Who was JFK?

[Kenneth Drew]

Quoting excerpts from the records of the Sec Def Conference, that is a primary document not secondary spin:

Part IV: Withdrawal of US Forces:

"As a matter of urgency, a plan for withdrawal of about 1,000 US troops before the end of the year should be developed."

Part V: Phase out of US Forces

"SecDef advised that the phase out program presented during May 6 Conference appeared too slow. In consonance with Part 3, request you develop a revised plan to accomplish more rapid phase out of US Forces."

Comprehensive Plan: Republic of Vietnam

Item 2: Decision Made and Actions to be taken

1."Draw up training plans for the RVN that will permit US to start an earlier withdrawal of US personnel than proposed under the plan presented."

Item 3: Role of Attack AIrcraft

"Secdef stated the percentage of RVNAF effort was no greater than a year ago. Our sights should be higher and he wanted to get US pilots out of combat and transport operations."

Comprehensive Plan: Part 2, Force Structure

"At the same time, the Secretary stated that we should seek opportunities to leave our material behind for RVN to use wherever they can absorb it..."

Part C: Relations of Reductions in US Strength to Growth in Self Sufficiency

"In connection with this presentation...the Secretary of Defense stated that the phase out appears too slow. He directed that training plans be developed for the GVN by CINPAC which will permit a more rapid phase out..."

LOL Jim YOU cited the NYT article now you dismiss it as "secondary spin" no one disputes that JFK wanted to get out of the mess he essentially had created. But there is reason to doubt if he would have let Vietnam fall when their own military proved incapable of saving the country.

no one disputes that JFK wanted to get out of the mess he essentially had created. Is it accurate to say he (JFK) created it?

[Kenneth Drew]

Just thinking about what the Democrats have done to us (US citizens) and to the World. Since JFK left us, LBJ took over and amongst all his failures, the VietNam war was surely his monumental failure. Then we get Jimmy Carter: he continued the policies of surrender in the world, leaving us the Iranian situation amongst other things, Then we got Bill Clinton--Black Hawk Down, anyone? continued the surrendering in the middle east. And then comes the master, Barack Obama. Colossal failures everywhere.

[Kenneth Drew]

Few quotes have been taken out of context as much as Ike's "military industrial complex" comments from his 'farewell address.'

Maybe, but reading the details of when he made the speech and what he included within it, I'm not sure what 'taking it out of context' would accomplish. Seems straight forward that he was warning the country about the interests working to make a larger military a full time operation. And it has worked out that way.

[Kenneth Drew]

"David, I've mentioned this on here a few times, but according to Roger Stone, who was close to John Lodge, HCL had foreknowledge of Kennedy's assassination. If true, it rules out a 'rogue' operation and implies the assassination was somewhat of an 'open secret' among the most senior circles of government."

Well, I believe it, but for historical accuracy I have to call the Lodge recall "hearsay." If the assassination was an open secret - and that's not unbelievable - then George Michael Evica, Jim DiEugenio, and myself are right: it was approved at the highest levels of American-globalist capital, including the family with longstanding connections to the Lodges and OmHarrimans, and to the Bundys.

and implies the assassination was somewhat of an 'open secret' among the most senior circles of government." Interesting: Kinda fits with what I said above: " I don't think the US president can really stop these activities. May be beyond his 'paygrade'."

[Jon G. Tidd]

Jim D,

I don't know the assassination anywhere near what you know. But I know the Viet Nam war pretty well.

Viet Nam was a test for five American presidents -- Eisenhower through Ford.

None of these presidents wanted to be tagged with losing Viet Nam. Ford caved because he had no choice.

You cite John Newman, who has a PhD. and who was an army intel intelligence analyst (I don't know the MOS).

I was a counter-intelligence officer in Viet Nam, who was trained in the Cambodian language at DLI, who ran agents and did other things. I knew Viet Nam at ground level in a way John Newman could not have known.

