Jeff Carter

more repetitive irrelevant long-debunked information. the above "factoid" is representative: Antarctica: a key node in a merry-go-round of circular reasoning. The idea that Prouty was forced, at the ARRB interview in 1996, to walk-back or retract his concepts of ”sinister motivation” sending him to Antarctica in November 1963 began with the ARRB panel, and has found eager vouching by a posse of contemporary critics including Griffiths, Litwin, and two guys with a podcast who prattled on about this issue for about 20 minutes back in August. None of these people actually know what they are talking about, and continued repetition of this pathetic talking point only underlines their ignorance. I can identify at least five essays, as part of a record which dates back to the 1970s, in which Prouty discusses the trip. This is a representative example of a consistent presentation: “I had worked for the U.S. Antarctic Projects Officer for many years. In fact I had received his congratulations in a valued letter of 2 July 1959 for work done then, more than four years earlier. The fact that I was working on another Antarctic project on Nov 22, 1963, was simply a part of my official military duties over the years.” (Prouty) That is essentially what Prouty told the ARRB panel as well. The panel, in their Summary of the interview, then claimed Prouty could not “back up the suspicions he mentioned in the excerpt from the book”. The “suspicions” constitute a brief non-definitive thought experiment influenced by the “JFK” film - which is the actual source of the “sinister motivation” concept referred (an example of the dramatic licence occasionally inserted into the script, as long acknowledged). The panel were entirely unaware Prouty was reiterating a longstanding and oft-stated account of his experience. The contemporary critics are not surprisingly also completely clueless on this matter, although it doesn’t prevent their insistence that Prouty engaged in a “climb-down”, a “retraction” or that “he finally admitted the claim was false in his ARRB interview”. Simply put, reiterating a position which one has consistently held over many years does in no possible or conceivable way constitute a “climb-down”, a “retraction”, or an admission of “false” claims, and insisting it does does injury to commonly held definition and the factual record. It underscores the essential bad-faith by which these critics are operating, and establishes the poster responded to here is effectively trolling the Forum.

Again, flooding the thread with tedious irrelevant lists and another run of flightsuiting to boot. Meanwhile, the record has established a high-level meeting between Chinese and Soviet officials at the time of the two Conferences - labelled by you as a bizarre fantasy - had been agreed to, had been announced, and, in a later official history, had been confirmed. The single partially substantive reply to the above has consisted of claiming the professional researcher from the Library of Congress made an egregious error. It is my understanding the production of such official histories, whether for the CIA or the State Department or any federal agencies, features strict and careful attention to accuracy. Yet your claim, when broken down, infers the researcher actually made two astonishingly bad errors, and in a single sentence! (First mistaking Teheran for Cairo and second, by extension, claiming Stalin was in Cairo when everyone knows he certainly was not.) And this got by the proofreader? Not sure about that.

A major problem with your position - which amounts to insisting that the Library of Congress researcher charged with producing an official history for a Senate Subcommittee made an obviously fundamental high-school level blunder which survived all drafts and fact checks - is you started your argument with an already formed conclusion, namely the mere notion of a Chinese-Soviet meeting in Teheran 1943 could only be considered as the fever-dream of a crackpot fabulist. And yet, using the sources you have introduced, in particular the paper “The Cairo Conference: The Forgotten Summit”, it can be established: - In 1943, at the behest of FDR, both Soviet and Chinese diplomatic letters to U.S. officials demonstrate a reluctant agreement to a high level meeting at either Cairo or Teheran. As part of this initiative, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov at one point was scheduled to go to Cairo, but it did not occur. - In light of the prearranged agreement to meet, the Reuters press release announcing a scheduled meeting in Teheran between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek is significant. - Articulated Soviet concerns about the optics of the meeting, should it be over-publicized, related to prior agreements reached with Japan, provide a strong reason why such meeting would have been held in secret - which apparently it was - and why official contemporaneous accounts are mute. The documented record clearly establishes such a meet-up to be entirely possible, and so the attribution of this notion as a “crackpot fantasy” fails the test of the actual facts.

