Jeff Carter

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

-- For years, Prouty led people to believe that he was sent to the South Pole just before the assassination to prevent him from interfering with the Dallas security arrangements.

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”. 

On 10/10/2023 at 8:06 AM, Michael Griffith said:

LOL! You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” in supposedly being sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements?! (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.

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Let's back up and recap what has been documented about Fletcher Prouty's fabrication about Chiang Kai-shek and his delegation and the Tehran Conference: 

-- Prouty said that he personally flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to the Tehran Conference. But there is no record of the Chinese delegation attending the conference.  

The U.S. State Department's website contains a huge collection of searchable records on the Cairo and Tehran conferences. These records were used for the State Department's massive volume Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. Not one of these records says anything about Chiang and his delegation attending the conference. 

To give you some idea of the scope of these records, I quote from a partial list of them provided in the Introduction on the State Department's website: 

A. Inside the Department of State 

1. Bohlen Collection—The collection of minutes and documents on the Tehran Conference made by Charles E. Bohlen, who served as President Roosevelt’s interpreter with the Russians at Tehran.

2. L/T Files–The office files of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs.

3. FE Files—The files of the Bureau (Office) of Far Eastern Affairs.

4. Moscow Embassy Files—The records of the American Embassy at Moscow, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

5. Cairo Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Cairo, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

6. Tehran Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Tehran, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington. 

B. Outside the Department of State 

1. Roosevelt Papers–The papers of President Roosevelt in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. This large collection was found to be particularly valuable for Heads of Government correspondence.

2. Hopkins Papers—The papers of Harry L. Hopkins, located in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Although many of the Hopkins files duplicate material in the Roosevelt papers, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.

3. J. C. S. Files—The files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These files provided documentation of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. The approval of the British Chiefs of Staff, along with that of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, was obtained for the declassification of the Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation published in this volume.

4. Defense Files—The files of the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of War and Navy and other relevant top-level files of the military departments for 1943.

5. Leahy Papers—A collection of official papers, now in the custody of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, the late Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Although much of this material duplicates the J. C. S. Files, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.

6. White House Files—Although the White House does not maintain files of the papers of former Presidents, some portions of the White House files were found to be pertinent. Thus, from the files of the office of the Naval Aide there was obtained a copy of the booklet containing the Log of the President’s trip to Cairo and Tehran in 1943.

7. Censorship Files—The files of the Office of Censorship, now in the National Archives. These files contained a few papers regarding the release of information to the press from Cairo and Tehran.

8. Treasury Files—The files of the Department of the Treasury provided several post-Conference documents.

9. Hurley Papers—The private papers of Patrick J. Hurley. General Hurley kindly made his papers available to the editors for the period of the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. From these papers came the first draft of the Declaration on Iran (post, page 623) and considerable data incorporated in footnotes in this volume. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction) 

The State Department's massive work also used the following unofficial sources--I again quote from the Introduction on the State Department's website: 

H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940). Hereafter cited as “Arnold”.

Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1959). Hereafter cited as “Alanbrooke”.

Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959), volume V of the series The Second World War. Hereafter cited as “Churchill”.

Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1951).

John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation With Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Deane”.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Eisenhower”.

Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Hereafter cited as “Feis”.

General Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale (London: Andre Deutsch, 1956).

Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948; 2 volumes). Hereafter cited as “Hull”.

Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960).

Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1952). Hereafter cited as “King”.

Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War (London: John Murray, 1949).

William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950). Hereafter cited as “Leahy”.

James Leasor, The Clock With Four Hands (New York: Reynal and Company, 1959).

Don Lohbeck, Patrick J. Hurley (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1956). Hereafter cited as “Lohbeck”.

Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1946).

King Peter of Yugoslavia, A King’s Heritage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954).

Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Reilly”.

Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Hereafter cited as “Elliott Roosevelt”.

Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Sherwood”.

J. C. Smuts, Jan Christian Smuts (London: Cassell and Co., 1952).

Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948).

