Vincent Salandria, Esq.

[William Kelly]

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“False Mystery” and the Transparent Conspiracy – William E. Kelly, Jr.

Yet to be fully realized is the significance of the essays on the assassination of President Kennedy by Vincent J. Salandria, now compiled and available in “False Mystery – An Anthology of Essays on the Assassination of JFK,” (1999, Edited by John Kelin, with an Introduction by Christopher Sharrett and an Essay by E. Martin Schotz. Spiral bound, 152 pages, w/index. $20).

The first printing of this edition is currently available exclusively from Andy Last Hurrah Books [849 W. Third St. #1, Williamsport, PA., 17701/ (570) 321-1150], but eventually other editions should be more widely available.

Salandria’s contributions to the case will be more widely recognized when the Kennedy assassination is studied as an historic, rather than as a contemporary event, but Salandria has had an affect on the thinking and approach of many independent researchers and investigators. When the total truth is eventually brought out and some semblance of justice is achieved, these essays will be recognized for contributing to not only what has already been chronicled about the assassination, but for shaping the philosophical, moral and legal bullets that have yet to be fired.

Well known among the researchers who have grown up studying the case, Salandria is another Philadelphia attorney who play important roles in this drama - along with Warren Commissioner John J. McCloy, assistant counsels William Coleman, Sam Stern and Arlen Specter and the first chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations Rirchard Sprague.

As Seton Hall professor Christopher Sharrett notes in his Introduction to “False Mystery,” Salandria wrote one of the earliest criticisms of the Warren Commission’s conclusion regarding the forensic evidence (in the Legal Intelligencer on Nov. 2, 1964), in which he personally challenges Sen. Arlen Specter (R. Pa.) with pertinent questions, a challenge that has thus far gone unanswered.

For those interested in a minute analysis of the forensic details, the first six chapters should suffice, including “Shots, Trajectories, and Wounds,” “The President’s Back and Neck Wounds,” “The Impossible Tasks of One Assassination Bullet,” “The Separate Connally Shot” and “Life Magazine and the Warren Commission,” which were previously published in “Liberation Magazine” or “A Minority of One.” For me things get interesting when you get to “The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy – A Model of Explanation,” which is where I first read Salandria in 1971 in the small, unique and then influential journal “Computers and Automation.”

Salandria explains that, “While the researchers have preoccupied themselves with HOW the assassination was accomplished, there has been almost no systematic thinking of WHY President Kennedy was killed.…Much valuable time has been lost; it is becoming increasingly clear that our delay has cost mankind dearly. I urge that no one drop this question, for to do so is to abandon the serious search for peace internationally and for domestic tranquility….Since November 22, 1963…there has been a great deal of research into the micro-analytic aspects of the assassination. I have been among the earliest and guiltiest of the researchers in my protracted analyses of the shots, trajectories and wounds of the assassination. The ransaking of the facts of the assassination is not a source of pride for me but rather of guilt…We have neglected this essential work of constructing a model of explanation which fits the data of the assassination and explains the why of it.”

“One who takes the trouble to study the micro-analytic material provided by the federal government must immediately conclude that there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. How foolish it was of us to dwell so long on these governmentally supplied pacifiers, rather than to put them aside and undertake the serious work of constructing a model of explanation. In this connection, it is important to take note that the very organization which made that mass of detailed micro analytic evidence available to us – the federal government – contended from the first that there was no conspiracy. But, the federal government’s intelligence agencies must have known that the material which the government issued would indicate a conspiracy existed. Then why did we get the evidence?”

“This question presents a serious theoretical problem. Why would the federal government on the one hand wish to provide us with data which prove a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy and simultaneously contend on the other hand that there was no conspiracy? So overwhelming and voluminous is the evidence of conspiracy provided for us by the government that we are compelled to conclude that if not THE, at least A NUMBER OF POSSIBLE plots, were meant by the conspirators to be quasi-visible. The federal government has deluged us with evidence that cries out conspiracy.”

