“I asked him [RFK], perhaps tactlessly, about Oswald. He said that there could be no serious doubt that he was guilty, but there was still argument whether he did it by himself or as part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters. He said that the FBI thought he had done it by himself, but that McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting.”
— Arthur Schlesinger writing about a conversation with Robert Kennedy on Dec. 5, 1963, quoted in Schlesinger’s Journals: 1952-2000, p. 214.
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Jefferson Morley’s new ebook, CIA and JFK: The Secret Assassination Files, available on Amazon, provides the fullest account yet of the JFK records that the CIA is still concealing in 2016 and why they should be made public in October 2017.
The idea that JFK was shot from the “grassy knoll” was as successful a scam as the idea that Oswald delivered that pinpoint shot to the head.
Photon is McCone in on the conspiracy theory too?
Bobby (as reported by Shlesinger) does not seem to connect there being more than one shooter with the possibility of a larger plot. If they thought Oswald was the only shooter why would people suspect a larger plot? How was Oswald being aided by this plot?
One would think that if there were a conspiracy (more than one) or even the hint of a conspiracy that there would be a murder trial or at least a grand jury.
Within three days of the assassination, at a time where all the evidence could not possibly have been completely evaluated, assistant AG Katzenbach released the now famous memo, in which he stated:
“The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
Within hours of the crime our government clearly signaled that it did not intend to allow any investigation of conspiracy. Fifty two years later we are left to wonder why the reasonable question, “was there a conspiracy?” was not only left unanswered but actively suppressed.
Why do you people think Lee Harvey Osald assassinated JFK?
CIA or the FBI didn’t get a chance to even make him confess.He didn’t even say he did anything wrong so you don’t have the right to even judge him unless you have a full documentry, which you don’t.
What about McCone’s 1964 memo to the Secret Service director wherein McCone confirms that Oswald was sent into Russia on a CIA mission in 1959. Does anyone believe that memo is a forgery.
I guess I missed this comment last year. I can’t remember ever reading about this memo. Does anyone out there know anything about it or could someone provide a link showing it?
Did McCone mean just 2, or 2 or more?
I believe McCone’s telling RFK there were two people involved in the shooting was the result of the briefing McCone received that used the first of two sets of briefing boards of enlarged Z film frames that were prepared by the CIA’s National Photo Interpretation Center – NPIC. I think the briefing given McCone was delivered by the director of NPIC and was an honest analysis – the photo/films indicate two gunman; we don’t yet know who was briefed by the second set of NPIC boards, but I suspect it was either LBJ or the Joint Chiefs.
BK
You may be right about this. Gerald McKnight’s book “Breach of Trust” had the first treatment of this topic that I had ever seen. But as I recall, the footnote documentation of this incident seemed a bit thin. That two sets of boards were made seemed more solid, but the conclusions of each were less so. “Mary’s Mosaic” has an even longer treatment, but that was based on pretty shoddy documentation, in my opinion. Not saying it’s not true, only that I haven’t seen convincing proof. Can you shed any more light on how well documented this is?
Wow. Never knew that’s what McCone thought.
I finally agree with the CIA.
[bogman:] “Never knew that’s what McCone thought. ”
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bogman: We need context here. The Schlesinger conversation took place only 13 days after the tragedy and McCone talked to Bobby only a few days after it.
The reasoning by McCone was simple: he had just seen the Zapruder film.
A few FBI agents also saw it at the time and one is asked by his fellow g-men:
“What do you see there?”
“Simple: The president was hit by 2 bullets, one from behind, one from the front”
“Exactly, but that is not what Hoover wants us to say”.
My point is that at the time, McCone was kept in the dark. Based on the information available, you or I could have told Bobby the exact same thing: “Two shooters”.