"Chasing Shadows" by Ken Hughes (2014)

The cover of this book is intriguing at first glance. It is a photo of President Lyndon Johnson in a White House elevator with President-Elect Richard Nixon on November 11, 1968, just days after Nixon won the Presidential election by the 2nd closest margin in the 20^th century; the first being John Kennedy’s victory over Nixon in the 1960 election. There is almost an irony to that alone.

The author mainly concerns himself with tying the Watergate Affair to the 1968 Presidential election, when Nixon basically sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks; talks which would have possibly cost him the election against Vice President Humphrey. Through back channel maneuvers with Anna Chennault; widow of the man who commanded the Flying Tigers during World War Two; Nixon was able to accomplish just that, narrowly winning the election in the bargain. That was in 1968; in 1972 he would win by a landslide.

The real surprise here is the role Lyndon Johnson played in defeating his own Vice President, whose aims and goals regarding Vietnam did not match the party position in reference to the bombing halt. Johnson wanted it pegged to the restoration of the DMZ; with which the Republicans agreed; while Humphrey and McCarthy wanted to stop the bombing without conditions in order to show “good faith” to the North Vietnamese.

Relying on thousands of hours of tape recordings at the Johnson Library and the Nixon Archives, the author paints an accurate picture of the political ambitions which got us into the war in the first place, and then kept us there far longer than was necessary. There were no “clean hands” in the bunch. The Republicans and Democrats were both focused on politics rather than what was right. These tapes prove the point.

While Johnson was advising Nixon; and Nixon was working with Chennault to delay the Peace Talks; an atmosphere of secrecy and subterfuge became the standard operating procedure in Washington. That attitude led directly to Nixon forming the celebrated “Plumbers Unit” in the White House; ostensibly to stop “leaks.” Left to their own devices they went on to embroil Nixon in the Watergate scandal; something he knew nothing about until after it happened. This was Nixon’s Bay of Pigs. He was blindsided by the same group of people in the same way in which Kennedy’s administration was blindsided by the last minute revelation of the full extent of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

This is a very important book in that it finally ties the Watergate scandal to the things which preceded it. There are many who believe that Nixon was set up by the CIA and Howard Hunt; who were working with some Cuban exiles that were connected to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The real question is why?

Nixon was asking for the CIA files on the Bay of Pigs and even stuff related to Dallas from the moment he took office. Why? He was surrounded by people who all had ties to George Bush; either as an oil tycoon, or later as a politician and head of the CIA. Why? This book doesn't answer these questions, but they are inherently connected. The author has touched only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The name Bush doesn't even appear in the index. 

The author even blames the entire ineffectiveness of the B-52 bombing of the Ho Chi Minh trail on Pentagon and Cabinet leaks while completely ignoring the Walker Spy Ring, which cost the U.S. approximately 15-20,000 more battle deaths. It is impossible to discuss the B-52 bombing raids, and their having been compromised, without at least mentioning the Walkers. But that is exactly what the author does.

This book is a very detailed and helpful account of the proposed policy to halt the bombing in Vietnam and how it was used as a campaign issue by both sides in the 1968 election. It even shows how Nixon forged a policy of secrecy and paranoia which would eventually culminate in the Watergate burglary and his eventual departure from the White House.

But the book never really answers the crucial question of how; or even why; Nixon would have allowed this to happen. For a wider scope on the issues raised in this book; particularly the “why” behind the Watergate break in; you can do no better than to read Russ Baker’s 2009 book “Family of Secrets.”

In spite of any shortcomings, this book is still an important one, if only because it goes beyond the basic assumptions of Watergate being the product of an overzealous staff and a paranoid President. Nothing as complicated as Watergate could possibly be that simple.

"A Cruel and Shocking Act" by Philip Shenon (2013)

If you believe that President Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald, then this is the book you have been waiting for. On the other hand, if you believe that President Kennedy was a victim of a conspiracy, then this is the book for you. Author Philip Shenon has gathered the memories of all the surviving staff members who assisted the Warren Commission in compiling its report, and in doing so has only bolstered the beliefs of both sides.

The Warren Commission Report was initiated by President Johnson, who later opined to Walter Cronkite that he believed there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, and therefore did not believe in the findings of the commission he himself had created. It was never signed by the man who chaired it; Chief Justice Earl Warren, who suppressed evidence in order to wrap things up neatly. And, finally, it was signed reluctantly by the man who would, 11 years later become the first unelected President of the United States, Gerald Ford.

