JFK files: CIA’s Gary Underhill made a chilling confession; six months later, he was found dead - What really happened

JFK files: A newly declassified file on the JFK assassination released late Tuesday (US time) by the President Donald Trump-led United States administration unveils a plethora of new insights on the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy. 

One such interesting insight is that CIA operative Gary Underhill told his friend that the intelligence agency was responsible for the former president's death.

The JFK files further reveal that Gary Underhill fled Washington in a hurry a day after Kennedy's death.

“The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the home of friends in New Jersey,” the unredacted document shows.

The document describes Gary Underhill's behaviour as agitated, adding that he feared for his life.

“He was very agitated. A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country.”

Less than six months after this, the CIA operative was found dead in his Washington residence.

“Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide,” says the JFK files.

What did Gary Underhill reveal?

As per the JFK files, the friends whom Gary Underhill went to described him as sober but ‘shook’.

“They say he attributed the Kennedy murder to a CIA clique which was carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics and other contraband, and manipulating political intrigue to serve its own ends.”

It further notes that Kennedy supposedly got “wind that something was going on” and was killed before he could “blow the whistle on it”.

“Although the friends had always known Underhill to be perfectly rational and objective, they at first didn't take his account seriously. I think the main reason was, explains the husband, 'that we couldn't believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every bit as ruthless--and more efficient--as the mafia,” the files say.

Was Gary Underhill's death really a suicide?

The newly released JFK files note that the suicide angle to Gary Underhill's death is “by no means convincing”.

It says that the location of the wound, behind his ear, was ‘odd’.

“His body was found by a writing collaborator, Asher Brynes of the New Republic. He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill was right-handed.”

The files say that Brynes ruled in the possibility of a silencer being fitted inside the pistol that Underhill was killed with, which is why neighbours could not hear anything.

“Underhill obviously had been dead several days. Garry Underhill's chilling story is hardly implausible. As a spy apparatus the CIA is honeycombed with self-contained cliques operating without any real central control,” it says.

JFK files released

Unredacted documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy were released after a Donald Trump order.

More than 1,100 files, consisting of over 31,000 pages, were posted on the US National Archives and Records Administration's website on Tuesday evening.

Donald Trump announced the release Monday while visiting the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.

John F Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, during a visit to Dallas. As his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository building. 

Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper's perch on the sixth floor. Harvey Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.