The Turning Point of the Assassination John F. Kennedy, Essay Example

On the morning of November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, while traveling in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas, was shot by an assassin’s bullet which allegedly was fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. Shortly after, President Kennedy died from his wounds, thus ending the life of one of America’s most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. Two days later, Jack Ruby killed Oswald while he was being transferred between prison facilities in Dallas (Kennedy Assassination, 2014). Now, more than fifty years later, there are more questions than answers in relation to Kennedy’s assassination, especially concerning how and why Kennedy was killed on that fateful day in Dallas. Some of the answers can be traced back to America’s involvement in Vietnam and Laos in the early 1960’s and to one pivotal turning point which opened the door to the death of President Kennedy.

This turning point is related to President Kennedy’s relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA, one of the most powerful government organizations with connections to virtually all important heads of State. Almost from the beginning of his administration, President Kennedy was greatly disliked by the CIA. The basis for this seems to be related to the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April of 1961 when the U.S. government attempted to end the dictatorship of Cuba’s President Fidel Castro by invading this island nation with a CIA-backed strike force (Frizzell & Knuth, 2013). This clandestine mission which was supported by President Kennedy failed miserably and although the President accepted all of the blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, certain members of his staff blamed the failure on other government officials, especially those with links to the CIA. Thus, the relationship between the President and the CIA deteriorated, particularly when the President reputedly told his advisors that he wished to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds” (Frizzell & Knuth, 2013).

The true turning point which would not have occurred if the President’s relationship with the CIA had been far less stormy and unpredictable occurred in 1962 when President Kennedy ordered the CIA to expand its clandestine operations in the nation of Laos which geographically is located “next door” to Vietnam. From the CIA’s perspective, this order went against the regulations of the 1962 Geneva agreement which stipulated that Laos was off-limits to American military involvement. But nonetheless, the CIA’s “secret war” in Laos went forward and escalated when the CIA recruited almost 10,000 Laosan tribesmen to fight the North Vietnamese Communist along the Ho Chi Minh trail (Moss, 2010, p. 89).

Thus, because of President Kennedy’s order for the CIA to enter Laos and his blatant disregard for their advice on military matters concerning his on-going support for the Diem South Vietnamese government, described by a leading Buddhist official as run by ignoramuses (The Vietnam War: America Commits, 1999), it became impossible for his relationship with the CIA to better itself and become more cordial. Ironically, two and half years after relating that he wished to see the CIA dismantled, President Kennedy was assassinated. As Frizzell and Knuth explain it, one of the most popular conspiracy theories related to the assassination is that due to the President’s alleged plans to dismantle the CIA, the men at the top of this intelligence agency had him killed. Whether this is true has never been completely realized, due in part to a massive cover-up of the Kennedy assassination and the lack of hard evidence to support it.

References

Frizzell, C., and Knuth, M. (2013). JFK and the CIA: Mortal enemies? Retrieved from http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jfk_cia.htm

Kennedy assassination. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.ushistory.org/us/56d.asp

Moss, G.D. (2010). Vietnam: An American ordeal. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

The Vietnam war: America commits 1961-1964. (1999). Retrieved from http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1961.html