Larry Hancock: Someone Would Have Talked

[John Simkin]

I also suspect Tracy Barnes was involved in the assassination of JFK. In fact there are several CIA agents involved in the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala that are likely to have taken part in the plot. The same goes for members of Operation 40. This includes David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Bill Harvey, William (Rip) Robertson, E. Howard Hunt, Bernard L. Barker, Frank Sturgis and William C. Bishop.

However, I think it is highly unlikely that evidence will be found that definitely proves that senior members of the CIA were involved in the assassination.

There is an interesting passage in Robert Maheu’s autobiography about his role in recruiting members of organized crime to kill Castro:

In the winter of 1959-60, however, the CIA still thought it could pull off the invasion (of Cuba). But it thought the odds might be better if the plan went one step further - the murder of Fidel Castro. All the Company needed was someone to do the dirty work for it. Professional killers. A gangland-style hit.

It was then that the CIA conceived the notion to let the mobsters do it themselves. They'd had a grudge against Castro ever since he'd forced them out of the Havana casinos. It was even rumored that Meyer Lansky had put a million-dollar bounty on Castro's head. CIA Director Alien Dulles passed the ball to his deputy director, Richard Bissell. Bissell handed off to the CIA security chief. Colonel Sheffield Edwards. And then I received the call...

Though I'm no saint, I am a religious man, and I knew that the CIA was talking about murder. O'Connell and Edwards contended that it was a war - a just war. They said it was necessary to protect the country. They used the analogy of World War II: if we had known the exact bunker that Hitler was in during the war, we wouldn't have hesitated to kill the bastard. The CIA felt exactly the same way about Castro. If Fidel, his brother Raul, and Che Guevara were assassinated, thousands of lives might be saved.

But in my mind, justified or not, I would still have blood on my hands. I had to think about it. The deal carried a pretty big price tag. I kept thinking about my family. What kind of danger would it put them in? If anything went wrong, I was the fall guy, caught between protecting the government and protecting the mob, two armed camps that could crush me like a bug....

Rosselli's first response was laughter. "Me? You want me to get involved with Uncle Sam? The Feds are tailing me wherever I go. They go to my shirtmaker to see if I'm buying things with cash. They go to my tailor to see if I'm using cash there. They're always trying to get something on me. Bob, are you sure you're talking to the right guy?"

When I finally convinced Rosselli that I was serious, very serious, he sat staring at me, tapping his fingers nervously on the table. I didn't want to pull any punches with the man, so I was totally up-front about the conditions of the deal.

"It's up to you to pick whom you want, but it's got to be set up so that Uncle Sam isn't involved - ever. If anyone connects you with the U.S. government, I will deny it," I told him. "If you say Bob Maheu brought you into this, that I was your contact man, I'll say you're off your rocker, you're lying, you're trying to save your hide. I'll swear by everything holy that I don't know what in hell you're talking about."

CIA contact with Maheu was via Sheffield Edwards and Jim O’Connell. This is not surprising given the fact that Maheu later talked about his relationship with the CIA.

Richard Helms told the Church Committee, it was not the policy of the CIA “to embarrass a president… by discussing the assassination of foreign leaders in his presence.” This is of course not strictly true but what Helms means is that no evidence is allowed to exist that shows that president’s knew and approved of this policy. The same would have been true of senior CIA figures.

The two exceptions to this are Bill Harvey and David Morales. They seem to have got fairly close to the action.

Does anyone have any strong evidence that Tracy Barnes was involved in the assassination?

[Larry Hancock]

John, I very much doubt that Barnes would have been directly involved in

the tactical elements of the assassination. He had no experience or expertise

in that area and apparently was not generally well respected either for either

tradecraft or security consciousness. Equally importantly, he had no close

personal relationship nor trust established with the exiles. Those criteria point you towards people like David Morales and Rip Robertson.