If you ever want to explain why Americans don’t really trust their government, and embrace conspiracy theories in the first place, you have only to look at the dysfunction of the Warren Commission to prove your point. The infighting between the various agencies; such as the FBI and the CIA to withhold evidence and sources from one another, as well as the commission, are perfect examples.

The book goes into detail about the connection of Oswald’s supposed Mexican visit, which produced no known photos of him at either of the embassies he supposedly visited, raising the possibility of a double agent. His relationship with Silvia Duran, of the Cuban Embassy is also explored.

Of particular interest are the deals made by Marina Oswald in the days immediately surrounding her husband’s death at the hands of Jack Ruby. She sold her husband’s diary without even telling the police that there was one. She also burned what she thought to be the only copies of the now iconic photos of her husband posing with a rifle, handgun and a Communist newspaper. The fact that there were so many other copies floating about in the days before digital scanning, etc. makes me wonder. Who else had copies of these photos and why?

Her take from the various book deals and magazine articles amounted to about $300,000 in today’s dollars. She fired her business manager, James Martin, after having a brief affair with him while living in his home. She ended the affair by calling his wife and telling her that her husband was no longer employed as her manager, or lover.

Marina Oswald wasn’t the only widow taking in some immediate cash. Jackie Kennedy began work on her book with Arthur Schlesinger before the Warren Commission was even done with their report. The commission was not even going to call upon her for her testimony; wishing to spare her the ordeal; until they got wind of the book. If she could talk about it for money, then she could appear before the Commission. Still, when it came time to depose her, they went to her home in Georgetown, where she was living at the time.

Robert Kennedy would only appear before the Commission by a series of letters; ones which he wrote himself. The first one was a request from Chief Justice Earl Warren to him; written by RFK asking him to submit a reply. The Chief Justice signed that request and sent it back to RFK. A pre-approved reply was then sent to the Chief Justice.

The portion of the investigation dealing with Jack Ruby is a true riddle. The man had the opportunity to kill Oswald on Friday night at the infamous “news conference” at the City Jail, where he was paraded before the press. Ruby even took part in that event when he corrected DA Henry Wade on the correct name of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He was that well known to the local police, yet no one noticed him entering the building on Sunday morning when he was finally able to kill Oswald.

Ruby ended up deranged before and during his trial for killing Oswald. He believed that since he had murdered Oswald the Jews of America were being tortured in retaliation. He was clearly insane; even judged to be so; yet he was still sentenced to death for his crime. He died before the sentence could be carried out. His chapter remains one of the most controversial among conspiracy theorists.

Arlen Specter, the architect of the “magic bullet” theory; which says that one pristine bullet caused 7 wounds to both Kennedy and Governor Connally before landing underneath a rubber mat on the gurney at Parkland hospital; is portrayed as an adequate investigator. His theory was doubted by just about everyone on the Commission. It has been the subject of numerous recreations using the latest technology to prove its validity. But think about this; if you intentionally set out to prove a theory correct, you must first start out by accepting that theory to be true. If you believe it to be false it is just as easy to prove that as well.

One of the most interesting events to come out of the Warren Commission’s investigation occurred when William Coleman; the lone African-American working for the Committee; went to a secret rendezvous off of Cuba to meet Castro and ask him; face to face; whether or not he, or the Russians, had anything to do with the President’s murder.

Castro had told the press in October of 1963 that the American government was targeting him for assassination; which they were under Operation Mongoose a black op being run by the CIA. He also promised to retaliate in kind; which many people think is actually what happened; Operation Mongoose got reversed by right wing factions within the United Sates, making Kennedy the target instead.

The most interesting thing about Coleman’s encounter is that he already knew Castro from the Cuban leader’s visits to New York, which had begun as early as the 1940’s. Apparently Coleman had met him in Harlem at the jazz clubs when Castro was on his honeymoon in 1948. They were both jazz fans. When they met again in 1964 aboard a Cuban navy boat, they discussed that visit and music before getting down to business. Castro denied any involvement in the murder, and Mr. Coleman took him at face value.

The investigators themselves; along with the 7 Committee members themselves, were often at odds over the direction and progress of the Commission. Some wanted to focus on the foreign conspiracy aspect of the crime more than others. As a result of the pre-determined outcome of the report; it must sate that Oswald acted alone, this was understood by all; any leads not leading back to Oswald as the sole shooter, were given short shrift.

