Prouty was instructed to assemble planes and travel to Syria to pick up a large group of released POWs from Roumania. Intermingled with these men, as Prouty observed, were German agents, also being moved out under American cover. He discussed this experience several times in his writing and interviews.  I cannot see how the Syrian experience or his later recollection of such amounts to an admission to a direct role in “repurposing and rearming WWII fascist émigré networks”.

As far as I can tell, Prouty never mentioned an RJ Smith when talking of his wartime experiences. Prouty was a VIP pilot in North Africa in 1943-45 - on what basis do you determine he was instead directly involved In the fascist relocation programs other than the Syrian experience?

Prouty’s job as military liaison to the CIA necessarily put him in contact with programs utilizing these fascist emigre and stay-behind networks and that is what he is talking about when quoted in Simpson’s book.That does not mean Prouty was personally involved or responsible for the programs themselves - in fact they were long up and running when Prouty assumed the liaison position in the mid-1950s.  I don’t see how this position leads to the claim: “COL. Prouty was front-and-center in the utilization of Nazi émigrés within US Army Special Forces”

52 minutes ago, Robert Montenegro said:

 

You know what, yeah, you got me.

Damn, of course, COL. Prouty was working for US Army Air Corps, Air Transport Command at the end of World War II.

Dang, why didn't I read that properly?!

Shoot.

I guess I'll go cook a baloney sandwich.

Wait a tick, Mr. Carter, put that baloney sandwich on hold!

Who was COL. Prouty's immediate superior officer? 

Oh, yeah, COL. Prouty's immediate superior officer from 1943 to 1945 was United States Army Air Corps Maj. Gen. Robert James Smith, commander of the United States Army Air Corps, African Division, Air Transport Command!

Maj. Gen. R.J. Smith was general traffic manager, American Airways, executive vice president, Braniff Airways Inc.,  president, Pioneer Airlines, and director, Continental Air Lines Inc., I wonder if any of those companies leased aircraft to CIA narco-trafficking proprietary airlines Civil Air Transport AKA Air America (hint, hint, they all did).

Plus, Maj. Gen. R.J. Smith was director First National Bank of Dallas and director & chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, I wonder if any of those banking entities had anything to do with the machinations surrounding the murder of President Kennedy (hint, hint, they both did).

Plus, Maj. Gen. R.J. Smith was member, Advisory Committee, Export-Import Bank of Washington, I wonder if that banking institution had anything to do with laundering tons of narco-dollars from CIA fronts (hint, hint, it sure did)

Plus, Maj. Gen. R.J. Smith was  director of Dallas Chamber of Commerce & director of Dallas Council On World Affairs, I wonder if he served with a rogues gallery of suspects in the Kennedy assassination (hint, hint, he sure did).

Maj. Gen. R.J. Smith was also a commander of Operation PAPERCLIP, I wonder if he served with a rogues gallery of Nazi war criminals and technicians (hint, hint, he sure did).

But I guess your right, Mr. Carter, COL. Prouty only worked for and was lifelong friends with United States Army Air Corps Maj. Gen. Robert James Smith, commander of the United States Army Air Corps, African Division, Air Transport Command.

You got me...

You are referring to CR Smith (Cyrus Rowlett Smith).

Other than the war effort, Smith had a lifelong career with American Airlines and was a major figure in the development of passenger airline travel and considered “one of the most influential persons in aviation history.” Prouty described him as “an absolutely magnificent person.”

Your repeated reference to an "RJ Smith" does not inspire confidence in wherever you are going with this.

27 minutes ago, Robert Montenegro said:

 

That's a big negative on your part, and a fair amount of deflective semantics.

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.

 

And that was just one mission COL. Prouty was involved with in 1944, ferrying Nazi intelligence agents out of Turkey, the Balkans, and Ukraine.

 

Like I said, COL. Prouty was front-and-center to those Nazi émigré espionage networks.

 

Once again, I am not attacking COL. Prouty, but reality needs to set in—the man was not innocent of protecting, training, arming and utilizing fascist war criminals... 

 

You are confused.

Prouty was assigned a mission to arrange aircraft and participate in flying them to a location in Syria where they would meet with a contingent of Allied POWs released from Roumania, who would then be flown to safety. Intermingled with the POWs were men who, it gradually became apparent, were German military personnel who were also being relocated. Prouty did not know of these men before the mission. He did not draw up the mission. He arranged a fleet of aircraft under orders and had them flown to the location he was instructed.  How that becomes being “front and centre” to Nazi emigre networks I have no idea.

