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Sundays with the Christianists: U.S. History Books that Won Vietnam

Posted in Guerra de Vietnam, Imperialismo norteamericano, tagged Textbooks, Vietnam War on 4 abril 2014| Leave a Comment »

Sundays with the Christianists: U.S. History Books that Won Vietnam

DOKTOR ZOOM

Wonkette.com March 30, 2014

You’ll never guess what fun topic we’re going to address this week, kids! That’s right: The years of Mitt Romney’s mission in France! We’ll learn all about how the Vietnam War was a just and important fight to save Southeast Asia from being crushed by dominoes, and why things happened as they did — or as Donald Rumsfeld recently analyzed the war with characteristic depth, “Some things work out, some things don’t, that didn’t.”

With typical clarity of purpose, our 8th-grade textbook, America: Land I Love (A Beka, 1994, 2006), explains exactly why America had to fight in Vietnam:

Concerned Americans believed in the domino theory of Communism in the poorer areas of the world. President Eisenhower had first used this term while referring to Southeast Asia. He said all of the countries there were like a row of standing dominoes. South Vietnam was the first domino, and the Communists were trying to knock it over. lf South Vietnam fell, all of the others — Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, Indonesia — would fall, too. Lesser developed nations were especially vulnerable to Communism. Foreign policy planners began to refer to the poorest nations as the “Third World.”

Eisenhower believed it, and it must have been so. Also the third world (no, they don’t explain the term). Strangely, Land I Love makes no mention of how, following the fall of South Vietnam, all those other countries turned communist as well.

Our other text, the 11/12th-grade United States History for Christian Schools (Bob Jones University Press, 2001), is a little less absolute about all this; it devotes space to the initial involvement in Vietnam in the ’50s and early ’60s in fairly objective terms, and described the shift in American troops’ role from “advisors” to combatants with this up-to-date metaphor:

Ostensibly the troops were there to train the South Vietnamese army and to protect American personnel. However, the situation in Asia, as one historian has noted, was proving to be like a “tar baby”: the more the United States tried to free itself, the more entangled it became.

Surprisingly, considering its tendency to be the less frothing-mad of the two texts, U.S. Historyhas no doubt about the reality of the event that led to the expansion of the U.S. role:

In the midsummer of 1964 the American destroyer Maddox repulsed an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Although the affair was relatively minor, Johnson denounced this attack on an American vessel and asked Congress to pass a joint resolution giving him authority to respond to Communist aggression in Vietnam.

Land I Love at least calls it an “alleged” attack, but in its eagerness to justify the fight against atrocity-committing communists, weirdly suggests that it came after American soldiers were in frequent combat:

Communist guerrillas, called Viet Cong, terrorized innocent South Vietnamese villagers, forcing men, women, and children to help them. The Viet Cong sometimes equipped little children with explosives and sent them on suicide missions against unsuspecting American soldiers who had come to liberate the villages. In 1964, the North Vietnamese navy allegedly attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Apart from that Gulf of Tonkin slip, U.S. History presents a pretty fair discussion of the Vietnam conflict, noting that it was “not a clear-cut conflict between two separate nations, as the Korean War had been. Americans were fighting both the North Vietnamese and pro-Communist South Vietnamese (called the Viet Cong).” U.S. History even notes that the South Vietnamese government, while non-Communist, “was corrupt, undemocratic, and unstable. The only advantage it offered to Americans was that it was ‘better than the Communists.’” We’re wondering if Bob Jones University has investigated the loyalty of whoever wrote that — nothing of the sort appears in Land I Love.

And then there’s the whole “limited war” strategy; U.S. History suggests that it was not a simple decision:

Johnson was committed to the idea of a limited, defensive war. He did not want to risk an outright war against North Vietnam — a war which might draw in the Soviet Union or Communist China, divert dollars from the Great Society at home, and prove politically damaging.

Land I Love knows, of course, that the real purpose of teaching history is to tell children who the good guys and bad guys were:

President Johnson wanted to fight the Communists in South Vietnam, but Congress refused to allow American forces to take the offensive and invade Communist North Vietnam. Congress opposed a clear military victory and the President himself wavered in his commitment because he did not want military spending to interfere with social welfare programs.

Under President Johnson, the United States sent some 500,000 American soldiers to South Vietnam to defend freedom in a no-win conflict known as the Vietnam War. These men fought bravely but they were not allowed to win. Conservative Americans felt that if the military had been allowed to fight the war as it should have been fought, fewer people would have been killed and Communism would have been defeated in that part of the world.

Land I Love is not quite as certain about how the war “should have been fought,” but it knows for sure that we should have won, because we’re America.

To its credit, U.S. History includes this lovely cynical comment from an unidentified girl in the early days of the campus protest movement: “I was told if I voted for Goldwater we would be at war in six months. I did — and we were.” It even acknowledges that the Johnson administration was deceptive about he progress of the war:

President Johnson feared that if Americans knew how deeply committed the United States was to the war and how it was actually going, they would stop supporting the programs of the Great Society. Therefore, he attempted to disguise the number of U.S. troops involved in the conflict and to cover setbacks. All that the American people generally heard were cheery, optimistic reports of how well the war was going.

