Theory: The Mafia
David E. Scheim has published two books claiming that the Mafia were responsible for the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. He believes that it was organized by Carlos Marcello, Santos
Trafficante and Jimmy Hoffa. This theory is based on the idea that the Mafia were angry with both
John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy for their attempts to destroy organized crime. Scheim's theory
was supported by Trafficante's lawyer,Frank Ragano, who published the book Mob Lawyer, in 1994.
G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director to the House Select Committee on
Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, published The Plot to Kill the President in 1981. In the book
Blakey argues that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved but believes that there was at least one
gunman firing from the Grassy Knoll. Blakey came to the conclusion that the Mafia boss, Carlos
Marcello, organized the assassination.
Anthony Summers is the author of The Kennedy Conspiracy. He believes that Kennedy was killed by
a group of anti-Castro activists, funded by Mafia mobsters that had been ousted from Cuba.
Summers believes that some members of the CIA took part in this conspiracy. Summers speculated
that the following people were involved in this conspiracy: Johnny Roselli, Carlos Marcello, Santos
Trafficante, Sam Giancana, David Ferrie, Gerry Patrick Hemming, Guy Bannister and E. Howard
Hunt.
In his book, JFK: The Second Plot (1992), Matthew Smith points out that Thomas H. Killam, a man
who worked for Jack Ruby, claimed that there was a link between his former employer, Lee Harvey
Oswald and the Mafia. He told his brother, "I am a dead man, but I have run as far as I am running."
Killam was found dead in an alley with his throat cut in March, 1964.
Stephen Rivele argued in the 1988 television documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy that the
Kennedy's assassination had been organized by Antoine Guerini, the Corsican crime boss in
Marseilles. He also claimed that Lucien Sarti had been one of the gunmen.
In October, 1991, Chauncey Holt confessed to John Craig, Phillip Rogers and Gary Shaw about his
role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He claimed Peter Licavoli, a leading figure in the Mafia
inDetroit, had organized the conspiracy and named Charlie Nicoletti, Charles Harrelson and Charles
Rogers as the gunmen.
In 1992 the nephew of Sam Giancana published Double Cross: The Story of the Man Who
Controlled America. The book attempted to establish that Giancana had rigged the 1960 Presidential
election vote in Cook County on John Kennedy's behalf, which effectively gave Kennedy the
election. It is argued that Kennedy reneged on the deal and therefore Giancana had him killed.
The next crime figure to confess to the crime was James Files. He claimed that two Mafia
leaders, Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli organized the assassination. Charlie Nicoletti was
identified as the other gunman. The story was eventually appeared in a video The Murder of JFK:
Confession of an Assassin (1996).
Theory: Soviet Union/Cuba
John Martino, an electronics expert, was employed by Santos Trafficante. He also worked as
a CIA agent and took part in its Black Operations. This involved a policy that was later to become
known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). In an article
published in January, 1964, Martino argued that in 1963 Castro discovered an American plot to
overthrow his government. He retaliated by employing Lee Harvey Oswald to kill President John F.
Kennedy.
Billy James Hargis, the founder of Christian Crusade, as "a Christian weapon against Communism
and its godless allies" claimed in 1964 thatJohn F. Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a
communist conspiracy. He also believed that the KGB and the American Communist Party tried to
place the blame on right-wing organizations such as the John Birch Society.
James Angleton believed that Nikita Khrushchev was involved in the assassination. He claimed that
Khrushchev sought revenge after he had been humiliated by Kennedy during the Cuban Missile
Crisis.
In his book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy (1975), Michael Eddowes argued that Kennedy was killed
by a Soviet agent impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald. In Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey
Oswald (1978), Edward Jay Epstein argues that Oswald was a KGB agent.
In a series of articles for the Washington Post Jack Anderson argued that Fidel Castro joined forces
with the Mafia to kill Kennedy. In his book, The Kennedy Assassination From a Historian's
Perspective, Michael Kurtz claims that there was a possibility that the assassination was ordered
by Fidel Castro.
Shortly before his death in 1975 John Martino confessed to a Newsday reporter, John Cummings,
that he had been guilty of spreading false stories implicating Oswald in the assassination. Cummings
added: "He told me he'd been part of the assassination of Kennedy. He wasn't in Dallas pulling a
trigger, but he was involved. He implied that his role was delivering money, facilitating things.... He
asked me not to write it while he was alive."
