Article 027: Was JFK About to Reveal the UFO Secret?

Marilyn Monroe, the MIC, Lee Harvey Oswald, secret intelligence and the theory that refuses to die

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, Texas.

More than sixty years later, Americans are still arguing about what really happened.

The official investigation eventually centered on one man: Lee Harvey Oswald.

But Oswald never received a trial.

Less than 48 hours after Kennedy's assassination, Jack Ruby stepped out in the basement of the Dallas Police Department and shot Oswald. The Warren Commission later criticized the security arrangements surrounding Oswald's transfer and concluded that those deficiencies contributed to his death.

Before Oswald died, however, he uttered a word that would become permanently attached to the assassination.

“Patsy.”

Was he?

After examining the competing accounts surrounding Kennedy's assassination, we believe the possibility that Oswald was being used or framed deserves serious examination.

That is our interpretation. It is not an established historical fact.

But this article isn't simply about Lee Harvey Oswald.

It is about something much stranger.

During Kennedy's presidency, America was simultaneously dealing with nuclear confrontation, covert intelligence operations, Cuba, organized crime, an enormous defense establishment, the rapidly developing space race and a UFO phenomenon the United States government had already been investigating for years.

Project Blue Book, the Air Force's official UFO investigation, operated during Kennedy's presidency. Its surviving records are now held by the National Archives.

Then, just ten days before Kennedy was assassinated, he issued an authenticated directive calling for substantive cooperation with America's greatest Cold War enemy in outer space.

Add disputed UFO documents, Marilyn Monroe, alleged intelligence secrets and Kennedy's conflicts with powerful institutions, and one of the strangest theories surrounding his assassination emerges.

Was John F. Kennedy getting close to information about UFOs that somebody did not want a President, or perhaps the world, to know?

There is no authenticated evidence proving that UFO disclosure caused Kennedy's assassination.

But there is enough genuine history surrounding this story to make the question fascinating.

And we're going down the rabbit hole.

THE “PATSY”

The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.

According to its reconstruction, Oswald fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

But the Warren Commission wasn't the government's final major investigation into Kennedy's death.

More than a decade later, Congress created the House Select Committee on Assassinations, commonly called the HSCA.

Its conclusions were considerably more complicated.

The HSCA concluded that Oswald fired three shots at Kennedy, that two struck the President and that Oswald fired the shot that killed him.

But the committee also relied on acoustic evidence that it believed indicated a high probability that two gunmen had fired.

That led Congress to an extraordinary conclusion.

The committee said Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

It could not identify the additional gunman or determine the extent of that conspiracy.

That doesn't mean Congress proved that the CIA killed Kennedy.

It didn't.

It doesn't mean Congress proved the Mafia killed him.

It didn't.

And it doesn't establish that Oswald was framed.

But it does mean the history is more complicated than simply saying every government investigation concluded that one man acted entirely alone.

The HSCA also reached another conclusion that deserves considerably more attention.

It found that the original investigation into the possibility of conspiracy had been inadequate.

The committee concluded that the FBI had failed to investigate the possibility of conspiracy adequately and had been deficient in sharing information.

It also concluded that the CIA had been deficient in collecting and sharing information both before and after Kennedy's assassination.

Even the Warren Commission, according to the later congressional investigation, had not received all relevant information held by government agencies.

The HSCA nevertheless said the Warren Commission had reached its conclusions in good faith.

That distinction matters.

You don't have to believe that everyone investigating Kennedy was participating in a cover up to believe that investigators may not have possessed the entire picture.

And then there is Oswald himself.

He never had the opportunity to defend himself before a jury.

Jack Ruby killed him before that could happen.

For us, that leaves the “patsy” question open to continued examination.

THE SHOT THAT STILL DISTURBS PEOPLE

There is one moment in the assassination footage that generations of people have found impossible to forget.

Kennedy's head and upper body move violently following the fatal head shot.

To many viewers, including generations of assassination researchers, that movement appears intuitively consistent with a shot coming from somewhere in front of Kennedy.

