Declassified JFK files provide ‘enhanced clarity’ on CIA actions, historian says

Six decades later, Americans know a bit more about the CIA’s clandestine operations in the early 1960s, particularly in Cuba and Mexico, thanks to a new tranche of declassified documents concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy released last week.

The more than 77,000 pages released by the National Archives and Records Administration do not appear to contradict the Warren Commission’s conclusion that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But historians say the papers hold important new details about the CIA’s involvement in foreign elections during the Cold War and its infiltration of Fidel Castro’s inner circle.

In this edited conversation with the Gazette, Fredrik Logevall, a professor of history and the Kennedy School’s Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs, highlights key details in the documents, shares what he’d still like to know, and offers some thoughts on why the assassination of JFK remains fodder for conspiracy theorists. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Logevall published the first book in a three-volume series on Kennedy in 2020. The second volume will be published next year.

---

What’s your impression of this new tranche of JFK records? Have you seen anything noteworthy so far?

With respect to the assassination, there’s little or nothing that’s new, at least in terms of what I’ve been able to see thus far. I can’t say I’m surprised — going in I didn’t expect we’d learn anything that would overturn our understanding of what happened in Dallas. The releases are, however, quite interesting on U.S. covert operations in the Cold War in the early 1960s. Some of them range beyond Kennedy’s years, but it’s for this period that they’re most interesting, especially with respect to Latin America. That’s actually been quite revealing to me.

“Interesting” in terms of what the CIA was doing or the volume of things they were doing back then?

In a way, it’s both. A lot of the “new” documents had been released before; the difference now is that they are unredacted. In 2017, for example, we got some really important CIA documents, but they would have certain words or passages blocked out. What’s been illuminating for me, even though it’s sometimes just a handful of words, is to have those words inserted. This matters, because as we know even a few words can change the meaning of a sentence or a passage dramatically. What we see with enhanced clarity is just how involved the United States was in other countries, not least in interfering in elections. In the past, country names or the names of leaders would have been omitted. Now they are there in black and white. There’s just something about seeing it say “Brazil” or “the Finnish elections,” for example, that makes this more clear, more stark. Also, you see just how large the presence of the CIA was. In certain embassies, those who are attached to the CIA could make up almost half the total personnel. Even those of us who are historians of the Cold War were somewhat taken aback by these figures. If you had asked me a week ago, I would have said that in this or that key embassy, there’s probably 20 percent max secretly attached to the CIA. I had no idea that it was sometimes approaching 40 or 50 percent.

Did we learn more about why Kennedy had a fraught relationship with the CIA?

We have not, though this could be buried in there and I just haven’t seen it yet. I thought we might learn more about that important relationship. You’re right to say that there was a wariness between JFK and the agency for various reasons. Some authors have exaggerated the depth and width of the schism, but it was there.

What’s something notable that you discovered?

In one CIA document, dated April 24, 1963, we learn that 14 Cuban diplomats were our agents. That’s quite significant — the degree to which there were people inside the Cuban government who were, in fact, working for the agency. In terms of the so-called Operation Mongoose, which was the effort to destabilize and overthrow the Cuban government, this helps us better understand to what extent were Cubans assisting in that effort. Later in the same document, we learn that there were two Cuban ambassadors on the payroll who provided first-rate reports and were closest to the bone in what Castro was thinking.

What are some key questions historians still have about the Kennedy assassination? Is there much left to learn?

I would like to know more about Oswald’s movements before Dallas. I would like to know more about his visit to Mexico City, which was in late September-early October 1963, just a few weeks before the assassination. He was flirting with defecting to Cuba, and so, in Mexico City, he met with both Cuban diplomats and Soviet diplomats. What exactly was said in those conversations? I’m interested, more broadly, in what U.S. intelligence agencies knew and didn’t know about his whereabouts in these weeks. That’s maybe the biggest issue for me.

The JFK assassination is often cited as the progenitor of modern conspiracy theory culture. Why is there still so much suspicion around it?

Part of it is simply because a president was killed, a president seemingly in the prime of life. I think we human beings have a natural inclination to believe that great events must have great causes. It seems somehow impossible that it was a lone misfit named Lee Oswald who took it upon himself to shoot the president. There’s got to be more to it than that, we tell ourselves. And so, the conspiracies will continue to fly. Regardless of what these documents would or would not have revealed, it would not have satisfied people who believe others were involved.

Someone asked me why we don’t seem to have the same consuming interest in, say, Lincoln’s or RFK’s assassination. It might have something to do with a few things. First there’s the fact that Oswald himself was killed two days later. Understandably, this makes people say, “How was that allowed to happen?” Second, the Warren Commission, which was a government commission formed to investigate the murder, was serious and thorough, but it made mistakes, notably in neglecting to interview everyone it might. Third, the fact that the assassination was captured on film might make a difference. So many of us have seen the Zapruder film, and it lives on in our mind, makes the whole thing more real, more eternal. Finally, there’s the oft-heard suggestion — the implications of which I’m still trying to sort out myself — that something important was lost on that day in Dallas, that it marked the end of American innocence somehow.

Put all of that together, maybe you have part of the explanation for why this particular event has been such fodder for conspiracy theories.