The Decline of the West, The Kennedy Mystique

The political-economic-social system that emerged in Western countries after World War II was based on a very simple premise: if you worked hard, if you tried hard enough, you could always live better than your parents. That truth held for a few decades. At the beginning of the eighties, it began a slow and gradual decline, finally consummated in the Great Recession of 2008. Western workers earn more or less the same today as they did 40 years ago. The probability that a young person outperforms their parents has been falling little by little in all deciles. In 1940, the children of the lowest percentile (those poorest families) had a 95% probability of obtaining a better economic position than their parents. By 1980 that percentage had dropped to 79%. The same happened with the middle percentile (the middle class): if in 1940 93% of their children could hope to live better than their parents, in 1980 they were only 45%. That is to say, at the height of Generation X, the outlook for most middle-class children (more numerous than the rich or extremely poor cohorts) was stagnant. They could no longer overcome the wealth and status of their parents. Similar figures show the high percentile: the children of wealthy families had a 41% improvement in the earnings of their parents in 1940; a huge percentage that contrasts with 8% in 1980. A steep decline at all levels. As we say, the factors are varied, but can be roughly summarized in two: wages have stagnated since the mid-1970s (instead, workers in 1964 earned $ 20.27 an hour, compared to $ 22.65 in 2018); and the economy has become polarized (less middle class and a larger gap, and more difficult to bridge, between the most economically privileged and the poorest). 

Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of The West, published 1918-1922, laid out the trajectory of the enfeeblement and decay that awaited us, developing a theme that went as far back as the Greek historian Polybius, but that, in the wake of a war that wiped out a generation, seemed less a “theme” than an historically imminent reality. The greatest poet of the modern age, William Butler Yeats, felt it in his bones, working out a visionary schematism in his prose volume A Vision and reflecting on the inevitable in his timeless poem “The Second Coming,” written one year after the end of the Great War. Robert Bork’s must-read Slouching Towards Gomorrah hammers out Yeats’s vision in lurid contemporary detail, pointing toward a “syndrome” of collectivist attitudes dominating the culture, the debilitation of the family structure, and a “left-liberal moral consensus” diluting the text of the U.S. Constitution. In his master volume On the Eve of the Millennium: The Future of Democracy in an Age of Unreason, published in 1995, Irish historian Conor O’Brien was not sanguine about the prospects for Western civilization in the coming years. Our dissolution is abetted by common lassitude, self-indulgence and studied ignorance, by those, O’Brien writes, “who are indifferent to politics, society, religion, virtually to anything.” We watch “history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation, as if we do not believe that history can happen here.”

Arnold Toynbee in his twelve-volume A Study of History, among my prize collections, articulated a theory of recurrence -- owing in part to The New Science of the 18th Century Italian political philosopher Giambattista Vico -- in which he saw patterns or cycles of growth and decay common to all civilizations, of which he isolated more than twenty-six exemplars. Though maintaining a guarded optimism that correlation is not infallibly causation and that Western Civilization might survive an otherwise inevitable debacle, he posited that once psychological devastation had gone too far, recovery would be impossible. Perhaps it was from reading Toynbee that O’Brien speculated about the onset of apathy and indifference leading to civilizational collapse. He believed we were already there. Though I disagree emphatically with Jonah Goldberg on many issues, his Suicide of the West remains a valuable book, confirming O’Brien’s thesis. Goldberg writes that the “corruption of the Miracle of Western Civilization can only succeed when we willfully and ungratefully turn our backs on the principles that brought us out of the muck of human history in the first place. The trouble is that “for more than a generation now, the best principles of the West have been under assault. Intellectuals are recasting the virtues of our system as vices.” Goldberg borrows his title from James Burnham’s magisterial 1964 Suicide of the West, in which Burnham writes of a “morphological pattern,” an unmistakable trend or curve. “Over the past two generations Western civilization has been in a period of very rapid decline, recession or ebb within the world power structure.” What we call liberalism is “the ideology of Western suicide,” permitting Western Civilization “to be reconciled to its dissolution.” Although he holds out hope for a transition to a higher order above the parochial divisions of the past, which seems touchingly romantic, his analysis of the liberal virus has rarely been bettered. 

In Michael Walsh’s terms from his new book Last Stands, manly virtue fights to the foreordained end. The issue is this: We cannot deter, but we can defer. What we are really doing, whether we know it or not, is buying time. Western civilization and its constituent nations are too far gone to be retrofitted; our internal enemies have seen to that. As Bork writes, a “soft and hedonistic culture…faces a continuing assault from within.” The prospect is grim. Apathy, indifference, psychological devastation, and self-hatred are the norms of our present moment. America, the guarantor and bellwether of the West’s survival, has been hollowed out by its Olympian classes, the political, informational and fiscal elites -- this was Founding Father and second president John Adams’ deepest fear. In his important 2018 study John Adams and the Fear of American Oligarchy, Luke Mayville parses Adams’ conclusion that “republican governments had always been threatened by elite domination and that America would be no different.” In the course of time, cowards and parasites -- let us call it the Iscariot function -- will prevail over Great Men and Women. Nation-saviors like Churchill and Thatcher will be cast aside, heroes will be betrayed by friends and colleagues. The historical template is Themistocles, the philosophical, Socrates, and the literary, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. They cannot forestall the vector of decline and will be derided and punished for having tried to do so. As John Adams wrote in an April 22, 1776 letter to James Warren, “But I fear, that in every assembly, Members will obtain an Influence, by noise not sense. By Meanness, not Greatness. By Ignorance not Learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls. I fear too, that it will be impossible to convince and persuade People to establish wise Regulations.” Nonetheless, for those of us who still care and recognize the precious muniment we have been given, let the coup de grâce happen later instead of sooner. The fight continues on a myriad fronts. Source: americanthinker.com

Neil Sheehan was born of Irish parents  in Holyoke Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard in 1958. After his military service he went to work for UPI in Tokyo. He spent two years as UPI’s chief correspondent covering the Vietnam War.  It was at this time––1962-64––that he became collegial and friendly with the Times’ David Halberstam. The commander in Vietnam at that time was General Paul Harkins. Since Sheehan and Halberstam were intimately involved with the actual military operations, they knew things were not going well. As author John Newman wrote in his milestone book JFK and Vietnam, this rosy outlook was an illusion perpetrated by both military intelligence and the CIA. It was carried out by Colonel James Winterbottom with the cognizance of Harkins. (Newman, 1992 edition). In a 2007 interview that Sheehan did, he said that he and Halberstam had a conflict with Harkins over this issue of whether or not Saigon and the army of South Vietnam (the ARVN) was actually making progress against the opposing forces in the south, namely the Viet Cong. He said that their impression was that Saigon was losing the war. Their soldiers were reluctant to fight, the entire military hierarchy was corrupt, and as a result, the Viet Cong forces in the south were getting stronger. It is something that David Halberstam did his best to forget about in his 1972 best-seller The Best and the Brightest, but Sheehan was more open about in his 2007 interview. The smiles in the picture belowe were genuine because Sheehan and Halberstam truly believed in winning the Vietnam War. At any and all costs. 