The Nazis were an OSS project. Prouty was working for the Air Transport Command.

23 minutes ago, Robert Montenegro said:

 

Dr. Niederhut,

I will once again stress my theorem—I am postulating COL. Prouty was engaged in a limited hangout.

COL. Prouty helped create the paramilitary networks that were utilized by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny against President Kennedy—in congruent fashion, COL. Prouty covered up the mechanical aspects of President Kennedy's murder to the effect of throwing educated minds (like yourself) off the right track.

I did not say COL. Prouty was a control officer for the assassination, I said he engaged in psy-warfare to cover-up his own structural guilt, which would have lead to other covert crimes he was involved in.  

That's not to say that COL. Prouty did not offer spectacular insights regarding the day-to-day functions of the US special operations community.

And yes, he did offer exclusive insights to how elements of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were moving against President Kennedy's formal orders (as were the bulk of the Southern Democrats & elitist-establishment Republicans on the East coast at the time).

I must ask a counter-narrative, to your question, however.   

What exactly do you believe COL. Prouty did for the Department of Defense?

Pin merit badges on boy scouts?

Or was he the literal "...Chief of Special Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff..." tasked with being the "...Focal Point officer for contacts between the CIA and the Department of Defense on matters pertaining to the military support of the Special Operations of that Agency..." (COL. Prouty's words, not mine) whose job it was to provide special forces teams with, uhm, what was it again?

COL. Prouty, what was that thing you did:

 

QUOTE —

 

"...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..."

 

— END QUOTE.

 

Oh, I see, COL. Prouty, thank you for clearing that up, wouldn't want to defame your memory by falsely claiming that you armed, aided and abetted Nazi force-multiplication networks.

 

Nazi force-multiplication networks that acted as the eyes, ears and loaded-fists of the Joint Chiefs of Staff!

 

COL. Prouty was the organizing military officer of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, an organization whose president in 1963 was Yaroslav Semenovych Stetsko, commander of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera (OUN-B), a WWII-era Nazi paramilitary army that engaged in genocidal mass-murder operations in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

 

Yaroslav Stetsko was a direct subordinate to SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, providing OUN-B cadre for Skorzeny's Ukrainian émigré special forces units, "Bataillon Ukrainische Gruppe Nachtigall" and "Battalion Ukrainische Gruppe Roland."   

 

The commander of the Nachtigall Battalion, which oversaw the execution of the the Lvov Civilian Massacre of 1941, a Skorzeny created special forces death-squad was Theodor Oberländer—a eugenics-minded mass-murdering Schweinhund—who later founded the All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights, which acted as an intelligence front to shield Nazi war criminals from international war tribunals—many of whom were serving in the Gehlen Organization, or COL. Prouty's brainchild Operation BLOODSTONE!

 

Still think it is slander on my part, Mr. Niederhut?

 

Allow me to quote another authorized interview with COL. Prouty, this time given to researcher Stephen Dorril, the founding editor of the respected journal Lobster Magazine and a lecturer at the University of Hudderfield, for his book, "MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service."

 

On page 225, from the chapter titled, "Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations," we find the startling admission from COL. Prouty:

 

QUOTE —

 

"...According to Fletcher Prouty, who was responsible for US Air Force air support for CIA missions overseas, a series of assassinations was undertaken by 'the best commercial hit men you ever heard of.' Known as 'mechanics,' the were 'Ukrainians, mainly, Eastern Europeans, Greeks, and some Scotsmen. I don't know how the Scotsmen got in there, but there they were.' Prouty asserts that teams of 'mechanics' were used in cross-border infiltration operations to rescue agents and in the murders of alleged Soviet agents. During 1947, a joint British/US émigré espionage network infiltrated with agents organized by Soviet and Czech Intelligence was 'liquidated' as part of Operation RUSTY. To mask the deaths, the killings were attributed to factional violence among rival Ukrainian groups..."

 

— END QUOTE.

 

Seems to me, according to COL. Prouty himself, used fascist war criminals to conduct "stay-behind" operations deep into Soviet territory (you know, that pesky Soviet territory where the Nazis slaughtered twenty million men, women and children).

