Michael Griffith

Just to be clear here, you do acknowledge that JFK was a flagrant, serial adulterer, right? I'm not talking about the night of the birthday bash in New York after Marilyn sang "Happy Birthday" to him. I'm talking in general. You do admit that JFK cheated on Jackie many, many, many times, right? And are you saying that JFK never slept with Marilyn?

The transcript of John Newman and Gus Russo's 1992 workshop suggests that Prouty told Newman in no uncertain terms that he was sent to the South Pole for sinister reasons. The transcript is part of a collection of documents written or collected by W. Anthony Marsh, a veteran conspiracy theorist. Here's what Newman said: Fletcher Prouty insists that he was sent to the South Pole by Lansdale to get him out of the way so that he would not witness the events of 22 November 1963. Presumably because if Prouty had been there he would have put two and two together and understood what was going on. (LINK) Yet, when Prouty was interviewed by the ARRB, he said there was nothing sinister about the trip and that it was so routine he did not think about it. And, of course, Landale did not send Prouty anywhere.

I guess Prouty didn't care that EIR was started and produced by anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying extremist Lyndon LaRouche. Nah, this was par for the course for Prouty. He also spoke at a Holocaust-denial conference sponsored by the IHR, praised the IHR's Holocaust-denying journal, spoke at a Liberty Lobby convention, appeared on Liberty Lobby's radio show 10 times in four years, recommended that people read the anti-Semitic rag The Spotlight, and praised Carto and Marcellus, etc.

Nixon had no plans to pull out of South Vietnam without leaving behind a modest residual force and without the provision of substantial long-term military and economic aid after the withdrawal. Furthermore, dramatic progress was made in the war effort under Nixon. The plotters would have had no rational motive for deposing Nixon over Vietnam. Watergate and a hostile Democrat-dominated Congress forced Nixon to change his plans and prevented him from honoring his commitment to come to South Vietnam's aid if North Vietnam seriously violated the peace treaty. If anything, the plotters would have kicked into high gear and done everything in their power to keep Nixon in office. Moves toward detente with the Soviets continued under Ford, Carter, and even Reagan. Of course, Carter, to his great credit, learned his lesson with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; he became much more skeptical of Soviet aims and promises afterward. Reagan pushed for an arms deal with the Soviets and held talks with Gorbachev. I suggest that the plotters either were not interested in controlling all aspects of American foreign policy and/or lacked the power to do so. If they had, it is hard to imagine how or why they could have allowed LBJ to pick the dovish, limp-wristed Hubert Humphrey as his VP, how they could have allowed LBJ to so egregiously hamstring our military in Vietnam, how they could have allowed the arms control treaties under Nixon and Carter, etc., etc., etc.

Oh, please. You guys claim that every criticism of Prouty is a "hatchet job," "a smear," "defamation," etc. You guys even claim that Prouty's ARRB interview was an "ambush," that poor ole Fletch was "set up" by the ARRB. You know, at some point you need to ask yourselves just how badly you're willing to damage the case for conspiracy in order to defend Prouty's bogus and nutty claims. It should tell you something that even Oliver Stone has repudiated Prouty's obscene trash about Lansdale, yet you guys continue to peddle it.

I think there is a third view, a second CT view: Mafia dons and CIA rogues teamed up to kill JFK because they viewed him as a threat, but they were not in a position to control, and did not control, all U.S. foreign policy, military, and trade policies after his death. The FBI and some military brass took part in the cover-up. The Mafia's and the rogue CIA elements' motives were revenge and self-preservation. It is true that LBJ planned to escalate the war in Vietnam after the '64 election, but McMasters and other scholars have documented beyond any doubt that LBJ did not envision, and did not want, a large-scale escalation. LBJ envisioned a moderate increase in the number of "military advisors," very limited U.S. air strikes, and an increase in the U.S. Navy's presence along the coast. LBJ did not want to send combat troops, certainly not in large numbers, if at all. When North Vietnam drastically escalated the war in late 1964 and early 1965, LBJ dithered and almost waited too long to deploy combat troops. And his initial air campaign was so limited and timid that it amounted to meaningless pinpricks that did no serious damage to the North Vietnamese war effort. If CIA and military elements were alarmed by JFK's limited nuclear test ban treaty and his careful steps toward detente with the Soviet Union, they must have been horrified by and furious with Nixon's sweeping arms control deal and his bold steps toward Soviet-American detente.

Please indeed. I guess Dr. Fitzpatrick, according to what you claim, must have flunked Radiology 101, because he was very disturbed by the fact that the 6.5 mm object has no partner image on the lateral skull x-rays. Yes, of course, everyone understands that the skull x-rays are 2D images. We all know that. But you keep citing this fact as if you're proving something, or as if a 3D image of the 7x2 mm fragment would magically change its height and width. The only thing a 3D image would show us that the AP x-ray does not is the fragment's depth/thickness. You can just keep going around and around with your specious speculation about the largest fragment that Humes said he removed, but I've already proved that Humes plainly, clearly, and unmistakably said that the largest fragment was the 7x2 mm fragment. You can't accept this because it destroys your cockamamie theory that Humes was actually describing the 6.5 mm object, never mind that even a child could identify the 6.5 mm object and the 7x2 mm fragment as different objects on the AP x-ray. Not only does your theory require us to discard the hard science of the OD measurements, but it demands that we view your tiny slice object on the lateral x-rays as the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object. Never mind that no expert has identified that slice as a bullet fragment, and that nearly all experts have said the 6.5 mm object is in the back of the head. I suspect we could go around and around about this stuff forever, because you brush aside all contrary evidence and then act like anyone who disagrees with you is refusing to follow the evidence where it leads, which is very strange posturing for someone who's pushing a theory that virtually no one else accepts.

If someone who had never read a book about the JFK case asked me to recommend one book, I would probably recommend Gerald McKnight's book Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why. If I had to vote on the "best all-around" book on the assassination, I think I would say Doug Horne's five-volume work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board.

This is just so silly and so sad. Even when confronted with Prouty's own words, you ignore their clear meaning and implausibly spin them as innocently as you can. By any rational, honest, objective assessment, Prouty clearly and plainly indicated that he believed he was sent to the South Pole for sinister, ulterior motives. I should have quoted the rest of what he said on the subject to make this even clearer. Prouty undeniably said that he found it "strange" that he was being sent to the South Pole. Yet, he told the ARRB that there was nothing strange or sinister about the trip and that it was "so routine" that he thought nothing of it. That's not what he told Oliver Stone either. (FYI, Prouty himself said in his 1992 interview on the anti-Semitic nutjob LaRouche's TV program that he acted as a consultant to Oliver Stone on the movie JFK.) Prouty clearly lied when he claimed for years that he worked on presidential protection. He was nice enough to fess up to his tale to the ARRB. And, no, there was no such thing as "military presidential protection units." I notice you punted on Prouty's gibberish about the notes he supposedly took during his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group and about the phone call itself. This was just more of his bunk. Any sane, truthful person would have made copies of those potentially historic notes and would have carefully safeguarded the originals. the criticism over Teheran involve an effort to deny Prouty his own personal experiences. Oh, sheesh. Unbelievable. First off, several of his claims about Chiang and Tehran have nothing to do with his alleged "personal experiences." Chiang was never "controlled" by Soong. I defy you to find one Asia/WW II scholar who will say that Mao's forces posed more of a threat to Chiang during WW II than the Japanese did. I also defy you to find one Asia/WW II scholar who will say that at the Tehran Conference, FDR got Stalin to agree to order Mao to stand down--Mao and his forces were never even discussed at that conference. As for Prouty's alleged "personal experiences," this brings us to Prouty's wild tale that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference, and that Prouty personally flew the delegation to Tehran. You guys rely on one obviously errant, unsourced statement buried in a book about the Vietnam War and ignore the hundreds of records and scholarly sources that prove that Prouty's tale is pure fiction. By the way, where are Prouty's alleged Tehran-trip photos of the Chinese delegation?

