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WHAT HIS ASSASSINS KILLED:

John F. Kennedy's Program
for a Nuclear America

This article appears in the October 18, 2013 issue of Executive Intelligence Review and is reprinted with permission.

[PDF version of this article]

This is an edited excerpt from the LaRouche PAC Weekly Report of Oct. 2, 2013. Megan Beets was the host, and the speakers were Michael Kirsch of the LaRouche science team, and Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

The ghost of President Kennedy speaks to his future:"This great, rich country of ours has a long, unfinished agenda, but it's always had that agenda, in creative times...."

Michael Kirsch: ...These cowards who are shutting down the government can feel the heat of the American population, like they felt with the objection to the Syrian strike; they can make it clear, that what they really want is for Glass-Steagall to go through; and as this crisis worsens, the population will be showering their demands upon them. But they also want water, they want food, and they want a full recovery program in the United States.

Now, that program we launched last month on this website: "Nuclear NAWAPA XXI: Gateway to a Fusion Economy." And that spells out what the future could look like, preparing the ground for fusion, full development of nuclear desalination, agreements with China and South Korea, the development of the whole region from the Mississippi all the way to the West Coast, all the way up through Canada, through the Bering Strait, and what the future lays out.

But what I want to present to you today, is a way in which to understand that that report is really the ghost of John F. Kennedy speaking to us today. And 50 years ago tomorrow, on Oct. 3, 1963, Kennedy spoke at Heber Springs, Arkansas, in his last major address, laying out this vision for the future, which was something he reviewed that entire week. And you'll see a presentation of that from Kennedy today.

FIGURE 1
This document by Kennedy’s team of experts, reviewing the proposals for NAWAPA and other water projects, was presented to the 89th Congress, second session, in 1966.
 
White House Photographs/Abbie Rowe
President Kennedy dedicates the first Saline Water Conversion Demonstration in Freeport, Tex. (with him are officials of Dow Chemical Co.). Kennedy is at the White House contacting the facility remotely—by telegraph, (or “on” switch?).

The Future Kennedy Planned

But one way to understand our report, why it really is the ghost of Kennedy, is to look at what the world would look like had John F. Kennedy's program gone through. And his program is not what people think about. He didn't just have one initiative, that he pushed us to go to the Moon. But on every single level, he was the nuclear President—vast advocacy of nuclear desalination; the first to start desalination of water, for the world. It was the first thing he did in office. He appointed the great geniuses to the Atomic Energy Commission, Glenn Seaborg and Leland Haworth, who pushed peaceful nuclear explosives, which hecontinued for use in construction, Project Plowshare. He pushed the entire nuclear program: We had 600 megawatts of nuclear power on the grid before Kennedy intervened at Hanford, Wash., to bring the steam coming from that plant into production for the electrical grid. He pushed the nuclear rocket. He pushed a full revival of project starts, which had been shut down even under Eisenhower. For eight years, no project starts on any dams in the United States.

So, if you look at the continuation of that program—also the breeder reactor[1]—if those policies had continued, we see that in 1966, what did occur, which was supposed to land on President Kennedy's desk, was this (see Figure 1). Sen. Frank Moss had set up a Senate committee in 1964 to study the NAWAPA [North American Water and Power Alliance] proposal, and that project was reviewed and found desirable.

FIGURE 2
1967: The Rover nuclear rocket is being transported to a test stand. This Kennedy program was killed by President Nixon in 1972.
  FIGURE 3
1968: Had Kennedy’s program continued, the Alaska-Canada rail system and the core of the NAWAPA project would have begun construction.

Kennedy had been in very good collaboration with Lester B. Pearson, the Prime Minister of Canada, so we can assume that by 1965, the treaty would have been signed for NAWAPA. Pearson later said that it was the U.S. that was dragging its feet, not Canada. He was in favor of it, in 1965, when the Senate finally did put forward a resolution that Bobby Kennedy co-sponsored. So that would have been done. The engineering plans would have begun.

