Prouty on Vietnam: NSAM 263 and 273 60 years on

[James DiEugenio]

This is Jeff Carter's latest and it uses Fletcher's own words to describe how he knew about NSAM 263, and his thoughts on how it was altered.

In that sense it is original.

It is truly incredible how the MSM missed this story so completely.  And how only very few people in the critical community, like Scott, were on to it

I am one of those who thinks this was simply integral to what happened to JFK.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/prouty-on-vietnam-nsam-263-and-273-60-years-on

[Michael Griffith]

This is embarrassing, and inexcusable, given what we now know about Fletcher Prouty, about NSAMs 263 and 273, and about JFK's Vietnam intentions. Threads such as this one do great harm to our cause and make the forum appear to be a home for crackpot claims. Prouty was a fraud who spent years palling around with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and who made ludicrous claims, including some downright obscene accusations, some of which even Oliver Stone has wisely repudiated (see the links at the end of this reply). 

Also, as I have noted in several other threads when the unconditional-withdrawal myth has been peddled, even most liberal scholars reject the claim that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election, including ultra-liberals such as Ed Moise and Noam Chomsky.

Dr. Marc Selverstone's recent book The Kennedy Withdrawal, which has been praised by scholars from both sides of the Vietnam War discussion, puts the final nail in the coffin of the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Among other things, Selverstone documents that the JFK White House tapes do not contain even a tiny shred of evidence that JFK planned on abandoning the war effort after the election, much less that he planned on doing so regardless of the consequences. 

People need to understand that the unconditional-withdrawal myth is a fringe theory, a theory that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Vietnam War historians and scholars from all across the spectrum. 

Whenever you see someone favorably cite or praise Fletcher Prouty, keep in mind that Prouty

-- wrote a letter to a Holocaust-denying journal and praised the journal's goals

-- spoke at a Holocaust-denial conference sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR)

-- spoke at a convention of the vile anti-Semitic group Liberty Lobby, during which he blamed the Israelis for high oil prices and repeated the standard anti-Semitic charge of "usury"

-- co-hosted a panel discussion with white supremacist Bo Gritz during the Liberty Lobby convention

-- appeared 10 times in four years on Liberty Lobby's radio program, a program that frequently included known Holocaust deniers and white supremacists as guests

-- had one of his books republished by the IHR's publishing arm, the Noontide Press (other books published by Noontide include works that deny the Holocaust, works that praise Hitler and the SS, the infamous anti-Semitic screed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and works that overtly promote white supremacy)

-- claimed that he flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran after the Cairo Conference and that the Chinese delegation, along with Chiang Kai-shek himself, attended the Tehran Conference, even though it is an undisputed historical fact that Chiang and his delegation returned to China after the Cairo Conference and did not attend the Tehran Conference

-- claimed that after he arrived in Tehran, he saw Winston Churchill and his delegation held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Churchill didn't have his ID on him since he was allegedly wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit, and during this delay the members of the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and pointed and laughed at the British delegation, yet no one in the British delegation ever mentioned such an incident, and there was no such thing as a pocketless jumpsuit during WWII (no member of the Chinese delegation ever recalled such an incident either, and never mentioned attending the Tehran Conference)

-- claimed that he met FDR's son Elliott while allegedly refueling at Habbaniya Airfield in Iraq, that Elliott met the Chinese delegation during the stop, and that Elliott knew the Chinese delegation attended the Tehran Conference, yet Elliott said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Tehran or in Egypt in his extensive accounts of his travels and of the conference, and the kind of plane that Prouty said he flew would have had no need to stop for fuel between Cairo and Tehran

-- said he would not be surprised to learn that the Secret Team assassinated Princess Diana

-- claimed that the Jonestown Massacre was carried out by the CIA/U.S. intelligence

-- took seriously Joseph Stalin's theory that Churchill had FDR poisoned

-- defended the fraudulent Church of Scientology and its criminal founder L. Ron Hubbard, and actually attacked Scientology whistleblowers who were exposing the cult

-- and claimed that General Edward Lansdale, who admired JFK and mourned his death, was a key plotter in the JFK assassination, that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that one of the tramp photos shows Lansdale walking away from the camera. To his credit, Oliver Stone has distanced himself from Prouty's nutty, obscene charges against Lansdale. 

LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK

Edited February 3 by Michael Griffith

[Sandy Larsen]

21 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

This is embarrassing, and inexcusable, given what we now know about Fletcher Prouty, about NSAMs 263 and 273, and about JFK's Vietnam intentions. Threads such as this one do great harm to our cause and make the forum appear to be a home for crackpot claims. Prouty was a fraud who spent years palling around with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and who made ludicrous claims, including some downright obscene accusations, some of which even Oliver Stone has wisely repudiated (see the links at the end of this reply). 

Also, as I have noted in several other threads when the unconditional-withdrawal myth has been peddled, even most liberal scholars reject the claim that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election, including ultra-liberals such as Ed Moise and Noam Chomsky.

Dr. Marc Selverstone's recent book The Kennedy Withdrawal, which has been praised by scholars from both sides of the Vietnam War discussion, puts the final nail in the coffin of the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Among other things, Selverstone documents that the JFK White House tapes do not contain even a tiny shred of evidence that JFK planned on abandoning the war effort after the election, much less that he planned on doing so regardless of the consequences. 

People need to understand that the unconditional-withdrawal myth is a fringe theory, a theory that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Vietnam War historians and scholars from all across the spectrum. 

Whenever you see someone favorably cite or praise Fletcher Prouty, keep in mind that Prouty

-- wrote a letter to a Holocaust-denying journal and praised the journal's goals

-- spoke at a Holocaust-denial conference sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR)

-- spoke at a convention of the vile anti-Semitic group Liberty Lobby, during which he blamed the Israelis for high oil prices and repeated the standard anti-Semitic charge of "usury"

-- co-hosted a panel discussion with white supremacist Bo Gritz during the Liberty Lobby convention

-- appeared 10 times in four years on Liberty Lobby's radio program, a program that frequently included known Holocaust deniers and white supremacists as guests

-- had one of his books republished by the IHR's publishing arm, the Noontide Press (other books published by Noontide include works that deny the Holocaust, works that praise Hitler and the SS, the infamous anti-Semitic screed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and works that overtly promote white supremacy)

-- claimed that he flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran after the Cairo Conference and that the Chinese delegation, along with Chiang Kai-shek himself, attended the Tehran Conference, even though it is an undisputed historical fact that Chiang and his delegation returned to China after the Cairo Conference and did not attend the Tehran Conference

-- claimed that after he arrived in Tehran, he saw Winston Churchill and his delegation held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Churchill didn't have his ID on him since he was allegedly wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit, and during this delay the members of the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and pointed and laughed at the British delegation, yet no one in the British delegation ever mentioned such an incident, and there was no such thing as a pocketless jumpsuit during WWII (no member of the Chinese delegation ever recalled such an incident either, and never mentioned attending the Tehran Conference)

-- claimed that he met FDR's son Elliott while allegedly refueling at Habbaniya Airfield in Iraq, that Elliott met the Chinese delegation during the stop, and that Elliott knew the Chinese delegation attended the Tehran Conference, yet Elliott said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Tehran or in Egypt in his extensive accounts of his travels and of the conference, and the kind of plane that Prouty said he flew would have had no need to stop for fuel between Cairo and Tehran

-- said he would not be surprised to learn that the Secret Team assassinated Princess Diana

-- claimed that the Jonestown Massacre was carried out by the CIA/U.S. intelligence

-- took seriously Joseph Stalin's theory that Churchill had FDR poisoned

-- defended the fraudulent Church of Scientology and its criminal founder L. Ron Hubbard, and actually attacked Scientology whistleblowers who were exposing the cult

-- and claimed that General Edward Lansdale, who admired JFK and mourned his death, was a key plotter in the JFK assassination, that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that one of the tramp photos shows Lansdale walking away from the camera. To his credit, Oliver Stone has distanced himself from Prouty's nutty, obscene charges against Lansdale. 

LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK

 

 Micheal,

I take exception to the way you smear Fletcher Prouty. It is reminiscent of the anti-Mormon rhetoric used to smear people like you and me over the years and decades, saying that we are sexual deviants because of our polygamist associations, and racists because many people we have associated with agreed with and participated in the withholding of the priesthood and temple ceremonies from Africans and their descendants. That's precisely what you do to Fletcher Prouty in my opinion, and its ugly.

 

[Robert Morrow]

Derrick Thomas, the greatest linebacker in Alabama football history and later a 7-time NFL Pro Bowler, most definitely believed in a conspiracy in the JFK assassination.

And he believed that Vietnam policy was the #1 reason for the Vietnam War (which, btw is not the opinion of me, Robert Morrow)

https://vault.si.com/vault/1995/11/27/derrick-thomas

QUOTE

Derrick Thomas, the Kansas City Chiefs' six-time Pro Bowl
linebacker, is an avowed Kennedy assassination conspiracy
theorist. Books, CD-ROMs and videos on the subject clutter his
Independence, Mo., home. But that is only the beginning. Thomas
has become friends with Jean Hill, the woman who claims she saw
smoke coming from a rifle shot beyond the grassy knoll at Dealey
Plaza in downtown Dallas. Last year he made a point of
introducing himself to Marina Oswald, the widow of accused JFK
assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, when she visited the Kansas City
area to speak at an assassination symposium. And on Nov. 22, the
anniversary of Kennedy's murder and the eve of the Chiefs'
Thanksgiving Day game with the Dallas Cowboys, Thomas planned to
roam Dealey Plaza for the third time in four years.

"That day is one of the most significant in all of history,"
says Thomas of the fateful Friday in 1963. In Thomas's opinion
it is also one of the most significant in his life, even though
he wasn't born until New Year's Day, 1967. "My true interest
spans from the connection between the assassination and the
Vietnam War," says Thomas. "Had Kennedy lived, probably the war
would have ceased and probably my dad would've still existed."

UNQUOTE

“MAN ON A MISSION KANSAS CITY’S DERRICK THOMAS HAS MANY OBESSIONS, INCLUDING THE WAR THT CLAIMED HIS FATHER THE PILOT”

By Michael Silver for Sports Illustrated

https://vault.si.com/vault/1996/08/01/man-on-a-mission-kansas-citys-derrick-thomas-has-many-obsessions-including-the-war-that-claimed-his-father-the-pilot

QUOTE

On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by
Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. But Thomas, based on his research,
sees an elaborate, sinister scheme behind the murder.
"Definitely a conspiracy," says Thomas. "Government, military,
big business. Not the Cubans, not the Mafia. Caterpillar
Company. Twenty billion dollars. Bell Helicopter. All the oil,
all the machinery was coming out of Texas."

When he discusses the Kennedy assassination, he does not speak
off the top of his head. He has gleaned information from
numerous books, CD-ROMs and videos and cultivated a friendship
with Jean Hill, a Dallas-area schoolteacher who claims she saw
smoke coming from a rifle beyond the grassy knoll at Dealey
Plaza at the time of the shooting. In 1994 he approached and
spoke with Oswald's widow, Marina, when she visited Kansas City
to speak at a symposium. Thomas's conclusion is that Kennedy was
murdered because U.S. government officials and leaders of
American business feared he would withdraw troops from Vietnam
and thus threaten lucrative opportunities in Southeast Asia.
Thomas believes Oliver Stone's conspiracy-based film, JFK, is
"almost true to life."

