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History is proving LBJ killed Kennedy


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It is a good video but it doesn't indicate LBJ killed JFK since, as they bring out, those who killed JFK also conceived the cover story to blame Castro, which was supposed to incite a USA invasion of Cuba, that didn't happen, because LBJ rejected the killer's cause, and instead instituted the equally implausible but more acceptable "Phase Two" Cover-story of the lone deranged nut assassin, thus rejecting the assassin's (whoever they were) ostensible desires.

I try to document exactly where and when this conspiratorial change in direction occurred and think I succeeded to some extent in this article - JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point which indicates that LBJ made the decision to abandon the Castro-Commie Phase One Cover Story for the Deranged Lone Nut version sometime between 6 and 9 PM on 11/22/63 while he was in his VP office at the Executive Office Building next to the White House when he made or one of his chief assistants make a number of unrecorded phone calls to officials in Dallas ordering them not to indict the accused assassin as part of a communist or any type of conspiracy, or it would lead to World War III.

If LBJ was the principle Mastermind behind the Dealey Plaza Operation then that discrepancy would not have happened.

bk

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

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Guest Robert Morrow

It is a good video but it doesn't indicate LBJ killed JFK since, as they bring out, those who killed JFK also conceived the cover story to blame Castro, which was supposed to incite a USA invasion of Cuba, that didn't happen, because LBJ rejected the killer's cause, and instead instituted the equally implausible but more acceptable "Phase Two" Cover-story of the lone deranged nut assassin, thus rejecting the assassin's (whoever they were) ostensible desires.

I try to document exactly where and when this conspiratorial change in direction occurred and think I succeeded to some extent in this article - JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point which indicates that LBJ made the decision to abandon the Castro-Commie Phase One Cover Story for the Deranged Lone Nut version sometime between 6 and 9 PM on 11/22/63 while he was in his VP office at the Executive Office Building next to the White House when he made or one of his chief assistants make a number of unrecorded phone calls to officials in Dallas ordering them not to indict the accused assassin as part of a communist or any type of conspiracy, or it would lead to World War III.

If LBJ was the principle Mastermind behind the Dealey Plaza Operation then that discrepancy would not have happened.

bk

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

"If LBJ was the principle Mastermind behind the Dealey Plaza Operation then that discrepancy would not have happened."

Apparently, you have not done much business with Lyndon Johnson. He give you a carrot on one hand, then stab you in the back with a sword when he needed to. The JFK assassination was the confluence of many parties each with their own agenda: Lyndon Johnson's desire to avoid personal destruction at the hands of the Kennedys, Texas oil executives and their desire to preserve the massive tax breaks in the oil depreciation allowance, war hawks in CIA/military who wanted an invasion of Cuba, a war in Vietnam and the end to JFK's nascent detente. All those agendas got "taken care" of ... except the invasion of Cuba.

Lyndon Johnson could not care less about that once he had gotten what he wanted. And after the murder of Oswald on Sunday, the public mood was one of conspiracy, distrust & grief and it simply would not have supported an invasion of Cuba. The plotters left holding the empty bag in the JFK assassination were the ones who wanted an invasion of Cuba. From their point of view, a consolation prize was murdering that "traitor" John Kennedy.

The Vietnam War can be seen as a pressure release value for Cuba policy. Cuba policy was a big reason for the JFK assassination, but the war hawks were given Vietnam instead.

Edited by Robert Morrow
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It is a good video but it doesn't indicate LBJ killed JFK since, as they bring out, those who killed JFK also conceived the cover story to blame Castro, which was supposed to incite a USA invasion of Cuba, that didn't happen, because LBJ rejected the killer's cause, and instead instituted the equally implausible but more acceptable "Phase Two" Cover-story of the lone deranged nut assassin, thus rejecting the assassin's (whoever they were) ostensible desires.

I try to document exactly where and when this conspiratorial change in direction occurred and think I succeeded to some extent in this article - JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point which indicates that LBJ made the decision to abandon the Castro-Commie Phase One Cover Story for the Deranged Lone Nut version sometime between 6 and 9 PM on 11/22/63 while he was in his VP office at the Executive Office Building next to the White House when he made or one of his chief assistants make a number of unrecorded phone calls to officials in Dallas ordering them not to indict the accused assassin as part of a communist or any type of conspiracy, or it would lead to World War III.

