Just as people were beginning to wonder if it was going to happen at all, the Trump administration uploaded thousands of files related to the JFK assassination into the National Archives early evening Tuesday.
President John F. Kennedy was murdered on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, in broad daylight. The U.S. government’s subsequent Warren Commission report, prompted by President Lyndon B. Johnson and released 10 months after the incident, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a poor shot with a rickety foreign rifle, did the job, and he alone did it.
But the American public overwhelmingly rejected that theory, especially after Abraham Zapruder’s video surfaced. Previously declassified documents revealed that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station managers provided instructions to agents on how to convince more people of the Warren Commission’s unconvincing conclusion.
Official Version
The propaganda version of JFK’s assassination rests on the premise that one bullet, fired from behind, hit the president in the back of the head, exited through his armpit, and then hit Texas Governor John Connally, who was sitting in the front seat. But the Zapruder film clearly shows that a bullet struck JFK from the front, whiplashing his head backward. There are many other circumstances that discredited the propaganda version of what happened that day. A second government investigation vindicated the skeptics and eventually contradicted the Warren Commission’s whitewashed report. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reopened the the JFK case. The committee ultimately concluded that JFK “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” but it couldn’t pin down who exactly was behind it.
The most pressing questions to have arisen over the last 60 years regarding one of the most dramatic incidents in America history is not whether Oswald really did the deed, but who in fact did it and why? This has become the subject of endless research, speculation, and a pile of books and articles.
Among experts, the top suspects of JFK’s murder are the CIA, the Mafia, then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and trailing far behind, the Soviets. Many JFK assassination buffs believe the murder was likely carried out not by just one of these suspects, but a combination of them.
“Small Clique Within the CIA”
The file getting a lot of attention after the March 18, 2025 documents dump is one pointing the finger at the CIA. A document dated July 19, 1967, with the subject “Ramparts: John Garrett UNDERHILL Jr., Samuel George CUMMINGS, and INTERMCO,” centers on a former U.S. Army intelligence officer who told friends that “a small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination.”
According to the memo, the day after the assassination, an agitated Underhill left Washington in a hurry and told his friends that he was afraid for his life and would likely have to leave the country. The friends Underhill visited said the CIA clique who did the deed was carrying out a lucrative gun-running and narcotics racket. They were also manipulating politics for their own ends. JFK supposedly learned of this and was going to take action.
Underhill, the file says, was an intelligence agent during World War II and an authority on limited warfare and small arms. He was on a first-name basis with top brass in the Pentagon and on “intimate terms with a number of high-ranking CIA officials.” He was someone who performed special assignments for intel. Less than six months after his frantic meeting with friends, he was found shot dead. The coroner ruled it a suicide, but, as the file says, that verdict was “by no means convincing”:
His body was found by a writing collaborator, Asher Brynes of the New Republic. He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill was right-handed. Brynes thinks the pistol was fitted with a silencer, and occupants of the apartment building could not recall hearing a shot.
Cubans Say Multiple Assassins
At least two of the files suggest JFK’s assassination was carried out by multiple assassins.
One of those files is one based on data with reference to Montevideo, the capitol of Uruguay. The file seems to contain information gathered in the ’90s by a source code named FGFORK/86 (F/86), who was seemingly spying on SLLARCENY/1 (L/1) in Uruguay.
L1 was originally from Cuba, the document indicates. L1 said he personally saw Cuban leader Fidel Castro explain “why just one assassin could not have possibly killed Kennedy.” The report said Castro ordered a re-enactment of the crime by his best marksmen “and they could not duplicate what Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly did by himself.” L1 then said that three groups carried out JFK’s assassination:
One group of Cubans, one group of ‘mafiosos’ and third group of mercenaries. The third group included a man with a Greek name.
Another file, albeit short, reinforces the notion that the Cubans believed without a doubt there were multiple assassins. From the document:
On 27 Nov Cuban official Ruben (Suarez) spoke with another Cuban official posted in Managua, Maria (Lopez), about the Kennedy assassination. Lopez claimed that Brigadier General Fabian (Escalante) Font of the Ministry of Interior was handling the matter and that he had information that could positively identify the Kennedy assassins.
Oswald Not a KGB Agent?
A November 1991 document includes information suggesting that Oswald was never a spy for the Soviet intelligence organization, the KGB.
In 1991, a KGB official named Nikonov reviewed “five thick volumes of files on Oswald” and confidently concluded “that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.” During his time in Soviet Russia, the KGB watched him closely. The file suggests Oswald would not have made a good spy:
From the description of Oswald in the files [Nikonov] doubted that anyone could control Oswald.… He commented that Oswald had a stormy relationship with his Soviet wife, who rode him incessantly, and the file also reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the USSR.
We May Never Know the Entire Truth
Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett said Tuesday during a conversation with Benny Johnson, before new files were released, that he didn’t believe the world will ever know the entire truth, no matter what is released.
He said that while most rank and file members of the CIA and FBI are good patriots, “their bosses are criminals.”
Later on, Roger Stone joined Johnson. Stone, who worked in the Richard Nixon administration, wrote the book The Man Who Killed Kennedy. He believes the assassination involved the CIA, Big Texas Oil, the Mafia, and JFK’s then-vice president Lyndon B. Johnson, whom he called the “linchpin.”
LBJ Motive
LBJ, Stone believes, had the greatest motive because he was connected to investigations into Robert Gene “Bobby” Baker and Billie Sol Estes. Baker was an advisor to LBJ who resigned after allegations of bribery and arranging sexual favors in exchange for votes and government contracts. Sol Estes was a con man convicted of and sentenced to prison for fraud. When he was released from prison in 2020, Sol Estes told a Robertson County grand jury that Agriculture Department employee Henry Marshall had been killed on orders from then-Vice President Johnson. Marshall’s death was initially ruled a suicide, but in 2021 a state judge ordered the official cause to be changed to homicide.
Stone also said that his former boss, Nixon, believes LBJ was behind the murder. He asked the president, “Sir, who killed Kennedy?” Nixon then said:
Lyndon and I both wanted to be president. The difference is I wasn’t willing to kill for it.
CIA Connection
As for the CIA, Stone believes they were upset at how JFK handled the Bay of Pigs disaster and the Cuban Missile Crisis. American media told the public that JFK faced down Nikita Krushchev until he turned around with his tail tucked between his legs and took his missiles back to Russia. But what really happened is the president agreed to remove American missiles from Italy and Turkey, which angered the CIA.
As for Cuba, multiple researchers assert that JFK’s pullback on the desire to overthrow Castro was a major turning point for the intel community. David Talbot, in his book The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, makes this exact case:
It was now clear that — despite his pronouncement of solidarity with Cuban “freedom fighters” — Kennedy was not serious about overthrowing the Havana regime. This marked the fateful turning point when the rabid , CIA-sponsored activity that had aimed at Castro shifted its focus to Kennedy. As Kennedy de-escalated the U.S. campaign against Havana, the violent anti-Castro network of spooks, political extremists, paramilitary adventurers, and assassins went underground. The scheming in hotbeds of exile activity like Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas grew more vicious in the spring and early summer of 1963. Mysterious characters with blood in their eyes began to make their appearance on history’s stage.
