He was at odds with Pentagon commanders, CIA, most congressional members, and nearly all his advisers.
He understood his vulnerability. He paid with his life. He was favored to win reelection. Imagine if he had two full terms.
by Stephen Lendman
Killing Kennedy mattered. It changed America’s direction. Things might have been different had he lived.
November 22, 1963 remains a stain on America’s legacy. It was Friday. A light rain fell.
Kennedy spent the night at the Texas Hotel. A platform was set up outside. He came out. He made some brief remarks.
“There are no faint hearts in Fort Worth,” he said. “I appreciate your being here this morning. Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. It takes longer, but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it.”
He addressed “the willingness of citizens of the United States to assume the burdens of leadership.”
His motorcade traveled to Carswell Air Force Base. He took a 13 minute flight to Dallas. Rain ended.
The plastic bubble atop his car was left off. Lyndon and Mrs. Johnson accompanied him in a separate car.
The procession headed downtown. It wound through Dallas en route to the Trade Mart. Kennedy was scheduled to speak at a luncheon.
Crowds along the route waved. His car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza. It was around 12:30PM. The procession passed the Texas School Book Depository.
Gunfire was heard. Kennedy was struck. His car sped to Parkland Memorial Hospital. It was a few minutes away. It was too late. He was given his last rites. Around 1PM, he was pronounced dead.
The New York Times headlined in bold type across the top of its front page:
“KENNEDY IS KILLED BY SNIPER AS HE RIDES IN CAR TO DALLAS; JOHNSON SWORN IN ON PLANE”
“Gov. Connally Shot; Mrs. Kennedy Safe”
“President is Struck Down by a Rifle Shot From Building on Motorcade Route – Johnson, Riding Behind, Is Unhurt”
Less than an hour earlier, police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a convenient patsy. He had nothing to do with killing Kennedy.
He alone remains officially blamed. The Big Lie persists. Lots of evidence refutes it.
Plato once said:
“Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school.”
“And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.”
On November 29, 1963, Lyndon Johnson established the Warren Commission. On September 24, 1964, it delivered its 888-page report.
Three days later, it released it publicly. It pronounced a bald-faced lie. It said Oswald acted alone.
It later published 26 volumes of supporting documents. They included testimonies or depositions of 552 witnesses.
Its distortions included over 3,100 exhibits. It went all out to conceal truth and full disclosure.
All records are in the National Archives. Included are unpublished reports. They’re sealed until 2039.
They’re no longer applicable under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act and 1992 JFK Records Act.
Nothing released ahead will change the official story. The Big Lie persists. It remain etched in stone. It’s for others to challenge it.
The Commission’s job was suppressing truth. It was coverup. It was stacked with insiders. They included:
- Chief Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren
- Senator Richard Russell (D. GA)
- Senator John Sherman Cooper (R. KY)
- Representative Hale Boggs (D. LA)
- Representative Gerald Ford (R. MI)
- former CIA director Allen Dulles, and
- former WW II Assistant Secretary of War/World Bank president/prominent presidential advisor John J. McCloy.
Testimonies were taken in secret. Sanitized versions were published.
Peter Dale Scott coined the phrase “deep politics.” It means “in every culture and society there are facts which tend to be suppressed, because of the social and psychological costs of not doing so.”
Scott noted “the ability of the government to establish a guilty party or parties immediately, and the press and media consumption of that product to the exclusion of all other possibilities.”
The Warren Commission’s mandate was “to validate what was already decided by the FBI on the day in question.”
“In Oswald’s case, FBI and CIA documents described him as five feet, ten inches, weighing 165 pounds.”
“But it contradicted the actual height and weight of the man picked up and charged being slightly shorter and weighing 140 pounds.”
“It appears someone had already decided who was going to be charged before the police found Oswald in the Texas Theater.”
He was named within 15 minutes from when Kennedy was shot. It was impossible to know that soon. The official story was bogus.
Jim Marrs book titled, “Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy” discussed a Cartha DeLoach memo. He was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s close aide.
He said then Congressman Gerald Ford may have been the bureau’s Warren Commission informant. He had close CIA ties.
