16-04-2009, 09:26 PM
Paul Rigby Wrote:Time & Tide, 5-11 December 1963, pp.11-12
The questions to be answered
Anonymous
And so to the piece which I regard as among the best ever written on the case. It has stood the test of time remarkably well:
Quote:Labour Monthly, January 1964, pp. 1-15;
Notes of the Month: After Kennedy
Quote:Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long
Shakespeare
By R. Palme Dutt
December 10, 1963
President Kennedy’s murder has thrown a sudden fierce light on the realities of the world in which we live, beneath all the smooth, polite façade of ‘Western civilization.’ This murder was a political act. Its consequences may reach far. The murder of an Archduke in Sarajevo at one end of Europe and the murder of the silver-tongued orator of socialism, Juares, at the other, inaugurated the first world war. The murders of Liebknecht and of Rosa Luxembourg immediately after the first world war, and of Rathenau in the succeeding years, presaged the downward slide of the Weimar Republic into Nazism. The murders of the last independent French Foreign Minister Barthou and King Alexander of Jugoslavia heralded the appeasement of Nazism. What will prove the sequel to Kennedy’s murder? It is no wonder that concern and anxiety is shared in many countries among wide circles of the people far beyond those sharing his political outlook.
Karl Marx’s Address to President Johnson
After the murder of President Abraham Lincoln the First International or International Working Men’s Association (the centenary whose foundation we honour this year) transmitted an ‘Address’ written by Karl Marx, and signed by Marx and all his associates of the General Council, to Lincoln’s successor, President Johnson, whom as Vice-President the assassin had also sought to kill, but who had escaped and survived to find himself suddenly, not by his own wish or solicitation, President Johnson. In his Address Karl Marx and his fellow signatories declared:
Quote:It is not our part to call words of sorrow and horror, while the heart of two worlds heaves with emotion. Even the sycophants who, year after year and day by day, stuck to their Sisyphus work of morally assassinating Abraham Lincoln and the great republic he headed stand now aghast at this universal outburst of popular feeling, and rival with each other to strew rhetorical flowers upon his open grave…Such indeed was the modesty of this great and good man that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr…
Yours, Sir, has become the tremendous task to uproot by the law which had been felled by the sword, to preside over the arduous work of political reconstruction and social regeneration. A profound sense of your great mission will save you from any compromise with stern duties. You will never forget that to initiate the new era of the emancipation of labour the American people devolved the responsibility of leadership upon two men of labour – the one Abraham Lincoln, the other Andrew Johnson.
Such were the words Marx chose to address the President of the United States a century ago.
From Lincoln to Kennedy
Kennedy was no Lincoln. Nevertheless it is true that the same evil upas tree of racial slavery, which was and remains the foundation of American ‘free’ institutions and of American wealth, just as of all Western ‘freedom’ and Western wealth, struck down Lincoln a century ago and was one of the key factors in striking down Kennedy today. Lincoln was the leader of ascendant American capitalism, when it was still progressive; and his leadership of the fight of the Republican North against the slave owners of the South made it possible for this Head of State of the already powerful American capitalism to be acclaimed by Marx as a ‘hero’ honoured by the international working class. Yet Lincoln was at the same time the head of what Marx characterised, in his letter to Engels of September 10, 1862, as ‘a bourgeois republic where fraud has so long reigned supreme,’ or again, in his letter to Engels on September 7, 1864, as ‘the model country of the democratic swindle.’ This merciless exposure, in informal private correspondence, of the real character of United States capitalism and capitalist democracy did not prevent Marx from recognising at the same time the historic significance of the role of its President in a given national and international situation, and from giving unreserved public expression to that recognition. It is possible that even today Marxists can learn something from this example of Marx, that it is not enough simply to classify a given political figure by his class affiliation and thereby regard the issue as closed when the need is to judge correctly his political significance in a given historical situation.
