What is the Kennedy Cult anyway?

[James DiEugenio]

I forgot more about the JFK administration than you will ever know.

And your misrepresentations of events is done with an élan that is so utterly agenda driven, and in such disregard of the evidence, that it becomes solipsistic, or as I say, Varnellian. 

Which means its no good to anyone, except yourself. 

And you will do anything in order to express these solipsisms--including t-r-o-l-l-i-n-g-- for the simple reason that no one buys them.  For good reason.  

Why not set your own web site up on the JFK case Cliff?  It will have these tabs: ice bullet, flechette, Harriman, The Matrix, T-3.  It will create a sensation.  

You might get five people there a week.

 

[Michael Clark]

Please reset yourself guys. You are sliding into the game of personal attacks and name calling. I appreciate the presence of both of you immensely.

[Cliff Varnell]

17 minutes ago, Michael Clark said:

Please reset yourself guys. You are sliding into the game of personal attacks and name calling. I appreciate the presence of both of you immensely.

I'd love to hear what I have wrong in my analyses.  Bay of Pigs, Laos, Diem?

That's how I learn.

I've been doing this for 21 years.  Nothing personal Sonny it's strictly business.

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Ellen J. Hammer's A Death in November: America in Vietnam 1963, pgs 177-80 (emphasis in the original):

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Washington, August 24, 1963

A handful of men in the State Department and the White House had been awaiting an opportunity to encourage the Vietnamese army to move against the [Diem] government. They intended to exploit the latest crisis [massive raids on Buddhist pagodas August 21] in Saigon to the full. "Averell [Harriman] and Roger [Hilsman] now agree that we must move before the situation in Saigon freezes," Michael Forrestal of the White House staff wrote in a memorandum to President Kennedy.

..."Harriman, Hilsman and I favor taking...action now," Forrestal informed the president. Kennedy was at his Hyannis Port residence in Massachusetts for the weekend. The three men had drafted a cable of their own to [uS Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot] Lodge. The substance, according to Forrestal, had been generally agreed to by [commander in chief of Pacific Command (CINCPAC)] Admiral [Harry D.] Felt. "Clearances [are] being obtained from [Acting Secretary of State] Ball and [the Department of] Defense...Will advise you reactions Ball and Defense, but suggest you let me know if you wish comment or hold-up action." A copy of their draft was dispatched to the president.

This would become Department of State telegram No. 243.

It stated that the American government could not tolerate a situation in which power lay in [Diem brother and head of SVN secret police] Nhu's hands. Military leaders were to be informed that the United States would find it impossible to continue military and economic support to the government unless prompt dramatic actions were taken by Diem to redress Buddhist grievances and remove the Nhus from the scene...Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary...

...Harriman and Hilsman were determined to send their cable that very day. They found Acting Secretary of State [George] Ball on the golf course, and he telephoned the president in Hyannis Port. Kennedy made no difficulty about giving his approval, assuming that the appropriate officials agreed.

After the call to Kennedy the rest was simple. Ball telephoned [secretary of State Dean] Rusk in New York and told him the president had already agreed, and Rusk gave his own unenthusiastic endorsement. When Roswell Gilpatric (McNamara's deputy at Defense) was called at home by Forrestal, he too was told that Kennedy had cleared the telegram and he was assured that Rusk had seen it. Gilpatric reluctantly gave the clearance of the Department of Defense but was concerned enough about the substance of the cable and the way it had been handled to alert General Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Taylor sent for a copy of the cable. When he read it, his first reaction was that the anti-Diemists in the State Department had taken advantage of the absence of the principal officials to get out instructions that would never have been approved as written under ordinary circumstances. John McCone also was out of town, and rather than try to locate him Harriman had reached Richard Helms, who provided the clearance of the Central Intelligence Agency.

With the president's approval State Department telegram 243 was dispatched to Saigon at 9:36 P.M. on August 24.

