Paul Rigby

Michael, In so far as I understand Weisberg's verdict - correct me if wrong, but from the extract quoted he appears to argue that Farewell America was a co-production of the Agency and its French assets - I endorse it. (I take that view even if Weisberg goes on to argue something very different...) I also believe, and have posted on JFK Lancer to this effect, that Weisberg possessed an acute intelligence. The question is, in whose service was it deployed? One example of what I'm getting at. When Zapruder came before the Presidential Commission of enquiry, he told us some very remarkable things. He was, for example, conscious of the possible impediments - street signs etc. - on Elm Street to a clear line of filming sight, and positioned himself accordingly. He told us that he filmed the motorcade uninterruptedly. He told us that Kennedy was first struck when "abreast" - parallel - to him. In short, he told us - or rather, told anyone with an IQ higher than their age and the ability to read - that he was familiar with a version of the film attributed to him, but not the one proffered by his interlocutors. Now how did Weisberg, this highly intelligent man with war-time experience in the OSS, deal with this testimony? Did he deal with it competently and honestly? Not a bit of it. Instead, he sought to assist the Warren Report liars by pretending that Zapruder hadn't had an uninterrupted view of the killing; and that the first bullet to hit Kennedy had done so much further back down Elm toward Houston. The film version served up by the WC was true, he sought to convince us, not the testimony of the very man alleged to have taken it.

Peter, Somewhere in one of Vance Packard's books of the the late 1950s/early 1960s, he quotes the motto of the tally men: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse them." To put it another way, you first establish the contradictions, then multiply them. And why not - who was/is to stop them? Intelligence bureaucracies do things because they can, and do so with impunity. But to introduce a note of caution: Saying there was a shot from the front is no great threat to the conspirators. On the contrary, unqualified, and minus precision, it serves their purposes admirably. After all, the grassy knoll is their built-in fall-back. They led us to it. And they're more than happy for us to remain there, ad infinitum.

C'mon, Brenda, it wasn't that difficult, even for a Republican... And the cheques come back by return of post, presumably? Marvellous thing, this neo-connery: You get to plunder the public purse even as you decry the role of big government.

The four dominant stands of the contemporary GOP embodied in one man: Sophistry, floristry, garbology, and chickenhawkery. Respect!

David, Jack, Ashton - A pleasure to be in the company of those for whom first principles are not at issue. Paul

Allen Dulles' briar?

Why did the conspirators offer the Z-film? An important subject, rarely addressed head on. Below, a preliminary sketch of an answer. I leave aside two other obvious motives, as trophy and training aid: Kennedy had to be killed in a public space to allay suspicion of an inside job. Yet it had to be an inside job to ensure its success. How to reconcile these conflicting imperatives? A false film, buttressed by a series of measures designed to render the location a pseudo- or controlled public space: 1) Location of crime scene at the end of the motorcade route, thus limiting potential number of independent witnesses; 2) Largely portable scene-of-crime, leaving little to examine, provoke reflection or, not unimportantly, clear-up; 3) Further limiting independent witness presence in the chosen public space by misdirection as to the precise motorcade route; 4) Minimisation of independent witness presence at key vantage points through guards at aforesaid key points; 5) Flooding of public space by intelligence assets, using pre-established business proprietaries as thoroughly plausible pretext for presence; 6) Misdirection of independent eyewitnesses (and subsequent enquirers) by use of both planted and/or manufactured witnesses; and rehearsed misdirection actions by motorcade figures designed to support the built-in fall back position (the grassy knoll); 7) Deliberate investigative failure to account for, and adduce the testimony of, all those present: inconvenient witnesses were marginalised, ignored, and/or replaced by more helpful material. The fake film showed only those witnesses the conspirators wanted us to see. The primary purpose of the film was to hide the true role of Kennedy’s own bodyguard. The second, to inject the required quota of ambiguity and paranoia into the case: the Z-film, in the version we are familiar with, is quintessentially the product of the counter-intelligence mind. The public understanding of the case would thus be shaped not by testimony, but by the false visual depiction. Of course, things didn’t go quite according to plan. But the essential task did.

Starnes returned to the subject of the CIA's catastrophic conduct in south-east Asia on the eve of Kennedy's murder. The country was Cambodia, where Sihanouk had been the object, as with Diem in neighbouring Vietnam, of repeated Agency assassination attempts well before Kennedy reached the White House. Note the sharp distinction drawn yet again by Starnes between State Department policy and that pursued by the Dullesians of Langley. The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Thursday, 21 November 1963 p.25 CIA and Decay The decay of the American bridgehead on the mainland of Asia continues with news that the unlikely kingdom of Cambodia has spurned military and economic aid from the United States. This represents a sharp defeat for American policy in Southeast Asia, certainly a disaster comparable to the loss of Laos, and it contains ominous portents for the future. Once again the Central Intelligence Agency is credited with playing a role in a calamitous undoing of American aims. Once the conditioned reflexes of the State Department have produced an instant denial that the Ivy League spooks of the CIA had anything to do with it. These reflexes are inherently incredible, of course. There is a rich and growing literature showing that too often the State Department doesn't know what the patient plotters of the CIA are doing. Moreover, Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk, as vain and bombastic as he is, is not stupid. He is no more likely to eviscerate Santa Claus than any other money-hungry Oriental despot is - unless he has what seems to be compelling reason. The State Department may not believe the CIA was conspiring in the downfall of Sihanouk, but the prince thought so. Such is the neurotic haze of secrecy under which the CIA coils and writhes that the specimen American lawgiver (to say nothing of the ordinary taxpayer) will never know the truth about America's defeat in Cambodia. But never doubt for a moment that it is a defeat, and a resounding one. If Viet Nam, Thailand and Laos are worth the lives and money we have so recklessly dedicated to them, then so is Prince Norodom's flyblown little kingdom. The United States has spent more than $350 million (plus what ever clandestine appropriations the CIA has devoted to the country) in an attempt to keep Cambodia from swinging completely into the Communist orbit. At best all we got for our money was a precarious neutrality, while Sihanouk gleefully played East and West off against each other with all the oily skill of a chop suey tycoon playing fan-tan. It takes no great prescience to understand that freed of any restraints from the West, Sihanouk will zoom straight for the candle flame held out by Communist China. The capture of Cambodia, like Laos' similar fate, may not be ratified for some time. But when it is, it will require only a moment of map reading to understand what has happened: Communist China now has a clear corridor from her borders to the Gulf of Siam. South Viet Nam is now flanked from the west, beleaguered from the north, surrounded by totally hostile neighbours and pinned against the sea. Thailand is just as ill-used. Malaysia is jeopardized; so it the sprawling, lunatic empire of Indonesia. To be sure, no one who has seen the miserable, almost impassable mountains, jungles and swamps of the Laotian-Cambodian corridor expects the people's army of China to go rolling down to the sea any time soon. But inexorably the Chinese Communist cadres will infest the countryside, subvert it, and bend it to Peking's grand designs. It is, of course, difficult to assay the CIA' s function in all of this. Dismiss, for the sake of argument, Sihanouk's proofs of CIA plotting against him as the paranoiac ravings of an uneasy tyrant. The fact remains that the United States secret, wholly unaccountable spy bureaucracy had carte blanche in Cambodia, had unlimited resources, and failed. It not only failed to keep Cambodia out of the Communist orbit, it provided Sihanouk with an excuse to cast out the last vestiges of American influence. All this, in the Orwellian language of Washington's CIA stiffs, will be cited as more evidence of the sad truth that the spooks get lumps every time the United States takes a licking, but never get credit for its mysterious, unknown feats of derring-do. The CIA remains above the battle of agencies which have to account for themselves. Only from time to time (and at times like this), its well-bred murmur is heard in the expense clubs in the nation's capital, explaining why it cannot be held accountable to democratic processes, as all our other great organs of government, secret and overt, are.