Dilemma of United States Policy
Certainly Kennedy belonged to a very different era from that of Lincoln. Kennedy was the representative, no longer of ascendant American capitalism, but of American capitalism in extreme decay, in the culminating stages of monopolist decline: on the one hand, extending its tentacles over the entire world; aggressive, ruthless and brutal; on the other hand, desperate and fearful before the advance of the new world of socialism and national liberation. The lords of American capital are finding themselves compelled to learn today, as the lords of the British Empire had to learn yesterday, that they are no longer all-powerful rulers of the world, capable of dictating their will in any quarter of the globe where they chose to impose it. They have to reckon with a new world situation in which there is equality of forces on either side. They have to reckon with a new strategic situation in which the superiority of ‘Western civilisation’ can no longer be proved by the superiority of the gatling gun over bows and arrows; while the alternative replacement dream, which had currency in the years after the second world war, of atomic monopoly or superiority to maintain the old supremacy has now also vanished. The have to reckon with a new world economic situation where the previous incontestable scientific and technological superiority of capitalism over older systems has now been successfully challenged in turn by the increasingly manifest superiority of the newer economic system of socialism. All this presents a new type of problem for the American policy makers, unguessed even in the days of the foundation of NATO.
Schizophrenia
From this situation follows the peculiar schizophrenia, the switchback somersaults of contradictions, the open clash of conflicting trends also on the highest levels, the ferocious battles in the Senate Committees or between rival strategic services, the ceaseless ‘agonising reappraisals’ of American policy in the current period. All the previous dreams of ‘the American century’; the spate of bombastic volumes of the Ludwell Denny type proclaiming the inevitability of the American world empire (‘What chance has Britain against America? Or what chance has the world?); the Colliers Magazine ‘Third World War’ Specials in five million copies in 1951 depicting on the cover the American G.I. bestriding Moscow, and proclaiming the theme ‘Russia’s Defeat and Occupation 1952-1960’ – all these have had to vanish into the discard so completely that younger people today, who know nothing of them, would find it difficult to believe that such was the current coinage of the Western world only a dozen years ago, when Priestley also contributed a star article to the Colliers’ ‘Third World War’ Special, describing with imaginative gusto the American occupation of Moscow, or Bertrand Russell, who has since to his honour abundantly redeemed his temporary loss of direction at that time, was advocating a preventative atomic war on the Soviet Union.
Toynbee on the American Counter-Revolution
But once these Fulton dreams of a Truman and a Churchill, of a Bevin and an Attlee, these dreams of the ‘policy of strength,’ of invincible Western power, of nuclear superiority, of triumphant ‘showdown’ with the Soviet Union to ‘roll back the frontiers of Communism,’ have vanished, what is to take their place? There is the problem, there is still the unresolved dilemma of American policy today. All the instincts of the American lords of capital, accustomed to bludgeon and bulldose their way triumphantly against all lesser breeds either within the United States or on the American Continent or abroad, and above all against any whom they might choose to describe as ‘Reds,’ revolt against the idea of negotiating on a basis of equality with the Soviet Union, with Communists. ‘Treason.’ ‘Twenty years of treason.’ They took sixteen years even to recognise the Soviet Union. After fifteen years they have not even yet recognised the Chinese People’s Republic. The banner of revolution raised in the American War of Independence nearly two centuries ago has turned to the opposite. As the historian Arnold Toynbee, until recently the favoured idol in the United States with his mystical cyclical theories cherished by reaction as the doom of any conception of human progress, has noted in his latest lectures published this year:
Quote:America is today the leader of a world-wide anti-revolutionary movement in defence of vested interests.
(Arnold J. Toynbee, America and the World Revolution, 1963.)
‘Paralysis of Power’
But while all the instincts of American reaction continue more violent and aggressive than ever, the more Communism advances in the world, prudence and hard facts and realism compel the recognition of the possible necessity of alternative courses. Slowly, hesitantly, doubtfully, amid the snarls of reaction, the U.S.-Soviet dialogue begins. George Kennan, who initially in the first years after the war (in the famous semi-official article signed by ‘X’) was one of the authors of the cold war theory, describing how its practice would inevitably lead to the crumbling and disintegration of the Soviet Union, has in the subsequent period, notably in the famous Reith lectures of 1958, been among the foremost to recognise the changed facts and the consequent necessity for a change in policy. In his most recent study ‘The Paralysis of American Power’ he has posed the question as ‘the heart of the problem’ of American policy:
Do we want to destroy or negotiate with Communist nations?
