Michael Griffith

4 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Both parties "have some good ideas," eh?

Can you give us some examples of Republican "good ideas?"

Reaganomic tax cuts for billionaires?

Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?

De-funding Obamacare?

Obstructing gun control legislation?

Suppressing voting?

Sabotaging climate change mitigation?

Rolling back Clean Air and Clean Water protection?

Banning books and the teaching of true American history?

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. 

11 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

First I do believe,  like Michael and Chris, that RFK's speech problem is a big impediment to his getting elected. It will also be difficult for him to win the Presidency just as it was for Ted Kennedy unseating Jimmy Carter, unless Biden decides not to run.

 

I do applaud that he, IMO has isolated the single greatest problem in the U.S., and that  is the preeminence of the Corporate State. Only 2 other people who have run for office have made that distinction. Ralph Nader in 2000, and Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 and came to regret it as a number of people who voted like I did  made it easier for Gore to have the election stolen from him. I'll only say that as a person who doesn't believe in the electoral college and someone who actually believes Gore probably won Florida.

 

I think there were 2 basic reasons I was mistaken voting for Nader. I think it's important to say that no American politician, Republican or Democrat would have a ghost of chance of being reelected if he passively let 911 pass. The chief difference between Gore and Bush's reaction to 911 would be that Gore wouldn't have launched a major domestic surveillance spy state as Bush did and 2) Gore would never have invaded Iraq. And certainly RFK wouldn't have. These differences are historically huge. And the differences in the 2 parties  perceptions on geopolitcal strategy would not be near as clouded as it is now.

 

Even though sometimes I think Michael offers a unique perspective,and I did like his link, which does give voice to recent weather anomalies, but says it's within historical precedents and talks of the difficulties of achieving any real consensus politically on climate change goals, between have and have not nations.  I  don't agree with his' putting down of Gore's predictions in "An Inconvenient Truth" as he in fact said in 2006 that if there was no serious action taken to effect climate change in 10 years, you would start seeing very visible effects, and at least from where I live in California. It was right around 2015 that things started getting pretty crazy. As I always understood it, the climate scientists were not predicting greater frequencies of hurricanes and other various extreme weather phenomena but just more extreme incidents, like in Missouri just yesterday! To me it's unquestionable everything's going out of whack. I'm completely in RFK's corner on that, as well as the points made about ensuring clean water, rethinking food supply and the preservation of species on earth etc.. IMO, We need someone who won't just put lip service to climate change, and his anti corporate stance works hand in hand with that.

 

I don't want to misinterpret RFK's anti vax stance because I frankly don't understand it, and to me,  it's not completely clear. And  that's bad political baggage that he's just going to be continually having to stave off.  He's villainized Faucci as evil, whose not been perfect but the worst you can say with certainty about him is that he's a government bureaucrat /turned in part politician,  living in a Capitalist economic system whose had to maneuver around a President who could  see nothing beyond his desire to get re elected. And despite some people's wishful thinking. There's not going to come a day when RFK Jr.is going to suddenly look brilliant on that issue.

 

This Banon, Roger Stone connection is new to me. But both those guys are politically very smart. All of  Trump's rhetoric about the issues of protecting the border and Globalism, (which is the closest thing Trump has to an ideological base outside of his Culture War rhetoric) didn't come from Trump, but from Steve Banon. Steve Banon's stated aim is the dismantling of the administrative state, including the nation's safety net. He and Stone are smart enough to know that RFK is diametrically opposed to that. So it's obvious they are just cynically using him trying to stir up more sh-t against the government, and allow an opening for Trump to get the plurality in 2024, because their proximity and influence to Trump was their single politically greatest life achievement, and would like to see it continue.

I think they're grasping at straws, as I don't think there is any more real evidence that RFK will start a third party movement than Ted Kennedy would have in 1980. I think the Kennedy's are smart enough to know they need the Dem Party apparatus. IMO, that possibility of unseating Biden, could have been much more interesting if he didn't have the vaccine baggage.

 

I was kind of hoping for the next generation of Kennedy's because I wanted to think my generation was someday going to pass the baton, and that this story could be better told now by a younger person. But we will see if some of that Kennedy mystique is left. Either RFK Jr. or someone similar, could have the ideas whose time has come. 

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. 

15 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

As the 60th anniversary approaches, and on the heels of the recent revelation that Harlan Crow, the son of Trammell Crow —  developer of the Dallas Trade Mart which was President Kennedy's final destination on the fateful day — has been the benefactor of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and wife Ginni who participated in the attempt to overthrow our government in 2020,

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.

