1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Michael: Until yesterday, I assumed that everyone in this forum knew the basic facts about Liberty Lobby and their founder Willis Carto,

 

That's true, there's only been a very superficial interest in the Liberty Lobby concerning Hunt's litigation.That's a little like people who come here from the right, never hearing of the Koch Bros.

But Geez, Can we at least admit Michael knows more about the Liberty Lobby than anyone else here?

 

What I see is Michael's has made all the recent points here, making a pretty solid case that it's not likely Prouty doesn't know who the Liberty Lobby is. And there's been zero points made against his assertions except an attempt to make this issue about Michael himself and impugn his motives on this thread, and  now another thread,, which is always a tactic of people who are losing the argument.

You have a choice, whether to really bone up and attack Michael's  repeated incidents of Prouty support  for the Liberty Lobby or try to attack Michael's assertion further that Prouty is L. Ron Hubbard fan, while if true, by itself wouldn't be a deal breaker, but is just more icing on the cake. Or  2) choose to let it ride and say it's impossible to know what was going on in Prouty's head, and damn it, I believe him!

 

Chris: We tend to ever increasingly fall into the emotional thinking, attacking the man as opposed to specifically what they have said, the matter in contention. 

I'm not sure I would call that emotional, Chris. If Prouty spent several years as an ardent defender of the Liberty Lobby, it says a whole lot about his judgment.  But it's true, it's not a reason to dismiss everything he says whole cloth, as I previously  said.

But let's examine your emotional thinking point from the other side.

This forum is heavily wedded to Oliver Stone's "JFK". It is a movie without a climax per se. The most powerful moment by everyone's account here is the meeting between Garrison and Prouty. That is the revealing moment of the movie. The articulation of the "whodunit."

 Now we, who have invested so much emotion in that scene, and now the title of this thread has been turned from a title that originally implied everybody who denies Prouty's assertions is a crackpot to having to entertain the assertion that maybe Prouty himself is a crackpot! That is a very bitter pill to swallow. This of course was never going to be accepted here gracefully.

I felt like I was the only one in this forum who felt any disappointment in Prouty when he folded like a lounge chair in front of that questioning body Prouty stood before.*  He didn't stick up for anything he had previously said! Didn't that bother anybody here? And I know there are factors we can't know, such as Prouty's fear maybe of losing his pension etc.

My guess is that's because Prouty then becomes like a Garrison martyr figure here, who later lost his confidence and came off very badly in public appearances but  we sympathize with his frustration, just as we sympathize with Prouty's capitulation because both of them are  being grinded down by the deep state.

I think the evidentiary basis for the JFKAC  still holds up very well, Thank you, without some cleverly written dialog in a movie, or even Prouty's viewpoint. By that, I'm not saying, he has no credibility. I just don't have to believe him.

 

* I assume his assertions about getting rid of Trujillo were after his testimony, or it would have really interesting if he was questioned about making that assertion. Of course not saying it couldn't be true.

 

 

Kirk, what you left out is the fact that the critic referred  has engaged a process of insults and name-calling from the start in the interest of reputational disparagement, using a technique known as the “prosecutor’s brief”, whereby one amplifies all the information reckoned to support a “case” while excising or otherwise diminishing information which doesn’t. Rhetorically, as a means of argument or seeking to convince, the prosecutor’s brief properly requires being put to the test (or cross-examined). The other day, for example, the critic offered a  list of twelve bullet points to bolster his argument, but put to the test every single one of those points could be shown to be either factually incorrect or a gross distortion of the facts - and I am very confident saying that.

That’s a bad track record, which suggests the need to continue to "test" further assertions.  Things that stick out in this regard are, for example, the characterization of a “close and prolonged” relationship with the Lobby's top leadership when there is no record to even suggest the parties had ever met or corresponded in any way. Or cite a willingness to be a “character witness” which not only never materialized but there is also no contextual information available to describe the process by which that allegedly occurred (the only reference is in an article which itself serves as a prosecutor's brief). There is also the insistence that through submission of articles for publication or appearance on a nationally syndicated radio program one is necessarily endorsing a set of ideological principles expressed through “hundreds” of extremist articles, but put to the test such formulation does not in fact seem exactly accurate as the Wikipedia description contradicts the notion. So what is more accurate - that the newspaper in question published “hundreds” of extremist articles or that it gave “no indication” of its ideological underpinnings?

That said, using the Liberty Lobby as a stick is an effective point of argument as it, by default, puts a cross-examination on the backfoot, in a “when did you stop beating your wife?” kind of way. Therefore, trying to understand what a reasonable person should have known about the publication in the late 1980s - which I do not know - becomes a “whitewash of a vile and racist” newspaper. Faced with that sort of inflamed rhetoric, one might decide is is best to avoid the topic altogether and forego any sort of cross-examination. That is ultimately the purpose of the insults in the first place - as seen elsewhere in the “conspiracy theorist” attacks on Stone following “JFK” or the gratuitous drive-bys which fill Bugliosi’s book.

On the South Pole trip, we have two primary sources, both written by Prouty, neither of which express any certainty as to the purpose of the trip, and therefore serve - openly and directly - as a speculation or a surmise. The criticism which has appeared in this thread instead portrays it as a factual “claim”. This rhetorical process is the prosecutor’s brief at work.

9 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

The Spotlight, which carried literally hundreds of articles that questioned the Holocaust, attacked Jews, placed all the blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict on Israel, minimized Hitler's crimes, peddled white supremacy, posited an international Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, etc., etc.

This does not square at all with the description of the paper as appears on Wikipedia:

"In 1975, Liberty Lobby began publishing a weekly newspaper called The Spotlight, which ran news and opinion articles with a very populist and anti-establishment slant on a variety of subjects, but gave little indication of being extreme-right or neo-National Socialist. However, critics charged The Spotlight was intended as a subtle recruiting tool for the extreme right, using populist-sounding articles to attract people from all points on the political spectrum including liberals, moderates, and conservatives, and special-interest articles to attract people interested in such subjects as alternative medicine."

