Prouty on Vietnam: NSAM 263 and 273 60 years on

[Jeff Carter]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

we’re not just talking about his public statements. We’re also talking about the JFK White House tapes and meeting minutes.

The non-public discussions are self-contradictory as well.

 

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

In every single firsthand statement from JFK himself we see him reaffirming his determination to win the war. You cannot cite a single firsthand statement from JFK to support your view.

You are twisting the focus of the debate  (I.e. withdrawal or engagement)  into a construct (i.e. to win or to lose) which is not relevant to the specific terms by which the policy (263) was developed. The specific terms dealt with the question of whether the United States military had a direct role to play in the Vietnam conflict. The determination, as unambiguously expressed by the actual language of 263, was it did not and thus the personnel would be withdrawn.

 

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

NSAM 263 simply does not support the unconditional-withdrawal myth. In fact, it refutes the myth.

The “unconditional-withdrawal myth” is something you made up. There’s nothing in Prouty or Newman’s extensive work which endorses this alleged “myth”. In fact, the expression of this “myth” which does appear in the record (with your preferred definition I.e. a complete withdrawal regardless or despite a Communist victory) is attributed to Robert McNamara, spoken during a classified debrief in October 1963 regarding his McNamara-Taylor trip to Vietnam. Over the past year, on this Forum, you have variously and erroneously attributed McNamara’s own words to Prouty, Newman, Galbraith, DiEugenio, and “JFK”’s screenwriters.

 

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

NSAM 263 itself is less than one page long and merely announces the 1,000-man withdrawal and refers to sections of the Taylor-McNamara report. If you read that report and the instructions that JFK himself gave to Lodge afterward, it is crystal clear that the withdrawal was conditioned on the situation on the ground...

The first sentence is about as disingenuous as you have ever posted on this Forum - and that is saying a lot. The entire paragraph is in fact disingenuous. You make sweeping statements referring to “instructions that JFK himself gave to Lodge afterward” which supposedly make it “crystal clear that the withdrawal was conditioned on the situation on the ground” - without actually identifying what you are referring to or why anybody should accept what you say. I don’t see any “ifs” or “buts” or otherwise conditional language in the approved recommendations. Further, the recommendations were not about “winning the war” as you insist, they were about replacing US personnel with Vietnamese personnel.

 

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I know some here will never abandon this mythical spin. A few facts...

All you are doing here is repeating Establishment talking points as first set out by Les Gelb in the New York Times in December 1991. While these points seek to contradict the informed commentary of persons such as Fletcher Prouty and John Newman, they fail to address the actual point of contention - which is the understanding of the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy as expressed in NSAM 263. Your personal rejection of these “mythical” views relies on a straw-man “unconditional-withdrawal myth”, and the rather questionable opinion that Kennedy would have actually introduced combat forces in Vietnam during his second term. Your commentary in general on the Vietnam War, as expressed on this Forum, reveals a belief the US war effort was in fact a noble endeavour, an opinion shaped by a conservative worldview imbued with a strong, if somewhat antiquated, anti-communist bent. That, it seems to me, is a formula for exactly misunderstanding the Kennedy administration and/or its policies.

Edited February 14 by Jeff Carter

[Michael Griffith]

Dr. James Giglio, a historian and author of the book The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, provided a good summary of some of the problems with using the 1,000-man withdrawal/NSAM 263 to support the unconditional-withdrawal myth, in an article he wrote for the American Historical Association's magazine Perspectives on History in 1992:

          The 1,000-force cutback slated for the end of 1963 mostly involved a construction battalion that had completed its work; it was understood that it would be replaced by other troops. Moreover, the testimony of several contemporaries and Kennedy's own statements suggest that he intended no pullout after the 1964 election. In a 1964 oral history interview, Robert Kennedy, who knew his brother best, confirmed that the administration had not considered a withdrawal. When asked what the president would have done if the South Vietnamese appeared doomed, Robert answered in a way that truthfully expressed the ad hoc nature of the Kennedy presidency: "We'd face that when we came to it." The recently published Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 4, Vietnam, August-December 1963, further affirms the no-pullout conclusion. (Oliver Stone's JFK in Historical Perspective | Perspectives on History | AHA (historians.org)

Far-left author and Noam Chomsky disciple Andy Piascik discussed some of the reasons that even most ultra-liberals reject the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election:

          This fixation on what he might have done is understandable, for the historical record -- what JFK actually did -- is quite horrifying and laid the groundwork for the decade of slaughter that followed.

          First was the escalation in Laos, accompanied by diplomatic shenanigans that undermined coalition governments that included the Pathet Lao revolutionaries despite they're being the most popular force in the country. The goal, as always with empire, was victory and the annihilation of anyone who favored national liberation.