However Barnes was in a very key position to do two things which related to

the conspiracy, first, a case can be made that it was his position and personal

dialogs which led many officers and many exiles to belive the story that JFK

was solely responsible for the failure of the BOP invasion - Barnes can be shown

to have aggressively taken that stand inside the CIA even in the face of it's

own internal investigation. The "legend" that JFK was a traitor very likley

started with Barnes and continuted to be reinforced by him. Secondly, Barnes was in a key position as a senior agency old boy to know and pass on the 1963 word about JFK's opening negotiations with Castro; as in a more minor way was Morales who had inklings of the new strategy from the SG meetings.

Hemming has said - among many things - that it was the "patriots" who orchestrated the assassination and that the mechanism was a matter of inciting key exiles to action, he refers to "baiting" them. I might have called it incitement instead. That of course would be done by the personnel who had direct credibility and confidence with them, not Barnes. Vidal described how CIA officers carried that message to key exiles in Miami in the summer of 1963 and that it had the impact of setting off a bomb among them. I tend to belive that in this case Hemming is telling us exactly what did happen.

I also think it is at least probable that information about Oswald and certain of Oswalds actions - including his vulnerability as a patsy - may have been passed on by Barnes due to his oversight with the new Domestic Operations division; it's

a question of whether or not DO was directly involved with the FPCC project which was carried out in 1963.

I will be adding a sizable appendix on Barnes to my upcoming second edition, thanks to a lot of literature searching by Pat and a bit of work of my own.

It would definitely be interesting to have some factual evidence of where Barnes was on December 22, 1963 though. If this all was as personal for him as it might have been - it could explain a reather interesting photo that James Richards has previously posted of individuals clustered at the corner of Main and Elm in Dallas?

-- Larry

[James Richards]

Good stuff, Larry.

I guess the follow up quesion is why would Barnes do this? I know there are lots of exotic theories floating around that involve the military industrial complex and big oil and the like but what was the prime motivator for Barnes? I know this will not play well but one has to consider something as simple and old fashioned as revenge, fuelled by blind hatred.

We have to go back to how Barnes and indeed David Phillips reacted to what happened at the Bay of Pigs. They became physically ill being deeply and personally affected - scars they carried for the rest of their lives. The gathering at the corner of Main and Houston that Larry mentioned may have been a perverse send off for JFK.

FWIW.

James

[Pat Speer]

There are three reasonable interpretations of Barnes' and the DOD's connections to the assassination.

One is that they had nothing to do with the assassination.

Two is that Barnes, Hunt, and Phillips (and possibly Angleton) were using Oswald to penetrate the FPCC (and also perhaps to ensnare Kostikov) , and that someone either turned Oswald or framed Oswald regarding the assassination, and that as a result the CIA covered-up their connection to Oswald. I have been reading FBI Agent Hosty's Assignment: Oswald, and while he buys Posner's theory on how Oswald did it alone, he's not so sure about Oswald's motive and suspects a possible Russian involvement. What is surprising about his book, however, seeing as it was written by a professed Oswald-did-it kinda guy, is that it details a mass cover-up within the FBI of Oswald's visit to Hosty, and of Hoover's secret inquisition of those who embarrassed the Bureau. Hosty even details how his superiors changed his answers to questions kept in his personnel file, and how he informed FBI Director Clarence Kelley of this, and how Kelley backed down rather than unveil the fraud. After reading this, it is totally reasonable to believe that the CIA has been covering up the level of their involvement with Oswald since day one. While many believers in a conspiracy accept this possibility as gospel, Hosty's book makes it palpable where even a lone-nutter can share in this belief.

