JFK papers revive conspiracy theories
Since Oswald was never brought to trial, doubts are bound to linger about the nature and extent of his guilt. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, 61 per cent of Americans believe he did not act alone. These sceptics are convinced the intelligence agencies ar
The Cold War rides again. Instead of calming fears and alleviating suspicion, the recent avalanche of documents relating to the assassination 54 years ago of John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States of America, may revive speculation about a sinister global conspiracy in which the former Soviet Union and Fidel Castro’s Cuba had key roles.
Perhaps it’s just as well that India has no 30-year rule for releasing state papers. No one knows, for instance, what Suman Sinha, who was posted in Lhasa at a critical period of Sino-Indian relations, recommended. Whatever is known about Jawaharlal Nehru’s private life comes from foreign sources and cannot be corroborated. There is no sign of the Henderson Brooks report on the 1962 war ever being officially released. While this secrecy might be deplored as a matter of principle, it does to an extent avoid witch-hunts and destabilizing policy swings. Against that must be set the damage done when secrecy ensures that rulers are not accountable.
One reason perhaps why the Kennedy papers released by the US National Archives are shrouded in so much mystery is the personality of a man whose second name was Jesus – James Jesus Angleton, the Central Intelligence Agency’s "Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence" from 1954 to 1975. He was largely responsible for intelligence cooperation with Britain.
Angleton was an intriguing character. He fancied conspiracies everywhere and never ceased fighting the Cold War. He had a personal reason for imagining that the Soviet Union had suborned all his and Britain’s agents and that these KGB men were laying siege on all sides to the West. Kim Philby, the trusted Ambala-born MI6 operative who was also a highly successful long-time Soviet spy, was his close friend. Angleton must have felt profoundly betrayed when Philby, who served as both an NKVD and KGB operative and is believed to have betrayed dozens of Western agents to the Kremlin, defected to Moscow in 1963. Incidentally, Philby’s father, St John Philby was an ICS officer and Arabist who became a Muslim and worked for King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia.
As the documents now made public reveal, Angleton wrote a memorandum on the curious tip-off to the Cambridge News. As he said, "The British Security Service (MI-5) has reported that at 1805 GMT on 22 November (1963) an anonymous telephone call was made in Cambridge, England, to the senior reporter of the Cambridge News. The caller said only that the Cambridge News reporter should call the American Embassy in London for some big news and then hung up." Kennedy was shot just 25 minutes after the call ended.
Angleton’s note continued: "After the word of the President's death was received the reporter informed the Cambridge police of the anonymous call and the police informed MI-5. The important point is that the call was made, according to MI-5 calculations, about 25 minutes before the President was shot.”
This is part of an information overkill that has added to public bewilderment. Some 3,000 documents related to the investigation into Kennedy's murder – consisting of files from the CIA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Defence and State departments and other US governmental agencies – were scheduled to be released 25 years after the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The law called for the records to be made available subject to the president’s approval.
Over 2,800 have now been released. Some were withheld due to national security concerns, according to a memo from Donald Trump who says he had “no choice” in the matter and had to defer to lobbying by various American intelligence agencies. He has promised to release the remaining papers in April next year. No doubt there will again be a public furore then. Americans are especially interested in files on J. Walton Moore who headed the CIA in Dallas at the time of the murder, and in an 18-page dossier on a Dallas businessman called Gordon McClendon who was known to have spoken to the nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald whom the Warren Commission identified in 1964 as Kennedy’s murderer.
The documents released so far cover the early years of the Kennedy administration up to the 1970s. They create the impression of a far-reaching and deep-seated conspiracy whose tentacles spread into many fields and many countries. They also ask pertinent questions. Why, for instance, was a man holding an umbrella on a warm sunny day? Did it conceal a weapon?
Oswald’s visit to Mexico City to obtain Cuban and Soviet visas strengthens speculation of an international Communist plot. Whom Oswald met on that trip has been the subject of speculation for many years. Nor can anyone be certain that the same bullet, fired from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository building, pierced Kennedy’s neck before entering Texas Governor John Connally’s back, exiting his chest below the right nipple, passing through his right wrist and puncturing his left thigh, as the Warren Commission held. Connally, who recovered from the wound, disagreed with the much parodied “magic bullet theory” but also pooh-poohed conspiracy theorists. He believed that Oswald was the lone assassin.
Among the documents released is a memo that J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary FBI director, dictated on November 24, 1963, just hours after Ruby shot Oswald. According to this, the FBI hoped for a confession from Oswald at the hospital before he died. That confession was never made, leaving Hoover with an urgent desire to have "something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."
No doubt Oswald was the marksman. But since he was never brought to trial, doubts are bound to linger about the nature and extent of his guilt. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, 61 per cent of Americans believe Oswald did not act alone. Those sceptics are convinced the intelligence agencies are keeping a tight lid on what really happened either to cover up their own inefficiency or to conceal the real truth.
One bizarre theory is that Kennedy was shot by a secret service agent in a car behind the presidential limousine. The most innocent explanation of this is that when the first shot was fired, the agent’s car jerked forward, causing him to accidentally fire his weapon at Kennedy. But some believe that the military and intelligence services were furious with Kennedy for not being sufficiently hostile to the Soviets and Cubans. Moscow believed the American “ultra-right” killed Kennedy and that without his restraining hand “some irresponsible generals in the US might launch a missile at the Soviet Union.”
Given the power of the “deep state” (including the CIA and FBI) under Trump, that fear not only persists but may have received a fresh lease of life.
The writer is author of several books and a regular media columnist