U.S. History even blames Johnson’s deceptions — partly — for the public response to the 1968 Tet Offensive, noting that after the Viet Cong’s initially successful assault on targets all over South Vietnam, U.S. and South Vietnamese troops eventually “drove back the enemy, recapturing what had been lost and inflicting massive casualties”:

Militarily, the Tet Offensive was a failure for the Communists, but it had a dramatic effect on the American public. Television newscasts emphasized the negative aspects — the suddenness of the attack and the heavy losses — thus leading many Americans to believe that Tet was a Communist victory. The U.S. government, to some extent, reaped what it had sown. Having misled the American people and media about the course of the war, the government now faced the wrath of a public who wanted to know how things could come so close to disaster so suddenly. After Tet, many Americans were seemingly no longer looking to win the war; they only wanted a way out.

That’s really not much different from Kid Zoom’s secular textbook, The American Pageant, which says the Tet offensive “ended in a military defeat but a political victory for the Viet Cong.”

Happily, we have Land I Love to infuse a much-needed taste of Pure Wingnut Bullshit:

The Tet Offensive. Congress’s refusal to allow the American military to take an offensive position and fight to win was exposed in early 1968 when the Viet Cong began a series of devastating battles known as the Tet Offensive. As American and South Vietnamese troops suffered heavy casualties, it became clear that unless Congress allowed the troops to invade North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and wipe out the Communist guerrillas and their war factories, the Vietnam conflict would never end.

Land I Love is so busy with the “what we shoulda done” to even note that the Tet offensive didn’t succeed in holding any significant territory — so yep, that really was some political victory for the Viet Cong; it even convinced rightwing textbook editors that all was lost.

We’ll let Land I Love have the last word this week, because it’s just so brilliantly paranoid, right down to the paragraph heading:

Betrayals all around. Although Congress refused to allow the needed military action, American and South Vietnamese forces managed to hold the Communists back. But Communist troops from North Vietnam continued to pour into the South, and European countries who sympathized with the Communists continued to supply North Vietnam with food and medical supplies. Some conservatives felt that Communist sympathizers in high-ranking government positions were deliberately hindering the U.S. military’s ability to achieve a victory in Vietnam.

Yes, this Christian textbook just complained that North Vietnamese were allowed to eat and get medical supplies. And of course, we never find out who those high-ranking traitors were, with all their back-stabbing, but they were almost certainly there.

Next Week: We’ll wrap up Vietnam and look at the dangerous radicals in the “peace” movement; take a wild guess which textbook makes no mention at all of My Lai, the Pentagon Papers, or Kent State? Hint: It’s the one that’s sure America was betrayed.

[Image Credit: Cover of Tod Holton: Super Green Beret (1967). Read the whole incredible mess at Ethan Persoff’s blog]

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The Nativist Origins of Philippines Independence

Posted in Filipinas, Imperialismo norteamericano, tagged Nativism, Philippines Independence Bill, Tydings-McDuffie Act on 4 abril 2014| Leave a Comment »

The Nativist Origins of Philippines Independence

Richard Baldoz

Truthout April 1, 2014

The flag of the United States is lowered while the flag of the Philippines is raised during the Independence Day ceremonies on July 4, 1946. (Photo: <a href=" http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Philippine_Independence%2C_July_4_1946.jpg" target="_blank"> via Philippine Presidential Museum and Library/a>)

The flag of the United States is lowered while the flag of the Philippines is raised during the Independence Day ceremonies on July 4, 1946. (Photo via Philippine Presidential Museum and Library)

This week marks the 80th anniversary of the passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which established conditions for the United States to grant the Philippines its independence after nearly five decades of American rule. The circumstances surrounding the passage of this historic legislation serve as a reminder of our nation’s lamentable experiment with overseas empire-building and a reckoning with this imperial past help us to understand one of the most visible legacies of this complicated relationship, the large number of Filipinos currently living in the United States.

The act often was hailed as evidence of the benevolent character of the American imperial project, which was motivated by the desire to «uplift and civilize» the native population who had suffered under more than three centuries of Spanish domination. The US annexed the Philippines in 1899 in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, despite objections from Filipino leaders who already had formed an independent government. American statesmen, however, declared Filipinos unfit for self-rule. Only after a protracted period of intensive colonial tutelage would Filipinos be allowed to run their own affairs. Adding insult to injury, American officials argued (without irony) that the US was duty-bound to take possession of the islands to protect them from the nefarious designs of self-serving foreign powers.

The eventual withdrawal of US sovereignty over the Philippines was far from a foregone conclusion that vindicated the American way of empire, and the origins of the Tydings-McDuffie Act offer a far more complex story involving racial animus, economic competition and the entanglement of domestic and foreign policy objectives.

Filipinos, as American colonial subjects, were exempted from restrictive laws that barred immigration from Asia countries. The exponential growth of the agribusiness sector in Hawaii and the West Coast during the early 20th century spurred a large demand for cheap, flexible labor. Agribusiness concerns actively recruited Filipinos to do field and cannery work previously carried out by Chinese and Japanese immigrants.

