Michael Griffith

Yes, JFK's scheduled early December coup attempt is discussed in detail in investigative journalist Lamar Waldron's 2013 book The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (pp. 206-382, 401-475).

I think that's going way too far. For all of Livingstone's faults, he did a great deal of solid, important research on the case, especially on the medical evidence. He conducted a lot of valuable interviews with key witnesses and experts. And people forget how many times Livingstone rejected various conspiracy claims because he correctly found them wanting.

I'm sorry, but you are simply not qualified to be passing this kind of judgment on Dr. Selverstone's book. One, your reading on the Vietnam War has been sparse and very one sided, as is apparent from your replies to me on the Vietnam War in other threads, where you repeated claims that were debunked years ago (some of them were debunked literally decades ago), and where you cited far-left books that even many liberal scholars recognize as problematic. You cited Nick Turse's scandalous book, which even Neil Sheehan condemned as shoddy, and you were unaware that Turse and his publisher were forced to issue a retraction when confronted with indisputable evidence of falsehood in the book. You obviously had never heard of any of the important disclosures from released/newly translated North Vietnamese sources (because far-left authors have ignored them). Two, you approach the issue of the Vietnam War from a rigidly ideological perspective that seems to render you incapable of being objective on the subject. When I first told you about Selverstone's book, you said the book would not be credible because you believed that Selverstone was a right-winger, since he works at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, when in fact Selverstone is a JFK admirer and a centrist. The mere fact that you would attack a book you hadn't read because you believed the author was a conservative says volumes about your own political bias. Selverstone's book is superior to Newman's solid book, partly because he uses sources that Newman did not use (some of them were not available yet). Also, Selverstone addresses Newman's key arguments. Newman's book is a solid, credible work and contains important information not covered in previous books on the subject, but Selverstone's book is a cut above any other book on JFK and Vietnam published to date. Scholars from all across the spectrum on the Vietnam War have praised Selverstone's book, yet you conclude that it is "a piece of rubbish." REALLY??? A "piece of rubbish"??? Honestly, such a comment shows that you really have no business passing judgment on the book in a public forum. I can only imagine how you are going to deal with (i.e., casually dismiss or ignore) the mountain of evidence that Selverstone presents in his book. The problem is that you are so inadequately read on the war, so ideologically rigid, and so emotionally committed to the far-left version of the war, that you are in no position to fairly and credibly judge Selverstone's scholarship. You have done great work on the JFK case. Some of your JFKA research has been historic and outstanding. But, when it comes to the Vietnam War and JFK's Vietnam policy, you are out of your depth.

August 2013. It was partially reprinted on the HNN website in September 2013: JFK vs. the Military | History News Network (hnn.us)

When you post a link, it would be helpful if you would provide a brief summary of the contents. Anyway, I find it curious and puzzling that LBJ cancelled the coup attempt in Cuba that JFK had scheduled for early December, even though Bobby urged LBJ to let the coup attempt proceed as scheduled. For many years, I believed that the plotters intended to use the assassination as an excuse to carry out an invasion of Cuba. But, when I learned that JFK had approved a carefully planned and credible coup attempt against Castro for early December and that LBJ cancelled it over Bobby's objections, I had to reassess my thinking.

As I've said many times in online discussions, if WC apologists want to prove that the backyard photos are authentic, all they have to do is either (1) duplicate the variant shadows in valid and realistic conditions, or (2) conduct a reenactment where an IR camera is handed back and forth to forward the film between exposures and where the resulting pictures have only microscopic differences in the distances between the objects in the backgrounds. So far, neither event has occurred. When Norman Mailer claimed in Oswald's Tale that Lawrence Schiller had duplicated the variant shadows in a reenactment, he declined to include any of the photos from Schiller's reenactment. When I finally got Schiller to send me one of the pictures from his reenactment, it was quickly apparent that the photo did not show a duplication of the variant shadows--in fact, it showed the opposite. When I wrote Mailer and Schiller about the photo, neither of them replied. When the HSCA PEP could find only "very small" (their term) differences in the distances between the background objects in the photos, surely it must have occurred to them that it was extremely unlikely x 10 that the photos were taken in the manner that Marina claimed they were taken. Mr. Mee pointed out that it would be difficult even for a professional photographer using an automatic camera, much less the IR camera, to take three photos that would have such virtually identical backgrounds.

