Deconstructing Noam Chomsky’s Myths: Three Categorically False Attempts to Dismiss Obvious Repercussions of JFK’s Assassination Regarding Vietnam
In the analysis to follow, we will examine the three reasons that Noam Chomsky has given for his position that there was no change in foreign policy, or any other policy, that substantively changed direction between the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
1. Chomsky: “JFK had not made a commitment to withdraw troops from Vietnam”
This point was already conclusively debunked by James K. Galbraith, sixteen years ago, in a September 1, 2003 article published in the Boston Review titled “Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam.” In a lengthy, well-sourced and comprehensive article, Mr. Galbraith, the son of famed Harvard professor, economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith, who JFK had appointed ambassador to India, rebutted that argument in a detailed manner that needs no elucidation. The referenced article is incorporated by proxy into this thesis and a few short excerpts are noted to simplify and summarize the lengthy and scholarly article. The following points summarize Galbraith’s incisive article:
• Galbraith referenced Robert McNamara’s assertion, in his 1995 book In Retrospect, that President Kennedy decided on October 2, 1963 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces; he then traced eighteen months of detailed steps which JFK had taken to lead up to a planned withdrawal. The article by Galbraith also cited John Newman’s seminal 1992 book JFK and Vietnam, which put Kennedy’s long-term strategy in historic context, and explained why the key parts of it were not contained in the Pentagon Papers released in 1971.
• Furthermore, he observed that Chomsky had incorrectly insisted that JFK’s decision was conditional. He puts to rest any notion that JFK’s strategy was in any way equivocal.
• Galbraith examined Chomsky’s repeated claim that the revised NSAM 273 was not substantively different than the original document: “There is no relevant difference between the two documents [draft and final], except that the LBJ version is weaker and more evasive.” There are abundant reasons, he explains, why that is a serious misrepresentation of material fact.
• In his concluding statement, Galbraith wrote: “John F. Kennedy had formally decided to withdraw from Vietnam, whether we were winning or not. Robert McNamara, who did not believe we were winning, supported this decision. The first stage of withdrawal had been ordered. The final date, two years later, had been specified. These decisions were taken, and even placed, in an oblique and carefully limited way, before the public.”
2. Chomsky: “JFK had launched bombing raids and aggressive, offensive military actions as early as 1961-62;”
Within Noam Chomsky’s web page referenced above, the following erroneous assertion may be found, in the item called “On Democracy,” a 1996 interview with Tom Morello, where he stated: “Kennedy is not even worth discussing. The invasion in South Vietnam – Kennedy attacked South Vietnam, outright. In 1961-1962 he sent [the] Air Force to start bombing villages, authorized napalm.”
Short of digressing with an extended journey deep “into the weeds” of the story of how JFK, in his first two years as president, was at constant loggerheads with the heads of his own military, intelligence agencies, and his own vice president, let it suffice to say that, in fact, by 1963, he had gained the self-confidence and the resolve to finally resist their attempts to take the very actions attributed to him by Chomsky.
A succinct description, however, would start with the fact that, throughout his vice presidency, Johnson was getting more accurate accounts of the war effort, through his back-channel connection from his long-time military aid Air Force Colonel Howard Burris, than was President Kennedy, who was briefed through the military’s Pentagon regular channels, primarily emanating from General Paul D. Harkins, who seemed to be an unusually optimistic military officer. As author Newman described in great detail, while Kennedy had been given rosy, always hopeful, but misleading reports of how everything was going reasonably well and the enemy was suffering major setbacks, Johnson was being told the opposite: how the war was being lost to the stronger Viet Cong operations, which was becoming an even larger force.
The better intelligence Johnson had obtained, than Kennedy was receiving, gave him the advantage, and arguably allowed him to accumulate more power than the president himself with the military and intelligence organizations. That kind of power was what Johnson had always pursued, as illustrated by one of his favorite maxims: “Power is where power goes.” It meant that one could define for themselves how much power, and clout, they held, regardless of their position; it may have even put him into a position to censor, or water down the intelligence reports that Kennedy received, however that is a speculative point that cannot be proven one way or the other.
