Michael Griffith

I admired Antonio Veciana for defending the CIA at the 2014 AARC conference, even though he revealed at that conference that his handler had been David Atlee Phillips. What Veciana said about the CIA was, and is, absolutely true, and his audience needed to hear it. However, if you watch the video of his presentation, you get the clear sense that his defense of the CIA did not go over well with the audience. When people get on JFK assassination forums and say extreme things like "the CIA is a terrorist organization," they risk helping to perpetuate the myth that only fringe ultra-liberals push the idea that JFK was killed by a conspiracy.

Yes, but he also spends considerable time citing and quoting Prouty. The fact that most JFK conspiracy theorists have cited and quoted Prouty, and that most continue to do so, is one of the very things that have caused most journalists and historians to reject the case for conspiracy and to embrace the lone-gunman theory. Even with all its flaws, I believe Oliver Stone's movie JFK was a vitally important and noble effort. But, the film could have been so much more credible and impactful if it had not repeated Prouty's claims.

In Prouty's book on the JFK assassination, he clearly seems to imply, or at least indicates an openness to the idea, that the "Churchill gang" killed FDR. It's really too bad that Oliver Stone relied on Prouty for information on key issues for his movie JFK. If you look at the issues that critics raised about the movie, you'll notice that many of them are claims that came from Prouty, such as the following: -- That NSAM 263 meant that JFK was going to abandon South Vietnam by late 1965 (an interpretation that is nowhere supported in the NSAM or in any of its background and associated documents, and an interpretation that was flatly rejected by RFK in April 1964). -- That Prouty's trip to Antartica was suspicious/sinister and was arranged to get him out of the way for the assassination (he back peddled on this claim in his ARRB interview and admitted the trip was not "unusual" and that it was in fact "routine"). -- That Edward Lansdale engineered the assassination and that he did so because he fiercely disagreed with JFK's Vietnam and defense policy (an utterly ludicrous and demonstrably false claim--Lansdale strongly opposed sending large numbers of combat troops to Vietnam, respected JFK, and was saddened by JFK's death; Lansdale was intensely disliked by most of the senior brass at the Pentagon because he opposed sending combat troops to Vietnam and opposed Lodge's handling of Diem, so any conspiracy that Lansdale would have attempted to organize would have found very few if any senior officers willing to join in the effort). -- That Prouty called a man whom he knew at the 112th INTC Group (316th INTC Detachment) and that during this call the man told him that the Secret Service had refused the unit's offer to help with presidential security (pressed by the ARRB, Prouty changed his story and said the man called him, although he had no good explanation for why the man would have called him, and then admitted that he didn't know anyone in that unit, that he, Prouty, had nothing to do with presidential protection schedules, and that, contrary to his earlier claims, he did not have the notes that he made during the alleged phone call).

I think it's entirely plausible that the Mafia obtained proof of Hoover's homosexuality and used it to blackmail him into largely ignoring organized crime. If this was not the case, and if he was not bribed, I would be curious to know why Hoover denied the Mafia's existence and did so little to combat it.

I read the preface and foreword and the first two chapters, because they're available free of charge as the Kindle version preview. Dr. Wecht gives the book a ringing endorsement in the foreword. The first two chapters look solid to me.

I agree. I concluded years ago that Beverly Oliver was not the Babushka Lady.

The FBI fought tooth and nail to keep the photos of the tie sealed. When Harold Weisberg finally obtained the photos (and they were top-quality photos), his suspicions about the FBI's dogged refusal to release the photos were confirmed: the photos prove that no bullet went through JFK's tie and that no bullet nicked the edge of the tie. This fact alone refutes the single-bullet theory, especially given the lone-gunman claim that the slits beneath JFK's collar were made by the exiting magic bullet. If one wants to argue that the FBI untied and then retied the tie, the first question that comes to mind is, Why would they have done that? Other questions come to mind: Surely, surely, if they were going to untie the tie, would they not have taken several photos of it before doing so to preserve a photographic record of the tie in its original configuration? Why is there no evidence that they untied and retied the tie? Why has the FBI never claimed they untied and retied the tie? If the FBI did untie and retie the tie, you can bet your 401K and IRA that if the original configuration of the tie put the nick on the edge of the knot, they would have documented this with photographs.

DLI did not start a semi-immersion program until the 1990s, and even then it's only about one-fourth of the course. I had friends who did the mini-immersion course as part of their one-year course, but no such institute-wide program existed at DLI before the 1990s. When I went to DLI the second time, 1986 to 1987, one or two of the bigger language departments were just starting an experimental two-week immersion stint where students would stay in a building for two weeks with their instructors and could only speak their target language. I remember my class talking about how we would like to do that, but our instructor said that our language department (Hebrew) was not ready to do something like that. When I went to DLI the first time, 1982-1983, there was no immersion training of any kind.

Ron, The foreign language aptitude test (called DLAB, short for Defense Language Aptitude Battery) may not have been given to Oswald when he enlisted. Usually, recruiters only arrange for recruits to take that test if they are going into a field that requires learning a foreign language. Since Oswald signed up for an MOS that did not require a foreign language, he would not have needed to take the aptitude test. I had to take the aptitude test when I was recruited because I was going into the signals intelligence field and would have to go to DLI as part of my technical training. If I had not passed the test, I would not have been eligible to go to DLI and would have had to choose a different MOS.