To sum up the Cairo-Teheran Conferences, sources added to the conversation - particularly “The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit” - actually support the notion that some kind of meeting between the Chinese and the Soviets was achieved at Teheran. The paper establishes that diplomats from both countries, at the behest of FDR, had agreed in principle to meet at one or the other of the Conferences. The paper also establishes why the Soviets would insist on a high level of secrecy to surround such a meeting. The paper in turn establishes that the Reuters news article published in the New York Times, which announced a planned Stalin-Chiang Kai-shek meet-up in Teheran, was released a day earlier than information protocol intended and should not have included word of this meet-up. Subtly, American officials suggested this was a deliberate leak engineered by the British to disrupt the Soviets secrecy request. Of the four leaders, Churchill was distinct opposed to FDR’s postwar concepts. This Reuters release, combined with the later brief confirmation off a Stalin-Chiang Kai-shek meet-up published in an official history in 1984, strongly contradict the idea that such meeting was a sort of “crackpot fantasy”. In fact, FDR’s postwar concepts are the real focus of Prouty’s discussions of these Conferences, in the context of de-colonization plans, particularly in Asia, and the emerging Cold War which took shape following FDR’s death. FDR’s concepts and diplomatic juggling are prominent in the official record. Unfortunately, information of great interest has been flooded by a morass of useless contrarian detail as one Forum member seeks to constantly “flightsuit” the topics.

These are your words: “I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference... I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again... Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference...you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…” Now that the book has been identified, everyone can see it clearly says what Prouty said it did ( yet you had labelled him a fabricator on this exact issue). In response to this information, you have moved the goalposts and now insist the accuracy of the book, as determined by yourself, rather than its provable material existence, which you denied, is your sole concern. And that Prouty, and by extension anyone who doesn’t denounce him, are somehow personally vouching for the “inexcusable blunders” and alleged confusion supposedly made by the designated official historian from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress - who presumedly was working from the most complete sources then available. Are the professionals with the Library of Congress not “credible”? Despite your musings over flight suits and refuellings, this particular discussion is honed on two points: 1) Prouty accurately citing an official history published by the Government Printing Office 2) Prouty recounting his personal experience flying a Chinese delegation to Teheran. The first point is indisputable, as the book says exactly what Prouty said it did. As for the second point, you are basically disavowing Prouty's own first-hand experience based on a litany of surmises and presumptions. Given your pattern of insult and conjecture, there is no reason to trust your self-declared omniscience.

You are the preeminent gaslighter to ever appear on this forum, and your preening egotism and utter lack of self-awareness is crystalized in your complaint of “moving goalposts.” A question was posted and it was answered: Sept 28 - “I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference.” Sept 28 - “Prouty said that all the books except one said that Chiang was not at the conference. He said he had one book that said Chiang was there. I'd like to see it. I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again.” October 4 - “Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference. Let's see it. I suspect you're just taking Prouty's word about the document and have not seen it yourself. Let's see that document.” Today - “you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…” The single source had been accurately identified by Prouty in his book. Further, the source is not an undergraduate paper placed online by a remedial student from a junior college - it is an authoritative history produced for a Congressional Committee and published by the U.S. government. It unambiguously states: “At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina.” If you have a problem with this statement, it should be addressed to the book’s author. Instead, you heaped insults on Prouty for his accurate observation: “fabricating”. “crackpot” “fraud” “nonsensical fiction”

Fletcher Prouty’s source for the specific presence of Chiang Kai-shek at the Teheran Conference, separate from the delegation he personally flew, was: Gibbons, William Conrad The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part 1: 1945-1960 As noted in the publishing information provided in a 1986 reprint by Princeton University Press: “The book was prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. It was originally published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in April 1984.” The 1986 Princeton edition can be found on the OpenLibrary service of the Internet Archive. On page 4, discussing views on colonialism and the approaching postwar frameworks, as discussed at Teheran, Gibbons writes: “The British were also opposed to suggestions for lessening control over other colonies, such as Indochina, because of the possible effect on their own Empire. At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina, but Churchill was vehemently against the idea.”

