USA 2024 Elections: Stop the 'Lesser of Two Evils' Syndrome
Trump as president could reduce risk of a nuclear conflict over Ukraine, while a win by. Biden or his replacement would likely make it worse
Liberals vote Democrat. Conservatives vote Republican. Most progressives vote Democrat. So has it been. That landscape is changing.
This election debate revolves around “lesser of evils” as always, but the presidential candidates are more unpopular than ever. What issues matter most? Greater possibility for world war with nuclear weapons. Mother Earth enraged. Racism and inequality. Republican attacks on women, especially women’s health and right to control their own bodies?
If I were not white, I might choose equality vs: racism as my first priority. Combating racism has certainly been number one for me even though I am white. Yet I also place war as number one, because the US’s endemic structure is rooted in war and racism-genocide under the banners of American Exceptionalism/Manifest Destiny/Monroe Doctrine.
The Library of Congress delivers annual reports to Congress about its wars, and undeclared wars OR so-called military interventions. It is extremely time-consuming to figure out the total number, because only five (or eleven) wars have been officially declared such.
Some years ago, I counted 350 wars after going through the whole report. Congress, however, does not count “regime changes” or “coups” run by the CIA. Some experts, such as the late William Blum, have tallied between 500 and 650 wars in US’s 250 years. No matter the exact figure, Real Americans are trained to love war as a matter of patriotism.
In my lifetime, since WWII, we have hardly breathed without being permanently at war. War should be the number one concern for all people who do not profit from the war industry. (A significant part of the working class, unfortunately, does profit from weapon production).
Colleague Dave Lindorff wrote a critique of the Grand Old Party two years ago. Let’s Rebrand the Misnamed GOP as the BLP - This Can't Be Happening! (thiscantbehappening.net)
That prompted me to reply with Call it the WAR PARTY - This Can't Be Happening! (thiscantbehappening.net).
Brief Democrat War History
Democrat James Polk stole half of Mexico in the 1846-8 war. Democrat Woodrow Wilson, Barack Obama’s southern racist idol, enacted the 1917 Espionage Act, which Democrats and Republicans used to nearly torture-to-death the peoples’ media messenger, Julian Assange. Free At Last!
It was “We” activists in Australia, England, and somewhat in the US who set him free.
Wilson invaded Russia during WWI to destroy the Russian Revolution. Russia had to fight for its sovereignty against about 300,000 foreign troops sent by the US, UK, France and Japan, as well as the Russian aristocracy’s White Army.
Harry Truman murdered millions of Japanese directly and over several years from radiation with nuclear bombs. Read Lindorff’s most important new book to learn that Democrat Harry Truman was preparing 400 nuclear bombs in the mid to late 1940s to annihilate 100 cities in the Soviet Union republics. Brilliant American teenage physicist Ted Hall (and Klaus Fuchs) saved the world from nuclear disaster by giving the Soviets information that allowed them to have their own bomb before Truman could drop his. Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World: Lindorff, Dave: 9781633888951: Amazon.com: Books; Ted Hall Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize For Helping to Prevent a Nuclear Holocaust in the 1950s - CovertAction Magazine
Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush promised Mikhail Gorbachov that the US would not extend NATO east of Germany. In exchange East Germany merged into one Germany as a NATO country, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Nevertheless, the Empire of Lies with Bill Clinton in command started the encirclement of Russia by bringing into NATO Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. A dozen more countries have since been recruited, many of them close to or bordering Russia.
Imagine what the US would do if Russia had a counterpart to NATO’s 32 countries, and brought Mexico and Canada into its NATO? Remember the Bay of Pigs and the October Missile Crisis!
Barack Obama engaged in more wars than any other president—seven at one time, continuing the two that his Republican predecessor George W Bush started, and adding five to his gun belt. Remember that Barack Obama did not benefit African-Americans with his wars for profit.
It was also under his authority, with drone comrade CIA Director John Brennan at his side, that a grand jury convened to draw up an indictment of Julian Assange (not acted on but ready go when Trump decided to activate it) which set the stage for 12 years in confinement.
