Larry Hancock's Blog, page 6

CIA Domestic Operations

Those seriously interested in the JFK assassination, as well as in CIA covert operations during the 1960s, may have come across references to the activities of the Domestic Operations division. In fact many might be surprised that the CIA did/does operate legally inside the United States. At times it has also operated illegally, the most sensational example being its MHCHAOS project – Operation Chaos was a domestic espionage operation from 1967 to 1974, established by President Johnson and expanded by President Nixon. Its stated goal was to undercover to uncover foreign manipulation of the various protest movements of the era, with a particular focus on anti-war activities.

While much is known about Chaos, due to Congressional investigations, there had been less clarity about the CIA’s other Domestic activities, especially beyond the legal activities of its Domestic Contact office, which purportedly did not violate prohibitions of spying on Americans as it was to obtain information on a totally voluntary basis – which in practice appears to have been interpreted loosely – acceptable if the information was obtained though voluntary second or third party sources. As an example, we know that in regard to the JFK assassination, information on Lee Oswald and his wife was obtained by an friend of theirs who was a volunteer for the CIA Contact service.

We have had inklings that CIA Domestic Operations might have considerably expanded its scope during the 1962/1963 period (as well as having come under the direction of former Directorate of Plans/Operations officer Tracy Barnes). Thanks to recent document research by my friend David Boylan we now know what that expansion involved, and the fact that it occurred as an After Action response to the CIA’s operational disaster at the Bay of Pigs.

David located an internal document outlining a proposal to reorganize many elements of the Plans/Operations Directorate – the entity that had been in charge of the overall Cuba Project under both Eisenhower and Kennedy and which had failed so badly with all aspects of that particular mission. That proposal, including the recommendation that moved the Contact Service from the Directorate of Intelligence to the Directorate of Operations (as part of an integrated and expanded Domestic Operations group) can be found here:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=235948#relPageId=23

The reorganization affected many areas of Operations, but specifically called for the creation of a “Domestic Division”, that new division was to incorporate the “Contacts Division” which had been operating under the Deputy of Director of Intelligence (DDI) but was to be moved directly under Operations (DDP). 

Domestic Contacts would serve as a foundation (and in a sense a type of cover) for all CIA domestic operational activities – including the establishment of personal and commercial domestic covers for foreign operations, contacts with domestic organizations in the United States (including businesses and foundations), and the management of CIA proprietary air cover businesses including CAT (Civil Air Transport / Taiwan) and Fairway (Washington DC) 

Fairway article https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=235948#relPageId=23

The Directorate of Plans/Operations has been the focus of much historical research on the CIA simply because it carried out foreign, covert operations. The Domestic service has largely been ignored because its role was viewed as quite limited – which was true up the the reorganization of 1961/62, now that we know the true scope of the Domestic Operations division during that era, and its role in supporting covert foreign activities, it may become of much more interest.

UAP/UFO Update

Given all the media activity on this subject – and the failure to mention any real historical context as part of the ongoing dialogs about UFO crashes, recoveries, reverse engineering (not to mention alien bodies), if you have not been in this venue for forty or fifty years (as I have) you might be a little overwhelmed or confused by it all.

In this new interview I talk about the ongoing historical analysis our UAP Intentions our SCU study team is doing, including our extension of our studies from strictly the military sphere to civilian pattern analysis, and indications studies.

I also try to insert some history into the crash/recovery debate and discuss a few very real examples of recovered UFO materials that were scientifically studied as early as 1947 – 1952 (which nobody else talks about). If all that sounds interesting here is my most recent chat with Tim Ventura on these subjects:

UFO/UAP Science Conference

With my more recent posts, I have been asked for an overview of what the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies actually does and why its work is different from a good bit of what is getting media attention on the subjects these days. If you are interested in that I recommend a quick look at the following overview:

Conferences coming up

I’m still spreading myself somewhat thin, working on new research and papers on UAPs/UFOs and still spending time on some very focused areas of JFK assassination research. Our UAP Intentions study team is expanding our work to pattern recognition and indications analysis of UAPs in the public space – as a complement to our military studies. Its getting pretty interesting and certainly it seems that there are serious differences in what was going on with the atomic warfare complex as compared to UAP activities involving the general public. Lots more work to do on tha,t but we have one paper in peer review and two more in research and development. I did a recent interview covering our approach to these studies and you can find it here:

If that is an area that interests you definitely look into the upcoming SCU conference at the end of July – SCU’s 2023 annual Anomalous Aerospace Phenomena Conference (AAPC) is coming up then.