It was later learned he reported to Hoover. He did so secretly. He admitted instructing the Commission to move Kennedy’s back wound up several inches. A lower location disproved the single gunman theory.
A subsequent Commission report was titled “A Presidential Legacy and the Warren Commission.”
It said the investigation put “certain classified and potentially damaging operations in danger of being exposed.”
The CIA hid or “destroy(ed) some information, which can easily be misinterpreted as collusion in JFK’s assassination.”
Family spokeswoman, Penny Circle, said Ford approved the text. Before his death, he publicly said the CIA destroyed or hid critical secrets related to the killing.
He suggested a “conspiracy.” He barely stopped short of admitting one. Commission conclusions were rubbish. They hid dirty truths. They were too disturbing to reveal.
Jim Fetzer has done extensive research on Kennedy’s assassination. He said the following:
“The weapon Oswald is alleged to have used cannot have fired the bullets that killed JFK.”
“The ‘magic bullet’ theory is provably untrue and was not even anatomically possible.”
“JFK was hit four times – in the throat from in front, in the back from behind, and in the head from in front and behind.”
“X-rays were altered. A brain was substituted, and photos and films were faked to conceal the true causes of his death.”
Fetzer cited “more than 15 indications of Secret Service complicity in setting JFK up for the hit.”
“Two agents assigned to the limousine were left behind at Love Field. The flat-bed truck for reporters that should have preceded the limo was cancelled.”
“The motorcycle escort was cut down to four and was instructed not to ride ahead of the rear wheels.”
“Open windows were not covered. The manhole covers were not welded, and the crowd was allowed to spill into the street.”
“…Vehicles were in the wrong order, with (Kennedy’s) Lincoln first, when it should have been in the middle.”
“This was such a blatant violation of protocol that any security expert would have detected it.”
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) destroyed the Presidential Protection Records. It did so to eliminate important evidence.
Kennedy’s route was changed days before he arrived. Included was a strictly prohibited 90 degree turn.
After gunfire struck him, driver William Greer pulled to the left. He stopped the vehicle.
“At Parkland Hospital, (Secret Service) agents got a bucket of water and a sponge, and washed brains and blood from the crime scene.”
Kennedy’s “limousine was taken back to Ford. (It) was stripped to bare metal and rebuilt.”
Doing so destroyed important evidence. It included the windshield. It had “a through-and-through bullet hole.”
Kennedy was shot from in front and behind. He was struck four times.
The Warren Commission claimed he was hit twice. The Commission claimed the bullet striking Kennedy in the back passed through his neck, then exited from his throat.
It struck Governor Connally. It shattered a rib. It damaged his right wrist. It embedded itself in his left thigh.
Fetzer called this explanation “a most unlikely scenario that is known as the ‘magic bullet’ theory.”
To make it remotely plausible, Commission member (then Congressman) Gerald Ford “had the description of the wound to the back changed from ‘his uppermost back.’ ”
The weapon Oswald was accused of firing couldn’t have killed Kennedy. His death certificate and autopsy said high-velocity bullets above 2,600 fps killed him.
Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle had a muzzle velocity of 2,000 fps.
Even with a more powerful weapon, “the shots themselves were highly improbable,” said Fetzer.
“(T)he simple expedient of locating where the bullet hit JFK’s back is enough to establish the existence of a conspiracy has not inhibited those who want to obfuscate the facts.”
Pseudo-documentaries air on TV. They obscure what happened. They hide vital truths.
They stick to the long ago discredited lone gunman explanation. “Authentic evidence, once separated from (fabrications), refutes it,” said Fetzer.
“The demise of the ‘magic bullet’ (theory) alone establishes conspiracy.”
“Creating a false photographic record of the assassination was crucial to the cover-up.”
“As much thought was given to concealing the truth from the public as was given to executing the assassination itself.”
“By removing some events and adding others, the home movie known as the Zapruder film became the backbone of the cover-up.”
“As long as it was taken to be authentic, it would be impossible to reconstruct the crime.”
Much has been written about Kennedy. James Douglas contributed some of the best. His book titled “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters” debunked mainstream myths and much more.
He showed how Kennedy threatened the military-industrial complex. He had to go. “(T)he CIA’s fiingerprints (were) all over the crime and the events leading up to it,” said Douglas.
