There are at least a dozen variations on the theme of conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but the weirdest one is the theory that Kennedy was killed because he had revealed the nation's most important UFO secrets to his erstwhile lover Marilyn Monroe, whose own death in 1962 is still a mystery to many people. The actual story is more complicated than that, and more interesting.
Part 1: CIA Background Information
The best place to begin this story is probably with three men in the Central Intelligence Agency who had access to the United States' most sensitive secrets: Allen Dulles, General Charles P. Cabell, and James J Angleton. All three were heavily involved in intelligence work during World War 2, and after the war they rose rapidly in the ranks of the newly created CIA. Allen Dulles held the most power between them and became CIA Director in 1953. Allen with his brother John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State made for an extremely influential partnership in U.S. government. The mysterious Army/Air Force General Cabell held the post of Chief of Air Force Intelligence from 1948-1951 (the relative lack of online information about him is amazing). In 1949 he initiated Project Grudge for the further investigation of UFOs, and later, Project Blue Book (the public version of it). In 1953 he became Deputy Director of the CIA. James Angleton, charter member of the CIA, was the legendary head of the CIA's Counter Intelligence division from 1954 until his forced retirement in 1975. Angleton's job was to combat foreign espionage on U.S. soil and communist infiltration of U.S. intelligence services, as well as the protection of the country's deepest UFO secrets - at any cost. These functions he shared with his arch-rival FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to whom Allen Dulles had granted the highest "need-to-know" clearance - at Hoover's insistence. Read Dulles' memo pertaining to Hoover.
All three were involved in the abortive Bay of Pigs "covert" operation in Cuba, with Dulles and Cabell more heavily involved than Angleton. Dulles angered Kennedy for being conveniently out of the country as covert airstrikes failed to destroy the Cuban Air Force and Cuban exiles floundered in the swamps of the Bay of Pigs. General Cabell (whose brother Earl was mayor of Dallas) begged Kennedy at the last minute to send U.S. military air support to the exiles but Kennedy refused, disgusted at the ineptitude of the operational planning which had left the exiles without sufficient ammunition or air support in the first place. Kennedy took public blame for the failure, but most could see that the top echelon of the CIA would have to go. Kennedy waited his famous "decent interval" (7 months) before firing Dulles, Cabell and Richard Bissell.
Even before the Bay of Pigs debacle in April 1961, Dulles had been disturbed by Kennedy's keen interest to be fully briefed on the UFO situation. Many years before, according to an alleged government report from 1947, the young Congressman Kennedy became privy to information about the famous "Roswell" incident of July 1947. If the report is reliable, Kennedy came to the White House with wide-open eyes on the subject, and soon after his inauguration in January 1961, insisting to Director Dulles that as President of the United States he was authorized to be informed about any and all government secrets and covert intelligence operations, including what was euphemistically called Psychological Operations (which included propaganda and disinformation aimed at the Soviets, discrediting or intimidating UFO witnesses, even detaining uncooperative citizens without charge- in the name of National Security). From an internal CIA report supposedly obtained from James Angleton's private files soon after his death in 1987: September 1961 (?), The Director of the CIA [MJ-1] writes to other members of MJ-12 that "As you must know, LANCER [Kennedy's Secret Service code name] has made some inquiries regarding our activities which we cannot allow. Please submit your views no later than October. Your action [in] this matter is critical to the continuation of the group. Although the exact date and Allen Dulles' name are missing from the report, it is unlikely to have been written by his successor, John McCone, who reportedly had a close relationship with President Kennedy. However, McCone had been Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission in the late-1950s, hence he must have had a very high security clearance and probably knew more details about UFOs and aliens than Kennedy.
After the failure in Cuba, Kennedy issued a string of National Security Action Memoranda which devastated the CIA; henceforth, the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon - not the CIA - would have the final say on all covert operations (click here for detailed info on these subjects). Dulles and Cabell knew that their careers were doomed. Angleton somehow managed to retain his job, despite the fact that the New York Times had made a mockery of the pre-invasion security with stories about Cuban exiles planning to overthrow Fidel Castro.
