Michael Griffith

But even you say that some of the evidence was faked, i.e., the paper bag, the prints on the paper bag, the latent palmprint, and the fibers found on the rifle--you say that all these items were faked. However, you offer bafflingly vacuous, invalid reasons for not accepting the hard scientific evidence of the OD measurements done on the autopsy skull x-rays, especially the odd claim that OD measurements are only valid for determining bone density. No conspiracy theorist of whom I am aware argues that the "public servants" were "incredibly sneaky and smart" when it came to faking evidence. On the contrary, many of us have pointed out (1) that in several cases the faking of evidence was not done with great skill, and (2) that in other cases those doing the faking did not realize that their forgery/alteration would prove to be problematic for the lone-gunman theory.

For those who might be interested, I have published a new book on the JFK assassination. It is titled A Comforting Lie: The Myth that a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy. The book is available as a paperback and as a Kindle book on Amazon (LINK). Here is the table of contents: Introduction Part 1: The Investigations Chapter 1 The Warren Commission and the Basic Elements of the Lone-Gunman Theory Chapter 2 The Forgotten Investigation: The House Select Committee on Assassinations Chapter 3 The Assassination Records Review Board: Historic Disclosures Part 2: Bullets, Marksmanship, Film, and Suspicious Events Chapter 4 Too Many Bullets, Too Many Misses Chapter 5 Too Many Shot Reactions in the Zapruder Film Chapter 6 The Wounding of James Tague: A Fatal Blow to the Lone-Gunman Theory Chapter 7 The Impossible Feat: Oswald’s Marksmanship and His Alleged Shooting Performance Chapter 8 Suspicious Events in Dealey Plaza Chapter 9 An Easy Target: The Suspicious and Unusual Lack of Security in Dealey Plaza Part 3: A Look at Some of the Medical and Physical Evidence Chapter 10 The 6.5 mm Object: Evidence of Fraud in the Autopsy X-Rays Chapter 11 The Bullet Fragments in the Back of the Skull Refute the Lone-Gunman Theory Chapter 12 The Vanishing Low Fragment Trail on the Autopsy Skull X-Rays Chapter 13 The Strange White Patch Chapter 14 The Autopsy Report vs. the Autopsy Photos of the Brain Chapter 15 Too Much Brain: The Impossible Autopsy Photos of the Brain Chapter 16 The Head Shot from the Front Chapter 17 The Dented Bullet Shell: Hard Evidence of Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination Part 4: A Disturbing Pattern of Death Chapter 18 Suspicious Deaths Part 5: Understanding and Appreciating JFK’s Presidency Chapter 19 Was JFK Bad for America? Chapter 20 JFK and Vietnam Final Thoughts Bibliography and References Index As you will notice from the pricing, I am not looking to get rich off the book. The Kindle version is only $9.99, and the paperback is only $23 even though it is over 400 pages long (however, the pages read quickly because the font is Arial 11 and the line spacing is 1.1). The Introduction, Chapter 1, and part of Chapter 2 are included in the free Kindle sample.

This is good news, very good news. Sadly, among academics and journalists, the numbers are very different. I'm guessing that a poll among those two groups would find 75% for the lone-gunman view, 20% for conspiracy, and 5% undecided/neutral.

In the sizable free sample of the Kindle version of the book that Amazon makes available, Knott seems to treat JFK in a balanced, reasonable manner, so much so that I'm going to read the entire book. I've used one of my Audible.com subscription credits to get the audible version. Knott hates Trump, as in really, really hates Trump. This comes through loudly and clearly in the book's introduction. Just FYI.

Your willingness to ignore contrary evidence is discrediting. One, according to Newman, Jim, and Prouty, and few other like-minded authors, by late 1963 JFK had decided to pull out of Vietnam after the election, even if this allowed the Communists to take over South Vietnam. This claim is expressly made in JFK Revisited. Two, you are once again repeating your fringe spin on NSAM 263 and on Kennedy's Vietnam intentions while ignoring the wording of the NSAM itself and ignoring the supporting documentation, not to mention the JFK White House tapes, JFK's own statements on Vietnam in the last few months of his life (including two he made on the day he died), and Bobby Kennedy's emphatic denial that JFK intended to pull out even if doing so meant a Communist victory in South Vietnam.