You're equating that to intentional mass murder? Bill Greer lied thru his teeth to the WC, but that doesn't come close to proving he was part of a conspiracy. Non sequitur of the year award - with bouquet - goes to Mr. B, the Artie Fufkin of neo-con apologetics Paul, get off the computer. Your mom needs to use the phone. I told her not to bother with the police: The weirdo in the undergrowth with the white spray is good old Slatttery, the nocturnal neo-con. Three sniffs of the laundry line and he's gone.

Um, because he's not a big wuss like you? Say it with flowers, Brendan, you know it makes scents... A little twist on an old axiom..... Slattery will get you nowhere. Thank you..thank you... Chuck Robbins Chuck, Well-intentioned and doubtless, in other contexts, sage words. Two probs: 1.Old Liverpool axiom: If you dish it, be prepared to take it, with interest. 2. Never assume motivation. Always permit the possibility of an ulterior one. Paul

You're equating that to intentional mass murder? Bill Greer lied thru his teeth to the WC, but that doesn't come close to proving he was part of a conspiracy. Non sequitur of the year award - with bouquet - goes to Mr. B, the Artie Fufkin of neo-con apologetics

The sad-sack who spots mobile Asters on Elm gets my vote.

The view of the State v. CIA war in Vietnam embodied in Starnes’ ‘Arrogant’ CIA was to receive powerful corroboration in the pages of The Times, then still the house-organ of the British elite. On Macmillan’s last day in No.10, it offered a succinct summary of the forces in play and what they represented. British historians, it should be noted, have spent over forty years avoiding this and similar meditations on the CIA under Kennedy in the Times 1961-63. More fool them. The capitalisation follows the original. The Times, Tuesday, 8 October 1963, p.13: Second leader An Elusive Agency President Kennedy’s failure to control the political activities of the Central Intelligence Agency has been one of the more disappointing and mysterious aspects of his Administration. It is to be hoped that his belated recall of MR. RICHARDSON, the head of the C.I.A. mission in South Vietnam, is a sign of a new determination to exert the full political control which the agency so badly needs. Few things damage a country more than if its representatives on the spot appear to be at odds with each other. The Cuban fiasco provided a unique opportunity to reassess the role of the C.I.A. The evidence of Laos and South Vietnam is that the opportunity was fumbled. (In Laos two years ago the C.I.A. was still opposing the neutralist coalition some time after PRESIDENT KENNEDY had formally endorsed it.) It is important, however, that the C.I.A. should not become a scapegoat for what are often the sins of the Government. Its involvement with NGO DINH DIEM’S family in Vietnam was encouraged by the absence of clear direction from Washington. The American Government was split over the proper policy for Vietnam, and in the resulting cleavage the State Department went one way and some of the C.I.A., with some of the Pentagon, another. There should have been especially keen vigilance over the C.I.A., for it is well known that many members of its staff are out of sympathy with the basic assumptions of the Administration’s policies, as they were not, on the whole, in the days of MR. DULLES. The difficulty that has always dogged the C.I.A. is that it is basically inimical to American traditions, and the country has been unable to assimilate it. Born out of the shock of Pearl Harbour, it found its present name in 1947. The original intention was that it should confine itself to the collection and evaluation of information, and many think it should return to this pristine state. It outgrew the restrictions almost by accident. The State Department was weak in staff and funds, and American policy demanded methods that were not compatible with normal diplomacy. Gradually MR. JOHN FOSTER DULLES found that he could sometimes act more effectively through his brother ALLEN, then head of the C.I.A., than through his own department. Repeated attempts to subject the agency to Congressional control stumbled on the obvious need for secrecy. Secrecy would disappear in the open arenas of American political life. At the same time the Dulles fraternity inhibited control by the Executive. The result was a new and secret kingdom which combined the collection of information with the formulation and the execution of policy. After the Bay of Pigs PRESIDENT KENNEDY tried to restore the making of policy to the State Department, local authority to his ambassadors, and most operational responsibilities to the Pentagon. He has had some success with these reforms, but not enough. The recent troubles have already revived demands for more Congressional control, and some increase may be possible. In the end, however, only one person is in a position to exert full control, and that is the President himself.