And again:
Do we want political or military solutions for the Cold War?
There indeed is ‘the heart of the problem’ of American policy today. And it is this context that needs to be seen the significance equally of the transitional role of Kennedy and of the murder of Kennedy.
Passing of the Eisenhower Era
When President Eisenhower went to the first Summit Conference in 1955, it was not by any means out of his own wishes or with any hope of the prospect that he went. It was the compulsion of world conditions and the climate of world opinion that sent him there. He has recorded in his recently published Memoirs The White House Years: Mandate for Change, 1953-1956, how initially Anthony Eden, when he was Foreign Secretary under Churchill, was opposed to the idea, but that after April 5, 1955, when he became Prime Minister,
For some reason, whether because of political exigencies of his new position or the turn of events in the world, Anthony now reversed his former opposition.
Eisenhower reveals that he eventually fell into line, ‘not wishing to appear senselessly stubborn.’ So the 1955 opportunity came and went, with nothing visible to show save for the theatrical gesture of the ‘Open Skies’ proposal of Eisenhower. Odd, incidentally, how, whenever it comes to proposals at the conference table, the American negotiators have always tended to harp on their central strategic aim of inspection of the Soviet Union. The U2 was another highly unorthodox kind of ‘Open Skies’ inspection. The test ban negotiations were bogged down for years on the issue of inspection. And now, when discussions have been opened on the possible next steps for disarmament, it appears that the American proposals are concentrated on the stationing of inspection teams in the Soviet Union. This nagging desire, with the calculations behind the desire, has become too obvious even to the most unobservant – as Blackett has long ago shown.
Eisenhower’s Unhappy End
1955 passed into the dead record. From the point of view of British Toryism the election had been won, and the urgency of the need was over.
The Devil was sick;
The Devil a Summiteer would be.
The Devil was well;
The Devil a Summiteer was he.
But then came the 1959 election; and the need became urgent again. This time the level of world pressure had risen far higher. Once again the reluctant Eisenhower was brought to the mountain. This time the most extraordinary measures had to be taken by the Central Intelligence Agency and the strategic services to wreck the Summit. The U2 was sent out on its reckless illegal raiding mission over the heart of the Soviet Union at a height which was believed to be beyond the reach of any known rocket, while in case of accident the pilot was equipped, not only with his roubles and revolver, but also his suicide instructions and kit. All went wrong. The deadly accuracy of Soviet rocketry capable of bringing down a fly at 80,000 feet was demonstrated to the world, while the pilot survived to tell the tale of how the massive bribe of dollars had led him to this shameful role. The unhappy Eisenhower was compelled, first to deny knowledge, then to claim a supposed accidental error of flight direction (before it was known that the pilot had survived to tell the tale); then to admit publicly that he, the American President, had lied, and confess to full guilty knowledge beforehand; finally to try to bluster it out and claim the sacred right of American aggression to violate sovereignty any where in the world. So Eisenhower passed out in a blaze of ignominy. The tragedy was duly repeated as farce when his colleague of the abortive Summit of 1960, Macmillan, ended in his turn with the ridiculous ignominy of finding the dignity of his name of a would-be grand signeur inextricably linked for all future history with the final episode of a Profumo and a Keeler attached like a tin can to his tail.
Transition to Kennedy
Kennedy was elected President in 1960 – by an extremely narrow majority against the notorious Red-baiter Nixon – on the basis of a very vehement electoral campaign of denunciation of the entire record of Eisenhower as a record of slackness and sloth. This cut both ways. Eisenhower had himself been originally returned in 1952 on a basis of a vehement electoral denunciation of the Democratic President Truman and his Secretary of State Acheson for their role in the Korean War and a solemn pledge to end the Korean War and bring peace in Korea. He kept that pledge and agreed to the Korean Armistice in 1953. It is one of the more engaging sidelights on American electoral tactics, and also one of the permanent indications of the deep true feelings of the masses of the American people beneath all the noisy official chauvinist bluster on the surface, that any promise of peace from a leading contender can be regarded as a sure electoral winner. President Wilson won the 1916 election on the unanswerable slogan ‘He Kept Us Out of War,’ only to enter the war as soon as the election was safely over, in the spring of 1917. The denunciation of Eisenhower by Kennedy included denunciation of the ‘weakness’ of Eisenhower on Cuba and the promise of vigorous action against the Castro regime in Cuba. That was one side of the medal. But it was not the whole picture.