Obama left Ukraine for Biden to fix, having had Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt first organize and finance the 2014 neo-fascist coup, and then hand pick the post-coup leadership.
White capitalists used Obama’s dark skin to convince corrupt or weak African leaders to embrace AFRICOM, which seeks to bring US military troops, bases, even nuclear weapons to all of Africa.
When Joe Biden first became a senator his comrade and mentor was Averell Harriman, whose father was one of “Hitler’s Angels.” Harriman himself was a creator of the “Cold War.”
It has become fashionable among many liberals and progressives to label Donald Trump a fascist, who seeks to become a dictator making America fascist. Naturally, good people must therefore vote for Democrats. Take a good look at what Obama-Biden have done though. Their neo-fascist coup in Ukraine ousted the democratically elected and managed Viktor Yanukovych government. Since then, and before the 2022 Special Military Operation/Invasion, fascist army battalions killed 15,000 Ukrainian citizens who were ethnic Russians living in four provinces, which voted to join Russia. Finally, in 2022, Vladimir Putin’s government accepted their wish. In reality, Russia is protecting its very sovereignty against an otherwise inevitable Yankee takeover on its southern border.
This piece is not focusing on the New World Order. However, in brief, neither Republicans nor Democrats are opposed to using/shaping fascist societies if they see fit. Ukraine’s government operates in a fascist manner as it disallows dissenting political parties, 12 of which are now banned, prevents unionization and strikes, and kills Ukrainians who think well of Russia.
NATO warriors cite Article 51 of the United Nations Charter as legal grounds for its proxy war against Russia. However, they never read that article in its entirety. Daniel Kovalik is just one of several international law attorneys who make the argument that Article 51 not only opposes “unilateral acts of war”, but also provides for self-defense when a nation’s sovereignty is at stake.
Russia has witnessed what such destabilizing efforts have meant for other countries, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Syria to Libya – that is, nearly a total annihilation of the country as a functioning nation-state. As Kovalik writes in Algora Blog:
“It is hard to conceive of a more pressing case for the need to act in defense of the nation. While the UN Charter prohibits unilateral acts of war, it also provides, in Article 51, that ‘[n]othing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense…’ And this right of self-defense has been interpreted to permit countries to respond, not only to actual armed attacks, but also to the threat of imminent attack…In light of the above, it is my assessment that this right has been triggered in the instant case, and that Russia had a right to act in its own self-defense by intervening in Ukraine, which had become a proxy of the U.S. and NATO for an assault – not only on Russian ethnics within Ukraine – but also upon Russia itself. A contrary conclusion would simply ignore the dire realities facing Russia.”
The US capitalist class has never had scruples about supporting fascism in many lands. Ask most Latin Americans about the fascist regimes the US backs or sets in place. Look at its origins today. While fascism’s ugly brutality is yet to occur in Italy it is now run by self-proclaimed fascist parties, and they are clearly on the rise in much of Europe where I have lived for the past 35 years.
American Capitalists Supported Hitler and Mussolini
In the 1930s, nearly the entire US capitalist class (Morgan, Rockefeller, Ford, Bush……) supported and financed Hitler and Mussolini, and sought a coup against FDR’s New Deal. This was exposed by Major General Smedley Butler, the two-time Congressional Medal of Honor-decorated Marine who played along as a sort-of double agent for FDR.
“The Business Plot (aka The White House Coup, and Fascist Plot) was a political conspiracy in 1933-4. Retired Marine Major General Smedley Darlington Butler was approached by Gerald MacGuire, representing the wealthiest businessmen, led by J.P. Morgan, seeking to use the popular general to organize a coup d’état with 500,000 marines and soldiers to overthrow President Roosevelt. (See New York Times, November 21, 1934, “Gen. Butler Bares ‘Fascist Plot’ To Seize Government by Force”.)” Empire of Lies Christens the New World Order. Part I of II: Overthrow Russia — Strategic Culture (strategic-culture.su)
“No court cases, no prison terms for them if they stop preventing his New Deal. That seemed to work. At least they gave up attempting to overthrow Roosevelt. Nevertheless, they continued to support fascism in Europe by selling, loaning or donating vital materials used for war.”
