CHAPTER 3

Having digested these books, I had to deal with the obvious discrepancies between the national myths and the dark picture painted by the dissenters. The overwhelming consensus had been that the United States was a moral example to the world, a shining City on a Hill, the American people industrious and god fearing. I myself liked what I saw of the American people, there was an informality and openness between people that I found absolutely refreshing and admirable. The social and economic systems obviously worked, the American society was the richest in the world and had managed to find a way to meld people of different ethnic origin into fairly peaceful coexistence.

How could I possibly reconcile my knowledge of the goodness of the average American with the disturbing information I had recently uncovered. It was clear to me that JFK, MLK and RFK had fallen victims to politically motivated assassinations. How could these dastardly deeds take place right under the nose of the public without the American people rising up in righteous wrath and indignation against the perpetrators. The answer had to be deception, deception on a gigantic scale but performed with such skill as to reassure the American public that nothing was amiss in this best of all democracies.

Jim Garrison had noted the disbelief and contempt conveyed by the attorneys who had debriefed him in preparation for the Johnny Carson show. He later said he had felt like a German citizen back in the '30s who had publicly questioned the sanity of Adolf Hitler. Carson himself had detested his argument. Garrison asked himself; "What could it be, that made intelligent people so allergic to the very concept of conspiracy"? His answer: "To acknowledge that an organized conspiracy had occurred was to recognize that it had been done for a purpose ---to change government policy. Having told the world for so many years how wonderful we all were, the media people were not willing to admit that our national leaders could be removed in such a brutal fashion in order to change government policy. That would put the lie to American democracy. That just could not be. Therefore, in their minds, the assassination had to be a random event, the work of a deranged loner".

Regarding the unpublished photos of "the three tramps" in Dealey Plaza, Garrison's thoughts were: "Collectively, these photos were among the most important ever taken. Why, then, had the editors and the publishers of the newspapers involved not seized the opportunity to be the first into print with these great photographs? ........ The idea of a gigantic, highly organized media conspiracy. I found unacceptable. It was simply too unwieldy. Yet something had caused the photos never to see the light of day! ..... And something had happened to me in New York City as well. Why had I been debriefed in advance so that Carson could be appraised of my likely answers? Why had Carson pulled my arm away so that the photographs were out of camera range? And why had the director and the control room switched the camera so that the photographs could not be seen?.....The only reasonable, realistic explanation, I found myself concluding, was control. It was not the kind where a small cabal in Washington or New York called all the shots about what could get into print and on the air. It was control of a looser sort: here a call from a high ranking federal intelligence official explaining to a newspaper publisher the overwhelming national security consequences that might result from irresponsible publication of pictures before the government had studied them, there a call from a Texas politician, a life time friend of Lyndon Johnson's, to a network president explaining the great harm that could befall the republic if such photographs were shown to the public ...... Some long-cherished illusions of mine about the great free press in our country underwent a painful reappraisal during this period. The restraint and respect for justice one might expect from the press .....did not exist".

I had to agree with Garrison that this type of control seemed eminently possible and could be sustained without the media "censors" even knowing the real reason for not publishing controversial information. Whatever the mysterious force was that actually initiated certain actions by the media, I realized that it could count on human nature to do most of the heavy lifting. Obviously every country cherished its own heritage and culture, often to the point that it was exceedingly easy for machiavellian rulers to convert patriotic feelings into unnecessary bloodshed. I had long recognized my impulse to defend my country of origin against attacks whenever such a situation arose and had come to the conclusion, that the only objective appraisal of a country's policies would have to from non citizens. As a Swede, my tendency was to shut my eyes to the defects of my nations history or policies and it was clear that Americans suffered from the same human affliction. As a matter of fact, the reason I could sustain an interest into the assassinations of the '60s, probably was that I was unencumbered by native patriotism, and subsequently didn't suffer unduly discomfort from dealing with the unpleasant facts I discovered. Had I been born in the U. S., I probably would have wanted to deny and explain away the troubling facts I ran into.

But where did these covert instructions to the media originate? The United States was appropriately proud of is constitution, built on the foundation of balance of power so that no group or person would be able to achieve absolute power. The President, the Congress and the Courts in concert with a Free press were supposed to make sure that the public received the kind of government that the American Revolution was fought over. However, in 1947 Congress had passed The National Security Act and that's where the weakness lay. The CIA, the bastard child of the Act, was effectively beyond the control of checks and balances. It is in the nature of Power that it defends its interests in whatever way it deems necessary, and Power here found a useful instrument, an organization without oversight which could easily be taken over and manipulated for the purposes of the powerful.

