James H. Johnston - Murder, Inc.: The CIA Under John F. Kennedy

The Cold War is often celebrated as a great Western victory that was won without firing a shot. James Johnstons extensive research and exceptional writing reminds us that a lot of shots were fired. This important story contains lots of lessons learned for Americans honest enough to read and remember its details.

Bob Kerrey, former U.S. senator from Nebraska

Many an author has entered the historical thicket that surrounds John F. Kennedy and his administrations adventures in Cuba. None, however, match James Johnstons thoroughness of research, lucid writing, and balanced assessment of the presidents obsession and its haunting implications.

Loch K. Johnson, author of Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States

James Johnston offers a thorough analysis of the newly released JFK assassination papers. Readers may draw their own conclusions, but one lesson is clear: the American intelligence community must always strive to be transparent and maintain the publics trust.

David L. Boren, former U.S. senator and president emeritus of the University of Oklahoma

James H. Johnston

Potomac Books

An imprint of the University of Nebraska Press

2019 by James H. Johnston

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image is from the interior.

All rights reserved.

Potomac Books is an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Johnston, James H., 1944 author.

Title: Murder, Inc.: the CIA under John F. Kennedy / James H. Johnston. Other titles: Murder, Incorporated

Description: [Lincoln, Nebraska]: Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018055529

ISBN 9781640121553 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 9781640122147 (epub)

ISBN 9781640122154 (mobi)

ISBN 9781640122161 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : United States. Central Intelligence AgencyHistory20th century. | United States. Central Intelligence AgencyCorrupt practices. | Intelligence serviceUnited StatesHistory20th century. | AssassinationUnited StatesHistory. | Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 19171963. | United StatesForeign relations19611963.

Classification: LCC JK 468. I 6 J 628 2019 | DDC 327.1273009/046dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055529

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

To my sister, Joan Mulkern, for encouraging me to write and to my brother, Mike Johnston, for encouraging me to write this particular book.

Late in life, former president Lyndon Johnson told a reporter that he didnt believe the Warren Commissions finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John Kennedy. Johnson felt that Cuban president Fidel Castro was behind it. After all, Johnson continued, Kennedy was running a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean, giving Castro reason to retaliate. A later Senate investigation reported on the CIA s assassination operations but was skimpy with details. However, since then the secret files on the CIA s Cuban operations have been made public, allowing this more complete and troubling story about the operations and their effect on the Warren Commission investigation of Kennedys death.

Kennedys animosity toward Castro is well known. He ordered an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and moved to the brink of World War III in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Hidden by secrecy, however, is the fact that the assassination operations were a continuing part of the CIA s bag of tricks and played a role in both events.

When the CIA entered the assassination business, it turned to organized crime to do the dirty work of killing Castro. This began in the last few months of the Eisenhower administration. But after an assassination plan went awry, the CIA s Bay of Pigs invasion was the only other option for getting rid of Castro as quickly as the new president, Kennedy, wanted. The underworld plots didnt end though. The CIA continued trying for eighteen more months. Apparently, it even had an assassination team in Cuba during the missile crisis. The CIA s long-term relationship with the mob proved sordid. When mobster Sam Giancana was caught illegally wiretapping one of his girlfriends, he essentially blackmailed the agency into blocking the FBI investigation. The CIA s relationship with the mob became even more problematic after FBI director J. Edgar Hoover discovered Kennedy was having an affair with another of Giancanas girlfriends.

The underworld operations ended with the missile crisis in October 1962. By the next April, the CIA had a new head of Cuban operations, Desmond FitzGerald. He proposed a coup in Cuba. Orchestrating a coup was a conventional way to bring about regime change, FitzGerald argued. Given a green light by the president, the CIA recruited Castros friend Rolando Cubela, who felt Castro had to be eliminated at the start of the coup. He wanted the CIA to give him assassination weapons. Having a direct hand in murder gave the agency pause, but after off-the-record meetings with Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the president on November 19, 1963, the CIA made the decision to give Cubela the weapons. It was working out the details with him at the very moment the president was murdered three days later.

The obvious question at the time should have been whether Castro had retaliated. In September 1963 he had said that U.S. leaders would not be safe if the CIA plotting against him continued, and it had. The CIA also knew that Oswald met with Cuban intelligence officers in Mexico soon afterward. But it never mentioned its plots to the Warren Commission, and there is no evidence it investigated retaliation on its own. When questioned in a later congressional investigation, a CIA officer blandly said, I dont believe the thought [of retaliation] ever occurred to me at the time.

The denial is ludicrous of course. But why hide the Cubela operation? If Kennedy knew of and approved it, then the CIA may have thought itself a kind of Praetorian Guard, protecting his memory and legacy from word of the dirty business becoming public. If he did not approve, though, then the CIA was protecting only itself. The public would probably have demanded the CIA be abolished at the mere hint its operation had backfired and resulted in the death of the president regardless of whether Castro was responsible.

But suppose the CIA told the new president, Lyndon Johnson. If he authorized a cover-up, the CIA would be exonerated by history although it could still be faulted for being a Praetorian Guard beholden to presidents rather than the public. This would explain Johnsons Murder, Inc., comment.

I was introduced to the subject as a lawyer for the 197576 Senate Intelligence Committee investigations of CIA assassination plots and of links between those and Kennedys death and questioned some of the witnesses quoted in this book. Committee chairman Senator Frank Church ( D - ID ), for whom the committee was named, coined the phrase rogue elephant to ask if presidents had approved assassination efforts or if the CIA had charged off on its own. The committee chose rogue elephant but did not seem particularly alarmed at the implication that, if this were true, the CIA was dangerously out of control.

No one could challenge the conclusion because the underlying documents and testimony were classified. However, in 1992 Congress passed a law to make public the secret files on Kennedys assassination. As a result a huge trove of material not only on the assassination but also on Kennedys and Johnsons Cuban policies was turned over to the National Archives. This included a great deal of material that had not been made available to the Senate investigation. Thus this book is sourced from formerly classified national security documents and testimony. It includes not only the high-level deliberations on the operations but also the spycraft of assassination.