Hollington K. Tong, Chiang Kai-Shek (Taipei: China Publishing Company, 1953).

General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958).

Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya, Eight Years Overseas, 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1950). (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction)

 -- Prouty claimed that Chiang and his wife flew to the Tehran Conference in FDR's plane or in another military aircraft. We know from the trip log for FDR and his delegation that Chiang was not on FDR's plane. The trip log lists every person who accompanied FDR to Cairo and Tehran, down to the cooks, admin assistants, and security people. And, there is no record of any other military or private plane taking Chiang and his wife to Tehran. 

Chiang's wife wrote a private letter to FDR soon after she and her husband returned to China on 12/1/43, the same day the Tehran Conference ended. She said nothing about her party making a detour to Tehran, much less about Chiang meeting with Stalin. Instead, she said her plane flew from Cairo to Karachi to Ramgarh to Chabau to Chungking.  

Chiang's personal diary, not published until years after his death, says nothing about any trip to Tehran. He made diary entries during the trip from Cairo to China, but not one of them even hints at a detour to Tehran.  

Prouty's only source for his claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference is a single, unsourced statement made in passing in William Gibbons' book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Gibbons clearly confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference in his errant passing comment. Gibbons had Chiang and Stalin approving an Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but the issue of the trusteeship was barely mentioned during the Tehran gathering, and Chiang approved the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, as innumerable records confirm. 

Also, to be fair to Gibbons, his errant statement about Chiang and Tehran was not even the subject of the paragraph in which it was buried. The paragraph's subject was Churchill's opposition to lessening control over Indochina and other colonies. You wouldn't know this to read Prouty's book, because Prouty did not alert readers that he was quoting from the middle of a paragraph--he simply started with the errant statement as if it were the start of a paragraph. 

-- Prouty claimed that at the Tehran Conference, FDR persuaded Stalin to agree to order Mao to stand down, and that during this alleged conversation Churchill stayed silent. But, a search through American and Soviet records of the conference yields not a single reference to Mao, much less a discussion about Mao's operations, much less an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down. 

It is fair to ask how Prouty could have known that Churchill supposedly stayed silent during the alleged FDR-Stalin conversation about Mao. How could Prouty have known this? The negotiating sessions were all secret. Prouty never explained how he could have known such a detail about a negotiating session that he did not, and could not, attend.  

-- Prouty claimed that when he flew the Chinese delegation to Tehran, he stopped to refuel at Habanaya Airport in Iraq. But this makes no sense. Prouty claimed he flew a Lockheed Lodestar, but that plane had a range of 1,600 miles. He would have had no need to stop for fuel to reach Tehran from Cairo. He could have made it to Tehran with at least 200 miles' worth of fuel to spare.  

-- Prouty claimed that while refueling at Habanaya Airport, he saw Elliott Roosevelt and introduced him to the Chinese delegation, and that, naturally, Elliott "knew" the Chinese delegation was at the Tehran Conference. But, Elliott said nothing about any of this in his extensive account of his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences. Not one word. He didn't even say anything about hearing a rumor that the Chinese were at the conference.  

-- Prouty claimed that he rode with the Chinese delegation into Tehran, that the delegation's cars were right behind the British delegation's cars, and that the British delegation was embarrassingly held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Winston Churchill had no ID on him because he was wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit. Prouty added that the Brits were only allowed to pass after a Soviet officer came to the checkpoint and let them proceed. 

Two things from this account scream that the account is pure fabrication: 

One, there was no such thing as a British military jumpsuit that had no pockets. One can quicky ascertain with a little online research that neither the British, nor the Americans, nor the French, nor any other nation in WW II made jumpsuits with no pockets. The very idea makes no sense, since jumpsuits were worn by pilots and air crews that always faced the possibility of having to abandon their planes in mid-air and would need pockets--secure pockets--to carry essential items.  

Two, even if we assume for the sake of argument that Churchill wore a pocketless jumpsuit, Prouty's tale requires us to believe that none of Churchill's aides had his ID and other papers but that all these items had been left on the plane. 

