Michael Griffith

20 hours ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Agreed. Many people here seem to be incapable of accepting that Oswald could have been in Mexico City of his own volition while also being impersonated/toyed with by other entities.

Now why in the world would Oswald have gone to Mexico City on his own initiative? 

The key giveaway is the fake Oswald call to the Soviet Embassy. We have abundant evidence that Oswald spoke Russian fluently, yet the fake Oswald who phoned the Soviet Embassy spoke atrocious, terrible Russian--we know this from the translator's own notes on the transcript. Clearly, that was not Oswald. 

This begs the question: If Oswald was a loner with no intel ties and no associates, why would anyone have bothered to impersonate him in Mexico City in a fake call to the Soviet Embassy and in fake visits to the Cuban Consulate?

A follow-up on the impossibly bright white patch seen on the lateral skull x-rays.

Dr. Mantik did not just use one of JFK’s pre-mortem skull x-rays as control. He and Dr. Doug DeSalles (M.D.) also used the skull x-rays of nine other deceased persons as controls. The contrast between the light and dark areas on those skull x-rays was only a fraction of the contrast between the white patch and the dark frontal area on JFK’s lateral autopsy skull x-rays. Doug Horne:

          As a scientific “control,” Mantik and his research partner Dr. Doug DeSalles took OD measurements of lateral skull x-rays from nine coroner’s cases to obtain a range of numerical measurements between the brightest and darkest areas on these skull x-rays. In general, the brightest areas of the nine coroner’s cases transmitted about two or three times as much light as the darkest areas.

          Furthermore, subjective, visual examination of the lateral x-rays of these nine skulls did not reveal the extreme contrast between very bright and very dark areas that is seen in the JFK lateral skull x-rays. The subjective visual evidence was consistent with the OD measurements, and vice-a-versa.

          On the right lateral JFK skull x-ray, Dr. Mantik took many OD measurements of two specific areas. The optical density measurements for one extremely bright area located anatomically behind the ear, which he labeled “P” (for posterior) in a diagram at his lectures, was compared with the optical density measurements for a very dark area in the front of the cranium [skull] labeled “F” (for front).

          Amazingly, on the right JFK lateral skull x-ray, OD measurements revealed that area “P” (in the rear of the skull behind the ear) transmitted about 1100 times more light than area “F” (in the forward part of the skull which appears so dark in the x-ray image). That’s worth repeating: The “great white area” in the rear of the skull behind the ear in the JFK right lateral skull x-ray transmitted about1100 times more light than the dark area in the front of the cranium, whereas on the “control” x-rays the ratio was only about 2 or 3 to 1 between the brightest area and the darkest area on each lateral x-ray. (Inside the ARRB, Volume 2, p. 546)

17 hours ago, Bill Fite said:

LOL 

You are not to be taken seriously. FYI, Galbraith's spin on the evidence, i.e., that JFK was determined to unconditionally abandon South Vietnam after the election, is viewed by the vast majority of historians as a discredited, fringe view.

15 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

I argue JFK was killed because his plans to scale down overall American presence in SE Asia would jeopardize CIA operations in Laos.  

Bingo!  Harriman was the heavy, the others merely his protégés.

Harriman out maneuvered Kennedy and boxed him into support for the Diem coup.

Who negotiated the ‘62 partition of Laos, which gave the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Communists and the Golden Triangle poppy fields to allies of the CIA?

Harriman.

American elites had a vital interest in Laos.  Diem and Kennedy had to go.  The most intense bombing campaign in history followed, and the Golden Triangle eventually replaced Turkey as the foremost source of heroin.

But that's just it: The evidence shows, and shows pretty clearly, that JFK had no intention of allowing South Vietnam, Laos, or Cambodia to fall to the Communists, and that he had every intention of providing whatever military and economic aid was needed to keep South Vietnam free. The whole reason, the entire rationale, for his limited and conditional withdrawal plan was that the war was going well enough that some U.S. troops could be brought home without endangering the war effort; moreover, as JFK made clear, and as Bobby later explained, JFK felt that the war "had" to be won. Bobby even said that JFK was willing to authorize air strikes if they were needed, and expressly allowed that JFK may have been willing to send in regular combat troops if the situation ever got so bad that they were needed.

Also, as I've said before, if the plotters killed JFK over Vietnam, they certainly would have knocked off LBJ when he began and continued to blunderingly hamstring and restrict our military operations. For that matter, if Vietnam was the plotters' main concern, they never would have allowed Johnson to pick such a feckless dove as Hubert Humphrey as his VP, especially given LBJ's age and health history. It just makes no sense.