The simple truth was that Sheehan and Halberstam were classic Cold Warriors who wanted to kick commie butt all the way back to China. They saw what America was doing as some kind of noble cause. They felt that we and they––that is, all good Americans––were standing up for democracy, liberty and freedom. As far as political sophistication went, they might as well have been actors performing in John Wayne’s propaganda movie, The Green Berets. In fact, as Newman shows in his book, Winterbottom would simply create Viet Cong fatalities out of assumptions he made. Harkins understood this and went along with it. The idea was to control the intelligence out of Saigon in order to bamboozle Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.  But throughout that year of 1962, whenever McNamara would report back to President Kennedy after one of his SecDef Meetings––a conference in the Pacific of all American agency and division chiefs in Saigon––he would deliver to the president the same rosy message he had just heard. And that message was false in two senses: the number of Viet Cong casualties was exaggerated, and the number of ARVN casualties was being reduced. This intelligence deception was happening in the spring of 1962. It was Kennedy who, through Galbraith, went to McNamara. And it was not for the purpose of promoting the ideas of the Pentagon on the war. Now, if the alleged 500 interviews Halberstam did were not enough to garner this information, there was another source available to him:  the Pentagon Papers––which Halberstam says he read. Both Sheehan and Halberstam fell in love with Colonel Vann. They were completely unaware of what was happening in Washington, how Kennedy had decided to take Galbraith’s advice and begin to remove all American advisors. They wanted to win, and they both felt it was only through Vann that the war could be won. One of the reasons Kennedy decided to get out is simple:  he did not think Saigon could win the war without the use of American combat troops. Or as he told Arthur Schlesinger: "The war in Vietnam could be won only so long as it was their war. If it were converted into a white man’s war, we would lose as the French had lost a decade earlier.” Kennedy said the same thing to NSC aide Michael Forrestal: America had about a one-in-a-hundred chance of winning. The president said this on the eve of his going to Dallas in 1963. Kennedy turned aside at least nine attempts by his advisors to commit combat troops into Vietnam during 1961. It’s very clear from the interviews that Sheehan did later in his life that, like Halberstam, he had a problem with admitting Kennedy was right, and he, Halberstam and John Paul Vann were wrong about Vietnam.

Why not mention Bobby Kennedy’s antagonism against the war in Vietnam, which was clearly manifest during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency? In fact, as author John Bohrer has written, Robert Kennedy had warned President Johnson against escalation as early as 1964. (The Revolution of Robert Kennedy, p. 70). Kennedy had told Arthur Schlesinger that, by listening to Eisenhower, Johnson would escalate the war in spite of his advice. When Halberstam heard about this, he now began to criticize RFK. How dare Bobby imagine that he was smarter than Johnson and Ike on the war. What did Robert Kennedy think? You could win the war without dropping tons of bombs and using overwhelming force? Again, this exchange exposes who Halberstam and Sheehan really were in 1965. If I had been that wrong, I would have excised it also. As per extending the New Frontier beyond its borders, this is contrary to what Kennedy’s foreign policy had become after his meeting with Gullion. JFK was trying for a neutralist foreign policy, one that broke with Eisenhower’s, and tried to get back to Franklin Roosevelt’s. What Sheehan is doing here is pretty obvious. He is transferring his guilt about who he was, and what he did while under Vann’s spell, onto Kennedy. In fact, Kennedy was opposed to what both Halberstam was writing and what Vann was advocating for about Vietnam. As proven above, JFK did not want America to take control of the war––to the point that President Kennedy tried to get Halberstam rotated out of Vietnam. (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 261) A Bright Shining Lie was an establishment project. The book was edited by the infamous Bob Loomis at Random House. Loomis was the man who approached Gerald Posner to write Case Closed, a horrendous cover-up of President Kennedy’s assassination. Source: kennedysandking.com 

Except for Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (both of whom died while in office), all presidents beginning with Calvin Coolidge have written autobiographies. The richest president in history is believed to be Donald Trump, who is often considered the first billionaire president. Truman was among the poorest U.S. presidents, with a net worth considerably less than $1 million. Certainly one remarkable aspect of Johnson’s career is that he was born working class, held low-paying government jobs throughout his entire life, yet took the oath of office as the wealthiest president in modern American history, having accumulated a personal fortune of over $100 million in present-day dollars, with the financial payoffs from his corporate benefactors having been laundered through his wife’s company. This odd anomaly is so little remembered these days that a prominent political journalist expressed total disbelief when I mentioned it to him a decade ago. Only James Madison had surpassed Lyndon B Johnson with a networth of $113 million (adjusted for inflation). After Johnson, it follows Bill Clinton (with a peak net worth of $75 million), Franklin D. Roosevelt (peak net worth of $60 million), Barack Obama (peak net worth of $40 million), George W Bush ($39 million), John Quincy Adams ($23 million, adjusted for inflation), Richard Nixon (peak net worth $17 million), Ronald Reagan (peak net worth $14 million), John F. Kennedy (peak net worth $10 million), Dwight D. Eisenhower (peak net worth of $9 million), and Abraham Lincoln ($1 million, adjusted for inflation). Johnson naturally expected to play a major role in the new administration, and he even issued grandiose demands for a huge political portfolio, but instead he found himself immediately sidelined and treated with complete disdain, soon becoming a forlorn figure with no authority or influence. As time went by, the Kennedys made plans to get rid of him, and just a few days before the assassination, they were already discussing whom to place on the reelection ticket in his stead. 

Much of Johnson’s long record of corruption both in Texas and in DC was coming to light following the fall of Bobby Baker, his key political henchman, and with strong Kennedy encouragement, Life Magazine was preparing a huge expose of his sordid and often criminal history, laying the basis for his prosecution and perhaps a lengthy prison sentence. By mid-November 1963, Johnson seemed a desperate political figure at the absolute end of his rope, but a week later he was the president of the United States, and all those swirling scandals were suddenly forgotten. Indeed, the huge block of magazine space reserved for the Johnson expose was instead filled by the JFK assassination story. In one bizarre 1961 incident that strangely foreshadows the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” finding, a federal government inspector investigating a major Texas corruption scheme involving a close LBJ ally was found dead, shot five times in the chest and abdomen by a rifle, but the death was officially ruled a “suicide” by the local authorities, and that conclusion was reported with a straight face in the pages of the Washington Post. Based on these considerations, it seems extremely difficult to believe that any JFK assassination conspiracy took place entirely without Johnson’s foreknowledge, or that he was not a central figure in the subsequent cover-up. According to Roger Stone, as his mentor Nixon was watching the scene at the Dallas police station where Jack Ruby shot Oswald, Nixon immediately turned as white as a ghost, explaining that he had personally known the gunman under his birth-name of Rubenstein. While working on a House Committee in 1947, Nixon had been advised by a close ally to hire Ruby as an investigator, being told that “he was one of Lyndon Johnson’s boys.” Roger Stone also claims that Nixon once emphasized that although he had long sought the presidency, unlike Johnson “I wasn’t willing to kill for it.” Stone further reports that Vietnam Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and numerous other prominent political figures in DC were absolutely convinced of Johnson’s direct involvement in the JFK assassination. Source: unz.com

Unlike Winston Smith's fatal conversion to political correctness, American values and common sense will triumph in the end because the authoritarian alternatives to Western democracy are serial phases of social engineering, political repression, economic decline, and ultimate collapse. Liberalism, like mathematics, works every time it is tried. Its governing philosophy sustains a commitment to the nation's fundamental principles: to constitutionalism and the separation of powers, to equality and freedom under law, to the protection of individual rights, and to the preservation of self-government. Liberalism insists that civil rights are not to be considered as privileges of tribal identity politics. It affirms that every citizen shall enjoy the right of free expression without fear of intimidation or censorship. Liberalism means, in brief, that political ideology cannot interfere with truth -- and that alone is victory. ––JFK Jr (George magazine)

