50 Years Since JFK's Murder and Nation's Loss of Innocence

Dwight Eisenhower knew of danger

Do you believe JFK was shot by lone gunman?

Sept. 11: Is there more to the story?

Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald.... just random, mad killing?

November 22, 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

That date not only marks the passing of a half-century since the president's death, it puts an exclamation point on the fact that it is 50 years since: our nation lost its innocence; the media lost Camelot; and, our nation's intelligence community began to operate openly within our borders.

That the president was murdered as the result of a conspiracy, in my mind, is beyond doubt. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations arrived at the conspiracy conclusion in 1976, but in true cover-your-butt bureaucratic fashion, the committee declared the evidence trail too cold to pursue, too cold to pin on identifiable perpetrators.

The murder of our president by interests connected to our nation's intelligence community was yet one more assassination by the same forces that had taken the lives of a number of leaders from around the world: Trujillo of the Dominican Republic in 1961; Patrice Lumumba of the Republic of the Congo in 1962; and Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963.

On that autumn afternoon in downtown Dallas, a dark corner had been turned and intelligence elements were now operating on our figurative Main Street. With the murder of John Kennedy those elements flexed their muscles in front of the world, confident in their cover-up and confident that questioning the official story would be seen as unpatriotic and very unwise.

Lee Harvey Oswald, the proverbial lone nut, armed with a cheap mail-order rifle, had figured out the president's parade route, fired three shots, murdered JFK, escaped, was captured, and was then killed by yet another lone nut two days later: case closed.

It was President Eisenhower, the popular two-term Republican and WWII hero, who in his presidential farewell speech warned of what would result if the partnership of military and industry continued down the path he saw it going down.

To Eisenhower's phrase, "military-industrial complex," we can, upon benefit of 50 years of reflection and investigation, add the word "intelligence" to the toxic brew trampling the Constitution: the "military, industrial, intelligence complex."

It is the intelligence part of the recipe that we now see running wild with out-of-control electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency. Your phone calls, faxes, tweets, internet browsing, Facebook activity and all electronic transmissions are fair game. While the cover story of this electronic surveillance is that it has to be conducted in order to prosecute the war on terror, the real reason is more likely related to the business world, international stock markets and business competition on a global scale. In other words it's all about money. No surprise there.

But it's been about money all along. Kennedy was murdered because he pursued peace with Russia, he planned for an end to the nuclear arms race, and he wanted no part of an expanded Vietnam War. Peace is bad for business and JFK paid the price for seeking that peace.

After Kennedy was buried, the Vietnam War expanded, the Cold War heated up, and the intelligence community began making giant domestic and global strides with those giant steps culminating on Sept. 11, 2001.

Without the Kennedy assassination we would have never had the 9/11 tragedy. A government within a government gave us both events along with two fairy tale cover stories: a lone crazed gunman in Dallas and 19 Muslim extremists who "hate us for our freedom."

Muslims armed with box cutters who flawlessly hijacked four planes on the same day; planes hijacked while the world's most sophisticated air security system completely, abjectly failed; and three buildings - not two buildings - that fell in New York City (buildings one, two and seven).

The tragedy of 9/11 gave us the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, exploded Pentagon budgets, the Patriot Act, rendition, CIA black sites, Guantanamo prison, drone strikes, and a lot more with all of it generated under the umbrella of "the war on terror." Terrorism, and the war against it, is good for business.

With a half-century of hindsight standing between Nov. 22, 1963, and today, and with a dozen years separating today from the tragedy of 9/11, the time has come for our nation to take a sincere, historic look at itself. It's time for the nation to call for a new investigation into the Kennedy assassination, and for the first genuine investigation of 9/11.

Those in power would have us believe that the evidence trail of the JFK murder is too cold to walk. Those same powers have told us that it is unpatriotic to question the 9/11 story. And those same forces tell us today to trust their intelligence program and not to worry about the Patriot Act. Inconvenient questions posed to the government are bad for business, and often those questions prove fatal for the questioner's career, if not their life.

"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes"

President Dwight Eisenhower, January 17, 1961

Amen.