The Assassination Of John F. Kennedy Made Really Simple

Today is a very important day on this blog. It will soon be the sixtieth anniversary of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. More has been added to this posting, which is number 52) in the compound posting "Investigations", December 2018.

I have written before my certainty that the Mafia was behind the assassination, to make it look like the Castro government of Cuba was really behind it. The U.S. was to take the assassination as an act of war, invade Cuba and depose the Castro government, and then the Mafia could have it's Cuban playground back. The idea of the Mafia being behind it is not new, but was because Kennedy had his brother, Robert, as Attorney General, who was making life difficult for the Mafia. I have never seen the Mafia regaining control of Cuba as the motive before.

But there has been more added here besides that. I have found a clue, supporting this scenario, that investigators were supposed to notice, but apparently didn't, and I cannot find that this clue has ever been written about. I ask readers that this posting be considered as the final word about the Kennedy Assassination.

Surely the subject of more conspiracy theories than anything else is the November 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald was officially determined to have acted alone as the assassin. But ever since then the majority of Americans have believed there is more to it than that. Some believe that there was more than one gunman, and that it wasn't Oswald who fired the fatal shot. Others believe that, while Oswald was the only gunman, he had support and was doing the assassination for some larger purpose.

Kennedy was being driven through Dallas in an open convertible, waving to the crowds who had lined the streets to see the popular president. The motorcade had just passed the building where school textbooks were stored and was proceeding down a slope when three rifle shots were fired from the sixth floor of the building. One shot missed, one hit both the governor of Texas and Kennedy, and then the fatal shot struck Kennedy in the head. At that point there was grass on both sides of the road, known as the "grassy knoll". 

This view from Google Street View is from the place where Kennedy was hit looking back at the building, to the left, from which the shots were fired.

Oswald, an employee of the school textbook building, almost escaped but the owner of a shoe store, having heard about the assassination on the radio, noticed a suspicious man duck into his store as a police car went past, and then go into a nearby theater. After assassinating Kennedy, Oswald had shot and killed a police officer who attempted to question him.

I am certain that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone with regard to the actual shooting. Those stories about a "second gunman", whether on the "grassy knoll" or in the school textbook building from where Oswald fired the shots, have been thoroughly debunked. The supposed sound of gunshots in the background on an audio recording has also been explained.

Communist countries inevitably come into play in virtually any Kennedy assassination theory. Oswald had earlier defected to the Soviet Union before changing his mind and returning to the U.S., bringing his Soviet wife with him. Before the assassination Oswald had visited both the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City. There was a very anti-Communist, particularly anti-Cuba, mentality at the time in the U.S.

The following image, from Google Street View, is of the apartment building where Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Minsk.

When I landed in the U.S. people were still talking about this assassination. Some children at school told me "Everybody knows that the Mafia did it".

There is a theory that the Italian Mafia was behind the Kennedy Assassination but it was because his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had started an extensive campaign against organized crime, and not because of any foreign connections. In this theory Oswald's earlier defection to the Soviet Union would make it appear that Communists were behind the assassination.

There were two groups of people for whom Fidel Castro's 1958 overthrow of the Cuban Government had been catastrophic. These were the anti-Castro Cuban exiles and the Italian Mafia.

Cuba, before Castro's revolution, had been a playground for the Mafia. The leader of the country, Fulgencio Batista, had been a close associate of theirs. If ever the Mafia had their own country it wasn't Italy or the United States, it was Cuba in the 1940s and 50s. In 1946 a great meeting of Mafia leaders was held in Havana. The location was absolutely ideal, close to America but beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. The Mafia had a vast amount of money invested in all kinds of resorts and casinos. Frank Sinatra was a regular performer.

But it all came to an end with the 1958 Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro.

Not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis Lee Harvey Oswald had started an organization called the "Fair Play For Cuba Committee". He is widely believed to have been planning to move to Cuba, leaving his wife behind, and killed Kennedy so that he would be a hero in Cuba.

Fidel Castro had overthrown the pro-U.S. government of Fulgencio Batista in 1958, driving many Cubans to leave for the U.S. These anti-Castro Cubans attempted to invade and liberate the country. The attempted invasion, known as the Bay of Pigs, was supported by the U.S. but ended in disaster.

Fidel Castro had visited the U.S. after coming to power in Cuba and had been very popular. But then Kennedy had demonized him, and had backed the Cuban exiles in their attempt to invade the island.

