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.

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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.

a cold warrior turns

featured the past two weeks on the rabble rouser show...“a cold warrior turns” chapter one of  “jfk and the unspeakable: why died and why it matters” by james w. douglass

humanity reached a new age with the advent of nuclear weapons. harry truman loved the power of the a-bomb and the military industrial complex shared in his excitement. kennedy did not share in this vision, instead turning toward a vision of peace.  this became the notorious “nuclear dilemma,” the idea of destroying the world in order to save it from the evils of communism.  a series of maladies had plagued kennedy throughout his life, yet he maintained a youthful exuberance in his life and work. “you’ve got to live every day like it’s your last day on earth.  that’s what i’m doing.”  his own war experiences taught him what it felt like to be killed and he learned the preciousness of life, his own and those of his comrades.  in certain death during wwii, kennedy did not give up hope while he struggled to save the lives of his crew in the south pacific.

kennedy went into politics because it was the one arena where he could make the most difference in pushing the world toward peace.  even running for senate in 1946, his visions of peace were evident, “what we do now will shape the history of civilization for many years to come. we have a weary world trying to bind the wounds of a fierce struggle that is dire enough. what is infinitely far worse is that we have a world which has unleashed the terrible powers of atomic energy. we have a world capable of destroying itself. the days which lie ahead are most difficult ones, but above all, day and night, with every ounce of ingenuity and industry we possess, we must work for peace. we must not have another war.”

despite his goals of peace, kennedy did vote for and campaign for an arms build up to not allow a missile gap to develop. that is, until he learned that the u.s. was way ahead of the rest of the world in the arms race. kennedy became more committed to peace as his military commanders became more committed to crushing the enemy.  pushing things further, kennedy supported the algerian revolution, which brought disgust from virtually every american for “attacking the unity of NATO,” but which also made him loved in europe and africa.

that the power brokers were against kennedy seemed no surprise to him.  a note he had written once on the matter took abe lincoln to heart, saying that a storm was coming and he believed he was ready.  around the same time, he had been in a discussion about the book “seven days of may” with friends in which he said that a coup d' etat would not happen in washington on his watch, but that he knew a couple people who wished they could pull such a thing off.  kennedy pointed out that the conditions for such a change were possible, but would require precisely the right conditions. apparently, he offered up the correct conditions in his policy making...

first, was the botched bay of pigs invasion.  kennedy rejected the military plan, but the CIA went over is head anyway to try to pull him into a trap, thinking that when the turmoil got bad enough that he would have no choice but to give in and go along with a plan he didn’t agree with.  but as he said, “they had me figured all wrong.”   kennedy, of course, was heavily villainized after the failed attack that saw 1000 troops captured.  kennedy came unglued and said he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.”  he certainly tried by moving to cut their budget and reduce their military capabilities.  he had the director, allen dulles, and two deputy directors fired.  curiously enough, after JFK’s assassination, dulles was brought back and appointed by LBJ to direct the warren commission, an investigation that was pointed directly at himself!

second, JFK further alienated the CIA during the cuban missile crisis by ignoring requests from his joint chiefs for a pre-emptive strike.   in the media, kennedy played tough.  he demanded immediate withdrawal of the provocative soviet missiles and set up a naval quarantine of soviet ships getting into cuba.  kruschev’s own militant stand was based on castro’s warning that another bay of pigs was eminent, so kruschev sought to restrain u.s. forces while equalizing the balance of power that the u.s. had provoked by putting their own missiles in turkey.  kruschev said the missile placement was a direct response and that “now they would learn just what it feels like to have the missiles pointed at you.”  privately, however, kennedy was having secret correspondence with kruschev so as to be “free from the polemics of the cold war debate.”  kruschev duly did not wish for “backward glances from the press” and wanted to cast politics out the door without having them come back in the window.   they both impressed upon each other the need to find peace rather than try to win the last war on earth.  they both had the same dilemma of insiders pressuring them into acting, generals eager for a fight.  through their dialog, they agreed to a peace.  kruschev removed the cuban missiles and, in response, the u.s. removed their missiles from turkey six months later.   such trading was unorthodox politics and compromise was regarded as treason.  the joint chiefs saw the armistice as JFK’s lack of will.   they felt the need to strike first and quick and did not believe russia would have a reprisal to any attack.  kennedy’s response was that the military was mad and told his brother in another lincoln reference that “this is the night i should go to the theatre.”   bobby kennedy replied that, “if you go, i want to go with you.”

