Michael Griffith

I've done no research about "two Marguerites," and the idea strikes me as outlandish on its face. However, there may be something to the Two Oswalds theory. When journalist Joe Patoski decided to write an article about the Two Oswalds theory for Texas Monthly, he did so only because he thought it was ludicrous and crazy. But, after spending some time looking at the evidence, he came away stunned by some of it and concluded there might be something to it. Patoski was impressed by two pieces of evidence: Hoover's 1960 memo about someone possibly using Oswald's birth certificate and the account of Frank Kudlaty that Oswald attended a junior high school in Fort Worth and that he handed over Oswald's school records to the FBI. Patoski tracked Kudlaty, and Kudlaty confirmed the account (https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/the-two-oswalds/).

Last week I finally got around to reading David Talbot's 2016 book The Devil's Chessboard: Alan Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government. I had watched three of Talbot's presentations on the book on YouTube, but I didn't get around to reading the book until last week. What an incredibly educational book. I'm going to add it to my list of recommended books on my JFK site. As someone who is ardently pro-Israeli, I was stunned and disgusted to discover that Dulles suppressed evidence of the Holocaust during WW II. I was raised Jewish for part of my early childhood. I was a Hebrew linguist for 13 of my 21 years in the U.S. Army. And, I was lucky enough to live in Israel for a short time. Thus, I was thoroughly appalled to read about Dulles's suppression of Holocaust evidence during the war and about his coddling of murderous Nazis after the war.

Asia scholar Jacqueline Desbarats’ chapter in the 1990 book The Vietnam Debate presented some of the results of her research into the bloody aftermath of the Vietnam War. Among other findings, she concluded that about 65,000 South Vietnamese were executed by the communists, and she added that this was probably an “underestimate.” Here is a portion of her chapter, which was titled “Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation”: Careful examination of public records does indeed supply evidence that there was an execution program after 1975. It also supplies evidence that the execution program was political in its intent rather than merely concerned with dealing with the crime wave that swept South Vietnam after the liberation. Who, then, were the victims of these summary executions? Among the victims brought to my attention were a number of government officials of the former regime: province chiefs, district chiefs, mayors, members of the police, high ranking members of the army, and members of the intelligence community. The victims also included a handful of members of the compradore bourgeoisie, a few leaders of popular, ethnic, or religious groups, including a couple of Hoa Hao, a number of people who tried to escape from the country, and a large number of people who tried to escape from reeducation camps. But by far the most widespread alleged reason for those executions was "antigovernment resistance." This reason alone accounted for forty nine percent of all the executions, including both armed resistance and passive resistance, such as refusal to register for reeducation. The empirical data collected in the interviews allows one to look at the pattern of executions over time and space. Two thirds of the executions occurred in 1975 and 1976, at which time the number of executions seems to have tapered off. A secondary peak occurred in 1978 at the time of the nationalization of commerce and business in South Vietnam. Over geographic space, we also find a rather clear pattern. Almost two thirds of the reported executions occurred in the Saigon and the Delta areas, and those were mostly executions that took place very soon after liberation. Subsequently, there is a geographic diffusion phenomenon, whereby executions started to spread to the areas north of Saigon. Those coastal areas became especially important after 1976. We also find a pattern in the kinds of reasons given for the executions. For instance, the executions motivated by anti­ government resistance were practically ubiquitous, as we find them everywhere, though mostly after 1976. On the other hand, executions of high­ranking officers are essentially found in the Mekong Delta area and occurred very soon after liberation, most of them in 1975. Executions of people who tried to escape from reeducation occurred mostly in the areas north of Saigon, and those are also widely spread over the ten year period examined. What are the numbers involved in extrajudicial executions? Looking only at deaths that were due to active willful acts rather than passive neglect, and using highly conservative coding and accounting procedures in the study's sample estimation, I came to an estimate of approximately 65,O00 persons executed.[9] I suspected all along that this probably was an underestimate. But I am more convinced now that it is an underestimate because the computations are based in part on the assumption that no more than one million people were processed through reeducation camps. As a matter of fact, we know now from a 1985 statement by Nguyen Co Tach that two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation. The change in statistical parameters resulting from that recent admission would indicate that, in fact, possibly more than 100,000 Vietnamese people were victims of extrajudicial executions in the last ten years. (Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (reaction.la))

In 2017, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada published an excellent article on North Vietnam’s harsh post-war treatment of the South Vietnamese titled “Vietnam After the War.” The article is carried on the foundation’s Asia Pacific Curriculum website (Vietnam After the War | Asia Pacific Curriculum). Among other things, the article notes that about one million South Vietnamese were subjected to “reeducation.” It notes that some prisoners in the detention camps were tortured, subjected to brainwashing, and forced to do hard labor, and that some of the prisoners “were never seen again.” It notes that North Vietnam quickly broke its promises to its southern allies (such as the NLF) about power-sharing and some level of autonomy for the South. And it notes that when the North Vietnamese took over the South, they took control of the news media, schools, and religious institutions. The article adds that the communists persecuted Christians and Buddhists, closed some religious buildings, began keeping lists of people who attended religious services, shut down schools and newspapers that they found unacceptable, fired teachers whom they considered suspect, and even burned books that they found objectionable. Here are some portions of the article: One thing standing in the way of reconciliation was the North Vietnamese government’s deep suspicion of many people in the south and their doubts about southerners’ loyalty to the communist regime. As will be discussed later, its approach to building a sense of loyalty was often heavy-handed and often had the effect of alienating people rather than winning them over. The North quickly made clear that previous agreements for sharing power with allied groups in the south were no longer valid. According to the 1973 Paris Peace Accords (another set of negotiations that aimed to bring an end to the conflict), South Vietnam “was supposed to continue to exist as a separate and sovereign state” until the northerners and the southerners could agree on how to “unite the two Vietnams via elections or negotiations.”7 Several NLF leaders believed that they could carve out and maintain some sort of neutral, non-communist southern state. At first, they had reason to be optimistic: the North had made repeated promises “that they were in no rush to communize the south.”8 For soldiers and higher-ranking officials in the South Vietnam government, and for anyone else viewed with suspicion, “re-education” was longer and more severe. Some people spent several years in camps. They were subjected to torture and brainwashing and forced to do hard labour in inhospitable areas of the country. Some who were taken away to the camps were never seen again.12 In total, about a million people in the former South Vietnam were subjected to some form of “re-education.” One tool the government used to identify so-called “bad elements”—those who were opposed to the North’s communist ideology—was the personal dossier. These were written biographies that included a person’s name and the names of his or her family members, as well as his or her ethnicity, religious affiliation, and current job. The government used this information to categorize people as “good” or “bad.” If a person had a sister, father, or uncle who had worked with the French, American, or South Vietnamese government, for example, he or she would likely be put in the “bad” category. Similarly, if someone’s family owned a business or other property, it meant that person was a capitalist, which was also bad. In total, the number of people who were believed to have such affiliations was estimated to be one-third of the south’s population.14 The media, schools, and religious institutions were brought under government control. All of these represented potential challenges or alternatives to socialism and were therefore seen as threats. Newspapers were shut down and the government started keeping records of who attended religious services. The government was especially suspicious of Christianity, which it saw as a holdover from the colonial years. But even non-European religions like Buddhism were viewed with suspicion. Some religious buildings were closed down or required to place a portrait of Ho Chi Minh on their altars.16 The government also burned books that it felt were not supportive of the revolution, and it replaced many teachers in the south with teachers from the north, who they believed would be more loyal.

When Harry Summers told Giap that the NVA never defeated the Americans on the battlefield, Giap replied: "That may be true, it is also irrelevant." Don't you understand anything about Vietnam Mike? You keep making these superficial arguments and keep missing the key points. Why did our battlefield success end up being irrelevant? Here are the main reasons this happened: (1) Congress, under your party's control, drastically cut our aid to South Vietnam at the same time that the Soviet Union and China were still pouring in massive amounts of weapons and supplies to North Vietnam. (2) Congress, under your party's control, gave North Vietnam a big flashing green light to invade by passing the Case-Church Amendment barely six months after the Paris Peace Accords, even though the Soviets and the Chinese were still giving North Vietnam massive amounts of military equipment and supplies. (3) When, in plain violation of the Paris Peace Accords, North Vietnam launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam in late 1974, Congress, controlled by your party, refused to honor our promise to aid South Vietnam if the North invaded again. As the situation grew worse, President Ford, to his great credit, called a joint session of Congress and publicly pleaded for Congress to allow him to at least give South Vietnam weapons and supplies, but Congress said no. If your party had not sided with North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China and had not betrayed South Vietnam, our battlefield success would have been very relevant; South Vietnam would be another South Korea today; and the horrors that the communists inflicted on the South Vietnamese never would have happened. Giap was not trying to get a battlefield victory. That was not central. The main point was to sap the will of the American army and, through that, to wreck the political consensus behind the war at home. Giap did both. Giap most certainly was trying to win on the battlefield, but he also soon realized that people who shared your views in our press and on our college campuses were powerful allies because they could be counted on to turn American victories into perceived defeats and propaganda coups, because they could be counted on to demonize South Vietnam's government while whitewashing North Vietnam's murderous regime, and because they could be counted on to smear the American war effort. Giap's army got decimated in the 1972 Spring Offensive, even though all the ground fighting was done by South Vietnam's army (ARVN). The Spring Offensive proved that we could keep South Vietnam free without having troops on the ground but just by providing air cover and war material. It proved that ARVN could hold their own against, and even defeat, Giap's army, as long as we provided air cover and continued to resupply them as needed. It was a great testament to how much ARVN had improved. Take a look at the book Kill Anything that Moves by Nick Turse. In that book, he shows how the Pentagon worked out a secret plan to hide a plethora of war atrocities. There were many; into the hundreds. There was also the study of the rising incidence of fraggings. Which, by about 1970, there were over two hundred yearly.(Col. Robert Heinl, July 1971 Armed Forces Journal) How does one conduct a war with that many mutinies? Or take the two Winter Soldier conferences in Detroit and Washington. About 109 veterans ended up testifying about war crimes. Oh, wow. Turse? The Winter Soldier stuff? Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that every claim you make here is valid, the conduct of our soldiers in Vietnam would still be far better than the conduct of the North Vietnamese army (NVA) and the VC. For every single real or alleged American war crime, there were three or four NVA/VC war crimes. This gets back to the point that every criticism of the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War and World War II. Have you actually read Turse’s book? I have. Have you read any of the critical reviews of Turse’s book, about Turse’s selective, misleading use of his sources, and about his narrow, one-sided approach? Will you ever read any works that defend the conduct of our soldiers in Vietnam, such as Burkett’s Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and History or Scruggs’ Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, or Moyar’s Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam, to name a few books that could be cited? It is especially revealing that you would cite the Winter Soldier conferences. Do you have any idea how many of those 109 were exposed as outright frauds, were exposed as not having served where they said they served, or who refused to provide verifiable specifics when asked to do so? No. Because you’ve only read one side of the story and refuse to read the other side. For starters, I would invite you to read Vietnam War scholar Phillip Jenning's section on the Winter Soldier claims in his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War. And, it should be noted that those 109 Vietnam vets constituted a tiny fraction of the 2.7 million American military personnel who served in Vietnam. So in the face of this, how can anyone call anybody else a thug? I mean the cover up about Calley was kind of sickening, don't you think? So you can’t even admit that Giap was a murderous thug? Yikes. What you clearly seem to be saying here, and elsewhere, is that our military in Vietnam was just as bad as the NVA and the VC, which is a slanderous, baseless position. There was no specific “cover-up about Calley.” Initially, there was a cover-up of the My Lai Massacre, which was an inexcusable crime in which Calley played a role. Calley and the few dozens of other soldiers who took part in the massacre deserved to be punished, but it was shameful that Calley was singled out for punishment while his equally guilty commanding officer, Captain Medina, was not prosecuted. (And, no, I do not agree with Nixon’s pardon of Calley.) Why don’t you ever talk about the far bloodier Hue Massacre carried out by the VC at the end of the Tet Offensive? Why don’t you talk about the other massacres and war crimes committed by the NVA and the VC? Our troops behaved like Boy Scouts compared to theirs. This gets back to the point about selectivity and balance. Every attack you can make on the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War and World War II. Some American soldiers committed war crimes during those wars. Yet, no rational person would argue that our soldiers in the Pacific were as barbaric as were Japanese soldiers, or that our soldiers in Europe behaved as badly as did SS soldiers (or Soviet soldiers), or that our soldiers in Korea committed anywhere near the number of war crimes that North Korean and Chinese soldiers committed. And please do not give me that stuff about abandoning Vietnam to communism. I don't see how Ben and Jerry's, Bank of America, McDonald's, a banking university etc constitute communism. HUH???! That “stuff about abandoning Vietnam to communism”? FYI, that “stuff” happens to be undeniable historical fact. What in the world are you talking about? I can honestly say that in all the hundreds of online discussions I’ve had on the Vietnam War, you are the first person I’ve encountered who has denied that the U.S. abandoned Vietnam to communism. Perhaps you misspoke. I can’t believe you are still repeating the bizarre argument that a brutal communist regime isn’t really a brutal communist regime if it allows some Western fast-food chains and banks to operate within its borders. Would you apply this amoral logic to Russia and China? It is as if you’re saying, “Never mind the suppression of basic human rights. Never mind the murdering and jailing of dissidents. Never mind the lack of justice and due process. Never mind the control of the news media. Just never mind all that because they allow some Western restaurants and banks to operate within their borders!” Again, go read the Human Rights Watch report on current-day Vietnam. The last time I checked, nobody has ever suggested that Human Rights Watch is a right-wing organization. And it would have all happened decades earlier if the US had not broken the Geneva Accords. A point you wish to ignore. For what reason? I’ve addressed this old communist talking point, but you just keep repeating it. Again, the country that most egregiously violated the Geneva Accords was North Vietnam, not the U.S. and not South Vietnam. I asked if you knew what JFK himself said about the Geneva Accords, but you never replied. Here is some of what he said on the subject in 1956, two years after the Geneva Accords had been enacted: I include in that injunction a plea that the United States never give its approval to the early nationwide elections called for by the Geneva Agreement of 1954. Neither the United States nor Free Vietnam was a party to that agreement – and neither the United States nor Free Vietnam is ever going to be a party to an election obviously stacked and subverted in advance, urged upon us by those who have already broken their own pledges under the Agreement they now seek to enforce. (Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the Conference on Vietnam Luncheon in the Hotel Willard, Washington, D.C., June 1, 1956 | JFK Library) And, tell me, what would have “all happened decades earlier”? 60,000-plus South Vietnamese executed? Thousands more killed via forced labor, starvation, and lack of medical treatment in communist concentration (“reeducation”) camps? Plunging the South into the same poverty as the North? At least 800,000 people fleeing for their lives rather than live under communist tyranny? The basic difference between us boils down to this: You regret that South Vietnam did not fall to communist tyranny decades earlier, whereas I regret that South Vietnam did not remain free.

