Michael Griffith

On 10/8/2023 at 1:55 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Joe:

If you had been the doctors who allowed MM to take so many pills, something like 746 in 50 days--just do the arithmetic as to how many per day-- do you think you would have been in any hurry to let the authorities know about what your negligence led to?

As Don McGovern has written, if MM's death would have taken place in the modern era with more medical oversight, her doctors would have likely  been severely disciplined by their medical boards, probably suspended, or even placed on trial.  Especially because of the empty bottle of nembutals--a very powerful drug.  MM was a pill addict, there is no way around that.  There is even evidence that she went to the black market for more.

It is not my opinion that RFK had nothing to do with MM's death.  It is an established fact that he was in Gilroy about 350 miles away at the time. And there is a plethora of evidence, including a series of photographs in time sequence, that demonstrate this beyond doubt.

For many years on end, actually decades, cheapjack writers like Robert Slatzer and David Heymann simply manufactured a mythology that had no basis in fact in order to sell their pulpy books to an all too willing populace.  Then that ridiculous novel Double Cross came out and the tabloid cable media jumped on board. In the former case, the clown Slatzer actually said that RFK had promised to marry MM?  And he also spilled out the secrets of MONGOOSE to her!  And he had been part of Murder Inc??  I mean please with this BS.

Heymann actually wrote that RFK was in Brentwood at her house not once but twice that day.  Which we now know, through Susan Bernard, and other evidence, was not possible.  And by the way, I would put the work of Summers and Shaw about one notch below those two clowns.  One of the worst things you can do as a non fiction author is to have your thesis in sight before you start your research and writing.   Summers, for example, actually bought into that con man Slatzer, who made a career out of this BS.  But further, he was actually played by Slatzer who promised to pay a friend of his to lie for him and Summers bought that also. And as more than one author has shown, MM's contract was never controlled by The Outfit. 

A writer without confirmation bias could have seen through  a con artist like Slatzer.   For example, Don McGovern utterly destroyed Slatzer. What Don did was to carefully analyze the information in these books, compare them to each other, and compare them to the adduced record. The pills MM took were ingested, they were not injected or supplied by enema. And Don proves this scientifically.  The mixture she took of Nembutal and Chloral Hydrate should have never been allowed by her doctors.  Especially since she had tried to take her life four times previously.  There have been many critiques of what Greenson was doing with MM, since as anyone can see, his treatment was not successful. And he was the third psychiatrist MM employed in something like 6 years.

it is almost impossible to overestimate the influence of Slatzer and Heymann on both the public and in the literature. Slatzer wrote two books and had two films made.  He made many appearances on TV talk shows masquerading as MM's 48 hour husband. Which is one of the most ridiculous BS stories ever postulated.  But yet, Summers references his name literally scores of times in his book Goddess, and Donald Wolfe does the same. This tsunami of utter hooey ended up with MM being consulted by Bob Maheu and attending meetings of MONGOOSE, and being employed as a honey pot in the Castro plots.  I wish I was kidding but I am not.  This stuff actually got published. It should make the people on this board cringe. This is what the subject of my multi part essay will be.  How this nuttiness ended up damaging literary and cultural standards.  Ending up with that debacle by Seymour Hersh about a signed trust agreement between MM and the Kennedys, in which Hersh was also played by a con artist who made lots of  money off his fraud.

And that is what, due to Slatzer, this became: a business dealing in fraud.  A fraud which distorts and defiles the  people being used in the money making process. And it also distracts from the factual record. Which Mike is trying to do with the heading of this thread.  The people in the JFK field--who have dealt with many such instances-- should be sensitive to it.

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.

3 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

You are the preeminent gaslighter to ever appear on this forum, and your preening egotism and utter lack of self-awareness is crystalized in your complaint of “moving goalposts.”

A question was posted and it was answered:

Sept 28 - “I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference.”

Sept 28 - “Prouty said that all the books except one said that Chiang was not at the conference. He said he had one book that said Chiang was there.  I'd like to see it. I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again.”

October 4 - “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.”

Today - “you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…”

The single source had been accurately identified by Prouty in his book. Further, the source is not an undergraduate paper placed online by a remedial student from a junior college - it is an authoritative history produced for a Congressional Committee and published by the U.S. government. It unambiguously states: “At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina.”  If you have a problem with this statement, it should be addressed to the book’s author.  Instead, you heaped insults on Prouty for his accurate observation: “fabricating”. “crackpot” “fraud” “nonsensical fiction”

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.

