Michael Griffith

Oh, sheesh. Is there no ridiculous rumor or slander that you guys won't gobble up if it fits what you already want to believe? I've already done that at least twice in this thread.

This is pseudoscience. Read the other side and you'll find there was nothing suspicious about WTC 7's collapse. I realize that in your echo-chamber far-left world, this nonsense is taken seriously, but just be advised that 99% of the educated population rejects this garbage and believes the official version of 9/11 is factual and rational. Here are some links on WTC 7: FAQs - NIST WTC 7 Investigation | NIST The Collapse of WT 7 - Canadian Consulting Engineer Footage that kills the conspiracy theories: Rare footage shows WTC 7 consumed by fire | Daily Mail Online No, the Owner of WTC Building 7 Didn't 'Admit' It Was Demolished After 9/11 | Snopes.com World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories - Wikipedia 9/11 Conspiracy Theory Debunking | World Trade Center Myths (popularmechanics.com) World Trade Center 7 Report Puts 9/11 Conspiracy Theory to Rest (popularmechanics.com) Sheesh, just how many 9/11 Truthers do we have infesting this forum? I'm just curious: How many 9/11 Truthers also reject "the official narrative" regarding the Moon landings and the Holocaust?

If anyone is interested, you can read Cecil B. Currey's book on Lansdale for free on The Internet Archive website. Membership is free and quick. Once you're a member, you can check out the book and read it online for free. Here's the link: Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American When Prouty's paranoid, troubled mind picked Lansdale as the chief visible culprit in the JFK assassination plot, he either did not realize or did not care that Lansdale was one of the last people on Earth who would have wanted JFK removed from office.

Oh, thank goodness! Based on your reply to me, I feared you were another 9/11 Truther. I've refrained from discussing the details of the collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7, but I'll make this one exception. It wasn't just the heat from the Jet A fuel that weakened the welds but also the intense heat from the numerous fires that erupted inside the Twin Towers soon after the jetliners smashed into them. There were numerous highly flammable objects inside the buildings. For example, every floor of the Twin Towers had two large A/C units on it. There were also dozens of refrigerators in the Twin Towers. A/C units and fridges contain freon. Freon will ignite and explode when exposed to heat. As the fires spread after the initial fireballs, the numerous flammable objects caught fire, and some of them exploded. This is why explosions from inside the buildings were heard. Witnesses who escaped the buildings also reported seeing large cracks develop on the walls of the staircases, indicating that a steady redistribution of vertical forces and propagation of structural failure downward in the buildings had already begun to occur while the witnesses began descending on the staircases. As for WTC 7, it contained large fuel tanks for generators. These tanks contained over 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel combined. As the Twin Towers collapsed, large pieces of them smashed into parts of WTC 7 and set areas of WTC 7's floors ablaze. These fires eventually reached the fuel tanks and set them off, causing large explosions and intense heat that did severe structural damage. Again, the reasons for the collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 have been explained by numerous experts and to the satisfaction of 99% of the educated population.

Any 9/11 theory that says the attacks were an inside job, that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon but that a missile did, and that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled explosions is nutty, absurd, and embarrassing, not to mention that it has been demolished to the satisfaction of 99% of the educated population. I have no issue with people who argue that the 9/11 Commission didn't get the whole truth about intelligence snafus or about Bush administration efforts to cover up the Saudi angle, etc. But when someone crosses the line into the whack-job theories of the 9/11 Truthers, they enter into fringe, bizarre territory. Such garbage has no place in any forum on the JFK case.

Every time you and others get on this forum and defend whacky theories such as the 9/11 Truther nuttiness, you discredit this forum as a place for serious discussion on the JFK assassination. Such garbage has no business appearing in a forum on the JFK case. It has nothing to do with the case. There is something wrong when people who advocate fringe theories don't care that 99% of the experts who have examined those theories reject them as not just wrong but also as bizarre and ridiculous. JFKA conspiracy theorists who also peddle 9/11 Truther claims are a dream come true for lone-gunman theorists. If I were the CIA and wanted to discredit this forum, I would pay people to do exactly what you are doing.

