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| President Kennedy receives the flag of the cuba exiles (Brigade 2506) in Miami in Dec. 29, 1962 and declares: "I promise to return this flag in a free Havana." Kennedy had been misinformed about the exact details of the planned Cuban invasion. |
On November 18th, 1963, John F. Kennedy predicted that the month of April, 1964, would bring "the longest and strongest peacetime economic expansion in our Nation's entire history." And he added: "The steady conquest of the surely yielding enemies of misery and hopelessness, hunger, and injustice is the central task for the Americas in our time . . . 'Nothing is true except a man or men adhere to it -- to live for it, to spend themselves on it, to die for it . . . '"
Time was slipping through his hands . . . he had four days to live.
And today - we are so far from his dream that most American citizens cannot even imagine that he almost made it happen. Never before in the written history of mankind, have we been so precariously poised on the brink of total, global war - a war from which humanity may not emerge alive - that we can only think that those forces that brought John Kennedy's life to a horrifying end intended the result. But, we will come to that soon enough.
John Kennedy's prediction - his hopes for the April to come, the April he never saw - may have related in an indirect way to certain remarks he had made on a previous April day in 1961. The title of the speech was "The President and the Press" and it was delivered to the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. It's a curious speech for several reasons and I have transcribed part of it though you can download listen to the whole talk, in his own voice, here. I think you will be able to detect in his voice the deadly serious maneuver he was making in this speech, that he was saying things that had to be said very carefully, because the message was being delivered on several levels.
After some cleverly humorous opening remarks, John Kennedy gets down to brass tacks; he identifies not only the "enemy," but the way to defeat that enemy:
Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared; no borders have been crossed by marching troops; no missiles have been fired.
If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of clear and present danger, then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear, and its presence has never been more imminent. It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions, by the government, by the people, by every businessman, every labor leader, and by every newspaper.
For we are opposed, around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence; in infiltration instead of invasion; on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice; on guerillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined, its dissenters are silenced, not praised; no expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the cold war, in short, with a wartime discipline no democracy would ever hope to wish to match. ...
Perhaps there is no answer to the dilemma faced by a free and open society in a cold and secret war. In times of peace, any discussion of this subject and any action that results are both painful and without precedent. But this is a time of peace and peril which knows no precedent in history.
It is the unprecedented nature of this that also gives rise to your second obligation, an obligation which I share and that is our obligation to inform and alert the American people, to make certain that they possess all the facts that they need and understand them as well; the peril, the prospects, the purposes of our program and the choices that we face.
No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary.
I'm not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, For I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed. I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers, I welcome it. This administration intends to be candid about its errors for, as a wise man once said, "an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors, and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.
Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press is protected by the First Amendment.
The only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution, not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants, but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers, our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate, and sometimes even anger public opinion. This means greater coverage and analysis of international news. For it is no longer far away and foreign, but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means finally, that government at all levels must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrow limits of national security. And we intend to do it.
It was early in the 17th century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all.
In that one-world effort to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.
And so it is to the printing press, the recorder of mans deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: Free and Independent.
Now, the above speech was made on April 27th, 1961, some ten days after the Bay of Pigs fiasco that has been reported in retrospect as the major "embarrassment" of the Kennedy Administration. This "Bay of Pigs" thing has almost become some sort of "slogan." Just the other day, some ignorant net-troll whipped it out as the final word on John Kennedy. "Remember the Bay of Pigs!" Say what?! Only a fascist supporter of the Bush Reich - the same gang that was behind the Bay of Pigs - would say something like that.
Wikipedia tells us about the Bay of Pigs::
As a result of the failure, CIA director Allen Dulles, deputy CIA director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director of Operations Richard Bissell were all forced to resign. All three were held responsible for the planning of the operation at the CIA. Responsibility of the Kennedy Administration and the US State Department for modifications of the plans were not apparent until later. ...
That is, the alleged responsibility of Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs disaster was not manufactured until later. The fact is, both the Mafia and the CIA faced the loss of millions upon millions of dollars after Castro kicked them and their gambling, drugs and white slavery trade out of Cuba. Up to the time of Castro, Cuba had been virtually a "client state" of the Mob and the CIA, and they wanted it back! That's what the Bay of Pigs was really all about.
Zack Shelton, retired FBI agent and Kennedy assassination investigator says: "The mob was in bed with the CIA."
The operation to kill Castro and re-take Cuba was a joint Mafia/CIA operation. An apologist for the Mafia/CIA, and obvious disinformation vector, John Hughes said in an interview:
And then we have the Bay of Pigs. The Bay of pigs - of course, it was a disaster - It was a disaster thanks to John Kennedy who, at 1:30 on April the 16th, had okayed the flight of airplanes out of Nicaragua to take care of the Bay of Pigs invasion. And then, at 9:30 that night, he rescinded it.
Hughes is effetely horrified by this mentioning the number of anti-Castro fighters that were captured or killed. It doesn't seem to affect him at all to think of the fate of the Cuban people once the CIA/Mafia regime was re-installed.
An interesting question is: What did John Kennedy learn in that period of time between authorizing the Bay of Pigs invasion, and then pulling the plug on it? And do we have some indications in the speech he gave to the press ten days later as to what it was he learned? If you carefully re-read the excerpt from the speech, and then compare it to the following from Wikipedia, I think you might realize that Kennedy understood that the Bay of Pigs was a trap that had been set for the U.S., designed to involve it in the beginnings of a global war:
Wikipedia: The CIA's near certainty that the Cuban people would rise up and join them was based on the agency's extremely weak presence on the ground in Cuba. Castro's counterintelligence, trained by Soviet Bloc specialists including Enrique Lister, had infiltrated most resistance groups. Because of this, almost all the information that came from exiles and defectors was "contaminated." CIA operative E. Howard Hunt had interviewed Cubans in Havana prior to the invasion; in a future interview with CNN, he said, "...all I could find was a lot of enthusiasm for Fidel Castro."
An April 29, 2000 Washington Post article, "Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack", reported that the CIA had information indicating that the Soviet Union knew the invasion was going to take place and did not inform Kennedy. Radio Moscow actually broadcast an English-language newscast on April 13, 1961 predicting the invasion "in a plot hatched by the CIA" using paid "criminals" within a week. The invasion took place four days later. According to British minister David Ormsby-Gore, British intelligence estimates, which had been made available to the CIA, showed that the Cuban people were predominantly behind Castro and that there was no likelihood of mass defections or insurrections following the invasion.
Apparently, Kennedy was doing some fast work behind the scenes and getting up to speed on this thing that had been sprung on him as almost a fait accompli. The clues are in what he said about it 10 days later:
For we are opposed, around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence; in infiltration instead of invasion; on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice; on guerillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined, its dissenters are silenced, not praised; no expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the cold war, in short, with a wartime discipline no democracy would ever hope to wish to match.
I believe that John Kennedy was selecting his words with great care in order to convey his message, his declaration of war on this "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy." I have also suggested in an earlier chapter of this series that John and Bobby Kennedy had a plan to use the system that was in place to get into office and then clean it up; they knew that there was no other way to do it. And, as noted above, there are plenty of apologists for the system of corruption in this country, such as John Hughes who opines:
Joseph Kennedy taught his kids that they could get away with anything, and no matter what they could always get away with it. And therefore, we have drug addiction in some of the Kennedy kids - well, we can get away with it, we'll solve everything. But Bobby Kennedy - oh, many, many instance where he thought he could get away with anything; John Kennedy believing that he could have intercourse with any woman in the world and get away with it; and so, I think that there was absolutely on feeling amongst the entire Kennedy clan that whatever we want to do, we can do, and we will get away with it. I think this was the Kennedy attitude.
And, if Bobby were really smart, he would have known - and I'm sure he did know - about the promise that his father made to the Mob - if he were really smart he wouldn't go after the Mob the way he did. But it was very selfish on his part - he was gonna make his name - to get rid of the mob. Of course, it is said that Bobby Kennedy did realize that he - in an interesting way - was the reason his brother got killed.
The above is just the type of slimy, psychopathic garbage that gets propagated by skilled defamation artists who are deviants to the core. What poverty of soul must exist in a person to take such a view, to twist and distort reality that way!
But it was true that the Mob helped Kennedy get elected. It's also possible that John and Bobby Kennedy did not know about any deal their father cut with the Mob, that John honestly believed that it was his own hard campaign work that helped him into office. In any event, it is typically psychopathic to accuse the victim of being responsible for their own death. "You should have known that if you stood up against evil that evil was gonna go after you so you deserve what you got!" That is exactly what Hughes is saying.
Retired FBI agent, Zack Shelton confirms the Mob connection:
Basically, Joe Kennedy promised the Mob the White House: "elect my son and the White House is yours."
So, what did they do? They thought they had elected his son because Illinois is the [state] that flipped [the election] (and West Virginia). They felt like they got Kennedy elected. So, when Bobby steps in, they felt betrayed.
Author David Scheim adds to the legend of the Mob being behind the Kennedy assassinations:
In the Spring and Summer of 1963, according to credible federal witnesses, 3 major Mafia figures were all discussing thoughts to kill John and Robert Kennedy. (Marcello, Trafficante, Hoffa.)
And we can't forget that the Mob was in bed with the CIA. Zack Shelton remarks:
The CIA didn't answer to anybody and Kennedy was about to disband it. He wasn't happy with the Bay of Pigs, he wasn't happy with all the operations they had going on to kill Castro. He was rather embarrassed by some of the operations they had going. He fired Dulles, he fired General Cabell and, strangely enough, the mayor of Dallas Texas was General Cabell's brother.
But obviously, even though he had fired some of the ringleaders and was preparing to go after others and put decent men into administrative positions, something was still afoot.
In 1962, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer, endorsed Operation Northwoods, a plot to gather public support for military intervention in Cuba. The plot called for acts of terrorism against the United States, including the development of a "terror campaign". We begin to realize that Kennedy wasn't just talking about Communists "over there" when he said we face a "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence; in infiltration instead of invasion; on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice; on guerillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations."
Many people have died to keep the secrets of the Kennedy assassination including military men, Mobsters and CIA agents at the highest levels, so it is clear that the apex of this pyramid of power is not to be found either within the military, the Mob or the CIA. All of them are just tools for the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy." Certainly it is likely that the CIA and the Mob both had teams of shooters in Dallas that day. It is also obvious that the FBI turned a blind eye to the matter indicating Hoover's tacit approval of the assassination even if the FBI was not directly involved. But there is more to this than meets the eye.