Holy smokes. You don't see Prouty back-peddling and finally admitting, when strongly pressed, that he had no evidence to back his claim that Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House??? You don't see this plainly and clearly in the transcript??? Really??? If you are so incapable of being objective about Prouty's gibberish, it makes me seriously question your research on other issues. Simple question: Yes or No: Is it not true that even Frank Church said that his committee found no evidence whatsoever that Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House? Yes or No? The answer is Yes. Another question: Yes or No: Is it not true that Prouty finally admitted that he had no evidence to support his claim about Butterfield? To any objective reader, the answer is obviously Yes. How can you be so gullible as to believe that E. Howard Hunt would have said this to Prouty in the first place? BTW, where are the Tehran-trip pictures that Prouty said he took? Those pictures would be massively important and genuinely historic evidence, if they existed. How could he have failed to preserve them? Where are his notes of his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group? Those notes could have been forensically tested to see if the paper and ink matched the time period. Is it not obvious that the alleged letter to Prouty from Krulak was a forgery, given Krulak's recorded interview with Harrison Livingstone? Are you going to try to defend Prouty's zany claim that Ibn Saud participated in the Cairo Conference?

You are using the juvenile option of "blocking" me because you've never been challenged on your JFK and Vietnam myths the way I've challenged you. You once again prove that you are not to be taken seriously on this issue, and that you are on the extreme and discredited fringe on this issue. You surely know that you are misrepresenting what JFK said regarding South Vietnam and the fight against communism in SE Asia in his Fort Worth and Trade Mart speeches. From his Fort Worth speech: This is not an easy effort. This requires sacrifice by the people of the United States. But this is a very dangerous and uncertain world. No one expects that our life will be easy, certainly not in this decade, and perhaps not in this century. But we should realize what a burden and responsibility the people of the United States have borne for so many years. . . . Without the United States, South Viet-Nam would collapse overnight. Without the United States, the SEATO alliance would collapse overnight. . . . . I don't think we are fatigued or tired. Now that surely doesn't sound like someone who was planning on unconditionally abandoning South Vietnam after the election, does it? From JFK's Trade Mart speech: About 70 percent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc – nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression – Viet-Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own Chiefs of Staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the economic help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result. Only a diehard Prouty apologist who can't face facts will deny that JFK was expressing strong opposition to reducing our aid and training to South Vietnam. And, once again, he certainly did not sound like he had any intention of unconditionally abandoning South Vietnam after the election. This whole argument about a skeleton crew left behind is a non sequitir that I have already dealt with. The idea that somehow this would hold off an assault from Hanoi and the Viet Cong after 15,000 advisors had been moved out is utterly ridiculous. This is more nonsense. Who said that the residual force of 1,500 support troops would be expected to hold off a North Vietnamese assault? Who? Who has even implied such a thing? No one. This is a sophomoric strawman argument. As the primary sources prove, the 1,500 support troops would only be left in country after conditions on the ground had permitted the completion of the withdrawal of the "bulk" of U.S. forces, and this would happen only if JFK were satisfied that the Communists had been defeated or that South Vietnam was strong enough to finish the job without U.S. forces (but with continued U.S. aid). The support troops would be for logistical purposes only, not as combat advisors. As Francis Bator, LBJ's Deputy National Security Adviser, pointed out in 2007: But as the “Record of Action No. 2472 Taken” at the October 2 NSC meeting and the October 11 National Security Action Memorandum 263 make clear, that plan was explicitly conditioned on Secretary McNamara’s and General Taylor’s “judgment that the major part of the US military task can be completed by the end of 1965…,” that “the long term program to replace US personnel with trained Vietnamese [could go forward] without impairment of the war effort.” Let's read what NSAM 263 itself said on the issue of JFK's Vietnam intentions: 1. It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. The test of all decisions and U.S. actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contributions to this purpose. You and a handful of other Prouty devotees have taken JFK's conditional withdrawal plan, a plan that called for continued aid to South Vietnam after the withdrawal, and a plan whose central objective and governing criterion was victory over the Communists in South Vietnam--you have taken this plan and grossly twisted it into a fictional determination to totally and unconditionally abandon South Vietnam after the election.

