Michael Griffith

I read the first two chapters (because they're available free of charge as a sample of the Kindle version). I would give the chapters a B-. I'm concerned about the apparent anti-Israeli bias and one-sidedness in Wiesak's comments about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. She chose not to mention the fact that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine but that the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors rejected it and instead tried to annihilate the Jews. The partition plan gave the Palestinians a homeland, gave them the West Bank, gave them a large chunk of northern Palestine, gave them the Gaza Strip, and gave them the majority of the most fertile areas. The partition plan also made Jerusalem an international city controlled by neither the Jews nor the Palestinians. But Palestinian leaders were so certain that their Arab brethren could easily "wipe the Jews into the sea" that they rejected the partition plan and invited five Arab armies to attack the newly formed Jewish state. Naturally, when the Jews miraculously won the war, they were in no mood to be generous to the people who had just tried to facilitate their destruction. The Palestinians were lucky the Jews didn't drive every one of them out of the country after their treacherous conduct. Until relatively recently, virtually all liberals were staunchly pro-Israeli. But, in recent years, as the Left has become increasingly radicalized, a growing minority of liberals have turned against Israel. Wiesak seems to be in that camp. If I am misreading her views on this issue, I will be happy to admit my error. I'm also concerned that Wiesak quotes Fletcher Prouty. Seriously? In 2022? After all we now know about Prouty, his nutty claims, his disastrous and revealing ARRB interview, his fringe/extremist associations? Every journalist and scholar who reads her book is going to see her use of Prouty as a red flag and is going to question her credibility and scholarship because of it. Oliver Stone's heavy reliance on Prouty's crazy claims in his 1991 movie JFK was the main problem that scholars had with the movie. If Wiesak had not quoted Prouty and had been more even-handed on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, I would give the two chapters an A. I try not to throw out babies with the bath water, but in 2022 there is just no excuse for any conspiracy theorist to be quoting Fletcher Prouty, and one would think that any person claiming to be "liberal" would be very sympathetic to the state of Israel.

Good grief, Paul, it is incredible that you would say this, given all that has been known on the subject for decades. LBJ and McNamara micromanaged the war to a degree never seen before or since in the history of American warfare. Presidents are not supposed to do that, but that's exactly what LBJ did, and that was a big part of the problem. I'm just wondering how anyone can be unaware of this fact in 2022. I take it you haven't read such books as H. R. McMaster's award-winning 1997 work Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, among others that could be cited. LBJ and McNamara went so far as to usurp from local commanders the choosing of tactical-level bombing targets and the setting of time frames for bombing operations without consideration of the weather and changing circumstances. LBJ did not just mismanage the war, he mis-micromanaged the war. He and McNamara were making tactical operational decisions that they had no business making, that they were not qualified to make, and that were normally made by corps- and division-level commanders.

In 1964, none other than liberal icon Adlai Stevenson, our UN ambassador at the time, set the record straight about the Vietnam War in a statement to the UN Security Council. Stevenson, who had twice been the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee (1952 and 1956), pointed out that North Vietnam was the aggressor, that South Vietnam was the victim, that the war was no civil war, that Communist China was backing North Vietnam’s aggression, that the Vietcong were controlled by Hanoi, and that the Vietcong were torturing and murdering children, medical workers, priests, and teachers, among other civilians, and were targeting hospitals and schools and other civilian facilities: It is the people of the Republic of Vietnam [i.e., South Vietnam] who are the major victims on armed aggression. It is they who are fighting for their independence against violence directed from outside their borders. It is they who suffer day and night from the terror of the so-called Viet Cong. The prime targets of the Viet Cong for kidnapping, for torture, and for murder have been local officials, school teachers, medical workers, priests, agricultural specialists, and any others whose position, profession, or other talents qualified them for service to the people of Vietnam--plus, of course, the relatives and children of citizens loyal to their government. The chosen military objectives of the Viet Cong--for gunfire or arson or pillage--have been hospitals, school houses, agricultural stations, and various improvement projects by which the Government of Vietnam for many years has been raising the living standards of the people. The government and people of Vietnam have been struggling for survival, struggling for years for survival in a war which has been as wicked, as wanton, and as dirty as any waged against an innocent and peaceful people in the whole cruel history of warfare. . . . The United States Government is currently involved in the affairs of the Republic of Vietnam for one reason and one reason only: because the Republic of Vietnam requested the help of the United States and of other governments to defend itself against armed attack fomented, equipped, and directed from the outside. . . . Aggression is aggression; organized violence is organized violence. Only the scale and the scenery change: the point is the same in Vietnam today as it was in Greece in 1947 and in Korea in 1950. The Indochinese Communist Party, the parent of the present Communist Party in North Vietnam, made it abundantly clear as early as 1951 that the aim of the Vietnamese Communist leadership is to take control of all of Indochina. This goal has not changed--it is still clearly the objective of the Vietnamese Communist leadership in Hanoi. Hanoi seeks to accomplish this purpose in South Vietnam through subversive guerrilla directed, controlled, and supplied by North Vietnam. The Communist leadership in Hanoi has sought to pretend that the insurgency in South Vietnam is a civil war, but Hanoi's hand shows very clearly. Public statements by the Communist Party in North Vietnam and its leaders have repeatedly demonstrated Hanoi’s direction of the struggle in South Vietnam. . . . The International Control Commission in Vietnam, established by the Geneva Accords in 1954, stated in a special report which it issued in June 1962, that there is sufficient evidence to show that North Vietnam has violated various articles of the Geneva Accords by its introduction of armed personnel, arms, munitions, and other supplies from North Vietnam into South Vietnam with the object of supporting, organizing, and carrying out hostile activities against the Government and armed forces of South Vietnam. Infiltration of military personnel and supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam has been carried out steadily over the past several years. The total number of military cadres sent into South Vietnam via infiltration routes runs into the thousands. Such infiltration is well documented on the basis of numerous defectors and prisoners taken by the armed forces of South Vietnam. Introduction of Communist weapons into South Vietnam has also grown steadily. An increasing amount of weapons and ammunition captured from the Viet Cong has been proven to be of Chinese Communist manufacture or origin. For example, in December 1963, a large cache of Viet Cong equipment captured in one of the Mekong Delta provinces in South Vietnam included recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, carbines, and ammunition of Chinese Communist manufacture. The United States cannot stand by while Southeast Asia is overrun by armed aggressors. (“Statement by the Honorable Adlai E. Stevenson, United States Representative to the United Nations, Before the Security Council of the United Nations, on the Cambodian Complaint,” May 21, 1964, available online at https://dolearchives.ku.edu/sites/dolearchive.drupal.ku.edu/files/files/historyday/originals/hd11_vietnam25.pdf) Amen. Amen. And Amen.

