Paul Brancato

Greg - do read Albarelli’s A Terrible Mistake. The chapters on Lafitte and on George Hunter White are especially interesting and well researched, and written before any diaries surfaced. 
Leslie - the ‘we’ in we know so little about includes me and probably everyone else reading this other than you and Robert, who is continuing his deep dive into all the characters mentioned in Coup and in the diaries, and into many other dark recesses. I know you have no doubts about the authenticity of the Lafitte diaries, but please understand that the rest of us wonder about various aspects of it including handwriting analysis, possible multiple authors, and exactly what the notes represent. But we continue to examine the names therein. You knew Hank better than anyone, and put your lifeblood into getting his work published, and continue to delve into the clues in the diaries  So I understand how very important this is to you, how you feel attacked when someone has questions. Can you let the questions exist without viewing them as a salvo in a turf war for truth? We all care, those of us reading this, how we got here in 2023, including Greg. I hope he takes me up on reading Hank’s earlier work and doesn’t just rely on Time magazine for a bio of this most interesting figure in history. 

10 hours ago, William Paris said:

Operation Mockingbird? I've never seen any information breaking down the media assets by left/right tendencies.  I'm certainly interested...

 

Mockingbird - thanks. My understanding, though I don’t recall why I know this, is that CIA targeted the left and liberal media because the conservatives were already on their side. I wonder if anyone remembers the NYT mea culpa article from around 2004 listing all the things they got wrong in their coverage leading up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. I only saw it recently, as I tuned them out when they joined the propaganda push for War. WMD’s, aluminum tubes, uranium from Africa, all of it - they apologized. Well, too little too late.

I mentioned Lafitte in conjunction with Clay Shaw, Permindex member. 

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Johnson referenced the Douglass book?

Whew.  Is RFK Jr making progress?

Maybe with republicans, but the democrats are crucifying him 

19 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Paul,

     My point is that, in some instances, we need to speak the truth, even if some people are offended by it.

     In my experience, the best approach to helping delusional people is to be scrupulously honest.

     The case of Ron Johnson is a good example.

     Should we, out of politeness, refrain from criticizing a man like Ron Johnson who actively participated in Trump's false Elector scam in 2020, and then refused to endorse Biden's election?

       I'm reminded of the old quote, inaccurately attributed to Edmund Burke, that, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

      

      

I couldn’t possibly agree more. 

Robert - could you fill in any detail on Droller in Taiwan? 

William - very simply, you are confusing ordinary people, most of whom are very underprivileged and all too easy to manipulate, with corrupt political manipulators. But it is also necessary, when you do hold power, to talk to your enemies and try to see things through their eyes from their points of view. You must think I’m losing my mind, or stupid. You don’t, ever, have to cave on your principles. You do need, always, to be a decent human being. The political class is engaged in a struggle, and both are being manipulated by hidden hands. Nothing new in that, been going on for millennia. The whole point of Trump’s presidency was to divide and conquer. From that election forward it’s been Civil War. But not in families, not among friends, who can disagree and still find reasons to love and respect one another. This battle isn’t for the hearts and minds of the American people. That’s a myth, and the issues that seem to divide us were settled by the vast majority of folks on all sides long ago. The battle is for control of everyone, you and your Trumper cousins. We need to break this stranglehold in which both political parties participate. Anyone but Trump is not nearly good enough. The principles you espouse, which I believe in too, will never come to pass unless we see through the manipulators smokescreens. The question for you is how do Democrats convince the Trump voter to switch? By hating Trump? Doesn’t work my friend. It’s by presenting a real alternative, one that isn’t hypocritical and corrupt. Do you honestly think that the Democratic Party isn’t corrupt? How can they hope to change hearts and minds and bring  about a fairer, more just, more egalitarian, freer, society, the one they say they espouse? 

10 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Why in the world would you make such disparaging comments about Senator Ron Johnson while quoting his defense of the conspiracy view on the JFK case? I know why: because Senator Johnson is a conservative Republican.

Blind, rabid partisans such as yourself may not take anything Senator Johnson says seriously, but plenty of other people do. 