“Because of the covertness of the coup, I propose the explanatory thesis that the new government rulers were eager to reveal their work at differing levels of certainty to diverse people and at different times. In this way, they could avert a concerted counter thrust to their illegitimate seizure of power. Democratic forces could not unite against the new illegitimate government apparatus because of timing. The insights of what had occurred dawned in the minds of decent citizens at different times and with different degrees of clarity. The transparent aspects of the conspiracy were permitted to flash signals to various elements of our population, much in the fashion of spot ads slanted at different times for selected audiences. The new rulers carefully and selectively orchestrated revelations of their bloody work, so as to gain there from the deference to which they felt they were entitled by their ascendancy to absolute power. I have long believed that the killers actually preempted the assassination criticism by supplying the information they wanted revealed and also by supplying the critics whom they wanted to disclose the data…Where evidence of a conspiracy….surfaced – and much did – thanks in the main to the government’s disclosures, that same government from the very first and continuously to date has publicly refused to act on the evidence.”

“So the transparent nature of the assassination in a very real sense framed us all; made us feel guilty, and served to paralyze us in a gripping sense of inadequacy. The transparent conspiracy paves the way for our despair and demoralization of the people. It eroded our trust in the nation states. But he alienation was deeper and more personal than the separation of people from confidence in their governments. The transparency of the assassination effectively destroyed politics…And thus a post-Orwellian, Huxlyian world was assured in by the new rulers…We should have broken early and cleanly from the micro analytic – or nitpicking – approach in the assassination inquiry. We should have immediately undertaken the vital work of developing an adequate model of explanation, an adequate hypothesis, in order to pursue the reasons for the assassination. We here and now belatedly begin this vital work.”

Like most conspiracy theorists, Salandria then asks the hypothetical question, “Which Group Was Responsible?” He lists a number of the usual suspects, J.E. Hover and the FBI, the Left, the Right, the Pentagon, CIA, Russians, Cubans and LBJ.

Under “The Russian or Cuban Model,” he dismisses them with, “Would Castro have selected Oswald,…as the killer? Would the Russians have chosen Oswald who had been ostensibly a defector to the Soviet Union? Would Castro or the Soviet Union have risked the transparent nature of the assassination in killing Kennedy so as to invite hydrogen war? Was it worth killing liberal John F. Kennedy for Cuba and Russia to get very conservative L.B.J. as the head of the United States government? Would the FBI or the CIA have covered for the Cuba or Russian governments? Would Warren have lent his liberal name, long attached to human rights, to a Warren Report which had as its purpose to protect collectivist totalitarian governments? Would our military remained silent, especially when so much of the blame for the cover-up was heaped on the military, if the Cuban and Russian governments were behind the killing? No, Cuba and Russia did not kill Kennedy.”

As with the Ruskies and Cubans, Salandria dismisses most conspiracy theories as illogical – though acknowledging, “There is much evidence to indicate military involvement in the assassination.” But he rejects LBJ as the primary sponsor because, “…it would be impossible to conceive of President Johnson and his Texas cronies arranging to have the President killed in their own bailiwick where the world’s suspicions would at once be directed against them. No, many careful studies show absolutely no evidence that President Johnson was involved in producing the assassination.”

Well, someone will just have to show Mr. Salandria the evidence linking LBJ directly to Billie Sol Estes, Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace in the murder of federal agent Henry Marshall, and the fingerprint from the assassin’s lair that some forensic specialists have matched to Wallace, together the fact that Carter and Fred Korth were in on the earliest planning of the Texas trip at the Cortez Hotel meeting with LBJ and JFK. The ascension of LBJ to the Presidency WAS the Coup d’etat, so LBJ had to be a party to the taking over of the government if he was the new head of the state.

In a Coup d’etat, ALL of the state security agencies as well as the military must either be part of the operation, compromised or neutralized. Instead of following all of the evidence to the guilty parties, Salandria focuses in on the CIA as the chief culprit, not only for the killing, but for the coverup, “…in order to insure that the nation would be so divided ideologically there could be no coalescence of forces which would seek retribution for the killing,”

Those interested in maintaining a divided ideology have supported both sides of the debate, and have tried to keep it a simple matter of branding everyone either a Lone-Nuter who believes Oswald did it alone psycho reasons, or a Conspiracy Theorists, those who know there was a conspiracy and marshal all of the evidence that supports their pet theory, with the chief suspects usually being an acronym organization – KGB, CIA, DIA, MAFIA, G2, ONI….or whatever.

There is however, a small, but growing and clearly distinguished Third Force – of Independent Researchers who are neither Lone-Nuters nor Conspiracy Theorists, who keep an open mind, read all of the books and documents, aren’t paid to do it, don’t have an axe to grind and don’t target suspects, but rather, follow the evidence where-ever it leads, and they realize that JFK was not killed by an agency or organization but by Real People, individuals with names, jobs, addresses, phone numbers and bank accounts.