Oh, you have me blocked??? Are we in high school or something? This is juvenile conduct. Anyway, let's first deal with your inexcusably erroneous claim about Kennedy's comments on Vietnam after NSAM 263 was signed: And as Gordon Goldstein noted in his book, there is no speech in which Kennedy said anything like that after NSAM 263 was signed. H. O. G. W. A. S. H. Total hogwash. I have personally quoted to you JFK's comments on Vietnam in his 11/22/63 speech in Fort Worth that morning and in the speech he was going to give at the Trade Mart after the motorcade. In both speeches, he called for staying the course and stressed the importance of the effort to block communism in Southeast Asia. And I notice that you once again repeat your fringe spin on NSAM 263 and ignore the evidence from the NSAM itself and from the supporting documents, which evidence clearly shows that the withdrawal was conditional, and that the ultimate objective remained the defeat of the Viet Cong and the maintenance of South Vietnam's independence. The same is true of the first draft of NSAM 273, which JFK was going to sign. You might actually break down and read Chomsky's critique wherein he documents these facts. It is simply amazing that you keep ignoring these readily available facts. FYI, Chomsky wrote his critique in November 2003, in response to Galbraith's September-October 2003 article "Exit Strategy," in which Galbraith used info from the ARRB releases. I take it you did not read Chomsky's critique. Otherwise, you would have known better than to imply that Chomsky knew nothing about the ARRB material. I repeat to you, yet again, that in 2013 Galbraith modified his position on the withdrawal compared to his 2003 position in "Exit Strategy." As I have quoted for you, Galbraith admitted in 2013 that the withdrawal plan allowed for over 1,000 support troops to remain in country and called for continued aid to South Vietnam. The basic problem here is that you are demonstrably wrong about JFK's Vietnam intentions, but you cannot bring yourself to admit it. Even most ultra-liberal scholars say you're obviously wrong. JFK was determined to win the war. His withdrawal plan was conditional and gradual, and reversible, and he never, ever wavered on the ultimate objective of victory over the Communists and the preservation of South Vietnam's independence. Again, you might read Chomsky's critique of Galbraith's 2003 article.

This is your answer to the facts that Chomsky presented showing that JFK had no intention of unconditionally withdrawing from Vietnam??? At least Chomsky is an honest radical. He would love to believe that JFK had turned against the war and was going to withdraw no matter what, but he looked at the evidence and found that it shows the opposite. Stone's 1991 movie was attacked because it peddled the unconditional-withdrawal myth, and because it peddled reckless and baseless claims about Edward Lansdale, about Mr. X's/Prouty's trip to the South Pole, about Mr. X's/Prouty's alleged role in presidential protection (he had none), about the fictional "stand-down order" given to the 112th MI Group, about the supposed phone blackout in DC right after the shooting, etc., etc. The first combat troops arrived in Da Nang "about 3 1/2 months" after the WC volumes were released because the situation had drastically changed from what it had been before Diem was assassinated in early November 1963. As I've pointed out to you many times, and as you keep ignoring, JFK never faced the kind of massive Communist escalation and the degree of South Vietnamese government instability that LBJ faced in early 1965. As H. R. McMaster profusely documents in Dereliction of Duty, LBJ was not at all anxious to send large numbers of combat troops to South Vietnam and only did so reluctantly in the face of (1) North Vietnam's massive escalation in early 1965 and (2) continuing instability in South Vietnam's government following Diem's death.

Vince Palamara has done some interesting research on the report that the Secret Service lost an agent in Dealey Plaza. JFK/DPQ: "Dual Mysteries" by V. Palamara (kenrahn.com)

What a sad piece of propaganda. FYI, Bobby Kennedy and Jackie privately told the Soviets, through their good friend William Walton, that he believed that JFK had been killed by a "right-wing conspiracy." Surely not even Dale Myers would accuse Bobby and Jackie of having been socialists or Soviet apologists. You might read Lane's last book, Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK. He acknowledged and condemned the suppression of human rights that occurred in the Soviet Union and in its Eastern Bloc satellites. Although we, very sadly, have a few researchers in this forum and elsewhere who admittedly peddle Communist propaganda (or something very close to it), they do not speak for or represent all researchers. Jim Marrs was certainly no socialist or radical leftist. Anthony Summers is no ultra-liberal. Nor is David Kaiser. Nor is Roger Stone. Nor is G. Robert Blakey. Nor is Gary Cornwell. Nor was Henry Hurt. Nor was Craig Roberts. Nor am I.