Once again, we see the rabidly partisan and harmful attitude that if someone supports the view that JFK was killed by a conspiracy, his arguments can only be taken seriously if he is a liberal.

 

 

I think you are at least partly right. Certainly the last sentence. But also the notion widely held on either side that the other is so entrenched and so wrong about everything that the only strategy left is winner take all. I happen to think that the strategy of Trump and the current Republicans on his team, and in general the Republican battle plan since Newt Gingrich, is to restrict as much as possible multiculturalism by going after voting rights, and to gain control of local governments and school boards towards the same ends, and towards restricting what kids are taught in school, and what rights women have towards their pregnancies. There is more to it of course - I’m summarizing. But to your point, this does not justify a tit for tat response. It would be far more productive to get out of the liberal/progressive bubble and talk to the people who vote for the other party. This is what RFK Jr has been up to for many years, and he gets criticized for it unjustly. People who vote for Trump, or other Republican candidates, are not deplorable. Racists, antisemites - misled and undereducated for the most part. Same for people who fall for illogical and too all encompassing conspiracy theories. By not trying to engage with them, meaning listening with open minds and hearts to their complaints, Democrats shoot themselves in their collective feet, and become the elite snobs they say we are. And look at the gang up against RFK Jr? I presume it was Republicans that asked him to testify today? Todays Democrats are making me sick, and this is while agreeing with their platform in almost all instances. If they think they are strengthening their electoral position by promoting censorship and partisanship in the extreme I think they are in for an incredible shock. 
 

Thanks for the update. Why hide his witness statements? Whoever this Perdomo is, (and I’m inclined to think as you do that it’s not the same Perdomo, mostly from photo comparisons) if his witness statements are secret that is indeed troubling and demands explanation. 

So much for Operation Bloodstone. 
ok - Prouty. This is for all of us, Michael, William on two sides, others, and Jim D. 
I am bothered by Prouty’s latter day penchant for the far right. But I don’t think speaking at Liberty Lobby events or to Holocaust deniers is an offense in and of itself. So how about this? Can one side or another provide complete transcripts of what Prouty actually said on air or in person on one or more of these occasions? It does, most certainly, matter what he said, much more than who he said it to. 

Robert - that is really tremendous research, pulling all this together and bringing in the rather mysterious Permindex. No wonder the goons stopped Garrison. Funny - last night I was thinking about Permindex - yet again, as this comes up often in my forever seeking brain. It was Jim D that first opened that door for me too, and we have had numerous exchanges on the forum, most recently with the Italian researcher Metta. This all becomes important because of Clay Shaw. Btw didn’t Pierre Lafitte later work for Shaw as a chef? During which time he helped raid Garrison’s files? I can only imagine WHICH files they searched for and removed. Seems obvious now that it wasn’t random. 

13 minutes ago, David Josephs said:

Thanks for the civil response W.   I don't mind it being pointed out where I'm wrong, but I need a bit more than "cause we say so"...

For those who stop short of the next step, McAdams sounds reasonable and logical, doesn't he?
I'm glad you took the next step...  now whether this too was part of "keeping the narrative going so they don't see the men behind the curtain"... I can only guess.

Like the repeated discussions about Oswald's shooting capability.  Since he was never in the window all that is, is a smoke screen to keep you busy ala, Salandria's famous quote.  Problem is when the minutia becomes a mountain.

(Incidentally...), Krulak and especially PROUTY saying it was Lansdale, doesn't make it Lansdale. 

If it was Lansdale though, does that not give the events a very different and sinister slant, especially to be allowed to walk past uniformed police with rifles? - do you see the tall tramp smiling as he walks by?

On the flip side, the top SS men begged off (Every read about FLYOD BORING: Palamara's "Boring is Interesting"?), Kellerman was a replacement (if I remember correctly) who would up being the man taking JFK's body from Parkland over the objections of the FBI and Dr. Rose.    And what he did at Bethesda and lied about was criminal.

So while PROUTY and his downline are many threads of the tapestry, there are many, many others - on purpose - to make understanding terribly difficult.