          In Vietnam, a similar approach led to massive devastation. In the winter of 1961-62, Kennedy initiated the full-scale bombing of those parts of South Vietnam controlled by the National Liberation Front (all but Saigon and its immediate surroundings). The justification that bombing was needed to defeat the revolution masked the indiscriminate nature of the aerial assault, which resulted in casualties that were overwhelmingly civilian. And so the tone was set for the next eleven years of war.

          It was also Kennedy who authorized the first use of Chemicals of Mass Destruction in Southeast Asia, with napalm the best-known and most deadly. Never had chemical warfare been used so extensively, though the U.S. had also used napalm in Korea in the early 1950's. Again, the tone was established as massive amounts of phosphorous, Agent Orange and other chemicals were used for the rest of the war, chemicals the deadly affects of which are being felt to this day throughout Indochina.

          And it was under Kennedy that the notorious strategic hamlets were set up throughout South Vietnam. "Strategic Hamlets" is a term worthy of Orwell at his best or Madison Avenue at its worst, designed to induce thoughts of happy, grateful peasants gathered around a campfire. The more accurate phrase would be Concentration Camps, as Vietnamese by the thousands were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to live behind barbed wire. . . .

          As each of these moves failed and the NLF grew stronger, Kennedy ordered ground troops to Southeast Asia in the spring of 1962 and gradually increased their numbers until his death. There is no evidence to indicate any plan for withdrawal short of victory. . . .

          Significantly, Schlesinger and the many other memoirists, biographers and historians of Camelot never mentioned withdrawal short of victory until domestic opinion had turned dramatically against U.S. aggression long after Kennedy's death. Only then did the myth of "Kennedy the Peacemaker" emerge. (https://www.ctpost.com/opinion/article/kennedy-s-never-ending-cult-5076200.php)
 

[Jeff Carter]

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Dr. James Giglio, a historian and author of the book The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, provided a good summary of some of the problems with using the 1,000-man withdrawal/NSAM 263 to support the unconditional-withdrawal myth, in an article he wrote for the American Historical Association's magazine Perspectives on History in 1992:

          The 1,000-force cutback slated for the end of 1963 mostly involved a construction battalion that had completed its work; it was understood that it would be replaced by other troops. Moreover, the testimony of several contemporaries and Kennedy's own statements suggest that he intended no pullout after the 1964 election. In a 1964 oral history interview, Robert Kennedy, who knew his brother best, confirmed that the administration had not considered a withdrawal. When asked what the president would have done if the South Vietnamese appeared doomed, Robert answered in a way that truthfully expressed the ad hoc nature of the Kennedy presidency: "We'd face that when we came to it." The recently published Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 4, Vietnam, August-December 1963, further affirms the no-pullout conclusion. (Oliver Stone's JFK in Historical Perspective | Perspectives on History | AHA (historians.org)

Far-left author and Noam Chomsky disciple Andy Piascik discussed some of the reasons that even most ultra-liberals reject the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election:

          This fixation on what he might have done is understandable, for the historical record -- what JFK actually did -- is quite horrifying and laid the groundwork for the decade of slaughter that followed.

          First was the escalation in Laos, accompanied by diplomatic shenanigans that undermined coalition governments that included the Pathet Lao revolutionaries despite they're being the most popular force in the country. The goal, as always with empire, was victory and the annihilation of anyone who favored national liberation.

          In Vietnam, a similar approach led to massive devastation. In the winter of 1961-62, Kennedy initiated the full-scale bombing of those parts of South Vietnam controlled by the National Liberation Front (all but Saigon and its immediate surroundings). The justification that bombing was needed to defeat the revolution masked the indiscriminate nature of the aerial assault, which resulted in casualties that were overwhelmingly civilian. And so the tone was set for the next eleven years of war.

          It was also Kennedy who authorized the first use of Chemicals of Mass Destruction in Southeast Asia, with napalm the best-known and most deadly. Never had chemical warfare been used so extensively, though the U.S. had also used napalm in Korea in the early 1950's. Again, the tone was established as massive amounts of phosphorous, Agent Orange and other chemicals were used for the rest of the war, chemicals the deadly affects of which are being felt to this day throughout Indochina.

          And it was under Kennedy that the notorious strategic hamlets were set up throughout South Vietnam. "Strategic Hamlets" is a term worthy of Orwell at his best or Madison Avenue at its worst, designed to induce thoughts of happy, grateful peasants gathered around a campfire. The more accurate phrase would be Concentration Camps, as Vietnamese by the thousands were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to live behind barbed wire. . . .

          As each of these moves failed and the NLF grew stronger, Kennedy ordered ground troops to Southeast Asia in the spring of 1962 and gradually increased their numbers until his death. There is no evidence to indicate any plan for withdrawal short of victory. . . .