Third is that Barnes and the DOD were the planners of the assassination. While this may sound like froot loops to the uninitiated, the nature of the men involved in the Domestic Operations Division--a department supposedly devoted to interviewing Foreign nationals on American soil, and of trying to turn these visitors into agents--was that these men were all decisive men of action, and lovers of intrigue. Barnes himself was described by Dulles as the bravest man he ever knew. Hunt was a notorious zealot and lover of sneaky stuff, with a willingness to kill for a cause, as revealed by Gordon Liddy's book, Will. Another of Barnes' men, Hans Tofte, had landed infiltration teams in Korea only to be disgraced when it was revealed the infiltration films he'd shown his superiors had been staged. Somehow, I just don't see these men as interviewers. The Angleton memo placing Hunt in Dallas. The Phillips connection with Oswald as reported by Veciana. The behavior of the DRE, run by Joannides (and Phillips, I believe), after the assassination. The behavior of Frank Sturgis after the assassination. The statements of Morales and Phillips towards the end of their lives. Even the stories of Marita Lorenz and Robert Morrow, all point to a CIA operation by these men to kill Kennedy and blame it on Castro. Barnes, of anyone in the CIA, may have had the strongest personal motive to kill Kennedy. The disaster at the Bay of Pigs had led to the ouster of his two closest mentors at the CIA, Dulles and Bissell, and he'd been forced to work for Helms, his greatest antagonist. Furthermore, Lyman Kirkpatrick's IG report had placed much of the blame on Barnes for the disaster. And yet here was Barnes, with his own division loaded with covert ops specialists, and a close connection to old proteges like Phillips, Morales, and Robertson. And, what's more, here was Barnes running a number of cover corporations at the time of the assassination, from which he may have siphoned a significant amount of money, using American tax dollars to pay for the execution of an American President.

That Barnes did kill Kennedy is questionable. That he should be considered a prime suspect in his death is unquestioned. That Richard Helms forced Barnes out of the CIA almost immediately after his becoming DCI, might also be significant. While it is undoubtedly true the two men did not see eye to eye, it is also true that the timing of Barnes' release, July 1966, coincided nicely with a growing clamor of doubts expressed about the Warren Commission, what with Inquest just in the stores and Rush To Judgment on its way.

The fact that after 40 years information about the Domestic Operations Division remains so scarce might also be taken as an indication that something happened there that we're just not supposed to know about.

Just my thoughts.

[Judyth Baker]

Your comments make sense, Pat. Especially regarding the FPCC, that organization Lee was required to embarrass for the FBI or some other agency (or, at least, for Banister). He could not tell me which agency.

  The FPCC's being associated with the communist party, USA, through Lee's letters and activities in New Orleans was something Lee and I also talked about.  He didn't want the assignment because it would involve getting arrested in his home town.  He had planned an incident in May that he thought would satisfy everyone. I have an interesting newspaper article supporting my statement, which is in the hands of Shackelford and Platzman. But Lee did not want an arrest, per se, to take place. By July, they wanted an arrest scenario added. It was just another indication, to Lee, of their not caring if he was being treated badly, and contributed to his suspicions that he was expendable, as early as July. The newspaper article, if anyone is interested, I will be willing to post later.---Judytth Vary Baker----

There are three reasonable interpretations of Barnes' and the DOD's connections to the assassination.

One is that they had nothing to do with the assassination.

Two is that Barnes, Hunt, and Phillips (and possibly Angleton) were using Oswald to penetrate the FPCC (and also perhaps to ensnare Kostikov) , and that someone either turned Oswald or framed Oswald regarding the assassination, and that as a result the CIA covered-up their connection to Oswald.  I have been reading FBI Agent Hosty's Assignment: Oswald, and while he buys Posner's theory on how Oswald did it alone, he's not so sure about Oswald's motive and suspects a possible Russian involvement.  What is surprising about his book, however, seeing as it was written by a professed Oswald-did-it kinda guy, is that it details a mass cover-up within the FBI of Oswald's visit to Hosty, and of Hoover's secret inquisition of those who embarrassed the Bureau.  Hosty even details how his superiors changed his answers to questions kept in his personnel file, and how he informed FBI Director Clarence Kelley of this, and how Kelley backed down rather than unveil the fraud.  After reading this, it is totally reasonable to believe that the CIA has been covering up the level of their involvement with Oswald since day one.  While many believers in a conspiracy accept this possibility as gospel, Hosty's book makes it palpable where even a lone-nutter can share in this belief.