In 1967, as you can see here (see Figure 2), the Phoebus rocket was operational: There were tests going on for a nuclear rocket, and that program was supposed to be operational in '67.

We would have seen, then, to support the NAWAPA project, by 1968, the completion of the Alaska-Canada rail system (see Figure 3), shown here in red. There is no rail connecting Alaska and southern British Columbia. That would have begun then, and would have supported the logistical needs for the construction of the large northern reservoirs throughout the NAWAPA project, which you can see there in blue. And at the same time, in 1968, we would have seen NAWAPA begin construction, after a few years of engineering.

Now, we did land on the Moon in 1969, but that was only one event, and the effects of Kennedy's program were unstoppable, throughout the economy. That was probably the only program of Kennedy's for which the full effects were not stopped.

But what else happened in 1969? The great German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and Kennedy's former science advisor Glenn Seaborg, who jointly oversaw the nuclear rocket program, said, we're going to continue with the NERVA rocket, and the NERVA rocket completed all of its tests, to move forward.

FIGURE 4 Giuseppe Verdi
1970: 150 million gallons/day nuclear desalination plants would be in operation (6-8 in Texas, California, Florida, and other coastal areas).

1970: According to Kennedy's program (see Figure 4), we see here, in blue, all of the coastal desalination plants for seawater that were going to be accomplished by then. The 1964 report said, 150 million gallon/day (mgd) plants. Los Angeles consumes 600 million gallons a day. That means that just four of the nuclear desalination plants that John F. Kennedy planned, would have provided all the water for modern-day Los Angeles. And that would have been the case for all the coasts: Florida, Houston, and the rest of California.

In the early 1970s (see Figure 5), according to John F. Kennedy's timeline, the process heat for industry, and for desalination also, would have led to the construction of nuplexes: whole nuclear agro-industrial complexes to be fully operational, according to their program, by the early '70s.

And then, also in the 1970s, we would have seen the use of nuclear explosives, not associated with destruction, but with construction, projects like deep harbors, tunnels, speeding up the building of NAWAPA which was now under way; building canals like the Kra Canal, the new Panama Canal, and other industry. And that was something that Kennedy was in avid support of.

FIGURE 5 Giuseppe Verdi
Early 1970s: Nuclear reactors providing process heat would be “full-scale operational,” leading to the construction of nuclear agro-industrial complexes.
  FIGURE 6
1970s: Nuclear propulsion space vehicles would be operational

By the 1970s, according to Kennedy's Atomic Energy Commission man, Glenn Seaborg, we would have had now, not just an operational nuclear rocket, but a space propulsion vehicle using that nuclear rocket, flying around and making tests (see Figure 6).

In 1975, according to their timeline, we would have had, not 150 million gallon/day plant for water desalination, but 800 mgd, 8,300 MW; that's not a slip of the tongue, that was the proposed plan, for an 8,300 megawatt thermal (MWth) nuclear power plant (see Figure 7 in PDF version)! So the cities on the coasts could have expanded populations, instead of restricting water supply, and agriculture in the West would have continued to expand, rather than contracting, which it started to do at this time.

By 1975, the rail system that was started earlier would now be done. So then you would have been able to supply all of these hard-to-reach areas, out in mountainous zones in northern British Columbia, in Canada, with all the supplies needed to build NAWAPA even faster, and that would be done.

1981 is when Wernher von Braun said we would have landed a nuclear-propelled spacecraft on Mars—unmanned or manned, that was the objective. They had all the tests planned, and that would have happened under Kennedy. Or even earlier than 1981, but that would have been the outer date on which that would have occurred.

FIGURE 8 Giuseppe Verdi
U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
1980s: Confinement of plasma and sustained fusion reactions would be achieved.

In the early 1980s, the breeder reactor program that would have been started in 1962-63, would have now been something that industry itself in the private sector would be building, and we would be putting breeder reactors on the grid throughout the economy.