I just got it in the mail two days ago. It is fantastic.

If you want to share your far-left views about the Vietnam War, this is not the thread to do so. Chomsky is an abject loon. Anyway, we're talking about the point that if the plotters viewed the Vietnam War as a major motive to kill JFK, it is very hard to understand why they let LBJ so horribly mismanage the war effort. So, there are two possibilities: (1) Vietnam was not a vital issue for the majority of the plotters, or (2) the plotters were not powerful enough to control LBJ's handling of the war effort. I've answered many of your claims about the war in my "Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War" thread.

That scenario strikes me as unlikely and unrealistic. If the plotters were Cold War hawks and therefore viewed Vietnam as a vital issue, I seriously doubt that any of them wanted a war in Vietnam merely to make money and did not care if South Vietnam fell to the Communists. That sounds far-fetched and out of character for Cold War hawks. If the argument is that the majority of the plotters were not Cold War hawks, then we're back to my point that that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the common assumption among most conspiracy theorists that the plotters viewed JFK's Vietnam policy as a major reason to kill him because they were Cold War warriors who were determined to keep South Vietnam free.

I think we're missing the forest for the trees here. The point is that IF the plotters' viewed JFK's Vietnam policy as a major reason to kill him, then they were not powerful enough to prevent LBJ from bungling the war effort. When I say "the plotters" I'm referring to most or all of them, not to just part of them. Obviously, if only a minority of the plotters considered Vietnam policy to be a crucial issue, this would explain the plotters' failure to control LBJ's handling of the war. But, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm certainly open to the idea that the majority of the plotters did not view Vietnam as a key issue. I think that's a distinct possibility, given what happened after JFK's death. If this is the case, then many of my fellow conspiracy theorists need to revise their theory of the assassination, since many of them believe that Vietnam was one of the plotter's main motives, if not their main motive, for wanting JFK dead. But, again, this is not what I'm talking about.

The point is that the Deep State, such as it was at the time, was unable to change LBJ's horrible handling of the war. If the Deep State killed JFK because of his Vietnam policy, the Deep State was not strong enough to change LBJ's disastrous handling of the war. And, JFK's withdrawal plans were not secret. He talked about the planned partial withdrawal twice in news conferences in 1963, and numerous stories about the withdrawal appeared in the press, even in The Stars and Stripes. If you're referring to the alleged secret plan to abandon South Vietnam regardless of the situation and consequences after JFK was reelected, that's a subject for a different thread (such as my thread on Oliver Stone's JFK Revisited documentary and the Vietnam War).

Something that caught my eye about Ruth Paine was that she studied Russian at Middlebury College in Vermont. Many government agencies send people to Middlebury for language training, and Middlebury is not cheap. When I was in the military, I was slated to attend a Hebrew course at Middlebury, but then I came down on orders for a PCS move (permanent change of station move), and so I was not able to attend the course. Military linguists view Middlebury as the best language school they can attend.

For years I took it for granted that one of the plotters' main motives for wanting JFK dead was his Vietnam policy. However, the closer you look at the relevant facts, the more unlikely this theory appears to be, IF--again IF--we assume that the plotters were as powerful as many of us believe they were, especially if we assume that LBJ at least knew and approved of the plot. If one of the plotters' main motives for wanting JFK dead was his Vietnam policy, and if the plotters wielded great influence in the federal government, especially in the Pentagon and the CIA, it is very hard to fathom the following: -- Why the plotters would have allowed LBJ to so horribly mismanage the war effort, especially why they would have allowed him to impose absurd, self-defeating restrictions on our military operations against North Vietnam. -- Why they would have allowed LBJ to retain Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense. -- Why they would have allowed LBJ to pick General Westmoreland as the commander of American ground forces in South Vietnam, instead of one of the three other candidates submitted to LBJ by the Pentagon: General Harold K. Johnson, General Creighton Abrams, and General Bruce Palmer. Westmoreland was clearly the least qualified of the four, had limited experience as a combat commander, and had little formal training in strategy and tactics. Johnson, Abrams, and Palmer would not have used the same approach that Westmoreland used. -- Why they would not have insisted that LBJ fire Westmoreland after his first three years as commander in South Vietnam. After Westmoreland's third year in command, it was obvious to most observers that Westmoreland was incompetent and that his search-and-destroy strategy was badly flawed. Some progress was being made in South Vietnam, but much more could have been made with a different strategy. (This is not to say that Westmoreland did nothing right, but his bad decisions far outweighed his good ones.) -- Why the plotters would not have pushed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be much more vocal in objecting to LBJ's limited-warfare, gradual-escalation approach. Another possibility is that JFK's Vietnam policy was indeed a major motive of the plotters but that the plotters were not strong enough/were not in a position to control LBJ's handling of the war. If the plotters consisted mainly of Allen Dulles, Mafia elements, and rogue CIA elements, with the knowledge and approval of LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover and elements of the Secret Service, this could explain why the plotters were unable to exert more influence on LBJ's handling of the war.

There was clearly much more going on with the Tippit shooting than the implausible, superficial WC version of the event. I used to be open to the idea that Oswald shot Tippit but that he did so only in self-defense, but now I suspect he was not even at the scene but was already at the theater trying to meet his contact.

This is just sad. Nobody who was on or near those stairs during the time under discussion saw or heard Oswald coming down the stairs. Jack Dougherty was working on the fifth floor near the stairway, and he heard no one coming down the stairs. Sandra Styles and Victoria Adams went down the stairs from the fourth floor at the same time Oswald would have been going down the stairs, but they did not see him. Dr. David Wrone: To make their scenario seem to work, officials had to render invisible the testimony of three witnesses. They omitted from the evidence the testimony of Jack Dougherty, who was working on the fifth floor near the stairway and heard no one come down the stairs. They also eliminated from their consideration the testimony of two secretaries, Sandra Styles and Victoria Adams, who had been on the fourth floor. After the last shot, they had fled to the stairway and were in fact on the stairs at the time Oswald had to have been there—and, according to Adams, he was not. (170) And you know, deep down, that you cannot get Oswald through the second-floor foyer door without being seen by Truly when Truly reached the second-floor landing. No way. Just no way. Anyone who clears their mind and considers the evidence objectively will realize this, even if they can't bring themselves to publicly admit it. Finally, any reenactment that assumes that the sixth-floor gunman could have simply dropped the rifle into its hiding place is fiction on that basis alone.

Here's what Sylvia Meagher said about the Coke issue: The timing of Oswald's purchase of a coke from the dispensing machine on the second floor is very important in evaluating the assertion that he had sufficient time to descend from the sixth floor and encounter Truly and Officer Baker, and in assessing Oswald's "escape." The original story out of Dallas was that Oswald had a bottle of coke in his hand when he was stopped by Baker. Leo Sauvage wrote in Commentary (ibid., p. 56) that the "police officer and the manager of the building had described Oswald as holding a Coca-Cola bottle in his hand," and that that was one of the details announced by Chief of Police Jesse Curry on Saturday, November 23. The Warren Report, however, insists that Oswald had nothing in his hands when Baker and Truly saw him. (WR 151) That is what both Baker and Truly said when they testified before the Commission, whatever they may have said on earlier occasions. Baker, for some reason, was asked to provide a further statement attesting to his encounter with Oswald, only a few days before the Warren Report was released. In that brief handwritten statement of September 23, 1964, Baker states that he entered the Book Depository to determine if the shots might have come from that building and that on the second floor he "saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a coke." However, a line is drawn through the phrase "drinking a coke," so as to delete it, the deletion being initialed by Baker. (CE 3076) The very fact that Baker said spontaneously that Oswald was drinking a coke, regardless of the later deletion, has self-evident significance of great persuasiveness. (Accessories After the Fact, p. 74)

As I said, this documentary is trash. Getting your information on the Vietnam War from the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, J. William Fulbright, Clark Clifford, and a few of the small minority of disgruntled Vietnam vets is like getting information on the civil rights movement from the Ku Klux Klan. Here are just a few of the facts that the documentary fails to mention: -- The North Vietnamese army (NVA) and the Vietcong (VC) frequently shelled fleeing civilians and also purposely shelled civilian residential and commercial areas even when they knew there were no U.S. or Allied soldiers in those areas, whereas we did not do these things (R. J. Rummel, Statistics of Democide, University of Virginia, 1997, chapter 6). -- South Vietnam never launched a large-scale invasion of North Vietnam, but North Vietnam launched three large-scale invasions of South Vietnam. -- I mentioned this in my first reply about the Hearts and Minds documentary, but it bears repeating: The North Vietnamese would have been unable to wage war against South Vietnam if the Soviet Union and China had not provided them with massive amounts of weapons and supplies and billions of dollars of financial aid to keep them afloat. Also, China stationed over 100,000 support troops in North Vietnam, and Russia provided over 1,000 military advisers to help operate Hanoi’s Russian-made SAM batteries. These facts are profusely documented, but if they are new to you and you doubt them, here are a few of the references that discuss them: - “Chinese and Soviet Economic and Technical Aid to North Vietnam, 1955-1960,” Russian Journal of Vietnamese Studies, volume 5, number 2 (2021), pp. 88-106, available online at https://vietnamjournal.ru/2618-9453/article/view/87090# - Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi’s War (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) - Andrew Wiest, The Vietnam War 1956-1975 (Osprey Publishing, 2014) - James Robbins, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive (Encounter Books, 2012) - Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken (Cambridge University Press, 2006) - Nghia N. Vo, The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam (McFarland Press, 2021) - Mark Woodruff, Unheralded Victory (Ballantine Books, 2005) - George J. Veith, Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975 (Encounter Books, 2013) - International Communist Aid to North Vietnam (CIA, 1968), available at https://www.intelligence.gov/assets/documents/tet-documents/cia/INTERNATIONAL_COMMUNIST_A%5B15617751%5D.pdf - Paul Combs, “The Little Known Role of the Soviet Union in the Vietnam War,” Medium (October 22, 2021), available at https://medium.com/perceive-more/the-little-known-role-of-the-soviet-union-in-the-vietnam-war-2da12f2b6c4e - The VC alone killed far more civilians than did American and Allied forces, and the VC usually did so deliberately as part of their campaign of terror, whereas the vast majority of civilians killed by American-Allied forces were unintentionally killed/collateral damage in combat operations against the NVA and the VC (W. P. Davison, Some Observations on Viet Cong Operations in the Villages, The Office of the Assistant Secretary Defense and the Rand Corporation, 1968, available online; Center for Research in Social Systems, Insurgent Terrorism and Its Use by the Viet Cong, Defense Documentation Center, 1969, available online; Patrick Shaw, Collateral Damage and the United States Air Force, School of Advanced Air Power Studies, Air University, 1997, available online; Fred L. Borch, What Really Happened on 16 March 1968? A Look at the My Lai Incident Fifty Years Later, Army Historical Foundation, 2018, available online; Brent Scher, “That Time John Kerry Defamed America and American Soldiers,” The Washington Free Beacon, January 2, 2017, available online; Gary Kulik and Peter Zinoman, “Misrepresenting Atrocities: Kill Anything that Moves and the Continuing Distortions of the War in Vietnam,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, 2014, available online [this is a thorough, 37-page critique of Nick Turse’s sleazy book Kill Anything that Moves]). -- South Vietnam, for all its faults, was far less repressive than North Vietnam; the South Vietnamese were definitely the good guys, and the North Vietnamese were most assuredly the bad guys (Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi’s War, chapters 1-3; Nghia N. Vo, The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam, chapters 1, 7, 11-14; Nguyen Duy Hinh and Tran Dinh Tho, The South Vietnamese Society, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980, available online). -- In a survey conducted by the Veterans Administration after the war, 92% of the veterans who responded said they agreed with the statement that political leaders did not let our armed forces win the war, and 90% said they were glad to have served in Vietnam (Panel Discussion on Ken Burns’ Vietnam War Documentary, 54:01-54:52). Anyone who believe that Hearts and Minds is "the best documentary ever made on the subject" is woefully uninformed about the war and cannot be taken seriously until they educate themselves by expanding their research.

Several early news accounts said that when Baker saw Oswald in the lunchroom, Oswald was holding a Coke in his hand. Where did those news accounts get that information, if not from DPD sources? In the first statement that Baker wrote directly by himself without the filter of a third party, he initially wrote that Oswald was drinking a Coke when he saw him. Granted, Baker wrote this statement on 9/23/64, but it was the first statement that he himself gave directly. Then, Baker lined out the part about the Coke. During a radio program on December 23, 1966, Albert Jenner, a former senior WC counsel, said that when Baker saw Oswald in the lunchroom, Oswald was holding a Coke in his hand. Said Jenner, "the first man this policeman saw, was Oswald with a bottle of Coke" (Sylvia Meager, Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967; Vintage Press, 1976., p. 226). My, my, how interesting. Anyway, the larger point is that the Baker-Oswald encounter was very problematic for the WC. The plotters surely wished it had never occurred, and surely wished they could have suppressed it before it became known and documented.

This documentary is trash. It could literally have been made by North Vietnam's propaganda arm. It is loaded with errors and distortions and ignores numerous facts that don't fit its anti-war narrative. I have already debunked many of the film's claims in previous replies. It would take many pages to discuss all the errors in the film, not to mention the distortions and glaring omissions. As just one example of the errors, the documentary shows Daniel Ellsberg making this inexcusably ignorant claim: A war in which one side is entirely equipped and financed by foreigners is not a civil war. The only foreigners in that country were the foreigners we financed in the first part of the war and the foreigners we were in the second half of the war. (1:22:50-1:22:57) Ellsberg had to know better than this nonsense. By 1954, Communist China had tens of thousands of troops in northern Vietnam. Chinese generals essentially ran the Vietminh's military operations (including the assault on Dien Bien Phu). By 1965, China had over 100,000 support troops in North Vietnam. The Soviets stationed over 1,000 AAA technical advisers in North Vietnam to help operate the North Vietnamese SAM batteries and had special forces units there as well. The Soviets and the Chinese provided North Vietnam with massive amounts of weapons and supplies (including tanks, SAM batteries, artillery, trucks, mortars, grenades, land mines, etc.). The Soviets and the Chinese literally kept North Vietnam from economic collapse with hundreds of millions of dollars (yens, rubles) in financial aid. The North Vietnamese Communists would have been a small footnote in history had it not been for the massive support they received from the Soviets and the Chinese.

Truly did go up the stairs ahead of Baker, and this made the Baker-Oswald encounter even more problematic for the WC. Truly told the WC that he had already started up the stairs to the third floor when he noticed that Baker was no longer running behind him. Truly also said there was slightly more distance between him and Baker on the second floor than there was on the first floor. The WC had no choice but to admit that since Truly was running up the stairs to the third floor when Baker saw Oswald in the lunchroom, Oswald must have entered the vestibule/foyer door before Truly reached the second-floor landing: Since the vestibule [foyer] door is only a few feet from the lunchroom door, the man [Oswald] must have entered the vestibule door only a second or two before Baker arrived at the top of the stairwell. Yet he must have entered the vestibule door before Truly reached the top of the stairwell [leading to the second-floor landing], since Truly did not see him. (WCR 151) But the Commission never explained how Oswald could have done this. If Oswald had gone through the foyer door before Truly reached the top of the second-floor stairs, he would have been several feet beyond the door by the time Baker reached the landing, and thus would not have been visible to Baker through the window. And, if Oswald had entered the door "only a second or two" before Baker reached the top of the stairwell, then Truly could not have missed seeing him. Nor did the Commission explain how Baker could have been the least bit unsure about whether or not Oswald had gone through the foyer door if Baker spotted Oswald right next to the door and if the door was in any kind of motion at the time. I suspect that Belin realized that it was obvious that Oswald could not have made it from the sniper's nest in time to walk across the second-floor landing and go through the vestibule/foyer door without being seen by Truly while walking toward the door, and that Oswald would have been well beyond the foyer door by the time Baker reached the landing after Truly had begun heading up the stairs to the third floor.

