JFK's War with the National Security Establishment
Joint Chiefs of Staff involved in Operation Northwoods:
Admiral George Anderson Jr., General George Decker, General Leyyman Leynintzer, General Curtis LeMay, General David Shoup
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Resources
Resources
The purpose of this section is not to argue complicity of the Pentagon in JFK’s assassination, but to show how JFK’s thinking and acts during his presidency had moved him from a cold warrior to such a left wing position that many within Washington and America could view him as a traitor and threat to America, thus justifying his forced removal from office through assassination. These concepts are well developed in Doug Horne’s excellent book, JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why JFK was Assassinated.
See also Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article: John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace
Robert Dallek’s JFK vs. the Military
James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters
David Talbot’s Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
Richard Rhodes’ Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb
Click HERE for a printable copy of this chapter
CLICK HERE to listen to a 20 minute podcast of this chapter
The Bay of Pigs: JFK and Two Clever Traps
The Bay of Pigs: JFK and Two Clever Traps
In 1960, after Castro’s government nationalized the sugar and mining industries, the Eisenhower administration began plans to remove him from power. Initially the program, headed by Richard Bissell of the CIA who reported project status to Vice President Richard Nixon, involved providing support to anti-Castro elements on the island, together with the assassination of Castro which the CIA was coordinating with Santos Traficante and Sam Giancana of the Mafia (see Week 8 Anti-Castro Cubans and the Mafia). However, during 1960 Castro consolidated power on the island, rolling up much of his opposition, and the plans changed to an armed invasion of the island by a large paramilitary force of Cuban exiles. JFK had been briefed on the anti-Castro plans in July by CIA Director Allen Dulles, and as the election neared, he executed a clever political gambit, publicly calling for support of anti-Castro exiles to overthrow Cuba. In Kennedy’s fourth election debate with Nixon, he opened with this theme: “I look at Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of the United States. In 1957, I was in Havana. I talked with the American ambassador there. He said he was the second most powerful man in Cuba. And yet even though Ambassador Smith and Ambassador Gardner, both Republican ambassadors, both warned of Castro, the Marxist influences around Castro, the communist influences around Castro, both of them have testified in the last six weeks that in spite of their warnings to the American government, nothing was done.” Nixon, privy to top secret plans which he could not disclose, responded by denouncing Kennedy’s policy of support for the exiles and thus lost a crucial voting bloc in the tightest election since 1916. Once Kennedy came to power, however, he was bound by his pre-election rhetoric to take action. The CIA invasion plans called for establishment of a defensive beachhead and announcement of an opposition government which would then request help from the United States. Kennedy was caught between two conflicting objectives; the desire for the invasion to be successful was balanced against his need for plausible deniability so that the invasion would not be seen by the rest of the world as yet another example of Yankee imperialism. The need for success eventually swelled the invasion force to 1,400 members and while the force behind the invasion was clearly the US Government, JFK demanded that the US military not be involved in any fighting, and at a press conference on April 12, 1961 JFK publicly ruled out under any conditions an intervention in Cuba by US armed forces.
In the months leading up to the invasion, the CIA had presented a rosy picture to JFK, telling him (falsely) that fewer than 20% of the Cuban people supported Castro and that 80% of the Cuban militias would defect when the invasion started. Castro, hearing of invasion plans from his spies in the Cuban exile community as well as the New York Times, arrested 20,000 Cubans suspected of being in sympathy with the invaders and prepared for the invasion. The Department of Defense had reviewed the CIA invasion plans and concluded in a memo January 16, 1961 that only an invasion force supplemented with US military force could assure success. In late January the Joint Chiefs concluded that the CIA plan had only a 30% chance of success, yet they reported to JFK that the plan had a “fair” chance of success. At a meeting on April 4, Kennedy polled twelve of his advisors on whether to proceed; eleven voted to go ahead and one was non-committal. As it happened, the invasion on April 17 was a disaster. Castro’s forces quickly encountered the invaders who were not able to establish a beachhead. During the invasion Richard Bissell and members of the Joint Chiefs confronted Kennedy and begged for US military intervention, but Kennedy reminded them of his public pledge of non-intervention and refused. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion and Kennedy’s refusal to intervene militarily engendered bitter recriminations toward Kennedy from elements of the CIA, the military and the anti-Castro Cubans. However, it has come to light in the subsequent decades that the CIA knew the operation was doomed to failure and their strategy was to pressure the young inexperienced President into military intervention. McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s national security advisor and close friend of Bissell’s stated “The secret hope of the leaders of the CIA was to pressure the president into reversing his position.” As Allen W. Dulles recorded at the time: “We felt that when the chips were down, when the crisis arose in reality, any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail.” According to Evan Thomas (The Very Best Men): “Some old CIA hands believe that Bissell was setting a trap to force U.S. intervention”. Edgar Applewhite, a former deputy inspector general, believed that Bissell and Dulles were “building a tar baby”. Walt Rostow, future National Security Advisor, wrote that “it was inconceivable to them that the president would let it openly fail when he had this American power.” As Kennedy later said, “They were sure I’d give in to them and send the go-ahead order to the Essex. … They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well they had me figured all wrong.”
Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy publicly took responsibility and was surprised to see his political ratings shoot up. He also forced retirement on Richard Bissell, CIA Chief Allen Dulles, and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell (whose brother Earl Cabell was mayor of Dallas). JFK was furious with how he had been misled and reportedly threatened to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” The experience gave the young president confidence in his intuition and made him skeptical towards his civilian and military advisors and colored his relationships with them over the next two and a half years.
Trouble in Southeast Asia
Trouble in Southeast Asia
The Bay of Pigs wasn’t JFK’s first foreign policy emergency. On the day before his inauguration Kennedy was briefed by outgoing President Eisenhower who told him that the communist insurgency in Laos was urgent and if Laos were lost, they would lose all of Southeast Asia. Kennedy’s advisors urged him to send ground troops into Laos, Vietnam and Thailand, and launch air strikes against North Vietnam and perhaps southern China. If the response escalated, his advisors urged him to use tactical nuclear weapons. On April 27, Admiral Burke told members of Congress, with JFK in attendance that unless the US prepared to intervene militarily in Laos, all Southeast Asia will be lost. Kennedy chose a different path. On March 23, Kennedy had called a press conference to announce support of “the goal of a neutral and independent Laos, tied to no outside power or group of powers, threatening no one, and free from any domination.” The Pathet Lao agreed to a cease fire on May 3 and the Geneva conference reached agreement on the Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos on July 23.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam things were heating up. On May 8, 1961, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a cable predicting the loss of Vietnam, in which he said, “I believe that we are facing a repetition of the unhappy sequence of events in Laos since 9 August 60 which can only lead to the loss of Vietnam.” On May 10, the Joint Chiefs sent a memo to JFK, urging the use of U.S. ground troops in Vietnam: “Assuming that the political decision is to hold Southeast Asia outside the Communist sphere, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are of the opinion that U.S. forces should be deployed immediately to South Vietnam; such action should be taken primarily to prevent the Vietnamese from being subjected to the same situation as presently exists in Laos, which would then required deployment of U.S. forces into an already existing combat situation.” Kennedy agreed in NSAM-52 to commit 400 U.S. special forces in a training role but forbade their use in combat.
During 1961, the Joint Chiefs made repeated requests for ground forces in Vietnam. JFK turned them all down. After General Taylor, JFK’s favorite, returned from Vietnam in November 1961, he recommended the introduction of 6,000 to 8,000 U.S. troops under the guise of a “flood relief task force.” On November 22, 1961, President Kennedy approved NSAM-111 which approved various support measures to the government of South Vietnam but no U.S. ground troops. As John Newman states, “There Kennedy drew the line. He would not go beyond it at any time during the rest of his Presidency. The main lesson of this climactic event is this: Kennedy turned down combat troops, not when the decision was clouded by ambiguities and contradictions in the reports from the battlefield, but when the battle was unequivocally desperate, when all concerned agreed that Vietnam’s fate hung in the balance, and when his principal advisors told him that vital U.S. interests in the region and the world were at stake. President Kennedy had given (and would give) lip service to the domino theory, but he obviously did not believe it, deep down inside, or else he would have taken Eisenhower’s advice and intervened in Laos." During a November 15, 1961 NSC meeting, JFK said “.. that he could make a rather strong case against intervening in an area 10,000 miles away, against 16,000 guerillas, with a native army of 200,000, where millions have been spent for years with no success.”
