John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories

A number of theories exist with regard to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Such theories began to be generated soon after the President's death and continue to be proposed today. Many of these theories propose a criminal conspiracy involving parties such as the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, Cuban exile groups opposed to the Castro government, and the military and/or government interests of the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Warren Commission

In 1964, the Warren Commission held secret proceedings and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, by himself, assassinated the President.
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) held additional secret proceedings and concluded that Lee Oswald was part of a conspiracy, and that a shooter fired on the President from the front, while Oswald fired at him from behind.

Based on the results of three opinion polls held in 2003, most Americans agree with the 1979 HSCA findings, and accept that Oswald conspired with others to kill the President and that a second shooter was involved. An ABC TV News poll [1] showed that 68% of respondents do not accept that Oswald acted alone, while a Discovery Channel poll [2] showed 79% support and a History Channel poll [3] showed 83%.

However, the HSCA did not attempt to identify any others who may have assisted Oswald, and also classified all the evidence it considered, fueling speculation that this allowed those genuinely responsible for murdering the President to avoid further investigation and prosecution. The controversy then appeared to die down until these concerns returned to public prominence in 1991 through the release of the popular movie " JFK" by Director Oliver Stone. The Assassination Records Review Board reported what happened next:

In 1991, Oliver Stone's "JFK" popularized a version of President Kennedy's assassination that featured U.S. government agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the military as conspirators. While the movie was largely fictional, the information that Stone conveyed in the movie's closing trailer was true: the HSCA had reinvestigated the murder and issued a provocative report, but their records were sealed until the year 2029. Stone suggested at the end of JFK that Americans could not trust official public conclusions when those conclusions had been made in secret. Congress passed legislation--the JFK Act--that released the secret records that prior investigations gathered and created. [4]

Under the JFK Records Act of 1992, many pages of classified documents have been turned over to the Board and then to the National Archives. Some of them have been declassified already.

The ARRB has this to say about the growing consensus of Americans that are skeptical of the Warren Report's conclusion that a lone gun man killed the President:

Doubts about the Warren Commission's findings were not restricted to ordinary Americans. Well before 1978, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and four of the seven members of the Warren Commission all articulated, if sometimes off the record, some level of skepticism about the Commission's basic findings. [5]

The House Select Committee on Assassination

While the HSCA concluded there was a probability of a conspiracy involved in the murder of Kennedy, it couldn't or wouldn't identify any other conspirators other than to say they might be individuals associated with anti-Castro groups or individuals associated with organized crime that were in some way also associated with Lee Oswald. The HSCA identified David Ferrie as a possible link because of his associaton with Oswald that may have taken the form of a personal friendship. Ferrie himself was also associated with organized crime figures and anti-Castro. groups. [6]

Oswald himself was also a nephew of a person who was associated with organized crime in New Orleans. Oswald and Ferrie knew one another when both were in a New Orlean's military auxiliary unit for boys immediately before Oswald joined the Marines when he turned 17. HSCA Final Report Page 145-147 [7] (Official Congressional Document at the Link) Oswald was a cadet in the teenage youth group and Ferrie was an instructor who also worked for a commercial airline as a pilot. There is a picture of Ferrie and Oswald with a small group of other member cadets when Oswald was 15. [8] David Ferrie had a sexual appetite for teen age boys that is well documented though he was never convicted of such acts. See, David Ferrie.

