Foreign reaction in 1963 to the JFK assassination – they blamed the Hard Right in the USA but gave LBJ a pass
As we turn to another anniversary of November 22nd, the media narrative
of the public skepticism is that these “wild conspiracy theories” fueled a lack
of trust in government, and somewhere along the way morphed into current
right-wing conspiracy theories such as QAnon. As Thomas Mallon, author of Ruth
Paine’s Garage put it, “I have lately found myself wondering if the
dangerous fact-free business of election denial doesn’t have some of its origin
in the more fantastical theories that grew up around the assassination decades
ago.”¹ This cheap theory of American history only looks at the public reaction
to the Kennedy assassination in a vacuum, refusing to understand why so
much of the public felt the government was lying to them. It cleanses the hands of J. Edgar
Hoover, Allen Dulles, and Richard Helms, while casting anyone who dare doubt
those luminaries as deranged fanatical right-wingers.
While American pundits still chortle over the idea of a wider
conspiracy to assassinate the president, in any other country this is not an
absurd idea at all, particularly in nations targeted by American intelligence
agencies. Understanding the international reaction, and the thoughts of other
world leaders in 1963, helps put the unresolved assassination into context. Their
immediate response is worth examining to better analyze the nature of the
crime, as is their characterization of Kennedy, in light of recent portrayals.
For instance, French
president Charles De Gaulle had been the target of numerous assassination attempts
by the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) due to his withdrawal from the brutal
French war in Algeria. The CIA was behind some of these plots, and President
Kennedy had warned the French government that while he personally would do what
he could to break up these plots, “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled
machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”² A startling
quote, and one that reveals how even Kennedy was aware that the CIA’s massive
machinery could carry out crimes even beyond the knowledge of the president.
Within hours of the shooting in Dealey Plaza, De Gaulle stated “President
Kennedy died as a soldier under fire, doing his duty in the service of his country.
In the name of the French people, a friend always to the American people, I
salute this great example and this great memory.”³
De Gaulle attended President Kennedy’s funeral in Washington, and upon
his return to Paris, had a conversation with information minister Alain
Peyrefitte about the circumstances of the assassination. De Gaulle noted the
similarities between the attempts on his own life, and the murder of President Kennedy, perceptively
commenting “the security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.”⁴
Peyrefitte then began asking De Gaulle about the circumstances of accused
assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and whether he had been set up as a patsy. De
Gaulle told Peyrefitte “they got their hands on this communist who wasn’t one,
while still being one. He had a sub par intellect and was an exalted
fanatic — just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused.” Going on,
the French president explained the necessity of Oswald’s death at the hands of
the conspirators, and how Ruby had been tasked to silence Oswald forever.
De Gaulle finished his examination with this remarkable insight on how
the United States would bury the coup:
“America
is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe
the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any
scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to
not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing
riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new
civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know.
