My new book, "Into the Nightmare"

[Joseph McBride]

Joseph just a couple of comments first.

On Vietnam I think you understate the case that JFK was getting out of Vietnam. Books by David Kaiser, Gareth Porter, Howard Jones, Gordon Goldstein have combined to make a much stronger case that JFK was resistant to a land from day one. Also on page 59 your mentioning of nuclear weapons in the context of JFK's "extraconstitutional" bellicose rhetoric -- citing Gary Wills-- is, IMO, misplaced given that in many cases such as Laos and the 1961 Vietnam advisor increase, what JFK was specifically seeking to bargain away was the JCS's insistence on keeping the nuclear option as one more quiver in their quill.

Secondly one of the weaknesses in this otherwise excellent book is IMO , a general failure to outline the degree to which the CIA was actively undermining JFK in foreign policy . You do make some occasional points on this re for example Cuba; but the systematic nature of CIA disregard for JFK's policies fails to come through.

This is not surprising considering how difficult it is to write a book that covers BOTH policy and the details of the assassination as yours does.

Also you quote Theodore White on LBJ the day of the assassination: "On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, leaned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President's mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick" That phrase ending in "guiding the quick" is that an allusion to some famous quote that I am missing? Also what do you think White means when he says guiding the quick. Does he offer any specifics there?

Nathaniel, Thanks for your detailed comments. "The quick" is an old-fashioned
way of referring to people who are alive and well.

I agree that JFK was generally resistant to widening the U.S. involvement
in Vietnam, and that he was trying to disengage in 1963, but he tried to play both sides
while temporizing until his expected 1964 reelection and issued
conflicting statements on the subject to preserve his options and/or keep
the opposition from becoming too strong (a failed attempt, since
his death changed everything). John Newman's
book JFK AND VIETNAM is precise and authoritative on Kennedy's complicated
efforts to keep us from a wider war, the one that he was resisting and
was set in motion by his death.

As for the Kennedy rhetoric I personally heard in April 1960, he was
reiterating what Garry Wills has analyzed as the unilateral
(and unconstitutional) presidential claim post-Hiroshima to sole authority
to wage war. It's not inconsistent with trying to keep the
control of nuclear weapons out of the hands of the military and
keep it under control of the executive branch. But as Wills notes,
presidents since 1945 have bypassed Congress in waging
war, the right reserved to Congress in the Constitution. We haven't had a declared war since World War II, although
some presidents have gone for phony kinds of fig-leaf resolutions
to back them up, most notoriously the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.

I no doubt could have gone into much more detail on the CIA and its opposition to JFK,
but in a long book focused on the assassination and related
events, I had to take a compressed approach to the wide picture
and focus on incidents and events and statements, including those of the
CIA and their affiliated groups, that most
directly related to Kennedy's death. I tried at every turn to
keep an eye on the "deep politics," as Peter Dale Scott
calls it, and I hope I succeeded.

Thanks again for your close reading.