The Weak In Rock

So, a new film made by a German filmmaker, called Rendezvous With Death, claims that the JFK assassination was orchestrated by the Cuban secret service. Not the first time that’s been suggested.

What’s interesting about this version of the story is that the claims are allegedly supported by former members of the Cuban secret service who were in on the plot and are interviewed in the film. There’s also an interview with Alexander Haig (I’m still bummed that he wasn’t Deep Throat) in which he quotes Lyndon Johnson as saying that “we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our President.”

Ok, let’s accept this version of events for a second. It works on a couple of levels. Most importantly it explains what currenly seems like an irrational level of annimosity that the US Government feels towards Cuba and Castro. We’ve made nice with China’s communist government. We’re trading with Vietnam and have normalized relations with them. And one would never know that we ever fought a brutal and bloody war all over the Pacific against the Japanese. Why not make nice with Cuba?

But if Cuba and Castro arranged the assassination of JFK, and high levels of the US Government have known it all along but were prevented from acting on it due to the need to play nice with the USSR then the hatred of Castro and Cuba starts to make a lot of sense. You can’t come clean to the public about this because if a dinky little third world nation can pull off an assassination of the President of the US then suddenly everyone would be aware that the emperor has been parading around naked all this time, not to mention the ways this would embolden other pesky third world nations who have axes to grind with the USA.

Still, I’m still personally fond of the Jim Garrison version of events where Cuba, the Mafia and Naval Intelligence are all involved, even if such a conspiracy would be impossible to keep under wraps in any significant way for this long. My own theory is that the mob did Kennedy in, as well as his little brother a few years later as revenge for the Kennedy brothers betraying them - Sam Giancana was, it would seem, largely responsible for JFK winning the 1960 election, and more than a little pissed off that once in office the Kennedy brothers focused a lot of energy and resources on tossing Giancana’s friends into prison.