Today, Friday, August 14, everyone can still get a FREE copy of my ebook Regime Change: The JFK Assassination. The free promotion ends at midnight tonight.
Yesterday, the inordinately large number of free downloads vaulted Regime Change to the #1 position on Amazon’s list of free ebooks on 20th-century American history and #360 on Amazon’s overall list of free ebooks.
There are thirteen comments under Regime Change on Amazon. All but one are positive. I am very grateful for people taking the time to read the book and to write a comment, even if it’s critical.
I have posted all the comments at the end of this article for easy reading.
The one negative comment is the one I wish to address in this article. It awarded 1 star to the book and it reads as follows:
“Hand picked “facts” and innuendo do not make for a compelling argument” by Michael Kaufman
I’ve been reading Jacob Hornberger’s writings since before the was even on the internet, and it is sad to see the decline of a once great mind. Watching him move from well thought out arguments on economics and liberty to a wild book of conspiracy theory is no fun at all.
I read through the book, and there isn’t much here that hasn’t been gone over before. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, nor does it address any of the issues that have plagued the conspiracy theorists for the last 50 or so years.
For example, if the people planning the assassination were trying to pretend that Oswald was the long gunman, why would they place a second gunman on the grassy knoll where any errant shot or flash would give him away. How did they plan to explain shots coming from different directions. Why not place him in the floor above or below Oswald in the book depository where his actions would be disguised by Oswald’s?
“The decline of a great mind?”
Ouch!
Oh well, at least it’s nice to know that it was once great!
Actually, however, the fact is that I have been writing about foreign policy, including foreign interventions, foreign wars, and regime-change operations, since the very first year of FFF’s existence twenty five years ago.
Consider, for example, the table of contents from the May 1990 issue of our monthly journal Future of Freedom (which at that time was called Freedom Daily):
“Dying for Freedom in Panama” by Jacob G. Hornberger
“Panama and the Canal: Children of American Imperialism and Socialism” by Richard M. Ebeling
“Patriotism” by Herbert Spencer
“The Conquest of the United States by Spain” by William Graham Sumner
Or consider the following articles from the November 1990 issue:
“The Vietnam War” by Jacob G. Hornberger
“Foreign Policy and Foreign Wars” by Richard M. Ebeling
“Conscription” by Daniel Webster
As I have outlined in my series entitled “Why We Don’t Compromise,” which is currently running in Future of Freedom, many people who have come into the libertarian movement have done so because of an attraction to free-market economics or Austrian economics. In fact, for decades the predominant focus of the libertarian movement has been on economic principles, especially the welfare state.
But ever since our inception here at FFF, we have also emphasized, as reflected by the small sampling of articles above, that the warfare state, also known as the national-security state, poses a much graver threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people than the welfare state.
For a long time, our writings on foreign policy, foreign wars, foreign interventions, and regime-change operations, however, were considered to be irrelevant and esoteric by some libertarians, especially those who had come into the movement as conservatives and who had been unable to abandon their conservative views on foreign policy.
Then came 9/11 and that brought to the surface the major fault line within the libertarian movement — between those of us who oppose the national-security apparatus that was grafted onto our governmental system after World War II and those who believe that the national-security apparatus is necessary to protect our rights and freedoms from the likes of communists and terrorists.
Ever since the inception of the national-security state, regime change has been one of its core elements. The invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 was a regime-change operation. So was the 1953 coup that ousted the democratically appointed prime minister of Iran and installed a brutal, unelected dictator in his stead. The same for the 1954 coup in Guatemala, where the democratically elected president was ousted from office and replaced by a brutal military dictator. Or Chile, where the U.S. national-security establishment instigated a coup in 1973 by which the democratically elected president of the country was violently ousted from power and replaced with one of the most brutal dictators in history.
When referring to those regime-change operations, we don’t generally speak in terms of conspiracies. But that’s precisely what they were. Every one of those operations consisted of several U.S. officials having entered into agreements with each other to carry out regime-change operations in those countries, and then having committed overt acts in furtherance of the agreements. That’s what a conspiracy is.
Needless to say, since the operations were covert, there were those who cried “Conspiracy theory!” when critics pointed out that the coups had all the earmarks of CIA regime-change operations. For example, when CIA Director Richard Helms denied under oath in testimony before Congress that the CIA had instigated regime-change operations in Chile from 1970-1973, there were those who doubted his testimony, even in the face of those who cried “Conspiracy theory!” Helms was later convicted of lying to Congress about the matter.
