Gene Kelly

Jim and Pat: Recall that the HSCA originally intended to interview George deMorenschildt. In March 1977, George was visiting a family friend in Manalapan, Florida. While he was there, George agreed to conduct an interview with Edward Epstein for a feature story in Reader’s Digest. During the interview, HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi paid a visit to the home and left his business card with George’s daughter, and asked if he could call him once he (George) returned. George's daughter informed her father (in Spanish) to keep the house made - and to prevent the gardener from knowing what was going on - that Fonzi had dropped by. She gave him the business card and left to go shopping. Later that afternoon, George was found dead in his upstairs bedroom with a 'self-inflicted' gunshot wound. George's family insisted that he would’ve never committed suicide. This all occurred while Sprague was still Chief Counsel, and before Robert Blakey took over the Committee. If Fonzi was onto deMorenschildt, its likely he would've eventually pursued the Paines (imho). As you well know, in June 1977, Chairman Louis Stokes hired Blakey as chief counsel, and he along with Cornwell and Billings took over for Sprague and Robert Tanenbaum. And as you've written previously, when Robert Blakey took over, a veil of secrecy descended over the investigation, which steered the Committee away from investigating the role of the CIA and toward a predefined organized crime conclusion. Gene

Agree on all points... I've always been intrigued by Shelley's role (he was after all Oswald's supervisor for 6 weeks) and he started at the Book Depository in 1945, and was still there (with Scott Foresman) in 1986. That is quite a long time to stay in one posiition. One wonders ...

Thanks for the clarififcation and additonal detail Alan. Very helpful. The official Warren Commission account of Oswald’s activities have him leaving the Depository at 12:33 pm, just three minutes after the shooting (WR, p.156), implying some of Bookhout’s revised account may be inaccurate. But its clear that Oswald appears to have eaten his lunch before (not after) the assassination. Two of Oswald’s colleagues (Givens and Bonnie Ray Williams ) make it clear that Oswald ate his lunch before the shooting started. Other interview reports also confirm that Oswald was on the TSBD first floor when the President was shot. The lunchroom encounter, Vicki Adams' observations, and Prayerman front step debates also enter into this timeline, and there's obviously a lot of opinions in that regard. But to me its clear that Oswald wasn't on the 6th floor, and that Shelley had to have a hand in his leaving the premises ... so he remains as a person of interest for me. Gene

Joe Robert MacNeil, an NBC reporter accompanying the five-city tour of Texas, ended up in the TSBD (looking for a pay phone) and saw a man using the phone who was (imho) most likely Shelley. In an affidavit made out that same afternoon, Shelley stated: "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." Shelley’s timeline following the shooting - compiled from various sources including his later Warren Commission testimony - is unfortunately inconsistent, leaving questions about where he actually was. A few minutes after MacNeil saw what he described as "three calm men" in the lobby of the TSBD, and after he made his own phone call to NBC News, Oswald apparently left the building. I don't believe that MacNeil was ever able to identify Oswald as the person who directed him to the pay phone. I went immediately into the clear space on the ground floor and asked where there was a phone. There were, as I recall, three men there, all I think in shirt sleeves. What, on recollection, strikes me as possibly significant is that all three seemed to be exceedingly calm and relaxed, compared to the pandemonium which existed right outside their front door. I did not pay attention to this at the time. I asked the first man I saw—a man who was telephoning from a pillar in the middle of the room—where I could call from. He directed me to another man nearer the door, who pointed to an office. When I got to the phone, two of the lines were lit up. I made my call and left. …I was in too much of a hurry to remember what the three men looked like. But their manner was very relaxed. (Ref: FBI report of Oswald at the police station, Warren Report, p. 619). Gene

Alan I beleive that William Weston's thesis about Shelley is taken from reports filed by FBI agents James Hosty and James Bookhout, who attended Captain Fritz’s first interview with Oswald. They wrote a joint report on 23 November, from notes taken on the 22nd. Hosty’s and Bookhout’s joint account of the first–day interview is the earliest surviving account of Oswald’s alibi. It implies this sequence of actions: At “approximately noon” Oswald ate his lunch in the domino room on the first floor. He then went up to the second floor, where he bought a Coke from the vending machine in the lunchroom. Finally, he went downstairs and was on the first floor when JFK came past. A second FBI account of the first–day interview (after Oswald was dead) by Bookhout included an encounter with a policeman and being outside the building with Shelley. The earliest report contains no mention of Oswald being stopped by a police officer, as Fritz would later report: OSWALD stated that on November 22, 1963, at the time of the search of the Texas School Book Depository building by Dallas police officers, he was on the second floor of said building, having just purchased a Coca–cola from the soft–drink machine, at which time a police officer came into the room with pistol drawn and asked him if he worked there. MR. TRULY was present and verified that he was an employee, and the police officer thereafter left the room and continued through the building. OSWALD stated that he took this Coke down to the first floor and stood around and had lunch in the employees’ lunchroom. He thereafter went outside and stood around for five or ten minutes with foreman BILL SHELLEY, and thereafter went home. (WR, p.619) The testimony of James Jarman and Harold Norman proved that Lee Oswald was on the first floor of the TSBD just a few minutes before the assassination. There also exists a cryptic version of Captain Fritz’s handwritten notes of Oswald’s interrogations of a claim by Oswald that he encountered a police officer while he was “out with Bill Shelley in front” of the TSBD. At least is how I understand the extant record. Gene