Also in the 1980s, we have from Ben Deniston from our team, a quote from a Department of Energy official, who in 1976, told the Congress that an experimental fusion power reactor could be achievable by the 1980s (see Figure 8). And the only people who covered it at that time, were unfortunately us, and some obscure journals. But they were making the breakthroughs, that it was achievable, that the ignition of fusion would have been achieved at that time. And of course, in 1978, Princeton Laboratories made a breakthrough of controlling the anomalies of the plasma that were keeping the heat down, and to have a high density. And they made a 60 million degree breakthrough, which was also stopped under Jimmy Carter and [first DOE Secretary] James Schlesinger, and there was no funding. But that means that by the '80s, we would have achieved ignition of fusion.

Rigor Mortis Sets In

Also, now, in the 1980s, was when the U.S. began to completely die: Its soul was killed in 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, but it was starting to rot in 1980, especially with respect to water development. From 1950-80, we more than doubled the use of water and irrigation from 25 million acres to 58 million acres. That stopped in 1980, and today it's 56 million acres, and rapidly declining. There was no development of any water use throughout the West, from the Mississippi west, starting 1980.

FIGURE 9 Giuseppe Verdi
1990s: NAWAPA comes online, doubling the acreage under irrigation, already vastly expanded through desalination programs.

If Kennedy's program had continued, we would have seen an acceleration of that curve, adding, through desalination, more and more water to the system, instead of leveling off.

By 1990 NAWAPA would have been done (see Figure 9)! We would have had water now coming online, 72 million acre-feet (maf), doubling the acreage and then tripling it. So, in 1990, or around that time, what would have happened: Population centers would have been developing in that region. It's kind of cold up there, but hey! We would have cities, with fusion now coming online, nuplex cities, and we would have a finished NAWAPA system with all the dams, the infrastructure that's now there, we're colonizing that region, and we would have seen population growth up into those regions.

And some time in the 1990s, according to the DOE officials in '76 and '78, we would have had fusion reactors now being added to the grid, and according to Kennedy, breeder reactors, which create more fuel than they consume (the normal reactors just use 1% of the energy contained in the uranium we mine, and cannot use thorium; the breeder reactors would use all of the uranium, by turning the non-fissile U-238 into plutonium, and all of the thorium, by turning it into U-233).

FIGURE 10
U.S. Population
(Millions)Giuseppe Verdi

So, now all the electricity in the United States would be from that. And here's where we really see what this process would create: This is a graph of U.S. population (see Figure 10), and the blue curve is the actual population growth as it occurred, and the red curve is what Kennedy's program would have created, and what the forecasts of the Kennedy Administration were.

You can see here, that by 2000, we would have reached 350 million Americans, and by now, 2013, we would have 443 million Americans, instead of 318. That means, that with the 140 million households in the United States, averaging 2.6 people per household, there would be an extra person there. One way to think about it, is that every American essentially has a "lost sibling," a brother or a sister, who was never born, and would have been, had this program actually happened.

This is what the future is today, and I think people have difficulty in seeing what our report, "Nuclear NAWAPA XXI: Gateway to the Fusion Economy," will mean. Well, this was reality: We had a President who was pushing this, and the reality of the world, just 50 years ago, was that this was the perspective. So when we say today, that we have to do this program, this is the most recent mooring point, for actual human civilization, and real sanity in the United States. And every single problem that we face today, are all symptoms of this program's being stopped.

Nuclear Power

What I want to run through quickly now, is Kennedy's actual program, and play a few clips for you.

The first thing that Kennedy did, was to appoint Glenn Seaborg and Leland Haworth to the Atomic Energy Commission in January 1961, right after the inauguration—and they were the visionaries. And in February, he then pushed the nuclear desalination program in Congress, saying we were going to see water shortages in 15 years, and this would be one of the greatest developments for the world, to converting brackish and saline water into freshwater.

