino “crowd”. Segment 5 illustrates the danger of revealing the conspiracy which would have been inherent in a full exposure and coordinated investigation of Ruby’s history. It also demonstrates the extent to which a key portion of the plan for Dallas imploded with the capture of Lee Oswald, bringing Ruby into a totally new role.

 

Beyond the uniqueness of Dallas (both in terms of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby) this segment also explores the tools and tactics of the assassination which reveal clear signs of what was a paramilitary attack employing standard infantry tactics and practices and carried out by well trained and experienced participants.  Deconstructing the attack also reveals that it was in no way designed to conceal a conspiracy. If anything it was carried out so as to reveal a multiple shooters and a level of tactical organization which would be expected from a coordinated team – not to cover itself by placing the blame on a single “lone nut”.  

 

The segment concludes with an examination of key elements in the chaos which followed the failure of the second element of the conspiracy (the framing of Lee Oswald as a Castro regime tool). That examination includes the follow up efforts of both those inside the conspiracy, and the senior officials in Washington D.C. who determined that national security demanded that a conspiracy neither be investigated nor exposed.  

[David Andrews]

Larry, your research and conclusion that both Oswald and Ruby underwent sudden behavioral and operational changes as soon as Kennedy was killed makes me wonder if the old rumor has some basis: that the Dallas action was announced to some participants as a deliberate, near-miss "attempt" on JFK's life, with the claimed intention of provoking a change in JFK's Cuba policy.  The rumor's been circulated since the mid-1970s.  Any thoughts on its viability?

Edited December 22, 2020 by David Andrews

[Larry Hancock]

My suspicion is that certain of the individuals involved as accessories, and in what initially appeared to be relatively peripheral roles were given a cover story that a legitimate covert action was in play - a provocation which would justify action against the Castro regime. That would have worked very well with certain individuals such as Jack Ruby. A message from Rosellit that he was working with the CIA on a fake attack on JFK would have been an easy sell. In fact a Gruber or a McWillie could have been brought in as cut outs for communications using the same story.  Roselli's credentials from the poison plots cannot be underestimated in making the plan work in Dallas.

Certain other individuals inside the chaos of Miami and anti-Castro activities would likely have bought into a highly covert op carried out by rogue CIA officers, designed not to kill JFK but to blow apart his back-channel approach to Castro. That approach would have worked well with at least some of the tactical and support team although obviously the core would have not only to have known but have been eager (and willing to sacrifice themselves - something I went over in a recent blog post on "risks").

Beyond that I doubt a provocation cover would have been necessary, Ruby could have brought individuals in for minor roles (plant something in the TSBD, leave a door open, keep people from behind the fence) based on having a bit of dirt on them, offering girls, money etc.  No need to get complex. He could always use the simple cover that he was friends with some folks that wanted to do something to protest or embarrass JFK when he was in Dallas.

So yes, I think there is very good reason for that speculation and it probably works best with individuals such as Ruby that appear to show an extreme change in behavior once they hear of the actual attack and JFK's death, either immediately or over the next few months. Certainly that includes Lee Oswald. It would be an interesting study and probably a lot more insightful than just listing mysterious deaths.