Also, if this event had really occurred, Churchill's adoring daughter Sarah surely would have mentioned it in her numerous writings about her experiences at the Tehran Conference. Sarah was fiercely anti-Soviet and disliked Stalin. If the Soviets had embarrassed and humiliated her father with such a stunt at a checkpoint, she would have said something about it. She never mentioned any such event, not in her two books and not in her voluminous correspondence with family members. 

-- Prouty claimed that while Churchill's group was allegedly delayed at the Soviet checkpoint, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and laughed and pointed at the British delegation. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese behaviorial standards and cultural norms in the 1940s recognizes that it is extremely unlikely that a Chinese delegation would have behaved in this manner, especially in a foreign country and when they were desperately seeking British and American assistance. And, needless to say, there is no record of any such event occurring at the Tehran Conference.

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.

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

LOL! So . . . uh . . . just never mind that Prouty's one and only source for his ahistorical bunk was demonstrably wrong??? Just never mind that???!!! Sheesh, this is unbelievable.

Your insulting comments about "gaslighter" and "preening egotism" are a sad by-product of your refusal to deal credibly and factually with Prouty's embarrassing, absurd claims. Rather than admit you didn't know enough to realize that Prouty's source was egregiously wrong, and rather than admit that you should have checked the source's claim before running with it, you opted to resort to insults.

Furthermore, as you must know, the issue of the accuracy of Prouty's lone source is not the only issue that I've raised regarding Prouty's ridiculous claims about Chiang and his group and the Tehran Conference. 

It is comical that you would pretend that it is someone unfair of me, that I'm "moving the goalposts," to bring up other obvious falsehoods in Prouty's bogus tale. 

Let me repeat the fact that Prouty's one source committed two inexcusable blunders: (1) he claimed that Stalin and Chiang approved FDR's plan for trusteeship for Indochina at the Tehran Conference, and (2) he claimed that Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. Chiang and Stalin reached no agreement about trusteeship in Tehran because Chiang was not there. By all accounts, Chiang knew nothing about the Tehran proceedings until after the conference ended. FDR and Chiang agreed on the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, and then FDR discussed it, briefly, with Stalin in Tehran. Yet, Stalin and FDR reached no formal agreement on the trusteeship concept at the Tehran Conference--that's why no such agreement is mentioned in the agreements made at the conference. 

Prouty did not realize that Gibbons got confused and assigned to the Tehran Conference events that happened at the Cairo Conference, and that Gibbons also blundered about who attended the Tehran Conference because he associated the trusteeship agreement with the wrong conference. It is nothing short of shocking that you and the handful of Prouty worshippers here ignore all the sources that clearly indicate that Chiang and his group did not go to Tehran, and that you just don't care that no records, meeting minutes, diaries, travel/trip logs, papers, or memoirs contain a shred of evidence that Chiang was ever in Tehran, much less that he met with Stalin.

It is instructive that you and a few others would choose to rely on Prouty's one and only source rather than rely on the hundreds of sources that refute Prouty's source. And, pray tell, what is Prouty's source for his fiction that at Tehran FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin tell Mao to stand down? Do you guys just not grasp how idiotic and erroneous that claim is? Or how about Prouty's laughable howler that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been controlled by Soong? I defy you to find a single Asia or WWII scholar who will endorse such gibberish. 

The small group of people who still deny Prouty's lies, erroneous claims, retractions, and sleazy associations are a dream-come-true for WC apologists. They make it easy for WC apologists to make the case for conspiracy look like nutty, irresponsible speculation.

 

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.

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Just shaking my head. Did it occur to you to check this claim before you ran with it? This is the kind of gaffe you commit when you don't know enough to spot bogus scholarship and when you blindly refuse to face facts about a cherished source. As anyone can readily verify, the trusteeship for Indochina was discussed and approved at the Cairo Conference, not at the Tehran Conference, and it was embodied in the Cairo Communique (aka Cairo Declaration). Google "Indochina trusteeship China Southeast Asia Manchuria Pescadores Taiwan Formosa Cairo Conference" or almost any portion thereof.

