America at Twilight (3)

By the time John F. Kennedy took the reins in January 1961, the Central Intelligence Agency had served itself a substantial slice of US foreign policy. Normally the sole jurisdiction of the President and Secretary of State, the CIA developed a rhythm in its operations both secret and deadly. The agency engineered a Coup in Iran (1953) and in Guatemala (1954) in concert with the State Department but it was planning some freelance adventures in September 1961, namely the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba, a former Congo Prime Minister, and Dag Hammerskjold, who was bringing a peace proposal to the Congo warring factions. His death remains a Cold Case. But the chutzpah of a cabal willing to dispatch the UN Secretary-General in the pursuit of its nefarious goals would hoist flags of concern in many capitals. Several months previous in April of ’61 the CIA’s mischief in the Bay of Pigs led President Kennedy into the jaws of defeat and profound embarrassment. Suggesting that Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial complex warning came a little late would garner a ‘duh’ because Kennedy’s next major duel with the Agency would play out in South East Asia: Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. CIA interference in Laos ran counter to Kennedy’s desire to neutralize that country under a United Nations initiative. In Saigon, CIA made plans to drag the United States into a full scale ground war between the US and the Viet Cong. That set the stage for dramatics that Kennedy knew could cost him his life.

When JFK became president he was unaware that the CIA had placed a secret team of its own employees through the entire U.S. government. This team was accountable only to the CIA, headed by Allan Dulles. When Dulles was fired, Richard Helms replaced him. According to author James W. Douglas, “with the exception of a tight circle of Agency bureaucrats no one was aware of this top-secret intelligence network. It constituted a powerful, unseen government within the government. The members of this {cabal} would act quickly, with total obedience when called upon by the CIA to assist its covert operations”. Knowing this eliminates the need for a tutorial on Dallas!

By the fall of ’63 Vietnam was a bag of hammers. The U.S. had a few hundred advisers in Saigon including about 300 CIA, the Joint Chiefs were agitating for substantially greater troop deployment, diplomats were divided on the chances of defeating the Viet Cong with a couple of hundred thousand troops, and Kennedy was trying to figure out how he was going to broach the subject of absolutely no U.S. troop involvement, not even advisors in South Vietnam. Between 1946 and 1954 the French suffered enormous losses; more than 100-thousand killed, another 100 thousand wounded, and millions in military hardware. Indo-China was purgatorial for the French and Kennedy was not going to sacrifice young Americans in the rice paddies of South Vietnam. So 6 weeks before his assassination JFK issued National Security Action Memoranda-NSAM #263. It ordered the withdrawal of “1,000 U-S military personnel by the end of 1963” and “by the end of 1965….the bulk of U.S. personnel.” At that point Kennedy was a dead man walking.

On October 3, 1963, Richard Starnes of the Scripps-Howard newspapers wrote “..according to a high United States source here (Saigon), 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.” The Starnes piece continued, “a very high American official noted the CIA’s growth was “likened to a malignancy” which the very high official was not sure even the White House could control…any longer. The Agency, he said, represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.”

Using its menacing influence the CIA managed to inveigle the Congress into believing in the righteous practicality of U.S. presence in Vietnam in spite of growing unrest among hoi polloi. Scattered protests threatened. The cost of war was draining America of its young. Black leaders were finding it difficult to justify to their military-age youth the sacrifice in a war the United States seemed unable to win. The question in 1964 and beyond was who will go get a watchman to help the poor, lazy, unfocused American media get it together. The watchman never came. There were scattered challenges to the findings of the Warren Commission, bothersome critics like Mark Lane, but nothing critical to its acceptance by the majority of Americans. So the Agency’s radar was concerned about crowds, and single-minded messiahs who could whip up unwanted irritations. After its success in Dallas, CIA managed assets were contracted to eliminate trouble. In 1965, there was Malcolm X. Who assassinated him? 56 years later his family would like to know. The CIA involved somehow? Then in April 1968 more executive action. There was that other black troublemaker with a huge following and a gift of soaring oratory. CIA would have to figure Americans bought the lone gunman story in ’63 why not use it again? Bingo-James Earl Ray. Neat, another guy with three names, a rifle and a couple bullets. Target: Dr. Martin Luther King. Tennessee Judge Joe Brown flatly stated James Ray did not kill Dr. King and a Civil court jury returned a verdict of a conspiracy. Doubts linger, but from the CIA perspective it got the job done. Where was the great American media? So far from the pulse of the action with no hope of ever catching up.

The next problem faced by the Agency was the emerging electoral strength of Bobby Kennedy. June 1968. He wins the California primary. Yes he was a major problem. If he goes to Chicago and wins the Democratic nomination and if he becomes President knowing what he knows about Washington…..Oh yes he’s gotta go. Change the setup. No rifles. A guy with a handgun, and another guy to guarantee the hit. Sirhan Sirhan. Catchy. A man with a mission. Sirhan shooting as Kennedy is walking towards him in the hotel kitchen hits everybody but Kennedy. Thane Eugene Caesar, a private guard hired to protect Bobby Kennedy, fires two fatal bullets, one report says four less than 5 inches from his head. Somehow no one figures that out, except Thomas Noguchi the coroner. But the media are told the Coroner is wrong. Sirhan’s gun had eight chambers, and police clean-up confirmed 13 shots fired. They said Noguchi was prone to making mistakes. Kennedy dies at 4:30 am Los Angeles time. Americans mourned but they remained clueless. Who hired Thane Eugene Cesar?

1960 was your opportunity to elevate the Republic, take it to a plane higher than any country has ever reached. America! It was yours to take. But in that decade 60-69, you elected a president, you killed a president, killed his assassin, killed two influential back leaders, killed the President’s brother who could have been president, sent more than two million men and women to fight a war you could not win! And you also put men on the moon, fulfilling a promise made years before by the slain president.

The people of the United States countenanced four major assassinations in less than seven years? And still could not or would not come to understand that they were living in a Banana Republic. The mind boggles! Wilful ignorance is when you are fully aware of facts, resources and sources but refuse to acknowledge them. America the Beautiful – four assassinations in less than 7 years? Couldn’t you people catch a clue? What was that about, “a malignancy growing as a government within a government?” An entity exercising tremendous power, accountable only to itself.

The citizens of the USA believe they live in the greatest, richest, most generous country in the world but don’t know when they are being shot at, lied to, libeled, ridiculed, stomped on and threatened. Very sad.

.