A Republican Tribute to John (July 22, 1999) by Ann Coulter: "John F. Kennedy Jr. was no run-of-the-mill Kennedy. I knew John F. Kennedy Jr. and I worked with John F. Kennedy Jr. John Kennedy Jr. actually did have the looks, charm, intelligence, humility, kindness, and class. The first time I met John was at a George magazine luncheon at Le Cirque to honor George magazine's "Twenty Most Intriguing Women in Politics." But the magazine founded and edited by the scion of the country's most famous Democratic family was truly a political magazine, not a Democratic magazine (as Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Esquire, Time, and Newsweek are). I told John MSNBC had fired me for it - but rushed to assure him, not to worry, they fired me a lot and had always hired me back. I still felt kind of bad about all the firings. The network had hired me because I was a conservative and then would fire me every time they discovered I was a conservative. I was seen as this right-wing performance artist. I have to confess I was tempted to think 'American society is stupid, I am going to screw with it.' But John was a kind man and he asked me what comments I had been fired for. Uber-Democrat, definition-of-cool John Kennedy Jr. thought it was tremendous that MSNBC kept firing me and a few months later George ran a bemused item on my repeated firings. About a year and a half after the luncheon, John hired me as a regular George columnist. Wow! This really was a new kind of Democrat. John wasn't a part of the older generation of Stalinist liberals who try to censor differing viewpoints and engage in the "politics of personal destruction" to harm those who disagree with them. As his magazine's motto says, this was "not just politics as usual." The importance of what John was doing to political discourse in this country cannot be overstated. If you've ever been on the receiving end of the "politics of personal destruction," it's not always fun being called a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc. Through his magazine, and his very being, John had begun to take the bitter acrimony out of political dialogue. While political neophytes out of Hollywood yammer about getting the younger generation involved in politics, John actually did it. John was able to begin altering the political dialogue in a way that no one else ever could. That is why it is so painful to hear the media talk of John in terms of the Kennedy mystique of liberal mythology or to hear him compared to a dysfunctional, airhead princess. Despite the liberal media's praise, John was a great man. Perhaps more important, he was a good man. In one of our last conversations, he made fun of one of the magazine's liberal columnists for being a predictable bore. Despite the massive publicity John had received for flunking the New York bar examination, he was very bright. During my book tour for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, I spoke at a George magazine breakfast about my book. John came to the meeting, and after my presentation he was the first to start asking questions. He had clearly read the book - unlike so many interviewers - and his questions raised some of the exact same points renowned intellectual William F. Buckley would be raising with me on Firing Line a few weeks later. He was making it safe to talk about politics again. For that, this Republican is deeply grateful and mourns his loss. ––"How to Talk to a Liberal" (2004) by Ann Coulter

JFK Jr.'s young life was further emotionally scarred by the 1968 assassination of his uncle Robert, who had become a surrogate father. John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist whose ranch Kennedy worked on as a teenager and who became a good friend, said in an interview in 2016 that JFK Jr. always wanted to be a "good man" rather than a great one, and he was "chosen as the sexiest man because People magazine should have named him the most virtuous man, but I guess it doesn't have the same ring." Kennedy Jr. attracted national attention when he introduced his uncle Ted at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, spurring many followers to speculate about his possible future in politics. On Kennedy's romantic life, JP Barlow describes him as "faithful" and "a serial monogamist." Among his alleged romantic conquests was Madonna, although his executive assistant, RoseMarie Terenzio, dismisses it as "maybe one night… sorry." He had a serious romantic relationship with actress Daryl Hannah, but he didn't settle down until his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. Their relationship suffered under the strain of the constant hounding by the media, which drove Bessette to a depression. Source: vanityfair.com

   

America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story (2003). Director: Eric Laneuville. Writer: Jon Maas based on Christopher Andersen book. Actors: Kristoffer Polaha as JFK Jr, Portia de Rossi as Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and Jacqueline Bisset as Jackie Kennedy. The TV film was released in 2003 on Starz channel, but due to several legal disputes, it was officially banned.

Extracts from the first "American Prince" draft: 

Carolyn Bessette POV (after meeting John Kennedy Jr): I saw some flickers of anger flashing in his eyes. Not having buckled his seatbelt, he slid closer to zip the space between us. "Alright, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? I have been nothing but gracious to you all the night and you are not even looking at me. What the fuck did I do wrong?" he practically shouted. His anger only fueled my own. "I just know your type. You're a self-righteous git who thinks the world belongs to him. People like you infuriates me!" I shouted back. John glared back at me. "You don't even know me, so why don't you just calm the fuck down and get down off your high horse for a second," he scoffed at me. "I don't need to know you, and I don't want to! You reek of privilege and false confidence, I can't stand politics!" I nearly shrieked back at him, drunkenly slapping at his chest to push him away from me. He grabbed my wrists to stop me. "Oh, that's how it is then? You hate me?" he asked, shoving my hands back against the window. He searched my eyes for acceptance, and suddenly he kissed me. "I'm exhausted," I said, yawning and stretching "and I need a shower". "Was that an invitation?" he asked with a goofy smile. I was exhausted by the time we got back to my bedroom. John delicately dried me off with a giant fluffy towel and dressed me in the black negligee I pulled from my cupboard. He carried me to bed and set me in gingerly, pulling a soft blanket over me. I don't know what compelled me--feeling alone or wanting more of his companionship--but I said something that surprised myself, and I think surprised John as well. "Will you stay with me?" I mumbled quietly. He sat on the bed next to me. "Is that what you want?" he asked pensively, kissing my forehead. "Yes," I sighed, holding his hand. "Then I'll stay," he whispered while he threw me a beautiful smile. He got up and went to the other side of the bed, climbing in next to me. He pulled me into him and reached across me to switch off the lamp, and I quickly fell asleep, satisfied but slightly dazed. We had talked more and now I was surprised by how much we had in common when it came to musical tastes. Eclectic, jazz, classic rock, alternative and indie pop throughout. 

