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

W. Niederhut · October 7, 2023

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Your willingness to ignore contrary evidence is both amazing and discrediting.

Projection.

The only "source" claiming that Chiang flew straight from Cairo to Karachi is Michael Griffith, himself.

Then, after Griffith's narrative about Chiang's putative itinerary was debunked, he moved the goalposts by blathering about Churchill's "jumpsuit" and, once again, claiming that Prouty was a "white supremacist," etc., etc.

Has anyone ever seen Griffith acknowledges his numerous debunked claims during the past year on this forum?

Rather than acknowledging his errors, Griffith simply re-posts them, ad infinitum.

Jeff Carter · October 7, 2023

Fletcher Prouty’s source for the specific presence of Chiang Kai-shek at the Teheran Conference, separate from the delegation he personally flew, was:

Gibbons, William Conrad The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part 1: 1945-1960

As noted in the publishing information provided in a 1986 reprint by Princeton University Press:

“The book was prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. It was originally published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in April 1984.”

The 1986 Princeton edition can be found on the OpenLibrary service of the Internet Archive.

On page 4, discussing views on colonialism and the approaching postwar frameworks, as discussed at Teheran, Gibbons writes:

“The British were also opposed to suggestions for lessening control over other colonies, such as Indochina, because of the possible effect on their own Empire. At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina, but Churchill was vehemently against the idea.”

Edited October 8, 2023 by Jeff Carter

Michael Griffith · October 8, 2023

13 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Fletcher Prouty’s source for the specific presence of Chiang Kai-shek at the Teheran Conference, separate from the delegation he personally flew, was:

Gibbons, William Conrad The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part 1: 1945-1960

As noted in the publishing information provided in a 1986 reprint by Princeton University Press:

“The book was prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations of the United States Senate by the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. It was originally published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in April 1984.”

The 1986 Princeton edition can be found on the OpenLibrary service of the Internet Archive.

On page 4, discussing views on colonialism and the approaching postwar frameworks, as discussed at Teheran, Gibbons writes:

“The British were also opposed to suggestions for lessening control over other colonies, such as Indochina, because of the possible effect on their own Empire. At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina, but Churchill was vehemently against the idea.”

Just shaking my head. Did it occur to you to check this claim before you ran with it? This is the kind of gaffe you commit when you don't know enough to spot bogus scholarship and when you blindly refuse to face facts about a cherished source. As anyone can readily verify, the trusteeship for Indochina was discussed and approved at the Cairo Conference, not at the Tehran Conference, and it was embodied in the Cairo Communique (aka Cairo Declaration). Google "Indochina trusteeship China Southeast Asia Manchuria Pescadores Taiwan Formosa Cairo Conference" or almost any portion thereof.

If Prouty had possessed even a basic knowledge of the Cairo and Tehran conferences, he would have recognized that his source, William Conrad Gibbons, mistakenly assigned to the Tehran Conference something that had happened at the Cairo Conference. I quote from the U.S. State Department Archive website's article "The Cairo Conference, 1943":

At the series of meetings in Cairo, Roosevelt outlined his vision for postwar Asia. He wanted to establish the Republic of China as one of his "Four Policemen." This concept referred to a vision for a cooperative world order in which a dominant power in each major region would be responsible for keeping the peace there. Weak as the Republic of China would inevitably be after the war, it would still be the major power in Asia, and it could help prevent renewed Japanese expansionism and oversee decolonization under a trustee system. Roosevelt hoped to prevent the British and the Russians from using postwar instability to increase their presence in Asia, and he advocated for Indochina to be established as a trusteeship instead of returned to France after the Japanese defeat.

To secure this future, he sought a commitment from Chiang Kai-shek that China would not try to expand across the continent or control decolonizing nations, and in return, he offered a guarantee that the territories stolen from China by Japan -- including Manchuria, the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands -- would be returned to Chinese sovereignty. Roosevelt also sought and gained Chiang's support for his proposal to create a trusteeship for the colonial territories after the war; in the end, this idea failed to gain the support of the British or French and was not enacted. (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm).

By the way, in Tehran and then at Yalta, FDR abandoned his pledge to restore Manchuria, Taiwan (Formosa), and the Pescadores to China after the war, in order to appease Stalin. Anyway. . ..

Gibbons' error was really inexcusable, especially for someone pretending to be an authority on the subject. That said, perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR did mention, in passing, the Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but he did so in the context of a discussion about pre-war French holdings in Indochina and by stating that he had already discussed Indochina trusteeship with Chiang Kai-shek. From the Bohlen minutes of the Tehran Conference:

The President said that he had had an interesting conversation with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, on the general subject of China. . . .

He added that he had discussed with Chiang Kai-shek the possibility of a system of trusteeship for Indochina which would have the task of preparing the people for independence within a definite period of time, perhaps 20 to 30 years. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d358)

Other than this one reference, you won't find any mention of an Indochina trusteeship in the Tehran Conference minutes; they talked about Indochina in terms of the military situation and regarding the Cairo Communique, but only once mentioned an Indochina trusteeship (e.g., https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ADFRXSHIYSKS2S8Z/pages/ANSP74UNEP7N6Q8S?as=text&view=scroll).

Or perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR sought Stalin's approval of the Cairo Communique. Asia scholar Mark Caprio:

In Cairo, Roosevelt met with two other Allied leaders, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, to discuss wartime strategy. He and Churchill would later meet with Stalin in Tehran, Iran immediately following the Cairo meeting to engage the Soviet leader in similar discussions, as well as to gain his consent of the Cairo Communiqué’s contents. . . .

As mentioned above, in Tehran, the Soviet leader was briefed on the discussions held in Cairo, and asked his views on the Communiqué’s content. ("Misinterpretations of the 1943 Cairo Conference," International Journal of Korean History, February 2022, https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=559)

On his way back from Yalta, FDR held a press conference 2/23/45 and mentioned that he had discussed Indochina with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and with Stalin in Tehran:

THE PRESIDENT: For two whole years I have been terribly worried about Indo-China. I talked to Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, Stalin in Teheran. They both agreed with me. The French have been in there some hundred years. The Indo-Chinese are not like the Chinese. (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/excerpts-from-the-press-conference-aboard-the-uss-quincy-en-route-from-yalta)

Professor Zhu Shaokang's book The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit documents that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference. It addresses the erroneous press report that Chiang was going to meet Stalin and explains how the report originated. Indeed, Shaokang discusses the fact that Chiang was determined to avoid meeting with Stalin, and that Stalin was equally adamant against the idea of meeting with Chiang (pp. 314-318)!

You can read these facts in the large extract from the book available online here: https://www.fhk.ndu.edu.tw/site/main/upload/6862ac282432fc1fde400aa74f317621/journal/81-12.pdf.

18 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Projection.

The only "source" claiming that Chiang flew straight from Cairo to Karachi is Michael Griffith, himself.

Then, after Griffith's narrative about Chiang's putative itinerary was debunked, he moved the goalposts by blathering about Churchill's "jumpsuit" and, once again, claiming that Prouty was a "white supremacist," etc., etc.

Has anyone ever seen Griffith acknowledges his numerous debunked claims during the past year on this forum?

Rather than acknowledging his errors, Griffith simply re-posts them, ad infinitum.

I think objective readers will see that you are actually describing your own conduct, that you have no answer for the evidence I've presented to you.

It is not "moving the goalposts" to point out obvious blunders in Prouty's cockamamie tale about the fictional Chinese presence at the Tehran Conference. You will never find a picture of a military jumpsuit that had no pockets, because no such jumpsuit was ever made (or ever will be made). Similarly, pointing out Prouty's fiction that at Tehran, FDR and Stalin made an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down is not "moving the goalposts" but is highlighting an obvious fabrication. I've already noted that the extensive records of the Tehran Conference, including the list of agreements, say nothing about any such agreement.

