Dear Bill - Why No Justice

Dear bill

I follow your blog and enjoy it very much.  Like you I was young when the president was killed and it has never left me.  For all these years I’ve waited for someone to rise up and seek justice in this case, which you also call for.  

We want them to recognize what is patently obvious to people like us, that JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy involving high levels of the government.  But that’s not ever going to happen, and here is why I’ve come to believe this.      

First, you have to go back and remember what it was like in the early 60’s. We were in a cold war with the communists that began on the heels of the Second World War. 

There is a scene in the movie “Patton” where, after the German surrender, General Patton suggests to Beetle Smith that he could start a fight with the Russians while we still had the army on hand to do it. “In ten days I'll have a war on with those communist bastards, and I'll make it look like THEIR fault.” The movie makes it seem like Patton was the crazy exception, but it was really the other way around. The desire to fight the communists was pervasive amongst many in the top command.  

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American military began developing detailed plans to annihilate the Soviet Union. In fact, just 6 weeks after the Japanese surrender, unbeknownst to the American public, the military was targeting Russia city by city. The military believed that we were going to have to fight them eventually, so we may as well do it while we have the advantage.  Anyone who didn’t agree with them was either a communist sympathizer or a coward. 

During the Korean War, MacArthur urged Truman to use atomic weapons against the North, and China too if necessary.  In the early 50’s the military wanted Eisenhower to launch a preemptive war against the Soviet Union. Throughout that decade, SAC flew spy overflights of Russia on a regular basis, and its commander actually hoped to provoke a war. Imagine how we would have responded if they were flying over the United States. When Eisenhower kept them in check, they accused their former commander of going ‘soft.’

So in 1960, along comes JFK, who they thought they could push around.  They advised him to invade Cuba, send troops to Laos and Vietnam, and confront the Soviets in Berlin.  They recommended using nuclear weapons at nearly every turn.  In the midst of the Berlin Crisis, the military’s ‘Net Evaluation Subcommittee’ met with the President to let him know that there was a window of opportunity where they could launch a preemptive attack on the Soviet Union and win.  Since that window would begin to close by 1964, their recommendation was to launch “a surprise attack in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions.”  Kennedy left the meeting disgustedly commenting, “…and we call ourselves the human race.”

Whenever JFK didn’t go along with their plans, he was accused of appeasement. Kennedy was particularly keen to appeasement accusations, because his father, when US Ambassador to Great Brittan, was a supporter of Neville Chamberlin’s appeasement policy towards Germany. Joseph P Kennedy was dismissed because of it. After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Curtis LeMay told a Washington reporter ‘off-the-record’  that Kennedy’ s actions during the crisis were cowardly and suggested to his staff that he should be removed from office.The appeasement rhetoric amongst our generals in Germany came loudly when Kennedy did not go in and demolish the Berlin Wall. So much so that Berlin University students sent the President a large black umbrella, the trademark symbol of Neville Chamberlin, the founding father of appeasement.

But the real problem came with the Cuban Missile Crisis. The military thought they had him this time; to them there was no choice but to invade Cuba and take the Soviet Missiles out. When Kennedy was considering the alternate plan of a blockade, LeMay tried to get his goat: “This blockade and political action I see leading us straight to war.  I don’t see any other solution for it. It will lead right into war. This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”  

At the time, the official version of the settlement was that the Soviets agreed to take out the missiles in exchange for a no-invasion pledge from JFK, but it wasn’t until years later that we were told that Kennedy had secretly agreed to take out our Jupiter missiles in Turkey in exchange. Kennedy knew that these missiles were junk, and he had tried to get them out before this crisis. However, the military was incensed that he did not order an invasion of Cuba, the communist malignancy in the western hemisphere. LeMay exploded, “This is the worst defeat in our history!”  And they soon became aware of the secret deal which to them this was treason. To their point of view JFK had caved in to what they saw as a Russian ultimatum to remove our missiles under nuclear threat.

This is why, I believe, Kennedy was assassinated, they shot him for what they perceived as treason. And by blaming his murder on a pro-Castro communist, they might finally get to invade Cuba and possibly start a war with the Russians. It was late 1963 and blaming a communist would give them the ‘period of heightened tensions’ they needed.

They did leave a cryptic fingerprint in Dealey Plaza. As the President’s motorcade proceeded down Elm Street there was a ‘Dark Complected Man’ on the curb with his arm high in the air, standing next to a man holding an open large black umbrella on a perfectly sunny day. Many researchers say that the man waving was an anti-Castro Cuban who JFK would recognize, and he certainly recognized the symbol of the umbrella.  So one of the last things John Kennedy saw before he was shot was the message “Appeasement-Cuba.”

This is why the government is never going to seek justice in this case. They believe that they carried out justice in executing a ‘traitor.’ And they will spout the Lee-Harvey-Oswald-three-shots-from-behind fiction until everyone who was alive on November 22, 1963 is gone. After that, the Warren Commission report will be the undisputed story, and anybody who ever believed otherwise were the lunatic fringe.

 Yours truly

Jim Magee (a Philly boy)