JFK (67 page)
Authors: Oliver Stone,L. Fletcher Prouty
Mr. Douglas turned away and looked out at the snow and the dim outline of the city. Finally he turned back, and said, “Prouty, I’ll be damned if I know what to say. I haven’t met the bastards and I haven’t the slightest idea what they know and what they do not know. They have never asked us for such information.” Of course he was referring to Robert McNamara, the new secretary of defense, and to Roswell Gilpatric, the new deputy, a totally new team in both person and political ideology, let alone “military strategy in the days of the hydrogen bomb.” This was the best characterization, that I can recall, of the climate that existed in Washington between the two administrations since that unexpected election of John F. Kennedy.
Few people have realized the true atmosphere of the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition, and nowhere else in the government was that transition more acrimonious than in the Pentagon. As a military officer I worked with the Gates team and without a break continued along with the McNamara team.
I cite this fact, at the close of my book, because as I look back over those years it has become clear to me that the Kennedy victory at the polls, in 1960, was perhaps as much a cause of his eventual assassination, in 1963, as anything else. There was no way he could win against the inplace power centers, including that of the military-industrial complex, as President Eisenhower himself had warned.
As you can see, such things have nothing to do with a “lone gunman” (Oswald), with Fidel Castro and the Cubans, with the Mafia, and all the rest of the lore that has blossomed since November 22, 1963. They are a part of the true story, and the others are parts of the essential “cover story” that has lived and been made to flourish since mid-November 1963.
Stone asked me to become a technical advisor as he developed the script for his film back in July 1990. He came to my home a few days after I had triple bypass coronary surgery in October 1990 and gave me a copy of the initial version of the script. I noticed as I studied it that he was arranging things so that the general public would have “a level playing field.” He wanted those who knew little about the details of the assassination and its aftermath to get a good comprehensive view of the entire situation.
Then, as Stone himself learned more about the assassination, he chose the work of two highly regarded researchers and writers: Jim Garrison and Jim Marrs, along with the experienced photography expert, Bob Groden. Garrison was an excellent selection because he was the first and only official member of any court jurisdiction in the country to do what ought to have been done in Texas, where the crime had taken place, i.e., take it into a court for trial. With this endeavor Jim had put many of the actual facts of the assassination into the record and had advanced public knowledge of the crime and of its raging cover story, including the Warren Commission ruse. With Jim Marrs, Stone had one of the finest and most honest technicians in the investigation business.
It has been my endeavor, since 1985 when I first sat down at my computer, to write the story of the Cold War as few have seen it, to explain what took place at the close of World War II that led to the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and to describe the events that led to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and answer the question
why
that terrible event was planned and executed. In this endeavor I had the invaluable assistance of Oliver Stone, Jim Garrison, and so many others dating from the eventful days of my own military career.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “There is properly no history; only biography.” With this work, I have added a bit of autobiography.
To Victor H. Krulak, lieutenant general, USMC (Ret’d), my boss and friend in the Pentagon during the Kennedy years.
To Oliver Stone, for discovering in my ideas and experience the ingredient that made the theme of his great movie a challenge to America.
To my son, David, his wife, Bonnie, and my daughters, Jane and Lauren, all computer experts, without whose encouragement and assistance I could never have accomplished the burden of this work.
To Lauren Michele Prouty, again because she did all the computer chores essential to the technical quality of the final product.
To my editor, Hillel Black, for his understanding a complex manuscript and an intricate subject and for his inspiration.
To Thomas Whittle, editor of
Freedom
magazine, for recognizing the value of this work and publishing some of these earlier articles.
To Michael Baybak, my literary agent, for steering me through the intricate pathways of publishing with good sense and good humor.
General note:
This work is based on a nineteen-part magazine series first developed by the author with and published by
Freedom
magazine, the investigative journal of the Church of Scientology
.
Report From Iron Mountain
, Leonard C. Lewin (New York: Dial, 1967).
Read chapter 13, “A Conflict of Strategies” in Gen. Victor H. Krulak’s
First to Fight
(Naval Institute Press, 1984).
It is significant to note that much of this important legislation was written by Clark Clifford at the time he was a naval officer assigned for duty in the Truman White House.
See Henry Pelling,
Winston Churchill
(London: Macmillan, 1974).
