The JFK Files: Revealing the CIA's Assassination Playbook
- The Ranter
- Mar 21
- 30 min read
The CIA's fingerprints are all over the historic murder of President JFK, but you can be assured it wasn't their last hit on American soil...
On March 18, 2025, the National Archives unleashed a seismic wave of historical content with the release of approximately 80,000 pages of previously classified documents tied to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy (JFK), Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), and Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK), fulfilling the executive order President Donald Trump signed on January 23, 2025.
Early dives into the data suggest no definitive smoking gun will be uncovered from these CIA-heavy files, especially not one rewriting the lone-gunman narrative. The documents primarily flesh out Lee Harvey Oswald’s trip to Mexico City while under surveillance and the CIA's awareness of his activities (including a tip from the Soviet Union warning the US about Oswald), but the big reveal - a memo screaming “we did it” - was always a pipe dream.
If conspirators within the U.S. government orchestrated the murder of a sitting president - an act of treason so heinous it would assuredly mean the electric chair for all involved - they’d have been surgical about covering their tracks. A clear paper trail would be suicide; verbal orders, deniable cutouts, or outright destruction of evidence would be a given.
That's not simple conjecture however - the proof of this erasure is chillingly concrete.
Take the missing transcript of Lyndon B. Johnson’s first call after being sworn in as president, made to CIA Director John McCone on November 23, 1963, mere hours after JFK’s death.
Senator Richard Schweiker, vice chair of the 1975 Church Committee which probed intelligence abuses, flagged its absence during hearings, calling it a “known document” the CIA withheld despite claiming a “complete” handover (Senate Report 94-755, Vol. V).
Schweiker accused the agency of stonewalling - “they gave us the runaround,” he testified -suggesting it might have captured LBJ grilling McCone about the events in Dallas or, darker still, locking in a cover story. Historians like David Barrett speculate it’s buried or burned (CBS News, March 18, 2025), a gaping void that screams intent.
Another glaring gap: George Joannides’s files, detailing CIA oversight of the anti-Castro "Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil" group that's been tied to Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans.
Joannides, an Operation Mongoose operative (the CIA op aimed at overthrowing Castro, which backfired catastrophically and led to JFK's distrust of the CIA), briefed the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978 - yet never disclosed his role in the op.
The 1992 Assassination Records Review Board found Joannides's files “lost” or incomplete - hundreds of pages "vanished", per Jefferson Morley’s decade-long FOIA battle (The Guardian, December 16, 2022).
Then there’s Project MKUltra, the CIA’s dystopian plunge into mind control from 1953 to 1973 (assuming it was actually shuttered and not merely moved to a new project) - dosing people on LSD and other hard drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and torture on unwitting Americans and even Canadians, with the main goal being to create, effectively, Manchurian candidates.
In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered MKUltra's records - estimated at 20,000 documents - incinerated, leaving only scraps uncovered by a 1977 Senate probe (Senate Select Committee on Intelligence).
Helms admitted the destruction under oath, citing “national security”; critics like John Marks (The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, 1979) see a cover for crimes too heinous to expose - what we do know from what has survived is that the project featured subjects driven to madness (including the creation of the Unabomber), an untold number of innocent victims were harmed (and even killed) in experiments they had no awareness of, and various universities and even hospitals were involved in the disgusting experiments; one can only guess what other horrors exist that we haven't uncovered yet.
These aren’t mere clerical flubs; they’re systematic purges, erasing the dots that can definitively connect the crimes to those in the government actually calling the shots.
Yet, the 2025 files - riddled with absences as they may be - still offer a haunting glimpse of the CIA’s fingerprints on JFK’s death.
Unredacted cables detail Oswald’s September 28 to October 3, 1963, Mexico City escapade: intercepted calls to the Soviet Embassy (one asking about a visa, hinting at escape plans), surveillance photos of him at the Cuban Embassy, a memo from October 10 labeling him “of interest” (CBS News, March 18, 2025). A CIA report cites a “reliable and sensitive source” noted his instability - an ex-Marine turned Soviet defector and pro-Castro agitator meeting with various communist groups - yet no actions were taken.
As you piece more of the story together, you'll find the shaky and incomplete picture surrounding JFK's murder isn't a fluke - it’s part of a playbook, honed and replayed across decades.
When prominent figures threaten the entrenched U.S. intelligence apparatus - the deep state as it were - they face a chilling script: a series of government "lapses" pave the way, an unstable patsy is "nudged" into action, a possible second shooter ensures the kill, and a scrubbed narrative buries the truth and obscures it in a convenient yet frustratingly incomplete narrative.
From JFK’s fateful motorcade in Dallas to Donald Trump’s 2024 brushes with death, this machine targets those who dare defy its power, leaving fragments that deeply hint at - but never fully prove - the conspiracy that lies beneath.
The JFK Assassination: A Blueprint of Doubt and Deception
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, the youngest elected U.S. president at 43 and a symbol of post-war hope, was assassinated in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza - an unbelievable moment that shattered a nation.
At 12:30 p.m. CST, his open Lincoln Continental convertible limousine rolled past cheering crowds on Elm Street, with JFK, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally’s wife, Nellie on board.
Suddenly shots rang out - sharp cracks pierced the festive cheer and forever changed the nation.