13 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Fletcher Prouty’s source for the specific presence of Chiang Kai-shek at the Teheran Conference, separate from the delegation he personally flew, was:

Gibbons, William Conrad  The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part 1: 1945-1960

As noted in the publishing information provided in a 1986 reprint by Princeton University Press:

“The book was prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. It was originally published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in April 1984.”

The 1986 Princeton edition can be found on the OpenLibrary service of the Internet Archive.

On page 4, discussing views on colonialism and the approaching postwar frameworks, as discussed at Teheran, Gibbons writes:

“The British were also opposed to suggestions for lessening control over other colonies, such as Indochina, because of the possible effect on their own Empire. 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.”

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.

18 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Projection.

The only "source" claiming that Chiang flew straight from Cairo to Karachi is Michael Griffith, himself.

Then, after Griffith's narrative about Chiang's putative itinerary was debunked, he moved the goalposts by blathering about Churchill's "jumpsuit" and, once again, claiming that Prouty was a "white supremacist," etc., etc.

Has anyone ever seen Griffith acknowledges his numerous debunked claims during the past year on this forum?

Rather than acknowledging his errors, Griffith simply re-posts them, ad infinitum.

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. 

19 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

So sick of Michael Griffith's verbose McAdams-style forum fiction defaming Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.

The Cairo-Tehran-Karachi timeline is not my "theory" about Prouty.  It's arithmetic.

My "theory" is simply that Prouty was always a straight shooter and a credible historical witness who flew Chiang's delegation to Tehran.  He wrote honestly about his experiences and observations-- including his observations about the drafting of the McNamara/Taylor Report, NSAM 263, and Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza.

Griffith began his latest defamation of Prouty by describing a lengthy, multi-page scenario purporting to show that Chiang and his delegation couldn't possibly have conferred with Stalin in Tehran on the evening of 11/27/43, or during the day and/or evening of 11/28/43.

People can do the math without my assistance.

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.

14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

It's about 1,200 miles from Cairo to Tehran, and 1,200 miles from Tehran to Karachi.

Planes like the Lockheed Lodestar had a maximum cruising speed of 250 mph in 1943.

So, leaving Cairo on the morning of 11/27/43, Chiang Kai-shek could have been in Tehran within six hours.

He and his delegation could have been in Tehran by the afternoon of 11/27/43 and remained in Tehran for another 36 hours. 

They could have then flown to Karachi in six hours on 11/29/43.

Nothing in Griffith's alleged Prouty-defaming timetable refutes Prouty's account of flying Chiang's delegation to Tehran.

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).

9 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Geez... More Michael Griffith bunk to de-bunk?

This never ends.

To simplify, bear in mind that Michael Griffith's objective in all of his Prouty posts has been defamation-- to claim that Prouty is a "nutty" conspiracy theorist and an unreliable historical witness.

The most important example is Griffith's repetitive denial of Prouty and General Krulak's positive identification of Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza.

They, certainly, ID'd their old colleague, Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza (and wondered what Lansdale was doing in Dealey Plaza!) but Krulak didn't want to end up on the wrong end of a CIA shotgun, and declined to publicize his awareness of Lansdale's presence in Dealey Plaza.

As for the Chiang Kai-shek issue, Prouty wrote (in JFK-- The CIA, Vietnam, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy) that he had personally flown members of Chiang's delegation from Cairo to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.  Prouty was less specific in his book about transportation arrangements for Chiang and his wife from Cairo.

Prouty also reported that Chiang's meeting with Stalin in Tehran was "one of the best kept secrets of WWII," and was unknown to historians who have written about Tehran.

The 11/26/43 NYT cable that I posted (above) indicates that Chiang was, in fact, invited to attend the 11/28/63 Tehran Conference to meet with Stalin.

Looking at Michael Griffith's own reported timeline, (above) we have;

Chiang and his wife leaving Cairo on the morning of 11/27/43.

Chiang and his wife arrived at Ramgarh on the morning of 11/30/43.

Chiang and his wife arrived in Chungking on 12/1/43.

