Interesting account of JFK affair, Gore Vidal

[Sandy Larsen]

[duplicate]

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

From the Recording:

at 3:46--LODGE telling  JFK: They're all going to be assassinated: her daughter , son in law, Nhu. and the President Diem, they're all going to be assassinated! I don't think there's any question about it.

JFK:" I assume that probably this fellow is in a impossible situation to save, I don't know if we'd be better off, if the alternative would be better-- maybe it will be. If so we well have to move in that direction".

 

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Your the only one whose conflating this Sandy. This is clearly  Lodge relating  the plan to kill Diem to JFK, and it's apparent that  JFK doesn't have any outright moral qualms against it or he would have said it. Maybe some confusion started here. Oh how could that be so!

 

Kirk,

You blame Kennedy because he didn't curse and stamp his foot when informed of the bloody coup plans?

JFK wasn't the king of S. Vietnam. If Diem's generals wanted to kill him, what is JFK supposed to do about it.

Well, one possibility is to talk Diem into leaving the country before he gets killed.

Well guess what... that is exactly what Kennedy wanted to do!

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

10 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

JFK wasn't the king of S. Vietnam. If Diem's generals wanted to kill him, what is JFK supposed to do about it.

I would say, threaten to withhold military aid

 

10 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Well guess what... that is exactly what Kennedy wanted to do!

woulda , shoulda, coulda. Trump was going to get out of  Afghanistan too..

 

 We certainly could have used our influence to put Diem in exile, by withholding military aid, But what JFK may have wished didn't happen. And we can see his first reaction was one of acquiescence. Maybe that emboldened Lodge to tell others. "JFK wasn't that opposed. We can get away with going along with it." I don't know, but why isn't it worth considering?

 

Anyway Sandy, Forget that, Let's stay focused! Jim's here. Did you ask him if he has the source and and information of JFK "being conned?"

 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

From the Recording:

at 3:46--LODGE telling  JFK: They're all going to be assassinated: her daughter , son in law, Nhu. and the President Diem, they're all going to be assassinated! I don't think there's any question about it.

JFK:" I assume that probably this fellow is in a impossible situation to save, I don't know if we'd be better off, if the alternative would be better-- maybe it will be. If so we well have to move in that direction".

 

Let's dissect JFK's reply to Lodge:

 

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

JFK:" I assume that probably this fellow is in a impossible situation to save, ...

 

Kennedy presumes it is impossible for Diem to stay in power.

 

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

...I don't know if we'd be better off, if the alternative would be better-- maybe it will be. ...

 

Kennedy wonders if the Vietnam situation would be better if Diem were removed from power.

 

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

...If so we well have to move in that direction".

 

JFK says that if the situation would be better with Diem gone, then they should remove Diem.

Kirk, where does Kennedy say that he's okay with the murder of Diem?

 

[Sandy Larsen]

17 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

We certainly could have used our influence to put Diem in exile, by withholding military aid.

 

Let me get this straight. JFK could have threatened Diem to withhold U.S. military aid if he allowed his generals to kill him?

I don't think so Kirk. You must have meant the following:

JFK could have bypassed Diem and talked directly to his generals, threatening to withhold U.S. military aid if they killed Diem?

Maybe, but I still don't think so.

Why not just offer to save Diem's life by flying him and his family out? Which is what Jim D. said JFK agreed to.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

3 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

Did JFK ever do anything wrong or was it just a series of gosh shucks?

 

You can believe any unsubstantiated negative things you want about Kennedy or anybody else, Cory. But I'm not that way.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Geez Sandy, You've based your whole case on "Jim Di said this" and "Jim di said that!" Then I see Jim Di's here. I ask you to ask him his sources for  his assertion that "JFK was conned" because he evades answering me. That question is  your Holy Grail!  He was probably here for 2 hours, and read this thread. Then you post again to me, and I said  "Jim's here,  Ask him now!" 

it doesn't sound like you're too interested in finally getting down to the truth, Sandy.. If you remember, we were in the exact same place a month ago. Where you were quoting Jim and expecting him to bail you out, and he didn't.

But again, i do give you credit!, You brought this out to the surface, while others were too afraid to touch it!   🙂

 

34 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

JFK could have bypassed Diem and talked directly to his generals, threatening to withhold U.S. military aid if they killed Diem?

This was the only question worth answering. Yes, Lodge obviously had connection with the Generals. How else could he have relayed their assassination plot to JFK?  "You want weapons, we'll take Diem and family to Taiwan or wherever".

[James DiEugenio]

I just got back from Texas and Florida.

 

How did this get from Gore Vidal and Lee Radziwill to the murder of the Nhu brothers?

I mean that is a mindbender.

[Matthew Koch]

32 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Geez Sandy, You've based your whole case on "Jim Di said this" and "Jim di said that!" Then I see Jim Di's here. I ask you to ask him his sources for  his assertion that "JFK was conned" because he evades answering me. That question is  your Holy Grail!  He was probably here for 2 hours, and read this thread. Then you post again to me, and I said  "Jim's here,  Ask him now!" 

it doesn't sound like you're too interested in finally getting down to the truth, Sandy.. If you remember, we were in the exact same place a month ago. Where you were quoting Jim and expecting him to bail you out, and he didn't.