BTW, my last name is Griffith, not Griffin. You can't even get that simple fact straight. You are a dream come true for lone-gunman theorists. They love it when people who posit a conspiracy in the JFK case go off the deep end with nutty claims and bizarre theories, as you do. You are immune to fact and logic when it comes to Prouty. You still have not provided a substantive answer to a single point I've made about Prouty's false assertions, his phony credentials, and his association with undisputed crackpots and extremists. Tony Ortega proved that Prouty did a lot more than just make "a few comments" about Hubbard's military records. That's a royal dodge. Ortega proved, among several other things that you ignore, that Prouty's self-proclaimed expertise in understanding military records was nonexistent, that Prouty had no clue what he was talking about. Ortega also proved that Prouty's claim that Hubbard worked in deep-cover naval intelligence was baseless and absurd. But you won't admit anything when it comes to Prouty. And, by the way, what in the devil was Prouty doing defending such a nutcase and fraud as Hubbard in the first place? Do you know anything about what a kook and crook Hubbard was? Doesn't it raise a giant red flag in your mind that Prouty would defend a nutjob like Hubbard and would take money from the Scientology cult to do so? I guess not.

Most of this is a mix of far-left nonsense and exaggeration. I think you are a wingnut, an extremist. Your mindset is that it's your way or the highway, and you see anyone who disagrees with you as the enemy. I think people like you are part of the reason that our politics have become so polarized and poisoned. I won't even bother answering your list of accusations--virtually all of them are either falsehoods or distortions.

Lemnitzer should have been court-martialed for misleading JFK about the plans for the Bay of Pigs operation. Instead, JFK was nice enough to shuffle him off to Europe to head NATO. In terms of suspects in the military, I have never suspected General Lemnitzer of involvement in the assassination. I do, however, view General Curtis LeMay and General Charles Cabell as plausible suspects.

I agree with much of what you say here. I definitely agree with your comments about Gore and 9/11. think Gore would have responded to 9/11 in a much more rational, sensible way than Bush Jr. did. I think the invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, if not a scandal. I would be curious to see RFK Jr. enter the Dem primary. It's just too bad that his voice has been so damaged by spasmodic dysphonia. I like the fact that he's proven willing to think outside the box and outside the standard partisan paradigm. Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, and Larry Hogan of the No Labels movement are trying to get a third party on the ballot nationwide for the upcoming election. The DNC and the RNC are already trying to block them from ballot access. I would like to see a sensible, centrist third party that could be a home for those of us who are tired of the bitter partisan feuds and strife between the two major parties. Both major parties have some good ideas, but hardliners in both parties are making it harder and harder to compromise and to get anything done.

This is unfortunate, baseless rhetoric. There was no "attempt to overthrow our government in 2020." There was an attempt to get certain courts and certain state legislatures to deal with clear evidence of election fraud and undeniable violations of election law. In the three years since the 2020 election, significant new evidence of election fraud has been documented. I've compiled much of this evidence on my website on the 2020 election. A link to it can be found on my Real Issues Home Page: Real Issues Home Page (google.com) It is noteworthy that some Democrats still claim that the 2000 election was "stolen" because the U.S. Supreme Court shut down Gore's final attempt at a cherry-picking recount in Florida that he believed would favor him. It wasn't Bush's fault that so many Gore voters in Florida could not figure out how to mark their ballots correctly. Many Democrats still claim that the Russians rigged the 2016 election to enable Trump to win, even though this myth has been abjectly debunked, and even though we now know that this tale was hatched by Hillary's campaign and certain DNC personnel.

