President Kennedy wanted to keep USA out of Vietnam

[Octafish]

Last edited Sat Feb 14, 2015, 08:11 PM - Edit history (1)

The Nation magazine wanted to know "Why don't Americans know what really happened in Vietnam?" Interesting read, it brings up how much USA uses the volunteer military and observes the corporate owned news media don't want to bring that up so that people continue to thank the troops for their service without wondering why they're tasked with missions in 133 countries around the world. What the article missed and people need to know:

JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.

In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...

The 1,000 advisors were the beginning. All US military personnel were to be out of the country by the end of 1965, reported James K. Galbraith.

Then in NSAM 273, four days after the assassination in Dallas, LBJ changes the policy to stay and support South Vietnam in its "contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy."

That important part of the Vietnam story doesn't get repeated anywhere near enough, even on DU. Thank you, niyad for suggesting this as an OP.

[hifiguy]

1. JFK made it abundantly clear to many people

that the US would leave Vietnam after the 1964 election, which he would have won in a walk had he lived.

[Octafish]

25. John F. Kennedy's Vision of Peace

On the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, his nephew recalls the fallen president's attempts to halt the war machine

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Rolling Stone, Nov. 20, 2013

On November 22nd, 1963, my uncle, president John F. Kennedy, went to Dallas intending to condemn as "nonsense" the right-wing notion that "peace is a sign of weakness." He meant to argue that the best way to demonstrate American strength was not by using destructive weapons and threats but by being a nation that "practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice," striving toward peace instead of "aggressive ambitions." Despite the Cold War rhetoric of his campaign, JFK's greatest ambition as president was to break the militaristic ideology that has dominated our country since World War II. He told his close friend Ben Bradlee that he wanted the epitaph "He kept the peace," and said to another friend, William Walton, "I am almost a 'peace at any price' president." Hugh Sidey, a journalist and friend, wrote that the governing aspect of JFK's leadership was "a total revulsion" of war. Nevertheless, as James W. Douglass argues in his book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, JFK's presidency would be a continuous struggle with his own military and intelligence agencies, which engaged in incessant schemes to trap him into escalating the Cold War into a hot one. His first major confrontation with the Pentagon, the Bay of Pigs catastrophe, came only three months into his presidency and would set the course for the next 1,000 days.

JFK's predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had finalized support on March 17th, 1960, for a Cuban invasion by anti-Castro insurgents, but the wily general left its execution to the incoming Kennedy team. From the start, JFK recoiled at the caper's stench, as CIA Director Allen Dulles has acknowledged, demanding assurances from CIA and Pentagon brass that there was no chance of failure and that there would be no need for U.S. military involvement. Dulles and the generals knowingly lied and gave him those guarantees.

When the invasion failed, JFK refused to order airstrikes against Castro. Realizing he had been drawn into a trap, he told his top aides, David Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell, "They were sure I'd give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the (U.S. Navy aircraft carrier) Essex. They couldn't believe that a new president like me wouldn't panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong." JFK was realizing that the CIA posed a monumental threat to American democracy. As the brigade faltered, he told Arthur Schlesinger that he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."

The next confrontation with the defense and intelligence establishments had already begun as JFK resisted pressure from Eisenhower, the Joint Chiefs and the CIA to prop up the CIA's puppet government in Laos against the communist Pathet Lao guerrillas. The military wanted 140,000 ground troops, with some officials advocating for nuclear weapons. "If it hadn't been for Cuba," JFK told Schlesinger, "we might be about to intervene in Laos. I might have taken this advice seriously." JFK instead signed a neutrality agreement the following year and was joined by 13 nations, including the Soviet Union.

His own instincts against intervening with American combat forces in Laos were fortified that April by the judgment of retired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, America's undisputed authority on fighting wars in Asia. Referring to Dulles' mischief in Southeast Asia during the Eisenhower years, MacArthur told JFK, "The chickens are coming home to roost, and (you) live in the chicken coop." MacArthur added a warning that ought to still resonate today: "Anyone wanting to commit American ground forces to the mainland of Asia should have his head examined."

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-20131120

Thank you, hifiguy. Yours is an important message. I hope more people spread the word.

[sabrina 1]

75. The CIA Should Be Disbanded. Kennedy got it right.

When the invasion failed, JFK refused to order airstrikes against Castro. Realizing he had been drawn into a trap, he told his top aides, David Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell, "They were sure I'd give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the (U.S. Navy aircraft carrier) Essex. They couldn't believe that a new president like me wouldn't panic and try to save his own face. Well, they had me figured all wrong." JFK was realizing that the CIA posed a monumental threat to American democracy. As the brigade faltered, he told Arthur Schlesinger that he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds."

So tragic that he didn't live to follow through, this would be a whole different country today, and far, far better and stronger one.

And people wonder why a majority of people still do not believe the official story of his assassination.

[Octafish]

81. Frank Church warned us in 1975 about the secret government and secret power.

Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American.

The guy also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

[font color="green"]“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”[/font color]

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, he narrowly lost re-election the next cycle.

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1

From GWU's National Security Archives:

"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-PA), a liberal Republican, also got the treatment from NSA?

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT, thanks to people who care. Thank you, infinitely, sabrina 1.

[jaysunb]

2. Just think, if this policy had prevailed, I would have missed

my first trip abroad.....

[HereSince1628]

7. How many trips did you make a broad?

Sorry it was the devish smile in your reply

[jaysunb]

10. LOL !

I can laugh now.

[warrant46]

22. Yes killing Kommunists for Freedom

Thanks to LBJ , ah the screaming of the shells going over head. Been there done that

[jaysunb]

34. I'm still conflicted about LBJ

Passing civil and voting rights gave me a better chance in this society, but the millions killed, maimed and displaced, leaves me cold.

Be well, my brother,

[Octafish]

39. Halliburton Deals Recall Vietnam-Era Controversy

Cheney's Ties to Company Reminiscent of LBJ's Relationships

by John Burnett, NPR
DECEMBER 24, 200312:00 AM ET

Current criticism over Halliburton's lucrative Iraq contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration.

Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam — allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering. Back then, the company's close ties to President Johnson became a liability. Today — as NPR's John Burnett reports in the last of a three-part series — Halliburton seems to be distancing itself from its former chief executive officer, Vice President Dick Cheney.

The story of Halliburton's ties to the White House dates back to the 1940s, when a Texas firm called Brown & Root constructed a massive dam project near Austin. The company's founders, Herman and George Brown, won the contract to build Mansfield Dam thanks to the efforts of Johnson, who was then a Texas congressman.

After Johnson took over the Oval Office, Brown & Root won contracts for huge construction projects for the federal government. By the mid-1960s, newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to suggest that the company's good luck was tied to its sizable contributions to Johnson's political campaign.

More questions were raised when a consortium of which Brown & Root was a part won a $380 million contract to build airports, bases, hospitals and other facilities for the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. By 1967, the General Accounting Office had faulted the "Vietnam builders" — as they were known — for massive accounting lapses and allowing thefts of materials.

Brown & Root also became a target for anti-war protesters: they called the firm the embodiment of the "military-industrial complex" and denounced it for building detention cells to hold Viet Cong prisoners in South Vietnam.

CONTINUED...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483

Tell Michael it was business.

[hifiguy]

53. IIRC the second volume of Robert Caro's LBJ biography

goes deeply into Johnson's ties to Brown and Root. Fascinating stuff.

[JonLP24]

80. They are bad, real bad,

A lot is made about private military but this is the worst -- http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675"

Also their slave labor has to be constantly watched & supervised, an American civilian contractor employee is paid well over a $100,000 to watch the TCN pump gas (actually he isn't there, just the TCN and a clipboard). I was in transportation, I wasn't kept inform of specific strategy, goals, civilian contractors -- all were to their own section, did their own thing, had their own missions. Some did visibly apparent jobs like provide security for bases -- I'm not sure if my assumptions are correct but I noticed what seemed like nationals from Africa with carbine rifles & dressed in fatigues with bullet proof vests (not that armor we wear) manned the entrances & exits of a lot of military bases. The more notable ones such as BIAP. I'm not sure who hires them, who they work, what is subcontracting or why that is given the foreign nationals are watched--treated as terrorist suspects the entire time which was amazing since most of them took a lot of abuse in-stride.

You cross someone with a civilian rank such as a GS7 or higher, I remember i was detailed to "supervise" a dining facility, the only real work I did was headcount & enforce these very strict rules (no backpacks, sun glasses or head gear) which come from somewhere where higher than me. Told one he didn't wash his hands at the sink on the way and blew a fit. Telling my NCO a GS7 is the equivalent of a colonel & what if he was wearing a colonel uniform, my NCOIC told him he'd "tell him to go back and wash his hands&quot

In the back to enforce the "no taking ice cream outside" (summer only rule, has to be some sort of bacterial explanation for that one) I spotted a contractor that kept taking the Buffalo Bob's sauce, I was on to him, alerted and it got to him. Next time, he must not realize seeing him do it at the table is what alerted me, he slimply grabbed the bottle and wrapped it inside the stars & stripes.

One I often didn't enforce was the taking too many packets of crystal light or coffee creamer. 2-3 was told OK. stocking up was the issue. the GS7 who didn't wash his hands also broke this rule but managed to choose this enforce this rule on a Warrant Officer 3. After he put it back, he came back and gave me props for not being afraid to correct a superior (though tact is emphasized this way up the chain). A 3 Star General would come in pretty much every morning and leave his hat on the table, no one messed with him. I always hated having to shout & announce when he showed up. I think it was a Navy thing where they do that - he was a Marine General. Zone 2 DFAC, located around some office buildings/trailers near Zone 1 which basically a shopping mall/Bazaar with an Olympic sized swimming pool across the street from an indoor gym where "Obama played ball wit the troops" in 2008 when he visited Arif Jan. Several middle aged men walked in the door wearing civilian clothes & in a group, discussing & sitting with the group were college basketball coaches my headcount assistant recognized right away. I didn't though there was no Coach K, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight. Interesting place, a lot of higher ups & contractors (ID was a big one, technically had to turn away someone wearing an Army uniform if he didn't have his ID (for headcount purposes, he isn't counted & can't eat without an ID) routine visitors I let slide. E-5 or higher can be pretty testy over the badge thing.

[JonLP24]

78. Look at foreign policy & domestic spying

Look at what he did there & look where we are now. I wonder how much of that was legitimate and how much of that was part of his famous politics strategy. He vehemently opposed Truman's civil rights proposes, infringing on states' rights by proposing federal anti-lynching laws & outlawing poll taxes. Kennedy chooses him to appeal to the white Southern conservatives & really trying to run the show or assert his power from the VP then starts pushing for progressive policies, including civil rights. Kennedy was worried about the South for reelection which is why he picked him for the initial election. The guy that was a major oppositional figure when Truman had a civil rights proposal claiming infringement on states with anti-lynching laws & poll tax prohibitions. He manages to pick in hindsight the perfect time to push it and for more of Truman's dreams, ending up forcing Kennedy to push for them since his VP already went public but LBJ acquired power during the peak of liberalism. After? He had the FBI spy on the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and other left of center activist groups -- Operation CHAOS, same thing as COINTELPRO just with a different name but CHAOS had Bush Sr fingerprints on it.

"Johnson's ambition was uncommon—in the degree to which it was unencumbered by even the slightest excess weight of ideology, of philosophy, of principles, of beliefs. - the author of his biography

[GGJohn]

37. Same here brother, same here.

Welcome Home.

[Drunken Irishman]

3. No he didn't or he wouldn't have escalated the war like he did during his presidency.

He also wouldn't have gone on national television weeks before his assassination to make the case for additional troops - as he did in late 1963.

[RufusTFirefly]

5. Are you questioning the authenticity of NSAM 263?

You must be. Otherwise, I don't know how you could assert what you just asserted.

As became obvious on Nov. 22, 1963, President Kennedy was playing a dangerous game. The Joint Chiefs were lined up against him. As was the CIA and their principal clients then and now, multinational corporate interests. A segment of the country hated his guts and believed that he "blinked" at a time when he should've eliminated the "Communist threat" in Cuba and elsewhere once and for all. Kennedy realized this would've been suicidal. As a result, many of his public pronouncements were at odds with his actions in private. A classic example is the back-channel negotiations he had set up with both Khruschev and Castro. Also, there's no question that Kennedy was elected by using the rhetoric of a Cold Warrior. This is often used to suggest that his plans for withdrawal were implausible. However, events in 1962 and 1963 profoundly changed his world view.

[hifiguy]

6. Outstanding post, Rufus!

Have you read JFK and the Unspeakable? All of what you discuss is documented in painstaking detail in that marvelous book.

[RufusTFirefly]

8. Thanks! And to answer your question: Yes, I have!

Impressive in its research and scope, it is above all a sad and beautiful book about a change of heart and an opportunity lost.

I'd recommend it highly to anyone interested in learning "what went wrong" and how, especially people who have steered clear of similar books in the past. JFK and the Unspeakable is an elegaic work of literature.

[H2O Man]

17. Outstanding book.

It definitely ranks in the "top ten" books that I've read.

Douglass's "Gandhi and the Unspeakable" is very important, too. And I'm really looking forward to the next one, on Malcolm and Martin.

[RufusTFirefly]

24. Yikes! Didn't even know about the Gandhi book

I just put it on reserve at my local public library (Egads! But that's socialism!)

Thanks for drawing my attention to it, H₂0 Man!

[H2O Man]

32. It didn't get

a lot of attention when it came out. It's interesting: the author was working on the introduction to the Martin & Malcolm book, and started giving background on Gandhi -- how he fit Merton's description of an enlightened leader who is assassinated as a consequence -- when he was convinced to expand it into a book.

[RufusTFirefly]

35. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Douglass's JFK book was one of the more haunting and memorable books I've read in the last 10 years. And I read a lot!

[Drunken Irishman]

9. I am not questioning Kennedy's words.

Kennedy's withdrawal that is often cited was slowed down before his death and only one platoon eventually planned to leave. Kennedy also agreed to more covert operations against the North Vietnamese before his death.

The evidence of Kennedy's full withdrawal goes counter to his actions during 1963. Including that interview in September, 1963, where he states the U.S. is prepared to continue assisting the South. He also questioned the leadership there and, what do you know, a couple months later - President Diem was assassinated and thus the successful coup of the South Vietnam government had come to fruition.

Kennedy, in fact, congratulated Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Ambassador to South Vietnam, after the assassination.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe Kennedy was ready to pull out troops. He might not have escalated it at the level Johnson did - but the U.S. was committed to the region and so was Kennedy.

[Rex]

29. I guess you do not know what back-channels means.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/06/papers_reveal_jfk_efforts_on_vietnam/?page=full

"WASHINGTON -- Newly uncovered documents from both American and Polish archives show that President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union secretly sought ways to find a diplomatic settlement to the war in Vietnam, starting three years before the United States sent combat troops.

Kennedy, relying on his ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, planned to reach out to the North Vietnamese in April 1962 through a senior Indian diplomat, according to a secret State Department cable that was never dispatched.

Back-channel discussions also were attempted in January 1963, this time through the Polish government, which relayed the overture to Soviet leaders. New Polish records indicate Moscow was much more open than previously thought to using its influence with North Vietnam to cool a Cold War flash point."

JFK wanted to find a way to withdraw from the war, without pissing off his advisers and supporters. Of course historians that are more biased toward LBJ say Kennedy would have escalated, that is to be expected.

[Drunken Irishman]

31. I don't doubt Kennedy tried to find a diplomatic end.

But he was not going to just withdrawal all U.S. interests from Vietnam. His actions pretty much prove this - despite what many want to believe. You may have an argument he would've taken a different approach there, but I don't think the U.S. would've been out of Vietnam had Kennedy not been killed.

[Rex]

33. Oh I do completely, by his second term.

I think LBJ wanted to help his buddies at KBR make a lot of money in Vietnam and did so. The USSR did not want to fight a nuclear war nor did JFK, documents prove it so I really don't know what evidence you are talking about.

[Drunken Irishman]

40. Well it's not like Vietnam turned nuclear anyway.

[Octafish]

50. It easily could have, if John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had their way.

President Eisenhower was who kept Vietnam from going nuclear. Sec State John Dulles thought it would stop the Chinese from intervening in Vietnam and CIA director Allen Dulles hoped it would lead to a wider nuclear war on Beijing and Moscow.

