In 1939, a 21 year old John F. Kennedy visited Palestine and wrote a letter to his father about his impressions. He begins his letter by saying that the British had made conflicting claims about the eventual disposition of the land to both the Arabs and the Jews: one through the Balfour declaration, favoring the latter, and one through the McMahon letters, favoring the former. He called them both vague and indefinite. (JFK and RFK’s Secret Battle Against Zionist Extremism, by Ken McCarthy and Rick Sterling, p. 58; all references to e book version) To Kennedy, the problem was to find an all-encompassing agreement that would work. Kennedy believed that there should be two separate states with Jerusalem as an independent city. (ibid, p. 60)
He then goes on to describe the beginnings of the waves of terror by the Jewish groups under false flag operations. In just one night there were 13 bombs set off in the Jewish quarter by them.
The ironical part is that the Jewish terrorists bomb their own telephone lines and electric connections and the next day frantically phone the British to come and fix them up. (Ibid, p. 60)
This is part of an underlying problem that Kennedy foresees: “On the Jewish side there is the desire for complete domination, with Jerusalem as the capital of their new land of milk and honey…” (ibid, p. 59) He concludes by saying that for most of the people in the area, their sympathy is with the Arabs. Largely because the Zionists come off as arrogant and uncompromising. But further:
…the country has been Arabic for the last few hundred years, and they naturally feel sympathetic. After all, Palestine was hardly Britian’s to give away. (ibid, p. 61)
It is important to read this letter. First of all, it is a remarkably perceptive and sagacious piece of correspondence for a 21-year old young man. Kennedy understands the dynamics going on at that relatively early date. But secondly, it also shows his comprehension of the standing the Arabs have established, and the tactics that the Zionists are using to undermine that standing. Finally, he understands the moral/political problem of the British giving away what had clearly been labeled Palestine, and the Zionist denial of this. In my opinion, it is not possible to fully comprehend JFK’s policy in the Middle East as president without reference to this remarkable letter.
In Part 2, I outlined Kennedy’s attempt to forge a new and better relationship with Nasser of Egypt. Kennedy saw him as an extremely charismatic and popular leader that he could work with as opposed to the conservative regimes like Saudi Arabia. (Philip Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans, pp. 124-25; 133-34) Nasser was a socialist, a secularist and a Pan Arabist, all of which Kennedy favored. For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood was an extremist fundamentalist group which would resort to violence. They were originally founded by the British in order to protect their oil interests in the area from any democratization. The group was then passed on to Saudi Arabia for financing. (Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, p. 47).
The goal of the Brotherhood was to expand fundamentalism throughout the area and make all obedient to Sharia Law. This was diametrically opposed to Nasser’s socialist/republican/secularist concept of Pan Arabism. Therefore the Brotherhood tried to assassinate Nasser twice. Nasser went to war with the group in 1954. His government arrested thousands, many received long prison terms, and several were executed. (Dreyfuss, pp. 103-04).
Saudi Arabia, a royalist monarchy, feared Nasser’s dream of a Pan Arabist confederacy with the oil in the Middle East going to socialist causes. And they knew about Nasser’s special relationship with Kennedy. So when a civil war broke out in Yemen in 1962, and Nasser sent troops to back the republican forces against the monarchy, the Saudis saw this as a way to both thwart Nasser and stymie his relationship with Kennedy. If Nasser succeeded in Yemen, they thought they might be next. So they sent arms and cash to the Yemeni monarchy. (Dreyfuss, p. 140). Kennedy did all he could to get a truce there, but the Saudis would not let up. And the high casualties from the fighting gave American critics of Nasser the opportunity to assail Kennedy on this score. Kennedy stood by Nasser, even in the face of British and Israeli criticism. (Muehlenbeck, p. 135) But the Saudis were determined not to let up. And they did not.
As the reader can see Kennedy, unlike Presidents Biden and Trump, did not find the leaders of Saudi Arabia and their devotion to fundamentalism very attractive. And while he was trying to find a way out of the Yemen debacle, he still thad two other problems with Nasser’s other enemy, Israel.
The Attorney General is duty bound to back the FARA Unit of the Justice Department. Due to attempts by the Axis Powers to send undercover propaganda agents into the USA, something called the Foreign Agents Registration Act was passed in 1938. (See McCarthy for excerpts from this act, pp. 40-53) This meant that agents of foreign principalities engaged in political activities or lobbying had to make public disclosure of their relations with the foreign principal, including all disbursements, receipts and activities involved. (Monika Weisak, America’s Last President, p. 204)
Under the Kennedy administration, Attorney General Robert Kennedy launched an effort to make the American Zionist Council (AZC) register as agent of a foreign government, namely Israel. RFK’s complaint began on November 21, 1962 when he had an assistant write to the AZC requesting the group register under the FARA law. (McCarthy, p. 25). In hearings before a senate committee led by William Fulbright in May and August of 1963, it was discovered that money being allegedly sent for humanitarian aid in Israel was being channeled back to the USA, and into lobbying and PR activities. (McCarthy, pp. 25-26)
The AZC began to stall for time. Revealingly, a man who worked for the AZC lobbying division, Isaiah Kenen, now began the process to incorporate a new Israeli propaganda outfit. This was called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC today. (Wiesak, p. 206) But on August, 16, 1963, a DOJ attorney went over the case in detail. He concluded the following:
Department should insist on the immediate registration of the American Zionist Council under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. (McCarthy, p. 26)
On October 11, the DOJ sent a demand letter to the AZC expecting their compliance with the law. Six days later, during a meeting, the AZC made a notable plea. They said they should not have to register. Because if they did so, the publicity would play into the hands of their rival group, the American Council on Judaism, which opposed the Zionist cause. (Wiesak, p. 208). The DOJ then said they wanted to see all the necessary disbursement material to comply with FARA. They then would make a final decision. The material was not filed before JFK’s assassination. (ibid) Which leads to another serious problem with Israel that was not solved before November 22, 1963.
