Michael Griffith
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14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
The Tehran Conference was scheduled to begin on November 28, 1943.
FWIW, here's a New York Times article dated November 26, 1943.
Chiang Kai-shek Is Invited to Join Roosevelt-Churchill-Stalin Talk; CHIANG IS INVITED TO STALIN PARLEY by James Reston
LONDON, Nov. 25 -- Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has been invited to any meeting that President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin may hold in the near future, it was learned today.
Wait a minute! You said that the reason Elliott Roosevelt said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Tehran was that it was supposed to be a secret meeting! Since the NYT had made it known that Chiang would be invited to some future meeting with FDR, Churchill, and Stalin, why wouldn't Elliott have mentioned the alleged historic presence of the Chinese delegation at the Tehran Conference?
Anyway, the Reston NYT article cannot refer to the Tehran Conference, as I've already proved. There is not one shred of evidence, not one little scrap, that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference. Chiang and his party could not have arrived in Ramgarh on the morning of 11/28/43 after leaving Cairo on the evening of 11/26/43, flying to Tehran, meeting with Stalin, and then flying from Tehran.
Moreover, in my previous reply, I proved that Prouty was fabricating again when he said that Chiang's real enemy was not the Japanese and that FDR and Stalin discussed and agreed on a Communist stand-down in China at the Tehran Conference (LINK). These two claims are pure bunk.
Prouty's entire account of Chiang and his delegation in Tehran smacks of implausible fabrication.
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On 9/30/2023 at 2:28 PM, Pat Speer said:
I guess you didn't read Bell's article, or my posts in response. It turns out that in a section excised by Micah in his first post (presumably because it didn't deal with the head wounds) Bell mentioned giving a fragment (singular) to a Department of Public Safety officer. I believe this is the official story. Years later she told the HSCA there were multiple fragments and that she gave them to the FBI, which led numerous writers and researchers to ooh and ahh and assume there was some mass cover-up of the "real" fragments...perhaps because they were too numerous to have come from CE 399.
This made her a CT darling.
Well, years after that, she was contacted by the ARRB. And she now shares a story about Perry showing her the head wound, and it's being low on the back of the head.
While the 1968 article by Bell should cause one to doubt the position first shared with me by Lifton (that she was never even in Trauma Room One) it undoubtedly damages her credibility in other ways. To the extent even that one seriously interested in the truth should avoid listing her among important witnesses.
I mean, I ended up concluding the back of the head wound described by most researchers is nonsense. But it's not as if there are only a few reasons to believe there was such a wound. We have Clark, first and foremost. And the supporting cast. As has been argued in this thread, one can conclude those stating the wound was not on the far back of the head (Giesecke, Salyer) were mistaken and those claiming they were mistaken when they said it was on the far back of the head (Carrico, Perry, Jenkins, Baxter, Jones) were pressured to do so. I don't buy it. But one is not insane to do so.
Adding the likes of Crenshaw and even McClelland into the mix--people who didn't come forward for decades or who changed their stories after their initial reports--and then appeared to revel in the attention, is questionable to begin with. But relying on Bell--who had no support for her story to begin with--and who it now turns out had written an article within a few years of the assassination that was in direct opposition to her subsequent claims regarding the fragments--well, that's just self-defeating, and fodder for a future Litwin article.
So once again you are weakening the case for conspiracy by offering convoluted alternative explanations, holding certain witnesses to an unreasonably rigid standard, and dismissing solid evidence. A few facts:
-- As Nurse Bell pointed out to the ARRB, the 11/22/63 evidence envelope that she herself filled out on the day of the shooting reads "fragments," plural, not "fragment" (ARRB meeting report, 4/14/97, p. 1).
-- It was the FBI that quoted Nurse Bell as saying that she handed over a single fragment to a Texas state trooper. Bell disputed that report:
When shown an FBI FD-302 dated November 23,1963 (Agency File Number 000919, Record #180-l 0090-10270), she felt it was inaccurate in two respects: it quotes her as turning over “the metal fragment (singular),” whereas she is positive it was multiple fragments; it says she turned over the fragment to a Texas State Trooper, whereas she recalls turning it over to plainclothes Federal agents who were either FBI or Secret Service. (Ibid., p. 1)
-- Nurse Bell also disputed CE 842:
When shown CE 842 (page 841 in Warren Commission Volume XVII), she said that the fragments photographed in the container were too small, and were too few in number, to represent what she handled on 1 l/22/63. (Ibid., p. 2)
-- As for your sad dismissal of the right-rear exit wound, let's look at what the Parkland doctors wrote while the events were still fresh in their minds on the very day of the shooting in their 11/22/63 medical reports:
Dr. Kemp Clark, neurosurgeon:
Two external wounds, one in the lower third of the anterior neck, the other in the occipital region of the skull, were noted. . . .
There was a large wound in the right occipital-parietal region, from which profuse bleeding was occurring. . . .
There was considerable loss of scalp and bone tissue. Both cerebral and cerebellar tissue were extruding from the wound. (Summary report of Dr. Kemp Clark, 11/22/63, pp. 1-2, CE 392)
Dr. Charles Carrico:
Two wounds were noted. One small penetrating wound of the neck in lower 1/3. The other wound had avulsed the calvarium and shredded brain tissue present and profuse oozing. . . .
. . . wound of the trachea was seen immediately below the larynx. . . .
. . . attempt to control slow oozing from cerebral and cerebellar tissue. . . . (Admission note of Dr. Charles Carrico, 11/22/63, pp. 1-2, CE 392)
Dr. Charles Baxter:
The president had a wound in the midline of the neck. . . .
wounds of the temporal and occipital bones . . . and the brain was lying on the table. (Admission note of Dr. Charles Baxter, 11/22/63, p. 1, CE 392)
Dr. Robert McClelland:
The president was at that time comatose from a massive gunshot wound of the head and a fragment wound of the trachea. . . .
Cause of death was the massive head and brain injury from a gunshot wound of the left temple. (Admission note of Dr. Robert McClelland, 11/22/63, pp. 1-2, CE 392)
(NOTE: The "left temple" was undoubtedly a viewer's-left reference and referred to the same small hole in the right temple that mortician Tom Robinson saw and filled with wax.)
Dr. Marion T. Jenkins:
There was a great laceration on the right side of the head (temporal and occipital), causing a great defect in the skull plate so that there was herniation and laceration of great areas of the brain, even to the extent that the cerebellum had protruded from the wound. (Statement of Dr. Marion T. Jenkins, 11/22/63, p. 2, CE 392)
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Now, compare these fresh, only-hours-old statements on the large head wound with those of other Parkland medical personnel and federal agents made a few months later:
Dr. Ronald Jones, Parkland doctor:
. . . he had a large wound in the right posterior side of the head. . . .
There was large defect in the back side of the head as the President lay on the cart with what appeared to be some brain hanging out of this wound with multiple pieces of skull noted with the brain. . . .
The hole [in the throat] was very small and relatively clean cut, as you would see in a bullet that is entering rather than exiting from a patient. (6 H 53-56)
Dr. Gene Akin, Parkland doctor:
The back of the right occipital-parietal portion of his head was shattered, with brain substance extruding. . . .
I assume the right occipital-parietal region was the exit, so to speak, that he had probably been hit on the other side of the head, or at least tangentially in the back of the head. . . .
This [the neck wound] must have been an entrance wound. . . . (6 H 65-67)
Dr. Paul Peters, Parkland doctor:
It was pointed out that an examination of the brain had been done. . . .
We saw the wound of entry in the throat and noted the large occipital wound. . . .
I noticed that there was a large defect in the occiput. . . . (6 H 70-71)
Nurse Patricia Hutton, who helped treat Kennedy:
Mr. Kennedy was bleeding profusely from a wound in the back of his head. . . .
A doctor asked me to place a pressure dressing on the head wound. This was no use, however, because of the massive opening on the back of the head. (21 H 216)
Nurse Diana Bowron, who helped treat Kennedy, who packed gauze squares into his head wound, and who wrapped his head in a sheet to prepare the body for the casket:
Mr. SPECTER. You saw the condition of his what?
Miss BOWRON. The back of his head.
Mr. SPECTER. And what was that condition?
Miss BOWRON. Well, it was very bad--you know.
Mr. SPECTER. How many holes did you see?
Miss BOWRON. I just saw one large hole. (6 H 136)Nurse Margaret Henchliffe, a Parkland nurse who helped treat JFK:
Mr. SPECTER. Did you see any wound anywhere on his body?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. Yes; he was very bloody, his head was very bloody when I saw him at the time.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you ever see any wound in any other part of his body?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. When I first saw him—except his head.
