Bill Simpich has a terrific piece at WhoWhatWhy about the new JFK files released since October 2017. One document found by Simpich jumped out at me. In 1995 the CIA asked Brazilian intelligence.
to photograph the JFK researchers and Cuban counterintelligence officers that met together in August, 1995 in Rio de Janeiro pursuant to an invitation by the Ministry of Culture.
The 1995 conference is well-known in the annals of JFK research. It marked the first time U.S. researchers had met with Cuban intelligence officers to get their first-hand perspective on the events that led to Kennedy’s assassination. The Cuban government has long contended that JFK was killed by a rogue CIA faction in league with ant-Castro Cubans.
The Cubans in attendance, Fabian Escalante and Arturo Rodriguez, were perhaps a legitimate CIA target. Escalante’s book, 1963 El Complot, details the Cuban interpretation of November 22, using unreleased Cuban intelligence files to make his case.
But the CIA did not restrict itself to spying on them. It also sought photographs of the Americans.
The honor roll of the US citizens who were spied upon include: Jim Lesar, veteran FOIA litigator; historian John Newman; former HSCA investigators Gaeton Fonzi and Ed Lopez; coroner Cyril Wecht; and diplomat Wayne Smith.
Now ask yourself, if the open-and-shut historical truth is that President Kennedy was killed by one man for no reason–as CIA historian David Robarge and agency-approved scribbler Max Holland contend-why would the agency find it necessary to spy on Americans who thought differently three decades later? Why take their photographs?
The answer, I think, is two-fold.
In fact, the CIA did not–and does not–have a lot of confidence in the “lone gunman” theory. The likes of Robarge and Holland espouse this theory but they know it is not particularly believable to most people. Sustaining its tenuous credibility requires aggressive action to discredit any and all new findings that call the CIA’s preferred narrative into question. The agency feared what JFK researchers might learn, so they spied on them to get advance notice of their findings.
In the case of the 1995 Rio conference, the agency feared that the JFK investigators might learn from the Cubans about previously undisclosed CIA operations related to Kennedy’s assassination. If so, the researchers would have unauthorized possession of classified information and could be judged a security risk. Hence the need for photos.