Salandria is one of those Conspiracy Theorists who blame the Ancronym Agencies in general, sometimes calling them “the National Security State,” but he does get specific and names names, and when he does, his suspects are also mine. Specifically focusing in on former CIA director and Warren Commissioner Allen Dulles and the suspicious and pivotal activities of JFK’s national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, Salandria takes us into the bowels of the conspiracy and puts his finger on the main artery from which the cracks in the case allow us to peek into mechanics of the crime.

Under “Dulles Suppressed Evidence of Oswald’s Soviet Intelligence Connections,” Salandria writes, “On January 21, 1964, in a secret executive session, the Warren Commission had to deal with the problem of Marina Oswald giving evidence that Oswald was a Soviet agent…we learn from the transcript of the secret executive session that Isaac Don Levine was helping Marina Oswald write a story for Life Magazine, which never got published. Allen Dulles….said simply: ‘I can get him in and have a friendly talk. I have known him.’ Does that sound as if Allen Dulles was contemplating suppression of information?”

Salandria is one of the first to point to the work of the ‘guerrilla journalism’ of Life Mag, and he acknowledges the past work of Life Mag’s Isaac Don Levine, who played a central role in the Alger Hiss case, exposed Trotsky’s assassin as a Soviet agent, bought and suppressed the Zapruder film for Life Mag and wrapped up the publishing rights to Marina’s story from the gitgo.

Since Dulles was retired from the CIA in November, 1963, and thus out of the official loop, Salandria looks to JFK’s national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, and his “Ties to the CIA.” Salandria on Bundy: “With the Kennedy Administration, McGeorge Bundy was a foreign policy hardliner who had little use for Adlai Stevenson’s idealistic approach to foreign relations. McGeorge Bundy was one of the planners of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Allen Dulles was in Puerto Rico, so Richard Mervin Bissill, Jr. was the CIA’s man in charge of the planning. As happenstance would have it, McGeorge Bundy, the President’ Assistant for National Security Affairs, had been a student of Bissell’s at Yale. He also had worked for Bissill on the Marshall Plan in 1948. Also in on that planning, as coincidence would have it, was General Charles P. Cabell, the CIA’s deputy director, who is brother of Mayor Earle Cabell, the Mayor of Dallas at the time of the assassination. McGeorge Bundy was – in the Kennedy and early Johnson Administration – the presidential representative and key man on the Special Group which makes key intelligence decisions for the country. It has operated as the hidden power center of government.”

The intertwining of CIA cover corporations in the assassination drama – the Catherwood Foundation, the San Jacinto Fund, etc., are important, and Salandria goes to great lengths to show that Bundy’s work as director of the Ford Foundation was merely an extension of his other work for the criminal bureaucrats at other agencies. McGeorge Bundy was also the senior White House official in the Situation Room at the time of the assassination, and Salandria thinks it is extremely significant, as I do, that the first official confirmation of the assassination being accomplished by a lone-nut and not a conspiracy came not from Dallas but from McBundy in the White House basement.[A topic that I will elaborate on in a separate article on “The Tale of the Tapes” – BK].

As for “The CIA’s Follow-up Tactics,” Salandria writes, “If our model of explanation, our hypothesis of the assassination of John F. Kennedy accurately interprets the data of the assassination, then it should also be useful in ferreting out current operations in which the Central Intelligence Agency would have had to involve itself domestically as a natural and necessary follow up to the Dallas assassination.” And there is evidence that establishes the fact that the intelligence network responsible for what happened at Dealey Plaza is still operational today. As Peter Dale Scott phrased it, the forces responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy are not “benign.”

Salandria makes the observation, “Of course, secret elitist police organizations such as the CIA do not thrive on peace, democracy, and a contented and informed people. The power of the intelligence agencies increases in direct proportion to the degree of sickness of a nation…”

And in the end he blames the CIA: “This is the lesson to be learned from the killing of President Kennedy and the overthrow of the Republic of the United States by the CIA: …let us turn away from the horror of the killing of John F. Kennedy. Let us join together….to tell the truth about the killing of Kennedy. Through this refusal to live a great lie we will come together to understand and love ourselves and society better. Let us not delay in this union of truth. If we do not join together in the search for the truth, then guns back up cover-story lies will pick us off one by one and ultimately join us together – in death.”

