Can we possibly AGREE....

[Jim Root]

Ron

I will try to find the exact cite but the information, if I remember correctly, comes from, "An American Soldier: the Wars of General Maxwell Taylor" John M. Taylor, Presidio Press, 1989 (john Taylor being Maxwell's son).

Taylor himself had been in a heated argument with Kennedy over the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 which, Taylor felt, put the US at a disadvantage with the Soviet Union in the development of small scale nuclear weapons. John J. McCloy agreed with Taylor on that point and actually refused Kennedy's request to negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets. Need to note that McCloy did not want the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1960 as well and the U-2 Incident led to the failure of the Paris Summit where the 1960 Treaty was to be signed. After Kennedy's assassination McCloy was brought back as Johnson's Chief Arms negotiator.

An interesting read is Maxwell Taylors speech to the graduating class at West Point in 1963 where he refers to the president as the "temporary custodian" of the Constitution. In the same group of activities leading up to that graduation John J. McCloy receives the Sylvanus Thayer Award and Edwin Walker resigns as a member of the West Point Alumni Association.

Some cotemporary input from others that knew Taylor:

"Military Analyst S.L.A. (Slam) Marshall of the Detroit News, a retired brigadier general and one of the nation's leading military historians (The River and the Gauntlet), has serious reservations about the man he followed through Normandy, Holland, Belgium and Korea. "I think I know Max Taylor as well as any man in America. He was an extraordinary battle commander-the most tightly self disciplined officer I ever knew. But Taylor is the wrong man for this job. Taylor is not a conciliator. He's actively interested in the exercise of power for his own sake."

Add this prophetic statement about Taylor in the same article that preceeded the assassiantion of John F. Kennedy by two years:

"He'd never mix with the fellows when we went on a trips, drink a beer or join in chitchat. He'd go over in a corner of the plane and read a book." Says one Hill leader, "I see nothing but trouble ahead."

Lawerence D. Freedman stated in a Foreighn Affairs article (September/October 2002):

"During the Cuban missile crisis, for example, the first offerings from the Joint Chiefs of Staff set as the U.S. objective the liberation of Cuba, even as the president set down the more restricted goal of removing offensive weapons from the island. When asked what the Soviet reaction might be to their preferred option of massive air strikes against the island, the brass answered, "Soviet reaction unknown." And they were still pressing for offensive action when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceded.'

"Kennedy later remarked that the first advice he would give to his successor was "to watch the generals" and not think that "just because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn."

Some thoughts...

Taylor was a special opps kind of guy. He did his famous mission to Rome in 1944 and if my information is correct other covert trips into Rome during WWII. His association with the Japanese language program in Tokyo prior to WWII (that became associated with Friedmans code work and the creation of the NSA), his pre Pearl Harbor South American tour, his creation of the "Green Berets", his battles with the other service Chiefs of Staff during the Eisenhower administration, his battles with Eisenhower on how the Army should be used, his conflict with the Air Force in matters of budget allocation and how the next war would be fought, etc., etc. show that Taylor could be discribed as an "independent thinker and lone wolf."

Taylor, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff held authority over NSA's General Blake, a former student of Taylors, he had a certain amount of control over the movements of the President via Chester Clifton and influence in the CIA through Marshall Carter, Deputy Director of the CIA. Both Carter and Blake were classmates of Edwin Walker at West Point and I have, in previous threads, addressed the associations between Taylor and Walker.

I have read that by the early 1960's NSA was controlling a majority of the US intelligence budget (Puzzle Palace). While in the mind of the public the CIA was the leading intelligence agency we have now learned that this was just not true. And the reality is that the NSA was associated with the Army from the begining.

Taylor, with a great amount of influence in the Kennedy Administration and with the internal and international power associated with control of the NSA was in a position to impose his will upon the American public. But perhaps not without the approval of his old tennis buddy John J. McCloy.

Jim Root

[Ron Ecker]

Ron

I will try to find the exact cite but the information, if I remember correctly, comes from, "An American Soldier: the Wars of General Maxwell Taylor" John M. Taylor, Presidio Press, 1989 (john Taylor being Maxwell's son).

Jim,

I have the book. His son states that Taylor was resting on his sofa when he was buzzed by General Tibbetts from the National Military Command Center informing him that JFK had been shot. He says that the first thing Taylor did was call McNamara out of a budget conference to inform him. Taylor then called a meeting of the JCS, with McNamara joining them.

That account is contradicted by McNamara himself. In his book In Retrospect (p. 90), McNamara was in his budget meeting and was informed by an urgent personal call from Bobby Kennedy that JFK had been shot. Then (shades of Rumsfeld after both towers had been hit on 9/11), McNamara continued with his meeting. Then a second call from Bobby Kennedy informed him that JFK was dead. Note that according to McNamara, not a word was said to him by Maxwell Taylor during this time. McNamara then says he met with the JCS (doesn't mention Taylor by name, and makes no mention of any West German officials being around).

