JFKA CTs need to believe a government agency or rogue actors thereof killed JFK

[Jon Banks]

Trump is massing murdering innocent people in Yemen?

Yes. He proudly boasted about bombing a prayer circle in Yemen last week.

Militants don't gather in a circle out in the open when they know they're being surveilled by US drones and satellites but tribal people in Yemen traditionally do that.

Many civilians have been killed so far in his unauthorized war against Yemen.

Israel has killed 18,000 children since 2023. I thought Republicans were pro-life and believed "all lives matter"?

[Tom Graves]

James Angelton lied under oath to the HSCA about his interest in Oswald prior to the assassination.

Did former Marine U-2 radar operator Oswald describe himself as a Marxist to Consul Richard Snyder in Moscow, tell him that he wanted to renounce his American citizenship, and say that he planned to tell the Soviets "something of special interest"? Did he then proceed to live half-a-mile from a KGB school for two-and-one-half years in Minsk? Did he marry a former KGB Leningrad "swallow" whose uncle was an MVD colonel and who had to be at the very least, according to KGB true defector Pyotr Deriabin, a low-level KGB informant? Did he talk with Soviet Embassy security officer Ivan Obyedkov over a sure-to-be-tapped-by-CIA phone line in Mexico City on 10/1/63, during which conversation Obyedkov volunteered to him that the name of the Soviet diplomat he'd met with at the Consulate a couple of days earlier was "Kostikov," i.e., KGB Colonel Valeriy Kostikov, someone the CIA and FBI (mistakenly?) believed at the time was a high-level officer in the First Chief Directorate's (today's SVR's) assassinations and sabotage section, Department 13?

If so, wouldn't the CIA have had good reason to be interested in Oswald prior to the assassination?

[Jon Banks]

Did former Marine U-2 radar operator Oswald describe himself as a Marxist to Consul Richard Snyder in Moscow, tell him that he wanted to renounce his American citizenship, and say that he planned to tell the Soviets "something of special interest"? Did he then proceed to live half-a-mile from a KGB school for two-and-one-half years in Minsk? Did he marry a former KGB Leningrad "swallow" whose uncle was an MVD colonel? Did he talk with Soviet Embassy security officer Ivan Obyedkov over a sure-to-be-tapped-by-CIA phone line in Mexico City on 10/1/63, during which conversation Obyedkov volunteered to him that the name of the Soviet diplomat he'd met with at the Consulate a couple of days earlier was "Kostikov," i.e., KGB Colonel Valeriy Kostikov, someone the CIA and FBI (mistakenly?) believed at the time was a high-level officer in the First Chief Directorate's (today's SVR's) assassinations and sabotage section, Department 13?

If so, wouldn't the CIA have had good reason to be interested in Oswald prior to the assassination?

Yes. Why then, did they lie about it if the basis for their interest was as innocent as you describe? I think we all can agree that Oswald's visit to the Soviet Union should have raised alarm bells at the CIA and FBI. If that's all there was to it, there's no sense in lying about it and keeping secrets about it decades later.

Therefore we can reasonably speculate that there was more to it than you describe...

[Tom Graves]

Yes. Why then, did they lie about it if the basis for their interest was as innocent as you describe? I think we all can agree that Oswald's visit to the Soviet Union should have raised alarm bells at the CIA and FBI. If that's all there was to it, there's no sense in lying about it or keeping secrets about it decades later.

Banksie,

Please freshen my memory -- How, exactly, did James Angleton "lie" about his interest in Oswald?

Regardless, JFKA conspiracy theorist John M. Newman (author of the 1995/2008 book, "Oswald and the CIA"), who used to think James Angleton was the mastermind of the JFKA, now says in his 2022 book, "Uncovering Popov's Mole," that a KGB mole by the name of Bruce Leonard Solie sent (or duped his confidant, protégé, and mole-hunting subordinate, Angleton, into sending) Oswald to Moscow in 1959 as an ostensible "dangle" in a (unbeknownst to Angleton and Oswald) planned-to-fail hunt for "Popov's Mole" / "Popov's U-2 Mole" (Solie) in the wrong part of the CIA -- the Soviet Russia Division -- which mole hunt lasted nine years, tore the SRD apart, and drove Angleton nuts.

Factoid: Newman dedicated his book to the aforementioned CIA good-guy, Tennent H. Bagley (look him up).

[Jon Banks]

Banksie,

Please freshen my memory -- How, exactly, did James Angleton "lie" about his interest in Oswald?

He denied that Oswald was ever the subject of a CIA operation. We can say with absolute certainty today that he lied:


Link - https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Morley-Written-Testimony.pdf


Again, if his reasons for surveilling Oswald were so obviously innocent, why lie about it?

