Who Killed JFK and Why?

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright November 20, 2013
All Rights Reserved.                                      

            Racking more brains than organized religion, the unsolved Kennedy assassination continues to bedevil every thinking man-or-woman that doesn’t stomach the government’s Cool-Aid known as the Warren Commission.  When the Warren Commission delivered its report to President Lyndon B. Johnson Aug. 24, 1964, it attempted to put to rest for all-time the Nov. 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  Fingered as the lone assassin, 24-year-old former Marine marksman Lee Harvey Oswald, the Warren Commission tried to end what’s become the most virulent conspiracy in U.S. history.  Government secrecy, both inside and outside the Warren Commission, preempted any attempt to accept a monolithic theory of JFK’s assassination.  Whatever the medical, forensic and miscellaneous evidence, the investigation was stifled by a 75-year sealing of pertinent government records.

               Whatever the so-called 98% of the documents released to the public under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act and 1992 JFK Records Act, key facts from the CIA, Secret Service and FBI have been withheld from the public citing “U.S. national security.”  If Oswald were really the lone “nut” gunman, what possible reason would there be to shield pertinent facts from public view, citing “U.S. national security?”  “Apparently, Bobby Kennedy’s first suspicion was that it was some rogue element in the CIA,” said Phillip Shenon, author of “A Cruel and Shocking Act.”  Shenon said Bobby recanted his CIA suspicion, looking more at the Mafia or the Cubans.  What Bobby  knew or couldn’t figure out was that the CIA has a long sordid relationship with the underworld, including known attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro since the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

             No one in the public wants to doubt their government, certainly not vaunted institutions designed to protect U.S. citizens like the CIA and FBI.  Following JFK into the grave was the public’s trust over what’s been an epic government cover-up.  Since the Warren Commission report, over 2,000 books have speculated about various conspiracy theories, designed to connect-the-dots, precisely to counter deliberate government obfuscation.  JFK knew intimately the April 17-19, 1961 failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion, attempting to topple Castro.  While Kennedy was quoted in a New York Times article saying he wanted “to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds,” after the botched CIA operation, it’s inconceivable that alone would prompt an assassination.   Kennedy’s frustration with the CIA’s covert operations wasn’t’ a big secret.

            Conspiracy theorists go over the deep end seeking one monolithic motive to the assassination.  “It would be odd in a way if [the CIA] didn’t go after Kennedy,” said Lisa Pease, a Los Angeles-based author and researcher speaking at a recent JFK conspiracy symposium in Pittsburgh.  “He was one of the few leftist leaders still standing,” said Pease, raising another endless motive, namely, that Kennedy was really a communist sympathizer.  JFK’s foreign policy was based heavily on journalist George F. Kennan’s classic Foreign Policy article, “Source of Soviet Conduct.”  Placing U.S. advisors in Vietnam to counter growing Soviet and Chinese Communist influence hardly shows leftist leanings.  When Kennedy heard Nov. 2, 1963 about the assassination of Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, he cringed, knowing the CIA did its job, not knowing who would be the Agency’s next target.

             Getting to the bottom of the JFK assassination hasn’t been easy, where the CIA set up roadblock-after-roadblock.  “I think it’s premature to rule out a conspiracy involving CIA people,” said former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, editor of jfkfacts.com.  Fighting-in-court under the Freedom of Information Act for 10 years, Morley has tried but failed to gain access to records for deceased CIA agent George Joannides, who monitored anti-Castro Cubans in South Florida, a group that had contact with Oswald.  “While the CIA conspiracy theories make good fodder for movies, they are pure fiction,” said CIA spokesman Edward Price.  Morley doesn’t blame the CIA for “killing Kennedy,” but believes the agency and its agents had a lot more information on Oswald than acknowledged.  Forceful denials by the CIA only fuel more suspicions about the Agency’s role.

             Neither the CIA nor FBI has officially admitted they tracked Oswald’s movements a few weeks before the assassination to the Russian embassy in Mexico City.  Who Oswald talked to in Mexico City or how much cash he received is anyone’s guess.  What’s undeniable since Nov. 22, 1963 is that the CIA, FBI and Secret Service have done their utmost to stonewall the investigation.  When the venerable chief counsel for1976-79 United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, former Notre Dame Law Professor G. Robert Blakey, expressed exasperation getting information out of the CIA, you know there’s a problem.  “I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and Oswald . . .” said Blakey in 2003, reflecting on CIA stonewalling.  Whatever loose ends remain on who killed JFK and why, they’re at the CIA.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.