I don't think this is a mystery.

Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57:

At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright

and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the

assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey

Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an

experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the

unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them

believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association.

In 1963 the US Govt's undisputed top Kremlinologist was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (#3 position at State) W. Averell Harriman. News of Oswald's Soviet connection didn't go out on the wires until circa 4:20 EST, a mere 2.5 hours before Harriman showed up at the White House with Fulbright in tow. That was some very quick work by the "US government's top Kremlinologists," but not the first hyper-hasty judgement of the day.

McGeorge Bundy called AF1 from the White House Situation Room on 11/22/63 to inform LBJ that the lone assassin had been apprehended, according to Jim Bishop in his book The Day Kennedy Was Shot. Since the extant tape recordings of the communications between AF1 and the WH Situation Room are incomplete, we can't state as a fact that it was Bundy who first advanced the lone-assassin scenario. We can assign a high likelihood to that conclusion, however, since Bishop and William Manchester were apparently shown transcripts of the now-missing AF1-WH logs.

We can state as a fact that New York Herald Tribune publisher Jock Whitney wrote the first Oswald-alone editorial, rushing to his office the evening of 11/22/63 to pin the crime on a nut.

Harriman, Whitney, and Bundy were all WASP bluebloods, Yale secret society guys.

The kind of people who could buy and sell cracker pols like Lyndon Baines Johnson a thousand times over.

If LBJ was the principle Mastermind behind the Dealey Plaza Operation then that discrepancy would not have happened.

bk

JFKcountercoup

JFKCountercoup2

Indeed.The Presidential nervous breakdown Gen. McHugh reported makes sense if one considers LBJ as something of a back-up patsy.

http://www.huffingto...k_b_339026.html

Edited by Cliff Varnell
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Guest Robert Morrow

"Harriman, Whitney, and Bundy were all WASP bluebloods, Yale secret society guys.

The kind of people who could buy and sell cracker pols like Lyndon Baines Johnson a thousand times over."

Have you ever read the relevant passages of "Spanning the Century: The Life of Averell Harriman, 1891-1986" by Rudy Abramson?

Post-assassination, Harriman was writing letters to LBJ begging for a job in the Johnson Administration. Harriman was not buying and selling anyone; he was practically on his knees begging LBJ to let him help out in foreign affairs. This is one big reason I think Harriman had absolutely no role in the JFK assassination and certainly no role in telling Lyndon Johnson what to do.

Link to biography on Harriman: http://www.amazon.com/Spanning-Century-Averell-Harriman-1891-1986/dp/0688043526/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354809474&sr=8-1&keywords=averell+harriman

Post-assassination, McGeorge Bundy assumed huge amounts of power over Lyndon Johnson, both domestically and, of course, in foreign policy. That is one reason I think Bundy may very well have been in on the JFK assassination plot. I do think the odds are Bundy was pushing the lone nutter fantasy in a time frame that is too soon, irrational and quite suspicious.

As for Jock Whitney... I don't think he had much to do with anything, nor do I think he had any special influence or control over Lyndon Johnson.

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Emphasis added

"Harriman, Whitney, and Bundy were all WASP bluebloods, Yale secret society guys.

The kind of people who could buy and sell cracker pols like Lyndon Baines Johnson a thousand times over."

Have you ever read the relevant passages of "Spanning the Century: The Life of Averell Harriman, 1891-1986" by Rudy Abramson?

Post-assassination, Harriman was writing letters to LBJ begging for a job in the Johnson Administration. Harriman was not buying and selling anyone; he was practically on his knees begging LBJ to let him help out in foreign affairs. This is one big reason I think Harriman had absolutely no role in the JFK assassination and certainly no role in telling Lyndon Johnson what to do.

Link to biography on Harriman: http://www.amazon.co...verell harriman

Post-assassination, McGeorge Bundy assumed huge amounts of power over Lyndon Johnson, both domestically and, of course, in foreign policy. That is one reason I think Bundy may very well have been in on the JFK assassination plot. I do think the odds are Bundy was pushing the lone nutter fantasy in a time frame that is too soon, irrational and quite suspicious.

