Three new / updated John Newman JFK books appearing on Amazon over the next few weeks

[Anthony Thorne]

John Newman has three new books appearing on Amazon over the next few weeks - updated editions of two earlier volumes, and the new, second volume of his ongoing JFK assassination study, COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS.


The updated new edition of JFK AND VIETNAM is out on January 15th. John Newman posted the new preamble to the book on Facebook. I've reprinted it below. There is substantial new supplementary material in the volume.

The all new COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is out on January 25th. Noted John - "Vol II is a big surprise. Completely changed my view of Eisenhower. And the Joint Chiefs were seditious on the Bay of Pigs plan--not good."

The revised edition of 2015's WHERE ANGELS TREAD LIGHTLY is out on January 31st. "One substantive change in Vol I is Merton is Jack Stewart, not Phillips. Otherwise there are minor changes, a few new crypts etc."


.....

PREAMBLE TO THE 2017 EDITION OF JFK AND VIETNAM
On Amazon January 15[SUP]th[/SUP] 2017.

Brigadier General Joseph A. McChristian was the intelligence chief of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), during General William Westmoreland's command of MACV (1964-1968).

McChristian's insistence on telling the truth about the size and determination of the Viet Cong caused a premature end to his tour at MACV in June 1967. He was perhaps the army's most distinguished intelligence officer. He had served as General Patton's intelligence chief in the breakout from Normandy in WWII. After MACV, McChristian became the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI), at Headquarters, U.S. Army.

I met McChristian during my assignment at Fort Huachuca in 1988, when he was inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of fame. We spoke privately for more than an hour. When he learned the topic of my PhD dissertation was about Kennedy and Vietnam, he opened up to me, not only about what had happened to him in Vietnam, but also about what happened afterward. He told me that many of his records at the Army Center for Military History had been surreptitiously removed. He encouraged me to go forward with the project, and to find the officers who had been in Vietnam during the 1961-1963 period and interview them. McChristian was happy to find out that Don Blascak and Sam Adams were going to help me do just that.

I decided to write this short preamble about a profound comment that General McChristian once made, and that I had quoted in the original manuscript of this book. Unfortunately, my editor at Warner Bookswho held a very senior position at that publishing housetold me I needed to remove it. She said that nobody would be able to understand what the comment meant. Reluctantly, I went along with her wish, and I have regretted it ever since. So, rather than just reinserting it in its original location at the end of Chapter Thirteen, I want to put it up front here. I want to frame it. I want to call it out, so that those among our citizenry who have not served in a military uniform can understand the kind of general officer we need the most.

The comment by McChristian to which I refer, took place on camera as CBS was producing its famous documentary on General Westmoreland and MACV: "CBS Reports, the Uncounted EnemyA Vietnam Deception." In Westmoreland's lawsuit afterward, the prosecution deposed McChristian on the question of whether or not Westmoreland had lied. They regretted doing that, as the intelligence chief, under oath, told the truth, and said that lying about the enemy violated the West Point mottoduty, honor, country. For the first time in history, one West Point graduate accused another of doing something "dishonorable."

But the comment I am thinking about took place during the production of the CBS documentary. In that on camera setting, McChristian refused to answer whether or not Westmoreland had lied. He agreed, however, to address the issue if the question was posed to him in this way: producer George Crile asked, "What does it mean to lie about the enemy in a time of war?" This was McChristian's answer: "It jeopardizes not only the lives of the soldiers on the battlefield, but also the future liberty of your people at home." It is my heartfelt hope that my editor was wrong, and that I do not have to explain the meaning and eloquence of McChristian's response.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I am really looking forward to the reissue of JFK and Vietnam.

That is such an important book in the field. In many ways its still the best book on the subject.

It caused a real sea change in thinking about Kennedy vs Johnson in Vietnam. And it was a key influence for Oliver Stone and his film JFK.

[Albert Doyle]

One clear memory I have of my childhood was looking at our black and white TV in our small lower floor TV room in the Boston suburbs in 1966 and seeing a major network news reporter say "General Westmoreland assures us we are winning the war in Viet Nam" and then giving body count statistics.

[Anthony Thorne]

Newman's latest update.

The revised edition of "Where Angels Tread Lightly" is now available at the CreateSpace eStore:
https://www.createspace.com/3494380

The revised edition will not be available at the main Amazon site until 3-5 business days from todaythe earliest 1/19/17 and the latest 1/23/17. Do not buy a copy from the main Amazon site until you see the front cover with "REVISED EDITION" on it.