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

You forgot to reference the critically important primary source material on this subject (prior to 1964) by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty-- the Joint Chiefs Liaison to the CIA who worked directly with Edward Lansdale and the CIA's Saigon Station for many years, and with the JFK administration until December of 1964.

Prouty also co-authored the Pentagon Papers and the 1963 McNamara-Taylor Report.

He was a participant/observer of the history of JFK, the CIA, and Vietnam.

His work has been misrepresented and Swift-Boated-Vetted for years by CIA propagandists, after he provided firsthand witness testimony about the CIA, JFK, and Vietnam.

JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy: Prouty, L. Fletcher, Stone, Oliver, Ventura, Jesse: 9781616082918: Amazon.com: Books

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.

19 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Michael,

     I'm not going to waste any more time debunking your buzzwords and McAdams/CIA disinformation about Prouty and his long-time colleague Ed Lansdale.

    The Education Forum has already been there and done that.

    My advice to you is to educate yourself by studying our lengthy EF threads on the subject.

    The Education Forum search engine is your friend.

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. 

15 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

The degree of vitriol (“fraud”, crackpot”) is always in inverse proportion to the rather thin gruel offered as nourishment to the charges. In this case it remains a recitation of minor details as they appear in a motion picture (”JFK”) which openly engaged dramatic licence to simplify and condense complex information. That this continues thirty years after the fact is amazing.

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.

19 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

C'mon, man.

What was the nature of Prouty's long-term relationship with Ed Lansdale?

Did Lansdale tell Prouty before 11/22/63 that he would be, unexpectedly, flying to Antarctica?

What was Prouty's official position in 1963?

Was he working with the USAF and CIA as a briefing officer in the JFK administration?

Was he merely a pilot, as Lansdale later claimed?

Was Prouty involved in writing DOD material relating to NSAM 263 and JFK's Vietnam policy in the fall of 1963?

Where was Ed Lansdale in November of 1963, and what was he doing?

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. 

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Michael,

I have some related information that you might find useful since you seem to have become somewhat of an expert on this  topic.

Others might find this useful or interesting themselves.

We have a forum member named Tom Hume who I haven't seen posting in many years. I ignored most of his posts because they were generally about numerology or some other pseudoscientific nonsense. (Sorry, Tom.) But one time he said that if you take two of the BYPs and viewed them with a stereoscopic viewer, you would indeed see the background in 3D.

So I bought a cheap 3D viewer and tried it, and by golly it worked! But not in the normal way. It worked only if the two photos were rotated by 90 degree (i.e. tipped over). It was as though you were there in the back yard and could see 3D only if you had you your head tipped sideways.*

The odds of this happening by chance are very low, thus indicating a probable forgery. (The HSCA even new about this phenomenon. So why didn't they mention the probable forgery?)

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.

38 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

How many times do we have to debunk this idiotic CIA/John McAdams trope about Col. Fletcher Prouty being a "crackpot" on the Education Forum?

Michael Griffin is merely the latest McAdams-esque pontificator repeating this bogus CIA propaganda trope here.

I'm guessing that Griffin, like Rob Clark, Mark Stephens, et.al., has never read Prouty's books on JFK, the CIA and Vietnam or The Secret Team.

How many times do we have to re-direct these McAdams guys to the true facts about Prouty's career as the Joint Chiefs liaison to the CIA in 1963, his co-authorship of the McNamara-Taylor Report, his long-term collaboration with Lansdale in Southeast Asia, and his evidence-based commentaries about Lansdale?  

There is a good reason why CIA propagandists like McAdams have repeatedly attacked a whistle blower like Prouty who worked directly with the CIA for years before sharing his observations with Oliver Stone and the general public in the early 1990s.

Perhaps Griffin can tell us where Lansdale was in November of 1963, and what he was up to.

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. 

17 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

The logic of Mister X’s monologue establishes that the assembly of a sniper team,  the security stripping of the motorcade, and a subsequent cover-up were key to success of a plot, and there is no inference within the film that General Y was directly involved in these or was even elevated beyond a presumed compartmentalization of information. I would say at least 95% of the film’s audience have no idea who Lansdale was, nor come away from the film convinced that General Y was a “key figure”.  Oliver Stone has been consistent he applied dramatic licence to the Mister X sequence because it introduced a “higher level” to the movie. Much of the hysterical reaction, particularly in 1992-93, focussed on making literal small details within this sequence without allowing for the dramatic licence common within any dramatized production dealing with historic or documentary events.

