JFK: Will We Ever Know the Truth?

[Gordon Gray]

IMO it was more complicated and less coordinated than that. The sponsors knew that an ambush was being organized on the mechanic level. The various sponsors had their own special interests and agendas. The military hawks wanted an excuse for a first strike at the Soviet Union. The bankers and industrialists, wanted the Vietnam escalation and the profits that would ensue. The Anti Castro Cubans and their CIA handlers wanted an invasion of Cuba, the Mob wanted to be rid of Bobby Kennedy. They all had their facilitators make contingency plans for all the possible scenarios that could result from the attempted assassination. Most importantly plausible deniability. Phillips was still trying to push his Castro did it scenario even after the Warren Commission was formed. The Sponsors weren't all on the same page about the goals, and the failure to kill Oswald, forced them to improvise, and let things play out. I don't think there was a unified central plan. As to LBJ; my understanding is that Connolly and the conservative wing of the Texas Democratic Party didn't want a motorcade at all for fear of an embarrassing incident and also because the rank and file who would turn out would make the liberal Kennedy look too popular. The Kennedy people for that very reason wanted a motorcade. The Connolly people wanted the Trade Mart location and the Secret Service and the Kennedy people wanted the Women's Building. The Women's building would have resulted in a motorcade that went west to east through Dealey Plaza and would have gone straight down Main street at a speed that would have precluded an ambush there. A compromise of a motorcade to the Trade Mart that took the motorcade east to west through Dealey Plaza was reached. The person responsible for forging this compromise was Bill Moyers.

A common mistake people make is that the Northwoods framing of Oswald would have led to a nuclear exchange. If you go back and look at what the military advisors were telling JFK they said a window of opportunity existed for a pre-emptive first strike where the US would enjoy a nuclear capability advantage that would justify the attack. Once Kennedy was assassinated both the US and USSR went on high nuclear alert which defeated any chance of a first strike and would have been a messy all out exchange had it occurred. Whoever altered NSAM 273 was sending a message to the generals once Johnson took over.

The Military believed that the superiority in number and quality of US missiles would lead to annihilation of the Soviet Union, with acceptable collateral damage on the part of the US.