The decision to nationalize the oil of Iran … could mean the end of Britain as a first-rate power; it could mean the end of oil shortage to the Russians.

If Middle Eastern oil were to become unavailable to us and our allies, a situation of instant crisis would appear. In the process of rearmament and building up of Western Europe as a first line of defense and in conducting a major military campaign in Korea, the usual sources of crude oil in the Western Hemisphere can no longer suffice for the total needs in oil without irreparable damage to the producing fields. Thus, dependence must be placed on more distant sources. In the Middle East, proved reserves, oil transportation facilities, and contractual exploitation rights are such as to be able amply to meet the need. Taken as a whole, the Middle East is believed to contain about half of the oil reserves of the world.

There are other reasons for the interest in Iran shown by the great powers. For 100 years, Iran has been subject to pressure from the Russians who wanted a warm water port and from Britain which wants economic privileges and strategic protection on the route to India. And, most recently, Russia has been anxious to protect the sources of its own large oil supplies in Azerbaijan, near Baku – only 125 miles from the Iranian border, and subject to easy bombing from bases which are being constructed in this general area.

JFK, however, expressed in his speech that the struggle had deeper roots:

The crisis in Iran is not over oil alone and it will not be solved by a settlement of the dispute with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The struggle is older and deeper and its elements are common to the other countries of the Middle and Far East.

The exploitation by Foreign countries of the resources and manpower of backward nations, the widespread illiteracy, misery and starvation, the domination by venal and corrupt politicians, and a massive and inefficient bureaucracy, a new and self-conscious proletariat, all compound to divide the nations by turmoil and discontent.

He indicated that the American response to this struggle had been lacking:

Faced with these disruptive forces in a vital strategic area, United States policy has been weak and vacillating.

Britain’s policy, with its very future as a strong power at stake, has been even more short-sighted, and has been, in short, profiting hugely from the very exploitation policy which General MacArthur blames for current Asiatic conditions. The final straw for the Iranians came when they realized the British Government was getting more from taxes alone from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company than the Iranian Government was receiving in total receipts from its partnership with the company.1

Upon landing in Iran on October 8, 1951, Kennedy wrote:

Iran is literally the crossroads of the East. It is bounded on the west by Iraq and Turkey, on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Arabian sea, and on the north by the Soviet Union and the Caspian Sea. A strong power occupying Iran could establish control over the Middle East and Near East. It could outflank Turkey, the Arab States, and Israel to the west and Afghanistan to the East.2

JFK then documented his thoughts on Britain's shortsightedness: “British do not seem to have learned the facts of life of 1951 and that the Iranians are willing to go down in a mass of nationalist hysteria regardless of economic arguments.”3 He commented that “Mosaddegh feels that if [the British] stay,” they will be “continually conspiring for increased position.”4 Reflecting on a visit with Dr. Allah, the King’s minister, Kennedy stated of Dr. Allah’s views, “People were determined to drive British out, who had conspired etc. to dominate country. He charged that the British had tried to replace Dr. Mosaddegh and he seemed to believe that if the terms the British offered were accepted it would only mean that they would be on way back to achieving portion of control.”5

JFK also spoke with British Ambassador Shepard, who told him that Mosaddegh was an “honest man” but a “fanatic.” Shepard informed Kennedy that Iran could not possibly run the refineries and had not the means of distribution, had no tankers, etc. He stated that “Iranians will never see reason until Mosaddegh goes.”6 Kennedy commented (unclear here if he was quoting Shepard or if these were his own conclusions), “The British are obviously waiting for mass unemployment and economic distress to force the government to its knees.” Shepard further told Kennedy that the Iranian government was corrupt, that Mosaddegh’s right hand man had stolen refrigerators, etc. from company property and was selling them. He stated that everyone was concerned only with protecting their own power and not with helping the people, that Mosaddegh had channeled popular discontent against native rich to the British.7

JFK then spoke with an Iranian senator who headed their Oil Commission. The senator stated that the British company had exploited Iranian oil. They took out 30 million tons of oil a year and gave Iranians money equaling only 6 million tons. He argued as long as Iran could produce 6 million tons on its own then it could make as much as it made with the British.

JFK concluded in his diary:

The U.S. must take a position one way or the other. Feel that it must be done through Mosaddegh as he is the only one with sufficient influence to get a plan acceptable to the British through the Parliament. Furthermore, if we side with the British, we lose further support among the Middle East and Far Eastern countries.8

Upon his return from Iran, JFK appeared on several television programs to discuss his findings. When asked during a December 1951 Meet the Press Interview whether he would ally himself with the nationalistic forces in Iran, JFK replied, “I certainly would. It’s the only hope. I think we’ve allied ourselves too closely with the British. … After the last year, the British position was hopeless.”9 Earlier in the same interview JFK voiced concern that US representatives often lacked knowledge about the countries they were assigned to, a shortcoming that further strained relations between the Middle East and the United States, “Too many of our representatives are … playing tennis and cocktails … not knowing the countries to which they are accredited, knowing very little of the people, very little of the language and the customs.”10 In a 1952 appearance on Meet the Press, JFK reiterated his stance, “The British position on Iran … was hopeless and that the United States should have thrown its weight completely with the Iranians and I think that time is going to prove that that was the right position.”11

In a 1952 interview, JFK addressed, in broader terms, the widespread resentment toward the West in the Middle East, highlighting how both Western powers and local elites had exploited the people of the region. When asked why is it that Americans have so many enemies in the Middle East, he replied:

I think that there’s two reasons. In the first place, all of these countries, stretching from French North Africa to the South China Sea, French Indochina, all of these countries have been or still are under the domination of Western powers, the so-called white powers, and there therefore is a heritage of animosity and hatred directed against the West and as we are the strongest of the Western Powers we fall heir to a great deal of that. Secondly, these people live on a marginal level. Their standard of living is very low. Most of them are illiterate. They have this past history of Western exploitation. The Communists, or the Russians, have not had a comparable colonial experience in this area. They move among the people and say, “How can you be worse off than you now are? Come with us, and you might be better off.” It’s compounded by the fact that in some of these countries they have native oligarchies who are corrupt and are not concerned about the welfare of the people. All these things compound.

… I would support the natives in those areas and their aspirations even if they don’t always do what we want them to do, … even if it happens to be against the interests of the West, … even if they happen to be working against the Western powers with which we’re closely allied.12

Given these remarks, it is not surprising that Kennedy, in later years, sent a copy of The Ugly American to each of his fellow senators, since the book echoed many of the same sentiments.

Not long after JFK’s 1951 trip, Mosaddegh was removed in a 1953 British/CIA coup, after which Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, solidified his control of the nation. The Shah was still in power when JFK was inaugurated as President of the United States in January 1961. JFK started his Iran policy by setting up a task force to review policy options.13 According to Robert Komer, senior staff member of the National Security Council, responsible for Middle Eastern affairs:

The President moved right in. … He personally stage-managed [the task force] and insisted on guiding the working out of a new policy toward Iran. This, as far as I’m concerned, was the first time we had taken a constructive long-range point of view of where we wanted to go in Iran instead of resorting to a series of short-term expedients.14

This was a great worry to the Department of State, which essentially saw task forces as a dilution of its authority and means of White House interference in its normal conduct of foreign policy. I became the White House man on it.

… The task force came up with what I think is the first real action program toward Iran with any substance that the United States government has ever had. Before that, we simply had no coherent rationale for our policy. … The President warmly endorsed it, gave instructions … that we were to follow through to make sure that this plan got actually carried out.15

The task force essentially concluded that the best route to take would be to support the newly appointed, reformist Prime Minister, Ali Amini:

[The U.S. should] encourage Amini positively but discreetly in any serious efforts to solve Iran’s immediate political and economic problems and to construct a broad political synthesis. This encouragement should be given in such a manner to avoid so far as possible arousing the Shah’s active opposition. The U.S. should be prepared to tolerate certain seemingly anti-American actions by Amini which do not really damage any major American interest.

… the U.S. [should] reorient its foreign aid program in Iran to put more emphasis on long-range economic developments.

… [the U.S. should] actively encourage the Shah to move toward a more constitutional role.

… the U.S. [should] encourage the formation and growth of broadly based political parties in Iran.16

The hope was that this policy would bridge “the gap between mutually hostile groups and slowly build a new framework of national unity and progress.”17

Progress on the recommendations was initially slow, prompting JFK to increase the pressure for action. In August 1961, he signed National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 67, calling for more recommendations on how better to support Amini, even asking if it were possible to get more moderate elements of the National Front to support Amini.18 The National Front was an opposition group in Iran. It had led the historic nationalization of the British-controlled Iranian oil industry in 1951, making Mosaddegh prime minister. According to the book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam “John Bowling, the Iran specialist at the State Department, wrote a paper analyzing Iran’s opposition forces and ‘discussing the advantages of a Western policy shift of support for a nationalist, more popularly based, Mosaddiqist coup.’” However, this author was unable to find any evidence at the JFK Library that this was ever seriously considered. There appear to be only brief mentions of the possibility, but nothing constituting any real action in that direction.19 JFK’s focus, rather, appeared to be on pressing the existing government for reforms.

Robert Komer outlined the results of NSAM 67 as follows:

Back in those halcyon days, we were terribly discouraged by the slow pace of the execution by State and the embassy and the country team. I recall writing a memo to the President in August [1961] saying, essentially, we are not doing enough to support the new [Ali] Amini reformist government that the Shah had finally put in and urging that we do a little forward contingency planning. This eventuated in the President asking Mac Bundy to write the Secretary of State saying, “Look, the President is concerned over the loss of momentum in Iran of the Amini regime. Let’s have an additional report of the Iran task force (which was highly offensive to State, I might say). We want State’s recommendations to the ambassador for further action.” Of course, we got a status report, and this needled the Department to come up with a few useful things. I remember commenting to Bundy that we got more interesting ideas than useful movement as a result of this follow-up memorandum citing the President’s worries.

The President, I must say, always kept a pretty healthy interest in the Iranian situation. He never explained why, but he was always good for a letter to the Shah and followed through magnificently on the question of reform. Once we got the Shah onto the wicket of running “a white revolution instead of a red one”—I think that was Amini’s phrase, anyhow the Shah borrowed it very quickly—Kennedy must have written the Shah about a dozen times, or there was an exchange of about a dozen letters and messages between them, in which the President always emphasized this reform theme. The Shah’s theme was always a new external threat: the Russians are giving more aid to the Afghans; I’m worried about the Afghans in Pushtunistan; I’m worried about the Kurds; I need more military equipment. The President would always reply, “You can depend on us. The United States strategic umbrella in effect is still strong and firm, but your problem is developing an internal consensus in Iran, modernizing the country. The real threat to you is internal, not external,” etc.; You know, it’s interesting as a case in—let’s call it psychological massage. But it worked: the indication of the personal Kennedy interest, the pleasant repetition of the refrain. The President always complimented him on the new reform measures, like the land reform that the Shah finally borrowed from Amini and carried through. These things had their effect, and I think that now any observer would call Iran one of the bright spots in the Middle East. The country is moving. The Shah is still worried about external threats and manufactures them when they don’t exist. He still asks for military assistance and is still spending an unconscionable amount of his oil revenues on military toys which we are willing to sell him. If we don’t, he will buy them from somewhere else. But essentially, we got some movement.20

In the spring of 1962, the Shah visited the White House, where President Kennedy stressed to him, several times, that leaders should identify themselves, not just with the upper elements of society, but with common people.21 David Bell, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, recounted in his oral history:

[Kennedy’s] relationship with the Shah of Iran … was one in which he was quite clearly saying to the Shah that if he was to be an effective ruler and if US assistance was to be helpful to him, the Shah had to undertake to become the leader of the positive, modernizing forces in his country, and that on this basis we would be delighted to help and to contribute to the security, independence and progress of Iran. I don’t quite know why President Kennedy was so instinctively on the side of revolution, change, the democratic left, dynamic progress, and reform in less-developed countries. It was certainly something he was clear about long before he became President. You’ll recall his famous speech on Algeria—I think in 1957—in which he came out strongly for the independence of Algeria from France. I think this reflects an aspect of President Kennedy’s own beliefs and attitudes which is easily overlooked. He was by bearing and manner and other aspects of his personal life— his acquaintances and friends and so on—he was an aristocrat, a member of the wealthy establishment in the United States. His father [Joseph P. Kennedy] was certainly an example of the rock-hard, acquisitive, successful business entrepreneur. And yet this was essentially a less significant aspect of President Kennedy’s character than the aspect of which I am now speaking. In the United States, and with respect to internal United States policy measures, he was solidly progressive or liberal—whatever term seems appropriate—and internationally, he expressed better than any President has done, since [Woodrow] Wilson certainly, the support of the U.S. for improvement of the social structures, social systems, and economic livelihood of people all around the world. His impact in consequence in Latin America and in other less-developed areas of the world was enormous, and the confidence he generated in those areas was very great indeed. You will recall the enormous impact he made on his visits to Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Central America—and the tremendously moving reaction there was to his death throughout the developing continents, especially in Latin America and Africa.22

It was not easy, however, to get the Shah to implement reforms. His primary concern was building up his military forces. Secretary of State Dean Rusk explained:

The principal problem we had with the Shah, as far as aid was concerned, was that he had very large ambitions about developing the armed forces of Iran. We felt that he was going far beyond his own capacity to maintain and pay for the armed forces that he was trying to build, that he should not divert such massive resources away from the economic and social development of his own country, his own people; and that basically the principal defense of Iran would lie in the loyalty of the people of Iran to him and to his government. Now, that could best be achieved through economic and social and educational and scientific development, rather than through a massive buildup of his armed forces. Now, we had regular differences of view with the Shah on just this point, so that the annual exercise in restraining the Shah’s appetite for military forces was a regular feature of our dealings with Iran during that period.23

As such, the Kennedy administration put its focus on pushing reforms through Amini.24 However, despite the movement in positive reforms, Amini did not last long in power. The Shah began to quickly waver in his support of him. As Kenneth R. Hansen, Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget wrote in a memo to JFK:

The increasing volume of complaints against Amini originate primarily among special interests which are being hurt or fear they will be hurt by the Prime Minister’s reform program. … The volume and bitterness of the criticism of Amini is probably more of an indication that he is succeeding than that he is making no progress. The critics are bitter because they are being or will be hurt, and most of them are persons who should be hurt by any successful reform program.25

Komer wrote in an internal June 1962 memo, “Meanwhile the Shah sits back doing nothing; he reputedly said Amini is a US man so the US can support him.”26

Komer further recounted of Amini’s resignation:

Amini, who was the first reform Prime Minister, resigned in July of 1962. This led to a great deal of concern on our part. It looked like it might be the end of the reform period. The President wrote the Shah saying he hoped this would not mean the end of the reform period. ... Then the President, who was always eager to use the Vice President on these exercises in personal diplomacy sent the Vice President … [to Iran]. The VP went out there, repeated the whole reform theme, etc., etc., as a useful thing to do. … The land reform program was started in January 1963, and the President, I remember, sent the Shah a congratulatory message sometime in January on getting it started so successfully—-I think they had a referendum or something.27

I see that in March 1963, we suggested that our leader put out a new NSAM [228] saying, “Look, boys, let’s review the Iranian situation and see if there isn’t more we ought to be doing.” We got another long report from the State Department; I recall thinking it was terrible and suggesting that we send it back and get a better answer. We did. The next episode was another letter from the Shah in June 1963, asking for more military hardware. At this time there was this new Arab Federation, which, by the way, did not add up to a hill of beans. It fell apart before it ever got created. The President, replied to this in July saying, “Look, there is no real threat from the Arab Federation,” again urging real economic reform as the best medicine for Iran.28

In addition to sending LBJ to Iran to press reforms, the State Department wanted to send Robert Kennedy to Iran as well. However, RFK declined, stating in his oral history:

The trip was arranged for Iran. But I said if I went to Iran, I said I wanted to visit the University and visit students. They said I couldn’t visit students. So, I said I wouldn’t go to Iran. That caused a major fuss in the State Department. They said, “You’ve got to go to Iran.” I said, “I’m not going to go unless I can go where I want to go.” So, they Cancelled that. … I don’t know what excuse they made.29

JFK himself loved to interact with students. White House Social Secretary Letitia Baldridge recounted how JFK had once escaped the Secret Service in his desire to interact with foreign students at a roped off event:

[President Kennedy] went about four feet along the rope and then he just agilely ducked right under it, right into the thousands of foreign students and the Secret Service lost him until about 35 minutes later. They had no idea where he was. You couldn’t see him. He was being pushed, shoved, his tie torn, everything. He couldn’t care less. He felt great, enormous excitement and pleasure from that, from being close to them and answering their questions. And they shot some of the worst questions at him too, insulting questions but he took them all on singlehandedly and they really were all impressed by that because in their own countries, many of these countries, the African/Arab nations, their leaders are always followed by machined gunned cars … so this was quite something to have him mingling amongst them so freely.30

JFK’s final letter to the Shah, sent in November 1963, again pressed him for social, economic and political reforms. Kennedy wrote, “Each free nation must do all in its power to face and solve its internal problems. At the present stage, this may in a real sense be more important for many countries than concentrating too much time and energy on external threats.”31 According to the Iranian ambassador in London the Shah wished not to see “Kennedy-type pretensions” from future US presidents.32

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JFK was hardly the “establishment” candidate when he sought the presidency in 1960. In fact, on the eve of the July 1960 Democratic National Convention, two of the most influential figures within the Democratic Party publicly voiced their opposition to Kennedy. Former President Harry Truman questioned whether the young senator was ready for the office:

Senator, are you certain that you’re quite ready for the country or the country is ready for you in the role of president? … I hope someone with the greatest possible maturity or experience would be available at this time. May I urge you to be patient. You will recall that I suggested to you … that all personal ambition be put aside and that we all join forces to seek out such a man who could unite us in purpose and in action.”2

Truman stated that his first choice was Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri. He then supplied a list of ten additional options, headed by Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas.3

Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt advocated for Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, to receive the nomination once again, despite his having already lost the general election twice. She proclaimed to a Democratic Party Convention crowd, “I think if we really want to win in November, we will nominate a Stevenson-Kennedy ticket.”4 She ignored not only Stevenson’s prior losses, but also Kennedy’s many public declarations that he would not agree to a vice-presidential slot.

JFK was not deterred by these attacks. Responding to Truman’s public call for him to step aside, Kennedy declared, “I do not intend to step aside at anyone’s request.”5 Despite the opposition from prominent figures within his own party, Kennedy prevailed and secured the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. However, as a result, he felt he needed to mend bridges with the party establishment, even declaring during his nomination acceptance speech, “I feel safer with them by my side.”6 Perhaps he was safer with Truman and Roosevelt on his side, but, as it turned out, not LBJ.

In 1960, presidential nominees were expected to select their vice-presidential running mate during the convention itself, giving JFK little time to deliberate over his decision. His first priority was to ease the tension within his party and bridge the divide between himself and LBJ, who likely would have secured the nomination had Kennedy chosen not to enter the race.

Although the precise circumstances that led to JFK’s decision to select LBJ as his vice president remain unclear, I have attempted to reconstruct the sequence of events based on the various accounts available.

One account is simply that JFK was blackmailed, as author Seymour Hersh argued in his book The Dark Side of Camelot. While blackmail is certainly possible, I am skeptical of this claim. If JFK could have been successfully blackmailed into choosing a particular vice-presidential candidate, it would seem reasonable to assume that the same leverage could have been used to influence his policies once he became president. Yet Kennedy did not bend to the wishes of those who opposed his policies, making Hersh’s hypothesis not particularly convincing.

The blackmail theory traces back to JFK’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who claimed that Kennedy was being blackmailed by Lyndon B. Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a close associate of Johnson’s, with stories concerning Kennedy’s alleged womanizing.7 Lincoln harbored a deep dislike of Johnson and even suspected that he was involved in JFK’s murder. As such, she may have been reluctant to accept that her former boss had chosen LBJ of his own accord, or perhaps she was tempted to throw even more suspicion at Johnson. Her earlier accounts of how LBJ came to be selected as Vice President align more closely with the accounts of other Kennedy associates and, in fact, contradict her later claim that blackmail was involved.

In her initial recollections, Lincoln stated that JFK expected LBJ to decline the vice-presidential offer.8 After Johnson indicated he was interested, Kennedy then, according to Lincoln, asked his brother, Robert Kennedy, to try to persuade LBJ to reconsider.9 If JFK had been blackmailed by LBJ, as Lincoln later claimed, why would Kennedy have expected Johnson to refuse the offer in the first place? And why would he then have asked his brother to try to talk Lyndon into declining the offer? Furthermore, in her 1968 book Kennedy and Johnson, Lincoln claimed that Kennedy had told her he intended to replace Lyndon Johnson as his vice president in 1964. But if Johnson, with the assistance of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, had blackmailed his way onto the ticket in 1960, would that same blackmail material not still have been available to him in 1964? If the alleged leverage had been sufficient to force Kennedy to accept Johnson in 1960, what would have prevented it from being used again in 1964? Lastly, LBJ did spread damaging stories about JFK in the lead-up to the convention, including allegations concerning his health and his father.10 If he was prepared to make such accusations, why would he have withheld the most sensational claims until after the nomination rather than using them to prevent JFK from securing the top spot?

This author finds Lincoln’s later claims to be at odds with her earlier accounts, raising questions about their reliability. Various individuals close to Kennedy have proclaimed that Kennedy tried on multiple occasions to fire Lincoln due to her incompetency but was too soft-hearted to do so.11 Indeed, several close aides have proclaimed that JFK’s greatest weakness was his inability to fire people. Life-long friend Lem Billings stated of JFK:

I think he cared a great deal about people, and his feelings of loyalty were far above average. I’d go even further, I never knew anyone with stronger feelings of loyalty. … I think that anytime that he really established in his own mind that a man was his friend he never deserted him. His feeling of loyalty to that person never lessened. This was true even when his loyalty was sorely tried.12 … I mean, it’s an interesting side of the President and perhaps shows a little bit of weakness on his part—one of the very few weaknesses that he had. He couldn’t fire anybody; at least he hated to do it. He just couldn’t bear it; he couldn’t bear firing a private secretary or a Cabinet member. I suppose it had to do with the tremendous feeling of loyalty he had for the people who had worked for him.13

In Hersh’s book, the only other individual he cites as suggesting that blackmail may have been involved is Hyman Raskin. Raskin claimed that, shortly after Kennedy announced Johnson as his vice-presidential running mate, JFK said to him, “Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems, and I don’t need more problems.”14 Raskin, however, made clear that he did not know what specific threats had been made against JFK.15 It is unclear why JFK would have confided something of such magnitude to Raskin, with whom he was not particularly close.

Lincoln’s original account does involve pressure on JFK, but of a different sort. In her original version, she recounts that Washington Post publisher Philip Graham, whom she describes as a close friend of Lyndon Johnson, strongly wanted to see LBJ get the presidential nomination. However, Graham knew that Kennedy was almost certain to secure the nomination and, accordingly, began planting stories in The Washington Post suggesting that JFK, if nominated, planned to select LBJ as his running mate. One such story appeared on the newspaper’s front page on the opening day of the convention. Lincoln wrote, “As a smart newspaper man, Mr. Graham must have known that sometimes, a prediction, even an unlikely one, helps make things come true.” On the night of Kennedy’s nomination Graham’s newspaper posted, “There is no reason to doubt that Senator Kennedy’s own personal preference is to offer the Vice-Presidential nomination to Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson.”16 However, according to Lincoln and numerous other Kennedy associates, LBJ had never been seriously considered in discussions about the vice presidency.17

Graham became editor of The Washington Post through his marriage to Katherine Meyer Graham, whose father, Eugene Meyer, owned the newspaper. Interestingly, and perhaps not coincidentally, following JFK’s assassination, The Washington Post, then under the leadership of Katherine Meyer Graham, played a significant role in advocating for the establishment of the Warren Commission, the official government body tasked with investigating Kennedy’s assassination—an “investigation” that, according to critics, amounted to little more than a rubber stamp of the official account.18 It seems the newspaper ultimately got the president it wanted after all.

According to Lincoln’s initial account, on the evening Kennedy secured the nomination, JFK asked her what his first scheduled appointment was for the following morning. When she told him it was a meeting with southern leaders, he asked her to contact LBJ first thing in the morning to ensure that Johnson would attend. He called her again shortly afterward to dictate a wire for her to deliver to LBJ, but her husband answered the phone, so JFK dictated the message to him instead. Her husband then took the message to LBJ. Lincoln recounted what happened next:

… Around 4:30 in the morning, my telephone rang. “Mrs. Lincoln,” Mr. Kennedy said, “was my message delivered to Lyndon?” … I managed to mumble, “Yes, Mr. Kennedy.” He then hurriedly asked, “Would you read it to me?” … When I told him exactly what was in the wire, there was a pause, as though he were thinking.

He paused so long I almost thought he had left the phone. Then he said, “Thanks, Mrs. Lincoln.”19

When her husband asked about the phone conversation, Lincoln replied, “[Mr. Kennedy] seemed puzzled, and I heard him say to someone, “I should have mentioned the southern leaders meeting.”20

Lincoln then wrote:

I am sure that the 10:00 meeting Mr. Kennedy requested in that telegram was meant only to give Mr. Kennedy a chance to gracefully shake Johnson’s hand after his defeat and to discuss with him the southern leaders’ meeting scheduled for later that day. There is no doubt in my mind about it. Mr. Kennedy did not plan to offer Johnson the Vice-Presidential nomination at the time the telegram was sent.21

… Mr. Kennedy undoubtedly felt that since the news leaks had occurred, it was essential that he offer the nomination to Mr. Johnson to avoid publicly slighting the Senate Majority Leader. If the story that Johnson would be chosen had not been so prominently placed, it might have been possible to avoid asking him, but now, it seemed necessary to make the gesture.22

When she asked JFK whether he thought LBJ would accept, he replied, “No.”23 She then indicated when JFK came back upstairs, he looked “unpleased.” LBJ had indicated that he was interested but wanted to consult with others before making a final decision. According to Lincoln, LBJ only stalled because he “wanted it to appear that Mr. Kennedy had walked down those two flights of stairs and had begged him to accept.”24

After Kennedy’s assassination, Philip Graham’s post-convention notes from July 19, 1960, were published in an effort to shed light on how the vice-presidential selection came about. Lincoln, along with others close to Kennedy, including his brother Bobby, declared that Graham’s account was inaccurate. Graham claimed that he spoke with Kennedy alongside Washington Post reporter Joseph Alsop, urging JFK to select Johnson as his vice president, and that Kennedy was very much on board.25

According to Lincoln, as word began to spread that LBJ might be selected as Kennedy’s running mate, JFK asked RFK to speak with Johnson in an effort to dissuade him from pursuing the vice presidency. Kennedy urged Bobby to convince Johnson to accept the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee instead.26

Let’s turn to Robert Kennedy’s account of what happened, which, as we’ll see, aligns closely with Lincoln’s original version. First, RFK flatly denied Graham’s claim that JFK wanted LBJ to accept the vice-presidential nomination:

The idea that he’d go down and offer him the nomination in hopes that he’d take the nomination is not true. The reason he went down and offered him the nomination is because he thought he should offer him the nomination because there were enough indications from others that he wanted to be offered the nomination. … But he never dreamt that there was a chance in the world that he would accept it.27

RFK then described what happened in the aftermath:

I was up in his room when [Jack] came back. And he said, “You just won’t believe it.” I said, “What?” And he said, “He wants it.” And I said, “Oh, my God.” He said, “Now what do we do?”

… We spent the rest of the day alternating between thinking it was good and thinking that it wasn’t … and how he could get out of it.

One of the major factors ultimately that persuaded him that he should take him was the fact that he would be so mean as Majority Leader that it was much better to have him as Vice President, where you could control him. …. Particularly, after you had offered him the job, then it would have been disastrous to have that affront and withdraw it.

Finally, [despite all this] we decided … that we’d try to get him out of there and not have him, because Jack thought it would be unpleasant with him, to be associated with him. If he could get him to withdraw and still be happy, that would be fine.28

RFK then went downstairs to speak with LBJ and, consistent with Lincoln’s account, offered him the opportunity to “run the party,” which would put him in a stronger position to seek the presidency in 1968. RFK rejected Graham’s assertion that he had acted independently of JFK’s wishes, “Obviously, with the close relationship between my brother and me, I wasn’t going down to see if he could withdraw just as a lark on my own. … That just flabbergasted me about Phil Graham’s memorandum.”29

RFK stated that although JFK did not want LBJ as his vice president, he was ultimately relieved that Johnson would no longer serve as Senate Majority Leader, claiming that his brother had told him LBJ would have been “impossible” in that role.30

JFK’s wife, Jackie, corroborated RFK’s account of the reasons behind LBJ’s selection as vice president. She recounted in her oral history:

Jack had to do it, have Lyndon as his running mate, to annul him as majority leader because here’s this man with this enormous ego, he would have been just enraged, and blocking Jack in every way. … I know he kept that session in before the convention … so Jack couldn’t get out and campaign and do more things. He’d done something before to really make things difficult for him. … If you’d had him up there with that enormous ego and thwarted and bitter…31

According to aide Kenny O’Donnell, JFK explained his selection as follows:

I’m thinking … of the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin, and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate. Did it occur to you that if Lyndon Johnson becomes the Vice-President, I’ll have Mike Mansfield as the leader in the Senate, somebody I can trust and depend on?32

… If Johnson and [Speaker of the House Sam] Rayburn leave here mad at me, they’ll ruin me in Congress next month. Then I’ll be the laughingstock of the country. Nixon will say I haven’t any power in my own party, and I’ll lose the election before Labor Day. So, I’ve got to make peace now with Johnson and Rayburn, and offering Lyndon the Vice-Presidency, whether he accepts it or not, is one way of keeping him friendly until Congress adjourns.33

O’Donnell, along with fellow aide Dave Powers, confirmed Bobby’s account that he went to speak with Lyndon Johnson with JFK’s full knowledge and approval.34

JFK was not the only one surprised that LBJ accepted the offer. According to historian and presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., “Very few people in Los Angeles that week [at the Democratic Party Convention] imagined for an instant that Johnson would exchange the power of the majority leadership for the oblivion of the Vice-Presidency.”35 Indeed, according to Schlesinger, JFK’s offer of the Vice Presidency wasn’t even a full-on offer:

“I didn’t offer the Vice Presidency to him,” Kennedy told a friend. … “I just held it out like this”—here he simulated taking an object out of his pocket and holding it close to his body—”and he grabbed at it.”36

Confirming Lincoln’s account of Graham’s strong desire to see LBJ selected as vice president, Schlesinger wrote in his book, drawing largely on Graham’s memorandum, that Graham had worked diligently to broker an agreement between the two parties and secure the Vice Presidency for LBJ.37

As has been shown, it’s a bit of a mess to try to decipher exactly what occurred. Robert Kennedy blamed this mess on the fact that no one had slept.38

Others argue that LBJ was selected purely for political reasons, particularly to help secure Texas. While this may have played a role in the ultimate decision, the evidence suggests that it was not a major factor. The leading candidate JFK had been considering up to that point was Stuart Symington, who was expected to help Kennedy secure California as well as other Midwestern and Western states. With LBJ on the ticket, Kennedy carried Texas but lost California; had he chosen Symington, he likely would have lost Texas but carried California instead.

It seems the primary reason for offering the Vice Presidency to Lyndon Johnson was to ease tensions following the intense battle for the presidential nomination. This was particularly important in light of LBJ’s powerful position as Senate Majority Leader. The need to tame a potentially hostile LBJ seems to have considerably influenced events. But, because of lack of sleep, the communication was very poor. If there was any outside pressure or manipulation impacting the decision, it seems to have come mainly from Philip Graham and The Washington Post. If Raskin’s claims that JFK was being threatened were accurate, perhaps these were the kinds of threats to which Kennedy was referring, rather than the more traditional form of blackmail.

Close JFK friend Charles Bartlett recounted how in the days after the convention, Robert Kennedy confided in him that the day LBJ was selected as VP “was the worst day of his life.” As for JFK, Bartlett revealed that he “seemed sort of stunned.”39 In his oral history, RFK stated that his brother “was a gentleman and a human being. This man [LBJ] is not. He’s mean, bitter, vicious—an animal in many ways.”40 In her oral history, Jackie Kennedy stated that at the time JFK offered LBJ the Vice Presidency, he felt LBJ was competent enough. However, she shared that later in his presidency, her husband would often proclaim, “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?”41 We now know the answer to that question.

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The book appears to serve two primary purposes. First, it portrays John F. Kennedy as a committed warmonger whose death had no meaningful impact on the course of world events. Second, it narrows the debate surrounding Kennedy’s assassination to a single question: whether he was genuinely committed to withdrawing U.S. forces from Vietnam. More specifically, the issue is not whether Kennedy intended to withdraw troops—there is little dispute in the historical record that he did—but whether that withdrawal was contingent upon favorable military conditions. Chomsky argues that the latter was the case.

Although Chomsky insists that Rethinking Camelot is not fundamentally a book about Kennedy’s assassination, he nonetheless contends that the answer to the Vietnam withdrawal question bears directly “on the thesis that Kennedy was killed in a high-level conspiracy.”1 Chomsky gives no serious consideration to the possibility that a high-level plot could have existed independent of Vietnam as a motive. In this respect, he shares a basic assumption with much of the JFK research community. In my Substack article, “JFK: Myth vs. Reality,” I argued that such assumptions unfairly limit the search for truth and, in doing so, undermine the pursuit of genuine justice for the murdered president.

This is not to suggest that Vietnam policy should be dismissed as a possible motive for the assassination. Rather, the mistake lies in assuming that resolving the Vietnam question necessarily resolves the assassination question. Nevertheless, the question of Vietnam is of immense historical importance. Given its impact upon millions of lives, it deserves deep exploration.

Noam Chomsky once declared, “Who cares [who killed JFK]. Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them had to be John F. Kennedy? … It’s just taking energy away from serious issues to the ones that don’t matter.”2 In his book, released on the 30-year anniversary of JFK’s assassination, Chomsky places the focus on two years prior, 1991, what he calls the “thirtieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s escalation of the US intervention in South Vietnam,” which he deems to be a far more important topic of conversation.3 Chomsky argues that JFK was a mere continuum along the spectrum of the American empire, and that what occurred in 1961 has far more historical significance than what occurred in 1963. In Chomsky’s view it is the year 1961 that set in motion the tragic Vietnam war escalation that took off in mass in the mid-1960s. Indeed, he labeled it a “curious coincidence” that during this tragic anniversary (1991) there was “renewed fascination with the Kennedy era” which he attributed to Oliver Stone’s film JFK which purported that JFK was killed in large part over a decision to withdraw from Vietnam.4

Chomsky argues that from the start JFK was militarily minded and had no interest in learning about the people of South Vietnam or achieving a peaceful policy of neutralization in the region. The record, however, indicates otherwise. Even prior to entering the presidency, JFK was warned by outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower, that combat troops would likely be required in neighboring Laos. Eisenhower told Kennedy that seeking a policy of neutralization was out of the question. Neutralization is a policy by which different factions, including Communist elements, share a government. “It would be fatal,” Eisenhower told Kennedy, “for us to permit Communists to insert themselves into the Laotian government.”5

Prior to JFK’s presidency, the CIA and the Eisenhower administration had backed the right-wing Laotian military leader General Phoumi Nosavan.6 In the early weeks of his presidency, Kennedy met alone with Laos ambassador Winthrop Brown. Brown critiqued the CIA’s and Pentagon’s endorsement of General Nosavan and told Kennedy that Laos could be united only under the neutralist leader Souvanna Phouma and JFK was very receptive to Brown’s perspective. Brown recounted of JFK, “Among the first questions he asked me was, ‘What kind of people are these people?’ … And my heart leapt up when he asked that question since I had long since come to the conclusion that the mistakes in our policy were fundamentally based upon a misjudgment of the characters and abilities and motivations and personalities.”7

Michael Forrestal, who served as Assistant to the President for Far Eastern Affairs, shared what JFK had often expressed to him, “Now, if we could only get these people to (in the case of Laos) realize that the United States is not dead set on supporting one faction against another, that our interests out there really are - we couldn’t care less actually. We would like to see them independent. We would like to see them be themselves - and not be Chinese or be French or be British or be U.S. How can we get that thought across?” Forrestal continued, “In that area of the world his main theme was: the more they are themselves, the better for the United States. Let’s not try to tell them what to do, and how to behave in each case. Let’s stimulate them to be more themselves.”8

While negotiating the neutralization of Laos, President Kennedy put out feelers with the North Vietnamese to gauge their interest in negotiating the same for Vietnam. William Sullivan, UN adviser to the Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs in the State Department, recounted these negotiation attempts in his 1970 oral history at the JFK Library:

When we had achieved the agreement on Laos, [Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Averell] Harriman asked for and got permission from the President to have some private, very private bilateral talks with the North Vietnamese to see if we could reach any similar agreement or see if we could negotiate an agreement on Vietnam. … It was set up for us by the intermediation of the Burmese. It was a very discreet fellow named Jim Barrington. ... Jim was the head of the Burmese delegation to the Geneva talks. And he got the North Vietnamese Foreign minister, and Ha Von Lau … to come to his hotel room. Averell Harriman and I slipped up a back street and alley to go into the back door of this hotel room. We had to do that because Geneva’s a relatively small town. And all these hotels are fairly close to each other. This was a small hotel fairly near the railroad station. Had we come cross the main square and driven up in front of it, I think everybody in town would have seen it. So, instead, we walked up this back street and went in and had this session with the two Vietnamese, Ung Van Khiem who was then the foreign minister, who is now the minister of interior and Ha Van Lau and Averell and myself.

… We got absolutely nowhere. We hit a stone wall. The North Vietnamese quite clearly were not interested in negotiating at that time. They were adamant in their positions. ... So we got nowhere. ... As I said, the President personally and specifically had sanctioned it. I don’t think it’s ever yet come to public notice or public print. But it’s quite clear at that time that they were not interested. But it is also clear that the President was interested. … We were interested in any prospects whatsoever that they were interested in negotiating with us and having some talks under any form or forum or format. We just wanted to see if there were any prospects of negotiating. And they were just dead against it.

… There were two or three lines converging. I think Averell Harriman’s line always was that once you get the Laotian settlement that you might be able to expand it into a larger area of understanding, and, particularly, if you got the Soviets to recognize that it suited their interests as well as ours to try to neutralize the whole Indochina area, that otherwise it might fall prey to the Chinese, and that we might be able to build therefore on the Laos settlement as something which would move toward a larger settlement in the whole Indochina area. That’s one thread. And the other thread was that if you get the Laos thing tamped down and you’re going to have this continuing confrontation with the North Vietnamese, that yes, you could do a neater, more surgical job in Vietnam. That’s sort of the JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] viewpoint. Now, I think the President shared a little of both, as to say, he recognized the military logic of the latter argument. But I think his efforts were all directed toward the former.

And I think this is why he did authorize us to have this session with the North Vietnamese in Geneva. At heart he was constantly looking for opportunities to see if we could expand from the Laos agreement, but at the same time feeling more confident about his military posture in Vietnam once Laos had been tidied up.9

JFK’s secrecy around approaching the North Vietnamese was likely centered around the unpopularity of such an approach, including within much of his own staff. Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs Walt Rostow wrote to JFK, “I submit that it would be unwise and contrary to the lessons of past and current experience to negotiate with the Communists before we have moved to buy time in Viet-Nam and indicated by deeds that the U.S. is serious about saving South Vietnam.”10

On May 10, and again on May 18, 1961, JFK’s military suggested he send combat troops into Vietnam. The U.S. already had military advisors in Vietnam from the Eisenhower days but no combat troops.11 In the Fall of 1961, JFK sent General Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow to Vietnam. As a result of the mission, on November 8, 1961, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended sending an initial eight thousand combat troops “without delay”12 and expanding to as many as 220,000 combat troops.13 McNamara informed JFK “short of the introduction of US forces on a substantial scale” the fall of South Vietnam would be likely. He further stated that the sending in of troops must be “accompanied by a warning through some channel to Hanoi that continued support of the Viet Cong will lead to punitive retaliation against North Vietnam.”14 Taylor recommended the same, “It is clear to me that the time may come in our relations to Southeast Asia when we must declare our intention to attack the source of guerrilla aggression in North Viet-Nam and impose on the Hanoi Government a price for participating in the current war which is commensurate with the damage being inflicted on its neighbors to the south.”15 The Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, noted to JFK that he was in agreement with the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that troops must be supplied in large scale to prevent the fall of South Vietnam. He declared, “The fall of South Viet-Nam to Communism would lead to the fairly rapid extension of Communist control, or complete accommodation to Communism, in the rest of mainland Southeast Asia and in Indonesia. The strategic implications worldwide, particularly in the Orient, would be extremely serious.”16 The President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy added to the chorus of those recommending a combat troop commitment.17

However, despite all this advice, JFK was hesitant. General Maxwell Taylor noted in a November 6 White House meeting memo, that the President “is instinctively against introduction of US forces.”18

Kennedy rejected the virtually unanimous recommendation of his advisors. General Maxwell Taylor recalled in a later interview, “I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against [sending combat troops], except one man and that was the President. The President just didn’t want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do. … It was really the President’s personal conviction that the US ground troops shouldn’t go in.”19

In a November 11 memo to the President, National Security Advisor Walt Rostow questioned JFK’s reluctance to commit combat troops, and essentially implied that JFK’s policy was one of weakness, “Without the troop commitment, the Communists (who have been reading of our fears of white men in Asia and of Nehru’s line on Ho Chi Minh) will believe they still have plenty of room for maneuver and to continue infiltration. An ambiguous signal to them is dangerous; and, whatever the rhetoric, they will interpret our policy by deeds, not words. The deeds proposed are, indeed, ambiguous.”20

According to the meeting notes from a November 15 NSC (National Security Council) meeting:

The President expressed the fear of becoming involved simultaneously on two fronts on opposite sides of the world. He questioned the wisdom of involvement in Viet Nam since the basis thereof is not completely clear. By comparison he noted that Korea was a case of clear aggression which was opposed by the United States and other members of the U.N. The conflict in Viet Nam is more obscure and less flagrant. … The President said that he could even make a rather strong case against intervening in an area 10,000 miles away … where millions have been spent for years with no success.

... Mr. Rusk suggested that firmness in Viet Nam in the manner and form of that in Berlin might achieve desired results in Viet Nam without resort to combat. The President disagreed with the suggestion on the basis that the issue was clearly defined in Berlin and opposing forces identified whereas in Viet Nam the issue is vague and action is by guerrillas, sometimes in a phantom-like fashion. Mr. McNamara expressed an opinion that action would become clear if U.S. forces were involved since this power would be applied against sources of Viet Cong power including those in North Viet Nam. The President observed that it was not clear to him just where these U.S. forces would base their operations other than from aircraft carriers which seemed to him to be quite vulnerable.

The President asked what nations would possibly support the U.S. intervention in Viet Nam, listing Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand (?). Mr. Rusk replied that they all would but the President implied doubts because of the pitfalls of the particular type of war in Viet Nam. He described it as being more a political issue, of different magnitude and (again) less defined than the Korean War.