As Roger Mattson notes in his book, Stealing the Atom Bomb, President Kennedy was probably the most rabid anti-proliferation president in the history of the USA since the Trinity test. (pp. 38-40, 256) He was against any other nations joining the nuclear club. (See also, Robert Kennedy In His Own Words, p. 327). Due to their association with Israel during the Suez Crisis, France decided to help them build an atomic reactor in the desert at Dimona. The reports indicate that the French discovered that this was going to be part of a program to build an atomic bomb. When they discovered this, they relayed the information to Dean Rusk, Kennedy’s Secretary of State. (Cable from Paris to Rusk, 8/14/63).
In fact, President Charles de Gaulle did not like the French cooperation with Israel, and he decided to curtail the cooperation. (Eric Rouleau, The World Today: French Policy in the Middle East, Vol. 24)
Kennedy had been worried about this previously. In a December of 1962 meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir, he asked her about their intentions at Dimona. Meir replied that there would ‘not be any difficulty between us on the Israeli nuclear reactor.” (Wiesak, p. 209). To put it simply and directly this was false. As Malcolm Blunt has demonstrated with declassified documents, there was a government wide conspiracy to deceive Kennedy about Dimona. This included Meir, David Ben Gurion and Abba Eban. Blunt has produced evidence in declassified cables that, on no less than six occasions, one of those three misrepresented facts to either JFK or his direct representative.
When Kennedy realized that everyone was lying to him he did something no other American president had done either before or since. On May 10th, he sent Ben Gurion a letter saying that no other country in the Middle East was even close to being able to produce the highly enriched uranium necessary for the creation of atomic weapons. He then closed the letter by saying if no full inspections were allowed of Dimona by the USA he would pull funding for Israel.
Understanding the import of this threat, Ben Gurion called for a full cabinet meeting. The letter he sent contained the usual comparisons of Nasser to Hitler, and he requested a bilateral defense treaty with America. (Letter of 5/12/63, Ben Gurion to JFK) A few days later, he replied again in a more restrained manner. But he was not responsive to Kennedy’s demand.
On June 15, Kennedy again issued his demand and threat about inspections. There was a supplement included by Dean Rusk saying the inspections had to begin before the reactor attained criticality. One day after Tel Aviv received this letter, Ben Gurion resigned as prime minister. A position he had held for 14 years.
Levi Eshkol now assumed office. On July 4, Kennedy issued the same demand and threat to him. At the time of Kennedy’s death, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy was negotiating with Eshkol on the terms of biannual inspections for Dimona.
There should be added a coda to fully depict the deceit of Ben Gurion. As author and investigator Roger Mattson has shown, some of the highly enriched uranium (HEU) that Dimona utilized to construct a nuclear bomb came from the United States. Beginning in 1959, a peculiar nuclear plant approved by the Atomic Energy Commission processed HEU. It was located outside Pittsburgh and was called Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC. Mattson proved that, from NUMEC, hundreds of kilograms of HEU went missing from 1959 on to the seventies. (Mattson, p. 286) No other plant in America came close to this record of losses. Plus, the records of the plant itself were sloppy, and some appear to have been destroyed. (Ibid, p. 75)
As Mattson reveals, people running NUMEC were members of the AZC. One of them later was a personal liaison from President Reagan to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Mattson concludes his book by saying that NUMEC had all the earmarks of being a front for the Mossad for the purpose of securing HEU for Dimona. In fact, the CIA’s former resident technical expert on atomic weapons, Carl Duckett, wrote a letter to Director George Bush saying he suspected that Dimona was jumpstarted by a theft from NUMEC. (Mattson, p. 165)
This turned out to be correct. In a later inquiry conducted under President Carter, 4 new witnesses were discovered by the FBI. They had worked at NUMEC in the sixties and they said that they saw shipments of HEU being loaded with destination addresses in Israel. (ibid, p. 275) The FBI also found out that NUMEC did not employ a professional security service, which is rather shocking. (ibid, pp. 272-73)
Thus were John Kennedy’s myriad problems with a supposed ally in the Middle East. As we will see, after Kennedy’s death, Lyndon Johnson magically made these all disappear. He did so in a remarkably short period of time. LBJ then was amenable to a sneak attack on Nasser for the epochal Six Day War. Which changed everything.