Michael Griffith

Critics pounced on three blunders in Stone's 1991 JFK to discredit the movie in the eyes of most journalists and academics. Those three blunders were (1) the claim that Ed Lansdale was one of the plotters, (2) the claim that JFK was determined to abandon the Vietnam War after the election, and (3) Stone's use of Fletcher Prouty as a source. 

One of Stone's own aides, Jane Rusconi, who checked into Prouty, warned Stone five months before the movie's release that Prouty must have known about Liberty Lobby's "unsavory" nature:

          “Basically, there’s no way Fletcher could be unaware of the unsavory aspects of the Liberty Lobby. The Anti-Defamation Leagues keeps a close watch on the Liberty Lobby and are very aware of Fletcher’s involvement. It could come back to haunt us if we don’t find a way to deal with this.”

And Rusconi was apparently unaware that Prouty had actually spoken at an IHR Holocaust-denial conference and had written a letter praising the primary goals of the IHR's Holocaust-denying journal.

Yet, just the information that Rusconi found on Prouty should have been enough to cause Stone to drop him, but Stone decided to use Prouty as a source anyway. This decision came back to haunt Stone in a major way when critics pounced on Prouty's bogus claims and documented Prouty's record of prolonged and close associations with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists.

Has the Stone-Prouty-Newman camp ever responded to Dr. Larry Berman's 29-page critique of Newman's case for the unconditional-withdrawal myth? I'm referring to Dr. Berman's 29-page chapter titled "NSAM 263 and NSAM 273: Manipulating History" in the roundtable book Vietnam: The Early Decisions (University of Texas Press, 1997, pp. 177-206), edited by Dr. Lloyd Gardner and Dr. Ted Gittinger.

Among many other things, Berman documents that JFK clearly expressed his intention to win the war in both public and private statements that he made in the last four weeks of his life. Indeed, in the speech that JFK was going to give at the Trade Mart, he warned that we "dare not weary of the task" of supporting nations that were threatened by communism, and that reducing our aid to those nations would be dangerous:

          Our security and strength, in the last analysis, directly depend on the security and strength of others, and that is why our military and economic assistance plays such a key role in enabling those who live on the periphery of the Communist world to maintain their independence of choice. Our assistance to these nations can be painful, risky and costly, as is true in Southeast Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. . . .

          Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces.

Berman also documents that when LBJ was faced with Hanoi's vast escalation in South Vietnam in the 14 months following Diem's death, his holdover JFK aides were among those who recommended sending combat troops to stabilize the situation. 

To get some idea of how drastically Hanoi's leaders escalated their war effort after Diem's death, the first division-sized battle did not occur in Vietnam until late 1964. Until then, the Communists had never deployed more than a regiment or a battalion into battle--they usually only deployed a company or two. Yet, in late 1964, they attacked Binh Gia with a division (a typical division contained three regiments or nine battalions). This brings us back to the key point that LBJ and JFK faced very different situations--JFK was never faced with the kind of massive escalation that LBJ had to confront.

And, Berman documents that LBJ was initially reluctant to send combat troops to South Vietnam, and that it took considerable persuasion from former JFK aides and others to get him to change his mind.

On 2/10/2024 at 11:48 AM, Roger Odisio said:

If you don't believe the Oswald-as-the-lone-assassin story--if you think there were more than three shots, or more than one shooter, or at least one of the shots came from the front--it follows that the original Zapruder film showing those kind of things would contradict that Oswald  story.  It would expose the story as false.

 

What is to be done by the WC in that case?

 

We know the WC used certain methods to deal with evidence that contradicted their story: ignoring, destroying, losing, or altering it.

 

But the original Zapruder film was a special problem.  The first three ways wouldn't work with it.

 

Zapruder shot his film from right in front of the fatal shots, clearly capturing the murder.  That day he was on TV explaining what his film showed.  Already there was a bidding war between at least Life mag and CBS for the rights to the film.  Life won and had plans to feature some stills in its next couple of issues.  The country was fixated on the murder that weekend. It was the crime of the century. It still is.

 

The killers were left with only one feasible choice that weekend--alteration of the film to try to obscure what it showed so as to keep the story they were already going with from imploding.  Why do you think the killers would not at least have tried that?

 

Their actions the first weekend and beyond establish that they did try.  When Life bought the limited rights to the film, we were told they sent it to their Chicago headquarters to begin work on photo layouts.  That's not what happened.

 

Instead Life immediately sent it to the NPIC, the CIA film lab in DC where key frames were enlarged and placed on briefing boards to get a clear picture of what the film showed.  The killers of course knew Oswald didn't do it.  They needed to find out how and to what extent the Zapruder film contradicted their story

 

As that task was being finished early Sunday morning, the film was sent to the then secret CIA lab at Hawkeye Works in Rochester, NY.  Why was it sent there?  What do you think they were doing at Hawkeye Works if it wasn't film alteration?

 

I asked that question of Robert Groden, an alteration denier, at the Duquesne U seminar in Nov., and he avoided the question by feigning like he misunderstood it.  He mumbled something about how the film worked on by Brugioni was not the original.  This is an important question to answer if you don't think the film was altered.

 

The film was then sent back to the CIA lab in DC that Sunday evening where a second set of briefing boards was done by a different group, unbeknownst to the first group. Why a second set if the film had not been altered?  Why was Dino Brugioni the CIA's primary photo analyst who had worked on the first set, not even told about the second set?

