JFK, The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
Preface
THE COLD WAR, along with its various politically managed "battle-grounds" has ended, but the mystery lives on. What was going on?
Increasingly we have all begun to realize that the legislative creation of the CIA, the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the development
of rockets and missiles along with the space program and the moon landings, as well as
with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, were craftily orchestrated events designed to
fill the gap between what mankind has known as conventional warfare and the incalculable
impact of nuclear warfare. In terms of the military industrial interests there had to be
a demand for their products and there had to be attrition of that materiel. Thus preparation
for warfare and some form of warfare had to continue. All this was done while carefully
avoiding a nuclear exchange.
On top of this, we have now begun to realize that one of the greatest casualties of the
Cold War has been the truth. At no time in the history of mankind has the general public
been so misled and so betrayed as it has been by the work of the propaganda merchants of
this century and their "historians." It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, "There is
properly no history; only biography," and this may have been said in jest. We have
learned, with some frequency, that the biographer himself may have toyed with the truth.
Perhaps "autobiography" is a better word for a factually correct history.
This book is a firsthand account of the years since World War II. It carefully documents a major sector of
the cold War from 1943 to 1975 by recognizing
the strategically elegant "Saigon Solution" as the long-range plan that was designed by the international
power elite to bridge, profitably that first thirty years, from
the end of World War II on September 2, 1945, to the fall of Saigon, on April 30, 1975. After that
they took advantage of the so-called energy crisis of the seventies and
the equally contrived financial crisis of the eighties to make unbelievable sums
of money from those valuable sources that must include the
global trade in drugs.
There are some readers who are unaccustomed to this age-old
Concept of the power elite. One of the better characterizations of this
idea was written by R. Buckminster Fuller in his important book Critical
Path. It reads:
" In our comprehensive reviewing of published, academically accepted
history we continually explore for the invisible power structure behind the
visible kings, prime ministers, czars,
emperors, presidents and other official head men, as well as for the underlying,
hidden causes of individual wars and the long, drawn out campaigns not disclosed
by the widely published and popularly accepted causes of these wars".
It goes without saying that few, if any, credible historians are going to
be able to name the individuals who comprise such an elite. One point must be clarified.
They are not the Bilderburgers, the Trilateralists, or members of the Council for Foreign
Relations. Much more is said on
this subject in the chapters that follow, and even then we must realize that one of the
greatest strengths of this power elite is that they have learned to live anonymously.
There is, in Lord Denning's book, The Family Story, a most pertinent reference to the
words of Winston Churchill during a heavy bomber
attack on Rotterdam during World War II. Denning reports that Churchill, during
a conversation among friends, made reference to a High Cabal that has made us
what we are. In that sense. Churchill's High Cabal equates with Fuller's Invisible
power structure.
For a man
in Churchill's position, and at the war-time peak of his public career, to make reference to a high, or higher, cabal defines the subject .We live under the influence of such a cabal
today, whether we realize it or not. This book opens up the subject for a broad and most
practical review.
In general, this historical account follows a chronological format, and in so doing it
recognizes the enormous significance of the November 22, 1963, assassination of
President John Kennedy and of the coup d'etat that replaced that administration as a
result.
Portions of this book appeared during 1985- 1987 in the magazine 'Freedom'. Oliver
Stone became familiar with its "Kennedy assassination" related material and used some
if it in his film JFK. The author
worked with Stone as a technical adviser and was portrayed as "Man X," played by
Donald Sutherland. However, the principal theme of the book documents the long-
range, strategic planning of the Cold War, begun as early as the Cairo and Teheran
"Big Four" Conferences of late November 1943, and how that planning led directly,
without a single day's interval, from the end of World War II, September 2, 1945, to
the United States' involvement in what became the Indochina war, which began on
that same date. These Conference plans also included the Korean war that began
five years later, in June 1950.
These facts were confirmed in a speech made by John Foster Dulles
before the American Legion Convention in St. Louis, quite coincidentally on September
2,1953, when he confirmed the United States involvement in this "desperate struggle's
first eight years in Indochina." Before that "no win" warfare had ended, not less than
$570 billion had been channeled into the coffers of this war-making High Cabal at a cost
58,000 American lives.
This type of limited warfare was not designed solely for the purpose of making war to
make money, as has been the case throughout history for most countries; but it was
necessitated by the knowledge, as early as 1943, that the atom bomb would be ready
before the end of World War II.
