Jim DiEugenio Wrote:OMG, Cliff, you are really scraping the bottom of the barrel are you not?

I quoted directly from Talbot's book -- how is that scraping the bottom of the barrel?

Your supreme ability to make contentless dismissals remains unchallenged.

Like I did not know about the thing with Drain?

You know all the details, Jim, except the important ones.

Have you ever met a rabbit hole you couldn't decorate?

I read Talbot's book twice and reviewed it.

You appear to have read it with little comprehension.

And Talbot's mis-reading of history will be an on-going subject...

You somehow think this is significant?

Squares with Kinzer's account that Dulles was hopelessly disengaged, and runs counter to the claim that Dulles attempted to force JFK into US military action which had already been firmly ruled out.

You never bothered reading the Bundy memo, did you, Jim?

Dulles did not want to talk about his huge gamble which just took the lives of about a hundred Cuban exiles, and there was no sign JFK was going to commit American forces.

Your entire argument rests on claims you make about what was going on in Allen Dulles' head. IOW, no factual argument at all.

I've asked you repeatedly why Dulles went down to Puerto Rico instead of supplying the "muscular leadership" required to influence a 180 degree turn in US policy.

The first time I asked you -- you ignored the question.

Called strike one.

The second time you responded by telling us that Dulles didn't want to give a hint that "something was about to happen."

But the CIA knew that the Soviets and Castro already had word ahead of time that something was about to happen, so that dog don't hunt.

Swinging strike two on you, Jim.

Wanna try again -- why did Dulles go down to Puerto Rico instead of following thru on this Machiavellian plan you imagine he had?

Don't look for an answer from Talbot -- he's as clueless as you.

So it was all for naught. And now it looked like he was going to be exposed. What do you expect him to be, a chatterbox about his private agenda which was now going to cost his career? And those of two other officers?

No, if he'd been engaged in the operation at all he'd have gone to Quarter's Eye and joined his CIA mates wrestling with the unfolding calamity.

You need to get out of the business of reading Allen Dulles' mind, Jim, you ain't good at it.

As per your other posting, you obviously know little or nothing about Corson. Others of us do. But I am not going to get into a back and forth on this.

Corson was close to Angleton -- but that doesn't mean he was wrong about Harriman.

You know very little about the impact W. Averell Harriman had on SE Asian policy, obviously, since you never accounted for Kennedy's Laotian policy in your review of his foreign policy initiatives.

As per Richardson, Debra Conway did a very good presentation on his removal many years ago at Lancer. This included an interview with his son. I am sure you consulted with her, and Richardson's son, right?

A minor point.

The involvement of Dunn, a US Army Special Operations Division officer, indicates the supra-institutional nature of elite actors.

Are you denying Dunn's involvement?

According to her research, it was Lodge who had Richardson removed. Because now he could work directly with Conein, who agreed with him that Diem had to go. Richardson did not buy into that.

And who rammed thru Cable 243 on August 24 '63 giving Lodge the green-light to organize the coup?

W. Averell Harriman, with an assist from George Ball.

Who were the top civilians in Kennedy's administration on the job in Washington on 11/22/63?

Officially, Robert McNamara, but his own military sub-ordinates kept him in the dark about Kennedy's shooting.

The top guys hands-on the job were at the State Dept. -- Ave Harriman and George Ball, the same two guys who bum-rushed Kennedy into getting rid of Diem.

This whole story has been told in detail by John Newman in his masterly JFK and Vietnam, see Chapter 18. There is no doubt that there was a cabal in the State Department that wanted to get rid of Diem, especially after the Battle of Ap Bac, which Hilsman was in country for. Newman describes the plotters and their actions. The cabal consisted of Hilsman, Lodge, Conein, Harriman, Forrestal, and probably Trueheart, the exiting ambassador's deputy. The best account of it from the Saigon side is Jim Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakabl, see pages 191-210. Neither man agrees with you on the primacy of Harriman, certainly not in the terms you describe him, as controlling Vietnam policy.