Third is that Barnes and the DOD were the planners of the assassination.  While this may sound like froot loops to the uninitiated, the nature of the men involved in the Domestic Operations Division--a department supposedly devoted to interviewing Foreign nationals on American soil, and of trying to turn these visitors into agents--was that these men were all decisive men of action, and lovers of intrigue.  Barnes himself was described by Dulles as the bravest man he ever knew. Hunt was a notorious zealot and lover of sneaky stuff, with a willingness to kill for a cause, as revealed by Gordon Liddy's book, Will.  Another of Barnes' men, Hans Tofte, had landed infiltration teams in Korea only to be disgraced when it was revealed the infiltration films he'd shown his superiors had been staged.  Somehow, I just don't see these men as interviewers.  The Angleton memo placing Hunt in Dallas.  The Phillips connection with Oswald as reported by Veciana.  The behavior of the DRE, run by Joannides (and Phillips, I believe), after the assassination.  The behavior of Frank Sturgis after the assassination.  The statements of Morales and Phillips towards the end of their lives.  Even the stories of Marita Lorenz and Robert Morrow, all point to a CIA operation by these men to kill Kennedy and blame it on Castro.  Barnes, of anyone in the CIA, may have had the strongest personal motive to kill Kennedy.  The disaster at the Bay of Pigs had led to the ouster of his two closest mentors at the CIA, Dulles and Bissell, and  he'd been forced to work for Helms, his greatest antagonist.  Furthermore, Lyman Kirkpatrick's IG report had placed much of the blame on Barnes for the disaster.  And yet here was Barnes, with his own division loaded with covert ops specialists, and a close connection to old proteges like Phillips, Morales, and Robertson.  And, what's more, here was Barnes running a number of cover corporations at the time of the assassination, from which he may have siphoned a significant amount of money, using American tax dollars to pay for the execution of an American President. 

That Barnes did kill Kennedy is questionable.  That he should be considered a prime suspect in his death is unquestioned.  That Richard Helms forced Barnes out of the CIA almost immediately after his becoming DCI, might also be significant.  While it is undoubtedly true the two men did not see eye to eye, it is also true that the timing of Barnes' release, July 1966, coincided nicely with a growing clamor of doubts expressed about the Warren Commission, what with Inquest just in the stores and Rush To Judgment on its way. 

The fact that after 40 years information about the Domestic Operations Division remains so scarce might also be taken as an indication that something happened there that we're just not supposed to know about.

Just my thoughts.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[James Richards]

The fact that after 40 years information about the Domestic Operations Division remains so scarce might also be taken as an indication that something happened there that we're just not supposed to know about.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think that's it in a nutshell right there, Pat. Excellent post.

James

[John Simkin]

Between March and May, 1964, Robert Kennedy was interviewed four times by John Bartlow Martin. It is clear that these interviews were not for publication (RFK says some unpleasant things about several people, including LBJ). These interviews were eventually published in the book, Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (1988). Although RFK does not talk directly about the assassination he does say things that might well provide an insight into these events. However, it is not clear if RFK is always telling the truth. Larry (or anybody else for that matter) – does your research support the following points made by RFK in these interviews? Also, are they relevant to the assassination of JFK?

(1) RFK is asked several time about the CIA's involvement in the assassination of foreign leaders. He admits that both JFK and himself were involved in discussing and planning the assassination and/or the violent overthrow of Ramfis Trujillo and Ngo Dinh Diem. He points out in both cases that LBJ was strongly against this policy. Although both these leaders were removed RFK claims this was independent of the CIA. He also admits that LBJ believed there was a connection between these plots and the assassination of JFK.

