JFK (6 page)
Authors: Oliver Stone,L. Fletcher Prouty
By mid-1963 Kennedy had arrived at the brink of a decision to keep all American troops out of Vietnam and to withdraw “all U.S. personnel”—military, CIA, and others—“from Vietnam by the end of 1965.” Anyone interested in the exact coverage of the steps in this policy making should read the
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961—1963
, vol. IV, “Vietnam: August—December 1963” by the Department of State and published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991. This official record documents twenty-six highest level meetings in the White House with President Kennedy during the period August 28, 1963, to November 13, 1963. At the same time, my immediate superior officer, Maj. Gen. Victor H. Krulak attended twenty-three of those meetings in addition to making a quick visit to South Vietnam. Such a full schedule, in the White House and with the President among other high officials, in such a concentrated period is most unusual. It shows clearly how closely Kennedy made an analysis of the Vietnam situation his own problem, and it relates precisely the ideas he brought to the attention of his key staff on the subject.
It is significant to note that as General Krulak came and went from the White House during that busy period, including his quick trip to and from Vietnam, he would call several of us on his staff into his office each day, discuss the notes he had made, and give us instructions concerning what he wanted done for the next day’s meeting with Kennedy. Quite naturally, I was intimately aware of this planning process, its policies, and precisely what the President intended as Vietnam policy for 1964 and 1965.
The president considered it imperative for Secretary McNamara and General Taylor to visit Vietnam during that troubled time one month before the Diems were to be removed from Saigon to Europe in accordance with his approved plan. At the same, General Krulak was made responsible for producing the final document for President Kennedy that would be known as the McNamara—Taylor Trip Report, October 2, 1963.
It was carefully written by several of us in the Pentagon under General Krulak’s guidance, utilizing the notes and personal comments of the President. Charts and photos were added, as necessary, and it was bound in leather. It was not something produced by the two principals during their busy travels. When completed and approved, Krulak arranged for a jet fighter aircraft to rush it to Hawaii where it was given to the travelers in order that they might become completely familiar with it before their plane landed at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. As soon as they landed, they boarded a helicopter for the White House, where they ceremoniously gave the report to the president.
The report of October 2, 1963, became NSAM #263 after acceptance and approval of the President and his National Security Council. That NSAM #263 is dated October 11, 1963. It is the basis for a policy decision confirming that “presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963” and to “train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military can be carried out by the Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.”
The Armed Forces newspaper
Stars and Stripes
carried the banner headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY ’65. (Note: Any researcher who looks for NSAM #263 in the Pentagon Papers will find that it was craftily entered as its cover sheet of only three sentences on one page, and about thirty or forty pages earlier the McNamara—Taylor Trip Report of October 2, 1963, is quite craftily entered without reference to the fact that it is the true body of NSAM #263.)
This was the official and carefully drawn policy of the Kennedy administration, as written under the eye of the President. It was no casual or overnight scheme devised for limited purposes. This policy was developed in the face of the fact that at the same time the Buddhist uprising in the country was alarming. It was the positive and well-planned policy of the President. As such, it all but telegraphed the death of John F. Kennedy before his reelection.
In boardrooms, gentleman’s clubs, and other secluded rendezvous locales, intimate groups of High Cabal principals quietly discussed this new policy and what it would do to their carefully planned, twenty-year objective: the “Saigon Solution.” With NSAM #263 and related policy actions, such as changes in military procurement methods, it was clear that President Kennedy stood between them and their own goals.
It was also clear that this latest “all out by ’65” policy was going to assure JFK’s reelection. He had to go. With that foremost in their minds, a gradual, firm, and positive consensual decision was reached. The present government must be overthrown. They wanted no more of Kennedy; and they could not abide the thought of a Kennedy dynasty.
With that, a highly professional movement was initiated: Part 1 was a professional hit job by skilled and faceless killers, and Part 2 was an intricate and most comprehensive cover story that gave us such indelible bits of lore as Oswald, Ruby, magic bullet, Warren Commission, and all the rest.
By November 22, 1963, despite the Pentagon Papers’ contrived omission of that fact of history, Kennedy was dead. By November 26, 1963, President Johnson had signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of the Kennedy policy announced in NSAM #263 and in March 1964, LBJ signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War that involved 2,600,000 Americans directly, with 8,744,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during that period.
That was the “Saigon Solution.” That is the historical and factually biographical material of this book. As you read this insider’s account, it should be noted that it was the former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who wrote, in the
New York Times,
February 2, 1983:
I do not believe we can avoid serious and unacceptable risk of nuclear war until we recognize, and base all our military plans, defense budgets, weapons deployments and arms negotiations on the recognition that nuclear weapons serve no military purpose whatsoever. They are totally useless—except only to deter one’s opponent from their use.