I agree with you about Averell Harriman's role. The fatally flawed "neutrality" pact for Laos was Harriman's doing, and his was recognized at the time. During the war, many GIs nicknamed the Ho Chi Minh Trail the "Averell Harriman Memorial Highway." What you seem to be unaware of is that JFK recognized that the Laos deal was a bad deal and was not working. 

On 10/28/2023 at 2:35 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Yes, and the diplomatic discussions detailed in the scholarly paper establishes that a desire for secrecy imposed on such meeting was a specific negotiating point for the Soviets, and for specified reasons. 

This is gibberish and nonsense. I already answered this bogus argument, and answered it with scholarly sources that are actually about the Tehran Conference and/or Chiang Kai-shek, not a lone unsourced sentence in a book about the Vietnam War. 

On 10/28/2023 at 2:47 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Addendum:  It looks like my response (above) to Sandy's question got buried at the bottom of the page within one minute of my post.

So, I want to remind people that we have a tree and a forest here.

Griffith's Tehran conference claim is his latest tree.

The forest is the 30 year U.S. government defamation campaign to create a false impression that Prouty was not an honest, credible witness of U.S. Deep State history.

Sheesh, who are you people? Is this some kind of game to you? The U.S. Government has had nothing to do with any alleged conspiracy to smear Prouty. Many of the critics who have exposed Prouty's false and nutty claims have been ardent, anti-Deep State, anti-right-wing liberals and Scientology whistleblowers who responded to Prouty's disgraceful lies in defense of Hubbard and Scientology. 

If there is still a government operation whose goal is to discredit the case for conspiracy in JFK's death, that operation must be thrilled with your embarrassing refusal to face the facts about Prouty.

No one--and I mean no one--has done more harm to the case for conspiracy than Prouty.

55 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Okay. And likewise, you should google something like "wtc controlled demolition" to learn what really happened on 9/11.

 

 

You said that family members have revealed that JFK was a serial adulterer. To which I replied that I would take their words seriously.

So what happened to them? Don't exist, eh?

As I said, I wouldn't trust the word of the mistresses themselves, but for kicks and giggles I checked those four out. Here's what I discovered:

Mary Pinchot Meyer:  According to the Wikipedia article on her, "More than ten years after Pinchot Meyer's death, rumors of her affair with Kennedy began to circulate." Gee, it took a decade for that rumor to begin. Regardless, National Enquirer and Washington Post "confirmed" the affair (whatever that is supposed to mean) to the satisfaction of the Wikipedia editors. So I guess maybe that affair really took place. (Or maybe not. I'd like to see how the affair was confirmed.)

Ellen Rometsch:  According to the Wikipedia article on her, Rometsch was allegedly an East German spy who "was widely thought in some Washington journalism circles to have been a mistress of President John F. Kennedy. However, the FBI never turned up 'any solid evidence' that Rometsch was a spy or that she had relations with President Kennedy." No evidence.

Mimi Alford:  According to the Wikipedia article on her, "Mimi Alford is an American woman who allegedly had an affair with President John F. Kennedy while she served as an intern in the White House press office between 1962 and 1963." Allegedly.

Judith Exner:  According to the Wikipedia article on her, "[David] Powers ... stated that Kennedy never had an affair with Exner. Never.

So first you peddle the nutty 9/11 conspiracy theory of "controlled demolitions," and then you run to Wikipedia in an attempt to challenge the widely known, nearly universally acknowledged fact that JFK was a serial adulterer. 

The books I mentioned quote a number of Kennedy family members and friends. You might also read Carl Anthony's book Camera Girl: The Coming of Age of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy. One of Anthony's sources was Lem Billings, a close friend of JFK's. Anthony also interviewed many of Jackie's friends, many of whom confirmed that she was aware of her husband's flagrant cheating.

Mimi Alford revealed her affair with JFK in her memoir. So did Judith Exner. And, gee, you're the first person I've encountered who has disputed that Exner and JFK had an affair. I've never read a book on the JFK case that disputed this.

As for Mary Pinchot Meyer, her affair with JFK was well known in DC circles, as Peter Janney documents in his book Mary's Mosaic.

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Mike,

Hundreds of millions of people knew JFK. For there to be a hundred sources of mere gossip is very much possible and wouldn't surprise me a bit. For there to be dozens of women falsely claim to be a JFK lover also is very much possible.

But I would take a family member seriously. And even a close family friend, depending upon how they became aware of the affair.

So what did family members and close friends say?

I can't believe we are even having this conversation. I suggest you Google something like "JFK adultery extra-marital affairs cheating," and go from there. I would also recommend two recent books:

Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency (2022), by Mark K. Updegrove.

