saigon & chicago

below is a recap of chapter 5 “saigon & chicago” 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

chapter 4: marked out for assassination

chapter five opens with a reflection back to the cuban crises.

kruschev had wanted to help his enemy kennedy based on a noah’s ark parable, saying “we now have a common cause to save the world from those pushing us toward war.”  robert kennedy had told the messenger anatoly dobrynin that his brother “didn’t know how to resolve the situation. the military is putting great pressure on him and insisting on military actions against cuba and the president is in a very difficult situation. even if he doesn’t want or desire war, something irreversible could occur against his will.”  kruschev’s memoirs added another robert kennedy quote, “if the situation continues much longer, the president is not sure the military will not overthrow him and seize power.”  both kennedy and kruschev were attune to the pressures from within their own governments and ready for peaceful solutions. as kennedy hoped “the test ban treaty to move the world to a just and lasting peace,” he now sought to begin merging missile technologies in a peaceful project of a race to the moon.

marvin gesling was an FBI agent who made a decision to end the watch on lee harvey oswald.  when j. edgar hoover learned of this, he was furious and relocated gesling to “siberia” (or the detroit field office).  but hoover himself was frustrated more because he knew the FBI had no power compared to the CIA.  he considered the relation of the “false story” of oswald’s trip to mexico. the trip was not false to the CIA because of their duplicity to the public in which the CIA posed oswald as a pro-castro agent, although they had another agenda. they created the false story to subvert and discredit the fair play for cuba committee. the real intent was to stage a soviet connection and scapegoat oswald, cuba and the soviet union altogether in the cover up of kennedy’s murder.

in the early 1960s, the first protests to end the war in vietnam occured. kennedy was not far behind them and began to enact his own plans.  kennedy was walking a fine line with the public, telling news reporters that he did not believe in withdrawing even as he was drafting NSAM 263 issuing plans for withdrawal.  he was trying to appease his advisors every once in a while and also achieve re-election for when he could do real work. still he was telling close acquaintances that he had definitely decided to get out. 

by kennedy’s plans, the presidency of diem in south vietnam was a necessity.  however, everyone else, including his supporters, sought the overthrow of diem.  henry cabot lodge, kennedy’s biggest mistake as vietnam ambassador, criticized diem’s “medieval attitude” and typically refused to meet with him.  kennedy kept pushing lodge to communicate, even if diem was unreasonable. kennedy tried to be cordial with lodge and appeal to his sensibilities if he hoped to get anywhere, though this left kennedy “on a collision course” with both lodge and diem.  meanwhile, kennedy sent two generals opposed to a coup to meet with diem.  diem still did not relent from his duty, and would not until the eleventh hour.

the CIA not only had more power than the FBI on internal matters, they also had more involvement in vietnam than the pentagon did.  CIA undercover activities were exposed by a new york times article in october 1963.  lodge was actively working with the CIA to facilitate a coup in south vietnam.  with his help, they checkmated kennedy in asia and “CIA spooks have infiltrated every sect of american communities in vietnam” as the washington daily news reported.

diem finally caught on to the coup agenda and reached out to henry lodge. lodge consoled him, though he knew much more than he let on.  lodge did not give diem any more complete information than he did to kennedy.  as the coup was encroaching on the presidential palace, lodge sent diem’s messages to kennedy halfheartedly and by the slowest means possible.  when lodge offered diem safe passage out of vietnam, he was bluffing.  in doing so, lodge also tipped off diem that he had been working with the generals in support of a coup.  in supporting the south vietnam coup, lodge was setting up kennedy as a communist sympathizer, which was simultaneously facilitating a washington coup.  diem, and his brother nhu, managed to escape the presidential grounds and found overnight shelter.  diem called lodge for assistance, though lodge then decided that he could not afford to get involved.  the CIA had no plans to evacuate diem, though lodge did have a plane available for washington trips.  instead, diem and nhu were tracked to a church from where they were taken and assassinated.  kennedy was horrified by this news, and though he accepted some responsibility for going along with some of the coup plans, he blamed the CIA for the assassination, echoing his same reaction to the 1961 assassination of the congolese president patrice lumumba.  kennedy was deeply bothered by not having done enough to help either lumumba or diem, reinforcing his wish to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.”

