Could it have been to deflect from his own involvement in the JFK assassination? "A communist did it" was not what the vast majority of Americans immediately thought when they heard JFK had been shot in Dallas, TX.
For years I have been collecting information on the many people who warned JFK not to go to Dallas because of the extreme right wing environment there. I have also been collecting information on who (what political force, what entity) so many people from all sections of American society immediately blamed the JFK assassination on.
While many political INSIDERS were immediately blaming the JFK assassination on Lyndon Johnson, vast swaths, the majority of Americans were immediately blaming the JFK assassination on a Dallas Right Winger, or a KKK sympathizing racist or right wing Dallas, TX oil men.
But not Lyndon Johnson, the King of the Kennedy-Haters, he was blaming it on a COMMUNIST.
Here is a very robust list of the many people who warned JFK not to go to Dallas because of its hard right atmosphere or who immediately blamed the JFK assassination on "the Right Wing."
Lyndon Johnson to Malcolm Kilduff, after Kiduff asked if he could
make a statement that the president was dead:
"No,
wait. We don't know if it's a communist conspiracy or not. I'd better get out
of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?"
[Sam Johnson's Boy, Steinberg, p. 606,
published in 1968]
QUOTE
When they reached the hospital,
Johnson jumped out of the car and held his left bicep with his right hand while
he rushed indoors with five Secret Service agents, leaving Lady Bird with
Yarborough. Rumors spread that he had
been shot, that he had suffered a heart attack. Once inside the hospital, Johnson and the agents were
ushered to the rear of the Minor Medicine area, where between deep sniffs from
his nasal inhalator, he said repeatedly, “The International Communists did it!”
…Nor had Salinger’s chief assistant Andrew Hatcher, gone to Texas, because
Kennedy had been considerate of the anti-Negro bias in that Southern state.
This was the reason Malcolm Kilduff, another assistant press secretary, was
present at the hospital and became the first person to call Johnson “Mr.
President.” Kilduff had come to Booth 13 to ask his permission to make a
statement that Kennedy was dead, but Johnson barked at him, “No, wait. We don’t know whether
it is a Communist conspiracy or not. I’d better get out of here and back to the
plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?”
UNQUOTE
[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the
President from Texas, pp. 605-606, published in 1968]
Alfred Steinberg was a seasoned
journalist who knew Lyndon Johnson very well, up close and personal. One could
rightfully call Alfred Steinberg a journalist insider of his era.
Pat Speer:
QUOTE
Acting Press Secretary
Malcolm Kilduff, for one, admitted in a 11-22-91 interview on WTVQ that he
immediately suspected a Dallas-based right-wing conspiracy had killed Kennedy,
but that when he spoke to Johnson to ask if he could announce Kennedy's death,
Johnson told him, coolly, "Well, now Mac, before you make that
announcement, we don't know what kind of a communist conspiracy this
might be" and then asked him to hold off the announcement until he
(Johnson) was safely aboard Air Force One.
And this wasn't the
first time Kilduff had said such a thing. No, not by a long shot. A 12-23-63 radio interview of
Kilduff (quoted by UPI in a syndicated article, which can be found in the next
day's Lewiston Morning Tribune) supports that Johnson's first concern was of an
international conspiracy. Kilduff quotes Johnson as follows: "I think I
had better get out of here and get back to the plane before you announce
it" (Kennedy's death) ..."We don't know whether this is a world-wide
conspiracy, whether they are after me as well as they were after President
Kennedy, or whether they are after Speaker McCormick, or Sen. Hayden. We just
don't know." Then, as if to confirm the infirmity of human
memory, Kilduff recounts how he waited for Johnson to leave the hospital before
announcing Kennedy's death (as opposed to his later claim he'd waited till
Johnson had arrived on the plane).
UNQUOTE
Lyndon Johnson was the one insisting that JFK go to Texas
From Jeff Sheshol’s Mutual Contempt, p.137:
Jeff Sheshol:
QUOTE
Among
the late president’s inner circle, this was the conventional wisdom: the Dallas
trip was nothing but a political errand for LBJ. “Absolutely, absolutely,” said JFK aide Ralph Dungan.
“Kennedy made that trip, I can say for all history and posterity, without a
doubt, as a favor to Lyndon Johnson,” as a party-building exercise at “Lyndon’s
strong urging.” So persuasive was Johnson, by this account, that his influence
outweighed the reservations of the White House staff. Noting the rise of
the right wing in Texas and recalling the ugly reception to Adlai Stevenson’s
recent visit to Dallas, staffers sparred over the merits of a trip. This was
hostile territory, protested Ken O’Donnell. But to each objection Kennedy’s
response was reportedly the same: “Lyndon Johnson really wants me to do it, and
I’ve got to do it.”
UNQUOTE
[Jeff Sheshol, Mutual Contempt, p. 137]
Bill Minutaglio, writing in 2013, on
the Hard Right Atmosphere of Dallas in the Fall of 1963
QUOTE
The meaning of the
Kennedy assassination, to me, is that we have lost the meaning – that we have
lost the lessons, the messages inherent in his death. When he came to Dallas in
1963, the city's microphone had been hijacked by a very small handful of rabid
extremists. The group – which included the wealthiest man in the world,
preachers, politicos, lunatic military men, and a media mogul – stole the civic
discourse, and built a toxic, anti-Kennedy trap, as the president neared the
city in November 1963. They created a vitriolic, hateful environment – and they
were clearly not speaking for the majority of people in Dallas. But they had
access to the pulpits, the airwaves, the news pages – and, together, they serve
as a cautionary reminder of what happens when a small, strident group can push
the public debate to the fanatical, extremist fringe.
UNQUOTE
Web link https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2013-11-22/writers-on-kennedy-fear-and-distrust/
Bill Minutaglio: Dallas was the HQ of the Hard Right “Overthrow
Kennedy” Movement
Bill Minutaglio 2013: “Dallas
had just simply become, in an almost initially unlikely way, the headquarters o
fthe anti-Kennedy, ‘Let’s overthrow Kennedy movement,” Minutaglio said in an
interview with NPR. “He was perceived to be a traitor. He was a socialist, he
was on bended knee to so many different entities communism, socialist and even
the pope.”
Web link: The
Evidence | CIA did not kill JFK
Writers on Kennedy
What we think about when we
think about JFK
BY BILL MINUTAGLIO, FRI., NOV. 22, 2013
Journalist Robert Novak: Goldwater’s
press secretary Tony Smith immediately thought that the John Birchers
had killed JFK
“Novak: Kennedy’s death ‘something I’ll never
forget,” CNN, 11-22-03.
QUOTE
Rowly and I were having lunch at the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel with
the director of the Goldwater for President campaign and Sen. Barry Goldwater's
press secretary.
We had finished the lunch and all four of us got in the same cab
and as we got in the cab we heard the news on the radio that the president had
been shot. And Goldwater's press secretary -- Tony Smith -- blurted out,
"Oh my God, I'm afraid the Birchers did it," meaning the radical
right-wing John Birch Society.
UNQUOTE
George Packer on the Hard Right
Atmosphere that was Dallas 1963
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/leaving-dealey-plaza
“Leaving Dealey Plaza,” George Packer, The
New Yorker, Oct. 14, 2013
QUOTE
My hosts in Dallas seemed unsurprised but unhappy
about my interest in Dealey Plaza. They suggested that it might be better not
to mention it at the talk I had come to give. As the city prepares to mark the
fiftieth anniversary of the assassination, with a coming flood of visitors and
media people, the shame of the President’s murder is starting to throb again.
Unfair as it might be, to some Americans Dallas is the
assassination, the city that killed the President—a view that will surely be
enhanced by the publication of “Dallas 1963,” by Bill Minutaglio, a former
Dallas Morning News writer, and Steven L. Davis (also discussed by Adam Gopnik last week).
The authors describe the potent brew of
right-wing passions, much of it well organized and well funded—Bircher anti-Communism,
anti-Catholicism, racism (Dallas was the last large American city to
desegregate its schools), Kennedy hatred—that suffused many people in Dallas
with the spirit of dissension and incipient violence during the early sixties,
including some of its leading citizens: elected officials, Baptist ministers,
the billionaire oilman H. L. Hunt, the right-wing zealot General Edwin Walker,
even the publisher of the Morning News, Ted Dealey. During the 1960
Presidential campaign, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, the state’s most powerful
politician, and his wife, Lady Bird, were spat upon in Dallas; Adlai Stevenson,
J.F.K.’s Ambassador to the United Nations, was assaulted there just a month
before the assassination. “welcome mr.
kennedy to dallas …,” ran the headline of a black-bordered, full-page ad
in the Morning News on the morning of November 22, 1963, with
a bill of particulars that stopped just short of accusing the President of
treason. Kennedy had warned his wife, “We’re heading into nut country.”
UNQUOTE
Reporter Charles Roberts: “a lot of people were
looking for signs of hostilities” in Dallas on JFK’s trip
[“Memories of a
Tragedy,” Michael Gillette, Humanities Texas, November, 2013]
https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/memories-tragedy
QUOTE
[The
correspondents] came [to Dallas from Fort Worth] by plane, got there a little
ahead of the presidential plane, as did Vice President Johnson. So we saw
Kennedy and Jackie get off of Air Force One; Johnson and Connally
and, I guess, Yarborough were there in line—the people who greeted them as they
came off the plane, although many of them had been in Fort Worth that morning
or had been with us the day before. . . . Besides it being a political story, we had some
feeling—not foreboding—but a lot of people were looking for signs of
hostilities—what with Dallas being a center of right-wing reaction.
. . .
Any correspondent who says that the possibility
of an assassination had crossed his mind is, I think, indulging in hindsight.
But we were looking for signs of hostility, and we saw a few. . . . But the crowd at the airport was mostly friendly.
Kennedy, at the airport, would go down the chain link fence shaking hands, a
thing that Johnson later improved on and made into much more of a production.
[President Kennedy] went down the fence with Jackie, and the Vice President
just stayed in the background there completely, although it was his home state.
I remember I a sked Jackie how she liked campaigning, as they got to the end of
the fence. I had walked, for some reason, the whole length of it with them—and
she said, in that sort of breathless way of hers, "It's wonderful,
wonderful."
UNQUOTE
One of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s speeches
in Dallas “had been interrupted by circling cars full of noisy protesters” and
of course these were RIGHTWING protesters
Angel
is Airborne: Part 1 | Washingtonian
And thank God, Mr. President,
you came out of Dallas alive.”
The joke was prepared, the words
typed, ready to place on the Vice President’s lectern in Austin, Texas, later
that evening. Lyndon Johnson was planning to close his speech on November 22,
1963, with a punch line about how John F. Kennedy had survived the city of
hate.
Fears for Kennedy in Dallas had been
widespread. The place was filled with extremists who thought JFK was soft on
Communism and the United Nations was a red front. Just a few weeks earlier,
Adlai Stevenson had been physically assaulted during a speech there; in 1961, one of Bobby Kennedy’s speeches
in Dallas had been interrupted by circling cars full of noisy protesters;
and in 1960, images of a crowd jostling and jeering Lyndon and Lady Bird
Johnson as they crossed a Dallas street had horrified the nation.
In the days leading up to the Kennedy visit,
homemade posters bearing the President’s face circulated with the headline
“Wanted for Treason.” That morning at their hotel suite in Fort Worth, after
seeing a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News accusing
him of being a Communist lover, JFK said to his wife, Jackie, “We’re heading
into nut country today.”
[“Angel is Airborne,” Garrett M. Graff, Washingtonian,
2013]
Some of Dallas 1963’s major financial, media, and
religious leaders were insisting Kennedy was a “traitor.” Don’t forget military
– Gen. Edwin Walker!
“Extreme words no longer left of fringe,” Joe
Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle, 11-19-2013:
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-francisco-chronicle/20131119/281672547719965
QUOTE
The authors describe how the intense antiKennedy
atmosphere in Dallas at that time created a “hothouse” where an unstable,
malleable loner like assassin Lee Harvey Oswald could germinate. It was a place
where some of the city’s major
financial, media, and religious leaders insisted that Kennedy was a “traitor.”
UNQUOTE
Headline of Dallas
Morning News on Nov. 22, 1963
“Storm of Political Controversy Swirls Around
Kennedy on Visit”
And in
upper right corner on front page of the Dallas Morning News, it read
“Nixon Says – JFK May Drop Johnson in ‘64”
Top LBJ aide Horace Busby and his
wife Mary V. Busby were horrified that JFK was going to ride in an open top
limousine in Dallas due to the Kennedy-hating hard right atmosphere of Dallas.
Not only that Busby says that Gov. John Connally, Cliff Carter and “all the
Johnson men” were against an open-car motorcade.
QUOTE
Mary V. handed me the front page of a recent
issue [of the Dallas Morning News]. “Read this,” she said. “Someone has
lost their mind.” It wa a story announcing that, on his visit to Dallas,
President Kennedy would ride in an open-car motorcade from Love Field to the
site of his luncheon address.
“I
can’t imagine your friends in the Secret Service letting the president do
that,” she said. I agreed with her. The thought of physical danger to the
president did not occur. Our memories were still fresh, though, of 1960, when
the vice president and Mrs. Johnson were mobbed in a Dallas hotel lobby. An
ugliness had crept into Dallas politics which perplexed many Texans. Only a few
weeks earlier there had been a nasty attack on Ambassador Adlai Stevenson when
he spoke there. An open-car motorcade was an obvious invitation for more
episodes – ugly signs, jeering chants, or perhaps an egg tossed at the
presidential limousine.
The
next day I voiced my concern to Walter Jenkins and learned that he shared it.
In fact, he told me, Governor Connally, Cliff Carter, and all the Johnson men
participating in plans for the Kennedy visit were counseling against the Dallas
motorcade.