Speaking of checking out, the Encyclopedia Brittanica online describes TV Soong: a “financier and official of the Chinese Nationalist government between 1927 and 1949, once reputed to have been the richest man in the world… He resigned as finance minister in 1931 though his influence—largely due to his wealth and his growing international prestige—remained great.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Song-Qingling Prouty's information is therefore hardly a fabrication. The characterization of such is wrong and ill-motivated.

Prouty’s source for Chiang’s presence in Teheran is a US government history of the Vietnam war published by the Government Printing Office in 1984. Mao’s agreement to suspend the civil war until defeat of Japan was published in newspapers around the time of D-Day. The esteemed Malcolm Blunt said in an interview that he used to be somewhat influenced by the “swift-boating” attacks on Prouty’s integrity - until he gradually realized Prouty’s information usually eventually checked out. The swift-boat attacks began only in the wake of Stone’s “JFK”, and their purpose then as now was to deflect from or prevent informed understanding of the Cold War era.

I am away right now, and cannot appropriately refute some of the notions being posted here. But, like the Vietnam threads, Griffiths is flooding the discussion with obscure rightist revisionism. Describing the Imperial Japanese Army as “brave” and reluctant occupiers of China is pure revisionism. He has a personal animus towards Prouty, evident for some months now, and it clouds his perspective.

The book you believe doesn’t exist is identified in a footnote found in the book W. Niederhut referred

24 hours ago, Mr Griffiths didn't know anything of this story. Now he's declaring himself the ultimate authority. I suspect, along with Jim Di, that NSAM 263 is the true stick in the craw.

I see the source of your error - he does say words to effect Chiang was at Tehran, but in context he is saying Chiang was represented at Tehran. Speaking specifically about the flight Prouty says: “I flew the Chinese up to Tehran from Cairo. These were TV Soong’s delegates who had been at the Conference.” Point being: this story appears a dozen or more times in Prouty's work and he is consistent in the description of a Chinese delegation (not Chiang physically). If you wish to insist there was no such delegation in Tehran then that is your opinion and there is nothing else to add.

While your intention is to label Prouty as “bogus”, “nutty”, and “bizarre”, this new claim is, again, based on a straw man argument. As one of Prouty’s oft-told tales, appearing a dozen or more times in his collected writings, the reference is clearly to a Chinese delegation rather than Chiang Kai-Shek himself. You have misunderstood Prouty’s own words and paraded your misunderstanding here and in another thread.

Just my opinion, but peak “fringe” rests in the promotion of the concepts and deceitful rhetorical techniques of the likes of McAdams and Litwin.

Sandy is correct. The “Jewish Sgt” discussion is about the complicated logistics of the AWACS system, and not a racialist formula for military deployments as you seem to have interpreted. The 35-page document that you don’t have time to read is a historical discussion of the AWACS controversy, written by researchers from an Israeli think tank, which confirms the uncontroversial prominence of ethnic or racial identity during the debate in 1981. Therefore reference to such at the time, as in Prouty's letter, was not automatically evidence of extremist viewpoints, as is assumed by contemporary critics (who are Fred Litwin - who first advanced this notion - and parroted by Michael Griffith on this Forum). But “his politics and apparent prejudices”, as argued in 1991 and again today, are used precisely to deny his credibility. As I have said previously, I had reason to work intensively with Prouty’s archives over the past few years, and the notion he was right wing or held extremist racialist views is assuredly not supported at all by his collected essays and interviews. Therefore accepting this notion, as you suggest, would be performing a disservice to the documented record and an accurate understanding of his work.

All I know is what Len Osanic shared with me, and what Prouty said to the ARRB: He respected the limits of his signed confidentiality agreements.

Kirk - you unfortunately fundamentally misunderstand the source and context of this particular complaint, and therefore your opinion as expressed is entirely misguided. Footnote #43 from my essay addresses the source quote and its immediate context - the controversial AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia early in the Reagan administration.

