JFK files reveal FBI warning on Oswald, a ploy to kill Fidel Castro, Soviets Union's missile fears

While many of the 2,891 records released by the National Archives were raw intelligence and uncorroborated, they were almost certain to reinvigorate rampant conspiracy theories about slaying of JFK in Dallas, Texas The US government on Thursday released a mammoth, long-awaited trove of secret files on the killing of president John F Kennedy, offering intriguing new insights into events surrounding one of the most infamous assassinations in history. An outlandish CIA plan to recruit the mafia to kill Fidel Castro, FBI foreknowledge of the plot to murder Kennedy’s killer, and Kremlin suspicions of a homegrown rightwing conspiracy were among the highlights, even as some files were withheld for further review on national security grounds. The plan was scrapped when it was determined “there was no shell in the Caribbean area large enough to hold a sufficient amount of explosive.” Another document included a transcript of a 24 November, 1963 conversation with then FBI director J Edgar Hoover, who said his agency informed police of a threat against the life of Kennedy’s killer Lee Harvey Oswald the night before Oswald was murdered. According to a source, “officials at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the ‘ultraright’ in the United States to effect a ‘coup’.” The Soviets feared the killing would be used as a pretext to “stop negotiations with the Soviet Union, attack Cuba, and thereafter spread the war.” Withheld files The Warren Commission, which investigated the shooting of the charismatic Kennedy, 46, determined that Oswald, a former Marine sharpshooter, carried out the Kennedy assassination acting alone.