JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (73 page)

Peer de Silva, John Richardson’s successor as Saigon station chief after Johnson became president, wrote in his memoir
Sub Rosa
that Lodge’s newly commandeered home had one serious drawback, its notoriety from its use by the Diem government for torture: “The house had been used as an interrogation center for Vietcong suspects and it was common knowledge among the Vietnamese that a number of them had gone to their reward under interrogation in the house.” Ibid.

[
61
]. Thomas Powers,
The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 187.

[
62
].
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. III:
Vietnam, January-August 1963
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), p. 268.

[
63
]. Ibid., p. 591.

[
64
]. Ibid.

[
65
]. Fletcher Prouty, interview by David Ratcliffe,
Understanding Special Operations and Their Impact of the Vietnam War Era
(Santa Cruz, Calif.: rat haus reality press, 1999), pp. 71-72.

[
66
]. Ibid., p. 72.

[
67
].
FRUS, 1961-1963,
vol. IV, pp. 395-96.

[
68
]. Robert S. McNamara,
In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
(New York: Times Books, 1995), p. 79.

[
69
]. Ibid., p. 80.

[
70
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 351.

[
71
]. Ibid.

[
72
]. McNamara,
In Retrospect,
p. 80.

[
73
]. Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers with Joe McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 17.

[
74
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, pp. 396, 338.

[
75
]. Bartlett, “Portrait of a Friend,” p. 16.

[
76
]. See Newman,
JFK and Vietnam
, p. 410.

[
77
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 396.

[
78
]. “Vietnam Victory by the End of ’65 Envisaged by U.S.,”
New York Times
(October 3, 1963), p. 1.
Times
published the October 2 White House statement on Vietnam, including the paragraph:

“[Secretary McNamara and General Taylor] reported that by the end of this year the United States program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where 1,000 United States military personnel assigned to South Vietnam can be withdrawn.” Ibid., p. 4.

“White House Report: U.S. Troops Seen Out of Viet by ’65”,
Pacific Stars and Stripes
(October 4, 1963), p. 1.

[
79
].
Public Papers of the Presidents: JFK, 1963,
pp. 651-52.

[
80
]. Ibid., p. 652.

[
81
]. Ibid.

[
82
]. According to the Vietnam Memorial Web site, the number of U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam was 8 during the Eisenhower Administration (1957-60). During the Kennedy years, 16 died in 1961, 53 in 1962, and 118 in the entire year of 1963, including the five weeks when Lyndon Johnson was president.

[
83
].
Public Papers of the Presidents: JFK, 1963
, p. 660.

[
84
]. Anne E. Blair,
Lodge in Vietnam: A Patriot Abroad
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 52

[
85
]. Joseph Alsop, “Very Ugly Stuff,”
Washington Post
(September 18, 1963), p. A17.

[
86
]. Mieczyslaw Maneli,
War of the Vanquished
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 112-31.

[
87
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 240.

[
88
]. Ibid., p. 254.

[
89
]. Ibid., p. 260.

[
90
]. Ibid., p. 282.

[
91
]. David Halberstam,
The Best and the Brightest
(New York: Random House, 1972), p. 283. Halberstam wrote that the “high-level meeting” at which AID administrator David Bell had his exchange with the president took place “in early September [1963].” He probably meant a September 10, 1963, White House meeting in which a State Department memorandum identifies Bell as one of the participants.
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 161. Besides President Kennedy, those who heard Bell’s comments on the commodity aid cutoff would then have included Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and CIA director John McCone.

[
92
]. Ellen J. Hammer,
A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1987), p. 190.

[
93
]. Marguerite Higgins,
Our Vietnam Nightmare
(New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 208.

[
94
]. Ibid.

[
95
]. Ibid.

[
96
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 346.

[
97
]. Ibid., p. 369.

[
98
]. Ibid., p. 372.

[
99
]. Ibid., pp. 372-73.

[
100
]. Ibid., p. 374.

[
101
]. Ibid., pp. 385-86.

[
102
]. Ibid., p.386.

[
103
]. Ibid., p. 385.

[
104
]. Ibid.

[
105
]. Starnes, “‘Arrogant’ CIA,” p. 3.

[
106
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 352.

[
107
]. At the October 2, 1963, National Security Council meeting, Kennedy answered his own question, “What should we say about the news story attacking CIA which appeared in today’s
Washington Daily News
?” He read aloud a drafted paragraph for a press release that presented a very different picture from Richard Starnes’s report that CIA agents had “penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.” The draft paragraph claimed instead that “there are no differences of view among the various U.S. agencies represented in Saigon.” Kennedy looked up from the press release and said, “That’s too fluffy. No one would believe that.” He deleted the paragraph from the White House statement issued that night which announced the beginning fall withdrawal from Vietnam.
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 352.

[
108
]. Starnes, “‘Arrogant’ CIA,” p. 3.

[
109
]. Ibid.

[
110
]. Prouty interview by Ratcliffe,
Understanding Special Operations,
p. 122.

[
111
]. Ibid., p. 123.

[
112
]. Ibid.

[
113
].
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. IV, p. 434.

[
114
].
Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission to South Viet-Nam
(United Nations Document A/5630, December 7, 1963), pp. 6-7.

[
115
]. Ibid., p. 10.