As John Kennedy noted in his speech quoted above, he believed that an error was not a mistake until you refused to correct it and he was finding a lot of errors in American Foreign policy and set about correcting them. This, in itself, became "acts of war" against the conspirators Kennedy had identified. Among those errors was the war in Viet Nam. Soon after taking office he had been confronted with a crisis in Laos where the Communists were fighting against a CIA supported opposition force. As in the Bay of Pigs situation, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised him to "send more troops."
Kennedy declined.
It was becoming clearer and clearer that John Kennedy did not take the loss of American lives as lightly as did those who ran the wars and the corporations that profited and the conspirators that pulled the strings behind the scenes.
Just prior to his death, John Kennedy signed National Security Memorandum 263 which effectively called for the return of all U.S. troops from Viet Nam by the end of 1965. His order to bring back the troops was countermanded only days after his assassination by National Security Memorandum 273, authorized by Lyndon B. Johnson. What is most peculiar is that the initial draft of this order signed by Johnson was dated November 21st, 1963 - the day before John Kennedy met his fate in Dallas. If nothing else, that is almost smoking gun evidence that LBJ was privy to the conspiracy.
So, not only were things getting tight for the CIA and the Mafia under John Kennedy, things were getting uncomfortable for the Military-Industrial Complex whose main business was war and death.
The question is: who was Kennedy really talking about when he said: "a "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence." Today, we want to look at one face of that beast in another chapter from Farewell America.
"There is little in the education, training or experience of most military officers to equip them with the balance of judgment necessary to put their own ultimate solutions . . . into proper perspective in the President's total strategy for the nuclear age." Senator J. William Fulbright
Three days before Kennedy entered the White House, on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation, issued a warning to the American people:
"Threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise . . . Our military establishment today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime . . . Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.(1)
"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economical, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State House, every office of the Federal government . . .
"In the councils of government, 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 . . ."
During Eisenhower's two terms in office, federal military expenditures reached a high of $350 billion, $182 billion more than defense expenditures under Truman, despite the fact that his term coincided with the end the Second World War and the Korean conflict.(2) If the cost of veterans' benefits and the portion of the national debt attributable to military expenses are added to this figure, it can be said that 77% of the United States budget in 1960 was devoted to paying for the wars of the past and preparing those of the future.
The Pentagon was not only the most important buyer of arms in the world, but also the world's largest corporation. In 1960, the Pentagon had assets totaling $60 billion.(3) It owned more than 32 million acres of land in the United States, and 2.5 million overseas. Its holdings were twice as large as those of General Motors, US Steel, AT and T, Metropolitan Life, and Standard Oil of New Jersey combined. Few states in the union -- and few countries in the world -- have a budget as large as that of the Defense Department, and one-third have a smaller population.(4)
In 1941, Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson had declared that the war economy should be a permanent institution, and not the result of an emergency situation. Defense industries, he said, should not have their activities restricted by political witch-hunts, nor sacrificed to the handful of isolationists who had dubbed them "dealers in death." With the return of peace in 1945, James W. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy in 1944, founded the "Association of Industry for National Security."
The 1960 military budget included $21 billion for the purchase of goods. Three-fourths of this amount went to less than one hundred corporations. The Pentagon's largest contractors at that time were General Dynamics ($1.26 billion in 1960),(5) Lockheed and Boeing ($1 billion each), General Electric and North Aviation ($900 million each). Eighty-six percent of these defense contracts were not awarded on bids. The Boards of Directors of the most favored contractors included several high-ranking retired military officers. General Dynamics, the Army's top contractor, counted 187 retired military officers, including 27 Generals and Admirals, among its personnel.
The public relations activities of the arms manufacturers were particularly agreeable to the Pentagon. In 1959, the Public Relations Department of Martin Aviation of Baltimore offered a "long weekend of relaxation" with appropriate recreational activities (known as Operation 3B, for Bathing, Blondes and Bars) to 27 high-ranking officers, including General Nathan F. Twining, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1960, Martin Aviation was awarded $800 million worth of defense contracts. Companies like Hughes Aircraft, Sperry Gyroscope, and Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone employed similar techniques.
Since the end of the Korean War, the existence and the expansion of the arms industry in general and the aeronautical industry in particular had been closely connected with the continuation of the Cold War, which was vital to numerous industrial concerns.(6) Vice-President Nixon had declared: "Rather than allow the Communists to nibble us to death in little wars all over the world, in the future we shall rely on our power of massive and mobile retaliation "The Pentagon was prepared for all contingencies. It had even made a detailed study on "how to preserve a viable society after a nuclear conflict"
In the course of his electoral campaign, John Kennedy had promised an increase in military expenditures. The Democratic candidate declared after his election to the Presidency that he had been ill-informed at the time about the actual ratio of American and Soviet forces. He had believed the fanciful information put out by the Air Force and the Pentagon and reprinted in the newspapers that the Soviet Union possessed 500 to 1,000 intercontinental nuclear missiles (in actual fact, it had 50). Once he was in the White House and had access to the more accurate (but still inflated) estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency, he discovered that Soviet strength had been exaggerated, but that this exaggeration was part of the strategy of the Pentagon.
On March 28, 1961, Kennedy declared before Congress,
"In January, while ordering certain immediately-needed changes, I instructed the Secretary of Defense to reappraise our entire defense strategy, capacity, commitments and needs in the light of present and future dangers. The Secretary of State and others have been consulted in this reappraisal, and I have myself carefully reviewed their reports and advice."
This new policy required the cooperation and control of the men responsible for carrying it out. Kennedy's new Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, had just completed a successful reorganization of the Ford Motor Company. "America produces few men of McNamara's caliber . . . A man of diamond-hard will and titanium physique," Time wrote about him. McNamara was 45, seldom socialized, took an interest in racial problems and urbanism, and enjoyed mountain climbing and poetry (Yates, Frost and Yevtochenko). He arrived at his office at 7:15 am and worked until after 8 in the evening. At the Pentagon he had "an almost Calvinist horror of emotion, an almost mystical reverence for reason. He was the first Secretary of Defense with the ability, experience, and just plain guts to bring the vast, sprawling, hideously bureaucratic US Defense establishment under effective civilian control."(7)
As early as January 21, 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff understood that henceforth they were to be ruled. In his first week at the Pentagon he asked 96 basic questions. He let it be clearly understood that from that time forward, basic strategy would be defined by the President and himself. He abolished 500 committees (out of 4,000) and coordinated the activities of those that he maintained. He overcame inertia and incompetence with the aid of computers, contingency planners, and coordinators. His aim was to relieve the military men of the need to be intelligent. He and his deputies would provide the intelligence, at the necessary times and places. "War is a simple art, and everything is in the execution," Napoleon had said. The military officers and even the high-ranking civilians in the Pentagon were obliged to learn a new three-dimensional language for which they were not at all prepared.
The new Defense Secretary substituted revolution for evolution. The concept and practice of systems analysis was introduced. The goal: scientific evaluation of major weapons developments and other expensive projects to determine as objectively as possible the return on a proposed investment, a compared with its alternative. McNamara wasn't interested in the opinions, the recommendations, or the conclusions of the officers in the Pentagon. He demanded written answers to specific questions. Concerning any administrative problem with political or financial repercussions, he asked only one thing: "What is the alternative? What are the choices?" He forbade the Generals to attend meetings in uniform (a two-star General is somewhat cowed before a three-star General, especially when he is wearing his stars). In 1961 he drew up a list of 131 urgent measures and presented it to his subordinates. By the end of the year, 112 of his suggestions had been carried out. Never before had the Generals been called upon to answer so many questions. The Pentagon stood behind the Air Force postulate, "The extermination of the Soviet system must be our primary national objective, our obligation to the free people of the world. We must begin the battle at once."
After the Bay of Pigs disaster, McNamara let it be known that the Pentagon would no longer play the role of passive accomplice of the CIA and the State Department. He had appointed Charles J. Hitch and Paul H. Nitze as his deputies. In 1960, Hitch had written a book entitled The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age, which introduced a new concept of military strategy. He suggested that the army and defense requirements should be subordinated to the national economy on a long and short-term basis. Paul H. Nitze, former director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State, felt that the President should consider his Secretary of State as the managing director of a foreign policy "where diplomatic, military, economic, and psychological aspects need to be pulled together under a basically political concept."
This theory became the basis of Kennedy's policy. He intended to replace John Foster Dulles' strategy of massive retaliation with a strategy of flexible response. He ordered a review of all existing plans and all the sacrosanct strategic concepts. Kennedy felt that the strategy of nuclear warfare should be based on something more than intuition. He told Congress:
"Our arms must be subject to ultimate civilian control and command at all times, in war as well as peace. The basic decisions on our participation in any conflict and our response to any threat -- indeed all decisions relating to the use of nuclear weapons, or the escalation of a small war into a large one -- will be made by the regularly constituted civilian authorities. This requires effective and protected organization, procedures, facilities and communications in the event of attack directed toward this objective, as well as defensive measures designed to insure thoughtful and selective decisions by the civilian authorities. This message and budget also reflect this basic principle . . .
"The primary purpose of our arms is peace, not war -- to make certain that they will never have to be used -- to deter all wars, general or limited, nuclear or conventional, large or small - to convince all potential aggressors that any attack would be futile -- to provide backing for diplomatic settlement of disputes -- to insure the adequacy of our bargaining power for an end to the arms race. The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. Neither our strategy nor our psychology as a nation -- and certainly not our economy -- must become dependent upon the permanent maintenance of a large military establishment. Our military posture must be sufficiently flexible and under control to be consistent with our efforts to explore all possibilities and take every step to lessen tensions, to obtain peaceful solutions and to secure arms limitations. Diplomacy and defense are no longer distinct alternatives, one must be used where the other fails -- both must complement each other . . .
"Our arms will never be used to strike the first blow in any attack. This is not a confession of weakness but a statement of strength. It is our national tradition. We must offset whatever advantage this may appear to hand an aggressor by so increasing the capability of our forces to respond swiftly and effectively to any aggressive move as to convince any would-be aggressor that such a movement would be too futile and costly to undertake."
Kennedy proposed an increase of $650 million in military expenditures, but his new budget was tailored to eliminate "waste, duplication, and outmoded or unjustifiable expenditure items." The President justified his thinking in the following words:
"This is a long and arduous undertaking, resisted by special arguments and by interests from economic, military, technical and other special groups. There are hundreds of ways, most of them with some merit, for spending billions of dollars on defense, and it is understandable that every critic of this Budget will have a strong preference for economy on some expenditure other than those that affect his branch of the service, or his plant, or his community.