“Henry Ford received the highest medal Nazi Germany could award a foreigner: the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, July 30, 1938. “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,” declared Hitler.
“IBM founder Thomas John Watson received the Order of the German Eagle (2nd class), June 1937. General Motor’s oversees chief executive James Mooney was awarded the German Eagle (1st class) by Adolf Hitler, in 1938. J.P. Morgan agent Grayson Murphy was decorated by Mussolini with the “Order of the Crown of Ital,” for his role in syndicating Morgan loans to fascist Italy.”
One of the fascist American Liberty League’s founders was Senator Prescott Bush, a partner in the Brown Brothers Harriman bank. “Bush had business ties with Hitler. He was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corporation, an investment bank that operated as a clearing house for assets and enterprises held by German steel magnate Fritz Thyssen. In October 1942, the U.S. seized the fascist war-profiteering bank under the Trading with the Enemy Act, but only held its assets until the war ended. Prescott Bush fathered two future presidents. Both acted to thwart Russia’s wealth and sovereignty.”
Stop Supporting War Parties
I don’t know if fascism will be arrive in the US soon but, let us say, as do Democrats and many progressives, that Trump could spark such a course to stem Russia-China-Global South advances.
The Nation, Democrat sycophant “progressive” weekly, and many other “progressive” media and organizations always support voting for the “lesser of evils”. The fact that the US is always at war killing hundreds a day, millions within months and years is not a big deal for them, obviously.
I imagine many progressives who read TCBH, however, do not want war. So, stop voting for the War Party! I don’t mean vote for “Love Me” Trump, although he wants to stop the proxy war supporting Ukraine, which is certainly more progressive than the Democrats. Even if Trump wins and seeks to make himself a Mussolini-type dictator, there are plenty of checks and balances available until the Democrats also seek dictatorial rule.
Much of The Establishment is frantic about Trump winning. Most capitalists prefer a semblance of stability in their economy and among the working class. Yet war and instability is preferred by the CIA, Pentagon, and the war industry: weapons, medicine, rebuilding, and fossil fuels for running the machinery. The US’s military, even not at war, is the greatest climate polluter of all sources, which doesn’t seem to bother liberals and many progressives who clamor for more Democrat warrior presidents, and who believe the New York Times produces real journalism.
A Times June 28 editorial froths at the mouth in anxiety over a Trump victory. Opinion | To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
“President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy.
“Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to that democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust.”
“Mr. Biden has been an admirable president.” However, since he was incomprehensible in his “debate” with Trump, the Pentagon’s chief newspaper conceded: “The burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man. Democrats who have deferred to Mr. Biden must now find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader.”
Yes, Trump is a liar, instable, unreliable, frenetic, which appeals to much of the working class reality-show fans, but not to the CIA. They want to run the show, to determine when instability is best, but they can’t trust Trump to go along. War Party Democrats do the Pentagon and CIA’s bidding. Trump might just stop their proxy war against Russia. Isn’t that in the interest of most of the working class and also climate activists given that Trump has no problem with the climate?
If Trump would and could stop this proxy war that would break the momentum underway with the Democrats leading us into World War III, and with nuclear weapons probably. Unlike many Democrat millionaires, Trump’s profits don’t derive from war-making, as far as I can tell. Another unsavory fact is that Trump is one of only a handful of US presidents who didn’t start his own war. He inherited Bush’s and Obama’s war, and sought to end some.
The reality is that the US is a dictatorship in the form of an oligarchy that runs Wall Street. Just look at Oliver Stone’s films. It makes no real difference if the dictatorial oligarchy is run by one man or by dozens. That is what the Establishment also told Richard Nixon during Watergate.
If Trump forces win, it couldn’t be worse than if the other brutal imperialist party remains in office. The reality is that the entire Yankee-European Establishment is fearful that it won’t be able to be the dominating force in the whole world, because their capitalist competitors in Russia, China and their BRICS economic bloc treat their partners in the Global South better than the colonialist-slave-owners and neo-colonialists have done for half a millennium.
