Harris, Trump, and JFK

The "perception of bias" and the legacy of November 22

Presidents Biden and Trump staked out positions on the JFK files, Vice President Harris’s position is unknown.

Like other major and minor publications JFK Facts has a long-standing tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates, though it’s not something I care to brag about.

I didn’t endorse in 2012 because the publication barely existed. I didn’t endorse any candidate in 2016 because I didn’t think JFK Facts would be a more interesting publication if my reporting came gift wrapped in my very fallible opinions. Ditto for 2020. By 2024 I believed firmly that partisan opinion-making, no matter how thoughtful or well phrased, would create, well, “the perception of bias” in my JFK reporting, among those readers who disagreed with me on other issues.

I know the very phrase has been debased by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos when he used it to justify his craven decision to kill the Post’s planned endorsement of Harris. His imperative was not hard to discern: an endorsement would have endangered Amazonian prospects for lucrative space technology contracts if Trump regains the White House.

But the “perception of bias” is worth respecting, even (especially) if our hometown oligarch abuses the concept. Because the 15,000-plus JFK Facts readers are a diverse bunch--from MAGA reds to Marxist reds and all shades of liberatarians and liberals in between—I, as the editor, do not want to align the publication against the interests of some significant portion of my paying customers.

I prefer the philosophy of the editors of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, another non-endorsing outlet, when they said, “We want to endorse the voters, not the candidates.” Which is to say, I’m not endorsing Harris or Trump. I’m endorsing JFK Facts readers as voters to whom the next president should pay attention.

Conflict of Interest

Besides, JFK Facts faces a conflict of interest.  While Kamala Harris is, in the editor’s personal opinion, the more qualified candidate to be president, Donald Trump is clearly more likely to deliver on the publication’s mission of full disclosure of JFK assassination records. Principles vs. interests.

In rallying his supporters against the federal government, Trump understands that the legacy of the JFK story in American political discourse—official mendacity cloaking a self-serving cover story of a “lone gunman” accompanied by oh-so condescending dismissal of anyone who dares to doubt it—is live ammunition for a culture war against political elites. Trump knows that the JFK story has potent appeal against the pretensions of liberal government and the arrogance of legacy news organizations.

For me, Trump’s pledge to Joe Rogan in the closing days of the campaign that he would release everything in the JFK files “immediately” was one of the few attractive moments in his campaign.

The other was giving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a platform for his critique of the food-industrial complex. The strength of RFK’s Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, told the Washington Post, “shows how all Americans of any political stripe see that we’re really, really sick — and that our food is the primary cause.” While I balk at RFK’s anti-vax message, his campaign against ultra-processed food is welcome and overdue.)

So while Trump’s “protection” message strikes me as more menacing than reassuring, I do want to believe him on the JFK files. Famous last words of a sucker, I know. Yes, Trump has made this promise in 2017 and promptly broke it. (“Good people,” he told Rogan, advised him to keep the files secret at that time.) But, this time around, he’ll do different, he says. And if Trump wins, I think he might actually deliver, if only to save face with Rogan and RFK Jr.

Vice President Harris, on the other hand, seems likely to continue Biden’s policy of deference to the CIA and NSA, as outlined in his June 2023 executive memo. A Harris presidency may sanction JFK secrecy indefinitely, thus thwarting the mission of JFK Facts. And so the interests clash with opinion.

The only solution, I see, is to stick to the mission and go easy on the opinions. Whether Trump wins or Harris wins, we need an orderly process to find, review and release the rest of the JFK assassination files.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) has the right idea: create an independent civilian review panel with authority to complete the task of full JFK disclosure quickly and without giving a veto to the CIA.

Rep. Steve Cohen.

War and Peace

The larger question on the eve of the 2024 vote is, why is anyone still talking about JFK? Who cares what happened 60 years ago? As the exceedingly rare undecided voter might ask: What difference could it possibly make it my life today?

It’s a matter of war and peace.  As Max Blumenthal explains in this video, when JFK died, the “strategy of peace” that he articulated in his American University speech of June 1963, died too. JFK’s vision of winding down the Cold War abroad while standing up for civil rights at home went only half-fulfilled.

The ambush in Dallas had a profound effect on the world. President Johnson delivered on JFK’s commitment to civil rights while repudiating his restraint in foreign policy. After November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson did two things JFK had long resisted: escalate in Vietnam and give the CIA carte blanche for regime change operations worldwide. Military coups, backed by Washington, rippled around the globe, ousting elected governments in Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Greece (1967) and Chile (1973).

The impunity enjoyed by the CIA after November 22, 1963 bred a “regime change” mentality into U.S. foreign policy and national security apparatus that it has never lost. Forty five years later, President Obama and Secretary of State HIllary Clinton approved a coup in Honduras that blocked a democratically elected leftist government. In 2017 Trump pursued regime change in Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and Cuba. In 2020 Biden did the same. Both failed to achieve U.S. policy goals while punishing the civil society which the U.S. claims to support.

So, on the issue of war and peace, the choice is minimal. Harris embraces the militarized Pax Americana that JFK rejected in his American University speech, while Trump promises to shed American alliances in favor of a transactional foreign policy that benefits his family and his favorite foreign strong men. Both reflexively support Israel to the detriment of U.S. national interests. Neither answers JFK’s call for “a strategy of peace.”

Harris and her foreign policy adviser Phil Gordon could do worse than read a memo to JFK written by White House adviser Arthur Schlesinger in June 1961. The CIA had usurped the role of the president, Schlesinger wrote, and become a de facto policymaking organization that needed to be brought under control of the elected government. Six decades later, Schlesinger’s advice to JFK is redacted, with an entire page blanked out for reasons of “national security.”

If President Harris (or President Trump) releases the JFK files next year, the most compelling reasons for why JFK wanted to reorganize the CIA will be on the public record for the first time. New possibilities in American governance will be revealed. No matter who practices it, full JFK disclosure will be healthy for democratic self-government.