Questions About Secret Agenda

[Matt Cloud]

I think that answer should already be very clear by now.  No I do not; such things -- things which did not happen -- cannot be so stated as things that would have happened.  It's a logical fallacy to pretend otherwise.  A most honest appraisal of the understanding of Kennedy's motives comes from no less than Ted Sorenson, keeper of the Kennedy flame, who never went so far at all.  Not once.  Kennedy hoped the Vietnamese could shoulder the war, no doubt.  Who wouldn't?  But they couldn't.  And after Diem, the situation got worse, not better.   

Moreover, this whole question rests on an absurd contradiction that fails to understand post-War policy in the United States.  To be sure, it is a often (publicly) unstated policy but it is confirmed through history.  (But see UN charter.) Post-war policy is to achieve self-determination for people's around the world.  It is also U.S. policy to achieve de-colonialization.  No more declared wars, no more wars of conquest; no more victory parades.  (Israel being the exception, although that conflict is now entering a new stage.  Plus the Ukraine.)  If you're stuck thinking that the CIA is an instrument of imperialism you do not understand what it has been doing since its inception.  It is and always has been a progressive organization.  VN began and ended as a CIA war.  The middle portion was to disrupt America by and large.  The reason, as I stated on the other thread, why the Left, whatever part of the spectrum you want to pin them on -- be it the full left (USSR) or the center left (Harriman, Halberstam) -- are all in agreement and want the VN war is because it is the way to ensure de-colonialization.  And that's what happened.  That is the progressive agenda fulfilled and so the contradiction here is that many who oppose the war in VN fail to see that it was the means to achieve this. Unfortunately that is so.  Neither the Left nor the Right wants to accept this.  But power does not relinquish with less.  And change is disruptive as Kennedy would say.  The communist/anti-communist conflict was in many regards, especially in the third world, a front for a deeper agreement between both super-powers as to how to re-make the post-war order.  There is more collusion between East and West in this regard than political leaders want to admit, for obvious reasons.  Kennedy, like all politicians of the post-war period, was caught in this conflict and I'm sure he saw through it too, being as perceptive as he was.  But I don't think that awareness could have relived him of the pressures that would fall on him had he lived.  This, finally, confirms the understanding of him as one destined to be cut-down, before he could be tainted with the agonizing struggle of the war.  

Opposition to the Vietnam War may be a defining characteristic for many on this thread.  I sense it is.  But that is little more than projection onto what was, especially in the early 60s, a very complex situation.  It would be helpful, especially at last today, with 60 years of hindsight and experience, if both left and right could see that Vietnam was neither a loss by the US nor an inglorious [edit: ignoble] struggle.  There is plenty of reason -- the self-determination of the Vietnamese above all -- to see the war in that light, now.  And it would be honest.  

 

Edited May 29 by Matt Cloud

[Matt Cloud]

1 minute ago, W. Niederhut said:

Your ad hominem slur accusing me of "dishonesty" and "partisan blindness" is complete bunk. 

And, to clarify, my minor misstatement was to write that you "insisted" that JFK would not necessarily have withdrawn from Vietnam, instead of writing that you "claimed" that JFK would not necessarily have withdrawn from Vietnam.

Whoop-dee-doo.

Nor were my comments ad hominem.  They were directly related to the subject of your post about JFK and Vietnam.

 

Drop it.

[W. Niederhut]

Just now, Matt Cloud said:

Drop it.

Ya think? 🙄

[Matt Cloud]

31 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ya think? 🙄

And as to your comment that I never got to because your other about me was so wrong that "Cloud's main published reference on Watergate is All the President's Men,"  I'll be reading with joy my photocopied pages from Deep Throat's diary tonight, which I have just dusted off and brought down from the attic, having been privileged to read them at Moynihan's urging at the Library of Congress in the '90s.  They're now at NARA, guarded over by my former colleague, CIA agent turned archive classification authority Mark Bradley, ever since the raid on Trump.   Until that is, Bradley resigned, after the Biden docs were "found."

 https://www.archives.gov/about/organization/senior-staff/director-isoo

Maybe I'll also skim over my father's notes from the period.  He was TIME's Watergate correspondent after Vietnam, after Moscow, from where he was expelled for "being a spy" and his work at the NSA during the Cuban Missile Crisis, translating those Soviet shipping cables.  (His papers, including a cable on N Vietnamese troop movements in 1971 (See CIA report on "intelligence failures associated with Lom Son 719") -- were in Howard Hunt's safe, the ones that Pat Gray was supposed to destroy, that Dean had said "should never see the light of day.") 

