John Newman and Greg Burnham Interview

[Matt Cloud]

Just now, James DiEugenio said:

This is what I wrote about Sheehan and Halberstam when Sheehan died.  What he and Halberstam did in Vietnam was really shameful.  Neither man, as far as  I can find, ever acknowledged that Kennedy was getting out at the time of his death.  

Neither man ever acknowledged that this decision had been severely altered, and then changed by Johnson with NSAM 273 and NSAM 288.  

Neither man acknowledged that the American commitment of combat troops, asked for by Vann, turned out to be an epic debacle.

And, as you will see, what Sheehan did to Mark Lane showed that as late as 1971 he was doing his master's bidding.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/neil-sheehan-in-retrospect

Halberstam and Sheehan want the Vietnam War.  They want to end colonialism I could infer; they want to change American society at home I can also infer.  Therefore you need the Vietnam War -- to do both of those things.  This isn't confusing.  The Left wanted Vietnam.  No one on the Left wants to admit this, understandably.  Kennedy was regarded as too conservative by the Left, both on Vietnam and on civil rights.  That said, your reading of 263 continues to be myopic and superficial.  It does not go so far as you keep insisting.  But this thread is not the thread for that on-going debate.  No one knows what Kennedy would have done as events in Vietnam became worse and worse in the fall of 63 and into 1964-65.  Evidently, as this thread has pointed out, 263 was already being reversed, before the assassination.   But of course the only interpretation of this fact that gets considered here is that that somehow proves the assassination was over Vietnam.  It was not.  It had little to do with Kennedy personally, but no one can seemingly conceive of this inherent deception.  

[Cliff Varnell]

3 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

Halberstam and Sheehan want the Vietnam War.  They want to end colonialism I could infer; they want to change American society at home I can also infer.  Therefore you need the Vietnam War -- to do both of those things.  This isn't confusing.  The Left wanted Vietnam.  No one on the Left wants to admit this, understandably. 

Since when did David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan represent "the Left"? 

Or W. Averell Harriman and the anti-Diem faction within the CIA?

3 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

Kennedy was regarded as too conservative by the Left, both on Vietnam and on civil rights.  That said, your reading of 263 continues to be myopic and superficial.  It does not go so far as you keep insisting.  But this thread is not the thread for that on-going debate.  No one knows what Kennedy would have done as events in Vietnam became worse and worse in the fall of 63 and into 1964-65.  Evidently, as this thread has pointed out, 263 was already being reversed, before the assassination.   But of course the only interpretation of this fact that gets considered here is that that somehow proves the assassination was over Vietnam.  It was not. 

Unless you were privy to the inner counsels of the plotters you can't state that as a fact.

[James DiEugenio]

MC: "But of course the only interpretation of this fact that gets considered here is that that somehow proves the assassination was over Vietnam.  It was not.  It had little to do with Kennedy personally, but no one can seemingly conceive of this inherent deception.  "

Matt, the above sounds close to Sean Fetter's Under Cover of NIght.

If the assassination of JFK had little to do with Vietnam or with Kennedy's  policies, then what was it about?

 

Edited May 25 by James DiEugenio

[Matt Cloud]

10 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Since when did David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan represent "the Left"? 

Or W. Averell Harriman and the anti-Diem faction within the CIA?

Unless you were privy to the inner counsels of the plotters you can't state that as a fact.

After 1968 when they flipped and were regarded as representing such by the Ramparts crowd for "exposing" their arrogance and folly that allegedly led America into the folly of the quagmire.  

As to the stating of facts and not being able to state such unless one is privy to "the plotters" if that's the standard around here, there's a long line of guilty in front of me, including many on this thread alone.  

At any rate, inference and study and deduction and yes being privy to persons associated with "the plotters" personally and first-hand many times over has led me to my conclusions.

[Matt Cloud]

5 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

MC: "But of course the only interpretation of this fact that gets considered here is that that somehow proves the assassination was over Vietnam.  It was not.  It had little to do with Kennedy personally, but no one can seemingly conceive of this inherent deception.  "

Matt, the above sounds close to Sean Fetter's Under Cover of NIght.

If the assassination of JFK had little to do with Vietnam or with Kennedy's  policies, then what was it about?

The Kennedy assassination was essentially two-fold in purpose:

1. Protection of The Big Mole or, the interlocutor if you like, between the U.S. and the Soviets.  Who was that?  Pat Moynihan.  The only person in US history to serve in the cabinet or sub-cabinet of four consecutive presidents.  He was of course the leader of the neo-cons to answer the question myself that I put to you some days ago which you declined to answer.  Oswald, and the Oswald Project, as I have said elsewhere at this forum, was an insurance policy against exposure of the identity of The Mole.  By having various counterintelligence factions bite on Oswald leads here and there -- and he was in many ways being set-up to take the blame for many Cold War "losses" up to that point, and then blaming Oswald for the assassination, CI was neutered lest it come out that there was a mole -- and that's a mole authorized by persons at the highest levels of the US government, such as Harriman, and known to Robert Kennedy certainly -- and that the CI had not done anything to stop the mole and allowed the assassination to happen.  This is why Moynihan can say, knowingly on 11/22/63: "We must get hold of Oswald."  Watergate was an extension of this as Nixon was having his aides dig into the Kennedy and Diem assassinations.  Moynihan was Deep Throat, too. 

