Newman, John M. JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle
for Power. New York: Warner Books, 1992. 506 pages.
Drawing on his laboriously-assembled 15,000-page archive of official
documents, historian John M. Newman builds his case that President Kennedy
planned to win re-election in 1964 -- and then get out of Vietnam. Newman's
Kennedy is an intelligent Tory realist, determined not to be suckered into
an Asian Bay-of-Pigs-on-the-installment-plan. Kennedy stonewalled repeated
requests from his inner circle to commit U.S. combat troops to Laos in
1961, and to Vietnam thereafter. As a result, Newman thinks, key insiders
came to doubt Kennedy's nerve. Newman documents a high-level conspiracy
that doctored the military's intelligence reports on Vietnam that Kennedy
received during much of 1962-63. But grimmer assessments reached Kennedy
via the CIA and the State Department, and Newman thinks Kennedy's real
intentions in Vietnam are signaled by an October 1963 document ordering a
secret 1,000-man initial withdrawal of U.S. advisors. (A few weeks later,
President Johnson ordered the U.S. naval raids that led to the Gulf of
Tonkin incident, and so to the war.)
Whatever the final truth may be on the difficult questions Newman
considers, his serious book deserves to be considered on the merits of its
arguments.
-- Steve Badrich
ISBN 0-446-51678-3
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