"But hard decisions must de made. Unneeded facilities or projects must be phased out. The defense establishment must be lean and fit, efficient and effective, always adjusting to new opportunities and advances, and planning for the future. The national interest must be weighed against special or local interests."(8)
Nevertheless, Kennedy asked Congress to approve the construction of ten more nuclear submarines, and he requested considerable expansion of the Polaris program, which he described as "a wise investment for the future." He also recommended the development of the Minuteman strategic missile, the continuation of the Skybolt airborne missile, an increase in the budget of the Strategic Air Command, the expansion of military research projects and aerial transportation to abolish obsolete equipment (the Titan, the B 47, the Snark), and he requested the cancellation of the projects for the B70 intercontinental bomber and the Eagle naval missile. Both programs were already out-of-date, but their manufacturers as well as the Pentagon had reasons for wanting them continued.(9)
The Pentagon was in favor of the Nike-Zeus anti-missile missile program, which was to be carried out by Western Electric. The Eisenhower administration had already ordered a freeze on the funds voted by Congress, and when they were voted again the Kennedy administration did the same. He also froze the funds for the B70 bomber.(10) But the Pentagon had already spent $1 billion on this project, and the most cautious estimates at the time placed the total cost at something close to $10 billion.(11)
These Presidential policies, and the intelligence and efficiency with which McNamara and his team intended to carry them out, constituted a revolution at the Pentagon. "In establishing civilian control of the Pentagon as a fact of life as well as a theory, McNamara perhaps went too far in alienating service officers. He not only out-thought and outmaneuvered such potentates as General Curtis LeMay, but he sometimes humiliated them as well," wrote Time.
"With a computer's mind and a martinet's will power, McNamara remolded the US war machine from the spasmic rigidity of massive nuclear retaliation to the exquisite calibration of flexible response. He cut costs, knocked heads beneath brass hats, bullied allies into line, cowed Congressional satraps, made enemies nearly everywhere," added Newsweek.
The days and the months passed feverishly. Faced with imperious orders from the top, the Generals and the Admirals yielded at first, then revolted. A sort of guerrilla warfare broke out among the 7,000 offices, 18 miles of corridors and 150 staircases of the Pentagon. Anti-administration declarations by high-ranking officers multiplied in the spring of 1961. General Edwin Walker declared, "We must throw out the traitors, and if that is not possible, we must organize armed resistance to defeat the designs of the usurpers and contribute to the return of a constitutional government."(12) He was backed by General P. A. del Valle and Admiral Arthur Radford.
"Some of the advisers now surrounding the President have philosophies regarding foreign affairs which would chill the average American," declared Admiral Chester Ward (retired). "World War III has already begun and we are deeply engaged in it," stated Admiral Felix B. Stunny. Admiral Ward accused the White House advisers of giving priority "not to freedom, but to peace " and added, "I am not in favor of preventive warfare, but I am in favor of a preventive strike" (sic).
General White, chairman of the Air Force Chiefs of Staff, declared,
"I am profoundly apprehensive of the pipe-smoking, tree-full-of-owls type of so-called professional defense intellectuals who have been brought into this Nation's capital. I don't believe a lot of these over-confident, sometimes arrogant young professors, mathematicians and other theorists have sufficient worldliness or motivation to stand up to the kind of enemy we face."
The New York Times(13) wrote,
"The Pentagon is having its troubles with right-wingers in uniform. A number of officers of high and middle rank are indoctrinating their commands and the civilian population near their bases with political theories resembling those of the John Birch Society. They are also holding up to criticism and ridicule some official policies of the US Government. The most conspicuous example of some of these officers is Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker . . ."
Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri rose in the Senate to condemn the extra-curricular activities of certain military officers, and Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas declared that by proclaiming that the United States was engaged in a desperate struggle and that its sole objective in the Cold War should be not peaceful coexistence, but total victory, the military leaders were giving support to the most irresponsible elements of the Far Right. As a result of these denunciations, General Walker was relieved of his duties for extremism and propaganda in the Army.
McNamara was strong enough to resist the combined pressures of his military advisers and Congress. With Kennedy's approval, he opted for the expansion of the intercontinental ballistic missile program at the expense of the conventional bombers so dear to military and industrial circles.
The Pentagon had been its own master for twenty years -- in the aftermath of World War II, during the Korean Conflict, and finally under the sympathetic administration of General Ike. The warriors realized now that the good years were gone. Not only did they fear for their privileges, but they considered it their duty to try and "save the nation."
During the Korean War, the Army had been shaken by the success of the brainwashing techniques applied to American prisoners of war. With Eisenhower's benediction, the National Security Council had set up a civilian education program to arouse the public to "the menace of the Cold War" and the necessity for nuclear survival. Feeling persecuted by the President and his Secretary of Defense, the warriors decided to avail themselves of this forum to inform the civilian public about the anti-American conspiracy of the men of the New Frontier.
In the spring of 1961, the "public alerts," the "freedom forums," the "strategy for survival conferences" and the "fourth dimensional warfare seminars" proliferated. The stated aims of these programs were "to alert all in attendance to the specific objectives of international communism," "to reveal areas of Communist influence upon American youth," "to re-orient American thinking toward un-American ideas," and to "identify public officials and policies displaying a 'softness' toward communism." The featured addresses bore titles like "What You Can Do in the Fight Against Communism," and "No Wonder We Are Losing." In short, Psy-ops.
Admiral Ward was the featured speaker at a fourth dimensional warfare seminar held on April 15 in Pittsburgh. On April 14 and 15, "Strategy for Survival" conferences sponsored by Major General William C. Bullock, the area commander, were held in several cities in Arkansas. The invitations to an "Education for American Security" seminar in Illinois were sent out in officially franked envelopes! "Project Alert" in Pensacola, Florida was endorsed by local Navy headquarters, and out-of-town participants in "Project Action," held on April 28-29 in Minneapolis, were offered overnight accommodation at the Naval Air Station. A seminar organized by anti-Communist crusader Dr. Fred Schwarz was sponsored in New Orleans by Rear Admiral W. S. Schindler, and at Corpus Christi Admiral Louis J. Kirn, Chief of Naval Air Advanced Training, sat on the platform.
Senator Fulbright charged that
"the content no doubt has varied from program to program, but running through all of them is a central theme that the primary, if not exclusive, danger to this country is internal Communist infiltration. The thesis of the nature of the Communist threat often is developed by equating social legislation with socialism, and the latter with communism. Much of the administration's domestic legislative program, including continuation of the graduated income tax, expansion of social security (particularly medical care under social security), Federal aid to education, etc., under this philosophy would be characterized as steps toward Communism.
"This view of the communist menace renders foreign aid, cultural exchanges, disarmament negotiations, and other international programs, as extremely wasteful, if not actually subversive . . .
There are many indications that the philosophy of the programs is representative of a substantial element of military thought, and has great appeal to the military mind ...
There is little in the education, training, or experience of most military officers to equip them with the balance of judgment necessary to put their own ultimate solutions . . . into proper perspective in the President's total strategy for a nuclear age . . ."
And he concluded with a warning:
"The radicalism of the right can be expected to have great mass appeal. It offers the simple solution, easily understood, scourging of the devils within the body politic, or, in the extreme, lashing out at the enemy.
"If the military is infected with this virus of right-wing radicalism, the danger is worthy of attention. If it believes the public is, the danger is enhanced. If, by the process of the military educating the public, the fevers of both groups are raised, the danger is great indeed.
"Perhaps it is farfetched to call forth the revolt of the French Generals(14) as an example of the ultimate danger. Nevertheless, military officers, French or American, have some common characteristics arising from their profession and there are numerous military 'fingers on the trigger' throughout the world."
In July, a Defense Department order went out restricting the right of military officers to express their political opinions in public and participate in such information programs.(15) There was a violent reaction from the conservatives. Senator J. Strom Thurmond, a North Carolina Republican and General in the Army Reserve, attacked the move as an "infamous attempt to intimidate the leaders of the United States Armed Force: and prevent them from informing their troops about the exact nature of the communist menace."(16)
On July 8, Khrushchev announced that the government of the USSR was obliged to postpone the reduction of its armed forces. Kennedy was sufficiently concerned by the information he received from the CIA to make a televised address on July 25, 1961 asking the country to be prepared to defend freedom in Berlin and elsewhere. He announced a supplementary defense build-up that included doubling and tripling the draft calls and calling up reservists to active duty. Finally, he recommended the construction of atomic shelters.
These pessimistic declarations raised the spirits of the military men, but frightened the American people.
The federal government printed pamphlets describing how to build a family-sized atomic shelter. The newspapers and television discussed the consequences of a nuclear attack. Atomic scientist Dr. Edward Teller stated, "If we don't prepare, 100 million Americans could die in the first days of an all-out nuclear war. Thirty to 40 million more could die from starvation and disease. The United States would cease to exist . . ." A Jesuit priest, Father McHugh, declared for his part that shelter owners had the moral right to keep out their panicked neighbors. A brochure published by the Office of Civil Defense advised all boat owners to head for the open sea as soon as the alert was sounded.
Congress demanded an expanded arms program, the money for which was to come from the aberrant projects of the welfare state. Senators Jackson and Keating declared that Congress would grant the President and the armed forces all the money they requested, and in particular $500 million for the Boeing B 70. The Pentagon was once again optimistic. The Generals and the Admirals multiplied their inflammatory statements. But on August 2, Senator Fulbright again spoke out:
"Military officers are not elected by the people and they have no responsibility for the formulation of policies other than military policies. Their function is to carry out policies formulated by officials who are responsible to the electorate. This tradition is rooted in the constitutional principle that the President is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and that, therefore, military personnel are not to participate in activities which undermine his policies."
On November 16, 1961 in Seattle, President Kennedy declared,
"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient -- that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind -- that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity -- and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem."
For the first time in the history of the United States, a President had dared to attack the myth of the national infallibility. Three days later, at a Democratic Party banquet in Los Angeles, Kennedy continued,
"Let us concentrate more on keeping enemy bombers and missiles away from our shores, and concentrate less on keeping neighbors away from our shelters. Let us devote more energy to organizing the free and friendly nations of the world . . . and devote less energy to organizing armed bands of civilian guerrillas that are more likely to supply local vigilantes than national vigilance."
This remark was aimed at the paramilitary organizations such as the John Birch Society, the Minutemen and the Ku Klux Klan.(17) At the time that Kennedy spoke, these extremist groups were made up largely of visionaries, profiteers, and fanatics. But General Walker and other high-ranking officers began training new leaders in 1962. The organizations gained strength, and by 1963 they and other groups such as the Friends of General Walker and the Patrick Henry Association had become forces to reckon with.
The Far Rightists dreamed of a world without communism, without foreign imbroglios, without the United Nations, without the federal government, without trade unions, and without Negroes. Their goal was an America with no Supreme Court which would invade or destroy Cuba, abolish the graduated income tax and stop importing Polish hams. For these people, even Eisenhower was an active agent of the Marxist conspiracy. When Kennedy moved into the White House, they were certain the Russians had landed. "God, I miss Ike. I even miss Harry," one man from Cincinnati told US News and World Report in 1962.