Here's an article about Prouty's bogus, disgraceful defense of Scientology cult founder Ron Hubbard. The article's author, a former Scientology member, makes no attempt to respond to Prouty's JFKA arguments but focuses on Prouty's fraudulent claims about Hubbard, such as Prouty's erroneous claim that Hubbard worked in military intelligence in the Navy. The author wrote the article after he discovered that Prouty was a fraud who had no clue what he was talking about regarding Hubbard. Laying to rest the obfuscations of L. Fletcher Prouty, Scientology’s conspiracist-for-hire | The Underground Bunker (tonyortega.org) Just one example from the article of Prouty's utter nonsense: Prouty made the erroneous claim that the number "16" in Hubbard's Navy records proved he worked in intelligence. Actually, this number identified the person as having spent time as a naval reservist. Prouty's silly claim was especially odd because the code sheet in Hubbard's records identified the number "16" as a designation for naval reserve service. The author of the article confirmed this in other Navy records. Prouty had no clue what he was talking about but was just making up stuff. I will not call everyone who defends Prouty "crackpots" (though a few of his defenders come across as just that), but I will say, again, that anyone who defends Prouty, after all we now know about him, is doing a great disservice to the research community and to the case for conspiracy. Prouty's bogus, nutty claims have done great damage to the conspiracy position, and I again commend Oliver Stone for repudiating Prouty's obscene claims about Lansdale. I have presented ample evidence that Prouty was a fraud and a kook who associated with extremists and who made numerous false claims, some of which were truly nutty. Your refusal to acknowledge these facts suggests that your devotion to Prouty has become a form of religious worship for you. The claim that the ARRB ambushed or mistreated Prouty is ridiculous. The ARRB interviewers were respectful and cordial. Indeed, I think they were too cordial when they did not press Prouty on why he did not preserve the notes he claimed he had taken during his alleged "stand down" phone call with an officer of the 316th/112th MI Group. These notes would have had great historical value, if they had in fact existed. How can anyone be so gullible as to believe that Prouty would not have carefully safeguarded those notes if the phone call had actually taken place, especially given the fact that he had earlier claimed in writing that he had the notes and pretended to quote from them? Appealing to Prouty's military record is lame. General Curtis LeMay received numerous medals and had "a distinguished military career." David Atlee Phillips received numerous CIA awards and had "a distinguished intelligence career"--just look at the articles about him on several government websites. General Hap Arnold, who ordered and oversaw the criminal and cruel firebombing of Japanese cities, had "a distinguished military career" (Arnold was the one who put LeMay in charge of the firebombing). The fact that Prouty received some awards in the military and held certain positions of medium responsibility does not erase the many bogus claims he made, nor does it change the fact that he associated with sleazy extremists, some of whom disputed the Holocaust. I am loathe to ever recommend censorship. But, when it comes to Fletcher Prouty, given the cold, hard facts about his bogus claims and disreputable associations, I would not allow defenses of him to appear in this subforum, if I were running the forum. I would move all defenses of him to a different subforum so that they would not taint the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination. I think some of McAdams' and Litwin's attacks on Prouty are unfair or invalid, but most of them are indisputable. Prouty's bogus and nutty claims are, after all, documented in his own writings and interviews. They are there are for all to see. This is not "CIA disinformation" but an observation of demonstrable fact.

Oh, gosh. Not this nonsense again. You are embarrassing the case for conspiracy. Prouty did not work with Lansdale or the CIA Saigon station chief "for many years." Lansdale transferred him out of his department because he was a NUTJOB. Prouty did not co-author the Pentagon Papers or the Taylor-McNamara Report. As I have pointed out to you before, and as you keep lamely labeling as "CIA disinformation," Prouty's NUTTY statements are well documented. Their existence cannot be disputed--they come from his own writings and interviews. His ARRB interview is available for all to read. His ties with seedy, extremist right-wing groups, one of which disputed the Holocaust, are a matter of record. If there were a CIA team tasked with spreading loony claims in the JFK research community to discredit the case for conspiracy, they would consider Prouty's nutty claims a gift from heaven.