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March,
p. 140]
Unlike LBJ who was immediately
blaming a “communist” for the JFK assassination (see Malcolm Kilduff), Richard
Nixon’s first comments were that a “right-wing nut” had killed JFK
QUOTE
Although Lee Harvey Oswald would not be charged
with the president’s murder until 2:30 the following morning, J. Edgar Hoover
had already decided that Oswald was guilty. Late that afternoon former
Vice-President Richard Nixon had called the FBI director and, getting right
through, had asked, “What happened? Was it one of the right-wing nuts?”
“No,”
Hoover replied, “It was a Communist.”
UNQUOTE
[Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and
the Secrets, p. 542]
Critical John Simkin blog post on
what Richard Nixon knew and said about the JFK assassination. And in the Roger
Stone revelations that Nixon was pointing the finger at LBJ
https://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL141.htm
Nixon had been told the Bay of Pigs operation
held the key to understanding the assassination of Kennedy. Haldeman claims in
his book The Ends of Power (1978):
"Ehrlichman had found himself in the middle of this feud as far back as
1969, immediately after Nixon assumed office. Nixon had called Ehrlichman into
his office and said he wanted all the facts and documents the CIA had on the
Bay of Pigs, a complete report on the whole project. About six months after
that 1969 conversations, Ehrlichman had stopped in my office. 'Those bastards
in Langley are holding back something. They just dig in their heels and say the
President can't have it. Period. Imagine that! The Commander-in-Chief wants to
see a document relating to a military operation, and the spooks say he can't
have it.' " (4) This was confirmed by John Ehrlichman in
his book Witness to Power: The Nixon Years that was
published in 1982. (5)
In his memoirs Richard Nixon has very little to say about the
assassination. He admits he was in Dallas on 20th November 1963 at a meeting of
the Pepsi-Cola board). Nixon said he contacted J. Edgar Hoover as
soon as he heard the news: "He came right on the line and without wasting
words I asked, 'What happened? Was it one of those right-wing nuts?' Hoover
replied: 'No', he replied, 'it was a Communist.' it was a Communist.' Months
later Hoover told me that Oswald's wife had disclosed that Oswald had been
planning to kill me when I visited Dallas and that only with great difficulty
had she managed to keep him in the house to prevent him from doing so."
(6)
Haldeman says that he had always been interested in the
assassination of John F. Kennedy and asked Nixon to reopen the case soon after
he entered the White House "but Nixon turned me down". Haldeman says
that "after Kennedy was killed, the CIA, launched a fantastic cover-up.
Many of the facts about Oswald unavoidably pointed to a Cuban connection."
Haldeman suggested that this included: "(i) Oswald had been arrested in
New Orleans in August, 1963, while distributing pro-Castro pamphlets. (ii) On a
New Orleans radio programme he extolled Cuba and defended Castro. (iii) Less
than two months before the assassination Oswald visited the Cuban consulate in
Mexico City and tried to obtain a visa." Haldeman says that when Nixon
mentions the "Bay of Pigs" he might have "been reminding
Helms" of the "CIA operation that may have triggered the Kennedy
tragedy and which Helms desperately wanted to hide." (7)
https://spartacus-educational.com/spartacus-blogURL141.htm
Earl Warren,
CIA director John McCone and Jackie Kennedy and FBI agent James Hosty all
immediately assumed that JFK had been killed by a right-winger.
https://www.newsweek.com/real-cover-191292
At the time, Hosty did not regard
Oswald as a threat to the president. He was more worried about the right-wing
crazies he had also been assigned to investigate. On Nov. 22, as he was sitting
in a Chinese restaurant eating a cheese sandwich (it was Friday, and Hosty was
a good Roman Catholic), he heard a wail of sirens. Weeping, a waitress told
Hosty that President Kennedy had been shot. Hosty, stunned, immediately blamed the right. He was
hardly alone. Chief justice Earl Warren, CIA Director John McCone and Jackie
Kennedy all assumed at first that the president had been targeted by a fanatic
right-winger.
[“The Real Cover-Up,” Evan Thomas, Newsweek,
11-21-93]
Peter Pringle essay on Dallas 1963, The Independent 11-20-93: “We’re heading
into nut country”
‘We’re heading into nut country’: President
Kennedy said this to an aide as he began his fatal visit to Texas thirty years
ago. Here Peter Pringle evokes Dallas as it was then, a hostile place which
cared very little for the dream that died there
[“’We’re heading into nut country,’” Peter
Pringle, The Independent, 11/20/1993]
Original web link:
QUOTE
Dallas, 20 November 1963, two days before the arrival of
President JF Kennedy. Four thousand, nine hundred and eighty yellow roses - all
the yellow roses in California, according to the evening newspaper the Times
Herald - arrived at the airport in preparation for the presidential visit. It
was a typical, expansive Texan gesture, part of an effort to turn a rebellious
city with the highest homicide rate in the union and a growing reputation for hating Democrats into
a festive, reasonable place for a day.
Texans
knew it was an impossible task; the flowers would be ceremonial, nothing more. By his third year in office most
people in Dallas disliked Kennedy. Now a Republican stronghold, Dallas had
voted 62 per cent for Nixon in 1960. A staggering 53.5 per cent of the city's
wage earners were white-collar professionals. They could not have
been less interested in Kennedy's New Frontier with its plans to desegregate
schools and its civil rights bill. They longed for a return of the values of
the Old Frontier and had concluded from the start that Kennedy could never fit
the image of a plainsman.
As for his fancy liberal ideas about foreign largesse, such as
the Peace Corps, it seemed to Dallas citizens that these encouraged socialism.
They opposed funding backward nations in Latin America that then turned into
ideological enemies. And while they appreciated Kennedy's determination to put
a man on the moon, they didn't want to pay for the exercise - unless it helped
to fight the Communists.
Dallas in those days was a town of 750,000, mostly Anglo-Saxon
native Americans who kept a clean, God-fearing and relatively corruption-free
city. They had kicked out the prostitutes and were prosecuting the new sellers
of pornography. The city was playing its part in the record number of banks
opening across the US; more had opened in 1963 than any previous year. Personal
income nationwide had risen by dollars 3bn in October to a record annual rate. New money from oil was replacing
old money from cotton. The city was expanding with newcomers from
rural Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas. All were politically and socially
conservative.
These people thought Kennedy was doing the country a disservice
by being too soft on Communism. 'We can annihilate Russia, and we should make
that clear to the Soviet government,' the venerable owner of the Dallas Morning
News, Ted Dealey, had
told Kennedy at a dinner at the White House. What was needed, said Dealey, was
'a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the
South-West think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle'. Kennedy
was not amused, but held his fire.
Texans were angered by the latest talk from Moscow about the
Russians being able to 'wipe out whole states' and Khrushchev's boast that the
new Soviet anti-missile system could 'hit a fly in the sky'. In Dallas, people
thought Kennedy let the Soviet leader off too lightly.
By that last week, almost everyone was joining in the
anti-Kennedy chorus. The
American Bible Society placed an advertisement in the newspaper urging
vigilance against the march of 'Godless Communism'. They added a
quotation from Theodore Roosevelt warning of a 'lapse into paganism' to the
point where America would perish like Assyria and Babylonia. There were many
backers. The advertisement was sponsored by the First National Bank of Dallas,
two funeral homes and a florist, among others.
In some cases the attacks were directed personally at Kennedy
and his family. The
Dallas Morning News ran a column headlined, 'Why do so many hate the Kennedys?'
It was a vicious gripe about the Kennedys being 'new rich' and having money
that 'still stinks'. (Never mind that much of Dallas money was even
newer.) The writer was AC Green, editor of the newspaper's editorial page,
which followed a sort of Kit Carson and Daniel Boone line. It had been writing
in a mocking code about liberal causes, referring to Franklin Roosevelt's
'Queer Deal', the 'American Swivel Liberties Union' and the 'Judicial Kremlin'
(the US Supreme Court). Even so, it was the most respected voice in Dallas, and
everyone read it.
People in Dallas, wrote
Green, disliked the Kennedys because their lifestyle has 'a touch of vulgarity'
about it. He complained particularly about Bobby Kennedy being 'ambitiously
dictatorial', and noted how people couldn't forget the Kennedy family links
with the 'Frank Sinatra-Hollywood-Las Vegas axis'. The bleached-blonde dowagers
of Dallas, who went to debutante balls and coffee mornings, and worried whether
they had the latest kitchen gadgets, played a game in which you had to list the Kennedys you
hated the most. The correct answer was Bobby, Jack, Teddy and Jackie, in that
order. Many Dallas women would die rather than admit it, but they
almost all copied Jackie's dress and hairstyle. It was the fashion.
This was a time when few southerners were ready to give the vote
to Negroes, as they still called African-Americans, or let them drink at the
same water fountains. But they were ready to share sports. The problem was,
where would the Negroes change their clothes? As Harold Bradley, the University
of Texas basketball coach, explained in the Dallas Morning News: 'It's going to
be hard to get a Negro boy down here unless the housing is integrated.' He
added: 'There's no question Negro basketball players are outstanding. You take
the top 100 boys in the country and 60 of them will be Negroes'. Times would
soon change, he forecast, because, 'Negro boys are hungry players'. At the
University of Houston, they were willing to admit 'qualified Negroes' without
specifying what that meant.
The church played a significant part in the life of the city. Most of its inhabitants were of
Scottish-Irish stock and Protestants. They resented the Kennedys' Catholicism.
It didn't help the strained relationship when the Catholic bishops spoke at
their annual conference in that last week about the first step toward racial
harmony being 'to treat all men and women as persons'. Most southerners simply
didn't agree.
George Wallace, governor
of Alabama and the supreme segregationist, came to Dallas that week, too. He
arrived from Louisiana in a plane with Confederate flag markings. Asked by
reporters about his stand against desegregation, he claimed he had never made
an unkind remark about Negroes. 'It's just mixing the races that causes
trouble', he said. 'We resent Washington telling us how to run our schools.
Why, they've had to build extra bridges across the Potomac just for the people
leaving Washington since they integrated the schools there'. Wallace said that
with all the trouble in Washington, 'we Alabama people ought to be telling them
how to run their schools'.
That was also the prevailing feeling in Dallas. The latest Capitol Hill scandal
was free liquor in a contraband bar in the Senate basement. And at least one
senator was accused of having call girls on his payroll. Life
magazine reported that Washington was a place where 'a man needs a guide to
distinguish wives from mistresses, and mistresses from hired prostitutes. It is
a world devoted to the cynical manipulation of government influence and
government largesse'.
The Dallas Morning News was in the front line of outrage against
the nation's capital,
suggesting it was inhabited by 'an unknown number of subversives, perverts, and
miscellaneous security risks.' But the real security risk was the President's
visit.
Dallas already had a
reputation for roughing up Democrats. In the 1960 campaign, Lyndon Johnson and
his wife, Lady Byrd, were spat on by a group of housewives. A month before
Kennedy's arrival, the UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, was assaulted in a crowd.
Kennedy had been advised against the visit by several aides, unsolicited Dallas
residents and by the Texas governor, John Connally, who said people in the city
were 'too emotional'. In that year, a kind of fever lay over Dallas, wrote William
Manchester in his book Death of a President. People carried huge billboards
calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice, Earl Warren. Cowboy-booted executives placed
'KO the Kennedys' bumper stickers on their cars. Jewish stores were smeared
with swastikas and Kennedy's name was booed in classrooms. The Dallas city
council rushed through an ordinance banning attacks against visiting speakers,
but many still feared the worst, especially in a town where guns could be
bought without a licence or any kind of registration.
There was more than gunfire. The day of the assassination, 22 November 1963, the Dallas
Morning News printed a full-page advertisement, ominously bordered in black,
accusing Kennedy, again among a long list of other complaints, of being a
Communist patsy. It was signed by the American Fact-finding
Committee, which eventually was identified as a group of right-wingers led by
Nelson Bunker Hunt, of the oil-rich Dallas family. It was this advertisement
that prompted Kennedy's remark: 'We're heading into nut country today'.
Kennedy had come to raise funds for his 1964 re-election
campaign and to try to heal rifts in the Texas Democratic Party, which was in
its usual mood: loving as a nest of alligators, as the Times Herald put it. His approval rate in the state
was just over 50 per cent, as opposed to 59 nationally, and down from 76 in
1962.
In three years Kennedy had failed to make headway on the
important initiatives of his administration - the first civil rights bill, a
foreign aid bill and a pre-election year tax cut. He and Khrushchev had come
within a button-push of blowing up the world over the Cuban missile crisis. And
he left blacks seething over civil rights.
Yet by the mid-Eighties most Americans would remember him as the
finest ever President. The ugliness of Dallas and the rest of the South would
be replaced by a memory of what Norman Mailer and others called an age of
innocence; an imaginary Kennedy era that afforded economic exuberance and a
happier and more secure America rudely shattered by the assassins bullets.
The best explanation for this cognitive dissonance is that those
who recall only the bright, shining moments of Kennedys presidency and manage to blot out the rest
still cannot accept that a psychotic jerk with a cheap Italian carbine brought
his life to a sudden close. Without such an end the staying power of
the Kennedy legend would never have been so great.
UNQUOTE
Pierre Salinger: JFK’s Cabinet on
11/22/1963 had the almost unanimous opinion the JFK had been killed by a
militant right-winger from the lunatic fringe of Dallas
QUOTE
It seems now, looking back, almost
sacrilegious to have played poker at such a time. But if there had not been
that game, it is hard to tell what would have happened on that plane, so high
were the emotions.
After a while, however, the poker game
could not keep our attention, and some of us slowly drifted forward to
Secretary Rusk’s cabin.
There, the topic of conversation was what kind of a man
would kill President Kennedy. I remember now that there was almost unanimous
opinion at the time that it would have to be a militant right-winger from the
lunatic fringe of Dallas.
The messages kept coming off the wire
service machine and finally one started grinding out the story of Lee Harvey
Oswald and his previous life in Russia and his membership in the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee.
This went against all the preconceived
theories we had established.
