JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK

by L. Fletcher Prouty

  8 It was Allen Dulles himself who revealed that the U-2 had not been shot down as the Soviets and the rest of the world had believed. Although Dulles revealed this information in sworn testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, May 31, 1960, the same month in which the crash landing occurred, his testimony was not released until 1982 and generally has been ignored by the American press.

  His revelation was staggering; however, no one has ever fully investigated the possibility that this flight, launched in direct violation of President Eisenhower’s order that there be no overflights before the summit conference, might have been ordered covertly by a small but powerful cabal that intended for it to fail and thereby to cause the disruption of the summit conference. Based upon a number of other strange events related to this particular flight, there is a strong possibility that this could be the case.

  9 I worked in the same office with General Lansdale at that time. Those in the Office of Special Operations and the Office of the Secretary of Defense were certain, from what they had heard firsthand, that Lansdale would be named the next ambassador to Saigon.

  10 The director of the Joint Staff was the senior permanently assigned officer in the then four-hundred-man office that supported the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Wheeler went on to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a position he held for some six years.

  11 I was the first chief of the Office of Special Operations and continued in that office until 1964, while Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer and, later, Gen. Maxwell Taylor were the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  12 One of the reasons Eglin Air Force Base was selected for this program was that a major CIA air facility had been established there a few years earlier and had become the worldwide center for CIA air-operation activities, excluding the U-2 program and those within the Air America proprietary airline infrastructure.

  13 This program was said to have been developed under the leadership of George Ball in the Department of State.

  Chapter 12: Building to the Final Confrontation

  1 In addition to this memorandum, there was NSAM #56, “Evaluation of Paramilitary Requirements,” and NSAM #57, “Responsibility for Paramilitary Operations.” Each of these was signed and distributed in the normal manner by McGeorge Bundy for the President.

  2 Carl von Clausewitz, 1780—1831. Prussian officer and military strategist.

  3 The Joint Staff is the unit that supports the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At the time of which I am writing (1961) there were some four hundred people in this unit.

  4 I was the pilot of a VIP aircraft used during these conferences by the British and Americans, and as pilot of this plane I carried the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran for that meeting. Actually, Chiang Kai-shek and May Ling, who had been in Cairo, went to Tehran, and I believe they traveled on Roosevelt’s plane. I flew their staff of delegates only.

  5 Although no relation to the previously mentioned Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, Gen. Richard G. Stilwell was a friend and close associate of Vinegar Joe’s son, Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, Jr., and a close associate of Lansdale.

  6 It may be difficult, or at least unusual, for the inexperienced reader to see in such a structured report its real and far-reaching significance. I shall provide an important example:

  Just before the election of John F. Kennedy, on November 8, 1960, Gen. Edward G. Lansdale and I flew to Fort Gordon, Ga., to pick up elements of the Civil Affairs and Military Government curriculum, which was then used as the basis for drafting the new curriculum for the Army Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg.

  At that time, we were both assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. By late 1960, this Mutual Security Program report had filtered down from the Eisenhower White House, without comment but with the weight of apparent approval. As a top-level document of great potential, it then became fundamental to the development of the new Special Warfare curriculum as it was rewritten and merged with the material from Fort Gordon.

  Because the Fort Bragg curriculum had the blessing of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, contained elements of a White House report, and was supported by the CIA, this whole layer of apparent authority became the Special Warfare and Special Air Warfare doctrine for dealing with Third World nations--particularly with Vietnam.

  There were no specific approvals of all of the above. The author has no evidence or recollection that any of this was ever discussed with the Congress or with the Department of State. Yet, on the basis of these policy statements, evolved from the writings of Mao, among others, the U.S. Army had more or less defined a new Cold War role for military forces.

  With this presentation the reader is getting a rare and unusual view of the inner workings of our government as it pertains to the development and utilization of the military in Cold War operations. This is exactly what is being done today in Central America, the Middle East, and Africa.

  (Note for researchers: I have been able to acquire a copy of this report, “Training Under the Mutual Security Program,” May 15, 1959. It appears, complete, as Appendix 3 of my earlier book, The Secret Team.

  Chapter 13: The Magic Box, Trigger of the Expanded War in Vietnam

  1 This was run by the CIA-sponsored Saigon Military Mission, described in detail in earlier chapters. It was part of “Operation Brotherhood,” an organization managed by CIA-run Filipino leaders under the aegis of the International Junior Chamber of Commerce.

  2 Intelligence gleaned from paid native informers always reported massive buildups everywhere. These native sources in intelligence never saw starvation-crazed refugees; they always saw what they were being paid to see. Every refugee area was another regiment of Vietcong. General Hunger was General Giap, and Communists were abroad in the land. After all, even the “intelligence source” was a shrewd businessman. He was a creation of the American CIA, and the CIA was running the war, with a checkbook, in 1960—61, as it had been since 1945.