Commission investigator Jim Liebeler was a hard working staff member. But he still found time to attempt the seduction of both Marina Oswald and Silvia Odio; the Cuban woman in Texas who claimed to have seen Oswald in the company of 2 other Latino men prior to the assassination. Silvia Odio is a possible key to the unexplored portions of Oswald’s Mexico City trip.

The other Silvia in this story is Silvia Duran, who was taken into custody within hours of the assassination by Mexican police at the request of the CIA. She was beaten and tortured in an effort to find out what she knew about Oswald and his activities there in Mexico.

All of these loose ends are what have Mr. Shenon concerned; and rightfully so; that there are still unexplored leads to the murder of President Kennedy in 1963. The latest ones involve Elena and Helena Garro, a mother daughter team who claim to have attended a party at which Oswald was present in Mexico prior to the assassination.

Whatever your beliefs about the Kennedy assassination may be, this book delivers all of the excitement you have come to expect from the crime which just won’t be solved. Mr. Shenon has done his homework well, and as a result has delivered an exciting book about the scenes behind the Warren Commission and the men who served on it.

In the end, it is also the story of the Warren Commission Report; a report which the Chief Justice for whom it was named refused to sign; and was only signed by Gerald Ford, who never believed it to be correct. And 11 years later he would become the first un-elected President of the United States.

Lee Harvey Oswald - Midnight News Conference 11-23-1963

There is one thing which has puzzled even many skeptics over the last 50 years concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, and the subsequent killing of the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald. That is why he was paraded; literally; in front of reporters in a hallway, and later on in a conference room at which Jack Ruby was present? At that conference Mr. Ruby even offered a correction to a question about the Fair Play for Cuba movement.

When people are accused of a high profile crime; even back then; they were secluded for two reasons. The first is that you really don’t want the trial to begin de-facto on TV, which raises the possibility of a mistrial later due to a tainted jury pool; and the second reason is that you don’t want some nut job killing the suspect for any reason at all.

In the case of Lee Harvey Oswald, he was paraded 3 times before the news media, and even allowed to give a midnight conference with TV reporters. The full footage of that conference is not on You Tube, so I have used the hallway footage to illustrate my point. Why was this man placed in front of the public at all?

The answer is patently simple. They wanted him dead. Look at who was in charge in Dallas at the time of the President’s murder? The Mayor was Earle Cabell, the brother of Charles Cabell, the CIA director who had been fired after the disaster at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Every-one else was subservient to this man. At stake was the fate of the Oil Depletion Allowance, which resulted in some very powerful people, all of whom had ties to the Intelligence Community, the Oil Industry and Army Intelligence to actually be involved in the President’s motorcade route when he was killed.

Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin was driving the lead car. Lumpkin was the friend of Jack Crichton, who was a member of the Army Intelligence Reserve Unit. Lt. Colonel George Whitmeyer, who commanded all of the Reserve Units in Texas, was in the car with him. He was not on the approved list of people riding in the motorcade and basically forced his way into it by virtue of his rank.

When the pilot car passed the Book Depository he instructed Mr. Crichton to stop the vehicle so he could relay instructions to the Dallas Policemen who were handling traffic at the corner of Elm and Houston. It is not known what the nature of that conversation was; only that it was conducted by a man with ties to the military and the CIA who should not have even been there at all.

The links go on and on; but the central question will always be why was Oswald paraded before anyone at all in the less than 48 hours he would be in custody before he was murdered by a man known very well to the Dallas Police Department? Remember that when Oswald was shot, one of the detectives handling him cried out, “Jack, you son of a bitch!” That footage will be posted tomorrow.

"The Hoax" with Richard Gere (2006)

This is a great movie about Clifford Irving’s alleged attempt to forge an autobiography of Howard Hughes. I say alleged because I have never been convinced that Mr. Irving wasn't the foil of larger forces. Think about it; a mediocre author, rejected by his publisher; suddenly comes up with the idea, and opportunity, to do an autobiography of the world’s richest and most reclusive man, and manages to secure a whopping $100,000 advance from the publisher. Now he has to produce the book.

