Was a Cuban hitman the second JFK assassin? New book reveals another
plausible killer
FEW people know more about the circumstances surrounding the
assassination of President John F Kennedy than Professor Robert Blakey.
By: Anthony SummersPublished: Sat, November 16, 2013
He was chief counsel of the US Congress's Assassinations Committee, the
body set up in the late Seventies to re-examine the shootings of JFK and
the civil rights leader Martin Luther King - and he had special access
to classified information.
In 2007, out of the blue, he was contacted by a Cuban exile named
Reinaldo Martnez. He was in his 80s, Martnez explained, and there was
something he wanted to get off his chest before he died. Over two days
with Blakey I listened to what Martnez had to say. He passed on what he
said he had been told by anti-Castro leader Tony Cuesta, a celebrated
hero to Cuban exiles in the US, when Cuesta was being treated in the
infirmary at Cuba's La Cabana prison for terrible wounds received in an
anti-Castro raid.
Cuesta said a comrade, Herminio Daz - a man he and Martnez both knew
intimately - had admitted before his death in combat that he had
"participated" in the assassination of President Kennedy. Daz was a
known political assassin, a marksman and - before joining the struggle
against Castro that so many exiles felt Kennedy had betrayed - had
worked in one of Mafia boss Santo Trafficante's casinos in Cuba.
We found Martnez credible, what he told us plausible. Former chief
counsel Blakey deems the new information "a breakthrough of historic
importance". Its significance lies in the fact it undermines the Oswald
did-it-alone theory of the official account of Kennedy's assassination
50 years ago, on November 22, 1963.
As everyone knows, the President was shot in the head as he rode through
Dallas, Texas, in an open-topped car. The Warren Commission, the probe
ordered by Kennedy's successor President Lyndon Johnson, concluded the
murder had been committed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine, a
recently returned defector to the Soviet Union and an apparent
Left-winger with an avowed sympathy for Fidel Castro's Cuba.
Two days after the assassination the alleged killer was himself shot
dead by nightclub operator Jack Ruby while being transferred to the city
jail.
The Warren Commission asserted Ruby had "no significant link" to
organised crime, the US Mafia.
However, in 1979 the second official investigation into Kennedy's death,
by the Assassinations Committee, came to a different conclusion. Its
report showed that Ruby had links to organised crime from his youth
until just before the assassination. The Committee also found links
between Oswald's family and organised crime.
It stated, too, that the physical and acoustic evidence and the human
testimony indicated that not one but two gunmen probably fired at the
President - Oswald from behind, as the Warren Commission had reported,
and another, unidentified gunman, shooting from in front. There had thus
"probably" been a conspiracy.
Oswald's actions that day suggest he was far from a mere innocent. That
said, there are reasons to dispute both investigations' fingering of
him: some witnesses put him in the ground-floor canteen of the Texas
School Book Depository as late as 12.25pm, five minutes before the
President was scheduled to pass by. That's where he was right
afterwards, too. Oswald had no known motive to murder Kennedy - in fact
he had spoken well of him.
All these years later the CIA continues to evade full disclosure.
It is still withholding 1,171 documents as "national security
classified". Many issues regarding US intelligence have never been resolved.
Oswald was a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union at the
height of the Cold War, saying he had promised to give the KGB
information he had learned on a U-2 spy base. Yet when he returned,
according to the official account, he was supposedly allowed just to
melt back into civilian life.
Here, briefly, a speculation. If Oswald was in fact interrogated on his
return, this Left-wing defectorcum-traitor may have been given options.
"You're a traitor, an offence that calls for a lengthy stay in jail." Or
perhaps: "Instead of going to jail you could perhaps be useful to us.
Maintain the Left-wing stance and we may get you to do things for us."
Oswald soon became active on behalf of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba
Committee, a group targeted, bugged and infiltrated by the FBI.
He appeared to clash, meanwhile, with an anti-Castro group the
Directorio Revolucianario Estudiantil, which was operating under the
auspices of the CIA.
As well as armed raids on Cuba by exiled fighters the struggle against
the Castro regime involved complex black propaganda operations.
I interviewed a former paid operative of the FBI Joseph Burton, whom the
Bureau has acknowledged as a "valuable and reliable source" and whose
assignment in 1963 was to pose as a Marxist and infiltrate radical
groups. Burton told me Oswald had been "connected with the FBI"… that
FBI agents had spoken of "owning" Oswald.
Many anti-Castro fighters loathed President Kennedy because they
considered he had betrayed their cause at the Bay of Pigs invasion in
1961, during the Missile Crisis in 1962 and by his clampdown on their
armed activity in 1963.
The Mafia for its part longed to see Castro ousted because the
revolution had robbed them of a gambling and hotel goldmine in Cuba.
They loathed the President, moreover, because they were under
unprecedented pressure from the Kennedy Justice Department.
If the anti-Castro groups and the Mob bosses plotted to kill Kennedy,
seeing to it that the crime was blamed on a pro-Castro activist would
have seemed a masterstroke.
What I have reported may point to what really happened in Dallas but
historians will be sparring over the Kennedy assassination far into the
future.
A final thought. The President's savage end came as a shock to America
and to the world. For the man himself though - in that initial moment of
knowing he was injured by a first bullet, in the split-second before his
head was blown apart - it may not have come as a total surprise.There
had been a security flap four days earlier when Kennedy visited Miami. A
motorcade had reportedly been cancelled - because of concerns about
Cuban exiles. The Secret Service had received a telephone intercept of a
Right-wing extremist speaking of a plan to shoot the President "from an
office building with a high-powered rifle".
Perhaps this had been mentioned to Kennedy for on the morning of the
fatal day - in his hotel suite as he prepared for the short flight to
Dallas - he had murmured to his wife Jacqueline and an aide: "Last night
would have been a hell of a night to assassinate a president… Anyone
perched above the crowd with a rifle could do it."
Two hours later, a marksman - or two marksmen - did do it.
Anthony Summers is the only person to have won the Crime Writers' Gold
Dagger Award twice, once for his book on the Kennedy assassination. Not
In Your Lifetime by Anthony Summers (Headline Books, £9.99) is available
at £8.99 with free P&P call 0871 988 8451 or visit www.expressbooks.co.uk.
You can also send a cheque or PO (payable to The Express) to: The
Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF
THE AWFUL MOMENT MRS KENNEDY NEVER FORGOT A WEEK after President
Kennedy's death his widow Jacqueline gave an interview to Life magazine
at the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts.
She recalled the moment her husband had been shot as she sat beside him
in words too raw - or so Life's editors thought at the time - to be
published: "You know, when he was shot, he had such a wonderful
expression on his face…[Then] he looked puzzled… he had his hand out.
"I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was fleshcoloured, not
white. He was holding out his hand - and I can see this perfectly clean
piece detaching itself from his head…" As the presidential limousine
gathered speed, Mrs Kennedy believed she cried: "I love you, Jack… I
kept saying, 'Jack, Jack, Jack…' All the ride to the hospital, I kept
bending over him saying, 'Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you,
Jack.' I kept holding the top of his head down, trying to keep the…" Mrs
Kennedy could not complete the sentence.
Source: "Was a Cuban hitman the second JFK assassin? New book reveals
another plausible killer | World | News | Daily Express" -
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/443382/Was-a-Cuban-hitman-the-second-JFK-assassin-New-book-reveals-another-plausible-killer
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