9 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

And this is not to even mention Prouty's other bizarre and embarrassing claims... his bogus suggestion that he was sent to the South Pole to help strip JFK of security (JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, pp. 283-285)--a claim that he back-peddled from with the ARRB

Prouty never suggested anywhere ever that he was sent South Pole to specifically “help strip JFK of security”, and certainly not on pp 283-285 of the book. The “suggestions” (an idea put forward for consideration)  Prouty did entertain never once amounted to a “claim” (an assertion that something is the case) he had to back-peddle from, as can be easily confirmed from the primary sources.   

11 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Surely didn’t know Prouty said that about the JCS and Jonestown. Not to derail too much, my reading of Jim Jones is that he was connected to US Intel in some way. But that’s a stretch.

Prouty’s source for the information re: Jonestown was an After-Action Report written for the Joint Chiefs which included a detailed chronology.

“Guyana Operations,” After-Action Report, 18-27 November, 1978, prepared by the Special Study Group, Operations Directorate, USMC Directorate, Joint Chiefs of Staff

This report is also referred in an article linked below by the respected journalist Jim Hougan, who did several pieces on Jonestown.     https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=16572#_ftn24

The inscription “hunter of fascists ha-ha” is intriguing because it is not Marina Oswald’s handwriting, but the exclamation “ha-ha” is a figure of speech which she was known to use.  In a footnote to my article, the handwriting of the phrase is compared -  the DeMohrenschildt print with handwritten notes Marina jotted for Priscilla McMillan.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-new-look-at-the-enigma-of-the-backyard-photographs-parts-1-3#_n4

30 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Then you should agree that it is entirely possible that Fletcher Prouty did not know that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic. Just as he said.

I contend that Prouty's ties with Liberty Lobby have to do with the fact that 1) Willis Carto was a conspiracy theorist, interested in Prouty's work, 2) who offered to publish Prouty's work, which then led to 3) a thankful Prouty helping Carto out in return.

 

I would agree with this perspective, and would add that the Liberty Lobby was barely mentioned at all by Prouty's critic here in his first run of posts, and then suddenly blew up to maximalist proportions over the course of a few hours. That is, I don't get the vibe of someone who has carefully worked through the details and is presenting a thorough reasoned analysis. He started with a highly biased opinion, received some pushback, and went searching for anything else that could be used as a pretext.

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

You either don't know what you're talking about or you're so emotionally committed to believing Prouty that you can't bring yourself to face the facts about him. Every single one of your "factually incorrect" and "gross distortion" responses is wrong. 

Let's focus on three facts that are indisputable:

1. The fact that Prouty was willing to be a character witness for Willis Carto in the IHR trial. Just to refresh everyone's memory, Carto was a proud, unabashed Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, and white supremacist. He founded Liberty Lobby. Liberty Lobby, headed by Carto, sent speakers around the country who argued that the Holocaust never happened--I personally heard one of these bozos speak in Portland, Oregon, when I was in my early 20s. 

2. The fact that Prouty spoke on Liberty Lobby's Radio Free America program numerous times. You know who else spoke on that radio show? People who questioned the Holocaust, bashed Israel, complained about "Jewish influence" in America, etc. You know who two of the other guests were? Fletcher Richman and Frank Flint. Google them. The radio show was finally shut down after vocal protests from Jewish groups and other civil rights groups. 

3. The fact that Prouty was a "featured speaker" at a Liberty Lobby convention in 1990. Prouty urged people to read Liberty Lobby's anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying weekly newspaper The Spotlight: "If anybody really wants to know what's going on in the world today, he should be reading 'Spotlight'" (Spotlight, 10-8-90, p. 14, HOLOCAUST FAQ: Willis Carto & The Institute for Historical Review (2/2) (faqs.org). 

I invite you to read back issues of The Spotlight. You'll find a plethora of articles bashing Israel, bashing Jews, giving favorable coverage of neo-National Socialist groups in Germany, accusing Holocaust victims of fraud, disputing the Holocaust, etc. Guess who placed an ad in the publication? Timothy McVeigh. 

Now, I have just two questions for you: Do you agree that the Holocaust happened? If so, how on God's green Earth can you be caught dead defending a man who (1) served on a Liberty Lobby board, (2) spoke at a Liberty Lobby convention, (3) urged people to read The Spotlight, (4) spoke on Liberty Lobby's radio show numerous times, (5) had one of his books published by a publishing house that disputed the Holocaust, and (6) lined up to be a character witness for Willis Carto, an unashamed Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, and white supremacist? 

Once your line of argument reduces to a series of crude associative smears, you are merely waving a flag which signals you have nothing of value or interest to add to the conversation.

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

You keep ignoring and twisting the facts about Prouty.

-- Prouty wrote letters attacking Hubbard's critics.

-- Prouty took money to appear as an "expert witness" to defend Scientology.

-- Prouty sat on an advisory board of the anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying Liberty Lobby.

-- Prouty had a book published by a Holocaust-denying publishing company.

-- Incredibly, Prouty testified as a character witness for Willis Carto, an unashamed anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, and white supremacist, in the IHR trial. Carto founded Liberty Lobby.

-- You're citing occult writer Peter Levenda as a source for the bogus claim that Hubbard worked "deep cover" for naval intelligence???!!! Let's look at some of the bizarre books that Levenda has written:

Sinister Forces - The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces) (2005)
Gates of the Necronomicon (as Simon) (2006)
Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation (2008)
Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java (2011)
The Angel And The Sorcerer (2012)
The Dark Lord: H. P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic (2013)
The Tantric Alchemist: Thomas Vaughan and the Indian Tantric Tradition (2015)
The Lovecraft Code (2016)
Sekret [sic] Machines: Gods (with Tom DeLonge) (2017)

Eee-gads! This is the kind of fringe writer you're citing in response to the evidence that Prouty had no clue about interpreting Hubbard's military records? And just never mind that Hubbard was a crook and an abject crackpot? Just never mind that fact?

The attacks on Prouty, far from being "thinly sourced, out of context, and cherry picked," are abundantly documented in his own writings and interviews. Let's summarize some of what we now know beyond any doubt about him:

-- He lied about his role in presidential protection.

