I couldn't believe they'd got away with it, but they did. They tried it in Cuba, but they couldn't get away with it. After the Bay of Pigs. But Kennedy wouldn't let them get away with it. He was about to blow the whistle on them…

The country is too dangerous for me now. They've gone mad. They're drug runners and gun runners. They get the intelligence and come back and tell the government how to run the country. And they're lying. And those idiots are listening to it. Kennedy gave them some time after the Bay of Pigs. "We'll give them a chance to save face," he said. The CIA is under enough pressure already.

I've got to get a boat too because I'm really afraid of my life. They've gone too far this time.

The day after the assassination, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the homes of friends in New Jersey. He was very agitated. A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country. Less than six months later Underhill was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled it suicide.

Garrett had been an intelligence agent during World War II and was a recognized authority on limited warfare and small arms. A researcher and writer on military affairs, he was on a first-name bases with many of the top branch in the Pentagon. He was also on intimate terms with a number of high-ranking CIA officials – he was one of the Agency "un-people" who perform special assignments. At one time he had been a friend of Samuel Cummings of Interarmco, the arms broker that numbers among its customers the CIA and, ironically, Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago, from whence the mail order Carcano allegedly was purchased by Oswald.

The friends whom Underhill visited say he was sober but badly shook. They say he attributed the Kennedy murder to a CIA clique which was carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics and other contraband and manipulating political intrigue to serve its own ends. Kennedy supposedly got wind that something was going on and was killed before he could "blow the whistle on it". Although the friends had always known Underhill to be perfectly rational and objective, they at first didn't take his account seriously. I think the main reason was, explains the husband, "that we couldn't believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every but as a ruthless – and more efficient – as the mafia."

The verdict of suicide is Underhill's death is by no means convincing. His body was found by a writing collaborator, Asher Brynes of the  New Republic . He had been shot behind the left ear, and an automatic pistol was under his left side. Odd, says Brynes, because Underhill thinks the pistol was fitted with a silencer, and occupants of the apartment building could not recall hearing a shot. Underhill obviously been dead several days.

Gary Underhill's chilling story is hardly implausible. As a spy apparatus the CIA is honeycombed with self-contained cliques operating without any real central control.

A check of Agency records has yielded the following information about John Garrett Underhill Jr.

(a) DPOD 7 August 1915, Brooklyn.

(b) Attended high school in Brooklyn and graduated from Harvard in 1937.

(c) Died 8th May 1964

(d) Was a pictorial journalist for Life, 1938-1942

(e) Ordered to active duty with MIS (Military Intelligence Service), Washington, as a second lieutenant, on 8 July 1943. Served with MIS for 2½ years working on technical and photographic headings for MIS publications, evaluation of intelligence and enemy uniforms, insignia, weapons, etc. on 9 October 1945 received a War Department staff citation for superior work in military intelligence. Left active duty in May 1946.

(f) CIA memoranda of February and October 1949 show that there was interest by the New York office of OO, Contact Division, in using Subject as a contact for foreign intelligence. Name checks were conducted with various military members of the intelligence community, but these yielded insufficient information and OO was advised that contract should be developed with caution, on a limited basis, and the Subject was not to receive information classified higher than confidential.

(g) In March 1957 national agency checks were again requested on Subject because of interest by the Office of Security.

(h) An UP article of unknown date cites an article written by Underhill for Esquire. The article described the US Army as shockingly weak. The UP piece stated that Underhill served in military intelligence in World War II and Korea. Underhill said that he had served as a consultant (probably in 1956 to an Army co-ordinating group.

(i) A report of 6 August 1954 from the Office of Security, Department of State, concerns contacts between Underhill and one Herman Axelbank, and was trying to sell photographs of Soviet military subjects. Underhill reported these contacts to the FBI and the CIA. In November 1949 Underhill visited Washington to call the attention of CIA to certain Axelbank pictures and was advised that Colliers might be interested in some of them for an article on Russia. Underhill discussed Axelbank with Ricky Haskins of CIA.

I've become familiar with the case of Gary Underhill, and I have been able to ascertain that he was not the type of man to make wild or unsubstantiated charges.  Underhill was an intelligence agent in World War Two and an expert on military affairs whom the Pentagon considered one of the country's top authorities on limited warfare. He was on good personal terms with the top brass in the Defence Department and the ranking officials in the CIA. He wasn't a full-time CIA agent, but he occasionally performed "special assignments" for the Agency. Several days after the President's assassination. Underhill appeared at the home of friends in New Jersey, apparently badly shaken, and charged that Kennedy was killed by a small group within the CIA. He told friends he believed his own life was in danger. We can't learn anymore from Underhill, I'm afraid, because shortly afterward, he was found shot to death in his Washington apartment. The coroner ruled suicide, but he had been shot behind the left ear and the pistol was found under his left side – and Underhill was right-handed.  

