John Newman at 1st Chicago Conference

( Incomplete.  There was a little bit more Q & A.  The presentation part is complete. )

1st Chicago conference - June 26 - 28th, 1992

George Michael Evica - introduces John Newman

Newman - I’m very, very pleased to be here and I would like to express my appreciation to The Third Decade for giving me this opportunity and to Doug Carlson for all the good work he did in getting this together.  And I’m very appreciative of having more than 30 minutes, or as was the case with the TODAY show 2 and a half minutes, to explore with you a very important subject. And one which I think has been rather neglected perhaps even covered over for some 30 years. 

Now before I do let me just give you, let me just say this, of course, my views are mine own they do not represent the Department of the Army or the intelligence community or any government organization.  And I find it necessary to say that.  But, I want to say one other thing too, let me get this out of the way now, so it’s not, doesn’t come up in the Q & A, if it must come up, fine, people continue to ask me about this, but, there isn’t anything incompatible with the job that I hold now and the research that I’m doing. And I get asked over, and over, and over, and over, and over again about that and my response is and always will be I don’t know of any regulation or what the number of the regulation is that says one should not search for the truth or tell the truth .  And, in fact, we are all sworn to do just that.  And as I say and [?] [?] happily for the past several years of looking into this subject and I have held symposium for Mayland, overseas, on military bases and other, and elsewhere which goes beyond my work when it deals directly with the assassination and some of the issues that are involved and I have never been subject to any harrassment by anyone in my chain of command ever.

Now I would like to throw out a little bit of a challenge to the assassination research community in that I don’t think with respect to this subject, for example, Vietnam and what possible relationship it could have to the assassination or policy in general that we are asking the right questions.  I did not really get into them in my work and I am constantly amazed when I attend these functions that I am not asked what I think would be the right sort of questions about the implications of this work.  So, I am going to go beyond the safety of the sandbox in which I normally play today and try and ask a few of those questions myself before I get started and then if you would sort of make a mental note of them as I go through the material and we can talk about that afterwards.

But, I would start by just asking two questions that are extremely important, first of all, if one would make the case that there is any linkage at all between policy considerations and the assassination of John Kennedy we would have to know whether from a policy standpoint it would make any difference if Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated?  Phrase the question that way.

And, number two, what therefore what if any of Kennedy’s policies were reversed by Johnson?  Now I want to say something about that as a sort of composite module on its own before dealing with Kennedy and Vietnam as a larger subject because of what’s happened here after Oliver Stone’s move. 
We have been treated to what I think is a false history on this issue anyway for many years but particularly now at this moment we are being treated to an amazing array of commentary from pundits in the media and even so called historians and it’s as a direct result of this movie.  

And in fact, why don’t I just put up, [John starts his A/V equipment which shows a political cartoon probably from Newsweek which recreates a scene from the Zapruder film where Clint Hill tries to get onto the presedential limousine after the fatal head shot] (Someone in the audience says, “I can’t read it.” Well, actually that’s Oliver [as Clint Hill] jumping onto the back of the limousine and the fellow next to the driver is wearing a CIA whatever saying, “Gun it, Stone’s trying to open the trunk.”  That, actually you see, that’s really what I think is going on here now because when Bob Novak slams his fist down and declares that this whole idea of Kennedy getting out of Vietnam is a bunch of bunk, and after all, what does Bob Novak know about Kennedy and Vietnam.  But, the vigor, the feeling, the intensity of that act, did you all see that on [CNN”s] Crossfife?  It was amazing the demonstration of emotion; and George Will.  

But, they’re not the only ones, we have for example Stanley Karnow, whose book I have used many times as a text, one of many texts in teaching the Vietnam War, "Vietnam: A History," is the name, who comes out now to tell us that the withdrawal plan was “a gimmick.” 

Now, he doesn’t say that in his book but he says it after Oliver Stone’s movie and it’s taken as the central thesis that Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam.  He is also telling us, and you know, also one day I was down on the set in New Orleans and I went up to Oliver and I said, Oliver, would you take a look at this, and I showed him a couple of lines out of Karnow’s book [ Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, Penguin, New York 1984 p. 342.] And those lines were attributed to Johnson on December 24, 1963 just a couple of weeks after the assassination.  And Johnson, according to Karnow says, just to the Joint Chiefs by the way, he’s talking to, to which one I don’t know, or to how many I don’t know, “Just let me get elected, and you can have your war.”  And I said Oliver, would you like to put this in the movie?  And he looked at it, and he looked at it, and he thought, and thought, and then he smiled from ear to ear, and he said, good work. And into the movie it went.  

Well, now, Stanley Karnow is very angry about that.  In fact he wrote an article about that for George Will, or input it into another George Lardner article and he says well, that’s not what I said at all in my book. When I put that in there I explained the real context.  I said that these, that in making that statement Lyndon Johnson was probably making, (remembering Karnow’s phrase) “assuaging the brass with promises he may never have intended to keep.”  

Well, that’s an interesting comment and I think it really tells us a lot about Stanley Karnow and how he’s coming at this whole baggage, and it really made me go back and start to re-read Stanley Karnow. 

You see, the fact is that Johnson and John Kennedy as I will demonstrate here this afternoon held very different views on the war.  And that’s no secret, even McGeorge Bundy told me that, finally, in an interview.  And not only that, not only did he hold different, did Johnson hold different and stronger views on the war but the fact is; that’s before the promise, okay, what’s before the promise? What’s the pattern? He had stronger views on the war?  Well, what about after the promise? He kept it! Okay, he kept it.  So, I’d say the record of Lyndon Baines Johnson before and after he made that comment, that dark comment, that one night a few days [weeks] after the assassination that he in fact, he might have been making a promise he very well intended to keep.  So, it’s not at all ludicrous for Oliver Stone to seize on that and put it in his movie, much as Karnow doesn’t like it. 

William Gibbons, an historian at Princeton University, argues that the withdrawal plan was a “a device,” something to convince Diem, who was very corrupt, that he should reform.  And the idea here is that we are going to scare Diem into reforming by threatening to withdraw 1,000 American soldiers. 

The problem with that is, in fact, that reasoning I was able to discover somewhere in a document, but the person who advocated this line of thought was Maxwell Taylor, General Maxwell Taylor, not John Kennedy and I’ll show you a document on that subject later which is very interesting.  

I guess the point is that we have academics coming out of the closets now with august reputations at Princeton, or like Karnow talking about the withdrawal plan as “a gimmick,”or “a device,” and we have media pundits saying it’s absolutely ludicrous there’s no evidence for it and the fact is that, well, I won’t accuse them of making it up, they are just totally ignorant, they’re just totally ignorant.

Now, take, for example, Harry Summers takes a different attack.  Harry Summers and I have a lot of blood on the floor over this whole question and I won’t go into our particular arguments but Harry Summers has been attacking Oliver Stone on this very issue, Kennedy and the withdrawal plan, and so on, but Summers does not dismiss out of hand that, this idea of a Kennedy withdrawal plan, he just says that, yeah, there are people who say Kennedy had such a plan but they’re just friends of Kennedy and conspiracy theorists.  And they are just trying to re-make Kennedy politically for the 1990’s.

Now I wanted to talk to you about some of those conspiracy theorists.  The first one being Senator Mansfield, who was the Senate Majority leader, [Mansfield became Senate Majority Leader when Lyndon Johnson became Vice President in 1961] and another one Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House [Tip O’Neill did not become Speaker of the House of Represenatives until 1977.  Carl Albert held it before him.  And before Albert the office was held by John William McCormack who became the Speaker of the House upon the death of Sam Rayburn. O’Neill was in the House as a congressman from Massachusetts when JFK was president.] Actually, the comments he made to Mansfield are rather famous if you’ve read Kenny O’Donnell’s book or read about some of the media coverage you know about them already.  Tip O’Neill came in rather late to the game just a few years ago with his book “Man of the House,” he talked about [how] Kennedy told him too that he was withdrawing from Vietnam and had a definite plan.  In fact, he and Tip O’Neill together were laying out a series of debates with Goldwater during the coming campaign where Kennedy would take the anti-war stance and Goldwater was going to take the pro-war stance.  And he talked about that recently, Tip O’Neill did, on the Larry King Live show. So, Tip O’Neill now adds his name to the list of conspracy theorists.

In addition to the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader, we have, in fact, let me say that the only person we are really missing of significance, by the way is Secretary of State Rusk, who complains to this day that he never knew about any withdrawal plan, Kennedy never told him. So, it’s crazy, cause if there was then Kennedy must have been playing politics and Kennedy would never do that.

But, at State Dapartment what we have is Roger Hillsman who happened to be not just another guy over there, he was the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs.  And he discussed Kennedy’s withdrawal plan with Kennedy and tells us about it.  And he’s been writing about it recently in the New York Times as well.  But, he talked about it years ago.  He didn’t just do it because Oliver Stone made a movie.

In the National Security Council we have the top Vietnam guy there is his name, Michael Forrestal, and he also tells us that Kennedy had a withdrawal plan and discussed it with him in the days before his death.

If we move over to the Pentagon, for example, we have the Secretary of Defense who has also acknowledged this withdrawal plan as a real one although McNamara says he doesn’t know what Kennedy would or would not have done after, had he lived, whether he would have changed his mind then.  He might have.  Nevertheless, it’s not some kooky idea acording to McNamara, McNamara acknowledges its existence.