The rightist movements not only had the benefit of military leadership, but also of important private funds. Harding University in Arkansas(18) furnished most of the speakers for the extremist forums. Its President, Dr. George S. Benson,(19) had the financial backing of companies like Lockheed, Boeing, US Steel, Lone Star Cement, Olin Mathison Chemical, American Iron and Steel Institute, and Acme Steel. In 1961, these companies contributed more than $6 million to Harding. General Electric and the CIA were among its most important benefactors.
Nevertheless, the international situation continued to deteriorate. In August, the Berlin Wall was constructed, and in September, the Soviets first, and then the United States began nuclear testing again. On October 28, the very day the UN General Assembly requested it not to, the Soviet Union exploded a 50-megaton bomb. On October 31, Senator Jackson criticized Kennedy for taking risks in national defense by delaying construction of the Boeing B 70, rebaptized the RS 70 to enhance its image. That same month, the Army sponsored a "Project Alert" in San Francisco, and in December the Navy did the same.
Kennedy attempted to thaw the Cold War by diplomacy,(20) but the exaggerated statements of the warriors of the Pentagon were hardly calculated to help him. McNamara, who was now "constantly scrapping" and who was loathed by Congress, which found him "arrogant and even supercilious," continued to wield his authoritarian power, to demonstrate his aversion to favoritism,(21) and to construct a rational system of defense. He declared,
"Technology has now circumscribed us all with a conceivable horizon of horror that could dwarf any catastrophe that has befallen man in his more than a million years on earth.
"Man has lived for more than 20 years in what we have come to call the atomic age. What we sometimes overlook is that every future age of man will be an atomic age.
"If, then, man is to have a future at all, it will have to be a future overshadowed with the permanent possibility of thermonuclear holocaust. About that fact, we are no longer free.
"Our freedom in this question consists rather in facing the matter rationally and realistically and discussing action to minimize the danger. No sane citizen; no sane political leader; no sane nation wants thermonuclear war. But merely not wanting it is not enough.
"We must understand the difference between actions which increase its risk, those which reduce it, and those which, while costly, have little influence one way or another. Nuclear strategy is exceptionally complex in its technical aspects. Unless these complexities are well understood, rational discussion and decision-making are simply not possible."
The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was the turning point in the Cold War. On October 22, Kennedy declared,
"I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man . . .
"We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth -- but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced . . .
"The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are -- but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high -- but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.
"Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right -- not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved."
The Soviets backed down.
By 1963 the detente had become a reality, and the Pentagon knew it had lost the game. That spring, the Navy Chief of Staff, Admiral George W. Anderson, handed in his resignation.(22) President Kennedy declared on March 1 that the Admiral would continue to serve the country in an important post.(23) On July 26, 1963, the President announced the imminent signature of the Treaty of Moscow:
"This treaty is not the millennium. It will not resolve all conflicts, or cause the Communists to forego their ambitions, or eliminate the danger of war. It will not reduce our need for arms or allies or programs of assistance to others. But it is an important first step -- a step towards reason -- a step away from war."
Noting the public's satisfaction, the Pentagon switched its tactics. It employed retired Generals such as ex-Major General Johnson to express its point of view in new and softer terms. General Johnson foresaw no other issue than "retreat or defeat" until the leaders of the administration had "determined their goals."
He noted that the United States had treaty obligations to defend 45 nations(24) around the world, and that the country needed not only to continue the Cold War, but to "win the hot war" if it should occur. He expressed his regret that at no spot in the world was the nation taking the initiative, not even in Cuba, where every month that passed saw Castro more deeply entrenched in power. He remarked that the size of the army had decreased by more than a million men since the end of the Korean War. He estimated that an invasion of Cuba alone would require 22 divisions, more than there were stationed on US soil, and concluded that the United States was not prepared for either a very limited (such as Vietnam) (25) or a limited war (such as Cuba or Berlin). He acknowledged that the United States was relatively well "covered" for a total war, with stocks of 40,000 nuclear weapons of 30 different types which were very costly to maintain, but that as the "civilians in government continue to place their faith in talk," the utility of this atomic arsenal was yet to be proved. The ex-Major General frankly admitted that he was afraid the industrialists "would not be satisfied with the indefinite maintenance of this atomic stockpile."
To the latter, the Kennedy administration replied that disarmament would be limited and progressive, and that the reductions would be partially compensated by civilian uses for the atom and the space programs of NASA. It added that it planned to fight the consequences of too rapid a conversion of the economy by reinforcing unemployment insurance, increasing information about new employment opportunities, organizing vocational retraining programs, establishing new industries, and re-orienting research programs towards chemistry, space exploration, illness, urban transportation, construction, education, water purification, population control, tropical diseases and the exploitation of ocean resources.
But this program would be long in getting started, and it would not be enough. The critics of the administration predicted a recession: consumers were burdened by their credit obligations, international competition was becoming tougher, and the dollar remained weak. Peace brought with it the risk of serious perturbations, if not a reversal, of the economy.(26) Already in 1962, when Republic Aviation threatened to close its Long Island plant, putting 20,000 people out of work, the President had released $1.3 billion of the defense funds voted by Congress, although the Air Force and the House Armed Forces Committee had requested $10 billion.
On March 30, 1963, McNamara decided to close 52 military installations located in 25 different states, plus 21 bases overseas. This reorganization was to be spread over a three- year period. His announcement had important repercussions throughout the country. The merchants of Del Rio, Texas contributed $50 apiece to send a delegation to Washington to protest the closure of Laughlin Air Force Base. The delegates pointed out that the base was the only important industry in Del Rio (18,612 inhabitants), that the military and civilian salaries paid by the base totaled $10.5 million per year, and that 1,700 families from the base did their shopping in Del Rio.
At Benecia, California (6000 inhabitants), the town council learned that the military depot there was to be closed. It estimated that the town stood to lose more than $200 000 a year in sales taxes, gasoline and liquor sales, as well as the business of the 2,400 employees of the depot, while the sewage system had just been renovated at a cost of $1.6 million. Representative John Baldwin (Republican) protested to Washington, pointing out that the Benecia depot was the very type of military installation that the country needed if it was to have (as Kennedy had promised) a trained army capable of facing up to any situation.
At Tacoma, Washington, a shoe salesman had just sold a pair of shoes. The customer handed him a $20 bill and a leaflet that stated, "You have just made a sale to an employee of the Mount Rainier depot. How much money will you lose when the $14 million in salaries paid by the depot is transferred to Utah? Write to your Congressman, to your Senator, to your Governor." And America wrote.
In addition to the three and a half million people directly employed by the Defense Department,(27) seven and a half million others owed their jobs to defense contracts. The consequences of disarmament would affect the entire country. Studies made by the US Disarmament Control Commission revealed that national defense industries accounted for more than 10% of the total national product, and employed nearly 10% of all the workers in the country. An annual reduction of $5 billion in the military program might slow down the national economy by $10 or $12 billion a year.(28)
The President of Standard Oil of California, the company most directly concerned by the Korean War, had declared in 1953:
"Two kinds of peace can be envisaged. One would enable the United States to continue its rearmament and to maintain important military forces in the Far East; it would have very little effect on industry, since the maintenance of a peace-time army requires almost as much oil as in time of war. But if there should be a great improvement in the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and in particular a disarmament agreement, the blow to the oil industry and the rest of the economy would be terrific."
Neither the industrialists nor the military were prepared in 1963 to bow before political, or simple reasonable, decisions. The Generals realized that the test ban treaty constituted a step towards general disarmament.
General Thomas D. White, former head of the Army chiefs of Staff, remarked,
"True security lies in unlimited nuclear superiority."
Admiral Lewis Strauss added,
"I'm not sure it's necessarily a good thing to cut down on tensions."
Admiral Radford, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared,
"I join with all my former colleagues in expressing my anxiety concerning our future security."
General Thomas Power, Commander of the Strategic Air Command, even attacked the test ban treaty before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
On April 4, 1962, General Walker testified before the committee. As he left the hearing room, journalist Tom Kelly of the Washington Daily News asked if he had any comment. The General's reply was a punch in the nose.
NOTES
1. In 1957, Fortune wrote: "We must obtain a reduction in the amount spent on highways, aid to the Negro community, and other non-military extravagances."
2. On July 1, 1944, the United States military budget totaled $81.3 billion. Three years later it had dropped $11.8 billion, but private industry was expanding rapidly to supply the needs of the civilian sector of the economy -- automobiles, home, household appliances, and all sorts of gadgets. The Korean War took up the slack, and in 1953 the military budget swelled to $50.4 billion. By 1954, this figure had dropped to $40.7 billion, but tax cuts provided another boom in 1955, which marked a record demand for new cars and a record high in buying. Since the beginning of the recession in 1960, the military budget had risen from $47.5 billion (1960-1961) to $51.1 (1961-1962) and $52.7 (1962-1963).
3. General Motors' assets in 1966 totaled $12.9 billion.
4. In December 1967, the Defense Department controlled a budget of $76 billion, and employed 4,500,000 people.
5. In the first nine months of 1967, General Dynamics did $1.57 billion worth of business, an increase of 24% over 1966. This rise is indicative of the boom in the aviation industry resulting from the Vietnamese War.
6. After the failure of the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna in the spring of 1961, the Los Angeles Mirror News ran a full-page advertisement that began, "The summit meeting has failed. What does that mean for you? A fantastic electronics boom. Billions of dollars, a healthy industry in Southern California employing 110,000 people."
7. Stewart Alsop.
8. March 29, 1961.
9. In 1967, 17 top military experts estimated that the nuclear forces of the United States and the Soviet Union would evolve in the following manner in the coming decade:
| United States | Soviet Union |
| 1962: 25 to 50,000 megatons | 1962: 6 to 12,000 megatons |
| 1971: 6 to 15,000 megatons | 1971: 30 to 50,000 megatons |
The experts used these figures to back up their plea for an increase in the American nuclear potential, but they also noted that under Kennedy American nuclear superiority was on the order of 4 to 1.
10. On February 25, 1962, the Air Force and the Boeing Corporation presented the B 70 bomber to the press once again, although Kennedy persisted in his refusal to release the blocked funds.
11. This system would be obsolete before it was operational, as has been the case up to now with all the anti-missile missile programs.