UNQUOTE

[Robert Morrow]

8 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

This is embarrassing, and inexcusable, given what we now know about Fletcher Prouty, about NSAMs 263 and 273, and about JFK's Vietnam intentions. Threads such as this one do great harm to our cause and make the forum appear to be a home for crackpot claims. Prouty was a fraud who spent years palling around with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and who made ludicrous claims, including some downright obscene accusations, some of which even Oliver Stone has wisely repudiated (see the links at the end of this reply). 

Also, as I have noted in several other threads when the unconditional-withdrawal myth has been peddled, even most liberal scholars reject the claim that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election, including ultra-liberals such as Ed Moise and Noam Chomsky.

Dr. Marc Selverstone's recent book The Kennedy Withdrawal, which has been praised by scholars from both sides of the Vietnam War discussion, puts the final nail in the coffin of the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Among other things, Selverstone documents that the JFK White House tapes do not contain even a tiny shred of evidence that JFK planned on abandoning the war effort after the election, much less that he planned on doing so regardless of the consequences. 

People need to understand that the unconditional-withdrawal myth is a fringe theory, a theory that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Vietnam War historians and scholars from all across the spectrum. 

Whenever you see someone favorably cite or praise Fletcher Prouty, keep in mind that Prouty

-- wrote a letter to a Holocaust-denying journal and praised the journal's goals

-- spoke at a Holocaust-denial conference sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR)

-- spoke at a convention of the vile anti-Semitic group Liberty Lobby, during which he blamed the Israelis for high oil prices and repeated the standard anti-Semitic charge of "usury"

-- co-hosted a panel discussion with white supremacist Bo Gritz during the Liberty Lobby convention

-- appeared 10 times in four years on Liberty Lobby's radio program, a program that frequently included known Holocaust deniers and white supremacists as guests

-- had one of his books republished by the IHR's publishing arm, the Noontide Press (other books published by Noontide include works that deny the Holocaust, works that praise Hitler and the SS, the infamous anti-Semitic screed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and works that overtly promote white supremacy)

-- claimed that he flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran after the Cairo Conference and that the Chinese delegation, along with Chiang Kai-shek himself, attended the Tehran Conference, even though it is an undisputed historical fact that Chiang and his delegation returned to China after the Cairo Conference and did not attend the Tehran Conference

-- claimed that after he arrived in Tehran, he saw Winston Churchill and his delegation held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Churchill didn't have his ID on him since he was allegedly wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit, and during this delay the members of the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and pointed and laughed at the British delegation, yet no one in the British delegation ever mentioned such an incident, and there was no such thing as a pocketless jumpsuit during WWII (no member of the Chinese delegation ever recalled such an incident either, and never mentioned attending the Tehran Conference)

-- claimed that he met FDR's son Elliott while allegedly refueling at Habbaniya Airfield in Iraq, that Elliott met the Chinese delegation during the stop, and that Elliott knew the Chinese delegation attended the Tehran Conference, yet Elliott said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Tehran or in Egypt in his extensive accounts of his travels and of the conference, and the kind of plane that Prouty said he flew would have had no need to stop for fuel between Cairo and Tehran

-- said he would not be surprised to learn that the Secret Team assassinated Princess Diana

-- claimed that the Jonestown Massacre was carried out by the CIA/U.S. intelligence

-- took seriously Joseph Stalin's theory that Churchill had FDR poisoned

-- defended the fraudulent Church of Scientology and its criminal founder L. Ron Hubbard, and actually attacked Scientology whistleblowers who were exposing the cult

-- and claimed that General Edward Lansdale, who admired JFK and mourned his death, was a key plotter in the JFK assassination, that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that one of the tramp photos shows Lansdale walking away from the camera. To his credit, Oliver Stone has distanced himself from Prouty's nutty, obscene charges against Lansdale. 

LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK

Regarding Fletcher Prouty: You can be a racist, an anti-Semite, you can hate Jews, believe the Holocaust never happened, read and agree with the Daily Stormer, believe that no one ever landed on the Moon, believe that the Government is talking to you on radio chips in your head, be a member of good standing in the Church of Scientology, be a long time child molester, believe that the moon is made of green cheese, eat your feces because you think they are a chocolate bar, fervently believe in the thesis of Gerald Posner's Case Closed, be on death row in a Colorado Super Max penitentiary for triple homicide, believe that you are the Second Coming of Christ, believe that space aliens run our country, believe that Donald Trump actually cares about family values, be on a cocktail of illegal drugs, be high as a kite AND

STILL BE 100% CORRECT THAT GENERAL EDWARD LANSDALE WAS PHOTOGRAPHED 5 FEET WEST OF THE TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY ON 11/22/1963. (And based on shadow measurement, that would be at 2:30PM.)

Fletcher Prouty gives his insights: http://www.prouty.org/letter.html Here is a 3/14/85 letter by Gen. Victor H. Krulak also identifying Edward Lansdale at the TSBD on 11/22/63: http://www.ratical.com/ratville/JFK/USO/appD.html Edward Lansdale, the CIA’s assassinations expert, - his presence in Dallas indicts the CIA.  Here is a web archive of Krulak’s identification of Lansdale: https://web.archive.org/web/20101128210811/http://www.ratical.com/ratville/JFK/USO/appD.html

Patrocinio Yapcinco Lansdale, the former wife of Gen. Edward Lansdale, has identified Lansdale in that photo taken at the TSBD on 11-22-63:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiRqNiG19dg

 – Danny Sheehan, on May 23, 2016, says that Patrocinio Yapcinco Lansdale has definitively identified Lansdale in that photo taken at the TSBD on 11-23-63

Patrocinio Yapcinco Lansdale (3-13-1915 to 11-11-2006) died in 2006 https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Yapcinco-1

 

Edited February 3 by Robert Morrow

[Jeff Carter]

As most on this Forum are aware, general knowledge of NSAM 263 (and its reversal with 273) was lacking until Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” foregrounded it (and was attacked hysterically for doing so). Stone’s key advisor on this point, Fletcher Prouty, became himself subject to reputational attacks - which, as can be seen above, continue to this day. Criticism of Prouty tends to be long on insult and short on substance. This new article works from Prouty’s own accounts and understandings of the historic record. It affirms NSAM 263 was unambiguous and the result of a deliberate process.

Working directly with General Krulak in the summer and autumn of 1963, Prouty was a first-hand witness to the development of Kennedy’s Vietnam policy culminating in NSAM 263. Although he was bound to secrecy on classified information, Prouty had more freedom to discuss the topic after the publication of “Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963 Volume IV: Vietnam August-December 1963” in 1991. Prouty sent a copy of that volume to Len Osanic with the following note:

"This is the best JFK and Vietnam book you can get. It is current in that it is of the exact months when JFK was making his Vietnam policy.

Note in those late and crucial days how many times JFK had White House meetings. Then note how many times Gen Krulak, my immediate  boss in the JCS, was there. Every time he came back he would call a few of us and we’d have a conference. Then he would assign our tasks  for the next meeting… it was usually the next day.

This (FRUS Vol. IV) should clear up a lot of questions you may have. I don’t see why serious and truthful writers have not made use of this class one book."

Edited February 3 by Jeff Carter

[James DiEugenio]

FRUS is invaluable, I agree.

Interesting about Derrick Thomas. Thanks.

I think that more than one factor was the reason for JFK's murder, but as time goes on, I tend towards  Indochina as paramount.

[James DiEugenio]

The completeness with which the MSM missed this story is a little shocking.

Why?

Because three months after the Commission volumes were published, the first combat troops landed at DaNang.

Never happened in three years under Kennedy.  And the MSM completely whiffed on that.

