Introduction

The article presented here represents a summation of information I have acquired in my own research over the last 30 years from many sources. Fundamentally it supports the idea that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22^nd, 1963 was in reality a coup d’état; that is, the elimination of the lawful and duly elected president of the United States, and inevitably the policies and programs of his which certain elements of the military and intelligence establishments in our nation during the Cold War found so threatening. Admittedly, while there is much substantial evidence, including eye/ear witnesses and medical and autopsy data that supports that there must have been a conspiracy in JFK’s murder, the evidence supporting a coup is mostly circumstantial. In any conspiracy case it is inevitable that the question “Why?” will be asked. In this article I am taking the fact of conspiracy for granted, and am concentrating my efforts on the possible reason why, which I believe supports the coup explanation. It is well understood by many that JFK was moving in the direction of peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War, and solving the problems with Cuba. Less well understood is the fact that Kennedy was well aware of the possibility of a coup attempt against him;  and that his view and understanding of the world differed greatly from the standard Cold War perspective shared by so many in the CIA and military establishment at the time. With that preamble understood, I invite you to read on…MA  

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On October 3, 1963,  a very interesting article appeared in the New York Times. The article, entitled “Intra-Administration War in Vietnam,” was written by the Times’ veteran Washington DC bureau chief, Arthur Krock. In 1963 Krock, a 3 time Pulitzer Prize winner, was one of the most highly regarded journalists in the country and had been the Washington correspondent for the Times for more than 30 years. Across that time he had been on post through the administrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and had, as a result, developed many close contacts and information sources within the halls of government and the various government agencies. With the advent of the JFK presidency in 1961, Krock’s government connections became even more intimate. He had been a good friend of Kennedy clan patriarch Joseph Kennedy since the mid 1930s and was instrumental in helping the young John Kennedy write and publish his first book, “Why England Slept,” in 1940.[1] Thus, when JFK became president, with regard to information and contacts, Krock’s position was immeasurably enhanced.

All of this lends a certain credibility to what Krock reports in his October, 1963 article, the significant portion of which I am quoting here. In this quote Krock is referring to a report filed in Saigon by a reporter for the Scripps-Howard[2] newspapers named Richard Starnes. Following is the quote from Krock’s article:

“Today, under a Saigon dateline, he (Starnes) related that, ‘according to a high United States source here, twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge [and] in one instance frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.’/ ‘Among the views attributed to United States officials on the scene, including one described as a ‘very high American official who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy’ are the following: The CIA’s growth was ‘LIKENED TO A MALIGNANCY’ which the very high official was not sure even the White House could control ‘ANY LONGER. If the United States ever experiences an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government, it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon. The Agency represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.’”

As the article’s title indicates, throughout JFK’s time in office there was considerable disagreement and animosity between the president and his close associates in his cabinet (which included his brother Robert Kennedy, who was Attorney General at the time) on the one hand, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff [3] and the CIA on the other. This conflict had commenced almost immediately after Kennedy had assumed office, when, in April, 1961, he refused to provide U.S. military support for the ill-fated, CIA sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by some 1400 CIA trained anti-Castro Cuban rebels.[4] Feeling the CIA had misled and lied to him about the operation, the direct result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, besides being a huge PR flap and black eye for the new president and the nation, was that JFK fired it’s long time director Allen Dulles[5], along with Deputy CIA Director Charles Cabell and Deputy Director for Plans[6] Richard Bissell. Obviously this made no friends in the intelligence community for the young president.

In addition to this, Kennedy had bucked the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis [7] to invade Cuba, opting instead for the less overt and less threatening action of a naval blockade of the island. Throughout the crisis, despite extreme pressure from his military Chiefs, Kennedy nimbly sidestepped their demands and refused to allow himself to be boxed in by them. Ultimately, through the use of the blockade and deft back-channel negotiations, he was able avoid nuclear war with Russia and solve the crisis by promising never to invade Cuba and removing aging U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Russians dismantling and removing their missiles from Cuba. An index of the military Chief’s rage toward Kennedy after the crisis can be seen in the actions of Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay [8]. When the president called the Chiefs together to thank them for their role in the handling of the crisis, LeMay antagonistically told the president that the Cuban Crisis resolution was, “…the greatest defeat in our history. We should invade today!”

In the other crises faced by his administration, most notably Laos[9] in 1961 and ’62, and Berlin[10] in 1961, he likewise steered a course that avoided direct military intervention, even though it was being demanded of him by both the military and intelligence establishments. By 1963 it was Vietnam taking center stage as a crisis, and by May of that year Kennedy had made it known to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara [11]and to other key advisors that his intention was to get the U.S. out of that Southeast Asian country. Again, and despite the insistence of the Chiefs that he do the opposite, JFK formalized his intent to get the United States out of Vietnam when he approved and issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263, which called for stepping up the Vietnamization of the war and directed that the first 1000 of the 16,000 U.S. military personnel in country be brought home by the end of ’63. NSAM 263 was approved and issued in early October, 1963, just a few days after Arthur Krock wrote his article.

In light of all this, one should also know that the CIA, and it’s earlier World War II precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)[12], had been involved in Vietnam since the closing days of World War II; first to assist the French in re-claiming their pre-World War II colony (1945-1954); and later, after the French were defeated at the battle of Dien Bien Phu (May, 1954)[13], to establish the new nation of South Vietnam as a bulwark against supposed Communist expansionism in Southeast Asia.  Thus, by the time JFK took office in 1961 the U.S. had been actively involved in Vietnam for 16 years, initially (until 1954) as a French ally, and for the last 7 years as the sponsor state for the new nation of South Vietnam, which would never have come into existence without the CIA and assistance from the United States. In the fall of 1963, with the actions JFK was taking, the CIA was staring in the face the end of nearly two decades of Agency and U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

To understand the context in which Arthur Krock wrote his article it is important to understand the facts I have just related. One should also realize that by 1963 the CIA had perfected the arts of both assassination and overthrowing legally constituted foreign governments (Coup d’état). In the name of anti-Communism and under the direction of Allen Dulles, the CIA had overthrown the governments of Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), the Congo (1961) and Ecuador (1961); and had tampered in the affairs and elections of many others. It also was involved in the assassinations of Congolese nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba (1961)[14], and Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo (1961)[15]. Of course, the CIA’s notorious efforts to murder Cuban leader Fidel Castro using Mafia assets and resources are now well documented, as is the Agency’s project (MKUltra)[16] to develop the technology to be able to create programmed killers using a particularly vicious form of mind control known as PDH (Pain-Drug Hypnosis).  