 

Brugioni told Doug Horne that when the JFKA investigation was heating up again in the 70's he mentioned to his then supervisor that he still had one of his boards in his safe. The supervisor became agitated and ordered him the get rid of his board.  He did.

 

If both sets of boards were made from the same unaltered film, if no changes were made at Hawkeye Works, why was it necessary to destroy Brugioni's version?  It's obvious that Brugioni's version contained things the CIA did not want the public to see.  It follows that the films from which the two sets of boards were made were not the same.

 

A simple example is the ridiculous depiction of the head shot(s) in the extant Zapruder that lasts for only one frame (1/18 of a second), shows a brief pink spray above JFK's head and a blob that sprouted on Kennedy's forehead. When interviewed by Doug Horne, Zapruder said he saw something very different:  a mostly white spray (probably more tissue and bone than blood at impact) rising much higher in the air and lasting for several frames.  That was so spectacular, it was something he could not forget, even when talking to Horne about it 48 years later. 

 

While the second set of boards was being worked on, Life went back to Zapruder and paid him more money for all rights to the film, including the right to show it in its entirety as a film. That's where you can get a true sense of what it showed, rather than from just selected slides 

 

But then Life buried it from public view for what became almost 12 years, refusing to show it. Why? 

 

They had to bury the film because, with the tools available at the time, they weren't able to completely obscure what it showed about what really happened.  All those years the film was buried gave the WR story time to take root.

 

When a bootleg copy of the film was shown on national TV in 1975,  Life's job of hiding the film was over.  They sold it back to Zapruder for $1.  

 

That shows what Life's role was. Paying for the film rights was not a money making investment for them, though they did sell extra magazines for a few weeks by publishing some of the frames from the film. They could have made a lot more by showing the film itself while the murder was fresh in people's minds. 

 

But they didn't want the public to see it.  CD Jackson, Life's publisher, was a long time CIA asset. Life was part of the conservative, anti-JFK empire of Henry Luce.  Life was fronting for the CIA throughout the process. 

 

Their judgement to hide the film was proved correct when we saw the gasps from Geraldo Rivera's audience when they saw the altered version of Zapruder, which led to a reopening of the case.  Imagine what would have been the reaction had they seen the original film showing, for example, the actual head shot(s) without the blob appended to Kennedy's forehead.

 

I could add discussion of the many examples of film distortions to flesh out the argument--like the fact that the turn on to Elm Street is entirely missing, even though Zapruder said once he started filming he never stopped until after the murder (correct me if I'm wrong about that statement).  But I wanted to concentrate on whether the claim that the film was not altered can fit the facts as we know them today.

 

The ball is in the court of the deniers and agnostics. 

Some of the clearest indications of alteration are the impossibly fast movements of Malcolm Summers and Charles Brehm's son, the obvious conflict between Jackie's and Agent Hill's locations and positions in the equivalent Nix and Zapruder frames. I discuss these issues in my article on Z film alteration:

Evidence of Alteration in the Zapruder Film

Another strong indication of alteration is the absence of a noticeable limo stop in the existing film. When you watch the film at regular speed, which is how the people in the plaza would have seen the event, the limo appears to travel at a steady speed until after the head shot, and the limo speeds up dramatically after the head shot. However, dozens of witnesses, from all over the plaza, said the limo stopped or markedly slowed soon after the shooting began. No such event is seen in the existing film. I reject the argument that all of these 40-plus witnesses experienced the same hallucination. 

And let's not forget that Prouty also made the fantastic claim that Lucien Conein was in Dealey Plaza too, despite the fact that Conein was in South Vietnam at the time.

We should also keep in mind that Prouty's website still claims that Victor Krulak identified the man with his back to the camera in the tramp photo as Lansdale, even though we know from Harrison Livingstone's recorded interview with Krulak that Krulak did no such thing. 

It should be noted that Prouty did not float his obscene claims about Lansdale until after Lansdale died in 1987.

22 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I have Gen. Edward Lansdale in the plot because credible multiple people have identified him at Dealey Plaza, his career was immediately resurrected by LBJ who sent him to Vietnam, he had a long and dirty career murdering and torturing people and engaging in black propaganda, and Lansdale's top congressional sponsor, according to Max Boot, was Sen. Thomas Dodd, a very close friend of LBJ who celebrated the death of John Kennedy. Lansdale's motive would be his absolute rage over the death of his pal Diem in a CIA sponsored coup that he would blame squarely on JFK whose Administration and also Lansdale's being run out of Vietnam policy making in the Kennedy Administration where he was loathed.

The claim that Lansdale was part of the plot is obscene, embarrassing, and discrediting. It was popularized by the anti-Semitic crackpot Fletcher Prouty. It remains one of the main reasons that academics and journalists dismiss the case for conspiracy. Even Oliver Stone has distanced himself from this scurrilous claim.

There is no credible evidence that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza. Zero. None. Zilch. Prouty's letter from General Krulak was exposed as a forgery when Harrison Livingstone interviewed Krulak on tape. 

Lansdale admired JFK and mourned his death. Lansdale was not a political partisan, either. The man with his back to the camera in one of the tramp photos is not Lansdale. Lansdale did not wear glasses, and the man is wearing a ring that Lansdale's family says he never wore. Lansdale's son insists the man is not his father. 

JFK did not intend for Diem to be killed, and he was shocked when he learned of Diem's death. Even many of the South Vietnamese generals did not know that Diem would be killed--indeed, many of them joined the plot on the condition that Diem would not be harmed. 

