SUSPECTS
IN THE JFK ASSASSINATION
Michael
T. Griffith
2001
@All
Rights Reserved
Second
Edition
Revised
on 12/19/2002
Who would have wanted to see President Kennedy
dead? Various Warren Commission (WC) critics have identified a number of people
and groups whom they suspect were either involved in the assassination or had
foreknowledge of it and did nothing to prevent it because they wanted JFK out
of the way. There is a wide difference of opinion among researchers concerning
suspects. According to many researchers, the following individuals and groups
were involved in the assassination conspiracy or knew about it and did nothing
to prevent it:
* Lyndon Johnson
* The CIA
* J. Edgar Hoover
* Oil baron H. L.
Hunt
* Certain Mafia leaders
* Anti-Castro Cubans
* Ultra-conservative elements in the
military
* Richard Nixon
* Family and allies of
* Fidel Castro
Lyndon Johnson
Personally, I can't make up my mind about
Lyndon Johnson. I suspect Johnson was involved in the plot to murder President
Kennedy, but I'm by no means certain, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn he
was not involved. I think it's also possible Johnson knew about the plot ahead
of time but did nothing to prevent it.
All this being said, I think it's clear
Johnson was a driving force behind the cover-up that followed the
assassination. Some of Johnson's actions in the hours and days following the
shooting give me pause and have caused many researchers to suspect Johnson of
wrongdoing to varying degrees.
By November 1963, Johnson suspected he was
going to be dropped from the presidential ticket in 1964, and there is in fact
good evidence that JFK was going to get a new running mate for his reelection
campaign (26:291-295). Also, Johnson was facing at least one serious probe into
his alleged involvement in criminal activity. JFK's death saved LBJ's political
career and kept him out of jail. And, it's no secret that LBJ strongly
disliked, if not hated, both President Kennedy and his brother, Bobby Kennedy.
There are reports that LBJ blackmailed his way onto the ticket in 1960 by using
damaging information about JFK's personal life.
Attorney Craig Zirbel assembles
circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that Johnson was involved in the plot, in
his book The Texas Connection. Noel
Twyman presents evidence along the same line in Bloody Treason. Johnson's former mistress, Madeleine Brown, has
said that Johnson told her shortly before the assassination that after November
22 he wouldn't have to worry about Kennedy anymore. However, there is no
evidence to corroborate Ms. Brown's story.
The CIA
As a traditional conservative, initially I
was flabbergasted by the accusation that the CIA was involved in JFK's death.
My first reaction was to dismiss the charge as the absurd ravings of die-hard
liberals. But now, a few years and hundreds of hours of research later, I'm not
so sure. I do dismiss the idea that the CIA's top command was involved in the
plot, and I don't believe the CIA as an institution was involved in the deed.
However, I believe there is credible evidence that powerful renegade elements
of the CIA took part in the assassination conspiracy.
When conspiracists speak of the CIA in
reference to its alleged involvement in the assassination, they are referring
primarily to the CIA's covert action personnel, i.e., those agents who deal (or
who used to deal) in sabotage, propaganda, and assassination. There is evidence
that suggests that some of the Agency's covert operations personnel have also
taken part in drug trafficking (see, for example, 36; 37; 38; 11:164-226; 40;
17:125-127, 132-136, 164-166, 183-185, 234-235; 20:331-343; 21:285-287; 22).
Most CIA personnel are not involved in such
activities and would be appalled at any attempt to harm an elected official.
The covert operations personnel make up a large portion of the CIA, and they,
along with the Agency's top officials, are the most powerful group in the CIA.
In years past some high-ranking CIA officials attempted to frustrate
presidential policies and initiated or sanctioned illegal operations, to
include working with organized crime.
