Opinion

PEASE: Nixon believed CIA involved in Kennedy Assassination

A new book, to be released September 2nd, discloses a previously unknown connection between Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, John F. Kennedy and the CIA. In fact, author Roger Stone, a former Nixon aide, asserts that Nixon “knew the CIA was involved in JFK’s assassination” and was so pesky in his attempts to get them to disclose all their records that the CIA contemplated the assassination of Nixon as well. The book, Nixon’s Secrets: The Rise, Fall, and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon, demonstrates a definitely unfriendly relationship between himself and then CIA Director Richard Helms.

The plot to kill Nixon did not materialize, Stone alleges, because Nixon threatened to bring down everyone with what he knew of the Kennedy Assassination, including Gerald Ford, a member of the Warren Commission, who as a committee member “knew that the autopsy records had been altered. In 1996, declassified documents revealed indeed Gerry Ford changed the autopsy {report} with a pencil” and that’s why Ford gave Nixon “a full, free and unconditional pardon.” The book is full of blackmail and intrigue.

Roger Stone wrote that the CIA “felt JFK had stabbed them in the back refusing adequate support for the Bay of Pigs invasion {of Cuba}, which the agency had masterminded.” Moreover, he identified Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson as having “engineered” the assassination “aided by the CIA” (“The CIA Plotted to Assassinate Richard Nixon,” Economic Policy Journal, June 2, 2014).

CIA involvement in the Kennedy Assassination has always been one of the principle theories having much support. With so much newer material now available, fewer and fewer believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Especially was this so after 1989, when the West gained access to KGB records showing Oswald a poor marksman during his stay in the USSR a few months before he fired three shots upon the Kennedy limousine with such amazing accuracy.

The link to Johnson is also not a new theory. More and more theorists have centered on Johnson for numerous reasons including his being the leading beneficiary of the death of his presidential predecessor and his immediately placing himself in charge of assembling the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination—even allegedly picking the individuals to serve thereon. Congress, with no vested interest in the outcome, should have formed the investigating committee. Johnson gained the most coveted office in the world. It is no secret that Kennedy planned to remove him from the ticket in the next election.

Renewed interest in the Johnson connection surfaced with the 1992 book, JFK: Conspiracy of Silence by Dr. Charles A. Crenshaw, one of the surgeons working on Oswald in Parkland Hospital. While doing so, he strangely received a phone call from President Johnson demanding that the physicians extract a deathbed confession from the accused assassin. Oswald died on the table without saying a word. Why is the new president obsessed with getting something on paper? The popular television documentary program 20/20 obtained White House logs of November 24,1963 and determined that the call could have been made (“JFK Assassination Interview with Parkland Hospital Doctor Charles Crenshaw,” 20/20, Utube).

Only two governmental investigations of the assassination have occurred each ending with conflicting conclusions. The Executive Branch’s 1964 Warren Commission Report supported the single gunman theory. The House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1976, more than a decade later, concluded that Kennedy was, "probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy."

Dr. Crenshaw, also the last to see Kennedy after helping to place him in his coffin, disclosed the shocking information that the hole in Kennedy’s neck, then the size of a little finger, demonstrated an entry wound, not an exit wound—that the wound had been tampered with to look like an exit wound. In other words, this shot came from the front. This supported the multiple assassin theory concluded by the House of Representatives. Amazingly neither the Warren Commission, nor the House Select Committee on Assassinations, interviewed Surgeon Dr. Crenshaw.

Complicating full disclosure even more, some 51 years later, is the government’s continued refusal to release “about 1,100 records — each record comprises 1-20 pages — that are considered to contain information about confidential sources or methods or have national security implications.” Most are referred to as the Joannides files. These “sit in metal boxes on shelves in ‘a big room that temperature—and humidity—controlled.’ ” These records are thought to show CIA involvement in the Kennedy Assassination as Joannides was a CIA agent “whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years” (“Kennedy probe files still sealed 5 decades later,” Associated Press, Nov. 15, 2013).

So until these, mostly CIA, records are finally released, and the federal government is finally transparent, historians are forced to use what we can and Roger Stone’s book Nixon’s Secrets, reveals fresh involvement of the CIA and possibly President Johnson in the plot to kill President John F. Kennedy. For historians and assassination buffs this should be a great read. Meanwhile we need to force the government to release all the Kennedy files.

Dr. Harold Pease is an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 25 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.