Then we can go one rung down to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that’s Maxwell Taylor [who replaced Lyman Lemnitzer on October 1, 1962] And that he tells us that indeed the only person against intervention was John Kennedy. Everytime that he and the generals went to Kennedy and asked for combat troops Kennedy would say, now, well, you guys just go and get General MacArthur to agree with that, then I’ll agree with that.  General MacArthur had direct hands on experience with sending American combat troops to Asia and what happens when you get too close to China.  And he was of the opinion that we should never do that again.  And told Kennedy repeatedly so.

General [James] Gavin, was, for awhile it looked like he was going to rise all the way up to the top, a very famous Army General, he was a friend of Kennedy but he was also an Army General who talked to Kennedy about his military plans for 15 years and says on many occassions Kennedy said he would never send combat troops there.

And General [Bruce] Palmer who was the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations in the Pentagon is another one, during those crucial months of Kennedy’s withdrawl plan, also has acknowledged Kennedy’s firm stance against sending combat troops.

So, we have I would submit a number of august conspiracy theorists and friends here that talk about A, Kennedy’s complete unwillingness to send combat troops and B, his withdrawal plan.

I think it’s high time that we put the shoe on the right foot, why should, with the record as it is, and I will show you a great deal of it, do we need to argue, to frame the arguement as it were, to have to prove that Kenendy was pulling out of Vietnam.  We shouldn’t have to do that.  I will go along with anyone who says maybe Kennedy would have changed his mind.  I don’t agree with that.  I don’t think he would, but if you want to frame the argument that way I’m willing to sit down and talk with you.

The fact is that Johnson did change Kennedy’s policy.

Kennedy might have changed his [own] policy too.  

But from here on out I’m only interested in framing the argument that way. If you want to talk, what if, what if, what if, what would Kennedy have done if he lived? Would he have continued his policy or would he have changed his policy?  That is the way the question needs to be framed.  And it’s not being framed that way.  We are being told that we’re lunatics for even considering that there was a withdrawal plan.  That we’re kooks, that were not good Americans.  And it’s a direct reaction to this film.

I just had to get that out of my system early.  

The fact that we can answer these questions in the affirmative, ie, that yes, it made a difference from a policy standpoint whether or not John Kennedy lived or died, and yes, indeed, Johnson reversed his policies in Vietnam, probably in Indonesia, and other places Peter Dale Scott has done some excellent work on Indonesia and it needs to be followed up.  I think you’re going to find a general pattern, Indonesia and some Latin America countries are also good candidates for further research here.  But, yes, it is true that Johnson reversed Kennedy’s policies.  These questions even though answered in the affirmative don’t get us into the link, any link necessarily between these reversals and the assassination of the president.

There are other questions that we must ask if we are to establish such a link.  And again it has not been the subject of my work but I wish the community would go in this direction.  So, let me ask a couple, okay? 

Let me just say this before I, you know, what we are talking about, if this is true, it’s a secret thing we can’t really see or touch.  Obviously, you’re not going to see a document, “Hey let’s kill Kennedy and reverse his policies,” anymore than you’re going to see a document, “Let’s shoot the president with triangulated crossfire,” whatever, it’s not an unencrypted document so to speak for us to look at. From our point of view then if one were to search for this what you would be looking for are the external characteristics, you see, of it.  And one would have to as an analyst analyze the external characteristics of this linkage between policy and mechanics.  

Now first of all, are there any anomolies in the policy area which indicate the president’s desires or even his expressed orders were being violated?  

Are there any indicators of attempts or efforts to circumvent the policy process?  And, if so, did this circumvention work in a direction to constrain presidential choices?

If these anomolies exist, is there a pattern to them? 

Does this pattern match other patterns sequentially, for example, with Oswald planning?  

Do we notice time horizons in these anomolous activities in the policy arena matching in any way anomolies in other areas.  

As an analyst, or as an analysts, these little sorts of things are patterns we should be searching for. 

Does the same name keep popping up with respect to these anomolous areas? 

And here’s another one and I’m surprised that it really hasn’t been, that this question hasn’t been asked in a major way, but is there any evidence of an effort to cover up the policy reversal, after the fact?  

And there are some more questions.  Those are just some good ones that come to mind.  And they really should be asked and we should take a look at the works of many of you who are here today, and not just my work, and look at them as compartments, and look for these cross fertilizations, as analysts.  And quit arguing so much about little things.  I see a lot of that going on, believe me.

(applause)    

Newman - Finally, there’s one thing I want to throw out before I get started, and I am going to do this just as a theoretical exercise only, this is probably not true at all. And I’m sure it is not, but I will just throw it out as a paradigm, as a maybe, as a what if.

What if JFK made things very easy, and this is a what if in the area of a linkage between Vietnam and the assassination, it’s totally a what if, what if JFK made things very easy for his opponents by his own public duplicity, i.e. his  public stance against withdrawal? I’ll talk about that a little later. But, on the other hand making things very, very difficult at the Top Secret level by leaving a last will and testament of withdrawal.  And what if, therefore, an attempt is made to construct a new last will and testament?  Not too soon, because Kennedy would see it and not approve it.  But, not too late because it would not be a last will and testament if it did, it would look like policy reversal, but to construct a new one, just at the right time, just before the assassination in order to leave the impression that JFK was in the process of reversing himself  I just throw that out there as a totally theoretical paradigm.  And you can, as I go through the material today wonder about whether or not anything, any of the evidence in the documents shed any light on that theoretical proposition.

Now, I am going to compartmentalize my remarks now to three areas, chronological, ‘61, ‘62, and ‘63.  It just about works that way.  And I’m going to start with ‘61. We will start at the beginning.  And let me just tell you for my doctural dissertation I pulled out ‘61 and spent my entire 400 pages just on 1961.  And there’s a reason for that. 1961 is a relatively clean year, in the sense that people don’t tell lies in the policy structure.  There is a struggle, but the lines of the struggle are clearly drawn, and we understand basicly what everybody wants to do.  They write memoranda, they explain what they want to happen and they say why.  That struggle is over at the end of 1961.  The president wins and a lot of other people lose and then the game changes, the floor falls away and it’s  smoke and mirrors for the next two years.  So, 1961 was an interesting year.  It’s a good baseline.  

And it begins right away for us with an airlift into Laos , a Soviet airlift.  This airlift of Russian military hardware and North Vietnamese cadres into the Laotian panhandle is initiated after Kennedy’s election but before his inauguration, a particularly vulnerable time from a Washington standpoint.  And Eisenhower tells John Kennedy that he, he, Eisenhower, would intervene with American combat forces.  And he advised Kennedy to do so.  But, that he, Eisenhower had not made that decision because he wished to leave it to the new president.  The very first thing Kennedy faces is this decision on whether or not to intervene in Southeast Asia with combat forces. And it’s also the first time he is briefed on Vietnam, and at the same meeting is briefed on the Cuban invasion plan. 

So, it’s a wake up call for the incoming president right in the first few days of office, of being asked to intervene in Cuba, intervene in Laos, and I don’t know anywhere else, but those were rather startling decisions to be facing right at the get go.  

Now. he doesn’t want to intervene in Laos.  He wants to pursue a diplomatic solution.  But, he is pressured into going along with a plan that says, well, look, we really need to get a militarily advantageous position first, then we can negotiate from a position of strength, and then we can have a diplomatic solution to the crisis.  So, he buys this.  He buys this and approves the plan.  He was told this would work because the pro-American forces of General Phoumi will win on the ground, and so on, and so on, and so on. This is based on an intelligence estimate which in turn is based upon military intelligence reporting from Laos.  And anyway, he approves it.  And it falls flat on its face.  It turns out the intelligence estimate was wrong and even during the processing of this estimate what had happened was the people who had information that showed that this plan was going to fall apart, but because some Air Force guy didn’t have this clearance or that clearance they were not allowed to discuss it in the room, and the estimate went forward, and the Joint Chiefs made their recommendation, and the president bought into it, and all of these people died in Laos and the American effort collapsed.  And this happened in March of 1961. 

And so you’ve heard stories about the animosity and the bad intelligence in The Bay of Pigs but I bring this out, give this as an example, right off the get go of what Kennedy was facing and what he thought he was facing was extremely awful advice both from the military and from the intelligence community on Southeast Asia.  

In any event the Laos thing boiled on for a few weeks.  Kennedy came very close to intervening, very close. And I don’t know that he wouldn’t have. And there’s nothing in my book, or nothing that I am going to say here today which should be construed as saying Kennedy was a pacifist. He was no pacifist.  He was willing to use American power, American military power, even nuclear weapons in certain scenarios.  But, there were significant differences of opinion over when, how, and where, and to what extent we should go and I am going to talk about those today. But, certainly not in Laos in the end. But, it became very close.  So close in fact that what happened in Desert Shield happened, the precise moves were made back in 1961.  The entire American military force that was in the Pacific theatre was assembled all brought, steamed up into the Gulf of Siam.  Command was ready, in Okinawa, General Harkins was the commander, the commander of the American invasion force for Laos.  And the date was set for the final presidential decision, April 27th.

And on the 20th of April, just one week before that, the Cuban operation, Zapata, fails. Now the failure of that operation doomed the Laos invasion plan. And Kennedy would say later, he would wave a sheaf of cables, “My God if I had taken these seriously we’d be in Laos by now,” because he was deadly serious about going into Laos.  And the thing that stopped him was this pattern culminating in Cuba, not starting in Cuba, which as I mentioned goes back into the Laos planning itself, but culminating in the failed Cuban operation.