(2) RFK denies that there were any discussions in 1963 about the possibility of dropping LBJ as vice president.

(3) RFK says that during the Cuban Missile Crisis covert actions against Cuba were called off. However, an anti-Castro Cuban exile, who he was very friendly with, informed him that William Harvey was planning to ignore this order by sending 60 agents into Cuba. When RFK tackled Harvey about this he claimed he was doing it “because the military wanted it done”. RFK claimed that the military denied all knowledge of this covert action.

(4) RFK denies categorically that there were any plots to assassinate Castro. He claims that these plots were never even contemplated. RFK does admit that he fully supported CIA attempts to overthrow Castro’s government. He was also aware of the Attwood negotiations with Cuba in 1963. However, he points out that they were also continuing with the covert operation to overthrow Castro. In fact, he points out that they enjoyed considerable success in their attempts to undermine Castro government in covert operations in “August, September, October”. This included the destruction of 20 tons of sugar cane every week. RFK speaks highly of the work of Desmond Fitzgerald but claims that by November, 1963, he was having difficulty in finding volunteers to take part in these raids on Cuba.

(5) RFK makes it clear that he has read the manuscript of Bay of Pigs (it had not been published at the time of the interview) by Haynes Johnson, Manuel Artime, Pepe San Roman, Erneido Oliva and Enrique Ruiz-Williams. He points out that it is an accurate account of events. In fact he said that “some of my people in the Department of Justice… are working on it”. RFK confirms that CIA officers in Nicaragua were telling the Cubans to ignore the orders given out by JFK during the Bay of Pigs period. RFK describes this as treason. Does anyone know the names of these CIA officers?

(6) RFK makes it clear that after the Bay of Pigs JFK lost trust in the CIA. He claims that they were not only given false information about Cuba. The same thing was happening in Vietnam and Laos. It seems that the CIA had its own independent foreign policy between 1960-63. However, RFK appears to have been very close to John McCone. RFK seemed convinced that he was one of the “good guys”.

(7) It seems that JFK was using several ambassadors to conduct secret foreign policy negotiations. This included Bill Attwood (Guinea), William Mahoney (Ghana), Jim Wine (Ivory Coast) and Kenneth Galbraith (India). This appears to be an attempt to keep these negotiations from the CIA. We know of course about Attwood’s negotiations with Cuba in 1963. Do we know what the others were up to? I know that Mahoney’s son wrote a good book about JFK and RFK (Sons and Brothers). He believes that JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy. He however, does not quote his father about these matters.

(8) RFK is insistent that JFK was not considering withdrawing troops from Vietnam. In fact, he argues that if it was not for Cuba, JFK would have sent “large numbers of troops into Laos and Vietnam” during his presidency. RFK argues that he fully agreed with JFK’s view that if Vietnam fell to the communists, other countries would also go the same way (including India). Both men were strong believers in the domino theory. This of course contradicts the comments made by John McCone, Robert McNamara and Kenneth O’Donnell that JFK was planning to withdraw from Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election.

(9) RFK talks about the scandals involving Billie Sol Estes, Fred Korth and Bobby Baker. He insists that there is no evidence that the administration was involved in any corrupt activities. He claims that there were no links between the activities of Estes and Baker and the administration. He admits that Korth was forced to resign (something that Korth’s pal, LBJ, was strongly opposed to) but this was not about the TFX contract. According to RFK Korth was forced to resign over some letters he sent to a bank. RFK says: “Now, there wasn’t a direct conflict of interest, but I thought that the letters were so bad that he should resign.”

[Larry Hancock]

Boy that's a long list John, and overall it seems to suggest there were a couple of sore spots RFK was still interested in covering up in terms of his brother's image.

1) There is no doubt that their was discussion of ways in which both Diem and Truijillo would be ousted. There is no good evidence that assassination was discussed at the level of JFK; however it is clear that the CIA was involved in both ousters and that Barnes in particular was backing armed attacks on Trujillo. JFK was very upset over Diems death. As to Johnson, he came up with several candidates for a conspiracy which killed JFK, Diem's associates were first and he later seemed to focus on Castro.