          Significantly, Schlesinger and the many other memoirists, biographers and historians of Camelot never mentioned withdrawal short of victory until domestic opinion had turned dramatically against U.S. aggression long after Kennedy's death. Only then did the myth of "Kennedy the Peacemaker" emerge. (https://www.ctpost.com/opinion/article/kennedy-s-never-ending-cult-5076200.php)
 

Giglio:  “The 1,000-force cutback slated for the end of 1963 mostly involved a construction battalion that had completed its work; it was understood that it would be replaced by other troops…”

John Newman’s “JFK and Vietnam” discusses in detail what happened to the 1000 man withdrawal, which was not carried out as envisioned (see 2017 edition Chapter 22 p529-532). This detail derives from the Honolulu Meeting Briefing Book (November 1963). Newman’s information substantially corrects and supplants what appears in the Pentagon Papers, which is missing three crucial documents regarding this issue (see footnote 1155).

 

Giglio: “The recently published Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 4, Vietnam, August-December 1963, further affirms the no-pullout conclusion.”

This blanket statement offers no citations, and contradicts a close reading of the discussions which culminate in 263. A close reading leads to exactly the opposite conclusion.

 

Piascik: “There is no evidence to indicate any plan for withdrawal short of victory. . . .”

The evidence and the plan is known as NSAM 263 as seen below.. Does “without impairment of the war effort” actually mean “victory”? That could serve as a quibbling debate, but what I see is that the academic critics of the withdrawal plans prefer to avoid referring to the language altogether because it upends their concepts, and the changes represented by 273 appear too obvious.

2 A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

3 In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.

[James DiEugenio]

The policy in Vietnam changed almost immediately and Newman notes this at the first 11/24 meeting. 

And it is there to see: "I am not going to lose Vietnam, I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went" (Newman, p. 459). LBJ then added that he had never been happy with our operations in Vietnam.  He felt we spent too much emphasis on social reforms, he has little tolerance with spending time being "do-gooders".  He then added that if there was any future bickering on the issue, that person would be removed. (Ibid, p. 460). John McCone for one noted the difference in tone.

Any idiot can contrast this with the last words of Kennedy both officially and not officially.  It was Kennedy who pushed through 263. He put back in the withdrawal program to the Taylor/McNamara Report, which Sullivan wanted to take out. As Newman notes, Kennedy more or less steamrolled the opposition. (p. 411) William Sullivan bitterly disagreed with what Kennedy was doing.   He thought that instead of withdrawing people and finishing the withdrawal by 1965, it should be contrary: we should be putting more people in by the end of 1963. 

During the NSC discussion over the 1000 man withdrawal in October, it was McNamara who pressed the issue of taking our men out and training the ARVN to replace them.(Newman, p. 413). This indicates that as Gordon Goldstein and John K. Galbraith have noted, and has been proven, Kennedy designated McNamara as his point man on the withdrawal. Privately, on November 12th, Kennedy told Sen. Morse that he was in the midst of a review and when he was done he wanted to share it with him for a couple of hours. Morse was one of the strongest critics of American involvement in Vietnam. (Newman, p. 432)

When Johnson took over he was clearly aware of all this.  He attacked McNamara for withdrawing men from a conflict we were losing. And he appointed Sullivan to a secret mission inside the White House to plan for direct American entry into the war, including the "causus belli", the Tonkin Gulf incident.  If anyone thinks that was a coincidence you need some serious counseling with your priest, reverend or rabbi.  Because it was not.

 

Edited February 15 by James DiEugenio

[Robert Morrow]

I happen to agree with Michael Griffith that JFK not being willing to prosecute the Vietnam War was not the #1 reason for the JFK assassination. Rather, I think that the personal reasons of LYNDON JOHNSON, ED CLARK, D.H. BYRD and GEN. EDWARD LANSDALE were much more the reason for the JFK assassination. I think that the actual SHOOTERS of JFK were probably men (like "Dark Complected Man" aka "Radio Man") who were in a white hot fury over JFK's non-invasion of Cuba.

Lansdale's reason was that he was in an absolute rage over the overthrow and death of Diem who he wanted to make the "George Washington" of Vietnam and Lansdale's rage at being castrated on policy inside the Kennedy Administration.

Having said that, here are some interesting headlines from the Washington Post from 10/3/1963 and 11/25/1963: 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Now, let me ask this:  When did JFK ever propose sending in combat troops to fight the war for Saigon?

Sound of crickets in the night.

When did JFK ever call in the Pentagon to design going to war with the north?

Sound of crickets in the night.

The amazing thing about Johnson is he reversed both of those policies quickly.  He called the Pentagon into his office in January, and they were advising him on war plans, which were then written up in NSAM 288 in March.