Assassination and Engineered Deception Plots Against Cuba
Assassination and Engineered Deception Plots Against Cuba
Following the Bay of Pigs disaster, the Kennedy administration did not give up all hope against removing Castro. The President convened a task force called Special Group Augmented which was chaired by his brother, Robert Kennedy. The task force formed a team called Operation Mongoose, run by General Edward Lansdale, which focused on sabotage and assassination plots against Castro, run out of the Miami JMWAVE station which at that time was the largest CIA station in the world. The CIA’s Bill Harvey, who was in charge of the Staff D wiretapping group within counterintelligence at the CIA, ran the assassination program utilizing Johnny Roselli of the Mafia (see Week 8 Anti-Castro Cubans and Mafia).
By late 1961 Castro was firmly entrenched in Cuba and there was very little domestic opposition. Lansdale realized that a direct American military invasion would harm the U.S. standing especially among third world countries, so he turned to the Pentagon for help. On March 13, 1962, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer presented Operation Northwoods to Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense. The plan called for a series of false flag engineered deceptions: attacks on the U.S. by U.S. covert forces pretending to be Castro forces. This would stir international outcry against the Cuban regime and make it easier for the U.S. to justify military invasion. The plans included attacks on the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo including sinking of ships, a terror campaign against Cuban exiles in Miami, or sinking an exile boat at sea, attacks on Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic staged to appear to be Cuban attacks and a fake shooting down of a U.S. airliner or Air Force plane. According to James Bamford in Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Kennedy rejected the plan and told Lemnitzer that there was virtually no possibility the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba. As Bamford relates, Lemnitzer wouldn’t take no for an answer and persisted in promoting plans for a military overthrow of Castro. In November 1962, JFK allowed Lemnitzer’s term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to expire and transferred him to be Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, replacing him with General Maxwell Taylor.
For more on Opertion Northwoods, see THIS from James Bamford
Nuclear First Strike and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Nuclear First Strike and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Since 1945 a group of Generals in the Pentagon, led by Strategic Air Command (SAC) Commander and Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay had pushed for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union, euphemistically termed “preventative war”. President Eisenhower rejected the doctrine of preventative war in favor of a massive retaliatory second strike, but the president did not have control over the bombs; they were able to be dropped or launched by the SAC and missile commanders. During the 1950’s LeMay, as SAC commander overflew the Soviet Union with provocative reconnaissance flights using B-29 bomber aircraft which resulted in the loss of at least 20 planes and 100 crewmen. When one crippled plane made it back safely, LeMay awarded the airmen Distinguished Flying Crosses and told them “Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started.” LeMay’s war plans called for total destruction of the Soviet Union. In 1954 that called for delivery of 600-750 bombs that would cause 17 million Soviet injured and 60 million dead; by 1962, with 3500 nuclear bombs, the plans would have caused at least 100 million dead in pursuit of the small group of Soviet leaders, as LeMay said "who have as their primary goal the retention of power inside the USSR in the few hands in which it now resides.” In July 1961, LeMay shocked Washington when it was reported in the Washington Post that he predicted an inevitable nuclear war with the Russians which would happen by year end, leaving every major American city reduced to rubble.
On July 20, 1961, during heightened tensions over the escalating Berlin Crisis, JFK received a briefing of the National Security Council in which the Single Integrated Operational Plan for general nuclear war, SIOP-62 was discussed. This plan was described by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy as “a massive, total comprehensive, obliterating strategic attack … on everything Red.” It called for an overwhelming surprise first strike destruction of all Communist Bloc nations in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions. JFK listened for a while and then walked out in the middle of the meeting, later remarking to Dean Rusk “And we call ourselves the human race.”
