Interesting account of JFK affair, Gore Vidal

[Ron Bulman]

14 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

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. 

 

Since you want to stick with the Nuh brothers' aspect of the thread.  I don't know what Sandy might have to say to your questions but here are my thoughts.

Yes, JFK was conned on Cuba initially on the BOP by Dulles and co.  JFK likely came to realize what might happen to Diem shortly before it did and realized he was powerless to stop it.  He did not authorize it.  He was conned by Lodge in that he ignored JFK's instructions and neglected to respond to his attempts to contact him.

Yes, he was conned, again by Dulles and co. on the Congo.  Contra?  Regan may well have been asleep in any given meeting or not informed at all.  But Bush damned well knew what was going on, he controlled it.

[James DiEugenio]

JFK was trying to kill Lumumba?  

That is so nutty its Chomskyite.  Lumumba was dead when Kennedy took office. Does that picture of JFK when he learned of his death  look like he was happy he was dead? The CIA knew Kennedy favored Lumumba and there is evidence they had him killed before Kennedy could free him from house arrest.  To insinuate anything else is Orwellian.  Just read either Mahoney or Newman's book.

The Castro thing is another mildewed piece of nonsense.  The CIA Inspector General Report says they never had anything approaching presidential approval on the plots. (pp. 132-33). And they also admit they lied to RFK about whether or not they were ongoing.  That report was secret for decades.  Because Helms did not want it to get out. So he and Halpern could bamboozle the public.

As per Diem, the tragedy of that whole thing is what John Newman told me once when I brought it up with him. He said Diem could not control his brother or his sister in law. When the Buddhist pogroms began, and when the monks and nuns started incinerating themselves, and when Madame Nhu said, "Do it again, I will bring the gasoline!"  I mean that was it.  What kind of government would allow the majority religion to be persecuted and what kind of government would back one that tolerated that kind of thing?

And as Jim Douglass points out, the so called negotiations Nhu had with Hanoi were going nowhere since they demanded that Saigon remove all American advisors.  That would have been like drinking poison.  South Vietnam would have been overrun in no time.  Since the government was falling apart already.   Nhu understood this and tried to create a fake coup to rally support to Diem. 

Diem was going to be overthrown.  That is what the cabal in the State Department wanted from August with the so called coup cable. In fact, near the end, Conein said he was getting different signals, one from State and one from RFK. But as Douglass writes, it is very clear that Conein and Lodge had their own agenda.  I mean with the BS they could not find a plane to get the Nhus out? Give me a break.  Know how many planes were in Thailand?

The other problem was that Rusk overruled JFK on the appointment of Gullion.  With him there, this would not have happened.  He would have gotten them out.

Edited November 24, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Matthew Koch]

1 hour ago, Cory Santos said:

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. 

 

Cory, while I do agree with you about that JFK Fanboy thing (I call them Kennedy Evangelicals) in the documentary 'A President Betrayed' the film shows cables where Averell Harriman crossed out instructions from JFK. Michael Forrestall was involved with the coup memo and did you know that Michael Forrestall was raised by Harriman when his father James died. So there is a real possibility that that group didn't follow instructions and worked to undermine the original plan as we see Cabot Lodge seemingly do by not following orders to the point he was going to be recalled. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

People who are really interested in this case are supposed to be categorically different than the MSM.

The MSM backed Sy Hersh and his POS book on Kennedy.  They back people like Robert Dallek, who somehow could not figure out what Kennedy was advocating in Congo, or what Hammarskjold was doing there.  Or why Dag had an ace of spades in his collar when his body, not burned or charred, was found. 

The whole aim of the MSM is to somehow neutralize what Kennedy was doing in order to cover up the true circumstances of his murder.  Since these matters have been concealed for decades: both what he was doing and how he was murdered.  Look how they resisted the facts of Kennedy's Vietnam withdrawal for three decades.

As I said to a Chomskyite in a debate, do you really think you know what Kennedy was doing better than Nasser, Sukarno and Juan Bosch did? Ask them what they thought of Kennedy, and what happened after.

500,000 dead bodies in Indonesia is not evangelism, its fact.  In his interview with Stone, the leading scholar on Indonesia in America,  Brad Simpson, said it would not have happened if Kennedy had lived. Be my  guest and argue with him.

Edited November 24, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Cory Santos]

14 minutes ago, Matthew Koch said:

Cory, while I do agree with you about that JFK Fanboy thing (I call them Kennedy Evangelicals) in the documentary 'A President Betrayed' the film shows cables where Averell Harriman crossed out instructions from JFK. Michael Forrestall was involved with the coup memo and did you know that Michael Forrestall was raised by Harriman when his father James died. So there is a real possibility that that group didn't follow instructions and worked to undermine the original plan as we see Cabot Lodge seemingly do by not following orders to the point he was going to be recalled. 