Don't take it from me, take it from Robert Kennedy.

Ellen J. Hammer's [B]A Death in November: America in Vietnam 1963, pgs 177-80:

<quote on>
Washington, August 24, 1963

A handful of men in the State Department and the White House had been awaiting an opportunity to encourage the Vietnamese army to move against the [Diem] government. They intended to exploit the latest crisis [massive raids on Buddhist pagodas August 21] in Saigon to the full. "Averell [Harriman] and Roger [Hilsman] now agree that we must move before the situation in Saigon freezes," Michael Forrestal of the White House staff wrote in a memorandum to President Kennedy.

..."Harriman, Hilsman and I favor taking...action now," Forrestal informed the president. Kennedy was at his Hyannis Port residence in Massachusetts for the weekend. The three men had drafted a cable of their own to [US Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot] Lodge. The substance, according to Forrestal, had been generally agreed to by [commander in chief of Pacific Command (CINCPAC)] Admiral [Harry D.] Felt. "Clearances [are] being obtained from [Acting Secretary of State] Ball and [the Department of] Defense...Will advise you reactions Ball and Defense, but suggest you let me know if you wish comment or hold-up action." A copy of their draft was dispatched to the president.

This would become Department of State telegram No. 243.

It stated that the American government could not tolerate a situation in which power lay in [Diem brother and head of SVN secret police] Nhu's hands. Military leaders were to be informed that the United States would find it impossible to continue military and economic support to the government unless prompt dramatic actions were taken by Diem to redress Buddhist grievances and remove the Nhus from the scene...Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary...

...Harriman and Hilsman were determined to send their cable that very day. They found Acting Secretary of State Ball on the golf course, and he telephoned the president in Hyannis Port. Kennedy made no difficulty about giving his approval, assuming that the appropriate officials agreed.

After the call to Kennedy the rest was simple. Ball telephoned [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk in New York and told him the president had already agreed, and Rusk gave his own unenthusiastic endorsement. When Roswell Gilpatric (McNamara's deputy at Defense) was called at home by Forrestal, he too was told that Kennedy had cleared the telegram and he was assured that Rusk had seen it. Gilpatric reluctantly gave the clearance of the Department of Defense but was concerned enough about the substance of the cable and the way it had been handled to alert General Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Taylor sent for a copy of the cable. When he read it, his first reaction was that the anti-Diemists in the State Department had taken advantage of the absence of the principal officials to get out instructions that would never have been approved as written under ordinary circumstances. John McCone also was out of town, and rather than try to locate him Harriman had reached Richard Helms, who provided the clearance of the Central Intelligence Agency.

With the president's approval State Department telegram 243 was dispatched to Saigon at 9:36 P.M. on August 24.

John Kennedy would regard this as a major mistake on his part, according to his brother Robert. "He had passed it off too quickly over the weekend at the Cape--he had thought it was cleared by McNamara and Taylor and everyone at State. In fact, it was Harriman, Hilsman and Mike Forrestal at the White House and they were all the ones who were strongly for a coup. Harriman was particularly strong for a coup."

<quote off>

ibid, pg 185:

<quote on>
Washington, August 26-27, 1963

...In the cool halls of the White House the hectic plotting of the weekend took on an air of unreality. Robert Kennedy had talked with Taylor and McNamara and discovered that "nobody was behind it, nobody knew what we were going to do, nobody knew what our policy was; it hadn't been discussed, as everything else had been discussed since the Bay of Pigs in full detail before we did anything--nothing like that had been done before the decision made on Diem, and so by Tuesday we were trying to pull away from that policy..."

President Kennedy belatedly realized that no one had spelled out to him the ramifications for the policy he had approved so lightly. He was irritated at the disagreement among his advisers. Taylor, McNamara, and McCone all were critical of the attempt to run a coup in Saigon. Even Rusk seemed to have second thoughts. "The government was split in two," Robert Kennedy recalled. "It was the only time really in three years, the government was broken in two in a very disturbing way."