"Do you have a favorite song?" he asked one day. "God, that's tough..." I said, picking my brain. "I love so many, but I think it has to be one with incredible lyrics, voice and music, and I have to go with something classic--one that will never go out of style and makes me inspired every time I hear it." "I totally agree with that," John nodded, "So, what is it?" "I think Feeling Good, by Nina Simone," I replied. "Damn, Carolyn, a woman after my own heart," John said, looking at me intensely for a long moment. "Your favorite lyrics?" he pressed. I didn't have to think about that, "And this old world, is a new world, and a bold world for me," I sang back at him. "You have some decent pipes," he complimented, and I blushed shaking my head. "Thought you'd go with 'freedom is mine, and I know how I feel'," he sang back, teasing me. "I need to learn to be bold before I can feel free," I sang back. He eyed me with that curious and boyish face I had learned to recognize. I started getting more comfortable under his gaze. "Well, what about you?" I asked, waiting for him to reciprocate. "I'd have to say Dream a Little Dream of Me," he answered quickly under his breath. I smiled: "Please tell me you mean the Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald version? It far outweighs Doris Day's original, in my opinion." "Exactly!" he said, speaking excitedly. "It's the duet with the two of them and of course..." "The horn?" I interrupted. He looked at me, absolutely dumb struck. "Yes. The horn makes it," he conceded slowly. "Favorite lyric?" I asked. "More of a verse, I'd say," he replied before singing to me. "Stars fading, but I linger on, dear, still craving your kiss. I'm longing to linger till dawn, dear, just saying this..." I purred into his mouth, kissing him with a passion. His hands found my face and pulled it closer to his. He admired my eyes, and delicately he caressed my cheeks with his thumbs, sliding down my lips. "Christ, Carolyn, you are absolutely delectable," he remarked before pressing his plump lips against mine. My heart fluttered and I kissed him back. "I needed you so much," he whispered against my lips. "Now I can see the real you," I asserted. And with my words he brightened again. "What changed your mind?" I smiled at him. "You did. You let me get to know you. And you taught me how much you cared, and how different you were than I thought. I was wrong to judge you," I said honestly. "You know all that Kennedy garbage sells..." He raised his eyebrows at me, "You keep things pretty close to the chest, Carolyn." I blushed. "What would you like to know, then?" "Now that's an excellent question," he pondered, leaning forward and raising one eyebrow. He leaned forward a bit more and whispered, "Everything." I laughed aloud and sipped on my wine. "Everything," he repeated, chuckling and leaning back, sipping his own wine. I laughed with him. "But, seriously, I don't know. I was almost functional until you came along. Honestly, you're making me crazy." I was taken aback--he was being so straightforward. "What do you mean?" I sipped more wine. "I mean what I said," he replied seriously, taking a swig. He made eye contact with me and we keep on staring at one another. I could tell he wanted me to say something, but I didn't know what would be right. "I can't get my mind off of you," he said with honesty. He stared at me and brought a hand up to my hair, running his fingers delicately along it. "Carolyn, I think you should know that I really care about you. I don't just think of you as a friend or a lover. In the last few weeks, I've realized that you mean a lot to me," he said, swallowing before continuing. "I don't think I can keep doing this if you haven't developed feelings for me, too; you know, beyond sex," he said carefully, his eyes searching mine. "I need you," I said in return, and he gulped for a moment. "Please, never stop saying that," he begged, kissing me again before reaching his hand down to the hem of my dress. "You don't understand the money doesn't matter to me. Let me help you, Carolyn, please quit your job!" he pleaded, bringing his hands to my face and lifting my lips to his passionately.  

Nancy Pelosi invokes Abraham Lincoln, JFK, and the Bible to impeach Donald Trump

Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored House Democrats and Republicans to “search their souls” as they decide later on Wednesday whether to impeach Donald Trump for fomenting a deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. ‘He must go’: Nancy Pelosi invoked Abraham Lincoln, JFK and the Bible in final entreaty to impeach Trump. “He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love,” Ms Pelosi said. The speaker began her speech in favour of Wednesday’s House impeachment resolution by invoking the words of President Abraham Lincoln as well as a passage from the Bible. “'Fellow citizens,' he said, ‘we cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honour or dishonour, to the latest generation,” Ms Pelosi said, quoting Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union address. Members of Congress “hold the power and bear the responsibility” to condemn Mr Trump for his actions inciting last week’s riot, the speaker said. The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established by President John F Kennedy in 1963. Kennedy and his wife Jackie designed the new medal, however, the president was assassinated before it was unveiled. It is presented to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the security or national interests of America, to world peace, or to cultural, public or private endeavors. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Jeffrey Morley: We have been the world police up until Agolf Twittler came to power. Things were going fine. The world has lurched because the Orange Menace left a power vacuum and basically supported our enemies. These alliances will be restored and we will come back better. This has been a wake up call for most Americans. Our democracy almost bit the big one, we were so close to falling under a wannabe dictator but we still came thru. “If we are together nothing is impossible,” Winston Churchill famously said of the United States and Britain in his Harvard speech of Sept. 6, 1943. “If we are divided all will fail." Trump and Putin tried to destroy us from within. Go and search for Foundations of Geopolitics. That will give you a great idea in what Trump and Putin were doing. Only 2% more of our population is in poverty compared with last year? That’s pretty amazing actually when you consider the impact the virus has had on our lives. 

"As a district attorney, I accept the verdict of the jury. However, to misconstrue this verdict as an acquittal of the federal government in its involvement in the assassination of the President and in its suppression of the evidence would be a serious mistake."  -Jim Garrison, A Heritage of Stone (1970). On March 1, 1967, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison shocked the world by arresting local businessman Clay Shaw for conspiracy to murder the president. His alleged co-conspirator, David Ferrie, had been found dead a few days before. Garrison charged that elements of the United States government, in particular the CIA, were behind the crime. From the beginning, his probe was virulently attacked in the media and violently denounced from Washington. His office was infiltrated and sabotaged, and eventually, Shaw was acquitted after the briefest of jury deliberation and the only prosecution ever brought for the murder of President Kennedy was over. “Garrison’s book presents the most powerful detailed case yet made that President Kennedy’s assassination was the product of a conspiracy, and that the plotters and key operators came not from the Mob, but the CIA.”—Norman Mailer (1972). —Jim DiEugenio: Jim Garrison indicted Clay Shaw for perjury and was ready to go trial, and he was not going to make the same mistake he did the first time by not calling enough witnesses. If everything had been declassified, Clay Shaw would have been convicted on about six counts. 

Douglas Caddy: There were two government agencies that decided to destroy Nixon. This stemmed from Nixon creating the secret Huston Plan that was designed to bypass these and some other agencies because Nixon thought they were ineffectual in protecting the nation’s security. The two agencies, the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, were resentful that their powers were being diminished. Both also opposed Nixon’s opening to China, afraid that doing so would awaken a sleeping giant that in time would threaten America. Inside the CIA James Angleton led a faction that was determined to undermine Nixon even if it meant sacrificing Howard Hunt, a longtime CIA agent. Angleton was chief of CIA Counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975. Hunt’s reports from inside the White House on Nixon pushing the Huston Plan alarmed Helms and Angleton. Fox News published an article on December 15, 2008, by James Rosen titled, “The Men Who Spied on Nixon: New Details Reveal Extent of ‘Moorer-Radford Affair.’” Here are key excerpts from it: A Navy stenographer assigned to the National Security Council during the Nixon administration "stole documents from just about every individual that he came into contact with on the NSC," according to newly declassified White House documents. The two-dozen pages of memoranda, transcripts and notes--the most privileged documents in the Executive Branch--shed important new details on a unique crisis in American history: when investigators working for President Richard Nixon discovered that the Joint Chiefs of Staff, using the stenographer as their agent, actively spied on the civilian command during the Vietnam War. 

