marked out for assassination

below is a recap of chapter 4 “marked out for assassination” from “jfk & the unspeakable: why he died and why it matters by james w. douglass”
click the links for recaps of previous chapters:

chapter 1: a cold warrior

chapter 2: kennedy, castro & the CIA

chapter 3: kennedy & vietnam

JFK was not afraid to die, nor was he afraid to live.  the trait kennedy admired most in others was courage (thus his 1951 book “profiles in courage”). he had respect for people who stood up and fought for causes, specifically with regard to war. political courage in trying to defuse the CIA and pentagon from “winning” the cold war was a much bigger type of courage, and yet kennedy was not afraid to fight that fight. the choice came down to eisenhower’s “assured destruction” and his own wanting to be “more flexible.”

the vietnam crisis was simmering when kennedy went against his conscience of wanting to appoint edward gullion as the new vietnam ambassador after gullion had worked magic in the congo keeping it independent during his time there. instead, kennedy made what he considered one of his biggest mistakes by allowing his republican rival, henry cabot lodge, to be appointed ambassador. lodge only wanted the position to use as leverage to try for the republican nomination against kennedy in 1964. lodge proceeded to take away all of kennedy’s power on the ground in vietnam and refused to even communicate with diem or guide him away from a potential coup. contrarily, lodge was working closely with henry luce, the media baron and staunch enemy of kennedy, and other generals supporting the coup efforts against diem. kennedy’s next option was to send his friend torbert macdonald to meet with diem to talk diem into removing the nhus from power to reassert some control and save his life, but diem wouldn’t budge. it was a marked defeat for kennedy and another victory for the CIA.

as if being on the CIA and pentagon’s blacklist was not enough, kennedy then found an unforgiving enemy in big business when they lured him into a trap to test his allegiances.  kennedy settled a steel strike crisis and brokered a deal to keep steel prices from rising.  the next move major steel companies made was a blatant duping by raising prices by 3.5%.  kennedy was incensed and made a comment he was never able to live down, “my father always said all businessmen were sons of bitches but i never believed it until now.”   he ordered the defense department to only order from small steel companies that had not risen prices or to take business overseas if necessary.  the government accounted for 9% of the nation’s total steel market. kennedy further attacked big steel by launching anti-trust investigations against them (which ultimately lead to fines in 1965 for price-fixing).  big steel’s response was that they were being treated as “enemies of the people” to which kennedy replied, they were exactly that “by putting pursuit of power and profit” above the interest of the people. seeing that kennedy was prepared to wage war against them, big steel backed down and relented on the price hikes.  business leaders, however, never forgot nor forgave kennedy’s handling of the situation or his subsequent recanting of his “all businessmen are sons of bitches” statement.   kennedy’s father was a prominent anti-business politician, who fought wall street with roosevelt in the 1930s.  douglass sees this through the fortune magazine lens of a test to see whether kennedy would accept defeat and lose credibility or fight back and unite the business world against him.  fortune then ran the article reading “steel: the ides of april” to foreshadow the fate of julius caeser onto kennedy.   the wall street journal made the quote, “the government set the price. and they did this by the pressure of the fear, by naked power, by threats by agents in the state security police.”  u.s. news commented, “the president is acting like a soviet commissar.”   it was obvious that the business world clearly had less use for kennedy now than they did before he was elected, back when he was, “their second choice for president and anyone else was their first choice.”

in continuing to probe oswald’s role in the years leading up to the assassination, douglass finds CIA fingerprints all over everything.  oswald had been, at the least, a CIA employee as a radar man in the marines.  after this, he either a) became a blatant traitor or was b) a double agent. (this chapter continues to point to a double agent role.)  angleton, the man in charge of the CIA assassinations unit, had created “201 files” on people to look like counter-intelligence files to be used as assassination scapegoats. oswald had a 201 file, though the document was incompletely preserved as evidence in the JFK assassination investigation. not that the full document could have mattered much anyway since allen dulles told the warren commission that “no CIA employee, even under oath, should ever say truthfully if oswald or anyone else was a CIA employee.”   ann egerton, after retiring from the CIA in the 1970s, was somewhat candid in HSCA interviews in implicating oswald as a CIA asset and a security risk that needed to be watched closely, thus the need for the 201 file.

