Continues to have an impact in contemporary times. This was part of a conference hosted by the future of Freedom Foundation. Some viewers may find language in the program offensive. By way of self introduction, the freedomt of foundation. [applause] many of you know we are devoted to presenting an uncompromising moral, philosophical, and theomic case for equilibrium philosophy. I practiced law for about 12 years and that shifted gears and went into the educational arena and libertarian philosophy. We have published many books, but the ones that i am really proud of our the kennedy autopsy, regime change, the jfk assassination, and the evil of the National Security state. Published a top secret classified document called a study of assassination. By reading this document, its clear that by this time, seven years after the cia had been called into existence with the National Security act of 1977 that this agency was specializing in the art of assassination how to kill people. Among the fascinating parts of this memorandum, the study, is that the cia is not only trying to figure out the best, most expeditious ways to kill people, but they were also trying to figure out how to do so in a way where people would not suspect that they committed the assassination or at least could not prove that they committed the assassinations. If we jump ahead 10 years and go into the 1960s and 1970s and move over to the school of the americas, which many Latin Americans call the school of assassins, this was the pentagon military training school, especially for military officials from latin america. They were part of rightwing military dictatorships, some of which the u. S. Government had installed into power. We find that at that school, they were teaching these military officials in the art of assassination. Iny also were teaching them the art of torture. They had torture manuals they used for the course. One of the fascinating aspect of the Assassination Program was how it had developed from 1954. One of the principles they were was that when you are committing a state assassination, killing somebody, and you dont want people to focus attention on you as the a great technique is to blame it on a communist. . Y a communist why not blame it on a capitalist or doctor or account, a businessman . To answer that question, we have to go back to 1945. World war ii had just ended. United states and allied powers had he did nazi germany defeated nazi germany. A u. S. Official said to the American People, you just cannot rest. We now have a new enemy arguably more powerful than the enemy we just defeated, and this new enemy is our world war ii partner and ally, the soviet union, and specifically, the communistcontrolled soviet union which have been communist controlled since world war i. The idea was they told americans they are in a worldwide communist conspiracy, and its based in moscow, russia, and this conspiracy entails communist that are hellbent on conquering the world, including the United States, and in order to prevent this from happening, they said it would be necessary to alter the structure of the whatcan government from was called a limited government republic where government powers are limited, enumerated, and in the open, to what is called a National Security state, which is a totalitarian type of government where government officials are able to operate essential essentially omnipotent powers, mostly in secret. As part of this idea that communist are coming to get us, they also talked in terms of the dangers of the philosophy of communism, that this was a very destructive philosophy, that was like a narcotic, a siren song, the idea that government should be taking care of people, that government should be taking from the rich and giving to the poor. That when people got a taste of this philosophy, they tend to want more of it. They want the government to take care of them to a larger extent. Threat thathis twin became part of the cold war that communist are coming to get us and this philosophy is threatening to envelop us, and as part of what became known as the anticommunist crusade, the entire National Security establishment the pentagon, began monitoring peopless activity and harassing them and infiltrating organizations, especially leftist organizations because there was a fine line between being a leftist or liberal and progressive and being a socialist and communist. A lot of leftist organizations were being infiltrated. The communist party was, but then there was also an Organization Called the fair play for cuba committee, which was just a National Organization saying we want normal relations for cuba. Of course, there was the civil movement. Martin luther king was suspected to be a communist. The Civil Rights Movement was suspected to be a communist front that would lead communist into america. We are all familiar with trumbo. Careers were ruined. The carthy hearings, that infamous question that struck fear into the hearts of anyone who had ever had any exposure to communism. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the communist party . The destroyed careers. They destroyed lives. So it is within this context that the tragedy starts to make sense. Blame it on the communists. If you start to question the official version, if you start pointing the finger at the government, they can turn around ,nd say youre a leftist pinko obviously a communist sympathizer, and it certainly tends to diminish the incentive among leftists who had had socialist proclivities from going down the road. Of assassination did not occur in a vacuum. It occurred in the middle of a regime change as part of a regime change operation in guatemala. Andt one being in 1953 iran, but what had happened in guatemala is the guatemalan people had had the temerity to democratically elect in a legitimate election a selfavowed socialist, a believed, a person who that we are going to take money from the rich and give it to the poor and this is the salvation of poverty. And he starts taking land from a giant