Um, because he's not a big wuss like you? Say it with flowers, Brendan, you know it makes scents...

One man's filet is another man's palate-cleansing sorbet. MV Sorry, Mark, but after that outstanding summary of the meandering thread about, oh, ROFLMAO, or somesuch, this represents an unacceptable dip in quality. Pseud's corner, sir, for the duration.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Chip Berlet is what G.K. Chesterton termed, in The Man Who Was Thursday, a "philosophical policeman." He attacks conspiracy theory and conspiracists in defence of rich people. The latter never engage in such things, you understand. But where Hofstadter attacked de haut en bas, Berlet proceeds de haut en FBI, ADL et al. Try this link for some well-informed and intermittently amusing stuff on his nonsense. He was memorably filleted by the late Ace Hayes in the mid-1990s. You should find Hayes' work among it. www.oilempire.us/berlet.html "The work of the philosophical policeman is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists." And in Berlet's case, cure them, courtesy of those kind men and women at the Ford Foundation.

Stephen, God knows if this is germane, but your question reminded me of this curio from the testimony of a Scotsman on Elm, Robert Henderson. Reportedly a Glaswegian WWII veteran holidaying in Dallas. With wife and daughter, took grandson, Roddy, to see presidential motorcade: “I Saw the Kennedy Killing,” The Weekly News (Manchester), 30 November 1963, p.8: “We settled for a spot on Elm Street. There weren’t all that many people around and it was easy to get a place by the kerbside…The President was sitting in the side of the car nearest us…The car stopped momentarily [after first shot – PR]…Then everything seemed to happen at once” “A stray dog wandered into the roadway” before shooting began. After shooting, “The dog that had been wandering about in the road was still there.” A cynic might wonder if this was part of an early - and early abandonned - attempt to explain the stop on Elm. Fortunately, I am not a cynic. Stephen, God knows if this is germane, but your question reminded me of this curio from the testimony of a Scotsman on Elm, Robert Henderson. Reportedly a Glaswegian WWII veteran holidaying in Dallas. With wife and daughter, took grandson, Roddy, to see presidential motorcade: “I Saw the Kennedy Killing,” The Weekly News (Manchester), 30 November 1963, p.8: “We settled for a spot on Elm Street. There weren’t all that many people around and it was easy to get a place by the kerbside…The President was sitting in the side of the car nearest us…The car stopped momentarily [after first shot – PR]…Then everything seemed to happen at once” “A stray dog wandered into the roadway” before shooting began. After shooting, “The dog that had been wandering about in the road was still there.” A cynic might wonder if this was part of an early - and early abandonned - attempt to explain the stop on Elm. Fortunately, I am not a cynic. I remember now why I thought it relevant: Stephen Barber, “President Kennedy Is Assassinated,” Daily Telegraph, Saturday (4 am edition, reprint), 23 November 1963, p.1: “A woman witness, Mrs. Jean Hill, said in a radio interview that the President and Mrs. Kennedy were looking at a dog in the middle of the road, near an underpass, when the shoots rang out. She said: “There were three shots. He grabbed his chest and fell over his seat, and Jackie fell over him.” “Murder Charge Lodged,” Dallas Times Herald, 23 November 1963, p.8: “The President passed directly in front of us on our side of the street,” Mrs. Hill said.

A sidebar on the question of Lodge and his role in Saigon in the period August-November 1963. I thought it might be interesting to see what an identified CIA asset had to say about him more or less contemporaneously. One example was ready to hand, courtesy of Pan & Lyons’ Vietnam Crisis. In that riveting tome, the authors offer an alleged verbatim extract from an interview with Nhu conducted by Suzanne Labin, the French “leftist” who enjoyed the somewhat surprising distinction of being permitted to address Pentagon high-fliers; and of having had at least one book - The Anthill: The Human Condition in Communist China - subsidised by the Agency through its best-known publishing arm, Praeger of New York, in 1960. Labin attributes the following to Nhu: “His political views seemed to be dominated by the fashionable decrees of Linus Pauling in the New York Times, and the neutralist preachings of Walter Lippmann in the New York Herald-Tribune.” Labin goes on to offer the classic Agency line on Lodge’s role, as supposedly recounted unbidden by Nhu, that renowned master of colloquial English: “Lodge never stopped working against us, with the cocksureness that a representative of a colonial power might have evinced, thirty years ago toward protectorate…Lodge does not bother with the normal business of an Ambassador, which would be to galvanize and to strengthen the friendship between our two governments. No, his only care is to intrigue against the legal government to which he has been accredited.” (Stephen Pan & Daniel Lyons, SJ. Vietnam Crisis (NY: Twin Circle Books, 1967 edition, p.117), citing Suzann Labin. Vietnam: An Eyewitness Account (Springfield, VA: Crestwood Books ), 1964, pp.34-35.) Interesting to note that Labin’s 1965 book, Embassies of Subversion (New York: American Afro-Asian Educational Exchange), carried a forward by one Thomas J. Dodd, the same Senator who, as we have seen, attacked Starnes at the CIA’s behest in February 1964. In early March 1963, Dodd had entered a gushing tribute to the CIA asset into the Congressional Record. It went by the modest title "Suzanne Labin: Joan of Arc of Freedom" (Congressional Record, 1963 March 4). You couldn’t make this up. Labin and Daniel Lyons were themselves to collaborate on Twin Circle’s 1968 book, Fifty Years: The USSR vs. The USA. Small world, indeed.

