Conclusion

I’ve proved some very important points in this book:

 

•  The official government version of the JFK assassination was—and still is—more full of holes than Swiss cheese;

•  President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy;

•  The CIA and the FBI lied to us;

•  There was a huge government cover-up;

•  Lee Harvey Oswald was operational with U.S. Intelligence.

The U.S. Secret Service basically kidnapped the President’s body from Texas authorities—even though Texas had full legal jurisdiction. That was the same Secret Service agency that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had been attempting to wrestle out of the control of the Treasury Department and get placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice so that he could be in direct control of his brother’s security protection.⁶⁸⁹ Robert Kennedy clearly had some suspicions in that regard; he even investigated whether the Secret Service had been “bought off” for the assassination and why they had failed to protect the President.⁶⁹⁰

The autopsy of the President’s body was kept under the strict control of high-ranking military officers—two Navy Admirals and one Army General—none of whom had medical credentials but were “running the show” nonetheless.⁶⁹¹ The results of that autopsy directly contradicted the evidence of wounds from frontal gunshots that had been clearly documented by the doctors in Dallas.⁶⁹²

The best sense we can get of the real reason for the gigantic cover-up comes straight from the national security reasons that President Johnson gave when he twisted the arms of key national leaders like Chief Justice Earl Warren and Senator Richard Russell, who were at first unwilling to serve on the Warren Commission: “this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface and we’ve got to take this out of the arena where they’re testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill forty million Americans in an hour.”⁶⁹³

That was the larger drama at work and it was point-blank and dangerous:

Johnson knew that he was being hustled into war with Cuba by forces within his own government. The Warren Commission would become his way of heading off this military showdown, which he realized could lead to nuclear war.⁶⁹⁴

President Johnson even saw fit to document some of the components of that cover-up, probably for the purpose of protecting himself. After speaking to Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark about how the details of the cover-up were proceeding, Johnson even made it a point to “memorialize” that conversation in document form, in which he quoted Clark:

On the other matter, I [Ramsey Clark] think we have the three pathologists and the photographer signed up now on the autopsy review and their conclusion is that the autopsy photos and x-rays conclusively support the autopsy report rendered by them to the Warren Commission . . .⁶⁹⁵

The plain fact of the matter is that the United States of America never admits it when we’ve done something wrong; never admits that we’ve made the wrong decision. But think about that. We know that decisions are made by people, and people do make wrong decisions. The fact that we won’t ever admit it—that we were duped or wrong or did the wrong thing—is really very childish behavior, grade-school stuff. We have to get over that or we’re not going to survive, and I believe that with all my heart. We need to come to grips. History is not history when it’s fabricated. And it also isn’t history just because the winners write it, as the old cliché goes. Because we all know that the people who write it don’t always report the truth.

But there’s even more at stake here than all that. As I mentioned in the Introduction, we don’t even seem to actually be in control of our own Democracy anymore. We elect a President who promised to get us out of a war, and he can’t do it! So who’s running things? Who is really steering the ship of this Republic? If it’s not the President, Congress, or the Judiciary branch, then who?

Has the military-corporate complex already taken over this country? I’m dead serious! I think that’s a serious question that really needs to be asked at this point. I love this country; I’ve served this country and I’ve risked my life and dedicated many years of public service for this country.

But it’s not the country I grew up in. It’s no longer the “Land of the Free.” It’s not “Of The People, By The People, and For The People.” Something happened. It’s now the home of the rich and the privileged. It’s a country that goes to war when war is clearly avoidable. It’s a nation that has taken away rights from the citizens it was sworn to protect and instead makes life more livable for the corporations and for the wealthiest one percent of its citizens. What kind of Republic does that?

America is a nation that is now virtually in a perpetual state of war around the globe. Think about that for a moment. That’s what we have become.

It wasn’t always that way. In the 1960s, it seemed we were clearly headed in precisely the opposite direction. We were on course to be the hope of the world.

It may shock you to hear this, but as shocking as it is, a lot of people agree with it, and it may surprise you to learn that PBS’s Charlie Rose is among them.⁶⁹⁶ So listen up!

