The Warren Commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination of President John Kennedy, spent ten months working on its assignment, heard the testimony of 552 witnesses, and issued a report concluding that Lee Harvey Oswald “acted alone” and that there was no evidence he was “part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign.”
Despite the prestigious names who signed the Warren Report, including Chief Justice Earl Warren and Congressman Gerald Ford, and despite the almost unanimous claims of the media that there was no conspiracy involved, a considerable segment of the American people remained unconvinced that Oswald was a loner.
It has now been revealed that, among those who retained the belief that Oswald was “a mysterious fellow,” plus the suspicion that “international connections” might have been involved, was none other than President Lyndon Johnson. We now hear speculations that a CIA plot to assassinate Castro may have motivated him to retali ate against Kennedy. Whether such a plot really existed, or was just thought to have existed, that certainly provided a motive for Castro to have hired an assassin to stalk Kennedy.
The most interesting part about all this is that the evidence of Oswald’s links to Castro was available immediately after the assassination. Oswald was then known to be an active member o:f a front called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and he made a trip to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on September 28, two months before the murder.
Two dramatic historical events could easily have provided Castro with a motive. The Bay of Pigs invasion took place under President Kennedy and was still fresh in Castro’s memory. On September 8, 1963, Castro warned Kennedy in these words: “United States leaders should think that, if they are aiding terrorists’ plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they cannot themselves be safe.”
On November 2, 1963, three weeks before Kennedy’s murder, President Diem of South Vietnam was assassinated with the acquiescence if not the connivance of the Kennedy Administration. This brutal murder could easily have convinced Castro that it was thereafter a race between him and President Kennedy to see who would be the first to be killed.
Some people who 12 years ago ridiculed the possibility of a Castro-Oswald conspiracy, now want the Rockefeller Commission to investigate the evidence that the Warren Commission neglected to pursue. Perhaps the difference is that in the 1960s it was fashionable to believe that conspiracies do not exist. But in the 1970s, Watergate conclusively proved that conspiracies do, indeed, exist, and those who pretend they do not, are only closing their minds to reality.
