The assassination of President John F. Kennedy took place on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. John Kiriakou has, on the Carlos Watson program, laid out the position he has arrived at over the course of his CIA career — drawn from three sources.[1]
The McCone exchange
Per an account given to Kiriakou by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, CIA Director John McCone was standing in the driveway at the Kennedy family home Hickory Hill with Bobby Kennedy Sr. RFK Sr.: “Tell me your people didn’t do this.” McCone: “I don’t know who did it.” Kiriakou: “He didn’t say, ‘Of course my people didn’t do it.’ He said, ‘I don’t know who did it.’ And I think that … there were elements of the CIA that were probably involved.”[2][3][4]
The Gately remark
In Pakistan, Kiriakou served alongside Jean Gately, the commander of the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. On confronting him with the realization of who he was, Kiriakou heard from Gately: “Fucking Kennedy. We could have won that thing.” Kiriakou: “And that was the very first time I ever saw that kind of flash of anger. And I thought, ‘Oh, I understand 1963.’”[5][6]
The “Israel in it” tranche
On the LBJ question Kiriakou is non-committal: “To me that just seems like a bridge too far. But the people that I know who believe LBJ was involved do have some compelling evidence, I guess.”[6]
On Israel he is not. Kiriakou recounts a conversation roughly a year prior with a friend at the White House, in which Kiriakou offhandedly thanked the president for releasing all the remaining Kennedy documents. The contact: “He didn’t release all of it.” Kiriakou: “What’s left?” The contact: “Every document that remains classified has the word Israel in it.” Kiriakou: “Damn it. I was hoping they weren’t involved.”[7][8]
Kiriakou’s reconstruction of motive: Israel was “livid that John Kennedy not only would not give them a nuclear weapon, but would not allow them to develop a nuclear weapon.” Asked about the risk of taking out an American president: “Enormous, like incalculable risk.” And so why anyway: “Because they saw it as a matter of their own survival. Remember, the whole idea was that the Arabs were going to push them into the sea — there wouldn’t be one Jew left.”[9][7]