I believe that JFK's dalliance with Ellen Rometsch was one of the things that at least some of the plotters used to rationalize and justify their conspiracy in their own minds. The last time I checked, murder was a much more serious sin than adultery. Thomas Reeves argues that if JFK had not been killed, his presidency may well have imploded with the revelation of his affair with Rometsch. During one of JFK's last press conferences, a female journalist asked him a very pointed hypothetical question that was clearly referring to his adultery--her question asked something along the lines of if he thought that a man who was cheating on his wife should leave his wife and marry one of his mistresses after he was out of office/retired. If you watch the video clip, you can see the question caught JKF off guard and made him uncomfortable. Well, anyway, when JFK and the plotters stand before the judgment bar of God, I'm confident that the plotters will be shocked when they receive a far, far harsher punishment for their crimes than JFK will receive for his adultery.

There were no troops in Vietnam at the time of Kennedy's death. They were classified as advisors. I've corrected you on this myth at least twice. There were several thousand American troops in South Vietnam who were engaged in combat operations while JFK was in office. The Special Forces/Green Beret troops in South Vietnam were most certainly "combat troops" even by the narrow, misleading definition you are using. Nearly 200 American troops died in South Vietnam while JFK was in office (16 in 1961, 53 in 1962, and 122 in 1963). Hundreds more were wounded. JFK vastly increased the number of American military troops in South Vietnam. When he took office, there were about 900 American troops in South Vietnam. By the end of 1961, there were 3,200. By the end of 1962, there were 11,300. By the end of 1963, there were 16,300. What you are talking about is the fact that there were no regular infantry troops in South Vietnam. I'm not going to repeat my explanation about the essentially meaningless difference between troops who engage in combat and infantry troops. This has to do with how they are categorized by their "military occupational speciality" (MOS). Thousands of the troops who were in South Vietnam in 1963 were engaged in combat operations but were not infantry troops by MOS. In war, many troops who are not infantry troops by MOS routinely engage in combat operations, e.g., combat engineers, artillery troops, and armored troops. Mike, Fletcher's claims were not at all outlandish or baseless. That is pure myth. Just read this and punch through to the links: https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/fletcher-prouty-vs-the-arrb I've already read your article. It's a sad denial of reality, a misleading spin that simply ignores the indisputable fact that Prouty back-peddled on several claims he'd been making for years and exposed himself as a fraud. I could not have written this article without the help of Doug Horne, who was there and described the perps to me. Also Malcolm LBLunt who found the ARRB memos, and Len Osanic, who took the call from Prouty after the ambush. Len was also in contact with a relative of one of the men involved in the failed back up issue in Dallas. Fletcher Prouty was correct on this. So just never mind all the fraudulent claims Prouty made because a few of his claims were allegedly proven valid? And never mind his seedy, disgraceful associations? The other issue Prouty gave advice on was the whole Vietnam angle. Now, to give credit where it is due, people like Peter Scott, and O'Donnell and Powers, and the Mike Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers did early work on this. But in about 1986, Prouty wrote a long essay that, in my view at that time was the best, most complete accounting of what really happened. IIRC, he even had the intel deception about us winning in that article. It was a remarkable piece of work. Now its true that after Prouty did his consulting, John Newman came in and did some extensive help also. But what is so striking about Prouty's article is that it presaged JFK and Vietnam pretty well. Prouty's "advice" on "the whole Vietnam angle" was idiotic, ignorant, silly, and baseless. His Vietnam War nonsense did enormous damage to the case for conspiracy and to the credibility of Oliver Stone's movie JFK. As for the Pentagon Papers, I would, once again, note that they only cover events through 1967, and are a cherry-picked selection of the internal policy and status documents relating to the war. I would, once again, suggest you Dr. Robert Turner's book Myths of the Vietnam War: The Pentagon Papers Reconsidered before you make any more comments about the Pentagon Papers. These are facts. What you are doing is siding with the smear artists, which included the military guys on the ARRB. No, they are not "facts." These are claims based on your paranoid far-left mindset and your refusal to deal logically and credibly with facts you don't like. If anything, the ARRB interviewers were too gentle with Prouty. They could and should have pressed Prouty on a number of issues, but did not. They should have pressed him to explain why in the world he would have discarded putatively historic notes that he had claimed in writing to have taken during his mythical "stand down" phone call with the 112th MI Group. They also should have pressed him on why he refused to identify the man who had supposedly told him that he recognized Lansdale in one of the Dealey Plaza tramp photos. People who present fact and truth about Prouty are not "smear artists." You are siding with a guy who was clearly a fraud, if not a genuine nutcase, and who palled around with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and Scientology crooks. You refuse to deal with Prouty's extensive associations with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, even though those associations have been documented by the ADL and by ultra-liberal journalist Chip Berlet. Rather than deal with the reality of those associations, you actually made the ridiculous claim that Berlet is not a staunch liberal and argued that he, too, was "smearing" Prouty. Nor do you seem to care about Prouty's sleazy, pitiful defense of the Scientology cult and its criminal founder. Nor do you seem to care about his other nutty claims (Princess Diana, FDR's death, the F-16, fossil fuels, etc.). In the early 2000s, a man who was a prominent and respected JFKA researcher called me because I had gained a level of recognition in the research community. He said he had called to get to know me and to get my views on certain issues. After about 10 minutes, he said, "Okay, I can tell that you're rational, that you're one of the sane ones." A bit surprised and puzzled, I asked why he said this. He explained that many of the JFKA researchers he'd dealt with always seemed willing to embrace "wild" and/or "nutty" claims, and that he'd called me to see if I was one of them. At the time, I didn't know what he was talking about, so I just said, "Oh, okay." Fletcher Prouty is a clear dividing line between wild/crazy and rational/sane. Sadly, years ago you and some other JFKA researchers swallowed Prouty's nutty claims and created this gigantic myth that JFK was murdered because he was going to abandon South Vietnam after the election, and that Edward Lansdale played a key role in the plot and was even in Dealey Plaza during the shooting--and you folks are so emotionally committed to this nonsense that you can't bring yourselves to face the ugly truth about Prouty. That's the core problem here.