As for Jock Whitney... I don't think he had much to do with anything, nor do I think he had any special influence or control over Lyndon Johnson.

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pg 334-5, emphasis added:

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 [Pentagon aide

William R.] 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.”

W. Averell Harriman: Yale, Skull & Bones 1913

McGeorge Bundy: Yale, Skull & Bones 1940

[cue Joe Pesci]

Don't you get it?

How in hell could the "US government's top Kremlinologists" have made the determination of Soviet innocence in less than 2 and a half hours, Robert?

Who were the USG's top Kremlinologists in 1963?

W. Averell Harriman

Charles Bohlen

George Kennan

Half of "The Six Wise Men" -- JFK's kitchen cabinet.

The other 3: Robert Lovett, Dean Acheson and [drumroll]...John McCloy.

Only Harriman was directly involved in JFK's murder, I'd reckon. The others didn't need to know.

McCloy took a top slot in the cover-up.

Dulles, Bundy, Bush...high-level employees.

Johnson occupied one notch below.

Edited by Cliff Varnell
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Thanks Bernice!

A couple of photos...b

Check out the eyes on the guy at the left...Financed the Soviet Union's manganese and oil industries and then financed the Nazi war machine, which used Soviet manganese in steel production & allowed Hitler military ambitions on Soviet oil fields.

Play both ends against the middle. A finger in every pie.

It was the Harriman way. The legacy inherited by Bush.

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"Harriman, Whitney, and Bundy were all WASP bluebloods, Yale secret society guys.

The kind of people who could buy and sell cracker pols like Lyndon Baines Johnson a thousand times over."

Have you ever read the relevant passages of "Spanning the Century: The Life of Averell Harriman, 1891-1986" by Rudy Abramson?

Post-assassination, Harriman was writing letters to LBJ begging for a job in the Johnson Administration. Harriman was not buying and selling anyone; he was practically on his knees begging LBJ to let him help out in foreign affairs. This is one big reason I think Harriman had absolutely no role in the JFK assassination and certainly no role in telling Lyndon Johnson what to do.

Link to biography on Harriman: http://www.amazon.co...verell harriman

Post-assassination, McGeorge Bundy assumed huge amounts of power over Lyndon Johnson, both domestically and, of course, in foreign policy. That is one reason I think Bundy may very well have been in on the JFK assassination plot. I do think the odds are Bundy was pushing the lone nutter fantasy in a time frame that is too soon, irrational and quite suspicious.

As for Jock Whitney... I don't think he had much to do with anything, nor do I think he had any special influence or control over Lyndon Johnson.

I've also heard Bundy's name mentioned as someone who knew about the hit as well.

Robert - tell me if this is true or not. I heard this story about Bundy 15-20 years ago. Basically it goes that Bundy had drafted a Presidental letter on Nov 19th or 20th ready for the President to sign on November 23rd/24th/25th, basically after Nov 22. But on the letterhead, instead of addressing it as President Kennedy, it was addressed as President Johnson. Maybe it was a hoax but have you heard of this story before? It was somewhat making the rounds after Stone's JFK movie but have not heard it since brought up.

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Guest Robert Morrow

Rodney, I think you are referring to NSAM-273, the draft of which McGeorge Bundy was making before the JFK assassination (the night before). LBJ signed it not JFK.

See Greg Burnham's presentation on NSAM-273

Part One: http://vimeo.com/17699759

Part Two: http://vimeo.com/17700009

Burnham thinks Bundy had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination. I do, too. However, the JFK assassination was much, much more about Cuba policy (and Lyndon Johnson's personal reasons; Texas oil executives' business reasons) than it was about getting the USA into Vietnam.

Diary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan about 11/22/63:

"We went directly to the President's office which was torn apart with new carpets being put down in his office and the cabinet room. As if a new President were to take office. No one about save Chuck Daly. McGeorge Bundy appeared. Icy. Ralph Dungan came in smoking a pipe, quizzical, as if unconcerned. Then Sorensen. The three together in the door of the hallway that leads to the Cabinet room area. Dead silent. Someone said "It's over."

