Is the "Lansdale Hypothesis" of the JFK Assassination the Real Deal?

[Benjamin Cole]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Which is why the shenanigans with an undetermined number of hijackers and hijackings, and four disputed crash sites, are so pesky and troublesome to an organized mind

My mind is unorganized, and I still don't understand 9/11.

[Greg Kooyman]

 

On 9/14/2021 at 3:13 PM, Paul Brancato said:

Help me out - how is this document relevant? 
 

 

I’m sorry Paul, I missed your question regarding the Roswell Gilpatric document.  You can find his reference to Ed Lansdale on pages 8 and 9 on the document.  It’s a downloadable PDF. It’s clear that Gilpatric NOT Allen Dulles was responsible for getting Ed Lansdale his promotion to General.  Roswell’s depictions of Lansdale’s reputation are very telling.  

Edited October 24, 2021 by Greg Kooyman

[Guest]

I saw a documentary this week, it talked about the face recognition technology being used in China, citing that the cameras were that good at they felt they could identify guilt on a persons face. The interesting part to me was that the cameras didn't even need to identify a person's face to ID them. It was claimed that they would only need to see the person walk from the back or side and that technology would ID them. It made me think about the Prouty/Kulac claim about Landsdale from the back. I would rate the chance of them being able to ID him by posture as pretty high, with identifying features. 

Was there any video footage of the Lansdale suspect in Dealey walking, or only stills? If so, is there any other footage of Lansdale walking in any documentaries? 

[Joe Bauer]

2 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I saw a documentary this week, it talked about the face recognition technology being used in China, citing that the cameras were that good at they felt they could identify guilt on a persons face. The interesting part to me was that the cameras didn't even need to identify a person's face to ID them. It was claimed that they would only need to see the person walk from the back or side and that technology would ID them. It made me think about the Prouty/Kulac claim about Landsdale from the back. I would rate the chance of them being able to ID him by posture as pretty high, with identifying features. 

Was there any video footage of the Lansdale suspect in Dealey walking, or only stills? If so, is there any other footage of Lansdale walking in any documentaries? 

I've been saying and promoting the same idea for years CB.

There must be some film footage of Lansdale walking somewhere. The man was in the middle of so many highest level command postings and actions. Lots of stills. Maybe hundreds?

Everything takes money however. A project like this would cost thousands.

I'd sure like to know what China's new super advanced ID technology could find regards any Lansdale presence in Dealey that day though.

 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I've been saying and promoting the same idea for years CB.

There must be some film footage of Lansdale walking somewhere. The man was in the middle of so many highest level command postings and actions. Lots of stills. Maybe hundreds?

Everything takes money however. A project like this would cost thousands.

I'd sure like to know what China's new super advanced ID technology could find regards any Lansdale presence in Dealey that day though.

 

Lets let think about the cost another way. Whoever is able demonstrate this will make thousands in article sales and potentially a book if they can make a solid case. There is a financial Incentive and the tech is there. 
 

it would be great to confirm that.

[Robert Morrow]

On 5/4/2021 at 4:33 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

Well....

We have John Newman who says the CIA was developing and building the LHO biography for a year before the JFKA, as part of the plan for the JFKA. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0M22fUKzk&t=3088s

Newman is surprisingly blunt in the film above (Killing Oswald, 2013).

So, not sure how Lansdale works with the CIA, from which he was separated at that point. 

Curiously, Landale appears to have been "against" the war effort in Vietnam. 

From Spartacus:

 

"Lansdale also argued against the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem. He told Robert McNamara that: "There's a constitution in place… Please don't destroy that when you're trying to change the government. Remember there's a vice president (Nguyen Ngoc Tho) who's been elected and is now holding office. If anything happens to the president, he should replace him. Try to keep something sustained."