Within days after the Kennedy murder, the FBI and Secret Service got a tip on the Dave Ferrie-Lee Oswald link but didn't follow up on the information. These agencies dismissed the information as a "figment of the imagination" of a New Orleans private investigator. [9]

In contrast, when the HSCA investigated later, it believed the testimony of witnesses that Oswald was with Dave Ferrie in Clinton La. [10] in late August or early September 1963. The HSCA also noted that, on several occasions, [11] Oswald was seen up in the office of a man named Guy Bannister, by a secretary, (See, Official Congressional Document at the Link) [12] Bannister, along with Dave Ferrie, worked in connection with New Orlean's underworld figures and anti-Castro groups, (Official Congressional Document at the Link, Page 145), and was seen in the restaurant downstairs from Bannister's office several times where Ferrie and Guy Bannister used to frequent. Oswald worked nearby, and used the same small building that Bannister used as an address stamped on his Fair Play for Cuba Committee pamphlets. (Official Congressional Document at the Link 145-147) [13]

There are other theories. Some of the other theories vary as to what extent, if any, Oswald was involved in the assassination. It has become public recently that there was some one impersonating Oswald in Mexico both calling and visiting the Russian Embassy trying to contact a Russian assassin. The CIA and FBI had concealed this information for over 30 years. [14]

The impersonator made these contacts less than 60 days before the President was assassinated. Oswald always denied participating in the murder and claimed he was a "patsy."

Thus, after over forty years have elapsed, the two "official" government investigations, with two different results on how many people were involved, and how many shots were fired, and many other government committees, boards, and panel reports, have not fully answered the question, for most people, of the number of, and the identities, of the people who killed John F. Kennedy.

There is no shortage of theories regarding the assassination and "pinning blame" on one's enemies: Richard Nixon, in a tape recorded conversaton, once said:

"They pinned the assassination of Kennedy on the right wing; the Birchers [meaning the John Birch Society]. It was done by a Communist and it was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated. And I respectfully suggest, can't we pin this [attempted assassination of George Wallace] on one of theirs?" [15]

Records Collection Act of 1992

Much of the confusion and skepticism surrounding the official theories of what took place has arisen out of the secrecy surrounding the Warren Commission's investigation and President Johnson sealing all the evidence surrounding the case in 1964.

In one stroke, Congress broke this cloak of secrecy in 1993, when the U.S. Congress passed the "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992" [16] which required all documentation pertaining to President Kennedy's assassination be unsealed and released. The civilian Assassination Records Review Board was put in charge of the process, which in the late 1990s released approximately six million pages of documents into the National Archives for public scrutiny. Investigators from the newly created Board subpoened documents from many sources and took testimony and opened to the public the many previously sealed documents which pertain to various conspiracies. Researchers are now combing through these documents to determine what this evidence reveals. Moreover, many documents remain to be unsealed.

Many new facts have already surfaced. For example, Dr. John Newman the author of JFK and Vietnam (1992) and Oswald and the CIA (1995) found within the newly released documents how the CIA, FBI and government began to cover-up Oswald's trip to Mexico; and how this impacted the Warren Commission and possibly created the hoax Nixon refers to. This cover-up was done initially by intelligence services perhaps to hide sources and incompetence, but once discovered was then carried forward by top government officials with the stated purpose of avoiding potential nuclear war with Russia. One possible flash point involved a recorded telephone conversation, prior to the assassination, where Oswald is impersonated and linked to the KGB.

As a consequence of this cover-up Dr. Newman laments: "Whether or not this also permitted conspirators to avoid the scrutiny of investigation — a possibility I take seriously — is something we will continue to debate." [17]

Evidence

One Shooter

Testimony supporting one shooter

Witnesses at the scene of the assassination saw a rifle being fired from the sixth floor window of the Depository Building, and some witnesses saw a rifle in the window immediately after the shots were fired. This is evidence that shots were fired from the depository.
Some people claim that the nature of the bullet wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally, and the location of the car at the time of the shots, establish that the bullets were fired from above and behind the Presidential limousine.
The bullet found on Governor Connally's stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital and the two bullet fragments found in the front seat of the Presidential limousine were matched to a 6.5- millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. No other bullet fragments from any other rifle were found.
The windshield in the Presidential limousine was struck by a bullet fragment on the inside surface of the glass, meaning that these fragments came from behind, and not in front, of the President.
The Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle from which the shots were fired was allegedly owned by Oswald.
Shortly after the assassination, a rifle was found partially-hidden between some boxes on the sixth floor and the improvised paper wrapper/bag that covered the rifle was found by the window from which the shots were fired. This is further evidence that shots were fired from the depository.
Oswald was seen carrying a paper bag/wrapper in a car on the way to, and into, the depository. He said, when he was asked, that it was full of "curtain-rods", which he said were for the rooming-house he was living in, while he was living away from his wife. The paper bag was found, but the "curtain-rods" were never found at the Depository. Some rods were found in the garage where his wife was living, but with no discernible fingerprints.