Jackie: Public, Private, Secret (2023), by J. Randy Taraborrelli.

Have you heard of Mary Pinchot Meyer? Ellen Rometsch? Mimi Alford? Judith Exner? How about "Fiddle and Faddle"?

Do you know who George Smathers was? Ken O'Donnell? Dave Powers? They were all good friends of JFK's and acknowledged JFK's serial adultery. 

Were all the Secret Service agents who reported seeing JFK with other women lying? All of them?

On 10/19/2023 at 1:52 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Memory of his insistence for the Dallas Trade Mart, which required the trip through Dealy Plaza had me baffled. 

A key fact to remember is that the selection of the Trade Mart did not require the motorcade to drive on Elm Street. There was another way to get to the Trade Mart, a way that avoided driving on Elm Street. 

21 hours ago, Bill Fite said:

from: https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/jfk-ordered-full-withdrawal-vietnam-solid-evidence/

Evidence of JFK’s Decision to Withdraw from Vietnam

The evidence is massive and categorical. It includes:

* Robert McNamara’s instructions to the May 1963 SecDef Conference in Honolulu to develop the withdrawal plan.

* A  detailed account of the McNamara-Taylor mission to Vietnam that returned with the withdrawal plan, drafted in their absence in the Pentagon by a team under Kennedy’s direct control.

* An audiotape of the discussion at the White House that led to the approval of NSAM 263 (National Security Action Memorandum), which implemented the plan; this audio was released by the Assassination Records Review Board at my request.

* The precise instructions for withdrawal delivered by Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his fellow Chiefs on October 4, 1963, in a memorandum that remained classified until 1997.

Taylor wrote:

“On 2 October the President approved recommendations on military matters contained in the report of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The following actions derived from these recommendations are directed: … all planning will be directed toward preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all US special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965. The US Comprehensive Plan, Vietnam, will be revised to bring it into consonance with these objectives, and to reduce planned residual (post-1965) MAAG strengths to approximately pre-insurgency levels… Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 US military personnel by the end of 1963…”

Did you bother to read the first post in the thread? None of what you cited and quoted proves that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from the Vietnam War.

No one denies that there was a withdrawal plan. The problem is that a small handful of researchers, mainly Jim DiEugenio and James Galbraith and John Newman, won't admit that the withdrawal plan was plainly, clearly, and indisputably conditional and partial (some supports would remain), and that JFK intended to continue to provide military and economic aid to South Vietnam even if conditions on the ground allowed the withdrawal to be completed.

The unconditional-withdrawal myth is rejected even by the vast majority of liberal, anti-war historians, including ultra-liberals such as Edwin Moise and Fredrik Logevall. The myth has been destroyed by in Dr. Marc Selverstone's recent and widely acclaimed book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam. Selverstone's book has been praised by leading scholars from both sides of the spectrum.

The unconditional-withdrawal myth is based on poor scholarship, a distorted reading of NSAMs 263 and 273, ignoring the JFK White House tapes, and dismissing as strategic lies every single firsthand statement from JFK himself during the last several months of his life, in addition to Bobby Kennedy's crucial April 1964 oral history interview in which he made it as plain as English can make something that JFK had no intention of pulling out of Vietnam and/or allowing South Vietnam to fall to the Communists.

I am simply agnostic about whether Oswald was actually in Mexico City. I think it's obvious that the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy and spoke terrible Russian was not the real Oswald. And I doubt that the Oswald who visited the Cuban Consulate was the real Oswald. But, that does not mean that Oswald was not in Mexico City at the time. 

Marina, even under intense pressure to say otherwise, said that her husband did not go to Mexico City, but her belief is not determinative in my view. She may have been sincerely mistaken. 

Occam's Razor tells me that if Oswald had actually visited the Cuban Consulate, and if the CIA photographed him entering and/or leaving the consulate, the CIA would have been very willing and anxious to make this evidence available. 

On 10/26/2023 at 2:42 AM, Sandy Larsen said:

Mike,

Can you show me any proof that Kennedy was a serial adulterer? If you can't, then as far as I'm concerned that reputation is probably based on a bunch of rumors.

Holy freaking cow. I mean, you really must be kidding. So you and apparently Jim dismiss as mere "rumors" the hundreds of accounts of JFK's serial adultery, some of which come from family members and close friends, and some of them are firsthand accounts from the women themselves. 

Let me guess: By "proof" you mean actual photos or films of JFK committing adultery or a written confession from JFK? Well, if that's your standard, then, no, there is no "proof" that JFK was a serial adulterer.  

