Michael Griffith

You still have not laid a finger on most of the evidence that Thompson and Rothmiller present. As usual, you vehemently pretend that you've refuted an account when in fact you haven't even addressed most of the evidence for that account. And now I see that, incredibly, you are attacking the research of Anthony Summers, who has arguably done more to make the case for conspiracy respectable and believable than any other researcher. A great deal of the key information that we know about the JFKA plot has come from the historic interviews that Summers conducted. But you, a Fletcher Prouty believer, say that Summers' books are worse than Heymann's and Slatzer's books! Is this because Summers is willing to admit that RFK visited Marilyn on the day she died? I see in another reply that you call Mark Shaw's research "goofy." His research is head and shoulders better than yours. Oh, yes, his research is not perfect, and, yes, he does make some mistakes. But your research is not perfect either, and your mistakes have been much more severe than his. No, it is not an "established fact" that RFK was in Gilroy, anymore than your discredited fringe myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam is an "established fact." Two LAPD sources later independently confirmed RFK's presence in LA on the day Marilyn died, and Marilyn's own housekeeper later, and with some reluctance, also confirmed this. But you brush aside all this evidence, and other evidence, and proclaim that it's an "established fact" that RFK was not in LA that day. This is an appropriate point to mention that your research skills and objectivity have been found to be sorely lacking on several issues. You continue to defend the disgraced crackpot Fletcher Prouty and his nutty, bizarre claims. If you cannot acknowledge the indisputable evidence that Prouty was a fraud and a crackpot, you have no business passing judgment on the research of others. And then there is your embarrassing "review" of Dr. Marc Selverstone's book The Kennedy Withdrawal, in which you simply ignore most of the evidence he presents and then pretend that you've refuted his research. When I documented that Selverstone's book has been praised by scholars from both sides of the spectrum, you cited Mike Swanson in your defense. When I pointed out the numerous egregious errors in Swanson's book Why the Vietnam War?, including embarrassing grammatical errors, you ignored this and kept on insisting that you had "debunked" Selverstone's book. It bears repeating that even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject your claim that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam, yet you keep repeating this myth as if it were an established fact. Finally, I would just note, again, that your main anti-Rothmiller source is McGovern, a love-struck Marilyn Monroe fan who can't even admit that Marilyn had affairs with RFK and JFK, or that she was even promiscuous. No serious student of Marilyn Monroe's life denies that she was promiscuous. But McGovern insists that Marilyn was not promiscuous and that she did not have affairs with RFK and JFK.

Let’s read Prouty’s tale about the alleged Tehran agreement between FDR and Stalin to have Stalin order Mao to stand down when Prouty put the tale in writing: With the close of the Cairo Conference, the Churchill and Roosevelt delegations flew to Tehran for their own first meeting with Marshal Stalin. This much was released to the public. A fact that was not released, and that even to this day has rarely been made known, is that Chiang and the Chinese delegation were also present at the Tehran Conference of November 28-December 1, 1943. . . . First of all, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan once Germany surrendered. In return, he agreed to help Chiang by speaking to his friend Mao Tse-tung about relaxing military pressures against Chiang’s Nationalist Army from that front in China. (JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, pp. 13-14) Where did Prouty get this fiction? He provided no sources. I know why: because there are no sources on the Tehran Conference that say that FDR and Stalin reached any such agreement. The subject of Mao’s operations in relation to Chiang’s forces was not even discussed at the conference. The following is typical of what the hundreds of sources on the Tehran Conference say about the agreements that were reached at the conference—this comes from the State Department’s Office of the Historian website: The Tehran Conference was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, between November 28 and December 1, 1943. During the Conference, the three leaders coordinated their military strategy against Germany and Japan and made a number of important decisions concerning the post World War II era. The most notable achievements of the Conference focused on the next phases of the war against the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin engaged in discussions concerning the terms under which the British and Americans finally committed to launching Operation Overlord, an invasion of northern France, to be executed by May of 1944. The Soviets, who had long been pushing the Allies to open a second front, agreed to launch another major offensive on the Eastern Front that would divert German troops away from the Allied campaign in northern France. Stalin also agreed in principle that the Soviet Union would declare war against Japan following an Allied victory over Germany. In exchange for a Soviet declaration of war against Japan, Roosevelt conceded to Stalin’s demands for the Kurile Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin, and access to the ice-free ports of Dairen (Dalian) and Port Arthur (Lüshun Port) located on the Liaodong Peninsula in northern China. The exact details concerning this deal were not finalized, however, until the Yalta Conference of 1945. ("The Tehran Conference, 1943," https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/tehran-conf) Soviet records of the Tehran Conference confirm the absence of any discussion about Mao's operations in relation to Chiang's forces during the conference. In one Soviet compilation of records of the Tehran Conference, published in Moscow in 1969, you won’t even find Mao’s name mentioned in the Soviet minutes of the conference (https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/tehranyaltapotsdamconferences.pdf). In a Soviet government document titled “Military Decisions of the Tehran Conference,” nothing is said about any agreement to have Stalin order Mao to stand down. Here’s the link to the document: https://www.prlib.ru/en/node/403368. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff’s compilation of papers and minutes of the Cairo and Tehran conferences, titled The Sextant, Eureka, and Second Cairo Conferences: November–December 1943, totaling 111 pages, says nothing about any FDR-Stalin agreement on a stand-down order for Mao. Mao is not even mentioned in any of the papers and minutes. Nor is there any mention of Chiang and/or his group being at the Tehran Conference. Anyone can confirm these facts for themselves by searching the compilation at the following link: https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/WWII/Sextant_Eureka3.pdf. In his 1994 interview, Prouty claimed that he was at the Tehran Conference and that while FDR was allegedly persuading Stalin to order Mao to stand down, Churchill just sat there and said nothing. Where did Prouty get this? He offered no sources to support his tale. All of the Tehran Conference negotiating sessions were held in private. How could Prouty have known whether Churchill said anything during the alleged discussion? This is just another bogus detail that Prouty invented to make his fiction seem more believable. None of this should be surprising. Remember that Prouty had shameful record of making bogus claims and of associating with extremists. For example, Prouty spoke at the convention of a notorious anti-Semitic group, Liberty Lobby, and co-chaired a discussion panel during the convention with David Duke’s running mate. During his speech to the anti-Semitic gathering, Prouty blamed the Israelis for high oil prices and complained about “usury,” a favorite attack and dog whistle used by anti-Semites. Prouty also appeared on Liberty Lobby’s radio program 10 times in four years—other guests on that program include a long list of Holocaust-deniers, anti-Semites, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis (LINK; LINK; LINK; LINK). A few legitimate guests appeared on the program once or twice but declined to appear again because they realized what it was about, but Prouty appeared on the show 10 times over a four-year period. Prouty wrote a warmly supportive letter to the editor of the IHR’s Holocaust-denying journal. Prouty even spoke at an IHR conference that focused on denying the Holocaust. He had one of his books republished by the IHR’s publishing arm, and praised notorious Holocaust deniers Willis Carto and Thomas Marcellus for having the “courage” and “vision” to republish his book. Prouty spent years defending the fraud of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. Prouty actually attacked Scientology whistleblowers. One of those whistleblowers, Tony Ortega, looked into Prouty and quickly saw him for the fraud he was (LINK). Finally, Prouty also spent years leading people to believe that he was sent to the South Pole just before the assassination to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements, that he worked on presidential protection, and that he had notes from his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group, but in his ARRB interview he admitted there was nothing sinister about the South Pole trip, that presidential protection was not part of his duties, and that he did not have the notes from his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group. This is not to mention Prouty’s genuinely obscene claims about Edward Lansdale being part of the assassination plot and being in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, claims that even Oliver Stone later repudiated.

