Kennedy vs the CIA

[Mitch Todd]

I have no clue where you get any of your information. Lodge lost the 1952 Senatorial election to JFK. Do you suppose he was happy about that? Numerous books have pointed out that Lodge was disregarding JFK's wishes.

This is not a surprise since they went counter to what the power structure wanted. Lodge was aligning himself with the side he expected to be around longer.

You also don't seem to have a clue where you get your own information. "Numerous books??" Which ones are those? Who wrote them? Can you not tell us? And this from a guy who is always complaining about other people don't back up their arguments with specific cites...

There's a great deal of information out there as to what was going on at the time. Pollard and I have been exchanging cites from the State Department FRUS correspondence archive. There are always the Pentagon Papers. Wikipedia can fill gaps quickly.  And there are a lot of great books about Vietnam (in whole or in part), both well-known (The Best and the Brightest and A Bright Shining Lie) and obscure but illuminating (the aforementioned biography of John Richardson by his son for instance). Google can send you in a lot of interesting directions you might not ever have thought of.

But you have your unnamable "numerous books," and the eternal nebulosity of their obscured opinion.

Again, John Kennedy himself appointed Lodge to the crucial Saigon ambassadorship at a critical moment. Do you really think JFK was stupid enough to post someone he couldn't trust to such a position?

[Mitch Todd]

I have read many books on JFK's presidency. I don't need to list them all. Anyone can research this themselves and see that Lodge was not following the orders that the WH was issuing in the months leading up to Diem's murder. The murder of the Diems is proof of this as the WH never approved this action.

I'm not asking you to list them all. Just one or two. After all, you are the king of demanding that others provide support for their contentions. It's simple courtesy to do the same when asked.

Waste all the words that you want, but the truth is the truth.

Over the years, I've noticed that there's a strong inverse correlation between how readily someone uses the word "truth" and their ability to recognize same.

Appointing someone as ambassador is a political thing. It doesn't mean that you like them.

Not merely political, but critical in this case. And it's not about liking someone, it's about trusting them. I ask again --you didn't actually answer the question last time-- do you really think JFK was stupid enough to post someone he couldn't trust to such a position?

Well, do you?

[Richard Rubio]

How about just one book? One little book?