JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power argues that United States President John F. Kennedy would not have placed combat troops in Vietnam and was preparing to withdraw military advisors by the end of 1965. Oliver Stone, director of the 1991 film JFK called it "a breakthrough exploration of Kennedy and his generals, [which] defines the 1961-1963 period in a light I never understood before".[5] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a former special assistant to Kennedy, described it as "the most solid contribution yet" to speculation regarding the course of American history had the President not be assassinated. While calling it a "[b]old and authoritative revisionist analysis", Kirkus Reviews said "this electrifying report portrays a wily, stubborn, conflicted leader who grasped realities that eluded virtually everyone else in the US establishment." In the Los Angeles Times, historian Leonard Bushkoff wrote: "Newman's vision of warmongering hawks--a group of conspiratorial Washingtonians whose motives he barely examines--is indeed based more on suppositions and innuendoes than evidence. Nevertheless, at another, deeper level, Newman's points are highly persuasive