Here is more information on the devastating effectiveness of Operations Linebacker I and Linebacker II, as well as on the effectiveness of the naval operations that immediately preceded them. This information comes from an article titled “Operation Linebacker: The Sea-Power Factor,” by Edward Marolda, published two months ago (August 2022) on the U.S. Naval Institute’s website. Among other things, Marolda politely notes that the Linebacker attacks should have been done in 1965. It is worth repeating over and over that Linebacker II alone refutes the claim that the war was unwinnable. In just 11 days, we brought North Vietnam to the verge of collapse and made them desperate to resume peace talks in order to get Nixon to stop the bombing. We know from North Vietnamese sources that Linebacker II inflicted enormous, unprecedented damage. The closing of Haiphong Harbor alone was a severe blow because 85% of North Vietnam’s imports came through Haiphong. During Linebacker I and II, imports from China dropped by a staggering 82%, dropping from 160,000 tons per month to 30,000 tons per month. Here’s the information from Marolda’s article: Nixon concluded that because of Hanoi’s brazen aggression [i.e., the Easter Offensive], President Lyndon B. Johnson’s October 1968 prohibition against U.S. combat operations in North Vietnam was now moot. On 5 April, in Operation Freedom Train, Nixon unleashed U.S. air and naval power against targets in the North Vietnamese panhandle south of the 19th parallel. As they had in South Vietnam, Seventh Fleet cruisers and destroyers operating along the North Vietnamese coast bombarded enemy surface-to-air and antiaircraft sites, road traffic, bridges, and “WIBLICs” (waterborne logistics craft) trying to move supplies southward along the coast. On 14 April, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, authorized the Navy’s cruisers and destroyers to bombard military targets north of the 20th parallel. President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had severely limited the ability of the fleet’s surface warships to strike targets afloat and ashore, and then only those far from Haiphong. Moorer, however, knew that Nixon had decided to “take out the whole Haiphong dock area, foreign ships or no ships.” On the 16th, the USS Oklahoma City (CLG-5) and four destroyers, in conjunction with carrier squadrons, hit petroleum storage targets and coastal and antiaircraft defenses in and around Haiphong. According to one Vietnamese account, the U.S. warships could operate well beyond the range of coastal defense guns. As a result, “these shelling attacks inflicted serious losses on us without receiving any punishment whatsoever.” By October, Seventh Fleet warships had bombarded sites around Haiphong five times and by then had fired more than 111,000 rounds that destroyed enemy shore batteries, logistic traffic, and 200 coastal vessels all along the coast. In addition to carrier air attack and surface ship bombardment, the Seventh Fleet hit North Vietnam with another of its offensive assets—mine warfare. Between 0859 and 0901 on 9 May, six Navy A-7 Corsairs and three Marine A-6 Intruders flying from the Coral Sea seeded the approaches to Haiphong with 36 Mk-52 magnetic sea mines. This brilliantly conceived and expertly run operation shut down this major port, through which passed 85 percent of Hanoi’s imports, for the rest of the war. No longer would Soviet freighters brazenly steam through the Seventh Fleet area of operations loaded with military hardware for North Vietnam. Hence, in only a few minutes and without cost, the Navy completed an essential mission that Washington had failed to order since 1965. In the following days and months, as part of Operation Pocket Money, fleet aircraft sowed 11,700 more Mk-52 and Mk-36 Destructors in North Vietnam’s other ports, key river mouths, and coastal areas. Seventh Fleet units, including Marine helicopter gunships, frustrated North Vietnamese efforts to use small vessels to lighter cargo ashore from ships beyond the mined waters. The mining offensive severely impacted Hanoi’s supply situation, especially limiting the import of SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, and put heavy pressure on the rail and road routes from China. Exports from China to North Vietnam during Linebacker fell from 160,000 tons a month to just 30,000 tons. . . . The fleet unleashed even more devastating firepower on 10 May, the first day of the Linebacker I campaign, the object of which was to limit Hanoi’s ability to wage war. . . North Vietnam’s leaders were so concerned about these attacks in their nation’s heartland that they dispatched their MiG force to meet the American squadrons. That action would cost them dearly. Between 1300 and 1306, Navy F-4 Phantoms shot down six of the 11 North Vietnamese MiGs that Navy and Air Force fighters would claim that day. One author with access to North Vietnamese records has observed that for the 923rd Fighter Squadron that operated MiG-17s, “May 1972 proved to be the worst month of the entire war.” The Linebacker campaign reached a peak for the Seventh Fleet in late summer 1972, when Task Force 77 aircraft were executing as many as 4,700 attack sorties a month. Negotiations to end the war, however, broke down at the end of October. Nixon then decided to up the ante with a massive B-52 bomber and tactical air assault on North Vietnam. He told Moorer that “this is your chance to use military power effectively to win this war, and if you don’t, I’ll consider you responsible.” Energized by this call to action, the Joint Chiefs chairman designed a campaign to inflict maximum damage on the enemy’s war-making capability and convince the leaders and population of North Vietnam that Nixon meant business. Beginning on 18 December, as waves of B-52s hit targets in and around Hanoi, Seventh Fleet forces added their power to the Linebacker II campaign. The USS Midway (CVA-41), America (CVA-66), and Ranger (CVA-61) attack squadrons focused their strikes on Haiphong as Seventh Fleet surface cruisers and destroyers pummeled military targets in 24-hour operations all along the coast and inland. On 28 December, after a “maximum effort” B-52 bombing raid on Hanoi, the North Vietnamese finally agreed to meet to end the war. That gathering produced the Paris Agreement of 27 January 1973. . . . The U.S. Navy and Air Force bombing campaigns were essential to defeat of the Nguyen Hue offensive [the Easter Offensive] in South Vietnam; they seriously degraded North Vietnam’s air and coastal defenses; and put heavy military and psychological pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the fighting. (https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/august/operation-linebacker-sea-power-factor) Marolda also notes that the U.S. Navy task force “eliminated” the threat from North Vietnam’s navy: Through the sinking of enemy P-4 and P-6 torpedo boats and other combatants at sea, along the coast, and in port, the Task Force 77 carrier squadrons and surface warships eliminated the enemy’s maritime threat to the fleet. Thus, Hanoi was powerless to challenge the U.S. Navy task force except via air attacks. But whenever the North Vietnamese sent fighters to attack the task force, they suffered heavy losses and did little or no damage. In short, North Vietnam was essentially defenseless against U.S. naval bombardment, since the task force ships could shell the coastal area while staying beyond the range of Hanoi’s coastal batteries. Finally, it’s worth noting that Linebacker I and II disproved all the dire predictions that mining Haiphong Harbor and doing massive bombing north of the 20th parallel would cause Soviet and/or Chinese intervention. Intelligence Community and senior military experts advised LBJ repeatedly that it was unlikely that Russia and/or China would intervene in response to closing Haiphong Harbor and heavy bombing north of the 20th parallel, but he listened to his liberal advisors instead of his intelligence and military experts.