And what we have down here is the new administration is not even a few weeks old, a couple months old, and we have a president alienated from his top military and intelligence advisors.  

What happens as a result of the decision not to, and in fact, a decision is not rendered on the 27th. And actually the decision is never rendered.  It just kind of goes away.  And everyone realizes by early May that we are not going to go in.  But, the perception amongst the Joint Chiefs is that day when there is an argument, a tremendous argument over going into Laos.  That evening the perception in the Pentagon is that we will not go into Laos. And the cables are sent out to the Pacific theatre saying as much.  And that same night, that very same night, 27 April, 1961, within hours of the perception in the Pentagon that we were not going to use those assembled forces to go into Laos a new annex to something called the Vietnam Task Force Report was drafted.  And up to that point the Vietnam Task Force Report was calling for increased American aid to Vietnam and several other measures had no provisions for what was put into this annex, and that was an American troop commitment in Vietnam.  So, the very first sentence in a document about using American troops in Vietnam was written within hours after the perception hit home in the Pentagon that we will not invade in Laos.  

And it was interesting there were several drafts of this annex, draft one didn’t have the troops commitment in it.  The second draft did, the same with the third draft.  The fellow who authored it, his name was Edward Lansdale, and its interesting.

Now, to speed up the story here, to give up the ghost on any idea of intervening in Laos for the next week.  Kennedy does not buy into invading Vietnam in April of 1961.  And really the rest of the year what we see, Kennedy; there is another segment here and I’m going to return to it later, to clean up the mess there is a tremendous loss of confidence in U.S. support amongst the regimes that were our allies in Southeast Asia as a result of our decision not to use American forces and Johnson was sent out to beef up morale.  And that’s a chapter I’m going to return to because Lyndon Johnson does some things he shouldn’t do while he’s out there.  That and this whole process, these recommendations, which included using nuclear weapons by the way.  They were absolutely incredible to read the planning meetings that were held.  There was an expectation  amongst several of the planners, some generals, some civilians that they would use nuclear weapons in this move into Laos.  

In any event that whole sequence so soured Kennedy on his own advisors with respect to Southeast Asia policy that he turned over the baton, so to speak, to Maxwell Taylor who he had brought in from retirement to investigate the failed Bay of Pigs affair in April and by June in effect Taylor runs American policy in Southeast Asia, with some input from Rostow and the NSC and U. Alexis Johnson over at the State Dept. But, Taylor, the magic word if you sent a document to Kennedy from June forward was, you’ve got to say I cleared it with Taylor, or Taylor agrees.  It’s clear that Taylor is running the show.  And in the end Taylor too joins forces with those urging Kennedy to send American combat troops into Vietnam.  That would be in November, 1961.

The story of Vietnam, or of Kennedy and Vietnam during those six months from June all the way up to the end of ‘61 really has a couple of components to it, in Vietnam itself the continuing success of the Viet Cong.  They are growing in numbers, and the area under their control is expanding.  And as that thing is escalating so is the argument in Washington over what to do about it.  And principally the argument between Kennedy and his advisors over whether or not to send American combat forces.  He is urged a few more times to send forces into Laos, but basicly the argument is Vietnam.  The proposals are numerous and they increase in number.  By the time we get to November, 1961 there are probably 20 or 30 different proposals that are sent to John Kennedy asking him to approve the introduction of American combat troops into Vietnam.  And in the end he does not do that.

I want to tell you about that decision, NSAM 111.  An NSAM, by the way, is an acronym for a presidential directive, national security action memorandum is what it stands for.  NSAM 111 which was his last “No” to that, I am going to discuss it, was in November of 1961.  But, I want to summarize all of those proposals and their significance in this way, and also to talk to you about it in terms of the debate right now that is going on in the newspapers and the periodicals.  The, and I don’t care about the Novaks, and the George Wills, and these sages of Saigon.  The people who concern me are the so called, pitiful, academics who tell us, well, we don’t really know what Kenendy would have done or would not have done at all had he lived because he never really faced the situation that Lyndon Johnson faced.  So no matter what you say or don’t say just the fact that the situation was different and the arguments were different prevent us from knowing.  And I say, bull.  

And that’s why it’s so important to look at the record of 1961.  And to look at these proposals and what was in them.  What were the arguments that were made to Kennedy? Why should we do this thing? What was he told that was at stake?  What if he didn’t do it? 

Well, he was told that the fate of South Vietnam hung in the balance.  It was critical! They were going to lose.  He was told, and of couse that is not reason in and of itself, but if you want to convince a president to do something you’ve got to tell him that critical U.S. interests are involved.  And they did, both in the Southeast Asia region and globally.  Critical U.S. interests were at stake.  In some of these memorandums he was threatened with a loss of India, Japan, Australia, the whole structure of the free world was going to come crumbling down if he did not send SEVERAL American combat divisions to Vietnam.  These were the arguments that were placed before the president in November of 1961. 

Now, can anyone think of a stronger argument?  I won’t hold my breath because I can’t think of how much stronger the case could be made.  And, incidently, these were the same arguments put to Lyndon Johnson by the same advisors in 1964 and 1965.  Kennedy said no and Johnson said yes and it’s that simple.  

If anything it would have been far easier to say yes in 1961 when the Viet Cong were fewer. Now, not only did he say no in the end.  But what he did agree to, by the way, was to deepen our military involvement, significantly!  The advisors would grow from 880 to about 16,000 by the end of 1963.  We would send under Operation Beef-Up armoured personnel carriers, herbicidal aircraft, bombing aircraft, lots of weapons.  So, military advisors and material were significantly increased.  But, the answer was no on American ground combat divisions.  And when he issued this NSAM 111 he called a meeting in the White House and you can read about it.  The documents were released just recently, a couple of years ago.  He called a meeting and he basically read his advisors the riot act.  And he explained that they had two choices, one, was to support his policy, the other one was to get out.  And “get out” were the words he used. And this happened right after he fired several people.  He had been waiting to fire Dulles, that was going to happen anyway.  Most people know that he waited to just about this time, Dulles is fired right at the time NSAM 111 is issued, and there’s a little something at the State Dept called the Thanksgiving Day massacre where lots of people are fired and then he issues NSAM 111, he calls these people in and says to them either you get with my policy or you get out.  

And not only that he says he wants a man, I want one man personally responsible for implementing my policy.  And the people were told this before they attended the meeting so at the meeting McNamara said I’m it.  Secretary of Defense McNamara said I’m it. 

No one ever again asked John Kennedy for combat troops in Southeast Asia.  That was the end of the struggle, November 22, 1961.  

Now, I think that is a very important story.  It’s a very important baseline.  The isolation of the President, and some of the vitriol [which] you can see in NSC meetings.  The argument that Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Kennedy had over Cuba, and then over those very meetings over Vietnam, I point out the feeling, the animosity that had built up.  But, it also makes it very clear that Kennedy was not willing to do it giving the argument then, given the arguments that he was given there wasn’t any chance and everyone knew it and no one even bothered to ask him again. 

Now what happens as a result of this new American aid package in addition to men and advisors, airplanes, and so on is a much larger ground intelligence capability than we had up to that point.  MACV, the Military Assistance Command of Vietnam is created.  And this man here Geneal Paul D. Harkens became the first commander. His replacement would be General Westmoreland, who is probably more of a household name.  But, General Harkins was the first MACV commander and he comes in in early ‘62, February 8th, as a matter of fact. In any event, MACV had a much larger ground intelligence effort than it ever had up to this point and they spent a long time, Harkin’s intelligence staff did, trying to figure out what the threat was naturally what they needed to know what was the nature and size of the threat, I mean after all that is what you need to know.  What is the nature and size of the threat? Once you know that you can marshall and allocate the national resources that will be laid out to meet the national objective.

Well, something funny happened after about six weeks of looking at the problem.  In fact, they brought the very best people they could, out of the Pentagon, out of the Honolulu, out of the Army intelligence effort there, they brought a couple of people from there, and they augmented the new MACV staff with the very best order of battle experts we had to do this initial study of the enemy.  And what happened was they discovered that the Viet Cong were about, well, much larger than they had thought.  And the size of the enemy was about three times the size to what the South Vietnamese army could cope. 

Now it doesn’t make much sense to have an advisory policy if the force you’re advising isn’t large enough to do the job.  So, what this intelligence meant, if it was allowed to go back to Washington, D.C. was that there are really two U.S. options.  Kennedy’s advisory approach was not an option.  Either we withdraw completely or we send in American ground combat troops.  Those are the only two viable options open.  That’s really what the intelligence meant.  The only thing was everyone knew what the answer was to the second one, ground American combat divisions was a no.  Kennedy was not going to do that. 

