General Edwin Walker and the JFK Assassination

The matters pertaining to this subject have been discussed in three preceding videos posted at LRC ( one, two three)

General Edwin A. Walker was the only U.S. Army general officer to resign his commission amid his tour of duty in the 20th century. Was he a patriot, a madman, or a little of both? What was his connection to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination? To Generals Lyman LemmitzerCurtis LeMay, Charles A. Willoughby, Clyde Watts, and Pedro A. Del Valle? To the Rev. Billy James Hargis, H. L Hunt, and Major Archibald E. Roberts? who have long passed down into the Orwellian Memory Hole but at this time were very significant players in this interlocked network.

The grassroots “conservative movement” in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was very different than the movement calling itself by that name today. This was especially the case for ‘the far right” associated with belligerent (and seditious) military elements (both within and outside the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs at the time of the assassination). Think Seven Days in May, not National Review. William F. Buckley Jr. and NR shaped and set the stentorian dogmatic tone for such “conservatives” for decades, purging and declaring any alternative voices on the Right anathema.

Actually the deep roots of these neo-fascist seditious policies go back even further, as do their explicit key linkages to American military and counter-intelligence entities, which may in fact have played a crucial role in the November 22, 1963 coup d’état and brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy. Both the European personnel and their American counterparts actively discussed the implementation of domestic coup strategies in their respective countries. These were the Europeans directly responsible for later implementation of the Strategy of Tension violence/terror campaign of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and horrific murders of innocent civilians throughout that continent. Many of these individuals had substantial links to fascist military elements in Europe who proposed or sponsored coup d’états such as in France in 1961 or Greece in 1967. Please check out pages 138 to 152, “Del Valle, Giannettini, and the Strategy of Tension,” in Peter Dale Scott’s seminal book on the JFK assassination, Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House (.pdf format)

I have been reading about and researching these people since 1970. That year I attended a special conference in Tulsa sponsored by Rev. Hargis’ Christian Crusade which featured Willoughby and Watts as speakers. Walker was also invited but had to cancel. I later attended a presentation in Tulsa in 1972 featuring Roberts, and briefly spoke to him afterwards. Unfortunately all these events occurred before my great interest in the JFK assassination and the possible linkage of these men to that tragic event.

In October 1959 Walker was appointed commander of the 24th Infantry Division in Europe and stationed in Augsburg, Germany. In April 1961 Walker was accused of indoctrinating his troops with right-wing literature from the John Birch Society. With the agreement of President John F. Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara relieved Walker of his command and announced an investigation into the affair. Kennedy was accused of trying to suppress the anti-Communist feelings of the military. Walker resigned from the army in protest about the way he had been treated. His case became a major cause celeb of the radical right, especially in military circles. His “Pro-Blue” propaganda campaign was organized by Major Arch Roberts.

David Talbot argues in his book, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, that Walker’s indoctrination program had been endorsed by General Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. Talbot quotes a letter from Lemnitzer to Walker saying that he found his efforts “interesting and useful.” It would be curious to discover how General Curtis LeMay felt about Walker and the controversy surrounding him.

In September 1961 Walker organized the anti-integration protests against the enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi.  Attorney General Robert Kennedy responded by issuing a warrant for Walker’s arrest on the charges of seditious conspiracy, insurrection, and rebellion. He was imprisoned in a psychiatric institution.

So like CIA director Allen Dulles, Walker was “fired” by JFK. He later survived an “assassination attempt,” allegedly by “JFK assassin” Lee Harvey Oswald. He has been suggested to have been the model for General James Matoon Scott in the book and movie, Seven Days in May (where he is mentioned), and the Brad Pitt character in Inglourious Basterds.

Did I believe that these persons played any significant role in the assassination. This event required tremendous power and compartmentalization within the government, enough power to shut down the investigation at all levels–state, local, and national. Those guys didn’t wield that kind of power within the private sector. That type of power can only exist within the governmental structure. While it was theoretically possible for Walker to continue wielding influence after being ousted from the military, I don’t think he ever wielded that type of power when he was within the military structure. Just because a guy is a general doesn’t mean that he is controlling the levers of power within the military. Consider the JFK autopsy, for example, which was a key element in the cover-up. While it’s clear that the military controlled the autopsy, what would they have needed Walker for to carry out a bogus autopsy? What role could he possibly play? Moreover, why would they use Walker or any of the other people above to find assassins? They had the Mafia or other clandestine networks for that. Moreover, I am extremely doubtful that the people who orchestrated this would have brought Walker into the event. He wasn’t needed. There was nothing he could add. Equally important, he was erratic–there was no way that they could trust him to be part of the event.

It seems to me that Allen Dulles’s situation was very different. The circumstantial evidence indicates that he continued wielding tremendous power within the CIA after JFK ousted him from power.

Did Walker and others above hate Kennedy? No doubt about it. Might they have wanted to see him dead? Quite likely. But key to the assassination was secrecy, compartmentalization, and a shut down of the investigation. That’s where big power came into play. And that type of power exists within the government, not outside it.

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12:44 am on May 28, 2022