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/LOC-HAK-537-4-11-9.pdf

 

You can stick with Secret Agenda.  

Edited May 29 by Matt Cloud

[W. Niederhut]

40 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

And as to your comment that I never got to because your other about me was so wrong that "Cloud's main published reference on Watergate is All the President's Men,"  I'll be reading with joy my photocopied pages from Deep Throat's diary tonight, which I have just dusted off and brought down from the attic, having been privileged to read them at Moynihan's urging at the Library of Congress in the '90s.  They're now at NARA, guarded over by my former colleague, CIA agent turned archive classification authority Mark Bradley, ever since the raid on Trump.   Until that is, Bradley resigned, after the Biden docs were "found."

 https://www.archives.gov/about/organization/senior-staff/director-isoo

Maybe I'll also skim over my father's notes from the period.  He was TIME's Watergate correspondent after Vietnam, after Moscow, from where he was expelled for "being a spy" and his work at the NSA during the Cuban Missile Crisis, translating those Soviet shipping cables.  (His papers, including a cable on N Vietnamese troop movements in 1971 (See CIA report on "intelligence failures associated with Lom Son 719") -- were in Howard Hunt's safe, the ones that Pat Gray was supposed to destroy, that Dean had said "should never see the light of day.") 

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/LOC-HAK-537-4-11-9.pdf

 

 

Sounds interesting, Matt.

Deep Throat's diary at NARA?

The unburnt contents of E. Howard Hunt's safe?

Hopefully, you'll share your knowledge of this historical material with the forum.

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ya think? 🙄

I had to laugh.  Thanks.

 

[Matt Cloud]

9 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Sounds interesting, Matt.

Deep Throat's diary at NARA?

The unburnt contents of E. Howard Hunt's safe?

Hopefully, you'll share your knowledge of this historical material with the forum.

Here's a teaser for you.  I found it just behind my old Kenner X-Wing Star Wars fighter toy that David Halberstam's nephew had given me in 1978.  No joke.

 

Deep Throat writes:

Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1973:

"A year and a day since the bombing resumed.  [That'd be the Christmas bombing of Dec. 1972.]  The doors of the trap snapped shut and I have been inside since.  [That doesn't sound good.]  And not for the better.  What did I expect?  War again in Vietnam.  Wrong on that one.  Garment [that's Leonard Garment, WH counsel and Nixon's personal lawyer, himself a candidate for Deep Throat*] and I concluded in the bar of the Hay-Adams that Henry Kissinger had six weeks left.  Not exactly one hundred percent correct there.  [The neo-cons are removing the realpolitikers.]  I concluded that for myself I had finally been sucked into the Vietnam swamp.  True only by general extension of a resumed identity -- this time with no extenuating circumstances of the least -- with Richard Nixon.

And yet it was the same Richard Nixon and the same responses that saved Israel in the year past, and seems somehow to have brought more rather than less reasonableness to the parties in conflict.  The Geneva Conference is going to open.  Kissinger's brilliance, but Nixon's courage.  It is only the moralists who came out of this badly: having a terribly skewed sense of morality.  

[Emphasis mine.]

 

 

*See also Garment's wife, Suzanne Weaver, Moynihan's aide at the U.N., with whom Moynihan would write A Dangerous Place (New York, Little Brown: 1978).

 

[Joe Bauer]

On 5/28/2024 at 7:51 PM, Ron Bulman said:

I had to laugh.  Thanks.

 

Doris Day apolitical?

For several years in the 2,000's I was employed at Doris Day's small  ( 30+ rooms-now 50 )  but kind of upscale hotel in Carmel, Ca called the Cypress Inn.

I began there as a part-time bellman at the ripe old age of 50 after 30 years of working as a landscape laborer here on the Monterey Peninsula.

I didn't know what the heck I was doing. Never worked in a hotel before. I was paunchy and grey haired. They were so desperate they hired me the second I approached the front desk and insecurely asked about the part-time bell position they had advertised in the local paper.

They rushed to the employee locker room in the 72 year old Spanish Adobe style building basement and brought me a light blue dress shirt and black bellman's vest ( which didn't fully cover my enormous pot belly ) and said ... "here, put this on and stand at the top of the entrance stairs and if someone drives up to the loading curb walk to their car and say...May I help you with your luggage?"

I swear this is exactly what happened that first day.

