James DiEugenio

Harriman did say that there were forces working against a neutralization plan.

Vietnam was at the start a CIA war. Lansdale was the main cog in South Vietnam, rigging elections for Diem and forging the whole Catholic exodus south to prop up a backing for Diem. As we know Lansdale was ostensibly an Air Force officer but was really CIA, and very friendly with Dulles. In fact Lansdale wanted to be the ambassador to Saigon. So yes, I would say that Dulles was strongly involved with all this. Laos was a little different, in that the Pentagon was really pushing for Kennedy to enter into that theater. At first there was not even a CIA station there. Arleigh Burke wanted a 60,000 man contingent to go into the country. Kennedy dismantled that with some tough questioning and arranged a neutralist solution. But as Mike Swanson pointed out in his book Why Vietnam? this caused a retargeting to Vietnam.

Ron: Truman and Acheson did something that FDR likely would not have done. They recognized Bao Dai as the leader in the south. This enraged Ho Chi Minh. Because it meant to him that America was going to back the French in their effort to retake the area after the war.. This is what FDR told Cordell Hull that he did not want France to do. Ho Chi Minh was correct and Truman did give aid to France when the war started. But as most commentators say, once Eisenhower took over, the aid greatly increased by a large factor. But still the French could not gain a decisive advantage. And Americans on the scene, like reporter Seymour Topping and diplomat Edmund Gullion, thought this was hopeless; and if America took over, it would be the same. So when Kennedy visited in 1951, both men said this to him: that France could not win the war. In fact, Topping's declaration might have been even stronger than Gullion's. When Kennedy returned home, he made some speeches about imperialism vs nationalism in the Third World. A little later he wrote a letter to Foster Dulles, asking him what America's strategy was in Indochina. About a year after that, it became clear that both Nixon and Foster Dulles advocated the use of American ground troops if necessary. In fact Nixon mentioned this in a speech. But then during the siege of Dien Bien Phu, Foster Dulles planned Operation Vulture, which Fletcher Prouty was one of the first to write about, and John Prados wrote a whole book about. This was a truly nutty plan to send a huge air armada over the site, accompanied by 135 fighter planes if China intervened. The mission was to drop 3 atomic bombs over the site. This was approved by Foster Dulles and Admiral Radford, but Ike turned it down when the British could not go along with it. But, Dulles then went to the French privately, no one knows if Ike approved this, and offered them the nukes. They declined. Nixon was the point man in congress for this wacky idea. Kennedy railed against it. When DIen Bien Phu fell, we found out why Dulles never replied to Kennedy's letter. Because against the advice of Topping and Gullion, America was now going to replace France as the imperial power there. As Ike later confessed, if they stuck to the Geneva agreement for free unification elections, Ho Chi Minh would win in a landslide. So they broke the agreement, split the country in half, and the CIA propped up this Catholic, English speaking, suit and tie attired dictator, Ngo DInh DIem, who was being run by Ed Lansdale. It was this choice that led to an epic tragedy. There were others who would have been much better. But, in retrospect, the wisest choice was to have just enacted the Accords. And avoided 20 more years of war and 5.8 million deaths in Indochina.

According to John Newman, that is correct. It was Eisenhower who first suggested that Lumumba should be eliminated. Then Allen Dulles put it into action.

Talbot's Go Fund Me page reached 100 K today. He deserves it. And nice job to everyone who helped.

Interesting point Ron. Kuznick and Stone argue that Eisenhower should take much more blame for what happened, instead of just dumping everything on Foster Dulles. Which is what many people have done. A good revisionist history of Ike is Blanche Wiesen Cook's The Declassified Eisenhower.

Well, try Paul, if you have to pay them!

Here is the video version: https://sdgacademylibrary.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/Conversation+with+Monika+Wiesak%2C+America's+Last+President/1_ugumvrpl

BTW, one of the reasons I brought up the UN action approved by Kennedy and the Secretary General is one of the articles I am working on right now for Substack. See, Kennedy greatly admired Dag Hammarskjold. When he died Kennedy brought in a Swedish diplomat from the embassy. He told him that Dag was the greatest statesman of the 20th century. He could never hope to equal him in stature. This is why I think that when Gullion sent the cable saying it was no accident what happened to Dag, that Kennedy decided to take an active part in the operation. This included two visits to the UN, invoking Dag's name. But the distinction I want to point out is that Kennedy used the UN to settle the dispute. When HRC, Rice and Power wanted to get rid of Gaddafi, they used NATO to bomb Libya. This is something I am going to specifically bring up in my two parter.

