CIA Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory
Encyclopedia
The CIA Kennedy assassination theory is a leading John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory
. It was frequently mentioned during the 1960s and 1970s when the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) was involved in plots to assassinate foreign leaders. Kennedy said to his collaborator Clark Clifford
, shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion
, "Something very bad is going on within the CIA and I want to know what it is. I want to shred the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds." According to author James Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union.
resulting in the firing of both, Bissell and Dulles, in November 1961, and replacing Allen Dulles by John McCone, who served Kennedy as DCI for almost two years. To make matters worse Allen Dulles decided to volunteer to help investigate President Kennedy’s murder. According to William Corson, Allen Dulles “lobbied hard for the job” as he was not in the prestigious group appointed by Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson finally appointed him. Congress
began investigating the intelligence agencies by way of the Church Committee
. In the weeks following the assassination, major changes were made in the CIA.
investigated, was the involvement by U.S. intelligence agencies to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
and Fidel Castro.
The CIA provided $42,000 in immediate support money to the plotters on the morning of the assassination of President Diem
of Vietnam
, which was carried out by Lucien Conein
, although Robert S. McNamara and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (who was a participant as a White House
historian) both stated that President Kennedy went pale when he heard the news about the coup and was shocked that Diem had been murdered.
Kennedy and the CIA had a strained relationship following the Bay of Pigs
disaster, with Kennedy remarking that he wanted "to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." However, that animosity was evidently short-lived, as CIA deputy director for intelligence John L. Hegerson would later write that "the [CIA's] relationship with Kennedy was not only a distinct improvement over the more formal relationship with Eisenhower, but would only rarely be matched in future administrations." While the CIA's budget has always been classified, ranking CIA official William Colby
made it clear when he wrote, "the fact of the matter is that the CIA could not have had a better friend in a President than John F. Kennedy. He understood the Agency and used it effectively, exploiting its intellectual abilities to help him analyze a complex world, and its paramilitary and covert political talents to react to it in a low key way."
The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that in 1979, although Oswald assassinated Kennedy, a conspiracy
was probable but that the conspiracy did not implicate any U.S. Intelligence agencies. This conclusion was based almost entirely on the analysis of a police dictabelt which supposedly recorded the sound of a fourth bullet being fired in Dealey Plaza
. The HSCA also said that President Kennedy did not receive adequate protection in Dallas, and the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. This lack of protection may have occurred because Kennedy himself had specifically asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit, undermining claims that the Secret Service "let it happen." It is important to note that if there were U.S. intelligence agencies to be implicated in the murder of a sitting president, that murder would effectively constitute a coup d'état
.
as head of covert operations may have had to mastermind the assassination of J.F.K. The CIA. Before it was called the CIA, it was a group created by private citizens and corporate businessmen and Wall Street lawyers directed by Allen Dulles, who set up a schema to operate an intelligence service outside the government. In addition to gather intelligence for the country, one of its objectives was to gather information for own and friend corporations represented by this lawyers and to perform clandestine operation to defend such domain.
This agency may have been created many years before Allen Dulles headed it. It is unknown the real origin of it, but most likely was created by few influential families owning important corporations and occupying influential position in the government and possibly made with members of ex-members of post-World-War-One OSS intelligence group. Several members of Allen’s family had played important roles in previous governments. His paternal grandfather, John Watson Foster, for instance was a lawyer, American military man, journalist and diplomat that served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison
in 1892 and 1893; and Robert Lansing a person related by marriage to his family, who was Secretary of State from 1915 to 1920 under President Woodrow Wilson
.
Dulles himself had said that his plan was to outsmart both Truman and Stalin. Dulles wanted an intelligence service that was not going to be controlled by the president or the Congress and soon had operations on his way using the Council of Foreign Relations as his based. He managed to put those loyal to him in government positions and used media to manipulate public opinion. The plan was that once the president Truman knew what Dulles and his friend did, Truman would not have other choice that accept the office, and that was what really happened, Harry Truman (1945–1953) accepted an organization doing quasi-privatized operations. However, Harry Truman did not completely trust this agency, according to his view it was too much business oriented, referring to the fact that it has a strong orientation to protect private companies interests. By then Frank Wisner had become the right hand of Dulles cover operations. He would later be an instrumental part of the assassination action and coup actions that would embarrass the history of the CIA. So President Truman "dissolved" the OSS on September 20, 1945 and created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) without permission to perform cover operations, then reinstated seven year latter, 1952, under President Eisenhower. During the dissolved period, the group quietly operated as it was before Truman. During the dissolved period the OSS members were put together with the Strategic Service Unit (SSU
) and "it was left largely autonomous in its operations and received complete administrative support from the Army". Under Eisenhower, Wisner and Dulles had exclusive rights to cover operations.
