On March 18, President Donald Trump ordered the release of thousands of files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, taking steps to fulfill an order he signed on his first week back in office.
The Kennedy assassination has long been the subject of scrutiny and theorizing, with official investigations and amateur enthusiasts questioning the extent of the CIA connection to the high profile killing. Indeed, allegations of CIA involvement emerged quickly after Kennedy’s death and became a subject of interest in the primary investigative effort, known as the Warren Commission.
The Warren Commission formed just one week after the assassination and disbanded after less than a year of investigation. The commission—which included among its members former CIA director Allen Dulles—came to the conclusion that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted alone. Further, the commission concluded that Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald dead two days after the Kennedy assassination, also acted alone.
Many have remained unsatisfied with the Warren Commission’s efforts and have, for decades, demanded complete disclosure of the records they reviewed to reach their conclusions.
In 2014, CIA Chief Historian David Robarge authored a report concluding John McCone—the CIA director at the time of the Kennedy Assassination and the Warren Commission investigation—was complicit in a “benign cover-up” by withholding documents sought by the Warren Commission. Robarge concluded McCone wanted the commission to remain focused on what he deemed the “best truth,” that Oswald acted alone.
Many of the files in this week’s document disclosure remain blurry and barely legible. Many of these documents have already been released, but in a more redacted form. And no clear smoking gun has emerged to reverse the Warren Commission’s conclusions, no matter how skeptical the public remains of that initial investigation.
That said, these new documents provide important context about the CIA’s activities in the years surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
Here are five things we now better understand about the CIA, thanks to these new disclosures.
1. A CIA Recruiting Program
Among the new disclosures, we now have more details about a CIA program to inspect mail being sent from the United States to what was then the Soviet Union. Previous disclosures of the Kennedy investigation have revealed the CIA had devoted resources to inspecting mail between the United States and the Soviet Union, but a new document reveals the extent of the program and it’s purpose.
An FBI internal memo, shared around in the winter of 1958, reveals the Bureau was aware of a CIA program that began about a year and a half prior, to search U.S. mail to the Soviet Union, on the grounds that Soviet secret agents around the world would use the postal service to coordinate with their handlers.
The new document reveals between 200 and 300 CIA employees had been assigned to this mail inspection program, at an approximate annual cost of $1 million a year (around $11 million today, when adjusted for inflation).
The FBI memo reveals that one of the sole purpose of this program was to identify individuals that the CIA could flip, to become intelligence sources.
James Angleton, the head of the CIA’s counterintelligence program at the time, revealed to the FBI that the agency “had successfully developed several sources through this means.”
This revelation is critical, as it relates to Oswald. A former U.S. Marine, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, only to return to the United States in June of 1962, about a year and a half before the Kennedy Assassination.
In his 2014 report, Robarge alluded to this CIA mail inspection program. He noted the agency had, through this program “acquired information from Oswald” prior to the assassination. Robarge raised the possibility that CIA employees hid these details about the mail inspection program from CIA director McCone. The CIA historian also raised the possibility McCone knew about the mail inspection program but elected to conceal it, so as to protect a highly-secretive effort to recruit double agents.
Robarge’s report states McCone may have concluded that if there was no sign from Oswald’s mail indicating that he was a threat to the president, then the Warren Commission didn’t need to know about the CIA’s mail inspection program.
Noteworthy here is that Dulles, who was McCone’s immediate predecessor and a member of the Warren Commission, had been in charge of the CIA until 1961, overlapping the span of time in which the CIA’s mail sorting program was active.
That Oswald’s mail became a point of interest in a CIA program whose sole purpose was to recruit assets, could raise the possibility that he indeed was an asset of the CIA.
Marguerite Oswald, the mother of the alleged assassin, had told Warren Commission in February of 1964 that her son indeed was a CIA agent.
2. CIA Had Extensive Undercover Network at Embassies
This week’s JFK disclosures provide new context about concerns raised within the Kennedy White House, that the CIA was increasingly acting without oversight, and possibly at odds with official U.S. policy.