“What Are We to Do?” Salandria asks. “Each of us can draw strength from the past. From the past we must draw upon the traditions which offer mankind purpose identity and love of his fellow man. Each of us must draw strength from the present. From the present we must seek to understand power and the tools of mind control…In studying the present we must raise the threshold of fear so that we can face hard truth. Hard truth will tell us that everywhere power seeks to defeat man’s individuality, to program man to be alienated from all other men; to manipulate man to seek pleasure and not responsibility. The present task of those who love humanity is to get men and women to move, work and join together in common love of human freedom, knowledge and justice….As a first small effort towards these ends, let us engage now in a discussion wherein we will use the Kennedy assassination not as a mechanism for practicing a debilitating exercise in double-think, but rather let us use the assassination as a means of expanding our understanding of our times.”

Salandria’s Anthology ends with the text of a speech Salandria gave to the National Conference of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA), on November 20, 1998.

On November 18, 1998, I was in the COPA Command Post in Washington D.C. helping to plan that conference, sending faxes to news organizations, when word came in that Salandria wanted two hours to speak, more than an hour longer than anyone else. After a number of cross continental phone calls, Salandria was accommodated, and as the primary speaker on the opening night of the Dallas conference, he gave the speech of his life.

As Sharrett described it in his introduction: “The essay entitled ‘A False Mystery Concealing State Crimes,’ is Salandria’s speech before COPA – at the Coalition On Political Assassination’s 1998 conference, and is a summary statement of his work. It exhorts the reader not to participate in the false, debilitating debate that refuses to say President Kennedy was the victim of a state-sanctioned coup. Salandria asks that we use this murder as an instruction for our times, a lesson concerning the bankruptcy of our way of life, as we engage in then difficult task of building a more just society. The speech, which took Salandria nearly two hours to deliver at COPA, received a prolonged standing ovation, heartening him greatly after a long period of believing assassination research had become an intellectual hobby horse and taken a disastrously pointless turn. The next evening, COPA gave Salandria a long-overdue lifetime achievement award.”

It was an incredible speech, is an important essay, and should be read by everyone interested in the assassination of the 35th President. Now you can either read it, thanks to John Kelin in “False Mystery” or at his “Fair Play” web magazine, or watch the video for the dramatic presentation. I will only quote a few paragraphs from it:

“No viable democratic government that was free of guilt and that was in control of civilian authorities would have permitted a sham autopsy of the President’s body. In accepting the orders of the generals and admirals not to probe the neck wound of the President the military doctors who were performing the autopsy effectively aborted it. Those doctors were guilty of malfeasance. The admirals and generals present in the autopsy room who were responsible for those orders were simply criminals, guilty of the crimes of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice. They were also criminal accessories after the fact to the murder of the President….”

“Ruth and Michael Paine could not have been Soviet, Castro or Mafia agents. They had to be agents of the killing force, our U.S. intelligence. If they had been Soviet or Castro agents, an innocent government would have swooped down on them and seen them as clear beacons leading to the killers. Our government did not cause them any trouble. The Paines are criminal co-conspirators in the killing of President Kennedy and would and should now be prosecuted by a guiltless government….”

In conclusion, Salandria said, “By coming to understand the true answer to the historical question of who killed President Kennedy and why, we will have developed a delicate and precisely accurate prism through which we can examine how power works in this militarized country. By understanding the nature of this monumental crime, we will become equipped to organize the struggle through which we can make this country a civilian republic in more than name only. Until we understand the nature of the Kennedy assassination, and until we express the truth openly on this vital aspect of our history, we will continue to be guilty participants in the vast amount of state criminality involved in the killing of President Kennedy and its coverup.”

“We can no longer afford to shield ourselves by asserting that the murder of President Kennedy is a mystery. There is no mystery regarding how, by whom and why President Kennedy was killed. Only when we strip away our privileged cloak of denial about the truth of the killing will we be able to free ourselves for the hard global work of changing our unfair and brutal society to one that is more equitable and less violent.”

After Salandria’s speech, I was talking to Fair Play editor John Kelin in the hall when Salandria walked passed. I thanked him, shook his hand and asked him for a copy of his speech, which he kindly provided to both me and John, who posted it on his web site, beginning the process that led to the publication of this fine Anthology.

It also led to a few rounds of exchanged emails and faxes between myself, Kelin, Salandria, Sharratt and E. Martin Schotz, a psychiatrist whose book, “History Will Not Absolve Us,” is also an important contribution to the JFK assassination literature. Schotz gave a talk at the same COPA conference called “The Waters of Knowledge versus The Waters of Uncertainty – Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy,” which is published as an Appendix in “False Mystery.”

While I disagree with Schotz on the role of COPA and the Assassinations Records Review Board, I do agree with him when he says, “The Warren Report was an obvious act of criminal fraud” and that “Senator Arlen Specter should be indicted for criminal obstruction of justice…” I also want to thank E. Martin Schotz for calling attention to the April 25, 1998 assassination of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Jose Geradi Conedera, the day after he spoke these words:

“The root of humanity’s downfall and disgrace comes from the deliberate opposition to truth…To open ourselves to the truth and to bring ourselves face to face with our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be accepted or rejected. It is an undeniable requirement of all people and all societies that seek to humanize themselves and too be free….Truth is the primary word, the serious and mature action that makes it possible for us to break the cycle of death and violence and open ourselves to a future of hope and light for all….Discovering the truth is painful, but it is without a doubt a healthy and liberating action.”

And something to die for.

That such assassinations still occur today is a crime we have allowed to continue to be committed because those responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy have gone unchallenged, thus far.

If Salandria’s hypothesis is correct - criminals within the government were responsible for the murder of the President, then I say they should still be held responsible and accountable for that crime. There is a moral responsibility on the shoulders of everyone who realizes this, not only to ask and try to answer the questions of How and Why the 35th President of the United States was killed, but an historical imperative to identify WHO IS responsible, present the evidence against them and not just request, but REQUIRE the laws of the land be enforced and upheld to the fullest extent possible.

Bill Kelly

bkjfk3@yahoo.com

Xxxyyyzzz

[Jack White]

Great stuff, Bill. Salandria was one of the earliest to see thru the sham.

It took me a long time to start ignoring the trees (details) and look

at the forest (who and why).

Jack

[Ronald R. Williams]

Bill,

This is a very important post. The role in the JFK case of Vincent Salandria cannot be over emphasized, as to its significance.

John Kelin’s work in putting this publication together deserves high praise.

Last September there was a discussion on Rich DellaRosa’s JFK Research Forum about another major Salandria contribution.

Some know that between (roughly) 1993 and 2000 there was an intensive correspondence that took place between a “committee” made up of Salandria, Michael Morrissey and others that had a close connection to the publication of E. Martin Schotz’s book History Will Not Absolve Us. This correspondence was published on Michael Morrisey’s web site and I made the comment that I thought if this would ever be made available in book form it would be one of the most important books in all the JFK assassination literature.

The last time I checked Michael Morrisey’s site is still there but it appears the 300 or so pages of the Salandria correspondence has been removed.

I wonder if any who have read this correspondence have any comments or any ideas of what could or should be done with it so it could be available as an important historical source in the Kennedy assassination literature.

Ron W

[Guest John Gillespie]

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“False Mystery” and the Transparent Conspiracy – William E. Kelly, Jr.

_______________________

Speaking of the transparent wannabe...

Salandria’s contributions to the case will be more widely recognized when the Kennedy assassination is studied as an historic, rather than as a contemporary event,

Of course, because it is there that it only counts…

I first read Salandria in 1971 in the small, unique and then influential journal “Computers and Automation.”

Ah, yes, it was that little gem that glowed so obscurely and which only the truly insightful perused (probably purchased, not bought, from the Harvard Square Out Of Town News kiosk, in the days of Joan Baez at the Club 47). Gush

“The Impossible Tasks of One Assassination Bullet”

Geez, eloquence here lies in inverse proportion to the ratio of pretension. It does have a hint of whimsy, but with a strong push of B.S. in the finish.

"...but for shaping the philosophical, moral and legal bullets that have yet to be fired. "

Breathtaking…as long as one is not downwind.

This is such a very unimportant post. However, its raison d'etre is manifest.

John Gillespie

[William Kelly]

Peter asked if Vincent Salandria's False Mystery is posted elsewhere on the internet.

It is at John Kelin's Fair Play site:

http://home.earthlink.net/~jkelin1/fp.html

I don't know what Gillespie's trying to say.

BK

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Vincent Salandria has been one of the blue chip JFK researchers for decades - literally since the day of 11/22/63. Salandria correctly points out that the JFK assassination is a "false mystery" and the real issue is whether we are going to accept the reality that US military intelligence murdered JFK for Cold War reasons. I would add that the role of Lyndon Johnson in this murder is equally obvious. See the book LBJ: the Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Phillip Nelson for that.

1) False Mystery: Essays on the Assassination of JFK by Vincent Salandria

2) Correspondence with Vincent Salandria by Michael Morrissey

3) History Will Not Absolve Us by E. Martin Schotz

4) Praise From a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report by John Kelin

5) Google “Vincent Salandria False Mystery Speech.”

6) Google "Vincent Salandria Spartacus" for his bio

7) Google "The Waters of Knowledge versus the Waters of Uncertainty: Mass Denial in the Assassination of President Kennedy" by E. Martin Schotz

Here is another Salandria/Schotz essay. Note: I do not think the 2000 election was stolen, but the Supreme Court's interference was outrageous and wrong (if you believe in states' rights as I do). But check out the early part of this essay:

http://www.bartcop.com/48consp.htm

JFK'S ASSASSINATION AND THE REPUBLICAN THEFT OF

THE 2000 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION - PARALLELS AND LESSONS

By Vincent J. Salandria and E. Martin Schotz February 21, 2001

There are lessons for progressives to learn from an analysis of

President John F. Kennedy's assassination and the hijacking of

the Presidency by the Supreme Court during this past fall's election.

The killing blow to JFK was delivered by a U.S.military-intelligence rifle team.

The deathblow to Al Gore's bid for Presidency came in the form of a precedent-denying

opinion of five reactionary members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

First, consider the assassination of President Kennedy. It was motivated by our

national security state's perceived need to block JFK's plainly signaled turn toward peace.

During the missile crisis, Kennedy negotiated us out of that planet-threatening cold war

confrontation rather than bomb and invade Cuba, which was the desire of his hawkish

foreign policy advisers, the joint chiefs, the CIA and the Congress.

In an op-ed piece in the February 4, 2001 "New York Times" Sergei Khrushchev,

son of Nikita, speaks to what followed from the resolution of that crisis. He states that

a "great deal changed after the crisis." He tells of the establishment of a direct communication

link between Moscow and Washington. He fails to mention the above-ground-nuclear

test ban treaty, the end of the Berlin confrontation, Kennedy's initiation of secret negotiations

concerning the normalization of relations with Cuba and his ordering of the beginning

of an American withdrawal from Vietnam.

Sergei Khrushchev further tells how in 1963 his father

"...made an official announcement to a session of the U.S.S.R.

Defense Council that he intended to sharply reduce Soviet

armed forces from 2.5 million men to half a million and to stop

the production of tanks and other offensive weapons." Sergei

Khrushchev adds that his father wished to have money freed

up by arms reduction to use "in agriculture and housing

construction." Sergei Khrushchev said that in another six

years, if Kennedy had not been killed and his father a year

later had not been removed from office, "they (Kennedy and

Khrushchev) would have brought the cold war to a close

before the end of the 1960's."

In 1963, the year of his death, Kennedy made his famous

American University speech in which he passionately spoke of

peace: "...not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by

American weapons of war [but] a genuine peace, the kind of

peace that makes life on earth worth living... not merely peace

for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely

peace in our time but peace for all time. I speak of peace

because of the new face of war Total war makes no sense...

Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union... Let

us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war... And is not

peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights...

we shall also do our part to build a world of peace in which

the weak are safe and the strong are just."

So, while Kennedy was in the process of turning toward

peace, the national security state, the giant U.S. war-making

apparatus, murdered him. The war machine killed Kennedy

before he was able to help the American people to understand

fully the direction and reasons for his turn. The protraction of

the cold war made possible by the Kennedy assassination

resulted in the allocation of additional vast wealth and resources

to our military-intelligence complex. Even now, some thirty-eight years

after Kennedy's death and with no credible enemies in sight, nothing

stands in the way of the U.S. warfare state continuing to receive

in excess of 300 billion dollars a year.

Immediately following Kennedy's death, and continuing to the

present, all governmental, media, and university centers of

power in our society have participated either actively or

passively in covering up the true nature of the conspiracy to

assassinate the President. At the time of the assassination

these institutions failed to pursue the truth of the President's

murder because they quickly perceived a common interest in

avoiding the whirlwind of political turmoil that would have followed

public awareness of the truth. The public tranquility, which

was orchestrated in the wake of Kennedy's assassination,

allowed the criminal US war against Vietnam to be escalated.