[Jeff Carter]

The main problem for those who wish to dismiss the idea that a U.S. personnel/adviser withdrawal from Vietnam was Kennedy’s express policy, or feel that tagging such as a “fringe theory” carries any authority, is the indisputable presence, in the record, of NSAM 263 itself. The document exists, its  purpose and language is not ambiguous, and it is easily established that 263 was the culmination of weeks of focussed attention on the Vietnam question. In other words, it was indeed the fully-formed expression of the Kennedy Administration’s policy for Vietnam: that the primary focus of the U.S. effort from October 1963 onward, would be one of training Vietnamese personnel to replace American personnel with the goal of completing that process, with withdrawal of all remaining U.S. personnel,  by the end of 1965.

It is also indisputable that NSAM 273 signals a reversal of that policy by switching the primary focus of the U.S. effort from the training program designed to eventually replace U.S. personnel to a primary focus on using U.S. capabilities to assist S Vietnam “win the war.” With NSAM 273, the training program and eventual withdrawal of all U.S. personnel by end of 1965 disappears as an active goal. The first draft (and wide dissemination in national security circles) of what would come into the record as 273 occurred as Kennedy was still alive, although there is no record of JFK requesting or otherwise directing such an abrupt shift in focus after only a few weeks. NSAM 273, disingenuously, was described to the public as a “continuation” of Kennedy policy.

Prouty’s description of the process leading to 263 and 273 is more “nuts and bolts” than John Newman’s work in “JFK and Vietnam”, but the understanding of what was afoot in September through November 1963 is complimentary. Newman is the scholar working decades later from declassified documents, while Prouty had a ground-floor point of view from his position in Krulak’s office. They both came to see NSAM 263 as definitive Kennedy policy - and the attempts by critics to claim that it wasn’t lacks an explanation of why or how this policy was made official as it was.

Prouty did not venture that Kennedy’s Vietnam policy specifically led to his death. Prouty believed the  grievances were more widespread:

“(JFK) and his advisors were doing things that you might say were a throwback to the Roosevelt era or even further back to basic government. This of course built Kennedy an awful lot of very serious enemies, who were enemies from the point of view that he must not be re-elected in 1964. They could not permit him to win in 1964 because in the second four-years a president is beholden to nobody and Kennedy knew that. That’s what caused people to rise against him, because on any side - whether you are in the petroleum business, or in the banking business, or in the military - Kennedy was putting things back where they had been and not playing favourites quite as strongly as say the Eisenhower administration had been doing before him.”

[James DiEugenio]

Jeff:

That is ironic that Fletcher should bring up Roosevelt in relation to Kennedy.

In my talk at the Wecht Conference that was one of my central themes, how Truman had altered FDR's foreign policy, and Kennedy was trying to get back to Roosevelt: this included detente with USSR, getting out of Vietnam, and trying to change things in Iran.

I said that Kennedy began as a Truman Democrat but during the year he spent researching and writing his Algeria speech, he became a Roosevelt Democrat.

And I also agree that the Powers That Be were intent on getting rid of him in 1963, he was not getting out of that year alive:  Tampa, Chicago, Dallas.

[Robert Morrow]

JFK on getting out of Vietnam

1) "I’ve just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We’re losing too damned many people over there. It’s time for us to get out. The Vietnamese aren't fighting for themselves. We’re the ones who are doing the fighting. After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. There's no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life." --President Kennedy, speaking to his Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff ...in the Oval Office on 21 November 1963, the day before his assassination, cited by James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

2) "In my last conversation with him [President Kennedy], I'll always remember that he said, 'As soon as the election is over, I'm going to get the boys out of Vietnam.'" --Tip O'Neill, former House Speaker, interviewed in the documentary, Beyond "JFK": The Question of Conspiracy

3) “If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected." --John F. Kennedy, cited by his special assistant Kenneth O'Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy

[Roger Odisio]

7 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

The main problem for those who wish to dismiss the idea that a U.S. personnel/adviser withdrawal from Vietnam was Kennedy’s express policy, or feel that tagging such as a “fringe theory” carries any authority, is the indisputable presence, in the record, of NSAM 263 itself. The document exists, its  purpose and language is not ambiguous, and it is easily established that 263 was the culmination of weeks of focussed attention on the Vietnam question. In other words, it was indeed the fully-formed expression of the Kennedy Administration’s policy for Vietnam: that the primary focus of the U.S. effort from October 1963 onward, would be one of training Vietnamese personnel to replace American personnel with the goal of completing that process, with withdrawal of all remaining U.S. personnel,  by the end of 1965.