Because as Lovett said to JFK: Foster Dulles had his brother's back. But Lovett now said Kennedy had the perfect opportunity to get rid of him.

Grand Slam was made up of Swedish, Indian, Ghanian and Ethiopian troops under Major General Chand of India. It was approved by U Thant and Kennedy. If i recall, it only had something like 11 casualties on the UN side. To me it was an example of what the UN could do for a just cause when necessary. But without Kennedy, the UN pulled out. In less than a year after Kennedy's murder, everything went downhill. Until Indonesia, Katanga was known as one of the richest mineral deposits there was. And since the Belgians had sacked the treasury, Lumumba knew he had to keep hold of it for the country to have an economic future.

To say as some are implying that somehow Kennedy did not figure prominently in the defeat of the Katanga secession is simply not accurate. And to also imply that American policy did not drastically change after his death, this is also not accurate. As Jonathan K notes in Endless Enemies, the White House and the CIA now tried to blame the Simba Rebellion--some of the last of Lumumba's followers--on influence from China! Just recall, for the disaster that took place ultimately in Congo, three men had to perish: Lumumba Dag Hammarskjold Kennedy. IMO, without those murders, and that is what they were, Belgium would not have retaken control and neither would have Union Miniere. This is why Lumumba became a hero in Africa, and why so many streets, buildings, parks and even children were named after Kennedy.

Here is the link some of you asked for on this, Jeff is a good guy one of the few in academia on the JFK case. And if you have not read Monika's book, what are you waiting for. It is excellent. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/season-3-episode-9-monika-wiesak-americas-last-president/id1555300202?i=1000660869324

Jadotville was part of the UN mission. Hammarskjold had appointed Conor Cruise O'Brien to run that mission. O'Brien got decidedly mixed reviews for his performance. But when Dag was killed, and the UN was faltering, it was Kennedy who went to the UN, not once, but twice to convince them to stay in the battle as a way of honoring Dag. We excerpted Kennedy's speech in which he mentions this in JFK Revisited. And it was Kennedy who approved Operation Grand Slam which ended the Katanga secession. Everyone knows that the Belgians, and to a lesser extent the British and French backed Union Miniere and Katanga and Tshombe. Is that supposed to be news? And yes mercenaries were hired to back Tshombe, reportedly one was Skorzeny in the employ of CIA. Everything went south after Kennedy's murder. Kennedy wanted to bring in British special forces expert Michel Greene to control the Simba Rebellion tactically. This did not occur and once Adoula retired, and Mobutu became a favorite at Fort Benington, LBJ moved the USA from center to the right. Without Kennedy, the UN withdrew in the summer of 1964. Now, the US and Belgium "intervened with arms, airplanes and military advisors. Mobutu brought Tshombe home from exile to replace Adoula as premier." To put down the Simba Rebellion, the USA and Belgium formed a mercenary force which included men from South Africa and reportedly Cuban exiles. To stop the rebellion in Stanleyville the US Air Force used C-130's to drop Belgian paratroopers on the city. As many have said this was a military success and a political disaster. Eighteen African states accused the USA and Belgium of violation of the UN Charter. As UN ambassador Stevenson said: a year before we were hailed as champions of a free Africa, now we were as reviled as the Belgians. (Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, pp 229-231)

And the thing is Cyril really did not slow down until about his last year. He was active with many people on the case right up until he was about 91. For instance he would call Tanenbaum almost every weekend. He would email Oliver Stone frequently about getting letters in the papers. He would gladly talk to me about certain forensic issues from his house at night. And no one should ever underestimate those Duquesne Conferences run by him and Ben. As I recall, at the 2003 one, he had about a thousand people there. Anyway, he and Gary teamed up to give Griffin a swift kick in the butt. Really kind of surprised at Griffin, as he was one of the less extreme Commission zealots compared to say Belin.

Correct Ben. I virtually attended the celebration of life for Wecht on Sunday. Very nice proceeding conducted by his family, I imagine Ben had a large role in it. Cyril never had much time for these Warren Commission zealots. Griffin has to know about those phone calls and he has to know that Ruby did not walk down the Main Street ramp.

Gary Aguilar and the late Cyril Wecht, in his last effort, do a nice job to take apart the latest apologia by one of the Warren Commission counsels. First, we had Belin, then Willens. This time its Burt Griffin. The thing is Griffin was their alleged Ruby expert, but wait until you see what he left out. These guys are (literally) shameless. Good job and nice exit by Cyril. https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/warren-commission-counsels-burt-griffin-and-howard-willens-attempt-the-impossible-shoring-up-the-tottering-credibility-of-earl-warren-s-investigation

Who is Eugenio? Do you mean me?