Was the ID of Lansdale “reckless” or “baseless”? Prouty was part of a discussion group in the late ‘60s / early ‘70s, and a collection of “Tramp photos” was disseminated within this group. Close attention was paid to all the strange and enigmatic details within these photos. Through this process, Prouty made his observation based on his professional proximity to Lansdale extending over a decade. Having arrived at this hypothesis, Prouty - logically - sought to account for this presence and engaged in speculation but I am not aware of any formulation which concludes Lansdale was a “key figure” in an assassination plot.

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?

14 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Thanks, Mike,

Apparently you didn't follow my rebuttal of Sundberg's arguments regarding Marton via Steve Thomas's posts on a separate Ed Forum thread. I know you were in receipt of his emails last summer, as well as the Mar 24 in which he actually threatened me with a lawsuit, couched in "concern". He also advised others on that mailing list to drop any pursuit of Marton Lajos lest they are subjects of a suit as well.  I find that unconscionable professionally, but I'm intrigued Sundberg is so concerned about this line of inquiry to suggest Hank was/we are indeed onto something.
 

@Steve Thomas  subsequently (thus far) refuses to engage any further with me.  I'll track down the details I shared with Steve and post them here, but I trust you're cognizant that I wouldn't want this thread which is focused on Hank's Joannides & Lafitte in New Orleans, 1963 to be hijacked.  

If the Joannides files represent the smoking gun that Mr. Morley alluded to back in December 2021, more boldly than he ever has, one would ask why Hank's revelation wasn't taken more seriously years ago.  [Note. I've yet to identify that Hank proposed the Joannides article for wide publication other than on jfkfacts.org. He was in 'hot pursuit' of the clues Lafitte left behind and may have thought at the time that Jeff's was the best and only forum suited for the Joannides angle of his investigation.] 

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. 

2 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

I'll be happy to respond once you've provided a constructive contribution to the topic of this thread ... Hank's article — which he emailed to Jefferson Morley in December 2013, and is posted in full here — that revealed Lafitte's knowledge of George Joannides in New Orleans in August 1963, which now apparently aligns with Morley's working hypothesis, nay "The Smoking Gun?" that Joannides initiated an operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald, in New Orleans, in August of 1963.

Would you focus and answer the following: If the government records currently in dispute reflect such an operation led by Joannides, and if said records have been under lock and key and buried six feet under since November 1963, how could a lowly chef in New Orleans know that Joannides was either personally in New Orleans in August 1963, or was conferring with parties that were, and that whatever he was discussing involved Oswald, and was relevant to the interests of JC King, Charlie Siragusa, and George Hunter-White?

Oh, I agree that the Joannides stuff looks important and confirmatory. As I said, if CID is wrong about Marton and Varga, this does not mean it is wrong about everything else. It raises some serious questions, but it does not automatically invalidate the rest of CID. I'm saying that the next edition of CID definitely should address the evidence that Jeff Sundberg has brought forward regarding Marton and Varga. 

We both know that the lone-gunman apologists love to exploit a handful of errors in a work and ignore the rest of the work. They did this very skillfully with the movie JFK. I'm saying let's tighten up CID so that critics can't jump on the Marton and Varga issue and dismiss the rest of the book.

My own modest offering on the subject:

The HSCA and Fraud in the Backyard Rifle Photos

It is a sad truth that weakness and cowardice about releasing JFK assassination records has been a bipartisan problem and black mark. 

Only a relatively small number of liberal activists and libertarian Republicans have been willing to speak out on TV and radio about the cover-up and the evidence of conspiracy.

On 3/20/2023 at 5:31 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Scott Reid who did a previous interesting story for K and K, takes another look at the Walker shooting.

Really interesting is this:  the "Walker note" might not have ben about theWalker incident. 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/oswald-and-the-shot-at-walker-redressing-the-balance

Great article. Definitely worth reading. Very informative. 

I can't think of a reason that Gen. Walker would have lied about the bullet in 1979. What motive would he have had for claiming that the bullet in evidence was not the bullet he saw and handled on the night of the shooting? 

Just looking at the case ideologically, why in the world would a man who wanted Walker dead have also wanted JFK dead? A violent leftist would indeed have wanted Walker dead, but it is hard to fathom why such a person would have wanted JFK dead. 

I am not surprised by Bush Sr.'s shameful failure to nominate board members, but Clinton's long delay in nominating board members has always puzzled me. 

On 3/24/2023 at 10:44 PM, James DiEugenio said:

For the record, if you read Newman's book he did not rely on Adams for that main thesis of his.

