Donald Trump, the CIA, and "the Whole Bay of Pigs Thing"

How Trump is using the CIA's darkest secret to avoid federal prosecution

Deep in the recesses of Donald Trump’s mind sits the answer to the darkest and greatest mystery in American history: who really killed President John F. Kennedy. 

During Trump’s term as president, he was obligated by law to release the remaining classified JFK files in 2017. At the last minute, he succumbed to pressure from the FBI and CIA to keep many files secret and away from the public’s eyes. 

This came as a shock to many Americans, particularly his supporters. After all, Trump had run his campaign on exposing the “Deep State,” the hidden bureaucratic cabal within the government that really controls the government. He had promised unprecedented transparency in his administration and had specifically tweeted that he would release all the JFK assassination files as President.

When the moment of truth came, Trump folded, and many people wondered why?

Recently one of Trump’s closest friends, Judge Andrew Napolitano, a conservative pundit regularly found in the rightwing mediasphere, provided an answer. In a series of interviews Napolitano stated that he once confronted Trump directly about why he had broken his promise and kept some of the remaining JFK files secret. Trump responded, “Judge, if you saw what I saw, you would know why I can’t release them.”

Apparently, what Trump read in those highly-classified documents, provided by the CIA, was so explosive and disturbing that he immediately reversed his prior opinion on releasing everything.

Now we may know what Trump saw.

Fast forward to December 15th, 2022.

This was the day that the National Archives was to release the remaining JFK files that Trump had kept back from the public in 2017. To little surprise, President Joe Biden decided not to release about one-third of the files, again at the request of the CIA.

However, over at Fox, on Tucker Carlson’s program, a potentially explosive revelation was being made. Carlson said, “We spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents, a person who was deeply familiar with what they contained. We asked this person directly, ‘Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy, an American President?’

“And here's the reply we received verbatim. Quote, ‘The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It's a whole different country from what we thought it was. It's all fake.’"

Carlson continued, “It's hard to imagine a more jarring response than that. Again, this is not a ‘conspiracy theorist’ that we spoke to. Not even close. This is someone with direct knowledge of the information that once again is being withheld from the American public. And the answer we received was unequivocal. Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

What would provide more credibility to this incredible allegation—or disprove it—would be if the public knew Carlson’s source.

In the very strong opinion of this writer, Carlson’s source is nonother than ex-president Donald J. Trump.

That's right: It was almost certainly Trump who told Carlson that the CIA was somehow involved in Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

Firstly, the only people who would have had access to these still-classified CIA documents, and a “person who was deeply familiar with what they contained,” would have been Trump and a very limited and trusted group at the CIA, including then CIA Director Mike Pompeo (who refused to comment for Carlson’s program, by the way).

That fact right there substantially narrows the field of possible sources.

Secondly, the usage of the word “fake” in the statement is kind of a dead giveaway that it was Trump. He is, after all, famous for constantly using “fake” in his speeches and general lexicon. Fake news, fake reporter, fake election, etc., For those who have studied the CIA and its clandestine communications closely, the source’s statement does not sound like that of a CIA intelligence officer. That much is clear. But it does sound exactly how Donald Trump talks to people and about things.

Thirdly, it is well known that Trump illegally took many classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago when he departed the White House in January, 2021. And when he was ordered to return them he and his lawyers stonewalled, delayed, and obfuscated. Eventually, an FBI evidence team had to bust into Mar-a-Lago with a search warrant and carry boxes of classified documents away.

Reportedly, there were very highly-classified documents among the general trove that the FBI found. One might speculate if some of those documents were related to the Kennedy assassination.

The apparent purpose of Trump's actions at Mar-a-Lago was blackmail, to use classified national secrets as a bargaining chip to avoid post-presidency federal prosecution.

This is where Trump’s JFK revelations to Tucker Carlson come in.

On December 10th, the Department of Justice announced that it appointed a special prosecutor to investigate Trump for actions surrounding the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol Building in Washington DC. Just five days later came the explosive allegations on Carlson’s show. Trump, seeing the writing on the wall, decided to fire a warning shot across the bow of federal investigators and prosecutors.

The message to the DOJ and Biden administration is clear: go after me and I will reveal the most damning and explosive secret the United States government is sitting on, the CIA connection to JFK’s murder.

However, what makes this ploy even more intriguing is that it has a long history.

Enter Johnny Roselli, a mobster connected to Sam Giancana’s Chicago Outfit in the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1960, after Fidel Castro came to power (and made his communist leanings known), the CIA, with the enthusiastic support of then Vice President Richard Nixon, secretly partnered with the Mafia to assassinate Castro. Roselli was contacted by a CIA representative, and he brought in Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, who in turn brought in Tampa mob boss Santos Trafficante Jr.