The episode became known as "the Moorer-Radford affair," after the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, the late Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, and the stenographer involved, Navy Yeoman Charles Radford. The details first surfaced in early 1974 as part of the Watergate revelations, but remained obscure for historians until the 1990s. The affair represented an important instance in which President Nixon was himself the victim of internal espionage. Under intensive polygraph testing in late 1971, Radford denied having leaked the India-Pakistan documents. However, the young stenographer did eventually break down and tearfully admit to Nixon's investigators that he had been stealing NSC [National Security Council] documents and routing them to his Pentagon superiors. Radford later estimated he had stolen 5,000 documents within a 13-month period. He [John Ehrlichman’s aide, David Young] encouraged Ehrlichman to mention to Admiral Robinson that the young stenographer-spy had already told investigators that he believed the material he had been stealing was destined to go to "your superiors," meaning the Joint Chiefs. Young also urged Ehrlichman to determine the extent to which Kissinger's top NSC deputy -- Alexander Haig, who had personally selected Radford to accompany Kissinger on his overseas trips, and who later went on to become secretary of state in the Reagan administration -- was "aware of Radford's activities." Nixon and his men eventually concluded that Haig had been complicit in the Pentagon spying, but opted not to take any action against him. Washington Metro Police Sergeant Carl Shoffler, who was actually a military intelligence agent assigned to the police by the Pentagon, learned from confidential information from Robert Merritt of the burglars’ plan to break into the Democratic National Committee in Watergate two weeks before the actual burglary took place. He used this information to set up the burglars and then was parked a block away from Watergate on the night of the break-in. When he received word from police headquarters that the burglary was underway, he entered the building and arrested James McCord and the four Cuban-Americans. Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy who were in the Watergate Hotel fled the scene. With the arrests of the burglars, the fuse was lit for the eventual destruction of Nixon. Tom Huston, the co-author with President Nixon of the Huston Plan, was one of the founders of Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, which was when I first got to know him. He is now one of my Facebook friends. Robert Merritt was one of two employees of the Huston Plan, being paid by cash funds provided by John Dean from the White House to Sergeant Dixie Gildon of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department who disbursed the money to Merritt. The Huston Plan is best described in a CNN article by Professor Douglas Brinkley, CNN’s Presidential Historian, and Professor Luke A. Nichter, published on June 17, 2015. Here are some excerpts from their article, “Great Mystery of the 1970s: Nixon, Watergate and the Huston Plan”: Chaired by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, ICI [Interagency Committee on Intelligence] membership included the major intelligence agencies, including Richard Helms of the CIA, Donald Bennett of the Defense Intelligence Agency, William Sullivan of the FBI, and Noel Gayler of the National Security Agency. The White House liaison was Tom Charles Huston, a conservative-minded attorney and former intelligence official, whose name will be forever associated with the mysterious report. On May 16, 1973, White House special counsel J. Fred Buzhardt reported to Nixon that top NSA officials, including Deputy Director Louis Tordella, had told him the Huston Plan had been put into effect, according to a tape released in August 2013 by the National Archives. When the existence of the Huston Plan first became public during Watergate, we were led to believe that it was never implemented. 

Nixon ordered the plan and then retracted it, so the story went. However, the reason the Huston Plan remains classified today is likely because at least portions of it were indeed implemented after all. The basis for its continued classification is to protect secrets that were operational. Our chance to learn about the Huston Plan and whether it was the authority upon which the Watergate burglary took place slipped away when former White House counsel John W. Dean III turned over the White House copy to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on May 14, 1973. Dean took the plan with him when he was fired on April 30. As a result of his giving the document to the courts, it became out of the reach of congressional subpoena and out of the reach of the Freedom of Information Act. When word reached the intelligence community that the Huston Plan was no longer in the custody of the White House, panic swept across the FBI, CIA, and NSA on May 17. The FBI feared it could end up in the hands of congressional investigators then looking into Watergate, with the result being that "inference is likely to be drawn by Congressional committees that this committee (the ICI) was a prelude to the Watergate affair and the Ellsberg psychiatrist burglary." There was indeed a "cancer on the presidency," as Dean said to Nixon on March 21, and the apparent answer of the national security establishment was to cut it out, with the resignation of Nixon. 

Don Jeffries: I'm an American, and I can trace my roots back here to the mid 1700s. I think the majority of the American people, at this time, unfortunately are stupid. Maybe dumbed down or brainwashed is a better term. They've proven to be incredibly easy to fool. Americans love to trash other Americans. I'm not qualified to judge the collective brain power in any other country, but I know Americans, and that's my assessment. As a populist, what makes it more difficult for me is the fact that I still feel a great affinity for "the people." Kind of like the way Winston Smith described the proles in 1984; he was desperately rooting for them, and realized they could overpower the Party in sheer numbers with little effort, but recognized how unable they were to do that. No one-including Vince Bugliosi, Gerald Posner, Stephen King or Tom Hanks-can make an effective case for Oswald being the lone assassin, because the official record proves that was impossible. However, what we should be worried about the increasingly stupid American public. Americans weren't always viewed as the warmongers and imperialists, but those who could be depended on to be on the right side of the fight. Bugliosi bombed trying to defend to Reclaiming History in his book tours; but the public doesn't buy the premise. Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com

Last Second in Dallas by Josiah Thompson

In this long-awaited follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1967 classic, Six Seconds in Dallas, Josiah Thompson reveals major new forensic discoveries since the year 2000 that overturn previously accepted “facts” about the Kennedy assassination. It provides incontrovertible proof that JFK was killed in a crossfire. Last Second in Dallas is not a conspiracy book. No theory of who did it is offered or discussed. Among the new discoveries: The test showing that all recovered bullet fragments came from Oswald’s rifle was mistaken. Several fragments could have come from bullets of any manufacturer and any caliber. The sudden two-inch forward movement of the president’s head in the Zapruder film just before his head explodes is revealed to be an optical illusion caused by the movement of Zapruder’s camera. This leaves without further challenge clear evidence that this shot came from a specific location to the right front of the limousine. Detailed analysis of film frames matched by the newly validated acoustic evidence show a second shot struck the president’s head from behind less than a second later. Result: two killing shots to the head from opposite directions in the final second of the shooting—hence the book’s title. At once a historical detective story and a deeply personal narrative by a major figure in the field, Last Second in Dallas captures the drama and sweep of events, detailing government missteps and political bias as well as the junk science, hubris, and controversy that have dogged the investigation from the beginning. Into this account Thompson weaves his own eventful journey, that of a Yale-educated scholar who in 1976 resigned his tenured professorship in philosophy to become a private investigator in San Francisco. Profusely illustrated, Last Second in Dallas features dozens of archive photographs, including Zapruder film frames reproduced at the highest clarity ever published.

Jim DiEugenio: It's pretty obvious now that director/producer Joel Surnow could not control his Herhsian mania to place every piece of weakly sourced or discredited piece of tripe that Kennedy's enemies have manufactured in this pile of TV cliches named The Kennedys. What is so interesting is that History Channel hired historians as fact checkers and were going to reward them if they approved the film! They could not do so even for money. That is how over the top Surnow is in this regard. And this fact checking process started with the script, and then went to a rough cut. So knowing that History Channel was watching him all the way, Surnow still could not contain himself. Richard Reeves, I believe, is not a really good historian--especially when it comes to JFK's foreign policy ideas. But the fact that even Reeves could not swallow this anti Kennedy, Rush Limbaugh inspired farrago says a lot. If the History Channel hired Limbaugh's buddy Surnow to begin with, they knew approximately what they were going to get. Therefore, the movers and shakers were not going to give Caroline Kennedy the time of the day if they liked Surnow. But it's clear that Surnow had no interest in facts or history. He just wanted to recycle Horowitz, Davis, Matthews, the Blairs, Thomas Reeves and Hersh's nutty books. This was not going to be real history at all. It was a reactionary political statement all the way. Surnow admitted that not all of Mr. Gillon and Mr. Dallek’s recommendations were taken. As if we didn't know it! Ted Sorensen, one of the closest advisers of JFK, opined the show was indeed "malicious and vindictive." 