Why did U.S. national-security state officials engage in those regime-change operations? Because of their conviction that such countries would threaten the “national security” of the United States by going communist. As I point out in Regime Change, it is impossible to overstate the obsessive mindset that U.S. officials had about the danger of America’s turning Red during the Cold War. Their obsession with communists was 1000 times greater than their obsession with terrorists in today’s “war on terrorism.” Indeed, that why they sacrificed more than 58,000 men in the Vietnam War, a war that Kennedy was extricating America from at the time he was assassinated.
What the targets of regime change in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, and Chile were doing with respect to communism and the Cold War paled to insignificance compared to what JFK was doing in the months preceding his assassination. The facts are set forth in detail in FFF’s other JFK book JFK’s War with the National Security State: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s.
As Horne carefully documents, Kennedy, who had lost all trust and confidence in both the CIA and the Pentagon, was in a war with the national-security establishment at the time he was assassinated. More important, he had decided to end the Cold War, including by engaging in secret personal negotiations with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban president Fidel Castro. Not surprisingly, in the eyes of the national-security establishment, Kennedy’s policies were certain to lead to America’s defeat at the hands of the communists during the Cold War.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if the national-security establishment is going to protect “national security” from threats abroad, why wouldn’t it protect America from what is perceived to be a much graver threat to “national security” emanating from within? Indeed, I’ll bet that if a president ever really did pose a threat to “national security,” there would be lots of conservatives who would favor the national-security establishment’s protecting “national security” by removing him from office and promising to soon restore a democratic system to America, just as conservatives have supported the national-security establishments of Chile and Egypt for doing the same thing.
Kaufman suggests that Regime Changes consists of “selected facts” and “innuendo.” Since he didn’t specify which facts and which innuendo, it is impossible for me to address those. But keep in mind that Regime Change is intended as a primer to the assassination — encapsulating in an easy-to-read format the overall, big picture of this particular regime-change operation.
For specific and detailed facts relating to what I consider is the key to understanding the assassination — the autopsy that the military conducted on Kennedy’s body — I’d recommend reading my other ebook, The Kennedy Autopsy, which now has 131 comments and has been on Amazon’s list of the top 100 best selling books for 20th century American history since January.
Kaufman does ask a very important question about Regime Change. He asks: Why would the plotters shoot Kennedy from the front when the patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald, was in the rear? Wouldn’t it make sense to have the shooters in the rear if the patsy is in the rear?
The fact that Kaufman raises the question leads me to believe that he didn’t bother reading my entire book because I give the answer to that question in Regime Change. I specifically point how that this part of the scheme was utter brilliance — nothing less than sheer ingenuity — because it was the only way to ensure a total shutdown of the investigation. I’ll leave it at that since the entire explanation for why they did that is in Regime Change.
We are still in our fundraising drive to help us publish new ebooks. See here for my fundraising letter. If you haven’t yet donated, I hope you will do so. The key to a free society, which necessarily entails a dismantling, not a reform, of the Cold War era national-security establishment, is the dissemination of ideas on liberty. The ebook industry provides a vehicle for doing that. Will you help us? Here’s our donation page.
Here are the links to all three of our JFK ebooks at Amazon:
The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob G. Hornberger
JFK’s War with the National Security State: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne
Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob G. Hornberger
Comments at Amazon on Regime Change: The JFK Assassination by Jacob G. Hornberger
Comment 1: Five Stars
“Regime Change is 100% on Target” by David S. Brown
I recommend without hesitation three excellent JFK assassination books, all affordably available on Amazon Kindle, and easy to read, published by Jacob Hornberger’s fff.com: Regime Change and The Kennedy Autopsy, both by Hornberger, and JFK’s War With the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy was Assassinated, by Douglas Horne.
Regime Change is 100% on target. As a first year law student, when I heard that Oswald had been traced from ID’s found in his wallet setting forth his true name together with the alias he allegedly used to order the murder weapon, I immediately believed it was a frame. In the 50 plus years I have been studying the JFK assassination, nothing has detracted from that conclusion, and everything has discredited the Warren fictions, the DPD stories, FBI lies and CIA false legends, and firmly established, first, that Oswald fired no shots that day, and second, that Oswald was framed that day, and third, that government officers and operatives were responsible. With Lyndon Johnson’s scandals coming to a head, and the likelihood of him being dropped from Kennedy’s 1964 ticket, and possibly disgraced and prosecuted for corruptions, the assassination certainly was an exquisite perfidy for the right hand man.
