Bernice Moore

New JCS Documents on Cuba and Vietnam New documents from the papers of Maxwell Taylor (pictured), Gen. Earl Wheeler, and other Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) files are now online, related to the hotspots in Cuba and Vietnam. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/...uba_and_Vietnam Joint Chiefs of Staff Papers http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...o?docSetId=1021 General Maxwell Taylor papers http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...o?docSetId=1022 1,000 U.S. MILITARY WITHDRAWAL FROM VIETNAM RIF#: 202-10002-10092 (10/31/63) JCS#: CM-985-63 http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=2 LBJ to General Taylor Dec.2.63 http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=3 CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS AFFECTING THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, RELATED TO THE VIETNAM CRISIS http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...oc.do?docId=138 B.......... Below .......in Washington for JFK's Funeral, Chiefs of Staff...

Peter: What you mention may be available within.....""The Secret Team"" by Col.Prouty .......the book is available free, on line.... http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/ST.html The missing pages from the Paper back edition ""JFK, The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F.Kennedy ""by ...Col.Prouty...are also downloaded on this site , free access..... http://www.prouty.org/books.html B........

Exit Strategy In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam James K. Galbraith 8 Forty years have passed since November 22, 1963, yet painful mysteries remain. What, at the moment of his death, was John F. Kennedy’s policy toward Vietnam? It’s one of the big questions, alternately evaded and disputed over four decades of historical writing. It bears on Kennedy’s reputation, of course, though not in an unambiguous way. And today, larger issues are at stake as the United States faces another indefinite military commitment that might have been avoided and that, perhaps, also cannot be won. The story of Vietnam in 1963 illustrates for us the struggle with policy failure. More deeply, appreciating those distant events tests our capacity as a country to look the reality of our own history in the eye. One may usefully introduce the issue by recalling the furor over Robert McNamara’s 1995 memoir In Retrospect. Reaction then focused mainly on McNamara’s assumption of personal responsibility for the war, notably his declaration that his own actions as the Secretary of Defense responsible for it were “terribly, terribly wrong.” Reviewers paid little attention to the book’s contribution to history. In an editorial on April 12, 1995, the New York Times delivered a harsh judgment: “Perhaps the only value of “In Retrospect” is to remind us never to forget that these were men who in the full hubristic glow of their power would not listen to logical warning or ethical appeal.” And in the New York Times Book Review four days later, Max Frankel wrote that David Halberstam, who applied that ironic phrase [The Best and the Brightest] to his rendering of the tale 23 years ago, told it better in many ways than Mr. McNamara does now. So too, did the Pentagon Papers, that huge trove of documents assembled at Mr. McNamara’s behest when he first recognized a debt to history. In view of these criticisms, readers who actually pick up McNamara’s book may experience a shock when they scan the table of contents and sees this summary of Chapter 3, titled “The Fateful Fall of 1963: August 24–November 22, 1963”: A pivotal period of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, punctuated by three important events: the overthrow and assassination of South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem; President Kennedy’s decision on October 2 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces; and his assassination fifty days later. (Emphasis added.) Kennedy’s decision on October 2, 1963, to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Vietnam? Contrary to Frankel, this is not something you will find in Halberstam. You will not find it in Leslie Gelb’s editorial summary in the Gravel edition of The Pentagon Papers, even though several documents that are important to establishing the case for a Kennedy decision to withdraw were published in that edition. Nor, with just three exceptions prior to last spring’s publication of Howard Jones’s Death of a Generation—a milestone in the search for difficult, ferociously hidden truth—will you find it elsewhere in 30 years of historical writing on Vietnam. Did John F. Kennedy give the order to withdraw from Vietnam? * * * Certainly, most Vietnam historians have said “no”—or would have if they considered the question worth posing. They have asserted continuity between Kennedy’s policy and Lyndon Johnson’s, while usually claiming that neither president liked the war and also that Kennedy especially had expressed to friends his desire to get out sometime after the 1964 election. The view that Kennedy would have done what Johnson did—stay in Vietnam and gradually escalate the war in 1964 and 1965—is held by left, center, and right, from Noam Chomsky to Kai Bird to William Gibbons. It was promoted forcefully over the years by the late Walt Rostow, beginning in 1967 with a thick compilation for Johnson himself of Kennedy’s public statements on Vietnam policy and continuing into the 1990s. Gibbons’s three-volume study states it this way: “On November 26 [1963], Johnson approved NSAM [National Security Action Memorandum] 273, reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Vietnam and the continuation of Vietnam programs and policies of the Kennedy administration.” Equally, Stanley Karnow writes in his Vietnam: A History (1983) that Johnson’s pledge “essentially signaled a continuation of Kennedy’s policy.” Patrick Lloyd Hatcher, while writing extensively on the Saigon coup, makes no mention at all of the Washington discussions following Johnson’s accession three weeks later. Gary Hess offers summary judgment on the policy that Johnson inherited: “To Kennedy and his fellow New Frontiersmen, it was a doctrine of faith that the problems of Vietnam lent themselves to an American solution.” Kai Bird’s 1998 biography of McGeorge and William Bundy briefly reviews the discussions of withdrawal reported to have occurred in late 1963 but accepts the general verdict that Kennedy did not intend to quit. So does Fredrik Logevall, whose substantial 1999 book steadfastly insists that the choices Kennedy faced were either escalation or negotiation and did not include withdrawal without negotiation. All this (and more) is in spite of evidence to the contrary, advanced over the years by a tiny handful of authors. In 1972 Peter Dale Scott first made the case that Johnson’s NSAM 273—the document that Gibbons relied on in making the case for continuity—was in fact a departure from Kennedy’s policy; his essay appeared in Gravel’s edition of The Pentagon Papers. Arthur M. Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and His Times tells in a few tantalizing pages of the “first application” in October 1963 “of Kennedy’s phased withdrawal plan.” A more thorough treatment appeared in 1992, with the publication of John M. Newman’s JFK and Vietnam . 1 Until his retirement in 1994 Newman was a major in the U.S. Army, an intelligence officer last stationed at Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency. As an historian, his specialty is deciphering declassified records—a talent he later applied to the CIA’s long-hidden archives on Lee Harvey Oswald. Newman’s argument was not a case of “counterfactual historical reasoning,” as Larry Berman described it in an early response. 2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman’s argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman: (1) On October 2, 1963, Kennedy received the report of a mission to Saigon by McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The main recommendations, which appear in Section I( of the McNamara-Taylor report, were that a phased withdrawal be completed by the end of 1965 and that the “Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 out of 17,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Vietnam by the end of 1963.” At Kennedy’s instruction, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger made a public announcement that evening of McNamara’s recommended timetable for withdrawal. (2) On October 5, Kennedy made his formal decision. Newman quotes the minutes of the meeting that day: The President also said that our decision to remove 1,000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem. Instead the action should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed. (Emphasis added.) The passage illustrates two points: (a) that a decision was in fact made on that day, and ( that despite the earlier announcement of McNamara’s recommendation, the October 5 decision was not a ruse or pressure tactic to win reforms from Diem (as Richard Reeves, among others, has contended 3) but a decision to begin withdrawal irrespective of Diem or his reactions. (3) On October 11, the White House issued NSAM 263, which states: The President approved the military recommendations contained in section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. In other words, the withdrawal recommended by McNamara on October 2 was embraced in secret by Kennedy on October 5 and implemented by his order on October 11, also in secret. Newman argues that the secrecy after October 2 can be explained by a diplomatic reason. Kennedy did not want Diem or anyone else to interpret the withdrawal as part of any pressure tactic (other steps that were pressure tactics had also been approved). There was also a political reason: JFK had not decided whether he could get away with claiming that the withdrawal was a result of progress toward the goal of a self-sufficient South Vietnam. The alternative would have been to withdraw the troops while acknowledging failure. And this, Newman argues, Kennedy was prepared to do if it became necessary. He saw no reason, however, to take this step before it became necessary. If the troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still standing, so much the better. 4 But from October 11 onward the CIA’s reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263. It represented an effort by the CIA to undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his full reasoning with the CIA. (4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were “to intensify the struggle” and “to bring Americans out of there.” Victory, which had figured prominently in a similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list. (5) The Honolulu Conference of senior cabinet and military officials on November 20–21 was called to review plans in the wake of the Saigon coup. The military and the CIA, however, planned to use that meeting to pull the rug from under the false optimism which some had used to rationalize NSAM 263. However, Kennedy did not himself believe that we were withdrawing with victory. It follows that the changing image of the military situation would not have changed JFK’s decision. (6) In Honolulu, McGeorge Bundy prepared a draft of what would eventually be NSAM 273. The plan was to present it to Kennedy after the meeting ended. Dated November 21, this draft reflected the change in military reporting. It speaks, for example, of a need to “turn the tide not only of battle but of belief.” Plans to intensify the struggle, however, do not go beyond what Kennedy would have approved: A paragraph calling for actions against the North underscores the role of Vietnamese forces: 7. With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should be a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources, especially for sea-going activity, and such planning should indicate the time and investment necessary to achieve a wholly new level of effectiveness in this field of action. (Emphasis added.) (7) At Honolulu, a preliminary plan, known as CINCPAC OPLAN 34-63 and later implemented as OPLAN 34A, was prepared for presentation. This plan called for intensified sabotage raids against the North, employing Vietnamese commandos under U.S. control—a significant escalation. 5 While JCS chief Taylor had approved preparation of this plan, it had not been shown to McNamara. Tab E of the meeting’s briefing book, also approved by Taylor and also not sent in advance to McNamara, showed that the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already being gutted, by the device of substituting for the withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were being rotated out of Vietnam in any event. (8) The final version of NSAM 273, signed by Johnson on November 26, differs from the draft in several respects. Most are minor changes of wording. The main change is that the draft paragraph 7 has been struck in its entirety (there are two pencil slashes on the November 21 draft), and replaced with the following: Planning should include different levels of possible increased activity, and in each instance there be estimates such factors as: A. Resulting damage to North Vietnam; B. The plausibility denial; C. Vietnamese retaliation; D. Other international reaction. Plans submitted promptly for approval by authority. The new language is incomplete. It does not begin by declaring outright that the subject is attacks on the North. But the thrust is unmistakable, and the restrictive reference to “Government of Vietnam resources” is now missing. Newman concludes that this change effectively provided new authority for U.S.–directed combat actions against North Vietnam. Planning for these actions began therewith, and we now know that an OPLAN 34A raid in August 1964 provoked the North Vietnamese retaliation against the destroyer Maddox, which became the first Gulf of Tonkin incident. And this in turn led to the confused incident a few nights later aboard the Turner Joy, to reports that it too had been attacked, and to Johnson’s overnight decision to seek congressional support for “retaliation” against North Vietnam. From this, of course, the larger war then flowed. * * * A reply to Newman’s book appeared very quickly. It came from Noam Chomsky, hardly an apologist for Lyndon Johnson or the war. Chomsky despises the Kennedy apologists: equally the old insiders and the antiwar nostalgics—Arthur Schlesinger and Oliver Stone—and the historical memory of “the fallen leader who had escalated the attack against Vietnam from terror to aggression.” He reviles efforts to portray Kennedy’s foreign policy views as different from Johnson’s. On this point he may well be fundamentally correct, though for reasons quite different from those that he offers. Chomsky’s Rethinking Camelot challenges Newman’s main points. First, did Kennedy plan to withdraw without victory? Or, were the plans of NSAM 263 contingent on a continued perception of success in battle? Second, did the change in NSAM 273 between the draft (which was prepared for Kennedy but never seen by him) and the final version (signed by Johnson) represent a change in policy? Chomsky is categorical on both issues: “Two weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, there is not a phrase in the voluminous internal record that even hints at withdrawal without victory.” Elsewhere he notes that “[t]he withdrawal-without-victory thesis rests on the assumption that Kennedy realized that the optimistic military reports were incorrect. . . . Not a trace of supporting evidence appears in the internal record, or is suggested [by Newman].” And, as for the changes to NSAM 273: “There is no relevant difference between the two documents [draft and final], except that the LBJ version is weaker and more evasive.” Chomsky denies Newman’s claim that the new version of paragraph 7 in the final draft of NSAM 273 signed by Johnson on November 26 opened the way for OPLAN 34A and the use of U.S.–directed forces in covert operations against North Vietnam. Rather, he reads the Johnson version as applying only to Government of Vietnam forces, even though the language restricting action to those forces is no longer there. Peter Dale Scott, the former diplomat, professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of part of the Pentagon Papers, replied to Chomsky on both points almost immediately. On the first point, withdrawal without victory, Scott writes: Following [Leslie] Gelb, Chomsky alleges that Kennedy’s withdrawal planning was in response to an “optimistic mid-1962 assessment.” . . . But in fact the planning was first ordered by McNamara in May 1962. This was one month after ambassador Kenneth Galbraith, disenchanted after a presidentially ordered visit to Vietnam, had proposed a “political solution” based in part on a proposal to the Soviets entertaining “phased American withdrawal. ” Scott goes on to point out that it cannot be proven that Galbraith’s recommendation was responsible for McNamara’s order. But there is good reason to believe they were linked, that both reflected Kennedy’s long-term strategy on Vietnam.6 As for the proposition that no evidence hinting at withdrawal without victory exists, Scott argues that Chomsky’s “ internal planning record”—for the most part the Pentagon Papers—“is in fact an edited version of the primary documents.” Moreover, “the documentary record is conspicuously defective” for November 1963. “n all three editions of the Pentagon Papers there are no complete documents between the five [coup] cables of October 30 and McNamara’s memorandum of December 21; the 600 pages of documents from the Kennedy Administration end on October 30.” On the second point, concerning NSAM 273, Scott writes that Chomsky reads “Johnson’s NSAM as if it were as contextless as a Dead Sea Scroll,” dismissing its importance and ignoring “early accounts of it as a ‘major decision,’ a ‘pledge’ that determined ‘all that would follow,’ from journalists as diverse as Tom Wicker, Marvin Kalb, and I. F. Stone.” Scott writes that Chomsky also ignores Taylor’s memo to President Johnson of January 22, 1964, which cites NSAM 273 as authority to “prepare to escalate operations against North Vietnam.” In the course of this controversy, the ground had narrowed sharply. After Newman’s book, no one seriously disputed that Kennedy was contemplating withdrawal from Vietnam. Instead, the disagreements focused on four questions: Did the withdrawal plans depend on the perception of victory? Did Kennedy act on his plans? Were actions he may have taken noisy but cosmetic, a pressure tactic aimed at Diem or a ploy for the American public, or were they for real? And were the OPLAN 34A operations that got under way following Kennedy’s death a sharp departure from previous U.S. policy or merely a “Government of Vietnam” activity consonant with intensifying the war in the South? * * * The publication of McNamara’s In Retrospect sharpened the terms of debate. Some key source materials, including the texts of the McNamara-Taylor report and those of NSAM 263 and 273, have been in the public domain for years. McNamara’s 1995 account of his September 1963 mission to Vietnam makes substantial use of the McNamara-Taylor report and the quotations presented are a study in ambiguity. He quotes General Maxwell Taylor’s apparent conviction that the war could be won by the end of 1965, but then he acknowledges that there were “conflicting reports about military progress and political stability” and describes the impressive doubts of those he spoke with that the South Vietnamese government was capable of the effective actions that military victory required: The military campaign has made great progress and continues to progress. . . . There are serious political tensions in Saigon. . . . Further repressive actions by Diem and Nhu could change the present favorable military trends. . . . It is not clear that pressures exerted by the U.S. will move Diem and Nhu toward moderation. . . . The prospects that a replacement regime would be an improvement appear to be about 50-50. The drift seems clear enough: the Diem government is failing and there is no reason to think a replacement would be better. But the references to “great progress” leave room for doubt. Withdrawal with victory or without it? McNamara then reproduces the precise wording of the military recommendations from Section I( of the report: We recommend that: [1] General Harkins review with Diem the military changes necessary to complete the military campaign in the Northern and Central areas by the end of 1964, and in the Delta by the end of 1965. [2] A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time. [3] In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. The report then went on to make a number of recommendations to “impress upon Diem our disapproval of his political program.” These matters dealt with the repression of the Buddhists and related issues; the recommendation to announce plans to withdraw 1,000 soldiers is not listed under this heading. The reason for the ambiguity over the military situation, as well as the vague “it should be possible” wording of the second recommendation, becomes clearer when McNamara describes the National Security Council meeting of October 2, 1963, which revealed a “total lack of consensus” over the battlefield situation: One faction believed military progress had been good and training had progressed to the point where we could begin to withdraw. A second faction did not see the war as progressing well and did not see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of successful training. But they, too, agreed that we should begin to withdraw. . . . The third faction, representing the majority, considered the South Vietnamese trainable but believed our training had not been in place long enough to achieve results and, therefore, should continue at current levels. As McNamara’s 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow. The denouement came shortly thereafter: After much debate, the president endorsed our recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by December 31, 1963. He did so, I recall, without indicating his reasoning. In any event, because objections had been so intense and because I suspected others might try to get him to reverse the decision, I urged him to announce it publicly. That would set it in concrete. . . . The president finally agreed, and the announcement was released by Pierre Salinger after the meeting. Before a large audience at the LBJ Library on May 1, 1995, McNamara restated his account of this meeting and stressed its importance. He confirmed that President Kennedy’s action had three elements: (1) complete withdrawal “by December 31, 1965,” (2) the first 1,000 out by the end of 1963, and (3) a public announcement, to set these decisions “in concrete,” which was made. McNamara also added the critical information that there exists a tape of this meeting, in the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, to which he had access and on which his account is based. The existence of a taping system in JFK’s oval office had become known over the years, particularly through the release of partial transcripts of the historic meeting of the “ExComm” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. But the full extent of Kennedy’s taping was not known. And, according to McNamara, access to particular tapes was tightly controlled by representatives of the Kennedy family. When McNamara spoke in Austin, only he and his coauthor, Brian VanDeMark, had been granted the privilege of listening to the actual tape recordings of Kennedy’s White House meetings on Vietnam. In 1997, however, this situation changed. The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent civilian body established under the 1992 JFK Records Act that has already been responsible for the release of millions of pages of official records deemed relevant to Kennedy’s assassination, ruled that his tapes relating to Vietnam decision-making should be released. In July the JFK Library began releasing key tapes, including those of the withdrawal meetings on October 2 and 5, 1963. 7 A careful review of the October 2 meeting makes clear that McNamara’s account is essentially accurate and even to some degree understated. One can hear McNamara—the voice is unmistakable—arguing for a firm timetable to withdraw all U.S. forces from Vietnam, whether the war can be won in 1964, which he doubts, or not. McNamara is emphatic: “We need a way to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it.” In Retrospect’s discussion of Kennedy’s decision to withdraw ends at this point. McNamara makes no mention of NSAM 263. However, on the tape of the meeting of October 5, 1963, one can clearly hear a voice—it may be Robert McNamara or McGeorge Bundy—asking President John F. Kennedy for “formal approval” of “items one, two, and three” on a paper evidently in front of them. It is clear that one of these items is the recommendation to withdraw 1,000 men by the end of 1963, the rationale being that they are no longer needed. This short exchange is thus unmistakably a request for a formal presidential decision concerning the McNamara-Taylor recommendations. After a short discussion of the possible political effect in Vietnam of announcing this decision, the voice of JFK can be clearly heard: “Let’s go on ahead and do it,” followed by a few words deciphered by historian George Eliades as “without making a public statement about it.” Unfortunately, the last White House tape from the Kennedy administration is dated November 7, 1963. The archivists at the JFK Library have no information on why the tapings either ended or are unavailable for later dates. McNamara states that he has “no specific memory” of the Honolulu Conference that he was sent to chair on November 20, 1963. The Military Documents The President of the United States does not make decisions in a vacuum. Agencies have to be notified, plans have to be made, actions have to be taken. Part of the enduring doubt over Kennedy’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam surely stems from the failure of this decision to cast a shadow in the primary record, and particularly in the Pentagon Papers, on which so many historians have relied for so many years. Furthermore, a persistent skeptic can still point to the “it should be possible” language of the McNamara-Taylor Report with respect to the final date of 1965 as leaving an “out” for the case where the military situation might turn sour. In two years and two months, much can happen, as events would prove. But as Scott already pointed out to Chomsky in 1993, the primary record available to date has been heavily edited. Documents from November 1, 1963, through early December are conspicuously missing. So, we now learn, are many others. In January 1998, again under the supervision of the ARRB, about 900 pages of new materials were declassified and released from the JCS archives. These include important records from May 1963, from October, and from the period immediately following Kennedy’s death; many had been reviewed for declassification in 1989 but were not declassified at that time. They clarify considerably the nature of the “presently prepared plans” referred to in the McNamara-Taylor third recommendation, and they give the military leadership’s interpretation of the direction they were getting from JFK. Since it is well known that the Pentagon did not favor withdrawal, it is fair to assume that if wiggle room existed in the President’s instructions it would surface in these documents. Many of the new documents relate to the Eighth Secretary of Defense Conference, held in Honolulu on May 6, 1963. Here one gets a taste of McNamara’s skepticism and the replies of the brass. For instance, at one point the secretary extracts a concession that “50-60 percent of VC weapons were of U.S. origin.” A bit later, we read: “ GEN HARKINS stated that for effective control the border should be defined, marked and cleared similar to the Greek boundary with Albania and Bulgaria. However, this cannot be done in the foreseeable future.” Turning to the development of a “comprehensive plan,” the documents immediately reflect discussions of a phase-down in the U.S. presence. For instance: “ SEC MCNAMARA stated that our efforts should be directed toward turning over equipment now in U.S. units supporting the Vietnamese as rapidly as possible. He added that we must avoid creating a situation that now obtains in Korea where we are presently spending almost half a billion dollars per year in foreign aid.” A little later, we find a decision noted: “1. Draw up training plans for the RVNAF that will permit us to start an earlier withdrawal of U.S. personnel than proposed under the plans presented.” And: “d. Plan to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel from RVN by December 1963.” Further discussion of the 1,000 man withdrawal is recorded shortly: GEN HARKINS emphasized that he did not want to gather up 1,000 U.S. personnel and have them depart with bands playing, flags flying etc. This would have a bad effect on the Vietnamese, to be pulling out just when it appears they are winning. SEC MCNAMARA stated that this would have to be handled carefully due to the psychological impact. However, there should be an intensive training program of RVNAF to allow removal of U.S. units rather than individuals. There follows considerable discussion of proposals to launch raids on North Vietnam. For Geneva convention reasons, it is agreed that these must be covert. Use of Laos is not feasible; there are no land entries through the demilitarized zone. As for sea entry, available boats are susceptible to weather and too slow. Sea is the only means of exfiltration. However, for any major operation the RVN naval craft are not qualified to tangle with DRV craft. . . . Build-up in CIA resources by end CY 1963 includes 40 teams in addition to 9 in country. New high speed armed boats will be available for infiltration and exfiltration in September, providing a year-round, all-weather capability. Thus emerges an answer to one of the critical questions separating Newman and Scott from Chomsky. OPLAN 34A, when it emerged in November, would be a CIA operation. It could not be otherwise, for the Government of Vietnam did not possess the boats. 8 Eventually, discussion turns to projected force structures, and a table titled “ CPSVN—FORECAST OF PHASE-OUT OF US FORCES ” gives precise estimates, by major unit, of the projected American commitment through 1968. McNamara’s reaction to this timetable is recorded clearly: In connection with this presentation, made by COMUSMACV (attached hereto), the Secretary of Defense stated that the phase-out appears too slow. He directed that training plans be developed for the GVN by CINCPAC which will permit a more rapid phase-out of U.S. forces, stating specifically that we should review our plans for pilot training with the view to accelerating it materially. He made particular point of the desirability of speeding up training of helicopter pilots, so that we may give the Vietnamese our copters and thus be able to move our own forces out. ACTION : Joint Staff (J-3); message directive to CINCPAC, info COMUSMACV. (Emphasis added.) The May conference thus fills in the primary record: plans were under development for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. On October 2, 1963, as we have previously seen, President Kennedy made clear his determination to implement those plans—to withdraw 1,000 troops by the end of 1963, and to get almost all the rest out by the end of 1965. There followed, on October 4, a memorandum titled “South Vietnam Actions” from General Maxwell Taylor to his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals May, Wheeler, Shoup, and Admiral McDonald, that reads: b. The program currently in progress to train Vietnamese forces will be reviewed and accelerated as necessary to insure that all essential functions visualized to be required for the projected operational environment, to include those now performed by U.S. military units and personnel, can be assumed properly by the Vietnamese by the end of calendar year 1965. All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965. (Emphasis added.) “All planning” is an unconditional phrase. There is no contingency here, or elsewhere in this memorandum. The next paragraph reads: c. Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963 per your DTG 212201Z July, and as approved for planning by JCS DTG 062042Z September. Previous guidance on the public affairs annex is altered to the extent that the action will now be treated in low key, as the initial increment of U.S. forces whose presence is no longer required because (a) Vietnamese forces have been trained to assume the function involved; or ( the function for which they came to Vietnam has been completed. (Emphasis added.) This resolves the question of how the initial withdrawal was to be carried out. It was not to be a noisy or cosmetic affair, designed to please either U.S. opinion or to change policies in Saigon. It was rather to be a low-key, matter-of-fact beginning to a process that would play out over the following two years. The final paragraph of Taylor’s memorandum underlines this point by directing that “specific checkpoints will be established now against which progress can be evaluated on a quarterly basis.” There is much more in the JCS documents to show that Kennedy was well aware of the evidence that South Vietnam was, in fact, losing the war. But it hardly matters. The withdrawal decided on was unconditional, and did not depend on military progress or lack of it. The Escalation at Kennedy’s Death Four days after Kennedy was killed, NSAM 273 incorporated the new president’s directives into policy. It made clear that the objectives of Johnson’s policy remained the same as Kennedy’s: “to assist the people and government of South Vietnam to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy” through training support and without the application of overt U.S. military force. But Johnson had also approved intensified planning for covert action against North Vietnam by CIA-supported South Vietnamese forces. With this, McNamara confirms one of Newman’s central claims: NSAM 273 changed policy. Yes, the “central objectives” remained the same: a Vietnamese war with no “overt U.S. military force.” But covert force is still “U.S. military force.” And that was introduced or at least first approved, as McNamara writes, by NSAM 273 within four days of Kennedy’s assassination.Moreover, McNamara effectively supports Newman on the meaning of NSAM 273’s seventh paragraph, which was inserted in the draft (as we have seen) sometime between November 21 and 26—after the Honolulu meeting had adjourned and probably after Kennedy died. A final military document is relevant here. Dated December 11, 1963, it is titled “Department of Defense Actions to Implement NSAM No. 273, 26 November 1963.” This document was prepared by Marine Lieutenant Colonel M. C. Dalby; it is from CINCPAC files and is labeled “Group 1—Excluded from Automatic Downgrading and Declassification.” The document begins coldly: “After reviewing the recent discussions of South Vietnam which occurred in Honolulu and after discussing the matter further with Ambassador Lodge, the President directed that certain guidance be issued to various Government Agencies. This was promulgated in the form of National Security Action Memorandum 273, 26 November 1963.” There is no reference to the change of commander in chief, which had occurred within the time frame indicated by the opening sentence. The particular importance of this document is its reference to paragraph 7 of NSAM 273. Planning for intensified action against North Vietnam was directed following the Honolulu Conference (JCS 3697, 26 Nov 1963) in the form of a 12-month program. . . . A deadline of 20 Dec 63 has been set for completion of the plan. There are then notes that these requirements were communicated to CINCPAC and COMUSMACV on December 2, with a reply from COMUSMACV on December 3. CIA station guidance, however, happened even more rapidly than that: CIA guidance to Saigon Station for intensified planning was dispatched following the Honolulu Conference (CAS 84972, 25 Nov 63). (Emphasis added.) In other words, the CIA began developing intensified plans to implement OPLAN 34A, the program of seaborne raids and sabotage against North Vietnam that would lead to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and eventually to the wider war, one day before President Johnson signed the directive authorizing that action. How this happened, and its precise significance, remains to be determined. 9 Conclusion John F. Kennedy had formally decided to withdraw from Vietnam, whether we were winning or not. Robert McNamara, who did not believe we were winning, supported this decision. 10 The first stage of withdrawal had been ordered. The final date, two years later, had been specified. These decisions were taken, and even placed, in an oblique and carefully limited way, before the public. Howard Jones makes two large contributions to this tale. One of them is simply range, depth, and completeness. His recent book Death of a Generation is a full history of how the assassinations of Diem and then of JFK prolonged a war that otherwise might have ended quietly within a few years. Where this essay has presented the story-within-a-story of just a few Washington weeks, Jones goes back to the start of the 1960s, chronicling the struggle for power and policy that marked the whole of Kennedy’s thousand days. And he presents a reasonably complete account of the archival record surrounding the withdrawal decisions of October 1963. Equally important, Jones’s reach extends to Saigon. In a long and fascinating section he outlines the intrigues that led to the murders of Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu on November 1, 1963. Here, Kennedy’s White House appears at its worst. It was fractious, disorganized, preoccupied with American politics, ignorant of the forces it faced in Vietnam. Diem’s mistreatment of the Buddhists, which provoked the monk Quang Duc to burn himself on a Saigon street in June 1963, traumatized the White House. And following that incident, Madame Nhu and her remarks about “barbecued bonzes” were an irritant out of proportion to their importance. Thus, in part, the decision to dissociate from Diem. In August 1963 it was a faction of subordinates (Averell Harriman, Roger Hilsman, Michael Forrestal) who seized the opportunity to foment a Saigon coup, taking advantage of the absence of the most senior officials over a Washington weekend. Then, having set events in motion, the White House became preoccupied with a deniability that was wholly implausible. Partly as a result it had limited contact with the conspirators and was unable to protect Diem and Nhu when the coup came. Diem was indefensible in many ways. But the coup went forward with no alternative in view; and as the French ambassador to Saigon put it at the time: “any other government will be even more dependent on the Americans, will be obedient to them in all things, and so there will be no chance for peace.” Meanwhile, there are tantalizing undercurrents of what might have been. Was Nhu in discussions with intermediaries for Ho Chi Minh, with the possibility that there might have been a deal between North and South to boot the Americans from Vietnam? It appears that he was. And had he succeeded, it would have saved infinite trouble. U.S. policy over Vietnam changed again in late November1963. The main change was a decision to authorize OPLAN 34-A—minor but fateful commando raids against targets in the North. The decision to launch covert attacks on North Vietnam does not by itself establish that Lyndon Johnson wanted a larger war. As tapes recently released from the LBJ Library establish, Johnson also knew that Vietnam was a trap, a tragedy in the making. He feared that a catastrophe would follow. In this respect, Johnson and Kennedy were similar. And yet, Johnson could not muster Kennedy’s determination, one might say blind determination, to avoid the disaster. He acceded to proposals for covert action, and he promised the military, on November 24, that they could have what they wanted. And so the sequence of events that led to the Tonkin Gulf, to our retaliation, to the North Vietnamese decision to introduce their own main forces in the South, and to our decision to introduce main forces, played out. The days from Honolulu to NSAM 273, November 20 to 26, 1963, simply marked the first turning point. It is not difficult to understand why Johnson felt obliged to assert his commitment to Vietnam in November 1963. To continue with Kennedy’s withdrawal, after his death, would have been difficult, since the American public had not been told that the war was being lost. Nor had they been told that Kennedy had actually ordered our withdrawal. To maintain our commitment, therefore, was to maintain the illusion of continuity, and this—in the moment of trauma that followed the assassination—was Johnson’s paramount political objective. Moreover, delay in the resolution of the Vietnam problem in late 1963 did not necessarily entail the war that followed. Our commitment then was still small. Tonkin Gulf and its aftermath lay almost a year into the future. Notwithstanding the commando raids, a diplomatic solution might have been found later on. Left in charge, Lyndon Johnson temporized, agonized, and cursed the fates. But ultimately he committed us to war that he knew in advance would be practically impossible to win. Nothing can erase this. And yet meanwhile, alongside McNamara, he too prevented any steps that might lead to an invasion of the North, direct conflict with China, and nuclear confrontation. He bided his time, until the trauma of Tet in January of 1968 and his own departure from politics in March liberated him to do what Kennedy had done over Laos in 1961: send Harriman to end it at the negotiating table. * * * Why did Johnson do it? He was not misinformed about the prospects for sucess. He was not crazy. His political fate in 1964 did not depend on a show of toughness. But one possibility is that the alternatives, as he saw them, were worse. To appreciate this possibility, one needs to grasp not one but two exceptionally thorny nettles: that of the strategic balance in the early 1960s on the one hand, and that of the assassination of John F. Kennedy on the other. In contemplating Johnson’s dilemma we find ourselves poised between the two black holes of the modern history of the United States.11 Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam was, as Jones writes, “unconditional, for he approved a calendar of events that did not necessitate a victory.” It was also part of a larger strategy, of a sequence that included the Laos and Berlin settlements in 1961, the non-invasion of Cuba in 1962, the Test Ban Treaty in 1963. Kennedy subordinated the timing of these events to politics: he was quite prepared to leave soldiers in harm’s way until after his own reelection. His larger goal after that was to settle the Cold War, without either victory or defeat—a strategic vision laid out in JFK’s commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963. And that was, partly, a question of atomic survival—a subject that can only be said to have obsessed America’s civilian leadership in those days, and for very good reason. The Soviet Union, which had at that time only four intercontinental rockets capable of hitting the U.S. mainland, was not the danger that rational men most feared. The United States held an overwhelming nuclear advantage in late 1963. Accordingly, our nuclear plans were not actually about deterrence. Rather, then as evidently again now, they envisioned preventive war fought over a pretext.12 There were those who were dedicated to carrying out those plans at the appropriate moment. In July 1961, the nuclear planners had specified that the optimal moment for such an attack would come at the end of 1963. And yet, standing against them (as Daniel Ellsberg was told at the time), the civilian leaders of the United States were determined never, under any circumstances, to allow U.S. nuclear weapons to be used first—not in Laos or Vietnam, nor against China, not over Cuba or Berlin, nor against the Soviet Union. For political reasons, at a moment when Americans had been propagandized into thinking of the atomic bomb as their best defense, this was the deepest secret of the time. Was it also a deadly secret? Did LBJ have reason to fear, on the day he took office, that he was facing a nuclear coup d’etat?13 Similar questions have engendered scorn for 40 years. But they are not illegitimate—no more so, let me venture, than the idea that Kennedy really had decided to quit Vietnam. Perhaps someday a historian will answer them as well as Howard Jones has now resolved the Vietnam puzzle. Meanwhile, let us hope that we might learn something about the need to recognize and cope with policy failure. And as for the truth behind the darkest state secrets, let us also hope that the victims of September 11, 2001, don’t have to wait as long. < James K. Galbraith, a 2003 Carnegie Scholar, holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr., Chair of Government/Business Relations at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. Notes 1 JFK and Vietnam has an odd story, in which I should acknowledge a small role. On release, it received a front-page review by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the New York Times Book Review. But of some 32,000 copies printed (in two printings, according to Newman) only about 10,000 were sold before Warner Books abruptly ceased selling the hardcover—a fact I discovered on my own in the fall of 1993, when I attempted to assign it to a graduate class. I met Newman in November 1993, partly through the good offices of the LBJ Library. I carried his grievance personally to an honorable high official of Time Warner, whose intervention secured the return of his rights. Still, the hardback was never reissued, and no paperback has appeared. 2 “Counterfactual Historical Reasoning: NSAM 263 and NSAM 273,” mimeo for a conference at the LBJ Library, 14–15 October 1993, published as “NSAM 263 and 273: Manipulating History” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, eds., Vietnam: The Early Decisions (University of Texas Press, 1997). 3 Reeves, author of President Kennedy: Profile of Power, made this argument in a televised lecture at the LBJ Library in early 1995. 4 In a contribution to Vietnam: The Early Decisions, Newman adds a further reason: Kennedy had, on October 2, allowed McNamara and Taylor to announce, as their recommended target date, that the withdrawal be completed by 1965. It would have been awkward to follow just three days later with a presidential decision making clear that the timetable was, in fact, a firm one. 5 The fate of these commandos surfaced in the New York Times of 14 April 1995, where it was reported that after 30 years in prison, many were denied immigration to the United States because of a lack of service records. 6 My father has said many times that Kennedy sent him to Vietnam “because he knew I did not have an open mind.” 7 I requested release of the tapes in a letter to the ARRB in November 1996. 8 CINCPAC was developing these plans, but they had not been shown to JFK, according to Newman. 9 According to Newman, LBJ took a belligerent tone at his first Vietnam meeting as President on November 24, and McGeorge Bundy attributed the escalatory language in NSAM 273 to this. However, by any standard the CIA moved quickly, and by this account it relied on the discussions at Honolulu—which occurred while JFK was still alive. 10 I have in this narrative deliberately underplayed the role of my own father, who was repeatedly called upon by Kennedy to deliver arguments in favor of disengagement from Vietnam, and whose 1962 recommendation for phased withdrawal was probably the basis of the 1963 orders. My father did not know that the actual decision was taken in October 1963, but he is in no doubt as to Kennedy’s determination: he recalls Kennedy in 1962 saying to him privately and unmistakably that withdrawal from Vietnam, as that from Laos and the detachment from Cuba, was a matter of political timing. 11 My father retains a distinct, chilling recollection of LBJ’s words to him, in private, on one of their last meetings before the Vietnam War finally drove them apart: “You may not like what I’m doing in Vietnam, Ken, but you would not believe what would happen if I were not here.” 12 Heather Purcell and I documented these nightmares in an article published in 1994 entitled “Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?” It is still available on the website of the American Prospect. When once I asked the late Walt Rostow if he knew anything about the National Security Council meeting of July 20, 1961 (at which these plans were presented), he responded with no hesitation: “Do you mean the one where they wanted to blow up the world?” 13 There is no doubt that the danger of nuclear war was on Johnson’s mind. It also explains important points about his behavior in those days, including his orders to Earl Warren and Richard Russell (the latter in a phone call, a recording of which has long been available on the C-SPAN website) as to how they would conduct their commission. The point to appreciate is that there is only one way a war could have started at that time: by preemptive attack by the United States against the Soviet Union. © 1997–2003 by James K. Galbraith. All rights reserved. Originally published in the October/November 2003 issue of Boston Review Shortcut to: http://bostonreview.net/BR28.5/galbraith.html B....