UNQUOTE
[Pierre
Salinger, With Kennedy, pp. 27-28, paperback edition, published 1966]
Journalist Martin
Agronsky and the entire NBC newsroom in Washington, D.C. thought for sure a
looney right-winger had killed JFK
QUOTE
The next morning, Agronski, having almost no sleep, walked
into Parkland Hospital, where I met him. I didn’t know him, and he said,
“Charlie, I was in the news
room in Washington, when you made the first report on Oswald. We
were all there watching. There
were a lot of people there.” Agronsky said, “Man, when you said Oswald was a
communist, that news room went totally silent. You could hear a pin drop in
that newsroom. Everyone was convinced that some looney right-winger had shot
the president, so it was a shock.”
UNQUOTE
[Charles
Murphy, I Covered the Kennedy Assassination, location 508 of 638 Kindle
book, published 11/30/13]
Rep. George Mahon (D-TX)
immediately thought a “right-wing extremist” had killed JFK
QUOTE
7:18
a.m. on Monday, November 25, 1963
AGRONSKY
interviews George H. Mahon (D-Tex), who was in the motorcade when the President
was shot.
REP.
MAHON: This has been an unbearable blow for Texans; it is hard to explain how
we Texans feel. At
first I thought a right-wing extremist had done it. Now we know it
was an extremist of the left … Violent mail has been coming into the Congress
in the last three years, four years. The American people are alarmed. They do
not trust their leaders.
UNQUOTE
[NBC
Broadcasting Company, Seventy Hours and Thirty-Minutes: a minute-by-minute
log, from the assassination of President Kennedy through his funeral,
published by Random House, 1966]
Add Sheriff Bill Decker to the list of people who said that there
was a large hole in the back of JFK's head:
Journalist
Charles Murphy, who worked for NBC in Dallas:
QUOTE
So
when they switched to me I sourced it using what Jimmy Kerr told me. Later
Jimmy, the off-the-air reporter, told me that I was standing outside the
emergency room at Parkland when Sheriff Bill Decker came out. And he asked
Decker, “Have you been in there and seen the president?” Decker pointed to
the back of his head and said, “Have you ever seen a deer with the back of it’s
head blown off?” And Jimmy said, That was good enough for me.” At the
same time, police dispatch was radioing all units that the president was dead.”
UNQUOTE
[Charles
Murphy, I Covered the Kennedy Assassination, Location 508 of
Charles Murphy’s Kindle book, published 11/30/13]
Here
is Charles Murphy's book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Covered-Kennedy-Assassination-Charles-Murphy-ebook/dp/B00GM9ABMU
Blurb
for Charles Murphy book:
November
22, 1963, Dallas, TX. As reports of "shots fired at the presidential
motorcade" came into the newsroom, Charles Murphy, a local TV news
anchorman, in a Fort Worth studio, found himself thrust into the national
spotlight, broadcasting live to the nation on the NBC television network. As
White House and local reporters in the motorcade scrambled for pay phones in
Dallas, Murphy was able to confirm details about the president's death, the
shooting of officer JD Tippit, and the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald live from
the Fort Worth newsroom of WBAP television. Murphy offers a detailed minute by
minute account of the assassination, and the inside story of how NBC news
covered the news story that changed television news coverage for ever.
Charles
Murphy's (1928-2023) obituary: https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/name/charles-murphy-obituary?id=52368675
Charles
Murphy Obituary
Charles
Murphy, a pioneering television journalist who covered the Kennedy
assassination for NBC News and spent 30 years as an ABC News correspondent,
died on June 20, 2023, in Arlington, Texas. He was 94. In addition to the
Kennedy assassination, Murphy covered the Vietnam War and the American Civil
Rights Movement, and later became known as one of the best writers and feature
reporters in the business.
Born Charles Edward Murphy on November 23, 1928, to John Murphy and Virgie Vola
Bartlett, he spent most of his childhood in Idabel, Oklahoma. At 17 he joined
the U.S. Army and later attended the University of Oklahoma, graduating with a
journalism degree in 1953.
Murphy began his broadcasting career when TV news was in its infancy, first
with KVOO in Tulsa and then WBAP in Dallas-Fort Worth (now NBC-5). On November
22, 1963, as reports of "shots fired" at President John F. Kennedy's
motorcade came into the newsroom, Murphy rushed to the main anchor desk, where,
broadcasting live over several days, he confirmed to a national audience
details about the president's death, the shooting of police officer J.D.
Tippet, and the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald. Long before cable news, that
career-defining story propelled Murphy to the ranks of the nation's elite TV
news correspondents. NBC News hired him to anchor the news for its affiliate,
WRC-TV, in Washington, D.C. and then assigned him to the White House during the
presidency of Lyndon Johnson. In 1967, when American casualties were at their
highest in Vietnam, he covered the war in Southeast Asia.
In 1968 after joining ABC News, he opened the network's Miami bureau and
covered, among other events, civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua; the
Arab-Israeli conflict, where his car was blown up by an Israeli fighter jet ;
unrest in Northern Ireland, including "Bloody Sunday," where British
troops fired on him; Apollo space launches; funerals for Anwar Sadat and Elvis
Presley and the military coup of the Chilean President Salvador Allende. His
ABC News documentary, "Chile: Experiment in Red," won both the
Overseas Press Club Award and the Dupont-Columbia Award. In 1977 Charles opened
the first Southwest Bureau for ABC News in Dallas. The many stories filed from
the region include the Oklahoma City bombing, the Challenger explosion, the
savings and loan collapse, H. Ross Perot's third-party presidential run and the
Branch Davidian siege in Waco.
Not every story was hard news, however. He loved telling quirky human-interest
stories. With his natural wit and Southern drawl, these became regular features
at the end of the nightly broadcast of ABC "World News Tonight,"
memorable observations on Americana like hunting dog graveyard in East Texas,
cowboy Christmas ball in West Texas, frog jumping competition in Arkansas, and
Beverly Hills motorcycle clubs who rode only for Sunday brunches.
Charles was a loving father and papaw. Among his pastimes, he enjoyed fishing
and hiking in Colorado with his family, raising orchids in his greenhouse, and
reading great big volumes of history. On or off camera, he was a natural
storyteller with a gift for entertaining people.
He is predeceased by his wife of 68 years, Jamie Edwards Murphy; his brother
Wilburn Dale Murphy and sister Juanita Pollard; and survived by his brother
John Murphy (wife Karin), sister Mary Lou Gilbreath (husband Glenn); and his
four children: Jamie McLeroy (husband Fred), David Murphy (wife Lowella), Sarah
Murphy, and Meredith Dickenson (husband Jerry); five grandchildren, Leah
McLeroy (husband Markus), Tommy McLeroy (wife Jessica), Charlotte Murphy
(fiancée Martin), Lloyd Murphy and Clark Murphy; and three great-grandchildren.
The family would like to give special thanks to Charles' friend and caregiver
Dalia Morales and her husband Victor; and to the wonderful staff at Satori
Senior Care, who lovingly cared for Charles during the last years of his life.
Jim Gatewood heard some of his Mason
brothers say they should “shoot that son of a bitch” JFK when he came to Dallas
On
eve of JFK remembrance, Dallas forced to reckon with a past of hate | US
politics | The Guardian
[“On
eve of JFK remembrance, Dallas forced to reckon with a past of hate,” Tom Dart,
Guardian, 11/21/13]
QUOTE
Working
in an insurance office when he heard on the radio that the president had been
shot, Jim Gatewood's shock turned to dread as he recalled a conversation among
his fellow Masons ahead of John F Kennedy's visit.
"I overheard
some of the brothers say they should 'shoot that son of a bitch' when he comes
to Dallas. I said a silent prayer, 'Lord, don't let it be one of the
brothers'," said Gatewood, who was 34 at the time and became a local
historian and author.
Segments
of the city's population felt hatred towards Kennedy – so much so that Dallas
was dubbed "city of hate" in the aftermath of the assassination. On
the day of his death, Kennedy told his wife, Jackie, that he was "heading
into nut country".
UNQUOTE
Jake Pickle in 1965 on Dallas not
being friendly territory as he assessed LBJ’s chances there against Gov. Allen
Shivers in 1956 delegate selection process for president. Texas was battling
over “favorite sons” to the 1956 Democratic convention.
QUOTE
Dallas is not friendly territory for us.
There’s too many radicals, and Shivers has them whipped to a frenzy about the
negros and the schools.
UNQUOTE
-- Jake Pickle's
appraisal of conditions during LBJ's Favorite Son Bid against Allan Shivers in
1956. -OS
Lawrence Wright
in 2013: “A Marxist in Dallas?! It was hard to find a liberal Democrat!
Source:
Nicole Stockdale, DMN tweet: https://twitter.com/nstockdale/status/396690925516115968
QUOTE
.@lawrencewright on Oswald: “A Marxist in
Dallas?! It was hard to find a liberal Democrat!” #JFK50
UNQUOTE
Hugh Aynesworth: people in Dallas
IMMEDIATELY suspected H.L. Hunt in the JFK assassination – in fact, someone
came to Aynesworth’s home on the night of Friday 11/22/1963 with information
purportedly indicting H.L. Hunt in the JFK assassination.
[“Hugh Aynesworth Has Spent His Career
Debunking JFK Conspiracy Theories,” Malcolm Jones, Daily Beast, 11/22/2013]
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hugh-aynesworth-has-spent-his-career-debunking-jfk-conspiracy-theories
Somebody actually came to you on Saturday, Nov. 23, with a
conspiracy theory explaining the assassination?
No, that Friday! As I came home that
night, he was sitting on the steps. He thought that H.L. Hunt and some of the
big companies there had been involved. He showed me a bunch of crap
that was just ridiculous, and all crumpled up. He’d obviously been carrying it
around for a long time. And I sent him to a friend of mine at the rival paper,
the Times Herald. Because I told him I can’t do this, and he said,
‘Well, you obviously don’t know what you’re doing, I need someone more
experienced.’ So I thought, OK, and I sent him to Bob Finley at the Times
Herald.
Bill Minutaglio on the Hard Right atmosphere
of Dallas in 1963
Interview: The Political Climate in
Dallas Leading to JFK’s Assassination
Texas
Standard’s David Brown interviews Bill Minutaglio on September 19, 2013
Walter Cronkite’s announcement of JFK’s assassination. The
televised shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. The Zapruder film. The Warren
Commission.
In that avalanche of history, a new book suggests we’ve lost sight
of something important: specifically, the seedbed for the most momentous
political tragedy of 20th century America.
It’s the story of “Dallas, 1963.” That’s the title of a new book by Stephen L. Davis andBill Minutaglio.
Minutaglio talks with KUT’s David Brown about why he describes the
book as a “biography of a city,” and what lessons may have been overlooked by
history.
“We felt there was a welling toxic environment in Dallas,”
Minutaglio says. “That
there was something that started as unease and dread in the community at large
and it really began building to a fevered pitch. It was waiting there for
Kennedy, and he didn’t know it.”
According to Minutaglio, Kennedy had received reports that the
environment in Dallas was quite intense and maybe he should rethink his visit.
Kennedy’s aides had reported that there was a group of people who had “hijacked
the microphone.”
These “outsized figures” included billionaire H.L. Hunt, General
Edwin A. Walker and Ted Dealey, publisher of The Dallas Morning News. However, as history states, Kennedy’s assassin wasn’t
some “right-wing radical.”
“People were literally coming to Dallas to join this anti-Kennedy
resistance,” Minutaglio says. “Lee Harvey Oswald was there, and was kind of
caught up in the swirl, and might have been motivated as a disturbed individual
to action, to be a part of this maelstrom. Nothing like this could have
happened, but in Dallas.”
Listen to the interview in the audio player above.
This interview originally ran Sept. 19, 2013.
2013 Mark
Byrnes article for Bloomberg on “Dallas, 1963: ‘City of Hate’? – lots of
interesting pictures in this article
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-22/dallas-1963-city-of-hate
QUOTE
Fifty years ago, Dallas was the nation's right-wing "center for
resistance," says Steven Davis, one of the co-authors of the recently
released Dallas 1963. The city had a handful of radical Kennedy opponents, including
congressman Bruce Alger. Alger once organized an anti-Lyndon Johnson rally that ended with the
Texas senator and his wife being spat upon.
It also served as the headquarters for gubernatorial candidate and John
Birch Society supporter Edwin Walker, who organized an anti-UN protest in 1963 that ended with ambassador
Adlai Stevenson being hit in the head with a sign post. Ted Dealey, publisher of the Dallas
Morning News, once told President Kennedy (at a White House
luncheon, no less), "we need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and
many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's [Kennedy's daughter] tricycle." The city did not even desegregate its schools until 1961.
UNQUOTE
[“Dallas,
1963: ‘City of Hate’?; Mark Byrnes, Bloomberg, 11/22/2023]
“The 1950s
congressman whose career explains the Texas GOP’s extremism,” Kyle Longley, The
Washington Post, 7-7-2022]
In June, the
Texas Republican Party made national headlines by adopting several extreme
positions at its convention. It called for students to learn about “the
humanity of the preborn child,” characterized homosexuality as “an abnormal
lifestyle choice” and reaffirmed punishing those helping with gender
transition.
Delegates also
pushed for repealing the 16th Amendment (the federal income tax), attacked
clean energy plans, promoted ending the legislature’s right to regulate guns,
and endorsed ending the Federal Reserve and guaranteeing access to
cryptocurrencies.
The
platform highlighted the feelings of the 5,100 delegates, some of whom
supported far-right activists attacking conservative Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.)
as “eye-patch McCain” for opposing Russian aggression.
This
platform should surprise no one. It has roots in the tea party uprising that
followed the election of President Barack Obama and flourished in Texas.
However, the roots go much deeper — back to the 1950s when Texas began
transitioning from a state influenced by the populism of people like Lyndon B.
Johnson and Ralph Yarborough toward one dominated by reactionary right-wing
politics steeped in baseless falsehoods, evangelical religion and fierce
loathing for the left. One man embodies these roots: Bruce Alger.
