21-05-2018, 08:12 PM
Quoted from The Three Barons at page 107
"On January 7, 1950, McCarthy met with three people at a dinner at the Colony restaurant in Washington, DC. The three were Charles Kraus, William A. Roberts (the attorney for investigative journalist Drew
Pearson) and Father Edmund A. Walsh, 63, founder of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
Drew Pearson, along with his partner, Jack Anderson, were journalists who "poked their nose" into the affairs of the U.S. Government, often behind the scenes. They did so to an extreme which has no parallel in post-2000 journalism. Father Walsh, also at the table, was founder of the Foreign Service School at Catholic Georgetown University. This university had achieved preeminence in Washington higher education, especially when it came to foreign policy. If any issues of national importance were discussed
over that dinner they would likely be foreign policy. This was a time of great international uncertainty and upheaval. Most historians date the beginning of McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade to that dinner in 1950."
This was considered by most historians as the seminal event for McCarthy's Anti-Communist Crusade. This analysis is also featured in the McCarthy biography The Life And Times Of Joe McCarthy by Thomas C. Reeves.
"seminal" def #3Seminal Holding the first place in a series of developed results or consequents; serving as a source, or first principle; giving rise to related ideas or results; germinal; radical; primary; original; as, seminal principles of generation; seminal virtue; a seminal discovery."The idea of God is, beyond all question or comparison, the one great seminal principle."
The analysis suggested by the eminent Mr. di Eugenio would claim that defining a single meeting between Ngo Dinh Diem, Francis Cardinal Spellman and JFK as the seminal event of the Vietnam War is "weird". To many readers, it might, admittedly, seem weird.
This is because (apparently) the seminal event should have (according to Mr. DiEugeno), involved such people as CIA guys Wesley Fishel, Peter White and Robert Amory or it should have been something much more elaborate like Operation Vulture, Dulles reneging on the Geneva Accords in 1956, Lansdale rigging the plebiscite for Diem, the Battle of Ap Bac and NSAMs, 263, 273, and 288 and Rolling Thunder,
According to the di Eugenio approach to analysis, the significance of the JFK-Spellman-Diem dinner was small because it was so miniscule in terms of (1) time spent, (2) money spent, (3) number of people involved, (4) immediate or short term disastrous results, etc. etc. etc. From this perspective, to elevate this tiny and quick event to the level of, say, the Tet Offensive is weird.
The Diem, JFK, Spellman meeting, (like the crucifiction of Christ), took only a couple of hours. I personally don't think that the seminal event is the same as the "most important event" or "the turning point" or "the most shattering event", etc. etc. etc.
Hitler's Beer Hall Peutsch was the seminal event of Nazi Germany. The most consequential event was the Battle of Stalingrad. These are two different concepts.
The perfect example can be found in The Road to Dallas by author David Kaiser. Kaiser happens to be an author cited above by Mr. Di Eugenio. In his book, Kaiser states that Oswald's visit to the apartment of Sylvia Odio is the most important evidence in the JFK assassination literature.
This sets up the perfect criticism of theories of authors like Mr. Kaiser. Since his book was published by Harvard University and his footnoting and textual scholarship is so outstanding, I was expecting something pretty awesome from The Road to Dallas. The question, to me, is "how can an author like Mr. Kaiser with his impeccable scholarship and his connection to Harvard be so wrong in his assessment of the crucial issues of his subject?" How could anyone view Oswald's visit to Sylvia Odio as ranking as the most important JFK evidence? That baffles me.
Cardinal Spellman was described by biographer John Cooney as "The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman". So you had the meeting between the American Pope, the future US President JFK and the future Dictator of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. You just can't put these three incredibly influential people on the same level or scoreboard as Wesley Fishel, Peter White and Robert Amory of the CIA. It's not what you know, but who you know.
All of these events (like Vietnam), to me, have to be looked at as acts of the world hierarchy. A schoolteacher who corners a group of young punk vandals at her school will first look to see who is the ringleader? And in the current FBI "spying on the Trump campaign", the most important question is was it done under the initiative of Obama, the Deep State or under the initiative of UK Intelligence? You have to look at the hierarchy and the dynamics of something like this.
There is no easy measurement like (1) which happened first? (2) which cost the most amount of money? (3) Which took the most amount of time and effort? (4) which generated the most amount of paper? (5) Who were the richest and most wealthy people involved? etc. etc.To get to the root cause or identify the "seminal event", it's an art and not a science.
And there's no "democracy of players" principle at work: i.e. Fishel, White and Amory of the CIA deserve equal credit to Spellman, JFK and Diem because Jefferson said "all men are created equal." That just doesn't work, in my opinion, though it may be idealistic on the part of some authors.
JFK researchers, (only in my opinion, not everyone's) tend to look at society and government more as a flat pancake (and less as a hierarchy with the ultimate villain invariably being at the top). In my opinion, the question of "who is the villain at the top?" is the proper question to be asked by historians. But that's just my own personal bias (and possibly too-suspicious) brain at work.
