Conspiracies as history doesn’t crank my tractor. You know, secretive Free Masons running the country since its founding. Most JFK conspiracy stuff I’ve dismissed. Occam’s razor often suffices. But a JFK assassination conspiracy theory recently grabbed my attention… because it isn’t much of a conspiracy. It’s a simpler explanation than most others, which can be crazy byzantine tales. It involves Cuba, though not directly.

Sure, conspiracies happen. Lincoln was killed as the principal target in a conspiracy.

The Deep State is collusion. Persons in “permanent government,” a.k.a., the federal bureaucracy, with intelligence and law enforcement agencies as the nexus, act to protect their turf, accrue power, and line their pockets at the America people’s expense. Eisenhower flagged the “military-industrial complex” and Truman warned about the CIA.   

When Trump came on the scene, the Deep State began shedding its shadowiness. Whether through arrogance or fear or both, Deep Staters proved they existed. As Chuck Schumer famously said, “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”    

JFK’s assassination happened 60 years ago today, November 22, in Dallas. Assassination “investigators” agree on very little, other than Kennedy was killed. Why JFK was assassinated and who did it are the stuff of elaborate theories, a veritable grocery store full of them. An entire industry has been created from them. All claim to have solved the 60-year-old whodunit. But most of it is highfalutin conjecture. Facts are stretched. Supposition is often presented as fact. Solving Kennedy’s death is bad for business.

Claims the Justice Integrity Project in its November 2023 newsletter:

More than 2,500 books are estimated to have been published in whole or part on the Kennedy assassination, according to Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) President James H. Lesar, who co-founded that non-profit in 1984.    

Pick your favorite assassination plot. Was it Khrushchev and the Soviets? The CIA? The mafia? LBJ? Castro? Maybe it was Martians on the Grassy Knoll who zapped Kennedy? Maybe it was a combo, like LBJ, the mafia, and Martians who doomed the 35^th president? 

Was the conspiracy among nutty right-wingers and peeved anticommunist Cubans, as Oliver Stone depicted in his 1991 blockbuster, JFK? Or something like that.

Oswald shot Kennedy, that’s Lee Harvey. Wait. Maybe not. Some assassination “investigators” swear Oswald couldn’t have been the trigger man, or was he just one of them? Oswald, we guess, happened to have a fondness for his Italian Carcano Fucile di Fanteria Mod. 91/38 rifle. He took it to his job the morning of Kennedy’s assassination just because.

Oswald was employed at the Texas School Book Depository, which -- coincidentally or by arrangement? -- was on Kennedy’s motorcade route through Dallas. Never mind that the route had been publicized in the Dallas Times Herald and the Morning News the day before and day of the assassination. Serendipity? Yep, chance happens.    

But did Oswald even go to work that day? The sniper’s nest and Carcano found on the book depository’s 6^th floor were setups. Was that an imposter’s handiwork, the same one who posed in the famous black and white photo “allegedly” of Oswald holding a newspaper and the Carcano?

Oswald was “just a patsy.” He stated that on camera in police custody after he was nabbed following his gunning down Officer J.D. Tippet while in flight. Or was Oswald framed for Tippet’s murder, too?  

Jack Ruby, owner of a Dallas strip club, the Carousel, shot Oswald at pointblank range. The shooting was videotaped. It happened at Dallas police headquarters as Oswald was being transferred to another facility. The murder occurred in the HQ’s underground garage. There’s no secret why Ruby was there. He was a well-known police groupie with easy access. Hard to appreciate, but security then was lax by today’s standards.

Ruby was a mob hitman, dispatched by Sam Giancana and other mob bosses, claim some conspiracists. Not so, said Burt Griffin, who was a Warren Commission staffer (but wasn’t the Warren Commission rigged?). Griffin was interviewed by NBC 5 Chicago for the assassination’s 50^th anniversary.

Griffin said:

"He [Ruby] thought that the shooting of the President might be part of some anti-Semitic conspiracy to blame it all on the Jews," Griffin recalled. An anti-Kennedy ad had been placed in the Dallas Morning News, the morning of the assassination, signed by an individual named Bernard Weissman. Ruby was obsessed with the ad, and that it might foment anti-Jewish sentiment.

Fact is, we can fill pages with claims and counterclaims about events, persons, organizations, and motives. But there’s no point. Most Americans believe the JFK tragedy resulted from a conspiracy. Oswald acting alone is scoffed at. 

So, here submitted is a quasi-conspiracy claim that seems plausible. Whether it’s true may never be known, in keeping with the assassination industry’s unstated guidelines.   

Gus Russo, per The Mob Museum in Las Vegas, is a “reporter, writer and producer” for corporate media who specializes in the Kennedys’ campaign to kill Fidel Castro and JFK’s assassination. He is a member of the Museum’s Advisory Council.

Russo explained in a lengthy article last year at the Museum’s website what Oswald’s motive was for the shooting. It isn’t complicated. Oswald alone killed Kennedy. He did so to impress Fidel Castro. Shooting JFK -- Oswald believed with reason -- would punch his ticket to Cuba.

From the article:

“We also learned that Oswald made his offer out of left field in the Cuban Embassy [in Mexico City],” Russo added, “and the Cuban agents sort of huddled together later, wondering, ‘What do we do with this guy?’” 

What Cuban agents did, finally, per Russo, was to encourage Oswald, figuring they had nothing to lose, though believing that Oswald faced long odds. The Cubans played no direct role in the shooting. But Castro had strong motivation to want JFK dead. Jack and Bobby Kennedy, along with the CIA, ran “Operation Mongoose,” which aimed to murder Castro. 

Said Russo:

“They [the Cubans] made promises to Oswald, from what we were told, and again this has never been adjudicated, but I can tell you what they told us. Two sources in Mexico City who were with Cuban intelligence said that, ‘We promised Oswald we’d rescue him if he was successful. And would fly him to Havanna.’”  

That contention seems odd. Oswald, said Russo, was heading to a private airfield, where he’d be picked up by a Cuban airplane. The Tippit murder thwarted his escape. The Cubans meant to dispose of Oswald. “[W]e were going to dump him over the Gulf of Mexico. We didn’t want to have anything to do with this guy.”

Why would Castro risk a fly-in to Dallas in the immediate aftermath JFK’s assassination? The risk would have been great. If the news media sniffed it out, Lyndon Johnson would have had little choice but to annihilate Castro. The Soviets wouldn’t have dared intervene.

Said Russo: Johnson, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and former CIA head Allan Dulles didn’t want the Castro assassination operation surfaced as part of the Warren Commission’s investigation. Oswald’s interaction with the Cuban Embassy was squelched. At the height of the Cold War, Johnson, per Russo, feared that an Oswald-Cuba connection, however tenuous, might have sparked major war.

So, there you have it. The quasi-conspiracy. 

 For many people, the Kennedy assassination will remain a whodunit. It’s assumed mythic proportions.

Without that terrible day in 1963, America’s course may have been different. Maybe JFK, as his champions argue, wouldn’t have escalated and sustained U.S. involvement in Vietnam as did LBJ. Maybe 58,220 American soldiers wouldn’t have died there. Maybe the fractures and social convulsions caused by the war would never have occurred.

Maybe. But, finally, it’s all speculation.

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith. He also blogs occasionally at Flyover. His X (formerly Twitter) handle is @JRobertSmith1.

Image: Library of Congress

UPDATE: This article has been updated to correct Gus Russo’s role at the Mob Museum. He did not serve on The Mob Museum’s Board but is, instead, a member of the Museum’s Advisory Council. They are two different groups with different functions within the organization.