As many have recognized, the war did not end until the first of each of the original
types of atomic bomb, implosion and Gun-type, had
been given its initial bloodbath public demonstration over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Then, and only then, did these world class planners realize that they had made a terrible
mistake in funding those nuclear physicists and their industrial backers to produce an
atom bomb. From the time of the first use of nuclear weapons until the present, and
even more certainly for the future, the atomic bomb demonstrated that effective
warfare, as it was known since the dawn of mankind, has ended. The almost timeless
era of conventional warfare is over. There will be more "victorious" wars. There will
be moneymaking meaningless wars. The next real, all-out, and unlimited war will lead to
Armageddon on Earth, it will be the last.
Bernard O'Keefe armed the Nagasaki bomb, detonated the 15-megaton BRAVO
hydrogen test device in the Pacific, and, before his death, became
the chairman of the board of E.G.&G. Inc., one of the nation's leading high-technology
nuclear-support companies. O'Keefe wrote:
The fission-fusion-fission bomb permits unlimited destruction in a small convenient
package. The radius of destruction (of such a bomb)
is measured not in miles but in hundreds of miles, rendering any civil defense by evacuation useless.
(Note: He said "radius")
Furthermore, the series of so-called wars since 1945 were never
fought to achieve victory. They were waged for dollars, without a true military objective,
under the control of civilian leaders, with the generals in a supernumerary role. In fact,
the first twenty years of our "desperate" struggle in Indochina were fought under the
operational control of agents of either the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) or the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) first assisting Ho Chi Minh
to establish the independence of Vietnam, and later, when U.S. policy swung
around in alignment with the Cold War, to support the French. The few bona
fide U.S. Armed Forces generals who were in Vietnam
were limited to managing and supporting activities, and none of them, at any time, ever
served in direct command of combat operations in Indochina. There was always an
ambassador, and frequently a CIA agent-under the cover of a general, both in
superior positions.
Such is the nature of these new limited, "make money" wars. Because of the
strategy that continued, the money making aspect of
warfare and the dilemma created by the advent of the nuclear weapon, no single
event of that thirty-year period has been a more serious indictment of the
condition of our present government, of our media,
and of those of the lawyer-capitalist system, who are in control of both, than the
enormity of the cover story fabrication about the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy. This situation has prevailed for the
past three decades plus. The reason why it has been possible to
maintain this enormous cover story for decades is that the greater crime
committed on November 22, 1963 was that of the coup d'etat of the
government of the United States. The conspirators took control.
Paramount among the many other reasons for this deplorable condition
has been the One World growth of a power elite of international bankers and
industrial giants who totally disregard the sovereignty of
nations and the individual rights of man.
As a result, the history of the Cold War period
that began before the end of World War II has been replete with fantasies. A number of
those whom we call "historians" are no more than paid hacks with little or no practical
experience, and a fixed agenda. Even the official history of United States Involvement in
Vietnam from World War II to the present (1968) popularly known as
the Pentagon Papers, contains such amazing propaganda in the chronic logical
record of that period as:
Nov. 22nd, 1963 Lodge confers with the President.
Having flown to Washington the day after the conference,
Lodge meets with the President and presumably continues the
kind of report given in Honolulu. (see, Vol. 11, page 223)
That is the Pentagon Papers official account of that otherwise momentous
day. What possible explanation can there be for the
fabrication of that totally untrue bit of official record of the very day that President John F.
Kennedy was assassinated as a result of a contract
murder? This becomes all the more significant when we realize that this official history
was directed by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and was compiled and
written by members of his staff in the International Security Affairs section. Under the
task force leadership and direction of Leslie H. Gelb, later editor of the New York
Times and now the president of the Council for Foreign Relations.
This massive study, containing countless other fabrications and significant
omissions, was officially presented to the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Clark
M. Clifford, on January 15, 1969. Since that
time, as later researchers, writers, and college professors have attempted to describe the
thirty years of Vietnam War history, they have been misled by this work and by others that
are equally false and contrived.
In contrast my book has been written utilizing a pattern of
chronology and autobiography. I was ordered to active military duty in July 1941
and as an Air Transport Command V.I.P. pilot, I was on duty in Cairo and Teheran
during those important, highest level Conferences
of late November l943. I participated in one of the initial, pivotal moves of the Cold War
in the Balkans during September 1944 while the Soviet Union was still publicly considered
to be one of our wartime allies. I was on Okinawa at the end of World War II and had
made air transport flights into Japan before the Medal surrender on September 2, 1945;
and returned again to the Far East as commander of a Military Air Transport
Service squadron based in Tokyo from 1952 through 1954. During those
years, I made many flights into Indochina and what became the nation of
South Vietnam in 1954.
