Rise of the M-16 Rifle…& Political Skullduggery

Opinion by Contributor John McNair

Washington DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- The stout little guy occupying the couch out in the foyer of Vice President Johnson’s office had just arrived as he had many times over the last year or so. He had spent much time between Johnson and McNamara’s offices trying to help them figure out how the U.S could buy his product and in an amount that would pull his teetering company from the red. This CEO had an unusual history.

He was born in Paris in 1918 and had been a member of the Communist Party. He was well known around Washington D.C. due to his writing for the communist paper, the Daily Worker. He had been under investigation by the FBI for his communist dealings and by the age of thirty, David Karr, a Russian Jew, had entered the world of public relations and had become a specialist in proxy fights. He partnered with corporate raider Alfons Landa, and by mid-1958 the two of them had taken control of the Penn-Texas Corporation, a holding company valued at over 130 million Dollars in assets. They renamed the company Fairbanks-Whitney, and under Karr’s leadership, its stocks doubled in value. Previous of that merger and during September of 1955 Colt Firearms, due to mismanagement of funds, voted to merge with Fairbanks-Whitney. Colt soon owned a licence to manufacture AR-15/10 rifles. Fairchild/ Armalite decided. because of repeated failures of the basic designs. to license the AR-15/10 rifle designs to Colt/Fairbanks-Whitney in early 1959.

Under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the United States military complex was beginning a new era where it would no longer train soldiers to man a particular specialty or discipline. McNamara decided it would be more beneficial to contract everything out. For instance, the Navy’s Construction Battalion (CBs) would no longer build runways and airports. President Johnson’s (LBJ) close friends and benefactors, the Brown Brothers (Brown and Root, Haliburton, KBR), would be contracted for building infrastructure. The Springfield Armory would no longer design, test, and manufacture rifles. Almost every facet of the Vietnam war was being contracted out save for the actual combat. How this was beneficial to the political factions was that money from the contracts could be readily “kicked back” to those signing the contracts as reelection funding. This new era was the brainchild of “wiz kid” McNamara…a title he and his minions were termed after they did wonders for the auto industry before coming on board the Johnson administration.

It was in this light that David Karr was there at Johnson’s office. To purchase one of Karr’s products could be beneficial to both Karr’s company and the funding of the upcoming election campaigns, but there were roadblocks.

First, potential government firearm purchases were historically submitted through the Springfield Armory, usually due to a specification being issued from the military via the Pentagon. After all, the new M-14 rifle took ten (10) years to develop and was just now being released to the troops as the latest battle rifle. Second, Kennedy had just issued in October 1963, the NSAM (National Security Action Memorandum) 263, which approved of the removal of troops from Vietnam as a start to end the conflict, so there was no need for the development of a new battle rifle.

Johnson had been telling Karr, one of his close friends and benefactors, to sit tight in order to see what the future may bring.

Few people know that it was the AR-10 not the AR-15 that Armalite/Colt had been pitting against the M-14 and the FN-FAL for government testing.

The AR-10 lost every battle to those two superior rifles, but supposedly, due to a request from General Willard G. Wyman in 1957, the AR-15 not the AR-10 was mysteriously being considered to replace the 30 cal carbine because the carbine was wanting on stopping power. To sell the purchase of a new rifle, McNamara had to come up with some excuses. First, it was said the M-14 seemed to rise during automatic fire. The next reason was even though the new M-14 .308 cartridge was significantly smaller than the M-1 Garand’s 30-06 cartridge, (the cartridge that won WWII) a soldier could carry even more of the new .223 cartridge which was being used in the M-16.

Also, there was this mysterious battle in Vietnam where the NVA’s AK-47s supposedly outclassed the M-14s, so all of a sudden, there was a push to field this new AR-15/M-16, far smaller in size and power than the M-14.

There has been no evidence that anyone in the field complained about pitting the M-14 against the AK-47 and don’t forget that during WWII the U.S. military carried enough ammo to feed their M1 Garands with no problem, through every jungle, island-hopping campaign including Burma during WWII. Incidentally, the AK-47 and most other fully automatic rifles rise during full-auto fire. Eventually the M-14 had its full-auto selector removed, but more importantly, the Army had always taught its troops to shoot, with most rifles, on semi-auto rather than full-auto or to shoot in three-shot bursts…so why would the M-14’s rise be of any consideration? After receiving the new M-16, most Marines wanted to get their M-14s back. One Marine lieutenant even wrote a letter to the Washington Post about the continuing malfunctions of the M-16 during battle which eventually lead to a Senate investigation in 1967.

The report of the comparative evaluation of the M14, AR15 and AK47 rifles was submitted to the Army Chief of Staff, who reviewed it and forwarded it with his conclusions and recommendations to the Secretary of the Army on January 14, 1963. In the review of the report, the M14 was shown as superior to the AR15 in penetration, night firing, and reliability, and the AR15 superior to the M14 in automatic fire and transportability. Most would think penetration and reliability two of the most important considerations.