Mr. SPECTER. Did you see any wound on any other part of his body?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. Yes : in the neck.
Mr. SPECTER. Will you describe it, please?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. It was just a little hole in the middle of his neck.
Mr. SPECTER. About how big a hole was it?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. About as big around as the end of my little finger.
Mr. SPECTER. Have you ever had any experience with bullet holes?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. Yes.
Mr. SPECTER. And what did that appear to you to be?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. An entrance bullet hole—it looked to me like.
Mr. SPECTER. Could it have been an exit bullet hole?
Miss HENCHLIFFE. I have never seen an exit bullet hole—I don't remember seeing one that looked like that. (6 H 141)Jackie Kennedy, JFK’s wife, who held his head in her hands on the way to the hospital:
I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was nothing. I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on. (5 H 180, declassified version—this portion of her testimony was omitted from the published version, but it was “declassified” in 1972)
Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who jumped onto the back of the limo and got a close-up look at JFK’s large head wound:
Mr. SPECTER. What did you observe as to President Kennedy's condition on arrival at the hospital?
Mr. HILL. The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head. (2 H 141)William Greer, the Secret Service agent who drove the limo:
Mr. SPECTER. What did you observe about the President with respect to his wounds?
Mr. GREER. His head was all shot, this whole part was all a matter of blood like he had been hit.
Mr. SPECTER. Indicating the top and right-rear side of the head?
Mr. GREER. Yes, sir; it looked like that was all blown off. (2 H 124) -
1 hour ago, Gil Jesus said:
The Dallas Police dictabelt recording and transcript from 11/22/63, covering the stretch of time that Dallas Police officer J.D.Tippit was shot dead. Note that the there is an anomaly in the dictabelt at 1:12 pm Dallas time. (around the 5:00 minute mark in the video ) Was the dictabelt altered?
I'm quoting from my article "Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?":
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Dr. Paul Hoch wrote to Dr. James Barger, one of the HSCA's acoustical scientists, and suggested the dictabelt recording may have been altered. Hoch was skeptical of certain parts of the recording relating to Tippit's presence in Oak Cliff, such as the transmission telling Tippit to be on hand for any "emergency." Hoch discussed this in a 1986 review of Henry Hurt's book Reasonable Doubt:
I suggested that both the tone and wording of two key messages [that supposedly explain why Tippit was in Oak Cliff] were in the "formal mode" which one would expect only in important messages -- or in a later re-creation. "You are in the Oak Cliff area, are you not?" seemed significantly more formal than "What's your location?", "Are you en route to Parkland, 601?", and similar inquiries recorded that day; it resembles "You do not have the suspect. Is that correct?", where the "formal mode" is expected. Similarly, "You will be at large for any emergency that comes in" contrasts with "Remain in downtown area, available for call" and "Stand by there until we notify you." This kind of analysis has been of evidentiary value in at least one other case, involving a tape (released by Larry Flynt) purportedly of a conversation between John De Lorean and FBI informant James Hoffman. Jack Anderson reported that psycholinguist Murray Miron was able to establish that the tape had been faked.
(24 May 84, SFC, #1986.2) In addition to the anomalously unresponsive content of "Hoffman's" remarks, his "speech cadences... `are consistent with those to be expected from one who has rehearsed or is reading from a script.'" Anderson described Miron as a "longtime FBI consultant." The Justice Department should certainly sponsor that kind of analysis of the Tippit messages. . . . (Echoes of Conspiracy, Vol. 8, No. 1, February 28, 1986)
Dr. Hoch sent his analysis to Professor Miron, in light of Miron's work on the Flynt tape.
Several months later, Dr. Hoch wrote the following:One reason for questioning the authenticity of the DPD Dictabelt is the presence of certain messages relating to Officer Tippit. Basically, the following exchanges are suspect because of their content, the formal tone of transmissions 590 and 592, and the apparent absence of the expected reaction. The message numbers and the transcriptions are from the Kimbrough transcript.
389. [Disp.] 87, 78, move into central Oak Cliff Area.
390. [78 (Tippit)] 78, I'm about Kiest and Bonnie View.
391. [87 (Nelson)] 87's going north on Marsalis on R. L. Thornton.
392. [Disp.] 10-4....
588-589 [Disp.] 78. [78] 78.
590. [Disp.] You are in the Oak Cliff area, are you not?
591. [78] Lancaster and Eighth.
592. [Disp.] You will be at large for any emergency that comes in.
583. [78] 10-4.I sent my analysis to Prof. Murray Miron, a psycholinguist whose work on another case was described in Echoes of Conspiracy, Vol. 8, No. 1, February 28, 1986. The following is from a letter I sent to the Justice Department on September 16, 1986, describing his independent analysis, which provided some support for my
own work:"Prof. Miron . . . has not yet prepared a formal report, but he has provided me with the following conclusions:
'Our preliminary findings... suggest that the communications directed to Officer Tippit are anomalously at variance with the other transmissions of the tape record.... The transmissions to Tippit are quite stilted. They have the appearance of transmissions made more for an audience's benefit than those for which the intent is to convey instructions. The query regarding Tippit's current position is rhetorical rather than questioning.'" (Echoes of Conspiracy, Vol. 8, No. 3, October 31, 1986) ("Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?", pp. 23-25)
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@Pat Speer To accept your position, we'd have to believe the following:
-- Humes mismeasured the largest fragment, even though the HSCA FPP confirmed that it's 7x2 mm. (Dr. Mantik has likewise confirmed that it's 7x2 mm.)
-- Even though Humes insisted that the 7x2 mm fragment was the largest fragment he removed, he actually removed the slice on the lateral x-rays that you've identified as the partner image of the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray.
-- Humes was wrong when he told the ARRB that the fragments he removed were "considerably smaller" than the 6.5 mm object.
-- Boswell was wrong when he told the ARRB that he was "sure" they did not remove a fragment as large as the 6.5 mm object.
-- Your slice on the lateral x-rays is the partner image of the 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray, even though not a single medical expert has even identified that slice as a metal fragment, much less as the companion image of the 6.5 mm object.
-- The 6.5 mm object is near the right orbit, not in the back of the head, even though the vast majority of medical experts who've examined the skull x-rays have placed the object on the outer table in the back of the skull.
-- The two back-of-head fragments were deposited by an FMJ bullet as it entered the skull, even though forensic science knows of no case where FMJ bullets have behaved in this manner, and even though both fragments are at least 3 inches above the rear head entry wound.
-- The fragments in CE 843 are the 6.5 mm object, even though they obviously could not have formed such an object.
-- CE 843 is not evidence of fraud, even though the CE 843 fragments are supposed to be the 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm fragments that Humes removed during the autopsy.
-- The 6.5 mm object has been mismeasured and is not actually 6.5 mm in diameter, even though every expert who has measured it has said it's 6.5 mm in diameter.
-- The OD measurements are wrong or fraudulent. Dr. Mantik and Dr. Chesser either committed the same errors in their OD measurements or Dr. Chesser falsified his measurements to agree with Dr. Mantik's measurements.
-- The 6.5 mm object on the AP x-ray is not evidence of alteration but is merely a stray disk that was accidentally x-rayed when the AP x-ray was taken, even though you and other advocates of this desperate theory can't identify a disk that was 6.5 mm in diameter, can't explain how a neat semi-circular notch would have been chipped from the disk, and can't explain why the disk/object does not appear in any of the other skull x-rays.
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Now let's address Prouty's abject nonsense about Chiang Kai-shek, the Sino-Japanese War, FDR and Stalin at the Tehran Conference, and the Soviet role in China.
From 45:35 to 46:44 in the video of his 1994 interview, he said the following:
Chiang's worst enemy was not the Japanese. He was a dictator. He ordinarily would have sided with the Japanese. He was dictator, but he was controlled by T. V. Soong. First of all, T. V. Soong's sister was his wife. And, secondly, T. V. Soong was the wealthiest man in the world. So Chiang Kai-shek knew who he was working for. This gave Stalin a problem. Because if Stalin was gonna try and agree with Roosevelt to help Chiang fight the Japanese, so we can move B-29 bombers closer to Japan to bomb and end the war, Chiang's enemy wasn't the Japanese. Chiang's enemy was Mao Tse-Tung. Well, Mao's a Communist. And how is Stalin going to tell them to forget the communism and side with this guy Chiang, who was a dictator?
Roosevelt did it. He argued with Stalin. Churchill kept quiet. And they finally worked out an agreement. It probably cost a helluva lot of money, where Stalin told Mao, "Look, Chiang is fighting to get rid of the Japanese, which is good for China, so be quiet for a while."