Diem's death proved to be a disaster for South Vietnam. In the two years following Diem's murder, South Vietnam had several coup attempts and four changes in government. Whereas the war effort had been going well since 1962, it began to unravel within weeks of Diem's death, causing North Vietnam to start sending massive, unprecedented amounts of troops and weapons into South Vietnam in early 1964.

16 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Thank goodness.

Maybe some day Dorothy Kilgallen's murder will receive the just investigation it deserves, if the case is indeed re-opened. 

We all know she was murdered.

There is no debate.

There is no way a guy like Pataky gets close to DK except for nefarious reasons.

He was never attracted to her physically.

Joe, I agree. And I think we should keep in mind that Councilman Holden has called on the DA to reopen the case and has released his letter to the DA thanks to the dogged work of Mark Shaw. 

When readers see the existing evidence that Dorothy was murdered, they also recognize that the only people who would have had any conceivable motive to murder her would have been people who did not want her to publish her findings on JFK's assassination. 

This is why the case of William Bruce Pitzer is also revealing and important. The case for suicide in Pitzer's death is highly implausible, to say the least, especially given the information revealed in the FBI and Navy files on the incident. Pitzer was just about to retire from the Navy and start a great new job that he had lined up for himself. He had already accepted the job offer and was just waiting to retire from the Navy. His family reported that he was happy, upbeat, and looking forward to this next phase of his life. They never bought the suicide finding. They also said that he told them that he knew things about JFK's wounds that disproved the official account of the assassination.

And add to this the fact that a former Army Special Forces officer revealed that a CIA officer asked him to kill Pitzer because Pitzer was supposedly about to hand over classified information to the enemy. Here, too, the only plausible suspects in Pitzer's murder would be people who feared he would reveal suppressed information about JFK's wounds.

31 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

From the official statement of Secret Service Agent Glen Bennett:

About thirty minutes after leaving Love Field about 12:25 P.M., the Motorcade entered an intersection and then proceeded down a grade. At this point the well-wishers numbered but a few; the motorcade continued down this grade enroute to the Trade Mart. At this point I heard what sounded like a fire-cracker. I immediately looked from the right/crowd/physical area/and looked towards the President who was seated in the right rear seat of his limousine open convertible. At the moment I looked at the back of the President I heard another fire-cracker noise and saw the shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head. </q>

The back shot occurred “immediately” before the head shot(s).  Bennett’s account is corroborated by the location of the holes in the clothes (4 inches below the bottom of the collars, to the right of midline), Willis 5 @ Z201 (Bennett turned to the right), Altgens 6 @ Z255 (Bennett still facing right but with blurred features, indicating movement), and 55 other “bang...bang-bang” ear witnesses.

Utterly absurd.  A short shot traveled roughly 90 yards in swirling wind and missed the head by inches?  Complete nonsense.

More nonsense.  Bennett’s account debunks such a scenario.

So you believe that the back shot occurred immediately before the Z313 head shot??? Even the altered Zapruder film shows JFK reacting to an apparent back shot at least 87 frames, or 4.75 seconds, before the Z313 head shot. 

Do you think it's wise to rely so heavily on a single eyewitness recollection? I think Bennett clearly merged some events and compressed their time frame. There is no way that the back shot came immediately before the Z313 head shot. 

13 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

Changing Vietnam policy was a major focus of those planning to murder Kennedy.  They knew what they wanted to happen after they got rid of Kennedy.  They were set up to quickly put their policy in place after the murder.

This specious scenario is one of the main reasons that most academics and journalists dismiss the case for conspiracy. The scenario is just not true. There is a mountain of evidence that contradicts it.

No one would accuse H. R. McMaster of being a pro-LBJ historian. Quite the contrary. Yet, even McMaster, in his best-selling and award-winning book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, documents in great detail (1) that LBJ did not want to send combat troops to Vietnam (certainly not in large numbers), (2) that LBJ hoped that the initial deployment of combat troops would be able to return within a year, (3) that when LBJ took office he hoped he could cut defense spending, (4) that LBJ hoped to keep Vietnam escalation to a minimum because he wanted to focus on his domestic agenda, and (5) that LBJ's relationship with the Joint Chiefs was anything but chummy and friendly.

I discuss these and other problems with the JFK-was-killed-over-Vietnam scenario in my thread The Myth that JFK Was Killed Over the Vietnam War.

On 2/4/2024 at 1:14 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

On 2/4/2024 at 12:57 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Sandy:

On the  back shot, I think that was a short shot.  

A short shot which traveled 90 yards thru swirling wind and missed the target by inches.

Riiiiiiiiiiight...🥺

The back shot would not have been 90 yards away but only about 50-70 yards away from the sixth-floor window. The Z313 head shot would have been 90 yards away.

A short shot (misfire) is a possibility. A number of witnesses said one of the shots sounded different from the others. Another possibility is that the back wound was made by a large fragment from the bullet that struck the pavement behind JFK's limo early in the shooting sequence.

Regarding the Harper fragment, Dr. Angel only studied the photos of the fragment for a week or two. Dr. Mantik studied the photos of the fragment for years, and after refining and revising his analysis, he meticulously built a strong case for identifying the fragment as occipital bone, the same conclusion reached by the only three pathologists who actually handled the fragment.  