And then on May 25, 1961, he makes his famous address to the Congress on the Moon program. And he includes in there something which most people don't realize he was actually pushing:

President Kennedy:

Time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.... I therefore ask the Congress, above and beyond the increases I'd earlier requested for space activities, to provide the funds which are needed to meet the following national goals:

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period, will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space. And none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish....

We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar spacecraft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior.

We propose additional funds for other engine development, and for unmanned exploration, explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon. We make this judgment affirmatively: It will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

Secondly, an additional $23 million, together with $7 million already available, will accelerate development of the Rover nuclear rocket. [applause] This gives promise, of some day providing a means for even more exciting and ambitious exploration of space, perhaps beyond the Moon, perhaps to the very end of the Solar System itself.

FIGURE 11 Giuseppe Verdi
Kennedy tours the Nuclear Rocket Development Station in Nevada, Dec. 8, 1962. Glenn Seaborg is on the right.

So, you can see that people were clapping for the nuclear rocket!

And here's Kennedy touring the nuclear rocket facility, in 1961; there's Glenn Seaborg on the right (see Figure 11).

He activated the first saline-water conversion plant at Freeport, Tex. There's a video of this you can find online. He continued on this, saying, this is one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs in history. This will make the deserts bloom, and will be one of the greatest things we could do around the world.

And then he wrote to the Congress about it, saying water would soon become a limiting factor for economic growth, not only in this nation, but in nations around the world.

Then, he intervenes in Project Plowshare, saying that we need to continue the use of underground atomic explosions without fallout, according to the Project Plowshare program, peaceful uses of nuclear explosives.

By September, he signs his bill into law for nuclear desalination development, which moves forward.

And then, on March 17, 1962, he really pushes nuclear power, and he says, we need to take a new, hard look at nuclear power in the economy.

As I said, up to that point, we had 600-800 MW six experimental reactors, which were created by the government. And they did a full study, getting back to him in November, with a 76-page report on a full program, for not just some observations, but a full transition to 100-200 nuclear fission reactors, not just burning up all the fuel, but then, creating some extra fuel in the process of fission; and then to the full breeder reactor, so that we would have no fossil fuel electricity on the grid by the beginning of this century.

Managing Water for the Next Generation

What I want to play now is a clip of the other main program Kennedy was pushing in that year, which is a nationwide water basin study. He revived the TVA; he revived everything that Roosevelt had pushed; he revived the project starts that had been completely stopped.

He made a number of speeches on this in 1962, and he also wrote to Congress, saying that we should have state planning, but also a Water Resources Council that would have then worked with Canada to build NAWAPA.

So, I'm going to play you these clips of speeches that he gave expressing that program:

President Kennedy, Oahe, S.D., Aug. 17, 1962:

This dam will produce enough electric energy, this one dam, to light the city of Edinburgh, in Scotland. This dam alone will supply enough irrigation area, larger than the nation of Luxembourg. This dam, and the rest of the dams on this river, which 30 years ago would have provided only floods, and darkness, now provide irrigation, and light. And though those of us who are here today follow in the footsteps of those who made it possible, we share a satisfaction and also a commitment, that we must, in our time, make it easy for future Presidents of the United States, and future citizens, in the 1970s and '80s, to visit projects like this, which had been planned and carried out in our day....

"And in 1944, under the administration of President Roosevelt, a comprehensive Missouri Basin Plan was authorized to accomplish all of these great objectives. This is the fifth, of six great dams that control the mainstream of the Missouri River. And I can assure those of you at the upper end of the Missouri, and our good friends at the lower end, that it will continue to be our policy, to regulate the storage and the flow of water, in these reservoirs, in the most advantageous manner for all concerned, that the best engineers in the world can devise....

Pueblo, Colo. Aug. 17, 1962:

In 1992, as those men and women were 30 years ago, who began to make this project possible, what are we going to do in 1962, beginning today, to determine what projects we should develop, so that by the end of this century, when there are 300 million people in the United States, that there will be available to them land, and water, and light, and power, and resources? And places to live, and places to rest, and places to work. So, we salute this project today, and we salute those who made it possible. And we look to the future, and we look to the past, and we commit ourselves in 1962, not only to celebrate this project, but to move ahead, in all the other areas, stretching from California to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in building this country up....

