James DiEugenio

My review of the Rakove book, which I think is a very, very important book about JFK's foreign policy. If you cannot read the book, at least read my review of it. A very well researched and even handed approach to the subject from a very smart and scholarly man. http://www.ctka.net/2014_reviews/rakove.html

Davey, in all honesty, Hoosier Pride and all, let me ask you this: Do you ever trace the history of an evidentiary point in this case, or see if there are any differing views in the official story by someone else who was there on the scene? Because if you had in this case, you would have seen that if there is one cop who may be as bad as Gerry Hill as a witness, its McDonald. Either one of these guys would have been humiliated on the stand by a competent attorney. http://jfkthelonegunmanmyth.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-filthy-lies-of-nick-mcdonald.html But further, that BS about the police blocking a shot by LHO in the theater, please. Please Davey. The FBI lab technician exposed that for a hoax many years ago. Gil Jesus once had that on his site. And we are supposed to believe you do not know that? Its ancient history, and you know it. What's wrong, slow day at KFC today?

Its interesting to trace the rise of the nutty neo cons. It actually started under former Warren Commissioner Jerry Ford. Ford continued with Kissinger as Secretary of State. But he then promoted Rumsfeld and Cheney. Those two felt that Kissinger/Nixon detente with Russia was too liberal. Too much like Kennedy. So they started to subvert Henry. And they did all they could to trash detente. This led to the rise of Paul Nitze and the Committee on the Present Danger to say that Russia was too strong and belligerent to have detente with. Nitze of course was the right-winger who authored NSC 68, which did so much to father in the whole MIC. Nitze was also one of the guys who was disappointed when JFK refused to retaliate when Castro shot down the U 2 during the MC.

"I breached your forums' etiquette. My time has come and now gone. Too old and too tired. This will be my last post on JFK assassination-related forums." David, I sure hope this is a joke. Please tell me it is.

Let me deal finally with Colby. As anyone can see, he cherry picked the NY Times article I referenced, to the point he did not even include its title. And he picked the spin parts and neglected the actual primary documents. He then tries to say that South Vietnam was actually a country partitioned in 1945. Well, this is like saying, I am going to auction my next book for a starting price of 500,000 dollars. OK. (No reply. Dead silence. ) Technically that is true. But in practical terms saying there was a South Vietnam in 1945 means little or nothing. The problem was there was a confusion of jurisdiction. There were four countries involved in maintaining the border: Japan, China, France and the USA. In fact, the OSS actually befriended Ho Chi Minh at the time. One by one it all fell apart until only France was left to reclaim Indochina, against FDR's wishes. Truman allowed this to occur. And he then backed France. The problem is, France was in no condition to contain the Viet Minh, Ho, or Giap. Therefore, the distinction of South Vietnam was meaningless almost as soon as the war started in 1946; because Ho proclaimed Vietnam as one country. And the Viet Minh operated almost everywhere. This was borne out at the end, when France extended into the north at Dien Bien Phu, and Ho was in the south. Contrast this with what happened after 1954. When the Dulles brothers tasked Lansdale with creating South Vietnam, the USA had the economic, and military might to actually create a country. And that country lasted for about 20 years under Diem and Thieu. For those new to this site, Colby was the guy who said JFK only showed liberal or progressive foreign policy views in 1963. I then quoted his Algeria speech from 1957 to show just how ignorant this was. I then showed what JFK did in Congo as an example of those ideas in 1961. Also, for the new members, when I got a load of Colby's background I decided that I was not going to engage with him anymore. I repeat that pledge now. Finis. I would rather debate David Von Pein.

Thanks Gene. Its amazing the Middle East stuff was not really brought out earlier. But when it finally was, especially by Robert Rakove, it was quite compelling I thought. Kennedy really did not like Saudi Arabia or the Shah.