Two Sides of Kennedy
The historic significance of the role of President Kennedy was that he embodied in his own person both the two conflicting trends in American policy today. On the one hand, he was a most active champion of the cold war. He raised arms expenditure again and again to the most staggering record peacetime height. He sanctioned the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in the first year of his office. Infuriated by the fiasco of that adventure, he prepared in the following year to launch the most massive large-scale official assault and invasion of Cuba, and was only foiled by the Soviet missiles. He conducted the dirtiest war of modern times in South Vietnam. At home, fearful of the power of the Southern Democrats controlling the levers of his machine, he faltered and fumbled before the imperative issue of Civil Rights, until his hand was forced, and let the flames of lawless racial violence rise to such heights as found expression in the murder of tiny Negro children in the open streets while the majesty of American law and power appeared palsied and impotent. The sequel was rapid. The bullet that had shot the Negro children with impunity shot Kennedy as the next victim. Just as the murder of Lumumba prepared the murder of Hammarskjold, so the murder of the Negro children prepared the murder of Kennedy. But it was not for the crimes of the cold war, or the dark record over Cuba and South Vietnam, or for the faltering over Civil Rights, that Kennedy was shot. It was only when he appeared to be moving in the direction of East-West negotiations and possible accommodation, when he set up the joint private exchange line with Premier Khrushchev, when he began to press forward the bill of Civil Rights, that he became the universal target of hatred and calumny by American reaction on a scale unparalleled since Roosevelt after Yalta. The death shot was the sequel.
Kennedy and Peace
For the other side of Kennedy’s restless, enquiring, action-seeking outlook and personality, that side which recognised with sober seriousness the deadly hazards of cold war recklessness and nuclear strategy, and which began to grope, however hesitantly, for an alternative, that side was also present from the outset, and visibly grew as his experience grew, as his contacts with Soviet representatives extended, as he grew with the responsibilities of the Presidency. Already in his election year in 1960 Senator Kennedy had called the ‘liberation’ policy of Dulles and Eisenhower ‘a snare and a delusion,’ and had declared that the United States ‘had neither the intention nor the capacity to liberate Eastern Europe’ (see J. Crown and G. Penty, Kennedy in Power, New York, 1961). True, in his platform speeches (reprinted in the collection under his name entitled To Turn the Tide by Harper and Brothers, 1962) he could still hand out the old threadbare rhetoric about the ‘eternal struggle of liberty against tyranny,’ dating it on one occasion from ‘500 years before the birth of Christ,’ on another occasion as ‘since the beginning of history,’ and on another occasion (all in the same book) as ‘since the end of the second world war.’ But the more the problems gathered around him, the more the real alternatives shattered the tinsel of rhetorical platitudes, and especially after the Caribbean crisis of the autumn of 1962, with the experience of the Soviet-American confrontation and final co-operation for peace in that grave test, the new positive note of insistence on the necessity of negotiation began to sound increasingly in all his major utterances.
‘Re-Examine Our Attitude to Peace’
On June 10, 1963, came the famous speech, appealing to Americans to re-examine their whole attitude to the Soviet Union and to the cold war – the speech which was the first public expression of the approach to a major new phase in American policy, and which was at the same time the starting point of the developments that culminated for Kennedy on November 22. He rejected the conception of a ‘Pax American’ based on the ‘policy of strength’:
Quote:What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax American enforced on the world by American weapons of war.
In common with the 1960 Statement of the 81 Communist Parties he recognised two basic propositions of the present epoch. First, that the latest development of nuclear weapons had brought a qualitative change to the question of a new world war:
Quote:I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.
Second, that a third world war should not be regarded as fatalistically inevitable:
Let us re-examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed. We must not accept that viewpoint.