You are just messing with me, right? No, but you must be messing with me. Once again, we see your willingness to accept erroneous WC assumptions and then claim that the only problem is misinterpretation. 1. If you connect an entry by the EOP to the wound in the throat you will find that the trajectory leads across the underside of the cerebellum, precisely where Humes noted damage. I suppose you think that's a coincidence. Really?! Let’s see you connect the EOP wound to the throat wound without hitting the cerebellum. Use the two diagrams I posted and show us a trajectory from the EOP to the throat wound that could have missed the cerebellum. Let’s see it. And, eee-gads, leaving aside the problem of missing the cerebellum, a bullet going from the EOP site to the throat wound (1) would have had to enter the head at around a 45-degree downward angle (was the gunman firing from a helicopter hovering above the TSBD?), (2) would have caused severe damage to the intervening neck tissue, and (3) could not have produced the small, neat, punched-in wound described by the Dallas doctors and nurses. And, oh yeah, the Clark Panel and HSCA saw a path from above and exiting at the throat wound on the x-rays. Oh, so Arlen Specter and crew were actually right in claiming the throat wound was an exit wound, and the Dallas doctors and nurses were all wrong, and the only problem is that WC apologists have missed (or suppressed) the EOP-to-throat-wound explanation! This is just so much poppycock it’s hard to take it seriously. The Clark Panel pretended this path started at the back wound, which they pretended was well above the throat wound. The HSCA Panel knew this was nonsense, but were frightened by the implications of the trail, and so conjured up a line of bs so transparent you might find it convincing. They said JFK's tie blocked his throat wound and forced the air leaking from his windpipe to back up into his neck. Because, y'know, that happens. As you know, I have documented that during the autopsy the pathologists absolutely, positively determined that the back wound was shallow and had no exit point. However, you would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and substitute the bogus back-wound-to-throat-wound theory with the far more ludicrous theory that the throat wound was the exit wound for the EOP rear head shot. 2. Most of the doctors you claim to believe in, including Mantik, have come to believe there was an entrance hole by the EOP. Assuming you believe they are correct, just where do you think the bullet exited? I think I’ve already made it clear that I accept the EOP entry site, but that you cannot accept the EOP site if you believe the brain photos are authentic. Where did the EOP shot exit? Given the fraud that we know occurred regarding the autopsy report (please don’t tell me you think Humes’s first draft was essentially the same as the published version), and given that we know that photos and x-rays were withheld, we cannot say with certainty where it went or how it behaved after it hit the skull. The bullet that Belmont said was lodged behind the right ear could have been the EOP shot. Or, the EOP shot, or a sizable fragment from it, could have exited the right parietal area and created the right parietal flap in the process. Even Dr. Mantik agrees that the right parietal flap is plausible and that it could explain the trajectory of some of the debris. 3. The brain photos are fake blah blah is built on Stringer's ARRB interview. It uses his belief the photos were not photos taken by him to push that the photos were faked to hide a huge hole on the back of the brain. And it does this without admitting Stringer also told the ARRB the photos showing an intact back of the head were taken by him, and that there was no hole on the back of the head. It's cherry-picking at its worst. You are years behind the times and are misrepresenting Stringer’s ARRB testimony. Stringer insisted that the extant brain photos did not show the same brain that he photographed, and that the extant photos were taken with a different kind of film than the film he used. Surely you know that when Lifton interviewed Stringer years earlier, on tape, Stringer clearly and specifically described a large wound in the back of the head. He even used the medical terms “occiput” and “occipital” to describe the wound’s location. Lifton repeatedly asked him if the large wound was “in the back” and “in the occipital part of the skull,” etc., and each time Stringer said it was. Lifton even asked Stringer if the large wound was in the part of the head that would touch the tile if a person were to lie flat on their back in a bathtub, and Stringer said yes. You know this, right? When we look closely at Stringer’s ARRB testimony, we see that it does not contradict his Lifton interview as sharply as some would like to think: Q: And, now, in terms of the back of the skull, was the portion that would include part of the occiput also severely damaged when you saw the President’s head? A: Yes. But when -When I first saw it, this was all intact. But then they peeled it back, and then you could see this part of the bone gone. (ARRB interview, 7/16/96, p. 86) And: Q: Okay. And where Mr. Robinson drew a circle showing missing occipital bone, would it be --do you have any recollection of whether any portion of that occipital bone was missing? A: I don’t know, because I don’t -- I don’t think I ever saw the whole hair pulled down that far. (p. 91) Frankly, if you read Stringer’s whole ARRB interview, you see that he was all over the map on the issue of missing occipital bone. Crucially, Stringer specified that when he photographed the head, the rear area of the head was intact. Yes, of course, because when Stringer photographed the head, the skull had already been reconstructed. Saundra Spencer explained that the pre-reconstruction photos showed a sizable right-rear defect, just as dozens of other witnesses said, but that the post-reconstruction photos showed the back of the head intact. 4. Actually, the brain photos are fake blah blah is worse than bad cherry-picking. It conceals from impressionable parties what they need to know: that the photos match up with the autopsy protocol and supplemental report, But, as we have seen, the brain photos markedly contradict the autopsy report because they show no pre-mortem damage to the cerebellum or the right occipital lobe, whereas the autopsy report says a bullet entered slightly above the EOP and created a fragment trail that led to the right orbit. and that this, the official evidence regarding the shooting of Kennedy, is clear-cut proof for two head shots, and thus, a conspiracy. And WC apologists love your two-rear-head-shots conspiracy because it is so specious, untenable, and convoluted, and because it, like the lone-gunman theory, dismisses all evidence of shots from the grassy knoll. According to you, all the witnesses who insisted that some shots came from the knoll were wrong; all the witnesses, in three different locations, who saw a large right-rear head wound were wrong; the doctors, including a neurosurgeon, who saw severe damage to the cerebellum were wrong; all the witnesses who smelled the distinct odor of gun powder near the knoll were wrong; all the witnesses who saw gun smoke on the knoll were wrong; the apparent gun smoke seen in the Wiegman film near the knoll is just an optical illusion or smoke from steam pipes; etc., etc., etc. There's no need to fake evidence when you can just mis-interpret it, or lie about it. Right. All the severe conflicts in the medical evidence and all the evidence of shots from the grassy knoll are all just cases of deliberate and innocent misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Nothing to see here. This was a cover-up that did not fake or alter a single piece of evidence! The brain photos that show only 2-3 ounces of missing brain tissue [Baden says the photos show only "an ounce or two" of missing tissue] and a virtually undamaged cerebellum—yes, they’re authentic, even if the guy who supposedly took them insists they don’t show the same brain that he saw and were not taken with the same film that he used, and even though we know that brain matter was splattered on the limo’s seats, on some of the limo’s occupants, on the limo’s trunk, on the follow-up car’s windshield, and on two of the trailing patrolmen. Yeah, sure, all that brain matter amounted to no more than 3 ounces!

