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

[Jeff Carter]

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

BTW, my last name is Griffith, not Griffin. You can't even get simple fact straight.

You are a dream come true for lone-gunman theorists. They love it when people who posit a conspiracy in the JFK case go off the deep end with nutty claims and bizarre theories, as you do. 

You are immune to fact and logic when it comes to Prouty. You still have not provided a substantive answer to a single point I've made about Prouty's false assertions, his phony credentials, and his association with undisputed crackpots and extremists. 

Tony Ortega proved that Prouty did a lot more than just make "a few comments" about Hubbard's military records. That's a royal dodge. Ortega proved, among several other things that you ignore, that Prouty's self-proclaimed expertise in understanding military records was nonexistent, that Prouty had no clue what he was talking about. Ortega also proved that Prouty's claim that Hubbard worked in deep-cover naval intelligence was baseless and absurd. But you won't admit anything when it comes to Prouty.

And, by the way, what in the devil was Prouty doing defending such a nutcase and fraud as Hubbard in the first place? Do you know anything about what a kook and crook Hubbard was? Doesn't it raise a giant red flag in your mind that Prouty would defend a nutjob like Hubbard and would take money from the Scientology cult to do so? I guess not.

 

Attacking Prouty based on a very brief consultancy performed on the outskirts of the extremely dense and confusing universe associated with Scientology has very little relevancy other than the choice opportunity for use as an associative slur by persons already disposed to speak poorly of the man. It functions as a reputational shorthand to deter or confuse, a context-free talking point dangled inside an insult-laden prosecutor’s brief  (“crackpot” “nut job”  “kook”). It’s purpose is purely rhetorical, to spin clarifications of Prouty’s work into defences of sketchy quasi religious outfits or “sleazy extremists” or anything else which can be used as both tar and feather.  While Griffith lauds his linked article, objectively it is clear the author is personally partisanly involved with the topic, which stemmed from a factional lawsuit dating to the late ‘80s; the author relies in part on the heavily-edited Prouty Wikipedia entry; and that other non-partisan researchers have since also concluded that Hubbard’s murky military records do show a tie to naval intelligence - which is the entire rub against Prouty (for example see Levenda, Sinister Forces Vol. 1, p154).

Point being, the attacks on Prouty’s credibility basically whittle down to a very thinly-sourced foundation of half-truths and out-of-context cherry-picked quotations, buttressed by a high wall of insults and slurs. It is not a “scholarly” effort.

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

This thread belongs on the main JFKA board, because it's mainly about Prouty's critical role in exposing the truth about JFK's assassination, the CIA, and Vietnam.

If someone like Michael Griffith t-r-o-l-l-s a JFKA thread by deflecting to extraneous subjects (Scientology, etc.) should the JFKA thread be banished to a board that no one visits?

Let's recall that, other than Griffith's t-r-o-l-l posts, everything on this thread came from original JFKA board posts!

This thread is about Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, the JFK assassination, and the systematic smearing of Prouty by CIA-affiliated propagandists during the past 30 years.

Who decided that it needed to be removed from the main JFKA board?

[Joe Bauer]

10 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

This thread belongs on the main JFKA board, because it's mainly about Prouty's critical role in exposing the truth about JFK's assassination, the CIA, and Vietnam.

If someone like Michael Griffith t-r-o-l-l-s a JFKA thread by deflecting to extraneous subjects (Scientology, etc.) should the JFKA thread be banished to a board that no one visits?

Let's recall that, other than Griffith's t-r-o-l-l posts, everything on this thread came from original JFKA board posts!

I agree this thread should be back on the main forum one.

[Sandy Larsen]

bump

[Guest]

Thanks to the mods for restoring this one to a the main page. I disagree with William on lots, but, IMO this is a very valid topic. 

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/6/2023 at 7:51 PM, James DiEugenio said:

As i wrote in my article "Fletcher Prouty vs the ARRB", this unwarranted criticism of Prouty began due to his cooperation with Oliver Stone on his film, JFK in 1991.