These books should be mandatory reading for all Federal and State candidates for office; all Federal and State officeholders; all those attending our nation’s military colleges; all military officers; all new recruits of our nation’s intelligence services; all intelligence officers and operatives; and all Justices and judicial appointees. Until the people who shape and execute American governing come to grips with our realities, we really do not stand a chance of meaningful reform. While the process may take years, we must start the education process now, one step at a time, to get there.
The remedies are difficult. Reconstitution of American democracy, the consensual rule of law and our limited Republic, is not impossible. Many of the recommended steps do require Constitutional Amendments.
There are more necessary steps, but the first essential steps are described below:
1. The first step is to re-enact a permanent special prosecutor law, with a new governmental oath of office applied to all government office holders, employees, agents and contractors, requiring personal accountability for full and faithful fidelity to fiduciary principle, and elimination of plausible denial and sovereign immunity as covers, including elimination of the special exemption from law enforcement for all overt and covert operatives.
2. The second step is establish the Justice Department as an independent fourth branch of the Federal Government, not representing the Executive, but the people and the Constitution, with authority to investigate and prosecute all matters without limit.
3. The third step is prescribe real transparency, not by feeble FOIA laws, but by enforced release of the entire Federal record, classified and non-classified, on a regular, open and daily basis within a maximum period of 3 years; and only the Attorney General, as the head of the Fourth Branch of government, holding authority to classify (subject to the transparency prescribed), or extend the maximum period.
4. The fourth step is to prohibit off book funding of covert operations and to require approval of vouchers for all government expenditures.
5. The fifth step is to prohibit covert operations other than those in pursuit of a formal Congressional Declaration of War, and the War Power amended to prevent U.S. police actions without the formality of a Declaration of War.
6. The sixth step is to limit all Federal intelligence to intelligence gathering and analysis, with all terrorism, renditions, torture, aggressive interrogation, subversion, assassination, disinformation and covert operations designed to influence events or the internal affairs of any nation prohibited as Treason.
7. The seventh step is get the money out of our governing and contracting, establishing limited 6 month electioneering periods, paid for by qualified Federal financing, with all lobbying prohibited, all contributions and personal campaign expenditures prohibited, and all gifts, fees, speaking and publishing or other income assigned for life to the Federal Treasury, applicable to all candidates and officeholders.
8. The eighth step is to proscribe interference in the internal affairs of other nations, crimes in the name national security, assassination, torture and aggressive interrogations, secret surveillance of persons or communications without a warrant, and drone attacks within a sovereign border without authority of the subject sovereign, other than in pursuit of a formal Congressional Declaration of War.
9. The ninth step is to provide legal recourse for victims of actions taken in the name of national security, whether the action is legal or illegal. Such actions shall give rise to claims for compensation for those affected or impacted, with a minimum of $50,000 in damages, and without limit as to the number of claims, whether for having been subjected to surveillance without a warrant, or otherwise adversely impacted. A complete record of each surveillance and the use of the surveillance product shall be kept and made freely available to the persons subjected to surveillance for use in court.
10. The tenth step is to mandate term limits for all officeholders and bureaucrats.
11. The eleventh step is to require an election upon death or disability of the President arising on suspicious circumstances or unnatural causes, with the VP ineligible.
I can assure readers that I personally found not a single factual error in any of these works. That the conclusions are soundly based is for each reader to determine, but I, for one, certainly concur.
Comment 2: Five Stars
“People like Curtis LeMay should have been removed from their positions” by Otter
It was definitely a coup. The military heads, CIA, FBi, LBJ, were all against Kennedy because he refused to wage war on the Soviet Union, Cuba, and was pulling advisors out of Vietnam. A nuclear exchange would have been catastrophic for the world, yet these people in power wanted war. People like Curtis LeMay should have been removed from their positions. They had no perception of the casualties that would have emanated.This was an extremely scary time in our history and I know we’ll never know all the details. I was in the Air Force in Vietnam at the time and we woke up wondering if today was going to be the day. JFK had the right idea and it worked!