Well, heck, if that's the standard, then there's no "proof" that Joseph Kennedy was a serial adulterer either. 

I suppose that's another reason you and Jim like Don McGovern, who is so love-struck that he refuses to acknowledge that Marilyn Monroe was promiscuous (in fact, she was very promiscuous). 

Reality check: McGovern is a love-struck Marilyn Monroe fan who can't even admit that she was promiscuous and who denies that she had any kind of a sexual relationship with RFK. McGovern is also very anti-conspiracy theory. In fact, he calls himself a "Non-Conspiracist" on his website and repeatedly condemns and derides "conspiracy theorists" and "conspiracists."

But apparently Jim is okay with that because he's determined to reject LAPD whistleblower Mike Rothmiller's historic disclosures, since those disclosures include negative information about JFK and RFK, even though Rothmiller has a sterling record as an anti-CIA, anti-FBI, and anti-police corruption whistleblower.

Jim likes McGovern's love-struck research because McGovern rejects Rothmiller and Thompson's important new book Bombshell. Jim doesn't seem to mind that McGovern seems to view conspiracy theories as irresponsible and fringe. McGovern derides Dorothy Kilgallen as a "gossip columnist" in his attacks on Mark Shaw's book Collateral Damage. As most here know, Dorothy was much more than a "gossip columnist." McGovern also claims that Rothmiller simply fabricated the pages from Marilyn's diaries.

When anyone documents Fletcher Prouty's many bogus claims, some of which were downright nutty, and documents Prouty's prolonged close association with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, one of the first arguments that Jim and other Prouty apologists will make is "that's what John McAdams said about Prouty!" (never mind the fact that some of Prouty's fiercest critics have been diehard liberals). But, Jim doesn't mind citing and praising Don McGovern, even though McGovern touts himself as a "non-conspiracist."

12 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Buried? It appears on the first page of the first chapter, rather obvious in a brief paragraph. The volume in question is an authoritative official history assembled for a US Congressional Subcommittee by a researcher from the Library of Congress. The factual assertion in question is backed up by multiple sources both contemporaneous to 1943 and current to the present day.  You dismiss it only because it undermined your expressed opinion. Your expressed opinion not only denied the authoritative history existed in the first place, but asserted that the person who had provided the correct information regarding the source had instead made it all up. I

This is just sad. It is also unbelievable, given the evidence I have presented to you.

I dismiss the lone unsourced sentence that you keep desperately relying on because it is refuted by literally every other primary and scholarly source on the subject. As I have proved, the vast collection of records on the conference available at the State Department's website say that only FDR, Churchill, and Stalin attended the conference, and they contain no mention of Chiang and his group even being in Tehran--and most of them specify that Chiang did not attend the Tehren Conference but only the Cairo Conference. The same is true of the available Russian records on the conference. 

But you brush aside this powerful mountain of evidence and rely on a single unsourced statement in a book about the Vietnam War. 

Yes, the unsourced statement is indeed "buried." Have you read it in its original context, or are you going by how Prouty misleadingly quotes it? It is in the middle of a long paragraph, and it is not even the topic of the paragraph, much less the book. 

And, sheesh, just because Gibbons' book was done for a Congressional subcommittee does not make it "authoritative." You must be kidding. Gee, is the Warren Report "authoritative" because it was done for the U.S. Government and was overseen by the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court? 

Gibbons clearly simply confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference. This is obvious. It is also understandable. Gibbons was not writing about the Tehran Conference or Chiang, but about the Vietnam War. These kinds of errors sometimes creep into a book when the author is making a  brief comment about a peripheral subject that is not the focus of the book.

Why are all the other scholars who've written about Chiang and/or the Tehran Conference wrong and Gibbons' single unsourced statement right? I've cited and quoted from book-length studies on the Cairo and Tehran conferences that specify that Chiang only attended the Cairo Conference and that he returned to China after leaving Cairo. Yet, you rely on a single unsourced statement and ignore all other sources.

Furthermore, I have also proved that the subject of Mao's military operations was never even discussed at the Tehran Conference. I have also proved that Prouty's Tehran-trip story is full of holes. I have further proved that Chiang's own diary and his wife's 12/5/43 letter to FDR refute Prouty's mythmaking. But you just don't care because you are oddly determined to believe Prouty's nonsense no matter what. 

On 10/13/2023 at 5:57 PM, Pat Speer said:

I have been battling cancer for a few years, and finally got the ok to travel a few weeks back. So of course I went out last week and tripped on the sidewalk and fractured my humerus. So, no, I won't be traveling to Duquesne, or Dallas. 