The President asked how he could justify the proposed courses of action in Viet Nam while at the same time ignoring Cuba. General Lemnitzer hastened to add that the JCS feel that even at this point the United States should go into Cuba.21

On the same day, McGeorge Bundy wrote to JFK, “I’ve told the Secretary [of State Dean Rusk] frankly that you feel the need to have someone on this job that is wholly responsive to your policy, and that you really do not get that sense from most of us.”22 Kennedy’s frustration boiled over at a November 27 staff meeting when he stated, “When policy is decided on, people on the spot must support it or get out.”23 McNamara agreed to take responsibility for carrying out JFK’s Vietnam policy. As author John Newman wrote in his book JFK and Vietnam, “Kennedy turned down the combat troops, not when the decision was clouded by ambiguities and contradictions … but when … all concerned agreed Vietnam’s fate hung in the balance, and when his principal advisors told him that vital US interests in the region and the world were at stake.”24

JFK believed that the way to best help South Vietnam was not through a massive US military presence, but through economic and social programs. In August of 1961, he wrote to South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm, who had requested increased US military support, “Military operations will not achieve lasting results unless economic and social programs are continued and accelerated.”25 JFK’s wife, Jackie, stated about Vietnam in early 1964 that her husband “always said the political there was so much more important than the military.”26

While JFK did not agree to his advisors’ proposals regarding the Americanization of the war, he did agree to expand the number of military advisors in South Vietnam and supply general military aid to support the South Vietnamese against the North Vietnamese. Roger Hilsman, the head of State Department intelligence, said JFK agreed for two reasons, one, “as a token, to keep the military quiet,” and two, “to carry out the Thompson / Hilsman counterinsurgency ideas. Now, counterinsurgency means to him don’t use military measures. Don’t chase the Viet Cong, you see. And don’t send American troops, because Americans with white faces will--well, white and black American faces they’ll drive the peasants into the arms of the communists. What counterinsurgency means is: Persuade the Vietnamese that they must do it, ‘it’s their war’ (quote, unquote); protect the peasants; win the peasants, through land reform, et cetera; arm the peasants; don’t chase Viet Cong; don’t use military measures.”27 JFK’s own statements support this. He told economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith, “There are limits to the number of defeats I can defend in one twelve-month period. I’ve [already] had the Bay of Pigs and pulling out of Laos.”28 He likely also felt he had to make some effort to assist South Vietnam without getting fully involved and turning it into an American war. As Robert Kennedy recounted years later, JFK gave assistance at the request of the South Vietnamese, who sought American help. By the late 1960s, the South Vietnamese no longer wanted the Americans in South Vietnam, but the U.S. remained there because it wanted to be there. During a November 26, 1967, interview on CBS’ Face the Nation, Robert Kennedy argued these were two very different moral positions. Indeed, JFK explicitly stated at a May 1963 press conference that if South Vietnam submitted an official request for US withdrawal, the U.S. would do so immediately.29

Another controversial issue Chomsky addresses in Rethinking Camelot is the use of defoliation as a military tactic in Vietnam, a policy for which he assigns substantial responsibility to Kennedy. Indeed, it has not been uncommon in the mainstream press to blame JFK, with headlines such as Politico’s “U.S. launches spraying of Agent Orange, Jan. 18, 1962,” where the author declares, “in 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave final approval to “Operation Ranch Hand” — a massive effort to defoliate the forests of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with an herbicide known as Agent Orange.”30 Given the seriousness of these accusations, it is important to address them.

Due to the pursuit of the neutralization of Laos, which made that country’s border with South Vietnam less secure (the North Vietnamese would infiltrate into South Vietnam via Laos), President Diệm appealed the U.S. for assistance with a defoliant program, for better control of the roads and trails along Vietnam’s borders. Additionally, President Diệm expressed concern about there being large areas in the remote regions of his country where the Viet Cong had forced Montagnards to clear land and plant rice. He therefore proposed that efforts should be made to destroy these crops before they could be harvested, to deny the Viet Cong crossing into South Vietnam a food supply.31

In a memorandum dated November 3, 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, that Admiral Harry D. Felt, the Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Command (CINCPAC), be authorized to implement a limited defoliation plan.32

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs William Bundy provided a detailed assessment of the proposed defoliation program, outlining both its potential advantages and drawbacks. On the positive side, he noted that U.S. diplomatic and military representatives in South Vietnam unanimously recommended approval without reservation. Preliminary field tests had also yielded encouraging results, and authorizing the program would comply with President Diệm’s wishes.

Bundy also identified several significant concerns. Most notably, he warned that North Vietnam would almost certainly exploit the program for propaganda purposes by accusing the United States of engaging in chemical or biological warfare. He further observed that any meaningful military benefit would depend upon the South Vietnamese government’s ability to commit ground forces and implement a coordinated operational plan. Despite these reservations, Bundy concluded that, from a military standpoint, the proposed program merited approval.33

On November 30, 1961, President Kennedy accepted a scaled-back version of the joint recommendation of the Departments of State and Defense, resulting in the issuance of National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 115. The memorandum authorized only the limited use of defoliation for the clearance of key transportation routes—areas where the Viet Cong frequently concealed themselves in vegetation to stage ambushes— and stipulated that each operation required prior approval from the President himself.34

This NSAM came during a period of heightened Cold War tensions. Shortly before Kennedy’s decision, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had overseen the testing of the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated, despite ongoing efforts by Kennedy to negotiate a nuclear test ban treaty. At the same time, Kennedy was facing pressure from military advisers to deploy large numbers of US combat troops to Vietnam and, in some discussions, to consider the possible use of nuclear weapons in Southeast Asia. In comparison, the proposed use of herbicides for limited roadway clearance likely appeared far less consequential. The chemicals involved were commercially available weed killers that had already been widely used in the United States, including on more than 400 million acres for purposes such as clearing vegetation around power lines and other infrastructure. Measured against the much more extreme military options being presented, the authorization of a limited defoliation program may not have seemed an extraordinary step at the time.35

Approximately one year later, on November 30, 1962, President Kennedy expanded the authority for approving herbicide operations by granting Vietnam Ambassador Frederick Nolting and General Paul D. Harkins, Commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (COMUSMACV), the ability to authorize future applications without seeking presidential approval for each individual operation. This delegation of authority, however, remained narrowly defined. It applied only to the clearing of roadsides, power lines, railroads, and other lines of communication, as well as areas surrounding depots, airfields, and other military installations. The authority did not extend to crop destruction operations. Nor did Kennedy authorize broader herbicide missions designed to support general field operations or target larger areas, such as Viet Cong base zones. The instructions sent to Saigon made clear that any operations beyond these specified limits required approval from the “highest authority.”36

Until the fall of 1962, President Kennedy had resisted pressure to authorize Viet Cong crop destruction operations. On September 25, 1962, South Vietnamese Minister Nguyễn Đình Thuần traveled to Washington and met personally with Kennedy to discuss the issue. Thuần argued that destroying Viet Cong food supplies was essential to shortening the war and would provide assistance to the Montagnards, who were attempting to restrict Viet Cong movement through remote regions.

Kennedy responded by asking whether South Vietnamese forces could reliably distinguish Viet Cong crops from those belonging to the civilian population. Thuần replied that the targeted crops were located primarily in remote and uninhabited areas, that intelligence capabilities had improved, and that Montagnard communities themselves had requested such operations.37 At the time, South Vietnamese forces were already attempting to destroy what they identified as Viet Cong crops through methods such as pulling, cutting, burning, strafing, and the use of napalm. From the South Vietnamese perspective, chemical herbicides represented not a fundamentally new tactic, but rather a less costly and more efficient means of conducting an existing aspect of the war.38

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara noted that, because herbicides were commercially available through international markets, he found it surprising that President Diệm had not proposed purchasing the chemicals with South Vietnamese funds if the United States declined to provide them. Assistant Secretary of Defense William P. Bundy responded that the United States would likely still bear responsibility for any crop destruction operations, even if the South Vietnamese obtained and used the chemicals independently.39 Lieutenant General Victor Krulak observed that Vietnamese forces already possessed the necessary chemicals, sprayers, and helicopters and thus had the capability to conduct defoliation and crop destroying herbicide missions on their own without the consent of the United States. Only by a gentlemen’s agreement did the Vietnamese recognize an American veto over the use of herbicides and associated equipment. He cautioned that future divergences between the U.S. and South Vietnamese viewpoints could lead to the use of herbicides by the South Vietnamese with neither the knowledge nor consent of US officials.40

The Joint Chiefs presented their final position to the Secretary of Defense on September 29. They noted that responsible American officials at multiple levels of command had repeatedly requested authorization for a limited trial of crop destruction operations. They also emphasized the urgent appeals of South Vietnamese officials, including the recent personal request from Minister Nguyễn Đình Thuần. Based on these considerations, the Joint Chiefs recommended that controlled quantities of herbicides be provided to the Government of Vietnam (GVN) for use in crop destruction operations. On October 2, 1962, President Kennedy authorized a restricted one-time crop destruction.41 It required that any target areas chosen be submitted to Washington for final clearance, meaning White House approval, before spraying began.42

Regarding Kennedy’s decision, aide Michael Forrestal wrote in an internal memorandum dated October 4, 1962, that the president acted with the strong encouragement “of Secretary McNamara, General Taylor, the field, and just about everybody else you could think of.” Forrestal believed that Kennedy’s reasoning was largely based on the view that a president could not consistently reject the recommendations of his military advisers, adding, “I believe his main train of thinking was that you cannot say no to your military advisors all the time, and with this I agree.”43

Nevertheless, Kennedy remained uneasy about the program. In his 1964 oral history interview with the JFK Library, Michael Forrestal recalled the president’s reaction upon discovering that activities were being carried out beyond the scope of what he had approved:

One of the things that we had a lot of trouble with in the White House was crop destruction. President Kennedy was quite violent about that. He discovered that one of the techniques that was being used was the defoliation (the nice word - the more crude, destruction) of crops; the theory being that you could deny food to the Viet Cong if you did this. Well, of course, it’s very difficult for a Vietnamese to distinguish between a Viet Cong and somebody who is loyal to the Government, and it is an impossible thing for Americans to do. … President Kennedy felt strongly about this, and he ordered a complete halt of all these operations until Jerry Wiesner [Jerome B. Wiesner] got into this. He told Jerry Wiesner to take a look at this, and Jerry did and was appalled at what he found. We stopped it all. We conducted some experiments in the United States and, I think, in the Canal Zone to first of all find out a technique that would really be effective and precise and could be pinpointed. Then we went out to Saigon and said, “Now if you’re going to do this (and we’re somewhat doubtful whether it’s a good thing to do) we’re certain you should only do it where there is no normal cultivation - where you can be sure the only cultivation that you see has to be Viet Cong and nothing else.” … President Kennedy … was quite clear about it. He just didn’t want to get involved in this kind of thing.44

Beginning in 1964, following Kennedy’s assassination, the restraints placed on chemical crop destruction began to slowly crumble.45 Agent Orange was introduced in 1965, and the use of spray chemicals rose exponentially in 1966 and 1967. Eighty percent of herbicides sprayed in the herbicide program (1962 to 1971) were applied during the period from 1966 to 1969. Five million acres of forest and 500,000 acres of farmland were destroyed. The preparation known as Agent Orange accounted for approximately 11.2 million gallons of the close to 19 million total gallons sprayed. In October 1969, the Department of Defense imposed restrictions on the use of Agent Orange in areas near populated regions after a National Institutes of Health study found that it could cause birth defects and stillbirths in mice. These findings contributed to the eventual termination of the herbicide spraying program.46

Does JFK deserve responsibility for his role in the Vietnam War? Yes, absolutely. But is it fair to hold him as largely responsible for the extensive chemical spraying campaign that occurred primarily in the late 1960s? No, it is not.

As has been shown, JFK was very concerned and uneasy about the issue, “violent” to use Michael Forrestal’s term. It is reminiscent of JFK’s approval to resume nuclear testing in the spring of 1962, after Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev dropped the largest nuclear bomb in history. Jackie Kennedy spoke of her husband’s internal struggle during this time, ““I can remember him being so worried at the time, about our resuming you know, and how long you could possibly put it off. … That was a terrible time for him. … There was nothing that worried him more through ’61 and ’62 than all this testing.”47

Does JFK’s approval to resume nuclear testing mean that he was disingenuous in seeking a nuclear test ban treaty? No, rather it motivated him even more to push for a successful negotiation with the Soviets to ban nuclear testing. A similar pattern can be seen in the herbicide issue. Kennedy was reluctant to approve their use, but ultimately accepted a limited program under strict controls, recognizing that preventing South Vietnam from using commercially available products already widely used in the United States would not be an easy battle for him to win.

But it may help explain Kennedy’s openness to Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring and his decision to ask his scientific adviser, Jerome Wiesner, to investigate the claims raised in the book. Wiesner was the same adviser to whom Kennedy had expressed concerns about herbicide use in South Vietnam. Kennedy’s support for examining the environmental concerns raised by Carson contributed significantly to broader federal investigations into pesticide use, the eventual ban on DDT, and the scientific research—including studies such as the National Institutes of Health investigation into Agent Orange—that helped bring about the end of large-scale military herbicide applications.

Furthermore, placing blame on Kennedy for the extensive use of Agent Orange during the latter half of the 1960s requires an additional assumption: that he would have expanded the war in Vietnam on the same scale as his successor, Lyndon Johnson. This leads to another central argument in Chomsky’s book—his claim that JFK was only planning to withdraw from Vietnam in a winning scenario. According to Chomsky, because South Vietnam was facing serious setbacks by 1964 and 1965, Kennedy, had he remained in office, would have been compelled to increase the US military commitment in much the same way Johnson ultimately did.

Let us, again, look at the record. Not long after Kennedy had agreed to increase the number of advisors in South Vietnam, he sent United States Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbriath to South Vietnam, specifically asking him to write up a report critical of American military intervention in Vietnam.48 As James K. Galbraith, John Kenneth’s son, stated, “Kennedy knew what he wanted, he knew what my father would deliver, which he did.”49 Upon reading Galbraith’s report, JFK told his aides, “to be prepared to seize any favorable moment to reduce our involvement, recognizing that the moment might yet be some time away.”50 Kennedy then passed on Galbraith’s report to Defense Secretary McNamara, asking him to come up with withdrawal plans for the US advisors.51 In his book JFK and Vietnam, Professor John Newman described the moment, in May 1962, when McNamara informed the military of the need for a withdrawal plan:

[The Secretary stated] that it was not the job of the United States to assume responsibility for the war but to develop South Vietnamese capability to do so. He then asked when that point could be reached. … Harkins’ chin nearly hit the table. Harkins responded that MACV had hardly thought about this, and that they had been too busy expanding their structure to think about how it might all be dismantled. McNamara then ordered MACV to devise a plan for turning full responsibility over to South Vietnam and reducing the size of our military command, and to submit this plan at the next [SECDEF] conference.52

At the July 1962 conference, McNamara again asked for withdrawal planning.53 On January 25, 1963, Kennedy angrily phoned Roger Hilsman complaining about a front-page story in The New York Times regarding a US general visiting Vietnam. He ordered Hilsman to stop military visits that seemed to increase the US commitment to Vietnam and told him, “The United States must keep a low profile in Vietnam so we can negotiate its neutralization like we did in Laos.” He then issued National Security Action Memorandum 217 forbidding “high-ranking military and civilian personnel” from going to South Vietnam without being cleared by the State Department.54 JFK had not only considered pursuing a policy of neutralization in Vietnam early in his presidency, despite Chomsky’s claims that he never had any interest in it, but again in 1963. On May 9, 1963, he reached out to Roger Hilsman to prepare for the neutralization of Vietnam. Hilsman recalled in a later interview:

[Kennedy] began to instruct me … to position ourselves to do in Vietnam what we had done in Laos, i.e., to negotiate the neutralization of Vietnam. He had made a decision on this. He did not make it public of course, but he had certainly communicated it to me as I say, in four-letter words, good earthy Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, and every time that I failed to do something [in a way] he felt endangered this position, he let me know in very clear language.55

Hilsman further expounded that Kennedy’s general attitude was: “If the Vietnamese win it, OK, great. But if they don’t, we’re going to … do what we did with Laos. So, he’s going in the exact opposite direction that [Lyndon] Johnson went.”56

By May 1963, the military finally proposed its initial withdrawal plans. However, McNamara immediately rejected the timeline, saying it was too slow, as it went into 1966.57 He stated that he would like to see “1000 or so personnel” withdrawn by “late this year if the situation allows.”58 JFK stated at a May 1963 press conference:

We are hopeful that the situation in South Viet-Nam would permit some withdrawal … by the end of the year, but we can’t possibly make that judgment at the present time. There is still a long, hard struggle to go … so that I couldn’t say that today the situation is such that we could look for a brightening in the sky that would permit us to withdraw troops or begin to by the end of the year. But I would say, if requested to, we will do it immediately. As of today, we would hope we could begin to perhaps do it at the end of the year, but we couldn’t make any final judgment at all until we see the course of the struggle the next few months.59

This May statement certainly sounds as though withdrawal would be contingent on how the war was going. However, it also appears as though JFK is hinting to the South Vietnamese that they should request a US withdrawal. JFK’s aide Kenny O’Donnell proclaimed that when he asked JFK how he was going to manage to withdraw from Vietnam, the President replied, that he would do so by getting the Vietnamese to ask the U.S. to withdraw.60

On October 11, 1963, JFK issued National Security Action Memorandum 263, which gave approval to the McNamara and Taylor report on Vietnam.61 This report came as a result of a McNamara and Taylor trip to Vietnam; it called not only for the withdrawal of one thousand advisors by the end of 1963 but also for a “withdrawal of the bulk of US personnel by 1965.”62

This brings us to the central question that Chomsky examines in his book—a question that has dominated much of the JFK debate for decades: How did Kennedy’s withdrawal request originate, and what conditions, if any, was it contingent upon?

The crux of the recommendations of the McNamara and Taylor report were:

A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.63

It is somewhat murky to sort out how these recommendations got into the report and who placed them there.

McNamara handed out assignments to five deputies to assist with the report: William Bundy and Michael Forrestal to edit the report; William Colby to evaluate the intelligence; William Sullivan to evaluate conflicting views of US personnel in South Vietnam and General Victor Krulak to determine the attitudes of the South Vietnamese and Military. Krulak had visited Vietnam, on JFK’s request approximately a month prior to McNamara and Taylor’s trip, to gauge the attitudes of the South Vietnamese Military. It appears that Krulak did not re-visit Vietnam with McNamara and Taylor, but rather wrote his section of the report from Washington D.C. He made no mention of a second trip to Vietnam in his oral history and others on the McNamara and Taylor flight to Vietnam do not recall Krulak being aboard.64 What Krulak did mention in his oral history is that he served in the Solomon Islands during World War II and that it was Kennedy’s PT Boat who rescued his crew from attack by the Japanese. Krulak stated:

I felt pretty beholden to him. I told him that one day we would be together again and I owed him a bottle of whiskey and I’d see that he got it.

Often, subsequently, we talked about our experiences in the Solomons and this very, very hairy business where he did something very great for my people. This established a real nexus between us, … a relationship which made it very easy for me to talk to him when I wanted to; and I did. I made great use of it.65

According to Airforce Colonel Fletcher Prouty, who worked for Krulak, while McNamara and Taylor were in Vietnam, Krulak made regular visits to the White House where he spoke with Robert Kennedy who informed Krulak of the President’s reactions to the in-progress report and any instructions he had for him. Professor John Newman referred to this as the “classic back-channel operation of its time.”66

William Sullivan recounted in his oral history, “One of the things that the President asked me to do … was to try to give him some explanation as to why the hell he was getting these totally optimistic reports from the military and these negative reports from the embassy.” When Sullivan saw “this business about troops out by ’65” in the draft report, he told McNamara, “I just can’t buy this. This is totally unrealistic. We’re not going to get troops out in ’65. We mustn’t submit anything phony as this to the President.” McNamara agreed and spoke with Taylor and they scrubbed it from the report. Sullivan asked Taylor why it had been in the report in the first place, and Taylor replied, “Well, goddamnit, we’ve got to make these people put their noses to the wheel -- or the grindstone or whatever. If we don’t give them some indication that we’re going to get out sometime, they’re just going to be leaning on us forever. So that’s why I had it in there.”67

Upon returning to Washington, Sullivan was shocked to hear in the press that the reference to a 1965 withdrawal was back in the report. He recalled, “I called Bob McNamara up and said, ‘All the arguments I used on this thing, why in the hell is it back in the public print again?’ I must say his reaction, comment to me was not all that convincing.”68

Chomsky, in his book, argues that Maxwell Taylor’s interpretation was correct, that the troop withdrawal was only included as a pressure tactic against the South Vietnamese and there was never any intention to withdraw in a losing scenario. Chomsky repeatedly references the phrase used in the report, “without impairment of the war effort,” to argue that only under a scenario of victory would JFK have withdrawn. However, taken technically, “effort” does not mean the same thing as “victory.” “Effort” can be interpreted as ensuring the South Vietnamese are sufficiently trained as to be able to do the tasks that the advisors are training them on. One can place a lot of effort into something and still fail.

Chomsky’s second major argument in support of the Maxwell interpretation is that, in his view, it was only after the tragedies of the late 1960s that individuals began claiming Kennedy intended to withdraw from Vietnam regardless of the war’s outcome. However, this characterization is not entirely accurate. JFK himself asked McNamara, at an October 2, 1963, meeting, whether the withdrawal was contingent on the assumption that the war was going well to which McNamara replied, “No, sir. Two major premises we have is, we believe we can complete the military campaign in the … fourth quarter of ’65. Secondly, if it extends beyond that period we believe we can train the Vietnamese to take over the essential functions and withdraw the bulk of our forces. … We need a way to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it.”69

McNamara told biographer Deborah Shapley that he and JFK had agreed to withdraw without victory. Shapley discounted McNamara’s claims and wrote, “his sincere belief that Kennedy would have gotten out of Vietnam was something he arrived at later when the war had become tragic and traumatic for him and the nation.” It was his “reverence” for President Kennedy which caused him “to self-deceive, to believe that his hero and mentor would have wisely guided them out.” Shapley further declared, “No hard evidence for McNamara’s claim has come to light.” Chomsky agrees with Shapley’s interpretation.70 Both ignored McNamara’s October 2, 1963, response of “No,” to JFK’s question if the withdrawal was dependent on the war going well.

