Ready July thirty, twenty twenty four, allegedly according to that thing we call a calendar.
Wow, this month has gone by really quickly.
Anyway, it is Tuesday, Tuesday, and it is the second broadcast day of the week because I actually did a show on Monday, which I don't normally do, and I've released the audio of it, but a special video edit of it is going to be put out later today or tomorrow, not sure which we'll get to it. I've been a little behind. But anyway, speaking about behind and
what's ahead, let's get to a couple of things. First of all, the jfk lnswer conference is going to occur on the twenty second of November, exactly on the anniversary, all right, at the Downtown Marriott in Dallas, and there will be details in the show notes there. Larry Hancock is involved in that now. I believe he's going to participate remotely this year, which kind of would rather that
Larry's there, but it's okay. I'm gonna be there anyway, and oh boy, look, I'm no replacement for Larry, that's for sure, but it's gonna be an interesting conference. So I have Larry with me tonight and of course he's the author of many books. And if you go to Larry dash Hancock dot com you can keep track of his blog. You can take a look at the many, many books, all of which I think I have on my sholf and he does take up more space on my shelf than anybody else.
And he's not just taking up space. Now, before I.
Even say hello to Larry, I gotta throw something out here because I know what he's going to discuss.
And this is.
Necessary because from the best to the worst of authors, bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters, everybody, I would dare say, everybody that I've ever listened to or read, you know, in recent years, especially and maybe from the nineteen eighties on. I think I think Mark Lane used to talk about this, I mean everybody. The whole idea that JFK said he was going to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and cast it to the four Wins or some version of that quote, that sentiment,
that idea. You have the Croc article, you have the various other mentions of this happening. You have his battle with the CIA, and then people do reference, you know, the firing of Allen Dallas, which was really a resignation.
He just asked for a resignation. He got it.
The Bay of Pigs, Cuba, Well, we've learned a lot about that over the years. And even when the book Ultimate Sacrifice was huge, people were talking about this. People were talking about this and still continue to and I say again, people reference this for all kinds of reasons.
And Larry, I.
Gotta tell you, I don't think the majority of people who mention it are putting it in context, understanding what it means. They just take it and use it for their own purpose. This oppositional thing the JFK was battling with the CIA. Of course, I would recommend when we're talking about this stuff books by Larry Hancock, like Tipping Point. Someone would have talked, okay, things like that, and a book which I hope will be out by the end
of this year about Oswald Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald. Puzzle Pieces is that the permanent name now puzzle pieces?
Larry now literally way simplified it. It is simply the Oswald.
Puzzle, the Oswald puzzle.
Well, either way, you're going to get the pieces of the puzzle in there, So the Oswald puzzle that's actually more concise and better. But of course Larry would do that, he's a writer. I'm not so anyway, But Larry, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, where do we
begin to take this apart? Because I know I'm right almost everybody, and I do mean from the best to the worst, from the deepest researchers to the people that just seem to have a casual knowledge and are really you know, pedestrian of podcasters who go, well, I think there was a conspiracy, but they have no idea which direction to go in. They have no idea about the facts of the case. They just parrot things. And this
is one of those things that's been parroted repeatedly. JFK was going to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and cast it to the winds, to the four corners of the earth. Different versions, like I said, in different times, in different places, but the sentiment is still the same. Do you think my observation is accurate?
No, it's or yes, it's absolutely accurate, Chuck. I think it comes from this urge that we seem to have to want to simplify matters to really especially we've developed a tendency I think over the years to kind of view everybody being against JFK and JFK being against everybody, and that, you know, setting up part of the context for the assassination, where in fact, if you really go back to the history, for example, JFK owed a great deal to the CIA and was very impressed with what
the CIA was doing in intelligence collections. If the CI had not done an job with its photo reconnaissance actually taking command of military assets, but using the U two as well, he would not have had the data that he had to manage the Cuban missile crisis. He would not have had the data that he had to even maintain the position that the Russians had hold out their missiles because they were he was getting photographs of, you know, missiles uncovered going.
Out on ships.
So his respect for CIA intelligence collection and the National Photo Interpretation Center was quite high, so as well as as his analysis at that point in time, he actually respected that a lot more than the military intelligence.
He was getting it during the Cuban missile.
Crisis, which was quite sensationalized, exaggerated, and not nearly as good as the CIA. In conso, the fact that he was totally upset with everything about the CIA simply is not accurate. The same thing we often betray him as being somehow hostile to the military. When JEFFK himself personally entered involved themselves with more major military exercises than any president.
He had been very supportive of the military. In the two years prior to his assassination, he had ordered a major military exercise in the Atlantic staging for a Cuban invasion, and had been very involved with that, And so he he wasn't any one thing. I think the answer to your question is, in our our search to simplify everything, we make it all single faceted. And that's not the way reality is, and certainly not the way JFK was.
JFK just aware of the shortcomings and strengths of these various agencies.
Well, look, just like life, Larry, the reality is that most things reside in the gray areas. Okay, So yeah, there was the he was definitely using the military assets. He had to manage a lot of things, from the you know, the issue over East and West Germany. Uh, you know, to problems in South what we called Southeast Asia or Endo China as it was described back then. Right, Uh, you know that area of the world, which eventually blossoms into the Vietnam conflict. But still there's a lot going on.