An excellent source on the 1970 incursion against NVA bases in Cambodia is General Tran Dinh Tho's book The Cambodian Incursion (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979). General Tho was the Assistant Chief of Staff J3 of South Vietnam's Joint General Staff, and he helped plan the operation. His book is available online at https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA324718.pdf. Sihanouk's professed posture of neutrality was phony, but his declaration of neutrality resulted in the protection of the North Vietnamese army (NVA/PAVN) bases along Cambodia's eastern border: For several years Cambodia, under the leadership of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, had condoned the use of part of its territory by the Vietnamese Communists for infiltration routes and logistic bases. These bases supported enemy activities in South Vietnam's Military Regions 3 and 4 and a significant part of Military Region 2 but were protected because of Cambodia's declared neutrality. (p. v) By the early months of 1970, the situation in South Vietnam had improved considerably, and things had been improving since 1965: The situation throughout South Vietnam in the early months of 1970 was one of continuing improvement, dating back to the introduction of United States combat troops into the war during 1965. This was in marked contrast to the dismally bleak prospects of the Republic of Vietnam in late 1964 and early 1965 when few believed that the new nation could escape Communist conquest. To counter the RVN [South Vietnam] and U.S. battlefield successes, North Vietnam switched strategy in 1967, and conceived a bold strike at the cities in order to liberate the countryside. Executed during the 1968 Tet holidays, this offensive strike at the cities of South Vietnam had unexpected consequences for both sides. To our enemy, it was a tragic military defeat. Not only had his General Offensive-General Uprising [the Tet Offensive] failed but he also lost significant amounts of weapons and many human lives. In addition, his infrastructure suffered extensive damage. On the RVN side, the population felt greatly stimulated by the enemy's defeat; morale and self-assurance grew. The GVN [South Vietnam's government] took advantage of this opportunity to call reservists to active duty and decreed partial mobilization. Popular response to military duty was enthusiastic. The American people, however, reacted adversely to the Vietnam war, apparently under the influence of press, radio and TV reports. It was perhaps this animosity toward the war that influenced President Johnson to order the cessation of U.S. bombing above the 19th parallel on 3 March 1968. (p. 1) Considerable progress was made in South Vietnam after the failure of the Tet Offensive: Exploiting further the RVNAF [South Vietnam's armed forces] success during the 1968 general offensives, the GVN initiated a three-month accelerated pacification program for the last quarter of 1968 and a similar program for 1969. As a result, by the end of 1969, population control had risen to 92% as compared to 67.2% for the period prior to the 1968 Tet offensive. By contrast, confusion reigned among enemy ranks after their defeat. During 1969, a total of 47,000 enemy personnel rallied to the GVN, compared to 23,000 during 1968. Aided by improved security across the country, the GVN resettled or returned to their home villages in excess of 1.5 million people displaced by the war. Most significantly, the GVN-initiated People's Self-Defense program received wide acceptance. Approximately 2.5 million people volunteered to join the program, pushed by their eagerness to protect their own communities. (p. 3) The nature of North Vietnam's war against South Vietnam: The war in South Vietnam was waged by North Vietnam under the disguise of national liberation. Hanoi created the instrument for it in late 1960 by establishing the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. This disguise was aimed at justifying the war before world opinion. North Vietnam claimed that this was an uprising of South Vietnam's people against the RVN regime, not an aggression from the north. But it was North Vietnam that in fact directed the war effort and supplied the manpower, material and financial resources for this effort through its local executive office, the Central Office for South Vietnam (COSVN). (p. 6) NVA POWs and defectors (aka "ralliers") disclosed NVA intentions for 1970 before the incursion into Cambodia: On top of these typical activities during the first quarter of 1970, enemy prisoners and ralliers disclosed that COSVN had been planning two offensive campaigns for 1970, in May and July respectively, with the objective of pressing the Paris peace talks toward an early settlement. However, the sudden change of government in Phnom Penh had forced our enemy to abandon these plans and turn his efforts toward Cambodia. Beginning in April 1970, therefore, there was a flurry of enemy activity in Cambodia. This activity indicated that the enemy was hastily dispersing and concealing his supply storage points in the border base areas and displacing his most valuable materiel deeper inside Cambodia. At the same time, the enemy was endeavoring to control a corridor east of the Mekong River leading south in an apparent attempt to secure movements of supplies for his units in MR-3 and MR-4 [MR = Military Region]. Evidently, the closing of Sihanoukville by the new Khmer regime was beginning to have an adverse effect on the enemy supply system. Additionally, the enemy realized that the supplies already in Cambodia would be of even greater significance to his immediate combat plans. (p. 12) The importance of the port of Sihanoukville to NVA supply operations: The other major logistic route besides the Ho Chi Minh Trail was through the port of Sihanoukville. It originated in the port of Sihanoukville, and led across lower Cambodia toward enemy base areas on the Cambodia-South Vietnam border. As far as the enemy was concerned, this port route was the safest and most secure because it lay entirely on Cambodian soil. (p. 21) More evidence that Sihanouk's claim of neutrality was bogus and that he was allowing his country to play the role of a hostile combatant: North Vietnam and the Viet Cong had made overtures to Sihanouk as early as the rupture of relations between the RVN and Cambodia in l963 aimed at securing the use of Cambodian territory. In February 1968„high ranking Viet Cong and North Vietnam officials went to Phnom Penh to negotiate the establishment of bases in Cambodia and the movement of supplies and equipment through Cambodia to these bases. In March 1968, Sihanouk himself announced that he had approved these requests because, as he said, Cambodia and North Vietnam and the Viet Cong were facing the same enemy: the imperialist American aggressors. Then, during an inspection trip to Takeo the same year, he openly declared that Cambodian authorities would voluntarily overlook trade activities by the Cambodian population to supply the Viet Cong with food and he would even authorize the use of Cambodian hospitals by VC and NVA wounded until they were fully recovered. The port of Sihanoukville was a major point of entry for NVA supplies and