Conspiracy theorists consider four or five groups, alone or in combination, to be the primary suspects in the assassination of Kennedy: the
CIA, the
military-industrial complex, the government of
Cuba led by
Fidel Castro,
J. Edgar Hoover, and international
drug lords, Garrison's 1988 book
On the Trail of the Assassins discusses his
prosecution of Clay Shaw for the assassination, and was partially adapted by
Oliver Stone for his 1991 film
JFK. The final report of the
Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) stated that the film "popularized a version of President Kennedy's assassination that featured U.S. government agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the military as conspirators." Journalist Rosemary James, whose article with Jack Dempsey and David Snyder in the
New Orleans States-Item broke the news of the Garrison investigation, stated that because Garrison's theory evolved frequently, it was mockingly called the "theory du jour" by the media.
Pamela Colloff and
Michael Hall described the theory held by Garrison and Stone for
Texas Monthly this way: "There is a secret government within our government, a cabal that in 1963 ordered the murder of a popular president, set up a patsy, installed its own puppet, and orchestrated an elaborate cover-up that included tampering with the corpse, destroying and suppressing evidence, and killing witnesses. Heading the cabal were some of the world's most powerful men: rich and corrupt industrialists, generals, and right-wing politicians. Down below was an eclectic group of mobsters, spooks, lowlifes, and anti-Castro extremists, many of whom were headquartered at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans, including Oswald, former FBI agent Guy Banister, soldier of fortune David Ferrie, and suspected CIA informant Clay Shaw. Together, in the summer of 1963, they plotted Kennedy's demise." Soon after the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald's activities in
New Orleans,
Louisiana, during the spring and summer of 1963, came under scrutiny. Three days after the assassination, on November 25, 1963, New Orleans attorney
Dean Andrews told the FBI that he received a telephone call from a man named
Clay Bertrand, on the day of the assassination, asking him to defend Oswald. Andrews would later repeat this claim in testimony to the Warren Commission. (second from left) with Lee Harvey Oswald (far right) in the New Orleans
Civil Air Patrol in 1955 Also, in late November 1963, an employee of the New Orleans
private investigator Guy Banister named
Jack Martin began making accusations that fellow Banister employee
David Ferrie was involved in the JFK assassination. Martin told police that Ferrie "was supposed to have been the getaway pilot in the assassination." He said that Ferrie had outlined plans to kill Kennedy and that Ferrie might have taught Oswald how to use a rifle with a telescopic sight. Martin claimed that Ferrie had known Oswald from their days in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol, and that he had seen a photograph, at Ferrie's home, of Oswald in a Civil Air Patrol group. Ferrie denied any association with Oswald. It was later discovered that Ferrie had attended
Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald. Whether Oswald's and Ferrie's association in the Civil Air Patrol in 1955 is relevant to their later possible association in 1963 is a subject of debate. On the afternoon of November 22, 1963the day
John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the day Marcello was acquitted in his deportation casethe New Orleans private investigator
Guy Banister and his employee
Jack Martin were drinking together at a local bar. On their return to Banister's office, the two men got into a heated argument. According to Martin, Banister said something to which Martin replied, "What are you going to dokill me like you all did Kennedy?". Banister drew his
.357 magnum revolver and
pistol-whipped Martin several times. Martin, badly injured, went by ambulance to
Charity Hospital. Earlier, in the spring of 1963, Oswald had written to the
New York City headquarters of the pro-Castro
Fair Play for Cuba Committee, proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans". As the sole member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald ordered 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba" from a local printer. On August 16, 1963, Oswald passed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in front of the
International Trade Mart in New Orleans. One of Oswald's leaflets had the address "544 Camp Street" hand-stamped on it, apparently by Oswald himself. The address was in the "Newman Building", which from October 1961 to February 1962 housed the
Cuban Revolutionary Council, a militant anti-Castro group. Around the corner but located in the same building, with a different entrance, was the address 531 Lafayette Streetthe address of "Guy Banister Associates", the private detective agency run by Guy Banister. Banister's office was involved in anti-Castro and private investigative activities in the New Orleans area. A CIA file indicated that in September 1960, the CIA had considered "using Guy Banister Associates for the collection of foreign intelligence, but ultimately decided against it". In the late 1970s, the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated the possible relationship of Oswald to Banister's office. While the committee was unable to interview
Guy Banister, who died in 1964, the committee interviewed his brother Ross Banister. Ross "told the committee that his brother had mentioned seeing Oswald hand out Fair Play for Cuba literature on one occasion. Ross theorized that Oswald had used the 544 Camp Street address on his literature to embarrass Guy." Guy Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, would later tell author
Anthony Summers that she saw Oswald at Banister's office, and that he filled out one of Banister's "agent" application forms. She said, "Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office." The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated Roberts's claims and said that "because of contradictions in Roberts' statements to the committee and lack of independent corroboration of many of her statements, the reliability of her statements could not be determined." In 1966, New Orleans
District Attorney Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that a group of
right-wing extremists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved with elements of the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Garrison later claimed that the motive for the assassination was anger over Kennedy's attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam. Garrison came to believe that New Orleans businessman
Clay Shaw was part of the conspiracy and that Clay Shaw used the pseudonym "
Clay Bertrand". Garrison further believed that Shaw, Banister, and Ferrie conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination. On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was brought to trial on these charges, and the jury found him not guilty.