In 1955 I was designated by the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force to
establish an office of special operations within that headquarters in compliance with
National Security Council (NSC) Directive #5412 of March 15. 1954. This NSC
Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations
and assigned that role to the Central intelligence Agency to perform such missions,
provided they
had been directed to do so by the NSC, and further ordered active-duty Armed
Forces personnel to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces
were directed to provide the military support of the
clandestine operations of the CIA as an official function.
I established that office and created its global clandestine support system. For the next
nine years, 1955 -1964, I served five of those years with the Air Force, two with the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, and two more with the Office of the joint Chiefs of
Staff in that unique function of supporting the CIA's secret clandestine operations.
This book documents the "Saigon Solution"-that complex and powerful element of the
Cold War master plan that, according to R. Buckminster Fuller, generated no less than six
trillion dollars for its beneficiaries, who were in most cases many of the same members of
the military industrial complex so aptly defined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his
Farewell Address, on January 1 / 1961.
How can that cabal of conspirators who now control this One World
be so powerful that it is possible for them to control the minds of our presidents, our
media, and our entire educational system. This book is a personal account of the characteristics of that power elite and of its
activities on an international scale during the Cold War. There is an overpowering
reason why this is important.
The greatest war in the history of Mankind came to a sudden and spectacular close
with the detonation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs. Those pivotal events
not only brought the Japanese to the surrender table on the battleship Missouri in
Tokyo Bay on September
2, 1944, but they also caused the ubiquitous highest cabal of this world to realize that they
made an irreparable mistake when they permitted, yes, encouraged, nuclear scientists to
create the nuclear weapon. They can never put the genie back in the bottle. From now on
warfare must be limited, or all-out warfare will obliterate life on Earth.
World War II was over and conventional warfare died with it. In the ancient days, "war
began with plunder, and the weapons at hand." Carl von Clauswitz added in 1833 in his
book Vom Kriege that "war is not
merely a political act but a political instrument " That was better; but, it was Alexis de
Tocqueville, in his insightful book, Democracy in
America, of 1835, who began to define "war in its modern dress: The secret
connection between the military character and that of the democracies was the profit
motive." With that precise statement de Tocqueville modernized the true concept of
warfare: it is driven by the profit motive; it must be profitable. Another way to put it
is that the profiteers make war as a necessity.
How many of us realize that back in November 1943, when Winston Churchill and
Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Cairo with Chiang Kai-shek they were not only making
plans for victory over the Axis powers in Europe, they were laying the groundwork
for a follow-on period of
warfare in eastern Asia, in Indochina (1945). Korea (1950). and Indonesia 1958)
following the defeat of Japan? Few historians seem to recall that also in Cairo was
Chiang Kai-shek's wife Mei-Ling the American educated sister of T. V. Soong then the
wealthiest man in the world.
and she actually took part in the work of the conference along with activities of T. V. Soong's
Chinese delegates, who were Chiang's advisors.
During October 1943, I had been directed to fly a Geological Survey
Team, under the leadership of Wean C. R Smith, founder and president
of American Airlines and an "oil wise" Texan, to Saudi Arabia. Roosevelt had sent that
select team into Saudi Arabia to meet with representatives of the California Standard
Oil Company at their remote quarters on Ras Tanura. Following that visit they had been
directed to join the President in Cairo. Their glowing report of the "limitless" quantity of
petroleum under the sands of Arabia caused Roosevelt to order the expedited
construction of a 50,000 barrel per-day refinery on that site. It was in operation before
the end of 1945, thus began the modern petroleum era in the midst of war.
Even more importantly, after these delegates of Chiang Kai-shek and T. V. Soong
had actively participated in Cairo in the planning for the post-World War II activities in
the Far East, they flew on to Teheran, for that historic conference with Stalin. The fact
that immediately following the Cairo Conference the Chinese delegation was in Teheran
for that meeting with Joseph Stalin has not been recorded in the history books of this era.
This is a most important omission. I was pilot of the plane that flew them there from
Cairo. During the sometimes heated exchanges between Roosevelt and Churchill on the
subject of "the end of colonialism in Southeast Asia", plans were made by all four conferees for a period of
continuing warfare in Indochina, Korea, and Indonesia under the guise of that Cold War "cover story."