Because Stone used Jim Garrison as his protagonist, Gerrison's book, and because of his choice to accent Vietnam, the MSM had their hatchets out for Prouty.

But worse, people in the critical community, who should have known better, took part in this.

Fletcher Prouty had many important contributions he  made to understanding the CIA and the secret government. Len Osanic's site is a good repository for this.

His insights on Vietnam, which he wrote in the eighties, are simply remarkable.  And if you have not read this articles from that period, you do not understand just how insightful  he was.

Jim, can you please email me (michael.t.griffith@gmail.com)? I need to ask you something offline. I tried to message you, but the Ed Forum software says your account can't receive messages. Thanks. 

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/7/2023 at 1:54 PM, W. Niederhut said:

If someone like Michael Griffith t-r-o-l-l-s a JFKA thread by deflecting to extraneous subjects (Scientology, etc.) should the JFKA thread be banished to a board that no one visits?

Prouty's employment with the Scientology cult and his embarrassing and bogus defense of L. Ron Hubbard are not "extraneous subjects" but speak directly to his judgment, character, and credibility. 

I just find it unbelievable that anyone is still defending Prouty after all we now know about him. 

[Steve Thomas]

I remember seeing a round table discussion once, of JFK's assassination that included John Judge and L. Fletcher Prouty along with several other people.

The topic turned to assassinations of foreign leaders and someone turned to Prouty and they asked him if he was aware of, or if he had somehow been involved with the killing of a foreign leader. He answered with only one word: Trujillo.

Steve Thomas

Edited April 11, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Jeff Carter]

53 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Prouty's employment with the Scientology cult and his embarrassing and bogus defense of L. Ron Hubbard are not "extraneous subjects" but speak directly to his judgment, character, and credibility. 

I just find it unbelievable that anyone is still defending Prouty after all we now know about him. 

Prouty was hired by a legal team to serve as an “expert witness”.

“Expert witnesses are called upon in the court system to serve as an objective party to the lawsuit and never function as an advocate for one side or the other.”

Cohen, Kenneth (2015-08-05). Expert Witnessing and Scientific Testimony : A Guidebook, Second Edition. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

[James DiEugenio]

That is correct Jeff.

Prouty's main preoccupation beginning in the seventies and lasting until his death was his writings about the shadow government.  And he was really one of the very first to expose that realm.  And he did it like almost no one else.  I will never forget reading an article of his saying how the CIA had decided to get rid of someone in the US, and how they had a directory of doctors--who they would use to conduct a medical exam--and attorneys--who they would use to argue at any inquest.

I really did not understand this and thought it was pretty far out.  Then, during the days of the ARRB, documents revealed that the CIA had a list of cleared attorneys in New Orleans who they were using against Garrison.  I thought back and said to myself, that Prouty guy really knew what the heck was going on.

 

[Michael Griffith]

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Prouty was hired by a legal team to serve as an “expert witness”.

“Expert witnesses are called upon in the court system to serve as an objective party to the lawsuit and never function as an advocate for one side or the other.”

Cohen, Kenneth (2015-08-05). Expert Witnessing and Scientific Testimony : A Guidebook, Second Edition. Chapman and Hall/CRC.

Sorry, but this won't work. Prouty did more than serve as an expert witness for Scientology/Hubbard, although that in itself was bad enough. Prouty also wrote letters attacking Hubbard's critics. As former Scientology cult member Tony Ortega has noted, "Prouty was a master of the 'noisy investigation,' and made vicious allegations against anyone who criticized Hubbard" (https://tonyortega.org/2016/09/10/laying-to-rest-the-obfuscations-of-l-fletcher-prouty-scientologys-conspiracist-for-hire/). 