Fletcher Prouty's nutty, obscene claim that Lansdale was one of the key plotters, that he was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that he is pictured in one of the tramp photos has been used by WC apologists as a sledge hammer to discredit the case for conspiracy. Academics and journalists pounced on this scurrilous claim to discredit Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK.

Thankfully, Stone did not include any of this ludicrous material in his 2021 documentary JFK Revisited.

Prouty or one of his adoring supporters almost certainly fabricated the letter that Prouty allegedly received from Victor Krulak in which Krulak is represented as confirming Lansdale's presence in one of the tramp photos. When Harrison Livingstone interviewed Krulak, on tape, Krulak made it clear that he believed no such thing (LINK).

Prouty was an anti-Semitic crackpot who spent years palling around with Holocaust deniers, white supremacists, and other extremists, speaking at their gatherings, praising the IHR's journal, having the IHR republish one of his books, appearing 10 times on Liberty Lobby's anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying radio program, appearing on Holocaust-denier Lyndon LaRouche's TV program, expressing concern about having Jewish sergeants operating a weapon targeting system, blaming the Israelis for high oil prices and accusing them of "usury" (a favorite line of anti-Semites throughout history), praising Holocaust deniers Willis Carto and Thomas Marcellus, recommending that people read the anti-Semitic rag The Spotlight, smearing Church of Scientology whistleblowers, defending Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, arguing that the "Secret Team" may have murdered Princess Diana, etc., etc., etc. 

I think this development regarding Dorothy Kilgallen's death, though modest, is important. It shows that a government official has become convinced that Dorothy was murdered, and now that official is publicly asking the DA to reopen the case.

One of the most vulnerable aspects of the lone-gunman myth is the pattern/number of suspicious deaths. In many instances, a crime is revealed by the efforts of the criminals to cover up the crime. 

Dorothy was clearly murdered, and her murder was clumsily staged to look like an accidental overdose or suicide. Mark Shaw's crucial discovery that Nembutal powder was discovered on a glass in the bedroom where her body was found constitutes strong evidence of murder. Nembutal was always provided in capsule form. The only way Nembutal powder could have gotten on the glass would have been if someone had taken apart the capsule and poured the powder into the glass. 

5 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

The link does say Dorothy Kilgallen in 1964 reported an interview with Acquilla Clemons, true enough. I wonder if Kilgallen’s original column would clarify whether that was Mark Lane’s interview (in which case nothing new), or an interview of her own. I have never heard of a Kilgallen Clemons interview transcript. 

With thanks to Greg Parker for the information, Dorothy Kilgallen reported on the Shirley Martin interview of Acquilla Clemons, giving it wider currency. It was not a previously-unknown interview of Acquilla Clemons conducted by Dorothy Kilgallen personally (https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg12239.html).

Many sources say that Kilgallen interviewed Clemons, not just the link I cited. John Simkin's Spartacus site says she interviewed Clemons (LINK, LINK). Simkin repeated this assertion in a post in this forum (LINK). Kilgallen biographer Sara Jordan says Kilgallen interviewed Clemons (LINK). So does James Chipman (LINK). Dorothy was in Dallas for several weeks in 1964 and had ample opportunity to speak with Clemons.

However, I suspect Parker may be correct. Parker's source is an excerpt from Lee Israel's 1979 book Kilgallen. Israel said that Martin interviewed Clemons on tape, then sent Dorothy a copy of the tape, and that Dorothy transcribed the tape and then used the transcript in her column. 

I can understand how this got morphed into Dorothy doing the interview herself. Until I can find a copy of Dorothy's 9/26/64 column, I'm inclined to accept Israel's account of the interview.

Anyway, the stuff you posted on Sara Jordan-Heintz's new book The Incredible Life & Mysterious Death of Dorothy Kilgallen (2023) is very interesting. 

2 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

Are you sure of that? What is the evidence Dorothy Kilgallen interviewed Acquilla Clemons?

She talked about it in one of her columns, her 9/25/1964 column (LINK). 

On 2/2/2024 at 6:53 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

 

(I also posted this in the "Research" and "Discussion" threads, but since this seems to be the one with all the action, I'm posting it here, as well.)

In light of the recent Paul Landis revelations, I thought I should finally write the article I've been meaning to do. It's rather long, but worth the read--everything you ever wanted to know about the two "stretcher" bullets: 1) the "pointed" Tomlinson/Wright bullet, and 2) the Wade/Nolan bullet--as well as 3) the small bullet fragments removed from Connally's wrist. Spoiler alert: the "pointed" Tomlinson/Wright bullet was the AR-15 bullet, which was disappeared. The Wade/Nolan bullet was the actual Connally bullet. Whether CE 399 was the original Wade/Nolan (Connally) bullet, l can't say. But I've scoured for every scrap of information I can find on these mutually exclusive chain-of-custody histories. Everything you want to know about the "stretcher bullet/s" is right here, with links to the original sources.

Read all about it at https://www.a-benign-conspiracy.com/multiple-stretcher-bullets-aka-the-connally-bullet-revisited.html.

Please read the article before commenting. Thank you.

Are you aware of the considerable evidence that Oswald was not even on the sixth floor of the TSBD during the shooting? Have you seen Oliver Stone's recent documentary JFK Revisited? It contains an excellent segment on this evidence.

Also, are you aware of the James Young deformed bullet, the Aldredge curb bullet mark, and the bullet that burrowed into the grass near the manhole cover farther down Elm Street near the triple underpass?

Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza

An expanded version of this article is included in my new book A Comforting Lie: The Myth that a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy.

