Monica Wiesak profiles RFK Jr. and his Israeli policy, and how they markedly differs from President Kennedy’s problems with that country. Which were not resolved at the time of his murder.
Tag: LBJ
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The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2
The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 2
By Paul Abbott
With Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry’s gross incompetence; his lack of regard for due diligence and caution when it came to the handling of Lee Oswald’s security, we must still ask – how legitimate were the ‘committee’ threats against Oswald? The ‘committee’, on whose behalf they were being made, has never been identified. To speculate: which organization would feel so strongly about avenging President Kennedy’s murder? Presumably, they would either have had the membership or resources and motivation in Dallas at the time to mobilize there come Saturday night / Sunday morning.
Of course, we must bear in mind that Dallas at the time, on account of its heavy, often extreme right-wing climate, was perceived as being the most worrisome of cities that President Kennedy’s tour included that weekend. And with the Democrat Kennedy’s reputation there for being bad for business and soft on communism considered, to the point of being accused of ‘Treason’, are we to suppose that there was an equally extreme organization, to quote Vernon Glossup, that was neither left or right leaning, who felt so strongly about Kennedy’s murder to the point of threatening the life of his accused assassin? It is doubtful.
One final, but simple point on the ‘committee’ front is that, from the moment of Oswald’s arrest to the morning of his transfer, there was never any record or reports of a large, angry group gathered along the streets of Dallas. No trace of an angry-mob type ‘committee’ anywhere in Dallas that weekend, let alone on November 24, which seems to indicate we can pretty much call the ‘threats’ from a ‘committee’ dubious.
With the ‘committee’ aspect discounted, what about the caller at least? There is sufficient evidence to substantiate that at least two calls were made that morning. However, the caller/s did not identify themselves nor the organization they were representing, so it literally could have been anyone. The wording attributed to the threat makers by Glossup and Newsom at the FBI, and McCoy at the Sheriff’s Department is interesting and almost verbatim in some parts to each other, particularly with reference to the reason the caller said he was warning of the threat…to ensure no one in the Sheriff or Police departments got injured. Of course, this could be attributed to Glossup’s notes made during the call and the resulting memo passed on to Newsom when calling the Sheriff’s Department and alerting the DPD about it. But neither item ever surfaced, so we can only take Glossup and Newsom’s word for it. Nonetheless, the DPD was not contacted by the threat makers directly, so just how sincere was the caller/s regard for their safety as well?
Let’s not forget another interesting detail present in both Glossup and the second of McCoy’s calls from the threat makers… that when both first took the call, the caller sounded like they handed the receiver to another man who then warned of harm to Oswald. It’s an odd detail that lends an almost absurdly stage-managed/manufactured slant on it all.
Could one or both of the callers have been Jack Ruby? If so, was he making such a call to sabotage an order or assignment that he did not want, or was he getting cold feet? It’s an interesting and viable theory that many researchers subscribe to.
One person largely overlooked, but was central to the whole threat episode, of course, was FBI Special Agent Milton Newsom. He was not present when the clerk, Vernon Glossup, received the first call from the threat makers. This seems odd: for the ranking agent on duty not to be present at that particular moment. Where was Newsom at 2 am? It’s not like it was during the daytime, and therefore there was a greater likelihood of his being in a meeting or out in the field. Wherever he was, he wasn’t far as he seemed to get word of the threat from Glossup and act on it quickly by contacting both the Sheriff and Police departments.
Perhaps most curious about Newsom was the fact that it was he, and only he, who took the only statement of Deputy McCoy, and the first of Captains Frazier and Talbert for the FBI regarding the whole threat episode. Talk about tying a neat bow on the recording of an event that he was involved in from the start!
We also have reason to question Newsom on this front because William Frazier, during his testimony to the Warren Commission, disputed literally most of his statement attributed to him by Newsom. For example:
- Newsom’s statement had Frazier saying that it was Vernon Glossup who rang him to advise of the threat received by him on Oswald’s life.
- Yet Frazier said it was Newsom who called the DPD and spoke to him.
- Newsom’s statement also quoted Frazier as saying that plans to transfer Oswald to the County Jail may be changed in view of the threat.
- Frazier told the Warren Commission that he would not have said this because he did not know what the plans were to transfer Oswald, therefore, he did not know how they might be changed.
- Newsom’s statement also quoted Frazier as saying Oswald’s planned transfer had been publicized primarily as a form of cooperation with the press and news agencies.
- Frazier also denied making this statement to Newsom.
Bear in mind, Frazier’s statement, like McCoy’s and Talbert’s, was barely one page long and consisted of a few paragraphs each. With the above considered, the only portion of his statement that Frazier could confirm as correct was how he (Frazier) mentioned that the DPD had not received any threats and that he was advised that the Sheriff’s office had received a similar threat call.
Compared to the three-page statement he submitted to Sheriff Bill Decker, C.C. McCoy’s statement attributed to him by Newsom barely lines up. It too attributed McCoy as saying that plans to transfer Oswald to the County Jail at 10:00 am had been made public through news releases. Unfortunately, McCoy did not testify on the matter, so we do not have any record of him denying or confirming Newsom’s accuracy in his statement.
What we do know is that both Glossup and Milton Newsom continued to work for the FBI in Dallas until at least the late 1970s. The only other part that Newsom played in the assassination investigation was the handling of the Bronson film of President Kennedy’s shooting. In fact, the death notice of Newsom in 2012 stated that he was a 30-year veteran of the Bureau. Vernon Glossup had even worked his way up to Special Agent status and by all reports is still alive. It is a loss to history that both were not subjected to more scrutiny about the threat matter. Unless Mr. Glossop would be willing and able to provide any further details after all these years, we are only left to speculate on him, Newsom and their conduct, in light of Oswald’s fate.
Threading the Threat Needle
If the phone call threats on Lee Oswald’s life were not legitimate from either a committee or an (unidentified) individual vengeful against him but merciful for the FBI, Sheriff and Police departments, all we are left with are pieces to speculate on their origin and purpose.
Let me propose something that might seem outlandish at first glance: the threat phone calls were staged by either Milton Newsom or someone doing so on his orders. Why? He did so to apply pressure on the DPD and, after the fact, manipulate witness statements to further discredit the police.
Context:
In his Saturday morning statement, Curry inadvertently accused the FBI of either not knowing of someone like Lee Harvey Oswald and therefore not warning them of his presence in Dallas ahead of President Kennedy’s visit, or knowing of him but not warning them. With its association with Oswald confirmed, to what length did the FBI know of or use Oswald? And how concerned were they that weekend of being implicated by association for the president’s assassination? While Oswald was still alive, they were rendered officially helpless as killing the president was not a federal crime at that time. They would have had more of a stake investigating Oswald if he had shot a postman.
What we must also consider is that the longer the weekend went with Oswald in police custody at City Hall, the more outrage and controversy were being stirred. For the most part, the scenes filmed and reported on by the media were chaos. Oswald, despite looking unkempt, calmly pronouncing his innocence, asking for legal assistance, and protesting the lineups he was in, provided a clear perception that the Dallas authorities barely had a handle on the situation. And an assortment of officials, including District Attorney Henry Wade, Chief Curry and Captain Fritz, providing updates on the investigation into Oswald did not help either. Doing so attracted the ire of people like J. Edgar Hoover and President Johnson, who were, fairly, worried that Oswald’s defense could argue for a mistrial on the grounds that he could never have received a fair trial thanks to the early opining of police and legal officials.
Motivation:
If the Dallas Police Department was out of its depth, with little help and steady guidance from Chief Curry, perhaps the FBI saw an opportunity to exploit this by creating a situation that would really highlight the point – something that would only add to the pressure already heaped on the DPD: a serious threat to Lee Oswald’s life. Such a scheme could be hatched locally with literally nothing to lose and everything to gain for the FBI. It would be the ultimate acid test to see what Chief Curry and his DPD would do. Perhaps the intent was to scare the DPD into actually getting with the program and ensuring Oswald’s security by transferring him sooner rather than later. That’s the best-case scenario because, given his Saturday afternoon statement to the press of when Oswald’s transfer would take place and his reputation for maintaining a closeknit relationship with them, it was more than a safe bet that Curry would remain to his word … even in response to a ‘credible’ threat and not budge on moving Oswald. Recall that Curry is on record as telling his beloved press mid-morning on Sunday that Oswald could have been transferred overnight in light of threats received on his life. But it did not happen because, Curry said, he didn’t want ‘to cross you people.’
What was the desired outcome? Aside from assuring Oswald’s safety by being transferred early, regardless of how the DPD responded, I think the underlying intent was to completely undermine Curry and the DPD so as to both minimize any more backlash on the FBI from his comments on Saturday morning and to position itself as the ideal body to step in at the right time to competently investigate President Kennedy’s assassination. With control and oversight of the overall investigation, the FBI would be in a position to cover its own tracks in terms of their association with Lee Oswald and protect itself against the likely catastrophic fallout it would attract. Like the fact that Oswald was an informant for the FBI. Which would have been a disaster for J. Edgar Hoover.
How:
I think it was as simple as at least two threatening phone calls being made on behalf of a conveniently nameless, purposeless organization that was neither right nor left leaning by a person who also remained nameless. And despite saying they were warning of the threat out of concern for the welfare of FBI, Sheriff and DPD personnel, the threat makers did not bother calling the police to warn them. It was all too easy to make up and do so in such a way that could not be traced back to the FBI. Perhaps the DPD were not called for fear of the call somehow being traced or the voice being recognised. If Newsom was behind it, why risk it when all he had to do was either make or have a call phoned into the FBI (if one was made at all)? From there, Vernon Glossup would have wittingly or unwittingly cooperated in the charade by providing a memorandum to Newsom to make the whole episode official. At that point, Newsom could have made or had someone make two ‘threat warning’ calls to the Sheriff’s Department whilst he, in an official capacity, would call the Sheriff and DPD. That is all it could have taken to whip up the storm that followed that morning.
Wrapping everything up neatly, as it were, Newsom could have easily positioned himself on behalf of the FBI to take the statements of the two other people pivotal to the threat response – McCoy and Frazier – to cement the narrative. And in doing so, sink a final boot into the Dallas Police Department by misquoting both men to implant a damning reference of Oswald’s transfer being publicized.
Evidently, the FBI’s stake increased once Oswald was killed because his murder effectively ended the Dallas Police investigation into him. What soon followed was the infamous Belmont memo on November 24th, which mandated that the country be convinced of Oswald’s guilt in killing President Kennedy alone through a report submitted by the FBI. Essentially, with Oswald dead and the DPD out of the picture, with no other suspect to investigate any further, the ball was handed firmly to the FBI to control the narrative. Because the FBI very quickly, yet momentarily, came to sit at the center of the investigation on the back of Oswald’s murder.
Johnson and Warren Wrap it all Up.
President Lyndon B. Johnson would establish the Warren Commission on November 29th, which was essentially a high-level PR piece that would ‘review and evaluate’ the findings of the FBI’s investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination and Lee Oswald’s sole guilt. This was because Johnson was concerned that a single report from the FBI would not be enough to prevent a ‘rash of investigations’ that would amount to a ‘three-ring circus’ that would steer away the public from the desired Oswald-lone nut narrative.
Chief Justice Earl Warren was approached directly by Johnson to head up the commission. Warren originally said no, but when Johnson countered him by putting forth information he had received from Director Hoover about a ‘little incident in Mexico City’, Warren tearfully agreed.
Just what exactly Johnson used to pressure Warren with has been speculated about ever since. Some have interpreted this reference to be some kind of sordid or salacious piece of blackmail that Hoover had procured on Warren and paid it forward to Johnson. I disagree – I think it was more like the information that FBI-contact/asset Washington Star reporter, Jerry O’Leary, happened upon when in Dallas covering the aftermath of the assassination. I have laid this episode out in another article, but essentially, Jerry O’Leary (who was later named as an asset within the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird) met with a CIA contact of his in Dallas who was an ‘unimpeachable’ source who told him that Oswald returned from Mexico with five thousand dollars in cash. Instead of publishing a story on this stunning revelation, O’Leary promptly reported it to the FBI, who took it straight up to the State Department and the White House. The implication was that either the Soviets or Cubans were behind the president’s murder and that such information could be the catalyst for all-out war with the Soviets. The Warren Commission was formed with sitting senators and representatives such as Hale Boggs, Gerald Ford and Richard Russell, as well as Washington powerhouses in John McCloy and Allen Dulles. Surely enough the Commission would submit its findings that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely guilty of killing President Kennedy and police officer J.D. Tippit on November 22nd and anything contrary to these conclusions was either ignored or manipulated. War against the Soviet Union and Cuba was averted, but the truth behind President Kennedy’s murder, his accused assassin’s intelligence links and Oswald’s own suspicious murder have remained enduring mysteries. We can now add to this mosaic the momentary influence the FBI had when it came to ‘investigating’ the Kennedy assassination and ponder what it did to cover its own tracks when it came to its proven association with Lee Oswald.
- Newsom’s statement had Frazier saying that it was Vernon Glossup who rang him to advise of the threat received by him on Oswald’s life.
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The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1
The Threats to Kill Oswald – Part 1
By Paul Abbott
The incarceration of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged killer of President John F. Kennedy and Police Officer J.D. Tippit, and his mistreatment at the hands of the Dallas Police across the weekend of November 22nd has been well established. But the matter of the alleged threats made against his life over the course of the night before his murder at the hands of Jack Ruby has largely been glossed over in the broader scheme of things. But just how they unfolded and were responded to has largely withstood any in-depth scrutiny ever since.
The Curry Storm
At approximately 11.30 am on Saturday, November 23rd, Jesse Curry, the Dallas Police Chief, was in his office on the southwest corner of the Third Floor of Dallas City Hall. Seated opposite him were a group of reporters, including the Associated Press’ Peggy Simpson and NBC’s Tom Pettit. It was one of the many occasions that weekend where he would hold court with the members of the press – to the point where he would be directed to stop doing so by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson across that weekend. Curry’s regard and synergy with the press were legendary and certainly a theme throughout his tenure as chief. In fact, in early 1958, he issued a memorandum to all Dallas police personnel essentially instructing them to provide the media with as much access and assistance as possible. Basically, he regarded them as a PR arm for the department and at that time, with the reputation that Dallas had for crime and corruption, it was clearly a mitigation strategy on his part.
During Curry’s mini press conference with Simpson, Pettit and others, an interesting exchange took place:
Curry: (to persons unknown) … They say he.. he said he was a communist…
Pettit: Hey Chief, did the FBI or your department have him (Oswald) under surveillance prior to yesterday?
Curry: No, sir, we didn’t have knowledge that he was in the city.
Pettit: Did the FBI?
Curry: I understand that they did know he was here and that they interviewed him … oh … a week or two ago.
Pettit: Did they warn you of his presence in the city?
Curry: No, they had not.. at the time .. until yesterday.
Pettit: Do you think they should have?
Curry: Well, they usually do. They keep us informed. If we don’t have knowledge of it, they usually liaise with us… usually let us know when these communist sympathizers or subversives come into the city. And why they hadn’t got round to informing us of this man, I don’t know.
This frank exchange would be widely reported and circulated, sparking the wrath of the FBI hierarchy up to and including Director Hoover. The implication of course being that Chief Curry was deflecting all blame on the FBI for failing to detect and stop the communist Oswald and prevent the November 22nd killings. In fact, what Curry was saying to Pettit was completely reasonable. And evidently correct, as the FBI was monitoring Oswald at the time, and they did not alert the DPD to him prior to President Kennedy’s arrival. What followed was an effort by the FBI to mitigate any fallout from Curry’s statement by having Special Agent in Charge in Dallas, Gordon Shanklin, contact Curry and have him retract what he said to Tom Pettit. A summary memo from the FBI’s Cartha De Loach shows that Shanklin was successful in doing this and that Curry even apologized and said that he did not ‘mean to place any blame on the FBI’. The damage control continued with the FBI using their proven media contact on the ground, the Washington Star’s Jerry O’Leary, who was in Dallas to cover events that weekend, to also get in touch with Chief Curry and ‘make him go on record regarding the falsity of his allegations’.
