Preface
November of this year will mark the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event that was a watershed moment for our nation; the effects of which reverberate still. With my own reading and research I have long since demonstrated to my own satisfaction that JFK was killed as the result of a conspiracy, involving elements of our own U.S. national security establishment. There is a great deal of evidence to support this conclusion, much of which is completely unknown to many Americans, so, I decided to write this series of articles; to illuminate this evidence and make people aware of it. Understanding what happened to JFK definitely requires a grasp of the related circumstances and context and it is the purpose of this Introduction to provide that for you. At over 5000 words, it is longer than my usual post, but this was required, as that is what it took to communicate the essential information. I have tried to make it as simple as possible, and have footnoted people and events to provide more information for you. With that Preface understood, here is the introduction to the JFK Evidence Series. I hope you learn from it and share it with others. MA
Conspiracy Theories
With the fact of my admission to believing there was a conspiracy involved in the killing of President Kennedy, I realize that I am open to the charge of being a “conspiracy theorist.” To me a more accurate moniker would be “conspiracy realist.” Conspiracies are nothing new in history, and have long been potent factors in determining the course of political affairs. Some of the fairly recent conspiracies in 20th century history having large effects on what was to come include:
*The Reichstag Fire, in which the German Parliament building was destroyed in 1933; used by Hitler to consolidate his power. Hitler’s henchmen blamed the fire on a hapless communist, who they claimed was the lone arson. In reality, the fire was almost certainly set by Hitler’s operatives; a classic “false flag”[1] operation to justify the emergency measures that granted Hitler dictatorial powers.
General Smedley Butler
*Also in 1933, what is known as the “Business Plot,” (also called the “Wall Street Putsch” or “White House Putsch,”)[2] was a conspiratorial coup attempt designed to remove President Franklin Roosevelt from office. The conspiracy was revealed by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler[3] in testimony under oath before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1934. Butler testified that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup against FDR. Although no one was prosecuted, the congressional committee final report said, “there is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient.”
*As dramatized in the novel “The Day of the Jackal,” and in the movie by the same name, in 1962 French President Charles De Gaulle was the target of an assassination attempt that nearly succeeded, when the limousine in which he and his wife were riding was attacked by machine gun fire. It was later proven that the assassination attempt was orchestrated by right wing French military and para- military groups angered over De Gaulle’s policy toward the French colony of Algeria. (De Gaulle was instrumental in ensuring Algeria was granted independence, which took place in July of 1962, a month before the assassination attempt.) It’s interesting to note that JFK sent De Gaulle a message following the assassination attempt on the French leader, stating that he supported De Gaulle’s administration, but that he could not vouch for his own CIA—a stunning admission. [4]
*In August of 1964, in what is now called the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident, the captain of the U.S. Destroyer Maddox cabled to his superiors that his vessel had been attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Later that day the captain cabled information expressing grave doubts that the attack had actually taken place. Nevertheless, President Lyndon Johnson and officers of his administration used the “attack that never happened” to wrest the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution” from Congress, which authorized Johnson to launch a massive retaliatory bombing campaign against North Vietnam; the first large escalation of the Vietnam War following Kennedy’s murder. (For a complete explanation of the Gulf of Tonkin incident please read “Deceit in High Places-The Real Story of the Gulf of Tonkin,” linked here)
*In a now famous incident, and one of the most obvious examples of a conspiracy, in 1972 a group of covert operatives, headed by former CIA officer Howard Hunt and involving former CIA contract agents Frank Sturgis and Bernard Barker, broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office complex in Washington DC. Operating at the behest of officers in the Richard Nixon White House, they were caught in the act when an alert security guard noticed a door with its latching mechanism taped down so the door wouldn’t lock. The security guard called the police, and the resulting scandal ultimately brought about the downfall of President Richard Nixon. In this instance, there were two conspiracies, the covert operation to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee in the first place, AND the conspiracy to cover up the burglars’ connection to the White House afterwards.
