Randy Benson at AU on June 10, 2023

 Randolph Benson

And We Are All Mortal:

A Commemoration of the 60th anniversary of JFK’s American University “Peace Speech”

Delivered by Randolph Benson

12 Noon, June 10, 2023

We gather today to commemorate the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's American University commencement address, also known as his "Peace Speech", here at the very spot of the speech.

This gathering was first held in 1999 by Coalition on Political Assassinations co-founders John Judge and Bill Kelly, and longtime COPA board member, T Carter. I first came in 2002, where I filmed the first frames of my film The Searchers. John Judge held this every year until his death in April 2014. While no one can possibly replace John, as a former member of COPA and a mentee of John’s, I felt it was important to continue this tradition, and I’ve held this every year since John’s death and will continue to do so as long as I’m able.

In the spring of 1963 President Kennedy began to feel that there was a possibility for some kind of new movement in our relations with the Soviet Union. He began to look for an opportunity to make what was described by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy as a “peace speech.” This was a project that was kept extremely confidential in the White House. Bundy began in a quiet way to get from two or three members of the White House staff ideas which might go into such a speech. Speechwriter and presidential advisor Ted Sorensen worked on it. The president thought a great deal about it, talked with Sorensen and Bundy and made clear the point of view and the ideas that he wanted.

A draft of the speech emerged and it was shown to a small group in the White House. The president had been in Hawaii and on the Friday before the Monday commencement Ted Sorensen flew to Honolulu with the draft of the speech and the president worked on his final revisions on his way back to Washington.

According to Presidential historian Arthur Schlesinger, the speech was not shown to the State Department or to the Defense Department until two days before the speech.

At noon on Monday, June 10, 1963 Kennedy addressed the graduating class of American University delivering the following words (abridged):

There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university wrote John Masefield and his tribute to English universities and his words are equally true today. He didn't refer to spires or towers, to campus dreams and ivied walls. Masefield admired the splendid beauty of the university, he said, because it was “a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, for those who perceive truth may strive to make others see.”

I have therefore chosen this time in this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived. Yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana, forced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I'm talking about genuine peace. The kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living; the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children. Not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time. I speak of peace because of the new face of war.

First let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it's impossible. Too many think it’s unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed and that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made therefore they can be solved by man; and man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable and we believe they can do it again.

There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.

So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.

We shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on -- not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace.

This speech was immediately to become known around the world as JFK’s Peace Speech. This speech received very little coverage in the news here in the United States, however it was front page news in papers around the world. In fact, Soviet Premier Kruschev ordered the speech to appear of the front page of the state newspaper, Pravda.

JFK then aggressively initiated a number of unilateral policy changes in line with what he expressed in this speech:

On June 28, JFK signed and had delivered to the Joint Chiefs of Staff National Security Action Memorandums – NSAMs - 55, 56, 57, which ordered:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff would be wholly responsible for all covert and paramilitary actions in peacetime, which was effectively removing all power from the CIA and placing it within the Pentagon, who answered directly to the President, with all of the oversight of the Executive and Legislative branches.

This has been accepted as JFK’s first step in “splintering the CIA into a thousand pieces and scattering them into the winds”, as he said he would after the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

On August 5, representatives of the United States, Soviet Union and Great Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater or in the atmosphere.

On September 20, President John F. Kennedy gave a speech at the United Nations that proposed converting the “moon race” to a cooperative venture with the Soviet Union.

On September 21, JFK ordered the evaluation of massive wheat sales to the Soviet Union, and talks began between our two countries on September 30 and lasted until November 5. The agreement had then begun its process of inter- and intra-governmental review.

On October 11, he signed NSAM 263, and delivered it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It reads, in part:

At a meeting on October 5, 1963, the President considered the recommendations contained in the report of Secretary McNamara and General Taylor on their mission to South Vietnam.

The President approved the... implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. We recommend that:

A program be established to train Vietnamese so

that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

President Kennedy was assassinated about six weeks later, on November 22. On November 26, just four days after the assassination, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, signed NSAM 273 which reversed Kennedy’s Vietnam withdrawal policy, approved an expansion of America’s involvement in the Vietnam war and approved covert military and non-military action into Cambodia and Laos, which put the CIA back in its pre-NSAM 263 position.

In the following months, the wheat sales were scrapped, nuclear testing re-started, the expansion of the military state accelerated as well as the war in Vietnam.

However, on this spot, at the moment, 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy gave us his vision for peace. For that he was murdered. For that, we must find common ground, acknowledge our shared humanity, and work together. As JFK stated, “confident and unafraid, we must labor on...towards a strategy of peace”.

Thank you.