In early 1962, the United States had overwhelming nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union with 156 ICBM’s, 144 Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles and 1,300 strategic bombers to the SU’s 44 ICBMs and 155 heavy bombers which could not even reach the US without ground refueling. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, concerned about a nuclear first strike on his territory, decided to place short and medium range nuclear missiles in Cuba, which could provide a second strike deterrent against the U.S. This led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. During the crisis, U.S. military generals launched several provocations which may have been designed to start World War III. President Kennedy had moved the nuclear alert status from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 3 (DEFCON 1 was imminent nuclear war). On Wednesday, October 24 when the naval quarantine took effect, LeMay protégé General Thomas Powers, SAC commander, without authorization raised the level to DEFCON 2 and broadcast in the clear to his command “Our plans are well prepared and are being executed smoothly … Review your plans for further action to insure that there will be no mistakes or confusion.”
On October 26, SAC launched an ICBM from Vandenberg Air Force Based across the Pacific to the Kwajalein test range. The missile was unarmed and part of a pre-planned test, but other missiles at Vandenberg were being readied with nuclear warheads at the time.
Also during the Cuban Missile Crisis, SAC’s nuclear armed bombers provoked Russia. As Richard Rhodes reports, “At the height of the crisis, according to a retired SAC wing commander, SAC airborne alert bombers deliberately flew past their turnaround points toward Soviet airspace, an unambiguous threat which Soviet radar operators would certainly have recognized and reported. ‘I knew what my target was’ the SAC general adds: ‘Leningrad’”
On Saturday, October 27, Robert Kennedy met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to urge the Soviets to come to agreement soon. As Dobrynin’s declassified cable to the Soviet Foreign Ministry states, “However, taking time to find a way out [of the situation] is very risky (here R. Kennedy mentioned as if in passing that there are many unreasonable heads among the generals, and not only among the generals, who are itching for a fight’). The situation might get out of control, with irreversible consequences.”
Indeed, things very well may have gotten out of control. On October 24, while American Navy ships were bombing a Soviet submarine escorting a Soviet ship, the submarine captain gave orders to fire a nuclear torpedo at the U.S. Navy ships. That order was countermanded by the Soviet Flotilla Commodore on board. Also, during the crisis JFK’s military advisors all urged him to bomb the intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba. Unknown to the military, however, the Soviets had installed at least 90 LUNA tactical nuclear missiles, known as FROGs (Free Rocket Over Ground) which were under the control of the local Russian commanders who had orders to use them in the case of invasion. The CIA had photographic reconnaissance photos of the FROG launchers but that was not adequately communicated to the White House. For more detail see The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Nuclear Order of Battle
The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved following a naval blockade through an agreement for the removal of the Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, an agreement for removal of U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, and a no-invasion pledge by the US towards Cuba, although the no-invasion pledge was conditioned on UN inspections verifying the removal of the missiles, and the inspections never happened. On Friday November 19, 1962 the President called the Joint Chiefs to the White House to thank them for their efforts and to smooth over any differences in their approach to the conflict. Kennedy opened with, “Gentlemen, we’ve won. I don’t want you to ever say it, but you know we’ve won, and I know we’ve won.” The Generals were furious. Admiral George Anderson exclaimed, “We’ve been had!” Curtis LeMay shouted, “Won, Hell! We lost! We should go in and wipe them out today!” LeMay called the crisis “the greatest defeat in our history” and said “Mr. President, we should invade today!”. JFK was stunned. Daniel Ellsberg, who worked in the Pentagon in 1964, told David Talbot that after the Cuban Missile settlement “there was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles … a mood of hatred and rage. The atmosphere was poisonous, poisonous.”
