ANALYSIS OF WORLD REACTION TO PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S ASSASSINATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00429A001400020016-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 28, 2004
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: December 13, 1963
• Content Type: MEMO

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13 December 1963
SUBJECT: Analysis of World Reaction to President
Kennedy's Assassination
A. The USSR
1. Since the assassination of President Kennedy,
Soviet leaders have refrained from taking any actions
which the US and the rest of the world could interpret
as calculated to embarrass the US. Soviet interest in
maintaining the atmosphere of detente created by the
nuclear test ban treaty was demonstrated by the appoint-
ment of Mikoyan to represent the USSR at President
Kennedys,tLb, funeral. He is close to Khrushchev and per-
sonally acquainted with many high-level US officials
and participated in the settlement of the Cuban mis-
sile crisis last fall. Moscow has consistently pre-
sented that settlement as the epitome of peaceful
coexistence in action.
2. Soviet leaders were apparently as profoundly
moved and shocked by the slaying of President Kennedy
as were the leaders of America's closest allies. In
addition to his formal message of condolence, Khrush-
chev personally visited the US Embassy. He recalled
to the Ambassador that Lenin had condemned "nihilist"
activities and asserted that the Soviet Communist
Party is traditionally opposed to terrorism. Madame
Khrushcheva also visited the embassy and referred
warmly to her memories of the Vienna meeting with
the Kennedys. She said her family, and indeed, all
Soviet citizens she knows, were "shaken" by the
tragedy. The Danish foreign minister, who was in
Moscow at the time of the assassination, reported
that Gromyko seemed visibly moved by the news. The
US Embassy was impressed by the apparently genuine
and deep reaction of concern, grief, and sympathy among
the Soviet people over the President's death. Several
State Department review completed
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embassy members, as well as other Americans in Moscow,
were stopped in the street by Soviet citizens wishing
to express sympathy, and American students at the
university reported that a number of their Soviet col-
leagues were in tears.
3. Soviet Government"leaders in their official
statements and messages carefully avoided any attempt
to assess the blame for what they termed the "heinous"
slaying of President Kennedy. The Soviet propaganda
line, on the other hand, which was peddled with great
force and a show of moral indignation to the Soviet
public by the press, radio and television, was that
the assassination was the work of "ultra rightists"
in the US and that the killing of Lee Oswald was an
attempt by the "ultras" to wipe out the tracks. Prior
to Oswald's murder, Moscow reflected sensitivity over
his Marxist affiliation. Soviet media charged that
American right-wingers were trying to use the assas-
sination of President Kennedy to stir up anti-Soviet
and anti-Cuban hysteria. Moscow subsequently went to
great lengths to detail the US Communist Party's
denial that Oswald was ever a member of the Party
and even took note of US press reports linking him
with Trotskyite movements. Moscow also noted that he
was denied Soviet citizenship while in the USSR, but
did not report that the Soviet Embassy in Washington
turned over a consular file on Oswald to US officials.
4. Soviet propaganda thus attempted to defend
the Soviet Government and the Communist movement in
general from any link with the assassination. It did,
however, present the tragedy to confirm and deepen the
impression of US life which it has been portraying to
the Soviet public for over a year--the impression
that the US is in the grips of a deep social and moral
crisis, with a massive rightist plot moving towards
power.
B. Communist China
1. Peiping promptly reported the assassination
of President Kennedy, but unlike Moscow did not com-
ment at length on the tragedy or on the suspected
The late President was one of Peiping'
assassin
.
favorite propaganda targets as an alleged "warmonger,"
and the Chinese Communists had devoted considerable
effort to denouncing Khrushchew for his "naive"
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association with President Kennedy. Reflecting
Peiping's vicious anti-US attitude and its disre-
gard for common decency, one paper printed a
gruesome cartoon on the assassination of President
Kennedy.