Some witnesses also described what they remembered as a devastating injury toward the rear portion of Kennedy's head.

Those observations became central to theories that Kennedy was struck from the front.

Some researchers have gone considerably further.

They have alleged that Kennedy suffered a frontal gunshot wound and that the appearance of his injuries was subsequently changed before or during the official autopsy.

We examined that argument because it is too important to simply ignore.

But there is a major evidentiary problem.

The surviving official forensic evidence does not establish that scenario.

The Warren Commission reported that the Bethesda autopsy identified a smaller wound in the rear of Kennedy's skull as the entrance point and a much larger defect on the right side of the skull as the exit wound.

The pathologists concluded that the fatal bullet traveled from behind Kennedy toward the front and right side of his head.

The autopsy also documented numerous tiny metallic fragments extending through the skull and a larger metallic fragment near the area above the right eye.

So we cannot responsibly tell readers that Kennedy being shot in the face has been established.

It hasn't.

Likewise, we cannot present alteration of Kennedy's body as established history.

That remains an allegation made by some assassination researchers.

But the fact that official forensic findings disagree with an alternative theory does not prevent us from examining why that theory developed.

Eyewitness recollections, interpretations of the Zapruder film, disagreements surrounding the medical evidence and decades of distrust have kept the controversy alive.

For us, the appropriate conclusion isn't that a frontal shot has been proven.

It is that the medical controversy should be presented alongside the official forensic findings so readers understand both the theory and the evidence against it.

SOMETHING BIGGER THAN OSWALD?

Now suppose, only for the sake of examining the theory, that Oswald really was what he claimed.

A patsy.

That immediately produces a much bigger question.

A patsy for whom?

Kennedy wasn't exactly short on powerful enemies or political conflicts.

His administration confronted organized crime.

His brother Robert Kennedy's Justice Department aggressively pursued Mafia figures.

Cuba became an enormous source of conflict.

Anti Castro militants became frustrated with Kennedy.

American intelligence agencies were conducting covert operations most Americans knew nothing about.

The Bay of Pigs became one of the greatest disasters of Kennedy's young presidency.

The invasion itself had been developed by the CIA during the Eisenhower administration. Kennedy inherited the plan and authorized the operation, which collapsed shortly after the exile force landed in Cuba in April 1961.

The failure produced enormous political consequences.

Kennedy's administration subsequently authorized Operation Mongoose, another covert effort directed against Castro's government involving the CIA and Defense Department.

Meanwhile, Kennedy confronted Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Humanity came terrifyingly close to nuclear confrontation.

Vietnam was becoming increasingly complicated.

And towering over all of this was something Kennedy's predecessor had publicly warned America about.

Something we'll call the MIC.

ENTER THE MIC

On January 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address.

Eisenhower was not some anti military activist standing outside the national security establishment.

He had commanded Allied forces in Europe during World War II.

He had served as Supreme Allied Commander.

He had spent eight years as President of the United States.

And as he prepared to leave office, he warned Americans about the enormous military and industrial system that had developed during the Cold War.

He gave that relationship a name that would become famous:

The military industrial complex.

Eisenhower warned against the acquisition of “unwarranted influence” by this combination of military establishment and arms industry. He also warned about the possibility of a disastrous rise of misplaced power.

Three days later, John F. Kennedy became President.

Think about that timing.

One of the most accomplished military leaders in American history was essentially warning the incoming political generation that America's permanent defense establishment had become something unprecedented.

Eisenhower wasn't claiming that this system secretly controlled America.

Nor was he talking about UFOs.

He was warning about concentrations of institutional power.

But Kennedy would spend almost his entire presidency operating inside precisely the environment Eisenhower had described.

Then Kennedy was murdered.

That does not establish that the MIC killed him.

But it explains why later researchers began asking whether Kennedy's conflicts with powerful national security interests might have mattered.

KENNEDY WASN'T SHORT ON ENEMIES

The list of groups that have appeared in JFK assassination theories is extraordinary.

Organized crime.

Anti Castro militants.