McNamara says that Bobby later came to the Pentagon and he, Bobby, and Taylor flew by helicopter to Andrews to meet Air Force One. By that time, if Taylor had been in Dallas, he would have had time to return to DC by military jet.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Ron Ecker

[Jim Root]

Ron

Interesting.

Am I correct about the military not being put on high alert?

Jim Root

[Ron Ecker]

McNamara says in his book that when he met with the JCS, they agreed that "U.S. military forces worldwide should be placed on alert, a standard procedure in times of crisis." He doesn't say high alert.

[Jim Root]

According to a November 22, 2013 article, Bryan Bender and Neil Swindey, Globe staff writers seems to contradict McNamara's memory. First it seems that Bobby Kennedy only called McNamara long after McNamara should have already been aware of Kennedy's death and second that Bobby Kennedy called McNamara to arrange transportation to Dallas not to inform him of the Presidents death.

"...(Bobby) Kennedy glanced at his watch. It was 1:45 p.m. “We’d better hurry and get back to that meeting,” he told his guests.

Just then his wife, Ethel, called over to him, holding the patio phone extension. “It’s J. Edgar Hoover,” she said, a look of worry playing over her face. They both knew the FBI director never called Bobby at home....(Robert) Morgenthau, in a recent interview, recalled watching Kennedy drop his sandwich, race over to the phone, and then quickly cup his hand over his mouth as he heard the devastating news. “Jack’s been shot in Dallas,” Bobby said with a gasp. “It may be fatal.”.....

Walking the grounds of Hickory Hill just an hour after receiving confirmation of his brother’s death, Bobby confided in an aide something truly unsettling. That aide, Edwin Guthman, would later recount it in his book “We Band of Brothers.” “I thought they would get one of us,” Bobby said, adding, “I thought it would be me.”

In his second-floor library, Bobby tried to displace his grief with action, changing his clothes and then working the phones, according to previously published interviews with some of the people he interacted with in those initial hours. Reaching a Secret Service agent at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Bobby told him to make sure there was a priest at his brother’s side.

The actions the attorney general took in these first crucial hours underscored the various, critical roles he played as the nation’s top law enforcement official, as his brother’s chief protector, and as the Kennedy clan’s chief executive after his father suffered a debilitating stroke less than a year into JFK’s presidency.

Bobby called Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to arrange transport for him to Dallas, figuring he would head there. He took a call from John McCone, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and asked him, “Jack, can you come over?” He called family members, handing out assignments based on their individual strengths. His sister Jean, who was closest to the first lady, would fly to Washington to be with Jackie when she returned, while sister Eunice, who was closest to their mother, would fly to the family compound in Hyannis Port to be with Rose, according to William Manchester’s book “Death of a President.”

Meanwhile, he decided his younger brother Teddy would also fly to Hyannis Port, giving him the toughest task: breaking the news to their father. That, Joseph Kennedy’s personal nurse, Rita Dallas, said in an interview, would require some elaborate choreography. While awaiting Teddy’s arrival, the household staff had to pretend that the patriarch’s TV set was broken, a ruse to prevent him from learning the devastating news about his son from newsman Walter Cronkite.

Bobby called National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and, according to Manchester, instructed him to have the locks changed on his brother’s files, knowing that a new president, a man he did not trust, would soon be in charge. As for that new president in waiting, Bobby took a call from Lyndon Johnson as he sat aboard Air Force One, phoning to get from the attorney general the precise wording for the oath of office he would soon take. The conversation between RFK and LBJ, like their relationship itself, was strained, with their mutual disrespect barely concealed.

Even in his grief, Bobby had to recognize this: He may have been the second most powerful man in government, but the assassin’s bullet that killed the president had also gravely weakened his brother. It would usher into the Oval Office the man he had aggressively tried to keep off the ticket in 1960, and then had belittled and ostracized for the three years that followed. There would be payback.

When McCone arrived from CIA headquarters, Bobby paced the lawn of his estate with him. As Bobby later told historian and aide Arthur Schlesinger, he asked McCone point blank if the CIA “had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and they hadn’t.” McCone was a devout Catholic, leading many to believe that their shared faith was behind Bobby’s confidence in the CIA director’s candor."

It was a confusing time, I am sure, but whose account carries the most weight, Taylor's son or McNamara's which seems to be contradicted in some ways by those with Kennedy at the time?

I don't have that answer but appreciate how you are looking deeper into Maxwell Taylor's potential involvement in the assassination story Ron.....something I have been looking at for years.

Jim Root

[Ron Ecker]

Jim,

I can't comprehend why McNamara would write in his book that no one at the Pentagon told him that JFK had been shot. He got it in a phone call from Bobby. I mean, why would he write such a thing if it wasn't true? (Remember too that most of the other JFK Cabinet members were kept out of the way, literally, being together on a flight to Japan at the time of the assassination.)

[Cliff Varnell]

I will say, though, that my library has nothing from Mr. Drago. I have no idea who he is or what he believes.

Charles Drago is an incredibly self-righteous authoritarian who pretends to be King Cheese Anti-Authoritarian.