materiel. It was estimated that the tonnages moving through Sihanoukville were sufficient to meet 100% of the requirements of enemy units in the RVN III and IV Corps areas, and perhaps two-thirds of the requirements for enemy units in the II Corps area of South Vietnam. . . . Intelligence reports subsequently confirmed that some Cambodian military vehicles and troops even assisted the Viet Cong in transporting weapons, ammunition and foodstuff toward base areas along the border. Cambodian troops and officials at outposts and checkpoints along the border were bribed by smuggler groups into letting contraband merchandise, such as rice and medicine, pass into Viet Cong base areas. Business was brisk and lucrative because the Viet Cong usually paid higher prices. These smuggling activities were conducted mostly by Chinese entrepreneurs residing in Cambodia. (pp. 21-22) Many Cambodians resented the NVA's presence and demonstrated against it: On 8 March 1970, several demonstrations took place in the Cambodian provinces along the border. The demonstrators demanded that North Vietnamese Army arid auxiliary troops withdraw from Cambodia. Two days later, the same demonstrations resumed in earnest. In Phnom Penh, angry demonstrators marched to the North Vietnamese Embassy and smashed its windows with rocks. (p. 29) Sihanouk's fall from power and the new government's demand that NVA forces leave Cambodia: Chief of State Sihanouk, meanwhile, was undergoing medical treatment and vacationing in France. The direction of governmental affairs was assumed by General Lon Nol and Deputy Prime Minister Sirik Matak. On 12 March 1970, General Lon Nol sent an official message to Hanoi asking for the withdrawal of NVA and auxiliary forces within 72 hours; the deadline was set for 15 March. On 16 March, other demonstrations took place with the same demand that NVA/VC forces immediately vacate Cambodian territory. On 18 March 1970, the Cambodian National Assembly passed a resolution stripping Prince Sihanouk of all governmental powers. General Lon Nol took over as prime minister and Prince Sirik Matak continued to serve as deputy prime minister. (pp. 29-30) The NVA responded to the demand that they leave by launching an attack on Cambodia. (Be advised that the word "Khmer" by itself is simply another word for "Cambodian"): Then, beginning in early April, NVA forces openly attacked Khmer outposts along the border and other towns east of the Mekong River. On 20 April, they overran Snoul, 16 km north of Binh Long Province. On 23 April, NVA troops attacked and seized Mimot after destroying an important bridge on Route 13 connecting Snoul with Kratie. On 24 April, they attacked the coastal city of Kep, north of Ha Tien, and on 26 April they opened fire on ships and boats sailing on the Mekong River. On the same day, they also took the town of Ang Tassom northwest of Takeo City and attacked Chhlong City northeast of Phnom Penh. On 17 April 1970, the new Khmer regime officially announced to the world that North Vietnamese troops were invading Cambodia. By that time, three out of Cambodia's seventeen provinces had been occupied by NVA forces who were also exerting heavy pressure on five others. At the same time, Cambodia appealed to the United States and other nations of the Free World for help in resisting North Vietnam's aggression. (pp. 30, 32) Lon Nol's appeal for help against the NVA provided a welcomed opportunity to finally deal with the unjust situation that Sihanouk's pro-Communist actions had created: The Cambodian appeal for help in resisting NVN aggression came indeed as a most welcomed opportunity for South Vietnam to redress an unjust situation in which it had been victimized by Sihanouk's prejudice. For years Sihanouk had closed his eyes to North Vietnam's freedom of action on Cambodian territory, allowing our enemy to establish supply bases and sanctuaries in order to pursue his war of aggression against South Vietnam. Every Vietnamese serviceman wondered then why we did not have the right of pursuit into Cambodia. But all this had changed. We were delighted when the new Khmer government asserted a hard line policy against our enemy, demanding that he withdraw his troops from Cambodia. We welcomed the new Khmer government's appeal for help to which we would certainly respond because RVN had found in the new Khmer regime not only a friendly neighbor but also a comrade-in-arms who shared our cause and fought against the same enemy. Surely, the United States could not ignore this plea. As the leader of the Free World, the U.S. could not let Cambodia or any other free country fall into Communist hands. (p. 32) Some of the reasons that the U.S. and South Vietnam needed to defend Cambodia and to attack the NVA bases in the eastern part of the country: What would happen if North Vietnam succeeded in overthrowing the Lon Nol regime and installed a pro-Communist government or reinstated Sihanouk in its place? If this were the case, I am sure that it would have brought very great difficulty for South Vietnam. Then the 600-mile infiltration corridor which ran the length of South Vietnam's western border from the Tri-Border area to the Gulf of Siam would allow North Vietnamese troops and weapons free access into South Vietnam and Cambodia would be an effective staging area for continued and unimpeded attacks against our country. During the previous few years, NVA units in South Vietnam were able to quickly replenish their materiel losses because they had control over border supply base areas and free access to the port of Sihanoukville. (p. 33) The NVA bases should have been hit years earlier, but politics prevented this from being done: The destruction of enemy logistic installations in Cambodia had in fact been considered by U.S. and RVN military strategists for a long time. It was a military action that should have been carried out before 1970. Political dictates, however, had prevented such an action, as long as Sihanouk was still in power. (p. 35) NVA POWs and ralliers (defectors) provided information on some of the positive results of the Cambodian incursion: According to depositions made by enemy prisoners and ralliers and in particular, judging by the large quantities of enemy supplies and materials captured, the following conclusions were quickly apparent: 1. The operation had effectively upset the enemy's plans to overthrow the Lon Nol regime and, as soon as he succeeded in Phnom Penh, his plan to launch an offensive in RVN MR-3. This was first disclosed by enemy Lt. Colonel Nguyen Thanh, Deputy Commander of Sub Military Region 2, who rallied [defected] to the GVN. 2. The morale of enemy troops had been seriously affected by the operation, particularly among troops under Sub Military Region 2. In a few instances, cadres and troops had refused to go into combat. Many had deserted to avoid fighting. 3. The area of Ba Thu and Angel's Wing, considered invincible, had been heavily damaged. Up to 90% of enemy supplies in this area had been destroyed or seized by the RVNAF. Heavy casualties had effectively reduced enemy troop strength by 25%, especially among Sub MR-2 units and Tay Ninh local force units. As a result, the enemy met with serious difficulties in replacing human and material losses. (p. 69)