All of this resulted in Curry speaking to another group of reporters (including Tom Pettit) out in the hall on the Third Floor of City Hall just after 1 pm that same day. He led with the following statement:
There has been some information that has gone out. I want to correct anything that might have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. And that is regarding information that the FBI might have had about this man (Oswald). I do not know… if and when the FBI has interviewed this man. The FBI is under no obligation to come to us with any information concerning anyone. They have cooperated with us in the past one hundred percent. Any time there’s any information that they feel that might be helpful to us, they have always come to us. Uh.. last night someone told me.. I don’t even know who it was, that the FBI did know this man was in the city and had interviewed him. I wish to say this. Of my knowledge, I do not know this to be a fact and I don’t want anybody to get the wrong impression that I am accusing the FBI of not cooperating or withholding information because they are under no obligation to us but have always cooperated with us one hundred percent. And I do not know if and when they have ever interviewed this man.
While this episode started and ended within a couple of hours, I think it has been totally overlooked and underestimated in the scheme of things. Think about it…with all of the world focusing on him, his police department and their handling of the man suspected of killing President Kennedy, the Dallas Chief of Police publicly acknowledged that his department was usually alerted by the FBI about people like Lee Oswald (‘communist sympathizer / subversive’) but they were not in Oswald’s instance. It remains a shocking admission.
No wonder the FBI was quick to act in response to Curry’s initial statement. The implications were doubly negative for them. If they did not know about a ‘communist sympathizer or subversive’ in Oswald, it was a massive oversight on their part that would rightly bring their competence into question. On the other hand, if they did know about Oswald, why did they not alert the DPD to his presence in Dallas? The implication would transcend just incompetence. Thankfully for us, the subsequent years have proven that the FBI was well and truly aware of Oswald, and was monitoring him, so this question, I think, lies at the center of a lot of the intrigue around Lee Oswald, his framing for the November 22nd killings and his own murder.
What is clear in the Curry matter is that the FBI instantly threw all of its efforts into mitigating any blame it would receive for Oswald and the events of November 22nd, as well as asserting itself as being in control. This is a crucial point to keep in mind for the rest of this article.
Come the latter hours of that Saturday, the media that had engulfed Dallas City Hall to cover Oswald’s incarceration were starting to dissipate. This was because it had been purported that Oswald had been charged with Kennedy’s murder, so their assumption was that there would be fewer and fewer opportunities to see and ask him any questions. The broader implication being that he would soon be moved to maximum security at the County Jail.
The matter of transferring Lee Oswald from the City Hall to the County Jail was something that was still only notionally being discussed across the DPD hierarchy that afternoon. In ordinary circumstances, the transfer of a prisoner from City Hall, or any police station, to the County Jail, where they would await sentencing, was the responsibility of the local sheriff. The principle being that the sheriff would present at the police premises the necessary paperwork to take custody of the prisoner from that moment on. Only in extraordinary circumstances, which the weekend of November 22nd clearly presented, would this protocol ever be deviated from. However, in a subsequent statement that he gave, Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker testified to not being notified by the DPD of any plans or intent they had for them (the DPD) or the Sheriff’s Department to facilitate Oswald’s transfer to the County Jail. In fact, he only found out his information on this front through members of the media.
And examining the statements of Chief Curry and his captain for the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, J.W. Fritz, who had Oswald in custody, shows that the transfer had not been discussed between them at any great length.
From Curry’s perspective, he was being asked the question by the media about the transfer, so he in turn asked Fritz if he thought he’d be done with his questioning of Oswald that (Saturday) afternoon, so he could be transferred. Fritz said that he still needed more time, which was his right, as it was much easier to interrogate a suspect at City Hall than at the County Jail. Between the two, it was generally agreed that Oswald would stay another night at City Hall for further questioning and be transferred the next morning. On this, Curry duly told the press that Oswald would be transferred the next day at 10 am:
Over the years, this point has been muddled as Curry telling reporters that if they were at City Hall by 10 am on the Sunday, they won’t have missed the transfer. But using articles) published that weekend, it was clearly reported that Curry stated the transfer would begin at 10 am. (Abbott, Death to Justice, p.363
As Saturday evening turned into night, Dallas City Hall quietened down to a near state of normalcy, with there only being a handful of reporters staying around in case Oswald was instead transferred that night. We are now able to examine the alleged threats to Lee Oswald’s life in the early hours of Sunday, November 24th, on behalf of a ‘committee’.
Below is a list of the people who had firsthand, evidential dealings with receiving and acting upon the threats:
- Police Chief Jesse Curry – DPD
- Sheriff Bill Decker – Sheriff’s Dept.
- Captain William B. Frazier – DPD
- Captain J.W. Fritz – DPD
- Vernon R. Glossup (civilian clerk) – FBI
- Deputy C.C. McCoy – Sheriff’s Dept.
- Special Agent Milton L. Newsom – FBI
- Captain Cecil E. Talbert – DPD
Using statements and quoting specific points that each of these people provided to either the FBI or the Warren Commission, we can piece together a chronology when it comes to the receiving and handling of these threats.
Threat Timeline:
- At the County Jail, Deputy Sheriff C.C. McCoy was working the night shift which consisted of taking phone calls from all manner of citizens, near and far, who were calling to do anything from express their condolences to warning of a group of ‘fourteen thousand negroes’ who were coming to town to get ‘this bunch’ straightened out. Also on duty were fellow personnel by the names Kennedy, Watkins and ‘Virgil’.
- At approximately 2:00 am, McCoy even received a call from Sheriff Bill Decker. During this call, he and Decker discussed when Oswald’s transfer would take place and that it should be while it was still dark. They even speculated when it became light (6:30 am or 6:45 am) and agreed that McCoy would call Decker back at 6 am to see about getting Oswald transferred before first light.
- At 2:15 am, McCoy received another call. This time it was from a man who, according to a statement he later provided, ‘talked like a w/m (white male) and he stated that he was a member of a group of one hundred and that he wanted the Sheriff’s office to know that they had voted one hundred per cent to kill Oswald while he was in the process of being transferred to the County Jail. And that he wanted this department to have the information so that none of the deputies would get hurt.’ McCoy said ‘The voice was deep and coarse and sounded very sincere and talked with ease. The person did not seem excited like some of the calls that had received running down this department, the police department and the State of Texas.’ McCoy said that he had his colleague, ‘Virgil’, listen to part of the call.
- At 2:30 am, civilian clerk for the Dallas FBI office, Vernon R. Glossup, received a call from an unknown male who also spoke in a calm voice and asked to talk to the man in charge. According to his own statement, Glossup said he ‘told the caller that the SAC (Special Agent in Charge) was not present at that time and asked if someone else could help him. The caller then said, “Wait a minute,” and apparently turned the phone over to another man. I am not certain there were two different voices; however, the tone of the unknown caller’s voice changed somewhat at this point. The voice at this point was calm and mature in sound, and this person stated as follows: “I represent a committee that is neither right nor left wing, and tonight, tomorrow morning, or tomorrow night, we are going to kill the man that killed the president. There will be no excitement, and we will kill him. We wanted to be sure and tell the FBI, Police Department, and Sheriff’s Office, and we will be there and will kill him.” With that, the caller hung up. Glossup transcribed the call in a memorandum for Special Agent Milton L. Newsom, who contacted the Sheriff’s Department at 3:00 am to see if they too had received any such calls. Newsom then called the Police Department at 3:30 am to ask the same and advise of the threat that Glossup had received.
- Sheriff Deputy McCoy concurred that he received a call from Newsom and that he merely asked if ‘we’ (the Sheriff’s Department) had received any calls threatening Oswald’s life. McCoy said that he had, so Newsom instructed him to contact Dallas Police ‘and give the same information to them.’ According to his statement, McCoy did call the Dallas Police Department but could only recall that he ‘talked to someone in Captain Fritz’s office.’ McCoy stated that he was told by a member of the DPD that they (Dallas Police) hadn’t received any threatening phone calls.
- Still with McCoy and his statement, he ‘received one other call regarding the transfer of Oswald, and when I answered the telephone, a male voice asked if this is the Sheriff’s office, and I said that it was. He said, “Just a minute,” and then another male voice stated that Oswald would never make the trip to the County Jail. McCoy said he could not determine whether or not this was the same voice that called earlier on behalf of a ‘committee’.
- At City Hall, Captain William B. Frazier was the ranking officer on duty there that night. He testified to the Warren Commission of being contacted by FBI Agent Milton Newsom between 3:00 am and 3:45 am. He quoted Newsom as telling him that he (Newsom) ‘received a threat from some man to the effect that a group of men of 100 or 200’, Frazier said he couldn’t recall exactly, ‘were going to attempt to kill Oswald that day sometime. That he (the caller) didn’t want the FBI, Dallas Police Department or the sheriff’s office injured in any way. That was the reason for the call.’
- To somewhat corroborate McCoy’s account, in the same testimony for the Warren Commission, Frazier said he spoke to someone with the surname of, or similar to, ‘Cox’ or Coy’ from the Sheriff’s Department. Frazier testified that he wasn’t clear on the time of the call, but he and McCoy discussed Oswald’s transfer and that McCoy told him that Sheriff Decker recommended that it be brought forward. And if so, there could be two supervisors from the Sheriff Department on hand at the County Jail to receive Oswald.
- Frazier said that he next called Captain Fritz at his home to tell him of the threats against Oswald and that he would need to be transferred. Fritz told him it was Chief Curry’s decision to make, as he wanted Oswald transferred in the morning. However, when Frazier tried to also reach Curry by phone at home, the line was out of order.
- At around 6:00 am, McCoy called Bill Decker as agreed and told him who was on duty and how they could carry out Oswald’s transfer if required – including hiding Oswald down in the footwell of the car. He was told by Decker to hold off on any plans until he spoke with Captain Fritz.
- At 6:15 am, Frazier was at the end of his shift and about to be relieved by Captain Cecil E. Talbert. In the handover, Frazier said that he advised Talbert of the threat situation with Oswald and that both Sheriff Decker and Agent Newsom were anxious to transfer him.
- According to Talbert’s statement for the Warren Commission, he must have been advised of the issue to reach Curry, as he said that he got the telephone company to put a buzzer on his phone line to determine if the line was faulty. It was, so he sent a squad car to Curry’s house to brief him on the situation and have him call City Hall… if he could.
- Despite the issues with his phone, Curry soon called Talbert back at City Hall and was briefed on the threats. All Curry did was instruct Talbert to tell Newsom and Decker that he would contact them when he was in his office between 8:00 am and 9:00 am later that morning.
With all of the above told, no more was done to address the threats to Lee Oswald.
As the morning rolled on, the transfer at least had some planning put toward it. Once Curry and Decker decided between them that the DPD would facilitate the transfer, it was decided that Oswald would be taken in an armored truck for the twelve-block journey to the County Jail. Acting on orders from Curry, Deputy Chief Batchelor contacted a local armored car company, and they sent two people carrying armored trucks to City Hall’s Commerce Street ramp exit.
At the last minute, at approximately 11:15 am, Fritz recommended that Oswald instead be placed in the back of an unmarked squad car and that it follow behind the armored car, which in turn would be empty and a decoy. His justification for this was that if there was an attack launched on Oswald during the transfer, a vehicle such as an armored car would be too awkward to maneuver and evade. With that, the transfer finally got underway with a group of detectives and Fritz leaving the Third Floor with Oswald – and the rest is tragic history. Jack Ruby was able to access the basement and be in a position to shoot, and ultimately kill, Oswald when he and his escort emerged into the basement and were walking to the car.
While there are clear gaps in some of the timings and accounts around the threats response (for example, McCoy’s statement does not include any mention of speaking to Decker after he had both received and received word of the threat calls), it is clear that there was some effort by he and the DPD’s Frazier to bring about Oswald’s transfer early to pre-empt any threat against his life. The roadblocks were Captain Fritz and Chief Curry.
When first told of the threats by Frazier, Fritz basically put his hands up and said, ‘Not me, not my call.’ What any competent leader within a hierarchy ought to have done, in this instance, was say, ‘It is the Chief’s call… so try and reach him to find out. If you can’t reach him, call me back because we’d best still get the transfer underway.’
However, if Jesse Curry’s phone line was not a factor and he was reached by Frazier, it would not have made a difference. We can be sure of this because he scuttled any chance to respond accordingly when he instructed that Newsom and Decker be told that he would arrive at City Hall in a couple of hours’ time. That was it. That was how he responded to the word of the threats. There was no action to effect an earlier transfer there and then. If he did decide to do something about it, Curry wouldn’t have had to do much other than give the approval. Between his personnel, and perhaps a quick phone call by him to Sheriff Decker, Oswald’s early and safe transfer would have been incredibly easy to carry out.
The burning question is why Curry didn’t want to have Oswald transferred at that point in time? At 10:20 am later that morning, when speaking to reporters, Curry not only mentioned the threat made to Oswald overnight, he also said that he could’ve been transferred early as a result but he (Curry) chose not to because he didn’t want to go back on the original time he told the press (Abbott, Death to Justice, p.112). Apparently, it was as simple as that. On top of it all, Curry actually laid out to the reporters that Oswald would be transported to the County Jail in an armored car. Talk about infuriating!
Having uncovered just how the verifiable threat episode involving the FBI, Sheriff and DPD took place, in Part Two, we will analyze this episode in the context of the furor that Chief Curry started with his candidness on the morning of Saturday when speaking with the press and how the FBI ultimately took the early lead in investigating President Kennedy’s assassination.
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An Open Letter to Fredrik Logevall
An Open Letter to Fredrik Logevall
Dear Dr. Logevall:
I have just watched all five segments of Turning Point: The Vietnam War. My review appears at the website Kennedys and King.com. I would venture to say it is the longest and most detailed examination of that disappointing series you will find.
I have written or contributed to five books on the JFK case. And I was the screenwriter for Oliver Stone for his two most recent documentaries on that case, JFK Revisited and JFK: Destiny Betrayed. One of the things that puzzled me about Turning Point is that I could not find a writing credit for the series. Because if one is going to do an over six-hour series on such a controversial, multi-faceted, complex subject, it is not wise to just wing it and hope the chips fall into place. And, as we will see, that is not what I think happened here. Let me explain why.
As you must know by now, the series begins with the John Kennedy administration. Which is odd in and of itself. Because America was involved in Vietnam two administrations prior: under Truman and Eisenhower. In other words, for about ten years before JFK was inaugurated. Kennedy inherited the war from those two men.
What this series does is something that is inexplicable. It leads with Kennedy, and spends the whole first segment on him. It then, in Part 2, tells us about what happened in the fifties. In other words, it flashes backwards, referring to something that should have been the lead in. And at that, it is an abbreviated treatment of those ten years. The key development, what actually got this country into Vietnam, was America’s breaking of the Geneva Accords and its installation of the Nhu family as the leaders of the manufactured country of South Vietnam. This was done by President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Vice President Richard Nixon. It had been presaged by Dulles’s planning of Operation Vulture to prevent the French collapse at Dien Bien Phu.
There are simply no questions about any of this. America backed the French until the bitter end, and Dulles was willing to use atomic weapons to save the French empire. Dulles then broke his oral agreement at Geneva, i.e., to hold elections and then unify the country. He installed Ngo Dinh Diem as the leader of South Vietnam and kept him in power with rigged elections. This is what started the war under America and caused the rise of the Viet Minh.
To say the film skimps over all this is being much too kind. But it cannot be skimped over, because this was all a monumental miscalculation. Vietnam was never worth using atomic bombs over, and it was not worth creating a new country, led by a man who turned out to be a tyrant. A leader who spoke English, wore Brooks Brothers suits, and had an American styled haircut. This was the true origin of American involvement. And you know this. Because you wrote a book about it called Embers of War.
But as poor as that aspect was, it was not the worst part of Turning Point. Because the film jumped from the fifties to 1965. Let me repeat that: from the fifties to 1965. In other words it skipped over 1964! I could hardly believe what I was witnessing. Why? Because unlike what the film tried to depict, there was no mystery as to how all those American combat troops got into South Vietnam. They arrived there on President Johnson’s orders. And Johnson was planning this expansion of the war and its Americanization throughout 1964. But there was one problem. He had to get elected. So he lied about his planning for America’s direct entry. Some of the people who he had planning for that entry were William Sullivan and Bill Bundy. As Joseph Goulden wrote in his book, Truth is the First Casualty, Sullivan’s first paper on this for LBJ said that this American involvement was necessary in order to halt the advance of the Viet Cong. (p. 88)
But we don’t need Mr. Goulden in order to certify that 1964 was a sea change do we? Because again, you wrote a book on this very subject. It was appropriately titled Choosing War. In other words unlike Kennedy, who stated it was Saigon’s war to win or lose, Johnson was making it America’s war. As you note in your book, two milestones in 1964 made it that way. The first was NSAM 288 which mapped out an air war against the north. The second was planning for a casus belli to get America into the war. This was achieved through the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which was written before the infamous incident happened, and which Johnson carried around in his suit coat. That was the equivalent of a declaration of war against the north. From there the first American combat troops landed at Da Nang in early 1965, as planned for by Johnson.