Is there any pejorative stronger than LOL or ROTFL combined to describe this fiction? I've already debunked Prouty's bogus claims that Soong controlled Chiang and that Soong was the richest man in the world. The rest of Prouty's gibberish is akin to saying that George McGovern won the 1972 election, that the Polish people sided with the Third Reich during World War II, or that Finland wanted to join the Soviet Union at the start of World War II.
Some facts:
-- At the Tehran Conference, FDR and Stalin never even discussed the idea of having Stalin order Mao to stand down. You will not find a single word about such a discussion, much less an FDR-Stalin agreement on the matter, in any of the minutes of the Tehran Conference.
-- There would have been no need whatsoever to discuss such an agreement at the Tehran Conference because the Chinese Nationalists had long since formed an alliance with Mao's Communists in the 1920s, and because Chiang had reached an agreement with the Soviets in 1937, in order to focus on fighting the Japanese. The alliance with Mao broke down for a while, but it was renewed in 1937 after Chiang provoked full-scale war with Japan by attacking the Japanese portion of Shanghai--Chiang did not want to risk having to fight the Japanese and the Communists at the same time.
-- When Chiang assumed the leadership of the Nationalists, he resumed the alliance with the Communists, after having failed to eradicate them, and also accepted support from the Soviet Union in the hope of defeating the Japanese. Notes Asia scholar Peter Harmsen,
Chiang, however, did not forget his pledge [to the Chinese Communists] to channel all his resources into the battle against Japan. With the backing of the Communists, and perhaps more importantly their Soviet masters, he now felt confident about facing up to the Japanese enemy. (Storm Clouds Over the Pacific, 1931-1941, Casemate Publishers, 2018, Kindle Edition, loc. 1205)
-- In the fall of 1937, the Soviets began providing the Nationalists with military equipment, including military aircraft and pilots (locs. 1586-1602). Observes Harmsen,
At the same time, Soviet military aircraft arrived, flown by Soviet pilots. By the time Shanghai was captured by the Japanese in November, the aviators had taken to the skies over the lower Yangtze and the Soviets had become an . . . important part of the war. (Harmsen, locs. 1586-1602)
-- Taking off from Nationalist airfields, Soviet bombers carried out bombing raids on Japanese bases in China and Saipan (Taiwan) (Harmsen, locs. 1743-1769).
-- After a Soviet air raid on a Japanese base on Saipan, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife hosted a banquet to honor the Soviet pilots (Harmsen, locs. 1755-1769).
Some info about how Chiang provoked an all-out war with the Japanese in Shanghai:
-- When the Japanese took China’s largest city, Shanghai, the Soviets, the British, the French, FDR, and FDR’s allies in the American press condemned Japan for its supposed “aggression.”
However, the Japanese were not the aggressors in that battle. The Japanese did not want to attack Shanghai. The Japanese had been trying to defuse the tense situation in Shanghai when the Nationalists attacked a small Japanese garrison because they thought they could easily overrun the garrison before the Japanese could get reinforcements to the area. But, the 2,000-man garrison fought with unbelievable courage and held off the 30,000-man Chinese army that attacked it just long enough for reinforcements to arrive. However, this incident did not lead to an all-out battle for Shanghai. A compromise was reached, and Shanghai returned to some sense of normalcy (Harmsen, locs. 732-762).
But, this situation changed when Chiang Kai-shek decided to attack the Japanese section of Shanghai with two elite divisions. The Japanese brought in more reinforcements and an enormous battle ensued, ending with the Nationalist forces being expelled from Shanghai and the Japanese taking control of the city (Harmsen, locs. 1413-1453).
Chiang's reasons for picking a fight with the Japanese at Shanghai remain a subject of debate. Harmsen:
Chiang may have genuinely thought that by concentrating his best troops in a shock attack on the meager Japanese garrison in Shanghai, he would be able to score a quick, dramatic victory that could rally the nation.
Japan, on the other hand, only entered the battle reluctantly. The army already felt overstretched in the north of China, and for the wrong reasons. Many Japanese generals considered the Soviet Union to be the main threat and the one that most resources had to be directed towards. The Chinese themselves understood this was the case, and on occasion admitted so in public. “Japan had no wish to fight at Shanghai,” Chinese General Zhang Fakui, one of the top field commanders during the struggle for the city, said in a post-war interview. “It should be simple to see that we took the initiative.” (Harmsen, loc. 1453)
Chiang was so fanatically anti-Japanese that he was willing to cut a deal with Mao and accept aid from the Soviets in the hope of more effectively fighting the Japanese. Soong was even more fanatically anti-Japanese, so much so that he actually accused Chiang of being too soft against the Japanese and resigned from Chiang's government over the matter.
Prouty's hogwash that Chiang did not view the Japanese as his main enemy is just that: hogwash. The same can be said about Prouty's account of an FDR-Stalin discussion and agreement at the Tehran Conference regarding a Communist stand-down in China.
Chiang would have welcomed aid from the Devil in order to fight the Japanese. Heck, until mid-1938, Chiang even accepted weapons from Nazi Germany and had been using active-duty German officers to train his troops. (Keep in mind that relations between Germany and Japan were very strained when Chiang was accepting German assistance.)
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On 9/29/2023 at 10:33 AM, Michael Griffith said:
Starting at 52:20, Prouty told a curious tale about Churchill supposedly being denied entrance into Tehran by Soviet guards when the British delegation attempted to drive into the city after arriving at the airport. Prouty said that he was riding in cars with the Chinese delegation after they arrived at the Tehran airport, and that they were riding behind the British delegation. He stated that when the British delegation reached the Soviet checkpoint into the city, Soviet guards would not allow Churchill to enter because he allegedly had no ID on him since he was supposedly wearing a jumpsuit that had no pockets.
The story gets even odder. Prouty said that when the Soviet guards refused to let Churchill enter, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and started pointing and laughing at the British delegation. Uh, gee, I thought the Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran was supposed to be a big secret. Plus, such a major diplomatic snafu as delaying the prime minister of England and his delegation because the prime minister supposedly had no ID surely would have been mentioned by Churchill and/or others in the delegation in later books, but Churchill's several books say nothing about such an incident, and the three Churchill biographies that I scanned likewise said nothing about it. (Also, why exactly would delegates from one country stand up and laugh and point at another delegation because their entrance was being delayed? That doesn't sound credible.)
Prouty's tale about the Chinese delegation laughing and pointing at the British delegation deserves further comment. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese cultural and behavioral norms in the 1940s and about race relations in the 1940s will recognize that Prouty's tale smacks of ignorant fabrication.
In the 1940s, it would have been unthinkable for a group of Chinese, especially Chinese diplomatic staffers, to publicly mock a group of British, especially a British delegation that included Winston Churchill, particularly if they were in a foreign country.
Leaving aside the racial and cultural components, such conduct would have been considered extremely inappropriate for members of a diplomatic delegation.
Such an incident--the alleged behavior of the Chinese delegation and Churchill's being delayed for lack of an ID--most assuredly would have been mentioned in diaries, reports, and memoirs.
No such incident is mentioned in Churchill's writings about World War II (I've read them). Nor is any such incident mentioned in the three biographies of Churchill that I've read.
Nor is any such incident mentioned in the State Department's available records on the Tehran Conference and on diplomatic activity during World War II. The State Department's enormous online archives contain dozens of relevant records (LINK). I searched through them and did not find a single reference to such an incident; nor did I find a single reference to the presence of a Chinese delegation in Tehran at the time.
Finally, in a future reply, we really should look at Prouty's bogus claims about the Sino-Japanese conflict. He makes claims that are akin to saying that the Third Reich and Poland enjoyed great relations during World War II. Those who've read my book The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor know that the Sino-Japanese War has been one of my primary areas of research for many years.
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16 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
I'm responding to Michael Griffith's latest Prouty defamation post in red (below.)
Michael Griffith wrote:
You need to learn to read a bit more carefully, and you need to watch Prouty's 1994 interview. I did not say that the FDR-was-poisoned theory was Prouty's theory. I said that in the 1994 interview, Prouty took the nutty theory seriously, which he plainly did. Go watch the video. The theory originated with the paranoid madman Joseph Stalin. Prouty also took this craziness seriously in his writings.
Huh, Michael? I need to "read" a video "more carefully, eh?" Makes a lot of sense.
The truth is that you need to read Prouty's book, at long last. He never wrote that he believed Stalin's theory about Churchill poisoning FDR.
His reference to Elliott Roosevelt's own writings about the 1946 meeting with Stalin appears on page 17-- in the context of discussing Churchill and FDR's well known disagreements about the post-WWII destinies of European colonies in Asia.