On this basis, while emphasising the fundamental difference of social system and outlook of the United States and the Soviet Union as not to be surrendered by either side, he urged the aim and possibility of ‘attainable peace’ through successive limited concrete agreements corresponding to the interests of both sides:
I am not referring to the absolute infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics still dream. Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace – based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a more gradual evolution in human institutions – on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned.
‘Re-Examine the Cold War’
Confronting directly the argument of opponents that the character of the Soviet Union and of Communism ruled out the possibility of any stable agreements or peace, he launched out in a series of appeals to the American public to re-think these questions and prepare for the prospect of a reversal of the traditional attitudes of the past eighteen years and a new era of U.S.-Soviet relations:
Quote:History teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising shifts in the relations between nations and neighbours…
Let us re-examine our attitudes towards the Soviet Union…Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Russians suffered in the course of the second world war…
Let us re-examine our attitude towards the cold war…Our conflicts, to be sure, are real. Our concepts of the world are different. No service is performed by failing to make clear our disagreements…but…we need a much better weapon than the H-bomb – a weapon better than ballistic missiles or nuclear submarines – and that better weapon is peaceful co-operation.
However much the innovating content of this June 10 speech might have been wrapped up in an accompaniment of conventional phrases and sentiments from the cold war armoury to reassure suspicious hearers, the unmistakable signpost pointing towards a major shift in U.S.-Soviet relations and possible closer co-operation was noted by diplomats all over the world, and not least by all the reactionaries and militarists of the United States and West Germany, who already began to sound the alarm.
‘A New Yalta’
Only the most naïve would imagine that an eloquent statement of principles is the same as action. Within a fortnight of that June 10 speech Kennedy was basking in the applause of the neo-Nazi hearers in West Berlin as he denounced Communism and proclaimed himself ‘a Berliner.’ Nevertheless, despite all the obvious contradictions and clashes, through all the fluctuating zig zags, the major line indicated in that June 10 speech continued to be pursued. By the end of July the Partial Test Ban Treaty was initialled, with the official signing by the beginning of August, and was universally recognised as opening a new diplomatic perspective. The anger and alarm of all the embattled hosts of reaction and militarism in the United States and West Germany now became open and unconcealed, all the more as rumours spread (denied by Kennedy on October 31) that the United States was preparing to withdraw some of its occupation troops from West Germany. Talk of a ‘new Yalta’ now began to be heard. Thus in the West German Welt am Sonntag of August 18 the influential economist, reputed close to Erhard, Professor Ropke, wrote:
Kennedy, being progressive, suffers from chronic distortion of sight in face of communist danger. Notwithstanding all the assurances he has given the Germans, he is gravely jeopardising the German glacis by pursuing a policy of one-sided concessions inaugurated by his emissary Harriman, one of the chief architects of the capitulation at Yalta. What de Gaulle justifiably fears is…a decision on Europe made by the Harrimans, the Kennedys and Macmillans – in a word, a new Yalta, whose first stage would be the recognition of the communist rape of territory and of peoples that Yalta made possible, and the second stage the systematic moral and political subversion of what remains of free Europe.
It is rich indeed when the heirs of Hitler can publicly rebuke the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union for daring to draw up the Crimea Agreement (drawn up at Yalta) pledging Three Power co-operation for the destruction of German militarism, Nazism, and fascism.
The ‘Final Solution’
But there is no mistaking the significance of this language which now became current in all the powerful right-wing cold war circles in the United States and West Germany during the autumn of 1963. In these circles ‘Yalta’ represents the ultimate term of abuse, because it was the expression of Western-Soviet unity for the destruction of Nazism and militarism. All the venom and hatred which was piled up against Roosevelt after Yalta from the wealthy monopolists and jackals of reaction began to be accumulated against Kennedy as the target. This menacing trend was accentuated by the internal situation in the United States. Just as the fury of the big vested interests against Roosevelt was intensified by his home measures of the ‘New Deal’ union recognition and war-time taxation (although all these measures were in reality indispensable prescriptions to seek to save the sick American capitalism), so the fury of reaction against Kennedy was intensified as he endeavoured to press forward with even the minimum measure of the Civil Rights bill. On November 11 the Economist recorded from Washington increasing
suspicion of the President’s contacts with the Russians. The report that he and Mr. Khrushchev have exchanged forty or so letters in the past year has become a matter for reproach as well as suspicion.
