How about semi-official, as in the Leslie Gelb, Richard Betts, Richard Holbrooke, Brooking Institute, book, "The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked, " circa late 70's. Flipped throgh long time ago, after reading a Chomsky polemic against this Cold War Liberal screed. Yup, no need to organize and protest and resist and "bring the war home" (heaven forfend, we don't want more Greenwich Village townhouses blowing up ala Ted Gold et al. Weathermen and Weatherwomen [Do ya need need a Weatherman to know which way the bomb fragments blow? btw] in '70) and sit-in and all the rest. Us Good Liberal Elites will get y'all out of the war we got you into in the first place! Holbrooke in particular gets my BS'ometer going, as I'm sure it does most of the list (except for that whipping boy Brad DeLong? Where has he been?)
And a liitle comment on Martin Luther King, Jr. re: the conspiracy thread and Chrles et. al. interpretration of how much King threatened the power structure. King, by the testimony of Michael Harrington, Chuck Fager (worked for Pete McCloskey, he wrote a piece for In These Times back in 80's on King) the David Garrow book on King and the SCLC, Taylor volumes, and a new book by Michael Eric Dyson, "I May Not Get There With You, " was a democratic socialist. The radicalism of King esp. towards the end, after he broke with the Cold War Liberals over the war (and with Bayard Rustin and others, and of course the LBJ admin.) was a real threat to the state. Enough for me to think that the state maneuvered a two bit racist petty criminal, James Earl Ray, to be the fall guy. And another Posner (no relation to Richard) Gerald's book disputing the King family's view (the William Pepper book has weaknesses I'll more than grant) about US Army Intelligence, CIA/FBI collusion/complicity is the hypothesis I'll buy, until some other credible one ever emerges. Doubtful.
Michael Pugliese