Your welcome Robert... It did not take me long, lucky this time, the info came up quickly.....as it was within my collections, which I call the "dungeons" where I spend much time... I will try to stay on top of the Operation Valkyrie thread, for further information..... The withdrawl as you comment, was never resolved, that was made positively impossible..... and though it has been found that LBJ announced he would be going along with such after the assassination, I believe it was by March that had changed....drastically.. This below is also an older thread on this Forum.....which I find of interest.. The Vietnam War and the Assassination of JFK http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:Tx3CB...lient=firefox-a Thanks.. Take care...... B.... Below LBJ Nam 5.31.68

Ron, John: You may be interested in some of this infomartion.... B...... Troop reductions in S. Vietnam. (transcript).. Many people seem to be unaware that President Kennedy publicly announced his intention to withdraw a thousand men from South Vietnam by the end of 1963. This announcement was made in a press conference on October 31, 1963, just 22 days before his death. In fact, the very first question asked in that press conference was about troop reductions in Vietnam and Korea. Here is the entire question and Kennedy’s response: "[REPORTER:] Mr. President, back to the question of troop reductions, are any intended in the far east at the present time – particularly in Korea and is there any speedup in the withdrawal from Vietnam intended? [PRESIDENT KENNEDY:] Well as you know, when Secretary McNamara and General Taylor came back, they announced that we would expect to withdraw a thousand men from South Vietnam before the end of the year. And there has been some reference to that by General Harkins. If we’re able to do that, that will be our schedule. I think the first unit, the first contingent, would be 250 men who are not involved in what might be called front-line operations. It would be our hope to lesson the number of Americans there by a thousand as the training intensifies and is carried on in South Vietnam." ------ from JFK’s press conference, October 31, 1963 [An audio cassette tape recording of the referenced press conference was provided by the John F. Kennedy Library, audio-visual department, Columbia Point, Boston, MA 02125.] NOTE: The referenced press conference is widely known and snippets are frequently used in documentaries about JFK shown on the major television networks; however, Kennedy’s comments about scheduled reduction of personnel in South Vietnam are ALWAYS deleted from ALL such documentaries. The producers of these documentaries usually show an interview with Walter Cronkite sometime earlier where President Kennedy suggested we should stay in Vietnam. Obviously Kennedy changed his public position on Vietnam shortly before he was killed, but the news media – to this day – is keeping that information from the public. The question is, WHY? Dave Sharp.... Kennedy Had a Plan for Early Exit in Vietnam By TIM WEINER Published: Tuesday, December 23, 1997 http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/23/us/kenne...2fVietnam%20War THE SECOND BIGGEST LIE by Michael Morrissey The biggest lie of our time, after the Warren Report, is the notion that Johnson merely continued or expanded Kennedy's policy in Vietnam after the assassination. 1. JFK's policy In late 1962, Kennedy was still fully committed to supporting the Diem regime, though he had some doubts even then. When Senator Mike Mansfield advised withdrawal at that early date: The President was too disturbed by the Senator's unexpected argument to reply to it. He said to me later when we talked about the discussion, "I got angry with Mike for disagreeing with our policy so completely, and I got angry with myself because I found myself agreeing with him (Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970, p. 15). By the spring of 1963, Kennedy had reversed course completely and agreed with Mansfield: "The President told Mansfield that he had been having serious second thoughts about Mansfield's argument and that he now agreed with the Senator's thinking on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam. 'But I can't do it until 1965--after I'm reelected,' Kennedy told Mansfield.... After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, 'In 1965 I'll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I'll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don't care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I'm reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected' (O'Donnell, p. 16)." Sometime after that Kennedy told O'Donnell again that "...he had made up his mind that after his reelection he would take the risk of unpopularity and make a complete withdrawal of American military forces from Vietnam. He had decided that our military involvement in Vietnam's civil war would only grow steadily bigger and more costly without making a dent in the larger political problem of Communist expansion in Southeast Asia" (p. 13). Just before he was killed he repeated this commitment: "'They keep telling me to send combat units over there,' the President said to us one day in October [1963]. 'That means sending draftees, along with volunteer regular Army advisers, into Vietnam. I'll never send draftees over there to fight'." (O'Donnell, p. 383). Kennedy's public statements and actions were consistent with his private conversations, though more cautiously expressed in order to appease the military and right-wing forces that were clamoring for more, not less, involvement in Vietnam, and with whom he did not want to risk an open confrontation one year before the election. As early as May 22, 1963, he said at a press conference: "...we are hopeful that the situation in South Vietnam would permit some withdrawal in any case by the end of the year, but we can't possibly make that judgement at the present time" (Harold W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, eds., Kennedy and the Press: The News Conferences, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965, p. 447). Then came the statement on October 2: "President Kennedy asked McNamara to announce to the press after the meeting the immediate withdrawal of one thousand soldiers and to say that we would probably withdraw all American forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965. When McNamara was leaving the meeting to talk to the White House reporters, the President called to him, "And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too" (O'Donnell, p. 17). This decision was not popular with the military, the Cabinet, the vice-president, or the CIA, who continued to support Diem, the dictator the US had installed in South Vietnam in 1955. Hence the circumspect wording of the statement on Oct. 2, which was nevertheless announced as a "statement of United States policy": Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgement that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965, although there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S. training personnel. They reported that by the end of this year, the U.S. program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where 1,000 U.S. military personnel assigned to South Viet-Nam can be withdrawn (Documents on American Foreign Relations 1963, Council on Foreign Relations, New York: Harper & Row, 1964, p. 296). NSAM 263, signed on Oct. 11, 1963, officially approved and implemented the same McNamara-Taylor recommendations that had prompted the press statement of Oct. 2. They recommended that: "A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time. "In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort" (Pentagon Papers, NY: Bantam, 1971, pp. 211-212). The withdrawal policy was confirmed at a news conference on Oct. 31, where Kennedy said in response to a reporter's question if there was "any speedup in the withdrawal from Vietnam": "I think the first unit or first contingent would be 250 men who are not involved in what might be called front-line operations. It would be our hope to lessen the number of Americans there by 1000, as the training intensifies and is carried on in South Vietnam" (Kennedy and the Press, p. 508). By this time it had become apparent that Diem was not going to mend his brutal ways and provide any sort of government in South Vietnam that the US could reasonably support, if indeed any US- supported regime had any hope of popular support at that point. The only alternative to a total US military commitment was to replace Diem with someone capable of forming a viable coalition government, along the lines of the agreement for Laos that had been worked out with Krushchev's support in Vienna in June 1962. The point of deposing Diem, in other words, was to enable an American withdrawal, as O'Donnell and Powers confirm: "One day when he [Kennedy] was talking with Dave and me about pulling out of Vietnam, we asked him how he could manage a military withdrawal without losing American prestige in Southeast Asia. 'Easy,' he said. 'Put a government in there that will ask us to leave'" (p. 18). This decision, too, was not popular with the Cabinet or with Johnson. Secretary of State Rusk said at a meeting on Aug. 31, 1963, "that it would be far better for us to start on the firm basis of two things--that we will not pull out of Vietnam until the war is won, and that we will not run a coup." McNamara agreed, and so did Johnson, the latter adding that he "had never really seen a genuine alternative to Diem" and that "from both a practical and a political viewpoint, it would be a disaster to pull out...and that we should once again go about winning the war." (NYT, Pentagon Papers, p. 205). Diem and his brother Nhu were both murdered during the coup on Nov. 1, 1963, but much as Kennedy's critics might like to imply that he ordered their executions, he had nothing to gain from such barbarity. O'Donnell and Powers say the killings "shocked and depressed him" and made him "only more sceptical of our military advice from Saigon and more determined to pull out of the Vietnam war" (p. 17). The US liaison with the anti-Diem generals, Lt. Col. Lucien Conein, a long-time CIA operative who had helped Edward Lansdale and the CIA bring Diem to power in 1954, later told the press, on President Nixon's suggestion, that Kennedy had known about the Diem assassination plot, but this was a pure fabrication (Jim Hougan, Spooks, NY: William Morrow, 1978, p. 138). It is more likely that Diem and Nhu were killed by the same forces that killed Kennedy himself three weeks later. Two days before Kennedy was shot, there was a top-level policy conference on Vietnam in Honolulu, where the issue was not just withdrawal but accelerated withdrawal, along with substantial cuts in military aid. As Peter Scott notes in his important but much-ignored essay in the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers, the Honolulu conference agreed to speed up troop withdrawal by six months and reduce aid by $33 million ("Vietnamization and the Drama of the Pentagon Papers," Pentagon Papers, Gravel edition, Vol. 5, Boston: Beacon Press, p. 224). The New York Times also reported that the conference had "reaffirmed the U.S. plan to bring home about 1,000 of its 16,500 troops from South Vietnam by January 1" (11/21/63, p. 8, quoted in Scott, p. 224). Curiously, because of the Honolulu conference and a coincidental trip by other Cabinet members to Japan, the Secretaries of State (Rusk), Defense (McNamara), the Treasury (Dillon), Commerce (Hodges), Labor (Wirtz), Agriculture (Freeman), and the Interior (Udall), as well as the Director of the CIA (McCone), the ambassador to South Vietnam (Lodge), chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Taylor), and head of U.S. forces in Vietnam (Harkins) were all out of the country when Kennedy was killed. Only his brother Robert, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, who apparently returned to Washington from Honolulu on Nov. 21, the HEW Secretary (Celebrezze), and the Postmaster General (Gronouski) were in Washington on Nov. 22. Johnson, of course, was with the president in Dallas, but this too was curious, since normal security precautions would avoid having the president and vice- president away from Washington at the same time, and together. 2. LBJ's policy In addition to Kennedy's own private and public statements, and the policy directed by NSAM 263, the second paragraph of Johnson's own directive, NSAM 273, signed four days after the assassination, explicitly affirms the continuation of the withdrawal plan announced on Oct. 2: "The objectives of the United States with respect to the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel remain as stated in the White House statement of Oct. 2, 1963" (Pentagon Papers, NYT, p. 233). Obviously, Johnson did not continue the withdrawal policy very long. Exactly when he reversed it is a matter of controversy, but it is certain that the decision was made by March 27, 1964: "Thus ended de jure the policy of phase out and withdrawal and all the plans and programs oriented to it (Pentagon Papers, Gravel ed., 2:196)." The first indication of this change came the day after the assassination: "The only hint that something might be different from on-going plans came in a Secretary of Defense memo for the President three days prior to this NSC meeting [on Nov. 26]." Johnson "began to have a sense of uneasiness about Vietnam" in early December and initiated a "major policy review (2:191)." It is not necessary to agree with Peter Scott that the text of NSAM 273 in itself reveals Johnson's reversal of Kennedy's policy, thus giving the lie to paragraph 2, which purports to continue that policy. The differences between the text proposed by McNamara/Taylor, JFK's White House statement, and LBJ's NSAM 273 are worth noting, however. Where McNamara/Taylor refer to the security of South Vietnam as "vital to United States security," Kennedy says it is "a major interest of the United States as other free nations." The syntax is sloppy here, so that "as other free nations" could mean "as is that of other free nations [besides Vietnam]" or "as it is of other free nations [besides the US]," but in either case Kennedy is clearly attempting to relativize the US commitment to South Vietnam. Further on he refers to US policy in South Vietnam "as in other parts of the world," again qualifying the commitment. These qualifications are missing in Johnson's statement, which refers exclusively to Vietnam. McNamara-Taylor refer to the "overriding objective of denying this country [south Vietnam] to Communism." Kennedy softens this to "policy of working with the people and Government of South Vietnam to deny this country to communism." Johnson hardens "overriding objective" again to "central object" (i.e. objective), which he defines as "to win their contest" rather than as "to deny this country to communism," which was Kennedy's formulation. McNamara-Taylor talk about "suppressing the Viet Cong insurgency." Kennedy qualifies this as "the externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Viet Cong." This is important, since the "Viet Cong" were nothing more than Vietnamese nationalists who happened to be living in South Vietnam. They were supported by the North, but in 1963 Ho Chi Minh would have been glad to stop the "external stimulation and support" he was giving the Viet Cong in exchange for nationwide free elections, which had been promised by the 1954 Geneva Accords but never took place, because he would have won in a landslide, in the South as well as the North. The best the US could have hoped for was a coalition government, as in Laos. By limiting the US commitment to stopping "external support" of the Viet Cong, Kennedy could well have been leaving the way open for a negotiated settlement. Johnson drops the term "Viet Cong" altogether and refers to the "externally directed and supported communist conspiracy." Kennedy's externally stimulated Viet Cong insurgency becomes Johnson's externally directed communist conspiracy. The Viet Cong have been completely subsumed under a much larger and familiar bugaboo, the international "communist conspiracy." In this one sentence, Johnson has greatly widened the war, turning what Kennedy was still willing to recognize as an indigenous rebellion into a primal struggle between good and evil. But again, it is not necessary to agree that these textual differences give the lie to paragraph 2 of NSAM 273, where Johnson vows to continue Kennedy's withdrawal policy, to agree that Johnson did, at some point, reverse the policy. This would seem to be obvious, yet we find most historians bending over backward to avoid making this simple observation. In fact, we find just the opposite assertion--that there was no change in policy. If we take NSAM 273 at face value, we must say that this is correct: Johnson continued Kennedy's withdrawal policy. But this is not what the historians mean when they say there was no change in policy. They mean that Johnson continued Kennedy's policy of escalation. The entire matter of withdrawal is ignored or glossed over. 3. The Establishment perspective Let us take some examples, chosen at random (emphasis added): "...President Kennedy...began the process of backing up American military aid with "advisers." At the time of his murder there were 23,000 [sic] of them in South Vietnam. President Johnson took the same view of the importance of Vietnam..."(J.M. Roberts, The Pelican History of the World, 2nd ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980, p. 988-989). "Although Johnson followed Kennedy's lead in sending more and more troops to Vietnam (it peaked at 542,000, in 1969), it was never enough to meet General Westmoreland's demands..." (Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, NY: Random House, 1987, p. 405). "By October 1963, some 16,000 American troops were in Vietnam... Under President Johnson, the "advisors" kept increasing... Lyndon Johnson, who had campaigned in 1964 as a "peace candidate," inherited and expanded the Vietnam policy of his predecessor" (Allan Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, A Pocket History of the United States, 7th ed., NY: Pocket Books, 1981, p. 565-566). These examples are typical of the more general view. As the treatments become more specialized, it becomes harder to separate fact from obfuscation, but it should be borne in mind that all of the accounts I will review contradict what one would think would be considered the most reliable source: the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers. The Gravel account devotes 40 pages to the history of the withdrawal policy ("Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces, 1962-1964," Vol. 2, pp. 160-200). It states clearly that "the policy of phase out and withdrawal and all the plans and programs oriented to it" ended "de jure" in March 1964 (p. 196). It also states clearly that the change in the withdrawal policy occurred after the assassination: "The only hint that something might be different from on-going plans came in a Secretary of Defense memo for the President three days prior to this NSC meeting [on Nov. 26]....In early December, the President [Johnson] began to have, if not second thoughts, at least a sense of uneasiness about Vietnam. In discussions with his advisors, he set in motion what he hoped would be a major policy review..." (p. 196). There can be no question, then, if we stick to the record, that Kennedy had decided and planned to pull out, had begun to implement those plans, and that Johnson subsequently reversed them. This clear account in the Gravel edition, however, is obscured in the more widely read New York Times "edition," which is really only a summary of the official history by NYT reporters, with some documents added. The Gravel edition has the actual text, and is significantly different. The NYT reporters gloss over the history of the withdrawal policy in a way that cannot be simply to save space. NSAM 263 is not mentioned at all, and Kennedy's authorization of the McNamara-Taylor recommendations is mentioned only in passing, and inaccurately: "[The McNamara-Taylor report] asserted that the "bulk" of American troops could be withdrawn by the end of 1965. The two men proposed and--with the President's approval--announced that 1,000 Americans would be pulled out by the end of 1963" (p. 176). That this "announcement" was in fact a White House foreign policy statement is cleverly disguised (McNamara made the announcement, but it was Kennedy speaking through him), along with the fact that the president also approved the more important recommendation--to withdraw all troops by the end of 1965. Earlier, the NYT reporter quotes a Pentagon Papers (PP) reference to the 1,000-man pullout (again ignoring the more significant total planned withdrawal by 1966) as "strange," "absurd," and"Micawberesque" (p. 113). Then he mentions a statement by McNamara that "...the situation deteriorated so profoundly in the final five months of the Kennedy Administration...that the entire phase-out had to be formally dropped in early 1964." The reporter's conclusion is that the PP account "presents the picture of an unbroken chain of decision-making from the final months of the Kennedy Administration into the early months of the Johnson Administration, whether in terms of the political view of the American stakes in Vietnam, the advisory build-up or the hidden growth of covert warfare against North Vietnam" (p. 114). This is quite different from the actual (Gravel) account. It implies that the change in the withdrawal ("phase-out") policy began well within Kennedy's administration; Gravel says the change began in December 1963. The "unbroken chain of decision-making" and "advisory build-up" implies that there never was a withdrawal plan. This has been the pattern followed by virtually all individual historians. In his memoir Kennedy (NY: Harper & Row, 1965), Theodore Sorensen, who was one of Kennedy's speechwriters, does not mention the withdrawal plan at all. Arthur Schlesinger, another Kennedy adviser and a respected historian, has done a curious about-face since 1965, but in this early book he buries a brief reference to the White House policy statement in a context which makes it seem both insignificant and based on a misapprehension of the situation by McNamara, who "...thought that the political mess [in South Vietnam] had not yet infected the military situation and, back in Washington, announced (in spite of a strong dissent from William Sullivan of Harriman's staff who accompanied the mission) that a thousand American troops could be withdrawn by the end of the year and that the major part of the American military task would be completed by the end of 1965. "This announcement, however, was far less significant than McNamara's acceptance of the Lodge pressure program [on Diem]" (A Thousand Days, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, p. 996). Schlesinger does not indicate that this "far less significant" announcement was a statement of official policy and implemented nine days later by NSAM 263, confirmed at the Honolulu conference on Nov. 20, and (supposedly) reaffirmed by Johnson in NSAM 273. Stanley Karnow, the author of what many consider to be the "definitive" history of the Vietnam War (Vietnam: A History, NY: Viking Press, 1983), instead of citing the documents themselves, substitutes his own convoluted "analysis": "...what Kennedy wanted from McNamara and Taylor was a negative assessment of the military situation, so that he could justify the pressures being exerted on the Saigon regime. But Taylor and McNamara would only further complicate Kennedy's problems" (p. 293). This image of a recalcitrant McNamara and Taylor presenting a positive report when Kennedy expected a negative one is absurd, first because both McNamara and Taylor were in fact opposed to withdrawal, and second because if Kennedy had wanted a negative report, he would have had no trouble procuring one. He already had plenty, as a matter of fact, most recently that of Joseph Mendenhall, a State Department official, who had told Kennedy on Sept. 10 that the Diem government was near collapse. Karnow goes on to enlighten us as to McNamara and Taylor's true motivation for recommending the withdrawal of 1,000 troops by the end of the year: "to placate Harkins and the other optimists" (p. 293). Again, this is patently absurd. First McNamara and Taylor are presented as defying the president's "true wishes," and then as deliberately misrepresenting the situation to "placate" thecommanding general (without bothering to explain why troop withdrawals would be particularly placating to the general in charge of them). Karnow fails to mention NSAM 263, and the reason is clear: he would be hard put to explain, if the recommendations were "riddled with contradictions and compromises" and contrary to the president's wishes, as Karnow says, why the president implemented them with NSAM 263. Karnow also tells us why the recommendation to withdraw all US troops by 1965 was made: it was "a prophecy evidently made for domestic political consumption at Kennedy's insistence" (p. 294). This is hard to understand, since there was no significant public or "political" opposition to US involvement in Vietnam at that time, but plenty of opposition to disengagement. We now have Kennedy, in Karnow's view, wanting a negative report, getting a positive one, and insisting on announcing it publicly for a political effect that would do him more harm than good! In an indirect reference to the Oct. 2 White House statement, Karnow begrudges us a small bit of truth: "Kennedy approved the document [the McNamara-Taylor recommendations] except for one nuance. He deleted a phrase calling the U.S. commitment to Vietnam an 'overriding' American goal, terming it instead a part of his worldwide aim to 'defeat aggression.' He wanted to preserve his flexibility" (p. 294). This confirms the importance of the textual changes in the two documents, as discussed above. In JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1984), Herbert Parmet mentions both the White House statement and the McNamara-Taylor report, but in a way that makes the two documents seem totally unrelated to each other. Of the White House announcement Parmet says only: "On October 2 the White House announced that a thousand men would be withdrawn by the end of the year" (p. 333). The larger plan to withdraw all troops by 1965 is not mentioned at all. This is particularly misleading when followed by this statement: "[Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell] Gilpatric later stated that McNamara did indicate to him that the withdrawal was part of the President's plan to wind down the war, but, that was too far in the future" (p. 333). Who is the author of the last part of this sentence, Gilpatric or Parmet? In any case, the end of 1965 was only two years away-- hardly "far in the future," much less "too far," whatever that means. Parmet continues: "Ken O'Donnell has been the most vigorous advocate of the argument that the President was planning to liquidate the American stake right after the completion of the 1964 elections would have made it politically possible" (p. 336). This reduces the fact that Kennedy planned to withdraw, documented in the White House statement and in NSAM 263 and 273, to the status of an argument "advocated" by O'Donnell. This clearly misrepresents O'Donnell's account as well as the documentary record. O'Donnell does not argue that Kennedy wanted to pull out; he quotes Kennedy's own words, uttered in his presence. It is not a matter of interpretation or surmise. Either Kennedy said what O'Donnell says he said, or O'Donnell is a xxxx. As for the documentary record, in addition to misrepresenting the White House statement, Parmet, like Karnow and Schlesinger, completely ignores NSAM 263 and 273. Parmet devotes the bulk of his discussion to the purely hypothetical question of what Kennedy would have done in Vietnam if he had lived. Parmet's answer: "It is probable that not even he was sure." This again flies in the face what we know. Kennedy knew what he wanted to do: withdraw. If Parmet's contention is that he would have changed his mind, had he lived, and reversed his withdrawal policy (as Johnson did), that is another matter. Parmet is trying to make us believe that it is not clear that Kennedy wanted to withdraw in the first place, which is plainly wrong. The hypothetical question is answered by O'Donnell and Powers, who were in a much better position to speculate than Parmet or anyone else, as follows: "All of us who listened to President Kennedy's repeated expressions of his determination to avoid further involvement in Vietnam are sure that if he had lived to serve a second term, the numbers of American military advisers and technicians in that country would have steadily decreased. He never would have committed U.S. Army combat units and draftees to action against the Viet Cong" (p. 383). Parmet says that for JFK "to have withdrawn at any point short of a clear-cut settlement would have been most unlikely" (p. 336). But "a clear-cut settlement" could range from Johnson's aim "to win" the war to Kennedy's more vaguely expressed aim "to support the efforts of the people of that country [south Vietnam] to defeat aggression and to build a peaceful and free society" (White House statement, Oct. 2, 1963). Parmet cites Sorensen as affirming Kennedy's desire to find a solution "other than a retreat or abandonment of our commitment." This was in fact the solution that the withdrawal plan offered: our mission is accomplished; it's their war now. Parmet quotes from the speech Kennedy was supposed to deliver in Dallas the day he was killed, as if empty rhetoric like "we dare not weary of the test" [of supplying assistance to other nations] contradicted his withdrawal plan. He also cites Dean Rusk, who said in a 1981 interview that "at no time did he [Kennedy] even whisper any such thing [about withdrawal] to his own secretary of state." If that is true, Rusk knew less than the rest of the nation, who were informed by the White House statement on Oct. 2. Finally, Parmet quotes Robert Kennedy as saying that his brother "felt that South Vietnam was worth keeping for psychological and political reasons 'more than anything else,'" as if this supported Parmet's argumentthat JFK was fully committed to defending that corrupt dictatorship. But RFK could well have meant that means South Vietnam was not worth keeping if it meant the US going to war-- just the opposite of Parmet's interpretation. Despite Kenneth O'Donnell's clearly expressed opinion in his 1970 memoir, Parmet manages to have him saying the opposite in a 1976 interview: "When Ken O'Donnell was pressed about whether the President's decision to withdraw meant that he would have undertaken the escalation that followed in 1965, the position became qualified. Kennedy, said O'Donnell, had not faced the same level of North Vietnamese infiltration as did President Johnson, thereby implying that he, too, would have responded in a similar way under those conditions" (p. 336). Now--who said what, exactly? If we read carefully, it is clear that it is Parmet who is "qualifying" O'Donnell's position, and Parmet who is telling us what O'Donnell is "implying"--not O'Donnell. John Ranelagh, a British journalist and author of what is widely considered an "authoritative" (i.e. sanitized) history of the CIA, describes Kennedy as "...a committed cold warrior, absolutely determined to prevent further communist expansion and in 1963 still smarting from the Bay of Pigs, the Vienna Summit, and the Cuban missile crisis. It was time to go on the offensive, show these communists what the United States could do if it put its mind to it, and Vietnam seemed the right place. It was an arrogance, born of ignorance of what the world really was like, assuming that American energy and power, applied with conviction, would change an essentially passive world. At the fateful moment, when the United States could have disengaged itself from Vietnam without political embarrassment, there was a