Good post and good information, Ron. I can't think of anyone who has done more damage to the case for conspiracy than Prouty. Prouty's outlandish and baseless claims in Stone's JFK were demolished by critics and enabled critics to ignore the valid parts of the film. Even worse, not only did Prouty devote considerable time and energy to defending Scientology and its crooked founder, but he spent years palling around with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers in Liberty Lobby and the IHR.

The Far Left and the Far Right both attack Tucker Carlson. That tells you he's doing something right. I disagree with Tucker on some issues, but I think he's one of the most refreshing, independent-minded TV hosts ever to come along. I hope he finds a new gig. We need more people who are not blind partisans on the airwaves.

Your refusal to face reality is troubling. So the fact that Prouty appeared on Liberty Lobby's anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying radio show 10 times over a four-year period doesn't count as close and prolonged? Four years isn't prolonged? Ten times doesn't indicate closeness? I bet that if any other researcher or witness appeared on such a radio show twice, you would be singing a very different tune. The fact that Prouty had one of his books republished by the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying IHR doesn't constitute a close relationship? This is not to mention that Prouty publicly thanked Marcellus and Carto for republishing his book, and even recommended that people read Liberty Lobby's newspaper The Spotlight. How do all these things not constitute a close and prolonged association? How did Prouty even know that the IHR existed and had a publishing arm? How would any normal person come to have a book published by such a small and extremist publishing company? If you were willing to be rational and honest, you would freely admit the self-evident fact that Prouty's association with Liberty Lobby and the IHR went far beyond brief and casual contact.

The alteration and fabrication of much of the medical evidence, as documented by Doug Horne and David Mantik, strongly indicates that senior elements of the military and the Secret Service were involved in the plot. A number of lines of evidence point to elements of the anti-Castro Cubans and to elements of the Mafia. Some of these same lines of evidence, along with other lines, point to rogue elements of the CIA. Hoover's actions, at a minimum, identify him as an accessory after the fact. Some members of the Dallas police department appear to have played a role in framing Oswald. They certainly played a role in arranging for Ruby to shoot Oswald.