JFK was struck twice: one bullet tore through his upper back, exited his throat, and plowed into Connally’s chest, shattering his fifth rib, exiting his right side, smashing his wrist, and lodging in his left thigh; a second blasted his skull, spraying blood and brain matter across Jackie and the car’s leather seats - her pink Chanel suit stained red as she cradled his head.
Connally slumped, wounded but alive; JFK was rushed to Parkland Hospital, pronounced dead officially at 1:00 p.m.
The shooter was taken into custody and revealed to be Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine and Soviet defector.
On November 24, as Oswald was shuffled from Dallas police headquarters to county jail, Jack Ruby - a 52-year-old nightclub owner with a lengthy rap sheet and deep ties to Chicago’s mob - stepped out from a crowd of reporters and cops, drew a .38 Colt Cobra, and shot Oswald point-blank in the stomach on live television, killing him before a stunned nation and silencing the supposed lone gunman before trial.
The Warren Commission, established by LBJ on November 29, pinned the shooting entirely on Oswald, claiming no one else was involved.
From a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, overlooking the motorcade’s turn, Oswald allegedly fired three shots with a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle - two hits, one miss - in 8.6 seconds, acting alone.
This official narrative buckles under even the faintest scrutiny.
The “magic bullet” theory - Warren Commission Exhibit 399, a near-pristine slug found on Connally’s stretcher at Parkland - claims one bullet caused seven wounds across two men: entering JFK’s back at a 17-degree downward angle, exiting his throat, piercing Connally’s chest, shattering his rib, exiting his chest, smashing his right wrist, and lodging in his left thigh.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of firearms would call this theory "dubious" at best, particularly given that a bullet passing through anything - let alone bone - without any serious deformation or damage is, quite frankly, absurd; yet this is what the Warren Commission stated as fact, and it's required to be in order for the official narrative to be correct.
A bullet mangling bone yet emerging barely scratched defies metallurgy - the FBI's own tests showed similar rounds deformed after merely hitting flesh (Warren Report, Appendix X), leaving the state of the bullet supposedly found at the scene incredulous at best.
As for the direction of the fatal shot, physicist Nicholas Nalli’s 2018 Heliyon study argues physics does support a rear shot - momentum and tissue dynamics align - but forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, testifying to the HSCA, called it “absurd” (PBS Frontline, 2013).
The famous Zapruder film, a 26-second, 486-frame home video by clothier Abraham Zapruder, captures JFK’s head snapping back and to the left - with frame 313’s gruesome explosion suggesting a frontal shot rather than from the rear, indicating that it came not from Oswald's perch some 265 feet behind the limousine.
If that bullet indeed came from the front, it suggests a firing postion from the infamous "grassy knoll"; over 20 independent witnesses bolster this theory.
Jean Hill, positioned near the limousine, saw a “man in a hat” on the knoll; S.M. Holland, a railroad worker atop the Triple Underpass, heard a shot and saw smoke there; Ed Hoffman, a deaf onlooker, signaled two men - one with a rifle - fleeing the fence at the grassy knoll.
The 1979 HSCA’s acoustic analysis of a Dallas police Dictabelt found a 95% chance of a fourth shot - four impulses, with two spaced too closely for Oswald to have possibly reloaded his bolt-action rifle in that time - though the National Academy of Sciences later disputed it as mere static (HSCA Report, Vol. VIII).
Oswald’s rifle bore his palm print, three shell casings matched, and he was clocked leaving the building - yet the 8.6-second window strains his “sharpshooter” Marine record (he barely passed this rather low bar in 1956), which has since been downgraded to claims of being a “mediocre” shot by Soviet reports in the 2025 files, which also called Oswald a “nervous wreck” (AP News, March 18, 2025).
The CIA and FBI smothered deeper probes - deliberately or ineptly, the line blurs.
Infamous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent out a memo just two days after JFK's death, commanding that the public must believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Believers of the official narrative claim this was in effort to unite the country, yet it reeks of cover up.
Ruby, a Chicago mob alum turned Dallas club owner, had cop buddies - over 50 Dallas PD officers knew him (Warren Report, Chapter VI) - yet strolled past dozens into a secure basement, gun in pocket, on November 24 to carry out the execution.
He claimed he acted to spare Jackie a trial (Warren Report, 1964), but mob enforcer Bill Bonanno tied him to Giancana (Bound by Honor, 1999), painting a fixer silencing a loose end.
Making matters even more insidious, the notorious Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West, one of the key conspirators involved in the CIA's heinous MKUltra program, was designated as Ruby's psychiatrist.
Despite no signs of it prior to West's private examination of Ruby in his cell, West emerged to report Ruby had suffered an “acute psychotic break”, declaring him psychotic and unstable.
West later helped to convince the court to spare Ruby from being sentenced to death given his mental condition - with some of West's disturbing acts and his part in the CIA's MKUltra program coming out many years later, it becomes hard not to believe the psychologist did something to Ruby in that cell.
As for reasons why the CIA and potentially other powerful government bureaucrats wanted JFK dead, there were many.
JFK had turned on the CIA after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April 1961 - a botched invasion of Cuba led by 1,400 exiles trained and armed by the CIA, which were then crushed by Castro’s forces, leaving JFK humiliated and distrustful after the CIA had misled him into approving the disastrous plan.