President in the White House looking for opportunities to assert American strength. "Kennedy wondered during 1963 whether he was in fact right in deciding that Vietnam was the place for the exercise of this strength, and some of his close associates subsequently were convinced that he would have pulled out had he lived. But his own character and domestic political considerations militated against this actually happening. In 1964 the Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, ran on a strong prowar plank, and it would not have suited Kennedy--just as it did not suit Johnson--to face the electorate with the promise of complete disengagement. In addition, in September 1963 McNamara was promising Kennedy that with the proper American effort the war in Vietnam would be won by the end of 1965. No one was listening to the CIA or its analysts" (The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA, NY: Touchstone, 1987, p. 420; emphasis added). Ranelagh not only ignores Kennedy's withdrawal decision "at the fateful moment," he transforms it into a desire "to assert strength," and has Kennedy pursuing the buildup for "domestic political considerations." (This is precisely opposite to Karnow's assumption, discussed above.) In the sentence beginning "In addition...", Ranelagh manages to "interpret" McNamara- Taylor's recommendation to pull out of Vietnam as an argument for Kennedy to stay in! Ranelagh's opinion that "no one was listening to the CIA," implying that the CIA was pessimistic about the war in 1963, contradicts what he says a few pages earlier: "The Pentagon Papers...showed, apart from the earliest period in 1963-64, the agency's analysis was consistently pessimistic about U.S. involvement..." (p. 417, my emphasis). This is the familiar "lone voice in the wilderness" image of the CIA: only they were "intelligent" enough to read the writing on the wall. But if that is true, why did the agency try so hard (from 1954 to 1964) to get us involved in the first place, and why did they continue tosupport the war effort in clandestine operations throughout? The CIA's Ray Cline says (as quoted by Ranelagh): McCone [CIA Director under Kennedy and Johnson] and I talked a lot about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and we both agreed in advising that intervention there would pay only if the United States was prepared to engage in a long, difficult process of nation-building in South Vietnam to create the political and economic strength to resist a guerrilla war (p. 420). Ranelagh intreprets this as evidence that the CIA wanted to withdraw from Vietnam in 1963. Nonsense. No one in the top echelons of the CIA, least of all Director John McCone, supported Kennedy's withdrawal plan in 1963. Nor does Cline's remark imply this. He is saying that the CIA's opinion (i.e. one of their opinions) was that to be "successful," the US would have to dig in for the long haul. I think the "long haul" is precisely what the CIA wanted, and precisely what Kennedy decided he did not want. That is why he decided to withdraw. Clearly, more powerful forces than Kennedy himself combined to make the intervention "pay" as the Johnson administration proceeded to engage in that "long, difficult process of nation-building" that generated hundreds of billions of dollars for the warmongers, destroying millions of lives in the process. Neil Sheehan, one of the editors of the NYT Pentagon Papers and the author of another acclaimed history of the war (A Bright Shining Lie, London: Picador, 1990), devotes exactly one sentence in 861 pages to the crucial White House statement of Oct. 2, and not a single word to NSAM 263 or 273. His view is consistent: the generals, except for a few, like John Paul Vann (the biographical subject of the book), were incredibly stupid to think the war was being won by our side, but Kennedy was even more stupid because he believed them. The McNamara-Taylor report is presented as the height of naivety, which, Sheehan adds sarcastically, "...recommended pulling out 1,000 Americans by the end of 1963 in order to demonstrate how well the plans for victory were being implemented. The White House announced a forthcoming withdrawal of this first 1,000 men" (p. 366). But "The President," Sheehan says, "gained no peace of mind." He was "confused" and "angry" at the conflicting reports. In other words, according to Sheehan, the withdrawal plan reflects nothing but Kennedy's "confusion" and misjudgement of the situation, based on the equally false evaluation of his Secretary of State and top military adviser. As for the CIA, Sheehan, like Ranelagh, says the "analysts at the CIA told him [Kennedy] that Saigon's military position was deteriorating..." (p. 366). But Kennedy was too "confused" to understand this, and ordered withdrawal on the false assumption that the war was going well. All of these studies bend over backward to avoid recognizing the documented fact that Kennedy had decided to withdraw from Vietnam by the end of 1965. The tactics of avoidance vary from ignoringthe existence of any withdrawal plan at all to attributing it to wishful thinking, political expedience, or sheer stupidity and naivety. At the same time, commentators are quick to remember the two TV interviews JFK gave in September 1963 (Documents on American Foreign Relations, pp. 292-295). On Sept. 2 he told Walter Cronkite of CBS: "But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake." A week later he said to David Brinkley on NBC: "What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don't like events in Southeast Asia or they don't like the government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay. We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can, but we should not withdraw." If any statements of that time frame were designed for political effect, these TV interviews were. Presidents are far more likely to play politics in television interviews than in official policy statements and Nation Security Action Memoranda. These remarks must be seen as coming from a president who was up for re-election in one year and who knew he would "be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser" if he withdrew from Vietnam, as he had told Ken O'Donnell a few months earlier. Those who take the "we should not withdraw" sentence as Kennedy's final word on the matter do not point out that it is directly contradicted by the White House policy statement and NSAM 263 the following month. Either Kennedy changed his mind or -- more likely -- the earlier public statements were meant to appease the pro-war forces. He also changed his mind about aid to South Vietnam: Mr. Huntley: Are we likely to reduce our aid to South Vietnam now? The President: I don't think that would be helpful at this time. Whatever Kennedy meant by this in September, he thought and did the opposite in October, implementing the McNamara-Taylor recommendations for aid reduction in addition to troop reductions. Kennedy also said in the Cronkite interview: "In the final analysis, it is their [the South Vietnamese] war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it--the people of Vietnam--against the Communists. We are prepared to continue to assist them, but I don't think that the war can be won unless the people support the effort, and, in my opinion, in the last two months the government has gotten out of touch with the people." He repeats this, almost verbatim, a few sentences later, obviously intent on emphasizing the point: "...in the final analysis it is the people and the government [of South Vietnam] who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear. But I don't agreewith those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake." In context, Kennedy may have been using the word "withdraw" here in the sense of "abandon." "Abandoning" Vietnam completely would indeed have been bad politics, but reducing aid (to force a change in Diem's policy) and withdrawing troops is not necessarily the same thing. Similarly, in the NBC interview, before Kennedy says "we should not withdraw," he says: "We have some influence, and we are attempting to carry it out. I think we don't--we can't expect these countries to do everything the way we want to do them [sic]. They have their own interest, their own personalities, their own tradition. We can't make everyone in our image, and there are a good many people who don't want to go in our image....We would like to have Cambodia, Thailand, and South Vietnam all in harmony, but there are ancient differences there. We can't make the world over, but we can influence the world." This does not sound like a strong commitment. As a whole, these remarks are perhaps more accurately interpreted as: "We won't abandon them, but we won't do their fighting for them either." This is an interpretation, but a plausible one. Despite the massive efforts to obscure it, the fact remains, and cannot be overemphasized, that Johnson reversed the withdrawal policy. The curious thing is that one hardly ever finds this fact plainly stated by those who should (and perhaps do) know better. Richard Goodwin, an adviser to both Kennedy and Johnson, is a rare exception: "In later years Johnson and others in his administration would assert that they were merely fulfilling the commitment of previous American presidents. The claim was untrue--even though it was made by men, like Bundy and McNamara, who were more anxious to serve the wishes of their new master than the memory of their dead one. During the first half of 1965 I attended meetings, participated in conversations, where the issues of escalation were discussed. Not once did any participant claim that we had to bomb or send combat troops because of "previous commitments," that these steps were the inevitable extension of past policies. They were treated as difficult and serious decisions to be made solely on the basis of present conditions and perceptions. The claim of continuity was reserved for public justification; intended to conceal the fact that a major policy change was being made--that "their" war was becoming "our" war" (Remembering America, NY: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 373; emphasis added). 4. Reactions to Oliver Stone's JFK Why do other historians find this observation by Goodwin so difficult to make? Because to acknowledge the fact of a major policy change in Vietnam means to acknowledge the possibility that the president was killed in order to effect this change. Since this is precisely the thesis of Oliver Stone's JFK, it is not surprising to see that the critics have followed the same avoidance tactics. The Wall Street Journal refers to the putative connection with Vietnam policy--which is the main point of the film--only obliquely, halfway through the review: "We further agree that November 1963 was a turning point in the American commitment to Vietnam. But the key was not the assassination of JFK but the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem three weeks earlier. Once President Kennedy gave the go-ahead for a coup against an allied government in the name of winning the war, the U.S. was deeply committed indeed. Lyndon Johnson, who had opposed the coup, was left to pick up the pieces" (12/27/91, p. A10). The crucial fact presented in the film--that Johnson reversed Kennedy's withdrawal plan--is not even mentioned. Time refers, also indirectly and buried midway in the article, to the portrayal of Kennedy's Vietnam policy as a figment of the imaginations of "the last misty-eyed believers in Camelot": "They still hold to the primal scenario sketched in Oliver Stone's JFK: a Galahad-like John Kennedy gallantly battling the sinister right-wing military-industrial complex to bring the troops home, ban the Bomb and ensure racial equality on the home front--a Kennedy killed because he was just too good to live" (European ed., 1/13/92, p. 39) Here the word Vietnam does not even appear, and "bringing the troops home" is presented as only one of several equally mythical Kennedy objectives. Whether banning the Bomb and ensuring racial equality were on Kennedy's agenda is debatable, but his decision to bring the troops home is not, or should not be. In an article entitled "Does Stone's JFK Murder the Truth?" (International Herald Tribune, 12/17/91, reprinted from the New York Times), Tom Wicker writes--also about halfway through--that according to Stone and Garrison Kennedy "seemed to question" the goals of those who "wanted the war in Vietnam to be fought and the United States to stand tall and tough against the Soviets..." This not only reduces Kennedy's withdrawal decision to a"question" but implies that even that is not certain: he did not decide, he questioned, that is, he seemed to question. Iain Johnstone tells readers of the Sunday Times (1/26/91, Sect. 6, pp. 12-13), again at mid-point position in his article, that the idea that Kennedy was "about to let down the military and munitions men by pulling out of Vietnam" is "doubtful." The only thing that is doubtful here is whether Johnstone has bothered to read the documents. On the last page of a seven-page article in GQ (Jan. 1992, p. 75), Nicholas Lemann finally confronts Garrison's and Stone's main thesis by referring not to the documents but to a 1964 interview with Robert Kennedy. This is apparently the same 1964 interview cited by Herbert Parmet (discussed above). I have not been able to consult the original material, which is part of an oral history collection at the JFK Library in Boston, but it is interesting that Lehmann cuts off the quotation at a strategic point. Interviewer: Did the president feel that we would have to go into Vietnam in a big way? RFK: We certainly considered what would be the result if you abandon Vietnam, even Southeast Asia, and whether it was worthwhile trying to keep and hold on to. Interviewer: What did he say? What did he think? RFK: He reached the conclusion that probably it was worthwhile... This has to be a deliberate misrepresentation. The ellipsis conceals what we know from Parmet's citation: "As Bobby Kennedy later said, his brother had reached the point where he felt that South Vietnam was worth keeping for psychological and political reasons 'more than anything else.'" (Parmet, p. 336). Piecing these two parts of RFK's remark together, the complete sentence would seem to have been: "He reached the conclusion that probably it was worthwhile for psychological and political reasons more than anything else." As I have already mentioned, "it was worthwhile" in this context more likely meant "it was not worthwhile" (psychological and political reasons hardly justifying a war), especially since we know, just as Robert knew, that President Kennedy had decided to terminate US military participation by the end of 1965. The German reviews of JFK, though they generally take Stone's thesis more seriously than the American ones, are equally evasive on the point of Kennedy's Vietnam policy. Several long articles do not mention it at all (Kurt Kister, Sddeutsche Zeitung, 1/22/92, p. 8; Verena Lueken, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1/24/92, p. 29). Peter Buchka in the Sddeutsche Zeitung (1/23/92, p. 10) mentions only that "a withdrawal from Vietnam," according to Garrison and Stone, would have deprived the weapons industry of gigantic profits. Peter Krte in the Frankfurter Rundschau (1/24/92, p. 22) notes that President Kennedy "said he would withdraw the troops from Vietnam if he was reelected," which is only half the truth. The only German critic who even mentions NSAM 263, Rolf Paasch, the American correspondent for the (Berlin) Tageszeitung, questions Stone's "interpretation" of it: "Whether his [JFK's] hints in 1963 about a withdrawal of US military advisers from Vietnam really demonstrated the conversion of a Cold Warrior, as Stone interprets on the basis of NSAM 263, cited in the film, or whether it was only opportunistic rhetoric aimed at his liberal supporters, is unclear" (1/23/92, p. 18). Here we are presented with two alternatives: NSAM 263 demonstrates either that Kennedy was a "converted Cold Warrior" or a xxxx. The possibility that he remained a Cold Warrior who just didn't feel like sacrificing thousands of American lives in Vietnam is not even considered. Why Paasch feels a clearly expressed presidential policy directive can be characterized as a "hint," why it requires "interpretation," and why he feels at liberty to question its sincerity, he does not say. It is clear that he has done his research by relying on the "interpretations" of American scholars like the ones we have discussed rather than on the prima facie documentary evidence. Der Spiegel mentions Kennedy's Vietnam policy in the form of a rhetorical question: "In the weeks preceding the assassination, didn't he think about withdrawing the advisers from Vietnam?" (12/16/92, p. 192). If presidents issued NSAMs every time they "think about" something, the world would be a good deal more confused than it is. In a box entitled "Was It [the assassination] a Plot to Keep the U.S. in Vietnam?" Time says that in Stone's movie Kennedy had "secret plans to withdraw from Vietnam" (2/3/92, European ed., p. 63). There was nothing secret about the White House statement on Oct. 2 or the press conference on Oct. 31, and the confirmation of the withdrawal plan at the conference in Honolulu was reported in the New York Times on Nov. 21, 1963. Certainly the withdrawal plan was not a secret within the Kennedy administration. Then, magnanimously offering to set the record straight by presenting "the evidence," Time says: "Kennedy confided to certain antiwar Senators that he planned to withdraw from Vietnam if re-elected, but publicly he proclaimed his opposition to withdrawal. In October 1963 he signed a National Security Action Memo--NSAM 263--that ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 of the 16,000 or so U.S. military "advisers." "After the assassination, Lyndon Johnson let the 1,000-man withdrawal proceed, but it was diluted so that it involved mainly individuals due for rotation rather than entire combat units. A few days after taking office, he signed a new action memo--NSAM 273--that was tougher than a version Kennedy had been considering; it permitted more extensive covert military actions against North Vietnam. No one has come forward, however, with any direct knowledge of a military or CIA conspiracy." This is a good example of gray propaganda--the half-truth. Kennedy's "opposition to withdrawal" is construed -- probably falsely -- from the September television interviews. The second half of this truth is that Kennedy publicly proclaimed the opposite--his intention to withdraw--in the Oct. 2 White House statement, of which Time conveniently omits mention. Similarly, Time tells us only half of what is in NSAM 263, leaving out the more important half, which implemented Kennedy's plan to remove all US troops--not just 1,000--by the end of 1965. What does the reference to Johnson's NSAM 273 as "tougher than a version Kennedy had been considering" mean? If the "Kennedy version" was Bundy's Nov. 21 draft of 273, this is wrong, because Kennedy never saw that draft, much less approved it. Time acknowledges that Johnson "permitted more extensive covert military actions against North Vietnam," but why not also acknowledge that these commando operations later provoked the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which in turned served--quite fraudulently, as even establishment commentators now admit--as the basis for the congressional resolution that made Vietnam "our war," that is, exactly what Kennedy said in the September interviews he wanted to avoid. By leaving out the crucial information, Time has Johnson merely "diluting" the 1,000-man withdrawal and making "tougher" a plan that Kennedy "had been considering." In other words, there was no policy reversal, and thus no background to a possible conspiracy. But let us substitute the whole truth for Time's half-truth, and then see what their conclusion would look like: "[Johnson reversed Kennedy's plan to withdraw all US troops by the end of 1965 and] permitted more extensive covert military actions against North Vietnam. No one has come forward, however, with any direct knowledge of a military or CIA conspiracy." Now the last sentence makes sense, but it is not the sense that Time wanted to convey. Time meant to tell us that 1) there was no policy reversal and thus no reason to suspect a conspiracy, and 2) that there is no direct evidence of one. The whole truth version tells us 1) that there was a policy reversal and thus good reason to suspect a conspiracy, but 2) there is no direct evidence of one. There is no excusing such obvious abuse of logic and the evidentiary record. It has to be deliberate, since the writer obviously knows what is in the documents he describes and chooses to omit certain crucial information. What reader who bothers to read Time in the first place would suspect this? It is propaganda, pure but not simple. It takes skill to write like this. 5. Fire from the left Alexander Cockburn, a talented writer and normally reasonable columnist for The Nation, was one of the first to condemn the Stone film. When it comes to the assassination, the views of this "radical leftist" fall right in line with those of the Establishment. In his review of JFK, Cockburn says the question of conspiracy in the assassination "has as much to do with the subsequent contours of American politics as if he had tripped over one of Caroline's dolls and broken his neck in the White House nursery" (The Nation, 1/6- 13/92:6-7). He doesn't even try to justify this point of view. He rejects the coup theory out of hand, along with all conspiracy theories, and then rejects any possible political significance of the assassination. The question is insignificant because he thinks he knows the answer. Cockburn fights dirty. He dismisses Scott's "yearning interpretation" of the textual disparities between JFK's White House statement and Johnson's NSAM 273 but fails to mention the most important part of both of these documents--the part referring to the troop withdrawals. The reader cannot know from Cockburn's essay that either document mentions troop withdrawals or that this is a crucial point in Scott's analysis. Since Cockburn makes no mention of JFK's withdrawal decision, it is easy for him to say there was "no change in policy" and call Scott's assertion to the contrary "fantasizing," but this misrepresents the facts. Cockburn has read Scott and he knows what is in the documents--not only in the first paragraphs, which he quotes, but also in the third paragraph of the White House statement and in the second paragraph of NSAM 273. These paragraphs refer to the withdrawal plan. Cockburn omits any mention of them. Ignoring this documentary evidence of October and November, Cockburn backtracks to the spring of 1963 to argue with John Newman's "frequently repeated claim [in his then unpublished book, JFK and Vietnam] that by February or March of 1963 JFK had decided to pull out of Vietnam once the 1964 election was won," a claim for which Cockburn sees "an absence of any substantial evidence": Newman's only sources for this are people to whom J.F.K. would, as a matter of habitual political opportunism, have spoken in such terms, such as Senators Mike Mansfield and Wayne Morse, both of whom, particularly the latter, were critical of J.F.K.'sescalation in Vietnam. There is no mention of Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, to whom Kennedy repeatedly told the same thing he told Mansfield. Would Kennedy have been being politically opportunistic with the most trusted members of his personal staff? In a subsequent issue of The Nation (3/9/92:290,317-320), replying to letters from Zachary Sklar, Peter Scott, and Michael Parenti, Cockburn repeats his claim that there is no evidence to show that Kennedy had planned to withdraw as early as the spring of 1963, "aside from some conversations recollected by men such as Kennedy's political operative Kenny O'Donnell or Senators Wayne Morse and Mike Mansfield." This means that either Kennedy was lying, or O'Donnell et al. were lying. The counterargument to these "lies" is Kennedy's "numerous statements to the contrary. There were plenty of those." Cockburn mentions two--a statement in July and his remarks in the Sept. 9 NBC interview. Newman explains these by suggesting that "J.F.K. was dissembling, concealing his private thoughts, throwing the hawks off track." Cockburn calls this "data-free surmises" and "a willful credulity akin to religious mania." Why is it "credulous" to suggest that JFK was dissembling? And if this is "credulous," why is it less so to assume, as Cockburn does, that JFK was not only dissembling, but outright lying, to O'Donnell et al.? JFK was much more explicit in his reported remarks to O'Donnell and Powers than he was in the TV interviews. Which would be the more likely place for a politician to dissemble--in a TV interview or in a private conversation with his most trusted personal advisers? Did JFK tell the absolute truth on TV and lie to his advisers? Because Newman says the opposite, Cockburn says he is a religious maniac. Is this rational? The crucial point, however, which Cockburn totally ignores, is that Kennedy did not wait for the 64 election as he said he would. He made the withdrawal announcement on October 2, 1963, and implemented it with NSAM 263 on October 11. Regardless of what he said publicly or privately in July or September, his official policy in October was withdrawal. Just as he fails to mention the crucial documents--the McNamara- Taylor report and NSAM 263--in his article, in his reply to the letters Cockburn, like Time magazine, fails to mention the most significant parts of both documents, which is not the 1,000-man pullout by the end of 1963 but the total pullout by the end of 1965. One cannot know, either from Time or from Cockburn, that Kennedy not only wanted 1,000 men out in two months but everybody out in two years. Cockburn then says the 1,000-man withdrawal was "proposed" by McNamara and Taylor because "at that time they thought the war was going according to plan and victory was in sight." He fails to say 1) that this proposal was implemented nine days later by NSAM 263, and 2) that plenty of Kennedy's advisers were telling him that the war was not going well. Cockburn keeps putting the word "victory" in Kennedy's mouth, butthe question Kennedy was facing was, Should we fight this war for the South Vietnamese or not? If JFK's answer was no, what else could he have done than declare the mission accomplished and withdraw? This is not "victory" in Cockburn's sense, but most likely a ploy to get out without losing face. The alternative would have been immediate, complete withdrawal, making it obvious to the world that the US had abandoned an ally. But withdrawal by 1966 on the basis of having accomplished a limited military objective (not "victory") would have been politically tolerable. What else could he have said? "Sorry folks, I made a terrible mistake in trying to support this dictatorial South Vietnamese regime against their own people, so we're going home"? No. He had to say: "We've done what we can and all we promised to do, but it's their war, so we're going home." Kennedy was not an idiot, but he would have to have been an idiot to have been deluded by "euphoric reports from the field," as Cockburn says he was. Many of the reports Kennedy received were anything but euphoric, and the White House statement of October 2 was not euphoric either: The political situation in South Viet-Nam remains deeply serious. The United States has made clear its continuing opposition to any repressive actions in South Viet-Nam [by the Diem brothers]. While such actions have not yet significantly affected the military effort, they could do so in the future. Kennedy would have been a complete fool to have thought that "victory was in sight," as Cockburn and others suggest. The fact remains that deluded or not deluded, Kennedy decided to withdraw. One can't have it both ways. One can't say that Kennedy was deluded into the withdrawal decision because he thought we were winning, on the one hand, and also say he didn't really mean it, that he was just playing politics. But this is exactly what Cockburn says: "There were also domestic political reasons for the adoption of such a course." What makes him think the political pressure to withdraw was greater than the pressure to escalate? JFK's own Cabinet, the Vice-President, the military, the CIA, and right-wing forces in Congress and in the general population were against withdrawal. That is why he told O'Donnell et al. that he should be re-elected before withdrawing, because he knew there was substantial opposition to it. The situation in Vietnam deteriorated so badly in the summer and fall, however, that he was forced to announce the withdrawal plan probably earlier than he would have liked. Cockburn says that when Kennedy discussed withdrawal "a qualifier was always there." "Always" turns out to be on two occasions, neither of which supports the point. The first is a quote from "one Pentagon official" (who?) as saying (when?) that the withdrawal could begin "providing things go well"--as if what some anonymous person said sometime somewhere could be taken as a "qualifier" to what Kennedy thought or did in October 1963 or any other time. But time, as we have already seen, is a minor factor in Cockburn's sense of history, and in the next sentence we are taken back to the press conference on May 22, 1963, where Kennedy said: "We are hopeful that the situation in Vietnam would permit some withdrawal in any case by the end of the year, but we can't possibly make that judgement at the present time. There is a long hard struggle to go." I suppose it is the words "hopeful" and "some" that Cockburn takes as qualifiers. He fails to note, however, that October comes after May, or that this fact has any significance. In October, McNamara and Taylor expressed complete withdrawal not as a "hope" but as a belief: "We believe that the U.S. part of the task can be completed by the end of 1965, the terminal date which we are taking as the time objective of our counterinsurgency programs" (NYT, Pentagon Papers, p. 213). The second "qualifier" Cockburn cites is contained in "the minutes to the discussion of NSAM 263." He gives no reference, but says these notes "have J.F.K. saying the same thing"--that the withdrawal "should be carried out routinely as part of our general posture of withdrawing people when they are no longer needed." Even if Kennedy actually said this, it does not say the same thing he said in May, nor does it "qualify" the withdrawal ordered by NSAM 263. It is perfectly compatible with the "mission accomplished" posture. US troops were indeed no longer "needed" (as in truth they never were) in Vietnam unless they were going to fight the South Vietnamese's war for them, which NSAM 263 is clearly intended to prevent. "And in implementing the withdrawal order," Cockburn continues, still apparently quoting from these anonymous minutes, "J.F.K. directed that 'no further reductions in U.S. strength would be made until the requirements of the 1964 [military] campaign were clear.'" But again, why does this "qualify" the withdrawal policy? The withdrawal was to be phased over the next two years and obviously would have to be done with consideration for the troops that would remain in country in the meantime. Instead of trying to support this foolish innuendo, Cockburn jumps back into his time machine to finish the paragraph: "Remember that already by the end of 1961 J.F.K. had made the decisive initial commitment to military intervention, and that a covert campaign of terror and sabotage against the North was similarly launched under his aegis." We cannot discuss NSAM 263, in other words, without remembering 1961, but who is suggesting that Kennedy's Vietnam policy was the same in 1961 as it was in late 1963? Mr. Cockburn. The truth is that Kennedy changed his mind and reversed his policy--from buildup to withdrawal--and after the assassination Johnson reversed it again. Cockburn implies that the "decisive initial commitment" was, though