Pat, I think it is a vast exaggeration to say that "almost everyone now thinks" that the war was a mistake and that it was a good thing we did not keep supporting South Vietnam. I'm sure that "almost everyone" in liberal circles thinks this way, but they don't constitute "almost everyone" in the population as a whole. Go to any of the major online forums that discuss the Vietnam War and you'll see that a great many people disagree with the liberal view on the war. Scholarly books that defend the Vietnam War continue to be published. I would answer your other comments by making the following points, which I think your comments avoid: -- North Vietnam was the aggressor. South Vietnam did not invade North Vietnam, but North Vietnam repeatedly invaded South Vietnam. -- For all its faults and problems, South Vietnam's government was far less corrupt and oppressive than North Vietnam's government. It is sadly ironic that so many VC/NLF/PRG members realized this only after South Vietnam fell. -- We could have won the war in a matter of months, if not weeks, if our military had not been hamstrung by so many ridiculous rules of engagement that placed suicidal restraints on our operations. We know from North Vietnamese sources that when Nixon allowed a reasonable and effective use of our air power in Operation Linebacker II in late 1972 for just 12 days, Hanoi's defenses were on the verge of collapse and Hanoi's leaders were desperate and were considering capitulation. This fact alone destroys the leftist myth that the war was unwinnable. -- Even during Linebacker II, we made every reasonable effort to minimize civilian casualties. Our air raids, even Linebacker II, did not violate the standard rules of war and were nothing like the criminal air raids that LeMay launched against Japan. -- In the first two to three years after South Vietnam fell, the North Vietnamese executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and killed a bare minimum of 5,000 others in the brutal "reeducation" camps. In contrast, during our 12 years in Vietnam, we lost just over 58,000 troops. -- Some former reeducation camp prisoners argue that well over 100,000 South Vietnamese died in those camps, based on their personal observations that in the camps where they were kept, the death rate among prisoners ranged from 1 in 20 up to 1 in 6, due to the harsh conditions and cruel treatment (see, for example, reeducation camp survivor Quang Hong Mac's book The Bloody Experiences in Hell's Reeducation Camp) . If we take the lowball figure of 800,000 for the number of prisoners in those camps and assume that "only" 1 in 20 died, that gives us a death figure of 40,000. -- The Communist Bloc, especially North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union, carried out a massive worldwide propaganda campaign from 1954 until the end of the war in order to smear South Vietnam and the U.S. war effort, and most American and European media outlets uncritically repeated much of that propaganda. To this day, liberal books on the war repeat many of the talking points that the communists put out during the war. -- Every argument that critics make against the Vietnam War can also be made against the Korean War--and I mean every single argument. The difference was that we did not impose suicidal restrictions on the use of air power in Korea, and that our news media did not smear the war effort and did not demonize the South Korean government.

Great post. And let's not forget what WC attorney Wesley Liebeler said about Oswald's rifle skills and the rifle in his 9/6/64 internal memo to Rankin wherein Liebeler expressed concerns about the draft of a portion of the Warren Report: 1. The purpose of this section is to determine Oswald's ability to fire a rifle. The third word at the top of page 50 of the galleys, which is apparently meant to describe Oswald, is "marksman." A marksman is one skilled at shooting at mark; one who shoots well. Not only do we beg the question a little, but the sentence is inexact in that the shot, which it describes, would be the same for marksman as it would for one who was not a marksman. How about: the assassin's shots from the easternmost window of the south side of the Texas School Book Depository were at a slow-moving target proceeding on a downgrade virtually straight away from the assassin, at a range of 177 to 266 feet." 2. The last sentence in the first paragraph on galley page 50 should indicate that the slope of Elm Street is downward. 3. The section on the nature of the shots deals basically with the range and the effect of a telescopic sight. Several experts conclude that the shots were easy. There is, however, no consideration given here to the time allowed for the shots. I do not see how someone can conclude that a shot is easy or hard unless he knows something about how long the firer has to shoot, that is, how much time allotted for the shots. 4. On the nature of the shots--Frazier testified that one would have no difficulty in hitting a target with a telescopic sight, since all you have to do is put the crosshairs on the target. On page 51 of the galleys, however, he testified that shots fired by FBI agents with the assassination weapon were "a few inches high and to the right of the target * * * because of a defect in the scope." Apparently no one knows when that defect appeared, or if it was in the scope at the time of the assassination. If it was, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary one may assume that it was, putting the crosshairs on the target would clearly have resulted in a miss, or it very likely would, in any event. I have raised this question before. There is a great deal of testimony in the record that a telescopic sight is a sensitive proposition. You can't leave a rifle and scope laying around in a garage underfoot for almost 3 months, just having brought it back from New Orleans in the back of a station wagon, and expect to hit anything with it, unless you take the trouble to fire it and sight the scope in. This would have been a problem that should have been dealt with in any event, and now that it turns out that there actually was a defect in the scope, it is perfectly clear that the question must be considered. The present draft leaves the Commission open to severe criticism. Furthermore, to the extent that it leaves testimony suggesting that the shots might not have been so easy out of the discussion, thereby giving only a part of the story, it is simply dishonest. 5. Why do we have a statement concerning the fact that Oswald's Marine records show that he was familiar with the Browning automatic rifle, .45-caliber pistol and 12-gage riot gun? That is completely irrelevant to the question of his ability to fire a rifle, unless there is evidence that the same skills are involved. It is, furthermore, prejudicial to some extent. 6. Under the heading "Oswald's Rifle Practice Outside the Marines" we have a statement concerning his hunting activities in Russia. It says that he joined a hunting club, obtained a license and went hunting about six times. It does not say what kind of a weapon he used. While I am not completely familiar with the record on this point, I do know for a fact that there is some indication that he used a shotgun. Under what theory do we include activities concerning a shotgun under a heading relating to rifle practice, and then presume not to advise the reader of the fact? 7. The statements concerning Oswald's practice with the assassination weapon are misleading. They tend to give the impression that he did more practicing than the record suggests that he did. My recollection is that there is only one specific time when he might have practiced. We should be more precise in this area, because the Commission is going to have its work in this area examined very closely. 8. On the top of galley page 51 we have that statement about Oswald sighting the telescopic sight at night on the porch in New Orleans. I think the support for that proposition is thin indeed. Marina Oswald first testified that she did not know what he was doing out there and then she was clearly led into the only answer that gives any support to this proposition. 9. I think the level of reaching that is going on in this whole discussion of rifle capability is merely shown by the fact that under the heading of rifle practice outside the Marine Corps appears the damning statement that "Oswald showed an interest in rifles by discussing that subject with others (in fact only one person as I remember it) and reading gun magazines." 10. I do not think the record will support the statement that Oswald did not leave his Beckley Avenue roominghouse on one of the weekends that he was supposedly seen at the Sports Drome Rifle Range. 11. There is a misstatement in the third paragraph under rapid fire tests when it says "Four of the firers missed the second shot." The preceding paragraph states that there were only three firers. 12. There are no footnotes whatsoever in the fifth paragraph under rapid fire tests and some rather important statements are made which require some support from someplace. 13. A minor point as to the next paragraph--bullets are better said to strike rather than land. 14. As I read through the section on rifle capability it appears that 15 different sets of three shots were fired by supposedly expert riflemen of the FBI and other places. According to my calculations those 15 sets of shots took a total of 93.8 seconds to be fired. The average of all 15 is a little over 6.2 seconds. Assuming that time is calculated commencing with the firing of the first shot, that means the average time it took to fire the two remaining shots was about 6.2 seconds. That comes to about 3.1 seconds for each shot, not counting the time consumed by the actual firing, which would not be very much. I recall that chapter 3 said that the minimum time that had to elapse between shots was 2.25 seconds, which is pretty close to the one set of fast shots fired by Frazier of the FBI. The conclusion indicates that Oswald had the capability to fire three shots with two hits in from 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. Of the 15 sets of 3 shots described above. only 3 were fired within 4.8 seconds. A total of five sets, including the three just mentioned were fired within a total of 5.6 seconds. The conclusion at its most extreme states that Oswald could fire faster than the Commission experts fired in 12 of their 15 tries and that in any event he could fire faster than the experts did in 10 of their 15 tries. If we are going to set forth material such as this, I think we should set forth some information on how much training and how much shooting the experts had and did as a whole. The readers could then have something on which to base their judgments concerning the relative abilities of the apparently slow firing experts used by the Commission and the ability of Lee Harvey Oswald. 15. The problems raised by the above analyses should be met at some point in the text of the report. The figure of 2.25 as a minimum firing time for each shot used throughout chapter 3. The present discussion of rifle capability shows that expert riflemen could not fire the assassination weapon that fast. Only one of the experts managed to do so, and his shots, like those of the other FBI experts, were high and to the right of the target. The fact is that most of the experts were much more proficient with a rifle than Oswald could ever be expected to be, and the record indicates that fact, according to my recollection of the response of one of the experts to a question by Mr. McCloy asking for a comparison of an NRA master marksman to a Marine Corps sharpshooter. 16. The present section on rifle capability fails to set forth material in the record tending to indicate that Oswald was not a good shot and that he was not interested in his rifle while in the Marine Corps. It does not set forth material indicating that a telescopic sight must be tested and sighted in after a period of nonuse before it can be expected to be accurate. That problem is emphasized by the fact that the FBI actually found that there was a defect in the scene which caused the rifle to fire high and to the right. In spite of the above the present section takes only part of the material in the record to show that Oswald was a good shot and that he was interested in rifles. I submit that the testimony Delgado that Oswald was not interested in his rifle while in the Marines is at least as probative as Alba's testimony that Oswald came into his garage to read rifle--and hunting--magazines. To put it bluntly that sort of selection from the record could seriously affect the integrity and credibility of the entire report. 17. It seems to me that the most honest and the most sensible thing to do the present state of the record on Oswald's rifle capability would be to write a very short section indicating that there is testimony on both sides of several issues. The Commission could then conclude that the best evidence that Oswald could fire his rifle as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so. It may have been pure luck. It probably was to a very great extent. But it happened. He would have had to have been lucky to hit as he did if he had only 4.8 seconds to fire the shots. Why don't we admit instead of reaching and using only part of the record to support the propositions presently set forth in the galleys. Those conclusions will never be accepted by critical persons anyway. (11 HSCA 230-232; 9/6/64 memo)

