Newspaper Clippings on Jfk Assassination

. -
. ‘ '
'
I .'
-
I -. ‘
t John Dean
\ demand on
irtuit during
lose behind
Chronicle of
JFC, I-flat LIB
attend, the
ead and the
dto be those
straight alt
d Mind and
.-ntheinside, ,
_. _4
-- _ -
-
_ _
'- '
-
l there who '
1
' ' '
' ' ' ' '
ly,tellitlike .’; ~ .-
1
‘
» - '
'- -' T
"
.
' '
smcmtol. 'ew'er.Fors -
' "
led not $0.18!’ hi. the offioeofif summer
individuals, seldomj upon complicat-
ed forces or processes- It is, there-
.:_
fore, natural that young eo le and. -. .1 . .
P P
.foth_ers- whose experience is limited
inevitably interpret events as the re-
1su'lt'_.jof,"the actions ‘of powerful indi-
viduals "Almost ever crisis of tele
vision drama is reso ved by gunfire
or other violence, and every crisis of
diplomacy is resolved the meeting
somewhere of powerfu persons pi-i
vately talking The Hol ywood star
system prevails The proeeases of so-
cial ae‘o&sm§'i$dation were nelver so
meticu esoribed as in t e mo-
_§_on (piclmie ‘The Godfather " n
§_1tmaY» the order, to be able to-say, "I never takeI increase as vaeations.”»1t is part of thewd manyaf quotient. -
, .
IOW not only".-. -
_
»
'
,
.
but discuss ’ -i
Tbs wmaiamts of Pwsrfill Paqple-ere P,-oopof about stress, tension and ~overw_ork
;elf.imp°5ed are -mostly bogus, and when they're
motion is. , real. they_’re self-imposed. It's aig at 9:3 so ~ f°*'_m °f 8193- '
.. .
ian ofgreat
ess - could
mind against trickery.
The trouble with the mind of the
conspiracy theorist left or right is its
-inability to-carry more than one idea-
at once. It asks laws or principles
governing all events, as if human af
fairs were motions of dumb bodies,
but it ignores the one law that might
serve -- the idea that some things
might be true upon some occasions
and not upon other occasions For
exainiple, although Watergate was
cleary a “cons iracy to defraud
many citizens, t e murder of John
Kennedy may have been the dement
1 ,. in e of
gmla?d‘<Erthse(iiI;s fear
they had no right to be the_re, and
might at any moment be_ found out,
revealed as weak and ordinary men.
"George . Allen of ~
the Washingbton
Redskins, Nixon's favorite foot all
coach, was perhaps ‘unconsciously
speaking for the president when he
remarked, “The winner is the only
’§§*E§ The feeling-is that while it maybe all right »
wished him
m he would -
to have power, it is wrong to enjoy it.
.d happened,
iphic detail.
realize that
state of his
itus symbol.‘
sing able to
this as if ‘it
iatien. What
igh, a group.
l that power
rientation“)
with serum"
in the blood
gout, and
iossible risk
rt disease,"
.igh among
i, and at its
loyed, a de-
ition for the
Blood pros-
-rol both in-
who have" in a work-
es it hardly
per cent of
isponded to
It that their
’ected their
lat lead to
stress and
igly sus cot
lO felt their
rsimply re-
gquotient."
the Puritan
in which
.ted by an
amount of
all power,
l, must be
simple - I
ike power,
want, there-
it has been
against my
e everyone
iful burden,
.eir behalf.
may be all
s wrong to
Y
Peru::s.
rimand and
want to be
i. One way
icting _
de-
/. nu Italy.
qoushms.
iping and
-etched be-
emands of
I
_Yet love it we do. In the words of
novelist Patrick Anderson, “Its -like
a woman you want to stay in bed with
forever. But that's not al_ , not for the
best people. There's all you can do
with wer if ou’re and
the teeth every day, butsometimes
thorefll be those moments when
you've done everything right. W118!
everything breaks your way, and
than you're soaring, you’ve W91‘! W111‘
-Ema, whether or not anyone else
ows _it or understands it or even
gives agdamn." V
Perhaps herein lies a key to the
difficulty we have in. coping with
power -— it is perhaps the most per-
sonal desire wei have, since even the
intimacy of sex is usually shared
with someone else. Power, by con-
trast; is a private passion, the win-
ning and the losing are internal, only
we can knowwhether or not we've
won our game. "
. 1- Q Q Q
~-
"Power!" says the Rev. John J.
McLaughlin, the controversial Jesuit
who was a deputy" special presiden-
tial assistant, and seemed to function
as chief exorcist to the defunct Nixon
White House. ‘,‘What do we know
about it? We don’t knowanything
about it. We have sex education -.-
why don’t we have power education?
You can train yourself to handle
power." True enough, though one
wonders, judging from ather
McLaughlin’s support for_' such
temporal matters as the Christmas
bombing of Hanoi, the mining of Hai-
phong and the president's stand on
Watergate, whether he himself is
able to perceive the difference be-
tween what he describes as “two
views of power . . . anopportunity
for an ego-trip, and an opportunity
for service." "
We don't in fact know much about
power. No sooner had the scandal of
Watergate been revealed than -ser-
mons egan to appear on the evils of
flower-,*as if the White House under
ichard M.-Nixon had been the pal-
aoe of Nebuchadnezzar. Yet what was
Watergate but an example of the
price of impotence? The rationale for
he burglary — and all that followed
from it — was insecurity and envy,
the baffled fear on the part of the
president and his assistants that even
in the White House they were 'so_me-
.
t
I
‘
, smart .