In fact, Ho Chi Minh, with an American OSS man and U.S.. Army general
standing on each side of him, declared the Independence of Indochina on the same
date - September 2, 1945, of the Japanese surrender. That date marks the beginning
of the three decades of the Vietnam War, as it was called. But the Cold War actually began even earlier while World
War II was still being fought against the Axis powers.
In September 1944, while I was stationed in Cairo, I was asked by the
commanding general of the Middle East Command, Benjamin Giles,
and by my own Cairo base commander, Gen. Robert J. Smith, to fly them to
Aleppo, Syria. There we met with British Intelligence officers who had been
informed by their Secret Intelligence Service and by our own OSS that a freight
train loaded with about 750 U.S. Air crewmen POWs was secretly en route to Syria
from Romania via the Balkans and Turkey. The American POWs bad been shot
down in the Balkans during air raids on the Ploesti oil fields. the train traveled from Bucharest, Romania, via the
Balkans and Turkey to the vicinity of Aleppo.
That night, after returning from Aleppo, I arranged about thirty transport aircraft to
fly on the following day, to that same landing ground north of Aleppo and close to the
Turkish border where the railroad track enters Syria. We flew to Syria, met the freight
train from Bucharest, loaded the POWs onto our aircraft, and began the flight back to
Cairo.
Among the 750 American POWs there were perhaps a hundred Nazi intelligence agents,
along with scores of Nazi-sympathetic Balkan agents They had been hidden in this
shipment by the OSS to get them out of the way of the Soviet army that had marched into
Romania on September 1st.
This September 1944 operation was the first major pro-German, anti-Soviet activity of its kind of the Cold War.
With OSS assistance, many followed in quick succession, including the escape and carefully planned flight of General Reinhart
Gehlen, the German army's chief intelligence officer, to Washington on September 20, 1945
The war against the Germans ended on May 8, 1945, and an
increasing allied force escalated the war against Japan. Around the world, most
believed, with the surrender of Japan four months later, that war-making had ended,
despite the enormous shadow of nuclear weapons that loomed over the horizon. They were wrong.
Meanwhile, a new, limited, clandestine paramilitary type of warfare emerged in
some of the hot spots of the world. The Korean War began in May 1950 and, almost
immediately, U. S. Armed Forces accompanied by their new CIA associates became
involved. By the time the North Korean forces surrendered, the somewhat dormant
warfare in Indochina had flared up, on schedule. Here American participation, as
noted earlier, was under the clandestine operational control of CIA agents, most of
whom had valuable World War II military experience.
By 1954 the United States government for the first time found it necessary to define "covert
operations".
As mentioned previously, the National Security Council Directive
5412 of March 15, 1954, became the U.S. government's basic directive
on covert activities. Further it stated emphatically that 'such operations shall not include
armed conflict by recognized military forces.' (Note: it
is this stipulation that prohibited the utilization of military "air cover" during the bay of Pigs
operation in 1961.) the CIA became a member of
the NSC 5412 Special Group, and responsibility for those covert operations that
had been directed by the NSC was assigned to the CIA with the full support of
the military departments, as requested, and
with full reimbursement for all "out-of-pocket "expenses.
During a meeting of the President's Special Committee on Indochina, January 20, 1954, the
CIA was authorized to include an "unconventional warfare officer, specifically Colonel
Lansdale", in a group of
five others being sent to Vietnam to create the Saigon Military Mission.
This unit was in place by July 1954 in time to support the new president Ngo Dinh Diem, of
the new country South Vietnam.
In May 1954, Ho Chi Minh's army defeated the French forces at Dien Bien Phu.
A Geneva Conference was convened to arrange an agreement between
the new Countries of North Vietnam and South Vietnam. One provision of that
agreement authorized any resident of the north who chose to move to the south to
do so, and at the same applied to those in the south.
On March 8, 1955, in a speech delivered nationwide, Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles reported, "So far, about six hundred thousand persons have
fled from northern Vietnam, and before the exodus is over the number will probably
approach one million. They are destitute and penniless persons with only such
possessions as they can carry on their backs."
Under the Control of the CIA's Saigon Military Mission, they had
been transported by U.S. Navy transport ships and by the CIA's Civil Air Transport airline
from the north to the Saigon region in the south.
In an effort to account for the success of its work with these "refugees"
the SMM declared its tactics to include "psychological warfare." Today, we would more
accurately call it "terrorism."