LOL! So . . . uh . . . just never mind that Prouty's one and only source for his ahistorical bunk was demonstrably wrong??? Just never mind that???!!! Sheesh, this is unbelievable. Your insulting comments about "gaslighter" and "preening egotism" are a sad by-product of your refusal to deal credibly and factually with Prouty's embarrassing, absurd claims. Rather than admit you didn't know enough to realize that Prouty's source was egregiously wrong, and rather than admit that you should have checked the source's claim before running with it, you opted to resort to insults. Furthermore, as you must know, the issue of the accuracy of Prouty's lone source is not the only issue that I've raised regarding Prouty's ridiculous claims about Chiang and his group and the Tehran Conference. It is comical that you would pretend that it is someone unfair of me, that I'm "moving the goalposts," to bring up other obvious falsehoods in Prouty's bogus tale. Let me repeat the fact that Prouty's one source committed two inexcusable blunders: (1) he claimed that Stalin and Chiang approved FDR's plan for trusteeship for Indochina at the Tehran Conference, and (2) he claimed that Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. Chiang and Stalin reached no agreement about trusteeship in Tehran because Chiang was not there. By all accounts, Chiang knew nothing about the Tehran proceedings until after the conference ended. FDR and Chiang agreed on the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, and then FDR discussed it, briefly, with Stalin in Tehran. Yet, Stalin and FDR reached no formal agreement on the trusteeship concept at the Tehran Conference--that's why no such agreement is mentioned in the agreements made at the conference. Prouty did not realize that Gibbons got confused and assigned to the Tehran Conference events that happened at the Cairo Conference, and that Gibbons also blundered about who attended the Tehran Conference because he associated the trusteeship agreement with the wrong conference. It is nothing short of shocking that you and the handful of Prouty worshippers here ignore all the sources that clearly indicate that Chiang and his group did not go to Tehran, and that you just don't care that no records, meeting minutes, diaries, travel/trip logs, papers, or memoirs contain a shred of evidence that Chiang was ever in Tehran, much less that he met with Stalin. It is instructive that you and a few others would choose to rely on Prouty's one and only source rather than rely on the hundreds of sources that refute Prouty's source. And, pray tell, what is Prouty's source for his fiction that at Tehran FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin tell Mao to stand down? Do you guys just not grasp how idiotic and erroneous that claim is? Or how about Prouty's laughable howler that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been controlled by Soong? I defy you to find a single Asia or WWII scholar who will endorse such gibberish. The small group of people who still deny Prouty's lies, erroneous claims, retractions, and sleazy associations are a dream-come-true for WC apologists. They make it easy for WC apologists to make the case for conspiracy look like nutty, irresponsible speculation.

Just shaking my head. Did it occur to you to check this claim before you ran with it? This is the kind of gaffe you commit when you don't know enough to spot bogus scholarship and when you blindly refuse to face facts about a cherished source. As anyone can readily verify, the trusteeship for Indochina was discussed and approved at the Cairo Conference, not at the Tehran Conference, and it was embodied in the Cairo Communique (aka Cairo Declaration). Google "Indochina trusteeship China Southeast Asia Manchuria Pescadores Taiwan Formosa Cairo Conference" or almost any portion thereof. If Prouty had possessed even a basic knowledge of the Cairo and Tehran conferences, he would have recognized that his source, William Conrad Gibbons, mistakenly assigned to the Tehran Conference something that had happened at the Cairo Conference. I quote from the U.S. State Department Archive website's article "The Cairo Conference, 1943": At the series of meetings in Cairo, Roosevelt outlined his vision for postwar Asia. He wanted to establish the Republic of China as one of his "Four Policemen." This concept referred to a vision for a cooperative world order in which a dominant power in each major region would be responsible for keeping the peace there. Weak as the Republic of China would inevitably be after the war, it would still be the major power in Asia, and it could help prevent renewed Japanese expansionism and oversee decolonization under a trustee system. Roosevelt hoped to prevent the British and the Russians from using postwar instability to increase their presence in Asia, and he advocated for Indochina to be established as a trusteeship instead of returned to France after the Japanese defeat. To secure this future, he sought a commitment from Chiang Kai-shek that China would not try to expand across the continent or control decolonizing nations, and in return, he offered a guarantee that the territories stolen from China by Japan -- including Manchuria, the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands -- would be returned to Chinese sovereignty. Roosevelt also sought and gained Chiang's support for his proposal to create a trusteeship for the colonial territories after the war; in the end, this idea failed to gain the support of the British or French and was not enacted. (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm). By the way, in Tehran and then at Yalta, FDR abandoned his pledge to restore Manchuria, Taiwan (Formosa), and the Pescadores to China after the war, in order to appease Stalin. Anyway. . .. Gibbons' error was really inexcusable, especially for someone pretending to be an authority on the subject. That said, perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR did mention, in passing, the Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but he did so in the context of a discussion about pre-war French holdings in Indochina and by stating that he had already discussed Indochina trusteeship with Chiang Kai-shek. From the Bohlen minutes of the Tehran Conference: The President said that he had had an interesting conversation with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, on the general subject of China. . . . He added that he had discussed with Chiang Kai-shek the possibility of a system of trusteeship for Indochina which would have the task of preparing the people for independence within a definite period of time, perhaps 20 to 30 years. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d358) Other than this one reference, you won't find any mention of an Indochina trusteeship in the Tehran Conference minutes; they talked about Indochina in terms of the military situation and regarding the Cairo Communique, but only once mentioned an Indochina trusteeship (e.g., https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ADFRXSHIYSKS2S8Z/pages/ANSP74UNEP7N6Q8S?as=text&view=scroll). Or perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR sought Stalin's approval of the Cairo Communique. Asia scholar Mark Caprio: In Cairo, Roosevelt met with two other Allied leaders, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, to discuss wartime strategy. He and Churchill would later meet with Stalin in Tehran, Iran immediately following the Cairo meeting to engage the Soviet leader in similar discussions, as well as to gain his consent of the Cairo Communiqué’s contents. . . . As mentioned above, in Tehran, the Soviet leader was briefed on the discussions held in Cairo, and asked his views on the Communiqué’s content. ("Misinterpretations of the 1943 Cairo Conference," International Journal of Korean History, February 2022, https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=559) On his way back from Yalta, FDR held a press conference 2/23/45 and mentioned that he had discussed Indochina with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and with Stalin in Tehran: THE PRESIDENT: For two whole years I have been terribly worried about Indo-China. I talked to Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, Stalin in Teheran. They both agreed with me. The French have been in there some hundred years. The Indo-Chinese are not like the Chinese. (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/excerpts-from-the-press-conference-aboard-the-uss-quincy-en-route-from-yalta) Professor Zhu Shaokang's book The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit documents that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference. It addresses the erroneous press report that Chiang was going to meet Stalin and explains how the report originated. Indeed, Shaokang discusses the fact that Chiang was determined to avoid meeting with Stalin, and that Stalin was equally adamant against the idea of meeting with Chiang (pp. 314-318)! You can read these facts in the large extract from the book available online here: https://www.fhk.ndu.edu.tw/site/main/upload/6862ac282432fc1fde400aa74f317621/journal/81-12.pdf. I think objective readers will see that you are actually describing your own conduct, that you have no answer for the evidence I've presented to you. It is not "moving the goalposts" to point out obvious blunders in Prouty's cockamamie tale about the fictional Chinese presence at the Tehran Conference. You will never find a picture of a military jumpsuit that had no pockets, because no such jumpsuit was ever made (or ever will be made). Similarly, pointing out Prouty's fiction that at Tehran, FDR and Stalin made an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down is not "moving the goalposts" but is highlighting an obvious fabrication. I've already noted that the extensive records of the Tehran Conference, including the list of agreements, say nothing about any such agreement. And let's be clear: Prouty did not just claim that Chinese delegates attended the Tehran Conference but that Chiang and his wife also attended. I quote from his embarrassing book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy: First of all, most historians doubt that Chiang and his wife actually attended the conference in Tehran. I can confirm that they did, because I was the pilot of the plane that flew Chiang's delegates to Tehran. Chiang and his wife traveled either with Roosevelt or in another U.S. military aircraft. (p. 14) How can you take this nonsense seriously? Why would the Chiangs have flown on a different plane? Why does not a single record from the Tehran Conference say anything about Chiang and his delegation being in attendance? Why would Chiang not have mentioned in his diary what would have been his historic presence at the conference? Why didn't Madame Chiang mention this momentous presence in her private letter to FDR, which she wrote just days after she returned to Chungking? Other reasonable and damning questions: Why didn't Elliott Roosevelt say anything about seeing any Chinese delegates at the conference or at Habanaya Airport? Why would Prouty have needed to stop at Habanaya to refuel if he was flying a Lockheed Lodestar, which had a range of 1,600 miles? Why didn't Sarah Churchill say anything about her father being delayed at a Soviet checkpoint, while he was quite sick no less, because, gee, he supposedly not only had no ID on him, due to his wearing a pocketless jumpsuit, but none of his staffers had his ID either?! I mean, sheesh, this is WINGNUT material. You embarrass yourself when you claim that you have "debunked" my "putative itinerary" for Chiang and his group. When you first attacked the evidence I presented that Chiang and his group did not fly to Tehran, you somehow missed the Karachi stop. But, once I pointed out your oversight, you insisted that Chiang still could have made the secret trip that escaped everyone's notice! And I would again point out that your dubious 36-hour window requires that the Karachi visit occurred on 11/29, and that even if we assume this was the case, you cannot identify a time slot when Stalin and Chiang could have met, given the very detailed information we have about Stalin's whereabouts and activities during the conference. This is on top of the fact that you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference, whereas I can cite all the official records of the conference and literally dozens of historians that confirm the fact that there was no Chinese presence at the conference, much less Chiang himself.