They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.”⁵
British Labour Party leader Harold Wilson, another target of
intelligence agencies in later years, stated that President Kennedy’s “struggle
for racial equality is something that will in memory long outlive his life,”⁶
praising the slain leader as a “great world statesman and a great fighter for
peace.”⁷ Future Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro stated that Kennedy’s “stature
as a politician, in his great country and on the international scene, was
growing in these years of a courageous policy of renewal.” Speculating on his
legacy, Moro said “the reason which he was struck in a mad way raises President
Kennedy even more on the moral plane as a great defender of men’s dignity and
equality.”⁸
Khrushchev tried to put his feelings into a letter to newly inaugurated President
Lyndon Johnson, writing that the assassination came at a time when “there appeared signs of
relaxation of international tension and a prospect has been opened for
improving relations between the USSR and the United States.” Khruschev
told Johnson that the Soviet people were indignant “against the culprits of
this base crime.”⁹ In
fact, the Soviet people were shocked by the carnage in Dallas. Thousands of
Moscow citizens stood in line at newsstands to buy the latest reports of the
assassination.¹⁰
All Soviet state media conveyed
the utmost respect for President Kennedy, as well as a mixture of shock and
horror at what was to come. Soviet television stations broadcast Kennedy’s
Peace Speech at American University from June of that year, where he spoke of the enormous sacrifice the Soviet people made to
defeat fascism in World War II, and his hopes for a genuine peace between the
superpowers.¹¹ Other outlets were already suspicious of the developing cover
story. The news
agency TASS stating “the more details and announcements are
made, the more suspicious and dark this case appears,” when reporting on the
Dallas police’s latest claims that Oswald was a member of the Communist party. TASS was
highly skeptical of why Oswald was being charged for murdering the president,
noting “there was no evidence which could prove this accusation.”¹²
Pravda declared the assassination a
“monstrous crime” and a “terroristic act,” but paid special attention to the
far-right powers that wanted Kennedy dead. The paper warned
its readers that this tragedy is unfortunately nothing new for America, and
that “it is reminiscent of other much small acts of gangsters whose connections
often lead to very high-placed extreme right-wing quarters.” As for the site of the
operation, Pravda keenly noted that the John Birch Society,
radical right-wingers, as well as “the notorious rebel general and Fascist
Edwin Walker have built their nests precisely in Texas.”¹³ TASS made
similar observations, noting that Dallas is a “mecca of oil millionaires and
the ultra-right wing groups they finance.”¹⁴
Some of the earliest reports from Moscow stressed the fierce struggles Kennedy faced
from staunch right-wingers within the U.S. government in the wake of
this “terrorist act”, noting “Kennedy’s steps in the direction of clearing the
international situation met with sharp opposition from the American madmen.”¹⁵
Yakov Victorov, foreign observer
for Pravda, issued a strong defense of President Kennedy’s international record, and drew parallels to President Franklin Roosevelt when it came to
his cooperation with the Soviets, calling the wartime leader “one of the great
men to occupy the White House,” but intoning that the men who followed
Roosevelt strayed from his path. While noting that Kennedy’s record was
inconsistent, he was ultimately a rational thinker when it came to the matter
of war and peace. Victorov went further, stating “Both Roosevelt and Kennedy
shared an understanding of the new factors in the history of mankind” and
predicted that future historians would “undoubtedly trace the line from
Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy.”
Victorov went deeper, cutting to the heart of the matter with the
simple question: “Who
profited from the assassination of Kennedy?” Speaking of wild men and
the champions of the cold war, Victorov stated that the dark forces behind the
murder felt there was no other way to crush Kennedy’s progress towards
international relaxation but through bloodshed. Ending on a note of optimism,
Victorov hoped that while the reactionaries were mobilizing to cover up the
terroristic act, “we are certain justice will triumph and the assassins will be
found.”¹⁶
But the most clear-eyed analysis from Soviet media came with regard to
the political ideology behind the violent change in American government,
drawing direct parallels to the Third Reich. Two days after the shots rang out,
Moscow television
commenter Valentin Zorin observed that a large organization had carried out the
monstrous act, and that fascists are trying to “revive the ghost” of the
Reichstag fire. Like the Nazis did, this commentator pointed out that American
fascists were blaming communists for the murder of President Kennedy,
which is absurd, since “no one but the enemies of peace and an easing of
international tension” would profit from his violent end.¹⁷
Pravda’s Washington correspondent Boris
Strelnikov expressed disgust at the “wail of the reactionary press” which
rushed to pin the crime on the work of communists. Strelnikov hypothesized that the operation was
similar to the Reichstag fire, which was used by the Nazis to expand
their powers and crush left-wing forces in Weimar Germany. Strelnikov noted an
incident shortly after the assassination where a young man in Madison, Wisconsin ran out into the street
“in the uniform of a Hitlerite Storm Trooper” and celebrated President
Kennedy’s death. Strelnikov concluded that it’s likely that the Dallas
bloodshed was organized by fascists who plotted “against every step directed at
an international detente,” trying to whip up anticommunist hysteria in
the country.¹⁸
According to FBI sources,
numerous Soviet officials assessed that an American coup organized by the far
right had just taken place, and that the
assassination of President Kennedy would be used to cease negotiations between
superpowers, heighten aggression with Cuba, and spread war to all corners of
the globe. Boris Ivanov,
KGB chief, held a meeting on November 25th, where he stated that Kennedy had
been assassinated by an organized group, not one lone nut.¹⁹ That in itself is
a stunning revelation, yet was not made public for decades.
