You can read this Jacobin article on new document releases and still be confused, and this is is not an unbiased objective journalistic source. But I am just going to state what I think is by far the most likely scenario: The murder of JFK was orchestrated by anti-Castro Cuban exiles with ties to the CIA. Oswald was manipulated by those elements into either participating in the murder or just being in the right place at the right time to be framed for it. He was then assassinated in turn by an agent with clear CIA ties, because he could not be allowed to talk. He might have been a CIA asset at some point, or he might have been a Soviet asset at some point, or he might have been a double agent for either side. It doesn’t particularly matter. Civilian governments ever since have pretty much given the U.S. military industrial complex what they want in exchange for at least publicly staying out of domestic politics.

If this is the most likely scenario, the puzzle is why it is still so threatening today. Individuals involved at the time have to be close to the end of their natural lifespans at this point. Why is it so threatening to the CIA or other government organizations? They could just say yeah, bad things went down during the Cold War and we’re sorry and we are the good guys now. Even if that isn’t true and the dirty truth is that civilians are not really in charge of our government, they can still lie and use the lie to get away with the crimes of today.

But there is one more possibility – maybe the Oswald thing went down the way they say it did, in a bizarre fluke that denies logic and common sense, and that is why we will never be able to make sense of it and will keep searching forever for patterns that are not there.