John F Kennedy, 35th president of United States of America who was assassinated in 1963 //photo courtesy
The declassification of JFK files on March 18, 2025,as directed by U.S. President Trump exposed the involvement of CIA in the assassination and revealed the operation bases worldwide, including one in Nairobi.
According to the latest release which stems from President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which permitted release of every details in the file unless there is concrete national security concerns not to release them, the 62,000-page document covered vast ground, CIA’s underground operations and also changed the longtime narrative of Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.
John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, widely known for being a significant figure in the American narratives, having advocated for civil rights and putting a stop to the Cuban Missile crisis. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963 after serving as president from January 20, 1961.
After JFK’s assassination, several conspiracy theories emerged regarding his death. Some people believed that the Soviet Union which he had forced to take their rockets out of Cuba conspired to kill him, while some believed Fidel Castro was behind the assassination, others believed he was killed by the Mafia who were retaliating for his brother’s crackdown on them while serving as the Attorney General, the CIA’s involvement was also suspected, but the long-standing narrative was Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone to kill JFK driven by personal motives like his Marxist beliefs or his insatiable desire for infamy.
The latest release does not directly point to the CIA as the murderers, but its name has been mentioned several times in the file, and a series of inconspicuous activities they took part in, right before the assassination, which reinforces the public suspicions of it being guilty.
The CIA had several motives for wanting JFK dead, especially after failure of the Cuba mission where they trained over 1500 exiles who supposedly were to invade Cuba and overthrow Fidel Castro. Surprisingly, Fidel’s army was on the lookout during the invasion, capturing over 1000 Cubans and holding them captive, while 144 died during the operation, something that made the CIA feel betrayed because JFK promised air support during the fight, only to cancel it at the last minute saying that it was a compromising situation for Americans since it would look like they were behind the invasion.
Additionally, CIA as status a “state within a state” raised suspicions. It had its foreign service, military, air force, autonomy under Kennedy’s regime and shockingly, a budget larger than that of the state. It was like a secret government within the U.S government which carried out several activities in secret and also withheld information. Above all, its Surveillance and Intelligence gathering especially on Lee Oswald, a major suspect in JFK assassination, raised suspicions further, and people speculated that if the CIA did not carry out the execution themselves, then they did it indirectly using someone else.
The file released some of the activities carried out by CIA, and its worldwide bases. The files confirm CIA bases in Harare, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Rabat, Lagos and Nairobi. The reports extracted from the files show that CIA offered to provide counterterrorism aid after the 1998 U.S Embassy bombing in Nairobi. By 2004, they set a covert program in Kenya and struck a deal to work with a Kenyan paramilitary unit popularly known as Rendition Operations Team (RRT).
They steered most of the activities that took place in this operation. They trained 60 strong candidates and bankrolled all their activities including grabbing up criminals from Nairobi and handing them over to Uganda for execution.
These sources also reveal that they chose Nairobi because it’s a stable business hub compared to the neighboring hubs like Somalia, and also, the U.S Embassy in Nairobi is not just a diplomatic base but also a major intelligence hub that keeps an eye on national threat like the Al-shaabab.
Some media houses like ‘The star Kenya’ has also validated these speculations noting that there are bases and safe houses that belongs to CIA in Nairobi, although no one has gotten the exact location of these bases.
This could only mean that the CIA base in Nairobi is not just a war relic, but a key player in the U.S regional security system.
Other than this new revelation raising questions among Kenyans who just discovered that U.S-CIA has been carrying out covert operations in their country right under their nose all these years, the release of the files has also left Americans questioning their justice system and wondering that if a president could be killed and the killers get away with the murder for up to 60 years, what does that mean for them as a country?
“Who is to be trusted?” They twitted
JFK files tying down CIA to the murder, Lee Oswald, the alleged killer being assassinated , Gary underhill (An intelligence agent during world war II) leaving Washington in a hurry after the assassination and confiding in a friend that a small clique within CIA was behind the assassination, only to be found dead a few days later shows a pattern, a pattern that proves that all these people were just a patsy, the real killer is still out there!
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