No criminal case in world history has been more debated and analyzed than the assassination of the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy. In addition to two official investigations, the subject has been endlessly examined in countless discussion forums, radio programs, TV documentaries, and films for more than six decades. Hundreds of films, thousands of books, and even more articles have been produced about the event. It has fascinated people around the world and attained an almost mythological status.
Intelligence analyst Harold Weisberg studied the assassination for four decades and described it as more complex than any single individual could fully grasp. Those who attempt to unravel the mystery often find themselves lost in a labyrinth of spectacular events.
Beyond the enormous number of threads in the case—witnesses and potentially involved individuals, as well as people associated with them and/or the accused shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald—there are also a range of leads that seem to point to the mafia, Cuban exiles, intelligence agencies, the military, the oil sector, and various more or less extreme groups.
The case also includes complex technical details such as weapons, bullets, clothing, photographs, films, and extensive autopsy material. Most books written on the subject point to either the mafia and/or the CIA as being responsible, sometimes in collusion with the FBI or the U.S. military leadership. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, has also been mentioned, as have Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union’s Nikita Khrushchev, and shipping magnate Onassis.
Some of the theories that have been put forward must be regarded as difficult to swallow even for the most open-minded. One version, for example, claims that the driver of the presidential limousine turned around and fired the fatal shot, while another asserts that it was Kennedy’s own wife who shot him. That certain “explanations” are more or less far-fetched is hardly surprising. History shows that wild speculation often follows dramatic world events.
We can see every day how people on the internet—often without the slightest evidence or factual basis—make spectacular and sensational claims about one thing or another. An unfortunate consequence of this is that those who honestly and sincerely wish to engage in meaningful and serious discussion about controversial subjects are often lumped together with the former category.
This, in turn, makes it easier for forces that wish to silence uncomfortable opinions in general, and opinions about the actions of those in power in particular. Words such as conspiracy and conspiracy theorist have taken on a ridiculed connotation and are even equated with extremism—despite the fact that history is full of examples of conspiracies at various levels.
In 1962, a political novel titled Seven Days in May was published in the United States by journalist Charles W. Bailey and author Fletcher Knebel. It told the story of an idealistic, peace-seeking president who, despite opposition from the military, succeeded in passing a disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union—after which a group of outraged Pentagon officers initiated a coup d’état.
The story was believed to have been inspired by the activities of the far-right Texas general Edwin Walker, but Knebel later revealed that he had gotten the idea after speaking with the Air Force Chief of Staff, Curtis LeMay. LeMay was outraged by what he considered Kennedy’s weakness toward communism and seriously wanted to start a nuclear war against the Russians. The sooner the better, LeMay thought, since it was only a matter of time anyway.¹
Kennedy had read Seven Days in May and, despite objections from the Pentagon, encouraged the director and his friend John Frankenheimer to adapt it into a film. When filming began the following year, Kennedy even allowed parts of the White House grounds to be used by the film crew.
That same summer, he went sailing with Paul “Red” Fay, an old colleague from World War II who was now Secretary of the Navy. Fay had also read the book and took the opportunity to ask the president whether he thought something similar could happen in the United States. Kennedy replied that if three catastrophic scenarios—such as the failed invasion of Cuba the year before—were to occur, then it could happen. “Then there are people in the military who would begin to question the president, especially if he were young and untested. But,” Kennedy added (ironically, as it would turn out), “it will not happen during my term in office.”³
It is said that Kennedy saw the film as a way to raise public awareness of political dynamics at a time when he himself was one of the few power holders occupying the political center regarding relations with the communist bloc. At a time when nearly all sectors of government were calling for tougher measures, Kennedy adopted a more restrained strategy.
From a peace-preserving perspective, this was certainly a wise approach—but from the viewpoint of the intelligence services, the military, and the political and economic power elite, it was often directly provocative. Such an attitude not only contradicted their analyses, it also threatened their power and profit interests.
But let us now delve a little deeper into the story.
Vincent Salandria was born and raised in an Italian ghetto in Philadelphia in 1926. After earning a degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1951, he began a legal career that would span more than six decades. Salandria also became a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization dedicated to defending minority rights.