There’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in Literacy, 27th in Math, 22nd in Science, 49th in Life Expectancy, 178th in Infant Mortality, 3rd in Median Household Income, 4th in Labor Force, and 4th in Exports. We lead the world in only 3 categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and Defense Spending—where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies.⁶⁹⁷

What happened? Why have we fallen back so far compared to the world leader that America used to truly be? Maybe the evidence tells us.

Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex went unheeded. As we’ve recently witnessed in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the U.S. military now seems to be on a completely “different page” than the elected leaders who supposedly shape U.S. foreign policy. It’s not clear at what exact point the U.S. military came to dominate foreign policy, but in my opinion, they now do. Here’s my Exhibit A: President Barack Obama was elected on a platform clearly mandating a quick withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. Rather than being able to actually meet that pledge after being elected, as he no doubt personally wished, he was instead somehow forced to expand military actions, stalling the Iraq withdrawal for years, going “all-in” in the War in Afghanistan and escalating a covert—but very real—war in Pakistan as well.⁶⁹⁸

Were these conflicts avoidable, at least to such a large and destructive extent? You bet they were.

So why did we “rush in where angels fear to tread”⁶⁹⁹ in direct violation of what was promised? Is it because Obama is a bad person?

I don’t think so. I actually think that Barack Obama is a pretty decent human being who would keep us out of wars if he was able to. But that’s exactly my point! He wasn’t “able” to.

Which leads us right back to that all-important question: Who the hell is actually running this country? Because it obviously isn’t the President any more, as evidenced above.

It isn’t the Judiciary branch of government.

And it sure as heck isn’t Congress—at this point, I don’t think they can even manage to figure out how to follow, let alone lead.

Our civil liberties are disappearing, too: teenagers are being hauled in by the police for ridiculous “crimes” like posting a rap video on social media.⁷⁰⁰ And then the cops who arrested and jailed the poor kid have the nerve to defend making the arrest even though they openly admit that there was no real substance to the so-called “terror threat.”⁷⁰¹ Whatever happened to our rights? And under the insidiously-named Patriot Act, Americans who get arrested are not even technically entitled to legal representation because they are being accused of “terrorism.”

And the fact that it’s illegal doesn’t seem to stop them from continuing it—or from lying about the fact that they do it! Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who risked his life to let us know about the “massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” and that “The NSA routinely lies in response to congressional inquiries about the scope of surveillance in America,” also had this to say:

The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. . . . The NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone . . . I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president if I had a personal email . . . I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.⁷⁰²

It’s extremely noteworthy that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter came out and told the press that it was good that those secrets on the extent of NSA spying on U.S. citizens were revealed to the public! But was that story covered on your nightly news broadcast? No way! And when a former President of the United States says that “America does not have a functioning democracy at this point in time” then that should be a real eye-catcher.⁷⁰³ I implore you to read that article: thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/16043-jimmy-carter-defends-snowden-says-u-s-has-no-functioning-democracy. If mainstream media doesn’t cover a story that significant then, once again, we should be asking ourselves an important question: Why not?

So let’s remember the wise words of Benjamin Franklin. After leaving the secret deliberations of America’s Constitutional Convention in 1787, he was asked by anxious citizens outside the proceedings, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” And without hesitation, Franklin responded:

A republic, if you can keep it.⁷⁰⁴

I’d like to say something else about the “War on Terror.” I think it’s really a war on ourselves; please allow me to explain what I mean by that.

After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union evolved into the world’s two great superpowers; each holding one side of a “nuclear balance of terror,” a protracted struggle for decades known historically as the Cold War.

The United States eventually defeated the Soviets; not with guns but with money. We outspent them militarily and the Soviets simply couldn’t keep up; in trying to keep up, their economy crumbled. So I will concede that, up until that time in history, it was at least logically arguable that a huge defense budget may have made some sense. The key phrase there is not “defense budget”; the important part of that statement is “up to that point.”