Have you read Doug Horne's research on LeMay's possible presence at the autopsy? O'Connor may not have realized who LeMay was or why his presence was important, so I don't think it is necessarily discrediting that he didn't mention this until later. And I'm not certain I would insist that Sibert and O'Neill's list of attendees is complete. Anyway, if it turns out that LeMay was not at the autopsy, so be it, but I'd be curious to get your take on Horne's research on the issue.

Kirk, I was not of draft age during the Vietnam War, but I had friends whose older brothers were drafted. My family does not have a military background, but I was in the U.S. Army for 21 years. The Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for over 20 years. When I went through Army basic training, I had no views about the Vietnam War. A number of my drill sergeants had served in Vietnam. It made an impression on me when all of them said that the war was an honorable endeavor and that they were proud of their service in it. I do not believe the war was a terrible mistake. I believe it was a valid, noble effort to keep 18 million people from falling under communist tyranny. I believe it was every bit as valid and noble as our effort to keep South Korea free. I believe the evidence is undeniable that the Vietnam War was entirely winnable. I think it is sad and repulsive that so many American liberals minimize or deny the brutality and terror that North Vietnam unleashed on the South Vietnamese after the war. I suspect they do this because they don't want to acknowledge the terrible consequences of the betrayal of South Vietnam. I find it especially sad to see American liberals repeating communist talking points about the Geneva Accords, about who violated those accords more severely, about who the aggressor was and who the victim was, and about key events during the war. I find that, virtually without exception, liberals who repeat those talking points are unaware of what we have learned from released North Vietnamese archives and from the writings of former North Vietnamese and Vietcong officials and officers.

Yes, as I said, I don't know if LeMay was one of the plotters or if he just knew about it, or if he didn't even know about it. I don't know. I do find it very odd that he went to the trouble of attending the autopsy.

