CIA Reactions to JFK Assassination Included Fear of Possible Soviet Strike against U.S.; Desire to “Bond” with LBJ
Web Posting Features New Articles from The CIA’s In-House Journal, “Studies in Intelligence”
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 493 Posted November 20, 2014
Edited by Jeffrey T. Richelson
For more information contact:
202/994-7000, nsarchiv@gwu.edu
Washington, DC, November 20, 2014 — The CIA’s reactions to the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy — 51 years ago this week — went from initial shock to suspicions of Soviet or Cuban involvement, to increasingly bureaucratic concerns such as the desire to establish a positive “bond” with incoming President Lyndon Johnson, according to a newly declassified internal CIA article published for the first time today by the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org).
Fears that Moscow might have masterminded the president’s killing rose sharply when the CIA was unable to locate Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for 24-48 hours afterwards. Agency officials worried that he was “either hunkering down for an American reprisal, or possibly preparing to strike the United States.”
This article is one of several from the CIA’s Studies in Intelligence in-house journal that the agency recently released as a result of litigation by a former CIA official against his former employer. It appears today as part of an update to a compilation of similar articles the National Security Archive posted in June 2013.
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STTPML Note: One of the members of STTPML was in Germany at 7th Army Headquarters in Stuttgart-Vaihingen on November 22, 1963 and on alert room duty when the announcement of the assassination of president Kennedy was announced along with the cancellation of an upcoming inspection. It should be noted that CBS coverage gave the name of Lee Harvey Oswald as a suspect before 2:30 pm and by 6:30 pm had a whole profile of him as a supposed pro-Castro Marxist who had lived in the USSR and come back with a Russian wife. Needless to say someone was ready with the name and profile in real time for the news that did not mention Oswald’s time at Atsugi in Japan a CIA-NSA base, nor his time in New Orleans with known fascists and Cuban exiles.