Theory: CIA
After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, CIA agent, Gary Underhill told his friend,
Charlene Fitsimmons, that he was convinced that he had been killed by members of the CIA. He
also said: "Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It's too much. The bastards have done something
outrageous. They've killed the President! I've been listening and hearing things. I couldn't believe
they'd get away with it, but they did!"
Underhill believed there was a connection between Executive Action, Fidel Castro and the death of
Kennedy: "They tried it in Cuba and they couldn't get away with it. Right after the Bay of Pigs. But
Kennedy wouldn't let them do it. And now he'd gotten wind of this and he was really going to blow
the whistle on them. And they killed him!"
Executive Action, was a CIA secret plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power. In his
book The Secret Team (1973) Leroy Fletcher Prouty claimed that elements of the CIA were worked
on behalf of the interests of a "high cabal" of industrialists and bankers. He also claimed that the
Executive Action unit could have been used to kill Kennedy. Prouty named CIA operative, Edward
Lansdale, as the leader of the operation.
Gaeton Fonzi was a staff investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In his
book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi argues that the assassination was organized by David Atlee
Phillips, head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division. Phillips, head of the CIA's Western
Hemisphere Division, denied this but told the investigator, Kevin Walsh, that Kennedy had been
"done in by a conspiracy, likely including rogue American intelligence people."
In his book, JFK: The Second Plot (1992), Matthew Smith claims that Lee Harvey Oswald was
recruited as a CIA agent while he was serving in the Marines. Smith quotes James Wilcott, a former
CIA man, who claimed that Oswald had been "recruited from the military for the express purpose of
becoming a double agent assignment to the USSR." The Soviets were suspicious of Oswald and he
was allowed so little freedom it was decided by the CIA to bring him home.
On his arrival back in the United States Oswald continued to pose as a left-wing activist. Smith
argues Oswald was "taken over and run by renegade CIA agents who were dedicated to
assassinating President Kennedy." Smith claims that J. D. Tippit and Roscoe White were also
involved in this plot although he suggests that Oswald was not aware of what was going on and was
being set up as a patsy. Tippit was supposed to take Oswald to Redbird Airport where he was to be
flown to Cuba in order to implicate Fidel Castro in the assassination.
Theory: FBI/Secret Service
After the death of John F. Kennedy, his deputy, Lyndon B. Johnson, was appointed president. He
immediately set up a commission to "ascertain, evaluate and report upon the facts relating to the
assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy." The seven man commission was headed by
Chief Justice Earl Warren and included Gerald Ford, Allen W. Dulles, John J. McCloy, Richard B.
Russell, John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs.
Lyndon B. Johnson also commissioned a report on the assassination from J. Edgar Hoover. Two
weeks later the Federal Bureau of Investigation produced a 500 page report claiming that Lee
Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. The report
was then passed to the Warren Commission. Rather than conduct its own independent investigation,
the commission relied almost entirely on the FBI report.
Mark North (Act of Treason) and George O'Toole (The Assassination Tapes) both believe that J.
Edgar Hoover either knew of plans to kill Kennedy and did nothing to stop them, or he helped to
organize the assassination. In his book, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) Peter Dale Scott
provides information that Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped to cover-up the real
identity of the people who assassinated John F. Kennedy.
In his book, Best Evidence, David Lifton claims that members of the Secret Service agents were
involved in the killing of Kennedy. This included providing the assassins with a good opportunity to
kill Kennedy. Lifton was highly critical of the behavior of William Greer, Roy Kellerman and Winston
G. Lawson during the assassination. Lifton believes that after the assassination of Kennedy they
hijacked the body in order to alter the corpse. In the book, Mortal Error, Bonar Menninger, claims
that SS agent George Hickey killed Kennedy by accident.
James H. Fetzer believes the Secret Service played a role in the assassination. In his book,
Assassination Science, he writes: "I have discovered at least fifteen indications of Secret Service
complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, from the absence of protective military presence
to a lack of coverage of open windows, to motorcycles out of position, to Secret Service agents
failing to ride on the Presidential limousine, to the vehicles arranged in an improper sequence, to the
utilization of an improper motorcade route, to the driver bringing the vehicle to a halt after bullets
began to be fired, to the almost total lack of response by Secret Service agents, to the driver
washing out the back seat with a bucket and sponge at Parkland Hospital, to the car being
dismantled and rebuilt (on LBJ's orders), to the driver giving false testimony to the Warren
Commission, to the windshields being switched, to the autopsy photographs being taken into
custody before they were developed".