Kennedy, never lacking in courage, went to beard the beast of American right-wing reaction in its den in Dallas. There on November 22 he was shot dead. Whoever shot those three bullets with such unerring accuracy from a distant window at a moving target, with each bullet a bull’s eye, was certainly a skilled marksman. Kennedy’s death was sudden and rapid, unlike the painful and lingering road to death of Roosevelt during the two months after Yalta. The stock exchange, as soon as it re-opened after the assassination, soared to record heights.
Presidential Murders as a Political System
For a century the murder of the President from time to time has been an unwritten article of the American Constitution. Commentators have observed that out of thirty-two Presidents during the past century four have been assassinated (leaving out the score unsuccessful attempts on others), and that one in eight chances of sudden death might appear a somewhat high casualty rate. But they have either remarked on this as a curious phenomenon, or deduced from it a strain of violence in the American Way of Life. What they have not observed is the constitutional significance of this practice. Under the United States Constitution the President, once he is installed in office for his term of four years (which in practice in the modern period has tended to become a term of eight years), exercises supreme executive power at will, and cannot be removed by any device in the Constitution. He cannot be forced to resign by a vote of Congress. He cannot be impeached. If a President develops progressive tendencies, and begins to enter on courses of action displeasing to the great propertied interests which are the real rulers of America, there is no legal or constitutional way of removing him, there is no way of getting rid of him save by physical elimination. The record of the kingdom of the Carnegies and Rockefellers has shown no scruples in that respect, either within the United States or through the actions of the Marines or the C.I.A. or other agencies in Latin America or other countries.
A Roll of Dead Presidents
Lincoln and Kennedy were shot dead in public. Others also from the moment of causing displeasure to the ruling interests vanished rapidly from the scene. Woodrow Wilson, aflame with the ideal of the League of Nations as a vision of international peace, incurred the obstructive hatred of the Elders of the Senate, who understood very well that American monopoly capitalism could not yet dominate an international organisation of this type and would therefore be stronger outside. Buoyantly Wilson entered on a speaking tour to convert the nation with his unrivalled prestige and popularity. On the tour he was suddenly struck down with physical collapse from which he never recovered; and he died an embittered man. Roosevelt returned from Yalta with its triumphant vision of American-Soviet co-operation for peace and popular advance in the post-war world, and incurred such venomous hatred from American reaction as has never been equalled. Within two months he was dead. He was replaced by the miserable pigmy Truman to inaugurate the cold war.
A C.I.A. Job?
The facts of the Dallas murder may become later more fully known. Or, as is more likely, they may remain forever buried. Universal suspicion has certainly been aroused in all countries by the peculiar circumstances and the still more peculiar actions and successive statements of the authorities both before and after. The obvious tale of ‘a Communist’ was too crude to take in anyone anywhere – especially as it was evident to all that the blow was a blow precisely against the aims most ardently supported by Communists and the left, the aims of peaceful co-existence, American-Soviet co-operation and democratic rights, which Kennedy was accused by the right of helping. The old legal maxim in a case of murder, cui bono – for whose benefit? – still has its value for sniffing out the guilty party. It is natural therefore that most commentators have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas. That may be but the trail, if followed up seriously, seems to reach wider. Any speculation at present can only be in the air, since the essential facts are still hidden. But on the face of it this highly organised coup (even to the provision of a ‘fall guy’ Van der Lubbe and rapid killing of the fall guy while manacled in custody, as soon as there appeared a danger of his talking), with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a C.I.A. job.
Can the Rat be Deodorised?
After all, the C.I.A. had just arrived fresh from bumping off Diem earlier in the same month. The Kennedy job was certainly a larger order to undertake; but the operation was manifestly organised with the customary elaborate attention to detail. Even the background information offered with regard to the Van der Lubbe presented a highly peculiar story. From the Marines; a supposed ‘defector’ to the Soviet Union being rejected by the Soviet Union; after he has done his job there, returning with all expenses paid by the U.S. Government (not usually so generous to ‘defectors’); endeavours to join anti-Castro gangs in New Orleans, but is rejected by them on the grounds that they regard him as an agent of the C.I.A.; turns up next as a supposed Chairman of a non-existent branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which denies knowledge of him or the existence of any branch either in Louisiana or Texas; applies vainly for a visa to Cuba; travels about widely, including to Mexico, with no visible source of finance. Here is typical small fry (‘so weary with disasters, tugg’d with fortune, that I would set my life on any chance, to mend it or be rid on ‘t’) fit to be chosen, and equipped with damning ‘evidence’ as an expendable fall guy, while a more skilled hand does the deed. By accident, when the whole of Dallas is screened in vigilant preparation, the one most strategic building on the route is overlooked. By accident the one notorious suspect, already under supervision by the F.B.I., but intended this time to be found as a suspect, is overlooked in the general rounding up and clearing out of all suspects. By accident, when immediately after the murder the whole building is swarming with police, he is able to walk out unmolested. And then the unhappy fall guy, tricked and trapped and no doubt double-crossed in face of previous promises of an easy getaway and rich reward, noisily protests his innocence, a quick shot inside the prison closes his mouth; and the shot is fired, oddly enough, again through an accidental oversight in letting this unauthorised intruder come close with a revolver, by a type described as an underworld character close to the police. No. The whole story is really too thick; and the more details are offered, the thicker it gets. Of course it will all be cleared up now by the Presidential Commission of Enquiry. Or perhaps not. Naturally we can have every confidence. For on the Presidential Commission Enquiry sits appropriately enough our old friend Allen Dulles, former Director of the C.I.A.
What Now, President Johnson?
What, then, is the prospect now for the United States and the world? It is another of the special features of the American Constitution that when the President dies or is killed, the Vice-President automatically succeeds. The smooth efficiency of this has been much admired. But the other side of the medal is less often noticed. The candidates for President and Vice-President are chosen in the dust and heat and smoky intrigues of the party conventions, with the Vice-Presidency as a kind of sinecure consolation prize for the defeated candidate. If a progressive representative is chosen to run for the Presidency, then the party machine requires that balance shall be maintained by nominating a representative of the right wing for Vice-President so as to leave everyone happy. Suddenly this tactical choice of a convention for a nominal job becomes the political choice of the country. Roosevelt had for running mate the execrable Truman; the electors chose Roosevelt, but they got Truman. When Kennedy was chosen as candidate by the Democratic convention, the balance was made by choosing for the Vice-Presidency a Southern Democrat from Texas.
The People Will Decide
No one would wish now to pre-judge the role of President Lyndon Johnson. In the past his utterances on foreign affairs have been closer to the ‘tough’ cold war line of an Acheson. His resounding crusade in West Berlin immediately after the building of the Wall of Peace, when he distributed ballpoint pens to the admiring population and with a slight lapse of historical memory proclaimed the Germans the finest and truest allies the Americans had ever had, will not easily be forgotten. He has a past to live down (not to mention the ticklish problem of extricating himself from the snowballing scandal associated with Bobby Baker, the Quorum Club and Ellen Rometsch) as well as a future to live up to. Nevertheless, he has also a record as a staunch supporter of Roosevelt’s New Deal. He is a skilled and realist political manipulator; and that can be an important virtue in diplomacy in the present situation. Everyone will assuredly hope that, within the limits of the present stage and existing political forces in the United States, he will rise to the height of the opportunities and responsibilities of the present historic testing time, equally for the future of peace and East-West relations, and for the future of democratic rights within the United States. Above all, the real outcome depends, not on the character of an individual, but on the role of the peoples in every country in the world and on the political leadership of the working class. Not least here in Britain we can influence the outcome by our contribution and our political activity in the coming year. 1964 is General Election Year, when the defeat of Toryism can be accompanied by the advance of the fight for an effective alternative policy, such as Communism and all on the left are striving to achieve.