America's Last President: Monika Wiesak's excellent new book

[Paul Brancato]

Thank you Jim for bringing this book to our attention. 
i watched a presentation of yours on JFK’s foreign policies, and found it very enlightening. He imagined a different world. The recent withdrawal of a letter drafted by 30 Congressional progressives urging peace talks alongside, not substituting for, military aid shows how far the ‘left’ has fallen. Apparently some staffer leaked the letter at a politically inopportune time which, to believe the news reports, caused a firestorm among the rank and file Democrats. That seems like spin to me, but whatever. Our collective ability to analyze geopolitical events is moribund. I started thinking about the Ukraine hearings during Trump’s presidency. The first take on it, which goes unnoticed because it is in the foreground, is ongoing arms sales to Ukraine, something the US does all over the globe. NATO seems to be mostly about arms sales. No one seems able to draw analogies, to imagine what it’s like to be on the wrong side of US Empire. No foreign power is arming Mexico, or Canada. But somehow arming NATO countries is just for defense against Russia, who is bound to attack if we don’t do so. Putin’s invasion proves the point. Before his aggression there were news stories about NATO’s expansion, now they have all but disappeared. Now it’s all forgotten in the fog of war. The few in Congress who dared question our policies have been muzzled. So here we are, in this incredibly dangerous situation, unable and unwilling to consider any choice other than proxy war. 
i think the biggest mistake was allowing Putin to invade. For months our military leaders were warning he was on the verge, could see the troop movements. That was the time to act, to take a stand with boots on the ground, directly in the paths of Russian troops. We knew where the entry points were, obviously. This reminds me a little of Hitler’s move into western Poland, which Britain and France did nothing to stop, despite diplomatic agreements to support Poland against such an invasion. How could Putin have been stopped? We don’t dare ask the question. It seems quite cynical to allow Ukrainians to die when it could have been avoided. I cringe listening to news reports rooting for the brave Ukrainians, not because I take Russia’s side, which I surely don’t, but because they are suffering and dying for this cause while we send them arms and root for them to win. This war could and should have been avoided.

[Michael Griffith]

Well, anyway, I will most likely get Wiesak's book, because the first two chapters, leaving aside the two issues I've discussed, are worthwhile and credible. I don't throw out the baby with the bath water, but I know that many readers will dismiss her book when they see her quoting Prouty, and that's unfortunate. 

I was impressed with her section on the letters that JFK and Joe Sr. exchanged about American intervention and so-called "appeasement" in WW II. I was especially interested to see that JFK appeared to support his father's position, urging him to frame his argument in such a way that his critics could not call him an appeaser without indicting themselves as "war mongers." Wow, that's some controversial stuff! I'll be curious to see if she develops this issue later in the book. 

This issue opens up the very touchy can of worms of FDR's handling of WW II, the issue of whether we should have considered the far more brutal Soviet Union as our main enemy and dealt with the Soviets first, and then turned our attention to toppling Hitler, and the issue of why FDR refused all Japanese peace offers (some of which were very reasonable) yet bent over backward to befriend the Soviets, who were every bit as brutal as the Japanese, if not more so. 

 

[W. Niederhut]

45 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Well, anyway, I will most likely get Wiesak's book, because the first two chapters, leaving aside the two issues I've discussed, are worthwhile and credible. I don't throw out the baby with the bath water, but I know that many readers will dismiss her book when they see her quoting Prouty, and that's unfortunate. 

I was impressed with her section on the letters that JFK and Joe Sr. exchanged about American intervention and so-called "appeasement" in WW II. I was especially interested to see that JFK appeared to support his father's position, urging him to frame his argument in such a way that his critics could not call him an appeaser without indicting themselves as "war mongers." Wow, that's some controversial stuff! I'll be curious to see if she develops this issue later in the book. 