Filipino immigration to the United States during the early decades of the 20th century generated significant controversy, especially on the West Coast, where their arrival was characterized as the «third Asiatic invasion» (following on the heels of the Chinese and Japanese «invasions»). Following the popular cultural script of the period, the newcomers were accused of stealing jobs from white citizens, spreading disease and displaying a propensity for criminality. The fact that the first wave of Filipino immigrants was made up overwhelmingly of young male laborers without traditional family moorings was viewed as a budding social problem.

Beginning in the late 1920s, the powerful West Coast nativist lobby pressed federal officials to enact legislation barring the entry of Filipinos. These efforts failed to make headway in Congress, with many lawmakers expressing concern about the diplomatic fallout that might result from excluding Filipino immigrants while they lived under the American flag. Key Congressional leaders worried that such a course of action would violate international norms followed by other imperial powers allowing colonial subjects unimpeded access to the «mother country.»

The failure of the federal government to take action compelled nativist leaders to ratchet up their campaign, hoping to galvanize greater public support for exclusion. Alarmist rhetoric accusing Filipino immigrants of brazenly defying the color line by pursuing social relationships with white women attracted significant media attention. Filipinos, moreover, were charged with exhibiting a penchant for labor militancy that threatened to upend the traditional balance of power between agribusiness and immigrant workers.

Moral panics about interracial sex and political subversion soon spurred public action most visibly manifested in a series of race riots and vigilante campaigns targeting Filipino immigrants on the West Coast in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Violence and acrimony directed at the «invaders» attracted national media attention and eventually prompted Congress to hold hearings on the «Filipino problem.» The nativist lobby used the platform to press its case for exclusion, soliciting support from Southern Congressional representatives, drawing comparisons between Filipino and African-American men’s alleged ardor for white women. Legislation aimed at restricting Filipino immigration stalled again, with the Philippines status as a US possession remaining the chief sticking point.

Nativist leaders quickly adopted a new strategy, embracing the cause of Philippine independence in the early 1930s. Once the Philippines was granted its sovereignty, they reasoned, Filipinos would no longer be exempt from restrictive immigration quotas. While there had long been a vocal base of support in Congress for Philippine independence, it was opposed by powerful constituencies in the federal government who viewed the archipelago as a valuable geo-strategic asset.

The nativist lobby entered into a makeshift coalition with two other important groups pushing for independence. The first was Midwestern agricultural interests, concerned about the importation of inexpensive Philippine products that entered the US duty-free because of the colonial status of the islands. Domestic sugar beet growers feared competition from cheap Philippine cane sugar, and dairy farmers saw coconut oil (formerly a key ingredient in margarine) as hurting the demand for butter. Their political agenda ran parallel to that of the nativists, except they advocated independence as a way to restrict the free entry of Philippine goods, rather than Filipino labor.

Filipino nationalists made up another segment of the independence coalition. Their demands for self-determination pre-dated the Spanish-American War, and indignity surrounding racist treatment and violence against Filipinos living in the US gave their campaign a renewed urgency. While Filipino leaders recognized that they their political allies had less-than-noble intentions, they believed that a Faustian pact was the price to pay for freedom.

The Tydings-McDuffie Act was signed into law in March 1934, despite opposition from the State Department and War Department. The act bore the hallmarks of the various interest groups involved in its passage. In a nod to the opposition, the Philippines would have to complete a 10-year probationary period before the US would formally relinquish its sovereignty over the islands. The status of Filipinos remained largely unchanged during this so-called «Commonwealth» period. They continued to «owe allegiance» to the United States while the Philippines remained under US administrative jurisdiction.

Although independence was delayed for 10 years, two key sections of the act went into effect immediately. Tariffs targeting Philippine sugar, coconut oil and other products were implemented quickly – a clear victory for Midwestern agribusiness interests. In addition, Filipinos immediately were subject to restrictive immigration laws barring the admission of other Asian groups. The Philippines was granted a token quota of 50 immigrants per year, the lowest number allotted to any country in the world. Nativist leaders were quick to take credit for the harsh new quota, believing that it reflected the prevailing racial animus towards Filipinos in the United States.

The unsavory political forces that helped push the Tydings-McDuffie Act through Congress were not lost on Filipino leaders, who observed that the act was as much about the «independence of America from the Philippines» as it was about independence for the Philippines. Filipinos living in the United States faced an uncertain future and remained a feature of everyday life, a fact evidenced by the passage of the Filipino Repatriation Act in 1935, which aimed to «relocate» resident Filipinos back to their homeland.

The Philippines’ march to independence was thrown into peril halfway through its 10-year probation, when Japan attacked the Philippines on December 8, 1941. Interestingly, a little-known provision of the Tydings-McDuffie Act empowered the president of the United States to conscript all Philippine military personnel into the US armed forces. President Roosevelt did just that and approximately 200,000 Filipinos eventually would serve under US military command during World War II.

The Allied war victory ensured that Philippine independence was put back on track and the war-torn country finally was granted its sovereignty on July 4, 1946. The date was a conscious choice made by US officials that would serve as a permanent reminder of America’s lasting influence over the islands. The large and growing Filipino population currently residing in the United States is one enduring consequence of that influence. Filipinos have long been coveted by American employers because of their English language skills and familiarity with US culture. These traits, of course, are the inheritance of empire and a reminder that Filipinos came to the United States only after Americans came to the Philippines.

Richard Baldoz is an assistant professor of sociology at Oberlin College and the author of the award-winning book The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898-1946.

What Really Killed William Henry Harrison?

Posted in Imperialismo norteamericano, tagged Presidential History, Thomas Miller, White House, William Henry Harrison on 4 abril 2014| Leave a Comment »

What Really Killed William Henry Harrison?

JANE McHUGH and PHILIP A. MACKOWIAK

NEW YORK TIMES MARCH 31, 2014

William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, holds a distinction that with luck will never be equaled: He was our shortest-serving president, dying on April 4, 1841, after just a month in office.

What killed him? Historians have long accepted the diagnosis of Harrison’s doctor, Thomas Miller: “pneumonia of the lower lobe of the right lung, complicated by congestion of the liver.”

The pneumonia was thought to be a direct result of a cold the 68-year-old Harrison caught while delivering a numbingly long Inaugural Address (at 8,445 words, the longest in history) in wet, freezing weather without a hat, overcoat or gloves.

But a new look at the evidence through the lens of modern epidemiology makes it far more likely that the real killer lurked elsewhere — in a fetid marsh not far from the White House.

The first clue that the pneumonia diagnosis was wrong lies in Miller’s own apparent uneasiness with it. “The disease,” he wrote, “was not viewed as a case of pure pneumonia; but as this was the most palpable affection, the term pneumonia afforded a succinct and intelligible answer to the innumerable questions as to the nature of the attack.”

An 1846 map of Washington, top, shows the home (A) of William Henry Harrison, above, its water supply (B), and a field of “night soil” (C) that could have harbored deadly bacteria.

Harrison — who had had some medical training as a young man — summoned Miller to the White House on March 26, complaining not of a lung ailment but of anxiety and fatigue. Miller did not bleed him, as was the standard treatment for pneumonia at the time. (More about what he did do in a moment.) But Miller may have overlooked a clue that was in front of his nose.

In those days the nation’s capital had no sewer system. Until 1850, some sewage simply flowed onto public grounds a short distance from the White House, where it stagnated and formed a marsh; the White House water supply was just seven blocks downstream of a depository for “night soil,” hauled there each day at government expense.

That field of human excrement would have been a breeding ground for two deadly bacteria, Salmonella typhi and S. paratyphi, the causes of typhoid and paratyphoid fever — also known as enteric fever, for their devastating effect on the gastrointestinal system.

Two other antebellum presidents, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor, developed severe gastroenteritis while living in the White House. Taylor died, while Polk recovered, only to be killed by what is thought to have

Harrison had a history of dyspepsia, or indigestion, which potentially heightened his risk of infection by gastrointestinal pathogens that might have found their way into the White House water supply.

Although we have no record of how he managed his dyspepsia, the standard treatment in the 1840s was carbonated alkali, which would have neutralized the gastric acid that otherwise kills harmful bacteria. In the absence of the gastric acid barrier, gastroenteritis can be caused by as few as one ten-thousandth the number of bacteria usually needed.

In 1841 there was no effective treatment for enteric fever. The most a doctor could do was adhere steadfastly to medicine’s most sacred tenet, primum non nocere — first do no harm.

At least Miller did not bleed the president. But he gave him a host of toxic medications that were then considered the standard of care — including opium, which retards the intestine’s ability to rid itself of microbial pathogens, facilitating their invasion into the bloodstream.

Enemas, which Miller repeatedly gave to Harrison, are also potentially dangerous in such patients. They can perforate ulcers produced by S. typhi and S. paratyphi in the ileum, the lower end of the small intestine, through which the bacteria would be able to escape from the intestine into the bloodstream, resulting in sepsis.

As he lay dying, Harrison had a sinking pulse and cold, blue extremities, two classic manifestations of septic shock. Given the character and course of his fatal illness, his untimely death is best explained by enteric fever. Pneumonia was a secondary diagnosis — as Harrison’s hapless doctor perhaps suspected all along.

Jane McHugh is a writer in San Antonio. Dr. Philip A. Mackowiak, a scholar in residence at the University of Maryland, is the author of “Diagnosing Giants: Solving the Medical Mysteries of Thirteen Patients Who Changed the World.”

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Brazil Marks 50th Anniversary of Military Coup

Posted in Brasil, Imperialismo norteamericano, tagged Brazil, CIA, Joao Goulart, John F. Kennedy, Lincoln Gordon, Robert Kennedy on 3 abril 2014| Leave a Comment »

Brazil Marks 50^th Anniversary of Military Coup

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 465

April 2, 2014

Edited by James G. Hershberg and Peter Kornbluh

President Kennedy and President Joao Goulart on a state visit to Washington April 2, 1962.

Washington, DC, April 2, 2014 – Almost two years before the April 1, 1964, military takeover in Brazil, President Kennedy and his top aides began seriously discussing the option of overthrowing Joao Goulart’s government, according to Presidential tape transcripts posted by the National Security Archive on the 50^th anniversary of the coup d’tat. «What kind of liaison do we have with the military?» Kennedy asked top aides in July 1962. In March 1963, he instructed them: «We’ve got to do something about Brazil.»

The tape transcripts advance the historical record on the U.S. role in deposing Goulart — a record which remains incomplete half a century after he fled into exile in Uruguay on April 1, 1964. «The CIA’s clandestine political destabilization operations against Goulart between 1961 and 1964 are the black hole of this history,» according to the Archive’s Brazil Documentation Project director, Peter Kornbluh, who called on the Obama administration to declassify the still secret intelligence files on Brazil from both the Johnson and Kennedy administrations.

Revelations on the secret U.S. role in Brazil emerged in the mid 1970s, when the Lyndon Johnson Presidential library began declassifying Joint Chiefs of Staff records on «Operation Brother Sam» — President Johnson’s authorization for the U.S. military to covertly and overtly supply arms, ammunition, gasoline and, if needed, combat troops if the military’s effort to overthrow Goulart met with strong resistance. On the 40^th anniversary of the coup, the National Security Archive posted audio files of Johnson giving the green light for military operations to secure the success of the coup once it started.

«I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do,» President Johnson instructed his aides regarding U.S. support for a coup as the Brazilian military moved against Goulart on March 31, 1964.

But Johnson inherited his anti-Goulart, pro-coup policy from his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. Over the last decade, declassified NSC records and recently transcribed White House tapes have revealed the evolution of Kennedy’s decision to create a coup climate and, when conditions permitted, overthrow Goulart if he did not yield to Washington’s demand that he stop «playing» with what Kennedy called «ultra-radical anti-Americans» in Brazil’s government. During White House meetings on July 30, 1962, and on March 8 and 0ctober 7, 1963, Kennedy’s secret Oval Office taping system recorded the attitude and arguments of the highest U.S. officials as they strategized how to force Goulart to either purge leftists in his government and alter his nationalist economic and foreign policies or be forced out by a U.S.-backed putsch.

Indeed, the very first Oval Office meeting that Kennedy secretly taped, on July 30, 1962, addressed the situation in Brazil. «I think one of our important jobs is to strengthen the spine of the military,» U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon told the President and his advisor, Richard Goodwin. «To make clear, discreetly, that we are not necessarily hostile to any kind of military action whatsoever if it’s clear that the reason for the military action is…[Goulart’s] giving the country away to the…,» «Communists,» as the president finished his sentence. During this pivotal meeting, the President and his men decided to upgrade contacts with the Brazilian military by bringing in a new US military attaché-Lt. Col. Vernon Walters who eventually became the key covert actor in the preparations for the coup. «We may very well want them [the Brazilian military] to take over at the end of the year,» Goodwin suggested, «if they can.» (Document 1)

By the end of 1962, the Kennedy administration had indeed determined that a coup would advance U.S. interests if the Brazilian military could be mobilized to move. The Kennedy White House was particularly upset about Goulart’s independent foreign policy positions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although Goulart had assisted Washington’s efforts to avoid nuclear Armageddon by acting as a back channel intermediary between Kennedy and Castro — a top secret initiative uncovered by George Washington University historian James G. Hershberg — Goulart was deemed insufficiently supportive of U.S. efforts to ostracize Cuba at the Organization of American States. On December 13, Kennedy told former Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek that the situation in Brazil «worried him more than that in Cuba.»

On December 11, 1962, the Executive Committee (EXCOMM) of the National Security Council met to evaluate three policy alternatives on Brazil: A. «do nothing and allow the present drift to continue; B. collaborate with Brazilian elements hostile to Goulart with a view to bringing about his overthrow; C. seek to change the political and economic orientation of Goulart and his government.» [link to document 2] Option C was deemed «the only feasible present approach» because opponents of Goulart lacked the «capacity and will to overthrow» him and Washington did not have «a near future U.S. capability to stimulate [a coup] operation successfully.» Fomenting a coup, however «must be kept under active and continuous consideration,» the NSC options paper recommended.

Acting on these recommendations, President Kennedy dispatched a special envoy — his brother Robert — to issue a face-to-face de facto ultimatum to Goulart. Robert Kennedy met with Goulart at the Palacio do Alvarada in Brazilia on December 17, 1962. During the three-hour meeting, RFK advised Goulart that the U.S. had «the gravest doubts» about positive future relations with Brazil, given the «signs of Communist or extreme left-wing nationalists infiltration into civilian government positions,» and the opposition to «American policies and interests as a regular rule.» As Goulart issued a lengthy defense of his policies, Kennedy passed a note to Ambassador Gordon stating: «We seem to be getting no place.» The attorney general would later say that he came away from the meeting convinced that Goulart was «a Brazilian Jimmy Hoffa.»

Kennedy and his top aides met once again on March 7, 1963, to decide how to handle the pending visit of the Brazilian finance minister, Santiago Dantas. In preparation for the meeting, Ambassador Gordon submitted a long memo to the president recommending that if it proved impossible to convince Goulart to modify his leftist positions, the U.S. work «to prepare the most promising possible environment for his replacement by a more desirable regime.» (Document 5) The tape of this meeting (partially transcribed here for the first time by James Hershberg) focused on Goulart’s continuing leftward drift. Robert Kennedy urged the President to be more forceful toward Goulart: He wanted his brother to make it plain «that this is something that’s very serious with us, we’re not fooling around about it, we’re giving him some time to make these changes but we can’t continue this forever.» The Brazilian leader, he continued, «struck me as the kind of wily politician who’s not the smartest man in the world … he figures that he’s got us by the—and that he can play it both ways, that he can make the little changes, he can make the arrangements with IT&T and then we give him some money and he doesn’t have to really go too far.» He exhorted the president to «personally» clarify to Goulart that he «can’t have the communists and put them in important positions and make speeches criticizing the United States and at the same time get 225-[2]50 million dollars from the United States. He can’t have it both ways.»

As the CIA continued to report on various plots against Goulart in Brazil, the economic and political situation deteriorated. When Kennedy convened his aides again on October 7, he wondered aloud if the U.S. would need to overtly depose Goulart: «Do you see a situation where we might be—find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?» The tape of the October 7 meeting — a small part of which was recently publicized by Brazilian journalist Elio Gaspari, but now transcribed at far greater length here by Hershberg — contains a detailed discussion of various scenarios in which Goulart would be forced to leave. Ambassador Gordon urged the president to prepare contingency plans for providing ammunition or fuel to pro-U.S. factions of the military if fighting broke out. «I would not want us to close our minds to the possibility of some kind of discreet intervention,» Gordon told President Kennedy, «which would help see the right side win.»

Under Gordon’s supervision, over the next few weeks the U.S. embassy in Brazil prepared a set of contingency plans with what a transmission memorandum, dated November 22, 1963, described as «a heavy emphasis on armed intervention.» Assassinated in Dallas on that very day, President Kennedy would never have the opportunity to evaluate, let alone implement, these options.

But in mid-March 1964, when Goulart’s efforts to bolster his political powers in Brazil alienated his top generals, the Johnson administration moved quickly to support and exploit their discontent-and be in the position to assure their success. «The shape of the problem,» National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy told a meeting of high-level officials three days before the coup, «is such that we should not be worrying that the [Brazilian] military will react; we should be worrying that the military will not react.»

«We don’t want to watch Brazil dribble down the drain,» the CIA, White House and State Department officials determined, according to the Top Secret meeting summary, «while we stand around waiting for the [next] election.»

THE DOCUMENTS

Document 1: White House, Transcript of Meeting between President Kennedy, Ambassador Lincoln Gordon and Richard Goodwin, July 30, 1962. (Published in The Presidential Recordings of John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Volume One (W.W. Norton), edited by Timothy Naftali, October 2001.)

The very first Oval Office meeting ever secretly taped by President Kennedy took place on July 30, 1962 and addressed the situation in Brazil and what to do about its populist president, Joao Goulart. The recording — it was transcribed and published in book The Presidential Recordings of John F. Kennedy, The Great Crises, Volume One — captures a discussion between the President, top Latin America aide Richard Goodwin and U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon about beginning to set the stage for a future military coup in Brazil. The President and his men make a pivotal decision to appoint a new U.S. military attaché to become a liaison with the Brazilian military, and Lt. Col. Vernon Walters is identified. Walters later becomes the key covert player in the U.S. support for the coup. «We may very well want them [the Brazilian military] to take over at the end of the year,» Goodwin suggests, «if they can.»

Document 2: NSC, Memorandum, «U.S. Short-Term policy Toward Brazil,» Secret, December 11, 1962

In preparation for a meeting of the Executive Committee (EXCOMM) of the National Security Council, the NSC drafted an options paper with three policy alternatives on Brazil: A. «do nothing and allow the present drift to continue; B. collaborate with Brazilian elements hostile to Goulart with a view to bringing about his overthrow; C. seek to change the political and economic orientation of Goulart and his government.» Option C was deemed «the only feasible present approach» because opponents of Goulart lacked the «capacity and will to overthrow» him and Washington did not have «a near future U.S. capability to stimulate [a coup] operation successfully.» Fomenting a coup, however «must be kept under active and continuous consideration,» the NSC options paper recommended. If Goulart continued to move leftward, «the United States should be ready to shift rapidly and effectively to…collaboration with friendly democratic elements, including the great majority of military officer corps, to unseat President Goulart.»

Document 3: NSC, «Minutes of the National Security Council Executive Committee Meeting, Meeting No. 35,» Secret, December 11, 1962

The minutes of the EXCOMM meeting record that President Kennedy accepted the recommendation that U.S. policy «seek to change the political and economic orientation of Goulart and his government.»