2) Of course there was discussion of dumping Johnson, that's politics. However it would have taken something truly explosive to force out a sitting VP from the ticket, of course LBJ's scandals made that an ongoing possiblity.

3) I would say that's pretty historically correct. Now if RFK had known about a good deal of other similar activities out of JMWAVE in 1963 - Harvey would have had plenty of company as he packed.

4) That is simply false, we know he was told of the initial Roselli plots and it's pretty clear that he knew the exiles he was backing in 1963 had eliminating Castro as one of the action items in their planned coup.

5) I've seen names offered for some of the officers but don't recall specifics, some may have been military advisors not CIA per se. I think Lynch even mentions this subject in his book.

6) He's got it right there, more and more evidence is surfacting for CIA officer actions that directly opposed Administration policy and directives. The new JMWAVE operations reports are a good source on that for Cuba.

7) I don't know of anyone who has really gone into this area in detail other than as it pertains to Cuba, something might be done by digging into State Department history documents. It's pretty clear that keeping it from CIA was virtually impossible.

8) The Viet Nam stance seems totally bogus to me and I'm not sure why he would say that at all?

9) I'd say that was a very accurate statement on the Johnson scandals; they were pure Johnson, nothing to do with the Administration per se.

[John Simkin]

4)  That is simply false,  we know he was told of the initial Roselli plots and it's pretty clear that he knew the exiles he was backing in 1963 had eliminating Castro as one of the action items in their planned coup...

8) The Viet Nam stance seems totally bogus to me and I'm not sure why he would say that at all? 

9)  I'd say that was a very accurate statement on the Johnson scandals; they were pure Johnson,  nothing to do with the Administration per se.

(4) This point makes it clear that he was not answering some of the questions truthfully. I suppose at the time he had no idea that this story would come out. I found it interesting that he was willing to admit to discussions about assassinating Ramfis Trujillo and Ngo Dinh Diem was true but was adamant that it had not been the case with Castro. This clearly suggests this was a sensitive area for RFK.

(8) It seems that in 1964 RFK wanted to preserve the image of JFK as a Cold War warrior. I think it again provides another reason why he kept quiet about what he knew about the assassination. I imagine that by 1967 RFK was beginning to regret that he had made these comments.

(9) RFK was suggesting that LBJ was not involved in these scandals. After all, LBJ was part of the administration. He also seemed keen to distance LBJ and Korth from the TFX scandal.

[Pat Speer]

It seems to me that the overwhelming pattern in these quotes is that Bobby, beyond trying to protect his brother's legacy, was seeking to hide his real suspicions of Johnson. It should not be forgotten that Martin was a special ambassador for LBJ and his envoy to the Dominican Republic during the 1965 crisis. So it remains to be seen how comfortable Bobby would be talking to him about LBJ. Or with anyone. Perhaps he was unwilling to admit even to himself that the main suspects in the death of his brother were Castro, LBJ, and the mob, and with all 3 their motivation came from stopping actions undertaken by himself, and not his brother. The one JFK specific motivation may have been the facillitation of a build-up in Vietnam, an act that Bobby supported in 1963.

As for the CIA, the Church Report confirms they were making their own policy throughout the early years of the Kennedy Administration, interpreting orders to assassinate foreign leaders without bothering to acquire confirmation, and refusing or forgetting to inform superiors of covert plans approved by previous superiors and even previous administrations. The underlying truth is that they believed the past orders of Nixon and Dulles superceded the current wishes of Kennedy and McCone. Some would call this treason. I mean, can you imagine if it turned out that our covert ops in Iraq had been planned out by Al Gore and that no one had bothered to tell Bush? Heads would roll. In the U.S. for a change.