Every member of Congress, everyone in the Executive branch, from the President on, in the field of national resources, has to plan during their period of administration or of office, for the next generation. Because no project that we plan today will be beneficial to us. Anything we begin today, is for those who come after us, and just as those who began something years ago make it possible for us to be here, I hope we'll fulfill our responsibility to the next generation that's going to follow us....

And the important lesson in all of those projects is that progress isn't being made as a result of a sudden idea, suddenly coming into fruition. This project, the Fryingpan, Ark., and the project in South Dakota, represented 10, 20, and 30 years' effort of devoted citizens. Things do not happen, they are made to happen. And this project is the result, in our action today, of 30 years of men, some of whom have now died, who thought that this dam would help this valley.

And you really see there, his theme: He was living—as you've written about, Mr. LaRouche, on the "simultaneity of eternity"—he's living not in this present moment; the question of human immortality, that's his theme. His theme is, the creation of something that's way beyond your own mortal existence. That was what he was reviving, that full commitment.

After this speech that we just saw, on Sept. 12, about four weeks later, he makes his most famous speech, at Rice University, saying why we go to the Moon. I'm not going to play that for the sake of time, today, but everybody should watch that speech.

I didn't mention it, but the month before that, he'd intervened on the Hanford nuclear reactor, and said that we need to bring this reactoronline with electricity—it was being blocked by Congress. It was going to be the biggest plant, and they were not letting the steam actually be used for electricity. They were keeping these reactors that we had off the electrical grid, because people were trying to stymie the development, saying it's not cost-effective, and so forth. So he personally intervened, writing a letter saying this has to be done.

Later that year, it finally was done, and the Congress moved ahead with it and brought the reactor online.

Then, on Sept. 26, he signed the bill for Hanford. And his commissioners, Glenn Seaborg and Leland Haworth, who wrote the full report, confirmed to him with a 76-page plan that nuclear energy would surpass the efficiency of coal, in physical terms, and that there was a whole plan for breeder reactors and use of process heat, in that report, November 1962.

Nuclear Power for Water and Energy

Giuseppe Verdi
U.S. Department of Energy
U.S. Department of Energy The President at the site of the soon-to-be-built Hanford nuclear plant in 1963.

Then, he launched not just his desalination program that he worked on for two years, but now he turned it into a nuclear desalination program, and he convened a special task group in the White House, in January 1963, to study the creation of large, dual-purpose nuclear reactors. They were discussing this throughout the year, and they finally finished only months after his assassination, with that 8,300 MW reactor, but also the full program, immediately, for 1970.

And in September, he intervenes again, to continue the Project Plowshare. September 11, 1963.

And then he takes his final tour, which I want to play you a clip from, at Hanford. He goes, a year after Hanford was started, and now he kicks off the construction of the largest nuclear reactor, which would be four times larger than any nuclear reactor in the world, the first 1 gigawatt nuclear reactor plant, in the United States. There are two other speeches he gave during that trip, in Salt Lake City, and you can find them on our website [www.larouchepac.com], but I'm not going to play that. I just going to play his speech at Hanford: the expression of the report he received from Glenn Seaborg and Haworth, and how he was moving everything forward.

President Kennedy:

I'm also glad to come here today, because we begin work on the largest nuclear power reactor for peaceful purposes in the world. And I take the greatest satisfaction of the United States being second to none. And I think it's a good area where we should be first, and we are first. [applause] We are first.

It's extraordinary how long it took. It's extraordinary what energy, human energy, was required to get this concept accepted. But as Scoop Jackson [Sen. Henry Jackson] said, just as it took a decade to get the Grand Coulee, which of all the extraordinary national assets I've seen in the last two days, is the most extraordinary, because it not only led to the prosperity of this valley, but led to what has been happening here for 20 years, and now leads to this new breakthrough, from that action, which took a decade to accomplish, and which will pay for itself many times over, and in a sense already has, we have some idea of how important it is, that these fights be won.