Dulles had several private businesses that he protected using his early quasi-private agency and the latter formalized CIA agency. Those included client companies of Sullivan and Cromwell, an international law firm linked to his family; the United Fruit Company
(UFCO) that had the monopoly on land, banana crops and export of banana from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia and Ecuador and the monopoly of its distribution and sell in the United States and Europe; sugar companies, friend mining companies, financial institutions, and others, using among other means USA embassies and branches of the Sullivan and Cromwell around the world. He used the power of his the agency, USA government officials, media and cover operations to pressure foreign governments to bend them in favour of his companies, assassinations and coups to take democratically elected governments dawn. So he has quite a large quantity of information to hide from the president J.F.K. and Frank Wisner too has the policy of not informing or partially informing his bosses if what was happening on covered operations.
His removal from the CIA on September 1961 could not have been caused by the missing chunks of information he hide from President Kennedy about the plans for the invasion to Cuba and subsequent failure on Bahía Cochinos alone; but also other events around the globe that indicated Kennedy that the CIA was not completely under his control. It was brutal blow for him and his Wall Street friends when President Kennedy decided to remove him from his position as head of the CIA. However; Wisner remain and the infrastructure Dulles created was still active.
To make matters worse, on October 28, 1962, to end the Cuban Missile Crisis
, President John F. Kennedy
and United Nations Secretary-General
U Thant
reached an agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
for the Soviet Union to dismantle the offensive weapons it had just brought to Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for an agreement by the United States to never invade Cuba. This was the final blow for several USA corporations and wealthy Cuban Business men to recover their valuable possessions in the island.
In summer of 1963, President Kennedy authorized a coup to replace a USA-friendly Vietnam President Diem
in a bloodless operation, where Diem and his brother were not to be harmed; however, on November 1, 1963, went the two brothers were to be taken out of the country they were shot to death. When Kennedy learned about the murder he was "angry as I ever saw him, absolutely shaken" said William Corson. W. Averall Harriman had been running Vietnam without consulting the President or the Attorney General. Harriman and Forrester were not following the CIA hierarchy. This event, writes Joseph Trento, were not coincidental with other events happening in United States in 1963. Judging by the dates, he may have referred to the murder of President Kennedy 28 days later.
Two years later after losing his position as head of the CIA, on November 22, 1963 the President was shot dead, and Allen Dulles decided to volunteer to help investigate President Kennedy’s murder. According to William Corson, Allen Dulles "lobbied hard for the job" as he was not in the prestigious group appointed by Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson, despite his knowledge of the CIA plots to assassinate political leaders up to the point of called the CIA "Murder Incorporated", finally appointed Allen Dulles on November 29, 1963 to the Warren Commission
. The Commission concluded that it was a lone man the only one to blame for the assassination of John F. Kennedy
.
The Mitrokhin materials, one of the most notorious leak of KGB archives because of its volume and importance for the west, shows that the KGB intelligence had reasons to believe that the CIA was behind Kennedy’s murder.
, a director of the CIA's Office of Special Operations, had reason to be hostile to Kennedy since when first elected, Kennedy supported invading Cuba and then only later changed his mind about how to approach the matter in part because of lack of information. The CIA website indicates that even though the plan to invade Cuba was in their way before John F. Kennedy was elected president, Allen Dulles had not reported the real scope of the plan to John F. Kennedy but only until the invasion was imminent, which may had triggered some anger on the President. After the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion
of Cuba sponsored by the CIA, Kennedy changed his mind about an invasion, earning the hatred of the Cuban exile community. Helms was immediately put under pressure from President Kennedy and his brother Robert (the Attorney General
) to increase American efforts to get rid of the Castro regime. Operation Mongoose
had nearly 4,000 operators involved in attacks on Cuban economic targets.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations believed evidence existed implicating certain violent Cuban exiles may have participated in Kennedy's murder. These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported this:
Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of The Dallas Morning News
, featuring a front-page account of the President's planned trip to Texas in November, the Cuban exile vented his hostility:
Author Joan Didion
explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 non-fiction book "Miami."