Only gradually over ten years did public outrage and disorder

gradually rise to the point where the US military adventure in

Vietnam could be terminated and at a cost of millions of Vietnamese

lives, thousands of American lives and the subsequent assassination

of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy and other

less prominent protest leaders. And this only begins to add up the true

cost of the establishment,s much prized domestic tranquility.

In the Bush's selection over Gore, these institutions have

reacted similarly, apparently believing that the need for

domestic tranquility ultimately over-rules all other

considerations. Once again we are witness to military

escalations in the wake of an illegal seizure of the Presidency.

The acquiescence of the establishment in the present case has

been manifest as the media and academic institutions dutifully

followed the lead of Gore and the Democratic Party

establishment in their refusal to call the Florida vote what it

was, a fraudulent election in which there was clear evidence of

a conspiracy by state and local officials to elect Bush by

suppressing a significant portion of the African American vote.

Gore and the Democratic Party establishment declined to raise

the extensive illegalities in the election process as an issue.

Instead, they attempted to keep the people off the streets and

channeled the struggle against the Bush forces through the

narrow avenue of questioning faulty voting machines counts.

This strategy deprived the struggle of all its true political significance.

Gore and the Democratic establishment accepted the cynical

action of the Supreme Court majority, which collaborated with

the Republican conspiracy to steal the election. In accepting

this theft of the election the Democratic establishment made

such larceny acceptable just as surely as in accepting the

obviously fraudulent and criminal Warren Report the

establishment made President Kennedy's assassination

"acceptable" as a means of determining our nation's policies.

In the presidential campaign corporate America contributed

heavily to both parties. Two per cent of the electorate, out of

disenchantment with the corporate control of the two major

parties, voted for Ralph Nader whose chances for election

were nil. Al Gore, with only rare digressions into populism,

clung in his campaign to the political "center." By clinging to

the "center "Gore managed to make the two political parties

barely distinguishable to the electorate. As a result a large

segment of the voting public was unable to perceive the issues

at stake, thus transforming the election into a choice between

the public personas of Bush and Gore.

The Republicans neutralized the African American and Jewish

voters in Florida by various Republican disenfranchisement tactics.

These consisted of: the Florida election officials purging the voting rolls

of legitimate voters through racial profiling, denying of votes to African

American college students, directing voters to polling stations where they

were not registered, assigning malfunctioning voting machines to precincts

where the poor predominated, providing inadequate or non-existent poll

assistance, and erecting police road blocks near polling stations

Notwithstanding this wide and obvious Republican Party

criminality, the Democratic Party strategists responded by

going into battle with both hands securely tied behind their

backs. They adopted in their court battles a narrow legal

theory, which was confined to asking the courts to order the

lawfully required hand vote recount. This circumscribed

Democratic legal strategy left un-addressed the extensive and

criminal disenfranchisement of Florida voters, and by

necessary implication, our nation's voters.

The Democratic Party refused to support the NAACP's

dignified Florida demonstrations, which protested the

conspiracy against the African American vote. Instead it relied

on our court system to serve as a bulwark to the precious right

of our citizenry to determine who should be President. The

Supreme Court majority emulated Earl Warren in demonstrating

disdain for democracy. These five Supreme Court members,

like Earl Warren, agreed to legitimize an illegitimate President.

The Supreme Court majority opinion, which selected Bush as

President, fashioned a legal opinion that achieved a degree of

rationality that rose no higher than that of the Warren Report.

Among the lessons to be learned from these two instances of

the imposition of two illegitimate Presidents are:

(1) the judiciary will not on its own protect our democracy;

(2) the only force that will insure our democratic rights is the

force of the people who understand the issues, are willing to

organize, and are willing take to the streets, if necessary, to

disturb domestic tranquility when their rights are not respected;

(3) that the current Democratic Party's leadership is, like that

of the Republican Party, a leadership dominated by corporate

interests and consequently is unwilling and unable to organize

people to defend their rights against assaults orchestrated by

the military-intelligence-industrial complex, the radical right and

the conservative business forces;

(4) that so long as the two major political parties are dominated by

corporate America, which is committedto maximizing profits ahead

of the needs of the people for justice and peace, democracy in this

nation will continue to erode to extinction.

