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Vietnam

NSA Memorandum 328

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NSA Memorandum 328

April 6, 1965

NSA Memorandum 328

NSA Memorandum 328

Old war

Wars rarely start without warning. Perhaps the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, yet their aggression was not.

War in Vietnam was not new in 1965. France had promised its colony independence after World War II. On September 2, 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared that independence. His proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!“

War with the French ensued. Ho Chi Minh defeated them and the US, under President Eisenhower, stepped in in the mid-1950s. Eisenhower was sure that a Communist ruled Vietnam would lead to Communism throughout southeast Asia. The Domino Theory.

At first we sent advisors, but as time exposed the weakness and corruption of the so-called democratic South Vietnam, the United States, now under President Lyndon B Johnson, decided to change from advisors to attackers.

NSA Memorandum 328

Ground troops

The US National Security Council meetings on April 1 and 2 in 1965 were about what we should do regarding Vietnam. The people of the United States found out on April 6.

President Johnson authorized the National Security Action Memorandum 328: the use of ground troops in combat operations in Vietnam.

The memorandum authorized U.S. personnel to take the offensive in South Vietnam to secure “enclaves” and to support South Vietnamese operations. The so-called “enclave strategy” called for the U.S. forces to control the densely-populated coastal areas while the South Vietnamese forces moved inland to fight the communists.

This memorandum represented a major mission change for the American soldiers and Marines who had recently arrived in Vietnam. American forces had been limited to strictly defensive operations around the U.S. air bases, but the memorandum authorized them to go on the offensive to secure large areas of terrain, an escalation of U.S. involvement in the war.

NSA Memorandum 328

TV explanation

On July 28 that year, Johnson explained why we were in Vietnam.

Today,  there are 58,318 names on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC.

NSA Memorandum 328

Black history, Death penalty, Today in history

Anthony Ray Hinton Released

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Anthony Ray Hinton released

“They took off the white robe and put on a black robe.”

Released April 3, 2015
Anthony Ray Hinton released
Bryan Stevenson, Anthony Ray Hinton
Anthony Ray Hinton released

Conviction

An Alabama jury convicted 29-year-old Anthony Ray Hinton of murdering two  fast-food managers in separate incidents in 1985.

The evidence was weak and his defense weaker. The only evidence linking Hinton to the crimes were bullets that allegedly had markings matching a revolver that belonged to Hinton’s mother. There were no fingerprints or eyewitness testimony. After Hinton was convicted, subsequent tests found the bullets at the scene could not be matched to the gun he was accused of using.

Anthony Ray Hinton released

Death Penalty

But Alabama sentenced him to die. In 2003, a New York Times article wrote, “There are reasons beyond the firearms evidence to doubt Mr. Hinton’s guilt. He was at work, several people testified, when the third shooting happened. The car he was said to have driven on the night of the third shooting had been repossessed months before. The restaurant robberies continued after his arrest.” 

Hinton’s court-appointed lawyer had spent only $1000 on an expert witness (despite the fact that Alabama law provides reimbursement for any reasonable defense expenses.) whose testimony was so weak he could not answer basic questions. 

Equal Justice Initiative

On February 24, 2014, through the efforts of the Equal Justice Initiative group, the US Supreme Court declared that “the criminal (Hinton) defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel is violated if his trial attorney’s performance falls below an objective standard or reasonableness and if there is a reasonable probability that the result of the trial would have been different.” (full text of Supreme Court decision)

According to the EJI site, “The Equal Justice Initiative is a private, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.”

The site also states that, “3170 people in the United States currently are under a death sentence. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 1314 men, women, children, and mentally ill people have been shot, hanged, asphyxiated, lethally injected, and electrocuted by States and the federal government.”

Victory

Anthony Ray Hinton greets family and friends upon his release (Credit Bob Miller for The New York Times)

On April 3, 2015, Anthony Ray Hinton  was freed after EJI and its experts undermined the Alabama’s case.

Anthony Ray Hinton released

ABC News report

Post release

Since his release, Hinton has spoken in various venues about the injustices of the Alabama judicial system and other issues related to his conviction and imprisonment. He completed a memoir entitled The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (2018), and has given readings and talks around the country about the book and his experiences.

Anthony Ray Hinton released

Beat generation, Cold War, Today in history

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

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Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

April 2, 1958
Bosheviks Sputniks Beatniks
Cartoon about the Bolsheviks

 

Jack Kerouac Reads from “On The Road”
Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Bolshevik Revolution

When the Bolshevik Revolution began in 1917, the western economies viewed the uprising as a threat to their capitalistic systems. The Bolsheviks challenged the notion of private property, private business, and personal self-determination.

When the nuclear arms race began after World War II, exemplified in particular between the United State and the Soviet Union, propaganda on both sides successfully demonized their enemy.

We Americans associated the suffix “-ik” with Communism and thus with evil intentions. When Senator Joseph McCarthy announced that he had incontrovertible evidence of Communist infiltration into the government and the arts, he launched hearings through the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Committees hearings and accusations damaged the careers of dozens of American citizens.

A corollary of the US-Soviet arms race was the space race. While on paper it looked like a race to get humans into space, the unspoken government goal was to design a nuclear weapon delivery system. 

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Sputnik

On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 and Americans had  another Communist -ick to hate (NYT article).

replica of Spunik 1 at US Air and Space Museum
Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks

The Beats

In reaction to the horrors of World War II and the increasing emphasis of the American Dream equaling American Consumerism (the antithesis of Soviet Communism), some young Americans like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady (future hippie and driver of Furthur), and many others developed a literary view and philosophy that de-emphasized conspicuous consumerism.

They deliberately did not fit in.  According to the Wikipedia entry, “Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase “Beat Generation” in 1948 to characterize a perceived underground, anti-conformist youth movement in New York.” Oxford Dictionaries site.

Bosheviks Sputniks Beatniks

Beatnik

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks
Herb Caen

Traditionalists already viewed the Beats with suspicion when Herb Caen, a well-known and popular San Francisco Examiner journalist, published a column on April 2, 1958 in which he wrote, “Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s beat generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!) hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only beat, y’know, when it comes to work.”

The term took hold immediately and the San Francisco Beats, already discriminated against, now carried the additionally negative Communist association.

Bosheviks Sputniks BeatniksEver ready to take advantage of a popular coinage, the media was able to convert the negative image of the beatnik into one to ridicule and have fun with. The Halloween costume.  The TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis in which Bob Denver played Maynard G Krebs, the lazy air-head beatnik. Denver’s acting career, as successful as it was, never recovered as his even more successful character on Gilligan’s Island  is simply the same beatnik without the costume.Beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik, beatnik

Bolsheviks Sputniks Beatniks