Your willingness to ignore contrary evidence is both amazing and discrediting. You once again just brush aside all the records and scholarly sources that say Chiang and his group were never in Tehran but flew straight from Cairo to Karachi to Ramgarh to Chabau to Chungking. You also ignore the evidence that Prouty clearly fabricated when he said that Churchill was wearing a military jumpsuit with no pockets, that Prouty had to refuel in Habanaya, that Churchill's delegation was delayed at a Soviet checkpoint because he had no ID on him, that at Tehran FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin order Mao to stand down, that Elliott Roosevelt saw the Chinese delegation at Habanaya and in Tehran, that Soong was part of the Chinese delegation, that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been "controlled" by Soong, etc., etc., etc. How you can view Prouty as a "straight shooter" in the face of this evidence, not to mention his back-peddling and retractions in his ARRB interview and his prolonged and close associations with Holocaust deniers and white supremacists, is beyond me.

This is a lot of desperate reaching and grasping. We both know that you cannot identify a plausible time slot when this supposed meeting could have occurred during your doubtful 36-hour window, i.e., between the afternoon of 11/27 and the early morning of 11/29, given the nearly hour-by-hour accounts and records we have of Stalin's whereabouts and activities during the Tehran Conference. Your entire dubious 36-hour window requires the assumption that the Karachi visit occurred on 11/29. If the Karachi visit occurred on 11/28, your theory collapses. Also, I notice that you keep ignoring a lot of contrary evidence: -- You brush aside the fact that Madame Chiang said nothing about a trip to Tehran but said that Chiang's party flew from Cairo to Karachi to Ramgarh to Chabau and then to Chungking. -- You brush aside the fact that Chiang's diary says nothing about a trip to Tehran. -- You brush aside the fact that Elliott Roosevelt's extensive accounts of the Cairo and Tehran conferences say nothing about Elliott seeing Chiang and/or his delegation at Habanaya Airport in Iraq or at the Tehran Conference. Yet, according to Prouty's tale, he introduced Elliott to the Chinese delegation at Habanaya and Elliott saw the delegation in Tehran. -- You brush aside the several other sources that chronicle Chiang's travels from Cairo to Chungking and that say nothing about a detour to Tehran. -- You brush aside the fact that you cannot produce a single source, official or unofficial, that corroborates Prouty's claim that Chiang and/or his delegation were at the Tehran Conference. -- You brush aside the fact that not a single source confirms Prouty's bunk about FDR and Stalin reaching an agreement at Tehran to have Stalin order Mao to stand down. There is no record of this subject even being discussed at the conference, much less an agreement reached on it. Other problems: -- According to the official FDR White House "Log of the Trip" found on the State Department's Office of the Historian website, FDR's flight from Cairo to Tehran was 1,310 miles and took 6.5 hours (LINK). By the way, that equals a cruising speed of 201.5 mph, not 250 mph. Also, that log, which is quite detailed, says nothing about Chiang and/or his delegation being at the Tehran Conference. -- If Prouty used a Lockheed Loadstar to allegedly fly the Chinese group to Tehran, he would not have needed to stop for fuel at Habanayah Airport. The Loadstar had a range of 1,600 miles (and a cruising speed of 200 mph) (LINK). Prouty would have easily been able to make it from Cairo to Tehran without refueling, just as did FDR's plane. Thus, this is another part of Prouty's tale that does not check out. -- According to Prouty, the Chinese delegation arrived at the same time the British delegation arrived. Prouty claimed that he was riding with the Chinese delegation and that the delegation's cars were right behind the British delegation. Then, claimed Prouty, when the British delegation was entering Tehran, they were stopped by a Soviet checkpoint and delayed because Churchill had no ID on him, and during this supposed delay, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and laughed and pointed at the British. If so, then it is baffling that Churchill's adoring daughter, Sarah Churchill, said nothing about what would have been a very noteworthy event and a major insult to her father. Sarah worked in British Air Force intelligence and served as an aide to her father. She was known as his "right-hand man." She accompanied him on most of his overseas trips. She accompanied him to the Cairo and Tehran conferences. She wrote extensively about her experiences at those conferences, including in her wartime correspondence with family members. In her writings, Sarah said quite a bit about the Tehran Conference. She described the slow ride through narrow, busy streets to the British compound. She talked about the lax security provided for their car ride from the airport to the British compound in Tehran. She talked about a toast that FDR made to her during one of the dinners at the conference. In her letters to her mother, she talked about how her father was quite sick when they arrived in Tehran and how he had to miss the welcome dinner that evening because he was so sick (Sarah Churchill to Clementine Churchill, 4 December 1943, Churchill Archives Centre, SCHL 1/1/7). Yet, she said nothing about her father being insultingly delayed by Soviet troops for an alleged lack of ID. Nor did she say anything about seeing Chiang and/or his delegation at the Tehran Conference. -- According to Prouty's tale, Churchill had no ID on him when his delegation was allegedly stopped at a Soviet checkpoint because he was supposedly wearing a military jumpsuit that had no pockets! This is the kind of bad blunder you make when you try to add false details to a fabrication to make it seem believable. I defy anyone to find me one example of a British or American WWII-era (or any era) military jumpsuit, aka flight suit, that has no pockets. In my 21 years in the U.S. military, I never saw a flight suit that had no pockets. I spent five years on an RAF base in England and saw lots of British Air Force and Navy personnel in their jumpsuits, since it was (and is) a popular uniform because of its loose, comfortable fit. I never saw one that had no pockets. I did a little digging on Google and found a number of pictures of WWII-era British military flight suits, and not one of them shows a jumpsuit with no pockets. Here are just a few of my search results: LINK LINK LINK LINK LINK Furthermore, even if we make the silly assumption, for the sake of argument, that Churchill was wearing a jumpsuit that had no pockets, one of his aides surely would have had Churchill's ID and travel documents readily available. Finally, here are more sources that say that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference: The Last Empress: Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China (2009), by Hannah Pakula. Pakula says Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference. Indeed, she points out that Stalin expressly rejected the very idea of having of any other leader besides Churchill and FDR attend the conference: The protocol for the Cairo meeting had not been easy to establish. Since Russia was not at war with Japan, it was impossible to have one meeting to include all four leaders, and it was decided that Roosevelt and Churchill would meet Chiang in Cairo—-the generalissimo insisted on being first—-and then move on to confer in Tehran with Stalin, who demanded that “there should be absolutely excluded the participation of the representatives of any other power.” (p. 469) The Forgotten Ally: China's World War II, 1937-1945 (2013), by Rana Mitter. Mitter says that the Cairo Conference was "the first and only conference in which China participated" (p. 336). And: As his aircraft bore Chiang back to Chongqing, events taking place some 1,800 kilometers from Cairo, in the Persian capital of Teheran, would change the picture significantly. Stalin had refused to join the others at Cairo, but at Teheran, meeting only Roosevelt and Churchill, he made his views clear. (p. 311) The kaleidoscope kept shifting for Chiang. He had been reminded of the precariousness of his command when he stopped over in India on the way back from Cairo, where he spoke to General Zheng Dongguo and inspected the 33,000 men of the Chinese Army in India (X Force), based at Ramgarh in Bihar province. (p. 312) Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo of Nationalist China (1968), by Cornelia Spencer. Spencer notes that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference, and that Chiang was furious when he later learned that in Tehran FDR had told Stalin he would not let China control Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores after the war (p. 217). Stilwell and the American Experience in China (1970), by Barbara Tuchman. Tuchman says that only Churchill, FDR, and Stalin met in Tehran, and that FDR sacrificed China's interests to Stalin at the conference (p. 523). Madame Chiang Kai-shek (2006), by Laura Tyson Li. Li, too, has Chiang and his wife returning to China after the Cairo Conference and has FDR and Churchill going to Tehran to meet Stalin: The Chiangs departed for China and Roosevelt and Churchill flew to Teheran, where Stalin spoke disparagingly of China and opposed her elevation to great-power status. (p. 246) BTW, in Seagrave's book The Soong Dynasty, he has FDR and Churchill going from Cairo to Tehran, not Chiang, and he has Chiang only learning about developments at the conference when he was in Chungking: Churchill and Roosevelt proceeded from Cairo to confer with Stalin in Teheran, where FDR was finally persuaded to give up those Asian battle plans to devote attention to the Allied invasion of Europe. When word of this reversal reached Chungking, Chiang Kai-shek was incensed (p. 394).

