Michael Griffith

But the conspirators surely knew that JFK was determined to keep South Vietnam free on his watch, that JFK intended to continue providing economic and military aid to South Vietnam even if all U.S. advisors were withdrawn, and that the withdrawal plan was conditional. Max Taylor knew this. So did the Joint Chiefs. Read Selverstone's book. If the main motive of the conspirators was Vietnam, one has to wonder why they allowed LBJ to so horribly bungle the war effort. Either the conspirators were not powerful enough to control how LBJ handled the war or the conduct of the war was not a key issue for them.

You're welcome. I just added a blurb about Selverstone's qualifications to the OP.

Barring the discovery of some new cache of documents and/or tapes, we now have the definitive book on JFK and Vietnam with Dr. Marc Selverstone's new book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press, November 2022). This book is very detailed and is packed with new information, including extensive use of presidential tapes and declassified documents. I listened to the audio version first, then read the book, and then re-read certain sections of the book. In a nutshell, here are the main points that Selverstone makes in the book: -- JFK did not intend to totally disengage from South Vietnam but intended to continue providing economic aid and military aid, even if conditions on the ground permitted him to withdraw all U.S. military personnel from the country. JFK was determined to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam on his watch. -- The final version of NSAM 273 was not a drastic departure from the original draft, and it was not a drastic departure from JFK's Vietnam policy. JFK had been intensely interested in taking the war to North Vietnam. RFK even urged General Krulak "to devise a bolder set of options against Hanoi." JFK and most of his advisors believed that "actions against the North needed to be larger, more frequent, and more systematic." Selverstone also notes that JFK's "interest in supporting covert action against the North actually increased during his time in office." Indeed, Selverstone makes a strong case that "had Kennedy survived Dallas and signed an early draft of NSAM 273, it is doubtful whether the operations it sanctioned would have been much different than those postdating its final version." After noting that the Bundy draft of NSAM 273 authorized sabotage operations against North Vietnam, Selverstone observes, Given Kennedy's enduring enthusiasm for those activities, he may well have authorized their continuation, regardless of whether NSAM 273 referenced a South Vietnamese or an American role in their execution; after all, actions against the North were always dependent upon U.S. support, both prior to Dallas as well as thereafter. (pp. 206-207) -- JFK was viscerally, adamantly opposed to sending regular combat troops to South Vietnam. -- Without JFK's knowledge, McNamara was going beyond JFK's intentions with the withdrawal plan and was the main driver behind the plan. On the other hand, some of JFK's more hawkish advisors were also going beyond JFK's intentions without his knowledge. -- In JFK's eyes and in the eyes of most of his advisors, the withdrawal plan was conditional, i.e., it would depend on the situation on the ground. However, JFK was anxious to reduce the number of U.S. personnel in South Vietnam as soon as possible. By the way, Selverstone cites John Newman's book JFK and Vietnam and Newman's article "The Kennedy-Johnson Transition: The Case for Policy Reversal" a number of times. Here is part of the publisher's description of Selverstone's book: In October 1963, the White House publicly proposed the removal of US troops from Vietnam, earning President Kennedy an enduring reputation as a skeptic on the war. In fact, Kennedy was ambivalent about withdrawal and was largely detached from its planning. Drawing on secret presidential tapes, Marc J. Selverstone reveals that the withdrawal statement gave Kennedy political cover, allowing him to sustain support for US military assistance. Its details were the handiwork of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, whose ownership of the plan distanced it from the president. Selverstone’s use of the presidential tapes, alongside declassified documents, memoirs, and oral histories, lifts the veil on this legend of Camelot. Scholarly praise for the book includes the following: “With the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, the courage of a mountaineer, and the storytelling instincts of a mystery writer, Selverstone tackles head-on one of the most tantalizing what-ifs in modern history. The Kennedy Withdrawal weighs all the evidence, from every angle, to render a verdict that is at once surprising, convincing, and authoritative. This will surely be the definitive account of JFK’s intentions in Vietnam.” ― Andrew Preston, author of American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction. “A splendid work. I doubt there is any scholar anywhere who knows the archival material better than Selverstone does, and he is surely unsurpassed in his familiarity with the Kennedy tapes. His prose is consistently smooth, clear, and engaging. This book will be the go-to account on Kennedy and the Vietnam War for a long time to come.” ― Fredrik Logevall, author of Choosing War and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Embers of War. “With the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, the courage of a mountaineer, and the storytelling instincts of a mystery writer, Selverstone tackles head-on one of the most tantalizing what-ifs in modern history. The Kennedy Withdrawal weighs all the evidence, from every angle, to render a verdict that is at once surprising, convincing, and authoritative. This will surely be the definitive account of JFK’s intentions in Vietnam.” ― Andrew Preston, author of American Foreign Relations: A Very Short Introduction. “This pathbreaking book redefines the terms of the long-running debate over John Kennedy’s Vietnam withdrawal plan. Weaving analysis and narrative together in compelling fashion, Selverstone cuts through the Camelot mythology to reveal the bureaucratic and political origins of the plan, as well as the reasons for its subsequent abandonment. A major contribution from a preeminent historian of JFK’s foreign policies.” ― Edward Miller, author of Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Dr. Selverstone is an associate professor in Presidential Studies at the Miller Center and chair of the Center’s Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia. He earned a BA degree in philosophy from Trinity College (CT), a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, and a PhD in history from Ohio University. A historian of the Cold War, he is the author of Constructing the Monolith: The United States, Great Britain, and International Communism, 1945-1950 (Harvard), which won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. As chair of the Recordings Program, he has edited the secret White House tapes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon. He is the general editor of The Presidential Recordings Digital Edition, the primary online portal for transcripts of the tapes, published by the University of Virginia Press.

