JFK Assassination: the Political Context

President Kennedy’s assassination has generated innumerable conspiracy theories, many of which fail to demonstrate a plausible relation between the assassination and Kennedy’s role within the political system.

Did the CIA Kill President Kennedy?

The CIA’s reputation as a general–purpose bad guy ensures that it features heavily in many politically inspired conspiracy theories. The Agency certainly played a role in the JFK assassination: some of its members were clearly involved in the framing of Oswald in Mexico City and perhaps also in Dallas and New Orleans.1

The question of an institutional motive is less clear. There was animosity from senior CIA officers toward Kennedy, who had transferred some of the CIA’s powers to the military in response to the Agency’s behaviour during the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, but this alone is hardly a convincing motive for the president’s assassination.2

The central role of certain members of the CIA in the framing of Oswald does not imply that the Agency as a whole had any involvement in the assassination. Such a notion is highly implausible, given that the CIA as an organisation almost never acted contrary to policy laid down by the White House. One of the CIA’s essential functions has been to carry out, and if necessary take the blame for, those aspects of official policy that could not easily be sold to the electorate, such as direct interference in the affairs of foreign regimes.3

Two exceptions to this rule involved aspects of Operation Mongoose, the CIA’s terrorist campaign against the Castro regime and the general population of Cuba:

• the CIA’s alliance with mobsters to carry out assassination attempts on Castro, in contravention of official anti–mafia policy;
• and its indulgence of the more enthusiastic anti–Castro Cubans in their military attacks on Cuban towns and ships at the same time as the White House was exploring ways to mend relations with Castro.4

Both examples contradicted the Kennedy administration’s official policy, and both are pertinent to the assassination. The CIA, which helped to frame Oswald, was closely associated with elements of the mafia and the anti–Castro Cuban exile movement. It is not at all implausible that the assassination arose from within this loose alliance of interests.

Did the Military–Industrial Complex Kill JFK?

Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK, popularised the notion that economic and military elites within the United States instigated President Kennedy’s assassination largely because he was threatening to withdraw US military and financial support for its client regime in South Vietnam, with the consequences that:

• the military would not get their war;
• the owners of armaments and construction companies would not get their state–subsidised profits;
• and capitalist ideologues would lose their influence over the economies of south–east Asia, with the possibility of a contagious outbreak of independent development throughout the US’s sphere of influence.

The JFK Assassination and Domestic Power

The so–called military–industrial complex reflected the interests of domestic elites far more powerful than any ad hoc grouping of mobsters, anti–Castro Cubans, disaffected CIA agents and a few gung–ho generals who opposed President Kennedy’s actions during the Cuban missile crisis.

There are two ways to interpret Kennedy’s assassination and his relations with elite institutions:

• Either he was working against the interests of established power, and was eliminated for institutional reasons,
• or he was working within the limits set by established power, and was eliminated by individuals or groups for reasons that had nothing to do with the interests of elite institutions.

The first option defines the JFK assassination as a coup d’état; the second as a conspiracy. Although the wider definition of ‘conspiracy’ encompasses almost every coup d’état, a narrower definition is valuable in this case. Any worthwhile account of a political event must acknowledge the fundamental distinction between:

• an action that is part of the normal functioning of established institutions;
• and an action that is independent of such institutions.

Many JFK conspiracy theories fail to make this distinction, which is crucial to any useful explanation of who killed Kennedy or why he was assassinated. The distinction is crucial also to understanding the significance of the assassination. The further removed any conspirators were from the institutions of power, the less the assassination has to tell us about the workings of the US political system.

JFK and Vietnam

The lack of any substantial change in official policy toward Cuba after the JFK assassination leaves only one credible reason why domestic elites might have had Kennedy removed from office by force: their disapproval of his policy toward Vietnam.

Under Kennedy’s administration, however, US financial and military support for the government in South Vietnam increased significantly, and the organised resistance of the South Vietnamese peasantry continued to be strongly suppressed:

• When Kennedy became president, there were about 700 members of the US military in South Vietnam. By November 1963, there were 16,700.
• The South Vietnamese army became larger and better equipped.
• A concentration camp system, known as the ‘strategic hamlet program’, was established to contain dissent in rural areas.
• Chemical warfare was used in South Vietnam to destroy forests and crops.
• Napalm was used against rural villages in South Vietnam.
• The US supported terrorist raids by South Vietnamese special forces in North Vietnam.5

A Change of Policy Under President Kennedy?

One dominant theme is visible in the historical record of US policy discussions under the Kennedy administration: that the US military would withdraw from South Vietnam when the local regime had imposed its control over the population. In response to the changing military and political situation in South Vietnam, there was much debate in US military, diplomatic and political circles about the best way to achieve this end.

President Kennedy began to favour a reduced role for the US military. On 11 October 1963, he signed National Security Action Memorandum no.263, which supported a proposal that the South Vietnamese army should be trained to take over the essential elements of the US military’s role, with the aim of allowing the US to withdraw 1,000 troops by the end of the year.6

This policy had first been proposed in April 1963, and was implemented in October when the corruption and harshness of Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime were seen as counterproductive to US interests. The State Department interpreted the memorandum as a hint that the regime ought to ease its repression of dissidents and political enemies.