Uhhh, you left out the inspection visit in Karachi before the Ramgarh visit. How did you miss that? They left in the morning on 11/27, stopped in Karachi on 11/28 or 11/29 for an inspection visit, which would have taken the bulk of the day, and then stopped in Ramgarh. Ramgarh was 1,100 miles from Karachi. Karachi was 1,190 miles from Tehran, a 2280-mile round trip. Ramgarh was even farther from Tehran. Give me a break. Prouty said the Chinese delegation arrived the same time the British delegation arrived, which was 11/27/43. No way. Just no way. In addition, you simply brushed aside the photo that shows some of Chiang's staff and Chinese civilians with Chiang at Ramgarh. You simply brushed aside the Army history that says Chiang flew to Ramgarh on his way from Cairo. You ignored the fact that Soong was not even at the Cairo Conference. You don't care that you cannot produce a single source that supports Prouty's ridiculous tale that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference. You simply blindly take Prouty's word for his mythical trip and ignore all evidence to the contrary. Is there no silliness you will not float to avoid admitting that Prouty was a fraud.

@W. Niederhut@Paul Brancato@Jeff Carter@Ron Bulman As promised, here is more evidence that refutes Prouty's claim that Chiang Kai-shek and his group attended the Tehran Conference. But, first, allow me to note that, yes, I have read Prouty’s books The Secret Team and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. I’ve also watched three of his video-taped interviews, read his ARRB interview, read some of his correspondence, read two or three of his articles, and read his obscene defense of the Scientology fraud. With this understood, let’s continue. On the State Department's Office of the Historian website, there is a letter from Chiang's wife, Mayling, to FDR, dated 12/5/43, that proves that Chiang and his group could not have been in Tehran between the morning of 11/27/43, when they left Cairo, and the morning of 11/30/43, when they arrived at the Ramgarh military base. (In a previous reply, I assumed that Chiang left Cairo in the afternoon on 11/26/43, after the conference ended, but it turns out that he and his group did not leave Cairo until the following morning.) In her letter to FDR, Mayling stated that they arrived in Chungking, China, on the morning of 12/1/43, i.e., on the same day the Tehran Conference ended. And keep in mind that Chungking was five hours ahead of Tehran and Cairo. Madame Chiang then said that on the way to Chungking, (1) they stopped to do an inspection of the Chinese-American Composite Wing in Karachi, India/Pakistan, and then (2) stopped to do an inspection and to view a tank-artillery demo in Ramgarh. She further mentioned that after the Ramgarh visit, they stopped in Chabau, India, late that night, to meet with the generals in charge of the Ledo front. I quote from her letter: My Dear Mr. President: The Generalissimo [Chiang] and I arrived in Chungking on the morning of December 1st. On our way we inspected the training of the Composite Wing in Karachi. We also stopped at Ramgarh for the day to inspect the troops and to attend the practice of tanks and artillery and finally, late that night, we stopped at Chabau where we had a conference with the generals commanding the forces at the Ledo front. Admiral Mountbatten met us at Ranchi and accompanied us to the Ramgarh manoeuvers. You will be glad to know that the Generalissimo was delighted with the training and spoke to the troops exhorting them to give their best in the coming Burma campaign. (LINK) So, before Chiang and his party spent the day in Ramgarh on 11/30/43, they stopped in Karachi to inspect the Chinese-American Composite Wing, which was stationed at Malir Field (the area was then part of India but is now part of Pakistan). The stop in Karachi must have occurred on 11/28/43 or 11/29/43 and probably lasted much of the day, as did the Ramgarh visit. A U.S. Army history, titled United States Army in World War II: China-Burma-India Theater, confirms that on the afternoon of 11/26/43, i.e., the last day of the Cairo Conference, Chiang was preparing to return to Chungking. The term "Generalissimo" was a common nickname for Chiang: The Allied leaders met the afternoon of the 26th at tea. . . . After tea the Prime Minister and Madame Chiang separately told Mountbatten that the Generalissimo had agreed on every point. Such was the situation when Churchill and Roosevelt with their key advisers departed for Tehran, and the Generalissimo prepared to go to Chungking. (LINK) This same U.S. Army history includes a photo of Chiang, his wife, and Admiral Mountbatten and others that was taken during Chiang's visit to Ramgarh (LINK, see page 67 for the caption). Here is the link to the photo from the U.S. Army history: LINK. The photo shows members of Chiang's staff standing to his left. The photo also shows two Chinese civilians dressed in suits standing to Mountbatten's right--these were probably two members of the Chinese delegation. The U.S. Army history also notes that the Chiang party flew to Ramgarh "on their way back from Cairo": On 30 November 1943 the headquarters of the Chinese Army in India [Ramgarh] was visited by Generalissimo and Madame Chiang on their way back from Cairo. (LINK) Historian Jay Taylor confirms that Chiang flew home to Chungking after the Cairo Conference: Chiang and his wife rose early on November 27 and made a dash to the pyramids, then headed for their airplane for the long flight home via India. (The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China, Belknap Press, 2011, p. 252) General Stilwell accompanied the Chiangs to their plane (Taylor, p. 252). On the flight home, Chiang wrote in his diary that the Cairo Conference was "an important achievement" (Taylor, p. 252). Another U.S. Army history, titled Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare 1943-1944, states that Chiang, his wife, the Chinese delegation, and Chiang's staff arrived in Cairo on the morning of 11/22/43, the day before the conference started (LINK). This was Chiang's group. They flew together. There is no record that they ever separated and flew home on different planes. The above-mentioned Ramgarh photo shows members of Chiang's staff standing next to him and shows Chinese civilians standing next to Mountbatten. Thus, even though histories and narratives understandably merely refer to Chiang or Chiang and his wife arriving here, leaving there, etc., we should understand that Chiang's group accompanied him when he arrived in Cairo and when he departed from Cairo to fly home to Chungking. In an article about the Cairo Conference on the University of Nottingham's Asia Research Institute website, we read, Chiang Kai-shek led the delegation as China’s main representative, while his wife Song Meiling and a number of important Guomindang generals and foreign affairs officials also attended. (LINK) Prouty also erred when he claimed that T. V. Soong was part of Chiang's group at the Cairo Conference. This is part of his bogus claim that he flew Soong and "his delegates" from Cairo to Tehran ("these were T. V. Soong's delegates"). In fact, Soong did not go on the Cairo trip because he had incurred Chiang's displeasure. Historian Ronald Heiferman notes that before the conference, Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry Stimson discussed the fact that Soong would not be attending the conference, The president and the secretary also discussed T.V. Soong's fall from the good graces of the generalissimo and how his absence from Cairo might affect the summit. Stimson told Roosevelt that General Somervell had described Soong as "the [N-word] in the woodpile in Chungking" (The Cairo Conference of 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang, McFarland Publishes, 2014, p. 52) Soong, ever the fanatic, viewed the Cairo Conference as a failure, lamenting that it was "more costly than I could have imagined." Soong told a colleague that "had he accompanied the Generalissimo to Cairo, he could have orchestrated things. . . ." (Heiferman, p. 153). Thus, Prouty was clearly fabricating again when he said that he flew Soong and "his delegates" from Cairo to Tehran. Note, too, that Soong's forced absence from the conference further debunks Prouty's fiction that Soong "controlled" Chiang. Prouty was peddling pure bunk when he claimed that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been "controlled by" Soong. You will not find a single historian who will endorse such laughable fiction.

