The Soviet Union theorized that President Lyndon B. Johnson could have been behind JFK’s assassination – and also feared Moscow could be blamed and attacked, according to documents in a major release of files related to Kennedy’s slaying on Thursday.
The Dec. 1, 1966 FBI memo, which relayed unconfirmed speculation, noted that sources said the KGB “was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.”
The memo, which was forwarded to the White House by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover with the all-caps title: ““REACTION OF SOVIET AND COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS TO THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY” said:
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“KGB headquarters indicated that in view of this information, it was necessary for the Soviet Government to know the existing personal relationship between President Johnson and the Kennedy family, particularly that between President Johnson and Robert and ‘Ted’ Kennedy.”
In days following JFK’s killing, Moscow believed the slaying could be used by rogue American military leaders to whip up anti-Soviet sentiment and even lead to an attack.
Soviets feared dark US forces were “interested in utilizing the assassination and playing on anticommunist sentiments in the United States,” according to the FBI.
“Our source further stated that Soviet officials were fearful that without leadership, some irresponsible general in the United States might launch a missile attack on the Soviet Union.”
Oswald lived in the Soviet Union for nearly three years from 1959 to 1962 and married a woman from Minsk.
The release of documents was made to satisfy a 25-year deadline set forward by the Oct. 25, 1992 enactment of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act.
However, many of the files were held back from release by President Trump after the CIA and FBI asked for more time to redact information that could cause “potentially irreversible harm.”
While Soviets believed JFK’s killing could have been engineered internally, LBJ saw a foreign link to the assassination.
Johnson would regularly say he believed JFK’s murder was payback for CIA involvement in the assassination of South Vietnam’s head of state, documents showed.
LBJ’s CIA director, Richard Helms, said in a deposition that Johnson wasn’t shy in sharing his own JFK conspiracy theories.
“President Johnson used to go around saying that the reason President Kennedy was assassinated was that he had assassinated President Diem,” Helms said during a April 23, 1975 deposition at Langley. Though the source didn’t say if Johnson ever said why he thought that.
South Vietnam’s autocratic leader Ngo Dinh Diem was arrested and assassinated in 1963 after a US-backed coup in the country.
Johnson was in JFK’s motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas when Lee Harvey Oswald opened fire from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
LBJ was sworn into office later that day aboard Air Force One.
Oswald’s ability to squeeze off those shots has long been debated, with critics of the lone-killer theory believing he didn’t have great marksmanship.
But a 1967 FBI cable quoted a Cuban intelligence operative telling another of Oswald’s shooting ability, “Oh, he was quite good.”
When the other asked how he knew, that operative said, “I knew him.”
Oswald was a known supporter of Fidel Castro and was active in the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” which sought greater US support for the Havana regime.
I was 14 yrs old when Kennedy was assassinated. I always thought LBJ had something to do with it.
I believe Jack Ruby is also key.
“However, many of the files were held back from release by President Trump after the CIA and FBI asked for more time to redact information that could cause “potentially irreversible harm.””
This isn’t exactly going to dispel any of the various conspiracy theories, and will probably generate a few new ones.After 5 decades plus a few years, what and who will be suffering “potentially irreversible harm.” and why?
For that matter, what kind of pressure was put on Trump (and every other President since the assassination for that matter) to persuade him to keep it secret and who put it on him (the others as well)?
I’d like to hear more about this, but what will probably be heard will be only various people blaming it on various sources and reasons with nothing to back it up one way or the other.
Conspiracy theories are born of things like this, maybe deliberately, and no one ever seems able to either confirm or deny their validity.
JFK Files: J. Edgar Hoover Said Public Must Believe Lee Harvey Oswald Acted Alone
by Alex Johnson
“There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.”
J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, dictated that line in a memo he issued on Nov. 24, 1963, the day Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald as Oswald was being transported to the Dallas County Jail after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
The memo is one of at least 52 records never previously made public that were included in the release Thursday of about 2,800 unredacted government documents related to Kennedy’s murder in Dallas two days earlier. President Donald Trump approved withholding an undisclosed number of other documents pending a 180-day national security review.
Scholars and other experts have repeatedly said it’s unlikely that there’s anything groundbreaking in the documents. But as journalists and historians pored through the enormous database of material Thursday night and Friday morning, some interesting nuggets were turning up, among them Hoover’s Nov. 24 memo.
Hoover appeared to be particularly concerned that the public would have to be compelled to believe that Oswald was a lone actor — not part of a larger conspiracy.
In the 1964 Warren Report on Kennedy’s assassination, Hoover was firm in stating that he hadn’t seen “any scintilla of evidence” suggesting a conspiracy — a sentiment he expressed in other public forums, as well, but not in words as blunt as those he used the day Oswald was killed.
Referring to Nicholas Katzenbach, the deputy attorney general at the time, Hoover dictated: “The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.”
It’s not clear from the memo whether Hoover thought there might have been a conspiracy but didn’t want it to be known or whether he sincerely believed Oswald acted alone and hoped to head off public fear and confusion.
Hoover also indicated that his concern may have been influenced, in part, by diplomacy, dictating that there could be serious international complications if the public thought Oswald might have been part of a larger plot.
Katzenbach is known from previously released documents to have shared Hoover’s concern, writing in a memo the next day, on Nov. 25, 1963, that “the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
In the memo, Hoover excoriated the Dallas Police Department for not having prevented Oswald’s killing by Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. The FBI had warned the police that Oswald’s life was in danger, but nothing was done, he complained.
“Oswald having been killed today after our warnings to the Dallas Police Department was inexcusable,” Hoover dictated. “It will allow, I am afraid, a lot of civil rights people to raise a lot of hell because he was handcuffed and had no weapon. There are bound to be some elements of our society who will holler their heads off that his civil rights were violated — which they were.”
Hoover argued against appointing an independent commission to review the evidence, contending that the matter should be left to the Justice Department, the FBI’s parent agency. Lyndon Johnson, the new president, announced the creation of the Warren Commission a few days later.
Hoover’s concern, writing in a memo the next day, on Nov. 25, 1963, that “the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
This is pretty clear at a coverup.
We will never know because so many people had a motive to kill JFK every window in the Texas Book Depository could have had another Lee Harvey Oswald in it! Fans of Marilyn Monroe, Castro, Mob bosses, enraged husbands whose wives Kennedy seduced, LBJ, CIA, KGB the list is endless!
Follow the money, follow the power. Of course Johnson.
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Here’s one for you conspiracy guys-did the plot extend to England?
from Spero News,
“The Call That Might Have Saved Kennedy’s Life”
http://www.speroforum.com/a/KCDXKPISKN42/82019-JFK-files-reveals-the-phone-call-that-might-have-saved-the-presidents-life?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WHNWJBQPKS48&utm_content=KCDXKPISKN42&utm_source=news&utm_term=JFK+files+reveals+the+phone+call+that+might+have+saved+the+presidents+life#.WfSUiflSwdV