President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was killed 50 years ago. It remains as crystal clear as the sunny, bright fall day it was a half-century ago. Who can forget living through that bloody past? I just joined the Middlesex County Planning Board staff. Our office was in the basement of 100 Church Street, New Brunswick. After lunch, Joan, the board secretary, burst in with the shocking news: “The President’s been shot!” No! Can’t be! A pale of devastation gripped all seven of us (Doug Powell, George Ververides, Don Rippey, Ed Donnelly, Bill Klewpicki, Joan Murphy, and me) as we listened in stunned silence to the broadcast of his death. Heart wrenching and poignant! JFK inspired and propelled us to public service when he challenged the nation with: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!” In a cloud of despair we couldn’t imagine anyone assassinating the man who defused a near apocalypse with Russia over the Cuban missile crisis.
Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) seized war power as JFK lay barely cold. Then Commander-in-Chief LBJ escalated Vietnam, resulting in more than 55,000 American servicemen killed while U.S. arms dealers raked in obscene profits!
After 50 years of JFK’s death that included vice presidential, CIA, FBI, mafia, Cuba, and Russian conspiracies, we’re informed that the shot that blew JFK’s brains out and our hope for peace was discharged by George Hickey in the secret service car directly behind JFK. A ballistics expert compellingly tied all the buried evidence (caliber of entry wound in skull, brain tissue from exploding bullet, trajectory, reported street scent of gun powder, photos and eye-witness accounts) to Hickey and the White House Pretorian Guard, which Hickey recently joined. Rather than protect the president with their lives they did what Oswald failed to do. Hickey killed JFK and the secret service covered it up while dashing idealism and stoking global tensions. Bloody ironic, self-serving, and perhaps treacherous! They now have a tarnished history. And mysteries still surround Hickey and Oswald. Were they acting in tandem? Under whose directions and why?
Subsequent assassinations of JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), a presidential peace candidate who challenged LBJ over Vietnam and Martin Luther King (MLK) who led a non-violent, anti-war and civil rights movement, strongly suggest that there’s more to this dark chapter than a lone gunman or even the possibility of an inept and deadly secret service rookie. All three victims, JFK, RFK, and MLK, were against military escalation in Cuba and/or Vietnam, which infuriated right wing hawks like General Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Pentagon, and the alienated, powerful U.S. armaments industry. No love was lost on J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, either. Many power brokers were aligned against JFK, RFK, and MLK. How could one let alone five lone killers (Hickey, Oswald, Jack Ruby, Sirhan-Sirhan, and James Earl Ray) succeed in the face of overwhelming police, FBI, and Secret Service “protection.” Could all that security be that consistently incompetent that long? Or were they involved in a rash of three assassinations of national peace leaders. Suspicion lingers and haunts me every November. I wish I could put it down.
Presidents Washington and Eisenhower warned us about the threat posed by a military-industrial culture, now including the NRA. Moreover, in the face of Tea Party recklessness, congressional paralysis, and bureaucratic ineptitude, JFK’s example and call for prudent peace policies and selfless public service echoes. Who will hear it and have the courage to respond?
— Doug Opalski