Not only that, but he used those fascist war-criminals to assassinate numerous targeted individuals (you know, anti-fascist Soviet veterans of WWII) on behalf of the Gehlen Organization, or as it was known by US Army intelligence in 1946, Operation RUSTY.

 

Still think it is slander on my part, Mr. Niederhut, to literally use COL. Prouty's own admissions in their proper historical perspective?

 

COL. Prouty armed and utilized émigré espionage networks of Nazi war criminals for illegal commando operations and assassinations, by his own admission.

 

Émigré espionage networks created by Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, Ausland-SD, Amt VI-S commander SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny.

 

P.S. Technically, I'm United States Army Staff Sergeant Montenegro, retired. United States Marine Corps Sergeant Montenegro was my father.

 

  

 

You have seriously confused programs that Prouty came to have knowledge of,  with programs that Prouty was directly involved with.

In the late 1940s Prouty was working academically - writing textbooks and teaching courses.

His work as liaison for the CIA did not begin until the mid-1950s.

Kennedy's Peace Speech is absolutely relevant to the assassination and James Douglass' five-hundred page book is the proof of that.

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Peaceful coexistence is an ideal, but at what price?

I doubt that Eastern Europeans subjected to the Soviet yoke after 1945, or modern day Ukrainians, share your blithe moral relativism about Soviet, and neo-Soviet, oppression.

Do you, at least, agree that Stalin was evil?

Conversely, do you believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are, generally, good --as opposed to murder, gulags, and social control through police state terror?

I think an honest review of postwar Europe will demonstrate that political discipline was enforced on both sides of the divide, and that, in very general terms, the public was supportive of their respective systems.

As for Stalin, he - like Cheney and Rumsfeld - proved absolutely ruthless in pursuit of what he determined was the best interest of the State. All three have, or will likely, die peacefully in their own beds. I don’ t see that as necessarily an eclipse in the arc of the moral universe, rather just a plain fact of contemporary power dynamics and edifices. I don’t see that fact reversible or transcended by engagement in some new crusade to defeat some newly identified evil-doer. A better approach, such as suggested by FDR and JFK, would be structural reforms that would make it unlikely such people rise to positions of influence in the first place. The Soviets, at least, engaged in an intensive process of self-evaluation in the wake of Stalin. (The Soviets also peacefully stood down and dissolved their hopelessly compromised project in 1990/91, whereas the current crisis-beset US Empire appears determined to go down lashing out in every direction).

Speaking philosophically, the horrors of the 20th century did inspire a lot of sociological reflection and inquiry on the nature of “evil”. Whereas you seem to regard it as an animated presence, a differing consensus, neatly summed by Arendt’s notion of banality, saw it better understood as a vacant absence.

47 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff,

    Certainly, we can all decry the misuse of labels that falsely demonize putative adversaries in the conduct of foreign affairs, without simultaneously pretending that there is no such thing as evil.

     Such moral relativism is surely absurd, even for modern intellectuals who believe that God is dead.

     Who among us would deny that mass murderers like Hitler and Stalin were truly evil?

     Or American mass murderers like LBJ, Nixon, Kissinger, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Neocons?

     And now Putin?

     My point is that we need to study both sides in the 78 year-old conflict between Washington and the Kremlin, and this forum has always been focused on the untold history of the U.S. Deep State.

      As for JFK's Berlin Speech, was it, in fact, delivered as a realpolitik-al counterpoint to the olive branch of the Peace Speech?

 

In my opinion, characterizing the concept of peaceful coexistence as moral relativism or a denial of the presence of “evil” both misses the point and passively accepts the destructive good/evil dichotomy.

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Posted without intentional, feculent irony by the guy who was supposed to move his redundant anti-Biden spam to the MAGA Water Cooler... 🙄

In any case, I, for one, was relieved when Ben finally figured out-- after the premier of JFK Revisited at Cannes-- that Operation Mockingbird is still operational in the U.S. media.   Ben wasn't so sure at the time, but he has learned some things, and he now wants to educate us, at last.

As for FDR's wartime alliance with the USSR, (prior to his death and the subsequent surrender of Japan) I noticed that no one has commented on the fact that FDR's own progressive, pro-Soviet former Vice President, Henry Wallace, acknowledged by 1950 that he had been naive about Stalin, and that he now believed that the Soviet Union was "utterly evil."   Is it possible that FDR would have done the same, had he lived another five years?