John Kennedy would regard this as a major mistake on his part, according to his brother Robert. "He had passed it off too quickly over the weekend at the Cape--he had thought it was cleared by McNamara and Taylor and everyone at State. In fact, it was Harriman, Hilsman and Mike Forrestal at the White House and they were all the ones who were strongly for a coup. Harriman was particularly strong for a coup.

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ibid, pg 185:

<quote on>

Washington, August 26-27, 1963

...In the cool halls of the White House the hectic plotting of the weekend took on an air of unreality. Robert Kennedy had talked with Taylor and McNamara and discovered that "nobody was behind it, nobody knew what we were going to do, nobody knew what our policy was; it hadn't been discussed, as everything else had been discussed since the Bay of Pigs in full detail before we did anything--nothing like that had been done before the decision made on Diem, and so by Tuesday we were trying to pull away from that policy..."

President Kennedy belatedly realized that no one had spelled out to him the ramifications for the policy he had approved so lightly. He was irritated at the disagreement among his advisers. Taylor, McNamara, and McCone all were critical of the attempt to run a coup in Saigon. Even Rusk seemed to have second thoughts. "The government was split in two," Robert Kennedy recalled. "It was the only time really in three years, the government was broken in two in a very disturbing way."

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Edited May 19, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

From the Church Comm. testimony of CIA Director William Colby (pg 17)

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_1_Colby.pdf

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Mr. CHAIRMAN: Is it not true, too, that the effort not only involved not only designing a gun that could strike at a human target without knowledge of the person who had been struck, but the toxin itself would not appear in the autopsy?

Mr. COLBY: Well, there was an attempt—

Mr. CHAIRMAN: Or the dart.

Mr. COLBY: Yes; so there was no way of perceiving that the target was hit.

Mr. CHAIRMAN: As a murder instrument, that is about as efficient as you can get, is it not?

Mr. COLBY: It is a weapon, a very serious weapon.

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Edited May 19, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, pg 170-1: another Big Lie.

<quote on, emphasis added>

In a small alcove of the autopsy room at Bethsda Naval Hospital, the acting chief of radiology, Dr. John Ebersole, clips the last of the x-rays onto a light box. Nothing. No bullet. The president's entire body has been x-rayed and still the doctors have been unable to determine what happened to the bullet that struck his back.

"Where did it go? someone asked.

The doctors have no idea. A discussion ensues about what might have happened to it. Someone suggests the possibility that a soft-nosed bullet struck the president and disintegrated. Others contemplate that the bullet could have been "plastic", and therefore not easily seen by x-rays, or that it was an "Ice" bullet, which dissolved after contact. None of the suggestions made much sense, but then neither did the absence of a bullet. FBI agent Jim Sibert decided to call the FBI laboratory and find out if anyone there knew of a bullet that would almost completely fragmentize. He managed to reach Charles L. Killion of the firearms section of the lab, who said he never heard of such a thing. After Sibert explained the problem. Killion asked if he was aware that a bullet had been found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital.  Sibert hadn't and is nearly certain that no one else at the morgue has either. Sibert hangs up the phone, returns to the autopsy room, and informs the three pathologists that a bullet had been recovered at Parkland Hospital.

<quote off>

Wrong!

The FBI knew all about high tech weaponry.

From the Church Comm. testimony of Charles Senseney:

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf

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Senseney: And the only thing that I can say is, I just have to suppose that, having been told to maintain the sort of show and tell display of hardware that we had on sort of stockpile for them, these were not items that could be used. They were display items like you would see in a museum, and they used those to show to the agents as well as to the FBI, to acquaint them with possible ways that other people could attack our own people. (pg 163)

Baker: ...There are about 60 agencies of Government that do either intelligence or law enforcement work.

Senseney: I am sure most all of those knew of what we were doing; yes...

...The FBI never used anything. They were only shown so they could be aware of what might be brought into the country.

(pg 166)

<quote off>

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Kirk Gallaway]

Cliff said:

Ever see JDiE admit Kennedy ever screwed up? 