So, the long and short of it is that what the intelligence meant was withdraw. And as I result I am not happy to tell you that this combat intelligence was not allowed to go back to Washington, at least officially.  Now what happened was, and what made it awkward also McNamara as a pointman now for President Kennedy would travel out to Honolulu and to Harkins’ headquarters MACV in Vietnam sometimes once a month during ‘62 to check on the progress of the president’s policy and when he went out to these meetings the picture of what was really going on was hidden from McNamara.  And in fact it became worse and worse and in it’s place a story of unadulterated progress was errected and delivered to Kennedy through McNamara by Harkins staff.  I’m not talking; how many people saw the CBS reports “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception” that Westmoreland sued over? Really? That few? Amazng. CBS went to press I think with something, with material that was very, very damning to General Westmoreland. But, I think that what happened here, in the early years, is even much worse than what they went to press with. I did hear that Dan Rather immediately upon hearing about my book asked for a copy to be sent over because in a sense it vindicates the work CBS did on the Westmoreland years.  There’s only one problem, it might tie back into the assassination.  Of course, you all know Dan Rather’s position on that.  So, I don’t expect to see him follow it up anytime soon. 

[John  now shows a slide, a USARPAC Intelligence Bulletin cover for April, 1962.]

Now, the reason that I know the intelligence coming out of Saigon was doctored and a false story put in its place is because the people who did it told me they did it.  I happened to have interviewed all of the living people to all of those still alive who worked, or were assigned to, or went out to augment MACV’s first intelligence operation in 1962.  And there are six that are officers that are still alive, and in fact one is still working at the CIA in a part-time capacity but if you saw the CBS special you saw him, George Allen, on tape. He was the CIA’s top Vietnam analyst during the Westmoreland years.  He was one of the ones who was sent out there.  He was one of the six people that gave me the interviews for what happened out there.  And they told me they cut the figures from 40,000 to about 15,000 of Viet Cong, told me what happened to the reports on infiltration, told me what happened to all the statistics that they put together, how lousy they felt, how the out-of-towners were kept under house arrest while McNamara’s team was briefed on Wednesday and how they couildn’t go back to Washington and blow the whistle before he got back.  The story goes on and on and on.  And I won’t give you all the parts of it now.  You can read about it in chapters eleven, twelve, and thirteen in the book if you’re interested. 

What I want to show you now because I couldn’t print tons of documents in the book, just one or two examples, I want to share with you something about documents.  And I have two purposes here today, one is to actually tell you about the story.  When you say, what’s in the files?  Well, let me show you.  I’m going to give you an example of some of the things that are in the files, and other things that might be there, okay, so keep that in mind too.  And finally it’s one thing for folks to tell me that they diddled, that all of this intelligence was doctored it’s another thing to find documentary evidence of it.  

So, you see, it just so happens that there was an Army intelligence operation in Honolulu as well as Saigon.  The theatre we refer to it as CINCPAC, Commander in Chief, Pacific Command.  That is the theatre command had some component commands, some service commands, the Army component command was called the United States Army, Pacific, USARPAC, and it is today too.  Anyway, USARPAC which was under CINCPAC had its own intelligence operation and they had live electircal circuits to Army security agency units on the ground in Vietnam.  So, they got the raw data, the same raw data that was being corrupted at MACV,  they got it before it was corrupted.  And they issued these things once a month, intelligence bulletin.  And I asked in the course of my research I asked the Army to declassify their intelligence holdings in the CINCPAC theatre and they agreed to do it and this is an example of one of them.

[Slide on the screen is the cover of the USARPAC Intelligene Bulletin for April ‘62.] 

Audience member - No trouble at all?

Newman - No trouble at all.

Audience member - Did that surprise you?

Newman - Yes. Well, at first it did, but, you see, we are talking about people here.  In fact, we are talking about the Center for Military History, we are talking about historians, people who are interested in history, some of them are civilians, some of them are military, and I think you will find that stereotypes tend to break down once you get inside organizations and start dealing with people.

The one problem is there has never been any manpower for this sort of thing, there are just scags and rules and stuff, that is technically declassified because it must be after so many years but the markings haven’t been crossed out.  They have to take a marker and just cross through the classification because it doesn’t belong there, technically you have a piece of paper and you have markings on it, it’s not right, it has to be lined through, somebody has to go through safes and all these sheets of paper and that’s; if you knew how many sheets of paper there are and how many years that would take, and that’s really the problem, you have to know what you want and you have to ask the right people, and normally you will find them cooperative.

FOIA works in a different way.  FOIA comes bursting through the front door of bureaucracy and in many cases the document has been coordinated by two, or three, or four agencies.  It has to be sent to two, or three, or four agencies, it comes through the front door there through a staff element which then has to find a line operation somewhere where somebody is suppose to know about this area then that somebody has to look at it, then it goes back up to the staff element, and then it goes back to the person at the requesting point, maybe at the presidential library, and that whole process could take a year, or two, or three years.  

So, that’s why I’m so excited about this process about opening up files, of having another mechanism than this FOIA thing, no matter how bad it is, and I think as we did at the statement Friday, we should register our criticism for watering down the process [meaning how FOIA has been weakened over the years] but never should we be so cynical as to say no we don’t care about it.  We do, we do, we want the files.  

Now, let me just move on here. [ John shows a slide, page 1 of the April 1962 USARPAC Intelligence Bulletin.  The headline reads, “Pace of Viet Cong War in South Vietnam Slowly Accelerating.” See p. 230 oh JFK and Vietnam. I’m calling this SLIDE #1] 

You see this is the story that was being told at USARPAC while McNamara was being told that we were winning the war and the irony of it is that a lot of these meetings were in Honolulu until August [of 1962?] In another building not a stone’s throw away there is an analyst writing this here on this particular one which is [goes to next slide which shows the cover sheet for the May 1962 USARPAC Intelligence Bulletin. SLIDE #2.  John went forward instead of back.  Slide #1 is from April ‘62, and then slides #2 and 3 are from May ‘62] May of ‘62. [John goes to another slide, SLIDE #3, SLIDE #3 has as it heading ENEMY PRESSES HARD ON SHAKY SOUTH VIETNAM REGIME (See p. 233 of JFK and Vietnam). John reads from the top left column.] 

“Communist Viet Cong violence continues unabated during March.  The Viet Cong launched an all time high of 1,861 armed attacks.”  

I can imagine if they told this to McNamara.  Can you imagine this being the lead item in a McNamara briefing? Good morning, Mr. Secretary, Enemy Pressing Hard on Shaky South Vietnamese government. You know? That’s not what happened.  He was told, you know, great and wonderful things.  I’ll give you an example of it in a second.  I unfortunately can’t stay up here all afternoon so I’ll give you a couple of examples.[ SLIDE #4 ] In fact, here’s one when he went all the way to Saigon in May (‘62) and I asked if these could be declassified and they were.  [Slide #4 looks like the cover page to a student’s term paper.  A few words I can’t make out, then centered below that by the, then centered below that Secretary of Defense, then centered below that, 2 (to some date) May 1962.

[SLIDE #5 a stock photo of McNamara.] That’s Robert Strange McNamara. (Some people laugh not knowing that Strange is his real middle name.) Well, that’s his name.

[SLIDE #6 This is a part of what was use to brief McNamara.  There are three paragraphs.  The first one seems only a sentnece or two long, then there’s an average size paragraph, then another.]  

Alright, now to show you how this works, I’ve taken an example of one of these briefings to McNamara, and this is the one in Saigon in May and this is a, one part of it concerning the enemy, and I have taken two paragraphs here. So, I have blown up one and two to show you how this operates.  Now notice that this one, we say is a review of major Viet Cong military activities.  This one (the other paragraph) we say is a major review of Republic of Vietnam armed forces operations (ARVN.)  So, we are going to compare the Viet Cong to ARVN.  Now, “Since 14 April there have been no Viet Cong operations larger than battalion size.”  Okay, a battalion is about 600 or so, 600 men.  So, anyway the Viet Cong since 14 April didn’t have any battalion operations.  The largest operation they had was about fifty men. 

Now, since 21 March there have been over 40 operations of battalion or larger size.

So, in other words the good guys are wining 40 to 0.  Looks pretty good doesn’t it? 

Well, wait a minute, this up here says, “Since 14 April,” and here it says, “since 21 March,” why not just pick one date and stick with it? In other words, if I am going to give you the score of a football game wouldn’t it be weird if I gave you the statistics for one team for the whole game and [the statistics] for the other team for just half the game? 

In fact, I’m going to show you why they did this because here is another map [SLIDE #7] from another USARPAC Intelligence Bulletin covering that very period incidently.  And what this is, you see all these little splotches all over here, that look like smoke from a coffee bar? These are Viet Cong battalion operations.  Now, let’s take a look at the dates, 12 April, 8 April, 6 April, 2 April, 2 April, 9 April, 10 April, 26 - 31 March, 20 March, 13 April, 9 April, 2 April, 16 March, 1 April, and so on. 

That’s a whole bunch of Viet Cong battalion operations.  

Now, let’s go back and take a lok at this again [Back to SLIDE #6] “Since 14 April there have been no Viet Cong battalion operations,” Oh, I get it.   But, “since 21 March there have been 40 government battalion...” You begin to see what’s been going on here? 

In fact, what has happened between early March and 14 April was the largest Viet Cong offensive of the war.  

And they were refitting and taking care of their wounded.  So, in the review of Viet Cong and government of Vietnam operations Secretary McNamara is told hey, the Viet Cong haven’t done anything, and, boy, the [South Vietnam] government is out there just kicking their butts.  And this is how they do it, with statistics that are pulled out [of their true context] to advance this story.  

