Vietnam Declassified: Kennedy, Johnson,Nixon

[Michael Walton]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_34A

This whole thing goes all the way back to 1954 with the above. I glanced at a book at the store recently (can't remember the name of it) where it mentioned the above and LBJ and McNamara signed off on the above I think it said Feb 64, six months prior to Tonkin.

The Tonkin incident was just the "Remember the USS Maine" incident the warmongers were waiting for - that little big incident to get everyone foaming to start the war. You know, like Bush did when he said Sadaam had nuclear weapons.

Coincidently, OP34A, starting in 1954, is around the same year where Oswald's Hungarian clone was found and thus, starting the Oswald and his clone operation.

Could these two incidents just possibly be related?

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[James DiEugenio]

To answer some queries:

 

Ron, yes the beginning of the paper trail for alteration of Kennedy's Vietnam policies goes back to NSAM 273.  That is what allowed direct American naval involvement in the DeSoto patrols.  And that is what led to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. And yes, as Mike notes above, the actual resolution was written months in advance.  Reportedly, LBJ carried it around with him in his jacket pocket waiting for the right opportunity to jam it through congress.

Sandy, I agree that is a really important piece of dialogue. And it should be getting much more attention. Its pretty much a verbal smoking gun.

Its quite apparent that LBJ is just steamrolling over McNamara, to the point that he is getting him to retract his October announcement like it didn't really happen.  I should add, the book Virtual JFK, that you refer to, that was a conference of scholars and former civil servants who listened to and debated to two days of evidence on the subject of whether or not Kennedy was going into Vietnam, and LBJ reversed that intent.  At the end of the two days, the majority agreed with that thesis. Which was an incredible achievement.

Mike OP34A began in 1954?  It must have been a different operation.  The ones that involved the DeSoto patrols did not start until 1964. As you can see from that Wiki entry, they were back then CIA backed and land based.  In 1964 they were under control of the Pentagon and largely sea based.

Ron, Newman's books can be purchased more cheaply in E book form.

Edited June 15, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, the thing that surprised me the most about doing the research on this topic was Nixon.

There are a couple of things I left out for length, like his sabotaging on the LBJ space talks in 1968 through Anna Chennault, and also the incredible story by Jim Hougan about Nixon in Vietnam in 1964 passing out gold bars to native Vietnamese in return for POWs, when, as Hougan notes, there were not supposed to be any POWs there.

But, as I say in there, it turns out Nixon dropped more bombs in Indochina than LBJ did, which, considering the scope of Rolling Thunder is really amazing.

Secondly, Nixon knew very early, by the first part of 1969 at least, and probably earlier, that the war could not be won.  Plus, by 1969. the American military was falling apart. MyLai was only the most extreme example, but there were scores and scores of others which the Pentagon covered up or deep sixed.  But Nixon continued the war anyway.  All for an agreement which was very close to what Hanoi offered in 1969.  

He was a terrible president.  And the idea that he and Kissinger were somehow foreign policy afficandos has been exposed today as nothing but self promoted flackery.  THEy were both, as opposed to JFK, dyed in the wool Cold Warriors. When hacks like Chris Matthews compare the two for purposed of similarity, as he did in his book, I mean you can only do that through censorship and editing of the record.  This  is why the assassination of RFK is so crucial an historical event.

It was that murder that paved the way for Nixon to get into the White House.

[James DiEugenio]

Here is the extraordinary Jim Hougan article.

Can anyone fathom what was really going on here?

http://www.jimhougan.com/NixonInTheJungle.html

 

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, for some factual context to the missions being referenced I suggest the following:

 

The Secret War Against Hanoi by Richard Schultz

The Way We Do Things, Black Entry Operations Into North Vietnam by Thomas Ahern

Black Ops, Vietnam; The Operational History of MCVSOG by Richard Gillespie

The are all factual and I used them all in researching and writing Shadow Warfare as well as covering the links between the DeSoto missions and the seaborne raids on N. Vietnam which are both related to the Tonkin Gulf incidents. They might help with your question - I certainly don't see where Nixon fits into it all.

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Larry.  I have that book and its next on my list.

[Joe Bauer]

RFK had to be taken out...sooner than before building up a stream locomotive campaign movement that could not be stopped.

RFK would have defeated Nixon.

Being defeated by two Kennedy's for the highest office in the land in one lifetime within 8 short years probably would have sent Nixon into his delusional breakdown sooner than 1974.

[Ron Bulman]

Nixon as VP in the 50's ran Maheu (then of the CIA) in an operation on Aristotle Onassis, future husband of Jacqueline Kennedy?  Deep doo doo for me.   Thank you for posting the Hougan article link.  I've read Eisenhower left the running of the CIA to Nixon but not that Nixon had actually ran a CIA agent himself, especially one so relevant later.

Maheu went on to head of security for Howard Hughes, richest man in the world at the time and while doing so connected Johnny Roselli of the mafia to the CIA for attempts to assassinate Castro as I imagine most readers of this site already know. 

Nixon approves Dulles and the CIA plan for what became the Bay of Pigs that JFK inherited.

Nixon passes through Vietnam in 64 on a non political mission distributing gold bars.  Were they from Lansdale in the Philippines after WWII or the stash LBJ moved from Mount (?) in Arizona (?) to Mexico?