No, in years on this forum. I have never once seen Jim Di acknowledge that JFK ever made a mistake in anything. And for the first time in my memory only a few days ago, Jim was forced to admit to me he's wrong, in assertions he just couldn't possibly deny.

While most everyone here has a healthy idealistic vision of JFK,.  I've felt given Di Eugenio's continual fawning over JFK, and his continual sort of soap box propagandizing is such that I might in the same somewhat biting sarcasm Cliff's using, classify Di Eugenio as a "JFK fanboy". But I prefer to characterize Jim Di's emulation of JFK, as having an element  of "adolescent hero worship" which you could argue is pretty similar language. For Jim there's always this compulsion to defend the nobility and heroism of JFK. You have no further to look than this very thread itself, rather than tit for tat answering   Hagger's charges, who other than Jim would opt to start a whole other thread to rally support of others? (which is always very important to him)

Obviously where there's a cult, there has to be followers. I've seen  a bit of knee jerk agreement and rather kiss butt comments to Jim that don't make me feel comfortable, but some of it is an healthy admiration for Jim's authorship and his efforts in the forum, which are substantial, and greater than any other single individual at this point. I think what makes me feel uncomfortable is that I find myself often in essence saying  either outright to Jim or in my own thoughts, "Thank You, but I can make my own judgments".  But I know I'm not the only one, so no cult.

I think of JFK as a more fallible and human figure than Jim, and to me it makes his story greater.. As an aside, I should say, I personally do find Jim's outlook as dark, gloomy,  and paranoid, and IMO the more closer to present day realities, the less relevant and more clueless his pronouncements become.  Jim seems preoccupied with perpetuating this dark ongoing victimization of the Kennedy's, which is at odds with the facts. Jim  insisted that Caroline Kennedy  was somehow robbed because she just wasn't rewarded outright Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat, even though she was a complete newcomer who really hadn't done much work for the party. I don't think we should resort to conspiracy name calling when decisions are made through a meritocracy.

The truth is, the Clinton's and the Bush's are gone. There's a lot that the follower's of the Kennedy legacy might be able to look forward to. The Kennedy political identity is largely untarnished, and is  currently the most viable  political dynasty on the American political scene, and the name now has a more broad base of political support than ever before. That probably runs counter to Jim's fatal story line. I've certainly never heard anything in the present that is at all hopeful from Jim.

                                                                 *****************

Jim says:The two best sources on this by far are John Newman's milestone book JFK and Vietnam, Chapter 18.  That tells the story from the American side.

In JFK and the Unspeakable pp 148-211, you will see it more from the Saigon side.

 

Not to key just on Jim here, But isn't that what it so often comes down to? One researcher/ author arrogantly proclaiming another in some cases, cherry picked author as the definitive source?

                                                                       **********

 

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Kirk Gallaway

[James DiEugenio]

When I site a source or two, its because i have been through much of the literature on JFK.  That is the basic biographies, and the longer biographies.

Plus I have been through the books on Vietnam, and I have reviewed most of them.  So I have a familiarity with the authors.  Whenever you review a book like I do, which means at length and in depth, then you simply have to take notes and then you have to go back and have the book in front of you to check it again.  Now, if you can show me anyone else who writes those kinds of frequent reviews, then please do.

Now, having read and digested these books that means I know what is in them.  But its not just a single analysis, but because I have read scores of others that means I can do what is called a comparative analysis.  What did this author discover and write compared to what another did on the same subject or a related subject.  

This particular subject, of Kennedy's foreign policy in the Third World, has  for me been kind of obfuscated because in the JFK assassination field it has been dominated by Cuba and Vietnam. About five years ago I decided well, if that was the end factor of study, then why does it not explain three key points:

1. Why did Kennedy not send in the Navy to save the Bay of Pigs?

2. Why did Kennedy not commit combat troops to Vietnam in November of 1961 when everyone in the room was urging him to do so during that two week debate? 

3. Why did Kennedy not bomb the missile sites during the Missile Crisis as everyone, even McNamara was urging him to do by the second week?