I reject Zirbel's suggestion that the CIA
was, if anything, happy with Kennedy and therefore had no conceivable reason to
want to see him dead. JFK and the CIA were often at odds with each other from
the moment of the
When Kennedy learned
A key figure who appears to link CIA covert
operations personnel to the assassination was CIA man David Atlee Phillips, who
was reportedly seen with Oswald a few months before the shooting (4:504-519;
15:128-171, 391-400, 408-409).
Among many other things, Phillips was the
propaganda chief for the
Another former CIA agent who has come under
suspicion is E. Howard Hunt. Hunt, a former high-ranking covert operator and a
propaganda specialist, was a key figure in the
Hunt made no secret of his intense dislike
for John Kennedy. Till the day he died, Hunt blamed JFK for the failure at the
Where was E. Howard Hunt on November 22,
1963? Hunt gave conflicting accounts of his exact whereabouts at the time of
the shooting. In his 1985 libel trial in
Veteran journalist Joseph Trento claims to
have seen a CIA memo that admitted Hunt was in
Several researchers have identified Hunt as
the small "tramp" in the famous "tramp photos." The tramp
photos show three supposed tramps who were arrested in the railroad yard behind
the grassy knoll shortly after the assassination. The tramps were found in a
freight train that had pulled out from behind the TSBD without authorization.
The railroad tower controller stopped the train because he knew it did not have
permission to depart. The police then searched the train and found the tramps.
In the tramp photos the tramps are being escorted by some
The tramp in the rear, the third tramp, is
the man identified by some researchers as E. Howard Hunt. I have studied
several photographs of Hunt and compared them with those of the third tramp. I
am struck by the resemblance between them. In their book Coup D'etat In America, which was endorsed by Congressman Henry
Gonzalez, authors Alan Weberman and Michael Canfield provide photographic
overlays of Hunt and the third tramp to demonstrate the marked resemblance
between the two. In 1988, experts at 3M's Comtal Corporation analyzed photos of
Hunt and of the third tramp and found a noticeable resemblance between them.
All this does not prove Hunt was the
third tramp, but it’s worth noting that he bears a strong resemblance to a man
who was arrested in
According to lone-gunman theorists, the men
in the tramp photos have been positively identified and had nothing to do with
the assassination. Soon after attention was focused on the tramp pictures by
the movie "JFK,"
WC defenders assert that the arrest records
and the finding of Gedney and Doyle "finally lay to rest irresponsible
theories of conspiracy" about the tramps. The third man listed in the
records is Gus Abrams. Richard Trask notes that Abrams' sister has identified
her brother as one of the men in the pictures. Thus, says Trask, "the
painstaking discovery of Mr. Doyle, his and the other two mens' stories, and
the evidence of Doyle's own face all come together into a more than credible
explanation" (23:347). However, there are several problems with the arrest
records and with Doyle's and Gedney's stories (5:347-353). I’m undecided about the tramps. They may have been innocent bystanders. I acknowledge that that’s a possibility. However, I think more information is needed
before anyone can reach a firm conclusion about them.
There are reports that certain CIA
operatives had foreknowledge of the assassination. One of these reports has
been related by Gaeton Fonzi, a former investigator for the House Select
Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Fonzi reports that a CIA operative
code-named Ten-One told him that one of his fellow CIA operatives dismissed the
claim that Oswald shot Kennedy because "he knows some of the people who
were involved" and that these individuals "were talking about it [the
shooting] before it even happened" (15:238-239).
Fonzi has also written that a close friend
of CIA hitman David Sanches Morales, Ruben Carbajal, told him that Morales once
indicated to a mutual associate, in Carbajal's presence, that he had been
involved in the assassination. Not only was Morales a CIA hitman, but he was
involved with the infamous Phoenix Program in
I looked at Ruben
Carbajal, who had remained silent while Walton was telling me this. Carbajal
looked at me and nodded his head. Yes, he was there, it was true. (15:390)
J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover strongly disliked, and in
fact hated, John Kennedy.
