Top secret memo reveals CIA thought John F Kennedy assassination was possible payback for US attempts to kill Fidel Castro and details Lee Harvey Oswald pre-shooting visit to Cuban embassy
- A top secret memo from 1975 details the possibility of Castro-Cuban involvement in the assassination of John F Kennedy
- The memo argues that Kennedy could have been killed in retaliation for attempts that had been made on Castro's life by the CIA and its operatives
- Lee Harvey Oswald may have been motivated to commit the fatal shooting after a September 1963 interview in which Castro lashed out at Kennedy
- It was just a few weeks after this that Oswald traveled to Mexico and spent a good deal of time at the Cuban embassy in hopes of getting a visa
- The memo also reveals that the investigation into this involvement had been botched due to poor work in interviewing necessary subjects
- The Cuban embassy worker Oswald had an affair with was never interrogated, nor was a worker who appeared to know about the plot on an intercepted call
A memo drafted almost 12 years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy reveals that a number of top intelligence workers believed that there may have been Castro-Cuban involvement in the fatal shooting of the president.
That argument is based largely on the six-day trip that Lee Harvey Oswald took to Mexico just two months before the assassination, which is detailed for the first time in the 26-page memo.
The assassination may have been carried out in retaliation to the attempts the CIA had made on Castro's life argues the memo, with Oswald possibly deciding it was crucial to murder Kennedy in order to save Castro.
Politico was the first to report on this memo.
New theories: A top secret memo from 1975 details the possibility of Castro-Cuban involvement in the assassination of John F Kennedy (Castro above in 1960)
Theory: The memo argues that Kennedy (above in 1960) could have been killed in retaliation for attempts that had been made on Castro's life by the CIA and its operatives
Oswald's ties to Cuba date back to 1959 according to the memo, with a man by the name of Nelson Delgado stating that Oswald has inquired as to how he might get a visa to go to the island in the months after Castro rose to power while they were both training at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, California.
Delgado suggested that he contact the embassy he said in excerpts from his interview with intelligence officers, and soon after Oswald received a letter with an official seal he claimed was from the Cuban consul in Los Angeles.
From then on he would receive multiple deliveries and often wait by the post rather than go out according to Delgado, who said that Oswald received letter, books and pamphlets from Cuban contacts but never any letters from home.
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It was soon after he finished his time at El Toro that Oswald defected to Russia, returning with wife Marina in June of 1962 and moving the following April to New Orleans.
The memo argues that the idea to assassinate President Kennedy may have first been put in motion when Oswald was in New Orleans and read an interview that Castro gave to an AP reporter in early September.
Lee Harvey Oswald (above) may have been motivated to commit the fatal shooting after a September 1963 interview in which Castro lashed out at Kennedy
Catro referred to Kennedy as a 'cretin' and 'the most opportunistic American president of all time' in that interview, while speaking about attempts to take out and kill Cuban leaders by the US government.
'We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind,' said Castro.
'US leaders should think if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders they themselves will not be safe.'
A few weeks after that interview ran in papers across the country, Oswald was in Mexico trying to get a new visa, spending five days shuttling back and forth between the Russian and Cuban embassies.
He also found time for a little romance according to the memo, which claims that Oswald had an affair with Silvia Duran, the receptionist at the Cuban embassy.
Duran was never formerly interrogated however the memo reveals, and instead allowed to avoid going in front of the Warren Commission during their investigation at the request of Mexican authorities.
That meant the one person with first-hand details of Oswald's trip to Mexico was never formally questioned and all her statements accepted at face value as factual and accurate.
She also did not have to answer to why her friend and co-worker Luisa Calderon was heard laughing and stating that she knew Kennedy was going to be shot in an intercepted phone call to the embassy just hours after the assassination.
'Yes, of course I knew it almost before Kennedy,' said Calderon according to the memo.
'Imagine, one, two, three and now, that makes three,' she added, laughing.
She then noted 'what barbarians' before telling the caller a party that had been planned for the night at Duran's was being rescheduled so they did not appear to be celebrating in the wake of the shooting.
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