Well, the CIA has done many good things over the years and has contributed greatly to our national security. However, the agency's serious abuses and crimes during its first few decades of existence remain a large stain on our national honor and heritage. Has the CIA done more harm than good? On balance, all things considered, I would say no, but it's not an easy call.

I think Robert Marrow research is a black spot for the research community. He swallows Fletcher Prouty's wingnut nonsense completely. Accordingly, he supports the ludicrous theory that Edward Lansdale was the mastermind behind the assassination. This is just shameful nonsense. Lansdale respected and admired Kennedy, was grief-stricken over JFK's death, and strongly opposed sending large numbers of combat troops to South Vietnam. Most of Lansdale's CIA associates tried to sabotage him at every turn because he did not agree with their methods. Prouty's claims about the Vietnam War are just as about as erroneous and bizarre as Holocaust denialism. Incredibly, Prouty blames Lansdale for the massive migration of some 1 million North Vietnamese to South Vietnam in 1954-1955, as if the Hanoi regime's brutality and oppression had little or nothing to do with it. Of course, Prouty omits the fact that the Hanoi regime forcefully prevented 1-2 million other North Vietnamese from leaving the country during that same period. Prouty makes the even more absurd claim that the Vietcong originated from those North Vietnamese immigrants. We know from a variety of sources, including North Vietnamese and Vietcong sources, that about 98% of those immigrants were non-communists, and that about 2/3 of them were Vietnamese Catholics who fled North Vietnam's anti-Catholic persecution. Folks, go read Prouty's ARRB interview, if you want to get some idea of what a dubious character Prouty was. The ARRB asked Prouty perfectly valid questions, and, as you can see in the interview, Prouty back-peddled and ducked and dodged all over the place. I would not be surprised to learn one day that Prouty was planted in the research community to discredit the conspiracy case as much as possible. Most of the biggest flaws that critics pounced on in Oliver Stone's movie JFK were based on Prouty's erroneous claims.

DLI was not an immersion program. You went to class with native instructors 6-7 hours per day, but then you went back to your barracks and spoke English with everyone else. Your commander and your platoon sergeant were not linguists and spoke only English. All of the support staff with whom you dealt at DLI--the admin and finance staff--were not linguists and were English speakers. DLI was not like Middlebury, which is a true immersion program. Oswald's scores on the Russian language test recorded in his military records indicate that at that point--February 1959--he had an intermediate-level proficiency in Russian, a solid achievement. I seriously, seriously doubt that he could have achieved that level of proficiency merely by self-study. When I went to DLI, the average test scores for those who went through the one-year Russian course were about the same as, or not hugely better than, Oswald's scores. Russian is ranked by the military as a Category IV language, which means it is regarded as one of the hardest languages to learn. The fact that Oswald even took the Russian language proficiency test indicates to me that he was in intelligence. When I was in the military, only personnel whose foreign language was required for the MOS (military occupational specialty) were given the language proficiency test in their foreign language, and I never knew of any MOS that required a foreign language that was not in the intelligence field.