He reportedly vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” (per aide Dave Powers, New York Times, April 25, 1966), firing its Director Allen Dulles in the aftermath and slashing agency autonomy with National Security Action Memo 55, shifting covert ops to the Pentagon (JFK Library, 1961).
Dulles would later serve as a Warren Commission member, the very commission tasked by Lyndon B. Johnson with investigating the JFK's murder. Talk about conflict of interest.
JFK's brother Robert, who served as Attorney General, had tripled mob convictions - up to 1,700 by 1963 - under JFK's direction, targeting figures like Giancana, who had coincidentally partnered with the CIA during Operation Mongoose to kill Castro (Church Committee, 1975).
The CIA’s unchecked power at this time - mob alliances, assassination plots (Castro, Lumumba), covert wars in Laos and Vietnam - was astronomical, and even JFK's aide, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., warned the President that the rogue agency was encroaching on his ability to direct foreign policy back in 1961.
Schlesinger's memo points to a group of operatives who believed themselves to be above not only the law, but the president himself, and indeed they were - even ignoring the things the CIA likely did, the agency committed countless acts of war, terrorism, and human rights atrocities both before JFK's presidential service and for decades after.
The latest documents also bring attention to a longtime intelligence operative who worked on "special assignments" for the CIA, Gary Underhill.
Just days after the assassination, Underhill worriedly confided in friends that a small clique inside the CIA was responsible for JFK's death, believing that JFK uncovered a lucrative racket involving gun-running, narcotics, and other contraband, but he was murdered before he could blow the whistle on it.
Underhill linked this operation to the weapons company Interarms, which a newly unredacted memo reveals was owned by the CIA.
Samuel George Cummings (reportedly a former friend of Underhill), was hired by the CIA as a chief agent before taking over the arms company in 1954, later taking sole ownership of it by 1958.
According to the memo, Cummings sold weapons to the CIA amongst other buyers, and coincidentally sold arms to Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, which was where Oswald's mail-order Carcano rifle was allegedly purchased from, adding another interesting coincidence to the mix.
Mere months after revealing this information to close friends, he was found dead of an apparent suicide under rather suspicious circumstances, something that's become a bit of a running joke in regards to anyone who has information against the CIA (or the Clintons).
Despite being right-handed, Underhill was found holding a pistol in his left hand, with the fatal gunshot wound coming from behind his left ear. Despite the "suicide" occuring in an apartment building, nobody reportedly heard any gunshot and thus he was only found several days after his death. Speculation points to the possibility the pistol used was equipped with a silencer when Underhill was shot, which was subsequently removed to stage the crime scene.
All of these conspicuous circumstances, while they certainly point to a more sinister picture than the official narrative presents (which is most certainly not entirely accurate), fail to name a definitive culprit - who exactly at the CIA was pulling the strings, and how many people were involved?
Even today, we still have no definitive answer, only threads that point to an institution known for their horrific acts.
What JFK's murder did establish however, was a playbook for "intelligence" agencies to follow.
A patsy, a secondary shooter as insurance, a "lone wolf" narrative that is immediately established and clung to without deviation, a scrubbed or "massaged" trail to obfuscate a clear picture of who else was involved - the CIA had assassinated others in foreign countries before, but the murder of a sitting president on US soil proved that they could take out anyone.
Oswald, a closely-tracked drifter with CIA eyes on him since his 1959 Soviet defection, was the perfect patsy - erratic, expendable, deniable. While certainly nowhere near innocent, he was also the fall-guy, providing cover for a more reliable shooter to make sure the job was done.
Ruby ensured a swift and definitive end to the story, no trial needed, the crazed lone gunman narrative etched in stone.
The massive gaps in government files - like the missing LBJ-McCone call and Joannides’s lost DRE records - ensured nothing survived that showed any definitive involvement of the powers that be.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Assassination: A Federal Hand in the Shadows
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., the 39-year-old civil rights titan and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee.
At 6:01 p.m. CST, as he leaned over the second-floor railing chatting with aides - Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Ralph Abernathy - a single .30-06 bullet from a Remington Gamemaster rifle tore through his right jaw, shattered his vertebrae, and severed his spinal cord.
Blood pooled on the concrete as aides scrambled to save the cultural icon. MLK was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, later pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m.
James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped convict with a rap sheet of armed robbery and car theft, was named the lone gunman.
From a bathroom window in Bessie Brewer’s boarding house across Mulberry Street - 206 feet away - he allegedly fired the shot through a scope, dropped the rifle in a bundle near Jim’s Grill, fled in a white Mustang, and was caught two months later on June 8 at London’s Heathrow Airport with a fake Canadian passport which listed him as “Ramon George Sneyd.”
Ray confessed in March 1969, avoiding trial with a 99-year plea, then recanted three days later, claiming a mysterious “Raoul” hired him as a mule.
The FBI and Justice Department stuck to the script: a lone racist, fueled by hate for MLK’s integration push, performed the deed - case closed.
The official tale frays like cheap thread.
Ray’s shot - a 200-foot scoped hit through a bathroom window overlooking the motel -stretches his skillset to breaking.