Considering all this, is it really such a stretch to consider the possibility of a CIA/Military sponsored assassination and coup right here in the United States? JFK didn’t think so—he was well aware of the possibility, to the point that he provided major support to ensure that two Hollywood feature films were made to inform the American people and to serve as a warning to those who might perpetrate such an action. The two films, both directed by John Frankenheimer, are “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) and “Seven Days in May” (1964). “The Manchurian Candidate,”  starring Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Harvey, is a Cold War action thriller that looks as if it was taken right out of an MKUltra experiment. The film depicts a group of US Korean War soldiers who are captured during a battle and then subjected to mental programming of a PDH nature in Manchuria, after which they are allowed to return to their units under the guise of having escaped. The purpose of the mental programming is ultimately revealed when the soldiers return to the United States as “sleeper” agents for the communists. In an effort to facilitate a coup d’état in the United States the Lawrence Harvey character as a programmed assassin is to be used to shoot and kill the favored presidential candidate, thus opening the door for a communist “plant” to become president. With the Cold War in full bloom at the time, and with the film’s depiction of communist covert efforts to overthrow the United States, United Artists began to waver in its support of the production, fearing that it would exacerbate Cold War tensions. At that point, as a favor to his friend Sinatra, Kennedy recommended to United Artists that it go ahead with the film, which they did. Upon the film’s release JFK even conducted a private screening at the White House.

Kennedy was even more actively involved in ensuring that “Seven Days in May” was made. In the summer of 1962 a syndicated columnist named Fletcher Knebel sent the president an advance copy of a novel that he had co-written with another journalist named Charles W. Bailey Jr. The two men wrote the novel after Knebel had done an interview with Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay in which LeMay had been very critical of Kennedy’s handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Out of this interview came the idea for a story depicting an attempted right-wing coup in the United States. That story became the novel “Seven Days in May.” JFK rapidly read the novel and then shared it with his brother and other members of his cabinet. The book told the story of a right wing senior military officer, played in the movie by Burt Lancaster, who organizes a plot with like-minded officers to oust the liberal president (played by Frederick March), who has been trying to negotiate a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union. The uncanny parallels between the novel and JFK’s actual situation as president heavily resonated with him. Thus, when the book was optioned to make the movie, Kennedy bent over backwards to ensure it would happen. When scenes needed to be filmed on location in front of the White House that called for a riot in the street, Kennedy let Frankenheimer know that he and his family would go to their home in Hyannis Port for the weekend, to ensure there would be no security problems. Kennedy’s support of the film helped to ensure an all-star cast for the project. In addition to Lancaster and March the film starred Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner and Edmund O’Brien, with a script by none other than Rod Serling, of Twilight Zone fame. According to JFK’s press secretary Pierre Salinger, and as relayed to Frankenheimer himself, “Kennedy wanted ‘Seven Days in May’ made as a warning to the generals. The president said, ‘The first thing I’m going to tell my successor is, ‘Don’t trust the military men—even on military matters.’”

As time has gone on there has been significant disinformation spun by certain elements of the government and media to the effect that JFK was as much a Cold Warrior as the other politicians of the day, and that he was as responsible for U.S. presence in Vietnam and the Vietnam War as were the presidents before and after him—Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. It has even been stated that Johnson and Nixon were just carrying forward Kennedy’s Vietnam policy in escalating the war. JFK’s own comments made in interviews and speeches at various times during his presidency contribute to this impression—when it suited his purpose he could spout Cold War rhetoric with the best of them.

The fact is, however, that JFK was a shrewd politician, and in 1963 he knew he was walking a fine line in trying get the U.S. out of Vietnam. He knew that to pull it off he would need to be re-elected in 1964, and so he could not be completely overt and transparent about his plans. In private, though, he could be. In January of 1963 in a meeting in the Oval Office with Senator Mike Mansfield,[17] who had been advocating U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, Kennedy admitted to Mansfield that his call for a total military withdrawal was correct. “But,” Kennedy said, “I can’t do it until 1965—after I’m reelected.” A little later, after Mansfield had departed, Kennedy told his aide Kenny O’Donnell, “In 1965, I’ll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy Red Scare[18] in our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So, we had better make damned sure I am reelected.”

The truth of the matter is that Kennedy’s world view was significantly different from the Eisenhower, Nixon, Dulles brothers (Allen was CIA Director while John Foster Dulles [19] was Secretary of State under Eisenhower), CIA, Joint Chiefs and even Lyndon Johnson Cold Warriors of the day. This becomes apparent if one listens to or reads JFK’s speeches made across the 1950s when he was in the House and Senate. His words from this time provide clues to who he was and what he stood for. Like Franklin Roosevelt[20] before him, Kennedy was decidedly anti-colonial. He understood that Nationalism, as it was manifesting in the European colonies in Asia and Africa after World War II (one of which was Vietnam), was not necessarily communist inspired. Though definitely anti-communist himself, he realized that for the United States to assume that Nationalism and Communism were synonymous, and to therefore assume an opposition stance to the mounting nationalist movements around the globe against the European colonial powers, was surrendering the high ground of national liberation to the communists, and was a huge mistake. His comments reflect this. After returning from an around the world trip in 1951, during which he visited Vietnam to see for himself what was happening in the French war against the Vietnamese nationalists led by the communist Ho Chi Minh[21], Kennedy, in a speech before the House, said: “We cannot ally ourselves with the dreams of empire. We are allies with our Western European friends and we will aid and befriend them in the defense of their own countries. But to support and defend their colonial aspirations is another thing. That is their problem, not ours.” A little while later, after returning from a 1953 trip to Southeast Asia, he stated that the Vietnamese people needed to be granted their independence from the French, and that, “Any intervention by the United States is bound to be futile.”

It was a warning that fell on deaf ears within the Eisenhower administration and the U.S. government.