According to William Weston, about four or five years after the assassination, Scott Foresman and another publisher called Southwestern decided to sever ties with the Texas School Book Depository. They constructed a new building in the northwest part of Dallas, which both companies shared. Dorothy Ann Garner, a former office supervisor at Scott Foresman, was interviewed by Weston. Ms. Garner told him that around 1969, Shelley quit the Book Depository and began working for Scott Foresman ... he was still there when Garner retired in 1986. Weston later contacted William Shelley on March 20, 1995, and asked him if he would be willing to answer questions; his response was an abrupt no, and then added, "Everything that I have to say on that subject is in the public record. You'll have to go with that." Shelley is an interesting character ... he was in charge of a work crew that spent the entire morning on the same floor where the sniper's nest, rifle, and empty cartridges were found. Plus, Oswald (in his early DPD interviews) had named Shelley as the one who told him he could leave the building. If Oswald had been talking to Shelley prior to his departure, then he must've seen him getting away. Not long after, Shelley told Roy Truly that Oswald was missing (but how he came to this conclusion was never publicly disclosed). Robert MacNeil was an NBC reporter on the White House staff, accompanying the President on his five-city tour of Texas. MacNeil ended up in the TSBD (looking for a pay phone) and saw a man using the phone who was likely Shelley, who claimed "I went back into the building and went inside and called my wife and told her what happened." About a minute or two after MacNeil saw what he described as "three calm men" in the lobby of the TSBD, Oswald was told to leave by Shelley. Gene

Jean See the article in Kennedys and King in April 2020 by William Weston "The CIA and the TSBD". Shelley started work at the Book depository in 1945 ... and he was still there 30 years later (at a relocated building site) when he was interviewed in 1975 by a young journalist named Elzie Dean Glaze. The so-called "Glaze letters" (one of which was sent to the HSCA) are intriguing. William Hoyt Shelley passed away in 1996, at age 70. Gene

Jim Hallin's book is indeed a good read. He writes the following about Elegant's widely accepted accusation: All wars produce legends, and the war in Vietnam was no exception. Perhaps the most enduring legend about Vietnam is that the way the war was reported cost the United States a victory. Robert Elegant, a long-serving Asia expert and a former Vietnam correspondent himself, puts this view succinctly: “For the first time in modern history, the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen . . . never before Vietnam had the collective policy --no less stringent a term will serve--sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents’ own side.” Having lived through this period (I am now 73 years old), I witnessed the press coverage first-hand. And it wasn't just television coverage (or Walter Cronkite) ... it was newspaper articles and editorials, "specials" about the war, attending public rallies (pro/con), and most importantly, hearing first-hand from friends and acquaintances about their personal experiences. Speaking for myself (and others), I didn't form opinions simply based on watching television or reading the paper ... frankly, the term "public opinion" is an abstract simplification (measured in part by polls). The books would come later, but in those days (1964-1974) we were not yet mistrustful of the President or our government (although that would change dramatically with Richard Nixon). And I didn't read Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" until years after the war had ceased ... I found the following excerpt from Hallin's book about the media coverage of the war to ring true: Far from undermining the Administration, it allowed state secrets of enormous political sensitivity to be contained. It helped the official perspective of the war to dominate the headlines. It propagated official lies. It never questioned American objectives. It kept the American public ignorant of the political tactics, history and programs of the North Vietnamese and the NLF (the Viet Cong). And worse--as in all wars--it helped its government to dehumanize the enemy, banish him from human society, paint him as fanatical, suicidal, half-crazed vermin. Regarding the controversial Tet Offensive, Hallin's conclusion was that the reporting of Tet actually rallied Americans behind the war effort, writing: When, for complex social and political reasons, public opinion turned against the war, the media began to reflect it. In short, the media did not lead the swing; they followed it. The classic example is the Tet Offensive in January 1968 when thousands of NLF and PAVN troops attacked U.S. and RVN installations throughout South Vietnam. As news of the Tet Offensive was released, more and more media outlets and journalists began questioning official sources and obtaining information themselves. Here is a link to a well written 2021 review of Hallin's book by Thomas Richardson in History Here and Now where he points out how journalists and news anchors walk a fine line between reporting events and the interpretation as such: https://historyhereandnowhhn.com/2021/12/17/reporting-from-vietnam-a-review-of-the-uncensored-war-the-media-and-vietnam-by-daniel-hallin/ Gene