I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.
Oh, please. So Elliott didn't mention this historic secret meeting because, gee, it was supposed to be off the record, as if he would have seen that as a reason not to talk about the meeting! I mean, you can't really believe that.
Oh, please. Are you claiming that FDR and Stalin couldn't possibly have had an agreement that any secret Nationalist Chinese meeting with Stalin (in Tehran) needed to be off-the-record? And, if so, that Elliott Roosevelt opted to respect the terms of that agreement?
The obvious explanation is that he didn't mention seeing the Chinese delegation because he never saw them--not at Habanayah Airport in Iraq and not in Tehran. Again, we know that Chiang and his delegation flew back to China right after the Cairo Conference, and that they stopped in Ramgarh, India, on 11/28/43, two days after leaving Cairo, to visit Chinese troops who were being trained there.
Post your source and reference link about the specific timing of Chiang's flights from Cairo to India -- proving that Chiang and/or his delegates couldn't have flown to Tehran en route to India.
And, when, pray tell, could this alleged meeting have even occurred? Not surprisingly, we have a virtually hour-by-hour accounting of Stalin's whereabouts during the conference. This is on top of the fact that not a single Soviet, Chinese, American, or British source, official or unofficial, says one word about a Chinese delegation being in Tehran.
Prouty specifically wrote that historians were not aware of the Nationalist Chinese delegation's meeting with Stalin in Tehran, and that it was "one of the best kept secrets of WWII."
Conversely, to believe your hypothesis, we would have to posit that Prouty was not telling the truth about flying Chiang's delegates from Cairo to Tehran on a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.
Under the circumstances, I believe Prouty, not your hypothesis.
Oh, you believe Prouty? Well, then you must believe that Soong was the richest man in the world and that he controlled Chiang, among many other blabberings of nonsense.
My "hypothesis"??? I've already documented that we know for a fact that Chiang was in Ramgarh by the morning of 11/28 and that he and his delegation visited the Chinese troops who were being trained there. We have a copy of the speech that Chiang gave to the troops, for crying out loud.
His plane arrived in Ramgarh in the morning, and the visit and inspection occurred in the early afternoon. That means he arrived barely 36 hours after leaving the Cairo Conference on the afternoon of 11/26. How about you produce a timeline that could have gotten Chiang and his group from Cairo to Tehran and then from Tehran to Ramgarh, with the required fuel stops, in 36 hours? Let's see it.
Have you heard of "Occam's Razor"? Google it. Occam's Razor screams that Prouty's claims about the Chinese delegation and the Tehran Conference are false.
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On 9/28/2023 at 6:15 PM, Micah Mileto said:
When Nurse Audrey Bell was interviewed by the HSCA in 1977, the record does not show her mentioning anything about seeing JFK's body. Beginning in the 80's, Bell would proceed to tell researchers that she was in Trauma Room One and that Dr. Perry or another doctor turned Kennedy's head to show her the extent of the large head wound. Many have been under the false impression that Bell never talked about being in Trauma Room One until the 1980's. A lucky Google search from me revealed a November 1967 paper authored by Bell herself, published in the journal of the Association of Operative Registered Nurses. The paper, titled Forty-Eight Hours and Thirty-One Minutes, reads: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001209208700474
Time stood still for us. It is nearly impossible to recall all that took place and all that was done in such a short period. When I reached the emergency elevator, I found that it was in the basement. Still in my street clothes and high heels, which almost sent me sprawling, I took the stairs and cut through the X-ray Department. At the door of the Emergency Suite, the administrator grasped my arm and it was a moment or two before she recognized me in the street clothes. "The President?" I breathed. "Go see what you can do, Audrey," she replied. "In Emergency Room One."
Three Doctors and two nurses surrounded John F. Kennedy. They were working with mechanical precision. One nurse, Mrs. Hutton, was adjusting the IPPB unit. She asked for assistance. I turned on the oxygen at the wall outlet. The machine started working and was connected to the endotracheal tube.
I helped cut the President's shirt from his right arm, and positioned the tracheotomy tray for Dr. Perry.
It was then that I saw the massive head wound. Even though the prospect of surgery-after viewing the proportions of the wound and the general condition of the President-was improbable, I rushed off in search of a telephone to call the Operating Room. [...][...]
ALMOST FOUR YEARS have elapsed since November 22, 1963. In those years I have tried to identify some of the emotions I experienced during the days that followed the tragedy. The first feeling I had is probably one shared by most other Americans: a feeling of disbelief, a refusal to believe that such a thing could happen-only, my feeling was perhaps all the more severe because of my close personal involvement. In fact, the shock was so great that I actually had temporary amnesia during the time. I could remember nothing of what had happened in the weeks prior to the horrible event.
Even today, my memory of what happened in the hospital during the days ensuing the tragedy, is vague and unclear. Time was a continuum with no stops, no differentiation between hour and hour, day and day.
The human mind is peculiar in the way it reacts to great stress. When the pressure becomes too great to bear, for a consciousness to focus upon something, the mind invents an escape. It was long after the tragedy that I realized how absurd many of the things I was thinking were, under the conditions.
Perhaps the first thing that struck me when I saw President Kennedy on the Emergency Room table, fatally wounded, was that he was such a tall man-too tall, I reflected, for his feet were overhanging the end of the table. I was surprised, too, at seeing him wearing a blue and white pinstriped shirt-I had always pictured the President as wearing only white. When I helped cut the shirt away from his arm, I recall trying to cut it up the seams, to save it from further damage. The tragi-comic nature of that notion was far from my feverish mind at the time. Perhaps, too, after seeing the wound , I secretly knew that our efforts would be futile, and I wanted to do something more, anything, to help.
I also hazily recall seeing a lady in a pink dress-a blood-spattered pink dress-standing close to the President in the Emergency Room. Some moments went by before I realized that she was Jacqueline Kennedy. She seemed quite composed . I know, though, that the composure resulted from shock. She was stunned. Later, in retrospect, I thought Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Connally were probably the only two self-contained persons I saw on that day.
I know that I shall carry the trauma of that experience with me for the rest of my life. I hope and pray no one else will ever have to undergo a similar experience. The intervening years have served to ameliorate the shock. They have not dulled the pain.
And let's remember that Nurse Bell insisted that the fragments removed from Connally's wrist were not merely flakes but were identifiable pieces of metal anywhere from 3 to 4 mm in length by 2 mm wide. She never wavered from this account.
But WC apologists must reject her testimony because it destroys the single-bullet theory.
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2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
As usual, Michael Griffith has posted another series of false claims about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.
Griffith refers to Prouty's "nutty theory" that Churchill had poisoned FDR.
This is inaccurate, like so many of Griffith's defamatory Education Forum posts about Prouty.
On page 17 of the paperback edition of Prouty's book, JFK-- The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, (Sky Horse/2011) Prouty referenced Elliott Roosevelt's own account of his 1946 meeting with Stalin in which Stalin theorized that Churchill had poisoned FDR. It wasn't Prouty's "nutty theory."
On page 16 of the same book, (op.cit.) Prouty published a detailed account of his role in flying Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar. While Prouty stopped to re-fuel the Lodestar in Habbaniya, Iraq, Elliott Roosevelt landed at Habbaniya in a U.S. B-25. Prouty spoke to Elliott Roosevelt and his pilot.
There is no reference in Prouty's book to T.V. Soong "controlling Chiang Kai-shek."
He merely wrote, in passing, that Madame Chiang was Soong's sister, and mentioned her celebrated appearance with Churchill, Chiang, and FDR in Cairo.
I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.
You need to learn to read a bit more carefully, and you need to watch Prouty's 1994 interview. I did not say that the FDR-was-poisoned theory was Prouty's theory. I said that in the 1994 interview, Prouty took the nutty theory seriously, which he plainly did. Go watch the video. The theory originated with the paranoid madman Joseph Stalin. Prouty also took this craziness seriously in his writings.
Also, as I noted earlier, in the 1994 interview, Prouty said that Soong "controlled" Chiang and that Chiang was "working for" Soong, which is nonsense. I've said nothing about what Prouty claimed in his book. I'm talking about what he undeniably said in the 1994 interview. He didn't just say this "in passing." He floated the myth that Soong was the richest man in the world to support his fiction that Soong controlled Chiang.
I have no explanation for Elliott Roosevelt not mentioning the Nationalist Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran-- unless Roosevelt understood that the delegation's meeting with Stalin was supposed to be off the record.
