Fifty Years of Lost Innocence

By Barney Byrne

This November 22, 2013 will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America.   The second I heard our young President had been gunned down in Dallas, Texas, a feeling of lost national innocence overcame me and a sense that things would somehow or other, never be the same.  Why I got this feeling, I couldn't explain but I do know for unexplained reasons, that I never quite took what the government had to say, at face value again. Then for some reason around 1980, I started delving into the facts, or the so called facts pertaining to this horrible crime.

 I began by reading the Warren Commission Report, which was supposed to be an in depth investigation of the assassination.  I came away  thinking this was just a planned white-wash, executed by President Johnson, in order to cut off any serious investigation by law enforcement  or congress.   If you read the Warren Commission report you will quickly discover that the commission  began it's investigation with the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assailant and that there was no conspiracy involved.  They disregarded all evidence that would suggest that there was a conspiracy or even that Oswald  was not the assassin.  No matter how credible the evidence, if it did not further their initial conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman, they simply declared it not credible.  Then I remembered Congress had reopened the investigation back in 1976 and had concluded that President Kennedy had probably been killed by a conspiracy.  Unfortunately, congress chose not to pursue the investigation into the conspiracy, any further.

  My take on all of this, is that president Kennedy was killed  by a "Perfect Storm of Evil", which had congregated in Dallas, on that fateful day, in 1963.  Those present included members of the C.I.A., an organization that President Kennedy had vowed to tear into a thousand pieces and reorganize.  He had just recently fired the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, who by the way was appointed to the Warren Commission.

You had members of military and naval intelligence, who were livid with hatred for the young President, for failing to support the bay of pigs Operation in an attempt to overthrow the Castro government, in Cuba.  You had members of organized crime who hated President Kennedy and his brother Robert for trying to hamper their illegal activities.  Then you had members of the F.B.I. and the Secret Service.  The head of the F.B.I.

despised the President and especially his brother, Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General.  When you learn that the F.B.I. and the Secret Service were able to detect and stop two  assassination attempts, one in Chicago and another in Miami, just days before the President's trip to Dallas, and failed to give members of the F.B.I. and the Secret Service stationed in Dallas this important information, you can only come away with one conclusion.  It was decided, by the powers-to-be for some reason that, President Kennedy would die in Dallas.

Former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodman Clinton, might say, "What does it all matter, that  was fifty years, ago."  Well, I'll tell you what it could have mattered.  President Kennedy was reported to be planning to remove most if not all our military from Vietnam, right after he was re-elected in 1964.  If this were true, perhaps we would not have had over 50,000 casualties in Vietnam.  President Kennedy was a Catholic and may have appointed Pro-Life judges to the Supreme Court, and "Roe vs. Wade"may never had been adopted, thus saving the lives of over 50 Million Americans.

Isn't it time for our government to come clean with all the facts of the Assassination?  

 Barney Byrne is a retired postmaster, who resides in Doylestown Township, PA with his wife, Barbara.