I believe there were a number of exiles who claimed that the CIA told them not to worry about the stupidity of the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion, as they guaranteed them that if they ran into trouble the president would call in a full-blown U.S. invasion. Of course, this was exactly the opposite of what the President said, and may indicate that the CIA had been deliberately deceiving JFK, assuming they could manipulate him into carrying out what had been planned as Nixon's war. It remains to be seen whether the CIA EVER really believed their stated plan would work. Does the IG report go into this? I'm gonna try and find out. Hello, Amazon. Ha.

[Pat Speer]

In hopes of inspiring a little more activity on this thread, which I believe to be the most productive one on the forum, let me share something which I came across and have already shared with Larry. While trying to nail down what function the Domestic Operations Division under Tracy Barnes performed, I came across the description in Ronald Kessler's Inside the CIA of a Domestic Resources Division, which comprises the Foreign Resources Branch and the National Collection Branch. The Foreign Resources Branch, which recruits foreign nationals on U.S. soil, shares the description provided the DOD by the Rockefeller Commission, while the National Collection Branch replaces the Domestic Contact Service, the unit of the CIA acknowledged to have made use of George DeMohrenschildt and Clay Shaw. That these two functions are now part of the same division adds fuel to the possibiilty that, offical CIA histories aside, these two units were both under Barnes in 1963.

Even more intriguing is the description of how the Foreign Resources Branch operates. They operate entirely under cover. They go to cocktail parties at embassies etc and try to make contacts. They receive "wish lists" from other elements of the government, and target those individuals and governments for recruitment. Since Hunt was in charge of covert ops for the DOD this would mean this was his primary function. Due to the famous Angleton memo, and Hunt's close contact with Phillips, this could indicate that Oswald was involved in a Hunt operation. Perhaps Lechuga or another embassy employee from Cuba had been targeted for recruitment after an appearance in the U.S. Perhaps the Oswald appearance at the Cuban embassy in Mexico was merely a test to see if the CIA's internal contact would accurately report his visit. Perhaps Phillips' allowing Veciana to see him with Oswald was part of this same test, since Veciana's cousin also worked at the embassy. While this may provide Hunt and Phillips non-murderous reasons to have had contact with Oswald, this could be a key to understanding what happened and why the CIA was involved with a cover-up, allowing Angleton to white-wash the agency's behind.

[Larry Hancock]

Pat, a comment on your rhetorical question:

"It remains to be seen whether the CIA EVER really believed their stated plan would work. Does the IG report go into this? I'm gonna try and find out."

It strikes me that the first IG report essentially concluded that the CIA did not

have the expertise to run a large scale military operation....which the Zapata

project turned out to be.....and the first report highlighted all sorts of issues

with the command structure, decision making and logistics. Barnes reply to

all of that was basically that it was nit picking and they got the Brigade

organized, transported, supplied and on the beach (well off shore at least) and

the plan only failed due to the lack of air superiority which had been an

assumption. Basically his out was that they may not have done a neat job but

it would have worked if JFK had not abandoned them. A more recent CIA

analysis of the BOP raises two major issues. The first is that there was no

real plan beyond getting the troops on the beach, no options, no fall back etc.

Of course it's pretty clear that Barnes and Bissell expected to get the troops

on the beach, supplied for a few days, declare a new government and then get

full scale US military commitment....or force JFK into it. And they expected

Castro to be dead. This second major issue raised is that Barnes and Bissell assumed way to much in regard to Castro's assassination when they really had no direct involvement with that activity nor really any way to know how well it was or was not going.

I know some people assume that the whole project was set up to fail because nobody could be as inept and overconfident as Barnes and Bissell seem to have been. Personally I tend to go along with the more recent CIA analysis which states that Barnes was uniquely qualified to know plan adequately based on the Guatamala project - but that he simply failed miserably. Possibly because the Cuba Project grew into something much larger and much more military than anything in his experience. And I can't help but feel that it also represented a hughe amount of wishful thinking on the part of the CIA who totally mis-evaluated the depth and breadth of actual popular support for Castro after the revolution. Of course given how poorly it managed to coordinate with in country exile factions like Unidad (and how CIA miscues literally allowed Castro to roll them all up immediately before the invastion) perhaps it was as much a failure of execution as of evaluation?