If Prouty had possessed even a basic knowledge of the Cairo and Tehran conferences, he would have recognized that his source, William Conrad Gibbons, mistakenly assigned to the Tehran Conference something that had happened at the Cairo Conference. I quote from the U.S. State Department Archive website's article "The Cairo Conference, 1943":

          At the series of meetings in Cairo, Roosevelt outlined his vision for postwar Asia. He wanted to establish the Republic of China as one of his "Four Policemen." This concept referred to a vision for a cooperative world order in which a dominant power in each major region would be responsible for keeping the peace there. Weak as the Republic of China would inevitably be after the war, it would still be the major power in Asia, and it could help prevent renewed Japanese expansionism and oversee decolonization under a trustee system. Roosevelt hoped to prevent the British and the Russians from using postwar instability to increase their presence in Asia, and he advocated for Indochina to be established as a trusteeship instead of returned to France after the Japanese defeat.

          To secure this future, he sought a commitment from Chiang Kai-shek that China would not try to expand across the continent or control decolonizing nations, and in return, he offered a guarantee that the territories stolen from China by Japan -- including Manchuria, the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands -- would be returned to Chinese sovereignty. Roosevelt also sought and gained Chiang's support for his proposal to create a trusteeship for the colonial territories after the war; in the end, this idea failed to gain the support of the British or French and was not enacted. (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm).

By the way, in Tehran and then at Yalta, FDR abandoned his pledge to restore Manchuria, Taiwan (Formosa), and the Pescadores to China after the war, in order to appease Stalin.  Anyway. . ..

Gibbons' error was really inexcusable, especially for someone pretending to be an authority on the subject. That said, perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR did mention, in passing, the Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but he did so in the context of a discussion about pre-war French holdings in Indochina and by stating that he had already discussed Indochina trusteeship with Chiang Kai-shek. From the Bohlen minutes of the Tehran Conference:

          The President said that he had had an interesting conversation with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, on the general subject of China. . . .         

          He added that he had discussed with Chiang Kai-shek the possibility of a system of trusteeship for Indochina which would have the task of preparing the people for independence within a definite period of time, perhaps 20 to 30 years. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d358)

Other than this one reference, you won't find any mention of an Indochina trusteeship in the Tehran Conference minutes; they talked about Indochina in terms of the military situation and regarding the Cairo Communique, but only once mentioned an Indochina trusteeship (e.g., https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ADFRXSHIYSKS2S8Z/pages/ANSP74UNEP7N6Q8S?as=text&view=scroll).

Or perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR sought Stalin's approval of the Cairo Communique. Asia scholar Mark Caprio:

          In Cairo, Roosevelt met with two other Allied leaders, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, to discuss wartime strategy. He and Churchill would later meet with Stalin in Tehran, Iran immediately following the Cairo meeting to engage the Soviet leader in similar discussions, as well as to gain his consent of the Cairo Communiqué’s contents. . . . 

          As mentioned above, in Tehran, the Soviet leader was briefed on the discussions held in Cairo, and asked his views on the Communiqué’s content. ("Misinterpretations of the 1943 Cairo Conference," International Journal of Korean History, February 2022, https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=559)

On his way back from Yalta, FDR held a press conference 2/23/45 and mentioned that he had discussed Indochina with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and with Stalin in Tehran:

          THE PRESIDENT: For two whole years I have been terribly worried about Indo-China. I talked to Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, Stalin in Teheran. They both agreed with me. The French have been in there some hundred years. The Indo-Chinese are not like the Chinese. (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/excerpts-from-the-press-conference-aboard-the-uss-quincy-en-route-from-yalta)

Professor Zhu Shaokang's book The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit documents that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference. It addresses the erroneous press report that Chiang was going to meet Stalin and explains how the report originated. Indeed, Shaokang discusses the fact that Chiang was determined to avoid meeting with Stalin, and that Stalin was equally adamant against the idea of meeting with Chiang (pp. 314-318)!

