LBJFK

CIA contract pilot and firsthand JFK assassination witness Robert “Tosh” Plumlee joins Sixth Floor Museum board member and historian Dory Wiley to examine one of the most consequential documentary trails connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy: National Security Action Memorandums 263 and 273. Plumlee’s role makes this discussion uniquely compelling because he is not commenting as an outside observer decades later. On November 22, 1963, he co-piloted a covert flight into Dallas carrying members of a CIA-connected abort team whose mission was to stop the assassination before it occurred. That account points directly to foreknowledge within covert operational circles on the very day Kennedy was killed.

At the center of this discussion is a newly published investigation in CovertAction Magazine (link below) examining the extraordinary sequence of events surrounding NSAM 263 and NSAM 273. Signed by Kennedy on October 11, 1963, NSAM 263 formally ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. military advisers from Vietnam by the end of that year and established plans to remove the remaining 16,000-plus American personnel by 1965. The memorandum represented a direct shift away from long-term military escalation in Southeast Asia.

What followed is a matter of documented record. Wiley’s investigation traces how two of the five versions of NSAM 273 were already being drafted on November 21, 1963 — the day before Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. After Kennedy’s death, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the final version of NSAM 273, effectively reversing Kennedy’s withdrawal trajectory and laying the groundwork for expanded American military involvement in Vietnam.

TO LEARN MORE, CLICK HERE

TO BOOK AN INTERVIEW, CALL OR TEXT 512-966-0983 OR EMAIL BOOKINGS@SPECIALGUESTS.COM