Why so many assassinations in the 60s

So why were there so many assassinations in the s in America? Black liberation posed an enormous threat to American society. The Vietnam War created new tensions in American society. But there was a second shooter…. Was it, the CIA? Or he mob? Was Martin Luther King murdered by the government. Others, on the other hand, think conspiracy theorists tend to overanalyse.

Most Recent. The kingmaker Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor dynasty. History of America. Civil Rights Movement. In some regions, however, political assassinations have become dominant only in the last couple of decades.

In South Asia, for example, 76 percent of the assassinations have been perpetrated since the mids, possibly a consequence of the growing instability in the region during and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. And more than 85 percent of assassinations in Eastern Europe were perpetrated after with the start of the transition to democracy in most Eastern European countries, a process that in many cases was accompanied by growing ethnic tensions and political instability.

In terms of targets, the data indicates that most assassinations target heads of state 17 percent , opposition leaders who are not part of the executive or legislative branch 18 percent , and members of parliament 21 percent.

In rarer instances the targets are ministers 14 percent , diplomats 10 percent , local politicians such as governors or mayors 5 percent , and vice head of states 3 percent. Causes of Assassinations The research findings indicate that, in general, political assassinations are more probable in countries that suffer from a combination of restrictions on political competition and strong polarization and fragmentation.

More specifically, states that lack consensual political ethos and homogeneous populations in terms of the national and ethnic landscape and include politically deprived groups will face a decline in the legitimacy of the political leadership and the political system and an increase in the likelihood of direct attacks against political leaders.

One of the most glaring examples of such a dynamic may be found in Sri Lanka, where the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a group that represents the deprived Tamil minority, organized a bloody campaign of political assassinations against the political leadership of the state and the Sinhalese majority from the early s until approximately And since these issues tend to be present mainly in times of electoral processes or of actual violent strife, one should not be surprised that our findings indicate that election periods or periods characterized by a general increase in domestic violence are moments when a country is more susceptible to political assassinations.

Another interesting finding is that the territorial fragmentation of a country is correlated with an increase in the number of assassinations. When a government loses control over some parts of a country to opposition groups, both sides are more willing to use assassinations to enhance their influence and to consolidate their status as the sole legitimate rulers of the polity.

When looking specifically at the facilitators of assassinations of heads of state, we can identify some unique trends. To begin with, the polities most susceptible to assassinations against the head of state are authoritarian polities that lack clear succession rules and in which the leader enjoys significant political power.

This is true even more so in polities that also include oppressed minorities and high levels of political polarization. Therefore, non-democratic political environments that feature leaders who are able to garner significant power and in which the state lacks efficient mechanisms for leadership change following an assassination, provide more prospects for success in advancing political changes via political assassination.

This stands in contrast to democratic systems, in which it is clear that the elimination of the head of state will have only a limited, long-term impact on the socio-political order. Although heads of state represent what could be considered the crown jewel of political assassinations, lower-ranking political figures also face this threat.

In this study, we specifically examined attacks against legislators and vice heads of state. Attacks against the latter are fairly rare and are usually intended to promote highly specific policy changes related to areas under the responsibility of the vice head of state or to prevent the vice head of state from inheriting the head of state position. Legislators, on the other hand, are most often victims of civil wars or similar violent domestic clashes in developing countries; in democracies they are almost never targeted.

To illustrate, no less than 34 Iranian legislators were assassinated in , when the new revolutionary regime was consolidating its control over the country. Hence, assassinations of legislators are almost always a result of national-level conflicts rather than local ones, contrary to what some may suspect.

In other words, the assassination of legislators should be considered more as acts of protest against an existing political order than political actions that are intended to promote specific political goals. One of the unique features of this study, among others, is its focus on assassinations of political figures who are not part of governing platforms.

Unlike other types of assassinations, the state is typically a major actor in the assassination in these cases. Pakistan as well as many Latin American countries. The anomalies are extreme. This is now easy to show in the case of Oswald.

