James DiEugenio

Jeff, yes that is accurate. But let me also add, its not just Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith. It is also: Gordon Goldstein, CFR David Kaiser, Naval War College James Blight, Janet Lang, David Welch, then at Brown Howard Jones, late of University of Alabama But further, after a three day debate down in Georgia sponsored for the book VIrtual JFK, the majority of academics and scholars there--out of about 30 total-- agreed that JFK was getting out, including Bill Moyers. So please let us not say that somehow a very tiny group of writers is advocating for this. That is not the case. Howard Jones was a conservative historian. He said that when he started his book, he did not know where it was headed. But he discovered an important piece of evidence on the way. An oral interview with Ros Gilpatric, McNamara's assistant. In it, he essentially said that McNamara told him that Kennedy's withdrawal plan "was part of a plan that the president asked him to develop to unwind this whole thing." (Virtual JFK, by James Blight, p. 371) When one combines this to the May 1963 Sec Def meeting notes, where McNamara is collecting withdrawal schedules, I really do not see there being any argument about this. Whether or not the skeletal crew left behind was going to be able to advise the ARVN on how to stave off an attack from the north is a question I think we all know the answer to. Its just a matter of comparisons. Under Thieu, Saigon had much more weaponry, a substantial Air Force, larger army etc. Did that American skeletal crew help him stop Hanoi's attack? Nope. Just ask Frank Snepp. Snepp--who was there on the ground-- and we--who watched on TV-- saw what happened: with the helicopter atop the American embassy. And Nixon and Kissinger both knew it was going to happen. A real historian, Jeff Kimball, quotes Nixon as saying this twice. The whole point of the Nixon/Kissinger strategy was the Decent Interval concept: Saigon would fall after the Americans left. Which Kissinger wrote down in his notes for his talks with Bejing. The difference is this: Kennedy would not have inserted combat troops, would not have used the USAF for saturation bombing, and would not have invaded Laos and Cambodia. I mean he did not even want Generals going to Vietnam to visit without his permission. That whole nutty strategy of escalation was LBJ's idea and he inserted it into the dialogue within about 48 hours after Kennedy's death. But if you want to see something really nutty, take a look at the plans for Operation Duck Hook. This was going to be Nixon's last hurrah to get a Korea type settlement. Harking back to Foster Dulles and Dien Bien Phu, it included the usage of tactical atomic weapons. The anti war movement stopped it from being enacted. As Ambrose said, Nixon was really around the bend on Vietnam. Read it and weep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hook

That is the only way the Post would have printed it.

Bill, all I can say to your posts on this thread and on Mike's other off the wall thread about Vietnam is: 👋

That interview was before the signing of NSAM 263. Now, are we supposed to quote all the people to who JFK said he was getting out, or the overall review of the policy on Indochina, which Mike's buddy Selverstone tried to say did not exist? But it did. And Scott wrote about it back in 1971. And somehow Selverstone missed it, even though Scott's essay was one of the very first and most famous on the subject. When people bring an agenda to an historical subject they are not writing history anymore. They are writing from a pre-formed ideology. The very title Mike placed on this thread proves that in spades.

Greg Parker takes apart Mimi Alford. https://gregrparker.com/2012/07/02/storm-in-a-mimi-teacup/ Again, JFK would write Mary M on White House stationary? Hmm.

As John Newman has noted, and proved, Kennedy said things in public which were contradicted by his actions. And he makes Vietnam an example. As per the Domino Theory, if you read Gordon Goldstein's book, Lessons in Disaster, McGeorge Bundy denies this. He says Kennedy did not really buy into that idea, namely that if Vietnam fell, all of Asia would collapse and the dominoes would extend, in some cases, to Manila, with others to Hawaii. I mean, when China went communist, did any other country fall? Not that I can see. The reason that Cambodia went was because Nixon and Kissinger were illegally bombing the country causing the collapse of two governments leading to the rise of Pol Pot. This would not have happened under Kennedy.

Joe: Mimi claimed some things which have already been discredited, as I noted above. Howard Hunt changed his story from when he first started talking to Kevin Costner, which was years before he came out with his revised version, in which he was somehow on the sidelines. This is after Mark Lane decimated his story about where he was on November 22nd.