Texas frequently elected
conservative segregationist Democrats in the first half of the 20th century.
But before the 1950s, the Republican Party was moribund, still considered by
some Texans to be the party of northern aggression in the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Only two Republicans served in the Texas congressional delegation between 1913
and 1953.
But in
1952, Alger rode a wave of right-wing energy to an upset victory in the
district encompassing much of Dallas. The pugnacious, arch-conservative
Missouri native hated the federal government. He proudly bragged that he was
the only member of Congress to vote against a school milk program. Intransigent
and partisan, Alger’s colleagues in both parties detested him — although many
affluent Dallas socialites adored the Republican for his vitriolic rhetoric
denunciation of socialists and communists and anyone they perceived as
anti-American — including civil rights activists.
During
his four terms in Congress, Alger never sponsored one piece of memorable
legislation and only voted with Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower 9
percent of the time.
The
Washington press corps ranked Alger the second least effective member of
Congress, trailing only Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.). This didn’t bother Alger:
He would crow, “My ignorance of politics couldn’t be matched by anybody in
politics.” His supposed ignorance was a badge of honor reflecting his
anti-government and anti-establishment credentials.
In many
ways, Alger reflected the local political culture, especially in the affluent
areas of Dallas. Each day, people received a steady diet of hard-right
propaganda rooted in Cold War rhetoric and baseless falsehoods.
The Dallas Morning News headed by the
reactionary E. M. “Ted” Daley often led the charge. It attacked the “Judicial
Kremlin,” a slap at the Warren Court, and even called President John F. Kennedy
“fifty times a fool.” At one point, Daley personally told Kennedy: “We need a
man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the
Southwest think you are riding on Caroline’s [Kennedy’s young daughter]
tricycle.” A steady barrage of incendiary pieces flowed from the newspaper
about liberals, socialists and communists — with little differentiation between
them.
This rhetoric heightened fears among
affluent Dallas residents who flocked to right-wing groups such as the John
Birch Society and often provided strong financial support to them. The group’s
virulent anti-communism, its opposition to international organizations and “one
world government” and strong support of states’ rights and disdain for federal
institutions — including the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Service —
brought in many supporters from Dallas and its suburbs.
Race and
religion were at the center of this politics. Even in the church pews, Dallas socialites received a
steady diet of incendiary — and false — claims regarding desegregation and
Catholicism. In 1960, the senior pastor of the 18,500 members of the First
Baptist Church of Dallas, W.A. Criswell, gave a sermon stressing that “the
election of a Catholic as president would mean the end of religious freedom in
America.” Later, he told reporters that Catholics should never hold higher
office in the country.
Often,
Alger sought to amplify and capitalize on the pronouncements of those like
Daley and Criswell — including an infamous episode during the 1960 campaign. On
Nov. 4, trying to distract from his own ugly divorce then making headlines,
Alger prepared an ambush for Johnson, then the Democratic vice-presidential
nominee.
Alger and
his supporters set up shop outside the Baker Hotel, across from where the
senator from Texas planned to deliver a speech. When Johnson approached the
hotel, Alger whipped a
crowd of primarily well-dressed women (who became known as the Mink Coat Mob) —
whose husbands worked in nearby office buildings — into a frenzy with chants of
“If Khrushchev could vote, he’d choose Kennedy-Johnson!” Standing taller than most
of the women surrounding him, Alger raised and lowered a huge sign, “LBJ SOLD
OUT TO YANKEE SOCIALISTS.”
Other signs from Alger’s mob included:
“TEXAS TRAITOR,” “JUDAS JOHNSON: TURNCOAT TEXAN” and “LET’S BEAT JUDAS.”
Some of the women rushed Johnson’s
limousine, screaming “Traitor” and “Judas.” One of them seized Lady Bird
Johnson’s white gloves and threw them forcefully into the gutter, prompting a
loud cheer. The congestion forced Johnson’s entourage to regroup in the hotel.
Johnson wily decided to walk across the
street to deliver his speech, offering up the perfect political theater. The
Mink Coat Mob once more surrounded the Johnsons as they exited the elevator,
shouting profanities and insults. They poked Johnson supporters with pins and
pounded them with signs. They even broke the nose of a young Johnson supporter.
The mob turned a five-minute walk into 30.
At one
point, Rep. Jim Wright (D-Tex.) fumed to Alger: “It’s out of line for a U.S.
Congressman to take part in this. Put a stop to this,” he ordered. Alger
responded gleefully, “We’re gonna show Johnson he’s not wanted in Dallas,”
prompting cheers from the well-dressed women.
After his
speech, Johnson played up the affair, telling reporters, “No man is afraid of
facing up to such people.” Pushing the advantage, he observed, “But it is
outrageous that in a large civilized city a man’s wife can be subjected to such
treatment. Republicans are attacking the women, and the children will probably
be next.”
Johnson’s
masterfully manipulated the political theater to his advantage. When he walked
slowly through the crowd, he knew the cameras captured a deranged mob of
Republicans better dressed than those attacking civil rights activists but the
same nonetheless. He chose his words carefully to appeal to Southern ideals of
hospitality and proper decorum, scoring a victory over Alger.
The incident outraged “thousands of
Texans and many more thousands of Southerners,” according to columnists Rowland
Evans and Robert Novak. Even the normally conservative Dallas Morning News
stressed the “damage was done.” It added that even Alger partisans “deemed the
incident unwise.”
One supporter of 1960 GOP presidential
nominee Richard M. Nixon bemoaned that the whole affair had “set the Republican
Party in Texas back twenty years.” After Nixon lost Texas by the narrow margin
of 46,333, he himself complained, “We lost Texas in 1960 because of that …
congressman in Dallas.”
Two years
later, Alger’s antics finally cost him his seat.
However,
rather than being an anomaly, Alger reflected — and savvily capitalized upon —
the local culture, allowing him to win reelection four times despite his lack
of legislative record and animosity from both parties. He stood at the
forefront of reactionary politics, often aligned on race with Southern
Democrats such as Strom Thurmond and Harry Byrd, fanning the flames of division
over integration and red-baiting liberals. While the social conservative issues
of school prayer, abortion, immigration and pornography became prominent after
he left office, Alger’s style and reactionary ethos infused these debates.
Since the
1960s, the political culture that created Bruce Alger and allowed him to hold
power has simply extended from the suburbs of Dallas throughout all of Texas.
Cultural and racial issues ensured its spread as Texas largely rejected
Democrats for Goldwater- and Reagan-style Republicanism. As in Dallas in the
50s, conservative evangelical churches and right-wing media have helped spread
this politics across the state.
The
recent meeting of the GOP faithful just reinforced this reality; Alger’s
progeny dominate the Texas GOP. People such as Reps. Louie Gohmert and Chip
Roy, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state Attorney General Ken Paxton boast of
political positions and rhetoric that recall Alger. The conservatives of the
George W. Bush years — who favored more inclusivity and less incendiary
rhetoric — have found themselves increasingly isolated.
It’s too
early to tell if this will eventually cost Republicans the state, which is
increasingly becoming more diverse and urban, but the Texas GOP seems unlikely
to change anytime soon.
“The City
With a Death Wish in It’s Eye,” James
McAuley, NYT, 11-16-2013.
FOR 50 years, Dallas has done its best to avoid coming to terms
with the one event that made it famous: the assassination of John F. Kennedy on
Nov. 22, 1963. That’s
because, for the self-styled “Big D,” grappling with the assassination means
reckoning with its own legacy as the “city of hate,” the city that willed the
death of the president.
It will
miss yet another opportunity this year. On Nov. 22 the city, anticipating an
international spotlight, will host an official commemoration ceremony. Dallas
being Dallas, it will be quite the show: a jet flyover, a performance from the
Naval Academy Men’s Glee Club and remarks from the historian David McCullough
on Kennedy’s legacy.
But once
again, spectacle is likely to trump substance: not one word will be said at
this event about what exactly the city was in 1963, when the president arrived in what he called, just moments
before his death, “nut country.”
Dallas — with no
river, port or natural resources of its own — has always fashioned itself as a
city with no reason for being, a city that triumphed against all odds, a city
that validates the sheer power of individual will and the particular ideology
that champions it above all else. “Dallas,” the journalist Holland McCombs
observed in Fortune in 1949, “doesn’t owe a damn thing to accident, nature or
inevitability. It is what it is ... because the men of Dallas damn well planned
it that way.”
Those “men of Dallas” — men like my
grandfather, oil men and corporate executives, self-made but self-segregated in
a white-collar enclave in a decidedly blue-collar state — often loathed the
federal government at least as much as, if not more than, they did the Soviet
Union or Communist China. The country musician Jimmie Dale Gilmore said it best in his
song about the city: “Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eye ... a
rich man who tends to believe in his own lies.”
For those men, Kennedy was a veritable
enemy of the state, which is why a group of them would commission and circulate
“Wanted for Treason” pamphlets before the president’s arrival and fund the
presciently black-rimmed “Welcome Mr. Kennedy” advertisement that ran in The
Dallas Morning News on the morning of Nov. 22. It’s no surprise that four
separate confidants warned the president not to come to Dallas: an incident was
well within the realm of imagination.
The wives
of these men — socialites and homemakers, Junior Leaguers and ex-debutantes —
were no different; in fact, they were possibly even more extreme. (After all, there’s a reason Carol Burnett
pulls a gun on Julie Andrews at the end of the famous “Big D” routine the two
performed before the assassination in the early 1960s. “What are ya,” she
screams, pulling the trigger, “some kinda nut?!”)
In the
years before the second wave of the women’s movement, many of these women,
affluent but frustrated in their exclusive neighborhoods like Preston Hollow
and Highland Park, turned to politics as a means of garnering the validation
they were otherwise denied. With time and money at their disposal, they would
outdo their husbands, one another and even themselves.
During the 1960
presidential campaign, it
was a well-heeled mob of Junior League women who heckled and spat on Lyndon and
Lady Bird Johnson outside the storied Adolphus Hotel downtown (a scandal
that actually helped Johnson politically by showing the distance between the
Texas senator and his more ardent constituents).
In
October 1963, just weeks before the president’s visit, it was the wife of a downtown insurance executive,
not a derelict, who struck Adlai E. Stevenson, then the United Nations
ambassador, over the head with a picket sign.
And in
the annals of my own family history, it was my charming grandmother, not some
distant relation without a Neiman Marcus charge card, who nevertheless saw fit
to found the “National Congress for Educational Excellence,” an organization
that crusaded against such things as depictions of working women in Texas
textbooks and the distribution of literature on homosexuality in Dallas public
schools.
In a
photograph taken not long after the assassination, my grandmother smiles a
porcelain smile, poised and lovely in psychedelic purple Pucci, coiffure
stacked high in what can only be described as a hairway to heaven. Her eyes,
however, are intent, fixed on a target — liberalism, gender equality, gays.
Dallas is
not, of course, “the city that killed Kennedy.” Nor does the city in which the
president arrived 50 years ago bear much resemblance to Dallas today, the heart
of a vibrant metroplex of 6.7 million people, most of whom have moved from
elsewhere and have little or no connection to 1963.
But
without question, these memories — and the remnants of the environment of extreme hatred the
city’s elite actively cultivated before the president’s visit — have
left an indelible mark on Dallas, the kind of mark that would never be left on
Memphis or Los Angeles, which were stages rather than actors in the 1968
assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
For the
last 50 years, a collective culpability has quietly propelled the city to
outshine its troubled past without ever actually engaging with it. To be fair,
pretending to forget has helped Dallas achieve some remarkable accomplishments
in those years, like the completion of the Dallas-Fort Worth International
Airport, the development of the astonishingly successful Cowboys franchise and
the creation of what remains one of the country’s most electric local
economies.
But those
are transient triumphs in the face of what has always been left unsaid, what
the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald once called the “dark night of the soul,”
on which the bright Texas sun has yet to rise. The far right of 1963 and the radicalism of my
grandparents’ generation may have faded in recent years, they remain
very much alive in Dallas. Look no further than the troop of gun-rights
activists who appeared just days ago, armed and silent, outside a meeting of
local mothers concerned about gun violence. If this is what counts as
responsible civic dialogue, then Dallas has a long way still to go.
This year
Dallas has a chance to grapple with the painful legacy of 1963 in public and
out loud. Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen, although the city did
quietly host a symposium on whether it really deserved to be labeled “the city
of hate” earlier this month.
But when
the national cameras start rolling on Nov. 22, Dealey Plaza, the abandoned,
almost spectral site of the assassination and now of the commemoration, will
have been retouched in a fresh coat of literal and figurative white paint.
Cosmetics seem to be all we can expect.
“This is
not a group psychology lesson,” Mike Rawlings, the mayor, told me over lunch
recently. “We can do what we can do. I guess I could bring up all the relatives of the people that said bad
things. But why would you do that?”
To which,
of course, there is nothing to say.
Correction: Nov.
24, 2013
An earlier version of this
article misspelled the first name of a Texas country musician. He is Jimmie
Dale Gilmore, not Jimmy.
James McAuley is a Marshall
scholar studying history at the University of Oxford.
Author Phil
Shenon describes the Hard-Right Atmosphere of Dallas at the time of the Kennedy
Assassination
QUOTE
The
two-day, five-city fund-raising trip was the talk of much of official
Washington because, to many, it seemed politically risky. The president had
been warned that he might face protests from right-wing demonstrators,
especially in Dallas. “The Big D,” as the city’s boosters liked to call it, was
home to several far-fight extremists groups and had a reputation for
discourteous, even disgraceful, treatment of prominent visitors. Only a month
earlier, Kennedy’s UN ambassador, former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, had
been heckled outside his Dallas hotel by anti-UN protestors, including a
scowling Texas homemaker who hit him over the head with a cardboard placard
that read: DOWN WITH THE UN. During the 1960 campaign, then Senate majority
leader Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Kennedy’s vice presidential candidate, and his
wife Lady Bird, were swarmed by dozens of screeching anti-Kennedy protestors as
they tried to cross the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas to reach the
hotel’s ballroom for a luncheon rally. One protestor carried a defaced copy of
a Johnson campaign poster with the words SMILING JUDAS scrawled across it,
while another spat on Mrs. Johnson. She described the nearly thirty minutes it
took to cross the lobby as among the most frightening of her life.