So he's utilizing these assets. There were adversarial relationships here, and there were problems, like we hear during some of these meetings right with his Joint chiefs and other assets that are supposed to be informing him. He's getting angry with people, they're making recommendations he doesn't want to hear sometimes. But it doesn't mean that that's all there was to it.
There is and those were individuals those aren't you know, you can talk about le May, or you can talk about Commander in Chief Atlantic during the Cuban missile crisis. Certainly there were individual face offs, right, But I think I think it's fascinating.
Again, we tend to look at it one facet.
Somebody asked, JFK is kind of like, well, clearly you don't like le May, and le May doesn't like you. Okay, why in the world, Julet, why is he head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if you don't And JFK said, yeah, I don't like him. But if for some unforsaken, god forsaken reason, we end up going to go war against Russia. I want him as the military commander because he's the most likely guy to win it.
See that's the thing.
He was a practicist. We don't give him credit for that.
Well that's the thing. He might not have liked le Maay, but he knew that let's be blood. If somebody had to loose hell on an adversary, LeMay was your man. I mean, this is the guy who firebombed and did more damage with firebombing than we did with nukes.
Uh you know, from the air during World War Two? Am I correct?
Oh?
Absolutely, So this is the guy I would pick two.
I might not like him, but I would say, look, if I got my back against the wall and I've got to start bombing things, this is the guy I want in there. I want the most vicious fighter I can sin. And LeMay was definitely the guy who could plan and execute something like that.
He had already proven it. This is why he ascended. Uh So.
But it doesn't mean that they were going to get along all the time. Now, when we look at the CIA, that's an even more complex relationship because people, you know, they love to point to the regular characters, right, James Jesus Angleton yes, I know he's a huge looming figure, and certainly he's rather complex and fascinating. But is he the guy who's like directly interacting with Jafka at that time? No, right, And meanwhile, who is interacting with him? What kind of
relationship is he having? And all these Cuban operations, people just kind of make it out like, Okay, Nixon was the operation officer, he hands it over to JFK in nineteen sixty one when JFK takes office. But that's not the tirety of the story either. Maybe he wasn't in on the planning of the Bay of Pigs, you know, per se, but it doesn't mean that he wasn't behind it. It doesn't mean that he didn't say, you know what, this is a good idea. We need to deal with
this problem in the backyard. Still a cold warrior, not necessarily the dove everybody wants to make Kennedy out to be. See again, he's more than one thing. He's not all for let's go to war and let's see if we can win a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union, okay, which other people have that mindset at the time. But simultaneously he's not saying, Look, it's all about we just
have to be peaceful. He might have made grand statements like that in public, and he certainly did multiple times about you know, we should be able to abolish all weapons and yeah, that's a wonderful utopian vision and an aspiration, but it doesn't mean that he's going to function that way on a day to day basis. Again, pragmatic solutions as opposed to aspirational you know, just wish it, wont do it whatever, you know, let me see if I can envision this and it'll happen.
No, he wasn't like that, So yeah.
Let's take another individual that really represents this multifaceted relationship.
Alan Dulles. Right, okay, you mentioned Dallas already.
It is I mean Alan Dulles during the Tailor Commission inquiry into the failure.
The Bay of Pigs is on record and you.
Can find his statements repeated in the Tailor Commission records as saying he concurs with the view that the CIA did a terrible job in covert military operations and in the future, the CIA should not be doing covert military operations. That needs to be taken from the CIA. It's not set up to do it well, it didn't.
Do it well.
That's Alan Dallas saying, you need, mister President, you need to take this away from the CIA. JFKs response actually is to do what Dells just told him to do, and he began a switchback project shortly after that, which he started first in Southeast Asia in Vietnam, moving CIA led covert military operations to the military, and then the following year, by Nancy sixty three, he was moving Cuban covert military operations to the to the military.
And that that is for.
Some reason, JFK researchers seemed to treat this as something mysterious.
And you know, we don't know what's going on here. When suddenly, you know.
The Joint Chief Staff people and it was probably going to end up under Commander in Chief Atlantic, which obviously she was in the Caribbean, it would be his responsibility. They start they start doing they start looking at how they're going to organize themselves for covert maritime operations, covert infiltration operations. That's when you see Army trainers start to show up in Florida. Why is brad Eyre's there? Suddenly like okay, this is going to be switched over. They
better get to know the Cubans. They're going to be training and running it. And you know, you find this switchback occurring in nineteen sixty three. You even find the Joint Chief starting to inquire with the CIA. You know what about these dr people?
Can we use them? What about Alpha sixty six? Can we use them?
And the CI is going now Alpha sixty six we've never been able to control them, dre we can't control them. If you guys are going to do this, do it at your own risk. You know, this is what's really going on in the real world, is this switch back just as dull As recommended. And JFK is indeed breaking off a good chunk of CIA military operations, special operations, and that's going to the military, So you know it. I think it's fascinating that people don't talk about to
FACK in that instance. JFK is actually doing what Alan Dulles recommended, breaking.
Part of the CIA apart. But he's certainly not going to do away with ci.
A intelligence collections, NSA intercept collection, CIA analysis photo interpretation, and if anything, he's adding to the whole mix by strengthening the events intelligence agency.
Right, which is fairly new right at that point in time. And it's interesting because it would shrink the CIA a bit, but it doesn't change its initial mission, which you know, is to be at that clearinghouse, so yeah, go ahead.