McNamara wrote in his memoir:

Having reviewed the record in detail, and with the advantage of hindsight, I think it highly probable that, had President Kennedy lived, he would have pulled us out of Vietnam. He would have concluded that the South Vietnamese were incapable of defending themselves, and that Saigon’s grave political weaknesses made it unwise to try to offset the limitations of South Vietnamese forces by sending U.S. combat troops on a large scale. I think he would have come to that conclusion even if he reasoned, as I believe he would have, that South Vietnam and, ultimately, Southeast Asia would then be lost to Communism. He would have viewed that loss as more costly than we see it now. But he would have accepted that cost because he would have sensed that the conditions he had laid down—i.e., it was a South Vietnamese war, that it could only be won by them, and to win it they needed a sound political base—could not be met. Kennedy would have agreed that withdrawal would cause a fall of the “dominoes” but that staying in would ultimately lead to the same result, while exacting a terrible price in blood. Early in his administration, President Kennedy asked his cabinet officials and members of the National Security Council to read Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August. He said it graphically portrayed how Europe’s leaders had bungled into the debacle of World War I. And he emphasized: “I don’t ever want to be in that position.” Kennedy told us after we had done our reading, “We are not going to bungle into war.” Throughout his presidency, Kennedy seemed to keep that lesson in mind. During the Bay of Pigs crisis in April 1961, against intense pressure from the CIA and the military chiefs, he kept to his conviction—as he had made explicitly clear to the Cuban exiles beforehand—that under no conditions would the United States intervene with military force to support the invasion. He held to this position even when it became evident that without that support the invasion would fail, as it did. I saw the same wisdom during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. By Saturday, October 27, 1962—the height of the crisis—the majority of the president’s military and civilian advisers were prepared to recommend that if Khrushchev did not remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba (which he agreed to the following day) the United States should attack the island.

But Kennedy repeatedly made the point that Saturday—both in Executive Committee sessions and later, in a small meeting with Bobby, Dean, Mac, and me—that the United States must make every effort to avoid the risk of an unpredictable war. He appeared willing, if necessary, to trade the obsolete American Jupiter missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba in order to avert this risk. He knew such an action was strongly opposed by the Turks, by NATO, and by most senior U.S. State and Defense Department officials. But he was prepared to take that stand to keep us out of war. So, I conclude that John Kennedy would have eventually gotten out of Vietnam rather than move more deeply in.71

Various individuals, such as aide Kenneth O’Donnell, Senator Mike Mansfield and Senator Wayne Morse, among others, have claimed that Kennedy privately expressed to them his intention to withdraw from Vietnam regardless of the war’s outcome. Chomsky dismisses these accounts as either retrospective recollections made after the fact or instances in which Kennedy was simply attempting to placate his critics.

While I agree with Chomsky that the contemporary documentary record generally carries greater evidentiary weight than personal recollections or anecdotal testimony, such accounts should not be dismissed outright, as Chomsky chooses to do. I will not recount these claims in detail here as I cover some of them in my book, America’s Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy, and others have been covered extensively elsewhere, such as in John Newman’s JFK and Vietnam and in James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable. Chomsky does not accuse these individuals of deliberately fabricating their accounts; rather, he argues that Kennedy may have misled them by telling them what they wanted to hear.

Other individuals have argued that JFK would have kept course and pursued the same policies as LBJ. But these statements tend to come from individuals not particularly close to JFK, such as Secretary of State Dean Rusk. In his oral history, Rusk declared that he was generally on the same page as JFK, but he also declared that he was generally in agreement with Walt Rostow.72 JFK referred to Walt as “the biggest Cold Warrior I’ve got” and further stated, “Walt had ten ideas, nine of which would lead to disaster.”73 Hilsman said of Rostow, “Jack Kennedy just thought Walt Rostow was laughable on Asia and Vietnam. He called him the ‘Air Marshal’ behind his back because he was always advocating bombing. But Jack Kennedy would never pay any attention to anything Walt Rostow said on Asia.”74 This implies that perhaps Rusk was imposing his own views on JFK. Indeed, both Robert Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy stated in their oral history interviews that JFK wanted to remove Dean Rusk as Secretary of State at the start of his second term and replace him with Robert McNamara.75

McGeorge Bundy stated honestly of the 1000-man withdrawal, “I remember it as very much coming out of a conversation that was quite closely held between Kennedy and McNamara. And what they meant by it beyond what they said, which was not very much, I honestly don’t know.”76

Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatrick stated in his oral history:

I do recall that the President became particularly restive in the summer and fall of ’63 about where we were going to come out, what was the exit point. And while I wasn’t personally privy to the discussions between him and McNamara which led to McNamara’s statement about the first withdrawal, McNamara indicated to me that this was part of a plan the President asked him to develop to unwind the whole thing.77

Perhaps Chomsky’s strongest argument for the troop withdrawal being contingent on success is his reference to Robert Kennedy’s oral history interview, recorded in 1964. In the interview, RFK was asked, “There was never any consideration given to pulling out?” and he replied, “No.” He was then asked, “But, at the same time, no disposition to go in?” He responded, “Everybody, including General MacArther, felt that land conflict between our troops —white troops and Asian —would only lead to disaster. So, we went in as advisors to try to get the Vietnamese to fight, themselves, because we couldn’t win the war for them. They had to win the war for themselves.” Finally, RFK was asked, “If the Vietnamese were about to lose it, would [JFK] propose to go in on land if he had to?” and RFK replied, “We’d face that when we came to it.”78 When Daniel Ellsberg later asked RFK the same question, Kennedy replied that JFK would have either gotten the South Vietnamese to ask the United States to leave or would have forced a negotiation with North Vietnam, but he would not have sent in combat troops. His answer mimicked Kenny O’Donnell’s claims. RFK expounded, “Nobody can say for sure what my brother would actually have done, in the actual circumstances of ’64 and ’65. I can’t say that, and even he couldn’t have said that in ’61. Maybe things would have gone just the same as they did. But I do know what he intended. All I can say is that he was absolutely determined not to send ground units.”79

Robert Kennedy’s interviews suggest that perhaps both sides of this debate have become overly focused on the wrong question. The narrow emphasis on whether Kennedy’s withdrawal plans were contingent upon the war progressing favorably has overshadowed a broader and more strongly supported argument: that Kennedy was highly unlikely to authorize the commitment of 500,000 US combat troops to Vietnam. In other words, he was highly unlikely to pursue the level of military escalation ultimately undertaken by his successors, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.

And what were JFK’s statements on the issue? They generally followed along the following line, as he stated in a September 2, 1963, TV interview with Walter Cronkite:

In the final analysis, it’s their war, they’re the ones who have to win it or lose it, we can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam against the Communists. We’re prepared to continue to assist them. … But these people who say we oughta withdraw from Vietnam are wholly wrong. … I think we should stay, we should make it clear … that while we wanna help, we don’t see a successful ending to this war unless the people will support it and the people will not support the effort if the government continues to follow the policy of the last two months [with the repression of the Buddhists.] … But we oughta remember that they’re the ones who are dying by the thousands and they’re the ones who have to win this war or they’re the ones who will lose it, we can’t do either.

It is this broader philosophy of Kennedy’s, which is well documented, that is often overlooked in the debate. The issue should not be framed as an all-or-nothing question. A range of possible outcomes exists regarding what might have occurred in Vietnam had Kennedy not been assassinated, yet the discussion often becomes confined to two opposing extremes.

In fact, the shift in US policy toward Vietnam can be seen almost immediately by comparing the pre-assassination draft of National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 273 with the version ultimately approved by President Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s death. Chomsky argues in his book that there was no meaningful difference between the draft and final versions, but a significant distinction is evident.

The original draft specified that any attacks against North Vietnam would be conducted solely with Government of Vietnam resources. The final version, revised after Kennedy’s assassination, removed this restriction, thereby expanding the potential scope of US involvement. In the early weeks of December 1963, plans began for American attacks on North Vietnam. These activities included “patrols” by US Navy patrollers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The first patrol began on February 28, 1964; the second patrol, which began July 31, 1964, led to the August 2 Gulf of Tonkin incident, which in turn led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution by Congress, and the eventual deployment of US combat troops into Vietnam in 1965.80

Chomsky dismisses this distinction in the final approved version of NSAM 273, arguing that Kennedy was already open to using US resources for operations against North Vietnam. As support for this view, he cites General Earle Wheeler, Chief of Staff of the US Army, who allegedly stated that when he discussed potential attacks on North Vietnam with Kennedy, the president “was quite interested in this.” This phrase, however, is not found anywhere in Wheeler’s oral history. What Wheeler did state in his 1964 oral history is, “While we did start to plan on some maritime operations against the north, other things of that kind, it was really only this past year that we got these things launched as real programs. Now, I don’t know what might have happened had President Kennedy not been murdered.”81

One last item worth addressing which Chomsky covers in his book is the November 2, 1963, coup against South Vietnamese president Diệm. Chomsky argues that it was the Kennedy Administration’s obsession with victory that caused it to overthrow Diệm.82 What Chomsky fails to mention is that General Maxwell Taylor (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), CIA Director John McCone, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, as well as Robert Kennedy all opposed the coup. Those who wanted to support the generals in South Vietnam with their coup ambitions were Michael Forrestal, Averell Harriman, and Roger Hilsman, JFK’s more dovish advisors. They were embarrassed by Diệm’s repression of the Buddhists, encouraged by his brother Ngô Đình Nhu and his wife, Madame Nhu.83

Chomsky claimed that the coup was to avoid Diệm’s brother Nhu from negotiating with the North Vietnamese. William Sullivan, who had originally reached out to the North Vietnamese about a negotiated settlement on behalf of JFK, countered Chomsky by stating, “The basic disillusionment with Nhu was not on fear of what he was doing with the North Vietnamese. It was what he was doing and destroying the whole prospect for his brother’s regime to have any popular base.”84

Chomsky further argues that Kennedy supported a coup in order to prevent the South Vietnamese government from requesting the withdrawal of US forces. However, as noted earlier, Kennedy had publicly stated at a May 1963 press conference that if Vietnam requested a withdrawal, the United States would comply immediately. The Diệm government therefore had approximately six months in which it could have made such a request, potentially forcing Kennedy to either uphold his public commitment or reverse his stated position.

Regarding Kennedy’s position on a potential coup, he considered the competing views of his advisers but ultimately instructed South Vietnamese Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge that “no initiative should be taken to give any active covert encouragement of a coup.” Instead, he directed that US officials should “identify and build contacts with possible alternative leadership as and when it appears.”

Kennedy was aware that coup plotting was widespread in South Vietnam. Such efforts had been a recurring feature throughout Diệm’s rule and intensified following the Buddhist repression during the summer of 1963. However, Kennedy did not want Diệm to be killed. At a meeting on August 28, 1963, he asked his advisers whether Diệm and his brother Nhu would be permitted to go into exile if the generals successfully carried out a coup. When his advisers responded, “We have no information,” Kennedy replied, “I think it would be important that nothing happen to them.”85

General Taylor recounted JFK’s reaction to learning of the murders of Diệm and Nhu, “Kennedy leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before. He had always insisted that Diệm must never suffer more than exile.”86 Arthur Schlesinger noted that JFK “was somber and shaken. I had not seen him so depressed since the Bay of Pigs.”87

Just as Kennedy undertook a period of reassessment and reflection following the Bay of Pigs disaster, he appeared prepared to conduct a similar review of US policy toward Vietnam. Shortly after the coup, in a self-recorded memorandum, he acknowledged, “I feel that we must bear a good deal of responsibility for [the coup].”88

JFK met with Michael Forrestal on November 21, 1963, shortly before his trip to Texas. Forrestal recounted the encounter as follows, “He asked me to stay a bit and he said, ‘When you come back [from Cambodia] I want you to come and see me, because we have to start a plan for what we are going to do now, in South Vietnam.’ He said, ‘I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country; what we thought we were doing; and what we now think we can do. I even want to think about whether or not we should be there.”89 Roger Hilsman concluded in his oral history, that had Kennedy not been assassinated, “There would have been a lot of Americans alive today that aren’t and a hell of a lot of Vietnamese.”90

Was Kennedy a perfect president? No. Are there legitimate grounds for criticizing some of his decisions? Certainly. Does he bear some responsibility for the decisions and policies that contributed to America’s growing involvement in Vietnam? Yes.

However, the argument advanced by Chomsky—that Kennedy’s assassination had no meaningful impact on the course of the Vietnam War—is, in this author’s view, difficult to defend. Had Kennedy irrevocably committed himself to withdrawing from Vietnam regardless of the circumstances? That cannot be known with certainty. Even if he had reached such a conclusion privately, he almost certainly would have retained the flexibility to reconsider if events changed.

At the same time, there is a compelling case that Kennedy had already moved toward disengagement and may well have intended to withdraw regardless of the military situation. More importantly, the historical record contains substantial evidence that he was highly unlikely to authorize the kind of massive American military escalation that ultimately occurred under Lyndon Johnson. Whatever uncertainties remain about the precise timing or conditions of withdrawal, there are strong reasons to believe that Kennedy would not have transformed Vietnam into the large-scale American war it became after his death.

Chomsky argues that “advocacy of withdrawal after victory” was not a controversial position and therefore that Kennedy’s approach was neither unique nor particularly significant. In contrast, he acknowledges that “withdrawal without victory” would have been a highly controversial policy.91

Yet despite recognizing the political sensitivity of such a position, Chomsky interprets Kennedy’s public statements that he did not intend to withdraw as a straightforward reflection of his actual plans. He does not sufficiently consider the possibility that Kennedy may have deliberately kept his options and intentions private, particularly given the intense anti-communist atmosphere of the era and the political risks associated with openly advocating disengagement from a conflict viewed by many as part of the broader struggle against communism.

At the height of COVID policy enforcements, Chomsky declared that the unvaccinated should be kept away from society and if they could no longer access food, “‘well, that’s actually their problem.”92 This is precisely the type of rabid ideology that JFK was up against, which would obviously require careful communication on his part. JFK was dealing with individuals who were just as fanatical about opposing communism as Chomsky was in supporting authoritarian COVID policies.

According to a Louis Harris poll in the summer of 1963, Americans by a 2-to-1 margin favored sending in troops “on a large scale” if the communist threat grew worse. In 1952, Republicans had made “Who Lost China?” a major issue in the presidential election. JFK certainly would not have wanted to campaign in 1964 with the phrase, “Who Lost Indochina?” plaguing him.93

Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella described Kennedy’s circumstance, “He gave me the impression of a courageous and honest man, but he seemed to be subjected to endless pressure and to be, to an extraordinary degree, the prisoner of a system. … [I have] personal feelings of sympathy and respect towards him.”94 In this respect, Chomsky was correct on one point: Kennedy governed within a system. He was not a king, and he did not exercise complete control over every policy that emerged from his administration. Yet, despite recognizing these institutional constraints, Chomsky affords Kennedy little allowance for the difficult choices he faced as president or the political realities within which those decisions were made.

Chomsky can question JFK’s morality, but what is Chomsky’s morality in constantly dismissing the short- and long-term ramifications of the JFK assassination? Would not a United States run by JFK have led to better outcomes, even if far from perfect? What is Chomsky accomplishing other than preventing real progress, even if not perfect progress? In this author’s view, his role in preventing the truth of JFK’s assassination from being revealed has done far more harm to the United States and the world than anything JFK did.

At the beginning of this article, I argued that Chomsky’s book, whether by design or consequence, served two propagandistic functions: first, it portrayed Kennedy as a committed warmonger whose assassination had no meaningful impact on the course of global events; and second, it narrowed the assassination debate to a single question: whether Kennedy intended to withdraw from Vietnam, even in a losing scenario.

The first function is readily apparent to many readers, while the second receives far less attention. Yet the assumption that resolving the Vietnam question inherently answers the assassination question permeates through Chomsky’s book. In this sense, the book can be viewed as operating on two levels: it not only advances a particular interpretation of Kennedy’s policies, but also constrains the broader framework through which the assassination itself is examined.

Why has the Kennedy debate become so narrowly centered on a potential Vietnam withdrawal when NSAM 263 was signed in October 1963 and evidence indicates that assassination planning was already well underway by that point? Should this not tell us that we need to extend the scope of analysis to other policies as the potential trigger of the crime?

Moreover, the Vietnam debate itself is often framed in overly simplistic, binary terms. There is substantial evidence dating back to Kennedy’s Senate years—and continuing throughout his presidency—that he had little interest in committing the United States to a large-scale war in Southeast Asia. Therefore, regardless of whether he had reached a final decision to withdraw unconditionally, there is considerable evidence suggesting that he was unlikely to expand the conflict on the scale that ultimately occurred under Lyndon Johnson.

This pattern was evident as early as 1961, when Kennedy resisted proposals for a major US troop commitment, and again in the spring of 1962, when he initially requested that withdrawal plans be developed. Given this timeline, should greater attention not be directed toward other policy disputes that more closely align with the period in which assassination planning was developing?

In this respect, both sides of the debate bear responsibility for narrowing the discussion around a single issue and limiting the scope of inquiry.

Chomsky’s book was written in response to the film JFK, which was executive produced by Arnon Milchan. As discussed in my Substack article, “JFK: Myth vs. Reality,” there are reasons to examine why Milchan may have had a strong interest both in supporting Stone’s film and in the broader debate that it created.

The height of this debate occurred at a time when the declassification of records was beginning to shed light on Kennedy’s conflicts and policy disputes in other areas—areas of great interest to Milchan—conflicts that more closely corresponded with the assassination timeline, involved fewer ambiguities, and have received comparatively little attention within much of JFK assassination research.

Whether intended or not, both Chomsky and the film have effectively served as gatekeepers. But what if both are incorrect in their ultimate conclusions? The established framework, set by both, does not allow for this possibility. Both the book and the film promote a similar premise: that if a high-level conspiracy existed, it must have occurred within a specific context and been motivated by a particular set of issues.

I would argue that this framework is not only unfair to President Kennedy but has also limited the pursuit of a fuller understanding of his assassination. This is not to suggest that those who believe Vietnam was a central motive are acting in bad faith, nor that their arguments are without merit. Rather, the point is that the range of possibilities should not be confined to those promoted by Warner Bros. and Arnon Milchan. Powerful interests often promote ideas not because they are correct but because they serve a useful purpose.

The film ultimately helped lead to the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), which was an important and positive development. However, the ARRB’s determinations were still made by individuals operating within a particular framework—one that required them to decide which records qualified as assassination-related and which did not.

Should not every major policy dispute and conflict faced by Kennedy in 1963 have been acknowledged as potentially relevant assassination material? Even if a direct connection could not immediately be established, such records would allow future researchers to examine the full scope of pressures, controversies, and tensions surrounding the President during the final year of his life.

Indeed, many of the documents declassified over the past three decades that may prove to be among the most relevant to understanding the assassination were never designated by the ARRB as JFK assassination records. This suggests a limited scope of inquiry—one that directs attention toward certain records while leaving other potentially significant areas outside the primary focus of review, effectively channeling attention toward selected evidence while diverting it from other potentially relevant lines of inquiry, giving the classic “look over here, not over there” vibe.

If your spouse, parent, or sibling were murdered, would you not want every significant conflict and unresolved tension they faced in their final year to be available for examination as potentially relevant to understanding why they were killed? The pursuit of justice requires examining the complete context surrounding a crime, not only the areas that fit within an initially defined framework.

It is time to move the JFK conversation beyond the limitations of the existing framework and examine the assassination through a broader lens—one that considers the full spectrum of conflicts, policies, and historical circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s presidency.

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The fact of the matter is that the management of our natural resources, instead of being primarily a problem of conserving them or saving them now require the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We have come to realize to a large extent that resources are not passive. Resources are not merely something that was put here by nature. Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which ten years ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources of the United States, and that is the most significant fact in conservation. In the short space of eighteen years, almost twenty years, the wealth of this country has gone up 300 percent. In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be, can be, must be—if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in the nation, the state, the community, and individually, if we maintain a vigorous and hopeful pursuit of life and knowledge, the resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them so greatly, that all those people who thought forty years ago that this country would be exhausted in the middle of the century, will have been proven wrong—it’s going to be richer than ever.1

JFK even called out Thomas Malthus, who believed humans would eventually outgrow their resources:

Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man by using up all of his available resources would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope, and I believe know, that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come. The earth can be an abundant mother to all of the people that will be born in the coming years if we learn to use her with skill and wisdom, to heal her wounds, replenish her vitality and utilize her potentialities.2

President Kennedy’s determination to improve the human condition and his willingness to use every available tool to reduce poverty and raise living standards drew criticism from some quarters. The Wall Street Journal labeled him a “self-appointed enforcer of progress,”3 while Fortune criticized what it described as his promotion of the “universal lust for industrialization and growth.”4 But JFK was undeterred. At his last cabinet meeting before his death, JFK had scribbled and circled the word poverty seven times.5 According to presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., JFK’s two main points of focus in 1964 were to be poverty and the environment.

Although President Kennedy firmly believed in harnessing the power of science to improve society, he also recognized the need for careful oversight and understood the significant harm that could result if appropriate safeguards were absent. Thus, while President Kennedy deeply appreciated the transformative potential of science, he should also be remembered for the caution and responsibility with which he approached scientific progress. As he once quipped, “Life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.”6

JFK articulated these concerns during a speech to the National Academy of Sciences:

[We have a] responsibility to control the effects of our own scientific experiments. For as science investigates the natural environment it also modifies it and that modification may have incalculable consequences for evil as well as for good. … Science has the power, for the first time in history, now, to undertake experiments with premeditation which can irreversibly alter our biological and physical environment on a global scale. The problem is difficult because it is hard to know in advance whether the cumulative effects of a particular experiment will help or harm mankind. In the case of nuclear testing, the world is satisfied that radioactive contamination involves unnecessary risks and we are all heartened that more than one hundred nations have joined to outlaw testing in environments where the effects most directly threaten mankind. In other fields we may be less sure. … The government has the clear responsibility to weigh the importance of large-scale experiments to the advance of knowledge or to national security against the possibility of adverse or destructive effects.7

President Kennedy did not merely express these concerns in public speeches; he also formalized them in National Security Action Memorandum 235, which he signed on April 17, 1963. The memorandum is sufficiently significant that it is worth reproducing in full:

TO

The Secretary of State

The Secretary of Defense

The Secretary of the Interior

The Secretary of Commerce

The Secretary of Agriculture

The Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare

The Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission

The Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The Director, National Science Foundation

The Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

The Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology

SUBJECT

Large-Scale Scientific or Technological Experiments with Possible Adverse Environmental Effects

I have approved the following policy guides governing the conduct of large-scale scientific or technological experiments that might have significant or protracted effects on the physical or biological environment. Experiments which by their nature could result in domestic or foreign allegations that they might have such effects will be included in this category even though the sponsoring agency feels confident that such allegations would in fact prove to be unfounded.