Most Western intellectuals eventually concurred with Henry Wallace's condemnation of the Soviet Union after Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was published and the truth about 20th century Soviet atrocities became more evident in the West.  The evidence was shocking.

Meanwhile, the evidence of Putin's neo-Stalinist atrocities has become increasingly evident in the 21st century.  Journalists and other Putin critics in Russia have been systematically murdered during the past twenty years, residential buildings in Ukraine have been demolished by Russian missiles, and Ukrainian citizens have been shipped to Russian Gulags in Stalinist fashion.  Putin is a graduate of the Yuri Andropov Institute.

Obviously, the U.S. military-industrial complex has committed endless atrocities in the post-WWII era, throughout the world, including the Middle East during the Bush/Cheney/Neocon era.  JFK was the only POTUS who tried to end those U.S. military-industrial travesties.  He understood the anti-colonial aspect of most Third World conflicts.

But, on this forum, there has been a persistent tendency to focus on only one side of the 78 year-old conflict between the U.S. military-industrial complex and the Soviet (and neo-Soviet) military-industrial complex.

Both complexes have been problematic for humanity.  People from the former Soviet Bloc nations of Eastern Europe understand that better than some people from the U.S., U.K., (and Ireland.)  Eastern Europeans would have preferred the Marshall Plan's "export of American democracy at gunpoint" to Soviet totalitarianism any day, which is why they have been so eager to join NATO and the EU.

Peace is an admirable thing, as Neville Chamberlain, himself, believed, but, when dealing with bullies, it is often necessary to carry a big stick.

JFK believed as much, as he said in his June 1963 Berlin Speech.

W - you well know, or should know, Wallace’s defensive remarks in 1950 were made in the context of the Red Scare and resulting political repression of progressives which included arrests, jail sentences, surveillance, blacklists, and loyalty oaths. You know, or should know, Kennedy was capable of Cold War rhetoric when the mood struck, but his developed and developing policies are the measure of where he was actually headed. I strongly doubt he was abandoning the concepts articulated in the Peace Speech a mere two weeks later at the Berlin Wall.

In my opinion, both JFK and FDR came to realize the folly and danger of a manichean good/evil mindset, and understood that progressive or liberal domestic and foreign policies were incompatible which such mindset. They understood that the logic of a good/evil dichotomy required confrontation and ultimately elimination of “evil”, and would unleash destructive rather than productive energies, and eventually be damaging to all. To JFK, this prospect would unfold in the context of doomsday weaponry as he witnessed first hand. (In light of that last point, a poster on the previous thread, expressing a manichean worldview, actually called the sitting President a “coward” for not engaging in direct military conflict with a country holding the world’s largest nuclear weapon stockpile, and doing so directly on its border. That’s Joint Chiefs 1962 level craziness.)

In perspective, 22 years since 9/11 - a period marked by “twilight-struggle against evil” rhetoric - the evil-doers have variously been identified as “al-Qaeda”, Saddam Hussein, back to “al-Qaeda”, briefly to Gaddafi, pivoting to Syria’s Assad, shifting to ISIS, then settling on Putin (with China just offstage and already identified). Once a good/evil paradigm is engaged, internally and externally, the conflict will never end and will ultimately take us all down. That should be common wisdom.

Apparently, to this forum's moderators, the Peace Speech is a "Political Discussion" with no relevance to the assassination, even though James Douglass wrote a five-hundred page book based on exactly the relevance.

42 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff,

     Most people in the West were unaware of the extent of Stalin's crimes against humanity prior to the publication of Solzhenitsyn's work after 1960.

     And many of the crimes of the Soviet state against humanity have remained largely "untold" to this very day.

     They were shrouded in secrecy and Bolshevik propaganda, in a closed society-- a totalitarian police state.

     What have you read, or heard, about the Soviet concentration camps in former Orthodox monasteries like Solovki?  Nothing, I'll wager.

     What have you read about the Bolshevik demolitions of Russian Orthodox churches, or their use as Bolshevik gymnasiums and skating rinks?

     Stalin had the Spaasky Cathedral near the Kremlin demolished because he couldn't stand looking at it.

     The man was evil.

     As for JFK, I believe he would have endeavored to prevent Putin's expansionist military agenda in the former Soviet Union-- through negotiation, if possible. But I also believe he would have used military force, if necessary, to resist Putin's brutal invasion and annexation of a sovereign Ukrainian nation.