-- He lied about the sinister nature of his trip to the South Pole.

-- When he was asked to produce the putatively historic notes that he had claimed in writing he had taken of his alleged 316th Det/112th MI Group "stand down" phone call, he lamely said they were "long gone" and offered no explanation for why he had failed to safeguard such supposedly historic notes (and, sadly, the ARRB interviewers were too polite to press him on this point). 

-- He made the slanderous claim that Lansdale was involved in the Lumumba and Trujillo murders.

-- He made the slanderous claim that Lansdale hated JFK and wanted him dead.

-- He made the bogus claim that Lansdale wanted to see a huge escalation in the American involvement in South Vietnam.

-- Without a shred of supporting evidence, he claimed that Lansdale was involved in the assassination plot and was even in Dealey Plaza on the day it happened. 

-- He said that Princess Diana may have been assassinated by "the secret team." He said he "would not be surprised" to learn that the secret team had killed Diana.

-- He approvingly quoted Stalin's nutty theory that Churchill poisoned FDR.

-- He associated with known anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and even appeared as a character witness for Willis Carto in the IHR trial. As mentioned, Carto founded Liberty Lobby and was an unabashed Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, and white supremacist. 

-- He repeatedly defended the crook and quack Ron Hubbard. He stridently attacked Russell Miller's excellent expose of Hubbard and Scientology Bare-Faced Messiah.

-- He publicly praised the cult of Scientology. 

Moderators, please, please move any threads about Fletcher Prouty to another subforum so that the JFK case is not tainted by association with this fraud and nutjob.
 

I have had reason to do a bit of a dive into Prouty’s career and record, which inevitably includes noting the semi-successful efforts of character assassination unleashed in the wake of the “JFK” film. It is a bit shocking to encounter the persistence of these efforts, particularly since Griffith is merely repeating the clearly one-sided and agenda-driven things he has read. Continuing efforts directed against Prouty’s reputation did at least influence a classic essay describing online narrative management techniques:

https://wikipediaonlineatrocity.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/anatomy-of-an-online-atrocity-wikipedia-gamaliel-and-the-fletcher-prouty-entry/

That said, it is further of note that every single one of the bullet points which concludes Griffith’s post are either factually incorrect or represent a gross distortion of the record:

-- He lied about his role in presidential protection.

            Factually incorrect. His statements were entirely consistent with his experience.

-- He lied about the sinister nature of his trip to the South Pole.

             Factually incorrect. See his Letter to Garrison Oct 2, 1985

-- When he was asked to produce the putatively historic notes…

            Gross distortion of the record. The notes exist.

-- He made the slanderous claim that Lansdale was involved in the Lumumba and Trujillo murders.

            Factually incorrect.

-- He made the slanderous claim that Lansdale hated JFK and wanted him dead.

            Factually incorrect.

- He made the bogus claim that Lansdale wanted to see a huge escalation in the American involvement in South Vietnam.

            Factually incorrect.

-- Without a shred of supporting evidence, he claimed that Lansdale was involved in the assassination plot and was even in Dealey Plaza on the day it happened

            Gross distortion and factually incorrect. Lansdale has been traced to Dallas outer suburb Denton on November 21, 1963.

- He said that Princess Diana may have been assassinated by "the secret team." He said he "would not be surprised" to learn that the secret team had killed Diana.

            Gross distortion.Cherry-picked speculation presented out-of-context.

-- He approvingly quoted Stalin's nutty theory that Churchill poisoned FDR.

            Gross distortion of the record. Prouty cited a published quotation.

-- He associated with known anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers…

            Gross distortion of the record.

- He repeatedly defended the crook and quack Ron Hubbard. He stridently attacked Russell Miller's excellent expose of Hubbard and Scientology Bare-Faced Messiah.

             Gross distortion of the record. “Expert witness” is legally an objective party.

- He publicly praised the cult of Scientology. 

            Factually incorrect.

39 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Sorry, but this won't work. Prouty did more than serve as an expert witness for Scientology/Hubbard, although that in itself was bad enough. Prouty also wrote letters attacking Hubbard's critics. As former Scientology cult member Tony Ortega has noted, "Prouty was a master of the 'noisy investigation,' and made vicious allegations against anyone who criticized Hubbard" (https://tonyortega.org/2016/09/10/laying-to-rest-the-obfuscations-of-l-fletcher-prouty-scientologys-conspiracist-for-hire/). 

Please read Ortega's article. He shows that Prouty had no clue what he was talking about regarding Hubbard's Navy personnel records. Prouty made the ludicrous claim that Hubbard served under "deep cover" in Navy intelligence and that his records were doctored to conceal this. Prouty's only "evidence" for this claim was (1) the fact that the number "16" appeared on some pages of Hubbard's records and (2) the fact that in one place Hubbard's records identified him as an "intelligence officer." But "16" simply referred to naval reservist duty, and the "intelligence officer" reference merely referred to Hubbard's work as a mail censor. 

Even worse than Prouty's work for the Scientology cult and his defense of a crook and crackpot like Hubbard was Prouty's association with Liberty Lobby, a group that promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. In my early 20s, having no clue what Liberty Lobby was, I attended a Liberty Lobby presentation in Portland, Oregon, with two friends. I realized I'd made a huge mistake when the featured speaker began to argue that the Holocaust never happened. Prouty actually served on one of Liberty Lobby's advisory boards and allowed the IHR Holocaust-minimizing Noontide Press to publish his book The Secret Team. Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me? And you're still defending this guy?

When his Liberty Lobby and IHR-Noontide Press connections came to light, Prouty, incredibly and unbelievably, claimed he had no idea that Liberty Lobby and Noontide Press were anti-Semitic and that they disputed the Holocaust! If my 20-year-old self could figure out that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic and denied the Holocaust, surely Prouty had to know this as well. If he really didn't know, this seriously calls into question his competence, judgment, and intelligence.   