Something I left out, but Douglass mentions: Before Lodge left for Saigon, he had a long meeting with Henry Luce. It was there that it was decided upon that they were going to go hard line on Diem. Which, of course, contradicted JFK's wishes. Thanks Paul. I agree that it is indicative of a high level plot. But what I was trying to say is that this is what happened to all of JFK's reforms in foreign policy. It happened in Indonesia, Congo, Dominican Republic etc. And those were just the most visible and spectacular ones. What was ignored, and I had to read up on this, was the Middle East policy which has the strongest repercussions to today. There was lot of money on the table if Kennedy was allowed to keep those reforms in place. You are talking tens of billions of dollars in 1963 terms. Well over a hundred billion today. The Powers that Be were not going to let that happen just so a bleeding heart Irishman, who was not one of their crowd anyway, could free and enpower a bunch of natives in the Third World.

Now, let me add what I consider the coup de grace here. I used this in my book Destiny Betrayed, second edition, but it was really discovered by Jim Blight and originally published in his fine book Virtual JFK. In a declassified phone call of February 20, 1964, Johnson told McNamara, "I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the president thought otherwise, and I just sat silent." In other words, Johnson was aware of what Kennedy and McNamara were planning. He was opposed to it but suffered in silence. But that would now be changed with Johnson in charge.... In another conversation, less than two weeks later, Johnson actually tried to make McNamara take back what he said in 1963 about the initial thousand man withdrawal and the complete withdrawal in 1965. He begins to formulate excuses to say that NSAM 263 didn't really mean that "everybody comes back, that means your training ought to be in pretty good shape by that time." When McNamara is silent over this contradiction being imposed on him, Johnson tries to soothe him by saying there is not anything really inconsistent in these new statements he wanted McNamara to make. (Destiny Betrayed p. 371) I really don't know who is worse on this, Johnson or Nixon. Johnson realized Kennedy was withdrawing and tried to cover it up so there would be no split in policy between them. Nixon, in his terrible book No More Vietnams, does not even recognize Kennedy's intent to withdraw. He then tries to say that Kennedy sent combat troops to Vietnam. By the same logic so did Eisenhower, since he first committed advisors. The worst thing about Nixon's policy is not just that his administration got us into Vietnam in the first place, but that he then spread a war he knew was unwinnable into Cambodia. Thereby causing one of the great post war genocides.

In January, the Pentagon passed up a program to the White House for the direct bombing of the north and the insertion of US combat troops. Both had been taboo with JFK. On March 2, 1964 the Chiefs sent a revised proposal to LBJ. This one included bombing, the mining of North Vietnamese harbors, a naval blockade, and possible use of tactical nukes in case China intervened. In other words, the new president was drawing up complete war plans for Vietnam. NSAM 288 was based on this proposal. It was essentially a target list of bombing sites which reached 94 prospects. What Kennedy did not do in three years, LBJ had done in three months. (ibid, p. 369) In May, with Nixon and Goldwater clamoring for bombing, Johnson now made the decision that the US would directly attack North Vietnam. All that was needed was a casus belli. But it important to note that LBJ had already ordered the congressional resolution to be written! And he was lobbying congress even before the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place! What was the net result of Tonkin? The damage was one bullet through one hull of a ship. (Recall, during the Missile Crisis Castro shot down a U 2 and killed a pilot. JFK ordered no retaliation.) For that one bullet, LBJ went on national TV and ordered wave after wave of sorties against North Vietnam. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution was then passed by both houses of congress. The war was on. The definition of a coup d'etat is a sharp shift in power and policy that takes place after a new government forcibly replaces another. That is what happened here.