Yes, please move this nuttiness out of the JFKA forum. It's embarrassing. It's bad enough that we have some people peddling 9/11 Truther craziness in this forum.

I'm guessing you haven't read the recent research on Oswald's whereabouts during the shooting either. There is no way, no way, he could have gotten from the sixth-floor window to the second-floor lunchroom in time to avoid being seen by Truly, who was running ahead of Baker. No way. This is not to mention the people who were on or near the stairs who also would have seen or heard Oswald coming down them, but did not. This is covered well in JFK Revisited. Even the super careful, uber cautious Anthony Summers makes a strong case that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during the shooting. You might start with his section on Oswald's whereabouts at 12:30 on 11/22.

Oswald wasn't even in the window. Have you not read any of the new research on Oswald's whereabouts during the shooting? In fact, Brennan failed to make a positive identification of Oswald in a police lineup on November 22, even though he had seen Oswald's picture on TV beforehand. Only after weeks of "questioning" by federal agents did Brennan positively identify Oswald as the sixth-floor shooter. Moreover, a number of points in Brennan's account actually cast doubt on the official version of the shooting. The House Select Committee ignored Brennan's story entirely. I am inclined to believe that Brennan did see someone firing from the sixth-floor window, but that the gunman he saw was not Oswald. I believe Brennan later identified Oswald only because he was pressured into doing so. Brennan's description of the gunman's clothing matches that given by four other witnesses who reported seeing a man in the window. Brennan and the other witnesses described the man's shirt as a regular "light- colored" shirt. However, Oswald did not wear a light-colored shirt to work that day. He wore a brown, rust-colored shirt that day, and he was seen in that shirt in the second-floor lunchroom less than ninety seconds after the shots were fired. I should add that two witnesses who saw the sixth-floor gunman said his hair was light-colored or light-brown, whereas Oswald's hair was solid brown and not light-colored at all.

Omitting the anti-communist/anti-Soviet parts of the speech does an injustice to JFK. As much as some JFKA researchers want to believe that JFK was a George McGovern-like dove, this is simply not the case. JFK was not a hawk in the sense that he did not have blind faith in the use of force as a cure for all problems, but he was certainly no dove either. He was entirely willing to threaten the use of force and to use force when he believed the situation required it. He made it clear to the Soviets that he was willing to go to war over Berlin. He increased the number of military advisors in South Vietnam from 700 to nearly 16,000 in less than three years. On the day he was assassinated, JFK touted his military buildup to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce: In the past 3 years we have increased the defense budget of the United States by over 20 percent; increased the program of acquisition for Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minuteman missile purchase program by more than 75 percent; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by over 60 percent; added five combat ready divisions to the Army of the United States, and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force of the United States; increased our strategic airlift capability by 75 percent; and increased our special counter-insurgency forces which are engaged now in South Viet-Nam by 600 percent. I hope those who want a stronger America and place it on some signs will also place those figures next to it. (John F. Kennedy - Speech to the Forth Worth Chamber of Commerce - American Rhetoric) Nor was JFK a liberal when it came to taxes and spending. He held federal spending to very modest levels of growth, was determined to balance the budget, and proposed one of the biggest tax cuts for the wealthy in American history. He also proposed a 9% cut (i.e., a cut of 5 percentage points) in the corporate tax rate. As the JFK Library points out, his income tax cut proposal called for cutting taxes from a range of 20-91% to 14-65% giving the rich a massive tax cut of 26 percentage points, a reduction of nearly 30% (John F. Kennedy on the Economy and Taxes | JFK Library).

