WHO KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY?

This Friday marks the 50^th Anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas. An event being commemorated along with his supposed achievements of which, during his three years in office there were few. Firstly one thing needs to be understood. The man wasn’t murdered he was assassinated. Something that only happens to very important people like top politicians, military or religious leaders. Murder’s for ordinary folk like you and me. Theirs is a different kind of death. They may be good people or bad but their demise is a happening on a much higher plane. It’s more like a ‘removal’. Ordinary people just get done in for whatever reason. Those living on a higher plane, the summit of something or other like a political system, are taken from it. Its apex, in their persona, is removed!

So J.F. Kennedy wasn’t murdered. His death in any case never had anything like a commonality about it and given the circumstance surrounding it, was shrouded in mystery much of which remains to this day. Mystery and conjecture which, in view of all the enquiry and investigation into what happened and all that’s been hypothesized, written and said, is so overgrown with legend and mythology that it’s like walking through a jungle of words.

So much enquiry, both official and unofficial. So much written and spoken. So much more known about the private life of the man and possibly so much more waiting to be revealed. The event has become something of a cult experience within American culture itself!

Some brief family background is always interesting. The Kennedys were Boston Catholics who had their origins in Ireland. Joseph Kennedy, father of three sons, was a gangster who made his money bootlegging liquor in the 1920’s and put it to good use promoting starlets in Hollywood and making a career for himself in American politics, winding up as ambassador to Britain in the 1930’s, his reputation badly dented because of his flirtation with the Nazis. His favourite starlet was the glamorous Gloria Swanson, his mistress for many years, notwithstanding the complaints of his wife Rose. He saw to it however that all his sons had an elite Ivy League education at the best American colleges. The ramifications of him going straight as a Roosevelt political appointee after dissociating himself from his many criminal friends and connections, Irish, Italian and Jewish have never been fully spelled out or investigated. Whether it caused any long term residual resentment and how deep it may have gone can only be guessed, but break from an immensely rewarding criminal career he did to establish another in politics.

Later as is well known all three of his sons eventually followed him into politics as Democrats, the party of choice among Irish Catholics. Liberals when set in an American political context but meaning little to nothing in that of anything European. If their politics were liberal in any way it was always more verbal than anything. John Fitzgerald, eldest of Joseph’s three sons, charmed and smiled his way up the greasy party political ladder backed with copious wealth until he became a Senator in an acceptably liberal north-east state. His college and early political career was marked by innumerable affairs which still continued after his marriage into American high society. Like his father also with Hollywood starlets. He then ran for President against the busy Richard Nixon in the early 1960’s, an interesting dark sided character who having established himself as a McCarthy political activist associated himself with mainstream Republicanism becoming Vice President to former war hero, General Eisenhower. Surprisingly, and strongly backed by the Kennedy family wealth, the young JFK won the election by the tightest of margins.

With his brother Robert at his side as Attorney General in a new Administration the stage was set for a showcase political elite of youth, good looks and glamour, trumpeted throughout America and Europe as laying down a marker for promise and hope in a dour political world dominated by post Stalinist bureaucracy, political combativeness and technical challenge. Right then, with the full publicity apparatus of the Democrat Party behind him the approachable JFK seemed to confidently smile his way through just about everything, even the shock of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, first man in space. Stuff the Russians, he promised America a first man on the Moon! Certain complications however were fizzing away in the background. While Robert was taking on and combating institutionalized crime, determined to reduce the power of the old well established syndicates while rooting out criminal corruption in the trades unions, a well-known Mafia fiefdom, his brother was conducting an affair with the mistress of Mafia boss Sam Giancana, likewise enjoying the home comforts of world glamour queen Marilyn Monroe.

Like his father, the young socialite President was now chewing the fat top end both sides of American society, the irresistible combination of politics and pussy. Chewing it off a potential old family enemy however was risky. At the same time, both brothers were perceived as a political challenge by a key  element of Government administration, its internal and external security apparatus, the former run by hard right secret transvestite J. Edgar Hoover, the latter comprising America’s various intelligence agencies. All were unhappy about what they saw as the frothy liberalism of the Kennedy Clan, to them a dangerously leftist political elite. This was a broth nicely stirring during a period of external political challenge from Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev… From Soviet missiles and Cuba. JFK seemed to deal with it firmly enough but exactly how firm was it for the various agencies concerned about the safety of their budgets once the crisis was over?

The complexity of the Kennedy’s relationship with J Edgar Hoover is real point at issue. It’s no secret that politically they both wanted him out and that he couldn’t stand them. How much did they really know about his sexual predilection… because he certainly knew all the Kennedy Affairs, especially with Marilyn. Precisely what was going on between them will never be known but despite repeated attempts at the time Bobby Kennedy failed to remove him from office. As for Hoover himself, he was never a man to stand in the way of a killing.

By November 1963, with John Fitzgerald Kennedy surrounded by such personal and political circumstances the stage was now set for the death of a President. Who killed him then? There’s been endless speculation and endless stuff written. So much so that it’s become a particularly wretched part of American life. Okay, let’s deal with some of the more way out stuff. I personally don’t believe he was done in by Aliens or ancient Sea Monsters. Neither do I believe he was killed by a world-wide conspiracy of Jews in the form of shape-shifting rabbis who spend most of their time hibernating in large bowls of chicken soup. Admittedly to some people all things are possible but to my mind a lot of this stuff is unlikely. My view is that he was done in for either personal or political reasons; as an act of revenge or because some people hated his politics. A killing done by a single individual acting on their own or someone connected to an organisation.

The Warren Commission, officially set up to investigate, concluded that the killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a disgruntled American citizen with military training who became a Russian national then got fed up living there and returned home. He fired the shots from a sniper rifle they said and that all the evidence pointed to him. The precise psychological motive however was never made clear but remained guesswork because Oswald was shot and killed soon after by a former Mafia operative and never got the chance to say anything. So one man on his own or others acting together? Maybe the mafia taking some old time revenge for Joe chickening out of the organisation back in the thirties, or some new revenge now both for that and his son sleeping with a current mafia boss’s piece of pussy… along with which a perceived threat from both Kennedys to organised crime. Three good reasons that all hang together, culminating in a lone mafia appointed professional killer specially employed for the job. Finally, Hoover of the FBI, fearing that the Kennedys might expose his secret sexuality, had him killed by a trained marksman or some part of the external security service which believed him to be a political threat and wanted him out of the way.

The above choices are fair and logical. The killing, using a specialist sniper’s rifle, was exceptionally professional given the speed of the vehicle and position of the target, the final bullet leaving no chance for survival. Lee Harvey Oswald may have been a good marksman but given the complexity of those moments could he have been as cold and steady as the situation required. Theories have been proposed that he was mentally conditioned but these are some among thousands and while there are many possibilities only a very small number combine logic and science.         

I don’t know who killed President Kennedy. Perhaps that is not as important as why. And perhaps that’s not so important either. Politically he didn’t do much during his time as the world’s most powerful man, except face down the Russians over missiles in Cuba and provide a political lead to take America’s space program forward. So little really when he could have done so much more. His winning smiles meant nothing to America’s needy and poor. Their betterment and the great issue of racial equality had to await Lyndon Baines Johnson. Even so, John Fitzgerald Kennedy died a rotten premature death and he didn’t deserve that. Same as anyone else who dies a rotten premature death.