If JFK had been president when Castro came to power in 1959, Castro may have never felt the need to ask the Soviets for assistance in the first place. Eisenhower overreacted to Castro and did much to push Castro toward the Soviets. I think JFK would have been less reactionary and more flexible in his dealings with Castro than Ike was. But, by the time JFK became president, Castro was already in the Soviet camp, thanks to Ike's mishandling of the situation.

Here is an interesting, balanced article on Henry Wallace: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/14/uncommon-man

Actually, most of my review focuses on her chapter on Israel, which is actually rather awful. I could have said a lot more about the errors and omissions in that chapter. A few parts of the chapter read like they could have been written by ISIS, Hamas, or Al Qaeda. I just hope that careful readers will note that in several cases she goes well beyond what JFK said. She goes so far as to accuse Israel of carrying out a "false flag" attack on the USS Liberty, a demonstrably erroneous claim (not to mention that the attack happened nearly four years after JFK's death). Israel never tried to blame a third party for the attack. One wonders if she understands the term "false flag." Leaving aside the issue of whether the attack was accidental or deliberate, Israel apologized for the attack within hours and later paid compensation to the families and to the U.S. Government. Being a former Hebrew linguist in the military and a lifelong student of all things Israeli, I can say this much for sure about the USS Liberty incident: The record is clear that Israel's civilian leaders were horrified when they learned of the attack. I can allow that elements of the Israeli military may have ordered the attack, but Prime Minister Eshkol and his inner circle certainly had nothing to do with it and were shocked and angry when they learned of it. If this were any other book, I would condemn the book for including such a grossly unfair portrayal of Israel and the Israelis. But, I think so highly of the rest of the book that I have given it four stars and have highly recommended it. By the way, I edited my Amazon review so that the first paragraph is entirely positive.

I have now finished reading Monika Wiesak's book America's Last President. Even though I strongly disagree with two of the chapters in the book, I am so impressed with the book overall that I have included it in the Recommended Books/Videos section on the front page of my JFK assassination site. Here is the review page I've created for the thumbnail link for her book on my site: America Last President.pdf - Google Drive I've posted a slightly revised version of this review as my Amazon review of her book.

I think it is very sad and perplexing to see anyone, in 2023, minimizing the scale and horror of Soviet brutality and aggression, given all that we now know. It is simply not true that no one knew about Soviet atrocities and repression until after WW II. That is fiction. Many people knew, but liberal Democrats, from FDR on down, did not want to hear it. At his conferences with Stalin, FDR shamefully handed over tens of millions of people to Soviet tyranny. The full depth of FDR's betrayal of human rights is discussed in painful detail, with the benefit of new period documents, in Dr. Sean McMeekin's book 2021 book Stalin's War: A New History of World War II. People who cherish freedom can thank God that FDR wasn't still president in 1945 when the Soviets tried to get Truman to let them occupy all of Korea, to occupy part of Japan, and to join in the occupation of mainland Japan. To his great credit, Truman said no. It was bad enough that the Soviets, thanks to FDR's shameful concessions, were able to literally rape Manchuria and to set up a brutal Marxist regime in North Korea (similar to the one they and the Chinese later set up in North Vietnam). Perhaps we should consider what Henry Wallace, to his enormous credit, wrote in his 1952 article "Where I Was Wrong": Before 1949 I thought Russia really wanted and needed peace. After 1949 I became more and more disgusted with the Soviet methods and finally became convinced that the Politburo wanted the Cold War continued indefinitely, even at the peril of accidentally provoking a hot war. In this article I shall speak frankly of some of the circumstances which have caused me to revise my attitude. Among the fist were the shocking revelations of the activities of Russia's atomic spies. This plus the testimony of American ex-Communists convinced me that Russia had been getting information illegally to which neither she nor any other nation was entitled. Next, I was deeply moved by reports of friends who had visited Czechoslovakia shortly after the Communist took control. In the summer of 1949, a member of the Progressive Party visited Czechoslovakia and reported the dispossession of relatives whose only crime was to own a small business. No one, I was told, could amount to anything who was not an outspoken critic of the U.S. and capitalism. Only Moscow-trained Communists were allowed in positions of authority. As I look back over the past 10 years, I now feel that my greatest mistake was in not denouncing the Communist take-over of Czechoslovakia of 1948. . . . More and more I am convinced that Russian Communism in its total disregard of truth, in its fanaticism, its intolerance and its resolute denial of God and religion is something utterly evil. (Henry A. Wallace (1952) on the Ruthless Nature and Utter Evil of Soviet Communism: Cold-War Era God-That-Failed Weblogging (typepad.com)