Charles Harrelson
, the father of actor Woody Harrelson
, has been alleged to be the tallest of the three tramps in the photographs. Harrelson at various times before his death boasted about his role as one of the tramps, however, in a 1988 interview, he denied being in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
E. Howard Hunt
, the CIA station chief who was instrumental in the Bay of Pigs Invasion
, and who later worked as one of President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers
, was alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps. At the time of his death, Hunt's son released tapes of Hunt implicating LBJ in Kennedy's assassination. In 1975, Hunt testified to the United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
that he was in Washington, DC on the day of the assassination. This testimony was confirmed by Hunt's family and a home employee of the Hunts. In 1985 however, in Hunt's libel suit against Liberty Lobby, defense attorney Mark Lane introduced doubt as to Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination through depositions from David Atlee Phillips
, Richard Helms
, G. Gordon Liddy
, Stansfield Turner
, and Marita Lorenz
, plus a cross-examination of Hunt.
Frank Sturgis
is thought by some to be the tall tramp in the photographs. Like Hunt, Sturgis was involved both in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Watergate burglary. In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz
, who later identified Sturgis as a gunman in the assassination. Hunt's confessions before his death similarly implicates Sturgis.
Chauncey Holt, also alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps, claims to have been a double agent for the CIA and the Mafia, and has claimed that his assignment in Dallas was to provide fake Secret Service credentials to people in the vicinity. Witness reports state that there were one or more unidentified men in the area claiming to be Secret Service agents.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations had forensic anthropologists study the photographic evidence. They were able to rule out E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Dan Carswell, Fred Lee Chapman, and other suspects in 1978. The Rockefeller Commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Frank Sturgis was in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
Despite these positive identifications of the tramps and the lack of any connection between them and the assassination, some have maintained their identifications of the three as persons other than Doyle, Gedney and Abrams and have continued to theorize that they may have been connected to the crime.
figure E. Howard Hunt
has been named as a possible participant in several Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Separately, he has denied complicity in the murder of JFK while accusing others of being involved.
Some researchers have identified Hunt as a figure crossing Dealey Plaza in a raincoat and fedora immediately after the assassination. Others have suggested that Hunt was one of the men known as the three tramps who were arrested and then quickly released shortly after the assassination.
In 1976, a magazine called The Spotlight ran an article accusing Hunt of being in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and of having a role in the assassination. Hunt won a libel judgment against the magazine in 1981, but this was thrown out on appeal, and the magazine was found not guilty when the case was retried in 1985.
Shortly before his death in 2007, Hunt authored an autobiography which implicated Lyndon B. Johnson
in the assassination. Hunt suggested that Johnson had orchestrated the killing with the help of CIA agents who had been angered by Kennedy's actions as President. A 2007 article published in Rolling Stone
magazine revealed deathbed confessions by Hunt to his son which suggested a conspiracy to kill JFK orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson, CIA agents Cord Meyer
, Bill Harvey
and David Sánchez Morales
, as well as a "French gunman," who purportedly shot at Kennedy from the grassy knoll.
Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa
, and mobsters Carlos Marcello
, Sam Giancana
, Johnny Roselli
, Charles Nicoletti
and Santo Trafficante Jr. (all of whom say Hoffa worked with the CIA on the Castro assassination plots) top the list of House Select Committee on Assassinations Mafia suspects.
Carlos Marcello allegedly threatened 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.
In his memoir, Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno
explains that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the anti-Castro Cubans through the Havana casinos operated by the Mafia before the Cuban Revolution. The Cubans hated Kennedy because he failed to fully support them in the Bay of Pigs Invasion
; the Mafia hated the Kennedys because, as Attorney General, the young and idealistic Robert Kennedy conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative because several of the Mafia "families" had worked with JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected, and there have always been reports of voting irregularities during the 1960 election, the closest election in history at the time. Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were expert in assassination, the Cubans having been trained by the CIA. Bonanno reports that he realized the degree of the involvement of other Mafia families when he witnessed Jack Ruby killing Oswald on television: the Bonannos recognized Jack Ruby
as an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana
.