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/special/

This is not to say Eisenhower was above using nuclear weapons. He was ready to call it victory if only one American were left alive.

[KingCharlemagne]

68. Many of those who disagree with you (and me) begin their posts with the words "I believe." That

phrase is a tribute to JFK's ongoing ability to mesmerize and captivate the better parts of our nature, but the historical facts tend to support your position and suggest that, at best, JFK was trying to keep his options open on Vietnam until after the 1964 election. IOW, JFK had made no firm decision to withdraw and might just as easily have decided to escalate exactly as LBJ did.

The JFK I like to believe in would have woken up, smelled the roses and pulled the plug on our involvement in Vietnam.. Alas, the historical record does not support my belief system entirely. More's the pity.

[jaysunb]

70. +1 n/t

[YoungDemCA]

63. You're trying to talk facts into this debate

There's your problem. This is a sacred cow here. An article of faith among Camelot believers.

For all the talk about Obama and Hero Worship.....that's nothing compared to what we have witnessed here.

[Octafish]

84. ''This is a sacred cow here. An article of faith among Camelot believers.''

I know that some of those posting on various rightwing websites hate JFK's memory, but I thought all DUers would be interested in knowing more about the assassination of President Kennedy and how it affects us today.

[H2O Man]

16. Respectfully disagree.

There is no serious question that JFK did not intend to get in a land war, or regarding his plans to withdraw literally all US "advisers" by the end of 1965. There is more than enough documentation of this -- quite a bit more than the OP can comfortably include -- and it really isn't open to debate any more. By the mid-1990s, lots of documentation became available through FOI; more, several other key people have gone on the record in the 1990s and early 200s, who had not gone public before.

[Drunken Irishman]

27. I think his decision making in 1963 warrants at least a debate on the matter.

1) The memo of withdrawal as pushed by many (especially in the wake of Stone's JFK) was slowed down considerably even before Kennedy's assassination - in fact it ultimately would call for the removal of just one platoon.

2) Kennedy beefed up covert operations against the North Vietnamese before his assassination.

3) Kennedy admitted to Walter Cronkite in September, 1963, that he U.S. was prepared to continue assisting the South Vietnamese.

4) Kennedy was very critical of the South Vietnamese government and, within months of his criticism, President Diem was assassinated in a successful coup.

5) In the wake of that coup, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the Ambassador to South Vietnam.

I believe you could make the case Kennedy wouldn't have gone all in like Johnson...but I don't believe he was going to remove troops there.

[H2O Man]

42. Interesting.

A curious thing about President Kennedy, especially in the context of foreign policy, is that he often had parallel plans. Because he compartmentalized his administration, it was common for one group of advisers to believe that JFK was definitely pursuing Plan A; while another group was only aware of Plan B. This was particularly true in the case of Cuba, circa 1962-63.

In large part, this was due to the Cold War mentality of the majority of men serving in his administration, and almost 100% of the military-intelligence community. This included their views on Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. However, during his presidency, Vietnam was the least tense of those four hot spots.

The pressure that President Kennedy was under to take more aggressive stances and aggressive actions in, included his knowledge of advisers both lying to him, and ignoring his orders. This was true in each of those four hot spots, at various times. JFK also knew that he did not know all of the lies, or times his orders were ignored or purposely undercut. While this can be true in any large bureaucratic system -- including a presidential administration -- it was particularly troublesome in Kennedy’s time.

Vietnam is, of course, only understood properly in the context of south-east Asia. JFK had, as a congressman, visited Vietnam with his brother Robert. He learned then that it would be impossible for France or the USA to win a ground war there. There is no evidence that his opinion changed; there is plenty of evidence that it remained consistent.

When he took office, Laos was considered far more important than Vietnam. Eisenhower believed that Laos required JFK’s immediate attention. Luckily -- an admittedly curious choice of a word there -- the Bay of Pigs required his attention before Laos. JFK learned to not trust the intelligence community’s leadership. Thus, when the intelligence community and military began to put massive pressure on him to engage in a war in Laos, JFK didn’t just take their word for it. Indeed, the Bay of Pigs taught him that the snakes would attempt to set him up, by creating circumstances that would force him into military conflict.

Laos became a neutral state -- on paper -- allowing JFK to prevent the build-up from advisers-to-troops that the Pentagon etc was advocating. This was the basic model that Kennedy was planning to use in Vietnam. By using the positive reports from the Joint Chiefs etc that South Vietnam was making great progress, JFK was able to say they were reaching the point they could stand on their own. But the political reality was that JFK could not have moved to neutralize Vietnam in 1952-63 (meaning neutralize the US’s role), and won re-lection in 1964

US involvement in Vietnam began, in the context of what President Kennedy faced, shortly after WW2. Both Truman and Eisenhower sent advisers who were engaged in warfare, though the two were unaware of the amount of the investment and human resources involved. While there were some in the Pentagon and State Department(s) who questioned the wisdom of a long-term investment in Vietnam, JFK faced an entrenched, powerful bureaucracy that would -- especially after Cuba and Laos -- believe (and demand) that JFK draw the line inh the sand there.

Did JFK make mistakes? Definitely. A great example was his listening to Rusk, about who to name as the new ambassador. JFK had a friend he trusted (I can’t think of his name off the top of my head) who had opposed US military involvement in Vietnam sine the late 1950s. Rusk advocated for Lodge to be appointed -- the potential advantage was to have a conservative republican associated with the conflict.

Another was to increase the official number of advisers in Vietnam. Yet, as bad as that was, it is best understood in the context of what the Pentagon and State Department (CIA) were demanding. Still bad, but an attempt to resist the rapidly growing demands of the war machine.

For many years, the Pentagon Papers were the best record of that era. The movie “JFK” raised lots of questions, while not answering them. The public demanded more information. Literally hundreds of thousands of documents were soon declassified. This allowed for more of those who were among JFK’s circle opposed to the US involvement to become comfortable speaking out; previously, a larger part of the administration, who were pro-war, had created much of that end of the public record.

Sadly, we know that President Nixon’s creation of a new domestic intelligence group had focused on, among many things, JFK’s role in Vietnam. This included creating false “documents” to “prove” JFK supported Lodge’s coup against Diem and his brother. The most recently released real documents prove, beyond a doubt, that this definitely was not true. But the fact that some good people still are influenced by misinformation and disinformation -- and unaware of the accurate record -- indicates why Nixon, Hunt, et al were so intent upon inserting lies into the public record.

Fascinating topic. While you and I may disagree on parts of it, I always enjoy and respect your contributions to DU.

[Octafish]

44. Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy on Indochina before the Senate, Washington, D.C., April 6, 1954

Mr. President, the time has come for the American people to be told the blunt truth about Indochina.

I am reluctant to make any statement which may be misinterpreted as unappreciative of the gallant French struggle at Dien Bien Phu and elsewhere; or as partisan criticism of our Secretary of State just prior to his participation in the delicate deliberations in Geneva. Nor, as one who is not a member of those committees of the Congress which have been briefed - if not consulted - on this matter, do I wish to appear impetuous or an alarmist in my evaluation of the situation. But the speeches of President Eisenhower, Secretary Dulles, and others have left too much unsaid, in my opinion - and what has been left unsaid is the heart of the problem that should concern every citizen. For if the American people are, for the fourth time in this century, to travel the long and tortuous road of war - particularly a war which we now realize would threaten the survival of civilization - then I believe we have a right - a right which we should have hitherto exercised - to inquire in detail into the nature of the struggle in which we may become engaged, and the alternative to such struggle. Without such clarification the general support and success of our policy is endangered.

Inasmuch as Secretary Dulles has rejected, with finality, any suggestion of bargaining on Indochina in exchange for recognition of Red China, those discussions in Geneva which concern that war may center around two basic alternatives:

The first is a negotiated peace, based either upon partition of the area between the forces of the Viet Minh and the French Union, possibly along the 16th parallel; or based upon a coalition government in which Ho Chi Minh is represented. Despite any wishful thinking to the contrary, it should be apparent that the popularity and prevalence of Ho Chi Minh and his following throughout Indochina would cause either partition or a coalition government to result in eventual domination by the Communists.

The second alternative is for the United States to persuade the French to continue their valiant and costly struggle; an alternative which, considering the current state of opinion in France, will be adopted only if the United States pledges increasing support. Secretary Dulles' statement that the "imposition in southeast Asia of the political system of Communist Russia and its Chinese Communist ally…should be met by united action" indicates that it is our policy to give such support; that we will, as observed by the New York Times last Wednesday, "fight if necessary to keep southeast Asia out of their hands"; and that we hope to win the support of the free countries of Asia for united action against communism in Indochina, in spite of the fact that such nations have pursued since the war's inception a policy of cold neutrality.

I think it is important that the Senate and the American people demonstrate their endorsement of Mr. Dulles' objectives, despite our difficulty in ascertaining the full significance of its key phrases.

Certainly, I, for one, favor a policy of a "united action" by many nations whenever necessary to achieve a military and political victory for the free world in that area, realizing full well that it may eventually require some commitment of our manpower.

[font color="red"]But to pour money, materiel, and men into the jungles of Indochina without at least a remote prospect of victory would be dangerously futile and self-destructive. Of course, all discussion of "united action" assumes that inevitability of such victory; but such assumptions are not unlike similar predictions of confidence which have lulled the American people for many years and which, if continued, would present an improper basis for determining the extent of American participation.
[/font color]

Permit me to review briefly some of the statements concerning the progress of the war in that area, and it will be understood why I say that either we have not frankly and fully faced the seriousness of the military situation, or our intelligence estimates and those of the French have been woefully defective.

In February of 1951, for example, the late Brig. Gen. Francis G. Brink, then head of the United States Military Advisory Group, in Indochina, told us of the favorable turn of events in that area as a result of new tactics designed by Gen. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. In the fall of that same year, General De Lattre himself voiced optimism in his speech before the National Press Club here in Washington; and predicted victory, under certain conditions, in 18 months to 2 years, during his visit to France.

In June of 1952, American and French officials issued a joint communique in Washington expressing the two countries' joint determination to bring the battle to a successful end; and Secretary of State Acheson stated at his press conference that -

"The military situation appears to be developing favorably. ... Aggression has been checked and recent indications warrant the view that the tide is now moving in our favor. ... We can anticipate continued favorable developments."

In March 1953, the French officials again came to Washington, again issued statements predicting victory in Indochina, and again joined with the United States in a communique planning military action and United States support which would achieve their new goal of decisive military victory in 2 years.

In May of 1953, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles told the Congress that our mutual security program for France and Indochina would help "reduce this Communist pressure to manageable proportions." In June an American military mission headed by General O'Daniel was sent to discuss with General Navarre in Indochina the manner in which United States aid "may best contribute to the advancement of the objective of defeating the Communist forces there"; and in the fall of last year General O'Daniel stated that he was "confident that the French-trained Vietnam Army when fully organized would prevail over the rebels."

In September of 1953, French and American officials again conferred, and, in announcing a new program of extensive American aid, again issued a joint communique restating the objective of "an early and victorious conclusion."

On December 2, 1953, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Walter S. Robertson told the Women's National Republican Club in New York - in words almost identical with those of Secretary of State Acheson 18 months earlier - that "In Indochina…we believe the tide now is turning." Later the same month Secretary of State Dulles state that military setbacks in the area had been exaggerated; and that he did not "believe that anything that has happened upsets appreciably the timetable of General Navarre's plan," which anticipated decisive military results by about March 1955.

In February of this year, Defense Secretary Wilson said that a French victory was "both possible and probable" and that the war was going "fully as well as we expected it to at this stage. I see no reason to think Indochina would be another Korea." Also in February of this year, Under Secretary of State Smith stated that:

"The military situation in Indochina is favorable. ... Contrary to some reports, the recent advances made by the Viet Minh are largely "real estate" operations. ... Tactically, the French position is solid and the officers in the field seem confident of their ability to deal with the situation."

Less than 2 weeks ago, Admiral Radford, Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, stated that "the French are going to win." And finally, in a press conference some days prior to his speech to the Overseas Press Club in New York, Secretary of State Dulles stated that he did not "expect that there is going to be a Communist victory in Indochina"; that "in terms of Communist domination of Indochina, I do not accept that as a probability"; that "we have seen no reason to abandon the so-called Navarre plan," which meant decisive results only 1 year hence; and that the United States would provide whatever additional equipment was needed for victory over the Viet Minh; with the upper hand probably to be gained "by the end of the next fighting season."

Despite this series of optimistic reports about eventual victory, every Member of the Senate knows that such victory today appears to be desperately remote, to say the least, despite tremendous amounts of economic and material aid from the United States, and despite a deplorable loss of French Union manpower. The call for either negotiations or additional participation by other nations underscores the remoteness of such a final victory today, regardless of the outcome at Dien Bien Phu. It is, of course, for these reasons that many French are reluctant to continue the struggle without greater assistance; for to record the sapping effect which time and the enemy have had on their will and strength in that area is not to disparage their valor. If "united action" can achieve the necessary victory over the forces of communism, and thus preserve the security and freedom of all southeast Asia, then such united action is clearly called for. But if, on the other hand, the increase in our aid and the utilization of our troops would only result in further statements of confidence without ultimate victory over aggression, then now is the time when we must evaluate the conditions under which that pledge is made.

I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, "an enemy of the people" which has the sympathy and covert support of the people. As succinctly stated by the report of the Judd Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January of this year:

"Until political independence has been achieved, an effective fighting force from the associated states cannot be expected. ... The apathy of the local population to the menace of the Viet Minh communism disguised as nationalism is the most discouraging aspect of the situation. That can only be overcome through the grant of complete independence to each of the associated states. Only for such a cause as their own freedom will people make the heroic effort necessary to win this kind of struggle."

This is an analysis which is shared, if in some instances grudgingly, by most American observers. Moreover, without political independence for the associated states, the other Asiatic nations have made it clear that they regard this as a war of colonialism; and the "united action" which is said to be so desperately needed for victory in that area is likely to end up as unilateral action by our own country. Such intervention, without participation by the armed forces of the other nations of Asia, without the support of the great masses of the peoples of the associated states, with increasing reluctance and discouragement on the part of the French - and, I might add, with hordes of Chinese Communist troops poised just across the border in anticipation of our unilateral entry into their kind of battleground - such intervention, Mr. President, would be virtually impossible in the type of military situation which prevails in Indochina.

This is not a new point, of course. In November of 1951, I reported upon my return from the Far East as follows:

"In Indochina we have allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire. There is no broad, general support of the native Vietnam Government among the people of that area. To check the southern drive of communism makes sense but not only through reliance on the force of arms. The task is rather to build strong native non-Communist sentiment within these areas and rely on that as a spearhead of defense rather than upon the legions of General de Lattre. To do this apart from and in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure."

In June of last year, I sought an amendment to the Mutual Security Act which would have provided for the distribution of American aid, to the extent feasible, in such a way as to encourage the freedom and independence desired by the people of the Associated States. My amendment was soundly defeated on the grounds that we should not pressure France into taking action on this delicate situation; and that the new French Government could be expected to make "a decision which would obviate the necessity of this kind of amendment or resolution." The distinguished majority leader (Mr. Knowlandz) assured us that "We will all work, in conjunction with our great ally, France, toward the freedom of the people of those states."

It is true that only 2 days later on July 3 the French Government issued a statement agreeing that -

"There is every reason to complete the independence of sovereignty of the Associated States of Indochina by insuring ... the transfer of the powers ... retained in the interests of the States themselves, because of the perilous circumstances resulting from the state of war."