     Here is the text of JFK's June 1963 Berlin speech.

     Does he sound like a POTUS who would have done nothing while Putin invaded Ukraine, in order to establish his totalitarian police state in Kyiv?

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AT THE RUDOLPH WILDE PLATZ, BERLIN, JUNE 26, 1963

Listen to speech.    View related documents. 

President John F. Kennedy
West Berlin
June 26, 1963

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany--real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

 

OK. So what you are saying is that FDR was naive, and JFK's Berlin speech, rather than the previous "Peace Speech", was the accurate measure of his true position as a Cold warrior.

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Huh?

FDR allied with the brutal mass murderer, Joseph Stalin, out of necessity.

And, at the time of his death, he was still seeking Soviet assistance in defeating Japan, right?

Is that your definition of naivete?

As for JFK, do you diehard Putin apologists really believe that JFK would have done nothing in response to Putin's invasion and annexation of Ukraine?

Study his June 1963 Berlin speech.

W. - you understand perfectly well that FDR crafted a postwar vision of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets, a fact which undermines a notion that the alliance was merely one of expediency. I also highly doubt that the political purges of the 1930s in the USSR were some kind of secret, or that FDR was naive in his dealings with Stalin.

JFK - in my opinion, trying to presume what JFK would do facing today’s situation in Ukraine is a useless and counter-productive exercise because, should his own vision of peaceful coexistence been realized then events leading to the war - including NATO expansion and neocon provocateurs - would not have occurred or even been possible.

33 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Nothing new here, Jeff.

Obviously, FDR (and even Churchill) turned to Stalin as an ally-- a necessary evil, if you will-- in the critically important task of defeating the N-a-z-i Wehrmacht in Europe.

And the Red Army did the lion's share of the fighting.  80% of all Wehrmacht military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.

Churchill was very reluctant to re-commit troops to the Continent after Dunkirk, and the D-Day invasion happened almost FIVE YEARS after WWII commenced in Poland. 

It was FDR who responded most sincerely to Stalin's request for a Second Front-- in Italy (and up the Rhone Valley.)

By the time Germany surrendered, in May of 1945, the Red Army was gargantuan-- far and away the most massive military force in Europe.

And Stalin had no intention of relinquishing his occupied territories in Eastern Europe after May of 1945.

In fact, he had entered into a pact with Hitler, (Molotov-Ribbentrop) to partition (and annex) Poland in August of 1939.

Stalin was always secretive, and deceptive, about his pre-war (and post-war) Soviet genocide-- the Purges, executions, and forced labor camps of the Gulag, which also involved the mass incarceration of ethnic Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and other ethnic non-Russians after 1939.

Soviet supporters in the West were generally shocked and disillusioned when the truth about Stalinism surfaced in the publications of Solzhenitsyn after 1960.

Stalin was not an enlightened, humane autocrat.  He murdered millions of his own citizens.

So, IMO, the Stone/Kuznick narrative blaming Truman and the Cold War hawks in the West for the tragedy of Cold War history is one-sided.

The "untold" half of the story is about the Kremlin.

The same thing is true about current narratives blaming the U.S. and NATO for Putin's brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine-- and the 25 year-old Dugin/Putin agenda of annexing Ukraine.

OK. So you are in fact saying that FDR was naive.

And, I assume, that JFK was simply foolish.

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff,

     This is the basic Cold War narrative of Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone's Untold History series, and it was the only historical narrative in the series that seemed partially erroneous, in my opinion.

     Certainly, Stone & Kuznick were correct about the machinations of American capitalists and Cold War hawks to kick Henry Wallace off of FDR's 1944 Presidential ticket, and to use Truman and the Bomb to end our WWII era alliance with Uncle Joe Stalin the Soviets, launching the Cold War.

     But were Stone & Kuznick correct about Stalin's totalitarian police state and his post-war agenda in Europe?

     We can ask an analogous question about Oliver Stone's benign opinion of Putin's agenda in the 21st century.

     Stone has focused, primarily, on telling the Untold History of the United States-- the grim machinations of Wall Street, the CIA, and military-industrial complex.

     Conversely, he and Kuznick have not really focused on the very dark, untold history of Stalinism, the Soviet Union, and the 21st century Russian Federation.

