James DiEugenio

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.

"Lane never questioned the veracity of the second floor lunch encounter" No kidding Greg. And this examination never happened either, did it? It was a thought experiment based on certain facts that went unexposed. Can you name another attorney I should have inserted for Lane in 1964? As per this owing to your work, are you serious? Way back in 1965, Harold Weisberg had Baker's original affidavit and compared it to the WC version. He discusses this issue at length in Whitewash 2. Which was published in 1966. I have had that book for about 15 years in my library. Which is before I ever heard of you. When I first started my Bugliosi series, about eight years ago, that it what I used to begin that part of the argument. I then got the actual first day affidavit online. Most of the rest of my material about Baker was from the WC volumes. I never asked for or was offered anything you had written on the subject. I never even knew you had done anything about Baker at that time. The only thing I ever recall using from you in that entire long series was some material about Ruby and Karen and Bruce Carlin. For which you are properly credited in Reclaiming Parkland. (p. 201) As anyone who knows me understands, I always try and properly credit people for things they discover and I use. But most of the time I work alone. I then issue academic sources in my work, which I do plentifully.

You can't find these eh? How hard did you look? NY Times Dec 23, 1997 by Tim Weiner.

I cannot help but add one last thing about McCloy and Carter in the 1979 hostage crisis. From an upcoming article of mine: "Before leaving the subject, its interesting to speculate on another possible aspect of the pressure campaign brought to bear on Carter to let the Shah into the United States. Everyone knows that John McCloy served on the Warren Commission. In May of 1979, Carter was visiting Los Angeles to make a speech at the Civic Center. He had still not allowed the Shah into the country. The police apprehended a man with a starter’s pistol in the crowd. When they questioned the suspect, he told the authorities he was part of a four man assassination team. His function was to fire a diversionary shot into the ground while the other members shot at Carter from a nearby hotel. Although the police were skeptical, they later found that a room at the hotel was rented by a man the suspect had named as part of the plot. In that room was a shotgun case and three spent rounds of ammunition. Further, the occupants had checked out the day of the assassination attempt. The apprehended suspect’s name was Raymond Lee Harvey. One of the men he named as a co-conspirator was Oswaldo Espinoza Ortiz. (Time, 5/21/79) About four months later, Carter admitted the Shah." Coincidence?

By the way, it is because of all this new information about Vietnam, which I think cinches the case, that I turned to these other areas. Since, as I stated in the power point, I thought that the critical community was too focused on Vietnam and Cuba. Kennedy's foreign policy was much wider and more sophisticated than that. And it was, I think, a pretty Gestalt concept. And it was formed by 1960. Which is a dispute I have with JFK and the Unspeakable. But my main point is, Kennedy's foreign policy reforms were more or less all overturned by LBJ and the CIA. And then hammered into the ground by Nixon and Kissinger. Which is why the late Jonathan Kwitny wrote his excellent book Endless Enemies. The fact that this was so systematic and rigorous I believe is evidence of a high level plot. Since that fits the description of a coup d'etat. One more point about Vietnam: in the book Virtual JFK, it is revealed that LBJ understood he was breaking with Kennedy on Vietnam. And he then tried to cover up that fact! And its on tape. I mean, really, how much more do you need?

Which McNamara did in May of 1963 at the Sec Def conference in Hawaii. The record of this meeting was finally declassified by the ARRB in 1997. It was a bombshell. So much so that it convinced the NY Times and Philadelphia Inquirer that Kennedy was planning to get out of Vietnam. I read the document closely and made it a front page story in Probe. ​On every page of the series McNamara and everyone else is clear that Kennedy wants to get out of Vietnam and turn the war over to the ARVN--sooner rather than later! (Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, pgs. 366-67, I will return to the sooner rather than later part) That fall, JFK decided to activate the plan; but he did not trust his subordinates to carry it out as he wished. So before Taylor and McNamara got back from Saigon, he had Krulak rewrite their report with himself editing it. (Ibid, p. 367. Since Prouty worked with Krulak, this is how he found out about it.) He then attached it to NSAM 263. He then rode herd on his cabinet to get on board this order, and for McNamara to announce it to the press. But as McNamara left to tell the media, Kennedy leaned out a window and said, "And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots too." (Newman, p. 407) ​Now, as I said, I wish to return to the irritation McNamara showed in Hawali, when some commanders asked for more time in getting Americans out. As Newman points out, Kennedy used the false intel reports to ballast his withdrawal, knowing they were BS. (ibid, p. 410) What he was really worried about was that South Vietnam would fall too soon. In other words even before the withdrawal was completed. What would he do then? ​Well, just declassified last year at NARA was, I think, the last piece of proof one needs in this regard; and why we had to wait to the 21st century for it shows how the other side used secrecy to their advantage. Kennedy, in November of 1963, ordered an all inclusive evacuation plan for American personnel from South Vietnam. Why would he do that if he was staying? Kennedy had made his choice: He was getting out, no matter what.

