On the Internet you can find a phrase about a mysterious conspiracy, allegedly uttered by the American president a week before his death. We checked to see if Kennedy said anything similar.

The full remark of the 35th President of the United States, appearing on many websites, reads as follows: “There is a plan in this country to enslave every man, woman and child. Before leaving this high and honorable position, I intend to expose this plan." It is noted that Kennedy uttered these words a few days before his assassination in November 1963 - apparently, thereby the distributors of the quote hint at the connection between the politician’s speech and his death.

This quote is quite popular in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet - it is found on social networks (Facebook, Telegram, "Zen", "Livejournal", Youtube, Twitter), as well as in online collections of various sayings ("YaHalva", "Pearls of thought", "Quotes.info"). You can also read about the quote in the online magazine “Boston Outlook" They even publish it on English-language resources audio recording Kennedy's speech with appropriate description.

The assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, gave rise to many conspiracy theories. Supporters of most of them argue that, contrary to official conclusions, the direct killer - Lee Harvey Oswald - did not act alone and was connected either with Soviet intelligence services, or with Chicago mafia, or with other major political or criminal forces.

And if the question of a possible secret organizer of the assassination attempt is indeed not so obvious and has been a difficult task even for intelligence services for decades, then the verbal legacy of the 35th President of the United States has been well studied. Meeting quotes John F. Kennedy is published on the Presidential Library website, transcripts of his speeches are on the project website The American Presidency. According to publications on the Internet, Kennedy's revealing speech was made on November 15, 1963. On this day he spoke at two conventions in New York: American Federation of Labor — Congress of Industrial Trade Unions (AFL-CIO) and Catholic youth organization (CYO). Both speeches were positive, touching on already achieved and future goals. The president did not talk about any conspiracy in them. “Verified” did not find anything similar either in other speeches of the American politician, or in his books, or in any biographical publications dedicated to Kennedy, including even non-academic works with elements of conspiracy theories.

Speech that can be heard on audio recordings, which often accompanies the searched quote and contains the words that “across the world we are confronted by a monolithic, ruthless conspiracy that is expanding its sphere of influence by secret means,” has nothing to do with the last days of Kennedy’s life. It sounded on April 27, 1961, three months after the presidential inauguration. On that day the politician spoke before members of the American Association of Newspaper Publishers and called on members of the press to be guided primarily by national interests when publishing this or that information. The background for the speech was the unsuccessful US operation against landing landing in Cuba. This press conference was not connected with any internal conspiracies.

“Verified” contacted the Kennedy Presidential Library with a question about the origin of the quote about the “plan to enslave America.” Archivist Stacy Chandler responded that the institution often receives similar requests. According to her, it is often claimed that this quote was made during Kennedy's speech at Columbia University in November 1963. However, the library did not find any information that the president spoke at that educational institution that year. Chandler and her colleagues were also unable to find anything similar in any of the databases available to them, including through keyword searches of scanned archival documents, newspaper reports and transcripts of JFK speeches.

And if the quotation in Russian first appeared on the Internet around ten years ago, then in the supposed original language - English - its history is somewhat longer. The oldest "Verified" mention of her that was discovered occurred in 2004, when a phrase signed by Kennedy was used as signatures in online correspondence. However, even before this, a rather similar statement was in use, which, obviously, became the prototype of what was being sought. We are talking about the words “the high office of the President has been used to organize a conspiracy to destroy the freedom of Americans, and before I leave office, I must inform the citizens of their plight,” allegedly spoken by the President at Columbia University not seven, but ten days before his assassination. This quote was quite popular in the 1990s - for example, it was heard during the hearings in Senate USA in 1997. The oldest cases of its use, according to the Google Books project and Archive.org, date back to the beginning of the previous decade. In particular, the words attributed to Kennedy can be found in three books that are not at all political, but economic in orientation: “Wealth for everyone"(1982), "Duck book. Investing in Survival in the 1980s" (1982) and "Declaration of Financial Independence"(1983). Even earlier, in 1981, the quote was referred to in Court of Appeal 7th District of the United States.

This is where the traces of the quote end, and, apparently, it appeared not much earlier than 1981, that is, at least 15 years after Kennedy’s assassination. The phrase turned out to be very convenient for quoting in non-core publications and quite successfully rhymed with various conspiracy theories in connection with the assassination attempt on the politician. However, there is no basis to assert that the statement in any of the above versions belongs to John Kennedy.

Cover photo: social networks