curiousAsked about the purpose of the conference on Vietnam that his advisers were attending in Honolulu the next week, he offered a laundry list of goals, including "assess the situation", decide "what our aid policy should be," and determine "how we can bring Americans out of there."
"Now that is our objective," he stressed. "To bring Americans home, permit the South Vietnamese maintain themselves as a free and independent country." After asking, "Are we going to give up in South Vietnam?" he answered, "The most important program, of course, is our national security, but I don't want the United States to have to put troops there."
Later that day he called a family friend to help select a fur coat as a Christmas present for the first lady, before boarding a helicopter that took him to a motorcade which in turn transported him to Manhattan where he could attend a party at the home of his sister and brother-in-law Jean and Stephen Smith. At the party he spoke with Adlai Stevenson, who had recently been accosted by an angry mob in Dallas. According to Clarke, at page 301, Stevenson said to Kennedy (about Kennedy's forthcoming trip to Dallas), "Why do you go? Your own people are saying you should not?" Clarke writes that Kennedy "stared back wordlessly and shrugged."