With Nixon's involvement in sabotage of the of the 68 peace talks, increased bombing and troop numbers and other things delaying the end of the war it seems he was involved in Vietnam from  Dien Bien Phu  until he resigned.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 19, 2017 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

On ‎6‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 3:39 PM, Chris Newton said:

Two thumbs up.

Vietnam is such a heartbreak to me. So many of my friends' older brothers never coming back alive and one great friend of mine left a quadriplegic. I didn't serve until 7 years after the end of the draft but most of my senior NCO's of that era were all vets and had their scars, real, imagined, physical and mental.

I ask: for what? Communist Vietnam is not part of any "axis of evil".

"for what?"   Helicopters and of course the fuel they required.  Vietnam reminds me how naïve I was.  My Dad (happy Fathers day) worked as an industrial engineer for Bell, that's where our bread and butter came from.  30 - 40 years later somebody pointed out in a book that every time a chopper went down they got to build a new one.  Just the transport of men and equipment to and from Vietnam was a huge business.

I still have my draft card.  Had to register in the fall of 74 for what turned out to be the last lottery drawing in the spring of 75.  I knew they had quit actually drafting people the year before but little else.  No friends or relatives dead or injured (physically).  I still did feel relived when "my" ball wasn't drawn until number 247.   A cousin told me, finally, 30 years later after his dad's funeral "they took you straight out of high school, you don't know sh*t from shinola, they give you (6 weeks, 2-3 months?) training, ship you over there and then you're getting shot at."  He'd been on disability over agent orange for years.  Had a close friend who said he'd go to Canada if he was drafted.  I would have went like a blind sheep if called.  Dad served at the end of WWII and stateside during Korea.  His brother carried shrapnel from the Philippines to his grave many years later.

I did work with a guy in 75-76 who claimed he was the second to enter a barn to search it but the first with an automatic weapon.  Said he was sprayed down the backside with an automatic weapon from the rafters.  I've seen the scars on his back and legs.  Also said he was given morphine before being put on a transport helicopter to Saigon and tore off a wristband indicating such in transit.  More morphine there.  Said they didn't think he would survive but sent him home to see his family before he passed if he made it.  He remembered waking up changing planes in San Francisco then next when landing at Carswell AFB in Fort Worth.  Believe what you want of his story.  He had no kind words for anyone of Asian appearance.

Just an aside as the forum's kind of slow. 

Edited June 19, 2017 by Ron Bulman

[Chris Newton]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

I still have my draft card.  Had to register in the fall of 74 for what turned out to be the last lottery drawing in the spring of 75.

Funny. I remember exactly where I was when I heard on the radio that the draft had ended. I had just turned 16 and it meant that I never had to register, not even later on when they re-instituted that requirement. I was 22 when I enlisted in 1982.

Of all the Nam Vets I served with, SGM Patrick Tadina had the most impact on me. He was nearing retirement and had been assigned to my unit shortly after jumping into Grenada. We were his first Armor unit but he went on to serve in Desert Storm, 6 years after I got out. He had been Americas longest serving and most decorated Army Ranger in Vietnam. He survived 12 tours as a LRRP and he's in the Army Ranger Hall of Fame. He avoided fanfare and when Stars and Stripes Europe wrote an article about him titled "The Real Rambo" he refused to talk about it.

[James DiEugenio]

Vietnam was just such a bad war.  In every way I can think of.

And for Nixon and Kissinger  to continue it as long as they did, knowing they could not win, but only to maintain a Decent Interval, that is more than a bit sickening. That is why I say that if all this info had been out there, the war would not have been sustained.

Ron, yes that is true about Nixon and Onasis.  And thanks for noting that Nixon was involved from beginning to the end.  And this is the man who the MSM praised as being such a foreign policy guru. My butt.  

 

Edited June 20, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Roger DeLaria]

My dad was a career man in the Air Force for 20yrs. Near the end of his military service, he got sent over to Vietnam when my sister was a baby and I was on the way. I was born when he was there, and he didn't see me until I was 9-10mos old. He was exposed to agent orange like many of the guys over there, which we think directly contributed to health issues years later. He never talked about his Vietnam tour much, until years later, and he really didn't say alot.

Edited June 19, 2017 by Roger DeLaria

[Chris Newton]

I just want to add, as a military veteran, I have many heroes and one of them is 2X MoH Awardee Gen. Smedley Butler who told it like it is.

BOLD mine.

Quote

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Agent orange, pellet bombs, anti personnel projectiles, onward and downward.  Vietnam was just hopeless. I will never forget Jane Fonda coming to my town with some veterans and showing the public these kinds of awful weapons.

As Ted Draper once said about Nixon's slogan, Peace with Honor, "How do you end a dishonorable war honorably?"

BTW, please note in the AV essay, the two guys i credit at the end.  Its one thing to declassify tapes and documents.  Its another to have someone go to a library and sit down and read them or listen to them.  That is not easy work.  Jeff Kimball and Ken Hughes actually did that on the Nixon side, and then wrote about it.  And they exposed the Decent Interval concept in writing.  A guy who does that kind of work in the JFK case, and does not get enough credit is Malcolm Blunt.  But its people like that who do the actual excavation.  And help us understand what happened.  Unfortunately its usually 20-30 years later.  Which is why I made that card about secrecy being the enemy of not just truth, but democracy.

Edited June 20, 2017 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

http://standardnews.com/vietnam-war-quiz