Larry Hancock - "Someone Would Have Talked"

Larry Hancock, “Someone Would Have Talked” (JFK Lancer, 2006)

HOOVER & LBJ

Larry Hancock notes (p. 305):

“We seem to see FBI Director Hoover leaving his office at the regular time on the Friday of the assassination and simply going home. Not to the airport to meet the new president and confer privately, nor to the National Command Center – apparently behaving just as he would at the end of a normal workday.”

“William Manchester gives a relatively detailed description of a phone call from Johnson to Hoover that evening. Johnson is in the White House after his return from Dallas and Hoover is at home, he had not stayed at the Capital to make himself available to the new President nor direct the investigation personally from FBI headquarters. It is apparently this call that Hoover uses to authorize his commandeering of the investigation and key evidence from the Dallas Police.” 62

[62. Manchester, page 405, and November 22-24 diary entries from “The President’s Daily Dairy”; Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum.

“Yet this call, very specifically timed at 7:25 PM, does not appear in the Johnson diaries available from the Johnson Presidential Library. No such call is logged, even though the others immediately before it are registered to the minute as Manchester reports them – there is no tape and no transcript. If Manchester had a source for this detail, it appears to have vanished.”

“In Dallas, the paperwork charging Lee Oswald in an international Communist conspiracy was torn up and redone after a call to DA Wade. According to Wade, “Cliff Carter, President Johnson’s aide, called me three times from the White House that Friday night. He said that President Johnson felt any word of a conspiracy – some plot by foreign nations to kill President Kennedy would shake our nation to its foundation….”

MCONE & LBJ

In the final report of the ARRB (part 8) noted that some of McCone’s records were missing or destroyed. One is listed “Date of Meeting November 24, participating DCI (McCone) and Bundy. Subjects covered: Message Concerning President Kennedy’s assassination.” (p. 306)

NPIC and JMWAVE
 

Hancock (p. 486):

“Memorandum for the Record, dated March 12, 1975 and signed by Edward Cates, Chief, Imagery Exploitation Group, NPIC. It recounts that three NPIC personnel who had formally worked at JM/WAVE had heard references to assassination plans aimed at Fidel Castro and one relating to Raul Castro.”

“The second project, which apparently did go into operation, was led by Carl Jenkins of the DDP (Directorate of Plans). It called for assassinating Castro at the DuPont Varadero Beach Estate, east of Havana. Castro was known to frequent the estate and the plan was to use a high powered rifle to kill him from a distance. The photo interpretation support involved providing annotated photographs and drawings of the estate. The image personnel had no knowledge of the plan ever being implemented, but other information suggests that up to three attempts were made to insert a shooter for this project.”

Gene Wheaton, Carl Jenkins & the ARRB

(p. 481):
“In October, 1995 Gene Wheaton faxed a communications to John Tunhein, Chairman of the newly organized Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB). Wheaton simply informed Tunheim that he might have some relevant information regarding the Board’s inquiry. Wheaton included a four page personal biography as background, as well as a letter of commendation from the White House, signed by President Nixon, in recognition of Wheaton’s work in the global war against heroin (awarded for his activities while working in Iran).”

“….John Tunheim responded to Wheaton‘s offer of information with a brief letter on October 25, 1995, thanking him for his interest and informing him that a Review Board staff member would be in touch with him. It appears that no further communication was directed to Wheaton until a blanket ARRB notice went out to individuals who had contacted the Board. In response, Wheaton faxed the Board a one page CV he’d prepared for a retired CIA officer whom he describes as a ‘very close friend’ in the 1980’s (February 15, 1996).”

From Wheaton’s CV, it is apparent to Larry Hancock that, among other things, Wheaton’s CIA officer friend “As a full time CIA officer, he served as Chief of Base in Florida and later Guatemala in 1960-61. He was responsible for selection and training of cadres for the (Cuba) Exile brigade as well as for selection and management of small teams and agents used in maritime infiltration prior to the Bay of Pig. Following this assignment he served as special warfare advisor to 1 Corps in DaNang, Vietnam prior to returning to become Senior Operations Officer for a still-sensitive project.”