It was these views that got him removed from office. The pressure to remove Lansdale came from General Curtis LeMay and General Victor Krulak and other senior members of the military. As a result it was decided to abolish his post as assistant to the secretary of defence. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for counter-insurgency work and became consultant to the the Food for Peace programme.

Lansdale continued to argue against Lyndon Johnson's decision to try and use military power to win the Vietnam War. When General William Westmoreland argued that: "We're going to out-guerrilla the guerrilla and out-ambush the ambush… because we're smarter, we have greater mobility and fire-power, we have more endurance and more to fight for… And we've got more guts." Lansdale replied: "All actions in the war should be devised to attract and then make firm the allegiance of the people." He added "we label our fight as helping the Vietnamese maintain their freedom" but when "we bomb their villages, with horrendous collateral damage in terms of both civilian property and lives… it might well provoke a man of good will to ask, just what freedom of what Vietnamese are we helping to maintain?"

Lansdale quoted Robert Taber (The War of the Flea😞 "There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbours resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert. Where these means cannot, for whatever reason, be used, the war is lost." Lansdale thought this was the situation in Vietnam and wrote to a friend that if the solution was to "kill every last person in the enemy ranks" then he was "not only morally opposed" to this strategy but knew it was "humanly impossible".

Lansdale added "No idea can be bombed or beaten to death. Military action alone is never enough." He pointed out that since 1945 the Vietminh had been willing to fight against the strength of both France and the United States in order to ensure success of their own. "Without a better idea, rebels will eventually win, for ideas are defeated only by better ideas."

 

By December 30, 1964 Lyndon Johnson  was specifically asking for men like Gen. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conein to be sent to Vietnam

 QUOTE

 On December 30, 1964, the president wrote to Ambassador Taylor suggesting that “we ought to be ready to make full use of the specialized skills of men who are skillful with Vietnamese, even if they are not always the easiest men to handle in a country team…. To put it another way, I continue to believe that we should have the most sensitive, persistent, and attentive Americans that we can find in touch with the Vietnamese of every kind and quality.” (italics added). The original draft of Johnson’s letter had included the words “of the general type of Lansdale and Conein” in place of “men who are skillful with the Vietnamese”; McGeorge Bundy must have blown a gasket and taken the names out, but the meaning remained clear.

 UNQUOTE

 [Max Boot, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam, p. 448]

 Edward Lansdale and Rufus Phillips were totally against the coup against Diem

 [“I lost my oldest friend in 2021. Rufus was the ‘good American,” Max Boot, 1-11-2022]

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/11/i-lost-my-oldest-friend-2021-rufus-phillips-was-good-american/

 QUOTE

 In a White House meeting on Sept. 10, 1963, Rufus told John F. Kennedy, “I am sorry to tell you, Mr. President, but we are not winning the war.” Rufus argued that the United States should pressure Diem to sideline his autocratic brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, by sending Lansdale back to Saigon. Instead, the Kennedy administration supported a military coup against Diem that exacerbated the instability — and led directly to a massive military intervention that Lansdale and Rufus had warned against.

 UNQUOTE

 WHOLE ARTICLE

 It was such an awful year in 2021. It was entirely fitting that it ended with the death on Dec. 29 of my oldest friend, Rufus C. Phillips III. I call him my “oldest friend” not because I had known him longer than anyone else but because he was 92 when he died of complications of pneumonia at a hospital in northern Virginia.

 Had you met him, you would never have noticed his advanced age. He was active to the end, working on a book that will come out this year from the University Press of Kansas: “Stabilizing Fragile States: Why It Matters and What to Do About It.” I have been reading it and find it a font of good sense based on the author’s firsthand knowledge not only of the war in Vietnam but also of the more recent conflict in Afghanistan.

It was because of Rufus’s role in Vietnam that I met him — and I quickly found that he was not only an invaluable source of historical insights but also a wonderful person, one of the truest gentlemen I have ever known. Meeting Rufus for the first time around 2010 helped inspire me to write a book about his mentor, the legendary counterinsurgency adviser Edward Lansdale, who helped to defeat a communist uprising in the Philippines in the early 1950s and went on to help create the state of South Vietnam in 1954-1956. I developed a close friendship with Rufus during the many hours he spent patiently answering my questions.

 As Rufus recounted in his memoir, “Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned,” he first arrived in Saigon in August 1954 as a young Yale graduate recently enlisted in the CIA. Taken under Lansdale’s wing, Rufus was given a crash course in political warfare — what would later become known, somewhat misleadingly, as the battle for “hearts and minds.” His instructions were simply to “make friends, see what they were doing, and figure out how to help.”

Against all odds, Lansdale and his small team helped the new prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, consolidate his authority against the challenges posed by both communist fighters and warlord militias. Serving as an adviser to the newly created army of South Vietnam, Rufus helped the troops in 1955 to pacify a region newly vacated by the communist-dominated Vietminh. His key advice was simply for the soldiers to treat the local people with kindness and respect — a reflection of the way that Rufus himself dealt with everyone he met.

Later, in 1962, Rufus returned to South Vietnam to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development as head of “rural affairs” — which, in effect, made him the U.S. director of counterinsurgency at a time when the communists, now known as the Vietcong, were on the march. Because he knew so many Vietnamese so well, he realized that the rosy assessments being advanced by the Pentagon bore little relation to reality — and he wasn’t afraid to say so.

 In a White House meeting on Sept. 10, 1963, Rufus told John F. Kennedy, “I am sorry to tell you, Mr. President, but we are not winning the war.” Rufus argued that the United States should pressure Diem to sideline his autocratic brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, by sending Lansdale back to Saigon. Instead, the Kennedy administration supported a military coup against Diem that exacerbated the instability — and led directly to a massive military intervention that Lansdale and Rufus had warned against.

After the publication of his memoir in 2008, Rufus was enlisted as an adviser to U.S. officials directing the Afghanistan War. He spent his 80th birthday in Kabul observing that country’s fraud-marred election in 2009. Seeing how deeply flawed the U.S. effort in Afghanistan was, as he writes in “Stabilizing Fragile States,” he became convinced that “some serious reform is needed regarding how our foreign policy apparatus works to help stabilize fragile, failed and failing states.” His new book is an important primer on the subject.

 But really all that future U.S. diplomats, military personnel and intelligence officers need to know is that they should act the way that Rufus would have. He had an inexhaustible font of decency and empathy for everyone he came into contact with. He made lifelong friends in Vietnam and everywhere else he went.

 While another legendary adviser in Vietnam, John Paul Vann, had a famously checkered private life, Rufus was a model of love and devotion to his wonderful wife of 59 years, Barbara, a top-level translator for the State Department who died in 2020. They had four children and six grandchildren — all of whom were with Rufus at the end.

Much has been written about “ugly Americans.” Rufus Phillips was the opposite. Like the aid worker Bob Gersony, who was profiled in a book by Robert D. Kaplan, he was a genuine “good American” — a gentle, decent man who served his country with humility and devotion and fearless truth-telling. Let us hope his example inspires others.

Edited February 7 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

On 5/5/2021 at 12:15 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Joe,

    I just discovered a very interesting, lengthy 2015 Education Forum thread about Lansdale, in which some data was posted about Lansdale's relationship with Charles Cabell.

   That thread had numerous detailed comments and references about Lansdale by Steven Gaal, Ron Ecker, Cliff Varnell, David Andrews, and others.   (I hadn't discovered this Forum at the time.)

    A very interesting read.

Was it Lansdale? - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com)

1955 - Gen. Edward Lansdale with a lot of people who would go on to hate JFK: Allen Dulles, Air Force Gen. Charles Cabell and I don't know how Air Force Gen. Nathan Twyning felt about JFK.