It doesn't change his mission.
But it also reflects Kennedy's pragmatism. Kennedy had been burned during his campaign the Air Force, which had been running primarily before the CIA.
Got the U two.
The Air Force with its long range our forty seven jets had been doing photo reconnaissance of Russia. They're the ones that came out with the bomber crisis thing that posed trouble for the Iisenower administration. Then they came up with the missile crisis thing. And it was actually the U two that disproved the missile crisis thing. Not that either Ice an Hour or Kennedy could talk about it, but Kennedy was very well aware that he needed balance and one of the whole points was for the DIA
and to merge this together. It's sort of like, I need some balance. I just don't want the Air Force talking to me. I just don't want the CIA talking to me. He's trying to institute his own checks and balances. Okay, the Navy collects a lot of information in certain areas. Actually, the Navy could have told JFK about the missile crisis because they were monitoring transports, but they weren't hooked into
the system that well. So he's looking for a solution, an intelligence collection that doesn't expose him to any one venue, in any one agency or services agenda. He understood the Air Force at an agenda, we need bombers, we need missiles, give us the money, not the Navy, you know. So he had a real good grasp on it. It's quite frankly, the same thing we see.
Him starting to do in Vietnam. He doesn't trust just one source. On Vietnam. I'm going to send out a group. I'm going to do fact finding.
Any of these people could have their own agendas, and I'm gonna I've got.
To hear from multiple people. That's the way he rolled.
He was the first president ever to literally open hold open Security Council meetings where everybody was invited to talk and contend with each other, which is one of the reasons why we get the feeling that you know, he was involved.
In a lot of contention. He wanted that. He actually encouraged it because he figured it would shake out what was really happening.
Right, because look, if you can get three people that usually don't agree on something to all agree, you can say to yourself, well, look, if the Air Force, the CIA, you know, and the Navy you're telling me the same thing, it is very likely to be true, you know. But on the other hand, if they're telling me three different things, you gentlemen, go back and figure this out, and that allows them to clarify things as opposed to going in
blind or with false information. And when you mentioned the missile crisis, this is also during the time when there are bad estimations about the capabilities and the counts of weapons that the Soviet Union has and these kind of things. So there's actually a couple of intelligence failures that we don't necessarily know about. And indeed, when we look back at Cuba, there's a couple of things that didn't seem to be known at the time.
Right, we didn't know where all their atomic weapons were. As a matter of fact, we never knew up until decades later, where all their atomic weapons were.
But most importantly, we had no idea.
That they had tactical nukes, and they actually had tactical nukes deployed around Guantanamo, I mean within a few miles range was for short range missiles. They had tactical nukes on the beaches where we would most like them not know that. And then when some warning came in of that, and Kennedy literally asked the army, it's sort of like, why am I just finding out?
Are you guys prepared for this?
And essentially a response to us, well, we're prepared to take the casualties. And you could see that Kennedy was just kind of like overwhelmed. It did like, nobody share this with me. So this is part of the game. The game in terms of reconciling information among different groups and making sure he was getting information. I don't think he didn't really trust any one source. So the thought that he's talking about breaking up the CIA in a
way is it's too restrictive. You know, he was looking for mechanisms that would let him crosschecked and countercheck information from all these sources. He didn't want to do away with anything except I think we could safely say that he was amazingly dissatisfied with CIA.
Military operations after the.
Bay of Pigs, right, right, and he did accept responsibility publicly and all that. And obviously again even though he's taking Dallas's recommendations and clearly Dallas's you know, and cabal these guys, they were supposed to know exactly the business they were in, and yet the whole thing sort of
didn't go right and it was a failure. Okay, So yeah, resignations come in, and it is suspect later that you know, of course Duallas has to I mean, but then again, I kind of couldn't see them putting together the Warren Commission without a control agent for the CIA on the commission, right, whether you had a congressman who was friendly or you had somebody there, there had to be somebody when.
You're talking about this guy that's been to Russia.
Yeah, and you know clearly there's a suspicion of foreign involvement. It would like be leaving the CIA out entirely would have been like lead FBI out entirely. That just wouldn't make much sense, right, even if you expect they're going to tell you what you know, you have to perform us say, all right, we had some of the advising us on possible ossible connections to foreign powers.
You know, you had to have that right.
And the other thing is, I mean, the guys out there publicly advocating for you know, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, even though he doesn't have an official membership. I mean, the whole thing looks pretty bad if you don't have somebody who's read in on this kind of stuff there to figure it out, because I mean, that's just a I don't even know how to describe it. But believe me, you need somebody there to control that
information one way or another, and not necessarily for nefarious purposes. However, I do always find it suspect that Dulls is on the Commission and so, but anyway, it doesn't mean though that.
I would actually I don't find it as suspicious that Dallas is on the Commission.
Oh.
I find Dallas suspicious and what he did on the Commission, But in terms of why he's there, it's really suspicious.
Is why Angleton is the liaison for the CIA.
You know, It's like Dulles makes sense, but Angleton just just like literally shouts, hey, there's something here that we might need to cover up.
Well there, you know, what that's a better way to look at it. You're right, it's not necessarily the fact that he's there. Him being there kind of makes sense if they have to interpret something strange, you know. And does the you know, chief Justice of the Supreme Court know how to deal with this, probably not. You know, does the congressman from Michigan know how to deal with it? Probably not, you know. So, okay, okay, you're right, You're right.