In 1979 the HSCA discovered that the FBI had
recorded conversations in 1962 and 1963 between various Mafia leaders and their
subordinates in which threats to kill JFK and wishes to see him murdered were
expressed (9:290; 56). Incredibly,
For more information on
Oil Baron H. L. Hunt
Conspiracy theorists are generally
suspicious of the late
The day before the assassination, Eugene
Hale Brading, a Mafia man with a long arrest record, visited Hunt's office
building in
Jack Ruby visited that hotel, and Hunt's
office building, on November 21. Moreover, according to Hunt's former chief aide,
John Curington, Marina Oswald met with Hunt two days before the shooting.
On November 23, Hunt asked his chief aide to
see what kind of security the police had for Oswald. The aide reported that
Oswald had very little protection and that security was very lax at police
headquarters where Oswald was being kept. Hunt flew to
Dick Russell's book The Man Who Knew Too Much (3) contains an important examination of
H. L. Hunt's troubling activities before and after the assassination, as does
Livingstone's Killing the Truth (see
also 1:276-278 and 2:568, 573-574).
A few years after the assassination, a
disturbing handwritten note surfaced. The note was addressed to a "Mr. Hunt"
and was signed "Lee Harvey Oswald." Three independent handwriting
experts retained by the Dallas Morning
News concluded the note was written by Oswald. In the note, which is dated
November 8, 1963, Oswald asks about his "position" and requests a
meeting before "any steps are taken by me or anyone else."
Was the "Mr. Hunt" oil giant H. L.
Hunt? Or, was it E. Howard Hunt of the CIA? Documents declassified in 1983
revealed that the FBI apparently believed the note was addressed to H. L.
Hunt's ultra-conservative millionaire son, Nelson Hunt.
The Mafia
Zirbel takes the view that the "Mafia
assassination theory is not logical" (6:66). Zirbel believes the Mafia had
enough compromising information on the Kennedys that it did not need to kill
JFK. Zirbel further says that only small-time Mafia men were involved in the
assassination. In my opinion, Zirbel's position is contradicted by the
evidence. While the Mafia did indeed have some embarrassing information on John
and Robert Kennedy, I think the record is clear that the Mob had strong motives
for wanting the President dead. There is evidence of Mafia involvement in the
assassination. Even the ultra-cautious HSCA concluded the Mafia had the means,
the motive, and the opportunity to assassinate President Kennedy. Prior to the
assassination, various Mafia leaders were heard to threaten JFK's life.
On November 20, two Mafia men told Rose
Cheramie that it was common knowledge in the underworld that Kennedy was about
to be killed. Mafia-CIA man David Ferrie was very probably involved in framing
Oswald while he was in
Without question, a Mafia man, Jack Ruby,
silenced Lee Harvey Oswald before he had a chance to tell his side of the
story. Furthermore, right after the President's visit to
Convicted
Many researchers believe Mafia kingfish
Carlos Marcello was a leading figure behind Kennedy's death. Five people, two
of them police informants, said they heard Marcello admit to being involved in
JFK's assassination (25:205-212). The Kennedys were waging a relentless war on
Marcello. Marcello was known to rabidly hate JFK and Bobby Kennedy. Jack Ruby
had considerable contact with Marcello's lieutenant in Dallas, Joe Civello.
Ruby also met with several Marcello associates, including Frank Caracci and
Cleeve Dugas, before the assassination. Furthermore, one of Marcello's men,
Nofio Pecora, once bailed Oswald (yes, Oswald) out of jail. John Davis, an
expert on organized crime, wrote a whole book on the evidence of Marcello's
involvement in the assassination, Mafia
Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (9).
