In 1956 Senator John F. Kennedy saw the Republic of Vietnam as the “cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia.” Diem's regime, he boasted, “is our offspring, we cannot abandon it.” Four years later, while campaigning for the presidency, Kennedy charged that Dwight Eisenhower had not confronted communism vigorously enough, and he promised a new, activist military program for America, invoking Generals Taylor, Ridgway, and Gavin to add credibility to his criticism that massive retaliation had not provided security against American enemies. Just months later, in his inaugural address, the new commander in chief pledged to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Despite Kennedy's adversarial world view and strident cold war rhetoric, many recent studies have cleared him of responsibility for the U.S. commitment to and subsequent aggression in Vietnam. Filmmaker Oliver Stone, historian John Newman, and former CIA operative Fletcher Prouty, among others, have contended that the young president had decided by late 1963 to quit Vietnam, reverse the cold war, and challenge the political power of the militaryindustrial-intelligence complex at home. Amid such pacifism, a militaristic cabal led by the JCS and the CIA decided to do away with Kennedy and go to war in Vietnam. Although such revisionism can be lucrative, it is demonstrably absurd.