Johnson’s reckless mission in May, 1961 to Vietnam was followed in short order by another disastrous field trip led by Dr. Eugene Staley, an economist, whose intent was to produce a financial plan for the government of South Vietnam to develop a stronger economy, a plan which Lieutenant Colonel William R. Corson, in his 1968 book Betrayal said, resulted in “half-baked theories of economic development,” written by supposed experts having “…no idea of the social fabric of Vietnam, or of the degree of political control and oppression there.”
Those fateful “half-baked” missions were followed by still another ill-fated trip in October, 1961, by General Maxwell Taylor, along with “Walt Whitman Rostow, William Bundy, Sterling Cottrell, and a host of lesser lights … Taylor, the linguist [also out of his element], spoke in French to Diem and his henchmen about the “across the board problem.” After a “quick two-day trip by air to see what was going on, a broad pronouncement of recommendation of strategy was made to the White House.” These trips resulted in an increase of the number of “advisors” from “… 685 in 1961 to 10,000 by the end of 1962. There was no change in the advice provided by the advisor; there were just more advisors.”
But as noted above, President Kennedy had begun to have doubts about where this policy was leading and, in the spring of 1962, asked McNamara to begin planning a reversal of that direction. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in The Imperial Presidency, “In the Kennedy years [Vietnam] intervention was limited and provoked no constitutional questions. The dispatch of ‘advisers’ – 16,000 by the time of Kennedy’s death – took place under familiar arrangements for military assistance based on congressional legislation and appropriations.” There are scores of other works which affirm this point, including many commonly known to anyone with a modicum of knowledge about this seminal event, and some have been referenced below, for other related points.
To clarify and summarize the issue, while the record shows that the troops in Vietnam under Kennedy were only “advisors,” whether in the Marines, regular Army, Navy, or Special Forces (which had been deployed in remote regions to assist groups like the Montagnards) it is true that, as their number increased so did their scope of responsibility, yet in those early years they were only fighting a defensive war south of the 17th parallel at the request of the recognized government there in an operation called “Farm Gate” (a fact that demonstrates that it was Kennedy who had inherited the outgrowth of decisions reached during the previous decade, and was put into the position of having to decide to perpetuate them or reverse them).
The advisors accompanied South Vietnamese combat troops on their missions and were put into indirect combat situations with greater regularity by 1962. But the larger exception to that paradigm related to the defensive air operations and its Air Force code name “Jungle Jim” which, according to McNamara’s decree, was used “for training and operational missions in South Vietnam with Vietnamese riding in the rear seats.”
Though the air strikes during this period were flown almost exclusively by American pilots as they went about training Vietnamese pilots, the targets were selected by Vietnamese planners. And sometimes, as author John Newman noted, the Vietnamese man accompanying the American pilot was not even someone being trained, but merely an enlisted man sent along for the ride, to keep up appearances as cover for the fact that the actual preparations of the South Vietnam Air Force lagged behind the overly ambitious schedule. This arrangement was “grudgingly” implemented since it was inconvenient not only for the officers running it and the pilots flying the aircraft, but the Vietnamese men in the back seats didn’t think too much of it either. According to author Newman, and to Air Force history, it “was more political than practical.”
That point reinforces the fact, however, that the American pilots were there by invitation of the recognized government, whose representatives (whether actually being trained, or not) accompanied every defensive bombing run. At the fourth SECDEF conference on March 22, 1962, the “glaring deficiencies of the South Vietnamese Air Force were discussed and ultimately, the number of American aircraft and pilots were increased to address these deficiencies in the context of the only available alternative, which was to cede air superiority to the declared enemy’s greater capabilities. There was also an effort, by Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay, to relax the restrictions that required a Vietnamese crewman on all combat flights, but McNamara would not budge on that because it would remove the “training cover” that allowed them to participate at all in these operations.
Although there was, admittedly, an element of deceit in these operations, this condition prevailed because of the rudimentary state of the South Vietnamese Air Force, and their military forces generally, until the hoped-for improvements could be achieved, coupled with the sudden need to expand the operations beyond their capabilities. Despite that concession, Dr. Chomsky nevertheless overstated this point on his website, where he maintains that Kennedy “ … invaded Vietnam. He invaded South Vietnam in 1962. He sent the US Air Force to start bombing.”