And let's be clear: Prouty did not just claim that Chinese delegates attended the Tehran Conference but that Chiang and his wife also attended. I quote from his embarrassing book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy:

First of all, most historians doubt that Chiang and his wife actually attended the conference in Tehran. I can confirm that they did, because I was the pilot of the plane that flew Chiang's delegates to Tehran. Chiang and his wife traveled either with Roosevelt or in another U.S. military aircraft. (p. 14)

How can you take this nonsense seriously? Why would the Chiangs have flown on a different plane? Why does not a single record from the Tehran Conference say anything about Chiang and his delegation being in attendance? Why would Chiang not have mentioned in his diary what would have been his historic presence at the conference? Why didn't Madame Chiang mention this momentous presence in her private letter to FDR, which she wrote just days after she returned to Chungking?

Other reasonable and damning questions: Why didn't Elliott Roosevelt say anything about seeing any Chinese delegates at the conference or at Habanaya Airport? Why would Prouty have needed to stop at Habanaya to refuel if he was flying a Lockheed Lodestar, which had a range of 1,600 miles? Why didn't Sarah Churchill say anything about her father being delayed at a Soviet checkpoint, while he was quite sick no less, because, gee, he supposedly not only had no ID on him, due to his wearing a pocketless jumpsuit, but none of his staffers had his ID either?! I mean, sheesh, this is WINGNUT material.

You embarrass yourself when you claim that you have "debunked" my "putative itinerary" for Chiang and his group. When you first attacked the evidence I presented that Chiang and his group did not fly to Tehran, you somehow missed the Karachi stop. But, once I pointed out your oversight, you insisted that Chiang still could have made the secret trip that escaped everyone's notice!

And I would again point out that your dubious 36-hour window requires that the Karachi visit occurred on 11/29, and that even if we assume this was the case, you cannot identify a time slot when Stalin and Chiang could have met, given the very detailed information we have about Stalin's whereabouts and activities during the conference.

This is on top of the fact that you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference, whereas I can cite all the official records of the conference and literally dozens of historians that confirm the fact that there was no Chinese presence at the conference, much less Chiang himself.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Michael Griffith

Jeff Carter · October 8, 2023

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Just shaking my head. Did it occur to you to check this claim before you ran with it? This is the kind of gaffe you commit when you don't know enough to spot bogus scholarship and when you blindly refuse to face facts about a cherished source. As anyone can readily verify, the trusteeship for Indochina was discussed and approved at the Cairo Conference, not at the Tehran Conference, and it was embodied in the Cairo Communique (aka Cairo Declaration). Google "Indochina trusteeship China Southeast Asia Manchuria Pescadores Taiwan Formosa Cairo Conference" or almost any portion thereof.

If Prouty had possessed even a basic knowledge of the Cairo and Tehran conferences, he would have recognized that his source, William Conrad Gibbons, mistakenly assigned to the Tehran Conference something that had happened at the Cairo Conference. I quote from the U.S. State Department Archive website's article "The Cairo Conference, 1943":

At the series of meetings in Cairo, Roosevelt outlined his vision for postwar Asia. He wanted to establish the Republic of China as one of his "Four Policemen." This concept referred to a vision for a cooperative world order in which a dominant power in each major region would be responsible for keeping the peace there. Weak as the Republic of China would inevitably be after the war, it would still be the major power in Asia, and it could help prevent renewed Japanese expansionism and oversee decolonization under a trustee system. Roosevelt hoped to prevent the British and the Russians from using postwar instability to increase their presence in Asia, and he advocated for Indochina to be established as a trusteeship instead of returned to France after the Japanese defeat.

To secure this future, he sought a commitment from Chiang Kai-shek that China would not try to expand across the continent or control decolonizing nations, and in return, he offered a guarantee that the territories stolen from China by Japan -- including Manchuria, the island of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands -- would be returned to Chinese sovereignty. Roosevelt also sought and gained Chiang's support for his proposal to create a trusteeship for the colonial territories after the war; in the end, this idea failed to gain the support of the British or French and was not enacted. (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm).

By the way, in Tehran and then at Yalta, FDR abandoned his pledge to restore Manchuria, Taiwan (Formosa), and the Pescadores to China after the war, in order to appease Stalin. Anyway. . ..

Gibbons' error was really inexcusable, especially for someone pretending to be an authority on the subject. That said, perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR did mention, in passing, the Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but he did so in the context of a discussion about pre-war French holdings in Indochina and by stating that he had already discussed Indochina trusteeship with Chiang Kai-shek. From the Bohlen minutes of the Tehran Conference:

The President said that he had had an interesting conversation with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, on the general subject of China. . . .

He added that he had discussed with Chiang Kai-shek the possibility of a system of trusteeship for Indochina which would have the task of preparing the people for independence within a definite period of time, perhaps 20 to 30 years. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d358)

Other than this one reference, you won't find any mention of an Indochina trusteeship in the Tehran Conference minutes; they talked about Indochina in terms of the military situation and regarding the Cairo Communique, but only once mentioned an Indochina trusteeship (e.g., https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/ADFRXSHIYSKS2S8Z/pages/ANSP74UNEP7N6Q8S?as=text&view=scroll).

Or perhaps Gibbons got confused because FDR sought Stalin's approval of the Cairo Communique. Asia scholar Mark Caprio:

In Cairo, Roosevelt met with two other Allied leaders, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, to discuss wartime strategy. He and Churchill would later meet with Stalin in Tehran, Iran immediately following the Cairo meeting to engage the Soviet leader in similar discussions, as well as to gain his consent of the Cairo Communiqué’s contents. . . .

As mentioned above, in Tehran, the Soviet leader was briefed on the discussions held in Cairo, and asked his views on the Communiqué’s content. ("Misinterpretations of the 1943 Cairo Conference," International Journal of Korean History, February 2022, https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=559)

On his way back from Yalta, FDR held a press conference 2/23/45 and mentioned that he had discussed Indochina with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and with Stalin in Tehran:

THE PRESIDENT: For two whole years I have been terribly worried about Indo-China. I talked to Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo, Stalin in Teheran. They both agreed with me. The French have been in there some hundred years. The Indo-Chinese are not like the Chinese. (https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/excerpts-from-the-press-conference-aboard-the-uss-quincy-en-route-from-yalta)

Professor Zhu Shaokang's book The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit documents that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference. It addresses the erroneous press report that Chiang was going to meet Stalin and explains how the report originated. Indeed, Shaokang discusses the fact that Chiang was determined to avoid meeting with Stalin, and that Stalin was equally adamant against the idea of meeting with Chiang (pp. 314-318)!

You can read these facts in the large extract from the book available online here: https://www.fhk.ndu.edu.tw/site/main/upload/6862ac282432fc1fde400aa74f317621/journal/81-12.pdf.

I think objective readers will see that you are actually describing your own conduct, that you have no answer for the evidence I've presented to you.

It is not "moving the goalposts" to point out obvious blunders in Prouty's cockamamie tale about the fictional Chinese presence at the Tehran Conference. You will never find a picture of a military jumpsuit that had no pockets, because no such jumpsuit was ever made (or ever will be made). Similarly, pointing out Prouty's fiction that at Tehran, FDR and Stalin made an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down is not "moving the goalposts" but is highlighting an obvious fabrication. I've already noted that the extensive records of the Tehran Conference, including the list of agreements, say nothing about any such agreement.

And let's be clear: Prouty did not just claim that Chinese delegates attended the Tehran Conference but that Chiang and his wife also attended. I quote from his embarrassing book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy:

First of all, most historians doubt that Chiang and his wife actually attended the conference in Tehran. I can confirm that they did, because I was the pilot of the plane that flew Chiang's delegates to Tehran. Chiang and his wife traveled either with Roosevelt or in another U.S. military aircraft. (p. 14)

How can you take this nonsense seriously? Why would the Chiangs have flown on a different plane? Why does not a single record from the Tehran Conference say anything about Chiang and his delegation being in attendance? Why would Chiang not have mentioned in his diary what would have been his historic presence at the conference? Why didn't Madame Chiang mention this momentous presence in her private letter to FDR, which she wrote just days after she returned to Chungking?