In order to implement this agreement, Bao Dai arrived in Paris on August 27 calling for "complete independence for Vietnam."
I do not wish to weary the Senate with a long recital of the proceedings of the negotiations, except to say that as of today they have brought no important change in the treaty relationships between Vietnam and the French Republic. Today the talks appear to be at an impasse; and the return from Paris to Saigon of the Premier of Vietnam, Prince Buu Loc, is not a happy augury for their success. Thus the degree of control which the French retain in the area is approximately the same as I outlined last year:

Politically, French control was and is extensive and paramount. There is no popular assembly in Vietnam which represents the will of the people that can ratify the treaty relationship between Vietnam and the French. Although the Associated States are said to be "independent within the French Union," the French always have a permanent control in the high council and in the Assembly of the Union and the Government of France guides its actions. Under article 62 of the French Constitution, the French Government "coordinates" all of the resources of the members of the Union placed in common to guarantee its defense, under policies directed and prepared by the French Government. French Union subjects are given special legal exemptions, including the privilege of extraterritoriality. The French High Commissioner continues to exercise powers with respect to the internal security of the Associated States, and will have a similar mission even after the restoration of peace. When Vietnamese taxes affect French Union subjects, there must be consultation with the representatives of the countries concerned before they are imposed. The foreign policy of Vietnam must be coordinated with that of France, and the French must give consent to the sending of diplomatic missions to foreign countries. Inasmuch as the French did not develop experienced governmental administrators before World War II, they have guided to some degree actions within the local governments by requiring the Vietnamese Government to turn to them for foreign counselors and technicians.

Militarily, French control is nearly complete. The United States has in the past dealt primarily with the French military authority, and these in turn deal with the Associated States. Our equipment and aid is turned over to the French who will then arrange for its distribution according to their decision. The French are granted for a period of time without limit facilities for bases and garrisons.

Culturally, the French are directly in contact with the training of intellectual youths of Vietnam, inasmuch as France joined in the establishment of the university, installed a French rector, and provided that all instructions should be in French.

Economically, French control of the country's basic resources, transportation, trade, and economic life in general is extensive. In Vietnam, estimated French control is nearly 100 percent in the field of foreign commerce, international and coastal shipping, and rubber and other export products. The French control 66 percent of the rice export trade. Moreover, possession of property belonging to the French cannot be changed without permission of the French; and France shares the veto right under the PAU agreement on matters affecting France's export and import trade.

All of this flies in the face of repeated assurances to the American people by our own officials that complete independence has been or will be granted.

In February of 1951, for example, the American Minister to the Associated States, Donald Heath, told us that the French colonial regime had ended and that "all Indochinese Government services were turned over to the Indochinese States." This is untrue. In November of 1951, Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk again assured us that -

"The peoples of the Associated States are free to assume the extensive responsibility for their own affairs that has been accorded them by treaties with France."

Last year, the Department of States assured me that -

"France had granted such a full measure of control to the 3 states over their own affairs that ... these 3 countries became sovereign states."

In February of this year, Under Secretary of State Smith stated that the representatives of the Governments of Vietnam and of France would "meet in Paris to draw up the treaty which will complete Vietnamese independence." As I have said, those conversations began in July, and broke off 10 days ago. And again Secretary Dulles stated last week that -

"Their independence is not yet complete, but the French Government last July declared its intention to complete that independence, and negotiations to consummate that pledge are underway."

They are underway 9 months after the pledge was originally given.

I do not believe that the importance of the current breakdown of these negotiations has been made clear to the Senate or the people of the United States. Every year we are given three sets of assurances: First, that the independence of the Associated States is now complete; second, that the independence of the Associated States will soon be completed under steps "now" being undertaken; and, third, that military victory for the French Union forces in Indochina is assured, or is just around the corner, or lies 2 years off. But the stringent limitations upon the status of the Associated States as sovereign states remain; and the fact that military victory has not yet been achieved is largely the result of these limitations. Repeated failure of these prophecies has, however, in no way diminished the frequency of their reiteration, and they have caused this Nation to delay definitive action until now the opportunity for any desirable solution may well be past.

It is time, therefore, for us to face the stark reality of the difficult situation before us without the false hopes which predictions of military victory and assurances of complete independence have given us in the past. The hard truth of the matter is, first, that without the wholehearted support of the peoples of the Associated States, without a reliable and crusading native army with a dependable officer corps, a military victory, even with American support, in that area is difficult if not impossible, of achievement; and, second, that the support of the people of that area cannot be obtained without a change in the contractual relationships which presently exist between the Associated States and the French Union.

Instead of approaching a solution to this problem, as Secretary Dulles indicated, French and Vietnamese officials appear to be receding from it. The Vietnamese, whose own representatives lack full popular support, because of a lack of popular assembly in that country, recognizing that French opinion favoring a military withdrawal would become overwhelming if all ties were entirely broken, have sought 2 treaties: one giving the Vietnamese complete and genuine independence, and the other maintaining a tie with the French Union on the basis of equality, as in the British Commonwealth. But 9 months of negotiations have failed thus far to provide a formula for both independence and union which is acceptable to the parties currently in the government of each nation. The French Assembly on March 9 - and I believe this action did not receive the attention it deserved - substantially lessened the chances of such a solution, through the adoption of a tremendously far-reaching rider which declared that France would consider her obligations toward Indochinese states ended if they should revoke the clauses in the French Constitution that bind them to the French Union. In other words, Mr. President, the French Parliament indicated that France would no longer have any obligations toward the Associated States if the present ties which bind them to the French Union - ties which assure, because of the constitutional arrangement of the French Union, that the French Republic and its Government are always the dominant power in the union - were broken.

I realize that Secretary Dulles cannot force the French to adopt any course of action to which they are opposed; nor am I unaware of the likelihood of a French military withdrawal from Indochina, once its political and economic stake in that area is gone. But we must realize that the difficulties in the military situation which would result from a French withdrawal would not be greatly different from the difficulties which would prevail after the intervention of American troops without the support of the Indochinese or the other nations of Asia. The situation might be compared to what the situation would have been in Korea, if the Japanese had maintained possession of Korea, if a Communist group of Koreans were carrying on a war there with Japan - which had dominated that area for more than a century - and if we then went to the assistance of the Japanese, and put down the revolution of the native Koreans, even though they were Communists, and even though in taking that action we could not have the support of the non-Communist elements of country.

That is the type of situation, whether we like it or not, which is presented today in connection with our support of the French in Indochina, without the support of the native peoples of Indochina.

In Indochina, as in Korea, the battle against communism should be a battle, not for economic or political gain, but for the security of the free world, and for the values and institutions which are held dear in France and throughout the non-Communist world, as well as in the United States. It seems to me, therefore, that the dilemma which confronts us is not a hopeless one; that a victorious fight can be maintained by the French, with the support of this Nation and many other nations - and most important of all, the support of the Vietnamese and other peoples of the Associated States - once it is recognized that the defense of southeast Asia and the repelling of Communist aggression are the objectives of such a struggle, and not the maintenance of political relationships founded upon ancient colonialism. In such a struggle, the United States and other nations may properly be called upon to play their fullest part.

If, however, this is not to be the nature of the war; if the French persist in their refusal to grant the legitimate independence and freedom desired by the peoples of the Associated States; and if those peoples and the other peoples of Asia remain aloof from the conflict, as they have in the past, then it is my hope that Secretary Dulles, before pledging our assistance at Geneva, will recognize the futility of channeling American men and machines into that hopeless internecine struggle.

The facts and alternatives before us are unpleasant, Mr. President. But in a nation such as ours, it is only through the fullest and frankest appreciation of such facts and alternatives that any foreign policy can be effectively maintained. In an era of supersonic attack and atomic retaliation, extended public debate and education are of no avail, once such a policy must be implemented. The time to study, to doubt, to review, and revise is now, for upon our decisions now may well rest the peace and security of the world, and, indeed, the very continued existence of mankind. And if we cannot entrust this decision to the people, then, as Thomas Jefferson once said:

"If we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education."

SOURCE w/links to photocopies of unredacted comments: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/United-States-Senate-Indochina_19540406.aspx

--------

The US Government, under the leadership of President Eisenhower, with the overt support of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the covert support of CIA Director Allen Dulles chose the path of war, supporting the French in their efforts of holding on to their colonial possession of Vietnam. Their efforts on behalf of France ended at Dien Bien Phu when the French forces surrendered on May 7, 1954 -- about one month after JFK's speech to the Senate above. Dulles had even offered to help France avoid defeat with atomic bombs.

SOURCE: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27243803

[jaysunb]

72. Excellent ! n/t

[Octafish]

73. JFK toured Vietnam in 1951...

Caroline Kennedy Nominated to be Next U.S. Ambassador to Japan

Thurston Clarke, Penguin Press
JULY 31, 2013

EXCERPT...

In the case of Vietnam, Kennedy repeatedly refused to send U.S. combat units to assist South Vietnamese forces, repeatedly overruling advisors who wanted him to do just that. In 1962 National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy tried to change his mind, reminding him that his advisers had unanimously recommended sending combat units, and suggesting cabling Ambassador Frederick Nolting, Jr., that combat troops would be sent “when and if the U. S. military recommend it on persuasive military grounds.” Kennedy would not budge. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Maxwell Taylor concluded, “I don’t recall anyone who was strongly against , except one man and that was the President.” Kennedy may have had this in mind when he told reporters at a 1962 press conference, “Well, you know that old story about Abraham Lincoln and the Cabinet. He says, ‘All in favor say “aye,” ’ and the whole Cabinet voted ‘aye,’ and then, ‘All opposed no,’ and Lincoln voted ‘no,’ and he said, ‘the vote is no.’ ”

Kennedy’s reluctance to send combat troops stemmed from his own visit to Vietnam in 1951. He and his brother Bobby had arrived at a violent juncture in the struggle between the French colonial authorities and Viet Minh guerrillas led by Ho Chi Minh. A suicide bomber had killed a French general, antigrenade nets covered government ministries, and artillery flashes lit the horizon as they dined at a rooftop restaurant in Saigon with Edmund Gullion, then serving as the political counselor at the embassy. Kennedy asked Gullion what he had learned. “That in twenty years there will be no more colonies,” Gullion said. “We’re going nowhere out here. The French have lost. If we come in here and do the same thing we will lose, too, for the same reason. There’s no will or support for this kind of war back in Paris. The home front is lost. The same thing would happen to us.”

CONTINUED...

http://thepenguinpress.com/2013/07/caroline-kennedy-nominated-to-be-next-u-s-ambassador-to-japan/

[heaven05]

4. this is one of the reasons

the military-industrial-banking complex had him assassinated.

[workinclasszero]

19. Bingo we have a winner!

Cross the MIC, end up dead.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. No, he really didn't

Transcript of President Kennedy's appearance on "The Huntley-Brinkley Report", 9 September 1963.

Mr. Huntley: Mr. President, in respect to our difficulties in South VietNam, could it be that our Government tends occasionally to get locked into a policy or an attitude and then finds it difficult to alter or shift that policy?

The President: Yes, that is true. I think in the case of South VietNam we have been dealing with a Government which is in control, has been in control for 10 years. In addition, we have felt for the last 2 years that the struggle against the Communists was going better. Since June, however, the difficulties with the Buddhists, we have been concerned about a deterioration, particularly in the Saigon area, which hasn't been felt greatly in the outlying areas but may spread. So we are faced with the problem of wanting to protect the area against the Communists. On the other hand, we have to deal with the Government there. That produces a kind of ambivalence in our efforts which exposes us to some criticism. We are using our influence to persuade the Government there to take those steps which will win back support. That takes some time, and we must be patient, we must persist.

Mr. Huntley: Are we likely to reduce our aid to South VietNam now?

The President: I don't think we think that would be helpful at this time. If you reduce your aid, it is possible you could have some effect upon the government structure there. On the other hand, you might have a situation which could bring about a collapse. Strongly in our mind is what happened in the case of China at the end of World War II, where China was lost - a weak government became increasingly unable to control events. We don't want that.

Mr. Brinkley: Mr. President, have you had any reason to doubt this so-called "domino theory," that if South VietNam falls, the rest of Southeast Asia will go behind it?

The President: No, I believe it. I believe it. I think that the struggle is close enough. China is so large, looms so high just beyond the frontiers, that if South Viet-Nam went, it would not only give them an improved geographic position for a guerrilla assault on Malaya but would also give the impression that the wave of the future in Southeast Asia was China and the Communists. So I believe it.

Mr. Brinkley: In the last 48 hours there have been a great many conflicting reports from there about what the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency was up to. Can you give us any enlightenment on it?

The President: No.

Mr. Huntley: Does the CIA tend to make its own policy? That seems to be the debate here.

The President: No, that is the frequent charge, but that isn't so. Mr.John A. McCone, head of the CIA, sits in the National Security Council. We have had a number of meetings in the past few days about events in South Viet-Nam. Mr. McCone participated in every one, and the CIA coordinates its efforts with the State Department and the Defense Department.

Mr. Brinkley: With so much of our prestige, money, so on, committed in South Viet-Nam, why can't we exercise a little more influence there, Mr. President?

The President: We have some influence. We have some influence and we are attempting to carry it out. I think we don't we can't expect these countries to do everything the way we want to do them. They have their own interest, their own personalities, their own tradition. We can't make everyone in our image, and there are a good many people who don't want to go in our image. In addition, we have ancient struggles between countries. In the case of India and Pakistan, we would like to have them settle Kashmir. That is our view of the best way to defend the subcontinent against communism. But that struggle between India and Pakistan is more important to a good many people in that area than the struggle against the Communists. We would like to have Cambodia, Thailand, and South VietNam all in harmony, but there are ancient differences there. We can't make the world over, but we can influence the world. The fact of the matter is that with the assistance of the United States and SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization], Southeast Asia and indeed all of Asia has been maintained independent against a powerful force, the Chinese Communists. What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don't like events in Southeast Asia or they don't like the Government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay. We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can, but we should not withdraw.

Robert F Kennedy, in an interview in 1964:

"The President felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam."

[Octafish]

46. JFK’s Embrace of Third World Nationalists

Exclusive: The intensive media coverage of the half-century anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s murder was long on hype and emotion but short on explaining how revolutionary JFK’s foreign policy was in his extraordinary support for Third World nationalists, as Jim DiEugenio explains.

By Jim DiEugenio
ConsortiumNews, Nov. 25, 2013

Most knowledgeable people understood that the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy would be marked by an extraordinary outpouring of media programming commemorating his life and death. But the volume probably exceeded expectations.

There were even programs aired that were not announced in advance, e.g., “The Assassination of President Kennedy” produced by Tom Hanks and his Playtone production company, which featured an aged and very ill-looking Vincent Bugliosi, author of Reclaiming History, one more defense of the Warren Commission’s report.

Perhaps the longest 50th anniversary program was the two-part, four-hour “JFK” on the PBS series “American Experience.” It was largely based on the work of historian Robert Dallek, who has written two books about Kennedy, An Unfinished Life and Camelot’s Court. Combined, the books amounted to over 1,100 pages of biography and analysis.

Although Dallek did much work on Kennedy’s medical records, there were some commentators who wondered if the historian was actually diligent enough in informing his readers about Kennedy’s policies, especially his foreign policy initiatives. In fact, in the introduction to the second book, Dallek suggests that he wrote the second tome because he couldn’t understand why an intervening poll showed President Kennedy as, far and away, the most admired of the last nine presidents. Dallek mused: Did I miss something?

Having read both of Dallek’s books, I would venture to say that, yes, he did miss something. Actually, more than just something. He missed a major part of the story that the general public – however vaguely, however inchoately – somehow does understand about President Kennedy. Namely this fact: There is as much a battle over who JFK was, as over the circumstances of his assassination.

Those two continuing controversies – who was Kennedy and who killed him – would lead some to ask if there may be a relationship between the two questions. In other words, was Kennedy killed because of the policies he tried to enact as president, particularly in the foreign policy sphere? However, in Dallek’s quest to discount this angle, he once wrote an article for Salon about Kennedy that was titled, “Why do we admire a President who did so little?”

But is that really the case? There is a growing body of scholarship that holds that, even though Kennedy was cut down after less than three years in office, he achieved quite a lot and was trying for even more. Authors like Irving Bernstein, Donald Gibson, Richard Mahoney, John Newman, James Bill, Philip Muehlenbeck and Robert Rakove have all tried to detail the serious achievements and goals Kennedy had while in office.

A Foreign Policy Revolution

Further, most of these authors have tried to demonstrate two foreign policy shifts that Kennedy set in motion but that his assassination reversed. The first were the series of changes that Kennedy made in the policies which preceded him, those of President Dwight Eisenhower and his foreign policy team, consisting largely of the Dulles brothers and Richard Nixon.

The second series of changes occurred after Kennedy was killed and Lyndon Johnson took office. These changes essentially returned to the status quo ante established by the Dulles brothers. Because the subject of Kennedy’s entire presidency would take a book to review, let us concentrate here just on a few segments of his foreign policy that still resonate today.

