Was the assassination of then-President John F. Kennedy in 1963 an "INSIDE JOB BY THE THEN CIA DIRECTOR GEORGE H.W. BUSH"? No, that's not true: This conspiracy theory is based on a factual inaccuracy. Bush was not the director of the CIA on November 22, 1963, when Kennedy was killed while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Bush would eventually become the CIA director, serving for almost one full year from 1976-77. John McCone was the CIA director at the time of the Kennedy assassination. He served as director from 1961-65.
The 52-second-long video was posted originally on TikTok and reposted on Facebook on July 15, 2022. The captions that show throughout the video read:
EITHER THE GRASSY NOLE OR WINDOW SHOOTER GETS HIM WITH RICOCHET
A CLOSER LOOK AT GREER/DRIVER GETTING THE FATAL HEAD SHOT
TRIGGER PULL
100% INSIDE JOB BY THE THEN CIA DIRECTOR GEORGE H.W. BUSH
EITHER THE GRASSY NOLE OR WINDOW SHOOTER GETS HIM WITH RICOCHET
DRIVER LOOKS BACK GETS HIS AIM AND
SHE KNOWS THE SHOT CAME FROM THE FRONT AND TRIES TO FLEE FROM MURDERERS ALL AROUND
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jul 25 22:22:55 2022 UTC)
The audio includes a music track of Frank Sinatra singing "Send In the Clowns." The narrator points to sequences of the famous film that was shot by Abraham Zapruder and suggests that the Secret Service agent who was driving the car was the person who fired a shot at Kennedy. He says:
Watch it watch it ... there it is! Gun. Head. Boom! George W. .. George H. W. Bush was the CIA director at the time that carried this out.
This fact check is only focused on the question of who was the director of the CIA in 1963, and that person was John McCone. The website cia.gov has a two-part PDF report that was published by the Center for the Study in Intelligence. Titled "John McCone as Director of Central Intelligence, 1961-1965," the study is introduced:
John A. McCone was the sixth Director of Central Intelligence, serving from 1961 to 1965 during some of the most tumultuous events in American history. The United States narrowly averted nuclear war with the Soviet Union when the Soviets tried to put offensive ballistic missiles into Cuba. An incumbent president fell to an assassin's bullet. The United States committed itself to defending the Republic of Vietnam against communist aggression and escalated its military support to that beleaguered country.
Bush, who was president of the United States from 1989 to 1993, was the president of Zapata Off-Shore Company in 1963 at the time Kennedy was assassinated. According to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library & Museum website, in 1963 Bush was then elected chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Bush had a varied career with many roles, including as a U.S. representative, as an ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, an envoy to the People's Republic of China, and in January 1976 was sworn in as the director of Central Intelligence. The cia.gov page on the 11th director of Central Intelligence begins:
Thirteen years before becoming the President of the United States, George H.W. Bush served as the 11th Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Many believed leading the CIA would mark an end to his political career. Instead, Bush became the only US president to have previously held the position of DCI, which gave him a unique perspective on both providing and receiving intelligence.