This is really sad. Mantik's research is far superior to yours. Have you ever responded to his reply to your attacks on his research? I already proved to you that Mantik places the 6.5 mm object in the back of the head. It is a bit misleading to note that Mantik observes that there was no 6.5 mm "fragment." Yes, of course, because he confirmed via OD measurements that the 6.5 mm object is not metallic but that it was superimposed over the image of a smaller fragment on the back of the head. Your polemic about 3D vs. 2D and measurements is lame. You keep ignoring the fact that Humes HANDLED the fragments. Let me repeat that: Humes HANDLED the fragments. He said they measured 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm. Obviously, the depth measurement was so miniscule that he understandably didn't bother with it. Yes, 27 of 29 medical experts have in fact said that the 6.5 mm object is in the back of the head. The two exceptions are Riley and Robertson. Every other expert who has examined the x-rays and commented on the object's location has said it's in the back of the head. Again, for the umpteenth time, that's why it's such a big deal that there's no companion image for the object on the lateral x-rays. If the object were not in the back of the head, it would not matter that it does not appear in the back of the head on the lateral x-rays. I read your chapter that you suggested I read when I pressed you on the impossible contradiction between the EOP site and the autopsy brain photos. But 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 lack of damage to the rear part of the occipital lobes. And, you don't even try to explain how a bullet that entered at the EOP site could have failed to damage the cerebellum. A major reason that the HSCA medical experts rejected the EOP site is that the brain photos show no damage to the cerebellum and no damage to the rear portion of the occipital lobes. If one wants to delude themselves into thinking that the bullet somehow could have avoided damaging the cerebellum (although Finck admitted this was impossible), even a person on heroin could not convince themselves that the bullet could have missed the rear part of the occipital lobes. When the HSCA FPP confronted the autopsy doctors with this problem, they had no answer for it. If you want us to believe that the brain photos are authentic, then you need to explain how you can reconcile those photos with the EOP entry site.

A few points in reply to your latest balmy diatribe: Some of Prouty's fiercest critics have been liberals and ultra-liberals, some of whom are as hypercritical of the CIA as you are. Prouty's erroneous "insights" about NSAM 263 have been debunked and rejected even by the vast majority of liberal scholars. You complain about the alleged "smearing" of Prouty and then turn around and spew ugly, outlandish smears against Edward Lansdale. Krulak's alleged "corroboration" of Lansdale's alleged presence in Dealey Plaza is appears to be a hoax. His supposed "corroboration" is in a letter that purports to be from Krulak to Prouty in which Krulak endorses the claim that Dealey Plaza tramp photo #1 shows Lansdale with his back to the camera! But there is considerable doubt about the authenticity of that letter because Krulak denied that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza when he was interviewed, on tape, by Harrison Livingstone. In the recording (LINK), you can hear with your own ears what Krulak says when he is asked if he gives any credibility to the claim that Lansdale was involved in the assassination and was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. Krulak answers "NO," and then says, "I haven't the remotest knowledge of that. The only things that I've ever heard is what Prouty has told me." Then, Livingstone asks Krulak about Prouty's claim that one of the tramp photos shows Lansdale with his back to the camera. In response, Krulak says that Prouty had told him that but that he, Krulak, could not corroborate it: "Yes, he has told me that. I couldn't corroborate it because I don't have any independent information or evidence." Livingstone then asks Krulak if he has any reason to suspect that Lansdale might have been involved in the assassination. Krulak answers, "No, no, I would not." The Q&A about Lansdale occurs from 4:20 to 6:10 on the recording. Also, go read Prouty's ARRB interview and see how he waffled and back-peddled about his claim that the photo shows Lansdale from behind. Even Oliver Stone has repudiated Prouty's nutty clams about Lansdale. As for your claim that John Kerry was the victim of a "smear job" by the Swift Boat veterans in 2004, I know you haven't bothered to read the research that those veterans presented. They did not "smear" Kerry but exposed his fraudulent war record and his even more disgraceful falsehoods about the conduct of American troops in South Vietnam.

Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference. Let's see it. I suspect you're just taking Prouty's word about the document and have not seen it yourself. Let's see that document. Over the last two days, I've been researching this issue again and have found solid proof that Chiang and his group could not have been in Tehran during the conference, which proof I will post tomorrow. As for newspaper articles about Mao's agreeing to suspend the civil war, (1) D-Day was in June 1944, not December 1943, and (2) you've ignored my reply about the agreement between Chiang and Mao that they reached years earlier. This fact is very well documented. Those newspapers were probably just quoting Mao reaffirming that the civil war was on hold until the Japanese were defeated. Again, the fact that Chiang and Mao agreed years earlier to not fight each other in order to defeat the Japanese is an undisputed matter of record. You can find it discussed in many books, one of which I quoted in my reply. Uh, but Soong was not the richest man in the world. Not even close. Do you guys just not care about facts when it comes to Prouty's nonsense? Who "reputed" that Soong was the richest man in the world? Who said that? Whoever said that was badly misinformed. Just because some people "once" speculated that Soong was the richest man in the world does not change the fact that Soong was not even close to qualifying for that label. And where is the evidence that Soong "controlled" Chiang and that Chiang "knew he was working for" Soong? Huh? Where is it? As someone who's been researching the Sino-Japanese War and Chiang Kai-shek for many years, I can assure that you won't find a single scholarly book on the subject that makes those claims about Soong. @Norman T. FieldYou would loose that bet, for it does make that claim. Selling off American war supplies to the Japanese was but one of his lucrative endevors. Wrong. I just bought the Kindle edition of the book. Seagrave, the book's author, does not say that T. V. Soong was the richest man in the world. On page 481, he quotes a Nationalist (Kuomintang) press release that, in passing, said that Soong was "one of the wealthiest men in the world," not the wealthiest. Even this claim is wrong. The Kuomintang may have believed this about Soong, but they were clearly not aware of how Soong's wealth compared to that of a number of other rich men in America and Europe. On page 18, Seagrave speculates that Soong "may have been the richest man on earth." "May have been" is not a positive declaration, but speculation. But this speculation is wrong. Even the Kuomintang did not make such a claim about Soong. On page 451, Seagrave says that it was "scuttlebutt at high levels in Washington and London" that "by the end of the war," Soong was "one of the richest men on earth," and he identifies the statements about Soong's reported American holdings as part of the speculation then current among high officials in Washington and London. Finally, on page 482, Seagrave says this about Soong in the 1950s: T. V. was frenetically busy wheeling and dealing in oil stocks, commodity futures, and new technology. He energetically pursued the reputation he was earning as the “richest man in the world.” This brings up another point: Soong acquired much of his wealth at the end of WW II, and he increased his wealth after China fell to the Communists by moving to America. So by any factual measurement, Soong was not "the wealthiest man in the world" in 1943 and 1944. He was not even the richest man in the world after he moved to America.

Trump lies and exaggerates so much, it's hard to know when he's telling the truth. He did many good things as president, but his conduct was and remains unpresidential, erratic, and unreliable. Biden is facing an impeachment inquiry because he's been taking millions of dollars in bribes from China and other foreign sources for years, because as VP he helped Hunter in his corrupt business dealings, and because he has brazenly lied about his involvement with Hunter and his acceptance of huge amounts of money from foreign sources.

Rothmiller's disclosures shed important new light on the JFK assassination. Since OCID knew about RFK's role in Marilyn's death, the CIA knew about it as well, because the CIA had agents in OCID. If J. Edgar Hoover was aware of the information from the audio surveillance of Marilyn and Peter Lawford's houses, he knew about RFK's guilt as well. Hoover and the CIA surely would have taken note of the phone calls that Bobby placed to JFK the day before and the day of Marilyn's death, which suggested that JFK may well have had some knowledge about how and why Marilyn was killed and may have approved of Bobby's action. This knowledge would have made the plotters feel strongly justified in deciding to eliminate JFK, and in deciding to kill Bobby five years later. In their minds, the killing of Marilyn Monroe made Bobby a murderer or an accomplice to murder, and made JFK an accomplice or an accessory after the fact. Indeed, Marilyn's death may have been the last straw for some of the plotters and may have convinced them that killing JFK would be morally justified.