The non-aligned world reacted to the assassination in much the same way. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru addressed parliament praising Kennedy as “a man of ideals, vision,
and courage, who sought to serve his own people as well as the larger causes of
the world.” The Times of India reported: “seldom have the
Indian people been so shocked and dazed by the assassination of a leader of
another country.”²⁰ In
later years, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi observed that President Kennedy “died
because he lost the support of his peers.”²¹ Lee Harvey Oswald was many
things, but he could hardly be considered a peer to Kennedy.
Algerian President Ben Bella was similarly stunned. Upon hearing the news of Kennedy’s death, Bella
was staggered, and quickly
telephoned a radio station to dictate his statement in which he “immediately
denounced the racialist and police-organized machinations of which
Kennedy had been the victim.” Bella was noticeably shaken, and U.S. Ambassador William Porter
relayed that the Algerian president “ascribed to Kennedy everything he thought
good in the United States: the fight against the big trusts, against the
segregationists.”²²
In Ghana, expressing his deep sorrow in regard to the assassination, Kwame Nkrumah speculated that
President Kennedy’s “uncompromising stand against racial and religious bigotry,
intolerance, and injustice” may have been the cause of his death.
Nkrumah stated that people around the world have “witnessed the evil maneuvers
of imperialism, capitalism, and racialism” in Kennedy’s murder.²³
A later report by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service from Accra Ghana Domestic Service expressed
astonishment at Oswald’s murder while in police custody, writing about
the ease of access to firearms in American society, particularly Texas. The
report from Ghana asked the obvious question of how a man who was under police
escort was able to be shot at nearly point blank range, noting that American
law enforcement “have had enough experience with mass violence” to understand
that there would be attempts on Oswald’s life.²⁴
A radio report in Lagos, Nigeria praised Kennedy in no uncertain terms, stating that the only
American president who has earned the sincere respect of African and Asian
nations has been lost. The broadcast cited actions such as Kennedy’s arms embargo
on South Africa and his lack of support for the colonial ambitions of Portugal
and Spain.²⁵ That did
not go unnoticed by Portugal, who fumed at Kennedy, and were one of only two
nations not to send condolences to Washington.²⁶ In 1969, newly
inaugurated President Richard
Nixon assured Portuguese foreign minister Franco Nogueira at an event
marking the twentieth anniversary of NATO by telling him “Just remember, I’ll never do to you
what Kennedy did.”²⁷
The hatred of Kennedy was
similar in South Africa’s government, where Foreign Minster Eric Louw blasted
the president as “an unremitting enemy of South Africa and an opponent of her
race policies.”²⁸
In South East Asia, the reaction was quite different. Nhan Dan, the
official organ of the Vietnam Workers Party in North Vietnam was highly
critical of President Kennedy’s reactionary imperialist foreign policy, and was
dismissive of revisionists like the Soviet leadership who had been
characterizing him as a man of peace. Nevertheless, Nhan Dan argued that nothing
good would come of the assassination, and that an aggressive path towards war
has not in any way been stopped by his death. Going further, the paper began to
elaborate on the forces at work behind the murder, ascribing President
Kennedy’s death to “contradictions among the different forces in the United
States which scramble for power and position.”²⁹
Yet, by far, the sharpest and
clearest analysis of the assassination at such an early date came from Fidel
Castro, in a speech he delivered on November 24th,
1963. Broadcast over Cuban radio and television, it was a deep political
analysis on the various factions within American power, the nature of fascism,
and the reasons for Kennedy’s death. Beginning by expressing the disapproval on
principle that any Marxist must take with singular acts of violence and
assassination, Castro began to elaborate on American political dynamics. Speaking to the Cuban people,
Castro stated that “within the United States there are elements that support a
policy that is even more reactionary, of an even much more aggressive policy,
of a much more warlike policy.”³⁰
Speaking in stark terms, Castro continued, explaining how the
assassination of President Kennedy will “convert the policy of the United
States into a worse policy and to aggravate the evils of the United States
policy.” Elaborating, Castro explained that there are ultra-reactionary
elements of the American public, such as the Ku Klux Klan, or reactionary
economic currents, as well as military interests which support further American
imperialism abroad.³¹ Then, there are more liberal elements, who have a more