other examples of oswald’s CIA connections came from the wilcott’s, a husband and wife team who resigned from the CIA in good conscience in the 1960s.  they gave interviews about the CIA keeping a lid on oswald in the soviet union in the late 1950s and how he was angered by the soviets being “onto him.” douglass continues, through their stories, to outline a structure of how individual employees can carry out certain roles of a larger plot with only a few people knowing the entire plan and outcome from the beginning.

the biggest example of a pawn in the game would undoubtedly have been james nagle.  the author of the book “the man who knew too much” walked into a san antonio bank, fired shots into the ceiling and waited in his car for the police to show up and arrest him.  he ended up serving four and a half years in prison and his only comment as to why was because he “would rather be arrested than commit murder and treason.”  he was holding a double-edged sword.  perhaps the most interesting part of the entire JFK assassination is that the KGB knew of the CIA’s plan and, though the KGB was opposed to JFK, they had to work hard to keep him alive because the CIA planned to implicate the soviets as part of the cover up.   james nagle was well acquainted with “angel” and “leopoldo,” two cuban double agents, who were financed by alpha 66 and working with oswald right up to the end.  nagle had been ordered by the soviets to make oswald aware of angel and leopoldo’s connections and their plans for him. when oswald would not listen to this advice, nagle was then asked to murder oswald.   this was the point when nagle bowed out of the game and sent j edgar hoover a letter detailing the kennedy assassination plot before getting himself arrested because his two options a) trusting the KGB, who wanted oswald dead, or b) trusting the CIA, who wanted kennedy dead, both were murder and treason as far as nagle was concerned.

this knowledge that j edgar received may or may not have been “news” to him, but it did raise enough awareness in the insider circles to rework the plan and shift the assassination site from washington to dallas a couple of months later.   hoover was certainly aware of the stealthy end-around the CIA did in moving out the de mohrenshildt’s and inserting michael and ruth paine as oswald’s benefactors bringing oswald back to dallas from new orleans.   ruth became a close friend of marina oswald so that she could brush up on her russian and then she helped oswald obtain a temporary job at a texas school book depository.  at the same time, he had been offered a better paying permanent position at trans texas airways, though he still, under some unclear and unacknowledged set of circumstances, accepted the temporary position at the depository. so, the question was posed, who were the paines?  michael, who was a helicopter engineer at bell helicopter, turned out to be no ordinary engineer. he was the step-son of the inventor of the bell helicopter and had the highest level of security clearance. (this minute fact was not known until 30 years later). he was well acquainted in the pentagon and his mother was friends with allen dulles mother and dulles mistress.  it seems more and more no small irony that the people coming and going from oswald’s life were moving him into a position on a chessboard.  but the fact that many of these circumstances were not known or asked about came as a direct result of the handling of the warren commission by dulles in the aftermath, who stated in mid 1964 that “at this point we are supposed to be closing doors, not opening them.”

well then, case dismissed.
…until chapter 5, “saigon and chicago” which will begin next week…

La Grande Main Street meeting of August 13

Notes from the La Grande Main Street meeting at Mt. Emily Ale House (8/13/2013)

      Main Street has broken the areas of interest down into four components, which I pretty much re-organize into three components. The idea of design could just as easily include the streetscape and façade into one group since they’re doing predominantly the same thing. Besides, very little was discussed on this topic. As far as this was concerned, only parking and signage on the freeway were discussed. Promotions and business development was the order of the day.   Promotions :: Design (Streetscape, Façade) :: Business development