This issue opens up the very touchy can of worms of FDR's handling of WW II, the issue of whether we should have considered the far more brutal Soviet Union as our main enemy and dealt with the Soviets first, and then turned our attention to toppling Hitler, and the issue of why FDR refused all Japanese peace offers (some of which were very reasonable) yet bent over backward to befriend the Soviets, who were every bit as brutal as the Japanese, if not more so. 

 

Do some remedial reading about Col. L. Fetcher Prouty, fella-- and the other subjects you have been schooled on in recent weeks.  Learn something new.

You continue to clutter this forum with falsehoods about Prouty, Vietnam, WWII, and the Middle East, while stubbornly refusing to educate yourself on these subjects.  You have a lot of fixed ideas that have been debunked by the facts.

Prouty remains one of the key CIA-affiliated figures in the U.S. who accurately exposed the history of CIA black ops, including JFK's assassination and the related alterations in U.S. Vietnam policy by LBJ and the Joint Chiefs after 11/22/63.  He was a co-author of the McNamara/Taylor Report behind NSAM 263.

As for WWII, my father's tank battalion (the U.S. 753rd) was involved for the duration of U.S. involvement in the European war effort in WWII-- with Patton's 5th Army invasion of Sicily, to the Italian peninsular campaign, (including the Battles of San Pietro and Monte Cassino) Operation Dragoon, then up the Rhone valley and into Germany at the war's end. 

I'm proud of my father's military service in WWII, and that of all of our American troops in WWII, including the 350,000 American soldiers who died in the European and Pacific theaters.  But I also recognize that 75 Russians died for every American killed in WWII.  75-to-1.  The Soviet Red Army was largely responsible for the defeat of the N-a-z-i Wehrmacht, and 80% of all Wehrmacht casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.  2,000,000 people died in the Battle of Stalingrad alone-- the turning point in the war.

Many Americans still don't understand that the central theater of the war in Europe was Russia.

The Western Front, including Italy, was a relatively small-scale theater, in comparison.

In fact, the Wehrmacht deployed a lot of younger and older soldiers to the Western Front, while sending their battle-hardened troops to the Russian Front.  Nor would Patton have rolled the Red Army, as the Rambo crowd seems to imagine.  Look at the sheer size of the Red Army in relation to the U.S., British, and Canadian forces at the war's end.

D-Day happened almost five years after WWII began.  Churchill was very reluctant to commit ground troops to the Continent after Dunkirk.  FDR sent our troops into North Africa and Italy-- including my father's tank battalion-- mainly in response to Stalin's repeated request for a Second Front.  The Russians had no illusions about Churchill's reluctance to open a Second Front.

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

Paul:

IMO, that story put out about the letter from the progressives being a mistake, is and I agree, pure spin.  They did not expect that furious reaction they got.  And so they tried to use some CYA.  But that is how far this has gone, you cannot even suggest a truce and peace talks.

Putin has always criticized Gorbachev for not getting the agreement about German unification linked to no further expansion of NATO in writing.  And there is probably some truth to that.

William:

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the Russian front and the defeat of Barbarrosa.  People forget that Barbarossa was the largest land invasion in history, over 3 million men.  And that does not include aircraft and armor. It was an utterly massive operation that actually set the record for speed in moving an army in one day. In fact that was a problem: the army was moving so fast the supply line could not keep up with it.  So the Russians began a scorched earth policy to slow it down.

As for Fletcher Prouty, well I have already voiced my views on this.  I think what the ARRB tried to do to him was really dirty pool.  And that the two guys who ran that counter operation--Wray and Quinn-- should have never been on the Board. And thank God for Malcolm Blunt, he was the one who fished out the documents on that one.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/fletcher-prouty-vs-the-arrb

Prouty's work on Vietnam is really important I think.  He was writing things in the eighties that presaged John Newman's 1992 milestone book on the subject.  And his insights on how the CIA works are, again, kind of visionary.  He was writing about the Agency's cleared attorneys panel before the documents were declassified.

 

Edited October 29, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

I have to say, let us not be too hard on Mike.