How does Griffith's timeline prove that Prouty was not telling the truth about Chiang and a Chinese delegation (that Prouty personally flew from Cairo to Tehran) being in Tehran?

Answer:  It doesn't.

It's another one of Michael Griffith's numerous Prouty defamation nothing burgers.

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. 

2 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

You are just blowing smoke, Michael. Sorry. 

For one, 27 of 29 experts? Really? Where do you get this? Not from Mantik--who says there is no such fragment. And not from the ARRB experts, right? And not from Ebersole, or Custer and Reed? Right?

So you're pretending you believe The Clark Panel, Rocky Panel, and HSCA Panels--the very guys who conjured up an entrance in the cowlick? If you read the HSCA info you will find some hints about what did happen--Davis noticed that the trail of fragments was on the outside off the skull--but you can't take anything that was said as gospel. 

Let this sink in. Only 2 measurements were given for 3-d objects. I myself am 6 x 2 from the front, 6 x 1 from the side, and 1 x 2 from the top or bottom...and that's just the straight on looks. If you view me from an angle, I can be a number of different sizes. When you read radiology textbooks they specifically warn against measuring fragments or bullets on x-rays, as the angles and magnification. can lead to some very bad guesses. 

And let this sink in as well. Lattimer's claim the forehead fragment was the fragment removed at autopsy was a guess. It wasn't science. It was a guess. And he was clearly wrong. It appears you put men with letters after their names on a pedestal. When it's convenient. Something tells me you hate Fauci and his ilk. 

And, finally, this. Mantik's conclusions are questionable, and often obviously incorrect. HIs methodology is also questionable. If you'd read my website you would know all this... 

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.

On 10/3/2023 at 11:09 AM, W. Niederhut said:

The thing about this repetitive John McAdams/Michael Griffith "Swift Boat Vetting" defamation of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty is that the same old defamatory tropes can be repeated indefinitely on social media.

Rinse and repeat the bunk until people believe it's true.

The CIA propaganda people have been aggressively trying to discredit Prouty for more than 30 years for his insights about NSAM 263 and his identification of Allen Dulles's favorite black ops man, Ed Lansdale, in Dealey Plaza (which was corroborated by General Victor Krulak.)

And, despite posting book-length, repetitive smears here about Prouty, Michael Griffith has never even read Prouty's own book, describing the details of his work on the McNamara/Taylor Report, NSAM 263, and his trip to Antarctica in November of 1963.

Nor has Griffith posted his sources for insisting that Chiang Kai-shek's delegation never met secretly with Stalin in Tehran-- despite the fact that Chiang was, in fact, invited to Tehran.

How are people supposed to respond to this kind of redundant Swift Boat Vetting propaganda?

The consensus after 2004 was that John Kerry needed to respond more aggressively and repetitively to the repeated Swift Boat Vet ads on television.  The smear job worked.

But, honestly, it becomes tiresome and boring to respond to Griffith's repetitive defamation of Prouty on the forum.

I'm taking a break from the task.

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.

On 10/3/2023 at 12:51 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Prouty’s source for Chiang’s presence in Teheran is a US government history of the Vietnam war published by the Government Printing Office in 1984.

Mao’s agreement to suspend the civil war until defeat of Japan was published in newspapers around the time of D-Day.

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. 

On 10/3/2023 at 1:27 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Speaking of checking out, the Encyclopedia Brittanica online describes TV Soong:

a “financier and official of the Chinese Nationalist government between 1927 and 1949, once reputed to have been the richest man in the world… He resigned as finance minister in 1931 though his influence—largely due to his wealth and his growing international prestige—remained great.”

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Song-Qingling

Prouty's information is therefore hardly a fabrication. The characterization of such is wrong and ill-motivated.

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. 

40 minutes ago, Gil Jesus said:

Judge Andrew Napolitano talks about a conversation he had with then President Trump about releasing the JFK files a month before Trump left office. Makes you wonder if the reason they're all hell-bent on throwing his ass in jail is because they're afraid he's going to say something?

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. 

12 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

Are we going to give Biden the benefit of the doubt, too? Maybe he's facing an impeachment inquiry because they're trying to silence him about the JFKA.

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. 

21 hours ago, Norman T. Field said:

The book "The Soong Dynasty" is very interesting on this subject. 

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.   