On June 28, 1961, Kennedy "requested" from Dulles a summary of MJ-12 Psychological Operations - MJ12 being the super secret high-level government department that knew all the secrets about UFOs and aliens recovered and studied by the U.S. Government - the secrets that had to be kept no matter what (even from certain Presidents). In the same document linked above, Dulles insinuates that the only time a president must be informed about alien beings is if the aliens are a threat to National Security, or if they put on a public display and can no longer be debunked. On November 5, just before Dulles left the CIA, he responded to Kennedy's June 28 request with an astounding statement near the end of his memo: "For reasons of security, I cannot divulge pertinent data on some of the more sensitive aspects of MJ-12 activities which have been deemed properly classified under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954."
Part 2: UFOs, MM and JFK
The sexual affair between Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy is well documented. Prior to 1962, Monroe and Kennedy had met twice - at public functions. In February 1962 Marilyn, at the invitation of Kennedy's sister Pat, attended a dinner party in honor of the president in New York City, where Kennedy asked Monroe for her phone number and she gladly gave it to him, beginning their short-lived affair. Monroe was friends with Robert Kennedy but contrary to rumor the two never shared a sexual relationship. According to a book by ex-FBI Deputy Director William Sullivan, FBI wiretaps ordered by J. Edgar Hoover had failed to find evidence of any sexual indiscretions on Robert's part.
As the spring of 1962 progressed, Monroe's access to the Kennedy brothers had dwindled; the political ramifications of the Kennedys' relationship with Monroe being publicly exposed was only too obvious. Hoover - well-documented as a political blackmailer - had already made it clear to the Kennedys that he would leak damaging personal information about them to the media if he ever felt that his position as FBI Director was being threatened. Political realist Robert heeded Hoover's words, but John continued his affairs with various women, apparently believing that in personal matters like sex, as president he was immune from media exposure.
Marilyn Monroe, depressed and feeling abandoned by the Kennedys, took to drinking and drugging even more heavily than usual. A highly reliable CIA memo from August 3 1962 - signed by James Angleton - describes the results of recent government wiretaps on Monroe's home phone. Click here for a closer view of the actual memo, in which Monroe in conversations with friends like newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen discusses a secret military base where "things from outer space" were being kept, as well as government plots to kill Fidel Castro, information garnered from President Kennedy when they had still "dated" each other. Still upset about being neglected by the Kennedy brothers, she talked about her secret diary and speculated on the effect it would have should it be published in the newspapers. She also considered the possibility of calling a press conference and "telling all". Monroe died of an alleged accidental drug overdose the next day, August 4 1962. According to the autopsy report, the contents of her stomach contained the equivalent of approximately 80-100 doses of the barbiturates Nembutol and chloral hydrate.
Part 3: The Assassination
The James J. Angleton Files:
Many of the CIA documents cited above were allegedly stolen from the personal files of James Angleton upon his death in 1987, the same year (coincidentally?) that the bulk of so-called MJ-12 documents began to began to mysteriously show-up in documentary film makers' and UFO researchers' mailboxes. In 1999 a researcher named Timothy S. Cooper began to receive MJ-12 documents from a secretive source who went by the name of Thomas Cantwheel, a self-described former CIA Counter Intelligence officer who worked with Angleton. In a letter to Cooper, Cantwheel claimed that he had been instructed by Angleton that upon his death, Cantwheel was to destroy any documents in Angleton's personal files that could tie the MJ-12 group to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. According to Cantwheel, these particular documents had been previously pulled from the CIA files by Angleton at the request of Allen Dulles, in order to protect the agency from embarrassment in the event they were ever leaked to the White House or news media. Cantwheel claimed that he had literally pulled documents from the fire as they were being burned. These fire-scorched documents - original watermarked carbon copies and stamped "CI" for Counter Intelligence - can be viewed here (pgs.1-2) and here (pgs.3-9). A few last comments about Angleton: As Director of Counter Intelligence, Angleton - by definition - had access to every file in every intelligence agency in the U.S. Government, and maintained close contacts within the FBI. In fact, this poet/spy was a sophisticated, urbane version of J. Edgar Hoover whose power may have equaled Hoover's own. There is a distinct possibility that Angleton ran a secret false-defector program - run outside of normal CIA channels in case the agency had been penetrated by Soviet agents - a program which likely included alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and was allowed to return to the U.S. in 1962 with no interference from the U.S. State Department.