Go read just a few of the issues of Liberty Lobby's weekly newspaper The Spotlight. You'll find article after article attacking the Jews, attacking Israel, claiming an international Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, claiming that the Jews controlled the American press, servings of favorable treatment of neo-National Socialist groups in Germany, etc., etc. You know how I know this? Because when I arrived at the above-mentioned Liberty Lobby meeting, having no clue what it was all about, there was a booth at the entrance that was offering free four-week trial subscriptions to The Spotlight, and I innocently signed up for my free trial. Needless to say, I declined to get a paid subscription after receiving the four free issues.

You guys keep talking about Prouty's military career and all his medals. Again, General Curtis LeMay, arguably one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of warfare, received many awards and commendations and retired as the Air Force Chief of Staff, the highest position in the Air Force. There are several Air Force buildings named after LeMay. General Hap Arnold, who ordered the brutal and criminal fire bombings of Japanese cities, and who chose LeMay to carry them out, likewise had a "distinguished military career" and received numerous medals and awards.

Or, take Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Except for a single letter of reprimand, McVeigh had a distinguished military career. McVeigh was promoted quickly, received numerous awards (including the Bronze Star and the NDSM), served in the Gulf War, was accepted for the elite Special Forces (Green Berets) school, and received an honorable discharge. 

credulous: having or showing too great a readiness to believe things

There is nothing even to defend here. You started on another thread by making inaccurate claims about the “JFK” film, and have followed by parroting lame associative slanders dating to the 1980s here. I am half-convinced you are in fact engaged in satire, slyly confirming Niederhut’s thread proposition by posing as exactly the sort of credulous nitwit who would refer angry partisan rants as anything substantive.

53 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Prouty's employment with the Scientology cult and his embarrassing and bogus defense of L. Ron Hubbard are not "extraneous subjects" but speak directly to his judgment, character, and credibility. 

I just find it unbelievable that anyone is still defending Prouty after all we now know about him. 

Prouty was hired by a legal team to serve as an “expert witness”.

“Expert witnesses are called upon in the court system to serve as an objective party to the lawsuit and never function as an advocate for one side or the other.”

Cohen, Kenneth (2015-08-05). Expert Witnessing and Scientific Testimony : A Guidebook, Second Edition. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

For the record, the following is the primary documentation which informed the General Y aspect of the "JFK" screenplay. It appears in a private letter sent by Prouty to Jim Garrison, dated October 2 1985 (emphasis added):

"As a strange aside, and perhaps no more than a coincidence, I was sent to the South Pole leaving early in Nov 1963. Now here I was the Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I had been in that work for 9 consecutive years in the Pentagon...and they send me for a VIP vacation to the South Pole. Was that on purpose? The man who sent me was Ed Lansdale. He said I had been working hard and would benefit from the change. He made all the arrangements and I went as "the escort for a VIP group" I was in New Zealand when JFK was killed and the man in the first picture of the Tramps, just outside the Texas School Book Bldg. just after JFK was murdered, the man who is walking in the opposite direction from the Tramps and the phony police, is none other than Ed Lansdale! I have had this verified by high-ranking close associates. Why was he in Dallas that day?"

As can be determined, this brief "aside" contains two certainties: a trip to the South Pole and an ID based on a photograph. Otherwise, it is uncertain and speculative. The flood of insults presumes definitive conclusions, which obviously do not appear in this letter. The flood of insults, exemplified by particular posts on this thread, is based on a poor and biased reading of the primary material and a failure to account for the concept of "dramatic licence" as was applied in the screenplay.

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

BTW, my last name is Griffith, not Griffin. You can't even get simple fact straight.

You are a dream come true for lone-gunman theorists. They love it when people who posit a conspiracy in the JFK case go off the deep end with nutty claims and bizarre theories, as you do. 

You are immune to fact and logic when it comes to Prouty. You still have not provided a substantive answer to a single point I've made about Prouty's false assertions, his phony credentials, and his association with undisputed crackpots and extremists. 

Tony Ortega proved that Prouty did a lot more than just make "a few comments" about Hubbard's military records. That's a royal dodge. Ortega proved, among several other things that you ignore, that Prouty's self-proclaimed expertise in understanding military records was nonexistent, that Prouty had no clue what he was talking about. Ortega also proved that Prouty's claim that Hubbard worked in deep-cover naval intelligence was baseless and absurd. But you won't admit anything when it comes to Prouty.

And, by the way, what in the devil was Prouty doing defending such a nutcase and fraud as Hubbard in the first place? Do you know anything about what a kook and crook Hubbard was? Doesn't it raise a giant red flag in your mind that Prouty would defend a nutjob like Hubbard and would take money from the Scientology cult to do so? I guess not.

 

Attacking Prouty based on a very brief consultancy performed on the outskirts of the extremely dense and confusing universe associated with Scientology has very little relevancy other than the choice opportunity for use as an associative slur by persons already disposed to speak poorly of the man. It functions as a reputational shorthand to deter or confuse, a context-free talking point dangled inside an insult-laden prosecutor’s brief  (“crackpot” “nut job”  “kook”). It’s purpose is purely rhetorical, to spin clarifications of Prouty’s work into defences of sketchy quasi religious outfits or “sleazy extremists” or anything else which can be used as both tar and feather.  While Griffith lauds his linked article, objectively it is clear the author is personally partisanly involved with the topic, which stemmed from a factional lawsuit dating to the late ‘80s; the author relies in part on the heavily-edited Prouty Wikipedia entry; and that other non-partisan researchers have since also concluded that Hubbard’s murky military records do show a tie to naval intelligence - which is the entire rub against Prouty (for example see Levenda, Sinister Forces Vol. 1, p154).

Point being, the attacks on Prouty’s credibility basically whittle down to a very thinly-sourced foundation of half-truths and out-of-context cherry-picked quotations, buttressed by a high wall of insults and slurs. It is not a “scholarly” effort.

