The Life and Public Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
In light of the news that President Trump has signed an executive order for a “plan” (as if one were needed) for the release of the JFK assassination files (as well as the MLK, Jr. and RFK files), the following article, that will appear in my upcoming book from Clarity Press, At the Lost and Found, seems appropriate. While it is good that these files might now be released, they are unnecessary to assess the truth behind these assassinations unless one wishes to engage in more “limited hangouts” as described by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:
Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.
There is no mystery to who killed these men, unless one wishes to engage in pseudo-debates forever because the truth and its implications are too terrible to bear.
What is the truth, and where did it go?
Ask Oswald and Ruby, they oughta know
“Shut your mouth,” said the wise old owl
Business is business, and it’s a murder most foul
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Don’t worry, Mr. President
Help’s on the way
Your brothers are coming, there’ll be hell to pay
Brothers? What brothers? What’s this about hell?
Tell them, “We’re waiting, keep coming”
We’ll get them as well
– Bob Dylan, Murder Most Foul
Despite a treasure-trove of new research and information having emerged over the last sixty-two years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. They have drunk what Dr. Martin Schotz has called “the waters of uncertainty” that result “in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance, that is.”
Then there are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission.
Both these groups agree, however, that whatever the truth, unknowable or allegedly known, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, ancient history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred more than a half-century ago, so let’s move on.
Nothing could be further from the truth, for the assassination of JFK is the foundational event of modern American history, the Pandora’s box from which many decades of tragedy have sprung.
Pressured to Wage War
From the day he was sworn in as President on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy was relentlessly pressured by the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and by some of his own advisers to wage war – clandestine, conventional, and nuclear.
To understand why and by whom he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, one needs to apprehend this pressure and why President Kennedy consistently resisted it, and the consequences of that resistance.
It is a key to understanding the current state of our world today and why the United States has been waging endless foreign wars and creating a national security surveillance state at home since JFK’s death.
A War Hero Who Was Appalled By War
It is very important to remember that Lieutenant John Kennedy was a genuine Naval war hero in WW II, having risked his life and been badly injured while saving his men in the treacherous waters of the south Pacific after their PT boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. His older brother Joe and his brother-in-law Billy Hartington had died in the war, as had some of his boat’s crew members.
As a result, Kennedy was extremely sensitive to the horrors of war, and when he first ran for Congress in Massachusetts in 1946, he made it explicitly clear that avoiding another war was his number one priority. This commitment remained with him and was intensely strengthened throughout his brief presidency until the day he died, fighting for peace.
Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, this anti-war stance was and is unusual for a politician, especially during the 1950s and 1960s. Kennedy was a remarkable man, for even though he assumed the presidency as somewhat of a cold warrior vis à vis the Soviet Union in particular, his experiences in office rapidly chastened that stance. He very quickly came to see that there were many people surrounding him who relished the thought of war, even nuclear war, and he came to consider them as insane and very dangerous.
A Prescient Perspective
Yet even before he became president, then Senator Kennedy gave a speech in the U.S. Senate that sent shock waves throughout Washington, D.C. In 1957 he came out in support of Algerian independence from France, in support of African liberation generally, and against colonial imperialism. As chair of the Senate’s African Subcommittee in 1959, he urged sympathy for African independence movements as part of American foreign policy. He knew that continued colonial policies would only end in more bloodshed because the voices of independence would not be denied, nor should they.
The speech caused an international uproar, and Kennedy was harshly criticized by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even members of the Democratic party, such as Adlai Stevenson and Dean Acheson. But it was applauded throughout Africa and what was then called the third world.
Yet he continued throughout his 1960 campaign for president to raise his voice against colonialism worldwide and for a free Africa. Such views were anathema to the foreign policy establishment, including the CIA and the burgeoning military industrial complex that Dwight Eisenhower belatedly warned against in his Farewell Address, delivered nine months after approving the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in March 1960, a juxtaposition that revealed the hold the Pentagon and CIA had and has on sitting presidents.
Patrice Lumumba
One of Africa’s anti-colonial and nationalist leaders was the charismatic Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, who in June 1960 had been become the first democratically elected leader of Congo, a country savagely raped and plundered for more than half a century by Belgium’s King Leopold II for himself and multinational mining companies. Kennedy’s support for African independence was well-known and especially feared by the CIA, which together with Brussels, considered Lumumba, and Kennedy for supporting him, as threats to their interests in the region.
So, three days before JFK’s inauguration, together with the Belgium government, the CIA had Lumumba brutally assassinated after torturing and beating him. This murder had been approved by President Eisenhower in August 1960 at an NSC meeting where he gave Allen Dulles, the Director of the CIA, the approval to “eliminate” Lumumba.
Then on January 26, 1961, when Dulles briefed the new president on the Congo, he did not tell JFK that they had already assassinated Lumumba nine days before. This was meant to keep Kennedy on tenterhooks, to teach him a lesson. On February 13, 1961, Kennedy received a phone call from his UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson informing him of Lumumba’s death. There is a photograph by Jacques Lowe of the horror-stricken president answering that call that is harrowing to view. It was an unmistakable message of things to come, a warning.
Dag Hammarskjöld, Indonesia, and Sukarno
One of Kennedy’s central allies in his efforts to support third world independence was U.N Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld. He had been deeply involved in peacekeeping in the Congo and efforts to resolve disputes in Indonesia, the latter being an extremely important country that was central to JFK’s concerns. Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash on September 18, 1961, while on a peacekeeping mission to the Congo. Substantial evidence exists that he was assassinated and that the CIA and Allen Dulles were involved. Kennedy was devastated to lose such an important ally.
Kennedy’s Indonesia strategy involved befriending Indonesia as a Cold War ally as a prerequisite for his Southeast Asian policy of dealing with Laos and Vietnam and finding peaceful resolutions to smoldering Cold War conflicts. Hammarskjöld was central to these efforts. The CIA, led by Dulles, strongly opposed Kennedy’s strategy in Indonesia. In fact, Dulles had been involved in treacherous maneuverings in Indonesia for decades. President Kennedy supported the Indonesian President Sukarno, whom Dulles opposed.
Two days before Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring. The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with economic and developmental aid, not military. It was part of his larger strategy of ending conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assisting the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.
Of course, JFK never went to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles. And Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal from Vietnam, which was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder. Soon both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon. In Indonesia, Sukarno would be forced out and replaced by General Suharto, who would rule with an iron fist for the next thirty ye
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
