One CIA document marked “Secret Eyes Only” details what it says were U.S. government plots to assassinate Castro, including a 1960 scheme “that involved the use of the criminal underworld with contacts inside Cuba.”
Another document made public Wednesday shows the U.S. government evaluating whether Oswald, while living in New Orleans, may have been swayed or affected in any way by the publication in the local newspaper of an interview an Associated Press correspondent conducted with Castro in which Castro warned of retribution if the U.S. were to try to help take out Cuban leaders.
The new files include several FBI reports on the bureau’s efforts to investigate and surveil major mafia figures like Santo Trafficante Jr. and Sam Giancana, who are often mentioned in conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy’s assassination. The files also include several FBI reports showing the bureau kept regular tabs on anti-Castro groups operating in southern Florida and Puerto Rico in the 1960s.
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Apart from the Kennedy investigation, some of the material would be of interest to scholars or anyone interested in the minutiae of 1960s counterespionage, with pages and pages of arcane details on such things as the methods, equipment and personnel used to surveil the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City.
In blocking the release of hundreds of records in 2017 because of concerns from the FBI and the CIA, President Donald Trump cited “potentially irreversible harm.” Even so, about 2,800 other records were released at that time.
The Warren Commission in 1964 concluded that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved. But other interpretations have persisted.
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Associated Press writers Ben Fox and Nomaan Merchant in Washington and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
© 2021 The Canadian Press