As of today, surely the definitive book on the subject is Dr. Marc Selverstone's recent and widely acclaimed work The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Harvard University Press, 2022). Here is an insightful one-hour interview with Dr. Selverstone that was done after his book was published--it will give you a good idea of the book's contents and of Selverstone's approach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVZKe68bwTk And let's be clear: Selverstone is a Kennedy admirer. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about. One big issue in discussing JFK and Vietnam is semantics. I've covered this at length in another thread, so I'll only summarize the issue here. When JFK talked about "combat troops" or "ground troops," he was referring to soldiers who were members of what are termed "regular infantry units" in military terminology. JFK did not want to send regular infantry troops to South Vietnam, but he had no problem sending other types of combat soldiers to Vietnam. Several thousands of the 17,000 "military advisers" whom he sent to South Vietnam were combat troops, and some of those troops took part in battles against Communist forces. Over 1,000 of those personnel were elite combat troops who served in Special Forces/Green Beret/Force Recon units. Some JFKA researchers make much of the fact that earlier in the war, when the situation was deemed dire, JFK refused to approve sending combat troops, i.e., infantry troops, to South Vietnam. This is true. However, these researchers tend to ignore the fact that, at the same time, JFK agreed to substantially increase the number of non-infantry combat troops in South Vietnam. Again, he drew the line at sending regular infantry units to South Vietnam, but he was quite willing to send other types of combat troops, and he did so several times during his time in office. Another big issue, and big problem, is distinguishing between a conditional withdrawal and an unconditional abandonment/total disengagement. There is a huge difference between the two. Far too often, some JFKA conspiracy theorists use these terms interchangeably. They point to evidence that JFK wanted to withdraw from South Vietnam and then act like this proves he intended to abandon South Vietnam after the election regardless of the consequences. Yes, JFK did indeed want to withdraw American troops from South Vietnam as soon as possible, but only if he could do so without handing over the country to the Communists. And, crucially, his withdrawal plan called for continuing military and economic aid to South Vietnam. It even called for leaving behind a 1,500-man contingent of support troops for supply purposes. James K. Galbraith, an ardent Kennedy-would-have-withdrawn-no-matter-what scholar, acknowledges this fact: Training would end. Support for South Vietnam would continue. They had an army of over 200,000. The end of the war was not in sight. After the end of 1965, even under the withdrawal plan, 1,500 US troops were slated to remain, for supply purposes. ("JFK's Vietnam Withdrawal Plan Is a Fact, Not Speculation," The Nation, 11/22/2013, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/jfks-vietnam-withdrawal-plan-fact-not-speculation/). Even if one wants to ignore the weight of the evidence and argue that JFK's withdrawal plan was unconditional, i.e., that he would have carried out the withdrawal regardless of the conditions on the ground, the fact remains that his plan also called for a continuation of military and economic aid to South Vietnam and for keeping 1,500 support troops in country. That is a far cry from his alleged willingness to abandon South Vietnam after the election.