It is also in the nature of the powerful and wealthy that they want to sustain their wealth and achieve the best possible circumstances for future wealth accumulation, often without concern for the human suffering they cause. The business establishment of the U.S. was in despair when FDR turned left in order to combat the Great Depression and within a short few months organized a coup attempt aimed at overthrowing FDR in favor of a fascist government, a little known fact that has escaped the notice of school book publishers. The Morgan and Du Pont business empires were the instigators. They attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. Butler had been selected because of his status as a war hero from WWI, and he was popular with the troops which would come in handy in the coup attempt. Unfortunately for the plotters, Butler had no intention of cooperating. He pretended to go along with the plan in order to gain evidence later to be turned over to Congress. What the business men proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs", to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. The plotters confidence was relayed to Butler: "You know the American people will swallow that. We have the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second..."

At the appropriate moment Butler revealed the details of the coup before the McCormack-Dickstein Committee of Congress, but it turned out that the businessmen were correct. They did have the newspapers, and the power to make sure that the final report was white-washed and suppressed. The elite media failed to pick up on what had happened. Butler, appalled by the cover-up, tried to get the story out but with little success.

Here we have the early template of what the establishment would so successfully implement after WWll; the use of public relations, deception and censorship to achieve their goals. The American business tycoons of the '20s and '30s had supported Adolf Hitler and his fascist state to the tune of millions of dollars, in fact the overwhelming financial support that helped Hitler gain power and credibility in Germany came from the U S. Another little known fact, or should we say, another conveniently covered-up fact. The use of dictators in order to create good conditions for business was acceptable outside the U.S., but at home the use of public relations and deception were preferred. The Congress committee, which had been created in order to go after the coup leaders, was co-opted and later turned into a tool of the establishment. It became the "House Un-American Activities Committee," which later wreaked havoc with thousands of innocent Americans through its Communist witch hunts. Access to the elite media was denied to the true hero of the coup attempt, General Smedley Butler, a modus operandi which would foreshadow decades of successful media censorship "by omission."

As the end of WWll approached, the establishment was determined to prevent the rise of another Roosevelt. Secret agreements were made with Nazi leaders, enabling these leaders to escape to South America and to the U. S. Roosevelt, who was in favor of future cooperation with the Soviet Union, had to be dealt with. In order to get rid of him before the treasonous activities of the establishment could be uncovered, he was given poison over time, and when the moment was ripe, the final dose of cyanide was delivered and Roosevelt died, exhibiting all the appropriate symptoms of cyanide poisoning. Meanwhile, the "powers that be" had engineered into the Vice Presidency, someone they knew could be controlled. This was Harry Truman, and the battle for the future was half won. The passage of The National Security Act of 1947 sealed the victory. In laying the groundwork for the post war economy, Hitler's successful blueprint was used extensively, albeit in modified form. The Jews couldn't be used as enemy any longer, Hitler had seen to that. The Communists were substituted, a perfect solution, which fueled the post war economic recovery for decades. Overt fascism was out, didn't mash well with the American psyche, so covert fascism was successfully introduced, and fooled pretty much every U.S citizen. The only victims were either on the left or foreigners anyway, and they didn't count. The blossoming of the American empire ensued and reached its logical conclusion in the Vietnam War.

Before this war, things were looking up, the economy boomed and the baby boomers reaped the economic benefits on a scale never surpassed in world history. John Fitzgerald Kennedy narrowly became president in 1961, and when his handler, his father Joe, became incapacitated, Kennedy ignored the wishes of the Secret Government and paid with his life for the transgressions he had committed. Unfortunately Kennedy had won the baby boomers hearts, and when "the powers that be" engineered the Vietnam War, the baby boomers erupted in fury. They had not been let in on the agenda of the Secret government, and had no desire to loose their lives in order to amass wealth for the military-industrial complex. During the era, MLK and RFK were assassinated in order to remove the leaders of the youth rebellion, and a stern warning to the counter-culture was delivered at Kent State, where a few students were deliberately shot to death.

However, the developments of the '60s would make the more perceptive Americans suspicious, there seemed to be a gulf between the rhetoric of the establishment and the acts actually performed.