These concerns about the CIA arose after the failed attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro in April of 1961, known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In June of 1961, Kennedy White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., authored a classified memo titled “CIA Reorganization.” Throughout the memo, Schlesinger warned the CIA was operating with increasing autonomy, lacking appropriate supervision and safeguards to ensure their covert operations were properly aligned with official U.S. policy.
At one point Schlesinger said the agency had the makings of “a state within a state.”
Schlesinger’s memo was previously released, but with redactions. The latest round of disclosures now allows the public a view an additional page and a half of previously redacted material. With this new look, the public can now see that Schlesinger reported that some 47 percent of the political officers serving in United States embassies at the time Kennedy entered office, were Controlled American Sources (CAS), a euphemism for intelligence agents pretending to be diplomats.
Schlesinger also warned that CIA station chiefs in certain countries often had more influence with the embassy staff within those countries than actual U.S. ambassadors and would sometimes pursue different policies.
In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs failure, Schlesinger concluded that the CIA has had an outsized influence in directing covert political operations without the necessary input of the State Department until the late planning stages. Schlesinger wrote that by the time the State Department became aware of the Bay of Pigs plan, it was under significant pressure to endorse the operation.
Schlesinger presented the significant portion of diplomatic employees who are actually undercover CIA assets as a further example of how the intelligence agency had subverted the State Department’s diplomatic mission.
Kennedy publicly accepted responsibility for the U.S. role in the failed Bay of Pigs operation, but still considered opportunities to assassinate Castro and overthrow his government thereafter. These continued anti-Castro plans were led by the CIA and dubbed Operation Mongoose.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, in which the Soviet Union threatened to deploy nuclear-armed missiles on Cuba, Kennedy reduced the size and scope of Operation Mongoose and made some public efforts to repair relations with Castro.
In a 1979 report, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, discussed the possibility that CIA-connected anti-Castro factions felt Kennedy had left them hanging without proper U.S. support during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and were embittered by this and by the appearance of Kennedy backing away from efforts to remove Castro. The committee studied the possibility that some of these CIA-linked anti-Castro groups played a role in the Kennedy assassination. They found no specific evidence to support this theory but also didn’t preclude the possibility of a plot by anti-Castro actors to kill Kennedy either.
3. The French Consulate Break-In, and ‘KGB tactics’ in the US
Included among the latest disclosures is a more complete picture of a range of CIA’s most controversial actions, oftentimes referred to as the agency’s “Family Jewels.” William Colby, the director of the CIA from 1973 to 1976, described these operations as “skeletons in the CIA’s closet.”
Previously disclosed portions of the “Family Jewels” files revealed CIA operations to wiretap and surveil American journalists, and political dissidents within the United States, including anti-war activists. Prior disclosures also revealed break-ins at the homes of Americans, including at least two former CIA employees. Another famed “jewel” in these past disclosures was Project MK ULTRA, in which the CIA studied ways to interrogate, brainwash, and psychologically torture people through the use of powerful psychoactive compounds, such as LSD.
While these actions were previously known, this week’s disclosure reveals another document related to the “Family Jewels.” The document, which was prepared for by director Colby in 1973, describes CIA activities that officials believed had exceeded the agency’s charter.
The memo describes a CIA operation to break into and steal sensitive documents from a French consulate in the United States in April of 1963. The document notes CIA director McCone briefed President Kennedy. The President’s brother, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was also briefed on the break-in.
An apparent objective of the break-in at the French consulate was to gather information on espionage activities in the United States by the French. Then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk expressed misgivings about the break-in and urged the Kennedy administration to inform the French that their spying activities were known and should desist.
At another point, the memo states the FBI had tipped off the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board that the CIA was “planning to wiretap extensively and indiscriminately in this country, to greatly increase the Agency representation in the Moscow Embassy, and generally to use KGB-type tactics, also extensively and indiscriminately.” This tip-off by the FBI led to a “heated exchange” between CIA Director McCone and FBI Assistant Director Alan Belmont.
The memo also described plans that were discussed to use chemical warfare agents against crops in Cuba and Vietnam, a proposal to sabotage a nuclear installation of the Communist Chinese government, and plans to greatly increase intelligence gathering efforts targeted at embassies of foreign governments within the United States.