When Kennedy was killed there was not one more combat troop in Vietnam than when he took office. Which means there were none. As everyone who has studied the war understands, and as Maxwell Taylor and McGeorge Bundy were explicit about, Kennedy was determined not to commit combat troops into Vietnam. And he did not. Even though, as Gordon Goldstein has shown in his book about Bundy, he was confronted with this proposition nine times. Yet he refused each overture. Johnson did not need to be so encouraged.
You would have been an excellent interview subject for what Johnson did in 1964. Instead you uttered the phrase that Vietnam was not Kennedy’s shining moment. Oh really? Compared to who? Compared to Lyndon Johnson, who started Rolling Thunder and committed a half million ground troops into theater? Or compared to Richard Nixon? Who invaded both Laos and Cambodia; the latter bringing a holocaust to that country. President Nixon also dropped more bomb tonnage over Indochina than Johnson did. Or shall he be compared to Eisenhower; who was going to use atomic weapons at Dien Bien Phu, but he could not get the British to back him on that. Ike also told Kennedy that Laos was worth going to the brink over in Indochina. Thankfully, Kennedy rejected that advice.
I first encountered you and your work through the book Virtual JFK. In the transcripts that make up that volume I thought you were a well informed and objective scholar. You then got involved with Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. They had you do the reply to people like John Newman and David Kaiser and Jamie Galbraith on Kennedy’s withdrawal in the book that accompanied their bloated and utterly mediocre series. Galbraith replied to you on that issue quite strongly and appropriately. Yet you have now repeated that performance. Again, you are part of a film that ignores NSAM 263, the McNamara/Taylor Report, and Johnson’s conscious reversal of Kennedy’s policy. Maybe you did not know what this film was going to be like. After all there does not seem to have been a script. But you sure do know now.
I’d wish you well on your relatively new high profile. But it’s not the profile I had imagined for you.
( This letter will be sent directly to the director and one of the producers of Turning Point.)
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Under Cover of Night, by Sean Fetter, Part 2
In the first part of this review of Sean Fetter’s very long book, Under Cover of Night, I concentrated on his rather radical ideas about how the medical cover up about the JFK murder was executed. By self-acknowledgement, his book is in the line of the 1974 volume Murder from Within. I also indicated that although the book is full of scorn and bile against the late David Lifton, it is also reminiscent of Best Evidence. For reasons stated there I did not find his case convincing in that aspect. As I noted there, the second person Fetter had extreme scorn for is Lyndon Johnson.
Considering the length of the two volume set, it does not take long for Fetter to get to his point about Johnson. Relatively early he calls Johnson the “plotter-in-chief”. (Fetter, p. 134) What is rather startling about that rubric is the man who Fetter names as Johnson’s accomplice in the plan to kill Kennedy. It’s a name that I had never previously heard of in that regard. Fetter says that the man who was Johnson’s cohort was House speaker Sam Rayburn. (See Chapter 27 throughout, e.g. pp. 596-97). One reason the reader may never have heard of Rayburn as a co-plotter to kill Kennedy is rather simple: He died on November 16, 1961. That is two years before Kennedy was killed. So the logical question would be: How could a man be part of a plot to kill JFK if he died two years before it happened? After all, most critics think that the plan to kill Kennedy was intricately plotted in advance and very cleverly designed. Further, many think today that there were also precursors to what happened in Dallas, namely attempts on Kennedy’s life in Chicago and in Tampa in the weeks before Dallas. So how could someone like Sam Rayburn, dead in November of 1961, have been part of something like that?
This is where the author now gets into another dispute with other critics. And Fetter is very clear about this:
The JFK assassination plot did not occur because of fierce intragovernmental disputes over Vietnam, or Communism in general, or nuclear war, or Cuba, or Berlin, or civil rights, or the Federal Reserve, or the CIA—nor because of President Kennedy’s words, policies, actions or inaction on any subject. Period. (Fetter, p. 593)
Therefore, in the space of one paragraph, Fetter disposes of the work of authors like John Newman on Vietnam, Larry Hancock on Cuba, Donald Gibson on the economy, Mark Lane and Jim Garrison on the CIA, and Peter Kuznick on Russia and atomic weapons. The work that these men did is plentifully documented. These policy disputes did occur, and they are proven.
But as mentioned above, with Fetter, that is rather irrelevant to the cause at hand. I mean, did Sam Rayburn fight any battles with Kennedy over Vietnam? How could he if Rayburn was dead within months of Kennedy’s inauguration? What Rayburn was known for was his incorruptibility. For instance, while being in the state legislature he was also part of a law firm. Yet he would not take fees from railroad companies that his firm represented. As many, including Robert Caro have noted, Rayburn was immune to lobbyists, turned down honorariums for speeches, and even refused to take travel expenses that he was legally entitled to. When hosts would try and extend him funds, he would reply “I’m not for sale” and then walk away. Rayburn died with cash assets of $35,000 while being $18, 000 in debt. (The Salt Lake Tribune, 2/25/2006, story by Mark Eddington)
From the above, one could say that Rayburn had a common touch about him. As his friend Cecil Dickson once said:
Rayburn is always watching out for what he calls ‘the real people’—those who come into life without many advantages and try to make a living and raise their families. The other people, well-born and with advantages, can get just about everything they want without government help, but ‘the real people’ need the protection of the government. (Patrick Cox at Constituting America web site)
Rayburn was born in Tennessee and moved to Texas at age 5. He spent about a half century representing people in the Lone Star state. But he did not sign the Southern Manifesto in 1956, as about 100 Washington southern politicians did, thus declaring their resistance to civil rights. He supported the creation of a civil rights commission and the Civil Rights Act of 1957. (ibid). In 1961 Rayburn was clearly and seriously ill. That summer he lost consciousness twice while in the Speaker’s chair. He was told he had cancer. He decided to return home to pass on and was quoted as saying, “I am one man in public life who is satisfied, who has achieved every ambition of his youth.” (Ray Hill in The Knoxville Focus, 4/8/2024) When Rayburn died, about 30,000 people showed up in his hometown of Bonham for his funeral. Among them were three presidents: Eisenhower, Truman and Kennedy. JFK was an honorary pallbearer.
So, if Rayburn had gained every ambition of his youth, how does Fetter make him into a post-humous co-planner of Kennedy’s murder? Well, according to our trusted historian and investigative journalist, Rayburn and Johnson were planning Kennedy’s death as far back as 1956. (Fetter, p. 594, pp. 611-13). How and why would they do that? Fetter’s reasoning is as follows: it was the only way to get someone from the south onto a national ticket. (He does not count the fact that Eisenhower was born in Texas, since he only lived there for two years, plus he was a Republican. Go figure.)
Does anyone really think this could be the reason to overthrow a government and murder the president in broad daylight while doing so? I have a hard time swallowing such a discussion taking place. Especially since John Nance Garner, a Texan, would have been president had he not resigned as Franklin Roosevelt’s VP in 1941. Further, Rayburn was a serious contender for that same office in 1944 as the movement to oust Henry Wallace gained steam. Finally, most people thought that since Johnson had proven to be such an effective leader in the senate he would naturally run in 1960, and he would be among the favorites.
So what evidence does Fetter advance for this nefarious plot taking place in 1956? As far as I can see he advances no direct evidence to such a plan being hatched. Neither did I denote any direct quote by Rayburn saying that having a southerner or Texan in the White House was a burning lifelong ambition for him. When Fetter does say that, the statement is not in quotes, and when one reads the footnote it is one of his usual “Author’s exclusive original discovery”. (See p. 622). When he tries to map out the thought process that Rayburn took in coming to that macabre conclusion, the footnotes are all attributed to the author, not the subject (See pgs.625-26).
I also have to add that President Woodrow Wilson was from Virginia, the home of the Confederacy. So when Fetter writes that no white southerner could win his party’s nomination for president, how did he miss that one? (p. 622)
II
But, in spite of the above, Fetter is wedded to this White Southerner Pledge by Rayburn and Johnson. How wedded to it is he? He actually writes that it did not matter who was the presidential nominee in 1960, Kennedy or anyone else. Because Rayburn and Johnson were so hell-bent they would have targeted, blackmailed and liquidated whoever it was. (Fetter, p. 626) He is quite explicit about this when he writes that if anyone else had beaten Kennedy in 1960, that person—whether it be Hubert Humphrey or Adlai Stevenson—would also have been killed.
At this point, probably earlier, one has to inject a bit of documented history into this rather closed end equation. Did not Lyndon Johnson run for the presidency in 1960? And was he not Kennedy’s closest and most feared rival that year? The answer to both of those questions is yes. In fact, Kennedy was so worried about Johnson running against him that he sent his brother to Texas to ask LBJ about his intentions. This was in 1959. (Jeff Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p. 10)
But here is the capper: Rayburn encouraged Johnson to hurry up and formally get in the race! (Shesol, p. 28). So in light of those public facts, what are we to make of Fetter’s 1956 stealth plan by Rayburn and Johnson?
What happened in 1960 was that Bobby Kennedy, representing a new style politician, outmaneuvered Johnson—an old style one. In examining that race, Jeff Shesol believes that Johnson thought Humphrey would stop Kennedy’s ascent in West Virginia, and LBJ would then enter the race at that time, once JFK’s momentum was broken. In fact, Johnson encouraged Humphrey to run in that state. (Shesol, p. 33). But backed by his father’s money, Bobby Kennedy ran a masterful campaign, closing with a statewide TV infomercial on the eve of the election. Therefore it was Humphrey who was broken. Seeing his strategy upset, LBJ started a Stop Kennedy crusade, using all kinds of attacks–his Catholicism, his youth, the “rich kid” smear. He even exposed Kennedy’s Addison’s disease. (Shesol, p. 35). Finally, about ten days before nomination night, he formally declared his candidacy, what Rayburn wanted him to do months previous. In fact, what is surprising is how well Johnson did in spite of his hesitancy and miscalculations. He finished second, far ahead of Humphrey, Stu Symington and Adlai Stevenson. Kennedy did not clinch his first ballot victory until the last state of Wyoming was called. (NY Times, 7/14/1960, story by W. H Lawrence) And Bobby Kennedy was worried about going to a second ballot.
The next step in Fetter’s Rayburn/Johnson stratagem is right out of Seymour Hersh. The Dark Side of Camelot is a book that I would think no serious JFK researcher would ever use. It has been exposed so many times in so many different areas, and Hersh has fallen into such disrepute, that the man is something of a joke today. (Click here as to why.) His book has been so strongly criticized on so many levels by not just me, but the MSM, that today it is almost a parody. (Click here.)
But yet, Fetter uses one of the worst parts of Hersh’s hatchet job in order to advance his Rayburn/Johnson precept. In The Dark Side of Camelot, Hersh said that the way Kennedy nominated Lyndon Johnson as Vice President was through a confrontation with LBJ and Rayburn. (Hersh, pp. 123-25). But yet, there is no witness to this in Hersh’s version. Hersh used a man named Hyman Raskin, and combined him with Kennedy’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln to arrive at an unwarranted conclusion. Raskin worked in the Kennedy campaign in 1960, primarily as an organizer for the western states. In the mid-nineties he told Hersh that he firmly expected that Senator Stu Symington was going to be the nominee for Vice President at the LA convention. And that both he and Bobby Kennedy were startled when it turned out to be Johnson. Hersh then pasted this together with an interview that Tony Summers did with Evelyn Lincoln for his book on J. Edgar Hoover, Official and Confidential, published in 1993. What Lincoln says is that Johnson had been using information that had been supplied to him by Hoover during the campaign. Its actually Hersh who then surmises a conclusion:
…the world may never know what threats Lyndon Johnson made to gain the vice presidency. Kennedy knew how much Hoover knew, and he knew that the information was more than enough to give Johnson whatever he needed as leverage. Kennedy’s womanizing came at a great cost.(Hersh, p. 129)
This is an example of paralipsis: the implication of something happening when much of significance is being omitted.
To say what Fetter does with this is ‘over the top’ is much too mild. Fetter uses a newspaper story by columnist John Knight about how LBJ was nominated, a story that was denounced as false by everyone involved. (Shesol, p. 57) He then adds one of his “Author’s exclusive original discoveries” to make it sound as if Johnson and Rayburn had mutual confrontations with, respectively, Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy. He then tops this with Rayburn and Johnson facing off with JFK in private and presenting him with photographic evidence of his philandering provided by Hoover. As the reader can see, Fetter has taken Hersh’s paralipsis and launched it into Saturn 5 orbit; apparently in order to fit his theory.
What really happened was this: Ted Sorenson put together a VP list for Kennedy. That list was assembled about two weeks before the LA convention, on June 29th. After being winnowed down, it had six men. This included Senator Hubert Humphrey, Governor Orville Freeman, Senator Symington, and Senator Henry Jackson. At the top of Sorenson’s list was Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy was aware of this list prior to LA. (Shesol, p. 42, Sorenson, Kennedy, p. 184). Kennedy liked Humphrey and Symington, since they were both liberals and had run clean races against him. But Clark Clifford, Symington’s manager, told JFK that Symington was going to gamble on a deadlocked convention. The problem with Humphrey was that he was still backing Adlai Stevenson, and if that failed, he would go to his home state’s governor, Freeman.(Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 40)
There were many politicos in LA who felt that Kennedy needed to balance the ticket geographically. Because quite early, in 1956 and ‘57, he had made two speeches, one in NYC and one in Jackson, Mississippi, both saying that his party had to back civil rights. Since then, he had been hemorrhaging support in the south. (NY Times, 2/8/56; Harry Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, p. 95) Two who understood this problem were Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and the powerful Washington lobbyist Tommy Corcoran. While in an elevator with JFK, Corcoran told Kennedy he had to pick Johnson in order to win. (Shesol, p. 44). Tip O’Neill said the same to Kennedy on the same day, July 12th. He further added that LBJ would accept if asked. Kennedy replied “If I can ever get him on the ticket, no way can we lose.” (Shesol, p. 45).
But two who were also very influential were newspaper men Phil Graham of the Washington Post and columnist Joseph Alsop. And they made their case for Johnson directly to JFK in his suite. (Sorenson, p. 186; Schlesinger, p. 42) After they did so, Kennedy accepted the idea rather easily, commenting on Johnson’s strength in the south. From there, Kennedy made a phone call to Johnson at 8:45 am on Thursday July 14th. Rayburn did not want Johnson to take the offer and told him so. (Schlesinger, p. 46) But rather reluctantly, and after talking to many people, Johnson accepted. (ibid, p. 49).
To try to counter all of this with the 30 year old memory of a man who was not even in on the negotiations, and a secretary who was reduced to tears after being fired by Johnson within 24 hours after he became president, to me that is simply balderdash. Which is what Hersh’s book was. But alas, Fetter also accepts a Hershian view of the Kennedys and Marilyn Monroe. He says that Bobby Kennedy was secretly meeting with Marilyn Monroe, and was at her home on the day and evening of what he terms ”her murder”. (Fetter, p. 213) Bobby Kennedy was nowhere near Monroe’s home in Brentwood on that day. He was 350 miles north in Gilroy and this is provable beyond any doubt through pictures and eyewitness testimony. (Susan Bernard, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures, pp. 184-88) Secondly, Monroe was not murdered. Forensic pathologist Dr. Boyd Stephens stated categorically for the record that she died due to an ingested drug overdose, either taken purposefully or by accident. (Donald McGovern, Murder Orthodoxies, p. 494)
III
But in the face of all these problems, Fetter plunges on. The next step in his plot takes place on Air Force One as the shocked presidential entourage is readying to leave Dallas after the assassination. What the author does with this scene is, to my knowledge, unprecedented in the literature. There is no official record of the calls Johnson made to Washington to talk to Bobby Kennedy about taking the oath in Dallas. The recording device only worked while the plane was in flight. (William Manchester, The Death of a President, p. 268) I have read some of the accounts of the calls back and forth in several books: William Manchester’s The Death of a President, Jim Bishop’s The Day Kennedy was Shot, Jeff Shesol’s Mutual Contempt, and Johnson’s own account in his memoir The Vantage Point, among others.
