The Real Reason the US Government Covered Up the JFK Assassination
- J Marzo
- 11 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Joe Marzo
Part I: The Legend of Lee Harvey Oswald
When the name Lee Harvey Oswald first flashed across American television screens on November 22, 1963, it carried with it the aura of mystery and menace. Who was this pale, hollow-eyed young man accused of killing the President of the United States? Reporters rushed to describe him as a “Marxist,” a “defector,” and a loner filled with hatred. But behind the easy labels lay a story that defied simple explanation—a story that would ultimately play a central role in why the assassination was covered up.
A Life Out of Step
Oswald’s trajectory had always been unusual. Born in 1939 to a working-class family in New Orleans, he grew up restless, bouncing between cities and schools. By 17, he enlisted in the Marines, where he trained on the very rifle the government would later say he used in Dallas. But even in uniform, Oswald was an oddity. He studied Russian, bragged of his communist sympathies, and earned the nickname “Oswaldovich” from fellow Marines.
In 1959, at the height of the Cold War, Oswald did the unthinkable: he defected to the Soviet Union. Declaring he no longer wanted to be an American, he sought citizenship in the very nation Washington considered its mortal enemy. Yet after nearly three years in the USSR—married to a Russian woman named Marina—he returned to the United States with little consequence. No arrest, no prosecution, no years in prison. For a supposed traitor, Oswald was welcomed back with astonishing ease.
The New Orleans Connection
Back in his hometown in 1963, Oswald began crafting a new identity—that of a fiery defender of Fidel Castro. On the streets of New Orleans, he passed out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a pro-Castro organization. Television cameras captured him arguing with anti-Castro Cubans, eager for the world to see him as a lone socialist crusader.
But here the story turns peculiar. The leaflets bore the address 544 Camp Street. That building, it turned out, was tied to Guy Banister—a former FBI agent who ran a private detective agency in the same space. Banister was a militant anti-Castro organizer, part of a network working closely with right-wing Cuban exiles determined to topple Castro’s regime.
So why would Oswald, the supposed Marxist, be handing out pro-Castro propaganda connected to the same building used by men sworn to destroy Castro? Was it coincidence—or something more deliberate?
A Ready-Made Legend
This was the beginning of what intelligence professionals call a legend: a manufactured identity built for operational use. Whether Oswald himself knew he was constructing such a legend, or whether he was being manipulated into it, the outcome was the same. By the summer of 1963, Oswald was firmly branded as a man who loved Castro and despised America.
In just a few months, this legend would deepen. In Mexico City, Oswald—or someone posing as him—would visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies, loudly proclaiming his communist loyalty. And when Kennedy was killed in Dallas, the trail of Oswald’s actions would be ready for the world to follow, pointing unmistakably toward Cuba.
Setting the Stage
Seen in isolation, Oswald’s New Orleans activities could be dismissed as the antics of a confused young radical. But in the broader picture, they were something more: the laying of a foundation. By the time Kennedy’s motorcade rolled through Dealey Plaza, Oswald’s “pro-Cuba” mask had been firmly cemented.
It was this mask—not just the rifle in the Texas School Book Depository—that would shape the cover-up to come. Because if Americans were allowed to believe the mask was real, then Kennedy’s assassination would no longer be the act of one troubled man. It would be an act of war.
Part II: Mexico City and the Manufactured Trail
In late September 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald slipped quietly across the border into Mexico. He was restless, desperate, and—if we believe the official record—determined to secure travel papers that would allow him to defect again, this time through Cuba and into the Soviet Union. But the six days he spent in Mexico City are among the murkiest and most controversial of his entire life. They also provide the clearest window into why the Kennedy assassination had to be covered up.
A Trail to Havana
On September 27, Oswald arrived at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City. He demanded a visa, arguing heatedly with officials who insisted he lacked the proper paperwork. He proclaimed his loyalty to the revolution, his desire to fight for Castro’s cause. He returned again and again, making a scene, even breaking down in frustration when denied.
He also visited the Soviet embassy, seeking a similar passage through Havana on his way to Moscow. Here too, he was denied. But the impression he left was unmistakable: a fiery communist eager to embed himself deeper into America’s enemies.
The CIA’s Watchful Eye
Mexico City was one of the most heavily surveilled posts in the Cold War. The CIA monitored both the Cuban and Soviet embassies with phone taps and hidden cameras. Every call was recorded, every visitor photographed.
Yet the files on Oswald presented an immediate problem. When CIA officers reviewed the material after Kennedy’s assassination, they found that:
The voice on the tapes identified as “Oswald” did not sound like him.
The photographs of the “Oswald” who entered the embassies did not look like him.
Some transcripts were altered or disappeared before reaching investigators.