Its key to note that the first two occurred in 1961.  This predates what many authors, including Jim Douglass, note as Kennedy's transformation during he Missile Crisis.

Now, what is also important to note here is that we should understand that both Nixon and Eisenhower wanted JFK to send in the Navy at Bay of Pigs.  Nixon told him to do so during the crisis and Eisenhower could not understand why he did not after. We should also understand that LBJ always wanted to commit combat troops to Indochina, as has been revealed by declassified tapes in the book Virtual JFK. (Which I am sure Kirk and CV have read numerous times. As you can tell from their citations)  In Goldstein's book, Lessons in Disaster, you will learn that Eisenhower backed LBJ all the way on Vietnam escalation, including the use of tactical nukes in Vietnam. (I am sure Kirk and CV read that book also as one can tell by their citations.)  Both LBJ and then Nixon violated Kennedy's strictures on going into Cambodia and Laos.  Nixon of course obliterated them, leading to the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia and the death of about two million people. I don't think I need to even review what LBJ would have done had he been in charge during the Missile Crisis, as one just has to read his comments in The Kennedy Tapes. (And I am sure CV and Kirk have done that, as can be revealed by their citations.)

So when these two talk about things like Fan Boys etc., I am somewhat befuddled.  When one does a comparative analysis, one discerns key points and quotes and one can then cite differences in values and actions.  Based upon this analysis, I can comfortably say that Cuba would have been a colony of America if Nixon had been president in 1961.  I can also safely say that American combat troops would have been in Vietnam in 1961 if Ike, Nixon or LBJ would have been president in 1961.There would have been no missile crisis with those men since American troops would have occupied the island and Castro and Che Guevara would have been in prison or dead by 1962.

Now, if you prefer those policies then just say so. Maybe there are more neocons here than I thought.  I don't prefer American intervention in the Third World. Because that usually denotes American imperialism. Which gets to what was my next question.  Having discerned this lacuna in the research I decided well, why?  Why did JFK not do any of those things?

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

3 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

When I site a source or two, its because i have been through much of the literature on JFK.  That is the basic biographies, and the longer biographies.

Plus I have been through the books on Vietnam, and I have reviewed most of them.  So I have a familiarity with the authors.  Whenever you review a book like I do, which means at length and in depth, then you simply have to take notes and then you have to go back and have the book in front of you to check it again.  Now, if you can show me anyone else who writes those kinds of reviews, then please do.

Now, having read and digested these books that means I know what is in them.  But its not just a single analysis, but because I have read scores of others that means I can do what is called a comparative analysis.  What did this author discover and write compared to what another did on the same subject or a related subject.  

This particular subject, of Kennedy's foreign policy in the Third World, has a for me been kind of obfuscated because in the JFK assassination field it has been dominated by Cuba and Vietnam. About five years ago I decided well, if that was the end factor of study, then why does it not explain three key points:

1. Why did Kennedy not send in the Navy to save the Bay of Pigs?

2. Why did Kennedy not commit combat troops to Vietnam in November of 1961 when everyone in the room was urging him to do so during that two week debate? 

3. Why did Kennedy not bombs the missile sites during the Missile Crisis as everyone, even McNamara was urging him to do by the second week?

Its important I think to note that the first two occurred in 1961.  This predates what many authors, including Jim Douglass, note as Kennedy's transformation during he Missile Crisis.

Now, what is important to note here is that we should understand that both Nixon and Eisenhower wanted JFK to send in the Navy at Bay of Pigs.  Nixon told him to do so during the crisis and Eisenhower could not understand why he did not after.

So what?  That wasn't the plan under Kennedy.

