Alastair Cooke explains LBJ to the UK, Nov. 25, 1963,

By artappraiser on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 8:01pm |

in "The 36th President," published in The Guardian.

Alastair Cooke was The Guardian's "America correspondent" at the time of the assassination. It's amazing to me how much he knew and understood about LBJ's politics at the time, and how he could express it in such a short piece.

Don't miss the graph where he says:

Until a few years ago, his glaring liability as a President for the 1960's seemed to be his vague, baffled view of foreign affairs. Indo-China he thought to be "futile war."

The link to that article scan comes from an anniversary commemorative page The Guardian has put up Nov. 22, with other articles as well, compiled by Katy Stoddard:

Kennedy assassination: How we reported a 'tragedy for the world'
US president John F Kennedy was assassinated 48 years ago. See how the story unfolded in the Guardian

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Comments

Another interesting period piece:

Our plan for invading Cuba: The 82nd Airborne and the Marines take Havana, and the whole op is done in three months
By Thomas E. Ricks, Best Defense blog @ foreignpolicy.com, Nov. 22, 2011

Over the weekend I was looking through some handwritten notes in the papers of Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, placed on-line by the National Defense University....on pages 43-44 (as handmarked; PDF lists it as pp. 45-46) of that document, I was surprised to see a summary of "CINCLANT's operational plan for Cuba," which seems to have been ordered up after the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961...

by artappraiser on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 8:47pm

Hey thanks for the link.

It took me a couple minutes to figure out all you had to do was click the archived material.

by Richard Day on Wed, 11/23/2011 - 9:08am

Welcome; glad to share with someone else who likes "old news."