[Vanity Fair, An American Original, 10/6/10]

Ron Ecker: It's from the book The President Has Been Shot. Charles Roberts of Newsweek was on AF1 as it returned to Washington with the president's body. He wrote this about the arrival at Andrews and the unloading of the casket (p. 141):

"I remember looking at (McGeorge) Bundy because I was wondering if he had any word of what had happened in the world while we were in transit, whether this assassination was part of a plot. And he told me later that what he reported to the president during that flight back was that the whole world was stunned, but there was no evidence of a conspiracy at all."

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From Bill Kelly's JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point

CHRONOLOGY of SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

6:30 (CST?) In Dallas, Dallas Police Homicide Capt. Will Fritz, Secret Service Agent Forrest Sorrels and Assistant Dallas District Attorneys Alexander and Allen conferred over dinner at the Majestic Café, evaluating the evidence against Oswald, considered the possibility of conspiracy and discussed what the charges against Oswald should be. [12]

7:00 P.M - LBJ talked with former President Harry Truman.

7:10 - LBJ conversed over the phone with former President Dwight Eisenhower.

7: 20 – LBJ on the phone with Sargent Shriver

7:25 – LBJ calls JE Hoover. Orders full investigation and report.

7:30 - LBJ writes Caroline and John John notes [13]

7:40 – Valenti: “At about 7:40 the congressional leadership came to call. They were ushered in. I sat quietly near the wall of the office, listening to the president importing to them for their help and their counsel.” Shortly after 8 PM, as Valenti puts it, “LBJ sat at his desk to have some soup. It as his first food since his morning breakfast in Fort Worth.” [14]

Bill, you missed it.

As per Valenti:

Shortly before 7:00 P.M., I escorted Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ambassador Averell Harriman into the office. I fidgeted outside, in the middle of what would have appeared to be an objective onlooker to be a mélange of confusion.

By absolving the Soviets of involvement, Harriman boxed Johnson in. If the Russians had nothing to do with it then Fidel could hardly take the blame. Alleged Mexico City KGB contact Kostikov was crucial to the frame of Oswald-as-commie-assassin. Was Johnson going to consider calling it a domestic conspiracy -- no chance of that, he'd be the prime suspect!

Looks like the Yale boys were calling shots, to me. Harriman gave Johnson his marching orders at just before 7pm.

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Guest Robert Morrow

Averell Harriman had absolutely nothing to do with the JFK assassination. Nothing. Nothing at all. In 4-5 years of intense JFK research I have found almost nothing in the literature or in comments among the top JFK researchers to indicate that Averell Harriman had anything to do with the JFK assassination.

Read that Harriman biography I posted above. Post assassination, Harriman was acting quite subservient and obseqious to LBJ; certainly he was not in a position of command and control.

Harriman may very well have been ordering Bundy around on Vietnam. The JFK assassination was far more about Cuba policy than it was about Vietnam. Vietnam should be seen as a pressure release value for pent up war hawk anger and agitation over Cuba.

And for all we know, at that pre 7:00 meeting LBJ could have been telling Harriman, we can't have this thing be a conspiracy with the Russians because we might have nuclear war and 40 million will die. That line later worked pretty good on Earl Warren.

Yes, Averell Harriman was a power play of the first degree for decades. But I see absolutely nothing to tell me he participated in the murder of his friend, John Kennedy. Harriman was also the one who opened up his own home to Jackie Kennedy for her and her children to live in post JFK assassination. Now that would be unthinkable for someone like LBJ or Allen Dulles to do. Sen. John Sherman Cooper of KY was also Skull & Bones at Yale and he was another good friend of John Kennedy who had absolutely nothing to do with the JFK assasssination. Cooper had deep reservations about the Warren Commission, but he went along with it. If the Kennedys had any friends on the Warren Commission it would have been Sen. Cooper.

Texas State Teachers College (LBJ) and Princeton (Allen Dulles), George Washington University (Hoover) played a much bigger role than Yale, although I do think it is very likely that Yale (McGeorge Bundy) was involved in the JFK assassination. Actually, I don't mean to leave out George Herbert Walker Bush (Yale, Skull & Bones) who is on the record as saying he can't remember where he was during the JFK assassination. I will take Bush's absurd comment as an admission to participation in the JFK assassination.

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Averell Harriman had absolutely nothing to do with the JFK assassination. Nothing. Nothing at all.

He told LBJ that the US government's top Kremlinologists thought the Soviets innocent of a crime that had only been committed a few hours earlier, and only a couple of hours after it was revealed that someone with Soviet connections had been caught in connection with the case.

Given the paucity of publicly available information how could Harriman, Charles Bohlen, George Kennan and Dean Acheson have legitimately determined Soviet innocence while talking over the phone for a couple of hours?

Claiming that Harriman had nothing to do with it certainly flies in the face of the role the man clearly played in enforcing the Oswald-lone-nut official scenario.

In 4-5 years of intense JFK research I have found almost nothing in the literature or in comments among the top JFK researchers to indicate that Averell Harriman had anything to do with the JFK assassination.

Ever consider the possibility you have a hard time processing information that doesn't conform to your pet theories? For instance, when shown the clear role W. Averell Harriman played in the cover-up you simply rationalize it away as if it were nothing!

Read that Harriman biography I posted above. Post assassination, Harriman was acting quite subservient and obseqious to LBJ; certainly he was not in a position of command and control.

That book is an "authorized" biography written with the generous co-operation of the subject. Take it with a grain of salt...

Anything in it about Angleton's favorite Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn accusing Harriman of being a Soviet spy?

Anything about the little gathering Harriman organized in 1932?

From Webster Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin's George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography

http://tarpley.net/o...mily-alliances/

The most important American political event in those preparations for [the ascension of] Hitler was the infamous “Third International Congress on Eugenics” held at New York’s American Museum of Natural History August 21-23, 1932, supervised by the International Federation of Eugenics Societies. This meeting took up the stubborn persistence of African-Americans and other allegedly “inferior” and “socially inadequate” groups in reproducing, expanding their numbers, and amalgamating with others. It was recommended that these dangers” to the “better” ethnic groups and to the “well-born,” could be dealt with by sterilization or “cutting off the bad stock” of the “unfit.”

Italy’s fascist government sent an official representative. Averell Harriman’s sister Mary, director of “Entertainment” for the Congress, lived down in Virginia fox-hunting country; her state supplied the speaker on “racial purity,” W.A. Plecker, Virginia commissioner of vital statistics. Plecker reportedly held the delegates spellbound with his account of the struggle to stop race-mixing and inter-racial sex in Virginia.

The Congress proceedings were dedicated to Averell Harriman’s mother; she had paid for the founding of the race-science movement in America back in 1910, building the Eugenics Record Office as a branch of the Galton National Laboratory in London. She and other Harrimans were usually escorted to the horse races by old George Herbert Walker–they shared with the Bushes and the Farishes a fascination with “ breeding thoroughbreds ” among horses and humans.

Averell Harriman personally arranged with the Walker/Bush Hamburg-Amerika Line to transport Nazi ideologues from Germany to New York for this meeting.The most famous among those transported was Dr. Ernst Ruaudin, psychiatrist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy and Demography in Berlin, where the Rockefeller family paid for Dr. Ruaudin to occupy an entire floor with his eugenics “research.” Dr. Ruaudin had addressed the International Federation’s 1928 Munich meeting, speaking on “Mental Aberration and Race Hygiene,” while others (Germans and Americans) spoke on race-mixing and sterilization of the unfit. Ruaudin had also led the German delegation to the 1930 Mental Hygiene Congress in Washington, D.C.

At the Harrimans’ 1932 New York Eugenics Congress, Ernst Ruaudin was unanimously elected president of the International Federation of Eugenics Societies. This was recognition of Ruaudin as founder of the German Society for Race Hygiene, with his co-founder, Eugenics Federation vice president Alfred Ploautz.

As depression-maddened financiers schemed in Berlin and New York, Ruaudin was now official leader of the world eugenics movement. Components of his movement included groups with overlapping leadership, dedicated to:

  • sterilization of mental patients (“mental hygiene societies”);
  • execution of the insane, criminals and the terminally ill (“euthanasia societies”); and
  • eugenical race-purification by prevention of births to parents from “inferior” blood stocks (“birth control societies”).

Before the Auschwitz death camp became a household word, these British-American-European groups called openly for the elimination of the “unfit” by means including force and violence.

A real sweet heart, this Harriman cat.

Harriman may very well have been ordering Bundy around on Vietnam.

And Cuba.

The people directing US policy on Cuba were also the driving force behind SE Asia policy -- meaning Harriman and his fellow Bonesman puppet Bundy.

Via Peter Dale Scott:

http://www.history-m...ter5.htm#_ftn41

"Assassinations Report, 173. Cf. FRUS, #320; 777 (Bundy memo of April 21, 1963).

The other two documents are not in FRUS."

As early as January 4, 1963, Bundy proposed to President Kennedy that the possibility of

communicating with Castro be explored. (Memorandum, Bundy to the President, 1/4/63).

Bundy's memorandum on "Cuba Alternatives" of April 23 [sic, i.e. April 21], 1963, also listed

the "gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro" among policy alternatives. (Bundy memorandum, 4/21/63) At a meeting on June 3, 1963, the Special Group agreed it would be a "useful endeavour" to explore "various possibilities of establishing channels of communication to Castro." (Memorandum of Special Group meeting, 6/6/63).

The initiative for engaging Castro came from Bundy, part of the Harriman foreign policy Kennedy adopted as his own. The Harriman policy on Vietnam would get shoved down Kennedy's throat summer/fall '63.

The intiative for overthrowing Diem came from Harriman, and when Kennedy reacted with such heart-sickness to the murder of the Ngo brothers Harriman likely concluded JFK didn't have the stomach to tough it out in Vietnam.

Here's John F. Kennedy describing on tape (11/4/63) the overthrow of Diem in Vietnam on 11/1/63:

(emphasis added)

President Kennedy:
Opposed to the coup was General [Maxwell] Taylor, the

Attorney General [Robert Kennedy], Secretary [Robert] McNamara to a somewhat

lesser degree, John McCone, partly based on an old hostility to [Henry Cabot] Lodge

[Jr.] which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge's judgment, partly as a result

of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his [CIA] station chief;
in favor of the

coup was State, led by Averell Harriman,
George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported

by Mike Forrestal at the White House.

Harriman's lead role is confirmed by this quote of Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith:

http://www.assassina...2n1/chrono1.pdf

Galbraith writes Harriman, “The South Vietnam coup is another feather in your cap. Do

get me a list of all of the people who told us there was no alternative to Diem.” A cautious

Harriman tells his secretary, “File and don’t answer."

As Debra Conway highlights in her 2005 NID Conference presentation, Harriman's foreign policy agenda was often separate from JFK's.

http://jfklancer.com...ersions.ppt.htm

Robert, check out Gareth Porter's The Perils of Dominance. The US military/foreign policy establishment wanted the militarization of Laos in 1961, as well as a greater footprint in Vietnam. Kennedy wanted to neutralize Laos, then Vietnam.

Harriman worked to neutralize Laos and militarize Vietnam. The North Vietnamese got the Ho Chi Minh Trail thru Laos and the CIA got the Laotian poppy fields.

How powerful was Harriman in SE Asia policy? He determined the rules of engagement for US forces in Laos!

William Colby, the Hmong and the CIA

By: Amoun VANG SAYAOVONG

http://www.hmongnet....au/hmongcia.htm

American desire to adhere to the spirit of the [1962 Harriman-negotiated] Geneva Accords deemed it necessary that the Hmong serve as a clandestine force which could harass the North Vietnamese without being directly linked to the United States. The Hmong were prohibited from taking any offensive actions as that could lead to an escalation in the war on the part of the North Vietnamese. Increased fighting also had the potential to expose the American support of the Hmong and could possibly lead to a complete annulment of the Geneva Accords. Colby - then CIA Deputy Director - was instructed by Assistant Secretary W. Averell Harriman of the State Department to keep the effort in Laos purely defensive in nature.

"'Okay, one hundred guns but no attacks, only for defense,' " Colby said of Harriman's orders.

"Don't get the Hmong to do any attack against the North Vietnamese. We don't want to escalate this thing any more than possible, " explained Colby of the American policy in the 1960s. "We would just like to dampen it down where it is ... where we don't let it get any further but we don't try to win any victories there [Laos]."

Harriman was an uber-dove on Laos, but an uber-hawk on Vietnam.

Why?...

The JFK assassination was far more about Cuba policy than it was about Vietnam. Vietnam should be seen as a pressure release value for pent up war hawk anger and agitation over Cuba.

No Robert, there was a solid connection between Cuba policy and SE Asia policy during the Kennedy Administration. The same people working on one worked on the other. This was true at the top (Harriman, Bundy, Lansdale) as well as out in the tropical climes where the Cold War was hot.

From Richard Bartholomew's Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used In the JFK Conspiracy

http://www.deeppolit...ghlight=rambler

By February 1963 [Gen. Edward] Lansdale had no position in Cuban policy and was focusing on Latin America. He was traveling to countries like Bolivia and elsewhere. The U.S. had a lot of personnel in South America under Kennedy. And a lot of them ended up going to Vietnam. According to [author John] Newman there is a blind spot as to exactly what they were doing and how many people the U.S. had in Latin America.

"I can tell you," Newman said, "that in the collateral research that I did, names that I came across, I found a correlation between -- I don't say this is definitive but I got a lot of hits -- the same names of the guys that were running around in Latin America, particularly in Cuban policy, end up in the Far East Division. Very strange coincidence. There were three -- it wasn't just one -- there were several. A neat nexus between the Southeast Asian guys and Cuban guys."

David Talbot's Brothers, pg 226:

When Lisa Howard told [envoy William] Attwood that Castro would like to

restore communications with Kennedy and offered to set up an informal meeting

at her apartment between him and Cuba's UN representative, Carlos Lechuga,

the diplomat responded enthusiastically. In a memo he wrote for [Adlai]

Stevenson and Averill Harriman -- who he was told was the best direct channel

to Kennedy -- Attwood suggested that "we have something to gain and nothing

to lose by finding out whether in fact Castro does want to talk"...Stevenson took

the proposal to Kennedy, who gave him clearance to pursue the dialogue.

Harriman too said he was "adventuresome enough" to like the idea...

Robert, it may be just a co-incidence, but in the 50's Havana was the center of the worlds narcotics distribution network, and in the 60's and 70's Laos became the center of the world's heroin production.

Is that what JFK's killer's were after -- a pipeline for Laotion heroin thru Vietnam and Havana? JFK's death would be blamed on Castro spurring a US "liberation" of the island. But the patsy was captured alive so Harriman and his flunky Bundy pulled the plug on the Commie-conspiracy scenario.

And for all we know, at that pre 7:00 meeting LBJ could have been telling Harriman, we can't have this thing be a conspiracy with the Russians because we might have nuclear war and 40 million will die. That line later worked pretty good on Earl Warren.

Robert, you're just making stuff up. Are you saying Max Holland mis-characterized the conversation?

Yes, Averell Harriman was a power play of the first degree for decades. But I see absolutely nothing to tell me he participated in the murder of his friend, John Kennedy.

And yet you're eager to pin the deed on Harriman proteges like McGeorge Bundy and G. H. W. Bush.

Robert, get a copy of A Death in November by Ellen J. Hammer and you'll have a greater appreciation of the profound split that occurred between Harriman and Kennedy over Vietnam policy.

Edited by Cliff Varnell
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The initiative for overthrowing Diem came from Harriman, and when Kennedy reacted with such heart-sickness to the murder of the Ngo brothers Harriman likely concluded JFK didn't have the stomach to tough it out in Vietnam.

Here's John F. Kennedy describing on tape (11/4/63) the overthrow of Diem in Vietnam on 11/1/63:

(emphasis added)

President Kennedy: Opposed to the coup was General [Maxwell] Taylor, the

Attorney General [Robert Kennedy], Secretary [Robert] McNamara to a somewhat

lesser degree, John McCone, partly based on an old hostility to [Henry Cabot] Lodge

[Jr.] which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge's judgment, partly as a result

of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his [CIA] station chief;
in favor of the

coup was State, led by Averell Harriman,
George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported

by Mike Forrestal at the White House.

Harriman's lead role is confirmed by this quote of Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith:

http://www.assassina...2n1/chrono1.pdf

Galbraith writes Harriman, “The South Vietnam coup is another feather in your cap. Do

get me a list of all of the people who told us there was no alternative to Diem.” A cautious

Harriman tells his secretary, “File and don’t answer."

.....Robert, get a copy of A Death in November by Ellen J. Hammer and you'll have a greater appreciation of the profound split that occurred between Harriman and Kennedy over Vietnam policy.

Another account comes from Ross A Fisher and was published in the book To Oppose Any Foe.

From a review by Ilya Shapiro for The Washington Times:

Moreover, Mr. Fisher contends, an anti-Diem cabal led by Averell Harriman, the under secretary of state for political affairs (number three at Foggy Bottom), effectively managed to green-light a coup when more senior officials (including Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA head John McCone, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Maxwell Taylor) were unavailable to give President Kennedy their (tempering) advice, and just when a more foresighted ambassador, Frederick Nolting, had been replaced by old Kennedy rival Henry Cabot Lodge.

This was the same Harriman who, while now thinking himself quite realistic in evaluating internal Vietnamese affairs, had earlier shown his profound naivete in trumpeting a “fingertips feeling” that the Soviets would police the Ho Chi Minh trail to prevent Viet Cong infiltration from Laos.

Lyndon Johnson removed both Harriman and his protege Roger Hilsman shortly after taking office, but the damage had been done. As Mr. Fisher convincingly argues, the “skillful bureaucratic maneuvering [of the Diem antagonists] thwarted the wishes of their superiors” and led to “the gravest error that the Kennedy Administration made in its policy toward Vietnam.”

http://www.washingto...6536r/?page=all

http://www.cap-press.com/pdf/1550.pdf

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The initiative for overthrowing Diem came from Harriman, and when Kennedy reacted with such heart-sickness to the murder of the Ngo brothers Harriman likely concluded JFK didn't have the stomach to tough it out in Vietnam.

Here's John F. Kennedy describing on tape (11/4/63) the overthrow of Diem in Vietnam on 11/1/63:

(emphasis added)

President Kennedy: Opposed to the coup was General [Maxwell] Taylor, the

Attorney General [Robert Kennedy], Secretary [Robert] McNamara to a somewhat

lesser degree, John McCone, partly based on an old hostility to [Henry Cabot] Lodge

[Jr.] which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge's judgment, partly as a result

of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his [CIA] station chief;
in favor of the

coup was State, led by Averell Harriman,
George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported

by Mike Forrestal at the White House.

Harriman's lead role is confirmed by this quote of Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith:

http://www.assassina...2n1/chrono1.pdf

Galbraith writes Harriman, “The South Vietnam coup is another feather in your cap. Do

get me a list of all of the people who told us there was no alternative to Diem.” A cautious

Harriman tells his secretary, “File and don’t answer."

.....Robert, get a copy of A Death in November by Ellen J. Hammer and you'll have a greater appreciation of the profound split that occurred between Harriman and Kennedy over Vietnam policy.

Another account comes from Ross A Fisher and was published in the book To Oppose Any Foe.

From a review by Ilya Shapiro for The Washington Times:

Moreover, Mr. Fisher contends, an anti-Diem cabal led by Averell Harriman, the under secretary of state for political affairs (number three at Foggy Bottom), effectively managed to green-light a coup when more senior officials (including Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA head John McCone, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Maxwell Taylor) were unavailable to give President Kennedy their (tempering) advice, and just when a more foresighted ambassador, Frederick Nolting, had been replaced by old Kennedy rival Henry Cabot Lodge.

This was the same Harriman who, while now thinking himself quite realistic in evaluating internal Vietnamese affairs, had earlier shown his profound naivete in trumpeting a “fingertips feeling” that the Soviets would police the Ho Chi Minh trail to prevent Viet Cong infiltration from Laos.

Lyndon Johnson removed both Harriman and his protege Roger Hilsman shortly after taking office, but the damage had been done. As Mr. Fisher convincingly argues, the “skillful bureaucratic maneuvering [of the Diem antagonists] thwarted the wishes of their superiors” and led to “the gravest error that the Kennedy Administration made in its policy toward Vietnam.”

http://www.washingto...6536r/?page=all

http://www.cap-press.com/pdf/1550.pdf

Great stuff, Mike!

I wonder just how "naive" Harriman was. They may have called the Ho Chi Minh Trail "The Averell Harriman Highway" and the '62 Geneva accords "Cave with Ave" -- but I wonder if it was all just chalked up as collateral damage in exchange for a free hand in the Laotian poppy fields.

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