Pro Castro interests.

The CIA.

Defense interests.

The Soviet Union.

Cuba.

Political extremists.

And combinations of several of them.

Congress eventually investigated many of these possibilities.

The HSCA did not conclude that the CIA, FBI or Secret Service participated in Kennedy's assassination.

It likewise concluded that the Soviet and Cuban governments weren't responsible.

The committee said anti Castro Cuban organizations as groups weren't responsible, although available evidence did not exclude the possibility that individual members could have been involved.

It reached a similar conclusion concerning organized crime. It did not find the national organized crime syndicate responsible as an organization, but said the evidence didn't exclude individual members.

That distinction is important.

There is no official finding that “the CIA killed Kennedy.”

There is no official finding that “the Mafia killed Kennedy.”

And there certainly is no official finding that “the MIC killed Kennedy because he was going to reveal UFOs.”

But there were real relationships and operations hidden from the public at the time that later investigators had to untangle.

And one of them sounds almost like something from a conspiracy movie.

THE CIA AND THE MAFIA REALLY DID CROSS PATHS

Years after Kennedy's death, congressional investigators established that the CIA had actually worked with organized crime figures in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

That is not an internet rumor.

It is part of the congressional record.

The HSCA examined what it called the “CIA Mafia plots.”

According to the committee's investigation, organized crime figures participated with the CIA during stages of efforts directed toward assassinating Castro. The committee discussed figures including John Roselli and intermediary Robert Maheu and examined the complicated relationships surrounding those operations.

Stop for a moment and appreciate how extraordinary that history actually is.

Two worlds that many Americans would naturally imagine as completely separate, American intelligence and organized crime, had intersected in covert operations involving plans to kill a foreign leader.

That does not establish that either world subsequently assassinated Kennedy.

But it demonstrates why the environment surrounding JFK cannot be understood as a simple collection of completely separate institutions.

The Cold War was messy.

Intelligence organizations conducted covert operations.

Government agencies kept enormous secrets.

Organized crime intersected with national security operations.

Cuban exile networks intersected with intelligence activity.

And later congressional investigators determined that the Warren Commission hadn't received all of the relevant information held by government agencies.

Now add UFOs.

JFK AND THE UFO QUESTION

This is where we need to be especially careful.

There are countless claims online that Kennedy personally encountered UFOs or that he was preparing to announce the existence of extraterrestrial visitors.

We have not found reliable evidence establishing that JFK personally witnessed a UFO.

But that doesn't mean UFOs were absent from the government surrounding him.

The United States Air Force was operating Project Blue Book during Kennedy's presidency.

The National Archives now holds those declassified UFO investigation records.

So the government investigating UFO reports during the JFK era is not controversial.

It happened.

The controversial question is whether there was another, much more secret layer beyond Blue Book.

That is where alleged MJ 12 documents and purported Kennedy UFO memoranda enter the story.

And that is also where the historical evidence becomes considerably less certain.

MARILYN MONROE AND “THINGS FROM OUTER SPACE”

The story sounds almost too perfect for Hollywood.

Marilyn Monroe.

John F. Kennedy.

Robert Kennedy.

Secret intelligence.

Missing information.

And UFOs.

A purported intelligence document dated August 3, 1962 has circulated within UFO research communities for years.

The document is presented by proponents as an intercepted intelligence report concerning Marilyn Monroe.

Researchers who believe it is authentic argue that it indicates Monroe had been told sensitive information by Kennedy, including information they interpret as relating to “things from outer space.”

The Majestic Documents project presents the document and argues that researchers have examined its authenticity.

But there is an enormous distinction we need to make.

This document does not possess the same established archival provenance as something like Kennedy's National Security Action Memoranda.

Therefore we cannot state as historical fact that Kennedy told Marilyn Monroe about extraterrestrials.

We can state that a purported document making that connection exists and that some UFO researchers believe it authentic.

Those are very different statements.

And the distinction matters.

Marilyn Monroe died on August 5, 1962.

Two days after the date appearing on the disputed document.

Her death was officially classified as a probable suicide.

That timing has inevitably generated theories claiming Monroe was silenced because she possessed dangerous information.

But timing alone isn't proof.

We have not found established evidence demonstrating that Monroe was killed because she possessed UFO information.

It remains a theory.

There is another reason for caution whenever alleged Kennedy and Monroe documents surface.

The history of JFK research contains actual document fraud. For example, the unrelated so called Cusack papers purporting to document connections among Kennedy, Monroe and organized crime were exposed as fraudulent.

That doesn't automatically prove every disputed Kennedy document is false.

It demonstrates why provenance is everything.

A sensational document needs stronger authentication, not weaker authentication.

THEN COMES A DOCUMENT WE KNOW IS REAL

This may be the most intriguing part of the UFO story.

Forget disputed documents for a moment.

Forget MJ 12.

Forget Marilyn Monroe.

Here we have something authenticated.

November 12, 1963.

President Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum No. 271.

The subject was:

“Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters.”

The document is preserved in official U.S. government historical records, with its source identified in National Archives holdings.

Kennedy instructed NASA Administrator James Webb to personally take responsibility for developing a program of substantive cooperation with the Soviet Union in outer space.

He called for specific technical proposals and connected the initiative to his earlier proposal for broader American and Soviet cooperation in space, including lunar exploration.

NASA's own historical collection describes Kennedy as having signed the memorandum ten days before his assassination.

This isn't an alleged photocopy that mysteriously appeared decades later.

This is an authenticated Kennedy administration document.

Now look at the dates.

November 12, 1963.

Kennedy is assassinated November 22, 1963.

Ten days.

TEN DAYS

Those ten days have become enormously important in UFO theories surrounding Kennedy.

But this is precisely where we have to keep documented history separated from speculation.

NSAM 271 does not mention UFOs.

It does not mention extraterrestrials.

It does not mention crashed spacecraft.

It does not mention recovered bodies.

It does not mention reverse engineered technology.

It does not order UFO disclosure.

The authenticated document concerns cooperation with the Soviet Union in outer space.

That is what we know.

But UFO researchers ask whether something more could have existed behind the public space policy.

What if the United States and Soviet Union were both detecting unexplained objects?

What if those observations were occurring near sensitive military facilities?

What if unidentified objects created the danger that one superpower could mistake an unexplained event for an action by the other?

And what if Kennedy believed certain information needed to be shared precisely because misunderstanding something in the sky during the nuclear age could be catastrophic?

It's an intriguing hypothesis.

But at present we do not have authenticated evidence demonstrating that this was the hidden purpose of NSAM 271.

The document itself doesn't say it.

THE OTHER JFK UFO MEMOS

This is where things become considerably murkier.

Documents have circulated within UFO research communities purporting to show Kennedy seeking access to highly classified UFO information.

If authenticated, documents like these could radically alter the historical discussion.

But authentication is exactly the problem.

The National Archives itself has addressed the broader MJ 12 controversy.

Its staff searched records of the Air Force, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other relevant government holdings for evidence concerning MJ 12.

The Archives describes multiple anomalies involving one famous alleged MJ 12 document, including classification and filing irregularities, and reports that searches failed to uncover corroborating information in other relevant records.

That doesn't prove every alleged UFO document from this era is fraudulent.

But it gives us an important rule for this investigation.

Authenticated records and disputed records cannot be treated as equals.

NSAM 271 is authenticated.

Project Blue Book is documented.

Government investigation of UFO reports is documented.

The more sensational Kennedy UFO documents remain disputed.

If new evidence ever conclusively authenticates them, this story changes dramatically.

Until then, we treat them as allegations and research leads rather than established presidential records.

WHAT IF THE UFO THEORY IS WRONG?

This question is just as important as asking what happens if it is right.

Kennedy didn't need extraterrestrial secrets to have powerful conflicts.

His presidency existed at the intersection of some of the most dangerous forces in twentieth century history.

Organized crime.

Cuba.

Anti Castro militants.

The CIA.

Nuclear weapons.

Vietnam.

Defense contractors.

Cold War espionage.

Domestic political conflict.

And a rapidly expanding national security establishment.

Any serious examination of Kennedy's assassination has to consider the possibility that, if a conspiracy existed, UFOs had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The HSCA couldn't identify the conspiracy it believed probably existed.

And subsequent challenges to the acoustic evidence weakened the basis for its conclusion that another gunman fired.

So we aren't going to pretend history has given us an answer it hasn't.

BUT WHAT IF THE UFO THEORY IS RIGHT?

Now let's entertain the hypothesis.

Not as established history.

As a thought experiment.

Suppose unidentified craft had been detected for years.

That part isn't difficult to imagine because the government really was receiving and investigating UFO reports through Project Blue Book.

Now suppose a small portion of those incidents couldn't be explained as conventional aircraft, balloons, astronomical phenomena or secret American or Soviet technology.

Suppose information concerning those incidents became deeply compartmentalized inside military and intelligence programs.

Then imagine a President beginning to ask questions.

Who controls that information?

Does the President automatically receive everything?

Does the CIA?

The Pentagon?

The Air Force?

Private defense contractors?

Could a highly compartmentalized program survive from administration to administration while presidents themselves came and went?

And what happens if a President decides information of enormous importance shouldn't belong exclusively to whoever has historically controlled it?

Suddenly the JFK UFO theory becomes about something much larger than flying saucers.

It becomes a question about power.

Who controls secrets capable of changing civilization?

THE MIC PROBLEM

Return to Eisenhower's warning.

He wasn't warning America about extraterrestrials.

He was warning America about human institutions.

Military power.

Industry.

Money.

Scientific research.

Government.

And the possibility that the relationship among those institutions could acquire enormous influence.

Eisenhower explicitly warned Americans not to allow the weight of this combination to endanger democratic processes and liberties.

Now imagine for a moment that extraterrestrial technology actually existed.

Whoever controlled access to that technology could potentially possess knowledge far beyond conventional aerospace engineering.

Propulsion.

Energy.

Materials.

Surveillance.

Communications.

Weapons.

The economic implications could be enormous.

So could the geopolitical implications.

That is one reason UFO researchers frequently place the military industrial complex at the center of disclosure theories.

But again, we have to distinguish an imaginable motive from evidence of a crime.

There is no authenticated evidence establishing that the MIC murdered Kennedy to prevent UFO disclosure.

The hypothesis is interesting precisely because the potential stakes would be enormous if its underlying assumptions were true.

But those assumptions remain unproven.

AND THEN THE PRESIDENT IS DEAD

Ten days after Kennedy's authenticated space cooperation directive, shots rang out in Dealey Plaza.

Kennedy was killed.

Oswald was arrested.

Oswald called himself a patsy.

Two days after Kennedy's assassination, Jack Ruby killed Oswald before the government's case against him could ever be tested at trial.

The Warren Commission concluded Oswald acted alone.

Years later, Congress concluded that Oswald fired the fatal shot but also concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.

Congress couldn't identify the additional gunman or the extent of that conspiracy.

It also concluded that the original investigation of possible conspiracy had been inadequate.

The FBI had been deficient in aspects of its investigation and information sharing.

The CIA had been deficient in collecting and sharing information.

And the Warren Commission had not received all relevant information held by other government agencies.

None of this proves the UFO theory.

But it explains why people never stopped asking questions.

OUR VIEW

After examining this history, we aren't comfortable reducing every unanswered question surrounding Dallas to a perfectly neat story in which everything meaningful begins and ends with Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oswald himself claimed he was a patsy.

He never received a trial.

A subsequent congressional investigation concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy, although the committee simultaneously concluded that Oswald fired the shots that struck Kennedy.

For those reasons, we believe the possibility that Oswald was being used or framed deserves continued examination.

That is our interpretation.

It is not an established historical fact.

We also believe the controversies surrounding Kennedy's wounds deserve to be examined rather than mocked or ignored.

The images are disturbing.

Witness recollections have been debated for generations.

The movement of Kennedy's body has caused countless people to wonder whether the fatal shot could have originated from the front.

But our examination also has to acknowledge evidence that cuts against that theory.

The official autopsy findings identified a rear entrance wound and a larger right sided exit wound.

We therefore cannot claim that Kennedy being shot from the front or alteration of his body has been established.

The evidence available to us doesn't justify saying that.

And we cannot claim that UFO disclosure has been established as the motive for Kennedy's murder.

It hasn't.

What we can say is that the historical environment surrounding Kennedy was extraordinarily complicated, that important government information wasn't initially shared with assassination investigators, that Congress later criticized the investigation of conspiracy, that Kennedy really did issue an outer space cooperation directive ten days before his death, and that disputed UFO documents concerning Kennedy really do circulate.

Those are facts worth examining.

BUT SOMETHING ABOUT THIS STORY REFUSES TO DIE

Maybe that's because the story contains just enough documented strangeness to keep the questions alive.

A President surrounded by powerful political enemies and institutional conflicts.

A predecessor warning America about the military industrial complex.

Secret CIA operations.

Actual CIA cooperation with organized crime figures in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

A later congressional investigation concluding that the original investigation of conspiracy had been inadequate.

A murdered suspect who never received a trial.

A disputed document connecting Marilyn Monroe, Kennedy and alleged information about outer space.

A real government UFO investigation operating during Kennedy's presidency.

And finally, an authenticated presidential directive calling for substantive cooperation with America's greatest Cold War adversary in outer space.

Ten days before Kennedy was killed.

None of those pieces proves the UFO disclosure theory.

But together they explain why the question has survived for more than sixty years.

WAS JFK ABOUT TO TELL US SOMETHING?

Maybe Lee Harvey Oswald acted exactly as the Warren Commission concluded.

Maybe there was a conspiracy that had nothing whatsoever to do with UFOs.

Maybe Kennedy's conflicts involving Cuba, organized crime, intelligence operations or other political forces explain whatever mysteries remain.

Maybe the disputed UFO documents are simply disputed documents that should never be treated as authentic without stronger provenance.

Or maybe somewhere inside America's enormous classified world, Kennedy encountered information that even presidents weren't expected to disturb.

We don't know.

And anyone claiming certainty should be able to produce extraordinary evidence.

But there is one question worth leaving open.

If a secret existed powerful enough to change humanity's understanding of who we are and what exists beyond Earth, how far would the people controlling that secret go to maintain control over it?

And perhaps the even more uncomfortable question:

Would the President of the United States necessarily be the most powerful person in that room?

More than sixty years after Dallas, the files continue to be studied.

Witnesses continue to be debated.

Documents continue to be examined.

Official conclusions continue to collide with alternative interpretations.

Maybe JFK was simply a President murdered by one man.

Maybe Oswald really was the patsy he claimed to be.

Maybe the truth lies somewhere between the stories we've been told.

And maybe the UFO connection is nothing more than one extraordinary theory born in the enormous shadows of Cold War secrecy.

But until every piece of this story makes sense, people are going to keep asking:

What did John F. Kennedy know, and who was afraid of what he might do with it?

 

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

National Archives: House Select Committee on Assassinations, Summary of Findings

National Archives: HSCA Findings on Government Agencies and the Investigation

National Archives: Warren Commission Report, Chapter 1

National Archives: Warren Commission Report, Chapter 2

National Archives: Warren Commission Report, Chapter 3

National Archives: HSCA Organized Crime and CIA Findings

U.S. State Department: NSAM 271, Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters

U.S. State Department: Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose

National Archives: Project Blue Book, UFO Records and MJ 12 Research

National Archives: Eisenhower's Farewell Address and Military Industrial Complex Warning

Disputed material referenced in this article

The following collection contains alleged JFK, Marilyn Monroe and UFO related documents discussed above. These materials should not be treated as authenticated government records.

Majestic Documents: Documents Dated 1960–1969