The issue of whether or not Johnson should take the oath of office immediately came up at the Parkland press conference after Kennedy was pronounced dead. It was addressed to Malcolm Kilduff, the acting PR man for the White House. (Manchester p. 221) Others brought it up. So Johnson called the Attorney General about who should administer the oath. RFK deferred the question to Deputy AG Nicholas Katzenbach and he called the Office of Legal Counsel. The message was relayed back to LBJ that any federal judge could do it and Katzenbach suggested a Johnson appointee, who ended up being Sarah Hughes. (Shesol, pp.114-115)
As with his Hershian moment at the 1960 Democratic convention, Fetter says all the above is really a cover story. The real point was that the focus of their conversation was a “problem of special urgency” which would result in “security measures”. He then adds on to this alleged RFK/LBJ conversation, specifically with LBJ mentioning things like security measures being needed to keep everything together. He further adds that Johnson said Castro could be mixed up in all this; that we have to contain an uncertain situation; we have early word of a possible Cuban involvement; and we need to prevent unhealthy speculation and wild rumors. (Fetter, pp. 212-13). The closest that Fetter comes to a footnote in all this is when he quotes p. 269 of Manchester’s book. That reference leads us to Johnson’s statement to the Warren commission in July of 1964. (WC Vol. 5, pp. 561-64). The only even remote reference that Johnson makes to any of these remarks that Fetter attributes to him is when he says that they discussed “problems of special urgency because we did not at that time have any information as to the motivation of the assassination or its possible implications.” Johnson then says that RFK then looked into the matter of the oath of office being administered to him and would call back. Which he did.
I have no idea where Fetter got the rest of this material. Or who he imputes it to, Kennedy or Johnson. And I have no idea as to how it relates so portentously to what actually happened due to the calls. Johnson had been told that he should go back to Washington by, among others, McGeorge Bundy. (Manchester, p. 271). The question of the oath was something that no one knew anything about. And it was also Bundy’s idea to get advice from the Justice Department on that. Which made perfect sense. (ibid)
But Fetter is not done with Air Force One and Love Field on November 22, 1963. He also writes that LBJ told Secret Service agent Jerry Kivett ”not to file a flight plan—that is, not to give the Air Force One crew a destination, and not to tell them where the presidential plane was actually headed.” (Fetter, p.184) I listened to this interview, which one can find at the Sixth Floor Museum web site. What Kivett says is he was told by LBJ to tell the flight crew not to file a flight plan, but to do so just ahead of the take off. Right before this, Kivett says that he was actually worried about Johnson being shot at the hospital. That is how high the fear and tension was at that time. He was also told by his superior Rufus Youngblood not to let anyone on Air Force One unless he knew them. With his blinkers on, Fetter cannot put these two pieces of information together to understand why Johnson told Kivett what he did: until they got back to Washington, there was a continuous threat.
But my other question about this was: The crew really had to be informed of that? I mean with politicians, Kennedy’s staff, and Mrs. Kennedy on board? Where else were they headed?
Fetter’s answer to that question is this: Mexico. (Fetter, p. 185) Fetter again has “exclusive original discoveries” on hand that no one ever realized. Or imagined. (Perhaps for good reason?) According to him, Johnson somehow knew that his plot to kill Kennedy was failing and was “in danger of total implosion.” Oh really? With the Dallas Police apprehending Oswald, and finding the rifle with three shells on the 6th floor? With supervisor Roy Truly supplying Oswald’s name to Will Fritz? And with the Texas School Book Depository now being sealed off as the setting for the crime? With cops like Ken Croy, W. R. Westbrook and Jerry Hill at work? I mean who could ask for much more?
Fetter defers from this. He wants us to think that Johnson so feared the skill, precision and dedication of the Dallas Police that the Vice-President was going to hijack the plane and fly to Mexico to escape justice. Yep, its right there in black and white on page 185. And he was going to stay there, perhaps for the rest of his life. Fetter does not say anything about how the rest of the people on board would have reacted to that, especially Jackie. (‘Are we going to bury Jack in Yucatan?”) Or anything about the willingness of the crew to go along with it. Or about any countervailing messages that would come in from Washington. Nope he doesn’t have to since, this is another of his “Author’s exclusive original discoveries”.
IV
To go through this entire book, as I have in the instances above, and point out all of its leaps of evidence and logic in regard to historical fact and evidentiary analysis would take an essay bordering on a pamphlet in length. So let me deal with some other points more briefly:
- The author calls the Warren Commission the Johnson Commission, and he actually tries to insinuate that somehow LBJ created and controlled that body. (See p. 502, 801) Anyone who has read Donald Gibson’s excellent essay on the subject knows that Johnson did not even want any blue ribbon Commission. Two men were instrumental in forcing it on the White House: Eugene Rostow and Joe Alsop. Johnson resisted these initial overtures but eventually gave in. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 3-16) Once established, it was controlled by Allen Dulles, John McCloy, Jerry Ford and J. Edgar Hoover. (See Walt Brown’s The Warren Omission.)
- In addition to John Kennedy, our trusted historian and investigative journalist says that Johnson also killed Bobby Kennedy. (Fetter, p. 855). No serious author of that case even insinuates such a thing. No one who studies it, as I have, can find any evidence for such a conclusion. See, for example, Lisa Pease’s fine work, A Lie Too Big to Fail.
- In his obsession to make Johnson into a mass murderer the equal of Hitler and Stalin, Fetter says that LBJ killed 9 million people. (Fetter, p. 750) He then lists several countries but without any references to death lists for them. For example, the deaths in Vietnam after Kennedy’s death should not be all attributed to LBJ. Because Nixon thwarted Johnson’s peace proposals, and then continued that war throughout his first administration: dropping more bomb tonnage on Indochina than Johnson.
- Fetter says that Johnson confessed to the murder of JFK through notes left behind after a meeting with Clark Clifford and Dean Rusk. He sources this to a book by Lloyd Gardner called Pay Any Price. He says that during a meeting in March 1968, Johnson jotted down the word “murderer”, Fetter says this was a confession. That section of the book deals with Johnson’s ideas about Vietnam after the Tet offensive. Clifford was advising him to get a truce and start negotiating a peace. Johnson left a note behind after on which there were three lines: “Murderer-Hitler”, “Stop the War” “Escalate the Peace”. Its very clear from this and Gardner’s context that LBJ was persuaded by Clifford’s argument, and that is the reason he made those notes. How do we know? Because, after this meeting , Johnson then made his famous abdication speech, saying he was not going to run and he would push for peace. How could anyone leave all that out? (Gardner, pp. 455-57)
- Fetter also says that LBJ confessed in his memoir called The Vantage Point. I first wondered how the tens of thousands of readers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, could have missed it. I then looked up the pages he referred to (pgs. 12, 18, 27) Its pretty obvious from reading the first two passages that Johnson was referring to reassuring the public that there was not going to be any paralysis in the transfer of government from Kennedy to him. This is one reason why he was advised to get back to Washington, the other being to escape any kind of wide ranging murder plot. The final reference, p. 27, which Fetter does not distinguish, referred to convincing Earl Warren to head the Warren Commission. Yet, Fetter does not note this in his text or describe how Johnson convinced him to do so!
- Fetter writes that Robert Kennedy actually knew that Lyndon Johnson had murdered his brother, and this is why he went into a period of depression afterwards.(Fetter, p. 793) The best volume on RFK’s investigation of John Kennedy’s death is clearly David Talbot’s book Brothers, which features scholarship Fetter cannot touch. In the interviews Talbot did for the book, the three suspects RFK had were the CIA, organized crime and the Cuban exiles. Johnson was not mentioned.
V
Let me close with Fetter’s section on Robert Kennedy, Mongoose and the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro. Fetter makes it sound as if Bobby Kennedy was ignoring his Attorney General job to oversee Mongoose, the secret war against Castro in 1962. (Fetter, p. 783) According to Arthur Schlesinger’s definitive biography, this is not the case. RFK would devote one afternoon per week to serve as ombudsman over proposed operations. In other words he wanted them in written, detailed plan before he would approve them. (Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 497). How on earth could it be otherwise? AG Kennedy was supervising a massive war against organized crime and the most forward looking civil rights program in history at the DOJ.
Beyond that Fetter implies that somehow Bobby Kennedy was aware of at least the last phase of the CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. The Inspector General report makes it clear that the CIA deliberately ran these operations on their own and never had any kind of presidential approval for them. (See IG Report pgs. 132-33). But Fetter wants the reader to think something different, and we will soon see why.
Fetter begins his paradigm on November 23rd with the CIA requesting information about Valery Kostikov from Mexico City. (Fetter, p. 785) He skips over how Kostikov’s name came up in the first place. As John Newman points out in Oswald and the CIA, James Angleton released his name on the day of the assassination as having allegedly met with Oswald in Mexico City seven weeks prior. This was incredibly interesting since Oswald was a former defector to the USSR and Kostikov was reportedly involved with Department 13 of the KGB–and one of their assignments was liquidation. Therefore, was the communist Oswald acting as an agent of Kostikov when he supposedly shot Kennedy?
But Fetter downplays this “virus effect” by Angleton, which Newman has talked about at various public appearances. Fetter wants to go to two days later when the Mexico City station brought up the name of Rolando Cubela. (Fetter, p. 786) Now we see why Fetter moves RFK to almost sitting supervisor of Mongoose, and wants to implicate him with the CIA plots to kill Castro. His idea is that this info somehow “froze” RFK in place about his brother’s death. (Fetter, p. 788). He then goes further and says that this effect was the actual reason for Oswald’s journey to Mexico City. Again, I have never seen this view anywhere.
The problems with it are obvious. As stated above, it was made clear in the IG Report that no president ever knew about the plots. Secondly, there was an effort by the CIA to lie to Bobby Kennedy about them. (IG Report pp. 62-64) Finally, the report spends over 30 pages on the Cubela phase of the plots to kill Castro. Its obvious that again, this was hidden from the White House. For example, Cubela wanted assurances from Bobby Kennedy about the plots. He never got them and Richard Helms forbade any acknowledgement of the CIA meetings with Cubela to RFK. (ibid, p. 89). So how would RFK be frozen by the name of Cubela if that name was being kept from him? What is the evidence that he saw that CIA cable anyway? As Newman has stated, the name of Kostikov and the visits to the Soviet and Cuban embassies threatened an atomic war, which is what Johnson used to intimidate Earl Warren into heading the Warren Commission. The question then becomes did Johnson really believe these visits, which Hoover had doubts about. Again, this issue is ignored by the author.
Despite all the lacunae I have shown in this book–and they are large and many–that does not give the author pause. In fact, one of the most disturbing aspects of Fetter’s narrative voice is its conceit. He writes for example that, “I have proven for the first time anywhere the true origins, the true chronology, and the true reasons for the JFK assassination plot.” (p. 881)
No he has not. Not even close. In fact, for this reader, the book is both so agenda driven, so solipsistic and at the same time so diaphanous in every aspect, that it shows, after almost 61 years, what little case there is against Lyndon Johnson in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. And let us leave Rayburn out of this from now on.
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JFK VS LBJ: The MSM in Overdrive
As our readers know, I just did a two-part review of the very poor CNN four-part special about Lyndon Johnson, largely modeled on the work of Joe Califano. As an honest appraisal of Johnson’s presidency, that program was simply unforgiveable, both in regard to Johnson’s domestic and foreign policy. (Click here for details) Concerning the latter, it actually tried to say that Johnson did not decide to go to war in Indochina until after the Tonkin Gulf Resolution had passed. Since LBJ used that resolution as an act of war, most of us would fail to see the logic in that, but that is how desperate CNN and the production company, Bat Bridge Entertainment, were in trying to salvage Johnson’s reversal of Kennedy’s withdrawal plan and decision to enter a disastrous war in Vietnam. That war plunged America into a ten-year-long struggle that resulted in epic tragedy for both Indochina and the USA.
Mark Updegrove was one of the talking heads on that program, as well as one of its executive producers. Updegrove was the director of the LBJ Library for eight years. He is now the president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation in Austin. He began his career in magazine publishing. He was the publisher of Newsweek and president of Time/Canada. He was that latter magazine’s Los Angeles manager, but he was also VP in sales and operations for Yahoo and VP/ publisher for MTV Magazine. In other words, Updegrove has long been a part of the MSM.
I could not find any evidence that Mark is a credentialed historian. All I could discover is that he had a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Maryland. I don’t think it is improper to question whether or not a man should be running a presidential library if he is neither an historian nor an archivist. The writing of history is a much different discipline than being a publisher or running business operations. At its fundamental base, it means the willingness to spend hours upon hours going through declassified documents, supplementing that with field investigation, and also tracing hard to find witnesses. Then, when that travail is over, measuring the value of what one has found.
It is not an easy task to write valuable history, especially of the revisionist type that bucks the MSM, for the simple reason that revisionist history that challenges hallowed paradigms is not a good path to career advancement. The much safer path is what the late Stephen Ambrose did. When a friend of his did discover powerful evidence which demanded a revisionist reconstruction about World War II, Ambrose first befriended him and then—measuring the costs to his career—turned on him. That is the kind of behavior that gets you business lunches with people like Tom Hanks. (James DIEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 45–48)
As I reviewed at length and proved with many examples, the aim of the above CNN series was to somehow elevate Johnson’s rather poor performance as president over the space of five years. It was a presidency that was so violent, corrosive, and polarizing that the late Philip Roth wrote a memorable book about its enduring and pernicious impact on the United States. There were many instances that I did not even deal with in my two-part review of that series, for example the overthrow in Brazil and the forcing out of George Papandreou in Greece in 1965. Who can forget Johnson’s rather direct reply to the protestations of the Greek ambassador in the latter case:
Then listen to me Mr. Ambassador: fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is the elephant. They may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good…We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament, and Constitutions, he, his Parliament, and his Constitution may not last very long. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 244)
As William Blum shows in his book, Johnson was true to his word.
Because of the above, it is not an easy job to somehow whitewash and then rehabilitate Johnson the man and Johnson the president, especially because LBJ followed President John Kennedy and almost systematically reversed much of his foreign policy, with so many debilitating results. In his film JFK: Destiny Betrayed, Oliver Stone showed those actions in relation to Indochina, Congo, the Middle East, and Indonesia. That film also tried to show how Kennedy was also working on modes of détente with both Cuba and the USSR. These were both abandoned by the new president.
Apparently Updegrove is well aware of how poorly Johnson does in a comparison with Kennedy. He has now written a book about Kennedy. Because of his longtime relations with Time magazine, he got them to do what is essentially a preview/promo for that book. (See Time online April 26, 2022, story by Olivia Waxman.)
To see where Updegrove’s book Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency is coming from, one can simply read the italicized intro to his own summary. Waxman writes that since 1963, there have been “myths and misunderstandings” about JFK and the early “gunning down” of the handsome leader caused some of this “continued fascination.” Waxman then lets Updegrove, who is not an historian, take charge with these words:
History in its most cursory form is a beauty contest and, as we look at John F. Kennedy, he’s a perfect President for the television age, because he shows up so well and speaks so elegantly.
Who needs to read the book? We have seen this infomercial so many times by the MSM that reading the book is superfluous. Kennedy was the glamour president. He was handsome, exquisitely tailored, a good speaker, and witty. This was what made him an icon in history, but he really did not have any notable achievements behind him. It was all glitz. And then Updegrove begins that part of the MSM formula: the belittlement of JFK, the so called myths and misunderstandings that caused the continued fascination with Kennedy the president. Mark chooses three areas to hone in on for his attack.
The Missile Crisis
He begins by saying that the first myth is that “JFK won the Cuban Missile Crisis by staring down the Soviets.” Updegrove then writes that the true cause of the crisis was that the Russians knew they were at a large atomic disadvantage and also that the USA had offensive missiles in Turkey. Therefore, this was not just “recklessness on the part of Nikita Khrushchev,” it “was really more of a calculated risk.” The risk being to get the missiles removed from Turkey. He says the world did not know about the Turkish agreement at the time. I would beg to disagree and you can find my basis for disagreement in the following story from the New York Times in late November of 1962. The agreement about Turkey was out and known in the public at that time. Unlike what Updegrove wants to maintain, most understood what the main terms of the agreement were. But further, to say that was the basis of the agreement is to ignore that the Russians had about ten times as many missiles in Cuba as the USA did in Turkey. (Philip Zelikow and Ernest May, The Kennedy Tapes, p. 60)
I would, however, also disagree with him on two other more important points. First, JFK’s achievement in the Missile Crisis was not a “stare down”. It was avoiding a nuclear conflagration. Anyone who reads the book The Kennedy Tapes will understand that JFK took the least provocative and least risky alternative that was offered him: the blockade. Many others in the meetings recommended bombing the missile silos or an outright invasion of Cuba. Both Kennedys were asking about the former: Would that not create a lot of casualties? (May and Zelikow, p. 66) Kennedy became rather disenchanted with that option.