As far as Tink's final conclusions, you and I are actually in the same boat. I fail to see evidence for two headshots, one from the front and one from the back, within a split second of Z-313. I have talked to Doug DeSalles (who worked with Tink on his book) about this recently, and he thinks this new presentation will be more convincing. But I suspect that I, and many others, will remain unconvinced. 

Your post does raise an important point about human nature--I think. Tink sees something in the z-film others fail to see, and this feeds into his belief it wasn't faked. While at the same time others fail to see things in the film they assume should be in the film, and this leads them to believe it was faked. Having met and chatted with the likes of William Newman and Mary Moorman, who will tell you the film isn't exactly what they remember, but that they feel sure it wasn't faked, and having had photos emerge of concerts in which I'd been in the crowd, which show me to have been 15 feet or more away from where I distinctly remember being, I put little faith in the recollections of humans when the recollections are at odds with the photographic record.

In my case, I performed a detailed study the eyewitness evidence, photographic evidence, and medical evidence, which led me to believe there was more than one shooter in Dealey Plaza, and that Oswald was not among them. While some are horrified that the experts and authorities were "fooled" by fake evidence, my horror is greater, as I have come to believe the experts and authorities incapable of separating fact from fiction, once the "proper" conclusion has been determined. 

Anyone who wants to believe that the Zapruder film is pristine needs to explain the impossible human movements and the other impossible events now contained in the film. Believers in the pristine Z film must also assume that 40-plus witnesses, from all over the plaza, had the same mass hallucination when they said the limo stopped or markedly slowed. The extant film shows only a split-second slowdown that can only be detected when the film is played in very slow motion and carefully analyzed. 

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Greg:

Jeff did provide info about the Tehran Conference and that was pages ago.

Uh, I soundly refuted that "info." The "info" was a single unsourced sentence buried in a paragraph about a different subject in a book about U.S. Government policy and the Vietnam War. The author clearly confused and conflated the Cairo Conference and the Tehran Conference.

So then, whenever one replies to one of these charges, Mike goes to another one.

What??? Uh, I responded to Jeff's reply. Compare his lone item of dubious evidence on Prouty's Tehran claim with the numerous sources that I cited. Did you even read my responses to his replies? 

You are badly damaging your credibility with these kinds of erroneous replies in defense of an anti-Semitic crackpot.

Diverting from the fact just established.

Ha! This is comical. He established no fact. He cited a lone, obviously errant and unsourced statement. I cited numerous scholarly sources, including many primary sources. But somehow you conclude that he made the better case. Curious.

And make no mistake, virtually all of these were  brought up by McAdams in the first place.  You can check that for yourself.  And almost all of them were replied to by Len Osanic years ago.

One, I've raised many issues that McAdams never mentioned. Two, just because McAdams said something does not automatically make it false. Are you saying McAdams was wrong about Ricky White, Robert Morrow, Beverly Oliver, and Madeleine Brown, for example? Three, Osanic's explanations for Prouty's bogus claims and craziness are lame. 

And, I must say that Jeff's excuses and explanations for Prouty's documented, undeniable prolonged associations with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers are just pitiful. As I've said many times, if we had the same evidence on a lone-gunman theorist, no conspiracy advocate be caught dead offering such excuses and explanations. 

On 10/24/2023 at 8:29 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

MG-

 

I have watched Shepard's presentations. Yes, there was a partisan lynching party going on...but remember, there were three GOP dons who went to the White House and told Nixon to resign. 

"Goldwater, along with House Republican Leader John Jacob Rhodes and Senate Republican Leader Hugh Scott, entered the Oval Office around 5 p.m. The Arizona senator sat directly in front of Nixon’s desk, the others to the side. Goldwater told Nixon he had perhaps 16 to 18 Senate supporters left – too few to avoid ouster. Congressman Rhodes said House support was just as soft."

---30---

Shepard does a great job explaining a weaponized Congress, media and judiciary. 

But the origins of Watergate, and James McCord, and the CIA involvement are not on Shepard's plate. 

The Deep State, when advantageous and possible, will used rank partisan politics to its advantage. 

For me, the question is who triggered Watergate? Not the D-Party.  

I think Shepard shows pretty clearly who triggered Watergate and why.

Yes, some GOP leaders urged Nixon to resign, but that was only because they were deceived by the false claims about the alleged "smoking gun" White House tape. If they had known the truth about the tape, I suspect they would have ardently defended Nixon.

Also, Nixon and Kissinger did not want out of Vietnam in the way that the anti-war Congress wanted out of Vietnam. They wanted to continue robust military and economic aid, and they wanted to be able to keep their promise to provide air support if North Vietnam seriously violated the peace accords. 