Ben, let me first address something James said in the reply after yours: General Giap claimed Khe Sanh was never of particular importance to the North Vietnamese. So now you're relying on a murderous communist thug like Giap? If Khe Sanh was "never of particular importance" to the NVese, why did Giap commit 40,000 troops to it and divert large numbers of artillery pieces that would be sorely missed during the Tet Offensive? (Some put the number of Giap's forces at closer to 100,000). If you had bothered to read the articles I linked, you would have read a refutation of the NVese claim that they didn't really care about Khe Sanh. In fact, the NVese also later claimed that they were not even trying to take the base but were merely trying to tie down American forces there, a laughable claim given the number of suicidal ground assaults they launched against the base. Ben, now to your reply: Yes, I watched the film I posted, that's why I posted it But you forgot to mention that the film said we won a resounding victory at Khe Sanh, and that when we counterattacked and pursued them, they were forced to leave behind huge amounts of war material, something they usually never did. The film, produced by the US Marines, describes Khe Sanh as under constant fire, so much so supplies were air-dropped. No, it does not. It includes several segments that show periods when Khe Sanh was not under fire. Will you ever watch the two-part AIM documentary Television's Vietnam, which includes a long segment on Khe Sanh? It includes interviews with soldiers who were at Khe Sanh during the battle. They were able to take leave and come back. Journalists were able to fly in and out. We had complete control of the air over Khe Sanh. Etc., etc., etc. The NVese fired a huge amount of shells at Khe Sanh. Yes, certainly, there were times when the shelling made the air strip "hot" and forced our troops to take cover, but there were also plenty of times when firing was minimal or non-existent. There were frequent long breaks in the shelling because we had destroyed so many NVese artillery pieces and it took time for them to bring in more artillery pieces. And, as mentioned earlier, many of their shells were off target and landed too far away to do any damage at all, because they were forced to fire from less-than-optimal ranges. I should add that we purposely allowed Giap to surround Khe Sanh. This was a conscious strategy to bait him into committing a large force to try to take the base: Khe Sanh was a purposely orchestrated event by General William C. Westmorland designed as bait to entice General Vo Nguyen Giap into a classic set-piece battle in an effort to destroy his army. (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1019240.pdf, p. 4) Oh, and the film was not made by the Marines but by the Air Force. If you watch the film, the opening credits state that it was made by the Air Force (0:01 to 0:06 in the film). Here is a very good Marine Corps video on the battle of Khe Sanh: Click Here. In 1967, the NV/VC were routed, and retreated---but came back. The battle occurred in 1968. The NVese hastily fled when we launched a ground counterattack. Oh, yes, the NVese came back, after they saw that we were leaving, and they were careful to keep their distance when they came back, and they came back in much smaller numbers than they had during the battle. Also, after the ammo dump got hit, our troops dug a huge complex underground to house the new ammo dump, a hospital, etc., and key parts of the base were connected by a series of tunnels and deep trenches. This was one reason that our casualties were so low. To appreciate the ineffectiveness of the NVese artillery, we should consider the number of flights--both fixed-wing and helicopter--and the amount of supplies they delivered during the battle: Throughout the siege, the smaller C-123s and C-7s landed on the airstrip to deliver their supplies and evacuate the wounded. All told, 12,430 tons of supplies were delivered and 4,250 passengers transported by USAF aircraft in 1061 sorties. In addition to these numbers, Marine helicopters transported 14,562 passengers and 4,661 tons of cargo keeping the overlooking hilltops in Marine’s hands.(https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1019240.pdf, p. 7) The final chapter, not in the contemporary film, is Marines abandoning the base under gunfire. This is the same distortion that North Vietnam and our news media peddled. If you want to call the long-range shelling that the NVese did while we were dismantling the base after we had chased their forces out of the area--if you want to call that "abandoning the base under gunfire," that's your prerogative. Strictly technically speaking it's accurate, but it's also misleading. Even after the bulk of our forces were gone and we had only a small force on Hill 689, the NVese did not dare launch any major attacks but only minor harassing attacks. Why do you suppose that was? Moreover, our forces continued to patrol the entire Khe Sanh plateau for over a year after we dismantled the base. Also, later that year, in October, we reoccupied the area for two weeks with South Vietnamese forces, and they encountered only minimal opposition. Now, why do you suppose that was? But that's not all. The Marines continued to hold Hill 950 overlooking the Khe Sanh plateau until September 1969. What happened when the NVese launched a major assault on the hill? Well, they never did that. Why do you suppose that was? Khe Sanh is in many ways a small version of the whole war---the insanity, with Westmoreland suggesting nuclear arms were needed to secure Khe Sanh, which was absolutely vital to the war effort. More distortion. Westmoreland never said nukes were needed to secure Khe Sanh. You are talking about Westmoreland's internal statement that IF the situation at Khe Sanh or near the DMZ severely deteriorated, low-yield nukes "might" need to be used. But the situation never even got close to that point. And I suspect that this will shock you, but dropping one or two low-yield nukes around Khe Sanh would not have been the end of the planet. The blast radius of the low-yield nukes at the time was about 8,000 feet, and the worst destruction would have occurred within about 4,000 feet of the center of the explosion, gradually and substantially tapering off from that point. I am not suggesting that we should have done this, but I am saying that it was not a crazy, reckless option when talking about areas that were miles away from any sizable populations. Then the US retreating from the Khe Sanh base later. Okay, I'm guessing you didn't bother to read any of the articles I linked, right? We did not "retreat" from Khe Sanh. In military terminology, our withdrawal from Khe Sanh was not a "retreat." We left Khe Sanh because the NVese changed their tactics in the area after incurring such a terrible slaughter when they tried ground assaults. Plus, we no longer needed a fixed base such as Khe Sanh because we now had enough helicopters in the area to carry out mobile operations in the region. And, I repeat that we continued to patrol the entire Khe Sanh plateau for over a year after dismantling the base, and that we held Hill 950 until September 1969 for recon purposes because the hill provided a view of the entire plateau. Another reason that we closed the base--actually, the main reason we did so--was that General Abrams had taken over command of U.S. forces in Vietnam, and closing the base was part of his successful Vietnamization strategy. Westmoreland recommended maintaining the base, but Abrams did not believe in Westmoreland's search-and-destroy approach. Therefore, he saw no need to maintain a base that was far removed from population and whose function could be done without maintaining it. The huge US military advantage, incredible losses for the other side, but ultimate defeat. That was the warped spin put out by the communists, our news media, and our anti-war movement. How was Khe Sanh a "defeat" when we continued to patrol the entire plateau at will and held a key observation point overlooking the plateau for over a year after slaughtering Giap's forces when they tried to take the base? "American commanders considered the defense of Khe Sanh a success, but shortly after the siege was lifted, the decision was made to dismantle the base rather than risk similar battles in the future. On 19 June 1968, the evacuation and destruction of KSCB began. Amid heavy shelling, the Marines attempted to salvage what they could before destroying what remained as they were evacuated."---Wikipedia Of course Wikipedia repeats the leftist line on Khe Sanh. "Amid heavy shelling"? Well, amid heavy long-range and ineffective shelling. This was more harassing fire than anything else; it did not impede our dismantling and withdrawal operations. And, incidentally, that "heavy shelling" was intermittent because Giap had to keep moving his artillery periodically to avoid the kinds of devastating air attacks he had suffered during the battle. As for the claim that we did not want to "risk similar battles in the future," this was a PR-based statement because of the media-hyped negative perception of an American base being surrounded and cut off, even though we purposely allowed the base to be surrounded, and even though we inflicted horrendous losses on the enemy. In actuality, our commanders would have been only too happy to have had "similar battles in the future" where we baited the NVese to surround a position and then decimated their forces with air and artillery attacks and forced them to flee so quickly that they left behind massive war supplies. One of the reasons we withdrew from and dismantled the Khe Sanh base was that we realized that Giap was not going to be dumb enough to try a ground assault on the base again. But liberal sources never mention this; instead, they prefer, for some reason, to repeat communist talking points about Khe Sanh. Liberal sources also never mention that we continued to patrol the entire Khe Sanh plateau and held a key observation point for over a year after the battle. Kissinger summed it up, when he said the problem with guerrilla warfare is the bad guys never do what you want them to. They fade when weak, they attack where vulnerable. Kissinger's comment has nothing to do with Khe Sanh. Giap's assault on Khe Sanh was not "guerilla warfare" but a traditional set-piece attack. Much as I loathe, detest and revile communist dictatorships (including the one in Beijing toasted by US multinationals, academic and financial elites). . . . I certainly agree with you on this point, but a few folks argue that brutal communist regimes are actually not all that bad if they have KFC, Domino's, McDonald's, and have schools of banking and finance. what can you say about the NV/VC soldiers? Do you suppose they showed a lot of determination? Actually, NV/VC soldiers surrendered whenever they had the chance to do so, i.e., if they could surrender without being shot by their officers while trying to escape. You should read the accounts of former NV/VC soldiers about the draconian discipline imposed on them by their officers. During the war, over 200,000 NV/VC soldiers surrendered and became POWs. In addition, it is worth noting that during the battle of Khe Sanh, NVese soldiers deserted in large numbers. Documents captured when we overran Giap's positions revealed that his desertion rate was an astounding 20-25%. This is mentioned in the Marine Corps documentary on Khe Sanh. If the US ultimately loses in Khe Sanh...what does that tell you? If US soldiers (understandably) just want to serve their tour and get out, what does that tell you? If Khe Sanh is a US victory.... It is Orwellian spin to say that we "lost" at Khe Sanh. If you were to get 10 military experts in a room and describe the events at Khe Sanh as a hypothetical scenario, I'd bet good money that every one of them would say that the force that occupied the base, that decimated the attackers, that forced the attackers to flee, and that continued to do recon patrols in the area at will was the force that won. As for the argument about U.S. soldiers, that is a sad head-shaker. Of course, of course, of course, most of our soldiers just wanted to serve their tour and get out. The same was true of our soldiers in the Civil War, in World War II, and in the Korean War. Most soldiers in any war, especially the draftees, do not want to be in a combat zone any longer than required, and naturally they are anxious to get back to their civilian lives. This universal reality does not change the fact that Khe Sanh was a resounding defeat for the North Vietnamese.

I think the evidence indicates that Oswald's expressions of communist/Marxist leanings were part of his cover story. We have a number of accounts from others who knew him in which he was heard attacking communism/Marxism, defending democracy, and saying capitalism was better than socialism. And there's the speech that Oswald gave at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, in which he expressed very non-communist/Marxist views, strongly criticized the Soviet Union, and said capitalism, though flawed, was better than socialism. He also gave a conservative-leaning speech in Louisiana. Lee Oswald: Speech at Spring Hill College in Alabama : The JFK Assassination (22november1963.org.uk) As Lamar Waldron notes, it is very interesting, and perhaps revealing, that Oswald never tried to contact any local communist or pro-Castro organizations. He would write letters to a national HQ but made no effort to contact local chapters.

