I’m happy to announce that the Mary Ferrell Foundation site has begun the serialization of Tipping Point, my newest study of the JFK assassination. Tipping Point is the culmination of some 30 years of my own research, but it’s a work built on the efforts of a host of dedicated citizen researchers who have pursued the truth in the murder of President Kennedy for decades more.
Those efforts include the most recent work of a my friends David Boylan, Bill Simpich, Stuart Wexler, and others who have continued to dig into the documents, records and personal associations of the individuals discussed in Tipping Point. Their work in decoding CIA cryptonyms, pseudonyms, and aliases – and applying them to the immense number of operational CIA and FBI documents released since the passage of the JFK Records Act – has allowed us to make real strides in examining the assassination in light of the full context of national security events in 1963. Complementary historical work in State Department and military records has also has also revealed key information about geopolitics during the last year of the President’s life, information either unknown or intentionally withheld from the official investigations into the President’s murder.
To be clear, Tipping Point is a study of conspiracy in the assassination of President Kennedy. It does identify and discuss the tactics of the attack in Dallas, the assets developed to support various aspects of that action, and the unraveling of the full plan following the shooting of the president. However, it is not a study of shooting trajectories, or of the immense body of material taken into evidence and examined by the official inquiries into the murder – the “Introduction” section of Tipping Point clarifies why I did not follow that path, as so many others have over the decades.
Thanks to the efforts of Rex Bradford, Tipping Point will be serialized on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. The Introduction is available now and new segments will be made live every week to two weeks. Given the extended citation links to documents and sources, each segment requires a good bit of work to set up on the site. The extended citations and commentaries in the end notes also led to the decision to publish Tipping Point as an actual book (print and electronic) which will be made available on Amazon early in 2021.
I’ll be happy to take questions on this blog as people read through it, or privately at my own email larryjoe@westok.net
As to Tipping Point itself, you can now begin with the “Introduction”, that will give you a good idea of my path to this work, and why I settled on a “back door” approach to pursuing the conspiracy. You can find it at this link:
Larry Hancock 
Thank you for posting your thought provoking introduction.
Looking forward to reading the rest of your research, and will be purchasing the print copy when it comes out.
My comment concerns one here is about one passage in the piece that really stands out, namely :
“one of the traditional practices related to such events has been to pre-empt panic and overreaction by taking control over the media narrative in an attempt to minimize public fears and concerns.”
I saw this very thing happen during the 31 March, 1981 attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan. On hearing the news, the U,S, Military put was in a state of lockdown, something which I myself experienced, having been on active duty at that time. And recently, a friend who is an Air Force vet has told me that his Bomber wing had been bumped up to DEFCON 3 after the Reagan shooting.
At the time the attempt occurred, then Vice President George H.W. Bush was in the air over the Midwest aboard Air Force 2. His flight immediately turned about and headed back to Andrews AFB, where he arrived about four hours later. Bush then very quietly arrived at the White House, and as mandated by the Constitution assumed all Presidential duties. Amazingly, one of his first public announcements was that the attempt on Reagan’s life was perpetrated by a lone nut and there was no evidence of a conspiracy.
I could go on about the many violations of security protocols that occurred that day, but suffice to say that there were many things about the Reagan shooting that aroused suspicion in many who were witness to it. Yet in spite of the fact that no investigation on the case had even begun, the former CIA Director took it upon himself to arbitrarily place all responsibility on John Hinckley and squelch any further inquiry.
What we have here is a textbook example of the practice that you’ve just described.
Later inquiries showed suspicious ties between assailant John Hinkley’s family and the Bush family, but were never seriously followed up by the Government or the media. And in the end, Bush’s influence in the Reagan Presidency became so overwhelming that many in Washington observed that he was filling the role of a “Co-President,”.
Its even been said that “Poppy” Bush had the next longest term of any occupant of the the White House- four years overtly, and eight covertly.
