Why Col. L. Fletcher Prouty's Critics Are Wrong

[Ron Ecker]

5 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Actually, Ron, I enjoyed reading your article.  I learned something new by reading it.

But I also think it's the kind of thing that Prouty defamers like Michael Griffith will blow out of proportion.

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the article.

As for Griffith, it looks like he's at liberty to lobby against Prouty all he wants.

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

2 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the article.

As for Griffith, it looks like he's at liberty to lobby against Prouty all he wants.

 

 

LOL...🤪

[Leslie Sharp]

11 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

You know when you think about that, it is really weird, to say the least.

So many people in the government flying all over the Pacific, and no one in Washington.

No one in Washington, except the US Joint Chiefs who — with the exception of Curtis LeMay — were in meetings with German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's Bundeswehr generals, including war criminals, at the Pentagon.

As William Manchester reports in his award-winning book, The Death of a President: November 22-November 25, 1963,

. . . On Friday, November 22 in Washington DC, "Tight security was also enforced in the Pentagon's Gold Room, down the hall from McNamara, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in session with the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr [armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany]. General Maxwell Taylor, the Chiefs' elegant, scholarly Chairman, dominated one side of the table; opposite him was General Friedrich A. Foertsch, Inspector General of Bonn's armed forces. Everyone was dressed to the nines—the Germans out of Pflicht [duty], the Americans because they knew the Germans would be that way—and the meeting glittered with gay ribbons and braid. . . .

Edited April 27, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

2 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

No one in Washington, except the US Joint Chiefs who — with the exception of Curtis LeMay — were in meetings with German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's BND generals, including war criminals, at the Pentagon.

As William Manchester reports in his award-winning book, The Death of a President: November 22-November25, 1963,

. . . On Friday, November 22 in Washington DC, "Tight security was also enforced in the Pentagon's Gold Room, down the hall from McNamara, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in session with the commanders of the West German Bundeswehr [armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany]. General Maxwell Taylor, the Chiefs' elegant, scholarly Chairman, dominated one side of the table; opposite him was General Friedrich A. Foertsch, Inspector General of Bonn's armed forces. Everyone was dressed to the nines—the Germans out of Pflicht [duty], the Americans because they knew the Germans would be that way—and the meeting glittered with gay ribbons and braid. . . .

A meeting in which Taylor was informed but carried on, which at the end of he informed them, and they all caried on?

[Michael Griffith]

19 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

There were no troops in Vietnam at the time of Kennedy's death. They were classified as advisors. 

I've corrected you on this myth at least twice. There were several thousand American troops in South Vietnam who were engaged in combat operations while JFK was in office. The Special Forces/Green Beret troops in South Vietnam were most certainly "combat troops" even by the narrow, misleading definition you are using.

Nearly 200 American troops died in South Vietnam while JFK was in office (16 in 1961, 53 in 1962, and 122 in 1963). Hundreds more were wounded. JFK vastly increased the number of American military troops in South Vietnam. When he took office, there were about 900 American troops in South Vietnam. By the end of 1961, there were 3,200. By the end of 1962, there were 11,300. By the end of 1963, there were 16,300. 

What you are talking about is the fact that there were no regular infantry troops in South Vietnam. I'm not going to repeat my explanation about the essentially meaningless difference between troops who engage in combat and infantry troops. This has to do with how they are categorized by their "military occupational speciality" (MOS). Thousands of the troops who were in South Vietnam in 1963 were engaged in combat operations but were not infantry troops by MOS. In war, many troops who are not infantry troops by MOS routinely engage in combat operations, e.g., combat engineers, artillery troops, and armored troops. 

Mike, Fletcher's claims were not at all outlandish or baseless. That is pure myth.

Just read this and punch through to the links:

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

I've already read your article. It's a sad denial of reality, a misleading spin that simply ignores the indisputable fact that Prouty back-peddled on several claims he'd been making for years and exposed himself as a fraud.

I could not have written this article without the help of Doug Horne, who was there and described the perps to me.  Also Malcolm LBLunt who found the ARRB memos, and Len Osanic, who took the call from Prouty after the ambush. Len was also in contact with a relative of one of the men involved in the failed back up issue in Dallas.

Fletcher Prouty was correct on this.

So just never mind all the fraudulent claims Prouty made because a few of his claims were allegedly proven valid? And never mind his seedy, disgraceful associations? 

