Max Boot gets Booted on Lansdale in Vietnam

[Cliff Varnell]

9 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

You just got your third strike.

 

Bye bye cliffie

Bless the Universe!

I can now demolish DiEugenio's mis-prepresentations of the historical facts behind the Bay of Pigs, the partition of Laos (a country he apparently cannot bring himself to mention), the over-throw of Diem, and the root facts of the JFK assassination -- without being called a t-r-o-l-l, an agenda-driven provocateur, or Machiavellian.

The historian has no clothes.

Edited May 24, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, if you understand someone is a t-r-o-l-l, its very easy to place them on ignore.

Just takes a few seconds.  One of the mods can direct you to the process.

[Cliff Varnell]

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5:

<quote on, emphasis added>

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

<quote off>

This memo shows Harriman flexing his muscles for the coup.

Memorandum of Conversation, "Vietnam," August 28, 1963, Noon

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/vn07.pdf

Edited May 24, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 5/23/2018 at 11:59 AM, James DiEugenio said:

As Lodge told PBS in the1983  Vietnam: A Television History special, when JFK realized what had happened, he sent a cancellation order. 

Lodge makes his appearance around the 39 minute mark of Episode 2.

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs. 184-5

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

Kennedy’s main State Department advisers on Vietnam, Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman, and his White House aide, Michael Forrestal, were all just as dismayed as Lodge was by the president’s decision to send McNamara and Taylor to Vietnam [on late September ’63 fact-finding mission].  When Harriman learned about it, he phoned Forrestal to say he and Hilsman thought the president’s proposal was “a disaster” because it meant “sending two men opposed to our policy” of promoting a coup.  Forrestal glumly agreed.

But Kennedy had made his decision.  The coup that his closest State Department advisers on Vietnam and his Saigon ambassador regarded as their policy, and that they had manipulated the president into endorsing, was not in fact his policy.

<quote off>

As skillful as JFK was maneuvering McNamara and Taylor to sign off on his Vietnam withdrawal policy, in the end he took a scalpel into a samurai sword fight.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 5/24/2018 at 10:45 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5:

<quote on, emphasis added>

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

<quote off>

Interesting information on William Corson: 

David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, pgs. 753-4

<quote on>

William Corson, a former Marine Corps officer and Navy intelligence agent who was close to Dulles, confirmed that the spymaster pulled strings to get on the Warren Commission.  He “lobbied hard for the job,” recalled Corson, who had commanded young Allen Jr. in the Korean War.  After he took his place on the commission, Dulles recruited Corson to explore the Jack Ruby angle.  After spending months pursuing various leads, Corson eventually concluded that he had been sent on a wild goose chase.  “It is entirely possible I was sent on an assignment which would go nowhere…Allen Dulles had a lot to hide.

<quote off>

Corson had been recruited by Kennedy to find out who ordered the assassination of Diem and Nhu -- did Dulles send Corson on a wild goose chase to prevent him from investigating who killed Kennedy?

Allen Dulles was Averell Harriman's personal lawyer for decades. 

Perhaps Dulles was trying to keep Corson from drawing the same conclusion about the Kennedy assassination that he did with the Diem murder -- Harriman ordered it.

 

Edited May 25, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 5/23/2018 at 9:49 PM, James DiEugenio said:

The idea that Ho Chi Minh, Le Duan and Giap were ever going to peacefully co exist with Madame Nhu, her husband and Diem is laughable.

Saigon, September 1963:

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November – America in Vietnam in 1963, pg. 251, emphasis added

The generals still seemed to think they could make a deal with Diem.  Don went with Dinh to Gia Long Palace to deliver a letter asking for a reorganization of the government that would give the military no less than the key cabinet posts of defense, interior, psychological war, and education.  They also wanted the Nhus out of the government.

There would be no coup until a reply was received from the president, General Khiem told his CIA contact that September.  But he reassured the American that the generals had not given up their plotting.  They feared that Nhu might actually succeed in working out a reconciliation with the North.  A dangerous prospect, according to Conein, because “what the devil are they fighting for if the central government was negotiating behind their backs.”