I've haven't read The Soong Dynasty, but I'd bet good money that it does not claim that Soong "controlled" Chiang. I'd also bet good money that it does not claim that Soong was the wealthiest man in the world. I haven't read The Soong Dynasty, but I've read many books and many articles on the Sino-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Pacific Theater in WW II, and not one of them makes the false claim that Soong controlled Chiang. Again, for about the tenth time, Soong resigned in disgust from Chiang's government in 1933 and did not return for nine years because he could not persuade Chiang to be as tough against the Japanese as Soong thought he should be. Prouty's errors about Soong and Chiang, as bad as they are, are not nearly as egregious as his bizarre claims that FDR and Stalin reached an agreement at the Tehran Conference about Mao standing down in China, that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference, that Elliott Roosevelt saw the Chinese delegation at Habanaya Airport in Iraq on the way to Tehran, that Elliott Roosevelt knew the Chinese delegation was at the Tehran Conference, that Churchill was delayed at a Russian checkpoint in Tehran because he had no ID on him, and that while Churchill and his delegation were allegedly delayed at the checkpoint the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and openly laughed and pointed at the British delegation.

First off, it bears repeating that your theory foundationally rests on your claim that the slice object on the lateral x-rays is the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, a claim that has zero support from any of the medical experts who've examined the x-rays. Not a single medical expert has identified that slice as a bullet fragment, much less as the partner image of the 6.5 mm object. Here's another summary of what you're asking us to believe: -- The 6.5 mm object was on the AP x-ray and on the lateral x-rays during autopsy. -- Humes saw the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray but inexplicably mismeasured it as being 7x2 mm, even though he handled it. How could anyone look at the perfectly round 6.5 mm object, with its neat semi-circular notch, and measure it as 7x2 mm? How? There is a fragment on the AP x-ray that measures 7x2 mm, as confirmed by the HSCA medical experts, and it is in the correct location to be the largest fragment of the two fragments that Humes said he removed (above and behind the right orbit). Remember that Humes handled the fragments that he removed, so he saw them in 3D. Even if the 7x2 mm fragment had been 7x2x20, the 6.5 mm object, being circular, would have had the same width as its height; it would have been 6.5x6.5 mm regardless of its depth. So you are asking us to believe that Humes blundered so badly that he mismeasured 6.5 mm as 2 mm for the object's width. Come on. Really? -- Humes not only badly mismeasured the 6.5 mm object, he also inexplicably described it as being "irregular" in shape. But the object is perfectly round with a neat semi-circular notch. The 7x2 mm fragment on the AP x-ray is irregular in shape, but the 6.5 mm object is not. Again, Humes handled the two fragments that he removed. -- Humes removed the 6.5 mm object and the 3x1 mm fragment, and these two fragments constituted CE 843, even though the largest CE 843 fragment is not perfectly round with a neat semi-circular notch, even though the three CE 843 fragments are not irregular in shape, and even though the CE 843 fragments could not have formed a perfectly round object with a neat semi-circular notch. -- When Humes saw the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray, he concluded that the slice object that you've identified on the lateral x-rays was the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, i.e., that the slice object was the partner image of the 6.5 mm object. But, again, not a single medical expert has identified that slice as a bullet fragment. -- When Humes saw the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray, he concluded that it was near the right orbit. However, 27 of the 29 medical experts who have examined the x-rays have said the object is in the rear outer table of the skull. -- Humes took the time to remove the 6.5 mm object and the 3x1 mm fragment, but he inexplicably failed to remove the 7x2 mm fragment, even though it is plainly visible on the AP x-ray. Occam's Razor screams, "Enough with this nonsense! The established science of optical density measurement must be given its due weight, and that science, as confirmed by two separate sets of OD measurements, shows that the 6.5 mm object is not metallic. Humes did not blunderingly mismeasure the 6.5 mm object as 7x2 mm. He handled and measured the 7x2 mm fragment as 7x2 mm, and that was the largest fragment he removed, just as he plainly said. He did not mention the 6.5 mm object in the autopsy report because it was not on the x-rays during the autopsy. The tiny slice object on the lateral x-rays is not a bullet fragment and cannot be the partner image of the 6.5 mm object." Can you give me the link to your chapter/article that explains how the EOP entry site can be valid if the autopsy brain photos are valid?

Oh, Gil, don't you know that John Connally, the guy who actually experienced the wounding and who knew himself better than anyone else, could not tell when he was really hit when he studied high-quality enlargements of the Zapruder film, that he was just plain "wrong" when he insisted he was not hit before Z231?! That is the WC apologists' answer to Connally's statements about when he was hit. According to one WC apologist here, all the autopsy-witness statements that the doctors determined that the back wound was shallow and ended at the lining of the chest cavity merely mean that the doctors so badly butchered the probing of the wound that they tore a false track that went to the lining of the chest cavity! And why didn't they see the track that allegedly went to the throat wound? Well, because they never lifted JFK's right arm during the probing, even though they removed the chest organs and positioned the body "every which way" to determine the wound's track!

But your hypothetical LeBron James scenario bears no resemblance to your arguments about the 6.5 mm object and the largest fragment that Humes said he removed. It is simply unreasonable and implausible to argue that Humes mistook your slice object for the 7x2 mm fragment and/or for the 6.5 mm object, that he saw the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray but failed to accurately describe it in the autopsy report or in his WC testimony, that Humes believed your slice object was the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, that Humes mismeasured the largest fragment that he removed, and that the CE 843 fragments could have formed a perfectly round fragment with a neat semi-circular notch on the bottom-right side (i.e., the 6.5 mm object). You brush aside the fact that not a single expert has identified your slice object as a bullet fragment, much less as the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object (i.e., as the partner image of the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray). I don't know how you rationalize this to yourself. As I've proved, Humes undeniably identified the 7x2 mm fragment on the AP x-ray as the largest fragment that he removed, and the 7x2 mm fragment is in the right location to be the largest fragment (above and behind the right orbit), just as Humes himself made clear. What's more, the HSCA FPP confirmed the 7x2 mm measurement. The FPP also confirmed the 6.5 mm measurement for the 6.5 mm object. Not even a child could have mistaken the 6.5 mm object for the 7x2 mm fragment or your slice object--they look nothing like the 6.5 mm object. You also brush aside the fact that virtually every expert who has examined the skull x-rays has placed the 6.5 mm object in the back of the head. You further brush aside the fact that if the slice object is the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, then the small back-of-head fragment has no partner image on the AP x-ray, a physical impossibility. Finally, I notice that you continue to avoid the fact that if you believe the autopsy brain photos are genuine, you must reject the EOP entry site. One of them has to go. One of them has to be invalid. No bullet entering at the EOP site could have avoided damaging the cerebellum and the rear aspects of the occipital lobes, but the brain photos show absolutely no damage to those areas--not even any bleeding. When Loquvam sprang this contradiction on Finck, Finck was forced to admit that he had no explanation for it. When Petty confronted Humes and Boswell with this contradiction, they likewise had no answer for it.

