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Freedom Rider: Assassination
Margaret Kimberley, BAR editor and senior columnist
18 Nov 2009
🖨️ Print Article
wilkins and king meet bobby kennedyby BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 was rooted in previous crimes and created a cascade of subsequent crimes. Indeed, none of the high profile political killings of the Sixties can be understood apart from the larger matrix of official criminality. Even “the American mafia owes its very existence to the CIA, which protected and promoted the illegal drug trafficking responsible for so much loss of life and destruction of entire communities.”
 
Freedom Rider: Assassination
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“The president of the United States was gunned down as a direct result of his connections with criminals and with anti-Castro Cuban exile terrorists.”
November 22, 2009 will mark 46 years since the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. That date is usually reserved for sentimental nostalgia for the days of “Camelot” and tales of the charismatic president and a family still admired by many people. It ought to be a date to remember the past and continuing corruption of American domestic and foreign policy which led to a day that changed our history and set in motion crimes committed years later.
The official explanation of the president’s death – than an unstable man acted alone – is impossible to believe and ignores information that was never brought before the American people. There are individuals such as Santo Trafficante and John Roselli who confessed to involvement in the president’s death in later years. None of those individuals were ever investigated in even a cursory manner. Doing so would have exposed the government’s illegal activities at home and abroad. As a result of this inaction, the same individuals may have played a part in the killings of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy and continued their illegal activities in the Watergate scandal.
“The Kennedy brothers’ ongoing financial and tactical support of violent Cuban exiles and organized crime figures brought about the president’s killing.”
The Kennedy administration was far from the romantic beacon that it has been portrayed to be for nearly 50 years. At the time of his assassination, the president and his brother, attorney general Robert Kennedy, were involved in a plot to overthrow the Cuban government. The Kennedy brothers’ ongoing financial and tactical support of violent Cuban exiles and organized crime figures brought about the president’s killing. The cover up led to further killing.
On November 9, 1963, avowed white supremacist Joseph Milteer was recorded by a police informant predicting that president Kennedy was about to be killed. Milteer had connections with mobsters Carlos Marcello and Santos Traficante. Milteer also spent years attempting to kill Martin Luther King. He openly offered a bounty to anyone who would kill him. Milteer had connections with convicted assassin James Earl Ray. The cover up of one assassination led to another years later.
Theories about the JFK assassination and the identity of the shooter or shooters vary a great deal. The confusion is a direct result of government lies that have been told for decades. Despite the fact that the 1992 JFK Act requires the release of all documents related to the assassination, they will not be released until 2017 at the earliest. All of the government files on the King assassination have not been released, neither to the House Special Committee on Assassinations or to the public.
“All of the government files on the King assassination have not been released.”
Among the untold stories of the presidential assassination is that of Abraham Bolden, the first black Secret Service agent to serve in a presidential detail. He experienced overt racism at the hands of his superiors and witnessed gross incompetence among his fellow agents. In November 1963 Bolden was stationed in Chicago, where an attempt to kill the president was revealed, causing the cancellation of a motorcade through that city. There was also an assassination plot uncovered in Florida that same month.
When Bolden attempted to contact the Warren Commission and reveal his information about the two assassination attempts, he was himself arrested on a trumped up charge of selling government documents. Despite the fact that a witness against him admitted to lying and a prosecutor pleaded the Fifth Amendment when asked about his conduct in the case, Bolden was convicted and spent three years in prison.
Bolden was punished because he wanted to tell what would have been a very inconvenient truth. The two previous attempts that November proved that the president of the United States was gunned down as a direct result of his connections with criminals and with anti-Castro Cuban exile terrorists. Some of those gangsters were eager to return to their lucrative activities in pre-Castro era Cuba, some took revenge because the president’s brother threatened their livelihoods with his headline-making prosecutions.
“Drug dealers and other criminals operate with the full assistance of the American intelligence agencies.”
Little has changed in the way our government has been run in the past five decades. Drug dealers and other criminals operate with the full assistance of the American intelligence agencies. The American mafia owes its very existence to the CIA, which protected and promoted the illegal drug trafficking responsible for so much loss of life and destruction of entire communities.
In 2009, narco-traffickers in Colombia now operate with the full blessing of the United States government. Journalists work hand in hand with the government to spread propaganda, and good people who dare to speak out against government crimes are themselves silenced through a variety of means.
By all means, the 22nd of November should be remembered. Remember that the CIA refuses to release information, claiming that doing so would cause “extremely grave damage” to national security. In other words, they want to tell their lies in perpetuity. Remember that Robert Kennedy approved J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of Martin Luther King and sowed the seeds of destruction of the civil rights movement. Remember that King’s killers had full government protection after killing a president. The truth isn’t pretty, but it must not be forgotten.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
 

 

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