Radical leftist Noam Chomsky, to his great credit, has also debunked the unconditional-withdrawal myth. When James Galbraith published his "Exit Strategy" article in the September/October 2003 issue of Boston Review, Chomsky wrote a long letter to the editor in response. Chomsky made all the same points that nearly all other scholars have made on the subject. He noted that Galbraith simply ignores most contrary evidence, and he observed that Galbraith's view conflicts with "the mainstream of scholarship." Here's Chomsky's letter in its entirety: Having worked through the relevant documentation that James Galbraith cites, I was curious to see how he could reach his conclusions in his article “Exit Strategy," at variance with the mainstream of scholarship and other commentary, as he notes. The basic method turns out to be simple: deletion. As for others, the centerpiece of Galbraith’s discussion of the withdrawal plans is NSAM 263, in which JFK gave qualified approval to the recommendations of Robert McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, who were greatly encouraged by the military prospects in South Vietnam and were “convinced that the Viet Cong insurgency” could be sharply reduced in a year and that the U.S.–run war effort should be “completed by the end of 1965.” They therefore advised “An increase in the military tempo” of the war throughout South Vietnam and withdrawal of some troops in 1963 and all troops in 1965—if this could be done “without impairment of the war effort” and with assurance that “the insurgency has been suppressed” or at least sufficiently weakened so that the U.S. client regime (GVN) is “capable of suppressing it” (my italics; the crucial condition throughout). Once again they stressed that the “overriding objective” is victory, a matter “vital to United States security.” JFK approved their recommendations, while distancing himself from the withdrawal proposal and approving instructions to Ambassador Lodge in Saigon stressing “our fundamental objective of victory” and directing him to press for “GVN action to increase effectiveness of its military effort” so as to ensure the military victory on which withdrawal was explicitly conditioned. The president, Lodge was informed, affirmed “his basic statement that what furthers the war effort we support, and what interferes with the war effort we oppose,” the condition underlying NSAM 263, as consistently throughout the period and beyond. JFK and his advisers were concerned with the “crisis of confidence among Vietnamese people which is eroding popular support for GVN that is vital for victory,” and the “crisis of confidence on the part of the American public and Government,” who also do not see how “our actions are related to our fundamental objective of victory”—JFK’s invariant condition. JFK (and his advisers) recognized that the war was unpopular at home, but regarded such lack of support—as well as GVN initiatives toward political settlement—not as an opportunity for withdrawal, but rather as a problem to be overcome, because it posed a threat to the military victory to which they were committed. The significance of these facts for the thesis under discussion is obvious. Virtually all of this was deleted from Galbraith’s account of NSAM 263, and the tidbits that remain he clearly misinterprets. Thus he does quote the qualification that troops can be withdrawn only “when they are no longer needed,” but fails to recognize that this is simply another reiteration of the unwavering commitment to military victory. By this method, Galbraith is able to draw the conclusions rejected by virtually everyone he cites, who use the same documentary record (in all relevant cases) but without crucial omissions and misreadings. His treatment of his own prime example is typical, as interested readers can readily discover. Galbraith also deletes much else of crucial significance, including: the shifting plans of Kennedy and his advisers that are closely correlated with changing perceptions of the military situation, clearly a critically important matter; the absence of any record by the memoirists of any thought about withdrawing without victory, e.g., in Arthur Schlesinger’s virtual day-by-day account; the fact that JFK’s most dovish advisers (George Ball, Mike Mansfield, etc.) reiterated their firm commitment to victory after the assassination, and in the months that followed praised LBJ for carrying forward JFK’s policies with “wise caution” (Ball), urging that LBJ’s “policy toward Vietnam was the only one we could follow” and strongly opposing the withdrawal option and diplomatic moves advocated by Wayne Morse (Mansfield), as did Robert Kennedy, who, as late as May 1965, condemned withdrawal as “a repudiation of commitments undertaken and confirmed by three administrations”; and a great deal more of very considerable relevance to his thesis. There is no need to review these matters, which are covered in detail in literature that Galbraith claims to refute, including my Rethinking Camelot, which also documents the revisions of the record that were introduced after the war became unpopular, the basic reason why such material (including much on which Galbraith uncritically relies) is unreliable for any historian. Galbraith claims further that this book was immediately refuted by Peter Dale Scott, but here there is another rather significant omission. Galbraith fails to point out that his claim is logically impossible: Scott does not even mention the book in the “epilogue” to which Galbraith refers, and was plainly unaware of its existence. Scott did mention an article of mine, which he apparently read so hurriedly that he seriously misunderstood its topic and was unaware of the documentation on which it was based, crucially, thousands of pages of recently released documents which, though I did not specifically refer to it, undermined Scott’s speculations to which Galbraith refers, published 20 years earlier in a collection of essays on the Pentagon Papers that I edited. Galbraith, like Scott, believes that I was relying on the Pentagon Papers; a look at the opening paragraphs suffices to correct this quite crucial error. But Scott’s departure from his usually careful work is irrelevant here, so there is no need to pursue it. Rather surprisingly, Galbraith relies heavily on John Newman’s deeply flawed account, which establishes its conclusions by elaborate tales of “deception” of JFK by those around him, though “in his heart [JFK] must have known” the truth so we can ignore the documentary record which leaves no trace of what JFK, alone, “had to notice.” This strange performance too is reviewed elsewhere in detail, and need not be discussed here. No one—even JFK himself—could have known how he would react to the radically changed assessments of the military/political situation immediately after his assassination. It is conceivable that he might, for the first time, have made decisions counter to those of his closest associates and advisers and chosen to withdraw (or perhaps to escalate more sharply). There is, however, no hint in the record that he contemplated withdrawal without victory, as we discover when we fill in the crucial blanks in Galbraith’s account, as is done in the extensive literature to which he refers, while evading its evidentiary base, and adding nothing of particular relevance. Kennedy-Johnson State Department official Lincoln Gordon, later president of Johns Hopkins University, once warned against “Camelot myth-making”—an observation that merits some reflection. (LINK)