Other reasonable and damning questions: Why didn't Elliott Roosevelt say anything about seeing any Chinese delegates at the conference or at Habanaya Airport? Why would Prouty have needed to stop at Habanaya to refuel if he was flying a Lockheed Lodestar, which had a range of 1,600 miles? Why didn't Sarah Churchill say anything about her father being delayed at a Soviet checkpoint, while he was quite sick no less, because, gee, he supposedly not only had no ID on him, due to his wearing a pocketless jumpsuit, but none of his staffers had his ID either?! I mean, sheesh, this is WINGNUT material.

You embarrass yourself when you claim that you have "debunked" my "putative itinerary" for Chiang and his group. When you first attacked the evidence I presented that Chiang and his group did not fly to Tehran, you somehow missed the Karachi stop. But, once I pointed out your oversight, you insisted that Chiang still could have made the secret trip that escaped everyone's notice!

And I would again point out that your dubious 36-hour window requires that the Karachi visit occurred on 11/29, and that even if we assume this was the case, you cannot identify a time slot when Stalin and Chiang could have met, given the very detailed information we have about Stalin's whereabouts and activities during the conference.

This is on top of the fact that you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference, whereas I can cite all the official records of the conference and literally dozens of historians that confirm the fact that there was no Chinese presence at the conference, much less Chiang himself.

You are the preeminent gaslighter to ever appear on this forum, and your preening egotism and utter lack of self-awareness is crystalized in your complaint of “moving goalposts.”

A question was posted and it was answered:

Sept 28 - “I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference.”

Sept 28 - “Prouty said that all the books except one said that Chiang was not at the conference. He said he had one book that said Chiang was there. I'd like to see it. I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again.”

October 4 - “Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference. Let's see it. I suspect you're just taking Prouty's word about the document and have not seen it yourself. Let's see that document.”

Today - “you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…”

The single source had been accurately identified by Prouty in his book. Further, the source is not an undergraduate paper placed online by a remedial student from a junior college - it is an authoritative history produced for a Congressional Committee and published by the U.S. government. It unambiguously states: “At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina.” If you have a problem with this statement, it should be addressed to the book’s author. Instead, you heaped insults on Prouty for his accurate observation: “fabricating”. “crackpot” “fraud” “nonsensical fiction”

Michael Griffith · October 8, 2023

3 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

You are the preeminent gaslighter to ever appear on this forum, and your preening egotism and utter lack of self-awareness is crystalized in your complaint of “moving goalposts.”

A question was posted and it was answered:

Sept 28 - “I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference.”

Sept 28 - “Prouty said that all the books except one said that Chiang was not at the conference. He said he had one book that said Chiang was there. I'd like to see it. I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again.”

October 4 - “Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference. Let's see it. I suspect you're just taking Prouty's word about the document and have not seen it yourself. Let's see that document.”

Today - “you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…”

The single source had been accurately identified by Prouty in his book. Further, the source is not an undergraduate paper placed online by a remedial student from a junior college - it is an authoritative history produced for a Congressional Committee and published by the U.S. government. It unambiguously states: “At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina.” If you have a problem with this statement, it should be addressed to the book’s author. Instead, you heaped insults on Prouty for his accurate observation: “fabricating”. “crackpot” “fraud” “nonsensical fiction”

LOL! So . . . uh . . . just never mind that Prouty's one and only source for his ahistorical bunk was demonstrably wrong??? Just never mind that???!!! Sheesh, this is unbelievable.

Your insulting comments about "gaslighter" and "preening egotism" are a sad by-product of your refusal to deal credibly and factually with Prouty's embarrassing, absurd claims. Rather than admit you didn't know enough to realize that Prouty's source was egregiously wrong, and rather than admit that you should have checked the source's claim before running with it, you opted to resort to insults.

Furthermore, as you must know, the issue of the accuracy of Prouty's lone source is not the only issue that I've raised regarding Prouty's ridiculous claims about Chiang and his group and the Tehran Conference.

It is comical that you would pretend that it is someone unfair of me, that I'm "moving the goalposts," to bring up other obvious falsehoods in Prouty's bogus tale.

Let me repeat the fact that Prouty's one source committed two inexcusable blunders: (1) he claimed that Stalin and Chiang approved FDR's plan for trusteeship for Indochina at the Tehran Conference, and (2) he claimed that Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. Chiang and Stalin reached no agreement about trusteeship in Tehran because Chiang was not there. By all accounts, Chiang knew nothing about the Tehran proceedings until after the conference ended. FDR and Chiang agreed on the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, and then FDR discussed it, briefly, with Stalin in Tehran. Yet, Stalin and FDR reached no formal agreement on the trusteeship concept at the Tehran Conference--that's why no such agreement is mentioned in the agreements made at the conference.

Prouty did not realize that Gibbons got confused and assigned to the Tehran Conference events that happened at the Cairo Conference, and that Gibbons also blundered about who attended the Tehran Conference because he associated the trusteeship agreement with the wrong conference. It is nothing short of shocking that you and the handful of Prouty worshippers here ignore all the sources that clearly indicate that Chiang and his group did not go to Tehran, and that you just don't care that no records, meeting minutes, diaries, travel/trip logs, papers, or memoirs contain a shred of evidence that Chiang was ever in Tehran, much less that he met with Stalin.

It is instructive that you and a few others would choose to rely on Prouty's one and only source rather than rely on the hundreds of sources that refute Prouty's source. And, pray tell, what is Prouty's source for his fiction that at Tehran FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin tell Mao to stand down? Do you guys just not grasp how idiotic and erroneous that claim is? Or how about Prouty's laughable howler that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been controlled by Soong? I defy you to find a single Asia or WWII scholar who will endorse such gibberish.

The small group of people who still deny Prouty's lies, erroneous claims, retractions, and sleazy associations are a dream-come-true for WC apologists. They make it easy for WC apologists to make the case for conspiracy look like nutty, irresponsible speculation.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Michael Griffith

Jeff Carter · October 8, 2023

2 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

LOL! So . . . uh . . . just never mind that Prouty's one and only source for his ahistorical bunk was demonstrably wrong??? Just never mind that???!!! Sheesh, this is unbelievable.

Your insulting comments about "gaslighter" and "preening egotism" are a sad by-product of your refusal to deal credibly and factually with Prouty's embarrassing, absurd claims. Rather than admit you didn't know enough to realize that Prouty's source was egregiously wrong, and rather than admit that you should have checked the source's claim before running with it, you opted to resort to insults.

Furthermore, as you must know, the issue of the accuracy of Prouty's lone source is not the only issue that I've raised regarding Prouty's ridiculous claims about Chiang and his group and the Tehran Conference.

It is comical that you would pretend that it is someone unfair of me, that I'm "moving the goalposts," to bring up other obvious falsehoods in Prouty's bogus tale.

Let me repeat the fact that Prouty's one source committed two inexcusable blunders: (1) he claimed that Stalin and Chiang approved FDR's plan for trusteeship for Indochina at the Tehran Conference, and (2) he claimed that Chiang was at the Tehran Conference. Chiang and Stalin reached no agreement about trusteeship in Tehran because Chiang was not there. By all accounts, Chiang knew nothing about the Tehran proceedings until after the conference ended. FDR and Chiang agreed on the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, and then FDR discussed it, briefly, with Stalin in Tehran. Yet, Stalin and FDR reached no formal agreement on the trusteeship concept at the Tehran Conference--that's why no such agreement is mentioned in the agreements made at the conference.

Prouty did not realize that Gibbons got confused and assigned to the Tehran Conference events that happened at the Cairo Conference, and that Gibbons also blundered about who attended the Tehran Conference because he associated the trusteeship agreement with the wrong conference. It is nothing short of shocking that you and the handful of Prouty worshippers here ignore all the sources that clearly indicate that Chiang and his group did not go to Tehran, and that you just don't care that no records, meeting minutes, diaries, travel/trip logs, papers, or memoirs contain a shred of evidence that Chiang was ever in Tehran, much less that he met with Stalin.

It is instructive that you and a few others would choose to rely on Prouty's one and only source rather than rely on the hundreds of sources that refute Prouty's source. And, pray tell, what is Prouty's source for his fiction that at Tehran FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin tell Mao to stand down? Do you guys just not grasp how idiotic and erroneous that claim is? Or how about Prouty's laughable howler that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been controlled by Soong? I defy you to find a single Asia or WWII scholar who will endorse such gibberish.