But again, i do give you credit!, You brought this out to the surface, while others were too afraid to touch it!   🙂

 

This was the only question worth answering. Yes, Lodge obviously had connection with the Generals. How else could he have relayed their assassination plot to JFK?  "You want weapons, we'll take Diem and family to Taiwan or wherever".

Kirk I once made the mistake of buying David Kaiser's Vietnam book before I heard his theory on the Kennedy assassination.. But I one thing I felt was good about the book it that most of it dealt with the Diem Coup. Remember Diem lost favor with Washington after the Monk set himself on fire. This article I am linking goes into explaining about how what you are going after isn't new info. https://historynewsnetwork.org/articles/1717.html

DAVID KAISER Author of American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War

It is a very sad fact of modern life that journalists and popular historians have no understanding of basic rules of evidence, and do not take the trouble to find authoritative works on subjects they choose to discuss.

I exhaustively researched and reported the Kennedy Administration's role in the Diem coup in my book, American Tragedy (which is not mentioned in the Weekly Standard.) Using contemporary documentation and audio tapes, I made two things very clear.

1. On only one occasion did President Kennedy refer to Diem's possible fate in a coup. At that time--during the last week of August 1963--he definitely said that Diem should be exiled and that nothing more should happen to him.

2. The Kennedy Administration, in a last meeting on October 30--two days before the coup--simply decided that they would not stand in the way of a coup if one took place. The discussion shows considerable skepticism as to whether one was going to take place. When the execution of the coup began, Conein got about an hour's warning.

It has been well known for many, many years that Lyndon Johnson opposed the coup from the beginning, and that he (and Nixon) liked to blame the coup for the war. It should be clear to any intelligent person with any familiarity with LBJ that he was blowing off steam, not reporting verbatim conversations. He was referring to the view of Roger Hilsman and Averell Harriman (whom he fired and demoted, respectively, within months of taking office) that Diem had to be replaced.

It is sad to realize, when one has devoted years of one's life to searching out the facts of a controversial historical incident, that when it comes to controversial events, only a small minority of Americans will be interested in those facts. 

 

[Matthew Koch]

5 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I just got back from Texas and Florida.

 

How did this get from Gore Vidal and Lee Radziwill to the murder of the Nhu brothers?

I mean that is a mindbender.

See Paul's comment on page 6, it turns into a Diem Thread after that.. 

[Joe Bauer]

Just now, Matthew Koch said:

See Paul's comment on page 6, it turns into a Diem Thread after that.. 

I don't either.

I've kept my postings to the original thread title.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

JFK could have bypassed Diem and talked directly to his generals, threatening to withhold U.S. military aid if they killed Diem?  I don't think so.

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Yes, Lodge obviously had connection with the Generals. How else could he have relayed their assassination plot to JFK?

 

You assume that Lodge got word of the bloody coup plan directly from the S. Vietnamese generals?

Why on earth would the S. Vietnamese generals tell the Americans they were planning to overthrow Diem? For all they knew, JFK could have informed Diem of this. For which they all would have been hung (or whatever) for treason.

I assume Lodge got word of the bloody coup plan through intelligence means.

Kirk, you keep kicking against the pricks because you want to believe that JFK knew all along that Diem and his family would be killed, and did nothing about it. Either that, or you just want to believe that Jim D. is wrong.

I don't know if Jim is right or wrong about the (fake) bloodless coup plan. But I've been following Jim's JFKA beliefs for a long time and found that his beliefs are almost always the same as mine. So I trust his judgement more so than just about anybody else's here on the forum. In addition, I've seen him challenged numerous time and he almost always defends himself very well with evidence.

The reason I don't ask Jim what his evidence is for the (fake) bloodless coup plan (the plan to remove Diem and his family from the country) is because I trust that he does have evidence. And I don't want to offend him for your sake by asking him to produce it.

And BTW, I don't need Jim to bail me out on this. As I have showed, that recording does not indicate that JFK was in agreement with the S. Vietnamese generals' plan.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

it doesn't sound like you're too interested in finally getting down to the truth, Sandy. If you remember, we were in the exact same place a month ago. Where you were quoting Jim and expecting him to bail you out, and he didn't.

 

I don't remember any such thing. What are you talking about?

 

[James DiEugenio]

24 minutes ago, Matthew Koch said:

See Paul's comment on page 6, it turns into a Diem Thread after that.. 

It actually began with Cory on that page.

[Cory Santos]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

You can believe any unsubstantiated negative things you want about Kennedy or anybody else, Cory. But I'm not that way.

 

Well it is one of the other.  Which is it Sandy?   JFK on Cuba?   Conned or he knew what was happening.   JFK on Diem overthrow?   Conned or knew what was happening?

Congo?   Conned or knew what was going on?    If, as you seem to be suggesting, he was innocent and was being constantly conned by his advisors, that doesn’t look to good for him.    
Let’s also apply this to Iran Contra and see if this is a partisan thing.   Was Reagan the mastermind or not?  If he was not, if he was being conned, does the buck stop with him still or do you give him a pass as well?  Hopefully you apply your logical deductions equally and without bias for party. 

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Cory Santos