In the context of what is now “one Vietnam” he might have had a point; but given the political reality extant in 1962, saying that “he invaded South Vietnam to start bombing” was not an accurate or honest way to portray actual historic fact. Indeed, it could be charitably called “wishful thinking,” or, more accurately, a gross misrepresentation, given that first, there was no “invasion” of South Vietnam since it was at their invitation, and second, the defensive bombing runs were being managed by South Vietnam against the Viet Cong, which were technically considered to be the aggressors in the territory involved (except by Chomsky, of course).
Dr. Chomsky’s misstatements of historical truth are probably due to the fact that his expertise lies in the study of linguistics, not history, and that has led to his development of tainted theories; according to author James McGilvray, “[w]ithin the field of linguistics, Chomsky is credited with inaugurating the ‘cognitive revolution’.” But based upon his erroneous descriptions of actual events, Dr. Chomsky evidently understands the theories of linguistics better than real-world communications, considering how most people would interpret the meaning of “cognitive ability” in comparing actual facts to his revisionist kind.
That series of misstatements, with more to follow, also illustrate how Chomsky intentionally uses words to completely reframe the meaning of a given set of facts: The first example is his repeated misstatements regarding Kennedy’s purported responsibility for the original build-up of combat troops in Vietnam, which is simply not true; and based upon that inaccuracy, moreover, then to suggest that Johnson merely “inherited” that legacy further undermines his credibility; though he would portray his dilemma as having had no alternative but to pursue it vigorously, despite the advice both had received from, for example, Generals Douglas MacArthur, James Gavin and Matthew Ridgway, even the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Maxwell Taylor, to stay as far away as possible from a ground war in Southeast Asia. It was he, Lyndon Johnson, not John Kennedy, who began the escalation, nearly 18 months after JFK was assassinated.
Remarkably, that is precisely the case that Lyndon Johnson had always deceitfully made – that he had “inherited” the war and merely followed Kennedy’s policies towards escalation – so Mr. Chomsky was at least paying attention then, to the prevaricating new president, apparently oblivious to the intrinsic worthlessness of his words; that, incidentally, was an issue so prominent among contemporary journalists that a new term was coined, and quickly added to dictionaries, to describe it: “Credibility Gap.”
The irony of Dr. Chomsky, publicly protesting a war – one which most other cognitively aware people knew had not been ramped up and “Americanized” until 18 months after JFK’s assassination, in the spring and summer of 1965 – apparently without realizing that it was President Johnson, not Kennedy, who did it, is astonishing. And revealing, and frankly disturbing in its implications.
To the previous conclusion that JFK had definitely decided to end American involvement in Vietnam’s civil war, we can now add the second conclusion: That JFK only reluctantly increased the number of “advisors” until the third quarter of 1963 when he revised official policy and planned to reduce them by the end of that year and withdraw them completely in 1965; he did not introduce “combat troops” nor “invade” South Vietnam and aggressively bomb them, since the Air Force was there by their invitation, and involved only defensive bombing runs managed by the Vietnamese military in operations within South Vietnam.
3. Chomsky: “Since JFK was killed by a “lone nut,” there was no reason to suspect a plot, or a ‘coup d’etat’.”
Finally, the primary reason for why many people are baffled by the intransigence of a fabled, world-acclaimed man of supposedly unmatched brilliance, the holder of numerous prestigious awards, honorary degrees and author of many scholarly works:
- The reason is that Dr. Noam Chomsky admits that he (unfortunately, like so many of his colleagues in the upper reaches of America’s educational elite regarding JFK’s assassination), has never studied it; therefore, as he recently stated, “I don’t really have any opinion. I haven’t looked into it in any detail, and I’m not that much concerned.”
For someone who is a self-professed expert on the world in general, and particularly the U.S. history and its foreign policy of the 1950s-1960s, that is a stunning admission, and it does not speak well for his “intellectual curiosity” to lack even a basic level of knowledge about the “Crime of the 20th Century,” never mind having a basis for any legitimate opinion at all of the subject at hand. The issue that his position – “I haven’t looked into it . . I’m not that much concerned” – allows him to avoid is whether the murder of the 35th president of the United States might have had something to do with what happened immediately afterwards: A major commitment of the U.S. military might on behalf of a despotic government fighting a civil war on the other side of the world (a government that Johnson once paradoxically, given the resources he had devoted to it, described as a “fourth-rate, raggedy-ass little country”).
