On June 4, 1963 a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed, which effectively stripped the Federal Reserve of its power to loan money to the Federal Government at interest. This Executive Order has never been repealed or superseded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid. So, when Kennedy signed this Order, it returned to the Treasury Department, the constitutional power to create and issue currency, without going ‘cap-in-hand’ to the Federal Reserve Bank.
EO11110 gave the Treasury Department the authority to ‘issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury’. It therefore seems obvious that Kennedy was fully aware that the Federal Reserve Bills being used as the purported legal currency were contrary to the constitution of the U.S. JFK was also attacking the ‘oil depletion allowance’ which permitted oil producers to declare up to 27.5 per cent of their income as tax-exempt. This exemption provided them with a lower tax rate and a competitive business advantage not shared by any other business interests, and the government would thereby retain more than $300m in tax revenue each year with this ‘allowance’. contributions – this proposal made JFK some very powerful enemies in the oil industry.
In the early 1960s, Dallas was spectacularly corrupt. It was a city of great contrasts, being the epicentre of the ‘Bible Belt’ and yet also an enclave of organised crime and corruption. It was also the centre of the oil industry. A 1964 New York Times article reported on a group of businessmen who had formed ‘an invisible government… that ran Dallas without an electoral mandate.’ would not have attracted many people from there and not for reasons of ideology alone. The oil industry – in particular, the more financially vulnerable Dallas-based independents – did not welcome Kennedy’s stance on the aforementioned oil depletion allowance.
The trade publication, Oil and Gas Journal, charged that JFK was setting up a ‘battleground [upon which] business and government will collide’ and J.E. Hoover also expressed his own reservations. The Kennedys understood the political importance of Dallas and of Texas in general. They chose Lyndon Baines Johnson to be JFK’s VP because they needed southern votes, and after the election they appointed Texans like John Connally, a lawyer representing Big Oil, to be secretary of the Navy, and George McGhee, the son-in-law of a legendary oil industry figure, as deputy Secretary of State. But Dallas in general was no friend of Kennedy. Prominent within the ‘Eastern Establishment’ was George H. W. Bush. As the son of a powerful Connecticut senator, he was unusually well-connected.
Although the oil depletion allowance remained intact – due to the Congressmen who were recipients of oil company campaign While his father, Prescott Bush remained back East, George had prospered in Houston and Dallas, respectively. A Kennedy rally One of Hoover’s friends, the Texas oilman, Clint Murchison, was among the most aggressive players in the depletion allowance dispute. Murchison had been exposed in the 1950s, in Time magazine no less, as epitomising the absurdity of this give-away to the rich and powerful. LBJ shared this enmity towards Kennedy. In fact, he was the only person in the White House that the oilmen trusted.
The Kennedys, for their part, had never liked LBJ either and had asked him to be JFK’s ‘running mate’ for political expediency alone. Within a year of the inauguration, there was already talk of dumping him in 1964 and RFK’s investigations of military contractors in Texas increasingly pointed towards a network of corruption that was in the process of leading back to LBJ himself. Spring Edition The Kennedys before the assasination According to presidential historian Robert Dallek: ‘RFK closely followed the Justice Department’s investigation, including inquiries into Johnson’s possible part in corrupt dealings. Despite wrongdoing, Johnson believed that Bobby Kennedy instigated the investigation in hopes of finding something that could knock him off the ticket in 1964.’
LBJ had numerous connections with the Bushes, whose Republican values often dovetailed with those of Johnson during the years when LBJ served as the Democrats’ majority leader. After Johnson ascended to the presidency, he and newly-elected Congressman Bush were often allies on such issues as the oil depletion allowance and the war in Vietnam. This Texas ‘Raj’ as it has been called, was an incestuous world. Denizens sat on one another’s boards, fraternised in each other’s clubs, and intermarried within a small circle, with most of the ceremonies being held in the same handful of churches. Whether one was a Democrat or Republican did not matter much, they all shared an enthusiasm for the anything-goes capitalism that had made them rich, and a deep aversion to ‘government inference’.
That meant anything that the government did – such as environmental rules or antitrust investigations – that was not in the oligarchs’ favour. In many respects, RFK became the focus for the hostility that JFK deflected with his charm. Bobby did not shrink from the role of enforcer and for as long as Jack (as JFK was known to his family) remained President – and in 1963 a second term seemed likely – Bobby would be his Rottweiler, and even worse was the prospect that the Kennedys could become a lengthy dynasty. The Kennedy administration struck at the heart of the Southern establishment’s growing wealth and power.
Not only did it attack the oil depletion allowance, but its support of the civil rights movement threatened to undermine the cheap labour that supported the oil industry. Yet in the space of five years, both Jack and Bobby were dead, and the prospect of a Kennedy dynasty had been extinguished. Instead, within twelve years of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, a new conservative dynasty was beginning to emerge – the ‘House of Bush’. In less than three years in office, JFK had crossed the Mafia, Onassis, the Roman Catholic Church, the CIA, the FBI, the military-industrial complex, Big Oil, the Federal Reserve and Israel. In short, he had transgressed against the entire rotten hierarchy in one way or another, and for that gross sin of sins, he would not just simply be quietly assassinated like some incumbents before him. He would be made a monumental example of: a huge, spectacular, unquestionable warning to others who may consider straying from the proscribed agenda. In fact he would be publicly, ritually executed. falsificationofhistory.co.uk
eturn to Bomb Alley 1982 – The Falklands Deception, by Paul Cardin
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