Why were they not found in the Depository?

Two shooters

Testimony supporting two shooters:

Over 50 witnesses who were present at the shooting heard shots that were fired from in front of the President, from the area of the grassy knoll and triple underpass, and approximately the same number of witnesses perceived shots were fired from behind the president (from the book depository). A small number of witnesses heard shots from both the front and the back of the president. [18]
Several eyewitnesses who were very close to the president and had a good view, saw the back of the president’s head "blasted out", that is consistent with being shot from the front. These include:
a. Clint Hill the secret service agent who was sheltering the President with his body on the way to the hospital and described the "The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car."; [19] [20]

b. Roy Kellerman, the President’s bodyguard who saw a 5 inch diameter hole in the back right hand side of the president’s head. [21]

c. Dr. McClelland, a treating physician in the emergency room who observed the head wound, stated that the posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue was missing.[22][23]

d. Dr. Kemp, Professor and Director of Neurological Surgery, who was also in the emergency room treating Kennedy also described the President's skull wound as being a large wound in the right occipitoparietal region. The occipital lobe of the brain is just above the cerebellum part of the brain.
The two official government investigations have confirmed that the security around Kennedy's motorcade had been considerably reduced from its typical levels. The lack of security suggests to some that the CIA, Secret Service and/or some other agent, rogue agent(s), or agencies were actively involved in the assassination, rather than simply exhibiting an act of negligence.
Oswald denied killing the president and was soon murdered himself.
Many people have pointed to the Warren Commission's single bullet theory causing all but one of the wounds in both Kennedy and John Connally, as unlikely. While some ballistic evidence has suggested that such a bullet trajectory was possible, this particular point is a source of much contention and disagreement. The biggest problem with the single bullet theory posited by the Warren Commission and the HSCA in 1979, is at the autopsy examination, the only wound noted to Kennedy's back was below the neck of Kennedy; and was less than a finger-length deep; and the bullet angled downward at from a 45 degree angle to a 60 degree angle. Nevertheless, under the single bullet theory the bullet was supposed to have exited the front of Kennedy's throat and then inflicted multiple wounds to Connally.
The scenario of two shooters is supported by eye witnesses. A large number of witnesses who were standing in the front of Kennedy heard the shots coming from the left, and not behind the President. In contrast, those up the road to the back of Kennedy heard the shots coming from the back. Therefore, all the members of one of the two groups of witnesses would have had to be wrong under the one-shooter theory. On the other hand, the two-shooter scenario with one shooter in front and one at the back is consistent with the statements of both groups of eyewitnesses.
According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), the acoustic evidence preserved on tape establishes a fourth shot may have been fired, meaning there must have been two shooters.
The size of the back head wound, in these descriptions, indicates it is the exit wound and that a second shooter from the front delivered the fatal head shot. [24]

Other controversial issues include:

Oswald had a better chance of shooting Kennedy as he was coming towards him, and not to wait until he was moving away from him, with the added difficulty of slight tree cover.
The immediate cleaning and renovation of the President's Lincoln Continental on the orders of LBJ. The vehicle should instead have been secured as evidence to allow forensic ballistics to be conducted. The failure to do so and the subsequent cleaning may have amounted to a criminal offence of tampering and/or destroying evidence.
The immediate removal of the President's body to Washington, when it should have been examined by the local coroner as required by Texas law.
Governor Connally’s hat, which he was holding in his right hand when his wrist was penetrated by a rifle bullet, has disappeared from the evidence chain after last being seen in the Dallas police chief's office on the evening of November 22. According to Connally's wife and official reports, the gold Mexican peso cufflink Connally was wearing on his right shirt sleeve cuff also disappeared.
The Dallas police did not seal off the Texas School Book Depository until 12:39 to 12:40 PM; policeman, detectives, witnesses, and others were busy searching the grassy knoll, parking lot, and railroad yard from 12:30 to 12:39 pm.
The Dealey Plaza area itself was not sealed off by the Dallas police, and photographs show that vehicles were driving down Elm Street, through the crime scene kill zone, within nine minutes of the assassination.
Oswald's Marine Corps service record was destroyed in 1973.
Several of the Bethesda autopsy photos are now missing.

It may never be possible to substantiate any conspiracy theory, or conversely, disprove the Warren Commission's findings that Oswald acted alone. However, perhaps several pieces of evidence may yet emerge and/or be declassified (Oswald's Marine Corps G-2 files and some of the FBI files in 1959-60) [25] which could shed light on unknown aspects of this turning point in American history.

Response

Those who dispute conspiracy theories have extensive evidence in attempts to refute them. [26]

The lax security could merely be the result of Kennedy being aware of the danger, but ultimately believing if someone wanted to kill him, they would.
Despite Oswald's denials there was evidence linking him to the rifle and the shooting; Jack Ruby was known for his underworld/police connections he was also known to be impulsive and had a quick temper, and therefore he may have killed Oswald as part of a plot to silence him. The Dallas police received several phone calls saying that Oswald would be killed. Some think that Ruby made those calls, although this has never been proven. [27]
Stopping government discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination would have more to do with quelling potentially damaging and misleading gossip and speculation; so that the investigation could proceed normally.^{[citation needed]}
Oswald consistently lied in order to hide any connection between himself and the rifle. His wife testified she took the photo with a specific camera and the FBI was able to confirm the testimony with forensics analysis. A copy of the photo was also signed by Oswald and given to a friend George de Mohrenschildt. Although after being shown these incriminating photos, Oswald said - in police custody - that they were fakes, and that he could prove it. Later tests showed that although one may have been genuine, the others were faked because of the exact same size of the heads at different angles and distances from the camera. [28]
At least one computer analysis has been used to assert that the bullet trajectory is not only consistent with the single bullet theory, but could only have been fired from a high position behind Kennedy. [29]
Different groups hearing a shot from behind and the front could be both correct given the likelihood of echo from surrounding structures. Furthermore an eyewitness on the fifth floor directly below the sixth floor window clearly heard three shots from that location. Only two bullets are needed to account for the President's injuries. [30]
Subsequently the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) examined the HSCA analysis of the dictabelt recording and "found a multitude of errors and omissions, the most serious of which was that the time that the Select Committee experts thought the shots were being fired was the wrong time. It was actually one minute after the assassination had actually taken place." In 2001, Dr. Donald B. Thomas published a paper in the British forensics journal Science & Justice claiming the NAS findings were wrong. [31] Thomas' conclusions have been challenged by subsequent studies. [32] [33]
The exact size ([34] vs. [35]) and position of the back head wound isn't precisely known. However, there is nothing inconsistent with a bullet making a hole larger than itself when entering a round (collapsible) object like a skull.^{[citation needed]}

Specific Conspiracy Theories / motives

Note that some of the following people and groups have been claimed by some to have been working together and as such these different theories are not always viewed as mutually exclusive.