It's more like the activity is suspicious. The way he cuts off questions and things like that is a little weird, all right, especially when you're talking about people that he should have had no real involvement with in any way, shape or form. Sometimes he's even seeming to direct questioning during sessions. But anyway, we'll leave that alone.
Still, I go back, he gets retired. I mean, the other guys have jobs.
Just kidding giously, Yeah, well, okay, you know, yeah, maybe, but what was he running a bank? No, he wasn't running a bank. McCloy was running a bank or at whatever. Anyway, Look, it doesn't matter because these were the you know, the Seven Esteemed Americans or whatever you know, of of high
you know, the Blue Ribbon Panel all right. So back to it, though, this idea that people presented in one way or another, I think it's it's one of those again, those things that that is subject to interpretation.
Now, what about the idea that he made that statement?
I mean, does it mean anything other than I'm just going to change things up, I mean, or does it go further? I mean, do you think that he really was gonna cripple and sort of marginalize the CIA? Do the actions look like that's going to happen or that was on its way to happening at the time, I mean, transferring responsibilities to the d I A seems obvious and we've talked about that before on here. But what about that, I mean, is there a serious effort to marginalize the CIA?
Even well, first of all politically, I mean, this is the height of the cod War, and in essence, the CIA to some extent has just saved his rear during the Cuban missile crisis.
You know.
That they're the ones that's been They have been on television. You know, it's like, oh, these are the aerial photographs of the missiles. This is how I'm gonna explain. You know, we know exactly what's going on now, whether we did, you know, but the CIA is looking pretty good in the public's estimate. You know, they helped get us through this, They've been they've been very involved in helping.
Us get through the missile crisis.
I don't think there's and you know, he's not going to go into an election, you know, and be accused by Goldwater of you know, gutting the c i A at the height of the Cold War. That that's not Kennedy politically, That's not going to happen.
No, He's he's going.
To make tweaks. He's going to make He's gonna he is he's in he's going to be in control of the situation in terms of who's in meetings and who he listens to. And he is going to shift responsibility, shift responsibilities, not break things apart. Does Does the CIA still need a core of you know, special military personnel to collect information? You know, I don't think that would go what what the real thing is what they did not need to be doing was being involved in major
military activities requiring military assets boats, ships, planes. The Tailor Commission documented the fact that one of the major failures of the Cuba Project initially was that it didn't have.
The right resources.
It didn't even have boats, you know, initially to infiltrate people into Cuba, and when it shifted to this invasion, it had to go find boats, bottle boats. Up to that previously, at that point in time, there had been a mechanism in place within the military for the military
to provide all of those resources for covert operations. There was a special Air Force squadron detailed to fly supplies and drop CIA special guies individually, small teams into Tibet, into China, into the Philippines, and they did a really good job at it if you look at the way actions were carried out into bet even though in the long run they lost because the Chinese overwhelmed them. That
went very well relying on the military for logistics. The big problem in Vietnam that Macnamara actually reported back to Kennedy on is like the CIA always tries to create all of this with them in charge of everything. They get the boats, they get the you know, they get the planes, they're doing everything. They're not the ones that are skilled in those kinds of activities. We need to let the military do it, which is why in Vietnam.
Starting in sixty two, they switch We're switching back all of those operations against North Vietnam covert military operations from the CIA to the military, which is yeah, we'll not even saying all of that. But the point is it was clear that the CIA often got itself in over its head in terms of logistics supports for larger activities.
Right, I mean, and when you need stuff in Vietnam, like the little speedboats to go up and down the rivers, I mean, you're better off with Navy personnel handling that. You know, you need infiltration, you need to just direct troop infiltration. Why not use the specialized troops that are trained by the army Army intelligence units.
These guys are ready to go already.
They don't need to be you know, or at least you know, hypothetically, they don't need to be trained to do this, and they just happen to be CIA guys.
They're ready to go. So what are you going to do?
They were already using these guys in support, and they would have to acquire them from the military. I mean, this is the way I'm interpreting it. And why not just use the people there? Look, they already have coherent units, send them in on their own, and.
Yeah, there you go exactly.
And it got really, it really got confusing because it's like, well, the CIA would get itself into a fix where it needed military, Well we're going to detail them from their military branch into the CIA, or we're going to recruit retirees.
And this hint is like a huge logistics It always amazes me.
It's like later on in Laos had to have a lot of military pilots flying into Laos because it was secret and deniable, right sure, and they all had to be vetted and detailed to the CIA. You know how how much that adds to the confusion and the process. One of the things that again not to go too far a feel, is one of the things that we're talking about here, everything that Kennedy was trying trying to do to overcome some of these issues, you know, get
the CIA out of these large scale military operations. When Jens Johnson took over, it died because and who goes into Laos and sets up its own military empire in Laos? CIA, who goes next door in Cambodia and does that on its own?
Ci A, does any of it ever work. Know.
I mean that's when we find the former chief at j M WAVE essentially in charge of Laotian military operations. You want to talk about something sad and what he did to the Homong people. So I just have to insert that sort of like all of the things that were about to be fixed.
It just like recent and the CIA.