In the summer of 1964, the Pentagon moved 93 planes from Thailand to South Vietnam.  Even Taylor objected to this.  Why?  Because he knew you were going to need American combat troops in theater to protect such a large air arsenal from the Viet Cong.

Therefore, by early August of 1964 Kennedy's policy had been completely negated, largely reversed.

Just recall, the volumes of the Warren Commission would be released three months later. Try to find any major news source which related one to the other.

Edited February 15 by James DiEugenio

[Robert Morrow]

22 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Dr. James Giglio, a historian and author of the book The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, provided a good summary of some of the problems with using the 1,000-man withdrawal/NSAM 263 to support the unconditional-withdrawal myth, in an article he wrote for the American Historical Association's magazine Perspectives on History in 1992:

          The 1,000-force cutback slated for the end of 1963 mostly involved a construction battalion that had completed its work; it was understood that it would be replaced by other troops. Moreover, the testimony of several contemporaries and Kennedy's own statements suggest that he intended no pullout after the 1964 election. In a 1964 oral history interview, Robert Kennedy, who knew his brother best, confirmed that the administration had not considered a withdrawal. When asked what the president would have done if the South Vietnamese appeared doomed, Robert answered in a way that truthfully expressed the ad hoc nature of the Kennedy presidency: "We'd face that when we came to it." The recently published Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume 4, Vietnam, August-December 1963, further affirms the no-pullout conclusion. (Oliver Stone's JFK in Historical Perspective | Perspectives on History | AHA (historians.org)

Far-left author and Noam Chomsky disciple Andy Piascik discussed some of the reasons that even most ultra-liberals reject the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election:

          This fixation on what he might have done is understandable, for the historical record -- what JFK actually did -- is quite horrifying and laid the groundwork for the decade of slaughter that followed.

          First was the escalation in Laos, accompanied by diplomatic shenanigans that undermined coalition governments that included the Pathet Lao revolutionaries despite they're being the most popular force in the country. The goal, as always with empire, was victory and the annihilation of anyone who favored national liberation.

          In Vietnam, a similar approach led to massive devastation. In the winter of 1961-62, Kennedy initiated the full-scale bombing of those parts of South Vietnam controlled by the National Liberation Front (all but Saigon and its immediate surroundings). The justification that bombing was needed to defeat the revolution masked the indiscriminate nature of the aerial assault, which resulted in casualties that were overwhelmingly civilian. And so the tone was set for the next eleven years of war.

          It was also Kennedy who authorized the first use of Chemicals of Mass Destruction in Southeast Asia, with napalm the best-known and most deadly. Never had chemical warfare been used so extensively, though the U.S. had also used napalm in Korea in the early 1950's. Again, the tone was established as massive amounts of phosphorous, Agent Orange and other chemicals were used for the rest of the war, chemicals the deadly affects of which are being felt to this day throughout Indochina.

          And it was under Kennedy that the notorious strategic hamlets were set up throughout South Vietnam. "Strategic Hamlets" is a term worthy of Orwell at his best or Madison Avenue at its worst, designed to induce thoughts of happy, grateful peasants gathered around a campfire. The more accurate phrase would be Concentration Camps, as Vietnamese by the thousands were rounded up at gunpoint and forced to live behind barbed wire. . . .

          As each of these moves failed and the NLF grew stronger, Kennedy ordered ground troops to Southeast Asia in the spring of 1962 and gradually increased their numbers until his death. There is no evidence to indicate any plan for withdrawal short of victory. . . .

          Significantly, Schlesinger and the many other memoirists, biographers and historians of Camelot never mentioned withdrawal short of victory until domestic opinion had turned dramatically against U.S. aggression long after Kennedy's death. Only then did the myth of "Kennedy the Peacemaker" emerge. (https://www.ctpost.com/opinion/article/kennedy-s-never-ending-cult-5076200.php)
 

Did it ever occur to you that John Kennedy could be rightfully considered a war criminal in relation to his actions in Vietnam? I am referring to JFK's use of the Strategic Hamlets "Concentration Camps,"  napalm and Agent Orange and his early prosecution of the Vietnam War.

And despite ALL of that John Kennedy could be considered a milquetoast compared to the highest levels of the United States Military who came to him in summer 1961 and ADVOCATED A NUCLEAR FIRST STRIKE ON RUSSIA AND CHINA WHICH WOULD HAVE RESULTED IN THE DEATHS OF HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE?

This is a distinction that nutty leftists like Noam Chomsky can't seem to figure out. They hate JFK so much they are unable to acknowledge there was something worse out there.

In other words, whatever policy JFK was proposing in Vietnam was not good enough for a broad swath of the United States military, especially the hard right generals in the United States Air Force? And these people in the military ESPECIALLY did not like the JFK and State Department-supported coup against Diem which occurred at the precise moment Gen. Edward Lansdale was being forced out of the Kennedy Administration.