Reading Donald Spoto's book on Marilyn Monroe one can see a good example of why this stuff that appears repeatedly on TV documentaries or films that cannot be trusted. Then read how Judith Exner kept on exaggerating and exaggerating her story after the Church Committee. In other words they got her to lie for money. To the point that toward the end, she could not even keep up with all the lies she'd told. She actually forgot JFK had impregnated her in previous books-a story she directly contradicted many times, but should we believe Kitty Kelley's version? Do you really think that after all had happened that Caroline Kennedy or RFK Jr. don't know about the conspiracy against their family? They do. But acting on it publicly carries a potent warning to it. So few of us are really martyrs. Personally, I don't know of any, do you?

Larry Hancock: Of many coincidences I actually refer in Tipping Point, Allen Dulles was in Dallas five weeks prior to the assassination. Invited to speak at the Dallas Council on World Affairs (of which George de Mohrenschildt was a member.) The remarks by David Morales's life long friend Frankie Knuckles and Bill Harvey's wife seem to me to carry strong weight. I think these people just didn't dislike JFK's policies, they considered him a traitor and literally hated him. The interview of Harvey's widow to Jefferson Morley sounds like the old woman slipped up and told the truth when she said about John Rosselli "...he was recruited for assassination purposes on Kennedy..." Then she caught herself and said, "I mean Castro." According to Clara Grace Harvey, Rosselli had been recruited by "another guy from the FBI for assassination purposes on Kennedy". Clara Grace Harvey thinks her husband was buddies with a mafia hit man, thought the mafioso was a "patriot?" Harvey was stationed in Miami to oversee operations regarding Cuba. During the Missile Crisis, he dispatched a crew to enter Cuba for suspicious reasons; however, when RFK & JFK found out about it, he was reassigned to the Rome CIA post. There in Rome, Harvey's drinking problem got worse. I'm sure Harvey was full of hate toward the Kennedys. Also, Clara Grace Harvey seems to have a problem about Jackie being at a drugstore sipping on a Coke... like the First Lady can't go down to a drugstore, sit at a counter and sip on a Coke?? Nuts! Of course, Ms Harvey talks about JFK's womanizing, but  do you notice that all of JFK's mistresses talked good of him, all of them, and even Jackie remembered him with so much affect. A year before his death Jackie told John "Please don't order us to a bomb shelter on Camp David. Me and the kids want to die with you!" In 1978 I had Thanksgiving dinner with a high-ranking special agent of the FBI. I was living and working in Washington DC, and the gal who invited me led me to the family farm for dinner. She had always bragged to me that her father had been buddies with J. Edgar Hoover. In the guy's den, before dinner, me and his son were having a couple of drinks. I innocently asked the guy what he thought "really happened" to Kennedy. His face got beet red and he lapsed into a tirade in which he called JFK a "goddamned communist". He said something to the effect that JFK and Bobby got what they deserved - he seemed to be gloating to me. He hated the Kennedy's in a way that shocked me to death. It was like it was personal - the Kennedy's weren't dead enough for this guy.... I found his obituary recently and I tried to research a bit about the guy. He was a special agent of the FBI at the time of the assassination named Leonard Spears.  

Douglas Caddy: William K. Harvey was one of the big men of CIA in it earliest days. A former FBI agent, Harvey was the agency's first chief of counterintelligence. He ran the CIA's Berlin base in the 1950s and in 1960 was put in charge of ZR RIFLE, the agency's assassination program. He was openly hostile to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy who forced the CIA to transfer him to Rome in 1963. He died in 1976. Mathilde Krim was LBJ’s mistress in the 1960s. She also just happened to be a fanatical supporter of the interests of Israel. In the late 1940s, she had been an active promoter of the Israeli terror group The Irgun. Mathilde Krim was also most likely a Mossad agent with long-time contacts to the highest levels of the Israeli government. I would have loved to hear the “pillow talk” between these two total opposites: the incredibly crude, uncultured and flabby LBJ and the cultured, sleek and highly educated Krim. You can bet that she was able to supply Israel with all sorts of top secret information that she was able to extract out of her bedmate. Maybe she also gave advice to LBJ about who exactly to blackmail or what transgressions by Israel for LBJ to ignore (like the USS Liberty attack). Mathilde Krim’s husband was the very wealthy Arthur Krim, one of the most powerful supporters of Israel in the USA. Mathilde Krim’s relationship with LBJ was most likely known by her husband but was “overlooked” by him because of its huge value to Israel as both as a source of information as well as for its potential use as blackmail. The heads of MSM at the time apparently knew all about the relationship between Krim and LBJ but “wisely” chose to ignore it unlike what they had done for JFK and his affairs. You can also bet that Krim dropped her lover LBJ like a hot potato once he left office and was no longer of use to her friends. 

Here’s Mathilde Krim with a soirée of Fine Folks to include LBJ & Lady Bird. She certainly made the rounds. Definitely an Intelligence Operative considering her prodigious network of contacts. It reminds me of a scene from Rosemary’s Baby. Behind the JFK and RFK assassinations is the Allen Dulles gang: Richard Helms, David Atlee Phillips, and James Angleton. It is true that Angleton had deep ties with the Mossad. It is also true that since the end of the second world war, Israeli skulduggery in the US and Europe has been massive. But these two political murders were planned and executed by the above Dulles cabal. Oswald was a CIA asset since his time as Marine serving at the US Atsugi base in Japan. Researcher HP Albarelli connects Oswald to right-wing Agency operative David Ferrie as far back as the early 1950s. Oswald was also part of Angleton’s false defector program, which inserted him into the USSR in the late 1950s. The grooming and handling of Sirhan Sirhan in California in the mid 1960s speaks of a well-entrenched domestic network of CIA assets. He was picked for patsydom for a number reasons, and Angleton, again, a prince of an ally for Mossad, liked Sirhan’s Palestinian background, which amped up the Arab threat, in the eyes of the US audience, to his Israeli friends. The author is correct that Thane Caesar was the real assassin of RFK. Previous to the RFK hit, Caesar had worked for the Hughes corporation in Burbank. The sprawling Howard Hughes business empire partially had served as a CIA cover since the 1950s. 

Laurent Guyenot (a French highly-educated professional engineer, who shares an interest in political writing): Finally, through years of research on other contemporary “deep history”, I came to find a pattern in Israel’s tremendous capacity to engineer history. “Psychological profiling” is important in any criminal case, and I believe that Israel has that profile. Jewish hatred for anything Catholic adds to the profile, not to mention the Kennedys’ vague Judeophobia (“The Jews have won the war”, Joe Kennedy said after resigning his Ambassador position, JFK himself had praised Robert Taft for his courage to denounce the Nuremberg trials) and their war waged on the Jewish Lobby by RFK’s team. JFK threatened the flawed Jews narrative on Hitler too. From JFK diary (published on Time magazine in 2017), his diary reveals that during his time in Berlin, Kennedy wrote about visiting Hitler’s bunker only months after Germany surrendered in the Second World War. “You can easily understand how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived,” Kennedy wrote in his diary in 1945. “He had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him,” he added. “He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.” 