Michael I found Dr. Veith's article interesting ... as a physicist, I liked his opening statement: When it comes to the Vietnam War, we face almost the same situation that we do with physics: there’s really no “grand unified theory” among either scholars or the public. The staggering complexity of that conflict resists any conclusive definition of what, precisely, it was about. Veith was too young to have fought in the Vietnam War and has never been to the Southeast Asian country; his book "Black April" was sponsored/supported by Henry Kissinger and impressively based on interviews with 50 former South Vietnamese military. His work with the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia is commendable ... amazing that there are still 1,579 Americans listed as missing and unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War. I also agree with his view that "the war was never black and white, but shades of grey reflecting multiple variations of truth.” His list of myths and falsehoods that exist in the public understanding of the Vietnam War is also revealing, although I'm not sure that I would agree with his reasoning in all cases: Myth 1: The US had no reason to be involved in Viet Nam Myth 2: The Vietnam war was illegal and immoral Myth 3: Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist and a benevolent leader Myth 4: The South Vietnamese government denied the people a free election on unification Myth 5: The Viet Cong were an idealistic nationalist group, just like the American Minutemen Myth 6: The rationale for US intervention in Viet Nam was based on a fraud Myth 7: The US military routinely used inhumane tactics on the people, while the VC were benefactors Myth 8: The great majority of villagers were VC sympathizers, so no counterinsurgency programs ever succeeded Myth 9: The Tet Offensive was a devastating blow to the US and SVN forces and a victory for the communists Myth 10: Media coverage of the war was balanced and accurate and contributed to appropriate US policies Gene

Michael Wiley and Droge's 2004 interview didn't much impress me ... the former makes apologies for the Gulf of Tonkin chicanery and the latter wasn't really a journalist, but rather a government employee who worked for the Agency for International Development. I did come across a 2020 paper by Brock J. Vaughan, Wilfrid Laurier University that examines the role that media played in coverage of Vietnam, and its effect in shaping the ultimate outcome of the Vietnam War. Entitled "War, Media, and Memory: American Television News Coverage of the Vietnam War", it references quite a few sources and writers on this subject. Here is a link: https://scholars.wlu.ca/bridges_contemporary_connections/vol4/iss1/5 The author states that: " ... (media's) role is often "grossly overestimated yet should still not be discounted entirely". Television news war coverage was nonlinear in that it reflected the complexities of battle, thus revealing the complexities of war itself. Although American public support and military policy were not directly influenced by television news coverage, our collective memories of Vietnam were." American military policy concerning Vietnam was influenced by public opinion (Mandelbaum 1982). However, there is little evidence that television positively or negatively affected public support for the war. McClancy (2013) notes that combat footage is widely believed to have negatively influenced public opinion, yet this simplistic view is “based on assumptions contradicted by any study of news footage of the time”. Bailey (1976) points out that critics often rely on “anecdote and impressionistic memory” for their claims that media coverage of Vietnam had a profound impact on public opinion and military conduct, without “systemic research” to back up their assertions. Many Americans claim that had the war in Vietnam not been televised, the U.S. would not have lost. According to Mandelbaum (1982), “this has become a truism, a part of conventional wisdom about recent American history”. Even President Johnson criticized the news media at the time. Those arguing that television was to blame for declining public support, resulting in America’s withdrawal, turn to supposed issues of bias in the press. The main problem with their assertions is that there was little, if any, bias in media coverage during the war. Russo (1971) mentions the fact that what may be considered “fair” or “unfair” coverage will vary from person to person. Still, major networks did not favor any particular stories that would paint the U.S. government as incompetent and incapable of winning the war. Hallin (1984) concludes that the basic structure, level of integrity, and objective nature of journalism throughout the war was consistent and remained “more or less unchanged”. It is imperative to mention that investigative journalism was seldom featured in Vietnam news coverage, as most journalists relied on official government sources. After the highly controversial Tet Offensive, press coverage did become more skeptical. Some media reports brought to light the struggles American troops were having with guerrilla warfare, although Huebner (2005) is quick to note that these reports “did not question the professionalism or courage” of the soldiers, but rather revealed the difficulties faced in “their ability to get the job done in [a] particular locale of Vietnam”. To claim the media was pushing an agenda is foolhardy and does not do the complexity of the situation in Vietnam any justice. The Vietnam War, Hallin (1993) states, “was the first war in which reporters were routinely accredited to accompany military forces yet were not subject to censorship”. Although, the Nixon Administration still “retained a good deal of power to ‘manage’ the news” (Hallin 1993). Huebner (2005) points to the lack of press censorship and “official control” of the media during the Vietnam Era, which was certainly not the case during WWII and the Korean War. However, journalists sometimes faced requests to withhold information regarding troop movements, and television networks had policies which governed the release of any footage that had the potential to upset the families of dead and wounded soldiers (Huebner 2005). Despite this, television correspondents did not attempt to shield viewers from the reality of life on the ground. Gene