Nathaniel's quote: "Do we discern a parallel to Helms illusiory banishment in the fate of William Harvey in 1962? Harvey was accused by Bobby Kennedy of initiating incendiary attacks around the time of CMC, without the approval of the president. While he did not leave the agency he was banished to Italy, far away from the JM/WAVE CIA Miami station, locus of the anti-Castro action. Yet there are signs that Harvey continued to be involved in Cuba policy without the president knowing about it. Was this banishment merely a ruse to facilitate plausible denial?" [Endquote] Nathaniel, Don't forget to factor in the "apertura a sinistra" factor when considering Harvey's "banishment" to Italy. What better place to sabotage that particular Kennedy initiative? Paul

Young Richardson refers to Starnes as "obscure" -- interesting way to describe a guy who won the Ernie Pyle Award for excellence in military/foreign-affairs journalism in 1962... Cliff, As you rightly imply, Richardson’s abuse of Starnes was puerile stuff. It told the reader much about its author, and nothing whatever about its intended target. To more rewarding things. For readers of this thread interested in examining Starnes’ prize-winning journalism from the summer of 1962, either through the Library of Congress (in person, or through its excellent duplication service) or via inter-library loan, here is useful guide. All items listed are from the Washington Daily News, as held by the LoC. It’s profoundly patriotic stuff, in a style not a million miles away from that of, say, Richard Tregaskis, whose own Vietnam Diary (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963) did well in the period. In a few short years, Starnes’ own flesh and blood was to occupy the uniform he briefly shared billets with in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. For an early journalistic opponent of subsequent U.S. policy in the region, these were to prove dark and fearful years indeed. June, 1962 The Stakes Are High in Vietnam, 11 June 1962, p.27 Viet Nam Frustrations, 12 June 1962, p.19 We Can Be Proud of GIs in Viet Nam, 13 June 1962, p.37 It’ll Be Good to Be With Marines Again, 14 June 1962, p.31 Here Is Where the Cold War Becomes Warm, 15 June 1962, p.33 A Daring Adventure Is About to Begin, 18 June 1962, p.21 It Was a Polished, Expert Performance, 19 June 1962, p.19 Eyes That Would Break Your Heart, 20 June 1962, p.37 A Hot One Near Ben Cat, 21 June 1962, p.29 Family Man in a Nasty Little War, 22 June 1962, p.25 A Nation With a Mess on it’s Hands, 23 June 1962, p.11 Viet Cong Guerillas Are Tough, 25 June 1962, p.25 A Two-Headed Mouse, 26 June 1962, p.17 We Are Seeing a ‘Nutritional Migration,’ 27 June 1962, p.29 The Sweet Old ‘Round Eyes’ Understood, 28 June 1962, p.13 New Coalition Alarms South Viet Namese, 29 June 1962, p.29 U.S. Inches Ahead in Drive to Save South Viet Nam, 30 June 1962, p.12 July, 1962 Enough to Make Anyone’s Liver Start to Bang, 2 July 1962, p.21 Little Girl in Big Job, 3 July 1962, p.15 If You’re Really ‘Au Fait,’ the Game is ‘CIA,’ 4 July 1962, p.15 Anna Wouldn’t Know Siam, 5 July 1962, p.27 Cobras Come With the Rain, 7 July 1962, p.9 An Elephantine Disaster…Well, Almost, 9 July 1962, p.23 ’14 Can Be a Troubled Sort of Age, 11 July 1962, p.29 They Never Learned to Hate, 12 July 1962, p.43 ‘Happy As A Dead Hog in the Sunshine,’ 13 July 1962, p.27 Wolfhound’s Morale Sags, 14 July 1962, p.9 When Reds Will Strike Is Big Thailand Poser, 16 July 1962, p.17 Like Something in a Midway ‘Crazy House…,’ 17 July 1962, p.17 Long Shot Chance in Laos, 18 July 1962, p.31 A Shoeshine Boy Brings Home a Basic Truth, 19 July 1962, p.31 Perhaps a Few ‘Pipes’ Might Have Helped, 20 July 1962, p.29 Made for Mystery, 21 July 1962, p.13 Big Question in Laos, 23 July 1962, p.19 It Has Been a Painful Lesson in Laos, 24 July 1962, p.15 Saga of the Willowy Ton, 25 July 1962, p.37 It Was Like the Taste of Burnt Caramel, 26 July 1962, p.29 A Sense of Foreboding, 28 July 1962, p.11