Johnson personally, nearly single-handedly, created the most turbulent domestic period of that particular century. It is unbefitting of a man of Chomsky’s stature to not recognize the implications of JFK’s assassination, and it suggests that his lack of interest in even wanting to know anything about that “incident” renders any opinion he might have on its impact to the nation, or lack thereof, meaningless.
There are only a limited number of potential reasons for his disinterest. Either,
- He prefers not to invest his valuable time in analyzing it because of all the complications that would make it too difficult to sort out; or,
- Despite his contrarian views on practically every other, less momentous, aspect of U.S. domestic and foreign policy of the 20th century, he accepts the government’s official explanations as stated by the Warren Commission in 1964, without question, as specious and absurd as they are; or,
- He has been conditioned by the very “political correctness” pressures of which he feigns his resistance, into a position of denial for the purpose of merely protecting his professional reputation, in order to avoid jeopardizing his stature as a professor emeritus of MIT by actively studying this clearly “off limits” national security state secret.
USS Liberty Attack Survivor Phil Tourney Interviews Noam Chomsky
Regardless of his reason, Chomsky has previously repeatedly stated, essentially, that, “the answer doesn’t matter anyway, so why bother.” The referenced quote above (I don’t really have any opinion. I haven’t looked into it in any detail, and I’m not that much concerned) came from an appearance Professor Chomsky made on February 27, 2016, on an internet-radio program titled Your Voice Counts at “RepublicBroadcasting.org” hosted by Phil Tourney.
Unbeknownst to Noam Chomsky, until Phil Tourney pointed it out in his first interview with him, was the fact that Lyndon Johnson, with Robert McNamara at his side, personally cancelled two sorties of U.S. fighter jets sent to protect it; and that was only one of the several other treasonous acts committed by the president against his own ship that day, yet professor Chomsky had never been aware of it until Mr. Tourney explained it to him.
There were several other troubling actions taken by Johnson and McNamara that day that have been covered at length in books and video presentations, but it is doubtful that Chomsky knows anything about all the rest of it since he was unaware of the one most stunning and incomprehensible of all. Yet several books have been written about the attack, including a very powerful one What I Saw That Day, by Mr. Tourney himself, and it was also featured in two chapters of my own book, LBJ: From Mastermind to The Colossus.
Host Phil Tourney asked Professor Chomsky to respond to this question on the air:
The Question: “In recognition of the scholarship of Peter Dale Scott, John Newman and many others, is it not time to revisit your earlier assessment of the JFK assassination and accept the fact that it was indeed the sea change in U.S. foreign policy, that led to LBJ’s escalation and even “Americanization” of the Vietnam War, as well as being behind the planning for the Six-Day War, including the “false flag” of sacrificing the USS Liberty as a pretext for inserting the U.S. military into that war alongside of Israel, with a plan to attack Egypt – that failed only because the Liberty did not sink?”
Chomsky’s lengthy response to that question began:
“We have plenty of evidence, I’ve reviewed it extensively myself, and I think that we can say with considerable confidence that it [ JFK’s assassination] was not a high-level plot that led to a change in policy. (Emphasis added).
“Policies continued about as they were with regard to the Vietnam War. If Kennedy had had … [unintelligible] … the actual documentation shows, that Kennedy continued to be one of the more hawkish members of his administration until the very end, until the very day of the assassination practically, he was keeping to the same strong position, the U.S. could withdraw, as had been suggested by McNamara, but only after victory, that was a condition; and if indeed Kennedy had had any interest in withdrawal, there was a perfect opportunity just shortly before the assassination. (Emphasis added).
As you know, in August, 1963, the U.S. government … determined that the South Vietnamese regime, the Diem regime, Diem and his brother were negotiating with North Vietnam, and were seeking a peace agreement between the two, which would have ended the conflict. Uh, if Kennedy wanted to withdraw, that was a perfect opportunity …uh, let the Diem brothers pursue the negotiations and end the conflict and take credit for having implemented a peaceful end of the conflict. But they didn’t do that, instead, what they did was instigate a plot to have the Diem brothers removed and it turned out they ended [up] being assassinated.
But that was not Kennedy’s proposal … rather, just remove them and put in place a more hawkish general who would then carry out Kennedy’s policy of maintaining and escalating the the war … uh, I think that fact, along with the extensive documentation on Kennedy’s actual position and the story that the evidence that has since been released about the [unintelligible] …the main documents [NSAM] 273 which called for an eventual withdrawal under the condition, as Kennedy insisted, that it be after victory. I think all of this shows pretty clearly that there was no … any plot had nothing to do with changing policy.”
[… ]
“Shortly after the Kennedy assassination, in Vietnam, it was learned that the optimistic forecasts coming from the military were not based …were based on highly distorted, misleading evidence and in fact the war was in much worse shape than they had thought and at that point the Kennedy advisors, including the most dovish of them, like George Ball, called for the policies which Johnson then implemented. But I don’t think that one can tie this to the assassination, in any event. This still leaves open the question, “who carried out the assassination,” and on that I have no particular thoughts … uh, on the 1967 war, I don’t think there is any credible evidence that the United States in any way instigated it, in fact they really didn’t want it, they tried to keep Israel from attacking, but didn’t block them. Uh, the war – the outcome of the war – was indeed very beneficial to U.S. policy, but not … there was no indication that it was planned in any way.” (Emphasis supplied).
Dr. Chomsky’s response to the question ran on, for a total of over 1,500 words and twelve minutes altogether (For the sake of brevity, and the fact that it trailed considerably “off-point,” the rest of his response has been omitted but it can be found at the referenced website). The only pertinent additional comment regarding his response to the question above, was this: “… the real change in policy, the major change in policy, came in 1967, that’s when U.S. aid to Israel started shooting up, when there was extraordinary enthusiasm about Israel in both political parties and among the general articulate community, the media and so on, changed radically after Israel’s huge victory in 1967.”
The following observations will summarize what must be said regarding Professor Chomsky’s statement:
• Regarding the outrageous, still-unresolved 1967 Israeli assault on a U.S. warship (which was quickly covered up by Johnson and no substantive punishment to Israel ever exacted) Chomsky’s statement above, about “U.S. aid shooting up,” was certainly true but there was a great amount of irony in that, even though this was not acknowledged; rather, his statement was more in the context of “win-win” atmosphere on the sides of both Israel and within the United States. But that should be no surprise, since the unfortunate attack by Israel on the USS Liberty was declared a state secret and thereby put to bed, and left for future generations to figure out.
• His first statement, that, “… Kennedy continued to be one of the more hawkish members of his administration until the very end, until the very day of the assassination …” was the outrageously opposite of what the record clearly shows – that he was practically the only one in his administration who was striving to achieve a lasting peace – as documented by practically every researcher who has ever studied this subject; and he seems wedded to that position regardless of what anyone else might ever say. The conclusions reached in the first two numbered paragraphs above entirely disprove Chomsky’s statement.
• Moreover, Chomsky is evidently unfamiliar with several additional specific, inarguable facts that contradict his mistaken portrayal of Kennedy being “hawkish:”
- The first was demonstrated on June 10, 1963 when he gave his famous “Peace Speech” at American University, in which he, notably, did not bother to clear the content with any of his White House or military advisors, not to mention the high level intelligence officials. That speech only increased the acrimony towards JFK felt by his enemies across the Potomac River in the Pentagon and farther up the river in Langley, the CIA.
- The second indication that he deeply wanted to achieve peace occurred three months later, in September, when Kennedy declared in an interview, “In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists …”
- The third is the point already noted in Section No. 1 above, where Chomsky does not understand the fundamental differences of Kennedy’s NSAM 263, and Johnson’s revised NSAM 273, which effectively, though subtlety, turned Kennedy’s policy around, by 180 degrees. Peter Dale Scott, and later John Newman have conclusively proven what the false prophet Chomsky still hasn’t comprehended.