Michael I am finding Colonel Harry Summers’ book an insightful read. It draws a lot from the classic writing of Clausewitz in understanding North Vietnam's actions. I also don't live far from Carlisle and have visited the War College. I found the following excerpt - about Clausewitz's wisdom of not only having the right strategy but the importance of "mobilizing the will of the people" - of interest: By an ironic twist of fate, the animosity of the Officer Corps was drained off to a large extent by General William C. Westmoreland. On his shoulders was laid much of the blame for our Vietnam failure. According to a 1970 analysis, "For the older men, the villains tend to be timorous civilians and the left-wing press; for the younger men, they are the tradition-bound senior generals and the craven press. For one group, it is the arrogance of McNamara; for the other the rigidity of Westmoreland." Those then "younger men" now make up the majority of the Army's senior officers. For example, the Vietnam experience of the Army War College Class of 1980 was mostly at the platoon and company level. As will be seen in subsequent chapters, placing the blame on General Westmoreland was unfair, but, unfair or not, it did spare another innocent victim-the American people. The main reason it is not right to blame the American public is that President Lyndon Baines Johnson made a conscious decision not to mobilize the American people-to invoke the national will-for the Vietnam war. Regarding John Kennedy's role and decisions, the following was of interest: In the Vietnam war the problem was not so much coordination of effort toward a common objective as it was determining that objective in the first place. Contributing to this deficiency was the erosion of the NSC structure. According to Hoopes, "President Kennedy...scrapped the entire structure of the NSC." Instead he chose to rely on "irregular meetings at the White House attended by the President, [Secretary of State] Rusk, [Secretary of Defense] McNamara, and [National Security Advisor] Bundy, augmented from time to time by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of Central Intelligence, and others..." President Johnson inherited "this somewhat amorphous set of arrangements for foreign policy formulation, coordination, and control." Just to show you that I am of an open mind ... Gene

Michael My mind is far from made up ... and Dr. Turner's qualifications are indeed impressive. I did have a hard time following Robert Elegant's writing, and simply don't agree with his premise about the press. My mention of Brock is only because I came across references to his book; the strategy described to promote conservative views reminded me of the tenor in your posts. I am not interested in debating left-wing versus right-wing beliefs, nor do I appreciate being typecast in that context. I am interested in facts, and learning about the origins and political decisions that shaped the war. Bigger picture, it was a central topic in JFK's short tenure as president and his influence is of particular interest to me ... recall that the original thread topic (begun almost 4 months ago) is the Top Five Books on JFK and Vietnam. I lived through Vietnam and have friends and family who served; very few of them describe it as a "noble cause" nor do they characterize it as a conflict that we "won". Not sure yet what to conclude about the Domino Theory but it doesn't seem to have panned out (opinions seem divided on that as well). Vietnam is obviously a complex story, and there's quite a lot written about it to digest. I have only begun my reading and study, and I will take a look at Peter Braestrup's book. Gene