The small group of people who still deny Prouty's lies, erroneous claims, retractions, and sleazy associations are a dream-come-true for WC apologists. They make it easy for WC apologists to make the case for conspiracy look like nutty, irresponsible speculation.

These are your words:

“I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference... I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again... Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference...you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…”

Now that the book has been identified, everyone can see it clearly says what Prouty said it did ( yet you had labelled him a fabricator on this exact issue).

In response to this information, you have moved the goalposts and now insist the accuracy of the book, as determined by yourself, rather than its provable material existence, which you denied, is your sole concern. And that Prouty, and by extension anyone who doesn’t denounce him, are somehow personally vouching for the “inexcusable blunders” and alleged confusion supposedly made by the designated official historian from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress - who presumedly was working from the most complete sources then available. Are the professionals with the Library of Congress not “credible”?

Despite your musings over flight suits and refuellings, this particular discussion is honed on two points:

1) Prouty accurately citing an official history published by the Government Printing Office

2) Prouty recounting his personal experience flying a Chinese delegation to Teheran.

The first point is indisputable, as the book says exactly what Prouty said it did.

As for the second point, you are basically disavowing Prouty's own first-hand experience based on a litany of surmises and presumptions. Given your pattern of insult and conjecture, there is no reason to trust your self-declared omniscience.

Michael Griffith · October 9, 2023

Let’s read Prouty’s tale about the alleged Tehran agreement between FDR and Stalin to have Stalin order Mao to stand down when Prouty put the tale in writing:

With the close of the Cairo Conference, the Churchill and Roosevelt delegations flew to Tehran for their own first meeting with Marshal Stalin. This much was released to the public. A fact that was not released, and that even to this day has rarely been made known, is that Chiang and the Chinese delegation were also present at the Tehran Conference of November 28-December 1, 1943. . . .

First of all, Stalin agreed to join the war against Japan once Germany surrendered. In return, he agreed to help Chiang by speaking to his friend Mao Tse-tung about relaxing military pressures against Chiang’s Nationalist Army from that front in China. (JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, pp. 13-14)

Where did Prouty get this fiction? He provided no sources. I know why: because there are no sources on the Tehran Conference that say that FDR and Stalin reached any such agreement. The subject of Mao’s operations in relation to Chiang’s forces was not even discussed at the conference.

The following is typical of what the hundreds of sources on the Tehran Conference say about the agreements that were reached at the conference—this comes from the State Department’s Office of the Historian website:

The Tehran Conference was a meeting between U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehran, Iran, between November 28 and December 1, 1943.

During the Conference, the three leaders coordinated their military strategy against Germany and Japan and made a number of important decisions concerning the post World War II era. The most notable achievements of the Conference focused on the next phases of the war against the Axis powers in Europe and Asia. Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin engaged in discussions concerning the terms under which the British and Americans finally committed to launching Operation Overlord, an invasion of northern France, to be executed by May of 1944.

The Soviets, who had long been pushing the Allies to open a second front, agreed to launch another major offensive on the Eastern Front that would divert German troops away from the Allied campaign in northern France. Stalin also agreed in principle that the Soviet Union would declare war against Japan following an Allied victory over Germany. In exchange for a Soviet declaration of war against Japan, Roosevelt conceded to Stalin’s demands for the Kurile Islands and the southern half of Sakhalin, and access to the ice-free ports of Dairen (Dalian) and Port Arthur (Lüshun Port) located on the Liaodong Peninsula in northern China. The exact details concerning this deal were not finalized, however, until the Yalta Conference of 1945. ("The Tehran Conference, 1943," https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/tehran-conf)

Soviet records of the Tehran Conference confirm the absence of any discussion about Mao's operations in relation to Chiang's forces during the conference. In one Soviet compilation of records of the Tehran Conference, published in Moscow in 1969, you won’t even find Mao’s name mentioned in the Soviet minutes of the conference (https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/tehranyaltapotsdamconferences.pdf).

In a Soviet government document titled “Military Decisions of the Tehran Conference,” nothing is said about any agreement to have Stalin order Mao to stand down. Here’s the link to the document: https://www.prlib.ru/en/node/403368.

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff’s compilation of papers and minutes of the Cairo and Tehran conferences, titled The Sextant, Eureka, and Second Cairo Conferences: November–December 1943, totaling 111 pages, says nothing about any FDR-Stalin agreement on a stand-down order for Mao. Mao is not even mentioned in any of the papers and minutes. Nor is there any mention of Chiang and/or his group being at the Tehran Conference. Anyone can confirm these facts for themselves by searching the compilation at the following link: https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/WWII/Sextant_Eureka3.pdf.

In his 1994 interview, Prouty claimed that he was at the Tehran Conference and that while FDR was allegedly persuading Stalin to order Mao to stand down, Churchill just sat there and said nothing. Where did Prouty get this? He offered no sources to support his tale. All of the Tehran Conference negotiating sessions were held in private. How could Prouty have known whether Churchill said anything during the alleged discussion? This is just another bogus detail that Prouty invented to make his fiction seem more believable.

None of this should be surprising. Remember that Prouty had shameful record of making bogus claims and of associating with extremists. For example, Prouty spoke at the convention of a notorious anti-Semitic group, Liberty Lobby, and co-chaired a discussion panel during the convention with David Duke’s running mate. During his speech to the anti-Semitic gathering, Prouty blamed the Israelis for high oil prices and complained about “usury,” a favorite attack and dog whistle used by anti-Semites.

Prouty also appeared on Liberty Lobby’s radio program 10 times in four years—other guests on that program include a long list of Holocaust-deniers, anti-Semites, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis (LINK; LINK; LINK; LINK). A few legitimate guests appeared on the program once or twice but declined to appear again because they realized what it was about, but Prouty appeared on the show 10 times over a four-year period.

Prouty wrote a warmly supportive letter to the editor of the IHR’s Holocaust-denying journal. Prouty even spoke at an IHR conference that focused on denying the Holocaust. He had one of his books republished by the IHR’s publishing arm, and praised notorious Holocaust deniers Willis Carto and Thomas Marcellus for having the “courage” and “vision” to republish his book.

Prouty spent years defending the fraud of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. Prouty actually attacked Scientology whistleblowers. One of those whistleblowers, Tony Ortega, looked into Prouty and quickly saw him for the fraud he was (LINK).

Finally, Prouty also spent years leading people to believe that he was sent to the South Pole just before the assassination to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements, that he worked on presidential protection, and that he had notes from his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group, but in his ARRB interview he admitted there was nothing sinister about the South Pole trip, that presidential protection was not part of his duties, and that he did not have the notes from his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group. This is not to mention Prouty’s genuinely obscene claims about Edward Lansdale being part of the assassination plot and being in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, claims that even Oliver Stone later repudiated.

Jeff Carter · October 9, 2023

To sum up the Cairo-Teheran Conferences, sources added to the conversation - particularly “The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit” - actually support the notion that some kind of meeting between the Chinese and the Soviets was achieved at Teheran.

The paper establishes that diplomats from both countries, at the behest of FDR, had agreed in principle to meet at one or the other of the Conferences. The paper also establishes why the Soviets would insist on a high level of secrecy to surround such a meeting. The paper in turn establishes that the Reuters news article published in the New York Times, which announced a planned Stalin-Chiang Kai-shek meet-up in Teheran, was released a day earlier than information protocol intended and should not have included word of this meet-up. Subtly, American officials suggested this was a deliberate leak engineered by the British to disrupt the Soviets secrecy request. Of the four leaders, Churchill was distinct opposed to FDR’s postwar concepts.

This Reuters release, combined with the later brief confirmation off a Stalin-Chiang Kai-shek meet-up published in an official history in 1984, strongly contradict the idea that such meeting was a sort of “crackpot fantasy”.

In fact, FDR’s postwar concepts are the real focus of Prouty’s discussions of these Conferences, in the context of de-colonization plans, particularly in Asia, and the emerging Cold War which took shape following FDR’s death. FDR’s concepts and diplomatic juggling are prominent in the official record. Unfortunately, information of great interest has been flooded by a morass of useless contrarian detail as one Forum member seeks to constantly “flightsuit” the topics.