He was also involved in the peace movement and was initially very critical of Kennedy’s policies. In Salandria’s eyes, Kennedy was a Cold Warrior who had acted irresponsibly during the so-called Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. The United States had secretly trained and equipped Cuban exiles to overthrow Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro, and after the failed invasion attempt, Castro allowed Soviet nuclear missiles to be installed on the island. This led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the two superpowers appeared to be on the brink of starting a third world war.
Salandria’s view of the president would later change, however—partly because of the nuclear test ban treaty that Kennedy succeeded in pushing through in September 1963. Just two months later, shots rang out in Dallas, and a young, alleged Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the murder. Initially, Oswald was detained as a suspect in the killing of a police officer named J. D. Tippit earlier that same day, but it did not take long before he was also identified as the prime suspect in the assassination of the president.
While most people felt great relief that the president’s murderer had been apprehended, Salandria began to sense that something was wrong. At an early stage, he had seen the peace movement infiltrated by provocateurs, and it was not uncommon for the same thing to happen within political groups.
What Salandria reacted to most strongly were reports that Oswald had had contact with political groups in the United States that were in direct or indirect opposition to one another. Since no left-wing individual in the country typically aligned themselves with as many conflicting factions as Oswald had, Salandria began to suspect that Oswald had in fact been working for U.S. intelligence.
The following day, Salandria discussed the matter with Harold Feldman, a particularly sharp-minded brother-in-law who worked as a freelance journalist and had previously published several pieces in psychoanalytic journals. Among other things, Feldman had written an article twenty years earlier on the psychology of assassins titled “Hero as Assassin.”
Feldman immediately reacted to the fact that Oswald, unlike all other assassins in similar cases, consistently maintained his innocence. “He has denied his guilt consistently, which no other lone assassin in history has ever done,” Feldman noted (referring to individuals who had assassinated political leaders). “They usually boast about it.”⁴
Feldman then predicted that Oswald would soon be killed and that a Jewish person would be used to carry out the murder.
In this way, Feldman argued, the American left—particularly intellectuals and left-leaning Jews—would be intimidated into not thinking critically about the assassination of the president. “We decided that if Oswald was the murderer and the U.S. government was innocent of involvement in the assassination, then Oswald would survive the weekend,” Salandria recounted many years later. “But if he was killed, then we would know that the assassination was the result of a high-level conspiracy within the government.”⁵
The next day, Oswald was to be transferred from police headquarters to the Dallas county jail. As he was led into the garage by police toward a waiting transport vehicle, a man stepped forward and shot him dead in front of police officers, journalists, and millions of shocked television viewers.
The killer turned out to be a middle-aged nightclub owner from Dallas with good connections within both the police and the criminal underworld. To most people in Dallas, he was known as Jack Ruby. Relatively few knew that his real name was Jacob Leon Rubenstein, and that his parents were a Jewish couple who had emigrated to the United States from Poland.⁶
To be continued…
Michael Delavante, The Assassination of President Kennedy – Part 1
Sources:
- Philip A. Goduti, ”Kennedy’s: Kitchen Cabinet and the Pursuit of Peace: The. Shaping of American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963″, McFarland & Co Inc; 1 edition (2009) (sidan 150) Se även: Warren Kozak, ”LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay,” Regnery History; Reprint edition, 2011, (sidan 348)
2. Kennedy, and What Might Have Been ‘JFK’s Last Hundred Days,’ by Thurston Clarke, Books of The Times By MICHIKO KAKUTANI AUG. 12, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com
3. Paul B. Fay, ”The Pleasure of His Company”, Harper & Row, 1966, (sidan 190) Se även: David Talbot, ”Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years”, The Free Press; annotated edition edition, 2007, (sidan 151)
4. John Kelin, ”Praise from a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report, ” Wings Press, 2007, (sidan 34)
- John Kelin, ”Praise from a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report,” Wings Press, 2007, (sidan 35)
- Scott Patrick Johnson, ”Trials of the Century: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture and the Law, Volym 1”, ABC-CLIO, 2010, (sidan 411)
