Once again, the so-called progressive alternative media attempts—this time via the unfounded asseverations of a former West Point faculty member—to depict JFK as a typical Cold Warrior and an ineffectual president on all fronts. As usual, Jim DiEugenio demolishes the argument.

By Greg Grandin, At: The Nation

Carrying forward his response to Fred Litwin on Garrison, Jim DiEugenio turns his unrelenting critical eye on Quillette, an organ of the alt-right which not only published an article based on Litwin's book, but also a follow-up piece with a similar title by one its editors, Jamie Palmer.

“Anytime someone goes after Garrison, I will be there,” Jim DiEugenio has assured us. So it is with the latest attempt, this time by Fred Litwin, to recirculate those all-too-familiar, stale media smears and untruths without any reference to the revelations of the ARRB.

We are pleased to reprint here an excerpt from an MA thesis, The Imperial Imperative: John F Kennedy and US Foreign Relations, presented at University of Kent at Canterbury, which the author has graciously shared with us.

Jim DiEugenio reviews the career of this amazing economist, statesman, academician and author, with a particular view to his close and important rapport with John Kennedy, an advisory relationship unjustly underplayed or erased by writers such as David Halberstam.

He leaned on JFK to stay out of Vietnam. Had Kennedy survived, might history have been different?

By Mark Perry, At: The American Conservative

In response to a recent article which he characterizes as “a compendium of every MSM caricature of Garrison and his Kennedy case that one can imagine”, Jim DiEugenio revisits the New Orleans DA's career and his JFK case, and what the ARRB and subsequent research has revealed about it.

Transcript, courtesy of David Giglio and Our Hidden History, of an interview with Roger Hilsman, who confirms that JFK's policy concerning Vietnam was essentially different from Johnson's. Note that he made these statements in 1983, nearly a decade before the publication of John Newman's book.

(Click here for video link)

We have also appended an important addendum, another interview with Hilsman from 1969.

What happens when the Left abandons its concern for such things as accuracy, morality and fact-based writing? What does one call such reporting then? Does it then not become—for whatever reason—another form of propaganda? Jim DiEugenio once again blasts Counterpunch for its pig-headed blind spot concerning the Kennedys.

[photos courtesy of National Press Club (Silverstein) and Amazon.com (St.Clair)]

(See also this article about Counterpunch and Cockburn from 2012 by author Douglas Valentine)