       The arts community asked for more exposure on a higher level. They would like to move the Third Thursday Art Walk to a different day, such as “first Friday.” This is seen as a day when people are more likely to be out for pleasure and have more money. Everyone’s money is “gone by the third week.” Sharon Porter, of the Blue Turtle Gallery, wondered about where the people with the money are, such as professors and doctors. She said, “These are the people that have money, let’s shake it out.”
       However, the business development people in the room quickly took over, noting that the art scene was great, but the service industries wanted to know how they are supposed to capitalize off ideas pitched toward retail industries. The one apartment overlap that seemed appreciated by all was the La Grande Scenic Bikeway. And an idea for having a bike and brew tour was perhaps the one useful, tanglible idea that came out to tie most everyone's interests into one event.   The dry cleaner and another bar owner wanted to know if anything was being done to help off-Adams businesses. As far as they see things, they are “getting nothing from it” other than their parking spaces being taken up by people going to events on Adams. There was also the perception that “Main Street” is narrow focused and should be referred to more as “Downtown.” [Main Street is a umbrella organization that towns across America work under to help secure funding and such to progress with their goals. As far as I know the only way to change the name is to change the name of the national organization.]
        There were wishes about wanting to build with the university that seemed to come with a lot of approving gestures. People also are heavily in favor of bringing in more tourism. One way was proposed to add more signage along the exits, but that brought on a deeper debate, “do we need signage or do we need an integral product first and foremost?”
        In this discussion, the problem that everyone wanted to address was parking, specifically angle parking took up, in terms of time, most of the meeting with the same point being echoed by just about everyone in the room.
       Jerry, the owner of Mt. Emily Ale House, hit the most important factors in one fell swoop of a speech. People seemed afraid to invest in the economic development model because they were being misled into seeing it as an added tax instead of being integral to building the community. It is easy for people to buy into that when a typical routine has been “building a portfolio for a few at the expense of the rest of us.” While that was not the nature of the last failed initiative, the mindset remains a majority feeling apparently. La Grande does need a diversity of opinions and a collaborative nature if we are ever to “attract businesses, fill the holes.” Mainly, La Grande needs to choose an identity and go with it. A dichotomy exists within our view of ourselves. We need a positive perspective, because that encourages good things to happen. And when good things happen, good things keep happening. This is a much more productive outlet than continuing to slam La Grande as having nothing going on [which kid yoshida has never done, by the way]. Above all, get out and participate. If you are not going to volunteer and help the changes, then you cannot complain. [Say it again and again Jerry!]
       Al’s ideas followed everyone by echoing the need to keep people in downtown, that “every $1 spent here becomes $9 within a year. Where do you spend that?”
By the next meeting, set for October 15, 6:00pm, at the Ale House, people were asked to pick a committee and bring an idea for how to brand La Grande…

kid yoshida’s take on the various issues:
       Yes a time like Friday evening is a bit more user friendly. But then again so would be Saturdays and Sundays, especially Saturdays during farmer’s market season is a huge downtown experience. Expanding upon things that already happen like that would be great. However, businesses in La Grande don’t seem to like to be open on the weekends, especially Sundays. Of course, there will be a dichotomy between the arts and retail industries. They are marketing to two entirely different aspects of life. Intermingling the two seems a bit counterproductive, people generally use an arts side of life to escape the business side of life. It is somewhat true that the arts type things are really focused on retail industry, since things that go on after 5:00pm (like the Art Walk) and things on the weekends do not include service businesses that operate on a M-F 9:00-5:00 schedule either.
       On the topic of when people have money to spend, it is true that people tend to have more money at the beginning of the month. Yet, it is also true that people spend money based on what they know will be happening. I, for instance, budget how much I have to spend throughout the month and spend it according to what events are scheduled. It often happens that when events fall late in the month that I do not have money for them simply because I had no idea at the beginning of the month that about those events. There are only a few businesses that even seem to care about promoting events that they are going to have other than signs in their own windows, or random and scattered facebook posts. And the ones that do often don’t promote them until maybe a week before the event. Promotion and advertising are of the essence and people in LG are terrible at this aspect. The earlier the better! The Art Walk is well established and people know about that, but may there be other reasons why people don’t spend a lot then…? I am not of the opinion that an earlier in the month event like that would create more than a small percentage of extra revenue.