I'll tell you this: the girls liked that could speak Vietnamese; the food was great; the war was always close, and it was good to speak Vietnamese; Americans contracted strange diseases (e.g., liver diseases) in Viet Nam; lots of Americans were wounded by friendly fire in Viet Nam. It was good to survive the Nam.

JFK and no person who was not a Viet Nam vet understood this. Just a Viet Nam vet's take.

[Paul Brancato]

Mr. Andrews - what family are you referring to?

[Kenneth Drew]

Jim D,

I don't know the assassination anywhere near what you know. But I know the Viet Nam war pretty well.

Viet Nam was a test for five American presidents -- Eisenhower through Ford.

None of these presidents wanted to be tagged with losing Viet Nam. Ford caved because he had no choice.

You cite John Newman, who has a PhD. and who was an army intel intelligence analyst (I don't know the MOS).

I was a counter-intelligence officer in Viet Nam, who was trained in the Cambodian language at DLI, who ran agents and did other things. I knew Viet Nam at ground level in a way John Newman could not have known.

I'll tell you this: the girls liked that could speak Vietnamese; the food was great; the war was always close, and it was good to speak Vietnamese; Americans contracted strange diseases (e.g., liver diseases) in Viet Nam; lots of Americans were wounded by friendly fire in Viet Nam. It was good to survive the Nam.

JFK and no person who was not a Viet Nam vet understood this. Just a Viet Nam vet's take.

Ford caved because he had no choice. I don't think that's fair to Ford. He didn't make a choice. The Congress voted to stop the war, put it on them. They were Democrats and deserved the credit/blame

[Pat Speer]

Jim D,

I don't know the assassination anywhere near what you know. But I know the Viet Nam war pretty well.

Viet Nam was a test for five American presidents -- Eisenhower through Ford.

None of these presidents wanted to be tagged with losing Viet Nam. Ford caved because he had no choice.

You cite John Newman, who has a PhD. and who was an army intel intelligence analyst (I don't know the MOS).

I was a counter-intelligence officer in Viet Nam, who was trained in the Cambodian language at DLI, who ran agents and did other things. I knew Viet Nam at ground level in a way John Newman could not have known.

I'll tell you this: the girls liked that could speak Vietnamese; the food was great; the war was always close, and it was good to speak Vietnamese; Americans contracted strange diseases (e.g., liver diseases) in Viet Nam; lots of Americans were wounded by friendly fire in Viet Nam. It was good to survive the Nam.

JFK and no person who was not a Viet Nam vet understood this. Just a Viet Nam vet's take.

Ford caved because he had no choice. I don't think that's fair to Ford. He didn't make a choice. The Congress voted to stop the war, put it on them. They were Democrats and deserved the credit/blame

We must have been reading different papers, fellas. Nixon made the agreements that ended the war, and Ford followed through on it. After a decent interval, which many think was planned out in advance, the North Vietnamese re-started hostilities. The Democrats then refused to give Ford the funding to re-start the war, should he have wanted to jump back in and save the South Vietnamese government.

But he didn't actually want to jump back in and save the South Vietnamese government!

Edited July 25, 2015 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

That is correct Pat. Its part of a new article I am working on for Bob Parry.

Nixon fought to keep his tapes and papers sealed until he died. We now know why.

The tapes are devastating to his legacy. There is no way around it. The guy not only lied to the public in office. He also lied in his books once he was out of office.

He knew that the war could not be won in 1969. He then tried to frighten Giap and the Russians with Cambodia and a nuclear alert. When that did not work, in fact it backfired, he settled on the decent interval strategy. Which he also lied about.

Edited July 25, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Jon:

In my work on Vietnam, I don't just use John Newman. I use him here because his was the first book length treatment of the subject and it was quite compelling. Therefore I read it twice and took a lot of notes. So I know that book quite well.