Oh, please. So Elliott didn't mention this historic secret meeting because, gee, it was supposed to be off the record, as if he would have seen that as a reason not to talk about the meeting! I mean, you can't really believe that.
The obvious explanation is that he didn't mention seeing the Chinese delegation because he never saw them--not at Habanayah Airport in Iraq and not in Tehran. Again, we know that Chiang and his delegation flew back to China right after the Cairo Conference, and that they stopped in Ramgarh, India, on 11/28/43, two days after leaving Cairo, to visit Chinese troops who were being trained there.
Chiang and his group could not have held a meeting in Tehran and still have made it to Ramgarh by the morning of 11/28/43. The Cairo Conference ended on 11/26. Ramgarh was 3,500 miles from Cairo and 2,000 miles from Tehran, and Cairo was 1,500 miles from Tehran. Chiang's plane made two fuel stops between Cairo and Ramgarh. If they had flown to Tehran from Cairo and then from Tehran to Ramgarh, they would have had to make three fuel stops, and fuel stops were usually not quick affairs. The cruising speed of passenger and transport planes back then was about 200 mph.
And, when, pray tell, could this alleged meeting have even occurred? Not surprisingly, we have a virtually hour-by-hour accounting of Stalin's whereabouts during the conference. This is on top of the fact that not a single Soviet, Chinese, American, or British source, official or unofficial, says one word about a Chinese delegation being in Tehran.
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On 9/27/2023 at 4:15 PM, Jonathan Cohen said:
You think just because there aren't surveillance photos of Oswald at the Cuban consulate that Oswald wasn't there? Guess that means you're intentionally ignoring the mountain of evidence proving he was.
"Mountain of evidence"??? It's a mole hill and it's full of holes.
If Oswald had entered the Cuban Consulate, he would have been photographed entering and leaving by the 27/7 surveillance cameras that the CIA operated outside the consulate. The claim that the CIA mixed up the photos and somehow "lost" the Oswald photos is absurd. Those photos would have been catalogued by date and time frame and camera.
Similarly, if Oswald he had called the Soviet Embassy, the call would have been recorded by CIA wiretaps, and the tape would have been carefully catalogued by date and time frame. I worked in signals surveillance in the military for years. The idea that the CIA "sent the wrong tape" to the FBI is ludicrous.
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Starting at 48:45 in his 1994 interview, Prouty entertained the nutty theory that "the Churchill gang" poisoned FDR. Although Prouty, as he often did, hedged his bet and said he had no way of "knowing" if the story was true, he also said that he knew people in England ("English people") who believed that it was true, and that in his conversations with them, they had asked him, "Have you heard the story that Roosevelt was killed by some people from here?"
Starting at 47:10 in the video, Prouty claimed that he encountered FDR's son Elliott at Habanaya Airport in Iraq when he, Prouty, landed there with the Chinese delegation to refuel en route to Tehran, and that Elliott "knew" the Chinese delegation attended the Tehran Conference.
Humm, well, then it is very odd that in the three memoirs/biographies that Elliott wrote, he said nothing about any of this stuff, even though it would have been quite historically significant--he said nothing about encountering the Chinese delegation at Habanaya Airport, and nothing about the Chinese delegation being present at the Tehran Conference. Using the Internet Archive (aka the Wayback Machine), I searched through Elliott's three non-fiction books (As He Saw It, An Untold Story, and A Rendezvous with Destiny) and found no mention of seeing the Chinese delegation in Iraq or in Tehran. As He Saw It is Elliott's firsthand account of FDR's conference meetings during World War II, and, naturally, he spends many pages talking about the Tehran Conference (pp. 165-197). But, again, he says nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Iraq or in Tehran.
Starting at 52:20, Prouty told a curious tale about Churchill supposedly being denied entrance into Tehran by Soviet guards when the British delegation attempted to drive into the city after arriving at the airport. Prouty said that he was riding in cars with the Chinese delegation after they arrived at the Tehran airport, and that they were riding behind the British delegation. He stated that when the British delegation reached the Soviet checkpoint into the city, Soviet guards would not allow Churchill to enter because he allegedly had no ID on him since he was supposedly wearing a jumpsuit that had no pockets.
The story gets even odder. Prouty said that when the Soviet guards refused to let Churchill enter, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and started pointing and laughing at the British delegation. Uh, gee, I thought the Chinese delegation's visit to Tehran was supposed to be a big secret. Plus, such a major diplomatic snafu as delaying the prime minister of England and his delegation because the prime minister supposedly had no ID surely would have been mentioned by Churchill and/or others in the delegation in later books, but Churchill's several books say nothing about such an incident, and the three Churchill biographies that I scanned likewise said nothing about it. (Also, why exactly would delegates from one country stand up and laugh and point at another delegation because their entrance was being delayed? That doesn't sound credible.)
I notice no one is defending Prouty's erroneous claim that T. V. Soong was "the wealthiest man in the world." Soong wasn't even in the ballpark when it came to the wealthiest men in the world. His wealth paled compared to that of the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, Henry Ford, Osman Ali Khan, and many others. When someone makes such an erroneous claim, that should be a red flag that they are not reliable.
I also notice that no one is defending Prouty's bogus claim that Soong "controlled" Chiang Kai-shek and that Chiang was "working for" Soong. This is another piece of fiction that Prouty just made up, and apparently the guy who was interviewing him had no clue that this was pure fabrication. But, since I've read a number of books about Chiang and the Sino-Japanese War, I knew this was nonsense. I knew that Soong had split with Chiang and had resigned because he could not get Chiang to be as tough on the Japanese as Soong thought he should be.
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It really boils down to this: Those who say that there was no Marilyn Monroe diary that revealed her affairs with RFK and JFK are saying that Mike Rothmiller is lying, that he fabricated the pages that he says he transcribed from the copy of Marilyn's diary that he says he saw in the OCID files.
I don't buy that for a minute. In watching Rothmiller's interviews, I get the sense that he is an honest, genuine person who is accurately reporting on what he saw and heard. I encourage anyone who has not watched his interviews to go watch them. I put links to two of them in my OP for this thread. I also suggest you watch the interview with co-author Douglas Thompson.
Rothmiller has a sterling record as a whistleblower against corruption and cover-up. His testimony before the LA Police Commission led to major efforts to clean up the LAPD. He has also revealed that one of the OCID files he saw said that 10 bullets were recovered from the RFK shooting, which is two more bullets than Sirhan could have fired. He has further revealed that the CIA had agents and assets in the LAPD.
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34 minutes ago, Tom Gram said:
You’ve got to be kidding. McGovern proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, with primary source documents, that Bob Slatzer’s book was a complete fiction designed solely to make money on the heels of Mailer’s complete fiction. Slatzer didn’t even write it. It was literally fiction by committee.
The existence of MM’s so-called “little red diary” was never mentioned, by anyone, until Slatzer’s book in 1974. Slatzer and his team invented it. The diary didn’t exist.
https://marilynfromthe22ndrow.com/wp/bombshell-the-night-rfk-killed-marilyn/marilyns-diary/
The irony in all the preceding is this: while Bombshellinvokes the Rashomon Effect in order to dismiss Robert Slatzer as an unreliable eyewitness, even though he eye witnessed nothing, Rotson accepts the stage prop that Slatzer created, quite possibly with help from Frank Capell, Marilyn’s infamous Little Red Diary; and that acceptance is as rich as a French Silk pie.
Not one piece of credible or verifiable evidence has been presented during the past forty-five plus years which proves that Marilyn’s Red Book of Secrets ever existed; and there is absolutely no credible or verifiable evidence presented in Bombshell which proves that Michael Rothmiller actually saw and even read a diary, much less the diary which the movie star herself disavowed. She acknowledged that she occasionally wrote about the events of her life. Thus, Marilyn’s journals, the ones accidentally discovered by Lee Strasberg’s widow prove conclusively what Marilyn wrote about and how she actually wrote. The red diary as inconsistently and absurdly described by Robert Slatzer, Jeanne Carmen, Samir Muqaddin, Ted Jordan, and now Michael Rothmiller, never existed
You haven't read Bombshell either, have you?
By time the Strasbergs came along, most of Marilyn's diaries were long gone. The diaries that the widow found have nothing to do with the diary compilation that Rothmiller examined and transcribed from.
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1 hour ago, Pat Speer said:
Yikes. All of your points are addressed on my website, which you really should read.
A couple of quick points.