I’ve made the point that every criticism of the Vietnam War can be made of the Korean War, and that if the ‘60s and ‘70s liberals had been around in 1950-1953 to demonize the South Korean government, smear our war effort, and whitewash North Korea’s crimes, the entire Korean Peninsula would be ruled by North Korea’s cruel regime. I normally don’t quote Wikipedia, because its articles often contain substantial errors or omissions, but Wikipedia’s article on the Korean War is pretty good, and, among other things, it points out that the Korean War caused more civilian deaths in proportion to population size than did World War II or the Vietnam War; it also mentions some of the crimes committed by the South Korean government: "The Korean War was among the most destructive conflicts of the modern era, with approximately 3 million war fatalities and a larger proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War. It incurred the destruction of virtually all of Korea's major cities, thousands of massacres by both sides, including the mass killing of tens of thousands of suspected communists by the South Korean government, and the torture and starvation of prisoners of war by the North Koreans. North Korea became among the most heavily bombed countries in history." Nevertheless, virtually everyone agrees that it is a very good thing that we fought to prevent North Korea from conquering South Korea, and that during the war South Korea’s government was, for all its many faults, not as bad as North Korea’s government. And nobody but a hardcore communist would deny that South Korea eventually became a democratic nation and an economic miracle, whereas North Korea has remained a vicious gulag. The tens of millions of South Koreans and the tens of thousands of surviving Korean War veterans can just thank God that the liberals of the ‘60s and ‘70s weren’t around in the early 1950s to sabotage the Korean War effort and betray South Korea the way they sabotaged the Vietnam War effort and betrayed South Vietnam.

Let’s talk about the state of affairs in South Vietnam in 1963 and about the Buddhist protests: -- As of May 1963, Vietcong attacks had dropped by 50 percent compared to early 1962 (Leonard M. Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, Warren Publishing, 2018, reprint of 2009 edition, p. 37). The South Vietnamese army (ARVN, read as ar-vin) made solid progress against the Vietcong in early 1962 and made even better progress from July 1962 onward (Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 166-170). -- North Vietnamese sources confirm that the Diem regime was conducting an effective campaign against the Vietcong (VC) in 1963, including the fact that in 1963 ARVN recaptured “practically everything” that the VC had captured, that ARVN launched successful operations deep into Communist base areas, and that the government’s strategic hamlet program was causing “enormous problems” for the VC. Dr. Mark Moyar: Once again, North Vietnamese documents and histories corroborate the American and other foreign reports on the Diem government’s effectiveness. One North Vietnamese account stated that in the first six months of 1963, the South Vietnamese government conducted between 1,500 and 2,000 infantry operations per month, and it noted: “Protracted and large-scale operations launched unremittingly against any given region were more numerous than in the previous year.” A top-level Communist report on this period asserted that the government strengthened the rural militias and it still possessed much stronger military forces than the Viet Cong. “Due to the results attained in the recent sweeps and due to his grinding efforts to gather in the people and establish strategic hamlets,” the report acknowledged, “the enemy seized a large number of people and constricted our liberated areas, causing us many manpower and material difficulties. It also stated that the government had launched successful operations deep into Communist base areas, destroying Communist forces and disrupting Communist lines of communication that ran from North Vietnam and Laos into South Vietnam. The history of the Communists’ critical Region 5 noted that during 1963, “the enemy recaptured practically everything we had captured.” The Diem government expanded the strategic hamlet program to cover most of the hamlets in the region, causing “enormous problems” for the Viet Cong. (Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, p. 208) -- When the Diem regime finally moved against the militant Buddhist monks who were leading the protests and who were associated with the pro-Communist Buddhist monk Tri Quang, they raided a grand total of 30 Buddhist pagodas out of the 4,766 Buddhist pagodas in the country (Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, pp. 37-38; Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, p. 232). -- Of the 18 ministers in Diem’s cabinet, only five were Catholics--the rest were Buddhists or Confucianists. Of the 38 provincial governors, 26 were Buddhists or Confucianists. Of the 19 top generals in ARVN, only three were Catholics. Thus, under Diem, more than 70% of leading government officials were not Catholics. -- Far from being anti-Buddhist, Diem had proved to be a friend of the Buddhists. Diem funded the building of more Buddhist pagodas and provided funds for Buddhist schools, among other things. Dr. Moyar: Diem, in stark contrast to Ho Chi Minh, had actually done much to help Vietnam’s Buddhists. From the beginning, Diem had given the Buddhists permission to carry out many activities that the French had prohibited. Of South Vietnam’s 4,766 pagodas, 1,275 were built under Diem’s rule, many with funds from the government. The Diem government also provided large amounts of money for Buddhist schools, ceremonies, and other activities. (Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, p. 215) -- Documents captured in 1963 revealed Communist participation in the Buddhist protest movement (Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, p. 217). -- The eight Buddhists who were killed at the protest in Hue were not killed by gunfire from government troops but by the same kind of plastic bomb commonly used by the VC (Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, pp. 40-41; Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, p. 215). -- Seeking to capitalize on the Buddhist protests, the VC launched attacks in some cities. The VC focused their attacks on only four provinces, however, and took only one city, Ben Tuong (Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, pp. 246-247; Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, p. 38). As noted above, ARVN had considerable success against the VC in 1963. Yet, liberal journalists portrayed South Vietnam as being on the verge of collapse shortly before Diem was killed, and liberal scholars still repeat this myth to this day. -- LBJ later called the removal of Diem the greatest mistake of the Vietnam War. Nixon called it one of the three biggest mistakes of the war (Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, p 37). -- The VC were thrilled with the removal of Diem, viewing it as “a gift from heaven.” Nguyen Huu Tho, the leader of the VC, said, “Americans have managed to do what we could not in nine years. It is a gift from heaven” (Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, p. 39). -- Dr. Moyar notes that the Buddhist protests were driven by a few militant Buddhist leaders and that Communist agents played an extensive role in the protest movement: Diem’s critics were wrong to believe that the Buddhist protest movement of 1963 arose from popular dissatisfaction with a government guilty of religious intolerance. It was, in truth, a power play by a few Buddhist leaders whose duplicity became clear over time as they showed themselves impervious to government attempts at reconciliation and as their charges of religious persecution were disproved. These leaders had close ties to the Communists or were themselves covert Communists, and other Communist agents participated extensively in the Buddhist movement’s protest activities. (Triumph Forsaken, p. xvi) -- David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and John Paul Vann misrepresented the Diem government, the state of affairs in South Vietnam, and the Buddhist protests: In 1963, the American journalists David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan played pivotal roles in turning influential Americans and South Vietnamese against the Diem regime. Their reporting on military events was inaccurate at times, and it regularly overemphasized the South Vietnamese government’s shortcomings. Colonel John Paul Vann, a U.S. Army adviser and the central figure in Sheehan’s book A Bright Shining Lie, was more dishonest in dealing with the press than Sheehan ever acknowledged. Vann fed the journalists an extremely misleading version of the Battle of Ap Bac, one that the journalists transformed into the accepted version of the battle. Halberstam and Sheehan presented grossly inaccurate information on the Buddhist protest movement and on South Vietnamese politics, much of which they unwittingly received from secret Communist agents. (Triumph Forsaken, p. xvi) -- Vietnam War scholar Leonard Scruggs sums up the Buddhist protest issue well: The facts of the Buddhist crisis of 1963 have been largely buried and distorted by the same anti-Diem journalists who reported from Saigon in those days. They were the same New York Times, Time magazine, and Associated Press reporters who became the core disseminators of distorted anti-war propaganda right through the fall of Cambodia and South Vietnam in 1975 and continue to this day to defend a left-liberal interpretation of the Vietnam War. Marguerite Higgins, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for her Korean War writing, frequently clashed with these younger male reporters in Vietnam. She derided them as “typewriter strategists who were seldom at scenes of battle” and alleged that they “would like to see us lose the war to prove that they’re right.” (Scruggs, Lessons from the Vietnam War, p. 40)