 

Thank you.  But, I want my point to not be missed.   Namely, one either thinks jfk was conned over several big events or one thinks he knew what was happening.  If the former, it is reasonable to conclude he was not effective as a leader as his white house was out of his control- which by the way cuts into any conspiracy argument that he had to be killed because why kill someone you are already conning?

If it is the latter, however, then he bears some complicity or responsibility for the BOP, Diem, etc   
This is rather simple yet seems to be getting lost because some don’t want to admit JFK ever had a fault- they are faults which are somehow classified as “unsubstantiated” lol.   I guess I missed that in graduate school studying history.   I need to correct my Ph.D professors, for shame.  
Applying this above logic, then no one here can blame Reagan for Iran Contra unless they are selectively using this logic to support their own political view.   This all goes back to early comments about how we view Kennedy historically considering alternative opinions of his presidency and personal actions   

 

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

Thank you.  But, I want my point to not be missed.   Namely, one either thinks jfk was conned over several big events or one thinks he knew what was happening.  If the former, it is reasonable to conclude he was not effective as a leader as his white house was out of his control- which by the way cuts into any conspiracy argument that he had to be killed because why kill someone you are already conning?

If it is the latter, however, then he bears some complicity or responsibility for the BOP, Diem, etc   
This is rather simple yet seems to be getting lost because some don’t want to admit JFK ever had a fault- they are faults which are somehow classified as “unsubstantiated” lol.   I guess I missed that in graduate school studying history.   I need to correct my Ph.D professors, for shame.  
Applying this above logic, then no one here can blame Reagan for Iran Contra unless they are selectively using this logic to support their own political view.   This all goes back to early comments about how we view Kennedy historically considering alternative opinions of his presidency and personal actions   

 

This to me looks like one of the logical fallacies, namely the false dichotomy. Can there be other possibilities, can it be more nuanced? 
 

You are offering up the idea that JFK is either guilty of gross incompetence, or, he is a war criminal.

 

There are some that subscribe to the idea that government was compromised by a network of individuals working directly against the president and the interests of the tax payer. He surely began to realise this during/after the BOP invasion. Eisenhower forewarned of what JFK might expect from the military industrial complex. He had institutional corruption to deal with everywhere. Hoover had the FBI and blackmail materials on everybody. Dulles had foreign policy tied up. The CFR was another questionable entity. IMO there was so much that needed fixing. It wasn’t like on day one in office that he could just fire all of the generals and remove the heads of the FBI and CIA. Its a slow process fixing such a situation, a huge task. More of a war of attrition, that involved discovering just how corrupt things were and using a strategy to break things down. The truth is; the military/cia could serve up any manufactured intelligence to make a case for something and you have no real second opinion, or peer reviewed data. Lets not forget he has to smuggle letters to Kruschev via the embassy, because he couldn’t trust his own personnel or security apparatus. 
 

Given that, is it logical to narrow something down with many variables to an extreme dichotomy, Cory?

One other thing to consider is; if he is a guy who was complicit, ie he gave his full consent for all that happened, with full knowledge of the consequences. Then why didn’t he just cover up the BOP by making someone else scapegoat? It would have been easy to do. Almost expected. 
 

Can you really judge a president trying to clean house, and hold him to the same standard as the ones who made the house dirty, or continued a negative culture? “Yes men” do not make the world any better. 

[James DiEugenio]

Nice one Chris, correct about false dichotomy.

Cory, its BS about Reagan.

Read FIrewall by Lawerence Walsh.   They designed a cover up in advance.

Kennedy was not an effective leader?

Do you want to explain how the following happened for starters?

A.

1. Kennedy organized a hemispheric embargo of Dominican Republic that was going to get the democratically elected Juan Bosch back into power over his military usurpers.

2. On the eve of Bosch taking power, LBJ lied his head off about communist terrorism and sends 25,000 Marines to defeat Bosch and keep the military plotters in control.

B.

1. Kennedy plans on visiting Sukarno in 1964 to head off the Malaysia crisis, and extend more aid and trade benefits to Jakarta so Sukarno can start building infrastructure and a self sustaining economy.

2. LBJ cancels the visit, joins England in the crisis, cuts off aid and trade benefits and sides with the military. The CIA send in all kinds of help to Suharto during the coup.  Over a half million are dead as the PKI is exterminated. 

C. 