I think it is going way too far to call Nixon a war criminal for what he did in SE Asia. He did his best to save 18 million South Vietnamese and 7 million Cambodians from Communist brutality. Truman authorized far deadlier bombing of North Korea than Nixon ever authorized of North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. For that matter, FDR authorized unbelievably vicious bombing of Japan and Germany, bombing that dwarfed Nixon's bombing of North Vietnam in terms of the types of targets and the degree of destruction. Indeed, FDR wanted the A-bomb so he could nuke Nazi Germany.

Until fairly recently, I resisted Bart Kamp's conclusions because I thought that the police and/or the FBI would not have been dumb enough to invent the second-floor Oswald-Baker encounter due to the severe problems it poses for the lone-gunman theory. But, the more I've thought about it, and the more I've reviewed Kamp's research, the more I have come to see that he has a strong case and that the second-floor encounter may well have been fabricated.

I am going to markedly revise my article "Where Was Oswald During the Shooting?" in light of Kamp's research. 

9 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

This is the JFK Assassination Debate Forum, Mike. Not the What Mike Believes Forum.

And we wonder why so many academics and journalists view the JFKA conspiracy case as being as bizarre and implausible as the theories about fake Moon landings, 9/11 being an inside job, a missile hitting the Pentagon on 9/11, the Holocaust being a Jewish propaganda hoax, Princess Diana being assassinated by British intelligence, etc., etc.  

7 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Question for the mods.

If a guy like Michael Griffith keeps repeating debunked claims, ad infinitum, is there a point where the Education Forum finally says, "No mas?"

Griffith has now posted pages and pages of redundant, defamatory McAdams-type disinformazia about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty and JFK's 1963 Vietnam policy decisions.

Whenever the subject, or honest questions, arise, Griffith simply re-posts the same debunked McAdams talking points.

It's not a debate.  It's like trying to converse with a television broadcasting the same Swift Boat Vet ads.

You post this pitiful reply after I just presented new evidence of another Prouty whopper. Can you find me one shred of evidence that Ibn Saud took part in the Cairo Conference?

You're the one who keeps posting "debunked claims." Any rational, objective reader who reads this thread will be amazed at your refusal to acknowledge the facts about Prouty. 

BTW, where are the pictures that Prouty claimed he took of the Chinese delegation during his fictional trip to Tehran? 

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The other trash artist was Epstein.  (Man, can you imagine being on the side of Epstein and McAdams?) 

Take a look at how correct Fletcher was on a charge by Epstein. (And how lucky BOR is to have such good listeners.)

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/fletcher-prouty-vs-edward-epstein 

So after all the facts I've documented in this thread about Prouty's bogus and/or nutty claims, you are still defending him??? 

BTW, just this morning I stumbled across another Prouty howler on YouTube. In his April 5, 1975, lecture titled "Anatomy of Assassination" at Yale University, Prouty claimed that Saudi Arabia's king, Ibn Saud, secretly took part in the Cairo Conference! Here's the LINK (1:10-1:20).

As with Prouty's fiction that Chiang and his group attended the Tehran Conference, not a single one of the hundreds of primary sources on the Cairo Conference says anything about Ibn Saud taking part in the conference. Many of these sources are available and searchable online. 

Saud was famous for refusing to travel outside his country's boundaries. The first time he did so was in February 1945, when he met FDR at Great Bitter Lake in Egypt when FDR was on his way home from the Yalta Conference.

Prouty loved to make up false history to impress his gullible audiences, none of whom seemed to know enough history to realize what a fraud Prouty was.

On 10/19/2023 at 4:09 PM, Anthony Thorne said:

I agree, a great review. When I'm slightly more cashed up than I am this minute, I'll be getting that book.

You can get the Kindle version on Amazon for only $9.99. 

It is a very good, and a very important, book. 

And Jim did a good job with his review of it.

BTW, Kamp did a 97-minute video on his findings, and it's available on YouTube: LINK.

20 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Leaving aside the questionable nature of the evidence for Brown's claims about the party, I am struck by the sheer absurdity of the idea that LBJ, Nixon, and Hoover would have held any kind of a meeting the night before the shooting if they were involved in the plot.

When the "richest men on Earth" in 1963 ( Texas Oil ) come calling to ask your presence for an important personal meet up, even the likes of Nixon and LBJ himself take pause.

And what a remarkable coincidence. Both Nixon and LBJ just happened to be in Dallas at the same time and mere minutes away from the alleged Murchinson home that very evening?

Physically it was totally possible for LBJ and Nixon to have made that meeting. And LBJ may have only been there for 20 minutes. A 1 to 1 1/2 hour brief absence from his hotel including drive time would barely be noticed.