But the other part of conservation is the newer part. And that is to use science and technology to achieve significant breakthroughs, as we are doing today, and in that way, to conserve the resources, which 10 or 20 or 30 years ago may have been wholly unknown. So we use nuclear power for peaceful purposes and power.

You know in the next 10 years—I hope the people of the United States realize it, that we double the need for electric power every 10 years! We need the equivalent of a new Grand Coulee Dam every 60 days! In the next 20 years, we're going to have to put into the electric industry, $125 billion of investment. And when we do that, this country is will be richer. And our children will enjoy a higher standard of living. We don't realize that what we regarded as affluence, 30 years ago, is now way down below: Air conditioning, television, electricity, and all the rest have changed the life of this country, and we're going to find the same, extraordinary changes, in the next 20 or 30 years.

I think we must do several things: First, we must maintain an aggressive program to use our hydro resources to the fullest. Every drop of water, which goes to the ocean, without being used for power or used to grow, or being made available in the widest possible basis, is a waste. And I hope that we will do everything we can to make sure, that nothing runs to the ocean unused and wasted. [applause]...

And third, as is well known here in Hanford, we must hasten the development of low-cost atomic power. I think we should lead the world in this. By 1967, '68, 1970, in the Northeast United States, where power rates are nearly double yours, we're going to find atomic power increasingly competitive.

And by the end of this century, this is going to be a tremendous source. Our experts estimate that half of all electric energy, generated in the United States, will come from nuclear fission.

These are the things we must do, and many more. This great, rich country of ours has a long, unfinished agenda, but it's always had that agenda, in creative times. And this is a creative time in our country, and throughout the world. All of the trained, and educated men and women, who are making our country over, who are building a better standard of living for our people—this is a time when we wish to encourage that release of energy, human energy, which is the most extraordinary of all.

And therefore, I'm proud to come to here, across the United States, as President, to express our thanks to you, to express my pride in what is being begun here today, which puts the United States, as I said, once more in the lead, in a whole new area which can mean so much to people around the world. And I think it's very appropriate that we come here, where so much has been done to build the military strength of the United States, and to find a chance to strike a blow for peace, and to find a chance to strike a blow for a better life for our fellow citizens.

This is a great national asset here. I can assure you, it will be maintained.

Make Up for Lost Time

All this progress was ended on Nov. 22, 1963. And the Moon program was not able to be halted, and the effects of that did transform the economy, and the nuclear reactor program did accelerate, as far as just the basic reactors, rapidly under Johnson, in the 1960s, we built way more than we even expected. But the nuclear rocket program, which had passed all the tests, was killed under Nixon in 1972; the nuclear desalination plants were never built, even though Johnson supported it, and had a whole Water for Peace plan, nothing was built; the breeder reactor program was scrapped, killed. There were fake attempts to support it, building one and then never letting it come online. And the use of peaceful nuclear explosives was phased out.

And that's why Kennedy was killed, to prevent the application of this. But this is the program that we have to do now, today. And this is our program. "Nuclear NAWAPA XXI: Gateway to the Fusion Economy" is, really, that program. Everything that we're seeing now, is the effect of that being killed. And the only thing to do, is to revive it. And I think if people think about Kennedy as President, you see what this growth process means, an evolutionary process of a nation, as he spelled out there. Saying, that 30 years ago, what we thought was affluence, is considered commonplace today.

So it was this complete evolutionary trend. And we had a President like that! That's what I think should shock people, the fact that this was in place. You say, how could that change so quickly? But I think that only by getting that in people's gut, can this population of the United States today and this Congress—or a whole new Congress (scrap these bastards!)—ever find the courage again to break through and make up for lost time.

So, I turn it over to you.