1. The head of any agency that proposes to undertake a large-scale scientific or technological experiment that might have significant or protracted effects on the physical or biological environment will call such proposals to the attention of the Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology. Notification of such experiments will be given sufficiently in advance that they may be modified, postponed, or cancelled, if such action is judged necessary in the national interest.

2. In support of proposals for such experiments, the sponsoring agency will prepare for the Special Assistant for Science and Technology a detailed evaluation of the importance of the particular experiment and the possible direct or indirect effects that might be associated with it.

3. The Special Assistant for Science and Technology will review the proposals and supporting materials presented by the sponsoring agency in order to assure that the need for the experiment has been properly weighed against possible adverse environmental effects.

4. On the basis of this review, the Special Assistant for Science and Technology will recommend to me what action should be taken on the proposed experiment. If the Special Assistant judges that inadequate information is available on which to make a judgment, he may request that additional studies be undertaken by the sponsoring agency or he may undertake an independent study of the problem.

5. Any experiment that may involve significant or protracted adverse effects will not be conducted without my prior approval.

6. In the case of experiments (such as atmospheric nuclear tests) that have major national security implications, the head of the sponsoring agency will notify the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs as well as the Special Assistant for Science and Technology and will supply both with an evaluation of the importance of the particular experiment and the possible direct or indirect effects that might be associated with it. The Special Assistant for National Security Affairs will determine on an individual case basis the procedure to be followed in reviewing these experiments in order to assure that the need for the experiment has been properly weighed against possible adverse environmental effects.

7. To the extent that it is consistent with national security and subsequent to approval, there should be early and widespread dissemination of public information explaining experiments of this type.

8. While the final decision to conduct such experiments must continue to reside with the government, the National Academy of Sciences and where appropriate international scientific bodies or intergovernmental organizations may be consulted in the case of those experiments that might have adverse environmental effects beyond the U.S. Recommendation on the advisability of this course of action will be made by the Special Assistant for Science and Technology in consultation with the sponsoring agency and the State Department.

John F. Kennedy

The precise reasons that prompted President Kennedy to issue this National Security Action Memorandum are unclear. One possibility is that it reflected his growing concern over the dangers posed by atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, an issue that would later be addressed through the ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in the fall of 1963. Another plausible explanation, given the timing, is that the memorandum was influenced, at least in part, by the concerns raised by biologist Rachel Carson regarding the environmental and public health effects of the insecticide DDT. In 1962, Carson had completed Silent Spring, the landmark book that brought widespread attention to the ecological and human health risks associated with indiscriminate pesticide use. She wrote:

The balance of nature is built of a series of interrelationships between living things, and between living things and their environment. You can’t just step in with some brute force and change one thing without changing a good many others. Now this doesn’t mean, of course, that we must never interfere, that we must not attempt to tilt the balance of nature in our favor. But when we do make this attempt, we must know what we’re doing, we must know the consequences.

The chemical industry reacted unfavorably to President Kennedy’s willingness to take Silent Spring seriously. By acknowledging the book’s concerns and calling for further investigation, he lent credibility to arguments that many in the industry sought to dismiss. Critics characterized the book as “alarmist” and “hysterical.” One detractor even asserted, “If man were to faithfully follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases would once again inherit the earth.”8 Rather than accept either side’s claims at face value, Kennedy directed his President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) to investigate the issue. In May 1963, the committee released its findings, which largely vindicated Carson’s conclusions.9

In his February 1963 message to Congress, JFK stated that “substantial advances have been made during the past year in protecting the American people against contamination of food, air and water, and from hazards associated with drugs.”10 This included:

• the spending of $600 million to build needed waste treatment facilities, the largest such expenditure in US history

• the strengthening of a national program of protection against undue exposure to radiation

• Drug law amendments which set higher standards of safety, efficacy, and honesty in the manufacture and sale of drugs. The new legislation required the FDA’s approval before a drug could be marketed. It transferred to the FDA control over prescription drug advertising, which would have to include accurate information about side effects. It required the FDA to approve efficacy (previously, it was only responsible for safety approval). Finally, it mandated that the FDA conduct a retrospective evaluation of the effectiveness of drugs approved for safety between 1938 and 1962.11 This led to a retrospective review of all drugs approved during those decades. By the early 1970s, this review had categorized approximately six hundred medicines as “ineffective” and forced their removal from the market.12

Despite these achievements, President Kennedy emphasized that “much remains to be done.” He identified several areas requiring continued action, including stronger regulation of food, drugs, medical devices, and cosmetics; expanded efforts to control air pollution; and the creation of a centralized facility dedicated to environmental health research. Kennedy wrote:

The long-range assault of multiple environmental contaminations on human health are cumulative and interrelated. It is of great importance, therefore, that our efforts to learn about and control health hazards be unified and mutually supporting. The President’s Science Advisory Committee, in cooperation with the Federal Council for Science and Technology, has undertaken a major review of the Government’s activities with respect to the use of chemicals in the environment.13

This recommendation ultimately led to the establishment of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in 1966, located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The institute’s goal is to study how the environment affects human health and disease.

These recommendations also helped pave the way for the Clean Air Act of 1963, the first federal legislation to authorize the U.S. government to take direct action in addressing air pollution. In his oral history, Vernon G. MacKenzie, chief of the Public Health Service Division of Air Pollution, stated:

The legislation that was enacted in the form of the Clean Air Act of 1963, in my view, has led to some real progress in dealing with this problem. It broadened the base of the federal program by making more definitive the authorities for dealing with the research and other technical aspects of the problem, and provided a greater degree of financial support. … But perhaps more importantly, it provided new mechanisms for applying the results of research into the actual control of air pollution. This was done by stimulus of state and local governments agencies not only by providing them with technical assistance but by, for the first time, providing financial assistance for the development and improvement of their programs and also by the entrance of the federal government into the actual legal regulatory control aspects of air pollution to supplement in a number of ways the ··· activities of state and local governments, particularly with respect to problems which are not readily within their reach legally. Thus, this new legislation provided for a partnership between all the levels of government so that the total effort could be made more productive.

Such joint effort applies particularly with respect to interstate air pollution problems, that is, a problem in which air pollution arises in one state and adversely affects health or welfare of people in another state. Up to that time, people who were adversely affected in this way--that is, by pollution arising in another state than that in which they were resident--had no legal recourse, but were completely at the mercy, shall I say, of the people in the offending state where the pollution arose. Under the new law, as passed in 1963, the federal government took direct jurisdiction with respect to such interstate problems. In the several years that have elapsed since that legislation was enacted, steps have been taken legally to reduce these adverse effects of an interstate character in areas in which there is a resident population of approximately twenty-five million people. So, I think this has led to something that is quite significant and has affected a large part of our population.14

Perhaps Kennedy’s greatest environmental contribution was the ratification of the nuclear test ban treaty. Aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. stated, “I have the impression that we would not have had a test ban treaty if … the president … had not been so deeply committed and forced the issue.”15

JFK’s concern for the environment was driven not only by his commitment to protecting human health but also by his love of nature. During his presidency, he established three national seashore parks, preserving important coastal landscapes for future generations:

I don’t know why it should be that six or seven percent only, of the whole Atlantic Coast, should be in the public sphere and the rest owned by private citizens and denied to many millions of our fellow citizens. In the last Congress, three national sea shores were created for all our people: Cape Cod in the Atlantic, Point Reyes in the Pacific, and Padre Island on the Gulf, representing the first major additions to our coast to coast national park system in 16 years, more seashore parks, and I can assure you they are wholly inadequate, more seashore parks than were authorized all throughout our history.16

Secretary of the Interior Stuart Udall remarked on President Kennedy’s efforts to establish these parks:

Well, it was very fortunate for me that President Kennedy was so deeply and personally involved in Cape Cod, because he knew out of personal experience a lot of things that I didn’t have to tell him, as to the fact that the national policy needed to be changed and that that these magnificent coastline areas that were left were going, going, gone. Because he introduced his bill as a senator in 1956-57. Of course, he knew and loved the Cape and all the people up there were concerned, and they got the park service and others working on it. But the bill didn’t go very far. There was a lot of opposition on the Cape. The congressman from there always was dragging his feet and Kennedy wasn’t able as a senator to get much headway. I don’t know whether a bill passed the senate. I don’t think it did. But when he became president, naturally, with the Democrats controlling Congress and everything, it was rather simple and easy to say, “Well boys, we’re going to begin by giving the President a present of a national park in his own state.” Naturally, he was all for it. This passed the first year. … It was also something that the President knew intimately and watched closely and was very pleased with. But then naturally he was not going to be selfish. Well, I remember him saying to me, “Well, aren’t there some more seashores we can save?” Of course, that gave me my green light to go with Point Reyes and Padre Island and the others that we began working on. We set out looking at the entire coastline of the country to find these superb seashore areas that were left, could be bought and put into the national park system.17

As demonstrated, President John F. Kennedy expressed a genuine commitment to protecting human health, safeguarding the environment, and improving living conditions and standards of living through a variety of initiatives. Stuart Udall, who worked closely with Kennedy on environmental matters, reflected on the significance of Kennedy’s legacy:

One of John Kennedy’s memorable achievements was the hold he gained on world opinion. When he died, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan wrote that JFK “...seemed, in his own person, to embody all of the hopes and aspirations of this new world that is trying to emerge ...” If Macmillan was right, this was a remarkable thing to accomplish in three swift years. It is clear Kennedy was loved and revered by millions of ordinary people around the globe because somehow, he had the capacity to lift their hopes, to catch their imaginations. If fifty years from now Kennedy is revealed as the last American President who was a true global leader idolized and revered in all parts of the world, this phenomenon alone will give pause to future historians.18

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During the 1960 presidential campaign, Feinberg approached JFK. According to close JFK friend Charles Bartlett, “As an American citizen, he was outraged to have a Zionist group come to him and say, ‘We know your campaign is in trouble. We’re willing to pay your bills if you let us have control of your Middle East policy.’” Bartlett recalled that Kennedy was deeply upset and concluded that “if he ever did get to be president, he was going to do something about it.”3

JFK’s wariness of Feinberg was strong enough that he asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to order a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) background check on him in March 1961. The background check confirmed Feinberg’s close ties to Israel but failed to uncover his role in organizing the financing of the highly secretive Dimona project.4

In a previous Substack article, “JFK: Myth vs. Reality,”5 I outlined not only JFK’s battle over Dimona and the obvious reality that Feinberg had failed to gain control over JFK’s Middle East policy but also stressed the importance of the luncheon speaking site in Dallas. Oswald had been placed into the Texas School Book Depository building before the luncheon site was even known, implying that if there was a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, then the organizers either relied on dumb luck or had the ability to manipulate the selection of the luncheon site. The Dallas luncheon site came about as a result of the following chain of events:

• In early October, Governor John Connolly visited JFK and pushed for a “nonpolitical” Dallas visit handing over planning of the trip to the Dallas Citizens Council & the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, which compromised the host committee, giving them say over the luncheon site and motorcade route. The head of the host committee was Sam Bloom, who ran the Bloom Advertising Agency.6 According to one of Bloom’s employees, “That project [ JFK’s trip to Dallas], like all non-advertising projects at Bloom, was total madness. Secret Service men, aides to the President, press people—they all swarmed around the agency for days.”7 The host committee (which appears to have been actively led by Bloom) made a series of questionable decisions that contributed to the circumstances surrounding the assassination. These included positioning the media at the rear of the motorcade—after Bloom secured convertible press vehicles instead of the customary flatbed truck—resulting in no press photographs or video footage of the assassination itself. Bloom’s advertising agency also published inconsistent motorcade routes in local newspapers, leaving Dealey Plaza less crowded than it otherwise might have been.8 Bloom was involved in luncheon site and motorcade route meetings.9 He also encouraged police to make Oswald available to the press (where Jack Ruby shot him).10 The FBI found a card in Ruby’s apartment with Bloom’s contact info scribbled on it.11 Bloom was a supporter of Israel,12 and a friend of Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Governor John Connolly.13 Why was one of the top PR men in the city keeping the press and public away from the Dealey Plaza location? And why did Bloom, while avoiding press coverage for JFK, seek it for Oswald? Would a PR man not be consistent and seek press access for both?

• JFK’s advance man, Jerry Bruno, wanted JFK to speak at the Hilton, which would not have allowed for the motorcade route to go past the TSBD, however the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages Convention had booked the site and did not want to give it up.14 Multiple financiers of Israel’s nukes program are founders of carbonated beverage companies.15

• After being informed that the Hilton was unavailable, Bruno selected the Women’s Building, which also did not allow for the motorcade to go past the TSBD.16 However, the host committee, and in particular, Governor John Connolly, suggested Bruno choose the Trade Mart instead, which did allow for the motorcade to go past the TSBD. Bruno then went to the head of the Secret Service, Gerald Behn, and Behn informed Bruno that he preferred the Women’s Building,17 so Bruno informed the Host Committee that he was sticking with the Women’s Building. However, Connolly then threatened to cancel the trip, and Bruno finally acquiesced on November 15 to the Trade Mart location.18

Without this chain of events, JFK could not have been assassinated in front of the TSBD. Much is often made of the fact that former CIA Director Allen Dulles met with Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon a few months prior to the assassination. Some argue that he did this to involve the Secret Service in the crime. However, the head of the Secret Service chose a lunch location that did not allow the motorcade to go past the TSBD. This shows how little attention many pay to the lunch location but should, as this fact makes the Dulles anecdote irrelevant. If the Secret Service as an institution was involved in the assassination, then the head of the Secret Service would not have chosen the Women’s Building as the lunch location. It does appear that at least one Secret Service agent, Emory Roberts, was compromised, but that is different from the institution as a whole. What we do know, however, is that it was the insistence of the Host Committee which made the luncheon site, and hence the assassination, possible.

The question then becomes, what if Bruno had not acquiesced and Governor John Connolly had cancelled the trip? There is evidence of a potential assassination plot prior to Dallas, on November 2, in Chicago, which failed after JFK made a last-minute cancellation.19 But, what was JFK’s schedule after Dallas? In my Substack article, “JFK: Myth vs. Reality,”20 I detailed how those involved with Dimona were effectively “saved by the bell” by the assassination of JFK, which spared them from the end-of-year inspections of the Dimona nuclear facility that had been promised to the president following his repeated and forceful demands.

According to documents at the JFK Library, Abraham Feinberg “strongly recommended” to JFK, initially in May and then again in August, that he accept a speaking invitation for December 5, 1963, at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The chairman of the institute even offered to move the annual event, which had always been in New York City, to Washington DC if that would make it more possible for the President to attend. He further wrote, “Because of the President’s interest in the Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Research Fund, we are prepared to allocate $1 million of the proceeds for an Eleanor Roosevelt Chair in cancer research at the Weizmann Institute.”21 JFK ultimately accepted the invitation to speak in New York City.

In early November, the executive vice president of the institute proactively reached out to the White House and asked to be briefed on the various aspects of the security arrangements.22

Feinberg served as president of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science,23 the official U.S. support organization responsible for raising funds for the Weizmann Institute of Science, a public research university and graduate school in Israel.

In addition to the speaking engagement at the Weizmann Institute of Science, JFK was also invited by Brandeis University to a mid-December speaking engagement, also in New York City, though this author does not know if this second invitation was accepted. Feinberg had close ties to Brandeis, serving as chairman of the board of trustees from 1954 to 1961.24

While we do not know if Feinberg’s strong recommendation that President Kennedy deliver a speech in New York City in early December—at an event over which Feinberg would have exercised considerable control—was related to the end-of-year deadline for the Dimona inspections, it nonetheless raises a legitimate question. Given the significance of the Dallas luncheon venue in the events of November 22, the reported existence of alleged assassination plots in the weeks preceding Dallas, and Feinberg’s close ties to Dimona, one must ask: even if JFK had survived Dallas, would he have survived New York City? Would he have lived to see the “end of the year”?

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This proposed section has generated much conversation and controversy. One important question to ask is, why integrate such capabilities, why not simply sign a mutual defense treaty? Indeed, many US politicians have repeatedly proclaimed Israel to be the United States’ “greatest ally” making it surprising that no such treaty exists. Such a treaty would likely need to define the borders that would be applicable to the treaty and Israel has never had solidly defined borders. It has, over the years, slowly expanded its territory.

The question then becomes, why did Israel make a large push for a security guarantee in 1963, repeatedly pressing President John F. Kennedy? And why did Lyndon Johnson not offer Israel a formal security guarantee despite reversing all the other policies toward Israel which had created, in the words of Israeli Minister Mordechai Gazit, “a state of crisis” in the US/Israeli relationship2 under the Kennedy administration? After all, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “Historians generally regard Johnson as the President most uniformly friendly to Israel” and “Israel has had no better friend” than Lyndon Johnson.3 Johnson was very close to Abraham Feinberg, who was organizing the financing for Israel’s nuclear weapons program.4 According to reporter Seymour Hersh, Feinberg “enjoyed the greatest presidential access and influence … with Lyndon Johnson. … Even the most senior members of the National Security Council [under Johnson] understood that any issue raised by Feinberg had to be answered.”5 It was under Johnson that Israel is believed to have developed its initial nuclear weapons. Johnson did not show the same opposition to Israel’s nukes program as JFK had. At a September 9, 1963, meeting, JFK expressed, “One of the best arguments, of course, for [the nuclear test ban treaty] is actually what situation we’ll face if we ever [reject] this treaty, we would really be in one hell of a mess. … My God, every country heading towards nuclear, Israel, Egypt, … we’d have a bitch of [a scenario].”6 It is also during Johnson’s presidency that Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank.

At a July 23, 1963, meeting, National Security Council Member Robert Komer, raised with JFK the lack of a US response to Israel’s request for a security guarantee: “One more problem before we leave, and that is the question of BG’s [Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion] letter, two and a half months ago, asking for a security guarantee. They’re asking every week, on the week, where is it?”7

At its May 7, 1963, annual conference AIPAC declared that one of its main objectives was the need for a clear security guarantee for Israel.8 In a May 12 letter to JFK, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion requested a formal security guarantee.9 At a May 17 meeting, JFK contemplated a potential joint security guarantee to Israel and Egypt. At the meeting JFK clearly stated that the guarantee would be for the Tripartite Declaration, i.e. the borders and armistice lines established between Israel and its Arab neighbors in 1949.10 Such a security guarantee would have meant no 1967 war and no expansion of Israeli territory. JFK sent a US representative, John J. McCloy (who later served on the Warren Commission) to approach Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser first. McCloy met with Nasser in late June; however, Nasser rejected the proposal of a joint security guarantee, indicating that he did not want an “umbrella” from the Western powers.11 Partly due to Nasser’s rejection and partly due to CIA Director John McCone’s claims that not much was happening at Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility at the moment, JFK, by the July 23 meeting had shifted away from the desire for a security guarantee, “If Mr. McCloy goes at this point [to Israel to discuss arms limitation], it seems to me they’re gonna try to bargain out. As I understand it, Mr. McCone’s impression is they’re not doing anything very much, if that’s so, we’re not in so much of a hurry, and I’m afraid we may be selling quite a lot and not getting very much”. JFK recommended instead that the U.S. maintain pressure on Israel for inspections via communication between the US ambassador to Israel and the new Israeli Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol.12 Eshkol ultimately agreed on August 19 to “end of year” inspections13 and Kennedy formally denied the request for a security guarantee on October 3.14

We know Nasser did not want the joint security guarantee proposed by JFK, but the question becomes, what exactly did Israel want from JFK and why were they pushing so hard for a security guarantee in the late spring and summer of 1963? Any security guarantee offered by JFK would almost certainly have required not only an agreed definition of Israel’s borders, but also comprehensive access to the Dimona nuclear facility to verify that it was being used exclusively for peaceful purposes and that any pursuit of nuclear weapons had been abandoned. However, it is unclear that Israel was willing to give up on its nuclear weapons program. Indeed, in his farewell speech to the Armaments Development Authority (RAFAEL) on June 27, 1963, Ben-Gurion (who resigned on June 16 after an ultimatum from JFK) expressed, “I am confident that science is able to provide us with the weapon that will … deter our enemies.”15

If Israel did not intend to abandon its nuclear weapons program, then an obvious question arises: why seek a security guarantee from JFK at all? Any such guarantee would almost certainly have been contingent upon comprehensive inspections of the Dimona facility, and verification that Israel had renounced the development of nuclear weapons. Had those conditions not been met, there is good reason to question whether the guarantee would have remained in force. As JFK stated, “My God, we wouldn’t continue our guarantee of Germany if they started manufacturing nuclear weapons, which is really of vital importance to us, why should we guarantee Israel if they’re doing it?”16 The 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories would have also likely invalidated any guarantee.

Whether intended or not, the campaign for a guarantee had the effect of convincing JFK that Israel was prepared to “bargain out” its nuclear ambitions. As a result, he failed to appreciate the extent to which the nuclear program had become integral to Israel’s long-term strategic vision, especially in the eyes of its principal architects and financial backers. This misunderstanding led him to underestimate the urgency of obtaining inspections of the Dimona reactor.

There is no doubt that many in Israel opposed the notion of the young nation becoming a nuclear power. Indeed, this is likely at least part of the reason why Ben Gurion secured financing from private donors located largely outside of Israel to develop its nukes. This private financing kept the program highly secretive. For those who directed and financed the program, however, the acquisition of nuclear weapons was viewed as essential to Israel’s long-term strategic objectives.

In my recent Substack article, “JFK: Myth vs. Reality,”17 I outlined a detailed timeline showing how Israel was effectively “saved by the bell” by the JFK assassination. Throughout all of 1963, Israel employed various tactics to delay JFK on his demand for inspections of their Dimona nuclear facility, with the resignation of its founding Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, playing a central role in that struggle. The push for a security guarantee no doubt contributed to the delay as well.