Bottom line, it just flat looks like an all around failure to me. Larry

[Pat Speer]

I just came across a passage in a book that makes me think that the Domestic Operations Division(Barnes) was the new name for the Domestic Contact Service (which dealt with Shaw and DeMohrenschildt.)

In The Agency (John Ranelagh, 1987), written with the cooperation of a number of former CIA personnel including John Bross, Lawrence Houston, Walter Pforzheimer and R. Jack Smith, it states on page 551, about the Schlesinger shake-up of 73:

"Schlesinger applied the same determination to the reorganization of the CIA, not always to the best effect. The CIA's "Contact Division"--the overt intelligence-collection operation responsible for debriefing Americans who had useful information gained abroad--lost its separate status within the agency and became part of the clandestine side under the Directorate of Operations."

ANALYSIS:

While the description of the division matches the Domestic Contact Service, the quotes around "Contact Division" indicate to me that this was not a specific reference to the Domestic Contact Service but to a Division who performed its tasks, whose name was classified. As the Domestic Contact Service was considered to be overt intelligence, I would doubt its name was classified. Furthermore, by using the word "Division" it indicates to me a strong likelihood the real name used the word Division. The phrase "separate status" seems to clash with the agency-approved books by Ray Cline and Anne Karelakis, which give the impression that the DCS went over from being a component of the DDI to the Directorate of Operations in 73.

As a result, I believe this indicates that the DCS was part of the DOD, and that the DOD was dismantled by Schlesinger, quite possibly on Nixon's orders. It also indicates that the CIA tried to cover this up...one would have to ask why. The fact that Nixon never trusted the CIA and believed there was a connection betweeen the assassination and the Bay of Pigs, another Barnes operation, when combined with Schlesinger's dismantling of the DOD, could be an indication that Nixon believed the DOD was involved. It's possible that Hunt had said something about this to Colson. I would be curious as to how many of the 1500 officers-1000 covert- fired by Schlesinger were from the DOD.

Let me know if this makes sense, or whether I'm clutching at straws.

Pat

[Larry Hancock]

Pat, that looks like great legwork and a fine analysis to me. And logically, if a new Domestic Operations Division is being established logically (and from an internal politics standpoint) Domestic Contacts would seem like something that would almost have to go into it unless it had a real power based to keep itself separate and there is little sign of that.

In fact it is so logical that it seems all the effort to make DCS and DOD mysterious is even worse than normal CIA internal security. Certainly it could be explained if their had been a paper trail or even personnel within that organization who had contact with Oswald in 1963. It might be worth taking another look at the documents in Newman's book to see if DCS or DOD is ever referenced on the distribution list for any Oswald documents. Doubtful though, if anything that would probably have been in his "soft file" which the CIA managed to keep hidden during all the investigations and when identified by the ARRB and requested, was still never provided as far as I know. Probably with good reason if it had been in Barnes' file cabinent...grin.

-- Larry

[John Simkin]

Earlier in this debate I argued that I was not convinced that Phillips was Bishop. However, after reading Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation, I have changed my mind. My comments were based on my knowledge of the way MI6/CIA agents work. Fonzi (and to a certain extent Phillips own book, The Night Watch: 25 Years of Peculiar Service, which I have also read recently) convinced me that Philips was not a typical agent. It is clear that Phillips took unnecessary risks. He was unwilling to abandon field work. It is indeed possible that he met people like Oswald and Antonio Veciana in public. Phillips was probably the most successful agent the CIA ever had. He knew it as well and it was this over-confidence that encouraged him to do things that now seem unbelievable.