He discovered it through Don Blaczak. (See Foreword to 2017 edition.)

Adams supplied him with others to talk to about what was going on in 1962, these were people like Bill Benedict.  (ibid)

Sam Adams was not a hack. Sam Adams stood up to all the other guys in the Pentagon who were submitting false intel estimates for Westmoreland.

CBS did a show around him, Westmoreland sued and the general lost.  Westy was forced to settle.  You can look it up.  But this was at a later interval in the war than the one Blaczak was talking about.

If you want to read a hack, read this Selverstone guy MIke exalts.  I am just about done with his excruciating book.  He more or less accused as prevaricators all those 19 people who JFK told that he was getting out.  He also says that Kennedy used NSAM 263 as a PR device.. 🤮

I wish I was kidding, but I am not. 

Sam Adams was indeed a hack, a total hack, who repeatedly issued deeply flawed analyses.

As for the CBS documentary that relied heavily on Adams' bogus claims, I strongly suggest you read the other side of the story. Westmoreland was not "forced to settle." That is long-debunked left-wing spin. 

Two readily available sources that give the other side of the story are Dr. Mark Moyar's long section on the Westmoreland v. CBS trial in his new book Triumph Regained, and Donald Shaw's article in Commentary:

Westmoreland vs. CBS - Donald P. Shaw, Commentary Magazine

Selverstone questions the accuracy of the belated claim that JFK intended to abandon South Vietnam after the election because he presents mountains of evidence that JFK had no such intention. It will be truly sad if you ignore all this evidence and repeat the discredited claim of an intended pullout and abandonment. There is a reason that this claim met with such widespread condemnation from scholars all across the political spectrum after the JFK film was released.

This dubious claim and the bizarre claim that Lansdale was a key figure in the assassination were the two flaws that critics pounced on. These two unfortunate flaws were used by many critics to dismiss the entire movie.

The best and earliest evidence on JFK and Vietnam points powerfully to the view that JFK was determined to keep South Vietnam free on his watch and that he had no intention of handing South Vietnam over to Communist tyranny. He made this clear in statements that he made literally hours before he was killed, and those statements echoed similar statements that he made in the months leading up to Dallas. Bobby himself made it clear in April 1964 that JFK had no intention of abandoning South Vietnam. 

I again point out the telling fact that McNamara said nothing, not one word, about his alleged "secret debrief" with JFK in his 1996 tell-all, mea culpa memoir. Not one syllable about it, not even in his section on JFK's withdrawal plans.  Nor did any of McNamara's worshipful, adoring aides say a word about this alleged debrief, which would have been a truly historic debrief had it actually occurred, not even in their diaries. Given what we now know about how utterly dishonest and two-faced (if not three-faced) McNamara was, I truly can't understand why anyone would use him as a source, unless he were speaking against his own interests. 

We must distinguish between a plan for conditional withdrawal and a plan for total abandonment. There is a huge difference between the two. JFK did want to withdraw from South Vietnam IF he could do so without handing over the country to the Communists. I suspect that many of the people who later claimed that JFK told them he would leave South Vietnam no matter what after the election were going beyond what JFK actually said to them. I suspect that what he actually expressed to them was his desire to withdraw from South Vietnam as soon as possible based on conditions on the ground.

In any case, the record is indisputable that JFK intended to continue to provide military and financial aid to South Vietnam even after he deemed it safe to withdraw American troops from the country. That is a far cry from total abandonment. 

On 3/30/2023 at 1:15 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

Well

Well, JFK would disagree with you. He met three times with General MacArthur to seek his advice and counsel on military matters.

Yes, I know, and it's tragic that MacArthur's advice contributed to JFK's awful blunder of agreeing to a coalition government in Laos. That terrible mistake allowed the North Vietnamese to control the southeastern part of Laos, which included their crucial supply route--the key part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail--into South Vietnam. That mistake cost many thousands of South Vietnamese and Americans their lives in the years to come. 

Ike and the Joint Chiefs correctly warned JFK that it was absolutely critical to take a stand in Laos, at least partly to prevent the Communists from using southeastern Laos as a supply conduit. But JFK, perhaps awed by MacArthur's vastly overrated military reputation, and sadly but understandably distrusting the Joint Chiefs after the Bay of Pigs debacle, ignored the Joint Chiefs' warning, even though Ike had likewise warned him that firm control of Laos was crucial. 

The Joint Chiefs damaged their credibility by their conduct before and during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but they happened to be correct about Laos. Their essential point about Laos was entirely sound, as later events painfully proved.