Paul Brancato

Leslie - Charles Willoughby is mentioned often. I know basically who he was. It seems he is a central figure in the conspiracy in Coup. Would you say what you and Hank thought his involvement was? What is his connection to Skorzeny etc?

Question - there were many events labeled super spreader. Yet I’ve not seen any analysis of death rates caused by such events. Do you know of any?

Dresser - Bush family connection. Could you summarize the SWRI connection?

When did Atkins leave Madrid, or go to VN? Where was he in 1963? Sure seems like a good candidate for shooter.

Thanks for putting this so simply. He is running as a Democrat - spilling poison as you put it on right out of the gate is what msm is doing, and it’s inappropriate and troubling. It’s hard to believe there is any integrity in the press when this happens, and I wish we here would refrain from politically punditry and start looking at his website and letting him speak for himself. I hope we don’t repeat the various albatrosses he’s already wearing, and see where he goes from here.

I know you are troubled by the anti-vaccine movement. Have you spent any time on RFK’s website?

Respectfully, I understand your point of view. Assuming he doesn’t join Trump on a ticket - if he did I think he might as you say siphon off votes - he would have to run as an independent in order to hurt Democrats. Personally I’d like to see him compete in the Democratic primaries. It’s too early to dismiss his candidacy. And my main point is that I don’t want the MSM to spin their coverage of RFK Jr through the words of Republican operatives. At this point in the election cycle we should evaluate the candidates of either party or independent ones on their merit.

Matt - thanks for sharing the smear campaign. In your mind, if the press quotes Bannon or Stone talking about RFK jr that’s newsworthy, whereas RFK jr talking about his life, beliefs, organization is not? First - would you vote for him under any circumstance? Second, most Democratic progressives who can make their way through the smear campaign would nevertheless find it extremely troubling and distasteful if RFK Jr, was courting the MAGA leaders, or considering running as Trump’s VP - a perfect example of msm coverage designed to hurt RFK jr among Democrats btw. My close friend, whose pov is similar to yours, asked me “would you distance yourself from him if he didn’t publicly denounce Bannon and Stone”? My answer is this - if he was interested in running with Trump, or having their support in his Democratic primary run the answer is yes. But RFK Jr would have no chance in the Democratic primaries if he was in cahoots with those people. So there is zero chance that he will declare his appreciation for MAGA leaders. But neither will he choose to alienate their voters. So ask yourself - why is Bannon etc doing this? My friend said - ‘to hurt the Democrats’. How does that work? You mean, Bannon wants RFK jr to get the nomination so he can lose in the general election? No? What then?

Michael Griffith - you WILL find people who are not anti-semitic who are very critical of Israel, like myself and many of my Jewish friends. You seem to conflate the two positions.

Michael -what are you saying? That guilt by association proves that Prouty was sympathetic to these awful publications? That he should have gone elsewhere to publish? Reminds me a bit of the good jfk researchers who participate in Judyth Vary Baker’s form. You can keep making the case against Carto and his ilk, but until you prove that Prouty was guilty of the same sins you only have guilt by association. You are shooting the messenger instead of engaging in Prouty’s ideas.

I don’t recall reading anything by Berlet attacking Stone’s JFK or Prouty. I hadn’t heard of Berlet before but in trying to fact check this Liberty Lobby Prouty stuff I came across his articles which have a theme running through them that it seems to me were prescient. Paul - am I mistaken? Was Berlet part of the Oliver Stone Prouty smear campaign? His thesis was that right wing groups were infiltrating the left. I read his material on Christic with great interest, since I used Christic research for my Iran Contra scandal trading cards, and met Sheehan. I think he is brilliant. Meanwhile, in today’s political climate the right and left have gotten pretty confused. The term Deep State is a case in point. It’s been wholly co-opted by the right, and lefties almost never talk about it. I recall Chomsky being quite critical of the Christic ‘secret team’ idea, saying that it wasn’t secret at all. He has a point when he says that the US State carries out its agenda openly. But what about the death squad activities that were part of the Central and South American milieu being run by former anti-Castro Cubans like Felix Rodriguez and Rafael Quintero? I know I’m wandering a bit. To get back to Berlet’s thesis, I have several far left friends and acquaintances who now share with the Right a paranoid view of just how far the ‘elites’ in Davos etc have gone to institute technocracy, which the old Right would have called ‘Communism and Socialism’. It’s a very confusing pallet of ideas. Very real conspiracies, such as the one that killed our most progressive leaders in the 1960’s, are buried in a sea of crazy conspiracies. And that’s the point. Help me, in your own words of possible, to understand who Berlet was and who he worked for.

I find it so interesting to read Waverly Root’s research, but I’m unable to find it on Google, though his long history as a food writer and historian is easy. Did Hank find his articles for WAPO and others?

It seems rather obvious that at the very least Schacht was no dummy. His post war activities are what interest me.

Chuck - you know we are mostly on the same page. I can’t bring myself to buy the kindle edition of Kross’s book after reading the reviews on Amazon. Self published perhaps? Is there original research in it beyond what Fensterwald dug up?

Marjan - Leslie is certainly not an official jfk record keeper. Most of us are not that.

Larry - it’s good to know you are looking into this. I have your book btw. Question for you is - what about currently? Do you think the phenomena is extraterrestrial?

It seems to me that the issues he raises are fundamental.

Greg and Michael - no one, no one, is denying who Carto, Liberty Lobby, Spotlight mag were or what they stood for. I think all of this does in fact stem from an Esquire hit piece on Stone’s JFK. It seems that we are supposed to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Chip Berlet, referenced by Michael, has written many interesting articles analyzing the far right incursion into the progressive left. It’s been going on for over 3 decades, and we can see the results in Trump’s victory. I have many friends who have become quite confused due to this infiltration. But none of them are anti-Semitic Holocaust denying fascists. There are many instances of progressive thinkers distancing themselves when they realized what was taken place. But there is another way of looking at this. The common cause that the far right uses is frustration with government and endless wars. Then they slip in their anti-Zionist message and it rings a bell. A lot of leftists, myself included, are anti- Zionist. Not anti-Semitic, not Holocaust deniers, just pissed off at Israel. I include many if not most of my Jewish friends in this camp, and I grew up with them and have lifelong friendships with the children of survivors. The far right has been far better organized and funded over these several decades, going back to the John Birch Society, than any Leftist organizations. But ideologically it’s we on the left who should be DP finding common cause with the anti- establishment right, while insisting that they have mis-defined their grand conspiracy. Overall, we should try to find common cause, as we are incidentally doing right now with Morley’s lawsuit and the lone Republican in Congress willing to put forth a challenge to Biden. The whole left right thing needs to be rethought. It’s a tool used by the ACTUAL power elite, who are not left or right, just Empire driven and wealth oriented. They made common cause with N… Germany in their thirst for power and money. i still recall how annoyed I was when I first heard the Larouche types talking about the New World Order. Why? Because it wasn’t in some feared future, it was already here and had been for a damn long time.

Marian - how would you label Otto Skorzeny?

Actually the High Cabal statement was easy to find. Why are you twisting it to being anti-semitic? He says essentially that the CIA worked on behalf of a high cabal of bankers and industrialists. Does the word ‘banker’ sound like a dog whistle to you?

Can you show Prouty literally making anti semitic, not anti-Israeli btw, remarks, and appearing alongside of the neos N’s, white supremacists, Holocaust deniers? You’ve belabored your point now for pages. I get your complaint, agree that it’s troubling, would never defend Carto or any of his screwed up friends. But this thread is about Prouty not Carto. Is the transcript of Prouty appearing as a character witness for Carto available? I assume you’ve looked for it, and read it if it is. Could you elaborate on his conspiracy theory of a ‘high cabal’? What exactly does he say?

Kirk - just want to point out that I am very familiar with the allegations and the truth behind those allegations concerning Carto and Liberty Lobby, and like you was disappointed with Prouty’s backtracking under oath. I’m also a fan of the movie JFK, but not a fan of Prouty for other reasons. I still think it’s a smear against Prouty intended to reveal him as an anti- Semite and Holocaust denier. We might as well dismiss Mark Lane too, who not only defended Liberty Lobby but also worked for Jim Jones. Yet it’s undeniable how much good work Lane did on the JFK case. It’s called shoot the messenger right? I think that the only way to judge Lansdale’s participation on 11/22 is on its own merits. Prouty claims he was there. That may be true regardless of anything Mr. Griffith has pointed out, and even if Lansdale was there it doesn’t prove he was running the show. I also don’t think that the efforts to assassinate Prouty’s character need to be CIA directed, or that they prove that aspersions of Prouty prove he was dangerous to the lone gunman theory of the WC. It would me more productive to examine Lansdale than Prouty.

Leslie - that your source disappeared is unsettling. Not only are the pics clearly of two different people, but it purports to come from French files and says Mertz was impersonating Souetre in Dallas. I would think it safe to assume this did not in fact come from official French files because of the glaring discrepancy in the photos. But since the French aren’t sharing we don’t know if they ultimately concluded that Mertz was in Dallas, but if that part is true it makes it easier to understand why they wouldn’t share the info.

Thanks for that Michael.

And I believe that you or somebody here said that he was dark haired and 5’9” or thereabouts. Is that correct?