       Stores that feature items that are beyond the budget of most of us lower-wage earners, would sensibly want to target those with more discretionary income. My first reaction is that people that have a lot of money typically have a lot of money for one reason: they are not fond of parting with their money. It is a tougher battle to extract cash from people that shelter themselves away, but I am not sure Main Street can accomplish these more detailed tasks, nor should they be expected to.
       I see Main Street as an entity to stir up the public interest. I do not see it as an entity to solve all the problems that each individual business owner needs to take upon themselves to figure out how to sell to people. Yes, it’s hard to sell water to a poor fisherman. That’s where the merchant’s own ingenuity comes into play. Main Street can tell the merchant what to expect and work to bring people in, which is sort of setting the table. For instance, Main Street can do a promotion to set up a fisherman’s conference (disregarding for a moment that there is no place in downtown for them to stay or convene, the options are pretty much in Island City.) Main Street can tell the bottled water salesman to get ready and be prepared for fisherman coming to town. From there, however, it is up to the salesman to work his own magic in unloading his product.
       If there could be a doctor’s conference across the street from Blue Turtle or if Blue Turtle could have a more mobile version to hit up places like Nightingale on campus or at least dispense flyers or some such thing as that might be a place to start.  A similar issue happened with the insurance salesman who doesn't see much benefit in working with Halloween because it does nothing to sell his business.  The point to these scenarios is that, in the end, it is mainly the job of the merchant to make the move with the aide of Main Street. There are numerous ideas that need to be thought about, but specifics I believe belong to the merchant alone.
        The second aspect here is that a lot of merchants in La Grande seem to focus on people they expect to have money (ie, older, wealthier, etc.) even though such populations may be more frugal with the resources they have. One thing most merchants in La Grande (except for maybe the Maridell Center or Tropical Swirlz) do not do is target kids, teenagers, younger adults. It might seem odd at first glance, but these are the people that are most free with the cash in their pockets. Businesses need to be finding out what these kids like and want. Any successful business model seems to have in common that they are in tune with younger generations. Even if you are not selling specifically to a younger generation, bring in tune with a different crowd can only be good business savvy. To have the ability to adapt to a multitude of different clientele is a skill that not every businessman possesses. It is easy to get stuck in the ruts of the things we have been doing all along. Adapting is key to survival.
         Think about it this way. I go see live music often, at least once a week. I like singer-songwriter, acoustic folk and country-ish types of music and such, but after a certain point when that is all there is in La Grande, it gets pretty old. The day before this meeting, I went a concert at Riveria Center that had one rock band and three metal bands. That concert blew me away. And my favorite bands there were the youngest, and local bands. Neither had much to sell, but I bought what was available. It’s not like it would have been the best concert ever, but I am pretty sure I haven’t been to a metal concert in almost 20 years. So even at amateur levels it sounds pretty damn good when I am deprived of it for so long. Why wouldn’t club owners want to get more diverse things like in town? Or the city in general? It stirs up the interest. I know different things like that metal concert happen sometimes, but they are pretty infrequent and, again, not all that well advertised, only really word of mouth.
        A primary thing to understand is that kids typically have their fingers on the pulse of what is hot. Not to follow that lead seems foolish to me, no matter which business you operate. If kids go places, their parents usually know about it. And the more their parents know about it, the more it gets talked about, frequented, the less effort advertising and promoting takes, etc. It’s a pretty cyclical thing really. Once the best model is in place, it almost runs itself. But it starts with fresh ideas and different ways of living. Talking to kids at the high school and university and incorporating them more into the Main Street “scene” is essential.
         Let’s say you sell insurance, could you market a way for a 17-year-old to get a better deal buying directly from you than attaching to the Progressive plan their parents use? Maybe that is or isn’t much reality, but at some level there is a way to get through. If you run a bar, maybe the kids won’t be old enough to come into your bar, but soon enough they will be. And their friends might already be. The more adapting and accommodating people are, the more accepted they are from the other side. I don’t see many instances, if any, of where La Grande has this figured out.