Another important reality for progressives to think about before voting is that the US society is terminally sick. Most of its inhabitants are emotionally sick. I, too, am sick from the disease of capitalism-imperialism, the constant killings; the ever-changing chaos that this new digital, artificial intelligence system has created. The disease is contagious.
The Yankee state and its vassals in Europe, the British Commonwealth, South Korea, and Japan are bred on selfishness, look-at-me self-poisoning tattoos and look-at-me smart telephone culture. After “We” of all colors, who struggled for centuries to finally achieve the right to vote for all non-white people and women, what did “We” come up with? Yet another liar and murderer, Barack Obama. He praises American Exceptionalism, believing America is the “only indispensable country” in the world.
As he said at a 2014 commencement address at West Point, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being…Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will.”
Wouldn’t that be great? Humanity does not need one leader. If we had cooperative economies and if we all lived in equality, we could all make the most important decisions, which we certainly cannot do under capitalism and with US’s military rule. There are around 4000 military bases and other military facilities in the 50 states, an average of 80 per state, and 800 military bases in some 100 countries. The US economy would collapse without the war machine. That fact must sink in so that “We” will struggle to create an economy and society based on cooperation, equality and peace.
If inconsistent Trump does win and would stop this proxy war against Russia, which has murdered around one million Ukrainians and Russians, that could be the most positive something “We” could do to agitate for a peaceful economy.
Trump, though, wants to kill more Palestinians than Biden, who wants “fewer” killed. Nevertheless, the fascist Zionist regime will still kill as many as they want. From one holocaust to another!
THIS CANT BE HAPPENING!
No matter who is the next US president, Wall Street and the military industrial complex will not on its own cease endeavoring to dominate the whole world. It is called capitalism-imperialism regardless of who leads it. Evil is evil, Republican or Democrat. We must understand that it is the SYSTEM not the individual or party that is essential. There are groups in the US today who understand that, such as the People’s Forum, which is activist and educational with courses/lectures showing that truth. There are others, such as ANSWER. Not living in the US, you readers know more than I do about what activist groups there are to support.
June Polls: What Are We To Do?
Following the first Trump-Biden debate polls show Trump=44-45%; 41-43% Biden. President: general election : 2024 Polls | FiveThirtyEight
In 2016, only 7% of black voters supported Trump. Today polls say three times that many will vote for him in November, and the majority of those under 50 will do so. In 2016, 28% of Latinos voted for Trump. May 2024 polls show 46% will do so in November.
In the last two weeks of June, polls show around 16% for the other four candidates, three of whom are progressive, or progressive-conservative. Then there is Chase Oliver of the conservative Libertarian party showing 1% in polls.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (progressive-conservative) is running at 11% even though he is not on all 50 states’ ballots, which he says will be the case by mid-July. I believe he is worth voting for if for no other reason than he knows the CIA murdered his uncle and has the guts to state the truth. He might even do something about that if he were to win. RFK Jr.’s father said he would reopen the investigation if he won the 1968 election. Not so surprisingly, he was murdered shortly thereafter. President: general election : 2024 Polls | FiveThirtyEight; Home of the Marist Poll | Polls, Analysis, Learning, and More.
Cornel West is People’s Party candidate with 3% of those polled. He and Green Party Jill Stein (1%) have similar platforms advocating justice for all, world peace, green energy. Both are genuine progressive/radicals worth voting for.
“There’s a large number of what are called the double haters, that is people who will not vote for either of these two zombie candidates,” Stein said. “So we’ve had enormous interest in our campaign, especially many people who will no longer show up for the Democratic Party.”
In my youth, millions of us in the US, the Commonwealth and Europe acted in a myriad of ways for years until our voices/bodies at least shortened the war against the Southeast Asian peoples. TCBH has a voice among progressives and radicals so let us use it to educate for socialism—without using the term if people think the MSM-MIC has corrupted it. Maybe one day “WE” will be able to make a big dent in the “THEYS”. So vote for independents who stand for peace, equality, green energy!
Make The Establishment tremble!
Ron Ridenour, a lifelong activist and revolutionary journalist, has been an expat living in Denmark for over 30 years, He is an occasional contributor to this site.