u. S. Corporation that had major connections to the cia and two members of congress, and he starts distributing it to the poor, to peasants in guatemala. This turns all kinds of alarm bells on in washington. Gosh, a communist that has been democratically elected . Its when he starts reaching out to the soviet union and says he does not care about the cold war and will establish friendly relations with them, and he wants to establish peace with cuba. That sealed his fate. At that point, he was deemed a great threat to u. S. National security. When he was caught smuggling weapons to czechoslovakia, which was a soviet satellite state, that did it. To take these weapons and take the Guatemalan Army up through mexico and down across brownsville and take over texas and the United States . Nobody made that clear, but the idea was we needed to target him for a regime change operation. Of these omnipotent powers not listed in the constitution. Nothing important. Guatemala never attacked the United States or even threatened to. As part of the regime change operation, the cia comes up with an assassination list of people who they are other proxies who are going to start this regime its ok toation assassinate. Amazing. If we jump ahead 20 years or so, 1970 to 1973, we go to chile, which is even further away from the United States. By the way, they succeeded in that regime change operation, ousting him from power. Luckily, he was able to get out about being assassinated, but then the chilean people do the same thing. They have the temerity to democratically elect a selfavowed socialist, communist. He was a physician. He was an intellectual. His name was salvador ina salvador allenda. Salvador allende. Congress is getting ready to confirm him as president and all the alarm bells go off in washington. Here we are again, another communist democratically elected. This is not good. Then he makes it even worse because he is talking about wanting to establish friendship with the soviet union, got nothing against russia, moscow. That sealed his fate. He is deemed a threat to National Security, so the order is given. Regime change. The cia goes in. They tried to bribe the members of congress so they do not vote for him or confirm him as president. That does not work, so they Start Talking about a military coup to take control and prevent allende from coming into power, but there is one big obstacle, a man named general rene schneider, the overall commanding general of chiles armed forces. A man of impeccable integrity. Sons, and hele of says to u. S. Officials is not going to happen. Hes a soldier who took an oath to support and defend the constitution of his country, and it provides only for impeachment or election to oust a president for office. It does not provide for a military coup, and of story. The cia position was different. They are here telling schneider militaryest of the establishment, the National Security establishment of this country they have a moral duty to save this country. The country is going down with communism, with socialism when he starts adopting all these programs, and it does not matter. Dont tell us technicalities in your constitution and what the law says because its a country goes down, what good is your constitution . You have a moral duty to save your country by violently ousting your president from office and taking control and saving the country. Schneider stands his ground. So a conspiracy of arises within inhington, virginia, or both which the decision is made to kidnap schneider violently and remove him from the scene. The cia has always denied that the conspiracy involved murdering him, but they lied about every other aspect of the operation, and the denials ring also because what else could they have done . They kidnapped the guy. The coup takes over. What are they going to do returned him to society . There was no chance of that. The kidnapping attempt takes place. Highpoweredles in weapons. Schneider is armed. He is a general, and he fights back against the kidnappers, and they shoot him dead. So the obstacle is removed and over a threeyour period of time, the cia starts bribing truckers not to deliver food and creating all kinds of chaos llendes socialist policies, which also work causing chaos and crisis, much like in venezuela today, so all this leads to a coup with the National Security establishment is attacking the president with infantry surrounding his isision, and allende fighting back with small arms fire, but he ends up dead. Apparently committed suicide. General pinochet takes power, proceeds to round up tens of thousands of people, kidnapping them, putting them into military dungeons, raping them his forces were committing the most gruesome sexual acts against the women that you can even imagine, disappearing them or executing them, including two americans with the complicity of u. S. Intelligence agents, and the idea was and the u. S. Was s regime atochet this point. They thought he was fantastic, that what he was doing to all these people was wonderful because they were communist. You see, if they are communist, its no problem doing this because this is a cold war. Obviously, the u. S. Was not doing this to communists in america. They were just surveilling them and harassing them and destroying their careers. In chile, pinochet was going all the way. By the way, communists were still killing u. S. Troops in vietnam at this time, so it was all considered war. If we go into the middle period 1954 and we go into 1959, theres a man named fidel castro that has taken power in cuba. Theear about a lot of dictatorship of we do not hear about the men he ousted from power, who was one of the most brutal, corrupt dictators in the world. He entered into a partnership with the mafia to run the casinos in havana. Ae mafia, as we all know, is murderous, blackmailing, extortion criminal organization, and he gets a cut of the action in return for this. To give you a real measure of the man, he has his Police Forces rounding up little girls, miners, and bringing