The other issue Prouty gave advice on was the whole Vietnam angle.  Now, to give credit where it is due, people like Peter Scott, and O'Donnell and Powers, and the Mike Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers did early work on this.  But in about 1986, Prouty wrote a long essay that, in my view at that time was the best, most complete accounting of what  really happened.  IIRC, he even had the intel deception about us winning in that article.  It was a remarkable piece of work.

Now its true that after Prouty did his consulting, John Newman came in and did some extensive help also.  But what is so striking about Prouty's article is that it presaged JFK and Vietnam pretty well.

Prouty's "advice" on "the whole Vietnam angle" was idiotic, ignorant, silly, and baseless. His Vietnam War nonsense did enormous damage to the case for conspiracy and to the credibility of Oliver Stone's movie JFK. 

As for the Pentagon Papers, I would, once again, note that they only cover events through 1967, and are a cherry-picked selection of the internal policy and status documents relating to the war. I would, once again, suggest you Dr. Robert Turner's book Myths of the Vietnam War: The Pentagon Papers Reconsidered before you make any more comments about the Pentagon Papers.

These are facts.  What you are doing is siding with the smear artists, which included the military guys on the ARRB.

No, they are not "facts." These are claims based on your paranoid far-left mindset and your refusal to deal logically and credibly with facts you don't like. If anything, the ARRB interviewers were too gentle with Prouty. They could and should have pressed Prouty on a number of issues, but did not. They should have pressed him to explain why in the world he would have discarded putatively historic notes that he had claimed in writing to have taken during his mythical "stand down" phone call with the 112th MI Group. They also should have pressed him on why he refused to identify the man who had supposedly told him that he recognized Lansdale in one of the Dealey Plaza tramp photos. 

People who present fact and truth about Prouty are not "smear artists." You are siding with a guy who was clearly a fraud, if not a genuine nutcase, and who palled around with anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and Scientology crooks. You refuse to deal with Prouty's extensive associations with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, even though those associations have been documented by the ADL and by ultra-liberal journalist Chip Berlet. Rather than deal with the reality of those associations, you actually made the ridiculous claim that Berlet is not a staunch liberal and argued that he, too, was "smearing" Prouty. Nor do you seem to care about Prouty's sleazy, pitiful defense of the Scientology cult and its criminal founder. Nor do you seem to care about his other nutty claims (Princess Diana, FDR's death, the F-16, fossil fuels, etc.).

In the early 2000s, a man who was a prominent and respected JFKA researcher called me because I had gained a level of recognition in the research community. He said he had called to get to know me and to get my views on certain issues. After about 10 minutes, he said, "Okay, I can tell that you're rational, that you're one of the sane ones." A bit surprised and puzzled, I asked why he said this. He explained that many of the JFKA researchers he'd dealt with always seemed willing to embrace "wild" and/or "nutty" claims, and that he'd called me to see if I was one of them. At the time, I didn't know what he was talking about, so I just said, "Oh, okay."

Fletcher Prouty is a clear dividing line between wild/crazy and rational/sane. Sadly, years ago you and some other JFKA researchers swallowed Prouty's nutty claims and created this gigantic myth that JFK was murdered because he was going to abandon South Vietnam after the election, and that Edward Lansdale played a key role in the plot and was even in Dealey Plaza during the shooting--and you folks are so emotionally committed to this nonsense that you can't bring yourselves to face the ugly truth about Prouty. That's the core problem here.

Edited April 27, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[W. Niederhut]

So, once again, Michael Griffith is posting falsehoods about the historical facts, while using false, defamatory terms like "nutty" to describe accurate commentaries about history (and science, in the case of the 9/11 research.)

The DiEugenio article (above) about Prouty's history speaks for itself.  It's spot on, and well documented.

There's nothing "nutty" about it.

I will point out to the forum that Griffith has also continued to avoid answering direct questions about his false statements here, while referring to accurate scientific and historical commentaries as "nutty," "deranged," "nutcase," "nutjob," etc.

These are direct quotes from his recent posts here on the Education Forum.

Doesn't this constitute a violation of Education Forum policies?

[Ron Ecker]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

A meeting in which Taylor was informed but carried on, which at the end of he informed them, and they all caried on?

Taylor was taking a break on the couch in his office when he got word that JFK had been shot. He called Secetary McNamaa out of a conference on the budget, and sent words to the Germans that he would be delayed in rejoining them. He called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs and McNamara in his office. The unified command was put on alert in case the assassination was an attempt to overthrow the government. He then rejoined the Germans, telling them of the assassination attempt but not that the president was dead. (Source: An American Soldier, by Taylor's son John M. Taylor, pp. 289-290.)