Discussion

Lyndon LaRouche: I think the point is, it's all obvious: There are things we have to play into this thing which are much beyond what you just presented, but that's the foundation, that's the description of the general foundation. And once we get that kind of commitment today, we would go ahead with much more. Certainly, I would be pushing much more.

I've discouraged people from thinking about putting man on Mars for the time being, especially for most of this remaining century. The purpose has to be, not putting man, as mankind, on Mars, or other places; the point is, controlling these areas, controlling these volumes, managing them. Because what's involved in this, the implications are beyond belief. We do have to have defenses against rocks and things of that sort. We do have to have other kinds of defenses, in the Solar System itself, in the nearby section of the Solar System. These things are essential.

And there are other aspects which go much beyond anything we've discussed here so far, and those are the things which, really, are the future. How're we going to take care of asteroids threatening mankind's existence? That's a leading concern, or should be. We have other kinds of things in nearby space, which should be of leading concern. But because the public is not informed of these things, or don't think they're reasonable, we might lose the entire human species, with one blow, by one fairly large asteroid.

Giuseppe Verdi
NASA
At Cape Canaveral, Dr. Wernher von Braun explains the Saturn Launch System to President Kennedy, Nov. 16, 1963.

Kirsch: You can't control anything without a nuclear rocket system. Their proposal was to go to Saturn, in six years. So you could get out there, you could figure out all these things in a very short amount of time.

LaRouche: Yes, there are aspects of these in that part of the system, where there are dangers which are coming from a great distance at a highly accelerated rate. But we need to really increase our understanding, get our people out of this monotony of routines of "Oh, this has already been proven, that has been proven." The most important things, on which human life depends, are the things which are yet to have been proven! And these things that we're not doing have the potential that the human species can disappear!

Kirsch: What I find shocking is that, if you look even at Kennedy's speeches when he ran for President, he was talking about all these future-oriented programs in 1960! He said, my opponent is saying nothing about the future.

But how could he have this view of the future, on all levels, and then the United States tolerate dropping that future thinking? What is it that gives someone like him the ability to plan out, and then push, and then to realize that, whereas people today say, "Well, you can't do all these big things—Omigod, NAWAPA is so big!" Or, "You gotta just stick to one thing, you guys gotta be practical. Just push this one nuclear power initiative." But you realize, you had a President who did everything, because that's really the only way you do it.

And that is reality. What we're living in today, is unreality. The way people talk about things today is actually not reality. This is the mooring point for reality.

Why Kennedy Was a Threat

LaRouche: You have to think of what the threat is that Kennedy actually represented. Who was he actually threatening? To whom was he a threat, and why?

Because of an opponent. Who was the great opponent of the United States, in that interval? Who was the great opponent of such measures by the United States, which the United States was capable of doing?

Who is that enemy, from abroad? With agents within our own country, who created this mess? What did Truman represent? Go back to Truman.

Now, here we have President Roosevelt, and the invasion of France, and so forth, this was already planned. But it was postponed, and postponed. And the implication is that the postponement of this invasion of France, as part of this liberation process, was that they [the British and their American confederates] were waiting for Roosevelt to die first, and Truman to come into power. That was the issue. That has been the issue.

So that every time we, in the United States, begin to move in one of these directions which were considered a threat to the British Empire, and its associates, that's where it comes from. There was only one real enemy of the United States, during that period. It was not the Soviet Union. It was the British Empire—or the Anglo-Dutch Empire, more precisely defined.

And we're still faced with that, today. What's the Queen of England demanding? What has she been demanding? That we go immediately to a reduction of the population of the planet, from 7 billion people, to 1. And that the standard of living be lowered, accordingly. In other words, the same thing, that is the British Empire, or the Anglo-Dutch Empire, more precisely defined. And that empire is still there.

And we have our people who call themselves patriots, we have members of Congress who call themselves patriots—and they do want to have that name of "patriot"—but what do they do in practice? What they do is they say, "Let's be practical," which means "I don't want to get shot!" "I don't want to get thrown out of office." "I don't want to be subjected to all kinds of indignities, because I displeased the Lady over there." This is the reality!