To understand the import of President Kennedy’s foreign policy ideas, one needs to contemplate the photo of Kennedy getting the news of the murder of Patrice Lumumba. The black African revolutionary leader of Congo was shot to death on Jan. 17, 1961, just three days before Kennedy was to take office, although his death was not confirmed for several weeks.

Eisenhower would not have reacted with the distress shown on Kennedy’s face because, as the Church Committee discovered, Lumumba’s murder was linked to the approval of a plan by Eisenhower and CIA Director Allen Dulles to eliminate him. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, pgs. 175-176) Former CIA officer John Stockwell wrote in his book In Search of Enemies that he later talked to a CIA colleague who said it was his job to dispose of Lumumba’s body. (Stockwell, p. 50)

To fully understand the difference between how Kennedy viewed Africa and how Eisenhower, the Dulles brothers and later Lyndon Johnson did, one must appreciate why Eisenhower and his national security team felt it necessary to eliminate Lumumba. As Philip Muehlenbeck has noted in his book Betting on the Africans, Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles essentially ignored the tidal wave of decolonization that swept through Africa in the Fifties and Sixties. Nearly 30 new nations emerged in Africa during this time period.

Even though most of this transformation occurred while Eisenhower was president, the United States never voted against a European power over a colonial dispute in Africa. Neither did Dulles or Eisenhower criticize colonial rule by NATO allies. Not only did the White House appear to favor continued colonial domination, but with the nations already freed, they looked upon the emerging leaders with, too put it mildly, much condescension.

At an NSC meeting, Vice President Nixon claimed that, “some of these peoples of Africa have been out of the trees for only about fifty years.” (Muehlenbeck, p. 6) And, of course, John Foster Dulles saw this epochal anti-colonial struggle through the magnifying glass of the Cold War. As Muehlenbeck writes, “Dulles believed that Third World nationalism was a tool of Moscow’s creation rather than a natural outgrowth of the colonial experience.” (ibid, p. 6) Therefore, to Eisenhower and his team, Lumumba was a communist.

Kennedy’s Anti-Colonialism

To Kennedy, however, Lumumba was a nationalistic leader who was trying to guide his country to independence, both politically and economically. Lumumba wanted Congo to be free of economic exploitation from foreigners. Kennedy agreed with that idea. As his Under Secretary of State for Africa, G. Mennen Williams, succinctly stated, “What we want for the Africans is what the Africans want for themselves.” (ibid, p. 45) The Kennedy administration’s policy deliberately made European interests secondary.

The crisis in Congo was exacerbated by the fact that Congo’s Katanga province contained abundant natural resources, including gold, copper and uranium. Therefore, when the Belgians abruptly left, they ensured that their departure would leave behind enough tumult so that certain friends in Katanga, like Moise Tshombe, would ask for their return. The problem was that Prime Minister Lumumba had no desire to ask.

So, in July 1960, Lumumba went to Washington to seek help in kicking the Belgians out. When Lumumba arrived, Eisenhower remained on a golfing trip in Newport, Rhode Island. (Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, p. 38) And, it was clear from Lumumba’s discussion with other officials that America was not going to help him expel the Belgians. Then, Lumumba turned to the Russians, who did supply military assistance. (ibid, p. 40)

This development played into the hands of CIA Director Allen Dulles, who declared that the “communist” Lumumba must be removed. He was killed on Jan. 17, 1961, apparently by a firing squad organized by Belgian officers and Katangan authorities (although his fate was covered up for several weeks).

There are some writers, like John Morton Blum and the late Jonathan Kwitny, who did not believe the timing of Lumumba’s murder to be a coincidence, just three days before Kennedy’s inauguration. It may have been done then because the CIA suspected that Kennedy would side with Lumumba, which, when his new plan for Congo was formulated, was clearly what JFK was going to do. (Mahoney, pgs. 65-67)

Kennedy decided to cooperate with Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold at the United Nations to try and save the country’s independence. Kennedy wanted to neutralize any East-West competition, to stop the creation of an economic puppet state in Katanga, and to free all political prisoners. Not knowing Lumumba was dead during the first weeks of his administration, Kennedy meant to restore Lumumba to power. If Lumumba’s death was accelerated to defeat an expected policy change by JFK, in practical terms, it was successful.

Who Was Gullion?

The man Kennedy chose to be his ambassador to Congo was Edmund Gullion, who was the one who had altered Kennedy’s consciousness about Third World nationalism. There are some writers who would maintain that perhaps no other person had as much influence on the evolution of Kennedy’s foreign policy thinking as did Gullion. Yet, Gullion’s name is not in the index to either of Dallek’s books on Kennedy.

Edmund Gullion entered the State Department in the late 1930s. His first assignment was to Marseilles, France, where he became fluent in the French language and was then transferred to French Indochina during France’s struggle to re-colonize the area after World War II.

Kennedy briefly met Gullion in Washington in the late 1940s when the aspiring young politician needed some information for a speech on foreign policy. In 1951, when the 34-year-old congressman flew into Saigon, he decided to look up Gullion. In the midst of France’s long and bloody war to take back Indochina, one that then had been going on for five years, Gullion’s point of view was unique among American diplomats and jarringly candid.

As Thurston Clarke described the rooftop restaurant meeting, Gullion told Kennedy that France could never win the war. Ho Chi Minh had inspired tens of thousands of Viet Minh to the point they would rather die than return to a state of French colonialism. France could never win a war of attrition like that, because the home front would not support it.

This meeting had an immediate impact on young Kennedy. When he returned home, he began making speeches that highlighted these thoughts which were underscored by the Viet Minh’s eventual defeat of the French colonial forces in 1954. In criticizing the U.S. Establishment’s view of these anti-colonial struggles, Kennedy did not play favorites. He criticized Democrats as well as Republicans who failed to see that the United States had to have a positive appeal to the Third World. There had to be something more than just anti-communism.

For instance, in a speech Kennedy gave during the 1956 presidential campaign for Adlai Stevenson, the then-Massachusetts senator said: “The Afro-Asian revolution of nationalism, the revolt against colonialism, the determination of people to control their national destinies. … In my opinion, the tragic failure of both Republican and Democratic administrations since World War II to comprehend the nature of this revolution, and its potentialities for good and evil, had reaped a bitter harvest today — and it is by rights and by necessity a major foreign policy campaign issue that has nothing to do with anti-communism.”

Stevenson’s office then sent a wire to Kennedy asking him not to make any more foreign policy speeches for the campaign. (Mahoney, p. 18) Considering that Stevenson was the darling of the liberal intellectual set, this handwringing may come as a surprise, but his campaign’s worries reflected the political realities of the day.

The Algerian War

In 1957, Kennedy found the perfect time and place to launch a rhetorical broadside against the orthodoxies of both parties on colonialism and anti-communism. By that time, France had inserted 500,000 troops into Algeria to thwart a bloody, terrifying and debilitating colonial war. But because the Algerians fought guerrilla-style, using snipers, explosives and hit-and-run tactics, the war degenerated into torture, atrocities and unmitigated horror.

When the grim facts on the ground were exposed in Paris, the Fourth Republic fell and World War II hero Charles DeGaulle returned to power. When Sen. Kennedy rose in the Senate to address the painful subject of Algeria, the war had been going on for three years. As yet, no high-profile U.S. politician had analyzed the issue with any depth or perspective for the public.

On July 2, 1957, Kennedy started the speech with an understanding tone, observing that many American leaders had chosen not to say anything since this was an internal French matter and France had been America’s first ally. Kennedy then switched gears, noting that a true friend of France would not stand by and watch France tear itself asunder in a futile war, one that would only delay the inevitable. He then got to his real point:

“Yet, did we not learn in Indochina … that we might have served both the French and our own causes infinitely better had we taken a more firm stand much earlier than we did? Did that tragic episode not teach us that, whether France likes it or not, admits it or not, or has our support or not, their overseas territories are sooner or later, one by one, inevitably going to break free and look with suspicion on the Western nations who impeded their steps to independence?”

I have read this fascinating speech several times, and there is one part of the speech that today stands out like a beacon in the night for today’s world. Kennedy understood the history of North Africa. That is, its conquest by the Ottoman Empire and the resultant fact that many, many native Algerians were Moslem. Therefore, he added the following:

“In these days, we can help fulfill a great and promising opportunity to show the world that a new nation, with an Arab heritage, can establish itself in the Western tradition and successfully withstand both the pull toward Arab feudalism and fanaticism and the pull toward Communist authoritarianism.”

This acute perception – that America needed to do everything possible to moderate emerging Arab nationalism so that it did not degenerate into “feudalism and fanaticism” – is something Kennedy would act upon once he gained the White House.

As historian Allan Nevins wrote, no speech by Sen. Kennedy had attracted more attention than this one, and much was negative. Naturally, those he criticized harshly attacked Kennedy: John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower and Nixon. But again, as in 1956, Stevenson and another fellow Democrat, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, also attacked him. Kennedy’s staff collected the many newspaper editorials the speech generated: 90 of the 138 responses were negative. (Mahoney, p. 21)

The World’s Reaction

But the reaction abroad was different. Many commentators in France were impressed by Kennedy’s insights into the conflict. And in Africa, Kennedy became the man to see in Washington for visiting African dignitaries. The Algerian guerrillas hiding in the hills were exhilarated by Kennedy’s breadth of understanding of their dilemma. They listened excitedly as the results of the 1960 presidential election were tallied.

Many books and films have been written and produced about what Kennedy did while in office in the foreign policy sphere. Most books concerning his assassination deal almost exclusively with Vietnam and Cuba. In the second edition of Destiny Betrayed, I tried to make the argument that, to understand Kennedy’s view of the world, it was necessary to broaden the focus.

In fact, the first foreign policy crisis that Kennedy reviewed once in office was neither Cuba nor Vietnam. It was the conflict in Congo. And as we can see from his reaction to both African crises, Kennedy had learned his lessons from Gullion well, to the point that he was willing to endanger relations with European and NATO allies in order to support Third World nationalism.

But there was another case where Kennedy did the same, the giant island archipelago of Indonesia, which the Netherlands had colonized since the late 1500s. After World War II, a guerrilla war challenged a restoration of colonialism and Indonesia won its independence in 1949. But, as with Katanga in Congo, the Dutch decided to keep control of the eastern island of West Irian because of its wealth.

In 1958, the Dulles brothers tried to overthrow Achmed Sukarno, the nationalist president of Indonesia, but the coup attempt failed. The shoot-down of American pilot Allen Pope exposed the coup as being organized and run by the CIA. Sukarno kept Pope imprisoned after the change of administrations.

President Kennedy invited Sukarno to the U.S. for a state visit. He wanted to discuss the release of Pope, so he asked CIA Director Allen Dulles for the report on how Pope was captured. Dulles gave him a redacted copy. But even in this form, Kennedy discerned what had happened. He exclaimed, “No wonder Sukarno doesn’t like us very much. He has to sit down with people who tried to overthrow his government.” (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 33)

Because of Kennedy’s different view of the issues at hand, he was able to achieve a much improved relationship with Indonesia. He secured the release of Pope, put together a package of non-military aid for Indonesia, and finally, with the help of Robert Kennedy and veteran diplomat Ellsworth Bunker, West Irian was released by the Netherlands and eventually returned to Indonesia.

Embracing Nationalism

What is clear from these examples is that Kennedy was a proponent of nationalism: the belief that native peoples living in areas emerging from colonialism and imperialism should have control of their own natural resources. This concept challenged the system of European imperialism that the United States also joined after the Spanish-American War at the end of the 19th Century.

The Dulles brothers, with their strong ties to the Eastern Establishment and, through banker David Rockefeller, to the Council on Foreign Relations, had been a part of this imperial system. One way was through their service to giant American international conglomerates at the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. John Foster Dulles had joined the firm in 1911 and became the managing partner at a relatively young age. Later, he brought his brother Allen into the firm where he made senior partner in just four years.

But, beyond that, the Dulles brothers were born into power. Their grandfather, through their mother, was John Watson Foster, Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison in 1892. Their uncle, Robert Lansing, served in that same office under President Woodrow Wilson.

After World War I, through Wall Street financier Bernard Baruch, the Dulles brothers gained entry to the Treaty of Versailles. There, from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, they were instrumental in setting up the mandate system in the Middle East. This made it easier for their corporate clients, which included the Rockefeller family trust, to set up oil exploration deals in these European-supervised principalities.

This is one reason the Dulles brothers favored the monarchical system in the Middle East. After all, if Arab nationalism advanced, it ran the risk of handing the oil riches of the Middle East to the people who lived there rather than to British and American petroleum companies.

The best-known example of the Dulles brothers’ strategy was the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran that ousted nationalist leader Mohammad Mosaddegh and returned the Shah — Mohammed Reza Pahlavi — to power. The Shah then amassed an appalling human rights record by deploying his CIA-trained security service, the SAVAK, against his political enemies.

As author James Bill notes in his book, The Eagle and the Lion, the Kennedy brothers disdained the Shah’s monarchical rule. At one stage, they commissioned a State Department paper on the costs and liabilities of returning Mosaddegh to power. To counter the negative image held by the Kennedys, the Shah launched a series of economic and social reforms called the White Revolution but they were unsuccessful.

After Kennedy’s death, the pressure on the Shah was relaxed due to the closeness of presidents like Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter to the Rockefellers. But history would see Kennedy as prescient for his 1957 warning about how neo-colonialism could lead to “fanaticism.” The prime example was the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah in 1979.

Working with Nasser

In contrast to the Eisenhower administration, President Kennedy had a much more favorable view of the nationalist leader of Egypt, Gamel Abdel Nasser, who held a special place in the geography of Middle East and African leaders. Because of the Suez Canal and his charismatic leadership of Arab nationalism and pan-Arab unity, Nasser emerged as a central figure in both regions.

Under Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles had poisoned the American relationship with Nasser by trying to pressure him into joining a U.S. military pact against the Soviet Union. Nasser replied that such an arrangement would cost him his standing with the Egyptian people. (Muehlenbeck, p. 10)

Keeping with his non-aligned status, Nasser also decided to recognize China’s communist government. John Foster Dulles – with his myopic “you’re either with us or against us” attitude – cut food shipments to Egypt and cancelled support for the Aswan Dam project.

This provoked Nasser’s occupation of the Suez Canal and the subsequent tripartite invasion of Sinai by England, France and Israel. But this blatant reassertion of European colonialism was too much for Eisenhower who joined with the USSR at the United Nations in demanding that the invaders leave. But much damage between Egypt and the West had already been done. The Russians stepped in to supply the necessary loans to construct Aswan.

The next chess move by Dulles looks even worse today than it did then. Realizing that these events had built up Nasser even further in the eyes of the Arab world, Dulles turned toward King Saud of Saudi Arabia and tried to use him as a counterweight to Nasser’s nationalism. Dulles arranged to have Saud do what Nasser would not: sign onto the Eisenhower Doctrine, a treaty which would, if needed, forcibly keep the Russians out of the Middle East.

Many saw this as a clever geopolitical tactic to keep Nasser in check. But it was perceived in the Middle East as Dulles allying himself with royalty and against nationalism. (ibid, p. 15) It was a repeat of what the Dulles brothers and Eisenhower had done in Iran in 1953.

Kennedy wanted to reverse this perception of the United States aligning itself with the old order. He told National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy that rebuilding the American relationship with Egypt would be a priority focus of his administration. He was determined that Egypt would stay non-aligned, but he also wanted to end the idea that the United States was close to the Saudis.

To Kennedy, charismatic and influential moderates like Nasser represented the best hope for American foreign policy in the Middle East. In a reference to what Dulles had done with the Aswan project, Kennedy said: “If we can learn the lessons of the past, if we can refrain from pressing our case so hard that the Arabs feel their neutrality and nationalism threatened, the Middle East can become an area of strength and hope.” (ibid, p. 124)

Repairing Egypt Ties

Kennedy tried to patch up the U.S.-Egypt relationship by doing something that seems rare today. He chose his ambassador to Egypt on pure merit, Dr. John S. Badeau, who headed the Near East Foundation and probably knew more about the history of Egypt than any American.