After two weeks of debate, Kennedy was the only guy in the room refusing to commit combat troops.(Newman, JFK and Vietnam, p. 138) He would only up the advisors, to see if this would really help. But he secretly sent Galbraith to Saigon to prepare a report for withdrawal in case the advisors did not work, which he suspected they would not. When Galbraith returned, JFK gave that report to McNamara. (ibid, pgs. 236-37) He then watched and waited as two things occurred. He got access to the true intel reports and then came the Battle of Ap Bac. In early 1963, for the first time, the Viet Cong decided to take on the ARVN in a pitched battle in daylight, in large regiment sized numbers. Further, the ARVN was well suported with several American advisors, including the legendary Jean Paul Vann. Along with air support. With all that in their favor, the ARVN was routed. It was so bad that the American Commander in theater, Harkins, lied about it. (See Newman, pgs. 302-04) It is incredible to me how this event is so ignored in our community. It indicates to me how few people have read Newman's masterly book. Three things happened as a result of this humiliation: 1.) It convinced the State Department that Diem could not win the war. 2.) It convinced Vann that Saigon would fall without direct American intervention. 3.) It convinced Kennedy that the hawks had had their day. It was time to give the order to McNamara to implement Galbraith's plan, namely withdraw. ​

Jon Tidd: JFK may have believed John Foster Dulles world view was flawed, but I'd bet there were countries as to which Dulles and JFK were in agreement to a degree. One of these countries was South Viet Nam. I could not disagree more. And its not a matter of supposition, or what I think, its a matter of the adduced record. JFK's view of the world was much more sympathetic to Third World areas coming out of Colonialism like Cuba and Indochina. So much so that he was willing to sustain a humiliating defeat at Bay of Pigs rather send in the Navy. He then fired the top level of the CIA for lying to him about the episode. After this, in the November arguments over combat troops into South Vietnam, he often asked three things: ​1. Why should we go into Vietnam which is so far away, when we did not go into Cuba which is so close? 2. How would we fare better than the French who were there for eight years and then lost? ​3. How can you make the public understand something like this, since it was not like Korea?

Let me add this as a bookend about McCloy. Many of us feel that McCloy and Dulles were the real centers of power on the WC. I have already indicated what McCloy did with Rockefeller and the CIA and Brazil in April of 1964. Well, guess what? Allen Dulles did something just as compromising in that same month. He decided to visit Harry Truman in Missouri. Why? He did not like that anti CIA column Truman published in December. Where Truman recommended the CIA's operational arm be severed and it revert to intelligence gathering only. In fact, Dulles actually wanted Truman to retract the essay. Truman would not. So Dulles wrote a memo to CIA trying to get other people who had influence with the former president to convince him to do so. It turns out that although Truman's anti CIA column was published a month after the JFK assassination, through his papers, we learn that the rough draft was completed on December 11th. But it was started on, get this, December 1st! Considering the fact that Truman had to have thought about it before committing anything to paper, this brings the provenance of the essay to about one week after JFK was killed. As I said, the meeting ended unsuccessfully for Dulles, since Truman was not going to retreat. Dulles now walked to the door and praised the new CIA director John McCone. But he had not mentioned Kennedy yet. He now did, in a truly startling way. He now mentioned the "false attacks" on CIA in relation to Vietnam and how Kennedy had repudiated these attacks! What could Dulles be talking about here? And why bring this up with Truman? He has to be speaking about the columns published in October of 1963 by Arthur Krock and Richard Starnes. They both spoke about the rising power of the CIA, especially in relation to Vietnam policy. Krock's source called the CIA influence in Vietnam a "malignancy". One which the WH could not control. Both articles spoke about an inevitable Seven Days in May scenario, except the coup of the American president would originate with the CIA, not the Pentagon. Now, contravening Dulles, I know of no source that says Kennedy disowned the columns. But I do know of some who say that, not only did he not object, he was an off the record source. After all, Krock was a close friend of his father's. Therefore, Dulles was trying to dupe Truman by deceiving him. But if these are the columns he was referring to, then his actions are even more revealing. Especially because it was he who brought up Kennedy's name personally in regards to them. Dulles' comments and actions--his personal visit, the bid for retraction, the bringing up of Kennedy while investigating his murder--all of these imply that Dulles thought Truman wrote the column due to the former president's suspicions about the CIA, Kennedy's murder and the Vietnam War, which LBJ was now in the process of escalating. What makes this even more interesting is this. If one looks at the first wave of essays and books on the JFK case, which will begin in 1965, no one connected those dots: Vietnam, the Krock/Starnes columns, Kennedy's murder, at that time. Dulles was doing at least ten years before anyone else did. By trying to get Truman to retract, was Dulles making sure no one else would connect the dots that early? If so, as prosecutors like Bugliosi say, this displays "consciousness of guilt". (Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition pgs. 380-81)

Thanks Paul. I am looking forward to that one also. Talbot is the kind of guy who can get on TV to get his message out. With Bugliosi gone, I wonder who they will recruit to be his antagonist.