Behind the CIA's 'Benign Cover-Up'

What Langley's history of lies about JFK's assassination tells us today

One of the striking weaknesses of the official theory that a lone gunman killed President John F. Kennedy for no apparent reason is its failure to account for numerous false statements from the CIA about the events leading to November 22.

In any homicide investigation, false statements about the murder or the events leading to it are regarded as potentially significant and thus worth investigating. In the case of the murdered president, the documented misrepresentations of the CIA have evidentiary value. They show a pattern of deception, which amounts to a clue about where the rest of the story is hidden.

The 1964 Warren Commission report assured the public that the CIA had cooperated fully in its investigation. In 2013, in-house historian David Robarge admitted what JFK skeptics had been saying for decades: In fact, the Agency had not cooperated with the Commission’s investigation.

In a CIA journal, Robarge acknowledged the Agency had withheld information from investigators about the plots to kill Fidel Castro and the surveillance of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. But that should not affect the credibility of the government’s lone gunman theory, he insisted.

It was, said Robarge in a memorable turn of phrase, a "benign cover-up.”

What would the late George Carlin have said about this oxymoronic coinage benign cover-up? The comedian who lampooned “plastic glass,” “jumbo shrimp” and “business ethics” surely would have had fun with “benign cover-up,” a sinister absurdity designed to assure the citizenry that the CIA’s misconduct related to the murder of a sitting president was somehow harmless.

Black comedy aside, the “benign cover-up” is worth studying. The history of the CIA’s deceptive or misleading or false statements can used as a diagnostic tool. Lies can help us discern truths about what the CIA is still hiding as the 60th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination approaches in November 2023.

The First Lie

The CIA’s first false statement on the assassination of President Kennedy came within hours of the ambush in Dallas. It was issued by Birch D. O’Neal, chief of an office known as CI/SIG, short for the Special Investigations Group, which was housed in the Agency’s super-secret Counterintelligence Staff.