Badeau already knew Nasser and the Speaker of the National Assembly, Anwar El Sadat. This, plus the way Kennedy changed American policy in Congo, helped to tone down Nasser’s anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric. Kennedy then went further. After Syria left the United Arab Republic in 1961, Kennedy made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to keep the Egyptian economy afloat.

In Kennedy’s view it was important for America to favor men like Nasser and Sadat over the monarchies of the Middle East because it was the nationalists, and not King Saud, who could capture the popular support of the public and channel it in a positive and progressive way. Or, as author Philip Muehlenbeck writes, “For Kennedy the Saudi monarchy was an archaic relic of the past and Nasser was the wave of the future.” (ibid, p. 133)

Like the Shah, Saud exemplified brutality, corruption and civil rights abuses. So, Kennedy did something symbolic to demonstrate the new U.S. attitude. In 1961, King Saud was in a Boston hospital for a medical condition. Kennedy did not visit him, even though the man was in his hometown. Instead, Kennedy went south to Palm Beach, Florida. After constant badgering from the State Department, Kennedy did visit Saud afterwards when he was in a convalescent home. But he couldn’t help registering his disgust by telling his companion in the car, “What am I doing calling on this guy?” (ibid, p. 134)

During the civil war in Yemen, Nasser backed Abdullah al-Sallal against the last Mutawakklite King of Yemen, Muhammad al-Badr. Saudi Arabia supported the king to stop the spread of Nasser’s influence and prevent the rise of nationalism. To demonstrate his alliance with Nasser over Saudi Arabia, Kennedy recognized al-Sallal, even though the leaders of England and Israel criticized Kennedy about it. (ibid, p. 135)

As historian Muehlenbeck notes, this conflict ended with a truce only because of the mutual trust and admiration between Kennedy and Nasser. Kennedy was so sympathetic to Nasser and Algerian leader Ahmed Ben Bella that the Senate passed an amendment limiting his aid to the two leaders.

Kennedy’s policies, at the very least, delayed the rise of anti-Americanism in the region. At best, they showed why future presidents should not forge ties to the reactionary monarchy in Saudi Arabia, which essentially has contributed to terrorist groups to preserve its power. Like no president before or since, Kennedy risked relations with traditional allies over the issue of nascent nationalism.

Portugal and Africa

Due to Prince Henry the Navigator’s success in expanding Portuguese interests into Africa in the 1400s, Portugal became the first country to develop the African slave trade and retained considerable colonial possessions in Africa over the next five centuries.

Just two months after Kennedy was inaugurated, Liberia sponsored a United Nations motion to begin a reform program so that Angola could gain its independence from Portugal. Kennedy had his UN representative Adlai Stevenson vote for Liberia and against Portugal, France and England.

Further underscoring this sea change in U.S. policy, American was now voting with the Soviet Union. Even the New York Times understood something big was afoot, calling it a “major shift” in traditional foreign policy by Kennedy. (ibid, p. 97)

Kennedy understood that he had to embrace anti-colonialism in order to compete with Russia in the non-aligned world. As he learned from Gullion in Vietnam, America could not be perceived as a counter-revolutionary country. If the U.S. went against the powerful emotions of nationalism, there would be little alternative but to support fascist dictators or even send in American combat troops, which Kennedy considered counter-productive and didn’t want to do.

Therefore, when the Angola vote was cast, Kennedy was trying to show the developing world that the USSR was not the only great power in the Caucasian world to oppose colonialism. (ibid, pgs. 97-98) In other words, for Kennedy, this was not just the right thing to do; it was the practical thing to do. And it was another clean break with Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers. The best they would do in these types of situations was to abstain from voting.

To say the Angola vote was not popular with Establishment forces is putting it mildly. Acheson again criticized Kennedy. Portuguese demonstrators in Lisbon stoned the U.S. embassy. But Kennedy understood that it would send a clear signal to the leaders of the developing world, a reversal of an earlier era of disdain for African nationalists. A few years before, when Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika went to New York to lobby for such a UN resolution, he was limited to a 24-hour visa and an eight-block travel radius.

But Kennedy went beyond just supporting a UN resolution. He offered to raise U.S. foreign aid to Portugal to $500 million per year for eight years if Portuguese President Antonio Salazar would free all of its African colonies. Since aid to Portugal was very minimal at the time, this was a staggering amount of money. Today it would be about $16 billion. After Salazar turned down the offer, Kennedy sent aid to the rebels in Angola and Mozambique. (ibid, pgs. 102,107)

Kennedy was even willing to risk relations with a major ally – France – over the issue of colonialism. In theory, French President DeGaulle had granted many of the former states of the French colonial empire freedom in 1960. But, after analysis, it was clear that DeGaulle planned to keep optimum influence in these states, a process called neocolonialism.

For instance, DeGaulle favored the states that would stay aligned with France with large amounts of aid. Those that decided to go their own way were given paltry sums. So, Kennedy targeted those countries ignored by DeGaulle, giving them more than $30 million by 1962. (ibid, p. 161) DeGaulle also backed the Belgian lackey Moise Tshombe in the Congo crisis.

Viewing these strategies as a continuation of European imperialism in Africa, Kennedy decided to compete with France, even if it meant weakening his relationship with DeGaulle. As Muelhenbeck notes, in November 1963, Kennedy commissioned a study of methods to compete with France and to formulate countermeasures designed to undermine the French grip in Africa.

Worrying About Laos

Before Eisenhower left office, he had two meetings with President-elect Kennedy. Contrary to what most might think, he did not tell Kennedy that the most looming and important foreign policy area was Vietnam, Congo or Cuba. He told him it was Laos. (Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 163)

Eisenhower and his advisers painted the picture in stark Cold War terms, warning against any kind of coalition government that would include communist representation. The talk got so stark and martial that Kennedy ended up asking how long it would take to put a division of American troops into the area. (ibid)

On Jan. 3, 1961 Eisenhower said that “if the communists establish a strong position in Laos, the West is finished in the whole southeast Asian area.” (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 32)

As historian David Kaiser later noted, the Eisenhower-Dulles definition of what a communist was often included people who, by objective standards, were actually neutralists. Later on, as Kennedy would show, if properly handled, these neutralists could actually become American allies.

But in the Dulles-Eisenhower Cold War meme – as with Egypt’s Nasser – you were either in the U.S. camp or against it. As Kaiser noted, it was this attitude that had left Indochina in such a highly agitated, militaristic state by the end of Eisenhower’s term in office. In fact, Eisenhower had approved war plans for Indochina as early as 1955. (ibid, p. 34)

The Dulles brothers never pursued a diplomatic resolution in Indochina, just as they never pressured France to the bargaining table in Algeria. Fitting their globalist and imperialist views, the Dulles brothers dismissed the idea of rapprochement over both large and small issues. All their energies seemed to be expended in political offensives and plans for war, hence this presentation to Kennedy on Laos.

But Kennedy did not take the advice. He reversed the policy again and parried an attempt to insert American troops by asking for estimates of how many men the North Vietnamese and Chinese could place into this conflict in their neighboring area. The estimates came back at 160,000 men within 30 days. (ibid, p. 40)

On the same day those estimates were returned, at his first press conference, Kennedy stated that he wished to establish in Laos “a peaceful country — an independent country not dominated by either side but concerned with the life of the people within the country.” (ibid)

Dissatisfied with the military option, Kennedy then went to the State Department and called upon Ambassador Winthrop Brown, who told the President that the Laotian army was simply not capable of fighting a civil war on its own. Kennedy asked him what he would propose instead. Brown said he would offer up a neutralist solution with a coalition government, noting that this is what U.S. allies in Europe favored. In fact, the allies thought that this was the only solution, and they felt the communist Pathet Lao should be included. (ibid)

Kennedy, who Isaiah Berlin once called the best listener he ever met, signaled to the Soviets a willingness to arrange a peaceful settlement. Kennedy would use the military option only as a bluff to strengthen his hand at the bargaining table. (ibid, p. 41) Although his military advisers continued to push for the introduction of combat troops, and even the use of atomic weapons, Kennedy continued to brush this advice aside.

In fact, Kennedy gave a press backgrounder where he himself argued against the military option from his 1951 experience with Gullion. Kennedy argued that if the Laotian government fell and the U.S. had to intervene, U.S. troops would likely be opposed by China and the Viet Minh. Kennedy added, “The French had 400,000 men and could not hold. I was in Hanoi in 1951 and saw for myself.” (ibid, p. 47)

After telling the Russians to get the Pathet Lao to stop their offensive in May of 1961, a truce was called. A conference was then convened in Geneva to hammer out conditions for a neutral Laos. By July 1962, a new government, including the Pathet Lao, was constructed.

Kennedy later explained his position to rival Richard Nixon: “I just don’t think we should get involved in Laos, particularly where we might find ourselves fighting millions of Chinese troops in the jungles. In any event, I don’t see how we can make any move in Laos, which is 5,000 miles away, if we don’t make a move in Cuba which is only 90 miles away.” (Schlesinger, p. 337)

Onward to Vietnam

So, there was a context of anti-colonialism and diplomacy in understanding President Kennedy’s resistance to the pressure from his military advisers when they pushed for sending combat troops to Vietnam. As with Laos, Kennedy bucked that advice and never dispatched combat troops, although he increased the number of U.S. military personnel advising the South Vietnamese army from about 900 under Eisenhower to about 16,000 by 1963.

The declassified files of the Assassination Records Review Board further illuminate this story of tension and intrigue over Vietnam policy, first highlighted to the American public by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK. As it turned out, Kennedy was not just fighting his military advisers on the Vietnam issue. He was opposed by many of his civilian advisers, too.

In April 1962, Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith volunteered to get a message to North Vietnam through Indian diplomats about a possible truce in return for a phased withdrawal of American forces. Almost everyone at senior levels of the Kennedy administration opposed Galbraith’s venture. The one man who liked the idea was Kennedy, who instructed Assistant Secretary of State Averell Harriman to follow up on the proposal.

Apparently, Kennedy did not understand that, although Harriman was in charge of the Laotian talks, he was not in favor of the same solution in Vietnam. Thus, Harriman subverted Kennedy’s intentions on this assignment. In the wire to Galbraith, Harriman struck out the wording of the language on de-escalation with a heavy pencil line. It was changed into a threat of American escalation in the war if North Vietnam refused to accept U.S. terms. When Harriman’s assistant tried to reword the cable to stay true to Kennedy’s intent, Harriman changed it back again. He then simply killed the telegram altogether. (Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance, pgs. 158-59)

In 2005, Galbraith confirmed to Boston Globe reporter Bryan Bender that he never received any instructions about his proposal from President Kennedy.

By 1963, as confirmed by Assistant Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric and Defense Department analyst John McNaughton, Kennedy had decided that he was going to use Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as his point man to go ahead and implement a withdrawal from Vietnam. McNamara’s instructions to begin planning the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel had been relayed to Saigon in summer 1962.

At a key meeting in Hawaii in May 1963, McNamara was presented with an update on the planning for the withdrawal. He deemed the plans too slow and asked them to be speeded up. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, pgs. 366-367) But the point was that the plan was in place. Kennedy activated it in October 1963 by signing National Security Action Memorandum 263, stating that the withdrawal would begin in December of 1963 and be completed in 1965.

In other words, Kennedy’s plan for a military withdrawal wasn’t just some vague notion or, as New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson recently wrote, a belief among his admirers “rooted as much in the romance of ‘what might have been’ as in the documented record.”

In a letter to the New York Times in response to Abramson’s JFK article, James K. Galbraith, a professor of government at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and son of the late John Kenneth Galbraith, challenged Abramson’s characterization of Kennedy’s withdrawal plan.

Galbraith wrote, “The record shows that on Oct. 2 and 5, 1963, President Kennedy issued a formal decision to withdraw American forces from Vietnam. I documented this 10 years ago in Boston Review and Salon, and in 2007 in The New York Review of Books.

“The relevant documents include records of the Secretary of Defense conference in Honolulu in May 1963; tapes and transcripts of the decision meetings in the White House; and a memorandum from Gen. Maxwell Taylor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Oct. 4, 1963, which states: ‘All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN [South Vietnamese government] forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965.’”

Kennedy on Cuba

The last major area of foreign policy that Kennedy was changing was Cuba. After the Missile Crisis in October 1962, Kennedy and Fidel Castro opened up a back channel through three intermediaries: ABC reporter Lisa Howard, State Department employee William Attwood, and French journalist Jean Daniel.

This attempt at secret communication and a détente between the two countries was in high gear in the fall of 1963. In his last message relayed to Castro through Daniel, Kennedy made one of the most candid and bold statements ever to a communist head of state. He said to Castro, “In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear.” (ibid, p. 74)

When Castro got this message, he was overjoyed. He exuberantly told Daniel that Kennedy would go down in history as the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. Three days later, Castro got the news that Kennedy had been shot. He was thunderstruck. He put down the phone, sat down and repeated over and over, “This is bad news…this is bad news…this is bad news.”

A few moments later, a radio broadcast announced that Kennedy was dead. Castro stood up and said, “Everything is changed, everything is going to change.” (ibid, p. 75)

As it turned out, Castro was not just speaking for himself. It’s true that Lyndon Johnson did not continue the Cuban back-channel negotiations, and that promising diplomatic attempt died along with Kennedy. But Castro was probably not aware that all the ventures described above were about to change back, more or less, to where they were under Eisenhower.

Kennedy’s attempt to withdraw from Vietnam was first stopped, and then reversed in three months. With NSAM 288, in March 1964, President Johnson signed off on battle plans for a huge air war against North Vietnam. In other words, what Kennedy refused to do for three years, LBJ did in three months. Less than 18 months after Kennedy’s death, Johnson inserted combat troops into Vietnam, something Kennedy had never contemplated and specifically rejected eight specific times. This would result in the deaths of over 2 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans.

Johnson also reversed Kennedy’s policy in Congo. Kennedy had stopped the attempt of Katanga to secede through a UN special military mission. But by 1964, the CIA was unilaterally flying air sorties over the country to stop a leftist rebellion. White-supremacist and right-wing South Africans and Rhodesians were called on to join the Congolese army. The pretext was that the Chinese were fomenting a communist takeover.

This rightward tilt went unabated into 1965. By then, Josef Mobutu had gained complete power. In 1966, he installed himself as military dictator. The enormous mineral wealth of Congo would go to him and his wealthy foreign backers. (ibid, p. 373)

The same thing happened in Indonesia. Without Kennedy’s backing of Sukarno, the CIA began plotting a second coup attempt. A Dutch intelligence officer attached to NATO had predicted it less than a year earlier in December 1964. He said Indonesia was about to fall into the hands of the West like a rotten apple. (ibid, p. 375)

The coup began in October 1964 and ended with General Suharto, long known for his willingness to cooperate with colonizing countries like Japan and the Netherlands, becoming the country’s leader. Sukarno was placed under house arrest, never to return to power.

Suharto then led one of the bloodiest pogroms in modern history, targeting the PKI, the communist party in Indonesia, but also slaughtering many other Indonesians including ethnic Chinese. The death toll was about 500,000, with many of the victims decapitated and their bodies dumped into rivers.

Like Mobutu, Suharto became a long-ruling dictator (holding power for three decades) and becoming an incredibly wealthy man by selling out his country to foreign businesses. Again, unlike what Kennedy had envisioned, the wealth of Indonesia would not go to its citizens, but to Suharto, his cronies and foreign corporations.

This pattern repeated itself almost everywhere. Africa went back to being neglected. Kennedy’s truce in Laos was shattered as the country descended into a civil war that featured heroin trading by the CIA’s Air America fleet. U.S. policy toward the Middle East embraced the Shah of Iran and his oppressive policies, sowing the seeds for the first explosion of Moslem fundamentalism in 1979.

Mideast Blowback

Rather than Kennedy’s disdain for the corrupt and repressive Saudi monarchy, that leadership was dubbed “moderate” and given the label “Arab ally.” With Saudi Arabia’s oil wells and deep pockets, its power and wealth attracted the friendship and loyalty of influential Americans, including the dynastic Bush family and its closely associated Carlyle Group.

Meanwhile, as demonstrated by author Steve Coll and other investigators, the Saudis provided cover and funding for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorists. The fanaticism that Kennedy warned about in 1957 – if the United States did not break with European colonialism and neocolonialism – came back to inflict destruction on U.S. targets, including attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and eventually on New York and Washington.