CIA conspiracy Addressing speculation that Oswald was a CIA agent or had some relationship with the Agency, the Warren Commission stated in 1964 that their investigation "revealed no evidence that Oswald was ever employed [by the] CIA in any capacity." The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported similarly in 1979 that "there was no indication in Oswald's CIA file that he had ever had contact with the Agency" and concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy.
Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote that investigators were pressured not to look into the relationship between
Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA. He stated that CIA agent
David Atlee Phillips, using the pseudonym "Maurice Bishop", was involved with Oswald prior to the Kennedy assassination in connection with anti-Castro Cuban groups. In 1995, former U.S. Army
Intelligence officer and
National Security Agency executive assistant
John M. Newman published evidence that both the CIA and FBI deliberately tampered with their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the assassination. He found that both agencies withheld information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman expressed the belief that CIA chief of counter-intelligence
James Angleton was probably the key figure in the assassination. According to Newman, only Angleton "had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot." Newman surmised that the cover operation was not under James Angleton, but under
Allen Dulles, the former CIA director, and a later Warren Commission member, who had been dismissed by Kennedy after the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1977, the FBI released 40,000 files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy, including an April 3, 1967, memorandum from Deputy Director
Cartha DeLoach to Associate Director
Clyde Tolson that was written less than a month after President Johnson learned from
J. Edgar Hoover about CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. The memorandum reads: "
Marvin Watson [adviser to President Johnson] called me late last night and stated that the president had told him, in an off moment, that he was now convinced that there was a plot in connection with the [JFK] assassination. Watson stated the president felt that [the] CIA had had something to do with plot." Later, Cartha DeLoach testified to the
Church Committee that he "felt this to be sheer speculation".
Shadow government conspiracy One conspiracy theory suggests that a secret or
shadow government including wealthy industrialists and right-wing politicians ordered the assassination of Kennedy.
Peter Dale Scott has indicated that Kennedy's death allowed for policy reversals desired by the secret government to escalate the United States' military involvement in Vietnam. with
John F. Kennedy in 1961 In
JFK vs Allen Dulles, the author Greg Poulgrain describes an attempt by America's
Rockefeller family to gain control over
West Irian gold mines in Indonesia, in particular the substantially gold-rich
Grasberg mine. Poulgrain speculates that President Kennedy's close relationship with Indonesian President
Sukarno and a planned 1964 US–Indonesian summit could have led to Indonesia granting independence to West Irian, making it difficult for Rockefeller-owned
Freeport Sulphur to gain control of the mines. Poulgrain contends that
Allen Dulles, who had ties to the Rockefellers through his employment at
Sullivan & Cromwell, organized the assassination on the Rockefellers' behalf to eliminate Kennedy's interference by easing Lee Harvey Oswald's return to the United States and getting him a job at the
Texas School Book Depository, before instigating
a coup in Indonesia with the cooperation of military officer
Suharto to discredit the
Communist Party of Indonesia. The subsequent
nationwide massacres and Suharto's assumption of the presidency, Poulgrain purports, led to Freeport securing the mines with the approval of Suharto's pro-Western government. Talbot also posits that Allen Dulles orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy at the behest of corporate leaders, though on the basis of their perceiving Kennedy as a threat to national security instead of to primarily secure any specific business interests. According to Talbot, Dulles lobbied the new president, Lyndon Johnson, to have himself appointed to the Warren Commission. Talbot says that Allen Dulles also arranged to make Lee Harvey Oswald the person responsible for the assassination. Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Kennedy planned to end the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, and was therefore targeted by those who had an interest in sustained military conflict, including the Pentagon and defense contractors. The former United States Senator
Ralph Yarborough in 1991 stated: "Had Kennedy lived, I think we would have had no
Vietnam War, with all of its traumatic and divisive influences in America. I think we would have escaped that." According to the author
James W. Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the
Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union. Douglass argued that this "was not the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military-industrial complex wanted in the White House."
