Barack Obama is a very smart man. But smart men have been President-Elect before and have been conned by their predecessors. One of the smartest was John F. Kennedy. Like Obama, Kennedy was trying to forge a unity government. He put Republicans in his cabinet (McNamara at Defense, C. Douglas Dillon at Treasury). When he went into a series of meetings with intelligence officials, JFK learned about the nearly completed training and planning for a U.S. backed invasion of Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro. Kennedy, who also met with President Eisenhower, convinced himself that Allen Dulles’ and Richard Bissell’s CIA invasion plan would work.

Continue reading No Good Choices for the President-Elect in Afghanistan

For those of us who believe history is the key to civilization, the death of a wonderful and thoughtful man should be noted.

John E. Taylor, the brilliant military archivist at the National Archives, died on Sunday,

September 21, of congestive heart failure at the age of 87. John’s expertise was in World War II military history, but his 66 years spent among the government’s most important records made him the institutional memory for much of the twentieth century. Over the years, he helped thousands of journalists, historians, documentary producers, and scholars discover and gain access to important historical documents.

Continue reading The Truth Lost A Champion