Claim: Ted Cruz's Father Involved in Kennedy Assassination

[MikeG]

"Independent researcher" Wayne Madsen posted this story on his website a little over a week ago:

Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination?

Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency's anti-Castro operations.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20160407


Rafael Bienvenido Cruz did live in Dallas, Texas in 1962, where his second daughter, Roxanne Lourdes Cruz was born, according to records that I found on Ancestry.com


A draft card from 1967 also indicates that he lived in New Orleans, although I could not find specific records of his residence prior to 1963.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/megan-smolenyak-smolenyak/ted-cruz-and-the-question_b_8937948.html


Residence doesn't establish any links to the CIA or the Kennedy assassination, so I looked at two more applicable issues.

One involved Rafael Cruz's actual support for Castro. A 2015 New York Times story offered an important piece of information:

But the family narrative that has provided such inspirational fire to Mr. Cruz's speeches, debate performances and a recently published memoir is, his father's Cuban contemporaries say, an embroidered one.

The elder Mr. Cruz, 76, recalls a vivid moment at a watershed 1956 battle in Santiago de Cuba, when he was with a hero of the revolution, Frank País, just hours before he was killed in combat.

In fact, Mr. País was killed seven months later and in a different place and manner.

In interviews, Rafael Cruz's former comrades and friends disputed his description of his role in the Cuban resistance. He was a teenager who wrote on walls and marched in the streets, they said — not a rebel leader running guns or blowing up buildings.

Leonor Arestuche, 79, a student leader in the '50s whom the Castro government later hired to verify the supposed exploits of revolutionary veterans, said a term existed for people like Mr. Cruz — "ojalateros," or wishful thinkers. "People wishing and praying that Batista would fall," she said, "but not doing much to act on it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/u...athers-story-of-fighting-for-castro.html?_r=0


In other words, Rafael Cruz may have been more of a wannabe rather than a hero of the revolution.

Just how invested he may or may not have been in the Cuban revolution, his alleged disillusionment with Castro, or his susceptibility to CIA manipulation are all matters of conjecture. Madsen offers absolutely no proof regarding any of these issues in his article.


Probably the one piece of evidence that seemed most applicable to debunking this conspiracy theory was something I learned on Metabunk—the shape of Rafael Cruz's ears.

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-s...m-on-day-of-shooting.t7123/page-2#post-173007


Look at the school picture featured in the New York Times article:


Now compare it to the person in the Madsen article. Notice the difference?


After all that work, I should have started with the ears.

 

[MikeG]

The story reappeared this week after the Indiana primary.


Political consultant Roger Stone has been making the rounds claiming that Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican presidential race because of "revelations" about his father's role in the JFK assassination.

http://www.infowars.com/roger-stone-cruz-dropped-out-because-of-jfk-revelation/

Stone is claiming that Rafael Cruz's involvement in the Kennedy assassination was confirmed by Oswald's alleged former mistress Judyth Vary Baker.

Baker has been a fixture in conspiracy circles for a number of years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/peter-worthington/lee-harvey-oswald_b_1017806.html


Appearing on AM 970 The Answer Wednesday with host Joe Piscopo, Stone made additional claims about the alleged photo of Rafael Cruz and Oswald.

The exchange begins at about 5:00 in the interview

STONE: "Here's another one for you, because I went over to the sheriff's department last night. Take a computer analysis of the photo, the facial aspects of the photo, and Rafael Cruz's photo today, it's a perfect match."

PISCOPO: "Did you check that? You went down to the sheriff's department last night? And you checked that out?"

STONE: "I talked to a guy yesterday morning and I asked him to do it. And, uhm, I think it's, I think it's Rafael Cruz."

http://www.mediaite.com/online/roge...o-jfk-in-the-most-roger-stone-way-imaginable/

Roger Stone is an interesting character with a long and, it might be safe to say, a "colorful" history in politics and conspiracy theories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone

It is a little amazing that this sort of malarky has made its way this far into a presidential race. Then again, 2016 has been a pretty strange year for politics.

