JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK

by L. Fletcher Prouty

  The government of an LDC makes its money by granting exclusive and monopolistic franchises to its friends, relatives, and true financial and traditional leaders of its national infrastructure, for everything from chewing gum and Coca-Cola to Cadillacs and F-16 fighter planes.

  These franchise holders, the ins, are usually assured of becoming millionaires. Their franchises are obtained through contacts with select sources in the United States and other Western powers. They cover all the essentials required by the populace; there is no other way to obtain nonlocally produced goods, including foodstuffs, which must be imported. The same franchise system applies to the nation’s exports.

  The outs, on the other hand, are those who have been stripped of their franchises, usually as a result of a coup d’état, in favor of the ruling group. The term “political party” and the words “communism,” “socialism,” and “democracy” rarely apply in any of these LDCs. The outs are definitely on the outside looking in and represent an ever-present danger to the ins through the possibility of a coup d’état. In most LDCs there can be no meaningful campaigns and elections. In most cases, the votes, if elections are held, are counted by the armed forces, and the armed forces are the instrument of the in power group. Such controls leave little alternative to the outs other than the coup d’état method of power transition.

  In all less-developed countries, the difference between the ins and the outs has little, if anything, to do with political ideology. The scenario exploited by the major powers divided the world into “Communist” and “the West” or some other structure. As far as each LDC is concerned, the game is quite simple: “Where do they buy—that is, where are the franchise materials produced and sold—and to whom do they sell their own resources, to include physical labor?”

  The supremely powerful international bankers keep the books and balances for each side. They make these transactions possible by offering the loans, issuing letters of credit, collecting huge fees for their role in each transaction, and collecting the interest on the entire package. In many LDCs the total amount of interest paid to the banks and their international financing structure amounts to more than half of the total value of dollars earned by their exports. For this reason annual payments are seldom more than the interest involved and none of the principal. This is one reason why the principal never comes back to the United States.

  The long-range future of such a system can mean only one thing: the eventual default of the total amount loaned and the loss of savings that had been deposited with the network of banks involved. For example, when the Chicago-based Continental Illinois Bank failed, a major share of its $47 billion holdings had come from 2,200 other financial institutions throughout the United States. Had the U.S. government not moved to take over these massive losses, the failure of that single “money center” bank would have taken down with it the majority of those other 2,200 financial institutions.

  Of course, nothing operates along such uncomplicated lines. Among the “Western” powers there is steep competition. France vies to sell the Mystère fighter plane to each LDC at the same time the U.S. pushes its own aircraft. Deals are made, for example, by Japan with Brazil to purchase iron ore and, in the process, to construct a much-needed 1,100-mile railway line. In most LDCs vast amounts of raw materials and labor at low cost are traded for manufactured items.

  All that is important here is to know that the struggle for less-developed countries is not a political contest such as Communists versus the West. It is, rather, a struggle for an import-export lock on each country, with the aim of creating markets and consumers, along with a maximized flow of dollars in both directions that includes a heavy overhead burden of interest for the bankers, who benefit likewise.

  This understanding takes us back to the origins of the thirty-year war in Indochina and events of that era. In 1945, even before Germany had surrendered in World War II, certain OSS officials, among them Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, had made contact with German leaders to create the anticommunism scenario that was to follow World War II.

  Despite the fact that the Soviet Union had been our ally during World War II and had sacrificed more than 20 million of its people for that victory, elements of the U.S.-British coalition began the postwar “anti-Communist” battle cry before the actual surrender of Germany. This means that OSS and British agents were scheming with “the enemy” (Germany) while they were joined with “the friend and ally” (Russia).

  As the business of World War II ended and the business of the postwar world moved into high gear, the key to the peacetime strategy called the Cold War was to be this division of the world’s nations into two camps: “communism” and “the West.”

  Since that time, approximately $100 billion per year has been spent on foreign military aid, and in real dollar terms as of 1980, a staggering total of “$6 trillion has been legally transferred from the U.S. people’s national capital account over to the capital ownership account of the stockholders of the one thousand largest transnational, exclusively American-flag-flying corporations.”9

  When so much money is loaned to the less developed countries and when the contacts that lead to the award of exclusive franchises for American-manufactured items are made, the next question is: To whom should these franchises be awarded by the American corporations involved? This question points to a need for a reliable American source in the LDCs who has information, that is, “intelligence,” on all key families in the country. The CIA fills this role quietly and unobtrusively.

  The CIA station chief in each less-developed country will create a list of key families who are close to the ruling power. In many instances, a son will be enrolled in the military of that country and will then, as a function of the U.S. Military Aid Program, be put on a quota of officers who have been selected to attend a “radar school” or other military course in the United States.

  An August 20, 1986, article in the New York Times states, “The Defense Department’s English Language Center here [Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas], where military people from seventy foreign countries come to study English, is a barometer of United States military relations with others.”