*In the Iran-Contra scandal, between 1981 and 1986, senior Reagan administration officials conspired to facilitate the sale of arms to Iran, which was illegal, as Iran was the subject of an arms embargo. The administration officials hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to support the Contras, a right-wing rebel group in Nicaragua, funding for which had not been authorized by Congress. The evidence of this was heard in Congressional hearings in 1987 and since has been known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
There are, in addition to the above, many more examples of conspiracies I could cite, perhaps recently including the attempts of Anthony Fauci and cohorts to cover up NIH funding of the gain-of-function corona virus research in Wuhan and subsequent lab leak that resulted in a world-wide pandemic. As well, the current “Russia-gate” scandal, in which President Trump is accused of collaboration with the Kremlin in influencing the 2016 election, something which the recently released Durham Report[5] states did not warrant the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump and his supposed Russian connections. Whether Trump did collaborate with the Russians, or he did not but the media and other agencies were manipulated to show he did, either way you have a conspiracy. Regardless, I am only pointing out these examples to illustrate how common—I guess you could say “normal”—such things are. Indeed, Franklin Roosevelt, in referring to such matters, once commented:
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Considering how often it occurs that “conspiracy theories” turn out to be “conspiracy facts,” the term’s unwarranted use as a pejorative by those who should know better speaks more to their intent to discredit those they consider threatening than it does to their intent to be factual.
In proving a conspiracy, one should realize that circumstantial evidence will often provide the best indication of it; a fact noted by Special Judge Advocate John Bingham[6] over 150 years ago in writing about the plot to assassinate President Lincoln:
“A conspiracy is rarely, if ever, proved by positive testimony,” Bingham wrote. “Unless one of the original conspirators betrays his companions and gives evidence against them, their guilt can be proved only by circumstantial evidence. It is said by some writers on evidence that such circumstances are stronger than positive proof. A witness swearing positively may misrepresent the facts or swear falsely, but the circumstances can’t lie.”
Such is the case with Kennedy’s murder. Some of the strongest evidence indicating a conspiracy in his assassination lies in its circumstances; not in what was done that day, but in what wasn’t; not in who should have been in Dealey Plaza immediately after the shooting, but who should not have been. An example is the fact that many of the primary presidential protection protocols were abandoned that day; windows in buildings along the motorcade route left open, especially the Book Depository; a motorcade route chosen that included two sharp turns among tall buildings, forcing Kennedy’s limousine to a near standstill to negotiate the turns (the crossfire that killed him occurred just after the 2nd of these turns); the absence of Secret Service personnel in the “slow down zone” after the turn to Elm Street, where the shots rang out; all of these were violations of presidential protection standards, which should have happened that day, but did not. Additionally, immediately after Kennedy was shot, when all known Secret Service personnel had left Dealey Plaza with the motorcade as it rushed to Parkland Hospital, several men presenting Secret Service credentials were observed in the confusion on the grassy knoll. Who were they? The Kennedy murder abounds in such things.
Context of the Assassination
The context of JFK’s killing includes the times in which he served and rose to the nation’s highest office, the post-World War II years of the late 1940s, 1950, and the early 1960s, and to grasp what happened to him it’s important to understand them. These were the years of the Cold War, pitting the U.S. and its allies against Soviet Russia and the communist bloc countries of eastern Europe in a struggle of political and economic philosophies; communism vs. democracy and capitalism. With both the U.S. and the Soviet Union having nuclear arsenals, neither nation could afford for the conflict to become “hot,” hence the struggle between them remained “cold,” instead taking the form of bellicose rhetoric, espionage, and “brushfire” conflicts that nevertheless resulted in millions of people being killed.
These years were also a time when the world was changing; when the less developed countries (LDCs) of the world were rising up and breaking their colonial shackles; shedding their colonial masters. The European colonial powers that had dominated Asia and Africa for centuries, countries like England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, due to nationalist movements and uprisings in their colonies, were being forced out. In 1947 India gained its independence from England, and over the next 15 years she was joined by over 30 new nations arising from former European colonial territories in Asia and Africa. One of these new nations was Vietnam, a former colony of France, which in 1954 finally succeeded in defeating the French following a bloody 7-year war for independence [7] only to have their country divided in half by the Geneva accords of 1954.[8] With the leader of the Vietnamese nationalists, Ho Chi Minh, being a communist, and the Cold War being in full bloom, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles,[9] shrewdly used what was to be, according to the Geneva agreement, a temporary division of Vietnam into northern and southern sections to set up and consolidate a U.S. client state in the south—South Vietnam—a nation that until then had never existed. The prevailing thought in U.S. leadership at the time being the “Domino Theory,” (the idea that if one nation in an area fell to communism, then so would the rest, like dominoes falling) the Dulles brothers intended South Vietnam to be the bulwark in Southeast Asia against such a happening. In so doing they set the stage for the Vietnam War, one of the most unnecessary and tragic conflicts in United States history.