You can read these facts in the large extract from the book available online here: https://www.fhk.ndu.edu.tw/site/main/upload/6862ac282432fc1fde400aa74f317621/journal/81-12.pdf.

I think objective readers will see that you are actually describing your own conduct, that you have no answer for the evidence I've presented to you. 

It is not "moving the goalposts" to point out obvious blunders in Prouty's cockamamie tale about the fictional Chinese presence at the Tehran Conference. You will never find a picture of a military jumpsuit that had no pockets, because no such jumpsuit was ever made (or ever will be made). Similarly, pointing out Prouty's fiction that at Tehran, FDR and Stalin made an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down is not "moving the goalposts" but is highlighting an obvious fabrication. I've already noted that the extensive records of the Tehran Conference, including the list of agreements, say nothing about any such agreement. 

And let's be clear: Prouty did not just claim that Chinese delegates attended the Tehran Conference but that Chiang and his wife also attended. I quote from his embarrassing book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy:

          First of all, most historians doubt that Chiang and his wife actually attended the conference in Tehran. I can confirm that they did, because I was the pilot of the plane that flew Chiang's delegates to Tehran. Chiang and his wife traveled either with Roosevelt or in another U.S. military aircraft. (p. 14)

How can you take this nonsense seriously? Why would the Chiangs have flown on a different plane? Why does not a single record from the Tehran Conference say anything about Chiang and his delegation being in attendance? Why would Chiang not have mentioned in his diary what would have been his historic presence at the conference? Why didn't Madame Chiang mention this momentous presence in her private letter to FDR, which she wrote just days after she returned to Chungking?

Other reasonable and damning questions: Why didn't Elliott Roosevelt say anything about seeing any Chinese delegates at the conference or at Habanaya Airport? Why would Prouty have needed to stop at Habanaya to refuel if he was flying a Lockheed Lodestar, which had a range of 1,600 miles? Why didn't Sarah Churchill say anything about her father being delayed at a Soviet checkpoint, while he was quite sick no less, because, gee, he supposedly not only had no ID on him, due to his wearing a pocketless jumpsuit, but none of his staffers had his ID either?! I mean, sheesh, this is WINGNUT material. 

You embarrass yourself when you claim that you have "debunked" my "putative itinerary" for Chiang and his group. When you first attacked the evidence I presented that Chiang and his group did not fly to Tehran, you somehow missed the Karachi stop. But, once I pointed out your oversight, you insisted that Chiang still could have made the secret trip that escaped everyone's notice! 

And I would again point out that your dubious 36-hour window requires that the Karachi visit occurred on 11/29, and that even if we assume this was the case, you cannot identify a time slot when Stalin and Chiang could have met, given the very detailed information we have about Stalin's whereabouts and activities during the conference.

This is on top of the fact that you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference, whereas I can cite all the official records of the conference and literally dozens of historians that confirm the fact that there was no Chinese presence at the conference, much less Chiang himself. 

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.

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I've been researching Chiang, the Sino-Japanese War, WW II (especially the Asian and Pacific theaters), and FDR's handling of the war for many, many years. Thus, when I watched Prouty's interview and came across his bogus claims about Chiang and about Chiang and Tehran, I knew right away they were nonsense.

I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. 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.

NSAM 263??? Ah, you're talking about the fringe interpretation that NSAM 263 was drastically revised after JFK's death. Anyone who reads NSAM 273 and NSAM 263 will readily see that the revision was minor. You realize that the vast majority of historians who have looked at this issue reject your interpretation, right? And when I say "vast majority," I mean something like 99%. 

There is no reasoning with you people. Even when confronted with clear, undeniable evidence of Prouty's fraudulent claims and of his prolonged sleazy associations and actions, you guys offer nothing but lame excuses that you would never dream of making if Prouty had been a WC apologist.

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.