Oliver Stone's film
JFK explored the possibility that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving the military-industrial complex.
L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, and the person who inspired the character "Mr. X" in Stone's film, wrote that Kennedy's assassination was actually a
coup d'état.
Secret Service conspiracy The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that it investigated "alleged Secret Service complicity in the assassination" and concluded that the Secret Service was not involved. Among its findings, the HSCA noted: (1) that President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas, (2) that 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, and (3) that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. The HSCA specifically noted: No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the presidential limousine
Roy Kellerman to cover the President with his body, although it would have been consistent with Secret Service procedure for him to have done so. The primary function of the agent was to remain at all times in close proximity to the President in the event of such emergencies. Some argue that the lack of Secret Service protection occurred because Kennedy himself had asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit. However, Vince Palamara, who interviewed several Secret Service agents assigned to the Kennedy detail, disputes this. Palamara reports that Secret Service driver Sam Kinney told him that requestssuch as removing the bubble top from the limousine in Dallas, not having agents positioned beside the limousine's rear bumper, and reducing the number of Dallas police motorcycle outriders near the limousine's rear bumperwere not made by Kennedy. In
The Echo from Dealey Plaza,
Abraham Boldenthe first African American on the White House Secret Service detailclaimed to have overheard agents say that they would not protect Kennedy from would-be assassins. Questions regarding the forthrightness of the Secret Service increased in the 1990s when the
Assassination Records Review Boardwhich was created when Congress passed the
JFK Records Actrequested access to Secret Service records. The Review Board was told by the Secret Service that in January 1995, in violation of the JFK Records Act, the Secret Service destroyed protective survey reports that covered JFK's trips from September 24 through November 8, 1963.
Cuban exiles The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved". Author
Joan Didion explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 book
Miami. She discussed
Marita Lorenz's testimony regarding Guillermo Novo, a Cuban exile who, in 1964, was involved in shooting a
bazooka at the headquarters of the
United Nations building from the
East River during a speech by
Che Guevara. Allegedly, Novo was affiliated with Lee Harvey Oswald, and Frank Sturgis. Lorenz claimed that she, Oswald, and seven anti-Castro Cubans transported weapons from Miami to Dallas in two cars just prior to the assassination. These claims, though put forth to the House Assassinations Committee by Lorenz, have never been substantiated.
Don DeLillo dramatized the Cuban theory in his 1988 novel
Libra.
Organized crime conspiracy In 1964, the
Warren Commission found no evidence linking Ruby's killing of Oswald with any broader conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. The Commission concluded: "Based on its evaluation of the record, the Commission believes that the evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime. Both State and Federal officials have indicated that Ruby was not affiliated with organized criminal activity." However, in 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved".
Robert Blakey, who was chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, would later conclude in his book,
The Plot to Kill the President (co-written with
Richard N. Billings) that
New Orleans Mafia boss
Carlos Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and that the Mafia had the means and the opportunity required to carry it out. In 1992 a revised edition of the book was released, retitled
Fatal Hour: The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime. In a 1993
Washington Post article, Blakey added: "It is difficult to dispute the underworld pedigree of Jack Ruby, though the Warren Commission did it in 1964. Author
Gerald Posner similarly ignores Ruby's ties to
Joseph Civello, the organized crime boss in Dallas. His relationship with
Joseph Campisi, the No. 2 man in the mob in Dallas, is even more difficult to ignore. In fact, Campisi and Ruby were close friends; they had dinner together at Campisi's restaurant, the
Egyptian Lounge, on the night before the assassination. After Ruby was jailed for killing Oswald, Campisi regularly visited him. The select committee thought Campisi's connection to Marcello was telling; he told us, for example, that every year at Christmas he sent 260 pounds of Italian sausage to Marcello, a sort of Mafia tribute. We also learned that he called New Orleans up to 20 times a day." In 1988 David E. Scheim, a manager of computerized information at the
National Institutes of Health, published
Contract on America: The Mafia Murder of President John F. Kennedy. It featured on
The New York Times Best Seller List. In 1989 the journalist
John H. Davis, who had penned the introduction to Scheim's book, published his own work, entitled
Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, in which he implicated Carlos Marcello as the ring leader of an assassination plot. Government documents have revealed that some members of the Mafia worked with the Central Intelligence Agency on assassination attempts against
Cuban leader
Fidel Castro. In summer 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent
Robert Maheu to approach the West Coast representative of the Chicago mob,
Johnny Roselli. When Maheu contacted Roselli, Maheu hid the fact that he was sent by the CIA, instead portraying himself as an advocate for international corporations. He offered to pay $150,000 to have Castro killed, but Roselli declined any pay. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he referred to as "Sam Gold" and "Joe". "Sam Gold" was
Sam Giancana; "Joe" was
Santo Trafficante Jr., the Tampa, Florida, boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in pre-revolution Cuba.
