From The Hindu, November 25, 1975: Ike and Kennedy ‘knew of CIA plots’

Washington, Nov. 24: A key figure in the investigation of the Central Intelligence Agency has said he believes that both Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy were aware of assassination plots of foreign leaders, especially the Cuban Prime Minister, Mr. Fidel Castro.

Mr. David Belin, former Executive Director of the CIA Commission investigation headed by the Vice-President Mr. Nelson Rockefeller, said that since the then head of the CIA, Mr. Allen Dulles, was the brother of then Secretary of State, Mr. John Foster Dulles, during the Eisenhower years, and because Mr. Robert Kennedy was the Attorney-General during his brother’s Administration, he “assumed” the Presidents were aware of the plots.

“The Presidents could read between the lines,” Mr. Belin said on television, because they were “not naive”.

Mr. Belin added the 347-page report issued last Thursday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence appeared to be “a thorough job” but he felt it went “easy on past Presidents and their knowledge of assassination plots”.  

“There is evidence in conflict about their knowledge because they were in sophisticated Washington, not the hinterlands,” he said.

Mr. Belin, who has served as a senior member of the Warren Commission which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy, called for a Congressional enquiry into the report.

He said he thought the probe would bear out the Commission finding that Lee Harvey Oswald alone killed President Kennedy and that Jack Ruby also was acting alone when he killed Oswald.