Prouty’s ARRB interview was not the first time he back-peddled all over the place. In the mid-1970s, Prouty made the zany claim that E. Howard Hunt told him that Alexander Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House. When Prouty’s claim became a news item when Butterfield angrily denied it, Prouty started waffling, offering the lame excuse in a phone interview that “they” may have “told me the wrong name in order to cover up the real informer." Oh, of course. And my dog ate my homework. Senator Frank Church, a staunch liberal and fierce critic of the CIA, investigated Prouty’s claim and did not find a shred of evidence for it. When the Church Committee pressed Prouty on the matter, he admitted he had no evidence to support his claim. Even the only moderately critical Wikipedia article on Prouty attacks him over his bogus claim: On July 12, 1975, prior to closed-door questioning by the staff of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Prouty told reporters that Alexander Butterfield was a contact for the CIA at the White House.[20] He said he had learned the information over four years earlier from E. Howard Hunt while doing work for the National League of Families.[20][21] Prouty said that most federal government departments, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, had similar CIA contacts and that he assumed that former president Richard Nixon was aware of Butterfield's role.[20][21] Senator Frank Church said the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities had found no evidence that the CIA planted an undercover agent within the White House or other government agencies.[20] A few days later, Prouty partially walked back his comments in a telephone interview: "They may have told me the wrong name in order to cover up the real informer."[21] In a telephone statement to UPI that same day, Butterfield called the allegations "wholly false and defamatory" and stated that he had never met nor seen Hunt and had just recently heard of Prouty.[21] In an interview with CBS News from Eglin Air Force Base where he was serving his prison term for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, Hunt denied the allegation calling it an "unfortunate invention on Mr. Prouty's part."[22] Also interviewed by CBS, Prouty again stated it was Hunt who told him about Butterfield.[22] In a personal letter sent to Roger Feinman at CBS News Radio on July 14, 1975, Harold Weisberg expressed his belief that "the clear inference of the Prouty connection is that as a CIA man Butterfield pulled the plug on Nixon."[23] On July 19, Church said that his committee found that there was "no scintilla of evidence" to support Prouty's allegations, and that his committee had ruled out the possibility that Butterfield served as a liaison officer for the CIA.[24] Church also stated, "on close interrogation, Mr. Prouty is unable to substantiate his earlier statement and acknowledges this to be the case."[24] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty) How many times does this guy have to be caught peddling false claims before his defenders will admit he was a fraud and a crackpot?

Yes. Definitely yes.

Holy cow. This is just so sad and so embarrassing. It is surreal that we are even having this discussion. It is not just that "most sources" say that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference, it is that ALL sources, both government and scholarly, including all primary sources, say that he did not attend--the only exception is a single solitary unsourced sentence buried in a book about the Vietnam War. And, incredibly, you guys cling to that one sentence and dismiss all other sources on the subject. If you can't see that the lone unsourced statement was an honest mistake that simply conflated the Cairo and Tehran conferences, you have a real problem with your reasoning and objectivity. As I've noted, the very next sentence after the unsourced mistake makes it clear that Gibbons was referring to the Cairo Conference regarding Chiang and to the Tehran Conference regarding Stalin. If you can't see that Prouty's tale about his Tehran trip is full of holes, full of obvious indications of fraud, you have a real problem with your reasoning and objectivity. I refer to Prouty's gaffe about pocketless jumpsuits, his gaffe about stopping for refueling when he was allegedly flying a plane that could have easily made the trip to Tehran with plenty of fuel to spare (let me guess: you'll say he "forgot" to fill up his tank before he left Cairo!), his silly tale about Churchill being held up at a Soviet checkpoint for lack of ID, his culturally ignorant tale that the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and mocked the British delegation during the alleged checkpoint delay, and his fiction that FDR persuaded Stalin to order Mao to stand down (when that subject was never even discussed at the conference). If you can't see that Madame Chiang's 12/5/43 letter to FDR destroys Prouty's tale, you have a real problem with your reasoning and objectivity. It is disturbing that you folks brush aside the fact that not a single person who attended the Tehran Conference and who wrote about their experiences at the conference mentioned seeing Chiang or the Chinese delegation in Tehran or at the conference. I think it is especially telling the Elliott Roosevelt and Sarah Churchill, both of whom wrote extensively about their experiences at the Tehran Conference, failed to confirm a single part of Prouty's Tehran fable. Elliott Roosevelt never mentioned seeing the Chinese group at Habanaya Airport in Iraq or in Tehran. Sarah Churchill never said a word about the alleged Soviet checkpoint delay or about seeing Chiang and his group at the conference. And on and on and on we could go. Shall we talk about the fact that the Church Committee exposed Prouty as a fraud? Are you aware of this fact?