When Kennedy learned of the deaths of Diem and his brother, he "leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face...." (Douglass, p. 211) He then did two things: he recalled Lodge from Saigon for the purpose of firing him. And he told NSC assistant Mike Forrestal that there was going to be a complete review of Vietnam policy. (DiEugenio, p. 368) Neither of these ever happened. Why? Because Kennedy was murdered that same month. With LBJ in charge, the hard line Lodge was asked to stay on, and after the first meeting of the new president on Vietnam, Johnson said he had "never been happy with our operations in Vietnam." After the meeting, he told assistant Bill Moyers he was going to give the generals what they wanted and Vietnam was not going to slip away like China did. He was going to tell those generals in Saigon, "to get off their butts and get out in those jungles and whip the hell out of some communists." (ibid) This is two days after Kennedy was killed. With a new approach evident to everyone, LBJ now sent McNamara to Vietnam prior to Xmas of 1963. He wanted a ground level report. McNamara came back with the non official intel figures about the true depiction of the war. The ones LBJ was getting from Burris. Johnson knew that McNamara got the message. (ibid, p. 369)

In September of 1963, columnist Stewart Alsop, under the influence of Ambassador to Saigon Henry Cabot Lodge, published a column saying that Diem and Nhu were contemplating indirect contacts with the North in order to get a cease fire. But the north demanded that the US personnel leave first. (Douglass, p. 191) Lodge knew that the military would never go along with such an agreement. Lodge then asked the dissident generals "What would you consider a sign that the American government does indeed intend to support you generals in a coup?" Duong Van Minh replied "Let the United States suspend economic aid to the Diem government." Twelve days later David Bell from AID told a surprised Kennedy that the Commodity Import Program that propped up Diems' government had been suspended. Kennedy said, "Who the hell told you to do that?" (ibid p. 192) Lodge had already maneuvered to have the regular CIA station chief removed from Saigon, since he knew he would not support the removal of Diem. Therefore, the de facto man in charge of the CIA station was Lucien Conein. Conein was the contact man with the dissident generals. Lodge and Conein were now countering Kennedy's soft approach with Diem and transforming it into a hard line approach. In September, the now famous Richard Starnes article appeared. It described the CIA's growing power in Saigon and likened it to a malignancy that even the White House could not control. It concluded with, "If the United States ever experiences a Seven Days in May, it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon." (ibid, p. 195) When the coup began, Diem and Nhu made a terrible mistake and stayed in contact with Lodge as they tried to escape. This allowed Lodge to convey this relocation to Conein, who was in contact with the generals. This resulted in the murders of Diem and his brother. (ibid p. 210)

Now that we have mapped out the evidence for Kennedy's withdrawal plan being in order in 1963, let us now demonstrate how his intent to withdraw was reversed in a very short time period. And further, how the new president attempted to cover up that reversal. LBJ did not have any of the sophistication or insight into foreign affairs,demonstrated with my opening powerpoint, that Kennedy had. As Frederick Logevall shows in his book Choosing War, he was much more the classic Cold Warrior who would have been at home with Foster Dulles' banal bromides about the red specter of Godless communism threatening to spread from Indochina to the Philippines to Hawaii to California if Saigon fell. Therefore he was much more in tune with what the CIA and the military wanted in Vietnam, that is direct American intervention. In fact, when JFK sent him there in 1961, he actually discussed that subject with Diem. (Destiny Betrayed, Second Editon, p. 367) But, more to the point, as I noted, Kennedy understood that the military was disguising the true facts of the war with a double set of intelligence records. One was the true record, which was pretty bad about our progress. The other was the "official" rosy record that showed how well we were doing. As Newman shows, somehow, probably through his military attache Howard Burris, Johnson had access to the real record which showed how badly the war was going, even with the additional advisors Kennedy had sent in. (Newman, pgs. 225-27) In May of 1963 during the large Buddhist demonstration against Diem, two percussion bombs went off near a radio station killing seven and wounding 15. The immediate deduction was that this was the work of the government security forces guided by Diem's brother Nhu. But at the hospital, the supervising physician disagreed. He had never seen such powerful explosives used by Nhu's men or the Viet Cong. In fact, Nhu had him jailed because he would not say the latter were the perps. The doctor figured that the lack of metal in the bodies betrayed a bomb that was detonated in air, a plastic bomb. Which neither Nhu nor the Viet Cong used at the time. The local authorities concluded that the bombs were planted by a CIA agent under military guise, Captain Scott. Scott later admitted to this. He said he used "an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people in the CIA, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device." (Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 131) This was the beginning of the Buddhist protests spiraling out of control and destabilizing Diem's government.

