Hornberger Indicts LBJ

[Sandy Larsen]

@James DiEugenio @Gene Kelly

If the purpose of Mexico City was only to prevent a thorough government investigation and not to create a pretext for war, then

1. What was in it for the Generals? Why did they do their part in the autopsy? (Which was creating viability for Phase 2 by removing evidence of shots from the front.)
    
2. Why was Phase 1 still being pushed when it was clear there would be no thorough government investigation?
   
   (For example, David Phillips trying to recruit a Cuban intelligence officer two months after the assassination to corroborate Gilberto Alvarado's story. And June Cobb still pushing the Elena Garro story in late 1964.)

 

The fact that the Generals participated in the autopsy tells me that they were indeed involved in the assassination. And in fact were the likely instigators of it. We all know that the Generals were all for an invasion of Cuba. Many of them also wanted a first nuclear strike against the Soviet Union:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Did_the_US_Military_Plan_a_Nuclear_First_Strike_for_1963.html

So it seems likely that the military wanted to create a pretext for those two things.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 5/3/2024 at 4:24 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I'm sure the plotters were concerned about that.

But if we were to deny that part of the plot was to control the autopsy for the sake of removing evidence of shots from the front, then we'd be forced to believe that the government came up with that decision extremely quickly after the assassination. Including surreptitiously removing the body from the brass casket and placing it in a shipping casket, flying it by helicopter to Bethesda, and performing pre-autopsy surgery on it. That just isn't possible. It had to have been planned prior to the assassination.

 

About the plausibility of pulling the coverup off, that's a good point!,

I suppose that's a talking point  the top down LBJ- did -it can embrace.

But let's face it, either way, if the coverup was planned before the assassination or just winging it after the assassination, it was a Herculean task. How were they going to have any certainty of success of convincing the public there wasn't a conspiracy? But there is a plausible deniability by virtue of the fact that the Katzenbach memo is probably the tack a lot of governments would have taken if  there was at first a genuine suspicion of foreign involvement and it became uncertain that they may never get to the bottom of it in a desired timely fashion, and  so that a partial government coverup in itself doesn't point directly at LBJ. 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

24 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

About the plausibility of pulling the coverup off, that's a good point!,

I suppose that's a talking point  the top down LBJ- did -it can embrace.

But let's face it, either way, if the coverup was planned before the assassination or just winging it after the assassination, it was a Herculean task. How were they going to have any certainty of success of convincing the public there wasn't a conspiracy? But there is a plausible deniability by virtue of the fact that the Katzenbach memo is probably the tack a lot of governments would have taken if  there was at first a genuine suspicion of foreign involvement and it became uncertain that they may never get to the bottom of it in a desired timely fashion, and  so that a partial government coverup in itself doesn't point directly at LBJ.

 

Just for the record, I believe that only a small part of the coverup was planned before the assassination. Basically just the "Best Evidence" was altered.

The body is the best evidence. The coverup of the wounds-from-the-front was clearly planned before the assassination.

I also believe that movie pictures were targeted for cover-up, because the Zapruder film was also altered very quickly.

Had the government decided post-assassination to alter the Zapruder and other films, they would have had all the time in the world to work on them. Just tell the public that they were studying the films looking for clues.

But, no, that is not what happened. Instead the Z film was altered in a matter of a day or so. The plotters planned to do what they could with confiscated films, and they had to do it quickly so that the government wouldn't suspect anything.

 

[Gene Kelly]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

@James DiEugenio @Gene Kelly

If the purpose of Mexico City was only to prevent a thorough government investigation and not to create a pretext for war, then

1. What was in it for the Generals? Why did they do their part in the autopsy? (Which was creating viability for Phase 2 by removing evidence of shots from the front.)
    
2. Why was Phase 1 still being pushed when it was clear there would be no thorough government investigation?
   
   (For example, David Phillips trying to recruit a Cuban intelligence officer two months after the assassination to corroborate Gilberto Alvarado's story. And June Cobb still pushing the Elena Garro story in late 1964.)

 

The fact that the Generals participated in the autopsy tells me that they were indeed involved in the assassination. And in fact were the likely instigators of it. We all know that the Generals were all for an invasion of Cuba. Many of them also wanted a first nuclear strike against the Soviet Union:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Did_the_US_Military_Plan_a_Nuclear_First_Strike_for_1963.html

So it seems likely that the military wanted to create a pretext for those two things.

 

Sandy

I may not have satisfying answers to your questions, but here are my thoughts.  First, for some reason or another, we never did invade Cuba ... I think that's because it wasn’t a priority for the Military or the high-level plotters, but only important to the Cuban exiles, who were used/manipulated (just as Oswald was considered to be a "useful idiot").  What I think the 'Generals' and military did get was their coveted war in Vietnam.

