James DiEugenio

Jon: With all due respect, it does not matter today what someone thinks or assumes. In your reply you did not counter one piece of evidence that I put forth. Except to say that you did not like McNamara or Bundy. Which is utterly irrelevant to the point. They as well as Taylor (I assume you hate him also) were witnesses to what happened. That is, they were there in the room. All of them later said that JFK would never have committed combat troops to Vietnam. Their testimony has value since they discussed the matter with him publicly and privately. Your assumption that JFK would not let Saigon be overrun by the communists is just that, an assumption. And by the way, it was not Ho Chi Minh in charge in the late sixties, it was Le Duan. This info is available in recently translated North Vietnamese volumes on the war. Further, in these books which a friend of mine has read, Hanoi did not commit regular troops to the south until 1964 for the specific reason that they felt Kennedy would withdraw. In fact, Giap later said that he understood that to be the case by 1963. Very soon, they saw that LBJ was going to reverse Kennedy's strategy. So they begin to infiltrate their regular army into the south expecting that, very soon, American troops would be there. They were correct. You can call Giap and Le Duan etc, all POS too. But the point is, they were right there in the middle of things getting communications from several different directions, including China and the USSR. So maybe they did know something that most others did not? I mean you cannot beat GIap's record can you? As John Newman once said to another doubter, in this case, Warren Hinckle, "Just show me Kennedy's plan for staying in Vietnam. I will gladly look at it. But I couldn't find it in ten years." Because its not there. BTW, when the Hanoi tanks rolled into Saigon in 1975, did the American public rise up in rage against the men who allowed it to happen? For me, and many others, the sheer amount of data on this issue has simply closed the case. Plus, the more we learn about Kennedy's overall foreign policy from new authors like Rakove, his withdrawal plan is all of a piece with the other parts of the mosaic. Kennedy was not going to use American combat troops in the Third World. If he did not commit them during the Bay of Pigs, or Laos, or in Vietnam in 1961--when everyone wanted him to--then it was simply a non starter. See, JFK was in Saigon in 1951, and he was determined to take the real pulse of that colonial struggle with France. And he did, mainly through State Department official Edmund Gullion. (I hope you know who he is.) Through him, he came to the conclusion that it was a lost cause--three years before DIen Bien Phu. And he used the same arguments he used in 1951 in 1961, during a two week debate in the White House. Its all there in the Burris memo of that 1961 meeting which is in the book Virtual JFK. If you have not read that book, you really should. Its a treasure trove of data and new documents. So this is what I have done on this issue. I don't call witnesses POS, or crumbs or whatever. Because I understand what happened. Johnson was determined to reverse JFK's policy and then to cover up his own tracks. And that evidence is in VIrtual JFK also. And BTW, I don't even call Johnson a POS. Because after reading about him, I understand who he was, a classic Cold Warrior, who got eaten alive by his own ignorance. To me Nixon and Kissinger were really POS. Why? Because as Ken Hughes proves, they knew the war could not be won as early as 1969. But they kept at it anyway, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. All of this to get a fig leaf of a Peace Accord, which they knew would collapse. But as long as it allowed for a Decent Interval, that was fine with them. With successors like that, JFK looks pretty darn good.

http://www.ctka.net/2015/JosephsBYP.pdf More interesting comments and some new information concerning those very fishy photos. This time by David Josephs. Read it until the end, even the HSCA did not buy the chin business.

Jon: NSAM 263 was attached to the McNamara Taylor Report. That report was written and edited by JFK through Krulak. He literally delivered it to those two men on the plane to then present to him. That report includes the entire withdrawal plan. After that was decided, Kennedy called a meeting of his advisors and essentially rammed it down their throats, it was a take it or leave it discussion: we are getting out. He then told McNamara to go outside and announce it to the press. And as he was walking out, JFK told him through the window, "And tell them the withdrawal means the helicopter pilots also" That is all supplemented by the declassified SecDef Meeting of May of 1963 in Hawaii. At that meeting McNamara called in all the State, Defense and CIA heads and made it clear the USA was getting out in 1965. He heard from every chief as to how the progress for withdrawal was going. In most cases he thought it was too slow, and asked it be hurried up. They got the message, as Wheeler wrote that any request for more time would be met by a presidential refusal. How anyone can argue that this would have been reversed later is simply strange to me. When all the internal evidence points one way, and all the chief advisors--McNamra, Bundy, Taylor--all agree, and you even have phone calls in which McNamara is saying, "We have to get out of Vietnam!", I mean what else do you want? Most of this was in Newman's book. But the SecDef meeting and the phone call were declassified by the ARRB. Since then we actually have the evacuation order issued by Kennedy in November. As John Newman has said, Kennedy was worried that Saigon would collapse before 1965. So he head a contingency plan put together for how to evacuate all the civilian Americans there. I see no convincing evidence to counter this today. Kennedy's speeches are to be discounted since he knew he could not reveal what he was doing before the election. In fact, he even said that. As for Saigon falling in say 1966, well he was ready to absorb that instead of inserting combat troops. That is the one thing JFK would not do. Which is why he absorbed the loss at Bay of Pigs rather than send in direct American intervention. He knew he would have to work his withdrawal plan around the election, as LBJ worked his escalation plan around the election. See, no one was working on any escalation plan for JFK in the fall of 1963. That all changed with LBJ at the helm.