Let me sum up my ideas about the MM case vs the JFK case. I would wager that no one has studied the latter case as much as I have for the last 15-20 years. I am not that proficient on the MM case, but I have done a lot or reading and study on it of late, say the last two years. In preparation for a long essay I will be publishing at K and K. The two cases are cognitively and forensically opposed to each other. In the JFK case, the longer you study it, the worse it gets, and the more obvious the evidence for a conspiracy and cover up becomes delineated. And you can actually locate how and where and when the latter happened: Hoover and Commission e.g. with Sandy Styles and CE 399. In the MM case, the longer you study it, the more you realize the contrary. Namely that MM had a lot of problems emotionally. She had three psychoanalysts in six years, one put her in a sanitarium in New York. She had been married and divorced three times by the time she was 35. She never met her father. She only met her sister when she was 15. She did not like Hollywood. Which is why she tried to create her own company. And there had been four prior attempts to take her own life. See if you find this material in Slatzer or Capell. What you find in these cheapjack books can methodically be disposed of because they are based largely on BS. Some examples: there was go glass in the bedroom, when in fact there was one and there was a police photo of it. That somehow Murray was using the washer dryer that night, when according to McGovern, MM did not have a set since she sent out all her clothes to the cleaners. That MM was really found in a different rec room, when in fact there was no bed in that room. That MM was killed by Greenson with a hypo in the chest, when in fact Noguchi examined the body for those kinds of hypo injections. That RFK was in Brentwood that day, when in fact photos, witness testimony and newspaper stories prove he was in the SF area. I could go on and on. But there was been a reaction, by people like McGovern, to all of this nutty rigamarole that tries to make hay out of the personal tragedy of MM. And tries to make RFK into something he simply was not. Two of the worst culprits were Slatzer and Heymann. Slatzer began his first book with MM saying that 1.) Bobby was going to marry her and 2.) Bobby had been part of Murder Inc and this was how he got involved with the plots to kill Castro. Heymann ended up saying that RFK had been to Brentwood on the day MM died, not just once, but twice. Who can believe such balderdash? But people do and apparently some people on this board buy into this junk. And also, Mark Shaw.

Thanks Pat. That disposes of that question, as we do not know how quickly they were all taken either do we? But the original question about the stomach and digestion, was also replied to by Stephens and Wecht, as they said the toxic materials had passed through to the liver. This proves two points: that the bodily processes were still proceeding, until about 2 AM, and the pills had passed through; and also the pills had been ingested, not injected. Stephens said that an injection would have shown more of the toxic material in the blood and less in the liver. (McGovern, pp. 494-95)

Pamela: No one here is saying that JFK was. Including Jim Douglass. But i have to note that the idea JFK would write a note to Meyer on White House stationary is really out there. But as others have noted, several other presidents have done the same thing. But they were not assassinated under very dubious circumstances while they were in the middle of altering certain policies that would prevent the deaths of millions of people in places like Indochina and Indonesia. And would have altered relations with Russia and Cuba, and given hope to people in the Third World like the Dominican Republic. And the idea that Mike Griffith started this whole thread out with is utterly nutty. Since the whole MM/RFK business did not start until 1964 with Capell's pamphlet. And the reason that was done was to stop Bobby from winning in New York. And recall, Capell was convicted for conspiracy to commit libel. Yet, as discovered by McGovern, Capell was a ghost writer on Slatzer's 1974 book. Hmm, Reliable?

Anyone who can read can see that both Wecht and Stephens explained specifically what happened to the pills and they are in quotes.

I think this is The Parkland Doctors with some additional footage added.

The Ellen Rometsch episode was checked up on by the FBI. Peter Vea saw the first reports, since Jim Lesar had them stowed away in his garage at his house. They could find nothing on this liaison. I dealt with Mimi Alford yesterday on the podcast. This is the woman who states that during the Missile Crisis JFK said "Better Red than dead." This is the same guy who went on the air and said any missile launched from Cuba toward the USA would be considered from Moscow. Who was also massing an army in Florida. She also said she was there at the White House with JFK. Problem: Jackie never left the White House during the Missile Crisis. She refused to. She said I am going to die with my husband and children. So according to Mimi, JFK was sleeping with Jackie one one side and Mimi on the other? Greg Parker did some work on Mimi, and he uncovered some really interesting connections and also some dubious things Dallek did. Mike Griffith started a truly idiotic thread with one of the most bizarre, unfounded and irresponsible titles ever on this forum. One that has utterly no basis in fact. That has been exposed as garbage..So now, he resorts to smearing JFK and piling on MSM baloney, trying to insinuate that he does not know this is how the MSM works e.g. that novel Double Cross.