You're welcome. Henry Wallace remains a polarizing subject. His conservative critics and his liberal admirers alike rarely mention his conversion to Republican-style anti-communism in the early 1950s. In most cases, both his critics and his admirers focus on his pre-1949 statements and actions.

I wholly agree that we should not cite right-wing extremists such as Alex Jones. As I've said, I won't go within 10 miles of anything associated with Alex Jones. To be consistent, however, we should also not cite left-wing extremists such as Noam Chomsky and especially James Fetzer. Yes, it is most certainly offensive and ludicrous to claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was faked, but it is equally offensive and ludicrous to claim that 9/11 was an inside job, that the WTC towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions, that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon but that a missile did, etc., etc.

It's interesting that WC apologists dismiss the important eyewitness accounts in Mark Lane's documentary Rush to Judgment because they claim that Lane manipulated the witnesses into saying what he wanted to hear. Yet, they say nothing about the bald manipulation of witnesses by WC attorneys.

Just a suggestion: When you post a video link, it would be helpful if you would provide a short summary of the video that presents at least some of the video's main/most important points.

I think that comparing JFK to Wallace does a disservice to JFK if we're talking about the pre-1949 Henry Wallace. Until 1949, Wallace was practically pro-Soviet. Wallace had almost nothing bad to say about the Soviets and consistently whitewashed or ignored Soviet brutality and oppression. After the Berlin Wall fell, evidence emerged from the Soviet archives that Wallace reported regularly to Moscow in 1945 and 1946. When Wallace ran as a third-party presidential candidate in 1948, he opposed the Marshall Plan, advocated unilateral disarmament, and refused to repudiate the endorsement of the American Communist Party. Even Norman Thomas, the perennial presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America, regarded Wallace as a communist dupe. However, Wallace did, eventually, come to his senses about the Soviets and Communism, and, to his credit, frankly admitted his error in the early 1950s. So complete was Wallace's transformation that he supported Eisenhower's reelection in 1956. Here's an article that Wallace wrote in 1952 in which he admitted he had been naive and gullible about the Soviets and Communism in general: Henry A. Wallace (1952) on the Ruthless Nature and Utter Evil of Soviet Communism: Cold-War Era God-That-Failed Weblogging (typepad.com) JFK was never naive about the Soviets or about the ugly, brutal nature of Communism, much less an apologist for them. It depends on which Henry Wallace we're talking about: (A) the one was a communist dupe and Soviet apologist until 1949 or (B) the one who realized and admitted his error, who recognized and acknowledged Soviet brutality, and who even supported Ike in 1956.

This gentleman has been posting the Hickey theory in the JFK Assassination Forum for some time now. I have pointed out most of the same problems with the theory in that forum that others have pointed out in this thread.

I am surprised by the reaction here to this committee. There are some well-founded, valid concerns about the weaponization and conduct of the FBI and the Justice Department that need to be investigated and corrected. I would think that members of this community, of all people, would be concerned about the worrying, arguably illegal conduct of elements of the JD and the FBI over the last six years.

I'm glad that Infowars is allowing an open debate on the JFK case, but, personally, I won't go within 10 miles of anything associated with Alex Jones. I agree that the civil judgments against Jones have been severe overkill, but he brought them on himself by making such ludicrous, outrageous comments about the Sandy Hook shooting.

Thanks. That helps.

Does anyone here have, or know where I can find, John Hunt's article on the bunched-jacket theory? As posted on Ken Rahn's website, the article is in three parts and is titled "The Case for a Bunched Jacket," but only Part 2 is still there and the photos in the article do not load. Here's the link to Part 2 on Rahn's site: http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/Issues_and_evidence/Back_wound/Bunching--John_Hunt/Bunching2--Hunt.html Part 1 is on the jfk-assassination.net website, but the photos won't load in that part either. Here's the link: https://www.jfk-assassination.net/bunched.htm I would love to get the entire article, with the photos included. Can anyone help me out?