“Recent document releases and research strongly suggests this sensitive duty was the (Manuel) Artime-associated AM/WORLD project, which was heavily compartmentalized within the CIA and which had its own staff independent of JM/WAVE... After service on the special Cuban project, Wheaton’s friend was assigned as senior advisor to the Dominican National Police, then as Senior Advisor on Security and Training in Nicaragua, and eventually as Chief of Base, South Laos in 1971-73…”

“After receipt of Wheaton’s second communication, Tom Samoluk of the ARRB wrote to Jeremy Gunn in regard to the Wheaton letters. Samoluk pointed out that the Board would need to decide whether or not it should assign an investigator to respond to such correspondence, to evaluate the person’s credibility and value in the Board’s search for documents. He also noted that he would be available to discuss the correspondence and any larger relevant issues.”

“Apparently as a result, ARRB staff member Anne Buttimer was assigned to contact Wheaton. There are records of contact with Wheaton in an April telephone call (Buttimer recorded as a ‘outside contact report’ for that call). Wheaton informed Buttermer that he had no specific documents that would offer information about the conspiracy but that he could produce documents which would substantiate the nature and general activities of the people through he had obtained information about the assassination conspiracy. He cited his sources on the assassination as Cuban exiles who had confirmed that exiles originally trained for attacks on Castro had killed JFK, considering him to have been a traitor. He also stated that ‘people above the Cubans wanted JFK killed for other reasons.’ Wheaton concluded with the cryptic remark, ‘the matter is not complex, but it is convoluted.’”

“On May 16, 1996, Buttimer followed up the telephone call with a letter to Wheaton in which she offered to meet with Wheaton should he find himself in the Washington D.C. area. We have also a copy of another letter form Buttimer to Wheaton in which she refers to a personal meeting with him in July 1996, at which time Wheaton delivered additional reference material to Buttimer. Unfortunately no contact report has been found for this meeting.”

“There is no further record of any contact by Buttimer or anyone else from the ARRB with Wheaton. In March, 1998 he again faxed the Board and noted that Buttimer seemed to have departed from the Board. He was never contacted again and only received generic Board news releases. The only response to his effort at follow-up is a very general reply from Eileen Sullivan, Press and Public Affairs Officer. In this “form letter” response, she refers to the Board as having received thousands of leads and suggestions and not being able to link any document releases to information provided by a particular individual. Apart from this generic ‘thank you,’ there is no expression of further interest form the Board. And there was no further record of any comment from Gene Wheaton on the subject….”

“A good deal of background research has been done on the Wheaton documents and on the names which Wheaton eventually disclosed to the ARRB in the documents submitted to Buttermer. These include the CV which Wheaton eventually identified as that of Carl Elmer Jenkins, a copy of Jenkin’s passport circa 1983 and business cards for Carl Jenkins…..”

“Research confirms that beyond a doubt, Carl Jenkins was indeed a senior CIA officer who worked on paramilitary activities in support of the Bay of Pigs project and that by 1963-64 he was indeed directly involved with the AM/WORLD project, with Artime (AM/BIDDY) and Quintero (AM/JAVA-4). …It should be noted that these AM/WORLD activities were completely segmented from JM/WAVE and communications from Jenkins and (Henry) Hecksher were not run through JM/WAVE. In fact the AM/WORLD group operated its own facility in Miami (cryptonym ‘LORK’).”

“It appears that Carl Jenkins’ paramilitary activities in support of Cuban operations were exactly as described to Gene Wheaton and exactly as summarized in the Jenkins CV submitted to the ARRB. There is also no doubt that Jenkins was very closely associated with Quintero in this period, as described by Wheaton. There two books in print that also confirm these descriptions of Jenkins.” (p. 488)

“In Death Merchant: The Rise and Fall of Edwin P. Wilson, author Joseph Goulden presents information from the CIA officer who Quintero went to when he became suspicious of an assassination assignment being promoted to Quintero and other exiles by Ed Wilson. The officer….talks about entering the CIA on detached duty from the Marines, being career paramilitary, and running CIA paramilitaries out of JM/WAVE. It seems clear that…was in fact Carl Jenkins.” 5

“In his book Manhunt: The Incredible Pursuit of a CIA Agent Turned Terrorist, Peter Maas mentions Carl Jenkins by name as the case officer for Quintero prior to the Bay of Pigs. Quintero was part of an advance team sent in before the invasion by Jenkins. After the landing failed, he hid out in Cuba for six weeks before making his way back to Florida. Afterwards Clines would assume a case officer role for Quintero, who would go on to make a number of sabotage an assassination missions into Cuba.”

“After a long career with the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigations Division, including several years in Vietnam and Iran, Wheaton went to work for the Anaheim (Calif) based autonetics division of Rockwell International in 1976….”

[BK Notes: Rockwell International eventually merged with Collins Radio, which became Rockwell-Collins. ]