I agree with DiEugenio, the odds of JFK sending a million American troops into the jungles of Vietnam were slim and none - even if the USA was about to lose Vietnam to the communists.

Lyndon Johnson, in contrast, was fully ready to use NUCLEAR WEAPONS in Vietnam on Feb. 10, 1968 in a panicked response to the Tet Offensive and LBJ only backed off from that "Nuke the VC" plan only after the Prime ministers of Canada and the United Kingdom appeared on national TV in the USA to vehemently oppose such a plan.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/10/24/that-sensational-new-york-times-story-about-lbj-saving-america-from-nuclear-war-in-vietnam-is-wrong/   [Gregg Jones, Dallas Morning News, October 24, 2018]

 

 

 

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

Michael Griffith: earlier you posted that Gen. Edward Lansdale admired John Kennedy and he mourned the death of JFK.

Would you care to DOCUMENT these assertions? Is there a book, an author, a page number you can refer me to that supports this? Is there a web page that has information about Gen. Edward Lansdale admiring JFK and later mourning his death? Are there any personal letters of Lansdale that support this? Did his second wife Pat Kelly ever say Lansdale admired JFK? Is there any thing in Max Boot's biography on Lansdale, which I have, that supports this?

Yes, John Kennedy, who offered Lansdale the ambassadorship to Vietnam, was an early fan of Gen. Lansdale. But by 10/31/1963 as Lansdale was being run out of the Kennedy Administration just as the coup (and soon to be murder) of his friend Diem (someone who Lansdale had invested so much time, energy and friendship in) was occurring, did Lansdale admire John Kennedy?

My point of view is that Gen. Edward Lansdale, like his benefactors Lyndon Johnson and full-on Kennedy-hater Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-CT), CELEBRATED THE DEATH of John Kennedy. That is because I think Lyndon Johnson and Gen. Edward Lansdale both were involved in the murder of JFK for deeply personal reasons.

If you have anything that contradicts that, you are welcome to DOCUMENT (that Lansdale admired JFK and mourned his death) that for the readers of Education Forum.

In Max Boot's book The Road Not Taken, he writes that Lucien Conien broke down in tears as he apologized to Lansdale over the coup and death of Diem. Lansdale must have been really, really pissed about what happened and I have little doubt that Lansdale would have placed the death of his friend Diem at the feet of John Kennedy personally.

Lucien Conien: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Conein 

 

Edited February 16 by Robert Morrow

[Michael Griffith]

I am in disbelief that people are still using the tramp photo showing a man with his back to the camera as "evidence" of Prouty's nutty claim that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza on 11/22. 

Anyway, one of the facts that Dr. Berman notes in his 29-page critique of Newman's theory is that McGeorge Bundy, i.e., the guy who drafted NSAM 273 for JFK, told LBJ, in writing, under the heading of "Can this be ended by 1965?" that

          1965 has never been anything more for us than a target for the completion of certain forms of technical training and assistance. A struggle of this kind needs patience and determination. ("NSAM 263 and NSAM 273: Manipulating History," in Vietnam: The Early Decisions, Kindle edition, loc. 3585)

William Bundy, another JFK aide, rejected Ken O'Donnell's claim that JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam without victory/regardless of the consequences. He noted that this claim and similar claims surfaced "at the height of anti-Vietnam sentiment" and "go alongside other literature . . . that President Kennedy would have acted very differently from what was done later" (Ibid., loc. 3537). William Bundy continued:

          But I think this line of thought is open to grave doubt. Was President Kennedy affirming an intention to withdraw under any and all circumstances? I do not believe that, not at all. (Ibid., loc. 3537)

When Senator Mike Mansfield was asked about Ken O'Donnell's famous account of one of JFK's meetings with Mansfield, during which JFK supposedly said he was going to withdraw from Vietnam no matter what after the election, Mansfield contradicted O'Donnell's account. Said Mansfield,

          The only thing discussed at that meeting . . . was the President's desire to bring about a withdrawal but recognizing that it could not be done precipitately but only over a period of months. The election was not even mentioned nor thought of and I must disassociate myself with any inference that the President and I agreed that "the party image" would or should be taken into account. What conversations Mr. O'Donnell and the President had after my meeting, I am not aware of. (Ibid., loc. 3528)

Finally, let's remember what Bobby Kennedy, who knew JFK better than any other man, said in his April 1964 oral history interview about his brother's views on Vietnam:

          The President felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam. (Ibid., loc. 3546)

This is exactly what we see in every public and private firsthand statement that we have from JFK during the last few months of his life, including the day of his death.

Edited February 16 by Michael Griffith

[Joe Bauer]

On 2/13/2024 at 2:20 AM, James DiEugenio said:

Johnson was obsessed with RFK's candidacy, and I think one reason he dropped out is that he could not take the humiliation of losing to him.