Posner repeatedly deceives. His treatment of McClelland and the large head wound is just one of numerous examples of what appears to be intentional deception. One glaring example of Posner's deception is his use of Kerry Thornley to attack Oswald. As part of his effort to portray Oswald as a glory-seeking, lackluster, Marxist Marine, Posner uses Thornley's unflattering testimony about Oswald. But Posner never tells his readers that Thornley claimed that he was a N a z i breeding experiment, that a bugging device was planted on him at birth so that N a z i cultists could monitor him as he grew up, and that Oswald was a N a z i breeding experiment too (for more on Thornley, see Jonathan Vankin, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Crimes, New York: Dell Publishing, pp. 18-19). Posner rejects numerous pro-conspiracy witnesses who had infinitely fewer and less severe credibility issues, but he uses a basket case like Thornley to attack Oswald and never tells his readers about Thornley's nutty beliefs.

WHAT???!!! This is utterly erroneous. Good grief, we decimated Giap's forces at Khe Sanh, and they eventually were forced to flee in such haste that they left behind huge amounts of war material, something they had never done before. Did you even watch the video that you linked? I ask because the video documents--and says--that Khe Sanh was an American victory, a resounding one. I'm genuinely baffled as to how you could say that the video you linked indicates the war was unwinnable or that we lost the battle of Khe Sanh. Among other things, the video notes that our air supply operations to the base were never cut--"the air bridge is never cut" (starting at about 3:10 in the video). The video also points out that we were able to maintain continuous C-130 surveillance flights over Khe Sanh to direct attacks on the North Vietnamese forces (starting at about 10:15 in the video). The video also notes that toward the end of the battle we actually attacked the North Vietnamese and pursued them, and that when we overran their base "the extent of the communist defeat becomes more apparent"--partly because they left behind huge amounts of war material (starting at about 13:15 in the video). I'm guessing that you still haven't bothered to watch the two-part AIM documentary on the Vietnam War. The AIM documentary has a long segment on Khe Sanh that debunks the misleading reporting that our news media did on the battle at the time. The media's dishonest, Orwellian spin on the battle is another sad example of our news media reporting an American victory as a defeat. Let's get some facts straight about Khe Sanh: First off, we withdrew from Khe Sanh only after we devastated the North Vietnamese and forced them to flee. Good grief, Giap's forces lost over 50% of their troops in the battle. One NVese regiment lost 75% of its soldiers. The air strip at Khe Sanh remained operational through the battle. During the months-long battle, the North Vietnamese managed to shoot down only four of our planes! Yes, just four. We continued to supply Khe Sanh by air at will and had no trouble air-evacuating our wounded. Moreover, unlike the French at Dien Bien Phu, we always maintained control of the high ground around Khe Sanh, which gave us a crucial advantage because we had the entire area surrounding the base ranged for artillery. Not only did we control all the high ground and have the area around the base ranged for artillery, but we had additional--and tremendous--long-range artillery support from Army bases that were far out of range of Giap's artillery. The video that you linked talks about this fact as well. The North Vietnamese could never even get close enough to launch a ground assault ala Dien Bien Phu because of our air raids and artillery. There was never any hand-to-hand fighting at Khe Sanh because the NVese forces could never get that close. And because we controlled the high ground, the NV had to fire their artillery from long ranges. The only significant hit they ever scored was when one of their shells hit the ammo dump. Of course, our news media showed endless clips of the ammo dump exploding and smoking, usually without explaining the rest of the story, such as the fact that this was a one-off success and that their artillery was ineffective the vast majority of the time. No, Giap did not outsmart us. Our commanders at Khe Sanh outsmarted him. They anticipated nearly his every move, and as a result were able to inflict horrendous damage on his forces. Also, our forces were not "constantly under fire" at Khe Sanh. There were plenty of lulls in the action, partly because it took the NVese troops time to recover from each disastrous assault they launched. Again, the NVese forces lost over half of their manpower because they got slaughtered so badly every time they would pop up and attack us and because of our air raids and artillery barrages. There were also lulls in the NVese artillery bombardments, and many of their rounds landed too far away to harm anyone. We know from North Vietnamese sources that our air raids around Khe Sanh were so effective against Giap's supply lines that his troops were nearly starving. NVese soldiers who were captured at the time said the same thing. The NVese POWs reported that there were several days when they had no food whatsoever, and that their rations had been cut to near-starvation levels. Another revealing fact is that because of our counterattack and pursuit, Giap's forces were forced to flee so hurriedly that, as mentioned, they left behind huge amounts of war material. This is revealing because the NVese were known for never leaving anything behind when they withdrew. And when I say that Giap's forces left behind "huge amounts" of war material, I mean really huge. Specifically, they abandoned 182 rockets and mortars, 260,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition, 13,000 rounds of larger-caliber ammunition, and 8,700 hand grenades and mines. If you are interested in reading the other side of the story, here are some articles you should read: Right Marine at the Right Place | Naval History Magazine - April 2021 Volume 35, Number 2 (usni.org) Airpower at Khe Sanh - Air Force Magazine AIR POWER & THE FIGHT FOR KHE SANH (defense.gov)

Dr. Peters himself said in a 1997 interview that the large head wound was "in the occipital parietal on the right side of the head" (Item 04.pdf (hood.edu). JFK was on the operating table in the trauma room for at least 20 minutes. In his 1997 interview, Peters said McClelland was standing next to Dr. Kemp Clark, the neurosurgeon, on JFK's left side. Dr. Clark "examined" JFK's head and saw the same wound that McClelland described, so Clark would have had to have moved in order to examine the head. McClelland may have moved around at times as well. He may not have stayed on the president's left side the entire time. Plus, once the doctors gave up trying to save Kennedy, McClelland would have surely moved around and would have had had ample opportunity to view the large head wound. Dr. Perry also said the large wound was in the "right occipital-parietal area" (Warren Commission, Volume VI: Dr. Malcolm Oliver Perry (history-matters.com). Thus, McClelland described the same wound--the large right occipital-parietal wound--that Peters and Perry described. So I don't see this as a major issue.

But the statements that I cited straight from NSAM 263 alone prove that there was no fixed, unalterable plan to totally disengage from South Vietnam regardless of the situation on the ground. Of course it doesn't promise anything beyond 1965, because the "objective" was to have "the bulk" of U.S. forces out of Vietnam by the end of 1965--but, again, this was clearly, indisputably made conditional on the situation. IF South Vietnam's armed forces were enlarged enough and able to defend the country on their own, then and only then would the end-of-1965 objective be able to be met. There was no indication that JFK held the view that "we are getting out of South Vietnam by the end of 1965 no matter what, regardless of the situation on the ground." There was not even a hint of any such position. On the contrary, NSAM 263 argues strongly against that view, and JFK made it very clear in numerous other statements that he was determined to keep South Vietnam from falling to the communists. I don't think you folks realize how bad it sounds to many Americans when you talk as though it would have been a great and wise act of statesmanship if JFK had handed over 18 million South Vietnamese to communist tyranny after he was reelected. What makes this position especially unfortunate is that JFK had no such intention. You are doing a disservice to his memory and are misrepresenting his intention when you claim that he would have abandoned South Vietnam regardless of the situation and the consequences. Have you or any of those who agree with you bothered to watch Dr. Selverstone's 2016 video yet?

I don't think your attacks on America First are sound or well sourced. Ditto for your sweeping, tar-brush attacks on Trump supporters. Why, why, why include material in your book that is going to turn off and alienate a large chunk of your potential audience? Why imply that one cannot really care about JFK's death if one believes in America First and supports Trump? Your conclusion that the Amerasia spy case was much ado about nothing is contradicted by very strong evidence. Citing the fact that Truman's Justice Department swept the matter under the rug is not at all convincing. Just FYI, when I first reviewed CID on Amazon, I gave it five stars. At that point, I was 2/3 of the way through the book and had not encountered the large amount of liberal preaching that comes in the last third of the book. I was so surprised and disappointed by the liberal preaching that reduced my rating to one star, although I still said that the book is a very important and worthwhile work.