at the same time that the saigon coup was going down, a correlated plot was being attempted in chicago to have kennedy assassinated.  an informant named “lee” had tipped off the FBI of armed snipers in chicago conspiring to kill kennedy on november 2.  hoover passed the buck on to the secret service, though this tip did lead to the arrest of three people, while two others alluded capture.  two of the arrested have never been identified.  the other was a scapegoat that parallels lee harvey oswald in dallas. thomas arthur vallee was a lone-nut, ex-marine who had trained at a U2 base in japan.  likewise, he also relocated to chicago from new york and was given a job late in 1963 in a building that overlooked the chicago presidential motorcade route, much like oswald had relocated from new orleans to dallas in late 1963 and was given a job in the texas book depository. vallee also was involved in various hushed-up activities, such as when his new york license plate information was frozen after the chicago incident and made available only to the FBI.  because of the tipoffs by “lee” and a detective who had met with vallee, the chicago plan was thwarted.  using the vietnam crisis as an excuse, kennedy’s trip to chicago was cancelled.  the timing of the arrest and the cancellation was called into question by douglass.  vallee had been followed, but not arrested until two and half hours before kennedy was due to arrive in chicago.  by that time, the cancellation announcement had already been made public. 

in chapter 5, douglass re-introduces abraham bolden, the chicago secret service officer who had a rough go working at the white house.  bolden knew too much about chicago and feared that kennedy would be killed.  suddenly, the IRS offered bolden a special assignment and a new identity, which was not an uncommon practice used to eliminate dissidents.  bolden thought he was being set up and refused the offer.  after the dallas assassination, bolden and his secret service colleagues knew there had been a connection with chicago but were told by the special agent in charge that nothing happened, that they knew nothing and not to talk about it.  in 1964, the secret service suddenly decided to take all member books and re-issue new information.  bolden suspected that identities needed to be covered up from kennedy’s murder.  he continued reflecting on the white house secret service attitude toward kennedy and the connections between dallas and chicago.  when he was sent to a training in DC, bolden attempted to contact the warren commission.  he was overheard by another agent and sent back to chicago where he was arrested under false pretenses of fraud.  bolden was convicted and all appeals held up despite documented evidence of the judge’s prejudice and witness perjury.  after getting out of prison in 1969, bolden and his wife were persistently threatened and harassed.   nonetheless, bolden continued to speak out on the matter to journalists and has written an autobiography. 

douglass wraps up the chapter by tying together the coincidences…

“just as chicago was the model for dallas, saigon was the backdrop for chicago. the virtual simultaneity of the successful saigon plot to assassinate ngo dinh diem and the unsuccessful chicago plot to assassinate john f. kennedy strongly suggests their having been coordinated in a single, comprehensive scenario. if kennedy had been murdered in chicago on the day after diem’s and nho’s murders in saigon, the juxtaposition of the events would have created the perfect formula to be spoon fed to the public: ‘kennedy murdered diem and got what he deserved.’  the legend created for the dallas scenario of the gun-toting malcontent lee harvey oswald followed a similar pattern.  from claims made by a series of CIA officers to the authors of widely disseminated books and articles, john kennedy has been convicted in his grave of having tried to kill fidel castro, whose supposedly deranged surrogate, lee harvey oswald, then retaliated.  as a successful chicago plot would have done, the dallas plot ended up blaming the victim: ‘kennedy tried to murder castro, and got what he deserved.’”

in 1995, the assassination records review board requested documents related to the chicago plot. the secret service responded by destroying everything. 

well, there i guess we don’t have it… 

tune in next week for the beginning of the last chapter “washington and dallas” and weekly until the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK on november 22.