LBJ Conspiracy

Vice-President Lyndon Johnson arguably gained the most from Kennedy's death, in that it promoted him to the presidency. When he was selected for the role of Vice-President he is quoted as saying, "One-in-four presidents die in office - maybe I´ll get lucky." Proponents suggest that Johnson thus had active reason to seek Kennedy's murder, as he was supposedly not a man who would be able to get elected on his own. Like many vice-presidents of the United States, Johnson's appointment was largely an attempt to provide a ´regional balance´ to the Democratic ticket, making Johnson seem expendable. During the Kennedy presidency his power and influence was limited.

President Kennedy had discussed with his closest aides (including his personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln) that he was considering dropping Johnson as vice-president before the 1964 U.S. presidential election.

Richard Nixon, who was also in Dallas from November 20, 1963 until just an hour before Kennedy arrived, was quoted in the November 22, 1963 Dallas newspaper saying he believed Kennedy would drop Johnson from the 1964 Democratic ticket because Johnson was embroiled in several high-profile political scandals (see Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes).

At the time of Kennedy's death, Johnson was the subject of four major criminal investigations involving government contract violations, misappropriation of funds, money laundering and bribery. (All four scandals "disappeared" after November 22, 1963) [36] Johnson biographers agree that Johnson was politically aggressive and power-hungry. Others have written that Johnson was an agent of the mafia — blackmailed by organized crime with revelations of Johnson's past criminal actions. [37]

Some theorists claim that an unidentified fingerprint found on a cardboard box on the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building is that of a known associate of President Johnson, one Malcom Wallace, a convicted murderer. In 1998 a fingerprint examiner named A. Nathan Darby signed an affidavit which asserted a 14 point match, though such a match has not been made by FBI fingerprint examiners or other independent examiners. [38]

LBJ had the limousine completely refurbished shortly after the death of Kennedy.

Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas - the home state of Lyndon Johnson. Conspiracists contend the Vice-President had links with people who could carry out the assassination in secret.

Military-Industrial Complex Conspiracy

The U.S. "military-industrial complex," which had been preparing for an escalation of the Vietnam War since the French withdrew from Vietnam in 1954 after France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu, knew that President Kennedy had seriously discussed plans and implemented actions to gradually withdraw all U.S. military advisers from Vietnam by the beginning of 1965. At the moment that President Kennedy was killed, 1,100 U.S. troops were in the air on their way home as part of President Kennedy's initial steps of withdrawing from Vietnam. President Kennedy's vice president, L.B. Johnson, undertook a major escalation of the war against Vietnam after he succeeded President Kennedy. In addition, elements of the U.S. military/intelligence apparatus were upset about President Kennedy's decision not to provide major overt U.S. military support for the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, and his pledge as part of the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis to refrain from further attempts to invade Cuba.

CIA Conspiracy

Frequently mentioned in other theories is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During the 1960s and 1970s, it was rumoured that the CIA had become involved in plots to assassinate foreign leaders, and claims are made that it had various motives for removing Kennedy from power. Kennedy´s statement that he would, "Break the CIA into a thousand pieces" after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and later moves to limit the power of the CIA were blocked by ´bureaucratic resistance´.

Congress finally looked into this after three high profile assassinations in the United States (President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert Kennedy) and attempted assassinations abroad.

Congress began investigating the intelligence agencies by way of the Church Committee.
In 1975 and 1976, the Church Committee published fourteen reports on the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies, their operations, and the alleged abuses of law and of power that they had committed.
Among the matters the Church Committee investigated: the involvement by U.S. intelligence agencies to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Fidel Castro and Gen. Rene Schneider of Chile.
The amount of domestic power possessed by the CIA during the 1960s might be gauged by the fact that the former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, was fired by President Kennedy for presiding over the disastrous invasion of Cuba by a small army of Cuban nationals, but was then appointed as one of the seven members of the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy's assassination.
President Kennedy also spoke to his advisers about the possible installation of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as the CIA's director.
The CIA was also very active in Vietnam at the time Kennedy was assassinated. The CIA had further angered Kennedy in Vietnam by being involved in the assassination of President Diem on November 1, 1963.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) later reviewed these issues and in 1979 concluded that, even though a conspiracy may have been responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, the U.S Intelligence agencies were not a part of the conspiracy

Organized Crime Conspiracy

Another possible culprit were the Mafia, in retaliation for their increasing crackdowns (12 times the number of prosecutions under Eisenhower) against organized crime. Documents never seen by the Warren Commission have revealed that the mafia was working very closely with the CIA on several assassination attempts of Fidel Castro known under the CIA code name Operation Mongoose. The CIA under the Kennedys approached the mafia because the CIA recognized the mutual benefits of ousting Castro. The mafia's interest lie in reclaiming of billions of dollars lost from gambling, drugs, prostitution, etc. when Castro seized the mafia's gambling and narcotics trafficking assets in 1959. Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, and mobsters Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli, Charles Nicoletti, and Santo Trafficante Jr., (all of whom save Hoffa worked with the CIA on the Castro assassination plots) top the list of House Select Committee on Assassinations mafia suspects.[39]. The family of Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana claims the Kennedys double-crossed him after the mafia, via workers unions controlled by the Illinois mafia, helped elect Kennedy President.

James Files, a hitman for the Chicago family, confessed to assassination of JFK on the record ^{[citation needed]}, he claims that Johnny Rosselli and Charles Nicoletti were also present and worked on the orders of Sam Giancana. His testimony has been subject to detailed cross-corroboration with other possible suspects and witnesses during investigation by retired FBI agents, according to their information the assassination has been thoroughly compartmentalized among the mob, CIA and local police squad. Although Files' story can not be fully validated he seems to have knowledge that proves his involvement in the JFK assassination plot. He is currently serving a 30-year jail sentence for attempted murder on a policeman.

Jack Ruby had grown up working for mafia leader Al Capone in Chicago. Carlos Marcello believed it was necessary to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother Bobby, who was serving as attorney general and leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade, reportedly saying "To kill a rabid dog, you must cut off the head (JFK), not the tail." (Bobby Kennedy.) [40]

J. Edgar Hoover was the long-time director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He did not want to retire even though he was approaching in January 1965 the then-mandatory government retirement age of 70 and would have been retired by President Kennedy had Kennedy lived to be reelected.

Hoover often told his aides that he deeply despised the Kennedys. Hoover may have been a gay transvestite. He lived with his longtime assistant director, Clyde Tolson and before this, with his mother until she died. If true, and if the mafia knew of Hoover's sexuality, the mafia could have been blackmailing Hoover to secure his silence whether Hoover knew about the assassination conspirators beforehand, after, or not.

This blackmail by the mafia of Hoover, like Hoover’s good friend and at the time of the assassination, next-door neighbor Lyndon Johnson, may have also extended to any investigations cover-up and guaranteed Hoover’s compliance and silence after the assassination. It is documented that before President Kennedy was elected, that Hoover rarely acknowledged even the existence of the mafia. After Kennedy became president the prosecutions of the mafia by the Robert F. Kennedy-led Justice Department (of which the FBI is a part) increased elevenfold. After President Kennedy was killed, Justice Department mafia prosecutions dropped sharply, reverting to pre-Kennedy administration levels.

In 1964, just days before his Warren Commission testimony, Hoover was appointed Director of the FBI "for life" by Kennedy's successor, Johnson, a decision which would have to have been, by law, reapproved by the president every year. Since Hoover's death in May 1972, the tenure of the FBI director is by law limited to a single 10-year term. After he died, Hoover's files were shredded by his secretary.

Oil Industry Conspiracy

Oil businessmen and their supporting bankers, many from Texas, who stood to lose billions of dollars of profits because President Kennedy wanted Congress to discontinue the hefty 27.5 percent oil depletion tax credit allowance.