The lone gunman theory long ago lost credibility. A state-sponsored coup eliminated Kennedy. He changed during his time in office. He evolved from cold warrior to peacemaker.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco chastened him. He refused authorizing another attempt to remove Castro.
He supported Palestinian rights. He opposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program. He offended energy giants. He wanted the oil depletion allowance cut or eliminated.
RFK waged war on organized crime. JFK’s first executive order expanded the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). He was a gradualist on civil rights. He believed integration was morally right.
He favored Federal Reserve reform. His Executive Order 11110 authorized replacing Federal Reserve notes with silver certificates if the occasion arose to do so.
It’s believed he ordered Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon to begin issuing United States notes. Perhaps he had in mind replacing Federal Reserve ones altogether. He was assassinated to soon to know.
He deplored the CIA. He fired director Allen Dulles and his deputy General Charles Cabell.
He once said he wanted to “splinter the (agency) into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” It was reason enough to kill him.
He increasingly opposed imperial wars. Initially, he sent troops and advisors to Southeast Asia. He opposed sending more to Laos.
He told his Geneva Conference representative, Averell Harriman:
“Do you understand? I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I don’t want to put troops in.”
He opposed deploying nuclear weapons in Berlin. He was against using them in Southeast Asia.
He once called Pentagon generals “crazy” for suggesting it. He refused to attack or invade Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. He said he “never had the slightest intension of doing so.”
He urged abolishing all nuclear weapons. He knew using them is lunacy. He favored general and complete disarmament.
He opposed Pax Americana enforced dominance. He signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty with Soviet Russia.
Weeks before his assassination, he signed National Security Memorandum 263. It called for removing 1,000 US forces from Vietnam by year end. He wanted them all out by December 1965.
He underwent a spiritual transformation. It bears repeating. He switched from cold warrior to peacemaker.
He was at odds with Pentagon commanders, CIA, most congressional members, and nearly all his advisors.
He understood his vulnerability. He paid with his life. He was favored to win reelection. Imagine if he had two full terms.
Imagine a new direction. Imagine deploring war. Imagine turning swords into plowshares.
Imagine a world at peace. Imagine nuclear disarmament. Imagine ending the Cold War a generation earlier.
In June 1956, he addressed Harvard’s commencement. He was Massachusetts junior senator at the time.
He ended by quoting an English mother. She wrote the Provost of Harrow saying: “Don’t teach my boy poetry. He is going to stand for Parliament.”
“Well, perhaps she was right,” said Kennedy. “But if more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a better place in which to live on this commencement day of 1956.”
Killing JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcom X “decapitat(ed) America’s left,” said Fetzer. In the 1970s, the nation began shifting right. Progressive charismatic leaders were gone.
None exist today. Their absence is sorely missed. It lets America get away with murder and then some.
Dark forces run things. War on humanity persists. Peacemakers aren’t around to stop it. Survival hangs in the balance.
I’ll never forget that memorable day or what I was doing when I heard the news. I was at work on lunch break. Everything at work stopped for the rest of the day. We knew nothing then about a state-sponsored assassination. We know plenty now.
A Tribute to President John F. Kennedy
Related Article:
Who killed Kennedy: CIA, LBJ, or the Truly “Unspeakable”?
The Sound of Silence : Arrested Development!
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/
Stephen Lendman is a writer, syndicated columnist, activist, News TV personality, and radio show host. He currently writes for MoneyNewsNow.com, VeteransToday.com and VeteransNewsNow.com. He also hosts, since 2007, a progressive radio show at The Progressive Radio News Hour on The Progressive Radio Network.
Stephen Lendman was born in 1934 in Boston, MA, raised in a modest middle income family, attended public schools, received a Harvard BA in 1956 and a Wharton MBA in 1960. After six years as a marketing research analyst, Lendman became part of a new small family business in 1967, remaining there until retiring in 1999.
Since then, he has devoted his time to progressive causes, extensive reading, and since summer 2005 writing on vital world and national topics, including war and peace, American imperialism, corporate dominance, political persecutions, and a range of other social, economic and political issues.
He is also author of the celebrated books “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity” and “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War“. His latest book is Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III (2014)
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