In 1954, shortly after France was defeated in Vietnam, another nationalist uprising started in a different French colony, this time in North Africa—Algeria. By 1956 the rebellion had grown into a vicious and especially cruel conflict, pitting the nationalist and mostly Moslem rebels on one side against the regular French military on the other. In an all-out effort to preserve their empire and suppress the rebellion, the French had committed over 400,000 troops to their north African colony; and, just as in Vietnam, were bogged down and getting nowhere. In the United States the Eisenhower-Dulles administration, with the agreement of the French government, regarded the Algerian war as an internal affair of the French empire, best left to the French to handle. The administration’s biggest concern was the preservation of good relations with France as a NATO[22] Cold War ally and a buffer against the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile JFK, who by 1956 was in the Senate and soon to become a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of its sub-committee on Africa, was in the midst of making a study of the problems of European colonialism and the nationalist uprisings taking place around the world, and specifically the Algerian conflict. Consequently, he was developing a refined view of the real difficulties and a more practical foreign policy approach to handling them; an approach more just, and more in alignment with American values and traditions. On July 2^nd, 1957, in a remarkable and controversial speech before the Senate, he made some of these views and proposed policies known.  The following are Kennedy’s opening remarks, quoted directly from the speech:

“Mr. President[23], the most powerful single force in the world today is neither Communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile—it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent. The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism—and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism. / Thus, the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free. On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the iron curtain.”

In the body of the speech Kennedy made the point that it would be in France’s, as well as NATO’s, best interest to grant Algeria its independence, while at the same time decrying the actual French proposals for resolving the conflict, all of which had the effect of leaving Algeria within the French empire, though supposedly with more rights and economic advantages for the Algerian people. He also criticized the U.S. for not living up to its rightful role of being an advocate for the freedom of all people; and for the shallow view in seeing France only in the light of the Cold War dispute with the Soviet Union and its role as a NATO ally, which, he argued, played right into the hands of the Soviets. He concluded the speech with a deeply felt appeal to the U.S. government to change its approach in the handling of the nationalist movements emerging, not just in Algeria, but all over the world; stated as follows:

“If we are to secure the friendship of the Arab, the African, and the Asian, we cannot hope to accomplish it by means of billion-dollar foreign aid programs. We cannot win their hearts by making them dependent on our handouts. Nor can we keep them free by selling them free enterprise, by describing the perils of Communism or the prosperity of the United States, or limiting our dealing to military pacts. No, the strength of our appeal to these key populations—and it is rightfully our appeal, and not that of the Communists—lies in our traditional and deeply felt philosophy of freedom and independence for all peoples everywhere.”

JFK’s Algeria speech had an electric effect on both sides of the Atlantic and drew massive press coverage, which in the U.S. was mostly negative. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, along with former Secretary of State Dean Acheson,[24] all criticized Kennedy’s speech, as did the French ambassador to the United States and other members of the French government. To the Algerian and other African nationalists, however, the speech was inspiring. One historian, Richard Mahoney,[25] described the impact on the Africans: “For African visitors in Washington, Kennedy became the man to meet. His dramatic speech on Algeria had coincided with the rush to independence in Black Africa…President Moktar Ould Daddah of Mauritania [26] remembered how thrilled he had been as a student in Paris to read the speech and how dramatic an impact it had made on all Africans living in Paris. Algerian guerillas encamped on the thickly forested slopes of the Atlas Mountains[27] received the news with a sense of amazement. An American correspondent who visited one camp later related to the senator his surprise at being interviewed by weary, grimy rebels on Kennedy’s chances for the presidency.”

As the Algerian guerillas referenced in Mahoney’s report seemed to realize, the other major effect caused by Kennedy’s Algeria speech is that it catapulted him squarely into the public eye as a possible future Democratic candidate for president. Eisenhower would be stepping down in 1960 after two terms, and with no incumbent president running for re-election it seemed an ideal time for JFK to throw his hat into the ring. In anticipation of exactly that, on January 1, 1960, in an article entitled “The Global Challenge,” the young Senator set forth his vision of how the United States should move forward in the world, both domestically and in foreign affairs. Concerning the many nationalist movements taking place in the world at the time, Kennedy wrote:

“If the title deeds of history applied, it is we, the American people, who should be marching at the head of this world-wide revolution, counselling it, helping it come to a healthy fruition. For whenever a local patriot emerges in Asia, the Middle East, Africa or Latin America to give form and focus to the forces of ferment, he most often quotes the great watchwords we once proclaimed to the world: the watchwords of personal and national liberty, of the natural equality of all souls, of the dignity of labor, of economic development broadly shared. Yet we have allowed the Communists to evict us from our rightful estate at the head of this world-wide revolution. We have been made to appear as the defenders of the status quo, while the Communists have portrayed themselves as the vanguard force, pointing the way to a better, brighter and braver order of life. / “Some say we are losing out for lack of a national purpose. We need to find, it is said, a new sense of great purpose. / “In my view the American purpose remains what it has been since the nation’s founding: to demonstrate that the organization of men and societies on the basis of human freedom is not an absurdity, but an enriching, ennobling, practical achievement. Our purpose is to demonstrate at home that this great continental democracy can solve its problems by the method of consent—by a system of freedom under law. With respect to the world outside, our purpose is not only to defend the integrity of this democratic society but also to help advance the cause of human freedom and world law—the universal cause of a just and lasting peace.”

As the decade of the 1950s merged into 1960 JFK was well positioned for a run at the presidency. His Senate speech on Algeria in 1957 had immeasurably raised his national visibility. What’s more, across the following two years, with the French conflict in Algeria dragging on with no end in sight, it appeared to many that he was correct in his criticisms, which raised his stature in the Democratic party. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for nearly 3 years, and because of his travels to Asia and Europe, he was knowledgeable in foreign affairs. As can be seen from his speeches and writings, and in contrast to the standard anti-communist Cold War approach of supporting our nation’s European NATO allies in their struggles with the nationalist uprisings in their colonies, he had developed a new approach; one that held great promise, not just for inhibiting communism, but also for endearing the United States to the developing nations of the world. This, Kennedy felt, was the surest way to halt the spread of communism; and to implement his ideas he needed the power of the presidency. Thus, on January 2^nd, 1960, one day after writing his “Global Challenge” article, he announced himself as a candidate for the nomination of the Democratic Party for president.

Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election over Richard Nixon in one of the closest votes in the nation’s history. As noted above, upon taking office he was almost immediately engulfed in the Cold War crises of the day. The communist insurgency in the Southeast Asian country of Laos was on his plate from the get-go, only to be interrupted by the Cuban Bay of Pigs disaster in April of 1961. Shortly after the Bay of Pigs, while JFK was still reeling from the ramifications of it all, an attempted coup took place against French president Charles de Gaulle.[28] The coup originated from right-wing French generals in Algeria who were opposed to the de Gaulle government’s secret negotiations with the Algerian rebels in the direction of at last granting independence to the French colony. Unbeknownst to JFK the French coup was partially CIA inspired. In their classic Cold War interpretation, the Agency was concerned that Algerian independence would result in a Soviet base in north Africa, as well as Soviet control of Algerian oil and natural gas resources. Convinced that the CIA was involved in the coup, de Gaulle, who had a long history of opposition to the American intelligence agency and to Alan Dulles himself, through his government let his suspicions be known to the French press. The resultant flap broadsided JFK at a most inopportune time, while he was still trying to negotiate the Bay of Pigs fall-out, and just one month before a planned state visit to France. In response Kennedy telephoned the French ambassador,Hervé Alphand,[29] in Washington and told him that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s government and that the U.S. was not involved in the coup. But, Kennedy added, he could not vouch for his own intelligence agency: “The CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine,” Kennedy told Alphand, “that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”

As noted at the outset of this piece, Arthur Krock’s article speculating on the possibility of a CIA sponsored coup in the United States was published in the New York Times on October 3, 1963. Fifty days later JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Was his killing a coup d’état? Based on the data included in this writing, in which can be found ample reason and motive for having him removed, the question is a reasonable one. Clearly, John Kennedy was an anti-war president. Given every opportunity in the crises he faced to resort to war, despite the massive pressure brought to bear to force his hand, he defied that option every time. A few months before Dallas, in June 1963, he had delivered his “Peace Speech,”[30] in which he encouraged Americans to re-evaluate their attitudes towards the Soviet Union and towards the subject of “Peace” itself. Following the speech Kennedy was able to successfully negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union and, possibly even more impressive, through a sustained lobbying effort got the Cold War oriented Senate to approve it. What would be next, his opponents wondered—ending the Cold War itself? His foreign policy was anti-colonial and for self-determination of the emerging third world; a stance that put him at odds with the Cold Warriors in his military and intelligence establishments. Perhaps most importantly he was going to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Throw in the fact that he was almost certain to be re-elected in 1964 and you can see why, from the military and CIA Cold War perspective, he had to go.

If you are one of those who believe there was no conspiracy involved in Kennedy’s murder; if you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald[31] as a crazed, lone nut assassin acted alone in killing the president, as the Warren Report concludes; then you have no reason to ask why he was killed—the assassination in that circumstance is nothing more than an accident of history; a case of bad timing.

If, however, one studies the facts of the assassination, as I and many others have, and concludes for oneself that there must have been a conspiracy, as I and many others believe the evidence indicates, then it becomes incumbent upon us to ask, and to find out, why he was killed. The Warren Report notwithstanding, the colossal failure of the U.S. Government and justice system to answer this question satisfactorily only lends credence to the notion that the truth has been covered up. Could that “truth” be that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy of right-wing, hard line, Cold Warrior elements within his own government, such as those described in this article? Could that “truth” show that November 22^nd, 1963, marks the date that the National Security establishment came “full on” in this country? The date coincidence[32] seems to indicate that, if not that, something close to that happened. Upon JFK’s removal, almost immediately the Vietnam War was ramped up into the conflagration it became, and our nation has not been the same since. Since then, despite the supposed end of the Cold War, the United States has been in a near constant state of war and preparation for war. To whose benefit?

I believe that the failure of the official organs of government to deliver to us the truth of what happened to JFK (and to this you can add the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy as well)[33] does not absolve us of our individual responsibilities as citizens in divining that truth. This country is, after all, supposed to be OUR Democratic Republic. Our government should be our servant and not our oppressor. It shouldn’t be the arbiter, of what “we the people” can or cannot know, even decades after the fact, based on the dubious concept of “national security.” Declared so by whom? For what reason? All too often the label “national security” is and has been used to cloak from the American people what REALLY happened; what is REALLY going on—protecting only the intelligence and national security establishment itself. The question once again is, “Why?”

In his “Farewell to the Nation” address, delivered on 17 January, 1961, a few days before JFK took office, President Eisenhower, who was just completing two terms as president and a half-century of military and government service, issued this warning to the American people:

“Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. / Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. / This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. / In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. / We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

If anyone was in a position to issue such a warning to Americans, it was Eisenhower. A West Point graduate (1915), Eisenhower served in the highest levels of the U.S. Army for the next 37 years. During World War I he commanded a unit training tank crews, but before World War II (which for the U.S was 1941-1945) was over had risen to the level of Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, planning and executing the Allied invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Europe. From 1945-48 he was the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, and from 1951-1952 was Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe—his last military post before announcing his candidacy for president. Eisenhower knew and understood how the government and military worked both before and after the development of the atom bomb; before and after the creation of the CIA and the National Security Agency; and before and after the advent of the Cold War. As his speech indicates, he saw what was happening, to the point that he felt compelled to issue his warning.

