JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK

by L. Fletcher Prouty

  President Reagan was not in Dallas and was not a member of the Warren Commission, but he was a member of the Rockefeller Commission that studied CIA activities in the United States. He learned about allegations concerning the assassination of President Kennedy and of the CIA’s role in foreign assassination attempts as a member of that commission. Then, on the steps of the Washington Hilton in 1981, he, too; was felled by an assassin’s gun. On that day, if not before, he learned how the game is played.

  Four days after Kennedy’s death, on November 26, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with his new presidential team, most of whom had served with JFK. Only four days after the assassination in Dallas, LBJ listened to a briefing on warfare in Indochina, which had been the subject on the agenda of the November 20 conference in Hawaii. This briefing and the agenda formulated at the November 20 conference in Honolulu, before President Kennedy’s death, marked a major turning point in the Vietnam War.

  Whereas Kennedy had ordered, in NSAM #263 of October 11, 1963, the return of the bulk of American personnel by the end of 1965, the November 20 agenda and the November 26 briefing moved in direct opposition to Kennedy’s intentions and paved the way for the enormous escalation that took place after his death. President Johnson’s NSAM #288 of March 1964 completed the full turnabout.

  On March 8, 1965, U.S. Marines landed on the shores of Vietnam at Da Nang. Before long, there were 550,000 American troops in Vietnam. Fifty-eight thousand U.S. soldiers would die there. Before that “no-win” conflict would end, more than $220 billion would be poured into the coffers of the war makers.

  It had been evident that great pressures were building against President Kennedy. The Kennedy administration, especially with the near certainty that the President would be reelected, was diametrically opposed to many of the great power centers of our society. He had to go. The government had to be put in the hands of more pliable “leaders.”

  A nation with the strength and determination to rise and demand an investigation into the death of President Kennedy—as well as the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King—will have the strength to survive and prosper.

  Does America have that strength? I believe it does. More than any other country, America represents the cause of freedom, for all of mankind. For that reason, for ourselves and for others, it is vitally important that the truth of the events in Dallas on November 22, 1963, be told.

  TWENTY

  LBJ Takes the Helm as the Course Is Reversed

  ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy flew to Dallas, Texas, to deliver a major speech at the Trade Mart. He did not live to deliver that speech. What follows are extracts from the speech that he had planned to deliver and an analysis of events that followed:

  I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our security because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this Nation’s strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion. Display of material wealth cannot stop the disillusionment of diplomats subjected to discrimination.

  But American military might should not and need not stand alone against the ambitions of international communism. Our security and strength, in the last analysis, directly depend on the security and strength of others, and that is why our military and economic assistance plays such a key role in enabling those who live on the periphery of the Communist world to maintain their independence of choice. Our assistance to these nations can be painful, risky and costly, as is true in Southeast Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. For our assistance makes possible the stationing of 3—5 million allied troops along the Communist frontier at one-tenth the cost of maintaining a comparable number of American soldiers. A successful Communist breakthrough in these areas, necessitating direct United States intervention, would cost us several times as much as our entire foreign aid program, and might cost us heavily in American lives as well.

  In a nutshell Kennedy planned to say much about the reasons for his policy in Southeast Asia. He intended to emphasize that “overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war” and to end with “ . . . direct United States intervention would cost us several times as much as our entire foreign aid program, and might cost us heavily in American lives as well.” This was Kennedy’s considered opinion on October 11, 1963, when he approved NSAM #263, and this remained his opinion until the day he died. There is no sign of any plan by Kennedy for the series of policy alterations that began with the draft of NSAM #273 on November 21, 1963, that, with significant revisions, Johnson signed five days later.

  It is important to note that Kennedy did not include any statement such as “the President expects that all senior officers of the government will take energetic steps to insure that they and their subordinates go out of their way to maintain and defend the unity of the United States government both here and in the field.” You will recall those words from the draft NSAM #273 that was written on November 21, 1963. Kennedy planned to make the above speech in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

  Kennedy’s prepared message for delivery at the Dallas Trade Mart had been planned to be the theme of a most important series of speeches to follow. Coming, as it did, not long after the publication of his National Security Action Memorandum #263 of October 11, 1963, it takes on additional significance in retrospect. He had already announced that one thousand American military advisers would be home from Indochina by Christmas and that American personnel would be out of Vietnam by the end of 1965. This subject, and the enormous pressures it evoked, were paramount in his mind on that memorable day in Dallas. Had he lived, and had he been reelected in 1964, this was to be the course he had charted for his administration and for his country.