One correction: Connally was not a member of the Joint Chiefs. He was Secretary of the Navy, a civilian position that was entirely separate from the JCS. I am undecided about the Estes account of Connally meeting with Ruby at the Carousel Club. The information in your post causes me to be a bit more open to the possibility that the meeting occurred.

One, not one of your drawings/diagrams even attempts or pretends to explain how a bullet entering at the EOP site could have magically missed the cerebellum and the right occipital lobe. Just to be sure I had not missed something, I reviewed all of your chapters on the medical evidence. Nowhere do you provide any diagram or drawing that even shows the EOP site in relation to the cerebellum and the right occipital lobe, much less that shows how a bullet entering at that site could have missed those parts of the brain. Two, I am baffled by your comment about the Clark Panel and the conflict between the EOP entry site and the lack of damage to the cerebellum in the brain photos. Did you have a sudden attack of amnesia and forget that the HSCA FPP hammered the autopsy doctors on the impossibility of the EOP entry site because of the virtually pristine condition of the cerebellum (with no pre-mortem cerebellar damage) and of the rear area of the right occipital lobe in the brain photos? Do I need to again quote Dr. Loquvam's devastating interrogation of Finck on this point? Do I need to quote Dr. Petty's damning questioning of Humes and Boswell on this point? Let's read what the FPP said on this issue in their report: The panel notes that the posterior-inferior portion of the cerebellum virtually intact. It certainly does not demonstrate the degree of laceration, fragmentation, or contusion (as appears subsequently on the superior aspect of the brain) that would be expected in this location if the bullet wound of entrance were as described in the autopsy report. There is no damage in the area of the brain corresponding to the piece of brain tissue on the hair which the autopsy pathologists told the panel was the entrance wound. (7 HSCA 129) The panel added that . . . the absence of injury on the inferior surface of the brain offers incontrovertible evidence that the wound in the President's head is not in the location described in the autopsy report. (7 HSCA 115) I find it hard to take you seriously when you keep insisting that the autopsy brain photos are authentic. Of all the evidence that has obviously been faked or altered, the brain photos are at the top of the list. We have a number of accounts of brain tissue being splattered onto over a dozen surfaces (15, by my count). We have numerous mutually corroborating accounts that a large part of JFK's brain was blown out. We have dozens of accounts of a large wound that included a sizable part of the occiput. We have several accounts of severe damage to the cerebellum. Yet, the brain photos show a virtually intact brain, with no more than 2 or 3 ounces of missing tissue, including a virtually undamaged cerebellum, no pre-mortem damage to the cerebellum, and no damage to the rear area of the right occipital lobe. And we have the EOP entry site, which could not exist if the brain photos were authentic. I'm adding two diagrams that show the EOP's location in relation to the cerebellum, and the EOP's location in relation to the eye socket. I did not create these diagrams but pulled them from the Internet and added lines, boxes, arrows, and comments.

