As I said in my original post, the CIA redeemed itself in JFK's eyes in the missile crisis. He was deliberately using strong language ("smash the CIA") to impress reporters that the CIA was responsible for the Bay of Pigs--when it was he who let himself be sold on that cockamamie plot. And anyway,JFK needed a global intelligence network at that critical time in the Cold War. He wasn't about to dump the entire CIA after getting rid of Dulles and Bissell. He gave RFK unofficial oversight of the CIA.




Sure!
Broadly, I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone or any group could have brought off assassinating the president and have gotten away with it all these years. Too many people would have had to have been involved, and the potential for screw-ups, loose lips, grudges, vengeance, etc., then and down the line would have been too great to keep the lid on all these years.

Also broadly: Who were the shooters? How did they get away? Where did they go afterward? How did the organization that arranged it benefit?

Both the Mafia and Castro had trained assassins that they could have used. Why would they involve borderline psychos like Oswald and Ruby, even if they were patsies? Far too dangerous to them.

And, it's unlikely that Giancana ever made a deal with JFK or his father to "deliver" Illinois in the 1960 election in return for "hands off" the Mafia. For one thing, JFK didn't need him--he already had Richard Daley, the all-powerful mayor of Chicago, promising to deliver the state by the tried-and-true method of having people vote "early and often." For another, Giancana hated the Kennedys because they humiliated him at a Senate hearing on organized crime and labor in 1959 (RFK, the committee's counsel, likened him to "a little girl"). Why would he be willing to do them a favor? [N.B.: The Teamsters, which Giancana dominated, endorsed Nixon in 1960.]

As for Castro: he needed JFK in the White House because JFK was the guarantor of the US agreement with the USSR that we would never again try to topple Castro, in return for the removal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. At LBJ's reception following JFK's burial, the first thing the Soviet delegation asked him was if he intended to continue with JFK's pledge.

I want to be very careful of what I say now: The Warren Commission version represents the path of least resistance to closure in the JFK assassination. By putting the assassination on one borderline psycho, and by putting his murder on another, they neatly close the door to all the conspiracy theories--and all their problems. But I stop short of saying I believe the Warren Commission, because I'm not convinced. The only thing I believe is that we'll never know what really happened.