Many researchers stress the importance of Oswald's friendship with George de Mohrenschildt. Oswald and his Russian spouse spent last months with this mysterious right-wing 'white russian' emigrant who was a long time CIA asset with business contacts to Prescott Bush in the oil industry. Oswalds contacts with de Mohrenschildt (called babysitting within the intel community) are one of the major detriments to the original 'communist' lone gunman theory. It is documented that de Mohrenschildt received several hundred thousand dollars from a CIA front company after the assassination. De Mohrenschildt's contacts with CIA operative for the 'Bay of Pigs' George Herbert Walker Bush (according to FBI files), the director of CIA and later forty-first President of the United States (1989-1993) are also documented. De Mohrenschildt committed 'suicide' a few days before his testimony before the 1977 Select House Committee on Assassinations.

Watergate Connection

Numerous theories have persisted in claiming deeper significance to the Watergate scandal than what is commonly acknowledged by media and historians. In his book The Ends of Power, President Richard Nixon's chief of staff H. R. Haldeman claimed that the term 'Bay of Pigs' was used by Nixon as a coded reference to the Kennedy Assassination in White House conversations recorded on the Watergate tapes.[41]

Anti-Castro Cuban Conspiracy

Angry Cuban anti-Castro exiles trained by and still working with the CIA killed Kennedy for his failure to give greater backing to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion to overthrow Castro's Communist regime.

Cuban Conspiracy

Cuban President Fidel Castro's agents killed President Kennedy in retaliation for the many times the CIA and Mafia had worked together and tried to kill Castro. In September 1963 Castro publicly warned the U.S. about American leaders not being safe if they think they could kill him. On November 22 1963 an agent of the CIA was assigned to kill Castro with a poison-pen weapon at their next meeting. It is notable that in 1962 the Kennedys had ordered the CIA to cease the assassination attempts against Castro. The CIA ignored the president's order, and continued with assassination training and attempts, unbeknownst to the president or Robert Kennedy. Starting in the second half of 1963 it is also documented that President Kennedy, through private back channels like French journalist Jean Daniel and CBS correspondent Lisa Howard had secretly approached Castro with overtures of a normalization in trade and diplomatic relations. In fact, Castro had been meeting with Daniel the moment Kennedy was shot. Many believe that mobster Johnny Rosselli deliberately spread the allegation that Castro was behind the assassination to draw public attention away from possible Mob complicity in the crime. [42]

Huismann's findings on the Cuban conspiracy

In 2006, the documentary Rendezvous with Death by German director Wilfried Huismann claimed new evidence that Oswald himself volunteered to carry out the assassination for Cuba during a September 1963 visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. In return, the Cuban government reportedly paid Oswald the sum of $6,500 (with inflation, $40,000 in 2006).

The film also alleged that the United States government did not investigate the Cuban role any further, due to the volatile relations between the U.S. and Cuba. Lyndon Johnson believed that if the American public were to know Cuba was responsible for the death of the President, they (specifically Republicans and those on the right) would demand an invasion of Cuba to remove Castro. Kennedy had promised Khrushchev an invasion of the island would never occur as part of the resolution to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Thus an invasion of Cuba would only have pushed America and the Soviet Union even closer to full-scale war. Johnson also feared that another crisis (even if resolved) would keep the Democrats out of government for decades.

The film does not make clear if Castro personally authorized the assassination. [43]

Soviet Hard-liners Conspiracy

Kennedy was killed to preserve the status quo of the ongoing Cold War (i.e. instead of a "hot war", WWIII —direct nuclear war with the Soviets). While Kennedy could be outwardly insulting and embarrassing to Soviet leaders, he was in reality perceived by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and other foreign leaders as too young, erratic, reckless and inexperienced to be taken too seriously. Kennedy's aggressiveness was believed by some to be the ultimate cause for the worsening of relations between the US and USSR, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The high tensions of this event led many to fear that Kennedy's rhetoric could only lead to a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Hard-line planners had decided to take the initiative in replacing Kennedy. Another side effect of killing Kennedy was that it would demoralize Americans. This theory is highly unlikely, as KGB documents released after the fall of the Soviet Union state that the KGB's report to Russian leadership on Kennedy's death specifically accused Lyndon Johnson.