21 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

1. What you call the 7 by 2 fragment is not the fragment removed at autopsy. No one present at the autopsy said it was, and they all said the fragment was removed from inches away. This includes Humes. While Mantik has said Humes ID'ed this fragment as the fragment he'd removed, Mantik was blowing smoke. 

2. Fragments are 3-d not 2-d. The fragments removed at autopsy could have been 7 by 2 by 9 and 3 by 1 by 11. We don't know. 

3. As to your last paragraph, all of this is discussed on my website.

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?

41 minutes ago, Gil Jesus said:

In this interview with ABC's "Nightline" in 1988, former Texas Gov. John Connally finally reveals a shooting sequence that destroys the Single Bullet Theory.

The first shot hit the President

The second shot hit Connally

The third shot hit the President

Hear it from the Governor's own lips:

Corroborated by the Zapruder film

https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Z230.mp4

Witnessed by a bystander

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNZ2xCrzulI

Concluded by the FBI

https://gil-jesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/page-1.png
 

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! 

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

A man says he saw NBA star LeBron James at the mall by his hot dog stand. He has a photo taken from  50 yards away that he says shows it. One of his co-workers doubts him. And spots a black man in the crowd 20 yards away and says that's him there and he's not by the hot dog stand. There's a photo of this man leaving the mall, however, and it's not LeBron James.

Decades later I discover this weird situation, and look in the photo by the hot dog stand, and see what appears to be a a black man looking in the other direction while leaning forward. I say well, that could be him right there.

Mantik and his minions: it couldn't be. The man must have been lying as part of some giant conspiracy.   

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.  

On 9/29/2023 at 4:25 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Do you know how many of these diaries there were Mike?

I only listed three.  Slatzer, Carmen and Jordan.  But I did say they were different and anyone can see that by reading their books. Which you apparently have not.

But now we have two more, Grandison's and Rothmiller's.  That makes five. And those two are different.   Grandison's version was really  a little nutty.  In his version MM was approached by Bob Maheu and James McConnell.  And somehow she knew that Hunt was nicknamed Eduardo.  🙂

Anyone who believes that does not merit being talked to.  Now Rothmiller says JFK was going to stay in Vietnam, as If Kennedy said this to her.

Mike, if you cannot see what has occurred here, then you are not as smart as I thought you were or you are being deliberately obtuse.

Clearly, in their hopes of making money, these fruitcakes and clowns in the MM field stole quite liberally from the JFK literature. And it did not matter if it made sense or checked out factually.  

I would have hoped that would not have been the case with you.  Apparently I was wrong.

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.

13 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ron Bulman just posted a White House press release from October 2, 1963 about JFK's intention to get out of Vietnam by December 31, 1965.  (It's on Ron's "SIXTY" thread.) I wonder how Michael Griffith will Liberty Lobby this one... 🤥

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.

On 9/28/2023 at 2:44 PM, Pat Speer said:

Once again, you are grossly mis-informed. Read the website. You'll learn a heckuva lot more than you will by repeating long-disproven talking points. 

Here's a sample: 

I got mad on behalf of Dr. James J. Humes. Not only did he accurately depict the position of the large fragment in Warren Commission Exhibit CE 388, but he was right about its angle within the skull. And yet, even so, everyone believed the Clark Panel when they said the largest fragment on the x-rays was on the back of Kennedy’s skull. Why did they believe them? (Heck, for that matter, why did I for the longest time believe them?) Were we pre-disposed to disbelieve Humes because of his military background? Or was it his Warren Commission experience in particular that destroyed his credibility? Were the autopsy doctors the boy who cried wolf and the Clark Panel a wolf in sheep’s clothing? I re-read every reference to the large fragment I could find. The autopsy report written by Dr. Humes states: “There is edema and ecchymosis (bruising) diffusely over the right supra-orbital ridge (the eye socket) with abnormal mobility of the underlying bone” and that “roentgenograms (x-rays) of the skull reveal multiple minute fragments along a line corresponding with a line joining the above described small occipital wound and the right supra-orbital ridge… From the surface of the disrupted cerebral cortex two small irregularly shaped fragments of metal are recovered. These measure 7 x 2 mm and 3 x 1 mm.” While these statements supported that the fragments were behind the eye, one might stretch them to support they were just behind the forehead as well. Perhaps then Humes' testimony was more specific. Indeed, it was. Before the Warren Commission, Humes testified that while studying the x-rays taken at the beginning of the autopsy, he'd observed "A rather sizable fragment visible by x-ray just above the right eye" and that the majority of the fragments visible on the x-rays were "dustlike...with the exception of this one I previously mentioned which was seen to be above and very slightly behind the right orbit." After being shown Exhibit 388, on which this fragment was depicted behind the right eye, he then explained: “We attempted to examine the brain, and seek specifically this fragment which was the one we felt to be of a size which would permit us to recover it.” Arlen Specter then asked: "When you refer to this fragment, and you are pointing there, are you referring to the fragment depicted right above the President’s eye?” To which Humes replied: “Yes, sir. Above and somewhat behind the President’s eye." He then continued: "We directed carefully in this region and in fact located this small fragment, which was in a defect in the brain tissue in just precisely this location.”