UNQUOTE
[Phil
Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The
Secret History of the JFK Assassination, pp. 28-29]
Don Carleton (1986) his book the Red Scare in
Texas
QUOTE
The altered relationship between
Houston’s powerful and federal government was especially evident after John F.
Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
UNQUOTE
Joe Bauer on the hard right wing
environment in Dallas at the time of the JFK assassination
Days
before Dallas. - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com)
Joe
Bauer:
QUOTE
The FBI and SS's inaction in response to the Milter threat tape
relative to the Miami Police one is simply not defensible imo. The excuse that
the SS just didn't translate that threat to Dallas is patently absurd,
ludicrous and totally illogical.
Dallas was ground central home to the most rabid and powerful
JFK hating groups and individuals in the entire country at that time. The most
extreme commie threat promoting ( JFK was a the most targeted commie threat to
them ) right wing groups organized and financed by the world's wealthiest
men-Texas oil, General Walker whom JFK and RFK had involuntarily committed to a
mental ward, KKK rampant in the city's police department and probably other
departments, EXTREME JFK hating Mafia Carlos Marcello don controlling Dallas
through his lieutenant Joe Civello, and even a hot-headed ex-patriot Cuban JFK
BOP blaming community, JFK and RFK hating LBJ and Texas's corrupt political
machine ... hence, Dallas just wasn't the threat potential of San
Antonio...right.
UNQUOTE
Harriet van
Horne – after JFK’s death, many people in Dallas said they should have invited
JFK to Dallas sooner!
More
Light on the Kennedy Assassination
V. Berezhkov
Book Reviews
Joachim Joesten, Die Wahrheit über den Kennedy-Mord.
Wie und warum der Warren-Report lügt.
Schweizer Verlagshaus AG, Zürich, 1966
NEW TIMES No. 43, 26 October 1966, pp. 28–32.
Of interest in this connection is the
opinion of Harriet van Horne, a well-known American journalist. Joesten cites
her as writing in the New York World Telegram and Sun (September
29, 1964) that the criticism she had to make of the Warren Report was that it
ignored the absolutist climate of Dallas as a contributing or catalyzing factor
in the Kennedy assassination. Dallas, she continued, was a city where the rich did
indeed inherit the earth. And they ruled it with guns, money, and the whip of
hate. One Texan told her that after Kennedy’s death one could often hear it
said in Dallas that they should have invited him sooner. Yet the Report was
disappointingly silent on the guilt of Dallas.
More
Light on the Kennedy Assassination (kenrahn.com)
In the immediate aftermath of the JFK
assassination, Richard Nixon was asking J. Edgar Hoover if a “right wing nut” had killed JFK while Denison Kitchell, a top
Barry Goldwater aide said “My God, one of the Birchers did it.”
https://libertyconservative.com/masochism-left-camelot/
QUOTE
On November
22, 1963, Left and Right came together briefly in an awful contemplation. A
hostile mob surrounded the headquarters of Barry Goldwater, the prospective
Republican nominee against John F. Kennedy in 1963, chanting “Murderers!”
On the
other side, the Eastern Republican establishment also got into the act.
Immediately after Kennedy’s assassination, Richard Nixon phoned FBI Director
J. Edgar Hoover and asked, “Was it one of the right-wing nuts?” Even in the
Goldwater camp, there was suspicion that Kennedy had fallen victim to a
right-wing assassin. Denison Kitchel, the manager of Goldwater’s senatorial
campaign, muttered, “My God, one of the Birchers did it.”
UNQUOTE
[Ron
Capshaw, “Masochism: The Left After Oswald,” The Liberty Conservative,
March 5, 2017]
Robert Dallek –
People close to JFK concerned about is travel to Dallas because of it was a
bastion of the right-wing.
https://www.centerforpublicsecrets.org/post/the-strange-love-of-dr-billy-james-hargis
“There were
concerns among people close to Kennedy about his traveling to Dallas,” says
historian Robert Dallek. “Because the city had a reputation for being the
bastion of the right-wing.”
JFK himself
discussed the possibility of his assassination by the Right Wing on the morning
of his assassination
QUOTE
We’re entering nut country today. But, Jackie, if somebody
wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry
about it?
UNQUOTE
[O’Donnell,
Powers, and MacCarthy, 1972, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye]
Snopes
on this topic - https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/did-john-f-kennedy-predict-his-own-assassination/
Both Ruth and Michael Paine immediately
assumed that Far Right of Dallas had assassinated John Kennedy
[“Paine interview raises more JFK assassination
questions – Part II,” Jeff Meek, Village Voice Sept. 20, 2020.]
And there is the matter of phones being tapped
and the hearing of a Ruth – Michael conversation in which one of them said they
knew who was responsible for shooting Kennedy. Allegedly Irving Police Chief
Paul Barger knew about this. Have you talked to Barger about the assassination?
“Not that I recall. I don’t recall the name either,” she said. What about your
phone being tapped? “That’s an interesting question. I’ve tried to figure out
where that report came about, Michael and I talking to each other and being
heard by somebody. We
talked on the phone after Kennedy was shot, but before we knew Oswald was
involved. We both were thinking it was the far right, which had been very
prominent in their hostility toward Kennedy. We were both assuming that’s who
it was (that shot the President). I’m wondering if someone in
Michael’s office heard him say it, (that) we know who was to blame for shooting
the President, rather than it being tapped.”
Scores of people told author Leslie
Warren that their first thoughts were that the Right Wing had killed JFK
QUOTE
The
first thought in the minds of the scores of people I’ve seen since the
assassination was that it must have been done by a member of the right wing. Many of the local
rightists themselves thought so. I watched the color go completely from a man’s
face at the Imperial Club when the murder was announced. Politically, he stands
well to the right of Goldwater. At that moment, he was convinced that one of
his colleagues had committed murder.
UNQUOTE
[Leslie
Warren, Dallas Public and Private, pp. 153-153]
Also
quoted in [Pierre Sundborg, Tragic Truth: Oswald Shot Kennedy by Accident,
p.499]
William Manchester, in Death of a
President, stated that after JFK was shot, nearly all conjecture was that
the sniper and his confederates (if any) were agents of the Radical Right
"When the news first broke that JFK
had been shot, people all over the world prayed that he had just been wounded.
"Prayers continued. The nation's
suspense continued. So did mute phone lines, official fears of a plot, and,
through the Joint Chiefs' global alert, the quick knotting of the Pentagon's
awesome fist. Erratic reactions also continued, triggered by unsuspected inner
quirks. The pathetic refusals to accept the facts persisted, though they were
being defeated as each passing minute eroded individual defenses of denial and
misunderstanding. Those who needed solitude paced their lonely rooms and
streets, those who required company forged intimate friendships with strangers
they would never encounter again, and those capable of speculation wondered
about the source of the shots. Nearly all the conjecture led in the same direction. There was little
doubt about the political convictions of the sniper. It was assumed that he and
his accomplices, whose existence was also assumed, were agents of the Radical
Right. This was true even of the surmises of members of the John Birch
Society...
[William
Manchester, Death of a President, p. ____ ]
A very concerned Cong. Henry Gonzales tried
to delete Dallas from JFK’s itinerary! Gonzales letter to Todd Wayne Vaughn,
dated June 8, 1992
http://jfk.boards.net/thread/283/henry-gonz-images-kennedys-parkland
QUOTE
As you may know, I was riding in the motorcade several
cars behind President Kennedy when he was assassinated. I had traveled with the
President from Washington on his trip to Texas, as he and I had been friends
since the early 1950’s. The President had enjoyed the opportunity to receive a
very warm and moving reception in my home city of San Antonio.
I had, however,
been apprehensive about going to Dallas all along and had tried to delete
Dallas from the agenda when the trip was still in the planning stage. My apprehension was still just as great when we began
the motorcade in Dallas. A few minutes later my worst fears were realized when
I heard gunfire.
UNQUOTE
Texas Gov. John Connally, Adlai Stevenson, Sen.
William Fulbright (D-AR) and Stanley Marcus all warned JFK NOT to go to Dallas.
Question: Did Lyndon Johnson?
QUOTE
Bob Schieffer, anchor and moderator of CBS’ “Face the
Nation,” once said, “Hugh Aynesworth knows more about this tragic story and the
reporters who reported it than anyone I know.”
Kennedy believed Florida and Texas were crucial for
re-election in 1964. That’s why he embarked on a five-city swing through Texas:
San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas … with Austin scheduled to be the
final stop. Dallas was viewed as hostile territory by some because of its
right-wing, anti-communist extremism and arch-conservative John Birch Society
advocates. “Adlai Stevenson (then-United Nations ambassador), John Connally
(then-Texas governor), Sen. William Fulbright (from Arkansas) and Stanley Marcus
(of Neiman-Marcus corporate fame) all warned Kennedy not to go to Dallas,”
Aynesworth said.
UNQUOTE
Dallas
reporter Hugh Aynesworth was expecting the hateful Dallas Right Wing would
“throw something” at John Kennedy to embarrass him.
QUOTE
Aynesworth understood the risk that
Kennedy had taken by visiting Dallas: the reporter felt the city deserved its
reputation as a hateful place that was full of racists and right-wing
extremists. Before the president’s trip, he assumed Kennedy might face some
kind of ugly protest in the city. “I never dreamed they would shoot him, but I
thought they would embarrass him by throwing something at him.”
Aynesworth was ashamed of his
employer, a newspaper that he felt brought out the worst in its readers. In his
view, the News fostered a spirit of
intolerance in the city that might have helped inspire the assassination. “I
felt badly beause the editorial page of my newspaper had really caused it, as
much as any other single thing,” Aynesworth said later. The paper’s shrilly right-wing political slant appalled and
embarrassed many people in the newsroom, including me… the News had criticized Kennedy mercilessly…
On the morning of the assassination,
the paper had run a black-bordered, full-page advertisement placed by a group
of right-wing extremists who identified themselves as the American Fact-Finding
Committee. The ad accused Kennedy of allowing the Justice Department “to go
soft on Communists, fellow travelers and ultra-leftists.” Jacqueline Kennedy
remembered that, as they prepared to drive into Dallas in the motorcade, her
husband showed her the ad and remarked, “We’re heading into nut country.”
UNQUOTE
[Phil Shenon, A
Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the JFK Assassination, p.
130]
Byron
Skelton, in 1963 the National Democratic Committeeman from Texas, was extremely worried about the hard right
political climate in Dallas and Skelton moved heaven and earth trying to get
John Kennedy to take Dallas off the itinerary of
the Texas visit.
QUOTE
But another guest, Ken O’Donnell, had departed
with fragmentary memories which would lie dormant and then arise phantom-like
over the weekend. David Brinkley’s wife had inquired about the unrest in
Dallas. O’Donnell, taciturn as always, said little.
Later Bob Kennedy had ask him, “Did
you see that letter from Byron Skelton?”
O’Donnell nodded. He had seen it.
All month the Democratic National
Committeeman from Texas had been troubled by a premonition. This in itself was
unusual, for no one had ever accused Byron Skelton of being skittish. Now in
his late fifties, he was senior partner of the law firm of Skelton, Bowmer, and
Courtney; director of the First National Bank of Temple, Texas; and past
president of Temple’s Chamber of Commerce. With his neat black suits, soft
voice, and abundant gray hair he was a poster of Southern respectability, and
three years earlier he had played a leading role in staging the historic
confrontation between the Roman Catholic Kennedy and skeptical Protestant
preachers of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. Skelton’s performance
in Houston had earned the respect and gratitude of the President. Now Kennedy
was returning for a grand tour of the state’s urban centers. The National
Committeeman should have been proud, even elated.
He wasn’t. He was disturbed. The Presidential schedule
included a stop in Dallas, and lately Skelton had been eying that city with
growing uneasiness. The atmosphere there had become so highly charged by
inflammatory statements that he was genuinely concerned. An unstable,
suggestible individual - “a nut,” as he put it to his friends - might easily be
incited. And so, on November 4, he had decided to act. “Frankly,” he had
written the Attorney General that
morning, “I am worried about President Kennedy’s proposed trip to Dallas.” Quoting
a famous Dallas resident who recently declared that “Kennedy is a liability to
the free world,” Skelton commented that “A man who would make this kind of
statement is capable of doing harm to the President,” and concluded that he
would “feel better if the President’s itinerary did not included Dallas.” He
asked that cancellation of the stop receive “earnest consideration.”
Nor
did he stop there. Two days later he wrote Walter Jenkins, Lyndon Johnson’s
right-hand man, expressing further misgivings about the city. He would, he told
Jenkins, prefer that the President and the Vice President omit it from their
itinerary, and to make certain he had touched all the bases he flew to
Washington the following week and talked to John Bailey and Jerry Bruno at the
National Committee. In a long session with Bruno he carefully reviewed the
political climate in Dallas and his own apprehensions about it. It wasn’t safe,
he repeated; regardless of previous commitments it should be avoided.
The
upshot of all Skelton’s efforts was an enormous zero. On November 8 the
Attorney General, who knew him and took him seriously, forwarded his letter to
O’Donnell, who decided it was an unsupported hunch. Both Jenkins and Bruno
concluded that Skelton was merely annoyed because he and Mrs. H. W. Weinert,
Democratic National Committeewoman for Texas, were not included in the
Presidential party. In fact they were entitled to feel slighted. The failure to
consult either of them about the trip (they learned about it from the
newspapers) was a singular breach of political
etiquette, arising from Connally’s insistence that the White House deal with no
one but him. Bruno conceded as much to Skelton, and Jenkins took the matter up
with the Governor. Yet the snub was comparatively trivial. Presidential
security was, or should have been, the overriding consideration. Skelton had
felt so, and had tried very hard to make his point.