On that evening of November 22, 1963, Gary Underhill was a deeply troubled man. What he had learned, and the fact that they knew he had learned it, were too much for him. He had to escape. Once he was out of Washington, he could regain his equilibrium. Then he would decide what to do. He had friends in New York he could talk to without fear of the word getting back to Washington.

Samuel Cummings, the world's biggest small-arms dealer, died on April 29 in Monaco after a series of strokes. He was 71 and had long reigned as the undisputed philosopher-king of the arms trade.

In a world marked by secrecy, deception, swindles and scams, Mr. Cummings stood out. He was open, had a reputation for honesty, and was a genial connoisseur of the profit found in political violence.

''The arms business,'' he told an interviewer in 1989, ''is based on human folly, and folly has yet to be measured nor its depths plumbed.'' His biographers limned him as a pleasant and law-abiding merchant of death.

His company, Interarms, did $100 million worth of business in a good year, and over the course of four decades it had many. It dealt guns and ammunition to dictators, despots, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries -- and, in one notable case, to both sides in a Central American guerrilla war.

Any government or guerrilla movement needing 30,000 automatic rifles in a hurry could dial Interarms' telephone numbers in Alexandria, Va., or Manchester, England, and take delivery in days subject to cash and certain licensing niceties.

Born of well-to-do British parents in Philadelphia in 1927, Mr. Cummings collected his first gun when he was 5 years old. He recalled finding a rusting German machine gun in the trash outside an American Legion post, tossing it in his little red wagon and dragging it home. It was, he remembered, love at first sight.

After a stint in the Army at the close of World War II, Mr. Cummings graduated from George Washington University and studied briefly at Oxford. In 1950 he began his true post-graduate education: he joined the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency, which provided him with more guns than he ever dreamed of.

For four years, with the cold war at its peak, Mr. Cummings was the agency's most cunning arms dealer. Masquerading as a Hollywood producer buying guns for the movies, he snapped up $100 million worth of surplus German arms on the cheap in Europe and shipped them to Chinese Nationalist forces in Taiwan.

Seeing the fantastic profit that could be made in such deals, he left the C.I.A. in 1953 and, at the age of 26, founded Interarms. The next year the agency mounted a coup in Guatemala and installed a right-wing colonel loyal to the United States. Mr. Cummings got the contract to arm the new Government.

Mr. Cummings did not discourage speculation that he maintained ties to the C.I.A.; for example, he named one of his subsidiaries Cummings Investment Associates, and let people draw their own conclusions.

Mr. Cummings dealt with almost anybody, drawing the line only at Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya and Idi Amin of Uganda. He sold Communist Chinese rifles to flag-waving American sportsmen. He sold weapons to the right-wing Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and his left-wing successor, Fidel Castro.

He made millions from the apartheid regime in South Africa; from the United States, Britain, Austria, France, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Israel, and many other nations across the Middle East and Latin America. He owned the United States franchise for Walther pistols, the handgun favored by Ian Fleming's fictional secret agent, James Bond.

He made a fortune by foreseeing passage of the 1968 Gun Control Act, which banned imports of military weapons into the United States. Months before it became law, he went on a global shopping spree, stockpiling 700,000 weapons in his huge warehouse on the banks of the Potomac River in Virginia, a few miles from the Pentagon.

''At that moment,'' he told an interviewer, ''we could have instantly overwhelmed the American armed forces.''

Mr. Cummings moved to Europe at that time, becoming a British subject and establishing residences at a chateau in the Swiss Alps and in the tax haven of Monte Carlo.

He maintained his headquarters in Virginia, which he visited less frequently in recent years. He also bought a lavish estate in the hunt country west of Washington, Ashland Farms, which was used primarily by his daughters, Diana and Susan Cummings. They survive him, as does his wife, Irma.

In September, Susan Cummings, 35, was charged with murder in the shooting death of her lover, Roberto Villegas, an Argentine polo player, who died of multiple gunshot wounds at Ashland Farms.

Only hours after Kennedy was shot, CIA agent Gary Underhill left Washington, D.C., and drove to the home of friends on Long Island, N.Y. Underhill says he fears for his life and he must leave the country. "This country is too dangerous for me. I've got to get on a boat. Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It's too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They've killed the president! I've been listening and hearing things. I couldn't believe they'd get away with it, but they did. They've gone made! They're a bunch of drug runners and gun runners - a real violence group.I know who they are. That's the problem. They know I know. That's why I'm here.''

Gary Underhill was a writer and researcher in the area of military affairs who is alleged to have had high-level Pentagon connections. Friends say that he did assignments for the CIA. A close friend was shocked when he barged into her home the day after the assassination in a highly agitated state. He had just come from Washington, D.C.

Underhill allegedly said "that the Kennedy murder wasn't as cut and dried as it might appear." According to the friend, "Underhill said that he knew the people involved (and that they knew he knew) and he fled Washington for his life." He indicated that "A small clique in the C.I.A. were responsible" who "were conducting a lucrative business in the Far East" in "gunrunning and other contraband, manipulating political intrigue to serve their ends." Underhill told his friend "Kennedy had gotten wind of something going on so he was killed before he could blow the whistle." The friends at first did not believe this fantastic story and assumed that "he had gone completely mad," despite their respect for his credentials and intelligence.

On May 8, 1964 Gary Underhill was discovered dead, shot through the head. The death was ruled a suicide by District of Columbia police. Some friends wondered if his death was really a suicide since two people who first examined the body indicated that he had been shot behind the left ear but was right-handed. Several friends began to wonder about the frightened claims he had made about the assassination less than six months earlier. Other friends however accepted the death as a suicide indicating their belief that he had been troubled by personal problems and under the care of a psychiatrist. In any event he is dead, and without Gary Underhill to question it is impossible to know if his claims are pure fantasy or based in fact.

Prior to WWII, from 1938 to 1942, he (Underhill) had worked for David Cort at Life magazine, as his assistant on weaponry and military affairs. Cort had lobbied to keep him out of the draft during WWII Cort described him as the World's No. 1 expert on military weaponry and key to Life's accurate coverage of the War…

Following the war Underhill worked as an analyst and contributor for a number of national publications and information bureaus including Esquire, The Washington Post, Colliers and Fortune. He also served as a consultant to an Army Coordinating Group, circa 1956. In the 1950s Underhill became associated with Samuel Cummings. Cummings had become the owner of one of the world's largest military and civilian arms trading companies (INTERARMCO); he had worked for the OSI and CSI and in the early 50s, had travelled the world buying foreign weapons with which to supply resistance groups behind the Iron Curtain. Cummings was eventually released as an asset because of being "sharp and difficult to control" but remained a voluntary CIA informant through the 60s.

Newly released John F. Kennedy assassination files include details from the eerie "suicide" of the CIA insider who blamed the agency for the 35th president's death in 1963.

CIA informant and former US Army Captain John Garrett Underhill Jr., commonly known as Gary Underhill, was found shot dead in his Washington apartment six months after JFK was killed.

The coroner declared Underhill had killed himself - but conspiracists have long thought otherwise since he had accused the CIA of being responsible for the fatal event.

One of the 80,000 investigative documents published by the National Archives on Tuesday revealed chilling details about Underhill's pre-mortem confessions, as well the suspicious circumstances of his death.

The memo - entitled Ramparts: John Garrett Underhill Jr., Samuel George Cummings, and Interarmco - described Underhill as a WWII intelligence agent who was "on intimate terms with many of the top brass in the Pentagon."

Underhill was known during his time as an intelligence agent as a 'recognized authority on limited warfare and small arms,' the memo said.

Given his closeness with the CIA, he was reportedly one of the agencies go-to people to embark on special assignments.

The day after the assassination, Underhill reportedly rushed out of Washington DC and showed up at his friend's New Jersey home late in the evening.

'He was very agitated,' the filing revealed.

'A small clique within the CIA was responsible for the assassination, he confided, and he was afraid for his life and probably would have to leave the country.'

Underhill was depicted by his peers as 'sober but badly shook,' according to the memo.

'They say he attributed the Kennedy murder to a CIA clique which was carrying on a lucrative racket in gun-running, narcotics and other contraband, and manipulating political intrigue to serve its own ends,' the document continues.

His friends alleged JFK 'got wind that something was going on' but was murdered before he could do anything about it.

Underhill was reportedly a rational and level-headed individual. At first, his friends were not convinced of his accusations against the CIA.

One said, as per the files: 'I think the main reason was...that we couldn't believe that the CIA could contain a corrupt element every bit as ruthless - and more efficient - as the mafia.'

The memo also included the perspective of Underhill's writing collaborator Asher Brynes, who was the one who discovered his dead body.