What Kennedy did was opt for the blockade, which also gave the Kremlin time to think about what they were doing. This neutralized the hawks in both camps. And I should not have to tell Updegrove how angry and upset the Joint Chiefs were with that choice. General Curtis LeMay accused Kennedy of appeasement and compared what he was doing to what Neville Chamberlain did at Munich with the Nazis. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 57)
But what is important here in regard to Updegrove is that in reading the transcripts, Johnson was siding with the hawks. At a meeting on October 27, 1962—towards the end of the crisis when Kennedy was trying to corral the confidence of his advisors for an agreement—Johnson was not on board. He said, “My impression is that we’re having to retreat. We’re backing down.” He then said we made Turkey insecure, and also Berlin:
People feel it. They don’t know why they feel it and how. But they feel it. We got a blockade and we’re doing this and that and the Soviet ships are coming through. (May and Zelikow p. 587)
He then said something even more provocative in referring to a U2 plane shot down by Cuba, “The Soviets shot down one plane and the Americans gave up Turkey. Then they shoot down another and the Americans give up Berlin.” (Ibid, p. 592) He then got more belligerent. He said that, in light of this, what Khrushchev was doing was dismantling the foreign policy of the United States for the last 15 years, in order to get the missiles out of Cuba. He topped off that comment by characterizing Kennedy’s attitude toward that dismantlement like this: “We’re glad and we appreciate it and we want to discuss it with you.” (ibid, p. 597) It’s reading things like that which makes us all grateful Kennedy was president at that time.
This is what Kennedy’s achievement really was, not taking this crackpot hawkish advice and instead working toward a peaceful solution that would satisfy everyone. And with this on the table, we can now fully understand Updegrove’s next point.
The Vietnam War
Updegrove says it was a myth that Kennedy would have pulled out of Vietnam. In his article, he ignores the fact that Kennedy had already given the order to begin that withdrawal with NSAM 263. He then pens a real howler: Kennedy did not tell any of his military advisors about his intent to withdraw. I could barely contain myself when I read that, but this is how desperate one gets when trying to argue this point, which has been proven through the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) beyond any reasonable doubt.
Most people would consider Robert McNamara a military advisor; after all he was the Secretary of Defense running the Pentagon. Roswell GIlpatric was McNamara’s deputy. In an oral history, he said McNamara told him that Kennedy had given him instructions to start winding down American involvement in Vietnam. (James Blight, Virtual JFK, p. 371) McNamara then conveyed this instruction to General Harkins, another military man, at a conference in Saigon in 1962. McNamara told Harkins to begin to form a plan to turn full responsibility for the conflict over to South Vietnam. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 120) In May of 1963, Harkins and all departments in Vietnam—military, CIA, State—submitted those withdrawal plans to McNamara. I showed the documents of this conference on a Fox special last year. I said, as anyone can see, everyone there knew Kennedy was withdrawing and there was no serious dissent, since they knew it was the path the president had chosen. (See the program JFK: The Conspiracy Continues) These documents were declassified by the ARRB in late 1997, so they have been out there for well over 20 years.
But further, the Board also declassified the discussions Kennedy had with his advisors in October of 1963, when the withdrawal plan was being implemented. At that time, Kennedy and McNamara overruled all objections to the withdrawal by people like National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Joint Chiefs Chairman Max Taylor. Again, Taylor was another military man. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, 2017 edition, pp. 410–11). Finally, when McNamara was leaving the Pentagon, he did a debrief interview. There, he said that he and Kennedy had agreed that America could help, supply, and advise Saigon in the war effort, but America could not fight the war for them. Therefore, once that advisement was completed, America was leaving; and it did not matter if Saigon was winning or losing: we were getting out. (Vietnam: The Early Decisions, edited by Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, p. 166)
Johnson is a liability for Updegrove here also. He knew all of this. And he objected to it. In a February 1964 discussion with McNamara, he bares his objection to Kennedy’s plan for withdrawal. He says he sat there silent thinking, what the heck is McNamara doing withdrawing from a war he is losing. (Blight, p. 310)
I really do not see how it gets any clearer than that.
JFK and Civil Rights
I just did a long review of this issue on Aaron Good’s series American Exception. Updegrove uses the hoary cliché that Kennedy came late to the issue and “he refused to do anything on a proactive basis relating to civil rights.” Both of these are utterly false and, again, LBJ ends up being a liability for Updegrove.
In 1957, President Eisenhower and Vice-President Nixon sent a mild, nebulous bill to Capitol Hill to create a pretty much toothless Civil Rights Commission. Neither man gave a damn about civil rights. In fact, Eisenhower had advised Earl Warren to vote again the Brown vs Board case. (Click here for details) The reason they did this was because Governor Orville Faubus had just humiliated the president over the crisis at Little Rock, so this was a way of salvaging the president’s image. The other reason was that the GOP wanted to split the Democratic Party between the northern liberals and the southern conservatives, and this was a way to do it.
In order to minimize that split, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson watered the bill down even more, to the point that Senator Kennedy did not want to vote for it. Johnson had to lobby him to do so. Finally, JFK relented after his advisors told him it would be better than nothing. Prior to this, for 20 years, LBJ had voted against every civil rights bill ever introduced on the Hill. And he did so on the doctrine of States Rights, echoing John Calhoun. The reason he relented this time was that he knew he could not run for president as a veteran segregationist. This was what had crippled his mentor Richard Russell’s presidential ambitions. Contrary to what Updegrove writes, this is why Kennedy was so eager to get to work on this issue in 1961.
Kennedy had hired Harris Wofford, attorney for the Civil Rights Commission, as a campaign advisor. After his election, he asked Wofford to prepare a summary of what to do with civil rights once he was inaugurated. Wofford told him that he would not be able to get an omnibus civil rights bill through congress his first year and probably not in his second year either. This was primarily due to the power of the southern filibuster in the Senate, but what he could do was act through executive orders, the courts, and the Justice Department, in order to move the issue. And then that could build momentum for a bill in his third year. (Irving Bernstein, Promises Kept, pp. 44–50)
Kennedy followed that advice just about to the letter. To say that Kennedy did nothing proactive on civil rights until 1963 is bad even for Updegrove. On his first day in office, Kennedy began to move towards the first law on affirmative action. (Bernstein, pp. 52–53). He signed such an executive order in March of 1961, saying that every department of the government must now enact affirmative action rules. He later extended this to any contracting with the government. In other words, if a company did business with say the State Department, that company also had to follow affirmative action guidelines. This was a huge breakthrough. Since now, for example, textile factories in the south had to hire African Americans to make uniforms for the Navy.
Bobby Kennedy made a speech at the University of Georgia Law Day in 1961. He said that, unlike Eisenhower, this administration would enforce the Brown vs. Board decision. Therefore, the White House went to work trying to force all higher education facilities in the South to integrate their classes. They did this through restrictions on grants in aid and money for federal research projects. Universities like Clemson and Duke now had to integrate classes.
Through the court system, Kennedy forced the last two reluctant universities in the South to accept African American applicants. This was James Meredith at Ole Miss in 1962 and Vivian Malone and James Hood at Alabama in 1963. When the Secretary of Education in Louisiana resisted the Brown decision, Bobby Kennedy indicted him. When Virginia tried to circumvent Brown by depriving funds to school districts, the Kennedys decided to build a school district from scratch with private funds. (Click here for details)
Kennedy strongly believed that voting rights was very important in this struggle. He therefore raised funds to finance voting drives and moved to strike down poll taxes in the south. (Bernstein, pp. 68–69). All of this, and more, was before his landmark speech on civil rights in June of 1963. You can ignore all of this if you just say well Kennedy was not proactive on the issue, but that is not being honest with the reader.
In my opinion, it is no coincidence that the CNN series was broadcast about a month before Updegrove’s book came out. And the book was accompanied by articles in Time and People and various appearances on cable TV.
If you did not know by now, that coupling shows we are up against a coordinated campaign, but the other side will not admit that.
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CNN’s Apologia for LBJ, Part Two
see Part 1
Early on in Joe Califano’s book, he writes the following about LBJ and Vietnam: “He certainly thought he was doing what John Kennedy would have done…” (p. 28). Califano’s book was published in 1991. The best one can say about that statement is that, even for that time, it was ill informed, because even back then, there was evidence that this was not even close to being the case. For example, Ken O’Donnell and Dave Powers had written that Johnson had actually broken with what JFK was doing. As they stated, Kennedy was going to withdraw a thousand advisors before the end of 1963. (The authors here were referring to Kennedy’s NSAM 263 without naming it.) Kennedy then told Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to announce this to the press in October of 1963. (Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, p. 17) Based on the paper trail in the Pentagon Papers, Peter Scott also wrote about this withdrawal plan. (Government by Gunplay, edited by Sidney Blumenthal and Harvey Yazijian, pp. 152–187)
CNN more or less adapts the Califano stance for this all-important issue. Why is it so important? If one is trying to salvage Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, it is imperative to somehow show that his radical escalation of the Vietnam War was really not his idea. There are two underlying reasons for doing this. First, Johnson’s escalation was not one of degree—it was an escalation in kind. LBJ would end up sending 500,000 combat troops into Vietnam. On the day Kennedy was killed, there were none there; only advisors. (The program tries to alchemize this by saying Kennedy had 16,00 troops in theater—utterly wrong.) Secondly, LBJ began Operation Rolling Thunder, the largest air bombing campaign since World War II, over both parts of the country. Even Califano admits that these American strikes extended to targets in and around Hanoi and Haiphong and close to the Chinese border. (Califano, p. 293) Kennedy never did anything like this—let alone to the extent of bomb tonnage that Johnson dropped.
So what does the film do to relieve this heavy cross on Johnson’s back? To anyone who knows what really happened, it attempts something kind of shocking. Through Andrew Young, the film tries to say that, in December of 1964, it was McNamara, National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk who were trying to convince Johnson to go to war in Vietnam. How on earth the film makers from Bat Bridge Entertainment got Young—usually a smart guy in public—to say this is a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes. How they ignored all the evidence declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board which contradicts it, is even more mystifying. Let me explain why.
II
Two of the most important pieces of evidence in Oliver Stone’s documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass concern the Vietnam War. Back in December of 1997, the Assassination Records Review Board declassified the records of the May 1963, SecDef meeting in Hawaii. These were regular meetings held by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on the progress of the war. Representatives of branches of the American government stationed in Saigon, for example CIA, Pentagon, and State, were in attendance. Those May 1963 documents were so direct and powerful that they convinced the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer that, at the time of his death, Kennedy was getting out of Vietnam. (Probe Magazine, Vol. 5 No. 3, p. 19) They showed that McNamara had given the order to begin a withdrawal program previously. And at this meeting various parties were submitting these schedules. To which McNamara replied: they were too slow. This supplied powerful corroboration for what O’Donnell, Powers, Scott and John Newman had written about—Newman in the 1992 edition of his breakthrough book JFK and Vietnam.
The other important piece of evidence in this regard is a taped phone call that President Johnson had with McNamara on February 20, 1964:
LBJ: I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the president thought otherwise, and I just silently.
RSN: The problem is—
LBJ: Then come the questions: how in the hell does McNamara think, when he’s losing a war, he can pull men out of there?
That tape is played loud and clear in the film, which has been out since November of last year, but Stone could have gone even further in this regard. Because in another phone call on March 2, 1964, Johnson tried to convince McNamara to revise his prior statements about withdrawing from Vietnam. (James Blight, Virtual JFK, p. 310) Further, in a January 1965 phone call, Johnson has learned that some of Kennedy’s hires now felt the new president was trying to shift the blame for the escalation of the war from himself to his dead predecessor, which was quite a logical deduction. (ibid, p. 306)
After his attempt to turn around McNamara on the war, Johnson set up an interagency committee headed by State Department employee William Sullivan. That committee was to plan the possible expansion of the war. (Eugene Windchy, Tonkin Gulf, p. 309) In six weeks, Sullivan concluded that nothing but direct intervention by America would stop the eventual triumph of the Viet Cong. (Joseph Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty, pp. 77–88).
In light of that conclusion, there is a telling point to be made about the choice of Sullivan to lead this committee. In October of 1963, Sullivan was one of the strongest opponents of Kennedy’s withdrawal plan. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, Second Edition, p. 410) To put it mildly, Johnson likely knew the result he was going to get from Sullivan.
Taken as a whole, what this accumulation of evidence shows is not just that Johnson reversed Kennedy’s policy in Vietnam, but he knew he was reversing it and then tried to camouflage that reversal. It also indicates that Johnson’s intent in this regard was established fairly early. The usual point of no return is considered to be the signing of NSAM 288 in March of 1964. That document mapped out a large-scale air war over North Vietnam, which Johnson invited the Joint Chiefs to design for him. (Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War, p. 129) As one commentator wrote about it: “Henceforth the United States would be committed not merely to advising the Saigon government, but to maintaining it.” (ibid) At that time, Max Frankel of the New York Times wrote that the administration had now rejected “all thought of a graceful withdrawal.” (March 21, 1964) As Gordon Goldstein has noted, Johnson was now working hand in glove with the Joint Chiefs on these future plans. (Lessons in Disaster, pp. 108–09)
This last is another marked difference with Kennedy. As former undersecretary Roger Hilsman wrote to the New York Times, JFK did not want any member of the Joint Chiefs to even visit South Vietnam, so the idea of him inviting them into the Oval Office to plan a massive air war there was simply a non-starter. (Letter of January 20, 1992) In other words, what Kennedy did not do for three years, Johnson did in three months.
Make no mistake, this was a key step in Johnson’s escalation. It was the document that would supply the working thesis for future air operations Pierce Arrow—retaliation for the alleged Tonkin Gulf incident—and Flaming Dart—retaliation for the Viet Cong attack at Pleiku—and those would evolve into Rolling Thunder. All of this counters Califano’s excuse for escalation in his book: that somehow the Joint Chiefs pressured LBJ into escalating. (Chapter 2, pp. 50ff) This is made possible by Califano not mentioning or describing NSAM 288, or how that process differed from JFK.
Why do I indicate that LBJ had all but certainly decided on a war against North Vietnam by the spring of 1964? Because one of his objectives was to get the Washington Post in his corner on this decision; so he enlisted their support in advance. In April of 1964, Johnson invited the executives of that paper, plus Kay Graham, the owner, to the White House. In the family dining room, he asked for their support for this planned expansion of the war in Vietnam. (Carol Felsenthal, Power, Privilege, and the Post, p. 234)
III
If that is not enough to convince the reader that the program and Andrew Young are wrong about the December 1964 date, how about this: the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was drafted three months before it was submitted to congress. (Edwin Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, p. 27) In other words, in May, one month after Johnson told the Washington Post he wanted their support for a future war, he had an attorney sketch a rough draft of a declaration of war in Vietnam. Like the other steps on the way to intervention, I could not find this event mentioned in either CNN’s film or Califano’s book. It would seem to me to be a quite important revelation as to intent. But let us go a step beyond it: What made Johnson rather certain that the war resolution would be used? Because Johnson’s planning even spoke of a “dramatic event” that could occur to cause the White House to go for a congressional resolution. (Moise, p. 30)
Johnson had approved a covert action plan after Kennedy’s death. General Maxwell Taylor had drawn up designs for fast hit-and-run sea operations against North Vietnam in September of 1963, but that plan was not submitted to McNamara until November 20, 1963. (Newman, p. 385) These attacks were eventually titled OPLAN 34A. Originally, the draft of NSAM 273 limited naval forces to those of the government of South Vietnam. On November 26, 1963, Johnson altered McGeorge Bundy’s draft. When OPLAN 34A was submitted to the White House, it now allowed direct American military attacks against North Vietnam. (Newman, p. 463) As Edwin Moise shows, these PT boat operations owed just about everything to the USA and were completely controlled by Americans. (Moise, pp. 12–17) They likely could not have been done by Saigon alone.