Michael Griffith · October 10, 2023

On 10/8/2023 at 4:44 PM, Jeff Carter said:

These are your words:

“I would like to know the one book that Prouty claimed said Chiang was at the Tehran Conference... I don't think such a book exists. I think he was fabricating again... Let's see that 1984 document that supposedly says Chiang and his delegation were at the Tehran Conference...you cannot cite a single credible source that says that Chiang and his group attended the conference…”

Now that the book has been identified, everyone can see it clearly says what Prouty said it did (yet you had labelled him a fabricator on this exact issue).

You are avoiding the main point. True, Prouty did not fabricate his one and only source, i.e., Gibbons. I acknowledged that in my first reply after you quoted what Gibbons said. But, as I also noted in my reply, Prouty obviously did not know enough to realize that Gibbons was horrendously mistaken.

As we know, Prouty quotes from page 4 of Gibbons’ book, which is available on the Internet Archive. On page 4, Gibbons says,

At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek both approved Roosevelt’s proposal for a trusteeship for Indochina, but Churchill was vehemently against the idea.

Gibbons provides no source for this statement. However, he does cite a source for his quotation of FDR's exchange with Churchill over Indochina trusteeship, which comes in the same paragraph and right after his statement about Chiang and Stalin approving trusteeship at the Tehran Conference. Gibbons cites page 40 of Thomas Campbell and George Herring's The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., 1943-1946, published in 1975, which is also available on the Internet Archive.

However, as you can confirm by checking out the Campbell-Herring book on the Internet Archive, page 40 says nothing about the Tehran Conference, and nothing about Chiang being at the Tehran Conference, much less anything about Chiang and Stalin agreeing to an Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference.

Moreover, the Stettinius diaries say that FDR met with Chiang in Cairo and with Stalin in Tehran (pp. 17-18). As you may know, Stettinius was the Undersecretary of State in 1943.

In response to this information, you have moved the goalposts and now insist the accuracy of the book, as determined by yourself, rather than its provable material existence, which you denied, is your sole concern.

This is grade-school silliness. Obviously, the accuracy of the book is the crucial issue, not its mere existence. My main point all along has been, and remains, that Chiang and his group were not at the Tehran Conference, and that therefore Prouty’s tale that Chiang and his group attended the conference is pure bunk.

And that Prouty, and by extension anyone who doesn’t denounce him, are somehow personally vouching for the “inexcusable blunders” and alleged confusion supposedly made by the designated official historian from the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress - who presumedly was working from the most complete sources then available. Are the professionals with the Library of Congress not “credible”?

Seriously? The “professionals at the Library of Congress” did not check Gibbons’ book for accuracy, and Gibbons was undeniably and self-evidently wrong about Chiang being at the Tehran Conference and about Chiang and Stalin approving an Indochina trusteeship at the conference. Gibbons’ book wasn’t even about the Tehran Conference, or diplomacy during WW II--it was about the Vietnam War. His blunder about Chiang and Tehran was an isolated passing comment in the first chapter, a chapter that merely provided background information on Indochina.

Despite your musings over flight suits and refuellings, this particular discussion is honed on two points:

We’re not talking about “musings” over flight suits and refueling. We’re talking about the fact that no WWII British jumpsuits were made without pockets. Prouty’s silly tale about Churchill having no ID at a Soviet checkpoint in Tehran because he was wearing a pocketless jumpsuit is another demonstrable falsehood that exposes the story as a fabrication.

Similarly, Prouty’s fiction about refueling at Habanaya Airport, seeing Elliott Roosevelt there, and introducing Elliott to the Chinese delegation is exposed as another false detail of Prouty’s fabrication. He said he flew a Lockheed Lodestar. If so, he would have had no need to make a refueling stop. The Lodestar could have made it to Tehran with at least 200 miles’ worth of fuel to spare, since it had a range of 1,600 miles.

Moreover, Elliott Roosevelt, in all his extensive writings about his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences, said nothing about seeing the Chinese delegation at Habanaya Airport or in Tehran—he didn’t even say anything about hearing that Chiang and/or his group were at the conference.

1) Prouty accurately citing an official history published by the Government Printing Office

And every other “official history published by the Government Printing Office” that discusses the Tehran Conference refutes the one source that Prouty cited. And every other historian who has written about the Tehran Conference has said that only FDR, Churchill, and Stalin were at the conference, and that Chiang did not attend it but flew home to Chungking after leaving Cairo.

Again, you can search through the hundreds of documents on the Tehran Conference on the State Department’s website and see that not one of them says that Chiang attended that conference, nor do any of them say that Chiang approved the Indochina trusteeship at that conference, nor do any of them say that FDR and Stalin reached an agreement to have Stalin order Mao to stand down at that conference. The subject of Mao’s operations in China was not even discussed at the Tehran Conference.

2) Prouty recounting his personal experience flying a Chinese delegation to Teheran.

LOL! You must be joking! His “recounting” is farcical on its face and contains dubious details that no credible person would swallow.

The first point is indisputable, as the book says exactly what Prouty said it did.

And it is also indisputable that what that book says is wrong. It’s not only wrong about Chiang being in Tehran, but it’s also wrong about where the Indochina trusteeship was formulated and where Chiang approved it. Chiang approved the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, not in Tehran (https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm).

As for the second point, you are basically disavowing Prouty's own first-hand experience based on a litany of surmises and presumptions. Given your pattern of insult and conjecture, there is no reason to trust your self-declared omniscience.

LOL! You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” in supposedly being sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements?! (He finally admitted the claim was false in his ARRB interview.) You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” with “military intelligence presidential protection units”?! (No such units existed.) You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” in his alleged “stand-down” phone call with the 112th MI Group and supposedly “taking notes” during the alleged call?! (No credible person could believe this tale after reading Prouty’s ARRB interview.)

Anyway, I am doing much more than just “basically disavowing Prouty’s own first-hand experience” in his tale about flying the Chinese delegation to Tehran and about Chiang being in Tehran. I am categorically saying it is an absurd fabrication, a fabrication loaded with transparently phony details.

Jeff Carter · October 10, 2023

A major problem with your position - which amounts to insisting that the Library of Congress researcher charged with producing an official history for a Senate Subcommittee made an obviously fundamental high-school level blunder which survived all drafts and fact checks - is you started your argument with an already formed conclusion, namely the mere notion of a Chinese-Soviet meeting in Teheran 1943 could only be considered as the fever-dream of a crackpot fabulist.

And yet, using the sources you have introduced, in particular the paper “The Cairo Conference: The Forgotten Summit”, it can be established:

- In 1943, at the behest of FDR, both Soviet and Chinese diplomatic letters to U.S. officials demonstrate a reluctant agreement to a high level meeting at either Cairo or Teheran. As part of this initiative, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov at one point was scheduled to go to Cairo, but it did not occur.

- In light of the prearranged agreement to meet, the Reuters press release announcing a scheduled meeting in Teheran between Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek is significant.

- Articulated Soviet concerns about the optics of the meeting, should it be over-publicized, related to prior agreements reached with Japan, provide a strong reason why such meeting would have been held in secret - which apparently it was - and why official contemporaneous accounts are mute.

The documented record clearly establishes such a meet-up to be entirely possible, and so the attribution of this notion as a “crackpot fantasy” fails the test of the actual facts.

Michael Griffith · October 10, 2023

Let's back up and recap what has been documented about Fletcher Prouty's fabrication about Chiang Kai-shek and his delegation and the Tehran Conference:

-- Prouty said that he personally flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to the Tehran Conference. But there is no record of the Chinese delegation attending the conference.

The U.S. State Department's website contains a huge collection of searchable records on the Cairo and Tehran conferences. These records were used for the State Department's massive volume Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. Not one of these records says anything about Chiang and his delegation attending the conference.

To give you some idea of the scope of these records, I quote from a partial list of them provided in the Introduction on the State Department's website:

A. Inside the Department of State

1. Bohlen Collection—The collection of minutes and documents on the Tehran Conference made by Charles E. Bohlen, who served as President Roosevelt’s interpreter with the Russians at Tehran.