I think there will be a sophisticated smear campaign, of which whispers of an alleged "Bannon link" is just one facet. The campaign, looking at that Twitter thread, will include MAGA, anti-vaxx, Sirhan apologist etc but the real issue is that RFK Jr is not afraid to publicly discuss issues even Bernie Sanders shied away from: 

"“The Ukraine war is the final collapse of the neocon's short-lived ‘American Century,’” Kennedy said. “The neocon projects in Iraq and Ukraine have cost $8.1 trillion, hollowed out our middle class, made a laughingstock of US military power and moral authority, pushed China and Russia into an invincible alliance, destroyed the dollar as the global currency, cost millions of lives and done nothing to advance democracy or win friendships or influence.”

On 4/6/2023 at 10:49 AM, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, gosh. Not this nonsense again. You are embarrassing the case for conspiracy.

Prouty did not work with Lansdale or the CIA Saigon station chief "for many years." Lansdale transferred him out of his department because he was a NUTJOB.

Prouty did not co-author the Pentagon Papers or the Taylor-McNamara Report. 

As I have pointed out to you before, and as you keep lamely labeling as "CIA disinformation," Prouty's NUTTY statements are well documented. Their existence cannot be disputed--they come from his own writings and interviews. His ARRB interview is available for all to read. His ties with seedy, extremist right-wing groups, one of which disputed the Holocaust, are a matter of record. 

If there were a CIA team tasked with spreading loony claims in the JFK research community to discredit the case for conspiracy, they would consider Prouty's nutty claims a gift from heaven. 

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

But Prouty was a fraud and he was a crackpot. It's not vitriol if it's true. I am astounded that anyone in this forum is still defending him after all we now know about him. Are you folks just unwilling to process the fact that even Oliver Stone has repudiated Prouty's claims about Lansdale? 

We're not talking about "minor details." Give me a break. "Minor details"? Falsely accusing Lansdale of involvement in the Lumumba and Trujillo murders is not a "minor detail." Falsely accusing Lansdale of hating JFK, when in fact Lansdale liked JFK and grieved over his death, is not a "minor detail." Making the outrageous claim that Lansdale helped strip of JFK of security in Dallas by sending Prouty on a sinister diversionary trip to the South Pole is not a "minor detail." 

I fear it won't do any good, but let's just review some key facts about Lansdale:

-- He opposed sending large numbers of American troops to South Vietnam. He had no problem with military and economic aid, but he believed that placing large number of American troops in South Vietnam was the wrong approach. 

-- He opposed bombing North Vietnam.

-- He criticized the excessive use of force by some American military units in South Vietnam. 

-- He opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion.

-- He even opposed most of the recommendations in the Taylor-McNamara report. 

-- He was bipartisan in his politics. He was neither a diehard Republican nor a diehard Democrat. 

-- In the Philippines, he opposed the massive use of force against Communist insurgents, just as he later did in Vietnam. 

Ed Lansdale was one of the last people on Earth who would have wanted any harm to come to JFK. He liked and admired JFK. He spoke with JFK at some length. And he grieved over JFK's death.

It is crazy talk, downright reckless crazy talk to accuse Lansdale of having played any role in JFK's death. People who continue to peddle this slander are doing harm to the case for conspiracy and are making everyone who posits a conspiracy look bad. 

Again, Oliver Stone himself has repudiated Prouty's charges against Lansdale. 

Go read Prouty's ARRB interview. Prouty himself repudiated the claim that his mission to the South Pole was sinister or unusual. BTW, not once in his ARRB interview did Prouty claim that Lansdale was the one who sent him to the South Pole. Prouty himself admitted he had nothing to do with presidential protection. Prouty himself admitted that he could not name who in the 316th FD/112th MI Group called him, or whom he called in the 316th/112th, and he even seemed to admit that the call was probably "not authentic." And when asked to produce the notes of his call with the 316th/112th, he blandly said he no longer had them but didn't explain why (and he was lucky the ARRB interviewers did not press him to explain why in the world he would not have safeguarded notes that would have been of great historical importance if they had in fact existed).

Prouty actually entertained the idea that Churchill poisoned FDR. Prouty made the bogus claim that we should stop building the F-16 because it was far inferior to the MIG-25 (the reverse was true). Prouty said Nixon was in Dallas during the assassination, when in fact Nixon left Dallas hours before the motorcade. Prouty said that a secret team may have assassinated Princess Diana. Prouty made bogus claims about George Bush and the Bay of Pigs, such as that one of the ships in the invasion was renamed "Barbara" after Bush's wife Barbara, when in fact none of the ships were renamed for the operation. Prouty claimed that KAL Flight 007 was not shot down by the Soviets but was blown up by a CIA-planted bomb. And on and on and on we could go about this crackpot.

“Loon” “nutty” “crackpot”. - these are all boiler-plate playground insults. Linguistically, they represent the expression of an opinion, or a prejudice. So basically, in your run of posts, you have somewhat crudely expressed a personal animus towards Fletcher Prouty. Fine. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. However, you have also thrown around terms such as “fraud”, which is more serious, as it amounts to a determination of deliberate deception, and this is where your posts veer into irresponsibility and character assassination. If you feel that Lansdale’s reputation was sullied during a particular sequence in a Hollywood motion picture made 30 years ago, then make your case (as you have been doing). But your posts drip with visceral anger and repeated insults which suggest something else is being triggered here.

Again, your list of minor details - or as you put it “false accusations” -  are taken from the screenplay of a Hollywood motion picture, from a sequence which the creators openly describe as relying on dramatic licence. Prouty did not write the screenplay, so your anger is misplaced. Here’s a tip - Garrison never made the closing courtroom speech either! Sound the alarm!  Why not then move on to Shakespeare’s “Richard III” - it is filled with historic inaccuracies! Can you feel the weight of western civilization crumbling because of this? Or let’s get more contemporary:  John Adams’ opera “Nixon in China” (1987) - “WTF Nixon never sang aloud. Kissinger wasn’t a tenor.”