Mike has done a lot of good work, and I mean a lot, on the forensics in the JFK case.

His site was always valuable in its analysis and findings, and Mike has done a lot of original work on the case e.g. the BYD photos.  And his work sometimes involved him doing legwork, that is finding experts to comment on the evidence.

So though I disagree with him on some of Kennedy's foreign policy aspects, Mike was and is quite good on the criminal aspects of the JFK case. And he has been for a long time. 

Mike: is your site still up?  Can you make a link to it if it is?

[Michael Griffith]

18 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Do some remedial reading about Col. L. Fetcher Prouty, fella-- and the other subjects you have been schooled on in recent weeks.  Learn something new.

You continue to clutter this forum with falsehoods about Prouty, Vietnam, WWII, and the Middle East, while stubbornly refusing to educate yourself on these subjects.  You have a lot of fixed ideas that have been debunked by the facts.

Prouty remains one of the key CIA-affiliated figures in the U.S. who accurately exposed the history of CIA black ops, including JFK's assassination and the related alterations in U.S. Vietnam policy by LBJ and the Joint Chiefs after 11/22/63.  He was a co-author of the McNamara/Taylor Report behind NSAM 263.

As for WWII, my father's tank battalion (the U.S. 753rd) was involved for the duration of U.S. involvement in the European war effort in WWII-- with Patton's 5th Army invasion of Sicily, to the Italian peninsular campaign, (including the Battles of San Pietro and Monte Cassino) Operation Dragoon, then up the Rhone valley and into Germany at the war's end. 

I'm proud of my father's military service in WWII, and that of all of our American troops in WWII, including the 350,000 American soldiers who died in the European and Pacific theaters.  But I also recognize that 75 Russians died for every American killed in WWII.  75-to-1.  The Soviet Red Army was largely responsible for the defeat of the N-a-z-i Wehrmacht, and 80% of all Wehrmacht casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.  2,000,000 people died in the Battle of Stalingrad alone-- the turning point in the war.

Many Americans still don't understand that the central theater of the war in Europe was Russia.

The Western Front, including Italy, was a relatively small-scale theater, in comparison.

In fact, the Wehrmacht deployed a lot of younger and older soldiers to the Western Front, while sending their battle-hardened troops to the Russian Front.  Nor would Patton have rolled the Red Army, as the Rambo crowd seems to imagine.  Look at the sheer size of the Red Army in relation to the U.S., British, and Canadian forces at the war's end.

D-Day happened almost five years after WWII began.  Churchill was very reluctant to commit ground troops to the Continent after Dunkirk.  FDR sent our troops into North Africa and Italy-- including my father's tank battalion-- mainly in response to Stalin's repeated request for a Second Front.  The Russians had no illusions about Churchill's reluctance to open a Second Front.

Prouty was a crackpot who associated with wingnut extremists and who peddled ludicrous theories that greatly damaged the case for conspiracy. If you still believe his stuff, you are the one who needs to do some remedial reading. Prouty's claim that Edward Lansdale played a leading role in JFK's assassination because of JFK's Vietnam policy is obscene and absurd. Lansdale opposed--O P P O S E D--the introduction of large numbers of combat troops in Vietnam. He also happened to admire JFK and was deeply saddened by his death. 

Pray tell, what "falsehoods" have I presented about WW II? WW II??? Are you saying you don't think the Soviets were just as brutal and murderous as the Japanese? FYI, the Soviets killed far more people than Germany and Japan combined. Do you have any clue about the gigantic atrocities that the Soviets committed in Manchuria and northern Korea alone toward the end of WW II? For that matter, Stalin and his henchmen murdered some 20 million of their fellow Soviets before WW II even began. As evil and murderous as Hitler was, Stalin was worse. Many, many Americans wondered why FDR could not reach some accommodation with anti-communist Japan while he coddled and aided the far more repressive and vicious Soviet Union, and many Americans also wondered why FDR chose to fight Germany instead of Russia when Russia was clearly a bigger threat to human freedom than Germany. Did you miss the news about the Iron Curtain, about the subjugation of tens of millions of Eastern Europeans under Soviet tyranny after WW II? Did you miss the news about what the Soviets did when Hungary and Czechoslovakia tried to free themselves from Soviet domination? Ever heard of Alexander Solzhenitsyn?