only "initial," also "decisive," that is, permanent. But Cockburn himself refers to NSAM 263 as "implementing the withdrawal order." How can the initial commitment in 1961 have been "decisive" if the opposite decision was implemented in October 1963? In the following paragraph Cockburn again quotes an Administration official to represent what Kennedy supposedly thought, though this time at least the official is identified: "On November 13, 1963, The New York Times published an interview with Michael Forrestal, a senior member of Kennedy's National Security Council, in which he said, 'It would be folly...at the present time' to pursue 'a negotiated settlement between North and South Vietnam.'" To buttress this statement, Cockburn then quotes "J.F.K. himself" in his press conference the next day: "We do have a new situation there, and a new government, we hope, an increased effort in the war....Now, that is our object, to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country, and permit democratic forces within the country to operate--which they can of course, much more freely when the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the North, is ended. So the purpose of the meeting in Honolulu is how to pursue these objectives." Cockburn's interpretation: "Thus, J.F.K. was defining victory--to be followed by withdrawal of U.S. "advisers"--as ending the internal Communist assault in the South, itself manipulated from the North." Again the word "victory," which is Cockburn's. The order of priorities--victory, then withdrawal--is also Cockburn's, not Kennedy's. The first objective Kennedy mentions is to bring Americans home. The last point is added almost as an afterthought: of course it would be better if the support of the North for the insurrection in the South could be ended. But it was clear to everyone, especially after the Buddhist uprisings in the summer, that the insurrection would continue even without support from the North unless post-Diem leadership emerged that the South Vietnamese themselves would be willing to fight for. This is what Kennedy meant when he said "We do have new situation there." The hope he expressed for "an increased effort in the war" was for an increased effort by the South Vietnamese! Cockburn is implying the opposite--that Kennedy hoped for an increased war effort by the US, and that this was to be the topic of the Honolulu conference. There is no basis for this assumption. Apparently, there is still no reliable record of that conference, which is strange. Scott's conclusion, based on contemporary news reports and references to the meeting in the Pentagon Papers, is that the Accelerated Withdrawal Plan was confirmed, i.e. the reduction in military aid and troop withdrawals implemented by NSAM 263 on Oct. 11. Cockburn tells us the opposite: As Newman acknowledges, the upshot of the Honolulu meeting was that for "the first time" the "shocking deterioration of the war was presented in detail to those assembled, along with a plan to widen the war, while the 1,000-man withdrawal was turned into a meaningless paper drill. The question appears unresolved. What was decided at Honolulu--to continue withdrawal or "widen the war"? In fact, Johnson's NSAM 273 did both--continued the withdrawal plan and increased covert military operations, but only the first of these contradictory policies was included in Kennedy's NSAM 263. That is what counts, especially since we do not know what happened at Honolulu, and there is no evidence that Kennedy knew either. In any case, he did not change his policy between Oct. 11 (NSAM 263) and Nov. 22. Cockburn's next argument is based on McGeorge Bundy's draft of NSAM 273: "The next day [after the Honolulu conference, i.e. Nov. 21], back in the White House, Bundy put the grim conclusions of the meeting into the draft language of NSAM 237 [sic; presumably 273], which, as he told Newman in 1991, he 'tried to bring...in line with the words that Kennedy might want to say.'" Cockburn assumes that Bundy's draft, whose first paragraph is almost identical with the first paragraph of Johnson's NSAM 273, proves that Kennedy would have said the same thing Johnson did. But there are several obvious questions he should be asking. First, why has this document, along with the other documents issuing from the Honolulu conference, remained classified so long? Second, why would Bundy draft the text of an important policy directive based on the results of a meeting which he had not yet even discussed yet with the president? It is quite wrong to assume that Kennedy would have approved the language of this draft just because Bundy thinks he would have. Cockburn forgets that we are talking here about the possibility of a coup d'tat. Bundy's motives and credibility are at least as suspect as Johnson's. He was a hawk on Vietnam from the word go and thus in the same camp as Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, and CIA director McCone. He had strong ties with the CIA through his brother William and his former professor at Yale, Richard Bissell, the CIA Director of Operations Kennedy fired after the Bay of Pigs, and through his job as National Security Adviser. As the president's personal liaison with the Director of Central Intelligence, who in turn represented the entire intelligence community, Bundy was the highest national security official to survive the presidential "transition"--the only person in a position under both Kennedy and Johnson to know all the nation's secrets. In short, if it was a coup, Bundy must have been in on it. If indeed he wrote the draft of NSAM on Nov. 21 (i.e., if it is not a falsification to confuse the "record"), he may have written it for Johnson. Cockburn doesn't hesitate to call Kennedy a xxxx, but he takes Johnson at his word. Johnson said about his first presidential conference on Vietnam on Nov. 24, 1963, two days after the assassination: Most of the advisers agreed that we could begin withdrawing some of our advisers by the end of the year and a majority of them by the end of 1965. Cockburn thinks this proves that "J.F.K. in the last days of his Administration, and L.B.J. in the first days of his, defined victory in the same terms, and both were under similar illusions." LBJ, whom O'Donnell, for example, portrays as a bald-faced xxxx on several occasions, could not possibly be lying! Again Cockburn puts the word "victory" in Kennedy's mouth, and ignores the question astutely raised by Scott: If there was no change of policy, why was Vietnam so important that it was the first order of business of the new president? If Johnson was under "similar illusions" as Kennedy, why did he say in his memoirs that he "felt a national security meeting was essential at the earliest possible moment" (quoted by Scott, p. 224)? This meeting was held on Sunday, Nov. 24, but Scott points out that according to the Pentagon Papers and the New York Times there was an even earlier meeting with McNamara, on Saturday morning, where a memo was discussed in which "Mr. McNamara said that the new South Vietnamese government was confronted by serious financial problems, and that the U.S. must be prepared to raise planned MAP [Military Assistance Plan] levels" (Scott, p. 225, quoting the Gravel edition). First, this does not seem to be what was decided in Honolulu, where according to the New York Times the Accelerated Withdrawal Plan was finalized. Secondly, if this is what was decided in Honolulu, why did McNamara wait two full days without discussing it with Kennedy and discuss it with Johnson the morning after the assassination? Scott's conclusion that the withdrawal policy was in fact reversed immediately after the assassination clarifies both points. Johnson's opinion on Vietnam was no different on Nov. 23 or 24 from what it was on August 31, 1963, when he said that "it would be a disaster to pull out...we should once again go about winning the war" (Pentagon Papers, NYT, p. 205). This was also Bundy's, Rusk's, and McNamara's position. Kennedy was practically a minority of one in the upper echelons of his own Administration, as Maxwell Taylor has written. But as long as he was boss, his view prevailed. The McNamara-Taylor report Of Oct. 2, 1963, according to Fletcher Prouty, did not represent McNamara's view at all, and was not even written by him. It was written at the Pentagon according to Kennedy's wishes and handed over to McNamara and Taylor in Honolulu when they stopped there on their way back from Saigon, so that they could then hand it to the president in Washington as "their" report. With Kennedy out of the picture, the hawks took over, reversing the withdrawal policy while maintaining the appearance of continuity. Noam Chomsky is another radical leftist who is vehemently opposed to what he calls the "withdrawal thesis" ("Vain Hopes, False Dreams," Z, Oct. 1992). Like Cockburn, Chomsky says there no withdrawal plan, only a "withdrawal on condition of victory" plan, and that arguments to the contrary are nothing more than JFK "hagiography." His argument is more rigorous than Cockburn's, but equally false. First, it is wrong to assume that all biographers and assassination researchers are JFK hagiographers. One need not deny that Kennedy was as ruthless a cold warrior as any other president to acknowledge that he had decided to withdraw from Vietnam. Reagan's decision to withdraw from Lebanon doesn't make him a secret dove either. Second, the withdrawal "thesis" is not a thesis but a fact, amply documented in the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers, as already discussed. Since Chomsky himself co-edited Vol. 5, it is surprising that he finds this fact so difficult to acknowledge. The thesis which Chomsky, like Cockburn, is actually arguing against is his own formulation: that JFK wanted "withdrawal without victory." It is true that according to the record, the withdrawal plan was predicated on the assumption of military success. Chomsky, however, understands this as a condition. This is wrong. There is a substantial difference between saying "The military campaign is progressing well, and we should be able to withdraw by the end of 1965," which is how I read the McNamara- Taylor report and Kennedy's confirmation of it in NSAM 263, and "If we win the war, we will withdraw," which is how Chomsky reads the same documents. We do not know what Kennedy may have secretly wanted or what he would have done if he had he lived. Whether he really believed the war was going well, as the record states, or privately knew it was not, as Newman contends, is also unknowable. What we do know, from the record, Chomsky notwithstanding, is that Johnson reversed the withdrawal policy sometime between December 1963 and March 1964. The point, again, is crucial. If one manages to say, as Chomsky and Cockburn and the other authors discussed here do, that in truth there was no change in policy, that in fact there never was a withdrawal policy but only a policy of escalation and victory (until after Tet), it means that Johnson and Nixon simply continued what Kennedy started. This, in turn, means that the question of the relation of the policy change (since there wasn't one) to the assassination does not arise. If, however, one states the facts correctly, the question is unavoidable. Exactly when Johnson reversed the policy, and whether he did so because conditions changed, or because perceptions of conditions changed, or for whatever reason, is beside the point. Why avoid the straightforward formulation, which is nothing but a summary of the PP Gravel account: JFK thought we were winning, so he planned to withdraw; Johnson decided that we weren't, so he killed the plan. The reason is clear. Once you admit that there was a radical policy change in the months following the assassination, whether that change was a reaction to a (presumed) change in conditions or not, you must ask if the change was related to the assassination. Then, like it or not, you are into conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theory is anathema to the leftist or neo-Marxian tradition represented by Cockburn and Chomsky. There are historical reasons for this, of course, since conspiracy theories have been notoriously exploited by the fascist right. Nevertheless, it is as wrong to identify all conspiracy theories with the likes of Hitler and Goebbels as it is to identify Marxist theories with the likes of Stalin and Erich Honecker. There is an alternative view. In this view, one accepts the fact of the policy change, but denies that it had anything to do with the assassination. It was mere coincidence that the policy change followed the assassination. This is a tenable position, but one that few seem comfortable with, and for a good reason: it is ludicrously naive. Nevertheless, it has apparently become Arthur Schlesinger's position, who reads Johnson's NSAM 273 as "reversing the Kennedy withdrawal policy" ("JFK: Truth and Fiction," Wall Street Journal, Jan. 10, 1992). But, he adds, to connect the policy reversal with the assassination, as Stone and Garrison do, is "reckless, paranoid, really despicable fantasy..." Despite Schlesinger's hysterical denials, the policy reversal is the most plausible motive for the assassination. Thus the biggest lie--the Lone Nut theory of history--requires another one: there was no policy reversal. It is astonishing that so many commentators of diverse political stripes have succumbed to this imperative. -end- + Join Us! Support The NY Transfer News Collective + + We deliver uncensored information to your mailbox! + + Modem:718-448-2358 Fax:718-448-3423 E-mail: nyt@blythe.org + ************************** The following chronology is from The Senator Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers, Volume II, pages 165-172. It is part of the section titled: "Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces, 1962-1964" and provides a rough (though incomplete) outline of the genesis and evolution of the "1000 man" withdrawal plan. This chronology should be examined in conjunction with the following sections also found in Vol II of Gravel: "U.S.--GVN Relations, 1964-1967" (esp pages 277-325) and "The Advisory Buildup, 1961-1967" (esp pages 408-456) in order to obtain a more complete picture of events and decisions. Anyone interested in further information related to this material, please feel free to contact me at 71301,527 Compuserve. October 20, 1993. David T. Fuhrmann. 23 July 62 Geneva Accords on Laos 14-Nation declaration on the neutrality of Laos. 23 July 62 Sixth Secretary of Defense Conference, Honolulu. Called to examine present and future developments in South Vietnam--which looked good. Mr. McNamara initiated immediate planning for the phase-out of U.S. military involvement by 1965 and development of a program to build a GVN military capability strong enough to take over full defense responsibilities by 1965 26 July 62 JCS Message to CINCPAC CINCPAC was formally instructed to develop a "Comprehensive plan for South Vietnam" (CPSVN) in line with instructions given at Honolulu. 14 Aug 62 CINCPAC Message to MACV MACV was directed to draw up a CPSVN designed to ensure GVN military and para-military strength commensurate with its sovereign responsibilities. The CPSVN was to assume the insurgency would be under control in three years, that extensive US support would be available during the three-year period; that those items essential to development of full RVNAF capability would be (largely) available through the military assistance program (MAP). Oct-Nov. GVN National Campaign Plan developed 1962 In addition to the CPSVN, MACV prepared an outline for an integrated, nationwide offensive military campaign to destroy the insurgency and restore GVN control in South Vietnam. The concept was adopted by the GVN in November. 26 Nov 62 Military Reorganization Decreed Diem ordered realignment of military chain of command, reorganization of RVNAF, establishment of four CTZ's and a Joint Operations Center to centralize control over current military operations. (JOC became operational on 20 December 1962.) 7 Dec 62 First Draft of CPSVN Completed CINCPAC disapproved first draft because of high costs and inadequate training provisions. 19 Jan 63 MACV Letter to CINCPAC, 3010 Ser 0021 MACV submitted a revised CPSVN. Extended through FY 1968 and concurred in by the Ambassador, it called for GVN military forces to peak at 458,000 in FY 1964 (RVNAF strength would be 230,900 in FY 1964); cost projected over six years would total $978 million. 22 Jan 63 OSD (ISA) Message to CINCPAC MAP-Vietnam dollar guide lines issued. Ceilings considerably different from and lower than those in CPSVN. 25 Jan 63 CINCPAC Letter to JCS, 1010, Ser 0079 Approved the CPSVN, supported and justified the higher MAP costs projected by it. 7 Mar 63 JCSM 190-63 JCS recommended SecDef approve the CPSVN; supporting the higher MAP costs, JCS proposed CPSVN be the basis for revision of FY 1964 MAP and development of FY 1965-69 program 20 Mar 63 USMACV "Summary of Highlights, 9 Feb 62-7 Feb 63" Reported continuing, growing RVNAF effectiveness, increased GVN strength economically and politically. The strategic hamlet program looked especially good. MACV forecast winning the military Phase in 1963-barring "greatly increased" VC reinforcement and resupply. 17 Apr 63 NlE 53-63 Although "fragile," the situation in SVN did not appear serious; general progress was reported in most areas. 6 May 63 Seventh SecDef Honolulu Conference Called to [word illegible] the CPSVN. Largely because of prevailing optimism over Vietnam, Mr. McNamara found the CPSVN assistance too costly, the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces too slow and RVNAF development misdirected. 8 May 63 Two SecDef Memoranda for ASD/ISA First: Directed joint ISA/JCS development of plans to replace US forces with GVN troops as soon as possible and to plan the withdrawal of 1,000 US troops by the end of 1963. Second: Requested the Office, Director of Military Assistance, ISA, "completely rework" the MAP program recommended in the CPSVN and submit new guidelines by 1 Sept. The Secretary felt CPSVN totals were too high (e.g., expenditures proposed for FY's 1965-68 could be cut by $270 Million in his view). 9 May 63 Buddhist Crisis Begins GVN forces fired on worshipers celebrating Buddha's birthday (several killed, more wounded) for no good cause. Long standing antipathy toward GVN quickly turned into active opposition. 9 May 63 JCS Message 9820 to CINCPAC Directed CINCPAC to revise the CPSVN and program the with-drawal of 1,000 men by the end of 1963. Force reduction was to be by US units (not individuals); units were to be replaced by specially trained RVNAF units. Withdrawal plans were to be contingent upon continued progress in the counterinsurgency campaign. 1 May 63 CINCPAC Letter to JCS, 3010 Ser 00447-63 CINCPAC recommended some changes, then approved MACV's revision of the CPSVN and the MACV plan for withdrawal of 1,000 men. As instructed, those 1,000 men were drawn from logistic and service support slots; actual operations would be unaffected by their absence. 7 May 63 ASD/ISA Memorandum for the Secretary ISA's proposed MAP-Vietnam program based on the Secretary's instructions was rejected as still too high. 9 May 63 OSD/ISA Message to CINCPAC CINCPAC was directed to develop three alternative MAP plans for FYs 1965-69 based on these levels: $585 M (CPSVN recommendation) $450 M (Compromise) $365 M (SecDef goal) MAP for FY 1964 had been set at $180 M. 6 Jun 63 GVN-Buddhist Truce (State Airgram A-781 to Embassy Saigon, 10 June) Reflected temporary and tenuous abatement of GVN-Buddhist hostilities which flared up in May. The truce was repudiated almost immediately by both sides. Buddhist alienation from the GVN polarized; hostilities spread. 7 Jul 63 DIA Intelligence Summary Reported the military situation was unaffected by the political crisis; GVN prospects for continued counterinsurgency progress were "certainly better" than in 1962; VC activity was reduced but VC capability essentially unimpaired. 8 Jul 63 CINCPAC-proposed MAP program submitted to JCS CINCPAC suggested military assistance programs at the three levels set by the JCS but recommended adoption of a fourth Plan developed by CINCPAC. "Plan J" totalled $450.9 M over the five year period. 4 Aug 63 DIA lntelligence Bulletin Rather suddenly, Viet Cong offensive actions were reported high for the third consecutive week; the implication was that the VC were capitalizing on the political crisis and might step up the insurgency. 14 Aug 63 SACSA Memorandum for the Secretary Discounted the importance of increased VC activity; the comparative magnitude of attacks was low; developments did not yet seem salient or lasting. 20 Aug 63 Diem declared martial law; ordered attacks on Buddhism pagodas. This decree plus repressive measures against the Buddhists shattered hopes of reconciliation, and irrevocably isolated the Diem government. 20 Aug 63 JCSM 629-63 CINCPAC/MACV proposed plan for l,000-man withdrawal in three to four increments for planning purposes only; recommended final decision on withdrawal be delayed until October. 21 Aug 63 Director, DIA Memorandum for SecDef Estimated that Diem's acts will have "serious repercussions throughout SVN: foresaw more coup and counter-coup activity But reported military operations were so far unaffected by these events. 27 Aug 63 JCSM 640-63 JCS added yet a fifth "Model M" Plan to CINCPAC's four alternative MAP levels. Providing for higher force levels termed necessary by the JCS, the Model M total was close to $400 M. JCS recommended the Model M Plan be approved. 30 Aug 63 OSD/ISA Memorandum for the Secretary Recommended approval of JCSM 629-63. But noted many "units" to be withdrawn were ad hoc creations of expendable support personnel, cautioned that public reaction to "phony" withdrawal would be damaging: suggested actual strength and authorized ceiling levels be publicized and monitored. 3 Sep 63 SecDef Memorandum to CJCS Approved JCSM-629-63. Advised JCS against creating special units as a means to cut back unnecessary personnel; requested the projected US strength figures through 1963. 5 Sep 63 ASD/ISA Memorandum to the Secretary Concurred in JCS recommendation with minor reservations the Model M Plan for military assistance to SVN be approved. 6 Sep 63 SecDef Memorandum for CJCS Approved Model M Plan as the basis for FY 65-69 MAP planning; advised that US materiel turned over to RVNAF must be charged to and absorbed by the authorized Model M Plan ceilings. 11 Sep 63 CJCS Memorandum for SecDef Forwarded the military strength figures (August thru December) to SecDef; advised that the l,000-man withdrawal would be counted against the peak October strength (16,732). First increment was scheduled for withdrawal in November, the rest in December. 21 Sep 63 Presidential Memorandum for the SecDef Directed McNamara and Taylor (CJCS) to personally assess the critical situation in SVN--both political and military; to determine what GVN action was required for change and what the US should do to produce such action. 7 Sep 63 ASD/ISA (ODMA) "MAP Vietnam: Manpower and Financial Summary" Approved MAP totals reflected the Model M Plan: FY 1964 = $180.6 M and FY 1965-69 = $211.6 M. TOTAL = $392.2 Million The GVN force levels proposed were substantially below those of the January CPSVN (from a peak strength in FY 1964 of 442,500, levels were to fall to 120,200 in FY 1969). 26 Sep- SecDef/CJCS Mission to South Vietnam 2 Oct 63 Positive detailed evidence presented in numerous briefings indicated conditions were good and would improve. Hence, the Secretary ordered acceleration of the planned U.S. force phase-out. 3 Oct 63 McNamara-Taylor Briefing for the President, and later, the NSC. Concluded the military campaign has made great progress and continues to progress, but warned that further Diem-Nhu repression could change the "present favorable military trends." 3 Oct 63 McNamara-Taylor met with President and NSC The President approved the military recommendations made by the Secretary and Chairman: --that MACV and Diem review changes necessary to complete the military campaign in I, II, and III Corps by the end of 1964, in IV Corps by 1965: --that a training program be established to enable RVNAF to take over military functions from the US by the end of 1965 when the bulk of US personnel could be withdrawn: --that DOD informally announce plans to withdraw 1,000 men by the end of 1963. no further reductions in US strength would be made until requirements of the 1964 campaign were clear. 11 Oct 63 NSAM 263 Approved the military recommendations contained in the McNamara-Taylor Report; directed no formal announcement be made of implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 men by the end of 1963. 11 Oct 63 State Department INR Memo RFE-90 Assessed trends since July 1963 as evidence of an unfavorable shift in military balance. (This was one or the first indications that all was not as rosy as MACV et al had led McNamara and Taylor to believe.) 1 Nov 63 Diem Government Overthrown The feared political chaos, civil war and collapse of the war (not materialize immediately; US Government was uncertain as what the new circumstances meant. General Minh headed the junta responsible for the coup. 20 Nov 63 All-agency Conference on Vietnam, Honolulu Ambassador Lodge assessed prospects as hopeful; recommended US continue the policy of eventual military withdrawal from SVN; said announced l,000-man withdrawal was having salutary effects. MACV agreed. In this light, officials agreed that the Accelerated Plan (speed-up of force withdrawal by six months directed by McNamara in October) should be maintained. McNamara wanted MAP spending held close to OSD's $175.5 million ceiling (because of acceleration, a FY 64 MAP of $187.7 million looked possible). 22 Nov 63 President Kennedy Assassinated One result: US Government policies in general were maintained for the sake of continuity, to allow the new administration time settle and adjust. This tendency to reinforce existing policies arbitrarily, just to keep them going, extended the phase-out, withdrawal and MAP concepts--probably for too long. 23 Nov 63 SecDef Memorandum for the President Calling GVN political stability vital to the war and calling attention to GVN financial straits, the Secretary said the US must prepared to increase aid to Saigon. Funding well above current MAP plans was envisaged. 26 Nov 63 NSAM 273 President Johnson approved recommendations to continue current policy toward Vietnam put forward at the 20 November Honolulu meeting: reaffirmed US objectives on withdrawal. 3 Dec 63 [material missing] Region/ISA Memorandum for the ASD/ISA [words missing] nam developments, for a "fresh new look" at the problem, second echelon leaders outlined a broad interdepartmental "Review the South Vietnam Situation." This systematic effort did not culminate in high level national reassessment of specific policy re-orientation. 5 Dec 63 CINCPAC Message to JCS Submitted the Accelerated Model Plan version of CPSVN. From a total of 15,200 in FY 1964, US military strength in Vietnam would drop to 11,500 in FY 1965 (vs 13,100 recommended by the Model M Plan), to about 3,200 in FY 1966 and 2,600 in FY 1967. GVN force levels were a bit lower but GVN force build-up a bit faster than recommended by the Model M Plan. MAP costs for FYs 1965-1969 totalled $399.4 million (vice $392.2 million under Model M Plan). 11 Dec 63 CM 1079-63 for SecDef The adjusted year-end strength figure was 15,394. Although 1,000 men were technically withdrawn, no actual reduction of US strength was achieved. The December figure was not 1,000 less than the peak October level. 13 Dec 63 Director, DIA Memorandum for the Secretary Reported the VC had improved combat effectiveness and force posture during 1963, that VC capability was unimpaired. (Quite a different picture had been painted by SACSA in late October "An Overview of the Vietnam War, 1960-1963," personally directed to the Secretary, was a glowing account of steady military progress.) 30 Jan 64 Second Coup in Saigon General Minh's military regime was replaced by a junta headed by General Khanh. 10, 11, 14, Dep Director, CIA Memo for SecDef, SecState, etc 19 Feb 64 Suspicious of progress reports, CIA sent a special group to "look at" South Vietnam. Its independent evaluation revealed a serious and steadily deteriorating GVN situation. Vietcong gains and, significantly, the quality and quantity of VC arms had increased. The Strategic Hamlet Program was "at virtual standstill." The insurgency tide seemed to be "going against GVN" in all four Corps. 6 Mar 64 Eighth SecDef Conference on Vietnam, Honolulu Participants agreed that the military situation was definitely deteriorating, that insurgency would probably continue beyond 1965, that the US must immediately determine what had to be done to make up for the setback(s). 9-16 MAR 64 McNamara/Taylor Trip to Vietnam Personally confirmed the gravity of the Vietnam situation. 16 Mar 64 SecDef Memorandum for the President: "Report on Trip to Vietnam" Mr. McNamara reported the situation was "unquestionably" worse than in September. (RVNAF desertion rates were up: GVN military position was weak and the Vietcong, with increased NVN support, was strong.) Concluding that more US support was necessary, the Secretary made twelve recommendations. These included: --More economic assistance, military training, equipment and advisory assistance, as needed. --Continued high-level US overflights of GVN borders; authorization for "hot pursuit" and ground operations in Laos. --prepare to initiate--on 72 hours' notice--Laos and Cambodia border control operations and retaliatory action against North Vietnam. --Make plans to initiate--on 30 days' notice--a "program of Graduated Overt Military Pressures" against North Vietnam. Mr. McNamara called the policy of reducing existing Us personnel where South Vietnamese could assume their functions "still sound" but said no major reductions could be expected in the near future. He felt US training personnel could be substantially reduced before the end of 1965. 17 Mar 64 NSAM 299 The President approved the twelve recommendations presented by Mr. McNamara and directed all agencies concerned to carry them out promptly. [material missing] forces was superseded by the policy of providing South Vietnam assistance and support as long as required to bring aggression and terrorism under control (as per NSAM 288). 6 May 64 CINCPAC Message to MACV Indicated growing US military commitment: this 1500-man augmentation raised the total authorized level to 17,000. 1-2 Jun 64 Special Meeting on Southeast Asia, Honolulu Called in part to examine the GVN National Campaign Plan---which was failing. The conferees agreed to increase RVNAF effectiveness by extending and intensifying the US advisory efforts as MACV recommended. 25 Jun 64 MACV/ Message 325390 to JCS Formal MACV request for 900 additional advisory personnel. His justification for advisors at the battalion level and for more advisors at district and sector levels was included. Also, 80 US advisors were requested to establish a Junk Force and other maritime counterinsurgency measures. 4 Jul 64 ClNCPAC Message to JCS CINCPAC recommended approval of the MACV proposal for intensification of US advisory efforts. 15 Jul 64 Saigon EMBTEL 108 Ambassador Taylor reported that revised VC strength estimates now put the enemy force between 28,000 and 34,000. No cause for alarm, he said the new estimate did demonstrate the magnitude of the problem and the need to raise the level of US-GVN efforts. Taylor thought a US strength increase to 21,000 by the end of the year would be sufficient. 16 Jul 64 MACV Message 6180 to CINCPAC MACV requested 3,200 personnel to support the expansion (by 900) of US advisory efforts--or 4,200 more men over the next nine months. 17 Ju1 64 EMBTEL Ambassador Taylor concurred in MACV's proposed increase, recommended prompt approval and action. 21 Jul 64 State 205 to Saigon Reported presidential approval (at the 21 July NSC meeting) the MACV deployment package. I have no links to these above ,they are from my collection.... I also have only the one page for NSAM 263...... B.....

