JFK's Foreign Policy: A Motive for Murder

[Lauren Johnson]

Jim, Do you think this has a chance of impacting the scholarly community? My guess, of course, is no. Thanks. This was a very moving slide show!

[Jim DiEugenio]

That is a very interesting and relevant question.

I already have a publisher who saw it online and wants me to write a book about it.

My opinion is that the two books, by Rakove and Muehlenbeck are so well documented that people new to the field will take them and run with them.

The problem is that the Kennedy presidency field has become so politicized that people like Dallek and Reeves will do what they can to blunt the power of these new discoveries. Plus, Sorenson and Schlesinger are dead. This new work by these men, essentially proves out the portrait that Schlesinger and Sorenson drew. Except now its much more detailed and referenced.

But to show you how dishonest Dallek is, in his two books on JFK, which come to over 1,100 pages of mostly pulp, he could not find the space or time to mention Gullion's name! That is about as bad as it gets in a biography. And Reeves, I think, is even worse. But that shows you how censored their work was. THerefore, the NY TImes likes them.

But really, I talked to Rakove and he enjoyed doing his book so much, he said he might do a sequel. The guy has a great pedigree: Stanford Lecturer and Ph. D. But let me add, isn't it interesting that everyone inside the community missed all this important material for so long? And it took people from outside the research field to discover it?

But the reason I have been at this now for so many months is that I do not want it to disappear. To me its just too important. In fact, I think its crucial.

[Lauren Johnson]

But let me add, isn't it interesting that everyone inside the community missed all this important material for so long? And it took people from outside the research field to discover it?

When the wall of sound of The Mighty Wurlitzer is filling the concert, other notes just don't exist.

On JFKU and JFK's 'turning to peace,' I have thought that phrase was out tune with some of Douglass' data points. I think he paints a picture of a young President becoming emboldened to become more public with his already formed ideas. Maybe he should have used phrases like 'publicly embracing peace' or something different from 'turning toward peace.'

[Jim DiEugenio]

But Lauren, the whole idea of the critical community is that we are not supposed to buy the might Wurlitzer.

But in this case, because of Oswald's profile and the whole FPCC thing in New Orleans, that is what people ran with: both as a perpetrator, and with the alternative of Oswald as patsy.

I agree that the Douglass book does make some hints of Kennedy's early exposure, and he does mention Gullion. But I think even there, Jim concentrated too much on Vietnam and Cuba. I mean he did a very good job on it, really excellent work and I commended him for it. But I don't look at JFK like that anymore.

ANd as good as the American University speech was, I think the 1957 Algeria speech is better.

[Tracy Riddle]

I'm finally getting around to looking at this. It's very good.

You mention Harold Weisberg in one of the early slides. He worked for many years on a book called Tiger to Ride, about JFK's foreign policy. It was never finished for various reasons. There are a lot of research materials related to it at his Hood University site. Howard Roffman was also working on some book about JFK & Vietnam that was never finished (according to correspondence between him and Weisberg).

In some of his unpublished manuscripts, Weisberg basically states that JFK was probably killed by people in the military who didn't like his foreign policy.

[Albert Doyle]

^ Using the CIA as a covert arm of military power domestically and filtering up to the sponsors via the Drago/Evica model.

[R.K. Locke]

The military top brass - even in America - are not at the top of the power pyramid. They were high level Facilitators, in my opinion, but not Sponsors.

[Jim DiEugenio]

That is really interesting about Weisberg and Tiger to Ride.

Can you link to it?

I didn't know about Roffman and Vietnam either. That guy was really good.

Did you know Harold made Howard cut out about a hundred pages from Presumed Guillty about the autopsy evidence?

He wanted it for Post Mortem. Which is really bad because that is the only JFK assassination book I ever read that I could not finish because it was so badly written.

OTOH, Howard was a good writer. Its a shame, really.

[Tracy Riddle]

That is really interesting about Weisberg and Tiger to Ride.

Can you link to it?

I didn't know about Roffman and Vietnam either. That guy was really good.

Did you know Harold made Howard cut out about a hundred pages from Presumed Guillty about the autopsy evidence?

He wanted it for Post Mortem. Which is really bad because that is the only JFK assassination book I ever read that I could not finish because it was so badly written.

OTOH, Howard was a good writer. Its a shame, really.

I didn't know that about Presumed Guilty/Post Mortem. Roffman's book is one of my favorites.
Weisberg's later books are badly written. His unpublished manuscripts are painful to wade through, but I've found a few interesting nuggets in them.

The materials are scattered around the site, and it's impossible to link to folders, but here is where you can find most of it:

http://jfk.hood.edu/index.shtml?browse.php

Click on the COLLECTION folder, then WEISBERG SUBJECT INDEX FILES, then T DISK, and you'll see a bunch of different folders called TIGER TO RIDE.

You can find Roffman's correspondence in the R DISK folder.

[Jim Hargrove]

Hi,

Using Chrome browser for Linux v 40.0.2214.111 (64-bit) on an Ubuntu Linux v 14.10 (64-bit) desktop machine, the fascinating 2014 presentation displays quickly and apparently perfectly with one anomaly:

On panel 26, the heading "How important was Congo to the Power Elite?" has no leading space between it and the paragraph beneath it, starting, "Jim Lesar has seen...." Everything else appears to be displayed perfectly.

More importantly, outside of Jim Di's work, the foreign policy positions of Mr. Kennedy beyond Cuba and the USSR had been completely unknown to me and no doubt others interested in the motives for the political assassinations of the 1960s. Without this often overlooked information, we were forced to read the tea leaves of Mr. Kennedy's better known public statements, which did seem to show change from his earlier statements to, for example, the American University speech.

Megathanks for your efforts to correct the public record yet again!

Jim