In his mind he is in actual contact with the legendary millionaire via handwritten letters detailing his life’s story. But is he? The handwriting experts all say the letters are genuine, but are they? In this cinematic version, based on actual documents and interviews, the author has hatched this plan with a friend, who doubts that the scheme will work. Banking on the greed of the publisher to land the most coveted book of the last 50 years, they study Hughes’ handwriting, honing their skills to perfection, and then creating the letters.

When he is accused of forging the letters, he manages to raise the advance to $1 million dollars, which only serves to ratchet up the pressure to produce the book. 

The money is exchanged based on the publisher’s eagerness to get the book out, only to be outwitted by either the author, or the forces he claims are arrayed against him. The goal, of course, was to add fuel to the fire when the real powers that be decided to bring Nixon down via Watergate. What better ammunition to have than a documented payment from Hughes via a disgraced publisher to a suspect author? If this seems confusing you really need to brush up on the connections between the Bay of Pigs, Dealey Plaza, and finally the Watergate affair, which was concocted to bring down the President by exposing his links to some of the most atrocious events of the 1960’s.

Excellent acting by Richard Gere; along with a tightly woven account of the events; are the things which drive this film, making it well worth watching.

"Nixon's Darkest Secrets" by Don Fulsom

If you skip reading just one book this year, this is the one I'd recommend most. I picked it up at the library, naturally, because the whole era of the 1960's, when I was growing up, is always of keen interest to me. And that interest leaves me open to reading about the greatest news events of my life at the time. Through my reading, I have come to see the links between the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy Assassination, and later, the botched Watergate burglary. I expected this book to affirm some of my own beliefs; which it does to a certain extent; as well as to be a re-hashing of some of the things that have already been written about former President Nixon, including his own autobiographies.

So, I picked it up eagerly, only to be sorely disappointed at the narrow scope of the book, which seems more concerned with character assassination, rather than an confirming, or even opening up new areas of one of our most complex Presidents.

The author, Don Fulsom, is a self-described White House reporter, former UPI Washington Bureau Chief, and currently an adjunct professor at American University, where he teaches a course on "Watergate: A Constitutional Crisis." That information all comes from the inside of the book jacket, and I have no reason to doubt any of it.

This book is perplexing in many ways. First off, for an individual who professes to be an expert on Watergate, he spends an inordinate amount of time exploring Nixon's connection with Bebe Rebozo, the Mafia related "bagman" who supplied Nixon with untold funds over the course of the President's political career. The two men first met in Florida in 1947. Rebozo seems to have been sort of a "knock about" guy at the time. He had already been a flight steward for Pan Am, a gas station owner, and a coin laundry operator. From these humble beginnings, Rebozo was able to forge a friendship with Congressman Nixon, a friendship which would last until the final days of Nixon's failed Presidency.

The most bizarre aspect of this book are the allegations that President Nixon and Bebe Rebozo were homosexual lovers for decades. Indeed the author takes 26 pages of this 260 page book to explore that unsubstantiated allegation; which I have never heard before reading this book; to prove his point. Using quotes from "unnamed" sources, as well as speculation by various individuals, he paints a picture of the Presidents relationship with Rebozo as "sexual". Some of the "proofs" of these allegations come from Bonnie Angelo, the correspondent for Time magazine, who swears she observed Nixon and Rebozo holding hands at a Miami restaurant. She further claims that she had never seen two men holding hands "as long and as fondly as Nixon and Rebozo." The author spends several pages on this alone.

Also high on the list as proof that Nixon was "gay", are the observations of his longtime secretary Evlyn Dorn, who claims that she only saw Nixon touch his wife once, to steady her in the back of a limo as they were standing, presumably during a campaign motorcade.

During Nixon's White House years, Rebozo was at the Presidents side almost continuously, logging in a visit about every ten days or so. These meetings took place at the White House, or at San Clemente, often without his wife and daughters being present. The author offers this as proof of their relationship being sexual.

One of the more bizarre tales of the alleged homosexual relationship involves the two men playing "King of the Pool" late at night. This is a game that all young men have played at one time or another; it involves one of the men floating on a raft while the other tries to turn it over. When that has been accomplished the roles are reversed, and the other guy attempts to regain the raft as his own. This allegation, which is used by the author as "proof" that President Nixon was homosexual, can only be described as strange, on its face alone. In other instances, the author has called forth "experts" on Nixon's "thinking." My only conclusion on that score is that both the author, and the anonymous "top psychiatrist", believe in ESP, or at least reading the minds of two men who are both deceased.