There continues to be an embarrassing and inexcusable amount of denial and evasion in this thread over Prouty's demonstrably bogus claims. Let's bring the discussion back to the facts: -- Prouty's one and only source for his claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference is a single sentence in William Gibbons' 1994 book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Gibbons provided no source for the statement. The statement appears in the middle of a paragraph about British opposition to a postwar trusteeship for Indochina. It is obvious to everyone except Prouty’s supporters that Gibbons simply confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference. The sentence that Prouty quotes from Gibbons' book says that at the Tehran Conference, Chiang and Stalin approved FDR's proposal for an Indochina trusteeship. But every other source ever written on the subject says (1) that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference, (2) that Chiang approved the trusteeship proposal at the Cairo Conference, and (3) that the trusteeship was only briefly discussed at the Tehran Conference. Here are just a few of the sources that document these facts: Negotiating China's Destiny in World War II (Stanford University Press, 2014), by Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary, Stephen MacKinnon (editors). See especially pages 196-200, 206-207, 226-229. The book is available online via Amazon Kindle (I have the Kindle edition). “The Cairo Conference, 1943,” article on the U.S. State Department's website, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm. “Madame Chiang Kai-shek to President Roosevelt,” State Department website, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943China/d140. The 12/5/43 letter that Chiang’s wife wrote to FDR in which she detailed her and her husband’s travels following the Cairo Conference. She stated that they flew from Cairo to Karachi, then from Karachi to Ramgarh, then from Ramgarh to Chabau, and then from Chabau to Chungking. Surely if she and her husband had gone to the Tehran Conference, she would have mentioned this noteworthy item in her letter to FDR. Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, White House Files, Log of the Trip, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d353. This is the detailed White House log, the "Log of the Trip," of FDR's trip to Cairo, his actions at the Cairo Conference, his trip to Tehran, his actions at the Tehran Conference, and his return trip to Cairo for the second Cairo meeting. "(Mis)-Interpretations of the 1943 Cairo Conference: The Cairo Communiqué and Its Legacy among Koreans During and After World War II," International Journal of Korean History, 2/28/2022, by Mark Caprio, https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=559. "Cairo Conference and Tehran Conference," https://www.nvlchawaii.org/cairo-conference-and-tehran-conference/. The Cairo Conference of 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang (McFarland, 2011), by Ronald Heiferman. See especially pages 148-159. The book is available online via Amazon Kindle (I have the Kindle edition). "Back-to-Back-to-Back Conferences: Cairo to Tehran to Cairo," George C. Marshall Foundation website, https://www.marshallfoundation.org/articles-and-features/back-to-back-to-back-conferences-cairo-to-tehran-to-cairo/. "Sextant Conference," JCS website, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/WWII/Sextant_Eureka3.pdf. The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit, by Zhu Shaokang, https://www.fhk.ndu.edu.tw/site/main/upload/6862ac282432fc1fde400aa74f317621/journal/81-12.pdf. Professor Shaokang discusses the fact that both Chiang and Stalin were determined to *avoid* meeting, and that they did not meet in Cairo or Tehran. "The Tehran Conference, 1943," State Department website, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/tehran-conf. "Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam," House of Lords Library, https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/tehran-yalta-and-potsdam-three-wartime-conferences-that-shaped-europe-and-the-world/. Eureka Summit: Agreement in Principle and the Big Three at Tehran, 1943 (University of Delaware Press, 1987), by Paul Mayle. Available on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/eurekasummitagre0000mayl/page/n1/mode/1up. An exhaustive look at the Tehran Conference. Chiang was not there, and the trusteeship idea was discussed only briefly. Stalin had no dog in the hunt on the issue of a trusteeship in Indochina, since the Soviets would play no role in it, per FDR's proposal. FDR obtained Chiang's approval of the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference to make sure that China did not swoop down into Indochina after the war, given China's history of occupying large chunks of Indochina, especially Vietnam, for long periods of time in the past. Stalin was indifferent about the Indochina trusteeship and was happy to say he agreed with the idea during the very brief discussion about it (by "very brief," I mean no more than a few minutes at the most). Stalin, however, was intensely interested in Manchuria, Korea, and the Kuril Islands. My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (Yale University Press, 2005), edited by Susan Butler with a foreword written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Available on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/mydearmrstalinco0000roos/page/n8/mode/1up. Not so much as a trace of a hint that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference, much less that Chiang and Stalin met at the conference. Also, Butler and Schlesinger both say nothing about Chiang being in Tehran. -- Prouty's claim that at the Tehran Conference, FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin order Mao to stand down has zero support in the record. Not a single available record on the conference mentions such an agreement, nor does a single record state that Mao was even mentioned at the conference. No such agreement or discussion appears in the available Soviet and American records of the conference. -- Prouty's claim that he had pictures from his trip with the Chinese delegation to Tehran is a revealing blunder, another one of his gaffes in trying to provide bogus details to make his story seem credible. His claim begs the question: Why didn't he include at least one of these alleged photos in his book JFK, especially given the fact that in his book and in his interviews he acknowledged that all other sources on the Tehran Conference say that Chiang was not there? His alleged photos would have been monumentally historic evidence. Where are these alleged photos? I'm reminded of Prouty's claim that he took notes during his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group. For years Prouty said, and wrote, that he had taken notes during this putatively historic phone call. Yet, when the ARRB asked about the notes, he said, "Oh, I think they're long gone"! Yeah, I bet his alleged Tehran-trip photos were "long gone" as well. They were long gone because they never existed. By the way, during his ARRB interview, Prouty claimed for the first time ever that he had not called the 112th but that they had called him! Until that point, Prouty had always said he had called them. And, incredibly, he told one of his ARRB interviewers that the phone call may not have been legitimate because the person who called him didn’t sound legitimate! -- Prouty's stunning claim that Mao's Communists posed a greater threat to Chiang during WW II than did the Japanese is an absolute howler. It's further proof that he had no clue what he was talking about. -- Prouty's equally stunning claim that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been controlled by T. V. Soong is ridiculous mythology. First of all, as we've established, Soong did not control Chiang but was subordinate to Chiang. Second, Chiang's hostility toward the Japanese and his determination to fight them is profusely documented. -- Prouty's bunk about Churchill being delayed at a Soviet checkpoint in Tehran due to a lack of ID because he was wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit is another piece of silly fiction that, naturally, finds no support in any source, including Sarah Churchill's extensive accounts of her experiences at the Tehran Conference. Plus, there were no pocketless British jumpsuits. For that matter, there were also no Soviet, American, French, or Canadian pocketless jumpsuits, as anyone can confirm in 15 minutes via Google. -- Prouty claimed, in writing, that he had "worked with military presidential protection units" and that he had "worked on what is called 'presidential protection.'" But, he royally back-peddled from these claims during his ARRB interview. He admitted that his duties did not include presidential protection. He said, “Quite frankly, other than knowing Presidential protection exists, that’s about all I was required to know," and added, "The only time I was personally involved -- and I think that was just for familiarization early in my assignment for this work -- was when I went to Mexico City.... that was my first and last course with them.... I flew the airplane to Mexico City for them." And, incidentally, the ARRB established that there was no such thing as "military presidential protection units." I worked in military intelligence in the Army for 21 years, and I never heard of such units. -- Finally, for many years Prouty led everyone to believe that he had been sent to the South Pole shortly before the assassination to prevent him from interfering in the Dallas security arrangements. In his book JFK, Prouty said that he had always “wondered, deep in my own hear,” if he had been sent to the South Pole to keep him “far from Washington,” and that he had “observed and learned” many things that led him to believe that “such a question might be well founded” (p. 284). Moreover, Prouty said that it “seemed strange” to him that he was ordered to go on the South Pole trip because the trip “had absolutely nothing to do with my previous nine years of work” (p. 284). Prouty convinced Oliver Stone to include the strange-sinister-South-Pole-trip claim in Stone’s 1991 movie JFK. Yet, when Prouty was interviewed by the ARRB, he said nothing about his professed suspicions about why he was sent to the South Pole. In fact, he admitted that the trip was “so routine” that he “didn’t give it a thought.” When asked specifically if he believed there was anything sinister about the trip, he answered, “Oh, no.” Gee, it’s too bad Prouty didn’t tell these things to Oliver Stone before Stone released his movie, hey? Following Prouty’s ARRB interview, critics pounced on his admission and used it to further attack Stone’s movie.

Yes, I did read that chapter. You keep claiming that I'm either not reading or am missing/ignoring your explanations. I am reading them, but your explanations don't "explain" anything--they are balls of confusion, special pleading, contradiction, error, and abject nonsense. Yes, Dr. Chesser did indeed say that when he examined the autopsy brain photos, he saw a "tiny sliver hanging loose" from the underside of the right cerebellum. How does this help your case??? How??? A bullet entering the EOP site would have done far, far, far more damage to the cerebellum than merely causing a "tiny sliver" to hang loose. Sheesh, you must be kidding. I take it you didn't follow my suggestion to examine a brain diagram and to note where the cerebellum and the right occipital lobe are located in relation to the EOP. If the bullet entered the EOP site at a sharply downward angle, it may have just barely avoided physical contact with the right occipital lobe, but it could not have missed the cerebellum. The bullet's shock wave would have at least damaged part of the right occipital lobe, and the bullet itself would have torn through the cerebellum. Furthermore, a bullet fired from the sixth-floor window would have entered JFK's skull at a downward angle of 15 degrees, which is not what one would usually consider to be a sharply downward angle. At that angle, or at any angle close to it, the bullet could not have avoided doing severe damage to the cerebellum and to the right occipital lobe, just as the HSCA FPP noted. Incredibly, you appeal to Dr. Kemp Clark regarding the appearance of JFK's eyes. However, you also claim that Dr. Clark egregiously erred in describing substantial damage to the cerebellum! IOW, Dr. Clark could accurately describe JFK's eyes but he committed the stunning error of mistaking damage to the parietal lobe for damage to the cerebellum! Yeah, and just never mind that he was a neurosurgeon, and never mind that the cerebellum has a distinct appearance and is only located low behind the occiput! This is a good example of your convoluted, contradictory, and dubious "explanations."

I think you're the one who's flailing. Readers will notice that you keep ignoring many of my points. As you surely know, Sturdivan says the 6.5 mm object is an artifact precisely because it has no partner image on the back of the skull in the lateral skull x-rays (The JFK Myths, p. 185). He notes that the partner image identified by the HSCA FPP on the lateral x-rays cannot be the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object because "it is not nearly light enough" (Ibid.) If the 6.5 mm object did not seem to be on the back of the head, this would be a pointless, invalid argument. This is why it is such a big deal that the 6.5 mm object has no partner image on the lateral x-rays. This is why this contradiction bothered and perplexed Dr. Fitzpatrick. I've pointed this out to you many times, but you keep ignoring it. For weeks you kept claiming that Mantik does not place the 6.5 mm object in the back of the head, until I proved that he does. What is disturbing about this is that Mantik himself refuted your claim in his response to your critique several years ago, yet you repeated the false claim until I proved that Mantik already refuted it. So you really should stop repeating the falsehood that the 6.5 mm object does not appear to be on the back of the head when this is the very reason that the lack of a partner image on the lateral x-rays is such a huge problem and such a big deal. In double-checking, I realized that, as you said, you do not posit a stray disk to explain the 6.5 mm object, but you do posit a drop of acid (fixing solution), which is even more problematic. Leaving aside the question of where a drop of acid would have come from in the first place, since when do drops of acid include a well-defined notch that disrupts an otherwise nearly perfectly round shape? The 6.5 mm object has a notch missing on its bottom right side (viewer’s right), but the rest of it is virtually perfectly circular (it looks perfectly circular on the AP x-ray). The fatal problem with the theory is that if the 6.5 mm object were caused by an acid drop, the x-ray film's emulsion would be visibly altered at this site, but the emulsion is completely intact (Mantik, JFK Assassination Paradoxes, p. 150). So, yes, you are correct: You have not advanced the stray-disk theory. I stand corrected on that. Sturdivan has offered the theory as one of two explanations (the other being an acid drop), but you have not. However, this doesn't help your case any because the acid-drop theory is impossible.

