John Fitzgerald Kennedy is seen to many Americans as an icon. To many conspiracy theorists he is seen as their martyr; a man who was about to expose the crimes of the deep state and was killed by the deep state and their puppet agent Lyndon Baines Johnson so that they could continue with their evil plans.
However, when I examined closer the record of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I found myself puzzled at how these anti- CIA, anti- deep state conspiracy theorists could consider this man to be their martyred saint, when he did several things that these conspiracy theorists app-haul.
The first note is his relationship with the CIA. Now, it is true that he personally detested them and rejected a plan to blow up a US civilian airliner over Cuba and frame Castro for it. And it is also true that following news of his brother’s assassination, Robert F. Kennedy called the head of the CIA into his office and asked if they had anything to do with it.
Yet, despite all of this, Kennedy was President of the United States at the height of the cold war and needed the CIA to get his dirty work done. There are two major flash-points that illustrate this.
One is the Bay of Pigs Invasion, in which Kennedy had the CIA train Cuban exiles to overthrow the Castro government of Cuba, which backfired. The other is Kennedy ordering the CIA to assassinate South Vietnamese Leader Ngô Đình Diệm which guaranteed a victory for Viet Cong, as Ngô Đình Diệm, although corrupt, was an effective and legitimate leader.
Vietnam is another element of the Kennedy that conspiracy theorists seem to seemingly conveniently overlook. I have often heard the claim by conspiracy theorists that Kennedy was killed so that Lyndon Johnson could go to war in Vietnam, excluding one big elephant in the room; Although it is true that Johnson started an all-out war against North Vietnam, it was not Johnson who escalated American involvement in Vietnam, but Kennedy, who sent thousands of advisers to train the South Vietnamese forces, and these United States forces even engaged in battles against the Viet Cong. Had Kennedy not been assassinated, history would not have changed, American bombing of Hanoi and communist targets in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand would have occurred anyway when it did.
All in all, JFK is not worthy of martyrdom, and anyone who claims so otherwise is doing his administration a serious disservice.