Continued Plots Against Castro
Continued Plots Against Castro
Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK transferred the Joint Chief’s General Lymnitzer to become Supreme Commander of NATO and Operation Mongoose’s Bill Harvey was transferred to become CIA Station Chief in Rome. Operation Mongoose was officially disbanded. However, the President’s advisors did not seem to get the message regarding the no-invasion pledge. An April 21 memo by McGeorge Bundy, JFK’s National Security Advisor included an option for a military invasion and overthrow of Castro. Discussions for Castro’s overthrow included support for a palace revolt, support for a spontaneous revolt, and a series of measures leading to the overthrow of the Castro regime. During 1963 assassination plots by the CIA against Castro continued although it is debated as to whether JFK or RFK knew of or approved these plots. See AMLASH and Rolando Cubela
Seven Days in May
Seven Days in May
In 1962, Fletcher Knebel published a book, Seven Days in May, about a military coup in the United States. Knebel got the idea for the book from interviewing Curtis LeMay who, following the Bay of Pigs called JFK a coward. According to James Talbot’s Brothers: the Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, JFK read the book and contacted Hollywood director James Frankenheimer and encouraged him to make the book into a movie, as a warning to the Generals. Talbot recounted a conversation JFK had with his friend Red Fay, who asked him if he thought a coup could happen in America. “It’s possible,” JFK told his sailing mate in a calm voice. “It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young president, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written of as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, ‘Is he too young and inexperienced?’ The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment.” Finally, said the President, “if there were a third Bay of Pigs it could happen.” He paused as Fay absorbed this chilling scenario. “But it won’t happen on my watch.”
Détente with Khrushchev
Détente with Khrushchev
Some people feel that JKF’s second Bay of Pigs was the Cuban Missile Crisis and his third Bay of Pigs was his movement toward détente with Khrushchev. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK and Khrushchev set up a hot line to afford direct communications in case of a crisis. And during the spring and summer of 1963, JFK made a number of steps towards peace. For several years the U.S. and the Soviets had discussed banning atmospheric nuclear tests but both sides resisted that approach due to the difficulty in monitoring each other’s testing. However, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, negotiations quickly proceeded and in August 1963, America and the Soviets signed the first Limited Test Ban Treaty.
On June 10, 1963 President Kennedy gave a remarkable speech for commencement exercises at American University. In it he called for peace with the Soviets and nuclear disarmament:
“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war, not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace — the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living — and the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.
I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the Allied air forces in the second world war. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.
Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles — which can only destroy and never create — is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.
I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war — and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.
Some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament — and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it.
But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes — as individuals and as a nation — for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward — by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the course of the cold war and towards freedom and peace here at home.”
See this link for the entire speech: https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610
Kennedy backed up his call for peace with another surprising announcement on September 20, 1963, when he proposed ending the space race with the Soviets and starting a joint US-Soviet space program to go to the moon. According to Nikita Khrushchev’s son, the Soviet Premier was planning to accept JFK’s joint space program but Kennedy’s assassination put an end to such efforts.
JFK made a final step towards détente in September 1963 with a back channel peace overture towards Castro, mediated by ABC News Reporter Lisa Howard, U.S. advisor to the United Nations William Attwood, and Cuba’s former ambassador to the U.N. Carlos Lechuga. A series of top secret back channel discussions took place in which Castro indicated his willingness to discuss terms and JFK made a speech in Miami in which he indicated that relations with Cuba could be normalized. This top secret peace dialog may have leaked, as evidenced by CIA cable interest in Castro’s physician, Rene Vallejo, who was part of the backchannel, and rumors of a new Kennedy betrayal which spread in the Cuban exile community in the fall of 1963. Kennedy sent another message to Castro through Jean Daniel, a French journalist who told Castro that the Cuban trade embargo could be lifted and the U.S. had committed a “number of sins” during the Batista era. Daniel was meeting with Castro on November 22 when word of JFK’s assassination came in. Daniel reported that Castro turned to him and said, “This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed!”
For more detail, see Peter Kornbluh's JFK and Castro
Insurrection in the CIA and the Media
Insurrection in the CIA and the Media
There was violent disagreement with JKF’s Cuba policies among some groups within the CIA who at times undertook actions in direct opposition to the White House. In Anthony Summer’s classic book, Not in Your Lifetime, he recounts that Antonio Veciana, the founder of Alpha 66, a violent Cuban exile group, claimed that he was assisted in the formation and strategy of Alpha 66 by CIA officer David Atlee Phillips (aka Maurice Bishop), who hoped to provoke the United States into overthrowing Castro by "putting Kennedy's back to the wall". On March 17, 1963 Alpha 66 shelled a Russian ship off Cuba, leading JFK to clamp down against unauthorized Cuban exile attacks. Henry and Claire Booth Luce, owners of the Time-LIFE Inc. publishing empire supported Alpha 66’s unauthorized raids on Cuba, buying them radios and paying for exclusive stories which were featured in the magazines. According to Warren Hinkle and William Turner in The Fish is Red: The Story of the Secret War Against Castro, Kennedy tried to defuse the situation by inviting the Luces to a private luncheon at the White House, but the conversation became heated and the Luces walked out before dessert.
