CIA Plot to Kill JFK

Overview

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. Within two hours, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. Within two days, Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, on live television. Within ten months, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone.

Almost nobody believed it.

Of the many conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination — and there are dozens, implicating everyone from the Mafia to Lyndon Johnson to Cuban exiles — the CIA theory has always been the most persistent, the most institutionally uncomfortable, and the hardest to fully dismiss. It’s built on a foundation that includes documented CIA hostility toward Kennedy, verified CIA connections to people in Oswald’s world, proven CIA deception of the Warren Commission, and the inconvenient fact that Kennedy’s own intelligence agency has spent sixty years fighting to keep assassination-related documents classified.

The theory doesn’t prove that the CIA killed Kennedy. But the circumstantial case is strong enough that the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” — and strong enough that, more than six decades later, the American government still won’t release all the files.

The Motive

Bay of Pigs and the Firing of Allen Dulles

The relationship between Kennedy and the CIA broke down spectacularly in April 1961. The Bay of Pigs invasion — a CIA-planned operation to overthrow Fidel Castro using Cuban exiles — was a catastrophic failure. Kennedy, who had inherited the plan from Eisenhower, felt the CIA had manipulated him into approving an operation designed to force his hand: once the exiles were on the beach, the agency expected Kennedy would have to provide air support. Kennedy refused. The invasion collapsed.

Kennedy was furious. He reportedly told an aide he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell — the three men most responsible for the Bay of Pigs.

For the CIA, this was existential. The agency had operated with near-total autonomy since its founding in 1947. No president had ever purged its leadership. Kennedy’s actions signaled a fundamental shift in the relationship between the executive branch and its intelligence apparatus.

The irony: Allen Dulles, the fired CIA director, was later appointed to the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy’s assassination. The fox was asked to investigate the henhouse.

Cuba: The Ongoing Obsession

The CIA’s Cuba operations didn’t end with the Bay of Pigs. The agency continued running anti-Castro programs — including Operation Northwoods, a proposed false-flag operation that Kennedy rejected, and multiple assassination plots against Castro that involved the Mafia.

Kennedy, meanwhile, was pursuing a dual track. Publicly, he maintained a hard line against Cuba. Privately, in the fall of 1963, he had authorized back-channel negotiations with Castro through various intermediaries, including journalist Jean Daniel, who was meeting with Castro in Havana at the moment Kennedy was shot.

For CIA hardliners, the prospect of Kennedy normalizing relations with Castro was intolerable. It would mean the Bay of Pigs had been for nothing. It would mean the agency’s Cuba operations — its largest covert program — would be shut down. And it would mean that thousands of Cuban exiles who had been trained, armed, and promised American support would be permanently abandoned.

Vietnam: The Policy That Wouldn’t Die

Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 on October 11, 1963 — six weeks before his death — ordering the withdrawal of 1,000 military advisors from Vietnam by the end of 1963. Some historians interpret this as the beginning of a full withdrawal. Others argue it was a limited tactical adjustment.

What’s clear is that after Kennedy’s death, the policy reversed completely. Lyndon Johnson signed NSAM 273 on November 26, 1963 — four days after the assassination — which effectively reversed Kennedy’s withdrawal trajectory. The Vietnam War escalated dramatically, eventually involving over 500,000 American troops.

The defense and intelligence establishments had enormous institutional and financial stakes in the continuation of the Cold War confrontation. Whether Kennedy would actually have withdrawn from Vietnam remains one of the great counterfactual questions of American history, but the perception among hawks that he might was real.

The Connections

Oswald’s Intelligence Footprint

Lee Harvey Oswald’s biography reads less like the story of a lone nut and more like the resume of an intelligence asset — or someone being used by intelligence agencies without fully understanding it.

The Marine years: Oswald served at Atsugi Naval Air Station in Japan, a facility used for U-2 spy plane operations and CIA activities in Asia. He had a security clearance that gave him access to classified information.

The defection: In October 1959, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, renouncing his American citizenship at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and threatening to give the Soviets classified radar information. Despite this, when he decided to return to the U.S. in 1962, the State Department loaned him money for the trip. He was not arrested, not debriefed by the FBI at length, and not charged with any crime. This treatment was, to put it mildly, unusual for a defector who had threatened to share military secrets.

The CIA file: The CIA opened a 201 personality file on Oswald in December 1960 — the kind of file typically opened on individuals of operational interest. The agency has claimed Oswald was never a CIA agent or asset, but the 201 file, combined with the agency’s later behavior, has never fully answered the question.

New Orleans: In the summer of 1963, Oswald spent time in New Orleans engaging in contradictory activities — distributing pro-Castro leaflets while simultaneously associating with anti-Castro Cuban exiles and right-wing figures. His contacts included:

• Guy Banister: A former FBI agent who ran an office at 544 Camp Street — the same address that appeared on Oswald’s pro-Castro leaflets. Banister was involved in anti-Castro activities and had intelligence connections.
• David Ferrie: A pilot, former Civil Air Patrol leader (who had been in the same unit as the teenage Oswald), and associate of both Banister and New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Ferrie had CIA connections through anti-Castro operations.
• Clay Shaw: A New Orleans businessman later prosecuted by District Attorney Jim Garrison for conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Shaw was acquitted, but CIA documents released decades later confirmed what Shaw denied at trial — that he had been a CIA contact.