15 hours ago, Bill Brown said:

Acquilla Clemons never said that two men were involved in the shooting of Tippit.

In addition to that, if two men really were involved (they weren't), how did REAL witnesses who were outdoors and pretty much watched the thing go down (Burt, Smith, Benavides, Markham and Scoggins) manage to completely miss this supposed second man?

She said she saw two men, that the man with the gun waved off the other man, that the two men headed in different directions, and her descriptions of the two men do not resemble Oswald (LINK, LINK).

Frank Wright saw an assailant jump into a car and speed off, while other witnesses saw an assailant leave the scene on foot. 

Do you believe that Dorothy Kilgallen accidentally overdosed on sleeping meds?

To show how truly embarrassing and inexcusable it is for anyone to still deny that the North Vietnamese imposed a reign of terror after they won, let us consider the open letter that numerous former anti-war activists sent to the Hanoi regime in 1979.

To their credit, a number of liberals who played leading roles in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War condemned the Hanoi regime in 1979 when they finally--some would say belatedly--became convinced that the Communists were brutalizing and oppressing the people.

In an “Open Letter to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” published in five major newspapers on May 30, 1979, Joan Baez and other former anti-war activists called out Vietnam's Communist leaders for serious human rights violations. The letter was written by Joan Baez and Ginetta Sagan and was signed by numerous other prominent liberal anti-war activists, including Norman Cousins, I. F. Stone, Norman Lear, Cesar Chavez, Edward Asner, and Daniel Berrigan.

Guess which anti-war activists condemned the letter or declined to comment on it? Shamefully, the list is very long. A small sampling: Jane Fonda, Dave Dellinger, Abbie Hoffman, William Kuntsler, and Tom Hayden condemned the letter--they actually blamed the U.S. for the oppression in Vietnam (some anti-war activists even argued that the CIA was behind the refugee accounts). Musician John Lennon and his wife Yoki Ono and actors Donald Sutherland, Michael Alaimo, and Peter Boyle declined to comment on the letter. Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaders John Kerry, Ron Kovic, Jan Barry, and Al Hubbard also declined to comment on the letter.

On a separate occasion, Joan Baez even complained that she had been "used" by the Left during the Vietnam War. 

To her further great credit, Joan Baez led the effort to persuade President Jimmy Carter to help the Vietnamese boat people and other Vietnamese who were fleeing from the Hanoi regime's tyranny. She eventually even persuaded President Carter to send the Seventh Fleet to rescue the boat people who were still at sea. 

Baez became convinced that the growing mountain of accounts of Communist brutality in Vietnam were true when her good friend and Amnesty International official Ginetta Sagan personally interviewed numerous Vietnamese refugees (see https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=dissertation). Baez and Sagan teamed up to form Humanitas, which sponsored the open letter. Here is a portion of the open letter:

          Thousands of innocent Vietnamese, many whose only «crimes» are those of conscience, are being arrested, detained and tortured in prisons and re-education camps. Instead of bringing hope and reconciliation to war-torn Vietnam, your government has created a painful nightmare that overshadows significant progress achieved in many areas of Vietnamese society. . . .

          We have heard the horror stories from the people of Vietnam from workers and peasants, Catholic nuns and Buddhist priests, from the boat people, the artists and professionals and those who fought alongside the NLF. The jails are overflowing with thousands upon thousands of detainees. People disappear and never return. People are shipped to re-education centers, fed a starvation diet of stale rice, forced to squat bound wrist to ankle, suffocated in connex boxes. People are used as human mine detectors, clearing live mine fields with their hands and feet. For many, life is hell and death is prayed for. . . .

          Many victims are men, women and children who supported and fought for the causes of reunification and self-determination; those who as pacifists, members of religious groups, or on moral and philosophic grounds opposed the authoritarian policies of Thieu and Ky; artists and intellectuals whose commitment to creative expression is anathema to the totalitarian policies of your government.

          Requests by Amnesty International and others for impartial investigations of prison conditions remain unanswered. Families who inquire about husbands, wives, daughters or sons are ignored. (https://vietnamkrigen.wordpress.com/dokumentsamling/open-letter-to-the-socialist-republic-of-vietnam/)

15 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The reason I put that in italics is that it shows how in conflict JFK was with his main advisors on Vietnam.  And this was late in 1961.  At one of the meetings in the November 1961 debates, it was Bobby Kennedy who stepped forward and stated, "There will be no combat troops in Vietnam." That was clearly on advisement of his brother.

That was a line that Kennedy was not going to cross and there is no evidence that he ever wavered on it. All the evidence indicates he was getting out after the 1964 election.

That policy was clearly and deliberately altered by Johnson. And he did it within days of Kennedy's death.  By late January, he was doing something Kennedy was vigorously opposed to--meeting with the Pentagon on planning for war against the north.  In March those plan were complete, NSAM 288.  (The tragedy of Robert McNamara is that he did not get out on that day.)

For Selverstone to say that Kennedy might have committed 300,000 combat troops in theater is simply one of the wildest, most irresponsible, most bizarre statements one can imagine anyone making about this subject.

I have answered every one of these claims with documented facts, several times now, but you just keep ignoring those facts and keep repeating these claims (LINK, LINK, LINK, LINK). You can repeat these erroneous claims with all the adamance at your command, over and over again, but they will still be claims that are recognized as erroneous and fringe even by the vast majority of liberal scholars and historians, even by ultra-liberal historians such as Moise and Chomsky. I realize you don't care about this fact, but I think it should be pointed out for the sake of others.