  Kennedy had learned much from experiences in Indochina since the beginning of our military/OSS involvement there in September 1945. He had seen that the billions of dollars of military aid provided to the French had been ineffectual in preventing their humiliating defeat by the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

  He knew that, during the Eisenhower administration, three U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft armed with tactical-size nuclear weapons had been deployed to an air base in Thailand, just across the river from Laos, for potential use against North Vietnamese forces that had been observed marching into eastern Laos. He knew that these aircraft had been recalled because wiser heads had prevailed and had persuaded Eisenhower that the use of such massive weapons against guerrilla forces could not have altered the course of that insurrection and might have ignited superpower retaliation and the conflagration of Earth.

  Kennedy had learned much from his experiences in October 1962, when aerial reconnaissance revealed the possibility that the Soviets had begun to place tactical, short-range nuclear missiles in Cuba. At that time he was presented with the stark dilemma of whether to deploy the large conventional military force that had been hastily assembled in Florida for an invasion of Cuba while realizing that if he ordered such an invasion, the Soviets who were based in Cuba may have had the option to respond by firing those missiles at targets in the United States.

  This created a unique problem. No actual missiles had been observed or photographed in Cuba, despite the fact that certain “crates” covered by tarpaulin could have been missiles and that certain site-grading work observed could have been done in preparation for missiles; this led to the possibility that there might be missiles there. But if the United States did attack Cuba in full force, Cuban missiles or not, this attack itself could have led to a superpower nuclear exchange. JFK chose the wiser course—not to attack Cuba.

  By 1963 Kennedy saw that prosecution of the CIA-directed covert warfare in Indochina would lead to a similar hard dilemma. By the summer of 1963, he and his closest associat
es had reached the conclusion that the future of South Vietnam must be placed in the hands of the South Vietnamese. He had made up his mind to Vietnamize that conflict, with American financial and material assistance, and to withdraw U.S. personnel as quickly as possible.

  This was the basis for NSAM #263 of October 11, 1963, and having made that pivotal decision, Kennedy knew all too well that he would have to go before the American people to gain their understanding and approval. He knew equally well that with that decision to get out of Indochina, he faced strenuous opposition from the all-powerful military-industry combine that Eisenhower had warned him about in December 1960, just after his close election victory over Richard Nixon. He knew that his decision would be violently opposed by the innermost, dominant elements of the OSS/CIA hierarchy that had been forcing events in Indochina since the end of WWII.

  They had urged Ho Chi Minh to create an independent Vietnam and had provided Ho and his military chieftain, Col. Vo Nguyen Giap, with an enormous supply of arms so they could round up remaining Japanese military elements. At the same time, this stockpile of arms, obtained from U.S. Army sources on Okinawa, provided the basis for their own national sovereignty. In this context, this OSS/CIA power structure, fortified by its worldwide allies, had been at the forefront in directing the Cold War since that time.

  The CIA knew all too well that Kennedy’s new Vietnamization policy was but the first step of his pledge to break the agency into a thousand pieces and limit its role to intelligence functions, a profession it did not practice seriously.

  With these major burdens in mind, Kennedy had begun a series of trips around the country, during which time he planned to deliver several major speeches, all orchestrated to underscore his new direction and to plant the seeds for his reelection in 1964. This is why he had planned to open his speech in Dallas with: “I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our security, because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship.”

  At the same time he opened this carefully planned course of action, his powerful opposition fully realized that the popular young President would be able to convince the American public that he was right and that he would be reelected to another four years in office. This his foes could not permit. Their course of action became clear to them: Kennedy must die!

  That decision made, the rest followed like a row of dominos. A knowledgeable go-between was notified, and he arranged for the President’s murder by skilled “mechanics” on the streets of Dallas—almost on the front steps of the sheriff’s office. These “mechanics” are members of a select group of specialists, referred to by Lyndon Johnson as “a damned Murder Inc.” and trained and supported by the CIA for use at U.S. government order. Their deeply anonymous system gets them to the target area and into safe positions and assures them of a guaranteed quick exit. Since the “mechanics” are certain to be on the side of the power elite, they never have been and never will be identified and prosecuted.

  This preparatory work is charged with another important detail. An assassination, especially of the chief of state, can always be made easier and much more predictable if his routine security forces and their standard policies are removed and canceled. The application of this step in Dallas was most effective. A few examples serve to underscore this phase of the concept:

  1. The President was in an open, unarmored car.

  2. The route chosen was along busy streets with many overlooking high buildings on each side.

  3. Windows in these buildings had not been closed, sealed, and put under surveillance.

  4. Secret Service units and trained military units that were required by regulations to be there were not in place. As a result there was limited ground and building surveillance.