        If anyone ever has the true answer to accomplishing a collaboration with EOU, then they will be a savior for sure. The downtown should be agressive in pursuing an collaboration with EOU. If downtown owners expect EOU to come to them, they are pretty shortsighted. EOU has no reason to come downtown, other than to occasionally get something different to eat. They have all the facilities. Downtown has nothing.
        As for the subject of extracting tourist dollars, this is a slippery slope and La Grande is sliding down the wrong side fast with their lack of identity. La Grande is a niche market and would likewise have to target niche tourists. If you are going after tourists that have lots of money, where will they stay, where will their events be hosted? There is no infrastructure because La Grande has never been that kind of town. La Grande is not Walla Walla, or even Joseph for that matter. If you could get someone like Marcus Whitman to put in a high rise hotel somewhere like where the old Blockbuster building is that would be a perfect start to building an infrastructure. Maybe turn Sac Annex, or some of it, back in hotel rooms. Baker has Geiser Grande, Wildhorse has a resort hotel, there is no place at all, and as such, no reason whatsoever for someone to stay in La Grande. The decision that was made to tear down the historic hotel or hotels that once stood where those Wells Fargo and US Bank reside in ever so hideous buildings was a death sentence. If those buildings so needed to be torn down, they should have been replaced by something more luxurious like what had been there before.
        However, they were not because La Grande is not that kind of town. Trying to make La Grande into another Walla Walla is an uphill battle because it doesn’t have the same history. The tourist industry, if there is to be one, needs to capitalize on the agricultural roots of the valley. That is the best hope, although it is sad to say that is a very specific market of tourists and most people passing through from Boise to Portland will not be interested in it.
         There does at the very least, as Jerry pointed out, need to be an anchor tenant and an identity to pull people into La Grande. Like Pendleton has the Round-Up, Joseph has the Wallowas…what does La Grande have? For that matter, La Grande doesn’t even have a rodeo at all! That is embarrassing from an outside perspective considering that even Haines, Elgin and Union have rodeos. The fight for tourist money is going to be tough because there are years of failed decision making to correct. Not that it can’t be done, but it will take a lot of capital, for one, and some very inventive ideas that can merge natural/scenic landscapes and agrarian roots with something that everyday people can identify with. The idea of having a couple more breweries in town was a decent pitch. To manage to create two more breweries that would be significantly better than the ones already in the region would obviously take a lot of finesse and sweet talking in pulling some people in from Portland or somewhere like that. I think there could be so many better ideas out there, but that is one that could provide anchor tenants and a La Grande identity to put on a billboard for 500 miles of I-84. Certainly that was the only thing close to a true answer presented at this meeting. Still, La Grande would have to go back to the issue of where people will stay…
        As far as signage and getting people off the interstate. Phew! Coming from Boise there is almost no reason to stop. There are only two exits and neither one are very inviting. The first follows a rest stop and it is less appealing than the rest stop itself. It is a truck stop and has no visible way to tell that there is any more of a town beyond. The second exit has a host of fast food chains and the majority of hotel rooms available in town. That’s not much of a reason to stop when billboards have already been encouraging the traveler to push on to Wildhorse. And even if they do stop, good luck getting them into downtown. They have the most essential things a traveler needs right there. The best exit of all doesn’t even have a turn off . If a driver decides that they want to stop in LG when driving by the fairgrounds, they need to go all the way to Perry or Hilgard.
        Coming from the other direction, the first exit is at least quite inviting and is the best way to lure people into La Grande. With a proper metal sculpture or something like what was discussed then it becomes even more inviting. The approach up through the woods and the view with the descent back into downtown is the sexiest spot in the entire town. That’s what got me here for the first time. For the signage issue and things along the freeway, that is the main place to start, getting people coming from the west. However, the infrastructure is going to take several years to build before these are relevant points.

        As for the beating a dead horse issue, yes, angle parking is a good idea for sure. But at the same time, it is a short-term solution. It would also require making the sidewalks smaller, particularly on the Red Cross side of Adams down to Joe Beans and taking out the turn lanes. And taking out the turn lane in front of City Hall probably needs to happen anyway. I signed the form to back the demand for angle parking, but in truth the biggest issue of the meeting had zero importance for me. I drive only in my work car and don’t even like to do it then. I live in downtown just so I can walk everywhere and if my car had any value I would have sold it a long time ago. The point here is that most downtowns are not known for their ease of accessibility anyway, so I am not sure what is the fuss is over all of this. There are far more pressing things that need to be addressed, such as once La Grande has angled parking and brings in some anchor tenants and a reason for people to come here, then where is all that influx of traffic going to park? There is enough parking made better by the angled idea, but that expands by about what, 50%? Meaning that 50 or so spaces from Island Ave to 4th Street will become about 75 spaces. That works well for the people who live here, but not once you have people wanting to spend vacations here.
         La Grande needs to not worry about petty things right now. I think it was optimistic for La Grande to be placed in a tier 2 of Main Street organizations. The reality of the situation is that is only determined by the funds available and interest in moving forward. The reality of the differing ideas, however, makes La Grande function as a tier one. We have no infrastructure for anything people want to do and people going too many different directions. People need to agree on one way to go and take off, support the efforts to build something to support those ideas and then start worrying about how to draw people in and how to market products and that kind of thing. There is years of work to do to correct years of bad decisions. That is not meant to discourage, but to be a sobering reality that nothing should be expected to change with the blooms of next spring.