The case of Gen. Reinhard Gehlen will be discussed below. Gehlen, head of Hitler’s Eastern European Intelligence Division, surrendered to American army officers before the fall of Nazi power and later was made a general in the U.S. Army for intelligence purposes by an act of Congress.
“The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War,” GPO, April 1984.
The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius
,
Jr
., by Campbell and Herring, 1975.
“The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War,” GPO, April 1984.
Office of Strategic Services, “Problems and Objectives of United States Policy,” April 2, 1945.
Dulles
by Leonard Moseley, Dial Press, 1978.
“Clandestine Operations Manual for Central America” Desert Publications, 1985.
Leonard C. Lewin,
Report From Iron Mountain
(New York: Dial, 1967).
We note that President Marcos of the Philippines had been in trouble and that the public had been rising against his harsh regime. . . . especially since the murder of his principal opponent, Sen. Benigno Aquino, in August 1983. During a visit to Manila, the director of central intelligence, then William Casey, made a modest suggestion that President Marcos ought to hold an election. At the same time we noted the rise of a new Communist-inspired insurgency there. The same Robin Hood tactic used again. At that point, the director of central intelligence knew and held the winning hand.
This was a pivotal meeting in developments leading to the steady escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Gen. Graves B. Erskine was serving as the special assistant to the secretary of defense for special operations. As such he was responsible for all military contacts with the CIA, for the National Security Agency, and for certain contacts with the Department of State and the White House.
With the “Magsaysay Scenario” in mind, it is interesting to note that Allen Dulles had with him at this meeting both Edward G. Lansdale, whom he was sending to Saigon from Manila to head the Saigon Military Mission (SMM), and the station chief for the CIA in Manila, George Aurell. Others present were: Adm. Arthur Radford; Mr. Roger M. Kyes, assistant secretary of defense; Adm. Arthur C. Davis; Mr. Charles H. Bonesteel; Colonel Alden; and Gen. Charles P. Cabell, deputy director of central intelligence. NOTE: The author was assigned to the Erskine office, 1960-62, during a nine-year period in the Pentagon. He served as the senior air force officer for the duties of the Office of Special Operations.
This officer was the same Edward G. Lansdale who had skillfully and successfully brought about the election of President Magsaysay in the Philippines. He was being moved to Vietnam to see if he could work the same magic with Ngo Dinh Diem, the Vietnamese exile who was being transported from the United States to Saigon to become the president of the nation-to-be: South Vietnam.
The CIA’s Saigon Military Mission was introduced into Indochina in June 1954. For the United States this marked the actual beginning of what we call the Vietnam War. The CIA had operational control over all forces of that war from 1954 to 1965, when the U.S. Marines, under U.S. military command, hit the beaches of Vietnam. The CIA’s role was dominant during those years in this phase of WW III, which cost $220 billion, millions of noncombatant lives, and the lives of 55,000 American servicemen.
Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the “vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.” Fuller noted also, “Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers.” See Fuller’s
Critical Path
, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981).
Potsdam Conference, held in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, in July 1945. This conference was attended by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. Churchill was defeated in British parliamentary elections during the conference, and he was replaced by the newly chosen prime minister, Clement Attlee. (General Source:
Foreign Relations of the United States
,
1952-54,
Volume XIII, “Indochina” [two parts], Government Printing Office, 1982.)
Foreign Relations of the United States
:
1952-54.
Department of State, Washington, D.C.
“Twenty-six Disastrous Years” Hugh B. Hester, Brig. Gen., U.S. Army (Retd).
Leonard Moseley
Dulles
(New York: Dial Press, 1978).
“A State Department euphemism for the various indistinct governments of Indochina at that time.
This special committee on Indochina consisted of the DCI, Allen W. Dulles; the under secretary of state and former DCI, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith; the deputy secretary of defense and former vice president of the General Motors Corp., Roger M. Kyes; and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Arthur S. Radford.
There are many truly amazing documents in U.S. military records, as well as in White House files, on this subject. Those that have been used, above, are:
- “Civil Affairs Planning in the Cold War Era”, U.S. Army Civil Affairs School, Fort Gordon, Ga., December 1959.
- Lecture, ”Southeast Asia, Army War College, by Edward G. Lansdale, December 1958.
- “Training Under the Mutual Security Program” by R. G. Stilwell and Edward G. Lansdale of the President’s Committee, May 1959.