The CBS documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, which accused Westmoreland of deliberately underestimating enemy strength, was so blatantly deceptive and biased that five months after it aired TV Guide published a scorching critique of it titled "Anatomy of a Smear: How CBS News Broke the Rules and 'Got' Gen. Westmoreland” (TV Guide, 5/24/1982). In response to the TV Guide critique, CBS's chief executives ordered an internal investigation into the documentary. The man chosen to conduct the investigation was CBS executive Burton Benjamin. Benjamin's internal report was a devastating indictment of the documentary's unfairness and bias. CBS suppressed Benjamin's report, but Benjamin was so disturbed by what he found that he wrote a book on his findings titled Fair Play: C.B.S., General Westmoreland, and How a Television Documentary Went Wrong (Harper & Row, 1988). Two years before Benjamin's book was published, an even harsher critique of the CBS hit job was written by Renata Adler, a respected investigative journalist who had previously worked as a lawyer and had served with the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation. Her book, titled Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al, Sharon v. Time (Alfred Knopf, 1986), picks apart the CBS documentary point by point. She presents examples where CBS editors took answers out of context and edited them to make them appear to be responses to different questions. She also shows that several of the anti-Westmoreland witnesses' titles and roles were exaggerated, and that the producers simply ignored a large number of witnesses who disputed the claim of deliberate falsification. We can dismiss the debunked slander that Westmoreland tried to mislead the White House and the Pentagon by purposely underestimating enemy troop strength. Even liberal historian Dr. Greg Daddis rejects this claim as "hollow," noting that the White House and the Pentagon "were well aware" of the dispute between MACV and the CIA over how to accurately measure enemy troop strength (Westmoreland's War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam, Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 85). The underlying core issue was whether the Viet Cong's so-called "self-defense and secret self-defense forces" should be counted in the enemy order of battle. There was an honest difference opinion about these forces among both civilian and military analysts. However, there was a small but vocal group of analysts, led by a genuinely sleazy CIA hack named Sam Adams, who adamantly insisted that every single person in these forces should be counted as an enemy combatant, an utterly preposterous idea. General Creighton Abrams, one of the straightest shooters and most honorable and decent officers in the war, explained why he believed it was "highly questionable" to include the self-defense and secret self-defense forces in the enemy order of battle: These forces contain a sizable number of women and old people. They operate entirely in their own hamlets. They are rarely armed, have no real discipline, and almost no military capability. (Daddis, Westmoreland's War, p,. 85) In most areas of South Vietnam, these forces were a non-factor, partly because they would often switch sides or go neutral, especially after the Tet Offensive. Only in the Mekong Delta did those forces pose anything approaching a viable military threat, and even then their impact was sporadic and usually limited. Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham, former head of the MACV Current Intelligence and Estimates Division, pointed out how strongly Adams' vastly inflated numbers had been debunked by the Tet Offensive: Had the Allied forces been attacked by a half million or more troops, one would have to give some credence to Mr. Adams. Since that was not the case, he should be given no credence. (Hearings, House Select Committee on Intelligence, December 3, 1975, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976, p. 1653) It turns out that MACV's estimates for enemy troop strength before Tet were much more accurate than Adams' wild numbers. Adams put enemy strength at 500,000 to 600,000 shortly before Tet. Yet, only about 80,000 Communist troops took part in the offensive. Of course, we now know from North Vietnamese sources that the NVA had nowhere near 500,000 troops in South Vietnam before Tet, including all Viet Cong forces. We could spend many pages talking about all of Adams' bogus claims. Just two examples: Adams absurdly claimed that 10,000 American troops died in the Tet Offensive, when in fact a little over 2,000 died (in contrast, well over 40,000 North Vietnamese-VC troops died in the offensive). Also, Adams not only claimed that 1,200 American aircraft were destroyed on the ground during Tet but that they were destroyed by North Vietnamese artillery! This was laughable. The North Vietnamese forces involved in Tet had conspicuously little artillery (this was just one of the reasons the offensive failed). The only two NVA forces during Tet that had any artillery to speak of were those in Hue and near the DMZ--and, in point of fact, fewer than 60 American aircraft were destroyed on the ground during Tet. Finally, I should add that the CBS documentary has been criticized even by some liberal scholars for doubting Westmoreland's 1968 factual statement that the Tet Offensive was a severe military defeat for the North Vietnamese. Even Ed Moise notes that "by 1981, when this documentary was made, the fact that Tet really had been an American military victory had become clear." The fact that the Communists suffered a crushing military defeat during Tet was clear to any rational observer by mid-1968. Of course, North Vietnamese and VC sources later confirmed that Communist losses during Tet were "catastrophic," "horrendous," and that after Tet the Viet Cong presence in many parts of South Vietnam was either obliterated or vastly reduced.

You haven't debunked anything. The information I've presented about Prouty is not "McAdams/CIA disinformation." Everything I pointed out about Prouty's nutty claims is documented. His admissions in his ARRB interview are a matter of record. Oliver Stone's repudiation of Prouty's claims about Lansdale is a matter of record (and has been posted in this thread). It is just embarrassing that we are even having this discussion. No serious researcher should be peddling Prouty's absurd JFKA claims, not to mention his nutty claims about other cases and issues. And we haven't even talked about Prouty's disreputable associations. Prouty's claims have done great damage to the case for conspiracy. Their inclusion in the film JFK gave critics low-hanging fruit with which to attack the film. Again, just think how much harder it would have been for critics to dismiss the film if it had not contained Prouty's bizarre baseless allegations. I do agree with you about one thing: I, too, am not going to waste any more time on this thread. This thread is embarrassing. It is pathetic that anyone would get on a public board and defend Prouty's nutty claims (and, again, we haven't even talked about his seedy associations). And then you guys wonder why the conspiracy view is so widely belittled and summarily dismissed by so many scholars and journalists.

But Prouty was a fraud and he was a crackpot. It's not vitriol if it's true. I am astounded that anyone in this forum is still defending him after all we now know about him. Are you folks just unwilling to process the fact that even Oliver Stone has repudiated Prouty's claims about Lansdale? We're not talking about "minor details." Give me a break. "Minor details"? Falsely accusing Lansdale of involvement in the Lumumba and Trujillo murders is not a "minor detail." Falsely accusing Lansdale of hating JFK, when in fact Lansdale liked JFK and grieved over his death, is not a "minor detail." Making the outrageous claim that Lansdale helped strip of JFK of security in Dallas by sending Prouty on a sinister diversionary trip to the South Pole is not a "minor detail." I fear it won't do any good, but let's just review some key facts about Lansdale: -- He opposed sending large numbers of American troops to South Vietnam. He had no problem with military and economic aid, but he believed that placing large number of American troops in South Vietnam was the wrong approach. -- He opposed bombing North Vietnam. -- He criticized the excessive use of force by some American military units in South Vietnam. -- He opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion. -- He even opposed most of the recommendations in the Taylor-McNamara report. -- He was bipartisan in his politics. He was neither a diehard Republican nor a diehard Democrat. -- In the Philippines, he opposed the massive use of force against Communist insurgents, just as he later did in Vietnam. Ed Lansdale was one of the last people on Earth who would have wanted any harm to come to JFK. He liked and admired JFK. He spoke with JFK at some length. And he grieved over JFK's death. It is crazy talk, downright reckless crazy talk to accuse Lansdale of having played any role in JFK's death. People who continue to peddle this slander are doing harm to the case for conspiracy and are making everyone who posits a conspiracy look bad. Again, Oliver Stone himself has repudiated Prouty's charges against Lansdale. Go read Prouty's ARRB interview. Prouty himself repudiated the claim that his mission to the South Pole was sinister or unusual. BTW, not once in his ARRB interview did Prouty claim that Lansdale was the one who sent him to the South Pole. Prouty himself admitted he had nothing to do with presidential protection. Prouty himself admitted that he could not name who in the 316th FD/112th MI Group called him, or whom he called in the 316th/112th, and he even seemed to admit that the call was probably "not authentic." And when asked to produce the notes of his call with the 316th/112th, he blandly said he no longer had them but didn't explain why (and he was lucky the ARRB interviewers did not press him to explain why in the world he would not have safeguarded notes that would have been of great historical importance if they had in fact existed). Prouty actually entertained the idea that Churchill poisoned FDR. Prouty made the bogus claim that we should stop building the F-16 because it was far inferior to the MIG-25 (the reverse was true). Prouty said Nixon was in Dallas during the assassination, when in fact Nixon left Dallas hours before the motorcade. Prouty said that a secret team may have assassinated Princess Diana. Prouty made bogus claims about George Bush and the Bay of Pigs, such as that one of the ships in the invasion was renamed "Barbara" after Bush's wife Barbara, when in fact none of the ships were renamed for the operation. Prouty claimed that KAL Flight 007 was not shot down by the Soviets but was blown up by a CIA-planted bomb. And on and on and on we could go about this crackpot.

Prouty had no "long-term relationship" with Lansdale. No, Lansdale did not send Prouty to Antarctica. Lansdale retired on 11/1/63. Prouty admitted in his ARRB interview that there was nothing sinister about his trip, that it was routine, and that he had previously worked with the group that he escorted on the trip. Prouty's official position in 1963 was not "chief of special ops." Yes, as I already mentioned, Prouty was a liaison officer between the USAF and the CIA. "Merely a pilot"? Whatever role Prouty had in writing material for NSAM 263 and other policy documents, if he had a role at all, was minor and ancillary. I doubt that he had anything to do with writing material for such documents. As for Lansdale's whereabouts on 11/22/63, why do you ask when we know that Lansdale liked and admired JFK and grieved over his death, when we know that Lansdale opposed--yes, opposed--sending large numbers of American troops to South Vietnam, etc., etc.? Anyway, Lansdale was probably at his home in DC. He had just retired from the Air Force 21 days earlier.