After that point in history, there was no real rationale or justification for spending more on weapons than almost the entire rest of the world combined, especially when our leaders were telling our people at home that there was no money for education, no money for jobs programs, no money for the elderly, and no money for much of anything except their lavish Washington parties and an unlimited defense budget.

After the Soviet threat receded, people anywhere close to my political persuasion started thinking, "Hey, great! We’re the world’s only superpower. Now, finally, there’ll be some serious money for programs that actually help people here at home.” But the high levels of military spending continued. In the meantime, in other areas in which we had been world leaders, we experienced sharp declines compared to other countries.

The problem at that point in our history was “defense” from whom? We no longer had a Superpower enemy. So who were they protecting us from?

Then quite conveniently, along came the War on Terror. It was so convenient, in fact, that it brings to mind the expression that if it hadn’t come along, it would have had to be invented. And some people think it may have been invented. Some think it was largely a manufactured conflict that was created to provide us with an invisible enemy that required insane amounts of spending and sacrifice to keep us safe. I can’t prove that. I don’t really want to believe that. I’m just saying we should be thinking about that—it’s a question we should be asking. Because—as Benjamin Franklin also wrote:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.⁷⁰⁵

Which leads us to what we have now—perpetual war. We spend more every year on weapons of death than almost the whole rest of the world combined—and then the politicians whine that there just isn’t any money left for social programs.

But whether we’re talking about the Cold War against Communism or our current War on Terrorism, the end result is the same. The products of destruction are paid for by mortgaging our country’s hopes for the future. Every new weapons system actually represents a theft: it robs a school of a new library; prevents health care from reaching seniors who desperately need it; and makes universities unaffordable for our most gifted youth. As President Eisenhower noted:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.⁷⁰⁶

We, The People are now barely allowed the privilege of asking how come? But it needs to be asked . We should be asking! How come?

How come there’s always money for another war but never enough money for jobs programs that millions of Americans really need, that could rebuild our breaking bridges and the rest of our infrastructure? How come we give billions to defense contractors for new bomber programs and take money from the teachers who are preparing our children for their future?

How come? If we ask that too aggressively these days we’re told we’re being unpatriotic, possibly even a “terror threat!”

What happened? Where is that Democracy we all grew up believing in? The Land of the Free.

Representative Cynthia McKinney grilled Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a few years ago over the fact that the Comptroller General of the United States determined that 3.4 trillion dollars was “missing” from the Pentagon budget in fiscal years 1999 and 2000. That’s right, I said 3.4 trillion dollars—I’m not making this up, it’s Congressional testimony.⁷⁰⁷

Isn’t that insane? Why on earth are we still we putting up with insanity like that? Shouldn’t these maniacs be locked up in a nice little home somewhere to prevent them from sabotaging our children’s future?

JFK faced that same type of political insanity and stood right up to it. At a meeting of the National Security Council in 1961, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented President Kennedy with their plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet people.⁷⁰⁸ They were dead serious.

JFK stood up from the table and walked out in disgust, right in the middle of the meeting. The President’s disgust “was in response to a more specific evil in his own ranks: U.S. military and CIA leaders were enlisting his support for a plan to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.”⁷⁰⁹ As JFK walked away, he shot a strong look at his Secretary of State and snapped:

And we call ourselves the human race.⁷¹⁰

That’s the kind of leader we were blessed with in President Kennedy. And I think that “blessed” is really the right word.

What we can learn from that is that our problems are really nothing new. JFK had to fight the same demons that we’re now faced with. Russian Premier Khrushchev and Kennedy secretly worked together through back channels to avoid war by going behind the backs of their own generals—because they both knew that was the only way that war could be avoided!

That secret strategy succeeded. In the Berlin Crisis in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, it was only by clinging to the hope of those secret negotiations that the peace was kept.⁷¹¹ Had either leader actually listened to their own military advisors, this planet would have been incinerated with nuclear madness and its fallout.