Although we could argue that the Phase 1 aspect lasted long past its need, I don’t see it as solely a poison pill (to pull CIA, FBI and SS principals in line).  Phase 1 also characterized Oswald as a pro-Castro Marxist - not a popular profile in the 60's - and helped to frame and severely limit the Warren investigation.  I also don't believe that everyone in the CIA was complicit (e.g., Win Scott, John Whitten) so plotters like Angleton had to continue to conceal damaging information from Mexico City - from his own Agency colleagues - and keep pushing the Kostikov story and Russian connections. As one researcher wrote, once Angleton had control of the investigation, he decided to “wait out the Warren Commission” while he chased every Soviet angle in sight" (e.g., Yuri Nosenko). There was also an ongoing duel between Soviet and US intelligence, since after all we were essentially implicating the Russians in the assassination. 

Finally, I don't believe LBJ was completely onboard or complicit in what transpired, even though he had strong motives towards the Kennedy's ... in other words, the plotters couldn’t be sure of his reaction to all of this. One part of me thinks its naive to think he didn’t know what was happening (including the shenanigans with the autopsy).  But I also don’t think the plotters could be assured of his support. LBJ made comments in the ensuing years about how the Generals insanely wanted a nuclear conflict, and he (like JFK) thankfully kept a lid on that ... we never did use nuclear weapons.  I don’t think much of LBJ's skills in foreign policy, but he had too much to lose (including his coveted presidency) by being a willing participant.

Gene

[Sandy Larsen]

8 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

Sandy

I may not have satisfying answers to your questions, but here are my thoughts.  First, for some reason or another, we never did invade Cuba ... I think that's because it wasn’t a priority for the Military or the high-level plotters, but only important to the Cuban exiles, who were used/manipulated (just as Oswald was considered to be a "useful idiot").

 

Gene,

Thanks for your response.

I don't know how anyone can think that the Generals didn't want to attack Cuba. The Bay of Pigs proved that they did.

President Johnson was handed to him a pretext for a Cuban invasion. He apparently didn't want it. That's the reason Phase 1 was rejected and Phase 2 accepted instead.

Maybe he handed Vietnam to the Generals as a compromise.

 

8 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

I also don't believe that everyone in the CIA was complicit (e.g., Win Scott, John Whitten) so plotters like Angleton had to continue to conceal damaging information from Mexico City - from his own Agency colleagues - and keep pushing the Kostikov story and Russian connections.

 

Yes, that makes sense.

 

8 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

LBJ made comments in the ensuing years about how the Generals insanely wanted a nuclear conflict, and he (like JFK) thankfully kept a lid on that ... we never did use nuclear weapons.

 

Which supports what I said about the Generals wanting a first nuclear strike against the Soviet Union.

When the military and CIA presented this plan to Kennedy (in 1962, I think), he asked what would be the best time to launch an attack. Dulles responded by saying the end of 1963.

 

[Robert Morrow]

On 5/5/2024 at 12:35 PM, Gene Kelly said:

Sandy

I may not have satisfying answers to your questions, but here are my thoughts.  First, for some reason or another, we never did invade Cuba ... I think that's because it wasn’t a priority for the Military or the high-level plotters, but only important to the Cuban exiles, who were used/manipulated (just as Oswald was considered to be a "useful idiot").  What I think the 'Generals' and military did get was their coveted war in Vietnam.

Although we could argue that the Phase 1 aspect lasted long past its need, I don’t see it as solely a poison pill (to pull CIA, FBI and SS principals in line).  Phase 1 also characterized Oswald as a pro-Castro Marxist - not a popular profile in the 60's - and helped to frame and severely limit the Warren investigation.  I also don't believe that everyone in the CIA was complicit (e.g., Win Scott, John Whitten) so plotters like Angleton had to continue to conceal damaging information from Mexico City - from his own Agency colleagues - and keep pushing the Kostikov story and Russian connections. As one researcher wrote, once Angleton had control of the investigation, he decided to “wait out the Warren Commission” while he chased every Soviet angle in sight" (e.g., Yuri Nosenko). There was also an ongoing duel between Soviet and US intelligence, since after all we were essentially implicating the Russians in the assassination. 

Finally, I don't believe LBJ was completely onboard or complicit in what transpired, even though he had strong motives towards the Kennedy's ... in other words, the plotters couldn’t be sure of his reaction to all of this. One part of me thinks its naive to think he didn’t know what was happening (including the shenanigans with the autopsy).  But I also don’t think the plotters could be assured of his support. LBJ made comments in the ensuing years about how the Generals insanely wanted a nuclear conflict, and he (like JFK) thankfully kept a lid on that ... we never did use nuclear weapons.  I don’t think much of LBJ's skills in foreign policy, but he had too much to lose (including his coveted presidency) by being a willing participant.

Gene

Ah yes, Lunatic Lyndon Johnson, the man who courted NUCLEAR WAR during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when he told Kennedy to LAUNCH AN ATTACK ON CUBA at the very peak of the crisis, right before it got settled.

The man who some, me including, think courted NUCLEAR WAR by his participation in the JFK assassination.