That is funny Joe because LBJ once said that "I got more by accident than Kennedy did on purpose."

One of the truly stupid article even for that sickening rag Texas Monthly. At every anniversary they gear up some aimless, pointless article that is meant to distract from what really happened.

Bill: That is a very cogent and incisive article by Jamie. Thanks for that. I wish we could have used him more in the documentary. But this shows how good he is on this issue.

Don McGovern and myself just dealt with this issue on the fine podcast That's Enough outta You. The chief author of most of these allegations, including Jayne Mansfield, was David Heymann. Heymann would collect obituaries from people in the Kennedy entourage and keep them in his files. Because it is very difficult to sue someone over libel who has passed on. He would then say that he interviewed the person and the person said he saw JFK en flagrante delecto with someone, sometimes a famous person and sometimes the person did not actually exist. He would just make up a name. The remarkable thing about this serial fabricator is that the anti Kennedy engine in the publishing business was so prevalent that Heymann was then used by other authors. Incredibly, he was used by Evan Thomas in his biography of Bobby Kennedy. BTW, Heymann tried to insinuate that RFK had a homosexual fling with Nureyev. When Harris Wofford was trying to get his fine book about the Kennedy presidency published entitled Of Kennedys and King, he had problems because the first couple of publishers he went to said words to the effect, Can't you put some stuff in there about JFK and Marilyn Monroe or something? Wofford said, I was with Kennedy for about two years and I never saw any of that. So how can I write about it? This is how bad the publishing houses were and are. And this is how far the standards have collapsed. But in reality, its even worse than that. As Jim Douglass references in his book, Kennedy likely did have affairs with Exner and Mary Meyer. But the whole anti Kennedy engine then encourages those stories to morph into something that did not occur. In the first instance it was the whole thing about Exner and her messaging between the White House and the Outfit about the CIA Mafia plots and the elections in West Virginia and Illinois. Which was complete and utter BS which Exner and the editors at Time Life simply manufactured. This eventually blew up in the faces of David Westin and Peter Jennings at ABC when they were dumb enough to buy the broadcast rights to Sy Hersh's putrid book. Hersh claimed there was a witness to this, but the witness then backed out. When the ARRB deposed him he denied he knew Exner and ever saw her doing this messaging. The Mary Meyer thing is just as bad. TIm Leary said that Mary caused Kennedy's moves toward peace due to the fact that TIm was supplying her with acid and she was turning JFK on. I am not kidding, and this was then reprinted elsewhere besides Leary. Leary wrote this in 1982. So I then spent two afternoons driving around LA to various libraries looking up every book TIm published from the sixties to that time, over 20 books. Guess what? Not one mention of it anywhere in those thousands of pages. Hmm, why would he not mention it? At least one of the books was like a diary. BTW, in that 1982 book TIm also said he had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. LOL, ROTF. Mary Meyer and Marilyn Monroe in the same book? This is what I mean. Its an industry. And I will be writing about this in relation to the Monroe case specifically.

Cory I guess knows more about causes of death through barbiturates than Wecht, Noguchi and Boyd Stephens. Do they all sell property in Arizona? Or else Cory has been reading too much of Slatzer. (I think its the latter myself.) Don initiates this issue in his book on pgs 487 -489. Wecht puts the time of death at 2 Am; prior to that MM slipped into a deep sleep, semi-coma and then a coma. "He also noted that her bodily functions would have continued until Marilyn's lungs and then finally her heart succumbed...." In other words her bodily functions continued long enough for the digestive tract to dissolve the capsules she ingested and long enough for her liver to start metabolizing the barbiturates. That last is the key point, and its why I italicized it, since it proves what Wecht was saying was correct. Don did his homework on this and how it relates to the whole issue of injection vs ingestion. And he expands on this proof on pages 492-95. For example, Nembutal is a short acting acid, which is quickly absorbed through the body resulting in a high liver concentration. Dr. Boyd Stephens also agreed with this: "the metabolic process had reached the stage where much of the toxic material had already reached the liver and was in the process of at least beginning the excretion process." (p. 494) First Giancana, then the note where Cory left out the why, then the tiger that turned out to be made of paper mache, and now this. Do we grant four strikes at this forum?

