Larry Hancock's Blog, page 3

Richard Case Nagell Retrospective

Among the things going on at the JFK Lancer conference in Dallas this week are a couple of presentations related to Nagell. After years of reading and pursing the information in my friend Dick Russell’s work on Nagell I ended up writing my own analysis of Nagell’s story and publishing it (along with a large number of related documents) as ‘Research of Larry Hancock’ though JFK Lancer in CD form. That’s a clue as to how long ago that occurred. Unfortunately that is no longer available from Lancer and most folks probably don’t have a CD drive on their computers any longer anyway.

However, over the years I have posted and done interviews on the subject of Nagell which would provide my personal takes on the Nagell story, and what information he provided is useful as context for the JFK assassination story and which is not – including any details of the actual attack in Dallas. Unfortunately I have problems in posting multiple links in WordPress so I will put them in a reply to this posting just to make sure they all get there.

JFK and the Bay of Pigs

I’ve posted and spoken about this topic on several occasions and address it in excruciating detail in my book In Denial. All of that has made little real impression, possibly because the disaster at the Bay of Pigs was only the final, dramatic but relatively brief, event in what had been a year long project actually authorized by President Eisenhower, not JFK himself.

You really cannot understand the trauma of the landings in Cuba without the full history of the project, what Eisenhower had ordered (which did not happen), what JFK had approved (which did not happen), and in particular what those involved in the military aspects of the project were not told by the CIA leadership – the withholding of information, along with extreme mismanagement over the course of a full year, were the causes for the failure as cited by both the CIA IG and its official historian.

Still, to this day I get responses that JFK was warned about the risks and ignored the warnings. The reality is that to some extent indeed he was warned – and constantly pushed back for CIA responses on the warnings, being given assurances that the concerns were all being addressed.

I can’t seem to get across the extent to which he was isolated from the military realities by the CIA leadership, being only weeks in office when he was even told about the project and at the time far too trusting of people that had been working on the project since the previous spring.

In pursuit of getting the truth of the matter across I recently agreed to do a reading series from my book for the AARC. It proved to be lengthy, tiring and not fully complete as it does not cover some of the details of the ‘wild card’ operations project leader Richard Bissell had in play – poisoning Fidel Castro, a false flag attack on Guantanamo, and the deployment of Navy strike forces which would have caused international condemnation but which would have overwhelmed the Cuban military within 48 hours (none of which were related to JFK).

On the other hand you can get much of the story by listening to the following, just not all of it https://aarclibrary.org/larry-hancock-in-denial-the-bay-of-pigs-parts-one-two-and-three/

If you do decide to listen, I will be here for questions. Larry

LARRY HANCOCK: IN DENIAL – THE BAY of PIGS PARTS ONE, TWO, and THREE

In Person in Dallas

Well, another JFK Lancer conference is coming up in Dallas next week. Unfortunately I won’t be there in person, just virtually. But after over two decades of traveling to Dallas to attend conferences, acting as the host/moderator for JFK Lancer for over a decade, and leading Plaza walking tours each year it certainly is a place I would like to be next week.

Chuck Ochelli has taken over my moderator role at the conference, he will be there as well as my friend and author David Boylan and many long time colleagues and friends whom I will miss seeing.

In thinking about the conference, Chuck and I decided to discuss what makes the conferences special, what makes being there in person special, and if you are there what you should do with your time walking Elm and Houston and the Plaza area. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-ochelli-effect-11-12-2024-larry-hancock–62724267 will take you to some advice – and a good bit of reminiscence.

November in Dallas

Its November again, and reason for anyone interested in the JFK assassination to be at the Lancer conference there later this month. I traveled to Dallas for November In Dallas for something over 20 years and learned much from being “on the ground” in the Plaza plus meeting authors and others at the conferences. There just is no substitute for that in person contact if you are serious about the subject and want the experience to become a student of the subject rather than just a reader or viewer of online content.

Watching the authors and better known researchers interact with each other in the hallways, in the plaza, after presentations and even in the hotel bar is an education in itself. There really is nothing like it to develop your own critical faculties. And getting a tour of the Plaza area from someone really familiar with it is pure gold in terms of what can be learned on site in terms of positions, angles – even who can see what from where. Pick your favorite witnessed, go to where they were located and review their descriptions, could they really see what they described and if so how quickly would you have focused in on that. Check their descriptions of what they heard and determine for your self what that suggests in the way of the shots.

The Plaza has not changed dramatically since that day but it may in the near future, don’t miss a chance to be there in person. The same goes for the conferences, even though they are retaining some of the longer term researchers via virtual appearances that may cease before all that long so check them out personally in terms of their work while you still have the chance.