Mike Not sure where you're going with the insinuation that "somehow you only seem to find leftist sources". I don't select articles and information based upon the political leanings of the authors. In "How to Lose a War: The Press and Viet Nam", Robert Elegant (a confidante of both Nixon and Kissinger), seems to put blame on the media and journalists for losing the war, and refers to "journalistic lemmings" stating: But never before Viet Nam had the collective policy of the media—no less stringent term will serve—sought by graphic and unremitting distortion the victory of the enemies of the correspondents' own side. In "Myths and Realities in the Vietnam Debate", Robert Turner (a public affairs fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution on War, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Federalist Society), he seems to put blame on anti-war protestors for losing the war, The people who protested against Vietnam were, in the overwhelming majority, as good, as decent, and as patriotic as any of us here. If you think I am suggesting that they were in any way evil, you have misunderstood me. But for all of their innocence, their actions had consequences. Because of their protest, tens of millions of people lost their freedom and millions of others lost their lives. Each protester will have to come to terms with that reality on their own. Neither of these authors or their theses moved me. At the risk of provoking your political sensitivities, I did come across "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy" by David Brock, who posits a deliberate strategy to promote conservative views and talking points in the mainstream media by: fostering the illusion that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, creating a phony academic body of entities (primarily think tanks, but also funded university programs) to manufacture "scholarship" that promotes the right-wing talking points so that they appear objective, leveraging the perception of liberal bias in the media to demand "equal time" for presentation of the laundered right-wing media talking points as news. Gene

Michael I don't think Duncan was part of a "very small minority" of veterans. I'd recommend that you read the 2017 paper "A Divided Front: Military Dissent During the Vietnam War" by Kaylyn L. Sawyer of Gettysburg College. ABelow are some excerpts from her summary: The turmoil in social and economic spheres during the 1960s combined with contradictions about America’s role in Vietnam and realization of the government’s deception regarding the nature and progress of the war itself fueled the largest movement of servicemen and veteran dissent in this nation’s history. This incidence of brutality at My Lai led the Vietnam Veterans Against the War to conduct the Winter Soldier Investigation, a hearing on war crimes, in 1971. Their goal was to prove that “the use of terror and mass destruction tactics against Vietnam’s civilian population was a pervasive phenomenon directly resulting from U.S. war policy.” Operation Speedy Express and the My Lai Massacre exposed the brutality of tactics, the failure of leadership, and the utter immorality of the body count strategy that could no longer be overlooked. Men serving in the Armed Forces, by this time, had seen enough hypocrisy, deception, and immorality in their leadership to justify dissent and outright disobedience. Over in Vietnam, soldiers saw clear evidence that the United States was neither supporting democracy nor the will of the South Vietnamese people. Here is the link ... https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177&context=ghj Another reference is "GI Resistance: Soldiers and Veterans Against the War," Vietnam Generation: Vol. 2 : No. 1 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol2 Gene

Michael The following paper by Derek Shildler of Eastern Illinois University in 2008 provides a good description of the orthodox/revisionist positions and their advocates: "Vietnam’s Changing Historiography: Ngo Dinh Diem and America’s Leadership." Here is a summary: Three scholarly views have arisen and become increasingly heated. Orthodox scholars follow the traditional doctrine that America’s involvement in the war was unwinnable and unjust, while the revisionists believe that the war was a noble cause and Vietnam, below the 17th parallel, was a viable and stable country, but policies and military tactics were improperly executed. The heated debates have focused on two central issues—Ngo Dinh Diem and his reign over South Vietnam and poor leadership by American presidents and top officials. Orthodox scholars argue that Diem as a corrupt tyrannical puppet, while revisionists believe Diem was an independent leader who knew what was necessary to allow his young country to survive. According to the orthodox scholars, American presidents John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson and other top officials did their best to control the situation in Vietnam, though the war was doomed from the beginning. Revisionists do not believe the war was lost on the battlefield but was lost due to poor decisions and lack of attention to the war. Recently, another group of scholars have weighed in on this subject. These scholars, post-revisionists, do not even admit defeat—arguing that the United States won the war by late 1970. Gene