And it was during these same years that the CIA was created and built into the covert operations force that it became, and still is. Born out of the National Security Act of 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency’s purpose, per the law, was to serve as a focal point where intelligence from all quarters of government could be gathered, evaluated and coordinated. Unfortunately, the law contained some vague language, which left open the possibility of the CIA being used for other purposes, as the National Security Council[10] (also created by the National Security Act) could, from time to time, direct. It was this vague language that opened the door for Allen Dulles, who became CIA director when Eisenhower was elected in 1952, to morph the Agency into the covert ops arm referred to above. Across the 1950s, under Dulles’ control, the CIA garnered more and more power, in effect becoming the vanguard of U.S. Cold War operations against the Soviet Union and communism, and, as time went on, a paramilitary force. In the process, it became involved and skilled at engineering coups d’état against foreign governments deemed threatening to U.S. interests. Examples include the removals of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba of the Congo in 1961, and President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, also in 1961. In the cases of Lumumba and Trujillo, they were both murdered, which points to another tactic perfected by the Agency across these years—that of assassination.
Of course, perhaps the Agency’s most famous attempt at taking out a foreign leader was its effort to remove Fidel Castro, who had assumed the presidency of Cuba in January, 1959, following a successful revolt against the dictator Fulgencia Batista. Just months after Castro had taken over it became obvious that he was establishing a communist regime in Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of Florida, and from that moment forward the CIA became obsessed with his removal in any way possible. Their multiple, failed attempts at assassinating him, in which they utilized the Mafia, were revealed finally in the mid 1970s during the Senate Church Committee[11] investigations of U.S. intelligence operations, chiefly the CIA. The Church Committee hearings also revealed such things as the CIA mind control program, code named MK Ultra[12], which had been covertly conducted for years, one of the goals of which was to mentally program people to do things, such as assassination, that they would ordinarily object to morally. The hearings also revealed the CIA’s Project Mocking Bird[13], which involved the Agency’s recruiting of domestic media assets that could be used for propaganda purposes when needed, something especially relevant today.
Despite all this, the CIA’s most famous effort to “get Castro” was also its most obvious: the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba on April 17, 1961, just 3 months into JFK’s presidency. Throughout 1960, Eisenhower’s last year in office, the Agency had been engaged in training some 1400 anti-Castro Cubans for an invasion of their home island to oust Castro and set up a non-communist government there friendly to the United States. Richard Nixon, Kennedy’s opponent in 1960, was well aware of this operation, as he’d been involved in the planning of it. Expecting Nixon to win the election against the upstart Kennedy, and confident of his support, the CIA was taken by surprise when Kennedy was elected. Thus, JFK inherited Operation Zapata (CIA’s code name) when he assumed office in 1961 and, by his own admission, made the major mistake of his presidency (next to his trip to Dallas) when he gave his stamp of approval to the invasion, which turned out to be a colossal failure. (The whole story of the Bay of Pigs, which should be well known by anyone who truly wants to understand what happened to John Kennedy and, by extension, our country, is too involved to explain here in this Introduction. To assist the reader, following this paragraph I have included a link to an article I wrote several years ago which provides the essential details. I urge you to read it.) In approving the operation, Kennedy had been very clear that it was not to involve regular U.S. military forces, and that he would not approve such. Late in the evening of April 17, 1961, when it was obvious the Cuban brigade was failing, in a last-ditch effort to salvage the operation, CIA officials and military officers attempted to pressure (perhaps “bully” would be a better word) the young President into approving the use of a navy destroyer and air strikes to defeat Castro’s forces. Kennedy refused, and the lines of future battle were thus drawn between himself and his military/intelligence establishment.