Please read Ortega's article. He shows that Prouty had no clue what he was talking about regarding Hubbard's Navy personnel records. Prouty made the ludicrous claim that Hubbard served under "deep cover" in Navy intelligence and that his records were doctored to conceal this. Prouty's only "evidence" for this claim was (1) the fact that the number "16" appeared on some pages of Hubbard's records and (2) the fact that in one place Hubbard's records identified him as an "intelligence officer." But "16" simply referred to naval reservist duty, and the "intelligence officer" reference merely referred to Hubbard's work as a mail censor. 

Even worse than Prouty's work for the Scientology cult and his defense of a crook and crackpot like Hubbard was Prouty's association with Liberty Lobby, a group that promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. In my early 20s, having no clue what Liberty Lobby was, I attended a Liberty Lobby presentation in Portland, Oregon, with two friends. I realized I'd made a huge mistake when the featured speaker began to argue that the Holocaust never happened. Prouty actually served on one of Liberty Lobby's advisory boards and allowed the IHR Holocaust-minimizing Noontide Press to publish his book The Secret Team. Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me? And you're still defending this guy?

When his Liberty Lobby and IHR-Noontide Press connections came to light, Prouty, incredibly and unbelievably, claimed he had no idea that Liberty Lobby and Noontide Press were anti-Semitic and that they disputed the Holocaust! If my 20-year-old self could figure out that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic and denied the Holocaust, surely Prouty had to know this as well. If he really didn't know, this seriously calls into question his competence, judgment, and intelligence.   

Go read just a few of the issues of Liberty Lobby's weekly newspaper The Spotlight. You'll find article after article attacking the Jews, attacking Israel, claiming an international Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, claiming that the Jews controlled the American press, servings of favorable treatment of neo-National Socialist groups in Germany, etc., etc. You know how I know this? Because when I arrived at the above-mentioned Liberty Lobby meeting, having no clue what it was all about, there was a booth at the entrance that was offering free four-week trial subscriptions to The Spotlight, and I innocently signed up for my free trial. Needless to say, I declined to get a paid subscription after receiving the four free issues.

You guys keep talking about Prouty's military career and all his medals. Again, General Curtis LeMay, arguably one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of warfare, received many awards and commendations and retired as the Air Force Chief of Staff, the highest position in the Air Force. There are several Air Force buildings named after LeMay. General Hap Arnold, who ordered the brutal and criminal fire bombings of Japanese cities, and who chose LeMay to carry them out, likewise had a "distinguished military career" and received numerous medals and awards.

Or, take Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Except for a single letter of reprimand, McVeigh had a distinguished military career. McVeigh was promoted quickly, received numerous awards (including the Bronze Star and the NDSM), served in the Gulf War, was accepted for the elite Special Forces (Green Berets) school, and received an honorable discharge. 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Jeff Carter]

39 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Sorry, but this won't work. Prouty did more than serve as an expert witness for Scientology/Hubbard, although that in itself was bad enough. Prouty also wrote letters attacking Hubbard's critics. As former Scientology cult member Tony Ortega has noted, "Prouty was a master of the 'noisy investigation,' and made vicious allegations against anyone who criticized Hubbard" (https://tonyortega.org/2016/09/10/laying-to-rest-the-obfuscations-of-l-fletcher-prouty-scientologys-conspiracist-for-hire/). 

Please read Ortega's article. He shows that Prouty had no clue what he was talking about regarding Hubbard's Navy personnel records. Prouty made the ludicrous claim that Hubbard served under "deep cover" in Navy intelligence and that his records were doctored to conceal this. Prouty's only "evidence" for this claim was (1) the fact that the number "16" appeared on some pages of Hubbard's records and (2) the fact that in one place Hubbard's records identified him as an "intelligence officer." But "16" simply referred to naval reservist duty, and the "intelligence officer" reference merely referred to Hubbard's work as a mail censor. 