  5. Sewer covers along the way had not been welded shut.

  6. The route was particularly hazardous, with sharp turns requiring slow speeds, in violation of protection regulations.

  The list is long and ominous. Such a lack of protection is almost a guarantee of assassination in any country. It is difficult, if not more difficult, to convince trained and ready units not to be there than to let them go ahead and do their job; yet someone on the inner cabal staff was able to make official sounding calls that nullified all of these ordinary acts of presidential protection on November 22, 1963.

  At the same time the killers were contacted, another element of the plot—the greatest and most important element—was put in motion. Even before the murder took place, “cover story” experts (their profession is part of a secret world known as “deception” or “special plans”) had already created an entire scenario with a “patsy” gunman and a whole cast of lesser luminaries, such as those concealed within the Mongoose anti-Castro project, who can be exposed and identified as the story paints a fictitious national fable through what is called the Warren Commission Report and other contrived releases over the years. Perhaps the strongest element of the cover-story side of the operation is the power that its perpetrators possess to prohibit normal pursuit and investigation by the media.

  There is but one way all of this could have been managed, both before and after this elaborate coup d’etat. That is with absolute control from the highest echelons of the superpower structure of this country and the world. When there is a complete and carefully planned assassination plot that is designed and put into operation to cover, at least all of the items touched upon above, then it becomes evident that there was a conspiracy. In most cases of this type the cabal is not concerned with this discovery, because with the death of the leader they have taken over the power position they sought, and none of them or their inner circle will be captured, identified, and prosecuted.

  After JFK was shot, an unusually large force of police and FBI men charged into Dallas’s Texas Theater at 231 West Jefferson Street at 2:00 P.M. and captured an unknown young man who had been sitting near the back of the house watching the movie War Is Hell. At 7:05 P.M. that evening, Lee Harvey Oswald was formally charged with the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit. It was 2:05 P.M. of the twenty-third in New Zealand, where I heard the awful news.

  Not until more than four hours later, at 11:26 P.M., did Homicide captain Will Fritz formally charge Oswald with “the murder of the President,” and it was not until the early hours of the morning, on Saturday, November 23, that Justice of the Peace David Johnston told Oswald he had been formally charged with the murder of the President and that he would be held without bond.

  These were the facts that reporters on the scene in Dallas needed to know, and had to wait for, before they could rush to their own files and begin the laborious task of putting together their own “Lee Harvey Oswald” stories, if indeed there were even any facts on file to base them on.

  Before being returned to his cell that evening, Oswald faced more than one hundred newsmen from throughout the nation, from international publications, and from radio and television stations. He told them, “I didn’t know I was a suspect. I didn’t even know the President was killed until newsmen told me in the hall.” These words may have been absolutely the truth. To turn them around, how did the police first get the idea that Oswald was their man? Could the Dallas police have gone into a courtroom, had there been a trial, and explained reasonably how they got the idea that a certain twenty-four-year-old man was the suspect, when they themselves had no clues?

  Oswald was formally charged at 11:26 P.M. Dallas time, on November 22, 1963. That was 6:26, P.M. New Zealand time, November 23, 1963. By that time New Zealanders had known, for hours, what the Dallas police did not know until later—that Lee Harvey Oswald had been designated as the killer of President Kennedy. These New Zealanders had read preprepared news that had been disseminated by the cover-story apparatus.

  This shows clearly how the scenario of President Kennedy’s death had been prepared well before the actual event and strongly suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald had been chosen
to be the “murderer” of the President before Dallas police made it official and despite evidence to the contrary. There can be no question whatsoever that the cabal that arranged to have President Kennedy murdered had arranged and staged all the other terrible events of that day They had also been able to control the dissemination of news that day, and they have been able to control the cover-up—including the report of the Warren Commission—since that date.

  The evidence of that part of the plot and of the continuing cover-up becomes quite clear when one goes back through the record. It becomes easier to see why the commission permitted the publication of twenty-six volumes to conceal the bits of information it did discover. Other facets of the work of the cabal have not been as easy to see. But the findings that do exist make it clear that there had to be important reasons for the murder of the President.

  Kennedy had stated his position on Vietnam on October 11, 1963. With the new South Vietnamese leader, Gen. Duong Van Minh, in charge as of November 4, 1963, the program to Vietnamize the war—which included an agreement to provide the general with necessary funds and military matériel—appeared to be headed in the right direction.

  Then a trickle of reports suggested a reversal of the situation in Vietnam. With a quick, and unexplained, jump from what had been a rather optimistic view of progress in Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers add:

  These topics [the military situation and the Strategic Hamlet program] dominated the discussions at the Honolulu conference in November 20 when Lodge and the country team met with Rusk, McNamara, Taylor, Bell, and Bundy. But the meeting ended inconclusively. After Lodge had conferred with the President a few days later in Washington, the White House tried to pull together some conclusions and offer some guidance for our continuing and now deeper involvement in Vietnam.