Paul Brancato

Thanks - Ratical is an interesting website I have not previously visited. I’m reading the Prouty interviews. I tend to agree with you that his naysayers focus in on one thing or another but miss the forest for the trees. I fail to see what is so incendiary about his recollections that a cottage industry would form in order to discredit him.

Maybe all this misses a point. We didn’t need Prouty’s mistaken evidence of a Bush connection to the Bay of Pigs. McBride’s discovery of the Hoover memo to ‘George Bush of the CIA was a far more important clue. Prouty’s revelation was a misdirection, intentional or not. But that doesn’t amount to a vindication of George Bush, whose explanation for the memo, discovered on the eve of his appointment to CIA director, doesn’t ring true. I realize this is a thread about Prouty, not Bush.

I’m certainly not on a mission re Prouty. What I’d like the experts here to do is outline in their view what Prouty, in his Liaison role between JCS and CIA would have known or not known regarding covert ops. There are inconsistencies in his testimony, and maybe he had good reasons for not going on the record, or not confirming previous assertions like the military stand down order. But it remains troubling that he held back on Lansdale. He must have known far more about a lot of things than he ever let on. so what exactly would he have been privy to?

So - Kirk - you don’t think that Dulles and company killed JFK? Do you dismiss Talbot too? Can you not recognize ‘shoot the messenger’? Did the ARRB help us understand the truth of Nov 22? Or continue to cover up the truth? Are you a CIA rooter? A fan of the Joint Chiefs? Just where do you stand?

Special services bureau, located underground at the Dallas Fairgrounds. Steve - is there a list of who was in the bureau?

When did you question Hosty?

I think I’ve read this years ago, but thanks Ben. I recall thinking why would Gonzalez, someone I thought was super progressive, do this. Now, in the fullness of time, it’s more clear.

Jim - remind me - who got Sprague ousted?

Great question Steve. Wonder if anyone knows? First thing that comes to my mind is his ‘alibi’ for where he was late morning on Nov 22. Since he was supposedly bringing a shoplifter into a police station, and as I recall there are no official records of that incident, only the shop owners decade later statement to the effect that Tippit was the officer who showed up in response to his phone call to the police reporting the shoplifter, such a notebook might clarify this.

Last paragraph is sure interesting - Hosty did not want to talk about the subjects he would have known the most about. He is quite sincere about what he was interested in (or perhaps what he was interested in talking to you about?). Do you think that Hosty knew much more than he was telling? You mention contact with subversives. Could you elaborate? What is it that you suspect Hosty may have held back about Oswald’s activity in Dallas re subversives?

They haven’t so far admitted that. What’s your take on the article?

Fortunately I didn’t make that comment.

All first hand accounts. Are your sources first hand accounts?

Michael - do you really want to get to the truth about the assassination?

If Prouty’s claims about JFK plans to leave VN were only his statements that would be one thing. But the NS memoranda are real, and the ‘liberal’ journalists who deny this are in fact revisionists. Why would I or anyone care what these ‘liberal’ say? Our media has perpetuated the myth that JFK was killed by a lone nut with no political objectives. Is that what you believe Michael? A simple yes or no would be appreciated.

What is the source for your rebuttal?

The 1994 interview is so prescient - incredible. He mentions Report From Iron Mountain, widely considered to be a farce. Might I ask what any of you think of this?

Michael - the Prouty interview is available. What is your source for your rebuttal?

To be clear, if my assumption is correct, the memo is from Clyde Tolson, and he claims that Katzenbach, then Deputy AG, told him that the man in custody in Dallas was to be blamed for the murder. I would read that as coming from Hoover, who had already told Katzenbach’s boss the same thing. Sandy - refresh my memory - who in the CIA was communicating with Hoover prior to his phone call to RFK? It sure seems like the FBI and Justice department were at loggerheads with the CIA and Military from the get go. This seems like a good reason for LBJ to be sitting on the crapper on AF 1 freaking out. If the planners were in communication with AF 1, and they were prepared beforehand with a designated patsy who they had linked in any way they could to Soviets and Cubans, it must have been painfully obvious to LBJ what came next. So in this case Hoover and LBJ decided to clamp down on this purposeful conspiracy and enforce the lone gunman theory immediately. It might also suggest that RFK knew enough to side with Hoover and LBJ on this immediately, through Katzenbach.

I too noticed the attempt to normalize the mocking of anyone that believes Operation Mockingbird was real and is ongoing. It would have been nice if the journalist had confronted RFK Jr on the spot instead of pointing out the fallacies afterwards regarding the effectiveness of Covid vaccines. As RFK Jr pointed out, the journalist was unprepared. He was there to do a hit piece disguised as ‘I came there in good faith to be fair but just didn’t like your manner or your theories’.

Thank you for saying it.

In Prouty’s own words, he certainly knew about Operation Bloodstone. I don’t know for a fact that he spent 3-4 years at Yale and did nothing else, no special assignments or travel. How can we know that?

The wilderness of mirrors, such an apt expression. Question - if you were JJ Angleton and William Harvey proved to you that Kim Philby was working for the Soviets, which he did, what would you do? I always thought that Angleton was either a fool, or he was a traitor. I never considered a third possibility, which is that he parlayed that knowledge in some way. What sense does it make that William Harvey and others would identify Philby as part of what later became known as the Cambridge 5, and then watch CIA, Angleton and presumably others as well, squelch their true identification? The ONLY thing that makes sense is that Philby was left in place as long as possible in order to use him. I put this on the current thread because I don’t think that travel records on McCord and Solie are enough to convict them of disloyalty. Angleton may have been running them, while the Soviets believed otherwise. Newman says he doesn’t care if Oswald was a shooter at Dealey Plaza or not. But if he is going to go on record as saying McCord was working for the Soviets AND running Oswald he needs to follow these ‘facts’ to their conclusions.

It’s not enough to put Michael on ignore. He should not be allowed to post here.

My oh my. I googled this and found zero mainstream coverage of the death or the suicide ruling. Snopes commented, saying rumors of anything but suicide were false. But reading their analysis just left me dumbfounded. They didn’t do any due diligence.