Personally, I think we blew it. Too few Americans were listening to, or even understood what Eisenhower was saying. Today most Americans were not even alive prior to the advent of the National Security apparatus in this country. It is all they have ever known, and so do not have Eisenhower’s perspective; and therefore have nothing in their own experience to compare the existing situation to. Back in the 1970’s we had our chances with two major inquiries[34] into the role of the CIA across the 50s and 60s, and these uncovered a lot of information about assassination plots, Cuba, MKUltra and other dirty dealings by the Agency. In the late 70s the House Select Committee on Assassinations [35]was formed by Congress and it conducted its investigations, coming up a with a lot more leads and information, to the point that in its final report it concluded that JFK was most likely killed by a conspiracy. In the end, however, the net effect of these investigations amounted to nothing. You would think that a finding like that of the House Select Committee, that JFK was most likely the target of a conspiracy, would be followed up on by the Justice Department with a further investigation, Grand Juries and indictments; but no such luck. The same was true with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, despite all the evidence of conspiracies in those murders. Back in the 70s some of the killers and conspirators were still alive, and we had a shot at getting the truth—and some convictions. Had we done so we could have cleared ourselves of the blight that still rots away at the core of the American soul. We should have insisted on action; but we didn’t—and that is our huge failure. [36] It’s a failure we are still paying for every day that goes by.

As Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

It is in the spirit of Jefferson’s words that I present to you this article. Please understand that the data I have presented here is just that—data. To my knowledge it is factual, or I would not have published it in this post. Likewise, the conclusions I have presented here are MY conclusions. To me they are logical extensions from the facts. I am not asking that you agree with my conclusions; I would only ask that you be challenged enough to do your own due diligence.

I hope you do, my friends.

The future of our country, and the world, depends on it.

Copyright © 2019

By Mark Arnold

All Rights Reserved

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[1] Why England Slept is the published version of a thesis written by John F. Kennedy while in his senior year at Harvard College. Published in 1940, Kennedy’s book examines the failures of the British government to take steps to prevent World War II, and its initial lack of response to Adolf Hitler’s threats of war.

[2] The Scripps Howard News Service, founded in 1917, supplied newspaper clients with Washington coverage and news from around the world, as well as photos, commentary and editorial cartoons. The operation was a remnant of a once-thriving era of wire services and news agencies, when an insatiable newspaper industry had numerous publications in every city and multiple editions per day. In an age when internet news is typically free, newspaper consolidation, declining advertising sales and shrinking circulation have crimped demand for wire copy. Scripps-Howard shut down its operations at the end of 2013

[3] The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a body of senior uniformed leaders in the United States Department of Defense which advises the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council on military matters. It is comprised of the Military Service Chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, one of which is appointed Chairman and another Vice Chairman. Their offices are in the Pentagon.  

[4] On January 1, 1959, a young Cuban nationalist named Fidel Castro (1926-2016) drove his guerilla army into Havana and overthrew General Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973), the nation’s American-backed dictator. For the next two years, Eisenhower administration officials at the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) attempted to push the left-leaning Castro from power. Their master plan to accomplish this, officially approved by President Eisenhower in March of 1960, was to equip and train a brigade of native Cubans who were opposed to Castro’s revolution and then send them back into Cuba to take the island back from Castro. There landing zone was to be at a shallow bay on Cuba’s southern shore—the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy inherited this operation, which had been on-going for months, when he took office in January of 1961. Wary of any operation that could draw the U.S. into a conflict with the Soviet Union, Kennedy insisted that the operation not involve any regular U.S. military units and repeatedly informed the CIA and military of this condition. Finally, in April 1961, the full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained anti-Castro Cubans was launched. However, the invasion did not go well. Planned air strikes to take Castro’s small air force out while still on the ground were cancelled at the last moment, and those few surviving planes, along with the fact that Castro’s troops badly outnumbered the invaders, were a huge advantage for Castro’s forces. With the invasion not going well the CIA and military leaders tried to pressure Kennedy into allowing the Navy to assist the rebels, which Kennedy flatly refused to do. Within 24 hours Castro’s forces easily defeated the invaders, killing over 100 of them and taking 1200 prisoners. The Bay of Pigs operation was a massive disaster for the U.S. in every way possible, but for President Kennedy was a rude lesson on the liability of trusting the advice of the CIA and military—a lesson he never forgot.

[5] Born in 1893 and educated at Princeton University, Allen Dulles began his intelligence career rather humbly in 1916 when he was stationed as a diplomat in Bern, Switzerland collecting political data for the State Department on Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I. By the late 1920’s he was working with his older brother John Foster Dulles (who became Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower in the ‘50s) as a lawyer and international finance specialist for Sullivan and Cromwell, a Wall Street law firm in New York. Across the 1930s he and his brother worked with top Nazi industrialists and played a major role in fostering U.S.-Nazi corporate relations. He was a legal counsel for Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, the infamous Nazi chemical giant I.G. Farben, (the producer of the poison gas used in the extermination of the Jews.) as well as banks and financial institutions established by German steel magnate and Nazi supporter August Thyssen. In 1933 both Dulles brothers attended a meeting with Adolph Hitler in Germany at which German industrialists pledged to support Hitler in exchange for Hitler’s promise to suppress the German labor unions. They encouraged their Western clients to contribute to the Nazi party and war machine and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Dulles brothers by their actions significantly helped Hitler and the Nazis attain power and build up their war machine once they were in power. They had many communication lines into the Nazi regime. When the U.S. entered WWII, Dulles became the Bern (Switzerland) station chief for the wartime Office of Strategic Services. At one point, none other than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suspected Dulles of being a traitor due to his connections to Nazi linked corporations. After the war was over Dulles was instrumental in helping Nazi corporations that had used slave labor to produce Nazi war materials evade prosecution. He and his brother were also able to prevent the prosecution Nazis who were known mass killers and assisted in arranging their flight from Germany and Europe to the U.S. or South America. He helped the Nazi intelligence apparatus turn over its assets to the West specifically negotiating the surrender of Nazi General Reinhard Gelen, the top German spymaster dealing with Russia and the eastern front. Gelen brought with him his corp of 350 or so Nazi intelligence operatives and they all proceeded to go to work for the OSS and ultimately the CIA under Dulles. Gelen’s group was added to as other Nazi’s found their way to him and ultimately numbered as high as 4,000, being mostly former German army and SS officers.  By the early 50s, when Dulles assumed the post of director of the CIA, he was well connected in the both the intelligence and international banking fields. Through the 1950’s under the Eisenhower Administration he shepherded the CIA away from merely an intelligence coordination office into a nearly autonomous covert operations force, beyond the control of the President, and the likes of which the country had never seen. That was the man running the CIA at the time Kennedy came into office.

