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Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 10:12:05 -0500
From: LIBRARY@mln.lib.ma.us
To: amarsh@FLASH.NET

   Title: Papers hint JFK sought to quit Vietnam Joint Chiefs mulled
   pullout in October '63[City Edition]

   Source: Boston Globe; Boston, Mass.

   Date: Dec 23, 1997

   Author: Associated Press

   Start Page: A3

   ISSN: 07431791

   Abstract:
   Newly declassified government documents suggest that weeks before his
   assassination John F. Kennedy wanted his military leaders to draw up
   contingency plans for a US withdrawal from Vietnam following the 1964
   presidential election.

   The documents add to the historical controversy over whether the
   nation might have been spared the loss of 58,000 American lives in
   Vietnam had Kennedy not been killed.

   But historian Ronald Spector of George Washington University said the
   execution of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem three weeks
   before Kennedy's murder in 1963 may have been more decisive than the
   change at the top of the US government.

   Copyright Boston Globe Newspaper Dec 23, 1997

   Text:

   WASHINGTON -- Newly declassified government documents suggest that
   weeks before his assassination John F. Kennedy wanted his military
   leaders to draw up contingency plans for a US withdrawal from Vietnam
   following the 1964 presidential election.

   The documents add to the historical controversy over whether the
   nation might have been spared the loss of 58,000 American lives in
   Vietnam had Kennedy not been killed.

   Some historians believe that Lyndon B. Johnson, upon succeeding
   Kennedy, deepened the US commitment out of eagerness not to be seen as
   the first American president to lose a war.

   But historian Ronald Spector of George Washington University said the
   execution of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem three weeks
   before Kennedy's murder in 1963 may have been more decisive than the
   change at the top of the US government.

   American leaders soon discovered that Diem had been hiding reports
   from the field that showed the war was going badly for the South
   Vietnamese, said Spector, who teaches a course on the US role in
   Indochina.

   And Diem's successors proved even more ineffective than Diem in
   combatting the Viet Cong.

   The newly released documents did not discuss Kennedy's role in
   sanctioning Diem's assassination, another contentious issue from those
   days.

   The document on plans for a withdrawal was among 800 pages of Joint
   Chiefs of Staff records that were made public yesterday by the
   government's Assassination Records Review Board. The board was created
   by Congress to amass for public inspection any records that might shed
   light on Kennedy's murder.

   "All planning will be directed towards preparing RVN forces for the
   withdrawal of all US special assistance units and personnel by the end
   of calendar year 1965," said an Oct. 4, 1963 memo from General Maxwell
   D. Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. RVN refers to the Republic of
   Vietnam. Taylor drafted the message for discussion by the joint
   chiefs.

   Less than a month after Kennedy's assassination, Johnson told his
   commanders to plan for "increased activity" against North Vietnam,
   another paper showed.

   Historian George Herring at the University of Kentucky, author of
   "America's Longest War," said there was no doubt that American
   officials discussed a withdrawal by 1965 "but the question is whether
   you read this as evidence whether Kennedy had made up his mind. I
   would say from earlier evidence that it was still up in the air."

   Another memo showed that at a May 6, 1963 Honolulu conference Defense
   Secretary Robert S. McNamara pressed for an initial withdrawal of
   1,000 troops "in one package" by the following December.

   General Paul Harkins, commander of US forces in Vietnam, agreed, the
   memo said, but did not want the troops to leave "with bands playing,
   flags flying" because "this would have a bad effect on the Vietnamese,
   to be pulling out just when it appears they are winning."

   At the time, the United States had only 16,300 advisers in South
   Vietnam. That commitment would swell to more than 536,000 within five
   years.

   Americans remained in the war until August 1973, when an agreement
   negotiated by the Nixon administration permitted a US withdrawal. Two
   years later, North Vietnamese forces overran Saigon.

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