Khrushchev Conspiracy

Kennedy's death was on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev, premier of the Soviet Union, who was America's nemesis during the Cold War. l

Federal Reserve Conspiracy

The Federal Reserve (the central bank of the United States) was threatened by Kennedy's intentions concerning restoring precious-metals backing to U.S. currency and securities. [44] (Note that the Secret Service was created in 1865 as an anti-money-counterfeiting agency, and was until 2003 an organ of the Treasury.) The same anti-hard-currency pro-central banking motive is suspected in the 1865 Lincoln, 1881 Garfield, and 1901 McKinley assassinations as well as the 1835 attempt on the life of Andrew Jackson who was a bitter opponent of central banking.

Freemason Conspiracy

Kennedy was killed as part of an elaborate Freemasonic ritual. [45]

Onassis Conspiracy

JFK was assassinated at the direction of Aristotle Onassis and his friends in the Illuminati group. French President Charles De Gaulle supported this theory.^{[citation needed]} Onassis married Kennedy's widow in 1968.

Corsican Mafia Conspiracy

Kennedy was killed by three French assassins linked to Corsican organized crime syndicates. This claim was made by Christian David, a petty French criminal interviewed on the BBC documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, who named Lucien Sarti as one of the shooters.

Israeli Conspiracy

The Israeli government was displeased with Kennedy for his pressure about their top-secret nuclear program[46][47] (see Dimona and Mordechai Vanunu) and/or, the Israelis were angry over Kennedy's use of men formerly under the employment of the Nazis in their rocket program, such as Wernher von Braun [48].

President Diem Conspiracy

South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem found out in June 1963 during electronic surveillance of the U.S. embassy in South Vietnam that the U.S. was helping his political enemies plan a coup against Diem. Diem, whose younger brother was a heroin addict, was also profiting from massively increased exports of opiates from the Southeast Asian "golden triangle" (after the sources of Turkish opiates dried up in the wake of the 1961 French Connection arrests in New York City) to North America via the Hong Kong and U.S. organized crime syndicates. If Diem were ousted in a coup, millions of dollars of Diem's drug profits would be lost. Even though Diem was killed in a coup on November 1, 1963, the plans to assassinate Kennedy went ahead for revenge and/or because of Diem's illegal co-entanglements with the world's various organized crime syndicates and the mafia motives.

Frank Sinatra Conspiracy

Frank Sinatra, a friend of Peter Lawford (brother-in-law to President Kennedy), supposedly requested union leaders, among them Jimmy Hoffa, to assist in "voter- turnout" in the 1960 Presidential election. Hoffa, angry at being called to testify by Attorney General Robert Kennedy about union pension funds being invested in mob-owned gambling casinos, felt double-crossed by the Kennedy family and called for a mafia "hit" on the President. This is a theory, but not very well documented. Jack Ruby, the assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected Kennedy assassin, had links to the mafia. Robert Kennedy accepted the findings of the Warren Commission, and declined to have the assassination further investigated. More recently, Senator Edward Kennedy has expressed his lack of interest in further investigation.

"Friendly Fire" Theory

In the book "Mortal Error", author Bonar Menninger alleges that, while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK, and did succeed in wounding him, the fatal shot was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George W. Hickey. Hickey lost his balance while attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and accidentally pulled the trigger of his AR-15 and shot JFK.

Civil Rights Theory

Another theory is that the CIA assassinated both Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy in an attempt to reduce the growing social and political power and influence of African Americans. Supporters of this theory refer to the friendship between King and Kennedy and contend that powerful elements within the CIA did not want a "pro-black" president.

Sources

Who's Who in the JFK Assasination: An A-to-Z Encyclopedia by Michael Benson Citadel Press, ISBN 0-8065-1444-2

External links

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