I didn't know anything about bell work. I was so awkward about it all, a few arriving guests were complaining to the front desk that there is some odd man standing around out front and pretending to work for the hotel and creeping them out.

Somehow, I stayed with it. Within 6 months I was the full-time bellman as well as the hotel concierge. I helped out at the front desk. Did stand in room service and maintenance. A real roustabout.

My pot belly eventually receded enough from running luggage up and down stairs ( no elevator) and after a suggested teeth cleaning or two I even felt comfortable enough to smile for the guests.

One of my little daily duties was to take Doris Day's hotel addressed personal mail out to her when she arrived to the hotel most weekday mornings in a non-descript car driven by her live in assistant Betsy. She was always dressed down, even plain. Donning a frumpy baseball cap and wearing simple style sunglasses.

I'd walk down the outside entrance stairs to her open passenger side car window and say "Good morning Ms. Day" and hand her the mail. She'd just give a little thank you nod. No words. She never asked me my name. Never once for years.

Ms. Day was quite reserved around most everyone she encountered outside of her home. Employees of her hotel...no exception. Couldn't blame her. She had endured a lifetime of strangers rushing her if they recognized who she was and too often aggressively trying to engage her.

I never gave any thought as to Ms. Day's political leanings, if any?

What little I heard she seemed almost apolitical.

Her world of interest was seemingly totally centered around animals and especially dogs.

She definitely kept engaged with several old friends from her Hollywood days.

Betty White visited her often.

She was extremely close to her son Terry Melcher who was a partner in the ownership of the Cypress Inn.

Melcher himself would actually drop in to the hotel every couple of months. He'd drive up from L.A.

Terry Melcher was a super warm and down-to-Earth person. He'd engage the guests in the hotel bar lounge as if they were old friends. He even walked up to me ( a goofy-looking pee-on bellman employee ) soon after I started at the Cypress and offered his hand and asked me about my history and family. We discovered both our children ( my son and his stepson ) attended the same local private high school...the York School.

Just loved the guy.

Ms. Day was "devastated" when her beloved son Terry passed from skin cancer in November of 2004. She went into seclusion socially for a good amount of time from what I heard and saw. Her grief was palpable.

The Cypress Inn built a beautiful indoor restaurant in the mid-2000's and named it "Terry's Lounge." If you ever visit, the fare is fabulous and reasonably priced and it is known as a "must try" location. Even live music on weekends!

The only tidbit I ever heard about Ms. Day's political leanings were from a person who I believe was her publicist at the time. In June of 2004 Ms. Day was to receive a presidential Medal Of Freedom award. G.W. Bush was president.

Ms. Day's humble reaction to first hearing about the award:

" "My first reaction was, `For what?"' she said Tuesday by telephone from her home in Carmel Valley, south of San Francisco. "I'm not being coy, or looking for a laugh. I have never thought about awards, whatever I do."

One day soon after the awards ceremony ( which Ms. Day did not attend due to her fear of flying) her publicist arrived at the front entrance of the Cypress. I greeted him and seeing him unloading a fairly bulky box out of the back of his SUV, offered to assist.

He thanked me and only asked if I could get the heavy glass doors open as he carried in the box and I walked with him to a locked hotel storage room where he placed the box.

Curious, I asked him what was in the box. He told me it was the Presidential Medal Of Freedom for Ms. Day!

He told me why Ms. Day didn't go to the White House to accept the award...fear of flying.

But he also "hinted" at another reason Ms. Day would not accept the award.

I may be misremembering due to my growing dementia after 72 years, but I recall Ms. Days publicist saying something about Ms. Day not liking Bush and the Republicans.

My sense of Ms. Day from anecdotal sharings by so many people here in my shared home world of Carmel was that Ms. Day was not a Republican party policy person. Much more a liberal minded person, if not simply apolitical.

Her world mostly centered around her love for animals, particularly dogs. Hence her partnership in the first hotel that accommodated dogs as guests in California starting in 1988.

Staying in and even working in her doggie hotel was a canine celebrating trip...every day!

Dogs everywhere, barking constantly, owners parading their dogs through every space in the hotel, petting, hugging even kissing them shamelessly while other dog lover guests or visitors gushed with affection sharing oohs and ahhhs.

I did pet sitting for the guests after my regular work shifts. I pet sat for so many celebrities in my time. The whole experience was surreal. I happen to love dogs myself.

Anyway just thought I would share what little I know of Ms. Doris Days possible political sentiments...for what it's worth. The above video of Ms. Day singing "Que Sera Sera" prompted me to do so.

