If we’re going to talk about John Kennedy, the CIA, and the military-industrial complex, we have to be careful about one thing: there’s a difference between what we can prove and what we suspect. And frankly, the documented history is dramatic enough without pretending we know something we don’t.
Start in 1947.
World War II is over. America has emerged as the most powerful industrial nation on Earth. The Soviet Union is now the great rival, the Cold War is beginning, and Congress creates the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA wasn’t officially created to promote American corporations around the world. Its job was foreign intelligence and national security.
But pretty quickly, intelligence gathering became something much bigger.
The CIA began conducting covert operations—secretly influencing elections, supporting friendly political movements and, eventually, participating in operations aimed at overthrowing governments.
Look at Iran in 1953. The CIA participated in the operation that helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh amid a struggle involving communism, geopolitics and control of Iran’s oil industry.
Then Guatemala in 1954. The CIA backed the operation that overthrew President Jacobo Árbenz. Again, Cold War fears and economic interests were tangled together.
So by the time John Kennedy becomes president in 1961, he inherits something enormously powerful: a national-security establishment accustomed to operating secretly around the world.
And almost immediately, Kennedy runs straight into it.
The Bay of Pigs
The CIA had developed a plan under Eisenhower to use Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro. Kennedy inherits the operation.
Kennedy is skeptical. He doesn’t want what looks like an American invasion of Cuba. The plan gets modified. But here’s an important point: Kennedy ultimately approves it.
And then it becomes a catastrophe.
The invasion fails. Kennedy refuses to turn the operation into a full-scale American military intervention.
And Kennedy takes public responsibility.
Behind closed doors, however, the relationship between the president and senior CIA leadership is badly damaged.
CIA Director Allen Dulles eventually leaves the agency, along with other senior officials.
Now imagine the atmosphere.
You’ve got the CIA conducting secret operations.
You’ve got the Pentagon.
You’ve got defense contractors.
You’ve got nuclear weapons.
You’ve got Cuba.
You’ve got the Soviet Union.
And you’ve got Vietnam.
Remember what Dwight Eisenhower had warned Americans about just days before Kennedy became president:
the military-industrial complex.
Eisenhower wasn’t claiming some secret cabal controlled America. His warning was subtler and, arguably, more important: a permanent defense establishment and enormous arms industry had developed unprecedented economic and political influence, and democratic government needed to guard against that influence.
Then comes Vietnam.
Kennedy absolutely increased America’s involvement. There were roughly 900 U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam when he entered office and roughly 16,000 by the time he died.
These weren’t simply civilians giving advice. They were American military personnel. Americans flew missions, accompanied South Vietnamese forces and died there.
But Kennedy did not do what Lyndon Johnson subsequently did.
He never deployed the enormous conventional American ground army that eventually fought the Vietnam War.
And shortly before Kennedy’s assassination, his administration approved plans to withdraw 1,000 American military personnel by the end of 1963.
Does that prove Kennedy was going to pull America completely out of Vietnam?
No.
Historians have argued about that for decades. Kennedy never lived long enough for us to know what he would have done as conditions deteriorated.
Then comes November 22, 1963.
Kennedy is murdered in Dallas.
Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested.
Two days later, Jack Ruby murders Oswald.
And suddenly the one man who could have stood trial and been questioned publicly about Kennedy’s murder is dead.
Then something extraordinary happens historically.
Within a couple of years, America’s involvement in Vietnam explodes.
Johnson sends conventional combat troops.
By 1968, more than half a million American military personnel are in Vietnam.
So people understandably look backward and say:
Wait a minute.
Kennedy fought with the CIA.
Kennedy fired its director.
Kennedy resisted turning the Bay of Pigs into an American invasion.
Kennedy was reconsidering aspects of Vietnam policy.
Kennedy gets assassinated.
And afterward America plunges deeply into Vietnam.
Those are historical facts.
But then comes the critical question:
Did the CIA murder Kennedy because he threatened its power or the interests of the military-industrial complex?
That’s where the evidence stops.
No released document has established an order from the CIA to assassinate Kennedy. No credible documentary trail has established that Allen Dulles or CIA leadership authorized his murder. And subsequent investigations have never established CIA responsibility.
That doesn’t mean Americans were foolish to ask questions.
Quite the opposite.
Later investigations revealed genuine CIA secrecy, assassination plots against foreign leaders and failures to provide investigators with relevant information. That history understandably damaged public trust.
But suspicion isn’t proof.
And I think there’s actually a bigger story than the assassination theory.
The story is about what happened to America after World War II.
We created an enormous permanent national-security apparatus because we believed the Cold War required one.
We created intelligence agencies capable of operating secretly.
We built an enormous defense industry.
We stationed American forces around the world.
And eventually even an American president had to confront the fundamental democratic question:
Who controls all that power?
The CIA?
The Pentagon?
Defense contractors?
Or the president and the people who elected him?
That’s the question Eisenhower was raising in 1961.
It’s part of the question Kennedy confronted during his presidency.
And more than sixty years after Kennedy’s assassination, it’s still a question worth asking.
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