JFK’s Political Career
It was against this back drop of Cold War, anti-communist fervor, the advent of the CIA and the rush to independence of the many former European colonies, that Kennedy started his political career, first as a Representative from a working-class district in Boston to the U.S. House of Representatives (1947-1953), then as a Senator from Massachusetts (1953-1960), and finally as President (1961-1963). Because Kennedy could speak the rhetoric of the Cold War with the best of them (a requirement in those days to get elected), many Americans to this day don’t realize how different his world view was from people like the Dulles brothers, Richard Nixon, and even President Eisenhower. Like Roosevelt before him, JFK was decidedly anti-colonial, a fact which becomes apparent when you read his talks, speeches and writings across the 1950s. While Eisenhower administration officials like the Dulles brothers, in their anti-communist zeal and desire to maintain the support of their NATO[14] allies against communism and the Soviet Union, supported European nations such as France in their efforts to keep their colonies, Kennedy decried those efforts. He made his views known in several speeches in the 1950s, most notably on the French colonies of Vietnam in Asia and Algeria in Africa. 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 Ho Chi Minh-led Vietnamese nationalists, in a speech before the House JFK 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 France, and that, “Any intervention by the United States is bound to be futile.” By 1953, with the U.S. funding at that point something like 80% of the French war against the Vietnamese nationalists, there was very real concern about United States intervention in the conflict on behalf of France, something that very nearly happened in 1954, just before the French were defeated.
In 1957 JFK was in the Senate, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of its sub-committee on Africa. In those capacities he’d made a study of the problems of European colonialism and the nationalist uprisings taking place around the world, and specifically looked in to the situation in the French colony of Algeria. Shortly after losing the First Indochina War to Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnamese nationalists, in 1954 another nationalist rebellion had started in that north African colony, and had been raging ever since. From his study Kennedy was developing a more refined view of the real difficulties and problems facing both the European colonial powers and the nationalist independence movements opposing them, and a more practical foreign policy approach to handling them; one more just and in alignment with American values and traditions. On July 2nd, 1957, in a remarkable and controversial speech before the Senate, specifically regarding Algeria, he made some of these views and proposed policies known. Following are Kennedy’s opening remarks, quoted directly from the speech:
“…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 challenging 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,[15] 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, 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… Algerian guerillas encamped on the thickly forested slopes of the Atlas Mountains 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.”
In the immediate wake of his Algerian speech, there weren’t many political pundits who would’ve bet on JFK even running for the nation’s highest office, much less getting elected. By 1960, however, the speculations of those “weary, grimy” Algerian rebels in the Atlas Mountains to that reporter regarding Kennedy’s chances for the presidency turned out to be prescient. His 1957 Algerian speech had immeasurably raised his national visibility. What’s more, across the following two years, with the conflict in Algeria dragging on and 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 very 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; to implement his ideas he needed the power of the presidency. Thus, on January 2nd, 1960, he announced himself as a candidate for the nomination of the Democratic Party for president.
Eisenhower’s Warning
Dwight Eisenhower
After a spirited primary campaign Kennedy won the Democratic nomination, and in the national election that followed, which featured the first ever televised debates between presidential hopefuls, he defeated the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, in what then was the closest election in U.S. history. Three days before he was to assume office, outgoing President Eisenhower delivered a most remarkable speech, his Farewell Address to the American people, in which he issued this admonition:
“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 qualified 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 with the development of the military industrial complex and national security state, to the point that he felt compelled to issue his warning.
It’s only in retrospect, in comparing Eisenhower’s comments in his Farewell Address to subsequent events across the 1960s; the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, that we can see the importance of what he was saying. I personally lived through those times, and I recall that anyone who challenged the official narratives of those 3 murders, each of which included the common denominator of a “lone nut” assassin, was instantly labeled a kook and a “conspiracy theorist,” which is when and how the term took on its negative connotation. In President Kennedy’s case, in the last year of his life, after experiencing and handling crisis after crisis (Laos, the Bay of Pigs, Berlin, the Cuban Missile Crisis) during his first two years in office, each time managing to avoid war, he began to move seriously in the direction of ending the Cold War and its constant threat of nuclear annihilation. He did this initially through a series of little known, back channel negotiations with Chairman Khrushchev, held on two occasions across the winter and spring of 1962/63; initiated by none other than Pope John XXIII and utilizing a Catholic pacifist magazine editor name Norman Cousins as the Pope’s representative. In his negotiations with Khrushchev, the last of which concluded in April, 1963, Cousins succeeded in raising the Soviet leader’s willingness to hear JFK’s proposals for reinvigorating the stalled negotiations on a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. On returning to the United States, Cousins debriefed to Kennedy personally, a consequence of which was another remarkable speech, undoubtedly the greatest of Kennedy’s presidency, and one of the greatest by any President in the 20th century.