Glenn Kessler of
The Washington Post explained: "After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled a friendly government in 1959, the CIA was desperate to eliminate him. So the agency sought out a partner equally worried about Castrothe Mafia, which had lucrative investments in Cuban casinos." In his memoir,
Bound by Honor,
Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss
Joseph Bonanno, disclosed 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. Many Cuban exiles and Mafia bosses disliked President Kennedy, blaming him for the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. They also disliked his brother, then
United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who had conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative because several Mafia "families" had allegedly worked with JFK's father,
Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected. Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were experts in assassinationthe Cubans having been trained by the CIA. Bonanno reported that he recognized the high degree of involvement of other Mafia families when Jack Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster
Sam Giancana. Some conspiracy researchers have alleged a plot involving elements of the Mafia, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans, including Anthony Summers, who stated: "Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro activists were involved together in the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in the fight to topple Fidel Castro." News reporter
Ruben Castaneda wrote in 2012: "Based on the evidence, it is likely that JFK was killed by a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, and elements of the CIA." In his book,
They Killed Our President, former
Minnesota governor
Jesse Ventura concluded: "John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia, all of whom were extremely angry at what they viewed as Kennedy's
appeasement policies toward Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union."
Carlos Marcello allegedly threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade. Information released in 2006 by the FBI has led some to conclude that Carlos Marcello confessed to his cellmate in Texas, Jack Van Lanningham, an
FBI informant, using a transistor radio that was bugged by the FBI, to having organized Kennedy's assassination, and that the FBI covered up this information that it had in its possession. In his book,
Contract on America, David Scheim provided evidence that Mafia leaders
Carlos Marcello,
Santo Trafficante Jr., and
Jimmy Hoffa ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination, and to an attempted confession by Jack Ruby while in prison.
David E. Kaiser has also suggested mob involvement in his book,
The Road to Dallas. Investigative reporter
Jack Anderson concluded that Fidel Castro worked with organized crime figures to arrange the JFK assassination. In his book
Peace, War, and Politics, Anderson claimed that Mafia member Johnny Roselli gave him extensive details of the plot. Anderson said that although he was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, many of Roselli's details checked out. Anderson said that Oswald may have played a role in the assassination, but that more than one gunman was involved. Johnny Roselli, as previously noted, had worked with the CIA on assassination attempts against Castro. The
History Channel program
The Men Who Killed Kennedy presented additional claims of organized crime involvement. Christian David was a
Corsican Mafia member interviewed in prison. He said that he was offered the assassination contract on President Kennedy, but that he did not accept it. However, he said that he knew the men who did accept the contract. According to David, there were three shooters. He provided the name of one
Lucien Sarti. David said that since the other two shooters were still alive, it would break a code of conduct for him to identify them. When asked what the shooters were wearing, David noted their
modus operandi was to dress in costumes such as official uniforms. Much of Christian David's testimony was confirmed by former Corsican member Michelle Nicole, who was part of the
DEA witness protection program.