The biggest question I have about this book is this, the author; who is seemingly "hell bent on election" to prove that the President was gay; also accuses him of being a homophobe. I don't see the connection, or rather; I do see the disconnection in this thinking. And, on another level, how can someone who is presumably of moderate to liberal persuasion, use these unfounded accusations to defame an already tainted President? And why bother?

Nixon was far from my favorite President. He extended the War in Vietnam for political gain; which caused an estimated 25,000 additional combat deaths; and allowed his involvement in the Bay of Pigs affair to be used against him as blackmail in the Watergate scandal. His excessive abuse of power is widely known. There is nothing new in this book at all, aside from the bizarre allegations I have already mentioned.

There is one highlight to this book; at the end, after the Index; there is a one page biography of the author. There is no mention of his being married. That, in itself, is of little consequence. But the photo the author uses to show his "inside" connection to the Nixon White House is of him holding hands tightly with the President; and they are both smiling...

"Berlin-1961" by Frederick Kempe (2011)

I have always been fascinated by the Cold War. Particularly, I have always had a deep and abiding interest in Berlin at the time this book takes place. I was 7 years old when the TV show I was watching was interrupted with the news that the Soviet Union had closed the border with West Germany. Although I did not fully understand the implications at the time, the episode itself would remain with me until this very day.

In June 1961 President Kennedy met with Premier Khrushchev in Vienna for a summit. The items on the agenda ranged from the failed U2 flight of Gary Powers the year before, and the Bay of Pigs episode; both of which had been planned under the Eisenhower administration; to the major issue concerning the division of East and West Berlin. There was a "brain drain" occurring at the time, with thousands of East Germans simply crossing the street to West Germany, and never returning. The right of Freedom of Access was the issue most important to the Communists, who were seeking to revoke this right, and they were adamant in their position on it. The loss of their best technicians was to come to a halt, even if it meant war.

After the beating that President Kennedy took at the Summit in June, he was hard pressed to make the Soviet leader understand that the United States was willing to risk a confrontation over the issue of access, which was clearly a violation of the earlier 1945 agreement on that very issue. At the time there were people living in Communist East Germany who simply crossed the street to work at jobs, or owned businesses in West Germany. These people lived right on the border, taking advantage of the difference in the value of the respective currencies.

By August of 1961, all plans had been laid to separate the city of Berlin. By carefully ordering supplies of barbed wired and concrete pillars, the East Germans were able to stockpile these items at strategically located points for use in creating a temporary barrier at the appointed time. That time came in the early morning hours of August 13th, 1961 when the East German Police, along with the Army, encircled the city in the dark of night. The residents of East Berlin, who had gone to bed with free access to relatives and work in the West, would awaken to a cordon of barbed wire, reinforced by German Police and thousands of factory workers who had been mobilized to back up those Police. Behind those factory workers were Soviet tanks.

The author neglects nothing, covering East German soldier Hans Conrad Schumann’s iconic leap over the barbed wire to freedom, as well as the East German women whose homes opened onto West German alleys: allowing some to lower themselves to freedom by sheets; this book is a gripping account of one of the most impressionable events of my childhood.

The author also does an incredible job of making the chess like game of nuclear brinkmanship come to life, rather than providing only boring facts and dates. By using the quotes, and written accounts of the events, ranging from the preparations for the summit, all the way through the crisis engendered by Ambassador Lightner’s attempt to attend the ballet in the Eastern sector in October, prompting the most famous, and dangerous incident at Checkpoint Charlie, Mr. Kempe has taken a journey back in time, placing the reader right on the forefront of the Cold War at its height.

Cuban Missle Crisis Ends

On October 22nd, 1962 President Kennedy announced that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from our shores. Acting under the auspices of the Monroe Doctrine he gave a 17 minute speech in which he outlined his response to the Soviet action, including the famous quarantine of Cuba, in which all Soviet ships headed to Cuba were boarded and searched. Those ships which refused to be searched were turned back by our Navy. On October 28th, 6 days later, the crisis came to an end when Soviet premier Khrushchev announced the withdrawal of the missiles. On the surface the United States had won a huge victory. Or, so it would seem.

In reality the United States had done the same thing to the Soviet Union by placing over 600 Jupiter missiles along the Turkish border, all aimed at strategic targets within the Soviet Union. This was akin to our violating the Soviet Union’s right of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, which we were using to have the Soviet missiles removed from Cuba.

