Ron Ecker

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the article. As for Griffith, it looks like he's at liberty to lobby against Prouty all he wants.

I don't doubt the importance of Prouty's book. I contributed my "gnat" to the thread because it's something I came across in my research of the Tokyo flight, and I thought it was worth a mention in a thread about Prouty. That is all.

I'll just add that there was really no excuse for him being unaware, mistaken, or ignorant. He could have easily found out about the conferences but he apparently didn't. Which is a careless way to write a book.

Certainly. He was dishonest only if he knew the history of the conferences but wrote as if he didn't, and as if no one else did either. I don't know what he knew, I just know that what he wrote comes across as dishonest if he did know. If he didn't know, then the word "ignorant" applies in this case. He was being either ignorant or dishonest. You say he was just ignorant in this case. I've got no argument with that. I've just presented the options.

For some reason I'm not getting through here. I'll try one more time. In his book Prouty said, "No one has explained why the Kennedy cabinet was ordered to Japan at that time." Which is BS. How difficult would it have been for Prouty to find out that the cabinet was "ordered" to Japan for a third annual conference, which always took place in November or December? Now if he's saying that "No one has explained why the Kennedy cabinet ws ordered to Japan at that time," meaning when JFK was to be shot in Dallas, who in the world did he expect to "explain" such a government conspiracy to him? I don't think conspirators are in the habit of explaining their conspiracies to any curious inquirers.

I don’t know who was involved in scheduling the Tokyo conference, I just know it was scheduled for November 25-27. As for Prouty’s “dishonesty,” I was not referring to any legitimate Prouty “speculations” about the Tokyo flight, I was referring to either his expressed ignorance or dishonesty about it. He said that “no one had explained” why most of the Cabinet was simultaneously out of the country. All he had to do was inquire to find out why. I’m sure there was someone in government who could tell him about why (officially) those Cabinet members were going together to Tokyo for a third annual conference. But obviously, if he really didn't know, he didn’t bother to find out why.

I suspect that it was not just coincidence. The purpose of my post was not to discount a conspiracy, it was just to point out Prouty being ignorant or dishonest in his statements about the flight and Honolulu conference, since Prouty is the subject of the thread.

The annual Tokyo conferences took place in November or December of each year (there were three). The first conference, which JFK called "a joint Cabinet group," was held in Tokyo in early November, 1961. The second was held in Washington on December 3-5, 1962. The third was to be held in Tokyo on November 25-27, 1963. I don't know when that date was set, I only know that there was nothing unusual about November or December dates for the conference. The Honolulu conference was held on November 20-21 so that Secretary Rusk could go straight from Honolulu to Tokyo, the other Cabinet members arriving in Honolulu on the evening of November 21. As for the question "Are there any examples, prior to November 22, 1963, of multiple Presidential cabinet members being simultaneously out of the country during a serious national crisis?" First off, there was no "serious national crisis" when the Cabinet plane took off for Tokyo. Secondly, no, most of the Cabinet members being simultaneously out of the country was not unprecedented if we assume, based on JFK's description of "a joint Cabinet group," that most of the Cabinet was out of the country simultaneously for the Tokyo conference in early November 1961.

