Two days before President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, he signed National Security Action Memorandum 263.
NSAM 263 formally authorized the withdrawal of 1,000 US military advisors from Vietnam by the end of 1963, with a plan for complete withdrawal completed by 1965. Kennedy had been privately skeptical of deepening US military involvement in Southeast Asia for over a year. He had resisted sustained pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA to commit to direct combat operations. He had told aides privately and on record that he would not allow Vietnam to become what Korea had been.
November 22, 1963: Kennedy is shot in Dallas.
November 26, 1963 — five days later: President Lyndon Johnson signs National Security Action Memorandum 273, which effectively reverses Kennedy's withdrawal order and recommits the United States to supporting the South Vietnamese government through military means.
The Vietnam War continued for twelve more years. 58,220 American soldiers died. Estimates of Vietnamese civilian deaths range from 1.5 to 3.5 million people.
At the time of his assassination, Kennedy was also conducting secret back-channel negotiations with Fidel Castro through a UN intermediary. He was actively challenging the CIA's operational autonomy. He was in public confrontation with the military establishment over defense spending. He had told trusted aides he wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces."
The interests most directly, immediately, and financially threatened by John F. Kennedy's governing agenda in the final months of 1963: the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and the defense contractors who required the Vietnam conflict to continue and expand.
Five days after his death, the Vietnam withdrawal order was gone. Twelve years. 58,000 American lives. Trillions of dollars in defense contracts.


