James DiEugenio

I agree Paul. Can you imagine working on that speech for about a year, and having his wife translate articles from the French and Spanish? Going all the way back to Roosevelt and his thoughts on the Middle East? What is remarkable about that speech is thinking back to the time frame it was made in: The hotbed of the Cold War and Foster Dulles condemning the whole idea of neutrality in the Third World. Kennedy got pilloried for making it.

Jean: Thanks for that link to the Algeria speech. We found out while making JFK Revisited, there is no film of it. There is only a short film of Kennedy speaking some of the speech in his office. I think he anticipated there would be no film of it. But man was there a reaction. 138 editorials and columns, 2-1 negative. And even Acheson and Stevenson attacked him. I like the touch about Jackie yelling at Acheson at Penn Central.

Can anyone show me where I mentioned Israel in those two essays?

Ron: In his 1957 speech JFK really gave it to Ike and Foster Dulles about Dien Bien Phu. He said something like, has everyone forgotten what happened three years ago? Do we really want to be on the wrong side of history again?

Thanks William. And i agree, the content of the two essays is pretty much being ignored. Yet, theTruman split from FDR and JFK's return to FDR is what those two are about. Can you imagine spending a year researching and writing a speech like Kennedy did on Algeria? And then getting blasted for it. When in fact you were utterly correct?

Everyone should take note of what happened in the Alec Baldwin case today. It would have been worse in the Oswald case. Because the instances of evidentiary manipulation were more prolific.

In a point I will get to later, Kissinger was too moderate for the Neocons. Rumsfeld and Cheney, who put the Neocon revolution in practice, sidelined him due to his attempt at detente. They then revved up Nitze's Committee on the Present Danger, filled with Neocons, to create the USSR as a military juggernaut that could demolish the USA. Which was another nutty Neocon theorem that Henry Jackson advocated. As I will write, this was the precursor to the Jackson Neocons taking over under Reagan. But the intellectual roots go back further to men like Strauss.

I actually meant it to be about JFK vs the Neocons.

BTW, how many people knew about JFK and his policy in Iran? Larry Hancock first tipped me off to that. Just remember, as Kai Bird pointed out, it was John McCloy who successfully lobbied the Carter administration to let the Shah into the USA. That brought us Ronald Reagan. Can you imagine one guy covering up the JFK case and doing that also? And recall, it was CBS who let him consult on their 1967 cover up special.

I am going to get to what a neocon is in this essay. It will be complete and accurate. And I will show how they disavowed and buried Kennedy's foreign policy until today it might as well be in a museum.

Thanks William, I was going to wait to post them. It will eventually be four parts. The underlying theme is dual. its about why JFK was murdered, and how his political legacy was then buried and the opposition resurfaced with the neocons. Unlike a lot of substack writers, who shall remain nameless, this work requires research and footnotes.

That is correct William. it should be.

What is the evidence that JFK despised Lyndon Johnson? From everything I have read, and its a lot, Kennedy treated Johnson with respect both in the senate and as VP. The stuff that went on prior to the convention, Kennedy understood that as pure politics in a political race. Kennedy understood that as a northeast Catholic liberal, LBJ would balance out the ticket in every way, geographically, religiously and politically. So it just made the most political sense. I repeat, Sorenson's first list had Johnson at the top. (Kennedy, p. 184) Sorenson then adds, "He had strong voter appeal in areas where Kennedy had little or none.. He was a protestant with a capital P. Above all, Kennedy respected him..." Clark Clifford was managing Symington's campaign. When Kennedy approached him to feel him out, Clifford replied that Symington was not interested, he was playing for a second ballot. (Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 40)

This is simply and utterly false. And I showed why in my review of Sean Fetter's meritless book. The reason being is simple: from the very start, when Sorenson made out his first list, Johnson was at the top. The question always was whether or not, he would accept it . Kennedy did not think he would. But at the convention, Alsop, and Graham, said he should ask. And Tommy Corcoran and Tip O'Neill both told him that he would take it and JFK said that would be his most likely path to victory. Since be had been hemorrhaging support in the south since his 1957 declaration for Brown v Board, which he did twice, once in Mississippi. That is how the call came to be. And Connally told LBJ he should accept. Bobby Kennedy did everything he could to stop it, but he failed. What Hersh did with this, like about everything he did in his trash compactor of a book, was simply and utterly wrong. He relied on someone who was not even in on the deliberations, ignored all the established precedents, and from there zoomed to a preordained assumption that was simply mythological. That Fetter, or anyone else, should rely on Hersh in this day and age for anything is simply unfathomable. Especially after the sorry debacles of the Marilyn Monroe trust and the Underwood messengering with Exner between Washington and Chicago. I mean please. Not on this forum.

BTW, that line of questioning about why Stringer did not follow his own method, that would open up a whole Pandora's Box. Because the other questions would then follow: about how the heck does any experienced autopsy photographer take a picture like the mystery photo? IMO, from what I have read, Stringer would then blame Humes. Which would lead to the question of: why on earth would Stringer allow Humes to direct him about his profession, that he himself taught in the opposite manner? You start going down that path and you literally have the rats jumping ship.