James DiEugenio

Yes, I agree. But you would be surprised at how many of these judges today are so biased in favor of CIA. Its a bit scary really.

You know that post by Pierce is not bad considering its in an MSM magazine, namely Esquire. At least he intimates that the whole Castro did it thing is a pre planned stand in.

Jon: Operation Linebacker, the massive aerial bombardment that took place over both the north and south went on for several months. And it included all kinds of targets. It was the most extensive, ferocious bombardment since late 1968, when LBJ pulled the plug on Rolling Thunder, in trying to get a peace treaty, which Nixon deliberately sabotaged. All told it included 155,000 tons of bombs from the air, and 18,000 tons from ships at sea. In some ways it went beyond Rolling Thunder, since it included the mining of Haiphong, and also laser guided bombs which were just coming in at the time. There is very little doubt that if Nixon and Kissinger had not done this, Saigon would have fallen. And the dichotomy is really stark. Because Giap's attack was completely conventional and had just about no air cover. It included only seven divisions, and 600 tanks. That is how much South Vietnam needed the USA. What makes the Linebacker operation so nutty today is that it was done for one reason: the 1972 election, so as to make sure McGovern would lose big. And BTW, that is not my deduction. Its in Ken Hughes's book Fatal Politics. Which is based upon tapes from the Nixon Library. See, because as I said, Nixon and Kissinger knew the war was not winnable. They knew what they were doing was simply a delaying action of something inevitable. Its only aim was to make sure Saigon did not fall before the election with American troops still there, of which there only about 10-12,000. To me, that is really despicable when you think about it. Why? Because they are still pulling mines out of Vietnam today. Twenty years after Nixon died.

Thanks Dave. It looks very well done. Plus, Talbot is a skillful writer, of which there are not that many in the field--I mean Harry Livingstone? Talbot can sketch in interesting scenes, so you feel like you are watching a play. Reminds me a bit of the style of Bill Turner, or HInckle in that regard.

Martin, Not just freedom of speech but, recall that the Easter Offensive was about to overrun South Vietnam. If Nixon had not ordered a massive Air Force bombardment that went on for weeks, it would have. Abrams was correct in NSSM -1.

This particular dispute is about who should pay Morley's court fees. See, the government is supposed to pay the plaintiff fees, win or lose if the material is in the public interest. It appears that this particular judge is disputing that. The previous case that Lesar is referring to is I think a case he brought for Bill Davy on some Garrison/Shaw files. I think Jim won that. But this particular judge if trying to deny Morley the same precedent. That is bad of course since it will discourage future cases by Lesar. Since not many researchers can afford him on their own.

I started reading it last night. He begins the book with a really well chosen, nicely sketched description of a meeting that takes place between Dulles in Switzerland during the war and a German Baron representing Himmler, who is trying to get a deal for a truce. This is after FDR had announced a policy of unconditional surrender. Dulles was willing to try and get a deal through which would preserve many of the Nazi leaders and power structure, without HItler. This is because he and his brother had made so much money off of German interestes from about the 20's all the way through the late thirties, and actually beyond, especially through IG Farben. Talbot actually calls Dulles a double agent in Bern. This is a very apropos way to start, because you have Dulles conducting his own foreign policy, which differs radically from the president's as he is dealing with people who are that president's enemies behind his back. The underlying irony is that his president is a democratically elected leader of the people, while his enemies--HImmler in this case--are not elected at all and are actually fascists. This is a nice teaser for what will happen in 1963. Very nice and auspicious beginning. I will not give out anything more in fairness to the author until I print my review at CTKA. Lisa Pease will be reviewing for Consortium.

Who would know best the details than Abrams? And he told Nixon and Kissinger that in 1969 the war was not winnable, and without the USA, Thieu would lose.

You have a firm second there Martin. But I would also add that Kaiser's book, American Tragedy is also good.