And I should add that MacArthur was not the only American military leader to make costly blunders in WWII. The famed Admiral Nimitz, who usually displayed superb tactical skill, made the huge blunder of wasting American lives taking Iwo Jima. As is now widely recognized, Iwo Jima was strategically and tactically worthless. The Japanese early warning radar on Iwo Jima was duplicative of the early-warning radar on Rota Island, which continued to provide the Japanese with early warning for the rest of the war. We rarely used the air base on Iwo Jima after we captured it. Iwo Jima was useless to the Army and the Marines as a staging base. There was simply no need to waste American lives taking Iwo Jima. And then there was General Buckner, who commanded the American assault on Okinawa. Despite having virtually total control of the air and sea over and around the island, along with having massive amphibious assets, Buckner opted for a dreadfully costly frontal assault on the heavily fortified Shuri Line, much to the pleasant surprise of the Japanese. Moreover, Buckner somehow failed to detect the Japanese movement to their prepared secondary defensive line behind the Shuri Line. Yet, when Buckner finally realized the movement had occurred, he once again opted for another, and even bloodier, frontal assault. A better general would have realized that the two Japanese forces on Okinawa were cut off and slowly starving. Very few supplies were getting through to them because of the U.S. Navy's blockade and American control of the air. He could have surrounded and then pinned in place the two Japanese forces with air raids, naval bombardment, and ground artillery bombardment, while securing most of the rest of Okinawa with very few losses. This would have not only saved the lives of thousands of Americans but also the lives of the thousands of civilians on the island who got caught in the crossfire, especially after the Japanese force in the south retreated to the secondary defensive line behind the Shuri Line.

I suspect that the HSCA PEP members knew or strongly suspected that the backyard photos were fake. The fact that they refused to publish the Penrose measurements for the chin says volumes. They had to know that their vanishing point analysis did not even remotely explain the impossible variations in the shadows. They outright lied about duplicating the variant shadows with the mannequin (at least McCamy admitted that the model's head was "no longer looking at the camera" when they finally got one of the shadows to fall at the required angle, but of course the backyard figure's head is looking almost straight at the camera). And on and on we could go. Several years ago, one of the PEP members emailed me after he read the first version of my article "The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos." He was quite upset by the article. But, when I asked him to explain the phony reenactment with the mannequin and the impossibly tiny distances between the background objects in the photos, he never replied.

This is downright crazy talk. It is people like you who make all conspiracy advocates look bad. So rather than face the facts about Prouty, you are actually accusing me of being another John McAdams and of peddling CIA propaganda??? Goodness gracious, that is beyond silly and absurd. How can you reach such a bizarre conclusion just because I'm pointing out the gaping holes in Prouty's claims and credibility? You should visit my JFK assassination site. Yes, I've read all of Prouty's books and have viewed every video interview of him that I could find. I notice you said nothing about Prouty's false claims. Just try to think of the matter this way: Just think how much stronger and how much less vulnerable to criticism the movie JFK would have been if it had not repeated Prouty's nutty claims? Think how much harder it would have been for critics to assail the movie if it had not repeated Prouty's absurd, discredited claims about Prouty's alleged role in presidential protection, Lansdale's allegedly sinister sending of Prouty on a supposedly diversionary trip to the South Pole, Lansdale's alleged role in stripping JFK of security in Dallas by sending Prouty to the South Pole, Lansdale's alleged hatred of JFK, Lansdale's alleged role in the murders of Lumumba and Trujillo, Prouty's alleged phone call with an officer of the 112th, and JFK's alleged intention to abandon South Vietnam after the election no matter what? If the movie had not included these false claims, just think how much harder it would have been for critics to dismiss it as "a crazy conspiracy theory film." I give Oliver Stone great credit for repudiating Prouty's claims about Lansdale. Are you going to accuse Stone of likewise peddling CIA propaganda?