It is also indisputable that NSAM 273 signals a reversal of that policy by switching the primary focus of the U.S. effort from the training program designed to eventually replace U.S. personnel to a primary focus on using U.S. capabilities to assist S Vietnam “win the war.” With NSAM 273, the training program and eventual withdrawal of all U.S. personnel by end of 1965 disappears as an active goal. The first draft (and wide dissemination in national security circles) of what would come into the record as 273 occurred as Kennedy was still alive, although there is no record of JFK requesting or otherwise directing such an abrupt shift in focus after only a few weeks. NSAM 273, disingenuously, was described to the public as a “continuation” of Kennedy policy.

Prouty’s description of the process leading to 263 and 273 is more “nuts and bolts” than John Newman’s work in “JFK and Vietnam”, but the understanding of what was afoot in September through November 1963 is complimentary. Newman is the scholar working decades later from declassified documents, while Prouty had a ground-floor point of view from his position in Krulak’s office. They both came to see NSAM 263 as definitive Kennedy policy - and the attempts by critics to claim that it wasn’t lacks an explanation of why or how this policy was made official as it was.

Prouty did not venture that Kennedy’s Vietnam policy specifically led to his death. Prouty believed the  grievances were more widespread:

“(JFK) and his advisors were doing things that you might say were a throwback to the Roosevelt era or even further back to basic government. This of course built Kennedy an awful lot of very serious enemies, who were enemies from the point of view that he must not be re-elected in 1964. They could not permit him to win in 1964 because in the second four-years a president is beholden to nobody and Kennedy knew that. That’s what caused people to rise against him, because on any side - whether you are in the petroleum business, or in the banking business, or in the military - Kennedy was putting things back where they had been and not playing favourites quite as strongly as say the Eisenhower administration had been doing before him.”

So what do you make of the fact that the draft that became 273 was started while Kennedy was still alive.  It's obvious Kennedy had no part in it, didn't know about it.  He would not have signed it.

It was being written by McGeorge Bundy, as I recall.  Who else knew about it?  Who ordered it?

Why would that person or persons have been working on it unless they knew Kennedy was going to be eliminated?

Johnson signed it shortly after Kennedy was buried.

[James DiEugenio]

Nice quote by Kilduff, in fact all three are good, thanks Robert.

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

So what do you make of the fact that the draft that became 273 was started while Kennedy was still alive.  It's obvious Kennedy had no part in it, didn't know about it.  He would not have signed it.

It was being written by McGeorge Bundy, as I recall.  Who else knew about it?  Who ordered it?

Why would that person or persons have been working on it unless they knew Kennedy was going to be eliminated?

Johnson signed it shortly after Kennedy was buried.

The new essay has a section devoted to NSAM 273.  It is not known why or under what direction McGeorge Bundy initiated the draft November 21, 1963. Fletcher Prouty was probably the first person to speculate on the origins and purpose of 273. You are correct - there is no indication anywhere that JFK knew of or had requested such a draft.

A dispute between Prouty and John Newman over 273 on the set of “JFK” is obliquely referenced in the Esquire Magazine “hatchet job” on the film published October 1991. At that time, Prouty had a more complete collection of NSAM 273 drafts and the misunderstandings were eventually resolved.

[Sandy Larsen]

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

6 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

So what do you make of the fact that the draft that became 273 was started while Kennedy was still alive. 

 It is not known why or under what direction McGeorge Bundy initiated the draft November 21, 1963.

 

How do you guys know that 273 was written before Kennedy's death? The document may have been antedated to make it look like it was Kennedy's.