A CIA document that was declassified in 1977
reports that a French assassin who belonged to the violent, anti-Kennedy French
terrorist organization known as the OAS was in Dallas on the day of the
shooting (1:202-209; 19:414-419; 25:95-126). The hitman's name, according to
the document, was Jean Soutre. The document mentions that Soutre had also gone
by the name of Michel Mertz. It now seems likely that the man was really Michel
Mertz using Soutre's name (25:95-172, 267-289). Mertz was a ruthless member of
the French Mafia, which had a strong motive to kill Kennedy (25:141-172,
267-289). Mertz and Soutre were enemies. Soutre himself said it was possible
that the man described in the document was Mertz using his, Soutre's, name.
Within 48 hours of the assassination, the man was picked up in
The CIA document mentions that Soutre
received mail from a dentist named Alderson. The FBI located this individual,
Dr. Lawrence Alderson, who had met Soutre while stationed in
Why would the Mafia have wanted JFK dead?
Quite simply, because the Kennedy administration was threatening the very
existence of organized crime in
Anti-Castro Cubans
In speaking of anti-Castro Cubans, I am
referring only to those exiles who were associated with the
In Zirbel's view, the anti-Castro Cubans
were admittedly furious with Kennedy over the failure of the Bay of Pigs
invasion but later forgave him because, among other things, he ransomed 1,200
captured exile troops from Castro (6:57). But there is strong evidence that
some anti-Castro Cubans never forgave Kennedy for the failure at the
Zirbel cites Kennedy's support of the
post-invasion efforts to get rid of Castro as another reason that the Cuban
exile troops would have forgiven JFK. However, Zirbel fails to deal with the
fact that Kennedy subsequently tried to shut down the anti-Castro training
bases and that he publicly pledged not to invade
Within days of the assassination, the Secret
Service learned from an informant that an anti-Castro Cuban activist in the
Chicago area, Homer S. Echevarria, in a discussion about an illegal arms sale a
short time before the President was killed, said that "his group had
'plenty of money' and that his backers would proceed [with the arms deal] as soon as we take care of Kennedy.'"
This information prompted the agent in charge of the
Anthony Summers' books Conspiracy and Not in Your
Lifetime contain thorough analyses of the possible role of some militant
anti-Castro Cubans in the assassination (4:268-339, 386-429; see also
1:135-155).
Ultra-Conservative Elements in the
Military
It's no secret that there were numerous
leaders in the military who viewed Kennedy as being weak, soft on communism (if
not pro-communist), and almost dangerous to the free world. They didn't like
his handling of the Berlin Wall Crisis, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile
Crisis, his backing of the coup against
One figure who has come under close scrutiny
by some conspiracists is the late Major General Edward Lansdale, U.S. Air
Force.
It is clear that Lansdale schemed and
plotted "to capture the emerging
Was
What about other senior military officers?
Could elements of the miliatry have been involved in the assassination? Sadly,
this possibility can't be ruled out. As mentioned, several senior military
leaders viewed Kennedy as almost dangerous to the free world. Kennedy's
relations with a number of senior military officers were reportedly about as bad
as his relations were with the CIA. Some senior military officials attempted to
give JFK a misleading, inaccurate picture of the true state of affairs in
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, one
high-ranking general took the unbelievably irresponsible step of ordering a
missile to be fired, without
Kennedy's authorization. The missile was unarmed, but the launching could have
triggered a Soviet response. A recent episode in the BBC 2 documentary series Time Watch detailed how during the '50s
and '60s leading generals were anxious to go to war with the
Richard Nixon
As a traditional conservative, I was even
more shocked by the suggestion that Richard Nixon was involved in the
assassination than I was by the idea that the CIA played a role in it.
However, it is no secret that Nixon was one
of the most corrupt presidents in the history of our republic. It's possible
that Nixon had foreknowledge of the assassination, but there is no substantive evidence
of this. Personally, I don't believe Nixon was involved in the assassination
plot. Nevertheless, let's review some of the facts that have led some
researchers to view Nixon as a suspect.
What motive would Nixon have had to want
Kennedy dead? For one thing, Nixon believed Kennedy had stolen the election
from him and that therefore JFK's election was illegitimate. Nixon also might
have feared that if JFK were reelected in 1964, that Bobby Kennedy would be in
prime position to win in 1968 and again in 1972, thus ruining his chances to be
president.