Good heavens. Are you aware that Prouty spoke at the 1990 convention of Liberty Lobby, a far-right anti-Semitic group? Are you aware that Prouty served on a Liberty Lobby advisory board? Are you aware that Prouty sold the rights to one of his books to the publishing arm of the Institute for Historical Review, a group that has skirted dangerously close to Holocaust denialism? Are you aware that Prouty claimed that Israel's Mossad was helping to push the U.S. Government into serving the Zionist cause? Are you aware that Prouty testified in behalf of the Church of Scientology huckster L. Ron Hubbard and claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Hubbard's military records had been doctored? Are you aware that Prouty served as a senior editor for Scientology's magazine? Prouty's ARRB interview was an "ambush"? Jeremy Gunn participated in that interview; he certainly was not there to "ambush" Prouty. Anyone who reads the interview can see that Prouty royally back-peddled on many of his claims. When asked about the notes of his call with someone with/from the 316th MI unit that he had claimed--in writing--to have, he lamely said he didn't have them anymore. Prouty was forced to admit that he was never in charge of presidential protection schedules, that his trip to Antarctica was not suspicious or unusual, that he never actually worked on presidential protection, that he had no firsthand knowledge to confirm his claim that Oswald had worked in a program that Prouty had headed--and on and on we could go. Back in the '70s, Prouty made some sensational allegations about Alexander Butterfield as a CIA plant in the White House. Even the very liberal Senator Frank Church said his committee found no evidence whatsoever that supported Prouty's claims, and Prouty soon began to back-peddle on his claims. And then there is Prouty's ludicrous, shameful claim that Edward Lansdale orchestrated JFK's assassination. When the ARRB asked Prouty who had told him that one of the Tramps photos showed Lansdale with his back to the camera, Prouty refused to name the person. Prouty also made the astonishing claim that Lansdale staged the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines! I agree that Max Boot's review of JFK Revisited is ridiculous and erroneous. That review is a sad example of the fact that even solid scholars can have blind spots on some issues. Boot definitely has a major blind spot when it comes to the JFK case. However, his biography of Lansdale is, on balance, superb, enlightening, and thoroughly researched. By the way, Boot is highly critical of the CIA and the Pentagon in the book. Another example of how blind spots can cause studious, serious researchers to make erroneous claims on some issues is Howard Donahue. When it came to the ballistics and trajectory evidence relating to JFK's head wounds, Donahue was solid and insightful. He correctly noted that no FMJ bullet would have left dozens of fragments in JFK's skull, that no FMJ bullet would have deposited a fragment below the entrance wound on the outer table of the skull, and that the trajectory from the sixth-floor window was impossible for the head shot. Yet, when it came to the SBT, Donahue was totally out to lunch, just awful, strained, and lame.