Information released only around 2006 by the FBI indicates that Carlos Marcello confessed in detail to having organized Kennedy's assassination. The FBI then covered up this information which it had in its possession. This version of events is also supported by the findings of a 1979 Congressional Committee investigation that Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and had the means and the opportunity required. The assassination came less than a fortnight prior to a coup against Castro in Cuba by the Kennedy brothers, related to the Missile Crisis
and Bay of Pigs Invasion
.
James Files
claims to be a former assassin working for both the Mafia and the CIA who participated in the assassination along with Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti
at the behest of Sam Giancana
. He is currently serving a 30-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a policeman.
in this effort, and that Attorney General
Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement.
It was Johnson's belief that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as a retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October, 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman Howard K. Smith, that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September, 1969, in an interview with Walter Cronkite
of CBS
, Johnson said that in regard to the assassination he could not, "honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections." Finally, in 1971, Johnson told Leo Janos of Time Magazine that he, "never believed that Oswald acted alone."
John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories
There has long been suspicion of a government cover-up of information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. There are also numerous conspiracy theories regarding the assassination that arose soon after his death and continue to be promoted today...
. It was frequently mentioned during the 1960s and 1970s when the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) was involved in plots to assassinate foreign leaders. Kennedy said to his collaborator Clark Clifford
Clark Clifford
Clark McAdams Clifford was an American lawyer who served United States Presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter, serving as United States Secretary of Defense for Johnson....
, shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
, "Something very bad is going on within the CIA and I want to know what it is. I want to shred the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds." According to author James Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union.
Background
The assassination policy of the CIA had been created under Allen Dulles. Robert Kennedy had been working as Attorney General and was running the intelligence agency through the White House Special Group . The embarrassment of the U.S. government and the CIA due to the failed invasion, the withholding of intelligence information and distrust on CIA operations while directed by Allen Dulles turned the Kennedy brothers against Allen Dulles and Richard M. BissellRichard M. Bissell, Jr.
Richard Mervin Bissell, Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency officer responsible for major projects such as the U-2 spy plane and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.-Early years:...
resulting in the firing of both, Bissell and Dulles, in November 1961, and replacing Allen Dulles by John McCone, who served Kennedy as DCI for almost two years. To make matters worse Allen Dulles decided to volunteer to help investigate President Kennedy’s murder. According to William Corson, Allen Dulles “lobbied hard for the job” as he was not in the prestigious group appointed by Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson finally appointed him. Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
began investigating the intelligence agencies by way of the Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
. In the weeks following the assassination, major changes were made in the CIA.
CIA assassinations
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 CommitteeChurch Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
investigated, was the involvement by U.S. intelligence agencies to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Émery Lumumba was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only ten weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis...
of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...
and Fidel Castro.
The CIA provided $42,000 in immediate support money to the plotters on the morning of the assassination of President Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
of Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, which was carried out by Lucien Conein
Lucien Conein
Lt. Col. Lucien Emile Conein was a noted U.S. Army officer and Office of Strategic Services / Central Intelligence Agency operative...
, although Robert S. McNamara and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., (who was a participant as a White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
historian) both stated that President Kennedy went pale when he heard the news about the coup and was shocked that Diem had been murdered.
Kennedy and the CIA had a strained relationship following the Bay of Pigs
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
disaster, with Kennedy remarking that he wanted "to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." However, that animosity was evidently short-lived, as CIA deputy director for intelligence John L. Hegerson would later write that "the [CIA's] relationship with Kennedy was not only a distinct improvement over the more formal relationship with Eisenhower, but would only rarely be matched in future administrations." While the CIA's budget has always been classified, ranking CIA official William Colby
William Colby
William Egan Colby spent a career in intelligence for the United States, culminating in holding the post of Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973, to January 1976....
made it clear when he wrote, "the fact of the matter is that the CIA could not have had a better friend in a President than John F. Kennedy. He understood the Agency and used it effectively, exploiting its intellectual abilities to help him analyze a complex world, and its paramilitary and covert political talents to react to it in a low key way."
The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that in 1979, although Oswald assassinated Kennedy, a conspiracy
Conspiracy (crime)
In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement...
was probable but that the conspiracy did not implicate any U.S. Intelligence agencies. This conclusion was based almost entirely on the analysis of a police dictabelt which supposedly recorded the sound of a fourth bullet being fired in Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza , in the historic West End district of downtown Dallas, Texas , is the location of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
. The HSCA also said that President Kennedy did not receive adequate protection in Dallas, and the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. This lack of protection may have occurred because Kennedy himself had specifically asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit, undermining claims that the Secret Service "let it happen." It is important to note that if there were U.S. intelligence agencies to be implicated in the murder of a sitting president, that murder would effectively constitute a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
.
Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner in the CIA
Looking back at the way the CIA was created can give a glimpse on the reason Allen Dulles as head of the CIA and Frank WisnerFrank Wisner
Frank Gardiner Wisner was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s....
as head of covert operations may have had to mastermind the assassination of J.F.K. The CIA. Before it was called the CIA, it was a group created by private citizens and corporate businessmen and Wall Street lawyers directed by Allen Dulles, who set up a schema to operate an intelligence service outside the government. In addition to gather intelligence for the country, one of its objectives was to gather information for own and friend corporations represented by this lawyers and to perform clandestine operation to defend such domain.
This agency may have been created many years before Allen Dulles headed it. It is unknown the real origin of it, but most likely was created by few influential families owning important corporations and occupying influential position in the government and possibly made with members of ex-members of post-World-War-One OSS intelligence group. Several members of Allen’s family had played important roles in previous governments. His paternal grandfather, John Watson Foster, for instance was a lawyer, American military man, journalist and diplomat that served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd President of the United States . Harrison, a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio, and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana at age 21, eventually becoming a prominent politician there...
in 1892 and 1893; and Robert Lansing a person related by marriage to his family, who was Secretary of State from 1915 to 1920 under President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
.
Dulles himself had said that his plan was to outsmart both Truman and Stalin. Dulles wanted an intelligence service that was not going to be controlled by the president or the Congress and soon had operations on his way using the Council of Foreign Relations as his based. He managed to put those loyal to him in government positions and used media to manipulate public opinion. The plan was that once the president Truman knew what Dulles and his friend did, Truman would not have other choice that accept the office, and that was what really happened, Harry Truman (1945–1953) accepted an organization doing quasi-privatized operations. However, Harry Truman did not completely trust this agency, according to his view it was too much business oriented, referring to the fact that it has a strong orientation to protect private companies interests. By then Frank Wisner had become the right hand of Dulles cover operations. He would later be an instrumental part of the assassination action and coup actions that would embarrass the history of the CIA. So President Truman "dissolved" the OSS on September 20, 1945 and created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) without permission to perform cover operations, then reinstated seven year latter, 1952, under President Eisenhower. During the dissolved period, the group quietly operated as it was before Truman. During the dissolved period the OSS members were put together with the Strategic Service Unit (SSU
Strategic Services Unit
The Strategic Services Unit was an intelligence agency of the United States government which existed in the immediate post-World War II period. It was created from the Secret Intelligence and Counter-Espionage branches of the wartime Office of Strategic Services.Assistant Secretary of War John J...
) and "it was left largely autonomous in its operations and received complete administrative support from the Army". Under Eisenhower, Wisner and Dulles had exclusive rights to cover operations.
Dulles had several private businesses that he protected using his early quasi-private agency and the latter formalized CIA agency. Those included client companies of Sullivan and Cromwell, an international law firm linked to his family; the United Fruit Company
United Fruit Company
It had a deep and long-lasting impact on the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the...
(UFCO) that had the monopoly on land, banana crops and export of banana from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia and Ecuador and the monopoly of its distribution and sell in the United States and Europe; sugar companies, friend mining companies, financial institutions, and others, using among other means USA embassies and branches of the Sullivan and Cromwell around the world. He used the power of his the agency, USA government officials, media and cover operations to pressure foreign governments to bend them in favour of his companies, assassinations and coups to take democratically elected governments dawn. So he has quite a large quantity of information to hide from the president J.F.K. and Frank Wisner too has the policy of not informing or partially informing his bosses if what was happening on covered operations.
His removal from the CIA on September 1961 could not have been caused by the missing chunks of information he hide from President Kennedy about the plans for the invasion to Cuba and subsequent failure on Bahía Cochinos alone; but also other events around the globe that indicated Kennedy that the CIA was not completely under his control. It was brutal blow for him and his Wall Street friends when President Kennedy decided to remove him from his position as head of the CIA. However; Wisner remain and the infrastructure Dulles created was still active.
To make matters worse, on October 28, 1962, to end the Cuban Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
, President John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and United Nations Secretary-General
United Nations Secretary-General
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat of the United Nations, one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General also acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations....