All of these distorted and out-of-context claims, as you note, have been effectively countermanded. Obviously, the poster will persist regardless. When presented with physical proof of his errors, such as the radio program, he simply doubles down and insists on his falsehoods. The cold fact is that Mr Prouty nowhere at any time expressed extremist views, and the poster’s continuing insistence that he did is completely in error. That this is all in the service of a vicious smear reveals a reckless, irresponsible and ultimately selfish mindset which contributes nothing to the Educational process represented by this Forum.

Mr Griffith continues to demonstrate that, on this topic, there is not a single internet rumour he will not endorse if it corresponds with his own personal projections. He is portraying a wildly exaggerated and distorted frame of reference which stems from ideologically-motivated and narrowly focussed source material from the early 1990s, the background of which is discussed in the essay. Here is a reference which clarifies how distorted and off-base these claims really are. This is one of the Radio Free America broadcasts which is described as replete with extremist racialist content. Judge for yourself: https://www.prouty.org/RFA/aug_31_1989.mp3

With the essay, I was focussed less on attempting to influence opinion on Prouty and his work, and more on setting the record straight in the face of a resurgence of partially informed criticism sourced primarily from literal “hatchet-jobs” devised in the 1990s in reaction to Oliver Stone’s “JFK”. The motivation for these character attacks was the film’s inclusion of facts pertaining to NSAM 263 and 273, as Prouty himself noted in a 1994 interview: “This was the most important fallout of working on this movie JFK for me personally. As soon as we put into the movie the fact of history that John F Kennedy had signed a White House paper, in those days called National Security Action memoranda, the highest most formal paper the executive branch could publish, number 263, it was dated 11 October 1963, in the month before he died. And that paper clearly said he was not going to put Americans into Vietnam. It went even further, in so many words it said that all American personnel were going to be out of Vietnam by the end of 1965. And the minute we put that into the script of the movie, even before the movie was made and put in the theatres, the newspapers and other pseudo-historians began to say ‘there’s no such thing, Prouty and Oliver Stone are wrong’. Well, there certainly is. You can find it in the Foreign Relations U.S. series.” (May 5, 1994) As Len Osanic has noted elsewhere, the personal attacks related to the movie were primarily focussed on Oliver Stone, followed by Jim Garrison. However, the persistence of unmerited reputational assaults on Prouty long after his insights on NSAM 263/273 have been essentially confirmed, is certainly a curious feature of the contemporary debate.

Yes. Robert is mistaken about Prouty and Operation Bloodstone. The error, in part, originates with Simpson, who incorrectly describes Prouty as “a senior aide to the airforce chief of staff in the 1940s”, which may indicate some confusion with his actual duties with the Air Transport Command. Note, though, Simpson does not say Prouty was “senior aide” specifically to Vanderburg and he says “1940s” rather than specifically 1947 or 1948 when the programs in question began. If Simpson knew of a direct correlation between Prouty and Vanderburg it would have been specified within the paragraph under discussion here. The other quote - from the Ratcliffe interview - refers to information in Simpson’s book, which obviously impressed Prouty as he was not aware of the extent of the programs. Prouty uses “we” in reference to that information i.e. “we” the United States. He wouldn’t need to refer to specific information in the Simpson book if he was discussing programs he himself was responsible for. I am not overstating what Robert meant. Robert has made the following direct claims (emphasis added): Prouty said he created “a network of Nazi commandos and assassins” Prouty admitted to being “ a driving force behind creation of the United States Army’s “Special Forces” units” Prouty “was front-and-center in the utilization of Nazi émigrés within US Army Special Forces” Prouty was doing academic work at Yale and in New York City from 1946 to the beginning of 1951, as he discusses in Understanding Special Operations. He also details the mission to Syria in 1944 in the same volume.