The pressure on Kennedy NOT to send in the Navy was overwhelming; the pressure to send in the Navy slight at best.

https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/bay-of-pigs-invasion-kennedys-cuban-catastrophe/

<quote on>

That the United States had been behind the operation was soon reported by the press and revealed in the United Nations. Unaccustomed to setbacks in what had so far been a charmed political life, Kennedy was devastated by the Bay of Pigs disaster. An adviser who peeped into the White House bedroom as the operation was failing observed JFK crying in the arms of his wife Jackie. He called his father for advice every hour, yet did not receive the paternal support he had anticipated. “Oh hell,” Joseph Kennedy told his son,“if that’s the way you feel, give the job to Lyndon [Vice President Johnson].”

<quote off>

Joe Kennedy on Allen Dulles & Co. "It's a lucky thing they were found out early."

Joe knew Dulles would take the fall, wanted his son to buck up.

3 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

We should also understand that LBJ always wanted to commit combat troops to Indochina as has been revealed by declassified tapes in the book Virtual JFK. (Which I am sure Kirk and CV have read numerous times. As you can tell from their citations)  In Goldstein's book, Lessons in Disaster, you will learn that Eisenhower backed LBJ all the way on Vietnam escalation, including the use of tactical nukes in Vietnam. (I am sure Kirk and CV read that book also as one can tell by their citations.)  Both LBJ and then Nixon violated Kennedy's strictures on going into Cambodia and Laos.  Nixon of course obliterated them, leading to the Pol Pot genocide in Cambodia and the death of about two million people. I don't think I need to even review what LBJ would have done had he been in charge during the Missile Crisis, as one just has to rad his comments in The Kennedy Tapes. (And I am sure CV and Kirk have done that as can be revealed by their citations.)

My beef with you is over the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy's policy in Laos, the overthrow of Diem, and the root facts of the JFK assassination.

You exaggerate beyond belief the pressure on Kennedy to send in the Navy at the BOP; you don't appear cognizant of the partition of Laos as an expression of JFK's pro-Non-Alignment stance; you appear oblivious to the reasons for the over-throw of Diem; you don't know the first thing about the murder of JFK -- he was shot in the back at T3, that's the first thing to know.

3 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

So when these two talk about things like Fan Boys etc., I am somewhat befuddled.  When one does a comparative analysis, one discerns key points and quotes and one can then cite differences in values and actions.  Based upon this analysis, I can say that Cuba would have been a colony os America if Nixon had been president in 1961.  I can also say that American combat troops would have been in Vietnam in 1961 if Ike, Nixon or LBJ would have been president in 1961.There would have been no missile crisis with those men since American troops would have occupied the island and Castro and Che Guevara would have been in prison or dead.

You're a fanboy because you won't admit JFK screwed up green-lighting the Bay of Pigs, the over-throw of Diem, and in hindsight giving the Reds the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

 

[James DiEugenio]

To find out the answer to that question I personally had to stray a little bit out of the usual area of reference.  And this happened by accident.  I was on vacation in a little resort town called Julian near San Diego.  I walked into a bookstore, as I usually do on such excursions, and I noticed the now famous picture of Kennedy getting the news of Lumumba's death on the cover of Mahoney's book JFK: Ordeal in Africa. I had never seen this book before.  And I did not recall it being mentioned in any JFK assassination book at that time (the mid nineties).  So I  decided to buy the book.  In reading it i was quite taken aback by the information in it.  Because I had never read any of this stuff in any JFK assassination book or in any JFK biography.

What Mahoney did was trace the evolution of Kennedy's ideas about American interventionism in the Third World from what is now that famous meeting with Edmund Gullion in Saigon in 1951 all the way to the great Algeria speech in 1957.  But then he went beyond that.  He showed how that speech made Kennedy the unofficial ambassador in Washington to African dignitaries, and he then showed how Kennedy and Gullion began to institute those ideas when he became president in the Congo.  This indicated to me that there was something rotten in Denmark,  in two ways.

1.) Why was this detailed information not in any previous biography I had read of Kennedy?  After all, the book was published in 1983. Was there a reason for this?  And if so, was it related to his murder?

2.) This information seemed to partly contravene the thesis that somehow JFK was transformed by the Missile Crisis. Because the first country he changed Eisenhower's policy in once inaugurated was Congo, not knowing that Lumumba had been killed.