Who in the world is claiming that Israel was behind the JFK assassination??? If that's the version that Shapiro heard, no wonder he has a dismissive attitude toward the case for conspiracy. Who is peddling the nutty idea that Israel was behind JFK's death? Anyway, yes, Shapiro's video is maddeningly bad. I have some friends who are big fans of Shapiro, and not one of them buys the lone-gunman theory. Heck, I'm a big fan of Shapiro on many issues, though I disagree him on a number of issues. It is so frustrating to see conservatives who are intelligent and eloquent on other issues peddle lone-gunman nonsense.

I think it's fairly clear from the record that the Baker-Oswald encounter occurred. As I've documented in two articles, the encounter is actually strong evidence that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during shooting. The encounter created all sorts of problems for the Warren Commission. Baker had to retract his initial claim that Oswald was holding a Coke when he approached him in the lunchroom. And, the WC had to brazenly rig their reenactment of Oswald's alleged journey from the sniper's nest to the second-floor lunchroom. Also, Baker's insistence regarding the speed of his movement to the TSBD created an impossible time frame for the WC to get Oswald to the lunchroom soon enough to be seen by Baker from the second-floor landing, which is why they had to so markedly rig the sixth-floor-to-second-floor reenactment. It would have been so much easier to have simply denied that the encounter occurred, but they couldn't do that.

Umm, I'm not so sure we can reject the Baker-Oswald encounter. The fact that Baker back-peddled on his earlier account that Oswald was holding a Coke when he saw him suggests to me that the encounter occurred. Everyone realized that if Oswald bought the Coke before Baker saw him, this would make it even harder to believe that Oswald had just come from the sixth floor. Plus, 11/22/63 interrogation notes have Oswald saying that he encountered a police officer while he was getting a Coke in the second-floor lunchroom. Another fact that suggests to me that the lunchroom encounter happened is that the WC found it necessary to egregiously rig the reenactment of Oswald's alleged movement from the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom.

I wish them all the luck in the world. There is no excuse for withholding those records.

Here is further proof that the available evidence does not support the irresponsible claim that JFK planned on totally disengaging from South Vietnam regardless of the situation on the ground. Francis Bator, LBJ's Deputy National Security Adviser, pointed out in 2007 that JFK's withdrawal plan was clearly conditional and did not include any intention to totally disengage from South Vietnam no matter what: Professor Galbraith is correct that “there was a plan to withdraw US forces from Vietnam, beginning with the first thousand by December 1963, and almost all of the rest by the end of 1965…. President Kennedy had approved that plan. It was the actual policy of the United States on the day Kennedy died.” 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.” The point: the 1963 policy says nothing about what the US would do if the McNamara-Taylor judgment about progress by 1965 turned out to be wrong, if the choice in 1965 turned out to be between turning the war into an American war or letting Hanoi and the NLF win in South Vietnam. (Vietnam Withdrawal? | Francis M. Bator | The New York Review of Books (nybooks.com) EXACTLY. EXACTLY. EXACTLY. No relevant document--not NSAM 263 nor any of it supporting documents--supports the reckless claim that JFK was prepared to cut off all aid and withdraw all U.S. personnel from South Vietnam after he was reelected. Even James K. Galbraith, of all people, admits that even under the withdrawal plan we were going to leave 1,500 troops for supply purposes and would continue to aid South Vietnam: Training would end. Support for South Vietnam would continue. They had an army of over 200,000. The end of the war was not in sight. After the end of 1965, even under the withdrawal plan, 1,500 US troops were slated to remain, for supply purposes. But the war would then be Vietnamese only, with no possibility of it becoming an American war on Kennedy's watch. (JFK’s Vietnam Withdrawal Plan Is a Fact, Not Speculation (thenation.com) I think the end of training was conditional as well, but I agree that "support for South Vietnam would continue" and that we would leave a residual force in country for supply purposes. That is a galaxy away from the baseless, irresponsible claim that JFK intended to abandon South Vietnam no matter what. This is why the segment on Vietnam in JFK Revisited is wrong. This is why the segment on Vietnam in the movie JFK is wrong. This is why JFK conspiracy theorists need to stop claiming that JFK was prepared to let South Vietnam fall to the Communists after he was reelected. Those who claim this are misrepresenting his position and tarnishing his legacy.