 

Edited May 26, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 5/23/2018 at 2:37 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Once it became obvious that Diem was not going to democratize the government, the last straw was Nhu's attacks on the Buddhist pagodas.

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 278:

<quote on, emphasis added>

On Thursday, October 31, General Don went to Gia Long Palace and talked with both Diem and Nhu.  He inquired about the petition he and General Dinh had given Diem in September, asking for cabinet posts and policy changes.  He was told that since everything had resumed to normal there was no need for changes…

General Don was busy on Thursday with last-minute preparations for the coming action.  That was the day [activist professor] Buu-Hoi went with two Buddhist monks to see Ngo Dinh Nhu.  They asked him to intervene with Diem to set free “all Buddhist dignitaries, laymen and students still under detention,” and Nhu “promised to obtain from the president a favorable answer to this request.”

The news was announced in an official press release.  It would be a banner headline on the front page of the Times of Vietnam the next day.

This was awkward news for the generals.  The Buddhist issue, which had been slipping away ever since the arrival of the mission from the United Nations {Oct. 24], seemed to be disappearing before their eyes, and a convenient excuse for their coup with it.

<quote off>

 

James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs 201-2

<quote on>

In Saigon on Friday morning, November 1, Ambassador Lodge and Admiral Harry Felt, Commander in Chief of the Pacific, met with President Diem, as rebel troops were gathering outside the city…

“Tell President Kennedy that I take all his suggestions very seriously and wish to carry them out but it is a question of timing.”

This was the response from Diem that Kennedy had been waiting for, and Lodge recognized it.  In his comment on Diem’s statement, Lodge cabled: “If U.S. wants to make a package deal, I would think we were in a position to do it.  The conditions of my return [to Washington] could be propitious for it.  In effect he said: Tell us what you want and we’ll do it.”

A milestone had been reached.  Diem had finally responded to Kennedy in a hopeful way through a reluctant ambassador, and Lodge had conveyed the message to Washington with a supportive comment.

However, Lodge buried Diem’s message to Kennedy near the end of his report.  Moreover, he did not send the report on his breakthrough conversation with Diem until 3:00 PM, an hour and a half after the coup had started.  He also chose to send this critical cable by the slowest possible process rather than “Critical Flash,” which would have given it immediate attention in Washington.  As a result of Lodge’s slow writing and transmission of Diem’s urgent message to Kennedy, it did not arrive at the State Department until hours after the rebel generals had laid siege to the presidential palace.  It was too late.

<quote off>

Edited May 26, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

On 5/23/2018 at 2:37 PM, James DiEugenio said:

But once Nhu began to attack the Buddhists, and once it became clear that his brother could not control him, his government was simply headed for a fall. <quote off>

 

May 8, 1963. Hue, South Vietnam.  Buddhist protesters crowded around a radio station when two explosions killed eight people.  The Catholic Diem regime blamed the Viet Cong; the Buddhists.blamed Diem.

JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass, pg 130-1

<quote on, emphasis added>

Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victim's bodies that he had never seen suchinjuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the  corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that "the death of the people was caused by an explosion which took place in mid-air," blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies...

...In May 1963, Diem's younger brother, Ngo Dinh Can, who ruled Hue, thought from the very beginning that the Viet Cong had nothing to do with the explosions at the radio station.   According to an investigation carried out by the Catholic newspaper, Hoa Binh, Ngo Dinh Can and his advisers were "convinced the explosions had to be the work of an American agent who wanted to make trouble for Diem." In 1970 Hoa Binh located such a man, a Captain Scott, who in later years became a U.S. military adviser in the Mekong Delta. Scott had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used "an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people at the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device."

.
<quote off>

Edited May 28, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Michael Walton]

On 5/24/2018 at 1:35 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Bless the Universe!

I can now demolish DiEugenio's mis-prepresentations of the historical facts behind the Bay of Pigs, the partition of Laos (a country he apparently cannot bring himself to mention), the over-throw of Diem, and the root facts of the JFK assassination -- without being called a t-r-o-l-l, an agenda-driven provocateur, or Machiavellian.