If you read Fatal Politics by Ken Hughes, you will see that in 1969, Kissinger asked everyone involved in Vietnam if it was possible for the ARVN to win without American support, which included combat troops. This was called NSSM-1, meaning it was a study memorandum, not an action memo. Everyone, repeat: everyone, said no it was not. The person whose opinion weighed the most on Nixon was Gen. Abrams who had succeeded Westmoreland. The problems were manifold. But the essential ones were that the combination of the regular army of the north, plus the Viet Cong in the south just presented too much of a tactical problem for the ARVN, which lacked inspirational leadership. I mean just think of this: Khe Sanh and Tet. Giap pulled off both of those at the same time with hundreds of thousands of US troops there. When Nixon got this study memo back, he went to his speechwriters and said, words to the effect, "Its hopeless. We can't win. Even Abrams says that." So he tried the Madman Act with the threat of atomic warfare, he threatened to bomb the dikes--which would have killed 200,000 people. None of it worked. So then he decided to bomb Cambodia and Laos. Which did nothing except annihilate those countries. There never should have been a second Vietnam War. And if the Dulles brothers and Nixon had not screwed over the north at Geneva, there wouldn't have been.

Thanks for that link. I didn't know that they made Sheehan's book into a film. Vann was a very interesting character, because after the battle of Ap Bac, he was one of the first advisors who understood that the problem was that, as constituted, the ARVN could not really defeat the Viet Cong at that time, 1963, let alone the regular army of North Vietnam. Therefore, Saigon needed American combat troops in order to win. Which, of course, is what Halberstam was saying back then before he switched sides and became a dove. Kennedy, of course, did not want to hear this because that was the last thing he wanted to do. But Vann was also anathema to the American Military inside Saigon. Because his picture was quite different than the one they were trying to present of America winning the war. Anyway, Last Days in Vietnam was a real eye opener for me, since I did not fully comprehend why the US exit was such a mess. I had a much better understanding why after watching this film. Although the film has some faults to it, which i pointed out, overall its worth seeing. Nick Turse and The Nation crowd were very unfair to the movie. Its one reason I did not see it in the theater. They seemed to think that there was no part of the Vietnam War where America did anything right. But as this film points out, there were some people who did try and do the right thing at the end, when the war was technically over, or at least American involvement in it. Even if they had to disobey orders to do so. That is why we have so many Vietnamese in America today, especially on the West Coast.

Duncan: A real question of fact. I as under the impression that the photoshop enhancement done on the PM figure and presented by you as PW was performed by "John Mytton". In fact, I thought that is what you said at the start. Now I am confused. Was it done by him or by you?

Ramon: I guess you don't know but Cliff thinks all the head wound stuff is irrelevant because he knows about JFK's shirts. So all of Mantik's work on the head wounds, and Riley's is simply ephemera to him.,

http://www.ctka.net/2015/RoryKVietnam.html I found this film both interesting and gripping. It is really skillfully made and contains film snips from the collapse of Saigon that I never saw before, and it explains more deeply other film segments we have seen but did not full grasp. Its one more exposure of the Nixon/ Kissinger Decent Interval charade that CIA officer Frank Snepp, who appears in the film, was the first to reveal, and was punished for. The American humiliation in Vietnam went on all the way to the end, and this film shows how the American ambassador there caused the final exit debacle. A guy who I never even heard of before. JFK was right way back when. And this film reminds us just how right, As he told Forrestal in 1963, just before Dallas, America had about a 100 to 1 chance of winning in Vietnam. Nixon did not understand that until 1969. And then when he did, he disguised the defeat with the whole Decent Interval masque. What a disgrace. But as this film shows, there were some Americans who tried to find some decency amid the disgrace.

But what they didn't expect was that Kennedy would launch an investigation afterwards to see why it was a debacle. And it included his brother, who asked Dulles too many pointed questions, like "How could you believe that 1500 Cuban exiles could hold a beachhead against 35,000 Cuban regular troops and tens of thousands of supplementary militia?" Did LBJ launch an inquiry after Tet? Did Ford launch an inquiry after the debacle of the fall of Saigon under chaotic circumstances? And Bush 2 wanted an inquiry of 9-11 with, of all people, Kissinger in charge? LOL

Thanks Dave. BTW, the appeal of this subject is phenomenal. That last time I looked, of the top five articles at CTKA, Jeff Carter's has four of the five. Now, David's article is starting to come on. People never tire of this subject, simply because I think they know something is rotten with those pics.

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.