Did The Kennedy Speech on No Secret Societies Seal His Fate?

The assassination of John F. Kennedy remains more than just a pastime for conspiracy theorists. Kennedy himself, in fact, was one that looked to stamp out what he perceived as powerful secret societies within the U.S. government.

Two years before his assassination, JFK delivered a powerful speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Speaking with the National News Publishers Association on April 27, 1961, Kennedy called for an end to secret societies in government.

Many conspiracy theorists believe that Kennedy’s speech about “no secrets” sealed the fate of a conspiracy theorist president.

So, did Kennedy’s denouncement of secret societies indeed seal his fate?

According to a transcript of the speech, entitled "The President and the Press," Kennedy spoke out against secrecy in government and warned those at all levels of government to avoid the stifling of dissent and covering up of mistakes.

Yet, in the same speech Kennedy scolded the press for revealing sensitive issues of national security.

The idea that Kennedy’s assassination was a government cover-up is by no means an uncommon theory. Even filmmaker Oliver Stone took plenty of heat for his Academy Award-winning film JFK, which implied that Lyndon Johnson played a role in the President’s assassination.

The question of course remains: did those looking to harbor secrecy within the government have enough at stake to warrant murdering Kennedy? Theorists have taken aim at the CIA, KGB, the Mafia, the FBI, and even Fidel Castro.

Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination. The former Marine defected to Russia and returned to the United States in 1962, a fact that bolsters the communist connection to JFK’s death.

Reading through the transcript of the New York Kennedy speech mentioning "no secrets," it’s hard to see how Kennedy’s words would have set in motion a deep-reaching government conspiracy to end his life. After all, we’ve heard the same calls for transparency and accountability from every American President in recent history - so what would make Kennedy's speech any different?

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Ben Norris is a freelance writer and independent journalist from Phoenix, Arizona. He is an Arizona Press Club scholar, human rights advocate. BenjaminJames has 84 post(s) at Top Secret Writers

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Posted in: Conspiracy Theories, Government Intelligence Tags: john f kennedy, kennedy assassination, mational news publishers association, secret societies

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Darren

Kennedy’s speech highlights the secretive nature of government in Soviet Russia, not the USA. Please read the entire speech and not one paragraph taken out of context.
Anonymous

Kennedy’s statement was anti-secrecy in general (“secret societies in government” were Ben’s actual words). I think that’s the point of most conspiracy theorists that tout the theory that Kennedy was targeted because of this speech. However, if you read Ben’s article you’ll notice that Ben’s position is that the theorists are wrong…and is essentially in agreement with you. Did you read the article before commenting?
Anonymous

Aha – awesome. Thanks for the update David. We’ll add this info to the article to make it clear that the Youtube video is edited. There are actually a number of these being distributed/copied around out there, so it’ll be good to shed light on what’s going on. We’ll have to provide some additional quotes from the actual speech.

Thanks again for the additional info!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1676832039 -Richard Simpson-

We reluctantly entered WWII two generations earlier. A generation earlier, we provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor, drawing us into WWII. Is it so hard to imagine that a generation after WWII, some ‘generals’ were itching for WWIII, and perhaps their own glorious war stories?
Anonymous

i’ve read the whole speech in full and people saying that its related to just the cold war or are trying to dub down saying has nothing to do with secret societies is ridiculous. From generally researching New world order related conspiracies over four years and looking into JFK and the speech my rational judgement is telling me that he is talking about shadow governments and regulatory democracy. I know the speech on line misses out a big section relating to the cold war but when you understand that the cold war in itself was phony or a false flag. Excuses for the speech not being about secret societies seem a bit weak to me.
Anonymous

SM Coogan – thanks for the update on your Alex Jones article. The sad thing is that I appreciate the effort Jones puts into issues, but it’s annoying to see someone ignore clear evidence and just go off on a tangent in the direction that they want to believe, rather than what reality is. It’s good to meet folks like you that can see the forest for the trees. I’ve bookmarked CTKA – thanks for letting us know about it.