[SLIDE #8] Here is the map, incidently, that McNamara was shown for the, this is known as the Measles Map, by the way, by the people who created it.  I love the name.  The idea of it is red is breaking out on it everywhere and what happens is this map, in fact it was done in conjunction with the order of battle study where the figures were cut down from 40,000 to about 15,000 and they had forgotton about the map, and there was a rehearsal for the McNamara briefing the night before, and General Harkins and his staff walk into the rehearsal and saw this map, well, not this one but one that had a lot more, especially with the red and blue stripes which were VC controlled, there was a lot more of that on here when he [Harkins] walked in and took a look at it and right then and there edited that map.  And General Harkins, according to George Allen and Bill Benedict and all of the other guys that were there in the room, to their total dismay and disbelief Harkins directed while his intelligence chief Air Force Col. Winterbottom himself went up and peeled off the pieces of the acetate and swithced the map around to make this one here.  

Now this lie went on literally till the end of the war but it didn’t work in the sense that Kennedy found out.  They did not find out till perhaps late 1962 or early 1963 and I can’t really be sure of an exact date.  What I can tell you is why I know that he knew.  There are a number of reasons, number one, CIA began to impugn the statistics coming out of MACV by the end of the year.  And Hillsman’s intelligence operation in the State Department, they also began to impugn the statistics.  And Mike Forrestal over in the National Security Council also began to take exception. In other words, there were a number of people who began to argue this.  In addition to that some of the military officers involved had come back to Washington and blew the whistle, or tried to.  Now they didn’t fare very well. But there were a number of things that happened, people trying to blow the whistle and some other intelligence organizations sending reports which got to Kennedy’s desk that lead me to conclude that no later than January or February of 1963 the genie is out of the bottle at the Top Secret level, there is no doubt that Kennedy knows.

Now by February or March what happens is rather extraordinary and tragic. Kennedy decides we are going to get out of Vietnam, good, but he decides to wait until after his reelection, bad.  In other words, we are going to go for almost, well not two years, but, what, a year and nine months or do with business as usual until the election.

Now I take great umbrage with that.  I don’t like it, and I said so.  And Arthur Schlesinger to his credit agreed with me, but very begrudgingly I thought in his review in The New York Times.  You see, because I just don’t think you can do that.  I think Kennedy should have gone public and taken the risk of maybe not getting reelected.  Nonetheless, he decided that, see, even though he could cope with the truth about the failure of his own policy he decided that he was too weak politically or didn’t have enough to go public with this so we end up with this pretty weird plan.

Audience member - What’s the strongest single piece of evidence, if there is a single piece of evidence that shows that he had made that decision?

Newman - The strongest piece of evidence is probably Mansfeld, and O’Donnell, in terms of a specific decision, although I haven’t seen, the other thing that I have, Bundy told me-

Audience member - (crosstalk)

Newman - Excuse me?

Audience member - You mean (crosstalk) 

Newman - Yeah, that he said specifically, not only that was he getting out but that he was going to be the most unpopular president in history for doing so. In other words, the idea was pulling out not in a winning scenario knowing full well that the whole house of cards was coming down there.

I questioned McGeorge Bundy about this, I figured that as Kennedy’s National Security Advisor he should have been in the loop.  What McGeorge Bundy told me was this, that it was a, he acknowledged the time frame but told me that this was a plan, an agreement he said, between Kennedy and McNamara and what else it involved beyond what they said about it which was very little.  No one else knew, which makes sense if the plan is to deceive.  It’s not something you’re going to put out as an all points bulletin, okay?  If the idea is to deceive your opponents I would expect very little hard evidence in documents.  The whole idea here is that he is going to pretend like it’s business as usual.  But, it’s tricky, it’s tricky.

The other thing he was going to do and he was being criticized by Mansfield, and one of the reasons he takes Mansfield into his confidence is because Mansfield is hammering him weekly on the senate floor, as are [Bourke B.] Hickenlooper [R-Iowa]  and several others, so there is a two part plan here really, to withdraw from Vietnam after his re-election but to begin the withdrawal process during the campaign, to begin to withdraw one thousand people during 1964.  Now the problem with that is that if you withdraw people from Vietnam while we are losing you have the same problem as if you’re pulling out anyway. So, now the fiction of winning becomes important to John Kennedy.  And there’s some irony here because whereas the function of the success story initially operates to constrain Kennedy so as not to precipitate an early decision on withdrawal now it gets used by Kennedy at the Top Secret level to justify precisely such a withdrawal.  

And that’s tricky, I mean it’s not, it is tricky, but I mean it’s risky.  It depends on a lot of things and one thing that Kennedy and or McNamara had not taken into account was what happened that summer [SLIDE #9, a slide of a  Budhist monk ]  which was the complete collapse of the regime in Southeast Asia. 

It wasn’t anything to do with Diem’s regime which was terribly corrupt.  But, a simple little thing started it, the Budhists wanted to fly their flags like the Catholics too and the regime said no, and shots were fired, and people were killed.  And instead of backing off and mending the fence the Diem regime dug in its heels and things festered. And Americans were treated to this sort of picture at dinner time, time and again.  

[ Image of Budhist monk sitting in the street and set afire, self immolation. ] 

There were eight or nine of these things, well staged for the international media that summer and it leads directly to coup planning in Saigon both aided and abetted from Washington, D.C., especially by Hillsman [SLIDE #10, a photo of Hillsman], and by Forrestal, and the NSC, and eventually approved of by Kennedy himself. And it would take me about half and hour to go over the story of how that decision came [to be] and I just don’t have the time to do it, so I won’t here. The bottom line is that Kennedy’s hands are mirred in this coup planning. But, it’s not straight forward.  

And the thing I want to mention about it is this, some people, particularly advocates of intervention have seized on Kennedy’s complicity in coup planning as an argument that the flag was planted and that there was no backing away, that we were committed from that moment on.  I don’t buy that.  In fact, the whole idea of our involvement, of encouraging the generals was a signal of displeasure in Washington of a desire not to become further embroiled.

From our standpoint the thing to take away from it right now is this, that the collapse in Saigon is now making it, very, very difficult to continue this success story.  So, Kennedy needs a recommendation.  And he needs it fast.  He can’t wait until 1964 to start the withdrawal. If he does, what we are probably going to see is, a, just exactly what he does see, in an election year to be faced with a decision and a losing scenario, so at least now if he can start it, at least he starts it, and then it gets bad because it’s Diem’s fault, or whatever, I don’t know how he, all the components of it, all I know is that in the summer of 1963 the withdrawal plan is accelerated. And instead of waiting until 1964 the decision is made to withdraw the first one thousand guys by the end of 1963.

In order to accomplish that McNamara and Taylor are sent out with the express mission of recommending such a plan.  They do.  They come back, although it’s amazing when you get into the details of the trip.  They really had no business whatsoever going on this, and honestly coming back and making this recommendation.  And the recommendation is crafted in something called National Security Action Memorandum 263.  Now, the problem is, and what is NSAM 263?  NSAM 263 is the Kennedy withdrawal order. Here it is. ( Newman shows NSAM 263 on the screen. ) Okay, the meeting was on October 5th. The President listened to the recommendations of McNamara and Taylor after their trip.  Then he approved the military recommendations of section 1B (1-3) of the report, meaning the McNamara-Taylor report, and here’s the key portion of this document, the president “directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.” This last paragraph here talked about a cable to Saigon No. 534 that was just declassified last Spring.  We have it now. It’s more coup planning, that’s what that refers to, that cable. It has been declassified.

Anyway, this is the operative portion of NSAM 263.  It makes; what this document tells us is that Kennedy ordered, implemented, the first part of the withdraw plan, ie, 1,000 people out by the end of the year. And these recommendations in Section I B paragraph (1-3) contain the schedule, the plans to turn over all responsibility for the war to the South Vietnamese by 1965.  

So, really, this is it.  It’s very clear. Now, he may have changed his mnd and not gone through, in other words, had he lived, yes, maybe he would have cancelled or changed, or whatever, the fact of the matter is he did order the first 1,000 guys out and approved recommendations to bring everybody out by 1965. That’s just an historical fact.

Question from audience member - What’s the date on that?

Newman - Well, the date on the document itself is October 11th, but it’s very clear when the meeting took place, the meeting, it was a National Security Council meeting on the 5th of October. 

Q. - 1963?

Newman - 1963, yes sir.

Now, I’m worried that maybe I just couldn’t read English, or maybe somebody who wrote the words in here didn’t understand what they were writing because, really, this is the only thing we have, and we’ve had this for some years now.  1976 was when it was declassified.  But, you know, the funny thing is, remember the Secrtary of State [Dean Rusk] who said he didn’t know anything about any withdcraw plan, no one ever told him? Let’s look to who this is addressed, who is the first guy up here.  (Laughter )

Now, last Spring there was another big declassification of documents by the State Department, and I have, this is not a whole one [ John is showing document # 179 in The Foreign Relations of the United States, Vietnam, IV, Aug-Dec, 1963. pgs 368-370, the excerpted text is from page 370. Dean Rusk was present at this meeting] I have just blown it up so you can see it. I have excerpted just a couple of sentences.  But here again, “The President has also said that our decision to remove 1, 000 U.S. advisors by December of this year should not be raised formally with Diem.”  Our decision.  In other words what this tells me is that a decision was made.  In fact, what you are looking at are the minutes from the 5 October meeting. They have now been declassified.  This, these minutes corroborate that order that you just looked, all right?