The historian has no clothes.

Cliff - I don't think you understand what Jim meant.  What he meant by "bye bye" is that there is an Ignore button.  Everyone - from Jim to the loons such as David Josephs and Jim Hargrove to others - are asking the admins to either explain to them how to ignore you or how to use their shiny and magical Ignore button that's built into this forum system. So your posts are, literally falling on deaf/blind ears.  They simply want to live in their one-way echo chambers now and want to ignore ALL dissent to their theories about the Kennedy case.

Of course you're free to continue to post but why bother?

 

[Karl Kinaski]

On 5/26/2018 at 5:32 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

Saigon, September 1963:

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November – America in Vietnam in 1963, pg. 251, emphasis added

The generals still seemed to think they could make a deal with Diem.  Don went with Dinh to Gia Long Palace to deliver a letter asking for a reorganization of the government that would give the military no less than the key cabinet posts of defense, interior, psychological war, and education.  They also wanted the Nhus out of the government.

There would be no coup until a reply was received from the president, General Khiem told his CIA contact that September.  But he reassured the American that the generals had not given up their plotting.  They feared that Nhu might actually succeed in working out a reconciliation with the North.  A dangerous prospect, according to Conein, because “what the devil are they fighting for if the central government was negotiating behind their backs.”

 

Quote: Merry, Robert. TAKING ON THE WORLD: JOSEPH AND STEWART ALSOP - GUARDIANS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY (Kindle-Positionen9217-9227). Booksurge. Kindle-Version. 

The day after, on August 22, there arrived in Saigon the new U.S. ambassador, Joe Alsop’s lifelong friend, Henry Cabot Lodge. By the time Joe reached Vietnam in mid-September 1963 for ten days of reporting, Lodge had concluded that Diem must go. At the ambassador’s invitation, Joe stayed at the embassy, and there he had ample opportunity to hear Lodge decry the misrule of Diem and his brother. Indeed, Lodge already had set in motion a U.S. plan to sanction a coup by the South Vietnamese military. On two successive days Joe spent several hours in conversation with Nhu and Diem at their lush offices at the Palais Gia Long. He had become well acquainted with the pair during his many visits to Saigon, and he had felt a strong sense of confidence in their patriotism and judgment. Based on his conversations with Lodge, he was prepared to revise his opinion, but he was not prepared for what he encountered. He first visited Nhu in his long, high-ceilinged office lined with books and mementos and overlooking the palace gardens. The state councillor, as Nhu was called, motioned Joe to a chair near his cluttered desk and then, pacing back and forth along the length of the office and lighting cigarets in quick succession, commenced a long tirade against Saigon’s American press corps, the American government, his own military, and his own brother. He proclaimed himself to be the world’s greatest living expert on guerrilla warfare, but said he couldn’t bring his brilliance to bear because he was obstructed at every turn by the obstinate Americans and by his brother. Then Nhu announced that he had been involved in secret negotiations with Hanoi, conducted through the French ambassador, Roger Lalouette. He said he expected to reach a settlement with the communist regime soon, and that he would bring his brother along on any accommodation he found acceptable. When Joe asked what he would do if the communists later reneged on their agreement, as they had done so often in the past, the councillor dismissed the question as unimportant. He had only to go into the countryside and wave a handkerchief, he boasted, and a million men would spring to arms at his back. He was, after all, the world’s greatest living guerrilla expert. As Joe put it years later, “Nhu had gone stark, raving mad.” 