I think this is a great point, very well put. Yes, indeed: If Dulles would order the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Charles De Gaulle, he would have had no qualms about ordering, or backing, JFK's assassination. And, as you say, Dulles had the added motive that JFK had fired and humiliated him. I don't think we can include John Foster Dulles, however, since he died in 1959.

You can live in your bubble if you like, but you should really not confuse apples with oranges. You're the one who appears to be living in a bubble, a liberal echo chamber. In a previous reply, you made the incredible claim that "nearly everyone knows" that the Vietnam War was wrong and unwinnable. What an astonishingly erroneous claim. No one who had done even a semblance of balanced research on the Vietnam War would make such an assertion, especially given the new information that has come to light from North Vietnamese sources over the last two decades, information that has badly embarrassed liberal scholars because it has demolished so many of their arguments. 1. While we supported the nationalists in China, we did not thrust hundreds of thousands of young American soldiers into a seemingly endless ground war. So, no, it is not the same. There are so many things wrong with this argument, it's hard to know where to start. Until Truman and Marshall treacherously cut off aid to the Nationalists, we were supplying the Nationalists with tons of weapons and supplies and with financial aid. We also had American pilots flying American planes that we had given to the Nationalists. We also had military officers advising Nationalist leaders. By 1972, we did not have "hundreds of thousands" of American soldiers in South Vietnam. For that matter, if Johnson had carried out the air operations in 1965 what Nixon carried out in 1972, the Hanoi regime would have been able to continue the war. Additionally, when the NVA launched the Easter Offensive in 1972, 99.9% of the ground fighting was done by the South Vietnamese. The Easter Offensive proved that if we merely provided air support and military aid, South Vietnam's army could not only match but defeat the NVA. There was no need for American ground troops after 1972. But, after the Paris Peace Accords, Congress slashed our aid to South Vietnam, refused to fulfill the Accords' provision that we could resupply South Vietnam on a one-for-one basis if hostilities resumed, and treasonably brazenly signaled to Hanoi that we would not respond to another NVA invasion. 2. Our support for South Korea was in league with the United Nations. And, if I'm not mistaken, there was no significant support for North Korea in the South. So, no, this is also not the same. Oh my goodness. You can't be serious. There was no "significant support" for North Vietnam in South Vietnam. The Tet Offensive proved this in spades. The vast majority of the South's population rejected the NVA and VC calls to rise up and help them overthrow the Saigon government, even in the initial days of Tet when the Communists managed to take a number of cities. The Communists were both shocked and enraged when they realized that most South Vietnamese did not want Hanoi's version of "liberation." The fact that the UN backed our support and defense of South Korea does not change the fact that every criticism that liberals made of South Vietnam's government could have been made against South Korea's government. Thank God that the liberals of the '60s and '70s weren't around during the Korean War to demonize South Korea, to whitewash North Korea, and to push for betraying South Korea to the Communists. By the way, are you aware that South Korea and Australia sent sizable forces to South Vietnam to help us battle the Communists? More than 60,000 Australian troops served in South Vietnam, and more than 300,000 South Korean troops served there. P.S. Neither myself nor anyone in my family are or were "far-left." We were a Republican pro-Reagan, pro-Nixon household up until 1972 or so, at which time my sisters and mother became anti-war--in large part because we had Marines in our house every weekend, who accepted that they could get shipped off to die any moment..for a cause they did not understand. My sisters and mother shifted further to the left as the seventies dragged on and the women's movement and anti-nuclear movements gained momentum. But my father remained a die-hard Republican until his death, and my brother was a small government Republican until Trump took away his party. Well, remarkably, the Marines who visited your house every weekend must have all been part of that tiny minority of military personnel who did not support the war. "For a cause they did not understand"??? Really??? How did those Marines who visited your house every weekend not understand that we were trying to prevent the brutal Soviet-Chinese proxy regime of North Vietnam from conquering South Vietnam? What didn't those Marines understand about that? How did they not grasp that we were trying to prevent the 18 million people of South Vietnam from having to suffer under the brutality and oppression of the Hanoi regime? By the way, after South Vietnam fell and the Communists imposed a reign of terror on the South Vietnamese, did any of those Marines ever come back to your house and say, "Gee, gosh, now we understand why we were fighting to keep South Vietnam free"? I, myself, was a huge fan of Lincoln's as a child, and always rooted for the Republicans growing up. But that changed with Watergate, and then Reagan. And yet, even so, I've remained Independent and have never registered as a Democrat. "And then Reagan"??? So a mainstream, inspiring conservative such as Ronald Reagan caused you to stop rooting for Republicans??? Clearly, you were always well left of center, regardless of which party you favored. Your comments in this thread make that very clear. Many of your arguments in this thread are literally the same arguments that North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and China made during the war.