In 1967, identical arguments and industrial pressure led the Pentagon to reinstate a project for the construction of ABM antiballistic missiles. McNamara tried to reduce this program, knowing that the Russians themselves admitted that their Tallin system of Galosh and Griffon antiballistic missiles was already obsolete. Due to progress in electronics and the techniques of ultra-miniaturized microcircuits, the American system, which will not be operational until 1974, and which the Pentagon considers insufficient, is also already obsolete. The new LSI (for large-scale integrated circuits) technique makes possible an assemblage ten times more dense and multiplies the sensitivity (reaction speed) of missiles by five. Electronics writes that "the radars and computers that will guide our anti-missile missiles will be as old-fashioned as a Ford next to the latest Ferrari."
12. General Walker began his political career in the Arie Crown Theatre in Chicago on February 9, 1962 before a crowd of 5,000 people. He had spent three decades in uniform, and had been decorated as a hero of the Korean War. In 1959 he joined the John Birch Society. Walker liked to say, "In patriotism, loyalty and combat, there are no moderates." He advised his audience to "attack on all fronts" and to "man your weapons and speak boldly."
13. June 18, 1961.
14. A reference to the French Generals' putsch of April 1961 in Algiers.
15. McNamara was called before the Senate Armed Services Committee to explain his action. When he arrived at the Capitol, he was greeted by 70 housewives wearing John Birch Society buttons.
16. Senator Barry Goldwater wrote:
"There exists today a new literature of military strategy which is in no manner the work of career officers, but of nuclear philosophers, as they have recently begun to call themselves, and who expose their humanitarian dislike for the bomb in all their writings.
"Today's Generals and Admirals are not bloodthirsty pirates with black patches over their eyes and cutlasses between their teeth. They are intelligent, competent, well-educated men who are trying as hard as our diplomats to find peaceful solutions to international problems. Our Generals and our Admirals are strategists of peace as well as experts on military questions.
"I believe that something both new and old is happening in our country, and that the great traditions of American history will find their true place.
17. The John Birch Society, founded by Robert Henry Winborne Welch, Jr., born in 1899, an alumnus of the Annapolis Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, vice-president of a candy factory in Belmont, Mass., favors, among other things, the immediate liberation of Cuba, the abolition of foreign aid, and the reinstitution of generalized segregation. In 1961, the society claimed a membership of 100,000. It kept files on "Comsymps" (anyone whose ideas were considered too liberal) and attempted to infiltrate universities and the government. It had genuine influence in the army.
The society is named after Captain John Morrison Birch, a young missionary who was killed at the age of 27 by the Chinese Communists while on a mission in Northern China 10 days after the end of World War II. According to Welch, Birch was the first victim of World War III.
The Minutemen, a clandestine combat militia, is headed by Robert Bolivar DePugh, who runs a $400,000 a year pharmaceutical business. Its 25,000 members hold daily drills with everything from pistols to antitank guns to be ready to check a Communist invasion, and organize guerrilla warfare seminars throughout the country. Although it is loosely organized, several hundred of its groups are armed and dangerous and capable of doing anything in support of their ideology or the interests of their leaders. Their motto is "Action Now" and their program calls for the assassination of dangerous Communists.
The KKK, headed by Robert Shelton, a former air-conditioner salesman, accepts as members only "loyal citizens born in the United States, Christian, white, with high morals, of the Protestant faith, believing in Americanism and the supremacy of the white race." But behind this relatively moderate creed lies a plethora of folklore and a group of savage people.
18. Which received its first gift, $300,000 from General Motors, in 1949. The decision was made by Alfred P. Sloan, who was President of GMC at the time.
19. Dr. Benson once declared, "If you want to force Washington to do what needs to be done, you must first reach public opinion. My goal is to strike it deep down in the roots so as to orient it towards piety and patriotism."
He also proclaimed that "Any American who loves freedom and is willing to work, work, work to protect it can find intelligent direction and companionship in a John Birch Society group."
20. On November 25, Kennedy granted an interview to Aleksei Adzhubei, editor in-chief of Izvestia, who told him, "Your election brought great hope to the people of our country." On November 28, the nuclear test ban conference, which had been adjourned since September 9, re-opened in Geneva. On December 21, Kennedy met with MacMillan at Bermuda to examine Western relations with the USSR.
21. In October 1963, Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth was asked to resign by McNamara. He was accused of showing favoritism towards the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, of which he had been President prior to his appointment in 1961. (The Continental National Bank was one of 20 banks that had lent $200 million to General Dynamics to enable it to begin construction of the TFX, now the F 111.)
22. Mainly because McNamara had gone over his head to enter into direct communication with the commanders of US naval units during the Cuban crisis. In addition, the Admiral disapproved of the fact that the Defense Secretary had gone against the advice of the Navy and Air Force and awarded the TFX contract to General Dynamics rather than Hoeing. The Air Force was also highly displeased with the cancellation of the Skybolt project in May 1962. Eisenhower had signed an agreement to supply 100 Skybolt air-to-air missiles to Great Britain, but as a result of the NATO crisis, Kennedy decided to cancel this project, which he considered too costly and superfluous.
23. On July 30, Admiral Anderson was named Ambassador to Portugal, "a maritime country, a country of great importance in the year 1963 and the years to come," in the words of the President. Before he took up his post, the Admiral made the headlines again by declaring that things were going badly at the Pentagon and recommending that the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff be appointed for a period of 4 years rather than 2. Kennedy refused, and the Admiral departed for Lisbon, where Lyndon Johnson left him.
24. Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, West Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Haiti, Costa Rica; Dominican Republic, Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, Formosa, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Laos, South Vietnam, etc.
25. This, of course, was in 1962. At that time General Harkins was predicting that the Vietnam war would be won by the end of the following year and described the local opposition as made up of "neutralist intellectuals and a few members of the Vietcong."
26. Eight months earlier, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency had published its predictions of what would happen to the economy if the Cold War should end. It forecast an increase in military expenditures until 1965, followed by a progressive but important reduction until 1977:
1962-63: $52.7 1963-64: $54.0 1964-65: $56.1 1968-69: $38.9 1971-72: $27.0 1974-75: $17.3 1977-78: $10.2
(in billions of dollars per fiscal year)
In 17 years, the share of the budget devoted to airplane construction would drop from $6.9 to $0.5 billion. The amount spent for missiles would drop from $5.1 to $0.1 billion, the military space program would be reduced from $0.5 to $0.0 billion, naval construction would drop from $1.9 to $0.2 billion, and the amount spent on various other equipment would decrease from $3.6 to $0.7 billion (Economic Impact of Disarmament, 1962).
In February 1962, the magazine US News and World Report published a chart showing the percentage of military contracts in industrial sales. For aviation and aeronautical equipment, this percentage was 94% , for naval construction 61% , for radio and telecommunications equipment 38% , for electrical equipment 21%, for iron and steel 10%, and for oil 10%.
27. 4,600,000 in 1968.
28. California, Texas, Florida, Alaska, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Georgia, Alabama, Oklahoma, Maryland, New York State, Ohio, New Jersey and Massachusetts would not be the only states to suffer. Defense manufacturing accounted for 30% of all factory jobs in Kansas, 28% in the District of Columbia, 24% in New Mexico, 23% in California, 21% in Connecticut and Arizona, 20% in Utah, 18% in Colorado, 14% in Florida, 12% in Maryland, and 10% in Missouri and Texas. Ten states accounted for two-thirds of all military contracts (for a total of $17 billion): California $5.8 billion, New York $2.5 billion, Ohio $1.3 billion, New Jersey $1.2 billion, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington and Connecticut $1.1 billion each, Pennsylvania $0.9 billion, and Missouri $0.7 billion.
And a thank you to Marianne K. for the link to the Kennedy speech of April 1961.On November 19, 1963, 43 years ago today, at a ceremony in the White House Flower Garden, John F. Kennedy welcomed officers of state education associations of the National Education Association. he remarked: "I realize once again in a very personal way what a tremendous flood of children are coming into our schools..."
He was always concerned about children, his own as well as the children of all Americans and the world.
Later that same day, President Kennedy sent a message to the rededication ceremonies of the national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania writing:
"The goals of liberty and freedom, the obligations of keeping ours a government of and for the people are never-ending."
Still later, President Kennedy signed into law a bill (HR1989) allowing the legislature of the Virgin Islands to issue general obligation bonds. (PL88-180). He then pocket vetoed a bill (S1201) for the relief of James T. Maddux.
Between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. Kennedy met with Dean Rusk and Phillips Talbott
It was John F. Kennedy's 1,033rd day in office.
There were three days left for the world to hope for peace in our lifetime; a hope that was snuffed out in 6 seconds on a Sunny afternoon in Dallas Texas by the very Consortium that now holds the world hostage in an iron grip of terror and degradation of humanity: Corporate Government otherwise known as Fascism; totalitarianism by any name, but conducted under the guise of "Democracy."
Allow me to divert for a few moments to talk about ideologies and how easy it is for something that is begun as a great and noble cause to be subverted and turned to its opposite purpose under the very noses of those who still believe in the ideal.
In the history of humanity, there have always been social commentators, pundits, and philosophers of a certain type - as distinct from true philosophers - who have a certain personality that induces them to become fascinated by their own "great ideas", which might, sometimes, even be true or partially true, but more often are merely doctrinaire and simplistic answers to very complex social problems. Careful examination of these ideas based on a healthy awareness of human nature and history would quickly reveal that such ideas are constricted or contain the taint of pathological thought processes. Nevertheless, such people have always tried to impose pedagogical methods - essentially brainwashing - which twist and deform the normal development of human beings in psychological and social ways. These types of theorists inflict permanent harm upon societies, depriving them of universally tried and tested values by claiming to act in the name of high ideal. The American public education system - based, supposedly, on "democracy" and the theories of John Dewey - is just such a case in point.
Where are the Copernicus', Brunos, Kants, DeCartes, Spinozas, Goethes, Newtons, Beethovens, Chopins and Mozarts of the modern day? (And that's just the short list!) Why does it seem that the great talents, the great geniuses, the great thoughts and revelations belong to another time? (Excepting, of course, Einstein who essentially gave us nuclear war.) Have we nothing left but mediocre technical extrapolations or, worse, cultural and spiritual regression? What did the years of the Renaissance have that we haven't got? Better to ask what we have that they hadn't! The answer cannot long elude an astute mind --we have Dewey and compulsory American education.
Dewey wrote:
"I believe that ... the school is primarily a social institution. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. Education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race ... education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness ... "
In short, to Dewey, education was a process of brain-washing children so that they would be fodder for his ideas of "social reform.". We know this because Dewey also said:
"Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril."
In other words, Dewey - and many other "theorists" just like him - actually end up undermining the values they claim and open the door for destructive ideologies to take hold across societies.