1. Your claim the fragment Humes removed is the fragment Mantik claims is the one he removed is just bizarre. Not only did Humes and others say the fragment was behind the eye, he had a drawing created showing it to be behind the eye, inches away from where Mantik claims it was. He also told the ARRB he thought the so-called 6.5 mm fragment was the fragment he'd removed at autopsy. To top things off, Mantik admits the forehead fragment is not the fragment removed at autopsy. Now, to be clear, he thinks it was, but that it mysteriously got switched. ANYTHING but admit he could be wrong. I mean, he repeats with regularity that Humes removed the forehead fragment, when Humes and others insisted the fragment he re moved was behind the eye. Mantik rarely admits this, but when he does he dismisses the claims of numerous witness with the wave of a hand. They said it was behind the eye but I know better because...because...well, they said it was 7 x 2 and I believe the forehead fragment is 7 x 2 or close enough. But that's not the way it works. X-rays are a 2 dimensional projection for a 3 dimensional object. If you took a a silhouette photo of a tall and skinny person from a distance, while the person was standing sideways, you might think it was a post or pillar. But with the person facing the camera? It would be readily identifiable as a person. The supposed 6.5 mm fragment is reportedly a slice of bullet. Well, how wide would that slice be? Whether or not my identification of the fragment is correct, one can not reasonably dispute that the large fragment on the A-P x-ray could be the fragment removed at autopsy. There's no way around it.
2. Oh that's right, the OD's... You really need to read my chapters on the x-rays and Mantik to understand the scope of it. But let me say this. There's a reason Fitzpatrick and others keep their distance from Mantik.
P.S. I already posted this, but apparently you failed to look at it.
Are you just not actually reading my replies? Humes did NOT say that he thought the 6.5 mm object was the largest fragment that he removed. As I documented earlier, he said the opposite: he said that the fragments he removed were "considerably smaller" than the 6.5 mm object. And Boswell said he was "sure" that they didn't find a fragment as large as the 6.5 mm object during the autopsy. How long are you going to keep ignoring these facts?
The autopsy report says the two fragments were "irregularly shaped." The 6.5 mm object is perfectly round with a neatly cut semi-circular notch on the bottom-right side. And none of the fragments in CE 843 could reasonably be described as "irregular" in shape, not to mention that there is no 7x2 mm or 3x1 mm fragment among them.
Moreover, if the CE 843 fragments once formed a single fragment, there is no way that fragment would have formed a perfectly round object with a neat half-circle cut from its bottom-right side. Come on, Pat. Look at them.
And, again, where are the two fragments that Humes described? Where are they? Are you saying he badly mismeasured both fragments? But, even if he blundered in both measurements, we have the AP x-ray that shows the 7x2 mm fragment, and the HSCA medical experts confirmed that it is 7x2 mm and is in the right location to be described as above and behind the right orbit. As I've proved, in his WC testimony Humes specifically and clearly said that the 7x2 mm fragment was the largest fragment he removed.
In addition, the shape of the 7x2 mm fragment on the AP x-ray is indeed "irregular." It looks like a small, disfigured club.
Not only must you assume that the 6.5 mm object is not on the back of the head but is near the right orbit, you must also assume (1) that the slice on the lateral x-rays that vertically corresponds with the back-of-head fragment is metallic, and (2) that your slice is the partner image of the 6.5 mm object. Yet, not a single expert has identified that slice as a bullet fragment, and your theory would leave the back-of-head fragment with no conceivable partner image on the lateral x-rays, a physical impossibility.
Fitzpatrick would not engage with Mantik over the OD measurements because he knew he would not be able to explain them away. Dr. Mantik is a world-class radiation oncologist and also a former professor of physics. His medical research has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals. Dr. Chesser did his own OD measuremens and confirmed Mantik's OD measurements. Drs. Haas, Henkelmann, Aguilar, and Wecht have endorsed Mantik's OD measurements.
Finally, I notice you avoided the cold, hard fact that if the brain photos are authentic, no bullet could have entered at the EOP site. This is lock bang, open and shut.
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1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:
24 hours ago, Mr Griffiths didn't know anything of this story. Now he's declaring himself the ultimate authority.
I suspect, along with Jim Di, that NSAM 263 is the true stick in the craw.
I've been researching Chiang, the Sino-Japanese War, WW II (especially the Asian and Pacific theaters), and FDR's handling of the war for many, many years. Thus, when I watched Prouty's interview and came across his bogus claims about Chiang and about Chiang and Tehran, I knew right away they were nonsense.
I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. 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.
NSAM 263??? Ah, you're talking about the fringe interpretation that NSAM 263 was drastically revised after JFK's death. Anyone who reads NSAM 273 and NSAM 263 will readily see that the revision was minor. You realize that the vast majority of historians who have looked at this issue reject your interpretation, right? And when I say "vast majority," I mean something like 99%.
There is no reasoning with you people. Even when confronted with clear, undeniable evidence of Prouty's fraudulent claims and of his prolonged sleazy associations and actions, you guys offer nothing but lame excuses that you would never dream of making if Prouty had been a WC apologist.
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22 hours ago, Pat Speer said:
First, you ignore where Humes placed the fragment and pretend "we" know better. And then you repeatedly refer to CE 843, and ignore the fragment as first photographed.No, I do not ignore where Humes placed the fragment. I quoted him at length on this very point: above and behind the right eye, and he said that fragment, the largest fragment, was the 7x2 mm fragment, which is above and behind the right eye.
I do not ignore CE 843 "as first photographed." Surely you know that CE 843 does not match the 6.5 mm object or the 7x2 mm fragment. This isn't even a close call.
As far as the OD measurements... Don't you kinda wonder why forensic radiologists refuse to support Mantik's methodology and findings? I mean, I'm a layman. It's not a surprise that not one radiology "expert" has offered support for my findings, IF they have even heard of them.
This is a poor excuse for dismissing the historic OD measurements. When Dr. Mantik tried to get forensic radiologist Dr. Fitzpatrick to review his OD measurements, he refused. And what about all the medical experts who support Dr. Mantik's OD findings: Dr. Aguilar, Dr. Chesser, Dr. Henkelmann, Dr. Haas, and Dr. Wecht? Don't they count? Do you think Dr. Chesser "erred" when he did his own OD measurements, or that he falsified his measurements to agree with Dr. Mantik's? Really?
Why do you suppose that Team Lone Gunman has not gotten a single medical expert to do his own OD measurements on the skull x-rays and to publish them, or even to review Dr. Mantik's OD measurements?
You need to get over your hero worship and read at least some of my website.
I do no hero worshipping. I don't agree with Dr. Mantik on a few issues, especially the acoustical evidence. You need to get over your abject refusal to acknowledge that some evidence was altered or planted.
He said the forehead fragment on the x-rays (which he mistakenly believes is the fragment removed at autopsy) is not the fragment in the archives (purported to be the fragment removed at autopsy). Well, this led me to double-check his assumptions, and realize that the forehead fragment was NOT the fragment removed at autopsy. And this, in turn, led me to look on the lateral x-ray where the doctors said they found the fragment they removed, and realize that it was right there all along, hiding in plain sight.
I've already refuted this impossible scenario. Humes clearly said that the largest fragment he removed was the 7x2 mm fragment, as I've proved. He said the other fragment was 3x1 mm. No such fragments are seen in CE 843, but CE 843 is supposed to be the two fragments that Humes removed. Nor do the CE 843 fragments support the idea that Humes's "largest fragment" was the 6.5 mm object. Unless we close our eyes and ignore geometry, there is no way those fragments could have formed a perfectly round object with a neat semi-circular notch on the bottom-right side, i.e., the 6.5 mm object.
And I again point out that not a single medical expert has identified your slice, which you claim is the lateral view of the 6.5 mm object, as a bullet fragment. No one.
I also repeat the fact that all of the ARRB, Clark Panel, and HSCA medical experts placed the 6.5 mm object in the back of the head, as does Dr. Aguilar, Dr. Henkelmann, Dr. Chesser, and Dr. Mantik.
P.S. When I got access to them, however, I received a surprise. Hodges said the autopsy photos and x-rays confirmed the entrance wound described in the autopsy report. IOW, he rejected the conclusions of his former colleague, Russell Morgan, and said the entrance was on the occipital bone, and not four inches higher on the parietal bone, as claimed by Morgan.
Yes, Pat, but if the autopsy brain photos are authentic, then there is no way the entry wound was where the autopsy report places it. This was the main objection that the HSCA medical experts raised against the EOP site. Do you remember the exchange that Finck had with Loquvam, when Loquvam pointed out that the entry wound could not have been near the EOP because the brain photos show absolutely no damage to the cerebellum, and when Finck admitted he could not explain this contradiction? I discussed this in my thread "The Autopsy Doctors' Rear Head Entry Site vs. the Autopsy Photos of the Brain" (LINK, ).