But why would Kennedy demonize Castro after he had been so popular in the U.S.? 

Kennedy is known to have had friends in the Mafia. Before becoming president he visited Cuba and Mafia friends reportedly set up the married future president with prostitutes. ( Source- Smithsonian Magazine, "When The Mob Owned Cuba"). It was known that Kennedy was less than saintly in his private life but his indiscretions were with high-class women, the likes of Marilyn Monroe. These encounters, while married, with common prostitutes could be very damaging.

Is this why the Mafia set him up with prostitutes? Knowing his lustful ways and that he might be president someday, this gave the Mafia something to hold over Kennedy. At least to some extent he would have to do their bidding. The 1960 election turned out to be very close and it is generally believed that the Chicago mob helped him win Illinois.

In 1963 the Cuban exiles in the U.S. and the Mafia must have been very disappointed. After the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro was firmly entrenched in power. The U.S. had supported the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, but not with it's own ground military force.

It became clear that the only way to remove the Castro government, so that the exiles and the Mafia could get their country back, was for the U.S. to actually invade Cuba. Kennedy had demonized Castro and supported the Bay of Pigs at their obvious request but, with Soviet nuclear missiles removed from the island, Cuba was no threat to the U.S. and Kennedy wasn't about to invade it, risking a world war.

But what if the exiles and the Mafia could find a pressing reason for the U.S. to invade Cuba? There was one thing that was within their power to do. What if they could have the U.S. President assassinated and make it appear that the Castro government was behind it? Kennedy had threatened to attack Cuba if the nuclear missiles were not removed.

It was widely known that the U.S. Government under Kennedy had enlisted the Mafia about the possibility of assassinating Fidel Castro. I don't think anything became of it and it's real purpose is so that Cuba would not welcome Americans who arrived or tried to move to Cuba, which was a popular idea in the 1960s. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was making life difficult for the Mafia and there could have been a, perhaps unspoken, arrangement in which the Mafia would eliminate Castro in return for the U.S. Government easing up on it. But this opened the idea of Cubans assassinating Kennedy in return, or maybe the Mafia killing Kennedy and making it look as if the Cubans were behind it.

That is where a character like Lee Harvey Oswald comes in, he described himself as a "patsy" after being arrested. He had earlier learned to speak Russian before defecting to the Soviet Union. But I cannot see that he spoke Spanish or had ever been interested in Cuba.

So why did Oswald suddenly shift his attention to Cuba? Neither his founding of the "Fair Play For Cuba Committee" nor his visits to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City apparently accomplished much.

Could he have undertaken those actions to make it appear that he was getting instructions from the Castro government? He could have kept his visits to those embassies in Mexico City a secret but he didn't. 

Could members of the Dallas Mafia, knowing of his earlier defection to the Soviet Union, have sold him on Cuba? They could have told him how hated Kennedy was in Cuba, since many members of the Mafia had been to Cuba, and that he would be a national hero there if he killed Kennedy.

They must have known that, given Oswald's erratic nature and his earlier re-defection from the Soviet Union, he would likely be denied permission to move to Cuba. When Oswald returned to Dallas they would tell him that there was one sure way that Oswald could not only get into Cuba, but also be a national hero there. It was to assassinate the U.S. President, who had demonized Fidel Castro, supported the Bay of Pigs invasion, and then confronted Cuba in the Missile Crisis the year before.

In April 1963, seven months before the assassination of Kennedy, a shot was fired at retired General Edwin Walker, who lived in Dallas. He was sitting at his desk by a window and the single shot hit the window frame. Oswald is widely believed to have fired the shot, although not until after the Kennedy assassination. The general was known for his outspoken right-wing views, and had in fact been relieved of his command over it.

But I find this to be a little bit strange. Oswald was clearly a very good shot with a rifle. If he could hit Kennedy's head at long range then how could he miss this shot, at much shorter range? He fired two shots at Kennedy, before the fatal third, why didn't he fire again at Walker? But the bullet fired at General Walker was the same type as Oswald's rifle would use.

Maybe Oswald didn't fire this shot, even though he told his wife that he did, or did fire it but purposely didn't hit Walker. It could have been done to build Oswald's legend as a genuine anti-fascist for his future life in Cuba after the assassination of Kennedy.

The fact that an Italian-made rifle was used in the assassination of Kennedy is interesting. It could be a false clue to divert attention away from the Italian Mafia. It made it look like someone, probably the Cuban exiles or someone other than the Mafia who had a grudge against Kennedy, was trying to make it look like the Mafia was behind it. If the Mafia really was behind it, but trying to keep it a secret, then why would they have Oswald use an Italian rifle?