  Chapter 14: JFK Makes His Move to Control the CIA

  1 Ike’s hopes for detente were crushed by the CIA’s U-2 spy-plane incident of May 1, 1960, as described earlier.

  2 The reader should note the similarity of this stage of the process to that which the Reagan administration promoted on behalf of the Contras in Central America during the eighties.

  3 For full details on the Bay of Pigs fiasco, see earlier chapters.

  4 New York Times, April 25, 1966.

  5 One of Robert F Kennedy’s sons is named Maxwell Taylor Kennedy.

  6 OSS, the forerunner of the CIA .

  7 This is a secret and secure means of direct communication. The chief agent in a country would have a direct line to CIA headquarters, bypassing every other channel of the U.S. government.

  Chapter 15: The Erosion of National Sovereignty

  1 Leonard C. Lewin, Report From Iron Mountain (New York: Dial Press, 1967). This book is not to be misunderstood. It is a novel; but its content is so close to the reality of those years that many readers insist that the “report” must be true. I have discussed this fully with the author. He assures me that the book is a novel and that he intended it to read that way in order to emphasize its serious content.

  2 A recent euphemism for guerrilla warfare or counter insurgency operations.

  3 Walter B. Wriston, Risk and Other Four-Letter Words (New York: Harper & Row, 1986).

  4 Philip P. Weiner, The Dictionary of the History of Ideas (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1973).

  5 As defined in my 1973 book The Secret Team, Secret Intelligence Operations are “clandestine operations carried out to get deep-secret intelligence data.”

  6 Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (R-Massa.).

  Chapter 16: Government by Coup d’État

  1 In what was a very accurate on-the-scene account of the murder of the President, an experienced Reuters correspondent wrote, “Three bursts of gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons, were heard.” This first news report by a seasoned combat journalist sho
ws that those in and around Dealey Plaza heard numerous shots -- more than the three bullets reported by the Secret Service, the FBI, and the Warren Commission.

  2 Permitting the vice president to ride in the same procession with the President violated one hundred years of Secret Service policy. Why did this occur on that momentous day? Who directed these changes in standard procedures, and why?

  3 As described in earlier chapters, this normally entails a series of orchestrated events that elevate a person, such as those mentioned, to a position where he is regarded as an extremely popular hero.

  4 Less developed countries, or LDCs, is a term much used for these small, underdeveloped nations in the banking community.

  5 This novel was published in 1967. Today it might have included the Strategic Defense Initiative “Star Wars” project as another boondoggle.

  6 R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981).

  7 A military term referring to the number of years of effective use of an item of military hardware before it is replaced by a newer or updated model. The life of type of most items normally averages between ten and twenty years.

  8 On several occasions in 1964, I spent a few hours alone with President Fernando Belaunde Terry of Peru discussing the subject of border patrol. Peru controls the entry and exit of almost 100 percent of its goods through the port of Callao, adjacent to Lima, and a special “free port” in the remote region east of the Andes, at Iquitos on the upper Amazon River.

  Belaunde wanted to establish a network of border surveillance by the use of small, capable aircraft, the Helio Aircraft Corporation’s “Courier,” which had been designed by members of the MIT aeronautical engineering staff and purchased by the hundred by the CIA. This small plane could land, STOL (short takeoff and landing) fashion, on unprepared airstrips and even on mountainsides.

  Belaunde told me that in conjunction with that type of modern border patrol he had repeatedly refused foreign aid projects for road-building because “all they would accomplish would be to facilitate the movement of the indigenous natives from their ancient communities to the jammed barriadas of Lima.”

  With entry into Peru limited, for the most part, to these two ports and their airfields, it was possible for the government to control all import and export business to benefit the Belaunde governmental team, which included certain old and rich families with traditional and banking power.

  9 Fuller, Critical Path.

  Chapter 17: JFK’s Plan to End the Vietnam Warfare

  1 Theodore Shanin, “Peasants and Peasant Societies,” in John Berger, “Historical Afterword,” Pig Earth (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979).

  Chapter 18: Setting the Stage for the Death of JFK

  1 Senator Gravel wrote these words in August 1971 for the introduction to The Pentagon Papers (Boston: Beacon Press Books, 1971). They were timely and applicable then. The reader cannot help but note that they are equally timely and applicable to the more recent Iranian “hostages for arms” controversy and even to Desert Storm.

  Chapter 19: Visions of a Kennedy Dynasty

  1 “New Frontier” was the domestic and foreign policy program of President Kennedy’s administration. It is taken from a slogan used by Kennedy in his acceptance speech in 1960. Edward C. Smith and Arnold C. Zurcher, Dictionary of American Politics (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968).

  2 Special Judge Advocate John A. Bingham, The Trial of the Conspirators (Washington, D.C., 1865), cited in The Pope and the New Apocalypse (S. D. Mumford, 1986).

  Chapter 20: LBJ Takes the Helm as the Course Is Reversed

  1 From his excellent book Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence (New York: Times Books, 1978). This is a good source of “inside the family” information about certain aspects of the intervention in Vietnam and of the role played by the various participants.