 We all know Hoover was in DC on the day of the shooting.

So? 

He could easily have made the meeting the evening before and got back to DC before dawn.

What is the documentation proving he was home with Tolson the entire evening before?

He ( Hoover ) was the one who notified RFK about it.

Again...so? What's that got to do with anything regards the evening before?

"He would have had to do an awful lot of flying in the space of about 10-12 hours to have attended the alleged party and made it back to DC." 

How about 8 to 10 hours?

Yes, Nixon was in Dallas for a convention, but he had a protective detail with him, and there's no evidence he attended the alleged party.

Why would Nixon have a protective detail? He was 3 years out of government office and only a Vice President while in. Extreme right-wing Dallas loved the guy.

Nixon could have easily ducked his security detail.

Heck, as "President" Nixon did so. Drove by himself to pick up Jackie Gleason at his home in Florida one evening and took Gleason to the nearby Air Force base to show Gleason ET bodies.

I know, National Enquirer stuff...but even Jackie Gleason before he passed finally admitted this strange Nixon encounter.

 

And of course there's no evidence he ( Nixon ) was at the Murchison get together.

Of course not, it was "supposed" to be off the books.

Bottom line is Nixon was only minutes away from the Murchison home that entire evening.

You might get with Lisa Pease about Brown's story. Lisa does not buy it at all.

Wonder what Lisa Pease has to say about 36 year long employ Virginia Murchison seamstress/companion May Newman's story. 

Newman had no publicity or money seeking bad integrity baggage at all like Madeline Brown.

How does Lisa Pease or anyone else explain Ms. Newman's Hoover story?

Misremembering? Exaggerated or even made up? Ms. Newman was mentally ill or suffering from dementia during her interview? Maybe sloshed to boot? 

I don't recall any published accounts of Newman detractors explaining away her Hoover story and her personal integrity.

I would think there might be "somebody" alive today that knew Virginia Murchison and remembered her domestic staff back in 1963. May Newman, Jules Fieffer and John Murchison's cook Beulla Holman as well.

Newman was employed by Virginia Murchison for 36 years!

Still? You're still defending this stuff?

I thought the research community had repudiated the likes of Madeleine Brown and Fletcher Prouty years ago. When I joined this forum last year, I never expected to find posts, much less entire threads, that defended the crazy, nutty claims of Brown and Prouty.

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Every once in awhile I make a mistake and look at a Griffith post. 

Yes Mike, I think the title of this thread is loony.  Its Mark Shaw BS, and Shaw has become a sideshow who has nothing to do with solving the JFK case today.

RFK was not in Brentwood, or close to Brentwood, that day. And the group pictures in Sue Bernard's book prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt. (pp. 186-87)

MM passed on by the process of ingestion not injection. Dr. Boyd Stephens of SF who was hired to do a review wrote that "The person metabolized the Nembutal in a manner consistent with oral ingestion of a large quantity of pills, and further that the metabolic process had reached the stage where much of the toxic material had already reached the liver and was in the process of at least beginning the excretion process."  (McGovern, pp. 494-95)

After reviewing his work,  attorney Ron Carroll agreed with Stephens.  Namely that an injection would have produced a much higher blood level of the barbiturate, and a much faster death, without the evidence of the extended metabolic process which allows  for the liver to absorb the toxic substance. (ibid, p. 495)

This is what is usually called hard evidence or core evidence.  The only real question about her death is: was it an accidental overdose?

One, until you stop defending Fletcher Prouty, you are in no position to be calling anything loony or nutty. Defending Prouty is as bad and inexcusable as defending Alex Jones or James Fetzer. 

Two, I notice that you are still ducking the issue of acknowledging JFK's serial adultery. Why is that? No serious, credible JFK researcher denies that he was a flagrant adulterer. Why do you keep refusing to acknowledge this fact? Because you don't want people to realize just how far out on the fringe you are when it comes to the Kennedys?

Three, I know you're going to just keep repeating the suicide/OD story, but you still have not laid a finger on the problems with that story. 

Four, no, the group pictures do not "prove" that RFK was not at Marilyn's house on the day she died. Again, even Summers, who initially did not want to believe it, acknowledges that RFK was at her house that day. 

Five, don't you find it a bit embarrassing that David Von Pein totally agrees with you about Mike Rothmiller and the evidence presented in Rothmiller and Thompson's book?

On 10/21/2023 at 9:40 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Paul,

I don't know about Greg and Doug, but I believe that some here are Prouty critics simply because he said things that contradict their strongly-held beliefs. For example, Michael Griffith for Prouty saying JFK was getting out of Vietnam.

