Jim DiEugenio Wrote:David Giglio found this fine interview with Hilsman from 1983, ten years before John Newman's book JFK and Vietnam was published.

In this respect it is even more startling that the book was so shocking. I attribute it to the media and academia more than anything. Ignorance and axe grinding.

https://kennedysandking.com/videos-and-interviews/clete-roberts-interviews-roger-hilsman-on-vietnam-1983

Jim DiEugenio Wrote:Paul:

Thanks for that. I know you had to note the two bombshells in there.

1.) Bobby Kennedy wanted to negotiate out of Vietnam in 1963? Page 7

2.) JFK was thinking of recognizing China as early as 1961? Page 21

I have studied JFK's foreign policy as much as anyone. I was unaware of those two.

Quote:One further organizational shift in early 1962 had long-term consequences for China policy. Within the Far East Bureau the China desk had continued, since 1949, to include within it men who worked on
both Taiwan and mainland China affairs. In the '50s, and in the first year of the Kennedy Administration, this arrangement tended to submergeWashington-Peking relations within Washington-Taipei relations;
mainland China specialists found it difficult to win bureaucratic struggles within the China desk, even before issues rose to the Bureau level. But by 1962 a long overdue reform was effected: mainland China was separated
off from Republic of China Affairs and was established as a new desk charged with "Mainland China Affairs." While lacking the additional bureaucratic support of an embassy in Peking (to counter Embassy Taipei), this new desk now had more independent access to the upper levels of the Bureau and the Department - and thereby potentially greater influence.

James Lateer Wrote:It's no surprise that China could have reared it's head as an issue for JFK behind the scenes. It is well known that Dean Rusk was heavily involved in the center of the Korean War situation. He had a long history working on the side of UK interests and policy.

I think that Rusk had been part of the decision to declare Korea as "outside the zone of US vital interests" as well as the decision not to bomb the bridges on the Yalu River to prevent Chinese intervention in Korea.

Rusk had served in the Burma Theater in World War II and thus, his career was extremely intertwined with the UK. This could have lead Rusk to anger the China Lobby and the pro-Taiwan dinosaurs of the right-wing.

Senator James O Eastland spent years investigating the secretive Amerasia issue. Also the totally secretive Institute of Pacific Relations (about which there is still little information publically available).

Any, of course, the German spy agency BND under former Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen was much more involved in the Far East than anyone would imagine. And you could add in the mysterious FOI of Richard Case Nagell/Lee Harvey Oswald and the Charles Willoughby involvement in Japan and the Far East.

It's easy to see why any potential opening to China would totally upset the applecart. That also might have been the poison pill for Nixon and the Watergate problem.

But I would still estimate the confrontation with the Soviets in central Europe as outweighing the Asian problems for JFK.

James Lateer