Now, there are a couple of things I want to bring up about this, on 2 October, after Kennedy listened the first time to the McNamara - Taylor recommendations, Taylor, excuse me, McNamara went out on the steps of the White House and briefed the press corps, and what he said was that he was recommending that the President withdraw 1,000 a guys in ‘63 and everybody out by ‘65.  That’s all that happened.  And it’s called the 2 October White House statement.  

But, the thing about it is, see, there was an argument, they wanted this whole thing, McNamara did, public.  And Kennedy wouldn’t do it.  Kennedy was afraid that if this was public then his hands would really be tied to the optimism [story] that McNamara came back with.  He ( McNamara ) was actually told to come back with.  So, after much haggling we have the minutes of that meeting also.  You can read where Kennedy; what happens is McNamara is sent out to state what are his recommendations and in that way the President himself will not be tied to the optimism.  So, what is going on here is a public charade where McNamara comes back and recommends to the President that he take out 1,000 guys but you never see Kennedy publicly out there saying he can do it, that he can pull out.   

Meanwhile, just a couple of days later Kennedy implements, on the 5th, actually makes a decision.  This the public is never told about.  Now, in case you were wondering, he continues to operate that way.  Here is an excerpt I took out of his next press conference where Vietnam comes up on 31 October.  Okay, this is three weeks after the decision has been made.  And he says, “If we are able to do that,” talking about 1,000 guys coming out, okay? “If we can do that the first contingent would be so many...” so publicly there’s no decision on if we can pull out, okay? At the top, that’s an unclassified.  Okay, this at the time was Top Secret, this was no press conference.  This was a Top Secret document.  That’s the difference between the 2 October White House statement which was an unclassified if then proposition, actually McNamara’s recommendation says by the end of the year the war should have progressed to the point where we can pull a 1,000 guys out and we think that it will.  So, you have this public if/then proposition made by the Secretary of Defense but at the Top Secret level an order from the President of the United States.  Again, the secret minutes of the meeting, and here the unclassified press conference, “If, we can..”

Now Diem’s murder a few days later leads to a decision at a meeting in Honolulu, at least the first instance I could find out about it, after Diem was murdered, well actually there was a meeting going on in the NSC when the news came in that Diem had been murdered 1 November.  And the records of that meeting have been “lost.”  What we do know is that there were two cables that went out from the State Department that night after this meeting, about Diem’s murder.  And in one of those Rusk announces a meeting in Honolulu on the 20th of November.  An extraordinary meeting, and it was extraordinary because of its participants.  Instead of just McNamara this time we are talking about Rusk, Ambassador Lodge, and General Taylor would have been, and who else, (looking at document) oh, here we go, McGeorge Bundy, the NSC chief was there, CIA director McCone, budget director [David E.] Bell, you know, this is an august crowd here.  They show up at Honolulu two days before the assassination.  I did this, I just showed you the slide, what this is, we call this a withdrawal sheet, and this tells me I am not allowed to see, these documents concern the Honolulu meeting I’m talking about right now.  One’s secet, one’s confidential. They are still classified.  And there are many more.  This is just one example.  There is a lot of stuff still classified about this Honolulu meeting. 

Q - Why?

Newman - Good question, good question.  Well, let’s talk about what we do know about the Honolulu meeting and then maybe it will become clear.  I found the briefing book, the Honolulu briefing book up at the Kennedy library.  It was all out of order.  It took me three days to put it back in order.  It’s about this thick.  And buried way back in the back in a tab enclosure was this thing. And it was entitled “The 1,000 Man Withdrawal.” An extraordinary document.  You learn a lot of things about the history of the withdrawal plan.  Actually, that it was cast in concrete back in May of ‘63 which gets to a little bit to your question sir, you asked what “hard evidence,” but I was talking February-March and making a guess in proximity to the CIA reporting and State Department reporting that was contradicting MACV.  What I probably should have said then is there is this piece of hard evidence and we do have the declassified record of the May SEC/DEF conference, by May, I mean the withdrawal plan, including the 1,000 man component has been cast in concrete, this whole business of my thesis, of the February - March timeframe though does not have such a document like this.  And I don’t know if it existed back then or not, but anyway, because there are quite a few documents from the May SEC/DEF conference  are also “lost.”  And I talked about this at our press conference on Friday, how there is this blackhole of missing documents that have been destroyed over the last months of Kennedy’s life about Vietnam and that’s part of the problem here.

Anyway, what does this tell us? [John shows the document “1,000 man Withdrawal”] First of all, the initials CINCPAC, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, [John reads] CINCPAC plan was submitted in July. Okay, the MAY SEC/DEF conference ordered the withdrawal plan to be, you know, the plan to be put together and sent up the chain.  So, CINCPAC sends their proposal back up the chain in July 1963.  They propose a 50/50 MIX of unit and individual personnel.  Well, what that means is 50% of this withdrawal is bogus, basically.  In other words, people can just, who were sick and for some reason taken out of the theatre and just not replaced but they could be replaced later if you want.  So, the 50% that is going to be in real units, real billets, real jobs, that is going to be a real withdrawal.  But, in October MACV recommends to change this to 30% units and 70% individuals.  And none of this stuff has been approved by McNamara or Kennedy.  So, what’s going on here is a progressive watering down of this 1,000 man withdrawal, not only that but there are changing what sort of units are going to be withdrawn.  And these columns here, I know you can’t read them, it doesn’t matter, this column here is the initial plan, and this is “the approved plan.”  In other words by November 20th, 1963 somebody has approved this plan, and that somebody is General Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  McNamara is being briefed for the first time in Honolulu with this.  And these, therefore, these holes here would indicate what units have been deleted, what units have been in the initial withdrawal plan but now are no longer going to be withdrawn.  And the type of units [that are not going to be withdrawn] they are are machine gun platoons, the herbicidal aircraft, the air defense aircraft, the reconnaissance aircraft, all of this stuff that was going to be withdrawn in Vietnam is no longer going to be withdrawn in Vietnam.  In fact, the only thing left in the withdrawal plan really is a couple of MP platoons  and some civic action medi-teams, and only really 300 in units.  So, they are, in essence, a plan originated by the President back earlier in the year to withdrawal 1,000 men from Vietnam ends up being really an accounting exercise that can be handled by a personnel clerk somewhere.

Now, that’s one thing that I found out about Honolulu, the other thing was when I interviewed the participants William Colby was there, McGeorge Bundy was there what happened at this conference was that the military, MACV, told the truth really for the first time about how bad the war was going.  They said that the situation was critical, especially in the southern delta area where most of Vietnam’s population resides, resided.  

Now it’s funny, let’s review the bidding here, the military and the civilians told Kennedy the war was going so badly that he had to send in several U.S. combat divisions to save the day. Okay?  That is November, even I can find that that argument goes up to December 1961.  At the first conference that MACV attends, the first SEC/DEF conference MACV attends in February 1962, we’re winning the war. We haven’t sent any ground divisions in.  

There is a sudden  reversal to this optimism, and I showed you some of the documents.  In fact, I call this the optimistic interlude.  We’re losing the war as long as we’re trying to convince Kennedy to send in combat troops.  And he won’t do it.   And so now we’re winning because we’re afraid he’s going to pull out.  And that story continues all the way up until to two days before the assassination.  And along with this information that we’re losing are proposals at this conference to escalate the war using direct American military power against North Vietnam.  Now at the time its called OPLAN 3463 it will become known as OPLAN 34A, but it’s original institutional origin goes under the name OPLAN 3463.  And the planning actually began, as I track that back also to May of ‘63 at that same SEC/DEF conference  where the participants were informed that the withdrawal plan would be drawn up.  Well, they drew it up all right over the course of the summer and watered it down.  Meanwhile, also being drawn up was this plan 3463 which became 34-A which had a variety of measures, several hundred different types of operations were envisioned from little raids and little intelligence missions to actual bombings.  So, it was a wide spectrum of measures that were being put together as part of this package to strike North Vietnam.

Now, there was a big argument over these proposals.  Several people objected.  I know that Bill Colby and was basically told to go away and sit down by McNamara. 

And the other thing that they decided to do as a result of this, this new development, the war had turned sour, and the Joint Chiefs recomendations, and McNamara’s recomendations was to hit at North Vietnam, was a new NSAM was going to be put together for Kennedy to sign.  Now, McGeorge Bundy, his NSC advisor, had the job of taking these recommendations from Honolulu coming back to Washington and putting together this new NSAM for Kennedy, which he did.  What he did however was to put in a restraining clause in the paragraph that pertained to these attacks against North Vietnam.  This is the draft that he put together dated 21st November 1963, the day before.  Kennedy is already on his was to Dallas.  He never sees this. [ John shows the draft of NSAM 273.]  And on the second page of it, or on the third page you can see, ah, here, “with respect to action against North Vietnam there should be detailed plans for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources especially for...” blah, blah, blah, blah. In other words, all this stuff here as is going to be done as a develoment of additional Government of Vietnam resources. And that’s what we’re going to do with respect to actions against North Vietnam.  

Kennedy is shot in Dallas. 

And Johnson signs the NSAM instead, or approves it instead and there has been a change however, in this paragraph.  The words are different.  It’s very strange.  Peter Dale Scott and I have discussed this for days on end. Why in the hell is it about North Vietnam, you almost have to do a little detective work to figure out what this paragraph is talking about.  But, this is the same paragraph, and what we are saying now is that plans should include different levels of possible increased activity, and in each instance there should be such and such factors resulting in….possibility of denial…..The point is here the constraining clause that McGeorge Bundy put in there limiting this to just developing some additional South Vietnamese government forces is gone.  This opens the door to American actions against North Vietnam.  And here are the certain portions of the draft, and the one Johnson signed, and you can see there’s a dramatic difference.  In fact, a day or two after this Johnson called General Krulak in and told him to get a group together right away to pursue this. And they did.  He approved the plan in January, and the missions began, right away and were continued throughout the course 1964, and led to the so called “Gulf of Tonkin,” whatever happened there, all right?