third, in the aftermath of the crisis, kennedy gave a speech at american university which was the mark of his turn away from the military’s imperialism toward peace.   he asked for a peace “not a pax americana peace…but a genuine peace.”   he disregarded the military industrial complex that was new in the american experience and held “total influence, political, economical, spiritual.”  kennedy told the graduating class in his speech that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex.  the potential for misplaced power exists and will persist…self examination is the beginning of peace…a way out of the cold war and into a new human possibility.”

kennedy seemed to support the russian cause more than what would seem acceptable.  he asked “what about our own attitude that doesn’t get beyond ‘what about the russians?’”  he always advised people to not concern about the speck in your neighbors eye more than the log in your own.  he pitied the russians as having suffered more during wwii than any other civilization in history.  his feelings such as “when we feel the enemy’s pain...peace is necessary” were not taken well in the u.s.  on the contrary, however, the speech at american university was broadcast in the u.s.s.r. despite their history of jamming u.s. broadcasts.  within a year, they would stop jamming all broadcasts and even allow the atomic energy agency into the country for inspections.  kruschev hailed the speech as “the best from a u.s president since roosevelt.”  meanwhile, the u.s. media ignored the speech and didn’t promote it all.   in other words, kennedy’s speech more censored in the u.s. than it was in russia!

at the same time that kennedy was making enemies with the CIA and the military, the trappist monk thomas merton was upsetting his superiors by publishing works calling for peace.  he was reduced to writing to friends (in high places) about the suicidal moral evil of the inconceivable destruction of nuclear war.   the new warfare, and perhaps even wwii, he thought was based on affluence and big business.   the people were reduced to passivity, blinded by mass media, which served only to come up with slogans to “engineer consent,” making people unaware of the real situations and that problems were “nine tenths our own fabricated illusion.”  merton was not a believer in JFK initially and dreaded that he was “in a position so impossible as to be absurd.”  merton did not believe any one in government had the depth, humanity and totality to serve the greater good.  he thought the use of such destructive weapons force us into corners and we live by their powers.  “we excel at getting ourselves into situations where we have to push the button.” merton certainly had no faith in the military watching radar screens 24/7 for any sign of attack, noting “you know what happens when you keep your eyes fixed on something?  you begin to see things that aren’t there.”   merton came to believe kennedy really did have his heart in the right place, but consented that we “need special graces from god if humanity were to survive.”

the final part of chapter one looks at an ex-marine that would be used as a pawn as “an assassin in the making for years.”   lee harvey oswald had went to the u.s. embassy in moscow saying he wanted to renounce his u.s. citizenship and pledge allegiance to the u.s.s.r.    he said he would make known radar information he had obtained in his higher than top secret position in the marine corps.  he then went to work at a factory in minsk for a year before coming back to the u.s. to open arms by the state department.  he was given a loan and job, quickly issued a u.s. passport, and connected with many important anti-bolsheviks in the dallas area.  in other words, despite his supposed allegiance to the u.s.s.r., he was given prodigal son treatment by the u.s.    it turns out that the u.s. had sent many disenfranchised youths to russia to act as spies. oswald’s former roommate, james botelho – a future california judge – admitted as much and said that oswald had always been very anti-communist and suspected that he had been on an intelligence assignment. shortly after oswald’s “defection” the russians shot down a u2, rumored to be with information he had supplied.  however, in questioning for the warren report, neither oswald nor anyone connected with him, was ever asked anything about the u2 incident.  instead, the warren commission omitteed many facts and made oswald’s character look like a megalomaniac.

oswald was a pawn in a game that kennedy himself didn’t even believe in anymore.  kennedy was “turning faster than was safe for a cold world leader.”  kennedy pulled off a miraculous public campaign to get a test ban treaty supported within the u.s.   his rhetoric pictured 300,000,000 people killed in the opening exchanges and that “the survivors would envy the dead.”  JFK wanted to stop the arms race and was killed in 1963.   kruschev wanted to stop the arms race and was removed from power in 1964.  the cold war continued until the late 1980s and defense contractors profited accordingly.

to read more, check out the book, or tune in for the next chapter “kennedy, castro and the CIA” next week. for airing times, check back on the facebook page.