Readerreader wrote:How do you square your analysis with the ouster of Diem in October, 1963?

Basically, JFK was set up by the CIA, who triggered the coup on Diem by halting the key AID economic package to S. Vietnam. This was unloaded on JFK at a WH meeting weeks before the Nov. 2 coup, by David Bell of AID (later disclosed as a CIA front). JFK was livid and demanded why the cut off in aid was ordered without his knowledge. Bell merely replied with a sheepish grain. All of this is documented using FOIA materials in James Douglass' book: JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

As Douglass documents, JFK well knew that with the money to run the S. Viet gov't cut off, the Diems would be next, and likely killed. He realized at that point the CIA had essentially isolated JFK from his own chain of command, documented when subsequently Henry Cabot Lodge withheld a key -urgent commuique from Diem to JFK asking what to do. (JFK had earlier ordered Lodge to notify him immediately of any Diem contacts).

Much of this was later covered up or distorted to make it appear JFK was the author of the Diem killings, by the CIA operatives collaborating with media in 'Operation Mockingbird'. They also distorted JFK's NSAM-263 and left out the LBJ's NSAM-273 eliminated it once he ascended to power. The way was then paved for a full blown war, leaving only the bogus Dulf of Tonkin incident to provide the excuse.

Douglass's superb book opened my eyes to much more sinister reading of recent American history, and shows the danger Obama might face if he bucks the foreign policy/military/intelligence establishment. As Douglass documents, while Kennedy had his hawkish Cold Warrior moments in public, behind the scenes it was decisions like his fall 1963 order to draw down troop strength in Vietnam, and his refusal to invade Cuba that led to the REAL powers that be taking his life.

One more point to take note of: Douglass shows how all who (for whatever reason) embrace the Warren Report-CIA version of our history are in effect enablers of the “unspeakable” (the core evil embedded in the national civic – political fabric) to which the author (Douglass) alludes.. Most skeptics and conspiracy deniers, as Douglass notes, are unable to confront the unspeakable: they are more than happy to give it cover by their denial. At root here: the denial of what really happened to JFK. Those in denial that it was a vile conspiracy are the sleepwalkers among us who have allowed evil to thrive and prosper the past 46 years- if only by incepting mass inaction and collective amnesia as well as an anti-intellectual revulsion to understanding the 60s assassinations and their role on our political-social future.

The author is not beyond implicating himself (p. xvi, Introduction):

“By overlooking the deep changes in Kennedy’s life and the forces behind his death, I contributed to a national climate of denial”

However, he also lets the reader know he or she may also share in this guilt (ibid.):

“Our collective denial of the obvious, in the setting up of Oswald and his transparent silencing by Ruby, made possible the Dallas coverup. The success of the coverup was the indispensable foundation for the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy by the same forces at work in our government – and ourselves”.

Adding:

“Hope for change in the world was targeted and killed four times over. The cover-up of all four murders, each leading into the next, was based – first of all –on denial. Not the government’s but our own- and the unspeakable was not far away.”

Every American worth his salt, and who doesn’t wish to be part of the unspeakable, needs to read this book and more importantly learn from it. I know I have, and the voluminous appendix of documents and citations alone shows it to be not merely another conspiracy book rehashing old issues.

Read it, profit and learn from it.