     Using your paradigm, (above) how do you explain the 20th century Stalinist genocide against Soviet citizens, (including the Holodomor) the Gulag Archipelago, and the multi-decade oppression of Eastern Europeans by the Soviet police state?  Hungary in 1956?  Prague in 1968?  Soviet genocide in Poland?  Ukraine in 2022?

     Are those Soviet (and Russian Federation) crimes against humanity primarily the fault of U.S. (and British) Cold War hawks?

You’ve directed your questions to a couple of historians rather than FDR and JFK themselves, and so avoid dealing with the root concepts of their proposals.

Was FDR entirely blind to what you term the “very dark, untold history of Stalinism”? That is, was he naive in proposing a postwar architecture modelled on peaceful coexistence with the Soviets? Was JFK foolish to propose a reset based on a similar concept?

Likewise, should JFK have pursued total war in Vietnam because the VC were irredeemably evil? Or did the Vietnam experience ultimately show that the war should never have been engaged in the first place and that manichean constructs of good and evil and twilight struggles etc were in fact the true foolishness?

In my opinion, it is useful to understand, as Kuznick/Stone do, that WW2 was a fight against fascism rather than an amorphous concept of “evil”. The Soviets were the allies in this fight. The postwar Cold Warriors were revisionists who reincorporated fascism in the “free world” and managed to turn the successful conclusion of the war into a manichean struggle against former allies. It is my understanding that FDR believed the fascists more of a threat to the American “system” than the Soviets, and his thinking was based on the interplay of systems rather than concepts of good and evil.

In my opinion, the 1963 Peace Speech referred to the postwar detente envisioned by FDR although infused with an existential urgency brought on by the Cuban Missile Crisis eight months previous.

FDR’s vision was not realized due to his death, and due to machinations during the Democrats 1944 Convention when Wallace was moved aside. These events would create the space for the ascendancy of the “Dulles world view”  in the U.S. foreign policy/security architecture. It was the “Dulles world view”, realized during the Eisenhower administration, which Kennedy would come to oppose and would have supplanted if he had received a second term.

One might imagine if the Cold War had been ended in the context of a general detente, then the large military blocs (Warsaw Pact / NATO) would have also been seen to no longer have purpose, and events like NATO expansion and other eventual triggers in Ukraine would never have happened in the first place.

How JFK Would Pursue Peace in Ukraine

Kennedy’s Peace Speech, 60 years ago, highlights how Joe Biden’s approach to Russia and the Ukraine War needs a dramatic reorientation, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/08/how-jfk-would-pursue-peace-in-ukraine/

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Did you somehow miss the part of the interview when JFK made it clear that he was opposed to withdrawing from Vietnam, when he said that withdrawing would be a "great mistake"?:

          All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear, but I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. I know people don't like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away.

          We took all this--made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate--we may not like it--in the defense of Asia.

And look what JFK said when asked about De Gaulle's then-recent statement (regarding neutrality in Vietnam):

          Mr. Cronkite: Mr. President, have you made an assessment as to what President de Gaulle was up to in his statement on Viet-Nam last week?

          THE PRESIDENT. NO. I guess it was an expression of his general view, but he doesn't have any forces there or any program of economic assistance, so that while these expressions are welcome, the burden is carried, as it usually is, by the United States and the people there. But I think anything General de Gaulle says should be listened to, and we listened.

          What, of course, makes Americans somewhat impatient is that after carrying this load for 18 years, we are glad to get counsel, but we would like a little more assistance, real assistance. But we are going to meet our responsibility anyway.

           It doesn't do us any good to say, "Well, why don't we all just go home and leave the world to those who are our enemies."

Look at what JFK said on the White House tapes. He made it as clear as English can be that he was determined to win the war. Selverstone documents this beyond any rational dispute in his new book The Kennedy Withdrawal. 

Yes, certainly, JFK did not want to send regular combat troops to South Vietnam, but that is a galaxy away from the spurious claim that he was determined to abandon South Vietnam after the election. Although he wanted to avoid deploying regular infantry units in South Vietnam, he was determined to keep providing military and economic aid to keep South Vietnam free. Every public statement he made supports this fact, and we now know that his private comments--recorded on the White House tapes--confirm this fact. 

Never, never, never, not one single time, not once on the White House tapes do we hear JFK express even a hint of an intention to abandon South Vietnam after the election. We hear just the opposite, as Selverstone documents. 