2. The purpose was also to create a massive distraction for lack of a better word which has gone on indeed for 60 years to manage the cold war by protecting it from being taken advantage of and exploited by extremes an either right or left.  Basically a big blackmail scheme was set-up that implicated so many, and across political divides, that no ultimately honest appraisal could come out.  The assassination allowed many policies to go through -- the Great Society legislation I would refer to here as a start -- that would not have passed probably but for the assassination.  This introduced, rightly or wrongly, social science concepts that were alien essentially to American society.  This would include the identity politics which we are so consumed with today.  Now, that's it in short.  We could discuss what the further the philosophy and even religious implications behind the fusion if you like, the convergence theory, of East and West ideologies more -- it's basically Hegellian Trotskyite neo-conservatism -- but that really would be a whole other and deeper topic really than this forum does on the whole. 

3.  Another reason behind the assassination may have been, somewhat attenuated however, that is, an off-shoot, would be prevention of Joe Kennedy's dream of Kennedy presidents from 1960 to at least 1984, and then even beyond. But that's again more a by-product than an overt purpose, I have to imagine. .  

 

[Matt Cloud]

2 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

The Kennedy assassination was essentially two-fold in purpose:

1. Protection of The Big Mole or, the interlocutor if you like, between the U.S. and the Soviets.  Who was that?  Pat Moynihan.  The only person in US history to serve in the cabinet or sub-cabinet of four consecutive presidents.  He was of course the leader of the neo-cons to answer the question myself that I put to you some days ago which you declined to answer.  Oswald, and the Oswald Project, as I have said elsewhere at this forum, was an insurance policy against exposure of the identity of The Mole.  By having various counterintelligence factions bite on Oswald leads here and there -- and he was in many ways being set-up to take the blame for many Cold War "losses" up to that point, and then blaming Oswald for the assassination, CI was neutered lest it come out that there was a mole -- and that's a mole authorized by persons at the highest levels of the US government, such as Harriman, and known to Robert Kennedy certainly -- and that the CI had not done anything to stop the mole and allowed the assassination to happen.  This is why Moynihan can say, knowingly on 11/22/63: "We must get hold of Oswald."  Watergate was an extension of this as Nixon was having his aides dig into the Kennedy and Diem assassinations.  Moynihan was Deep Throat, too. 

2. The purpose was also to create a massive distraction for lack of a better word which has gone on indeed for 60 years to manage the cold war by protecting it from being taken advantage of and exploited by extremes an either right or left.  Basically a big blackmail scheme was set-up that implicated so many, and across political divides, that no ultimately honest appraisal could come out.  The assassination allowed many policies to go through -- the Great Society legislation I would refer to here as a start -- that would not have passed probably but for the assassination.  This introduced, rightly or wrongly, social science concepts that were alien essentially to American society.  This would include the identity politics which we are so consumed with today.  Now, that's it in short.  We could discuss what the further the philosophy and even religious implications behind the fusion if you like, the convergence theory, of East and West ideologies more -- it's basically Hegellian Trotskyite neo-conservatism -- but that really would be a whole other and deeper topic really than this forum does on the whole. 

3.  Another reason behind the assassination may have been, somewhat attenuated however, that is, an off-shoot, would be prevention of Joe Kennedy's dream of Kennedy presidents from 1960 to at least 1984, and then even beyond. But that's again more a by-product than an overt purpose, I have to imagine. .  

 

P.S. The long-absent motives for both JFKA and Watergate now solved.  

[Kirk Gallaway]

The left wanted Vietnam?

What?, The Ramparts crowd? What are you talking about?

That's sounds like 21st Century  right wing revisionism that's probably pigeonholing the left as being only the blue blooded class of international business expansionists or pigeonholing the left as establishment authors or a magazine.

The only real resistance to the Viet War came from the left! They were generally young people without great means, and some academics and they were protesting long before 1968!.

However I will agree with you, I don't think the JFKA was primarily about Vietnam..

 

I do think the general comments here are more interesting than the 2 hours, though it did have some interesting points and I was able to speed through it.

Newman has become the  conspiracy superstar of those who seek to confirm their biases of the CIA -did -it camp. Having said that, of all the possible groups, I do think the CIA as the greatest possibility of aligning with other suspected factions, so I'm not opposed. 

Bleu later talks of the difficulty of depicting names for the  groups in his survey. I think a definite flaw was in his asking "who was behind the JFKA" and providing 2 categories involving the CIA , one was rogue agents within the CIA  and the other was just the CIA, which polled 20%!  So are we to  believe that 20%  believed it was the entire 5000 people who worked in the CIA at the time?( I don't have the figures)   Obviously that notion is absurd and to an extent discredits the  participants in the poll.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26 by Kirk Gallaway

[James DiEugenio]

MC: P.S. The long-absent motives for both JFKA and Watergate now solved. 

