Document reportedly confirms CIA rejected ‘lone gun’ theory soon after JFK assassination

A declassified CIA memo is giving renewed attention to the lone gun theory on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna shared a two-part post on the document that “confirms the CIA rejected the lone gun theory in the weeks after the JFK assassination.”

The Florida Republican and Air Force veteran gave a hat tip to independent journalist Jefferson Morley who has researched and written extensively on the history of the CIA and the assassination of Kennedy.

This document confirms the CIA rejected the lone gun theory in the weeks after the JFK assassination. It’s called the Donald Heath memo.

TY @jeffersonmorley for flagging this. Part 1/2https://t.co/L08dsdlunS pic.twitter.com/LgfdQNUAvm

— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) March 21, 2025

Luna was referring to what is known as the Donald Heath memo, a letter to congressional investigators from the former officer in the CIA’s Miami station.

Part 2/2 pic.twitter.com/BFl7Jx2tNo

— Anna Paulina Luna (@realannapaulina) March 21, 2025

The memo seemed to confirm that the official narrative about the president’s assassination was being questioned even at top levels of the government. Doubts about whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone seemed to be circulating even among senior officials at the agency.

“The Heath memo sheds new light on and old question: Did the CIA ‘drop the ball’ on Lee Harvey Oswald? Or did the CIA drop a veil of operational secrecy around what it knew about the accused assassin and anti-Castro exiles?” Morely asked in a Substack post back in 2023 when the 1977 memo was first declassified and revealed the name of the undercover CIA officer who was part of the secret JFK assassination investigation.

The memo, written by Donald Heath, shows that while the White House and the FBI were assuring the public that a loner had killed the president for no reason, the CIA’s Miami station was actively pursuing suspicions that anti-Castro exiles might have been involved,” Morely wrote, adding that the probe’s findings were never disclosed.

The Warren Commission, tasked by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded one year later that Oswald had acted alone. According to the commission, there was no evidence of any conspiracy to kill the president. A House Select Committee on Assassinations probe concluded in 1978 that Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

President Donald Trump ordered the release of tens of thousands of pages of records related to the 1963 assassination.

These records were released at the direction of President Trump on March 18, 2025. They can be accessed online at https://t.co/uo61QB86r7 and/or in person at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. https://t.co/Zy3LZjRvXK

— U.S. National Archives (@USNatArchives) March 20, 2025

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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