The CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory is a prominent John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory. According to ABC News, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is represented in nearly every theory that involves American conspirators. The secretive nature of the CIA, and the conjecture surrounding the high-profile political assassinations in the United States during the 1960s, has made the CIA a plausible suspect for some who believe in a conspiracy. Conspiracy theorists have ascribed various motives for CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, including Kennedy's firing of CIA director Allen Dulles, Kennedy's refusal to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy's plan to cut the agency's budget by 20 percent, and the belief that the president was weak on communism. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
Background
John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the killings of Kennedy and Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit but was murdered by nightclub owner Jack Ruby two days later.
In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald killed Kennedy and Tippit, and that there was no evidence that Oswald was part of a conspiracy. However, the discrepancies between the official investigations and the extraordinary nature of the assassination have led to a variety of theories about how and why Kennedy was assassinated, as well as the possibility of a conspiracy. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed that Oswald killed Kennedy, but concluded that a second gunman probably also fired at Kennedy and that a conspiracy was probable.House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report, pp. 65–75. The committee's conclusion of a conspiracy was based almost entirely on the results of a forensic analysis of a police dictabelt recording, which was later disputed.
Origin and history In 1966, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that a group of right-wing extremists were involved with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.Jim Garrison Interview , Playboy magazine, Eric Norden, October 1967.Garrison, Jim. On The Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 12–13, 43, 176–178, 277, 293. Garrison also came to believe that businessman Clay Shaw, head of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, was part of the conspiracy.Garrison, Jim. On The Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 85–86. On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.
Three days after Shaw's arrest, the Italian left-wing newspaper Paese Sera published an article alleging that Shaw was linked to the CIA through his involvement in the Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC), a subsidiary of the trade organization Permindex in which Shaw was a board member. According to Paese Sera, the CMC had been a front organization developed by the CIA for transferring funds to Italy for "illegal political-espionage activities." Paese Sera also reported that the CMC had attempted to depose French President Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s. The newspaper printed other allegations about individuals it said were connected to Permindex, including Louis Bloomfield whom it described as "an American agent who now plays the role of a businessman from Canada [who] established secret ties in Rome with Deputies of the Christian Democrats and neo-Fascist parties."Garrison, Jim. On The Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 87–90.
The allegations were reprinted in various newspapers associated with the Communist parties in Italy (l'Unità), France (L'Humanité), and the Soviet Union (Pravda), as well as leftist newspapers in Canada and Greece, prior to reaching the American press eight weeks later. American journalist Max Holland wrote that the KGB planted the original story in Paese Sera, citing archives released by Vasili Mitrokhin, thereby influencing both Garrison's subsequent accusations against the CIA and Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. Originally published in The Washington Post on November 22, 2003. In 1969, Shaw was brought to trial on charges of conspiring to assassinate Kennedy, and the jury found him not guilty.
The CIA has rejected allegations of involvement and has sought to counter these allegations. A declassified CIA cable sent to CIA overseas stations and bases in 1967 encourages agents to not discuss the assassination unless such a discussion is already occurring. It further suggests agents should “discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors” and “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics”. It highlights book reviews and feature articles as one method and encourages claiming that “parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists”.
Proponents and believers Jim Garrison alleged that anti-Communist and anti-Castro extremists in the CIA plotted the assassination of Kennedy to maintain tension with the Soviet Union and Cuba, and to prevent a United States withdrawal from Vietnam.Garrison, Jim. On The Trail of the Assassins, (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988), pp. 12-13, 43, 176-178, 277, 293. James Douglass wrote in JFK and the Unspeakable that the CIA, acting upon the orders of conspirators with the "military industrial complex", killed Kennedy and in the process set up Lee Harvey Oswald as a fall guy. Like Garrison, Douglass stated that Kennedy was killed because he was turning away from the Cold War and pursuing paths of nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with Fidel Castro, and withdrawal from the war in Vietnam. Mark Lane — author of Rush to Judgment and Plausible Denial and the attorney who defended Liberty Lobby against a defamation suit brought by former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt — has been described as a leading proponent of the theory that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy. Others who believe the CIA was involved include authors Anthony Summers and John M. Newman.