The persistent campaign for a U.S. security guarantee appears to have led JFK to believe that Israel’s refusal to permit inspections was primarily a negotiating tactic—a means of leveraging access to Dimona in exchange for a formal security commitment. An alternative interpretation, however, is that the resistance to inspections reflected deeper concerns: not only the desire to conceal the development of a nuclear weapons program, but also the possibility that US-supplied nuclear materials had been diverted to support it.18

In any case, to this day, proper inspections of Dimona have yet to occur. The cursory inspections conducted during the Johnson administration occurred only after the nuclear reactor had already gone critical (JFK demanded and was promised inspections before it went critical). Johnson’s inspections were not the detailed inspections that JFK had demanded. Instead of pursuing Dimona inspections, Congress is now considering merging US interests with Israeli interests in a way which would have been inconceivable during the Kennedy administration. As JFK cautioned, “I’m afraid we may be selling quite a lot and not getting very much.”

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1

The Kucinich Report

The NDAA Proposed Merger of the U.S. and Israeli Military is Strategically Unwise and Inherently Unconstitutional

This article is Part 2 in a three part series on the proposed merger of U.S and Israeli intelligence, military and biotechnology. Read Part 1 here…

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2 months ago · 97 likes · 3 comments · Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich

Then I encountered Michael Jackson’s “Tabloid Junkie.” Despite Jackson’s extraordinary global fame, the song received little mainstream attention. As a fan, I was well aware of the extent to which the media had shaped—and often distorted—public perceptions of him. If anyone understood the consequences of sensationalism, misinformation, and media manipulation from personal experience, it was Michael Jackson.

So, what did Michael Jackson tell us in his song, “Tabloid Junkie?” The song is not only an indictment of media behavior, but also a rebuke of the public’s willingness to accept press narratives uncritically. To illustrate his argument, Jackson invokes John F. Kennedy as a powerful reference point.

Let’s walk through the lyrics.

Speculate to break the one you hate
Circulate the lie you confiscate
Assassinate and mutilate
As the hounding media in hysteria
Who’s the next for you to resurrect
JFK exposed the CIA
Truth be told the grassy knoll
As the blackmail story in all your glory

That is a remarkably powerful opening verse. In the line, “speculate to break the one you hate,” Michael Jackson suggests that the media can use rumor, conjecture, and insinuation as weapons to undermine individuals it targets; mere suspicion and innuendo are enough to damage a person’s reputation. The next line, “circulate the lie you confiscate,” takes the critique even further, highlighting the media’s ability to amplify unverified allegations and spread them to a mass audience.

Jackson’s observation echoes the famous saying often attributed to Mark Twain: “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes.” Once a sensational accusation enters the public sphere, it can acquire a life of its own, regardless of its accuracy. The sentiment is also reflected in Jackson’s own words: “Lies run sprints, the truth runs marathons.” Both quotations capture the same reality—the speed and appeal of scandal often allow falsehoods to outpace the slower, more difficult process of establishing the truth.

The next lyric, “assassinate and mutilate,” can be interpreted as referring to both physical and character assassination. In the case of John F. Kennedy, Jackson suggests that the damage did not end with the assassination itself. In the aftermath of his death, the press, in his view, “mutilated” Kennedy’s public image, reshaping his legacy into something distant from the man he was. Through the line, “Who’s the next for you to resurrect?” Jackson implies that the media reconstructs their enemies posthumously in distorted and selective ways. In this reading, Kennedy is transformed from a diligent, thoughtful, and committed public servant into a caricature of a self-absorbed playboy.

The question then becomes: where does the truth reside? Jackson answers, “Truth be told the grassy knoll.” For those familiar with discussions surrounding the Kennedy assassination, the grassy knoll is commonly associated with theories of a second shooter and the possibility of a broader conspiracy. While belief in some form of conspiracy is widespread, Jackson’s significance lies less in repeating that idea and more in expanding its scope. He implicates not only the possibility of a coordinated physical assassination but also the media’s role in shaping and distorting Kennedy’s posthumous identity. In doing so, he extends the notion of “assassination” beyond the event itself to include the lasting destruction of character in the public imagination.

Let’s move on to the next set of lyrics.

It’s slander
You say it’s not a sword
But with your pen you torture men
You’d crucify the Lord

Here, Michael conveys how media is a tool of empire, with slander serving as one of its most effective weapons. Harm, in this sense, is not limited to physical violence but can take many forms, including psychological and reputational damage. It is reasonable to infer that Jackson was drawing on personal experience when making this observation.

The following lines may be among the most important for listeners to consider. In them, Michael urges the public not to participate in or amplify media manipulation.

And you don’t have to read it, read it
And you don’t have to eat it, eat it
To buy it is to feed it, feed it
So why do we keep foolin’ ourselves?

“Why do we keep foolin’ ourselves?” Jackson’s question turns the focus back on the audience as much as the media. While the media is criticized for shaping and distorting public images, the public is also implicated for accepting and perpetuating those narratives. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

Next came the chorus:

Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don’t make it factual
Though everybody wants to read all about it
Just because you read it in a magazine
Or see it on the TV screen
Don’t make it factual, actual
They say he’s homosexual

The last line, “They say he’s homosexual,” highlights the media’s tendency to weaponize sex in an effort to undermine a person’s public image. In Kennedy’s case, contradictory claims circulated—portraying him both as a womanizer and, at times, as homosexual, the latter often linked to his close and longstanding friendship with Lem Billings. These conflicting narratives reflect how sexualized rumors can be used less to clarify truth than to reshape perception.

Let’s move on to the second verse.

In the hood
Frame him if you could
Shoot to kill
To blame him if you will
If he dies sympathize
Such false witnesses
Damn self-righteousness

When applied to the Kennedy assassination, the above lyrics are quite powerful, and again, speak to Michael’s understanding of the dual assassination of JFK (physical and character). “Shoot to kill, to blame him if you will” can be interpreted as either referring to Oswald (“Frame him if you could”) or to JFK himself (the press blamed JFK’s vanity for the lax security along his motorcade route).

Next are perhaps the most profound lyrics, “If he dies sympathize, such false witnesses.” It raises the question of whether Jackson is accusing the press of offering insincere expressions of sympathy while simultaneously participating in the construction of misleading narratives about Kennedy’s life and death. In this interpretation, blaming the victim becomes a form of moral posturing, allowing the media to appear self-righteous even as it perpetuates distortion. Jackson ultimately implies that the intent behind the destruction of JFK—captured in the phrase “shoot to kill”—was deliberate from the outset.

In the following lines, Michael shifts away from the Kennedy assassination to more personal critiques of the press, condemning its misrepresentation of his vitiligo diagnosis. He also criticizes them for their treatment of Marilyn Monroe.

In the black
Stab me in the back
In the face
To lie and shame the race
Heroine and Marilyn
As the headline stories of
All your glory

In the rest of the song, MJ essentially repeats the prior lyrics, but it’s worth noting the below:

To read it sanctifies it, ‘fies it
Then why do we keep foolin’ ourselves

Here, Michael once again emphasizes that it is the public that ultimately lends credibility to press narratives. This raises an important question: why do we continue to accept and validate these accounts so readily?

“Tabloid Junkie” stands out as one of the most insightful songs Michael Jackson ever wrote. It deepened my understanding of the broader JFK narrative and encouraged a more critical stance toward the surrounding gossip and media portrayals. Through music’s subtle influence on perception, it also introduced the idea that Kennedy was subjected not only to physical assassination, but also to a sustained character assassination—together forming a kind of dual erasure.

While the physical assassination cannot be undone, Jackson’s message suggests that the ongoing distortion of Kennedy’s character can be resisted. Although JFK cannot be brought back to life, there remains the possibility of revisiting and re-engaging with the ideas and policies he represented.

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John F. Kennedy felt deeply that the duty of the American president was to “serve as … the defender of the public good and the public interest against all the narrow private interests which operate in our society.”1 He understood the grave challenges that money in politics placed on that obligation. And he made it clear that he would not succumb to those financial pressures. In a May 1961 press conference, he declared:

I made it clear in the campaign and I make it clear again … that while we’re glad to have support, no one should contribute to any campaign fund under the expectation that it will do them the slightest bit of good and they should not stay home from a campaign fund or dinner under the slightest expectation that it will do them a disservice.2

He understood, however, that such strict ethical adherence would be much easier achieved if financial pressures were taken off public officials. As such, he added to his statement that the U.S. needed “to try to work out some other way of raising funds for these presidential campaigns … and as long as we can’t get broader citizen participation, I think it ought to be done through the national government, and I would support that strongly if the Congress would move in that direction.”3

To help guide Congress, JFK created a Commission on Campaign Costs in October 1961 to review and recommend alternate ways of financing campaigns. In his announcement of the commission, he proclaimed:

To have Presidential candidates dependent on large financial contributions of those with special interests is highly undesirable, especially in these days when the public interest requires basic decisions so essential to our national security and survival.

… Traditionally, the funds for national campaigns have been supplied entirely by private contributions, with the candidates forced to depend in the main on large sums from a relatively small number of contributors. It is not healthy for the democratic process—or for ethical standards in our government—to keep our national candidates in this position of dependence. I have long thought that we should either provide a federal share in campaign costs, or reduce the cost of campaign services, or both.4

In April 1962, the commission issued its findings.5 On May 29, 1962, JFK wrote a letter to the president of the Senate and the speaker of the House, stating, “It is essential to broaden the base of financial support for candidates and parties. …” JFK indicated that this could be accomplished via an incentive system. He specifically recommended a tax incentive that would give each taxpayer the choice of receiving a 50 percent tax credit on their contribution amount, up to $10 annually (valued at approximately $100 in 2024), or a reduction in taxable income, up to $750 annually. If that was not acceptable to the legislators, he suggested that the government match all contributions under $10. So, for every $10 donated by a citizen, the government would contribute another $10 to the citizen’s chosen candidate. He also requested that all large donors be required to disclose their donations.6 He resubmitted a similar letter to the Senate and the House on April 30, 1963, declaring, “The people of the United States are entitled to know their candidates for public office and to be free of doubts about tacit or explicit obligations having been necessary to secure public office.”7 He urged them again to consider his proposed legislation.

JFK opposed setting contribution limits, not because he felt they were unnecessary, but because he thought that practically, they could never be enforced. The commission explained to him that placing limits would only increase the number of political action committees (PACs). PACs are generally formed by corporations, labor unions, trade associations, or other organizations or individuals.8 They fund campaign activities and are subject to federal limits. Super PACs are independent expenditure-only political committees that raise money to influence elections through advertising and other efforts. They cannot directly contribute to or work with a campaign. Their donations are not subject to federal limits.9

The commission pointed out that “there is doubt whether individuals could be prohibited from making certain expenditures, instead of contributions, if the latter were effectively limited, in view of constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression.”10 In place of limits, JFK proposed the “establishment of an effective system of disclosure and publicity to reveal where money comes from and goes in campaigns.” He declared that in the commission’s view “full and effective disclosure … provides the greatest hope for effective controls over excessive contributions and unlimited expenditures.”11

JFK proposed these legislative changes in 1962 and again in 1963. There is no guarantee that he would have been able to pass the legislation, but he would likely have continued to try, and it is not uncommon for legislation to take several years to be enacted into law successfully. When considering that JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, may have been elected as president after him, had he not been assassinated while running for the presidency in 1968, it is pretty likely the legislation would have eventually passed. Instead, we got the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which set hard limits on financial contributions and did not create an incentive system to encourage vast numbers of small, federally financed donations. The act had the end result of accomplishing what the commission predicted such policies would accomplish: a vast increase in the number of PACs and multiple Supreme Court decisions striking down parts of the law as unconstitutional.12 It failed to broaden the base of political contributions or remove the influence of wealth on political campaigns.

The first Supreme Court decision to strike down parts of the Federal Election Campaign Act was Buckley vs. Valeo in 1976. The court declared that placing limits on campaign expenditures was unconstitutional as it infringed on the right to political speech. The court upheld the limits on campaign contributions, saying that individuals could still contribute independently, outside the official campaign, preserving their free speech rights. One can promote a candidate without contributing to his official campaign.13

In the 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission case, the Supreme Court determined that laws preventing corporations or unions from using their funds for independent “electioneering communications” violated the First Amendment.14

Had JFK lived, his proposed campaign finance laws would likely have passed in place of the 1971 Federal Election Campaign Act. His legislation would have led to a much broader base of campaign contributors. This, in turn, would have led to the election of officials who were more pressed to serve the small donor, which would have spawned policy decisions that were beneficial to the average American. Wealth would have still greatly influenced campaigns but less so than today. There would have been some degree of balance.

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So, I started by studying JFK’s career, from the early days through his presidency. The first undeniable truth that confronted me was that, despite the common myth, JFK’s policies were remarkably consistent. He was always committed to peace, to ending the Cold War, to non-proliferation, to anti-colonialism, etc. And he always believed that a strong military, short of multilateral disarmament, was essential to maintaining peace (and to negotiating genuine, multilateral disarmament). Realizing that the often-repeated claim that JFK “turned” was a myth, it then occurred to me that I needed to take a much deeper dive into the assassination, for if JFK never turned, then why was he killed? More specifically, why was he killed on November 22, 1963? Why not April 1963 or September 1962 or February 1962 or October 1961, etc.? And why did clear movement on the assassination appear to start in the spring of 1963? Why not earlier? After all, to many powerful interests, JFK was a problematic president from day one. In 1961 alone, he avoided pushes for war in Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. In that same year, he cracked down on the CIA with NSAMs 55 & 57 (giving the military greater control over covert operations) and he forced the three men at the top of the agency to resign. He also had pushed for disarmament since his days as a senator and had for many years supported third world nationalism. Indeed, JFK’s foreign policy views were deemed too radical as far back as 1956, when the then Democratic Presidential Nominee, Adlai Stevenson, asked JFK to refrain from making foreign policy speeches on his behalf.2 So, if these interests had tolerated JFK during the first three years of his presidency, why would they choose to assassinate him as an election year approached? After all, Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican nominee, was a hawk on Vietnam, who accused LBJ of being too soft.3 If Vietnam, as is often claimed, was a motive for the assassination, then why did the culprits not just try to sabotage JFK’s re-election campaign and push for Goldwater, who was ready to give them what they wanted? JFK had abdicated the South with his civil rights stance. He was an incredibly popular president, but certainly not beyond having his re-election campaign vulnerable to sabotage. JFK himself believed the 1964 campaign would be tough.4 So, the question to ask is, what was different in 1963 from 1962 or 1961 but could not wait until the 1964 re-election campaign?

From a purely policy perspective, it became obvious to me that what differed most and what could not wait until 1964 was JFK’s policies toward Israel, particularly his demand for thorough access to Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility. And yet, the vast majority of the research community completely shunned the notion that Israel was a potential suspect in the crime. Not only did they shun it, but they openly derided it. This made me feel a great degree of sadness for JFK.

I am not writing this to argue who the primary culprit behind the assassination was. As I’ve said, my book Echoes of a Lost America looks at the evidence without any hypothesis in mind. I care enough about JFK to never shun anyone as a potential suspect. Research into JFK’s assassination should be driven not by the need to be right, but by the pursuit of justice for him. I am writing this because I feel deeply that JFK deserves to have all beneficiaries of his assassination scrutinized and one beneficiary, arguably the greatest beneficiary, has been ignored for far too long.

While my book outlines the many ways in which the CIA, pro-war interests, powerful financial interests and Cold Warriors benefited from the crime, the timeline below focuses on JFK’s policies toward Israel. It was Isaiah L. Kenen, who incorporated AIPAC in early 1963, who referred to 1963 as “the turbulent year.”5 In 1961 and 1962, relations between JFK and Israel were relatively calm, but that all started to change in the fall of 1962. One can see a clear struggle forming during that time period, climaxing in June of 1963 with the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and then racing against a Dimona inspection deadline of late 1963.

It is clear from this timeline that Israel was “saved by the bell” by the JFK assassination. In response to JFK’s demands, Israel had promised him inspections of their Dimona nuclear facility “toward the end of the year” and before their reactor reached criticality. JFK was informed by CIA Director John McCone that after the reactor went critical, much of it would be closed off and proper inspection would be impossible.6 Yet, we know the reactor went critical by early January 1964, and the cursory inspections that occurred after then did not remotely resemble the inspections that JFK demanded and was promised. What would proper inspections have revealed? Would they have revealed the source of the uranium Israel was using, believed to have been funneled from the NUMEC plant in Pennsylvania?7 Arguably, the most important issue to JFK was nuclear non-proliferation. He had already threatened to cut off support to Israel over the building of nuclear weapons, what would he have done if he found out they were not only lying to him about building nuclear weapons but also taking materials from the U.S. to do so? And what was Israel’s plan to stop JFK from finding out? After all, they had agreed to “end of year” inspections and assured JFK those inspections would be before their reactor reached criticality. The assassination has prevented these two questions from being answered, unless the answer to the latter is the assassination itself.

The timeline (we’ll get to the assassination players later):

• August 1962 - JFK approves HAWK sale to Israel. The HAWK was a defensive missile. This was the peak of good relations between JFK and Israel.

• September 17, 1962 – Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion sends a letter to Jewish American leaders that Israel will fight the Joe Johnson refugee plan (supported by JFK) “down to the last man.”8 The plan was presented through the UN and gave the following three options to refugees: repatriation (return to Israel); reparations (no return, but compensation for lost property); or resettlement, with compensation for lost property, to primarily other Arab countries or potentially non-Arab countries.9

• September 26, 1962 – brief inspection of Dimona nuclear facility, ruse concocted by Israel to fool inspectors.10

• November 21, 1962 - the Department of Justice makes its initial request to the American Zionist Council to register as a foreign agent.11

• December 6, 1962 – AZC asks for 120-day delay.12

• December 27, 1962 - JFK tells Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir that he wants more thorough and frequent access to Dimona.13 The ruse of September 1962 could likely not be maintained through more frequent and thorough inspections. At this same meeting JFK reiterates his expectation that the refugee issue will continue to be pursued (despite failure of Johnson Plan) and that he supports increased use of UN troops on the borders. Also makes clear that US and Israeli interests are not the same.

• January 2, 1963 - Isaiah L. Kenen incorporates the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which was an existing lobbying division of AZC.14

• January 31, 1963 - B’nai B’rith rewards JFK with a presidential Gold Medal.15 Did they think perhaps cajolery would work on JFK or was this an attempt at preemptive narrative control?

• February - 1963 – George de Mohrenschildt introduces Lee Harvey Oswald to Ruth and Michael Paine.16

• March 12, 1963 - Oswald allegedly purchases rifle from Klein’s Sporting Goods owned by Milton Klein.17

• March 27, 1963 - JFK formally demands more thorough and frequent inspections of Dimona, suggesting the first one start in May.18

• April 1963 - Paines take over “babysitting” Oswald.19

• April 1963 - shooting of General Walker, which after the assassination of JFK is blamed on Oswald.20 No way to know if this shooting was staged as part of assassination planning to create a pattern of behavior for Oswald or if it was just a random crime taken advantage of afterward.

• April 24, 1963 - Oswald moves to New Orleans, on same day Dallas papers announce Kennedy visit.21

• April 26, 1963 - Ben Gurion sends letter to JFK requesting an in-person discussion in Washington DC.22

• May 4, 1963 - JFK denies the request for an in person visit.23

• May 7, 1963 - AIPAC annual conference states its three objectives are: 1) need for a clear security guarantee for Israel, 2) need to stop Nasser’s expansionist policy and threats against Israel and 3) termination of aid to UAR (United Arab Republic) until it meets our standards of behavior. JFK opposed to 3) and ultimately rejects 1) as well. JFK not a fan of Nasser interfering in other Middle Eastern countries (warned Nasser Israel would occupy West Bank if he pushed Jordan coup), but JFK did recognize the new government in Yemen after the coup against the previous royal government, despite pushback from Britain and other US interests, though warned Nasser to leave Saudi Arabia alone and that he needed to pull out of Yemen. JFK is aware of AIPAC demands as a summary of the meeting is sent to him. Yet he does not pursue them.24

• May 10, 1963 – memo speculating where Israel may be getting uranium from. No mention of NUMEC or U.S. It appears there is no suspicion at this time that they are funneling from the U.S.25

• May 12, 1963 - Ben-Gurion replies to JFK’s rejection and talks about the Jordanian king potentially being assassinated, stating “there is always a danger that one single bullet might put an end to his life and regime. … In light of past events one cannot dismiss the possibility.”26 Was this a veiled threat? Was Ben Gurion the originator of the single bullet theory?

• May 17, 1963 – JFK meeting with staff. They discuss initial ultimatum letter to Ben Gurion. JFK recommends if Ben Gurion again denies an inspection after this next request, that his refusal should be leaked to the press. JFK discusses possible joint security guarantee to Israel and Egypt dependent on commitment to abandon nuclear weapons development as well as contingent on non-occupation of West Bank / Gaza. Wants to guarantee the tripartite declaration. Suggests Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser be approached first, though his aides are doubtful Nasser will be receptive.27

• May 18, 1963 - JFK replies to Ben-Gurion and gives his first ultimatum.28

• May 21-24, 1963 - Several letters sent to LBJ, informing him that Congress needs to put pressure on the administration to cut aid to Egypt: “Now is the time for our Congress to initiate a move to protect Israel.” Some of these letters are from TX, including from Dallas.29 The remainder are from Chicago and New York (see my Substack article, “JFK, Abraham Feinberg, and Speaking Sites,”30 for more on why these two additional cities may have been planned as potential assassination sites.) According to LBJ he was in contact with Ben Gurion in 1963 about Dimona, but no timeline given, “I spent a lot of time with him [Ben-Gurion] back when they were in real problems, and they were getting ready to sanction [in 1963 over Dimona]. I just came down here and said, ‘Hell no. That can’t be.’ And I stopped it.”31

• May 23, 1963 – Senate foreign relations committee meetings begin on AZC foreign registration issue.

• May 29, 1963 - Ben Gurion responds to JFK and suggests inspection at the end of the year or early next year32 (Does Ben-Gurion expect something to change by the end of the year?). Ben Gurion’s agreement to inspection causes JFK to drop his threat to leak to newspapers Ben Gurion’s refusal of inspection.

