Laughable conspiracy theory of the day: Castro killed Kennedy

[Partridge]

JFK assassination 'was Cuba plot'
BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4582488.stm)

A new documentary exploring the death of John F Kennedy claims his assassin was directed and paid by Cuba. Rendezvous with Death, based on new evidence from Cuban, Russian and US sources, took three years to research. One source, ex-Cuban agent Oscar Marino, said Havana had exploited Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested but shot dead before he could be tried. Conspiracy theories on the killing have variously accused Cuba, Russia and the US of acting alone or jointly.

According to Oscar Marino, the Cubans wanted Kennedy dead because he opposed the revolution and allegedly sought to have its leader Fidel Castro killed. Mr Marino told film director Wilfried Huismann that he knew for certain the assassination was an operation run by the Cuban secret service G2, but he declined to say whether it had been ordered by Mr Castro.


Cuban intelligence made contact with Oswald after being alerted by the Russian KGB in 1962 when he returned to the US after living in the Soviet Union for three years, Cuban and Russian sources say.

"He [Oswald] was so full of hate, he had the idea. We used him," Mr Marino said.

A possible Cuban connection was investigated by the US immediately after Kennedy's death. But an FBI officer sent to follow the Oswald's trail during a visit to Mexico was recalled after only three days and the investigation called off.

Laurence Keenan, now 81, said it was "perhaps the worst investigation the FBI was ever involved in". "I realised that I was used. I felt ashamed. We missed a moment in history," Mr Keenan said.


Veteran US official Alexander Haig told the filmmaker that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson, believed Cuba was to blame and feared a pronounced swing to the right if the truth were known that would keep the Democrats out of power for a long time.

Mr Haig - a US military adviser at the time and later a secretary of state - told the filmmakers Johnson said: "We must simply not allow the American people to believe Fidel Castro could have killed our president."

"He [Johnson] was convinced Castro killed Kennedy and he took it to his grave."

Communist sharpshooter

John F Kennedy, the 35th US president, was assassinated as his motorcade drove through Dallas in November 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine sharpshooter who worked in a book warehouse overlooking the assassination, was arrested but killed shortly afterwards.

He had a Russian wife, called himself a Communist and agitated on behalf of Castro's Cuba. [He also agitated against Castro]

[Gold9472]

If it was Cuba, don't you think the American Government would have used that to invade Cuba? Which is what they wanted to do at the time?

[Partridge]

What's going on here? Last week I was listening to Taking Aim taking apart Thom Hartmann's recent JFK book 'Ultimate Sacrifice' - basic theory: JFK was killed by pissed off Mafia heads, Kennedy had planned a second Bay of Pigs, and of all people Che Guevara was going to work with the CIA to instigate a coup against Fidel and Raul (which would result in 'free and fair' elections). Yes, the same Che who argued in 1962 for the placement of USSR's nukes on Cuban soil because "[after the Bay of Pigs] anything that can stop the Americans is worth it" (or something to that effect - source: John Lee Anderson's Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life).

Now we have the 'It Wuz Castro' theory. And the justification was the Bay of Pigs and presumably Castro's (not unfounded) fear of another such attempt. Ridiculous. Are we seriously to believe that in the space of four years, Castro had gone from guerrilla leader in charge of a small, third world nation to the plotter of the murder of one of the most powerful men in the world, and who's powerbase (and military) was a mere 90 miles from Cuba? Here we have the image so beloved of the US ruling class of the 'mad Castro', plotting and scheming to bring down the USA... by assassinating a very popular leader? Whatever you think of him, Castro wasn't (and isn't) stupid.

The theory presented here is that LBJ didn't say it was Cuba, even though he knew, because he feared a 'rightwing backlash' (because obviously LBJ was so leftwing). Let's for a moment assume that LBJ did in fact think it was the Cubans and sat on it. There is no way Castro could have known that would be the outcome - in fact, I would think it would be the opposite. Given the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis and Operation Mongoose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuban_Project) (and subsequent destabilisation attempts, if I was Castro I'd have been worried that the US ruling class would use any perceived hostile Cuban activities within the US as the excuse for a full scale invasion - with the full backing of the America People, the rightwing Cuban emigrés, and one would suspect with little opposition outside of denunciations in the UN from the USSR - afterall, if it could be proven that Castro was the ringleader the USSR would have no option but to accede. One doubts they would risk a 'hot' confrontation in defence of someone who would become a pariah if it was revealed he had been behind Jack Kennedy's murder. Operation Northwoods afterall was drawn up with that specific purpose - ON was of course vetoed by the Kennedy brothers, as they prefered the 'James Bond' style assassination and 'counterinsurgency' attempts to overt warfare.

But even then, according to Andersons book on Che, "Only two months [before Jan 1964, ie Nov 1963], he [Castro] and President Kennedy had been edging toward a behind-the-scenes detente, sending exploratory message back and forth with a view to "normalizing" relations, when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas." (p586, paperback ed).

There is an interesting footnote to this line, which actually if one believed it would lend creedence to the theory presented by this documentary. It reads: "Che Guevara remained a suspect for almost any kind of international skullduggery, evidently, for his named popped up in a number of reports filed during the Warren Commission's investigation into the JFK assassination, including some quite bizarre ones from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI field agents. One, in particular, reported an alleged sighting of Che Guevara and Jack Ruby - Oswald's assassin - together in Panama."

I don't know the specifics of this alleged meeting, and I doubt it happened. The main reason being Che (along with Fidel) was by this stage the most famous and important revolutionary in the entire world. And given the extraordinary lenghts he went to in order to hide his identity whiel travelling to Congo and later Bolivia (see the pic of the disguise he used to enter Bolivia here (http://www.commietravel.com/cuba/statesmen/che/che008_bolivia_small.jpg) - Yes, that is the hairy communist!) - I find it very very hard to believe that a) he would even meet Jack Ruby (presumably to arrange Ruby's murder of Oswald) in the first place! and b) that he would not be in disguise when he did so (if he did). Then there is Che actual ideological position, which to the best of my knowledge did not advocate 'propaganda of the deed' type assassinations (Che was afterall a Leninist, and Lenin argued voicferously against the assassinations carried out by the anarchists and Narodniks in pre-1917 Russia). He advoacted guerrilla warfare among the peasantry, which is a different kettle of fish altogether, and eschews such tactics unless they are part of an overall political and military struggle taking place at the same time - and in the US anyone could see that this was most definitley not the situation. Besides, I don't know that Che was ever in Panama outside of his travels through there in the early 1950s - long before the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

So who is this Oscar Marino? Apparently "a former Cuban agent who fell out with the Castro regime". Can you say "CIA stooge"?

[Gold9472]

I should really start reading some JFK books. For me, the Zapruta film has always been the evidence that Oswald did not kill Kennedy, and the fact that newspapers in South America had articles within 24 hours detailing a complete description of Oswald, as well as his photograph. Meaning that the story was most likely pre-written. Other than reading about the Bay Of Pigs, the Gulf Of Tonkin, The Pentagon Papers, etc... I never really read about his assassination, nor have I read the Warren Commission's report completely.

[beltman713]

No, it was the cigarette smoking man.

[Gold9472]

No, it was the cigarette smoking man.

Whoever it was, it wasn't Oswald.

[beltman713]

You know, from the X-Files.

[Gold9472]

You know, from the X-Files.

I know who you meant... I used to love that show. Until they got rid of Mulder.

[beltman713]

Yeah, it sucked after that.

[Gold9472]

And the last episode sucked ass. But the cigarette smoking man was killed.

[beltman713]

He killed MLK too.