2. L/T Files–The office files of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs.

3. FE Files—The files of the Bureau (Office) of Far Eastern Affairs.

4. Moscow Embassy Files—The records of the American Embassy at Moscow, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

5. Cairo Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Cairo, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

6. Tehran Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Tehran, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

B. Outside the Department of State

1. Roosevelt Papers–The papers of President Roosevelt in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. This large collection was found to be particularly valuable for Heads of Government correspondence.

2. Hopkins Papers—The papers of Harry L. Hopkins, located in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Although many of the Hopkins files duplicate material in the Roosevelt papers, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.

3. J. C. S. Files—The files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These files provided documentation of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. The approval of the British Chiefs of Staff, along with that of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, was obtained for the declassification of the Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation published in this volume.

4. Defense Files—The files of the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of War and Navy and other relevant top-level files of the military departments for 1943.

5. Leahy Papers—A collection of official papers, now in the custody of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, the late Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Although much of this material duplicates the J. C. S. Files, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.

6. White House Files—Although the White House does not maintain files of the papers of former Presidents, some portions of the White House files were found to be pertinent. Thus, from the files of the office of the Naval Aide there was obtained a copy of the booklet containing the Log of the President’s trip to Cairo and Tehran in 1943.

7. Censorship Files—The files of the Office of Censorship, now in the National Archives. These files contained a few papers regarding the release of information to the press from Cairo and Tehran.

8. Treasury Files—The files of the Department of the Treasury provided several post-Conference documents.

9. Hurley Papers—The private papers of Patrick J. Hurley. General Hurley kindly made his papers available to the editors for the period of the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. From these papers came the first draft of the Declaration on Iran (post, page 623) and considerable data incorporated in footnotes in this volume. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction)

The State Department's massive work also used the following unofficial sources--I again quote from the Introduction on the State Department's website:

H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940). Hereafter cited as “Arnold”.

Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1959). Hereafter cited as “Alanbrooke”.

Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959), volume V of the series The Second World War. Hereafter cited as “Churchill”.

Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1951).

John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation With Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Deane”.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Eisenhower”.

Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Hereafter cited as “Feis”.

General Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale (London: Andre Deutsch, 1956).

Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948; 2 volumes). Hereafter cited as “Hull”.

Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960).

Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1952). Hereafter cited as “King”.

Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War (London: John Murray, 1949).

William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950). Hereafter cited as “Leahy”.

James Leasor, The Clock With Four Hands (New York: Reynal and Company, 1959).

Don Lohbeck, Patrick J. Hurley (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1956). Hereafter cited as “Lohbeck”.

Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1946).

King Peter of Yugoslavia, A King’s Heritage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954).

Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Reilly”.

Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Hereafter cited as “Elliott Roosevelt”.

Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Sherwood”.

J. C. Smuts, Jan Christian Smuts (London: Cassell and Co., 1952).

Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948).

Hollington K. Tong, Chiang Kai-Shek (Taipei: China Publishing Company, 1953).

General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958).

Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya, Eight Years Overseas, 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1950). (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction)

-- Prouty claimed that Chiang and his wife flew to the Tehran Conference in FDR's plane or in another military aircraft. We know from the trip log for FDR and his delegation that Chiang was not on FDR's plane. The trip log lists every person who accompanied FDR to Cairo and Tehran, down to the cooks, admin assistants, and security people. And, there is no record of any other military or private plane taking Chiang and his wife to Tehran.

Chiang's wife wrote a private letter to FDR soon after she and her husband returned to China on 12/1/43, the same day the Tehran Conference ended. She said nothing about her party making a detour to Tehran, much less about Chiang meeting with Stalin. Instead, she said her plane flew from Cairo to Karachi to Ramgarh to Chabau to Chungking.

Chiang's personal diary, not published until years after his death, says nothing about any trip to Tehran. He made diary entries during the trip from Cairo to China, but not one of them even hints at a detour to Tehran.

Prouty's only source for his claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference is a single, unsourced statement made in passing in William Gibbons' book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Gibbons clearly confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference in his errant passing comment. Gibbons had Chiang and Stalin approving an Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but the issue of the trusteeship was barely mentioned during the Tehran gathering, and Chiang approved the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, as innumerable records confirm.

Also, to be fair to Gibbons, his errant statement about Chiang and Tehran was not even the subject of the paragraph in which it was buried. The paragraph's subject was Churchill's opposition to lessening control over Indochina and other colonies. You wouldn't know this to read Prouty's book, because Prouty did not alert readers that he was quoting from the middle of a paragraph--he simply started with the errant statement as if it were the start of a paragraph.

-- Prouty claimed that at the Tehran Conference, FDR persuaded Stalin to agree to order Mao to stand down, and that during this alleged conversation Churchill stayed silent. But, a search through American and Soviet records of the conference yields not a single reference to Mao, much less a discussion about Mao's operations, much less an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down.

It is fair to ask how Prouty could have known that Churchill supposedly stayed silent during the alleged FDR-Stalin conversation about Mao. How could Prouty have known this? The negotiating sessions were all secret. Prouty never explained how he could have known such a detail about a negotiating session that he did not, and could not, attend.

-- Prouty claimed that when he flew the Chinese delegation to Tehran, he stopped to refuel at Habanaya Airport in Iraq. But this makes no sense. Prouty claimed he flew a Lockheed Lodestar, but that plane had a range of 1,600 miles. He would have had no need to stop for fuel to reach Tehran from Cairo. He could have made it to Tehran with at least 200 miles' worth of fuel to spare.

-- Prouty claimed that while refueling at Habanaya Airport, he saw Elliott Roosevelt and introduced him to the Chinese delegation, and that, naturally, Elliott "knew" the Chinese delegation was at the Tehran Conference. But, Elliott said nothing about any of this in his extensive account of his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences. Not one word. He didn't even say anything about hearing a rumor that the Chinese were at the conference.

-- Prouty claimed that he rode with the Chinese delegation into Tehran, that the delegation's cars were right behind the British delegation's cars, and that the British delegation was embarrassingly held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Winston Churchill had no ID on him because he was wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit. Prouty added that the Brits were only allowed to pass after a Soviet officer came to the checkpoint and let them proceed.

Two things from this account scream that the account is pure fabrication:

One, there was no such thing as a British military jumpsuit that had no pockets. One can quicky ascertain with a little online research that neither the British, nor the Americans, nor the French, nor any other nation in WW II made jumpsuits with no pockets. The very idea makes no sense, since jumpsuits were worn by pilots and air crews that always faced the possibility of having to abandon their planes in mid-air and would need pockets--secure pockets--to carry essential items.

Two, even if we assume for the sake of argument that Churchill wore a pocketless jumpsuit, Prouty's tale requires us to believe that none of Churchill's aides had his ID and other papers but that all these items had been left on the plane.

Also, if this event had really occurred, Churchill's adoring daughter Sarah surely would have mentioned it in her numerous writings about her experiences at the Tehran Conference. Sarah was fiercely anti-Soviet and disliked Stalin. If the Soviets had embarrassed and humiliated her father with such a stunt at a checkpoint, she would have said something about it. She never mentioned any such event, not in her two books and not in her voluminous correspondence with family members.

-- Prouty claimed that while Churchill's group was allegedly delayed at the Soviet checkpoint, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and laughed and pointed at the British delegation. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese behaviorial standards and cultural norms in the 1940s recognizes that it is extremely unlikely that a Chinese delegation would have behaved in this manner, especially in a foreign country and when they were desperately seeking British and American assistance. And, needless to say, there is no record of any such event occurring at the Tehran Conference.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Michael Griffith

Jeff Carter · October 11, 2023

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Let's back up and recap what has been documented about Fletcher Prouty's fabrication about Chiang Kai-shek and his delegation and the Tehran Conference:

-- Prouty said that he personally flew the Chinese delegation from Cairo to the Tehran Conference. But there is no record of the Chinese delegation attending the conference.

The U.S. State Department's website contains a huge collection of searchable records on the Cairo and Tehran conferences. These records were used for the State Department's massive volume Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. Not one of these records says anything about Chiang and his delegation attending the conference.