The Space Program and the Sharing of UFO Data with the USSR:
November 12 1963 - 10 days before the Kennedy assassination: Memo from JFK to CIA Director John McCone: "...I have initiated [censored] and have instructed James Webb [Head of NASA] to develop a program with the Soviet Union in joint space and lunar exploration...helpful if you would have the high threat cases [UFOs] reviewed with the purpose of identification of bona fide as opposed to classified CIA and USAF sources..." This rather mysterious memo, with huge black-out areas, goes on to say, "When this data has been sorted out,...arrange a program of data sharing with NASA where Unknowns [actual alien spacecraft] are a factor. This will help Mission Directors in their defensive responsibilities." What Kennedy meant by NASA's "defensive responsibilities" is unclear. A handwritten notation dated 11/20/63 states: "Angleton has MJ directive". There is no proof that sharing highly classified information with the Soviet Union led to Kennedy's death, but one can easily imagine the anger and disbelief that Kennedy stirred-up in the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Angleton, with an automatic distrust of anything Russian and responsible for guarding America's secrets, could not have like the idea in the slightest. That same day - November 12 - Kennedy allegedly had a phone conversation with the Soviet Premiere Khrushchev on the Hot Line, a call in which they discussed the dangers of confusing UFOs with missiles and inadvertently triggering a nuclear war. In a 2004 TV interview, Khrushchev's son Sergei said that such a conversation between his father and Kennedy did indeed take place in the autumn of 1963. Quoting from the alleged transcript - Kennedy: "Mr. Premiere, I have begun an initiative with our NASA to exchange information with your Academy of Sciences in which I hope with foster mutual concern over this problem [UFOs] and hopefully find some resolution. I have also instructed our CIA to provide me with full disclosure on the phantom aspect and classified programs [i.e. MJ-12]..." Here we can see Kennedy still pressuring the CIA to give him full access to all UFO data.
The theory that UFO secrets were responsible for JFK's death can be lumped into the general conspiracy category of "The CIA and Military-Industrial Complex Did it". It was just one more thing that tipped the scales in Kennedy's disfavor. There was a sizeable minority of average Americans who were virulently anti-Communist, who hated losing Cuba and hated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The same attitude pervaded the CIA and Pentagon. But the "rogue elements" of the U.S. government did not need to take an active role in the murder of JFK. Like former Army Intelligence officer L. Fletcher Prouty once said, you don't have to order an assassination of a president, you just take away the security and let it happen.
Postscript
Of all the people mentioned in this article, Allen Dulles almost literally has the last word on the JFK assassination. He was appointed as one of the seven Commissioners on the Warren Commission, where he loyally looked after the CIA's interests and denied conspiracy to the bitter end. According to the 1989 book High Treason, the CIA records that pertained to Lee Harvey Oswald, which were requested by the Commission Staff, were withheld from the Commission until the Warren Report had already gone to press. In 1971, the shadowy General Cabell - then retired - went for a routine medical examination and died in the doctor's office.
Copyright 2011 by K.D. Bishop
Sources: "The Planets" TV series episode, interview with Sergei Khrushchev (2004), dailymail.co.uk, New York Times, "My 30 Years in Hoover's FBI": William Sullivan (1979), majesticdocuments.com, blackmesapress.com, "UFOs and the Death of Marilyn Monroe": Donald R. Burleson (2011), educationforum.ipbhost.com (Sullivan), "High Treason": Harrison Livingston (1989), bibliotecapleyades.net, prouty.org, gwu.edu (Bay of Pigs chronology), wikipedia (Dulles, Cabell, Angleton, McCone, Kilgallen, death of Monroe ), examiner.com, crimemagazine.com, scribd.com