[6] The euphemistic title Deputy Director for Plans (now called Director of Operations) is given to the CIA officer responsible for the evaluation and coordination of covert operations in the U.S. intelligence community. The Bay of Pigs was supposed to be one such operation, but in the end was far too big and relied too much on the military to be considered covert.

[7] Of the many crises confronted by John Kennedy during his time in office the Cuban Missile Crisis was the most significant, both for the nation and in terms of the effect it had on him personally. Never before or since has the nation come so close to nuclear war. The crisis was a 13-day confrontation in mid-October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union initiated by the American discovery of Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba. In defiance of his military advisers, JFK handled the situation through implementing a naval blockade of Cuba, along with back-channel negotiations, and successfully kept the nation and world from war.

[8] Curtis LeMay (1906-1990) fashioned a remarkable, if somewhat controversial career in the Air Force. He had commanded the B-29 firebombing raids over Tokyo during WW II that are estimated to have killed between 250,000 and 500,000 civilians. He once commented that if the Japanese won the war he would be tried for war crimes. He also helped run the Berlin airlift in 1948 and later in 1948 he took over the Strategic Air Command (SAC). Over the next nine years LeMay presided over its emergence as the most massive jet powered, nuclear bomber force in the world with over 2000 jet bombers, many of them B-52s. In 1951 he became the youngest four-star general in the U.S. Military since Ulysses Grant in the Civil War. He became Chief of Staff of the Air Force in 1961. Noted for his right wing, anti-communist views, the cigar smoking LeMay could be both intimidating and belligerent in expressing them. 

[9] For a full description of the Laos Crisis please read two posts published earlier on this blog site; “Laos-The Vietnam that Never Was” and “The Crisis in Laos.” They can be found in the Archives section at fromanativeson.com

[10] In the 1950s and 60s the divided city of Berlin in East Germany was considered by both the U.S. and the Soviets to be the major contention point of the Cold War, and the place World War III was most likely to start. For the full story of the Berlin Crisis please read “Confrontation in Berlin”, found in the Archives section at fromanativeson.com

[11] Robert Strange McNamara (June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. After Kennedy’s assassination under Lyndon Johnson he played a major role in escalating the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam War.

[12] The “Office of Strategic Services” (OSS) was the United States World War II intelligence agency formed in 1942 to fill the US need for gathering and coordinating intelligence and conducting secret operations during the war. It was formed with the assistance of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI 6, and was patterned after it. Though the OSS was disbanded following World War II many of its operatives formed the nucleus of what would become the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) once it was created in 1947.

[13] The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the decisive engagement in the first Indochina War (1946–54). After French forces occupied the Dien Bien Phu valley in late 1953, Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap amassed troops and placed heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French camp. Boosted by Chinese aid, Giap mounted assaults on the opposition’s strong points beginning in March 1954, eliminating use of the French airfield. Viet Minh forces overran the base in early May, prompting the French government to seek an end to the fighting with the signing of the Geneva Accords of 1954.

[14] Patrice Émery Lumumba (1925-1961) was a Congolese politician and independence leader who served as the first Prime Minister of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo from June until September 1960. He played a significant role in the transformation of the Congo from a colony of Belgium into an independent republic. The CIA saw him as a communist and a threat to their interests in Africa, and is alleged to have tried to assassinate him. The local station chief scuttled the plan, but was clearly in on some kind of assassination attempt. In 1960, Lumumba was deposed by rivals in the government, severely beaten and then executed by a firing squad. Decades later, declassified documents confirmed the CIA’s involvement in plots to kill him. One of these involved a top Agency scientist who sent to the Congo to poison the Congolese leader, but for whatever reason never accomplished it. So, what was the role of the C.I.A. in Lumumba’s death? The C.I.A. has stated that it had no hand in Lumumba’s murder. But a review of the evidence suggests that over a period of four months American officials at the Embassy and the C.I.A. station in Leopoldville encouraged Lumumba’s Congolese opponents to eliminate him before he turned the tables on them and invited the Russians back to the Congo. These officials were following a policy that had been set the previous summer, when Allen Dulles compared Lumumba to Fidel Castro and President Eisenhower agreed he was a threat to world peace. They were to get rid of Lumumba one way or another. If murder ordered by the United States Government and carried out by a C.I.A.-hired assassin was acceptable, then murder carried out by Lumumba’s Congolese opponents, with the help of Belgian mercenaries, was not going to offend anyone’s sensibilities. (from the NY Times, Aug 2, 1981)

[15] Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina (1891-1961), nicknamed El Jefe, was a Dominican politician, soldier and dictator, who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. Trujillo was notorious for his cruelty and arbitrary use of power, killing 10s of thousands during his suppressive reign. He remained in power with U.S. support for decades, but by 1960 he had alienated himself from many Latin American nations due to his policies. After Trujillo’s agents attempted to assassinate Venezuela’s President Rómulo Betancourt in June of 1960, President Eisenhower authorized the initiation of plans to have him removed. On May 30, 1961 Trujillo was killed by a group of assassins using CIA provided weapons

[16] MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the Agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world. The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. Sometimes the test subjects knew they were participating in a study—but at other times, they had no idea, even when the hallucinogens started taking effect. Many of the tests were conducted at universities, hospitals or prisons in the United States and Canada. Most of these took place between 1953 and 1964, but it’s not clear how many people were involved in the tests—the Agency kept notoriously poor records and destroyed most MK-Ultra documents when the program was officially halted in 1973.

[17] Michael Joseph Mansfield (1903-2001) was an American politician and diplomat. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a U.S. Representative (1943-1953) and a U.S. Senator (1953-1977) from Montana. He was the longest-serving Senate Majority Leader, serving from 1961–1977. When it came to the Vietnam War, Mansfield was an early voice of caution, opposed to involving the U.S. military in a war he thought could not be won.

[18] Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) was an ardent anti-communist elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Wisconsin in 1946. In 1950 he publicly charged that 205 communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department. Reelected in 1952, he became chair of the Senate’s subcommittee on investigations, and for the next two years he investigated various government departments and questioned innumerable witnesses, resulting in what would be known as the Red Scare. A corresponding Lavender Scare was also directed at LGBT federal employees, causing scores of citizens to lose their jobs. After a televised hearing in which he was discredited and condemned by Congress, McCarthy fell out of the spotlight. He died on May 2, 1957.