I believe LBJ was terrified at the prospect of an RFK presidency for other reasons way more personally threatening than a humiliation one.

He knew RFK had the goods on him and his massive personal corruption. And LBJ knew RFK was aggressive enough to actually go after LBJ with the full power of the presidency.

LBJ always feared this scenario as well as the following two:

RFK would have also gone after LBJ's closest ( like brothers ) mutual protection and enabling friend J. Edgar Hoover as well and in the least immediately dumped Hoover into political exile obscurity.

LBJ and J.E. Hoover would have been toast.

And, LBJ had to have feared RFK going all out in a new investigation into JFK's murder as well.

AND ... RFK could have ran roughshod over the Mafia ( which no president ever did ) and which was always one of RFK's longest and most passionately held goals.

When you've got LBJ, Hoover, the Mafia all fearing your presidency to the ultimate degree and also highest position covert operatives choosing to bestow more respect upon Mafia leaders (Johnny Roselli and William Harvey) than a president ( Harvey thought the Kennedy's were all scum according to his wife's taped account ) your chances at making it to the general election alive are zero to none.

Those players played for keeps.

Edited February 16 by Joe Bauer

[Robert Morrow]

10 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I am in disbelief that people are still using the tramp photo showing a man with his back to the camera as "evidence" of Prouty's nutty claim that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza on 11/22. 

Anyway, one of the facts that Dr. Berman notes in his 29-page critique of Newman's theory is that McGeorge Bundy, i.e., the guy who drafted NSAM 273 for JFK, told LBJ, in writing, under the heading of "Can this be ended by 1965?" that

          1965 has never been anything more for us than a target for the completion of certain forms of technical training and assistance. A struggle of this kind needs patience and determination. ("NSAM 263 and NSAM 273: Manipulating History," in Vietnam: The Early Decisions, Kindle edition, loc. 3585)

William Bundy, another JFK aide, rejected Ken O'Donnell's claim that JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam without victory/regardless of the consequences. He noted that this claim and similar claims surfaced "at the height of anti-Vietnam sentiment" and "go alongside other literature . . . that President Kennedy would have acted very differently from what was done later" (Ibid., loc. 3537). William Bundy continued:

          But I think this line of thought is open to grave doubt. Was President Kennedy affirming an intention to withdraw under any and all circumstances? I do not believe that, not at all. (Ibid., loc. 3537)

When Senator Mike Mansfield was asked about Ken O'Donnell's famous account of one of JFK's meetings with Mansfield, during which JFK supposedly said he was going to withdraw from Vietnam no matter what after the election, Mansfield contradicted O'Donnell's account. Said Mansfield,

          The only thing discussed at that meeting . . . was the President's desire to bring about a withdrawal but recognizing that it could not be done precipitately but only over a period of months. The election was not even mentioned nor thought of and I must disassociate myself with any inference that the President and I agreed that "the party image" would or should be taken into account. What conversations Mr. O'Donnell and the President had after my meeting, I am not aware of. (Ibid., loc. 3528)

Finally, let's remember what Bobby Kennedy, who knew JFK better than any other man, said in his April 1964 oral history interview about his brother's views on Vietnam:

          The President felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam. (Ibid., loc. 3546)

This is exactly what we see in every public and private firsthand statement that we have from JFK during the last few months of his life, including the day of his death.

Hi Michael Griffith, you have told us that Gen. Edward Lansdale admired John Kennedy and mourned his death. I have asked you multiple times to document both of these assertions and you have failed to do so. 

I, on the other hand, say that Gen. Edward Lansdale HATED THE GUTS OF JOHN KENNEDY and helped to MURDER KENNEDY because Lansdale was in a rage over both the coup and death of Diem and also the fact that he (Lansdale) had been politically castrated in the Kennedy Administration and was unceremoniously forced to retire on 10/31/1963, the exact day of the Diem coup which was occurring simultaneously with Lansdale's canning. As Max Boot points out, 11 days after the JFK assassination, Gen. Lansdale had a job in the Johnson White House, on White House grounds at the Old Executive Office Building.

Another thing I learned from Max Boot's book on Lansdale was that he sure did OPPOSE THE DIEM COUP and author Boot goes over this again and again in his book. And that Lansdale was in a rage over the death of Diem and that Gen. Lansdale had a strong dislike of Robert Kennedy (just as LBJ, Sen. Thomas Dodd, Lansdale's mentor Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover and many CIA/military/Secret Service men did).

