FBI Memos Reveal Shadow Networks Behind JFK Killing: Cuban Exiles, CIA Cutouts, and a President’s Peace Plan

Newly declassified records reveal that President John F. Kennedy's pursuit of peace with the USSR and Cuba may have triggered a covert backlash from the very networks empowered to carry out U.S. foreign operations. 

Image Source: Edebiyat Dünyası

FBI and CIA memos from 1963 show that anti-Castro Cuban exiles—some trained and supported by U.S. intelligence—were deeply disillusioned by JFK’s diplomatic overtures, creating fertile ground for extremist plots.

One explosive memo details how District Attorney Jim Garrison traced the origins of the JFK assassination to a triangle of CIA-linked anti-Castro activities between New Orleans, Dallas, and Miami. 

These efforts allegedly involved former Bay of Pigs veterans, Cuban exiles, and ultranationalist Minutemen who viewed Kennedy's détente push as betrayal.

Garrison's theory, supported by new documents, alleged that lower-level intelligence operatives and Cuban exiles had been greenlit for paramilitary operations—until the White House intervened. 

A July 31, 1963 FBI raid on a Lake Pontchartrain training camp shuttered the operation, one that had CIA approval, sparking outrage among exiles who believed they’d been abandoned.

The documents also show internal CIA discussions from May 1978 indicating the agency's discomfort with the HSCA (House Select Committee on Assassinations) probing these links. 

The Agency resisted release of sensitive files, maintaining a secured safe within HSCA offices to tightly control access.

One document describes how the Cuban Revolutionary Council’s former head, José Miró Cardona, resigned in protest after JFK’s shift in policy. 

He publicly condemned Kennedy for “granting Castro immunity” and claimed that Cubans were promised U.S. military support—support that never came.

Perhaps most notably, Garrison alleged that the American University speech in June 1963—in which JFK called for mutual peace and restraint—was viewed by hardliners as the final provocation. Just five months later, the President was dead.

These documents underscore how the intersecting paths of Cold War geopolitics, CIA field activity, and domestic extremism may have converged in one of America’s most haunting political murders.