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Huh??? You must be joking. Go watch the video. Prouty clearly says that he flew Chiang and his delegation to Tehran and that Chiang and his delegation attended the conference. He says several times that Chiang attended the conference. Go watch the video.

And, just FYI, there was no Chinese delegation at the Tehran Conference. They returned home with Chiang. This explains why nobody saw a Chinese delegation at the conference. None was there.

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.

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

As chance would have it, yesterday I stumbled upon the video of an interview that Fletcher Prouty gave in 1994 (LINK). Some of Prouty's comments about Vietnam and about Chiang Kai-shek's war with the Japanese were utterly erroneous, but I won't spend time discussing them. But I do want to discuss Prouty's astounding claim that he flew Chiang Kai-shek and his delegation to Tehran for the Tehran Conference and that Chiang attended the conference (along with FDR, Churchill, and Stalin) after he attended the Cairo Conference (starts at about 44:45). 

I have been studying Chiang Kai-shek, the Sino-Japanese War, World War II (especially the Asian and Pacific theaters), FDR's handling of the war, and the post-war struggle for China for many years. When I came across Prouty's astounding claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference, I replayed the segment three times to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding him. I wasn't: He claimed that he flew Chiang and his delegation to the Tehran Conference and that Chiang attended the conference. 

Some of the problems with this claim:

-- Chiang's diary states that after he left the Cairo Conference, he returned to China. The Cairo Conference was held from 11/22/43 to 11/26/43. The Tehran Conference was held from 11/28/43 to 12/1/43. 

-- On his way home from Cairo, Chiang and his wife stopped at the U.S. Army's training center in Ramgarh, India, to inspect Chinese troops who were being trained there under General Stilwell's supervision. This visit occurred on 11/30/43 and was publicized. While there, Chiang addressed the Chinese troops. A copy of his address is in the Joseph Stilwell papers in the Online Archive of California (Collection A-22 1943, Box 50, Folder 9).

-- Gen. Stilwell, who attended the Cairo Conference, said that Chiang returned to China after the conference.

-- Not one of Chiang's biographers, friendly or critical, knew anything about Chiang attending the Tehran Conference.

-- The biographies of Chiang written by his first and second wives say nothing about Chiang attending the Tehran Conference. 

If Chiang had been able to be at the conference, even in an unofficial capacity to hold off-the-record talks with the attendees, this would have been a significant honor and would have made Chiang look more important. The fact that no friendly biography of him mentions his alleged presence at the Tehran Conference is telling.

-- Naturally, the Tehran Conference was swarming with journalists from all over the world. None of them spotted Chiang or his delegation at or near the conference.

-- Not a single Soviet or British official or unofficial record of the Tehran Conference mentions Chiang's attendance or presence.

-- Not a single U.S. State Department record of the Tehran Conference mentions Chiang as even being present, much less as being an attendee.

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.

3 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I went to your footnote when I first read it. And it opened to a 35 page document I don't have time to read.

It's very unclear. Certainly there was no specific dialog there attributed to Prouty. What point are you making? Can you give me  a specific page you want to direct me to? Are you making Sandy's point?

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).

3 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

As I've already said, you can just say.

"Ok he's not perfect, but his politics and apparent prejudices are another matter entirely. We believe him as a very credible witness."

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.

16 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Heh heh. Prouty directly addressed the Liberty Lobby issue, as quoted by Jeff Carter. 
meanwhile, Mervyn would like to be a cult leader. Maybe he could publish his works like James has. 
Jeff - isn’t there one unaddressed issue about Prouty regarding his sharing of what he saw from his lofty insider perch? I’m not dismissing his general views, just wondering what more he knew that he didn’t reveal. 

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.

31 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Jeff was thorough in bringing up the oppositions points, but mostly, didn't really effectively counter them. Yes the fact that Prouty would criticize his government for having a "jew" in a very prominent position in the defense department obviously indicates a distrust to having Jews in  in high sensitive National Security positions. It is very disparaging when someone  has probably worked all of his life to have  risen to such a high position is then summarily judged for his ethnicity and questioned for his patriotism.