  It goes on to say, “ . . . the long-term benefit is the opportunity for us to influence other countries—this center is a vital link in American foreign policy. ”

  Furthermore, the Times adds, “Beyond language, the center tries to expose the students to the United States. Tours to local banks, businesses, and the Lone Star Brewery are arranged, as are trips to Dallas and Washington.”

  What the Times did not add was that many, if not all, of these special students had been selected for this trip to the United States by the CIA’s chief of station in the home LDC. Upon return, these students and their families will be looked upon as future franchise holders for the import of U.S.-made products. This effort is cloaked in the military uniform, but it has been arranged by the CIA for business purposes.

  As with all good intentions, there are times when things go wrong. Despite all precautions, there comes a time when the in government is overthrown by the outs. In spite of all the propaganda, the new ins are rarely, if ever, “Communists,” “socialists,” or other ideologues. They just want to cancel all existing franchises, turn out the former franchise holders, and begin the whole process again. In such a system, it becomes necessary for the United States to side with one group or the other. Thus we have Ortegas, Castros, Ho Chi Minhs, and Garcías.

  A check of the record would reveal that many later “enemies” had been, at one time or other, favorites of the CIA or OSS. A serious dilemma is thus created: The CIA would like to keep its role in these affairs secret, but how can it be secret when the present outs are only once removed—often, literally—from having been the ins? Both sides are well aware of the game played by the CIA and its friends in the American business community.

  So, as we said earlier, when Paz was displaced by the CIA and when Barrientos was put in his place, Paz knew exactly
what had happened and who had done it. And it was no surprise when, twenty-two years later, he regained the presidency of Bolivia.

  Is Paz thinking, every day that the CIA must be at work again, behind the cover of the so-called anticocaine project, to put bullets in the guns of the armed forces to once more run him out of town? Stay tuned. We’ll see how it all ends.

  After all, CIA Director Casey’s suggestion to Marcos that he run an election worked like a charm. Marcos was out, and the franchises for products to be imported into the Philippines under the Aquino regime were all written anew. That is good business, and worth every penny of the $137.6 billion or so in annual foreign military aid—or is it?

  SEVENTEEN

  JFK’s Plan to End the Vietnam Warfare

  AS STATED IN EARLIER CHAPTERS, the Bay of Pigs operation mounted by the CIA against Castro and Cuba failed because of the cancellation of the air strike that Kennedy had ordered to destroy the final three combat-capable aircraft in the Cuban air force.

  Here is an example of the failure of an administration to understand the employment of military power. This time the failure involved conventional equipment. On January 27, 1963, a report in the Los Angeles Times by Marvin Miles contained key information from an important member of the Kennedy administration:

  The discussion whether United States air cover was planned for the Bay of Pigs invasion is academic, in our opinion, whereas U.S. failure to properly assess the fighting capabilities of the T-33 jet trainer has serious implications.

  Attorney General Robert Kennedy acknowledged last week that underestimating the T-bird was a major mistake.

  “We underestimated what a T-33 carrying rockets could do,” he said. “It wasn’t given sufficient thought. They caused us a great deal of trouble. ”

  This article is evidence that by January 1963, the Kennedys had realized that the cancellation of that crucial air strike was the major miscalculation behind the defeat of the exile brigade, just as Gen. Maxwell Taylor had reported to them. As Robert Kennedy said in the same article, “The plans and the recommendations obviously were not adequate.” The Kennedy brothers agreed that they would not lay themselves open to that problem of underestimating enemy capability again.

  But far away, on the other side of the world, Indochina, with all of its pitfalls, was looming over Camelot at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  By mid-1961, the Kennedys realized that the mysteries of a national military strategy that was clouded by the reality of the H-bomb was as much a factor, in the theater of operations in Indochina, as the T-33 jets had been in the Bay of Pigs operation. In other words, any participation in a military action in a friendly Third World country was necessarily limited to the use of conventional weaponry. At the same time, military strategists know that war must always be an all-out, go-for-broke activity.

  A war, by definition, cannot be limited. Furthermore, if limited warfare is attempted, it inevitably becomes a war without an objective. Such a war cannot be won, as we learned in Korea and would learn in Vietnam. Thus, as Clark Clifford so clearly predicted, a war in Vietnam, fought as it was without a military objective, had to lead nowhere. Kennedy knew that the introduction of U.S. military forces into Vietnam would create that insoluble problem. Despite this understanding, the low-level action Kennedy inherited in Indochina from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations existed, and the CIA continued in operational control there as it had since 1945, although now in a somewhat more diversified and obscure role.

  By the end of 1961 President Kennedy’s military adviser in the White House, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, had visited Vietnam and had rendered an important report on conditions there. The President accepted most of the Taylor recommendations, with the exception of his call for the introduction of U.S. ground forces “to help the Diem government with flood relief.”