You're kidding, right? In this entire thread, how many lines have I spent on attacking Prouty over his erroneous claim that JFK was getting out of Vietnam? Maybe, oh, 15 or 20 out of dozens of replies?

Anyone who reads my posts in this thread will readily see that I repudiate Prouty (1) because he spent years palling around with--and agreeing with--anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, (2) because he attacked Scientology whistleblowers and defended L. Ron Hubbard, (3) because he made bogus claims about Chiang Kai-shek and the Tehran Conference, (4) because he made bogus claims about Chiang and the Sino-Japanese War and the Pacific War, (5) because he back-peddled on nearly every major claim he'd been making about the JFK case in his ARRB interview, and (6) because he peddled truly nutty theories (Diana may have been killed by the Secret Team; the Jonestown Massacre was a U.S. intel operation; etc.).

I haven't felt the need to spend much time attacking Prouty over his claim that JFK was getting out of Vietnam because so many other scholars have destroyed that myth. As I've mentioned many times, even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject the idea that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election. A major reason for this rejection is the evidence from the JFK White House tapes and from JFK's own public statements on the war in the last months of his life, including one that he gave the day before he died and another that he was going to give at the Trade Mart, in addition to Bobby's statements about JFK's intentions in his April 1964 oral interview.

On 10/17/2023 at 1:57 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Mike:

You know between your comments on the Prouty thread and now this, I really do not know what to make of you on this forum.

You started this dumb thread in the first place with its ridiculous heading.  You then abandon it and then you come back and you apparently do not read what was written in between.

There is evidence for one encounter between JFK and MM.  Period.

There is no evidence at all between RFK and MM.  That is simply balderdash.

Nothing at all happened at the night in question at MSG, and I have proved this with first hand evidence. 

FInally, RFK had no romantic entanglement with MM and had nothing to do with her demise.  Over and out.  And this is also provable with all kinds of evidence.  And any rumors about that did not occur in print until 1964, after JFK was killed.  So you should just stop this innuendo with that Mark Shaw type of overtone you have as a heading on this thread.  It is truly nutty. As it smears three people.

MM died of barbiturate poisoning which had been ingested, not injected.  And not taken by enema or suppository.  And that is also proven.  The question then becomes: was it deliberate or was it accidental?  One can make an argument for both sides on that one.  But if someone takes well over seven hundred pills in 50 days, and a bottle of Nembutals in 36 hours, I mean that is pretty much asking for trouble. Try and buy Nembutals on the open market today.

You have not "proved" anything. 

I notice you avoided the question about whether or not you acknowledge that JFK was a serial adulterer. Were you the one who told a newcomer that all the stories about JFK's serial adultery were just slanderous lies?

You call the thread "dumb" and its heading "ridiculous" because you are unwilling to objectively consider the evidence that RFK was involved in Marilyn's murder and that JFK appears to have acted as an accessory after the fact. The thread's title is actually a serious question that deserves thoughtful consideration, but you won't even discuss the matter because you refuse to even consider the possibility that RFK played a role in Marilyn's death.

I don't know why you are puzzled by my comments in the Prouty thread. I've discussed part of the mountain of evidence that Prouty was a fraud and a crackpot, and I've done so because his bogus claims have done great damage to the case for conspiracy (and yet there are researchers who, incredibly enough, still cite and quote him, and you are one of them). 

As a Prouty believer, and given the abject howlers that you've posted in our Vietnam discussions, you are in no position to be using terms like "nutty" to describe the credible claim that RFK and Marilyn had an affair. Even Summers admits RFK was at her house the day she died. Gee, what was he doing there??? Oh, that's right, you won't even admit he was there--you buy the fable that he was in Gilroy, never mind that several sources independently said he was at her house that day.

The suicide/accidental OD explanation is a disgraceful joke. You brush aside all the evidence of foul play because that evidence contradicts your unrealistic, ahistorical view of the Kennedy brothers. 

On 10/21/2023 at 8:41 PM, Paul Brancato said:

What I’m trying to figure out is why many posters here want to tear Prouty to shreds. 

Because Prouty was an obvious fraud and a crackpot. Because he spent years palling around with vile anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, speaking at their conferences, appearing on their radio program, praising their "courage" and "vision," praising their publications, etc. Because he made many claims that were demonstrably false, including some claims that were downright nutty. Because he back-peddled all over the place in his ARRB interview. And because he viciously attacked former Scientologists who were trying to expose that cult's manipulation and corruption. 

Perhaps a better question is, Given all that we now know about Prouty, how can anyone defend him?