UNQUOTE
[William
Manchester, The Death of a President,
pp. 33-35]
Evelyn Lincoln and her husband Abe Lincoln URGED
JFK not to go to Texas because of the right wing atmosphere:
https://natedsanders.com/lot-32319.aspx
From
her book My Twelve Years with President John F. Kennedy which Evelyn Lincoln
quoted in an April 21, 1966 letter to Emeric J. Kirtz:
QUOTE
All during the discussions about the
Texas trip, Abe (my husband) said to me repeatedly, “I think it would be better
not to go to Texas.”
On November 19th, as we
were going over some last-minute reminders for the trip, I told the President
about Abe’s fear over his Texas trip. The President didn’t seem alarmed, he
merely said, as I had heard him say many times before, “If they are going to
get me, they will get me even in a church.”
UNQUOTE
Auction
of 4 Evelyn Lincoln letters closed on 9-25-2014
Lot of four letters written and signed by
President John F. Kennedy's personal secretary, detailing her views on Richard
Nixon and the parallels between Abraham Lincoln and JFK. Evelyn Lincoln's correspondence
with one Emeric J. Kurtz of New York, NY spans a period of ten years, from 17
August 1965 until 20 January 1976. Three of the letters are typed and one is
hand-written, and all are written on Ms. Lincoln's personal stationery.
Included are the original envelopes, all addressed to Emeric J. Kurtz.
The 20 January 1976 letter contains strong words on Richard Nixon. Ms. Lincoln
interestingly states ''...there was no man Nixon hated more than President
Kennedy. From that day on he spent every waking moment planning how he could
get Kennedy. He found that he could not defeat him while he was alive. So now
after he is dead and can not answer back and defend himself he is using again
the same dirty tricky tactics he used in the White House during the Watergate
scandals, to blacken President Kennedy's name and character...'' She attaches a
photocopy of a recent Washington Post article from 21 January 1976, which cites
examples of perceived vindictive behavior on the part of Nixon. The additional
letters reflect on the assassination day, and answer particular questions posed
by Mr. Kurtz. Largest measures 6.75'' x 8''. Very good.
[https://natedsanders.com/lot-32319.aspx
]
JFK told Evelyn Lincoln, “He [John
Connally] sure seemed anxious for me to go to Texas. Evelyn Lincoln said that
the concern over the hard right atmosphere in Dallas was so great that Dallas
was removed and put back on the itinerary multiple times.
Evelyn
Lincoln: Important Witness - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum
(ipbhost.com)
JFK
researcher John Simkin, in a Jan. 20, 2005 post on Education Forum:
Lincoln is also very interesting about what
she has to say about the trip to Texas. She says that JFK was very reluctant to
go on this trip: “Advance reports from our own staff and from many other people
gave us cause to worry about the tense climate in Texas – and, most especially,
in Dallas. Dallas was
removed and then put back on the planned itinerary several times. Our own
advance man urged that the motorcade not take the route through the underpass
and past the Book Depository, but he was overruled.”
Lincoln
comments on a meeting that took place between JFK and Connally only three days
before Bobby Baker resigned. The
meeting was about Baker and the proposed trip to Texas. After Connally left JFK
told Lincoln: “He sure seemed anxious for me to go to Texas”.
I have been able to find out more about this incident. Kennedy’s
advance man was Jerry Bruno. He actually wrote about this in a book called The
Advance Man (1972). In October, 1963, Bruno went to Dallas to inspect the
route. He met with Ralph
Yarborough who warned that Johnson and Connally might be involved in some
conspiracy against Kennedy. He told Bruno that they would be “after Kennedy in
a minute if they thought they could get away with it.”
After
inspecting the route Bruno became convinced that it posed several dangers. He
met with Connally and demanded that motorcade route should be changed. Connally
refused and the discussion became heated. With this, Connally got on the phone
to the White House. From
what he heard Connally say, it appeared that the White House gave its backing
to the proposed route. Bruno accepted the decision but after the assassination
the White House Staff denied the Connally telephone call took place.
[Note
from Robert Morrow: John Connally was pretending to be on the phone talking with the Kennedy
White House as he was speaking with Jerry Bruno.]
LBJ aide Cliff Carter asked Jerry
Bruno if there was any truth to the rumor that JFK was going to dump Lyndon
Johnson
Vince
Palamara:
QUOTE
HEAD DNC ADVANCE MAN :
Jerry Bruno, HSCA 12/13/77-
[RIF# 180-10117-10264]
"advanced the Bogota, Columbia trip and one to Italy in 1963 as
well as an 11-state conservation trip which the
President took before
going to Texas that year";
Bruno didn't like Trade Mart-catwalks... liked
Women's Building;
before 11/22/63: "Cliff Carter asked Bruno
if there was any truth to the rumor
that JFK WAS GOING TO DUMP LYNDON IN 1964.
Bruno told him he didn't know.
The Johnson people were also afraid of the
BOBBY BAKER investigation
and the effect it would have on Johnson
remaining on the ticket.";
Bruno at White House, 11/5/63 w/ Behn-"
O'Donnell, Behn, and
Brunodecided against the Trade Mart... Bruno
does not remember talking
to Agent Winston Lawson of the WHD; he says he
dealt mainly w/ Jerry
Behn and to this day he can't imagine what
caused Behn to reverse
himself on the Trade Mart.";
"Kenny O'Donnell told Bruno that a local
Secret Service agent in
Dallas (Sorrels?) [Steuart?] told Jerry Behn
that the SS now felt they
could protect the President at the Trade
Mart.";
"Bruno told us there was friction between
the FBI and the SS.
'They would never rely on each other. The SS
would develop their own
local sources', he said... He said there were
times when the SS agents
were LAX. Sometimes they'd say that they checked
out a situation and
they would not have done so. Asked to comment
about drinking after
hours, he said: "They were not 'one beer'
drinkers. They could really put
it away', he said. He related an incident on the
Naples trip where
an agent, whom he did not identify[ Berger?,
whose name was
remembered twice at the Press Club
11/21-11/22/63 and who was mentioned in
Bruno's notes], pulled his gun on a hotel keeper
who would not open a bar
late at night to serve them. This trip was in
1963[June or July] prior
to the Texas one."
UNQUOTE
Archie N. Hodge, Nov. 16, 2023 –
“Why JFK Ignored His Warnings: Was Told to Avoid Dallas”
Why
JFK Ignored His Warnings: Was Told to Avoid Dallas | by Archie N. Hodge |
Medium
QUOTE
First,
let’s review some of the warnings that JFK received:
Pierre Salinger: The president’s press secretary may have given
the president his strongest warning against Dallas. According to a video
interview, Salinger said, “I received a letter from a lady in Dallas saying,
‘tell the president not to come to Dallas (because) somebody’s going to be out
to kill him.’ I was stunned by this letter and went to see the president. I
said, look this is a warning, I mean, you really got to be careful when you go
to Dallas.” In his book, With Kennedy, Salinger stated there were
general concerns about Kennedy’s safety at this time. “The president, however,
was the last person in the world to be concerned about his personal safety.”
Salinger continued, “On several occasions, the subject had come up in
discussions with him, he always replied, ‘If anyone is crazy enough to want to
kill a President of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to
do is to give his life for the president’s.’” Prophetically, that’s exactly
what happened — a mentally disturbed Lee Harvey Oswald traded his life for
JFK’s.
Evelyn Lincoln: President Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln,
warned him about the Texas trip after she received news from multiple sources.
One source was her husband, Harold Lincoln (nicknamed “Abe”). Abe told her that
he heard about an assassination attempt that was to take place in Dallas. In a
video interview (see YouTube), Mrs. Lincoln stated that when she
told JFK, he replied, “‘Mrs. Lincoln, I can’t live a life where I’m
afraid to go out into the public. Do you know if they (assassins) want to get me,
they can get me in church? I’m still going to Dallas.’” Ironically, a
man named Abe Lincoln had indirectly warned the President of the United States
about a possible assassination attempt.
Adlai Stevenson: On October 24, 1963, shortly before JFK arrived
in Dallas, United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson went to Dallas to speak.
As stated in the book, “The President’s Secret Service”, the Ambassador ran
into thousands of picketers and a raunchy crowd. One man screamed, “Kennedy
will get his reward in hell and Stevenson is going to die.” After his speech, a
woman hit him over the head with her picket sign. Upon arriving back to
Washington, Stevenson warned Arthur Schlesinger (Kennedy’s speechwriter), that
Kennedy should not go to Texas, especially Dallas. “There was something very
ugly and frightening about the atmosphere,” Stevenson told Schlesinger. It is
believed that Schlesinger did not pass along the message.
Senator William Fulbright: Shortly before President Kennedy left for
Texas, Arkansas Senator, William Fulbright spoke to him about his trip, but
more specifically, Dallas. In, “The Morning Record Newspaper”, Fulbright told
Kennedy, “Dallas is a very dangerous place. I wouldn’t go there. Don’t you go.”
Byron Skelton: The Texas Democratic Chairman couldn’t shake the
feeling that something bad was going to happen to President Kennedy if he went
to Dallas. As stated in, “The Death of a President”, Skelton sent a letter to
the president’s brother, Bobby Kennedy, on Nov. 4, 1963. The
chairman stated that he would “feel better if the president’s
itinerary did not include Dallas.” Bobby knew that Skelton was not a
melodramatic man. However, just a few weeks earlier, the Secret Service had
cancelled JFK’s trip to Chicago because of serious threats. Bobby knew that his
brother wasn’t going to allow for a second cancellation. Still concerned, he
forwarded the letter to one of JFK’s closest aide, Kenneth O’Donnell, who was
responsible for his schedule. Later, O’Donnell wrote that advising the
president to avoid Dallas based on “a letter” would have been a waste of time.
Billy Graham: As quoted in his book, Just as I am —
the Autobiography of Billy Graham, Graham recalled, “I unaccountably felt
such a burden about the presidential visit to Dallas that I decided to phone
our mutual friend, Senator Smathers, to tell him I really wanted to talk to the
president. Instead, he sent me a telegram that the president would get in touch
with me directly. Graham continued, “He thought I wanted to talk about the
president’s invitation to another golf game in Florida that weekend. But all I
wanted to tell him and the president was one thing — “Don’t go to Texas!” Unfortunately,
the evangelist wasn’t able to reach JFK in time.
[….]
Making a Visit to Texas — but not Dallas
JFK’s
trip to Texas was a state tour, not just a visit to Dallas. The 2-day excursion
was to include: Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas and Austin (in that
order). According to her book, Kennedy and Johnson, Evelyn Lincoln
stated that members of the White House staff were very leery of the Texas trip.
“Advance reports from our staff and from many people gave us cause to worry
about the tense climate in Texas, and most especially in Dallas,” Lincoln
stated. “Dallas was removed and then put back on the planned itinerary
several times. Our own advance man urged that the motorcade not
take the route through the underpass and past the book depository, but he was
overruled.” Ironically, Lee Harvey Oswald lived in Dallas and worked
at the book depository. Thus, the president’s motorcade route was the ideal
setup for an assassination.
The Evangelist, Billy Graham
Perhaps
the one person who had enough influence to prevent the Texas trip was the
Evangelist, Billy Graham. JFK respected Graham’s spiritual advice very much,
and even invited him to the White House during the Cuban Missile crisis. At
other times, Kennedy would ask Graham theological questions. He believed that
Graham was a man of God, and that his messages were from God. Therefore, the
minister would have dissuaded the chief executive against Texas, and Kennedy
probably would have canceled his trip (or at least Dallas). However, as stated
earlier, the evangelist’s message did not reach the president in time.
UNQUOTE
Lem Billings begged his friend JFK
not to go to Dallas!
[I
can’t find the source for this quote but I believe it. Quoted as LeMoyne
Billings. It might be in an oral history or it might be in a book about Lem
Billings.]
QUOTE
I
didn't want him to go to Dallas. I was afraid for him. A lot of people in the
south and a hell of a lot of people in Texas hated Jack. They'd like to see him
dead, and there are a lot of guns in Texas. Up to the last minute, I begged him
not to go. I claimed he could plead illness with his back. He appeared almost fatalistic
on our final night together. He told me, "If God wants me to end my life
on Texas soil, then so be it.
UNQUOTE
Congressman Albert Thomas also told JFK on the
night of 11-21-21 to be wary of Dallas and careful about what he said there:
https://www.orwelltoday.com/jfkjbs.shtml
William
Manchester:
"He saw Thomas approaching and motioned
him into the bedroom, saying ... 'What can I do for you this morning,
Congressman?' and Thomas answered, 'Mr President, it's the other way round. If
I can't win after what you did for me in Houston, I don't deserve to get
elected.' There was a tap on the door. Dave Powers handed Kennedy his Trade
Mart speech. Thomas added gravely, 'But if I were you, I'd be
careful what I said in Dallas. It's a tough town.' Kennedy let it
pass. Nothing he had seen this morning had encouraged him to soften a word. The
Washington correspondent of the Dallas Times Herald, who had seen
the advance copy of the speech, had warned his office that it was 'a
withering blast at his right-wing critics.' The President intended
it to be just that. 'Why don't you give Kenny a hand?' Kennedy said, glancing
at the door. 'That's why I'm here,' said the Congressman, and went out.
Billie Carr, Democratic activist, told
JFK on 11-21-63 NOT TO GO TO DALLAS. Source: Shawn Leventhal in a Twitter post
on 11-22-20. The Albert Thomas tribute dinner was being held at the Rice Hotel
in Houston on 11-21-63.
https://twitter.com/shawnleventhal/status/1330504246144462856
QUOTE
Billie Carr told me that
she was at The Rice the night before and told him not to go to Dallas!
UNQUOTE
Molly
Ivins on Billie Carr: Billie Carr - The Texas
Observer
Billie
Carr would have been age 35 in 1963 because she was born in 1928.