It was the combination of OPLAN 34A with the already-in-practice DeSoto patrols that all but guaranteed an exchange between Hanoi and the Pentagon in the Gulf of Tonkin. The PT boats were designed and equipped with armaments that could be used to attack Hanoi’s military installations near the shore, which they did. The idea was for the OPLAN 34A missions to create a disturbance and then the destroyers in the gulf could theoretically gain some kind of intelligence from the reaction. The problem was that both the boats and the ships violated the territorial waters of North Vietnam. (Moise, pp. 50–51) The PT boats attacked the islands of Hon Me and Hon Ngu off the coast of North Vietnam on the night of July 30–31. The latter was 4 kilometers off the coast, the former about 12. Hanoi was claiming their waters ended at 12 miles, therefore both islands would be within their boundaries. When the PT boats retreated, they were within sight of one of the destroyers on a DeSoto mission, the Maddox, which had just entered the gulf. (Moise, p. 56)
Therefore all the elements were in place for a confrontation. On the night of August 2nd, Hanoi sent out three torpedo boats to counter the raiders. They were all severely damaged by American fire and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed. The Maddox endured one bullet hole from a machine gun round. In spite of this engagement, President Johnson continued the patrols and the Navy added a second destroyer, the Turner Joy, to the mission. What made it even worse is that the PT boats attacked another North Vietnamese base on the evening of the 3rd of August. (Moise, p. 97) This is why many, including George Ball of State, considered the missions to be clear provocations. (Moise, p. 100)
Needless to say, the alleged Hanoi attack on the two destroyers on the night of August 4th never really occurred. Yet Johnson used this false reporting to launch the first American air strikes against the north, based on the NSAM 288 target list, and also to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which has been penned three months earlier. (Moise, p. 212) But all of the above is not the worst. The worst is this: Johnson realized the second attack did not occur about one week after he ordered the air strikes. (Moise, p. 210)
In light of all the above, to say that Johnson was being talked into a war by Bundy, McNamara, and Rusk in December is simply hogwash. And to say, as the program does, that Johnson was not a war monger is equally wrong. The total debate time on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was about 8 hours. (Goulden, p. 75) And everyone sent up by the White House to testify for the resolution denied there was any connection between the DeSoto missions and the OPLAN 34A operations—which was false. (Goulden, p. 76)
But there were two grand benefits garnered from the provocations:
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LBJ’s approval ratings on the war skyrocketed. As one commentator noted, he had turned his one weakness against GOP candidate Barry Goldwater into a strength.
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He got his declaration through. (Goulden, p. 77) The very fact he did the latter undermines what Tom Johnson says about the war: that the SEATO Treaty alone necessitated our involvement.
IV
Califano deals with the case of William Fulbright in one desultory page near the end of his book. (Califano, p. 360) CNN and Bat Bridge do not really deal with him at all. The Arkansas senator and Johnson had been friends prior to 1965. In fact, Johnson used Fulbright to get his Tonkin Gulf resolution through the Senate; the unsuspecting Fulbright trusted him. He ended up regretting it.
The CNN series does not mention the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic either. Yet the two subjects are related, because Fulbright’s relationship with LBJ collapsed over the lies Johnson had told him about that 25,000 man Marine invasion in the Caribbean in 1965. Fulbright was the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He had helped expedite both the Latin American invasion and the Tonkin Gulf resolution. Ironically, it was Fulbright’s reinvestigation of the former that led to his doubts about Tonkin Gulf and ultimately wrecked the relationship. One can even argue this was the main engine for Johnson’s capsized approval ratings, which resulted in his abdication.
In June of 1965, Fulbright’s staff had begun to examine the reasons Johnson had given for the April 28, 1965, invasion of the island. At every opportunity, the reasons for the invasion were escalated and sensationalized. This culminated in June with the excuse that 1,500 people were killed, heads were cut off, the American ambassador called while hiding under a desk with bullets flying through windows, and Americans were huddled in a hotel screaming for protection. (Goulden, p. 166) The staff found out that this was mostly nonsense and Fulbright decided to give a scathing speech in which he said that there was simply no evidence to back up what Johnson had told him about decapitations and bullets flying through embassy windows. The democratically elected leader, Juan Bosch—who the Marine invasion fatally crushed—had been favored by President Kennedy. (Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street, pp. 78–79) Therefore, Johnson’s reversal of JFK’s policy “lent credence to the idea that the United States is the enemy of social revolution in Latin America…” (Goulden, p. 167)
Fulbright now suspected that maybe the White House had also lied about the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. In November and December of 1965, he and his staff now prepared for full-blown hearings on the Vietnam War. Fulbright called up administration official after official and quizzed them on both what the real purpose of the Tonkin Gulf resolution was, and if the administration had been candid about its provenance. The hearings themselves were damaging enough to Johnson, but when CBS and NBC decided to run them at full length for days on end, they began to really hurt him politically. For the first time, administration officials had to defend the remarkable escalation of the Indochina conflict and reply to questions about if the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was justified. There had been nothing like it since the Army/McCarthy hearings and there would be nothing like it again until the Watergate hearings.
Average Americans now began to be informed about how America got into an open-ended conflict that had seemingly escalated beyond what anyone had ever thought it could be. But perhaps most importantly, the hearings dramatically illustrated the formula for the following:
…what had happened to turn the liberal supporters of President Kennedy into opponents of the policies of President Johnson…and the right-wing opponents of Eisenhower and Kennedy into supporters of the present administration… (Goulden, p. 166)
In other words, how Johnson had fragmented the Democratic Party beyond saving.
Neither Califano’s book nor the CNN series figuratively lifts up the hood to show the audience just how Johnson was finally convinced to get out of Indochina. Since they will not, the present reviewer shall. After the Tet offensive, and during the siege of Khe Sanh, several foreign policy luminaries were asked to attend a Pentagon briefing at the White House—after which LBJ ranted and raved for about 45 minutes. This compelled former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to walk out. A White House staffer called him and asked him why he left. Being blunt, Acheson told him to “Shove Vietnam up your ass!” Johnson got on the phone and Acheson told him he would no longer listen to “canned briefings.” He only wanted to hear from people on the scene in Vietnam and would only accept raw data, not finished reports. About a month after this, Johnson sent his new Secretary of Defense over to the Pentagon. Clark Clifford went over the data and then quizzed the Joint Chiefs on the overall situation on the ground. He concluded that the only way to win the war was to expand it into Cambodia and Laos. Clifford reported back to Johnson that he should get out; Vietnam was a hopeless mess. (Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men, pp. 683–89; see also Clifford in the documentary film Hearts and Minds.)
That is apparently too strong a truth for CNN and Bat Bridge Entertainment, which tells the reader a lot about the value and candor of this disappointing production. The program ends with the Richard Nixon/Anna Chennault subterfuge of Johnson’s attempt at a truce in Vietnam—which was about four years too late. (Click here for details)
In sum, this is a disappointing and less-than-candid four-part series about Johnson and his presidency. These kinds of programs make it difficult to understand the past, and therefore stifle our attempts to deal with the present.
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Michael Kazin and the NY Review vs JFK
Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown. The New York Review of Books is a leftwing, tabloid formatted political, cultural, and intellectual review. It specializes in contemporary political events, books, and the arts. In their May 27th issue, this respected publication allowed Mr. Kazin to do something that should have been prevented. Kazin was supposed to be reviewing part one of Fredrik Logevall’s, two volume biography of John F. Kennedy, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century.
What’s disturbing about Kazin’s review is this: it is not a review. After reviewing books for approximately two decades—and studying literary criticism for longer than that—I understand what the process entails. The most important thing about critiquing a book is an analysis of the text of the book. What that means is the critic describes what the author has written and analyzes both what is there and also what the author left out that might have altered his argument. When that process is completed, the critic evaluates the book in relation to other works in the field as a measure of value. Of course, there are many, many biographies of John F. Kennedy that Kazin could have used as a measuring rod.
What is striking about Kazin’s review is that it is really a polemic against John Kennedy. Kazin used Logevall’s book as a springboard to trash the man and his career. One can easily detect this by noting how much of Kazin’s “review” deals with matters outside the time frame of the book, which only goes up to 1956. In fact, one can see what the “reviewer” is up to in his first sentence:
Why, nearly six decades after his murder, do Americans still care so much about and, for the most part, continue to think so highly of John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
If one has to ask that question, then obviously one is about to assault those people who do so. Kazin follows that up by pulling a page out of the Larry Sabato/Robert Dallek playbook. He now writes that Kennedy achieved little of lasting significance in his presidency.
Again, please note: this is a review of a book that only extends itself to 1956. But Kazin is now talking about something Logevall has not gotten to yet. Beyond that, he is making a judgment about the years that the book does not address! Clearly, Kazin has an uncontrollable agenda about the Kennedy years in the White House that his editors allowed him to spew. He more or less writes that Kennedy achieved nothing of value either domestically or in foreign policy. I would think that signing two executive orders for affirmative action in his first year would count as something of value. (Irving Bernstein, Promises Kept, p. 56) After all, no previous president had done that. In foreign policy, I would think that constructing the Alliance for Progress and refusing to recognize the military overthrow of the democratically elected Juan Bosch in Dominican Republic would be something to address.
But if Kazin did note just those two things about Kennedy’s foreign policy, then he would create a polemical problem for himself, because then the reader would ask: What happened to those two programs? The answer would be that Lyndon Johnson pretty much neutralized both of them. (Click here for details)
In the last instance, concerning Dominican Republic, LBJ did more than that. In 1965, he launched an invasion to preserve the military junta and prevent Bosch from regaining power,which was a clear reversal of what Kennedy’s policy was. (Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street, pp. 78–79) Pretty clever guy that Kazin.
As one can see from the above linked article, Bobby Kennedy was very upset about what Johnson had done to the Alliance for Progress. As was RFK, Senator William Fulbright was beside himself about the Dominican Republic invasion. Fulbright’s staff had done some research by consulting sources on the ground. They concluded that Johnson had lied about the true state of affairs, especially concerning alleged atrocities by Bosch’s forces. (Joseph Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty, p. 166)
That Johnson deception in the Caribbean paralleled another, even larger one: the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. In fact, it was Fulbright’s outrage over LBJ’s subterfuge in the Dominican Republic that provoked him into reviewing what Johnson had done to get America into Vietnam. One of Fulbright’s staffers, Carl Marcy, had reviewed both instances and he now believed Johnson had lied about each. He wrote a memo to Fulbright about it. He concluded that what Johnson had done in the last 24 months helped explain what happened to:
…turn the liberal supporters of President Kennedy into opponents of the policies of President Johnson, and the rightwing opponents of Eisenhower and Kennedy into avid supporters of the present administration. (ibid)
Feeling that he had been suckered, in 1966 Fulbright began his famous televised hearings on the Vietnam War. This is what began to split the Democratic Party asunder and aided the election of Richard Nixon. This is why it was smart for Kazin not to go there.
The above points out just how wildly askew Kazin is in foreign policy. But as far as domestic policy goes, in addition to the two affirmative action laws, Kennedy granted federal employees the right to form unions and, by 1967, there were 1.2 million who had joined. That idea then spread to state and local government. In 1962, Kennedy signed the Manpower Development and Training Act aimed to alleviate African-American unemployment. In April of that year, Kennedy went on national television to begin what economist John Blair later termed “the most dramatic confrontation in history between a president and a corporate management.” (Gibson, p. 9) This was Kennedy’s battle against the steel companies who had reneged on an agreement he had worked out with them between management and labor. Kennedy prevailed after his brother, the attorney general, began legal proceedings against the steel cartel. If Kazin can indicate to me a recent president who has made such an address against another corporation or group of aligned businesses, I would like to hear it.
In 1962, Kennedy tried to pass a Medicare bill. It was defeated by a coalition of conservative southern senators and the AMA. At the time of his death, Kennedy was planning to revive the bill through Congressman Wilbur Mills. (Bernstein, pp. 246–59) But also, on June 13, 1963, Kennedy made a speech to the National Council of Senior Citizens. This was part of those remarks:
There isn’t a country in Western Europe that didn’t do what we are doing 50 years ago or 40 years ago, not a single country that is not way ahead of this rich productive, progressive country of ours. We are not suggesting something radical and new or violent. We are not suggesting that the government come between the doctors and his patient. We are suggesting what every other major, developed, intelligent country did for its people a generation ago. I think it’s time the United States caught up.
In fact, one can argue that Kennedy proposed universal healthcare way before Barack Obama did. All one has to do is just look at this speech:
How did Professor Kazin miss that one? It didn’t take deep research. After all, it’s on YouTube. Please note: in this speech Kennedy talks about how progressive goals for the public can be attained through government leadership and action.
By 1960, because of his vote to table the measure, it was established that Richard Nixon was not going to advocate for federal aid to education. President Kennedy favored such aid and appointed a task force to study the issue. (Bernstein, p. 224) By October of 1963, Congress had passed the first federal aid to education bill since 1945. It would be signed into law by President Johnson.
That last sentence is also apropos of the War on Poverty. It was not Lyndon Johnson who originated the War on Poverty, it was John Kennedy. Kennedy was influenced by the publication of Michael Harrington’s book The Other America. This provoked Kennedy to begin a series of talks with his economic advisor Walter Heller concerning the subject of how best to attack poverty. (Thurston Clarke, JFK’s Last Hundred Days, pp. 242–43) Kennedy decided he would make this an election issue and he would visit several blighted areas to bring it to national attention.
Bobby Kennedy set his close friend David Hackett to actually study the problem of geographical areas of poverty and how it caused juvenile delinquency. (Edward Schmitt, President of the Other America, p. 68) In fact, JFK had allotted millions for demonstration projects to study possible cures for the problem. Hackett was also allowed a staff of 12 to do investigations and research for him. (Allen Matusow, The Unraveling of America, pp. 111–12) At his final meeting with his cabinet, Kennedy mentioned the word “poverty” six times. Jackie Kennedy took the notes of that meeting to Bobby Kennedy after her husband’s death. The attorney general had them framed and placed on his wall. (Schmitt, pp. 92, 96)
So, between Heller and Hackett, and his plans around the 1964 election, the president seemed off to a good start. It took very little time for Johnson to place his own stamp on the program. Over RFK’s protests, Johnson removed Hackett from his position. (Matusow, p. 123) Heller resigned in 1964 in a dispute over the Vietnam War. LBJ then did something really odd. He appointed Sargent Shriver to run the War on Poverty. As Harris Wofford notes, everyone was puzzled by the decision to retire Hackett and replace him with Shriver, for the simple reason that Shriver already had a job in the administration: running the Peace Corps. (Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings, p. 286) Consequently, the management of the program suffered. By 1968, Shriver had gone to Paris to serve as ambassador and LBJ had more or less abandoned the program. (Matusow, p. 270)
This relates to the whole shopworn mythology that Kazin uses on the race issue. If anything shows his almost monomaniacal obsession, it’s this. Recall, Logevall’s book goes up to 1956. Kazin says that young JFK avoided the race issue for purposes of politics. Then how does one explain that in 1956 Kennedy made these remarks in New York:
The Democratic party must not weasel on the issue…President Truman was returned to the White House in 1948 despite a firm stand on civil rights that led to a third party in the South. We might alienate Southern support, but the Supreme Court decision is the law of the land.
Again, it takes no deep research to find this speech, because it was printed on page 1 of the New York Times of February 8, 1956. Kennedy did the same thing the next year in, of all places, Jackson, Mississippi. He said the Brown v. Board decision must be upheld. (Harry Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, p. 95) How could doing such a thing gain him political advantage in that state? As author Harry Golden notes, at this point Kennedy began to lose support in the south and to receive angry letters over his advocacy for the Brown decision.
It was obvious what Senator Kennedy was pointing at: President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon were not supporting Brown vs. Board. In fact, as many historians have noted, Eisenhower had advised Earl Warren to vote against the case. (The Atlantic, “Commander vs Chief”, 3/19/18) The other civil rights issue that Kazin brings up is even fruitier. His complaint is that Kennedy did not try and pass his own civil rights bill in the Senate. Kennedy was elected to the Senate in 1952 and Lyndon Johnson became the senate Democratic leader in 1953. LBJ became the Majority Leader in 1954. As most knowledgeable people know, Johnson voted against every civil rights bill ever proposed in Congress from the time he was first voted into the House in 1937. Was the junior senator from Massachusetts going to override the powerful Majority Leader from his own party? It was Johnson and Eisenhower who were responsible for fashioning a civil rights bill. And they didn’t.
After Eisenhower had been humiliated by Republican governor Orval Faubus during the Little Rock Crisis at Central High in 1957, he tried to save face. He and Nixon sent up a draft for a Civil Rights Commission to investigate abuses. The concept behind it was to split the Democratic Party: Norther liberals vs Southern conservatives. Johnson cooperated by watering down the bill even more to prevent the schism. Why did LBJ cooperate? Because he was thinking of running for the presidency and he saw what being against the issue had done to his mentor Richard Russell’s national ambitions. Senator Kennedy did not like the bill; he thought it was too weak. Johnson had to personally lobby JFK to get him to sign on. (Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon Johnson: The Exercise of Power, pp. 122–25; 136–7) In a letter to a constituent, Kennedy wrote that he regretted doing so and hoped to be able to get a real bill one day with real teeth.