Also, when Humes and Boswell jointly testified before the HSCA, Dr. Charles Petty politely called their attention to this problem, noting that not only do the brain photos show no damage to the cerebellum but also no damage to the posterior aspects of the occipital lobes. Petty said that the panel wondered how this could be if "this wound were way low":
Dr. PETTY: Well, we have some interesting information in the form of the photographs of the brain, and if this wound were way low, we would wonder at the intact nature not only on the cerebellum but also on the posterior aspects of the occipital lobes such as are shown in Figure 21 Here the cerebellum is intact as well as the occipital lobes and this has concerned us right down the line as to where precisely the inshoot wound was and this is why we found ourselves in a quandary and one of the reasons that we very much wanted to have you come down today. (7 HSCA 259)
Take your pick: Either admit that the brain photos do not show JFK's brain or repudiate the EOP entry site and be left with no identifiable rear entry site.
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15 hours ago, Pat Speer said:
What the heck? We have already established that much of this post is nonsense. The "corresponding" fragment Mantik claims was recovered at autopsy was actually a couple of inches away from the fragment recovered at autopsy (CE 843). That's why they don't look alike. They'r not the same fragment.
Oh my goodness. Your response is the nonsense here. You are totally--and I mean totally--misrepresenting Mantik's argument. Your theory is downright bizarre and simply ignores what Humes said, what the autopsy x-rays show, and what the OD measurements prove.
CE 843 is supposed to be the two fragments that Humes said he removed. He said they were 7x2 mm and 3x1 mm. He said the largest fragment he removed was the 7x2 mm fragment. The fragments in CE 843 look nothing like the fragments that Humes described, and the largest fragment in CE 843 looks nothing like the 7x2 mm fragment that we see on the AP x-ray and that Humes specifically, clearly said he removed.
Furthermore, the CE 843 fragments could not have formed the 6.5 mm object, an object that is perfectly round except for a neatly cut semi-circular notch on the bottom-right side. I can't imagine how you can look at those fragments and think they could form such an object.
The 6.5 mm object could not have been the largest fragment that Humes removed--it looks nothing like a 7x2 mm fragment and it is not near the right orbit but is in the back of the head. Plus, not a single expert has agreed with your theory that the slice on the lateral x-rays is a bullet fragment, much less that it is the lateral partner image for the 6.5 mm object.
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20 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
Will you stop it Mike. I don't think you realize just how bad posts like the above make you look.
And I don't think you realize how bad your dismissive polemic makes you look. You're attacking and rejecting a book that you haven't even read, and your primary source for rejecting Rothmiller is a love-struck Marilyn Monroe fan who can't even admit that she was promiscuous or that she had affairs with RFK and JFK.
Fred Otash, of all people. And any auther who relies on Otash is simply not credible.
Says the guy who relies on the anti-Semitic crackpot Fletcher Prouty. What about all the documents in the 11 boxes from Otash's storage unit? What about the parts of Otash's story that Thompson was able to verify? Oh, that's right: you don't know about any of this because you haven't read the book.
I won't even comment on Prouty, Jeff Carter is on fine footing there. This is just more of your frothing about like a wild geyser at Yosemite.
Jeff Carter didn't even discern from the video that Prouty clearly claimed that Chiang Kai-shek was at the Tehran Conference, when we know for a fact that he was not. You might want to go read my last two replies in that thread.
I think Mike is being deliberately obtuse on this one since no one would buy his Vietnam baloney.
I think any objective person who reads our exchanges on Vietnam will see (1) that your research on Vietnam has been limited and one-sided; (2) that you cited many fringe, amateurish sources, sources that even liberal scholars have repudiated (e.g., Turse); (3) that you made several inexcusably erroneous claims about the war, (4) that you are not qualified to talk about the war; and (5) that you had no answer for the evidence I presented.
Mike, if you have nothing to say or contribute, just don't say anything. Because your net contribution to this forum is really quite negative.
On the contrary, you are the one who spews personal attacks and dismissive diatribes against anyone who doesn't go along with your version of JFK and the assassination. Just yesterday you created a thread dedicated solely to throwing personal insults and strident attacks against Mark Shaw, a decent and sincere researcher who has developed significant new evidence in the JFK case, and who has reached many more people with the basic case for conspiracy than your books have reached.
All over the fact that you cannot accept that in 1991, John Newman and Oliver Stone and Fletcher Prouty were correct on JFK getting out of Vietnam.
We both know that even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject the Stone-Prouty-Newman fiction about JFK getting out of Vietnam. You have gone so far out to the fringe on this issue that you even find it necessary to attack liberal scholars who are just as anti-war as you are.
Indeed, you've even claimed that ultra-liberal activist and investigative journalist Chip Berlet is not really a liberal. Oh, Berlet most definitely is a liberal, an ultra-liberal, who has done valuable work in exposing white supremacists, neo-fascists, and anti-Semites, and who has worked for a long list of liberal groups, including the ACLU. But you have gone so far to the extreme left of the spectrum that even Berlet does not qualify as a liberal in your eyes, partly because Berlet has documented Prouty's anti-Semitic activities and statements.
I suspect that one of the reasons you have launched such a frenzied attack on a good guy like Mike Rothmiller, without even bothering to read his book, is that his transcription of Marilyn's diary includes an entry that shows that JFK was determined to win the Vietnam War.
And, by the way, Marilyn's friends and associates verified that she was a diligent diary keeper, that she often kept her diary handy and that she made frequent entries.
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14 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:
FYI, folks. Prouty wrote highly specific details about his flight from the Cairo Conference to Tehran with Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese delegation-- even specifying the plane that he flew and his encounter with Elliot Roosevelt at the airport in Iraq where the planes re-fueled en route to Tehran.
Also, Prouty mentioned a detail that our U.S. government-employed Prouty-defamer, Michael Griffith, neglected to mention.
To wit, Madame Chiang Kai-shek was T.V. Soong's sister!
Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese delegation's meeting with Stalin was, apparently, kept secret because Stalin was in the awkward position of being in an alliance with both Mao Tse-Tung's Chinese Communist Party, (at war with Chiang's Nationalist Army) and the U.S. and British allies fighting the Japanese, with Chiang Kai-shek.
Obviously, an important part of FDR's agenda in Tehran was to elicit Soviet help in defeating Japan-- just as he had elicited Chiang Kai-shek's help in establishing B-29 bases in China, for the U.S. war against Japan. In the process, FDR must have also hoped that Stalin would ask Mao Tse-Tung to forestall attacking Chiang's Nationalist Army until the Japanese had been defeated.
Prouty-defamer, Michael Griffith, apparently, didn't consider the logistical possibility that Chiang Kai-shek and his delegation could have met secretly with Stalin before the well-publicized Tehran meeting of FDR, Stalin, and Churchill at the Soviet embassy.
This is just unbelievable. Prouty was obviously telling a bogus tale to make himself look important and knowledgeable, but you guys just don't want to admit it.
There is not one shred--not one tiny speck--of evidence from any memos, diaries, meeting minutes, memoirs, newspaper accounts, reports, etc., that Chiang and his delegation were even in Tehran at the time, much less that they met secretly with Stalin. No such alleged meeting is mentioned in a single Soviet, British, American, or Chinese source. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that Chiang and his delegation flew back to China right after the conclusion of the Cairo Conference.
We know for a fact that Chiang and his delegation were in Ramgarh in northeastern India on 11/30/43, where they stopped on the way back to China to inspect and visit Chinese troops who were being trained there by the U.S. Army. The visit was publicized, naturally enough, and we have the speech that Chiang gave to the Chinese troops.
Yes, Chiang's first wife was Soong's sister. So what? That doesn't validate Prouty's bogus claim that Soong controlled Chiang. You won't find that nonsense in any book about Chiang or Soong. Again, Soong quit Chiang's government because he couldn't get Chiang to be as tough with the Japanese as Soong thought he should be, and Soong didn't return to Chiang's government for nine years.
I could also talk about the utterly erroneous claims that Prouty made in the interview regarding Chiang Kai-shek's actions during World War II, but I suspect they would be met with the same surreal, unserious denials and excuses that we have already seen in this thread.
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16 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:
Is Mark Shaw one of the worst Kennedy researchers around? Or is he just simply the worst, period?
How many people think the Mob, and only the Mob killed JFK today? How many people blame the murder of JFK, on of all people, RFK?
Mark Shaw does.
And Shaw's work on Monroe is even worse than his work on the JFK case. Read this two parter to find out why.
https://www.kennedysandking.com/articles/mark-shaw-insults-allen-texas-part-1
This is another one of your unfair and misleading attacks on a fellow researcher, a researcher who has developed important new evidence in the JFK case and who has reached a huge audience with the basic case for conspiracy in JFK's death--and all because he does not agree with your fringe, fantasy-laced version of the Kennedys and of the assassination.