When Kennedy designed his foreign policy, he was very deliberate about his plan to move in a new direction. In 1957, he said the single most important test of America was the way it was going to separate itself from European imperialism. Though Kennedy often talked as a Cold War hardliner – during the 1960 campaign and the early days of his presidency – he was intent on creating a foreign policy that would shatter the confines of the Cold War.

Before the 1960 convention, Kennedy told adviser Harris Wofford that if Sen. Stuart Symington or Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was the nominee, “we might as well elect Dulles or Acheson; it would be the same cold-war foreign policy all over again.” (Muelhenbeck, p. 37)

Under Secretary of State George Ball amplified this by saying, that after World War II, America was thought of as a status-quo power, while the Soviets were thought of as being on the side of the oppressed and revolution: “The Kennedy Doctrine challenged this approach. … If America failed to encourage the young revolutionaries in the new countries, they would inevitably turn toward the Soviet Union. … America should therefore, stop trying to sustain traditional societies and ally itself with the side of revolution.”

Authors such as Larry Sabato assert that Kennedy left no lasting legacy – and that is becoming the chic conventional take on his aborted presidency. What Sabato and these others fail to note is the remarkable changes Kennedy made in the Eisenhower/Dulles imperialist foreign policy in less than three years. They also ignore how fast the policies were snapped back by the old order operating through the CIA and President Johnson. If you don’t note these clear changes, then you can say they did not occur.

But the people Kennedy was aiming his policies at certainly understood what happened on Nov. 22, 1963. In Nairobi, Kenya, over 6,000 people crammed into a cathedral for a memorial service. The peasants of the Yucatan peninsula immediately started planting a Kennedy Memorial garden. Schools in Argentina were named after Kennedy. Nasser sunk into a deep depression and ordered Kennedy’s funeral shown four times on Egyptian television.

In the Third World, the public seemed to instantly know what had really happened and what was about to occur. A progressive and humane foreign policy was about to revert back to something oppressive and profit-oriented. A brief three-year glow of hope was ending.

Because of the laziness and corporate orientation of the mainstream media, it has taken many Americans 50 years to figure out what the rest of the world knew instantaneously. And – despite today’s conventional wisdom obsessing on Kennedy’s “shallowness” and “celebrity” – the discovery of what Kennedy truly represented to the rest of the world during his “thousand-day” presidency is beginning to register in America.

Jim DiEugenio is a researcher and writer on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other mysteries of that era. His most recent book is Reclaiming Parkland.

SOURCE: https://consortiumnews.com/2013/11/25/jfks-embrace-of-third-world-nationalists/

FTR: Jim DiEugenio also is a DUer.

[blkmusclmachine]

12. The CIA didn't much care for Kennedy.

"Lone gunman."

Heh, riiiiiiiiiight...

[Octafish]

38. Just the bad apples who contracted the Mafia to murder heads of state.

Funny how they still to this very day try to make out that it was JFK's idea.

AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

Details on the actual sit-down, which to an amateur democratic detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing:

Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history

By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)

EXCERPT...

By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.

"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.

At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."

Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.

Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.

"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.

"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."

"Yes."

"Did it bother you at all?"

"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."

CONTINUED...

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3

Yet, for some reason, the CIA continues to the present day to imply that it was Kennedy who did that.

Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time

Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh

By The Raleigh Telegram

RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.

SNIP...

Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.

Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.

He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.

The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.

CONTINUED...

http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311

Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer cough Shenon plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.

What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know

A member of the panel that investigated JFK’s death now worries he was a victim of a “massive cover-up.”

By PHILIP SHENON
February 02, 2015

EXCERPT...

Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one man—then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brother’s death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commission’s findings, Kennedy’s family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.

“What a bastard,” Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. “This is a man I once had admiration for.”

Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswald’s Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFK’s administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedy’s political career; he had led his brother’s secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA’s often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. “You can’t distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this,” Slawson says. “They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.”

Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brother’s death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspects—but admits again that he cannot prove—that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commission’s investigation had to be limited. “He was probably just told that vital national interests” were at stake—that certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.

That might explain what Slawson saw as Warren’s most baffling decision during the investigation—his refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. “It was a different time,” Slawson says. “We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV

Why would CIA not want the Warren Commission, and the American public to which it reported, know the truth about its illegal assassination program?

[blkmusclmachine]

13. The George Bush Center for Intelligence is the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency

[blkmusclmachine]

14. Pic URL:

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Nhb-exterior-020.jpg/1024px-Nhb-exterior-020.jpg

[YoungDemCA]

15. Meanwhile, in regards to Cuba....

In April 1961, President Kennedy had authorized an invasion of Cuba by C.I.A.-supported Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. When that failed, Castro’s regime jailed more than a thousand members of the invasion brigade, who were released in December 1962 in exchange for $53 million in medical supplies and food. President Kennedy greeted the freed prisoners at the Orange Bowl in Miami. They presented him with their battle flag, which J.F.K. pledged to return to them “in a free Havana.”

Trying to recoup from the Bay of Pigs disaster, the Kennedy administration covertly unleashed Operation Mongoose, which included sabotage, paramilitary raids, guerrilla warfare and – although differences remain to this day over how much the president knew about them – efforts to assassinate Castro.

Kennedy saw Operation Mongoose as a substitute for authorizing a full-fledged American invasion to remove Castro from power. But the Cuban leader mistakenly presumed that Mongoose was actually the prelude to such an invasion, and he asked the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to do something to keep the Americans out. Castro’s request was one of the reasons that, in the fall of 1962, Khrushchev ordered nuclear-capable missiles sent to Cuba, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Kennedy settled the crisis, in part, by pledging that the United States would not invade Cuba; however that pledge was conditioned on the presumption that Castro would stop trying to encourage other revolutions like his own throughout Latin America. But Castro was furious that Khrushchev had not consulted him before making his bargain with Kennedy to end the crisis — and furious as well that U.S. covert action against him had not ceased. (In fact, on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination, the C.I.A., in Paris, gave a disaffected comrade of Castro’s a poison pen that was to be used against the Cuban leader.)

http://nytimes.com/2014/12/18/upshot/when-jfk-secretly-reached-out-to-castro.html?referrer=&_r=0

[Octafish]

49. Just before his assassination, President Kennedy ordered secret peace talks with Castro

Others in government worked against him.



The National Security Archive at George Washington University has the story:

Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba

INITIATIVE WITH CASTRO ABORTED BY ASSASSINATION,
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHOW

Oval Office Tape Reveals Strategy to hold clandestine Meeting in Havana; Documents record role of ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard as secret intermediary in Rapprochement effort

Washington D.C. - On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the eve of the broadcast of a new documentary film on Kennedy and Castro, the National Security Archive today posted an audio tape of the President and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, discussing the possibility of a secret meeting in Havana with Castro. The tape, dated only seventeen days before Kennedy was shot in Dallas, records a briefing from Bundy on Castro's invitation to a U.S. official at the United Nations, William Attwood, to come to Havana for secret talks on improving relations with Washington. The tape captures President Kennedy's approval if official U.S. involvement could be plausibly denied.

The possibility of a meeting in Havana evolved from a shift in the President's thinking on the possibility of what declassified White House records called "an accommodation with Castro" in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Proposals from Bundy's office in the spring of 1963 called for pursuing "the sweet approach…enticing Castro over to us," as a potentially more successful policy than CIA covert efforts to overthrow his regime. Top Secret White House memos record Kennedy's position that "we should start thinking along more flexible lines" and that "the president, himself, is very interested in (the prospect for negotiations)." Castro, too, appeared interested. In a May 1963 ABC News special on Cuba, Castro told correspondent Lisa Howard that he considered a rapprochement with Washington "possible if the United States government wishes it. In that case," he said, "we would be agreed to seek and find a basis" for improved relations.

The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm. The documentary film, which focuses on Ms. Howard's role as a secret intermediary in the effort toward dialogue, was based on an article -- "JFK and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation" -- written by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh in the magazine, Cigar Aficionado. Kornbluh served as consulting producer and provided key declassified documents that are highlighted in the film. "The documents show that JFK clearly wanted to change the framework of hostile U.S. relations with Cuba," according to Kornbluh. "His assassination, at the very moment this initiative was coming to fruition, leaves a major 'what if' in the ensuing history of the U.S. conflict with Cuba."

CONTINUED with links, resources...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/index.htm

This is a story I don't see mentioned very often online, rarely in print, and never on television. I believe it's a good thing for Democrats to know, as well as all people who are interested in making peace and building a better world.

[hifiguy]

54. It can be safely said Castro and Khrushchev were

among the people who least wanted to see JFK dead as of November, 1963.

[Octafish]

55. Which is so weird how the evidentiary trail led right to them.

"Evidentiary" as could best be manufactured in advance and invented on the fly by an organization which had contracted with the Mafia to murder heads of state.

The Framing of Oswald

by Rex Bradford

The CIA advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special Agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above, and have listened to a recording of his voice. These special agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald."

The paragraph shown above comes from an FBI memo sent to both the White House and the Secret Service on November 23, 1963, the day after President Kennedy's assassination. It was a follow-up to a phone call at 10:01 AM, in which Director Hoover informed Lyndon Johnson of the same fact. Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of Kennedy held in police custody in Dallas, had been impersonated in phone calls to the Soviet Embassy in Mexio City.

The fact that Oswald was impersonated less than two months prior to the Dallas shooting was obviously important news. What made the revelation even more stunning was that, in one such call, "Oswald" referred to a previous meeting with a Soviet official named Kostikov. Valeriy Kostikov was well-known to the CIA and FBI as a KGB agent operating out of the Embassy under official cover. But, far more ominously, the FBI's "Tumbleweed" informant had previously tipped off the U.S. that Kostikov was a member of the KGB's "Department 13," involved in sabotage and assassinations.

An otherwise inexplicable impersonation episode takes on an entirely new meaning in this light. The calls from the Oswald impersonator made it appear that Oswald was a hired killer, hired by the Soviet Union no less. This was a prescription for World War III.

Perhaps the perfect plan was foiled by the fact that Oswald was captured, allowing the FBI to interrogate him and compare his voice to the tapes of these tapped phone calls, which were apparently flown up from the CIA's Mexico City Station on the evening of November 22. In any case, what should have been a hot lead to sophisticated conspirators was instead quickly buried—by November 25, FBI memos made no more mention of tapes, only transcripts. The CIA has maintained to this day that the tapes were routinely recycled prior to the assassination, and no tapes were ever sent. But the evidence that the tapes did exist and were listened to is now overwhelming, and includes several FBI memos, a call from Hoover to LBJ which appears to have been suspiciously erased, and even the word of two Warren Commission staffers who say they listened to the tapes during their visit to Mexico City in April 1964!

Back in November 1963, with the knowledge that it wasn't Oswald in these calls to the Soviet Embassy tightly held, and with witnesses coming forward to claim seeing Oswald take money to kill Kennedy from Cuban operatives, a coverup went into high gear. Lyndon Johnson used the fear of nuclear war, bandying about the figure "40 million Americans" who would die in a nuclear exchange. Even though he knew of the impersonation, Johnson used this false scare to press men like Richard Russell and Earl Warren onto a President's Commission which another Commissioner, John J. McCloy, said was to "settle the dust."

The Mexico City story, which involves far more than the telephone tapes and remains truly mysterious in many ways, is not the only element in the setup of Oswald. Whether he was part of a murder conspiracy or just a "patsy," Oswald was set up for the role as lone gunman. Several incidents prior to the assassination painted him as a "Red" assassin, including his test-drive at a car dealership in Dallas and an episode at a shooting range. In both cases, the Warren Commission showed that Oswald could not have been present, and thus dismissed the claims. They should have instead asked, who was there pretending to be Oswald?

The frameup also included the planting of Commission Exhibit 399, the "magic" bullet which matched Oswald's rifle, and the laydown of that junky weapon and matching shells near the so-called "sniper's nest" in the Book Depository. While the pre-assassination Oswald setup events are the most interessting, because they are inherently part of the assassination plot, post-assassination coverup activities also served to frame Oswald for the murder, and to hide his connections to the intelligence community. Essays in this topic area include discussion of the circumstantial evidence that ballistics evidence was tampered with in order to support the lone gunman answer. And the medical coverup writings on this site abound with examples of such manipulation.

But the most important setup was the incriminating connection to a planted Communist conspiracy. This episode is important because it helps explain why men like Earl Warren might engage in a coverup. It also narrows the field of potential conspirators considerably. In 1963 these intelligence activities were kept under extremely tight wraps. So who knew that the Embassy phone lines were tapped? Who knew that Kostikov was involved in assassinations and that this fact was known to the U.S.? Who knew that this phony Red connection would scare the government into a coverup?

CONTINUED w/links, sources...

http://www.history-matters.com/frameup.htm

Jefferson Morley's "Our Man in Mexico City" goes over the story and the times as seen through the life of the station chief, Win Scott. It's a fine, fine, fine read. No nonsense, it shows why the secret government and their toadies throughout the federal government do all they can to keep the lid on this treason.

[hifiguy]

56. According to Douglass there were at least two

and possibly three "Oswalds" running around in the months before the hit on JFK.

ETA - And the real Oswald had been a low-level CIA asset for years, which is common knowledge.

[YoungDemCA]

61. "This is a story that I don't see mentioned very often"

Did it ever occur to you that maybe there's a good reason for that, that has nothing to do with alleged government conspiracies from decades ago?

[Octafish]

67. So when you can't find anything to support your POV, resort to condescension, YoungDemCA.

I won't quit asking, writing, talking and wondering until the truth is known and those who've played a role in treason are brought to justice.

CIA, FBI, Secret Service and other goverment agencies to the present day hide important files and protect individuals on their roles concerning the assassination. If it really is "Case Closed" why all the secrecy after 51 years?

[FairWinds]

18. This a a good discussion & debate -

folks are presenting actual evidence, and making real points.

More please - keep it coming.

I'm reading all of it with interest.

[Octafish]

69. George H.W. Bush was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Last edited Sun Feb 15, 2015, 11:03 PM - Edit history (1)

In the hour of the death of President John F. Kennedy, Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush named a suspect to the FBI in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas.



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated?

Could it be, he was on official business? I suspect he was on Secret Government business. After all, his eldest son bragged during his Texas Air National Guard and Harvard grad school days that his daddy was CIA.

Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

George Herbert Walker Bush was head of the CIA when the Church Committee was looking into the CIA assassination programs. He made things all friendly-like and turned what had been a serious hunt for truth under previous DCI Colby into another dog-and-pony show that was big on show and light on facts.

Bush has never explained these memos in public. He's never even admitted where he was the day JFK was killed.

[99th_Monkey]

20. Not to mention JFK was also going to obliterate the CIA

which I believe was the 'final straw' for fascist Dark Siders

[hifiguy]

28. JFK famously said after the Bay of Pigs

that he wanted to "smash" the CIA into a thousand pieces. They had lied their asses off to him about the entire thing and left him holding the bag.

There was also the famous pro-peace speech at American University in the summer of 1963. The MIC had a lot of reasons to hate John Kennedy. The man actually had the audacity to think that he was in charge because he was president. No president since has suffered under that delusion after seeing what happened to JFK.

[roamer65]

21. Back channel negotiations with Khrushchev.

The CIA and NSA don't like it when you go behind their backs. They're scum.

[Octafish]

52. Secret Government is why the pendulum won't swing back.

Who can hold the secret offices of government responsible when they use their power to spy on the People's representatives?

Russ Tice, Bush-Era Whistleblower, Claims NSA Ordered Wiretap Of Barack Obama In 2004

The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing
Posted: 06/20/2013

Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst who in 2005 blew the whistle on what he alleged was massive unconstitutional domestic spying across multiple agencies, claimed Wednesday that the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama in 2004.

Speaking on "The Boiling Frogs Show," Tice claimed the intelligence community had ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.

"Here's the big one ... this was in summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a 40-something-year-old wannabe senator for Illinois," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives right now would you? It's a big white house in Washington, D.C. That's who they went after, and that's the president of the United States now."

Host Sibel Edmonds and Tice both raised concerns that such alleged monitoring of subjects, unbeknownst to them, could provide the intelligence agencies with huge power to blackmail their targets.