In such circumstances, you have to think very clearly about strategy. What is the strategy of the United States by which the United States could have prevented much of this from happening? Things they didn't do. Well, you had Truman. Truman just passed everything over to Churchill.

Kirsch: He stayed in the White House for two months! He just came over here, and slept in the basement.

LaRouche: Yes, but this was the process! We had a stinking President, really, a clown, a thug! And a controlled personality. We had other problems after Kennedy. Johnson was scared to death! He said so! Then you had this nut coming in, [Nixon], who caused a real problem, but they threw him out.

But then you look at the record: We never really got back to where we were with Kennedy. We were never allowed—

Kirsch: We were never even close.

JFK Refuted Malthus

President John F. Kennedy on Oct. 22, 1963 debunked British economist Thomas Malthus’s (1766- 1834) genocidal theory that population growth inevitably outstrips food-production capability, and leads to starvation.

Addressing the National Academy of Sciences one month before his assassination, Kennedy stated:[2]

“Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom.”

Kennedy went on to prescribe the government policy, scientific advancement, and international cooperation needed for expanded output to feed a growing population:

“The truth or falsity of [Malthus’s] prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions. . . . The Earth can be an abundant mother to all of the people that will be born in the coming years. . . . Abundance depends now on the application of sound biological analysis to the problems of agriculture, and the long-term answer to inadequate food production, which brings misery with it, must lie in new research and new experimentation, and the successful use of new knowledge will require close cooperation with other nations.”

The President proposed concerted international scientific work, new infrastructure, and nuclear power to solve such problems as resource development, protection from catastrophic weather, and overcoming poverty.

—Michael Kirsch and Anton Chaitkin

LaRouche: Right, we were never even close to starting. What Kennedy represented, with Eleanor Roosevelt, who was his chief sponsor, he represented the continuation of Roosevelt. He did more than that, as the representative of Roosevelt; he was also the representative of the Founders of our nation. And that's the fact now.

What It Will Take To Succeed

Kirsch: Also, you look at the destruction of all of Kennedy's policies, and then you realize, you can't just push "nice" programs! Because obviously, people have been trying to revive and push these nice programs for a long time, but they continue to get sabotaged; people pushed the breeder reactor, and this and that, but everything gets destroyed. So we have to destroy this enemy. Because you can't just say, "We need this whole development program that we're pushing now today." The issue is, how do we do that? And my question is, do we have to have a hero who exposes this treason, the Warren Commission coverup? Do we have to get at the root of who this enemy is, in order for this program to go through?

LaRouche: There have been a number of people who have been committed to making this kind of program work. I have been one of them. There have been others. But for one reason or another, either we didn't have, in one case, have the access to the leadership position, or, lacked the courage or capability of designing and steering it. So therefore, all they have to do, the British Empire, is look at the people of the United States, look at the institutions, look at who they can corrupt? Make sure that what should happen, doesn't happen!

Who's the enemy? It's the Anglo-Dutch interest, which is the dominant power on this planet, politically. This is the enemy of the United States, it's what's called the British Empire, the Anglo-Dutch empire, that'swhat the enemy is! And don't try to explain by anything else. That is the enemy. And it's the only enemy. It always has been the enemy, ever since the Dutch took over and called themselves British. Because it was the Dutch empire in the 17th Century, and its transmogrification, that becomes the British Empire, with the Dutch still in control. It's the same organization.

What is it? It's global, actually. Look at the British Empire, what was included in the British Empire, and what is still included in the British Empire, even though it's not counted as that. The mentality of people, conditioned through generations, to accept a British standard, as the standard under which they, with their own costume and their own language, will use!


[1] There was a report from the Kennedy Administration on breeder reactors that said we should build eight experimental reactors, right then. Not the measly one that was authorized under Nixon in 1972, and built, but never brought online.

[2] JFK's Address to the National Academy of Sciences (YouTube)

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