Billie
Carr obituary - Billie
Carr Obituary (2002) - Houston Chronicle (legacy.com)
Billie
Carr in 1972 became the Democratic national committee woman (1972-2000) for
Texas and she helped to run the McGovern campaign in Texas.
Billie
Carr bio - Guide to
the Billie Carr political papers, 1956-2003 MS 373 (utexas.edu)
Billie McClain Carr (later known as "The
Godmother" for her work on behalf of the liberal wing of the Democratic
Party) was born in Houston, Texas, June 1, 1928. She grew up near downtown
Houston, graduated from Sam Houston High School in 1946, and married three
months later; she had three sons, and over the years took courses at South
Texas College and the University of Houston.
Carr's activities as a political organizer
began in 1952, when political issues in Texas stirred her to run for Democratic
chairman of her precinct and she unexpectedly won. Soon afterward she became a
protégé of Frankie Randolph, a leader and benefactress of liberal causes who
helped found the Harris County Democrats (a liberal precinct organization) in
1953. She taught Carr the art of grass roots political organizing, and over
time Carr assumed a leadership role in Harris County Democrats and began to establish
a statewide reputation as an organizer, convention strategist, and spokesperson
for the statewide liberal coalition.
In 1954 Carr was elected a member from her
precinct to the Harris County Democratic Executive Committee, serving in that
capacity until 1972; she
was also Harris County's member on the Texas State Democratic Executive
Committee from 1964 to 1966. She was a leader in efforts to achieve
proportional liberal participation in presidential conventions and became
nationally known in the Democratic Party for taking a rump delegation to the
1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, an action which helped initiate a party-wide
set of reforms abolishing the use of the unit rule by which conservative
Democrats had been able to minimize the election of liberals as delegates to
presidential conventions.
As a liberal activist and strategist, Carr also
fought for civil rights. She protested the Vietnam War and fought for women's
rights in the 1970s, and for gay rights in the 1980s. She helped organize the
1966 campaign leading to the election of Barbara Jordan, the first black woman
elected to the Texas Senate, and was later described by U. S. Rep. Mickey
Leland as "the grand old lady of liberal politics" for her efforts in
helping a number of minority candidates (including himself) win political
office. She later established a business, Billie Carr & Associates,
specializing in campaign and other political services.
In 1972 Carr was elected to serve as a member
of the Democratic National Committee (a position she held until 2000); there
she was elected "whip" for the progressive-reform caucus and in June
1981 was elected chair of the newly-formed Progressive-Liberal Caucus. At
various periods she also served on the Credentials Committee, the Platform
Advisory Committee on Older Citizens, and the Executive Committee.
Billie Carr died in Houston on September 9,
2002.
On Wednesday, November 20, 1963 Harold
Lincoln, the husband of Evelyn Lincoln, overheard in a Wash, DC bar some of
LBJ’s Secret Service agents discussing JFK being shot in Dallas.
Source:
Evelyn Lincoln letter to Robert White
Ron
Bulman post on 5-24-2022
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27789-the-warnings/
I've never seen a list of these
threats put together anywhere. Thank you. I think this one might
qualify for adding to your list as the source is somewhat personal, Evelyn
Lincoln, JFK's long time loyal personal secretary.
In a letter to Robert
White received by author Christpher Fulton 6/5/1992 she says:
"On November 20
1963, my husband, Harold Lincoln, overheard a conversation in a bar in
Washington, D.C. Secret Service agents in Vice President Johnson's detail
were discussing President Kennedy being shot at (my emphasis, a security
"Test"?) in Dallas, Texas. I was shaken, and I pleaded with the
president not to go, but he was fearless."
From Vince Palamara's Honest Answers, pg. 119.
Gil Jesus post on Education Forum
5/24/2022 – on the people who were worried about JFK coming to Dallas
Gil Jesus:
How did
all of these people know Lee Harvey Oswald was going to kill Kennedy ?
The Fulbright warning
Senators were prominent among those who urged Kennedy not to go
to Dallas. In October 1963, J.William Fulbright (D-Ark) made it plain that
Kennedy should go nowhere near the city, especially after the Dallas Morning
News had attacked the president rather fiercely in an editorial for his
insufficient opposition to communist aggression. The editorial's vehemence
reflected the depths of loathing Kennedy could expect there. "Dallas
is a dangerous place", he told Kennedy, "I wouldn't go there. Don't
YOU go there".
Seven weeks earlier, Fulbright had virtually pleaded with the president to skip
Dallas, saying that any political gain was not worth the risk.
Senator Fulbright was never called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
The Connally warning
Even Governor Connally tried to talk the President out of a stop
in Dallas, saying that the people might be "too emotional".
Governor Connally was never asked about this during his testimony.
The Skelton warning
On November 4th, Robert Kennedy received a letter from Byron
Skelton, a Democratic Committeeman from Texas, asking that Dallas be
dropped from the President's itinerary because "they" would kill him
there. Observing the attitude in preparations for the
President's trip, he simply felt that it was not safe to go there. Skelton felt
so passionately about bypassing Dallas that he flew to Washington to plead his
case.
Mr. Skelton was never called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
Two U.S. Army cryptographic code operators who claimed to
have intercepted coded messages about the JFK assassination plan were thrown
into mental institutions after attempting to report it.
The Dinkin warning
Private First Class Eugene Dinkin was a cryptographic code
operator stationed in Metz, France. On November 4, 1963 he went AWOL from his
unit and two days later he appeared in the Press Room of the United Nations in
Geneva and told reporters that "they" were plotting against
President Kennedy and that "something" would happen in Dallas.
Private Dinkin had a friend mail a letter to Robert Kennedy. The letter warned
RFK that an assassination plot was underway and would occur in Texas
around Nov. 28, 1963. Dinkin said that the plan was that the
murder would be blamed on either a communist or a negro.
His allegation reached the White House on November 29 and went to the Warren
Commission in April of 1964.
The Warren Commission took no interest in the matter and omitted any mention of
Dinkin from its 26 volumes of evidence.
Dinkin was not called to testify for the Warren Commission.
The Christensen warning
David Christensen was an Air Force sergeant who was stationed at
an RAF base in Kirknewton, Scotland. The base had a relationship with the CIA
and was used by the CIA as a top-secret listening station. Completely separate
from Dinkin and around the same time, he intercepted a communication in
late October 1963 that an assassination attempt would be made on Kennedy.
Sgt. Christensen, like Private Dinkin, was summarily “committed to a mental
institution.”
A rambling letter Christensen wrote mentions the JFK
assassination link he received “six weeks to one month” before the big event.
He goes on to name two men ( Forney and Delaughter ) as being instrumental in
blocking him from getting the intel to NSA.
An interview was conducted in 1978 by two staffers ( Kenneth
Klein and Gary Cornwell ) of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. But
this interview was with a Sgt. Stevenson, who was stationed with Christensen,
not the source himself. Stevenson discounted the Christensen story.
The HSCA knew about Christensen’s claims but never questioned
him personally.
These two warnings are summed up best by Dr. Jerry Kroth,
Associate Professor Emeritus, Santa Clara ( Cal. ) University:
"Two code operators, in secret American military installations, quite
independently of each other—and both obviously with clearances—discovered
chatter, decidedly secret chatter, about the coming assassination of the
President of the United States. If taken seriously, it meant a deep conspiracy
was afoot involving high level government and military plotters, not little Lee
Harvey who was sorting textbooks in the Texas School Book Depository for $1.25
an hour."
Finally, there is one problem for the naysayers: to explain what
type of mental illness allows its victim to predict in advance and with any
degree of certainty, the time and place where an attempt to assassinate the
President of the United States will take place.
The Miami warning
On November 9, 1963, Miami Police informant Willie Somerset
recorded a breakfast meeting with his friend Joseph Milteer, who outlined the
assassination of President Kennedy. Milteer was taped by Somerset as he spoke
of Kennedy's coming visit to Miami on November 18th:
Somerset: "Well, how in the hell do you figure would be the
best way to get him?"
Milteer: "From an office building with a high-powered rifle."
Somerset: "Boy if that Kennedy gets shot, we have to know where we are at.
Because you know that will be a real shake.."
Milteer: (An investigation) would leave no stone unturned there, no way. They
will pick up somebody within hours afterward....just to throw the public
off."
Somerset asked when such an assassination would take place, to which Milteer
replied:
"It's in the works....there ain't any countdown to it. We have just
got to be sitting on go. Countdown, they can move in on you, and on go they
can't. Countdown is alright for a slow, prepared operation. But in an emergency
situation, you have got to be sitting on go."
Captain Charles Sapp of the Miami Police Intelligence Bureau was
concerned with Milteer's remark about the President's assassination being
"in the works" to mean that it may take place at a future time and
place.
So he notified both the FBI and the Secret Service of the threat. Miami
Police provided both agencies with copies of the taped conversation two weeks
before the assassination.
Despite the fact that this threat was perceived as significant,
both the Miami FBI and Secret Service failed to pass the information on to
those responsible for the President's Dallas trip.
In a subsequent meeting following the assassination, Somerset
commented that Milteer was a pretty good guesser, to which Milteer replied,
"I don't do any guessing".
Milteer also commented that he was in Dallas that day.
The FBI interviewed Milteer after the assassination and he
denied making the remarks. He also denied being in Dallas on November
22nd.
Although they had him on tape, they dropped the issue, saying that
Milteer was someplace other than Dallas on November 22nd.
Sapp, Somerset and Milteer were never called to give testimony
to the Warren Commission.
The Mexican warning
On November 14th, an "unnamed subject" who had been
arrested in Piedras Negras, Mexico on September 30th for stealing three cars,
told the FBI "that he is a member of the Ku Klux Klan and that his sources
have told him that a militant group of the National States Rights Party
plans to assassinate the president and other high-level officials. He
stated that he does not believe that this is planned for the near future, but
he does believe the attempt will be made ."
The Secret Service was advised "telephonically" by the FBI of the
above information the following day, but according to the Secret Service
report, the FBI's Washington D.C. headquarters downplayed the information
saying that "the subject was attempting to make a deal with them" on
the car theft charges he faced and that "no information was
developed that would indicate any danger to the President...during his trip to
Dallas".
Hoover was downplaying the threat to assure the Secret Service that no
additional steps were needed to protect the President in Dallas.
Two days later, Oswald walked into the FBI office in Dallas and left a note for
Hosty, the contents of which were in dispute by people who allegedly read
it.
The William Walter telex
Several hours after Oswald left the "Hosty note",
Hoover sent out a teletype to all FBI offices notifying them that
"information has been received by the bureau that a militant revolutionary
group may attempt to assassinate President Kennedy on his proposed trip to
Dallas November 22-23 1963. All receiving offices should immmediately contact
all CIs (Criminal Informants), PCIs (Potential Criminal Informants), logical
Race and Hate groups (KKK, NSRP, Nazis) and determine if any basis for threats.
Bureau should be kept advised of all developements by teletype."
In other words, no written reports: notify the Bureau by
teletype. If the information was found to be true, it would end up in the hands
of Hoover, who would make sure that the Secret Service would not be warned.
William Walter was never called to give testimony to the Warren
Commission.
The Rose Cheramie warning
In the early morning hours of November 20, 1963, a drug addict
and prostitute named Rose Cheramie was found lying on the side of the road near
Eunice, Louisiana. She had been thrown from a moving car.
Battered and bruised and in a state of near hysteria, she was
transported to Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson. She appeared to be under
the influence of some drug. State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge, who
investigated the incident, asked her what had happened. She told him that she
had been travelling from Florida to Dallas with two Latin men. When he asked
her what they were going to do in Dallas, she replied, "pick up some
money, pick up my baby and ....kill Kennedy."
At the State Hospital, she repeated her claim to the
doctors several times, saying that the President would be murdered in two days and
said that she got her information from "word in the underworld". But
because of her emotional state at the time, she was thought to be in a
drug-induced delirium and her story was not believed.
Fruge, Cheramie and the doctors she spoke to were never called
to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
The Stevenson warning
Adlai Stevenson had urged a fundamental reconsideration of the
trip after right-wing extremists spat on him and struck him with a sign on
October 24th in Dallas. This was the second embarrassing attack on a politician
from the extremists in Dallas.
Lyndon Johnson and his wife were attacked by a mob of Nixon supporters in 1960,
not the least of which was Congressman Bruce Alger, the only Republican
congressman from Texas, who held a sign that said, "LBJ sold out to to the
Yankee Socialists".
Ambassador Stevenson was never called to give testimony to the Warren
Commission.
The Marcus warning
Stanley Marcus, head of the well-known Neiman Marcus retail
company, pleaded with Kennedy not to come to Dallas. Marcus was with Stevenson
when the U.N. ambassador was attacked in October.
After Marcus shoved Stevenson into the back seat of the car, the mob started
rocking the car side to side. The driver gunned it and almost killed someone in
an attempt to get away.
Stanley Marcus was never called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.
The Brinkley warning
Private citizens echoed these warnings throughout October and
November. Anne Brinkley, wife of newscaster David Brinkley, delivered her
warning the evening before the trip to Texas. Anne Brinkley, wife of NBC News
Anchor David Brinkley, wrote to Kennedy's Press Secretary Pierre Salinger,
"Don't let him come down here...I think something terrible is going to
happen to him ".
Ann Brinkley was never called to give testimony to the Warren
Commission.
Pierre Salinger received a
frightening letter from a woman in Dallas telling JFK to not come to Dallas
Pierre
Salinger:
QUOTE
I
received a letter from a lady in Dallas saying tell the President not to come
to Dallas somebody is going to be out to kill him. I was stunned by this letter
and I went to see the President and I said look – this is a warning – I mean you really have to have to be careful
when you go to Dallas.
UNQUOTE
"Don't let the
President come to Dallas" - YouTube
Video
posted by JFK63Conspiracy – titled “Don’t let the President come to Dallas”
William Manchester in The Death of a
President wrote about the Hard Right atmosphere of Dallas 1963
https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2011/01/quote-for-the-day/177550/
- posted by the Daily Dish of the Atlantic of Jan. 8, 2011
"In
that third year of the Kennedy Presidency a kind of fever lay over Dallas
County. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed “Impeach Earl Warren.”
Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas. Fanatical young matrons swayed
in public to the chant, “Stevenson’s going to die–his heart will stop, stop,
stop and he will burn, burn burn!” Radical Right polemics were distributed in
public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; junior executives were
required to attend radical seminars. Dallas had become the mecca for
medicine-show evangelists of the National Indignation Convention, the Christian
Crusaders, the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies . . .
In
Dallas a retired major general flew the American flag upside down in front of
his house, and when, on Labor Day of 1963, the Stars and Stripes were hoisted
right side up outside his own home by County Treasurer Warren G. Harding–named
by Democratic parents for a Republican President in an era when all Texas
children were taught to respect the Presidency, regardless of party–Harding was
accosted by a physician’s son, who remarked bitterly, “That’s the Democrat
flag. Why not just run up the hammer and sickle while you’re at it?" -
William Manchester, Death of a President.
Charlotte Essman (11/24/63) letter
to LBJ about the vicious right wing hatred of JFK in both East Texas and
Dallas. She almost wrote JFK to tell him NOT to come to Dallas because of this
cauldron of JFK-hate
2) https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a6756/kennedy-anniversary-112009/
From Chuck Helppie’s web page on the JFK assassination
Belated Warning to LBJ
Letter to LBJ
(LBJ Presidential Library Archives)
Author's note: This letter illustrates the predominate
attitude toward President John F. Kennedy that prevailed in
East Texas as of the weekend of November 22, 1963.
This letter was published in an Esquire
magazine column by Mark Warren titled:"On The Anniversary of Kennedy's
Death, Extremism Lives On." Mr. Warren reports he came
across this letter in the stacks at the LBJ Presidential Library
in Austin while doing research of his own. He identifies Bruce Alger
as the "then-congressman from Dallas, and the only Republican in
the Texas delegation." [F.Y.I. - Texas was a
predominately Democrat state in 1963.]
(http://www.esquire.com/features/kennedy-anniversary-112009)
QUOTE
November 24, 1963
President Lyndon B. Johnson
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President:
In this time of mourning and appreciating
how very busy you are, I still must write about existing conditions here
in East Texas, even if you are too busy to read this, because I feel it is
my duty to do so. I wanted
to write President Kennedy's staff and try to get them to persuade him not to
go to Dallas but unfortunately didn't do it out of fear of being a
crank or busy-body. This time I will risk that appellation. I am frightened at
conditions that prevail in East Texas.
Mr. President, the easy thing and what is
desperately trying to be done [is] to convince a stunned nation and world that
Mr. Kennedy's murder was the work of some deranged crackpot, and while the
trigger was pulled by such a one, perhaps the atmosphere that made it
inevitable was the hatred of the people (I don't mean every one of them but a
big majority) who wanted Mr. Kennedy and anyone connected with him out of the
White House. A week ago this might have sounded ridiculous but subsequent
events lend it credence, I believe. There is a virus of disrespect and hate spreading here very rapidly.
And unless one lives right here with it, day in and day out, it is unbelievable
how quickly and subtly it infects reasonably intelligent persons. This
is not too hard to understand only if one recognizes the unremitting, deep,
bitter religious and racial prejudice existing today in this section of our
land — I don't know if any of them are similarly infected in other sections,
but I know personally of what I speak as regards East Texas.
In fact, although nearly every one indignantly denies having any racial or
religious prejudice to the point where he deceives even himself in this matter,
after listening seriously to protestations of horror and shock one can almost
hear a collective sigh in essence, "Too bad he had to die but after all a Catholic is no
longer in the White House and this ought to set the 'niggers' back on their
heels for awhile!" It is painful to some of us I know to give
credence to such a condition so we blind ourselves that where religious and
racial prejudice prevails, not just the killer but all are mentally confused.
When this prejudice is played upon so adroitly and exploited actively (as in
our locality) by such groups as The American Fact-Finding Committee and many
more [of] that ilk, for instance the John Birchers, etc., it soon fans into a
situation as exists here, many, many citizens ridden by a vicious hate which
inevitably erupts and expresses itself in violence — as in the case of Mr. Kennedy's
murder in Dallas.
A strong evidence of this was the recent
demonstration of violence against Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in Dallas, and even more clearly by an article
carried in the Dallas News (a 100% anti-Kennedy sheet) stating
that Mr. Bruce Alger advised the citizens of Dallas there was absolutely no
need to feel apologetic about this incident — everyone being free to
express his opinion. He neglected to specify the degree of violence of such
expression. And the citizens vote for Bruce Alger! So what can one expect? I just
heard the flash about Oswald being shot and also the theory that this was
caused by mass hysteria. That is here, all right, but I think rather there are
certain groups and individuals who wish to insure Oswald's complete and
continuing silence because, knowing the 'temper' of Dallas, I can't believe a known police
character of Ruby's caliber would risk his neck through any feeling of
patriotism or love for Mr. Kennedy — can you?
I don't know if anything can be done about the festering
sore of prejudice and hatred on our social structure here, but I doubt
if you can know its deadliness unless you are in constant, daily touch, and I
thought it my duty to mention it, in case, even though you may consider I am an
alarmist and am exaggerating.
I only wish I were.
Respectfully,
Charlotte Essman
UNQUOTE
There was a Charlotte Essman who lived in East Texas – where
Tyler, TX is – and she lived from 1/10/1893 to September, 1966. Died at age 73.
https://www.ancientfaces.com/person/charlotte-essman-birth-1893-death-1966/70318111
Nevada congressman Walter Baring in
the evening of 11/22/1963: It was probably a good think JFK was murdered.
Source: Harry Reid who was in Baring’s congressional office when he said it
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a6756/kennedy-anniversary-112009/
[“Decades After Kennedy’s Death, Extremism Lives On,” Mark Warren,
Esquire 11/20/2009]
QUOTE
A couple of years ago, Senator
Harry Reid of Nevada told me something that shocked me, and that I will never
forget. When Reid was a young man, he had worked his way through law school at
George Washington University in Washington D.C. as a fulltime Capitol Hill cop,
a patronage job accorded him by Nevada's lone member of the House at the time,
a boozy old reactionary named Walter Baring. In the evenings, it was Reid's
habit to take his break in the Congressman's office, as Baring held forth over
his customary cocktail.
On the evening of November 22, 1963, as the nation and world began
to absorb the murder that day in Dallas of President Kennedy, Reid sought
solace with his congressman. Baring, Reid said, was "one of those guys for
whom there was a Communist behind every bush. Fluoride was a Communist plot. And Kennedy, too, had been
leading us down the path to Communism, Baring told me. It was probably a good
thing that he was murdered."
UNQUOTE
The Austin Chronicle’s Dick
Holland describes the Hard Right atmosphere of Dallas in 1963
DICK
HOLLAND – LONE NUTTER writing for the Austin Chronicle on Feb. 23, 2001
in his review of books by Gary Cartwright and Jan Reid, “Things They Used to
Do: Two Texas Journalists Who Stared Danger in the Face”
https://www.austinchronicle.com/books/2001-02-23/things-they-used-to-do/
QUOTE
A lot of bizarre
things were happening in Dallas in the fall of 1963. Madame Nhu, wife of the
president of South Vietnam, bought a dozen shower caps at Neiman Marcus and
tried to drum up support for the Diem regime in Saigon -- even while the CIA,
with Kennedy's approval, laid plans to assassinate her husband. Members of the
American Nazi Party danced around a man in an ape suit in front of the Dallas
Times Herald building. ... Zealots from the National Indignation
Committee picketed a U.N. Day speech at the Adolphus Hotel by Ambassador Adlai
Stevenson; they called him Addle-Eye, booed and spat on him, and hit him on the
head with a picket sign. When a hundred Dallas civic leaders wired apologies to
Ambassador Stevenson, General Edwin Walker, who had been cashiered by the
Pentagon for force-feeding his troops right-wing propaganda, flew the American
flag upside down in front of his military gray mansion on Turtle Creek. Someone
took a potshot at General Walker about that same time. We know now the shooter was Lee Harvey Oswald.
The piety of the Dallas business climate was perfect cover for all brands of
extremism -- pro-Castro cabals and anti-Castro cabals with overlapping
membership, international arms smugglers, con men who lived under assumed
identities in the near North Dallas apartment complexes, airline flight
attendants who smuggled sugarcoated cookies of black Turkish hash.
UNQUOTE
[“Things
They Used to Do: Two Texas Journalists Who Stared Danger in the Face,” Dick
Holland, Austin Chronicle, Feb. 23, 2001]
Minutaglio talks with KUT’s David
Brown about why he describes the book as a “biography of a city,” and what
lessons may have been overlooked by history.
“We felt there was a welling toxic
environment in Dallas,” Minutaglio says. “That there was something that started
as unease and dread in the community at large and it really began building to a
fevered pitch. It was waiting there for Kennedy, and he didn’t know it.”
According to Minutaglio, Kennedy had
received reports that the environment in Dallas was quite intense and maybe he
should rethink his visit. Kennedy’s aides had reported that there was a group
of people who had “hijacked the microphone.”
These “outsized figures” included
billionaire H.L. Hunt, General Edwin A. Walker and Ted Dealey, publisher
of The Dallas Morning News. However, as history states,
Kennedy’s assassin wasn’t some “right-wing radical.”
“People were literally coming to
Dallas to join this anti-Kennedy resistance,” Minutaglio says. “Lee Harvey
Oswald was there, and was kind of caught up in the swirl, and might have been
motivated as a disturbed individual to action, to be a part of this maelstrom.
Nothing like this could have happened, but in Dallas.”
NBC News –
pictures from the day of the JFK assassination:
https://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/jfk-s-assassination-look-back-day-n813796
Pictures include JFK and entourage walking outside the
Texas Hotel in Fort Worth, JFK looking at LBJ at the Fort Worth Chamber of
Commerce breakfast
Signs at Love Field included “KENNEDY! Why are you
dedicated to Socialism” and “In 1964 Goldwater and Freedom” – one guy had a
Confederate flag above his sign which read
In ‘64
Vote Right
Vote White
Anyone but
The
NAACP’s KENNEDY’S
Another sign said:
2 or 4 Legs; Swims, Walks, Flies, or Crawls
ANYTHING
BUT
J.F.K.
When
my father, a loud man of infectious enthusiasms, moved us from Montreal to
Dallas in 1961, he said we’d be living next door to Mickey Mantle. We did, sort
of. But the real thrill was that we were now living in a country led by the
most urbane, glamorous, and witty president in history. Fifty years ago today,
my father was on his way to a lunch at the Dallas Trade Mart, where John F.
Kennedy was to give an address. I doubt the births of his five children excited
him as much as the possibility that he might shake hands with Kennedy that
afternoon.
Whenever
my father was home, the air was full of talk of “promise” and “opportunity” and
“can-do” and “pragmatism.” You could not be a young boy in our house and not
think you ought to grow up to be like Kennedy. Once, stepping into the shower
in the middle of the day, my father advised me, “You know Kennedy showers three
times a day.” (Never mind the possible extramarital reasons either of them may
have had for midday showers.) We had moved to Dallas so my father could run the
largest downtown development in the city’s history. I barely remember that
being mentioned.
I
was in class at St. Marks School of Texas when Kennedy was shot. In the early
afternoon of November 22, 1963, my mother picked me up from school. The radio
was on. I don’t remember what was said, but I remember being very sad—and not
knowing exactly why this was so different from the feeling I had when they were
packing up the summerhouse at the lake. I suspect now that in my child’s mind,
I was sure that the death of this man Kennedy was in some way the death of
something in my father.
I remember only the black-and-white
images on television in the days that followed. My loud father was silent. In
line at the school cafeteria, some of the boys said they were happy about the
assassination. My mother told me they were only repeating what their parents
said. Later, she liked to boast that I had brawled with the sons of the “Texan
Kennedy Haters.” (I hadn’t. She was confusing them with sons of “the Texan
Racists,” whom I had scrapped with.) My mother’s finishing school in
Switzerland had done nothing to prepare her for Dallas society in the 1960s,
and she did little to accommodate what she called “the vulgarity” of the place.
Fifty years later, mention of Dallas still brings the color to her face.
But
my Canadian father loved America as only a striving and talented provincial
could. Kennedy’s promise that all men could be free, that even the moon was
within reach, gave the country—powerful, yet still young and crude compared to
the ones it had just rescued from barbarism, and uncertain in the face of the
new nuclear threat it faced overseas—the élan it needed to face the future with
a belief in its capacity for greatness. Kennedy was on the move. None of us
wanted to be left behind.
And
then, fifty years ago today, all of us were.
Kennedy hatred was
deepest, perhaps, in the South, where civil rights battles had grown
increasingly tense. “White violence was sort of considered the status quo,”
Diane McWhorter, who grew up in Birmingham, Ala., and is the author of “Carry
Me Home,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the racial unrest of 1963,
said recently.
“There had been so many
bombings that people had accepted it,” Ms. McWhorter said. But in May, the
city’s blacks struck back, attacking the police and firefighters and setting
several businesses on fire. In September, only two months before Dallas, white
supremacists in Birmingham planted a bomb in a black church, killing four young
girls.
2) An Evening with Rev. William A. Holmes (youtube.com)
In 2008, Holmes was invited to
speak at the Sixth Floor Museum, and there he finally disclosed who told him
about the cheering schoolchildren. Carol Tagg —a member of his Northaven
congregation —was suffering from Alzheimer's, but Holmes got permission from
her family to name her and the school where she taught music and heard the
cheering children.
Mrs. Tagg died in 2010. In a
recent phone interview, Eric Tagg, her son, declared Holmes' account to be
"all true." He added that while he wasn't in his mother's classroom,
he was friends with children who were, and they verified the cheering.
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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