PS: I prefer the nickname "Banksy". Great street artist.

[Jon Banks]

I want to elaborate on my earlier comment to Steve about the CIA going rogue for more clarity:

Do I believe it's plausible that plotting JFK's assassination was ever official CIA policy? No. I don't think the CIA director ordered a hit on Kennedy.

At worst, I find it plausible that some individual CIA officers and contractors went rogue against Kennedy. Which is close to the HSCA's conclusion.

A year or so ago, I listened to a podcast that featured legendary CIA officer, Felix Rodriguez. In explaining the differences between the CIA today and the 1960s, he basically said, back then, they would do unethical stuff and let the CIA's lawyers clean it up afterwards. In contrast, today, the CIA officers talk to lawyers before proceeding with operations.

Under the context of the CIA's earlier years when there were agents who did some things that they had to hide from the President and even the CIA director, I don't find it implausible that some CIA operatives could've been involved in a plot against JFK. Recently declassified files have confirmed that upper levels of the CIA didn't know much about some of James Angelton's most secret operations. He hid stuff from everyone, including people who worked closely with him. And it's well known that CIA officers hid stuff from John McCone, Kennedy's pick for CIA director, after Dulles was fired.

If all of that is true or even suspected of being true, it would be in the interest of the CIA as an agency to cover up any potential links to Oswald or the Kennedy assassination rather than come clean about the possible involvement of their guys.

It's that context which explains why the CIA didn't disclose to the HSCA that George Joannides ran the DRE at the time when LHO was engaging with their operations in New Orleans. And why James Angelton lied under oath to the HSCA about his interest in Oswald prior to the assassination.

From the 1961 letter from Schlessinger to Kennedy:

"I submit the following views as one who worked in OSS during the war and served as a periodic CIA consultant in the years since.

On balance, CIA's record has probably been very good. In the nature of clandestine operations, the triumphs of an intelligence agency are unknown; all the public hears about (or should hear about) are its errors. But again in the nature of the case, an agency dedicated to clandestine activity can afford damned few visible errors.

The important thing to recognize today, in my judgment, is that the CIA, as at present named and constituted, has about used up its quota. Its margin for future error is practically
non-existent. One more CIA debacle will shake faith considerably in US policy at home as well as abroad. And, until CIA is visibly reorganized, it will (as in the Algerian instance) be widely blamed for developments of which it is wholly innocent.

The argument of this memorandum is that the CIA's trouble can be traced to the autonomy with which the agency has been permitted to operate and that this autonomy is due to three main causes: (1) an inadequate doctrine of clandestine operations) (2) an inadequate conception of the relationship between operations and policy: (3) an inadequate conception of the relationship between operations and intelligence. The memorandum also suggests ways in which come of these problems can perhaps be alleviated."


Link - https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/176-10033-10145.pdf


Kennedy didn't succeed at reorganizing the CIA. The significance of the letter is that it proves that Kennedy was concerned about the way the agency was operating at that time.

[Tom Graves]

From the 1961 letter from Schlessinger to Kennedy:

"I submit the following views as one who worked in OSS during the war and served as a periodic CIA consultant in the years since.

On balance, CIA's record has probably been very good. In the nature of clandestine operations, the triumphs of an intelligence agency are unknown; all the public hears about (or should hear about) are its errors. But again in the nature of the case, an agency dedicated to clandestine activity can afford damned few visible errors.

The important thing to recognize today, in my judgment, is that the CIA, as at present named and constituted, has about used up its quota. Its margin for future error is practically
non-existent. One more CIA debacle will shake faith considerably in US policy at home as well as abroad. And, until CIA is visibly reorganized, it will (as in the Algerian instance) be widely blamed for developments of which it is wholly innocent.

The argument of this memorandum is that the CIA's trouble can be traced to the autonomy with which the agency has been permitted to operate and that this autonomy is due to three main causes: (1) an inadequate doctrine of clandestine operations) (2) an inadequate conception of the relationship between operations and policy: (3) an inadequate conception of the relationship between operations and intelligence. The memorandum also suggests ways in which come of these problems can perhaps be alleviated."


Link - https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2025/0318/176-10033-10145.pdf


Kennedy didn't succeed at reorganizing the CIA. The significance of the letter is that it proves that Kennedy was concerned about the way the agency was operating at that time.

Banksie,

Do you think this proves the evil, evil, evil CIA killed JFK?

Did JFK really say he was going to break the CIA into a thousand pieces?

Do you think reorganizing the CIA was the only suggestion by Schlessinger that JFK didn't implement?