You Prouty apologists need to get your story straight. Your reply consists of a lot of special pleading and back-peddling, not to mention, ironically enough, strawman argumentation. In JFK Revisited, Newman expressly says, without any qualification or caveats, that JFK told McNamara that he was determined to pull out of Vietnam even if it meant South Vietnam fell to the Communists. If that is not "unconditional," what is? Prouty believers have said over and over and over again that JFK allegedly told certain aides and associates that he was going to pull out of Vietnam after the election even if he were damned as a Communist for doing so and even if the Communists conquered South Vietnam as a result. I've lost count of how many times Jim and his allies have quoted JFK's alleged statement that he wanted all the helicopters/helicopter pilots withdrawn too. Go read Jim's atrocious fringe articles on JFK and Vietnam on his Kennedys and King website. It is amazing that you would pretend that I'm using a strawman argument in pointing out what Prouty apologists have been saying for years. I did not say, and have never said, that the primary source documents use the term "unconditional" and "total"! What an odd argument for you to make. I mean, a big part of my whole point is that, no, the primary sources do not say any such thing, which is a major reason that Prouty apologists are wrong for claiming that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally pull out of Vietnam after the election! This is more clownish, wingnut material. You are an embarrassment to the research community when it comes to JFK and Vietnam. As we have seen in other threads on the subject, you have no clue what you are talking about on the matter. Contrary to your baffling false claim, Selverstone does not deny the existence of the belated accounts given by some JFK aides and associates that JFK told them he was going to pull out of Vietnam after the election even if it meant losing South Vietnam. How can you say such a thing? In fact, Selverstone acknowledges those accounts, and then he goes on to show why those accounts are not believable, just as ultra-liberal historian Ed Moise has done. Indeed, Moise is even more blunt than Selverstone in rejecting those accounts. As Moise and Selverstone observe, those accounts contradict every single statement that JFK himself made on the subject. It is also worth noting that several former JFK aides denied that JFK had any intention of abandoning South Vietnam after the election. Did you actually read Selverstone's book before you wrote your amateurish, misleading "review" of it, or did you just skim through it? This would explain why your "review" simply ignores most of the evidence that Selverstone presents. You cite a small handful of scholars who agree with your fringe view on JFK and Vietnam. As we both know. those scholars constitute a very, very, very tiny minority of all the scholars who have written on the subject. We both know that even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject your unconditional-withdrawal myth. I notice you declined to say anything about the points I made about the first draft of NSAM 273 and the 10/2/63 White House statement, which provide further proof that JFK was determined to win the war, that he was going to continue to aid South Vietnam for as long as necessary, that he was prepared to leave behind a training force if needed, and that the central objective of all actions relating to South Vietnam was to defeat the Communist insurgency and to keep South Vietnam free--just as Bobby Kennedy made clear in his 4/30/64 oral interview.

@Cliff Varnell@Bill Fite@James DiEugenio Speaking of JFK's determination to win the Vietnam War, here is some of what was said on that subject in the first draft of NSAM 273, i.e., the draft that JFK was prepared to sign, dated 11/21/63: It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. The test of all decisions and U.S. actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contribution to this purpose. (Paragraph 1) Wow. Huh. Gee. That doesn't sound like there was any intention to cut and run after the '64 election, does it? And: Programs of military and economic assistance should be maintained at such levels that their magnitude and effectiveness in the eyes of the Vietnamese Government do not fall below the levels sustained by the United States in the time of the Diem Government. (Paragraph 6) So U.S. aid to South Vietnam was to be maintained, and at the same level as it was under Diem. How about the withdrawal? What did the first draft of NSAM 273 say about the withdrawal? Let's read: 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 October 2, 1963. (Paragraph 2) Booyah! And let's read the relevant part of that 10/2/63 White House statement: Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgment 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. (Paragraph 3) Yes, indeed! Notice that this is a judgment call about the situation on the ground in South Vietnam, that the "major part" of the U.S. military task "can" (not "will" or "shall") be completed by the end of 1965, and that some U.S. training personnel (i.e., military advisors) may be required to remain in South Vietnam after the end of 1965. This is not even in the ballpark of an ironclad, irreversible decision to totally disengage from South Vietnam after the '64 election, and anyone who says otherwise is ignoring the plain English of the statement. The 10/2/63 White House statement also specified what the "central objective" of U.S. policy for South Vietnam was--it was the “effective performance” of the effort "to deny this country to communism and to suppress" the Viet Cong insurgency. Let's read: 1. The security of South Viet-Nam is a major interest of the United States as of other free nations. We will adhere to our policy of working with the people and Government of South Viet-Nam to deny this country to communism and to suppress the externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Viet Cong as promptly as possible. Effective performance in this undertaking is the central objective of our policy in South Viet-Nam. (Paragraph 1) But according to the Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith unconditional-withdrawal myth, the central objective was to totally and unconditionally disengage from South Vietnam after the ’64 election. This is an excusable myth that has done considerable damage to the case for conspiracy in JFK's death. The 10/2/63 statement also said that "major" U.S. assistance to South Vietnam would be maintained until the insurgency had been suppressed or until South Vietnam was capable of suppressing it: Major U.S. assistance in support of this military effort is needed only until the insurgency has been suppressed or until the national security forces of the Government of South Viet-Nam are capable of suppressing it. (Paragraph 3) So until the Communist insurgency had been suppressed or until South Vietnam could suppress it, “major” U.S. assistance to the military effort would be “needed.” In closing, I quote the final paragraph of the 10/2/63 White House statement, the statement that the first draft of NSAM 273 said governed the objectives of the clearly conditional withdrawal plan: 5. It remains the policy of the United States, in South Viet-Nam as in other parts of the world, to support the efforts of the people of that country to defeat aggression and to build a peaceful and free society. This primary-source evidence is a big part of the reason that even nearly all liberal historians reject the unconditional-withdrawal myth.