Realizing how important this was, Lisa Pease and I wrote a two part article for Probe. The first was about Kennedy's policies in Congo and his struggle to keep the country free of imperialism.  The second part was about the murder of Hammarkskjold.  And this was before Susan Williams' book on that case. (Which I am sure Kirk and CV have read because of all their citations to it.)

I continued to study this issue off and on.  And then about five years ago I decided to make it my prime area of concentration. Thankfully, other authors have done some good work on this issue, like Robert Rakove, Phil Muelhenbeck and Greg Poulgrain. (As you can see from references, Kirk and CV have read all of these authors.)  And so I have come to the conclusion that it was these ideas formed way back in 1951 that dictated the three different decisions that JFK made in the instances I named above.  That his basic foreign policy vision was formed before he entered the White House.  And that is why he did not do those things.  Now, I will offer that I do think the Missile Crisis did prompt the acceptance of the overture from Castro and the American University speech in 1963.  

 There is one last question about this concept.  Why did what Gullion said to Kennedy hit home with him as it did?  I think the answer is in Mahoney's book.  Mahoney describes a conversation Nehru had with Kennedy. He was trying to impress upon JFK the evils of British colonialism.  Kennedy stopped him and replied that no one had to lecture him about that issue. He came from a nation that had endured it for 800 years.  He was talking about his Irish background of course.  Which he never forgot.  And that is I think the answer to that question about Gullion.  See, he never joined the CFR, or any secret societies in college, and he did not like working intel.  He got out of that and volunteered for those suicide missions in the South Pacific.  With this those Joe Sixpack guys, and like Gullion, he brought at least one of them back to the White House with him. 

In addition to Congo, this paradigm illustrates his policy in Indochina, Indonesia, Algeria, the rest of Africa, the Middle East and Dominican Republic to name some of them.  And I have talked about these with examples in the lectures I have done on the subject.  

 

 

Edited May 19, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

21 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

 And so I have come to the conclusion that it was these ideas formed way back in 1951 that dictated the three different decisions that JFK made in the instances I named above.  That his basic foreign policy vision was formed before he entered the White House.  And that is why he did not do those things. 

JFK still ordered regime change in Cuba on Sunday April 16th.  No, he didn't send in the Navy -- that was explicitly never part of the plan once Dean Rusk took over at State.

He sent 1400 Cuban guys into certain defeat because he didn't grasp the significance of the D-Day-2 failed false flag attacks.

He never should have given that order, he was bum-rushed by Rusk and Bundy.

And then August 24.1963: JFK bum-rushed by Averell Harriman and George Ball into okaying Cable 243 green-lighting coup d'etat in So,Vietnam.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[James DiEugenio]

Now up until these new books and the new work on these areas, the JFK field focused on the reversals of Kennedy's foreign policy in Cuba and Vietnam after his death.  Not knowing about these other areas, they ignored what happened there.

Lisa Pease did a very good two part essay about Indonesia, and that was the first real exploration of another impact of Kennedy's death on his foreign policy.  It was quite important I think since it resulted in a huge bloodbath, and also the great wealth of that country going to Suharto and American imperialists through the Whitney/Rockefeller controlled Freeport Sulphur. 

But the pattern also repeated itself in Congo, where LBJ and the CIA brought in air power, took over the embassy, and used some Operation Forty guys as pilots to wipe out the last of Lumumba's followers,  and Mobutu took over and the Belgians and British now benefited from the wealth of the Congo.

I don't think I have to detail what happened in Indochina, except to say that Nixon and Kissinger made it all a lot worse.   And they both lied about the contemplated use of atomic weapons.  As Jeff Kimball has detailed in his two books--which I am sure both Kirk and CV have read because of their references to them--they did contemplate bombing the dikes and also using nuclear weapons to stop the Easter Offensive.