Jon: In my work on Vietnam, I don't just use John Newman. I use him here because his was the first book length treatment of the subject and it was quite compelling. Therefore I read it twice and took a lot of notes. So I know that book quite well. But its not like its the only one out there. Consider the following: JFK and the Unspeakable by Jim Douglass Virtual JFK by James Blight American Tragedy by David Kaiser Death of a Generation by Howard Jones Lessons in Disaster by Gordon Goldstein These all agree with John's main thesis. Namely that Kennedy was planning on leaving Vietnam, his assassination altered the intent, and Johnson then reversed what JFK was going to do. In fact, the Blight book offers documentary evidence that Johnson knew he was reversing Kennedy's withdrawal plan and he enlisted McNamara in that deception. And although John's book has held up well, he is doing a revision of it right now. If you asked me to judge these books strictly on the merits today, total objectivity, I would have to say that Kaiser's book is probably the best because he deals with a longer time span than John does, and he includes Laos in his study in addition to Vietnam.

That is correct Pat. Its part of a new article I am working on for Bob Parry. Nixon fought to keep his tapes and papers sealed until he died. We now know why. The tapes are devastating to his legacy. There is no way around it. The guy not only lied to the public in office. He also lied in his books once he was out of office. He knew that the war could not be won in 1969. He then tried to frighten Giap and the Russians with Cambodia and a nuclear alert. When that did not work, in fact it backfired, he settled on the decent interval strategy. Which he also lied about.

Thanks Robert: That got on Daiiy Kos? Surprising.

Greg: You quoted yourself from 2010. As if I saw that. My original essay on this was from at least 2-3 years before that. And, I agree, I should have named Weisberg as the only early critic who questioned it. But I probably did not since he did not have Baker's two first day affidavits in his book. I found them on my own.

Colby: You asked me for the date of the NY Times article. You then cherry picked from it just what you wanted. You did not link to it. And you cut off the title which said, JFK had exit plan from Vietnam. JFK made a mess of Vietnam? You cannot be serious can you? As I proved above, that commitment, down to the splitting up of the country and the creation of a new entity called South Vietnam, and the entry of American advisors, was all done by Eisenhower, Dulles and Nixon. And they then reneged on their promise to reunite the country in 1956, because they knew the guy they found to lead the new country of South Vietnam, namely Diem, would lose a national election to Ho Chi Minh. That was the event which caused the war. As per not following through on the May Sec Def plan to exit, well yeah if you eliminate the following, you can say there is ambiguity about it: 1. The McNamara Taylor Trip 2. Kennedy's heisting of their report and his editing of it through the WhIte House and then presenting his version to them 3. Kennedy's ramrodding of this report through his advisors 4. The issuance of NSAM 263 and its attachment to this report 5. The newly discovered evacuation plan Which takes us all the way through November of 1963. So maybe Colby arranged a seance to talk to JFK more recently, and the spirit said, "Hey I was really just kidding with all this stuff."

I should add, if i recall correctly, didn't Kissinger tell Oriana Fallaci something like "We should have never been there." Incredible irony if true. Because when you study the time line, its Eisenhower/Nixon that makes the first real American commitment to South Vietnam. Because before them there really was not a South Vietnam. And Nixon was the point man in congress for Foster Dulles on Operation Vulture, that is the plan to lift the siege of Dien Bien Phu with American air strikes, including three atomic bombs.. Dulles, Nixon and Eisenhower then split up the country into north and south and hired Lansdale to find and install Diem. And that is how we got there. Henry, meet your idiot boss, DIck Nixon.

