Ben Swann Fan

Executive Order 11110 was issued by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on June 4, 1963.

This executive order delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury the President’s authority to issue silver certificates under the Thomas Amendment of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, as amended by the Gold Reserve Act. The order allowed the Secretary to issue silver certificates, if any were needed, during the transition period under President Kennedy’s plan to eliminate silver certificates.

Text of Executive Order

President Kennedy’s Executive Order (E.O.) 11110 modified the pre-existing Executive Order 10289 issued by U.S. President Harry S. Truman in 1951, and stated the following:^[13]

“The Secretary of the Treasury is hereby designated and empowered to perform the following-described functions of the President without the approval, ratification, or other action of the President…”

The order then lists tasks (a) through (h) which the Secretary may now do without instruction from the President. None of the powers assigned to the Treasury in E.O. 10289 relate to money or to monetary policy. Kennedy’s E.O. 11110 then instructs that:

SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 9, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended (a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j):’(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821(b)), to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption of an outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and subsidiary silver currency for their redemption,’ and (b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof.

SECTION 2. The amendments made by this Order shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as if said amendments had not been made.

John F. Kennedy,
THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 4, 1963

Public Law 88-36

The House of Representatives took up the President’s request early in 1963,^[4] and passed HR 5389 on April 10, 1963, by a vote of 251 to 122.^[5][6] The Senate passed the bill on May 23, by a vote of 68 to 10.^[7][8]

President Kennedy signed the bill into law on June 4, 1963 and also signed an executive order (11110) authorizing the Treasury Secretary to continue printing silver certificates during the transition period.^[9][10] The act, which became Public Law 88-36 (77 Stat. 54), repealed the Silver Purchase Act of 1934 and related laws, repealed a tax on silver transfers, and authorized the Federal Reserve to issue one- and two-dollar bills, in addition to the notes they were already issuing.^[11] The Silver Purchase Act had authorized and required the Secretary Treasury to buy silver and issue silver certificates. With its repeal, the President needed to delegate to the Treasury Secretary the President’s own authority under the Agricultural Adjustment Act.^[12]

Revocation

E.O. 11110 was not reversed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and the section added to E.O. 10289 remained on the books until President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12608 on September 9, 1987 as part of a general clean-up of executive orders.^[14] E.O. 12608 specifically revoked the section added by E.O. 11110 which effectively revoked the entire Order. By this time, however, the remaining legislative authority behind E.O. 11110 had been repealed by Congress when Pub.L. 97–258 was passed in 1982.

In March 1964, Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon halted redemption of silver certificates for silver dollars. In the 1970s, large numbers of the remaining silver dollars in the mint vaults were sold to the collecting public for collector value. All redemption in silver ceased on June 24, 1968.

Conspiracy theory

Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire, presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of the Federal Reserve, and that forces opposed to such action might have played at least some part in the assassination.^[15][16][17] According to Marrs, the issuance of Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the United States Department of the Treasury by replacing Federal Reserve Notes with Silver Certificates.^[16] Actor and author Richard Belzer named the responsible parties in this theory as American “billionaires, power brokers, and bankers … working in tandem with the CIA and other sympathetic agents of the government.”^[18]

A 2010 article in Research magazine discussing various controversies surrounding the Federal Reserve stated that “the wildest accusation against the Fed is that it was involved in Kennedy’s assassination.”^[16] Critics of the theory note that Kennedy called for and signed legislation phasing out Silver Certificates in favor of Federal Reserve Notes, thereby enhancing the power of the Federal Reserve; and that Executive Order 11110 was a technicality that only delegated existing presidential powers to the Secretary of the Treasury for administrative convenience during a period of transition.^[16][17]

References