ANDREW ARMSTRONG, JR.... HSCA May/73 http://www.geocities.com/m_j_russ/armstr.htm Info re Ian Griggs....... Joy Dale (originally Joyce Lee McDonald, now Joyce Gordon) is alive and well and living in the Dallas area. ************* 'Joy Dale the little redheaded stripper from Dallas' Joyce McDonald My Mom is alive and well! http://knol.google.com/k/cynthia-ann-mcdon...&locale=en# Below Left: Joyce Lee McDonald ( JoyDale) ...Ruby......Right..Karen Bennet Carlin ( Little Lynn ) B....

“ The Day Kennedy Died “ Dr. Robert McClelland held JFK’s head in his hands. He massaged Oswald’s heart. Forty-five years later, his students are still riveted by the surgeon’s tales. By by Michael J. Mooney, portrait by Randal Ford D Magazine NOV 2008 McClelland followed Shires to Parkland. When they arrived and changed clothes—something they didn’t take the time for with Kennedy—Oswald was just being wheeled in. When Kennedy arrived, every faculty member on site was called into the emergency room. With Oswald, there were only a few doctors working on him. Twenty-eight minutes after Jack Ruby’s shot, they were inside Oswald’s abdomen. (“He was as white as this piece of paper,” McClelland tells the med students. “He had lost so much blood. If he hadn’t turned when he saw Ruby coming, he might have been all right.”) When Oswald saw the gun in Ruby’s hand, he had cringed slightly, flinching. Because of this, the bullets went through his aorta and inferior vena cava, the two main blood vessels in the back of the abdominal cavity. There was enormous loss of blood. The medical team pumped pint after pint of untyped blood, 16 in all, through his body. Shires and Perry eventually got a vascular clamp to stop the bleeding, and the two set about clearing away intestines to get enough room to repair the damage. They worked on Oswald for an hour when his heart arrested. The blood loss was just too much, and the brief but severe shock too damaging. Perry opened Oswald’s chest, and he and and McClelland, who was also assisting, took turns administering an open heart massage. (“You pumped Oswald’s heart in your hands?” a student asks. “We took turns, each going until we got tired. We went for, oh, about 40 minutes.”) The heart got flabbier and flabbier. They squeezed and pumped. The blood around his heart collected on their gloves. Then, no more. Almost two hours after being shot, Lee Harvey Oswald was pronounced dead. The first live homicide on public television was witnessed by 20 million viewers. The entire emergency room was in a daze. First the president. Two days later, in the room next door, the president’s assassin. It was as if the community had tumbled into one of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone episodes. For McClelland, it got stranger. One of the sheriff’s deputies who had been escorting Oswald during his public transfer—the taller deputy America saw in the Stetson hat—was waiting outside the trauma room to see how Oswald was doing. He told the doctors something odd had happened, even more odd than the public murder. After the shot, the deputy explained to McClelland, when Oswald was on the ground, he got on his hands and knees and put his face right over Oswald’s. “I said, ‘Son, you’re hurt real bad. Do you wanna say anything?’ ” the deputy said. “He looked at me for a second. He waited, like he was thinking. Then he shook his head back and forth just as wide as he could. Then he closed his eyes.” They would never open again. Looking back, McClelland would wonder if Oswald was tempted to say something. If maybe he was worried he would regret it. He didn’t know he was going to die, McClelland thought...... http://www.dmagazine.com/2008/10/24/The_Da...nnedy_Died.aspx B..