- The fourth illustration of the point was Kennedy’s final words on the subject, of which there were two instances that occurred on Thursday, November 21, 1963, before he left for his fatal trip to Texas:
- Just an hour before he departed, he told Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, “I’ve just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We’re losing too damn many people over there. It’s time for us to get out. The Vietnamese aren’t fighting for themselves. We’re the ones who are doing the fighting … After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. There’s no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life.”
- Also, before he left the White House, he instructed Michael Forrestal, “I want you to organize an in-depth study of every possible option we’ve got in Vietnam, including how to get out of there. We have to review this whole thing from the bottom to the top.”
That Noam Chomsky denies all of these indisputable events is simply incomprehensible. Moreover, his statement “ … the U.S. could withdraw, as had been suggested by McNamara, but only after victory, that was a condition” is yet another subtle distortion of fact, on the same point as also previously addressed, above, and already proved to be yet another misstatement.
But, even worse than that, Chomsky’s assertion that the “South Vietnamese regime . . . were negotiating with North Vietnam, and were seeking a peace agreement between the two, which would have ended the conflict” is yet another smoke-screen and unsupported assertion that is patently untrue.
As explained in a recent book, titled, Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War by Pierre Asselin, there was no such peace initiative being pursued, even though in July, 1963, an illusory effort by “Hanoi and its allies in China and the Soviet Union ‘have recently stepped up efforts to gain international support for the convening of a Geneva-type conference on south [sic] Vietnam,’ the assessment began. Their aim was to ‘exploit the precedent of the Laotian settlement and the favorable atmosphere resulting from it to obtain international support for a similar type settlement . . . But since Diem was ‘unlikely under any circumstances to agree to internal negotiations for the withdrawal of United States military aid and the neutralization of South Vietnam,’ Hanoi had nothing to lose and much to gain domestically and internationally by at least appearing to be open to negotiations on those issues.”
Though this ephemeral idea had germinated within the Hanoi regime, it never blossomed south of the 17th parallel. That was because they had considered pursuing it – not through the Diem regime, but – through the National Liberation Front (NLF), as a provisional revolutionary government, since that entity was already “in place” with its own flag and anthem and “regularly addressed messages to sovereign states and the UN in the name of the South Vietnamese people.” Even though Hanoi portrayed it as a proxy for a shadow government, it was ultimately decided to drop the idea, because the NLF had no territorial base, and if it claimed one, it wouldn’t last long before Diem’s forces would seek it out and destroy it. In other words, Professor Chomsky has taken this sliver of a suggestion that there was supposedly a viable peace offering being actively negotiated by Diem and his cunning brother, Nhu, in July, 1963 and posited it as an actual fact. But in reality, the North Vietnamese government was merely exploiting international opinion by appearing to be open to negotiations, while never getting around to putting the offer on the table.
The supposed “peace talks” that Professor Chomsky alluded to were simply pretexts (a.k.a. “Chomskyisms”) cleverly designed to extend his oration as long as necessary to defray any attempt of this, or any other, interviewer to interrupt him with a request for elucidation.
The fact is that the first known peace offer to have come from North Vietnam was 18 months after JFK’s assassination: In April 1965 Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong Pham proffered a four-point plan which called for a return to the provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954, along with the withdrawal of US military personnel. And in 1966, in a casual gesture, Ho Chi Minh declared that North Vietnam was willing to “make war for 20 years” – but if the Americans “want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to afternoon tea.” President Johnson’s public statements also regularly expressed a willingness to negotiate with Hanoi, but always through off-the-cuff comments he made for public consumption at press conferences or other empty gestures, not firm policy offerings, until 1967-68, and even then, they were half-hearted attempts to gain political favor, aimed mostly at the voting public.
How an Exalted, Clairvoyant Oracle can “Fall onto His Own Petard”
What emerges from an intensive study of actual, documented facts – in contrast to the series of linguistically-challenged “Chomskyisms” – noted above is that the leading anti-war force, practically the only one, within the Kennedy administration, was President Kennedy himself. For Chomsky to cling to his illusionary idea of the sincerity of the Diem brothers achieving a “peace agreement” with their sworn enemies in the North Vietnam government seriously undermines his credibility. To airily dismiss the well-established history of their plotting and prevarications toward the U.S., especially the cunning and deceitful brother Nhu, who had even been planning a false coup d’etat as a means to somehow regain popular respect, should be proof enough that this is a specious argument.