Here is more information on the harmful, self-defeating restrictions that LBJ and McNamara placed on our air operations. This comes from Dr. Wayne Thompson’s book To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North Vietnam 1966-1973, published by the U.S. Air Force (2000) and available online: Jacob Van Staaveren’s Gradual Failure: The Air War over North Vietnam, 1965–1966 took our story through the belated attempt to destroy North Vietnam’s oil storage facilities in the summer of 1966. By then the North Vietnamese had dispersed gasoline and other oil products from tank farms to barrels scattered around the country. It was another lesson in the weakness of a gradual bombing campaign like Rolling Thunder. After eighteen months of bombing, even North Vietnam’s airfields were still largely unscathed, not to mention its principal port at Haiphong and its capital city of Hanoi. The Air Force had proposed bombing targets in all those areas at the outset with B–52s, but President Lyndon Johnson kept all air attacks well away from the major cities for months and eventually permitted only fighter aircraft to attack targets near them. No earlier president had so involved himself in the details of target selection and tactics. . . . During the long Rolling Thunder air campaign over North Vietnam from March 1965 to November 1968, Johnson con[1]fined B–52 targets in North Vietnam to supply depots and transportation routes near the border with South Vietnam and Laos. Even these marginal B–52 raids on the North did not begin until April 1966. . . . About a third of North Vietnam’s imports came down the northeast railroad from China, and most of the rest came by sea through Haiphong. Since North Vietnam imported almost all its military supplies, including gasoline, General Momyer deemed it essential to close the port of Haiphong and the rail connection with China. But Soviet ships at Haiphong caused President Johnson to worry that an international incident might lead to a wider war. [Of course, when Nixon bombed targets in Hanoi and Haiphong and mined the Haiphong Harbor, no international incident resulted. The Soviets and the Chinese were not about to risk war with the U.S. over North Vietnam.] The President refused to approve Navy bombing or mining of Haiphong harbor, and the Air Force was left to bomb the northeast railroad without much hope of making a critical difference. In any case, bridges along the route were hard to hit with unguided bombs in the teeth of heavy enemy air defenses. Johnson had not even approved striking the biggest bridges across the Red River at Hanoi and across the parallel Canal des Rapides for fear of civilian casualties. Nor were railyards promising targets without the heavy bomb loads only forbidden B–52s could carry. Trains could make a quick run from the Chinese border to Hanoi at night, skipping the intervening yards, and the downtown yard was, of course, off limits. . . . The Air Force and the Navy had sought permission to go after oil from the beginning of the war. Without gasoline, North Vietnamese trucks would be useless. But the big tank farms were in the cities of Haiphong and Hanoi, where President Johnson hesitated to do any bombing. By the time he gave the go-ahead, the enemy had dispersed gasoline around the country in drums and small underground tanks. When bombing caused the tank farms to go up in billowing flames and smoke, their significance had already been reduced to a minimum. Planes spent the rest of the summer chasing gasoline drums, while the trucks kept moving. . . . In Rolling Thunder the Johnson administration devised an air campaign that did a lot of bombing in a way calculated not to threaten the enemy regime’s survival. President Johnson repeatedly assured the communist rulers of North Vietnam that his forces would not hurt them, and he clearly meant it. Government buildings in downtown Hanoi were never targeted. Even the government’s ability to communicate was left almost untouched. . . . The U.S. response to SAMs was almost as inadequate as its failure to attack North Vietnamese airfields. In April 1965 when American reconnaissance began to observe the construction of SAM launch sites within twenty miles of Hanoi, Secretary of Defense McNamara took Assistant Secretary McNaughton’s advice and forbade attacks on the sites. . . . Since SAMs proved too mobile and antiaircraft artillery too numerous and most of the MiG fields were off limits, all three arms of North Vietnam’s air defense remained deadly. They worked increasingly well together through practice and through a growing radar-communications network. By putting SAMs and guns on or near dikes, hospitals and schools, the North Vietnamese found they could put American pilots in a no-win situation—either permit these units to fire unhampered or give the North Vietnamese the kind of publicity that could win friends in the United States and threaten a pilot’s career. . . . In such ways did North Vietnam’s rulers seek to persuade their own people, as well as Americans, that American high technology could be beaten. The U.S. government cooperated to a remarkable degree by giving Rolling Thunder a gradual, even tentative character of self-imposed sanctuaries and bombing pauses. Since the North Vietnamese took the position that they would not negotiate while they were being bombed, the Johnson administration found itself under pressure to stop bombing to prove its interest in a negotiated peace. . . . President Johnson’s prohibition on bombing near Hanoi came at the beginning of the most important North Vietnamese propaganda initiative before the Tet Offensive of 1968. TASS, the Soviet news agency, issued reports that the December 1966 bombing attacks had killed civilians in downtown Hanoi, capturing headlines in the United States and Europe. (To Hanoi and Back, pp. vii, 3, 26, 29-31, 35, 37, 44, available at https://media.defense.gov/2010/Oct/01/2001309673/-1/-1/0/ToHanoiAndBack.pdf) This is just small sample of the information in Dr. Thompson’s book. He also spends considerable time debunking the North Vietnamese/Soviet/American liberal claim that we engaged in carpet bombing and that our bombing killed large numbers of civilians who lived far away from valid military targets.

