[accessed May 18, 2011].

13. Jefferson Morley, "JFK: 'It [A Military Coup] Could Happen in this Country,'" JFK Facts, January 21, 2013,

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/quote/jfk-it-a-military-coup-could-happen-in-this-country/#more-2129 [accessed January 22, 2013].

14. In theory, the cabal could also have been the opposite: Communist-inspired. In April 1961, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover sent Attorney General Robert Kennedy a memo admitting that the Office of Strategic Services (the CIA's parent organization) had been infiltrated by a "Communist element" that "created problems and situations which even to this day affect US intelligence operations." See Hoover to RFK, April 21, 1961, NARA Record Number 124-90092-10011, Mary Ferrell Foundation website, https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=99112&relPageId=3

[accessed April 16, 2013].

15. Lindsay Porter, Assassination: A History of Political Murder (New York: Overlook Press, 2010), 15, 93, 16061.

16. According to Arthur Schlesinger, "Marvin Watson of Lyndon Johnson's White House staff told Cartha DeLoach, [a senior official] of the FBI that Johnson 'was now convinced [1967] there was a plot in connection with the assassination. Watson stated the president felt that CIA had had something to do with this plot' (Washington Post, December 13, 1977)." See Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 616.

17. Personal interview with Bill Alexander, Dallas, January 14, 2011. It is unclear whether any copies of the newspaper, the Dallas Morning News, were actually printed containing this charged information-Alexander says two thousand were-but they were either not distributed or do not survive, as far as we can determine. Yet Alexander is correct that the "Communist conspiracy" charge was considered Friday afternoon and evening. As Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum notes, this internal debate explains an important aspect of the November 22 timeline: "Clearly, something caused a delay [in charging Oswald with JFK's murder] since Oswald was charged with Tippit hours before he was charged with Kennedy. The decision whether or not to amend the charge by removing 'Communist conspiracy' was a pretty darn good reason." E-mail from Gary Mack, August 30, 2011.

18. Did President Johnson have ironclad evidence of his suspicions, or were these his surmises after the passage of years? The written and testimonial record is not clear, though one naturally assumes that a sitting president has access to the people and documents needed to form conclusions of these sorts.

19. Joseph A. Califano, Jr., "Letter to the Editor: A Concoction of Lies and Distortions," Wall Street Journal, January 28, 1992: A15.

20. Max Holland, "The Assassination Tapes," Atlantic Monthly, June 2004,

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/holland_atlantic.htm

[accessed July 27, 2011].

21. G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President (New York: Times Books, 1981), 140.

22. Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation Into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Henry Holt, 1985), 309.

23. "Dousing a Popular Theory," Time, October 2, 1978,

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,948669,00.html

[accessed August 16, 2011].

24. Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 22526. Morley believes that Washington silenced Mann because a full investigation could have "revealed that the CIA and FBI had been playing close attention to the FPCC and Oswald in the years, months and weeks before JFK was killed." See "At the Newseum: Epstein's Unconvincing Indictment of the Pro-Castro Assassin," JFK Facts, April 8, 2013,

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/at-the-new seum-epsteins-unconvincing-indictment-of-the-pro-castro-assassin/#more-4118

[accessed April 11, 2013].

25. Kennedy told the Florida Chamber of Commerce in Tampa on November 18: "I do not think that there is any doubt that Fidel Castro, as a symbol of revolt in this hemisphere, has faded badly. Every survey, every report, I think every newspaperman, every publisher, would agree that because Mr. Castro has embraced the Soviet Union and made Cuba its satellite, that the appeal that he had in the late fifties and early sixties as a national revolutionary has been so badly damaged and scarred that as a symbol, his torch is flickering. We have not been successful in removing Mr. Castro. We should realize that that task is one which involves not only the security of the United States, but other countries. It involves possibilities of war. It involves danger to people as far away as West Berlin, Germany, countries which border upon the Soviet Union in the Middle East, all the countries that are linked to us in alliance, as the Soviet Union is so intimately linked with Cuba ... In answer to your question, Mr. Castro still is in control in Cuba, and still remains a major danger to the United States." In Miami later that day, Kennedy added: "It is important to restate what now divides Cuba from my country and from the other countries of this hemisphere. It is the fact that a small band of conspirators has stripped the Cuban people of their freedom and handed over the independence and sovereignty of the Cuban nation to forces beyond the hemisphere. They have made Cuba a victim of foreign imperialism, an instrument of the policy of others, a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American Republics. This, and this alone, divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible." These tough words were delivered in two cities with large numbers of Cuban-Americans. It is not unreasonable to assume that Castro would have been interested in monitoring Kennedy's Texas speeches to see if he continued this theme in a state with a different population mix. See John F. Kennedy, "Address and Question and Answer Period in Tampa Before the Florida Chamber of Commerce," November 18, 1963, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project,

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9526

[accessed January 7, 2013]; and "Address in Miami Before the Inter-American Press Association," November 18, 1963, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project,

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=9529

[accessed January 7, 2013].

26. Brian Latell, Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 21321.

27. "JFK Assassination Quotes by Government Officials," Mary Ferrell Foundation,

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/JFK_Assassination_Quotes_by_Government_Officials

[accessed May 19, 2011]; Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 41618; Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Henry Holt, 1985), 309; "Dousing a Popular Theory," Time, October 2, 1978,

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,948669,00.html

[accessed May 31, 2011]; "Cable to CIA Director," March 3, 1964, "Latin American Division Work Files," Box 1, Record Group 263, Folder "WF02:F3," Archives II, College Park, Maryland.

28. Martin Roberts, "Cuban Ex-Intelligence Chief Recalls JFK Assassination," Washington Post, July 12, 2010.

29. Telephone interview with Edward Martino, May 8, 2013. Martino, who has apparently not sought publicity nor profited from his story, permitted my interview with him to be cited but requested that no direct quotations be used. See also Larry Hancock, "If There Was a JFK Conspiracy, Wouldn't Somebody Have Talked?" JFK Facts, January 2, 2013,

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/experts/if-there-was-a-jfk-conspiracy-wouldnt-somebody-have-talked/

[accessed May 10, 2013].

30. The term refers to an intensely propagandized individual who has been programmed subconsciously to act as an assassin, on the orders of a foreign power. Richard Condon wrote a thriller novel by this name, and it first appeared in a film released in 1962, starring, among others, Frank Sinatra. See Hal Hinson, "The Manchurian Candidate," Washington Post, February 13, 1988.

31. "Discussion Between Chairman Khrushchev and Mr. Drew Pearson, RE: Lee Harvey Oswald," May 27, 1964, NARA Record Number: 104-10150-10113, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=51190&relPageId=2

[accessed January 7, 2013]. The memo containing the details of this conversation, leaked by Pearson and his wife, was signed by Richard Helms, CIA's Deputy Director for Plans.