From the day he entered the White House, Kennedy was looking to write such a bill. Advised by Wofford that such legislation would not pass in the first or second year, he did what he could through executive actions and help from the judiciary. He then submitted a bill in February of 1963. As Clay Risen shows in his book The Bill of the Century, it was not Johnson who managed to get it through. This was and is a myth. JFK began with a tremendous lobbying effort himself. After he was assassinated, it was Bobby Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and Republican senator Thomas Kuchel who were the major forces to finally overcome the southern filibuster. Also, as most knowledgeable people know, it was not Johnson who managed to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That was owed to Martin Luther King’s galvanizing demonstration in Selma, Alabama. Johnson could not get an extension of Kennedy’s housing act through either. It was the occasion of King’s assassination that allowed it to pass.
Plain and simple: Kennedy did more for civil rights than FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower combined. That is an historical fact. (Click here for the short version and here for the long version)
Kazin writes something that I had to read twice to believe. He says that in his congressional races, from 1946–58, Kennedy never said or did “anything that might annoy his largely Catholic, increasingly conservative white base In Massachusetts.” I just noted his 1956 speech about civil rights in New York. But just as important, as readers of this web site know, from his visit to Saigon in 1951 and onward, Kennedy spoke out strongly against the establishment views of both Democrats and Republicans on the Cold War, especially as it was fought in the Third World. Kennedy assailed both the policies of Dean Acheson and John Foster Dulles as being out of touch and counter-productive in the struggles of former colonies to become free of imperialist influence. He noted this in 1956 during the presidential campaign:
…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, has 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. (Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, p. 18)
Kennedy’s five year campaign to find an alternative Cold War foreign policy culminated with his famous Algeria speech the next year. There, he assailed both parties for not seeing that support of the French colonial regime would ultimately result in the same conclusion that occurred three years previous at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina. Kennedy’s speech was such a harsh attack on the administration that it was widely commented on in newspapers and journals. The vast majority of editorials, scores of them, decried the speech in no uncertain terms, as did Eisenhower, Foster Dulles, Nixon, and Acheson. But it made him a hero to the peoples of the Third World, especially in Africa. (Mahoney, pp. 20–24) This completely undermines another comment by Kazin: that Kennedy had “to surrender to the exigencies of cold war politics and the ideological make up of his party as he rose to the top of it.” As John Shaw wrote in his study of Kennedy’s senate years, JFK’s challenge to Foster Dulles allowed him to become a leader in foreign policy for his party and “to outline his own vision for America’s role in the world,” which Kennedy then enacted once he was in the White House. (JFK in the Senate, p.110) These were almost systematically reversed by Johnson. (Click here for details)
Toward the end of his article, Kazin goes off the rails. He says there is no memorial statue of JFK in Washington. Well Mike, there is none of Truman or FDR either. He says there is no holiday for JFK. Again, there is none for Franklin Roosevelt either. And they have recently combined the Lincoln and Washington holidays into a single President’s Day. He also says that President Joseph Biden made no mention of the Kennedys in his campaign or during his brief presidency. Biden did make reference to RFK as his hero in law school, more than once. (See for example NBC news story of August 23, 2019, on a speech Biden gave in New Hampshire.) And Biden has RFK’s bust in the Oval Office and he transported a wall painting of President Kennedy from Boston to place in his study.
If Kazin did not know any of the above, then it must be pretty easy to get tenure at Georgetown. If he did and ignored it all, then his editors should have never let this travesty pass. It does a disservice to the readers and it should be corrected. In a fundamental and pernicious way, it misinforms the public.
Addendum:
We urge our readers to write Mr. Kazin and complain to the NY Review of Books. There is no excuse for this kind of display of factual and academic ignorance and arrogance.
JFK addressed the definition of a liberal and why he was one in a 1960 campaign speech. This speech is a good source to reference in any response to Mr. Kazin. (Click here for details)
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Why the Vietnam War? by Michael Swanson
In 2013, Michael Swanson wrote an interesting and unique book called The War State. That volume focused on the formation of the military industrial complex (MIC) right after World War II. One of the most important parts of the book was its description of Paul Nitze as a chief architect of that complex. Swanson detailed his role in the writing of NSC–68 and, later, the Gaither Report. Those two documents played key parts in constructing a massive atomic arsenal by wildly exaggerating the threat the USSR posed to America. They were also influential in the maintenance of a large standing army in peacetime, something America had not done after previous wars. The author also showed how crucial FDR’s death was to the rise of this deliberately alarmist illusion and how GOP Senator Bob Taft tried to resist it. He closed that work with Dwight Eisenhower’s memorable speech warning about the dangers of the MIC and President Kennedy’s dodging its attempts to persuade him to use American forces to attack Cuba during the Bay of Pigs episode and the Missile Crisis. (For my review, click here)
Swanson has now written what is clearly a companion volume. Why the Vietnam War? focuses on what the French termed Indochina and how America entered that colonial conflict after France was defeated. Quite rightly, in the opening section of the book, he scores the 2017 Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary mini-series on the subject. He says that it devoted only one episode to the key period he will devote himself to, 1945–1960. He terms the series itself more about:
the culture wars that began during those years of peak American involvement in the war and less about the causes of the war—much less any real lessons that can be drawn from it… (Swanson, pp. 17–18)
Swanson is accurate as far as he goes. But I would go further. The Burns/Novick series was actually a kiss on the cheek to the forces that have tried so hard to place lipstick and mascara on the epochal disaster that took place in Indochina. That disaster was a result of, first, American support for France and, then, direct American involvement in the second part of the war. Any series that can deal with the formative years of American involvement without mentioning the name of Ed Lansdale or Operation Vulture, and then deals with the actual fighting of the war by discounting the Mylai Massacre, that production is serving as an appendage for the forces who wish to whitewash what happened there. (Click here for details) In fact, those forces do not want anyone to learn anything from the epic tragedy that was enacted as a result of direct American involvement. (Click here for my review)
This refusal by the media and our political leaders allowed George W. Bush to pretty much repeat what Lyndon Johnson did. In 1965, Johnson used a deliberate deception to commit direct American intervention—including combat troops—into Vietnam. In 2003, Bush used a deliberate deception to commit direct American intervention—including combat troops—into Iraq. In the first instance, the deception was an alleged unjustified attack in open seas by North Vietnam on an innocent American patrol ship (i.e. the Tonkin Gulf Incident). In 2003, the deception was that Saddam Hussein possessed, and could use, Weapons of Mass Destruction. In both instances, neither the media, nor our elected representatives, supplied any kind of countervailing inquiry, in order to prevent two disastrous wars. In this author’s opinion—and likely Swanson’s—the Burns/Novick pastiche helps enable the possibility it will happen a third time.
II
The French first took control of Vietnam in the 1850’s; they then annexed Cambodia and Laos before the end of the century. (Swanson, p. 20) France treated Indochina as an economic colony creating monopolies on opium, salt, and alcohol. They constructed rubber plantations and mined zinc, copper, and coal. The work lasted from 6 am to 6 pm and the overseers used batons to beat anyone they thought was lazy. The colonizers also recruited informers to squeal on those who wished to rebel or organize resistance. They also taxed the colonists and sent the funds back to France. (Swanson, p. 22)
There had been periodic resistance by the Vietnamese against both China and France. But the epochal event in the anti-colonial struggle was the French defat by the Third Reich in 1940. That shockingly quick loss allowed Japan, Germany’s Axis ally, to take over Indochina. But, in large part, Japan allowed the French to stay on as managers.
In 1944, Japan took direct control. The OSS sent a man named Archimedes Patti (true name) to work against Japan and set up an intelligence unit in the area. Patti was aware that Franklin Roosevelt did not want to continue colonialism after the war. In fact, FDR told the Russians that one reason he wanted to disband colonialism was to avoid future wars for national liberation. (Swanson, pp. 25, 26)
Since this was the aim, the OSS contacted Ho Chi Minh to know what he needed for his resistance movement and Ho met with Gen. Claire Chennault of Flying Tigers fame. (Ibid, pp. 31,32) For a brief time, Ho actually worked with the OSS and they supplied him with small arms. Patti was very impressed by the resistance leader and wanted the USA to support him against Japan. Patti also met with Vo Nguyen Giap, the future military commander of the Viet Minh. How close was the OSS to Ho Chi Minh? They actually saved his life when he was sick with malaria. (Swanson, p. 41)
Once Japan was defeated, the plan was to have the Nationalist Chinese occupy the north, while the British occupied the south. (Swanson, p. 48) Everyone realized this was only a prelude to escorting the Japanese out and unifying the country. In fact, Ho and his followers had already designed a flag for Vietnam. He also went to work on a Declaration of Independence.
It was not to be. The British, the largest colonizers on the globe, betrayed their trusteeship for their wartime ally, France. (Swanson, pp. 56–58) This caused a rebellion among Ho’s followers, the Viet Minh. England then asked the Japanese to aid their fight to put down the Viet Minh. Douglas MacArthur said about this reversal:
If there is anything that makes my blood boil, it is to see our allies in Indochina and Java deploying Japanese troops to reconquer these little people we promised to liberate. It is the most ignoble kind of betrayal. (Swanson, p. 61)
Hundreds of Viet Minh were killed in this struggle. The British commander, Douglas Gracey, left in late January of 1946. The French now returned. Ho tried to negotiate independence with the French. Those negotiations failed, as did a cease-fire attempt. (Swanson, p. 74) France now began to shell Haiphong and occupy Hanoi in the north. In December of 1946, Giap began a terrific assault on the latter city. That siege is usually designated as the beginning of the French Indochina War.
III
In 1947, the French talked their stand-in, Bao Dai, into returning as governor. (Swanson, p. 74) At around this time, Ho Chi Minh had approximately 60,000 troops and a million local reservists at his disposal. After his failure to take Hanoi, Giap decided to fight a passive/aggressive war, while building his forces to equal those of the French. (Swanson, p. 75) What is extraordinary about Giap’s early effort was that there was really little aid given to Giap by China, and less by Russia, in the early years.
In fact, Stalin did not recognize Ho’s government at first. This changed in 1950. Swanson describes a visit to Moscow by Ho at this time. (Swanson, pp. 76–77) He then states that it was in 1950 that both the USSR and China officially recognized Ho’s government. But I think there was something else that could have been elucidated about this important time frame.
As the Pentagon Papers state, in early 1950, France “took the first concrete steps toward transferring public administration to Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam.” (Pentagon Papers, complete collection, Vol. 1, p. A–7) This infuriated Ho, since he considered Bao Dai nothing but a puppet. Now Stalin and Mao Zedong recognized Ho, and Stalin instructed him that China would be aiding him most at the start. (Swanson, p. 77)
This triggered a reaction by Washington. As Swanson notes, the 1947 announcement by the new president of the eponymous Truman Doctrine—which was based on George Kennan’s Long Telegram—signaled an end to Roosevelt’s neutralism toward nations emerging from colonialism. The team of Harry Truman and Secretary of State Dean Acheson strongly differed with Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull on both Russia and the Third World. Therefore, when China and Russia extended recognition to Ho, Acheson now officially reversed the prior American policy of neutralism in Indochina. (Op. Cit. Pentagon Papers) Acheson now made a public statement in this regard:
The recognition by the Kremlin of Ho Chi Minh’s communist government in Indochina comes as a surprise. The Soviet acknowledgement of this movement should remove any illusion as to the “nationalist” nature of Ho Chi Minh’s aims and reveal Ho in his true colors as the mortal enemy of native independence in Indochina.
Acheson then went further. He said that Paris bestowing administrative powers on Bao Dai would lead “toward stable governments representing the true nationalist sentiments of more than 20 million peoples of Indochina.” (Ibid) This was an absurd statement. But it constituted a milestone. Not only would Truman and Acheson be abandoning FDR and Hull, they would be reversing that policy. Anyone cognizant of the history of the area would realize that Bao Dai was simply a figurehead for Paris. It was an insult to say he represented “native independence.” But Truman followed Acheson’s lead and said America also recognized the French mandarin as leader of Vietnam. Consequently, France requested funds for this colonial regime. On May 8, 1950, Acheson complied by saying the area was under threat from Soviet imperialism, which was more full-blown Cold War malarkey. (Op. Cit., Pentagon Papers, p. A–8) This groundbreaking reversal was one more example of what Anthony Eden called the incalculable foreign policy calamity that took place upon Roosevelt’s death. (Frank Costigliola, Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, p. 2) Swanson gets the general outline, but I wish he had been a little more precise about it.
Giap’s overall strategy proved successful. Even with Truman giving tens of millions to the French effort to reinstall colonialism, by 1951, Giap was in control of the countryside. When John Kennedy visited Saigon in that year, Giap had bases 25 miles outside the city. (Swanson, p. 67) In fact, the French had to install anti-grenade nests over restaurants and terraces. Swanson notes young Kennedy’s talks with reporter Seymour Topping and American diplomat Edmund Gullion. Both men revealed they had deep misgivings about the French effort. They did not think it would succeed and the war had now turned the Vietnamese against America. During his talk with the French commander there, Kennedy expressed so many reservations about their cause that the Frenchman filed a complaint with the American embassy about the impetuous congressman. (Swanson, p. 68) When the congressman returned to Boston, he made a speech warning about America tying itself to the desperate effort of France to hold on to its overseas empire.
IV
To disguise the betrayal of FDR’s neutralism and counter the beginning of Kennedy’s crusade—which will culminate in 1957 with his Algeria speech contra another doomed French colonial effort—the ploy used was the Domino Theory. (Swanson, pp. 86—87) This was the idea that, somehow, if America allowed one country in southeast Asia to go communist, it would cause a chain reaction that could extend out as far as the Philippines. It was propounded forcefully by President Dwight Eisenhower.
What Swanson notes here is that, in spite of this posture, many prominent people simply did not believe the Domino Theory. And he lists high ranking Republicans like senators Barry Goldwater, Everett Dirksen, and Richard Russell. The amount of money America contributed to the French effort rose significantly when Eisenhower became president. And these three men objected to it. As Russell said of the expenditures:
You are pouring it down a rathole; the worst mess we ever got into, this Vietnam. The President has decided it. I’m not going to say a word of criticism. I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I’ll tell you right now we are in for something that is going to be one of the worst things this country ever got into. (Swanson, p. 97)
To put it mildly, these were prophetic words. Under Truman, America was giving tens of millions to the French war effort. Under Eisenhower, that figure soared into the hundreds of millions. It all culminated in the siege of Dien Bien Phu. Realizing their strategy there had been effectively countered by Giap, the French now pleaded for even more help to stave off a disastrous defeat. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Vice President Richard Nixon, and Admiral Arthur Radford all agreed the USA should offer the help, whether it be the insertion of American ground troops or Operation Vulture. The latter was the deployment of a huge air armada including atomic weapons. (Swanson, pp. 102–04)
Eisenhower would only go along with Vulture if we could get England to endorse it. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden would not approve the scheme. One reason he would not is he did not see Vietnam as being that important; another being he did not buy the Domino Theory. (Swanson, p. 108) Swanson does a good enough job on all this international intrigue, but I wish he would have included the part where, after Eden and Ike turned down the plan, Foster Dulles offered the atomic bombs to the French—and it appears he did so without the president’s authorization. (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 245) They turned him down on the grounds the bombs would kill as many of their troops as the Viet Minh.
Dien Bien Phu fell in May of 1954. There was no domino reaction.
But Foster Dulles did react. Two days later, Dulles had a meeting with several military chiefs, one of them being Radford. The discussion centered on this question: Now that the French were gone, who would be the major power in Asia? Would it be China or the USA? (Swanson, p. 109) At this meeting, Radford was very clear that America’s enemy in Asia was now China. Unless America went after China, they would be free to spread communism throughout the continent, including Indonesia. Swanson interprets Radford’s belligerence retroactively. He now sees Radford’s Vulture plan as a way of checking China.