Oh, shoot! I forgot about this important factor. Yes, LBJ was about to be engulfed in a serious scandal, a scandal that Bobby was helping to fuel with leaks to selected journalists. Also, LBJ may have learned that JFK was gonna drop him from the ticket in '64 regardless of the scandal. There is some anecdotal evidence that indicates that LBJ had advance knowledge of the assassination. The plotters surely did not want to wait until LBJ was forced to resign, because JFK would have replaced him with someone who was less corrupt. According to Evelyn Lincoln, JFK was considering NC Governor Terry Sanford as his new VP. Interestingly, we know that JFK met with one of Sanford's top aides at the White House. The fact that JFK was considering Sanford is interesting because Sanford was a fiscal conservative and supported taking power from the federal government and giving it back to the states. He opposed segregation and was generally left-of-center on most issues while in the Senate, but not radically so. As a Senator, he supported a bill that would have mandated a balanced federal budget. He also voted to confirm most of Reagan's judicial nominees, including Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, although he voted against Robert Bork

Wow! What a small world! My wife and I lived in Marina both times I attended DLI. Housing in Monterey was too expensive for us. Marina was the closest place that had halfway affordable housing. In fact, we lived in a nice HUD apartment complex both times we were there. Rankin's comment is important because he does not dispute that Oswald went to DLI, but he says they're trying to find out what Oswald studied while there. When DLI moved from SF to Monterey, it was originally named the Army Language School, and the Army base that hosted it was (and still is) the Presidio of Monterey. So, Rankin's reference to trying to find out what Oswald studied at the "Monterey School of the Army" is all the more interesting. Oswald could have been sent to DLI on a temporary training assignment from his regular duty station, and if his presence at DLI was deemed classified, any reference to his time at DLI could have been omitted from his service record. Some military personnel who attend DLI are there on TDY/TAD orders, i.e., temporary orders. Once they finish their training, they go back to their regular duty station or to their next duty station.

I've read Prouty's The Secret Team. Have you read Boot's book? Good heavens, just go read Prouty's ARRB interview. Holy cow. How anyone can read that interview and still believe Prouty is a reliable source is beyond me. If Prouty had had any idea what he was talking about, he would have known that Lansdale was one of the good guys in the CIA and that Lansdale frequently disagreed with the CIA's approach and frequently clashed with his CIA bosses and peers.

You are free to keep seeing the emperor's new clothes. Your arguments simply ignore the mass of new evidence that has surfaced since the 1970s. How can you quote the autopsy report on the back wound with a straight face, given everything we now know about the report and about the extensive, prolonged probing of the back wound? Several autopsy witnesses described the repeated probing, even after internal organs were removed to give the doctors a better view and to facilitate the probing. One of the medical technicians could see the probe pushing against the lining of the chest cavity--the wound had no exit. On the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were certain the back wound was a shallow wound with no exit. But you dismiss all this evidence and choose to rely on the bogus autopsy report. Where on the autopsy x-rays is the EOP-to-right-orbit fragment trail described in the autopsy report? How did the autopsy doctors "miss" the most largest, most obvious "fragment" on the skull x-rays, the 6.5 mm object?

Hi, Leslie. Yes, I was at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, twice, from 1982-1984 (Arabic) and from 1986-1987 (Hebrew). DLI is also known as the Presidio of Monterey because that's the official name of the Army installation where DLI is located. When I began to study the JFK case and came across Rankin's comment that Oswald attended "the Monterey School of the Army," it jumped out at me because I knew from my own experience that 99% of the military people who are sent to DLI work in an intelligence field, and that no one goes there unless they receive orders to go there. I'm saying 99% just to be safe. In fact, I never knew any military person at DLI who did not work in an intelligence field.

NSAM 263 was an obvious culprit-- suspiciously reversed by LBJ, McGeorge Bundy, et.al., within a few days of JFK's murder, by NSAM 273. I used to believe this as well, but I think a closer look at NSAM 263 and related evidence casts doubt on this interpretation. Plus, if Vietnam was a major motive for the conspirators, they certainly did not act like it during the four years when LBJ and McNamara were disastrously bungling the war effort. And let's not forget about Allen Dulles and Indonesia. Yes, I think this was part of the overall Dulles-CIA factor. Destiny Betrayed describes that history quite cogently. James DiEugenio, Fletcher Prouty, John Newman, Peter Dale Scott, et.al., have made a very clear case for foreign policy reversals resulting from 11/22/63. I agree with about 85% of Destiny Betrayed. However, I would not touch Fletcher Prouty's nonsense with a 10-foot poll. He was a borderline quack, possibly even a plant in the research community. His attacks on Edward Lansdale were baseless, reckless, and downright nutty. Prouty was even more of a clown than the ARRB exposed him to be. I highly recommend historian Max Boot's highly acclaimed 768-page biography of Lansdale: The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (2018). What's truly amazing to contemplate is the highly successful, multi-year cover up of the truth about those post-JFK foreign policy reversals by LBJ and the Mockingbird mainstream media-- involving everyone from David Halberstam to Ken Burns. I certainly agree that the news media engaged in a massive cover-up about JFK's death, RFK's death, and certain CIA crimes, but I don't quite get how Halberstam and Burns could be included in the list of offending journalists. For example, Burns' "documentary" on the Vietnam War is disgraceful--it mostly parrots North Vietnamese, Soviet, and Chinese Communist propaganda about the war, although it does correct a few--just a few--of the errors/omissions in the 1983 PBS documentary on the war.