Sen. John F. Kennedy visting Oak Ridge National Lab. 2-24-1959, 59-152-5 DOE photo by Ed Westcott
In June of 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave what would be known as his “Peace Speech” at American University. Kennedy explained his plan to look for a new way forward out of the Cold War that didn’t rely on an arms race, and instead focused on finding common ground and peaceful solutions. Watch his speech below:
At the Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob Hornberger explains what happened after the speech, in which Kennedy called for a treaty banning nuclear testing. Hornberger writes:
Kennedy then secured the approval of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, over the vehement objections of the Pentagon and the CIA.
And then he ordered a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, which, in the eyes of the national-security establishment, meant that the dominoes would start falling to the communists, with the final domino being the United States.
Given that the next presidential election wasn’t until late 1964 and given that JFK stood a good chance of winning reelection, the national-security establishment knew that it had to act now in order to save America. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, on the streets of Dallas elevated Vice-President Lyndon Johnson to the presidency. Since Johnson was on the same page as the national-security establishment, he immediately reversed the direction that Kennedy was taking America and restored the old Cold War racket of the U.S. national-security establishment.
While the national-security establishment wanted Johnson to invade Cuba, he refused to do so. While a full-scale invasion would easily have been successful in achieving regime change in Cuba, Johnson knew that the Russians could retaliate by taking West Berlin, which necessarily would have required a U.S. response. Thus, Johnson wisely refused to succumb to the Pentagon/CIA pressure to invade Cuba.
However, reversing JFK’s order to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam, Johnson decided to throw an anti-communist bone to the national-security establishment by giving it the war it wanted against the Reds in Vietnam. Soon after Johnson won election in 1964, he and the national-security establishment concocted the fake North Vietnamese attack on U.S. forces in the Gulf of Tonkin. That enabled them to secure the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution from Congress, which ultimately led to the needless sacrifice of more than 58,000 American soldiers, not to mention the killing of more than a million Vietnamese.
Mark Gambuzza, a close friend of this author, says of Hornberger, “Since one of LBJ’s first move was signing an executive order to reverse JFK’s policy and send troops to Vietnam- this article appears correct. Hornberger seems to have grabbed all that info from a great book – Unspeakable by James Douglas. I don’t think you need to be a career investigator to see the link between Vietnam and the assassination. If you agree – then it would make sense that the same powerful, corrupt war faction of the Pentagon, will do anything they can to smear and stop Secretary Hegseth.”
Hegseth is, of course, under mounting pressure from many directions because he is a threat to the Defense Department’s establishment. Despite the attempts to dislodge him from his post as Secretary of Defense, Hegseth remains focused on carrying out President Trump’s agenda for peace. Watch:
. @SecDef presented @POTUS with all the accomplishments that the DOD have achieved in the last 100 days:
“I think we’re controversial because we’re OVER the target!” pic.twitter.com/GnznUoK1UE
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) April 30, 2025
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