Most of the research I’ve done on Prouty was related to the fact that at the time of the JFK assassination, almost the entire Cabinet was out of the country on an airplane bound for Tokyo, Japan. And what Prouty had to say about it doesn’t cast him in a very good light. Here is an excerpt from my article “The Tokyo Flight”: In his book (JFK) Prouty calls the Cabinet members' trip to Japan "unprecedented," and says, "No one has explained why the Kennedy cabinet was ordered to Japan at that time." But in fact the explanation can be readily found in the official records of the JFK administration. In June 1961 JFK met in Washington with Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda, and in a joint statement they announced an agreement "to establish a joint United States-Japan committee on trade and economic affairs at the cabinet level.” In a November 8, 1961 press conference, JFK commented on "the success and significance of the first meeting of the Joint United States-Japan Committee on Trade and Economic Affairs," which was held the week before in Japan, and which he described as a "joint Cabinet group.” (The acronym for this committee in State Department documents is the Joint ECONCOM.) The second annual meeting was held in Washington on December 3-5, 1962, and the third was to have taken place in Tokyo on November 25-27, 1963. (End of excerpt.) So either Prouty was just too lazy to find out the facts through his connections, or else he was lying (how many readers of his book would know it?) when he said that it was “unprecedented” and “no one has explained” it. And if he was just too lazy, he had no justification whatsoever for saying that was unprecedented and unexplained. But wait, there’s more. Another excerpt: (Secretary of State) Rusk and Defense Secretary McNamara attended a conference on Vietnam, with military officers and other officials, in Honolulu on November 20-21. The purpose of the meeting was to review the situation after the assassination of South Vietnam's President Diem earlier that month. The conference date and location were chosen to dovetail with Rusk's scheduled trip to Japan. But in his book Colonel Prouty asks with suspicion why all those Cabinet members who would be on the Tokyo flight had to attend the Honolulu Conference. Calling it "one of the strangest scenarios in recent history," Prouty asks "Why was the cabinet in Hawaii? Who ordered the cabinet members there?" In fact Rusk was the only Tokyo-bound Cabinet member who attended the Honolulu Conference. According to (JFK press secretary) Salinger, the five members of the Cabinet who were to join Rusk and Salinger for the trip to Japan arrived in Hawaii, along with their wives, on the evening of November 21, when the Honolulu Conference was over and McNamara was already on a plane headed back to Washington. http://www.ronaldecker.com/tokyo.html

That passport was found on the street at the WTC North Tower crash site, not at the Pentagon. Two hijacker passports were found at the Pennsylania crash site. (A big hole in the ground.)

I’m sure everyone here is familiar with the fact that on November 22, 1963, evidence was being presented to a Capitol Hill hearing on the corruption of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. The hearing was adjourned when word came of the assassination in Dallas, and the hearing never resumed. JFK’s death may have been a “Get out of jail free” card for LBJ. I came across a fascinating parallel in the career of Hungarian-born British film producer and director Alexander Korda, specifically how a world-changing violent event had saved him too from a Capitol Hill hearing and may have kept him out of jail. Due to WWII in Europe, Korda’s British film company had to make the 1941 movie “That Hamilton Woman” in Hollywood. The historical drama (starring Laurence Olivier as the British naval hero Horatio Nelson and Olivier’s then-wife Vivien Leigh as his mistress Lady Hamilton) was also a propaganda piece, showing how the UK stood up to and defeated the aggressor Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies. In 1941 here was the UK left practically alone fighting the National Socialists. I came across this in the Wikipedia article on “That Lady Hamilton”: “In her research on the subject, film historian Professor Stacey Olster reveals that at the time the film was made, Alexander Korda's New York offices were ‘supplying cover to MI-5 agents gathering intelligence on both German activities in the United States and isolationist sentiments among makers of American foreign policy.’ According to Olivier's biographer Anthony Holden, ‘That Hamilton Woman’ ‘became Exhibit A in a case brought against Korda by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Committee had accused him of operating an espionage and propaganda center for Britain in the United States—a charge Korda only escaped by virtue of the fact that his scheduled appearance before the committee on December 12, 1941 was preempted by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor five days earlier.’” I can imagine LBJ saying on the evening of November 22, “Whew. Things went according to Korda.” BTW “That Hamilton Woman” is said to have been Winston Churchill’s favorite movie. Which reminds me of an old Churchill joke that my father once told me. If I remember correctly, he said that he and my mother heard it in New York nightclub act soon after the war, so take it so what it’s worth. During the war Churchill was an overnight guest of the Roosevelts at the White House. Early in the morning Franklin caught Churchill coming out of Eleanor’s bedroom. Franklin said, “Now, Winnie, I’ll have no more of that.” And Churchill said, “By Jove, I don’t think I will either.”