  2 Previous CIA station chief, Saigon.

  3 At the time General Taylor issued these instructions to General Westmoreland, I was serving with the Joint Staff as chief of the Office of Special Operations in SACSA. I attended meetings at which General Taylor presided and was well aware of his brilliance and experience. His remarks to General Westmoreland cannot be taken lightly. For my work with the Joint Staff, I was awarded, by General Taylor, one of the first Joint Chiefs of Staff Commendation Medals ever issued.

  4 During the summer of 1944, I had been ordered to fly from Cairo via Tehran over the Caspian Sea and then across southern Russian into the Ukraine to a point just west of Poltava. I saw firsthand the indescribable destruction of such cities as Rostov, and how the once-fertile Ukraine had been laid bare. Only the firebombed Tokyo had suffered more damage.

  Index

  Abrams, Gen. Creighton W.

  Acheson, Dean

  Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)

  Afghanistan

  Africa, outlook for

  Agent Orange

  Agnelli, Giovanni

  Agriculture

  Agrovilles

  Ahn Lac Air Base

  Air America

  Air Re-supply and Communications

  Allen, George V.

  Ambrose, Dr. Stephen E.

  American Airlines

  American Legion

  American Medical Association

  Ammunition, coup role of

  Anloa Valley

  Anson, Robert Sam

  Antarctica

  Apollo program

  Arzu, Roberto Alejo

  Ash, Roy L.

  Assassination, CIA policy on common techniques in and FDR. See also Kennedy (John) assassination

  Assassination manuals

  Associated Press

  Atomic bomb, development of and Japan. See also Hydrogen bomb; Nuclear weapons

  Auchincloss, Ken

  Aurell, George

  Baldwin, Hansen W.

  Ball, George

  Bao Dai

  Bankers

  Bannister, Guy

  Barber, James David

  Barrientos Ortaño, Gen. René

  Bay of Pigs operation execution of failure analyzed Kennedy reaction to planning of

  Bell Helicopter

  Bingham, John A.

  Bishop, Jim

  Bissell, Richard

  Black budgets

  Blackburn, Alfred W.

  “Block” system

  Bodin, Jean

  Boeing Aircraft Company

  Boggs, Hale

  Bolivia, coup in

  Bombing, impact of

  Book of the Film, The (Stone)

  Boston Globe

  Bow and arrow

  British Broadcasting Company

  Brown, Clarence

  Buddhists

  Budgets, defense and Eisenhower administration military and Third World of Vietnam War

  Bundy, Bill

  Bundy, McGeorge and Bay of Pigs and NSAM’s

  Burke, Adm. Arleigh A.

  Bush administration

  Cabell, Gen. Charles

  Cabell, Earle

  Cairo conference

  California Standard Oil Company

  Cambodia

  Camelot

  Cameron, Allan W.

  Camp Peary

  Cam Ranh Bay

  Can Loa

  Caravelle Group

  Carr, Waggoner

  Casey, William

  Castro, Fidel. See also Bay of Pigs operation

  Catholics, relocation of. See also Tonkinese refugees

  Central Intelligence Agency. See CIA

  Central Intelligence Group (CIG)

  Chiang Kai-shek and Tehran conference

  Chiang Kai-shek, Madame

  Chicago Daily News

  Chile

  China, and Tehran conference

  Chinese and Vietnam war. See also Tonkinese refugees

  Christchurch Star

  Churchill, Winston and iron curtain

  CIA, and assassinations and Bay of Pigs and Bolivian coup and business com
bat activity of control of and covert operations creation of Cuban-exile program of and Diem and Dien Bien Phu and economic warfare economics division of and franchise holders and French-Indochina War funding of growth of and helicopters international reputation of Johnson changes in and Korean airliner incident and Kennedy Vietnam policy and Laos laws governing and McCone appointment and military-politics relationship and paramilitary forces and Pentagon Papers and Phoenix Program political immunity of and project size reason for roles of and Nazis and NSAM’s and Saigon Military Mission and secrecy and Special Forces, and U-2 incident and Vietnam-war Americanization. See also individual names and subjects; Vietnam war

  CINCPAC

  Citizens’ Retraining Camps

  Civil Affairs and Military Government

  Civil Air Transport (CAT), and helicopters and Tonkinese refugees

  Civil Guard

  Clifford, Clark

  Cline, Ray

  Cochin China

  Colby, William

  Cold War, cost of and enemies initial planning of and NSAM’s origins of purposes of

  Colson, Charles

  Combat Development Test Center (CDTC)

  Communications, and national sovereignty

  Communism, as enemy. See also Cold War

  Conein, Lucien

  C-123 cargo plane

  Congress, U.S., and Southeast Asia Resolution

  Congressional Record

  Conspiracies; proving of

  Cooper, Sen. John Sherman

  Cornwell-Thompson Company

  Corporate socialism

  Counsel to the President (Clifford)

  Counterinsurgency

  Coups d’etat, CIA methods in and franchise holders