 

[Efftup]

The story reappeared this week after the Indiana primary.

STONE: "Here's another one for you, because I went over to the sheriff's department last night. Take a computer analysis of the photo, the facial aspects of the photo, and Rafael Cruz's photo today, it's a perfect match."

PISCOPO: "Did you check that? You went down to the sheriff's department last night? And you checked that out?"

STONE: "I talked to a guy yesterday morning and I asked him to do it. And, uhm, I think it's, I think it's Rafael Cruz."

This is actually quite hilariously bad.

To go from "I went over the Sheriff;s dept and it;s a perfect match" in one sentence to "I had someone else go over ther and I think, I think it;s Rafael Cruz" in the next is quite some backtracking.

 

[deirdre]

this is the closest in age i could find.. although i "think" he is slightly older than 24 in this pic. which is actually good as his hair line is all wrong..unless we go witht he hairplug theory.
(from my searches it appears Mr. Cruz is the zodiac killer, but that's off topic)

some photo sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-36195317
http://oswaldinthedoorway.blogspot.com/2016/04/whats-thing-about-rafael-cruz-and-heavy.html
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/ted-cruz-made-in-canada/

 

[tinkertailor]

Political consultant Roger Stone has been making the rounds claiming that Ted Cruz dropped out of the Republican presidential race because of "revelations" about his father's role in the JFK assassination.

It seems a lot more likely that he would have dropped out for the simple reason that Trump is winning and he didn't really have a chance after a certain point. I mean, Trump currently (as of the Indiana primary) has 1053 delegates compared to Cruz's 565. There really doesn't have to be another conspiratorial reason here, he just was going to lose.
I wish we could just say 'Occam's Razor' and leave it at that but it's pretty useless against a long-lived conspiracy theory like the JFK assassination...
sigh.

 

[MikeG]

This is actually quite hilariously bad.

To go from "I went over the Sheriff;s dept and it;s a perfect match" in one sentence to "I had someone else go over ther and I think, I think it;s Rafael Cruz" in the next is quite some backtracking.

Agreed.

I don't know the website mediaite.com, but its commentary on Stone's claims was pretty funny.

So there you have it folks, straight from Roger Stone's mouth: I talked to a guy. For Stone, who was once described by The Weekly Standard as the, "boastful black prince of Republican sleaze," this sort of ironclad logic is basically as reputable as an official report from the Associated Press.

 

[MikeG]

It seems a lot more likely that he would have dropped out for the simple reason that Trump is winning and he didn't really have a chance after a certain point. I mean, Trump currently (as of the Indiana primary) has 1053 delegates compared to Cruz's 565. There really doesn't have to be another conspiratorial reason here, he just was going to lose.
I wish we could just say 'Occam's Razor' and leave it at that but it's pretty useless against a long-lived conspiracy theory like the JFK assassination...
sigh.

You are absolutely right. Electoral math is likely the driving factor in Cruz's decision.

But after giving it some thought, there might be more to this story. For all the derision raining down on Trump over the assassination conspiracy hoopla, the polls say that it does have traction with the public.

The number of people who believe in more than one shooter is declining, according to a 2013 Gallup poll, but still pretty high.


http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx

In politics, conspiracies don't rely upon facts for credibility. It looks like Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style of American Politics," Harper's Magazine (November 1964): 77-86 is still alive and well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics

 

[Gridlock]

From Gerald Posner's book Case Closed via the WSJ:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...stery-behind-that-photo-of-lee-harvey-oswald/

The two men were apparently approached by Oswald at the Louisiana State Employment Commission and offered a few dollars if they'd help pass out pamphlets. That's the assumption, anyway; the only testimony on the record is from a young man named Charles Steele, who spoke to Warren Commission lawyers in April 1964.

Steele indicates that he was there because he'd driven a friend to the building to take a test she needed to pass in order to get a job. Oswald came up, offered him $2 for 20 minutes of work, and Steele agreed. He dropped off his friend after her test and met Oswald at the New Orleans Trade Mart building. He can be seen in this video, passing out leaflets alongside Oswald.