The man who was within inches of having NUCLEAR WAR during the Six Day War with his orchestration of Israel's attack on the USS Liberty. https://peacelibertyprosperity.substack.com/p/the-most-incredible-story-never-told

The man who authorized - then canceled 48 hours later - the use of NUCLEAR WEAPONS during the Vietnam War as he is response to the Tet Offensive. The decision to use TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS was called "Operation Fracture Jaw" and LBJ was itching to enact that plan.

After the Tet Offensive and in response to Khe Sanh being in danger, Lyndon Johnson on Feb. 1, 1968 was on the verge of using NUCLEAR WEAPONS in Vietnam and only stopped after the Prime Ministers of Canada and the United Kingdom denounced the idea on CBS’s Face the Nation on Feb. 11, 1968. LBJ had approved “Operation Fracture Jaw” on the day before Feb. 10, 1968 and he finally canceled the order to use nukes on Monday, Feb. 12, 1968

 

 

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/

  

That sensational New York Times story about LBJ saving America from nuclear war in Vietnam is wrong

A recent book and article makes a mountain out of contingency planning.

 

By Gregg Jones|Contributor

2:00 AM on Oct 24, 2018

On Saturday, Oct. 6, presidential historian Michael Beschloss was on Twitter early and often, tweeting and retweeting a front-page New York Times story about his new book, Presidents of War.

In the telling of veteran Times reporter David Sanger, the historian scored a spectacular discovery in the archives of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin: a secret plan by General William Westmoreland to move tactical nuclear weapons to South Vietnam in 1968. According to Beschloss's account, an upset President Lyndon Johnson aborted the scheme, saving America from a potential nuclear confrontation that could have ignited World War III.

The story was sensational — and wrong or misleading on multiple counts.

Over the past 50 years, newspaper stories, journal articles and at least seven books, including one by me, have examined the Khe Sanh nuclear weapons discussions — just one of several relevant facts omitted by Beschloss and the Times.

The article was a publicity coup for the historian and his publisher, Crown/Penguin Random House, which also published Sanger's three most recent books. Yet the account distorts the actual events. It also creates the false impression that a reckless general brought America to the brink of nuclear war, only to be slapped down by a principled president.

How a muted one-page passage in Beschloss's book became a breathless article in the New York Times remains unclear. Sanger didn't respond to emailed questions about the Times story. Beschloss's publicist at Crown/Penguin Random House, Rachel Rokicki, responded to a detailed set of questions with a thirteen-word statement: "Presidents of War accurately represents Beschloss's research and Crown stands behind his work."

Communists attack

The story begins in January 1968.

America convulsed with anti-war protests. A siege mentality infected the White House. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had turned against the war, and LBJ faced hostile scrutiny in the U.S. Senate from a potent pair of anti-war Democrats: William Fulbright, chairman of the important Foreign Relations committee; and Eugene McCarthy, standard bearer of an insurgent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Publicly, the president assured Americans that victory was in sight. Privately, he pored over military intelligence reports warning of major communist attacks in the near future. Intelligence analysts pointed to the remote Marine base at Khe Sanh as a likely target.

On Jan. 21, the communists attacked, laying siege to the outposts and main combat base at Khe Sanh. Two days later, a U.S. Navy spy ship, the USS Pueblo, was seized off the coast of North Korea. On Jan. 30-31 in the Tet Offensive, communist forces launched attacks on major urban centers throughout South Vietnam.

From the outset, LBJ was determined not to lose Khe Sanh. He pressed the chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Earle "Buzz" Wheeler, to make sure that Westmoreland had everything he needed to hold the American outpost. Johnson put the issue of tactical nuclear weapons on the table almost immediately.

On Feb. 1, at the behest of Johnson, Wheeler queried Westmoreland on the feasibility of tactical nuclear strikes at Khe Sanh. The following night, LBJ phoned Wheeler to press him yet again on whether nuclear weapons might have to be used to save Khe Sanh. The chairman forwarded the president's concerns to Westmoreland.

Addressing the nuclear issue, Westmoreland wrote that "the use of tactical nuclear weapons should not be required in the present situation." But if the situation along the frontier with North Vietnam changed dramatically, "I visualize that either tactical nuclear weapons or chemical agents would be active candidates for employment."

Wheeler forwarded the commander's response to the White House on Feb. 3.

On Feb. 5, communist forces launched the first of three ground attacks on Khe Sanh outposts. A U.S. Army Special Forces camp at the village of Lang Vei was overrun. A platoon-size Marine outpost less than two miles from Khe Sanh Combat Base was abandoned.

As communist forces turned up the pressure at Khe Sanh, word of President Johnson's nuclear weapons discussions leaked in Washington.

LBJ had a new crisis on his hands.

Three documents

The Times offers three documents as smoking guns in its case that Beschloss has uncovered a shocking back-door effort by Westmoreland to move nuclear weapons to Vietnam in 1968. But the Times analysis conflates events, makes wrong assumptions and ignores contradictory evidence.

