On Edwin Kaiser and Related Topics

[Jim DiEugenio]

Scott, if you want to keep throwing stuff up on the wall, then that is your choice.

But the CIA itself in its own March 15th memo admit that they looked at Playa Giron because of its air strip capability, and the air operations would be launched from there after a beachhead was attained. That is their words.

When Stevenson and Rusk talked to JFK about the CIA's request to launch a second strike from Nicaragua, Kennedy specifically said that he had not signed onto that. He wanted the second strike to come from on the island.

As I said, its your choice to keep up this unannotated diatribe. But in practical terms, to put it mildly, it does not advance your credibility.

[Scott Kaiser]

I apologize for providing truth, I had no idea that truth would tarnish my credibility.

[Jim DiEugenio]

When your notion of "truth" conflicts with multiple sources from the declassified record--some of them from the CIA itself--then yes, you risk your credibility.

But you are the same person who said I made up quotes from Allen Dulles about his snookering of Kennedy. When in fact, Dulles had himself admitted he suckered JFK and put it in his own writing! And an historian discovered it at the Princeton Library.

You were apparently unaware of this fact. Which was in the Douglass book.

This indicates a very dubious methodology of sourcing by you.

[Scott Kaiser]

Okay, please allow me to revert my analogy to a more clarification? While anyone argues the fact as to who really called off the second airstrikes, I'm providing you with information no one had ever known. (Kinda like no one, and I mean no one, knew who the sixth burglar was in Watergate,) even the best of the best researchers and authors didn't know. But, I did. While you want to believe the second airstrikes were to secure a beach-head, I'm trying to you it was to eliminate Castro's air-force. It was because of the failed Bay of Pigs Kennedy got assassinated. The lone gunman theory, yeah well, that along with the single bullet theory are two of the most laughable arguments anyone could ever present.

Pay no attention to me, I'm someone who's never been heard of, I'm nobody, truthfully, everyone but me is correct, and because everyone had been researching this a lot longer then I, this may be the reason you're right and I am wrong. I admit that.

However, I can post my proof, back up what I say, trust me Jim, you have put too much faith in Taylor and Kirkpatrick, we all make mistakes Jim. The sooner you can come to grips with this, the sooner some folks will allow those of us who are always wrong, be right sometimes?

[Scott Kaiser]

Would you agree that president John F. Kennedy made a public announcement that no American military would be used? If we can agree on that, then can you explain why American military was used?

[Scott Kaiser]

And, if American military was used, then why didn't we just invade Cuba?

[Jim DiEugenio]

The problem with what you are arguing is that it is contravened by the written evidence in the record, plus the testimony of those on scene, at CIA and in the WH. It is very hard to swallow what you are saying for those reasons.

As per the second question about military aid and why did we just not invade Cuba, this is something that I have thought about for a long time. I have come to the conclusion that if Nixon would have won the election, we would have invaded Cuba. In fact he himself admitted this. If it would have happened under Eisenhower, I also think he would have invaded.

When you focus on Kennedy's overall foreign policy, and the formulation of his ideas about communism and the Third World, and you really study that subject, then you see this question as a gestalt query not as an instance.

Kennedy's ideas on this were that the USA could help those in the Third World who wanted to be helped in order to resist communism. But the USA could not in and of itself do the fighting for them. We could supply aid, and weapons and advisers. But being sensitive to the what Europeans and the USA had done in the past to developing nations, he was not going to let America under his stewardship repeat that sorry record. How else does one explain his African policy, specifically the Congo, where he was for Lumumba and against the Belgians and the British. How else does one explain his Indonesia policy, where he made the Dutch surrender West Irian, maybe the wealthiest island in the world, to Sukarno?

How else does one explain Vietnam? He refused to send in troops in the fall of 1961 when almost everyone in the room was pushing him to do so. Once he committed more advisors, that was it. Kennedy felt we should help South Vietnam with weapons, supplies, and money and advisors, but not combat troops. Having fulfilled that limited commitment, he was pulling out at the time of his death.

In Cuba, he passed up two opportunities to invade the island. During the Bay of Pigs, and during the Missile Crisis. In the first instance, with Zapata collapsing, Kennedy was the only one resisting invasion. In the second instance, it came down to him and his brother. Johnson wanted an invasion. Towards the end, even McNamara did. If you can believe it, Fulbright also.

After years of studying this pattern, that is what I have come up with. Kennedy followed the Truman Doctrine, which every president did since after the war. But he followed it only in its strictest form and its original design.

[Rolf Zaeschmar]

Kennedy... wanted the second strike to come from on the island.

That makes sense. The Cuban air strikes quickly became a topic at the UN, where the "plausible deniability" of US involvement was slipping badly. And it certainly could not have survived another round if future air strikes could not positively have been traced to Cuba itself.

[Rolf Zaeschmar]

... why did we just not invade Cuba, this is something that I have thought about for a long time.

Me too. One salient fact is that after the Bay of Pigs the US never seriously threatened Castro's hold on power, though the pinprick raids and the economic sabotage efforts continued for decades. Why not? They overthrew dozens of governments in the interim, but not Cuba. In some "deep state" kind of way, I suspect the powers that be quietly decided Cuba was more valuable to them as a communist nation. Remember that Castro himself seized power with the assistance of the CIA.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Thanks Rolf.

BTW, for the evidence about JFK's overall foreign policy which I talked about in Post 33, see the article i posted a daly or so ago, "Dodd and Dulles vs Kennedy in Africa". That supplies a lot of evidence for where JFK was coming from.