A coup d’etat could never happen in the “democratic” United States, right? So how did LBJ — Lyndon B. Johnson — become president?
President John F. Kennedy was brutally assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Two days later his accused assassin — Lee Harvey Oswald — was allowed to be killed in the Dallas police department basement.
Perhaps the most important witness in U.S. history, Oswald was silenced forever by the sleazy strip club operator Jack Ruby.
A blue ribbon commission to investigate JFK’s murder was appointed by Johnson and headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. The other panel members included the segregationist senator, Richard Russell, and future Republican president, Gerald Ford.
Its most active member was former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who had been fired by Kennedy. The commission’s job wasn’t to find the truth but rather to conduct a cover-up.
The resulting Warren Report claimed Oswald was the lone assassin but it couldn’t come up with a motive. Oswald has since been labeled a “lone nut,” as if that answered any questions.
As soon as Oswald was murdered on live TV, people around the world thought that John Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. This was also true in the U.S., where the capitalist media universally supported the “lone gunman” theory.
The late Milton Neidenberg described the skepticism of his co-workers immediately after the assassination. Neidenberg, a socialist labor organizer who died in 2018, was employed at Bethlehem Steel’s Lackawanna works just outside Buffalo, N.Y.
None of the steelworkers who also were hunters believed that Oswald could have killed Kennedy with the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that the Warren Commission claimed was the murder weapon.
According to a 2017 poll, 76 percent of Black adults and 61 percent of all adults in the U.S. believe there was a conspiracy involved.
The Warren Report fairy tale
Was it even possible for Oswald to have fired the three shots that the Warren Report claimed he did? A paraffin test applied to Oswald’s face after he was arrested came back negative, which could have ruled him out from firing a rifle.
The Warren Report stated that Oswald fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, where he worked. Yet many eyewitnesses reported shots fired from “the grassy knoll” instead. Bystanders and police ran up this knoll, west of the book depository, immediately after Kennedy was shot.
Kennedy was shot from behind according to the Warren Report. Doctors at Parkland Hospital described Kennedy’s throat wound as an entrance wound, indicating a shot from the front.
The famous home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder clearly shows Kennedy being propelled back and to the left. This is consistent with a shot fired from the front, not from the book depository. So does the testimony of witnesses who saw a bullet hole in the windshield of Kennedy’s limousine.
The Zapruder film gave a few seconds for three shots to have been fired. Using the bolt action rifle that was supposedly used, it has been virtually impossible for skilled sharpshooters to repeat the alleged feat.
Television reporter Robert MacNeil and other witnesses heard two shots fired very close together, probably too close to have been fired from the same rifle.
One shot missed Kennedy completely and hit a curb, causing a small cut on James Tague’s cheek from concrete fragments. Another shot supposedly struck Kennedy’s head.
That left the “magic bullet,” alleged to have hit President Kennedy and then struck Texas Gov. John Connally’s chest, wrist and thigh. Connally, who survived, always denied he was hit by the same bullet.
Oswald was also accused of killing Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. Two witnesses, Acquilla Clemons and Frank Wright, saw two shooters.
Police claim that no notes or a tape recording were made from their interrogations of Oswald. When they paraded him briefly before reporters, Oswald denied that he had killed anyone and declared he was just a “patsy.”
Pentagon coup d’etat
The easiest explanation for these conflicting facts is that at least two shooters were involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Two shooters means there was a conspiracy.
But whose conspiracy was it?
Kennedy was lured to Dallas, which was then a center of the ultraright. JFK’s picture was featured on “wanted for treason” posters that were distributed there.
The usual protections that guard a U.S. president were stripped from Kennedy. There wasn’t even a Secret Service agent riding on the back of Kennedy’s limousine when the president was shot. Half of Kennedy’s cabinet were halfway across the Pacific Ocean.
Then there was the autopsy conducted at the Bethesda Naval Hospital (now the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center).
Dr. David Mantik and Dr. Michael Chesser, who studied the x-rays of Kennedy, called them fraudulent.
Only the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs had the power to do this, with the assistance of the Dallas power structure. The clean-up work of eliminating witnesses, like Oswald, could be contracted out to organized crime and counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles.
Oswald was very likely an informant for either the FBI, CIA or both. “Everywhere you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence,” said former U.S. Sen. Richard Schweiker.
Oswald’s earlier “defection” to the Soviet Union was phony. His attempt to set up a “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” in New Orleans was like that of a provocateur. These actions were aimed to make Oswald look like a leftist and possible Soviet agent.
Thirteen months before Kennedy was shot down, the Cuban missile crisis terrified the world. The Joint Chiefs wanted to invade Cuba.
A nuclear war with the Soviet Union could have been the result. President Kennedy didn’t want to take a gamble and agreed to end the crisis instead.
Dallas gave generals like Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay another chance. LeMay despised Kennedy. He later ran as the fascist George Wallace’s running mate in the 1968 presidential election.
The Soviet Union was then facing a U.S. arsenal of 3,400 nuclear bombs and 185 nuclear missiles. The Pentagon wanted to use them to “wipe out communism” forever.
But this second half of the coup didn’t gel. Much of the ruling class didn’t trust their fallout shelters. Oswald’s survival for 48 hours also dampened things.
LBJ’s consolation prize for the Pentagon was a big escalation of the U.S. war against Vietnam, which had already been going on under both Eisenhower and Kennedy. Within two years after JFK’s murder, U.S forces in Vietnam increased 11 times to reach 184,000 GIs.
Trump’s coup against the election
Fifty-seven years after Kennedy was murdered, Trump is trying to stage another coup. The White House is attempting to overturn the election which he lost by over six million votes. To do so he has to throw out the votes of millions of Black, Indigenous and Latinx voters.
Trump is counting on five members of the U.S. Supreme Court to do the job. He appointed three of them: “Justices” Amy Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are just as reactionary.
Twenty years ago, five members of the court stopped the counting of ballots in Florida. They put George W. Bush in the White House despite Bush losing the election by over 500,000 votes.
Trump will order the Pentagon brass to enforce a Supreme Court decision overturning the election. The attempted coup on June 1 — when Trump wanted to use troops to crush the Black Lives Matter movement — was a trial run.
It was the 22 million people who were marching in the streets that stopped the Trump coup. That includes thousands in Dallas. Trump got only a third of the votes in Dallas county.
Many of the stratum within the ruling class that wanted to get rid of the Kennedys — smaller and newer billionaires — are backing Trump today. While most of the media are attacking Trump, virtually all the Republicans who have done so are either former elected officials or retiring ones.
Trump may also try to start a new war as an excuse to stay in the White House. In an ominous move, B52 bombers have been flown from North Dakota to Western Asia.
Trump has already convinced millions of his followers that the election was stolen. The vast majority of white cops are Trump supporters, too.
Two days before the Electoral College is to meet, Trump forces are calling for a mass march in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 12. Fascist groups like the Proud Boys will mobilize for it.
Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, may be clowns. But they are also extremely dangerous.
Only the power of the people can sweep all the Trumps into the sewer.
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