Strelnikov in PRAVDA Dispatch
Moscow TASS International Service in Russian 0827 GMT 25 November 1963--L
(Excerpts) New York, 24 November--Some new circumstances
preceding the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas became known here
today. An extremely reactionary atmosphere created by ultrarightwing elements in
Texas had become so tense that the White House secret service was induced to ask
Kennedy to cancel his trip. The governor of the state, Connally, who knew the
mood of the Texas extremists better than others, was equally concerned. The
governor flew especially to Washington to dissuade Kennedy from visiting Texas
where, according to the governor, "unpleasant incidents might happen.:"
Nor did the persuasions help of U.S. representative to the
United Nations Stevenson, who a month ago himself felt the rage of the Dallas
hoodlums. "A premonition of disaster which might befall Kennedy in Dallas never
left Stevenson," the New York HERALD TRIBUNE writes today. "I considered it my
duty," Stevenson himself relates, "to telephone the White House and warn about
the outrages in Dallas."
Many of the Dallas inhabitants awaited Kennedy's arrival with
a premonition of something awful going to happen. On the day of President
Kennedy's arrival in Texas, the Dallas NEWS put out a thick margin of mourning
around one of its pages. This page carried an address to the guest from
Washington. "Welcome, Mr. Kennedy, to Dallas," the extremists wrote, "to a town
which rejected your philosophy and policy in 1960 and which rejects them again
in an even more decisive fashion than before." Bob Considine, correspondent of
one of the New York newspapers, not without reason calls this a prophetic
"address."
According to police allegations, Oswald's guilt is fully
proved. Apparently they found at a Chicago gunsmith's a letter from Oswald
requesting a rifle of the same type which was found at the window from which the
criminal fired. It is reported that during a search of Oswald's apartment a
photograph was discovered which shows him with the rifle in his hands. It is
said that political literature was also found there. Judging by the titles of
the books and newspapers, many of them are publications by American Trotskyites.
The Dallas police claim that Oswald called himself a Marxist.
This is exactly what the ultrarightwingers, fascists, John Birch Society
members, racists, General Walker, and Senator Goldwater want. "It is clear that
the killing was committed by a communist fanatic," the Hearst newspapers write,
whipping up hysteria. "Doing this, he was serving the cause of communism."
Reading this and listening to the wail of the reactionary
press, we might conclude that a long-thought-out, provocative operation was in
the midst of being unfolded, reminiscent of the burning of the German Reichstag
in 1933, which was needed by the German fascists to inflict a blow on Germany's
progressive forces. It is not by chance that in Madison, Wisconsin, a youngster
in the uniform of a Hitlerite Storm Trooper ran out on the street yesterday and
started shouting: "I am celebrating Kennedy's murder! Now we will get at those
Reds!"
Attempts to whip up anti-Soviet and anti-Cuban hysteria are
increasing by the hour. Local papers are publishing obviously provocative and
inciting reports about New York police expecting possible disorders outside the
premises of the socialist countries' missions to the United Nations. Plain
Americans do not conceal their concern at what is going on around them.
A correspondent of the New York WORLD TELEGRAM tells today of
a typical conversation overheard by him in a cafe on Lexington Avenue, New York.
Here is the end of the conversation, as the American journalist describes it: "I
will tell you more," the man at the counter said. "I am afraid; I am afraid of
what may happen. The matter may not go that way. Or might it?" "Of course, it is
already going that way," answered a fat man.
With every hour since Kennedy's tragic death there is more
reason to think that the assassination in Dallas was a premeditated action by
the fascist forces, those ultrarightwing and racist circles which are
plotting against every step directed at an international detente and are trying
to flood the United States with a new, dirty wave of reaction.