The next day Joe went back to Gia Long for lunch with President Diem, who greeted him cordially. Joe soon discovered that Diem’s thinking echoed Nhu’s. Diem repeated much of what his brother had said the previous day in almost identical terms, and he seemed just as impervious to reason. Joe filed a bold column relating his Gia Long experiences and expressing chagrin at the intellectual decay within the Saigon government. Nhu, he wrote, had “lost touch with the real world,” and Diem had “lost his ability to see events or problems in their true proportions, no doubt because his natural tendency to be suspicious has been daily played upon by his brother.” Joe echoed Lodge’s view that success in the war hardly seemed possible with these men in charge. “So there are likely to be changes here,” he concluded. But Joe couldn’t let it go at that. He had admired Diem, had considered him a Vietnamese patriot and a hero in the struggle against the communists following the 1954 partition. He couldn’t bring himself to blame Diem entirely for the state of things. He attacked the American press corps for writing negative stories about Diem and exacerbating his paranoia: “The constant pressure of the reportorial crusade against the government has also helped mightily to transform Diem from a courageous, quite viable national leader, into a man afflicted with galloping persecution mania, seeing plots around every corner, and therefore misjudging everything.” It was a bizarre column, and it touched a nerve in Washington. Joe hadn’t named names, but sophisticated readers knew he was talking primarily about The New York Times’s David Halberstam, whose dispatches had been very critical of Diem and pessimistic about the South’s military prospects. James Reston, the Times Washington bureau chief, phoned Mac Bundy and asked, “Why don’t you call off Alsop?” Reflecting the administration’s frustration with Halberstam’s dispatches, Bundy replied, “Don’t you believe in freedom of the press?” Joe’s column was not a product of serious analysis but rather of the emotions he felt as he contemplated the West’s experiences in Asia. If a national leader could go “right around the bend,” as Joe himself put it, because of foreign press coverage, then he clearly suffered from serious intrinsic flaws. Back in Washington, Joe went to the White House to brief Kennedy in the Oval Office. He reiterated what he had written in the column, only in stronger terms. “I don’t think this is viable,” he said."

Close quote

 

AND

There is a German book APOCALYPSE VIETNAM where Pierre Salinger said, quote: "The day I embarked for Tokyo (via Honolulu) (20.11. 1963) Kennedy told me: I am about to negotiate (openly) with North Vietnam and I will make clear, that there will be no war in Vietnam." 

In summer/autumn 1963 JFK and the Diem brothers were involved in secret negotiations to reunify Vietnam. By November 22. 1963, the three men were dead. 

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2018 by Karl Kinaski

[Cliff Varnell]

5 hours ago, Michael Walton said:

Cliff - I don't think you understand what Jim meant.  What he meant by "bye bye" is that there is an Ignore button. 

Isn't it wonderful?!  I don't have to put up with DiEugenio's fact-free insults anymore!

But I don't think anyone is as widely ignored as you, Michael.

5 hours ago, Michael Walton said:

Everyone - from Jim to the loons such as David Josephs and Jim Hargrove to others - are asking the admins to either explain to them how to ignore you or how to use their shiny and magical Ignore button that's built into this forum system.

I have no beef with Jim Hargrove or David Josephs.

5 hours ago, Michael Walton said:

So your posts are, literally falling on deaf/blind ears.  They simply want to live in their one-way echo chambers now and want to ignore ALL dissent to their theories about the Kennedy case.

Of course you're free to continue to post but why bother?

Just because you can't process the information I'm posting here doesn't mean no one else gets it.

Thank you Karl Kinaski!

 

[Michael Walton]

4 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

I have no beef with Jim Hargrove or David Josephs.

So I guess you DO believe the tales of intrigue regarding the Oswald clone, contrasty photos and sloping shoulders - HA hilarious!

Truer words!

[Cliff Varnell]

4 minutes ago, Michael Walton said:

So I guess you DO believe the tales of intrigue regarding the Oswald clone, contrasty photos and sloping shoulders - HA hilarious!

Truer words!

I'm agnostic on all those issues.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 156:

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

When [Diem and Nhu] had first claimed that Americans were active behind the scenes in the agitation spreading in Saigon, they had sounded paranoid – a favorite word among Americans for Diem and Nhu that summer.  But who could disbelieve [David] Halberstam, with his excellent sources in the Central Intelligence Agency, when he reported that the CIA had been openly sending its agents into the pagodas and making daily contact with Buddhist priests and “other participants in this crisis”?  These agents were acting under orders – and they did not go to the pagodas to discuss the finer points of Buddhism.

<quote off>