Paul, I have followed the “Nazi Connection to the JFKA” since the 1990s. Simpson’s book was published in 1988. Carl Oglesby wrote about Gehlen in “The Yankee and the Cowboy War” in the mid-70s. The U.S. gov’t denied its relationship with Gehlen up through the year 2000. I couldn’t begin to understand anyone who might belong to a “no big deal camp”. The distributed presence of exfiltrated Nazi war criminals had severe well documented consequences within Latin America and NATO, to name two places. David Emory has been expanding knowledge of the networks for a very long time.No doubt there is much more to be learned. Fletcher Prouty witnessed first hand an exfiltration operation moving German personnel out of Roumania and away from the advancing Soviets. He was under the impression it was an OSS operation, orchestrated by Wisner. There’s a clue. Prouty’s superior in the Air Transport Command Col. RJ Smith set up that particular event logistically. That is, maybe, another clue. But what we have here is an entire thread speculating that it was Prouty - the enlisted man following orders - who was running the entire operation! Robert’s “proof” that Prouty worked under Vanderburg and was instrumental with Operation Bloodstone in 1947-48 is lacking, to say the least, and does not amount to much more than a misinterpretation of a pronoun. From that weak foundation he has offered sweeping generalizations and broad surmises which are not grounded in or even suggested by the material record, let alone the two primary sources he claims. The material record shows Prouty in academic pursuits through the late 1940s, as appears in his military records and as he discusses in fair detail in Understanding Special Operations. This thread has followed a months long run of reputational disparagement directed at Prouty on this Forum, most of which sources to decades-old “hatchet jobs”. I am finishing up a detailed rebuttal, to be published soon at another site.

Robert - Prouty’s military records show him at Yale and New York City on academic assignments (course teaching and textbook writing) from 1946 through the beginning of 1951. How do you account for this in light of your hypothetical claims that Prouty was an “organizing military officer” for a massive covert program? What is the source of your information on Maj. Gen. Robert James "J.R." Smith? You have inferred he had long-standing operational interests aligned with Col. Prouty, beginning in 1943. You are claiming that Prouty made “admissions” of his role during interviews in the 1980s. It appears your hypothesis is in no small part reliant on such admission. Here is one quote you provide: “But I've done a lot of thinking since then, especially since the publication of this book Blowback and others, that shows we exfiltrated thousands of ex-Nazis out of Germany for various reasons after WWII..." Here’s a second: "...The Eastern European and Russian émigré groups we had picked up from the Germans were the center of this; they were the personnel,” according to the retired colonel. “The CIA was to prepare these forces in peacetime; stockpile weapons, radios, and Jeeps for them to use; and keep them ready in the event of war. A lot of this equipment came from military surplus..." You have added emphasis - namely you have underlined the word “we”. It appears you have determined that “we” is a direct reference to Prouty himself and the programs you hypothesize he was responsible for. I would venture that most readers, in context, would understand the word “we” as instead referring to the United States or the United States Military. Note in the first quote how the word “we” is contextualized in reference to information from the Simpson book “Blowback”. Surely Prouty didn’t learn of his own alleged nefarious role from a book published forty years later, but that’s how the sentence reads according to your interpretation. It appears your hypothesis is about three weeks old. Yet you have stacked the thread with a torrent of names and connections outlining a major covert program extending over decades which, if true, upends decades of historic research and rewrites the postwar era. Can you discuss your research methods?

I am entirely familiar with both Ratcliffe’s book and Simpson’s. I do not recall any portion of either which involves a Prouty “admission” of having a “direct role” with these fascist emigre and stay-behind networks. The Syrian experience was incidental - he did not know ahead of time the Germans were being moved as well. In the 1950s, Prouty was aware of the basic outlines of the CIA’s programs in Eastern Europe, but such awareness does not translate into being “front-and-center in the utilization of Nazi émigrés within US Army Special Forces”. That suggests an active direct engagement specifically with that program, which the job description of the liaison position is not consistent with. This is what you have so far claimed: Prouty said he created “a network of Nazi commandos and assassins” Prouty admitted to being “ a driving force behind creation of the United States Army’s “Special Forces” units” Prouty “was front-and-center in the utilization of Nazi émigrés within US Army Special Forces” I don’t see any of those claims supported by the quotes you provide. Also, Prouty was working in academic environments in 1947-48 when you seem to infer he was directly involved with Vanderburg and Operation Bloodstone. It appears you might be attributing the word “we” - which Prouty uses in those quotes - to refer to him (Prouty) personally instead of, as I would read it, “we” meaning the United States. Prouty was not “right-wing”. That is a fundamental error in this line of approach.