Monday, July 8, 2013

Not Really A Great Surprise: Castro, Cuba, Oswald, and Assassination

From July 8, 2013 Yahoo News:

(Reuters) - Lee Harvey Oswald had closer ties to Cuba's intelligence agency in the months before his fatal shooting of John F. Kennedy than previously known, according to a new book by a former CIA analyst.

Furthermore, the CIA lied about its knowledge of those ties to the Warren Commission that was tasked with investigating the crime, according to Brian Latell, the CIA's national intelligence officer for Latin America from 1990 to 1994 and author of the book "Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, & the Assassination of John F. Kennedy," due out on July 9.
The article confirms something that I am sure that I saw in a CBS interview with President Lyndon B. Johnson shortly before his death:
"Castro knew Kennedy was to be fired upon," Latell says the agent told him.

U.S. officials covered up these vital clues because they were concerned about the consequences if a Cuban connection was publicized, Latell argues.

"Had it been known it could have triggered an invasion of Cuba," he said. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, "didn't want that" so soon after the missile crisis that had brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war barely a year earlier.
The interview that I remember seeing included Johnson saying that the Warren Commission did not pursue the Cuban connection because Johnson was afraid that if they found something, it might lead to war.

2 comments:

  1. You mean the way the anthrax investigation focused on a ludicrous domestic source and then just kinda died out?

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  2. There was a book out recently which claims that the assassination was ordered by the KGB, but without obtaining clearance at the top level (which even within the KGB would have been necessary for that operation). The KGB agent who ordered it? Yuri Andropov. (Not quite. But he was one of those involved at the top level.)

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9628028/The-assassination-of-President-John-F-Kennedy-the-finger-points-to-the-KGB.html

    http://www.amazon.com/Spy-Like-No-Other-Assassination/dp/1849544158/

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