I would love to believe Judyth Baker's story. I read Haslam's book Dr. Mary's Monkey, and I read McAdams' article on her. My only big objection to her account is her claim that when Oswald went to Mexico City, he was carrying a biological weapon to kill Castro. That strikes me as far-fetched. Beyond that, her account just strikes me as too pat, as too good to be true. I do not categorically reject it as impossible, but I am skeptical of it.

When U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Thomas White retired in early 1961, JFK named General Curtis LeMay as his replacement, which of course made LeMay one of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. LeMay assumed the office in July 1961. Just because LeMay had been the Vice Chief of Staff did not mean that Kennedy had to appoint him as Chief of Staff. He could have picked someone else. However, I understand that a new, young president would have risked a lot of discord with the Air Force by passing over a famous general such as LeMay for the Chief of Staff position, but I am surprised that JFK did not fire LeMay after LeMay's rude and insubordinate comments to him during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions. Personally, I think LeMay qualified as a war criminal for his atrocious, barbaric bombing campaign against Japan in 1945. He bombed over 60 cities, most of which did not even come close to qualifying as valid military targets, and in the process killed, at the very least, 250,000 civilians. When asked about his bombing of Japanese cities, LeMay famously replied, "There are no innocent civilians." Now, I am no shrinking flower when it comes to rules of engagement during war. I understand that sometimes you have no choice but to kill civilians because your enemy is using them as human shields and is placing heavy weapons among them to fire at your troops, at your vehicles, or at your planes. I also understand that sometimes you have to bomb certain factories, POL depots, power plants, shipyards, and other facilities that directly support your enemy's war effort, and that many times those facilities are located in or near civilian areas. But, even in those cases, you should make every effort to minimize civilian deaths. LeMay made no such effort, with the sole exception of his order to avoid bombing the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. When I get to heaven and have a chance to learn the whole story about the JFK assassination, I will not be a bit surprised if I find out that LeMay knew about the plot and warmly approved of it, or even that he was one of the plotters.

I am not revising at all. You are ignoring plain evidence that refutes the total-disengagement-no-matter-what view. For example, look at recommendation number 2, which you quoted. Look at the conditional wording, and notice that it didn't say "all U.S. personnel" but "the bulk of U.S. personnel": . . . by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time. Again, note the "should be possible," not, "we're leaving by then no matter what." And notice that it said "the bulk," not "all" but "the bulk," which is consistent with Taylor's point that it might be necessary to leave behind a small force of trainers. And look at recommendation number 3, which you also quoted. It stated this "long-term" program to replace U.S. personnel with Vietnamese would be done "without impairment of the war effort": This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort. "WITHOUT IMPAIRMENT OF THE WAR EFFORT." This was all conditional on the situation on the ground. This was a "long-term program" that would not impair the war effort, because JFK had no intention of totally disengaging until South Vietnam was secure and militarily viable. You are ignoring all the other JFK statements that show he had no intention of completely disengaging from South Vietnam until South Vietnam was able to stand on its own. Bobby said the same thing. I should add that you are correct in saying that NSAM 263 only approved part 1 B (1-3) of the McNamara-Taylor report. However, JFK did approve paragraph 1 B 6.a of the report as well, although not in the NSAM, as I noted in my previous reply, in that he approved the policy statement in 1 B 6.a at the 10/2 NSC meeting. Also, 1 B 6.a was mirrored in 1 B 1 (2-3).

Are you really, seriously, actually suggesting that I didn't mention the Skorzenys in my brief review of CID because I was trying to "deflect" from the Skorzenys? Gosh, seriously? I also did not mention David Ferrie, Guy Banister, David Atlee Phillips, Alan Dulles, and Richard Helms. It was just a brief Amazon review. The names I included and omitted were not based on any ideological agenda. So you believe that more than 1% of Americans buy into Skorzeny's virulent brand of fascism and racism??? Well, I feel sorry for you. I can tell you that as a Trump volunteer who got to talk with dozens of Trump supporters and got to hang around hundreds of others, I never heard one word that would suggest such thing. I can't fathom why anyone who shares Skorzeny's anti-Semitic views would support Trump, since Trump is ardently pro-Israeli, since part of Trump's family is Jewish, since Trump has many Jewish friends, since Trump has invested in Israel, since Trump was the only president who had the guts to move our embassy in Israel to its rightful place in Jerusalem, and since Trump (before he became president) even appeared in political ads in Israel endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu. Anyway, regarding your follow-on reply, I appreciate the corrections on the info about Albarelli and the datebook, etc. I will correct my review accordingly.