2. Chinese Communist delegates to meetings out-
side of China took issue with expressions of sorrow
over the President's death on the part of other
delegates. At Conakry, Guinea, a Chinese Communist
delegation to a conference of Afro-Asian lawyers
walked out of the hall on 23 November when the chair-
man asked members to stand for one minute to silent
tribute to the slain President. The Chinese returned
to the meeting only after the tribute. At a subse-
quent session of the World Peace Council in Warsaw,
Peiping delegates fought their way to the rostrum
and over vehement objections of the chairman denounced
other participants for lauding the assassinated Presi-
dent.
3. Peiping has found it easy to switch its at-
tacks from President Kennedy to President Johnson.
The Chinese Communist press has portrayed the new
President as a "rich millionaire" who "represents
the interests of big Oilmen and ranchers in the south
and big capitalists and industrialists in the north."
Peiping noted that Johnson "has given positive sup-
port to all Kennedy's reactionary policies in whose
making and projection he participated."
C. Cuba
1. Cuban reaction to the President's killing and
the aftermath has reflected more sensitivity and appre-
hension than any other regime in the world. Havana
comment, highlighted by off-the-cuff speeches of
Castro and "Che" Guevara, has stressed that a new,
tougher policy against Cuba would be forthcoming from
the US.
2. In his speech of 27 November, Castro went
into elaborate detail in an attempt to prove what he
had stated in his earlier speech of 24 November--that
President Kennedy died at the instigation, if not by
the hand, of "ultrareactionaries" in the US. Cuban
press and radio comment on the assassination has ela-
borated Castro's theme by stressing "evidence" that
the same reactionaries in the US who criticized
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President Kennedy's Cuban policy as too weak were respon-
sible for murdering him. The 28 November Venezuelan
statement on the arms cache of alleged Cuban origin found
in Venezuela has been linked in Cuban propaganda with
the Kennedy assassination as another move paving the way
for more direct action against Cuba. Cuban comment on
both events has suggested an elaborate reactionary plot
in the US in which all evidence of the "true origin" of
the assassination is being covered up. Allen Dulles'
presence on the Warren Commission is being cited as
"evidence" to prove this charge.
D. Other Communist Countries
1. East European Communist media, with the excep-
tion of Albania, closely followed Moscow's effort to
lay responsibility for the assassination of President
Kennedy at the door of America's radical right wing.
Repeatedly referring to previous extremists' excesses,
Communist propaganda organs in East Europe suggested
that the rightists, in their impotence to reverse
President Kennedy's liberal policies, have now resorted
to "political terror" to gain their ends.
2. The Albanian press used the assassination to
denounce US imperialism as well as Khrushchev and other
"revisionists." Tirana said that the new praise which
Khrushchev and modern revisionists are now giving to
Kennedy's imperialist and aggressive policy, which
Johnson intends to continue, shows that they have de-
cided to follow their line of "capitulationism" and to
collaborate and compromise with imperialism.
3. North Vietnam and North Korea have attributed
the assassination to US political struggles. The Hanoi
party newspaper attacked "revisionists" who have "ex-
pressed sorrow at the loss of a bellicose ringleader of
imperialism."' The paper judged the President's death
to be the result of a power struggle. It stated that
"seeing that the measures taken by Kennedy yielded nothing
for financiers but only benefited the Kennedy group, his
opponents did not hesitate to shoot him down."
E. The NonCommunist World
1. In Western Europe the press expressed strong
doubts that the assassination of the President and the
subsequent murder of his accused assassin were individual
acts of two maniacs. Numerous stories advanced the
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theory that the two killings were in fact part of some
plot. There was a general atmosphere of suspicion and
disbelief and overwhelming criticism of the police per-
formance in Dallas.
2. Press reports available from Africa showed
heavy emphasis on the racist theme. The contention was
voiced that the President was shot because of his civil
rights stand.
3. Middle East commentaries attributed the assas-
sination to Zionism. One Cairo newspaper noted that
Oswald's killer was "one Jack Ruberstein, a Jew of course."
4. Some observers in Nationalist China and Latin
America saw a Communist plot, but these reports were not
numerous.
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