Edited April 27, 2023 by Ron Ecker

[Leslie Sharp]

5 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

Taylor was taking a break on the couch in his office when he got word that JFK had been shot. He called Secetary McNamaa out of a conference on the budget, and sent words to the Germans that he would be delayed in rejoining them. He called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs and McNamara in his office. The unified command was put on alert in case the assassination was an attempt to overthrow the government. He then rejoined the Germans, telling them of the assassination attempt but not that the president was dead. (Source: An American Soldier, by Taylor's son John M. Taylor, pp. 289-290.)

Ron, I won't derail W. Niederhut's thread on Col. Prouty any further than I have in my response to @James DiEugenio 's suggestion there was "no one in Washington" on Friday, November 22; instead, I'll launch a new thread, "JCS, the Bundeswehr, and the Pentagon, November 22, 1963"

[James DiEugenio]

Mike Griffith about me:

your paranoid far-left mindset and your refusal to deal logically and credibly with facts you don't like. 

Can I join William in objecting to this cheap, pernicious labeling? 

I have always felt that one resorts to this kind of smear when one feels one does not have the proper data to counter it.

I don't know how one can get around the facts that Bundy, Taylor and McNamara all went on the record saying that Kennedy was never sending combat troops into Vietnam.  In fact, Taylor actually admitted that it was really Kennedy who was the one man who was always against that.  

And I also do not know how one gets around the writing of NSAM 288 three months after JFK is killed, when in fact, JFK would not tolerate such plans for three years.

And my God, how does anyone compare Farmgate with Rolling Thunder, the greatest air operation since World War II over an agrarian society.  When it was all over 7 million tons of bombs went off all over Indochina.

540,000 combat troops, 58,000 dead Americans, 375,000 wounded, 5.8 million civilians killed in Indochina, and the fall of Sihanouk.

Is all the above far left paranoia? Nope, those are all facts.

We evaluate presidents not by comparing them to Mother Theresa, but in relation to other presidents.  Compared to LBJ and Nixon on Vietnam, Kennedy comes out as St. Francis of Assisi.  Why anyone would not think that is salutary truly escapes me. Especially in light of what Vietnam is. like today. 

Oh, but I forgot, that is communist propaganda.

 

[Michael Griffith]

If anyone is interested, you can read Cecil B. Currey's book on Lansdale for free on The Internet Archive website. Membership is free and quick. Once you're a member, you can check out the book and read it online for free. Here's the link:

Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American

When Prouty's paranoid, troubled mind picked Lansdale as the chief visible culprit in the JFK assassination plot, he either did not realize or did not care that Lansdale was one of the last people on Earth who would have wanted JFK removed from office. 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

When Prouty's paranoid, troubled mind picked Lansdale as the chief visible culprit in the JFK assassination plot, he either did not realize or did not care that Lansdale was one of the last people on Earth who would have wanted JFK removed from office. 

Michael, would you care to lay out your rationale as to why Edward Lansdale would not want President John F. Kennedy removed from office? Please take any relevant variables into account. 

[Ron Ecker]

Was it Prouty or someone else who wrote about how Lansdale in Vietnam would throw Vietnamese guys out of a flying helicopter if they didn't tell him what he wanted to know? I'm pretty sure it was Prouty, but anyway I've never forgotten it. What a nice guy.

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

42 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

Was it Prouty or someone else who wrote about how Lansdale in Vietnam would throw Vietnamese guys out of a flying helicopter if they didn't tell him what he wanted to know? I'm pretty sure it was Prouty, but anyway I've never forgotten it. What a nice guy.

 

 

It was Prouty, Ron.

And Prouty also said that the Currey biography of Lansdale was bunk -- a CIA propaganda piece.

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Ron Ecker said:

Was it Prouty or someone else who wrote about how Lansdale in Vietnam would throw Vietnamese guys out of a flying helicopter if they didn't tell him what he wanted to know? I'm pretty sure it was Prouty, but anyway I've never forgotten it. What a nice guy.

Oh, sheesh. Is there no ridiculous rumor or slander that you guys won't gobble up if it fits what you already want to believe?

1 hour ago, Chris Barnard said:

Michael, would you care to lay out your rationale as to why Edward Lansdale would not want President John F. Kennedy removed from office? Please take any relevant variables into account. 

I've already done that at least twice in this thread.

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, sheesh. Is there no ridiculous rumor or slander that you guys won't gobble up if it fits what you already want to believe?

I've already done that at least twice in this thread.

 

Which page? (To save me time).