Edited February 7 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

Lansdale biographer Max Boot says that SENATOR THOMAS DODD (D-CT) was Gen. Edward Lansdale's TOP CONGRESSIONAL SPONSOR.

Oh, that is a very bad sign. Sen. Thomas Dodd, who was very close to Lyndon Johnson, hated the Kennedys with the intensity of 100 white suns. Sen. Thomas Dodd welcomed the death of John Kennedy.

Sen. Thomas Dodd of Conn (father of future Sen. Chris Dodd) was a rightwing Democrat, friend of Lyndon Johnson and a Kennedy hater. See below:

Jim DiEugenio, from “Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare, from Jan. 10, 2004:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/ed-butler-expert-in-propaganda-and-psychological-warfare

Butler's role in the assassination tale now gets even more interesting. For as Time magazine noted in its 11/29/63 issue, "Even before Lee Oswald was formally charged with the murder, CBS put on the air an Oswald interview taped by a New Orleans station last August." That night, according to New Orleans Magazine, Butler and the INCA staff churned out news releases about Oswald in order to offset the "rightist" and "John Bircher" charges flying about. Then, Senator Thomas Dodd, who ran the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, was called up by Butler. Conservative Democrat Dodd was very friendly with the CIA and was a personal and professional enemy of Kennedy, opposing him on his African anti-colonialism policy in the Congo. Dodd was out of Washington on November 22nd but booked a special flight back and announced to his staff, "I am a friend of the new administration!" Dodd then began to mimic and deride those who were bereaved over Kennedy's death. He topped it all off with this: "I'll say of John Kennedy what I said of Pope John the day he died. It will take us fifty years to undo the damage he did to us in three years."

The Pope John who Sen. Thomas Dodd is referring to:

Pope John - from Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_popes

Pope John XXIII (11-25-1881 to 6-03-1963) is who Sen. Dodd was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII

Italian. Opened the Second Vatican Council; called "Good Pope John". Issued the encyclical Pacem in terris (1963) on peace and nuclear disarmament; intervened for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962).

Sen. Dodd was on the payroll of the hard right American Security Council which was lobbying for wars against Cuba and Vietnam

          Peter Dale Scott:

QUOTE

But, as William Turner showed some years ago in his book Power on the Right, the ramifications of this milieu went far beyond the Hunt family and their FID network. Willoughby in particular was also part of the leading defense-industrial lobby, the American Security Council, along with politically active army researve officers like Lieutenant Colone Lev Dobriansky, who first brought the issue of Bogdan Stashynsky and the alleged murder training school to the attention of Sourwine and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. In the early 1960s the American Security Council was the leading public group campaigning to use military force to oust Castro from Cuba, and to escalate the war in Vietnam. Senator Dodd was on the ASC payroll when he generated the Senate subcommittee report on Stashynsky’s supposed murder training school.”

UNQUOTE

[Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, p.216]     

 

Edited February 7 by Robert Morrow

[Michael Griffith]

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

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

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

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

Edited February 7 by Michael Griffith

[Robert Reeves]

30 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

 

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

 

Or Prouty did not have Krulak's permission to publicly post the letter. Drawing a denial from Krulak when asked about an unverified private statement from himself to Prouty.

[Robert Morrow]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

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

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

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

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

I would like to put in a nice word for the Spotlight. They were absolutely obsessed with Israel's and Lyndon Johnson's intentional attempt to sink the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967, murder all 294 sailors on board and then blame the heinous crime on Egypt. It almost caused WWIII.

In other words, Zionist Jews and their absolute tool ultra–Zionist Lyndon Johnson tried to murder 294 sailors in an Operation Northwoods-style false flag attack, a mere 5 years after the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed heinous false flag operations to get us into a war with Cuba in spring, 1962. JFK turned them down and I will bet you Gen. Edward Lansdale was probably the one who was writing up Operation Northwoods for the JCS.