The first document offered by the Times is a Feb. 10 cable from Westmoreland to his superior, Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, the U.S. Pacific commander. In it, Westmoreland writes, "Oplan [Operation Plan] Fracture Jaw has been approved by me."

 

The second document is a Feb. 10 "eyes only" memo written by White House national security adviser Walt W. Rostow to Johnson. The Times describes the memo as the first "alert" given the president about the secret "Fracture Jaw" operation to move nuclear weapons to South Vietnam. The Times interviewed former White House aide Tom Johnson, who says LBJ "rejected the plan and ordered a turnaround."

 

The third document presented by the Times is a Feb. 12 cable from  Sharp to Westmoreland, ordering the termination of "all planning for Fracture Jaw."

 

The Times omits cables that reveal President Johnson's repeated questions for Westmoreland about whether nuclear weapons would be needed to defend Khe Sanh. In one cable, dated Feb. 1, Wheeler directs Westmoreland to conduct contingency planning for the use of tactical nuclear weapons around Khe Sanh.

In citing the Feb. 12 cable from Sharp to Westmoreland, the Times ignores a fundamental question: If President Johnson just learned of a secret scheme to introduce nuclear weapons to Vietnam and was "extraordinarily upset," as Tom Johnson told the Times, why did nearly 48 hours pass before Westmoreland was ordered to terminate the nuclear planning?

Media reaction

There is a less sensational explanation for the sudden shutdown of Fracture Jaw planning.

On Saturday, Feb. 10, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other U.S. newspapers carried articles on the Johnson administration's rumored nuclear weapons discussions. The previous day the Post had reported a comment by Sen. Eugene McCarthy that nuclear weapons were indeed being considered. The White House was in damage-control mode.

At 3:17 p.m., President Johnson convened a White House meeting with his senior Foreign Affairs Advisory Council. Vietnam was the focal point of the nearly two-hour meeting: Khe Sanh and Hue; troop levels and equipment; even nuclear weapons. But at no point did anyone suggest alarm over Westmoreland's actions.

The subject of nuclear weapons was raised at the outset by President Johnson, according to an aide's detailed notes.

"Is it true there are no nuclear weapons in Vietnam?" LBJ asked.

"It is true there are none there," responded Defense Secretary McNamara.

Johnson posed another question on the nuclear issue. Notably, he directed it to White House press secretary George Christian.

"Do you expect any more trouble on the nuclear matter?" LBJ asked.

"No, I think it will die down," Christian said.

He was wrong.

Halting Fracture Jaw

The Khe Sanh nuclear weapons story blew up on the Johnson White House during the Sunday morning news shows of Feb. 11, 1968.

On the CBS News program, Face the Nation, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson declared that it would be "sheer lunacy" for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons in South Vietnam. The Canadian prime minister described the prospect as madness.

It was against the backdrop of rising global denunciations that the Johnson administration shut down the nuclear contingency planning on Feb. 12. Sharp sent his cable to Westmoreland, ordering him to "discontinue all planning for Fracture Jaw." He also ordered a tight lid on all related documents and discussions.

The story bedeviled LBJ throughout that week.

On Feb. 16,  Johnson held a press conference to deny any such discussions underway.

"The president must make the decision to deploy nuclear weapons," he said. "No recommendation has been made to me. Beyond that, I think we ought to put an end to that discussion."

Contingency plan

In the decades since, the full story has emerged in pieces. In 1976, Westmoreland discussed his role in the planning. "Although I established a small secret group to study the subject, Washington so feared that some word of it might reach the press that I was told to desist," he wrote in his memoirs, A Soldier Reports. "I felt at the time and even more so now that to fail to consider this alternative was a mistake."

In 1991, much of the secret cable traffic involving the nuclear discussions was revealed in Valley of Decision, a book by Khe Sanh chaplain Ray Stubbe and national security scholar John Prados. The codename for the nuclear contingency planning, "Fracture Jaw," came to light in a 1997 official Marine Corps volume, The Defining Year, 1968, written by historian Jack Shulimson. Further discussion of "Fracture Jaw" followed in 2006 in MACV: The Years of Withdrawal 1968-1973, a U.S. Army history authored by Graham A. Cosmas.

One cable in particular leaves little doubt that Westmoreland's nuclear planning was conducted with the full knowledge of the White House.

On Feb. 1, 1968, LBJ's chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked Westmoreland and Sharp for their views "as to whether there are targets in the area which lend themselves to nuclear strikes, whether some contingency nuclear planning would be in order, and what you consider to be some of the more significant pros and cons." Wheeler further suggested that Westmoreland might have to "put a few of your bright planners on this."

And so, with the blessings of President Johnson's top military adviser, contingency planning for the possible use of nuclear weapons at Khe Sanh moved into high gear. It ended days later, without drama, as nothing more than a contingency plan. Historians and researchers have known that for decades.