In this instance though what we are talking about here is very basic, and I could talk at length about McGeorge Bundy and the difference here, and there were other ones, I don’t have the time, I only chose one difference between the draft and the final NSAM .  But what McGeorge Bundy told me is that the differences between drafts and the final 273 reflected Johnsons very much stronger views on the war and the orders that he, Johnson, gave that day.  Johnson directly changed that day.  And what change are we talking about? We are talking about the change from an advisory effort to one where there is direct American action.  That is something that Kennedy never would have approved.

The other change was more gradual, and that’s combat troops. It took Johnson rather longer to reverse that aspect of Kennedy’s policies.

Now, I have talked to you for much too long on Kennedy and Vietnam.  But, I want to talk to you just briefly about LBJ and Vietnam during the Kennedy years.  This is a picture of LBJ in Saigon with Diem in the spring of 1961, just a few weeks into the Kennedy administration.  He was sent out there to shore up confidence after the American, actually the Kennedy decision not to intervene in Laos.  And what he’s doing with Diem out there is actually going beyond the mandate set for him by Kennedy and he actually surfaces the idea of asking Diem if he would like American combat troops.  Diem at first says no. General McGarr our top military guy is out there and he comes in with the compromise, well, what if these American combat troops are only used for training? Then Diem says yes. The long and short of it is that Johnsons asked Diem to send a letter to Kennedy, Kennedy will get it and he will totally ignore it.  But, the reasons Johnson surfaced this issue with Diem is not because as one or two historians have said, which is, like Gibbons at Princeton, that Kennedy ordered Johnson to surface this issue with Diem but because Johnson received [on] the morning of his meeting with Diem a Top Secret cable relayed from the Joint Chiefs from the night before stating that Diem should be encouraged to ask for U.S. combat troops.  That is the documentary fact.

These people who say like Kayhin, George M Kayhin who used to run around campuses in the 60’s urging escalation in Vietnam now says he and another say that Kennedy ordered Johnson to go out there and do that.  There is no evidence of that at all, there is nothing I could find.  What I did find was a Top Secret cable where the Joint Chiefs asked the Vice President to bring up the subject.  In so doing he was not serving the requests or desires of President Kennedy he was facilitating the desires and the requests of the Joint Chiefs.

In fact, Kennedy was back in Washington while Johnson was talking combat troops to Diem, deleting from a presidential directive any authorization for Johnsons to have such a discussion.

Q. – Did Lansdale help him?

Newman – I theorized that he did.  And that is a very difficult thing to prove.  I think that when one looks at all of the conversation, I collected all the state department cables coming back and some reports that were being written in the Pentagon.  Did you hear the question?  The question was did Lansdale assist with this?  I think that very stringent analysis would suggest that Lansdale may have had a role but it is by no means provable.  I just know that Lansdale was very prominent in a lot of cable traffic going back and forth, there was something called the telephone which could have been very helpful in orchestrating this.  But, I can’t prove it.  And I’m running a little late, so I’m going to [move on.]

Now, this fellow here, Col. Burris, was Johnson’s military representative.  Burris wrote an extraordinary set of memoranda to Johnson in 1962 about the battlefield situation in Vietnam.  And he told the president basically, er, the Vice-President that we were losing.  This is just the first one in January, January 30th, [1961] it doesn’t really say anything about losing.  Here we go, March 16, [1961] “Communist rebels continue their attack in company and battalion sized units in contrast to its smaller groups.”  It is a very bleak picture being painted by Burris to Johnson here.  Here is a better one, [March 20 something, 1961] “Viet Cong activity is being intensified on increasingly broad spectrum.  In the face of this increased activity south Vietnam statistics in one area in particular are somewhat alarming, desertions from the regular forces have increased to 1,000 a month.”  I’ll just try and cut to the chase here, what’s going on with these documents is that Burris has got access to some raw data somewhere and is feeding to Vice President Johnson the very same data that I discovered in the USAIRPAC bulletins, “Viet Cong operations in the month of March have reached an all time high, 1,861.”  Just to make that point here, a little excerpt here from the May USAIRPAC bulletin which matches the Burris memos.

Anyway, I interviewed Burris about where did you get this information from.  The boys in the woodwork he said.  Who are the boys in the woodwork, I said.  He said, well, winking, you’re one of them, you should know.  So, he did, and didn’t.  He said later on, later on McCone put a stop to what I was getting from the boys in the woodwork.  Of course, McCone at the time was CIA director.  So, my assumption is that he was able to get access to the USAIRPAC bulletins or some other version of them.  So, Vice-President Johnson while Kennedy and McNamara were being lied to systematically about the state of the battlefield was being provided with not just the concept that we were losing but with the very statistical indices which underlay that failure on the battlefield.  And I find it objectionable and startling that if anything that any major foreign policy issue that the Vice-President should be briefed differently than the President. but especially one where the lives of soldiers on the battlefield are at stake. 

Q. – Any indication that the information may have come from the CIA?

Newman – Well, yes, you could take that implication, if that’s what “boys in the woodwork,” means.  I know they probably didn’t want me to include [the phrase ] “the boys in the woodwork,” but if I went back to my notes and I deleted “the boys in the woodwork,” everywhere where they work there would be holes everywhere because “the boys in the woodwork,” are so prominent, and that would include some passages pertaining to the May 1961 visit which I just don’t have time to go into.  Somebody was rehearsing Burris and telling him what he could and could not say to his boss, the Vice-President, very strange.

Q. - If he was saying you were one of them he could mean military intelligence.

Newman – Could be, could be.  Anyway, I searched for any indication that Johnson told Kennedy what was happening.  And there is none at all.  And in fact what he does say in his own memoir, if you read it, the book,  "Vantage Point," talks only about, you know, we were winning the war.  

And here are the same men advising him to send combat troops as they did Kennedy.  He had an argument with Goldwater over that, said he would never send American boys over to Asia.  And here he is announcing the Gulf of Tonkin, the crisis, and signing the resolution, and talking to his advisors in May of ’65 after he intervened.

Now, I have just one set of closing remarks I want to try and just step back and talk about what this means on a much more fundamental level.  You see, Kennedy’s own public duplicity on the issue of intervention has made it all too easy for the Johnsons apologists to seize on them as proof that JFK too would have sent combat troops.  The Kennedy apologists on the other hand ignore Kennedy’s public statements, they’re not helpful, they subvert the truth too.  The fact is that Kennedy time and again told, made statements that were anti-withdrawal while at the Top Secret level proceeded with a withdrawal plan.  However high or noble he thought his larger purpose was in carrying out such duplicity he besmirched his own reputation and that of his office that he held.  The real question posed by the Janus like nature of Kennedy’s public and private comments goes to the core of the American political system.  What is legitimate national interest?  Who shall decide it?  When is it permissible for the President to mislead the public about his intent with respect to war? Or in respect to anything? Is there a higher end which justifies such a means? If one President can deceive to get out of a war that he helped to get into can another President deceive to get into one?  And that’s precisely what happened, to wit Johnson’s promises in the campaign of 1964.

You see, what was going on here is that Kennedy’s problem was how to disguise a withdrawal and Johnson’s problem was how to disguise an intervention.  The questions posed by the behavior of both presidents Kennedy and Johnson go beyond the Vietnam war and strike at the very heart of our political institutions and Western moral and ethical traditions.  In order to exercise our duties as informed citizens we have to know what it is that we’re voting for.

These things said, however, there is no escaping the truth about the tragedy of Dallas, Texas on that day history indeed was changed.  It was truly a fork in the road and when the guns of Dallas fell silent this nation was irreversibly propelled into the Danteian inferno of Vietnam.  …and nothing less we must face, lest history be repeated again.  Thank you very much.

(loud applause )

Q. (George Michael Evica ) – After our last speaker, at 6:00 p.m., this camera person will need a ride to the airport.  So, if there is anyone who will offer their good services to us for this symposium that would get him to his plane we would deeply appreciate it.

I’m going to take the first commentary and question, John, the book by Peter Dale Scott “The War Conspiracy,” establishes direct working links between the old China Lobby, what could be called a Southeast Asian war party and the anti-Castro Cuban coalition, that is a sub-characterization Cuban access, therefore Kennedy’s obvious decision to honor his no invasion of Cuba commitment and his apparent decision to withdraw from Vietnam, that is his two policy decisions opposed by the same people, for example the military intelligence and other groups belonged to those three groups, his Caribbean, Latin American, and Pacific policy [was] opposed by the same significant people. Do you find Scott’s analysis credible?
Newman – Yes.

Evica – You do.  Good

Newman – Yes.    

Evica - I’m going to start up this way and come down this way.

Q. - Yeah, John you were staying pretty close to McGeorge Bundy, his activities, late November, after the assassination, NSAM 263, 273, there have been reports from some of the authors that he was responsible for the radio broadcast eminating from the situation room in the White House around 4:00 p.m. central standard time on the day of the assassination that there was only one lone assassin and no copnspiracy.  It has been attributed either to him or Commander Oliver Hallet.  Can you comment on that?

