McAdams Alleging That Morley Is Protecting DiEugenio

Here is the link.



https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.assassination.jfk/jyuQDTcnmRc

Letter to anyone who states that Kennedy wasn't pulling out of SEA
This is not the first time an editor of the New York Times has made this mistake, Galbraith says.
In a 2007 review of Arthur Schlesinger’s Journals, editor Joseph Lelyveld wrote that while “Kennedy had now and then spoken in private about withdrawal [from Vietnam] after the 1964 election, when he died it was a faint hope, not yet a plan.”
Galbraith notified the Times that Lelyveld was incorrect in a detailed letter.
“Schlesinger himself says otherwise; in ‘Robert Kennedy and His Times’ he writes of the  ‘first application’ in October 1963 ‘of Kennedy’s phased withdrawal plan.’ Robert McNamara goes further, in his 1995 memoir ‘In Retrospect,’ to speak of ‘President Kennedy’s decision on October 2 [1963] to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces.’
“A presidential decision requires a plan. The elements of a decision must include: (a) previous planning, reflected in military documents in this case; (b) discussion of the plan; (c) a decision to accept or reject the plan, reflected in a decision document, and (d) steps to implement the plan. In the case of JFK and withdrawal from Vietnam, all these elements are present.
“We have records of the 8th Secretary of Defense conference in Honolulu on May 6, 1963, which tell of a ‘Comprehensive Plan’ for Vietnam, including: ‘plan to withdraw 1000 US personnel from RVN by December 1963.’ McNamara also ordered that ‘training plans’ be developed for the Vietnamese to permit ‘a more rapid phase-out’ of the remaining U.S. forces.
“On October 2, 1963, these plans were discussed at the White House. We have the tape. McNamara states to Kennedy: ‘And the advantage of taking them out is that we can say to the Congress and the people that we do have a plan for reducing the exposure of US combat personnel to the guerrilla actions in South Vietnam.’
“On October 5, 1963 at a meeting at 9:30 am, Kennedy made the formal decision to implement the withdrawal plan. Again, we have the tape. On October 11, the White House issued National Security Action Memorandum 263, which speaks of ‘the implementation of plans to withdraw’ troops from Vietnam.
“A memorandum conveying the decision, from JCS Chair Maxwell Taylor to his military colleagues, had already been sent. It states:
‘All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all U.S. special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965. The U.S. Comprehensive Plan, Vietnam, will be revised to bring it into consonance with these objectives…’
“For Mr. Lelyveld to state that there was no plan, but only a ‘faint hope’ of withdrawal, is clearly at odds with the plain wording of the source documents. There was a plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam, beginning with the first thousand by December 1963, and almost all of the rest by the end of 1965. Moreover, President Kennedy had approved that plan. It was the actual policy of the United States on the day Kennedy died.”
Postscript
To Galbraith’s correspondence I can only add one point.
The records released since the 1990s under the JFK Records Act have strengthened the argument of those who say Kennedy was a dove, who sometimes wore a hawk’s feathers, but who did not want a counterrevolution in Cuba or a land war in Vietnam.
The view that Kennedy was peacemaker moving to his left in 1963 is not just the view of liberation theologian James Douglass but also of academic historians such as Robert Dallek and Washington journalists such as Jeff Greenfield. It is now the conventional liberal wisdom.
But not, it seems, at the New York Times.

Thanks for posting this, gerrrycam.  

The counterargument has for years made for strange bedfellows between the Right (McAdams, Holland, et al.) and Left (Halberstam, Chomsky, Cockburn).  To such an extent that that bastion of the "liberal chic", The Nation, when it comes to the JFK assassination, has been host to both sides (since they actually ran Max Holland pieces at the beginning of the last decade).

This is the McAdams who isn't really McAdams?

I hate to ask, but what's up with that?

Here is extensive article regarding the matter from the Boston Review:

           Exit Strategy 1963

The view that Kennedy was peacemaker moving to his left in 1963 is not just the view of liberation theologian James Douglass but also of academic historians such as Robert Dallek and Washington journalists such as Jeff Greenfield. It is now the conventional liberal wisdom.

Not just liberals, former Nixon & Reagan aide Roger Stone and conservative writer Jerome Corsi have both recently published books asserting the same thing (and for Republicans, they looked upon Kennedy rather favorably).