Moscow's position was correct, if we could have missiles on their border, they could have missiles on ours. Unknown to American military intelligence at the time, was that there were, and had been, low yield "tactical" nuclear weapons, though not missiles, in Cuba since the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. These weapons were for combat use, typically for the repulsion of invading forces. Had our troops landed in support of the coup, they would have been met with small scale nuclear arms. And that would have triggered a nuclear response from the United States, which of course would have set off a response from the Soviet Union. Now, here we were, one year later, facing off with the Soviet Union for a second time.

Kennedy and Khrushchev were both very concerned about losing control of their respective armed forces at the time. The Joints Chiefs of Staff wanted to invade over the missile issue, and the President wanted to negotiate. Officially, at the time, the so-called "Doomsday" clock stood at 1 minute to midnight, the closest the Soviet Union and the United States had ever come to a nuclear war. A solution, acceptable to both sides, needed to be found, and quickly!

Within 6 days of JFK's speech, Khrushchev announced the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. This was hailed as a great victory for America at the time. A closer look would have revealed otherwise. The facts would not come to light for several more years, and when they did surface it didn't look like we got such a great deal after all.

President Kennedy had proposed, and the Soviets accepted, the dismantling of 600 operational nuclear missiles on the Soviet border in exchange for removing 5 non-operational missiles from Cuba. There was one caveat; the terms of the deal could not be announced. The concessions by the United States were to be kept quiet. And they were, for several years.

The Soviet Union got exactly what they wanted, and in a way, so did we. At the time we were dismantling the Jupiter missiles on the Turkish border, we were installing newer, longer range missiles, all aimed at the same targets, throughout Germany and Western Europe.

By 1964 both Kennedy and Khrushchev were out of office, Kennedy felled by an assassin’s bullet(s), and Khrushchev removed to a Dachau, where he would spend his remaining days in seclusion. Both men had fallen victim to the forces that would thwart any peace efforts. Those forces are still with us, to this very day.

The First Step

When I was 8 years old the world came close to being destroyed in a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Twice, in as many years, these two superpowers had come face to face with the prospect of all out nuclear war. The first time was during the Bay of Pigs debacle in early 1961, when the Cubans, unbeknownst to our CIA, had tactical nuclear weapons to repel the invasion. Their use would have triggered a nuclear response from the United States, which, in turn, would have put us at nuclear odds with the Soviet Union.

Because of this attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the Soviet Union, by the fall of 1962, was in the process of placing nuclear missles on the island of Cuba. This resulted in the Cuban Missle Crisis, which was the second time. If the United States and the Soviet Union had not negotiated a settlement to that crisis, an estimated 140 million people would have been killed within the first day of fighting, as both sides launched their respective missles.

By the following summer of 1963 President Kennedy, along with Soviet Premier Kruschev, would seek to initiate a treaty to ban all further testing of nuclear weapons. This was the first step in what later became known as "detente."

I was only a small boy at the time, but the stakes were so high that I was literally "riveted" to the news. The fact that I lived in New York City, a prime target for the Soviets should hostilities occur, undoubtedly had an influence upon my interest in the matter. So you can imagine my relief when I came home on the afternoon of July 26th, 1963 to the World Telegram and Sun headline that a test ban treaty had been signed between the two superpowers who held my fate in their hands.

I watched the presidents address to the nation that evening. In it, I was introduced to the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius, who was quoted in the President's address. I memorized that speech and for years afterwards could recite it verbatim. I even clipped a copy from the newspaper and carried it around for months. I still have it. For those who have never heard, or read it, I have printed a portion of it here. 47 years after it was delivered the eloquence of these words has not been diminished by the intervention of time.

Test Ban Treaty Speech

"Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness. Negotiations were concluded in Moscow on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmospere, in outer space and underwater....

Now, for the first time in many years, the path to peace may be open. No one can be certain what the future will bring. No one can say whether the time has come for an easing of the struggle. But history and our own conscience will judge us harsher if we do not now make every effort to test our hopes by action, and this is the place to begin. According to the ancient Chinese proverb, "A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."

My fellow Americans, let us take that first step. Let us, if we can, get back from the shadows of war and seek out the way of peace. And if that journey is one thousand miles, or even more, let history recall that we, in this land, at this time took the first step."