 

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.

48 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Well, I'm shocked, shocked to see that Michael Griffith has crawled out of the woodwork, once again, to re-post his oft-repeated, McAdams Kill-the-Messenger tropes impugning Col. Prouty's reputation.

That disingenuous propaganda strategy will never end-- i.e., repeating the disinformation until uninformed people mistake it for truth.

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.

5 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Look, Prouty praised, in writing, the primary goals of the IHR's journal, the Journal of Historical Review, a Holocaust-denying publication. The IHR, as most know, is a Holocaust-denying organization. Prouty even spoke at an IHR conference that focused on denying the Holocaust. He appeared 10 times on the nutcase radio program produced by Liberty Lobby, a vile anti-Semitic group--other guests on that program included Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, and white supremacists. He also spoke at a Liberty Lobby convention and hosted a discussion panel with Bo Gritz at the convention (and, BTW, during his speech he blamed Israel for high oil prices). For those who don't know, Gritz was white supremacist and former KKK leader David Duke's running mate in 1988.

These indisputable facts alone should convince any rational person that we must repudiate Prouty. 

And this is not to mention Prouty's embarrassing defense of L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology fraud, Prouty's sleazy attacks on Scientology's critics, Prouty's suggestion that the "Secret Team" may have killed Princess Diana, Prouty's giving of credence to the nutty claim that Churchill poisoned FDR, Prouty's obscene attacks on Edward Lansdale, and Prouty's back-peddling on every major claim he'd been making for years when interviewed by the ARRB in the 1990s (including his admission that he did not have the notes that he allegedly took during his supposed stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group). 

The subject of Fletcher Prouty is a bright red line that separates credible, serious JFK research from fringe, specious JFK research. If you write a 10-chapter book on WW II, and if one of the chapters stoutly defends Hitler and the Third Reich, no one will care about what the other chapters say, no matter how valid they might be. 

Fletcher Prouty did enormous damage to the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination. He continues to do so because a handful of researchers still defend him and still peddle his discredited, fringe claims.

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.

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

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? 

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.

21 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Jeff - I respect your contributions here, as you know. One question I have for you is whether you think ‘we’ doesn’t refer to himself and his superior officer. Maybe you are right that it’s generic. And then again maybe not. The other, more important question, is whether you think it’s worth examining the documents pertaining to Bloodstone? Are you of the ‘no big deal’ camp when it comes to the incorporation of Nazi soldiers and intelligence operatives into US special forces? Leave Prouty out for a second, as I asked others to do. Do you think the US military was involved, as Prouty himself later asserted? 

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.

1 hour ago, Robert Montenegro said:

 

The whole experience with this post has been Orwellian with a hint of Kafka.

I either get doublespeak, groupthink or nonsensical persecution, and all I did was ask a question by stating a couple of facts, posting a supporting document or two, usage of direct quotes, and, yes, a little inference.

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?

38 minutes ago, Robert Montenegro said:

 

Once again, I suggest you go back and read "Understanding Special Operations and their impact on the Vietnam War Era: 1989 Interview with L. Fletcher Prouty Colonel USAF (Retired)" by David T. Ratcliffe.

 

The following is COL. Prouty talking about some of the missions he was involved with as a member of Air Transport Command, United States Army Air Corps:

 

QUOTE —

 

"...The interesting thing about that was, once we got into the air, I realized that some of my passengers were not these American pilots. They were men from the Balkans. In fact, we were talking, and then later on I learned they were people who had been selected by the OSS in the Balkans for special evacuation before the Soviet armies arrived. Because they were Nazi intelligence officers, and (for some reason) our own OSS wanted to get them out of there. This puzzled us a little bit, but we weren't in the political business so we didn't ask too many questions. 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..."

 

— END QUOTE.

 

Here is a link to the information I am presenting:

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/

Read it in it's entirety, please...

 

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.