Gregg Jones is author of Last Stand at Khe Sanh: The U.S. Marines' Finest Hour in Vietnam and a former Dallas Morning News reporter. 

 Gregg Jones, “The Enduring Debate Over Khe Sahn,” NYT opinion, January 19, 2018

 Web link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/opinion/enduring-debate-khe-sanh.html

 In early 1968, the siege of the remote Marine combat base at Khe Sanh dominated American news coverage of the war in Vietnam. Gen. William Westmoreland, America’s supreme commander in Saigon, billed the North Vietnamese Army’s move against Khe Sanh as “the main event” of a Communist offensive.

News accounts ominously compared the siege to Dien Bien Phu, the remote French garrison surrounded and forced to surrender to Vietnamese Communist forces in 1954. On Feb. 18, even with the so-called Tet offensive raging across the country, The New York Times called the unfolding showdown at Khe Sanh “the major battle of the Vietnam War.”

The drama played out over 77 days, with nerve-jangling highlights on nightly news broadcasts. Four weeks into the siege, Americans learned that President Lyndon Johnson and his commanders were contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons to save Khe Sanh.

The defenders endured artillery barrages, sniper fire, probes and ground assaults. Ultimately, though, Khe Sanh didn’t live up to its early hype of an Alamo-style disaster in the making.

Over time, the events that unfolded at Khe Sanh in 1968 were eclipsed by the interpretation of what had occurred. A revisionist historical narrative hardened in the 1980s, and Khe Sanh became a metaphor for General Westmoreland’s mismanagement of the war. More recently, the siege has been written off as a brilliant North Vietnamese ruse that concealed the impending Communist attacks on urban centers — the Tet offensive. This judgment infuses books of contemporary vintage and the recent Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary film on Vietnam. In reality, the evidence on North Vietnamese intentions at Khe Sanh is inconclusive, and the case is far from closed.

As 1968 began, the United States and North Vietnam aspired to victory in the year ahead. Khe Sanh figured prominently in the plans of both. The anchor of the American stronghold at Khe Sanh was a Marine combat base perched on a plateau between an old French road, Route 9, and the Rao Quan River, about seven miles east of the border with Laos and 15 miles south of the demilitarized zone dividing North Vietnam from South. A fan-shaped array of outposts, including an American Army Special Forces camp, guarded approaches to the base from the north and west.

In January 1968, two North Vietnamese Army divisions — some 20,000 men — converged on Khe Sanh from the west. Another division moved to a position northeast of Khe Sanh.

The first phase of the North Vietnamese plan, “General Offensive and General Uprising,” called for Communist troops to provoke a series of interior battles to lure American forces from the populous coast. One of those battles was to occur at Khe Sanh.

But the ruling Politburo in Hanoi had split over the next phase. A faction led by the ascendant Le Duan, the general secretary of the Central Committee, called for urban attacks aimed at igniting a popular uprising. In opposition to that risky approach were North Vietnam’s aging revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh, and his military chief, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, architect of the victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Ultimately, Le Duan outflanked his opponents and the urban offensive was incorporated into the plan. The attacks on southern cities were to unfold as Vietnam celebrated the lunar new year — Tet — in late January 1968.

 In Saigon, General Westmoreland welcomed the Communist move against Khe Sanh. He laid plans for an unprecedented artillery and air response to cripple his North Vietnamese adversaries in a rare conventional confrontation.

The drama at Khe Sanh got underway with a flurry of N.V.A. attacks in the early hours of Sunday, Jan. 21. An enemy ground assault penetrated a Marine outpost on Hill 861 before failing. Communist artillery bombarded Khe Sanh Combat Base, detonating the main ammunition dump. Other North Vietnamese troops attacked the district headquarters compound in nearby Khe Sanh village.

Over the next two weeks, the base and its outposts endured daily barrages and sniper fire. At night, N.V.A. soldiers probed Khe Sanh’s defenses.

Concerns of a massive ground assault on Khe Sanh increased after the Communist urban attacks began on Jan. 31. The following day, President Johnson’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Earle Wheeler, asked General Westmoreland whether tactical nuclear weapons might be required to save Khe Sanh. Westmoreland hedged his bets. In a worst-case scenario, he said in a secret cable, “I visualize that either tactical nuclear weapons or chemical agents would be active candidates for employment.”

On Feb. 5, as fighting continued in Saigon, Hue and other cities, the North Vietnamese attacked a key Khe Sanh outpost on Hill 861 Alpha. Communist forces pierced the Marine perimeter, but the attack was finally broken by a massive artillery barrage aided by electronic sensors and punctuated with a ground counterattack. The following night, the Army Special Forces camp southwest of the base was overrun in a ground assault supported by 11 Russian-made PT-76 light tanks. On Feb. 8, N.V.A. soldiers attacked a small Marine outpost barely a mile southwest of the base.