In 1977, the FBI released 40,000 files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy, including an April 3, 1967, memorandum from Deputy Director Cartha DeLoach to Associate Director Clyde Tolson that was written less than a month after President Johnson learned from J. Edgar Hoover about CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. According to DeLoach, LBJ aide Marvin Watson "stated that the President had told him, in an off moment, that he was now convinced there was a plot in connection with the assassination [of President Kennedy]. Watson stated the President felt that [the] CIA had had something to do with this plot."DeLoach to Tolson, FBI document 62-1090060-5075, April 4, 1967, p. 3. When questioned in 1975, during the Church Committee hearings, DeLoach told Senator Richard Schweiker that he "felt [that Watson's statement was] sheer speculation."Testimony of Courtney Evans and Cartha DeLoach, Church Committee Reports, vol. 6, Federal Bureau of Investigation, p. 182.
Conspirators and evidence
Oswald impersonator in Mexico City conspiracy theory
Gaeton Fonzi was hired as a researcher in 1975 by the Church Committee and by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1977. At the HSCA, Fonzi focused on the anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, and the links that these groups had with the CIA and the Mafia. Fonzi obtained testimony from Cuban exile Antonio Veciana that Veciana had once witnessed his CIA contact, who Fonzi would later come to believe was David Atlee Phillips, conferring with Lee Harvey Oswald.Michael Carlson, The Independent, September 17, 2012, Gaeton Fonzi: Journalist who investigated the assassination of John F KennedyThe Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures, JFK files: As Donald Trump looks to release classified documents, last living link to assassination drops bombshell, The Independent, 23 October 2017. Through his research, Fonzi became convinced that Phillips had played a key role in the assassination of President Kennedy. Fonzi also concluded that, as part of the assassination plot, Phillips had actively worked to embellish Oswald's image as a communist sympathizer. He further concluded that the presence of a possible Oswald impersonator in Mexico City, during the period that Oswald himself was in Mexico City, may have been orchestrated by PhillipsThe Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: Five Decades of Significant Disclosures
This evidence first surfaced in testimony given to the HSCA in 1978, and through the investigative work of independent journalist Anthony Summers in 1979. Summers spoke with a man named Oscar Contreras, a law student at National University in Mexico City, who said that someone calling himself Lee Harvey Oswald struck up a conversation with him inside a university cafeteria, in the fall of 1963. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had taken a bus trip from Houston to Mexico City and back during September–October 1963.Warren Commission Report, Appendix 13, pp. 732-735, Mexico CityWarren Commission Hearings, vol. 11, pp. 214–215, Affidavit of John Bryan McFarland and Meryl McFarland. Contreras described "Oswald" as "over thirty, light-haired and fairly short" — a description that did not fit the real Oswald To Fonzi, it seemed improbable that the real Oswald would at random start a conversation regarding his difficulties in obtaining a Cuban visa with Contreras, a man who belonged to a pro-Castro student group and had contacts in the Cuban embassy in Mexico City.
Fonzi theorized that there was an Oswald impersonator in Mexico City, directed by Phillips, during the period that the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald himself had visited the city. Fonzi's belief was strengthened by statements from other witnesses. On September 27, 1963, and again a week later, a man identifying himself as Oswald visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Consular Eusebio Azcue told Anthony Summers that the real Oswald "in no way resembled" the "Oswald" to whom he had spoken to at length.House Select Committee on Assassinations Hearings, Volume 3, pp. 136-139, Testimony of Eusebio Azcue Lopez. Embassy employee Sylvia Duran also told Summers that the real Oswald she eventually saw on film "is not like the man I saw here in Mexico City."
On October 1, the CIA recorded two tapped telephone calls to the Soviet embassy by a man identified as Oswald. The CIA transcriber noted that "Oswald" spoke in "broken Russian".AARC Library, Lopez Report, p. 136. The real Oswald was quite fluent in Russian.Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 9, p. 226, Testimony of George S. de Mohrenschildt. On October 10, 1963, the CIA issued a teletype to the FBI, the State Department and the Navy, regarding Oswald's visits to Mexico City. The teletype was accompanied by a photo of a man identified as Oswald who in fact looked nothing like him.AARC Library, Lopez Report, pp. 143-144.
On November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination of President Kennedy, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's preliminary analysis of the assassination included the following: