CIA Director told RFK Two People Shooting at JFK

               CIA Director John McCone told RFK “there were two people involved in the shooting.”

                                     CIA CHIEF TOLD RFK ABOUT TWO SHOOTERS

                                        Robert F. Kennedy and CIA Director John McCone


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JFKfacts » CIA chief told RFK about two shooters in Dallas

In Dallas on the night of the assassination, one copy of the Zapruder film of the assassination of President Kennedy was hand delivered to the Grand Prarie Naval Air Station where a jet pilot flew it to Washington D.C. 

The film was taken to either the FBI or Secret Service headquarters and it was viewed, but since the FBI and Secret Service aren't in the business of analyzing film, two Secret Service agents took it to the new state-of-the-art facility at the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) at the Navy Yard. There it was turned over to Dino Brugioni. Brugioni's team analyzed it and made still enlargements of select individual frames that were mounted on briefing boards. They worked on the film throughout the night and in the morning the director of the NPIC Art Lundal, took the briefing boards to the CIA Headquarters.

                                                NPIC Z-FILM BRIEFING PANEL #1
This briefing board is similar to but not one of the briefing boards used by Lundal to brief John McCone
[For more background on the Z-Film at NPIC see:  JFKCountercoup2: Z-Film at NPIC Event #1

JFKCountercoup2: Doug Horne on The Two NPIC Z-Film Events]

Art Lundal’s October 1962 briefing to JFK on U2 photo evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba set off the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy was so impressed with Lundal’s briefing he sent Lundal to London and Paris to brief the US Ambassador David Bruce and the Prime Minister and French President Charles DeGaul. The content of Lundal’s briefing to CIA director John McCone on the assassination is unknown, but it was ostensibly based on the NPIC analysis of the Zapruder film and the reports of the Secret Service agents who witnessed the assassination.

But when McCone went to the White House to brief the President on the assassination and the international situation, he found LBJ in the basement Situation Room monitoring reports from Dallas. When LBJ saw McCone, he waved him off and declined to see him. LBJ didn’t need to know anything the CIA had to say about the assassination or anything else.

                                                         Dino Brugioni of the NPIC

Brugioni wrote: "McCone found Lyndon Johnson colorless and crude in intelligence matters and, as president, clumsy and heavy-handed in international affairs. Instead of personally carefully considering prepared intelligence memorandums on intelligence matters, he preferred to be briefed by trusted advisors. Increasingly, the president sought intelligence information almost exclusively from Secretary McNamara and the Defense Department. McCone's advice simply was no longer actively sought by the president. His role diminished, his influence faded, and the ready access he had enjoyed during the Kennedy administration became very limited…"

While LBJ wasn’t interested in what the CIA had to say about the assassination, Robert F. Kennedy was inquisitively concerned, and a few weeks later, on December 9, RFK crossed paths with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a close aide and advisor to President Kennedy. When Kennedy’s casket was moved from the White House to the Capitol for the state funeral, RFK asked Schlesinger if the casket should be opened or closed. Schlesinger looked at the dead president’s lifeless body and waxed face and said it should be closed, and RFK agreed.

When they met on December 9^th, Schlesinger asked RFK what he thought about the assassination, and in his journal Schlesinger wrote: “I asked him, perhaps tactlessly about Oswald. He said there could be no serious doubt that he was guilty, but there still was argument whether he did it by himself or as a part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters. He said the FBI people thought he had done it by himself, but that McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting.” (published in 2007 as Journals 1952-2000  (Penguin Press, Diary entry December 9, 1963 page 184),

That the Director of the CIA would tell the Attorney General he thought “there were two people involved in the shooting,” was not just a personal belief or an unsubstantiated opinion, it was a determination based on the NPIC analysis of the Zapruder film and the reports of the Secret Service agents who witnessed the assassination and said that the President and Governor Connally were hit by separate shots, indicating there was more than one gunman.

                                                        Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and JFK

Journals 1952-2000. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (Penguin Press 2007)

Diary entry December 9, 1963 page 184 Schlesinger and Robert Kennedy discussion

Schlesinger: I asked him, perhaps tactlessly about Oswald. He said there could be no serious doubt that he was guilty, but there still was argument whether he did it by himself or as a part of a larger plot, whether organized by Castro or by gangsters. He said the FBI people thought he had done it by himself, but that McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting.