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Jeff Carter

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  1. Regarding what Robert Kennedy may have said in a 1964 interview, it worthwhile to recall he was still, at that point, Attorney General and member of LBJ’s cabinet, thus subject to direction as set out in paragraph 4 of NSAM 273: 4. The President expects that all senior officers of the Government will move energetically to insure the full unity of support for established U.S. policy in Vietnam. Both in Washington and in the field, it is essential the Government be unified. More detail on the development of NSAM 263, including more information on McNamara’s input both at the time and his recollections afterwards, can be found in James Galbraith’s Boston Review article "Exit Strategy" from 2003: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/galbraith-exit-strategy-vietnam/ Noam Chomsky published a reply shortly after, many of which talking points have been repeated by the dissenting voice on this thread. Galbraith in turn replies to Chomsky: https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/chomsky-galbraith-letters-vietnam-jfk-kennedy/
  2. Giglio: “The 1,000-force cutback slated for the end of 1963 mostly involved a construction battalion that had completed its work; it was understood that it would be replaced by other troops…” John Newman’s “JFK and Vietnam” discusses in detail what happened to the 1000 man withdrawal, which was not carried out as envisioned (see 2017 edition Chapter 22 p529-532). This detail derives from the Honolulu Meeting Briefing Book (November 1963). Newman’s information substantially corrects and supplants what appears in the Pentagon Papers, which is missing three crucial documents regarding this issue (see footnote 1155). Giglio: “The recently published Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 4, Vietnam, August-December 1963, further affirms the no-pullout conclusion.” This blanket statement offers no citations, and contradicts a close reading of the discussions which culminate in 263. A close reading leads to exactly the opposite conclusion. Piascik: “There is no evidence to indicate any plan for withdrawal short of victory. . . .” The evidence and the plan is known as NSAM 263 as seen below.. Does “without impairment of the war effort” actually mean “victory”? That could serve as a quibbling debate, but what I see is that the academic critics of the withdrawal plans prefer to avoid referring to the language altogether because it upends their concepts, and the changes represented by 273 appear too obvious. 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. 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.
  3. The non-public discussions are self-contradictory as well. You are twisting the focus of the debate (I.e. withdrawal or engagement) into a construct (i.e. to win or to lose) which is not relevant to the specific terms by which the policy (263) was developed. The specific terms dealt with the question of whether the United States military had a direct role to play in the Vietnam conflict. The determination, as unambiguously expressed by the actual language of 263, was it did not and thus the personnel would be withdrawn. The “unconditional-withdrawal myth” is something you made up. There’s nothing in Prouty or Newman’s extensive work which endorses this alleged “myth”. In fact, the expression of this “myth” which does appear in the record (with your preferred definition I.e. a complete withdrawal regardless or despite a Communist victory) is attributed to Robert McNamara, spoken during a classified debrief in October 1963 regarding his McNamara-Taylor trip to Vietnam. Over the past year, on this Forum, you have variously and erroneously attributed McNamara’s own words to Prouty, Newman, Galbraith, DiEugenio, and “JFK”’s screenwriters. The first sentence is about as disingenuous as you have ever posted on this Forum - and that is saying a lot. The entire paragraph is in fact disingenuous. You make sweeping statements referring to “instructions that JFK himself gave to Lodge afterward” which supposedly make it “crystal clear that the withdrawal was conditioned on the situation on the ground” - without actually identifying what you are referring to or why anybody should accept what you say. I don’t see any “ifs” or “buts” or otherwise conditional language in the approved recommendations. Further, the recommendations were not about “winning the war” as you insist, they were about replacing US personnel with Vietnamese personnel. All you are doing here is repeating Establishment talking points as first set out by Les Gelb in the New York Times in December 1991. While these points seek to contradict the informed commentary of persons such as Fletcher Prouty and John Newman, they fail to address the actual point of contention - which is the understanding of the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy as expressed in NSAM 263. Your personal rejection of these “mythical” views relies on a straw-man “unconditional-withdrawal myth”, and the rather questionable opinion that Kennedy would have actually introduced combat forces in Vietnam during his second term. Your commentary in general on the Vietnam War, as expressed on this Forum, reveals a belief the US war effort was in fact a noble endeavour, an opinion shaped by a conservative worldview imbued with a strong, if somewhat antiquated, anti-communist bent. That, it seems to me, is a formula for exactly misunderstanding the Kennedy administration and/or its policies.
  4. The critics of the “JFK” film - that is, the mainstream establishment - attacked (or “pounced on”) the film due to its overarching premise that Kennedy had been assassinated by a far-reaching officially sanctioned conspiracy. Specific reference to Lansdale, Prouty, John Newman etc do not really factor into this equation. In fact, outside of Anson’s Esquire Magazine hatchet-job, I’m not aware of Prouty, Newman, or Lansdale at the time being directly referred at all. The idea that the entire Establishment was prepared to accept a JFK conspiracy hypothesis but pulled back from the abyss solely due to the film’s references to Lansdale, Prouty, and/or Vietnam is, outside of Leslie Gelb’s NY Times op/ed, almost entirely made-up. Similarly, Prouty’s alleged “prolonged and close associations” with the Liberty Lobby milieu in fact consists of a single paid speaking engagement (for The Spotlight) and a contract for a small reprint run (500 copies) of “The Secret Team” (both occurring in September 1990). In context, at the time, both Mark Lane and Dick Gregory spoke at the same conference, Bernard Lewin’s “Report From Iron Mountain” was also reprinted by the same publishing house, and Noam Chomsky lectures on cassette were available from the publisher’s mail-order list.
  5. Relying solely on public statements from the time, one could make a case for either withdrawal or engagement simply by cherry-picking from the self-contradictory record. Critics such as Prouty and Newman look closely at what was done rather than what was said. They give more weight to the production of NSAM 263 - culminating a period of intense concentration on a strategic plan for Vietnam led personally by Kennedy - rather than discourse which may have been subject to electioneering and political persuasion. The intention of 263 is not ambiguous. What is notable with the argument that “JFK never faced” what LBJ “had to confront” - which was first broached in Les Gelb’s NY Times op-ed December 1991) - is that rhetorically it dismisses the withdrawal argument for its presumption regarding the “unknown”, while simultaneously presuming to in fact "know" the “unknown” (i.e. JFK would have reacted the same as LBJ). It also fails to factor the escalatory measures initiated by the Johnson administration, beginning with NSAM 273.
  6. I have no information regarding this. I am not aware of further communications between Prouty and Krulak on this topic. Prouty would most likely have kept such a private matter. The original (1985) communications are authentic.
  7. An accurate timeline relevant to this issue has been offered several times, but is consistently misrepresented by persons who approach the topic as a means of scoring partisan points rather than establishing the facts. Prouty was part of an interested group (I think loosely connected to Richard Sprague) who had access to high-quality 8x10 copies of photos taken in Dealey Plaza. The complete set of “Tramps” photos was part of this collection. This is late 60s/early 70s - second generation pre-HSCA era. Sprague was publishing assassination related articles in his journal Computers and Automation. Prouty would later say he immediately recognized Lansdale in the one photo, but did not speak of it to his colleagues. Prouty, with Sprague collating photos, published his first assassination related article “Guns of Dallas” in 1975. This article features a brief discussion of the Tramp photos (as well as referencing the Military Intelligence stand down later misrepresented by the ARRB panel). No mention of Lansdale. https://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/GoD.html Prouty contacted Krulak regarding the Tramp photos in early 1985 - more than a decade after initially viewing the photos. Krulak’s response is dated March 15, 1985. He says: “That is indeed a picture of Ed Lansdale . The haircut, the stoop, the twisted left hand, the large class ring. It's Lansdale. “ To be consistent, at this point the self-styled Prouty critics should be identifying Krulak himself as a “crackpot and fraud.” But they won’t do that because Krulak retains a stellar reputation for personal integrity, and the critics would themselves become the laughing-stocks. So instead they posit, apropos of nothing but their partisan imaginations, that the letter is a “forgery” ( note that in December 1963 Krulak celebrated Prouty’s military career with a Letter of Appreciation for his “outstanding performance of duty”: “your unique knowledge and appreciation of the inner-relationship of political and military factors have contributed materially to the achievement of national objectives…You take with you both the gratitude of your associates and the confident hope that in your forth-coming responsibilities in civilian life you will profit from the same high standards that have characterized your outstanding service with the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” This is the person certain posters on EF claim is an “extreme fringe kook.”) Five years later (March 1990), Prouty writes his “Lansdale hypothesis” letter to Garrison. He doesn’t directly ID Krulak when he writes: “Others who knew Lansdale as well as I did, have said the same thing, ‘That's him and what's he doing there?’ “ Portions of this letter make their way into the "JFK" script. Prouty did however mention in confidence Krulak’s ID to his colleague Harrison Livingstone - who, for reasons of his own, broke Prouty’s trust, publicized the issue, and made a direct cold call to Krulak, who understandably reacted defensively. Krulake, however, did not refute his communication five years previously with Prouty - another matter which is consistently misrepresented by agenda-driven partisans. It was Livingstone who broke this information publicly, not Prouty. Livingstone had been difficult at the time with Stone and the "JFK" office, which Stone refers to in his published response to Esquire's hit piece on the film.
  8. I think Prouty is using a slight bit of sarcasm to sharpen the lens through which the origin of 273 might be best viewed. He also pointed out the draft may have actually been composed on the plane returning from Honolulu. In that case, the request to his brother to show the draft to McNamara sticks out because McNamara was present on the same plane. It was a long flight, why didn’t Bundy just show it to McNamara himself? Your thoughts on why this didn’t and wouldn’t occur are sharply rendered. The utility of having a draft dated November 21, of course, is it could be plausibly labelled, after the fact, a Kennedy administration document. Regarding this draft: “There’s enough there to present the feeling that somehow somebody knew things were going to change.” Prouty interview with John Judge 1992
  9. This is the relevant footnote from the article (36): “I have other copies of this draft document that were done on various typewriters and they certainly indicate that this draft document had to have been quickly circulated through all of the highest governmental levels...on the 21st. On these draft copies there are some notes, and line outs.” Also: “in this original draft that he circulated among many of the top echelons of the Government, with personal ‘Cover Letters’ to the Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone and to his brother William in McNamara's office…” Prouty The Highly Significant Role Played By Two Major Presidential Policy Directives 1997. Collected Works Prouty also identifies a copy “sent to Don Wilson with USIA”. Distribution corroborated (Bundy acknowledges notes and revisions) in Newman's "JFK and Vietnam".
  10. Here is a thread on Lansdale from 2008, with fascinating commentary from Sterling Seagrave, whose book "Gold Warriors" is engrossing. I think Fletcher's "Lansdale Hypothesis" letter to Garrison may have been written under the influence of potent painkillers prescribed for his back surgery. It's a little hyperbolic by his standards. However, one of Seagraves' gems - which may relate to cover stories and red herrings generated in Dealey Plaza - is that one of Lansdale's quirks was a fondness for use of umbrellas in covert ops.
  11. Greg - for the record, Prouty never speculated that “Lansdale killed JFK” or had a direct operational role in the assassination itself. In his letter to Prouty in response to the photo and the Lansdale ID, Krulak asked: “What was he (Lansdale) doing there?” That is a fair question. To the extent that he speculated, Prouty thought Lansdale, using his public relations and covert operations background, may have been assigned to create cover stories and red herrings - such as the bizarre march of the tramps. Of course, Lansdale may have just been there because he was in the area and the President was in town. Or the figure might not be Lansdale at all, and the similar identification points may just be coincidental. In my opinion, although of interest, very little of the important information Prouty had to share hinges in any way on this identification, and it is therefore of secondary value.
  12. It can be said there was a faction within the foreign policy / national security bureaucracy which was not prepared to accept a withdrawal from Vietnam on the terms Kennedy had devised. Being generous, one could say the Bundy draft merely reflected these concerns in a way which kept all options open. On the other hand, and this is what Prouty emphasized, Kennedy’s policy had been fully expressed with NSAM 263 and a dissenting opinion submitted weeks later would not change anything. So why would Bundy go to the trouble of not only writing it up (in the form of a NSAM), but distributing it to a fair number of persons on November 21? There is no record anywhere which shows that Kennedy had asked for, read, or was even aware of Bundy’s draft. I assume the dissenting voice on this thread bases his opposite opinion on material in Selverstone’s book. To assert that Kennedy was prepared to sign 273 is just wishful thinking. Robert, appreciate you putting this together. As my colleague Len Osanic handles the Prouty archive, people share with him various items from the inter-webs when Prouty’s name is invoked. From those non-scientific samplings it has been discernible that a contemporary wave of focussed negativity directed towards Prouty has been an actual “thing” over the past three or four years. At a cursory glance, much of this generates from an equally discernible rehabilitation of Ed Lansdale. For many years, Prouty did not speak publicly of the three tramps photo or Krulak’s confirming ID, but he did share this information confidentially with other researchers. Harrison Livingstone broke Prouty’s confidence, and publicized the Lansdale ID and also directly confronted Krulak, who naturally reacted defensively. Most persons who attack Prouty on this issue are unaware of this background. They are also either unaware or in denial regarding the information about Lansdale’s presence in Denton Texas, which is most relevant and important. Bundy was also the man who called off the late air-strike against Castro’s one remaining jet, thus assuring the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation.
  13. John Newman spoke with McGeorge Bundy in the early 1990s regarding the draft of NSAM 273. Bundy had a fuzzy memory, but did acknowledge he wrote the draft and added, cryptically, of the recommendations: “I tried to bring them in line with the words Kennedy might want to say.” Bundy had been instructed to attend the meeting in Honolulu (November 1963), but it is not known by whom. Bundy wrote up “recommendations” supposedly reflecting a Honolulu consensus in the form of a draft NSAM, but it is not known what motivated him to do so. There is no record anywhere which links Kennedy to the draft of this NSAM. Short of such a confirmation, it is difficult to consider the draft as an expression of “Kennedy administration” policy. This is because there is an established record of the extensive process leading to NSAM 263. There is no evidence of any “process” leading to the 273 draft. What is striking is that the training/withdrawal plan from 263 entirely disappears beginning with the 273 draft, while the 1000 man December 1963 withdrawal remains and is used specifically to promote the idea that there was full continuity in Vietnam policies from Kennedy administration to Johnson administration.
  14. First - no one voted you into a position where you get to declare what is or is not a “fringe claim”. Second - there are distinct differences between utterances which are “factual” and utterances which express an “opinion”. In my observation, you constantly blur the line between the two. Third - your repeated angry attacks against scholars promoting a Kennedy Withdrawal thesis constantly refers to an “unconditional-withdrawal myth”. This “myth” supposedly follows a line such as: “ Kennedy advocated absolute withdrawal no matter what, even if the Communists take over Vietnam”. You generally name Prouty, Newman, DiEugenio, Galbraith, ands even Stone’s “JFK” film as perpetuators of this myth. However, the myth is itself a myth. I have read just about everything Prouty wrote regarding Vietnam and I have never come across anything resembling an advocacy of an “unconditional withdrawal myth”. I have never found any such statement in Newman’s work. Neither does such claim appear in the “JFK” film. When pressed, all you can say is Newman says something like it in the JFK Revisited series (released three decades after Stone’s “JFK” film). He does (in the third episode), but in the context of paraphrasing something SecDef McNamara said during debriefs from his trip to Vietnam with Taylor (Sept 1963). That you bolster this false notion of an “unconditional withdrawal” with rhetoric such as “fringe”, “nutty”,”crackpot” etc establishes only that your “opinions” often arrive with an attached agenda.
  15. Bundy's initial draft was dated, at the top, November 21, 1963 . This draft also was distributed to certain persons within foreign policy circles - such as Bundy's brother William - on that day. There remain a few notes and memoranda related to that. Prouty had collected several of these drafts, and noted the differing typewriters used for dissemination. John Newman posted one of these drafts: https://jfkjmn.com/new-page-77/
  16. The new essay has a section devoted to NSAM 273. It is not known why or under what direction McGeorge Bundy initiated the draft November 21, 1963. Fletcher Prouty was probably the first person to speculate on the origins and purpose of 273. You are correct - there is no indication anywhere that JFK knew of or had requested such a draft. A dispute between Prouty and John Newman over 273 on the set of “JFK” is obliquely referenced in the Esquire Magazine “hatchet job” on the film published October 1991. At that time, Prouty had a more complete collection of NSAM 273 drafts and the misunderstandings were eventually resolved.
  17. The main problem for those who wish to dismiss the idea that a U.S. personnel/adviser withdrawal from Vietnam was Kennedy’s express policy, or feel that tagging such as a “fringe theory” carries any authority, is the indisputable presence, in the record, of NSAM 263 itself. The document exists, its purpose and language is not ambiguous, and it is easily established that 263 was the culmination of weeks of focussed attention on the Vietnam question. In other words, it was indeed the fully-formed expression of the Kennedy Administration’s policy for Vietnam: that the primary focus of the U.S. effort from October 1963 onward, would be one of training Vietnamese personnel to replace American personnel with the goal of completing that process, with withdrawal of all remaining U.S. personnel, by the end of 1965. It is also indisputable that NSAM 273 signals a reversal of that policy by switching the primary focus of the U.S. effort from the training program designed to eventually replace U.S. personnel to a primary focus on using U.S. capabilities to assist S Vietnam “win the war.” With NSAM 273, the training program and eventual withdrawal of all U.S. personnel by end of 1965 disappears as an active goal. The first draft (and wide dissemination in national security circles) of what would come into the record as 273 occurred as Kennedy was still alive, although there is no record of JFK requesting or otherwise directing such an abrupt shift in focus after only a few weeks. NSAM 273, disingenuously, was described to the public as a “continuation” of Kennedy policy. Prouty’s description of the process leading to 263 and 273 is more “nuts and bolts” than John Newman’s work in “JFK and Vietnam”, but the understanding of what was afoot in September through November 1963 is complimentary. Newman is the scholar working decades later from declassified documents, while Prouty had a ground-floor point of view from his position in Krulak’s office. They both came to see NSAM 263 as definitive Kennedy policy - and the attempts by critics to claim that it wasn’t lacks an explanation of why or how this policy was made official as it was. Prouty did not venture that Kennedy’s Vietnam policy specifically led to his death. Prouty believed the grievances were more widespread: “(JFK) and his advisors were doing things that you might say were a throwback to the Roosevelt era or even further back to basic government. This of course built Kennedy an awful lot of very serious enemies, who were enemies from the point of view that he must not be re-elected in 1964. They could not permit him to win in 1964 because in the second four-years a president is beholden to nobody and Kennedy knew that. That’s what caused people to rise against him, because on any side - whether you are in the petroleum business, or in the banking business, or in the military - Kennedy was putting things back where they had been and not playing favourites quite as strongly as say the Eisenhower administration had been doing before him.”
  18. As most on this Forum are aware, general knowledge of NSAM 263 (and its reversal with 273) was lacking until Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” foregrounded it (and was attacked hysterically for doing so). Stone’s key advisor on this point, Fletcher Prouty, became himself subject to reputational attacks - which, as can be seen above, continue to this day. Criticism of Prouty tends to be long on insult and short on substance. This new article works from Prouty’s own accounts and understandings of the historic record. It affirms NSAM 263 was unambiguous and the result of a deliberate process. Working directly with General Krulak in the summer and autumn of 1963, Prouty was a first-hand witness to the development of Kennedy’s Vietnam policy culminating in NSAM 263. Although he was bound to secrecy on classified information, Prouty had more freedom to discuss the topic after the publication of “Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963 Volume IV: Vietnam August-December 1963” in 1991. Prouty sent a copy of that volume to Len Osanic with the following note: "This is the best JFK and Vietnam book you can get. It is current in that it is of the exact months when JFK was making his Vietnam policy. Note in those late and crucial days how many times JFK had White House meetings. Then note how many times Gen Krulak, my immediate boss in the JCS, was there. Every time he came back he would call a few of us and we’d have a conference. Then he would assign our tasks for the next meeting… it was usually the next day. This (FRUS Vol. IV) should clear up a lot of questions you may have. I don’t see why serious and truthful writers have not made use of this class one book."
  19. Criticism of a “Kennedy withdrawal” seems to split into two camps. One is based on denial: i.e. the denial that NSAM 263 says what it says or that it means what it means. The second camp accepts the veracity of NSAM 263 and its stated policy, but argues its intentions would surely have been overrun by events. The second camp finds initial expression in a Leslie Gelb op-ed in the New York Times (January 6, 1992). The first camp - which obviously you endorse - is notable for a stubborn refusal to acknowledge or accept the plain language of 263, choosing instead to highlight unrelated utterances or add unstated qualification.
  20. "a fictional determination to totally and unconditionally abandon South Vietnam after the election.” Look at all the straw! Record of Action 2472 is simply a brief summary of discussion held at an NSC meeting. It is not the expression of a “plan”. NSAM 263 is the expression of a plan, but Bator’s insistence such plan was “explicitly conditioned” on future “judgments” is clearly a misreading. The “plan” is based on judgments already rendered.
  21. Prouty’s interview for the Church Committee speaks for itself. Because it was a classified session, he is free to describe in great detail the methodology of embedded CIA representatives across varying levels of government, and the means by which discerning insiders could navigate who was what. In lesser detail, Prouty tried to achieve the same years later when describing Oswald’s Marine activities to the clueless ARRB Board. Here, at the Church Committee, his interviewers are not naive and so quite a bit of information is shared - a lot of which would find independent confirmation years later. On the other hand, in 1975, there was a parallel rendering of Prouty’s appearance to the Church Committee in the mainstream press, triggered it appears by a leaked limited hangout which produced a superficial pseudo-controversy which didn't rise much above the level of demands that Butterfield’s “CIA Agent” badge be produced for all to see. This superficiality is compounded by the fact the granular detail of the pseudo-controversy lies dormant in paywalled legacy media archives, and exists for quick reference only as compressed summaries on Wikipedia. Basically, the determined Prouty hatchet-job crew have been reduced to demanding the production of Oswald or Butterfield’s “Secret Agent” badges, or calling for “forensic tests” of 50-year-old scraps of Amtrak stationary.
  22. Chomsky believed Kennedy to be a committed “cold warrior”, and his analysis skews to conclusions supportive of that position. Chomsky’s argument that NSAM 263 was laden with qualifying language is simply not correct. The large majority of criticism directed against Stone’s JFK movie had to do with the proposition of a conspiracy tied to the assassination rather than specific Vietnam issues. Chicken-egg comparisons regarding Vietnam circa 1964/65 are hypothetical and work from narrow presumptions. It could be argued JFK would not have had to face a “massive escalation” from the North because JFK would not have initiated the same provocative and aggressive escalations LBJ did in 1964.
  23. Prouty testified to the Church Committee on July 15, 1975. The session was eventually declassified and can be read in full. Claims that he dissembled in any way, “walked back” information or “admitted he had no evidence” are not at all supported by the transcript. Claims that the testimony “exposed Prouty as a fraud” is not at all supported by the transcript. Contemporaneous claims against Prouty published in Time Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and CBS are contradicted by the transcript. Note that suspicions regarding Butterfield can be found in most of the Watergate revisionist work, including Secret Agenda, Silent Coup, and Family of Secrets. To claim that it was just a “zany” theory on Prouty’s behalf is simply wrong. Here is more information on Butterfield: https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbutterfield.htm The Church Committee transcript features Prouty relating information about persons such as Robert Mullen, Joseph Califano, Al Haig, Butterfield, etc which would later be independently confirmed in work published well before Prouty’s Church Committee interview was declassified. the transcript can be accessed here: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1372#relPageId=1
  24. This is a straw-man argument, one that has been floated since the earliest attacks on the JFK film. This is the straw: “unconditionally and totally disengage”, as it appears in the following formulation: “the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from Vietnam” Language specifying “unconditional” or “total disengagement” does not appear in NSAM 263, and such concepts are not part of the argument advanced by the so-called “Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith” cabal. Les Gelb was one of the first to utilize this diversion, claiming “J.F.K. might never have issued the directive if he had thought it would mean losing the war.” Its an entirely hypothetical construct. The rhetorical strategy consists of substituting the hypothetical assertions - i.e. Kennedy would not just hand over South Vietnam to the Communists - in place of the actual policy, and attack the “unconditional withdrawal myth makers” based on the hypothesis. Fact is - it is impossible to predict what the result of training Vietnamese personnel to replace U.S. personnel and withdrawing the “bulk of U.S. personnel” by the end of 1965 would have been. All that can be said is it was Kennedy’s policy to do the above, as expressed in NSAM 263, and the “Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith” faction are absolutely correct in pointing that out.
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