No, Dr. Selverstone's suggestion that JFK may have committed 300,000 combat troops in response to the kind of dire situation that developed in 1965 is hardly "wild, irresponsible, and bizarre" but has been voiced by most scholars who have addressed the issue. I think that your polemic against this suggestion indicates that you are not qualified to be discussing JFK and Vietnam.

I should point out, again, that even Bobby Kennedy, in his April 1964 oral history interview, allowed that JFK may have authorized combat troops if the situation had become serious enough. You keep ignoring the fact that JFK was never faced with the situation that LBJ faced in early 1965. 

I devote an entire chapter to JFK and Vietnam in my new book A Comforting Lie: The Myth that a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy (chapter 20, which is 22 pages long).

I think that anyone who continues to defend Fletcher Prouty, given all that we now know about him, is showing a troubling lack of objectivity and credibility. 

Among the many pitiful excuses offered for Prouty is the argument that Prouty agreed to have the Holocaust-denying IHR Noontide Press republish his (nutty) book The Secret Team because no one else would publish it. One, if Prouty truly could not find a single other publisher who would republish the book, that should tell you something. Two, no matter how anxious I might be to get a book published, I would never, ever, ever agree to have a Holocaust-denying publishing company publish my book. 

Finally, regarding "fringe claims," yes, Prouty most certainly made a number of fringe claims. The claim that Ed Lansdale was a key plotter and was in Dealey Plaza is a nutty, obscene, fringe claim, and is recognized as such by 99.99% of the scholars and historians who have written on the subject. The claim that Prouty flew the Chinese delegation to the Tehran Conference and that Chiang and his delegation secretly attended the conference is a nutty, fringe claim, and is rejected by 99.99% of the scholars and historians who have written on the subject. The claim that the Israelis were to blame for high oil prices in the 1980s/early 1990s is a nutty, fringe claim, not to mention an anti-Semitic smear peddled by neo-Nazi groups and radical Muslims, and is recognized as such by 99.99% of the scholars and historians who have written on the subject. And on and on we could go. 

Thanks to the efforts of Mark Shaw, a prominent member of the NYC council, Robert Holden, has formally requested that the NYC DA reopen the case of Dorothy Kilgallen, an early critic of the Warren Commission who died under highly suspicious circumstances soon after telling friends that she believed she was about to break the JFK assassination case wide open.

Dorothy was one of the first critics of the lone-gunman theory. She used her widely read newspaper column to raise questions about the single-assassin scenario and about Jack Ruby. She interviewed Acquilla Clemons and noted that Clemons said the man with the gun did not look like Oswald but was short and chunky/heavy, and she said there was another man nearby who was waved off by the man with the gun. She was the only journalist to obtain a private interview with Jack Ruby. 

Councilman Holden sent his formal request last week, on January 31. Mark Shaw published an announcement about the request today:

The official Mark Shaw Books Website

Here is the letter that Councilman Holden sent to the NYC DA:

CM-Holden-Letter-to-DA-Bragg-on-Dorothy-Kilgallen-January-31-2024.pdf (markshawbooks.com)

6 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Nor do these authors ever bother to tell their readers that they are pushing a theory that is rejected even by most liberal Vietnam War scholars and historians, not to mention the overwhelming majority of moderate and conservative Vietnam War scholars and historians.

I understated things a bit. The vast majority of liberal Vietnam War scholars and historians reject the unconditional-withdrawal myth, and all moderate and conservative scholars and historians reject it. If someone is aware of a moderate or conservative scholar/historian who accepts the myth, please name him/her. I've been researching the Vietnam War for decades and have read dozens of book and hundreds of articles and papers. I'm not aware of a single moderate or conservative scholar/historian who accepts the unconditional-withdrawal claim.

3 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

Michael G., is it consensus historians’ view that JFK would have signed NSAM 273 without any editing as it stands (as LBJ did sign it)? 

The earlier NSAM had the written 1965 objective of near-withdrawal (understood most read that as with conditions, nevertheless that stated policy and planning objective)—is it consensus historians’ view that that element was now being dropped or abandoned or repudiated in NSAM 273–and that JFK would have been OK with that dropping, abandonment, or repudiation of the stated 1965 timetable planning? 

It just looks like JFK by Nov 1963 was seeing Vietnam as a morass and looking for an acceptable wind-down or disengagement while not “losing” at the same time, whereas a majority of joint chiefs etc had no such intent or interest or belief in a feasible possibility of a 1965 near-end to engagement. And that these differences in wordings reflect internal battles over framing policy at staff/Joint Chiefs level? 

Did JFK usually sign such prepared draft NSAM’s unaltered or did he frequently have them revised or reworded, in practice? I.e. how certain do you feel that JFK if he had returned to Washington instead of being assassinated, would have knowingly signed an abandonment of a policy commitment to plan for disengagement/withdrawal (mostly) by 1965?

Bundy wrote the first draft of NSAM 273 after consulting with JFK. He tailored it to conform with JFK's views. The version that LBJ signed was not drastically different from the first draft. 

As Dr. Marc Selverstone has proved in The Kennedy Withdrawal, the JFK White House tapes contain not one shred of evidence that JFK saw Vietnam "as a morass" and that he was looking to pull out while not losing at the same time. For one thing, North Vietnamese sources have confirmed that the war was actually going well until Diem was assassinated in November 1963.