kennedy & vietnam

a recap of chapter 3 "kennedy and vietnam" from "jfk and the unspeakable: why he died and why it matters"
by james w. douglass (2008/2010 simon & schuster)

click the link for recaps of chapter 1 "a cold warrior" & chapter 2 "kennedy, castro & the CIA"


abraham bolden had been a secret service agent in chicago that kennedy met by chance and appointed to be the first african american detail at the white house.  bolden was a man who had grown up in east st. louis and had risen to a relatively prominent position through a rare integrity, and playing by the rules and respecting authority.  bolden was not pleased with his secret service cohorts in washington.  he said that most agents seemed to hate kennedy and joked that if someone shot at him they would jump out of the way.  they were generally disrespectful toward kennedy and created a very lax security around the president. within 2 months at the white house, bolden removed himself from duty and returned to chicago.

such was the atmosphere around kennedy.  he was not liked or supported within many right wing communities, including those on the inside that were cold war patriots. there are, as we have seen, and will continue to see, a multitude of reasons why his support was deteriorating.

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

john kennedy, and his brother robert, traveled to vietnam in 1951 when most advisors in the government were in favor of military support, however a member of the consulate in saigon, edmund gullion, gave them some sobering advice:  "in 20 years there will be no more colonies. we're going nowhere out here. the french have lost. if we come in here and do the same thing, we will lose too, for the same reason. there's no will or support for this kind of war back in paris. the home front is lost. the same thing would happen to us."

kennedy considered gullion's perspective after becoming president and was inspired to issue national security memorandum 263 to begin withdrawing u.s. troops from vietnam.  kennedy was killed 6 weeks after that was issued and it was ignored by the johnson administration.  thomas merton had acknowledged as much, saying that if kennedy had taken too many steps toward peace he would "sooner or later be marked out for assassination."  kennedy himself also said that he could "only afford so many defeats in one year."   in the continued struggle with his national security state, kennedy understood the increasing isolation.

the military generals were shocked at the idea of withdrawal.  general lemnitzer had been one of the more aggressive military commanders who had proposed operation northwoods in cuba, which encouraged deception in starting rumors against cuba, staging attacks, riots, sabotage and to "develop a cuban terror campaign" to trump up stories in the media to make cuba look irresponsible and add credibility to any u.s. retaliation.  kennedy blocked this plan, but lemnitzer pushed the joint chiefs to support invasion so kennedy replaced him as the chief of staff.  however, the entire government was in the cold war movement and the mindset of military force and the opinions of the rest of the staff were no different than lemnitzer.

the night before his inaguration, kennedy asked eisenhower if it was preferable to support a coalition to form a laotian government or intervene militarily through SEATO.  eisenhower was shocked by the mere thought of concession to the enemy and counciled kennedy on the use of military.  kennedy was skeptical and said it sounded like a "prescription for disaster from the man who, in a few hours, would no longer have to bear any responsibility for it...there he sat telling me to get ready to put ground forces into asia, the thing he himself had been carefully avoiding for the last 8 years."  in contrast, kennedy had a meeting with former general douglas macarthur, who told kennedy, "anyone wanting to commit ground troops to the mainland of asia should have his head examined."  JFK repeated this message everytime his generals brought up the issue and would tell them "go back and convince general macarthur and i'll be convinced."

laos was in a precarious situation. the CIA was backing phoumi nosavan who had risen to power through support of the eisenhower administration. souvanna phouma had been deposed even though his administration was supported by all the u.s. allies as well as the communist bloc.  kennedy wanted to stabilize the country with a neutral government, however he had the same military advisors who had promoted the nosavan regime in the first place. the military was not going along and started asking for more and more troops the way they had tried to bully kennedy in cuba.