RFK was especially vocal about his goal of ending the Vietnam war on the ’68 campaign trail. And then there’s Richard Nixon: a national security state favorite since his time as congressman during the so-called Red Scare of the early 195os, Nixon was their favored candidate in the ’68 election. RFK’s death sealed the deal for Nixon. Nixon would go on to incur the wrath of his former national security state allies with his secret negotiations with China and the USSR while president. Because of his previous good works for them, a political death was arranged rather than a violent physical one. And the “manufacturer” of the single bullet theory was Jewish Senator Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission. Another point about the Kennedy’s dislike of Israel it was much greater than anyone thought especially coming from the old man Joe. Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish and Johnson helped smuggle Jews legally and illegally into Texas. “Israel,” in Kent’s analysis, “would use all the means at its command to persuade the U.S. to acquiesce in, and even to support, its possession of nuclear capability.” In short, Israel would use its immense political power – especially through its lobby in Washington – to force the United States to accede to Israel’s nuclear intentions. Stephen Green believes that Kennedy’s position vis-a-vis Israel was an important stand: “It was a remarkable exchange, and the last time in many, many years in which an American president precisely distinguished for the government of Israel the differences between U.S. and Israeli national security interests.” 

Thus it was that John F. Kennedy informed Israel, in no uncertain terms, that he intended – first and foremost – to place America’s interests – not Israel’s interests – at the center of U.S. Middle East policy. Kennedy’s friendly overtures to the Arab states were only a public aspect of what ultimately developed into an all-out ‘secret war’ between Kennedy and Israel. Another part of the all secret war between Kennedy and Israel was Ben-Gurion hated Kennedy because he consider his father an anti semite and Hitler supporter. Hersh wrote, “The Israeli prime minister, in subsequent private communications to the White House, began to refer to the President as ‘young man.’ Kennedy made clear to associates that he found the letters to be offensive.” Kennedy himself told his close friend, Charles Bartlett, that he was getting fed up with the fact that the Israeli “sons of bitches lie to me constantly about their nuclear capability.” Obviously, to say the very least, there was no love lost between the two leaders. The U.S.-Israeli relationship was at an ever-growing and disastrous impasse, although virtually nothing was known about this to the American public at the time. On his part, RFK was admirable for his bravery in confronting corruption and the mob. But it might very well have been the Kennedy’s un-doing: RFK’s morality. On the other hand, I came to doubt that Pentagon generals, whom James Douglass incriminate, would plot to assassinate their own president: a question of psychological profile. They may have wished him dead, and rejoiced over his death, but that is totally different. What I find interesting is Nixon’s observations, or perhaps cryptic messages, on both assassinations. Nixon was no real “friend” of Israel either. Recall the tape of his conversation with Billy Graham. Mark Felt, a Hoover insider and Jewish, was passed over by Nixon for top dog at the FBI, which was complicit in the coverup of both assassinations. Mark Felt became Deep Throat and kept the pot boiling on Watergate. Could Nixon have been suspicious about the official narratives of the assassinations? I strongly advise getting a copy of Greg Poulgrain 'JFK vs Allen Dulles' which documents the links between Dulles and de Mohrenschildt going as far back as the 1930's. Information that George de Mohrenschildt didn't disclose to the WC's Albert Jenner commission sessions attended by Dulles. Source: educationforum.ipbhost.com

JFK: the third most intelligent president of USA, JFK Jr: Dependably and consistently good

1. (Highest IQ ranking) President John Quincy Adams - IQ score: 168. While studying law at Harvard University, America's future sixth president (1825-1829) became romantically involved with a local woman, but his parents advised him to establish his career before marrying her. Brokenhearted or not, Adams listened to the advice — and went on to his duty to become one of the most respected and productive presidents ever. He's remembered for his diplomatic skills: he settled the Treaty of Ghent and ended the War of 1812; negotiated with Britain over the location of the U.S. border with Canada; and purchased Florida from Spain. 

2. President Thomas Jefferson. IQ score: 153. Officially, Thomas Jefferson was a planter, lawyer and politician — but he also had in-depth knowledge of mechanics, several languages and architecture, and he was a talented surveyor and mathematician. He was an extremely busy man with a huge range of interests that he kept under control with a very strict schedule: He rose with the sun, ate breakfast strictly at 8, had a big lunch at 3, and kept track of everything in a trusty notebook. Jefferson's achievements include writing the Declaration of Independence when he was in his early 30s. As the third president (1801-1809), he: doubled the country’s territory; negotiated peace with France; and developed American trade. He remained an overachiever after retiring from office, when he founded the University of Virginia.

3. President John F. Kennedy - IQ score: 150. JFK was not just very smart—he was a real trooper who fought chronic illnesses his whole life and refused to give in. He pursued an interest in political philosophy at Harvard, then served with distinction in the Naval Reserve in World War II. During his abbreviated presidency (1961-1963), he faced some intense political situations. Kennedy steered the U.S. through the Cold War, struggles with Cuba and the Middle East, and the rising civil rights and women's equality movements. As the country was becoming more woke, the 35th president managed to push it toward a more equitable future by signing the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and proposing what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

David Talbot: In recent years, the Kennedy legacy has been clouded by a spate of books, documentaries, and articles that have attempted to demythologize Camelot by presenting JFK as a drug-addled, sex-addict, with capricious character. This pathological interpretation misses the essential story of his presidency. There was a heroic grandeur to John F. Kennedy's administration that had nothing to do with the mists of Camelot. It was a presidency that clashed with its own times, and in the end found some measure of greatness. Coming to office at the height of the Cold War and held hostage by their party's powerful Southern racist wing, the Kennedy brothers steadily grew in vision and courage - prodded by the social movements of the sixties - until they were in such sharp conflict with the national security bureaucracy and Southern Democrats that they risked splitting their own administration and party. This is the fundamental historical truth about the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. And yet, caught up in the fashionable anti-Kennedy backlash of the times, prominent journalists like Christopher Hitchens dismissed JFK as a vulgar playboy. One result of this relentless Kennedy bashing has been to diminish the public outrage over JFK's unsolved murder. After all, if President Kennedy really was such a sleazy character, where is the tragedy in his violent demise? It has also become fashionable in all the media babble about Dallas that fills the air each year around November 22 for commentators to opine that 'we will probably never know the truth about John F. Kennedy's assassination'—a self-fulfilling prophecy that relieves them of any responsibility to search for the truth. From Dallas to Vietnam to Iraq, the truth has consistently been avoided, the perpetrators have never been found. When the nation has mustered the courage to impanel commissions, these investigations soon come up against locked doors that remain firmly shut to this day. The stage for this reign of secrecy was set on November 22, 1963. The lesson of Dallas was clear. If a president can be shot down with impunity at high noon in the sunny streets of an American city, then any kind of deceit is possible. The CIA should be required to disclose the phone and travel records of agents suspected of involvement in the JFK - and RFK - assassinations, such as David Morales. Lingering technical disputes about the events in Dealey Plaza - such as the hotly debated 'acoustic fingerprints' on the Dallas police motorcycle Dictabelt that apparently indicated that as many as five shots were fired that day - should be resolved by utilizing the most sophisticated forensic resources, including those of the federal Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, which oddly refused to take on the case. The assassination researchers are, of course, indefatigable by nature. That's what has allowed them to carry on, through years of government obstruction, media ridicule, and the bewilderment of family and friends. But outside this shrinking community of hardy souls, a malaise hangs over the JFK crusade. Do Americans still want the truth - starting with Dallas and going all the way to Guantanamo? Do they want to take back their country? I don't know for certain. But I have to be optimistic. Just because there really is no other way, is there? —David Talbott,  author of Brothers - The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years.