Your replies are what smack of bad faith. I've already proved in this thread that Prouty clearly suggested, in writing, that he was sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements. Prouty repeated this tale to Oliver Stone when he acted a consultant for Stone's 1991 movie JFK. This is why Oliver Stone included the claim in the movie. It is amazing that you are pretending that Gibbons could not possibly have committed just a single blunder in a passing comment on a topic that was not even the subject of the paragraph or the book, but, according to you, every other historian who has ever written about the Tehran Conference has blundered by saying that Chiang did not attend the conference! You're also saying that all those other historians have further blundered by not saying that Chiang and Stalin approved the Indochina trusteeship in Tehran. You have one source that supports Prouty's fable. I have literally hundreds that refute it. Yes, there was talk of a Chiang-Stalin meeting at one point, but, as I documented, both Chiang and Stalin eventually shot it down and in fact proved determined to avoid meeting. By the way, I recently stumbled across the video of another Prouty interview. He appeared on a TV show produced by anti-Semitic nutjob Lyndon LaRouche in 1992 (LINK). No sensible person in their right mind would have appeared on that show. Anyway, during the interview, from 2:40 to 3:29, Prouty claimed that he had pictures that corroborated his story that he flew the Chinese delegation to Tehran. Well, then, where are those pictures? Why didn't he ever publish them? Why didn't he include them in his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy? Huh? Why? During that same segment of the interview, Prouty also said that he introduced Elliott Roosevelt to the Chinese delegation when he allegedly stopped at Habanaya Airport. Humm, well, then it is especially odd that Elliott said nothing about this noteworthy event in his extensive accounts of his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences.

Oh, come on. You'd better take a minute and look at a diagram of the brain. If the bullet had entered the EOP at a sharply downward angle, it still could not have missed the right occipital lobe and the cerebellum. You must know this. You must be able to see this in any valid brain diagram. The EOP site was slightly above the EOP. So do tell me how in the world it could have missed the right occipital lobe. Look where the right occipital lobe is. Look at the EOP. Now tell me how a bullet entering just above the EOP, even at a sharply downward angle, could have missed the right occipital lobe. Not on this planet. The FPP got this one right, and even Wecht saw the conflict between an EOP site and an undamaged cerebellum and an undamaged right occipital lobe. And if the bullet were traveling sharply downward, how in the devil could it have left the cerebellum completely undamaged, without even causing any bleeding?!

No, it does not all make sense. It's nonsense. I already answered most of these arguments in the thread on Landis's disclosure and the 6.5 mm object, yet you've repeated them without addressing the objections I raised to them. First off, you keep ignoring the hard science of the OD measurements, the two independent sets of OD measurements done by Dr. Mantik and Dr. Chesser. Those measurements prove that the object is not metallic. This means it's not a bullet, and it's not a stray disk. It's a ghosted image that was placed over the image of a smaller genuine back-of-head fragment that measures 6.3 mm x 2.5 mm. Dr. Mantik was even able to duplicate how the image was created. Anyone can look at the CE 843 fragments and see that they look nothing like the fragments that Humes handled and measured. There is no way those fragments were ever a 7x2 mm fragment and a 3x1 mm fragment. Not one of them looks like what someone would describe as "irregular," not to mention that they're not 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm. Nor could the CE 843 fragments have formed the 6.5 mm object, especially given the fact that the object is not metallic. When you repeat your convoluted explanation, you really should inform readers that not a single medical expert has identified your slice object as a bullet fragment, and that your entire theory stands or falls on your assumption that the slice object was metallic. Your theory also requires that the slice object is the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, and that it is the fragment that Humes said was the largest fragment he removed, even though, as I've proved, Humes made it crystal clear that the largest fragment he removed, handled, and measured was 7x2 mm. But if the slice object is the partner image of the 6.5 mm object, i.e., if it's the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, then the small bullet fragment in the back of the head on the lateral x-rays has no partner image, a physical impossibility. You keep avoiding this problem. Your theory further requires us to believe that Humes saw the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray but somehow committed the incomprehensible blunder of mistaking it for an irregularly shaped 7x2 mm object, even though the 7x2 mm fragment and the 6.5 mm object are both clearly visible on the AP x-ray. Your theory also requires us to believe that the 6.5 mm object is near the right orbit, but the vast majority of experts who've studied the x-rays place the object in the back of the head. You cite Sturdivan on the 6.5 mm object's appearance but ignore the fact that he puts the object in the back of the head, which destroys your convoluted theory. Speaking of the 6.5 mm object's appearance, here's what Dr. Fitzpatrick said about it: He opined that the 6.5 mm radio-opaque object in the A-P skull X-Ray looked "almost as if it had been machined off or cut off of a bullet. (ARRB meeting report, 2/29/96, p. 4) Yes, indeed. The object certainly looks neatly circular on the AP x-ray, even in enlargements of the AP x-ray. But, if it really is not perfectly circular but is just generally circular, then that refutes your theory that the object is a stray disk that was lying on the table when the AP x-ray was taken. The stray-disk theory is implausible anyway, for the reasons I explained in the thread on Landis and the 6.5 mm object.

I have trouble trusting the judgment and research of anyone who continues to defend and cite Fletcher Prouty after all we now know about him. Prouty was an anti-Semitic crackpot who made numerous bogus claims and some downright nutty claims. Prouty spent years palling around with notorious anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists, speaking at their conferences, praising their journals (in writing), appearing numerous times on their radio programs, praising the likes of Carto and Marcellus, blaming Israel for high oil prices and complaining about "usury" (a favorite dog whistle of anti-Semites), and expressing concern about Jewish sergeants operating targeting computers during military operations, among many other things that could be mentioned. It is hard to fathom how someone could accept Prouty's bizarre bunk and then turn around and attack Mike Rothmiller. Rothmiller has a sterling record as an anti-corruption whistleblower. He has exposed CIA penetration of the LAPD. His testimony before the LA Police Commission led to badly needed reforms of the LAPD. He has also revealed that OCID files contained evidence that more shots were fired at RFK than Sirhan could have fired. And on and on I could go. Yet, Jim and his allies reject and attack Rothmiller. Here is the core problem that Jim and his allies have with Rothmiller: Rothmiller's disclosures contradict their ahistorical, untenable view of the Kennedys and their version of the JFK assassination. This is also why they attack Mark Shaw, even though Shaw has uncovered historic new evidence of conspiracy and cover-up in the JFK case. Both Rothmiller and Shaw make it clear that they believe JFK and RFK did many good things, but this is not good enough for Jim and his allies.