1. Kennedy exchanges a long series of letters to Nasser.  He boosts aid to Egypt, and demands Ben Gurion allow inspections of Dimona, while asking for a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.  Ben Gurion steps down when Kennedy says he will place aid in limbo if he gets no inspections.

2.  LBJ cuts off communications with Nasser, and decreases aid to Egypt.  Has no problems with the Israelis finishing the reactor. Drops all pretense of support for Kennedy's refugee solution.  Nasser breaks with the US on eve of the six day war. 

I could go on and on.  We all know what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia.  About 5.8 million dead after JFK is killed.

Its very clear what happened with the BOP.  Which is why Kennedy fired the top level of the CIA.  That is weak leadership?  I have never been someone who begins with a rubric, like "evangelicals" or "fan boys".  I proceed from the data I find credible and then go to a conclusion.  That is what we are supposed to be about.  If we are not, then we are just urinating in the wind.

Edited November 24, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

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.

 

Cory,

I am not a history buff, let alone a history expert. I don't know the answers to your questions. This whole thing started between me and Kirk because he made a claim -- based on the Lodge/JFK recording -- that I knew Jim D. disagreed with. So I pointed out what Jim's belief was.

As our exchange proceeded, I found that I needed to study the topic more in order to answer Kirk's questions. Eventually I understood it well enough that I could form my own opinion. I couldn't conclude from that recording what Kirk concluded. I'll add that I wasn't the only one... Paul Brancato felt the same way. And I didn't need Jim D.'s writings to make that conclusion.

Having explained that, I am not what some of you guys call a JFK fanboy. But if I had to choose between what you or Kirk believe, and what Jim D. believes, I would pick Jim. And no, not because I'm Jim D. fanboy, but rather because I trust his judgement over yours and Kirk's.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Sandy and Chris.

BTW, I have never considered myself a fanboy.  Historians are not like that.  And I don't think Douglass or Talbot does either.

But about nine years ago I began to realize that there was  a game being played by the MSM about Kennedy.  When I started to track down what was being done, I began to realize how widespread it was and how many forms it took e.g. Chris Mathews, Robert Dallek.  And I was determined to try and find out what the facts and data really were and said.  

I have now spent about a decade doing this.  I would not have done that if I did not feel like I was being duped at the start. I also would not have done it if I did not think this new info sheds light on JFK's murder.

 

 

[Matthew Koch]

8 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

Thank you.  But, I want my point to not be missed.   Namely, one either thinks jfk was conned over several big events or one thinks he knew what was happening.  If the former, it is reasonable to conclude he was not effective as a leader as his white house was out of his control- which by the way cuts into any conspiracy argument that he had to be killed because why kill someone you are already conning?

If it is the latter, however, then he bears some complicity or responsibility for the BOP, Diem, etc   
This is rather simple yet seems to be getting lost because some don’t want to admit JFK ever had a fault- they are faults which are somehow classified as “unsubstantiated” lol.   I guess I missed that in graduate school studying history.   I need to correct my Ph.D professors, for shame.  
Applying this above logic, then no one here can blame Reagan for Iran Contra unless they are selectively using this logic to support their own political view.   This all goes back to early comments about how we view Kennedy historically considering alternative opinions of his presidency and personal actions   

 

What you are bringing up would make a good thread if we someone could word it correctly. It's very similar to apologetics. 

I live in a Traditional Catholic area and most of the people here, their manners and heart and actions are just like JFK. The Streets are named after non communist revolutionaries like George Washington, Simon Bolivar, and Jose Marti people here are very anti communist and very giving and caring religious people. I see JFK as very consistent with Traditional Catholicism because he was one. Which is fairly Conservative and that JFK was liberal for the time on civil rights like all Catholics were. Now when we get into socialized medicine I know JFK favored a system similar to the British. I highly doubt though that JFK would not be able to define what a woman was and I know he would not support abortion as "Health Care" so that is why an apologetic like debate is needed on this subject. For the most part I see JFK as a centrist which is probably why he is so universally loved. 

I have read around 220-250ish range on the subjects of the Assassination, Administration, BOP, CMC, Vietnam,etc, to basically pan for gold and have been collecting info from that bibliography to attempt to build upon the subject and hopefully help solve the case. It took me around 5 years to read that amount of books. Before the started reading the subject I naively thought that if I read 15 to 20 books I'd have it figured out. A big problem when one starts on the subject is that you must first learn what is the Establishment or established opinion on the subject. Then you have learn enough to have a nuanced opinion on the subject which takes time to do. The JFK case also lends itself to confirmation bias and takes a long time to read enough of dissenting opinions to see which ones "Hold water" so to speak. Kennedy's flaws are tough to talk about because there was a campaign through the 80's and 90's to portray Kennedy similar to what the media is doing now a days with Trump as a bad and reckless person. In the case of JFK the MSM media portrayed him as a reckless, spoiled rich kid that never had to work for anything and was unreasonable because of that and sicked his ruthless brother RFK on everyone. But on the flip a lot of the researchers and authors are ultra political partisans that are trying to make JFK more liberal than he actually was. 