KD: I think if Nixon could have won without troops there, he might have, but he didn't have a desire to win (or lose). ​But Nixon lied his head off about this in public. Privately, he knew that the USA could not militarily win the war. In fact he knew this almost immediately when Abrams told him that the ARVN would need even more American direct intervention to sustain it for five years. That is something Nixon was not going to do. He saw what happened to Johnson. ​So he tried invading Cambodia which was a horrible mistake that did not help South Vietnam very much at all. ​When nothing worked, he and Kissinger decided on the Decent Interval strategy. Let the country fall on someone else's watch.

Jon: The whole point about being a researcher on this case is not to express what you think or what you believe about either the assassination, or who JFK really was. The point is to express what you know to be true due to the evidence. The thesis of John Newman's book is that Kennedy did understand what was happening in Vietnam. I mean surely after the battle of Ap Bac, because his State Department representatives were in country at the time. As John states, Kennedy was essentially going to hoist the hawks on their own petard. That is, since they said we were winning, then we could withdraw. Even though Kennedy knew that was not the case. Which is why he was telling McNamara to speed up the timetable. Kennedy understood from Edmund Gullion, that Vietnam was not a place to fight both the Viet Cong and NVM army. As he said, how do you fight a force that is everywhere and nowhere and has the support of the people? That is why he refused eight different requests for the insertion of combat troops in 1961. Even though these were sent to him describing the most dire circumstances if he refused them. Kennedy understood that for the US Army to get involved in a land war in the jungles of Indochina was simply futile. He knew this not just from Gullion, but from DeGaulle and MacArthur. In fact, whenever someone would try and convince him to do otherwise, he would declare: "Alright, you go see MacArthur. When you convince him that I should do it, have him call me." Of course, that ended the argument. To JFK, Indochina was not worth the struggle. Which is why he was determined to get a settlement in Laos, and never contemplated going into Cambodia. Which LBJ did in a small way, and Nixon actually did in a wholesale way--with catastrophic results.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/23/us/kennedy-had-a-plan-for-early-exit-in-vietnam.html Here is the whole article. Note the title. Above, I have excerpted the actual document wording to show that there is no ambiguity about what the documents say. Its undeniable. When one is talking about leaving material behind for the RVN, I mean, give me a break. Because of that, the Times had to headline it as they did. But because its the NY Times and Weiner, they had to then spin it in order to create a controversy which the documents do to not depict. The most striking thing about them is the constant refrain by McNamara that the withdrawal had to be faster. I actually think this is traceable to what I talked about earlier. Namely that Kennedy was worried about getting out before South Vietnam fell.

Quoting excerpts from the records of the Sec Def Conference, that is a primary document not secondary spin: Part IV: Withdrawal of US Forces: "As a matter of urgency, a plan for withdrawal of about 1,000 US troops before the end of the year should be developed." Part V: Phase out of US Forces "SecDef advised that the phase out program presented during May 6 Conference appeared too slow. In consonance with Part 3, request you develop a revised plan to accomplish more rapid phase out of US Forces." Comprehensive Plan: Republic of Vietnam Item 2: Decision Made and Actions to be taken 1."Draw up training plans for the RVN that will permit US to start an earlier withdrawal of US personnel than proposed under the plan presented." Item 3: Role of Attack AIrcraft "Secdef stated the percentage of RVNAF effort was no greater than a year ago. Our sights should be higher and he wanted to get US pilots out of combat and transport operations." Comprehensive Plan: Part 2, Force Structure "At the same time, the Secretary stated that we should seek opportunities to leave our material behind for RVN to use wherever they can absorb it..." Part C: Relations of Reductions in US Strength to Growth in Self Sufficiency "In connection with this presentation...the Secretary of Defense stated that the phase out appears too slow. He directed that training plans be developed for the GVN by CINPAC which will permit a more rapid phase out..."

I assume you mean "thread"? Which one?

That is correct. Carter signed that in June, right after the Los Angeles incident.

Yawn. See my reply above. Greg wasn't even a gleam in his father's eye in 1964.