If you read the supporting documents behind NSAM 263 and 273, you see that the withdrawal was clearly conditional, that some support troops would remain, and that military and economic aid would continue. 

If you stop outside the JFKA research community, you quickly discover that the Stone-Prouty-Newman unconditional-withdrawal myth is a truly fringe theory that is accepted by only a handful of scholars/historians. Even the vast majority of liberal scholars/historians reject it, including ultra-liberals such as Moise and Chomsky. 

I forgot to mention that Fletcher Prouty actually appeared on a third anti-Semitic program: On 11/11/1992, he appeared on The LaRouche Connection TV program, a program created by a lunatic fringe anti-Semite and Holocaust denier named Lyndon LaRouche (LINK). The U.S. Justice Department's Office of Justice website says the following about LaRouche:

          LaRouche has had frequent encounters with the law and has voiced his blatant anti-Semitism. He has also made outrageous accusations against prominent political figures, such as accusing the Queen of England of being the head of an international Jewish drug conspiracy and calling Henry Kissinger a Soviet spy. The portrait of LaRouche details his political activities since the late 1960's, reveals who supports his neo-Nazi activities and discusses why and where his financial support originates (LINK; see also LINK and LINK).

Prouty apologists can offer only pitiful excuses and surreal denials regarding Prouty's prolonged association with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, his documented support of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, his shameful defense of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, his bizarre theories, and his bogus claims. 

Academics and journalists who reject the conspiracy view of the JFKA always pounce on authors who cite Prouty; understandably, they point to the citation of Prouty as an indication that the authors are not credible or believable. Oliver Stone's unfortunate reliance on Prouty's claims in his 1991 movie JFK provided critics with devastating ammo with which to attack the movie. Researchers who continue to cite and praise Prouty are embarrassing themselves and are doing considerable damage to our cause.

Part of what is disappointing about the OP and the article linked in the OP is that the authors keep repeating these fringe claims and never address or acknowledge contrary facts that have been presented to them. I know they are aware of these facts because I have personally presented these facts to them in this forum. 

As just one example, let's take a look at the original draft of NSAM 273, i.e., the version that JFK was going to sign when he returned from Dallas. Among other things, the original draft is further clear evidence that JFK was determined to win the war to keep South Vietnam free, and that he stipulated that all decisions and actions should be judged based on whether or not they contributed to this purpose:

          1. It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. The test of all decisions and U.S. actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contribution to this purpose. . . .

Immediately after this statement, the draft mentions the 10/2/63 withdrawal announcement, i.e., NSAM 263.  Obviously, the objectives of NSAM 263 were to be judged by whether or not they helped South Vietnam to win the war and remain free, and if they began to harm that "central object," they would be abandoned.

Paragraph 6 directed that military and economic aid should be maintained at the same levels that they were during Diem's tenure:

          6. Programs of military and economic assistance should be maintained at such levels that their magnitude and effectiveness in the eyes of the Vietnamese Government do not fall below the levels sustained by the United States in the time of the Diem government…

Paragraph 7 called for "a wholly new level of effectiveness" in action against North Vietnam:

          7. With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should be a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources, especially for sea-going activity, and such planning should indicate the time and investment necessary to achieve a wholly new level of effectiveness in this field of action. . . .

Paragraph 10 called for making the case to the world that the Viet Cong were "controlled, sustained, and supplied" by the Hanoi regime:

          10. In connection with paragraphs 7 and 8 above, it is desired that we should develop as strong and persuasive case as possible to demonstrate to the world the degree to which the Viet Cong is controlled, sustained, and supplied from Hanoi, through Laos and other channels.

None of these things should be the least bit surprising, given JFK's statements in the months leading up to the Texas trip, and given his statements during the Texas trip, in which he made it clear that he was determined to keep South Vietnam free and that he was opposed to abandoning the war effort.

However, you'd never imagine these things, much less know them, to read the way the defenders of the unconditional-withdrawal myth spin the original draft of NSAM 273. Nor do these authors ever bother to tell their readers that they are pushing a theory that is rejected even by most liberal Vietnam War scholars and historians, not to mention the overwhelming majority of moderate and conservative Vietnam War scholars and historians.

On 1/22/2024 at 4:24 AM, Robert Burrows said:

Phil Spector on John Lennon's assassination...

https://youtu.be/d91OevA-7_A?si=Fyy0E--hTCic1bIS

I think Spector's take is ridiculous. The "perfect time" to have gotten rid of John Lennon would have been shortly after he became a leading figure in the anti-Vietnam War movement, not in December 1980. One of the facts that cries out against this whacky conspiracy theory is that there was no conceivable, rational motive for the CIA/MIC to assassinate Lennon in December 1980. 

This Lennon assassination conspiracy theory is the poster child for the kinds of zany, irrational conspiracy theories that critics accuse us of concocting. Pushing this theory hands our critics powerful ammo on a silver platter.

There are no credible parallels between Mark David Chapman and either Sirhan Sirhan, James Earl Ray, or Lee Harvey Oswald. Chapman not only immediately confessed his crime but pled guilty to the shooting in a court of law. He remembered his crime in considerable detail; he still remembers it; and he has never denied it. There is no mystery about how Chapman paid for his few travels. Chapman has provided a plausible motive for his action. And Chapman was clearly mentally disturbed during the months leading up to his shooting of Lennon and for many months afterward. 