In the Dominican Republic, LBJ reversed Kennedy's embargo on the military takeover of Dominican Republic, and then sent in troops under false circumstances to prevent Juan Bosch from taking the presidency back.  Contrary to popular belief, it is this use of the military which began to drive a wedge between Johnson and Fulbright.  Since the senator concluded that LBJ had lied about this and this caused him to belatedly question the Gulf of Tonkin incident.  And that caused him to open hearings on Vietnam.

I could go into other areas, like what LBJ did with Nasser after Kennedy tried to befriend him, what LBJ did with Israel by allowing them to go ahead with their bomb project etc.  And some of these trends were exacerbated by Nixon and Kissinger.

But the point is, this is not Fan Boy stuff.  This is scholarship based upon research.  And its still going on.  Therefore in my opinion to use those slurs tells me that one is either unaware of these facts or simply does not care about them. Or maybe one's personal agenda does not deem them important.

I do think they are important.  And clearly the people who followed JFK  and consciously reversed them thought so too.  One only has to ask the people in Africa and Indonesia how crucial they were. When Sukarno heard the news of Kennedy's death he weeped and said, "Why did they kill Kennedy?"

Edited May 19, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

So JFK made mistakes. And JFK tried, increasingly, to do the right thing. That’s why I care. Why focus on his mistakes? Somehow it’s important to get DiEugenio to agree? He’s better read than any of us. He’s not perfect. Who is? The books he recommended, which Kirk mentioned, are great books. RFK Jr. himself recommended JFK and the Unspeakable. Newman is digging deeper into the document weeds than anyone. And I agree with Jim completely on the importance of Africa and Indonesia in understanding the difference between JFK and the presidents and policies that came before and after. It’s obvious. 

Edited May 19, 2018 by Paul Brancato

[Cliff Varnell]

8 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

So JFK made mistakes. And JFK tried, increasingly, to do the right thing. That’s why I care. Why focus on his mistakes?

I seek clarity on who killed him.

I find many persons of interest involved in JFK's mistakes.

Quote

Somehow it’s important to get DiEugenio to agree?

Not at all.  It's important to challenge the group-think surrounding him.  I know Jim will never agree to anything I write.

Quote

He’s better read than any of us. He’s not perfect. Who is? The books he recommended, which Kirk mentioned, are great books. RFK Jr. himself recommended JFK and the Unspeakable. Newman is digging deeper into the document weeds than anyone.

I quoted a passage from JFK and the Unspeakable involving high tech CIA weapons in Hue in May '63.

He ignores the evidence I present and attacks me instead.

I divide the world not into CTs and LNers, but T3 Factualists and T3 Deniers.  Jim D is a leader of the latter.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[James DiEugenio]

CV has such a incredibly shallow view of history that its really a bit scary  sometimes.

Every president from 1945 through Reagan supported the Truman Doctrine. What this did was allow the USA to aid people abroad who resisted communism.  That is we could give them supplies, weaponry, money and advisors. JFK did that in Vietnam also. That doctrine was never challenged.

Zapata was just that.  But there was a big difference in it.  Kennedy was told that if the operation failed, the exiles could go guerrilla and meet up with other commandos.

When it did fail, Kennedy, unlike what Nixon or Eisenhower would have done, did not use American might to salvage the operation.  If you have been following my argument, that was the dividing line.  Kennedy would not go beyond the Truman Doctrine.

During the investigation that followed, RFK discovered that Dulles had lied about this aspect.  There was no contingency to go guerrilla and there were no credible commandos to link up with on the island. During Bobby Kennedy's interrogation of Dulles, this was exposed and also exposed was that Rusk, Lemnitzer and JFK relied upon that to make their commitment to the the project. (Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, pp 42-43) This is one of the reasons Dulles was terminated.  I believe the other reasons were his support for the OAS revolt against DeGaulle and the murder of Lumumba. Which was withheld from Kennedy for almost a month and was done before Kennedy was inaugurated. And some commentators feel that was deliberate.

If you don't want to follow new information.  Fine.  Just say so.  But you don't have to because its evident.

Edited May 19, 2018 by James DiEugenio