What were JFK's chances of being reelected in 1964? This question has a direct bearing on our theories about the motives behind the assassination. If even some of the plotters believed that JFK had a good chance of being reelected, this would have made them determined to kill him before the election. On the other hand, if JFK's reelection chances looked questionable or unlikely, this could suggest that the plotters' motives included factors other than just fears about what JFK would do after the election, such as revenge. Starting in early 1963, JFK's approval rating began to drop. By September 1963, his approval rating had dropped to the lowest of his presidency, although it was still above 50 percent. However, this decline represented a drop of over 20 points compared to early 1962. JFK's disapproval rating climbed steadily throughout 1963. Historian David Coleman: By September, his approval rating had slid to the mid-50s, the lowest of his presidency. A small rebound of 2 points in the following months did not establish a strong pattern. Significantly, the disapproval rating climbed steadily throughout the year, which might have posted an intensifying problem had Kennedy lived to contest the 1964 presidential election. (https://historyinpieces.com/research/jfks-presidential-approval-ratings) JFK won the 1960 election by the narrowest margin in U.S. history, winning fewer states than Nixon won (winning 23 states to Nixon's 27 states) but winning in the Electoral College anyway. JFK barely won LBJ's home state of Texas, winning by only 46,000 votes out of 2.2 million votes cast. He won Illinois by an even slimmer margin, and arguably with the help of voter fraud by the Daley machine, edging out Nixon by a mere 0.18% of the vote, or by 9,000 votes out of 2.7 million votes cast. JFK's support for civil rights reform, especially his noble and necessary interventions against segregation in the South, had infuriated Southern voters. JFK would have lost the 1960 election without the Deep South states of Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana, and without the Upper South states of Arkansas and North Carolina. But his chances of winning those Southern states in 1964 would not have been good. Even in the sympathy-martyr-vote-dominated election of 1964, JFK's successor, LBJ, lost the Southern states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana by large margins. And this happened even though Goldwater seemingly did everything he could to throw the election, since he had been drafted as the GOP candidate against his express wishes, and since, like everyone else, he recognized that LBJ would receive enormous voter sympathy as JFK's successor in the aftermath of the assassination. If JFK had not been assassinated, he may well have faced Richard Nixon in a rematch in 1964. Even after the assassination, Nixon considered entering the GOP primary. If there'd been no assassination, Nixon may well have sought and won the GOP nomination. If JFK had faced Nixon in 1964, he most likely would have lost most of the South, and Nixon could have won the election by a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. One would think that in 1963 the plotters recognized that JFK's chances for reelection in 1964 were hardly a safe bet. Yet, they decided to kill him a year before the election. They could have simply ruined his reelection chances by revealing his serial adultery. Such a disclosure in that era would have forced JFK to resign and ended his political career. Or, the plotters could have poisoned JFK and made it look like he had died from natural causes. Instead, they chose to publicly execute him.

It is a quite a sad reach to compare the Slatzer/Carmen/Jordan diary claims with Rothmiller's transcriptions from the diary compilation that he saw in OCID files. You are falsely comparing apples to rotten grapes. And Rothmiller is nothing like Slatzer, Carmen, or Jordan. Rothmiller's diary transcriptions do make sense, and Thompson, a respected international journalist, was able to verify a number of aspects of Rothmiller's story. You'd know this if you would break down and read the book, instead of relying on a love-struck Marilyn Monroe fan who can't even admit well-known negative facts about Marilyn and the Kennedys. You would be championing Rothmiller as a credible, solid source if his disclosures did not include information about JFK and RFK that you cannot tolerate. It is as simple as that. Your version of the JFK assassination is driven by your near worship of JFK and RFK and by your far-left ideology. Thus, even though Rothmiller is one of the genuine good guys, even though he has a sterling record as a whistleblower against police and CIA wrongdoing, and even though he is with us on the JFK and RFK assassinations, you feel compelled to reject his story and to viciously attack him because his story refutes your version of the Kennedys and of the JFK case. And, mind you, there is nothing inherently wrong with being far left/ultra-liberal. Bernie Sanders is ultra-liberal, but I respect him as a principled and sincere politician, and I actually agree with him on a few issues. But when you let your ideology overrule your objectivity, as I think you do, that's when there's a problem.

I guess the press release is news to you and Ron Bulman, but in fact it's very old news and proves nothing. That press release merely referred to the conditional withdrawal plan that was under consideration, the same plan that I've discussed at great length in this forum. As I've documented, the plan was formulated precisely because the war effort was going well, contrary to the Newman-DiEugenio myth that the war was going "terribly." See my thread "The Myth that JFK Was Killed Over the Vietnam War" for some of the evidence that the war was indeed going well. As mentioned, the plan was conditional. It was conditioned on the situation on the ground. If the war began to go badly, the plan would be suspended. And notice that the press release said the withdrawal "could" be completed by 12/31/65, not "would" be completed by then. Liberal historian Stanley Karnow, who was a strident critic of the Vietnam War and an ardent Kennedy admirer, rejected the liberal spin on the conditional withdrawal plan: Former members of Kennedy's staff cite a Pentagon plan for a phased withdrawal of American advisers as proof that he would have disengaged from Vietnam. They point out that 1,000 advisers did in fact depart in late 1963. But as the anonymous authors of the Pentagon Papers note, the reduction was "essentially an accounting exercise," partly calculated to demonstrate that progress was being made in the war. Many of the men were pulled out under routine rotation procedures, or for medical or administrative reasons. They were replaced by others, so that the force ceiling had hardly changed by the end of the year. (“No, He Wouldn’t Have Spared Us Vietnam,” Washington Post, November 20, 1983, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1983/11/20/no-he-wouldnt-have-spared-us-vietnam/8164ae04-33b6-4463-99c5-9382ceb2a8bb/) The myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election was part of the low-hanging fruit in Stone's JFK that critics pounced on and used as an excuse to tar-brush the entire movie. It was part of the bunk that Prouty and Newman peddled to Stone and that Stone unfortunately accepted. Many of the other blunders in the film, blunders that critics gleefully hammered, also came from Prouty: -- Prouty's claim that he was sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements. (He later admitted this claim was false when he was interviewed by the ARRB. It's too bad he didn't tell Oliver Stone that it was false.) -- Prouty's claim that Ed Lansdale played a key role in the assassination plot and that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. -- Prouty's claim that a photo of some tramps in Dallas on the day of the shooting unmistakably showed Lansdale with his back to the camera. (Prouty back-peddled on this claim in his ARRB interview.) -- Prouty's claim that a newspaper in New Zealand had too much information on Oswald too quickly after the assassination. -- Prouty's claim that an officer in the 112th MI Group told him they were ordered to stand down for the Dallas motorcade. (When interviewed by the ARRB, Prouty casually admitted that, contrary to what he'd claimed in writing for years, he did not have the notes that he had allegedly taken during his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group. And, oddly, the ARRB interviewers did not ask a single follow-up question when Prouty said he no longer had the notes, such as, "What happened to those notes? How did you lose them? When did you misplace them? Why didn't you make xerox copies of them?") Stone's JFK would have been a much harder target to attack, and would have seemed far more credible, if Stone had not made the sad mistake of believing Prouty's nonsense. Stone later repudiated Prouty's lies about Lansdale, but by then it was too late to do any good.

Sigh. . . Just a huge sigh. . . . The "men most intimately involved with the skull x-rays" were describing the 7x2 mm fragment, the same fragment that Humes clearly, plainly, undeniably said was the largest fragment that he removed. You keep presenting all these quotes as if they prove your ridiculous theory. Again, yes, the largest fragment at the autopsy was behind and above the right eye/orbit. You keep making this point as if you're proving your theory, but you keep ignoring the fact (1) that virtually every expert who's examined the x-rays has said the 6.5 mm object is in the back of the head, not near the right eye/orbit, (2) that the 7x2 mm fragment is above and behind the right eye/orbit on the x-rays, (3) that OD measurements prove that the 6.5 mm object is not metallic, (4) that the slice that you claim is the 6.5 mm object on the lateral x-rays has not been identified by a single expert as a bullet fragment, much less as the partner image of the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray or as the fragment that Humes removed, and (5) that Humes undeniably, self-evidently specified that the 7x2 mm fragment was the largest fragment that he removed, and the HSCA experts confirmed the 7x2 mm measurement. Yes, Humes later waffled on the 6.5 mm object in his ARRB testimony, but before he realized the implications, he insisted that the fragments that he removed were "considerably smaller" than the 6.5 mm object. Boswell said the same thing. And neither man said that he saw the object during the autopsy--they merely said that just because they did not remember seeing it did not mean it was not there. Custer did NOT tell the ARRB that he saw 6.5 mm object on the x-rays during the autopsy. Even David Von Pein admits that Custer did not clearly say this and may have been referring to the cluster of tiny fragments in the right-frontal region. In Custer's many hours of discussions with Dr. Mantik about the autopsy and the autopsy x-rays, not once did he claim that he'd seen the 6.5 mm object on the x-rays during the autopsy. The only person who told the ARRB that he saw the 6.5 mm object on the x-rays during the autopsy was Ed Reed. I've already discussed the problems with his testimony. Humes made it as clear as language can make something that the largest fragment that he removed was the 7x2 mm fragment seen on the skull x-rays. You simply refuse to admit this but offer the dubious, absurd explanation that Humes actually removed the slice that you've identified on the lateral x-rays and somehow confused that slice with the 7x2 mm fragment. Again, not a single expert has identified that slice as a bullet fragment, and the vast majority of experts have placed the 6.5 mm object in the back of the skull.