The majority of criticism directed at “JFK” centered on a) defence of the Warren Commission and b) a rejection of the concept that Kennedy was removing the US armed services from Vietnam. If anything, the declassification of documents from the era have bolstered the basic premise of the film and undercut the critic’s arguments. You have greatly exaggerated a supposed centrality  of “Mister X” and “General Y”, and correspondingly have wildly overstated the relevance of Prouty’s 1997 ARRB appearance let alone Stone’s recent and obviously objective observation that a positive ID cannot be derived from the Tramp photo in question. Nether event can be spun as a “repudiation” other than in the minds of those already convinced. In turn, you have repeated standard out-of-context slurs directed at Prouty which originate from a list compiled by John McAdams thirty years ago as part of the attack on the “JFK” film, and which cannot be described as adhering to any scholarly standards. Posting insults on an Internet forum does not adhere to such standards either.

The degree of vitriol (“fraud”, crackpot”) is always in inverse proportion to the rather thin gruel offered as nourishment to the charges. In this case it remains a recitation of minor details as they appear in a motion picture (”JFK”) which openly engaged dramatic licence to simplify and condense complex information. That this continues thirty years after the fact is amazing.

5 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

As a matter of fact, it was a reckless, baseless charge to suggest that Lansdale played any role in JFK's murder, much less a clearly crucial role.

Now, okay, we can go back and forth about how we define "master plotter," but the film clearly portrays General Y as a key figure in the plot. I don't know how anyone can deny this. 

The film has General Y being contacted by someone who is obviously close to the top of the plot and who asks General Y to "come up with a plan." The film also has Mr. X claiming that General Y helped strip JFK of security by sending Mr. X on a supposedly unusual escort mission to the South Pole, and that General Y was even in Dealey Plaza during the assassination. 

Incidentally, the film also falsely accuses General Y/Lansdale of involvement in the murders of Lumumba in the Congo and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Says Mr. X in referring to General Y, "He's done it before. Other countries. Lumumba in the Congo, Trujillo, the Dominican Republic, he's working on Castro. No big deal." Lansdale had nothing to do with those murders.

By the way, the film briefly shows the name plate on General Y's desk. Part of it is blocked, but the visible part reads "M/GEN E.G. . . . U.S. Air. . . ." Lansdale's first two initials were E.G., and he was a general in the U.S. Air Force.

 

The logic of Mister X’s monologue establishes that the assembly of a sniper team,  the security stripping of the motorcade, and a subsequent cover-up were key to success of a plot, and there is no inference within the film that General Y was directly involved in these or was even elevated beyond a presumed compartmentalization of information. I would say at least 95% of the film’s audience have no idea who Lansdale was, nor come away from the film convinced that General Y was a “key figure”.  Oliver Stone has been consistent he applied dramatic licence to the Mister X sequence because it introduced a “higher level” to the movie. Much of the hysterical reaction, particularly in 1992-93, focussed on making literal small details within this sequence without allowing for the dramatic licence common within any dramatized production dealing with historic or documentary events.

Was the ID of Lansdale “reckless” or “baseless”? Prouty was part of a discussion group in the late ‘60s / early ‘70s, and a collection of “Tramp photos” was disseminated within this group. Close attention was paid to all the strange and enigmatic details within these photos. Through this process, Prouty made his observation based on his professional proximity to Lansdale extending over a decade. Having arrived at this hypothesis, Prouty - logically - sought to account for this presence and engaged in speculation but I am not aware of any formulation which concludes Lansdale was a “key figure” in an assassination plot.

There’s a very interesting and wide-ranging previous discussion of the many sides of Lansdale on this forum:

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/13678-edward-lansdale/

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Are you serious? Nobody but nobody denies that "General Y" was clearly intended to be Edward Lansdale. If you doubt this, you can Google it.

Critics exploited this reckless, baseless charge to impugn the validity of the entire movie. 

“General Y” is obviously based on Lansdale but is not portrayed as a “master plotter” or a “key figure”. He is not, for example, in the smoky room of power brokers where the grievances against Kennedy are aired. General Y is seen receiving a phone call - presented as a speculation, as something that “maybe” happened. General Y is portrayed as an “agent” of higher powers, which is exactly how Prouty always characterized him.

It appears you set up a sort of “straw man” with the attributions of “master plotter” and “key figure” which you use to apply a dismissive term (“quack”) to your target (Prouty). The film doesn’t make those attributions and as far as I am aware neither did Prouty. So there is no “reckless baseless charge” in the first place other than those directed towards the film.

14 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

As I've said before, I believe the movie JFK was monumentally important and basically accurate in its essential thrust. 

Stone's one major blunder in the movie was his implication that General Edward Lansdale was a key figure behind the assassination. Stone made this horrific gaffe because he relied on Fletcher Prouty.

Some due diligence would have quickly revealed that Prouty's claim was utter nonsense and slanderous garbage. Lansdale liked and admired JFK, grieved over his death, and opposed the introduction of large numbers of American troops in South Vietnam. Lansdale opposed most of the Taylor-Rostow recommendations on Vietnam. He opposed LBJ's escalation in 1965 and criticized U.S. military operations as misguided. By the way, Lansdale also opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion.

It is a red flag of Prouty's quackery that, of all people, he identified Edward Lansdale as one of the master plotters who wanted JFK dead in order to vastly escalate the war effort in Vietnam. 

 

Can you cite where Fletcher Prouty specifically identified Lansdale as a "master plotter" of the assassination?

Or how exactly the "JFK" film implied Lansdale was a "key figure behind the assassination"?

35 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

So, Jeff Carter did not answer any of my key questions (1-3) above about his paper.

Jeff did post a link to this survey paper by author Kiril Kalinin.  Much appreciated.

In reviewing Kalinin's survey, I noticed that he did find a stronger correlation between Dugin's theses and beliefs among Russian military and government "elites" than among business "elites," as I suspected.

Of course, the key question regarding Dugin's opus and Russian foreign policy is what Putin believes about Dugin's work.  Putin is an autocrat.  He calls the shots.

When Russian "elites" disagree with Putin, they get thrown out of windows.

Interestingly, Kiril Kalinin also specifically mentions the prestige and importance of Dugin's work in Russian military and government circles-- including Kalinin's own Volgograd Academy of Public Administration.*

So, Jeff Carter's attempt to downplay the significance of Dugin's work in Putin's Russian Federation looks like more of Jeff's usual misleading pettifoggery.