16 hours ago, Greg Burnham said:

One big difference between you and David [Mantik] is this: When David makes a mistake he admits it. For some reason you keep harping on the same error, that he already acknowledged, as if he was supposed to be 100% infallible 100% of the time. Now, back to the matter at hand. Please show your work. Ya know, that pesky math stuff. Specifically could you show your optical densitometry readings for comparison purposes?

You are spot on. 

Pat's response to Dr. Mantik's historic OD measurements is specious and amateurish, and a gift to WC apologists (they frequently cite Pat's anti-alteration arguments in the JFK Assassination Forum). Dr. Michael Chesser did his own OD measurements, and his measurements support Dr. Mantik's, but Pat brushes this aside as meaningless. Pat's refusal to accept this historic scientific evidence is both baffling and discrediting.

Similarly, Pat's criticism of Dr. Mantik's placement of the Harper fragment in the occiput reflects his refusal to face facts that contradict his rigid ideological opposition to film and x-ray alteration. He waves aside the fact that the only three pathologists who actually handled the Harper fragment all said it was occipital bone, even though Dr. Ebersole told the HSCA that one of the late-arriving skull fragments was occipital bone. 

This is embarrassing, and inexcusable, given what we now know about Fletcher Prouty, about NSAMs 263 and 273, and about JFK's Vietnam intentions. Threads such as this one do great harm to our cause and make the forum appear to be a home for crackpot claims. Prouty was a fraud who spent years palling around with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and who made ludicrous claims, including some downright obscene accusations, some of which even Oliver Stone has wisely repudiated (see the links at the end of this reply). 

Also, as I have noted in several other threads when the unconditional-withdrawal myth has been peddled, even most liberal scholars reject the claim that JFK was going to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election, including ultra-liberals such as Ed Moise and Noam Chomsky.

Dr. Marc Selverstone's recent book The Kennedy Withdrawal, which has been praised by scholars from both sides of the Vietnam War discussion, puts the final nail in the coffin of the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Among other things, Selverstone documents that the JFK White House tapes do not contain even a tiny shred of evidence that JFK planned on abandoning the war effort after the election, much less that he planned on doing so regardless of the consequences. 

People need to understand that the unconditional-withdrawal myth is a fringe theory, a theory that is rejected by the overwhelming majority of Vietnam War historians and scholars from all across the spectrum. 

Whenever you see someone favorably cite or praise Fletcher Prouty, keep in mind that Prouty

-- wrote a letter to a Holocaust-denying journal and praised the journal's goals

-- spoke at a Holocaust-denial conference sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR)

-- spoke at a convention of the vile anti-Semitic group Liberty Lobby, during which he blamed the Israelis for high oil prices and repeated the standard anti-Semitic charge of "usury"

-- co-hosted a panel discussion with white supremacist Bo Gritz during the Liberty Lobby convention

-- appeared 10 times in four years on Liberty Lobby's radio program, a program that frequently included known Holocaust deniers and white supremacists as guests

-- had one of his books republished by the IHR's publishing arm, the Noontide Press (other books published by Noontide include works that deny the Holocaust, works that praise Hitler and the SS, the infamous anti-Semitic screed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and works that overtly promote white supremacy)

-- claimed that he flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to Tehran after the Cairo Conference and that the Chinese delegation, along with Chiang Kai-shek himself, attended the Tehran Conference, even though it is an undisputed historical fact that Chiang and his delegation returned to China after the Cairo Conference and did not attend the Tehran Conference

-- claimed that after he arrived in Tehran, he saw Winston Churchill and his delegation held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Churchill didn't have his ID on him since he was allegedly wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit, and during this delay the members of the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and pointed and laughed at the British delegation, yet no one in the British delegation ever mentioned such an incident, and there was no such thing as a pocketless jumpsuit during WWII (no member of the Chinese delegation ever recalled such an incident either, and never mentioned attending the Tehran Conference)

-- claimed that he met FDR's son Elliott while allegedly refueling at Habbaniya Airfield in Iraq, that Elliott met the Chinese delegation during the stop, and that Elliott knew the Chinese delegation attended the Tehran Conference, yet Elliott said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation in Tehran or in Egypt in his extensive accounts of his travels and of the conference, and the kind of plane that Prouty said he flew would have had no need to stop for fuel between Cairo and Tehran

-- said he would not be surprised to learn that the Secret Team assassinated Princess Diana

-- claimed that the Jonestown Massacre was carried out by the CIA/U.S. intelligence

-- took seriously Joseph Stalin's theory that Churchill had FDR poisoned

-- defended the fraudulent Church of Scientology and its criminal founder L. Ron Hubbard, and actually attacked Scientology whistleblowers who were exposing the cult

-- and claimed that General Edward Lansdale, who admired JFK and mourned his death, was a key plotter in the JFK assassination, that Lansdale was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that one of the tramp photos shows Lansdale walking away from the camera. To his credit, Oliver Stone has distanced himself from Prouty's nutty, obscene charges against Lansdale. 

LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK    LINK

5 hours ago, Pamela Brown said:

An appeal to "Occam's Razor" is a appeal to authority...

MDC killing John Lennon ergo no conspiracy falls prey to the fallacy of false alternatives...

Appealing to Occam's Razor is not an appeal to authority.

Chapman confessed right after the crime and has continued to confess ever since. He is no Sirhan Sirhan--he is the exact opposite. There is nothing suspicious about Chapman's few trips. 

But, if you are determined to believe that the CIA/MIC killed Lennon, no amount of evidence will convince you otherwise.