Those who do not want to purchase the revised edition can print out this note on the 2017 changes to fold and place inside their book:

The most substantive change from the original 2015 edition is the correction of the true name for the pseudonym Andrew F. Merton. It is Jack Stewart, not as I originally thought, Dave Phillips. Some of the reasons for that misidentification will be evident in Appendix Three to Volume II, which draws attention to a mistake in the State Department Foreign Service Register. It suggested, wrongly as it turns out, that Stewart was in Mexico at a time that Merton was actually still involved (for about three more months) in several important operations taking place in Havana. That matters less than getting the identification right. I want to acknowledge and thank Jerry Shinley for sharing his extensive data on Stewart, which made the oddity in the register irrelevant. It also enabled me to develop a very detailed life history of Stewart from civil records. I will continue to follow his story, including his continuing friendship with Earl Williamson. I have made some adjustments to other pseudonyms in Appendix Two: the most important (aside from Merton) is the discovery that Reichardt and Karnley are both pseudonyms for Ken Crosbywho was living only twenty miles from me in the Shenandoah Valley until a few years ago. The others are minor adjustments to the pseudonyms for Gerry Droller, Henry Hecksher, Justin O'Donnell and William Harvey. In Appendix Four, the correct date5 September 1957is given for the naval uprising at Cienfuegos to overthrow Batista.

[Tracy Riddle]

I am really looking forward to the reissue of JFK and Vietnam.

That is such an important book in the field. In many ways its still the best book on the subject.

It caused a real sea change in thinking about Kennedy vs Johnson in Vietnam. And it was a key influence for Oliver Stone and his film JFK.

I remember the frenzy of criticism it received from certain quarters when it was first released because it went against the approved history.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I do also.

But the thing about that book is that it accomplished the seemingly impossible. It actually began to alter the public's view of the war, the MSM's view of the war, and finally even academia's view of the war. For the latter see, the book and film, Virtual JFK.

I mean how many books can you say that about? Undoubtedly, the film gave his book some ballast. It got John on at least one national TV show. But by and large, the effect was mainly through the book I think. That is how good of a case John made.

[Anthony Thorne]

COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is now on Createspace. It'll be on Amazon in the next few days. The Vietnam volume is not far off either.

[Anthony Thorne]

COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS

$29.99, 484 pages softcover
https://www.createspace.com/5403894

The second volume in a series on the assassination of President Kennedy, "Countdown to Darkness" describes events during a dangerous quickening of the Cold War. The race for a long-range delivery system for nuclear weapons came to its final, unexpected, and unstable conclusion-the "missile gap" favored the United States, not the Soviet Union. The European colonial empires were collapsing in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, spawning Cold War hot spots, where Moscow and Washington rushed in to fill the void. The inevitable consequence of Castro's revolution played itself out as communism established itself-armed to the teeth by the Soviet Bloc by early 1961-a few miles from the American underbelly.

This book reveals how deeply the Eisenhower Administration was in denial about the entrenched Castro police state, the complete penetration of all anti-Castro groups by Cuban intelligence, and the convulsive spectacle of the exiled Cuban leaders. As Eisenhower marshalled his subordinates to overthrow Castro, the president lost patience with DCI Allen Dulles. Eisenhower wanted a Cold War triple play-the elimination of Castro and, to ensure support from Europe and Latin America, the simultaneous elimination of Congolese Prime Minister Lumumba and Dominican Republic Dictator Trujillo.

Dulles approved a CIA plan to use the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro in the fall of 1960, as the Democratic and Republican nominees entered the U.S. presidential election campaign. The Nixon-Kennedy debates turned into a spectacle over the crisis in Cuba. JFK pummeled Nixon for not standing up to Castro and not arming the rebels inside and outside of the Cuba, while Nixon, who knew that was exactly what the administration was doing, was unable to respond due to the covert nature of the plan. In the NSC, the president had demanded, "Everyone must be prepared to swear that he has not heard of it." Unfortunately for the Vice President Nixon, Kennedy had heard all about it. By the fall of 1960, the principal Cuban exile groups in Miami, and their underground sections in Cuba, had long since descended into chaos. The principal CIA officer responsible for holding them together, Gerry Droller, was singularly incompetent. But that mattered little, as the rate at which Soviet Bloc weapons were pouring into Cuba rendered the exile leadership problem irrelevant. The exile government would never be put ashore in Cuba.

All of this came together in a terrible ending. The covert CIA paramilitary plan was unable to keep pace with the consolidation of the regime in Havana, and that plan breathed its last before Kennedy was inaugurated.

It did not take long for Allen Dulles and the Pentagon chiefs to figure out that if they told the president the truth about Cuba and Laos, he would abort in Cuba and negotiate over Laos. So they lied to the President Kennedy about their views. They assumed that when the exile invasion force was being slaughtered on the beachhead, the president would change his mind and send in the marines and airplanes. The lie about Laos nearly worked. But when the lies about Cuba-that the brigade could succeed and the Cuban people would rise up in rebellion to assist it-did not work, the countdown to darkness came to its tragic, and ignominious end. Once past that foreboding event horizon, political and economic forces inexorably cleaved inward like matter pulled into the singularity of a black hole. Within a year, Kennedy would fire the top three men at the CIA and most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

[Anthony Thorne]

COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is now on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Darknes...20Darkness

Newman will reportedly be doing an interview about the books on Black Op Radio fairly soon.

[Anthony Thorne]

The Kindle version of COUNTDOWN TO DARKNESS is now available.

https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Darknes...ohn+newman

Clicking on the cover image at the link above opens a long preview for the book. You can read the Acknowledgements, Forward, the contents listing, the introduction with John's hypotheses for the entire series, the first chapter of the book and a decent amount of the second chapter.