Thanks to Stephen Roy for the info on the arms cache being moved to Florida. And Jack, I only repeated someone else's reference to a laundry truck at Dealey Plaza. Do you know of any photos of it? The one used in the Houma Arms Cache raid had Louisiana license tags. Jack Ruby's brother also owned a commercial laundry. BK Bill: Here is the Laundry truck in Altgen's 5, referenced by Jack....... B.. Hey B. Thanks for that. It's obviously a laundry truck at DP. Are there any other photos that show the license plate? If so, perhaps it could be nailed down closer. bk Hi Bill : Your welcome, That is the last clear photo, I do believe until, we see the next frontal photo of Altgens the 6, after he has been hit... and none that I have ever seen as a frontal photo, of that corner of Houston and Elm....showing the truck again... I wish.... B....

Hi David: Here is a comparison, with two taken showing LHO's right side , after his arrest... B.....

Thanks to Stephen Roy for the info on the arms cache being moved to Florida. And Jack, I only repeated someone else's reference to a laundry truck at Dealey Plaza. Do you know of any photos of it? The one used in the Houma Arms Cache raid had Louisiana license tags. Jack Ruby's brother also owned a commercial laundry. BK Bill: Here is the Laundry truck in Altgen's 5, referenced by Jack....... B..

pam, .....doug has sent this reply, along with a nick email .. think what you want, you do anyway, as in the past.... have you emailed doug yet from this f....? i , we await the proof.........of all your suppositions..and accusations ..and ramblings.......post it......now... so be it..... b..... --- On Thu, 5/21/09, Doug Weldon wrote: From: Doug Weldon <xxxxxxxxxx> To: bmoorxxxxxxx Bernice: As for Pamela I think Nick said it best: Doug >> " I am sure that Pam will convince those who are of the same theory, >> to begin with. >> I note that she takes things out of contex in that she keeps saying that >> I talked to Greer early in the evening. ..........." Nick Anyone with any reasoning or intelligence will see through things. As for anyone else, they can sit around and convince themselves that the world is flat. As for Pamela, God bless her. Doug b....

if you are insinuating in any way i have or may have altered any email research information or such, you had better be prepared to prove that insinuation, and..........now...........or apologize..... whomever began this latest debackle sp.... on the alts re emails etc, accusations ,whatever is whom you need to go back and take this all up with, that is your source , of where it all began, not i , nor doug, no one else... doug is a member , you should recall that from a past go around with him...on here.. why have you not emailed him from this f and asked him yourself.... what is your problem a reading comprehension, or do you simply not read the info posted to you.. you may disagree with me and others all you like about emails but that is the web law, educate yourself.. you have posted info within your own studies based on such information from witnesses, you have admitted such, by having had nick's emails and loosing them..same thing, get a grip. part of a cult like whatever, you are rediculous, if you only knew.......it appears you know nothing.... you are trying now your darndest to , imo .......in anyway discredit nick's info, so that when doug's book is released hopefully you will have discredited such, and down his book before it ever comes forth......isn't that a straw man you are endeavouring to create here.. are you in doubt about your said reasearch now, which imo agrees with the govs...w/c s.. imo ....you stopped your research way back then as i see it, doug did not, i do think you are really rattled now by what will be forthcoming within his book and research.......and that is the real problem here, that it might blow yours away, as they say....hang on girl.... is this not the why you really brought this here..again...a straw man technique you are trying...to imploy........ your latest, problem began on the alts with rich and his recall and an email, why do you, and why have you not settled it there, why have you and continually are trying to drag others into your mess....it is your and his disagreement.... whatever you thinkie in regard to any interview with nick, again i say, read what has previously been posted....above here. i was not there when nick was, period, i knew or know nothing ......get it...finally.. .....i will not be yours nor anyone's scape goat in this crap.... go back to the beginning at the alts..... ...get a grip girl on yourself, no one is out to get you or were, that is your imagination running away with you... do comprehend and total it.... b..

So you are saying Nick cc's Weldon? You are missing the point here. You were not included in the email. It was purportedly sent to me. You do not have MY permission to post it.f Weldon is attempting to claim I am 'pretending' not to know something? That is untrue and unhelpful. Why would he even make such a statement? And moreover, why would you post it? There seems to be en entire cottage industry around this CCC interview. It is becoming evident that I was being led down a primrose path right from the start. You, Rich and Weldon seem to have all the answers as to why I was asked to interview Nick in the first place. Perhaps you would share them with us and perhaps even share some of your own emails --that is, ones actually sent to you -- to explain what has been going on for the last 9 years? Pam : Please , try to understand once an email has been sent, it is in the Public Domain....If questionable to you, please do a search and retrieve the information, to your satisfaction.... I was not there on the F, when all this went down, between yourself and Nick, nor Doug, nor Rich......I have stated that previously , as well as Dixie, and am doing so again.. So whatever went down between you and them..... I have no knowledge of... It was ....Your choice of whether and when you interviewed Nick....and you did so.. It is apparently somewhat rattling to you as to what has been going down at the alts, in the Judyth thread and now in another new that you have begun there...and I understand.....But imo, you have now only brought it here, to the EF, for your attention, to try to imply that for some reason you have been led down some garden path as you put it, and or being used as an excuse by you, to continue your denials, within the research..... that has been done in the past, and has been proceeding...and does not agree with yours....... Note that differences between yours and others research is nothing new.....Yours as you seem to believe is far from the only findings, it did not stop there as you want to believe..yours is not the final given as they say....There is and has been much further work that has proceeded re all... The research has been and is being continued....and as far as I understand there is much new within, and all as well as youself must wait, for Doug Weldon's book to be published. New information that I am not priveledge to either, so I cannot answer any questions pertaining to such...... From Doug.... Bernice I do believe I was improper in referring to Pamela as a "waste." I want to apologize. However I disagree with her, it is inexcusable to make an ad hominem attack. I do not know Pamela, but no person, whatever their motives, is a "waste." My terminology was poor. Please post this on my behalf. Doug Weldon Bernice: I do want to add that Pamela knew that Nick was forwarding his e-mails and there was no expectation of privacy. The last e-mail from Nick to Pamela was very revealing. I spent a couple of days with Harold Weisberg in 1996 and he did not think highly of Frazier. I have never spoken to Mr Frazier. I am not aware of any accounts by F. Vaughn'sFerguson's "golf buddies" giving an account of a hole in the windshield. George Whitaker was not a "golf buddy." . Again, my apologies to Pamela. May she pursue what she believes is right. Doug This e-mail speaks for itself and answers the privacy issue. Best, Doug nprince9@juno.com wrote: > >> Pam >> I am not comfortable with what you have written in the past about >> what I submit. You challenge every thing I submit and the basis for it >> is some documentation the at you rely on more than an eye witness. >> To attempt to correct only brings on a further barrage of questions and >> more challenge. >> I dont need it and I dont intend to continue it. >> As far as what I forward to Doug Weldon, do you really believe that you >> have the right to ask me that, or that I should even offer a reason ?? >> >> Happy Holiday > > B....

Hopefully this will be the last re this episode... Bernice: Pamela is again giving creedence to Robert Frazier and F. Vaughn Ferguson, neither of which had any credibility. Frazier retired and hid when Weisberg tried to subpoenae him to court. " Murder In Dealey Plaza" shows Ferguson's credibility. I have so much from Nick, both in e-mails and taped conversations. He even sent me a cd he made. He was a talented singer. You have my permission to publish anything I give you but Pamela is such a waste. >> Doug >> If you are wondering why I am forwarding all the back and forth mail >> to you--Pam asks me questions and I answer them-------I have nothing to >> hide. She seems to miss certain things or put things in--out of >> context.---like the reason Bill was at the WH so early when he was >> supposedly at Bethesda. I never said it was early--I worked from 7 in >> the AM and I dont think I got home till the wee small hours of the next >> day. I will answer her questions as well as I can-- >> >> Nick B.....

From Doug Weldon..... Bernice: Yes. Nick cc'd me. What's more Pamela, despite pretending that she doesn't know this, did KNOW it and confronted Nick about it. Nick told her that he was doing such. Doug B...

From Doug Weldon...re Nick Principe's information.....thread at the alts.. --- On Sun, 5/17/09, Doug Weldon <XXXXXXXXt> wrote: From: Doug Weldon xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Re: Alts link . To: "bernice" <XXXXXXXXXX> Received: Sunday, May 17, 2009, 7:34 PM Bernice: Thank you. So much of this is just silly. Nick was very consistent and discussed this with friends since 1963. As I always do I talked with people who knew Nick to determine if he had a tendency to exaggerate or embellish facts. It is something I always do with anyone I talk with and has sometimes forced me to exclude evidence I would have liked to use. I also have taped conversations with Nick. There were some areas that Nick discovered that his memory had been faulty and readiy admitted his errrors. This was not true about his meeting with Greer (not Kellerman) and neither Greer or Kellerman viewed the vehicle with Nick. Pamela completely distorted what Nick was saying and it greatly disturbed him. He told her that he did not like her trying to misrepresent and twist what he was saying. He was very direct in telling her that she was distorting his accounts. Pamela even questioned whether Nick was who he said he was and did determine his bona fides. For people who question Nick who never spoke with him or understand the context of his e-mails it is just simply ridiculous. Those people have a different agenda other than truth. Nick Prencipe had other unique information about Lyndon Johnson that I will offer in my book. You are welcome to post this in the alts or whereever. Best, Doug B.......

First off thank you Dix, you have walked into this whatever.?..I am grateful for your support... I am still trying to make any sense out of all, perhaps by weeks-end, months-end, years-end ?? Pamela, No, you are in error that Rich ever sent any email of Nick's to me, nor did I to him...I have never had any discussion with him in regard to Nick... they also have been available on the EF for months....Perhaps that is the where from?? I really do not know... There is no rule here stipulating that research emails nor emails cannot be posted, .....as far as research is concerned to do so is also regarded as a dead man's right to have his information spoken out for him, or her......if not, that window , and opportunity to the research world would be closed permanently... ...In fact once an email leaves your pc, it is said it is in the public domain......I have read.... Whatever went down with Nick, I was not involved with at the time on the Forum, nor have I ever conversed with Rich about such. I never knew Nick.. I will not be made a scapegoat in all this, as some apparently it would seem , have been trying to do...... This whatever that has been going on at the alts, ..it is a problem not of my making...it is between one man's recall and information from a witness dead man's email.... I call anyone dishonest and challenge them, to prove such, who would state that I in anyway, altered or forged any research and or email or information EVER.... I say thank you Pamela for bringing this to light....perhaps a re-read of that alt thread is in order..... B....

Hi Bill : Garrison knew and had the Library card, info...as per Penn Jones.... see....and scroll down...Penn Jones : Baylor http://www3.baylor.edu/Library/BCPM/JFK/Jo...nnett-blake.htm Penn had him down as Clay & Clem.... Take care... B.....

******************** Don: Putting any studies of the backyard photos aside......for now.....see below... Yes, agreed at one time many of us looked up to Dr.Thompson, through his book.SSID.. and no I do not know any involved personally either... and as one who agrees with your statement about the new neo-conspiracy peoples, who imo have been making a slow appearance now for over a year, and are obviously growing..and have posted about such,on another F...in the past...... ...and IMO some names that are surfacing are surprising....perhaps... I do not believe in all alterations, on the otherhand there are simply too many, to ignore all... I do not follow anyone blindly, hell I am too ole now to even think of doing so, and too damn stubborn, to even try....as I have been told, and therefore am quite independent within the studies.... In relation to your post Kathy......In your first paragrph you might substitute Dr.Fetzer for Dr.Thompson..."".Josiah Thompson said the photos are "probably genuine." Please note the modifier "probably." He even gives a reason for it, and now someone is going to write him off for that. Amazing! Is it just because he doesn't believe what others do? And how much must he believe, until he is accepted by those of you complaining." I have read where Dr.Fetzer has used the word probably, within his studies.....and you are very correct, when you state, "Is it just because he doesn't believe what others do?.And how much must he believe, until he is accepted by those of you complaining? "" and there have been many complaints...re Dr.Fetzer's Moorman studies..on this forum...and some were within your posts. Dr.Thompson, your attitude now towards Dr.Fetzer appears to me imo, to have taken a turn for the worse and not research..... You have stated, on this forums board, words to the effect, you are enjoying it..... So be it, and thank you for making very clear, that is what you are using this forum for.... I used to come here for research, of late all I mainly see is a "get back at you" mentality.... and imo it sucks... Don : Below.......re the backyard photos.......Putting aside anyones studies, this below is from the W/C and has been available for many years.. This tells what they truly thought of such....in photographic form......and can be considered another of their failures..... Have a good look all at the chins...from the W/C.... Thanks.. B..

We very recently suffered a sudden, immediate family loss.. At such times we are replenished with our memories. Please, accept our sincere condolences..and prayers.. Moore family.

