The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used Kenya as an operational base in the 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, according to a dossier issued by President Donald Trump’s administration.
As part of their Africa Division (AF Division) bases, the CIA established offices in Kenya and five other nations, according to the 8,000 digitized papers.
As part of their operational standard, the Secret Service had established camps all over the world to oversee the President’s international travels at the time, in the early 1960s.
“These include the acquisition and dissemination of information, consultation, coordination, and operational interchanges,” partially read the materials.
Johannesburg, South Africa; Lagos, Nigeria; Pretoria, South Africa; Rabat, Morocco; and Salisbury, subsequently known as Harare, Zimbabwe, are other African countries.
Shortly after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis almost resulted in a nuclear war, the US has taken steps to strategically position itself in Nairobi and other locations because of the unstable environment surrounding its relations with the Soviet Union.
Investigators’ efforts to monitor assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s movements in the months preceding Kennedy’s death in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and to discover more about his stay in the Soviet Union were reflected in several of the documents.
However, because the Rapid Response unit (RRT), a covert “special team,” was established in 2004, CIA’s involvement in Kenya has endured.
The Kenyan paramilitary General Service Unit’s Recce Company is the primary member of the clandestine Kenyan squad, which is often referred to as the Rendition Operations squad.
It has so far been able to evade public scrutiny despite being established, outfitted, trained, and advised on tactical counter-terror operations by the CIA and run by a paramilitary liaison officer at the US embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.
According to interviews, the squad supported by the CIA has been in charge of homicides, alleged summary executions, rendition operations, and the seizure of high-value terror suspects.
One senior CIA counterterrorism officer told Declassified UK that the RRT was “an indigenous solution to an indigenous problem.”
According to reports, the paramilitary group was swept in to fend off the DusitD2 assailants in 2019.
In the fight against terrorism and other security-related matters, the United States and Kenya have maintained close cooperation.
Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), joined the ranks of US leaders who have traveled to Kenya, an economic powerhouse in East Africa, in 2024.
William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Gina Raimondo, the secretary of commerce, and Brian Nelson, the under-secretary for counterterrorism and financial intelligence at the US Department of Treasury, are among the other high-ranking US officials who have visited Kenya.