High–level discussions had been taking place for some time about whether or not to support a coup by a group of South Vietnamese generals against Diem. NSAM 263 failed to have the desired effect, and US officials approved a coup. On 2 November, Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, were executed.7

The coup was followed by more internal disruption. Three weeks later, official policy was redefined in another document, NSAM 273, which mentioned the withdrawal of troops only in a general way as part of US “objectives”, and proposed that US military involvement be extended to North Vietnam. The memorandum was drawn up the day before the JFK assassination, while Kennedy was in Texas, and was signed by Lyndon Johnson on 26 November.8

Kennedy, Johnson, and two NSAMs

Johnson was more willing than Kennedy to be persuaded of the need to increase US military involvement in south–east Asia, but this does not imply that he was installed for that purpose, nor that it was necessary for Kennedy to be replaced in order for military involvement to increase. The first substantial increase under Johnson did not happen until February 1965.

President Kennedy had consistently aligned himself with the less militaristic of his advisers, while remaining within the scope of acceptable debate. Although the official written record is incomplete, there is nothing in the publicly available documents to suggest that Kennedy strayed from the doctrine that the US military may only withdraw once the domestic rebellion is contained.

Even if NSAM 263 had been interpreted by domestic elites as recommending unconditional military withdrawal, it could hardly have provoked Kennedy’s assassination, the plans for which were clearly underway when Oswald or an impostor were seen in Mexico City and Dallas, two weeks before the memorandum was signed.9

President Kennedy and Domestic Power

In the speech he gave in Forth Worth a few hours before his assassination, Kennedy boasted of his loyalty to US elite institutions:

In the past 3 years we have increased the defense budget of the United States by over 20 percent; increased the program of acquisition for Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minuteman missile purchase program by more than 75 percent; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by over 60 percent; added five combat ready divisions to the Army of the United States, and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force of the United States; increased our strategic airlift capability by 75 percent; and increased our special counter–insurgency forces which are engaged now in South Viet–Nam by 600 percent.10

Although the Kennedy administration disapproved of some of the CIA’s actions against Cuba, it supported the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, set up Operation Mongoose later that year, and began the economic embargo of Cuba in 1962.11

Kennedy consistently promoted the interests of US investors in Latin America by opposing land reform and supporting military coups in Guatemala, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.12

The current state of the evidence shows that President Kennedy’s policy toward Latin America, Vietnam and the Soviet Union did not go against the interests of US elites. Nor had he caused problems by implementing radical domestic policies. The Kennedy administration’s civil rights legislation was a half–hearted response to a growing popular movement.13 There was little significant pressure on Kennedy to change the wealth distribution mechanisms to favour the general population rather than investors and owners. Kennedy showed no signs of independent action toward this; unsurprisingly so, since he personally benefited from the existing mechanisms.

The JFK Assassination as a Coup d’État

In third–world dictatorships, a coup d’état by one political force against another can succeed because power is highly concentrated and easily targeted. In relatively democratic, industrialised nation states, elite power is distributed sufficiently widely to make a violent coup difficult to achieve.

Several institutional mechanisms allow domestic elites to keep short–term managers such as presidents in check. For example:

• Owners of the mass media may put an unfavourable slant on news stories;
• Owners of capital may threaten to invest abroad rather than within the domestic economy, or to withdraw investment from particular projects.
• Political sponsors may threaten to withdraw financial and other forms of support.

None of these measures was used to any significant extent against Kennedy. Even if the dominant social institutions disapproved of the president’s policies toward Vietnam, Cuba, domestic civil rights, or anything else, they evidently did not disapprove enough even to impose peaceful constraints on his actions.14 President Kennedy must have been removed from office by an ad hoc group working outside the normal structures of institutional power. The JFK assassination was the result of a relatively small–scale conspiracy rather than a large–scale coup d’état.

It is certainly conceivable that the conspirators included individual members of domestic elites. The strong evidence that President Kennedy’s autopsy took place under military control suggests that some senior military figures were, at the very least, aware of the conspiracy behind his murder. The extent of their active involvement, however, remains unclear.15

How to Think About the JFK Assassination

It was obvious from very early on that President Kennedy’s assassination was a conspiracy. The transparent absurdity of the single–bullet theory by itself rules out a lone assassin as the culprit.

Many conspiracy theorists, however, slip too easily into blaming institutions for the murder. Just because this or that employee of the CIA or the army or the Dallas police department may have played a part in the assassination, it does not follow that the CIA or the army or the police were the driving force behind the assassination.

The notion that Kennedy was a gallant hero, killed by domestic institutions in a coup d’état,16 is almost as implausible as the notion that he was killed by a lone nut, Lee Harvey Oswald, firing an antiquated rifle with a broken telescopic sight.

In both cases, the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ are missing. Oswald’s motive for killing Kennedy, that “he was a general misanthropic fellow” who wanted to get his name in the history books,17 is no more convincing than the proposition that the owners of the country would eliminate someone who was serving their interests faithfully, or that, if it suited their needs to replace Kennedy, they would risk doing so with violence rather than with any of the peaceful means at their disposal.

• Further Reading about the JFK Assassination
• JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories

• Further Reading about the JFK Assassination
• JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories