The Kennedy Withdrawal
The Kennedy Withdrawal
Over the course of several meetings, from October 2 through October 5, 1963, President Kennedy and his advisers debated the merits of a plan to withdraw the bulk of U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of 1965. Segments from two of those meetings, from the morning and evening of October 2, reveal Kennedy's concerns about that plan and the language with which it was to be explained to the American public.
President John F. Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States, 1961-1963.
Biographical sketch from American President.
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McGeorge Bundy was National Security Advisor, 1961-1966.
Obituary from the New York Times.
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Robert S. McNamara was secretary of defense from 1961-1968.
Biographical sketch from American President.
Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1962-1964.
Biographical sketch from the Arlington Cemetery Website.
JFK Daily Diary, October 2, 1963.
Meeting Tape 114/A49, John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. Raw audio file available at the Miller Center's White House Tapes portal.
Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor Daily Diary, 1 September - 10 October 1963, National Defense University Library, Maxwell D. Taylor Papers, Box 21, Diary 1963.
"McNamara-Taylor Report," October 2, 1963 | Source: U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian.
South Vietnam, Enemy Situation, Early 1964. Source: ehistory @ OSU | United States Military Academy.Bibliographies
Bibliography - Vietnam Conflict, Miller Center of Public Affairs.
Bibliography of the Vietnam War, Prof. Edward E. Moise, Clemson University.
Vietnam War Bibliography, Richard Jensen, University of Illinois-Chicago.
Scholarship
James G. Blight, janet m. Lang, and David A. Welch, Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived: Virtual JFK (Lanham, Md., 2009).
Galbraith, "Exit Strategy," Boston Review, November 2003.
Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (New York, 2003).
Fredrik Logevall, "Vietnam and the Question of What Might Have Been," in Kennedy: The New Frontier Revisisted, ed. Mark J. White (New York, 1998), 19-62.
Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (Berkeley, Calif., 2005), 141-179.
John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power (New York: 1992).
Archives
John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Boston, MA.
Virtual Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University.
U.S. Department of State: Office of the Historian, August-December 1963.
Documents Relating to the Vietnam War, Mt. Holyoke College.
May 7, 1963, Meeting Tape 85, JFKL.
President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara discuss the timetable for ending U.S. assistance to the counterinsurgency in Vietnam.
February 25, 1964, WH6402.01, citation #2191, LBJL.
President Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara discuss the wisdom of Kennedy's October 1963 withdrawal announcement.
The Kennedy Withdrawal
See Stephanie van Hover, Marc J. Selverstone, and Patrice Preston-Grimes, "Window Into the White House," Social Education, vol. 72, no. 3 (April 2008), 130-135.
Teaching with the Tapes
Chester Pach, "The United States in the 1960s," Ohio Univesity.
Jeff Woods, "White House Tapes," Arkansas Tech University.