I wrote what is essentially a book on this, Michael. And you are correct if your point is that 6.5 mm FMJ bullets don't leave small entrances an inch or two away from huge exits. And yet the size of the exit is undisputed--witnesses at both Parkland and Bethesda described a huge exit. Well, this led many a researcher to muse that hunting ammunition or AR-15 ammunition was used. But my research led me down a different road. All clues, in fact, point to a bullet's clipping the top of the head at an angle, and creating a tangential wound of both entrance and exit, This convoluted explanation is an example of the reason you are a dream come true for WC apologists, and the reason they cite you so often. You are a non-conspiracy "conspiracy theorist." Most of the people who saw the exit wound said it was in the back of the head. A number of them specified that it was in the right occipital-parietal area. Several doctors who saw the wound said the wound exposed a badly damaged cerebellum. Your explanation requires us to believe that all of those witnesses were not just mistaken but badly mistaken, that they couldn't tell the difference between a wound that included part of the occiput and a wound in the top of the head that was above the right ear. Clint Hill stared at the wound for several minutes as he lay on the back of the limo on the way to Parkland. He saw the wound again hours later at the autopsy. He insisted the wound was in the back of the head, in the right-rear area of the head. Nurse Diana Bowron packed the exit wound with gauze. Mortician Tom Robinson reassembled the skull after the autopsy. Both said the large wound was in the back of the head. Nurse Margaret Henchliffe helped prepare JFK's body for placement in the casket. She got a prolonged look at the large head wound. She noted that while she was helping to prepare the body for the coffin, she had the opportunity to examine the head wound "more closely." She said the wound was in "the back of the head." She added that "there was no flap of scalp on the right, neither was there a laceration pointing toward the right." She also reported that "most of the brain was missing." But according to you, these two nurses who got a prolonged look at the large head wound, and who even handled the head, mistook a large wound that was above the right ear for a wound in the back of the head. And according to you, Nurse Henchliffe was just "mistaken," or lying, when she said she saw no flap on the right side and no laceration that pointed toward the right, and that most of the brain was missing. Saundra Spencer explained to the ARRB that the autopsy photo that you keep citing was taken after the autopsy, after the skull had been reassembled. But she was "mistaken," too, right? with the small entrance by the eop representing a second wound. But you know that you can't accept the EOP entry wound if you accept the autopsy brain photos. The brain photos categorically destroy the EOP entry site. The HSCA FPP hammered the autopsy doctors on this point, and they had no answer for it. A bullet entering at the EOP could not have missed the cerebellum, nor the rear aspects of the occipital lobe, but in the brain photos those areas are undamaged. Something has to give. Either you abandon the EOP site or you acknowledge that the autopsy brain photos cannot be photos of JFK's brain.

If Prouty’s claims about JFK plans to leave VN were only his statements that would be one thing. But the NS memoranda are real, and the ‘liberal’ journalists who deny this are in fact revisionists. Those memoranda do not prove that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election. Not even close. Anyone who says otherwise either hasn't read them or is so emotionally committed to this myth that they refuse to face facts. Why would I or anyone care what these ‘liberals’ say? Well, because when anyone cites a conservative source, or even a moderate source, you and several others here reflexively reject it, usually without even having read it. You should care that even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject the Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio myth because it shows what a fringe, dubious, bogus theory it is. Needless to say, all moderate and conservative scholars reject the theory as well. If I were to cite a conservative figure who said JFK was killed because he wanted to cut taxes on the rich so massively, and if that person had made the same nutty, ridiculous claims that Prouty has made, and if that person had spent years palling around with extremists and Holocaust deniers, including speaking at their gatherings and praising two of their journals--if I were to cite such a person, you guys would not be offering up all of these amazingly lame denials and excuses for him. Our media has perpetuated the myth that JFK was killed by a lone nut with no political objectives. Is that what you believe Michael? A simple yes or no would be appreciated. Are you serious? You can't be serious. It says volumes that you would even ask me such an absurd question. No, I most certainly do not believe in the lone-gunman theory. How you could not know this after my many posts in this forum is truly a mystery. Here's my website on the case: https://sites.google.com/view/jfkassassinationwebsite/home. Now, getting back to subject at hand, let me make you a promise: You will not find a single Asia/WWII scholar who will support Prouty's bogus claim that FDR and Stalin reached a Mao-standdown agreement at the Tehran Conference. There was no need for such an agreement. The subject was not even on the agenda. Not one of the numerous State Department documents from/about the conference mentions any such discussion or agreement. And none of the four dozen or so books that I've read about WWII say anything about such an agreement. Prouty was just making up bunk. Similarly, you will not find a single Asia/WWII scholar who will say that Soong "controlled" Chiang, because they all know that Soong was so frustrated with Chiang that he left Chiang's government in 1933 and did not return for nine years. Some "control," hey? And, no, Soong was not even remotely close to being "the wealthiest man in the world." He wasn't even in the ballpark. How you guys can just keep denying reality about Prouty is beyond me. Do you really want to get to the truth about the assassination, or do you want to slavishly adhere to your mythical far-left version of it?

What is the source for your inane question? Although I suspect this will not address your question, I will note that I listed a number of mainstream scholarly sources in my "rebuttal." Did you not see them? You guys have no clue how far out in La La Land Prouty's claims are regarding FDR's alleged agreement with Stalin concerning Mao and Chiang at the Tehran Conference. They are nonsensical fiction that any Asia or WWII scholar would laugh to scorn. There was no such agreement, nor was there a need for such an agreement. Nor would any Asia or WWII scholar endorse Prouty's fiction that T. V. Soong "controlled" Chiang and that Chiang was "working for" Soong. That is just total nonsense. Prouty fabricated these wingnut tales to make himself look important and knowledgeable, and because he assumed his audience wouldn't know enough to realize he was spewing pure bunk.

LOL! "Obscure rightist revisionism"??? You have no clue what you're talking about. You find me one reputable Asia/WWII scholar who supports Prouty's whacky claim that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference, that at the Tehran Conference FDR and Stalin made an agreement for Stalin to order Mao to stand down, that Soong "controlled" Chiang, that Soong was "the wealthiest man in the world," that Churchill and his delegation were held up at a checkpoint in Tehran because Churchill had no ID on him, that Chiang normally would have sided with the Japanese, etc., etc. This is wingnut material. Sheesh, you must be kidding. Speaking of the Tehran Conference, here is the State Department document on the agreements reached at the Tehran Conference--notice that it says nothing about any agreement between FDR and Stalin to have Stalin order Mao to stand down in China: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d424 Here are the State Department documents on the proceedings of the Tehran Conference--notice they do not mention Chiang or his delegation being in attendance: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/ch8 Since the New York Times had already announced that Chiang would be invited to a FDR-Churchill-Stalin meeting, if Chiang and his group had attended the Tehran Conference, there would have been no reason to keep their presence a secret. Here is the State Department's collection of post-Tehran Conference papers, all 66 of them--notice that not one of them says a word about Chiang or his delegation attending the conference: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/ch14 Are these sources what you would call "obscure rightist revisionism"? And, FYI, the sources I've cited in threads on JFK and the Vietnam War are hardly "obscure" or even necessarily "rightist." Max Hastings is hardly a "rightist revisionist." Nor is Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen. Nor was Truong Nhu Tang. Hastings and Nguyen would be quite shocked to hear themselves described as "obscure rightist revisionists." Tang would have viewed anyone who put that label on him as delusional. For that matter, many of the scholars I've cited in those threads are liberal scholars who reject the fringe Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio theory that JFK was determined to unconditionally abandon South Vietnam after the election. Even the vast majority of liberal historians reject this myth, not to mention the even more-extreme idea that JFK's alleged determination to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam was the reason he was killed. If anyone is peddling "obscure revisionism" it is the handful of researchers who peddle Prouty's bizarre, debunked claims. Finally, before you venture into the subject of the Sino-Japanese War, you might want to do a little homework. Peter Harmsen is hardly a "rightist" or a "revisionist." If you think this of Harmsen just because of the statements I quoted from his book, you have done very little reading on the subject. You might want to start by reading Harmsen's book, and also Dick Wilson's book When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945, and David Macri's book Clash of Empires in South China. Nobody but an unread partisan would call Harmsen, Wilson, and Macri "obscure rightists" or even "revisionists." (News flash: We who posit a JFKA conspiracy are viewed as "revisionists" by all of academia.)