U Thant
U Thant
U Thant was a Burmese diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations, from 1961 to 1971. He was chosen for the post when his predecessor, Dag Hammarskjöld, died in September 1961....
reached an agreement with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964...
for the Soviet Union to dismantle the offensive weapons it had just brought to Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for an agreement by the United States to never invade Cuba. This was the final blow for several USA corporations and wealthy Cuban Business men to recover their valuable possessions in the island.
In summer of 1963, President Kennedy authorized a coup to replace a USA-friendly Vietnam President Diem
Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm was the first president of South Vietnam . In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a...
in a bloodless operation, where Diem and his brother were not to be harmed; however, on November 1, 1963, went the two brothers were to be taken out of the country they were shot to death. When Kennedy learned about the murder he was "angry as I ever saw him, absolutely shaken" said William Corson. W. Averall Harriman had been running Vietnam without consulting the President or the Attorney General. Harriman and Forrester were not following the CIA hierarchy. This event, writes Joseph Trento, were not coincidental with other events happening in United States in 1963. Judging by the dates, he may have referred to the murder of President Kennedy 28 days later.
Two years later after losing his position as head of the CIA, on November 22, 1963 the President was shot dead, and Allen Dulles decided to volunteer to help investigate President Kennedy’s murder. According to William Corson, Allen Dulles "lobbied hard for the job" as he was not in the prestigious group appointed by Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson, despite his knowledge of the CIA plots to assassinate political leaders up to the point of called the CIA "Murder Incorporated", finally appointed Allen Dulles on November 29, 1963 to the Warren Commission
Warren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
. The Commission concluded that it was a lone man the only one to blame for the assassination of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
.
The Mitrokhin materials, one of the most notorious leak of KGB archives because of its volume and importance for the west, shows that the KGB intelligence had reasons to believe that the CIA was behind Kennedy’s murder.
Cuban exiles
Richard HelmsRichard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, a director of the CIA's Office of Special Operations, had reason to be hostile to Kennedy since when first elected, Kennedy supported invading Cuba and then only later changed his mind about how to approach the matter in part because of lack of information. The CIA website indicates that even though the plan to invade Cuba was in their way before John F. Kennedy was elected president, Allen Dulles had not reported the real scope of the plan to John F. Kennedy but only until the invasion was imminent, which may had triggered some anger on the President. After the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
of Cuba sponsored by the CIA, Kennedy changed his mind about an invasion, earning the hatred of the Cuban exile community. Helms was immediately put under pressure from President Kennedy and his brother Robert (the Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
) to increase American efforts to get rid of the Castro regime. Operation Mongoose
Cuban Project
The Cuban Project was a program of Central Intelligence Agency covert operations developed during the early years of the administration of President of the United States John F. Kennedy...
had nearly 4,000 operators involved in attacks on Cuban economic targets.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations believed evidence existed implicating certain violent Cuban exiles may have participated in Kennedy's murder. These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported this:
President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963. (37)
Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News
The Dallas Morning News is the major daily newspaper serving the Dallas, Texas area, with a circulation of 264,459 subscribers, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in September 2010...
, featuring a front-page account of the President's planned trip to Texas in November, the Cuban exile vented his hostility:
"CASTELLANOS... we're waiting for Kennedy the 22d, [the date Kennedy was murdered] buddy. We're going to see him in one way or the other. We're going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas. Mr. good ol' Kennedy. I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy. He stinks."
Author Joan Didion
Joan Didion
Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism. Her novels and essays explore the disintegration of American morals and cultural chaos, where the overriding theme is individual and social fragmentation...
explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 non-fiction book "Miami."
Three tramps
A list of the better known "identifications" of the three tramps alleged by conspiracy theorists includes:Charles Harrelson
Charles Harrelson
Charles Voyde Harrelson was an American organized crime figure who was convicted of assassinating federal judge John H. Wood, Jr., the first federal judge killed in the 20th century...
, the father of actor Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woodrow Tracy "Woody" Harrelson is an American actor.Harrelson's breakthrough role came in the television sitcom Cheers as bartender Woody Boyd...
, has been alleged to be the tallest of the three tramps in the photographs. Harrelson at various times before his death boasted about his role as one of the tramps, however, in a 1988 interview, he denied being in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
E. Howard Hunt
E. Howard Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was an American intelligence officer and writer. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G...
, the CIA station chief who was instrumental in the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
, and who later worked as one of President Richard Nixon's White House Plumbers
White House Plumbers
The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, were a covert White House Special Investigations Unit established July 24, 1971 during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop the leaking of classified information to the news media...
