Who killed JFK?

"Magic Bullet"

Most likely rogue CIA agents, working with Lee Harvey Oswald.

A packed room hears from a former CIA agent.

It was one man's carefully considered opinion.  The students at the JFK School of Government at Harvard are heavily populated with mid-career military people and employees of the US intelligence agencies. It is a place where people on their way up in careers at the State Department, Defense, FBI, CIA, etc. stop to spend two years getting a new level of sophistication on how government is supposed to work and actually works. The speaker, Rolf Larson, wanted people to see how a former CIA case officer looks at evidence, and to get a sense of the "old days" at the CIA.

Opportunity.  He said there was a secretive "wild west" quality to the CIA's behavior back in the 1950's and 1960's. The agency fomented revolutions. The agency did targeted assassinations. It arranged government coups for the purpose of protecting American businesses. Iran. Central America. We did not just meddle in elections, he said. The CIA killed people. The CIA discussed assassinations with the mafia, he said. (The mafia considered assassinating Kennedy, he said, then passed on the opportunity.) 

Have no illusions, he said. The CIA covert operations programs weren't subtle.

Motive. A great many people hated JFK for pulling the plug on the Bay of Pigs invasion. The CIA coordinated an invasion of Cuba, based on a fanciful presumption that American-sponsored invaders would be greeting by cheering crowds. They weren't. Instead, they were greeted by armed opposition loyal to Castro. President Kennedy stopped the invasion, leaving some rebels, who had trusted the CIA, to be captured and killed. 

Many CIA employees felt betrayed. The people they had recruited were stabbed in the back, they thought.

Cover Up. The single bullet theory, which is the only theory that can justify saying that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, is somewhere between utterly impossible and almost impossible. The Warren Commission report was an explanation and coverup that allowed Americans to "move on" emotionally. 

First Oswald Assassination target

No one really wanted a close look at what happened, not the CIA, not the FBI, not the Kennedy family. A close look would expose Kennedy's memory to stories about mafia girlfriends and Marilyn Monroe, and Bobby Kennedy had no interest in pursuing the investigation. On the flight home from Dallas the very first thing LBJ did was appoint J. Edgar Hoover Director of the FBI for life--protecting the FBI from any exposure.

Lee Harvey Oswald's behavior. He acted exactly like a person being squeezed by a CIA case officer, not like a rogue operator acting alone. He knew he was being looked at by the FBI, a military veteran who had defected to the USSR and then returned, a high priority security risk. He then left obvious--in hindsight--calls for help, using two different names on documents likely to be noticed by the FBI. 

The shot he took from the Depositary site, not taken during the clear opportunity while Kennedy was coming toward him in the open vehicle, and instead waiting until Kennedy had turned the corner and was moving away from him, makes no sense. The earlier shot would have been much easier. The shots make sense only if Oswald were under instructions to wait until a second gunman had his shot as well. 

Then, after the shot Oswald went outside and waited, and then finally caught a bus. This is inconceivable unless Oswald expected an exfiltration, i.e. that he expected his CIA handlers to pick him up and get him out of town. He was waiting for something that did not come as expected. 

What happened, maybe? Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy. CIA case officers acting on their own, filled with disgust for Kennedy, used CIA techniques to put the squeeze on Oswald. They threatened to expose him for his previous effort to assassinate General Walker. This accomplished what CIA case officers do: make a vulnerable person a reluctant agent. His task was to carry out an assassination of the president. 

He may not have known there was a second shooter, but there was one, which explains the ambiguous but likely audio confirmation of 4 shots, not the 3 that Oswald fired. The fatal shot of Kennedy may not have come from Oswald from the rear,  but from the front, which explains the ambiguous motion of Kennedy's head exposed in the Zapruder film. 

Then Oswald was killed. Dead men tell no tales. That is far too convenient to have "just happened" to a lone gunman. The rogue CIA officers made the arrangement with the mafia to do it. They wouldn't kill Kennedy but they were willing to kill Oswald. The prompt death of Oswald is the clear sign of a conspiracy.

They got away with it.