Part 2As noted in the previous post, the Soviet’s propaganda onslaught, geared toward exploiting Goldwater’s pro-segregation statements, was launched within minutes of President Kennedy’s assassination.
The KGB officers envisioned that after President Johnson’s assassination and Goldwater’s subsequent election to the Presidency, they would use the long tentacles of the CIA to push the idea that “President-elect Goldwater” was a racist “madman” who conspired with his supporters to kill two U.S. Presidents in less than a year. They envisioned that the entire nation would soon be launched into violent partisan and racial turmoil with people revolting against the pro-segregation “President Barry Goldwater” and the conspiracy to seize power.
David Murphy, Chief of the CIA’s Soviet Russia Division, was immediately suspicious of the propaganda.
On November 23, 1963, one day after President Kennedy’s assassination, Murphy sent a cable “via closed channel” to CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton on the subject of “Possible KGB Role in Kennedy Slaying.”
Murphy’s cable states: “Within minutes of the first news, Moscow radio statements as heard in London attributed the assassination to ‘right-wing elements.’ Only as the true identity of the believed assassin became known did Moscow begin to complain that U.S. reactionaries were using Oswald as a pawn.
“Was Oswald, unwittingly or wittingly, part of a plot to murder President Kennedy in Dallas as an attempt to further exacerbate sectional strife and render the U.S. Government less capable of dealing with Soviet initiatives over the next year?”
Murphy also stated, “We can expect major Soviet pressures over the next several months, for which the Soviets have made careful, long-range preparations.”
Official documents clearly confirm Murphy’s suspicions.
“Twelve minutes” after it was announced that President Kennedy was dead, Moscow radio carried “the first TASS bulletin on his death,” stating that he “had fallen victim to rightwing extremists,” and on the following day, as a veritable deluge of propaganda got under way, Moscow radio reported, “Kennedy was a victim of racist fanatics.”
In another Moscow radio broadcast on November 23, Soviet propagandist Valentin Zorin stated, “It is quite obvious” that the assassination is “a political crime, carefully prepared and planned.”
Zorin noted that the assassination “took place in the southern state of Texas, which is commonly known as the stronghold of American racists . . . . It is here that Senator Goldwater, an aspirant to the Presidency and the idol of the American rightists, enjoys support.”
Goldwater’s name came up again the next day when the official Soviet newspaper Izvestiya described the “political atmosphere” when President Kennedy was assassinated “as one in which ‘wild men,’ such as Senator Goldwater, come out violently against coexistence with the Soviet Union,” and a Communist radio broadcast stated that “the American racists” were responsible for “eliminating Kennedy.”
On November 25, Soviet propagandist Valentin Zorin stated that President Kennedy’s policies “aroused violent criticism and fierce resistance from an influential group of die-hard politicians known as the ‘madmen.’” Zorin noted Goldwater’s “unbridled attacks on the policy of the late President,” adding, “For many months, Goldwater maliciously attacked Kennedy and his policy, demanding its radical revision.”
And while Valentin Zorin was implicating Goldwater in the assassination, an article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda was titled, “How the ‘Wild Men’ Prepared the Crime in Dallas,” and the CIA stated that Pravda was adamant about “blaming the Kennedy assassination on ‘right extremists.’”
A United States Information Agency report revealed that “Soviet propagandists” specifically accused the “Goldwater group” of being “reactionaries” who “abetted” President Kennedy’s assassination. The report also stated that “the main thrust of Soviet and East European comment and analysis” was a claim that “President John F. Kennedy was a victim of right-wing terrorists who hope to establish an ‘ultra-conservative dictatorship’ in America.”
The CIA’s Daily Summary of November 25 stated that Che Guevara, who came to power with Fidel Castro in the 1959 Cuban Revolution, gave a speech in which he proclaimed, “Everything indicates that in the next months and years, world peace will be threatened by the most unscrupulous, ferocious, and warlike monopolistic oligarchy, with the most murderous potential that the history of humanity has ever known.”
The next day, four short days after the assassination, Soviet propaganda correlated President Kennedy’s assassination to the 1964 Presidential election. The official government newspaper Izvestiya boldly proclaimed that an “intensified struggle” would determine “the course of the election campaign which is now developing,” and it warned, “Madmen ready to play a hazardous game with the destinies of the American people, ‘wild men,’ Fascist racists – these are the ones who were up in arms against Kennedy. Is it not they who directed the killer’s bullet into the head of the President?”
A CIA report of November 26 states that Moscow warned of “rightwing ‘wild men’” who would “test President Johnson’s resolve to pursue present policy lines . . . . ‘Rightwing ultras’ are consistently blamed for the assassination . . . . Soviet media see Oswald’s murder as an effort to silence him -- proof that rightwing fanatics were behind the assassination,” and the Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe maintained that President Kennedy was killed because of his “championing of Negro rights.”
On the same day, Moscow’s International Service reported, “Without a doubt, direct responsibility for the Dallas tragedy should be borne by the Ku Klux Klan and the ultra reactionary forces in the United States.”
Communist propaganda brought up “the unhealthy climate of right-wing extremism,” and the CIA stated that “Soviet propagandists portray a sick American society beset by the cancerous growth of right-wing political extremism.”
As noted earlier, David Murphy, the CIA’s Soviet Russia Chief, wrote that the Soviets had made “careful, long-range preparations” for the “pressures” they would exert after the assassination.
A CIA memorandum of December 13, 1963 corroborates Murphy’s view, stating that “for over a year,” the intention of Soviet propaganda was to portray the United States as being “in the grips of a deep social and moral crisis, with a massive rightist plot moving toward power.”
The Communist Party in the United States blamed the assassination on “pro-Fascists, ultra-right forces, Dixiecrats, and racists” who will “stop at nothing to undermine the democratic institutions of the country and to threaten international peace.”
The official Soviet news agency TASS forebodingly warned, “Kennedy’s death raises a number of other questions, not the least of which is who will be elected President in 1964. Until yesterday, most felt that Kennedy was ensured re-election. Will Johnson be the Democratic candidate in 1964? Are the chances of the Republicans enhanced? There is no answer yet to these questions, although the pre-election balance is apparently changing.”
President Johnson’s assassination would clearly change the “pre-election balance” and significantly enhance the “chances” of KGB asset Barry Goldwater. Soviet KGB officers had every intention of making sure Johnson would not be “the Democratic candidate” on election day.
Radio Moscow brought up Goldwater again on November 28, stating, “A bloody crime has been committed in the United States . . . . Who is responsible for this crime? The press throughout the world has been paying much attention to ultra rightwing groups in the United States . . . . The influential Senator Barry Goldwater is known as one of the leaders of the ultra rightwing in the United States.”
And there is more, lots more. Click the link.
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