[Peace-discuss] Rethinking Chomsky as a true dissident---JFK murder as example

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Date: 29 May 94 22:59:26 +0200
From: m.morrissey at asco.ks.open.de (Mike Morrissey)



                        Rethinking Chomsky


_Rethinking Camelot_ (Boston: South End Press, 1993) is Noam
Chomsky's worst book.  I don't think it merits a detailed 
review,
but we should be clear about the stand that "America's 
leading
intellectual dissident," as he is often called, has taken on 
the
assassination.  It is not significantly different from that 
of the
Warren Commission or the majority of Establishment 
journalists and
government apologists, and diametrically opposed to the view
"widely held in the grassroots movements and among left
intellectuals" (p. 37) and in fact to the view of the 
majority of
the population.

For Chomsky, the only theories of the assassination "of any
general interest are those that assume a massive cover-up, 
and a
high-level conspiracy that required that operation."  These 
he
rejects out of hand because "There is not a phrase in the
voluminous internal record hinting at any thought of such a
notion," and because the cover-up "would have to involve not 
only
much of the government and the media, but a good part of the
historical, scientific, and medical professions.  An 
achievement
so immense would be utterly without precedent or even remote
analogue."

These arguments can be as glibly dismissed as Chomsky
presents them.  It is simply foolish to expect the 
conspirators to
have left a paper trail, much less in the "internal record," 
or
that part of it that has become public.  It is equally 
foolish to
confuse the notion of conspiracy and cover-up with the much 
more
broadly applicable phenomenon of "manufacturing consent," to 
use
Chomsky's own expression.  You don't have to be a liar to 
believe
or accept or perpetuate lies.  This is exactly what Chomsky
himself and Edward Herman say about the media, and it 
applies to
the "historical, scientific, and medical professions" as 
well:

       Most biased choices in the media arise from the
       preselection of right-thinking people, internalized
       preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the
       constraints of ownership, organization, market, and
       political power.  Censorship is largely self-
censorship, by
       reporters and commentators who adjust to the 
realities of
       source and media organizational requirements and by 
people
       at higher levels within media organizations who are 
chosen
       to implement, and have usually internalized, the
       constraints imposed by proprietary and other market 
and
       governmental centers of power (_Manufacturing 
Consent_, NY:
       Pantheon, 1988, p. xii).

Nevertheless, Chomsky admits that a "high-level conspiracy" 
theory
makes sense if "coupled with the thesis that JFK was 
undertaking
radical policy changes, or perceived to be by policy 
insiders."
Rethinking Camelot is devoted to refuting this thesis.

I've addressed this subject before ("Chomsky on JFK and 
Vietnam,"
_The Third Decade_, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 8-10), so I won't 
repeat
myself.  But two things should be clear.  First, Chomsky has
loaded the deck.  The theory that Kennedy was secretly 
planning to
withdraw from Vietnam regardless of how the military 
situation
developed is not the only one that supports a conspiracy 
view of
the assassination.  This is John Newman's highly speculative
argument in _JFK and Vietnam_ (NY: Warner Books, 1992), 
which is
so easy to refute that one wonders if it was not created for 
this
purpose.  Why else would the CIA, in the form of ex-Director
Colby, praise the work of Newman, an Army intelligence 
officer, as
"brilliant" and "meticulously researched" (jacket blurb)?  
In any
case, accepting the fact that we cannot know what JFK's 
secret
intentions were or what he would have done, the fact that he 
was
planning to withdraw by the end of 1965 is irrefutable.

Secondly, it should be clear that Chomsky's view of the 
relation,
that is, non-relation, of the assassination to subsequent 
policy
changes is essentially the same as Arthur Schlesinger's.  
They are
both *coincidence theorists*.  Schlesinger says Johnson 
reversed
the withdrawal plan on Nov. 26 with NSAM 273, but the idea 
that
this had anything to do with the assassination "is reckless,
paranoid, really despicable fantasy, reminiscent of the 
wilder
accusations of Joe McCarthy" (_Wall Street Journal_, 
1/10/92).
The assassination and the policy reversal, in other words, 
were
coincidences.

I suspect Chomsky knows he would appear foolishly naive if he
presented his position this way, so he has constructed a 
tortured
and sophistic argument that "there was no policy reversal" 
in the
first place, which, if true, would obviate the question of 
its
relation to the assassination.  A neat trick if you can pull 
it
off, and Chomsky gives it a good try, but in the end he 
fails.  In
fact, he undermines his own position by making it even 
clearer
than it has been that the reversal of the assessment of the
military situation in Vietnam, which caused the reversal of 
the
withdrawal policy, occurred very shortly after the 
assassination,
and that the source of this new appraisal was the 
intelligence
agencies:

       The first report prepared for LBJ (November 23) 
opened with
       this "Summary Assessment":  "The outlook is hopeful.  
There
       is better assurance than under Diem that the war can 
be
       won.  We are pulling out 1,000 American troops by the 
end
       of 1963." ... The next day, however, CIA director John
       McCone informed the President that the CIA now 
regarded the
       situation as "somewhat more serious" than had been 
thought,
       with "a continuing increase in Viet Cong activity 
since the
       first of November" (the coup).  Subsequent reports 
only
       deepened the gloom (p. 91).

By late December, McNamara was reporting a "sharply changed
assessment" to the President (p. 92).

The only difference between this and Schlesinger's view is
that Chomsky says the assessment of the military situation 
changed
first, and then the policy changed.  So what?  The point is 
that
both things changed *after* the assassination.  The 
President is
murdered, and immediately afterward the military assessment
changes radically and the withdrawal policy changes 
accordingly.
It matters not a whit if the policy reversal occurred with 
NSAM
273, as Schlesinger says, or began in early December and 
ended de
jure in March 1964, as the Gravel Pentagon Papers clearly say
(Vol. 2, pp. 191, 196).

Nor does it matter what JFK's secret intentions may have
been.  It is more important to note that according to 
Chomsky's
own account, whose accuracy I do not doubt, the source of the
radically changed assessment that began two days after the
assassination was the CIA and the other intelligence 
agencies.
Furthermore, this change in assessment was *retrospective*, 
dating
the deterioration of the military situation from Nov. 1 or
earlier.  Why did it take the intelligence agencies a month 
or
more to suddenly realize, two days after the assassination, 
that
they had been losing the war instead of winning it?

This question may be insignificant to coincidence theorists
like Schlesinger and Chomsky, but not to me.  _Rethinking 
Camelot_
has shown me -- sadly, because I have been an admirer -- that
Chomsky needs to do some serious rethinking of his position, 
and
that I need to do some rethinking of Mr. Chomsky.