A Strategy of Peace
On June 10, 1963, a bright and sunny day in Washington DC, President Kennedy took the podium to address the graduating class of American University. Expecting to hear the normal platitudes uttered by speakers on such occasions, the graduating students instead were privileged to hear what today is called Kennedy’s “Peace Speech,” an oration which, with the Cold War attitudes of the times, is nothing less than stunning. If you have not heard this speech before, I urge you to do so as soon as you can, and when you do, if you aren’t old enough to remember, try to put yourself in the place of people who pretty uniformly had been taught and therefore considered the Soviet Union to be the Evil Empire incarnate. With his speech, JFK urged his audience to reconsider not only their attitudes about peace, but on the Soviet Union itself, and in so doing set the course of his administration away from a strategy of confrontation with the Soviets and toward a strategy of peace and ending the Cold War. Within weeks after his speech, Great Britain, the U.S. and the Soviet Union successfully negotiated and agreed on the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and in September, 1963, the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Senate, something that would have been impossible just a few months earlier. Then, in October of 1963, the President took his next major step toward peace when he approved National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM)[16] 263, which mandated the start of US withdrawal from Vietnam, ordering the first 1000 troops home by the end of the year.
Six weeks later, on November 22nd, 1963, President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas, Texas. Within days JFK’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, signed NSAM 273 which began the process of reversing Kennedy’s Vietnam withdrawal plan, and it wasn’t long before Johnson ordered the escalation resulting in the tragedy of the Vietnam War, that took the lives of 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. At that point, not even three years had passed since President Eisenhower, in his Farewell Address, had issued his warning about the military industrial complex:
“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.”
With the murder of John F. Kennedy, what Eisenhower warned us against had come to pass on the streets of Dallas, and our country has not been the same since.
_______________
Alright, friends. I wanted to ensure you had the basic information presented in this article as background to the facts I will write about in this upcoming JFK Evidence Series. Each article of the series will cover one piece of the evidence indicating the plot to kill the 35th President, and will include the sources used, so you can follow up with your own research.
My sole intent in writing these articles is to assist people to become more aware of what has happened to our country. I offer them in the hope that one day we’ll have the Republic we should have had all along; one free from vested interests, that protects our natural rights, and is designed and run for ALL the people.
It’s my earnest hope that day comes soon!
[1] A “false flag” operation is an act committed with the intent of disguising the actual source of responsibility and pinning blame on another party, to justify certain military/political responses by the group or country committing the act. The term “false flag” originated in the 16th century as an expression meaning an intentional misrepresentation of someone’s allegiance.
[2] A “putsch” (German) is a violent attempt to overthrow a government.
[3] Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed the Maverick Marine, was a senior US Marine Corp officer. During his 34-year career, he fought in the Philippine-American War, the Boxer rebellion, the Mexican Revolution, and World War I. At the time of his death, Butler was the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received sixteen medals, including five for heroism; he is the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal as well as two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions. In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler’s testimony.
[4] By the summer of 1962, when the assassination attempt described here on De Gaulle took place, Kennedy had experienced his own problems with the CIA, most notably at the Bay of Pigs, after which he fired both CIA Director Allen Dulles and Dep Director Charles Cabell, but in other instances as well. While JFK had already made his sentiments on Algeria known, and agreed with De Gaulle’s decision to grant independence to the French colony, he also understood that his own CIA was more in agreement with the right-wing French generals opposing De Gaulle. It has never been established if the Agency was involved in the attempt on De Gaulle’s life, but one must wonder.
[5] Beginning in 2017, Donald Trump and his allies alleged that the FBI investigation (known as Crossfire Hurricane, a code name) of possible contacts between his associates and Russian officials was a “hoax” or “witch hunt” that was baselessly initiated by his political enemies. In April 2019, Attorney General William Barr announced that he had launched a review of the origins of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and it was reported in May that he had assigned DOJ Special Counsel John Durham to lead it several weeks earlier. Durham was given the authority “to broadly examine the government’s collection of intelligence involving the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russians,” reviewing government documents and requesting voluntary witness statements.Durham’s report, released in May, 2023, concluded that the FBI was unjustified in launching their investigation into Trump’s supposed Russia connections.
[6] John Armor Bingham (January 21, 1815 – March 19, 1900) was an American politician who served as a Republican representative from Ohio and as the US Ambassador to Japan. In his time as a congressman, Bingham served as both assistant Judge Advocate General in the trial of the Abraham Lincoln assassination and a House manager (prosecutor) in the impeachment trial of US President Andrew Johnson. He was also the principal framer of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.