Communist forces set to work encircling the base with trenches and concealed gun positions, imperiling the stronghold’s aerial supply lifeline. In Washington, retired Gen. Maxwell Taylor, a respected World War II veteran and former ambassador to South Vietnam, advised President Johnson to abandon Khe Sanh. Food and water were rationed in the outposts, and wounded men sometimes died awaiting helicopter evacuation flights. The sense of crisis deepened on Feb. 10 when a Marine C-130 transport was hit by enemy fire and forced to crash-land at Khe Sanh, killing eight Americans.

 That same week, unknown to General Westmoreland and the Marines, Communist commanders shifted a third of their siege force from Khe Sanh to the battle for Hue, 50 miles to the southeast. Years after the war, Westmoreland’s intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Phillip B. Davidson Jr., remained baffled by the decision. The North Vietnamese “kept too many troops at Khe Sanh just to threaten it, and too few to overrun it.” It is one of many unsolved mysteries that still shroud the battle for Khe Sanh.

The siege reached its climax in the last week of February 1968, although this, too, became evident only much later.

On Feb. 24, American forces launched Operation Sierra, colloquially known as the Super Gaggle, for the large number of aircraft involved. It involved inundating enemy gun positions around Khe Sanh with tear gas, smoke, high explosives and napalm, allowing big Sea Knight helicopters to swoop in to the hilltop outposts and drop external nets packed with supplies. The resupply crisis eased.

The following day, fear of an imminent assault on the base peaked after the decimation of a Marine patrol and discovery of new Communist trenches extending to within a few yards of the southeastern perimeter wire. On the night of Feb. 29, N.V.A. forces undertook three waves of attacks on the eastern perimeter of Khe Sanh Combat Base. The Americans activated an elaborate plan to trap and slaughter Communist forces with coordinated B-52 strikes and other air and artillery missions. A few N.V.A. soldiers reached the perimeter wire before the final attack failed.

North Vietnamese pressure on Khe Sanh eased in March as improved weather resulted in even heavier American air and artillery attacks. With the arrival of a joint Army-Marine relief force, American commanders declared an end to the siege on April 8.

In the weeks ahead, the Army forces departed and fresh Marine battalions arrived, encountering even bloodier combat than during the siege. But by then the reporters had moved on, and General Westmoreland was on his way out, replaced by Gen. Creighton Abrams. In early July, Khe Sanh Combat Base was dismantled, and, in a scene that foreshadowed the events of April 1975, the last Americans left hurriedly by helicopter. North Vietnamese radio proclaimed victory at Khe Sanh.

Nearly 1,000 Americans died in the 1968 fighting around Khe Sanh (far more than the discredited official toll). Estimates of Communist losses ranged from 2,500 to 15,000 killed.

The full intentions of the North Vietnamese at Khe Sanh remain unclear. For decades, the Hanoi party line has held that Khe Sanh was solely a ruse to mask the urban attacks — a self-serving claim by ideologues who view history as a tool of the revolution rather than a search for objective truth. That claim has been amplified by respected Vietnam War correspondents such as Neil Sheehan and the late Stanley Karnow. Largely ignored is a competing analysis that contends the North Vietnamese intended to cap their 1968 offensive with the coup de grâce inflicted on the Americans at Khe Sanh. Until the Vietnamese government opens its wartime archives, we won’t know for sure what Khe Sanh was about.

Gregg Jones is the author of “Last Stand at Khe Sanh” and “Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream.”

At the peak of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Lyndon Johnson wanted to invade or bomb Cuba – which would have caused WWIII

 Web link: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/05/robert-caros-new-history-of-lbj-offers-a-mistaken-account-of-the-cuban-missile-crisis.html

 QUOTE

 From start to finish, and on several occasions, RFK can be heard on the tapes, and read in the transcripts, arguing not only for an air attack but for an air strike followed by an invasion of the entire island of Cuba. Sheldon Stern, the library’s former chief historian, who has studied the tapes and transcripts more thoroughly than anyone, writes in his forthcoming book The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myth versus Reality: “RFK was one of the most consistently hawkish and confrontational members of the ExComm.”

 The same can be said of Lyndon Johnson, who, the few times he did speak up at the ExComm meetings, was (as Caro accurately quotes him) brutally bellicose, calling the president’s patience—his failure to meet Khrushchev’s forceful gestures with immediate force—a sign of “weakness” and “backing down.”

But, except in tone, Johnson was no more hawkish than Bobby Kennedy—and, especially on the last day of the crisis, no more hawkish than nearly all the advisers at the table.

When President Kennedy says he’s disposed to take Khrushchev’s missile trade, McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, protests (you can hear his voice on the tape, quivering), “I think we should tell you … the universal assessment of everyone in the government who’s connected with alliance problems: If we appear to be trading the defense of Turkey for the threat in Cuba, we will face a radical decline.”

