Warren Commission Conclusion

1. Warren Commission Conclusion 10. In its entire investigation the Commission has found no evidence of conspiracy, subversion, or disloyalty to the U.S. Government by any Federal, State, or local official. What about the CIA, the military, Vice President Johnson, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police Department?

2. Military-Industrial Complex • Term for the powerful coalition between the Pentagon and the defense contractors who provide billions of dollars worth of military hardware • President Dwight D. Eisenhower coined the phrase in his farewell speech on January 17, 1960: Our military establishment today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime.... Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.… But now, we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. • In the JFK assassination, the military-industrial complex theory points the finger (either individually or collaboratively) at the CIA, the military, and the Texas oil barons led by H.L Hunt, all of whom desired to replace JFK with Lyndon Johnson.

3. The Context of the Military-Industrial Complex • The rise of the powerful combination of weapons manufacturers, industrialists, financiers, and the military, which Eisenhower called the “military industrial complex,” can be understood in terms of the escalation of the annual military budget expenditures from $13 billion in 1950 to $47 billion in 1961 to $100 billion by the end of the Viet Nam War in 1975. Today, the total Department of Defense budget in the wake of the Iraq War exceeds $500 billion, more than the rest of the world combined, with the result that tens of millions of American jobs are dependent on defense contracts. In essence, the US has managed for over a half century to maintain a “war-time” economy even in peace-time. • After World War II until the late 1980s, the US was engaged in the so-called “Cold War” with the Soviet Union. Although the two “superpowers” never actually waged armed warfare directly with each other, they competed vigorously and obsessively in three major ways: • the so-called “arms race,” which involved building up their arsenal of atomic and nuclear weapons as a measure of their military supremacy; • the extension of their global spheres of influence or imperial domains, which involved exerting either military and/or economic control over vast territories or nationalities; • the so-called “space race” with the moon as the ultimate destination was an extension of the obsession with both military and territorial supremacy; • ideological propaganda warfare which tended to divide the world into democratic/capitalist or socialist/communist camps; even athletic or cultural events took on the aura of “us” vs “them.” • The obsession with military, territorial, and ideological supremacy gave rise to the logical fallacy known as the “domino theory,” which postulated that if a particular area fell into the communist orbit, then it would be only a matter of time before adjacent areas followed suit. Thus, the spread of communism had to be checked at all costs.

4. The Rise of the CIA • The perceived communist threat spawned an American intelligence network that extended its power and influence far beyond its mandate to collect and interpret information on the activities and purposes of an enemy or threat to national security. • The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 exposed the inadequacy of existing military intelligence agencies and led to the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) which by 1947 had evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). • The CIA was responsible only to the National Security Council, which was headed by the President, effectively giving the President absolute control over the new agency. Under the guise of protecting “national security,” the CIA had enormously expanded its budget, staff, and role within a decade after its formation. Although the amounts were never clear, a portion of the funding for its over 15,000 employees, in addition to thousands of foreign agents and contract employees, came from the public purse. • But increasingly, the CIA was acquiring an enormous secret budget from the many properties or “fronts” that it had created to provide a cover for its clandestine activities. These fronts, including airlines, import-export companies, “high tech” firms, advertising agencies, foundations, among numerous other enterprises which it owned wholly or partly, gave the CIA greater fiscal autonomy, allowing it to extend its range of activities to overseeing military operations, destabilizing and overthrowing foreign governments, and assassinating national leaders.

5. CIA Covert Operations • Among the CIA’s covert operations which a Senate Committee headed by Frank Church exposed in 1975 included: • intervening to suppress the Communist influence in the Italian national elections in 1948; • initiating a coup to overthrow popularly-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 after his government had nationalized the oil industry, thus undermining the interests of Gulf Oil; • financing a right-wing coup in Guatemala in 1954 to overthrow the popularly elected government of JacoboArbenz, which had nationalized the property of the United Fruit Company; • plotting the murders of Premier Patrice Lamumba in the Congo and President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, both in 1961, and of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963, three weeks before President Kennedy was assassinated. • Growing CIA power and influence prompted President Harry Truman to reflect: I never had thought ... when I set up the CIA, that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment that I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role.