An Army washout in 1948 with no sharpshooter training, he was a bumbling crook - stickups, prison breaks - not a sniper. The rifle, found in a bundle with a scope and Ray’s prints near Canipe’s Amusement Co., matches the slug via ballistics (FBI Report, April 1968), but witnesses muddy the scene: Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, on the balcony, saw smoke rising from bushes near the boarding house, not just Ray’s window (HSCA Testimony, 1978); Charles Stephens, a tenant, heard footsteps fleeing down the hall, suggesting a second figure (Memphis PD Interview, April 5, 1968); Louisa Palmer, across the street, saw a man in a suit bolt from the bushes (Commercial Appeal, April 6, 1968).
Loyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill below, claimed in 1993 a Memphis cop or mob hitman fired the kill shot, not James Earl Ray.
The bullet’s angle was also a point of contention - the official story says it came from Ray’s perch at a 5-degree downward slant - drew dissent. The 1978 HSCA saw ballistics experts like Dr. Vincent Guinn questioning if a lower trajectory from the bushes fit better, though the majority stuck to Ray's position (HSCA Vol. IV).
Ray’s escape - $2,000 in cash (a lot of money back then), trips to Atlanta (on April 5), Canada (April 6), and London by May - suggests he had outside help; the FBI claims Ray's cash was the result of bank robberies he was involved in back in 1967, but no receipts or witnesses for any such claims have ever been provided (FBI Summary, June 1968).
Federal ties to the assassination loom like a storm cloud.
J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI ran Operation COINTELPRO against MLK from 1963 - wiretaps on his SCLC office, bugs in hotels like the Willard in D.C. - resulting in over 14,000 hours of tapes by 1968 (The Atlantic, November 2019).
In November 1964, Hoover sent an anonymous “suicide letter” with recordings of his affairs - compiled by aide William Sullivan - calling MLK a “filthy fraud” and urging him to “take it out of this country” or kill himself; MLK’s wife Coretta opened the blackmail letter (Senate Church Committee, 1975).
An FBI memo from March 29, 1968 - just days before the murder - labeled him a “Black Messiah” whose influence - civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, Poor People’s Campaign -threatened “national stability” (FBI File 100-106670).
The CIA tracked him too, fearing his stance on war fueled communism - then CIA Director Helms briefed Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 on MLK’s “subversive” ties, per Church Committee testimony (Senate Report 94-755).
By April 1968, MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign, a multiracial march on Washington demanding economic justice, and his fiery anti-Vietnam speeches - like the April 4, 1967, Riverside Church address calling the U.S. “the greatest purveyor of violence,” - rattled the establishment (NYT, April 5, 1967).
Regime stability trumped civil rights; silence was the goal. The 1978 HSCA found a “likely conspiracy” based on Ray’s funding and witness anomalies, but of course cleared the agencies of any involvement - yet Coretta Scott King’s 1999 lawsuit revealed the FBI destroyed tons of files pertaining to the case, echoing the CIA’s MKUltra purge (LAT, December 9, 1999).
An internal memo from 1976, uncovered in FOIA litigation, showed 15 boxes of MLK surveillance tapes were “disposed of” post-Hoover (Washington Post, June 20, 2017).
Ray fits the patsy mold just like Oswald did - erratic, expendable, deniable.
His “Raoul” tale - a shadowy handler giving cash and orders in a Memphis bar - mirrors Oswald’s New Orleans cutouts; Ray claimed he bought the rifle and scoped the motel on Raoul’s dime, then handed off the bundle pre-shot (HSCA Interview, 1977).
No Raoul ever surfaced - the FBI dismissed him as fiction - but Ray’s $2,000, fake IDs (Eric Starvo Galt, John Willard), and jet-set escape defy a lone crook’s means, and if he was helped by a CIA or FBI asset, the FBI surely isn't going to reveal that itself.
The feds’ heavy hand - years of harassment, missing evidence - suggests complicity, not just failure.
Hoover, who was certainly no stranger to dastardly deeds, hated MLK - he called him “a tomcat with degenerate sexual urges” in 1964 (Time, November 18, 2014) - and the FBI’s 1968 “neutralize” directive in regards to MLK Jr.'s movement, declassified in 2019, hints at more than mere surveillance.
RFK’s Assassination: The Second Shooter’s Shadow
On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, at 42 a Democratic dynamo and heir to his brother’s legacy, was assassinated in the Ambassador Hotel pantry in Los Angeles - a brutal encore to the tragic Kennedy saga.
Around 12:15 a.m., fresh off a victory speech in the California primary, RFK exited the ballroom through the cramped service area - 20 feet long, 10 feet wide, packed with 77 people, a maze of steam tables and ice machines.
Shots erupted - sharp pops cutting short the celebration just as they did Bobby Kennedy.
Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant, fired an Iver Johnson .22 revolver, emptying its eight rounds as RFK moved past. RFK was hit three times: once under the right armpit (through-and-through), once in the back (lodged near the spine), and a fatal shot behind the right ear at point-blank range, with powder burns - entering an inch from his skull with an upward trajectory.
Five others - union organizer Paul Schrade, ABC’s William Weisel, volunteer Ira Goldstein, student Irwin Stroll, and bystander Elizabeth Evans - were wounded, struck by wild shots.
Sirhan was tackled by aides - NFL star Rosey Grier, Olympian Rafer Johnson, and writer George Plimpton - gun in hand, pinned to a table as he shouted about Palestine. His seized diary ranted “RFK must die” over his support of Israel (LAPD SUS Report, 1968).