It's like everybody goes back to normal and the CIA gets back all those large scale military tasks that it does. It already said it didn't know how to handle, and once again we proved it in Southeast Asia.
Yeah, and tell you the truth.
I mean, Larry might not agree with this statement, but quite frankly, I think that's exactly what leads to the larger drug trade and everything else that went on after that, because these are guys who are trying to figure out how to work with the indigenous population based on what they have to work with. And hello, you know, you can send the military to guard a poppy field, but but you know, when you got to move that stuff around, the CIA is a little better equipped to do that.
Okay, Because well.
I would agree with you then that's yeah, obviously, when you.
Make something deniable, yes, when you make something deniable and start using covers and start using law locals.
Uh, there's money to be made.
And as I said in Shadow Warfare and that in the chapters on the drug trade, it's sort of like, Look, whenever you officially send something in, whether it's on a jeep or a donkey or a mule or a private aircraft, you know, if you sent something in, I got to tell you something's going to come back.
Right, No, And that's the way it rolls. But if you do this with the CIA, nobody ever gets to hear about it. It's clearly mark military assets. I mean, it's a little difficult to hide.
So they have Yeah, some stuff is going to get smuggled, but the military would also have some authority. I mean I've I've read interviews and I've actually talked to some people that work for Air America. I mean, if if among tribes started loading on bricks of illegal substance under the aircraft, the guy from America Air America doesn't like, well, you know, the CIA is working with these people. You know, I'm not going to raise any objections. And by the way,
they've got guns, you know, and I don't. I'm just the pilot right, So there's no authority involved either.
And let's face it, as a as.
A noted drug trader in Miami once said, everybody says they're CIA, and everybody says this is.
Okay, right, So, but you can't do the same thing with a bunch of guys in army uniforms that have orders that are traceable, you know. Again and again, although the military does have its covert people as well, but it's not the same thing. It's not as loose out there the way I see it. Besides, they were already well established, you know, so that's what makes sense to me.
And again, so this whole idea about you know, oh he was going to destroy the CIA, it doesn't really hold water, is the weird thing now, But you can't deny that that statement was made in a couple of different ways. So was that the aspirational thing to like, look, I'm going to overstate my case. And then when I just dragged back a couple of responsibilities, then nobody's going to freak out because they're going to say, oh, look, he might look to dismantle the CIA.
And all he did was shift a few.
Responsibilities around, you know, smooth things out with the military assets, you know, actually being in charge of the military or excuse me, the military actually being in charge of military assets.
I mean, is that what you think that is? Maybe it's an overstatement so that there's less of a reaction JFK, because I'm thinking about this politically. Politically.
Yeah, it's just, you know, there is no doubt in my mind that there were points in time where he was pissed enough to say exactly that, and then probably more.
I suspect there were longer tirade.
If I'd have been there, there would have been longer tirades, like you.
Know, So I think this is one of those cases where we.
Have to take an expression and evaluate it in terms of actions.
Okay, he said that in the heat of the moment.
We all know JFK did things in the heat of the moment, Okay, mine.
But what did he actually do?
Is there any evidence, I mean that he was moving in that direction into breaking it all apart any plans.
And now there's nothing we see in the.
Record that he was intending to replace it with the DIA, which would have been insane. But because that's not the way the services were structured, there's no So there's no sign that he was moving towards anything more than optimizing roles. I guess is probably the better part of you know, what these guys do well and what can I use?
And what do they don't do well that somebody else might use.
There's no sign of anything beyond that, so it's a reality.
Check right now.
One thing does come to me from a live reaction bias Skype, and the question is pretty direct. Do you think this maybe had something to do with the idea that the Kennedys find out that the mafia was utilized at certain points in the Cuban operations Because many writers, and this is the question from the listener, many writers have made a big deal out of Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy both becoming upset when they found out that there were organized crime assets utilized by the CIA in
Cuban operations. Is it possible that this statement about smashing the CIA was made out of frustration during that time period and that is what evoked it. That's the questions that's Kevin. But yeah, psyches Kevin for that. What are your thoughts on that question?
Mark, Well, there's no I'm not sure to what extent. John knew about that. Bobby certainly did.
I mean, Bobby's the one that actually asked the question and was read into the fact that mobsters had been used in the poison plans, you know, circum Bay of pigs, and he was the one that was told it was done, it was no more, it would never be done again, and he was the one that said it better not be.
So we absolutely knew know that Bobby knew about it. There's no sign that he The.
Interesting thing is, there's no real sign that he engaged any further, he did really pursue it. I think one of the things that kind of like, there's no sign that he asked for an extent, did briefing.
That.
You know, it's kind of like CIA doing anything more with the mob There's not no sign that he really pursued it.
I think one of the one of the things that we might not like it, but.
Bobby was so immersed in the get rid of Castro thing that I don't think that might have been the top of his mic, like, well, Okay, I don't like what they were doing, I want them to do it anything more. Now, let's talk about how we're going to get rid of Castro. That was his obsession, right, and
it truly was. He inserted himself personally, as far as I can tell, probably more into the anti Castro effort, especially during late sixty two and into sixty three, and in sixty three, inserted himself more into the anti Castro effort than he he actually did in the anti organized crime thing or a Justice Department thing. That's where he really was paying attention. So I can't but John shows
up nowhere in any of this. The only thing JFK ever really says is that he makes an allusion to one of his friends, something on the order of, what would you say if I told you we had been trying to assassinate, you know, Castro, you know, like he or he heard from Bobby that we had been trying.