To give you some idea of the scope of these records, I quote from a partial list of them provided in the Introduction on the State Department's website:

A. Inside the Department of State

1. Bohlen Collection—The collection of minutes and documents on the Tehran Conference made by Charles E. Bohlen, who served as President Roosevelt’s interpreter with the Russians at Tehran.

2. L/T Files–The office files of the Assistant Legal Adviser for Treaty Affairs.

3. FE Files—The files of the Bureau (Office) of Far Eastern Affairs.

4. Moscow Embassy Files—The records of the American Embassy at Moscow, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

5. Cairo Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Cairo, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

6. Tehran Legation Files—The records of the American Legation at Tehran, which (for the period of World War II) are now in Washington.

B. Outside the Department of State

1. Roosevelt Papers–The papers of President Roosevelt in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library at Hyde Park, New York. This large collection was found to be particularly valuable for Heads of Government correspondence.

2. Hopkins Papers—The papers of Harry L. Hopkins, located in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Although many of the Hopkins files duplicate material in the Roosevelt papers, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.

3. J. C. S. Files—The files of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These files provided documentation of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff and of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff. The approval of the British Chiefs of Staff, along with that of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, was obtained for the declassification of the Combined Chiefs of Staff documentation published in this volume.

4. Defense Files—The files of the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries of War and Navy and other relevant top-level files of the military departments for 1943.

5. Leahy Papers—A collection of official papers, now in the custody of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from the office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, the late Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy. Although much of this material duplicates the J. C. S. Files, a few unique papers were found for publication in this volume.

6. White House Files—Although the White House does not maintain files of the papers of former Presidents, some portions of the White House files were found to be pertinent. Thus, from the files of the office of the Naval Aide there was obtained a copy of the booklet containing the Log of the President’s trip to Cairo and Tehran in 1943.

7. Censorship Files—The files of the Office of Censorship, now in the National Archives. These files contained a few papers regarding the release of information to the press from Cairo and Tehran.

8. Treasury Files—The files of the Department of the Treasury provided several post-Conference documents.

9. Hurley Papers—The private papers of Patrick J. Hurley. General Hurley kindly made his papers available to the editors for the period of the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran. From these papers came the first draft of the Declaration on Iran (post, page 623) and considerable data incorporated in footnotes in this volume. (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction)

The State Department's massive work also used the following unofficial sources--I again quote from the Introduction on the State Department's website:

H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940). Hereafter cited as “Arnold”.

Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: A History of the War Years Based on the Diaries of Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1959). Hereafter cited as “Alanbrooke”.

Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1959), volume V of the series The Second World War. Hereafter cited as “Churchill”.

Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1951).

John R. Deane, The Strange Alliance: The Story of Our Efforts at Wartime Cooperation With Russia (New York: The Viking Press, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Deane”.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Eisenhower”.

Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: The War They Waged and the Peace They Sought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). Hereafter cited as “Feis”.

General Sir Leslie Hollis, One Marine’s Tale (London: Andre Deutsch, 1956).

Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948; 2 volumes). Hereafter cited as “Hull”.

Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of General the Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960).

Ernest J. King and Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1952). Hereafter cited as “King”.

Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War (London: John Murray, 1949).

William D. Leahy, I Was There: The Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, Based on His Notes and Diaries Made at the Time (New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1950). Hereafter cited as “Leahy”.

James Leasor, The Clock With Four Hands (New York: Reynal and Company, 1959).

Don Lohbeck, Patrick J. Hurley (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1956). Hereafter cited as “Lohbeck”.

Arthur C. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1946).

King Peter of Yugoslavia, A King’s Heritage (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1954).

Michael F. Reilly, Reilly of the White House (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1947). Hereafter cited as “Reilly”.

Elliott Roosevelt, As He Saw It (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). Hereafter cited as “Elliott Roosevelt”.

Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948). Hereafter cited as “Sherwood”.

J. C. Smuts, Jan Christian Smuts (London: Cassell and Co., 1952).

Joseph W. Stilwell, The Stilwell Papers (New York: William Sloane Associates, Inc., 1948).

Hollington K. Tong, Chiang Kai-Shek (Taipei: China Publishing Company, 1953).

General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Wedemeyer Reports! (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1958).

Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya, Eight Years Overseas, 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1950). (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/introduction)

-- Prouty claimed that Chiang and his wife flew to the Tehran Conference in FDR's plane or in another military aircraft. We know from the trip log for FDR and his delegation that Chiang was not on FDR's plane. The trip log lists every person who accompanied FDR to Cairo and Tehran, down to the cooks, admin assistants, and security people. And, there is no record of any other military or private plane taking Chiang and his wife to Tehran.

Chiang's wife wrote a private letter to FDR soon after she and her husband returned to China on 12/1/43, the same day the Tehran Conference ended. She said nothing about her party making a detour to Tehran, much less about Chiang meeting with Stalin. Instead, she said her plane flew from Cairo to Karachi to Ramgarh to Chabau to Chungking.

Chiang's personal diary, not published until years after his death, says nothing about any trip to Tehran. He made diary entries during the trip from Cairo to China, but not one of them even hints at a detour to Tehran.

Prouty's only source for his claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference is a single, unsourced statement made in passing in William Gibbons' book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Gibbons clearly confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference in his errant passing comment. Gibbons had Chiang and Stalin approving an Indochina trusteeship at the Tehran Conference, but the issue of the trusteeship was barely mentioned during the Tehran gathering, and Chiang approved the trusteeship at the Cairo Conference, as innumerable records confirm.

Also, to be fair to Gibbons, his errant statement about Chiang and Tehran was not even the subject of the paragraph in which it was buried. The paragraph's subject was Churchill's opposition to lessening control over Indochina and other colonies. You wouldn't know this to read Prouty's book, because Prouty did not alert readers that he was quoting from the middle of a paragraph--he simply started with the errant statement as if it were the start of a paragraph.

-- Prouty claimed that at the Tehran Conference, FDR persuaded Stalin to agree to order Mao to stand down, and that during this alleged conversation Churchill stayed silent. But, a search through American and Soviet records of the conference yields not a single reference to Mao, much less a discussion about Mao's operations, much less an agreement that Stalin would order Mao to stand down.

It is fair to ask how Prouty could have known that Churchill supposedly stayed silent during the alleged FDR-Stalin conversation about Mao. How could Prouty have known this? The negotiating sessions were all secret. Prouty never explained how he could have known such a detail about a negotiating session that he did not, and could not, attend.

-- Prouty claimed that when he flew the Chinese delegation to Tehran, he stopped to refuel at Habanaya Airport in Iraq. But this makes no sense. Prouty claimed he flew a Lockheed Lodestar, but that plane had a range of 1,600 miles. He would have had no need to stop for fuel to reach Tehran from Cairo. He could have made it to Tehran with at least 200 miles' worth of fuel to spare.

-- Prouty claimed that while refueling at Habanaya Airport, he saw Elliott Roosevelt and introduced him to the Chinese delegation, and that, naturally, Elliott "knew" the Chinese delegation was at the Tehran Conference. But, Elliott said nothing about any of this in his extensive account of his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences. Not one word. He didn't even say anything about hearing a rumor that the Chinese were at the conference.

-- Prouty claimed that he rode with the Chinese delegation into Tehran, that the delegation's cars were right behind the British delegation's cars, and that the British delegation was embarrassingly held up at a Soviet checkpoint because Winston Churchill had no ID on him because he was wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit. Prouty added that the Brits were only allowed to pass after a Soviet officer came to the checkpoint and let them proceed.

Two things from this account scream that the account is pure fabrication:

One, there was no such thing as a British military jumpsuit that had no pockets. One can quicky ascertain with a little online research that neither the British, nor the Americans, nor the French, nor any other nation in WW II made jumpsuits with no pockets. The very idea makes no sense, since jumpsuits were worn by pilots and air crews that always faced the possibility of having to abandon their planes in mid-air and would need pockets--secure pockets--to carry essential items.

Two, even if we assume for the sake of argument that Churchill wore a pocketless jumpsuit, Prouty's tale requires us to believe that none of Churchill's aides had his ID and other papers but that all these items had been left on the plane.