I also think Doris Day thought the world of JFK.

 

 

Edited May 30 by Joe Bauer

[Kirk Gallaway]

16 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

I think that answer should already be very clear by now.  No I do not; such things -- things which did not happen -- cannot be so stated as things that would have happened.  It's a logical fallacy to pretend otherwise.  A most honest appraisal of the understanding of Kennedy's motives comes from no less than Ted Sorenson, keeper of the Kennedy flame, who never went so far at all.  Not once.  Kennedy hoped the Vietnamese could shoulder the war, no doubt.  Who wouldn't?  But they couldn't.  And after Diem, the situation got worse, not better.   

Moreover, this whole question rests on an absurd contradiction that fails to understand post-War policy in the United States.  To be sure, it is a often (publicly) unstated policy but it is confirmed through history.  (But see UN charter.) Post-war policy is to achieve self-determination for people's around the world.  It is also U.S. policy to achieve de-colonialization.  No more declared wars, no more wars of conquest; no more victory parades.  (Israel being the exception, although that conflict is now entering a new stage.  Plus the Ukraine.)  If you're stuck thinking that the CIA is an instrument of imperialism you do not understand what it has been doing since its inception.  It is and always has been a progressive organization.  VN began and ended as a CIA war.  The middle portion was to disrupt America by and large.  The reason, as I stated on the other thread, why the Left, whatever part of the spectrum you want to pin them on -- be it the full left (USSR) or the center left (Harriman, Halberstam) -- are all in agreement and want the VN war is because it is the way to ensure de-colonialization.  And that's what happened.  That is the progressive agenda fulfilled and so the contradiction here is that many who oppose the war in VN fail to see that it was the means to achieve this. Unfortunately that is so.  Neither the Left nor the Right wants to accept this.  But power does not relinquish with less.  And change is disruptive as Kennedy would say.  The communist/anti-communist conflict was in many regards, especially in the third world, a front for a deeper agreement between both super-powers as to how to re-make the post-war order.  There is more collusion between East and West in this regard than political leaders want to admit, for obvious reasons.  Kennedy, like all politicians of the post-war period, was caught in this conflict and I'm sure he saw through it too, being as perceptive as he was.  But I don't think that awareness could have relived him of the pressures that would fall on him had he lived.  This, finally, confirms the understanding of him as one destined to be cut-down, before he could be tainted with the agonizing struggle of the war.  

Opposition to the Vietnam War may be a defining characteristic for many on this thread.  I sense it is.  But that is little more than projection onto what was, especially in the early 60s, a very complex situation.  It would be helpful, especially at last today, with 60 years of hindsight and experience, if both left and right could see that Vietnam was neither a loss by the US nor an inglorious [edit: ignoble] struggle.  There is plenty of reason -- the self-determination of the Vietnamese above all -- to see the war in that light, now.  And it would be honest.  

 

 

Matt:But I don't think that awareness could have relived him of the pressures that would fall on him had he lived. 

 

I agree with you re Vietnam that history was kind to JFK dying just after Diem's death and that JFK's will to get out of Vietnam  was much more vulnerable to the political winds than many here who just say JFK "would have gotten out of Vietnam, period, end of story!"  But that's not to preclude that he couldn't have achieved that and taken political heat for it, just like Biden did after 17 years,  since you and I agree that wasn't the primary cause for his death.

 

Matt: Post-war policy is to achieve self-determination for people's around the world.  It is also U.S. policy to achieve de-colonialization.

 

Yes we know  FDR much earlier  was down on colonialism.

 

Matt:The middle portion was to disrupt America by and large.  The reason, as I stated on the other thread, why the Left, whatever part of the spectrum you want to pin them on -- be it the full left (USSR) or the center left (Harriman, Halberstam) -- are all in agreement and want the VN war is because it is the way to ensure de-colonialization.

 

"The middle portion was to disrupt America by and large." The middle portion", what are you saying? 

Ensure decolonization? Ok  But by that time,who was threatening their sovereignty? In VN the French had long since been gone. This is the late 50's and 60's. The issue among the super powers was largely what direction to either influence or subvert ongoing directions of fledgling post colonial countries.

 

Matt: There is plenty of reason -- the self-determination of the Vietnamese above all -- to see the war in that light, now.

 

And in your  U.S. vision of VN self determination, that wouldn't include an economic system? There was no U.S. self interest involved at all but the altruistic desire for their  self determination?