The fight is not over. The theft of the presidential election

ought to put the American people on notice. The recent

bombing of Iraq should ring a bell. If we are serious about

defending and broadening our democracy, we must organize

and act. We much organize to protest militarism, to address

the need for a clean environment, quality public education,

universal health care and a reasonable living standard for every

citizen. In order to accomplish this it will be necessary for

federal discretionary funds to be directed towards these ends

not towards tax benefits for the rich, not towards our

obscenely immense military budget, not toward the

manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons, and not toward

the fraudulent "national missile defense system.

African Americans, Hispanics, Catholics, Jews, trade unionists

and the poor must again join together to form a force capable

of effectively pursuing the vision for which President Kennedy

died. They must lovingly and peacefully join together to

demand for themselves and their children a less violent future

and a more equal and equitable distribution of the wealth of

this nation. The domination of the Democratic Party by the

corporations must end, and the Democratic Party must attend

to the needs of this vital democratic coalition. For the

Democratic Party to fail to do so will mean it must be

abandoned as a vehicle for progressive change in this society.

These are the lessons we take from the murder of President

John F. Kennedy and the recent Republican theft of the Presidency.

Vincent J. Salandria

E. Martin Schotz

Edited February 11, 2013 by Robert Morrow

[Michael Swanson]

The assassination was 50 years ago. At this point perhaps the most important question to ask isn't even who killed Kennedy or even why - but how was it possible that whoever was involved was able to get away with it? Why did they know they would be able to cover it up and why is it still covered up to this day?

I think there is answer looking back to the history of Rome. This is a passage from Tacticus about the second emperor of Rome after Augustus:

..........

The first crime of the new reign was the murder of Postumus Agrippa. Though he was surprised and unarmed, a centurion of the firmest resolution despatched him with difficulty. Tiberius gave no explanation of the matter to the Senate; he pretended that there were directions from his father ordering the tribune in charge of the prisoner not to delay the slaughter of Agrippa, whenever he should himself have breathed his last. Beyond a doubt, Augustus had often complained of the young man’s character, and had thus succeeded in obtaining the sanction of a decree of the Senate for his banishment. But he never was hard-hearted enough to destroy any of his kinsfolk, nor was it credible that death was to be the sentence of the grandson in order that the stepson might feel secure. It was more probable that Tiberius and Livia, the one from fear, the other from a stepmother’s enmity, hurried on the destruction of a youth whom they suspected and hated. When the centurion reported, according to military custom, that he had executed the command, Tiberius replied that he had not given the command, and that the act must be justified to the Senate.

As soon as Sallustius Crispus who shared the secret (he had, in fact, sent the written order to the tribune) knew this, fearing that the charge would be shifted on himself, and that his peril would be the same whether he uttered fiction or truth, he advised Livia not to divulge the secrets of her house or the counsels of friends, or any services performed by the soldiers, nor to let Tiberius weaken the strength of imperial power by referring everything to the Senate, for “the condition,” he said, “of holding empire is that an account cannot be balanced unless it be rendered to one person.”

Meanwhile at Rome people plunged into slavery- consuls, senators, knights. The higher a man’s rank, the more eager his hypocrisy, and his looks the more carefully studied, so as neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another, while he mingled delight and lamentations with his flattery. Sextus Pompeius and Sextus Apuleius, the consuls, were the first to swear allegiance to Tiberius Caesar, and in their presence the oath was taken by Seius Strabo and Caius Turranius, respectively the commander of the praetorian cohorts and the superintendent of the corn supplies. Then the Senate, the soldiers and the people did the same. For Tiberius would inaugurate everything with the consuls, as though the ancient constitution remained, and he hesitated about being emperor. Even the proclamation by which he summoned the senators to their chamber, he issued merely with the title of Tribune, which he had received under Augustus. The wording of the proclamation was brief, and in a very modest tone. “He would,” it said, “provide for the honours due to his father, and not leave the lifeless body, and this was the only public duty he now claimed.”

....

In the original Latin Tacitus uses the phrase “Arcana imperii” to explain what is happening in these passages. Renaissance political philosophers were captivated by it. In English it means empire/power as a hidden thing.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Michael Swanson

[Ian Kingsbury]

Paul

It would appear that the imperial power supposedly given to "Emperor" JFK

was used by an other , and all while his praetorian guard did not "delay the slaughter"

A very interesting comparison .

And the plotters would have you believe this was done "for the sake of the empire"

I truly believe if they ever catch one this will be their "defence"

But I do not believe they died paupers!.

Ian

[William Kelly]

JFKCountercoup2: Salandria forgives Spector