As for SENATOR MIKE MANSFIELD, you might find this educational:

Sen. Mike Mansfield in the 1990s told Sam Donaldson that JFK told him that after he was re-elected in 1964 that he would REMOVE the USA from Vietnam

 https://samdonaldsonlive.com/2017/09/26/changing-history/

[Internet Wayback Machine archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200925185851/https://samdonaldsonlive.com/2017/09/26/changing-history/ ]

 Blog post: Changing History by Sam Donaldson, Sept. 26, 2017

 QUOTE

 About Vietnam, Kennedy told Walter Cronkite in September 1963: “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the Government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Viet-Nam, against the Communists.”

That he said in pubic. According to several people close to Kennedy, he told them privately that after he was re-elected and free from any political imperative he would absolutely withdraw. I talked to one of them.

Mike Mansfield, the Senate Democrat leader of the time, who after his Senate career served as the U S Ambassador to Japan, was by the 1990s fully retired. However, now in his own ‘90s, Mansfield was still coming down to his downtown Washington office.

I called him on the phone one day and he took the call.

“Senator,” I said, “I hear that you were one of the people President Kennedy told that after he was re-elected he intended to withdraw our military forces from South Vietnam. Is that true, did he tell you that?”

“Yep, that’s what he told me, replied Mansfield.

“Can I come down to your office with cameras and interview you about that,” I asked?”

“Nope,” said Mansfield. Mike always was a man of few words.

But my feeling is not just based on what Mansfield or others said Kennedy told them.  After all, Lyndon Johnson early on in his presidency confided in his friends he wasn’t keen on getting further involved in Vietnam.

In fact, when Johnson was running for election in 1964, he actually said in a public speech: “we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

UNQUOTE

 Lyndon Johnson weeks before the 1964 general election on Vietnam:

 We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

 https://www.bartleby.com/73/1881.html

 QUOTATION:

In Asia we face an ambitious and aggressive China, but we have the will and we have the strength to help our Asian friends resist that ambition. Sometimes our folks get a little impatient. Sometimes they rattle their rockets some, and they bluff about their bombs. But we are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.
ATTRIBUTION:	President LYNDON B. JOHNSON, remarks at Akron University, Akron, Ohio, October 21, 1964.—Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963–64, book 2, pp. 1390–91.
SUBJECTS:	Vietnam War

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17 by Robert Morrow

[James DiEugenio]

When people reply to Mike, I have to read his stuff.  Geez.

Look, Mac Bundy was in the room when McNamara said they were pulling out the first thousand.  Bundy asked what this was about.  McNamara said that it was part of a withdrawal program that should be started.  When Gordon Goldstein confronted him with this exchange for his biography of Bundy, he realized what had happened.  Kennedy was going around him because he felt he was too hawkish and McNamara was reciting what JFK wanted said.  That ended up being correct, because we know this from John K Galbraith's biographer RIchard Parker.

Does anyone here think that JFK did not know what would happen in VIetnam after the withdrawal? Its right in the O'Donnell and Powers book.  Nixon and Kissinger both knew what was going to happen and they kept it secret.  Their knowledge was not exposed until their tapes were declassified. Nixon realized the war was hopeless before he was sworn in.  But he wanted to try for a Korea type settlement, first with Duck Hook, and then with the invasions of Laos and Cambodia. Neither one worked, but it got millions of Cambodians killed later. 

So who was correct?  Kennedy who just did not think that Vietnam was worth anywhere near 5.8 million corpses? Or Nixon who knew it was hopeless but still tried to get a Peace with Honor--he got neither.  But he did  not mind all those millions of dead bodies along the way.  

Mac Bundy told Goldstein that Kennedy understood Vietnam because of his experience in Saigon from 1951, when he saw that the French effort was futile and was told so by Topping and Gullion.  He knew that if it became a white man's war, America would lose because they would be perceived as the imperial power suppressing nationalism. This colored all  he was doing from 1961.  The key moment being when he sent Galbraith to Saigon after the November debates.  The clear reason was to get different advice from the man he knew would give it to him. As Galbraith  told his son, he wanted to counter the hawks. 

These are all facts.  To me, they make Kennedy look much better than LBJ and RMN.  Why anyone would argue the contrary is simply weird. 

Edited February 17 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Let me add one other point about McNamara.

I have also thought, but cannot prove, that this was the reason he commissioned the Pentagon Papers and kept them secret from Johnson.  In that notable book, The War Within, McNamara is depicted as being wracked with guilt about Vietnam, and in late 1966 Galbraith said the same thing after meeting him for dinner.  And this is about when the creation of the PP started.

My personal opinion is that McNamara understood how huge the split was between Kennedy and Johnson on the war and part of his aim in the PP was to show how it happened.  In the Gravel Edition there is a whole section called Phased Withdrawal 1962-64 which demonstrates this.

For whatever reason, neither  the Post nor the TImes printed that section.

[Michael Griffith]

On 2/14/2024 at 5:47 PM, Jeff Carter said:

The non-public discussions are self-contradictory as well.