Lyndon B. Johnson conspiracy A 2003 Gallup poll indicated that nearly 20% of Americans suspected
Lyndon B. Johnson of being involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Critics of the Warren Commission have accused Johnson of plotting the assassination because he "disliked" the
Kennedys and feared that he would be dropped from the Democratic ticket for the
1964 election. According to journalist
Max Holland, the first published allegation that Johnson perpetrated the assassination of Kennedy appeared in
Penn Jones Jr.'s book
Forgive My Grief, self-published in May 1966. In the book, Jones provided excerpts of a letter purported to have been authored by Jack Ruby charging LBJ with the murder of the President. and
Madeleine Brown. The fact that JFK was seriously considering dropping Johnson from the ticket in favor of North Carolina Governor
Terry Sanford should Kennedy run in 1964 has been cited as a possible motive for Johnson's complicity in the assassination. In 1968, Kennedy's personal secretary
Evelyn Lincoln wrote in her book,
Kennedy and Johnson, that President Kennedy had told her that Lyndon B. Johnson would be replaced as Vice President of the United States. That conversation took place on November 19, 1963, just three days before the assassination of President Kennedy and was recorded that evening in her diary and reads as follows: In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book
Blood, Money & Power. McClellan claims that Johnson, motivated by the fear of being dropped from the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and the need to cover up various scandals, masterminded Kennedy's assassination with the help of his friend, attorney
Edward A. Clark. The book suggests that a smudged partial fingerprint from the sniper's nest likely belonged to Johnson's associate
Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, and that Mac Wallace was, therefore, on the sixth floor of the Depository at the time of the shooting. The book further claims that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates, including
Clint Murchison and
H. L. Hunt. McClellan states that the assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 percent. It remained unchanged during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan, this resulted in a saving of over $100 million to the
American oil industry. McClellan's book subsequently became the subject of an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series,
The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The episode, "The Guilty Men", drew angry condemnation from the Johnson family, Johnson's former aides, and former Presidents
Gerald Ford (who was a member of the
Warren Commission) and
Jimmy Carter following its airing on
The History Channel. The History Channel assembled a committee of historians who concluded the accusations in the documentary were without merit, and The History Channel apologized to the Johnson family and agreed not to air the series in the future.
Madeleine Brown, who alleged she was the mistress of Johnson, also implicated him in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In 1997, Brown said that Johnson, along with H. L. Hunt, had begun planning Kennedy's demise as early as 1960. Brown claimed that by its fruition in 1963, the conspiracy involved dozens of persons, including the leadership of the FBI and the Mafia, as well as prominent politicians and journalists. In the documentary
The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Madeleine Brown and May Newman, an employee of Texas oilman Clint Murchison, both placed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at a social gathering at Murchison's mansion the night before the assassination. Also in attendance, according to Brown, were
John McCloy,
Richard Nixon,
George Brown,
R. L. Thornton, and H. L. Hunt. Madeleine Brown claimed that Johnson arrived at the gathering late in the evening and, in a "grating whisper", told her that the "... Kennedys will never embarrass me againthat's no threatthat's a promise." Brown said that on New Year's Eve 1963, she met Johnson at the
Driskill Hotel in
Austin, Texas, and that he confirmed the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, insisting that "the fat cats of Texas and [U.S.] intelligence" had been responsible. While attending to Oswald, Crenshaw said that he answered a telephone call from Lyndon Johnson. Crenshaw said that Johnson inquired about Oswald's status, and that Johnson demanded a "death-bed confession from the accused assassin [Oswald]". Critics of Crenshaw's allegation state that Johnson was in his limousine at the moment the call would have been made, that no one in his car corroborated that the call was made, and that there is no record of such a call being routed through the White House switchboard. Former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt accused Johnson, along with several CIA agents whom he named, of complicity in the assassination in his posthumously released autobiography
American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond. Referencing that section of the book,
Tim Weiner of
The New York Times called into question the sincerity of the charges, and
William F. Buckley Jr., who wrote the foreword, said material "was clearly ghostwritten". Shortly afterwards, an audio-taped "
deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed first-hand knowledge of a conspiracy, as a co-conspirator, was released by his sons; Historian
Michael L. Kurtz wrote that there is no evidence suggesting that Johnson ordered the assassination of Kennedy. According to Kurtz, Johnson believed Fidel Castro was responsible for the assassination and that Johnson covered up the truth because he feared the possibility that retaliatory measures against Cuba might escalate to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In 2012, biographer
Robert Caro published his fourth volume on Johnson's career,
The Passage of Power, which chronicles Johnson's communications and actions as Vice President, and describes the events leading up to the assassination. Caro wrote that "nothing that I have found in my research" points to involvement by Johnson.
Political consultant and convicted
felon Roger Stone believes that Johnson orchestrated Kennedy's assassination. He also claims that
Rafael Cruz, father of
Texas Senator and
Republican presidential candidate for the
2016 elections Ted Cruz, is tied to
Lee Harvey Oswald.
George H. W. Bush conspiracy Some critics of the official findings theorize that
George H. W. Bush was involved in the assassination as a CIA operative in Dealey Plaza. In the book
Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK?, American attorney
Mark Lane suggests that Bush worked out of a Houston office as a CIA agent at the time of the assassination. In the book
Family of Secrets,
Russ Baker contends that Bush became an
intelligence agent in his teenage years and was later at the center of a plot to assassinate Kennedy that included his father,
Prescott Bush, Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson, CIA Director
Allen Dulles, Cuban and Russian exiles and emigrants, and various Texas oilmen. According to Baker, Bush was in Dallas on the night before and morning of the assassination. On November 29, 1963, exactly one week after the assassination, an employee of the FBI wrote in a memo that "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was given a briefing on the reaction to the assassination by Cuban exiles living in Miami.
Joseph McBride speculated that the "George Bush" cited in the memo was the future U.S. president,
George H. W. Bush, who was appointed head of the CIA by president
Gerald Ford in 1976, 13 years after the assassination. During
Bush's presidential campaign in 1988, the memo resurfaced, prompting the CIA to claim that the memo was referring to an employee named George William Bush. George William Bush disputed this suggestion, declaring under oath that "I am not the George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum." On the website JFK Facts, author Jefferson Morley writes that any communication by Bush with the FBI or CIA in November 1963 does not necessarily demonstrate culpability in the assassination, and that it is unclear whether Bush had any affiliation with the CIA prior to his appointment to head the agency in 1976.
Cuban government conspiracy In its report, the Warren Commission stated that it had investigated "dozens of allegations of a conspiratorial contact between Oswald and agents of the Cuban Government" and had found no evidence of Cuban involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy". In 1966 it produced a television program narrated by Butler entitled "Hitler in Havana", which suggested that Castro had culpability in the assassination of President Kennedy. The
Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), whose member
Carlos Bringuier had taken part in that same radio debate, rushed out the next issue of their paper
Trinchera in the assassination's aftermath, with the headline "The Presumed Assassins" next to photos of Oswald and Castro. In 1969 Bringuier published the book
Red Friday, wherein he argued that Oswald was working for Castro. In the early 1960s,
Clare Boothe Luce, wife of
Time-Life publisher
Henry Luce, was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored anti-Castro groups. This support included funding exiles in commando speedboat raids against Cuba. In 1975, Clare Luce said that on the night of the assassination, she received a call from a member of a commando group she had sponsored. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something like" Julio Fernandez and he claimed he was calling her from New Orleans. According to Luce, Fernandez told her that Oswald had approached his group with an offer to help assassinate Castro. Fernandez further claimed that he and his associates eventually found out that Oswald was a communist and supporter of Castro. He said that with this new-found knowledge, his group kept a close watch on Oswald until Oswald suddenly came into money and went to
Mexico City and then Dallas. According to Luce, Fernandez told her, "There is a Cuban Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun." Luce said that she told the caller to give his information to the FBI. Luce revealed the details of the incident to both the
Church Committee and the HSCA. Both committees investigated the incident, but were unable to uncover any evidence to corroborate the allegations. In May 1967, CIA Director
Richard Helms told President Lyndon Johnson that the CIA had tried to assassinate Castro. Helms further stated that the CIA had employed members of the Mafia in this effort, and "... that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro dated back to August of 1960to the Eisenhower Administration." Helms said that the plots against Castro continued into the Kennedy Administration and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement. On separate occasions, Johnson told two prominent television newsmen that he believed that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman
Howard K. Smith of
ABC 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 in regard to the assassination, "[I could not] honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections", and referenced unnamed "others". Finally, in 1971, Johnson told his former speechwriter Leo Janos of
Time magazine that he "never believed that Oswald acted alone". In 1977, Castro was interviewed by newsman
Bill Moyers. Castro denied any involvement in Kennedy's death, saying: It would have been absolute insanity by Cuba. ... It would have been a provocation. Needless to say, it would have been to run the risk that our country would have been destroyed by the United States. Nobody who's not insane could have thought about [killing Kennedy in retaliation].
Soviet government conspiracy The Warren Commission reported that they found no evidence that the Soviet Union was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy". Much later, the high-ranking
Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen.
Ion Mihai Pacepa, said that he had a conversation with
Nicolae Ceauşescu who told him about "ten international leaders the
Kremlin killed or tried to kill", including Kennedy. He claimed that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy." Pacepa later released a book,
Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination, in 2007. Similar views on the JFK assassination were expressed by Robert Holmes, former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, in his 2012 book
Spy Like No Other.