Is it any wonder that the
program labeled "Communist-inspired insurgency" that emerged in the
south arose because this horde of displaced people was forced to fight for food, shelter, and
the necessities of life? This is the way that the CIA and its sponsors made war in Vietnam. By
late 1960 our own forces had
created the concept of "counterinsurgency."
All of this was well known to the then-Senator John F. Kennedy.
During the years since the end of World War II, be had been a member of the House of
Representatives and a U.S. Senator and served on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. He had met Ngo Dinh Diem
during 1953 and had met the Cuban exile political leaders as early as August 1960.
They were working with the CIA at that time. He knew as much, or more, about the
training of Cuban exiles under the CIA and of their plans for removal of Castro as
Nixon did. . . perhaps more. It was during the final television debate of the presidential
campaign with Nixon that Kennedy outmaneuvered Nixon, especially regarding anti
Castro policies, and many believe that this made it possible for him to be elected president
in November 1960. It was during this same month,
after the election, that the CIA quietly upgraded the Eisenhower administration's
March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program from small air-
drop and over-the-beach operations to a 3,000 man invasion brigade - a plan that
Kennedy inherited.
In brief, this Preface is an outline of the national and world affairs of
the U.S. government as Kennedy inherited them from the eight-year Republican
administration under Eisenhower.
At that time, January
1961, I had been in the Pentagon for six years and was working in the Office of
Special Operations, a direct function of the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
Thomas Gates. This office was, among other things, responsible for the CIA
relationship and special operations as well as for reviewing the development and
execution of plans and programs of the National Security Agency.
The most noticeable characteristic of that "lame duck" period, which
became evident as the Kennedy newcomers began to replace the departing
Eisenhower old-timers, was the frequently mentioned and vehemently expressed
dislike by the old-timers in the halls of the
Pentagon for the new President. This developed as a result of his defeat of Nixon and
the end of the Republican administration's policies. It was further exacerbated by the
representatives of the military-industrial complex who had been working so
successfully with the tenants of the Pentagon since World War II - particularly on the
procurement plans
for the high-cost "hardware" support of the warfare-to-come in Vietnam. Kennedy was hated
from the start. They knew his reputation. He was certain to be a threat to their future expectations.
All of a sudden the die was cast with the sabotage of the Bay of Pigs operation in April
1961. Quite unbelievably, Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, the man in charge of
that operation, was out of the country on the day of the landings. Equally troublesome was the fact
that the essential, pre dawn air strike on D-Day by Cuban Exile Brigade bombers
from Nicaragua to destroy Castro's last three combat jets that Kennedy, himself,
had directed, had been canceled the night before D-Day by Special Assistant for
National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy. That telephone call by Bundy was
made just four hours before the Exile Brigade's B-26s were to take off fromua n that
Kennedy-ordered strike.
Everyone connected with the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion knew that the
policy dictated by NSC 5412, March 1954, positively prohibited the utilization of
active-duty military personnel in covert operations. At no time was an air cover
provision written into the official invasion plan developed by an experiencedÐdÐdÐdÐd and highly competent U.S. Marine
Colonel and approved, with that stipulation, by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President. The "air cover" story that has been created since
the failure of the Brigade is incorrect.
President Kennedy reacted quickly and deftly, as soon as the Brigade was forced to
surrender. He formed a Cuban Study Group one day after
the Brigade's defeat and charged it with the responsibility of determining the cause for the
failure of that operation he had inherited from the previous administration. That prestigious
and diverse study group consisting of Allen Dulles, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Admiral Arleigh
Burke, and Robert Kennedy, reported that Bundy's telephone call to General Cabell that
canceled the President's air strike order was the primary reason for the failure on the beach
and the surrender of the Cuban Exile Brigade.
The language of the report, as written by General Taylor and unanimously agreed to by
the group, was used almost verbatim by the president when he issued National Security
Action Memorandum, #55,
June 28, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility "for the defense
of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities"
from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When fully implemented, as Kennedy had
planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the ClA out of the covert
operations business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin.
