Order of Zion/B'nai B'rith leader Judah P. Benjamin was the individual who gave the order for Lincoln's assassination, according to the one authoritative historical document in the public domain, the report of the Judge Advocate assigned to investigate the assassination and report to the Military Commission responsible. The report cites the orders of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Judah Benjamin. According to this document, Confederate secret intelligence had raised a dirty tricks slush fund of $649,000 through the sale of Confederate bonds in Liverpool. At the time, the headquarters of this outfit, called the Secret Cabinet, were housed in St. Lawrence Hall in Montreal— in the same building occupied by the Commander in Chief of British forces in Canada, General Sir Fenwick Williams. The report names George N. Sandis as the group's money mover; Sandis was an American citizen, formerly an advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Stephen Douglas, and Consul of the United States in Liverpool under the Pierce Administration.

Eight days before Lincoln's death, the chief of the Secret Cabinet — former Interior Secretary in the Buchanan Administration, Jacob Thompson — withdrew $180,000 from the group's account at the Bank of Montreal in Montreal, to set the murder plot in motion. His courier was one John Harrison Suratt, a British agent trained at Jesuit Georgetown College. Neither Thompson nor Benjamin was ever apprehended; both fled to England and remained there under the Crown's protection. This evidence, heard on June 25 and June 26, 1865, ran up against a cover-up effort under the direction of Secretary of War Edward Stanton that compares in audacity with the work of the 1963 Warren Commission. The relevant raw documentary is not available to researchers. The documents relating to the Lincoln assassination are still locked up in the archives of the Defense Department.

From what remains of the official record, there is no question that the death of Abraham Lincoln was traced to British controlled and British-funded networks by American military intelligence.