Document 4: U.S. Embassy, Rio de Janeiro, Airgram A-710, «Minutes of Conversation between Brazilian President Joao Goulart and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Brasilia, 17 December 1962,» December 19, 1962

In line with JFK’s decision at the Excom meeting on December 11 to have «representative sent specially» to talk to Goulart, the president’s brother made a hastily-prepared journey to «confront» the Brazilian leader over the issues that had increasingly concerned and irritated Washington-from his chaotic management of Brazil’s economy and expropriation of U.S. corporations such as IT&T, to his lukewarm support during the Cuban missile crisis and flirtation with the Soviet bloc to, most alarming, his allegedly excessive toleration of far left and even communist elements in the government, military, society, and even his inner circle. Accompanied by US ambassador Lincoln Gordon, RFK met for more than three hours with Goulart in the new inland capital of Brasília at the modernistic lakeside presidential residence, the Palácio do Alvorada. A 17-page memorandum of conversation, drafted by Amb. Gordon, recorded the Attorney General presenting his list of complaints: the «many signs of Communist or extreme left-wing nationalists infiltration» into civilian government, military, trade union, and student group leaderships, and Goulart’s personal failure to take a public stand against the «violently anti-American» statements emanating from «influential Brazilians» both in and out of his government, or to embrace Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. Turning to economic issues, he said his brother was «very deeply worried at the deterioration» in recent months, from rampant inflation to the disappearance of reserves, and called on Goulart to get his «economic and financial house in order.» Surmounting these obstacles to progress, RFK stressed, could mark a «turning point in relations between Brazil and the U.S. and in the whole future of Latin America and of the free world.» When Goulart defended his policies, Kennedy scribbled a note to Ambassador Gordon: «We seem to be getting no place.» JFK’s emissary voiced his fear «that President Goulart had not fully understood the nature of President Kennedy’s concern about the present situation and prospects.»

Document 5: Department of State, Memorandum to Mr. McGeorge Bundy, «Political Considerations Affecting U.S. Assistance to Brazil,» Secret, March 7, 1963

In preparation for another key Oval office meeting on Brazil, the Department of State transmitted two briefing papers, including a memo to the president from Amb. Gordon titled «Brazilian Political Developments and U.S. Assistance.» The latter briefing paper (attached to the first document) was intended to assist the President in deciding how to handle the visit of Brazilian Finance Minister San Tiago Dantas to Washington. Gordon cited continuing problems with Goulart’s «equivocal, with neutralist overtones» foreign policy, and the «communist and other extreme nationalist, far left wing, and anti-American infiltration in important civilian and military posts with the government.»

Document 6: Excerpts from John F. Kennedy’s conversation regarding Brazil with U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon on Friday March 8, 1963 (Meeting 77.1, President’s Office Files, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston)

On March 8, 1963, a few days before Dantas’ arrived, JFK reviewed the state of US-Brazilian relations with his top advisors, including Secretary of State Dean Rusk, his ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, and his brother Robert. Unofficially transcribed here by James G. Hershberg (with assistance from Marc Selverstone and David Coleman) this is apparently the first time that it has been published since the tape recording was released more than a decade ago by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. As the comments by Rusk, Gordon, and RFK make clear, deep dissatisfaction with Goulart persisted. «Brazil is a country that we can’t possibly turn away from,» Secretary of State Rusk told the president. «Whatever happens there is going to be of decisive importance to the hemisphere.» Rusk frankly acknowledged that the situation wasn’t yet so bad as to justify Goulart’s overthrow to «all the non-communists or non-totalitarian Brazilians,» nor to justify a «clear break» between Washington and Rio that would be understood throughout the hemisphere. Instead, the strategy for the time being was to continue cooperation with Goulart’s government while raising pressure on him to improve his behavior, particularly his tolerance of far-leftist, anti-United States, and even communist associates-to, in JFK’s words, «string out» aid in order to «put the screws» on him. The president’s brother, in particular, clearly did not feel that Goulart had followed through since their meeting a few months earlier on his vows to put a lid on anti-U.S. expressions or make personnel changes to remove some of the most egregiously leftist figures in his administration. Goulart, stated RFK, «struck me as the kind of wily politician who’s not the smartest man in the world but very sensitive to this [domestic political] area, that he figures that he’s got us by the—and that he can play it both ways, that he can make the little changes…and then we give him some money and he doesn’t have to really go too far.»

Document 7: CIA, Current Intelligence Memorandum, «Plotting Against Goulart,» Secret, March 8, 1963

For more than two years before the April 1, 1964 coup, the CIA transmitted intelligence reports on various coup plots. The plot, described in this memo as «the best-developed plan,» is being considered by former minister of war, Marshal Odylio Denys. In a clear articulation of U.S. concerns about the need for a successful coup, the CIA warned that «a premature coup effort by the Brazilian military would be likely to bring a strong reaction from Goulart and the cashiering of those officers who are most friendly to the United States.»

Document 8: State Department, Latin American Policy Committee, «Approved Short-Term Policy in Brazil,» Secret, October 3, 1963

In early October, the State Department’s Latin America Policy Committee approved a «short term» draft policy statement on Brazil for consideration by President Kennedy and the National Security Council. Compared to the review in March, the situation has deteriorated drastically, according to Washington’s point of view, in large measure due to Goulart’s «agitation,» unstable leadership, and increasing reliance on leftist forces. In its reading of the current and prospective situation, defining American aims, and recommending possible lines of action for the United States, the statement explicitly considered, albeit somewhat ambiguously, the U.S. attitude toward a possible coup to topple Goulart. «Barring clear indications of serious likelihood of a political takeover by elements subservient to and supported by a foreign government, it would be against U.S. policy to intervene directly or indirectly in support of any move to overthrow the Goulart regime. In the event of a threatened foreign-government-affiliated political takeover, consideration of courses of action would be directed more broadly but directly to the threatened takeover, rather than against Goulart (though some action against the latter might result).» Kennedy and his top aides met four days later to consider policy options and strategies–among them U.S. military intervention in Brazil.