And as for the conference, take full advantage of the in person opportunity if you can, in person dialogs offer a total experience you are not going to get on YouTube or in a Forum. You will quickly find out who is truly opened minded about the subject – and who is on a mission of some sort. How even the best known names respond to questions in person rather than in front of a group can be an excellent test.

I will be on with Chuck Ochelli this coming week discussing my decades of attending, moderation and presenting at conferences and relating few memorable experiences with speakers that likely will never be repeated (a few of which were painful and embarrassing and won’t be missed).

David Boylan and I will both be participating at the Lancer Conference this year, he in person and myself remotely due to age and health. He’s young and vigorous though and recalls the names we talk about more quickly than I do anyway. Our joint presentation will be “Oswald Gaming the FBI”, that should stir things up a bit for some.

But whatever you do, if you can attend the conference in person, its an opportunity not to be missed and you can register at the link below:

https://assassinationconference.com/

Why and How?

One of the questions that is circulating in regard to the Oswald Puzzle is why anyone would a book focused on Lee Harvey Oswald rather than join in the more common practice of writing about him simply as part of the JFK assassination. Another question, given all the seeming mystery about Oswald, the open questions about virtually everything about him, and the many opposing views that go along with those – is whether it is even possible to tackle him as an individual.

Well, my friends Rob Clark and Joe Borelli have been routinely discussing Oswald for the better part of a year on their Lone Gunman podcast and though its too early by a month or so to dig into the book itself, they thought it might be good to discuss the ‘why and how’ of the book in advance. Then we could visit it again after everyone has had a chance to engage with the actual content of the book. We spent over an hour doing just that on their show last week, wading into a few particulars along the way but more often talking about the challenge and issues of methodology. (by the way, I totally love their short intro theme, it would make a great ring tone).

If that sounds interesting you can find the show linked below:

Inside The Oswald Puzzle

The new book by David Boylan and myself should be in print and available in January, we’ve just completed working with the publisher on the photo section, something which proved to be an interesting exercise because it led us to explore the wealth of Oswald related photographs that the Warren Commission collected – but which never received much, if any, attention by the press and media following the assassination.

Taking a deep dive into those images was fascinating and I had never realized the extend of the Warren Commission and Dallas Police collections. The Dallas Police took in an immense amount of his personal possession and photographed it, including his family photo albums, letters, reading material and even receipts.

Yes, receipts, Oswald can only be thought of as something of a pack rat, he kept virtually every piece of paper that passed though his hands, not to mention what must have been hundreds of his own personal photographs. Interestingly the DPD did their photographic record in what seems to be a totally unstructured manner, with no organization a what can best be described as simply a jumble of photographs. It makes wading though it all something of a challenge but there are real finds if you have the patience and the background to reference it to his personal history. What the police actually did with the photographic record escapes me as I see no sign it ever really played any role in their investigation.

Digging through those photos, and putting them into a chronological and contextual sequence gave us a much more personal insight into what was important to Oswald, and how much he was actually engaged with others, especially following his return from the Soviet Union with a family. He was not at all the isolated figure that the Commission and media presented to the public. One example of that would be the letters of thanks he received from attendees at his presentation to students at a Jesuit preparatory school early in the summer of 1963. Those letters praise his remarks as being objective, enlightening and well informed. They reminded me of the Marine officer who testified that when engaging in geopolitical discussions Oswald knew as much if not more than he did – and the officer was a political science graduate of prestigious eastern university.

The discussion of Oswald’s photographic record came up in a lengthy chat with Chuck Ochelli, in which we discussed the background and overall contents of the book – as well as the methodology behind the book itself. Certainly we will talk in more detail about the contents of the book once its in print, but for the moment if anyone wants to hear more about the insights we gained into Oswald as an individual you can check out the following link:

The Oswald Puzzle now on Amazon

Well I’ve been writing on it as a work in progress for over a year, so its about time to officially announce details of its arrival. The book is now on Amazon for pre-order with a January availability.

The Amazon overview will give you a good feel about the contents. In brief, the book brings new material to the discussion of Lee Harvey Oswald. It is contrarian in some places, conspiratorial in others.

Above all David and I have tried to make it as balanced as possible, giving readers alternative sources and reading reference for points were there are long standing controversies and conflicts. But along with that we clearly state our own views on some of most long-standing questions about Oswald – and his activities on November 22, 1963.

Our sources are extensively cited in hundreds of end notes, with a great many having links to actual documents so readers can research matters for themselves. And as with any quest for historical balance on a decades long controversy, we expect to dodge fruit being thrown by from corners.