Newman - I really would like to if I knew anything but I don’t.

Q. - Hi John, you talk a lot about Kennedy’s policy on troop withdrawal.  What about his policy on bombing Vietnam as compared to LBJ.  What do you think he would have done-

Newman - Yeah, I could have gone into all the components the policy was that a Vietnamese had to be in the backseat.  And this was done in order to try to enforce “the advisory role.”  We were training and advising. In reality we know that this policy was flagrantly violated, although you can’t prove it documentary-wise a number of flyers have come out and said often the guy in the back seat wasn’t a pilot at all.  He was Vietnamese, he may have been a lower ranking enlisted guy.  The reality was that American fighter pilots and bombers were carrying, were doing the fighting.  But, the policy was that we should only train them.  But, in many respects when they had decisions they wanted they would brief the President such and such, and if there was no reaction from the President then the action would proceed and I detail one or two of those in my book.  And the air operations were one area in particular where that sort of naked decision making, or lack of decision-

Q. - That was not my question, my question is do you think he would have bombed Vietnam now or not, or would there have been no bombing?

Newman - Oh, well, it depends on what you’re talking about, if it’s North Vietnam the answer is no, not using American planes.

Q. - Or at that point would we have supplied them with some?

Newman - What he wanted to do from the very beginning against North Vietnam was use South Vietnam forces.  And he issued an order from the first weeks of his administration to get after North Vietnam, to conduct guerilla operations.  And they even did it.  The problem was the people that we dropped in there never came back out alive. So, the thing just kind of tappered off.

But, not direct American power against North Vietnam.

Evica - Next question

Q. - John, two points I would like you to comment on if you would the first because if anybody here has any questions of whether it causes some military anguish if they are asked to withdraw from a war type situation maybe you could address this issue and that is “The Day of the Jackal,” and the position of Charles DeGaulle, and his advice to John Kennedy, and what almost happened to Charles De Gaulle a few months earlier, and the second would you please address the issue that we were reminded of last week in the 20th aniversary of Watergate, and that is the attempt by E. Howard Hunt, I believe, under the orders of Charles Coulson to make it appear that John Kenendy ordered the assassination of Diem.

Newman - Well, I’ve always been intrigued by this issue of Hunt hunting around in Vietnam documents.  And, in fact, I’m not certain perhaps there wasn’t other mucking around going on.  And it always seems to hinge upon trying to paint Kennedy in  a much more hawkish light than he was. And what I would say is what we are looking at is a continuing, and I think it’s covering up and contributing to a false notion of our history.  The fact is, the issue is not that Kenendy was against using American power in Southeast Asia.  That is not what we are saying here.  I often point out that when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961  Kennedy sent an armoured task force right through East Germany.  Can you imagine Reagan having done that?  All right, so, the fellow was not afraid to use American military power.  And he went eyeball to eyeball with Khruschev in Cuba.  But for him I think the problem was Saigon was no Berlin, period.  So, while in some instances he was willing to spill American blood and treasure in other instances he was not even though he was willing to go a certain way.  And this business you’re talking about here, and there are areas of my book that I ponted out a couple of academics that try to twist things around and invented false orders by Kenendy that contribute to the same pattern that Kennedy was totally behind the Diem murder, which you are talking about here.  And there is always a pattern to these mistakes where Kennedy ends up being a tarred with the brush of intervention.  And the truth is the reverse, that he was getting out.

Evica - Next question 

Q. - I was wondering about your attitude to the other side of the coin.  I know you’ve done a lot of work about Kennedy’s sympathies to a withdrawal order, use of surrogate forces or perhaps a low level counterinsurgency, what was the impetus in your sense for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and those who opposed Kennedy’s policy to keep pounding for the introduction of U.S. combat troops? Why were they so intent on it? 

Newman - Well, there are a number of factors hre and I am not a student of which company would have profitted, as companies always do who make implements of war when we have a war, and so that’s got, there is certainly a factor, I won’t say the Joint Chiefs were influenced by that or not influenced by that, I don’t have their stock portfolios, I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to say that any of them, I really look upon the Joint Chiefs, with the possible exception of LeMay, I’m talking about Decker, I’m talking about Shoup, the Marine Corps commander, as basically honest individuals, who really believe, these were the hey day years of the Cold War, we’ve gone through, the Soviets have threatened to nuke Paris and London, at one point in the late 50’s and we’ve had a series of crisis where we have backed down because we felt we were at a postion of inferiority strategicly vis-a-vie the Soviet Union so there was a series of set backs in 1957, ‘58, ‘59, Syria, Lebannon, Suez, in any event I don’t think that for the most part all of these individuals simply wanted to get into a war because they wanted to make money.  I really do believe that they look at the world in very black and white situations, we vs. them and they are rearing their ugly little heads here and we’re going to stop them everywhere at once, and if everywhere at once means deploying American combat troops in Europe and in Cuba and in Soputheast Asia, that’s what we ought to do.  And there was a disagreement between them and Kennedy on going so far in so many places.  Kennedy was told that he would have to declare a state of emergency by Walt Rostow just to take care of the Berlin crisis and intervene in Laos in 1961.  And he would not do that, he would not pull up the reserves and did not want to declare a state of emergency.  So, while willing to comitt ground power in Europe he was not going to go as far as they were.  But, if you read the documents I think there was a sense that we had to hold the line along the Euro-Asian land mass including in East Asia as part of the battle against Communism.

Q - I just thought you might know militarily John because I wondered now it seems that surrogate forces and counter-insurgency almost seem to have become the battle of choice-

Newman - Right.  Well, there is that argument too.  And that’s what Taylor represented, flexible response, and introducing new concepts.  Frankly, even up to the point later on when we got half a million guys in there it was still the Army, and there’s been a good work on this called The Army and Vietnam by Andrew Krepinevich.  Big Army could never get rid of, you know, the planes in Nrmandy type of scenarios, you know, the Gulf War, that’s the sort of thing we do well, meeting threats at lesser thresholds is not something that the Army is historically trained well or taken seriously and trained as hard for, and certainly was the case at that time.

Evica - Next question

Q - Yes, I’d like to get back to Lansdale if I may.  Hed was probably one of the most evil men who ever lived.  He comes right out of ( sounds like J. L Thompson ? ) in California and goes into the OSS and he begins to hang people upside down dead by the heels and so on in the Phillipines.  And was he not responsible for hiring Phillipinos in the early days of the war, whether in Laos or elsewhere to fight, or in Vietnam.  Am I correct?

Newman - Oh, I think there were a lot of, were there not, Phillipino medics and technical gujys who worked-

(cross talk)

Q. - He had many odd jobs that were given to him-

Newman - that went into Laos with the A-teams.  There were a number of them in Vietnam-

Q. - He had millions of dollars to hire them.  It was very much like Casey hiring Argentinians mercenaries to fight the Contras.

Newman -...I interviewed the A-teams, the Special Forces guys who were in the (?) star teams in Laos, and they would often talk about the Phillipinos that they were technical specialists- 

Q. - Well, there were a great number of them.  the only other thing I’d like to add is this, Kennedy was considering Lansdale for Ambassador, and did not.

Newman - Right. 

Q. - and indeed did not appoint him.  Then Lansdale retires in 1963.  Was he forced to retire in 1963.

Newman - Yeah, it was extended.  LeMay felt to do that.  He retired on the 1st of November 1963.  When you get these screenplays if you ever do get them and see the footnotes, I was the one who gave Stone the information on his whereabouts in November. Now, Fletcher Prouty has always believed based upon this one picture that this is the back of Lansdale’s head. And Oliver approached me and asked me to look into this matter some more, and I really didn’t, I didnt do very much in the way of getting into the assassination tomes, I stayed in Vietnam.  Since my book dealt with Lansdale extensively on vietnam policy and I wanted to look at his papers anyway I agreed to do that.  And I took a look at his papers and what I found was a set of letters, at least half a dozen of them where he says he’s going to Texas.  And we know that he’s in Washington up to the 14th of November.  And that he’s on the road after the 14th, and also we have a little slip of paper we found in a box that has the words “Texas Hotel,” written on it and a telephone number, and a name in Denton which is just north of Dallas.  Now we can’t prove the time horizon, the date of this piece of paper.  But, it looks to me, very much, that he was headed to Dallas, Texas in 1963.

Q. - Thank you.

Evica - Thank you. Next question 

Q. - Coming back to a question that was asked just a minute ago, do you think that these plans that were being drawn up in the summer of ‘63 on the coup, do you think they included the assassination of the Diem brothers?

Newman - Excuse me, could you ask that question again?

Q. - Did the coup plans that were being drawn up in the summer of ‘63 include the assassination of the Diem brothers?

Newman - Oh, I’m sure in Saigon they did. No, I can’t say I’m sure.  I don’t know.  I would presume that the generals who would try to get rid of him would probably consider killing him.  In Washington there is not a shred of evidence that anyone was contemplating the murder of Diem, that I have seen.  It doesn’t mean it never existed.  But, I have seen an awful lot of the documents, and that was never was discused.

Evica - Next question 

Q. - In your research have you come across any evidence that the policy differences on Vietnam, or otherwise tangentially, any evidence that people who disagreed with Kennedy got so far as to kill him?

Newman - No direct evidence.  That’s why I told Oliver