In April 2016, the notoriously unreliable conspiratorial “Wayne Madsen Report” (WMR) published an article in their typical “just asking questions” style (i.e., making wild accusations acceptable by framing them as questions rather than statements) positing a link between the father of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz and the JFK assassination:

Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Castro operations.



Just those first two paragraphs were loaded with plenty of weasel phrasing: The article doesn’t elaborate on exactly what “questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr.” (other than the far-fetched ones the author is raising) but nonetheless concludes “there is a strong reason to believe” that Rafael Cruz, Sr. was somehow involved with the CIA’s “anti-Castro operations” (which, even if true, is not the same thing as being “linked to the JFK assassination” unless the CIA had a hand in killing President Kennedy).

The sum total of the evidence presented in support of this claim is that some grainy pictures of a man purportedly photographed handing out “Hands off Cuba!” pamphlets with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans during the summer of 1963 bear a passing resemblance to a picture of Rafael Cruz, Sr. taken nine years earlier (that is, both photographs are of dark-haired young men with similar haircuts):

Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing “Hands off Cuba!” pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. WMR has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald’s left is none other than Rafael Cruz. The photograph at the trade mart was favorably compared to a 1954 photograph of Cruz attached to an official Cuban Ministry of Education document. In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza and, after Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, the couple moved to New Orleans from Dallas after the birth of their second daughter on November 18, 1962.





Once again, the WMR’s author doesn’t explain how he could possibly know that the unidentified person standing near Lee Harvey Oswald in these photographs was actually a Cuban (other than by assuming he’s Rafael Cruz), nor does he identify the “source” who informed him that the “individual to Oswald’s left is none other than Rafael Cruz.” (By the standards of “evidence” used in typical WMR items, someone’s saying, “Hey, the dude in that blurry Oswald photo looks kinda like Ted Cruz’s dad” counts as a “source.”)

WMR also doesn’t explain how it could possibly be of any significance that Rafael Cruz, Sr. and his wife once lived in Dallas, given that they moved out of that city in November 1962, a full year before the JFK assassination, and more than six months before President Kennedy even decided he would be visiting Texas in November 1963. Evidently the conspiracy in which Cruz and Oswald were involved was so vast, they were able to predict the movements of President Kennedy several months before Kennedy himself planned them.