It Did Not Start with JFK
The U.S. military, the CIA, and American right-wing business leaders all wanted Fidel Castro removed from power. It began almost from the moment the Communist dictator took over in Cuba in January 1959. It continued throughout JFK’s Presidency, and plans were in the works for a massive U.S. military invasion of Cuba in December 1963. Why, then, when presented with a golden opportunity after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of JFK, a so-called “Communist defector” to the Soviet Union, did they do nothing? The accused assassin was a Castro supporter and a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, who had attempted to travel illegally to Cuba via Mexico City two months before the assassination. It was the perfect time to get rid of the Cuban leader. There must have been a reason that those who opposed him sat idly by.
Why is it that historians have treated the assassination of JFK as if it occurred in a vacuum? Within twenty-six months of his murder, fifteen attempted assassinations and government overthrows of leftist leaders and regimes throughout the world happened, all perpetrated by right-wing anti-Communists. In almost every case, either the CIA or the U.S. military provided support. Was this just a coincidence?
Following his arrest, Lee Harvey Oswald asked for only one person to represent him – a New York attorney named John Abt. In 1963, Abt was the only lawyer in the United States who had ever represented someone for violating the Smith Act. Enacted in 1940, the Smith Act made it “…a criminal offense to advocate the violent overthrow of the government or to organize or be a member of any group devoted to such advocacy.” Oswald was part of a group looking to overthrow the U.S. government, and JFK’s assassination was to be the catalyst to initiate this. However, authorities and assassination researchers have misrepresented Oswald’s motive for picking Abt from the moment he mentioned his name to reporters in Dallas? Why was this so?
Four months before JFK’s assassination, Oswald spoke before the Jesuit House of Studies at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. He told those in attendance that “Americans are apt to scoff at the idea that a military coup in the U.S., as so often happens in Latin American countries, could ever replace our government, but that is an idea that has grounds for consideration.” Why was this ignored?
Why was it that immediately after Oswald’s arrest, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade said an international conspiracy was behind JFK’s assassination? He continued to do so until Lyndon Johnson’s people in Washington ordered Wade to say that Oswald had acted alone.
These questions have bothered me for years. And to obtain the answers, I realized investigating the events surrounding JFK’s assassination was not enough. I needed to travel back in time sixty years to when the radical right-wing discontent that eventually led to the assassination of JFK began.
The right-wing movement started in the aftermath of World War I, one year after Bolsheviks ousted the tsar and took control in Russia. Many elites feared that a potential influx of Eastern Europeans and Communists into the U.S. threatened democracy and the American way of life as they knew it. It gave rise to a racist pseudo-science called eugenics, which believed all races and nationalities were inferior to Anglo-Saxons, or Nordics, which were people of northern European descent. And as communism became more widespread following the Great Depression, FDR was called a Communist for his New Deal programs that took money from the rich without their consent. Wealthy elites thought it violated the Constitution and their inalienable right of self-determination, guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence. Many became concerned and wanted to stop it, even if it meant removing a President from office to maintain the status quo.
It Did Not Start With JFK: The Decades of Events That Led to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy is the first book to focus on the period from the 1930s through 1960 and the impact it had on Kennedy’s death. After years of New Deal social programs, eugenics, and anti-Communist white nationalism, a Fascist, right-wing group of wealthy elites formed. It included military and U.S. intelligence members and business leaders who looked to establish a Fascist New World Order based upon Christian, anti-Communist, racist principles.
The rise of the radical right led to multiple plots to assassinate FDR. In the 1930s, major American corporations ignored the atrocities and supported Nazi Germany. At the same time, Jews and anyone else not of Nordic-Aryan ethnicity were considered “subhuman” and expendable by proponents of eugenics. After World War II, the movement strengthened as calls for a “Pax Americana,” and American supremacy echoed through the land. Anything was acceptable in the war against communism, including collaboration with ex-Nazi war criminals. The CIA became a rogue agency answerable to no one. They created their own foreign policy that repeatedly opposed what Presidents wanted to do. They funded émigré armies throughout Europe with Mafia drug money. They assassinated leaders, overthrew governments, and conducted mind-altering drug experiments on innocent people. It was all done without government approval. A radical right-wing faction within the CIA evolved. This group resorted to sabotage and treason to manipulate Presidents Truman and Eisenhower whenever they attempted to curtail the spread of the American war machine or normalize relations with the Soviet Union. Containing communism was considered essential if the United States was to survive. The military resorted to treason as well, as many believed their duty was to obey the Constitution, not the President, which led to talk of a potential military coup in the halls of Washington during the latter part of Eisenhower’s Presidency, as well as throughout JFK’s term in office.
The movement became increasingly influential and powerful during the Cold War, as anticommunism and the civil rights movement threatened self-determination and an American way of life they wanted to preserve. A radical right-wing Christian religious revival occurred to combat communism. And when racial segregation was ruled unconstitutional, it galvanized the Fascist movement. Racist hate groups in Dallas and New Orleans joined with ex-U.S. military generals, white nationalists, and other supporters from the military and CIA. They were willing to overthrow the government of the United States if necessary.
The evidence shows that Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were repeatedly controlled and duped by the radical right to maintain the status quo in America. However, President Kennedy demonstrated time and again that he would stand up to the “Deep State” invisible government that ran Washington. And as he governed with a plan that promoted Communist appeasement and racial equality for all, it became clear to the radical right that treason and sabotage were no longer viable options to control the young, upstart President. As a result, in the country's best interest, as the Fascists perceived it, JFK had to die.
It Did Not Start With JFK: The Decades of Events That Led to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy also explains how Lee Harvey Oswald became part of this right-wing paramilitary network during the 1950s. It describes his association with neo-Nazi types in New Orleans, his stint in the Marines, which included a connection to U.S. intelligence, and his “defection” to the Soviet Union. It explains how Jack Ruby, during the same period, became involved with organized crime, drug traffickers, gunrunners, and the war against Castro, which inevitably connected him to the radical right element of U.S. intelligence. The book explains how each man’s activities eventually involved them with members of the extreme right-wing cabal who wanted JFK dead and the road each would follow to Dallas in 1963 and a date with destiny.
It Did Not Start With JFK: The Decades of Events That Led to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy also examines how the war against communism developed into an international Fascist movement made up of American right-wingers and European monarchists whose common goal was to contain the spread of communism throughout the world. JFK was just one in a series of “Communists” who had to be removed from power to ensure their New World Order became a reality. Why this came to be is the key to unraveling the assassination riddle. And the answer to “why” can only be determined by examining the decades before Kennedy’s death, which is the focus of It Did Not Start With JFK: The Decades of Events That Led to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy . And once “why” is understood, who was responsible becomes clear.