But its not like its the only one out there. Consider the following:

JFK and the Unspeakable by Jim Douglass

Virtual JFK by James Blight

American Tragedy by David Kaiser

Death of a Generation by Howard Jones

Lessons in Disaster by Gordon Goldstein

These all agree with John's main thesis. Namely that Kennedy was planning on leaving Vietnam, his assassination altered the intent, and Johnson then reversed what JFK was going to do. In fact, the Blight book offers documentary evidence that Johnson knew he was reversing Kennedy's withdrawal plan and he enlisted McNamara in that deception.

And although John's book has held up well, he is doing a revision of it right now. If you asked me to judge these books strictly on the merits today, total objectivity, I would have to say that Kaiser's book is probably the best because he deals with a longer time span than John does, and he includes Laos in his study in addition to Vietnam.

Edited July 25, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[Kenneth Drew]

Jim D,

I don't know the assassination anywhere near what you know. But I know the Viet Nam war pretty well.

Viet Nam was a test for five American presidents -- Eisenhower through Ford.

None of these presidents wanted to be tagged with losing Viet Nam. Ford caved because he had no choice.

You cite John Newman, who has a PhD. and who was an army intel intelligence analyst (I don't know the MOS).

I was a counter-intelligence officer in Viet Nam, who was trained in the Cambodian language at DLI, who ran agents and did other things. I knew Viet Nam at ground level in a way John Newman could not have known.

I'll tell you this: the girls liked that could speak Vietnamese; the food was great; the war was always close, and it was good to speak Vietnamese; Americans contracted strange diseases (e.g., liver diseases) in Viet Nam; lots of Americans were wounded by friendly fire in Viet Nam. It was good to survive the Nam.

JFK and no person who was not a Viet Nam vet understood this. Just a Viet Nam vet's take.

Ford caved because he had no choice. I don't think that's fair to Ford. He didn't make a choice. The Congress voted to stop the war, put it on them. They were Democrats and deserved the credit/blame

We must have been reading different papers, fellas. Nixon made the agreements that ended the war, and Ford followed through on it. After a decent interval, which many think was planned out in advance, the North Vietnamese re-started hostilities. The Democrats then refused to give Ford the funding to re-start the war, should he have wanted to jump back in and save the South Vietnamese government.

But he didn't actually want to jump back in and save the South Vietnamese government!

I agree with your scenario, I might have stated something differently, but you did very well.

[James DiEugenio]

Now that we have mapped out the evidence for Kennedy's withdrawal plan being in order in 1963, let us now demonstrate how his intent to withdraw was reversed in a very short time period. And further, how the new president attempted to cover up that reversal.

LBJ did not have any of the sophistication or insight into foreign affairs,demonstrated with my opening powerpoint, that Kennedy had. As Frederick Logevall shows in his book Choosing War, he was much more the classic Cold Warrior who would have been at home with Foster Dulles' banal bromides about the red specter of Godless communism threatening to spread from Indochina to the Philippines to Hawaii to California if Saigon fell. Therefore he was much more in tune with what the CIA and the military wanted in Vietnam, that is direct American intervention. In fact, when JFK sent him there in 1961, he actually discussed that subject with Diem. (Destiny Betrayed, Second Editon, p. 367)

But, more to the point, as I noted, Kennedy understood that the military was disguising the true facts of the war with a double set of intelligence records. One was the true record, which was pretty bad about our progress. The other was the "official" rosy record that showed how well we were doing. As Newman shows, somehow, probably through his military attache Howard Burris, Johnson had access to the real record which showed how badly the war was going, even with the additional advisors Kennedy had sent in. (Newman, pgs. 225-27)

In May of 1963 during the large Buddhist demonstration against Diem, two percussion bombs went off near a radio station killing seven and wounding 15. The immediate deduction was that this was the work of the government security forces guided by Diem's brother Nhu. But at the hospital, the supervising physician disagreed. He had never seen such powerful explosives used by Nhu's men or the Viet Cong. In fact, Nhu had him jailed because he would not say the latter were the perps. The doctor figured that the lack of metal in the bodies betrayed a bomb that was detonated in air, a plastic bomb. Which neither Nhu nor the Viet Cong used at the time.