In continuing to dig into the morass, as it has been called by some in the past..of the .. .."The Zapruder Film"....... What I regard imo, as another go-around and using two more witnesses , who are unable to speak for themselves at present... By whomever, is that their conclusions and opinions are, simply put....that Mary & Jean's given information of their actions that day Nov.22/63....is in error.. Which is their perogative and is a given..... Some continue to ask, why did no one report what Jean Mary have mentioned re their actions that day.... Were they asked,?? comes to mind.... Such as some apparently who have posted and do believe that the Umbrella man did not spin nor pump such up an down .....but as posted and shown within another thread, it may be , Did Zapruder take the Zapruder film..? He does pump the umbrella and spin it, and that is seen within the Zapruder film. Yet no witness reported this action either.. Now let's for this post, put aside what Mary Moorman and Jean Hill stated that does differ...with their actions seen within the film..... .........lets go in another direction.. I found that in re-reading just this one article below, thanks to, and written by Michael Griffith.. Names in relation to the Zapruder film.... and have listed just those mentioned, in such..that lead to information pertaining to Zapruder film alteration.... There are more than likely many more within the links that are included.. I continue to find such, very interesting....each time...I do so..... Michael T. Griffith Dr. Luis Alvarez. Physicist Art Snyder Noel Twyman, J. Edgar Hoover aide Cartha DeLoach Charles Brehm's son William Newman Special Agent George Hickey Newsman James Altgens Special Agent George Hickey James Fetzer Mark North Dr. David Mantik Mathematician Daryll Weatherly William Greer Mike Pincher Roy Schaeffer Secret Service Special Agent Sam Kinney Chester Breneman Dan Rather Abraham Zapruder Patrolman Bobby Hargis Secret Service survey Douglas Horne/ARRB Philip Melansen Dr. Mantik says the following: A strong case can now be made for extensive editing of the Zapruder film. In fact, the conclusion seems inescapable--the film was deliberately altered. No other explanation is in the same league, in terms of explanatory power, for the myriad of anomalous characteristics that are seen everywhere in this case. Many frames were excised, some individual frames were extensively altered, others were changed only enough to fill in for missing frames, and others were left alone. . . . What can be made of the absurd paradoxes of (supposed) camera tracking errors that are totally inconsistent with what actually appears in the relevant frame? When the frame contents shift by enormous amounts, corresponding blurs must be seen. There is no cinematic magic that can avoid such realities. And what can be said about intersprocket magnifications that are grossly different in two frames, particularly when tracking nonsense surfaces in the same frames? And now, thanks to Noel Twyman, we have the image of The Soaring Bird and of The Black Hole. These could have provided precisely the kind of reference points for pin registration that would be essential for frame to frame editing. Why else are these images there? They do recur persistently throughout the film. And when they are absent, where do they go--unless someone has deliberately omitted them? And where exactly did the intersprocket image of the right motorcycle come from? And why is it never visible in the central image? Why does the intersprocket image of the motorcycle skip around? Why is the intersprocket image darker after about Z235? Why do so many odd features occur within the intersprocket area? Why is the intersprocket image missing in frames Z413 and 414? And so the questions come, one after another, like automatic rifle fire. How much more evidence is required before reason prevails? At the very least, the proposal of film alteration deserves extensive consideration and serious discussion--even among those who are still inclined to be doubters. For these individuals, there is now much to explain. It is time for them to put on their ten-league boots and begin climbing this small mountain of data. (Assassination Science, p. 340, original emphasis)..... EVIDENCE OF ALTERATION IN THE ZAPRUDER FILM Michael T. Griffith 1998 @All Rights Reserved Third Edition Revised and Expanded on 4/8/98 What follows are some of the indications that the Zapruder film has been altered. By "altered" I mean that certain frames have been removed and that others are composites. Why was the film altered? To remove episodes and images that clearly showed there were more than three shots (at least one from the front) and therefore that there were multiple gunmen involved in the shooting. I have gathered most of these points from the historic new book Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out On The Death Of JFK, about which more will be said further on in this article. * Numerous witnesses, over 40, including the escort patrolmen to the rear of the limousine, said the limousine stopped or slowed down drastically for a second or two. The Muchmore film shows the limousine's brake lights on for nine frames (about half a second) during the time period corresponding to about frames 311-319 of the Zapruder film. This event is not seen in the Zapruder film; in fact, the limousine never comes close to performing this action in the current film. Opponents of alteration cite the virtually invisible, extremely brief slowing identified by physicist Dr. Luis Alvarez. This slowing occurs from about Z295-304, as the car decelerates from approximately 12 to 8 mph in half a second. However, in the film this event is so subtle that it is usually not noticed by viewers. No one appears to have noticed it, in fact, until Dr. Alvarez, through careful study and analysis of the film, detected it. It seems highly unlikely that this subtle, half-second slowing is what the witnesses were describing when they said the limousine came to a full stop or slowed down drastically. * However, the sudden slowing of the limousine from 12 to 8 mph in Z295-304 does present another problem for the film's authenticity. Though the slowdown is not very noticeable in the film, it represents a deceleration of about 0.37 g. Physicist Art Snyder notes that such a rapid slowing would be expected to toss things around, and he adds that most cars do not decelerate more than 0.4 g. When one examines the frames immediately after this deceleration, one sees no visible effect on the occupants from such a dramatic slowing. The fact that JFK is not moved by this deceleration is particularly interesting because he no longer had voluntary muscular control and should have been thrown forward. Yet for many frames before and after this event he appears to be quite immobile. So, assuming Dr. Alvarez's data are accurate, the sudden reduction in speed that he detected would seem to constitute further evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film. Could it be that this half-second slowing is a remnant of what was originally a much longer, more noticeable deceleration? * Dr. Roderick Ryan believes he has discovered that the limousine is actually standing still in Z303 but is moving in Z302, even though the limousine appears to be moving at a nearly uniform speed in the film during this time (Noel Twyman, BLOODY TREASON, Rancho Santa Fe, CA: Laurel Publishing, 1997, pp. 158-159, 164-165). Notes Noel Twyman, Experience tells us that the limousine could not have decelerated from 11 miles per hour to a complete stop in 1/18 second. (BLOODY TREASON, p. 165) Dr. Ryan made this discovery by analyzing the blurring of background images in the two frames. Moreover, Dr. Ryan's son, who also works in motion picture film technology, studied the film and confirmed his father's discovery (BLOODY TREASON, p. 159). In case some might be wondering about Dr. Ryan's background, he is a retired scientist from Kodak. He holds a Ph.D. from USC, majoring in cinema and communications. He worked for Kodak for 29 years. He spent his entire career in motion picture film technology. He is a recipient of the Scientific and Engineering Award from the Society of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has authored numerous books on motion picture technology and several articles on motion picture science. In addition, he is a Fellow of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a member of the Committee for Selection of Scientific and Technical Awards, Special Effects, Documentary Films. * In Z353-356 we see Malcolm Summers diving to the ground. Summers is to the right of James Altgens. In Z353 Summers' left leg is extended most of the way out. But, in the very next frame, Z354, amazingly, the foreleg is bent markedly backward. Can anyone flex their foreleg to that degree so quickly? In 1/18th of a second? In Z355 Summers' left leg is bent even farther backward. Can anyone move their foreleg that much in 1/9th of a second (from its position in Z353 to its position in Z355)? Then, in Z356, the left foot seems to be on the ground. Can anyone whip their left foreleg backward and then put their foot on the ground in the space of three frames, 1/6th of a second? * Another seemingly impossible action in the Zapruder film is the extremely rapid and precise movement of Charles Brehm's son in Z277-287. In Z277 Brehm junior is standing behind his father. Then, from Z277-287, or in just over half a second, he bolts out from behind his father and comes to stand beside him, clapping his hands no less. In other words, in Z277 Brehm junior is standing behind his father, but, just ten frames later, he is standing calmly and steadily beside him and clapping his hands--all in a fraction over half a second. Ten frames of the Zapruder film, calculated at the assumed speed of 18.3 frames per second, equals .56 seconds (or 560 milliseconds). I attempted to duplicate the speed of the son's movement, but was unable to do so in the manner seen in the film. When I moved myself around a chair fast enough to appear from behind it to beside it in the required time, I was unable to come to a stop the way the son does in the film. In the film the son, after just over half a second, is standing calmly beside his father clapping his hands. I could not duplicate this feat. Again, when I did move myself around the chair fast enough, I could not stop with that kind of speed and precision and come to be clapping my hands by the time I stopped. While working on the present edition of this article, I conducted a simulation with my eleven year-old son, Jacob. I had Jacob stand behind a chair and asked him to duplicate the actions of Brehm's son as quickly as possible. I showed him exactly what he had to do. Jacob carried out the movements twelve times. With a stop watch in hand, I timed each attempt. Jacob's times were as follows: .97, .99, .89, .92, 1.03, .92, .89, .99, .97, .85, .82, and .77, as compared to Brehm's son's amazing time of .56. Jacob was unable to perform the required actions as rapidly as Brehm's son performs them in the Zapruder film. For his last three attempts, Jacob was practically jumping out from behind the chair. And, bear in mind, Jacob was purposely trying to move as rapidly as he could. Yet, he was unable to duplicate the feat of Brehm's son. I have pressed opponents of alteration to explain this amazing feat of Brehm's son. So far none has been able to do so. They cite the fact that Brehm's son also moves out from behind his father in the Muchmore film. However, as others have noted, the extant Muchmore film is not the original, and some researchers believe the film might have been altered in an attempt to make it roughly conform with the edited Zapruder film. As I've said in JFK discussion groups on the Internet, I would invite anyone to attempt to duplicate the movement of Brehm's son--to whip around an object, turning sharply in the process, stop on a dime with no need to steady himself, and clap at the same time, all in the equivalent of ten frames, or in just over half a second. To put it another way, to duplicate this movement, a person would need to be standing behind an object one moment and then come to be calmly standing and clapping beside it just 10/18th of a second later. If someone claims he or she can do this, I would invite that individual to videotape the feat and make the tape available for others to view. At this time, I am convinced this movement is impossible, and that this episode is proof of alteration in the Zapruder film. * Several witnesses said Kennedy was knocked visibly forward by a shot to the head, and Dan Rather reported seeing this event when he viewed the film the day after the shooting. No such motion of the head is now visible in the film, only the split-second forward movement from Z312-313, which no one could have noticed. Former FBI official and J. Edgar Hoover aide Cartha DeLoach recently provided further evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film (albeit unintentionally and unknowingly, I'm sure). DeLoach recalls in his book HOOVER'S FBI that he watched the Zapruder film at FBI HQ the day after the shooting and that he saw Kennedy "PITCHING SUDDENLY FORWARD" in the film. No such motion, of course, is seen in the current film. Newsman James Altgens, who was standing on Elm Street, to the left front of the limousine, with an excellent view of the shooting, when asked if he saw the backward head snap, replied that he didn't see it and that he thought reports of it were based on an optical illusion. Special Agent George Hickey, riding in the follow-up car, said the final shot made Kennedy "fall forward and to his left." William Newman, who was standing on the Elm Street sidewalk right in front of the grassy knoll and who had one of the best views of the shooting, tried to tell New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that JFK was knocked forward and to the left as if struck by a baseball bat, but Garrison wouldn't believe him because the event wasn't in the film. I believe the above is good evidence that the original Zapruder film showed Kennedy being knocked rapidly forward. How do defenders of the film's authenticity explain this testimony? They seem to have two approaches to this evidence: They either dismiss all of it as mistaken or they note that Kennedy does eventually fall forward and that this is what the witnesses were describing. Yes, Kennedy does eventually fall forward, but this occurs after the violent backward head snap and is a much slower motion, a motion that is clearly the natural result of Kennedy losing consciousness and simply falling over into his wife's lap. The witnesses, on the other hand, seemed to be saying that the impact of the head shot knocked or strongly pushed Kennedy forward, which is not seen in the current film. In the current film, Kennedy's head is knocked forward from Z312-313 by the impact of a bullet. No one disputes this. With regard to these frames, Itek noted, "the President's head is subjected to a large acceleration forward." Itek calculated that Kennedy's head is knocked forward 2.3 inches and his right shoulder about 1.1 inches from Z312-313. Bear in mind that each frame represents only 1/18th of a second. But, amazingly, by Z314 the head is suddenly moving backward. I suggest that in the original film the marked forward motion that begins at Z312 did not end at Z313 but continued for at least several frames and probably more, and that this was the forward movement seen and described by witnesses. * The violent, dramatic backward head snap in Z313-323, which for so many years was thought to be concrete proof of a shot from the front, actually constitutes further evidence of alteration. It has been established that no bullet striking the front of the skull could have caused the backward head snap. However, no bullet striking from behind could have caused this motion either. Warren Commission supporters have put forth two theories to explain how a bullet striking from behind might have caused the head snap, the jet-effect theory and the neuromuscular-reaction theory. Both theories are untenable (see, for example, ("Special Effects in the Zapruder Film: How the Film of the Century was Edited," in James Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science, Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1997, pp. 279-284; Mark North, Act Of Treason, New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991, pp. 383-385). So if neither a bullet from the front nor a bullet from behind could have caused the head snap, what caused it? A few researchers have speculated that Jackie was the cause of the head snap, that is, that she shoved JFK backward, but it is extremely doubtful that she was strong enough to throw her husband's torso backward with such terrific force. The head snap is a physical impossibility, at least according to everything we now know about physics and the human body. So how can we explain it? Dr. David Mantik, who holds a doctorate in physics, suggests that what we now see as the head snap was originally a much slower motion and was actually the action of Jackie lifting her husband back up to look at him. * Seemingly impossible inconsistencies occur in the streaking of background figures in relation to the camera's movement. Mathematician Daryll Weatherly's vector analysis of image streaking constitutes powerful evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film. Dr. Mantik explains, Weatherly, in an insightful analysis, takes [physicist Dr. Luis] Alvarez's work to its logical conclusion and raises new and curious issues related to image streaking. For example, between Z-193 and Z-194 the camera moves to the left. This is easily determined by simply looking at the right edge of the frame--the image shifts with respect to the frame edge, presumably as a result of uneven camera movement (i.e., poor tracking). As Alvarez noted, such a movement should produce streaking--of the background figures, the sign, and the closer bystanders. But none of this is seen--it is all quite paradoxical. Based on this, Weatherly proposes that this is a composite scene. This is a remarkably simple and powerful argument. It is difficult to avoid this conclusion. (Assassination Science, p. 315) Another case of inconsistent image streaking occurs in Z212. In this frame the posts on the Stemmons Freeway sign are noticeably blurred, but the holes in the masonry wall in the background are very well defined. "Since neither of these objects is moving," observes Dr. Mantik, "their visual definition should be similar--but it is not" (Assassination Science, p. 315). * A white spot on the grass behind the limousine is seen to behave in an unnatural manner. When the spot's width is measured in relation to the camera's tracking, the spot should be at its smallest when the image is at the left edge of the frame. But it doesn't do this. On some occasions, the spot's width is two to three times what it should be. And the frame to frame displacement of the white spot becomes especially egregious when the spot moves into the intersprocket area. Between Z334 and Z335, the displacement of the spot is 180 PERCENT OF NORMAL. Critics of alteration note that the white spot also appears in a photo taken by Richard Bothun. This, however, does not explain the unnatural way the spot behaves in the Zapruder film. * The head turn of the driver, William Greer, from Z315-317 is too fast--it seems to be well beyond human capability. His head turns about 165 degrees in six frames, or in only 1/3rd of a second. Furthermore, attorney Mike Pincher and Roy Schaeffer argue that the Greer head turn should create blurring in the film since the human eye can't remain focused when following such a rapid movement, but no blurring is seen: If the reader flashes his hand in front of his face in approximation of one-third of a second, it appears as a blur. The eyes are incapable of staying in full focus in following this action. If Greer's 165-degree movement in one-third of a second truly depicted real time, it would likewise appear as a blur. But blurring of this nature is not seen in the Zapruder film. (Assassination Science, p. 223) * At least four witnesses saw blood and brain from Kennedy's skull blow out toward the rear of the limousine. Blood and brain splattered onto the left side of the follow-up car's windshield and onto the driver's arm. A considerable amount of blood and brain also splattered onto the two patrolmen who were riding to the limousine's left rear. At least one of those witnesses specified that the brain matter blew out from the back of the skull, and dozens of witnesses, including doctors and nurses, saw a large hole in the right rear part of President Kennedy's head. In the Zapruder film no blood or brain is seen to spray backward. (It cannot be said that the right frontal explosion of blood and brain, which is itself suspect, caused all the blood splattering. In the Zapruder film the right-frontal spray blows mainly forward, and also up and toward the camera, and quickly dissipates--in fact it dissipates in no more than three frames. This effusion of spray could not have caused all of the blood splattering that occurred.) Secret Service Special Agent Sam Kinney was the driver of the follow-up car in Kennedy's motorcade and thus had a bird's-eye view of the shooting. In interviews with Vincent Palamara between 1992 and 1994, Kinney made some interesting and important observations about what he saw and about his impressions concerning the shooting. Of particular interest are Kinney's comments about the large head wound in the President's head: He had no brain left [in the wound created by the shot]. It was blown out. . . . there was nothing left. . . . [The wound was in] the back of the head. I saw it hit and I saw his hair come out . . . . I had brain matter all over my windshield and left arm, that's how close we were to it. It was the right rear part of his head, because that's the part I saw blow out. I saw hair come out, the piece [of skull] blow out, then the skin went back in--an explosion in and out. ("The Secret Service Interviews," Kennedy Assassination Chronicles, Summer 1997, p. 20, emphasis added) When Kinney was told about the description of the exit wound given by a number of the doctors who treated Kennedy at Parkland Hospital right after the shooting, he replied, I would say that, too. . . . ("The Secret Service Interviews," p. 20, emphasis added) Kinney's description of a large, blown-out right-rear exit wound matches the reports given by numerous Parkland doctors and nurses and by several witnesses at the autopsy. Also, his account of particulate matter exploding out the back of the skull and landing on his windshield and left arm agrees with Patrolman Bobby Hargis's report that the head shot sent blood and brain flying toward him so fast that when it struck him he initially thought he himself had been hit and that the debris got all over his motorcycle and uniform (in an interview he gave a few years ago, Hargis described the head shot as an "explosion"). Hargis, of course, was riding to the left rear of the limousine. * There are marked disagreements between the descriptions of those who saw the film soon after the assassination and what is now in the film. Dan Rather's reference to Kennedy's head being knocked forcefully forward is one case in point. Another example is the account of surveyor Chester Breneman, who was allowed to study enlargements of Zapruder frames to aid him in determining locations and distances. Breneman insisted that on some of the frames he saw a blob of blood and brain blow out from the back of Kennedy's head. No such event is visible on the current film. (As mentioned, some witnesses in the plaza likewise saw blood and brain blown backward.) * The bloody spray from the right-frontal explosion that is seen in the film blows upward, forward, and also toward the camera, and is really clearly visible for only one frame, and dissipates in two to three frames--or in no more than 1/6th of a second. Yet, in films of two ballistics tests the resulting spray is visible for multiple frames. In other words, the right-frontal effusion in the Zapruder film seems to disappear too quickly, with unnatural speed. * The 12/5/63 Secret Service survey placed the shots at approximately Z208, Z276, and Z358. A head shot at Z358 corresponds with the accounts of Emmett Hudson and James Altgens. Additionally, CE 2111, a Secret Service report, identifies the manhole cover on the side of Elm Street as being located almost opposite the limousine at the time of the last shot--the manhole cover is some 70 feet beyond the spot on the street that corresponds to Z313, which is when the head shot occurs in the current film. (There are several indications that there were TWO head shots. Dr. Mantik opines the first head shot occurred at around Z306-313 and that another one followed a short time later. He believes the current rapid backward head snap that starts at Z313 was originally a much slower motion and, as mentioned, might very well have been the action of Jackie lifting her husband back up to look at him.) * There is a "remarkably symmetric" plus sign at the center of Elm Street in Z028 (Z28). This might have been used as a register mark for aligning the film when it was being copied by those who altered the film. * There are magnification anomalies in the film for which there appears to be no credible natural or innocent explanation. One clear example of this is the measured width between the two posts on the back side of the Stemmons Freeway sign from Z312-318. This distance increases by over 12 percent in only six frames. Yet, from Z191-207 the interval remains constant. Some might attempt to explain this anomaly by suggesting that the lens was nonlinear for objects so far off the central axis. But, even if this were the case, it would still be unusual for such inconsistent changes to occur so abruptly within the lens, and lens aberrations do not normally occur in such an erratic fashion anyway. * Abraham Zapruder told CBS News that he began filming as soon as the President's limousine turned onto Elm Street from Houston Street, as one would logically expect him to have done. But the present Zapruder film begins with the limousine already on Elm Street at Z133. On the day after the assassination, Dan Rather of CBS News watched what was quite possibly an earlier version of the film. Rather reported that in the film he watched that day the limousine "made a turn, a left turn, off Houston Street onto Elm Street." Again, no such event is now seen in the film. In the current film there is a long gap between the earlier motorcycles and the limousine's first appearance at Z133. Why would Zapruder have expended valuable film on the motorcycles but not have taken as much footage as he could of the limousine? Why did he report he had filmed the limousine when it turned onto Elm Street? And what of the left turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street that Rather observed in the film when he viewed it the day after the shooting? Before I conclude, I would like to address two questions that have been raised by those who deny alteration: Why would the forgers, who were presumably trying to conceal or remove evidence of multiple gunmen and of shots from the front, produce an altered film that included the rapid backward head snap seen in the current film? And, why would the forgers have produced a film that contained indications of more than three shots? My answer to both of these objections is twofold: One, they do not explain the evidence of alteration. If there is scientific proof of alteration, then these philosophical objections must be rejected. Two, I do not believe the forgers were at all satisfied with the results of their tampering. I think they had to create the backward head snap because they had to remove images that were even more unacceptable and problematic. We must keep in mind that the Zapruder film was suppressed from public view for over a decade. In short, I believe the forgers concluded that even after all of their editing the film was still unacceptable, and that this is why the film was suppressed for so long. I stress that this list contains only some of the indications of fakery in the Zapruder film. I would urge the reader to read the chapters on the signs of alteration in the Zapruder film in the new book Assassination Science, edited by Professor James Fetzer of the University of Minnesota. Concerning the evidence that the Zapruder film has been altered, Dr. Mantik says the following: A strong case can now be made for extensive editing of the Zapruder film. In fact, the conclusion seems inescapable--the film was deliberately altered. No other explanation is in the same league, in terms of explanatory power, for the myriad of anomalous characteristics that are seen everywhere in this case. Many frames were excised, some individual frames were extensively altered, others were changed only enough to fill in for missing frames, and others were left alone. . . . What can be made of the absurd paradoxes of (supposed) camera tracking errors that are totally inconsistent with what actually appears in the relevant frame? When the frame contents shift by enormous amounts, corresponding blurs must be seen. There is no cinematic magic that can avoid such realities. And what can be said about intersprocket magnifications that are grossly different in two frames, particularly when tracking nonsense surfaces in the same frames? And now, thanks to Noel Twyman, we have the image of The Soaring Bird and of The Black Hole. These could have provided precisely the kind of reference points for pin registration that would be essential for frame to frame editing. Why else are these images there? They do recur persistently throughout the film. And when they are absent, where do they go--unless someone has deliberately omitted them? And where exactly did the intersprocket image of the right motorcycle come from? And why is it never visible in the central image? Why does the intersprocket image of the motorcycle skip around? Why is the intersprocket image darker after about Z235? Why do so many odd features occur within the intersprocket area? Why is the intersprocket image missing in frames Z413 and 414? And so the questions come, one after another, like automatic rifle fire. How much more evidence is required before reason prevails? At the very least, the proposal of film alteration deserves extensive consideration and serious discussion--even among those who are still inclined to be doubters. For these individuals, there is now much to explain. It is time for them to put on their ten-league boots and begin climbing this small mountain of data. (Assassination Science, p. 340, original emphasis) If you have not read Assassination Science, I would urge you to do so. It is quite possibly the most important book ever published on the death of President Kennedy. It truly represents a breakthrough in the case. Noel Twyman's book Bloody Treason also presents evidence of alteration in the Zapruder film, along with other important developments relating to the assassination. Even if some of the apparent technical anomalies in the Zapruder film can be explained, strong indications of tampering would still remain. To put it another way, if opponents of alteration are able to explain the absence of background streaking in certain frames, the magnification anomalies, the odd behavior of the white spot, and other seeming difficulties, would this establish the film's authenticity? No. Otherwise, do we dismiss the witnesses who reported the limousine stopped or slowed drastically? Do we dismiss the witnesses who saw blood and brain blown visibly to the rear? Do we dismiss the fact that the backward head snap is physically impossible according to everything we know about physics and the human body? Do we dismiss the fact that Zapruder said he filmed the motorcade from the time it turned onto Elm Street? Do we dismiss the fact that Brehm's son is positioned behind his father one moment but half a second later is standing calmly clapping at his side? Do we dismiss the fact that the 12/5/63 Secret Service survey placed the last shot at Z358 and that this placement matches the testimony of Emmett Hudson and James Altgens regarding the explosive head shot? The numerous indications of alteration in the Zapruder film naturally raise some disturbing questions. The answer to the question of why the film was altered is fairly apparent--to conceal obvious evidence of a frontal shot, of multiple gunmen, and of more than three hits. But, who performed the alteration? Whoever they were, they were very well connected (so as to gain access to the film) and had at their disposal considerable technical expertise. It would seem self-evident that those who altered the Zapruder film were either working with or following orders from the men who were responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy. Though it has been 34 years since the shooting, a special prosecutor or a Congressional committee should be appointed to investigate this matter. A declassified CIA document indicates the Zapruder film was detoured to a sophisticated CIA photographic lab relatively soon after the assassination, and quite possibly on the night of the shooting. Professor Phillip Melanson has discussed this declassified document and what it reveals about the handling of the film in his famous article "Hidden Exposure: Cover-Up and Intrigue in the CIA's Secret Possession of the Zapruder Film" in The Third Decade, November 1984. A summary of the main points of Melanson's findings is included in Assassination Science. Though many researchers have long suspected the Zapruder film was altered at the CIA, there is some indication that at least part of the alteration might have been done at the FBI. ----------------------------------------------------------- MICHAEL T. GRIFFITH is a two-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. His articles on the JFK assassination have appeared in THE DEALEY PLAZA ECHO, in THE ASSASSINATION CHRONICLES, and in the JFK/DEEP POLITICS QUARTERLY. He is the author of the book COMPELLING EVIDENCE: A NEW LOOK AT THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY (Grand Prairie, TX: JFK Lancer Productions, 1996). He is also the author of four books on Mormonism and ancient religious texts. Back to Michael T. Griffith http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/the_critics/g...Alteration.html ""Professor Phillip Melanson has discussed this declassified document and what it reveals about the handling of the film in his famous article "Hidden Exposure: Cover-Up and Intrigue in the CIA's Secret Possession of the Zapruder Film" in The Third Decade, November 1984. A summary of the main points of Melanson's findings is included in Assassination Science."" http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=520770 ""A declassified CIA document indicates the Zapruder film was detoured to a sophisticated CIA photographic lab relatively soon after the assassination, and quite possibly on the night of the shooting..."" The following excerpts are taken from three enclosures in ARRB Document D-133, which was prepared by Doug Horne. Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 07/15/97 Date: 07/14/97 Topic: ARRB Interviewed Homer McMahon . . . Mr. McMahon was manager of the NPIC (National Photo Interpretation Center) color lab in 1963. About two days after the assassination of President Kennedy, but before the funeral took place, a Secret Service agent named "Bill Smith" delivered an amateur film of the assassination to NPIC and requested that color prints be mde of frames believed to be associated with wounding ("frames in which shots occurred"), for purpos- es of assembling a briefing board. Mr. Smith did not explain who the briefing boards would be for, or who would be briefed. The only persons who witnessed this activity (which McMahon described as "an all night job") were USSS agent Smith, Homer McMahon, and Ben Hunter (McMahon's assistant). Although no materials produced were stamped with classifi- cations markings, Smith told McMahon that the subject matter was to be treated as "above top secret"; McMahon said not even his supervisor was allowed to know what he was working on, nor was his supervisor allowed to participate. Smith told McMahon that the had personally picked up the film (in an undeveloped condition from the man who exposed it) in Dallas, flown it to Rochester, N.Y. (where it was developed by Kodak), and then flown it down to NPIC in Washington so that enlargements of selected frames could be made on NPIC's state-of-the-art equipment. After the film (either an unslit original or possibly a duplicate) was viewed more than once on a 16 mm projector in a briefing room at NPIC, the original (a double-8 mm unslit original) was placed in a 10x 20x40 precison enlarger, and 5" X 7" format internegatives were made from selected frames. A full-immersion "wet-gate" or liquid gate pro- cess was used on the original film to reduce refractivity of the film and maximize the optical quality of the internegatives. Subsequently, three each 5" X 7" contact prints were made from the internegative. He recalled that a mimimum of 20, and a maximum of 40 frames were duplicat- ed via internegatives and prints. All prints, internegatives, and scraps were turned over to Bill Smith at the conclusion of the work. . . . Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 08/14/97 Date: 08/14/97 Topic: Processing of Zapruder Film by NPIC in 1963 (Revised August 15, 1997) . . . I asked both men [Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter] if they still recall- ed that their event occurred prior to the President's funeral, and they both emphatically said yes. Mr. McMahon said he believes they performed their work the night of the same day the President was assassinated, and Bennett Hunter said he was of the opinion they did their work on the sec- ond night after the assassination (i.e., Saturday night). . . . Home McMahon remembered again that the Secret Service agent stated definitively that the assassination movie was developed in Rochester, and that copies of it were made in Rochester also, and that he personal- ly watched one of those copies projected at least 10 times that night prior to making the internegatives of selected frames. Mr. Hunter agreed that it seemed very likely to him that the copies of the motion picture film would "probably have been made in Rochester", but did not independ- ently recall. . . . Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 06/18/97 Date: 06/17/97 Topic: ARRB Staff Interviewed Ben Hunter (Grammatical Edits Made on June 19, 1997)(Final Edit Made June 20, 1997) . . . -The Zapruder film was not copied as a motion picture; in fact, Hun- ter said that NPIC did not have that capability for color movies, since they were in the business of still, B & W reconnaissance photography for the most part. He said that the assigned task was to analyze (i.e., loc- ate on the film) where occupants of the limousine were wounded, includ- ing "studying frames leading up to shots", and then produce color prints from appropriate frames just prior to shots, and also frames showing shots impacting limousine occupants. He recalled laying the home movie out on a light table and using a loupe to examine individual frames. He does not recall whether they received any instructions as to number of shots, or any guidance as to where to look in the film. . . . Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 07/15/97 Date: 07/14/97 Topic: ARRB Interviewed Homer McMahon . . . Although the process of selecting which frames depicted events sur- rounding the wounding of limousine occupants (Kennedy and Connally) was a "joint process", McMahon said his opinion, which was that President Kennedy was shot 6 to 8 times from at least three directions, was ul- timately ignored, and the opinion of USSS agent Smith, that there were 3 shots from behind from the Book Depository, ultimately was employed in selecting frames in the movie for reproduction. At one point he said "you can't fight city hall", and then reminded us that his job was to produce internegatives and photographs, not to do analysis. He said that it was clear that the Secret Service agent had previously viewed the fim and already had opinions about which frames depicted woundings. . . . END ""* Abraham Zapruder told CBS News that he began filming as soon as the President's limousine turned onto Elm Street from Houston Street, as one would logically expect him to have done. But the present Zapruder film begins with the limousine already on Elm Street at Z133. On the day after the assassination, Dan Rather of CBS News watched what was quite possibly an earlier version of the film. Rather reported that in the film he watched that day the limousine "made a turn, a left turn, off Houston Street onto Elm Street." Again, no such event is now seen in the film. "" Mr. LIEBELER - As you stood there on this abutment with your camera, the motorcade came down Houston Street and turned left on Elm Street, did it not? Mr. ZAPRUDER - That's right. Mr. LIEBELER - And it proceeded then down Elm Street toward the triple underpass; is that correct? Mr. ZAPRUDER - That's correct. I started shooting--when the motorcade started coming in, I believe I started and wanted to get it coming in from Houston Street. Mr. LIEBELER - Tell us what happened as you took these pictures. Mr. ZAPRUDER - Well, as the car came in line almost--I believe it was almost in line. I was standing up here and I was shooting through a telephoto lens, which is a zoom lens and as it reached about--I imagine it was around here--I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area). Mr. LIEBELER - Grab himself on the front of his chest? Mr. ZAPRUDER - Right---something like that. In other words, he was sitting like this and waving and then after the shot he just went like that. Mr. LIEBELER - He was sitting upright in the car and you heard the shot and you saw the President slump over? Mr. ZAPRUDER - Leaning--leaning toward the side of Jacqueline. For a moment I thought it was, you know, like you say, "Oh, he got me," when you hear a shot--you've heard these expressions and then I saw---I don't believe the President is going to make jokes like this, but before I had a chance to organize my mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head opened up and the blood and everything came out and I started--I can hardly talk about it [ the witness crying]. http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/zapruder.htm The Zapruder Film: Truth or Deception? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-rcdBNFnGs...ated&search B...