, was alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps. At the time of his death, Hunt's son released tapes of Hunt implicating LBJ in Kennedy's assassination. In 1975, Hunt testified to the United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
that he was in Washington, DC on the day of the assassination. This testimony was confirmed by Hunt's family and a home employee of the Hunts. In 1985 however, in Hunt's libel suit against Liberty Lobby, defense attorney Mark Lane introduced doubt as to Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination through depositions from David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips was a Central Intelligence Agency officer for 25 years, one of a handful of people to receive the Career Intelligence Medal. He rose to become the CIA's chief of all operations in the Western hemisphere...
, Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, G. Gordon Liddy
G. Gordon Liddy
George Gordon Liddy was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed from July–September 1971, during Richard Nixon's presidency. Separately, along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in...
, Stansfield Turner
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield M. Turner is a retired Admiral and former Director of Central Intelligence. He is currently a senior research scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Policy....
, and Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz is a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life. She later had a child with the Venezuelan former dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.In the 1970s she testified regarding the John F...
, plus a cross-examination of Hunt.
Frank Sturgis
Frank Sturgis
Frank Anthony Sturgis , born Frank Angelo Fiorini, was one of the Watergate burglars.-Early Life and Military Service:...
is thought by some to be the tall tramp in the photographs. Like Hunt, Sturgis was involved both in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Watergate burglary. In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz
Marita Lorenz is a German woman who had an affair with Fidel Castro in 1959 and in January 1960 was involved in an assassination attempt by the CIA on Castro's life. She later had a child with the Venezuelan former dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez.In the 1970s she testified regarding the John F...
, who later identified Sturgis as a gunman in the assassination. Hunt's confessions before his death similarly implicates Sturgis.
Chauncey Holt, also alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps, claims to have been a double agent for the CIA and the Mafia, and has claimed that his assignment in Dallas was to provide fake Secret Service credentials to people in the vicinity. Witness reports state that there were one or more unidentified men in the area claiming to be Secret Service agents.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations had forensic anthropologists study the photographic evidence. They were able to rule out E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Dan Carswell, Fred Lee Chapman, and other suspects in 1978. The Rockefeller Commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Frank Sturgis was in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
Despite these positive identifications of the tramps and the lack of any connection between them and the assassination, some have maintained their identifications of the three as persons other than Doyle, Gedney and Abrams and have continued to theorize that they may have been connected to the crime.
E. Howard Hunt
Former CIA agent and WatergateWatergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
figure E. Howard Hunt
E. Howard Hunt
Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was an American intelligence officer and writer. Hunt served for many years as a CIA officer. Hunt, with G...
has been named as a possible participant in several Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Separately, he has denied complicity in the murder of JFK while accusing others of being involved.
Some researchers have identified Hunt as a figure crossing Dealey Plaza in a raincoat and fedora immediately after the assassination. Others have suggested that Hunt was one of the men known as the three tramps who were arrested and then quickly released shortly after the assassination.
In 1976, a magazine called The Spotlight ran an article accusing Hunt of being in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and of having a role in the assassination. Hunt won a libel judgment against the magazine in 1981, but this was thrown out on appeal, and the magazine was found not guilty when the case was retried in 1985.
Shortly before his death in 2007, Hunt authored an autobiography which implicated Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
in the assassination. Hunt suggested that Johnson had orchestrated the killing with the help of CIA agents who had been angered by Kennedy's actions as President. A 2007 article published in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine revealed deathbed confessions by Hunt to his son which suggested a conspiracy to kill JFK orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson, CIA agents Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer, Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency official.-Early life:Meyer's father, Cord Meyer Sr., was a diplomat and former real estate developer. His grandfather, also called Cord Meyer, was a property developer and a chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee. He was...
, Bill Harvey
William King Harvey
William King "Bill" Harvey was a Central Intelligence Agency officer, best known for his role in Operation Mongoose. He was known as "America's James Bond."...
and David Sánchez Morales
David Sánchez Morales
David Sánchez Morales was a Central Intelligence Agency operative who worked in Cuba.-Biographical highlights:...
, as well as a "French gunman," who purportedly shot at Kennedy from the grassy knoll.