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Ron, I think you make a very strong argument for not voting for the lesser of two evils, and even address the issue of whether at least people of the global majority livindhere in the US, and especially American Blacks and undocumented immigrants facing mass deportation under Trump might feel that there are more pressing concerns than ending the war in Ukraine. They may.well feel that preventing a man with a lifetime history of racism and racist oppression whose three Supreme Court nominations assure that a Trump administration and a Trump-dominated Congress would reverse a century of gains for them — meaning loss of voting rights, an end to diversity hiring, in school admissions, etc. and a brutal pursuit, imprisonment and deportation of millions of immigrants.It is an appalling prospect akin to the dark days following the British partition of India or More recently Myanmar’s expulsion of the Rohingya people.
Furthermore, while I agree that “lesser-evil” voting by liberals and even many leftists over decades has stymied the development of any serious left political movement able to challenge to the one-capitalist-party duopoly in the US, As someone who has voted third party in the past a number of times (including I’m sorry to say in 2016 while living in Pennsylvania which Trump won the electoral votes of by just 0.7%), I believe that this particular election is qualitatively different from all earlier ones back to the era of the New Deal.
Donald Trump in his second term, should his election bring with it Republican control of both houses of Congress, and with a Supreme Court super majority not only already in his pocket, but having shown this past week that it is ready to make him immune from prosecution, a court that is ready to end any limits on presidential power, and that has demonstrated itself itself ready and willing to end voting rights for many Americans, we are actually facing the prospect of a real fascist dictatorship in this country.
Furthermore, with Trump talking about having police shoot protesters, and even about calling in federal troops to attack protesters (as he notoriously did in Portland in his first term)this, the alternative leftist strategy of resisting in the streets as an alternative to voting for a Democrat will be more like what people in the Philippines and in Latin America have had to do to oust fascists.
The other problem is that while, as you say, there are third party and independent candidates for those who want to avoid voting Democratic, there is no real left organization with significant political power in the US. And just voting for one such tiny party — even if all leftists settled on one — would not amount to anything.
I will not have the stomach to vote for Biden, if he manages to stay a candidate, or probably for any alternative candidate the Democratic leadership turns to, if that person says she or he will continue to arm a genocidal Israel. I also certainly cannot vote for Trump, a convicted rapist and abuser of women, a life-long racist and a massively corrupt person, who by the way will back Israel to the hilt and then, after Gaza is totally destroyed and its inhabitants killed or driven into the Egyptian desert, will help his son in law turn Gaza into a playground for the super-rich like Dubai.
Having spent most of your life in the US, Ron where you courageously fought for years against all of the US’s evils, I know that you are aware of the depth of the problems here and the challenge we on the left have trying to organize and arouse the US masses to rise up and fight for something better, including a real democracy. (Half or more of the working class in this country votes against their own interests, focussing instead on single issues like opposing “killing babies,” mandating masks or vaccines in a pandemic, or outlawing semi-automatic high capacity assault weapons.)
But allowing Trump to take power, especially with the now openly talked-about Project 2025, a blueprint for the establishment of autocracy in the US whose leader just yesterday warned of violence if “the left” tries to prevent its implementation, means that this really is an existential election.
Yes, I agree with you Ron that the threat of a nuclear WWIII is very real under the Democrats, whether it’s Biden or some other neoliberal Democratic candidate. But while that is a threat and a real danger which could result from a Democratic win in November, the prospect of an end to the not insignificant freedoms and limited democracy that we still have in the US in the event of a Trump second term has become almost a certainty, in my opinion.
Dave, Yes the right-wing is better prepared for armed struggle, and its racist-fascist fraction (Republican and Democrat) is always prepared to kill, especially black people. Yet, Democrats play along, sometimes in the same fashion, other times a bit less violently.
I remind you, and TCBH readers, that when Martin Luther King, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), NAACP, CORE, Malcolm X, Black Panthers and Black Power groups were struggling in a myriad of ways to achieve, at least, equal civil rights and voting rights, DEMOCRATS were the main enemy, especially in the south where the main battles were fought.
In 1964, I was jailed the day after Goodman-Chaney-Schwerner were kidnapped, tortured and murdered. The cops held me (and a colleague civil rights worker) in a police car while they talked with civilian KKKers about what to do with us. Fortunately, we were only jailed, and released a day later when civil rights lawyers got us released.