Combined, his weakly argued reasoning based upon non-factual assertions, demonstrates how his use of linguistic tricks ultimately produces nothing more than a more rarefied, higher-level version of mythology having the imprimatur of a legendary soothsayer. It vividly demonstrates how an exalted, clairvoyant oracle can “fall onto his own petard” all while, apparently, going practically unnoticed by most of his followers. And it demonstrates, again, the effectiveness of the residual “Operation Mockingbird” program designed in the early 1950s to infiltrate publishers and journalists and feed them CIA propaganda ready for dissemination to the public.
That paradigm inextricably evolved, over time, to its much more sophisticated, and subtle, manifestation: To install and sustain Chomsky (among others), in his influential position at MIT – notoriously famous for its history of being one of the CIA’s most favored universities – for the very purpose of putting a politically correct imprimatur on official government dogma.
In this case – his radio appearance with Phil Tourney – it was a “limited hangout” to acknowledge the diabolical Israeli attack on a U.S. Navy spy-ship, and to leave it at that. The real objective of his appearance on Mr. Tourney’s radio show – not unlike his many other appearances – was to hide the fact that the attack was just another Johnsonian (governmental) “false flag” operation, which was the real (and only) catalyst behind that attack. His appearance there was merely another attempt to sandbag such attempts to reveal deeper truths, and to lead his students away from questioning the other larger, and unresolved crimes of the US government, starting with the 1963 coup d’etat and the endless wars now being waged around the world.
Commenting on the same point in a video that examined this point, “The Shame of Noam Chomsky,” two notable authors of a number of books affirmed these assertions in their own observations:
James Corbett: “He uses his verbosity and loquacity to talk around various subjects and to mumble and mutter and stutter on for 8 minutes in ways that completely fail to address the original question and in ways that no one seems to notice. It’s a key technique in his ability to deflect and avoid answering the question.”
Barrie Zwicker: “He engages in bizarre non-sequiturs all the time. This is a technique he uses.”
Clearly, Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers had/has no better exemplar for a mythmaking model: The key commonality Moyers and Chomsky share is their ability to perform uninterruptible monologues, extending their thoughts as though their space in time is infinite, their thought processes segued seamlessly together as though invisibly connected, even where one subject has nothing to do with the next. They, like their fellow practitioners of this art, were trained to use their voices in low, modulated, softly spoken monotones, caressing every syllable of each word as though, sufficiently squeezed, there could be hidden, implicit meanings revealed in each. When the subject turns though, and the audience needs a clarion call to act, the pace of the modulation increases in harmony with the temper, tone, and decibel level and the mesmerizing point is reached at the pinnacle of the oration. Only the occasional commercial break might interrupt them long enough to quickly have a drink of water and relax their vocal chords sufficiently to begin again, after all the soap, hemorrhoid elixirs and automobile ads have been completed and logged in.
Anyone attempting to interrupt them between those commercials will understand implicitly that to do so would be a very foolish mistake on their part, and could only cause them a special kind of embarrassment, or other discomfort.
It is called a “Hobson’s Choice” when there really is no free choice, other than the only one that will move both parties to the next level. Thus, under the understood paradigm of “facts be damned,” their reputations as great oracles of worldly events is assured.
__________________________
Final Analysis: The Checkered Legacy of a Famed and Elite “Intellectual”
Considering the implausibility of anyone with the exalted status of Professor Chomsky completely misstating historical records, lying about other factual data and ignoring well-established analysis by serious researchers such as Peter Dale Scott and John M. Newman – absent a compelling alternative motive for doing all of that – one is inexorably led to this perplexing question: “Was Noam Chomsky assigned a mission to mislead an entire population?” The only conceivable answer is “yes” and the only realistic reason for it must relate to a highest-level Deep State priority: “Strengthening the Myths of the National Security State.”
LBJ: Master of Deceit 
3 thoughts on “The Keepers of State Secrets: Noam Chomsky and Bill Moyers (Among Others), on a Mission to Hide the Worst Treasons of the 1960s ?”