UNQUOTE

 [“What Robert Caro Got Wrong,” Fred Kaplan, Slate, May 31, 2012]

 

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:52 PM by Robert Morrow

[Denise Hazelwood]

On 4/30/2024 at 4:46 PM, Roger Odisio said:

I would add a few things. Johnson's order to snatch the body from Dr. Rose was verified by Jack Valenti, who was sitting next to Johnson on AF1 at the time, in his book  defending Johnson, A very Human President.  He says the order was the first of Johnson's new presidency, "and a good one".

 

Doesn't cover up of the AR-15 accident explain this order nicely?

[Lori Spencer]

@James DiEugenio wrote:
 

“In fact, it was O'Donnell who gave the order to Kellerman to run over Rose. (Bishop, p. 286).”

This version of events is confirmed in O’Donnell’s oral history and Rufus Youngblood’s memoirs, so I tend to believe them over anybody else. 
 

As for Valenti, he made it clear, repeatedly, that Johnson would not let AF1 take off without JFK’s body on board. That’s a totally separate matter from ordering his secret service detail to snatch the body from Parkland. 
 

Johnson, Youngblood, Powers, and Kenny O’Donnell did this to suit the wishes of the president’s widow, who insisted she wasn’t going anywhere without Jack. 
 

Ultimately, then, it was Jackie Kennedy who made the decision. The president, SS agents, Powers, and O’Donnell were deferring to her wishes and made sure she was accommodated — even if it meant stealing the body from Parkland. 
 

I have argued for years that LBJ had no foreknowledge of the assassination, and was not a conspirator. (Not a popular opinion these days, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) 

You might enjoy this recent show I did with Jim DiEugenio about LBJ’s alleged role in the plot. It’s spicy! 
 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Lori is correct.

I looked it up in Valenti's book.

You know, it is not fun driving around LA to these out of the way libraries to find these alleged source books, and then to discover that like a game of telephone, what is in the them was greatly exaggerated and distorted from what it actually says.

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:44 PM by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Lori is correct.

I looked it up in Valenti's book.

You know, it is not fun driving around LA to these out of the way libraries to find these alleged source books, and then to discover that like a game of telephone, what is in the them was greatly exaggerated and distorted from what it actually says.

 

JD-

Back when I lived in L.A., a local library could have sent to it any book in the system. 

Maybe budget cuts have done that in. 

 

[Roger Odisio]

20 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Lori is correct.

I looked it up in Valenti's book.

You know, it is not fun driving around LA to these out of the way libraries to find these alleged source books, and then to discover that like a game of telephone, what is in the them was greatly exaggerated and distorted from what it actually says.

 

Back again with the same claim, Jim, while ignoring everything that contradicts the claim that was laid in front of you? 

 

The first time you claimed the passage telling how Johnson ordered the body to the plane was not even in Valenti's book. Now you claim, without explanation, that the account that Pat Speer quoted (shown below) was "greatly exaggerated and distorted". Which is it?

 

Here is what Pat wrote:

 

In his 1975 defense of Johnson, A Very Human President, former Johnson aide Jack Valenti offered up a fascinating insight into Johnson's actions on 11-22-63. Valenti sat with Johnson on the plane while waiting for Mrs. Kennedy, and was intimately aware of Johnson's thoughts during this period. He wrote of Johnson's decision to be sworn-into office as soon as possible--which, while unnecessary, was nevertheless politically desirable. He then added “before Air Force One departed for Washington, Johnson had also made his first command decision, on his own, to wait for the body of the dead president to be brought aboard before he gave an order to be airborne. This was an intuitive decision and a good one.” So... Johnson, a man famous for seeking advice, had decided not to leave without the body, and had come to this decision entirely on his own, after reaching Air Force One. Hmmm... 

 

Be specific.  Are you claiming Pat is mistaken?  The quote is not from Valenti's 1975 book?

 

A main reason we know about Johnson's order is that Valenti was sitting next to him at the time, and then tirelessly promoted the idea the rest of his life.  He thought the order tosnatch the body showed Johnson to be the consummate leader acting in the face of the tragedy and chaos of the moment. Such is irony.

 

Here again is a brief summary of the times Valenti's story was by him and others with him as the source, in  public, as I laid out with more detail out on p.2 of this thread.

 

*1967 column by Drew Pearson, in which Pearson wrote: Air Force One, the Presidential plane, had been waiting for Kennedy's body. This delay was on the personal order of the new President, *and contrary to the wishes of the Secret Service*.  Pat concludes: Pearson's column thereby adds weight to Valenti's subsequent statements suggesting Johnson's preoccupation on 11-22-63 was not with Mrs. Kennedy, but with her husband's body,the "best. evidence"of the murder.

 

* 1978 WBBM Bob Wallace interview

 

*  5/22/82 oral history for the Kennedy Library

 

* 11/22/88  Washington Post article

 

* 7/15/91interview with Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald Strober

 

* 11/21/93 Washington Post article

 

* 11/22/98 NY Times article

 

* 11/20/03 article on Valenti by Sharon Theimer

 

* Valenti's 2007 memoir, This Time, This Place

 

Each time Valenti tells the same story. 