"I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on," Tice said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/russ-tice-nsa-obama_n_3473538.html

I feel for President Obama. This may be why Snowden wishes he'd come forward earlier.

[KingCharlemagne]

23. All due respect, but the verdict of professional historians who have examined the

question is that JFK sought, above all else, to keep his options open on Vietnam until after the 1964 election. We simply have no way of knowing whether he would have continued the withdrawal of military advisors or whether he would have reversed course and escalated along the path that LBJ chose. IOW, JFK had not made up his mind what course of action to pursue in Vietnam as of Nov 21, 1963 and he was eager to postpone as long as possible having to make such a decision.

Saying this in no way diminishes JFK's legacy and may, in some ways, enhance it, in my opinion. I can dig up the source(s) who argue this view if you think it will contribute to the discussion but I'm a bit pressed for time.

[roamer65]

58. JFK would have pulled the plug on it.

I really believe if he had not been assassinated that he and Khruschev's back channel negotiations would have brought on a de-escalation of the Cold War and its proxy wars.

But Kennedy was assassinated and one year later Nikita was removed from office and exiled.

Lyndon Johnson would have also been removed from office and would have served jail time for the Billy Sol Estes affair and other related corruption.

[Octafish]

71. John M. Newman, in ''JFK and Vietnam'' documented the sordid history.

The Pentagon and CIA gave LBJ, as veep, a more accurate picture of what was happening in Vietnam than they provided JFK, as president.

Why? JFK said he would not get into a land war in Southeast Asia and he certainly was not going to place US draftees in the middle of Vietnam's civil war; Johnson did.

Vietnam Withdrawal Plans

The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.

The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?

At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?

The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.

But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.

CONTINUED with links:

http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm

As in the physical sciences, when a new theory supersedes an old one, the last to see and understand are the advocates of the old.

[KingCharlemagne]

76. Since your extract mentions Kaiser's "American Tragedy" in its final paragraph, it is

only fair to quote directly from Kaiser's "Introduction":

This book . . . . shows how Robert McNamara and the Pentagon helped hide the true situation from the President, the rest of the government, and the American people, thereby putting off the need to reevaluate American policy. Kennedy died believing, mistakenly, that the war was still going well. (p. 4, Emphasis added)

Your thesis seems premised on JFK's recognition that all was lost in southeast Asia, hence the need for an early withdrawal. It should go without saying that, if JFK died believing the war was still going well, he would have hardly seen any pressing need to withdraw. Unless he thought it was going so swimmingly well that nothing would be lost by withdrawing. And no historian, as far as I know, maintains that absurd position.

The conclusion is thus inescapable . . . as of Nov 21, 1963, JFK had not made up his mind about what course of action to take in Indochina after his reelection.

[Octafish]

82. Not a thesis. It's what the documentary record shows.

John Newman explains in detail how CIA and Pentagon officials painted two different pictures: One for President Kennedy, apparently so he wouldn't realize how dire the situation really was; and another for Vice President Johnson, closer to reality.

Newman details this in "Back Channel to the Vice President," pages 225-229 of "JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power."

Where was the Vice President's information coming from? Burris says he "got a lot of raw information." (7) When pressed for his exact sources he replied, "We got it from everywhere." In a more revealing memo on another occasion he said: "They'd hand you a copy of a memo. You'd get stuff from the boys in the woodwork. Later McCone put a stop to what I was doing." Newman, p. 227

The above is from the original edition. Reprints may have it on another page.

If you haven't read it, KingCharlemagne, I think you'd get a lot out of it.

[KingCharlemagne]

85. We are now come full circle. If JFK was being fed info that led hiim to believe the

war was not an incipient disaster, then why was he (according to your thesis) so hell-bent on withdrawing all U.S. military personnel from Vietnam?

There are 3 possibilities in the decision tree faced by JFK (at least as I read it):

1) The situation is an incipient disaster, such that no amount of American aid or manpower can rescue it. A decision to withdraw under such a scenario would only be prudent. (But so also would a decision to escalate with ground troops in the hopes of staving off utter defeat and humiliation, the path LBJ ultimately chooses.)

2) The situation is going passably well. Sure, the generals who have replaced Diem are a particularly nasty lot, but they have bought sufficient time for the U.S. to 'stay the course,' neither withdrawing precipitously nor escalating. There will be enough time after the 1964 election to decide on next steps.

or

3) The situation is so improved with Diem's overthrow that JFK now feels he can afford to withdraw U.S. advisers completely.

I have chosen scenario #2 - neither planning to withdraw nor to escalate. You, it seems to me, have chosen either scenario #1 or #3, but I'll be darned if I can figure out which. Sometimes I think you lean towards scenario #1 but the passages you present from Newman -- I have not yet read it, but will try to -- suggest scenario #3 (at least as far as JFK's mentality was concerned in early November 1963).

Although Scenario #2 does not depict JFK as the budding peacenik many on this thread would prefer, it suits my reading of Kennedy's personality and governance style which was to procrastinate on dramatic action until events on the ground forced his hand. In the nuclear age, such a deliberative style is vastly to be preferred, imho, over the shoot-from-the-hip mentality of LeMay, Goldwater and others of that stripe, even if it leaves us with a JFK who is not the 'peace-maker' folks on this thread would have him be.

So again: did JFK want to withdraw (your thesis) because iin his mind the war was going so well or because it was going so poorly?

Great debate by the way. Absolutely no disrespect intended to you or your position.

[Damansarajaya]

26. So Oliver Stone was right. That's what he said after his movie JFK came out. nt

[BootinUp]

47. lol. nt

[Octafish]

48. ''I will never send draftees over there to fight.''

THE SECOND BIGGEST LIE

by Michael Morrissey

The biggest lie of our time, after the Warren Report, is the notion that Johnson merely continued or expanded Kennedy's policy in Vietnam after the assassination.

1. JFK's policy

In late 1962, Kennedy was still fully committed to supporting the Diem regime, though he had some doubts even then. When Senator Mike Mansfield advised withdrawal at that early date:

The President was too disturbed by the Senator's unexpected argument to reply to it. He said to me later when we talked about the discussion, "I got angry with Mike for disagreeing with our policy so completely, and I got angry with myself because I found myself agreeing with him (Kenneth O'Donnell and Dave Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970, p. 15).

By the spring of 1963, Kennedy had reversed course completely and agreed with Mansfield:

"The President told Mansfield that he had been having serious second thoughts about Mansfield's argument and that he now agreed with the Senator's thinking on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam.

'But I can't do it until 1965--after I'm reelected,' Kennedy told Mansfield....

After Mansfield left the office, the President said to me, 'In 1965 I'll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I'll be damned everywhere as a Communist appeaser. But I don't care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I'm reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected' (O'Donnell, p. 16)."

Sometime after that Kennedy told O'Donnell again that

"...he had made up his mind that after his reelection he would take the risk of unpopularity and make a complete withdrawal of American military forces from Vietnam. He had decided that our military involvement in Vietnam's civil war would only grow steadily bigger and more costly without making a dent in the larger political problem of Communist expansion in Southeast Asia" (p. 13).

Just before he was killed he repeated this commitment:

"'They keep telling me to send combat units over there,' the President said to us one day in October [1963]. 'That means sending draftees, along with volunteer regular Army advisers, into Vietnam. I'll never send draftees over there to fight'." (O'Donnell, p. 383).

Kennedy's public statements and actions were consistent with his private conversations, though more cautiously expressed in order to appease the military and right-wing forces that were clamoring for more, not less, involvement in Vietnam, and with whom he did not want to risk an open confrontation one year before the election. As early as May 22, 1963, he said at a press conference:

"...we are hopeful that the situation in South Vietnam would permit some withdrawal in any case by the end of the year, but we can't possibly make that judgement at the present time" (Harold W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, eds., Kennedy and the Press: The News Conferences, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1965, p. 447).

Then came the statement on October 2:

"President Kennedy asked McNamara to announce to the press after the meeting the immediate withdrawal of one thousand soldiers and to say that we would probably withdraw all American forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965. When McNamara was leaving the meeting to talk to the White House reporters, the President called to him, "And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too" (O'Donnell, p. 17).

This decision was not popular with the military, the Cabinet, the vice-president, or the CIA, who continued to support Diem, the dictator the US had installed in South Vietnam in 1955. Hence the circumspect wording of the statement on Oct. 2, which was nevertheless announced as a "statement of United States policy":

Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgement that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965, although there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S. training personnel. They reported that by the end of this year, the U.S. program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where 1,000 U.S.
military personnel assigned to South Viet-Nam can be withdrawn (Documents on American Foreign Relations 1963, Council on Foreign Relations, New York: Harper & Row, 1964, p. 296).

CONTINUED...

http://govt.eserver.org/gulf-war/jfk-lbj-and-vietnam.txt

Oliver Stone may have saved democracy with a work of art.

[Rex]

30. He wanted a complete withdraw, but the MICIA said no way.

So then he wanted more oversight over the MICIA and then was gone. Kennedy died with 16k troops on the ground in Vietnam, 10 years later it was 50k. Easy to do the math and see who won between JFK and the MICIA.

[Octafish]

74. JFK would never fall for phony intel like Gulf of Tonkin.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5501005

It's been pretty much money trumps peace ever since Nov. 22, 1963.

From 16,000 volunteer "advisors" to 540,000 draftees combat troops on a lie.

[kelliekat44]

36. I have tried to get folks to view "Evidence of Revision" 1-6 on YouTube.

It's all there about how the war with Viet Nam went down.

Well researched and well documented.

&spfreload=10

[Octafish]

83. Thank you, kelliekat44!

The parts I have watched are very, very good.

I will watch in its entirety and give you my thoughts.

Thank you very much for this video report.

[Enthusiast]

41. That's probably why the Fascists killed him.

The war profiteers. The MIC and more.

[colsohlibgal]

43. Agreed, Almost Certainly

He sealed his fate with the remarkable speech he made at American U.

He knew the stakes too. He urged John Frankenheimer to make "Seven Days In May", saying the plot was more plausible than anyone could imagine. The Joint Chiefs, the hawks in the CIA, were all in thinking we could actually win a nuclear war. They saw JFK turning from cold warrior to pacifist and it enraged them.

And as I say to everyone, if you really think lone nut LHO shot JFK, plain and simple, just search for "Umbrella Man" on You Tube. Oh and find a clip of LHO clearly saying he was "just a patsy" - before he was silenced permanently right in the police station. Oh yeah, nothing to see here.

[Enthusiast]

51. The evidence that Oswald was "just a patsy" is undeniable.

We are supposed to believe that Ruby was exacting revenge for Oswald having killed the President. It couldn't be any more obvious. The big lie. Just another of the big lies.

[hifiguy]

57. I remember seeing the clip where Oswald makes the "patsy" statement.

Unless he's the best actor who ever lived, the expression on his face is pure, true "How the FUCK did I wind up in this situation and what the hell is going on???"

[roamer65]

59. Better yet, look up the video of Jack Ruby saying "If Adlai Stevenson had been VP..." N/t

[YoungDemCA]

62. I deny it. As does Oswald's brother, for that matter.

Kudos to you and everyone else who has been trying to divert popular attention and responsibility from President Kennedy's assassin, though.

[woo me with science]

45. K&R

[Octafish]

86. Peter Dale Scott did the yeoman's work on JFK and Vietnam issue.

McNamara - Taylor
PROPOSED STATEMENT
Oct 2, 1963

The security of South Vietnam remains vital to United States security. For this reason we adhere to the overriding objective of denying this country to communism and of suppressing the Viet Cong insurgency as promptly as possible.

Although we are deeply concerned by repressive practices, effective performance in the conduct of the war should be the determining factor in our relations with the GVN.[28]

--------------------------------

White House - Kennedy
ACTUAL STATEMENT
Oct. 2, 1963

The security of South Vietnam is a major interest of the United States as other free nations. We will adhere to our policy of working with the people and Government of South Vietnam to deny this country to communism and to suppress the externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Viet Cong as promptly as possible. Effective performance in this undertaking is the central objective of our policy in South Vietnam.

While such practices have not yet significantly affected the war effort, they could do so in the future.

It remains the policy of the United States, in South Vietnam as in other parts of the world, to support the efforts of the people of that country to defeat aggression and to build a peaceful and free society.[29]

---------------------------

White House - Johnson
NSAM 273
(SECRET)
NOV. 26, 1963

It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported communist conspiracy. The test of all U.S. decisions and actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contributions to this purpose.[30]

SOURCE: http://www.history-matters.com/essays/vietnam/KennedyVietnam1971/KennedyVietnam1971.htm

[roamer65]

60. November 22, 1963 was a coup d'état masked by an assassination...plain and simple.

IMHO, I do strongly believe that if President Kennedy had escaped Dallas unharmed, there would have been an actual military coup d'état in the United States. That would have been the only way to try to stop Kennedy from investigating the attempt.

[Octafish]

89. JFK knew what he was getting into in Dallas. He had survived an attempt in Chicago...

Former Secret Service Agent Abraham Bolden helped investigate the Chicago Plot to assassinate President Kennedy, about three weeks before Dallas.

The same basic M.O. as Dallas, ambush, high-power rifles, high-rise, and one patsy by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee, a USMC veteran from a U-2 base in Japan. The plot was broken up by the Secret Service in Chicago. Not that they wanted to, they sort of had to when the local cops got a call from a landlady with the guns, passports, maps and "parade route" in Highlighter still on the bed.

The great author and journalist Edwin Black broke the story, "The Plot to Kill JFK in Chicago," way back in 1975 or so. Scribd has a copy, posted by Mr. Black (an outstanding author, New York Times journalist, and a good friend of someone I met once):

PDF: http://www.thechicagoplot.com/The%20Chicago%20Plot.pdf

or:

PDF: http://www.scribd.com/doc/49710299/The-Chicago-Plot-to-Kill-JFK

On the above article, from Edwin Black:

This file has been transcribed from a poor set of photo-copies. The images in those photocopies are, at best, very poor and I chose not to include them except to reference them and provide any subtext attached.The text in the original article was formatted in one to three columns per page and, to make referencing the original a bit easier, I’ve referenced those columns as well. I hope I’ve maintained the integrity of the original article to everyone’s satisfaction.

But first…

Five years ago on a commission from Atlantic Monthly, I began investigating a Chicago conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy just 20 days before Dallas. When I asked the wrong questions and came too close to sensitive information, I was followed and investigated by a Defense Intelligence Agency (D. I. A.) operative. By examining my own file, I identified him and embarrassed the DIA into halting the harassment. There's a record of their "project" in the credit bureau where it began, Credit Information Corporation. (named Cook County credit bureau at the time). The DIA's inquiry listed my employer as Atlantic Monthly although, that assignment was my only work for the magazine.

Unfortunately, the harassment didn't end until after my apartment was broken into. No valuables were taken. But all my files were obviously and clumsily searched.

But that was five years ago, before Watergate, a different era. Today, when reporters edge close to dirty government secrets, it is the agencies who become nervous. And they think thrice before attempting the retaliation and tactics once common to the game.

My investigation, revived within the past eight months, took me to New York, Long Island,Houston and Washington as well as through courts, warehouses, police stations and federal offices in Chicago. Hundreds of hours scrutinizing federal, state and local documents,dozens of interviews, hundreds of leads. And always with the Secret Service and FBI working against me, doing what they could to make the investigation tedious, time-consuming, and expensive. Perhaps they hoped the investigation would just disappear after all the obstructions.

I hope they now know they must come up with the answers. It is simply unacceptable to wait until the 21st century for the release of seventy or so top secret Warren Commission documents.

(image: Edwin Black’s signature)

There also are FBI reports in which one wealthy Southern racist by the name of Joseph Adams Milteer was tape-recorded by an FBI informant detailing an attempt on the president's life on a trip to Miami or Tampa Bay.



A rabid right-wing racist who was tape-recorded 13 days before Dallas by FBI detailing the assassination of JFK "with a high-powered rifle from a high-rise office building" outlined the official version of Dallas, complete with patsy, before it happened. Seems he was prophetic, as two weeks later, Milteer or his lost twin, appears in photographs in Dealey Plaza should make the front page and lead every broadcast, but it doesn't, for some reason.