Most Americans are familiar with the
Watergate scandal, which led to Nixon's resigning in disgrace in 1974. What is
not as well known is the degree to which Nixon aided certain elements of the
Mafia during his tenure in the White House. This is not surprising, given the
fact that Nixon's friends, and even some of his appointees, included several
people who had important Mafia connections.
The Nixon administration repeatedly
intervened to quash prosecutions and investigations of criminal activity in
Mafia-dominated labor unions. Nixon was involved in a number of highly
questionable--and, in some cases, Mob-connected--financial dealings. Nixon
pardoned organized crime figures after the government had spent millions of
dollars to put them in jail. Among those pardoned was Mafia killer Angelo
DeCarlo. On one occasion, recorded on a 1971 Watergate tape, Nixon and his
aides discussed using Mob thugs to attack anti-war protestors. Not
surprisingly, by all accounts the Mafia warmly endorsed and supported Nixon's
campaigns. John Davis, an authority on organized crime, has said, If ever there
was a candidate for the presidency whom the mob wanted elected, it was Richard
Nixon. Since the earliest days of his political career in
A study of the Nixon presidency reveals a
consistent pattern of serious corruption and suspicious deaths, as several
authors have discussed in detail. Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill said
the following:
. . . I've been
around politics for a long time, and I can say with assurance that what went on
during the Nixon presidency was unlike anything I had ever seen, or even heard
of. We're talking about blackmail and corruption in the highest office in the
land. (7:280)
O'Neill went on to relate that several
wealthy businessmen who had previously supported Democratic presidential
candidates were suddenly giving money to Nixon because the Nixon administration
was using the IRS and other agencies to blackmail them into donating
(7:281-286). The businessmen were first threatened with all sorts of
investigations and inspections; then, they were led to understand that if they
would donate to the Nixon campaign, they wouldn't have anything to worry about.
Harrison Livingstone writes,
I feel that the
real reason Nixon was pursued over the Watergate break-ins was that there were
a series of murders connected with Richard Nixon's presidency.
Not only was the
liberal-centrist leadership that represented the majority of Americans
crippled, but numerous others--witnesses, journalists, lawyers, bureaucrats,
and ordinary people were liquidated. Watergate itself saw a number of deaths,
including an entire planeload of people in a crash onto the streets of
The plane crash victims to whom Livingstone
refers were on Flight 553. The plane crashed under very suspicious circumstances
on December 8, 1972, a few months after CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and other
intelligence operatives had broken into the Democratic Party's campaign
headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Among the aircraft's passengers were
Hunt's wife, Dorothy, and CBS correspondent Michelle Clark. According to
Watergate witness and Hunt associate James McCord, by the time Mrs. Hunt died
in the crash, she was upset at having to bribe witnesses and defendants, and
wanted out. It was rumored at the time that she was about to leave Hunt and
perhaps even turn on him. Reportedly, when Dorothy Hunt boarded the flight, she
was carrying documents that were very damaging to her husband and to the Nixon
presidency. (After the crash, columnist Jack Anderson said the documents were returned
to Hunt in August 1972.) Law enforcement officials were quoted as saying that
ten thousand dollars was found in Mrs. Hunt's purse. Other reports put the
figure at well past $100,000. Hunt claimed his wife was taking the money to her
cousin to invest. Charles Colson, Nixon's counsel, later told Time magazine, "I think they killed
Dorothy Hunt."
Michelle Clark was actively pursuing an
investigation into the Watergate scandal. She reportedly had learned from
inside sources that the Hunts were considering blowing the whistle on the Nixon
White House. If so,
One of the most disturbing things about
Flight 553 is that the plane appears to have been sabotaged. Not only that, but
somehow swarms of FBI agents (at least 50) reportedly just happened to be near
the crash site well before the plane
went down. In fact, the FBI agents reportedly were in the crash area before the
firemen arrived, even though the fire department had received an emergency call
within one minute of the crash.