The conference this year is all online and will be the weekend of July 29th and 30th. In the midst of all the current innuendo and speculation about UAPs our conference is devoted to scientific investigations and will be presenting the latest open research from around the world, keynoted by Tim Gallaudet, Ph.D., Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (ret). Our invited speakers include academics from South Africa, France, Germany, Israel, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.

The span of topics includes instrumentation and field studies, a recent case analysis, historical indications analysis, drone reporting, computational propulsion effects, the framing of the UFO debate, the San Marino UN initiative, the recent Debrief article, and others.

Here is the link      https://scu.regfox.com/2023-scu-anomalous-aerospace-phenomena-conference-aapc

For those who have followed the JFK assassination, the good news is that in person conference are back this year and JFK Lancer will be hosting one in Dallas which I very much hope to attend. Details will follow but the basics on the Lancer conference can be found here:

https://jfklancerpublications.com/

Milteer Dialog

Anyone relatively new to and interested in the JFK assassination will continually run into the hundreds of the reports collected in the months and years following the assassination, in many cases generated by leads provided to the Secret Service or FBI which were at least minimally investigated at the time but resurfaced in the work of private researchers or even in follow on inquiries during the Garrison investigation, the HSCA, etc. Each of those reports can lead down trails that consume months and years even years of questions, as I learned the hard way over the decades.

Many of the names and leads recycle forever, beyond the endless repetition on forums and in discussion groups they even lead beyond Dallas to other assassinations and events of the Sixties and Seventies.

One of those reports came out of Florida, taken from a sting on an ultra right figure who was being investigated for activities related to obtaining weapons for an attack on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Recently someone interested in that lead, and that individual, contacted me and wanted to discuss Joseph Milteer – an individual Stu Wexler and I researched intensely on our two books related to the King Assassination, particularly in The Awful Grace of God.

We ended up having an extended conversation about Milteer, in particular the possibility that he might somehow have been involved in moth investigations – and the challenge presented by the fact that while Milteer had been talking to a police and FBI source in the sting operation. Both Milteer and those individuals he was associated with were aware that the source was suspected of being a “snitch”, and were warned about what could be said to him – presenting the issue of misinformation being involved.

Actually misinformation became did come into play to the the extent that while Miami police retained the source as a valued informant, the FBI ultimately determined him to become have become increasingly unreliable in the years after 1963, something that Stu and I cover in our writing.

In any event, it our extended conversation rambled a bit but if you are interested in Milteer, or much of what had been brought up in regard to him, you might find it interesting and the link to the conversation is below.

Just as a teaser, after much research Stu and I (as well as Lamar Waldron) determined that Milteer was indeed a actor in the King assassination and responsible for the money used in the bounty that brought James Earl Ray into that conspiracy.

Interview on new UAP/UFO atomic weapons study

For those that might be interested, the following is a recent interview by Tim Ventura on the first phase of our study of UFO/UAP activity in the military domain – from 1945 to 1975. The interview was really tightly focused on a set of very good questions and moves quickly so I thought it might be useful to those of you who had just read my post about the study and didn’t want to dig into all 64 pages of charts and statistics.

I and other Intentions Team members will also be presenting at the upcoming SCU virtual conference this summer; we will give an overview not only of our pattern recognition study and intentions analysis but of a model which we have developed (based in the practices of strategic intelligence studies) that can be applied to other domains of activity. Anyone interested in this subject will find the conference of real interest; we have a very diverse set of academic and scientific speakers.

https://www.explorescu.org/post/scu-announces-2023-annual-anomalous-aerospace-phenomena-conference

https://whova.com/embedded/speakers/CJHM8CpuN0mQ3Z24bZf4hgNq6yH4Wha4F0-S4RAuJzA%3D/?utc_source=ems

UFO / UAP Studies

As I’ve mentioned, the last few years have seen the majority of my time go into a different venue than much of my earlier research and writing, more in line with the work I did for my book Unidentified:

The good news is that the first results of that research is now published and available.

The breadth of the UFO/UAP phenomenon is daunting, from the complexity of how unidentified objects maneuver and accelerate in ways that violate known principles of contemporary physics to the related questions of both intelligence and intentions rising from the decades of official reports and investigations which began at the end of World War II.  

Over the past three years I have been part of a team of SCU (Scientific Coalition for the study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena) members which has been deeply involved in applying the practices of pattern recognition and indications analysis to the questions of UAP intelligence and intention. The first step in that process was the development of a curated database which could be used in a search for anomalous patterns in UAP activity over the period of 1945-1975 (the period covering the development and deployment of atomic weapons).  