On October 10, , six weeks before the assassination of John F. Both messages contained false and mutually contradictory statements, and also withheld known facts of great potential importance. CIA officer Jane Roman helped draft both messages. In she was confronted by two interviewers with irrefutable evidence that she had signed off on erroneous information about Oswald in the CIA cable to Mexico City.

CIA leaders were so convinced about the potential significance of the al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, they not only set up surveillance of it, but provided regular updates to the FBI director [Louis Freeh], the head of the CIA [George Tenet], and the national security advisor [Samuel Berger]. The information was not shared with FBI headquarters until August A CIA desk officer instructed him not to send the cable with this information.

Several hours later, this same desk officer drafted a cable distributed solely within CIA alleging that the visa documents had been shared with the FBI.

In both cases the FBI later complained that the withholding of information was crucial in enabling the deep events to occur. It is perhaps more likely that Oswald and al-Mihdhar were being protected by the CIA for some other operation — possibly against Cuba in the case of Oswald , or to penetrate existing al-Qaeda cells in the US in the case of al-Hamzi and al-Mihdhar.

But someone in the CIA with knowledge of these sensitive files, and intent on a criminal deep event, could have used the sensitive identities of Oswald and al-Mihdhar as designated culprits in the plots, knowing that the CIA would be virtually coerced into cover-up because of the embarrassing manipulations of their files on these individuals.

In a different way, I believe that the U. Galt, the real man whose name was assumed early on by Ray as an alias, was an intelligence insider who was certainly the subject of a sensitive file. A sensitive file must have existed also for the Toronto policeman Ramon George Sneyd, whose name supplied a later Ray alias. This would put someone inside intelligence, rather than the mob, at the center of the MLK plot.

It has long been recognized that the selection of Eric S. Galt as an alias for Ray could not have been made by Ray himself, but was a sophisticated choice by someone controlling Ray, of a man who was. A search for Eric S. As Senator Sam Ervin later revealed in a set of Senate Hearings, by this time computerized files on civilians were being amassed and shared by all these agencies.

I draw two conclusions from my assertion that that some branches of the US government knew early of the real Galt problem. This conclusion would suggest an intelligence component to the MLK assassination at a much higher level than previously noted facts that the CIA was collaborating with local police forces like that of Memphis, or that the CIA had Martin Luther King under surveillance.

On the surface, these conclusions seem to point out a difference between the MLK case and the two Kennedy assassinations. The use of sensitive names, Galt and Sneyd, served in contrast to delay the apprehension of James Earl Ray for weeks. If Ray was also a designated culprit, why would he be protected in this fashion? I can think of only one reason. Ray was then arrested two days later, appeasing the growing apprehension among some that assassins were now, with impunity, determining the future of America.

Philip Melanson has rightly drawn attention to the effective help provided Ray in the weeks prior to his arrival in London, contrasted with the breakdown in that help thereafter. The question arises as to how a sophisticated assassination conspiracy clever enough to match Ray and Galt, kill King, and guide Ray through Toronto could be inept enough to allow him to be captured alive in London.

As I say, this is the only reason I can think of for a planned delay in the arrest of Ray as designated culprit. But of course this reason, if correct, would be still another corroboration of a single source behind the twin deep events of April 4 and June 5, As there is far more research to be done, I am hoping that some younger resercher will take advantage of this new opportunity.

Hanes, Sr. Stoner, a founder of the National States Rights Party. Lee Bailey ofBoston and Arthur J. Belli and Allen P. It was when he was facing conviction and deportation from the Friars Club case that Roselli went to Jack Anderson with his information about the CIA-mafia plots to kill Castro.

Osborn p. John Larry Ray writes that in he tried to obtain the services of Shenker for his brother, and that it was Shenker who put him in touch with Percy Foreman Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last , Percival E. Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last ,