Murder, Inc.

The CIA under John F. Kennedy

James H. Johnston

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Hardback

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English

Potomac Books Inc
01 August 2019

History of the Americas; The Cold War; Espionage & secret services; Political assassinations

"Late in life, former President Lyndon Johnson told a reporter that he didn't believe the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President John Kennedy. Johnson felt Cuban President Fidel Castro was behind it. After all, Johnson continued, Kennedy was running ""a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean,"" giving Castro reason to retaliate. Surprisingly, despite continuing public fascination with the CIA and with Kennedy's assassination, no one has written about Murder, Inc. and its connection with Kennedy's death. James Johnston was a lawyer for the 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee, which investigated and first reported on the assassination plots and their relation to Kennedy's murder, and so brings a special expertise to the subject.

Murder, Inc. is a chronological narrative of the CIA's assassination operations from their start, a few months before Kennedy took office, to their end with Kennedy's assassination. It continues through the many subsequent investigations.

The book is sourced largely from the National Archives' huge holdings on the Kennedy assassination that have been declassified under the Assassination Records Review Act. While some proponents of the Act expected the secret documents would contain bombshells about the assassination, many deal instead with Murder, Inc.

n a nutshell, the story is that in 1960, the CIA engaged the Mafia to kill Castro. One CIA officer termed it simply a ""contract."" This arrangement continued through the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Frustrated by the lack of results, Kennedy ordered the Agency to come up with a better plan. By the spring of 1963, it proposed that rather than kill Castro, it would orchestrate a coup to overthrow him. This plan moved into high-gear in September 1963 when the CIA began meeting secretly outside Cuba with a friend of Castro who was willing to lead the coup. But, he also said they would need to kill Castro and asked the CIA to provide him with assassination weapons: rifles with telescopic sights and an exotic poison dart-gun. The CIA put off agreeing until four days before Kennedy was killed. As a result, it was meeting with the Castro assassin to arrange delivery of the weapons at the very moment Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Within weeks of becoming President, Lyndon Johnson ordered the operation stopped. His Murder, Inc. comment is an obvious reference to what he was told before making this decision."

By: James H. Johnston
Imprint: Potomac Books Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781640121553
ISBN 10: 1640121552
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 01 August 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

James H. Johnston is a lawyer, writer, and historian in Washington DC. He is the coauthor of The Recollections of Margaret Cabell Brown Loughborough: A Southern Woman’s Memories of Richmond, VA, and Washington, DC, in the Civil War and the author of From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family.

Reviews for Murder, Inc.: The CIA under John F. Kennedy

"The Cold War is often celebrated as a great Western victory that was won without firing a shot. James Johnston's extensive research and exceptional writing reminds us that a lot of shots were fired. This important story contains lots of lessons learned for Americans honest enough to read and remember its details."""" - Bob Kerrey, former U.S. senator from Nebraska """"Many an author has entered the historical thicket that surrounds John F. Kennedy and his administration's adventures in Cuba. None, however, match James Johnston's thoroughness of research, lucid writing, and balanced assessment of the president's obsession and its haunting implications."""" - Loch K. Johnson, author of Spy Watching: Intelligence Accountability in the United States """"James Johnston offers a thorough analysis of the newly released JFK assassination papers. Readers may draw their own conclusions, but one lesson is clear: the American intelligence community must always strive to be transparent and maintain the public's trust."""" - David L. Boren, former U.S. senator and president emeritus of the University of Oklahoma"