JFK Files Don't Make The Details Of His Assassination Any Less Mysterious

LOADING ERROR LOADING Tidbits revealed in newly released National Archives documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy suggest the investigation into what happened in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, won’t settle lingering questions. A 1975 presidential Commission on CIA Activities deposition shows that David Belin, an attorney for the commission, asked Richard Helms, who had served as CIA director, whether “the CIA was in some way conspiratorially involved with the assassination of President Kennedy.” “Is there any information involved with the assassination of President Kennedy which in any way shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was in some way a CIA agent or agent …” Belin inquired. The document was cut off, but the remainder of it, which was declassified in 1994, shows that Helms responded saying that Oswald “was certainly not an agent of the CIA.” As for whether Oswald was in any way connected to the FBI, Helms said his recollection was “not all that precise.” Meanwhile, a document says Oswald made contact with Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov, an officer from the Soviet KGB, while at Mexico City’s Soviet embassy on Sept. 28, 1963. “We at once notified the chief of police and he assured us Oswald would be given sufficient protection,” Hoover said after the Dallas FBI office received a call from a man “saying he was a member of a committee organized to kill Oswald.” It’s unclear where that protection was when Jack Ruby shot Oswald to death on Nov. 24, 1963, while he was being taken to the county jail. Hoover said in the 1963 memo that his concern “is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin.” He didn’t expand on this, so it’s not known whether Hoover believed there were more people involved and didn’t want the public to know, or whether he merely thought he would have a hard time convincing the public that the assassin was a lone wolf.