meanwhile, a similar situation was happening with a divided government in south vietnam.  ngo dinh diem and his brother ngo dinh nhu (who were to be assassinated shortly before kennedy) had destroyed both the democratic government and the communist rivals with the support of the u.s government in 1955-56.  like laos and cuba, kennedy refused to send combat units.  kennedy had by then lost all confidence in the joint chiefs and, in fact, subverted them by planting a story in the n.y. times that the military leaders were against sending in troops.  it was a dangerous game with the pentagon that worked with the public for a while.  it did not please the military, who put more pressure on kennedy to at least send "advisors" though they could not possibly hold back the vietcong.  the military would begin to use the advisor role as a cover for guerilla fighters.  in some cases kennedy had to concede to their wishes.  there was a show of force he authorized in thailand and some very controversial spraying of fields in vietnam to kill crops to weaken the country. kennedy had to keep his military at bay, saying he couldn't "go against his military advisors everytime."  part of his problem was the need for re-election and to do that he had to seem as though he wasn't selling out to the communists.  his plans for withdrawl had to be in convoluted political terms "like an elephant tiptoeing through a minefield" while he made piecemeal concessions.  still, his ideas became obvious by the south vietnamese forces.  they responded by wanting the americans out of vietnam.  then, kennedy came with the great revelation of putting forces in power that were opposed to the u.s. support so that they would take pressure off him by demanding the americans leave.  kennedy was telling his closest aides that "in '65, i'll become one of the most unpopular presidents in history. i'll be damned everywhere as a communist appeaser, but i don't care.  if i try to pull out completely now from vietnam, we'd have another joe mccarthy red scare on our hands. but i can do it after i've been re-elected."

at the beginning of his presidency, kennedy was not as interested in a whites vs asians war of nationalism, but more in defusing tensions in berlin.  generals lemnitzer and lemay wanted to use nukes everywhere, including berlin.  in august of 1961, while the berlin wall was being constructed and the tensions were at their height, kruschev sent a messenger to talk with kennedy who was all smiles saying everything was almost over. kruschev was willing to work with kennedy and wanted a summit meeting so long as kennedy's october 1961 speech in berlin didn't turn into a war-like ultimatum.  at the UN, kennedy said disarmament was a neccesity and challeged the soviets to a "peace race."  while the forces at the epicenter had engaged in a tense 16-hour standoff at checkpoint charlie, kennedy and kruschev, through backchannel communications, called off the tanks and the u.s. agreed to end any threats of destroying the berlin wall.  a year later, the rapport and trust the two leaders had started to develop would help the cuban missile crisis to be more easily resolved.  in both cases, kruschev was happy to oblige and retreat first because he knew that kennedy was under even more pressure from his own cabinet than kruschev was being pressured from the kremlin.

despite the backdoor talks and deepening respect, kruschev was powerless to stop ho chi minh in north vietnam as much as kennedy was to stop ngo dinh diem in south vietnam. the politics interwoven between and within the southeast asian nations was more complicated than outside forces could handle.  the idea of stopping the ho chi minh trail through laos was laughable in practice, but even moreso when neutrality was being systematically sabotaged by the CIA at the same time.  it referencing another comment from macarthur kennedy then gave a notorious quote, "the chickens are coming home to roost from eisenhower's years and i live in the chicken coop."


tune in to next week's show, when i will begin reading chapter 4 "marked out for assassination"

kennedy, castro & the CIA

a recap of chapter 2: “JFK and the unspeakable: why he died and why it matters.”

by james w. douglass. (for the review of chapter 1: click here.)


anti-communism was a “dogmatic theology” in the cold war. the worst thing imaginable was communicating with the enemy and compromising with “the satanic incarnation of evil.” anti-castro groups believed that “no one could talk with the devil in havana and remain in communion with the gods in washington.” this was especially true for the president of the united states. john kennedy knew this well, yet his response was to do exactly that, to “start thinking along more flexible lines.” this was such rogue thinking that even bobby kennedy tried to pressure his brother out of doing it.