Who were Mississippi’s government officials then: Democrat Paul Johnson governor; Democrat Senators John Stennis and James Eastland, buddies of Joe Biden when he became a senator a decade later. His main mentor was another Democrat “Hitler Angel” Averell Harriman, as I wrote above.
(OK, Dave, it was also Democrat LBJ who signed the two civil rights acts AFTER our mass movements demanded such, and while he was murdering millions of Southeast Asians, he hoped for some “peace” at home, which “We” did not allow him.)
Eastland told the Senate, and the MSM picked it up, that the entire Mississippi Freedom Summer voting campaign was run by the Communist Party. His proof was that I was one of 1,000 black and white volunteer campaigners. Out of them, only one other was a member of the CP, my roommate. In fact, the Communist Party did not support our campaign, which I know personally. It was tied to the most conservative of civil rights groups, NAACP, and the Democratic Party. What did those comprises lead to?
Dave, I think your good nature makes you wish for the best without great numbers of people getting hurt. That would be good if it could be. How many Ukrainians and Russians has the current Democrat government killed? One million? How many tens of thousands Palestinians? How many other thousands in Africa’s wars imposed upon them by the U.S,, and millions more dying of unnecessary poverty—40 nations suffering under DEMOCRAT economic sanctions?
I repeat: both parties have always been and always will be War Parties, American Exceptionalist/Manifest Destiny/Monroe Doctrine parties.
George Kennan, one of Democrat Truman’s Cold War warriors, warned Wall Street and its Pentagon that the U.S. would face dangerous competition subsequent to WWII since it only had 6.3% of the world’s population yet 50% of the world’s wealth. Swans Commentary: Context And Accuracy: George F. Kennan's Famous "Quotation," by Gilles d'Aymery - ga192; and George Kennan urged American leadership and patience to counter the Soviets. Instead, the Cold War ensued (theconversation.com)
As early as 1948, Kennan advised not to mess with Ukraine. “No Russian government would ever accept Ukrainian independence. Foreseeing a deadlocked struggle between Moscow and Kyiv, Kennan made detailed suggestions at the time about how Washington should deal with a conflict that pitted an independent Ukraine against Russia. He returned to this subject half a century later. Kennan, then in his 90s, cautioned that the eastward expansion of NATO would doom democracy in Russia and ignite another Cold War.” George Kennan’s Warning on Ukraine | Foreign Affairs
George W. Bush agreed with Kennan when he promised his “comrade” Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1989-90, that the U.S. would not move NATO east of Germany. Nevertheless, as I have written above, Democrat Bill Clinton ignored that essential agreement for world peace.
Today, the U.S. has just half the world’s wealth it had in 1945 (estimates vary from 24-30%) with only 4.2% of the world’s population. China is “catching up” with 16% of global wealth for its 1.45 billion population, 20% of the world’s population. That leaves 60% for Global South, Europe, Russia plus. Russia, with 140 million people (1.5% of global population), has just 1% of world’s economy. Visualizing the U.S. Share of the Global Economy Over Time (visualcapitalist.com) and
List of countries by total wealth - Wikipedia.
Despite its wealth, Wall Street’s two parties keep 11% of its population in poverty. Guess what, both parties keep far more non-white people in poverty, and in jails-prisons, than whites. Economy of the United States - Wikipedia
Even the most ruthless warrior of all US presidents, Harry Truman—who without “necessity” murdered Japanese civilians with atomic bombs, created the Cold War with Winston Churchill, the CIA and then NATO—had second thoughts towards the end of his life.
“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven if I had known it would become the American Gestapo”. Truman told his biographer he made a mistake creating the CIA. Even President Truman Regretted Forming The CIA – The Millennium Report and TOP 25 QUOTES BY HARRY S. TRUMAN (of 382) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)
Before that admission, just one month after the CIA murdered President John Kennedy, Truman wrote in the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.” Truman's True Warning Against the CIA (consortiumnews.com) This is by Ray McGovern, former CIA advisor to Ronald Reagan.