Mexico City: In late September 1963, Oswald visited Mexico City and allegedly visited both the Soviet and Cuban embassies. The CIA’s Mexico City station, run by David Atlee Phillips, conducted surveillance of these embassies. The agency’s handling of information about Oswald’s Mexico City visit — including a photograph of a man identified as Oswald who was clearly someone else — has generated decades of suspicion. The CIA initially claimed to have no photos of Oswald in Mexico City, then eventually acknowledged surveillance that should have captured him.

David Atlee Phillips

Phillips is one of the most frequently cited CIA officers in assassination theories. He was chief of Cuban operations in Mexico City in 1963, directly responsible for surveillance of the Cuban embassy Oswald visited. Phillips later became chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division.

After his retirement, Phillips was identified by congressional investigators as a person of interest. Antonio Veciana, a Cuban exile leader, testified that his CIA handler — a man he knew as “Maurice Bishop” — had been seen with Oswald in Dallas before the assassination. Veciana eventually identified “Bishop” as David Atlee Phillips, though he wavered on this identification over the years.

Phillips died in 1988. His estranged brother later claimed that David had told him the story of the assassination wasn’t what people thought, though the exact meaning of this statement remains debated.

James Jesus Angleton

Angleton, the CIA’s legendary counterintelligence chief, is another figure who haunts the assassination story. He controlled the CIA’s Oswald file before the assassination. After the assassination, he served as the CIA’s liaison to the Warren Commission — effectively controlling what information the Commission received from the agency.

Angleton was later revealed to have run illegal domestic surveillance programs and was forced out of the CIA in 1974. His role in managing the Oswald file and the Commission relationship has never been fully explained.

The Institutional Cover-Up

What the CIA Hid from the Warren Commission

Even if the CIA didn’t kill Kennedy, it unquestionably lied to the commission investigating his death. Documented deceptions include:

• The CIA did not disclose its assassination plots against Castro — operations that used some of the same Cuban exile networks connected to Oswald’s New Orleans associates
• The CIA did not fully disclose its surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City
• The CIA did not disclose that Oswald’s 201 file had been handled in unusual ways
• Allen Dulles, sitting on the Commission, did not disclose relevant information about CIA operations he had overseen as director

A 2013 internal CIA history, partially declassified, acknowledged that CIA officers had “ichosen not to disclose information about their deceitful operational use of Oswald” — a remarkable admission whose full implications remain debated because the complete document remains classified.

The HSCA Findings

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (1976-1979) conducted the most thorough government reinvestigation of the Kennedy assassination. Its key findings:

1. Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”
2. The conspiracy did not involve the Soviet or Cuban governments
3. The conspiracy did not involve organized crime as an institution (though individual organized crime figures were not excluded)
4. The Secret Service, FBI, and CIA had performed inadequately in their duties

The Committee’s conspiracy finding was based partly on acoustic evidence (later disputed) suggesting a fourth shot from the grassy knoll, but the Committee’s investigation also documented extensive CIA connections to anti-Castro activities and failures to share information with the Warren Commission.

The Garrison Prosecution

New Orleans, 1967-1969

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison launched the only criminal prosecution related to the Kennedy assassination, charging businessman Clay Shaw with conspiracy to murder the president in 1967.

Garrison’s case was built around the connections between Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald in New Orleans. He alleged that Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald had met and planned the assassination as part of a CIA-connected operation rooted in anti-Castro activities.

The trial, held in 1969, ended in Shaw’s acquittal after less than an hour of jury deliberation. Garrison’s case was hampered by unreliable witnesses, prosecutorial overreach, and the death of David Ferrie (found dead in his apartment in February 1967, shortly after Garrison’s investigation became public).

Garrison was widely ridiculed for the prosecution. But decades later, CIA documents confirmed that Shaw had indeed been a CIA contact — something Shaw denied under oath. Whether Shaw’s CIA connection was related to the assassination remains unproven, but Garrison’s instinct about the intelligence community’s involvement was not as far-fetched as his critics claimed.

Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK dramatized Garrison’s investigation and sparked a public outcry that led directly to the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.

The Classification Problem

More than sixty years after the assassination, thousands of pages of CIA documents remain partially or fully classified. The JFK Records Act mandated full release by 2017. Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden have all authorized extensions and continued redactions at the CIA’s request.

The agency’s stated reason: protecting intelligence sources and methods. The obvious question: after sixty-plus years, what sources and methods could possibly still require protection?

The continued classification fuels the conspiracy theory more effectively than any evidence ever could. If the CIA has nothing to hide, critics argue, why is it still hiding things?

Timeline

Sources & Further Reading

• Talbot, David. The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. Harper Perennial, 2015.
• Morley, Jefferson. The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton. St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
• McKnight, Gerald D. Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why. University Press of Kansas, 2005.
• Garrison, Jim. On the Trail of the Assassins. Sheridan Square Press, 1988.
• House Select Committee on Assassinations. Final Report. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979.
• Shenon, Philip. A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination. Henry Holt, 2013.

Related Theories

• JFK Assassination — The broader assassination conspiracy landscape
• JFK Grassy Knoll — The second shooter theory
• Operation Northwoods — CIA’s proposed false-flag operation that Kennedy rejected
• RFK Assassination — The killing of Kennedy’s brother five years later