Another anniversary is now behind us. November 22 marked 47 years since that horrific day in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
Kennedy retrospectives necessarily focus on that gruesome, Zapruder-chronicled event and, for contrast, on his iconic, “Ask Not” inaugural speech that is remembered as a paean to selflessness. It nostalgically reminds us of what was lost.
What is often overlooked, however, is Kennedy’s less famous, but arguably more important, speech in the summer of 1963, less than five months before his murder. This was his “peace speech” at American University. It underscored a reality that had been evolving since the Cuban missile crisis had forced Kennedy to ponder the abyss of Armageddon. He was no longer the Cold Warrior-in-Chief, although he was under constant siege by those of that prevalent mentality.
While the Joint Chiefs didn’t much like it, especially the part criticizing any “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war,” JFK also said this on June 10, 1963:
“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 the same small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
That’s also what was gunned down in Dallas. A perspective that transcended Cold War jingoism and nuclear pre-emption scenarios. One borne of having backed off from the Apocalypse the year before. Kennedy was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson, who was in sync with his generals, and Vietnam, which Kennedy demonstrably wanted out of, would escalate into the bloody quagmire that would cost America foreign-policy credibility and more than 50,000 lives.
Secret Service Solace?
As is typical at this time, there are books that accompany the inevitable documentaries. Exhibit A of the former is the Kennedy Detail by former Secret Service agents Clint Hill and Jerry Blaine. Hill was the agent who climbed aboard the presidential limousine after JFK had been shot and crawled along the trunk till he reached the back seat. He had been riding in the follow-up car.
In various interviews, including one on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Mathews, the agents, still visibly moved nearly a half century later, acknowledge regrettably that nothing else could have been done that fateful day. Even, as Hill recalls, had he actually been stationed on the back of the limousine, the line of fire would have still been unimpeded. By the way, it was Kennedy’s preference that agents not station themselves on his motorcade limo.
But there remains something critically relevant unstated — and unasked. And you don’t have to be a conspiracy buff or hard core revisionist to ask it.
Why wasn’t more done BEFORE Kennedy came to Dallas, by then notoriously regarded as the “Hate Capital of Dixie”?
Keep in mind that at literally the last minute, Kennedy had to call off his planned trip to Chicago on Nov. 2. The reason: The Secret Service had arrested two members of a four-man sniper team suspected of plans to kill the president. The other two had escaped. This was the dodged bullet.
Just days before Dallas, rumors were rife about an assassination attempt on Kennedy in Tampa. Unprecedented security, culled from the region to complement TPD, was implemented to protect the president, whose motorcade would pass by, among other buildings, the Floridan Hotel. The likely M.O. of a potential assassin — or assassins — was known.
But JFK still went to Dallas — to help mediate a Democratic Party feud between Gov. John Connolly and Sen. Ralph Yarborough and to help retain its 25 tenuous electoral votes in 1964. But there were plenty of well-documented, dire warnings about Dallas, including from United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who had been roughed up and spat upon in Dallas a few weeks previous.
It was a pragmatic, political given that the Texas trip had to happen. But given the foreboding Chicago and Tampa experiences, how do you permit a classic, sniper-ready ambush with understaffed security; an unmonitored overpass, knoll and buildings; an unobstructed target and a motorcade route that needed to slow to a virtual stop to make its Dealey Plaza dogleg turn?
No, the die had been tragically cast by the time Agent Hill raced bravely to Kennedy’s limo. The time for something to have been done had fatefully — and negligently — passed.