Will Proof of the JFK Conspiracy Finally Be Revealed?

In October of this year, under the JFK Assassinations Record Act of 1992, the final documents that remain classified by the CIA surrounding Kennedy’s death are set to be released. The act states that 25 years after the bill was passed, all documents pertaining to the case must be declassified unless the President deems it necessary to maintain their secrecy for national security reasons.

The CIA has released almost 90 percent of the millions of documents it has that are relevant to the assassination, including a recent trove containing more than 400 never before seen archives that were released in response to a FOIA request from POLITICO. Some of these archives have curiously been labeled illegible while others have been marked irrelevant.  But there are still over 3,000 documents that have never been seen by the public, and there is a strong chance that the CIA and FBI will petition the President to maintain their classified status.

The number of different theories surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 is seemingly endless. Many of these theories stem from the belief in a cover up or conspiracy, either known, or executed by members of the CIA. In fact, polls have shown that the majority of Americans don’t believe the officially sanctioned story that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in carrying out the killing. Conflicting reports from the doctors who examined Kennedy’s body, the immediate murder of Oswald, and Cold War paranoia are just a few of the causes for conspiratorial speculation. But what is hiding in those documents that have remained classified for over 50 years? Will the truth behind Kennedy’s murder be uncovered, or is the government simply hiding embarrassing activities it conducted in the fervor of the Cold War?

Technically, the CIA has already admitted to a cover-up of certain extent, regarding how it presented information to the Church Committee that investigated the assassination. The agency admitted to a “benign cover-up” to prevent the commission from “straying too far from what the agency believed was the best truth.” Also included in the still classified documents, is a testimony from the chief of the CIA’s counterintelligence branch, James Angleton, in front of the Church Committee.

After the committee concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin, public support for the verdict was overwhelming, but since then the tides have changed. The deluge of conflicting stories and questionable explanations over the past five and a half decades demands answers that will hopefully be resolved before the end of this year.

The Corsican Assassin

One odd circumstance surrounding the events of November 22, 1963, that was disclosed by a previous FOIA request from Jerome Corsi, revealed that a well-known French assassin was in Dallas that day and later detained, unbeknownst to the public. He was then deported (or transported out of the country) without any mention to the Church Committee. While the identity of the assassin was somewhat convoluted, from his use of multiple aliases, he is thought to be a man by the name of Lucien Sarti, Jean Souetre, or Michel Mertz, a Corsican mobster who was involved in the French Connection’s heroin trade.

The identity of the Corsican was supposedly confirmed by E. Howard Hunt, a CIA officer who claimed on his deathbed that he was involved in the assassination along with a French gunman at the grassy knoll. Hunt was also implicated and arrested in the Watergate scandal.

But the implications of the presence of the French assassin fall in line with a grander theory that Kennedy was assassinated by the mob, as they saw him to be a threat to their drug trade. A trifecta of three mob bosses, Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante, ran a multi-billion-dollar heroin trade in the U.S. receiving their supplies from the French Connection via Laos and Vietnam. This trade became threatened by CIA actions directed by Kennedy and a subsequent plot ensued to assassinate him.

Kennedy’s embroiled connections with the mob add to the convoluted web in which a conspiracy to murder him could have unraveled. JFK’s father worked with Giancana, the Chicago mafioso, during Prohibition bootlegging liquor. It was thought that Giancana helped finance Kennedy’s presidential campaign and intimidated people to vote for him as a favor to the senior Kennedy. Giancana was also included in plans to assassinate Fidel Castro during JFK’s presidency. But once JFK and Robert Kennedy’s policies started to threaten his business, he turned on them.

Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia Boss

At this point, some believe that members of the CIA also wanted Kennedy dead and were planning a coup. Others believe that Kennedy’s assassination could have been a false flag for a global drug trade that involved not just the mob, but also government agencies. With members of the mob having CIA connections from assassination attempts on Castro, it would be unsurprising if there was some collusion between the two in plotting Kennedy’s murder.

Now, after more than 50 years, there is a possibility that the truth could be exposed as to what the CIA really knows about the JFK assassination. Will the final archives be declassified or will the CIA convince the President to maintain secrecy? Many of the suspicious actors involved in the assassination are dead at this point so that adds to the possibility of some sort of disclosure. One thing that’s almost certain is that the documents must not contain information implicating Lee Harvey Oswald, otherwise there would be nothing to hide. But it seems very likely that there may be something revelatory that poses, or once posed, as an embarrassment to some of the higher institutions in our government.