 

You are twisting the focus of the debate  (I.e. withdrawal or engagement)  into a construct (i.e. to win or to lose) which is not relevant to the specific terms by which the policy (263) was developed. The specific terms dealt with the question of whether the United States military had a direct role to play in the Vietnam conflict. The determination, as unambiguously expressed by the actual language of 263, was it did not and thus the personnel would be withdrawn.

 

The “unconditional-withdrawal myth” is something you made up. There’s nothing in Prouty or Newman’s extensive work which endorses this alleged “myth”. In fact, the expression of this “myth” which does appear in the record (with your preferred definition I.e. a complete withdrawal regardless or despite a Communist victory) is attributed to Robert McNamara, spoken during a classified debrief in October 1963 regarding his McNamara-Taylor trip to Vietnam. Over the past year, on this Forum, you have variously and erroneously attributed McNamara’s own words to Prouty, Newman, Galbraith, DiEugenio, and “JFK”’s screenwriters.

 

The first sentence is about as disingenuous as you have ever posted on this Forum - and that is saying a lot. The entire paragraph is in fact disingenuous. You make sweeping statements referring to “instructions that JFK himself gave to Lodge afterward” which supposedly make it “crystal clear that the withdrawal was conditioned on the situation on the ground” - without actually identifying what you are referring to or why anybody should accept what you say. I don’t see any “ifs” or “buts” or otherwise conditional language in the approved recommendations. Further, the recommendations were not about “winning the war” as you insist, they were about replacing US personnel with Vietnamese personnel.

 

All you are doing here is repeating Establishment talking points as first set out by Les Gelb in the New York Times in December 1991. While these points seek to contradict the informed commentary of persons such as Fletcher Prouty and John Newman, they fail to address the actual point of contention - which is the understanding of the Kennedy administration’s Vietnam policy as expressed in NSAM 263. Your personal rejection of these “mythical” views relies on a straw-man “unconditional-withdrawal myth”, and the rather questionable opinion that Kennedy would have actually introduced combat forces in Vietnam during his second term. Your commentary in general on the Vietnam War, as expressed on this Forum, reveals a belief the US war effort was in fact a noble endeavour, an opinion shaped by a conservative worldview imbued with a strong, if somewhat antiquated, anti-communist bent. That, it seems to me, is a formula for exactly misunderstanding the Kennedy administration and/or its policies.

Given replies such as this one, I find it increasingly hard to take you seriously. I think it should be mentioned that you continue to defend Prouty's ludicrous claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference, that he flew the Chinese delegation to the Tehran Conference, that Churchill didn't have any ID on him when he disembarked in Tehran because he was wearing a pocketless flight suit, that a Soviet checkpoint held up the British delegation in Tehran because of Churchill's alleged lack of ID, that Stalin discussed Mao's military operations at the Tehran Conference, that Elliott Roosevelt saw the Chinese delegation at Habbaniya Airport in Iraq en route to Tehran, that Elliott Roosevelt saw the Chinese delegation in Tehran, etc., etc. This is all just abject nonsense peddled by a fraudulent storyteller. No historian takes these claims seriously.

I've already refuted your false claim that your side (such as it is) does not claim that JFK intended to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election. I don't understand how you can float such a denial. Your side's most prominent spokesmen, James Galbraith and John Newman, make exactly this claim. Go back and re-watch Newman's segment in JFK Revisited, where Newman, citing McNamara's fraudulent "secret debrief," claims that JFK was going to withdraw even if it meant South Vietnam fell to the Communists. You can't get more unconditional than that. As for Galbraith, see his articles on the subject wherein he argues that JFK ordered a "complete withdrawal" and that it did not depend on conditions on the ground, such as this one: LINK. (For interested readers, here's Noam Chomsky's demolition of Galbraith's arguments: LINK.)

I see no point in repeating facts and sources to you because you are beyond persuasion on this issue. There is a reason that even ultra-liberals like Moise, Bird, Chomsky, and Karnow have rejected your side's ahistorical interpretation of NSAMs 263 and 273 and of JFK's Vietnam intentions. Anyone can read the background documents for those NSAMs and readily see that they flatly contradict your spin on them. And anyone can read Bobby's April 1964 oral history interview and see where he flatly rejected the idea that JFK was going to withdraw from Vietnam without winning first. 

Edited February 20 by Michael Griffith

[Sandy Larsen]

@Michael Griffith

This isn't hard to understand.

 

From NSAM 263:

The President approved the military recommendations contained in Section I B (1-3) of the [McNamara/Taylor] report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

 

From Section I B (1-3) of the McNamara/Taylor report:

2. A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

 

Kennedy was pulling advisor/troops out of Vietnam, with 1965 being the target date.