To do it.
But it was very low key, you know. So I don't see them as much as I see it.
I don't see them really appalled or pursuing.
The fact that the CIA might have used the Mafia, when in nineteen sixty three, Bobby's pretty much for anything they can do to get rid of Castro, it just needs.
To be done deniably.
And I will tell you not AFK, but Bobby would have seen paperwork that included proposals within am World and actual am.
World documents that he could have seen.
I don't know that I saw him that he did that that talked about assassination, but that was not using the mob that at all.
That had all gone away other than John Rosellie.
Other than John Rosellie, that had all gone away after Bobby expressed his issue with it, after he learned about it, truly, other than Roselle, the mob was not in the picture any longer.
No, that's a really good answer to your question or his question. Shock.
Yeah, No, that's his quest. I wasn't going there.
But you know, just pragmatically again, Roselli could still be useful in that intelligence collection could still be viable among organized crime, just don't use them in the assassination plots. That's a possibility too. We don't don't necessarily know that. That wasn't the answer, by the way, because they might have had information that would have been relevant to infiltration, right because they had businesses there, and yeah, could yeah, and.
That's very personal to Roselle.
I mean, Roselli is the guy that had been in Cuba, that he'd been in the casinos in Cuba. Right, he had the contacts, he knewed people like Verona, so it's a very personal thing.
Well that's Roselli.
Yeah, yeah, that's why I'm saying, Yeah, that's why I'm saying he's still viable as an asset to collect intelligence. See, I'm being very specific about specific about that because you don't have to involve him in the assassination plots. You can still collect information and Roselli has some and also has some people that they could collect from, so it's
not like he's useless. Just don't use him in the assassination plots seem to be the main objection, right, let's not use criminals to the criminal stuff, which you know, to me makes no sense. Not very pragmatic on Bob's part, but you know, look we can disagree. But then again, they had also failed so far, so there's another issue. And you know, maybe that had something to do with some of the personnel they selected, but hey, it is what it is, because there were better guys to do
things there. I mean, there were people still running guns that were not connected to the CIA. There were still people running you know, illegal stuff in and out of Cuba, right that you know, even the band cigars, those things made it out.
You know what I'm saying.
Please, there was always going to be some business element there, okay, goohd.
And even among the Cubans, I think it's interesting through into sixty four and sixty five, we find a number of documents that are intelligence documents that are being connected on the Cuban community where wealthy Cubans in the US are trying to make deals with crime figures in Cuba to assassinate Castro. So it's like nobody that's an ongoing thing, but it's among the Cubans themselves.
Not the CIA. The CIA is actually trying to stop.
It, right, I mean, there's all kinds of but there's different interactions going on here, right, And there are various contraband operations. There are people coming in and out of there, some of them independently trying to leave. You know, the old trope of here comes a Cuban floating on a door into Florida. You know, all of that is true, but it's not all one thing, and it's not all being conducted by you know, the intelligence agencies, unlike some
people want to make it sound. And again, you know this idea that the you know, well, okay, they had to cover up the mafia thing and all that, and I go, all right, I get that, and nobody would.
Want to bring it out.
But also the mob wouldn't want to come out and say they were working with the government, you know, to do their bidding either. That wasn't something that was like really advertised. You know, when did we find out about it? Ten years later? Fifteen years later?
Basically? Right? I mean by the time we get to you.
Know, z R Rifle going public and stuff like that, what is that seventy four, seventy three, I forget what year that was, do you.
Remember, Yeah, ZR Rifle. Yeah, not until the seventies.
But I was just going to say, that's one of the things, the rumor when Roselle in the seventies, when Roselle got involved in this court case and that sort of stuff. This whole thing did not help. For example, Giancana in Chicago, the word that he had been working with the government with the CIA was one of the things that lost him his godfather's position in Chicago, and he had to leave the country and go to Mexico.
You know, so you're totally right.
Check that's like who's working with the government, and can we trust him?
You know, I'm not else Yeah, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say it for sure, but I've read reports that he was you know, shot six times in the mouth too, you know, just saying, yeah, I'm not saying that that's a direct correlation, but you know, it could be a hint that. I mean, I'm just speculating that who else is he willing to out?
You know, like, Okay, if that was, if he was willing to cut a deal to do that to make himself look good, who.
Else might he be willing to sacrifice? Makes me nervous?
Well, there you go. And if you're willing to work. And that's the other thing is that you know, there is an acknowledgment that they're there to do their job, yes, but the idea that you're actually cooperating with them is another issue. See, there's a difference between cooperating and acknowledging. And these guys acknowledge them all the time, even when they're following them around. You know, they do funny things by him a sandwhich a Christmas present, you know, stuff
like that, and and things like that. But when they find out. You know, you're you're part of a secret organization, remember, okay, and you're not keeping that secret too well if now you're letting the government know that. Listen, I got some men I can give over to you. I got some assets, I got some inroads. You're not really keeping it all that secret.
Are you. Nope?
So you know, just saying and I'm not even saying that's why he was killed. I think he was just in a weak position and somebody took advantage of it personally. But it doesn't mean that somebody didn't think about that when they decided to, you know, shoot him so many times in certain parts of his body. Just a consideration, not necessarily a conclusion anyway. Back to this thing about the CIA, though, So ultimately, where should we conclude with this?