James Lateer
"On January 7, 1950, McCarthy met with three people at a dinner at the Colony restaurant in Washington, DC. The three were Charles Kraus, William A. Roberts (the attorney for investigative journalist Drew
Pearson) and Father Edmund A. Walsh, 63, founder of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
Drew Pearson, along with his partner, Jack Anderson, were journalists who "poked their nose" into the affairs of the U.S. Government, often behind the scenes. They did so to an extreme which has no parallel in post-2000 journalism. Father Walsh, also at the table, was founder of the Foreign Service School at Catholic Georgetown University. This university had achieved preeminence in Washington higher education, especially when it came to foreign policy. If any issues of national importance were discussed
over that dinner they would likely be foreign policy. This was a time of great international uncertainty and upheaval. Most historians date the beginning of McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade to that dinner in 1950."
This was considered by most historians as the seminal event for McCarthy's Anti-Communist Crusade. This analysis is also featured in the McCarthy biography The Life And Times Of Joe McCarthy by Thomas C. Reeves.
"seminal" def #3Seminal Holding the first place in a series of developed results or consequents; serving as a source, or first principle; giving rise to related ideas or results; germinal; radical; primary; original; as, seminal principles of generation; seminal virtue; a seminal discovery."The idea of God is, beyond all question or comparison, the one great seminal principle."
The analysis suggested by the eminent Mr. di Eugenio would claim that defining a single meeting between Ngo Dinh Diem, Francis Cardinal Spellman and JFK as the seminal event of the Vietnam War is "weird". To many readers, it might, admittedly, seem weird.
This is because (apparently) the seminal event should have (according to Mr. DiEugeno), involved such people as CIA guys Wesley Fishel, Peter White and Robert Amory or it should have been something much more elaborate like Operation Vulture, Dulles reneging on the Geneva Accords in 1956, Lansdale rigging the plebiscite for Diem, the Battle of Ap Bac and NSAMs, 263, 273, and 288 and Rolling Thunder,
According to the di Eugenio approach to analysis, the significance of the JFK-Spellman-Diem dinner was small because it was so miniscule in terms of (1) time spent, (2) money spent, (3) number of people involved, (4) immediate or short term disastrous results, etc. etc. etc. From this perspective, to elevate this tiny and quick event to the level of, say, the Tet Offensive is weird.
The Diem, JFK, Spellman meeting, (like the crucifiction of Christ), took only a couple of hours. I personally don't think that the seminal event is the same as the "most important event" or "the turning point" or "the most shattering event", etc. etc. etc.
Hitler's Beer Hall Peutsch was the seminal event of Nazi Germany. The most consequential event was the Battle of Stalingrad. These are two different concepts.
The perfect example can be found in The Road to Dallas by author David Kaiser. Kaiser happens to be an author cited above by Mr. Di Eugenio. In his book, Kaiser states that Oswald's visit to the apartment of Sylvia Odio is the most important evidence in the JFK assassination literature.
This sets up the perfect criticism of theories of authors like Mr. Kaiser. Since his book was published by Harvard University and his footnoting and textual scholarship is so outstanding, I was expecting something pretty awesome from The Road to Dallas. The question, to me, is "how can an author like Mr. Kaiser with his impeccable scholarship and his connection to Harvard be so wrong in his assessment of the crucial issues of his subject?" How could anyone view Oswald's visit to Sylvia Odio as ranking as the most important JFK evidence? That baffles me.
Cardinal Spellman was described by biographer John Cooney as "The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman". So you had the meeting between the American Pope, the future US President JFK and the future Dictator of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. You just can't put these three incredibly influential people on the same level or scoreboard as Wesley Fishel, Peter White and Robert Amory of the CIA. It's not what you know, but who you know.
All of these events (like Vietnam), to me, have to be looked at as acts of the world hierarchy. A schoolteacher who corners a group of young punk vandals at her school will first look to see who is the ringleader? And in the current FBI "spying on the Trump campaign", the most important question is was it done under the initiative of Obama, the Deep State or under the initiative of UK Intelligence? You have to look at the hierarchy and the dynamics of something like this.
There is no easy measurement like (1) which happened first? (2) which cost the most amount of money? (3) Which took the most amount of time and effort? (4) which generated the most amount of paper? (5) Who were the richest and most wealthy people involved? etc. etc.To get to the root cause or identify the "seminal event", it's an art and not a science.
And there's no "democracy of players" principle at work: i.e. Fishel, White and Amory of the CIA deserve equal credit to Spellman, JFK and Diem because Jefferson said "all men are created equal." That just doesn't work, in my opinion, though it may be idealistic on the part of some authors.
JFK researchers, (only in my opinion, not everyone's) tend to look at society and government more as a flat pancake (and less as a hierarchy with the ultimate villain invariably being at the top). In my opinion, the question of "who is the villain at the top?" is the proper question to be asked by historians. But that's just my own personal bias (and possibly too-suspicious) brain at work.
James Lateer