RFK lingered for 26 hours at Good Samaritan Hospital, eventually dying at 1:44 a.m. on June 6. The LAPD and FBI, via the Special Unit Senator (SUS), branded Sirhan a lone gunman, his motive being RFK’s pro-Israel Senate votes - case inevitably closed by the 1975 Schafer Report.
The evidence however tells a darker tale.
Coroner Thomas Noguchi’s autopsy (June 6, 1968) is damning: the fatal shot was fired 1-3 inches from RFK’s head, behind the right ear, on an upward trajectory with powder burns -stippling on his skin and hair proved it was at an extremely close range (Autopsy Report, LA County).
Sirhan, pinned 3-6 feet in front by 12 separate witnesses - including maitre d’ Karl Uecker who grabbed his arm after two shots, per his 1968 LAPD statement - couldn’t have landed the kill shot from his position.
Enter Thane Eugene Cesar, a last-minute hire by Ace Guard Service, escorting RFK through the pantry. Witnesses place him precisely: Uecker saw Cesar “right behind Kennedy, holding his elbow”; Frank Burns, a campaign aide, put him “at Kennedy’s shoulder” as shots rang out (SUS Interviews, June 1968).
Cesar carried not one but two guns that night: a .38 revolver (guard issue) and a personal .22 Iver Johnson Cadet - the same caliber as Sirhan’s.
He told LAPD on June 5 he drew the .38 when Sirhan opened fire, but denied shooting; the .22 stayed holstered, he claimed (LAPD Transcript, 1968).
Witnesses complicate this: Don Schulman, a KNXT reporter 5-10 feet away, saw a guard “pull a gun and shoot three times” (Ted Frost Show, June 6, 1968); Nina Rhodes-Hughes, 5-7 feet back, counted 12-14 shots and saw a “short, dark-haired” rear shooter (CNN, 2012); Evan Freed, a LA Free Press photographer, spotted a “dark suit” firing near Sirhan; Lisa Urso, a 17-year-old student, saw a “tall man in a dark jacket” shoot (SUS Files, June 6, 1968).
Philip Van Praag’s 2005 analysis of Stanislaw Pruszynski’s live audio tape - captured on a mono cassette - finds 13 shots - five beyond Sirhan’s maximum of eight - with “double shots” (0.07 seconds apart) recorded which would require a second gun, possibly lower-pitched, from behind (Forensic Re-Inquiry, 2007).
Coroner Noguchi’s count - 13 bullet impacts (three in RFK, five in victims, five in the ceiling/doorframe) - backs this; Sirhan’s lone eight-round salvo couldn’t have done it all.
On September 25, 1968, three months post-shooting, he sold the .22 to Lockheed co-worker Jim Yoder for $15 - receipt dated - hinting it was “used in a crime” and “might be hot” (1994 Moldea interview, The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy).
His 1968 LAPD story - claiming he owned it since 1966 - shifted in 1971: he’d sold it “six months before” to an unnamed buyer, clashing with Yoder’s receipt (LAPD Jordan Interview, 1971). By 1988, the gun vanished - “stolen” from a truck in Arkansas, per Yoder’s brother-in-law Larry Bidwell, with no police report made (LA Magazine, 2018).
The weapon was never tested - ballistics could’ve tied it to RFK’s wounds, but LAPD never even seized it.
That wasn't the only thing glossed over in the LAPD's special SUS investigation.
The doorframes with the extra bullet holes were burned in 1969, per LA County records; ceiling panels, pocked with lead, mysteriously vanished (LAT, 1975).
Pruszynski’s tape, recording 13 shots, was dismissed as “echoes” or “plates crashing” in the 1975 Schafer Report - but Van Praag’s recorded oscilloscope peaks hold firm that this is not the case (CNN, 2008).
In 1975, a Los Angeles judge convened a panel of seven experts in forensics to examine the ballistic evidence of the case. They found that the three bullets that hit Kennedy were all fired from the same gun, but could not find a match between these bullets and Sirhan's revolver. They accused DeWayne Wolfer, the lead crime scene investigator who had testified at trial that a bullet taken from Kennedy's body was from Sirhan's revolver, of running a careless investigation.
The forensic experts urged further investigation.
An internal police document, which was later released, concluded that "Kennedy and Weisel [who was wounded in the shooting] bullets not fired from same gun" and "Kennedy bullet not fired from Sirhan's revolver" - yet the official narrative was locked in place and is maintained to this day: a lone nut is the culprit, evidence that doesn't add up disappeared or was dismissed without convincing explanation, and anyone that doesn't parrot the official narrative is simply a conspiracy theorist.
It's a carbon copy of JFK’s Warren Commission cover up.
But why kill RFK?
As Attorney General (1961-1964), he’d tripled mob convictions, hitting CIA allies like Giancana and Johnny Roselli, who had been used during Operation Mongoose in the CIA's attempt to kill Castro (Church Committee, 1975).
As a senator, he’d vowed to reopen his brother's assassination case - publicly promising in 1967 to “get to the bottom” (NYT, June 4, 1967) of it - and his 1968 presidency loomed as a death knell for the CIA's plethora of secrets: the endless Castro plots, MKUltra (which was completely unknown at the time), the Bay of Pigs fallout.
They already got away with killing a Kennedy once, why not do it again?