For more on the LBJ angle on the USS Liberty murders:

1) www.sacrificingliberty.com  - 4 part DVD documentary on the USS Liberty 

2) Joan Mellen's book Blood in the Water: Blood in the Water: How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty: Mellen, Joan: 9781633884649: Amazon.com: Books

3) Peter Hounam's 2003 Operation Cyanide - Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War Three: Hounam, Peter: 9781904132196: Amazon.com: Books 

4) Judy Morris' article on the USS Liberty, "The Most Incredible Story Never Told: LBJ's Order to Destroy the USS Liberty: https://peacelibertyprosperity.substack.com/p/the-most-incredible-story-never-told

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

2 hours ago, Robert Reeves said:

Or Prouty did not have Krulak's permission to publicly post the letter. Drawing a denial from Krulak when asked about an unverified private statement from himself to Prouty.

Oh, I think that the Krulak identification of Lansdale is legit and there are some embarrassing things that Gen. Victor Krulak did not want the public know what he thought. I think Harrison Livingstone said, screw it, I am going to ask Krulak about this and it blew up in his face with (lying) denials by Krulak.

I've learned lots of things from people who would go berserk if I publicly quoted them on what they privately told me about political figures.

[Robert Morrow]

Author Max Boot: Senator Thomas Dodd – a man who celebrated the death of JFK and who was a close friend of LBJ – was Lansdale’s top congressional sponsor in 1965

Max Boot: 

QUOTE

          Luckily for Lansdale, he did find another supporter: Senator Thomas Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, a friend of Humphrey’s, a former Nurenberg prosecutor, and a Cold War hawk who would soon experience a precipitous downfall – he would be censured by the Senate in 1967 for diverting campaign funds to personal use. (His son Christopher would later follow him into the Senate.) Dodd wrote to the president on February 23, 1965, urging the dispatch of a “special liaison group” to help the embassy in Saigon “to establish the broadest and most effective possible liaison with the army leaders, with the Buddhists, with the intellectual community, and with the Vietnamese political leaders.” Attached was a list of eight men whom Dodd suggested sending. The very first name on the list was Edward Lansdale, who “enjoys a near legendary reputation in the Far East.”

          As normally happens, this missive wound up on the desk of the Vietnam expert at the National Security Council, a post formerly filled by Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrestal and now held by CIA officer Chester L. Cooper. His reaction as both wary and weary. “I know the President sometimes must get the feeling that he is being pursued by Lansdale or, at least, by the advocates of Lansdale,” he wrote to National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. “For whatever it’s worth, I am in close contact with the General and am on the receiving end of a considerable number of ideas and projects which he and his friends have advanced. Some of these are quite interesting, and we are exploring them. It may well be Lansdale could be more effectively used than he is a present – either here or in Saigon. But Lansdale is one thing – a platoon of Lansdales is another.

          On July 27, 1965, five months after his first letter, Senator Dodd tried again, writing to the president, “Because of the grave situation in Vietnam, I again wish to urge that some consideration be given to assigning Major General Edward G. Lansdale to Vietnam.” This time, however, the response was not a curt dismissal. At the bottom of Dodd’s letter, Lyndon Johnson scrawled, “Tell him I’m going to get Lansdale out to Viet Nam.”

 UNQUOTE

 [Max Boot, The Road Not Taken, pp. 452-453]

[Sandy Larsen]

On 2/7/2024 at 9:31 AM, Michael Griffith said:

Prouty was an anti-Semitic crackpot...

 

Michael,

You shall not refer to Fletcher Prouty as either anti-Semitic or a crackpot on this forum, unless you prove it.

Associating with anti-Semitic people and organizations does not make one anti-Semitic.

The moderators will penalize you for such future remarks, if we see it or if it is reported.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

2 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You shall not refer to Fletcher Prouty as either anti-Semitic or a crackpot on this forum, unless you prove it.

 

What you may do, if you want, is to say that you think he's anti-Semitic and a crackpot. Something like that. That won't violate forum rules.