===

I am far from an expert, more like a novice when it comes to how and what the CIA did to cover itself and its assets and programs... I am aware of the broad stroke concepts and have read about some of the implementations.  There are outright experts right here, like @Larry Hancock whose works are must reads if you want any kind of clearer understanding of he CIA and it's methods.  And I'm sure he can recommend some others

To accept Oswald did it - one just needs to agree with the government
To learn he didn't requires dedicating one's life and accepting the evil that men do...  most don't have the stomach for it

 

Last sentence - ain’t that the truth? I have one friend who found the stomach after listening to me rant and finally reading JFK and the Unspeakable. No one else read anything, not even the trading cards I worked so hard on.

22 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

126 House Democrats voted NAY in 2002.

Small consolation. NYT, WAPO, CNN, Senate, most of the House, am I leaving anything out? Remember the UN weapons inspectors asking the coalition not to proceed because they were finally making very good progress, enough so that anyone looking closely behind the propaganda could see there were no wmd’s? Remember the mobilization against the war, largest in US history? We we right, they were wrong, the results have been devastating.  

Yes William - where are those Democrats? And why aren’t they speaking up? Can we just look at that as some form of ignorance? I can’t. I think it’s par for the 60 years course. It’s the Democrats fault that we never got to the bottom of this. And we know the CIA targeted the left or liberal media for their infiltration a la whatever that operation was (is) called. I heard someone from Ukraine today on the radio expressing total consternation about how much in lockstep the US media was when discussing the neo Nazi element in the Ukraine military, unlike before the invasion.o And in lockstep against RFK Jr. CA even has a petition floating around to ban him from running as a Democrat in the Ca primaries. Imagine that? What has the Democratic Party become? Well, given your point, to some extent what they always were, referring to the holders of power within that establishment . Remember when the League of Women Voters ran Democratic election debates? Until the D party took it away? Remember the lock step around the Iraq war, Donahue being fired from his most popular tv talk show? This is no Democracy. 

20 minutes ago, David Josephs said:

The memo is from Rocca up the chain.  Thanks again to Bill Simpich who provides the needed background...  
The redacted info from the FBI report this CIA report is referencing:  A. Edward Horsey, a public accountant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, tips the FBI that he been working with a group of people to study the Kennedy slaying. They concluded a man named Al Groat was on the grassy knoll firing a gun.    http://historiadiscordia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/19670718-fbi_memo-a_edward_horsey.jpg 

So much for paragraph 1.   https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=LISIREN-3  There are enough links and backstories to keep you busy for quite a while... but not the point

The rest describes what Bringuier told the FBI as found in an FBI report which Rocca must have seen or was briefed upon as he shares details of the FBI report.  If Bringuier is lying, he is lying about what DePino said to him which he tells to the FBI - ok, CIA lying to the FBI is expected - yet Rocca runs with the ball, forwards the info on and even offers a name which we are now learning appears to have direct implications within the assassination...

ROCCA offers the name to the person he is writing the memo to...  C/WH/1...  as this is not my area I am not sure who that was in 1967...  but are you of the mind that Rocca lies directly to his superiors in this case just to create a false record about a tiny little event while dropping a bombshell name - by mistake?

For the sake of discussion then... this BS disinformation which Bringuier feeds the FBI - what is the purpose of this Rocca memo to C/WH/1 and adding the name MAX HOHENLOHE ??

That is the question. 
tom - did you see my note about Garrison files being destroyed? Let’s wait and see if Jim D has anything to add on that, and on any references he may have seen in the Garrison files that survived. Again, wasn’t Pierre Lafitte involved in that destruction of Garrison files? 

Ben - now that you have labelled all the shenanigans, something many of us agree with, let’s get back to the historical topic itself. 
I am truly shocked at the info John Loftus provides in ‘The Secret War Against the Jews’. I haven’t finished the book, but so far, and from other books Loftus wrote, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed in the remainder of the book. Do not confuse this author with another - John W. Loftus. This author was a former prosecutor for the US Justice Department’s Nazi hunting unit. 

12 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

The Dictator-Puppet-in-Chief, through his illegal but indisputable snuff job on the JFK Records Act, is helping to cover up a Nazified-CIA JFKA? Really? Why? 

Ben - if you are referring to Biden, let’s add Trump to that moniker. 

Thank you David Josephs. 
there are two threads in which some of the same info is being discussed. I’m going to rewrite what I posted for Jim D on that other thread here.

Jim - Robert isn’t using Dipino and Bringuier as sources. He is using Raymond Rocca, who was the task force commander for the ‘Garrison Group’. Someone in that group, working for Rocca, sends him the info identifying the unnamed Nazi in Mexico City. It wasn’t either Dipino or Bringuier - they just said he was a Nazi working in Mexico City. This looks a lot different to me than how you are describing it. Why would Dipino bring this to Rocca’s attention? I would guess it’s because they are worried about its implications, and trying to help Rocca, not smear Garrison.
David - It looks like you and i are on the same page. 
Jim D - I’ve reposted this here. I cannot understand why you want to dismiss it, and denigrate Robert, which you have done a few times now. If you disagree with the general thesis that Robert seems to be developing, it would serve all of us well if you would argue your case by sharing your own conclusions about possible Nazi involvement. I’ll repeat what I said in an earlier post - collaboration is called for, not competition. Reading between the lines I gather that you, probably more familiar with Garrison’s files than anyone else, have not found anything Garrison himself or his staff wrote that indicates he was pursuing a Nazi in MC, or any other Nazis. If that’s the case, I’ll ask you how many of Garrisons files were destroyed before researchers got ahold of them? Btw if I’m not mistaken Pierre Lafitte was one of the men who destroyed Garrison files. 
 

Did anyone here listen to the interview where he supposedly said what got you all so riled up? Yes or no?

Jeff - for a moment leaving out Bloodstone, what was Prouty doing from say 1954 to 1962? Weren’t there like 10 CIA military overthrows of elected governments during those years? Wasn’t he running covert ops for the Pentagon, or something like that? I don’t feel up to looking at past posts to determine his official title, but it seems to me he was part of that nexus. 

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Anyone who would use DePino and Carlos B as serious witnesses to what Garrison was doing knows utterly nothing about what was happening in New Orleans.

And I can say that as a declarative fact.

Go ahead and read my book, Mellen's book or Bill Davy's book.

Bob is not quoting from a Garrison memo.  He is quoting from a CIA document.  These are full of disinformation.

And Bringuier was a prime font of this to both the CIA and FBI.

And anyone who studies the Garrison case would know that.

What this shows is Bob's lack of knowledge about New Orleans, and his willingness to sacrifice his credibility on the altar of  his new cause.

 

Jim - Robert isn’t using Dipino and Bringuier as sources. He is using Raymond Rocca, who is the task force commander for the Garrison group. Someone in the Garrison group, working for Rocca, sends him the info identifying the unnamed Nazi in Mexico City. It wasn’t either Dipino or Bringuier - they just said he was a Nazi in MC. This looks a lot different to me than how you are describing it. Why would Dipino bring this to Rocco’s attention? I would guess it’s because they are worried about its implications, and trying to help Rocca, not smear Garrison. 

5 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Is this supposed to be something new?

And this is what you use to dodge the fact that you are using two CIA assets who deliberately tried to smear Garrison and feed disinfo about him?

Please Bob.

 

 Which CIA assets is Bob using? Does his info on Bloodstone depend on them? Is he also using primary documents? And for many, Prouty’s pre assassination career isn’t old news. I’ve never really thought about it. Those job titles put him at the center of covert policy no? Do you think Bob is misstating Prouty’s bio? I would also repeat something others have said - have you given Otto Skorzeny enough of a deep dive? We need you Jim, especially you, to take this seriously. I understand your objection to Griffith’s enumeration of Prouty’s supposed sins during retirement. I’ll look forward to reading Jeff’s essay, and have read the ones on your website too. I confess I’m confused - I don’t know who the real Prouty was. So I read and ponder. What I’m hoping you will do going forward is to put your acumen on solving the assassinations. 

19 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Yes. I was momentarily open to the RFK Jr. candidacy at first, but not now. The major right-wing billionaire money and all the love from right-wing MAGA types combined with RFK Jr. playing nice to Trump instead of calling for all hands on deck toward the very real prospect of hard fascism just like Pinochet or Mussolini. 