Sirhan's appearance of being “mesmerized” or in a trance as described by witness Nina Rhodes-Hughes even hints at a potential link to the MKUltra program - Subproject 94 tested hypnosis for amnesiac killers, per declassified files (CIA MKUltra Hearings, 1977) - though that's a story for another time.
The official narrative is that Sirhan Sirhan acted alone - but the evidence, like in JFK's murder, suggests a second shooter, this time with a clear suspect in plain sight.
The playbook is virtually identical: Sirhan fits the patsy mold; late-notice guard Cesar served as the insurance that the job got done, and doubled as a security lapse; the narrative was quickly finalized and evidence was conveniently lost or ignored to protect the official story.
The Attempts on Trump: A Modern Echo
Following the 60's spat of high-profile assassinations, it took decades for another figure to truly challenge the power of the unelected who pull the strings of the American intelligence apparatus.
Even Ronald Reagan, who in many ways appeared to threaten the establishment, went along with the desires of the establishment when it came to foreign operations and the never-ending war machine.
It wasn't until Donald J. Trump came along that an outsider would again come into power, but this time the establishment faced a man who would not bend to their political pressure.
By then, it wasn't just the CIA and FBI that had gone rogue - virtually every government institution was crippled by rot and incompetence, its massively bloated ranks sending American society into a death spiral of unimaginable debt and moral decay.
His first term was crippled from the get-go by holdouts in the Republican party alongside a unified Democrat front which controlled the house - despite compiling true achievements in foreign policy and the economic market, his desire to drain the swamp was hamstrung by disloyal members of his crew and his own inexperience in dealing with the true nature of Washington, D.C.
Following Joe Biden's election "victory", the establishment was firmly back in charge and continued their ruination of the United States - coincidentally, many of the actions taken by the Biden administration, were actions used and documented regularly by the CIA in efforts to destabilize foreign nations, such as continuously releasing violent criminals back into society, promoting a militant response by civilians to any political pushback, and collapsing a nation's borders.
While the deep state in its modern incarnation certainly held sway over both political parties, the Democratic party had become so intertwined with it, the two became indistinguishable, and its influence poured out not only throughout the predominantly liberal media, but around the world through an unbelievable amount of cash handouts (as exposed more recently by the efforts of DOGE).
Despite the loss of his presidency and the sustained attacks on not only himself but his family and friends, Trump remained undeterred - now fully understanding what he was up against and how they would attempt to stop him, he was more determined than ever to expose the corruption in the US government.
With the amount of influence the modern deep state has at its disposal however, assassination wouldn't normally be necessary anymore - relentless smears in the media, sham impeachments, consistent promotion of hoaxes that end up having less truth than the latest sighting of Bigfoot - they threw everything at Trump for years, and yet he wouldn't go away.
He was back for another presidential bid, and given Biden's historically bad approval rating and the anger the American people felt toward the continued failures of their government, not to mention Biden's clearly declined mental state, even the most biased observers had a hard time pretending Trump wasn't the front runner.
So then came the lawfare, a throwback to 1930's Germany.
After multiple bogus dossiers and hoaxes, the intelligence agencies had failed to get anything to stick - even with illegally obtained wiretaps on Trump and his associates, they could find no evidence of real illegal misconduct, and their manufactured attempts fizzled out.
That wouldn't stop them however, as they stuck him with multiple incredulous lawsuits and even ridiculously laughable "criminal" charges, forcing him to sit in a courtroom when he should have been campaigning.
But he still wouldn't give up.
On July 13, 2024, they decided to go back to the old method of taking out their opposition.
114 days before the presidential election, a momentary head-turn saved Donald Trump from meeting the same fate as the three other victims listed above.
At 6:11 p.m. EDT, as he addressed some 10,000 supporters at the Butler Farm Show grounds - flanked by American flags and a jumbotron flashing “TRUMP 2024” - a bullet grazed his right ear, drawing blood down his cheek.
A last-second head turn to a chart labelled “Illegal Immigration Stats” saved him.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, a town just 40 miles south of Butler, fired from a DPMS Panther Arms, 5.56mm rifle from the AGR building rooftop, 130 yards north of the stage.
Eight rounds whizzed through the air before Secret Service snipers, perched on a barn 200 yards west, returned fire with a .300 Winchester Magnum, killing Crooks at 6:11:42, his head blown open, body slumping on the sloped roof.
Three spectators were hit by Crooks' volley: Corey Comperatore, 50, a husband and father, took a chest shot shielding his family, tragically dying at Butler Memorial; David “Jake” Dutch, 57, was clipped in the shoulder; James Copenhaver, 74, was grazed in the arm (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 15, 2024).
The FBI, leading the probe as of March 19, 2025, brands Crooks a lone wolf, with his motive “still under review,” and no manifesto found (FBI Presser, September 2024).
The narrative’s a sieve that has been quickly forgotten, Trump's famous "Fight, Fight, Fight!" defiance overshadowing the sinister plot that nearly destroyed the country.
Crooks’s profile defies the story of a lone wold: three encrypted overseas phones (FBI’s decryption is supposedly “ongoing”), recovered from his Hyundai Sonata, pinged servers in Belgium and New Zealand - why a 20-year-old nerd needs spy-grade comms baffles and indicates he was not acting alone (Reuters, July 20, 2024).