Michael I am now reading Marc Selverstone's book and find much of what he says to be thought-provoking. I am not as well-versed as you and others in this topic (the "great what-if" as it's called) but I am performing my due diligence. While not a student of military history, I lived through Vietnam and - thanks to your thread and challenges - have become more interested in what might have happened in a 2nd Kennedy term. I believe that each newly elected president inherits the decisions/policies of the previous administration (both good and bad). As John Newman writes, Kennedy had a lot on his plate ... Vietnam in the early 1960's was a marginal issue compared with problems regarding Berlin, Cuba, Mississippi, the nuclear test ban treaty and Capitol Hill. Nonetheless, JFK 'inherited' the Vietnam conflict similar to the Cuban Bay of Pigs from Dwight Eisenhower, who initially chose in 1954 to stay out of the French conflict (and not American commit troops). When Kennedy took office, Diem’s government appears to have been faltering. As Edward Cuddy wrote in 2003 in "Vietnam: Mr. Johnson's War or Mr. Eisenhower's?”: After the partition of Vietnam into a communist North and pro-western South, Eisenhower chose to invest huge sums of money and prestige in transforming South Vietnam into a showcase of a new “free Asia.” Spending billions of dollars, sending military advisers, supporting the increasingly brutal tactics of the South Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem—all this effort would help create a pro-American bastion in Southeast Asia and halt Communism. Yet it also left a terrible decision for his successors. Dwight Eisenhower managed to avoid an American war in Vietnam during his two terms, but he invested so much American prestige and effort in the success of South Vietnam that by the end of the 1950s, America had become deeply invested in its fate. Eisenhower created an American Vietnam, and his successors would wage a bitter – and failed – war to keep it. Unfortunately, Eisenhower chose to ignore the Geneva Accords, committed America to South Vietnam, and played a major role, during and after his presidency, in creating the heavy pressures that shaped Lyndon Johnson's Vietnam decisions. If you are interested in all sides of the debate and a good weighing of the pros/cons of this topic, I would refer you to Mark White's November 2020 essay in American Diplomacy entitled “Without Dallas: John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War”, where he opines: Kennedy’s manifest capacity to reject his military’s hawkish advice, his shift towards a more conciliatory foreign policy in 1963 and his enhanced credibility in international affairs due to his successful management of the Cuban missile crisis (and hence the limited pressure he would have felt to prove in Vietnam that he could cut the mustard on the world stage) indicate that Kennedy would probably have decided against going to war in Vietnam. His default approach to politics and policy was caution, in sharp contrast with his private life. Putting his presidency on the line by fighting a land war in Southeast Asia would not ultimately be a decision he could have made with equanimity. What I have learned thus far is that this "What-If" is a subject of fierce debate among historians, and there's no shortage of books, articles and opinions. What some conclude (notably Selverstone) is the best historians can do is to speculate about JFK’s real intentions in Vietnam. I'm not sure what you infer by the "liberal/orthodox position on the war", but I remain open to all views and input. Gene

Shades of Chappaquiddick ...

Thanks Jim ... Seth Jacobs work is an interesting read. I also plan to get John Newman's "JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power". The book summary describes "an intense power struggle that plagued the Kennedy Administration before the Vietnam War" ... Newman contends that the president's advisors conspired to deceive Kennedy and push the United States into combat (similar to what occurred with Cuba and Bay of Pigs). There is also Howard Jones 2004 book "Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War". In a concluding chapter entitled "The Tragedy of JFK" he states: Just as the withdrawal plan moved closer to implementation, President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, bringing the process to a close. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, assured Americans that he would continue his predecessor's domestic and foreign policies. Indeed, Newsweek observed that the White House intended to fulfill its October 2 decision to withdraw 1,000 troops by the end of the year. In a bitter irony, however, Johnson's pledge to continuity helped to undermine the rest of the withdrawal plan because the Kennedy administration had so carefully kept its existence from public view that any further troop reduction would appear to repudiate previous policy. The United States still intended to withdraw the first thousand troops in Vietnam by the end of the year; but the Johnson administration escalated the nation's military involvement, and the heart of the plan soon died. While interesting to consider, Marc Silverstone's thesis doesn't convince me. It's simply not credible that JFK would've escalated similar to LBJ in the ensuing years. A New York Journal of Books review states that "Silverstone speculates about JFK’s real intentions in Vietnam, suggesting that Kennedy and his national security team would probably have acted on the basis of the military situation on the ground as it evolved over the next several years". But the reviewer also points out that most of the people advising Johnson on Vietnam after Kennedy’s death were Kennedy’s people. Gene