That was an incredible moment:

The two most heavily armed leaders in history, on the verge of total nuclear war, suddenly joined hands against those on both sides pressuring them to attack. Khrushchev ordered the immediate withdrawal of his missiles in return for Kennedy’s public pledge never to invade Cuba and his secret promise to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey—as he would in fact do. The two Cold War enemies had turned, so that each now had more in common with his opponent than either had with his own generals.⁷¹²

The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a letter to JFK’s Secretary of Defense on November 20, 1962, stated the following:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable . . .⁷¹³

That was a nuclear first-strike they were talking about. And it got even worse. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a top-secret memo to JFK’s Secretary of Defense on March 13, 1962. That memo urged the Kennedy Administration to create a number of “shock incidents,” in the form of fake attacks on U.S. soldiers stationed in Cuba and other Central American countries and also in Miami, other Florida cities, and “even in Washington.”⁷¹⁴ The plans even included blowing up an American ship in Guantanamo Bay. The purpose of the proposed “false flag” attacks was to create a backlash—referred to in the memo as “a helpful wave of national indignation”—that would provide a rationale for invading Cuba.⁷¹⁵

The stakes were higher than most people even imagine; then or now. That national security structure firmly believed that nuclear war was winnable . As former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, “They were certain of that. There were men in power who believed that America could claim victory even if the country lost 20 or 30 million people.”⁷¹⁶

President Kennedy was totally committed to drastic reductions in the arms race:

On May 6, 1963, President Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum Number 239, ordering his principal national security advisers to pursue both a nuclear test ban and a policy of general and complete disarmament.⁷¹⁷

And I want to now end this book with an extremely important point. JFK won that war against his own national security structure. And so can we. Join me in that effort online at “Jesse Ventura—The Official Facebook Page”: facebook. com/OfficialJesseVentura.

I aim to make our so-called leaders once again responsible to the people they are supposed to represent. I want your input on a pledge I’m drafting that we are going to send to every member of Congress and request that they sign.

That pledge will include the following:

•  Immediately release all documents related to the JFK assassination that are currently being withheld;

•  Repeal provisions of the “Patriot Act” which are contrary to the historically established rights of American citizens as set forth in the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights;

•  Any act of warfare against another people or nation must be justified by formal declaration and ratified by the United States Congress;

•  Reduce “defense” spending to a level that actually reflects the level necessary for our defense;

•  Use the resources from spending reductions and a more just system of taxation to benefit our citizens through increased access to quality health care, a massive public works jobs program that rebuilds our nation’s infrastructure at the same time that it creates employment, the rescue and funding of the Social Security retirement system, and creating quality education through valuing the teachers of our children the way they should be—with our thanks, our vision, and with ample reward.

All those Washington politicians can decide as they wish; either to sign it or to not sign our petition—but I’m gonna put it right into every single one of their laps and they’re gonna have to go on public record of either supporting those principles or opposing them.

I taught at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and I’ve learned that innovation is the key to problem-solving. As Margaret Mead, a cultural anthropologist who was way ahead of her time said, “We are continually faced with great opportunities which are brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.”⁷¹⁸

That translates like this: We’re not powerless! I’ll give you a specific example of the type of catalyst change that I’m talking about. Take the gigantic “immigration problem” in this country right now that no one wants to address. We can change the whole paradigm on immigration and here’s how. We grant long-term permission to stay in this country—“green cards”—to the best foreign students. In exchange for giving them their education, we actually encourage them to stay here in the U.S. and practice the skills that they learned in our universities. We keep the fruits of their education. That’s how we can immediately enrich our U.S. labor pool, by keeping the cream of the crop—the best and brightest academics at the top of the most important fields. Right now, after getting educated here, most of them have to leave the country. It makes no sense.

Meanwhile, we increase teacher salaries and innovate change throughout our school system to make that job worthy of a career in education and gradually that will provide huge future benefits to our economy and our country. That’s how to revitalize our educational system and begin coming to terms with the issue of immigration at the same time; by looking at our problems as opportunities. I don’t believe in problems—I believe in solutions. We can mobilize a political force of concerned citizens that has to be reckoned with simply by caring and getting involved in the future course of our country. We can use that power to turn negatives into a positive. We can energize that knowledge to revitalize our Republic.