• June 15, 1963 - JFK gives second and more forceful ultimatum, telling Ben-Gurion the end of the year is not acceptable, and he wants inspections early in the summer.33

• June 16, 1963 - Ben Gurion resigns.34 Here, it seems clear that his first attempt was to stay in office and simply delay JFK to the end of the year (May 29 letter agreeing to end of year visit and prior letters delaying) but after JFK’s June 15 letter, he has no choice but to resign as there is no other way left to delay JFK.

• June 16, 1963 – Letter from Israeli Ambassador to Secretary of State, “Most unlikely we can get further ear of cabinet on this question while current political crisis unresolved, would, therefore, recommend approach be postponed until cabinet problem is sorted out.”35

• Shortly after Ben-Gurion’s resignation - According to Jefferson Morley, CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton goes to visit Ben-Gurion. It was not uncommon for Angleton to make trips to Israel.36

• June 26, 1963 - US representative visits Nasser to discuss arms limitation / security guarantee.37

• July 4, 1963 – JFK sends first letter to new prime minister Levi Eshkol repeating ultimatum he gave to Ben-Gurion.38

• July 17, 1963 – Eshkol tells Kennedy he needs time to figure out what is going on.39

• July 23, 1963 – Secretary of State recommends to JFK to delay Dimona push temporarily until September after Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratification for better negotiating position. Mentions Congressional pressure to give Israel a security guarantee.40

• July 23, 1963 - It is brought up in a meeting with JFK that Israel has been asking weekly for a security guarantee. JFK says he wants to keep up the pressure on Dimona inspections, through conversations between the ambassador and Eshkol, but nothing beyond that at the moment. Doesn’t want to give security guarantee if he doesn’t need to. JFK asks if the U.S. can write to the French and ask them for more info on the Israeli reactor. Recommends that after a test ban treaty is ratified, we should attempt to get every country that has not yet agreed to inspection to accept some form of international inspection. We might point out that it is in the Arab interest to do so since this will also put pressure on the Israelis. Nasser stated in the late June meeting that he is not seeking a security guarantee because he did not want an “umbrella” from the Western powers. Due to Jordan situation calming down (and hence reduced risk of Israeli occupation of West Bank), due to McCone’s intelligence claims that not much was going on at Dimona at the moment, and due to Nasser’s disinterest in a US security guarantee, JFK has moved away from desiring a security guarantee.41 In prior June 15 meeting JFK had stated his interest in a security guarantee was due to nuclear weapons concern and concern over Israel occupying West Bank.42

• July 25, 1963 - nuclear test ban treaty signed, pending senate ratification.

• Early August 1963 – second set of senate hearings on AZC.

• August 10, 1963 - U.S. sent a letter to France to enquire what sort of inspections they had done on Israel’s nuclear reactor.43

• In the early morning of Aug 16, 1963 - US ambassador of Israel informed State Department that they will get a response on Dimona on Aug 19th.44

• August 16 & 23, 1963 - the Sterns capture the footage of Oswald parading around as a Communist sympathizer45 (this is later used on the day of the assassination to provide immediate “proof” of the official narrative).

• August 16, 1963 - Department of Justice reiterates the need for AZC to register as a foreign agent.46

• August 19, 1963 - Eshkol replies to Kennedy and suggests Dimona visit “toward the end of the year.” Tells Kennedy it will be before the reactor goes critical.47 Admits to Israeli ambassador, who informs Secretary of State, that “for obvious reasons” he consulted with Ben-Gurion on how to reply on Dimona. Stated that Ben-Gurion was “unenthusiastic about participating in such deliberations since not in government.”48

• September 24, 1963 - test ban treaty ratified.

• September 27 – October 3, 1963 – Oswald allegedly in Mexico City and visits Valery Kostikov, who at the time was believed to be tied to Soviet assassinations. This connection was used to scare everyone into participating in a cover up lest the assassination lead to war with the Soviets.49

• October 3,1963 - JFK formally denies request for security guarantee.50

• October 4, 1963 – Israel ambassador discusses security guarantee rejection letter with Eshkol. Eshkol informs him he will discuss the letter with Ben-Gurion, again indicating Ben-Gurion still very much involved with Israeli leadership.51

• October 4 – Nov 22, 1963 – Israel presses US for all sorts of security measures in response to rejection of security guarantee, from weapons sales to intelligence sharing. Keeps State Department busy with these requests. A limited intelligence sharing session occurs in early November, Israel complains that they did not get much from the meeting.52

• Early October 1963 – Governor Connolly visits JFK and pushes for “nonpolitical” Dallas visit handing over planning of trip to Dallas Citizens Council, giving them say over luncheon site and motorcade route.53

• On October 8, Marvin Gheesling, a supervisor at FBI headquarters, takes Oswald off the espionage watch list. This ensured Oswald would not be removed from the motorcade route in Dallas, as he would not be seen as a security threat.54

• October 11, 1963 – DOJ requests AZC to register as foreign agent and expects response within 72 hours.55

• October 14, 1963 – AZC says they will file paperwork but asks for decision to be delayed until paperwork is reviewed.56

• October 14, 1963 – Ruth Paine informs Oswald of job at Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) building.57

• October 16, 1963 – Oswald begins his employment at the TSBD.58

• October 28, 1963 – JFK advance man Gerald Bruno flies down to Dallas to find a speaking site. Initial preference is the Hilton (where JFK spoke at during his last trip to Dallas) but this is booked out by American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages convention and they refuse to give up the site. Part of this bottler’s convention were Seagrams and Perrier. The founder of Seagrams, Samuel Bronfman, and the founder of Perrier, Gustave Leven, were both financing Dimona. Due to unavailability of the Hilton, Bruno selects the Women’s Building. Bruno selects the Women’s Building despite suggestions that he pick the Trade Mart.59 Neither the Hilton nor the Women’s building allow for the motorcade to go past the TSBD where Oswald is stationed. This means Oswald was stationed at the TSBD before the luncheon site was known, making understanding who drove the selection of the luncheon site vital to understanding who was behind the assassination.

• November 2, 1963 – alleged JFK assassination plot in Chicago fails as JFK cancels trip.

• November 5, 1963 - Israel informs Secretary of State that they will suggest a date for Dimona inspections shortly.60

• November 7, 1963 - Israel sends a second letter to Secretary of State saying Dimona inspection date will be supplied shortly and re-assured it will be before the reactor goes critical in response to US hearing French rumors that reactor will go critical sooner than expected.61

• · November 15, 1963 - after incessant complaints from the Host Committee and from Governor John Connally, and threats by Connally to cancel the trip, the White House acquiesces to giving up the Women’s Building luncheon site and agrees to speak at the Trade Mart instead. It is not until this moment that a motorcade going past Oswald is made possible.62

• November 15-21, 1963 – Sam Bloom, head of the host committee, secures convertible vehicles for press, which are placed in the back of the motorcade (in a typical motorcade a flatbed truck is secured and placed in front of the president so that photos may be taken of him). Bloom’s PR agency prints various routes in the papers, ensuring Dealey Plaza is less crowded, hence less witnesses. Why is one of the top PR men in Dallas keeping the press and the public away from the president at the Dealey Plaza location?63

• November 16, 1963 - NY Times posts article attributing to Ben-Gurion an implication that nuclear weapons development is occurring at Dimona.64

• November 18, 1963 - Ben-Gurion denies that he hinted at nuclear weapons development at Dimona.65

• Ongoing during the year, though never urgent – many discussions on how to address the refugee issue, culminating with US support for UN resolution 194, article 11 at UN on Nov 20, 1963. Also pressures throughout the year for JFK to cut funding to Egypt, culminating in Gruening amendment in November 1963 to limit JFK’s ability to give foreign aid.

• November 22, 1963 - JFK assassinated.

It is no wonder Isaiah L. Kenen referred to 1963 as “the turbulent year.” And while JFK had many other struggles with various power players, none of the others so easily line up with the assassination timeline. Combat troops were not sent to Vietnam until 1965, and as mentioned previously, Goldwater was a bigger hawk on Vietnam than LBJ. Furthermore, JFK did not sign NSAM 263 to withdraw the first 1000 advisors from Vietnam until October 1963, but the assassination was far in the works by then, and his original request to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to come up with a withdrawal plan was in May 1962,66 long before the assassination appears to have been set in motion. Cuba was never invaded after JFK’s assassination. It is true that many of JFK’s policies toward the third world shifted after his murder, but these policies had been in place since 1961; they did not go through a shift in 1963. And despite many perceptions to the contrary, JFK’s view of the Soviets did not go through a radical shift either; he had spoken of his desires to end the Cold War and cooperate with the Soviets in items such as space exploration since the start of his presidency. While these other motives certainly existed, it is difficult to pinpoint one of them as the potential trigger of the crime, as the timelines do not really line up. The closest timeline to potentially line up that is often repeated in JFK assassination research is the Cuban Missile Crisis as the trigger for the plot. But as previously mentioned, the U.S. never invaded Cuba after the assassination, and if the military was so concerned about JFK being a threat to national security, why did they wait over a year to remove him, only to remove him going into an election year?

Something has to drive the timeline of the crime. It cannot just be a random meshing of motives. A sophisticated plot would be difficult to pull off with too many chefs in the kitchen. And if one player has an urgent timeline, would they really allow other players to get involved and potentially leak the plot or derail their timeline?

Now that the timeline has been outlined, let’s move on to the players.

Below is a broad overview of the individuals who, wittingly or unwittingly, helped make the assassination possible. To understand the crime—and who may have been behind it—it is necessary to first examine those who had a direct and measurable effect on its successful execution:

• James Angleton - Controlled Oswald’s government files / created WWIII virus in Oswald’s files (i.e. tied Oswald to KGB assassinations which was then used to scare everyone into participating in a cover up).67 Angleton ran “CIA within the CIA,” had close ties to former CIA head Allen Dulles and was very close to the Mossad. Angleton had his own existential motive (at risk of being fired and tried for treason - Dimona inspections would have possibly (perhaps likely) revealed uranium smuggling operation, and Angleton would have likely been implicated, or at the least, viewed as negligent). His personal existential motive was tied to Israeli existential motive. Personal existential motive is likely to be a greater factor than anything anyone else might have wanted from Angleton.

• Marvin Gheesling - FBI counterintelligence agent took Oswald off FBI watch list (this may possibly have been under orders of Angleton, though we do not know), Angleton was CIA liaison to FBI.68

• Clay Shaw – Appears to have monitored Oswald in New Orleans – Connected to CIA and also on the board of Permindex whose de-facto head Louis Bloomfield (and his brother Bernard Bloomfield) were financing Dimona.69 Bloomfield also tied to Zim Shipping which was accused by a whistleblower of smuggling uranium from NUMEC to Israel.70 Jim Garrison (who unsuccessfully prosecuted Shaw for the murder of JFK) believed Shaw was making trips to Montreal to visit with Bloomfield.71 Shaw also technically worked under the Sterns. They were on the board of the International Trade Mart,72 helped finance JFK’s pre-presidential transition period after his election,73 (bringing to mind Bob Dylan’s lyrics in “Murder Most Foul,” “You’ve got unpaid debts and we’ve come to collect”) and have even been accused of financing NUMEC,74 though there is no solid proof of this last point. The Sterns used their media network to establish Oswald legend for the public. They are the ones who captured footage of Oswald in August 1963.75 Arnon Milchan, tied to Israeli nukes program ,76 finances film JFK about Shaw. Fails to disclose Shaw’s ties to Israel’s nukes program via Permindex and possibly via Sterns. Dimona was financed by approximately 25 private donors, only a small subset of which have been publicly disclosed.77 Given there were three billion people on the planet at the time, the probability of Shaw’s ties to Bloomfield being random are slim to none.

• Other lower-level characters hanging around Oswald in New Orleans – not sure if these players (Banister, Ferrie) had any concrete role in the assassination, though Ferrie did call Lawrence Meyers (in Chicago, where Banister was from). Meyers then visited Jack Ruby and supported his cover story, so Ferrie was likely involved, perhaps unwittingly.78 Ferrie appears to have US intelligence connections, but he is communicating with Ruby via Lawrence Meyers. Meyers tied to B’nai B’rith, which is suspected of having Israeli intelligence ties.79 On its board of overseers sat Edgar Bronfman, whose father, Samuel Bronfman, was financing Dimona.80

• Ruth Paine: Monitored Oswald in Dallas - likely connected to CIA81 / connection to mistress of Dulles82 / seemed to be supportive of Israel though we don’t know for sure (she worked with various Jewish organizations) / taking lessons in Yiddish,83 Ruby tried to get access to Oswald by accompanying Yiddish press84 (likely no relation but Yiddish speaking population in Dallas small, it should have been researched to see if a connection could be made between Paine and Ruby).

• George de Mohrenschildt - Appears to be some sort of “babysitter” of Oswald before handing him off to Ruth Paine in the spring of 1963.85 Later said he feared the FBI and the “Jewish mafia.”86 He appeared to have connections to CIA and French intelligence.87 Also, friends with Jean de Menil, president of Schlumberger Corporation.88 De Menil on board of Permindex89 and Banister/Ferrie would pick up explosives from Schlumberger corporation in support of anti-Castro activities.90

• The Stern family - Captured video/audio footage of Oswald (in August 1963)91 to establish official narrative – supportive of Israel92 with a deceased family member having some CIA connections,93 alleged to be involved in NUMEC financing.94 Obviously, whoever plotted the murder, trusted the Sterns to safely hold on to the footage of a “nobody” until it was ready for primetime after the assassination.

• Lawrence Meyers - Connection between New Orleans (Ferrie) and Dallas (Ruby)95 and also Ruby’s cover guy on the weekend of the assassination (told Warren Commission Ruby “worshipped” JFK),96 active in B’nai B’rith (suspected of having Israeli intelligence ties),97 worked in the sporting goods business in Chicago (though no evidence he had any links to Klein’s Sporting Goods in Chicago which allegedly sold Oswald the rifle), daughter worked as a nuclear chemist, son in Army intelligence.98 Meyers travelling down to Dallas before the assassination and staying for the weekend to serve as Ruby’s cover guy implies that the decision to potentially use Ruby to shoot Oswald may have been in play prior to the assassination.

• Sam Bloom - Head of the host committee in Dallas.99 The host committee (which appears to have been actively led by Bloom) made various questionable decisions that contributed to the assassination (like putting press at the back of the motorcade so no photos/videos taken of assassination,100 like printing inconsistent routes in the papers, so Dealey Plaza less crowded, etc.). Bloom involved in luncheon site and motorcade route meetings.101 He also encouraged police to make Oswald available to the press (where Ruby shot him).102 Ruby had Bloom’s contact info scribbled on a card in his apartment.103 Bloom was supportive of Israel,104 a friend of LBJ,105 and connected to Dal-Tex building, where shooters may have been stationed. His brother-in-law was head of a strange dummy organization (Dallas Uranium and Oil) which had a phone number in the Dal-Tex building, even though the building dealt with textile companies.106 According to one of Bloom’s employees, “That project [ JFK’s trip to Dallas], like all non-advertising projects at Bloom, was total madness. Secret Service men, aides to the President, press people—they all swarmed around the agency for days.”107 According to Elizabeth Harris, it was through the “ubiquitous Bloom” that the Secret Service worked with the host committee.108

• Dallas Citizens Council / Dallas Chamber of Commerce – These entities compromised the host committee in Dallas (which was led by Sam Bloom).109 Various individuals pushed for Trade Mart over Women’s building (which would have had alternate motorcade route that did not go past TSBD) – some individuals, like Bloom, were supportive of Israel, at least one defense contractor, Dallas Citizens Council consisted mainly of approx. 100 CEOs,110 probably had intelligence links, Mayor Earle Cabell was a member of Dallas Citizens Council (though no active participation in luncheon discussions).111 Mayor Earle Cabell was the brother of Charles Cabell, one of the CIA men let go by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.

• American Bottler’s convention – forced JFK advance man to pick a different site than the one he wanted (the Hilton, which JFK had spoken at the prior year, which would have avoided motorcade route going past Oswald).112 Not clear if there is a direct connection here but without this convention booking the Hilton (and refusing to give it up), the assassination could not have happened. Multiple financiers of Israel’s nukes program are founders of carbonated beverage companies.113

• John Connally – Pushed very hard for Trade Mart location. Threatened to cancel the trip if JFK did not speak at Trade mart.114 Without Connally’s insistence, JFK would have spoken at Women’s Building and not gone past TSBD where Oswald was stationed. Connally later shot, so not witting participant but perhaps manipulated in some way to push for Trade Mart. He was close to both LBJ and Sam Bloom as well as to the Navy and likely others.

• Men arrested in Dal-Tex building on the 3^rd floor where Sam Bloom connected office located were connected to same organized crime networks as Ruby, with the head (Meyer Lansky) supportive of Israel and tied to US intelligence/Navy, one of them may have met up with Ruby and Meyers the night before (staying at same hotel as Meyers).115 Not clear if these men were tied to assassination or how but their arrest likely not coincidental.

• Emory Roberts - Secret Service agent who called off other agents from JFK’s vehicle, took them drinking the night before, loyal friend to LBJ.116 LBJ said Roberts is the first person he sees in the morning and the last one he sees at night.117 Not much else known about him other than his close relationship to LBJ. The head of the Secret Service chose the Women’s Building over the Trade Mart as the lunch location,118 so this implies strongly that the secret service as an institution was not involved in the assassination, and that Roberts (and perhaps others) were compromised by parties outside of the typical command line.

• Jack Ruby – organized crime figure, worked under Lansky,119 appears to have contacted Sam Bloom before Oswald transfer where he shot Oswald (FBI found Bloom’s contact info scribbled in Ruby’s apartment).120 Allegedly Bloom was urging police to make Oswald available to the press.121 Also, closely connected to Lawrence Meyers (his cover guy),122 giving Ruby Zionist ties from both the Lansky side and the Meyers side, not to mention through his contact with Sam Bloom.

• The assassins – don’t know who these were, perhaps some Cuban exiles involved, perhaps one French assassin, these could have possibly been under the control of Angleton or Lansky, both had ties to Cuban exiles and/or could have gotten assassins from anywhere.

• Eugene Rostow – first person to suggest the Warren Commission123 – supportive of Israel, big cold warrior,124 others later pushing Warren Commission (like Dean Acheson, Joseph Alsop) were big establishment figures.125 Acheson had no known interest in Israel (but he did work earlier in his career with Henry Morgenthau, who was involved with organizing financing for Dimona).126

• Navy autopsy – Appear to have performed a “cover up” autopsy, promoted the lone nut thesis. At this point technically LBJ commander in chief and they would have to report to him, not clear why they did cursory autopsy, the fact that they pushed lone nut thesis goes against the theory pushed by some that they killed JFK to invade Cuba and start WWIII, if that was the case, why not claim multiple shooters, easier to argue Cuba and/or Soviets behind assassination (and hence convince public of need for war) with multiple shooters. The fact that they pushed the lone nut thesis implies war was not the desired outcome of the assassination. Much is also made of the fact that Airforce Chief Curtis Lemay allegedly flew in from Canada to be at the autopsy.127 If he had known about the assassination beforehand, would he not have made sure to be in town, as anything can happen with flights? Lastly, it was not the Secret Service who snatched the body from Dallas, but rather JFK’s folks, Kenny O’Donnel, Lawrence O’Brien, and Dave Powers, whose motives were almost certainly innocent.128

• LBJ - instrumental in cover-up, ran with Angleton’s WWIII virus story and coerced everyone to participate in cover-up, though initially did not want Warren Commission,129 close to both Ben-Gurion (whom he was speaking with behind JFK’s back in 1963) and with Abe Feinberg (organizing financing of Dimona).130 Close to many other powerful interests, such as military industrial complex. Also close to the Navy, who performed the autopsy, as well as Sam Bloom (head of host committee)131 and Emory Roberts (Secret Service agent responsible for lax security).132

• Warren Commission – Run by Dulles; the magic bullet man, aka Arlen Spector, was big Israel supporter.

As can be seen from the timeline and players above, a case can be built against Israel. It can be argued that individuals such as the Sterns, such as Lawrence Meyers, such as Sam Bloom, among others, were working in the interest of Israel. It can be argued that the reason Ben-Gurion was speaking with LBJ about Dimona in 1963 was to get assurance that were JFK removed, LBJ would pursue the desired policies. And LBJ, of course, had his own motives. He was at risk of being dropped from the 1964 campaign.

Did every individual involved in the crime have direct ties to Israel? No, but the same can be said about any of the often-repeated suspects. Indeed, most of the individuals financing Dimona were not even located in Israel, but does that mean they were not working on Israel’s behalf? Some crucial individuals, such as John Connally, and certainly others as well, were not even witting participants. It is true that Connally had close ties to the Navy, but would the Navy really put one of their own in harm’s way? It is more likely that Connally was manipulated, perhaps by the host committee.

Whether it be Angleton and his control of Oswald’s files, whether it be Shaw and the Sterns in New Orleans, whether it be Lawrence Meyers (connection between New Orleans and Dallas and Ruby’s cover guy), whether it be the host committee (Sam Bloom), whether it be Eugene Rostow recommending the Warren Commission, ties to Israeli interests, and particularly to Dimona, are all over the assassination. Does that prove Israel was behind the crime? No. And I am not arguing that it does. But I am saying that in fairness to John F. Kennedy, we should not shun any beneficiary of the assassination as a potential suspect, particularly one that has strong circumstantial ties to the assassination.

So much focus is placed on Oswald that so many other vital elements of the plot are completely ignored. Countless books are written about Oswald and his potential ties to the CIA, but virtually none of them mention that Oswald was placed into the TSBD before the luncheon site was even known. And yet, virtually no one takes the time to figure out how the luncheon site came to be and who controlled those decisions. In this way, Oswald served as the perfect patsy. He got everyone to focus on him. If we want to have any hope of understanding the crime, it is important that we broaden the story beyond the patsy, as, after all, the patsy is the individual the culprits wanted everyone to focus on. Furthermore, any hypothesis as to why JFK was killed must outline a clear timeline of policy events in comparison to key touchpoints of the assassination planning and must also explain why alternative options could not be pursued.

