Did He or Didn't He Act Alone?

November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination and I am already anticipating a slew of news stories on the conspiracy theories surrounding this murder.  About the only thing these conspiracy theories truly prove is that there a lot of people who had a motive to murder the President.  The most popular of the conspiracy theories is that Vice President Lyndon Johnson did it.  Other theories say it was Fidel Castro, it was the mob, it was the CIA, it was the FBI.  Still others say Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.  Of course, the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination concluded that Oswald acted alone and used the "single bullet" to prove its point.  However, in a recent poll, 59% of Americans still believe there was a conspiracy to kill the President.

To my untrained mind, the conspiracy theory that makes the most sense is that the CIA in conjunction with the mafia were responsible for the killing.  Seems an odd combination.  However, during the Kennedy administration, the CIA had reached out to Sam Giancana, the head of the Chicago Outfit, and enlisted the mobsters help in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.  The plot never came about, largely because the FBI, which was doing its own surveillance of Giancana stumbled upon some CIA surveillance equipment at his offices one day.  Normally, the mafia did not do hits on politicians of any kind (they would just buy them), especially national leaders.  But, Giancana's willingness to help out indicated that the mob would be open to the idea.  Further, the Kennedy's had double crossed the mob.  That was usually good for a death sentence, so the idea of the mob wanting to take out the President does not seem far fetched.

Sometime in either 1959 or 1960, Jack Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy, approached Giancana and asked the mobster if he could deliver the votes necessary to carry Illinois for Kennedy.  In return, Kennedy promised the mobster that the government would get off his back.  The elder Mr. Kennedy also wanted Giancana to get the New York mob to cancel a contract that it had put out on Joseph Kennedy's life, too.  During the late 1950's, after New York state police exposed the mob as a national crime syndicate (something J Edgar Hoover denied all along until this bust), Congress went after the mob hard.  Giancana was subpoenaed to testify and during this testimony, a young Bobby Kennedy publicly embarrassed the mobster by comparing him to a school girl.  After Jack Kennedy was elected President in 1960, with Giancana doing his part, Robert Kennedy was named Attorney General and his pursuit of the mob intensified.  The mob had been double crossed.  So we can definitely establish a motive for the mob to go after Kennedy.

But what about the CIA?  Why would the CIA have been involved?  It all started with the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.  The Bay of Pigs invasion was to be conducted by Cuban nationals based out of Miami and trained by the CIA.  They would invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, and would receive US air support.  The Eisenhower Administration approved it.  My own thought on this was that this invasion was Vice-President Nixon's idea, and he would carry it out after he was elected.  Senator Kennedy was briefed on it - and I believe it was very brief.  Kennedy gave his go ahead, but when the invasion went badly, he pulled the air support.  Afterward, Kennedy was quoted as saying he wanted to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.  The animosity between the CIA and Kennedy was short-lived.  Except in the Miami office.  They never forgave Kennedy for his desertion of the invasion.  And this could be where the plot was hatched.

The most prominent agents in the Miami office were Howard Hunt, the station chief, and Frank Sturgis.  President Kennedy's popularity among Cuban exiles and nationals was practically non-existent and the hate was very high.  Hunt and Sturgis obviously knew this.  And the CIA had worked with the mob before and could have contacted them to see about the viability of all this.

And even here, it starts to break down for me.  First, I believe that in the case of Hunt and Sturgis, their first loyalties were always to Richard Nixon.  Both would go on to work for President Nixon's "Plumbers" unit and Sturgis would actually go on to be one of the Watergate burglars.  How did all of this come about?  Who financed what part of the effort?  Who provided the arms?  Who really directed the cover up?  While I do not believe that Vice President Johnson was ever directly involved in the assassination, he clearly put himself in charge of the investigation.  Normally, the investigation would have been handled by the Attorney General, but with Robert Kennedy as the AG (a man Johnson hated even more than the President), there was no way Johnson was going to put him in charge of it.  Not with a cover-up to direct.  With the assassination occurring in Texas, it was easy for Johnson's people on the ground to do their part.  No autopsy was performed in Texas (going against Texas law), the body was immediately removed from the hospital and flown to DC on Air Force One.  Then Johnson appointed the members of the Warren Commission to investigate and the rest is history. 

In this theory, Richard Nixon would have been some kind of facilitator.  First, Nixon always had close ties to the mob.  Second, Nixon had a long friendship with Kennedy that went ice cold after the 1960 campaign.  Third, I have long thought that Nixon and Johnson were political soul mates.  Both ruthless, highly corrupt, power hungry.  I believe that Nixon could have brought the parties together and it was likely Nixon who informed Johnson of what was going on and it was Nixon who got Johnson's buy-in to the whole idea.  Nixon's team would do the job, and Johnson would direct the cover-up.  I have long thought that after he became President himself, Nixon referred to this assassination way too much, and he spoke way too authoritatively about it.  One place where this breaks down for me is the placement of Texas Governor John Connally in the same car as the President.  I'm sure Nixon assured Johnson that nothing was going to happen to him that day.  But Connally was in a dangerous position.  Connally was a very good friend of both Johnson and Nixon (especially Johnson).  In fact, Connally would go on to serve as Treasury Secretary for President Nixon.

Certainly, this theory has holes in it.  Yet it is the most plausible of all conspiracy theories to me.  I'm not sure I believe it.  Then again, I am not sure I believe that Oswald acted alone either.