The local authorities concluded that the bombs were planted by a CIA agent under military guise, Captain Scott. Scott later admitted to this. He said he used "an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people in the CIA, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device." (Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, 131)

This was the beginning of the Buddhist protests spiraling out of control and destabilizing Diem's government.

Edited July 25, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

In September of 1963, columnist Stewart Alsop, under the influence of Ambassador to Saigon Henry Cabot Lodge, published a column saying that Diem and Nhu were contemplating indirect contacts with the North in order to get a cease fire. But the north demanded that the US personnel leave first. (Douglass, p. 191) Lodge knew that the military would never go along with such an agreement.

Lodge then asked the dissident generals "What would you consider a sign that the American government does indeed intend to support you generals in a coup?" Duong Van Minh replied "Let the United States suspend economic aid to the Diem government." Twelve days later David Bell from AID told a surprised Kennedy that the Commodity Import Program that propped up Diems' government had been suspended. Kennedy said, "Who the hell told you to do that?" (ibid p. 192)

Lodge had already maneuvered to have the regular CIA station chief removed from Saigon, since he knew he would not support the removal of Diem. Therefore, the de facto man in charge of the CIA station was Lucien Conein. Conein was the contact man with the dissident generals. Lodge and Conein were now countering Kennedy's soft approach with Diem and transforming it into a hard line approach. In September, the now famous Richard Starnes article appeared. It described the CIA's growing power in Saigon and likened it to a malignancy that even the White House could not control. It concluded with, "If the United States ever experiences a Seven Days in May, it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon." (ibid, p. 195)

When the coup began, Diem and Nhu made a terrible mistake and stayed in contact with Lodge as they tried to escape. This allowed Lodge to convey this relocation to Conein, who was in contact with the generals. This resulted in the murders of Diem and his brother. (ibid p. 210)

[Len Colby]

Colby:

You asked me for the date of the NY Times article. You then cherry picked from it just what you wanted. You did not link to it. And you cut off the title which said, JFK had exit plan from Vietnam.

JFK made a mess of Vietnam? You cannot be serious can you? As I proved above, that commitment, down to the splitting up of the country and the creation of a new entity called South Vietnam, and the entry of American advisors, was all done by Eisenhower, Dulles and Nixon. And they then reneged on their promise to reunite the country in 1956, because they knew the guy they found to lead the new country of South Vietnam, namely Diem, would lose a national election to Ho Chi Minh. That was the event which caused the war.

As per not following through on the May Sec Def plan to exit, well yeah if you eliminate the following, you can say there is ambiguity about it:

1. The McNamara Taylor Trip

2. Kennedy's heisting of their report and his editing of it through the WhIte House and then presenting his version to them

3. Kennedy's ramrodding of this report through his advisors

4. The issuance of NSAM 263 and its attachment to this report

5. The newly discovered evacuation plan

Which takes us all the way through November of 1963.

So maybe Colby arranged a seance to talk to JFK more recently, and the spirit said, "Hey I was really just kidding with all this stuff."

Here's the link. Unlike you I took nothing out of context, I edited for brevity. The rest of the article was along the same lines, JFK had a withdrawal plan but it's unclear if he would have implemented it if he had lived. You OTOH falsely indicated the article supported your assertion.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/12/23/us/kennedy-had-a-plan-for-early-exit-in-vietnam.html

No one indicated JFK was kidding but rather that he plan to pull out seems to have been contingent on the South Vietnamese being able to fend for themselves.

I called it "the mess he essentially had created" because there were 900 advisers at the end of 1960 but 16,300 by the end of 1963, people in his administration have spoken of it being considered a "Kennedy operation" no advisers saw combat till he was POTUS

[Len Colby]

Those who think Ike's “MIC” comment was not taken out of context should read the transcript without any spin.

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=90&page=transcript