1968 REPORT OF THE M16 RIFLE REVIEW PANEL

Even after all the continuing negative reports, in January 1963, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara concluded that the AR-15 (not the AR-10) was the superior weapon system and ordered a halt to M14 production. So he concluded in four months what it usually took the Springfield Armory years to do. Then, on November 4, 1963, McNamara authorized the purchase of 104,000 copies of the M-16(AR-15). On November 21, the day before Kennedy’s death, NSAM 273, written in Honolulu by McGeorge Bundy, reevaluated Kennedy’s NSAM 263 and returned the U.S. towards war. President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. In January 1964, David Karr resigned as CEO, and in May the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation was renamed Colt Industries.

A few years later David Karr was “assassinated” with poison while on the way home from Moscow. Somehow, David Karr, Johnson and McNamara and were able to circumvent the whole of the military complex protocol to sell 104,000 poorly functioning rifles to the United States government.

McNamara was at one time CEO of Ford Motor Company and was by no means an idiot. So why did McNamara decide, after all the controversy, that the unproven M-16 was a rifle needed by the U.S. military…especially in light of the new M-14 having just arrived on the battlefield after ten (10) years of development?

Furthermore, he did so against the wishes of the military? By the end of 1964, the M-16 was widely distributed to the troops in Vietnam and was subsequently adopted in 1969 as the main battle rifle, not just the replacement for the 30 cal carbine, of the U.S. military. McNamara closed the Springfield Armory for good in 1968.

The Israel Connection

You’ve been told that Kennedy was assassinated by perhaps the Mafia or Castro, the CIA or maybe even Russia. What the public never understood was that Kennedy’s most ardent adversary was none of the above but was David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s then prime minister.

There had been an ongoing, passionate feud between Israel and the Kennedy brothers. JFK had found out that Israel had a nuclear weapons facility buried under the Negev Desert and was demanding Israel give up its ambitions for nuclear weapons and, just as passionately, demanded Israel hold mediation talks concerning repatriation and right of return for the Palestinians. Robert Kennedy, the U.S. attorney general, had discovered that Israel was smuggling vast amounts of funds into the U.S. for distribution by the AZC (American Zionist Council)… later to become AIPAC. He was publically demanding that AIPAC be listed as a foreign agent…a demand which is still being voiced today. David Ben-Gurion had been humiliated by the Kennedys when JFK refused him access to the White House for talks. Ben-Gurion also made several speeches that alluded to Kennedy being a severe threat to the future of Israel.

In 1967 LBJ helped quash the U.S.S liberty incident where Israel attacked a U.S. spy ship off the coast of Gaza in an effort to drag the U.S. into the Six-Day War against Egypt. If you take time to study the relationship between LBJ and Israel one might conclude there was a relationship of beneficial proportions. Many people believe that Johnson was in on the attack and not just a president who didn’t want to embarrass an ally. Understanding that David Karr was a Jew, loyal to Israel and perhaps a representative of Israel or Ben-Gurion it would be easy to conclude that the sale of the M-16 rifle may have been influenced by that relationship. By-the-way, David Karr sold Israel their first Russian-designed desalinization plant in March 1961… So he had a close relationship with Ben-Gurion. David Ben-Gurion stepped down as prime minister in May 1963…just months before Kennedy was assassinated.

So, the two people or entities which benefited the most, by far, from JFK’s murder were Israel and LBJ. After Kennedy’s assassination the loud demands that Israel abandons the bomb and allow the Palestinians to return to their land quickly disappeared. LBJ became president of the United States and then went on to escalate the Vietnam War for the next twelve years which, in turn, allowed Colt Industries to sell many more M-16s and made Brown and Root a world corporation. And finally, Israel had the freedom to develop many nuclear weapons while taking and developing much of Palestine for themselves.

Robert Kennedy was supposedly assassinated by a Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, in 1968. AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) is now the most significant political action committee in the world, and they still have not registered as a foreign agent. With the help of AIPAC, Israeli citizens now occupy important and influential seats in the Senate, House, State Department, Pentagon, Education Department, and Justice Department not to mention judgeships and state offices as well.

After almost five decades of controversy and complaint, the military has finally decided to rid itself of the troublesome AR-15 platform and the 5.56/.223 cartridge. It’s entirely possible that McNamara and LBJ never expected the M-16 to be anything other than a temporary purchase to help an important benefactor. Perhaps LBJ and McNamara thought the military would abandon the M-16 quickly after the Vietnam War and never anticipated the M-16 to hang on for decades as America’s main battle rifle.

When you take into account the probability that Israel murdered JFK and that the M-16 was purchased solely to benefit a loyal supporter becomes potently clear. The M-16 was never meant to be America’s battle rifle; it was just a favor to a friend.