At the same time, as I have already mentioned, each society contains a small but very active minority of persons with various deviant worldviews, especially in the areas treated above, which are caused either by psychological anomalies and pathologies, or by the long-term influence of such mental distortions upon their personalities, especially during childhood. Such people exert a particularly strong and pernicious influence upon the formative process of the psychological world view in society, whether by direct activity or by means of written or spoken words, especially if they are engaged in the service of some ideology or other.
Ideologies are generally created by groups that have joined together to right a wrong - perceived or actual - and because such conditions are generally those of oppression, there is a great deal of emotion imbued into the ideology. This emotion can blind the theorists to the realities of human nature.
For example, the ideology of the proletariat, the class of wage laborers, which aimed at revolutionary restructuring of the world, was contaminated at the beginning by pathological deficits in the understanding of, and trust for, human nature and therefore, was easily taken over by totalitarians with a lust for power as the Communist experiment in Russia has demonstrated.
It is also clear from observation of socialist and capitalist systems that, again, they do not take into account the true range and variety of human natures, as well as those elements of the instinctive substratum that are common to all normal humans.
Nevertheless, the fact that one ideology or another was taken over and co-opted, along with its corollary social movement, later serving goals which the originators of the ideology would have abhorred, does not prove that the idea was worthless, false, and fallacious from the start. The fact is, under certain historical conditions, the ideology of any social movement or religion, can be taken over and subverted. Just look at the Republican Party in the U.S. for another prime example!
An ideology is taken over and co-opted by gradual adaptation of the primary ideology to functions and goals other than the original formative ones. A kind of layering takes place with the outer layer remaining closest to the original content. This continues to be used for the group's propaganda purposes, especially in their relations to the outside world, although it is also used inside with regard to older members. But gradually, the second layer forms and the controllers of the organization are, by now, in control, gradually steering the ship of ideology to a different destination. At this level, the use of "doubletalk" is clearly understood by the top members: it is more hermetic, generally composed by slipping a different meaning into the same names. Since identical names signify different contents depending on the layer of the organization in question, understanding this "doubletalk" requires simultaneous fluency in both languages.
Average people succumb to the first layer's suggestive insinuations for a long time before they learn to understand the second one as well. Anyone with certain psychological deviations immediately perceives the second layer to be attractive and significant; after all, it was built by people like him.
Comprehending this doubletalk provokes in normal people a quite understandable psychological resistance; this very duality of language, however, is a pathognomonic symptom indicating that the group in question is already co-opted to an advanced degree.
The ideology of unions affected by such degeneration has certain constant factors regardless of their quality, quantity, or scope of action: namely, the motivations of a wronged group toward radical righting of the wrong, and the proclaimed higher values of the "cause" are used by individuals who have joined the organization who consciously understand that it is to be a vehicle to power. For some of them with active pathologies, there is no conscious intent to do ill, however the self-declared idealistic motivations help them to sublimate their personal feelings of being wronged and different, caused by their own psychological failings. More damaging still is the fact that this sublimation then allows them to liberate themselves from the need to abide by uncomfortable moral principles. We see clear examples of this in the present day where Christianity is being used to promote hatred and war.
In a world full of real injustice, the formation of such groups is quite common. And, in the same world, it is also quite common for its membership to be soon packed with social elements that are damaged and twisted or genetic deviants. Such a group easily succumbs to degradation and reversal of intentions under the old ideological names. When this happens, those people with a tendency to accept the original version of the ideology will tend to justify such ideological duality.
A given ideology may have contained original weaknesses that are due, as mentioned above, to errors of human thought and emotion; or it may, during the course of its history, become infiltrated by more primitive foreign material which can contain pathological factors. The source of such infection by foreign ideological material may be the ruling social system with its laws and customs based on a more primitive tradition, or an imperialistic system of rule. It may be, of course, simply another philosophical movement often contaminated by the eccentricities of its founder, who considers that reality must be blamed for not conforming to his theories.
One important thing to note is that just because an ideology is great and true, it is not therefore better able to withstand co-opting and degradation. The fact is, the greater and truer the original ideology, the longer it may be capable of nourishing and hiding from view the fact that it has been completely co-opted to the core. In a great and valuable ideology, the danger lies in the fact that the external ideology is still intact, as the first layer, and weaker minds become the tools of the corrupt inner layer all the while believing that they are acting in the true spirit of the original ideals.
Thus, if we intend to understand how a group of psychological deviants could assassinate a sitting president of the United States and get away with it, and subsequently bring the U.S. to the point where it is teetering at the abyss of total destruction, we must take great care to separate the original ideology of Democracy from its counterpart, or even caricature, created by the co-opting and degradation conceived and promoted by the monolithic and ruthless conspiracy identified by John F. Kennedy in those hours between the time he authorized the Bay of Pigs Invasion and then rescinded the order. Remember that he told us that this conspiracy "relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence; in infiltration instead of invasion; on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice; on guerillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined, its dissenters are silenced, not praised; no expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the cold war, in short, with a wartime discipline no democracy would ever hope to wish to match."
And so, today, in our excerpt from Farewell America, we take a closer look at Capitalism which has come to be equated with Democracy.
Businessmen
. . . the President's action points inevitably to a federal dictatorship over business.
David Lawrence, US News and World Report
The American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.
John F. Kennedy, April 11, 1962
Engraved over the entrance to the Business School of Columbia University is a motto which exhorts the nation's businessmen to a "high sense of duty." Since the death of Roosevelt, whose very name they reviled,(1) the businessmen had been left to their own devices. Truman and Eisenhower had been modest petty bourgeois, and Nixon would certainly have followed in their footsteps. The businessmen were wary of President Kennedy, who as a young Senator from Massachusetts had opposed the Taft-Hartley law and neglected the industrialists of his state. Kennedy did not regard profit-making as the most esteemed of vocations. Brought up in a family of millionaires and a millionaire himself, he was not impressed by other millionaires, nor did he consider the successful businessman the most admirable of beings. He liked to quote from Dr. Johnson:
"A merchant's desire is not of glory but of gain; not of public wealth, but of private emolument; he is therefore rarely to be consulted on questions of war or peace, or any designs of wide extent and distant consequence."
He was well aware of their power, but he did not trust the Titans. When he became President he declared,
"Taken individually, labor leaders are often mediocre and egotistical, but labor as a whole generally adopts intelligent positions on important problems. On the other hand, businessmen are often individually enlightened but collectively hopeless in the field of national policy."
Eisenhower sought out the Titans, respected their advice, and treated them as they thought they deserved to be treated -- in other words, as representatives of the most influential body in the nation. Kennedy kept his distance. Prior to his election he had had little contact with industrial circles, and once he was in the White House he saw even less of them. Businessmen were generally excluded from the Kennedys' private parties. Not only did he "snub" them (in the words of Ralph Cordiner, President of General Electric), he also attacked them. Kennedy did not consult the business world before making his appointments. The men he placed at the head of the federal regulatory agencies were entirely new.(2) Since the end of the war, the businessmen had become accustomed to considering these bodies as adjuncts of their own professional associations. They were more indignant than surprised. They attempted to intervene, but in vain. The President had a mind of his own.
In January 1961, the nation seemed stable and prosperous. The economy was suffering from a slight recession, but the level of unemployment was considered acceptable.(3) But in his first State of the Union Message on January 30, Kennedy spoke of the changes needed in terms that seemed to echo the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt as he inaugurated the New Deal, at a time when the economy of the United States had struck bottom and the Titans were nearly asphyxiated. "The present state of our national economy is disturbing," he began. He called for "urgent increases in federal expenditures in the fields of housing, urban renewal, school construction, medical research, and juvenile delinquency." He proposed a new plan for the economic, social and cultural development of foreign countries.
The President's policy towards Latin America alarmed the businessmen even more than it worried the Pentagon and the diplomatists. The business world foresaw the economic consequences of the President's foreign policies. In Strategy of Peace, he had written:
"Just as we must recall our own revolutionary past in order to understand the spirit and the significance of the anti-colonialist uprisings in Asia and Africa, we should now reread the life of Simon Bolivar, the great 'Liberator' of South America . . . in order to comprehend the new contagion for liberty and reform now spreading south of our borders . . .
"Fidel Castro is part of the legacy of Bolivar, who led his men over the Andes Mountains, vowing 'war to the death' against Spanish rule, saying, 'Where a goat can pass, so can an army.' Castro is also part of the frustration of that earlier revolution which won its war against Spain but left largely untouched the indigenous feudal order . .
"But Cuba is not an isolated case. We can still show our concern for liberty and our opposition to the status quo in our relations with the other Latin American dictators who now, or in the future, try to suppress their people's aspirations."
Later he added, "Our differences with Cuba do not concern the impulse that drives the people of this country toward a better life. The economic and social reforms undertaken in Cuba must be encouraged."
One of his closest advisers, historian Arthur Schlesinger, wrote:
"All across Latin America the ancient oligarchies -- landholders, Church and Army -- are losing their grip. There is a groundswell of inarticulate mass dissatisfaction on the part of peons, Indians, miners, plantation workers, factory hands, classes held down past all endurance and now approaching a state of revolt."
Near Recife, Schlesinger had seen poverty-stricken villages full of starving children covered with scabs. He recalled that before Castro came to power Havana had been nothing but a giant casino and brothel for American businessmen over for a big weekend. "My fellow countrymen reeled through the streets, picking up fourteen-year-old Cuban girls and tossing coins to make men scramble in the gutter,"(4) he wrote.
The policies of the President and his advisers were certain to have economic repercussions. In April 1962, a year after the inauguration of the Alliance for Progress, Latin America, in the eyes of the conservatives, appeared headed for chaos. In Argentina, President Frondizi had just been overthrown by a military coup, and rioting had broken out in Guatemala and Ecuador. There was no country to the South that could be considered politically and economically stable.(5) Capital flowed back into the United States, frightened by the specter of Castroist revolution.
But the effect on the American economy threatened to be even worse. The businessmen could not accept concepts like those of Schlesinger, who declared that the essential thing was not, as Nixon had suggested, to stimulate the cosmetics industry,(6) but to build hospitals and to invest in sectors that affected the strength of the nation and the welfare of the people.
Kennedy and his team called themselves "liberals," but the most intelligent of their adversaries, like economist Milton Friedman, questioned their right to use this term. "As a supreme, if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label," Friedman wrote.