 

That is what you think. If anyone buys this, or that Moynihan was the leader of the Neocons,  which he was not, I can sell you the proverbial bridge in Arizona.

Edited May 26 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

After 1968 when they flipped and were regarded as representing such by the Ramparts crowd for "exposing" their arrogance and folly that allegedly led America into the folly of the quagmire.  

After 1968?  I thought we were discussing the '63-'64 lead up to the escalation of the Vietnam War.  By the end of 1968 the American Left had been protesting the Vietnam War for almost 4 years.  

Where do you get the idea "the Ramparts crowd" -- Warren Hinckle and Robert Scheer most notably -- felt Halberstam and Sheenhan represented the American Left more than writers like I.F. Stone, Norman Mailer, Paul Krassner or Ralph Gleason?

2 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

As to the stating of facts and not being able to state such unless one is privy to "the plotters" if that's the standard around here, there's a long line of guilty in front of me, including many on this thread alone.  

You got that right.  In my book the JFKA Critical Community is chock-full of self-aggrandizing hustlers who've failed to grasp the significance of physical evidence in a cold case murder investigation.

Me, I only tout ONE fact:  JFK was murdered by a military-style ambush involving multiple shooters.  Everything else is speculation.

2 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

At any rate, inference and study and deduction and yes being privy to persons associated with "the plotters" personally and first-hand many times over has led me to my conclusions.

How did you verify the bona fides of these associated persons?

So tell us -- who did it?

[Matt Cloud]

At one time it was commonly understood that the concept of post world war II limited warfare/counterinsurgency was a liberal conception, the product of the egg-heads at Harvard and RAND and "the "East Coast Establishment."  If that doesn't represent those whom you say represent the true left so what?  What is the significance of the persons you name-drop to the topic?  What at all?  That they were the true left and they were anti-vietnam from the start?  Fine.  If so they don't represent the other left -- the Trotskyites/would-be neo-cons -- who do. That has been my point all long: the 1950s had been largely about allegations that CIA for one was run by leftists, com-symps, if not outright communists.  This created a fissure in the D Party between hard-line dems and appeasers.  It was through this gap, this convulsion within the left, created by The Red Scare that the neo-cons infiltrated the D party.  Then they did it to the R party in the 70s.

 

But let's stick to the issue, which is where does the impetus for US escalation come from.  Well, guess who needs the Vietnam War more than anyone?  The Soviets.  Without direct US involvement the entire propaganda campaign of the war from their perspective -- a war of racist imperialism -- falls apart.  That explains quite a lot.

 

 

 

 

[Matt Cloud]

13 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

MC: P.S. The long-absent motives for both JFKA and Watergate now solved. 

 

That is what you think. If anyone buys this, or that Moynihan was the leader of the Neocons,  which he was not, I can sell you the proverbial bridge in Arizona.

That's the latest in a long line of seriously ignorant comments by you.  Unbelievable you would say that.  Should you wish to reconsider, I'll be here.

[Matt Cloud]

14 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

The left wanted Vietnam?

What?, The Ramparts crowd? What are you talking about?

That's sounds like 21st Century  right wing revisionism that's probably pigeonholing the left as being only the blue blooded class of international business expansionists or pigeonholing the left as establishment authors or a magazine.

The only real resistance to the Viet War came from the left! They were generally young people without great means, and some academics and they were protesting long before 1968!.

However I will agree with you, I don't think the JFKA was primarily about Vietnam..

 

I do think the general comments here are more interesting than the 2 hours, though it did have some interesting points and I was able to speed through it.

Newman has become the  conspiracy superstar of those who seek to confirm their biases of the CIA -did -it camp. Having said that, of all the possible groups, I do think the CIA as the greatest possibility of aligning with other suspected factions, so I'm not opposed. 

Bleu later talks of the difficulty of depicting names for the  groups in his survey. I think a definite flaw was in his asking "who was behind the JFKA" and providing 2 categories involving the CIA , one was rogue agents within the CIA  and the other was just the CIA, which polled 20%!  So are we to  believe that 20%  believed it was the entire 5000 people who worked in the CIA at the time?( I don't have the figures)   Obviously that notion is absurd and to an extent discredits the  participants in the poll.

 

 

 

 

See my comment above about the origin of limited warfare and counterinsurgency. 

[Matt Cloud]

2 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

That's the latest in a long line of seriously ignorant comments by you.  Unbelievable you would say that.  Should you wish to reconsider, I'll be here.

Pat Moynihan basically ran the US government from at least 1982 on.  Maybe as early as 1978.  Sorry if you never read that, or put that together.

[Matt Cloud]

12 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

That's the latest in a long line of seriously ignorant comments by you.  Unbelievable you would say that.  Should you wish to reconsider, I'll be here.

Why I wonder would it be that when I would drop papers and such off to Moynihan -- either in his Capitol hideaway office or his apartment on Penn ave, say, there, seemingly invariably, would be Irving Kristol hanging about practically in his undershorts. 

 

Unbelievable that you would display such ... naïveté.

[Matt Cloud]