Recently declassified documents on the assassination of John F. Kennedy have reignited debate over the CIA’s role in monitoring Lee Harvey Oswald, offering fresh details on Cold War-era intelligence operations and secretive power struggles within the US government. The Times, UK, reported that the National Archives released over 2,100 files, totaling more than 63,000 pages, including previously redacted testimony from James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s top counterintelligence officer, and other revealing intelligence memos.
One of the most significant disclosures involves Oswald’s ties to US and Soviet intelligence. A 1991 intelligence report dismissed the idea that Oswald was a KGB agent, while also noting his poor marksmanship and volatile marriage. The files also contain testimony suggesting that the CIA closely monitored Oswald’s movements, particularly his visits to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City just months before the assassination. Critics argue that these documents either expose gross incompetence or a deliberate effort to manipulate Oswald as a scapegoat for the assassination.
Among the newly released materials is a 1961 memo from Kennedy’s aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in which he discussed the possibility of dismantling the CIA after its disastrous handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The memo portrays the agency as a rogue entity operating outside presidential oversight, leading some to speculate that JFK’s plans for intelligence reform made him a target. Another declassified document reveals that a former US Army intelligence officer, Gary Underhill, had accused a “CIA clique” of orchestrating Kennedy’s murder as part of a wider operation involving gun-running and narcotics smuggling. Underhill was later found dead, with his death ruled a suicide.
The files also contain surprising international connections, including an Australian intelligence effort to suppress details of anonymous phone calls made to the US Embassy in Canberra around the time of Kennedy’s assassination. Meanwhile, a newly uncovered letter claims that an informant warned US diplomats three months in advance that Oswald was planning to kill the president in Dallas.