Where does the proposed "Prouty- Newman -Stone" faction ever say JFK was determined to "abandon" S Vietnam regardless of the consequences? Please cite. 

32 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

There's nothing obtuse about it. I asked him if he read the declaration. How can that be obtuse? It's yes or no.

Papadopoulos lied to the FBI and Durham skipped the part (revealed in subsequent emails and phone data) about his own (GP) notes that Coffee Boy claimed not to able to read about a meeting in London with Putin reps arranged or proposed BEFORE the opening of Crossfire Hurricane. Just a slight oversight by Durham I'm sure.

The only lesson from the Papadopoulos indictments was to emphasize that one should never agree to an FBI interview without a lawyer. One count consisted of a determination that one’s non-paid consultancy began at the moment one was told they were “hired”, rather than the day one showed up in person for “work” (that sounds crazy but read the indictment). Another consisted of P’s determination that Mifsud was a “nobody”, instead of being a vitally important Russian contact as insisted by Mueller’s charge. But Mifsud was a nobody, as can be determined by the investigation’s absolute non-interest in speaking to him beyond a brief session ahead of P’s interview. It is also a fact that the Female Russian National was not Putin’s niece or cousin or whoever Mifsud represented  her to be I.e. there was no meeting in London with Putin reps other than Mifsud’s false representations - but why he did that was never determined.

15 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

Did you read his declaration under oath?

Bob - you're a bit obtuse here. Are you suggesting that Papadopoulos' experience revealed the "collusion" or are you demonstrating the predicate?

I have yet to see any compelling information to suggest Prouty was anything other than who he said he was - i.e. a retired military man whose career had provided remarkable access to extraordinary events. He was not a whistleblower in the sense of revealing classified information, which he never did. However, neither did he ever sign a non-disclosure agreement with the CIA, which is why he could speak more thoroughly than others about CIA programs. If anything, he reflected the opinion of a sizeable faction of the military who resented the growth of the CIA, led by Dulles, into a “fourth force” in the US defence structure. Politically, though he never really discussed his personal leanings, he was not right-wing, as sometimes characterized. He might be best described as a mid-century main-street Rotary-club American.

Before “JFK” he was a relatively marginal figure. “Secret Team” got great reviews but no distribution, and there was no follow up. His essays were published for a time by “men’s magazines”. He came into Oliver Stone’s orbit through a series of communications he had with Garrison in the mid-80s. Prouty provided the “Washington angle”, which Stone thought lifted “JFK” into a “bigger movie.” However, as Prouty told the ARRB, he was not personally an assassination “buff”, and his principle work concerns the rise of the CIA and its clandestine activities through the 1950s leading to the critical juncture during the Kennedy administration.

On 5/17/2023 at 5:14 AM, Michael Griffith said:

...the Stone-Newman-Prouty fiction that JFK was going to totally disengage from South Vietnam after the election regardless of the consequences... the Stone-Newman-Prouty claim about JFK's Vietnam intentions is a fringe view...

Could you cite where the presumed "Stone-Newman-Prouty" claim specifically maintains that "JFK was going to totally disengage from South Vietnam after the election regardless of the consequences". I think you have, yet again, used a straw man fallacy to advance an argument. 

The Harvey and Lee hypothesis is:  a hypothesis. I don’t understand why some persons, beyond expressing disagreement with the hypothesis, deputize themselves and seek to not just police discussion on the topic but actively try to prevent such discussion. It is abundantly clear the concept of an Oswald doppelgänger / double has historic roots (discussed as early as 1964), and is part of the evidentiary trail.

I’m personally agnostic, but have found Harvey And Lee to be a valuable resource, and Armstrong a very good writer who asks the right questions and engages the reader. The self-appointed deputies are the annoyance.

Prouty on Lansdale and Dealy Plaza - in his own words:

Some thoughts -

Maybe someone is doing a beta test, seeing how quickly the problems are identified I.e. “something clearly ‘off’” about the voices.

Otherwise, Is it not the case that the “former American intel agent going by the name of ‘Mac’” is rather discredited by this stunt?

Basic critical thinking skills aid in discerning the credibility of sources, and a healthy skepticism properly greets such a “scoop” to begin with.