Finally, I guarantee you that no one here has schooled me about the Vietnam War. The people who've responded to me on the subject appear to have done no serious reading on the war, and what little they know about it has obviously mostly come from looney far-left sources. Before I told them about it, not one of them knew anything about the historic information we've learned from North Vietnamese and Soviet sources about the Vietnam War, because the sources they've read ignore this information. Nor did any of them seem to have any clue about the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after the war, which included executing tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sending over 1 million others to concentration camps, where thousands more died from brutality and neglect. When I first mentioned this reign of terror, one of them said, "You must be talking about Cambodia." Anyone who thinks that the 1974 extremist propaganda film Hearts and Minds is a credible documentary on the war, much less "the best" documentary on the war, has no credibility and has no business talking about the subject in a public forum.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Mike:

Is your site on the JFK assassination still up?

I know you had some problems with finding a place for it.

But can you provide a link for it?

I thought it was good.

Edited October 30, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

I disagree with Mike on Fletcher Prouty.

In this article I tried to show how the caricaturing of Prouty began: 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/fletcher-prouty-vs-the-arrb

Anson should have never had this assignment since he had an ingrained bias against Stone's film due to his horrible chapter on Jim Garrison in his book.  That is really one of the worst hatchet jobs there is, which is saying something.  But Anson started this and then Epstein continued it. I replied to Epstein also.

(Click here for that one, which also has a further link in it. https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/fletcher-prouty-vs-edward-epstein) 

Fletcher was correct on the 112th declining, as he was correct on Kennedy's intent to get out of Vietnam.  Was he correct on Lansdale being in Dealey Plaza, who knows?  But even Ed's wife thought it was him according to Danny Sheehan.

I should also add, Prouty was instrumental in exposing Watergate too. He exposed McCord as a lot more than a technician in his fine book The Secret Team, and he also exposed Butterfield as being CIA.  All you need to know about Fletcher and Watergate is that McCord hated his guts. What a feather in his cap.

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[W. Niederhut]

Does anyone know where the old CIA trope about Fletcher Prouty being a "crackpot" originated?

I think I first read that nonsensical meme on a John McAdams website, after I had read Prouty's JFK and Vietnam book.  I was surprised to read it, because Prouty seemed to be the diametric opposite of "crackpot" in my professional psychiatric opinion.  He was a judicious, highly respected military officer who was ultimately promoted to serve as the U.S. Joint Chiefs Chief Liaison to the CIA.

Since then, I have seen the same McAdams "crackpot" meme used by several different people who, on questioning, have never read Prouty's books or studied his letters and commentaries.

Michael Griffith is the most recent of these misinformed Prouty defamers.

[James DiEugenio]

William:

You can make the connection from  Anson to McAdams to Epstein.

That is what started that caricature off in the first place.

McAdams was probably the worst of the three, because he was so active on line.  Him and Len Osanic would really argue over what to place in Prouty's Wikipedia entry.  They, of course, mostly sided with McAdams.

And I have always maintained this was a roundabout way of knocking Oliver Stone and his film JFK. 

Since he was the one who originally supplied Oliver with the information about Kennedy's intent to withdraw from Vietnam.

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/29/2022 at 2:02 PM, James DiEugenio said:

As for Fletcher Prouty, well I have already voiced my views on this.  I think what the ARRB tried to do to him was really dirty pool.  And that the two guys who ran that counter operation--Wray and Quinn-- should have never been on the Board. And thank God for Malcolm Blunt, he was the one who fished out the documents on that one.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/fletcher-prouty-vs-the-arrb

Prouty's work on Vietnam is really important I think.  He was writing things in the eighties that presaged John Newman's 1992 milestone book on the subject.  And his insights on how the CIA works are, again, kind of visionary.  He was writing about the Agency's cleared attorneys panel before the documents were declassified.