The day after the crash, Nixon appointed
Egil Krogh Undersecretary of Transportation. Krogh had previously headed up
Nixon's "plumber's" unit, which employed E. Howard Hunt and was
involved in the Watergate break-in. Krogh himself later went to prison for
burglarizing a psychiatrist's offices. As Undersecretary of Transportation,
Krogh was in a position to supervise the two government agencies responsible
for investigating the crash of Flight 553, the National Transportation Safety
Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), and witnesses later
testified that he played a "leading role" in at least one attempt to intimidate
members of the NTSB when it was investigating the crash.
Eleven days after Flight 553 went down,
Nixon named Alexander Butterfield head of the FAA. Butterfield had worked for
the CIA and was the White House aide in charge of secretly taping presidential
conversations and phone calls. Livingstone presents a thorough analysis of the
case of Flight 553 in chapter 20 of High
Treason 2.
It is now known that Nixon delayed the
withdrawal from
Mr. Speaker, I
speak today about the murderous actions of the late former President Richard
Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger in the early 1970's.
The Nixon
administration, elected with a pledge of having a secret plan to end the
Vietnam war, took credit in the 1972 elections for the withdrawal from
Each day that we
delayed our withdrawal, American servicemen died needlessly. Kissinger advised
against early withdrawal for election reasons in December of 1970. According to
Department of Defense statistics, 2,412 men died in 1971, another 767 in 1972,
and 65 more in 1973. In total, 3,244 men died while the withdrawal was delayed
for the purposes of ensuring the re-election of Richard Nixon and the sinecure
of Henry Kissinger.
One hundred and
forty slabs of stone carry the names of 58,191 dead servicemen at the Vietnam
Memorial. If Nixon and Kissinger had considered the lives of their fellow
Americans instead of their own political victories, 7 stones would not have
been needed. The next time you visit the Wall, think about it--1 out of every
20 names would not be there if we had pulled out quickly and decisively when
Kissinger first
discussed it. One out of every 20 names is there to help win an election for
CREEP. The blood of 3,244 servicemen is an enormous burden on the soul to take
to your grave. (24:E1116-1117)
What about Nixon and the assassination? For
one thing, there is some evidence linking him to Jack Ruby. It was reported in
a 1947 FBI document that Jack Ruby had performed "information functions
for the staff of Congressman Richard Nixon" (1:269). Nixon flew to
Nixon left
According to none other than Nixon's chief
of staff, H. R. Haldeman, Nixon attempted to force the CIA to assist in
thwarting investigations into Watergate by threatening to expose the CIA's role
in the Kennedy assassination (13:110-111; 5:329-330; 9:402-404; cf. 1:272-273;
5:87-92). In connection with this, it is worth mentioning again that E. Howard
Hunt of the CIA tried to blackmail Nixon for over $100,000 dollars, and Nixon
seriously considered paying the money, as White House tapes reveal. What did
Hunt know?