Audio and video are certainly a more sophisticated level of fakery, but fake documents have made their way through the research community in the past. Prouty called these “golden apples” - too good to be true but tempting to believe.

There is, of course, the claim the BYP are fakes, and also what to make of the autopsy photos which seem to have been deceptively staged? The introduction of deceptive materials, if exposed, is severely damaging to credibility. But without exposure…

Didn’t the CIA create pornographic films with a double standing in for a South Asian leader? That’s also a use of audio-visual fakery from six decades ago.

Unfortunately, this current moment is not short of media-driven moral panics and rushes to judgment and deep fakes could drive such events.

Orson Welles’ hybrid documentary “F Is For Fake” has a lot to offer in thinking about these issues.

45 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

Who decided on that breech, Jeff? The RF? Your sentence sums it up. The Ukraine Legal Authority. Not the RF. The Ukraine is its own legal authority regardless of how you like to peddle it and their borders are legally established by international law.

You keep saying that it is up to Russia to determine the outcome of people's lives in the Ukraine which I find offensive and ignorant. Get a grasp on what you're preposing.

I’m not sure what you mean. The breach was the unconstitutional removal and replacement of the elected government in February 2014. The RF had nothing to do with that. Otherwise you are attributing things to me which I have never said.

This topic has some relevancy in that during the months leading up to the start of the SMO, international disagreements over national security and sovereignty echoed those of concern during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Recognizing the points of similarity actually assists in clarifying what is going on, a task which has some urgency. The stage is currently being set for a two-front world war which could go hot over the next months or year ahead.

54 minutes ago, Bob Ness said:

Thank you. Wanted clarification on that. There was no signed agreement then. You realize that in order for NATO to come to any agreement it requires approval by the NATO membership, which at that time were 16 members; these countries were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A DISCUSSION between Clinton or Bush, verbal or not, is NOT an agreement.

The Russian Federation well knows that this is NOT an agreement and not does not have any internationally recognized legal authority. It represents a position by both parties to form a diplomatic resolution to differences related to the region which have dated back generations. Further, the RF also knows that due to our institutions there are no fixed continuity policy discussions UNLESS there are SIGNED STIPULATIONS that carry forward the interval agreements in negotiations. That is dipolmacy 101 which of course most people, Oliver Stone included, won't know.

The continuation of RF talking points about the "agreement" or "treaty" that never existed ignores the ABSOLUTE legal authority of the CONTINUOUSLY RECOGNIZED borders of Ukraine which includes Crimea. These borders have been recognized by the USSR and subsequently by the Russian Federation and was legally agreed to by the Russian Federation Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, agreeing to respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine, refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine, and to return the nuclear weapons stored in Ukraine to Russia.

Again: The USSR recognized the borders of Ukraine in 1990. This recognition was stipulated in the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which was signed by the USSR SUPREME SOVIET. This recognition was reaffirmed in the 1997 NATO-Ukraine Charter and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, both of which Russia signed.

There is a reason to agreed upon borders in the nuclear age (and before really). It gives everyone the information, regardless of position in whatever controversy, the basic definition of the line that gets crossed that becomes aggression or invasion, take your pick.

Just in case you weren't aware: the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was a sovereign state within the Soviet Union since about 1922. It had its own constitution and government, and was responsible for its own internal affairs and foreign policy.

So it has been legally recognized by the USSR AND RF for 100 years and that includes the disputed areas.

And there ya go.

Bob, there was a breach in the legal authority of the national Ukraine government in 2014. This breach was meant to be resolved by the Minsk Agreements, endorsed by the UN Security Council, but the Agreements were never realized and Ukraine’s government - within which the Donbass region has no representation - formally rejected / withdrew from these accords. So the legal breach of national authority/legitimacy has yet to be resolved. In light of this, appeals to preexisting legal authorities aren’t quite as cut and dried as you suggest.

In terms of Crimea, and its referendum to leave Ukraine, international law supports both sovereignty and the right to self-determination, although it is rare that the apparent contradiction assumes such stark contrast.

The assurances that NATO would not expand eastward were widespread and unambiguous. The argument “didn’t get it in writing” is more akin to a used car salesman than international diplomats. As veteran Cold warrior George Kennan pointed out in the late 90s, the disavowal of these pledges would have serious ramification in international relationships and trust, and has contributed to the widespread feeling in much of the world that the US and its partners are not presently “agreement-capable”.