The ARRB did not play "dirty pool" with Prouty. Give me a break. They asked him perfectly valid questions and gave him every opportunity to explain his previous claims. In response to the valid, respectful questions they put to him, he back-peddled all over the place--about his role in presidential protection, about his trip to Antarctica, etc.--and he claimed he no longer had the notes he had supposedly made of his conversation with the MI unit that he claimed had been told to stand down for the Dallas motorcade. He was lucky that the ARRB interviewers did not press him on this issue--I certainly would have. I would have asked, "What do you mean you no longer have those notes? Why would you discard such historically important documentation?" 

You can't seriously, seriously believe Prouty's obscene claim that Edward Lansdale was a/the mastermind behind the assassination because he was angry over JFK's Vietnam policy. If you would do any reading on Lansdale in non-loon/non-wingnut sources, you would discover that Lansdale strongly opposed deploying large numbers of combat troops to South Vietnam. Heck, he even thought that we started bombing North Vietnam too soon, and he (correctly) believed that during Westmoreland's tenure we were using too much firepower in rural areas. 

Prouty's work on the Vietnam War itself is ridiculous, just ridiculous. If you ever decide to do some balanced reading on the war, you might start with responsible liberal books on the war, such as Karnow's book or Hasting's book or Daddis's book. I disagree with many of their conclusions about the war, but at least their research includes information that debunks the reckless claims made by the likes of Chomsky, Prouty, and Zinn.  Then, you might read at least two conservative/South Vietnamese books on the war, such as those written by Mark Moyar, Lewis Sorley, Ira Hunt, Phillip Davidson, James Robbins, Geoffrey Shaw, Dale Walton, Leonard Scruggs, Grant Sharp, George Veith, Mark Woodruff, Bruce Palmer, Phillip Jennings, Robert Turner, Nghia Vo, Bui Diem, and Nathalie Nguyen.

Prouty was is no position to have inside knowledge about the CIA. FYI, Lansdale fired Prouty because he was so paranoid about the CIA.

Finally, the importance of JFK's comments on his father's position on intervention in Europe in WW II appears to have escaped those who have criticized my remarks on the subject. I know you folks worship FDR and blindly rubber-stamp his horrible handling of the war, but that there were many, many millions of patriotic Americans who believed that it was a mistake to side with Stalin and that it was not an either/or situation regarding Stalin and Hitler, i.e., that opposing Stalin did not mean excusing Hitler. Many Americans felt that we should let the Germans chew up the Soviet Union and then deal with Hitler by, among other measures, supporting the substantial German opposition to Hitler. But, FDR refused to lift a finger to help the German opposition, though he was happy to give Stalin, one of the worst mass murderers in history, billions of dollars of weapons, supplies, and financial aid.

[W. Niederhut]

Geez.  Michael Griffith has, obviously, never read Prouty's book on JFK and Vietnam.  I also doubt that Michael has ever read The Secret Team or Prouty's famous 1990 letter to Jim Garrison.

Michael's tropes about Prouty all seem to come from Lansdale and CIA/McAdams disinformation sources on the internet-- e.g., the trope about Prouty being a "crackpot," a "chauffeur," an anti-Semite, etc.  It's a case of CIA character assassination/Swiftboat vetting-- repeating the defamatory lies until uninformed people believe they are true.

If Michael had read JFK and Vietnam, he would know that Prouty was a firsthand witness/participant in Vietnam who had worked directly with Lansdale at Saigon Station for years, and was intimately familiar with the history of CIA ops in Vietnam after 1954, having served as a USAF liaison to the CIA.  Obviously, the CIA relied heavily on Prouty and the U.S. military for their Vietnam ops prior to 1964.