Oswald's Soviet-born wife, Marina, was well-known in the Russian community around Dallas. Cuban exiles would have heard about Oswald's earlier defection to the Soviet Union and that he liked guns. Having been in the U.S. Marines he would be a good shot with a rifle at a distance. The following year, 1964, was an election year and Kennedy was sure to campaign in Dallas. Oswald just happened to get a job in the school textbook building that Kennedy's motorcade would pass, and from where the fatal shots would be fired.

Given Oswald's pro- Castro activities and then his escape to Cuba after the assassination would make it clear that Cuban Communists were behind the killing. The U.S. would use that as a reason to invade Cuba and depose the Castro Government, the same as it invaded Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11. The Cuban exiles and the Mafia would have their country back.

Fidel Castro, according to the Wikipedia article about him, thought that Kennedy had been assassinated by a right-wing conspiracy and was concerned that Cuba would be blamed for it.

But why would the Mafia choose Oswald as the assassin and what exactly were they thinking? To understand that we have to go back thirty years before the assassination and when we do it all fits together perfectly. This is the clue that investigators were supposed to notice but I cant see anywhere that they did. The Warren Commission report on the Kennedy Assassination was written by very unimaginative bureaucrats.

In 1933 Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate president-elect Franklin Roosevelt. That means it was after Roosevelt had been elected but before he actually took office. Zangara was a bricklayer and had immigrated from Calabria, in southern Italy. It was this assassination attempt that the Mafia was thinking of when it set Oswald up to assassinate Kennedy with an Italian-made rifle to make it look as if Castro was behind it, but set it up to look as if the Mafia was behind it, who really were behind it.

There are so many similarities between Zangara's assassination attempt on Roosevelt and Oswald's assassination of Kennedy that it could not possibly be a coincidence. Like Oswald Zangara gained marksmanship skills in the military, having served with the Italian Army in the First World War. Like Oswald Zangara was working close to the site of the assassination attempt. Like Kennedy Roosevelt had been in an open car, with another politician, when the assassination attempt took place. Kennedy had been with Texas governor John Connolly, who was wounded. Roosevelt had been with Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was killed. Oswald fired from a sixth floor window, Zangara fired standing on a chair. Like Oswald Zangara was politically leftward. His final words, before execution, was to excoriate Capitalism and express solidarity with poor people.

All of these similarities could not be a coincidence. The attempted assassination of Roosevelt took place in Miami, which has always been America's Cuban center. Since an Italian leftist had tried to assassinate FDR in Miami, it would look to those investigating the Kennedy assassination like Cuban agents had set Oswald up with an Italian rifle, and so many similarities, to assassinate Kennedy but make it look like the Mafia had been behind it. Also considering that Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was organizing a crackdown on organized crime.

Meanwhile the Mafia would be one step ahead of everyone else. It really would be the Mafia that was behind the assassination of Kennedy. But it would look to U.S. investigators like Cuban agents were behind it, but trying to set it up to look like the Mafia was behind it. The U.S. would take the assassination of it's president by a foreign government as an act of war. U.S. forces would then invade Cuba, and depose the Castro government, and the Mafia would have Cuba back.

The plan was for Oswald to escape, and later be traced to Cuba. But even if he didn't escape investigators were supposed to notice the striking similarity between Oswald and Zangara, which could not possibly be a coincidence, and take it as an act of war by the Castro government, which tried to set it up as if the Mafia had killed Kennedy because the Mafia had been involved in supposed plots by the U.S. Government to assassinate Castro.

This scenario explains Jack Ruby. The most intriguing thing about the Kennedy Assassination is that Oswald was himself shot to death two days after killing Kennedy. It was announced that Oswald was being moved from one police station to another. News reporters were waiting in the parking garage of the police station. As Oswald was escorted past them, a man among the reporters pulled out a pistol and shot Oswald to death.

The shooter was Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with a criminal background who was heavily in debt and dying of cancer. He would die in prison for the shooting. His stated reason for killing Oswald was so that Kennedy's widow, Jackie, wouldn't have to go through his trial.