Even worse than Prouty's work for the Scientology cult and his defense of a crook and crackpot like Hubbard was Prouty's association with Liberty Lobby, a group that promoted Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. In my early 20s, having no clue what Liberty Lobby was, I attended a Liberty Lobby presentation in Portland, Oregon, with two friends. I realized I'd made a huge mistake when the featured speaker began to argue that the Holocaust never happened. Prouty actually served on one of Liberty Lobby's advisory boards and allowed the IHR Holocaust-minimizing Noontide Press to publish his book The Secret Team. Are you kidding me? Seriously, are you kidding me? And you're still defending this guy?

When his Liberty Lobby and IHR-Noontide Press connections came to light, Prouty, incredibly and unbelievably, claimed he had no idea that Liberty Lobby and Noontide Press were anti-Semitic and that they disputed the Holocaust! If my 20-year-old self could figure out that Liberty Lobby was anti-Semitic and denied the Holocaust, surely Prouty had to know this as well. If he really didn't know, this seriously calls into question his competence, judgment, and intelligence.   

Go read just a few of the issues of Liberty Lobby's weekly newspaper The Spotlight. You'll find article after article attacking the Jews, attacking Israel, claiming an international Jewish conspiracy to rule the world, claiming that the Jews controlled the American press, servings of favorable treatment of neo-National Socialist groups in Germany, etc., etc. You know how I know this? Because when I arrived at the above-mentioned Liberty Lobby meeting, having no clue what it was all about, there was a booth at the entrance that was offering free four-week trial subscriptions to The Spotlight, and I innocently signed up for my free trial. Needless to say, I declined to get a paid subscription after receiving the four free issues.

You guys keep talking about Prouty's military career and all his medals. Again, General Curtis LeMay, arguably one of the biggest mass murderers in the history of warfare, received many awards and commendations and retired as the Air Force Chief of Staff, the highest position in the Air Force. There are several Air Force buildings named after LeMay. General Hap Arnold, who ordered the brutal and criminal fire bombings of Japanese cities, and who chose LeMay to carry them out, likewise had a "distinguished military career" and received numerous medals and awards.

Or, take Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Except for a single letter of reprimand, McVeigh had a distinguished military career. McVeigh was promoted quickly, received numerous awards (including the Bronze Star and the NDSM), served in the Gulf War, was accepted for the elite Special Forces (Green Berets) school, and received an honorable discharge. 

credulous: having or showing too great a readiness to believe things

There is nothing even to defend here. You started on another thread by making inaccurate claims about the “JFK” film, and have followed by parroting lame associative slanders dating to the 1980s here. I am half-convinced you are in fact engaged in satire, slyly confirming Niederhut’s thread proposition by posing as exactly the sort of credulous nitwit who would refer angry partisan rants as anything substantive.

[W. Niederhut]

On 4/7/2023 at 9:49 AM, Michael Griffith said:

BTW, my last name is Griffith, not Griffin.

 

 

Michael,

    I apologize for misspelling your name.  I went back and corrected the typos.

    I must have been thinking of the talk show host, Merv Griffin, back in the day.

[W. Niederhut]

Michael Griffith is on a roll with his hyperbolic name-calling lately, and it looks like his creative slurs are not only being slung at CIA whistleblower, Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.

This week, Michael has derided James DiEugenio as "far left," and he just oxymoronically denounced me as a "close-minded ultra-liberal."

Edited April 12, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Michael Griffith]

On 4/7/2023 at 2:18 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Attacking Prouty based on a very brief consultancy performed on the outskirts of the extremely dense and confusing universe associated with Scientology has very little relevancy other than the choice opportunity for use as an associative slur by persons already disposed to speak poorly of the man. It functions as a reputational shorthand to deter or confuse, a context-free talking point dangled inside an insult-laden prosecutor’s brief  (“crackpot” “nut job”  “kook”). It’s purpose is purely rhetorical, to spin clarifications of Prouty’s work into defences of sketchy quasi religious outfits or “sleazy extremists” or anything else which can be used as both tar and feather.  While Griffith lauds his linked article, objectively it is clear the author is personally partisanly involved with the topic, which stemmed from a factional lawsuit dating to the late ‘80s; the author relies in part on the heavily-edited Prouty Wikipedia entry; and that other non-partisan researchers have since also concluded that Hubbard’s murky military records do show a tie to naval intelligence - which is the entire rub against Prouty (for example see Levenda, Sinister Forces Vol. 1, p154).