Prouty was also intimately familiar with Lansdale's earlier ops with Magsaysay in the Phillippines, that set the stage for Allen Dulles to give Lansdale a leadership role in CIA Vietnam ops after Dien Bien Phu.

Prouty was judicious, perceptive, and sufficiently competent to eventually be promoted to a position as the chief Joint Chiefs' liaison to the CIA during JFK's administration.  Hardly a crackpot.

He served as a high level briefing officer, and co-authored parts of the Pentagon Papers and the McNamara/Taylor Report, with General Victor Krulak, which was used as the intel basis for NSAM 263.

Along with Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone, whom he consulted with, Prouty was one of the true heroes of the JFKA truth movement.

He was a man who had firsthand, personal knowledge of Ed Lansdale and CIA black ops and psy ops around the world, and became highly suspicious of numerous details about the JFK assassination op.  He was also a rare case of a person with firsthand knowledge of CIA ops who never reported to Allen Dulles or signed a CIA non-disclosure agreement.

Like Garrison and Oliver Stone, he was, obviously, targeted by the CIA for character assassination for telling the truth about JFK, the CIA, and Vietnam.

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

In that article I wrote on this issue, I used declassified memos from the ARRB focusing on Tim Wray and Dennis Quinn.  Two former Pentagon guys who went to work for the ARRB-- and later quit.  Those memos were supplied by Malcolm Blunt. I supplemented that with information from Doug Horne, who knew both of them.  Finally, I got some info from Vince Palamara on the actual actions of the Secret Service.

Mike, those two guys were wrong on the points they wanted to question Fletcher on.  That is, was there an attempt to get the 112th to supplement the Secret Service, and did the military do this kind of work in locations off military bases. Fletcher was correct on both issues. He realized how biased the panel was, and therefore due to his past experience with the Rockefeller Commission and HSCA, he decided to play around with them.  That is what he told Len Osanic when he got home that day from being questioned. This is all proven in that annotated piece.  

 Prouty did have some very interesting information about Kennedy's intent to withdraw from VIetnam and he wrote about this more than once.  Back in the eighties he wrote a landmark essay that was so detailed in nature that it kind of envisioned Newman's 1992 volume.  He wrote two interesting books, The Secret Team, and JFK, the CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy.  Many people, including the late Mort Sahl, think that the former is a classic in the literature. 

Oliver Stone will tell you that it was Prouty who originally alerted him to the information in the film about Kennedy's intent to get out of Vietnam. Which turned out to be dead on accurate.  

As I said, the people who attacked Prouty--Anson, McAdams, and Epstein--were really using him to get at Stone's film.  And I explained the reasons for this already. Epstein wrote the first book attacking Jim Garrison.  I mean, please, everyone knows who John McAdams was. And Anson had one of the worst chapters every written in a book about the New Orleans scene. 

According to Len Osanic, Prouty was not fired.  He resigned his commission because he wanted to take a job in banking.  But its interesting that people like McCord and Lansdale had it out for him.  I mean to listen to McCord on Prouty, I mean wow. 

Fletcher must have been doing something right.

 

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Well, I will try and again call attention to the book instead of arguments from people who did not read it.

She does a nice job on the Steel Crisis, which I think is kind of ignored.  That was something that Kennedy felt he had to do.  And he took a lot of heat from Wall Street about.  She uses a very neat quote from JFK on why he did it:

"Well if to stop them saying we are anti-business we are supposed to cease enforcing the antitrust laws, then I suppose the cause is lost....We cannot succeed unless they succeed.  But that doesn't mean that we should not meet our responsibilities under antitrust, or that doesn't mean when we attempt to pass a bill on taxes to prevent tax havens abroad or a flight of capital which affects our gold balances, that doesn't mean we are anti -business. It means that we have to meet our public responsibilities."

Can you imagine, Kennedy was worried about tax havens abroad back in 1962?