We can learn much about the Vietnam War, and about the brutality that North Vietnam imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, from the book A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1985), written by Truong Nhu Tang. Tang was a high-ranking Vietcong official and served as a leader in the National Liberation Front and as the minister of justice in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG). When Tang could no longer stomach the “reign of terror” (his words) that the North Vietnamese communists were imposing on the South, and when he realized that his protests against the brutality were pointless, he quit his position as the PRG minister of justice and eventually fled the country. What makes Tang’s book so important, and at times so annoying, is that he never stopped believing in the justice of the Vietcong cause, and that he remained an admirer of Ho Chi Minh for many years after he fled the country. He had met Ho Chi Minh as a young student in Paris and was mesmerized by him. Only years later, long after he left the country, was Tang able to bring himself to acknowledge the ugly truth about Ho Chi Minh, such as the mass executions and bloody purges that Ho carried out in the late 1950s in North Vietnam (pp. 298-302). Here are some of things we learn from Tang’s book: -- The North Vietnamese imposed a “reign of terror” on the South that included “outrages of every description” (pp. 280-281). -- These outrages caused Tang to realize that North Vietnam’s communists were not interested in a genuine national unity government but in “the ruthless consolidation of power” (p. 281). -- Tang said the communist terror included “a wave of arbitrary arrests that scythed [slashed] through the cities and villages” (p. 279). -- Tang said that at least 300,000 people were put into the "reeducation" camps, and he noted that this figure only counted the number of former government officers, state officials, and members of South Vietnam’s political party who were formally summoned for reeducation (p. 282). He added, This figure does not include people who were arrested in the sweeps by governmental organs and military authorities that terrorized both Saigon and the provinces during that period. (p. 282) -- The “reeducation” camps were “vicious” and “destructive” (p. 274). Tang complained about the camps to the PRG president, Huynh Tan Phat, but was told that the camps were necessary and would continue (pp. 274-276). He even complained about the camps directly to North Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Van Dong, but to no avail (pp. 280-282). -- One reason Tang was so upset about the camps was that he had personally persuaded many former South Vietnamese officials, functionaries, and professionals to report to the camps on the basis of North Vietnam’s and the PRG’s assurances that they would only be there for 30 days (pp. 277-279). He even persuaded two of his own brothers, Bich and Quyhn, to report to the camps on the same assurance. -- When Tang saw his brothers at the Long Thanh detention camp, he was distrubed that they were “pale and thin” and looked “frightened,” and that the other prisoners looked “dazed” (p. 279). (Tang was eventually able to get Bich released, but Quyhn spent another 10 years in the camps. Quyhn’s “crime” was that he was a doctor who had attended a political gathering that the communists did not like.) -- Another reason that Tang became increasingly troubled and distraught over the detention camps was that the former officials, functionaries, and professionals whom he had persuaded to report to the camps were not released after one month or even after one year, and he was ashamed that “this all happened during my tenure as minister of justice” (p. 282). -- Even over a year after Saigon’s fall, communist brutality against the South Vietnamese continued: Over a year had passed since the intentional sabotage of our reconciliation policy, and still the wave of official terror continued to swell. (p 287) -- Tang felt terrible that he had convinced his family, all of whom lived in Saigon, that life under communist rule would be better than life under the Diem and Thieu governments. His own mother and his friends confronted him on the matter: [His mother asked him] What had possessed me to inflict this misery on my family and my people? “Your Communist friends are full of double-talk—lies and violence.” She had applauded the liberation of Saigon in April 1975, but in the intervening year her sympathy for the revolution had turned to repugnance. My mother’s feelings were hardly unique. Talk about what was happening enveloped Saigon. And among my friends, much of it seemed directed at me. [Said his friends,] “At least under Diem and Thieu there was honor among thieves. But these [Communist] Party people are wolfing everything in sight.” “Do you think it was such a wonderful idea to chase the Americans out? At least when the Americans were here, we had food. Now what do we have?” (pp. 287-288) -- The mid-1973 Case-Church Amendment, which effectively assured North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of South Vietnam, played a key role in North Vietnam’s decision to resume military operations against the South, in violation of the recently signed Paris Peace Accords (p. 229). Hanoi’s leaders followed U.S. Congressional debates very closely (pp. 229-231). -- However, the communists initially resumed their attacks on South Vietnam in a limited manner because they were not certain to what extent the Case-Church Amendment “might actually control American conduct, especially if there were to be a major escalation in the level of fighting” (pp. 229-230). The North Vietnamese were particularly worried about “the return of American air power” (p. 230). -- Once it became apparent that the U.S. Congress would not authorize further military operations to protect South Vietnam, the communists decided to launch a full-scale assault on the South (pp. 230-240, 248-257). -- Tang spends considerable time talking about how pleased North Vietnam was with the American news media and the American anti-war movement, and the fact that the communists viewed our news media and the anti-war movement as valuable allies (e.g., pp. 145-148, 207-216, 282-286). -- The 1968 Tet Offensive was a military disaster. The communists “suffered agonizing and irreplaceable losses during the frontal assaults of Tet” (p. 192). It took the communists about two years to recover from the losses they incurred during the Tet Offensive (p. 204). -- Tang deeply regretted the Hue Massacre committed by communist forces shortly before they retreated from the city toward the close of the fighting of the Tet Offensive (pp. 154-156). -- In the 1972 Spring Offensive (aka the Easter Offensive), the communists suffered “prodigious” losses (pp. 211-212). -- The communists were thrilled and grateful when the U.S. Congress “prohibited funds for American operations in Cambodia and Laos” after the highly effective U.S. attacks on North Vietnamese forces and bases in eastern Cambodia and Laos (p. 211). -- North Vietnam’s bases in Cambodia and Laos were absolutely crucial supply points and staging areas for the communist war effort against South Vietnam (pp. 159-170). When Nixon authorized attacks on those bases, the attacks caused great damage and were very concerning to Hanoi (pp. 170-173, 179-184). (No wonder North Vietnam was so happy when our Democrat-controlled Congress forbade further attacks on those bases.) -- The Soviet Union began supporting North Vietnam’s communists in 1948, and when China fell to the communists in 1949, this enabled Russia and Red China to begin supplying large amounts of weapons to Ho Chi Minh’s forces (pp. 25-34). -- The B-52 attacks authorized by Nixon did severe damage and caused many troop casualties. However, assistance from Soviet intelligence prevented the B-52 attacks from being even more damaging. Soviet intelligence ships in the South China Sea provided advance warning of approaching B-52 raids in many cases (pp. 168-170). -- Before the launching of the last phase of the final offensive against South Vietnam, the Soviets supplied North Vietnam’s army with enormous amounts of weapons and supplies. This massive injection of war material “altered the balance of military forces” in favor of the communists (pp. 232, 250-251). (This was happening at the same time our Democrat-controlled Congress refused to honor our Paris treaty commitment to resupply South Vietnam’s army if the North invaded.) -- The North Vietnamese attacked and seized the key southern province of Phuoc Long in January 1975 and were “jubilant” that the U.S. did not respond (p. 250). The fact that the U.S. did not respond to the attack on a key province that bordered Saigon was a clear signal that the communists had nothing to worry about from the U.S. -- South Vietnam’s shortage of supplies, especially fuel, was a major disadvantage in the final months of the war (pp. 229-232, 248-253). -- When the Americans left Cambodia, this enabled the murderous Khmer Rouge to take over that country (pp. 176-181, 254-255). Finally, it is important to keep in mind that Tang was a genuinely moderate member of the National Liberation Front (NFL) and of the PRG. He admired Marx and Lenin, but he was not a hardcore communist. He believed Hanoi’s promises that under communist rule, the southern part of Vietnam would be allowed to form its own regional government that would be part of a national unity government, and that the southern region would have a genuine voice and influence on national policy. It is surprising how many times in his book Tang tacitly and overtly acknowledges that there were significant long-standing differences between northern Vietnam and southern Vietnam. He was shocked and disillusioned when he realized that North Vietnam had no intention of keeping its promises to the NLF and the PRG regarding a degree of autonomy and self-rule for the South, and he was furious over the brutality that the communists inflicted on the South.

That is a sad example of the fact that so many college students in Europe and America were radicalized by some of their professors to the point of practically being pro-communist. I wish the America-bashing students in the U.S. today could be forced to live in North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, China, or Russia for one year, not as pampered guests, but as ordinary members of society. I'd bet good money that after a few months most of them would be begging to come back to "racist, oppressive, unjust America."

Uh, I stated what the tax rate was for the top bracket, which bracket JFK was cutting, and I stated the lower rate that JFK proposed. This is in the part of my reply that you quoted. JFK cut taxes more than Reagan did. JFK’s tax cut was larger than the Reagan tax cuts and any single Bush tax cut compared with national income, and it was larger than all three Bush tax cuts combined in relation to the federal budget. In addition, JFK gave a huge tax cut to the rich. The Tax Foundation: Contrasting the size of the tax cuts with national income shows that the Kennedy tax cut, representing 1.9 percent of income, was the single largest first-year tax-cut of the post-WW II era. The Reagan tax cuts represented 1.4 percent of income while none of the Bush tax cut even breaks 1 percent of income. The Kennedy tax cuts would only have been surpassed in size by combining all three Bush tax cuts into a single package. Comparing the size of these tax cuts with the federal budget shows that the Kennedy’s tax cuts represented 8.8 percent of the budget. In 1981, Reagan’s tax cuts represented 5.3 percent of the budget. Each of Bush’s tax cuts are smaller than Reagan’s—EGTRRA (3.8 percent), JCWA (2.5 percent) and the 2003 Tax Cut (1.8 percent). When the Bush tax cuts are combined (8.1 percent), they would be larger than Reagan’s tax cut, yet smaller than Kennedy’s tax cut. ("Fiscal Facts," Tax Foundation, http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/323.html) Two articles of mine on the facts about tax cuts, revenue, and growth: https://miketgriffith.com/files/settingrecordstraight.htm The Facts About Tax Cuts, Revenue, and Growth (miketgriffith.com)

I didn't mention Skorzeny and his wife because they have nothing to do with the non-assassination-related liberal political preaching in the book. My point is that the book would appeal to a wider audience if it did not have such a heavy dose of liberal politics and did not tar-brush conservatives. I don't know of anyone who thinks that identifying Skorzeny and his wife's role in the plot is either liberal or conservative, since 99% of Americans detest Skorzeny's racist, fascist ideology.