JFK and the Power Behind the Throne

I rarely have posted links to outside articles without offering significant commentary.  This will be one such occurrence.  For those with an interest in the JFK assassination, I highly recommend the following:

The First Step in the JFK Cover-Up, by Jacob G. Hornberger

This is the story of the autopsy not performed in Texas:

After President Kennedy was declared dead by physicians at Parkland, he was placed into a casket. A team of Secret Service agents then began removing the casket from Parkland with the intent of taking it to Love Field, where President Johnson was waiting for it to take it back to Washington.

There was one big problem, however. Texas law required an autopsy of the body to be conducted by an official medical examiner. Therefore, the Dallas medical examiner, Dr. Earl Rose, informed the Secret Service team of Texas law and advised them that the body wasn’t going anywhere until the autopsy was conducted.

The body was removed without the required autopsy.

JFK’s War against the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated, by Douglas Horne

This is a multi-part look at the relationship JFK had with the military and national-security bureaucracy:

During my three years on the staff of the ARRB, and while subsequently researching the manuscript for my five-volume book, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board, I became increasingly aware of the broad levels of conflict between President Kennedy and his own national security establishment — those officials within the State Department, the Pentagon, the National Security Council (NSC), and the CIA who helped him to formulate and carry out the nation’s foreign and military policy around the world. This internal conflict over just what our nation’s foreign and military policies ought to be, at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, commenced early in the first year of JFK’s presidency, and continued to escalate during the 34 months of his administration. Although John F. Kennedy gave a robust inaugural address that seemed in the eyes of many to establish his credentials as a traditional, mainstream Cold Warrior, his ensuing behavior early in 1961, and his increasing and open skepticism, throughout his first year in office, toward the bellicose and inflexible advice he was receiving from within the federal bureaucracy, signaled a growing gulf between the young 35th President and the national security establishment that was supposed to serve him and implement his policy decisions.

This essay will explore, one year at a time, the seminal events in JFK’s ongoing and escalating conflicts with the national security hard-liners in his own administration. At the essay’s end, I will address the inevitable question that arises today, fifty years after his death: Did these internal conflicts over the conduct and very future of the Cold War with the USSR lead to JFK’s death? Did powerful forces and individuals within his own administration cast a veto on his presidency, and his life, over reasons of state policy at the height of the Cold War? These are the questions the reader should keep in mind while reading this essay.

As of this moment there are five articles in the series, with a promise of more to come.  All can be found via the above link.