Let's continue with the recap of what has been documented about Prouty in this thread: -- In his 1994 interview, Prouty made the bizarre claim that Chiang Kai-shek would have sided with the Japanese had he not been "controlled" by T. V. Soong. This is as absurd as saying that FDR would have sided with the Nazis had he not been controlled by Harry Hopkins. I've already documented Chiang's determination to fight the Japanese and his willingness to cut any deal that would enable him to keep fighting the Japanese. I should add that in re-reading Prouty's gibberish on Chiang and WW II in his book JFK, I came across Prouty's astonishing claim that Mao's Communists posed more of a threat than the Japanese during WW II! Specifically, Prouty said that Chiang's "greatest wartime threat came from the Communist faction under Mao Tse-tung" (p. 13). Holy mythology! This guy was a total crackpot! By 1935, Chiang's forces had badly mauled the Communists and had forced them to retreat to the northwest corner of China (Google "the Long March"). In 1937, Mao allied with Chiang to form the Second United Front because both men viewed the Japanese army as the chief existential threat to their existence and to China's existence. The Japanese army posed a far greater threat to Chiang than did Mao's army. In 1940, Mao had 488,000 troops, whereas the Japanese army in China numbered 1.1 million troops and had far superior equipment, logistics, and air power. (And, FYI, in 1937, Chiang's army outnumbered Mao's army by nearly 3 to 1. By 1940, Chiang's army outnumbered Mao's army by 4 to 1.) -- In his 1994 interview, Prouty also claimed that T. V. Soong "controlled" Chiang and that Chiang knew he was "working for" Soong. OF course, this is nonsense. As we've seen, Soong quit Chiang's government in 1933 and stayed out of it for nine years because he couldn't get Chiang to do what he wanted, and Soong didn't attend the Cairo Conference because he had angered Chiang and was forced to remain in China. -- In his 1994 interview and in his book JFK, Prouty claimed that Soong was "the wealthiest man in the world" to bolster his bunk that Soong controlled Chiang. In his book, Prouty specified that Soong was the wealthiest man in the world at the time of the Cairo Conference (p. 13). Yeah, the same conference that Chiang would not allow Soong to attend! Anyway, Soong was not even remotely the richest man in the world in November 1943. Soong made much of his money at the end of WW II and after he moved to the U.S. Even then, his wealth, though considerable, paled compared to that of the Rockefellers, the Hunts, J. Paul Getty, Henry Ford, etc. -- For years, Prouty led people to believe that he was sent to the South Pole just before the assassination to prevent him from interfering with the Dallas security arrangements. He also claimed that his duties involved presidential protection. He further claimed that sometime after the assassination, an officer from the 112th MI Group told him in a phone call that the 112th had been ordered to "stand down" for the Dallas motorcade, over the objections of the unit's commander. Prouty claimed he took notes during the phone, and for years he claimed that he still had those notes. All of this bunk was demolished during Prouty's ARRB interview, largely by Prouty himself. Prouty admitted that there was nothing sinister about his trip to the South Pole. He admitted that his job really did not include presidential protection. He markedly changed his story about the alleged stand-down phone call and even said the phone call may not have been genuine. And, when asked if would provide the notes he had said he'd taken during the phone call, he casually said he no longer had them, and offered no explanation as to how or why he could allowed such potentially historic notes to disappear. -- For years, Prouty made the obscene claim that one of the Dealey Plaza tramp photos showed General Edward Lansdale with his back to the camera. His supporters apparently forged a letter from General Krulak in which Krulak endorsed Prouty's claim, but in a recorded interview Krulak said the opposite and added that he had no reason to believe that Lansdale would have taken part in the assassination. In Prouty's ARRB interview, he declined to say who first told him that the man in the suit in tramp photo 1 was Lansdale with his back to the camera. He said it was "a personal matter." A "personal matter"?! You make a nutty accusation that you recognize the back side of Lansdale in a tramp photo and even years later it's "a personal matter"?! When Prouty was asked if he had ever asked Lansdale about the photo or his whereabouts on the day of the shooting, Prouty said, "No, I figured it's his business"! Prouty and Lansdale were neighbors until Lansdale died, yet Prouty never once made any effort to talk with Lansdale about the photo or his whereabouts on 11/22/63. Prouty offered the cockamamie excuse that he had assumed that Lansdale was in Dallas on official duty doing a "scenario," and that the tramps were the scenario! When Max Boot interviewed Lansdale's son, the son said that his father did not wear the ring worn by the man in the suit in tramp photo 1. The son also noted that Prouty waited until after Lansdale died before claiming that Lansdale was in the Dealey Plaza during the shooting. I would add that the man in the tramp photo is wearing glasses, yet no extant photo of Lansdale shows him wearing glasses. By the way, Prouty also claimed that CIA operative Lou Conein was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that he is seen in the Altgens photo! Well, here's the problem: Conein was in South Vietnam for all of 1963, as Larry Hancock, to his credit, has acknowledged. Conein played a key role in the coup that killed South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem. In fact, he was Ambassador Lodge's liaison with the coup plotters. In the 1980s and 1990s, Prouty claimed that the policemen in the tramp photos were imposters! Apparently Prouty forgot that in 1975 he himself had identified the police officers as real policemen and had even named them: Marvin Wise and Billy Bass. I mean, come on, folks. This guy was a nutjob. I won't bother recapping Prouty's sleazy prolonged associations with known anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists, and their two most notorious groups, Liberty Lobby and the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). I have thoroughly documented these disgraceful associations in this thread.