4. The French Consulate Break-In, and ‘KGB tactics’ in the US
While the previously mentioned 1972 “Family Jewels” memo touched on proposals for the use of chemical warfare agents in Cuba and Vietnam, other documents contained in this latest round of disclosures also describe planning for biological warfare operations.
A 1962 memo, prepared as part of Operation Mongoose, reveals discussions about the best way to covertly induce crop failure in Cuba to destabilize and topple the Castro government.
According to the memo, U.S. Army Gen. Marshall Carter, who was involved in Operation Mongoose planning, urged extreme sensitivity in biological warfare during the operation, to guard against the possibility that the Cuban government would trace resulting crop failures back to a U.S. sabotage effort.
The document indicates some planners had a preference for using biological agents that appear to be natural in origin, rather than chemical agents that might be recognized as a deliberate sabotage effort.
The memo states White House national security adviser McGeorge Bundy, who was involved in these discussions, “Had no worries about any such sabotage which could clearly be made to appear as the result of local Cuban disaffection or of a natural disaster, but that we must avoid external activities such as release of chemicals, etc., unless they could be completely covered up.”
It’s unclear, from the new document, whether the U.S. government proceeded with efforts to sabotage Cuban crops with biological agents.
Cuba did experience shortfalls in its 1962 and 1963 sugar production, according to contemporaneous documents authored by U.S. generals involved in Operation Mongoose.
Past disclosures have revealed the CIA did use cloud seeding techniques to try to divert rainfall away from Cuba to hinder its crop production.
5. Other Western Hemisphere Regime Change Operations
The CIA’s efforts to shape overthrow and install new governments didn’t end at Cuba. Newly-released documents provide new clarity about the agency’s role in shaping other governments in the Western Hemisphere.
A 1973 document included in the newest disclosures describes how the CIA supported Bolivian Gen. René Barrientos in his bid for the Bolivian presidency. Barrientos had already been the vice president of Bolivia before he co-led a November 1964 coup to overthrow then-President Víctor Paz Estenssoro.
Barrientos was on the U.S. government payroll and seen in Washington as a bulwark against the spread of communist and left-wing political thought in South America. Estenssoro had been more left-leaning at the time Barrientos drove him out of power.
While Washington had an ally in Barrientos, they desired for him to be seen as a constitutionally-elected leader rather than the leader of a post-coup military government.
According to the 1973 CIA document, the U.S. government indeed served as the driving force compelling the post-Estenssoro military government to hold elections in the summer of 1966. Furthermore, the government backed Barrientos in his bid for the presidency.
The document states the CIA spent $585,000 in 1964 dollars (the equivalent of about $6 million today) to convince Bolivia’s military government to hold constitutional elections, suppress leftists in the process, keep other political actors out of the way, and to give the election the overall appearance of legitimacy.
“To have Barrientos elected, CIA first had to promote a credible election by underwriting the campaigns of both the selected winner and his token opposition at the polls,” the document states.
It appears the final result was pre-determined.
The CIA document states, “In a genuine tour de force, [CIA Chief of Station] Lawrence M. Sternfield produced what [Organization of American States] observers called a democratic and honest election–and got the results from the electoral tribunal four days before the election.”
Not every leadership outcome could be set through a fixed election. Sometimes, existing leaders first had to be eliminated.
On May 30, 1961, a group of gunmen gunned down Rafael Trujillo—the dictator of the Dominican Republic—on a stretch of highway in what is today the capital city, Santo Domingo.
Following Trujillo’s assassination, the U.S. government took efforts to steer the country’s future governance. Beyond that, people have been left to debate the degree to which the U.S. government was involved in the Trujillo assassination itself.
In a 1975 report to the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, CIA officials admitted the agency had plotted the assassinations of Castro, Trujillo and the former President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Patrice Lumumba. The memo goes on to state the CIA had “no role whatsoever” in Lumumba’s assassination in January of 1961. As for Trujillo, the memo stated the agency played “no active part” in the killing but “had a faint connection” with those did the shooting.
Exactly what the CIA meant by “no active part” and a “faint connection,” has been unclear in the decades since.