He cannot even say he will support the Democratic nominee against Trump if that is the choice. He cannot say he will raise taxes on the super-wealthy--start the process of unwinding class war against the working poor of America, find his inner Bernie or Elizabeth Warren willing to take stands and fight on economic issues--or support laws addressing global warming. As Kirk Gallaway has brought out. 

RFK Jr's father dealt with the likes of the John Birch Society, Minutemen, and General Edwin Walker, precursors in a direct line of continuity to today's Trump and MAGA--right-wing populism with a white-nationalist, male-supremacist ethos and core base and vigilante violence (e.g. Jan 6).

Can't RFK Jr. see that? Sadly, apparently not. 

Can anyone imagine RFK playing nice to the General Walker types and being fine with HL Hunt money bankrolling RFK's presidential run in 1968? 

Can anyone imagine RFK not supporting the Democratic nominee against Nixon, if RFK had failed to win the nomination in 1968? 

Can anyone imagine RFK playing nice with Trump, if RFK were alive today? 

Good grief is right, Matt. 

I viewed RFK Jr’s fund raising money - he is so far behind Biden and Trump. Ask yourself, does this kind of journalism which magnifies right wing support for him actually help him in a primary fight? I’d say it’s designed to make sure Democrats don’t support his primary challenge. If my friends are a good litmus test, it’s very effective. 
I don’t know what interview this latest round of hit pieces refers to, but if you know which it is, my advice is to watch it for yourselves. Perhaps it’s the interview with the Rabbi I saw that is causing all the fuss. If so I can tell you exactly what he said, or you can read his Twitter responses. He was talking about bio warfare and bio labs, and saying that one of the things researchers are working on is targeted bio weapons, and how awful that would be. He specifically said he wasn’t suggesting that Covid was such a weapon, prior to quoting a study which looked at ethnic Covid death rates and concluded that Chinese and Jewish people fared best in the study. The Rabbi then said that he thinks that couldn’t be true because he knows so many Jews who succumbed, to which RFK Jr says maybe you’re correct on that, I was just quoting what the study suggested, and warning of targeting bio weapons in general. 

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

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 is not part of the get Prouty movement. He was simply pointing out his quotes, and his official capacity. In your interpretation of the quotes in Blowback, Prouty was just giving Simpson a history lesson. In Robert’s he is recounting operations that he was involved in first hand. Clearly he had superior officers, so you are overstating what Robert meant. You are stating that other than one Roumanian operation, or was it Syrian, he was back home in an academic post. Am I correct? Are you saying that Robert is mistaken about Prouty’s official title during Operation Bloodstone? 

Michael Griffith - please allow Jim D to focus on Bloodstone just for a bit. 
jim - it’s so important to have you revisit this, which you say you put aside after ARRB revelations that seemed to put Cubans front and center. I’m paraphrasing so if I’m not getting to the gist of your objection please correct me. 
The Nazi agent in MC was the tip of the iceberg. The Mexico City station, Win Scott in particular. I believe Robert has a lot more to share on that. He has been trying to be methodical, one step at a time, but there is so much resistance that he is put in the defensive. I know you mentioned Mae’s Nazi treatise, in fact it was probably Destiny Betrayed that put me onto that. It was a first step by an intrepid journalist who had access to way less documents. She focused pretty heavily in her work on Otto Von Bolschwing, who the CIA eventually had to stop protecting due to his exposure. It was the beginning of the unraveling. I’m interested in seeing the whole nasty thing exposed, and we are making progress. 
Robert made a good case for Jerry Droller/Frank Bender actually being a prominent Nazi named Friedrich Schwend. He withdrew that post, presumably to re-examine the evidence, and I’m hoping he reposts it, because it was a good place to start. Maybe his evidence was flawed in some way - I don’t know - but I hope whatever it was that caused him to remove it gets resolved. 
Jim - did the ARRB convince you that shooters were Cuban? If so who? And who ran the operation? My take on the Cuban angle is that it doesn’t jibe with William King Harvey and his ZRRIFLE op. We need to take a much closer look at his buddy Arnold Silver, and at any op with the letters ZR.