During the spring of 1963 Alpha 66 member Eddie Bayo started spreading rumors that there were two Russian officers in Cuba who wished to defect and pass on details of atomic warheads which had remained in Cuba despite the agreement which ended the Cuban missile crisis. The story reached wealthy businessman and politician William Pawley and on June 8, 1963, the Miami JM/Wave CIA station launched an unauthorized raid, called Operation Tilt, or the Bayo-Pawley mission to rescue the Soviet officers. The raid included a LIFE magazine reporter, and if successful would have been a devastating political challenge to JFK. As it happened, the heavily armed raiding party was never heard from again after their boat left for Cuban shores.
Vietnam withdrawal and NSAM 263/273
Vietnam withdrawal and NSAM 263/273
As outlined in John Newman’s JFK and Vietnam, through 1962 and 1963 JFK had resisted pressure to send ground troops to Vietnam. Newman concludes that JKF wanted to completely pull all U.S. advisory troops, which by December 1963 numbered 16,300, following the elections in 1964. In order to accomplish this he sent his two top advisors, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Chairman of the JCS General Max Taylor to Vietnam in September 1963. They returned with the McNamara-Taylor report which was given to JFK on October 2, 1963. The report called for continued training of South Vietnamese forces so that all U.S. troops could be withdrawn by the end of 1965, as well as announcement of the intent to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. The President formally approved the report and implemented its recommendations by signing a National Security Advisory Memo: NSAM 263. The hawks were furious and looked to find a way to reverse policy. America had had strained relations with Ngo Diem, the President of Vietnam and there had been discussions about whether to support a coup against him. JFK approved a recommendation that “no initiative should now be taken to give any active covert encouragement to a coup. There should, however, be urgent covert effort with closest security under broad guidance of Ambassador to identify and build contacts with possible alternative leadership as and when it appears.” This unfortunately worded cable to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge gave the hard liners all the approvals they needed. CIA agent Lucien Conein met with the South Vietnamese military Generals and finalized the coup plans. The palace was attacked on November 1; Ngo Diem and his brother escaped and called Ambassador Lodge and asked to be flown out of the country. Lodge replied that he wasn’t able to arrange an airplane. The Ngo brothers were captured and executed. When JFK heard the news, General Taylor reported, “Kennedy leaped to his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on his face which I had never seen before. He had always insisted that Diem must never suffer more than exile.” The coup removed the fig leaf of legitimacy from the South Vietnamese government and increased the level of responsibility that the U.S. Government had for events in South Vietnam. A cabinet level conference in Honolulu was planned for November 20 to determine how to respond to events. However, in his final weeks of life, JFK publicly stated his desire to pull out. At a news conference on November 12 he said, “Now that is our object, to bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country, and permit democratic forces within the country to operate – which they can of course, much more freely when the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the north, is ended. So the purpose of the meeting in Honolulu is how to pursue these objectives.”
At the Honolulu conference the military presented a downbeat report on how the South Vietnamese were losing the war and pushed hard for a sharp increase in aid. The Honolulu conference recommendations were drafted in a new NSAM 273, which fudged JFK’s 1,000 man withdrawal by more than making up the reduction by new troops rotated in. The conference also agreed to a large increase in covert operations, perhaps because they knew JFK was a fan of special forces. NSAM 273 was drafted on November 21, 1963 and assassination researchers have often used it to argue that people within JFK’s administration had foreknowledge of the coming change of policy under LBJ.
For more detail, see Vietnam in late 1963
and James K. Galbraith's Exit Strategy
Newman relates that there was a shift in policy under LBJ: JKF had had to disguise a planned withdrawal while LBJ had to disguise a planned escalation. In December 1963 LBJ was heard to say, “just get me elected then you can have your war”
Here’s a lovely fictional vignette by E. Martin Schotz titled Kennedy-Dulles Dialog in Heaven: The Logic of War
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