Kennedy versus the CIA: the Power Struggle That Preceded the Murder

On November 23rd, 2013, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, we argued, based on consideration of means and motives, that the CIA most likely killed Kennedy with a nod from Vice President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was not only a beneficiary of the killing, but the man in a position to impose a cover up. The CIA, of course, got to kick-start the war it wanted in Vietnam.

Then, we wrote:

A peculiarity of the American Constitution is that, on the death of the President, the Vice President is automatically sworn in as the new president. What a temptation that must present to a sociopathic Vice President.

Adding to the temptation is the fact that a president achieving office through assassination immediately assumes the power to direct the CIA, FBI and anyone else who may be concerned to undertake a cover-up as a matter of state.

It is not altogether surprising, therefore, that four out of 44 American presidents have been assassinated while in office, or that almost a dozen others, including in recent times Ronald Reagan, have been targeted for assassination.

The assassination of an American President is not normally, one would assume, a simple matter. The president is supposed to be well protected. But JFK made an enemy of the CIA, an agency with expertise in the removal of unwanted heads of state by means of assassination.*

Angered by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy fired CIA chief Allen Dulles and is reported to have expressed the wish to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

How difficult, then, would it have been for Vice President Lyndon Johnson to organize the killing? Perhaps not difficult at all. A nod to the CIA may have been all that was required.

With the Vice President’s OK, the agency was in a position to secure its own future by killing Kennedy, while being confident of protection from the new president. On that assumption, the pieces fall into place rather easily.

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What we were unaware of at the time was how directly and bitterly the CIA was in defiance of the President's authority in Vietnam. This, however, was made abundantly clear in the following article by Arthur Krock, which appeared in New York Times, on October 3, 1963, just weeks before Kennedy was killed. Thus is greatly strengthened the circumstantial evidence that the CIA killed Kennedy.

The Intra-Administration
War in Vietnam

By ARTHUR KROCK

New York Times, WASHINGTON, October 2: The Central Intelligence Agency is getting a very bad press in dispatches from Vietnam to American newspapers and in articles originating in Washington. Like the Supreme Court when under fire, the C.I.A. cannot defend itself in public retorts to criticisms of its activities as they occur. But, unlike the the Supreme Court, the C.I.A. has no open record of its activities on which the public can base a judgment of the validity of the criticisms. Also, the agency is precluded from using the indirect defensive tactic which is constantly employed by all other Government units under critical file.

This tactic is to give information to the press, under a seal of confidence, that challenges or refutes the critics. But the C.I.A. cannot father such inspired articles, because to do so would require some disclosure of its activities. And not only does the effectiveness of the agency depend on the secrecy of its operations. Every President since the C.I.A. was created has protected this secrecy from claimants—Congress or the public through the press, for examples—of the right to share any part of it.

With High Frequency

This Presidential policy has not, however, always restrained other executive units from going confidentially to the press with attacks on C.I.A. operations in their common field of responsibility. And usually it has been possible to deduce these operational details from the nature o the attacks. But the peak of the practice has recently been reached in Vietnam and in Washington. This is revealed almost every day now in dispatches from reporters—in close touch with intra-Administration critics of the C.I.A.—with excellent reputations for reliability.

One reporter in this category is Richard Starnes of the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Today, under a Saigon dateline, he related that, "according to a high United States source here, twice the C.I.A. flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge . . . [and] in one instance frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with it." Among the views attributed to United States officials on the scene, including one described as a "very high American official . . . who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy . . . are the following:

The C.I.A.'s growth was "likened to a malignancy" which the "very high official was not sure even the White House could control . . . any longer." "If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the C.I.A. and not the Pentagon." The agency "represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone."

Disorderly Government

Whatever else these passages disclose, they most certainly establish that representatives of other Executive branches have expanded their war against the C.I.A. from the inner government councils to the American people via the press. And published simultaneously are details of the agency's operations in Vietnam that can come only from the same critical official sources. This is disorderly government. And the longer the President tolerates it—the period already is considerable—the greater will grow its potentials of hampering the real war against the Vietcong and the impression of a very indecisive Administration in Washington.

Related:

Miami Jury: CIA Involved in JFK Assassination