Humes tried to get through to the HSCA as well. Dr Petty: “the least distorted and least fuzzy portion of the radiopaque materials would be closest to the film, and we would assume then that this peculiar semilunar object with the sharp edges would be close to the film and therefore represent the piece that was seen in the lateral view” Dr. Humes: “Up by the eyebrow.” Dr. Petty: “no up by the—in the back of the skull.” Petty returned to the topic later: “we’re trying to establish whether this particular sharp-edged radiopaque defect is close to the back of the skull or close to the front of the skull." Dr. Humes: “I can’t be sure I see it in the lateral at all, do you? Do you see it?” Dr. Petty evaded Humes’ question and turned to Dr. Boswell: “Were these fragments that were recovered at all?” To which Boswell, obviously trusting Petty that the fragments were where he said they were, replied: “No. They were not.”

When asked about the large fragment by the ARRB, Humes similarly relented: “I don’t remember retrieving anything of that size.” Later, however, when asked if he could spot any fragments on the lateral x-ray, he said: “Well, you see, there’s nothing in this projection that appears to be of the size of the one that appeared to be above and behind the right eye on the other one.” Wait. He claimed not to recognize the fragment, and yet he still knew exactly where it was—and it just so happened to be in the exact location where he’d found a fragment during the autopsy??? From this strange slip-up, one might assume Humes suspected all along that the Clark Panel’s fragment on the back of the head was in reality the fragment he’d found near the forehead. By the end of his ARRB interview, in fact, he admitted as much, telling Jeremy Gunn that the large fragment “that you saw in the first AP view of the skull could be the 7 by 2 millimeter one that we handed over to the FBI.”

Well, at least Humes tried to tell the truth. Unfortunately, no one believed him… that is, except Dr. Boswell, who shared his faith the fragment was the one removed at autopsy. In 1994, when asked about the largest fragment on the x-rays by Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. Boswell asserted "The largest piece was up along the frontal sinus, right." When shown the lateral x-ray by the ARRB, moreover, Dr. Boswell told Gunn “I think we dug this piece out right here,” and then explained “right here” as near the “right eye...right supraorbital area.” He later told Gunn that the large semicircular fragment he’d initially had trouble identifying on the A-P x-ray might very well be “the same as the one that appears to be in the frontal bone in the lateral.” Well, which part of the frontal bone? In any event, he was on the right track.

And he wasn't alone. While the radiologist at the autopsy, Dr. Ebersole, died years before he could be called to testify before the ARRB, his two assistants at the autopsy, x-ray technicians Jerrol Custer and Edward Reed, who actually took the x-rays, were called to testify, and both confirmed that the large fragment on the x-rays was found behind the right eye. When asked in a series of questions if he could see the large fragment visible on the A-P x-ray on the lateral x-ray, Reed told Gunn, "Yes, I can...In the frontal lobe...Right above the supraorbital ridge...Supraorbital rim. It is right impregnated in there." Even more telling, when asked the same question a week later, Reed's boss on the night of the autopsy, Custer, testified that the large bullet fragment was located in the "Right orbital ridge, superior."

