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of the car rather than Oswald’s position behind Kennedy. The Warren Commission found that Oswald fired the fatal shots from a third floor window in the Dallas book depository building. Amateur film taken of the assassination appears to show the president’s head being pushed back and to his left (as viewed from the front of the car) when the bullet struck. The conspiracy theorists believe the government covered up the crime to protect someone or something of great importance.[340] It is certain that critical evidence was lost and suffered from tampering. Photographs of the Kennedy emergency room operation and autopsy are missing as are parts of his brain that were supposed to be retained. Stranger still, the missing photographs are said to be the very ones that could prove if the killing shot came from the front or the back of the president. The missing brain matter could also prove what kind of bullet hit the president. What really happened that day in Dallas may never be conclusively known, but the Warren Commission’s investigation was sloppy and contained many unstated assumptions and flaws that caused people to conclude a government cover-up had occurred.

The Kennedy assassination was a blow to the upbeat nature of the nation. The 1950s was an era of growth and change, but the changes were moderate. The death of Kennedy threw a wet blanket on the times and the message was things were not as they once were. The newspapers were full of reports about the war in Vietnam, small as it was, and the continuing strife of the civil rights movement. The Space Race was proceeding and even there it seemed the communists were winning. Nonetheless, prosperity was evident, and the future seemed to promise more of the same. Europe started talking about a new organization, a kind of economic United States of Europe, where trade barriers would come down and laws could be homogenized. France was pushing the idea as they believed they would be the natural leader of any such organization, thus, enabling a further distancing from America and its inordinate influence on European affairs.

Most European states were unhappy with the US involvement in Vietnam, and they resisted pressure to fight the communist assault on the South. The world had larger problems, they thought, and a lot of those problems were just to the east of Europe as the Soviet Union gained economic and military power.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Worthless Cold Warrior

November 1963-1968

After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon B. Johnson became president. Johnson, who had been a leader of Congress for years, had large plans. He launched the “War on Poverty,” “War on Crime,” and many other social wars for his “Great Society”; however, he did all this while engaging in and massively expanding a real shooting war in Vietnam. Johnson, who witnessed the importance of price controls during World War II, stated that the nation would enjoy both “guns and butter” with his administration. This statement illustrates an unrivaled irrationality. Wars bring inflation, normally on a massive scale; thus, governments move to inhibit inflation by imposing wage and price controls at the outset of a conflict. Discovered in World War I, this was not a secret and wage and price controls were immediately initiated in World War II. Johnson knew all of this and chose to ignore it (he also ignored his economists).

The predictable result of this economic policy was massive inflation and economic stagnation. The impacts on the American economy were intensely negative which affected the Cold War. With America focused on Vietnam the troops and equipment in Europe, and other areas, languished. The Soviets upheld the peace, but if they had struck the US Army and its European Allies would have faced conquest from the east. All over the world communists were making progress in their insurgencies because the attention of the United States was on Vietnam. Johnson failed at fighting the Vietnam War and the Cold War. During his final years in office antiwar protests swept the nation. As the press turned against him