JFK at 100 — Paul Craig
Roberts
JFK at 100
Paul Craig Roberts
This Memorial Day, Monday,
May 29, 2017, is the 100th birthday of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th
President of the United States.
JFK was assassinated on
November 22, 1963, as he approached the end of his third year in office.
Researchers who spent years studying the evidence have concluded that President
Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy between the CIA, Joint Chiefs of
Staff, and Secret Service.
Kennedy entered office as
a cold warrior, but he learned from his interaction with the CIA and Joint Chiefs
that the military/security complex had an agenda that was self-interested and a
danger to humanity. He began working to defuse tensions with the Soviet Union.
His rejections of plans to invade Cuba, of the Northwoods project, of a
preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, and his intention to withdraw
from Vietnam after his reelection, together with some of his speeches signaling
a new approach to foreign policy in the nuclear age (see for example, https://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BWC7I4C9QUmLG9J6I8oy8w.aspx ), convinced the military/security complex that
he was a threat to their interests. Cold War conservatives regarded him as
naive about the Soviet Threat and a liability to US national security. These
were the reasons for his assassination. These views were set in stone when
Kennedy announced on June 10, 1963, negotiations with the Soviets toward a
nuclear test ban treaty and a halt to US atmospheric nuclear tests.
The Oswald coverup story
never made any sense and was contradicted by all evidence including tourist
films of the assassination. President Johnson had ro cover up the
assassination, not because he was part of it or because he willfully wanted to
deceive the American people, but because to give Americans the true story would
have shaken their confidence in their government at a critical time in
US-Soviet relations. To make the coverup succeed, Johnson needed the
credibility of the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, Earl Warren, to chair
the commission that covered up the assassination. Warren understood the
devastating impact the true story would have on the public and their confidence
in the military and national security leadership and on America’s allies.
As I previously reported,
Lance deHaven-Smith in his book, Conspiracy Theory in America,
shows that the CIA introduced “conspiracy theory” into the political lexicon as
a technique to discredit skepticism of the Warren Commission’s coverup report.
He provides the CIA document that describes how the agency used its media
friends to control the explanation.
The term “conspiracy
theory” has been used ever since to validate false explanations by discrediting
true explanations.
President Kennedy was also
determined to require the Israel Lobby to register as a foreign agent and to
block Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. His assassination removed the
constraints on Israel’s illegal activities. http://www.voltairenet.org/article178401.html
Memorial Day is when
Americans honor those in the armed services who died serving the country. JFK
fell while serving the causes of peace and nuclear disarmament. In a 1961 address
to the United Nations, President Kennedy said:
“Today, every inhabitant
of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be
inhabitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of
Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any
moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be
abolished before they abolish us. It is therefore our intention to challenge
the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race – to advance
together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament
has been achieved.”
Kennedy’s address was well
received at home and abroad and received a favorable and supportive response
from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, but it caused consternation among the
warhawks in the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The US led in terms of the number of
nuclear warheads and delivery systems, and this lead was the basis for US
military plans for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963 Also, Many believed that nuclear disarmament would
remove the obstacle to the Soviet Army overrunning Western Europe. Warhawks
considered this a greater threat than nuclear armageddon. Many in high military
circles regarded President Kennedy as weakening the US viv-a-vis the Soviet
Union.
The assassination of
President Kennedy was an enormous cost to the world. Kennedy and Khrushchev
would have followed up their collaboration in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis
by ending the Cold War long before the military/security complex achieved its iron
grip on the US government. Israel would have been denied nuclear weapons, and
the designation of the Israel Lobby as a foreign agent would have prevented
Israel’s strong grip on the US government. In his second term, JFK would have
broken the CIA into a thousand pieces, an intention he expressed to his
brother, Robert, and the Deep State would have been terminated before it became
more powerful than the President.
But the military/security
complex struck first, and pulled off a coup that voided all these promises and
terminated American democracy.
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