The Deep State Manipulation of American Politics from JFK’s Assassination to Watergate

How is it that the United States government manages to smoothly transition from one administration to the next, even when the political orientation of the incoming president is diametrically opposed to his predecessor?

What Is the Deep State, Really?

There is a behind-the-scenes network that ensures this happens. It is nonpartisan and especially applies to foreign policy.

The Council on Foreign Relations, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and various think tanks are all breeding grounds that discuss and create American foreign policy. There are major multinational corporations involved as well.

Taken together, they make up what is known as The Deep State, designed to ensure America’s objectives on the world stage proceed regardless of who occupies the White House.

At no time were they more relevant than during the Cold War.

The Deep State Versus Communism

Eisenhower called it the Military-Industrial Complex, but make no mistake; a Deep State government concerned him.

The Deep State intended to contain the spread of communism until it imploded from within, which they believed was inevitable. Whenever Truman or Eisenhower attempted to violate this Policy of Containment during the Cold War, the Deep State sabotaged their operations to ensure they failed.

However, when Kennedy was president, sabotage was insufficient, for he made it clear that if elected to a second term, he would turn American foreign policy upside down.

JFK Defies the Deep State

Consider that by the summer of 1963, J.F.K. signed a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union and then went directly to the people to pressure Congress into approving it.

During his American University speech In June, he made clear he intended to normalize relations with the Soviets. Behind the scenes, he was trying to do the same thing with Fidel Castro in Cuba.

He was determined to pull U.S. troops out of Vietnam by 1965, as he began to realize it was an unwinnable war. “Make sure I am reelected,” he is on record as saying.

He planned to send a massive economic and military aid package to Indonesia and visit Jakarta early in 1964 to improve relations with them further. The CIA and the Joint Chiefs objected, believing Indonesian President Sukarno was a Communist who would take the American money and buy weapons from his friends at the Kremlin.

Kennedy’s detractors also accused him of abandoning Laos to the Communists and allowing the East Germans to construct the Berlin Wall.

Meanwhile, domestically, JFK was prepared to put forth a civil rights bill, which he could only do during his second term.

President Kennedy left the Deep State no choice. Sabotage was not an option. There were too many areas to address, and Kennedy could not be manipulated.

He had to die.

Puppet Administration?

With Lyndon Johnson the new President, who probably would have gone to prison due to the Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes scandals if Kennedy were reelected, the Deep State knew they could control the new administration.

It began quickly.

In April 1964, the U.S. supported a military coup in Brazil. That same month, U.S. Marines were sent to the Dominican Republic and fought rebel forces. In November, the CIA covertly financed a right-wing military coup in Bolivia. In October 1965, a military coup toppled Sukarno in Indonesia, resulting in the massacre of as many as 1,000,000 suspected “Communists.”

None of this would have happened if John Kennedy were still President.

Escalation in Viet Nam

Then there was Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which occurred in August 1964. The military goaded the North Vietnamese into allegedly attacking the U.S.S. Maddox. The Joint Chiefs lied to Congress, and in short order, the U.S. military became entrenched in Southeast Asia. By February 1965, President Johnson began bombing targets in North Vietnam, and a month later, the first U.S. combat troops arrived. By 1967 there were 500,000 American troops in Vietnam.

The Threat of Another Kennedy

On March 31, 1968, LBJ told the nation that he did not intend to run for a second term. Just fifteen days before, Robert Kennedy had publicly announced his intent to run for president. The timing was not a coincidence, for there was little doubt that Kennedy would have defeated Johnson in the Democratic primary.

The Republican candidate in 1968 was Richard Nixon, whom John Kennedy had defeated in 1960 in a razor-thin outcome. Some say Kennedy stole that election from Nixon. Regardless, the sympathy vote in 1968 would have gone to Robert Kennedy, the anti-war candidate.

Meanwhile, Martin Luther King was prepared to endorse Robert Kennedy and throw the African American vote behind him, making Robert Kennedy an unstoppable candidate. However, King’s assassination on April 4 ended that.

By the summer of 1968, Robert Kennedy was on his way to a Democratic nomination until he was assassinated on the 6th of June.

Two assassinations, two months apart, changed the entire election. By the time of the Democratic Convention in August, the party was in disarray. To ensure a Nixon victory, the ex-Democratic governor of Alabama, George Wallace, ran as an independent, pulling votes away from Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee.

The Deep State Versus Nixon

During his presidency, Nixon visited China in February 1972 and the Soviet Union in May of the same year. During his second term, he would end the Vietnam War, a humiliating defeat for the U.S. and a violation of the Policy of Containment that had characterized American foreign policy since 1945.

It was all sacrilege to the Deep State. So, it is not surprising that, by the end of 1973, the Watergate scandal would bring his presidency to an end. And it was not a coincidence that the Watergate burglars were all ex-CIA operatives from the secret war against Fidel Castro when JFK was President.

Gerald Ford, an ex-member of the Warren Commission, would succeed Nixon. Nelson Rockefeller, whose family was part of the Deep State government going back to the 1930s, became vice president.

Perhaps this was all a coincidence. I think not.

What If..?

One last thought: If John Kennedy had served a second term, things would have been dramatically different. And there is no doubt Robert Kennedy would have been the favorite to succeed his brother in 1968, with the possibility that brother Ted would follow Bobbie in 1976. It would have created a Kennedy presidential dynasty from 1960 through 1984, Ronald Reagan’s second term.

Would the Deep State have allowed that to happen?

Not in a million years.