Organized crime and the CIA conspiracy
It is alleged that Mafia criminals may have wished to retaliate for increasing pressure put upon them by Robert Kennedy (who had increased by 12 times the number of prosecutions under President Dwight Eisenhower). Documents never seen by the Warren Commission have revealed that some Mafiosi were working very closely with the CIA on several assassination attempts of Fidel Castro.Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa was an American labor union leader....
, and mobsters Carlos Marcello
Carlos Marcello
Carlos "The Little Man" Marcello was a Sicilian-American mafioso who became the boss of the New Orleans crime family during the 1940s and held this position for the next 30 years.-Early life:...
, Sam Giancana
Sam Giancana
Salvatore Giancana , better known as Sam Giancana, was a Sicilian-American mobster and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-1966...
, Johnny Roselli
John Roselli
John "Handsome Johnny" Roselli , sometimes spelled John Rosselli, was an influential mobster for the Chicago Outfit who helped them control Hollywood and the Las Vegas Strip. Roselli was also involved with the Central Intelligence Agency plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the early 1960s...
, Charles Nicoletti
Charles Nicoletti
Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti, also known as "The Typewriter" "Chuckie Typewriter" , was a top Chicago Outfit hitman under Outfit boss Sam "Mooney" Giancana before and after Giancana's rise and fall.-Early years:...
and Santo Trafficante Jr. (all of whom say Hoffa worked with the CIA on the Castro assassination plots) top the list of House Select Committee on Assassinations Mafia suspects.
Carlos Marcello allegedly threatened 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.
In his memoir, Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno
Joseph Bonanno
Joseph Charles Bonanno, Sr. was a Sicilian-born American mafioso who became the boss of the Bonanno crime family. He was nicknamed "Joe Bananas," a name he despised.-Early life:...
explains that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the anti-Castro Cubans through the Havana casinos operated by the Mafia before the Cuban Revolution. The Cubans hated Kennedy because he failed to fully support them in the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
; the Mafia hated the Kennedys because, as Attorney General, the young and idealistic Robert Kennedy conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative because several of the Mafia "families" had worked with JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected, and there have always been reports of voting irregularities during the 1960 election, the closest election in history at the time. Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were expert in assassination, the Cubans having been trained by the CIA. Bonanno reports that he realized the degree of the involvement of other Mafia families when he witnessed Jack Ruby killing Oswald on television: the Bonannos recognized Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby
Jacob Leon Rubenstein , who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, who was originally from Chicago, Illinois, was then a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas...
as an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana
Sam Giancana
Salvatore Giancana , better known as Sam Giancana, was a Sicilian-American mobster and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-1966...
.
Information released only around 2006 by the FBI indicates that Carlos Marcello confessed in detail to having organized Kennedy's assassination. The FBI then covered up this information which it had in its possession. This version of events is also supported by the findings of a 1979 Congressional Committee investigation that Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and had the means and the opportunity required. The assassination came less than a fortnight prior to a coup against Castro in Cuba by the Kennedy brothers, related to the Missile Crisis
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation among the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War...
and Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
.
James Files
James Files
James Earl Files is allegedly a former Central Intelligence Agency/Mafia hit man who claims to have been the grassy knoll shooter in Dealey Plaza on the morning of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.-Background:...
claims to be a former assassin working for both the Mafia and the CIA who participated in the assassination along with Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti
Charles Nicoletti
Charles "Chuckie" Nicoletti, also known as "The Typewriter" "Chuckie Typewriter" , was a top Chicago Outfit hitman under Outfit boss Sam "Mooney" Giancana before and after Giancana's rise and fall.-Early years:...
at the behest of Sam Giancana
Sam Giancana
Salvatore Giancana , better known as Sam Giancana, was a Sicilian-American mobster and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-1966...
. He is currently serving a 30-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a policeman.
Alleged Cuban retaliation for CIA activities
President Lyndon Johnson informed several journalistic sources of his personal belief that the assassination had been organized by Fidel Castro from Cuba. Johnson had received in 1967 information from both the FBI and CIA that in the early 1960s, the CIA had tried to have Castro assassinated, had employed members of the MafiaMafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
in this effort, and that Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement.
It was Johnson's belief that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as a retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October, 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman Howard K. Smith, that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September, 1969, in an interview with Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
of CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, Johnson said that in regard to the assassination he could not, "honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections." Finally, in 1971, Johnson told Leo Janos of Time Magazine that he, "never believed that Oswald acted alone."