The Lingering 'Plot'

...Even the fact that Kennedy virtually committed the U.S...

...Hence the following warning in the Hungarian newspaper Népszabad Ság, which is typical of the line that has been followed: "The people of the world must follow the events in the U.S...

...to a defense of Israel against Arab aggression last spring has been conveniently forgotten...

...Rightists and "anti-peace forces" were behind the murder...

...The vaguely expressed but widespread conviction is that somewhere, somehow, a subtle web of intrigue involving Zionists (in the Arab view) or reactionary anti-peace forces (in the Communist view) brought the young President down...

...FOREIGN OPINION AND THE ASSASSINATION The Lingering 'Plot' By William Lineberry Vienna Barring some sensational disclosures from the Warren Commission, the basic facts about President Kennedy's murder now seem fairly well fixed in the minds of most Americans...

...That a society like ours could spawn two men like Oswald and Ruby, whose shabby lives were given meaning only in acts of dreadful violence, is a sufficient indictment in itself...

...From the very day of the President's death, of course, the Communist press has carefully cultivated the impression that U.S...

...Recently, the trend has been to suspect the Warren panel itself of complicity in the plot and of performing a "covering-up" exercise...

...According to one such "solution,' both Oswald and the Dallas policeman he later shot (probably on orders) were employed by the CIA, and both killed Kennedy...

...Marguerite Oswald, who is now being given star billing in Eastern Europe as the heroine of the case...

...Thus, the Arabs see the "Rubenstein" trial as more important than anything the Warren Commission is likely to say in its "official report...

...Moreover, the violent entry of Jack Ruby (always cited as "Rubenstein" in the Arab press) into the case gave Nasser-controlled newspapers in Cairo exactly the thread they needed to unravel this strange American mystery...

...But the conviction that Kennedy was the victim of a reactionary plot is by no means confined to official quarters...

...one encounters it with disturbing consistency among the general public as well...

...Why American Jews would want to kill Kennedy, a man they overwhelmingly backed in the 1960 elections, is obviously not a matter for deep reflection among Arabs...

...for years...

...specifically, it was expected to unveil the "reactionaries" behind the "plot...

...Prior to John F. Kennedy, three American Presidents had been struck down by assassins...

...William Lineberry is an editor for the Foreign Policy Association...

...Johnson once said in effect of Rousseau, must know that he is talking nonsense...

...Yet in the case of Eastern Europeans and their view of the Kennedy assassination, "nonsense" may not be exactly the right term...

...For the most part, East Europeans are far from hostile to Americans...

...And in rural areas one can still run across aged peasants who point to the horizon and tell you America is 300 days' walk in that direction...

...This has not been altogether the case in Communist Eastern Europe, where initially at least great things were being predicted from the Warren investigation...

...His death, then, was engineered by elements who fear peace...

...Ironically, and for Communist purposes at least, the murder of Kennedy reflects badly enough on the "American way of life" without the need of fictitious embroidery...

...diplomats in Eastern Europe admit privately that their own considerable efforts to debunk the conspiracy theory have met with stoney disbelief...

...They go out of their way to demonstrate their friendship and affection for the U.S...

...A man who talks such nonsense, Dr...

...In the Arab nations of the Middle East and in Communist Eastern Europe, notions about the "actual" circumstances of Kennedy's death come as a distinct shock to the visiting American...

...There is a lingering suspicion here that more than two bullets entered the President's body...

...with the utmost vigilance, for the abject elements who were capable or murdering their President, and of covering and mixing up all traces, would not shrink from the unleashing of a war if it depended on them...

...Their views, sinister though they may be, are more a reflection of their own political traditions and experience than ours...

...For the Arabs, Ruby and not Oswald has become the key figure in the assassination...

...When President Johnson appointed the distinguished Warren Commission, he expressed the hope that its definitive report would remove all doubt about the actual circumstances of the late President's assassination not only from the minds of Americans but in the minds of people the world over...

...unless the Commission comes up with some startling new conclusions, its report promises to be an anti-climax...

...And why Ruby in particular should have been selected as their agent in this "plot" is an equally "trivial" detail...

...Still, one wonders if the Communists, and the Arabs as well, may not be deliberately exploiting this tragedy to win political points for themselves...

...For the rest of the world, too, conclusions have fairly well hardened, but they probably have been determined more by the historical experience of the particular people involved than by the actual facts of the case...

...It is enough, apparently, that Kennedy was "a friend of the Arab people...

...Other Arab journals have been quick to pick it up...

...And then there was the testimony (and its brusque dismissal by Chief Justice Warren) of Oswald's mother, whose statement that her son had been an agent of the CIA and that his wife had been "brainwashed" by the FBI has received wide circulation throughout the Communist bloc...

...Her testimony has been widely publicized, and if it did not go down well with the Warren panel, that was scarcely a deterrent to its being welcomed in the Communist press...

...Here is a ready-made opportunity to demonstrate the power and rapacity of such a group in action...

...In such ways, the cards of history have been stacked against the Warren report, and it should not surprise us if 10 or 20 years from now people in various parts of the globe who remember are still asking each other: "Who really murdered John F. Kennedy...

...Precisely who these "elements" are is never spelled out although it is generally made clear that the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon are all involved...

...This unsubtle switch in press and public opinion is largely traceable to statements from the accused assassin's mother, Mrs...

...Insane violence without historical scope or justification appears to be an American trait, and it falls outside the Communist view of history...

...In countries with long histories of political conspiracy and murder, the assassination of an important statesman naturally engenders suspicion of a monstrous plot...

...Americans tend to forget that recent decades, with their spate of dictators trumpeting "big lies" and hack propagandists twisting facts to fit their needs, have taught mankind to be wary of any report marked by an "official" seal...

...For one thing, the Committee's make-up had been suspect from the start, what with the inclusion of the "Southern race-hater" Senator Russell of Georgia and the former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles...

...And in at least two areas, little that the Warren Commission reports will alter the current belief that the late American President was the victim of a "monstrous plot...

...At the Journalists' Club in Budapest, amateur sleuths piece together the clues and come up with rather fantastic solutions to "the crime of the century...

...Lying by governments has become more or less accepted form, and the great mass of the people, who are not after all mere putty in the hands of bureaucrats, are sophisticated enough to know it...

...The likelihood of a plot arose only with the murder of Lincoln, and even in that case the plot appears to have been carried forward by a group of half-crazed individuals...

...In a wholly different way, the "facts" have also become fixed in the minds of other peoples around the world...

...These views, initially put forth in the government-controlled Arab and Communist press, have effectively trickled down to the mass of the people and are clung to tenaciously against all argument to the contrary...

...These people are, after all, the prisoners of their own culture and history...

...And the sanity of each of these three assassins is strongly in question...

...Jack Ruby, as the policeman's friend, was then "put up" to the job of killing Oswald...

...In the case of most Americans, these doubts appear to have been removed already...

...That expressions of confidence in the Warren Commission were shortlived is not surprising...

...For the Arab, of course, political intrigue has become an accepted fact of life...

...Communist propagandists have been blathering about the "reactionary circles" who supposedly run things in the U.S...

...Yet this is not the kind of American history that appeals to the Communists...

...The possibility that Kennedy could have been killed in the isolated act of a perhaps mentally-deranged individual is difficult to entertain...

...Kennedy has therefore been portrayed as a "statesman whose main purpose was safeguarding the interests of imperialism," but who "realized the destructive power of nuclear war" and "always responded to the peaceful initiatives of the Soviet Union...