Decoy hearse and wound alteration David Lifton presented a scenario in which conspirators on
Air Force One removed Kennedy's body from its original bronze casket and placed it in a shipping casket, while en route from Dallas to Washington. Once the presidential plane arrived at
Andrews Air Force Base, the shipping casket with the President's body in it was surreptitiously taken by helicopter from the side of the plane that was out of the television camera's view. Kennedy's body was then taken to an unknown locationmost likely
Walter Reed Army Medical Centerto surgically alter the body to make it appear that he was shot only from the rear. Part of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey on January 18, 1978, by committee staff members Donald Purdy and Mark Flanagan. According to the report, Lt. Richard Lipsey said that he and General Wehle had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. Lipsey "... placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Wehle then flew by helicopter to Bethesda and took [the body of] JFK into the back of Bethesda." Lipsey said that "a decoy hearse had been driven to the front [of Bethesda]". With Lipsey's mention of a "decoy hearse" at Bethesda, Lifton theorized that the casket removed by Lipsey from Air Force Onefrom the side of the plane exposed to televisionwas probably also a decoy and was likely empty. Laboratory technologist Paul O'Connor was one of the major witnesses supporting another part of David Lifton's theory that somewhere between Parkland and Bethesda the President's body was made to appear as if it had been shot only from the rear. O'Connor said that President Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda inside a body bag in "a cheap, shipping-type of casket", which differed from the description of the ornamental bronze casket and sheet that the body had been wrapped in at Parkland Hospital. O'Connor said that the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda, Researcher
David R. Wrone dismissed the theory that Kennedy's body was surreptitiously removed from the presidential plane, stating that as is done with all cargo on airplanes for safety precautions, the coffin and lid were held by steel wrapping cables to prevent shifting during takeoff and landing and in case of air disturbances in flight. According to Marrs, the issuance of
Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the
United States Department of the Treasury by replacing
Federal Reserve Notes with
silver certificates. A 2010 article in
Research magazine discussing various controversies surrounding the Federal Reserve stated that "the wildest accusation against the Fed is that it was involved in Kennedy's assassination." Among these views were that
Zionists were motivated to kill Kennedy due to his opposition to an
Israeli nuclear program, that Lyndon B. Johnson received orders from Zionists to have Kennedy killed, and that the assassin was a Zionist agent. Piper said that the assassination "was a joint enterprise conducted on the highest levels of the American CIA, in collaboration with organized crimeand most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the Israeli intelligence service, the
Mossad." The theory alleges involvement of
Meyer Lansky and the
Anti-Defamation League. In a speech before the
United Nations General Assembly in 2009, Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi also alleged that Kennedy was killed for wanting to investigate Dimona.
Other published theories holding his
AR-15 rifle •
Reasonable Doubt (1985) by Henry Hurt, who writes about his Warren Commission doubts. Hurt pins the plot on professional crook Robert Easterling, along with Texas oilmen and the supposed Ferrie/Shaw alliance. . •
Behold a Pale Horse (1991) by
William Cooper alleges that Kennedy was shot by the presidential limousine's driver, Secret Service agent
William Greer. In the Zapruder film, Greer can be seen turning to his right and looking backwards, just before speeding away from Dealey Plaza. This theory has come under severe criticism from others in the research community. . • Former Secret Service agent
Abraham Bolden's
The Echo from Dealey Plaza (2008) () and Kevin James Shay's
Death of the Rising Sun (2017) () detail plots that occurred shortly before Kennedy's trip to Dallas in 1963, in
Chicago and
Florida. Within the Secret Service during those chaotic months, "rumors were flying" about Cuban dissidents and right-wing southerners who were stalking Kennedy for a chance to kill him, Bolden wrote. The security threat in Chicago on November 2, 1963, involved former Marine Thomas Arthur Vallee, who was arrested after police found an M-1 rifle, a handgun, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his apartment. A high-powered rifle was confiscated from another suspected conspirator in Chicago shortly before Kennedy's trip there was canceled, Bolden said. Authorities also cited similar threats in Kennedy's
Tampa, Fla., and
Miami visits on November 18. • Mark North's
Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy, (1991) implicates the FBI Director. North documents that Hoover was aware of threats against Kennedy by organized crime before 1963, and suggests that he failed to take proper action to prevent the assassination. North also charges Hoover with failure to work adequately to uncover the truth behind Kennedy's murder, . •
Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (1992) by Bonar Menninger () alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did succeed in wounding him, the fatal shot was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the presidential limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger of his
AR-15 and the shot fatally hit JFK. Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "
At the end of the last report (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it,