 

 

 

[Matt Cloud]

29 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

 

Matt:But I don't think that awareness could have relived him of the pressures that would fall on him had he lived. 

 

I agree with you re Vietnam that history was kind to JFK dying just after Diem's death and that JFK's will to get out of Vietnam  was much more vulnerable to the political winds than many here who just say JFK "would have gotten out of Vietnam, period, end of story!"  But that's not to preclude that he couldn't have achieved that and taken political heat for it, just like Biden did after 17 years,  since you and I agree that wasn't the primary cause for his death.

 

Matt: Post-war policy is to achieve self-determination for people's around the world.  It is also U.S. policy to achieve de-colonialization.

 

Yes we know  FDR much earlier  was down on colonialism.

 

Matt:The middle portion was to disrupt America by and large.  The reason, as I stated on the other thread, why the Left, whatever part of the spectrum you want to pin them on -- be it the full left (USSR) or the center left (Harriman, Halberstam) -- are all in agreement and want the VN war is because it is the way to ensure de-colonialization.

 

"The middle portion was to disrupt America by and large." The middle portion", what are you saying? 

Ensure decolonization? Ok  But by that time,who was threatening their sovereignty? In VN the French had long since been gone. This is the late 50's and 60's. The issue among the super powers was largely what direction to either influence or subvert ongoing directions of fledgling post colonial countries.

 

Matt: There is plenty of reason -- the self-determination of the Vietnamese above all -- to see the war in that light, now.

 

And in your  U.S. vision of VN self determination, that wouldn't include an economic system? There was no U.S. self interest involved at all but the altruistic desire for their  self determination?

 

 

 

Ok .. let's see here. 

You equate the idea of Kennedy giving up Vietnam in 64 or 65 with Biden given up Afghanistan, after 17 years of war?  I don't see the comparison.

"The middle portion" refers to the middle of the Vietnam War -- 67-68, when the draft was expanded and the number of troops there reached its maximum.  Perhaps you'll re-phrase whatever it is you were trying to convey in light of that clarification by me.

Of course there's U.S. self-interest involved.  Most obviously today, when self-interest by the US is confirmed by the current status of the VN economy and it's large role in manufacturing goods for the Western markets.  And it's check on China.  And at the time of the VN war, it was in the US' self-interest to not be opposed to self-determination in light of the Cold War claims being made by the Soviet Union.  That's the huge propaganda issue.  But U.S. couldn't simply abandon Vietnam lest huge political outcry would ensue here, largely on the Right.  Ergo, how to get self-determination while making it seem like you're fighting spread of Communism.  And both are actually occurring.  The dominos -- which never included Cambodia and Laos -- did not fall.  The Philippines, Thailand and India for example did not go the way of VN.  Was there perhaps a bit of horse-trading going on as between USSR (and China) and the US?  You get VN but India remains non-aligned?  Something like that? 

And to be sure, the far more cynical and far more ugly situation in Cambodia may yet prove to have been US sanctioned from an early period (1969) through the early 1990s (support of Pol Pot) in order to ensure a check against VN's possible territorial expansion.  See the late Richard Holbrooke on that score.  (U.S. more imposed to 1979 VN invasion of Cambodia then to Pol Pot.)  

If these responses aren't sufficient perhaps you could flesh out with a little more specificity what it is you are actually asking.

In any case, you might say that the left was tricked into opposing the war -- which was in ways a fulfillment of global egalitarianism, however counter-intuitive that may seem, and the right -- was tricked into supporting it. But that's the art of government, especially in the Cold War when all was (and still is) not what it may seem.

Edited May 29 by Matt Cloud

[Matt Cloud]

1 minute ago, Matt Cloud said:

Ok .. let's see here. 

You equate the idea of Kennedy giving up Vietnam in 64 or 65 with Biden given up Afghanistan, after 17 years of war?  I don't see the comparison.

"The middle portion" refers to the middle of the Vietnam War -- 67-68, when the draft was expanded and the number of troops there reached its maximum.  Perhaps you'll re-phrase whatever it is you were trying to convey in light of that clarification by me.

Of course there's U.S. self-interest involved.  Most obviously today, when self-interest by the US is confirmed by the current status of the VN economy and it's large role in manufacturing goods for the Western markets.  And it's check on China.  And at the time of the VN war, it was in the US' self-interest to not be opposed to self-determination in light of the Cold War claims being made by the Soviet Union.  That's the huge propaganda issue.  But U.S. couldn't simply abandon Vietnam lest huge political outcry would ensue here, largely on the Right.  Ergo, how to get self-determination while making it seem like you're fighting spread of Communism.  And both are actually occurring.  The dominos -- which never included Cambodia and Laos -- did not fall.  The Philippines and India for example did not go the way of VN.  Was there perhaps a bit of horse-trading going on as between USSR (and China) and the US?  You get VN but India remains non-aligned?  Something like that? 