Take strength from the fact that others have gone before you, and still more will follow. Join me in standing strong on these issues and promoting that petition to the so-called leaders in our government. Because it’s still our government. They just need to be reminded of that.

Stay vigilant! Let’s take back our country!

I will end with a little story, and it’s an important one, too.

It may shock some to learn that, long before President Nixon’s Watergate tapes conspiracy in the 1970s, JFK secretly taped events like his National Security Council meetings with the Generals and Admirals who were his war-mongering adversaries.⁷¹⁹ And unlike President Richard Nixon, Kennedy knew how to keep a secret. Even among the White House inner circle, only he and—one would guess, his brother, the Attorney General—knew of the secret taping system.⁷²⁰ Also unlike Nixon, Kennedy used it to protect the common people from the evil designs of their leaders.

What those tapes revealed when they listened to the recordings of those Generals and Admirals must have scared the hell out of them, too. The tapes were eventually released, and as soon as the President leaves the room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff all start squawking with profanities about what a chicken the President was.⁷²¹

Listening to those tapes would reveal that even the Joint Chiefs thought to be most loyal to the President and Commander-in-Chief were also viciously opposed to what they saw as his “pacifist” policies. It was no laughing matter.

So JFK would marshal together his forces, telling his real team of advisors that they had better develop a consensus for peace—and fast. He explained why with a simple gesture toward the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one short and scary sentence:

“They all want war.”⁷²²

That’s what JFK was up against.

Well, guess what? They still do want war! War has become a very important “business” to the military and corporate Powers That Be who purport to be our masters.

So we, as a nation, must now develop a consensus for peace, because anything less than that is our de facto acceptance of the perpetual war state of that military-corporate complex.

I continue to seek your support for rebuilding America back into a country that again invokes the words spoken by President Kennedy shortly before his murder:

I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women— not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.

No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. . . . So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

So, let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.⁷²³

It’s time to put an end to the influence of special interests that pollutes our political process. It’s also time to put an end to the two-party dictatorship sponsored by those special interests that are not in the People’s interests.

When I was Governor Jesse Ventura in Minnesota—as an Independent—I ran and was elected governor with zero PAC money (political action committees). I took no special interest money, and I would not even allow those people into my office—for four years in office I never once met with a lobbyist. I literally banned them from the Governor’s Office. So for four years the state of Minnesota was not run by special interests.

Would you like to know what happened? My state ran budget surpluses, and I returned that money to the taxpayers every year. That’s how it should be— because that’s the People’s money!

It’s time to do the same thing on a national level. Our current system of “politics as usual” has got this country in a chokehold, and we’re pinned down on the mat. As I said in my book, Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me!, if we would have had the money that we spent in the whole fiasco of the Iraq War, we could have worked wonders:

The New York Times recently noted that, for what the war is costing, we could’ve instituted universal health coverage, provided a nursery school education for every three and four year old, and immunized kids around the world against numerous diseases— and still had half the money left over.⁷²⁴

My point is this: That was our money, and it should’ve been us who decided how it was spent, not Pentagon war-mongers, not corporate fat cats, and not special interest lobbyists.

Peace,

Governor Jesse Ventura

⁶⁸⁹ Talbot, Brothers, 5, 21–22.

⁶⁹⁰ Ibid.

⁶⁹¹ Talbot, Brothers, 15–17.

⁶⁹² Horne, Inside the ARRB.

⁶⁹³ American RadioWorks, “The President Calling (November 28, 1963, at 8:55 p.m.),” retrieved 12 June 2013: americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/b4.html

⁶⁹⁴ Talbot, Brothers, 285.

⁶⁹⁵ President Lyndon Baines Johnson, “President Johnson’s Notes on Conversation with Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark – January 26, 1967 – 6:29 P.M.,” January 26, 1967:

history-matters.com/archive/jfk/arrb/master_med_set/md68/html/md68_0001a.htm

⁶⁹⁶ Geoffrey Dickens, “Charlie Rose Endorses America is ‘Not Greatest Country’ View of Aaron Sorkin Show,” June 22, 2012: newsbusters.org/blogs/geoffrey-dickens/2012/06/22/charlie-rose-endorses-america-not-greatest-country-view-aaron-sork

⁶⁹⁷ Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom, June 24, 2012, HBO: youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw

⁶⁹⁸ Adam Martin, “The C.I.A.’s Silence on Drone Strikes Is Getting Awkward,” The Atlantic, February 6, 2012: theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/02/cis-silence-drone-strikes-getting-awkward/48328/

⁶⁹⁹ Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1709.