* "One of the most prominent proponents of this ideology is Aleksandr Dugin, whose textbook, Foundations of Geopolitics, celebrated the 20th anniversary of its publication in 2017. Dugin’s Eurasianist ideas penetrated the halls of power in Moscow with ease, and quickly found fecund soil fertilized by geopolitical ressentiment (resentment). By forging close personal ties with pillars of the presidential administration and parliament, the secret services, and the Russian military (Dunlop 2004), Dugin made his book available as a practical guide for rebuilding the Russian empire. Even in my years as a student at the Volgograd Academy of Public Administration, Dugin’s text was used as an international relations primer. The combination of historical grievances, a confrontational geopolitical climate, and rising political demands for coherent ideologies may have made Russian elites susceptible to his radical ideas."

-- Kiril Kalinin

 

Kalinin writes an objective academic report which acknowledges Dugin’s work had influence, particularly in the years after its 1997 publication, but concludes the influence was “limited” and did not result in the sort of “strategic plan” or “blueprint” or “playbook” which you assert.

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff Carter's un-linked use of a Stanford paper to downplay the significance of Dugin's work on Putin's foreign policy is misleading on several counts-- although it's difficult to critique Jeff's paper without having the full text and the methodology.

1)  Who were the "Russian elites" surveyed in Jeff's paper?  Do they determine RF foreign policy?  Were they being honest in the survey?

2) Who actually determines Russian Federation foreign policy, other than Putin and, perhaps, General Gerasimov?

3) What does a survey of Russian military elites indicate about Dugin's influence, where his Foundations of Geopolitics is part of the standard curriculum in the Putin era?

As an Ivy League guy, I'm less awed by Stanford papers than Jeff, but here's a far less sanguine Stanford academic paper about Aleksander Dugin that Jeff should read. (Bold italics mine.)

Aleksandr Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics

https://tec.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/aleksandr-dugins-foundations-geopolitics

January 31, 2004

Conclusion

In a moment of exultant imperial elan, Dugin revealingly trumpets at one point in his book, "The battle for the world rule of [ethnic] Russians has not ended" (213). It is necessary to speak the unvarnished truth. An official adviser on geopolitics to the speaker of the Russian Duma is a dangerous Russian fascist. As has been noted, Dugin also reportedly enjoys close ties to elements in the presidential administration, the secret services, the military, and the parliament. Although Dugin's influence should not be exaggerated, it also should not be understated. One is required to ask whether Russian fascism--a tendency which exhibits contempt both for international borders and for international law--has a realistic chance of emerging as the "new political thinking" in international affairs in Vladimir Putin's Russia. In late 1998, Russian academic Andrei Tsygankov appropriately warned that the discourse of Dugin and of like-minded "Eurasians" is in reality "the discourse of war." 50

Interviewed by a journalist from the army newspaper Krasnya zvezda in May 2001, Dugin patiently explained: "Eurasian space is the territory of Russia, the countries of the CIS and a part of the adjacent territories to the West and to the South, where there is no clear-cut geopolitical orientation. All of this comprises Eurasian strategic space broadly understood." 51 The army reporter offered no objections to this quite mad schema.

Aleksandr Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics, to summarize, represents a harsh and cynical repudiation of the architecture of international relations that was laboriously erected following the carnage of the Second World War and the emergence of nuclear weapons. Dugin and his "system," it seems, resemble the combustible interwar period and the rise of fascism in Europe, with the lurid imperial fantasies of the Duce, the Fuhrer, and other fascist demagogues. Could a reversion to a destructive past be the "dividend" which Russia and the West are to receive for having finally and with enormous effort put an end to the Cold War?

The Stanford paper is easily found via its title. The Abstract describes the methodology used.

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10199694

You have described Dugin’s work as central to “Putin’s geopolitical playbook” and crucial to understanding “Putin’s strategic plans.” This opinion appears to parrot widespread opinion-making centred in western security-oriented think tanks and periodicals. The frequent reference to a “playbook” or “blueprint” suggests a particular trope is being repeated via an echo chamber of like-minded analysts, most of whom have little to no actual experience within Russia itself. What is the evidence of Dugin’s alleged influence?

Again, Ambassador Burns’ February 2008 memo regarding Russia’s geopolitical outlook on NATO expansion and Ukraine is remarkable for its predictive qualities. Burns had as close access as any American to the top level of Russia’s government and had a deep understanding of their mindset. No where at all in his descriptions of Russian perspectives on geopolitical challenges does Dugin's name come up, nor does he reference an overriding desire to recreate the Soviet Union.

17 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

The reference is Putin's geopolitical playbook-- Aleksander Dugin's 1997 The Foundations of Geopolitics.

     It's worth a look, bearing in mind that the book was published years ago, around the time that former KGB Lt. Col. Vladimir Putin ascended to the Presidency of Russia's floundering democracy.

  “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia” by Aleksander Dugin was written in 1997. Since then, it has risen to the rank of textbook for the Russian military’s “Academy of the General Staff”. It lays out a Nationalist, Eurasianist political ideology and strategy for Russia to rebuild its influence and rise to world dominance. The strategic objectives laid out in the book are clear and systematic.

The textbook believes in a sophisticated program of subversion, destabilization, and disinformation spearheaded by the Russian special services. The operations should be assisted by a tough, hard-headed utilization of Russia's gas, oil, and natural resources to bully and pressure other countries.

First off, the textbook says that the United States need to be weakened internally.

Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".

The book also recommends:

• Isolating the United Kingdom from the rest of Europe

• Annexing Ukraine

• Dismembering Georgia

• Creating a vital alliance with Iran

• Destabilizing Turkey

  

A peer-reviewed essay by a Stanford academic published in the journal Post-Soviet Affairs (2019, Vol. 35, Not 5-6) is titled “Neo-Eurasianism and the Russian Elite: the irrelevance of Aleksandr Dugin’s geopolitics”.