GO_FIGURE

Edited May 3, 2016 by Cliff Varnell

[Ron Ecker]

On 11/22/63 the Chief of Naval Operations, JCS, was Admiral David L. McDonald. He wrote an autobiography entitled The Reminiscences of Admiral David Lamar McDonald, published in 1976.

The book is out of print and unavailable new or used at Amazon.com. If anyone can get a hold of a copy of the book somehow, it would be interesting to know what if anything he says about where he was on 11/22/63.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 11/22/63 the Chief of Naval Operations, JCS, was Admiral David L. McDonald. He wrote an autobiography entitled The Reminiscences of Admiral David Lamar McDonald, published in 1976.

The book is out of print and unavailable new or used at Amazon.com. If anyone can get a hold of a copy of the book somehow, it would be interesting to know what if anything he says about where he was on 11/22/63.

The book is reportedly located at these two libraries:

University at North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC has multiple libraries.)

Contact

Nimitz Library, United States Naval Academy

Contact

:

Librarians are very helpful. They'll look up information in a book for you, and send you photocopies.

Your local library can request an interlibrary loan and get the book for you, or so I understand. (I've never done it myself.)

[Ron Ecker]

Sandy,

Thanks. I'll contact UNC.

[Jim Root]

Ron

Not sure why MacNamara or Taylor's son would write something that was not true. But from both I do believe that MacNamara was in a Budget meeting and that there was a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff. Two points which they both agree upon.

Of course I like the Taylor account because it fits with Max's protocol approach to things.....George Marshall was alone when the Japanese attacked (which he had pre-Knowledge of) and I find it interesting that Taylor would find a way to be sequestered alone when the assassination occurred ( if he had pre-knowledge of the potential for an assassination attempt).

Jim Root

[Cliff Varnell]

Ron

Not sure why MacNamara or Taylor's son would write something that was not true. But from both I do believe that MacNamara was in a Budget meeting and that there was a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff. Two points which they both agree upon.

Jim, if Taylor never informed his civilian boss that the commander in chief was dead -- that would be an egregious breach of duty, right?

The Pentagon not informing the Secretary of Defense that the President was dead -- isn't that scandalous?

Taylor & son had the motive to lie, not McNamara.

[Cliff Varnell]

The left can force Hillary to do good things, just like Obama was forced on net neutrality and same-sex marriage.

Like this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/12/hillary-clinton-to-support-federal-reserve-change-sought-by-liberals/

Bernie Sanders is demonstrating the power of the anti-oligarch Democratic grass roots.

I won a bet last week that left me saddened.

And embarrassed for my country.

Last September I bet $10 to win $30 that Donald J. Trump would win the Republican nomination.

First time in my life I wanted to lose a bet.

I liked the odds, but then after the San Bernardino-workplace-shooting & Trump's "Muslim ban" I thought for sure the Republican Globalists would sink the Big Orange Puss.

Now my betting window is open for Hillary Clinton/Elizabeth Warren all the way

Edited May 12, 2016 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

emphasis added

Ron

I will try to find the exact cite but the information, if I remember correctly, comes from, "An American Soldier: the Wars of General Maxwell Taylor" John M. Taylor, Presidio Press, 1989 (john Taylor being Maxwell's son).

Taylor himself had been in a heated argument with Kennedy over the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 which, Taylor felt, put the US at a disadvantage with the Soviet Union in the development of small scale nuclear weapons. John J. McCloy agreed with Taylor on that point and actually refused Kennedy's request to negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets. Need to note that McCloy did not want the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1960 as well and the U-2 Incident led to the failure of the Paris Summit where the 1960 Treaty was to be signed. After Kennedy's assassination McCloy was brought back as Johnson's Chief Arms negotiator.

So who did Kennedy get to negotiate the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets?

W. Averell Harriman.

In mid-August '63 Harriman -- the #3 man at Foggy Bottom -- was on the fast track to become the Sec of State in the second Kennedy Administration, a long coveted position.

On August 24 1963 he threw it all away when he engineered Cable 243 giving the green-light to a US sponsored coup in So. Vietnam.

Kennedy demoted Harriman in all but title after the Diem coup.

On 11/22/63 Harriman was still the #3 man at the State Department. With all the top cabinet officers out of town or, as in the case of McNamara, sidelined, it was the #2 man at State who acted in the line of succession -- George Ball.

It so happens that the two guys most responsible for Cable 243 -- Harriman and Ball -- were the top civilian officials on the job the day Kennedy was murdered.

I suppose the significance of this depends on one's capacity for co-incidence.

[Cliff Varnell]

Tying together a couple of strands on this thread...

http://www.apfn.net/dcia/woman.html

The Bush family were proteges of Averell Harriman.

He died in 1986 and his wife Pamela Churchill Harriman started spending lots of Harriman family money on her protege Bill Clinton.

Harriman proteges occupied the White House for 20 years after Ave died, and it sure looks as if there will be another 4 at least.