There’s been a theory going around the Interenet for some time that in a 1961 Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, President John F. Kennedy warned the American people of a threat from the Illuminati. This theory has popped up again in an article by Katherine Smith in The People’s Voice (which was republished at LRC (link) where I found it).

The oft quoted portion of the speech which supposedly indicts the Illuminati is as follows:

“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system that has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, and no secret is revealed.”

However, it is quite clear on a reading of the full transcript of Kennedy’s speech that the enemies he warns of are not “the Illuminati” but rather international communists. His speech opens with a story about Karl Marx’s unsuccessful attempts to make a living as a journalist for the New York Herald Tribune and Kennedy’s regret that Marx did not get the rate of pay which he requested, which might have saved the world from the development of his communist philosophy.

In the speech, Kennedy does not attempt to clue in the press in regard to a shadowy Illuminati, but rather he asks the press not to make American state secrets available in their news publications. He does not talk about secrecy as something to be avoided but as something to be willing adopted by the press in furtherance of American security.

“For the facts of the matter are that this nation’s foes have openly boasted of acquiring through our newspapers information they would otherwise hire agents to acquire through theft, bribery or espionage; that details of this nation’s covert preparations to counter the enemy’s covert operations have been available to every newspaper reader, friend and foe alike; that the size, the strength, the location and the nature of our forces and weapons, and our plans and strategy for their use, have all been pinpointed in the press and other news media to a degree sufficient to satisfy any foreign power; and that, in at least in one case, the publication of details concerning a secret mechanism whereby satellites were followed required its alteration at the expense of considerable time and money.”

“The newspapers which printed these stories were loyal, patriotic, responsible and well-meaning. Had we been engaged in open warfare, they undoubtedly would not have published such items. But in the absence of open warfare, they recognized only the tests of journalism and not the tests of national security. And my question tonight is whether additional tests should not now be adopted.”

See Kennedy’s Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association (link).