Okay, let’s get some facts straight about the long-overdue, badly needed, and completely justified 1970 operation to strike at North Vietnamese army (NVA/PAVN) bases in eastern Cambodia. -- The NVA had 14 bases in eastern Cambodia. These bases not only served as huge storage depots but as safe rallying points for NVA soldiers retreating or returning from South Vietnam. Some of those bases were less than 50 miles from Saigon. The entire military chain of command of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and senior CIA analysts, urged the Johnson administration to allow them to shut down those bases, but Johnson and McNamara refused. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of American and South Vietnamese soldiers needlessly died because of this shameful, inexcusable refusal. -- The NVA forces in the northern half of South Vietnam (Military Regions I and II) got their supplies from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but the NVA forces in the southern half of South Vietnam (Military Regions III and IV) got their supplies from eight of the 14 NVA bases in eastern Cambodia, and the supplies at those bases came from the port of Sihanoukville. Thus, those bases were the conduit for at least half of the weapons, ammo, and other supplies entering South Vietnam, where they would be used to kill American, South Vietnamese, South Korean, Australian, and New Zealand troops. -- Cambodia’s leader, Sihanouk, was not thrilled about the NVA’s occupation of a 10-mile-wide and 450-mile-long strip of the eastern end of his country, but he had little choice, and he also agreed to allow North Vietnam to ship gigantic amounts of military supplies to the port of Sihanoukville, from which they were then sent to the NVA bases in eastern Cambodia. To make the pill easier to swallow, the Hanoi regime paid handsome bribes to Sihanouk, his wife, and other relatives (Nghia M. Vo, The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam, McFarland Publishing, 2021, pp. 208-209). Next, I’ll quote from Boston University historian Dr. Michael G. Kort’s book The Vietnam War Reexamined (Cambridge University Press, 2017). On Cambodia’s ”neutrality” and on the justification for the invasion: The time and place where Abrams’s efforts to cut the North Vietnamese ”logistics nose” melded neatly with Nixon’s willingness to exceed the limits established by President Johnson was the 1970 offensive into Cambodia. The target area was Cambodian territory just across the South Vietnamese border. . . . Kissinger notes that Cambodia’s official ”neutral” status was a sham. In fact, the offensive’s target territory” was no longer Cambodian in any practical sense ... Cambodian officials had been excluded from the soil of their own country; most, if not all, of the population had been expelled.” These were ”illegally occupied territories” under control of the North Vietnamese. Dave Richard Palmer calls the situation as of 1968 a North Vietnamese ”military occupation on parts of Cambodia.” There were fourteen North Vietnamese military bases inside Cambodia, some no more than thirty-five miles from Saigon. About two-thirds of South Vietnam’s population was exposed to attack from these bases. . . . Andrade points out that Cambodian bases, immune from attack along with those in Laos and North Vietnam, were part of the ”unbeatable advantage” the United States had long given North Vietnam. This situation gave Nixon his first, and primary, reason to move against Hanoi’s forces in Cambodia. (pp. 168-169) Kort explains the events that led to the invasion: The sequence of events that led to the Cambodian invasion dates from 1965 . That was when Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia’s longtime ruler, first allowed the North Vietnamese the use of his country’s port of Sihanoukville as an entry point for shipments destined for Communist forces in the southern part of South Vietnam. . . . In 1970 Sihanouk was overthrown in a [bloodless] coup led by his country’s prime minister, Lon Nol. The main reason for the coup was widespread resentment of the North Vietnamese occupation of Cambodian territory, which Sihanouk was blamed for tolerating and abetting. Lon Nol immediately closed the port of Sihanoukville to the North Vietnamese, a serious blow to their efforts to supply their troops in the southern part of South Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese responded to the coup by seizing more territory and threatening the existence of Lon Nol’s pro-Western government, Nixon had a second reason to attack their forces in Cambodia. (p. 169) Kort observes that the incursion achieved significant results, both tactically and strategically: Allied forces . . . killed or captured thousands of enemy troops, seized huge quantities of weapons and ammunition of all sorts, and confiscated fourteen million pounds of rice. The amount of small arms ammunition alone was equal to what Communist forces used in an entire year. Davidson cites estimates that North Vietnamese offensive plans were set back at least a year, possibly two. The operation thus was ”quite successful militarily.” It ”struck the Communists a stunning blow by destroying their stores and bases in Cambodia” and bought time both for Vietnamization and the US withdrawal from South Vietnam. Army veteran and military historian John M. Shaw, author of a comprehensive and well-received volume on the subject, offers a similar assessment. Shaw considers the campaign ”fully justified and reasonably well executed.” While hardly perfect, it seriously weakened the North Vietnamese, bolstered South Vietnamese morale, strengthened Vietnamization, and bought the United States time to complete an orderly military withdrawal. (p. 170) Here are the stats on the results of the operation in terms of enemy losses: 1. Casualties Killed 11,369 Prisoners and Ralliers (defectors) 2,328 2. Material and Supplies Individual Weapons 22,892 Crew-Served Weapons 2,509 Installation, shelters destroyed 11,688 Small-arms ammunition, mortar 16,762,167 rounds Hand grenades 62,022 Explosives 83,000 lbs Antiaircraft ammunition 199,552 rounds Mortar ammunition 68,593 rounds Rockets, 107- and 122-mm 2,123 Rockets, B-40 and B-41 43,160 Recoilless rifle ammunition 29,185 Vehicles, all types 435 Pharmaceutical products 110,800 lbs Rice 14,046,000 lbs (Brig. Gen. Tran Dinh Tho, The Cambodian Incursion, U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1979, p. 193, /tardir/mig/a324718.tiff (dtic.mil)) Those mindless, brainwashed anti-war students who screamed against the Cambodian operation had no objection when the NVA occupied eastern Cambodia in the first place, no objection when the NVA tried to overthrow the Cambodian government when that government demanded that the NVA leave the country, and no objection to all the thousands of American and Allied soldiers who needlessly died because of the weapons and supplies that came from the NVA bases in Cambodia. But, when we finally moved against those bases to save our lives and defend South Vietnam, they became outraged. Of course, those same brainwashed dupes had little or nothing to say when the North Vietnamese Communists imposed a reign of terror on the South Vietnamese after Saigon fell and when Communist Vietnam was consistently ranked, year after year, as one of the most brutal and repressive regimes on the planet after the war.

This is an excellent visual summary of the evidence that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during the shooting. I've added a link to it on my JFK site. The video also gives us more reasons to suspect that Detective Leavelle was guilty of foul play, which in turn raises the possibility that he played a deliberate role in Oswald's death.