New John Newman podcast video

[Michael Griffith]

On 9/6/2023 at 1:37 PM, Michael Griffith said:

I watched the segment on JFK and Vietnam. Very sad. Newman is badly informed and sorely mistaken on this issue. He makes a number of claims that are simply erroneous and that were debunked years ago. 

The war was not going terribly in 1963. Quite the opposite. An abundance of sources, including North Vietnamese sources, confirm that the U.S. war effort was going well in 1963, and also in 1962. The war effort did not start to go badly until after Diem was assassinated. Has Newman not read any of these materials?

Diem was not corrupt, and he enjoyed considerable support among the people. Diem enabled tens of thousands of people to own their own farms for the first time ever. Under Diem, South Vietnam's economy performed far better than did North Vietnam's economy. Diem greatly improved South Vietnam's education system, and, unlike Hanoi's leaders, allowed private schools to operate and gave public school districts some control over curriculum. 

The Buddhist crisis was markedly exaggerated by JFK's liberal advisers and by the American press. The majority of the officials in Diem's government were Buddhists, as were many ARVN generals. Diem had done a great deal to help the Buddhists. The militant Buddhists were a minority among their fellow Buddhists. Many ARVN generals who were Buddhists believed that Diem was being too lenient with the militant Buddhists. And, it has been known for years now that some of the militant Buddhists were Communists and that Communists had substantially penetrated the Buddhist protest movement. 

As for Newman's claim that JFK had decided to abandon South Vietnam after the election, it is sad to see him repeat this specious claim, after all we now know on the subject. Even the vast majority of stridently liberal, anti-war historians reject the claim as baseless. No trace of any intention to pull out can be found on the JFK White House tapes--instead, we hear numerous affirmations of JFK's desire to win the war, not to mention the fact that JFK publicly and repeatedly rejected and criticized the idea of withdrawal in the months leading up to his death. 

Even on the civil rights issue, Newman is off base. He says that JFK was not going to take strong action on civil rights until after the election in order to avoid losing the Souther vote. This is pure fiction. JFK's forceful interventions against segregation in Mississippi and Alabama had already infuriated most conservative Southern Democrats. Furthermore, JFK had already introduced civil rights legislation in Congress, and it was DOA because of Southern Democratic opposition. Democrats were already quite fearful that they were going to have a hard time winning Southern states in the 1964 election. 

I might add that the revised version of NSAM 273 that LBJ signed on 11/26/63 was virtually identical to the draft that JFK was going to sign after he returned from Dallas. The 11/26/63 version said nothing about U.S. combat troops--not one word. It tacitly allowed the direct intervention of U.S. forces, but it did not expressly say this. And, U.S. military personnel had already been directly involved in military actions for well over a year before JFK's death. 

Furthermore, there is a mountain of evidence that shows that LBJ was not chomping at the bit to send large numbers of U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam. Indeed, in his first meeting with the Joint Chiefs soon after the assassination, LBJ told them he wanted to cut defense spending. Additionally, the record shows that LBJ hoped to keep U.S. intervention in Vietnam to a minimum, and that he even hoped that the American advisers there could start to be withdrawn soon.

Moreover, there is also the fact that JFK never faced the kind of massive Communist escalation that LBJ faced. Hanoi's leaders drastically escalated the Communist war effort in late 1964 and early 1965, far beyond what they had ever done before. JFK had never been faced with such a situation. When LBJ was faced with it, he dragged his feet and nearly waited too long.

An especially curious error in Newman's segment on JFK and Vietnam is his claim that OPLAN 34A was a plan to "invade" North Vietnam and that Maxwell Taylor and Victor Krulak "suppressed" the plan and "didn't let that go back." 

He is wrong on both counts. OPLAN 34A was not a plan to "invade" North Vietnam. The plan called for covert raids and limited aerial attacks on North Vietnam in response to the terrorist attacks and military ambushes that the North Vietnamese had been sponsoring and/or conducting in South Vietnam for over two years. Moreover, Taylor and Krulak did not "suppress" OPLAN 34A. In fact, JFK approved OPLAN 34A.

Ultra-liberal historian Edwin Moise says the following about OPLAN 34A:

          Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) finalize the details on a plan, approved by President Kennedy just before his assassination, to secretly but more directly support the South Vietnamese armed forces in their conflict with North Vietnam. McNamara and the JCS believe that the CIA’s actions in North Vietnam so far have been too piecemeal to significantly deter Communist activities in the South. They codename the plan Operations Plan 34A (OPLAN 34A) and it directs U.S. forces to engage in covert actions against the North, both directly and in support of South Vietnamese troops. These include commando raids and aerial attacks against military and communication facilities as well as espionage, sabotage, intelligence, and counterinsurgency operations.