Point being, the attacks on Prouty’s credibility basically whittle down to a very thinly-sourced foundation of half-truths and out-of-context cherry-picked quotations, buttressed by a high wall of insults and slurs. It is not a “scholarly” effort.

You keep ignoring and twisting the facts about Prouty.

-- Prouty wrote letters attacking Hubbard's critics.

-- Prouty took money to appear as an "expert witness" to defend Scientology.

-- Prouty sat on an advisory board of the anti-Semitic and Holocaust-denying Liberty Lobby.

-- Prouty had a book published by a Holocaust-denying publishing company.

-- Incredibly, Prouty testified as a character witness for Willis Carto, an unashamed anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, and white supremacist, in the IHR trial. Carto founded Liberty Lobby.

-- You're citing occult writer Peter Levenda as a source for the bogus claim that Hubbard worked "deep cover" for naval intelligence???!!! Let's look at some of the bizarre books that Levenda has written:

Sinister Forces - The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft (Sinister Forces) (2005)
Gates of the Necronomicon (as Simon) (2006)
Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation (2008)
Tantric Temples: Eros and Magic in Java (2011)
The Angel And The Sorcerer (2012)
The Dark Lord: H. P. Lovecraft, Kenneth Grant, and the Typhonian Tradition in Magic (2013)
The Tantric Alchemist: Thomas Vaughan and the Indian Tantric Tradition (2015)
The Lovecraft Code (2016)
Sekret [sic] Machines: Gods (with Tom DeLonge) (2017)

Eee-gads! This is the kind of fringe writer you're citing in response to the evidence that Prouty had no clue about interpreting Hubbard's military records? And just never mind that Hubbard was a crook and an abject crackpot? Just never mind that fact?

The attacks on Prouty, far from being "thinly sourced, out of context, and cherry picked," are abundantly documented in his own writings and interviews. Let's summarize some of what we now know beyond any doubt about him:

-- He lied about his role in presidential protection.

-- He lied about the sinister nature of his trip to the South Pole.

-- When he was asked to produce the putatively historic notes that he had claimed in writing he had taken of his alleged 316th Det/112th MI Group "stand down" phone call, he lamely said they were "long gone" and offered no explanation for why he had failed to safeguard such supposedly historic notes (and, sadly, the ARRB interviewers were too polite to press him on this point). 

-- He made the slanderous claim that Lansdale was involved in the Lumumba and Trujillo murders.

-- He made the slanderous claim that Lansdale hated JFK and wanted him dead.

-- He made the bogus claim that Lansdale wanted to see a huge escalation in the American involvement in South Vietnam.

-- Without a shred of supporting evidence, he claimed that Lansdale was involved in the assassination plot and was even in Dealey Plaza on the day it happened. 

-- He said that Princess Diana may have been assassinated by "the secret team." He said he "would not be surprised" to learn that the secret team had killed Diana.

-- He approvingly quoted Stalin's nutty theory that Churchill poisoned FDR.

-- He associated with known anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and even appeared as a character witness for Willis Carto in the IHR trial. As mentioned, Carto founded Liberty Lobby and was an unabashed Holocaust denier, anti-Semite, and white supremacist. 

-- He repeatedly defended the crook and quack Ron Hubbard. He stridently attacked Russell Miller's excellent expose of Hubbard and Scientology Bare-Faced Messiah.

-- He publicly praised the cult of Scientology. 

Moderators, please, please move any threads about Fletcher Prouty to another subforum so that the JFK case is not tainted by association with this fraud and nutjob.
 

Edited April 12, 2023 by Michael Griffith