JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters

by James W. Douglass

RFK’s response: “Whap! His hand slapped down on the desk. I jumped in my chair. ‘Because we were there!’ He slammed the desktop again. His face contorted in anger and pain. ‘We were there, in 1951. We saw what was happening to the French. We saw it. My brother was determined, determined never to let that happen to us.’”[80] John Kennedy had been there. He had seen it with Robert, when the French troops were doing it. A friend on the spot, Edmund Gullion, had underlined the futility of American combat troops replacing the French. Ellsberg wrote that he believed what Robert Kennedy said, “that his brother was strongly convinced that he should never send ground troops to Indochina and that he was prepared to accept a ‘Laotian solution’ if necessary to avoid that.”[81]