Declassified CIA report concluded director led 'cover up' of Kennedy assassination investigation

FILE: Nov. 23, 1963: Lee Harvey Oswald, Dallas, Texas. (AP)

A declassified CIA report concludes former agency Director John McCone withheld information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy Jr., according to a recent news story.

The 2013 report, declassified last fall, concludes that McCone, who ran the spy agency when Kennedy was fatally shot in November 1963, kept information from the Warren Commission during its investigation into the assassination.

The report’s author, CIA historian David Robarge, writes that McCone and other top CIA officials were part of a "benign cover-up" to keep the commission focused on what the agency believed at the time was the "best truth … that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone," according to Politico Magazine.

The commission was established by President Johnson days after the assassination to investigate the tragedy and is officially known as the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy.

Robarge also writes that McCone and the others were "complicit" in keeping "incendiary" information from the commission.

McCone died in 1991. His testimony before Chief Justice Earl Warren and the rest of the commission was considered vital in the effort to get to the bottom of Kennedy’s death.

The commission's final report concurred with McCone's assessment that Oswald, a former Marine and Marxist, was the “lone gunman” and acted alone.

However, commission members also heard testimony from hundreds of other witnesses, reviewed FBI and Secret Service reports, visited the Dallas crime scene and analyzed Oswald’s personal records, as part of their roughly year-long investigation.

The 888-page report found the 46-year-old Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade below a school book depository building.

However, many people are unconvinced and argue that Oswald was part of a larger plot or conspiracy to kill Kennedy, perhaps in connection with Russia or Cuba.

Within an hour of Kennedy being shot, Oswald, who worked in the book depository building, killed a policeman who questioned him. He was arrested minutes later. However, Oswald was murdered the next day while being taken to a more secure jail, his motives and potentially connections never fully revealed.

Robarge's article also states that McCone was sure that Oswald acted alone and directed the agency to provide only “passive, reactive and selective” assistance to the commission, according to Politico.

The portrayal also suggests that McCone was more involved in commission dealings than previously thought.

The report quotes another senior CIA official, who heard McCone say that he intended to "handle the whole (commission) business myself, directly," the Politico story says.