When and Where Did the Training Take Place?

[Steve Thomas]

When and Where did the training for the JFKA take place?

Certain things needed to be set up beforehand:

Staging and Logistics- food, transportation, lodging, maps

Sight lines - enfilade and triangulation of fire, wind and elevation, wind and elevation

Exfiltration - escape routes

Anybody have any ideas?

Steve Thomas

 

[Denny Zartman]

21 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

When and Where did the training for the JFKA take place?

Certain things needed to be set up beforehand:

Staging and Logistics- food, transportation, lodging, maps

Sight lines - enfilade and triangulation of fire, wind and elevation, wind and elevation

Exfiltration - escape routes

Anybody have any ideas?

Steve Thomas

 

I read that an insider once said the 1973 film "Executive Action" was a fairly accurate depiction of the preparation and execution of the assassination.

[Larry Hancock]

Steve, you and I have discussed this before and I've written about it in detail so I hate to belabor it but - on the assumption the tactical team consisted of people that had been training for months and in some instances for years in infiltration, exfiltration and the tactics of a rifle ambush, it substantially reduces the preparation time and much of it would be done in Dallas, during the days before - given that  you are attacking a soft target which in itself has some flexibility on time and even movement the best you could do is plan for a main route, a back up and be prepared to deal with some flexibility in the timing - which did happen (having the ambulance involved in a blocking move was part of that, a pickup stalled as a diversion for DPD security during the hour before hand another). 

Certainly they would have practiced routes and even caching of weapons, exfiltration exactly where they would occur and not stand out at all (recall the report of men in the parking lot putting a rifle in a car trunk...from women working in the Daltex in the evening and going home as I recall).

As to exfiltration and infiltration, these guys had gone into and out of Cuba multiple times working against extremely tight security and making it - getting in out out of Dallas, into and out of the Plaza was child's play by comparison - walk towards the cops and don't run and you are good, which we saw happen with guys from behind the fence. Only runners get noticed, and the guy that ran down the railroad tracks did draw attention but then effectively vanishes off the DPD tapes....another diversion likely enough.

All the movies you see about extensive mockups, training ranges, practice runs have to do with very "hard", fixed targets.  This was very much different and like the soft target motorcade attacks they had practiced against Castro.  Not even of the level of the sniper attack that had aborted before the BOP landings.

As Martino said, the guys arrived in Dallas at least week in advance, reconnoitering the route, selected shooting sites and no doubt practiced elements of the exfiltration (remember the report of guys with a rifle on the knoll only days before and how slow DPD was to respond to that - just another test of timing and police routes and communications).

Bottom line, this was an infantry ambush on a soft, mobile target operating on a known route and with a fixed destination.  As to the the weapons, they could have sighted them in on range or out in the country.  Takes maybe a dozen shots if you plan to use a scope, probably less with iron sites. 

 

  -- sorry to repeat myself, I suspect  you were looking for others to respond but I'm still here...grin

 

[Gerry Down]

2 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

caching of weapons

The caching of weapons is interesting. I presume stuff like serial numbers would be sanded off the weapons in case they had to be left behind after the assassination and the police found them. This way the rifles could not be traced. Where do you think they would have hidden the rifles in the days leading up to the assassination and how would they be transported to the assassination site?

I’ve always been curious about Felix Rodriguez’s account of being given a bolt action rifle for his assassination attempt. I would have thought an automatic rifle would be the perfect assassination rifle as it would enable you to pepper the target with multiple bullets in 1 to 2 seconds. But Rodriguez was given a bolt action rifle for some reason. Seems odd. 

[Michael Griffith]

3 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

(remember the report of guys with a rifle on the knoll only days before and how slow DPD was to respond to that - just another test of timing and police routes and communications).

I thought this story had been debunked. Wasn't it determined that this report was mistakenly based on a police/FBI report about target practice in a location that was near the plaza but not in it? As I recall, there were two men who were seen firing at silhouette targets not far from the plaza. 

[Larry Hancock]

This would not be a deniable operation so tracing would not be an issue,  weapons going back to the general commercial market would be just fine since Castro associated actors could easily pick them up in the US.   As to rifles in Texas or the south in general, you put them in the trunk of the car or the bed of the station wagon and go, people carried them openly on the streets. There were gun shops downtown so if you really wanted to be cool put them in a gun case (there were multiple reports of that from Dallas that day)    But more likely just park in the lot behind a building, put the gun inside a raincoat or jacket or have it in a package, take them out of the car, use them, throw them in the back of the vehicle as was described and drive off since nobody opened any trunks of the cars exiting the parking lot.   

A serious shooter is going to use a bolt action or a semi-automatic since they expect to hit where they aim and they will have a clearly defined target in the open, take a couple of shots at the most and be gone.  I recall our arms instructor saying - when we were issued M16s  - look at the full auto switch setting and forget it.  You only use if for fire suppression - to stop people shooting at you, and you better have plenty of clips or they will just come on and kill  you.  If you actually have a target you want to kill  you use single shot in semi-auto mode. 

 

 

[Larry Hancock]

Mike as I recall it, yes the report was an FBI report discussing something that had come from DPD but the actual DPD report never surfaced - sort of the same situation as the Frazier polygraph.  I don't know how it could have been debunked without the original report - which was supposedly just a call in to DPD from an unnamed citizen.  For all we know that could have been just a test, a hoax, a mistake etc.   