Jack Ruby is known to have been acquainted with members of the Dallas Mafia, as well as with off-duty police officers, through his nightclub. He was as strange of a character as Oswald, if not more so. Maybe he thought, or the Mafia told him, that he would be a hero for killing the man who killed Kennedy. Maybe he thought his friendships with police officers would help him after he had killed Oswald. According to one account that I once read while being restrained and arrested after shooting Oswald Ruby shouted to the police, "Hey guys it's me, Jack". There is information online that Ruby visited Mafia friends in Cuba, in 1959.

Notice the similarity here. Jack Ruby was convinced he would be a hero in America for killing Oswald, just as Oswald was convinced he would be a hero in Cuba for killing Kennedy. It makes it appear that they were convinced by the same people.

The assassination was successful but the exiles' plan was for Oswald to escape, and later be traced to Cuba or trying to enter Cuba. Convertibles were popular during the 1960s and Kennedy would be waving to the crowds that would certainly come to see the popular president from the open car. Oswald wouldn't be in the crowd but in the school textbook building. It would take some time to determine where the shots came from, initially focusing on the crowd, and this would give Oswald the chance to escape, which he almost did.

Many people have speculated that Jack Ruby, already dying of cancer, had the job of silencing Oswald after he had fired the fatal shots because Oswald, as an ex-Marine, was the one that was a good shot with a rifle. In the same way, during the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul, the would-be assassin didn't know that there was another gunman standing near him who would shoot him after he had shot the pope, purportedly to save the pope's life but really to silence the assassin from revealing who was behind the assassination attempt.

But if Jack Ruby was to similarly silence Oswald then why wasn't it done immediately? Jack Ruby was nowhere around when the assassination took place and Oswald had already been in police custody two days when Jack Ruby managed to silence him, by pretending to be a reporter in the police station parking garage. Ruby had made a great show of grief after Kennedy had been killed, closing his nightclub, but that could have been part of the "Plan B", silencing Oswald, after he had failed to escape to Cuba and had been arrested.

The plan was for Oswald to escape and later be traced to Cuba. Oswald's home and belongings would be searched and He left behind the "backyard photos" of himself holding the rifle that would kill Kennedy, obviously so that people in Cuba would know for sure that he was the assassin. He almost did escape but when he was caught they had to find a way to silence him before he could reveal who was really behind the assassination.

CONCLUSION

What I want to do here is to add the concept that the real reason Kennedy was assassinated was to bring about a U.S. military invasion of Cuba that would depose the Castro Government by making it appear that it was behind the assassination. Many people with influence, the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans, had lost so much that they could regain by bringing this about.

Also that the Kennedy assassination was modeled on the assassination attempt on Franklin Roosevelt thirty years before. The plan was for Oswald to escape after the assassination, and later be traced to Cuba. But even if Oswald didn't escape investigators were to notice this clue, which they apparently didn't, and blame the assassination on Cuba.

Of course if this clue had been noticed, and resulted in a U.S. invasion of Cuba, it could have started a world war.

Has anyone ever noticed that George W. Bush, a native of Texas, would follow exactly this same pattern, except that the Kennedy Assassination would be replaced by 9/11 and Fidel Castro would be replaced by Saddam Hussein. Maybe George Bush instinctively knew what the Kennedy Assassination was really about. Fidel Castro remained in power but what might have happened was played out against Saddam Hussein instead. His country was invaded and he was deposed on the basis of his involvement in 9/11. The theories about Oswald not acting alone were reflected in Saddam's supposed "weapons of mass destruction".

Another separate thing that I have never seen written about the Kennedy Assassination is that not far from the site of the assassination in Dallas lived an eight-year-old boy, named John Hinckley Jr. He would one day attempt a presidential assassination of his own. His assassination attempt would resemble not Oswald's sniper shots at Kennedy but Jack Ruby's waiting for Oswald, and then opening fire. 

Kennedy had won the 1960 presidential election by defeating Richard Nixon, who would later be president himself. Ironically Nixon, while not assassinated, would also be brought down by the obsession with Cuba. Cuban exiles were prominent among the Watergate burglars, who were allegedly looking for evidence that the Democrats were receiving funding from Cuba.

This Mafia dynasty in Cuba, during the 1940s and 50s, doesn't get a lot of historical attention. But it was the primary reason for the Castro revolution that overthrew the Batista government, and brought the world to the edge of nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It led to the assassination of Kennedy, which inaugurated the modern era of mass shootings. Charles Whitman's sniper shootings, from the University of Texas Tower, very much resembled Oswald's firing at Kennedy which took place elsewhere in Texas. This is generally considered as the first modern mass shooting. Finally, it resulted in America being really shaken by Watergate.