Let's back up and recap what has been documented about Fletcher Prouty's fabrication about Chiang Kai-shek and his delegation and the Tehran Conference: -- Prouty said that he personally flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to the Tehran Conference. But there is no record of the Chinese delegation attending the conference. The U.S. State Department's website contains a huge collection of searchable records on the Cairo and Tehran conferences. These records were used for the State Department's massive volume Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. Not one of these records says anything about Chiang and his delegation attending the conference. To give you some idea of the scope of these records, I quote from a partial list of them provided in the Introduction on the State Department's website: A. Inside the Department of State 1. Bohlen Collection—The collection of minutes and documents on the Tehran Conference made by Charles E. Bohlen, who served as President Roosevelt’s interpreter with the Russians at Tehran. 2. L/T Files–The office files of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs. 3. FE Files—The files of the Bureau (Office) of Far Eastern Affairs. 4. Moscow Embassy Files—The records of the American Embassy at Moscow, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington. 5. Cairo Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Cairo, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington. 6. Tehran Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Tehran, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington. B. Outside the Department of State 1. Roosevelt Papers–The papers of President Roosevelt in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. This large collection was found to be particularly valuable for Heads of Government correspondence. 2. Hopkins Papers—The papers of Harry L. Hopkins, located in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Although many of the Hopkins files duplicate material in the Roosevelt papers, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume. 3. J. C. S. Files—The files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These files provided documentation of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. The approval of the British Chiefs of Staff, along with that of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, was obtained for the declassification of the Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation published in this volume. 4. Defense Files—The files of the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of War and Navy and other relevant top-level files of the military departments for 1943. 5. Leahy Papers—A collection of official papers, now in the custody of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, the late Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Although much of this material duplicates the J. C. S. Files, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume. 6. White House Files—Although the White House does not maintain files of the papers of former Presidents, some portions of the White House files were found to be pertinent. Thus, from the files of the office of the Naval Aide there was obtained a copy of the booklet containing the Log of the President’s trip to Cairo and Tehran in 1943. 7. Censorship Files—The files of the Office of Censorship, now in the National Archives. These files contained a few papers regarding the release of information to the press from Cairo and Tehran. 8. Treasury Files—The files of the Department of the Treasury provided several post-Conference documents. 9. Hurley Papers—The private papers of Patrick J. Hurley. General Hurley kindly made his papers available to the editors for the period of the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. From these papers came the first draft of the Declaration on Iran (post, page 623) and considerable data incorporated in footnotes in this volume. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction) The State Department's massive work also used the following unofficial sources--I again quote from the Introduction on the State Department's website: H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940). Hereafter cited as “Arnold”. Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1959). Hereafter cited as “Alanbrooke”. Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959), volume V of the series The Second World War. Hereafter cited as “Churchill”. Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1951). John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation With Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Deane”. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Eisenhower”. Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Hereafter cited as “Feis”. General Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale (London: Andre Deutsch, 1956). Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948; 2 volumes). Hereafter cited as “Hull”. Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960). Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1952). Hereafter cited as “King”. Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War (London: John Murray, 1949). William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950). Hereafter cited as “Leahy”. James Leasor, The Clock With Four Hands (New York: Reynal and Company, 1959). Don Lohbeck, Patrick J. Hurley (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1956). Hereafter cited as “Lohbeck”. Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1946). King Peter of Yugoslavia, A King’s Heritage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954). Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Reilly”. Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Hereafter cited as “Elliott Roosevelt”. Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Sherwood”. J. C. Smuts, Jan Christian Smuts (London: Cassell and Co., 1952). Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948). Hollington K. Tong, Chiang Kai-Shek (Taipei: China Publishing Company, 1953). General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958). Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya, Eight Years Overseas, 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1950). (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction) -- Prouty claimed that Chiang and his wife flew to the Tehran Conference in FDR's plane or in another military aircraft. We know from the trip log for FDR and his delegation that Chiang was not on FDR's plane. The trip log lists every person who accompanied FDR to Cairo and Tehran, down to the cooks, admin assistants, and security people. And, there is no record of any other military or private plane taking Chiang and his wife to Tehran. Chiang's wife wrote a private letter to FDR soon after she and her husband returned to China on 12/1/43, the same day the Tehran Conference ended. She said nothing about her party making a detour to Tehran, much less about Chiang meeting with Stalin. Instead, she said her plane flew from Cairo to Karachi to Ramgarh to Chabau to Chungking. Chiang's personal diary, not published until years after his death, says nothing about any trip to Tehran. He made diary entries during the trip from Cairo to China, but not one of them even hints at a detour to Tehran. Prouty's only source for his claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference is a single, unsourced statement made in passing in William Gibbons' book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Gibbons clearly confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference in his errant passing comment. Gibbons had Chiang and Stalin approving an Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but the issue of the trusteeship was barely mentioned during the Tehran gathering, and Chiang approved the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, as innumerable records confirm. Also, to be fair to Gibbons, his errant statement about Chiang and Tehran was not even the subject of the paragraph in which it was buried. The paragraph's subject was Churchill's opposition to lessening control over Indochina and other colonies. You wouldn't know this to read Prouty's book, because Prouty did not alert readers that he was quoting from the middle of a paragraph--he simply started with the errant statement as if it were the start of a paragraph. -- Prouty claimed that at the Tehran Conference, FDR persuaded Stalin to agree to order Mao to stand down, and that during this alleged conversation Churchill stayed silent. But, a search through American and Soviet records of the conference yields not a single reference to Mao, much less a discussion about Mao's operations, much less an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down. It is fair to ask how Prouty could have known that Churchill supposedly stayed silent during the alleged FDR-Stalin conversation about Mao. How could Prouty have known this? The negotiating sessions were all secret. Prouty never explained how he could have known such a detail about a negotiating session that he did not, and could not, attend. -- Prouty claimed that when he flew the Chinese delegation to Tehran, he stopped to refuel at Habanaya Airport in Iraq. But this makes no sense. Prouty claimed he flew a Lockheed Lodestar, but that plane had a range of 1,600 miles. He would have had no need to stop for fuel to reach Tehran from Cairo. He could have made it to Tehran with at least 200 miles' worth of fuel to spare. -- Prouty claimed that while refueling at Habanaya Airport, he saw Elliott Roosevelt and introduced him to the Chinese delegation, and that, naturally, Elliott "knew" the Chinese delegation was at the Tehran Conference. But, Elliott said nothing about any of this in his extensive account of his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences. Not one word. He didn't even say anything about hearing a rumor that the Chinese were at the conference. -- Prouty claimed that he rode with the Chinese delegation into Tehran, that the delegation's cars were right behind the British delegation's cars, and that the British delegation was embarrassingly held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Winston Churchill had no ID on him because he was wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit. Prouty added that the Brits were only allowed to pass after a Soviet officer came to the checkpoint and let them proceed. Two things from this account scream that the account is pure fabrication: One, there was no such thing as a British military jumpsuit that had no pockets. One can quicky ascertain with a little online research that neither the British, nor the Americans, nor the French, nor any other nation in WW II made jumpsuits with no pockets. The very idea makes no sense, since jumpsuits were worn by pilots and air crews that always faced the possibility of having to abandon their planes in mid-air and would need pockets--secure pockets--to carry essential items. Two, even if we assume for the sake of argument that Churchill wore a pocketless jumpsuit, Prouty's tale requires us to believe that none of Churchill's aides had his ID and other papers but that all these items had been left on the plane. Also, if this event had really occurred, Churchill's adoring daughter Sarah surely would have mentioned it in her numerous writings about her experiences at the Tehran Conference. Sarah was fiercely anti-Soviet and disliked Stalin. If the Soviets had embarrassed and humiliated her father with such a stunt at a checkpoint, she would have said something about it. She never mentioned any such event, not in her two books and not in her voluminous correspondence with family members. -- Prouty claimed that while Churchill's group was allegedly delayed at the Soviet checkpoint, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and laughed and pointed at the British delegation. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese behaviorial standards and cultural norms in the 1940s recognizes that it is extremely unlikely that a Chinese delegation would have behaved in this manner, especially in a foreign country and when they were desperately seeking British and American assistance. And, needless to say, there is no record of any such event occurring at the Tehran Conference.

This explains nothing. Only a miniscule amount of substance was removed for testing and would not have altered the appearance of the three fragments in CE 843. Those fragments look nothing like the 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm fragments that Humes removed, handled, and measured. No matter how thick you want to assume they were, there's no way that the two fragments Humes described could be the CE 843 fragments. In addition, the CE 843 fragments manifestly could not have formed a perfectly round object 6.5 mm in diameter and with a neat semi-circular notch.