At least Mark Shaw does not endorse and peddle the nutty, bogus claims made by the anti-Semitic crackpot Fletcher Prouty. But you do.
On balance, Mark Shaw's research is valuable and informative. All things considered, his research is more credible than yours, and he is a more effective advocate for the basic case for conspiracy than you are.
Another big plus in Mark Shaw's favor is that he, unlike you, does not go out of his way to discredit and attack fellow WC critics just because they don't completely agree with his version of the assassination.
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The amount of denial on the part of Prouty defenders in this thread is simply astonishing, the latest remarkable example being the refusal to acknowledge that Prouty told another bogus tale when he claimed, in very plain English, that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference. We know for an absolute fact that neither Chiang nor his delegation was at the Tehran Conference. Let's read what Prouty said:
[44:50 to 45:28] A lot of people haven't studied the Tehran Conference enough. It was Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and [his emphasis] Chiang Kai-shek. You can't find a single book that will say that Chiang Kai-shek was at that [stops]. . . . I have one book that says that Chiang Kai-shek was at the Tehran Conference [yeah, written by Iam Nuts and titled Bogus Claims for Crackpots to Repeat].
I was at the Tehran Conference. I was the pilot that flew the Chinese there. So I know damn well they were there. I flew them there.
At 45:43, Prouty says that Chiang Kai-shek was "controlled by T. V. Soong," which is total, complete hogwash. Soong resigned from Chiang's government in 1933 because he didn't think Chiang was being tough enough against the Japanese! He didn't return to Chiang's government for nine years. Some "control," hey?
At 45:50, Prouty says that T. V. Soong was "the wealthiest man in the world"! LOL! Really?! Uh, no, he was not. Not even close.
Let's continue with Prouty's fiction about Chiang and his delegation attending the Tehran Conference:
[47:00 to 47:33] I had been at the Cairo Conference, and then I flew the Chinese up to Tehran from Cairo. These were T. V. Soong's delegates that had been there at the conference. . . .
There was no secret that the Chinese were going up there, except to the newspapers. They never mentioned it, and books don't mention it.
Uh, that's because it never happened. Soong and the rest of the delegation accompanied Chiang back to China after the Cairo Conference.
But even if one wants to ignore Prouty's plain assertion that the Tehran Conference included Chiang Kai-shek, there is still the fact that Soong and the rest of the delegation returned with Chiang to China after the Cairo Conference. They attended Chiang's review of the Chinese troops who were training at the Ramgarh training facility.
At 47:55, Prouty says that Elliott Roosevelt, FDR's son, saw the Chinese "going up there" (to Tehran) because he and Prouty saw each other at an Iraqi airport en route to Tehran, and that Elliott knew the Chinese were in Tehran.
Uh, sorry, but, by all accounts, the first time T. V. Soong met Stalin was in June 1945. Again, Soong returned with Chiang to China after the Cairo Conference.
If there had been a secret meeting between Stalin and Chiang and/or Soong, there would have been no reason to keep it secret after the war. There is not one shred of evidence in Soviet, British, American, and Chinese sources that such a meeting occurred. This is not surprising, since Chiang and Soong and the rest of the delegation returned to China after the Cairo Conference.
So here we have caught Prouty red-handed fabricating tales once again. How in the world can you people keep defending this guy? He was a crackpot and a fraud. He made up bogus stories to make himself look important. He also exaggerated and embellished. And this is not to mention his prolonged, sleazy associations with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and the Church of Scientology.
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On 9/21/2023 at 8:00 AM, Sandy Larsen said:
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Mailer's biography of Marylin Monroe:
Since Mailer did not have the time to thoroughly research the facts surrounding her death, his speculation led to the biography's controversy. The book's final chapter theorizes that Monroe was murdered by rogue agents of the FBI and CIA who resented her supposed affair with Robert F. Kennedy.[76] Mailer later admitted that he embellished the book with speculations about Monroe's sex life and death that he did not himself believe to ensure its commercial success.[77]
So Jim D. called it right. (At least in this case.)
For someone like Norman Mailer to make stuff up about MM's death "for a buck," that's a pretty good indication that other writers were doing the same. Nobody knew the truth about her death, so those who wrote about it were all speculating.
Rothmiller is no Norman Mailer. Mailer said many things that he knew, or should have known, were false, especially about the JFK case. He even claimed that Oswald spoke poor, broken Russian. When I asked Mailer to send me the reenactment photo that he claimed duplicated the variant shadows in the backyard rifle photos, he referred me to Larry Schiller. The photo that Schiller sent me did not even come close to duplicating those shadows. When I confronted Mailer with this fact, he ended the discussion.
If you read Bombshell, you'll learn about the extensive research that Thompson did to corroborate Rothmiller's account.
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2 hours ago, Donald Willis said:
I find the Hickey story intriguing, mainly because an LN on alt.assassination.jfk, Claviger by name, endorsed it, some years ago. He still considered himself an LN because, even if the Hickey story were true, Hickey was not part of a conspiracy. Like everyone before him (such as Dale Myers), Claviger made the trajectory fit his theory. I couldn't quite get HOW, but it made me question all the other official and unofficial trajectories. And, yes, not incidentally, Claviger also read my 12 points re DPD Insp. Sawyer, and agreed that he came off as somewhat of a loon.
I knew Howard Donahue, not well, but I knew him. He began to suspect that a rifle from the follow-up car caused the head shot because (1) he knew that the dented shell found in the sniper's nest could not have fired a bullet that day, (2) that the trajectory from the sixth-floor window through JFK's head was impossible given the entry point and the skull damage, and (3) that FMJ bullets do not leave fragments on or just below the outer table of the skull when they enter the skull.
Howard was one of those fine Americans who found it very hard to believe that his government would brazenly lie to him about something so important as the death of a president. He just could not process it. Thus, he accepted the SBT and went looking for a non-conspiratorial explanation for the head shot.
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43 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:
While your intention is to label Prouty as “bogus”, “nutty”, and “bizarre”, this new claim is, again, based on a straw man argument.
As one of Prouty’s oft-told tales, appearing a dozen or more times in his collected writings, the reference is clearly to a Chinese delegation rather than Chiang Kai-Shek himself. You have misunderstood Prouty’s own words and paraded your misunderstanding here and in another thread.
Huh??? You must be joking. Go watch the video. Prouty clearly says that he flew Chiang and his delegation to Tehran and that Chiang and his delegation attended the conference. He says several times that Chiang attended the conference. Go watch the video.
And, just FYI, there was no Chinese delegation at the Tehran Conference. They returned home with Chiang. This explains why nobody saw a Chinese delegation at the conference. None was there.
Why Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's Critics Are Wrong
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
The 1994 interview is ridiculous. It's filled with bogus claims and obvious fabrications.
If we had a video of Prouty admitting that he lied and fabricated all over the place, I suspect that someone would get some pseudo-expert to declare the video a fake, and that we'd see replies denouncing the video.
Let's just recap some of the bogus, nutty claims that Prouty made:
-- Princess Diana may have been killed by the Secret Team.
-- Prouty met "English people" who told him that Churchill had FDR poisoned.
-- The Spotlight was a great news source.
-- The primary goal of the IHR's Holocaust-denying journal was a worthy goal.
-- Prouty was sent to the South Pole to prevent him from intervening in the security arrangements in Dallas. (After making this claim for years, he repudiated it when questioned by the ARRB.)
-- Ed Lansdale was a key player in the assassination plot and was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting.
-- The 112th MI Group was ordered to stand down for the Dallas motorcade.
-- Prouty took notes of his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group. (Yet, when interviewed by the ARRB, he said the notes were "long gone" and offered no explanation for why he would have failed to preserve such potentially historic notes. The ARRB could have had a document expert examine the notes to determine the age of the paper and the ink and how long the ink had been on the paper, etc.)
-- The Jonestown Massacre was not a mass suicide but a mass murder carried out by intelligence agents.
-- The Israelis were to blame for high oil prices.
-- T. V. Soong was the wealthiest man in the world in the 1940s.
-- Soong controlled Chiang Kai-shek.
-- L. Ron Hubbard served in Navy intelligence.
-- Chiang Kai-shek did not consider the Japanese his main enemy.
-- Chiang and his group attended the Tehran Conference.
-- Carto and Marcellus had "courage" and "vision" for having the Holocaust-denying IHR republish one of Prouty's books.
And on and on we could go.