Interestingly, Oswald reportedly told his interrogators that he went straight to the Texas Theater from his boarding house. That rings true. Two witnesses said Oswald entered the theater just a few minutes after 1:00 and remained there until he was arrested. The key point about the Tippit shooting is that the case against Oswald is literally plastered with holes. Contradictions and implausible assumptions abound. No one has yet come up with a rational, believable innocent explanation for why Tippit was even in Oswald's neighborhood in the first place. Nor can anyone provide a rational, credible explanation for why Tippit would have stopped the assailant if the assailant was Oswald. The ballistics evidence was clearly tampered with. An experienced cop is not going to confuse revolver shells for automatic shells, and vice versa. It is easy to tell them apart, especially since .38 automatic shells are marked ".38 AUTO" on the bottom. Conveniently missing initials on shells, even though clear instructions were given to mark them. The wrong fingerprints on the front passenger door and the right front fender of Tippit's car. Markedly contradictory descriptions of the shooter and of the number of shooters and of how they left the scene. A shooter who was supposedly so utterly stupid that he emptied his shells in the immediate vicinity of the crime--yup, that's totally believable. Police lineups that were egregiously unfair and designed to ensure that witnesses who viewed them would pick Oswald. A rigged reenactment with the alleged cab driver to avoid admitting that the timing doesn't work. And on and on we could go.

To do justice to JFK's speech, and to fully and accurate report on it, we should also note some of the other things that JFK said in that speech, such as the following: It is discouraging to think that their leaders [Soviet leaders] may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims--such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . [and that] the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . [and] to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars". . . . As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. . . . Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge. It is our hope-- and the purpose of allied policies--to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today.

I agree. I believe that Hersh and Halpern are part of a deliberate, long-standing effort to conceal the fact that powerful elements of the CIA were defying presidential orders and policy and were operating in a lawless manner.

You folks have it all wrong. Lennon was killed by the Majestic 12 because he was going to expose the UFO cover-up. It's so obvious. Surely by then the Majestic 12 had taken over the MK-ULTRA program. Obviously, they programmed Mark Chapman to shoot Lennon. They even cleverly had Chapman leave behind evidence that he was also thinking about shooting Ronald Reagan, Johnny Carson, and Liz Taylor, so as to make it appear that he was just a total nutjob who was considering killing liberals and conservatives alike. The heck with Occam's razor!

I think there's a simpler explanation: FBI and CIA officials convinced Trump that releasing the remainder of the records would harm national security. Being new to government and having no background in national security, Trump was persuaded by their arguments and decided to err on the side of caution (or what he wrongly perceived as caution).

Wow, this is interesting: So now, according to some, RFK Jr. might not be sufficiently liberal because he's willing to cooperate on some issues with conservatives. People with such a rabidly ideological mindset are a huge part of the problem with our politics today. That mindset is poisoning out political debate and making it impossible for non-extremist Democrats to find common ground and reach compromises with non-extremist Republicans, and vice versa.

Please go spam some other JFK forum. You don't know what you're talking about.

The GOP is a dumpster fire?! My heavens, the presumptive Democratic nominee is clearly suffering from substantial cognitive decline. His handlers rarely let him talk to reporters, and when they do, he usually utters several gaffes or incoherent statements. Recent polls show that nearly half or just over half of Democrats do not want him to run in 2024. Democrats just lost the House in the mid-terms and narrowly avoided losing the Senate.

It's interesting to note that in 2020, HBO aired a documentary that questioned the reliability and security of the Dominion voting systems. HBO presented evidence that Dominion voting systems were vulnerable to hacking. Months before Fox News, HBO aired voting machine allegations in a documentary. It wasn’t sued | Just The News I think Fox was wise to settle, not because there isn't plenty of credible evidence of 2020 election fraud but because they knew that their odds of getting a jury that would be objective and patient enough to process and weigh that evidence were not great. I'm sure Fox's lawyers also worried that they would draw a judge who would exclude much of the evidence of election fraud on specious grounds. Three of the seven judges on the Wisconsin supreme court, including the chief justice, wrote in their dissent in the court's 4-3 rejection of the Trump election lawsuit that there was credible evidence of considerable election fraud in Wisconsin, and they harshly criticized the majority for failing to address that evidence in their ruling. I find it chilling that any judge allowed this kind of lawsuit to proceed in the first place. This was a serious blow to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press. I can only guess what liberals would have said if similar lawsuits had been filed against the liberal publications that claimed that Bush won the 2004 election because of serious election fraud, especially in Ohio.