To his adversaries, President Kennedy's economic policies appeared to be inspired entirely by a concern for public welfare to which they were fundamentally opposed. They quoted the words of Jefferson, "The government is best which governs least." Many of them preferred the freedom to make a million or go bankrupt to the governmental planning and regulation that diminished the range of these alternatives. Senator Barry Goldwater was a good example of this mentality. The little people considered the cowboy-grocer as one of their own, and the big men knew that, regardless of his political destiny, they had nothing to fear from him. For Goldwater, a General in the Air Force Reserve, intelligence was nothing but the "extremism of imbeciles." Turning his back on this kind of extremism, Goldwater expressed himself in vague definitions of the great problems of the day, asserting that unemployment was but "an excuse for the lazy," and the government "the end of individualism." But he turned serious when he wrote:
"Welfare is a private concern . . . The current instrument of collectivism is the Welfare State. The collectivists have finally realized that it is possible to institute socialism through a policy of welfare as well as by nationalization. Welfare socialism is much more difficult to combat. It takes an individual and changes him from a spiritual creature, proud, hardworking and independent, into a dependent and animal creature.
"We must reject this false notion that Communism is brought about by poverty, illness, and other similar social or economic conditions. Communism is brought about by the communists, and by them alone. Communism is international conspiracy, and its goal is to re-establish slavery throughout the earth.
"The advent of a reign of freedom, justice, peace and prosperity is impossible until Communism has been defeated. The victory over Communism must be the principal and immediate goal of American policy. All other objectives are secondary. We must take the offensive. American civilization is man's greatest achievement in the history of the world . . .
"In Strategy of Peace, Kennedy actually described Fidel Castro as the 'heir of Bolivar, the great liberator of South America' . .. the same Bolivar who led his men across the Andes after declaring all-out war on Spain. We must fight Communist subversion throughout the Western Hemisphere, within our borders as well as in Central and South America, with all the weapons at our disposal. It is inconceivable that Castro, that show-off puppet, that lackey of Kennedy be allowed to make fun of us and jeer at our freedom only a few minutes' flying time from our closest city . . . Financial circles have been deeply disturbed by the recent events in Guatemala, Bolivia, and particularly in Cuba . . .
"In the last analysis, the choice is not between surrender or nuclear war. It is between winning or fighting a nuclear war. We must cut out extravagant and useless domestic programs and stop wasting our money on utopian foreign aid projects."
It never seems to have occurred to Goldwater that the system of screwing the governed public out of their tax money in order to hand it over to the rich who kept getting richer, including the industrialists that benefited from congressional favoritism, was, itself, a form of welfare. For if Welfare can be defined as giving money or help to those that do not earn it, what then is the system of paying Congressmen who do not actually represent the interests of their people?
As if in answer, Kennedy declared on March 13:
"For the first time we have the capacity to strike off the remaining bonds of poverty and ignorance -- to free our people for the spiritual and intellectual fulfillment which has always been the goal of our civilization . . .
"This political freedom must be accompanied by social change. For unless necessary social reforms, including land and tax reform, are freely made -unless we broaden the opportunities for all our people -- unless the great mass of Americans share in increasing prosperity -- then our alliance, our revolution, our dream, and our freedom will fail. But we call for social change by free men -- change in the spirit of Washington and Jefferson, of Bolivar and San Martin and Martin -- not change which seeks to impose on men tyrannies which we cast out a century and a half ago. Our motto is what it has always been -- progress yes, tyranny no -- progreso si, tirania no!"
Caracas(7) and then Bogota gave the President of the United States a warm welcome. In Mexico in June 1962, he paid tribute to the Mexican revolution, and in March 1963 in Costa Rica he defended the rights of the peasants to land and an education and called for an end to "the ancient institutions that perpetuate privileges." His enemies saw the Kennedy Administration as the ally of the "agitating popular forces" of the continent south of the border, "working towards progress and a better life for the masses by evolution if possible, or by revolution if that is the price that must be paid.(8)
Revolution! Many people thought that it had already invested the White House, despite the reassurances of the President. On February 13, 1961, he told the National Industrial Conference Board:
"There is no inevitable clash between the public and private sectors -- or between investment and consumption -- nor, as I have said, between Government and business. All elements in our national economic growth are interdependent. Each must play its proper role -- and that is the hope and the aim of this administration . . .
"We will not discriminate for or against any segment of our society, or any segment of the business community. We are vigorously opposed to corruption and monopoly and human exploitation -- but we are not opposed to business. We know that your success and ours are intertwined -- that you have facts and knowledge that we need. Whatever past differences may have existed, we seek more than an attitude of truce, more than a treaty -- we seek the spirit of a full- fledged alliance."
His tone annoyed his business audience, who thought they perceived a hint of paternalism, and who were somewhat less than eager to cooperate with the federal government. The Business Advisory Council discontinued its meetings and decided to break off relations with the Commerce Department. The members of the Council noted uneasily that the Kennedy virus had spread to Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges, a man they had thought they could count on.
The Democrats had inherited a rather mediocre economic situation from the Eisenhower Administration. 1961 was not a very good year. True, the national income had increased 19.6% between 1958-1961 as compared with its 1954-1957 level, corporate sales had risen 18.7%, and salaries had climbed 18.9%. But the prosperity of an economy is written in the balance sheet, and during the same period business profits had risen only 3.3% after taxes.(9) Critics also noted that the federal and state governments were steadily expanding, and that their expenditures equaled one-third of the gross national product.(10) Retail prices had remained stable, and wholesale prices had dropped 1%,(11) but the personal incomes of some of the Titans had also dropped.(12)
Things looked better at the beginning of 1962. The automobile industry, the economic thermometer of the nation, predicted an annual sales figure of 7 million cars, an increase of 1,500,000 over the previous year.(13) 1962 promised more than a recovery and less than a boom. In January Bradford B. Smith, an economist for US Steel, told the National Industrial Conference Board, "I have said to this group many times that as the nation goes, so goes the steel industry, only twice as fast. I would say the steel production in the first half of 1962 could look pretty good."
A month later, however, Roger Blough, Chairman of US Steel,(14) noted that overall industrial profits, which should have reached the figure of $35 billion in 1961,(15) were only $23 billion, and added that over the past three years hourly salaries in the steel industry had increased 40 cents (between 12 and 13%), while profits had been the poorest ever recorded in the history of steel. In 1961, 85% of these profits, he claimed, had been used to pay dividends. He declared that an economy should not be judged solely by its prices, which always depend on costs, but rather by the comparative level of costs and profits. Blough told US News and World Report that the President might understand businessmen, but that he certainly didn't like them. He recalled that President Kennedy had sent a letter to steel industry leaders in September 1961 warning them against any increase in prices. "The steel industry, in short, can look forward to good profits, without an increase in prices. Since 1947, iron and steel common stock prices have risen 397%; this is much better performance than common stock prices in general," the President had written.
On April 6, 1962, the Steelworkers Union agreed, at the request of the federal government, to limit its wage demands to a 10-cent-an-hour increase beginning on July 1, 1962.(16) On April 10, the steel industry announced a price increase of $6 a ton,(17) placing the President, the consumers, and the unions before the fait accompli. In the course of its history, the steel industry had often defied American Presidents, but it had forgotten what it was like to be thwarted. The following day at his press conference, the President declared:
". . . the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans."
This denunciation of the Titans stunned the nation. It marked the birth of a legend. The President's remarks made headlines throughout the world and were even quoted in Pravda, which expressed its surprise and satisfaction. The businessmen were disconcerted by the violence of his reaction and by the apparent extent of his public support, but Roger Blough maintained that his decision had been made "in the interest of the stockholders" and that the profits of the largest steel producers were 33% lower in the first quarter of 1962 than they had been in 1959.(18)
The administration replied that the dividends paid to the stockholders of the steel corporations in 1958-61 were 17% higher than those paid in 1954-57. The steel industry rejoined that profits had exceeded $1 billion in 1959, but that they had fallen to $807 million in 1961, endangering investment possibilities, the future of the steel corporations, and consequently the future of American industry. But, faced with FBI investigations, the pressure of public opinion, and the cancellation of government contracts, it yielded and revoked the increase.(19)
On May 7, 1962, US News and World Report wrote: "What happened is frightening not only to steel people but to industry generally . . . President Kennedy had the public interest at heart in acting as he did, but the results may not in the long run be what he intended them to be."
The following day at Atlantic City, speaking before the United Auto Workers Convention, Kennedy declared:
"This administration has not undertaken and will not undertake to fix prices and wages in this economy. We have no intention of intervening in every labor dispute. We can suggest guidelines for the economy, but we cannot fix a single pattern for every plant and every industry . . . This is a competitive economy. We believe it has served us well, the free enterprise system."
The preceding day, May 7, Roger Blough had told the stockholders of US Steel: "this concept is as incomprehensible to me as the belief that Government can ever serve the national interest in peacetime by seeking to control prices in competitive American business, directly or: indirectly through force of law or otherwise." And he added that since 1950 wages had doubled, revenues from taxes on business had increased by 68%, the profits of store owners and farmers had risen by 70% , while corporation profits had only increased by 2%. He remarked that in recent years the prices of many industrial products had increased, and that he did not see why there should be any discrimination against steel.
Replying to President Kennedy's remarks at Atlantic City on May 1, Walter Reuther, President of the United Auto Workers, declared that what the economy needed was "to increase demand, and therefore salaries." That same day Dr . Charles E. Walker, Executive Vice President of the American Bankers Association, made a speech at New Brunswick attacking increased federal expenditures and the concepts of the President's economic advisers.
May 28, 1962 was the blackest day on Wall Street since the 1929 crash. Steel holdings fell to 50% of their 1960 level. "This could become total war," declared Avery C. Adams, Chairman of Jones and Laughlin Steel, to the stockholders of his company. The unions began to wonder whether the consequences of the President's intervention might not prove more serious for them than for the corporations.(20) Allan Sproul, ex-President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, declared that "although there was no panic by stock-holders after the stock market crash of May 28, 1962, another May 28 might have different consequences. (21)
In July 1962, the steel industry at Pittsburgh was working at only 55% of capacity, as compared to 70% in April. The steel companies noted that this crisis hit them just when they were faced with competition from foreign producers favored by lower costs and cheaper labor, and from related industries (plastics, aluminum, cement, glass, wood) that were becoming more and more diversified and more and more powerful. One of the paradoxes in the arguments of certain businessmen was the fact that, while rejecting any notion of federal intervention in their affairs, they called for greater protection against foreign competition.(22)
Business reaction was unanimous. Ralph Cordiner, President of General Electric, declared that Kennedy ought to reread his Lincoln,(23) and David Lawrence(24) wrote:
"The heavy hand of government has just won a pyrrhic victory . . . Economic facts cannot be changed merely because politicians dislike them. Nor can America's private enterprise system survive very long if the Federal Government itself engages in the mudslinging of class warfare and, in effect, tells an industry it must disregard profits, disregard dividends, and pay labor whatever the Administration says shall be paid even if, as in this case, it costs the industry an additional $100 million a year.