Comment 3: Five stars
“Clear and concise reasoning” by Keith.
Jacob Hornberger has done a superb job outlining for the reader his theory on who was actually responsible for the assassination of JFK. By putting the reader “in the moment”, he is able to put into context why this tragic event occurred and aptly explains and dispels some of the other theories put out there. An excellent read.
Comment 4: Five stars
“Great JFK Case Summary” by Gitarman
The author takes a complicated subject and breaks it down into clear, cogent facts. He has a talent for common sense analysis of the most relevant theories based on the latest documentary evidence. highly recommend this quick read.
Comment 5: Five stars
“For those that think death’s honesty will fall upon them….” By Julio S. Guerra
For those that think death’s honesty will fall upon them naturally, life sometimes must get lonely…Bob Dylan. And for those of us who question the lies, life is also lonely!
Comment 6: Five stars:
“The plot revealed” by Amazon Customer
Great book. Puts all the pieces of the jfk assassination story together so the pieces fit and presents it so that a clear picture emerges out of the loose ends. Author has a firm grip on the factual and circumstantial evidence of the case and the result is a portrait of 50 years of deceit and deception designed to hide the truth from the American public. An eye opening and groundbreaking piece of journalism. the writer should be commended for this monumental literary effort.
Comment 7: Five stars
“Five stars” by marymertz1
Great
Comment 8: Four stars
“A burial for the lone nut theory” by Anthony Davies
This is a short but excellent summary of why Kennedy was killed, which picks up where Oliver Stone’s “JFK” left off and brings a trained lawyer’s mind to the task of sifting what matters and what doesn’t.
Mr Hornberger develops powerful arguments not just for rejecting the “lone nut” theory but for ridiculing it. For example there is the first, which I should have asked myself but never had: “If Oswald’s aim was to seek glory and fame for killing President Kennedy, why would he deny that he did it?”
The culprit is very clearly shown as the “National Security” apparatus of the state, and this book will greatly help that majority which already rejects the official fable that the assassination was the work of a wannabe-famous little loser, by providing an unanswerable indictment of that part of the Federal Government.
My only disappointment came at the book’s end, where Mr Hornberger writes that “only one solution to all this: a return to the founding principles of our nation, the principles of a limited-government republic established by the U.S. Constitution.” Certainly, that would be a vast improvement, but the book names the formation of the CIA and the continuation of a large standing army (ie, the late 1940s) as the origin of the evils that produced the JFK assassination; so a reversal of that would not bring the country back to its original Constitutional status. In any case, some of us consider that even that status is far too large to be acceptable to a free people even if it could be preserved over time; and time has demonstrated that it can not.
Comment 9: Four stars
“Regime Change is really the closing argument a prosecutor would have given had the real assassins of JFK ever been prosecuted” by Michael Foudy
If you read the other books in this series and watched the five part video this book (I did) would deserve all five stars, because it brings it all together in a final summation. Think of this book as a prosecutor’s closing argument. However if you have not consumed all that data , this book is still good enough for four out of five stars in my world. To really appreciate this book I strongly suggest your read Hornberger’s other books on this topic first. To really see the full monty watch the five part video by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board and who is the author of the five-volume book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, discusses deceit and deception in the official autopsy of John F. Kennedy, which I found compelling. You can find that video at Jacob Hornberger’s website: https://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/altered-history-exposing-deciet-and-deception-in-the-jfk-assassination-medical-evidence-part-1/ Then end your exploration with the proverbial closing argument, “Regime Change” If you do all that you will have seen the entire case, which I found persuasive. I realize that sounds like a daunting task but the information you will discover is more than worth it.
Comment 10: Four stars
“Well worth reading!” by Charles Hurlburt
While this book contains little that is new to the seasoned JFK assassination student, it is an excellent in depth coverage of the why and who of the plot to replace our president.
Comment 11: Four stars
“JFK Assassination Facts” by Amazon customer
Solid summary of event surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. No new revelations, but decent job of sorting out the facts.
Comment 12: Three stars
“A logical viewpoint” by Hans
One has to read this report with the understanding it is not detail oriented but merely presents a logical view of “who” architected the assassination plot, making it obvious it was not Oswald. It does not delve into specifically how and from where the act was accomplished nor does it identify any specific actors who carried out the assassination. It also presents facts that gives a reason for the absurdity of the Warren Commission Report.