The team then moved to an extended series of pattern analysis and statistical studies, focused on UAP activities in the military and aerospace domains. The goal of that work was to search for, document, and characterize any anomalous patterns of activity related to elements of the American atomic warfare complex (radioactive materials manufacturing, weapons assembly and storage, and weapons deployment) over the period of the study.

Patterns of UAP activity at atomic warfare complex facilities were also compared to UAP reports from conventional military facilities, reports from United States’ aerospace test and development facilities, reports related to atomic power plants, and to the incidence of overall UAP reports submitted to the United States Air Force’s long term UFO studies conducted during its Sign, Grudge and Blue Book projects.

The details and assessments of this SCU study have now been published in an extended academic paper – SCU
UAP Pattern Recognition Study 1945-1975 US Military Atomic Warfare Complex, Hancock et al. 2023 1.

If you would really like to dig into the subject you can download the full report at:

https://www.explorescu.org/post/uap-pattern-recognition-study-1945-1975-us-military-atomic-warfare-complex

I’ll be interested in comments, feedback and questions from those who have the interest and stamina to engage with the first of what we hope to be two major studies dealing with intelligence and intention as related to UFO/UAP activities over the earliest decades of the Cold War.

The First 72 Hours

JFK assassination research and dialog has largely focused on the attack in Dallas and the events of November 22, 1963, with virtually never ending discussions of the crime scene, evidentiary issues, the autopsies and related forensics. Given the problems in all those areas, including chains of possession, conflicting testimony and the very real indications of manipulation in both the areas of the evidence put into the official record and the autopsy of the President, those discussions will likely never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Much less attention and dialog has been associated with the period of time beyond that evening’s autopsy at Bethesda, in particular the indications that a variety of meetings, and conversations which would have pointed towards an early suspicion of conspiracy in the attack have been intentionally obfuscated or entirely deleted from the historical record.

In the 2010 edition of Someone Would Have Talked, I tried to present considerable detail and a chronology of the first 72 hours, extending into the iterative efforts by LBJ to control the narrative of the assassination, beginning with his hope to circumvent anything beyond the production of a report by the FBI – which by Sunday afternoon can be shown to have consisted of no more than a “difficult task” (as described in an internal FBI memo) of preparing a report to portray Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole individual involved in the attack.

That 2010 edition was built around the then newly released material from the ARRB and the work and writing of Douglas Horne, the work of Rex Bradford on a key conversation between Johnson and Hoover on Saturday, November 23, and my own research into the earliest work of William Manchester as compared to extant records at the Johnson Library – suggesting that the Johnson call logs had been altered to conceal a very critical Friday night call between Johnson and Hoover which had simply resumed the following morning.

Later work by Bill Kelly and some of my own studies related to the Air Force 1 radio transmissions suggested that there was also considerable communication while that aircraft was in the air that did not make it into the final transcripts which were released to the media, including the fact that LBJ specifically had the materials reviewed and cleared for release when the press eventually learned they existed.

Those elements, plus some anecdotal reports of conversations with senior national security figures, support the idea that there were discussions and decisions made to suppress indications of conspiracy – and a full, open ended inquiry into that possibility during the first 72 hours. Beyond that, even more recent remarks and document releases prove that the possibility of a Cuban or Cuban exile conspiracy in the attack was investigated quite seriously and the results suppressed within the CIA – not just internally but officially in testimony to the Warren Commission and records provided to the Church Committee.

Click to access 104-10103-10024.pdf

Most recently, my friend Mike Swanson has discovered and written about even more evidence that certain early conversations very likely related to the assassination and having national security impact were also either suppressed or literally removed from the historical record.

The Mystery Of The Missing JFK Assassination Related LBJ Presidential Tapes (The First 72 Hours) – Mike Swanson

Considered as a body of information, these elements all seem to me to lend support to the fact that there were two conspiracies involved in the murder of President Kennedy, the one which killed him and a separate one which occurred after the fact which suppressed even the idea of conspiracy. That second effort was hastily and iteratively implemented, to the extend that conversations, tapes, photos etc had to be cleared from the record and those involved had to overtly lie and obfuscate about what had gone on in the first 72 hours after the assassination – not the execution of some well planned and structured coverup planned as part of a grand conspiracy, but rather something separate where actions that were critical and even reasonable at the time, in the interest of national security, had to be dealt with and obscured piece meal, after the fact, once the decision on a lone nut solution became set as a top level policy.

Where in the world is Larry?