The "Davids" quoted are David LIFTON and David MANTIK. Jack *************** David Andrews: This article may help in understanding what the Parkland Medical authorities saw...on Nov.22/63....Their first Report... The following is information from "Three Patients at Parkland" an article in the... "Texas State Journal of Medicine, dated January 1964. Written in late November / early December,1963...before the official story was set in stone, and the authourities had returned to speak with the Doctors of Parkland, and show them the autopsy findings of Bethesda...... Charles J Carrico - Dr. Carrico was the first physician to see the President. A 1961 graduate of Southwestern Medical School, he is 28 and a resident in surgery at Parkland. He reported that when the patient entered the emergency room on an ambulance carriage he had slow agonal respiratory efforts and occasional cardiac beats detectable by auscultation. Two external wounds were noted; one a small wound of the anterior neck in the lower one third. The other wound had caused avulsion of the occipitoparietal calvarium and shredded brain tissue was present with profuse oozing. No pulse or blood pressure were present. Pupils were bilaterally dilated and fixed. A cuffed endotracheal tube was inserted through the laryngoscope. A ragged wound of the trachea was seen immediately below the larynx. The tube was advanced past the laceration and the cuff inflated. Respiration was instituted using a respirator assistor on automatic cycling. Concurrently, an intravenous infusion of lactated Ringer's solution was begun via catheter placed in the right leg. Blood was drawn for typing and cross -matching. Type 0 Rh negative blood was obtained immediately. In view of the tracheal injury and diminished breath sounds in the right chest, tracheostomy was performed by Dr. Malcolm 0. Perry and bilateral chest tubes inserted. A second intravenous infusion was begun in the left arm. In addition, Dr. M. T. Jenkins began respiration with the anesthesia machine, cardiac monitor and stimulator attached. Solu-Cortef (300 mg.) was given intravenously. Despite those measures, blood pressure never returned. Only brief electrocardiographic evidence of cardiac activity was obtained. Malcolm 0. Perry - Dr. Perry is an assistant professor of surgery at Southwestern Medical School from which he received his degree in 1955. He is 34 years old and was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1963. At the time of initial examination of the President, Dr. Perry has stated, the patient was noted to be non-responsive . His eyes were deviated and the pupils dilated. A considerable quantity of blood was noted on the patient, the carriage, and the floor. A small wound was noted in the midline of the neck in the lower third anteriorly. It was exuding blood slowly. A large wound of the right posterior cranium was noted, exposing severely lacerated brain. Brain tissue was noted in the blood at the head of the carriage. Pulse or heart beat were not detectable but slow spasmodic respiration was noted. An endotracheal tube was in place and respiration was being controlled. An intravenous infusion was being placed in the leg. While additional venesections were done to administer fluids and blood, a tracheostomy was effected. A right lateral injury to the trachea was noted. The cuffed tracheostomy tube was put in place as the endotracheal tube was withdrawn and respirations continued. Closed chest cardiac massage was instituted after placement of sealed-drainage chest tubes, but without benefit. When electrocardiogram evaluation revealed that no detectable electrical activity existed in the heart, resuscitative attempts were abandoned. The team of physicians determined that the patient had expired. Charles R. Baxter - Dr. Baxter is an assistant professor of surgery at Southwestern Medical School where he first arrived as a medical student in 1950. Except for two years away in the Army he has been at Southwestern and Parkland ever since, moving up from student to intern to resident to faculty member. He is 34 and was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1963. Recalling his attendance to President Kennedy, he says he learned at approximately 12 :35 that the President was on the way to the emergency room and that he had been shot. When Dr. Baxter arrived in the emergency room, he found an endotracheal tube in place and respirations being assisted. A left chest tube was being inserted and cut-downs were functioning in one leg and in the left arm. The President had a wound in the midline of the neck. On first observation of the other wounds, portions of the right temporal and occipital bones were missing and some of the brain was lying on the table. The rest of the brain was extensively macerated and contused. The pupils were fixed and deviated laterally and were dilated. No pulse was detectable and ineffectual respirations were being assisted. A tracheostomy was performed by Dr. Perry and Dr. Baxter and a chest tube was inserted into the right chest (second interspace anteriorly). Meanwhile one pint of O negative blood was administered without response. When all of these measures were complete, no heart beat could be detected. Closed chest massage was performed until a cardioscope could be attached. Brief cardiac activity was obtained followed by no activity. Due to the extensive and irreparable brain damage which existed and since there were no signs of life, no further attempts were made at resuscitation. Robert N. McClelland - Dr. McClelland, 34, assistant professor of surgery at Southwestern Medical School, is a graduate of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He has served with the Air Force in Germany and was certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1963. Regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, Dr. McClelland says that at approximately 12:35 p.m. he was called from the second floor of the hospital to the emergency room. When he arrived, President Kennedy was being attended by Drs. Perry, Baxter, Carrico, and Ronald Jones, chief resident in surgery. The President was at that time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head with a fragment wound of the trachea. An endotracheal tube had been placed and assisted respiration started by Dr. Carrico who was on duty in the emergency room when the President arrived. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and McClelland performed a tracheostomy for respiratory distress and tracheal injury. Dr. Jones and Dr. Paul Peters, assistant professor of surgery, ; inserted bilateral anterior chest tubes for pneumothoraces secondary to the tracheo-mediastinal injury. Dr. Jones and assistants had started three cutdowns, giving blood and fluids immediately. In spite of this, the President was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. by Dr. Clark, the neurosurgeon, who arrived immediately after Dr. McClelland. The cause of death, according to Dr. McClelland was the massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the right side of the head. The President was pronounced dead after external cardiac massage failed and electrocardiographic activity was gone. Fouad A, Bashour - Dr. Bashour received his medical education at the University of Beirut School of Medicine in Lebanon. He is 39 and an associate professor of medicine in cardiology at Southwestern Medical School. At 12 :50 p.m. Dr. Bashour was called from the first floor of the hospital and told that President Kennedy had been shot. He and Dr. Donald Seldin, professor and chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine, went to the emergency room. Upon examination, they found that the President had no pulsations, no heart beats, no blood pressure. The oscilloscope showed a complete standstill. The President was declared dead at 1:00 p.m. William Kemp Clark - Dr. Clark is associate professor and chairman of the Division of Neurosurgery at Southwestern Medical School. The 38-year-old physician has done research on head injuries and has been at Southwestern since 1956. He reports this account of the President's treatment: The President arrived at the emergency room entrance in the back seat of his limousine. Governor Connally of Texas was also in this car. The first physician to see the President was Dr. Carrico . Dr. Carrico noted the President to have slow, agonal respiratory efforts. He could hear a heart beat but found no pulse or blood pressure. Two external wounds, one in the lower third of the anterior neck, the other in the occipital region of the skull, were noted. Through the head wound, blood and brain were extruding. Dr. Carrico inserted a cuffed endotracheal tube and while doing so, he noted a ragged wound of the trachea immediately below the larynx. At this time, Drs. Perry, Baxter, and Jones arrived. Immediately thereafter, Dr. Jenkins and Drs. A. H. Giesecke, Jr., and Jackie H. Hunt, two other staff anesthesiologists, arrived. The endotracheal tube had been connected to a respirator to assist the President's breathing. An anesthesia machine was substituted for this by Dr. Jenkins. Only 100 per cent oxygen was administered. A cutdown was performed in the right ankle, and a polyethylene catheter inserted in the vein. An infusion of lactated Ringer's solution was begun. Blood was drawn for typing and crossmatching, but unmatched type O Rh negative blood was immediately obtained and begun. Hydrocortisone (300 mg.) was added to the intravenous fluids. Dr. McClelland arrived to help in the President's care. Drs. Perry, Baxter, and McClelland did a tracheostomy. Considerable quantities of blood were present in the President's oral pharynx. At this time, Dr. Peters and Dr. Clark arrived. Dr. Clark noted that the President had bled profusely from the back of the head. There was a large (3 by 3 cm.) amount of cerebral tissue present on the cart. There was a smaller amount of cerebellar tissue present also. The tracheostomy was completed and the endotracheal tube was withdrawn. Suction was used to remove blood in the oral pharynx. A nasogastric tube was passed into the stomach. Because of the likelihood of mediastinal injury, anterior chest tubes were placed in both pleural spaces. These were connected to sealed underwater drainage. Neurological examination revealed the President's pupils to be widely dilated and fixed to light. His eyes were divergent, being deviated outward; a skew deviation from the horizontal was present. No deep tendon reflexes or spontaneous movements were found. When Dr. Clark noted that there was no carotid pulse, he began closed chest massage. A pulse was obtained at the carotid and femoral levels. Dr. Perry then took over the cardiac massage so that Dr. Clark could evaluate the head wound. There was a large wound beginning in the right occiput extending into the parietal region. Much of the right posterior skull, at brief examination, appeared gone. The previously described extruding brain was present. Profuse bleeding had occurred and 1500 cc. of blood was estimated to be on the drapes and floor of the emergency operating room. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound. By this time an electrocardiograph was hooked up. There was brief electrical activity of the heart which soon stopped. The President was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m. by Dr. Clark. M. T. Jenkins - Dr. Jenkins is professor and chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at Southwestern Medical School. He is 46, a graduate of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and was certified by the American Board of Anesthesiology in 1952. During World War II he served in the Navy as a lieutenant commander. When Dr. Jenkins was notified that the President was being brought to the emergency room at Parkland, he dispatched Drs. Giesecke and Hunt with an anesthesia machine and resuscitative equipment to the major surgical emergency room area. He ran downstairs to find upon his arrival in the emergency operating room that Dr. Carrico had begun resuscitative efforts by introducing an orotracheal tube, connecting it for controlled ventilation to a Bennett intermittent positive pressure breathing apparatus. Drs. Baxter, Perry, and McClelland arrived at the same time and began a tracheostomy and started the insertion of a right chest tube, since there was also obvious tracheal and chest damage. Drs. Peters and Clark arrived simultaneously and immediately thereafter assisted respectively with the insertion of the right chest tube and with manual closed chest cardiac compression to assure circulation. Dr. Jenkins believes it evidence of the clear thinking of the resuscitative team that the patient received 300 mg. hydrocortisone intravenously in the first few minutes. For better control of artificial ventilation, Dr. Jenkins exchanged the intermittent positive pressure breathing apparatus for an anesthesia machine and continued artificial ventilation. Dr. Gene Akin, a resident in anesthesiology, and Dr. Giesecke connected a cardioscope to determine cardiac activity. During the progress of these activities, the emergency room cart was elevated at the feet in order to provide a Trendelenburg position, a venous cutdown was performed on the right saphenous vein and additional fluids were begun in a vein in the left forearm while blood was ordered from the blood bank. All of these activities were completed by approximately 12:50 at which time external cardiac massage was still being carried out effectively by Dr. Clark as judged by a palpable peripheral pulse. Despite these measures there was only brief electrocardiographic evidence of cardiac activity. These described resuscitative activities were indicated as of first importance, and after they were carried out, attention was turned to other evidences of injury. There was a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that part of the right cerebellum had protruded from the wound. There were also fragmented sections of brain on the drapes of the emergency room cart. With the institution of adequate cardiac compression, there was a great flow of blood from the cranial cavity, indicating that there was much vascular damage as well as brain tissue damage. President Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1 p.m. It is Dr. Jenkins' personal feeling that all methods of resuscitation were instituted expeditiously and efficiently. However, he says, the cranial and intracranial damage was of such magnitude as to cause irreversible damage. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ List taken from "Murder In Deaey Plaza" Dr.J.Fetzer.. The observations of the wounds.. At Parkland...the earliest statements. .................................................RightRear...........Right Side...........Right Anterior 1. William K.Clark, MD.......................X 2. Robert McClelland, MD.................. X 3. Marion T.Jenkins, MD..................... X 4. Charles J.Carrico, MD.................... X 5. Malcolm Perry, MD...................... . X 6. Ronald C.Jones, MD...................... X 7. Gene Akin, MD..............................X 8. Paul Peters, MD.............................X 9. Charles Crenshaw, MD................... X 10. Charles R.Baxter, MD....................X 11. Robert Grossman, MD...................X.......................X 12. Richard B.Dulany, MD...................X 13.AdolpheGiesecke,MD..................X...........................X............ .............X 14. Fouad Bashour, MD......................X 15.Kenneth E.Salyer Kenneth E. Salyer MD....................X..........................X......................X 16. Pat Hutton, RN.............................X 17. Doris Nelson, RN..........................X 18. William Greer, SS........................X 19. Clinton J.Hill, SS..........................X 20. Diana Hamilton Bowron, RN..........X 21, William Midgett............................X........................X What do we see in the Zapruder film…..?.. A huge blown out wound to the right, front, top of the head, ?? and a the appearance of a shadowed blackened area within the back of his head....where the staff of the Parkland Hospital reported the blown out back head wound .... It is Not What is Seen in the Zapruder Film.....it is what is Not seen… We look to the Zapruder film..and we see, No blown out wound at the back of the head, be it tangential or avulsive......... Parkland did not see nor report a huge blown out right, front, top of the head wound....not even Clark.. Yet there it is within the Zapruder film, and not seen within Parkland. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& B.....

Quote: Hi Bernice! The caption to the photo states that Hill "stood in the grassy area" when the shot was fired. It says she was on the grass when the shot was fired. At odds with previously quoted text ... and the text on the page Kathy included is Jean's much later ever changing story. Jean was a lovely and fun woman, but one cannot ignore how her story grew from a guppy to a whale over the years. Good pickup on Kathy's part. Hope all is well with you! Bests, Barb :-) ****** Hi Barb:Kathy , I have grave doubts that Jean was responsible for the insertion of any photos nor what comments may have or not been typed below..within the book... .....Bill Sloan wrote the book with Jeans input......I believe perhaps from tapes ??..and as all writers do they do take some libertys.....there were some differences she noted with him....... ...I believe Jean mentioned such, on her Black Ops shows...not positive now, but well could be........ She was also trying to get the rights back to the book at the time, as the book was no longer available and out of print......I never did read or hear later if she did. Some witnesses stories grew down through the years, but this thread is about what was stated at the time of the assassination, not the changes they may have made years later.... And why their movements that day are not seen within the Zapruder film..... Thanks B....

Hi Kathy: I realize that you have been to Dealey, you are fortunate. ""Quote Kathy :I posted that to demonstrate that it is coming out of the same book that some are saying says that she was in the street when the fatal shot was fired."" Please link thanks. ""Now that I have taken a look at Bill Sloan with Jean Hill, THE LAST DISSENTING WITNESS (1992), I have discovered on p. 63 the following exchange between Jean Hill and a person--identified by FBI AIC Gordon Shanklin--as a CIA agent: "You said you were 'right at the curb' on Elm Street as the presidential limousine approached", he began, "but weren't you actually in the street itself for several seconds?" "Yes", she replied, regaining some of her composure. "I jumped into the street and called out to the president to look in our direction. We wanted to take his picture". "Is that the only reason you were in the street?" She frowned. "Yes, of course", she said. "And why did you suddenly jump back from the president's car at almost exactly the same instant the shooting started?" "I just realized I probably shouldn't be so close, and I decided I'd better get back. Notice how consistent this is with Mary's description of stepping into the street, taking her picture, stepping back on the grass and getting down so she would not be shot and tugging at Jean's leg, so she would get down, too."" What I see as one of the main points in all this, that appears to be constantly averted is that none of these actions of Mary & Jeans are seen within the Zapruder film, and should be..... As what one has stated does verify the other's information..... ..Mary has stated and very clearly, she was in the street....3 times I believe down through the years.... .. Thanks B.. ********* The reel was an interview by Jay Hogan of Mary Moorman and Jean Hill at 3:30 pm...on KRLD RADIO excerpts, Tape 5B and 6A at NARA. I am excerpting from the lengthy transcript several relevant parts of the interviews. Decide for yourself the importance of this first day evidence: HOGAN: Q: Hello, Mrs. Moorman? A: Yes. Q You took the picture just after the shooting, or just before? A: Evidently, just immediately, as the. . . Cause he was, he was looking, you know, whenever I got the camera focused and then I snapped it in my picture, he slumped over. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) Q: About how close were you? (DELETED FOR BREVITY) A: 10 or fifteen foot, I, no more . . . Because I fall behind my camera. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) Q: Were you up on that grassy bank there? A: We stepped out in the street. We were right at the car. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) Q: How many shots did you hear? You say "shots rang out". A: Oh, oh, I don't know. I think three or four is what I, I uh, that I heard. Q: Uh huh. A: (continuing) that I'm sure of. Now, I don't know, there might have been more. It just took seconds for me to realize what was happening. Q: Yeah, uh, what as your first thought? A: That those ARE shots. I mean, he had been HIT. And that they're liable to hit me, cause I'm right at the car, so I decided the place for me is to get on the ground (laughs) Q: So huh, how did the president respond to this shot. I mean, did he just slump suddenly? A: He grabbed his chest, and of course, Mrs. Kennedy jumped up immediately, and fell over him; and she said: "My God, he's been shot." Q: Did you notice any other reactions... (DELETED FOR BREVITY) A: Uh, they hesitated just for a moment [referring, I believe, to the car itself, rather than to the behavior of any particular individual--dsl] cause I think they were like I was, you know--'Was that a shot," or was itj ust a backfire, or just what? And then, course, he clutched himself and they immediately sped up, real fast, you know, like--to get OUT of there. And, uh, the police, there were several motorcycles around him; and, uh, they stopped, and uh--one or two must of went with him, And one ran up the hill, and a friend that was with me ran up the hill across the street from where the shots came from. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) Q: It (shots) seemed fairly close by? A: Yes, uh huh. Q And form what direction did they seem to be? A: Oh, Lord? North. Just back there (at--laughs) Q: Just just right at you? A: Yes, sir. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) A: The sound popped, well it just sounded like, well, you know, there might have been a firecracker right there in that car. Q: And in your picture, uh, you uh took this picture just BEFORE the shot? (DELETED FOR BREVITY) A: Evidently, at the minute (means "instant") that he, that it hit him because, uh, we was we was looking, at me, or I mean, he was looking, you know, at the people when my picture came out. They just slumped over, so I must have got it. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) A: Yes, uh huh. You could see he's clutched, he's bent over, and she's... and she hadn't even gotten up in my picture, and she DID get up, STOOD UP, in the car. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) Q: Uh huh. And you and your friend Miss Hill, uh, were together there at the scene. Was anybody else with you? A No, uh uh. Q: OK, well we sure thank you. FROM HERE ON OUT, the interview continues with Jean Hill Q: (continuing) And also, here, we do have Miss Hill. Miss Hill, you were an eyewitness, also? A: Yes, I was . I suppose we were the people closest to the President's car at the time. Q: Uh, that as about 10 or fifteen feet, you'd say? A: Not anymore than that at all. Q: Uh huh. You were both looking right at the presidential car, then? A: Yes, we were looking right at the President. We were looking at his face. As Mary took the picture, I was looking at him. And he grabbed his hands across his ch-when two shots rang out. He grabbed his hands across his chest. I have never seen anyone killed, or in pain before like that but there was this odd look came across his face, and he pitched forward onto Jackie's lap. DSL NOTE: I believe this must mean: "to the side onto Jackie's lap" --because Jackie was to the left of JFK, not in front of JFK. In my interview of the Newman's, circa 1971, in person, and on tape, they talk of JFK falling to the side, or being thrust towards Jackie. A: And uh, she immediately, we were close enough to even hear her, and everything, and she fell across him and says "My God, he's been shot." Q: ..... Did you notice particularly any of the other people around? At the time (she cuts in) A: There was NO one around us on our side of the street. We had planned it that way; we wanted to be down there by ourselves; that’s the reason we had gotten almost to the underpass, so we’d be completely in the clear. Q: Any other reactions form the other people in the motorcae, that you recall? A: The motorcade was stunned after the first two shots, and it came to a momentary halt, and about that time 4 more uh, 3 to 4 more shots again rang out, and I guess it just didn't register with me. Mary was uh had gotten down on the ground and was pulling at my leg, saying "Get , get down, they're shooting, get down, they're shooting; and I didn't even realize it. And I just kept sitting there looking. And uh uh just about that time, well, of course, some of the motorcycles pulled away. And some of them pulled over to the side and started running up the bank; there's a hill on the other side (she is interrupted) Q: Yes, Maam. A: And the shots came from there. After they were momentarily stopped--after the first two shots--THEN they sped away REAL quickly. (DELETED FOR BREVITY) Q: Well, thank you Miss Hill, and also Miss Moorman, for speaking with us about this. A. Thankyou. ANNOUNCER: That's two eyewitnesses to the murdered president, who saw on his face the anguish of his very last hour alive. Before we go back to CBS, here again are some announcements of special local importance.

Bill you may find this information from Doug Horne interesting... B.. The following excerpts are taken from three enclosures in ARRB Document D-133, which was prepared by Doug Horne. Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 07/15/97 Date: 07/14/97 Topic: ARRB Interviewed Homer McMahon . . . Mr. McMahon was manager of the NPIC (National Photo Interpretation Center) color lab in 1963. About two days after the assassination of President Kennedy, but before the funeral took place, a Secret Service agent named "Bill Smith" delivered an amateur film of the assassination to NPIC and requested that color prints be mde of frames believed to be associated with wounding ("frames in which shots occurred"), for purpos- es of assembling a briefing board. Mr. Smith did not explain who the briefing boards would be for, or who would be briefed. The only persons who witnessed this activity (which McMahon described as "an all night job") were USSS agent Smith, Homer McMahon, and Ben Hunter (McMahon's assistant). Although no materials produced were stamped with classifi- cations markings, Smith told McMahon that the subject matter was to be treated as "above top secret"; McMahon said not even his supervisor was allowed to know what he was working on, nor was his supervisor allowed to participate. Smith told McMahon that the had personally picked up the film (in an undeveloped condition from the man who exposed it) in Dallas, flown it to Rochester, N.Y. (where it was developed by Kodak), and then flown it down to NPIC in Washington so that enlargements of selected frames could be made on NPIC's state-of-the-art equipment. After the film (either an unslit original or possibly a duplicate) was viewed more than once on a 16 mm projector in a briefing room at NPIC, the original (a double-8 mm unslit original) was placed in a 10x 20x40 precison enlarger, and 5" X 7" format internegatives were made from selected frames. A full-immersion "wet-gate" or liquid gate pro- cess was used on the original film to reduce refractivity of the film and maximize the optical quality of the internegatives. Subsequently, three each 5" X 7" contact prints were made from the internegative. He recalled that a mimimum of 20, and a maximum of 40 frames were duplicat- ed via internegatives and prints. All prints, internegatives, and scraps were turned over to Bill Smith at the conclusion of the work. . . . Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 08/14/97 Date: 08/14/97 Topic: Processing of Zapruder Film by NPIC in 1963 (Revised August 15, 1997) . . . I asked both men [Homer McMahon and Ben Hunter] if they still recall- ed that their event occurred prior to the President's funeral, and they both emphatically said yes. Mr. McMahon said he believes they performed their work the night of the same day the President was assassinated, and Bennett Hunter said he was of the opinion they did their work on the sec- ond night after the assassination (i.e., Saturday night). . . . Home McMahon remembered again that the Secret Service agent stated definitively that the assassination movie was developed in Rochester, and that copies of it were made in Rochester also, and that he personal- ly watched one of those copies projected at least 10 times that night prior to making the internegatives of selected frames. Mr. Hunter agreed that it seemed very likely to him that the copies of the motion picture film would "probably have been made in Rochester", but did not independ- ently recall. . . . Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 06/18/97 Date: 06/17/97 Topic: ARRB Staff Interviewed Ben Hunter (Grammatical Edits Made on June 19, 1997)(Final Edit Made June 20, 1997) . . . -The Zapruder film was not copied as a motion picture; in fact, Hun- ter said that NPIC did not have that capability for color movies, since they were in the business of still, B & W reconnaissance photography for the most part. He said that the assigned task was to analyze (i.e., loc- ate on the film) where occupants of the limousine were wounded, includ- ing "studying frames leading up to shots", and then produce color prints from appropriate frames just prior to shots, and also frames showing shots impacting limousine occupants. He recalled laying the home movie out on a light table and using a loupe to examine individual frames. He does not recall whether they received any instructions as to number of shots, or any guidance as to where to look in the film. . . . Document's Author: Douglas Horne/ARRB Date Created: 07/15/97 Date: 07/14/97 Topic: ARRB Interviewed Homer McMahon . . . Although the process of selecting which frames depicted events sur- rounding the wounding of limousine occupants (Kennedy and Connally) was a "joint process", McMahon said his opinion, which was that President Kennedy was shot 6 to 8 times from at least three directions, was ul- timately ignored, and the opinion of USSS agent Smith, that there were 3 shots from behind from the Book Depository, ultimately was employed in selecting frames in the movie for reproduction. At one point he said "you can't fight city hall", and then reminded us that his job was to produce internegatives and photographs, not to do analysis. He said that it was clear that the Secret Service agent had previously viewed the fim and already had opinions about which frames depicted woundings. . . . END