"Apparently (Mr. Kennedy) believed that the Administration could coerce the industry into submission. For what else was meant by Mr. Kennedy's statement that the 'Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are examining the significance of this action in a free, competitive economy? . . . This implied a threat of criminal prosecution. It was a move designed to terrorize those who disagreed with the Administration . . . While denying any inclination toward state socialism, the President's action on steel prices points inevitably to a federal dictatorship over business."
And he concluded, "Socialism (is) often a forerunner of Communism."
Analyzing the battle underway, Richard E. Neustadt(25) wrote,
"As far as I can observe it from abroad, the steel case was a classic demonstration of two things: of the tenuousness and uncertainty of presidential power -- one might almost say the weakness of the President's position -- coupled with almost incredible political naivete on the part of the US Steel Corporation."
Some months later, Kennedy explained his reaction:
"I think it would have been a serious situation if I had not attempted with all my influence to try to get a rollback, because there was an issue of good faith involved. The steel union had accepted the most limited settlement that they had since the end of the second war . . . in part, I think, because I said that we could not afford another inflationary spiral, that it would affect our competitive position abroad, so they signed up. Then, when their last contract was signed . . . steel put its prices up immediately. It seemed to me that the question of good faith was involved, and that if I had not attempted . . . to use my influence to have the companies hold their prices stable, I think the union could have rightfully felt that they had been misled. In my opinion it would have endangered the whole bargaining between labor and management, which would have made it impossible for us to exert any influence from the public point of view in the future on these great labor-management disputes which do affect the public interest."
In June 1962, at the height of the crisis, business circles in the United States were much more concerned about the President's style and personality than by the decline in the stock market, which it knew to be artificial, or the state of the economy, which it considered hopeful.(26) Kennedy's speech at Yale(27) on June 11 confirmed the worst fears of the businessmen:
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived, and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought . . .
"We cannot understand and attack our contemporary problems in 1962 if we are touched by traditional labels and worn-out slogans of an earlier era. But the unfortunate fact of the matter is that our rhetoric has not kept pace with the speed of social and economic change. Our political debates, our public discourse - on current domestic and economic issues -- too often bear little or no relation to the actual problems the United States faces . . .
"(These problems) cannot be solved by incantations from the forgotten past. But the example of Western Europe(28) shows that they are capable of solution -- that governments, and many of them conservative governments, prepared to face technical problems without ideological preconceptions, can coordinate the elements of a national economy and bring about growth and prosperity . . .
"Some conversations I have heard in our own country sound like old records, long-playing, left over from the middle thirties. The debate of the thirties had its great significance and produced great results, but it took place in a different world with different needs and different tasks. It is our responsibility to live in our own world, and to identify the needs and discharge the tasks of the 1960's . . .
"Nearly 150 years ago, Thomas Jefferson wrote, 'The new circumstances under which we are placed call for new words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects.' New words, new phrases, and for the transfer of old words to new objects -- it is truer today than it was in the time of Jefferson, because the role of this country is so vastly more significant . . . As we work in consonance to meet the authentic problems of our times, we will generate a vision and an energy which will demonstrate anew to the world the superior vitality and the strength of the free society."
This was a serious speech. Not only did he attack the Titans, but also those of his fellow-citizens who took pride in their traditional stereotypes, their worn-out slogans, their old records, their ancestral cliches, their imaginary problems, and their prefabricated interpretations, and of whom Kennedy said that they were 150 years behind and understood nothing of the real problems of their times.
It was already late when he announced on television on August 13 that since he had entered the White House the gross national product had increased by 10%, industrial production had risen 16%, disposable personal income had gone up 8% ($30 billion), the unemployment rate had dropped by 1 million, and that in Carbon County, Pennsylvania, George Demart, aged 52, was finally able to support his family. He added that corporate profits had risen 26%, but those concerned were probably no longer listening when he concluded:
"We have to move ahead, and I know that there are those who oppose all these moves as they opposed moves in other days much as they opposed a ban on child labor and, more recently in the Senate, medical care for the elderly.
"This country would still be in the dark ages economically if we permitted these opponents of progress and defenders of special privileges to veto every forward move. But the president of the United States, I believe, and the Congress and all of us must be committed to action in our time."
The fever fell somewhat in the fall. Business was good, and 1963 looked better still. The increase in federal expenditures, defense contracts, and urban renewal projects acted as a stimulus on the economy. But businessmen remained pessimistic and distrustful. At the American Bankers Association Convention at Atlantic City on September 23-26, 1962, it was predicted that automobile production would drop by 500,000 units in 1963.(29) Most financial experts in New York and Chicago warned of a new recession.
There was no recession. On the contrary, the United States was in the midst of an industrial expansion.(30) But the federal government remained vigilant. In July 1962, it had protested to the banks, which were predicting inflation and deforming the financial market. In November it denounced unjustified price increases in the pharmaceutical industry. In 1963, its antitrust suits multiplied.
The tendency towards corporate mergers was accentuating.(31) Pursuing its traditional anti-trust role, the Justice Department opened investigations into price-fixing conspiracies and other illegal activities. This action brought positive results (prices of electrical equipment dropped 30%), but it infuriated industry." Mergers arouse acute suspicion of the Government's trustbusters," wrote US News and World Report.(32)
In January, the Justice Department asked a federal court to force the General Motors Corporation to dispose of its locomotive business and break up its merger with the Euclid Road Machinery Company. In a third case, it charged General Motors with monopolizing the manufacture and sale of inter-city buses.
In the face of such attacks, businessmen began to ask themselves what would happen when large companies attempted to grow or diversify through mergers. Was this the end of all corporate mergers? The Federal Trade Commission opened an inquiry into the relationships between 1,000 of the nation's largest companies. It was particularly curious about "joint ventures" and "reciprocity," or the extent to which big companies bought from their own best customers. To what extent did a steel company order its machinery from the machinery manufacturer who regularly bought its steel? How far did a truck manufacturer go in favoring a steel company that purchased its trucks?
General Dynamics was ordered to dispose of a division dealing in industrial gases that it had acquired five years before, and a merger of Consolidated Foods with a firm producing dehydrated onions and garlic was broken up after the FTC charged that the food firm had required some of its suppliers to buy the products of its new division. The FTC suggested that any merger might be judged illegal if it tended to promote reciprocal business.
The government brought price-fixing charges against a long list of industries, including milk, baked goods, silver products, copper tubing, pulpwood, brass-mill products, macaroni, sewing machines, etc., and in many instances won easy victories. In 1963, the Justice Department's Antitrust Division won 45 out of 46 cases.
Big business grew more and more concerned about the tendencies of the Kennedy administration, and industrialists aren't the type of people to sit around and chew their fingernails. Employers complained that they were continually placed at a disadvantage in their relations with the labor unions, which were backed by Washington. They felt that the National Labor Relations Board had abandoned the neutral position it had occupied under Eisenhower. "The NLRB is also affected by the spirit of crusade," declared Joseph L. Block, Chairman of Inland Steel. J. Mack Swigert added, "The financial power of the unions is so great that many employers can't risk a strike."(33)
Kennedy stated over and over again that he was opposed to government control of salaries and prices, but his administration intervened more and more often in labor disputes. Washington appointed mediators who stressed the "public interest," which was generally interpreted as favoring the unions. Federal pressure was exerted on numerous corporations, especially in the missile and space industry, which had not yet adopted the union shop. The regulatory commissions available to the President wielded considerable power.(34) The National Labor Relations Board ordered that workers fired for union activities, or who had lost their jobs because their employer refused to negotiate with their union, be reinstated with their back pay plus 6% interest.
The businessmen feared that the federal government would somehow take control of wages, (35) and their fears were voiced at the gatherings of the American Management Association, the National Association of State Labor Relations Boards, and the American Mining Congress. The Vice President for Labor Relations of the Ford Motor Company declared that the Kennedy administration appears to be "seeking some sort of halfway house between private bargaining and Government compulsion that will give it the degree of influence or control over the results that it conceives to be needed . . . it is prepared to go past the point of relying simply on reason and persuasion."
Others went much further. US News and World Report charged that "the machinery for a true socialist economy already exists," and quoted one financier who added, "The pension funds give considerable room for maneuver. By acting in a certain direction, they could be used to destroy the capitalist framework."
1963 could be considered a good year for business. But the businessmen didn't think so. The gross national product, wages, taxes, and prices had progressed satisfactorily, but the steel industry was still working at only 50% of capacity, and profits were lower than what businessmen thought they ought to be, and proportionally lower than what they had been in 1950.(36)
Speaking at the University of Chicago, Henry Ford declared, "How high are profits? By any relative measure, profits are now at about the same level as they were during the 1954 recession. Today, after 3 full years of rising prosperity for the rest of the economy, profits have finally climbed back up until they are as high as they were at their lowest point in the decade after the end of World War II. The reduction of federal income taxes is an important step in the right direction."(37)
Industrialists noted that the growth rate of the American economy in 1963 would be the lowest of all the industrialized countries, and emphasized that this lag could have "dramatic" consequences. They forecast that the Soviet Union would have caught up with the United States in terms of industrial production by 1975-80.
Kennedy responded to these predictions by pointing out that the exceptional growth rate of the Soviet Union was due in large part to its huge crop -three times larger than that of the United States -- of students in all branches of learning, future researchers, and future technicians, and he cited this as one more reason for assuring equal educational opportunities for all students and breaking down the financial barriers surrounding the universities.(38) He was especially concerned about unemployment: in 1963 there were 4,166,000 people out of work, as compared to 4,007,000 in 1962.(39) The businessmen were more concerned about federal deficits and expenditures.(40)
In 1962, Kennedy had elected to pursue a new economic and financial policy based on the potential gross national product.(41) To bring this potential into being, it was necessary to create "fiscal drag" -- in other words, to reduce taxes on individuals and corporations. On December 14, 1962, speaking to the members of the Economic Club at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, the President upset the traditional economic thinking not only of the businessmen, but also of the members of Congress. Many Congressmen were violently opposed to any increase in federal spending, which they blamed for weakening the dollar, and considered the budget deficit as an evil in itself which should be reduced by all possible means. But Kennedy felt differently.(42) He began by reassuring them: "To increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures."
But he went on to declare, "Our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia . . . or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve . . . a budget surplus."
The President planned to apply PPBS, which had been used so successfully at the Defense Department, to the federal budget,(43) but in 1963 the primary problem was that of balancing the budget. Kennedy proposed a Keynesian program of budgetary deficit designed to encourage economic expansion.(44) This classic plan consisted of alleviating fiscal pressure without a corresponding decrease in public expenditures. A tax cut, investment tax credit, and a simultaneous increase in public spending would increase demand and stimulate consumption.
On January 17, 1963, President Kennedy presented both his 1963 budget and his proposals for a tax cut an