Its pretty clear I’ve been noticeably absent here for a number of weeks – so what’s going on? To some extent I’ve been involved with the Mary Ferrell Foundation Board which is involved in legal action against President Biden and the National Archives over the release of documents under the JFK Records Act. You can find the information on that at the MFF site:

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

But primarily I continue to be involved with ongoing research and writing on the subject of UFO/UAPs as well as supporting the the work of the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies:

https://www.explorescu.org/

I’ve been involved with two major UAP research projects, one involving the study of the physical characteristics gained from very close observations of UAPs (our team reviewed something like 100,000 incident reports, and using some very rigorous criteria, ended up actually studying some 300 extremely credible observations). Our report on that is in peer review at present. Separately I’m involved with a team studying UAP intentions in the Military/Aerospace domain. In that study we focus on something like 2,000 reports officially submitted to military and law enforcement from 1945-1947. We have done three articles on the study and now have one major study in peer review with another to be submitted shortly. If you would like to see the articles they are available in the SCU Review:

https://www.explorescu.org/post/scu-review-volume-2-4

https://www.explorescu.org/post/scu-review-volume-3-2

Our third article will summarize our work to date and present a model for structured studies which might be used in a variety of topical domains including physiological and psychological studies.

Of course I also continue to do various shows, including a routine appearance with Chuck Ochilli where we discuss things such as political warfare and topical issues including Ukraine and China. And I continue to do background research on some very focused areas of the JFK assassination.

I also still have a long term project going which will provide a rather contrarian hypothesis regarding Lee Oswald’s activities during 1963, built around his own personal agendas – but including his use in CIA and DRE propaganda activities – and ending with a rather detailed speculation on the road to Dallas how he ended up as a patsy. But that is a long story, months down the road and still jelling in the work David Boylan and I are doing.

So that’s were I’ve been, for the next few months my focus will remain on the UAP work and I hope to be able to post bits of that here for those interested.

JFK Assassination Records Update

If you have not been following the effort to obtain the release of known JFK related documents and the collection of additional assassination related materials, you may be unaware of the pending December deadline for a presidential decision on records release.  Past presidents, including Donald Trump, failed to authorize a full, legally mandated release of records, and last year President Biden postponed the mandated release. 

With another deadline imminent and no sign that the national security agencies will not once again manage to stall document release, the Mary Ferrell Foundation is now in court, seeking a legal decision which would force President Biden and the National Archives to comply with their designated responsibilities under the JFK Records Act – legislation passed by Congress some thirty years ago.

You will find a full description of what the law calls for and the failures to comply, as well as the current legal action at the Mary Ferrell Foundation web site:

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

The main page of the site will give you links to information on the law suit as well as a recent press event at the National Press Club, which detailed the need for action and in which examples of documents which may be key to the history of the assassination, and to the CIA’s activities relating to Lee Oswald are described.

I plan to post more information on what we now know about the CIA’s knowledge of Oswald prior to the assassination (information which was withheld from the Warren Commission inquiry) as well as to the indications of operational use of Lee Oswald by the Agency – operational use which may well explain the extent to which that Agency has stonewalled release of records over the years.

Both the CIA and FBI’s actions in concealing information are remarkable for several reasons, but the CIA stands out as an ongoing bad actor, for years after the Warren Commission concluded its inquiry. During the press conference Jeff Morley related one area of noncompliance related to a CIA officer who was in charge of the anti-Castro student group (DRE) who Lee Oswald contacted in New Orleans in 1963 – and who, when assigned as a liaison in support of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, failed not only to make DRE reports and records available but actually concealed his role in that key period of time prior to the assassination.

Even in matters which would seem to be completely innocent the CIA has refused to fully release Oswald related documents.  When Lee Oswald and his wife returned to the US from Russia, the CIA’s Domestic Contacts officer (J Walton Moore) in the Fort Worth/Dallas area initiated an effort to monitor them, using sources within the local Russian community.  That sort of activity was certainly standard CIA operating procedure and few would have found fault with it.  Yet after almost 60 years some 200 pages of known CIA files on Moore remain unreleased and the documents we do have are heavily redacted.

For comparison, over the last decade the CIA and other agencies have released virtually every document related to the American spy satellite networks that were established during the decades of the sixties and seventies – with satellite capabilities specified and even the engineering diagrams for much of the equipment involved.  During those decades those satellites represented the epitome of Top Secret Code Word classification.

Which leaves us with the question, if that sort of national security related information is now released and public, why in the world would there be such obvious gaps in the file of a CIA Domestic Operations officer, who in 1962/63 was simply checking on Lee Oswald after his return from Russia – in what would seem to be routine, due diligence activity.