          Wherever possible, OPLAN 34A activities are carried out without direct U.S. involvement or in ways that maintain plausible deniability of American involvement. Much like other political, diplomatic, and military measures being taken against North Vietnam, the Department of Defense conceives of OPLAN 34A as a way to pressure Hanoi’s government to shut down its support for the Communist insurgency in South Vietnam and to reexamine its alleged aggression in neighboring Laos. (https://www.vietnamwar50th.com/1945-1964_the_road_to_war/Military-Assistance-Command-Vietnam-and-the-CIA-Finalize-Operations-Plan-34A/)

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

On 8/13/2023 at 7:42 PM, Anthony Thorne said:

1:38:44 - The ‘Trojan Horse’ inside the Kennedy family: Maxwell Taylor

I just finished watching this segment. Another very sad and rather odd segment. Newman accuses Taylor of having been a trojan horse who was pushing for a larger war in Vietnam. This is a misleading claim.

Yes, for a time, Taylor did advocate deploying a modest number of combat troops to South Vietnam for defensive purposes only--even then he opposed having U.S. troops do the bulk of the fighting. However, after Taylor went and stayed in South Vietnam as the U.S. ambassador (and the head of military operations in country), he became one of the leading opponents of sending any combat troops to South Vietnam, in any capacity. Taylor was so strident in his opposition to sending combat troops that even LBJ's JFK-holdover aides urged that he be replaced as ambassador. This fact is profusely documented in H. R. McMaster's widely acclaimed, award-winning book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

It is worth noting that the situation was so bad in South Vietnam in early 1965, because of the large-scale Communist offensive ordered by the Hanoi regime, that even former JFK advisers McGeorge Bundy and John McNaughton recommended to LBJ that combat troops be deployed to South Vietnam.

The 1965 NVA-VC offensive was the largest aggressive action ever undertaken up to that time--it was much larger than any previous Communist offensive.

This gets back to the key point that JFK was never confronted with such a massive Communist escalation, and that when this situation arose in early 1965, even most of JFK's former advisers who then worked for LBJ recommended introducing combat troops into the fight. 

It is rather surprising that Newman fails to mention any of these important facts.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Gerry Down]

On 9/3/2023 at 10:04 PM, Joseph Backes said:

Oh, an overlooked book that all good JFK researchers should have in their library is one by Clarence Kelly, "Kelly: The Story of an FBI Director." He was the FBI Director after Hoover. In it he's convinced Oswald was in MC.  Anyway, what's important is in the book we learn the FBI had their own separate wire tapping / phone tapping operation going on.  This was totally separate from the CIA's.

Why wasn't this revealed in the Lopez report? I mean there was talk from Boris and Anna Tarasoff of there being another Oswald phone conversation which they remembered transcribing but which does not appear in the official record. Could the HSCA (ie Hardway and Lopez) not have gone to the FBI and got their wire-tap copies to check if this alleged extra Oswald phone call occurred?

[Joseph Backes]

Because Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway were reviewing CIA records.  Also because they didn't know about it.  Kelly's book wasn't published until 1987 which was well after the HSCA period.  

Boris and Anna Tarasoff have nothing to do with the FBI tap.  

I don't think it's necessarily correct that there is an FBI copy of everything the CIA taped, or vice versa.  

I was pointing out something John Newman referenced in, I think, his 1994 A.S. K. presentation.

As to how many Oswald calls there were and when I would check with Newman's "Oswald and the CIA," book. 

So, unless the ARRB asked the FBI about this I don't think there are many records at all on the FBI taping system in MC.

Joe

[Gerry Down]

15 minutes ago, Joseph Backes said:

Because Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway were reviewing CIA records.  Also because they didn't know about it.  Kelly's book wasn't published until 1987 which was well after the HSCA period.  

Boris and Anna Tarasoff have nothing to do with the FBI tap.  

I don't think it's necessarily correct that there is an FBI copy of everything the CIA taped, or vice versa.  

I was pointing out something John Newman referenced in, I think, his 1994 A.S. K. presentation.

As to how many Oswald calls there were and when I would check with Newman's "Oswald and the CIA," book. 

So, unless the ARRB asked the FBI about this I don't think there are many records at all on the FBI taping system in MC.

Joe

Its an extraordinary oversight. Its directly relevant to key issues surrounding the Mexico City incident. For example Hoover stated that his agents listened to an LHO tape and said it was not Oswalds voice. Could they have been referring to one of their own tapes of Oswald? Also Hoovers statement:

I can’t forget CIA withholding the French espionage activities in USA, nor the false story re Oswalds trip to Mexico City, only to mention two of their instances of double dealing.

Could he have been referring to the fact the CIA were omitting one of the LHO phonecalls, the same one the Tarasoffs recalled transcribing. These FBI tapes/records would have been key records the ARRB should have been after. 

Were these FBI wire-taps so important to the FBI that they were able to avoid giving them to the WC even though the CIA were forced to hand over theirs? Its remarkable the FBI were able to avoid having to do this while the CIA were forced to hand over theirs. 

[Joseph Backes]

It's not an oversight.  As I said, Kelly's book came out in 1987.

No. The tape Hoover is referring to is one of the CIA tapes.  Eldon Rudd was an FBI agent in MC. He flew up to Dallas with it.  

The ARRB was keenly interested in the MC tapes. But, they had to work through the State Dept and they were not very helpful.