Yeah, you bet. First, you misrepresented what I said about the role that RFK's murder of Marilyn Monroe played in the plotters' actions, and you confused justification with motive. Now, you're using a juvenile strawman argument. In your rush to post silly polemic, I guess it did not occur to you that those plotters who were anti-Castro Cubans would have naturally had a direct, personal reason for being angry about the Bay of Pigs and for wanting revenge for it, but they would have had no reason to have such feelings about Marilyn Monroe's murder. When people post here, they assume a minimal level of understanding and maturity on the part of readers. Obviously, as I've said many times in this forum, the plotters, as well as those who carried out the plotters' plans, did not all have the same motives for wanting JFK dead, nor did they all use the same excuses/reasons to justify their actions.

William, thank you for posting this. Very helpful.

No, you don't "understand correctly." You have either somehow misread the original post and follow-up posts or you are deliberately misrepresenting them. No one is saying that RFK's murder of Marilyn Monroe was the plotters' "actual motive." I have not even cited it as a "motive." I've said that when they learned of the murder, they viewed it as justification for an act they were already contemplating or as an excuse to carry out their desire to have him killed. No one has said the plotters killed JFK to "avenge" Marilyn's murder. I'm sure they couldn't have cared less about Marily Monroe or whether she lived or died. They saw her murder as an excuse/justification for their conspiracy to kill JFK.

LOL. Not cherry= picking at all - It's their war to win - did you miss that part? I'm only answering this for the sake of others, especially any guests. Well, yes, of course it was "their war to win." You keep quoting this statement as if you're somehow proving something and/or validating the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Heck, Nixon said it was "their war to win." So did Abrams. So did Colby. So did just about everybody. The point, which you keep avoiding, is that (1) JFK made it clear that he opposed pulling out of South Vietnam and even opposed reducing aid to South Vietnam because he was determined to help them win the war, and (2) that JFK defended the war effort as vital, said we had to be patient and persist, and said he did not want a repeat of what happened in China. As you missed the Gen Maxwell Taylor memo in posts above? Oh, boy. You must be reading the Taylor memo with pink-shaded glasses or with half the memo blacked out. The Taylor memo does not even come close to supporting the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from Vietnam after the election. Where in the world in that memo do you see any such thing? BTW, you cannot read the 10/4/63 memo in isolation from Taylor and McNamara's 10/2/63 memo to JFK. Have you read the 10/2/63 memo? The few times when the unconditional-withdrawal-myth folks cite that memo, they usually ignore the parts that make it clear that the withdrawal was neither unconditional nor irreversible. Here's a link to that memo: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IV, Vietnam, August–December 1963 - Office of the Historian. I suspect you guys just don't care, but it should give you pause that even the vast majority of liberal historians, who have looked at all the same evidence that you guys cite, reject as spurious and fringe the Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith myth that JFK was determined to totally disengage from Vietnam, no matter what, after the election. That inexcusable myth was one of the two main points of scholarly attack against Stone's 1991 movie, the other point being the obscene myth that Ed Lansdale played a key role in the plot.