The point I was trying to make was that even if it had been a hoax it was not passed on to SS nor were any special security  measures taken because of it.  Basically the Plaza area as well as almost all the motorcade route was a soft target where only traffic and crowd control measures were in place.  The only evidence of what one would describe as "hard" security was at the Trade Mart.

There was no security zone of control around the plaza or anywhere else to monitor people coming in or search them, show ID etc. That would all have been laughable to the guys who were used to making missions in and out of Cuba.

[Eddy Bainbridge]

Could someone comment an actual process. It seems there are indications that shots were coordinated and possibly a signal given that the first shots were unsuccessful. Is this recognised as standard assassination procedure?

[Larry Hancock]

Eddy, if  you read the last section of Tipping Point, which is free on Mary Ferrell, I do go into the actual process in considerable detail, even with references to standard infantry ambush  manuals and tactics.  I really would have hoped most folks would have read that by now...sigh.  

Its part of the material in Section 5    https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html

 

 

[Sean Coleman]

16 minutes ago, Eddy Bainbridge said:

Could someone comment an actual process. It seems there are indications that shots were coordinated and possibly a signal given that the first shots were unsuccessful. Is this recognised as standard assassination procedure?

IMHO….don’t think there was much of a process, just the head guys of the relevant investigating authorities (CIA, FBI, DPD, SS etc) having the arrogant attitude of ‘we can cover up any loose ends.’

There seems too many ineptitudes too call it a well planned operation- wallets, jackets, cab rides, single bullets, X-rays, caskets, dodgy checks, blankets, paraffin tests and so on and so on for hours and hours because the list is as endless as an endless thing.

yeah so, thrown together with a bit of a wish and a prayer. And tons of authority I reckon.

[Steve Thomas]

4 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

  -- sorry to repeat myself, I suspect  you were looking for others to respond but I'm still here...grin

 

Larry,

Like a bad penny.

haha *couldn't resist* 😄

I got to wondering last night if the training took place overseas, (Nicaragua or Guatemala maybe?), or if it was domestic (Florida or New Orleans?)

Steve Thomas

Edited September 7, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Michael Griffith]

33 minutes ago, Sean Coleman said:

IMHO….don’t think there was much of a process, just the head guys of the relevant investigating authorities (CIA, FBI, DPD, SS etc) having the arrogant attitude of ‘we can cover up any loose ends.’

There seems too many ineptitudes too call it a well planned operation- wallets, jackets, cab rides, single bullets, X-rays, caskets, dodgy checks, blankets, paraffin tests and so on and so on for hours and hours because the list is as endless as an endless thing.

yeah so, thrown together with a bit of a wish and a prayer. And tons of authority I reckon.

Some carefully planned military operations have experienced unexpected mistakes, overlooked items, etc., etc. I think the assassination was carefully planned but that some mistakes occurred and that some things were overlooked. I think the wounding of Connally was a major unexpected development. The wounding of Connally created a myriad of unexpected problems. 

[Larry Hancock]

Steve,  I would venture that it was a combination,  almost all these guys got initial infantry training from Jenkins in Panama and then advanced guerilla training in Nicaragua.   The when the project was changed from strictly guerilla action to the conventional Brigade they were pulled off for special infil/exfil training first at the camp south of New Orleans and then moved on for actual missions into Cuba from the maritime base in the Keys.

Afterwards several of them worked occasional missions for WAVE or were on call but detached.

I think they were hand picked and selected for Dallas the same way Robertson later picked guys to go to the Congo....then possibly not even pulled together until they arrived in Dallas a week or so early.  Plenty of time to reconnoiter and dry run, especially if they had local info available from somebody like Ruby or even one or two of the Dallas local DRE  types who knew the city and could play support roles. All very similar to the Cuban ops they had done previously. 

"Training" was long past for these sorts of folks, mission planning and prep was more the order of the day.  But when you know the route, the starting and stopping point etc, too much time leads to leaks and sloppiness.  Remember, their main advantage, as with all special ops, was going to be surprise - they get two to five minutes before anybody really begins to understand what just happened. 

 

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

I think they were hand picked and selected for Dallas the same way Robertson later picked guys to go to the Congo....then possibly not even pulled together until they arrived in Dallas a week or so early.  Plenty of time to reconnoiter and dry run...

...too much time leads to leaks and sloppiness. 

 

Larry,

huh.

I would have guessed six months, but then, I'm a slow learner.

Steve Thomas

[Larry Hancock]

One of the things the guys at WAVE learned was that any operation they planned which involved the participants knowing any level of detail was quickly compromised - because the Cubans talked among each other.  A cultural thing that they came to accept.

So the practice became to keep them all on call, have them on the payroll, but since you were working with training people  you only needed to give them the minimum logistics orders until they were assembled at the mission launch site.   Not you might still find gossip that was something was going to happen.....but it would be all over the place.  Just like the gossip we find about JFK being at risk starting in the late summer time frame.

What I can't seem to get across is that this was not a new type mission, an infantry ambush against a soft target does which involves no more than a dozen or so people is not a massive operation and the trade off is always how much prep time is actually required balanced with the tolerance for leaks.  In this case I suspect the tactical team had a few weeks notice  in regard to a mission but that they were then isolated, transported and put under strict control in the Dallas area while all elements were finalized and rehearsed.

I know everybody wants something more but its the small scale, special operations with highly trained people that actually work...the ambush/sniper attacks on Castro had required no more than half a dozen people with some minimal support by locals and then they more often failed due to leaks than anything else.