CIA? I Thought it was Mafia!

JFK assassination conspiracy theories aside, it was fun to read about the latest E. Howard Hunt speculation in today's Los Angeles Times. Aside from a couple of talking heads on a recent History Channel documentary debunking the conspiracy theories, who doesn't believe someone besides Oswald, or instead of him, fired the fatal shots into Kennedy?

Now just WHO shot those shots, that's another question. I have been led to believe over the past 35 years, since I got started with an interest into the event, that there was a hazy cross-over between the CIA and the mob, specifically Sam Giancanna's group, who were getting revenge for several issues. The CIA was pissed because Kennedy let Hunt's team hang out with no promised air-cover at the failed attempt to invade Castro's Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. And the Mafia, who came through for Papa Joe and engineered the ballots in favor of Kennedy over Nixon in Chicago in order to get the coveted Illinois electoral votes--they didn't like the young Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy, putting them on the hot seat in a ploy to clean up organized crime.

So they arranged, hand-in-hand, to murder the upstart who wouldn't follow orders, President Kennedy. That's what I thought. I don't care about the details, it is sufficient to me that so much documentary material is still being kept from public scrutiny that there must be something to hide, which after 44 years must have little to do with national security, and more to do with certain knowledgeable survivors.

Granted, that Johnson might have been a ringleader is a notion difficult to grasp, despite his dislike of Kennedy, how do you really keep that kind of involvement secret? According to the Hunt children who are trying to peddle his memoirs, that's exactly what was up back in November, 1963.

"The story, which he planned to detail in a memoir and could be worth big money — was that rogue CIA agents plotted to kill President Kennedy in 1963, and that they approached Hunt to join the plot but he declined."

The story goes on to quote one of Hunt's sons:

"He told me in no uncertain terms about a plot originating in Miami, to take place in Miami," said St. John. He said his father identified key players and speculated that then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was responsible for moving the venue to Dallas, where the Texan could control the security scene."

Some people think Nixon knew about the plot too, but kinda sorta turned away without interfering. Conspiracy buffs always point out that Nixon was in Dallas on November 23, 1963. No matter what stance one takes regarding the Kennedy conspiracy theories, some of the late-breaking stories are fascinating in themselves, and this one about Hunt is no different. I mean, he really was a spy--wouldn't it be interesting to know what he knew?