Like I said, I've heard it used for all sorts of reasons, all sorts of justifications. Oh, he was going to do this, So the CIA, out of self preservation, needed to strike back at him. And frankly, even though I used to sort of believe this, Larry, I really did. I felt like that was the best possible ability, not just because he made that statement, but because it just
seemed to make sense to me. For a very long time I thought this, and as time has gone on, I gotta tell you, I lack of evidence starts to you know, peel away at some of these things that look good to me. And there is a serious lack of evidence that CIA proper struck back at him.
There is a serious lack.
Of evidence that even the people that you know, he allegedly fired because they love to point to Cable and Dulles and even though they resigned because they were asked to resign, let's get that straight. And you know, indeed, I also find a creepy that walking out of Dallas the one year, on my way to the Greyhound bus station, I look up to light a cigarette and realize I'm standing in front of the Charles Cable, you know, CIA building,
right next to the Greyhound station in Dallas, Texas. You know, just saying it's one of those things that made me go huh. But at the same time, I don't think the CIA struck back out of meta self defense in order to protect itself, to keep it from being smashed into a thousand pieces. I think that's been overused.
I think that's too convenient.
With a lack of evidence to back it up that it was a serious statement. And when we look at what was happening here, like you said, switch back transference, even let's try and make this more pragmatic. All of these words make a lot more sense when we take a look at, especially the things that we've discovered in
the aftermath of all this. And again, it would have been a political nightmare to turn around and say, you know, those guys who basically helped us find the missiles in Cuba, Yeah, I'm going to destroy that agency now.
A year later.
I don't think so that that makes no political sense. And one thing you got to guarantee here is that John F. Kennedy was certainly a political animal and was definitely looking to be elected, and that would not have helped Larry. I got to tell you, if you smash the people that you know warned us effectively as far as the public is concerned, gave us the only warning that there were missiles ninety miles away from our coast,
I think you would have taken a serious political hit. Jeez, you must be weak on communism, which of course was already an argument in some circles then, and you're giving the enemy and advantage because you're taken away from the people who actually saved our next year. One way or another, the CIA was kind of a hero in that scenario, even in public at that time. Or Am I wrong about that?
Oh?
Absolutely, it was still it was still in a very strong position. We might think differently the way we have come to look at things, but in the popular view of the time, the CIA was, you know, a major part of our defense against the communist menace.
Is kind of it would be.
Saying I'm going to break apart the CIA is kind of like saying, well, I'm going to break apart the FBI in nineteen sixty three. That would have given overwhelming support to the argument that you must be a communist in your betraying the country.
That would have been impossible to do. I think what it does is it takes us back.
To where I normally tend to go, is you have to dial it down where they're individuals who might have had, you know, severe concerns about what JFK was doing. You know, individuals within the CIA who might have had when they saw him, you know, taking away the things that they were doing, thinking what taking away the things that they
felt they were the best people to do. You know, could could his transferring paramilitary operations, covert military operations to the army have had an impact on the mindset down in Florida, JM Wave.
In Key West.
Absolutely, you know, they already had, They already had concerns about him for many reasons. This would have just further inflamed the opinions like man, he just really he doesn't know how good. He keeps making bad decisions. The Army doesn't know how to do this kind of stuff. They'll be front pages and the papers, you know. So on a personal level, it could well have.
Had an impact.
At an agency level, I don't think there's any sign that the CIA itself felt that as an agency it was at risk.
It was still in a preeminent position.
The director of the Director of the CIA was the guy that reported intelligence to the National Security Council. He was the guy that did the daily briefings for the president. None of that was changing or was going to change. So as an institution, there's nothing to suggests the CIA would have felt that it would be threatened. Individual attitudes or something else entirely.
No, look, individual attitudes. I mean, we could sit here and speculate and calculate and come up with all sorts of differing, you know, possibilities about that. I mean, God only knows what some people's thought process was at that point in time, and we've talked about that before, you know, whether it's King or Angleton or whoever. I mean, there's a wide variety of reactions to everything happening.
But you also don't see.
The preemptive propaganda to sort of protect the CIA coming out in the press at the time. Either I looked for it, No, because that would have been part of.
It, right, that's an excellent point. We know they knew how to do that.
Yeah, So like you're not seeing these articles that basically make the case that I just made, which is, you know, the CIA is your hero man. If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have known about the missiles and Cuba. We would have been you know, they might have made up
other stories. We might have been nuked already. If it wasn't for the CIA, they might have come out with editorials, stories, speculations in fiction and in the news media to prop up the CIA if they had felt threatened at all, and we do now know they had plenty of assets to do this, so you don't see that they.
Had done it before. CIA was very good at self promotion.
They had done it under Eisenhower, very effectively in regard to Iran.
Right, So yeah, you're right.
It would have been no problem for them to put together a campaign.
And we don't see any signs at that good point.
Yeah, that campaign is non existent, but but we do know it was done before. And again, like I said, we're well aware that they had assets everywhere. I mean in television. We learned later they have, you know, people at CBS and this I mean it's you know, a yes, Operation Mockingbird, everybody brings that up. But they had assets, it's all over the place, and friendly, friendly authors that
were in perfect positions to get well read. And all you would have had to do is, you know, ghost write something for somebody who needed a little something, and that would have been it. I mean, even if somebody was like say, you know, formerly a well read author and hadn't been well read recently. You give them something a little special, You hand it to him, let him tweak it, and bang, they have something for their career.
