Ben, best wishes for the success of the new forum. I'm always happy to answer questions about what I've written about - my newest JFK books are the 2010 edition of
Someone Would Have Talked and then
NEXUS. The first is a very much bottoms up investigation of the conspiracy and NEXUS is totally tops down, looking at how a conspiracy could have developed within the CIA based on its history with such things. More recently I've done books on the MLK assassination (
The Awful Grace of God), covert warfare - which traces the careers of a number of the JFK suspects in the two JFK books (
Shadow Warfare) and most recently a study of National Command Authority and command and control (
Surprise Attack).
I'm happy to answer questions in any of those areas, obviously I don't remember everything off the top of my head though. I can also offer directions to researches that might help since I've been speaker chair for the Dallas conference for over a decade and know a lot of folks personally. I'll probably be brief in my answers (although brief for me is a relative term) since I am currently working on three more book projects and this years 2016 conference. If I don't seem to be responding, you can always get my attention at <!-- e --><a href="mailto:larryjoe@westok.net">larryjoe@westok.net</a><!-- e -->.
-- again, best wishes to Ben, having been on JFK forums all the way back to CompuServe I know the patience it takes to manage one that stays positive. Larry
Welcome, Mr. Hancock. It is always nice to have real researchers to help out armchair ones such as myself.
Thanks Larry for your kind words... I've edited your post to include links to your books for anyone interested in picking up any of them. I highly recommend 'Someone Would Have Talked' - and have cited it many times in debates with believers...
Thanks Ben, I try not to promote the books too strongly but for practical purposes basically all I've learned goes into them - which is why I write them - and after some 25 years at this they are a far better resource for detail than I am. The other comment I would make is that covering a much broader historical time frame in regard to studying agencies, operations, and practices has given me a much more realistic view of things. Many things that seemed unique and mysterious when looking at only one subject - such as the JFK assassination - become less so with a longer baseline. However what does not change is that government agencies have a very difficult time investigating themselves, much less their sources, assets or surrogates. Its part actual legal entanglement, part operational security and compartmentalization and part CYA, the proportion of each changes instance by instance. In my view that is just a fact of life and we have to accept that it comes with the territory.
Larry,
I have not read your book "Someone would have talked."
I am wondering how you handled the statements made by Jack Ruby. It appears to me he did exactly that...talked.
I have not figured out (yet) how to embed a youtube video in a message so here is the url to the Jack Ruby statements I am referring to.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dLupbqmtUU[/youtube]
"I am wondering how you handled the statements made by Jack Ruby. It appears to me he did exactly that...talked."
I would agree, actually I recount how Jack talked both before and after the assassination - and during the period when he was stalking Oswald. His remarks to an IRS informant before hand were solid input for the HSCA, so solid the informant was officially offered to the HSCA which did not even interview him as far as is documented.
I deal with Ruby extensively including a hour by hour chronology over some 48 hours when he was converted from being in a minor support role to something very much different.
The books title is a contrarian expression, it deals with the fact that many people did talk before the assassination and immediately afterwards and they simply were not registered in the official conclusions. Ruby was very important to the conspiracy since they had the tactical assets they needed already, what they did not have was ground level intelligence in Dallas, especially with police preparations, and Jack filled that role.
Hi Larry, good to meet you. I'm one of the patrolmen who saw a bullet hole in JFK's windshield, and I look forward to reading some of your books. I know Ben always like to permalink "Someone Would Have Talked" on Amazon whenever a LNer whipped out Talking Point #71 ("All these people involved in a so-called conspiracy and yet no one talked"). It's unfathomable they still believe "no one talked". It's more like no one talked whom they believe.
More importantly, a WCR supporter named R. Anderson gave "Someone Would Have Talked" one star, therefore I know it must be good.
[Administrator edited to remove personal slur]
I suppose the book title has been a mixed blessing, originally I picked it because I frequently got asked just that same question. On the other hand I'm sure some passed it by because of that. Its been fun on a couple of occasions when radio hosts booked me assuming I would be anti-conspiracy and help poke fun at CT's. Some of those shows probably were a bit shorter than planned. The most fun was a British company that offered to sign me up to edit a collection of anti-conspiracy articles on JFK....that went south pretty quickly.
There is no doubt its risky going to sources rather than staying with harder evidence and I have to say I've chewed up a bunch of years writing off sources that seemed interesting at first....readers sometimes ask me about names they think are missing from SWHT and I have to say they are not really missing, I looked at them and if they are not in there it meant that I could not sufficiently vet them. I do try and give my vetting criteria at the beginning of the book. All in all their really are enough credible folks who talked to give us the general scenario, the interesting part is that those are the ones who never thought their remarks would go beyond family, friends - or their lawyers.
Larry Hancock Wrote:I suppose the book title has been a mixed blessing, originally I picked it because I frequently got asked just that same question. On the other hand I'm sure some passed it by because of that. Its been fun on a couple of occasions when radio hosts booked me assuming I would be anti-conspiracy and help poke fun at CT's. Some of those shows probably were a bit shorter than planned. The most fun was a British company that offered to sign me up to edit a collection of anti-conspiracy articles on JFK....that went south pretty quickly.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I can well imagine the shock of some interviewer who suddenly realized he should have done his homework!!!