The HSCA PEP was unable to duplicate the variant shadows seen in the backyard photos without markedly altering the position of the mannequin's head to the point that it bore no resemblance to the position of the backyard figure's head. The PEP's explanation for the obvious difference between Oswald's chin and the backyard figure's chin is lame. British photographic expert Malcolm Thompson didn't buy it either. Revealingly, the PEP declined to publish the Penrose measurements for the chin. To explain the charge that the backgrounds in the photos were identical, the PEP ended up proving that the backgrounds are virtually identical. The PEP did horizontal and vertical parallax measurements and, damningly, found only "very small" differences in the distances between background objects in the photos. How small? Incredibly small. Tiny fractions of an inch. When I interviewed photographic expert Brian Mee, he zeroed in on this finding as strong evidence of forgery. He noted that it was wildly implausible that a camera supposedly handed back and forth to advance the film between exposures could have produced three photos with backgrounds that were virtually identical, three photos that had such incredibly small differences in the distances between background objects. Mr. Mee scoffed at the argument that the PEP's vanishing point analysis explained the variant shadows. I discuss these and other issues in my article The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos. The full transcript of my interview with Mr. Mee can be found in my online book Hasty Judgment.

First of all, Prouty was a crackpot and a fraud. I can't believe that anyone is still defending him after all we now know about him. He did great damage to the case for conspiracy. Two, scholars very quickly realized that General Y was intended to portray Lansdale. Most average viewers probably did not realize this, but scholars certainly did, and they justifiably pounced on it as a reckless and sleazy charge. Three, once again, you can parse words about the definition of "key figure," but I think it's obvious that the film portrays him as exactly that. The film portrays General Y (1) as being tasked by the plotters to come up with a plan, (2) as playing a key role in stripping security from the motorcade by sending Mr. X on a supposedly unusual and needless mission to the South Pole. And yet you deny that he's portrayed as a key figure in the film? In the director's cut, which was released many years ago, the film also has Mr. X saying that General Y was in Dealey Plaza during the assassination. All of these charges are bogus and absurd. Lansdale had retired by early November 1963 and did not send Prouty on any unusual or diversionary mission to the South Pole. When Prouty was interviewed by the ARRB, he admitted there was nothing unusual about his trip to the South Pole. In fact, he admitted the trip was routine and not sinister at all. I notice you said nothing about the film's false claim, via Mr. X again, that Lansdale was involved in the murders of Lumumba and Trujillo. Furthermore, the film has Mr. X saying that General Y had "no love for Kennedy." That is false. Lansdale admired and liked JFK and grieved over his death. In addition, the film portrays Mr. X/Prouty as "chief of special ops" with responsibilities related to the Secret Service and presidential protection. Prouty lied about all of this. He was never actually "chief of special ops" but a team head and a liaison officer between the USAF and the CIA, and his duties did not involve presidential protection or the Secret Service. In his ARRB interview, Prouty admitted he had nothing to do with presidential protection. When the ARRB pressed Prouty about his alleged phone call with an officer of the 316th INTC Detachment/112th INTC Group, in which the officer supposedly told him that the unit had been ordered to "stand down" on 11/22, Prouty back-peddled all over Kentucky. He admitted he didn't know who had called, or whom he had called, and didn't know if the person even actually belonged to the unit. At one point he seemed to admit, in the words of the ARRB interview summary, that the call was "probably not authentic." Crucially, when the ARRB asked Prouty to produce the notes that he had repeatedly claimed he had taken of his alleged phone call with the 316th/112th, the notes that Prouty claimed in writing he had kept and quoted from ("I have kept the notes I made during that call and shall quote from them there"), he said they were "long gone." "Long gone"??? Yeah, uh-huh. He could not produce a single copy of these alleged historic, vitally important notes, nor did he explain why the notes were "long gone." How can any serious researcher believe anything this guy said?

Fair enough. I'll just go check out the other thread that you mentioned. Thanks.

I was surprised and disappointed when Obama and his fellow Democrats didn't release all the JFKA files after they won a sweeping victory in the 2008 election. They won huge majorities in Congress, and Obama won the White House. They won a 257-178 majority in the House and a 59-41 majority in the Senate.