Debra & Cliff, Apologies for bundling my replies together, but it seemed a sensible measure given the length and nature of the post to follow. First to Debra: I’ve skimmed the links you posted and found much that was new to me, for which many thanks. I won’t comment on the unfamiliar material therein in any detail as I haven’t yet had the time to do it justice. One brief, relatively minor, observation, however. While it was nice to see the cover of Dick’s noirish mystery – And When She Was Bad She Was Murdered (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1950), one of three he dashed off in the period to pay the bills – much the most apposite of his books in this context is his classic 1967 assault on the CIA and liberal illusion, Requiem In Utopia (NY: Trident Press). It’s one of the outstanding spy novels of the decade and I commend it to all. Cliff, second but not least: Later than intended, I at least deal with the question of the bowdlerisation of the Times of Vietnam’s edition of 2 September 1963, as promised in my previous post to you. I begin with a book published in 2005. A picture of its cover features in Debra’s presentation, and she makes reference to its author in the post above. Written by the son of the CIA station chief Starnes named in ‘Arrogant’ CIA Disobeys Orders In Vietnam, My Father The Spy: An Investigative Memoir (NY: HarperCollins) represented a return to an old and mendacious line of Agency attack on the Scripps-Howard man. Here is John H. Richardson fils on the Times of Vietnam’s detailed expose of the thwarted CIA coup of 28/29 August, as posted earlier in this thread. It is to Richardson fils’ credit that he reproduces his father’s acknowledgement of its accuracy. There, honesty ends: “I have a copy of that newspaper, its angry headline spanning the entire front page: CIA FINANCING PLANNED COUP D’ETAT. Although it didn’t actually use my father’s name…” (p.187). Stop right there. It did, as we shall shortly see. The trouble is, the version to be found today in both the Chicago-based Centre for Research Libraries, and the British Newspaper Library at Colindale, is not the original. What became of that? Two veteran China Lobby propagandists, Stephen Pan and the Jesuit Daniel Lyons, explained its fate in 1966: “All of the copies of the paper disappeared from the newstands within a few hours…and when 6,000 more copies were reprinted on September 9, they, too, disappeared almost immediately…That night the presses were smashed by unknown forces.” (Vietnam Crisis (NY: Twin Circle Books, second edition, July 1967), p.121). I offer four very different sources, spread across three decades, for my claim that Richardson’s name did appear in the CIA-suppressed original. To begin in the 1970s, with Polish diplomat, and International Control Commission member, Mieczyslaw Maneli: “In the first version of this article, as I learned later, there was even a mention of the high CIA officials who engineered this conspiracy. According to the information I gathered in Saigon, it mentioned the name of Mr. Richardson, allegedly chief of the CIA in South Vietnam, who masterminded the abortive coup. It was allegedly Mme. Nhu who ordered them to drop this name from the article. I had the opportunity in Saigon to read one of the first versions of this article...” (Mieczyslaw Maneli. War of the Vanquished (NY: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 143.) John Prados offered confirmation in his 2001 study of William Colby: “The station chief’s name [Richardson’s] appeared, first in the Times of Vietnam, then in articles in the United States” (Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (Oxford UP, March 2003), p.122). We can do even better. Here is Diem-critic Stanley Karnow writing within a month of 'Arrogant' CIA's publication: “All this might have remained secret had not Nhu, learning of the attempt against Diem’s regime, publicized the ‘plot’ by foreign elements.’ Vietnamese newspapers named Richardson as the leader of the operation, and Washington recalled him.” (“U.S. Still Divided On Viet-Nam Aims,” Washington Post, 31 October 1963, p.A20). My final witness is Dick Starnes. In late February 1964, he despatched a Scripps-Howard researcher to the State Department in successful pursuit of copy. There it was, Richardson’s name. He was moved to seek confirmation of its presence as a consequence of the following attack, launched by our old friend Dodd of Connecticut on the Senate floor: “The propaganda campaign against the CIA reached a crescendo during the recent Vietnamese crisis. Last October 4, an article by a correspondent for an American newspaper chain charged that the CIA had been subverting State Department policy in Viet Nam, and that John Richardson, the CIA man in Saigon, had openly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Lodge. The correspondent who wrote this article was guilty of openly identifying a CIA representative abroad, thus reducing his potential usefulness forever. Visiting Congressmen and members of the press may sometimes know the identity of the CIA representative but it has been take for granted that they do not reveal his identity to the public. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first instance in which an American correspondent has been guilty of this flagrant breach of the ethics of security.” Starnes responded to Dodd’s farrago with this tour de force: The Washington Daily News, March 4, 1964, p.35 Over to You, Senator A spirited – if maundering and contradictory – defense of the Central Intelligence Agency’s role in Viet Nam has been uttered by Sen. Thomas J. Dodd (D., Conn.). Altho he prudently avoided using my name, Sen. Dodd’s speech unmistakably was an attack upon me for reporting the truth about the CIA’s headlong wilfulness in Viet Nam. The speech was long-winded and tedious, which is par for the course, and it was also essentially untrue. It betrayed a man who either is disingenuous or whose memory has played him false. He complained to the Senate that “baiting the CIA almost seems to have achieved the stature of a popular national pastime.” He cited my dispatches from Saigon last October, and he alluded to two subsequent broadsides against the CIA levelled by “distinguished members of Congress.” He neglected to include in his indictment a well-reasoned attack on the CIA made recently by former President Harry Truman, who repeated and enlarged upon my well-founded charges that the huge espionage apparatus had strayed into operational and policy-making areas where it did not belong. Sen. Dodd’s motives in slighting Mr. Truman is unknown to me, and may well be nothing more than additional evidence of eclectic memory. In his speech, the Senator and erstwhile FBI agent warned that these attacks upon the CIA are “highly dangerous,” and added: “Whether the critics realize it or not, these charges also constitute an attack on the wisdom and integrity of both President Eisenhower and President Kennedy. It is tantamount to accusing them of passively allowing an executive agency to function without control or supervision; and to make foreign policy – in other words, to usurp the President’s own authority. This is patently ridiculous. Neither President would have ever permitted such a thing.” Here regard for historical truth impels one to remind the Senator that he himself repeated strikingly similar charges, “patently ridiculous” or not, less than four years ago. I quote now from a press release issued by the Senate Internal Security Sub-committee for use Sunday, Sept. 11, 1960: “’Cuba was handed to Castro and the communists by a combination of Americans in the same way that China was handed to the communists,’” Senators James O. Eastland (D., Miss.) and Thomas J. Dodd (D., Conn.) said today in releasing the testimony of two former United States Ambassadors.” The two envoys were Earl T. Smith, who was US Ambassador to Havana when Castro rose to power, and Arthur Gardner, his immediate predecessor. Again the press release: “The Senators drew particular attention to this statement of Ambassador Smith. “’We helped overthrow the Batista dictatorship which was pro-American, only to install the Castro dictatorship, which is pro-Russian. According to former Ambassador Smith, the agencies of the United States Government which ‘had a hand in bringing pressure to overthrow the Batista government’ were ‘certain influential people, influential sources in the State Department, lower down echelons in the CIA…” These charges, of course, were not ridiculous. Ambassador Smith is a distinguished financier and public official. He levelled his charges against the CIA in sworn testimony before the Internal Security sub-committee, on Aug. 30, 1960, Sen. Dodd, among others, present. Ambassador Smith enlarged upon his charges in a book (previously quoted here at some length) entitled “The Fourth Floor,” which was published by Random House two years ago. Both his testimony, which was accepted at face value and broadcast by Sen. Dodd, and his book made it plain that the CIA, indeed, had run contrary to American interests, had helped boost Castro into power, had made policy, or attempted to, and, in one instance, had been openly rebellious and insulting toward Ambassador Smith. So much for Sen. Dodd’s own excursion into what I am afraid he would now deride as dangerous CIA baiting. In his speech two weeks ago, Sen. Dodd laid two charges against me. Both are false and dastardly, both are of a piece with the CIA’s record for crude intimidation of reporters who undertake its lunatic growth and hunger for power. CHARGE: A dispatch of mine identified and thus destroyed the usefulness of one John Richardson, the CIA’s then “station chief” in Saigon. TRUTH: Mr. Richardson’s identity and role in Saigon were secrets from no one – except American newspaper readers. He was widely known as the CIA’s chief resident spook in Saigon. It is inconceivable that in a few days digging, I could discover information not long known to Ho Chi Minh’s espionage network. CHARGE: My dispatches violated a gentleman’s agreement to protect the identity of CIA agents. TRUTH: I am party to no agreement to hide facts from American taxpayers and parents when I am sure the enemy knows them. CHARGE: Striking at the CIA is like hitting a man ‘who has his hands tied behind his back…the agency cannot confirm or deny published reports, true or false, favourable or unfavourable. It cannot alibi. It cannot explain. It cannot answer… TRUTH: Baloney. Ask any reporter who has hung one on the CIA’s solid Spode chin. Few editors with guts enough to hire honest reporters have not had plaintive and/or outraged phone calls from CIA Director John McCone and his predecessors. And, indeed, Sen. Dodd’s own apologia disproves him. The voice is Sen. Dodd’s, but I’ve got a powerful hunch the words are Mr. McCone’s. John H. Richardson fils used the CIA’s suppression of the original edition of the Times of Vietnam’s CIA Financing Planned Coup D’Etat to fashion a lie: Starnes’ identification of his father a month later came as a “bombshell” (p.197) that “stunned and dismayed” (p.198) the veteran CIA man who had, of course, as we have seen, been named a mere month earlier by the Times of Vietnam. The revival of this ancient anti-Starnes canard had a distinctly contemporary – and distinctly Mockingbirdish –purpose. Richardson fils parleyed the lie into a piece for the NYT in which he solemnly averred that the fiendish outing of Valerie Plame Wilson had precedent, and that precedent was Starnes’ outing of Richardson’s father way back in 1963 (“The Spy Left Out In The Cold,” NYT, 7 August 2005). “The past telescopes into the future,” one of Richardson pere’s patrons, James Angleton, is famously reported to have observed. The process manifestly runs both ways. As ever, the NYT printed the CIA-serving lie. P.S. Was John H. Richardson really Nhu’s bosom pal, as so many claim? Not according to those aforementioned veteran China lobbyists, Stephen Pan & Daniel Lyons, SJ: "From 1957 to 1960, Diem's brother…co-operated very closely with the representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Saigon…Nhu had good friends with the CIA in Saigon, but the CIA replaced them with men who were unfriendly to him..." (Vietnam Crisis (NY: Twin Circle Publishing Co. Inc, July1966; this edition March 1967), p. 105).