I came across this post while doing some research. I'm certain that others have already pointed this out, but the four photos that show a shirt do not, of course, show a coat worn over the shirt, and that the mild bunches shown in photo #4 and in the JFK shirt photo are not nearly large enough and high enough to account for JFK's rear clothing holes, both of which were over 5 inches below the top of their respective collars. Moreover, if a bullet struck the bunch seen in the final photo, the JFK shirt photo, it would have made three holes in the shirt, two in the overlapping layers of the bunch and one in the fabric beneath the overlapping layers. Finally, a word about the front shirt slits. They look nothing like a bullet hole. They are not the same shape or length or thickness. Part of the left slit (viewer's right) extends into the neckband, while the right slit (viewer's left) does not. The right slit is roughly half vertical and half diagonal, while the left slit is not as irregular. The initial FBI lab report did not attribute the slits to a bullet but stated that the slits could have been caused by a fragment. Also, the FBI found no metallic traces around the slits but did find metallic traces around the rear clothing holes. Moreover, the slits have no fabric missing from them, unlike all the other clothing holes.

Sorenson may have believed this, but he was wrong. We now know that JFK had a Cuba coup planned for early December 1963. After Dallas, Bobby even tried to get LBJ to let the coup proceed, but LBJ refused. Lamar Waldron covers this in some detail in The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination. LBJ's refusal shows that he was not part of the inner circle of the assassination plot, since the plotters appears to have hoped to use the assassination as an excuse to invade Cuba. I think LBJ knew that "something" was in the works against Kennedy, but I don't think he was one of the plotters.

You really think that the Russians would have attacked West Berlin with Nixon as president in response to the liberation of Cuba? I doubt that. If the Russians made no move against Berlin during JFK's invasion of Cuba, even though they regarded Kennedy as less hawkish/weaker than Nixon, it seems unlikely they would have attacked Berlin over Cuba with Nixon in the White House. The Russians were acutely aware that they would suffer far more severe losses in a nuclear exchange than we would. Besides, if we had liberated Cuba in 1961, there would have been no Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. All this being said, I should probably repeat that I mostly blame the CIA and the Joint Chiefs for the failure of the Bay of Pigs.

This video is sadly misleading, incomplete, and heavily biased. It repeats many of the standard far-left myths about JFK and Vietnam. I notice that not one of the experts interviewed for the video said anything about the massive aid that North Vietnam received from Russia and China, the 100K-plus Chinese troops who were stationed in North Vietnam, the thousands of Russian advisers who were stationed in North Vietnam, the murderous reign of terror that North Vietnam imposed on the south after South Vietnam fell, and the fact that South Vietnam, for all its many faults, was far less repressive and more democratic than North Vietnam, etc., etc.

I think it is now clear that there were at least two head shots. The autopsy report describes a fragment trail that ran from the EOP to the right orbit. The extant autopsy skull x-rays show a fragment trail that runs between the right-frontal region and a point upward and farther back on the skull that ends short of the cowlick area. It is inconceivable that the autopsy doctors missed the higher trail or mistook it for the lower trail. Now that the cowlick entry site has been debunked, that leaves the EOP entry site, but the EOP site is at least 2 inches below and on the opposite end of the skull from the right-frontal fragment cloud, and there is no trail that even remotely connects the EOP site with the fragment cloud.

I think the Zapruder film, altered or not, provides powerful evidence of multiple gunmen even before the head shot frames, i.e., the Z200-207 reactions and the Z226-232 reactions. At around frame 200, JFK's hand not only stops suddenly in the middle of a wave, but it also drops to the chin or throat level in a fraction of a second and stays at that level until he disappears behind the freeway sign at Z207. By frames 202-204, Mrs. Kennedy has made a sudden sharp turn to the right, toward her husband. When she reemerges into view at Z223, she is looking intently at JFK; obviously, her attention was drawn to him because the reaction that he had begun at around Z200 had become more noticeable while the car was behind the freeway sign. Beginning at Z226, Kennedy's body is visibly jolted sharply forward, and the position of his hands and elbows--particularly his elbows--changes dramatically, as they are flung upward and forward. The force and speed of these movements of his arms and elbows are quite startling when one compares frame 226, where they are first discernible, to frame 232 just 1/3-second later. Although the WC and the HSCA ignored these movements (they alluded to them but did not describe them), they are among the most dramatic and visible reactions in the entire Zapruder film. The Z200-207 reactions indicate a shot at Z186-188, and this appears to be the throat shot. The Z226-232 reactions indicate a shot at Z224-225.

Well, far be it from me to defend Curtis LeMay (since I think he was a war criminal who should have been prosecuted for war crimes after WWII), but 13 Days presents a distorted portrayal of LeMay and the other Joint Chiefs. 'Thirteen Days' is more a fantasy tale – Baltimore Sun