Second Plot

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Second Plot

Author says, What if the second plot against JFK succeeded and a guilty-looking Oswald landed in Havana? Matthew Smith and Jim Marrs suggest a failed second plot against JFK to understand the confusing events in Dallas. In this conspiracy theory, Lee Harvey Oswald is a CIA Agent. Framed by rogue operators in the Agency, Oswald was to fly to Cuba with the visa he had collected in Mexico City. Smith and Marrs conclude that the consequence would have been World War Three, and we should be grateful the second plot failed..

In 1963 at a dramatic Press Conference in Havana on this day a Cuban journalist asked Lee Harvey Oswald the million-dollar question Did you shoot the President? Watch the Youtube Clip

I have not been accused of that. responded Oswald. The reporters answered that he had been. In fact, I didn't even know about it until a reporter in the hall asked me that question. I didn't shoot anyone, they're accusing me in because of the fact I lived in the Soviet Union. I'm just a patsy!

In the United States, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was personally leading the investigation¹. And by now a seemingly water-tight chain of evidence had been collected to prove the existence of a Cuban plot :

Positive identification by the key witness. Howard Leslie Brennan had watched the presidential motorcade from a concrete retaining wall at the southwest corner of Elm and Houston streets in Dealey Plaza, having a clear view of the south side of the Texas School Book Depository Building
A letter from Oswald dated May 26, 1963 addressed to the New York City headquarters of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), a pro-Castro organization, proposing ...renting a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans.
An approved visa application from the Cuban embassy in Mexico City dated October 18, 1963 accompanied by a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. From Oswald which said, Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our business.
A receipt for a surplus Italian military rifle from Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago with a coupon taken from an advert in the February issue of American Rifleman. The rifle was purchased under the name A. Hidell and sent to a Dallas post office box rented by Oswald under his own name.
An FPCC I.D. Card in the name of A. Hidell discovered at Oswald's lodgings in Dallas.
A 1955 photograph from the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol (pictured) showing David Ferrie (second from left) with Lee Harvey Oswald (far right).
Ferrie was the pilot of the Douglas DC-3 that has whisked the assassination team out of Red Bird Airfield on November 22nd. In July 1961, he delivered a speech entitled The Presidential administration and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. attacking the Kennedys for refusing to provide air support to the Bay of Pigs invasion force of Cuban exiles. The tirade was considered so offensive that Ferrie was asked to leave the podium of the New Orleans chapter of the Military Order of World Wars.

Lyndon Baines Johnson had been informed in advance of the assassination at a party thrown by oil-baron Clint Murchison on November 21st. Also present was an impressive guest list including John Tower, oil billionairre H.L. Hunt, Chase Manhattan's John McCloy and former Vice President Richard Nixon when J. Edgar Hoover had arrived with the news. Those damned Kennedys will not be poking fun at me after today Johnson told his mistress Madeleine Brown.

Johnson needed the immunity offered by the Office of the President to escape from the Bobby Baker scandal. In fact LBJ had suspected that Kennedy had insisted on a dangerous tour of the south-west to garner votes, because he was planning to throw him off the 1964 presidential campaign ticket. Such was his need for haste that LBJ was sworn in on Air Force One before the departure from Dallas, insisting that Jackie Kennedy join them in her blood-splattered clothes.

Whilst Johnson was more than happy to be a beneficiary of the conspiracy, he soon suspected a deeper game, a second plot in fact. Not unaccustomed to dirty tricks himself, the pieces were falling in to place far too conveniently. On November 25th LBJ asked his friend J. Edgar Hoover how their consciences would be if forty million Americans died as a result of the assassination of JFK². Because the majority of Americans were now demanding an invasion of Cuba. Both Johnson and Hoover suspected that this third Cuban crisis was manufactured by rogue agents in the CIA as a false pretext to finally overthrow Fidel Castro and recover their prestige from the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Author's Notes

Source - JFK: Say Goodbye to America by Matthew Smith (2001)

In this scenario we imagine that the Second Plot, a conspiracy theory developed by Matthew Smith and Jim Marrs succeeds. The authors suggest that almost all of the above evidence was manufactured, with decoys and imposters used to prevent Oswald himself from suspecting the plot. They also suggest that Jim Garrison was correct to identify Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Guy Bannister as partcipants but misjudged their involvement in the direction of the plot.

Notes:

1) This was Lyndon Johnson's original plan, until unofficial investigations threatened to reveal the truth forcing Johnson (to Hoover's anger) launch a Presidential investigation.
2) This was in fact a manipulation spoken to Earl Warren to convince him to head the Commission.

Steve Payne

Editor of Today in Alternate History, a Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today.

Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility. Possibilities such as America becoming a Marxist superpower, aliens influencing human history in the 18th century and Teddy Roosevelt winning his 3rd term as president abound in this interesting fictional blog.

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