[7] The Vietnamese war for independence from France, called the First Indo-China War, started in late 1946 and lasted until Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh army defeated the French at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in May of 1954. The term “Viet Minh” means “League for the Independence of Vietnam.”
[8] The Geneva Conference of 1954 was a conference that was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War and involved several nations. It took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 26 April to 20 July 1954. The crumbling of the French colonial empire in Southeast Asia led to the formation of the states of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the State of Vietnam (precursor of the future Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam), the Kingdom of Cambodia, and the Kingdom of Laos. Three agreements about French Indochina, covering Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, were signed on 21 July 1954 and took effect one day later. Regarding Vietnam, the Accords temporarily divided the nation at the 17th parallel into northern and southern zones, with Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh going to the north and those allied to the French (some Vietnamese opposed to the communist dominated Viet Minh fought with the French) to the south. The Accords also mandated a national election to be held within 2 years to reunite country under a leader and form of government democratically elected. In the US, the Eisenhower administration (chiefly the Dulles brothers, Sec of State John Foster and CIA Dir Allen,) recognizing that Ho Chi Minh would easily win such an election, engineered the creation of South Vietnam, a new nation, and the mandated elections never occurred. For the full story of this fateful episode in U.S./Vietnam history go to the following linked article:
[9] Allen Welsh Dulles (April 7, 1893 – January 29, 1969) was the first civilian director of central intelligence (DCI), and its longest-serving director to-date. As head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the early Cold War, he oversaw the build-up of the Agency, as well as the 1953 Iranian coup d’état, the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, the Lockheed U-2 aircraft program, the Project MK Ultra mind control program and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He was fired by John F. Kennedy over the latter fiasco. Dulles was a member of the Warren Commission that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Between his stints of government service, Dulles was a corporate lawyer and partner at the Wall Street law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell. His older brother, John Foster Dulles, was the secretary of state during the Eisenhower administration and is the namesake of Dulles International Airport.
[10] Established in 1947, along with the CIA, by the National Security Act, the United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials. Since its inception in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman, the function of the Council has been to advise and assist the president on national security and foreign policies. It also serves as the president’s principal arm for coordinating these policies among various government agencies. The Council has subsequently played a key role in most major events in US foreign policy, from the Korean War to the War on Terror.
[11] Senator Frank Church (Democrat, Idaho) led one of the most important oversight investigations ever undertaken by Congress into covert operations by the U.S. intelligence community. His work began on January 27, 1975, when the Senate voted 82-to-4 to form the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities; it would come to be called the Church Committee, after its chair. Created in response to explosive revelations of the U.S. Army’s program of domestic surveillance and an article published in the New York Times on December 22, 1974, by Seymour Hersh exposing assassination attempts on foreign officials by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the committee launched a series of investigations into American intelligence agencies including the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
[12] Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects’ mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs (especially LSD) and other chemicals without the subjects’ consent, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture. Another purpose of the program was to determine the feasibility of using the same techniques to make programmed assassins through the implanting of a command that could later be activated, with the person then carrying out the command.
[13] Operation or Project Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts magazine article reported that the National Student Association had received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations confirmed the Agency’s connections with journalists and civic groups.
[14] The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, also called the North Atlantic Alliance,) is an intergovernmental military alliance between 31 member states – 29 European and two North American. Established primarily by the U.S. in the aftermath of World War II, the organization implemented the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, D.C., on 4 April 1949.NATO is a collective security system: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. During the Cold War, NATO operated as a check on the threat posed by the Soviet Union. The alliance remained in place after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and has been involved in military operations in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.
[15] Dean Gooderham Acheson (April 11, 1893 – October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman’s main foreign policy advisor from 1945 to 1947, especially regarding the Cold War. Acheson helped design the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was in private law practice from July 1947 to December 1948.After 1949 Acheson came under partisan political attack from Republicans led by Senator Joseph McCarthy over Truman’s policy toward the People’s Republic of China. As a private citizen in 1968 he counseled President Lyndon B. Johnson to negotiate for peace with North Vietnam. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy called upon Acheson for advice, bringing him into the executive committee (ExComm), a strategic advisory group under the National Security Council created by Kennedy.
[16] Directives issued by the National Security Council are called National Security Action Memorandums, or NSAMs. Once approved they are, in effect, policy statements of the US government.
2 Responses
Thanks for publishing this!
You’re Welcome! Thanks for reading and commenting. Best, mark