Following a 2011 interview with one of Trujillo’s alleged assassins, the BBC reported the U.S. involvement in his assassination amounted to “Three M1 carbines left in the US Consulate after the withdrawal of embassy staff, and handed over with CIA approval.”
Though earlier disclosures left a vague acknowledgement of a CIA-connection to Trujillo’s assassination, a newly-released document provides the names of specific U.S. officials involved in the plot, and provides a detailed recounting of their engagement with the Dominican dissidents who pulled the triggers.
The CIA memo, dated to some time around 1967, specifically identifies six from the CIA and six State Department employees, some who routinely communicated through CIA channels.
- Roy R. Ribottom – Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs; Washington D.C.
- Frans Devize – U.S. State Department; Washington D.C.
- Joan C. Hill – U.S. State Department; Washington D.C.
- Joseph S. Farland – U.S. State Department; Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic
- Henry Dearborn – U.S. State Department; Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic
- Jodn D. Barfield – U.S. State Department; Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic
- J.C. King – CIA, Chief, White House Division; Washington D.C.
- Ned Holman – CIA, Chief, Branch III, White House Division; Washington D.C.
- Lear Reed – CIA Chief of Station in Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic, until October 1960
- Robert Owen – CIA Chief of Station in Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic, Jan. 20 – June 4, 1961
- Charles Cookson – CIA Operations Officer; Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic
- Isabel Cintron – CIA Administrative Assistant; Ciudad Trujillo, Dominican Republic
- Rather than simply passing along three rifles one day, the document indicates the CIA actually took proactive steps to arrange the transfer of the guns for months, and finally did so by recruiting an intermediary; an American who owned a grocery store in the country, named Lorenzo Berry.
The 64-page document details discussions of U.S. efforts to first convince Trujillo to step down on his own, followed by discussions of options to assassinate him. The document also reveals extensive conversations about what weapons would be best to transfer to the assassins. While the killers did eventually receive the three M1 Carbines described by BBC, the plotters also discussed transfers of high-powered sniper rifles, submachine guns, rockets, and grenades.
Discussions about the transfer of weapons proceeded up to the last few days before the assassination.
The CIA said machine guns would be supplied “to demonstrate good will” with the assassins and steps were taken to achieve this goal. But the memo states they never did go through with passing along any weapons other than the M1 Carbines.
The CIA had transferred the three M1 Carbines to the assassins on or around April 7, 1961, just days before the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The internal memo indicates the high-profile failure in Cuba influenced their decision to not provide more weapons to their Dominican contacts involved in the Trujillo assassination plot.
While they had previously admitted to a “faint connection” to the Trujillo assassination, the CIA record instead indicates the agency was closely involved in the planning even after the Bay of Pigs failure, but limited their support thereafter as a way to maintain a low profile.
In a message sent the day after Trujillo’s assassination, the CIA’s Dominican Republic Chief of Station Robert Owen states, “If we are to at least try ‘cover up tracks,’ CIA personnel directly involved in assassination preparation must be withdrawn now. . . . . . If assassination tried and not successful, immediate evacuation of the chief of station, the operations officer, and the administrative assistant mandatory. . .”
Indeed, by June 2, Owen and two other CIA officers in the Dominican Republic who were named as plotters, left the country.
Some of the Dominican assassination plotters were arrested and interrogated, and proceeded to tell of a high-level U.S. government role in the planning. Dominican authorities actually didn’t believe these confessions by the assassins because they presumed if the U.S. government was involved, the plan would have seen not only Trujillo’s successful assassination but the complete overthrow of his government.
Indeed, the overthrow of Trujillo’s government was discussed by the CIA, but they assessed after the fact that their Dominican co-conspirators were too fragmented and failed to coordinate among themselves the general government coup that would follow Trujillo’s assassination.
Lorenzo Berry, the store owner who facilitated the weapons transfers to the assassins would later return to the United States and receive $2,000 (about $21,000 when adjusted for inflation) in compensation for his efforts by the CIA. The document further notes Berry and his wife became involved in other political intrigues in the Dominican Republic thereafter, including “actions that led to the overthrow of Dominican President Juan Bosch in 1963.
This article was originally published by FreeBase News and is reprinted with permission.
Source: American Military News
