builds another scaffolding: he now postulates that Exner
was Kennedy's conduit to the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro (Ibid
p. 324). What is breathtaking about this is that this is
something that not even Exner had uttered yet, at least not for
dissemination. And she won't until her get-together with Kitty
Kelley in the February 1988 cover story for People. This curious
passage leads one to think that Davis may have planted the seed
from which the Kelley story sprouted.

To go through the entire Davis book and correct all the errors of
fact, logic, and commentary would literally take another book.
But, in line with my original argument about anti-Kennedy
biography, I must point out just two parts of Davis' discussion
of JFK's Vietnam policy. The author devotes a small chapter to
this subject. In his hands, Kennedy turns into a hawk on Vietnam.

Davis writes that on July 17, 1963, Kennedy made "his last public
utterance" on Vietnam, saying that the U.S. was going to stay
there and win (p.374). But on September 2, 1963, in his interview
with Walter Cronkite, Kennedy states that the war is the
responsibility of "the people of Vietnam, against the
Communists." In other words, they have to win the war, not
Americans. Davis makes no mention of this. Davis similarly
ignores NSAM 111 in which Kennedy refused to admit combat troops
into the war, integral to any escalation plan, and NSAM 263,
which ordered a withdrawal to be completed in 1965. This last was
published in the New York Times (11/16/63), so Davis could have
easily found it had he been looking.

In light of this selective presentation of the recor