⁷⁰⁰ Tim Cushing, “MA Teen Arrested And Held Without Bail For Posting Supposed ‘Terrorist Threat’ On Facebook,” May 3, 2013, Overhype: techdirt.com/articles/20130502/18364622931/ ma-teen-arrested-held-without-bail-posting-supposed-terrorist-threat-facebook.shtml

⁷⁰¹ Philip Caulfield, “Massachusetts teen charged with making ‘terror’ threats mentioning Boston Marathon on Facebook,” May 3, 2013, New York Daily News: nydailynews.com/news/national/teen-faces-terror-charges-boston-marathon-facebook-post-article-1.1334038#ixzz2VerYsDsP

⁷⁰² Thomas Gaist, “NSA Whistleblower Reveals Identity, Exposes US Government’s ‘Architecture of Oppression’,” June 10, 2013, Information Clearing House: informationclearinghouse.info/article35233.htm

⁷⁰³ Jack Kenny, “Jimmy Carter Defends Snowden, Says U.S. Has No ‘Functioning Democracy’,” July 20, 2013, New American: thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/16043-jimmy-carter-defends-snowden-says-u-s-has-no-functioning-democracy

⁷⁰⁴ Benjamin Franklin, “Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia,” September 17, 1787: ourrepubliconline.com/Author/21

⁷⁰⁵ Benjamin Franklin, “Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor,” November 11, 1755: ushistory.org/Franklin/quotable/quote04.htm

⁷⁰⁶ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” March, 1953: usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2011/09/30/the-origins-of-that-eisenhower-every-gun-that-is-made-quote

⁷⁰⁷ U.S. Representative Cynthia Ann McKinney, March 11, 2005, “U.S. House of Representatives Hearing on Fiscal Year 2006 Budget for the Department of Defense and Military Services”: fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031505_mckinney_transcript. shtml and youtube.com/watch?v = Aupqwx6vaCs and Vince Gonzales , “Vince Gonzales investigates the Pentagon’s inability to account for trillions of taxpayer dollars,” CBS News, January 29, 2002: 911research.wtc7.net/cache/sept11/cbs_waronwaste.html and youtube.com/watch?v=LJmS_92Oo9I

⁷⁰⁸ Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 236.

⁷⁰⁹ Ibid, 237.

⁷¹⁰ McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival, 354; Dean Rusk, As I Saw It, 246–247.

⁷¹¹ Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 237–243.

⁷¹² Ibid, 382–383.

⁷¹³ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume III: National Security Policy (U.S. Government Printing Office: 1996), 388.

⁷¹⁴ Talbot, Brothers, 106.

⁷¹⁵ Ibid.

⁷¹⁶ Talbot, Brothers, 221.

⁷¹⁷ Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 326.

⁷¹⁸ Geniuses, “Margaret Mead–Anthropologist, psychologist, activist,” retrieved 16 June, 2013: geniusrevive.com/en/geniuses.html?pid=73&sid=235:Margaret-Mead-Anthropologist-psychologist-activist

⁷¹⁹ Talbot, Brothers, 166.

⁷²⁰ Ted Widner, “JFK’s Secret White House Recordings Unveiled,” September 5, 2012: thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/25/jfk-s-secret-white-house-recordings-unveiled.html x

⁷²¹ Talbot, Brothers, 166.

⁷²² Talbot, Brothers, 166.

⁷²³ President John F. Kennedy, “Commencement Speech at American University,” June 10, 1963.

⁷²⁴ Jesse Ventura & Dick Russell, Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me: From the Minnesota Governor’s Mansion to the Baja Outback: Reflections and Revisionings (Skyhorse Publishing: 2008), 263.