Wow, a nine part series on King's novel? Which is one more redo of the WCR? This is the new media eh? Looks a lot like the old media to me.

That is a neat excerpt from USA Today about Sullivan. But it was not his idea to infiltrate the Klan and destroy them from the inside. It was Bobby Kennedy's.

It looks like I am the only one who was invited who decided not to go to New Orleans.

Another great vignette from the book. I had heard about this incident before but not to the point that DeGaulle had to rally the public behind him through the air waves. Good work Dave.

I agree with that. I have also read about Knebel's efforts to marginalize the critics.

Better and better. BTW, the son is a really sad case. Seamus Coogan found him online. He showed me some of the exchanges. He did not have a lot of good stuff to say about his pop. In addition to being a nightmare for the Third World, Dulles was an incredibly bad father and husband.

BTW, If anyone has not read that exchange, you really should. I excerpted some of it in Reclaiming Parkland. (p. 273) But it really should be read in its original form for its full shock value. (My only regret is that it was not taped.I would have loved to have heard the exasperation in Dulles' voice as he denied what was happening in the Z film.) After you read it, you will see why: 1.) The WC never had a snowball's chance in Hades of finding the truth in this case, and 2.) Just how pernicious Dulles' presence on it was. Why? Because not only was Dulles determined to avoid the impact of the evidence, but, as Walt Brown shows in his book, The Warren Ommission, Dulles was the most active member of the WC. And as we also now know, Dulles was doing some back room dealing while on the Commission with his old buddies. Even a whitewasher like Peter Grose had to admit that one. I look forward to Talbot's book because I want to see precisely how Dulles got on the Commission. And just how bad he really was. This was a part of the story that Kinzer avoided. (Perhaps deliberately?)

There are two. But the second one is a mini series for small screen. This one has Bryan Cranston as LBJ. http://screenrant.com/bryan-cranston-lbj-series-spielberg/

Am I getting confused or are there two films in production on LBJ?

Its the kind of thing that makes you want to scream.

Peter Scott is speaking at a Dallas Conference sponsored by Trine Day, hosted by Fetzer, and with Baker as a speaker? Tell me its not true. Doug, are you sure? Can you link to the conference site? Wow, is Scott getting senile or what?

Boy this sounds like a good one.

WInter Kills was so far over the top it was camp.

We forgot another one:

To my knowledge, they have not. More than one author has used them as evidence that Ruby was surveilling the station that morning, as part of his continuous three day stalking of Oswald.

Ok, so you say you do not know who he is. If that is true then that absolves you of the question, since you cannot answer it.

One last question Duncan, which I think is quite fair. If you expect your argument here to be accepted in good faith and respected on its own grounds, then I think its only fair to ask you to tell us a rather important fact about it. Namely, who is John Mytton? We know that is not his real name. We also know he pulled a real stunt with the Kennedy autopay evidence, which does not give him a credible track record. Based on that, I think its important that you tell us who he or she is. If you do not, then one has to ponder as to why not. Or if this person insists on having his name remain buried, then again, why is that so? It would naturally lead one to think there must be a reason for this refusal, and it is not likely benign. This is important for two reasons. First, people on your side of this issue--that is the Krazy Kid Oswald pack--have a history of disguising themselves. They do this so that they can deliver the same old arguments under a different name, therefore delivering the illusion of more than one person being there of this persuasion, e.g. Paul May. Second, if John Mytton is, say Tink Thompson--which is very hard to believe--, that is one thing. But if John Mytton is actually, say, Dave Reitzes, that is another kettle of fish altogether, since it brings into question now all the methodologies used. In the spirit of full disclosure, we await your answer.

Cliff: Seven Days in May is about taking out a president by military takeover, sort of like the attempted 34 coup against FDR. Close to an assassination. Z is a really good film that is based on an actual event. Wonderfully made in every way--acting, directing, and editing. Battle of Algiers, which I have seen four times, is about a long anti colonial struggle, in which all kind of terror tactics were used over a number of years.

Although I don't understand the relationship of the others to political assassination, the film Z is a really excellent film that can only be called a classic. Just the editing of that movie makes it worth seeing. And the performance by Jean Louis T, as the prosecutor is galvanizing. Sort of reminds me what the HSCA would have been if Sprague had stayed on.

Gary Mack came up with Badge Man. I, for one, never bought it.

Since we are on the subject of that era's assassination films, let us not ignore the best of them all, at least for me: The later remake was a disaster, and Streep did not approach Lansbury. This is probably Frankenheimer's best film, with the possible exception of Black Sunday. A book and film that was way ahead of its time. (I except Frankenheimer's The Iceman Cometh, since that is really a filmed play, not a film. But in my opinion, that is probably the best film of a great American play ever produced.)

Donovan ran the OSS during the war and Dulles worked for him. After the war both men campaigned hard to get the CIA established and both men wanted to be the Director. But Truman went with the military guys under the advice of Souers who was his guru on intelligence at the time. But then two things happened: 1.) Bedell Smith got sick, and 2.) Foster Dulles became Sec of State. Smith brought Dulles in as his Deputy when he read the Dulles-Correa-Jackson report on how to reorganize the CIA. When he got sick, Foster got Ike to give Allen his dream job as DCI. And with his brother to protect him, and Ike a Cold Warrior anyway, Allen turned the CIA into a nightmare for the Third World. CIA now became Corporate Interests of America. Donovan was all but forgotten.