Either Oswald was impersonated—or the files were manipulated. Either way, the effect was the same: a breadcrumb trail tying him directly to Cuba and the Soviet Union.
A Story That Wrote Itself
When Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas only weeks later, the Mexico City visits became dynamite. The accused assassin wasn’t just a troubled drifter with a rifle. He was a man who had loudly proclaimed his communist allegiance inside enemy embassies. The narrative wrote itself: Fidel Castro had struck back.
Part III: Johnson’s Dilemma
On the night of November 22, as the nation reeled, Lyndon B. Johnson absorbed the weight of the presidency. His phone buzzed with urgent updates. From J. Edgar Hoover, he learned of Oswald’s Mexico City visits. From CIA officers, he heard of Oswald’s leaflets and pro-Castro activities. Piece by piece, the picture forming on Johnson’s desk pointed to Havana.
The Shadow of Nuclear War
The problem was obvious. Barely a year earlier, the world had teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Americans had practiced duck-and-cover drills while B-52 bombers circled the skies on nuclear alert. Kennedy himself had narrowly avoided disaster through back-channel negotiations with Khrushchev.
Now, if the public believed that Cuba had orchestrated Kennedy’s assassination, the pressure for retaliation would be overwhelming. Congress, the military, and the American people would demand an invasion. And if U.S. forces stormed Cuba, the Soviet Union would almost certainly respond.
It wasn’t just paranoia—it was a roadmap to World War III.
Johnson’s Appeal to Warren
Johnson knew he needed control. Within days, he began pressing for a high-level commission to settle the narrative. When Chief Justice Earl Warren hesitated to lead it, Johnson cornered him with brutal logic. “You’ve got to head this commission, Mr. Chief Justice,” Johnson said. “Otherwise we could be facing 40 million dead Americans in an atomic exchange.”
The choice was stark. Either the commission concluded that Oswald acted alone, or the United States risked plunging into a nuclear inferno.
A Preordained Conclusion
And so the Warren Commission was born—not as a neutral search for truth, but as an instrument of containment. Evidence tying Oswald to Cuba and the Soviets was quietly sidelined. Witnesses raising uncomfortable contradictions were dismissed. The Mexico City anomalies were buried.
By September 1964, the official report declared with certainty: Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone.
The lone-gunman theory was not simply an investigative finding. It was a political necessity.
Epilogue: A Necessary Fiction?
The Kennedy assassination remains one of the most contested mysteries in modern history. Generations of researchers have pored over the evidence, pointing to mafia figures, rogue CIA agents, Cuban exiles, and shadowy intelligence operations. Yet beneath the debates, one truth remains constant: the government’s first priority in 1963 was not transparency—it was survival.
The real reason for the cover-up was not to protect Lee Harvey Oswald, nor even to shield American intelligence agencies from embarrassment. It was to prevent the American people from believing their president had been killed by a foreign enemy allied with Moscow.
Because if they had, the demand for war would have been irresistible. And war, in 1963, meant nuclear war.
The lone-gunman story became more than a conclusion. It became national security policy—a necessary fiction crafted to preserve peace, however fragile.
Six decades later, Americans still question what really happened in Dallas. But one answer is clear: the cover-up was born not out of loyalty to Oswald, but out of fear that the truth—whatever it was—might destroy the world.
Sources:
On Oswald’s Background & New Orleans Activities (Part I)
Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 10–11, Testimony on Oswald’s New Orleans activities.
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), Final Report, 1979 – sections on Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities.
Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice (2005).
Anthony Summers, Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the JFK Assassination (updated edition, 2013).
On Mexico City & the CIA Files (Part II)
Jefferson Morley, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA (2008).
John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (1995).
National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection: CIA Mexico City cables (declassified in the 1990s and 2017).
Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (1993) — HSCA investigator’s firsthand account of pursuing the Mexico City leads.
Anne Goodpasture Testimony, HSCA Appendix Vol. XII – CIA officer in Mexico City, on surveillance operations.
On Johnson’s Role & the Warren Commission (Part III)
Recorded LBJ phone calls, November 22–29, 1963, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
Howard P. Willens, History Will Prove Us Right: Inside the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (2013).
Michael L. Kurtz, The JFK Assassination Debates (2006).
Earl Warren, The Memoirs of Earl Warren (1977), reflections on being persuaded by Johnson.
On the Cover-Up & National Security Justification (Epilogue)
HSCA Final Report, 1979 – acknowledgment of a “probable conspiracy” despite reaffirming Oswald as the shooter.
Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (2013).
Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993).
Jefferson Morley & Rex Bradford, National Security Archive (Mary Ferrell Foundation), articles on CIA files and the Mexico City cover-up.
