The Kennedy Assassination*

We All Failed Him

(Originally published May 10, 2022.)

It is unlikely that there was US Government conspiracy behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but there was certainly a government cover up. Had the Secret Service done its job competently on 22 November 1963, the President would have survived the assassination attempt. Had the FBI and the CIA done their jobs competently beforehand, there would have been no attempt at all. The President’s death that day constitutes the most embarrassing intelligence failure of my lifetime. The Warren Commission only made matters worse by not being honest with the American people.

The Secret Service

Lee Harvey Oswald fired three 6.5 millimeter bullets with his Mannlicher-Caracano rifle from the sixth-floor window in the southeast corner of the Texas Book Depository where he worked. The first shot missed completely, ricocheting off the street pavement and grazing an innocent bystander. The sound -- was it a gunshot or a motorcycle backfire -- alerted the Secret Service to possible danger.

The second bullet, fired 3.5 seconds later, hit the President in the back of his upper right shoulder, exited the front, lower right part of his throat, and went on to hit Texas Governor John Connally in the back of the chest. At this point, the Secret Service knew the President was being attacked.

Had the driver of the Presidential limousine, William Greer, accelerated abruptly after the second shot and gotten out of the kill zone, President Kennedy would have survived. Greer did not accelerate. He actually slowed down, apparently to help Clint Hill, a fellow Secret Service officer, who was valiantly running up to the limousine to throw himself in the line of fire.

This tragic mistake made Oswald’s third shot, fired a long 4.9 seconds later, quite easy. It hit the President in the back, right side of his head, shattering his skull and irreparably damaging his brain. To all intents and purposes, this third bullet killed the President instantly, a fact that poor Mrs. Kennedy was first to recognize.

Mrs. Kennedy never forgave Greer. The Secret Service did learn from their mistake, however. When President Reagan was shot in 1981, they got him out of the kill zone fast, probably saving his life.

The FBI

FBI counterintelligence had been keeping tabs on Oswald since June 1962 when he returned from two years in the Soviet Union. FBI/Dallas interviewed him twice in June and August 1962. FBI/New Orleans picked up the case in June 1963 after Oswald moved there for unknown reasons at the time, and became active in pro-Cuba agitation.

In late September 1963, Oswald travelled to Mexico City, where he met with Cuban Embassy officials as well as with the Soviet Embassy official Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov. The CIA knew of his meetings with Kostikov in real time because of two wiretapped telephone conversations, one on 27 September and one on 1 October. The Soviets have never denied the meetings between Kosikov and Oswald because they knew we listened to their telephone conversations and could prove the meetings took place. The CIA did not know the substance of those meetings.

Kostikov was an interesting guy. He was a KGB officer serving under cover as a Soviet consular official, so his meetings with Oswald may have been of innocent, consular nature. However, we knew that Kostikov’s real job was as the local representative of Department 13 of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate, the department responsible for sabotage operations as well as assassinations.

Because of the possible counterintelligence concerns, CIA/Mexico City duly reported the fact of Oswald’s meeting with Kostikov to CIA Headquarters on 8 October. CIA Headquarters informed FBI Headquarters 18 October, noting that Kostikov was KGB but neglecting to mention that he was Department 13. FBI Headquarters then informed FBI/New Orleans on 25 October. There was no great urgency at the headquarters level.

FBI field elements moved promptly. On Tuesday, 29 October, FBI/New Orleans advised that Oswald had left town without paying his last month’s rent and was having his mail forwarded to a friend in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. That same day, FBI/Dallas Special Agent James Hosty confirmed that Oswald’s wife, Marina, was staying with the friend and that Oswald himself would appear from time to time.

Hosty became very interested in Oswald. On Friday, 1 November, he interviewed Marina. On Monday, 4 November, he interviewed Oswald’s employer at the Texas Book Depository. The next day, 5 November, he went to Irving, did not find Oswald, so interviewed the friend instead.

Oswald was furious when he learned of all this on Friday, 8 November. He thought the FBI was harassing him. It was a three-day weekend for Veteran’s Day. During his lunch break on Tuesday, 12 November, he walked from the Texas Book Depository to the nearby FBI office and asked the receptionist for Special Agent Hosty. When the receptionist said Hosty was out, Oswald wrote out a note threatening to bomb the Dallas FBI office unless Hosty backed off.

This written threat of violence against the US Government by a subject of counterintelligence concern was never reported to the Secret Service Advance Team that had arrived in Dallas to prepare for the just announced visit of President Kennedy on 22 November.

As a matter of Standard Operating Procedure, it should have been. The Secret Service would then have determined that Oswald was employed at the Texas Book Depository, overlooking the Presidential motorcade route. They probably would have asked the FBI or Dallas Police to find some pretext for detaining Oswald during the President’s visit. At minimum, the FBI or the police would have kept Oswald under surveillance during the visit. For certain, he would have been prevented from killing the President.

On the evening after the assassination, Hosty was summoned to the office of his boss, Special Agent in Charge Gordon Shanklin. “What the hell is this?” Shanklin demanded, showing Hosty the threat letter from Oswald.

“It’s no big deal,” Hosty replied.

“What do you mean?” Shanklin yelled. “This note was written by Oswald, the probable assassin of the President, and Oswald brought this note into this office just ten days ago. What the hell do you think Hoover is going to do if he finds out about the note? If Hoover find out about this note, he’s going to lose it.”