There is nothing about this topic that is a myth. The disgrace about it is that it, with few exceptions, had been ignored for decades on end by the MSM and the critical community. It is a simple fact: Johnson sent the first combat troops to Vietnam about 3 1/2 months after the Commission volumes were issued. That act crossed a line that JFK refused to cross in three years. But worse, Johnson had been planning this move for months on end. This has been proven by more than one author: Moise, Goulden, Logevall. Many people in the Pentagon felt that the Saigon government could not win on their own. For example, Col. John Paul Vann, plus his acolytes in the press, Halberstam and Sheehan. Therefore, to avoid the loss and humiliation, America had to get involved directly. Two of the people who tried to cover up this breakage with Kennedy's policy were Johnson and Walt Rostow, who LBJ brought back from State after Kennedy got rid of him because he was too hawkish. The idea there was not any break in policy is a flat out fabrication. There was one and it did not take very long at all for that to begin to set in among Kennedy's advisors. Like at the first meeting on the 24th. Very soon after, in January, Johnson did something that Kennedy would not have done: he brought the Pentagon into the oval office to plan American intervention in the war. Kennedy did not even want those guys visiting South Vietnam. You then had NSAM 288 in March. Every serious commentator on the subject notes that 288 is a milestone since it plans for an American war against North Vietnam, including air target lists. That list was used for the retaliation against Hanoi over the phantom attack at Tonkin Gulf. Those kinds of plans did not exist under JFK since he had no intention of broadening the war. His plan was to get out. In fact, he was worried that Saigon might fall before America got completely out so he signed an evacuation order in November. There is no logical way to explain all of these reversals of policy in Indochina. Except to say that the Pentagon and Johnson were totally opposed to Kennedy on this issue. Plain and simple. As Roger Hilsman once wrote, there were things in foreign policy that only Kennedy advocated for; he was out there on his own. One was Indonesia, and we saw what happened there after his death. Another was Indochina. And we saw what happened there. Nether would have happened if Kennedy had lived.

Cory: If you have followed my writings on the JFK case you will see that today I barely use Summers' book. I think its badly dated and the focus is very narrow. That article I posted was not written by me, but I hope you read it, since it was written by Don McGovern. Who I consider the best authority we have on MM. And he skewered that article you posted. I am very surprised that you were not aware of that article prior to posting Summers.

Cory, here you go. https://www.kennedysandking.com/articles/marilyn-tony-summers-and-his-paper-tiger And, if you missed it, Summers later said that she took her own life. Today, his book, Goddess, looks utterly horrid. He largely relied on three provable BS artists: Slatzer, Carmen and Smathers. (I am not even counting Seaton.)

To reply to these in order: 1. As I have written and Dr. Boyd Stephens showed, the dozens of pills MM took in something like 36 hours were ingested not injected. 2. There is no credible evidence that Bobby Kennedy had any romantic or sexual relationship with MM. 3. Randy Tarraborelli, for one, has said that the striking thing about the Hoover/FBI memos on MM is that they are so full of BS. Later on, some were clearly sourced to Frank Capell. Which, if you know anything about the MM case, that guy was a rightwing loon. He started the whole mythology. He was later convicted of conspiracy to commit libel.

After having read all this, i have to conclude, especially after reading Greg and Andrej, someone has been fiddling with images. And it looks like it was deliberate.

👋 Nice one William.

Sandy: I met Rob a few times when he was working on his docudrama series for cable. He was going to base that on three books: Fonzi's, Dick Russell's, and Jim Douglass' book. So that should give you an idea of where he was headed. One of the scripts I saw was largely based on Nagell, Russell and Schweiker. But then that series was dropped and he is now doing a podcast. Which I think begins in a coupel of weeks. I have not seen any of the scripts for that.