  Also by the end of 1961, John McCone, appointed to replace Allen Dulles as the director of central intelligence, had been to Indochina and around the world on a most highly specialized orientation trip orchestrated by one of the CIA’s best, Desmond Fitzgerald.

  At the same time, it became quite clear to those most active in promoting military activity in Indochina that President Kennedy was not going to accept proposals to introduce U.S. armed forces into Vietnam for military purposes but that he might approve their use as advisers in a limited partnership with Diem’s government. First, however, he wanted to learn more about conditions there.

  Since most of Kennedy’s advisers came from academic backgrounds, they were interested in learning more about the Vietnamese, their lives, and their traditional government. With two thousand years of cultural and political history Indochina—and particularly that part called Vietnam—was a “traditionalist society.” Its basic economic way of life was simple and efficient, sustained as it was by agriculture and fishing.

  One of its most remarkable characteristics was that its peasant communities were cohesive social units that easily managed the behavior of their inhabitants. This social structure was based upon the clan, or “Toc,” which consisted of all persons, male and female, of a common ancestry through the male line going back to the fifth ascending generation and forward to the third descending generation. This represented a total of nine generations and a time span of two hundred years or more.

  Such a clan was headed by the senior male of the principal lineage, and his home served as its headquarters. The clan was sustained by the “cult of ancestors,” and rites took place in an ancestral hall. As can be imagined, these clans were closely knit and generally remained in the same area century after century. They were quite isolated, and other than the payment of a head tax and a requirement of limited military service, they had very little contact with any central government.

  These rice-growing peasants rarely traveled far from their own village, and most personal contact was with members of their own clan. With the exception of Saigon in the south, Hanoi in the north, and Hue, the old Imperial capital, near the middle, few places in Vietnam could have been considered to be urban. These clusters of families and clans constituted self-contained units of social conservatism that were strongly resistant to external influences. Yet, in their quiet way they set the tone of the war. They had no use for outsiders.

  At this time, the total population of Vietnam was approximately 30 million, with 14 million in the south. Of those in the south, about a million and a half were Chinese, and more than a million were recent “refugees,” or invaders from the north. These northern Vietnamese were neither welcomed by nor well assimilated among southern clans. The southern Vietnamese recognized these invaders, who were mostly of the Catholic faith, by their more Mongoloid or Chinese features. But this was not the problem.

  Shortly after establishing the South Vietnamese government under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States transported this enormous tide of northern refugees into the south. Diem was from a Mandarin background and from central Vietnam. He was a staunch Catholic who had been an exile in the United States and Europe under the sponsorship of the Catholic church for many years. A brother, Monseigneur Ngo Dinh Thuc, was the archbishop of Hue and the head of a Catholic clergy of two thousand, including four bishops who served in the provincial regions. This meant that President Diem and his government were much closer to the northern “invaders” than to the southern villagers and landowners.

  This influx of over one million northern Catholics was, without question, one of the most inflammatory causes of hostility throughout South Vietnam, as the CIA and its allies intended it to be. The stable, nonmobile natives of the south were overwhelmed by these new arrivals, whom the Diem government favored and had settled on their land, into their established way of life and inflexible economic system.

  Almost from the start of his regime, in 1955, Diem initiated land-reform measures by issuing new land ordinances. By means of magnanimous-sounding actions, the traditional landowners were required to declare their uncultivated land; if they failed to bring any unu
sed holdings into production, the government would seize the land and use it for the settlement of refugees from the north. In this manner Diem “legally” acquired an enormous amount of land for the actual resettlement of more than half a million “invaders.” Such actions made no friends for Diem in the south and became the basis for much of the violent rioting, called “insurgency,” that developed in later years.

  By 1959 Diem had instituted another idea. He set up “Agrovilles,” which were intended to be semirural communities in which all families could enjoy the amenities of the town and still have their basic garden property. This is an old idea; in fact, one of the underlying, unstated objectives of the thirty-year war in Indochina was to bring about the breakup of this ancient and traditional communal style of living.

  The Agroville concept was a failure, primarily because of the continuing friction caused by the burden of the million-plus refugees. Then there was a new development. A plan for the “pacification” of the southernmost region of Vietnam, the Mekong Delta, was proposed to Diem in November 1961, just after General Taylor had left Saigon and returned to Washington.

  It was sponsored by R.G.K. Thompson, a British civil servant who had come to Saigon from the position of permanent secretary of defense in Malaya. Diem had issued a request for experienced third-party (non-U. S. and non-Vietnamese) officials to assist him with counterinsurgency problems. Thompson came as part of the British Advisory Mission to Saigon. He began by laying out a plan for the “pacification” of the Mekong Delta region.

  “Pacification” is a word that has an ominous meaning in some quarters. Although it may be confused with “pacify” (that is, to calm) or “pacifism” (that is, opposition to war), this is not what it meant in Indochina. There it had taken on a deadly meaning.