Amen.
If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security, as well as our liberty.
John F. Kennedy
October 29, 1960
“THE DEEPEST COVER STORY of the CIA is that it is an intelligence organization.” So said the
Bulletin of the Federation of American Scientists
some years ago. It was a true statement then, and it is even more accurate today. At no time was this more evident than during the Vietnam War years.
Have you ever wondered why the CIA was created, when such an organization had not existed before in this country, and have you ever tried to discover what specifically are the “duties” and “responsibilities” that are assigned to this agency by law? Or why it is that this “quiet intelligence arm of the President,” as President Harry S. Truman has called it, and its Soviet counterpart, the KGB, were the lead brigades on the worldwide frontier of what was the Cold War?
In the real world—where more than six trillion dollars have been spent on military manpower, military equipment, and facilities since WWII ended in 1945—we discovered that the major battles of that Cold War were fought every day by Third World countries and terrorists. At the same time, the enormous military might of both world powers proved to be relatively ineffectual, because those multimegaton hydrogen bomb weapons are too monstrous, and too uncontrollably life threatening, to have any reasonable strategic value.
The existence of these multimegaton hydrogen bombs has so drastically changed the Grand Strategy of world powers that, today and for the future, that strategy is being carried out by the invisible forces of the CIA, what remains of the KGB, and their lesser counterparts around the world.
Men in positions of great power have been forced to realize that their aspirations and responsibilities have exceeded the horizons of their own experience, knowledge, and capability. Yet, because they are in charge of this high-technology society, they are compelled to do something. This overpowering necessity to do something—although our leaders do not know precisely what to do or how to do it—creates in the power elite an overbearing fear of the people. It is the fear not of you and me as individuals but of the smoldering threat of vast populations and of potential uprisings of the masses.
This power elite is not easy to define; but the fact that it exists makes itself known from time to time. Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the “vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.” Fuller noted also, “Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers.”
The power elite is not a group from one nation or even of one alliance of nations. It operates throughout the world and no doubt has done so for many, many centuries.
These leaders are influenced by the persuasion of a quartet of the greatest propaganda schemes ever put forth by man:
- The concept of “real property,” a function of “colonialism” that began with the circumnavigation of Earth by Magellan’s ships in 1520. A “doctrine of discovery and rights of conquest” was described by John Locke in his philosophy of natural law.
- The population theory of Malthus.
- Darwin’s theory of evolution, as enhanced by the concept of the survival of the fittest.
- Heisenberg’s theory of indeterminacy, that is, that God throws the dice, and similar barriers to the real advancement of science and technology today.
The first of these schemes derives from the fact that the generally accepted “flat earth” was, all of a sudden, proved to be a sphere by the voyage of Magellan’s ships around the world. It is not so much that certain educated men had not already theorized that Earth was round, but that with the return of the first ship
Victoria
the expedition’s wealthy financial backers had visual evidence that ships could circumnavigate the world and that because they could, Earth had to be a sphere. Being a sphere, it therefore had to be a finite object, with a finite—that is, limited—surface area. With this awakening the ideas of world trade and related colonial proprietary rights were born.
It may be postulated that this single bit of physical awareness brought about the greatest change in the mind of man since the dawn of creation. Before Magellan’s time, mankind had simply accepted as self-evident the fact that there was always more property “out there” over the horizon and that it was not essential that anyone think seriously about the ownership of land, particularly open land. This general idea ended with the return of the good ship
Victoria.
From that date on (circa A.D. 1520), the powerful rulers of the seafaring countries assumed the ownership of all real property in those discovered lands, and the natural resources on that property became one of the driving forces of mankind. One of the most important occupations of man during later years was that of surveyor. George Washington was a surveyor, outlining vast unknown tracts of land deeded by the King to his favorites, as though the King, and no one else—least of all those who inhabited these tracts—owned them. This paternalistic view of the right to the natives’ real property totally disregarded the fact that most of the new land discovered “out there” was, and had been, already populated by others for millennia. The power centers of that period were taking over the real property of the world—no matter who was on it or who had been living there—using little more than the surveyor’s chain, the missionary’s cross, and the explorers’ gun.
By 1600, Queen Elizabeth had founded the East India Company, which was given charter rights to create proprietary colonies anywhere on Earth. During those long years when the British fleet maintained the global British Empire, the East India Company was the structural mechanism of the most powerful men on Earth.
The East India Company founded Haileybury College in England to train its young employees in business, the military arts, and the special skills of religious missionaries. By 1800 it became necessary to initiate the task of making an Earth inventory, that is, to find out what was out there in the way of natural resources, population, land, and other tangible assets. The first man assigned the official responsibility for this enormously vital job was the head of the Department of Economics of Haileybury College.