David I would recommend reading the informative three-part essays by Paul Bleau in Kennedys and King, "Exposing the FPCC". In a related Bleau's article, "The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK", he describes/links eight subjects who shared similar traits to Oswald. Eight of the nine subjects profiled are connected to cities visited by Kennedy during the six months that preceded his assassination. Each of these cities was a territory exploited criminally by Mafiosi of interest. At least three moved to the cities and got employment in strategically located buildings along the motorcade route shortly before the planned presidential visit. Seven were ex-military and eight of them exhibited behavior that can very plausibly be linked to intelligence gathering or Cuban exile interaction. Seven were directly linked to the FPCC; seven of them had visited Mexico City, and six attempted to visit Cuba, three of them successfully. Seven had links to Cuban/Latino exiles. Six were described as having psychological problems and seven exhibited anti-Kennedy behavior… but none were probed seriously by the Warren Commission. Researchers (e.g., Bill Simpich, John Newman) and Garrison investigators maintain that Oswald was being sheep-dipped so that the Soviets or Cubans could be blamed. Paul and others point out that four of the patsies (including Nagell) could be linked to the FPCC adds even more credence to this claim. It is also interesting to note that one of the mysterious investigators for the Chicago plot, Daniel Groth, had intelligence links and was likely tasked with monitoring the FPCC. When Oswald, already notorious for his Russian adventure, opened an FPCC chapter in, of all places, New Orleans by the middle of 1963, one can assume that he was a known quantity to all the agencies. And there is evidence that Oswald agitated for the FPCC in Dallas before moving to New Orleans. The opening of a Miami FPCC chapter in 1963 by Santiago Garriga is more evidence of illegal domestic espionage on or through the FPCC by the CIA. According to Bill Simpich, author of State Secret, Garriga’s resumé was perfect for patsy recruiter/runners - interaction with Cuban associates in Mexico City; seemingly pro-Castro behavior; and his crowning achievement: like Oswald in 1963, he opened an FPCC chapter in a market deemed very hostile for such an enterprise. Garriga also represents a potential fall guy who is the most clearly linked with intelligence. According to According to John Newman, the CIA - led by David Phillips and James McCord - began monitoring the FPCC in 1961. In December 1962, the CIA joined with the FBI in the AMSANTA project. A September 1963 memo divulged an FBI/CIA plan to use FPCC fake materials to embarrass Cuba. There are strong indicators that the CIA efforts to penetrate and use the FPCC were local and illegal––such as spying on U.S. citizen/members of the FPCC. This FPCC was definitely a creation/creature of the CIA. Gene

Thanks for the feedback, Jim. I did some research into this topic of Diem, specifically the work of Seth Jacobs who is an Associate Professor in History at Boston College and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American military and diplomatic history, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and America in the 1950s. He authored "Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam" among other works. In a 2004 paper by Jacobs entitled, “America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S.” he makes the following comment: Americans had a number of “ideas, notions, and images … in their heads” about Asia, and these made up the universe within which U.S. government officials weighed options and fashioned strategies. American ideas, notions, and images— specifically racist and religious ones—led policymakers to conclude that Diem was the perfect viceroy to prevent South Vietnam’s absorption by the red empire. These long-implanted biases enabled Washington officials to ignore or reject the accumulating evidence that their policy was not working. Jacobs wrote that, following the removable of the emperor Bao Dai, the nation was led by a Confucianist authoritarian Ngo Dinh Diem, who gave preference to a Catholic minority (of which he was a part). He describes Diem as a Vietnamese who, while he had worked as a civil servant in French Indochina, had strong credentials both as a nationalist and anti-communist. He left Vietnam between 1950 and 1954, in part, due to credible Communist threats on his life. He also distrusted the Bao Dai proto-state relationship with France. Jacobs describes the "Diem Experiment" which began on July 7, 1954, when Ngo Dinh Diem, the Prime Minister of South Vietnam, took control of the South Vietnamese government. During the initial stages, Diem inspired little confidence in the South Vietnamese, Americans, and French, but the Eisenhower administration welcomed Diem's rise to power. Jacobs gives Diem credit for being an effective networker ... like most politicians, he cultivated the support of influential patrons by seeking out their company and telling them what they wanted to hear. Jacobs described a pivotal May 1953 luncheon where Diem made the acquaintance of Senator Mike Mansfield, who was instrumental in keeping Diem in office during the subsequent Battle for Saigon (along with Cardinal Spellman), characterizing that meeting as “one of the most fateful encounters of the postwar era”. But Jacobs does not portray Diem as a puppet. He wrote the following: Diem was shrewd enough to understand that American cold warriors came in different stripes and responded to different overtures; thus, he emphasized his devoutness when lobbying conservative Catholics like Spellman and played the “third force” card to great effect with liberals like Kennedy, Mansfield, and Buttinger. More important, Diem had the perspicacity to build a power base in the United States. While other anticommunist Vietnamese like Phan Huy Quat, Tran Van Huu, and Nguyen Van Tam conducted their campaigns for the premiership either in their native land or with Bao Dai on the French Riviera, Diem concentrated for the most part on winning over American government officials and influential private citizens. He recognized that Washington, not Paris or Saigon, would have the final say in determining who occupied the Norodom Palace. Gene

Jim I've been following this extended debate and discussion about JFK, Diem and Vietnam. I am also now reading Monika Wiesak's fine book, "America's Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy". My question is, in your estimation, why did Foster Dulles and company originally back/support Diem? Was it because they felt he was a controllable puppet? Or perhaps a Catholic leader they thought could unite the north and south? Surely, they must've known how flawed and weak he was. But they had Edward Lansdale continue to prop him up as a leader. What was their end game here? Thanks, Gene