Paul, For what it's worth: An old girl friend of mine is the daughter of a Diem secret police officer. She was 13 at the time of the coup. She's Buddhist, and insists that the Buddhist uprising against Diem in '63 was manufactured by the CIA. She talked about how the little kids would sneak into the temples even when they were surrounded. She told me that Diem was negotiating with Ho Chi Minh to kick the Americans out. I haven't seen anything concrete in the historical record to confirm this, other than fleeting references to un-explained "anti-American" activities by Diem. Paul, have you come across anything in your research to indicate that Diem was secretly negotiating with Ho, and might that have played a part in Harriman coming around to the coup? Cliff, What a fascinating contact to have made! I agree entirely with your ex-girlfriend. To follow, one of the reasons why. Please bear in mind that the version before you is not the original, but a later, bowdlerised simulacrum, a proposition I'll justify tomorrow night, when I've slept off the effects of last night's extra-cold Guinness. I'll return to your question about Nhu's negotiations with Hanoi then, too. The Times of Vietnam, Monday, 2 September 1963, pp.1&6 CIA Financing Planned Coup D’Etat Planned for Aug. 28; Falls Flat, Stillborn Saigon (TVN) – The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was financing a planned coup d’etat scheduled for last Wednesday, reliable foreign sources said yesterday. For some weeks as the Xa Loi anti-government campaign grew, the rumours of coup d’etats became more frequent and abundant. It was well known that the Communists were exploiting the Xa Loi campaign in an effort to topple the Vietnamese Government, and there were constant rumours that C.I.A. was also supporting it. Now as the story comes out, it is revealed that C.I.A. agents in the political section of the U.S. Embassy, the Public Safety Division of U.S.O.M. and the G2 section of M.A.A.G., with the assistance of well-paid military attaches from three other embassies, had prepared a detailed plan for the overthrow of the Vietnamese Government. The C.I.A. plan, it is said, had the blessing of high officials in the “distressed” State Department. It is also said Vietnamese authorities seem to be well aware of C.I.A. efforts to help build the political agitation of the “Buddhist Affair” to a point of popular confusion and hysteria which would be fertile ground for the planned coup d’etat of the unofficially official American organization. Beginning in January of this year, it is reported American secret agency “experts” who successfully engineered the coup d’etats in Turkey, Guatemala, Korea, and failed in Iran and Cuba, began arriving in Vietnam, taking up duties mostly in the U.S. Embassy, U.S.O.M., M.A.A.G., and various official and unofficial installations here. The Vietnamese Government, though seemingly well aware of all this, apparently could not believe such action was possible from allies and at a time with victory so near. Rumours of their activities with student and religious and other private groups and clubs have long flown around the city. During the period in which U.S. Ambassador Nolting was on leave from May to July, the operators became more openly active, showing themselves in person at Xa Loi Pagoda to confer with agitators there. But, certain foreign sources say, the young agent provocateurs showed their hands too brazenly in the attempt to prepare the military coup d’etat and revealed the plot. Naively believing the subjects of their bribes were anti-government, they poured money into the pockets of many, the sources say. The money is now spent from a budget which the U.S. Congress has no authority to audit, an affair which may bring much trouble and shame when the U.S. Congress takes a close look. The sources estimate the sum of money spent to overthrow the Vietnamese Government was between 10 and 21 million dollars. The money was in three banks, it is reported: Bank of America, Hong-Kong-Shanghai Banking Corp., and Bank of Tokyo. U.S. banknotes under 50 dollar denominations were difficult to change on the black market on Saturday, and black market dealers who accepted small notes gives as much as 4 ps. per dollar less than the going rate of 1065 VN for bills of 50 and 100 dollar denominations. By Sunday afternoon some black market currency dealers were refusing to buy dollars but were selling them at 1058 VN to the dollar. The macabre outline of the plot in seven steps bears a sinister resemblance to the Communist tactics: 1) Create unrest and discontent among the masses, provoking “religious”-inspired anti-government sentiment; sow discord among the population. 2) Mobilize youth groups (a function of the C.I.A. agents in U.S.I.S. and U.S.O.M.) particularly the following groups: Boy Scout, Girl Scouts, Buddhist Youth, Buddhist student groups. 3) Buy police, army, labor, and civil servants with three months advance salary and a bonus. 4) Assure government officials that they will be allowed to stay in their present posts if they agree to resign when given the signal. 5) While agitating in the different groups, provoke the government at the same time to commit mistakes such as killing innocent civilians or imprisoning large numbers of particular interest groups such as the youth. 6) When confusion has reached its peak, make sure “representatives” of so-called “representative groups” – e.g., civil servants, army, etc; - present an ultimatum to the President to (a) resign or ( to send his family into exile. 7) If President resigns, a puppet government must be ready to take over – or a “military junta” prepared to take the reigns of government until elections can be held. The 24 million dollar “budget” was earmarked, according to the same sources, as follows: 1) Advance salaries for the army, police and civil servants 2) Bonus for the same 3) Further gratifications for the same if necessary 4) Financing of the “Buddhist” organizations 5) Financing of youth movements such as the “Voluntary Youths” (whose financing to date is reported to have come from “American sources”. 6) Propaganda – including payment for “articles” by foreign correspondents in Vietnam 7) Relief – assumed to mean a contingency fund for miscellaneous or unforeseen expenditures The plan, it is said, was to install a puppet military junta before elections (formerly scheduled for the 31st of August but postponed after martial law was declared). The various and sundry politicians in exile were to be returned to Vietnam to form several political parties and prepare for elections. Nguyen Ton Hoan, at a press conference in New York last week, announced he had a government ready to bring to Vietnam. He is reported to have presented the list to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Pham Huy Co of November 11 fame is reported also to be in the U.S. ready to cash in a change of governments. But, Nguyen Ton Hoan’s list – according to several persons on the list – contains (end of page 1) the names of persons who have never even been consulted to give approval for their inscription on the list. Some weeks ago the Radio Catinat rumor indicated the coup was to come between the 15th and 28th of this month. The Government and Army took action on August 21, but this plan continued, the sources say. The date scheduled for the coup was actually August 28, they report. On August 29 a military intelligence source was quoted in a foreign wire service dispatch as reporting that President Diem would be