“So, Who Ordered JFK Killed?”

One of the great tragedies of our nation was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Everyone who was alive on that day remembers where they were.

This week there has been a lot of press coverage on that assassination, and there is STILL question as to who killed JFK, and why.

About 25 years ago I was sitting in the basement bar of a small hotel in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with the recently retired number two man in the CIA, Ray Cline, (actually, the Number One professional who serves under a political appointee.)

It was Ray Cline seen bending over the desk of President Kennedy in that famous photo while the U-2 photos of the Russian missile sites were being pointed out in Cuba. He was the Number One professional man in the CIA for many decades.

A photo of me with the late Ray Cline and my then newspaper Editor, while we were all in Russia, is attached. You can see the typical Russian buildings in the background. We had meetings with many Russian military and politicians while in Russia, and you should have seen the Russian Generals embrace Ray when they saw him — he was revered even by our opponents for his professionalism.

One does not often get an opportunity to talk privately with someone like Ray, in a quiet venue like a dark, vacant hotel bar at 2 a.m. —  so I asked him, “Who killed JFK?”

I thought his answer was revealing: “I don’t know, but I can tell you who everyone on that plane back to Washington carrying the body of JFK, Lyndon Johnson, and Mrs. Kennedy unanimously THOUGHT had done it.”

“ Fidel Castro.”

When you read the Ray Harvey Oswald background, that makes sense to me.