And to be sure, the far more cynical and far more ugly situation in Cambodia may yet prove to have been US sanctioned from an early period (1969) through the early 1990s (support of Pol Pot) in order to ensure a check against VN's possible territorial expansion.  See the late Richard Holbrooke on that score.  (U.S. more imposed to 1979 VN invasion of Cambodia then to Pol Pot.)  

If these responses aren't sufficient perhaps you could flesh out with a little more specificity what it is you are actually asking.

In any case, you might say that the left was tricked into opposing the war -- which was in ways a fulfillment of global egalitarianism, however counter-intuitive that may seem, and the right -- was tricked into supporting it. But that's the art of government, especially in the Cold War when all was (and still is) not what it may seem.

Quite addendum:

 

You equate the idea of Kennedy giving up Vietnam in 64 or 65 with Biden given up Afghanistan, after 17 years of war?  I don't see the comparison.

 

If anything the appropriate analogy is the obvious one.  Ford in 75 akin to Biden in 2021, not Kennedy in 64.

[James DiEugenio]

I am beginning to have my doubts about Matt.

First there is this: 

If you're stuck thinking that the CIA is an instrument of imperialism you do not understand what it has been doing since its inception.  It is and always has been a progressive organization.

How in Hades was what David Phillips and the CIA did in Chile in 1973 progressive?

How on earth was what the CIA did in Jakarta in 1965 progressive?

How the heck was what the CIA did in Congo to get rid of Lumumba, progressive?

How was propping up a monomaniacal dictator who deprived citizens of free speech, the right to petition, the right to organize, religious rights for the majority, and ultimately torture and death for dissidents in Saigon, how was that progressive?

In all these cases, the CIA was on the side of fascism.  For instance, in Congo, Lumumba came to power in a free election with a written constitution. Lumumba could have been a great example for Africa.  Kennedy backed Lumumba, so did Hammarskjold.  All three men were killed, with a prime suspect in each case being the CIA.  

This is progressive?  Matt has a weird idea of progressivism.

And who the heck is Deep Throat anyway?  And why would his diary be at NARA? Are you talking about Felt? Bennett? Inman?  Someone else?  If its someone else, who is it and why?

[James DiEugenio]

I think I will now put Matt on ignore.

[Matt Cloud]

7 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I am beginning to have my doubts about Matt.

First there is this: 

If you're stuck thinking that the CIA is an instrument of imperialism you do not understand what it has been doing since its inception.  It is and always has been a progressive organization.

How in Hades was what David Phillips and the CIA did in Chile in 1973 progressive?

How on earth was what the CIA did in Jakarta in 1965 progressive?

How the heck was what the CIA did in Congo to get rid of Lumumba, progressive?

How was propping up a monomaniacal dictator who deprived citizens of free speech, the right to petition, the right to organize, religious rights for the majority, and ultimately torture and death for dissidents in Saigon, how was that progressive?

In all these cases, the CIA was on the side of fascism.  For instance, in Congo, Lumumba came to power in a free election with a written constitution. Lumumba could have been a great example for Africa.  Kennedy backed Lumumba, so did Hammarskjold.  All three men were killed, with a prime suspect in each case being the CIA.  

This is progressive?  Matt has a weird idea of progressivism.

And who the heck is Deep Throat anyway?  And why would his diary be at NARA? Are you talking about Felt? Bennett? Inman?  Someone else?  If its someone else, who is it and why?

If you don't understand that progress comes through conflict -- by creating a clash -- well, you don't understand the politics of progressivism.  Sorry.  Read some Samuel Huntington.  Understand Trotskyism and Hegel and neo-conservatism.  These are the defining political philosophies of the day.  Whether you like it or not.  And as to the specifics of what any given underling at CIA or State or anywhere may have believed or intended, you might consider that upper-management has different agenda in mind.  Of course however, management would need some rabid anti-communists on staff to begin that side of the conflict.  

 

Thanks again, Jim.  

[Matt Cloud]

11 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I think I will now put Matt on ignore.

You should.  Your engagement with me has not been in your favor.  

Edited May 29 by Matt Cloud