<quote off>

ibid, page 198, quoting Robert Kennedy:

<quote on>
"The result [of the cable of August 24] is we started down a road from which we never really recovered...[US Vietnam military commander General Paul] Harkins was against it and Lodge wasn't talking to Harkins. So Henry Cabot Lodge started down one direction, the State Department was rather in the middle, and they suddenly called off the coup. Then the next five or six weeks we were all concerned about whether they were going to have a coup, who was going to win the coup, and who was going to replace the government. Nobody ever really had any of the answers to any of these things...the President was trying to get rid of Henry Cabot Lodge...The policy he [Lodge] was following was based on that original policy that had been made and then rescinded...that Averell Harriman was responsible for..."

<quote off>

"Harriman was particularly strong for a coup."

Harriman and RFK were on very friendly terms, and for Bobby to finger Harriman as the heavy outweighs anything you Pet Theorists can come up with, Jim.
[/B]
In the latter case, Douglass seems to give the most weight to Lodge. And if pressed on the issue, I would probably agree with that. And I would base it on the evidence adduced by both of those writers. Plus the fact that Lodge disobeyed the instructions in the Saturday Night Special cable, which he did not write. This indicates that he felt above his co plotters.

So now you're doing the Vulcan Mind Meld with Henry Cabot Lodge?

The overthrow of Diem was Harriman's policy, not Kennedy's.

In Kennedy's taped remarks on 11/4/63 he put Harriman at the front of the anti-Diem crowd.

http://millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom/exhibits/jfks-memoir-dictation-on-the-assassination-of-diem

Anyway, I think that is about it on this subject for me.

Declare victory and depart the field!

A time-honored dodge by those getting their ass kicked rhetorically.

I've only just begun pointing out the flaws in your and Talbot's Pet Theories.

Contesting these sinking tugboats is getting like Paul vs Ernie over at Spartacus. As I said at the start, there is no getting around people who have their pet theories. Since they are immune to evidence which impugns that theory. As an historian, I am not allowed to do that sort of thing.

As an "historian" all you put into evidence are your own interpretations of dead guys' thinking.

You ignore what Bobby Kennedy said about the Diem coup, and you ignore what Jack Kennedy said about the Diem coup, and you ignore the role Harriman played not only in the Diem coup but in Kennedy's SE Asia policy as a whole.

So what if other Pet Theorists agree with you?

Your conclusion that Dulles was engaged in some dark plot to coerce Kennedy on the BOP is made of ether, not fact.

I have to go by the totality of the evidence, and cull that totality from the best sources.

This from a guy who openly brags about ignoring the physical evidence in the JFK murder case, and openly brags about ignoring Laos in his assessment of JFK's foreign policy.

So, bye bye.

Uh-hunh...

Scott Kaiser Wrote:Kennedy who was very angry at the CIA for trying to force Kennedy into wanting to use American military when this failed operation was dependent on an uprising that was never going to take place, and Castro made sure of that. It was that part of the operation that the White House and the CIA overlooked. However, President Kennedy did make a public announcement on TV to the American public just a week before the invasion, he stated,, "there will be NO American military intervention." Well, that was a lie too, Kennedy did approve A4 Navy Skyhawks from the U.S.S. Essex to fly air-cover for the B-26's, that's called [American military] being used right? Are you with me so far? But, by the second day, the B-26's were all shot-down, that meant there would be no need for the A4's or air-cover right? Kennedy had delayed the A4's, after it was all over with they, the A4's did a fly by to show some interest in the matter, search and rescue according to you, lol... Kennedy had no intention of those A4's ever getting involved, that would have meant going against his word to the American public, by using American military right? And, Kennedy said he wouldn't. Thus is the reason he, [Kennedy] had Bundy call the CIA and delayed their take off. The mission was doomed! Now, it was too late and all over with. He accepted public responsibility while trying to maintain "plausible deniability." Yes, Kennedy did get assassinated over the BOP's.

Did I miss something?