Two days later, after Oswald was killed, Shanklin ordered Hosty to destroy the threat letter. When Hosty began to tear it up, Shanklin said, “No! Not here!” Whereupon Hosty went to a nearby men’s room, tore Oswald’s hand-written note into tiny pieces, and flushed this evidence related to the assassination of an American President down the toilet.

The CIA

The failure of the CIA is worst of all. I was only eleven years old at the time of the Kennedy Assassination, yet I still feel chagrin about my Agency’s performance. But facts are facts, and we must try to learn from them.

On 7 September 1963, Fidel Castro made an impromptu appearance at a reception hosted by the Brazilian Embassy in Havana. He immediately approached an American reporter named Daniel Harker and offered him an interview which appeared in all major US newspapers the following day. He told Harker, “We are prepared to fight them and answer them in kind. United States leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe. Let Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves since they, too, can be the cause of an attempt which will cause their deaths.”

In Intelligence circles, this is called “a clue.” At that very same moment, 5-8 September, in Brazil a CIA officer named Nestor Sanchez was meeting secretly (we thought) with Rolando Cubela, the second in command of Cuban intelligence. During those meetings, Cubela volunteered to assassinate Castro and establish a new Cuban government less hostile to the United States. But Cubela was only pretending to be our agent, he really was a double agent reporting back to Castro. Everything the CIA asked him to do, Cubela immediately reported beck to Castro. **

Unfortunately, the CIA disregarded Castro’s clue. We kept meeting with Cubela in the belief that he was a trusted agent. On 29 October in Paris, the senior CIA official for all Cuban operations, Des Fitzgerald, assured Cubela that once he had killed Castro and seized the presidential palace in Havana, the US would promptly provide political and military support to the new Cuban government. Cubela demanded proof that President Kennedy was personally aware of the plot.

The proof was provided by Kennedy himself in a speech to Cuban exiles in Miami on 18 November. Fitzgerald convinced Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s to include wording in the speech to assure Cubela of Presidential support. The next day, Dallas newspapers reported, “President Kennedy all but invited the Cuban people to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime and promised prompt US aid if they do.”

Nestor Sanchez met again with Cubela in Paris to give him a pen filled with Black Leaf poison with which to kill Castro. Their meeting took place on 22 November in the evening Paris time. It was interrupted by the news that President Kennedy had just been assassinated in Dallas.

In 1964, Castro met with a representative of the American Communist Party he trusted, Jack Childs. Castro didn’t realize that Childs was secretly cooperating with the FBI and would report everything Castro said back to J. Edgar Hoover, just like Cubela reported back to him. Castro confided to Childs that during discussions with Cuban Embassy officials in Mexico City during late September 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald had threatened to assassinate President Kennedy.

Castro knew in advance that Oswald posed a threat to the President. It is unknown whether under any circumstances Castro would have warned Kennedy. Had he chosen to do so, Oswald would have been in jail on 22 November. Knowing what he knew about the CIA plot to kill him, it is not surprising that Castro chose not to warn Kennedy.

The Warren Commission

The CIA plot to kill Castro led directly to the cover up by the Warren Commission.

On the Sunday following the assassination, at the very moment when Oswald was himself murdered on national TV by Jack Ruby, CIA Director John McCone, along with Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, briefed the new President, Lyndon Johnson, on the plot. The next day, President Johnson directed that, “speculation about Oswald’s motivation should be cut off and we should have some basis for rebutting the thought that this was a communist conspiracy.” In saying this, Johnson was convinced that there was a communist conspiracy, but he was deeply worried that evidence of Cuban-Soviet complicity could lead to nuclear war.

Johnson ordered J. Edgar Hoover to conduct an expeditious investigation to determine whether there was any compelling evidence that would prove that Oswald was not the lone gunman in the assassination. The FBI formally opened its “exhaustive” investigation on Tuesday, 26 November, and formally closed it thirteen calendar days later Monday, 9 December. Just as President Johnson had ordered, the FBI concluded that Oswald was a lone madman who acted without the assistance or encouragement of any other parties -- there was no communist conspiracy behind the Kennedy Assassination.

To rubber stamp the FBI conclusion, Johnson created the Warren Commission. The Commission members, including former CIA Director Allen Dulles, were sworn in on 16 December, one week after the FBI submitted the report of its “exhaustive” investigation. The Commission presented its final report to President Johnson on 24 September 1964. After nine months of effort, the Commission reached the same conclusion as the FBI reached in thirteen calendar days: that Oswald was the lone gunman who acted without the assistance or encouragement of any other parties.

In concluding that there was no broader communist conspiracy, the Warren Commission was kept in the official dark about the Cubela plot to assassinate Castro. The CIA could not tell the Commission because Cubela remained a “trusted” agent of the CIA until 1965!

For good reason, skeptics didn’t buy the Warren Commission Report. When they started to probe, it became apparent that the Commission was covering up or at least downplaying weak spots in the performance of key US Government agencies. Doubts grew and grew. Most Americans didn’t know what to believe. A large number of honest Americans even came to believe there was a US Government conspiracy to kill our own President.

A more complete intelligence failure is hard to imagine!

*Historical facts are taken, for the most part, from Vincent Bugliosi’s seminal book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, pp 513-788.

**In 1987, a senior Cuban intelligence officer named Florentino Azpillaga Lombard defected to the United States and stunned the CIA with evidence that all of the thirty-eight Cubans that the US thought it had recruited since 1961 had really been double agents reporting back to Fidel Castro.