moderate policy and value diplomacy more than militarism. These elements are
still pro-imperialist, but can often clash with the more reactionary militarist
elements. Castro stated
that the assassination “could only benefit those ultra-rightist and
ultra-reactionary sectors, among which President Kennedy could not be
counted.”³²
Castro began to explain the clashes between Kennedy’s moderate faction
and the ultra-rightists, noting that the most bellicose imperialist elements of
American power had consistently attacked Kennedy throughout his term, and that “the commitment not to invade
Cuba, which resulted from the October crisis, was one of the points of
Kennedy’s policy that was most constantly attacked by the ultra-reactionary
sectors.” Castro also pointed out that the nuclear test ban treaty was another area where
Kennedy was a target of ire by the extreme right. Some of the most extreme
ultra-reactionaries even wished for a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, who
Castro characterized as “neo-fascists without any consideration of the most
basic rights of nations or the interests of humanity.”³³
What makes Castro’s selection of that first-strike nuclear policy so
remarkable is that in a meeting
in July, 1961, President Kennedy was presented with a plan to launch a nuclear attack
against the Soviet Union by members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA .
The proposal noted the war would begin in late 1963. Kennedy began
quizzing the men feeding him this idea on how many millions would perish in
such a conflict. Disgusted, the
president abruptly walked out of the meeting, and turned to Secretary of State
Dean Rusk saying “and we call ourselves the human race.”³⁴
Turning to the motives behind Kennedy’s murder, Castro explained that
what passed through everyone’s mind was that it “was the work of some of the
elements that disagreed with his international policy, that is, his nuclear
pact policy, his policy toward Cuba which they did not consider aggressive
enough but weak.”³⁵
Yet what infused him with the
most passion was the propaganda campaign against the Cuban people in the wake
of the assassination:
“We foresaw that as a result of these
events the cycle might begin again, the ambush, the Machiavellian plan against
our country; that on the
very blood of their assassinated president there might be people unscrupulous
enough to begin immediately to draw up an aggressive policy against Cuba
— if that aggressive policy were not previously linked to the assassination, if
it were not linked because it might have or might not have. But there is no
doubt that that policy is being built on the still warm blood and the still
unburied body of their own president who was tragically assassinated.
They are people who have not one iota of
morality. They are people who have not one iota of scruple. They are people who
have not one iota of shame, who perhaps think that in the shadow of tragedy
they can unsheath their daggers against our country, believing that they can
take us unprepared, demoralized, weak, one of those beliefs into which the imperialists
erroneously always fall.”³⁶
Castro then went on to read from various news wire stories on Oswald’s
background, pointing out how quickly
the American media leapt to implicate the Soviet and Cuban governments in such
a crime. He also observed how strange this Oswald character was, with his
supposed defection and service in the Marines. Finally, presenting his
analysis of the assassination to the Cuban audience, Castro concluded: “Perhaps
[Oswald] is an instrument very well chosen and well prepared by the extreme
right-wing, by the ultra-conservative reactionaries of the United States, for
the definite purpose of getting rid of a president who, in their opinion, was
not pursuing a policy they felt was necessary, but rather a more belligerent, more aggressive,
more adventurist policy.”³⁷
While the strength of their analysis varied, the
specific political persuasions of the world leaders examined here did not
change their opinion on the basic facts of the Kennedy assassination. Figures as divergent as Charles
De Gaulle, Indira Gandhi, and Fidel Castro all agreed that there had been a
conspiracy orchestrated by high levels of American power to kill President
Kennedy, and that Oswald did not act alone. It is significant then, on
yet another anniversary where Americans will hear about how the assassination
was a tragic event clouded in mystery that fuels wild conspiracy theories, that
there is such a unified reaction from heads of state around the world. In that
sense, America is significant, in that major acts of political violence are
left unresolved and ascribed to entirely apolitical actors. When American
politicians are gunned down in broad daylight in blatant acts of reactionary
violence stemming from the power on the right, they get characterized as tragic
symptoms of unspecified vague social ills, rather than specific acts of
self-preservation and maintaining power by imperialist forces.