Again, I did not write this article to argue who was behind the assassination. That, I do not know. But what I do know is that for far too long, one vital suspect has been ignored and instead a myth has been promulgated. Skeptics often demand documented proof, as if such crimes are actually recorded on paper. But what we do have is a clear pattern, via both the timeline and the players involved. And solving crimes, at the end of the day, is about pattern recognition. No one gives you the answer on a silver platter. I do strongly agree, however, that maintaining skepticism toward all potential hypotheses about the crime is essential.

It is worth closing this article with a quote from JFK:

As every past generation has had to disenthrall itself from an inheritance of truisms and stereotypes, so in our own time we must move on from the reassuring repetition of stale phrases to a new, difficult, but essential confrontation with reality.

For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Mythology distracts us everywhere—in government as in business, in politics as in economics, in foreign affairs as in domestic affairs.133

For too long the myth has persisted that JFK “turned” during his final year, leading to his assassination. But JFK was always committed to the same ideals. So, let’s stop focusing on the myth and start looking at the actual policies which were pressing in November 1963, the ones which could not wait until re-election, or for that matter, not even until January 1964, the ones that differed from 1961 and 1962, that began in the latter parts of 1962. Not many policies fit into this category. And let’s look beyond the multi-layered Oswald legend and start analyzing all the components of the assassination and all the players who were needed to pull off the crime. Let’s stop shunning any entity with motive and with clear circumstantial ties to the assassination as a suspect, particularly an entity that still benefits daily, all these years later, from that crime. John F. Kennedy deserves that much.

Those who believe RFK Jr. and his uncle have disparate views on this topic often do so because they do not understand the perspectives of either or because they take a nuanced topic and oversimplify it. At the most surface level, yes, JFK was supportive of vaccination and RFK Jr. has been quite critical of it. But if we take a more nuanced look, we can see that it is not vaccination itself that RFK Jr. opposes, but rather corporate corruption and coerced medication, neither of which is inconsistent with JFK’s well-established views.

JFK was genuinely unaware of the potential risks associated with vaccines, which was common at the time due to the far fewer vaccines available compared to today. And he did sign the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 to make vaccines more readily available to those who wanted them and could not afford or access them, but the Act also clearly stated, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to….require any person who objects to immunization to be immunized or to have any child or ward of his immunized.”1 JFK may not have been aware of the risks associated with vaccination, but he was fully aware of the need for informed consent, outlined not only in the Vaccination Assistance Act of 1962 that he signed but also in the consumer rights pledge that he issued on March 15, 1962. In his pledge, which focused largely on pharmaceuticals, he outlined the four fundamental consumer rights to be 1) the right to safety, 2) the right to be informed, 3) the right to choose, and 4) the right to be heard.2 Clearly, he believed strongly in informed consent.

None of these rights, however, applies to vaccines today. Regarding the first consumer right, the right to safety, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against HHS has revealed that there were no pre-licensing inert placebo studies done on any of the mandated childhood vaccines.3 So, no one can scientifically say whether these vaccines do more good than harm. Inert placebos were used for the COVID vaccine trials, but the vaccines were given to the placebo group after only a few short months,4 so essentially, there are no long-term studies on the health impacts of these products, and there likely never will be. Regarding the second consumer right, the right to be informed, how many were even aware of what was mentioned under point one? Or how many people are aware that in the Pfizer clinical trial, there were five times as many heart attack deaths in the vaccine group as in the placebo group, but only one less COVID-19 death in the vaccine group?5 Without such knowledge, one cannot possibly make an informed decision. Regarding the third consumer right, the right to choose, this was also denied during the COVID pandemic, with many kicked out of school or fired from their job for wanting to hold off on consuming an experimental product. Regarding the fourth consumer right, the right to be heard, there are over one million COVID vaccine injuries reported to VAERS (vaccine adverse event reporting system),6 a system that is historically grossly underreported, as most do not correlate their chronic health issues that develop over time to the vaccines they may have taken and the synergistic effects those products may have had on their bodies over time. Despite the reported adverse effects, the voices and suffering of the injured are largely ignored or dismissed, and worse, censored. Given that many who worked with JFK stated he was the best listener they ever met, it is doubtful he would ignore the pain of others. Isaiah Berlin, the British philosopher, once observed of JFK, “I’ve never known a man who listened to every single word that one uttered more attentively. And he replied always very relevantly. He didn’t obviously have ideas in his own mind that he wanted to expound…He really listened to what one said and answered that.”7

Indeed, there were two industry scandals during JFK’s presidency, one in the pharmaceutical industry and one in the chemical industry, and in each case, he listened to the women who were raising the health concerns. It is highly unlikely that he would have ignored the many distraught voices of the mothers of vaccine-injured children. Indeed, JFK often listened to protestors, going as far as inviting them into the White House for a conversation. When 2000 women protested in front of the White House in support of disarmament, he listened, “I saw the ladies myself. I recognized why they were there. There were a great number of them. It was in the rain. I understood what they were attempting to say, and therefore I considered that their message was received.”8

In 1961 an epidemic of severe birth defects was uncovered in Germany. Some doctors suspected that the drug thalidomide, a popular remedy for insomnia, headaches, and nausea, was causing the birth defects. The drug manufacturer rejected the claims as speculation.9

While not officially yet approved in the United States, thalidomide had already been fairly well distributed. The American pharmaceutical company Richardson-Merrell filed a New Drug Application (NDA) for thalidomide in September 1960. Dr. Frances Kelsey, a new FDA employee, requested proof of experiments on pregnant animals but never received the requested evidence. When it became clear that the new drug would be recalled, Richardson-Merrell withdrew the pending NDA in March 1962. In April 1962, the FDA finally revealed that thalidomide had been widely distributed via a clinical trial. It turned out that approximately 2.5 million doses had been disbursed to more than 1,200 US doctors.10

During this controversy, Dr. Kelsey was under much pressure and was even threatened with a libel suit by the drug company.11 On August 7, 1962, Kennedy presented Kelsey with the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service at a ceremony at the White House, the highest honor for a civilian. Kennedy then signed legislation in October 1962 requiring the FDA’s approval before a drug could be marketed. The legislation transferred to the FDA control over prescription drug advertising, which would have to include accurate information about side effects. It required the FDA to approve efficacy (previously, it was only responsible for safety approval). Finally, it mandated that the FDA conduct a retrospective evaluation of the effectiveness of drugs approved for safety between 1938 and 1962.12 This led to a retrospective review of all drugs approved during those decades. By the early 1970s, this review had categorized approximately six hundred medicines as “ineffective” and forced their removal from the market.13

Rachel Carson was a biologist who became concerned with the impact of pesticides on both the environment and human health. In early 1962 she completed her book on the subject, Silent Spring. Kennedy strongly supported the book, and the chemical industry was not pleased. He gave the book credibility and treated it as something that should be taken seriously. The industry responded with a propaganda campaign attacking the book. Kennedy, meanwhile, formed a committee to study the environmental and health impacts of pesticides. In May of 1963, that committee issued a report essentially vindicating Carson and called for greater study of pesticides and alternate methods of pest control in hopes of ultimately removing toxic pesticides from the market.14

JFK could have ignored Frances Kelsey and Rachel Carson, just like he could have ignored the 2000 women protesting outside the White House in the pouring rain, but he did not. In fact, his openness to listening to women closely parallels the way RFK Jr. first became engaged with the issue of vaccine safety. RFK Jr. has frequently recounted how mothers of vaccine-injured children began attending his talks on mercury pollution, and how one determined mother showed up at his doorstep with a pile of scientific studies, insisting she wouldn’t leave until he read them.

As RFK Jr. examined these studies and consulted with vaccine experts about the concerns they raised, he came to understand the extent to which our regulatory agencies are influenced—if not compromised—by the pharmaceutical industry. JFK was also aware of regulatory agency capture. When the DDT controversy arose, he was perceptive enough not to request the USDA to study Carson’s claims. Instead, he went to his own independent scientific advisory committee, which the USDA opposed. That is because the USDA was closely tied to the pesticide industry. The same is true today for the FDA, CDC, and the pharmaceutical industry.

As has been seen, JFK did not blindly accept industry talking points, he did not coerce consumers into taking unwanted products, and he listened to all who raised concerns. RFK Jr. embodies all of these qualities in his fight against corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. The topic may differ; it may be vaccines and not thalidomide or DDT, but the concepts are the same. Those who focus solely on the surface-level issue of vaccination when criticizing RFK Jr.—while ignoring the deeper concerns of corporate corruption and the need to amplify the voices of disaffected consumers—fail to grasp the principles that JFK truly represented.

I am writing this as someone who has long admired Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Indeed, I thought so highly of him that I dedicated my first book America’s Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy to him and wrote my second book Echoes of a Lost America: Unraveling the Murder of JFK with him partly in mind. I continue to commend him for many of his views and applaud his courage when it comes to the issues of medical freedom and corporate corruption. However, despite RFK Jr.’s claims that he is fully aligned on all issues with his uncle, I have come to the realization that when it comes to one vital matter, he is the polar opposite of John F. Kennedy. The man RFK Jr. resembles is actually Lyndon Johnson. That matter, of course, is the Middle East.

John F. Kennedy’s Middle East policies have been obscured for decades, and it is unclear if Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is even aware of his uncle’s struggles in this area. Before getting into the details, it is important to preface that John F. Kennedy’s goal in the region was peace and prosperity for all—Israelis and Arabs alike. He was not pro or anti either side. He was simply pro-peace and pro-prosperity.

Despite these objectives, it is well documented that John F. Kennedy struggled immensely with Israel during his presidency. Indeed, in the words of Israeli minister Mordechai Gazit, “the US/Israeli relationship was entering a state of crisis” in the days before JFK’s assassination.1 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proclaimed that Israel has often offered to compromise and accommodate its Palestinian neighbors over its 75-year history. He has blamed the Arabs for the failure to achieve peace in the region.2 But the Arabs have not been the only entity who has tried to negotiate with Israel. JFK attempted to reach an agreement on a peaceful solution with Israel as well. Based on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim that Israel was always willing to negotiate and trade for peace, he is essentially implying that the tension in the US/Israeli relationship that existed during his uncle’s presidency was the sole fault of his uncle, and Israel bears no responsibility. If even John F. Kennedy could not manage to negotiate with Israel effectively, how can the Arabs be blamed for the same? And John F. Kennedy’s failure was not for lack of trying.

There were four significant areas of tension during JFK’s presidency that led to the “state of crisis” in relations between the U.S. and Israel: 1) JFK’s support of Palestinian right of return, 2) JFK’s desire to maintain friendly relations with the Arabs, 3) JFK’s attempts to register the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, later replaced by AIPAC, as a foreign agent, and 4) Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

Early on in his presidency, JFK committed himself, via letters to Arab leaders, to UN Resolution 194, Article 11, which called for the Palestinian right of return.3 He initially worked with Joseph E. Johnson, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who came up with a proposal that would give each refugee a choice between repatriation (return to Israel); reparations (no return, but compensation for lost property); or resettlement, with compensation for lost property, to primarily other Arab countries or potentially non-Arab nations.4

Johnson believed that only approximately 10 percent of refugees would choose to return and that the rest would choose resettlement, partly because compensation was set in favor of resettlement and partly because the land they left in 1948 no longer existed. He felt the refugees understood the return would be to Israel and not Palestine. As such, the number choosing to return would remain reasonably small. Johnson, as well as US representatives, repeatedly stressed to Israel that they could pull out at any point if Johnson’s estimates were not accurate.5 JFK even suggested going slowly, starting with small numbers, to get a better gauge of where the percentages would fall when it came to refugee choice, to make Israel feel more comfortable with the plan.6

In hopes of finalizing the refugee negotiations, JFK even reluctantly agreed to sell Israel defensive Hawk missiles in hopes of a quid pro quo.7 When progress on the refugee issue failed to materialize, JFK’s frustrations were documented in an internal White House memo:

1. We have, during the past year, conscientiously sought to meet a number of Israeli concerns. We have a) assured them of our support on the Jordan Waters; b) given them a firmer statement of US interest in Israel’s well-being and security; c) agreed to provide Hawk missiles at some cost to our relations with other countries in the area; and d) provided an increased level of economic assistance.

2. Yet there has been no practical progress on the refugee question. In fact, the recent conversation between [Israeli Foreign Minister] Mrs. [Golda] Meir and the secretary indicate to us that Israel is saying, for all practical purposes, it will not accept any refugees and that no progress can be made on this question in the immediate future. We cannot accept this. The president is concerned—in fact he is dissatisfied—that Israel has not been more forthcoming.

3. We cannot and will not accept the status quo on this matter. We want and expect Israeli cooperation on the basis of the formula discussed by the president and [Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion in 1961; some repatriation and plenty of resettlement.8

JFK foresaw his struggles with Israel as far back as 1939 when he expressed in a letter to his father that some of the Zionist leadership (Israel had not yet been established) possessed an “unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude.” He also wrote, “On the Jewish side there is the desire for complete domination, with Jerusalem as the capital of their new land of milk and honey, with the right to colonize in Trans-Jordan.”9

The second major area of tension between John F. Kennedy and Israel was JFK’s desire to build good relations with the Arab states. He listed possible better relations with Egypt as one of the top items to explore during his presidency.10 In early 1962, Kennedy approved a three-year, $500 million PL-480 food package for Egypt and a loan designed to stabilize the Egyptian economy. This surge in American aid led Kennedy foreign policy advisor Chester Bowles to predict Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser would take up a “key role in bringing the Middle East peacefully into our modern world.”11 Israel, however, greatly objected to Kennedy’s approach. Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion wrote to JFK:

I am aware that financial aid granted by the United States is meant to help in the economic development of the country and to improve the conditions of life of the Egyptian people. Indeed, if Egypt were not planning the annihilation of Israel, Western financial aid could be regarded as a very positive action. However, in the present state of affairs, the aid serves, notwithstanding the good intentions of those who grant it, to set the Russian arms in motion against Israel.12

Kennedy was not amused by the accusations in Ben-Gurion’s letter and responded:

I continue to believe that the efforts of the United States to develop effective relations with the Arab states are in fact in the long-term interest of Israel at least as much as of the United States or the Arab countries themselves. These effective relations, in my judgement, have significantly increased our influence with Arab leaders, and this influence is always exercised on behalf of the peace of the area and with full regard for the security of Israel. Thus, I really cannot agree with the suggestion that our limited economic assistance to the United Arab Republic can be considered as a force which serves “to set the Russian arms in motion against Israel when the opportunity offers.”13

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in multiple recent interviews, has stated that the Palestinians have been given more aid than Europe received during the Marshall Plan.14 Perhaps if one considers 75 years of assistance in today’s dollars, that is possible. However, his uncle complained bitterly that the Congress was denying him the ability to give aid to foreign nations, and in particular, Arab nations, even though the amount he was asking for was far less than what was distributed during the Marshall Plan and was to be disbursed among far more people.15 His uncle’s statements contradict Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims.

In November 1963, Senator Ernest Gruening proposed an amendment—targeted at Egypt—that would deny aid to any state deemed to be engaged in or preparing for aggression against another recipient of US aid.16

In an internal White House memo, it was implied that JFK felt Israel may have encouraged Gruening to push the amendment to block JFK’s aid to Egypt. R. W. Komer, senior staff member of the National Security Council, responsible for Middle Eastern affairs, wrote to JFK what he had communicated to Israel:

We were expected to subsidize Israel, both privately and publicly, to support her to the hilt on every issue, to meet all of her security requirements, and to defend her if attacked. In return, we did not even know what she intended to do in such critical fields as missiles and nuclear weapons. … What kind of a relationship was this? … Couldn’t the Israeli government acknowledge just once that the U.S. had a defensible position in attempting to maintain good relations with the Arab states?[17

This leads us to the third source of tension between John F. Kennedy and Israel: his attempt to register the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, as a foreign agent. According to Judge Simon Rifkind [representing AZC], the request for registration “would eventually destroy the Zionist movement”.18 JFK, nonetheless, persisted. During his campaign announcement speech, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proclaimed that those who cannot afford lobbies need the Kennedys, and those are the people he will help as president.19 Indeed, those are the people his uncle helped when he requested that the American Zionist Council register as a foreign agent for the Palestinians have no lobby. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., however, sounds like an AIPAC spokesman every time the subject of Israel arises. He long ago abdicated his own campaign promise. Some campaign rhetoric is always expected, and indeed, JFK himself spoke at the Zionists for America convention while campaigning in 1960. But even in that speech, he spoke of the need for Israel to build a peaceful and cooperative relationship with its neighbors and the need to resolve the refugee problem.20

The last, and arguably greatest, source of tension between John F. Kennedy and Israel was Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Throughout the spring of 1963, JFK sent multiple requests to Israel asking for thorough semi-annual inspections of their nuclear facility at Dimona. After numerous attempts to dodge Kennedy’s demands, Ben-Gurion finally replied to JFK regarding inspections on May 29, 1963, and suggested an inspection either at the end of the year or early 1964.21

Kennedy responded on June 15, 1963, just a few days after his famous American University “Peace Speech,” in which he called for a nuclear test ban treaty as the first step to potential disarmament. In his letter responding to Ben-Gurion, JFK requested more detailed, more frequent inspections, starting immediately, during the early summer of 1963, not at the end of the year, otherwise: “This government’s commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized if it should be thought that we are unable to obtain reliable information on a subject as vital to peace as the question of the character of Israel’s effort in the nuclear field.”22

On July 22, 2023, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. condemned US Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for supporting Congresswoman Ilan Omar’s “appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee despite Omar’s advocacy of a boycott of Israel.”23 If one applies RFK Jr.’s logic to 1963, RFK Jr. is implying that his uncle deserved to be removed from office as anyone who seeks to withhold funding from Israel is apparently unworthy of representing the American people. Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sent a letter to the Israeli ambassador in Washington in which he stated of JFK’s support for the Palestinian right of return, “Israel will regard this plan as a more serious danger to her existence than all the threats of the Arab dictators and kings, than all the Arab armies, than all of Nasser’s missiles and his Soviet MIGs. … Israel will fight against this implementation down to the last man.”24 RFK Jr. has repeatedly claimed that Israel needs to be tough with its Palestinian neighbors because those neighbors are a threat to Israel’s security.25 But according to Israel’s founding prime minister, JFK’s stance was more dangerous to Israel than the collective threat of all the Arab states. Following RFK Jr.’s logic, does that imply that any action was permissible to achieve a change in JFK’s policies?

As JFK’s letter outlining his ultimatum arrived in Israel on June 16, 1963, Ben-Gurion resigned, never accepting receipt of the letter.26 By Ben-Gurion resigning, Israel was able to get a six-month delay on JFK’s demands for immediate inspections. JFK reluctantly agreed to wait until the end of the year, as the new prime minister, Levi Eshkol, needed time to get his bearings. However, JFK made it clear he wanted inspections to occur before the nuclear reactor went critical, as once the reactor was critical, much of it would be radioactive and closed off.27 JFK, however, never made it to the end of the year. He was assassinated. Annual cursory inspections did occur under Johnson, but they were limited in nature, and the first inspection did not occur until early 1964 after the reactor had already gone critical. According to historian Stephen Green, Lyndon Johnson’s White House “saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona when the reactor went critical in early 1964.”28 Lyndon Johnson himself proclaimed in a declassified phone conversation, “I spent a lot of time with him [Ben-Gurion] back when they were in real problems, and they were getting ready to sanction [in 1963 over Dimona]. I just came down here and said, ‘Hell no. That can’t be.’ And I stopped it.”29

RFK Jr. proclaimed that he has no issues with Israel possessing nuclear weapons as “Israel will never use them.”30 He fails to understand the broader geopolitical implications of Israel being a nuclear state as explained by his uncle: “We are concerned with the disturbing effects on world stability which would accompany the development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel. … Development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel would almost certainly lead other countries that have so far refrained from such development to feel that they must follow suit.”31

After JFK’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson reversed all of Kennedy’s policies toward Israel. Had JFK lived, it is questionable whether Israel would have nuclear weapons today and whether AIPAC would have the influence it has. The refugee issue may very well have been resolved, and the 1967 Six-Day War, which led to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, almost certainly would not have happened. Neither would the USS Liberty attack have occurred.

John F. Kennedy spoke of how America’s first president, George Washington, had warned Americans about passionate attachments to other nations. JFK proclaimed, “Washington told our forefathers in this country to reject permanent, inveterate, antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others and said any nation failing in this is to some degree a slave. He warned against foreign influences, which seek to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion.”32

Based on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statements over the last few years, I would argue that he has failed to heed his uncle’s warnings. He has indeed developed a passionate attachment to a nation other than the one for which he ran to be president, even going as far as proclaiming that as president, his support of Israel would be “unconditional.”33 His uncle believed that people who thought issues were simple and that answers were obvious were dangerous people.34 RFK Jr.’s passionate attachment to a foreign nation has caused him to oversimplify the problems in the Middle East. It has caused him to lay all blame on one party and no blame on the other. Indeed, it has caused him to fail to learn yet another lesson from his uncle: peace is a process, a way of solving problems. According to John F. Kennedy, to achieve peace, one must look inward at the role of one’s own actions in contributing to the conflict. One must also put themselves in the shoes of their adversary.35 How can one possibly achieve peace if one is incapable of criticizing one of the two sides? If one is unwilling to follow the process of peace, how can one ever expect an outcome of peace?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may claim to have run for president as an independent, but he is not acting as such. When I first heard that he was running for president, I thought to myself, if he wins, I will happily change the title of my book. Unfortunately, it has become evident that even if RFK Jr. had won, the title of my book, America’s Last President, would still have applied to John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked at the bottom of his campaign emails, “Donate today to put a Kennedy back in the White House.” He failed to understand that the last name Kennedy is not what made his uncle special. It was his uncle’s actions that made him the great man that he was. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may share his uncle’s last name, but his actions are those of Lyndon Johnson, the man who reversed all of John F. Kennedy’s Middle East policies, gave blind and unconditional—and some would argue treasonous—support and allegiance to a foreign nation, and solidified the US/Israeli relationship that persists until today.

My intention in writing this was not to attack RFK Jr.—he still embodies many traits I greatly admire—but to emphasize how poorly JFK’s policies are understood, even by those who hold him in high regard and see themselves as continuing his work. Perhaps one day, RFK Jr. will still follow in his uncle’s footsteps.

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