 

Johnson on his own (he was after all the President now in charge of the security detail back at Parkland) decided he would not leave Dallas without the body. and so ordered itbrought to the plane. With the clear knowledge he was breaking the law, which indicates the importance he placed on  getting control of the body.  As you know, Dr. Rose had jurisdiction over the body, not Johnson.

 

As I said when I posted this stuff, it almost doesn't matter, Jim, whether you are somehow correct, using whichever version of your claim you wish, that Valenti's story is not in his book, because he told the same story repeatedly to others over the years. The story itself has been established as Valenti's view many times over.

 

Moreover, we know that Johnson's action coincided precisely with what the killers wanted. Control of the autopsy was crucial to the success of the coverup, if they were to get away with the murder.  The body had to be taken to DC where the autopsy could be controlled.  If Rose got his hands on it the jig was up. The Oswald as the lone assassin story that was inconsistent with what actually happened was already being disseminated.

 

Again, please read Pat Speer's thorough research about Johnson's order on his website.  https://www.patspeer.com/chapter-21-rorschach-test   Scroll down to near the end  of the chapter to read Pat's account and analysis. I'd be happy to consider any disagreements you have with it.

 

 

 

[Roger Odisio]

On 5/15/2024 at 1:22 PM, Lori Spencer said:

@James DiEugenio wrote:
 

“In fact, it was O'Donnell who gave the order to Kellerman to run over Rose. (Bishop, p. 286).”

This version of events is confirmed in O’Donnell’s oral history and Rufus Youngblood’s memoirs, so I tend to believe them over anybody else. 
 

As for Valenti, he made it clear, repeatedly, that Johnson would not let AF1 take off without JFK’s body on board. That’s a totally separate matter from ordering his secret service detail to snatch the body from Parkland. 
 

Johnson, Youngblood, Powers, and Kenny O’Donnell did this to suit the wishes of the president’s widow, who insisted she wasn’t going anywhere without Jack. 
 

Ultimately, then, it was Jackie Kennedy who made the decision. The president, SS agents, Powers, and O’Donnell were deferring to her wishes and made sure she was accommodated — even if it meant stealing the body from Parkland. 
 

I have argued for years that LBJ had no foreknowledge of the assassination, and was not a conspirator. (Not a popular opinion these days, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) 

You might enjoy this recent show I did with Jim DiEugenio about LBJ’s alleged role in the plot. It’s spicy! 
 

 

 

Do you agree that the planners of the murder (setting aside their identity for the moment) knew that control of the autopsy was crucial to the success of their coverup if they were to get away with it?  And that they must get control of the body before Dr. Rose got his hands on it? Shortly after the murder they were already disseminating their Oswald story they knew was contradicted by what actually happened. Their story could not survive an autopsy by Rose.

 

If so, it follows that they must have had a plan in place before the murder to quickly get control of the body, the "best evidence" of what happened. 

 

From the moment Kennedy was pronounced dead, Lyndon Johnson became president and the security detail back at Parkland now worked for him. He had ample time and opportunity between the time he became president and the plane took off to order the body to be brought to the plane. As Valenti said he did.

 

But you propose that it was Ken O'Donnell, JFK's appointments secretary and personal friend, who, without Johnson even knowing about it, personally ordered the security detail remaining at Parkland to illegally snatch the body. And they followed his orders for some reason.

 

In times of uncertainty and chaos like this was, the chain of command and following orders takes on a heightened importance.  Similar to what it's like in a war.  Probably the only way your claim makes sense is if O'Donnell was able to tell them he was relaying an order from Johnson, the person with authority to give such an order, not acting on his own. 

 

Among all the people in Dallas, O'Donnell should have been among the most interested in finding out what happened to his friend. He knew of Kennedy's battles with the enemies in his own administration.  The day of the murder, O'Donnell didn't know what happened, but he knew the value of having an autopsy done by an independent doctor free from the effects of those people back in Washington.

 

You claim O'Donnell did it because of his concern for Jackie.  I'm sure he was concerned about her.

 

It's undeniably true that Jackie let everyone know she was not going to be separated from the body in Dallas.  But that alone does not get you where you want to go.  AF2 was also there to take the body and Jackie back to Washington after Rose did the autopsy. There was no necessary conflict between Rose doing the autopsy--he was ready to do it that afternoon--and Jackie's accompanying the body back to DC on AF2 afterward.

 

It seems clear that the person who ordered the body to the plane as quickly as he did, did so to prevent Rose from doing the autopsy.  That person wasn't O'Donnell. 

 

LS:  As for Valenti, he made it clear, repeatedly, that Johnson would not let AF1 take off without JFK’s body on board. That’s a totally separate matter from ordering his secret service detail to snatch the body from Parkland. 

 

RO:  A separate matter? How else was Johnson going to make his preference known to those with the body except to order it to be sent to the plane?  He wasn't just mumbling to himself.  Is there evidence he was he willing to wait until after Rose did the autopsy to get the body, even though we know that's not what happened?