The CIA-Mafia plots, as they became known once they came to light in the mid-1970s, never resulted in Castro’s assassination despite many attempts. However, strong evidence indicates that they may have resulted in another assassination: that of JFK.

In 1967, facing deportation proceedings to Sicily by the INS, Roselli started to talk. He told investigative reporter Jack Anderson (the information quickly made its way to then-President Lyndon Johnson), that assassination plots had been hatched by the CIA and Mafia against Castro and that one of those plots may have backfired, killing Kennedy. The INS quickly backed off with its deportation of Roselli.

Roselli started to talk again in the late-1970s when he was called to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), a congressional committee tasked with reinvestigating the Kennedy assassination (their final report pointed to a conspiracy to kill JFK). 

Roselli also talked to his friend Jack Anderson again: “Roselli hinted to associates that he knew who had arranged President Kennedy's murder. It was the same conspirators, he suggested, whom he had recruited earlier to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro…When Oswald was picked up, Roselli suggested the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive U.S. crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald making it appear as an act of reprisal against the President's killer. At least this is how Roselli explained the tragedy in Dallas.”

Some evening in late July 1976, as the HSCA was preparing to recall Roselli to give additional testimony, he had dinner with his old co-conspirator in the CIA-Mafia plots, Santos Trafficante Jr. Two days later he went missing. Two weeks later the remains of his cut-up body were found stuffed in an oil drum floating in Biscayne Bay off of Miami.

Roselli, it would seem, had talked too much.

Watergate and the “Bay of Pigs Thing”

Donald Trump is taking a page out of the Roselli playbook, but he is also emulating Richard Nixon, who as president used his guilty knowledge of Kennedy’s assassination to pressure government institutions into doing his bidding.

When the Watergate scandal exploded into newspaper headlines in early 1973, Nixon attempted to blackmail the CIA into helping him stop the FBI from looking further into the Watergate break-in. 

Most of the Watergate burglars, the so-called “Plumbers,” were current or former CIA operatives, and it was in the Agency’s interest that these men’s backgrounds not be splashed across the front page of the New York Times. However, when this fact became insufficient to force a CIA-assisted cover-up of Watergate, Nixon played his big card.

In a conversation with his top aid, H.R. Halderman, Nixon ordered him to go to CIA headquarters and tell then-CIA Director Richard Helms, “...‘Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that, ah, without going into the details ... don’t, don’t lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.”

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion

The Bay of Pigs invasion was a clandestine operation run by the CIA and Pentagon, and overseen by President John F. Kennedy, that ended in utter disaster. On April 17, 1961, 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Their goal was to establish a beachhead and instigate a national uprising against Fidel Castro and his forces. The plans went awry almost immediately, Kennedy refused to send in American military assets to help the besieged exiles, and the exiles were subsequently crushed, with many killed and captured by Castro’s forces. Kennedy bitterly blamed the CIA for the fiasco, vowing to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” The CIA and Cuban exile community, in turn, bitterly blamed Kennedy for the failure.

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Halderman did as he was told. He later described in his autobiography The Ends of Power the tense scene in Helm’s office:

“Then I played Nixon's trump card. 'The President asked me to tell you this entire affair may be connected to the Bay of Pigs, and if it opens up, the Bay of Pigs may be blown....'

“Turmoil in the room. Helms gripping the arms of his chair leaning forward and shouting, 'The Bay of Pigs had nothing to do with this. I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs!'

“Silence. I just sat there. I was absolutely shocked by Helms' violent reaction. Again I wondered, what was such dynamite in the Bay of Pigs story?

“…Years later, former C.B.S. correspondent Dan Schorr called me. He was seeking information concerning the F.B.I. investigation Nixon had mounted against him in August, 1971.

“Schorr later sent me his fascinating book Clearing the Air. In it I was interested to find that evidence he had gleaned while investigating the C.I.A. finally cleared up for me the mystery of the Bay of Pigs connection in those dealings between Nixon and Helms. It's intriguing when I put Schorr's facts together with mine. It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination…After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic cover-up….In a chilling parallel to their cover-up at Watergate, the CIA literally erased any connection between Kennedy's assassination and the CIA.”

Recently we learned through excellent reporting by former Washington Post reporter

Jefferson Morley

that Nixon was, in fact, referring to the JFK assassination when he cryptically spoke about the “whole Bay of Pigs thing.”

Like Johnny Roselli and Richard Nixon before him, Trump has figured out that the “Bay of Pigs thing” is a potent weapon to wield in order to avoid prosecution. Tucker Carlson’s recent segment on Fox News highly suggests this is the case. If Trump reveals more about what he saw in the still-classified JFK documents, we may be at a major breakthrough in finally understanding what happened sixty years ago in Dallas, what the CIA still continues to hide about it, and in what capacity the CIA may have been involved in the murder of an American president.