When I went to look up Howard Hunt there I got a generic message that the site was for sale. Has that been cut off for whatever reason?

Aaron Good gathered a really outstanding cast of people to help salute David Talbot and hopefully contribute to his Go Fund Me page. Greenwald, Morley, Scott, Stone and others. A really interesting tribute to a man who made some very big contributions. Let us keep our fingers crossed. https://www.fourdiedtrying.com/post/david-talbot-a-tribute-and-call-to-action-dcc40

I will be soon doing an expanded version on substack of my Pittsburgh talk about "The Death of JFK and the Rise of the Neocons." I would be working on it right now, but I am going to do a substack on last night's debate first. Then I will get to work on that revised and expanded version. Kennedy's relationship with Nasser is so interesting.

Paul: There you go again. Now i he have to read this nonsense. Dulles was trying to kill Lumumba without telling the winning candidate, and then he did not tell JFK even after the guy was dead. Dulles secretly knew that Bay of Pigs was going to fail, yet told JFK he felt confident it would succeed. He approved the plots to kill Castro, again without informing the president. As the Bruce/ Lovett report makes clear Dulles turned the CIA into a covert action machine, one which Kennedy complained he was in the dark about at times. Before Smathers sold out his pal, he said that one night at dinner he was trying to encourage JFK into backing a plot to kill Castro. Kennedy exploded in rage and smashed a plate over the table. He said he wanted no such talk in his presence and complained about the CIA doing these kinds of things on their own, as he suspected they had done with Trujillo. Need I even mention Truman? That column in the Washington Post worried Dulles so much that he went to Truman's house and tried to get him to retract it.

From my review of Larry Tye's hack book on RFK. Another point that Tye scores his subject on is that RFK pondered whether an air strike would be enough to get the missiles out, or if there needed to be an invasion. At this first meeting President Kennedy had just listed four options his advisors had mapped out for him. Robert Kennedy then chimes in: We have the fifth one really, which is the invasion [which was already raised by Maxwell Taylor]. I would say that you’re dropping bombs all over Cuba if you do the second, air and the airports, knocking out their planes, dropping it on all their missiles. You’re covering most of Cuba. You’re going to kill an awful lot of people, and we’re going to take an awful lot of heat on this. And then—you know the heat. You’re going to announce the reason that you’re doing it is because they’re sending in these kinds of missiles. Well, I would think it’s almost incumbent upon the Russians then, to say, Well we’re going to send them in again. And if you do it again, we’re going to do the same thing in Turkey” or “we’re going to so the same thing to Iran.” (The Kennedy Tapes, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, p. 66) Does this sound like RFK is pushing for an invasion? He is making an overall air strike, which is what Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had described, sound very unappealing. As Steven Schneider writes, Bobby Kennedy was against even the air strike option, comparing it to what the Japanese did to America at Pearl Harbor. So how could he have been for an invasion? (Robert F. Kennedy, pp. 56-57) In fact, after an unsettling meeting with congressional leaders who thought the agreed upon blockade of Cuba was too weak, the brothers were shaken by the sabre rattling. They both agreed that the blockade was the least JFK could do without being impeached. (op. cit. Probe, p. 16)

Having to look at what was a decent thread after Cloud and Koch jump on is discouraging. Oh no, Moynihan and the Missile Crisis? May and Zelikow were working from a baseline, the tapes. So whatever the politics of Zelikow, there was little wiggle room. Plus May was his check and balance. There was a slight debate over this later, but I checked it out. I thought it was minor at best. The whole thing about the Jupiters is silly, if you go back and look at the newspaper stories, they were named at the time. I will say it again, The Kennedy Tapes, is an invaluable chronicle because its in the participants' own words. Plus its comprehensive, it lays in the prologue and goes all the way to the final removal of the bombers. Please note, Nitze wanted to retaliate for the U2 shootdown--which was a really dumb thing for Castro to do--Kennedy did not do it.

Paul: I was writing about the Dulles vs Kennedy confrontation over Lumumba. I consider Mahoney and Jonathan K to be good sources on that. In fact their books are considered classics today. That Dulles/JFK confrontation ended in early 1961. And its one of the reasons Dulles was terminated. Dulles also may have had something to do with the assassination of Dag Hammarskjold. Gullion sent a cable to DC saying that the Hammarskjold plane crash was not an accident. . But I did not go into that.