[Special Prosciuto]

64. I have always suspected JFK was killed for his opposition to that war.

The war dragged on for another 11 years. Despite the original Warren Commission bullshit, Congress "re-opening" the case, countless books and movies and stupid shit on TV, this killing is still unexplained. But my gut feeling is in my reply title.

[dissentient]

65. Kennedy had too much potential to help the common people. There is even a rumor that he was

assassinated because he was going to release top secret info about UFOs to the people. No joke.

Who knows what the truth really is, but I don't believe the official cover up, I mean official story, not for a minute.

[Special Prosciuto]

66. Flying Saucer bullshit began in 1947, with the hallucinating "pilot" Kenneth Arnold

and then by idiots of the press in Roswell, NM. Hollywood joined the bullshit campaign.

These things scared the public and launched the "cold war". 4 more decades of abject fucking ignorance.

[JonLP24]

77. He also shot down Operation Northwoods

He clearly had a different view on foreign policy than the Kennedy administration may have wanted. It is remarkable how conservative everyone was after him now while LBJ had some progressive initiatives, he also once called Harry Truman's civil rights proposal from his Committee of Civil Rights (independent, fact-finding, cut-the-BS, committees) is why Harry Truman even became a national figure enough so to reach FDR's radar by-the-time he was weighing his VP pick using terms like "sadistic" and "murder" (for imposing an anti-lynching law on Southern states who already have murder on books and taking the position Southern States should have the right to have a poll tax or not -- state's rights). It is hard to say what influence over his policies or what policies he really favored but by all accounts he was an expert on politics. As VP, he clearly tried to assert influence pushing civil rights & great progressive ref, many of the things Truman started was fulfilled, especially the economic policies designed to counter the under-consumption as a result of trickle-down economics that doomed the Great Depression. It also was during a time which was the peak for this kind of thing, now TANF is so politically unpopular pretty much single parent families

On foreign policy he favored things the executive agencies did, all with communists (now replaced with terrorists) as a cover. Also when it comes to domestic policy as well.


Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name for a domestic espionage project conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency. A department within the CIA was established in 1967 on orders from President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson and later expanded under President Richard Nixon. The operation was launched under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms, by chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober. The program's goal was to unmask possible foreign influences on the student antiwar movement.[1][2] The "MH" designation is to signify the program had a worldwide area of operations.[3]

When President Nixon came to office in 1969, existing domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS.[5] Operation CHAOS first used CIA stations abroad to report on antiwar activities of United States citizens traveling abroad, employing methods such as physical surveillance and electronic eavesdropping, utilizing "liaison services" in maintaining such surveillance. The operations were later expanded to include 60 officers.[3] In 1969, following the expansion, the operation began developing its own network of informants for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located in foreign countries that might have ties to domestic groups.[2] Eventually, CIA officers expanded the program to include other leftist or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to Vietnam, such as groups operating within the women's liberation movement.[1] The domestic spying of Operation CHAOS also targeted the Israeli embassy, and domestic Jewish groups such as the B'nai B'rith. In order to gather intelligence on the embassy and B'nai B'rith, the CIA purchased a garbage collection company to collect documents that were to be destroyed.[6]

Targets of Operation CHAOS within the antiwar movement included:[5]

Students for a Democratic Society
Black Panther Party
Women Strike for Peace
Ramparts Magazine[7]

Officially, reports were to be compiled on "illegal and subversive" contacts between United States civilian protesters and "foreign elements" which "might range from casual contacts based merely on mutual interest to closely controlled channels for party directives." At its finality, Operation CHAOS contained files on 7,200 Americans, and a computer index totaling 300,000 civilians and approximately 1,000 groups.[8] The initial result of investigations lead DCI Richard Helms to advise then President Johnson on November 15, 1967, that the agency had uncovered "no evidence of any contact between the most prominent peace movement leaders and foreign embassies in the U.S. or abroad." Helms repeated this assessment in 1969.[1] In total 6 reports where compiled for the White House and 34 for cabinet level officials.[2]

In 1973, amid the uproar of the Watergate break-in, involving two former CIA officers, Operation CHAOS was closed.[4] The secret nature of the former program however was exposed in 1974 when Seymour Hersh published an article in the New York Times titled Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years.[1][9] The following year, further details were revealed during Representative Bella Abzug's House Subcommittee on Government Information and individual Rights.[3] The government, in response to the revelations, launched the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (The Rockefeller Commission), led by then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, to the depth of the surveillance.[1] "Dick" Richard Cheney, then Deputy White House Chief of Staff, is noted as stating of the Rockefeller Commission; it was to avoid " ... congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch."[1]

Following the revelations by the Rockefeller Commission, then-DCI George H. W. Bush admitted that "the operation in practice resulted in some improper accumulation of material on legitimate domestic activities."[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS

Obviously, wild speculation would fill in the blanks but I notice it is interesting the executive branch spying/law enforcement agencies foreign policy has basically been continued & expanded ever since. I'm very unfamiliar with Jimmy Carter as far as Presidents since Woodrow Wilson (the start of the J Edgar Hoover war against the left) goes so I can't really say, it feels like he was sabotaged with the lifting the standard & Saudi Arabia using oil as political weapon after years of selling it cheaper than Cola, I'm not sure why the easiest hostage demands of all-time took so long (except saving face) & whoever decided to resolve the embargo by trading weapons for oil was either a mistake that will haunt us for generations or a brilliant idea from a greedy sociopath, connected with Department of Defense war profiteers.

Every President since. Clinton campaigned on free trade & welfare reform, no surprise there. He also expanded on the role set for him regarding Europe by Bush/Reagan & expanding NATO to the point of a unilateral bombing campaign but mainly picking a side. It is clear Obama was different, at-first or something set him apart. He indicated priorities for Africa which his predecessors ignored (with the exception of the Somolia civil war which privacy followed -- huge shipments obviously heading to Saudi Arabia or Qatar-Kuwait enough of a concern for foreign powers), middle east -- his "Cairo speech", his day 1 memo suggesting things should not be kept disclosed for a variety of reasons mentioned one of them "subjective fears" then to use "subjective fears" to block torture photos but everything since. One week after releasing the torture memos which caused a lot of their fierce opposers to pat themselves on the back. The same press conference where Gibbs indicates the intended legal action by the Obama administration he legitimizes "enhanced interogation techjniques"

QUESTION: This new argument -- if you’re saying, basically, that this could put troops in further harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, Former Vice President Cheney, General Hayden, others have made the same argument about releasing the so-called torture memos. Do you have any regrets about putting those memos out? They’ve made the same argument about them?

GIBBS: No. Well, I’ll use the example I’ve used on this before, Ed. You didn’t begin to report on enhanced interrogation techniques at the release of the OLC memos, did you?

QUESTION: No.

GIBBS: OK. The -- I’m saying...

QUESTION: (Inaudible)

GIBBS: Hold on. I’m also sensing that the graphic that CNN uses to denote what happens when somebody gets waterboarded wasn’t likely developed based on reading memos that were released three weeks ago. The existence of enhanced interrogation techniques were noted by the former administration in speeches that they gave. You read about the enhanced interrogation techniques in autobiographies written by members of that former administration. The notion...

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/102-organizers/kevin-gosztola/5586-obama-employs-bush-administration-tactic-to-halt-release-of-detainee-photos

That was basically the beginning of the end. They "save lives", he defends the tortures, embraces John Breenan to the point where Obama allows him the freedom to carry out these "secret (kill) order"s without checking with him first. So much was made of his team of rivals but he basically have someone who was on the board of directors for banks & oil as the guy giving him advice on military foreign policy. It is remarkable how difficult it has been just to be able to confirm who he has, the hold-ups have been ridiculous and McCain obsessing over "the surge" during questioning was ridiculous. All I did was transport cargo but I was in Iraq 2006-2007. One thing I noticed before & after was the violence, weapons (2 times from "the surge" to July) a truck was hit with an EFP, one hit the engine block, the other the passenger. We lucked out since we were combined in a task force with Navy, Air Force, National Guard that we just did the 12 month. THe 2nd EFP hit one of our trucks in the last month. I couldn't imagine 3 more months of that. Before that was just roadside bombs or small arms fire which is basically harmless to a M915A2 (different story for TCN vehicles andHummers) with the one complex attack at checkpoints 58-60(outside the walls of Taji) which was a notorious hot spot with daisy chain IEDS near Ramadi a runner-up (both like that before or after "the surge&quot .

Obama's cabin is also scandal-free. However, you also have a continuation of this

Academi continues to provide security services to the United States federal government on a contractual basis. The Obama administration contracted the group to provide services for the CIA for $250 million.[8] In 2013, Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions received an approximately $92 million contract for State Department security guards.[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

Basically, everyone that has a connection to former executive branches (Ashcroft is one) on the board of directors of a private military company receiving defense spending to do something that won't be announced on a press release.

Basically, you get my point. Espionage act & "state secrets", that started with Ashcroft. Indefinite detention & everything else continued, expanded the powers of the executive branch. For someone who criticized Bush over civil liberties & domestic spying, it is remarkable he now uses their arguments.

Like I said, a role, a foreign policy & domestic initiative that was threatened with Kennedy but continued & pushed by every President since LBJ. Leaps were made during the Reagan's & Bush administration only for the Democratic successor to improve on them. I aways wondered Nixon & LBJ taped themselves. Paranoia? Blackmail? or if you knew or were involved in the kind of things they know you'd tape yourself too. Though I wish more would collect evidence on themselves.

Also he continued the whole picking a side in Europe to the point of blaming everything on Russia, protestors were burned in a trade union building by the Right Section and Obama once again blames Russia. Except Right Section are ultra-right wing nationalists

[Octafish]

87. John Aschcroft stopped flying commercial airliners in July 2001 based on a 'threat assessment.'

Ashcroft Flying High

CBS News
WASHINGTON, July 26, 2001

Fishing rod in hand, Attorney General John Ashcroft left on a weekend trip to Missouri Thursday afternoon aboard a chartered government jet, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In response to inquiries from CBS News over why Ashcroft was traveling exclusively by leased jet aircraft instead of commercial airlines, the Justice Department cited what it called a "threat assessment" by the FBI, and said Ashcroft has been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term.

"There was a threat assessment and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected or who made it.

A senior official at the CIA said he was unaware of specific threats against any Cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself, in a speech in California, seemed unsure of the nature of the threat.

"I don't do threat assessments myself and I rely on those whose responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they've suggested I should stay within for those purposes," Ashcroft said.

Asked if he knew anything about the threat or who might have made it, the attorney general replied, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."

CONTINUED...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ashcroft-flying-high/

Johnny Ashcan knew. And DU remembers.

Thank you for the heads-up on Northwoods and the rise of the AmeriSTASI.

Regarding JFK and peace, something important that doesn't get mentioned much in history class in the USA:

Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963

Thank you for caring about these important histories "Left Out" of the official narrative, JonLP24. The more people who know, the sooner the day when Justice returns.

[JonLP24]

90. I was actually looking up black market nuclear history as well as overall nuclear history

as I clicked on your post. The corruption is obvious, the ulterior motives, etc. That difficult part is trying to figure it all out. Nuclear is especially tricky since a lot of nukes were developed but never used. Israel appears to be the most shadiest of them all.

Vanunu was put on trial in Israel on charges of treason and espionage. The trial, held in secret, took place in the Jerusalem District Court before Chief Justice Eliyahu Noam and Judges Zvi Tal and Shalom Brenner. Vanunu was represented by Avigdor Feldman, a prominent Israeli civil and human rights lawyer. He was not permitted contact with the media but he wrote the details of his abduction (or "hijacking", as he put it) on the palm of his hand, and while being transported he held his hand against the van's window so that waiting journalists could get the information.

On 28 March 1988, Vanunu was convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to eighteen years of imprisonment from the date of his abduction in Rome. The Israeli government refused to release the transcript of the court case until, after the threat of legal action, it agreed to let censored extracts be published in Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper, in late 1999.

The death penalty in Israel is restricted to special circumstances, and only two executions have ever taken place there. In 2004, former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit told Reuters that the option of extrajudicial execution was considered in 1986, but rejected because "Jews don't do that to other Jews."[43]

Vanunu served his eighteen-year sentence at Shikma Prison in Ashkelon.[29] He spent more than eleven years of his sentence in solitary confinement, allegedly out of concern that he might reveal more Israeli nuclear secrets and because he was still bound by the contract that swore him to secrecy on the subject. While in prison, Vanunu took part in small acts of non-submission, such as refusing psychiatric treatment, refusing to talk with the guards, reading only English-language newspapers, and watching only BBC television. "He is the most stubborn, principled, and tough person I have ever met," said his lawyer, Avigdor Feldman.

In 1998, Vanunu appealed to the Supreme Court for his Israeli citizenship to be revoked. The Interior Minister denied Vanunu's request on grounds that he did not have another citizenship.[44]

Many critics argue that Vanunu had no additional information that would pose a real security threat to Israel, and that the Israeli government's real motivation is a desire to avoid political embarrassment and financial complications for itself and allies such as the United States. By not acknowledging possession of nuclear weapons, Israel avoids a US legal prohibition on funding countries which proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Such an admission would prevent Israel from receiving over $2 billion each year in military and other aid from Washington.[45]

Ray Kidder, then a senior American nuclear scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has said:

On the basis of this research and my own professional experience, I am ready to challenge any official assertion that Mr. Vanunu possesses any technical nuclear information not already made public.[46]

His last appeal against his conviction, to the Israeli Supreme Court in 1990, failed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

US uses black market nuclear deal accusations constantly either against Iran, recently Asad, Qaddafi was a major one. What is interesting I came across an article when the IAEA was inquiring why a famous Russian scientist was in Iran in the 90's, published years ago.

This is by far the best source of information regarding the marketplace

Wisser and Meyer's deal illustrates the increasingly white-collar nature of the nuclear bomb business. The popular image of desperate terrorists smuggling enriched uranium across borders may not be the most serious nuclear threat to the world. Instead, the people helping to make the bombs are often successful businessmen made even richer through illicit deals for making the machines to enrich uranium and build bombs. They may live in suburbs and belong to country clubs. And their ability to operate under the guise of "legitimate" business makes catching up with them far more difficult.

<snip>

A.Q. Khan was the architect of an audacious global trafficking network in sophisticated technology that supplied nuclear know-how and uranium enrichment equipment to North Korea, Iran and Libya. Manufacturers and businesses from as many as 30 countries participated in the enterprise. "The beast," according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, was intended to become part of a uranium enrichment facility enabling Libya to produce as many as several nuclear bombs a year.

<snip>

Khan assembled a network of businesses able to dodge international export controls by secretly obtaining the technology for nuclear enrichment from multiple locales. In some instances, the job was made easier by the fact that much of the technology needed to enrich uranium and build nuclear bombs has a civilian use as well—in everything from navigation to medicine to energy production—making exports far more difficult to control (and penalties, for mere export violations, far less than those for illegally building a nuclear bomb).

A global network of manufacturers, linked together by Khan according to their specialties, turned their otherwise legitimate businesses into contractors for enriching uranium. Most of them, unlike Gerhard Wisser and Johan Meyer, have yet to be prosecuted; some critics say one reason has been the United States' reluctance to cooperate on international investigations.

Khan operated his international sales network undetected for more than a decade. There is only one international body with the authority to monitor and prevent the trafficking of nuclear technology—the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—and it wasn't looking for operations such as Khan's.

Instead, until recently, both the United States and the IAEA have focused on the smuggling of uranium by criminals or terrorists. The U.S. poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a program aimed at providing former Soviet nuclear scientists with employment to keep them out of the black market.

http://cironline.org/reports/business-bomb-modern-nuclear-marketplace-2219

Again, published years before the recent Whistleblower prosecutions. You come across information like that, the only thing I can ask myself is WTF is really going on?

[craigmatic]

79. We really don't know what JFK would've done with Vietnam. He didn't want to make a decision until

after the '64 election but the assassination happened. the reason LBJ went in was because Goldwater made a big deal out of fighting communists during the election and he needed to look tough. JFK would've faced the same pressures and let's not forget that the military machine was spoiling for a war somewhere.

[madville]

88. At this point

Does what may or may not have happened half a century ago really matter?



The past is depressing, the present and the future are all that really matter since no one can go back and change anything.

[Electric Monk]

91. Interesting thread. K&R nt