stopping in Manila on that day – the 29th – en route to exile in a friendly country. Manila journalists were alerted to be at International Airport to see him on the stopover. Meanwhile President Ngo Dinh Diem was visiting marines on the Saigon River. Apparently the source was not alerted to the actual turn of events, or he leaked the “news” prematurely. U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge had been due to arrive on August 26. There were unconfirmed reports that the date was postponed to August 29. But, immediately after the August 21 action of President Ngo Dinh Diem and the Army, Lodge received orders to come immediately, arriving in Saigon on August 22. Certain diplomatic sources in Saigon report that essentially the whole diplomatic corps was aware of the plan in general, if not in detail. All were alerted for the hour of 11pm on August 28, they report. But, at the last moment, it was postponed because the Vietnamese knew about it and were organised to face it and to resist to the end – even if it meant fighting in the streets of Saigon. A number of foreign embassy representatives have expressed great concern, the foreign sources say, because they knew a coup attempt would result in bloody chaos in Saigon. President De Gaulle was reported to have been indignant, because he knew the Vietnamese would never give in to such a coup easily and it could only create a situation which would profit the Communists. But it seemed it was only when the CIA agents saw for themselves that the Tu Vu Thanh (Self-Defense Corps of the capital) of the Cong Hoa Youth – street combat specialists – were really organized to face the coup of the day, that they finally postponed their “coup”. They were well aware, whether they reported it to Washington or not, that in the elections of 57 strategic quarters of the capital, the Republican Youth had victories in 54 of the 57 quarters. The new Ambassador has made no public declarations since his arrival, but has conferred with President Ngo Dinh Diem and with Counsellor Ngo Dinh Nhu. The Ambassador is faced with a most explosive and delicate situation, which some observers believe may turn out to have been as big a debacle as the Cuban affair. The State Department, they judge, has cut the rug from under Lodge’s feet by speaking so precipitously to “deplore” the Vietnamese Government for action which has proven to have been an extremely wise move. If State Dept. had maintained silence until Lodge had time to send away the agent provocateurs among his personnel here and “fix things up” with the Vietnamese Government before the State Department took an open public position on the actions of August 21, it could have saved much face for itself. But apparently the CIA operators had so greatly misjudged the popularity and strength of the Ngo Dinh Diem Government that Washington was convinced there was going to be a change of government here. In the meantime, the U.S. public – through foreign press reports based on U.S. “intelligence” assessments, was readied to accept the planned term of events. Ambassador Nolting’s and General Harkins’ statements of optimism and support have for some months been discredited and toned down by the U.S. press here, often with quotes from junior officers who disagreed with their chiefs. The CIA crowd has obviously prepared well to undercut any sound Lodge policy which develop as they undercut that of Nolting. Since the monstrous flub – realising at last that they do not have the Vietnamese people with them – the agitation and plotting continues all the same, both foreign and Vietnamese sources say. In an effort to revive the “religious” character of the crisis, there is now a reported plan underfoot to murder the Thich Thien Hoa newly appointed head of the Buddhist group; Cao Hoal Sang of the Cao Dai sect; and several leaders of the Hoa Hao sects. Next step would be the assassination of Monsigneur Ngo Dinh Thuc himself which the plotters would term a “reprisal” of non-Catholic patriots. The Archbishop is indeed feared for his well-known fearlessness and dynamism. As for Counsellor and Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, the plotters want only exile for them for the time being, because they know well that if they were murdered it would provoke a bloodbath of reprisals. A threatening side-issue in the pumped-up “religious” affair is reported to be a campaign to encourage the Highlanders – trained by U.S. Special Forces – to desert the national cause. “Intelligence” sources have for some time been telling the press that “Who controls the Highlands, controls Vietnam.” The CIA group which is reported to have complete control of U.S.I.S., is said to have gone “underground” and to be clandestinely calling on the Armed Forces of the Republic to demonstrate and to provoke the several-times postponed coup d’etat. As late as Saturday evening, AFRS radio station was broadcasting 30 second spot lectures on such subjects as “majority rule” and explaining in a sarcastic tone that majority rule meant “respect” for the activities of “minorities”. On Sunday, one agent said angrily “Nhu won the first round. But just wait for the second round.” Said one Vietnamese government official – “The U.S. press summaries get to Xa Lol two days earlier than I could get them. I can only think of one source for their information.” As things appear, the plotters momentarily seem to have abandoned the idea of a coup d’etat, but still cling to the purpose of creating unrest under whatever label they can ????, counting on diplomatic immunity to go on untouched in their activities to topple the Government. The State Department, now faced with an embarrassing dilemma created by gross errors of assessment of the situation here, has the choice of doing an about face or losing plenty of face – and maybe both. The millions of Americans who believe in the freedom and national integrity their government preaches are in for a big disillusionment if their government does not soon denounce the sinister cynics who almost turned Vietnam over to the Communists. And some observers on the scene are wondering whether the whole fiasco is a desperate effort of those who helped to lose Cuba for the Free World to try to recoup their loss of face by taking control of Vietnam in time to proclaim her victory as their own. But this is not the American way, as American citizens have been brought up to understand it. And, once revealed, the American people will without any doubt turn their wrath for this fiasco on those who have betrayed their ideals. The U.S. Congress – watchdog of the American dream – is still there. And they are not likely to accept lightly the betrayals of all the ideals of which they are the guardians – among the most precious of which is self-determination of peoples in freedom. There is one more factor in Vietnam’s favor. U.S. Congressmen are also political realists, and it won’t take long for most of them to see the realities of the situation in Vietnam once the facts are placed before them.[/indent] Debra, Many thanks for the links. I do not find the idea of Lodge being Starnes' source inconceivable: As I confessed earlier in this thread, I genuinely don't know who it was. As for the rest of your post, I disagree fundamentally. Before doing so, however, I owe you the basic courtesy of scrutinizing and digesting your work. There is, perhaps, much I could learn from it. I'll do that tomorrow night when I have regained the feeling in my outer extremities, fingers in particular. Best wishes, Paul