"In real life, the big gesture isn't enough. You need to be consistent, you need to be dependably good." —JFK Jr (Estimated IQ according to his SAT tests in Brown University: 129). John Kennedy Jr was passionate about history and one of his favorite readings was Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic by Ernst Badian (an Austrian-born classical scholar who served as a professor at Harvard University from 1971 to 1998). "John's legacy was really about who he would've become," friend Brian Steel, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan with John Kennedy Jr, said to Today News. "But I just think America and also the world would have been a better place. Now you look back, and you think of what might have been."  A run for high-profile political office in New York was most likely in his future with an eye on one day returning the Kennedy family to the White House. "There's no doubt he was thinking about running for governor," Steel said. "We had that discussion a couple times in the months before he passed away. He also had given sort of fleeting thought for running for that Senate seat in 2000. The White House could have been his destiny." "I think anytime you go into politics, you have to make sure the rest of your life will accommodate that decision," John Kennedy Jr. told NBC's Tom Brokaw in 1995. "There is a whole generation that has now grown up without knowing Kennedy Jr. as a public figure, but his memory lives on. I mean, there was no one that compared in the world to John," Steel added. "Everything that he did with his power, his fame, it was all about some greater good," Rose Marie Terenzio (his former executive assistant at George magazine) said. "He's truly missed for the way that he gracefully took that mantle of responsibility and lived an honorable life full of integrity—and he's missed for what we all want, which is somebody to look up to and to be proud of." 

Brian Steel: Calling out a random woman in public angered John, and you can see clearly John going off on the paparazzo who'd shouted Carolyn's name while they were vacationing in Hyannisport. I can’t believe a minute later, John apologized to that annoying photographer, which shows you what a classy man he was. Not only he apologized for losing his temper, John also offered to pay for his broken camera. Not too many high status people would do that. And you can tell he really felt bad, he first had yelled "I don't give a fuck about your camera!" and then he asks him politely: "Can I pay for it? How much it costs?" Very rare sympathy that is not found in celebrated public figures these days. 

Douglas Caddy: Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, recalling a discussion he and Kennedy had about the Bay of Pigs said, "This episode seared him. He had experienced the extreme power these groups had, these various insidious influences of the CIA and the Pentagon on civilian policy, and I think it raised in his own mind the specter: Can Jack Kennedy, President of the United States, ever be strong enough to really rule these two powerful agencies? I think it had a profound effect... it shook him up." John Stockwell (former CIA officer) discussed his role in Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, and their eventual parting of ways over differences in belief about the mechanics of the assassination plot. Though both agreed that Kennedy was killed by a group of conspirators, Stockwell argued that it was a group of "renegades" whereas Stone, using the Jim Garrison investigation and Fletcher L. Prouty's recollections as starting points, argued that the conspiracy went to the highest levels of the US government. Stockwell faults Stone and Garrison for leaving out the mafia connection to the assassination plot and the Miami nexus of Cuban-exiles. Stockwell focused on how the CIA targeted six countries for destabilization in order to put its favorites in command of their governments. What he described fits to a T of what America under Trump has gone through. The only difference being that it was a former KGB Colonel named Putin and not the CIA that targeted America for destabilization.

Jim DiEugenio: A few days ago, I wrote a brief article for Kennedys and King.com about the upcoming parole hearing for Sirhan Sirhan. I posted it on the RFK section. Since it is dealing with a current topic--the hearing is in March--and since people have queried me about it and emailed me their letters, I decided to check on its popularity. At Google, it is nowhere to be seen.  I thought that was odd. It makes me wonder, are we living in The Truman Show? Is Google really that rigged against people like us?  I mean I know all about Wikipedia. But now this? If so, break Google up. The Corbett Report had the most popular video on youtube in regard to the federal reserve, explaining the origins of fractional reserve banking and money creation so a layman could understand. It was top search and then it just vanished from searches but, it’s still there on the authors page, you just can’t find it even if you type the exact title. There was nothing factually incorrect about the video, it just didn’t make the FED look good. Some book sites have removed peoples audiobooks and refunded them, with no explanation. Clearly the books were fine for publication, or they never would have been available in the first place. Youtube, FB and Twitter have all just removed people's accounts with no warnings, the only general explanation you get is that policy was broken, no laws were broken though. Essentially, where this is going is that big tech is shaping our thoughts and ideas, manipulating public discourse. Society is so reliant on google for results, it has lost the ability to critically think or research. This is the future, you’ll only find what google wants you to find and people will wish they had hard copy of books again. 

Larry Hancock: The Carlos Lechuga / Silvia Duran / Harvey Oswald story deserves far more attention than it has received and is based in deep research by Bill Simpich and Stu Wexler, now continued by David Boylan (who is working the Moore lead as well). I would say it is one of the deepest and perhaps the most seminal leads to explain events in Mexico City (including Emilio Rodriguez, Tony Sforza, the AMOTS and the impersonation of Oswald) than anything else I've seen. More importantly, it provides a very specific path by which Oswald would have been selected as the ideal patsy for Dallas....a path leading back directly to Miami and SAS/WAVE personnel. So in terms of tensions and a deep seated mistrust of JFK you only need to look at how Esterline communicated that to those in the chain of command and follow him down to Miami, to Moore, to Morales, and to the exiles in the maritime operations there. Whatever anyone suspected or knew about JFK's plot was overridden by personal concerns and by fears of survival of the CIA as a whole - whom everyone still saw as a front line unit in the fight against global communism. I imagine that was used as the justification for just moving on. Even after his exit from CIA in November 1961, Allen Dulles was still able to input his agenda in 1963? We know Eisenhower gave green lights to get rid of Lumumba and Trujillo. But the killing of Dag Hammarskjold in September '61 was given no presidential authority, yet Dulles and ZR/RIFLE were involved. The day after the crash, former U.S. President Harry Truman commented that Hammarskjöld "was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said 'when they killed him'." Having read the recent brilliant publication by Greg Poulgrain 'JFK vs Allen Dulles' that documents the 30 years of Dulles overtaking of Indonesia, that required the removal of both Sukarno & JFK, which resulted in the regime change in '65. So there were odds that the ex CIA Director could also set the Dallas plot in motion! Presidential authority got lost in the world of subtle conversations and indirect dialogue in the Director's office at CIA. J.C. King was the first CIA officer to propose killing Castro - and was the senior officer that approved the TILT mission, a political action which could have eviscerated the Kennedy administration had it succeeded. Frankly I think King doesn't get nearly enough attention, a man with extreme views who was operationally in charge of Western Hemisphere for way to long. All I can postulate in Tipping Point is there were conversations which would have involved Dulles, Angleton, Harvey and Helms about their concerns over JFK's drift towards negotiation and neutrality in international relations, which they considered both extremely naive and actually dangerous. Those conversations were repeated within Operations, likely to King and down stream to officers in SAS/WAVE. Source: https://educationforum.ipbhost.com