That's some rather misleading cherry-picking. In that same interview, in fact right after he said it was their war to win or lose, he said he disagreed with those who were advocating withdrawal, and he added that this would be a "great mistake" and that "this is a very important struggle": I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. I know people don't like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away. . . . A week later, when he was interviewed on NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report on 9/9/63, JFK said he even opposed reducing aid to South Vietnam, said "we must be patient" and "we must persist," and said we did not want to see a repeat of what happened in China: We are using our influence to persuade the government there to take those steps which will win back support. That takes some time and we must be patient, we must persist. Mr. Huntley: Are we likely to reduce our aid to South Viet-Nam now? THE PRESIDENT. I don't think we think that would be helpful at this time. If you reduce your aid, it is possible you could have some effect upon the government structure there. On the other hand, you might have a situation which could bring about a collapse. Strongly in our mind is what happened in the case of China at the end of World War II, where China was lost, a weak government became increasingly unable to control events. We don't want that. In the last two speeches of his life, one of them being the speech he was going to give at the Trade Mart on 11/22, JFK made clear his determination to win the war. It is misleading and dishonest to talk about JFK's Vietnam policy without quoting the firsthand statements that he himself made, but the tiny handful of researchers who keep peddling the unconditional-withdrawal myth almost never quote those statements--instead, they rely on McNamara's phony "secret debrief" and on hearsay and double hearsay statements attributed to JFK years after his death by liberal aides and associates who were trying to distance JFK from the war. And, yes, JFK firmly believed in the Domino Theory, and the theory was sadly proved correct by subsequent events. When it became clear that South Vietnam was about to fall to the Communists, Cambodia fell to Communist rule, and Laos quickly followed. The North Vietnamese Communists executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent another 800,000-plus to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%. Communist rule in Cambodia was even worse, where the Cambodian Communists murdered over 1 million Cambodians. In Laos, the brutality of Communist rule drove 10% of the population to leave the country by 1980.

Objective, reasonable grownups who have done any serious reading on the subject of WW II diplomacy and/or Chiang Kai-shek will look at Gibbons' single unsourced statement and will quickly and easily recognize that Gibbons simply conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference. One obvious indication of this is found in Gibbons' very next sentence, where he recounts that FDR told Churchill that Chiang had told him that he did not want to control Indochina and did not want to administer a trusteeship in Indochina (p. 4). This is exactly what Chiang told FDR at the Cairo Conference. What Gibbons clearly intended to say is that Chiang and FDR discussed the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference and that Chiang approved the proposal, and that FDR then notified Stalin of this fact at the Tehran Conference and that Stalin agreed with the trusteeship idea. This is why every other government source and scholarly study on the Cairo and Tehran conferences and/or on Chiang says that Chiang only attended the Cairo Conference and then went home to China, and that only Stalin, FDR, and Churchill attended the Tehran Conference. In previous replies, I have cited and quoted some of the numerous sources that document these facts. The kind of error that Gibbons obviously made happens occasionally when authors make a passing comment about a subject that is not the topic of the book and is not even the topic of the paragraph. And it bears repeating that Prouty's other Tehran claim--that FDR persuaded Stalin to get Mao to stand down--is demonstrably bogus. As I have proved, the subject of Mao's operations was never even discussed at the Tehran Conference. I notice that the Prouty apologists in this thread have made no effort to defend Prouty's zany claim that Ibn Saud (the king of Saudi Arabia) attended the Cairo Conference. Prouty was fond of just making up factoids to make himself look important and to give the illusion of appearing to have inside knowledge of important historical events. Finally, I would note that in Prouty's 1975 speech at Yale, the same speech in which he claimed that Ibn Saud attended the Cairo conference, Prouty repeated his false claim that he worked with the Secret Service on presidential protection.

Uh-huh, and you obviously endorse Powers' invalid denial. You know, even Don McGovern, Jim's "gold standard" source, admits that JFK was a flagrant adulterer. Perhaps Jim is not aware of this or has chosen to stay silent about it. Why do you suppose that even McGovern is willing to admit the well-known fact that JFK was a serial adulterer but you and Jim are not? If you don't want to read the three books I've recommended, you might read the chapter on JFK's adultery in historian Thomas Reeves' book A Question of Character: A Life of John Kennedy, and the chapter on JFK's adultery in Seymour Hersh's book The Dark Side of Camelot. Hersh's book is admittedly a bit of a hit piece, but Reeves' book is not. Reeves gives JFK credit and praise for many of his actions. Both Hersh and Reeves provide ample evidence of JFK's flagrant adultery.

Yes, indeed. There is also the fact that Marilyn's housekeeper said that Marilyn was upbeat the last time she saw her that day (before RFK and Lawson came over). Nothing in her behavior in the weeks leading up to her death indicated that she was thinking about killing herself. Her career was on the rebound. She had just gone shopping for new furniture for the house she had recently bought. These are not the normal actions of a suicidal person. I should add that Dorothy Kilgallen was aware that Marilyn was dating RFK. She dropped an obvious hint of their relationship in one of her columns shortly before Marilyn died. (I guess this is why the love-struck McGovern viciously attacks Dorothy.)