[19] John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) was a powerful U.S. secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the older brother of Allen Dulles, CIA director from 1953-1961. Born into a family of statesmen, Dulles became an international lawyer for the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, and attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 as part of the Reparations Commission and Economic Council. He negotiated the Japanese peace treaty ending the U.S. occupation of Japan in the early 1950s as a consultant to President Harry S. Truman, but later became a vocal critic of the Truman administration’s foreign policy. Named secretary of state in 1953 by Eisenhower, Dulles was known for a strong stance against communism and his management of the crises of Suez, Indochina and Lebanon. He and his brother Allen were instrumental in involving the United States in Vietnam following the French defeat in 1954.

[20] Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945), often referred to by his initials (FDR) and crippled by polio, was in his second term as governor of New York when he was elected as the nation’s 32nd president in 1932. With the country mired in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt immediately acted to restore public confidence, proclaiming a bank holiday and speaking directly to the public in a series of radio broadcasts or “fireside chats.” His ambitious slate of New Deal programs and reforms redefined the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans. Reelected by comfortable margins in 1936, 1940 and 1944, FDR led the United States from isolationism to victory over Nazi Germany and its allies in World War II. Though his ardent anti-colonial views were at odds with Winston Churchill (English Prime Minister during World War II), he nevertheless spearheaded the successful wartime alliance between Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and helped lay the groundwork for the post-war peace organization that would become the United Nations. The only American president in history to be elected four times, Roosevelt died in office in April 1945.

[21] Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) first emerged as an outspoken voice for Vietnamese independence while living as a young man in France during World War I. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, he joined the Communist Party and traveled to the Soviet Union. He helped found the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930 and the League for the Independence of Vietnam, or Viet Minh, in 1941, initially fighting the Japanese, who had invaded Vietnam during World War II. At World War II’s end, Viet Minh forces seized the northern Vietnamese city of Hanoi and declared a Democratic State of Vietnam with Ho as president. Known as “Uncle Ho,” he became the inspirational leader of the Viet Minh and the Vietnamese people during their war for independence against the French, which ended in 1954 with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The 1954 Geneva accords ending that war temporarily divided the nation at the 17^th parallel into a northern section, controlled by Ho and the Viet Minh, and a southern section, in which the French forces and their allies gathered in preparation to turn over their administrative functions and vacate the country. The 1954 Accords called for a nationwide election in Vietnam to take place in 1956 that would allow the Vietnamese people to choose the form of government they wanted and to reunite the nation. Realizing that Ho Chi Minh would win such an election easily, the U.S. government sent a mission to southern Vietnam to establish there a new country, South Vietnam, that would be an anti-communist client state of the U. S., an action that subverted the Geneva agreement and led directly to the American Vietnam War. For the next 15 years, until his death in 1969, Ho Chi Minh became the symbol of Vietnam’s struggle for unification during a long and costly conflict with the strongly anti-Communist regime in South Vietnam and its powerful ally, the United States.

[22] The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries. The organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on 4 April 1949. Initially established as a block to Soviet expansionism in Europe following World War II, NATO’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.

[23] “Mr. President” for a Senator on the Senate floor is used when the Senator is addressing the person presiding over the Senate at the time. In the U.S. Senate this is usually the Vice President of the country. The term is not generally used except on the floor of the Senate. The term “Mr. President” for the President of the United States is used when addressing the President of the United States.

[24] Dean Gooderham Acheson (1893-1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As United States Secretary of State in the administration of President Harry S Truman from 1949 to 1953, he played a central role in defining American foreign policy during the Cold War.

[25] Richard Mahoney (1951-) currently the director of the School for Public and International Affairs at North Carolina State University, is the author of three books, two of which are about the Kennedy administration: JFK: Ordeal in Africa (1983) and Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (1999). His latest book is entitled Getting Away with Murder: The Real Story Behind American Taliban John Walker Lindh and What the U.S. Government Had to Hide (2004). Mahoney has also authored numerous articles and monographs on presidential history, foreign policy, international trade, and political risk.

[26] Moktar Ould Daddah (1924-2003) was the President of Mauritania, a country in northwest Africa that was part of the French empire, from 1960, when his country gained its independence from France, to 1978, when he was deposed in a military coup d’etat. Before being ousted in the coup he was re-elected to the presidency three times.

[27] The Atlas Mountains stretch approximately 1,600 miles (2,500 kilometers) across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia; separating the coastlines of the Mediterranean and Atlantic from the Sahara Desert. The Atlas are actually a series of ranges separated by high plateaus. The Algerian revolt against France started amongst people living in one of the Atlas ranges in that country, the mountains providing shelter for the rebels.

[28] Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (1890-1970) was a French army officer and statesman who led the French Resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to reestablish democracy in France, which he accomplished. However, the French government, known as the Fourth Republic, began to crumble in the late 1950s, and de Gaulle once again returned to public service to help his country. He helped form the country’s next government, becoming its president in January 1959. Establishing France’s Fifth Republic, de Gaulle dedicated himself to improving the country’s economic situation and maintaining its independence. He sought to keep France separate from the two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union. To show France’s military relevance, de Gaulle successfully campaigned for the country to press on with its nuclear weapons program. De Gaulle was not afraid to make controversial decisions. After coping with uprisings in Algeria for years, he helped the French colony achieve independence in 1962. This move was not widely popular at the time. De Gaulle supported the idea of a united Europe, but he wanted Europe to be free from the superpowers’ influences. He fought to keep Britain out of the European Economic Community because of its close ties to the United States. In 1966, de Gaulle also pulled his country’s forces out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), acting again on his concerns with the United States. To some, de Gaulle came off as anti-American. Though he may have been, to some extent, his actions seemed to truly reflect his deep nationalistic views. Sometimes inflexible and intractable, de Gaulle nearly saw his government toppled by student and worker protests in 1968. He managed to restore order to the country, but left power soon after, following a battle over political and economic reforms. In April 1969, de Gaulle resigned from the presidency.