At this meeting, Foster Dulles admitted that the Domino Theory was not valid in Vietnam. But he saw his new duty as enlisting allies in an alliance against China. Nixon felt a soft policy against China would not work; it would allow China to dominate Asia. Foster Dulles decided that at the upcoming peace conference ending the French Indochina War, the USA would only pay lip service to the ostensible agreement. They were not going to let the Geneva Accords allow for a vote that would unify the country, since they knew Ho Chi Minh would win that election. (Swanson, p. 114)
At Geneva, the Chinese advised Ho Chi Minh to accept the partition of Vietnam. The reason being that Zhou EnLai did not want to fight another Korean War against the USA. (Swanson, pp. 124–25) Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, Director of the CIA, took control of decision making in Saigon. They employed legendary black operator Colonel Ed Lansdale to create this new country of South Vietnam, one that had not existed before. CIA official Bob Amory picked up the name of Ngo Dinh Diem from William O. Douglas. Amory then passed it on to Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles. And that is how Lansdale then chose the leader for this newly created country. (Swanson, pp. 128–29) Bao Dai agreed to appoint Diem as prime minister. Diem now denounced the Geneva Accords as non-binding. Lansdale quickly shuffled Bao Dai offstage by rigging elections for Diem. Diem would poll over 98% of the vote, garnering more votes than people who had registered in a district, which, of course, made a mockery of the whole electoral process. (Ibid, p. 128) This new country of South Vietnam was a creation of the United States and it was not at all a democracy. All this was done to deny an election that Eisenhower and Foster Dulles knew Ho Chi Minh would win.
The real story, not reported in the papers or on television, is that America had created a dictatorship.
V
The best book I have read about Diem is Seth Jacobs’ Cold War Mandarin. Both Jacobs and Swanson note the importance of Wesley FIshel to the rise of Diem’s career in the United States. FIshel was an academic who participated in US involvement in Asian affairs. (Jacobs, pp. 25–26) What made Diem attractive to Fishel was the fact that he was against both the French and the Viet Minh. Because of this opposition, Diem left Vietnam and began to ingratiate himself with as many luminaries as he could: Fishel, Douglas MacArthur, Cardinal Francis Spellman, and Pope Pius XII. The last two owed to the fact he was a Catholic. By early 1951, Diem was being interviewed by no less than Dean Acheson to get his input as to what was really going on In Vietnam—where the USA was now tied to a French colonial war. (Jacobs, p. 28) Acheson was impressed and Diem settled in for a long American stay.
Because of his Catholic background, Spellman offered him free lodging at Maryknoll Seminary in Lakewood, New Jersey. From this base, he went out on a speaking tour to colleges and universities in the East and Midwest, extolling his anti-French and anti-Viet Minh stance. FIshel got Diem a consultancy at Michigan State. As Jacobs notes, there was no university in the nation that was as dedicated as MSU to joining forces with the CIA and Pentagon in fighting the Cold War. Once the program was installed there, Diem and Fishel began the most ambitious of all the university’s programs in regards to nation building. (Jacobs, p. 30)
It was at New York’s Yale Club in late 1951 where Diem met Justice Douglas. Douglas advised not just Robert Amory about the viability of Diem as a leader in Vietnam, but also Senator Mike Mansfield. Mansfield had been a professor of Asian history prior to becoming a senator, therefore his views on the subject carried some weight. In 1953, Douglas invited Spellman, Mansfield, and Senator John Kennedy to a luncheon for Diem at the Supreme Court building. (Jacobs, p. 31) During his speech, Diem complained that there had to be an alternative to the French and the Viet Minh, and if there was, it would be the driving force behind an independent Vietnam. Such a cause would give the people of that country something to fight for. Whereas the French found Diem unappealing, obsolete, and even stupid, somehow, with Spellman’s backing, he became popular in America.
The timing, of course, was quite advantageous for Spellman. France was about to lose their colonial struggle at Dien Bien Phu. The Dulles brothers, Nixon, and Eisenhower had sunk 300 million into their winning this battle under General Henri Navarre. After making such an investment, that brain trust was not going to let Ho Chi Minh take command. And since Diem had been campaigning for three years, he was the natural choice to install as America’s mandarin. As Jacobs notes, what is surprising in reviewing the record is that there was really never any debate about this. (Jacobs, p. 33) Diem was popular in the proper echelons in America. There never seemed to be any question about whether or not his popularity would transfer to VIetnam, which was well over 60% Buddhist.
Diem arrived in Saigon in June of 1954. He made no speech at the airport and the windows of his car were closed as he departed. (Swanson, p. 136) He now occupied the presidential palace with his brother Nhu and Nhu’s wife, Madame Nhu. The latter’s father became ambassador to Washington and her uncle became minister of foreign affairs. Eisenhower and Foster Dulles appropriated tens of millions to construct an army for him. Yet, almost at the outset, Ambassador Don Heath cabled Washington that Diem was the wrong man for the job. At this point, the Pentagon more or less agreed with Heath. They doubted if Diem could rally the populace around him and if he could not, “no amount of external pressure and assistance can long delay compete communist victory in South Vietnam.” (Swanson, p. 147) These ominous and well-founded warnings were ignored.
Unlike Ho, Diem did not seem interested in making the lives of the peasantry easier. What he seemed to be interested in was consolidating his power. As noted above, Bao Dai was dispensed with first. Diem and Nhu then plotted to do away with the underworld drug organization, the Binh Xuyen. With the help of the army, they did. (Swanson, p. 159)
Lansdale was Diem’s chief patron. In addition to rigging elections, he devised a propaganda operation to transfer one million Catholics south, in order to bolster Diem. (Jacobs, pp. 52–53) National Assembly candidates had to be first approved by Diem before they ran. The major party, the Can Lao, was run by Nhu. Diem and Nhu, now that they were secured by Lansdale, began to imprison and torture tens of thousands they thought could pose a threat to their regime. This included beheadings and disembowelings. (Jacobs, p.90) South Vietnam was, for all intents and purposes, a one-party state and that one party was founded by and supervised by Nhu and it also controlled the press. The constitution gave Diem the ability to rule by decree and change existing laws.
As partly noted above, Diem took nepotism to new standards. Madame Nhu, the first lady, also served as a member of the assembly and headed the Women’s Solidarity Movement, a female militia. Another brother, Ngo Din Tuc, was the most powerful religious leader in the country. Diem’s youngest brother was ambassador to the United Kingdom. (Jacobs, pp. 86, 89)
The puzzling thing about the above is that, in these formative years, Diem received the nearly unalloyed backing of both the American press and the Establishment. His regime worked with Fishel at MSU, but also with the Brookings Institute and the Ford Foundation. (Swanson, p. 172) From 1955–61, the USA sent his government two billion dollars. With all this power behind him, Diem appointed province and district chiefs. (Jacobs, p. 90) Yet Diem did not redistribute land. He simply moved peasants to unpopulated areas—and they were not given title. He was attempting to build a human wall along border areas. And like the French, he posted taxes on the property. Diem also used land transfers to enrich himself. (Swanson, pp. 172–75) The net result of all this, as both Swanson and Jacobs note, is that he was not able to establish any kind of loyal following among the peasant class, which made them easy targets for, first, the Viet Minh and, later, the Viet Cong. By 1960, the political arm of the Viet Cong was formed, called the NLF or National Liberation Front. This failure contributed to the creeping Americanization of the war.
VI
Swanson now begins to focus on a character who was central in insisting that America become directly involved in Vietnam: Walt Rostow. From his earliest days in academia—Harvard and MIT—Rostow was a rabid critic of Karl Marx and despised the doctrine of communism. At MIT, Walt became involved with the Center for International Studies (CENIS), a think tank devised as a method of getting MIT involved with the Cold War. (Swanson, pp. 194–195) In fact, even though he was a Democrat, he was discouraged by Eisenhower’s refusal to commit American ground troops to save the siege of Dien Bien Phu. He wrote several books and articles for CENIS. His most famous book was The Stages of Economic Growth. As Rostow told his friend C. D. Jackson, that volume was designed to counter Marx and show that economic progress in the Third World would lead not “to a communist end game utopia, but to a corporate capitalist end point.” (Swanson, p. 196) John Kennedy liked the aspect of Rostow’s philosophy that promoted the importance of utilizing foreign aid for democratic ends in the Third World.
John Kennedy’s ideas about Vietnam overall, and South Vietnam in particular, differed from the Dulles brothers and also with what they had let Diem construct in South Vietnam. Senator Kennedy talked about offering the people in the area a revolution, one that was peaceful, democratic, and locally controlled. (Swanson, p. 215) As Swanson has demonstrated, that is not what Lansdale, Diem, and the Dulles brothers had created. When he became president, Kennedy resisted overtures by people like Lansdale and Rostow to utilize direct American involvement in theater. After the Bay of Pigs debacle, he tended to discount the input from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired CIA Director Allen Dulles. The president now turned to people like speech writer Ted Sorenson, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and military aide General Maxwell Taylor for advice.
Swanson spends many pages on describing the situation in Laos, next door to Vietnam. I found this part of the book quite helpful in understanding both Indochina, the ideas of the Joint Chiefs, and why Kennedy resisted them.
Kennedy appointed a task force to study Laos and make recommendations about the country. Laos was newly formed in 1954, when it was carved out of French Indochina as a result of the Geneva Accords. It was a landlocked country of two million people. In 1954, the main vectors of power were the Royal Laotian government, the Pathet Lao, and the remnants of the French regime there. Charles Yost was the American ambassador and the embassy consisted of two rooms. (Swanson, p. 239) Prince Souvanna Phouma wanted no part of the Cold War. Prince Souphanouvong was his half-brother and he was the leader of the leftist Pathet Lao, located mostly in the northern part of the country. Because of this relationship, the prince thought he could form a working relationship with the Pathet Lao.
Washington did not care for the idea, but what made the resistance to the idea puzzling was there so little to fight over in Laos. Ninety percent of the populace lived off self-sufficient farming. But yet, Foster Dulles decided to send them five times the country’s GNP in foreign aid. (ibid, p. 240) Before leaving the country, Yost suggested a partition, but no military aid. That was ignored and he left due to illness.
Allen Dulles decided to set up a CIA station there. The Pentagon now set up a 22-man military outpost. This in a country where most of the people did not use the national currency and all but 10 per cent were illiterate. They did not even know what the Cold War was. In fact, Souvanna Phouma told the new ambassador, Graham Parsons, that the Pathet Lao were not communists. (Swanson, p. 249) In the face of this native advice, the CIA created a Cold War in Laos. Souvanna was blackballed and the CIA head of station, Henry Hecksher, invented something called the Committee for the Defense of National Interests (CDNI). Hecksher’s creation forced the prince to resign as Prime Minister. (Swanson, p. 253) The CDNI backed Colonel Phoumi Nosovan, who took power in late December of 1959. America now expanded its military mission there to 515 men. Allen Dulles assigned Phoumi a case officer, Jack Hasey. (John Newman, JFK and Vietnam, Second Edition, p. 13)
Colonel Kong Le did not like the rapid polarization and disintegration of Laos. He supplanted Phoumi in August of 1960, declared Laos neutral, and invited Souvanna to return, which he did. (Swanson, p. 256) Allen Dulles now told Eisenhower that Kong Le was a Castro type communist, which he was not. Ambassador Winthrop Brown agreed with Kong Le that Laos should be neutral. It did not matter. In December of 1960, Kong Le was displaced and the CIA and Pentagon returned Phoumi to power. This drove Kong Le and his neutralists into the arms of the Pathet Lao, who were now getting aid from Hanoi. (Newman, p. 13)
This is the messy situation that Eisenhower had left for Kennedy in Laos. What makes it even more startling is this: on January 19, 1960, the day before JFK’s inauguration, Eisenhower told Kennedy something that, in retrospect, is rather astonishing. Ike told him that Laos was the key to all Southeast Asia. If Laos fell, America would have to write off the entire area. (Newman, p. 9) If anything defines C. Wright Mills’ description of American leaders of the era as a bunch of “crackpot realists,” that judgment does.
When Kennedy took over, he called in Winthrop Brown and asked him for his opinion. Brown started with, “Well sir, the policy is…” Kennedy cut him off and said, he knew what the policy was, he wanted to know what Brown thought. Brown replied that he favored a neutralist solution with Souvanna and Kong Le. He felt the alliance with Phoumi was a disaster. (Swanson, pp. 263–64)
In what would be a repeated strophe, on April 5, 1961, Phoumi launched a (failed) assault against Kong Le and the Pathet Lao across the Plain of Jars. Brown was convinced this collapse could open up all the major cities to the Pathet Lao. (Swanson, p. 268) Kennedy decided to ignore the Joint Chiefs’ recommendation for direct intervention, made by Arleigh Burke and backed by Lyndon Johnson, which included using atomic weapons against China if they intervened. (Newman, p. 27) Instead, he made a show of force by moving a naval armada into the area. The Pathet Lao now called for a cease-fire. A neutralist conference was now at hand. After all the sabre rattling—referring to the Bay of Pigs debacle—Kennedy said to Schlesinger: “If it weren’t for Cuba, I might have taken this advice seriously” (Swanson, p. 284)
VII
The Pentagon now switched arenas. They planned for a showdown with China in either Thailand or Vietnam. (Swanson, p. 287; Newman, pp. 28–29) This not so hidden effort should be combined with the failure of Diem to attain even the semblance of functional democracy.
Jacobs deals with what I believe is a key event indicating just how bad the Diem regime was on the eve of Kennedy’s presidency. Contrary to what the American media was depicting, there were intelligent alternatives to Diem even in the late fifties. But Diem’s Public Meeting Law stopped them from attaining recognition. That law limited candidates from speaking to a crowd of over five persons. Some candidates were threatened with arrest or trial on charges of conspiracy with the Viet Cong. (Jacobs, p. 113) In many instances, the ARVN just stuffed ballot boxes.
Diem’s best-known critic was Dr. Phan Quang Dan. In the August 1959 national assembly elections, Diem sent 8000 soldiers to vote against Dan. Not only did the Saigon physician win anyway, he won by a margin of 6–1. (Jacobs, p. 114) When Dan was about to take his seat, he was arrested on charges of fraud. This was so outrageous that a group of prominent men met at the Caravelle Hotel to sign a letter of protest. The signers included Phan Huy Quat, a man who had previously been recommended to Eisenhower and Foster Dulles as a better alternative than Diem. Although this protest garnered some media attention in the USA, on orders of Diem, it was deliberately ignored in South Vietnam. The Caravelle Group was probably the last viable opportunity to install a government that could inspire popular loyalty in Saigon. (Jacobs, p. 116)
In the summer of 1961, President Kennedy asked Vice President Johnson to go to South Vietnam on a goodwill tour. LBJ mightily resisted. Kennedy ended up ordering him to go. (Swanson, p. 303) On the advice of the Pentagon, LBJ asked Diem if he wanted American combat troops in theater. Diem declined, but said he needed more funds to build up the ARVN; apparently in order to protect his argovilles—groups of farming communities. (Swanson, p. 311) As the author notes, Diem changed his mind a few months later. In September of 1961, he was willing to accept combat troops. (Swanson, p. 326) This would later evolve into the Strategic Hamlet program.
In late 1961—around when Kennedy sent Walt Rostow and General Max Taylor to Vietnam—the president met with Arthur Krock, a friend of his father’s. He told the journalist he had serious doubts about the Domino Theory and did not think the USA should get into a land war in Asia. (Swanson, p. 335) When Taylor and Rostow returned with a recommendation for inserting combat troops, Kennedy struck this from their report. He also circulated a press story saying no such recommendation was in the report. (Swanson, p. 339) Perhaps because of the Taylor/Rostow mission, Diem now told Ambassador Nolting he would like to place American troops across the demilitarized zone. Lyndon Johnson’s initial suggestion was now bearing fruit.
Swanson names four men who had similar views to the president’s about Indochina. They were Senator Mike Mansfield, Ambassador to India John K. Galbraith, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and, later, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. In two meetings in November, Kennedy made the decision that there would be no American combat troops sent to Vietnam. He would send more advisors and equipment, but no ground troops. Virtually everyone except the men mentioned above wanted the contrary and members of the Joint Chiefs wanted to go to war. (Swanson, p. 400) In fact, the Chiefs sent Kennedy a memo saying that a failure to enter Vietnam would lead to the collapse of Southeast Asia. But when McNamara forwarded the memo, he advised Kennedy that it required no action from the president at the time.
In his coda, Swanson writes that the headlong push to go to war in Vietnam stemmed from four issues:
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The atomic advantage of the USA over Russia and China
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The failure to use that advantage at DIen Ben Phu and in Laos
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The Pentagon push that a showdown with China was inevitable in the battle for Asia
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The monolithic view that Hanoi was a satellite of China
Swanson has written a cogent—and in some ways unique—overview of the struggle for imperial hegemony in Indochina, specifically, the rise and fall of the French effort and the seeds of the later American imposition in Laos and South Vietnam. Along the way, he foreshadows the fact that Kennedy was trapped by his own advisors and how his removal would lead to an epic tragedy.
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