50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Former CIA Deputy Director Cabell Wrote Autobiography

In his 1979 book, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story, Peter Wyden noted that the brother of the mayor of Dallas on November 22, 1963--former CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell--wrote an autobiography prior to his death in 1971. And in its September 16, 1973 issue, the Washington Post reported that "New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, as late as March 1971, was preparing to accuse former Dallas Mayor Cabell's brother of `conspiring to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.'"

In a 1992 telephone interview, Bay of Pigs author Wyden told Downtown that he was only shown by Cabell's sons the portion of Cabell's then-unpublished autobiography which dealt with the Bay of Pigs events and he did not know why Cabell's autobiography was not published as of 1979. He also stated in 1992 that there is a possibility that Cabell's autobiography was published in the 1980s.

Wyden did not recall anything in the tone or content of the portion of Cabell's autobiography which he read, however, which indicated that Cabell felt any special rage towards JFK after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Wyden thought that although Cabell was a "great conservative guy" in his politics, he was too "routine-minded" to be capable of being involved in some kind of plot to assassinate JFK. In Wyden's view, Cabell was "the kind of guy who could only follow S.O.P.--standard operating procedure."

Wyden noted that he had neither attempted to investigate the JFK assassination, himself, or read any recent books about the JFK assassination, but his impression is that Oliver Stone's JFK film was "a propaganda hoax" which was wrong to "glorify" New Orleans D.A. Garrison. Wyden felt that Stone's film was "an effort to capitalize on this conspiracy paranoia," and he "was offended" by Stone's JFK movie. One possible explanation for the popoularity of recently published books on the JFK assassination, in Wyden's view, was that this mass sentiment still represents "part of the mourning" process for JFK.

When he wrote in the late 1970s about Charles Cabell in Bay of Pigs, Wyden was not aware that Cabell's brother, Earle Cabell, was the Mayor of Dallas on the day JFK was assassinated. But he felt that this fact was of "peripheral" importance to the subject of his Bay of Pigs book.

(Downtown 5/20/92)