As renowned Kennedy assassination researcher and lawyer Vincent
Salandria has said:
We cannot consider ourselves a free and democratic
people until we understand and address the evil nature of the warfare-state
power which murdered President John F. Kennedy. Until then we cannot begin the
vital work of ridding the world of the terror produced by our mighty war machine
that crushes hopes for true substantive democracy here and elsewhere.
We can no longer afford to shield ourselves by asserting
that the murder of President Kennedy is a mystery. There is no mystery regarding how, by whom, and
why President Kennedy was killed. Only when we strip away our privileged
cloak of denial about the truth of the killing will we be able to free
ourselves for the hard global work of changing our unfair and brutal society to
one that is more equitable and less violent.³⁸
The public may know that President Kennedy was killed as a result of
conspiracy, but its failure to reckon with the truths which everyone else
around the world realized 59 years ago has contributed to the deepening spiral
of mass violence, psychosis, and bloodshed that define the history of the
United States.
Sources
¹ Granberry, Michael. “Ruth Paine, Who Lent a Helping Hand to Lee and Marina Oswald, Looks
Back at Nov. 22, 1963.” Dallas News, November 19, 2022. https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/17/ruth-paine-who-lent-a-helping-hand-to-lee-and-marina-oswald-looks-back-at-nov-22-1963/.
² Talbot, David. The
Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret
Government. (New York: Harper Perennial, 2015), 418.
³ “Tragedy Stuns World Leaders; Radio Informs Armed Forces” Chicago Tribune. November
23, 1963.
⁴ Talbot, 567.
⁵ Ibid. 568.
⁶ “Britain Mourns the New Frontiersman” The Guardian Journal. November
23, 1963.
⁷ “News Of Murder Strikes With Shattering Impact” The Palm Beach Post. November
23, 1963.
⁸ “Tragedy Stuns World Leaders; Radio Informs Armed Forces” Chicago Tribune. November
23, 1963.
⁹ “Message of Condolence” The
Guardian. November 25, 1963.
¹² “Moscow Claims Rightist Plot” Santa Cruz Sentinel. November 24, 1963.
¹³ “Reds Try to Dodge All Blame” Cincinnati Inquirer. November 24, 1963
¹⁹ FBI airtel to Director Hoover from New York SAC. February 22,
1964.
²⁰ Rakove, Robert B. Kennedy,
Johnson, and the Nonaligned World. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2012, , xvii-xxviii.
²¹ Oglesby, Carl. The
Yankee and the Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate.
Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1976, 71–72.
²² Schayegh, Cyrus. Globalizing
the US Presidency: Postcolonial Views of John F. Kennedy. London:
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, 88.
²⁶ Schayegh, 86.
²⁷ Mahoney, Richard. JFK:
Ordeal in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, 243.
²⁸ Schayegh, 85.
³⁰ “Castro on Death of President Kennedy”, Havana Domestic Radio
and Television in Spanish, November 24, 1963, 4. The speech is
incredible and should be read in full.
³¹ Ibid., 5.
³² Ibid., 6.
³³ Ibid., 8.
³⁴ Dallek, Robert. “JFK vs. the Military.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media
Company, September 10, 2013. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/08/jfk-vs-the-military/309496/.
³⁵ “Castro on Death of President Kennedy”, 9.
³⁶ Ibid., 10.
³⁷ Ibid., 28.
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