[29] Hervé Alphand (1907- 1994) was a French diplomat and close aid of Charles de Gaulle, going all the way back to World War II. Alphand was the French ambassador to the United States, from 1956 to 1965 and despite the sometimes testy relations with the U.S. he got on well with the Kennedy administration, often holding lavish receptions for JFK and his wife.

[30] Considered by many to be JFK’s best speech ever, and one of the greatest by an American president in the 20^th century, Kennedy’s Peace Speech, delivered on June 10^th, 1963 during commencement exercises at American University in Washington DC, was stunning because of its radical departure from the Cold War rhetoric of the day. Incredibly well written and eloquent, Kennedy called upon the American people to reevaluate their attitudes towards both the subject of “Peace” and the Soviet Union. It was during this speech that he made the famous statement, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.” A few weeks after the speech the United States and the Soviet Union resumed negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in the sea, and in outer space, which negotiations resulted at last in the Limited Test Ban Treaty, ratified by the US Senate on September 24^th, 1963.

[31] Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) was the accused assassin of President Kennedy, arrested in a movie theatre by Dallas police shortly after Kennedy was murdered in Dealey Plaza on November 22^nd, 1963. During his short time in the custody of the Dallas police he steadfastly maintained that he hadn’t shot anyone, claiming that he was “just a patsy.” Oswald never got to present his case in court because less than 48 hours later he too was shot and killed on national TV while in the custody of numerous Dallas police by a Dallas nightclub owner with Mafia connections named Jack Ruby. Had Oswald lived and actually gone to trial, with a competent defense attorney he likely would have been acquitted of killing the president. There was no eyewitness to him shooting at the president and nitrate tests indicated he had not fired a weapon that day. The supposed murder weapon was an old, World War II vintage Italian, bolt-action rifle with a mis-aligned scope, and Oswald was known to be a sub-standard marksman. There were many other factors, too many to state here, that cast doubt on Oswald’s guilt as Kennedy’s assassin. In addition Oswald had known contacts with both the FBI and the CIA. Most likely he was manipulated by his intelligence contacts into the position of being the patsy, a fact he realized, but a little too late.

[32] In the art of investigation the principle of “date coincidence” is critically important. If you were running a business and noticed that your company’s income was declining, the first question to ask is “when did the decline start?” By establishing WHEN the decline started you can then isolate the changes that happened right before that that have resulted in declining income, and remedy them. The “date coincidence” of JFK’s murder to the escalation of the Vietnam War is a classic example of this.

[33] The assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, which took place a few months apart in the spring of 1968, bear striking resemblance to JFK’s murder, in that they both were supposedly carried out by lone, mentally unbalanced assassins with no conspiracy involved; yet in both cases there is significant evidence that points to exactly that. In Robert Kennedy’s murder the autopsy revealed that he was killed by a gunshot wound right behind his right ear from point blank range, yet Sirhan Sirhan, the supposed assassin, was in front of Kennedy the whole time. Sirhan’s weapon was an 8 shot .22 caliber pistol, yet there is evidence that anywhere from 9 to 13 shots were fired that day. In MLK’s case, his accused assassin, James Earl Ray, after initially admitting to the murder, a short while later claimed that he was set up by man he only knew as “Raoul”, who directed him to buy the rifle and to rent the room from which Ray supposedly shot King. Ray was convicted of murdering King and spent nearly 30 years in prison before dying in 1998. In 1993 a strange element came out in King’s killing. A man named Lloyd Jowers, who owned the restaurant below the room Ray had rented at the time King was killed, came forward and acknowledged that he was part of the plot against MLK, which involved the mysterious Raoul, just as Ray had stated. After Ray had died the King family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jowers. In a 4 week trial in Memphis a jury heard testimony from over 70 witnesses, ultimately finding for the King family and concluding that King was most likely killed by a conspiracy involving Jowers and Raoul, but not Ray.  

[34] The United States President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, Vice President Nelson Rockefeller Chairman, was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States. The Rockefeller Commission issued a single report in 1975, which delineated some CIA abuses including mail opening and surveillance of domestic dissident groups. It also conducted a narrow study of issues relating to the JFK assassination, specifically the backward head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown publicly in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas. (by 1975 both Hunt and Sturgis had become famous because of their roles in the Watergate scandal. In light of evidence developed since then, and the admissions of Hunt and Sturgis themselves, they both also played roles in the JFK killing.) The Rockefeller Report, seen by many as a “whitewash,” was superceded almost immediately by the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church (Democrat, Idaho) The Church Committee’s work exceeded the Rockefeller Commission by far in scope and depth and resulted in a much larger expose of abuses by the CIA and other elements of the U.S. intelligence community, including the FBI and even the IRS.

[35] In 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook reinvestigations of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1979, a single Report and twelve volumes of appendices on each assassination were published by the Congress. In the JFK case, the HSCA found that there was a “probable conspiracy,” though it was unable to determine the nature of that conspiracy or its other participants (besides Oswald). This finding was based in part on acoustics evidence from a tape purported to record the shots, but was also based on other evidence including an investigation of Ruby’s underworld connections. The acoustics evidence was disputed by a panel of scientists, but that “debunking” has itself come under attack recently.

[36] To this day the only actual trial conducted addressing the assassination of JFK was that brought about by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.  On March 1, 1967, following significant investigation, Garrison arrested and charged New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of several others. Garrison opened the case as the result of his routine responsibility as DA, to investigate and prosecute crimes occurring within his jurisdiction. After reading the Warren Report and observing for himself what a slipshod investigation it was, Garrison decided to follow up on some leads he had encountered immediately after JFK was killed regarding a man named David Ferrie and his association with Lee Harvey Oswald. Ferrie lived in New Orleans and was brought in for an interview by Garrison within a day or so after the assassination. After the interview Garrison turned Ferrie over to the FBI for further investigation, but the FBI immediately released him, issuing a statement stating the found no evidence that Ferrie was involved in Kennedy’s murder. Trusting the FBI at the time (1963), Garrison dropped his investigation, only to resume it 3 years later after reading the Warren Report. Garrison’s investigation, and the harassment he was subjected to by the CIA, the FBI and their assets in the media, stand as a cautionary tale to anyone who takes on the task of getting to the truth. In the end the jury acquitted Clay Shaw of the charges, but did agree that Garrison had proved the existence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s killing.