Their statements, moreover, echo what Secret Service Agents Roy Kellerman and William Greer told the Warren Commission. On 3-9-64 Kellerman told the commission that both he and Greer were shown the x-rays during the autopsy and that the only fragment he recalled being removed came from "inside above the eye, the right eye." Shortly thereafter, Greer testified in a similar fashion. He recalled: "I looked at the X-rays when they were taken in the autopsy room, and the person who does that type work showed us the trace of it because there would be little specks of lead where the bullet had come from here and it came to the--they showed where it didn't come on through. It came to a sinus cavity or something they said, over the eye." As Custer and Reed were but technicians, and not officially qualified to interpret the x-rays, we can only assume the "person" who claimed this was Ebersole.

And this wasn't the last time Kellerman spoke on the matter. In 1977, when asked about his role in the autopsy by an HSCA investigator, Kellerman recalled that the x-rays showed "...a whole mass of stars, the only large piece being behind the eye, which was given to the FBI agents when it was removed."

So what did these agents have to say about this fragment? On the night of the autopsy, FBI agents James Sibert and Frank O’Neill signed a receipt as follows: “I hereby acknowledge receipt of a missile removed by Commander James J Humes.” These agents were therefore intimately involved in the recovery of this missile (which they would later insist was the fragment). One might think then that they'd be sure to remember if it was the largest fragment on the x-ray and from where it was removed. While an 11-22-63 memo from their boss, Alan Belmont, written during the autopsy, claimed a bullet was "lodged behind the president's ear," we can only assume this was a misunderstanding of what the agents had actually told their superiors over the phone. Sure enough, Sibert and O'Neill's 11-26 report on the autopsy asserts “The largest section of this missile as portrayed by x-ray appeared to be behind the right frontal sinus.” As the right frontal sinus is just above the eyebrow and is an inch or so lower than the club-shaped fragment widely believed to have been the fragment recovered at the autopsy, this would put the bullet fragment, not an intact bullet as implied by Belmont's memo, behind the eye, and not the ear, as claimed in Belmont's memo. (The club-shaped fragment, it should be noted, was simply in the middle of the forehead, and not lodged behind anything, let alone another body part beginning with the letter "E".)

Lest that not be convincing, Sibert and O'Neill's subsequent statements further confirmed that the largest fragment recovered at autopsy was recovered from behind the eye, and not from the middle of the forehead. Although a 10-24-78 affidavit signed by Agent Sibert for the HSCA said merely that the fragments were recovered from the head, a report on an 8-25-77 interview with James Sibert notes "Sibert believes that both fragments came from the head, probably from the frontal sinus region." An HSCA Report on a 1-10-78 interview with his partner Frank O'Neill, moreover, confirmed that this fragment was recovered from just behind the eye. It states: "O'Neill believes the doctors recovered a piece of the missile from just behind an eye and another one from further back." On 11-8-78, O'Neill even put this in writing; his signed affidavit declares "I saw the doctors remove a piece of the missile from just behind an eye and another one from further back in the head." (P.S. It seems likely O'Neill thought the second fragment recovered was the second largest one noted on the x-rays. This is an understandable mistake. He noted two fragments in his report and the doctors recovered two fragments. Problem is they weren't the same two. The second fragment recovered by the doctors was found right next to the fragment removed from behind the eye while the second largest fragment observed on the x-rays was, according to O'Neill's own report on the autopsy, observed "at the rear of the skull at the juncture of the skull bone.")

And no, Sibert and O'Neill aren't the end of our parade of witnesses for the fragment behind the eye. That honor belongs to Bethesda chief of surgery Dr. David Osborne. On 4-5-90, Osborne (then an Admiral) wrote JFK researcher Joanne Braun. He told her that the fatal bullet "hit in the occipital region of the posterior skull which blew off the posterior top of his skull and impacted and disintegrated against the interior surface of the frontal bone just above the level of the eyes."

So here we have the men most intimately involved with the skull x-rays ALL stating that the large fragment on the A-P x-ray was in the supraorbital ridge or that the trail of fragments came to an end above and behind the right eye.

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. 

16 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

 

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.

3 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

 

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?

37 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

What is the source for your rebuttal? 

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.

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

I am away right now, and cannot appropriately refute some of the notions being posted here. But, like the Vietnam threads, Griffiths is flooding the discussion with obscure rightist revisionism. Describing the Imperial Japanese Army as “brave” and reluctant occupiers of China is pure revisionism. 

He has a personal animus towards Prouty, evident for some months now, and it clouds his perspective.

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.)