_
toughizid lucky. yYoa get.kieked in
individual who is truly alive. I've
said this-to our ball club. Every time
you win, you're reborn; whenyou
lose you die a little."
But power is not based on winning
all the time. A’ man who has to win
every battle is asking the impossible
of himself and the world, and is likely
to collapse the first time he encoun-
ters defeat. A powerful man, by defi-
nition, is able to survive failure and
humiliation, to draw some deeger
wisdom" from them, to practice w at
John F. Kennedy called “grace
under pressure.”
Theessence of ower is_ the ability
to cope with the dzzmands of life, not
to react li_ke a Earanoid at‘ every real
or imagined t reat, or waste one's
life and energy trying to submit
everything to one’s own control. The
world is a disorderly and dangerous
place, and always has been, and the
man of power must learn to live in it
comfortably. It is one thing to have a
sense of order, but quite another to
impose that sense of order on the rest
of the world — no amount of power is
sufficient for that, and onecan only
fail in the attempt. We can only con-
trol others to a limited degree, and
the world is full of men who seem
powerful in their little world, but are
in fact chained to their desks like
galley slaves to the oar. On and on
they labor, far into the night, be-
cause they fear one moment of inat-
tention or hesitation will undermine
their power.
One could see these traits in for-
mer President Nixon — the joyless-
noes, “the endless struggle for con-
trol," the compulsiveneed to be “on
top,” the tortured attempts to dis-
guise even small defeats as" victories
of some kind, the endless pleas for
sympathy and understanding, the
feeling that life is nothing but a
tough challenge, in which hard work
and the will to win count for every-
thing.
It is not power - perhaps not even
the abuse of power— that is at the
root of the White House horrors.
“The thing that is completely misun-
derstood about Watergate," said for-
mer -Whlte House special counsel-
Charles Colson, “is that everybody
thinks the people surrounding the
president were drunk with
power. . . But it wasn't arrogance
at all. It was insecurity. That in-
security began -to breed a_ form of
paranoia. We overreacted to the at-
Finally, ‘it should be said that, de-
spite the pitfalls he leads us into,
despite the dangers, or simple dis-
comfort, the conspiracy theorist
seems to understand least his own
importance The paranoid contribu
tion to decision must always have
been great, integral to process, a
noise and a clamor keeping lawmak
ers from slumbering in town halls
and Congress, as children shape
their parents, or as students stopped
the war in Vietnam The heat of
paranoid instincts or intuitions
warms the law with human concern
tacks onus and to a lot of -things.”
There is no doubt that a “high-level
self-pity influenced the style of the
Nixon White House, andself-pity is
not an emotion one connects with a
sense of power. What is more, it led
to blunders, inefficiency and bad
management.
Nor was the Nixon administration
uniquein this respect. Many of the
people we think are powerfulturn out
on closer examination to be merely
frightened and anxious. It is a mis-
take to assume that the position and
the person are the same thing. A
man may have money, a great posi-
tion of authority, but if we notice that
his hands are constantly fidgeting on
his desk, that he»can't look us in the
eve, that he crosses and uncrosses
his legs as if suffering from a bad
itch in the-crotch and that when the
telephone rings, he can't make up his
mind whether to. ick it up or ignore
it, we can then, P think, safely con-
clude that he is not a man of power.
However humble our own position,
we have a chance of getting whatev-
er it is we want. How often we fail to
recognize this, how long it takes us to
learn the difference between real and
simulated power, what opportunities
we waste! .
We have to learn to fight subtly,
ruthlessly, constantly for our own. As
nations carry on diplomacy and war
to maintain their own independence,
so we too must play the games of
power in.order to be ourselves, to
avoid “being lived by events, rather
thanliving t em." W at is at stake is
our ability to be the person we want
to be, rather than being the person
others» want us to be. What we all
want is what Rollo May,describes as
“sense of significance. . .a person's
convictionthat he counts for some-
thing, that he has an effect on others,
and that he can get recognition from
his fellows.”
Thus, trivial as power games may
sometimes seem, they are a means
of defining who we are, of preserving
both ourfreedom of action and our
ability to effect change. We learn,"
early on in the schoolyard, that
things often go badly for bystanders,
that engaging‘ ourselves in events
may lead to t eir turning out in our
favor, rather than against us. When
you pick up the telephone, write a_
letter, join in a conversation, you are- like it or not - initiating a game,
at the end of which you will either
feel pleased with yourself or have the
nagging sense that you have some-
how been diminished, reduced in sig-
nificance. Nothing is static; every
action makes us more or less than we
were before. Even the most mundane
office is a place in which to test our
power. Every moment in the day
offers us theopportunity to try-our
skills, to enjoy our triumphs, to learn
something from defeats-— for we
cannot always be victorious.
Most ofus think ower lies else-
where, inthe next offlce, on the floor
above, in the White House, beyond
ourreach. But it is all around us; we
have only to seize it. It does" not -lie
beyond the everyday activities of our
lives, but in them. _
’i
I