In a case like the BOP I see that not as a flaw but a profile in courage by not making things worse. In the Diem coup is see JFK being too pragmatic and thus got taken advantage of by the Harriman Lodge group. Mind you that a month later Kennedy's administration is flown to Hawaii for a meeting on Vietnam where the policy changes and the administration also changes. That's why I see the Diem thing as a false dichotomy. 

[Ron Bulman]

15 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Sandy and Chris.

BTW, I have never considered myself a fanboy.  Historians are not like that.  And I don't think Douglass or Talbot does either.

But about nine years ago I began to realize that there was  a game being played by the MSM about Kennedy.  When I started to track down what was being done, I began to realize how widespread it was and how many forms it took e.g. Chris Mathews, Robert Dallek.  And I was determined to try and find out what the facts and data really were and said.  

I have now spent about a decade doing this.  I would not have done that if I did not feel like I was being duped at the start. I also would not have done it if I did not think this new info sheds light on JFK's murder.

 

 

Jim, just a suggestion here.  You need to do a review at K & K of Joseph McBride's book Political Truth, Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination of President Kennedy: Joseph McBride: 9781939795618: Amazon.com: Books  

The theme of the book dovetails with what you post and goes much deeper.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Sandy and Chris.

BTW, I have never considered myself a fanboy.  Historians are not like that.  And I don't think Douglass or Talbot does either.

But about nine years ago I began to realize that there was  a game being played by the MSM about Kennedy.  When I started to track down what was being done, I began to realize how widespread it was and how many forms it took e.g. Chris Mathews, Robert Dallek.  And I was determined to try and find out what the facts and data really were and said.  

I have now spent about a decade doing this.  I would not have done that if I did not feel like I was being duped at the start. I also would not have done it if I did not think this new info sheds light on JFK's murder.

 

 

As I said further up this already long thread; the term “fanboy” is by design, derogatory. It really constitutes “ad hominem” to imply that someone holding views different to your own, is a delusional groupie kid supporting a sports team or music band. I am not personally offended by it particularly but, it’s very disrespectful to the talented hard working researchers here, the people who have sacrificed so much time for this cause, or anybody seeking truth or mourning the loss of JFK all these years later. It heavily impacted the lives of many.
 

I question the underlying motivation for using the term. Nihilism is on the increase in the world. People don’t look up to anyone, they attack people who do have things that they believe in.
 

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Matthew Koch said:

In a case like the BOP I see that not as a flaw but a profile in courage by not making things worse. In the Diem coup is see JFK being too pragmatic and thus got taken advantage of by the Harriman Lodge group. Mind you that a month later Kennedy's administration is flown to Hawaii for a meeting on Vietnam where the policy changes and the administration also changes. That's why I see the Diem thing as a false dichotomy. 

Good point.

Am I right in thinking that JFK may well have died in Chicago within the same 24 hours as Diem. Nov 2nd. If that had happened this would have been used to spin the JFK narrative as if he was complicit in hits and got hit himself, leaving the public with much less reason for compassion. The same storyline played out with the Mongoose assassination plots on Castro. They were used to distort any legacy, 
 

Thinking out loud here but, was it verifiable that Lodge said Kennedy won’t be around by December? Or just hearsay/myth? 
 

PS You’re right on the confirmation bias, its present on all sides to some degree.  

[James DiEugenio]

Ron,

I reviewed Joe's book already.

 

Just google it.

[Cliff Varnell]

On 11/19/2022 at 5:20 PM, Paul Brancato said:

I don’t think one needs to be a Kennedy fan boy in order to observe and analyze the posthumous assassination of the Kennedy brothers. 
Jim D isn’t the only one who writes about JFK’s foreign policies, but you will never see anything serious about that important perspective in mainstream media, and Jim does an excellent job explaining it with cogent references. What does being a fan boy have to do with that?

DiEugenio's adoration of JFK has led him to shoddy scholarship in regard to the Bay of Pigs, the partition of Laos, and the overthrow of Diem.  He repeats Kennedy's face-saving talking points as if Holy Writ.

Edited November 26, 2022 by Cliff Varnell