ABSTRACT

The consistency and effectiveness of Russia’s assertive foreign policy has earned Putin, both domestically and internationally, the image of a powerful and ambitious leader with a strategic plan to re-establish the Russian empire and defend Russia’s core national interests. Speculation among scholars and practitioners regarding the existence of such a “strategic plan” makes Aleksandr Dugin’s conspiratorial neo-Eurasianism project an especially appealing subject of research. This paper explores key ideas of Dugin’s neo-Eurasianism, as described in his Foundations of Geopolitics, and tests them empirically with data from the Survey of Russian Elites: 1993–2016 using a Bayesian Structural Equation Modeling approach. Its main finding is that the theory has limited utility for understanding elites’ foreign policy perceptions and therefore its influence should not be over- stated. Moreover, there is no evidence that Dugin’s theory is more salient in the post-Crimean period than in the pre-Crimean period.

A cursory search engine check confirms that the presumed influence of Dugin’s “conspiratorial neo-Eurasianism project” is in fact an over-stated obsession couched in a familiar “paranoid style” and limited to the chattering networks of western foreign policy wonks whose consistently mediocre analysis diverges only in whether to describe Dugin’s work as a “playbook” or a “blueprint”.

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

More of your usual pettifoggery, eh, Jeff?

Far from "refuting basic established information," as you imply, I was simply setting the record straight, for Benjamin Cole, about Kilimnik's longstanding working relationship with Paul Manafort in Ukraine (since 2005.)

Ben had expressed skepticism about Manafort's knowledge of Kilimnik, when Manafort was working for the Kremlin in Ukraine.

Thanks for confirming that I was correct.

As for the question of whether Kilimnik is a Russian GRU intelligence agent, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that he is.  I believe there is still an outstanding FBI warrant for his arrest.

As for Manafort's history of lying to Mueller's investigators about his 2016 campaign contacts with Kilimnik, where did I say that Manafort's polling data was shared with the GRU for the purpose of Russian social media propaganda?

On the contrary, my belief is that Manafort's polling data had more to do with GRU hacking of U.S. voter registration databases, for the purpose of manipulating vote tallies in key swing states.  (See the Intercept article above.)

 

So your longstanding endorsement of a Manafort/Kilimnik/polling-data/social-media theory has been replaced by a Manafort/Klimink/polling-data/voter-registration-database-hack theory. Note that the voter registration database hack concept is distinguished by an inability to determine who was responsible, what exactly occurred, and even uncertainty if anything occurred in the first place.

17 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Well, Ben, you could always ask our Kremlin expert, Jeff Carter.  🤓

Jeff assured us long ago that Manafort had a longstanding working relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik.

But why did Manafort go to such great lengths to lie to Mueller's investigators about his 2016 campaign contacts with GRU agent Kilimnik, which included collusion--sharing polling data about the impending election?

What was Manafort so desperate to hide from Mueller?

The judge vehemently denounced Manafort for lying, before sentencing him to years in prison.

(Of course, Manafort knew that Trump would pardon him for stonewalling Mueller's investigation.)

I can clearly see that you're currently stuck in the MAGA-verse Russiagate-denial echo chamber, and that no contrary evidence will burst your Gerth-ian bubble.

But posting redundant MAGA spam is no substitute for answering the hard questions about the damning evidence.

Russiagate was no hoax.

Are you aware that Trump's longstanding Russian mafia business associate, Felix Sater, bragged in 2015 that Putin was going to put Trump in the White House?

 

I’m sorry, but the longstanding association of Kliminik with Manafort Associates is a material documented fact, not a baseless “assurance”. That you continue to refute basic established information and do so prodigiously throughout numerous threads is an entirely exhausting and ultimately time-wasting procedure. That you continue to impute foreign influence in the expression of documented fact is intellectually barren. Suspicion directed at Klimink was generated by Mueller’s deputy Weissman during a presser in early 2018. Weissman insisted that communication between Klimink and Manafort in the summer of 2016 was entirely unusual and therefore perhaps sinister, despite the two men having been business associates for a decade and likely in communication every single day throughout that time period.

The concept that Klimink is a “GRU agent” is not sourced and is therefore merely an assertion. His background as a key source of information for State Dept officials working from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, as well as his ten years of service with the International Republican Institute in Moscow - part of the secretive and meddling National Endowment for Democracy apparatus - is rarely acknowledged and strongly suggests such claim is, as Rick Gates has said, “ludicrous”.

The concept that “polling data” handed by Manafort to Klimink was used to inform Facebook and Twitter posts which were somehow instrumental in swaying swing state voters to change their preference to Trump is not only ridiculous with even cursory reflection, but has been effectively debunked by all analysis of the posts themselves, most rigorously by the academic study released several weeks ago.

The only reason this story has any legs at all is due to continuing promotion by the mainstream journalists who failed to do their job professionally in the first place, buttressed by an astonishingly credulous rump of partisan true believers.

7 hours ago, David Josephs said:

Really enjoyed the 5th part of the series on the BYP Jeff...  Thanks for the wonderful work.  
And for showing Michael Paine for who he was and will always be.

You feel the same about the 2nd negative? for which the HSCA is just plain stumped... but seems not to have done very much more about it.
Despite there been quite a few sources of the information

Maybe a different pose entirely, or maybe it had been tampered with so it needed to be gone...?
Does seem to help support that 3 photos were produced from one negative.  

And then what about when/how it was developed? Or are we to believe Oswald did that himself?

Maybe I missed that in your write-ups.

DJ

 

All I can say is clarification regarding the found negatives and other questions such as where did version C come from should have appeared in Studebaker’s executive testimony to the HSCA as he was the person best positioned to have first hand knowledge. But the HSCA interviewers did not ask the appropriate questions and therefore failed to clarify the issues raised by their own photographic panel. Their lack of curiosity revealed by the transcript is stunning. 

There is no reference to 133-C prior to the Dees copy, other than the recreation photo, which would be difficult to conceive as a coincidence. The Secret Service participated in the recreation so they also , with the DPD, knew of this photo in 1963. 

My speculation as to why this photo was effectively “disappeared” : it was the photo which was in DPD possession on the Friday night, and its removal from the record assisted the provenance established with the “discovery” of A and B the following afternoon.