Several of the people who were hired or
considered for employment by the Nixon White House during Watergate had been
connected with the Warren Commission (3:273-274; 9:410-414). Was this just a
coincidence? In addition, some of the operatives and Cuban exiles who were
involved in the
Family and Allies of Ngo Dinh Diem
It's worth noting that Kennedy was
assassinated just three weeks after
Furthermore, Diem and Nhu learned that
Kennedy was backing the coup well before the coup actually occurred, but they
didn't know the exact date of the coup (there were several postponements of the
coup). It would have been only natural for Diem and Nhu to have set plans in
motion to kill Kennedy. Nhu was Diem's chief advisor and the head of the
nation's secret police. Nhu and Diem were involved in the lucrative heroin
traffic with the French Mafia, the same French Mafia to which Michel Mertz
belonged. Not only would Diem and Nhu have wanted Kennedy dead in order to put
a stop to the coming coup against them, but they might very well have viewed
Kennedy as a powerful potential threat to their multimillion-dollar heroin
business with the French Mafia, given the Kennedys' ongoing war against the
Mafia in America and the Kennedy Administration's pressure on the French
government to get tough with the French Mafia. The French Mafia, the American
Mafia, and the Diem government were effectively business partners in a
lucrative heroin network. We now know that Nhu's counter-intelligence
operatives placed electronic bugs in the U.S. Embassy in
But one thing we
know was never disclosed in
The only problem
with that is that the coup took place a little sooner than Diem counted on. We
contend that Diem and Nhu (along with their colleagues in the Marseille and
Interestingly, it has come to light that
three previously classified FBI file surveys named Nhu's wife, known as Madame
Nhu, and the government of
Such a cruel
injustice against a faithful ally cannot go unnoticed, and those who indulge in it will have to pay for it. . . . If my family
has been treacherously killed with either the official or unofficial blessing
of the American Government, I can predict
to you all that the story of
Three weeks after Madame Nhu made this
statement, JFK was killed in
There is some evidence that Lyndon Johnson
himself suspected that supporters of Diem and Nhu were involved in Kennedy's
death (25:281-282).
What is especially interesting is that the
Russian KGB investigated the assassination and concluded Kennedy "was shot
by a professional assassin hired by French and South Vietnamese agents"
(25:284). This information comes from Colonel Semyonavitch Pavlotsky, who was
the highest ranking officer in the KGB's investigative unit. Pavlotsky
continues,
Our unit knew that
the Americans helped overthrow and murder
Fidel Castro
Gus Russo's book Live by the Sword convinced me to add Fidel Castro to the list of
suspects. Some researchers have long suspected that Castro and his agents
played a role in Kennedy's death. In the aftermath of the assassination, many
people speculated that Castro was responsible for Kennedy's murder. Several
conservative commentators suggested Oswald was hired by Castro and/or the
Soviets to kill Kennedy.
Certainly Castro had a motive to kill
Kennedy. Castro knew of the CIA-Mafia assassination plots to kill him, and he
most likely suspected JFK approved those plots. It would have been only natural
for Castro to retaliate by attempting to kill Kennedy before Kennedy, or the
CIA and the Mafia, killed him.
Russo presents evidence that Oswald met with
Cuban intelligence agents in
Is it illogical to posit both pro-Castro and
anti-Castro Cuban involvement in the assassination? Not at all. It's well known
that some Cuban exiles despised Kennedy and viewed him as a traitor after the
It should be kept in mind that some of the
reports of Cuban involvement in the assassination might very well have been
disinformation generated by elements of the CIA, possibly as part of an effort
to incite an American invasion of
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, the conspiracy that killed
President Kennedy was comprised of several persons and groups. Not all these
persons and groups were involved to the same degree or at the same time. I
think it's pretty clear elements of the Mafia and some anti-Castro Cubans were
involved. It's possible that agents of Fidel Castro played a role as well.
Castro's agents might have encouraged, or even assisted, embittered Cuban
exiles who wanted to kill Kennedy. I think J. Edgar Hoover knew of the plot but
did nothing to stop it. Funding for the plot could have come from H. L. Hunt. I
believe certain rogue elements in the CIA's covert operations division were
also involved, and that fanatical elements in the military may have assisted
them. What we must realize is that back then there was considerable interaction
between the Mafia, elements of the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans.
As for the cover-up, I believe that members
of
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael
T. Griffith holds a Master’s degree in Theology from The Catholic Distance
University, a Graduate Certificate in Ancient and Classical History from
American Military University, a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from
Excelsior College, and two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the
Community College of the Air Force. He
also holds an Advanced Certificate of Civil War Studies and a Certificate of
Civil War Studies from
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