like the bay of pigs invasion, the CIA once again tried to force JFKs hand by sabotaging cuba, trying to provoke them into retaliating, which would leave JFK with no other choice but to go to war. david atlee phillips (aka maurice bishop) publicized an alpha 66 raid on cuban boats. once kennedy learned of this, he called the CIA’s bluff and actually did the opposite of what they expected. he had the justice department arrest the perpetrators and impound the american boats in cuban waters. the CIA hatched numerous devious plots, including one to assassinate castro by giving him a contaminated diving suit that would produce a debilitating disease. this plan was thwarted when it was learned that washington’s envoy to cuba, james donovan, had already given castro a diving suit as a gift of good will after the two had become friends. such failure was a black eye for the CIA because a properly carried out plan could accomplish their three biggest objectives at once (a) kill castro, (b) discredit kennedy and (c) escalate soviet-american tensions. meanwhile, kennedy kept pushing the world closer to peace. the government thought he was crazy and painted him as a castro ally. he thought the government (which he had inherited from eisenhower) was crazy to not want to achieve peace.

for castro’s part, he was not about to trust america, but he was coming to see kennedy as an honorable person. the bay of pigs, the freezing of cuban assets in the united states and other actions had put him off of any dialogue, but kennedy’s american university address had given castro a new hope. the book gives a detailed look at how kennedy and castro planned a secret correspondence the way that kennedy and kruschev had and invloves a french interviewer meeting with castro with the understanding that interview be somewhat of a mediation. this occurred on november 19, 1963…

castro told him, “i believe kennedy is sincere. i also believe that today the expression of this sincerity could have political significance… i haven’t forgotten that kennedy centered his electoral campaign against nixon on the theme of firmness toward cuba. i have not forgotten the machiavellian tactics and the equivocation, the attempts at invasion, the pressures, the blackmail, the organization of a counter-revolution, the blockade, and above everything, all the retaliatory measures which were imposed before, long before there was the pretext and alibi of communism. but i feel that he inherited a difficult situation; i don’t think a president of the united states is ever really free. and i believe kennedy is at present feeling the impact of this lack of freedom. i also believe that he now understands the extent to which he has been misled, especially, for example, on cuban reaction at the time of the attempted bay of pigs invasion.” castro then gave his feelings of the agreements made between kruschev and kennedy during the missile crisis. above all, kruschev and castro were both eager for a second JFK term of office and felt that would be more productive than anyone else, such as lyndon johnson. the assassination occurred while the reporter was with castro, and castro said, “everything has changed. everything is going to change.” and it did. LBJ ignored all contact castro tried to make. no other president in the twentieth century would try to establish dialog with cuba. the question castro posed, while the war in vietnam was heating up, what sense did it make to fight a war on the other side of the world against a very formidable enemy and not close to home against the tiny island nation of cuba? the answer to that to come in chapter three…

meanwhile…

william b. reilly, who had been a CIA contact for many years and situated his coffee shop in close proximity to the CIA offices in new orleans, met with lee harvey oswald and immediately got him a job with his cohort, guy banister. banister himself had sent guns to miami for the alpha 66 raids. suddenly, oswald was passing out pro-castro leaflets on the streets of new orleans. when an employee notified banister of this, his response was “don’t worry, he’s working for us.” (oswald was shown to be on the CIA payroll at $200 per month for the two years leading up to the assassination of kennedy.) ostensibly, oswald was in new orleans as part of a plan to subvert the fair play for cuba committee as well as to put oswald in a position to be hated by people on both sides of the fence. this put CIA director allen dulles in position to be a prime suspect in the assassination, as if we needed more dirt on him. plans for oswald became two-fold, set him up as a scapegoat and draw the u.s. into war with cuba – the very thing that kennedy was trying to avoid.

one of maurice bishop’s insiders considered spilling the beans on meetings he had observed with oswald and to make bishop’s real identity of david atlee phillips known. he was told he would be killed, and sure enough he was shot in the head, though he survived the attack, yet the FBI and the police did no investigation. bishop was the head of the mexico city divison of the CIA, where Oswald next went to put on his pro-castro act at the soviet and cuban embassies asking for immediate visas to the two countries. however, the CIA documents of events were quite sketchy and cast much doubt on whether it was even oswald who was in mexico. there was even a “fake dialog” in a recorded phone call of oswald asking for his own address, which he apparently didn’t know himself, so that he could give it to the soviets. when “oswald” was denied visas, he was removed from the offices several times. the idea that an oswald impostor was sent to contrive a soviet-cuban plot to kill kennedy was admitted by j. edgar hoover. stay tuned for more on the lee harvey oswald saga of the making of a scapegoat…



chapter three “kennedy and vietnam” will begin on thursday night.