JFK was gunned down fifty years ago this month [GETTY]
In 2007, out of the blue, he was contacted by a Cuban exile named Reinaldo Martnez. He was in his 80s, Martnez explained, and there was something he wanted to get off his chest before he died. Over two days with Blakey I listened to what Martnez had to say. He passed on what he said he had been told by anti-Castro leader Tony Cuesta, a celebrated hero to Cuban exiles in the US, when Cuesta was being treated in the infirmary at Cuba's La Cabana prison for terrible wounds received in an anti-Castro raid.
Cuesta said a comrade, Herminio Daz - a man he and Martnez both knew intimately - had admitted before his death in combat that he had "participated" in the assassination of President Kennedy. Daz was a known political assassin, a marksman and - before joining the struggle against Castro that so many exiles felt Kennedy had betrayed - had worked in one of Mafia boss Santo Trafficante's casinos in Cuba.
We found Martnez credible, what he told us plausible. Former chief counsel Blakey deems the new information "a breakthrough of historic importance". Its significance lies in the fact it undermines the Oswald did-it-alone theory of the official account of Kennedy's assassination 50 years ago, on November 22, 1963.
FAMILY GRIEF: Jackie Kennedy and her children at the funeral [AP]Martnez explained, and there was something he wanted to get off his chest before he died
Two days after the assassination the alleged killer was himself shot dead by nightclub operator Jack Ruby while being transferred to the city jail.
The Warren Commission asserted Ruby had "no significant link" to organised crime, the US Mafia.
However, in 1979 the second official investigation into Kennedy's death, by the Assassinations Committee, came to a different conclusion. Its report showed that Ruby had links to organised crime from his youth until just before the assassination. The Committee also found links between Oswald's family and organised crime.
It stated, too, that the physical and acoustic evidence and the human testimony indicated that not one but two gunmen probably fired at the President - Oswald from behind, as the Warren Commission had reported, and another, unidentified gunman, shooting from in front. There had thus "probably" been a conspiracy.
Oswald's actions that day suggest he was far from a mere innocent. That said, there are reasons to dispute both investigations' fingering of him: some witnesses put him in the ground-floor canteen of the Texas School Book Depository as late as 12.25pm, five minutes before the President was scheduled to pass by. That's where he was right afterwards, too. Oswald had no known motive to murder Kennedy - in fact he had spoken well of him.
All these years later the CIA continues to evade full disclosure.
It is still withholding 1,171 documents as "national security classified". Many issues regarding US intelligence have never been resolved.
Oswald was a former Marine who had defected to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, saying he had promised to give the KGB information he had learned on a U-2 spy base. Yet when he returned, according to the official account, he was supposedly allowed just to melt back into civilian life.
GUNMAN: But many doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone [GETTY]Oswald soon became active on behalf of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, a group targeted, bugged and infiltrated by the FBI.
He appeared to clash, meanwhile, with an anti-Castro group the Directorio Revolucianario Estudiantil, which was operating under the auspices of the CIA.
As well as armed raids on Cuba by exiled fighters the struggle against the Castro regime involved complex black propaganda operations.
I interviewed a former paid operative of the FBI Joseph Burton, whom the Bureau has acknowledged as a "valuable and reliable source" and whose assignment in 1963 was to pose as a Marxist and infiltrate radical groups. Burton told me Oswald had been "connected with the FBI"… that FBI agents had spoken of "owning" Oswald.
Many anti-Castro fighters loathed President Kennedy because they considered he had betrayed their cause at the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, during the Missile Crisis in 1962 and by his clampdown on their armed activity in 1963.
The Mafia for its part longed to see Castro ousted because the revolution had robbed them of a gambling and hotel goldmine in Cuba. They loathed the President, moreover, because they were under unprecedented pressure from the Kennedy Justice Department.
If the anti-Castro groups and the Mob bosses plotted to kill Kennedy, seeing to it that the crime was blamed on a pro-Castro activist would have seemed a masterstroke.
What I have reported may point to what really happened in Dallas but historians will be sparring over the Kennedy assassination far into the future.
A final thought. The President's savage end came as a shock to America and to the world. For the man himself though - in that initial moment of knowing he was injured by a first bullet, in the split-second before his head was blown apart - it may not have come as a total surprise.There had been a security flap four days earlier when Kennedy visited Miami. A motorcade had reportedly been cancelled - because of concerns about Cuban exiles. The Secret Service had received a telephone intercept of a Right-wing extremist speaking of a plan to shoot the President "from an office building with a high-powered rifle".
Perhaps this had been mentioned to Kennedy for on the morning of the fatal day - in his hotel suite as he prepared for the short flight to Dallas - he had murmured to his wife Jacqueline and an aide: "Last night would have been a hell of a night to assassinate a president… Anyone perched above the crowd with a rifle could do it."
Two hours later, a marksman - or two marksmen - did do it.
Anthony Summers is the only person to have won the Crime Writers' Gold Dagger Award twice, once for his book on the Kennedy assassination. Not In Your Lifetime by Anthony Summers (Headline Books, £9.99) is available at £8.99 with free P&P call 0871 988 8451 or visit www.expressbooks.co.uk.
You can also send a cheque or PO (payable to The Express) to: The Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF
THE AWFUL MOMENT MRS KENNEDY NEVER FORGOT A WEEK after President Kennedy's death his widow Jacqueline gave an interview to Life magazine at the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts.
She recalled the moment her husband had been shot as she sat beside him in words too raw - or so Life's editors thought at the time - to be published: "You know, when he was shot, he had such a wonderful expression on his face…[Then] he looked puzzled… he had his hand out.
"I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was fleshcoloured, not white. He was holding out his hand - and I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head…" As the presidential limousine gathered speed, Mrs Kennedy believed she cried: "I love you, Jack… I kept saying, 'Jack, Jack, Jack…' All the ride to the hospital, I kept bending over him saying, 'Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack.' I kept holding the top of his head down, trying to keep the…" Mrs Kennedy could not complete the sentence.