them into havana out in the villages to favors forxual wellheeled businessman who are gamblers in the casino coming in from the United States. Not surprisingly, a lot of cubans did not like this. If you objected, you found yourself in a dungeon tortured, executed. Thus, the revolution starts. And it really was not castro that started it. He was actually in jail. A woman named teddy a sanchez her bestchez, one of friends, a young girl, 12 or 13, got raped, and she said enough was enough, and she is celebrated in Human History in cuban history as the starter of the revolution. Castro takes power, and its not real clear where he stands at first. People are kind of getting the measure of this man, but he makes it very clear from the beginning that he says, we are now independent of u. S. Control. This was a shock. This raises eyebrows in washington. Cuba had been under control of 1898, the states from spanishamerican war where we had doublecrossed them. We said we were going to help them with their independence from spain, but after the independence was won, we forgot to tell you, we are now in control. So the United States government had controlled cuba, and castro says no more. Its over. We are now independent. Then he starts to display the same socialist, communist proclivities, and this causes real alarm bells to go off. Frommunist 90 miles american shores. Whats guatemala . A couple thousand miles away. This is 90 miles away from american shores. This is a communist regime. This is a dagger pointed out. Mericas throat never mind cuba never attacked the United States, never threatened to attack the united committed an act of terrorism, they are a grave threat to United States security. Then castro sealed his fate. He starts reaching out to the soviet union, telling u. S. Oil companies that operate in cuba to refine soviet oil, and the american officials tell u. S. Oil producers not to refine that, that its communist oil, and everything spirals out of control, and castros fate is sealed. Now we had a regime change operation that would ultimately manifest itself in a partnership between the cia and mafia to assassinate castro. From intose this maelstrom comes john f. Kennedy. He had to be present at eisenhowers farewell address, were eisenhower, ironically, who had been in charge of these ousted, tells the American People, by the way, i want to warn you about something, and that is this new way of life we have here, that the militaryindustrial complex constitutes a grave threat to the democraticd process, something the people of guatemala had already discovered and the people of chile would discover, but kennedy comes into office pretty much your standard cold warrior. He embodies all the communists are coming to get us like all americans. Communism is a dangerous siren song of a philosophy. Pretty much your standard cold warrior. Not completely. But immediately, the cia presents him with a plan that had been brought up under eisenhower with the cia has gone to eisenhower and said we had two successes under our belt. Weve got iran, guatemala, so we can do this. We can do it again. Eisenhower says go for it, but they had not finished in time, and they really thought nixon was going to win, so there would just be this continuity, but nixon did not win, and suddenly, the man they considered kind of a neophyte playboy junior senator from massachusetts, they play him and present this plan to him. They say, mr. President , we have this all set up. The exiles are trained. There will be no u. S. Involvement. They will win. The cuban people are going to rise up because they do not like castro, and kennedy says lets do it, but wants to make it clear they will be no u. S. Involvement in this, except secretly. The lies are built into the plan from the beginning. They said no, no u. S. Support will be necessary. Well, they were playing him. Could notthat it succeed without u. S. Support, but they figured that kennedy would be trapped, that he would say, we cannot lose face. A communist defeating the cuban exiles at the bay of pigs how could we tolerate that . The world would lose respect for us. They knew they were manipulating him into having to provide that support. The invasion starts. Cuban exiles are getting massacred and captured. Sayhey come to kennedy and we were wrong, we need the air support after all thinking of course he would have to say yes, told you, noays, i air support, and you told me none would be necessary. Its not coming. Are defeated. Es castro is crowing about this. The whole world is marveling this little army has defeated a u. S. Trained army, and there is tremendous anger and antipathy as a result. The cia and cuban exiles were considering kennedy to be a betrayer, a trader, a person that betrayed the cuban people, the cause of freedom, the American People, everything that we stand for. He had left this that america could not survive with. Kennedy, for his part, was angry because he knew he had been played. He had figured out he had gotten doublecrossed. He said he was going to take the cia and tear them into 1000 pieces and scatter them to the wind. Words. Ere his he does the unthinkable he fires the much revered director of the cia. Guy was a world war ii intelligence veteran. Much revered within the agency. Kennedy says, youre out. Injury, he puts his brother bobby in charge of monitoring the cia, which they hated because they had had pretty much Carte Blanche under eisenhower for eight years. Here is the genesis of the war. It expanded to the military. That the military is exhorting kennedy after this. We have to invade cuba and they present him with this plan, which they were totally convinced was necessary. It was a unanimous plan that says were going to have terrorist attacks by u. S. Secret agents posing as communists, and when real people die they have to be sacrificed for the greater good kennedy will go on National Television and say, my fellow americans, weve been attacked, im going to send troops into cuba to defend america to defend your rights and freedo