and turned to the rear." (italics added). George Hickey sued Menninger in April 1995 for what he had written in
Mortal Error. The case was dismissed as its
statute of limitations had run out. The theory received public attention in 2013 when it was supported by
Colin McLaren's book and documentary titled
JFK: The Smoking Gun (). No Secret Service agent fired a weapon that day. •
Who Shot JFK? : A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories (1993) by Bob Callahan and Mark Zingarelli explores some of the more obscure theories regarding JFK's murder, such as "The Coca-Cola Theory". According to this theory, suggested by the editor of an organic gardening magazine, Oswald killed JFK due to mental impairment stemming from an addiction to refined sugar, as evidenced by his need for his favorite beverage immediately after the assassination. . •
Passport to Assassination (1993) by Oleg M. Nechiporenko, the Soviet consular official (and highly placed KGB officer) who met with Oswald in Mexico City in 1963. He was afforded the unique opportunity to interview Oswald about his goals including his genuine desire for a Cuban visa. His conclusions were: (1) that Oswald killed Kennedy due to extreme feelings of inadequacy versus his wife's professed admiration for JFK, and (2) that the KGB never sought intelligence information from Oswald during his time in the USSR as they did not trust his motivations. . •
Norman Mailer's ''
Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery'' (1995) concludes that Oswald was guilty, but holds that the evidence may point to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, who, purely by coincidence, was attempting to kill JFK at the same time as Oswald. "If there was indeed another shot, it was not necessarily fired by a conspirator of Oswald's. Such a gun could have belonged to another lone killer or to a conspirator working for some other group altogether." . • David Wrone's
The Zapruder Film (2003) concludes that JFK's head wound and his throat and back wounds were caused by in-and-through shots originating from the grassy knoll. Three shots were fired from three different angles, none of them from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. Wrone is a professor of history (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point. . •
The Gemstone File: A Memoir (2006), by Stephanie Caruana, posits that Oswald was part of a 28-man assassination team that included three U.S. Mafia hitmen (
Jimmy Fratianno, John Roselli, and Eugene Brading). Oswald's role was to shoot John Connally. Bruce Roberts, author of the Gemstone File papers, claimed that the JFK assassination scenario was modeled after a supposed attempted assassination of President F.D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was riding in an open car with Mayor
Anton Cermak of Chicago. Cermak was shot and killed by
Giuseppe Zangara. In Dallas, JFK was the real target, and Connally was a secondary target. The JFK assassination is only a small part of the Gemstone File's account. . • In "Allegations of PFC Eugene Dinkin", the Mary Farrell Foundation summarizes and archives documents related to Private First Class Eugene B. Dinkin, a cryptographic code operator stationed in
Metz, France, who went
AWOL in early November 1963, entered Switzerland using a false ID, and visited the United Nations' press office and declared that officials in the U.S. government were planning to assassinate President Kennedy, adding that "something" might happen to the Commander in Chief in Texas. Dinkin was arrested nine days before Kennedy was killed, placed in psychiatric care (deemed a mad man?), and released shortly thereafter. His allegations eventually made their way to the Warren Commission, but according to the Ferrell Foundation account, the Commission "took no interest in the matter, and indeed omitted any mention of Dinkin from its purportedly encyclopedic 26 volumes of evidence." • Described by the
Associated Press as "one of the strangest theories", Hugh McDonald's
Appointment in Dallas stated that the Soviet government
contracted with a rogue CIA agent named "Saul" to have Kennedy killed. According to McDonald, his CIA mentor told him that "Saul" was the world's best assassin. McDonald stated that after the assassination, he recognized the man's photo in the Warren Commission report and eventually tracked him to a London hotel in 1972. • Returning from the funeral of President Kennedy,
Charles De Gaulle, the president of France, told his confidant
Alain Peyrefitte that the Dallas police were linked to far-right segregationist "ultras" in the
Ku Klux Klan, and that the far-right
John Birch Society manipulated Oswald and used Jack Ruby to silence him. •
A Woman I Know: Female Spies, Double Identities, and a New Story of the Kennedy Assassination (2023) by Mary Haverstick, identifies and interviews the real-life retired (female) pilot
Jerrie Cobb, who died in 2019, and suggests that she either was the same person as, or impersonated
June Cobb (d. 2015), a known CIA operative who may have been part of the team that attempted to assassinate
Fidel Castro. She provides statements to the effect that Cobb (apparently as "June") piloted a small twin-engined plane to the Redbird private airport (now
Dallas Executive Airport) in Dallas, where it remained with engines running during the assassination of the president, purportedly to assist in spiriting away Lee Harvey Oswald, and may also herself have been involved in the assassination as a second shooter in the vicinity of the presidential limousine; her conclusion, which has received mixed responses from reviewers, is that Oswald was "set up" to conduct the assassination by a clandestine team within the
CIA including
William King Harvey and
Arnold M. Silver. == Notable supporters and critics of JFK assassination conspiracy theories ==