Document 9: Excerpts from John F. Kennedy’s conversation regarding Brazil with U.S. Ambassador to Brazil Lincoln Gordon on Monday, October 7, 1963 (tape 114/A50, President’s Office Files, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston)

«Do you see a situation where we might be-find it desirable to intervene militarily ourselves?» John F. Kennedy’s question to his ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, reflected the growing concerns that a coup attempt against Goulart might need U.S. support to succeed, especially if it triggered an outbreak of fighting or even civil war. This tape, parts of which were recently publicized by Brazilian journalist Elio Gaspari, has been significantly transcribed by James G. Hershberg (with assistance from Marc Selverstone) and published here for the first time. It captured JFK, Gordon, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and other top officials concluding that the prospect of an impending move to terminate Goulart’s stay in office (long before his term was supposed to come to an end more than two years later) required an acceleration of serious U.S. military contingency planning as well as intense efforts to ascertain the balance between military forces hostile and friendly to the current government. In his lengthy analysis of the situation, Gordon — who put the odds at 50-50 that Goulart would be gone, one way or another, by early 1964 — outlined alternative scenarios for future developments, ranging from Goulart’s peaceful early departure («a very good thing for both Brazil and Brazilian-American relations»), perhaps eased out by military pressure, to a possible sharp Goulart move to the left, which could trigger a violent struggle to determine who would rule the country. Should a military coup seize power, Gordon clearly did not want U.S. squeamishness about constitutional or democratic niceties to preclude supporting Goulart’s successors: «Do we suspend diplomatic relations, economic relations, aid, do we withdraw aid missions, and all this kind of thing — or do we somehow find a way of doing what we ought to do, which is to welcome this?» And should the outcome of the attempt to oust Goulart lead to a battle between military factions, Gordon urged study of military measures (such as providing fuel or ammunition, if requested) that Washington could take to assure a favorable outcome: «I would not want us to close our minds to the possibility of some kind of discreet intervention in such a case, which would help see the right side win.» On the tape, McNamara suggests, and JFK approves, accelerated work on contingency planning («can we get it really pushed ahead?»). Even as U.S. officials in Brazil intensified their encouragement of anti-communist military figures, Kennedy cautioned that they should not burn their bridges with Goulart, which might give him an excuse to rally nationalist support behind an anti-Washington swerve to the left: Washington needed to continue «applying the screws on the [economic] aid» to Brazil, but «with some sensitivity.»

Document 10: State Department, Memorandum, «Embassy Contingency Plan,» Top Secret, November 22, 1963

Dated on the day of President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, this cover memo describes a new contingency plan from the U.S. Embassy in Brazil that places «heavy emphasis on U.S. armed intervention.» The actual plan has not been declassified.

Document 11: NSC, Memcon, «Brazil,» Top Secret, March 28, 1964

As the military prepared to move against Goulart, top CIA, NSC and State Department officials met to discuss how to support them. They evaluated a proposal, transmitted by Ambassador Gordon the previous day, calling for covert delivery of armaments and gasoline, as well as the positioning of a naval task force off the coast of Brazil. At this point, U.S. officials were not sure if or when the coup would take place, but made clear their interest in its success. «The shape of the problem,» according to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, «is such that we should not be worrying that the military will react; we should be worrying that the military will not react.»

Document 12: U.S. Embassy, Brazil, Memo from Ambassador Gordon, Top Secret, March 29, 1964

Gordon transmitted a message for top national security officials justifying his requests for pre-positioning armaments that could be used by «para-military units» and calling for a «contingency commitment to overt military intervention» in Brazil. If the U.S. failed to act, Gordon warned, there was a «real danger of the defeat of democratic resistance and communization of Brazil.»

Document 13: Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cable, [Military attaché Vernon Walters Report on Coup Preparations], Secret, March 30, 1964

U.S. Army attaché Vernon Walters meets with the leading coup plotters and reports on their plans. «It had been decided to take action this week on a signal to be issued later.» Walters reported that he «expects to be aware beforehand of go signal and will report in consequence.»

Document 14 (mp3): White House Audio Tape, President Lyndon B. Johnson discussing the impending coup in Brazil with Undersecretary of State George Ball, March 31, 1964.

Document 15: White House, Memorandum, «Brazil,» Secret, April 1, 1964

As of 3:30 on April 1^st, Ambassador Gordon reports that the coup is «95% over.» U.S. contingency planning for overt and covert supplies to the military were not necessary. General Castello Branco «has told us he doesn’t need our help. There was however no information about where Goulart had fled to after the army moved in on the palace.

Document 16: Central Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Cable, «Departure of Goulart from Porto Alegre for Montevideo,» Secret, April 2, 1964

CIA intelligence sources report that deposed president Joao Goulart has fled to Montevideo.