His house at 2506 Milford Drive was evidently "professionally" scrubbed - no laptop, no journal, just a “cleaned-out” bedroom, per neighbors to WPXI (July 16, 2024); his Discord and Steam accounts (handles “PedroPete,” “FPSFanatic”) had scant posts, one cryptic: “July 13 will be my premiere” (FBI Digital Report, August 2024).
He appeared in a 2022 BlackRock ad filmed at Bethel Park High - 30 seconds as an extra, an ironic appearance given Trump’s many jabs at Wall Street (Bloomberg, July 18, 2024) -and practiced his shooting at Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, 15 miles away, a range used by the DHS and ICE for training (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 17, 2024).
His AR-15, legally bought by his father Matthew in 2013, had a collapsible stock and red-dot sight (ATF Trace, July 2024).
A loner with no social media footprint beyond a wiped X account (@TMCrooks1998, last post 2022), he’s an enigma - too polished for a nut, too obscure for a cause.
Unlike in the 60's when assassinations were all the rage, security is a completely different beast nowadays for presidents and other major figures, and if not getting caught is imperative, it's made incredibly difficult by the abundance of high-definition cameras available to everyone and their mother.
This makes a second shooter, or "insurance", way too risky and simply adds more risk of being exposed, necessitating an update to the traditional playbook. They made up for it by adding heaps of "incompetence" in its stead however, giving their patsy a world of time to get set up and ensure success.
In order for the attempt on Trump's life to even get started, security had to collapse like a house of cards - and collapse it did.
The Secret Service had lapses that day so glaring they beggar belief.
Trump’s team begged for more agents pre-rally, citing a 300% spike in threat chatter post-June 27 debate - yet they were denied by Secret Service brass citing “resource constraints” (House Oversight, July 23, 2024).
The lead detail, normally 20-strong from Trump’s Bedminster rotation, was swapped for a skeleton crew - five agents, three from Pittsburgh’s field office, one a last-minute fill-in from D.C., none with Trump’s usual protection training (Senate Report, August 2024).
The AGR roof - 130 yards from Trump's platform with unobstructed sightline - was flagged as a clear risk in a June 30 site survey; Acting Director Ronald Rowe vetoed extra snipers however, citing “budget cuts” (House Testimony, July 25, 2024).
Crooks roamed the area beforehand with a golf rangefinder - which was spotted by agents yet never followed up on.
Crooks was spotted at 6:01 p.m. by attendees like Sean Parnell, shouting “guy with a gun!” to deaf ears (Fox News, July 14, 2024). A Secret Service countersniper, 200 yards west, saw him at 6:09 but held fire - his line-of-sight supposedly blocked by trees until Crooks shot first (USSS After-Action, September 2024).
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s July 23 testimony would have been comical if it wasn't so painfully crooked - her claims that the “sloped roof” (a mere 8-degree pitch, which many pointed out was less severe than the one the counter sniper team that took Crooks out was positioned on) was too dangerous for her team to set up on was about the flimsiest excuse one could possibly come up with.
Cheatle resigned shortly after, with her close relationship to Biden scrutinized - she was an ex-PepsiCo security chief, with no military experience and an extremely soft resume for such a position, and shortly after landing her Director position implemented a “30x30” diversity push (30% women by 2030) fueled cries of incompetence by some (Fox News, July 24, 2024) while others saw a clear attempt to disassociate from clear intent.
Crooks was given roughly ten minutes with a rifle on the roof of a building in clear sight of now-president Trump, a security "lapse" of unfathomable proportions; not only that, but CNN, a vehemently anti-Trump "news" organization, decided that they would show the Butler rally live that day, an honor they didn't reserve for any of his prior rallies that summer.
With the abundance of "leaks" to cable outlets and regular "tips" to news outlets that enable them to record high-profile perp-walks when the FBI or other agencies deem it fit, it's certainly not out of the question to believe that they were tipped off - not necessarily of an assassination attempt, but of something major happening they'd want the world to see.
Make no mistake, the plan was to have Donald Trump's bloody, brutal death broadcast to the world in crystal-clear 4K definition, sending a message to all who would oppose those with the real power in Washington that nobody is out of their reach.
And if it wasn't for that fateful head turn, they'd have succeeded.
Instead, it galvanized Trump's base, and turned Trump into the most iconic leader in American history, his defiance in the face of death showing his dedication not only to the country, but in continuing to fight for it even if it means his own demise.
While it showed Trump's true will and determination, it also exposed the worst of the Democratic party, which quickly crumbled in the aftermath - from prominent Democrats and media members lamenting that he wasn't killed, to claims Trump staged it to garner sympathy (an unbelievably ridiculous claim if one has even the slightest understanding of firearms), to the promotion of Kamala Harris to be their candidate despite her...well, everything.
The establishment expected Trump to be gone, one way or another, before Americans ever made it to the polls that November. Even with brazen cheating like that seen in the 2020 election and many states allowing people to vote without ID in 2024, the odds of winning were next to nil - and those who had enriched themselves taking billions of taxpayer funds, not to mention destroyed untold numbers of lives thanks to their foreign meddling (Ukraine, arming of Syrian "rebels", Afghanistan) and stateside policies (release of violent criminals, millions of illegals including terrorists and murderers, political prosecutions) knew the gig would be up if Trump returned to the Whitehouse.