6. Castro as a CIA Target • By the early 1960s, the chief target of CIA assassination plots was Premier Fidel Castro who in 1959 had overthrown the American-backed regime of Fulgencio Batista. • Proclaiming himself to be the leader of a socialist revolution, Castro closed down the gambling casinos and houses of prostitution which had been the source of an estimated $100 million a year for organized crime in the United States. He also nationalized the sugar industry, the backbone of the Cuban economy, and seized more than $700 million of American property, including banks that had been accused of laundering money for American interests. • The American government retaliated by restricting sugar imports and placing an embargo on Cuban trade. • With his economy paralyzed and rumours of an American invasion proliferating, Castro turned to the Soviet Union for economic and military support. • The prospect of a communist-supported state within 90 miles of its southeastern coast was too much for the American government to tolerate. In January 1961, little more than two weeks before Kennedy assumed the presidency, the US terminated diplomatic relations with Cuba and stepped up its efforts to isolate the island by cutting off its sugar markets and oil supplies.

7. Bay of Pigs Fiasco • Under the direction of Vice President Richard Nixon (since President Eisenhower was opposed), the CIA organized Cuban exiles to invade Cuba in 1960. • Nixon’s surprising lost to Kennedy by a narrow margin was a shock to the military and intelligence establishment that counted on an apparently certain Nixon victory to maintain the strategic status quo. It soon became clear that President Kennedy shared President Eisenhower’s reluctance to provide the air and naval power necessary to support the paramilitary invasion. Kennedy preferred an invasion that would leave no evidence of American involvement. • Still, CIA planners remained confident that Kennedy could be persuaded somehow, and besides, they had become so accustomed to getting their own way in carrying out covert operations that they could not contemplate otherwise. • Miscommunication and misunderstanding prevailed up to the moment of the April 17, 1961 landing of 1,500 Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy did not give in to continuing pressure to provide essential air and naval support, with the result that the Cuban expeditionary force was soundly defeated. • With the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA felt betrayed by Kennedy for not supporting its plan to rid the western hemisphere of the communist menace. The Cuban exiles believed that Kennedy had gone back on his word; even after Kennedy negotiated their release from Cuban custody in December 1962, many of the captured exiles vowed to seek revenge. • The American military and diplomatic community, whether supportive of the invasion or not, was embarrassed to be associated with such a disastrous defeat and a violation of national sovereignty. While publicly declaring that he was “the responsible officer of government,” Kennedy emerged from the crisis determined that he would never again be duped and manipulated by the CIA and the Pentagon. He fired CIA Director, Allen Dulles, the Deputy Director, Major Charles Cabell, and Agent Richard Bissell who was chiefly responsible for organizing the Bay of Pigs fiasco. • JFK also issued National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 55 and NSAM 57 which had the effect of reducing the powers of the CIA and military intelligence agencies. In a telling statement, Kennedy was quoted as vowing “to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and to scatter them to the wind.”

8. CIA-Mafia Links • That Kennedy’s success in controlling the CIA was limited is indicated by the continuing efforts to assassinate Castro with the help of organized crime. • Throughout the 1950s, Cuba had been a lucrative stronghold for the Mafia’s gambling and prostitution operations. Castro’s rise meant the Mafia’s fall in Cuba, and leading crime bosses such as Santos Trafficante in Miami, Carlos Marcello in New Orleans, Sam Giancana in Chicago, and Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas wanted to restore the status quo as vigorously as did Nixon and the CIA. • The Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee in the mid 1970s revealed startling evidence of a CIA-Mafia link to eliminate Castro. After all, both organization shared economic motives and a killing capacity to serve each other’s interests. Their mutual desire to regain control of Cuba led to a mutual antipathy towards Kennedy for his failure to support invasions in 1961 and 1962, and a complex web of evidence exists to suggest that the Mafia, notably Marcello and Trafficante, were eager participants in a CIA-based plot to assassinate the leader responsible for their failure to get rid of Castro. • Besides, Sam Giancana felt betrayed by the Kennedys after he had helped to engineer a crucial electoral victory in Illinois in the 1960 election, only to be persecuted by Attorney-General Robert Kennedy’s war on organized crime. • Indeed, the “deep politics” of America made for strange bedfellows.

9. Cuban Missile Crisis • While Kennedy’s reappraisal of US military and intelligence operations did not sit well with the military-industrial complex, which had so much to gain – notably profits – by controlling the resources of other nations, his response to the subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis raised doubts about his dedication to fighting communism. • In October 1962, satellites and U-2 spy planes revealed that the Soviets were establishing offensive missile bases in Cuba. The military, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pentagon, along with the CIA strongly urged Kennedy to bomb the missile bases and to invade the island immediately. • As the world braced itself for World War III, Kennedy struck a deal with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev: the USSR would remove the missile bases in return for a US pledge not to invade Cuba. • To the American and Western media, the Soviets appeared to have backed down and Kennedy emerged triumphantly from the thirteen-day standoff as a courageous and bold leader. • While his popularity was skyrocketing, the Pentagon and the intelligence community at Langley, Virginia were fuming. Kennedy had squandered an opportunity to strike a decisive blow against communism, even if it meant the possible loss of millions of lives in a nuclear war between superpowers. The munitions dealers and their agents in the Pentagon accepted this prospect as the benefits and costs of their business. Kennedy was not prepared to pay the price.

10. JFK as a Threat to the Military-Industrial Complex • Relationships between Kennedy and the military-industrial complex continued to eroded steadily in 1963 with the announcement of the closure of 52 military installations in 25 states along with 21 overseas bases. • In August 1963, Kennedy further upset “cold warriors” by signing a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, specifically forbidding the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Kennedy was moving toward what later would be termed “detente” with the Soviet Union, which the military-industrial complex considered intolerable. • The last straw would be Kennedy’s re-evaluation of American policy in Southeast Asia. Initially, Kennedy was content to follow President Eisenhower’s policy of sending military” advisers” and munitions to South Vietnam which had been at war with communist-controlled North Vietnam since 1954. By 1963, Kennedy indicated that his perspective had been coloured by earlier events: The Bay of Pigs has taught me a number of things. One is not to trust generals or the CIA, and the second is that if the American people do not want to use American troops to remove a Communist regime 90 miles away from our coast, how can I ask them to use troops to remove a Communist regime 9,000 miles away? • Speaking of Vietnam in an interview with Walter Cronkite in September 1963, Kennedy hinted of his future plans when he said: “In the final analysis, it is their war. They have to win it or lose it.” • JFK’s sentiment was reflected a month later in NSAM 263 calling for the withdraw of 1,000 troops from South Vietnam immediately and total withdrawal of all American forces within two years. • This withdrawal plan lasted until November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy was assassinated, when his successor, Lyndon Johnson, as one of his first official acts as President of the US, signed NSAM 273 which in effect rescinded NSAM 273 and opened the way for the escalation of the Viet Nam War.

11. The Texas Connection • In Texas, Kennedy incurred the wrath of oil barons, notably H. L Hunt, reputedly the world wealthiest man at the time, when he sought to rescind a special tax shelter known as the oil depletion allowance. Kennedy plan to diminish this benefit would have cost the oilmen an estimated $300 million a year. • It is no wonder that they longed for one of their own, none other than Vice President Lyndon Johnson, to assume his rightful place in the White House. • JFK planned to dump scandal-ridden Johnson as his Vice President in 1964. Robert Kennedy loomed as a presidential successor in 1968 and Edward Kennedy would be ready in 1976. The notion of a Kennedy dynasty was troubling to the military-industrial establishment. • Johnson’s hatred for the Kennedys and his obsession to become President are well documented. His mistress, Madelaine Brown, claims that the night before the JFK assassination Johnson told her: After tomorrow those goddam Kennedys will never embarrass me again – that’s no threat – that’s a promise! The remarks were allegedly made at a party attended by Hunt, Clint Murchison, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and other notable members of the military-industrial establishment. • President Johnson was responsible for forming the Warren Commission. He was thus in a position to control any coverup. • Hunt controlled the Dallas police and was well-connected to the CIA , FBI, and the military establishment. Hence the location of the assassination. • The idea of Johnson as a conspirator is based on the traditional notion of “cui bono” – who benefits the most? Otherwise, the evidence is circumstantial and speculative.

12. The Military-Industrial Complex Argument • The military-industrial complex argument is based on the “deep politics” interpretation of American history, which links the “outsiders” – Mafia and anti-Castro Cubans – to the “insiders” – the CIA, the military, and Johnson’s Texas connection. The Dallas police, the FBI, and the Secret Service become accomplices after the fact. • In effect, American government is like the iceberg that sank the Titanic. What one sees above the surface is but a small fragment of what really lies beneath. • This theory speaks mostly to the motivation to dispose of Kennedy within government circles, which could not be achieved by democratic means because of his popularity. • The evidence is highly circumstantial and speculative to the point of disbelief. Could such an abuse of power happen in America? • To accept this argument is to challenge the fundamental nature of American democracy and the legitimacy of executive power.