While JFK’s proposal has been forgotten in popular memory and sometimes overlooked by historians, it was understood as highly significant at the time. Kennedy was pushing, not just a scientific endeavor, but a peaceful end to the Cold War.
You can read JFK’s speech here.
Hmmm… two months before he’s assassinated under still bewildering and mysterious circumstances, JFK makes it absolutely clear he intends to end the Cold War through mutual cooperation and peaceful coexistence.
For the defense establishment, this would have to be seen as the last straw. Refusing to escalate military involvement in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, ‘capitulation’ to the Soviets in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the cow to never invade Cuba and the subsequent closing of mercernary camps, the American University speech, test ban treaty and now proposing a joint mission to the moon with the Soviets… all had the effect of creating a boiling cauldron of reactionary hate that JFK himself noted to friends, resulting in the movie ‘Seven Days in May’ released after his death.
The four high-ranking CIA officers hid the truth of material evidence in the assassination from the WC and HSCA. And the WC is a complete whitewash with a foregone conclusion. They even took the word of Oswald’s killer over a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter.
Did Walter Cronkite or any other news reporter mention JFK’s hope for a joint mission when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon? No like purges in totalitarian countries, JFK unique vision was erased from our history.