He was shot behind his left ear, which was 'odd' given he was right handed, Brynes said.

Another detail that may allude to an unsettling connection is Underhill was allegedly a friend of Interarmco founder Samuel Cummings.

Interarmco was the arms broker for the CIA, as well as Klein's Sporting Goods in Chicago - the store Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly mail-ordered the Carcano rifle he shot JFK with.

JFK investigative documents were published by the National Archives on Tuesday after the White House said Americans would be 'shocked' by the information.

'We are tomorrow announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files...people have been waiting for decades for this,' Trump said on Monday. 'We have a tremendous amount of paper. You've got a lot of reading.'

He added: 'I don't believe we are going to redact anything. I said just don't redact. You can't redact. But we're going to be releasing the JFK files.'

Despite this claim, some pages are heavily redacted with thick black bars across the pages.

"It's a lot of stuff, and you'll make your own determination," Trump said of the contents, adding that he saw them before their release.

Since their release, conspiracy theorist skeptical of the circumstances of JFK's death - including Oswald being the assassin - have scoured the documents for any detail from the investigation that proved a different story.

I first researched and wrote about Garett Underhill in Someone Would Have Talked, some twenty years ago.  At that point I covered him as a loose end, given that he had expressed his fears that a "clique within the CIA" had been involved in killing President Kennedy, that they had been involved in illegal smuggling activities, they were opposing JFK's policies, and that they posed a threat to the President.

Underhill's background and connections were impressive, directly related to his long-time work in monitoring and consulting on foreign military matters related to weapons, in particular international sales and shipments of arms.  He had served as an advisor on weapons to Life magazine during WWII, and afterwards served as an analyst for several publications including Collier's Magazine, Fortune, Esquire and The Washinton Post.

His expertise also led him into consulting work for the Army during the 1950's and, most importantly, becoming a business associate of Samuel Cummins and INTERARMCO, the world's largest military and weapons trading company. Details on that relationship are covered in my book Shadow Warfare which explores Cummins his CIA connections -  with a history reaching through years of its covert operations and deniable weapons shipments around the world.

In 1963, Underhill was working for Fortune magazine, with a particular interest in Cuba. Immediately following the President's assassination, he privately expressed fears that his research had exposed him to a clique of CIA officers, formerly working in SE Asia and involved in illicit weapons shipments which had also involved drugs. He feared that this clique viewed JFK as a threat and had been involved in killing him.

Beyond that Underhill was panicked by the thought that they knew who he was, and that he was aware of their activities. Over time and with further research, Underhill's remarks began to be much less of a loose end, especially as I researched and wrote about arms shipments into Thailand, Laos, and related activities in the Golden Triangle area - where arms going in were entangled with drugs coming back in the same channels. An area where CIA officer Henry Hecksher had worked (after his time as Chief of Station in Laos).

Most importantly in that book I also explored a new and highly deniable CIA project which involved shipments of weapons and equipment going into the Caribbean in the fall of 1963 – a project headed by Henry Hecksher designated as AMWORLD.  With his interest in Cuba, it seems more than likely Underhill would have become aware of weapons shipments going to a project that was covertly sanctioned, but overtly presented as something totally against JFK's public position of no further American military action against Cuba. It would have appeared to be a direct violation of JFK's orders to turn off American support for Cuban exile missions against Cuba.

While Underhill likely did not know any details of the sanctioned project, he certainly could have heard from Cummins that the people involved were old SE Asia hands, individuals we now know to be Hecksher and Carl Jenkins (newly assigned to the project and coming back from duties in Laos and Vietnam).

With what we have learned over time we can speculate that Underhill might well have reached the conclusion that CIA officers out of SE Asia had gone rogue, using their established connections to get weapons to support people working in direct opposition to JFK's announced policies – for that matter it must be noted that AMWORLD itself would later be shut down over media reports of drug smuggling associated with its operations.

Underhill might also have feared that his inquiries via Cummins had been shared with the AMWORLD officers - something would have been of interest to them given their security concerns. While the CIA officers in charge of AMWORLD maintained a distance from its field operations, they were very much concerned about its security and visibility.

What Underhill could not have known was that a what appeared to be a very illegal and rogue operation against JFK's policies – a project buried so deeply in deniability that recruits were told the Kennedy's had abandoned them – was actually an operation known to him and strongly supported by Robert Kennedy. Sadly, his fears may have been meaningless, ironically his immediate thoughts about a ‘clique within the CIA' being a threat to the president may have been much more accurate.