Cliff, Again, many thanks for the apposite links. On the matter of Harriman’s attitude to Diem’s government. I would be more persuaded by a detailed account, preferably buttressed by contemporaneous sources, explaining the alleged transformation of Harriman’s view in the course of the summer of 1963. As matters stand, we find utterly conflicting evidence and, to the best of my limited knowledge, no remotely adequate account of why the man who negotiated peace for Laos suddenly turned hawk over Vietnam. Moreover, it is only on Vietnam, and Vietnam alone, we are invited to believe, that Harriman found himself allied to the CIA, an organisation that loathed his long-since modified views on Russia, his work on the test ban treaty, and his support for an opening to mainland China; and, let us not forget, had actively sought to sabotage the Geneva settlement on Laos. You see the full oddity of what we are routinely invited to believe. Note, too, the distribution and type of sources for the two conflicting accounts of Harriman’s attitude to Diem. The contemporaneous public record, certainly up to March 1963, finds Harriman determinedly resisting pressure to dump Diem. The official, governmental record, by contrast, released many years later and with the new orthodoxy firmly in place, offers a complete reversal, a reversal which purportedly takes place a matter of months after. This aforementioned orthodoxy, portraying Harriman as Vietnam hawk, is characterised by a number of striking omissions. First and most revealingly, it invites us to forget the inconvenient fact that attempts to assassinate President Diem began no later than 1957, the year in which Time magazine – yes, that old Agency harridan yet again – denounced Diem as a pinko neutralist with a distinctly under-developed zeal for zapping his fellow-countrymen in the service of Cold War anti-communism. In November 1960, well before Harriman had regained influence or power in White House counsels, the CIA tried to oust Diem in a smaller version of the military putsch that succeeded three years later. The bombing of the presidential palace in 1962 occurred well before Harriman’s alleged switch to pro-coup, anti-Diemism. However, let us permit for one moment that Harriman was indeed a hawkish opponent of Diem. In that case, and further assuming that Harriman or proxy was the administration insider-source for Starnes’ ‘Arrogant’ CIA, we are faced with the absurd position of Harriman seeking not merely to quieten anti-Diem reporters in this period, but leaking savagely to discredit a Saigon CIA chief, John H. Richardson, who, as the record shows, was entirely in favour of overthrowing Diem no later than August 28/29, 1963.

Mark, A valuable posting and a fitting tribute to an uncommonly prescient political scientist. To think that he wrote this before the composition of the Presidential Commission of enquiry was known - it's incredible. I mean, a committe of enquiry nominally presided over by a man who had interned large numbers of American citizens for possession of Japanese surnames, reporting to a President haunted by the menace of "yellow dwarves," and populated by such towering intellects as Gerald Ford and, well, all the rest of them! And the report, what a triumph of reason supported by,er, public money...thank goodness Hofstadter never critiqued that. We'd have died laughing.

Good to see this matter aired - better still, in a thread of its own, bringing together as many instances of the CIA-Time/Life relationship as possible!