By mid-1963 Kennedy had arrived at the brink of a decision to keep all
American troops out of Vietnam and to withdraw "all U.S. personnel" - military, CIA, and
others - "from Vietnam by the end of 1965." Anyone interested in the exact coverage of
the story read the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, vol. IV,
"Vietnam: August-December 1963" by the Department of State
published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991. This official record documents
twenty-six highest level meetings in the White
House with President Kennedy during the period August 28, 1963, November
13,1963. At the same time, my immediate superior officer, Maj. Gen Victor
H. Krulak attended twenty-three of those meetings
in addition to making a quick visit to South Vietnam. Such a full schedule in the White
House and with the President among other high officials, in such a concentrated
period is most unusual. It shows clearly, how closely Kennedy made an analysis of the
Vietnam situation his
problem, and it relates precisely the ideas he brought to the attention his key staff on the
subject.
It is significant to note that as General Krulak came and went from White House
during that busy period, including his quick trip to and from Vietnam, he would call
several of us on his staff into his office each day to discuss the notes he had made, and give us
instructions concerning what he wanted done for the next day's meeting with Kennedy.
Quite naturally, he was intimately aware of this planning process, its policies, and precisely
what the President intended as Vietnam policy for 1964 and 1965.
The president considered it imperative for Secretary McNamara and
General Taylor to visit Vietnam during that troubled time one month before the
Diems were to be removed from Saigon to Europe in accordance with his
approved plan. At the same time, General Krulak was made responsible for
producing the final document for President Kennedy that would be known as
the McNamara-Taylor Trip Report, October 2, 1963.
It was carefully written by several of us in the Pentagon under
General Krulak's guidance, utilizing the notes and personal comments
of the President. Charts and photos were added, as necessary, and it was bound in leather. It
was not something produced by the two principals during their busy travels. When
completed and approved, Krulak
arranged for a jet fighter aircraft to rush it to Hawaii where it was given to the travelers in
order that they might become completely familiar
with it before their plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. As soon
as they landed, they boarded a helicopter for the White House, where they
ceremoniously gave the report to the president.
The report of October 2, 1963, became NSAM #263 after acceptance and
approval of the President and his National Security Council. That
NSAM #263 is dated October 11, l963. It is the basis for a policy decision
confirming that "presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by
the end of 1963 and to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed
by U.S. military can be carried out
by the Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of
U.S. personnel by that time."
The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes carried the banner headline U.S.
TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY '65. (Note: Any researcher
who looks for NSAM #263 in the Pentagon Papers will find that it was craftily entered
as its cover sheet of only three sentences on one page, and about thirty or forty pages
earlier than the McNamara-Taylor Trip
Report of October 2, 1963, is quite craftily entered without reference to the fact that it is
the true body of NSAM #263.)
This was the official and carefully drawn policy of the Kennedy administration, as
written under the eye of the President. It was no casual or overnight scheme devised for
limited purposes. This policy was developed in the face of the fact that at the same time the Buddhist uprising in the country was
alarming. It was the positive and well planned policy of the president. As such, it all but telegraphed
the death of John F. Kennedy before his reelection.
In boardrooms, gentleman's clubs, and other secluded rendezvous
locales, intimate groups of High Cabal principals quietly discussed this new policy and
what it would do to their carefully planned, twenty-year objective: the "Saigon
Solution." With NSAM #263 and related policy actions, such as changes in military
procurement methods, it was clear that President Kennedy stood between them and
their own goals. It was also clear that this latest "all out by 1965" policy was going to
assure JFK's reelection. He had to go. With that foremost in their minds, a gradual, firm,
and positive consensual decision was reached. The present government must be
overthrown. They wanted no more of Kennedy; and they could not abide the thought of a
Kennedy dynasty. With that, a highly professional movement was initiated: Part I was a
professional hit job by skilled and faceless killers and Part 2 was an intricate and most
comprehensive cover story that gave us such indelible bits of lore as Oswald, Ruby, magic bullet, the Warren Commission, and all the rest.
By November 22, 1963, despite the Pentagon Papers' contrived
omission of that fact of history, Kennedy was dead. By November 24 1963,
President Johnson had signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of the Kennedy
policy announced in NSAM #263 and in March 1964, LBJ signed NSAM #288
that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War that involved 2,600,000 Americans directly, with 8,744,000 serving with the U.S.
Armed Forces during that period.
That was the "Saigon Solution." That is the historical and factually biographical material
of this book. As you read this insider's account, it should be noted that it was the former
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who wrote, in the New York times, February
2, 1983:
I do not believe we can avoid serious and unacceptable risk of
nuclear war until we recognize, and base all our military plans, defense
budgets, weapons deployments and arms negotiations on the recognition
that nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever. They are
totally useless - except only to deter one's opponent from their use.
Amen.
Col. L Fletcher Prouty.
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