Well I'm not sure that Cold War hawks and war profiteers are the same thing. In terms of the military-industrial complex, the Cold War hawks would be "military" and the war profiteers would be "industrial." Now certainly the Cold War hawks would be out to win the war, so they might well be upset if LBJ mishandled it, but the industrialists would be out to make money win or lose. And if LBJ mishandled the war, how much was he to blame? Didn't someone say you should never get bogged down in a land war in Asia? I would say the Cold War hawks were to blame more than any president. Of course things might have been different in the war if we did to North Vietnam what Putin is doing to Ukraine. Just bomb the hell out of the civilian population. Thank God we didn't do that.

The plotters wanted a war in Vietnam. As General Smedley Butler said, "War is a racket." To war profiteers, winning a war is not as important as having one. If LBJ mishandled the war, it meant it would be a longer war than a well-managed one. For war profiteers, the longer a war is the better. They milked it for all they could till the American people got tired of it. So did we lose the war? To the war profiteers, so what?

I woke up in time to see her go to prison.

I saw Lawford recently in DEAD RINGER, in which he plays a real jerk who tries to blackmail Bette Davis, because he knows she murdered her twin sister. He played it well, but I don't remember what happened to him. Maybe I fell asleep.

I thought Joseph McBride, in his post on the Belmont memo, was arguing that the bullet lodged behind the right ear may have been the one fired by Badge Man and which blew out the back of the head. That's what I don't understand, but maybe I read it wrong.

Knowing nothing about ballistics, I'm very confused. Though I won't dispute it, I don't understand how a bullet could blow out the back of JFK's head, yet the bullet itself remained in the head, lodged behind the right ear. And if a shot from the right front entered behind the right ear and remained there, that means it barely entered his head, as if it were a bad round. And if was an explosive bullet designed to leave no trace of itself, why was the bullet itself still there? I have always thought, perhaps naively, that a bullet blowing out the back of the head would be gone out the back of the head. I never would have dreamed the bullet could have stayed close to where it entered the head.

Did he say what he was doing there? (Benchwarming with E. Howard Hunt?)

And the MSM never fails. CNN's Smerconish has always struck me as a pretty perceptive guy, but in reporting last night on the documents release (he has apparently replaced Cuomo in prime time) he toed the party line and then some. He had as his guest what he called the man "who wrote the book" on the JFK case, Gerald Posner. Smerconish also said that he (Smerconish) had been a good friend of Arlen Specter, and that whenever Smerconish would mention the single bullet theory, Specter would correct him, calling it "the single bullet conclusion."

Is that McCord on the far left? (The guy staring at him from the far right seems to think so.)

I couldn't understand why Donald Trump, who had zero respect for the intelligence community, listened to the intelligence community on JFK and didn't release documents. One almost has to believe there's some kind of dynamite in those documents.

Former librarian here too. Want to hear a good library story? My last job was running a prison library. We had a small world globe on a table in the library, and this inmate was searching for something on the globe. He said, "Mr. Ecker, can you help me find the North Pole on this globe?" I pointed out where it was, saying, "It's right here on top." And he said, "Oh, no wonder I couldn't find it."

Mantik: "The (superficial) back wound was likely caused by metallic shrapnel." Shrapnel from what?

While LBJ may have been informed in advance if he wasn't actually in on the planning, I've always felt that too much is made of his "smile" and the wink from Thomas in the photo of the swearing in. We don't see LBJ's face, just a raised cheek, which could be from a grimace or a smile. A grimace would be perfectly understandable at such a solemn moment, even if just put on for effect. But a smile? What fool would smile at that time with all eyes upon him? As for the wink, it could have been just a gesture of encouragement ("You're the man" or "Go get 'em" or whatever), and not something more nefarious. In any case I just don't buy that LBJ is smiling.

Either it's just my imagination or I have a vague memory of reading that there was a steam pipe that ran along the top of the GK fence. True or false? It sounds like something a lone nutter might come up with in a pipe dream. I don't recall any pipe along the fence when I visited there in 1990.