JFD
It is very much a standard practice and I’ve run into it over and over again. One of the interesting things though is that the practice is totally external, if you can get inside matters you find something more like chaos at the highest levels – while they struggle to maintain the external image of control
I explore several examples of that in my book Surprise Attack, including the Kennedy assassination and the Reagan shooting – in both instances the lack of practice in assuming in control during a crisis produces some fascinating and frightening behavior (as when somebody in charge does not know which Defcon State is which and moves it the wrong direction).
What does become clear in all that is that often what are legitimate efforts to control panic, have the secondary effect of obfuscating and undermining any real investigation of the incident which triggers the damage control response.
Also probably why the heightened state of military alert was kept quiet in both of the cases you describe. Although the alert at the time of the Kennedy murder was far more ominous and extensive and as well.
As for confusion at the actual levels of command, that’s exactly what I myself saw at the beginning of the Reagan shooting. After hearing word of the attempt, I was called to a conference room where dozens of Officers were tensely conversing in groups. After about 15 minutes, the 2nd Mar. Div. Chief of Staff entered and announced that the President was out of danger and to return to our units and duties.
JFD
Enjoyed the introduction, Larry, and I look forward to reading the rest of TIPPING POINT. I agree with the idea of working your way around the evidence. So much of it has been tainted and corrupted that it leaves you spinning in circles. I think, from other material that you’ve produced, that you are closing in on who was almost certainly involved. So much is circumstantial, but most trials are won on such evidence.
I think we have closed in on a relatively finite set of individuals. Yet one of the things that stumps me is what sort of contemporary investigation could have produced charges or have gone to trial. The CIA chose to successfully shield a key connections and individuals from the HSCA, Garrison had no chance against them. Even JMWAVE’S own internal investigation disappeared and Shackley lied saying none had been carried out.
As AG RFK would have had to come up with statutes to make it a federal investigation, take Hoover out of the mix, create a special investigators office and go to Congress to get absolute power of access to all FBI and CIA personnel and records. He would also have had to get a variety of criminal investigative tools that were never exercised by the WC or the HSCA.
That would have meant a huge political fight with Johnson.
A live Oswald might have opened to door to people to be investigated, but its highly unusual to find a criminal prosecutor with a slam dunk case opening the door to conspiracy.
About the only thing I can think of is that if Hosty had gone public about Oswald being observed with subversives, that might have forced the issue. But he would have had to take that to the national press and I doubt anybody in the Dallas office would have had the guts to support him – he would have been ostracized.
If an assassination attempt on a president fails, those in the plot are in great jeopardy. If it succeeds and the successor benefits I’m not sure there is a path to justice – especially if there is a suitable patsy in custody.
Seems like I read something that Burt Griffin, I think it was, said about conspiracies. In essence, it was that some conspiracies are so well done and complex, or convoluted if you will, that they are basically unprovable. Knowing and proving are different things. If one knows but can’t prove, then retribution can occur other ways. There were a number of violent deaths about mid ’70’s when the JFK matter was firing up again. Who knows if that was some chickens coming home to roost.
Certainly that is axiom true in organized crime – which is why most syndicate figures tend to get busted for financial, tax or related violations rather than the violent crimes they oversee or enable. Same is true in politics although moral transgressions tend to do politicians in as well.
In regard to the deaths in the seventies, I tend to think the really suspicious ones like Roselli and Morales were clean up actions rather than revenge. The trick would be whether the clean up was coming from the people they had worked with who could have been linked to the assassination, or from within the Agency itself. I tend to suspect the former.
I agree about who would have been most likely behind the clean ups. Sam Giancana was murdered with a silenced .22 pistol. In that same time frame, there were other murders of mob related people by .22’s. Different guns, but the same unique markings on the bullets produced by the silencers. Same manufacturer. It was two Chicago cops who were selling to mob connected hitters. The speculation in the mob at the time was that Trafficante did it.
The HSCA era killings were most likely independent actions by folks who didn’t want the attention they might get if investigations got serious, Roselli being a good example. He let some names slip during his appearance, lawyers involved with the procedure let that slip and word got back to Miami that he might be becoming to loose lipped in his old age.
Morales himself remarked he was not afraid of the people he had worked against, but rather of some of those he had worked with…