The overview and opportunity to pre-order can be found here:

CIA Cold War Operations

In my last post I introduced a discussion of CIA document and security practices, particularly those relating to the development and use of sources, covers, and assets. We delved into the structured path towards moving someone into being an asset, and then the steps to green light and assign them provisional operational status as well as designating them as operational for specific missions.

The response to that discussion was good, so this past week I continued the discussion of practices within the CIA’s Operational group – addressing the development (and cultivation) of corporate and business covers as well as differentiating them from CIA ‘proprietaries’. We also discussed the history of the military with the CIA, in particular the use of detailees and the CIA’s connections to US Air Force support – until the Agency decided to take a disastrous tack and set up its own air operations group.

We wrapped it up by talking about a virtually unique effort to develop total deniability in a covert military project – AMWORLD – and how dangerous and ineffective that proved be during 1963/64.

You can listen to the full discussion at this link:

CIA Practices

One of the terms that shows up frequently in regard to the CIA and the JFK assassination is the word ‘asset’. In a way that’s good because it at least provides a bit of differentiation – in contrast to someone simply being described as ‘working for the CIA’. Or perhaps being a ‘source’, a ‘paid employee’, a ‘spy’ or some other series of words implying that an individual was knowingly cooperating with the Agency, providing information or actually being given tasks or assignments.

Using the right word is very important in characterizing a relationship between and individual since all the words above can mean very different things – and in some instances relationships were and can be either ‘witting’ or ‘unwitting’. Indeed the CIA did not only designate relationships as witting/unwitting, but had separate sets of files and paperwork for each.

Beyond that, given operational concerns, an individual might even be treated as unwitting or witting over the course of time or by different groups within the agency itself. As an example, a general 201 file (created on basically anyone coming to the CIA’s attention) might not have all the details found within separate files on that same individual held in different areas.

If all that sounds complex and confusing, its supposed to because the overriding concern was always security and the need to prevent Agency activities from being penetrated or exposed. Standard practice for the bureaucracy inherent in any intelligence agency.

My friend David Boylan has spent the past few years exploring the types of documents and paperwork associated with CIA sources and assets, examining actual examples of the paperwork for people in those roles. Its often dull work but if you pay close attention to document routing, to who is copied on what, to who signs off on what, and what types of background checks and even polygraph testing (referred to as ‘fluttering’) are involved you can reverse engineer the process and the paperwork that should exist for a given type of relationship.

More importantly you can trace it all the way though what is required to move someone into being a source and on to what gains them provisional operational approval and then actual operational approval for specific tasks or missions.

David and I joined Chuck Ochelli last week to discuss the complexities of such things and if you are interested in a more detailed discussion you can find it at the link below:

Who to Trust?

One of the long standing issues regarding the attack on President Kennedy in Dallas has been the question of trust – primarily in terms of trust in the overall official investigation, but secondarily in terms of what witness reports to trust, in the work of the Dallas Police, and especially in the FBI follow on investigation.

Its a question I do pursue in several respects in my forthcoming book, The Oswald Puzzle, however that has to do with Oswald himself, as a person more than simply a suspect. In the broader sense though many people, especially those that decide to delve into the assassination seriously for the first time, have much broader questions of trust.

Robbie Robertson and I chatted about trust issues – and issues of what might be termed ‘standard practice’ in FBI investigations in a recent edition of his Out of the Blank podcast. One of the things that I stressed is that we have to evaluate the FBI work in terms of the directions it was given immediately following the assassination – which changed from an open ended inquiry into all its sources on Friday to a tightly focused on Oswald alone by mid-day Saturday as well as by what are clearly standard FBI field interview practices (what did Hoover want in reports and what did he object to…his being the ultimate micromanager, punctuation could ruin your career).

Many who decide to pursue the assassination seriously becomes frustrated by the people the FBI did not interview, or interviewed only superficially, or quite literally handled in a fashion that closed off leads and if anything obfuscation a comprehensive investigation. There is no doubt about such concerns at this point in time – the question is more one of how much of that was due to Hoover’s management of the inquiry, the orders the agents were given by the various station chiefs (especially in Dallas and New Orleans) and the extent to which we simply face ‘standard practice’, CYA in terms of Bureau history with Oswald, or something more damming.

After having extensively studied the FBI practices in respect to several major political assassinations, in particular that of MLK, I have some opinions on those questions and if you are interested they certainly come out in the discussion with Robbie at the link below.

Oh, also apologies, the video shows a good bit of ‘jitter’ in my movements, not sure if it was a camera tracking thing or the stability of my mid-century modern table which I work on …sorry, if it becomes distracting. It was not showing at all during the recording.