You have something for propaganda. And then the cycle continues right, I mean they.
Or were they doing any dirty tricks against JFK, which they certainly could have done. What were those same media assets the other thing?
I mean, we're talking about really dirty.
Tricks, right, because there could have been leaks, There could have been you know, I mean because we've all heard about people speculating about what Hoover had on JFK, and we know that that existed, but Hoover was more about you know, self preservation in his job. I think it's seems like anyway, that's the evidence that we know of, and the fact that those files disappeared after his death means that, you know what, I guess, what was meant to be achieved was achieved.
Right.
But it's not like the CIA couldn't have made a deal with Hoover, or the CIA didn't have their own files on Kennedy guarantee.
It's not that, not like the CIA did not know about romage.
There you are no and data.
You know, they had plenty if they had chosen to start rumors and gossip campaigns, and there's no sign of.
That, right, So they weren't attacking him or defending themselves, which means that to me, there's no evidence that they in public anyway, there's no evidence that there was a need for self preservation, because otherwise those two things would have been a necessary asset to deploy, not the only asset. And in that case, if I had seen a lot of that static in the media at the time, and
I really don't. I've searched through it a bit, you know, to see things, and to see what was being published and by former you know, political figures and all that kind of stuff. It's a couple of interesting things get said, but nothing is to this extreme where it looks like the CIA is trying to defend itself. Like I can't make that, I can't even make that narrative.
Yep.
If the CIA is in combat with anyone at this point in time in the fall of nineteen sixty three, yes, it's the military in Vietnam. If you want to look for the CIA, you know, where do they feel threatened? Where are they doing whispering campaigns? Who are they where are they trying to preserve their influence in their grounds.
That was going on in Southeast Asia as we can see, and you can see it when when Kennedy sends out a delegation and they come back and he talks to four different people, and here's four totally different stories, and it's like, did.
You people all even go to the same place. I know you were on the same plane. What's going on?
If there's some contention and combat going on, it's it's inter service and interagency in Southeast Asia.
It's not focused on JFK.
There interesting warfare is going on in Southeast Asia.
Right, So ultimately, the CIA is not defending itself against the concept of being smashed into a thousand pieces, although as I said, it could have been a political thing to let that float and then to minimize the effect of a few things getting shifted around so that nobody overreacts.
I mean, I don't know.
That sounds like a clear strategy to me, is to let it be known that he's upset with the agency and then he just moves a few things and maybe that's the end of it.
Oh you know, yeah, absolutely.
So, Larry.
I've had you on for just about an hour discussing this. I think we've handled it pretty well. But it's just one of these things that constantly comes up though, right where I swear people use it for a lot of different reasons, and it does make sense if you lay it out as like he said this, he was definitely threatening the agency, so they had to defend themselves.
And I get it, but it doesn't.
Really hold up to scrutiny because there's a whole bunch of things missing here that should have come along with it. But anyway, if you check out Larry's Larry's work and his blog of course Larry Dashhandcock dot com, go there any of his books. Highly recommend all of them. But you mentioned Shadow Warfare during this discussion. There's a book Stu Wexler co authored, that one with you, I think Ray. Yes, Yes,
Stu Wexler's co author on that one. Larry has co authored many books with Stu, but also many on his own, and a new one hopefully coming out by the end of the year, The Oswald Puzzle.
Did I get that right? That time?
With David Boyling?
Yes, with David Boilet, which is another interesting guy. Is he doing a presentation at Lancer this year?
By the way, I.
Yes, he will be excellent and I think you'd be amused by check just a tidbit David might be good to have talk about this. Dave was just sending me a message. David's really become the document geek. I am not, but he's just run across the fact that uh and and found the document trails themselves. That the CIA had two three sets of files that you could have on
an individual. One was there two to one personality file, but then separately some people would have either a unwitting asset file or a witting asset file that you kind of.
Love it nice, nice by the two one we're familiar with.
But yeah, these are pr Q files different, totally different filestream.
I was not aware of it. I don't think. I'm not sure any of us were aware of it. David was digging into that.
Now, I was just gonna I was all he had to do was.
Find Oswell's pr Q twenty one unwitting asset file and we just really be done.
Yeah, that would be great. So please David, if you can, I would love to see that. Uh And that would end a lot of discussions. Uh, because you know, you can't be James Bond if you're an unwitting asset Okay.
And uh, I don't even give you weapons. You don't get deducted anyway.
No, you don't get to talk to anybody.
They just kind of go, you know, what we do is we just kind of, you know, give this guy a little push and kind of Korea.
Okay. Anyway, that's the way it goes. And uh, that's the way this went.
So anyway, Larry dash Hancock dot com go there, and I do highly recommend all of Larry's work.
So that's that.
Enjoy In Denial, Secret Wars with air Strikes and Tanks by Larry Hancock. Secret wars became a staple of US Covert Operation Center, still happening today. Larry Hancock's book In Denial rips the cover off many of them, using new five else it exposes things about the Bay of Pigs that no one has ever written about before. It shows why it really failed and why the United States did not earn from it. It also shows why other countries
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