So I guess no WC apologists want to venture to explain the problems posed CE 843? CE 843 is supposed to be the two fragments that Humes said he removed from the skull during the autopsy. He said they were 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm. He said the largest fragment he removed was the 7x2 mm fragment. However, the three fragments in CE 843 look nothing like the fragments that Humes described; moreover, the largest fragment in CE 843 looks nothing like the 7x2 mm fragment that we see on the AP x-ray and that Humes said he removed. Obviously, the three CE 843 fragments could not have formed the 6.5 mm object, i.e., an object that is perfectly round except for a neatly cut semi-circular notch on the bottom-right side. Regardless of the fragments' thickness, there is no way they could have formed such an object. What happened to the 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm fragments that Humes removed, handled, and measured? Where did the CE 843 fragments come from?

These are your words: “I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference... I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again... Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference...you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…” Now that the book has been identified, everyone can see it clearly says what Prouty said it did (yet you had labelled him a fabricator on this exact issue). You are avoiding the main point. True, Prouty did not fabricate his one and only source, i.e., Gibbons. I acknowledged that in my first reply after you quoted what Gibbons said. But, as I also noted in my reply, Prouty obviously did not know enough to realize that Gibbons was horrendously mistaken. As we know, Prouty quotes from page 4 of Gibbons’ book, which is available on the Internet Archive. On page 4, Gibbons says, At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina, but Churchill was vehemently against the idea. Gibbons provides no source for this statement. However, he does cite a source for his quotation of FDR's exchange with Churchill over Indochina trusteeship, which comes in the same paragraph and right after his statement about Chiang and Stalin approving trusteeship at the Tehran Conference. Gibbons cites page 40 of Thomas Campbell and George Herring's The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1943-1946, published in 1975, which is also available on the Internet Archive. However, as you can confirm by checking out the Campbell-Herring book on the Internet Archive, page 40 says nothing about the Tehran Conference, and nothing about Chiang being at the Tehran Conference, much less anything about Chiang and Stalin agreeing to an Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference. Moreover, the Stettinius diaries say that FDR met with Chiang in Cairo and with Stalin in Tehran (pp. 17-18). As you may know, Stettinius was the Undersecretary of State in 1943. In response to this information, you have moved the goalposts and now insist the accuracy of the book, as determined by yourself, rather than its provable material existence, which you denied, is your sole concern. This is grade-school silliness. Obviously, the accuracy of the book is the crucial issue, not its mere existence. My main point all along has been, and remains, that Chiang and his group were not at the Tehran Conference, and that therefore Prouty’s tale that Chiang and his group attended the conference is pure bunk. And that Prouty, and by extension anyone who doesn’t denounce him, are somehow personally vouching for the “inexcusable blunders” and alleged confusion supposedly made by the designated official historian from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress - who presumedly was working from the most complete sources then available. Are the professionals with the Library of Congress not “credible”? Seriously? The “professionals at the Library of Congress” did not check Gibbons’ book for accuracy, and Gibbons was undeniably and self-evidently wrong about Chiang being at the Tehran Conference and about Chiang and Stalin approving an Indochina trusteeship at the conference. Gibbons’ book wasn’t even about the Tehran Conference, or diplomacy during WW II--it was about the Vietnam War. His blunder about Chiang and Tehran was an isolated passing comment in the first chapter, a chapter that merely provided background information on Indochina. Despite your musings over flight suits and refuellings, this particular discussion is honed on two points: We’re not talking about “musings” over flight suits and refueling. We’re talking about the fact that no WWII British jumpsuits were made without pockets. Prouty’s silly tale about Churchill having no ID at a Soviet checkpoint in Tehran because he was wearing a pocketless jumpsuit is another demonstrable falsehood that exposes the story as a fabrication. Similarly, Prouty’s fiction about refueling at Habanaya Airport, seeing Elliott Roosevelt there, and introducing Elliott to the Chinese delegation is exposed as another false detail of Prouty’s fabrication. He said he flew a Lockheed Lodestar. If so, he would have had no need to make a refueling stop. The Lodestar could have made it to Tehran with at least 200 miles’ worth of fuel to spare, since it had a range of 1,600 miles. Moreover, Elliott Roosevelt, in all his extensive writings about his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences, said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation at Habanaya Airport or in Tehran—he didn’t even say anything about hearing that Chiang and/or his group were at the conference. 1) Prouty accurately citing an official history published by the Government Printing Office And every other “official history published by the Government Printing Office” that discusses the Tehran Conference refutes the one source that Prouty cited. And every other historian who has written about the Tehran Conference has said that only FDR, Churchill, and Stalin were at the conference, and that Chiang did not attend it but flew home to Chungking after leaving Cairo. Again, you can search through the hundreds of documents on the Tehran Conference on the State Department’s website and see that not one of them says that Chiang attended that conference, nor do any of them say that Chiang approved the Indochina trusteeship at that conference, nor do any of them say that FDR and Stalin reached an agreement to have Stalin order Mao to stand down at that conference. The subject of Mao’s operations in China was not even discussed at the Tehran Conference. 2) Prouty recounting his personal experience flying a Chinese delegation to Teheran. LOL! You must be joking! His “recounting” is farcical on its face and contains dubious details that no credible person would swallow. The first point is indisputable, as the book says exactly what Prouty said it did. And it is also indisputable that what that book says is wrong. It’s not only wrong about Chiang being in Tehran, but it’s also wrong about where the Indochina trusteeship was formulated and where Chiang approved it. Chiang approved the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, not in Tehran (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm). As for the second point, you are basically disavowing Prouty's own first-hand experience based on a litany of surmises and presumptions. Given your pattern of insult and conjecture, there is no reason to trust your self-declared omniscience. LOL! You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” in supposedly being sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements?! (He finally admitted the claim was false in his ARRB interview.) You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” with “military intelligence presidential protection units”?! (No such units existed.) You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” in his alleged “stand-down” phone call with the 112th MI Group and supposedly “taking notes” during the alleged call?! (No credible person could believe this tale after reading Prouty’s ARRB interview.) Anyway, I am doing much more than just “basically disavowing Prouty’s own first-hand experience” in his tale about flying the Chinese delegation to Tehran and about Chiang being in Tehran. I am categorically saying it is an absurd fabrication, a fabrication loaded with transparently phony details.

I did read your website. As I said, I read your chapter on the rear head entry wound. And, as I noted, your chapter doesn't lay a finger on the problem. You don't even acknowledge the entire problem. You mention the lack of damage to the cerebellum, but you say nothing about the even-more-damning lack of damage to the rear part of the occipital lobes. You offer no explanation for how a bullet that entered at the EOP site could have failed to damage the cerebellum, much less how it could have failed to damage the rear area of the occipital lobes. Again, if one wants to delude themselves into thinking that the bullet somehow could have avoided damaging the cerebellum (although Finck admitted this was impossible), no rational person could convince themselves that the bullet could have missed the rear part of the occipital lobes. And, as I've also noted, when the HSCA FPP confronted the autopsy doctors with this problem, they had no answer for it. You cannot duck the issue by attacking the entire HSCA FPP and its consultants just because they posited the cowlick entry site. They did so because of the brain photos and because of the 6.5 mm object. Some of those experts did gently raise issues with the cowlick site, but Baden ignored them. The fact of the matter is that the FPP and its consultants were undeniably correct in noting that a bullet entering at the EOP site would have done considerable damage to the cerebellum and to the rear portion of occipital lobes. But since you are bound and determined to believe that the autopsy materials are pristine and reliable, you refuse to acknowledge the impossible contradiction between the EOP site and the brain photos.