Joe I tried to dig into Gheesling a little, but there's not much out there. I tend to think that he was duped, and just doing his job. He retired (after being banished to a field office as punishment) and died in 1982 (buried in a Catholic ceremony). There does however exist some doubt about Lambert Anderson, who may've convinced Gheesling to remove the FBI flash. Lambert Anderson was one of the two agents at FBI headquarters who had been specifically charged with handling the Oswald file. He was also involved in running a joint FBI-CIA operation targeting the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee for disruption. In the second half of 1963, Lambert Anderson held down the Cuban desk for the FBI’s Nationalities Intelligence division. Simpich labels Anderson as "an intriguing character", as he was with Nationalities Intelligence, had the FPCC file, and he was "the new guy" at the Cuban desk. He answered to Branigan and Robert Lenihan, who were the case supervisors of the Domestic Intelligence Division. He only served with the Cuban section for a short period of time, a few months in 1963. Anderson was “fairly new" and "not considered to be an expert on Cuba.” Bill Simpich believes that a more likely reason (for removing the FBI security flash) is that "Anderson got wind of a tip that Oswald was of some use to the FBI". Simpich raises a question of whether Gheesling and Anderson took Oswald off the security watch list based solely on the report about Oswald's cooperation with the FBI, or whether they had also been tipped off that a molehunt was about to begin with Oswald's file. He concludes that "the timing would suggest that both factors were in play". Anderson was also 'censured for not putting Oswald on the security index, as well as CIA Soviet Section Chief Bill Branigan for his overall responsibility. But Simpich makes it clear that "the record is unequivocal that Gheesling was the man most severely punished – and his punishment was specifically based, at least in part, for cancelling the flash on Oswald". Gheesling was a 33-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and worked for the Michigan office as a specialist in espionage cases until his retirement in 1976. Ann Egerter is a person of interest here ... she was interviewed by HSCA investigators on 3/31/78 and asked to use an alias. Egerter complained to the CIA after her deposition was over that she had not done well, citing her problem with the “Lee Henry” handwriting on documents, among a host of other issues. Her deposition of 5/17/78 remains one of the only depositions - if not the only deposition - still classified more than thirty years later. Gene

Ben To build on what Joe shared, Jane Roman was interviewed by Jefferson Morely at her house on Newark Street in Cleveland Park on November 2, 1994. He was accompanied by a colleague, John Newman. Here is a link to a summary of that interview from History Matters: "What Jane Roman Said: A Retired CIA Officer Speaks Candidly About Lee Harvey Oswald" by Jefferson Morley https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/WhatJaneRomanSaid/WhatJaneRomanSaid_2.htm Some interesting observations and comments by Morley ... Roman insisted I tell her how I had found her. I said, ridiculously, that I had my sources. She said she wanted to know or she didn’t see the need to go any further. I promptly folded. “I found the property records on your daughter’s condo,” I said. Roman nodded and seemed grimly satisfied. I pulled out my tape recorder and she balked again. Newman reassured her that taping was the best protection for all concerned. She relented. Listening to the tape of the 75-minute interview that ensued, I am struck by several things. Above all, the tone is professional. Newman and Roman spoke as colleagues in the intelligence business. They understood what the other one was saying. Newman was assertive, well prepared, self-possessed. Roman was circumspect, thoughtful and concise. Right from the start, Roman and Newman parried with revealing results. Gene

Makes sense Joe ... Angleton was close to Dulles (see the photo from Allen Dulles funeral), and also kept the false defector Nosenko under wraps. I speculate that Russia knew what happened and sent Nosenko to distance them from the setup (and the Kostikov "virus balloon"). And it was the suspect mole Bruce Solie who "cleared" Nosenko. Lots of intrigue here. I am also puzzled by the Marvin Gheesling/Lambert Anderson who cancelled an FBI security flash on October 9th ... after two misleading CIA cables about Mexico City. And only days later, Oswald is hired at the TSBD. Bill Simpich concluded that the flash was removed because CIA/FBI were using Oswald in some kind of intelligence-related operation. He is giving the benefit of the doubt to Gheesling and Anderson. Gheesling was punished and transferred from HQ to a field office (and as Newman points out, 33 other agents were disciplined by Hoover). It seems the "Kostikov Virus Balloon" effectively blackmailed the FBI into cover their reputation later. What little I've read about Gheesling tells me he wasn't complicit, but rather used ... not so sure about Anderson. Gene

Good clarification Greg ...