September 15, 2024 marked a far more desperate attempt at taking out the former and future president at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Despite it being just two months after the last unforgivable security "blunder", the once-again knee-capped Secret Service allowed Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old Hawaii roofer turned Ukraine zealot, to set up in a bush near the sixth hole of the golf course, lying in wait for hours for Trump to get within range.
Secret Service thankfully spotted him at 1:27 p.m. and exchanged fire, chasing him off. Routh fled in a black Nissan Qashqai, caught 40 miles north on the I-95 at 2:14 p.m. with a Century Arms WASR-10, scope, and GoPro - for filming his “big moment” (FBI Release, September 17, 2024).
Once again, the story the FBI spread was of another “lone nut” shooter - one with, once again, encrypted phones, with two found to be pinging Ukraine contacts. Routh had an interesting rap sheet - a 2023 arrest for a homemade bomb, a 2002 felony for a standoff with police (Hawaii News Now, September 16, 2024).
Unlike the prior attempt, this one was clearly less planned - Trump’s golf outing was a last-minute Sunday whim, indicating a far more opportunistic approach with little time to set up a more sophisticated attempt.
Yet it still begs many questions - how did Routh evade detection, who tipped him off on Trump's whereabouts (or, given Trump played golf regularly at his club when in town, was he simply setting up there on the chance Trump opted to play that day), and who was funding his trips to and promotion of Ukraine?
A Legacy of Unchecked Power and Targeted Silence
From JFK’s 1963 Dallas motorcade to Trump’s 2024 close calls, the CIA - and later the FBI, followed by virtually every government alphabet agency - wielded unchecked power, commiting crimes with no fear of reckoning, forming a shadow empire within the state.
MKUltra (1953-1973) dosed Americans with psychoactive drugs and tried various other methods to test mind control, tortured Canadian patients with electroshock, "broke" young students mentally at Harvard (which helped form the Unabomber), and committed more crimes than one can fathom.
Operation Mongoose (1961-1963) partnered with mobsters like Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli in a plot to kill Fidel Castro after the Bay of Pigs disaster.
Gary Webb’s 1996 San Jose Mercury News “Dark Alliance” series tied the CIA to Nicaraguan drug-running, with the agency caught red-handed funding Contras with money "earned" by selling crack in LA (LAT, August 20, 1996).
Foreign assassinations piled bodies upon bodies and helped destabilize entire nations, the effects of which are still felt around the world - Patrice Lumumba (1961, Congo), Rafael Trujillo (1961, Dominican Republic), Ngo Dinh Diem (1963, Vietnam) - all in the name of regime change or anti-communism, which were declassified in CIA Family Jewels (1977).
Even when parts of this "overreach" was exposed, such as with the 1975 Church and Pike Committees - which included assassinations, coups, domestic spying - accountability simply never existed; nobody spent a single night in jail, nobody was charged with a single thing.
When political figures were deemed as a threat to this beast we now call the deep state, they faced the murder playbook - a simple series of steps honed to silence threats.
JFK soured on the CIA post-Bay of Pigs, firing Dulles after the debacle, vowing reform and cracking down on the very same mobsters the CIA was working with; killed November 22, 1963.
RFK, set to probe his brother’s death and pick up where he left off in combating the mob during JFK's presidency; killed June 5, 1968.
MLK’s anti-war, anti-poverty crusade threatened stability and made enemies of one of the most notorious agency heads in US history; silenced April 4, 1968.
Finally, Trump’s anti-establishment barbs and his devotion to cutting out the corruption which stifled his first presidency, nearly cost him his life twice in 2024.
Each time, an unstable patsy was credited as the sole perpetrator: Oswald, Sirhan, Ray, Crooks, Routh.
A second shooter ensured success in the 60's - JFK's grassy knoll shooter, RFK’s replacement security guard Cesar, MLK’s bush shooter - but became untenable in a modern setting, but was offset by incredible agency "lapses" in the case of Trump's attempted murders.
The narratives were quickly formed and stuck to regardless of what contradictions or holes were uncovered, with documents or evidence known to exist going "missing" to make it clear the only narrative one can follow is the official story.
The latest release of files prove not the plot, but the pattern: dissenters who can truly threaten the intelligence machine are subject not only to smears, harassment, and political pressure, but death.
Trump’s survival breaks the kill streak - a head turn in Butler, a redeeming spotter in Florida - but the intent was evident.
July 13’s aftermath saw Democrats absolutely implode, their evident panic hinting at foreknowledge, whether they themselves planned it or not.
This isn’t coincidence - it’s a system, refined across decades, silencing voices that dare defy its power and turning any who look at the clues left behind into "conspiracy theorists", a term, ironically, made popular following JFK's assassination.
As we continue to look toward the future, never forget the evil that continues to cling to whatever power they have left.
The same people championing the assassination of Trump now call for more protests against Elon Musk as Tesla owners have their vehicles attacked in broad daylight and dealerships are firebombed.
The same people who decry Trump for removing convicted rapists and murderers from the country, call for those they disagree with politically to be arrested.
The same people who claim Trump has broken the law, celebrate political activist judges defying articles of the constitution and dictating who the duly elected president is allowed to hire/fire and even what content must be displayed on government websites.
Trump and his supporters may be winning plenty of battles at the moment, but the war for the future of America is far from over.
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