Also, if this event had really occurred, Churchill's adoring daughter Sarah surely would have mentioned it in her numerous writings about her experiences at the Tehran Conference. Sarah was fiercely anti-Soviet and disliked Stalin. If the Soviets had embarrassed and humiliated her father with such a stunt at a checkpoint, she would have said something about it. She never mentioned any such event, not in her two books and not in her voluminous correspondence with family members.

-- Prouty claimed that while Churchill's group was allegedly delayed at the Soviet checkpoint, the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and laughed and pointed at the British delegation. Anyone who knows anything about Chinese behaviorial standards and cultural norms in the 1940s recognizes that it is extremely unlikely that a Chinese delegation would have behaved in this manner, especially in a foreign country and when they were desperately seeking British and American assistance. And, needless to say, there is no record of any such event occurring at the Tehran Conference.

Again, flooding the thread with tedious irrelevant lists and another run of flightsuiting to boot. Meanwhile, the record has established a high-level meeting between Chinese and Soviet officials at the time of the two Conferences - labelled by you as a bizarre fantasy - had been agreed to, had been announced, and, in a later official history, had been confirmed.

The single partially substantive reply to the above has consisted of claiming the professional researcher from the Library of Congress made an egregious error. It is my understanding the production of such official histories, whether for the CIA or the State Department or any federal agencies, features strict and careful attention to accuracy. Yet your claim, when broken down, infers the researcher actually made two astonishingly bad errors, and in a single sentence! (First mistaking Teheran for Cairo and second, by extension, claiming Stalin was in Cairo when everyone knows he certainly was not.) And this got by the proofreader? Not sure about that.

Michael Griffith · October 11, 2023

Let's continue with the recap of what has been documented about Prouty in this thread:

-- In his 1994 interview, Prouty made the bizarre claim that Chiang Kai-shek would have sided with the Japanese had he not been "controlled" by T. V. Soong. This is as absurd as saying that FDR would have sided with the Nazis had he not been controlled by Harry Hopkins. I've already documented Chiang's determination to fight the Japanese and his willingness to cut any deal that would enable him to keep fighting the Japanese.

I should add that in re-reading Prouty's gibberish on Chiang and WW II in his book JFK, I came across Prouty's astonishing claim that Mao's Communists posed more of a threat than the Japanese during WW II! Specifically, Prouty said that Chiang's "greatest wartime threat came from the Communist faction under Mao Tse-tung" (p. 13). Holy mythology! This guy was a total crackpot!

By 1935, Chiang's forces had badly mauled the Communists and had forced them to retreat to the northwest corner of China (Google "the Long March"). In 1937, Mao allied with Chiang to form the Second United Front because both men viewed the Japanese army as the chief existential threat to their existence and to China's existence.

The Japanese army posed a far greater threat to Chiang than did Mao's army. In 1940, Mao had 488,000 troops, whereas the Japanese army in China numbered 1.1 million troops and had far superior equipment, logistics, and air power. (And, FYI, in 1937, Chiang's army outnumbered Mao's army by nearly 3 to 1. By 1940, Chiang's army outnumbered Mao's army by 4 to 1.)

-- In his 1994 interview, Prouty also claimed that T. V. Soong "controlled" Chiang and that Chiang knew he was "working for" Soong. OF course, this is nonsense. As we've seen, Soong quit Chiang's government in 1933 and stayed out of it for nine years because he couldn't get Chiang to do what he wanted, and Soong didn't attend the Cairo Conference because he had angered Chiang and was forced to remain in China.

-- In his 1994 interview and in his book JFK, Prouty claimed that Soong was "the wealthiest man in the world" to bolster his bunk that Soong controlled Chiang. In his book, Prouty specified that Soong was the wealthiest man in the world at the time of the Cairo Conference (p. 13). Yeah, the same conference that Chiang would not allow Soong to attend! Anyway, Soong was not even remotely the richest man in the world in November 1943. Soong made much of his money at the end of WW II and after he moved to the U.S. Even then, his wealth, though considerable, paled compared to that of the Rockefellers, the Hunts, J. Paul Getty, Henry Ford, etc.

-- For years, Prouty led people to believe that he was sent to the South Pole just before the assassination to prevent him from interfering with the Dallas security arrangements. He also claimed that his duties involved presidential protection. He further claimed that sometime after the assassination, an officer from the 112th MI Group told him in a phone call that the 112th had been ordered to "stand down" for the Dallas motorcade, over the objections of the unit's commander. Prouty claimed he took notes during the phone, and for years he claimed that he still had those notes.

All of this bunk was demolished during Prouty's ARRB interview, largely by Prouty himself. Prouty admitted that there was nothing sinister about his trip to the South Pole. He admitted that his job really did not include presidential protection. He markedly changed his story about the alleged stand-down phone call and even said the phone call may not have been genuine. And, when asked if would provide the notes he had said he'd taken during the phone call, he casually said he no longer had them, and offered no explanation as to how or why he could allowed such potentially historic notes to disappear.

-- For years, Prouty made the obscene claim that one of the Dealey Plaza tramp photos showed General Edward Lansdale with his back to the camera. His supporters apparently forged a letter from General Krulak in which Krulak endorsed Prouty's claim, but in a recorded interview Krulak said the opposite and added that he had no reason to believe that Lansdale would have taken part in the assassination.

In Prouty's ARRB interview, he declined to say who first told him that the man in the suit in tramp photo 1 was Lansdale with his back to the camera. He said it was "a personal matter." A "personal matter"?! You make a nutty accusation that you recognize the back side of Lansdale in a tramp photo and even years later it's "a personal matter"?!

When Prouty was asked if he had ever asked Lansdale about the photo or his whereabouts on the day of the shooting, Prouty said, "No, I figured it's his business"! Prouty and Lansdale were neighbors until Lansdale died, yet Prouty never once made any effort to talk with Lansdale about the photo or his whereabouts on 11/22/63. Prouty offered the cockamamie excuse that he had assumed that Lansdale was in Dallas on official duty doing a "scenario," and that the tramps were the scenario!

When Max Boot interviewed Lansdale's son, the son said that his father did not wear the ring worn by the man in the suit in tramp photo 1. The son also noted that Prouty waited until after Lansdale died before claiming that Lansdale was in the Dealey Plaza during the shooting.

I would add that the man in the tramp photo is wearing glasses, yet no extant photo of Lansdale shows him wearing glasses.

By the way, Prouty also claimed that CIA operative Lou Conein was in Dealey Plaza during the shooting, and that he is seen in the Altgens photo! Well, here's the problem: Conein was in South Vietnam for all of 1963, as Larry Hancock, to his credit, has acknowledged. Conein played a key role in the coup that killed South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem. In fact, he was Ambassador Lodge's liaison with the coup plotters.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Prouty claimed that the policemen in the tramp photos were imposters! Apparently Prouty forgot that in 1975 he himself had identified the police officers as real policemen and had even named them: Marvin Wise and Billy Bass. I mean, come on, folks. This guy was a nutjob.

I won't bother recapping Prouty's sleazy prolonged associations with known anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and white supremacists, and their two most notorious groups, Liberty Lobby and the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). I have thoroughly documented these disgraceful associations in this thread.

Jeff Carter · October 11, 2023

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

-- For years, Prouty led people to believe that he was sent to the South Pole just before the assassination to prevent him from interfering with the Dallas security arrangements.

more repetitive irrelevant long-debunked information. the above "factoid" is representative:

Antarctica: a key node in a merry-go-round of circular reasoning. The idea that Prouty was forced, at the ARRB interview in 1996, to walk-back or retract his concepts of ”sinister motivation” sending him to Antarctica in November 1963 began with the ARRB panel, and has found eager vouching by a posse of contemporary critics including Griffiths, Litwin, and two guys with a podcast who prattled on about this issue for about 20 minutes back in August. None of these people actually know what they are talking about, and continued repetition of this pathetic talking point only underlines their ignorance.

I can identify at least five essays, as part of a record which dates back to the 1970s, in which Prouty discusses the trip. This is a representative example of a consistent presentation:

“I had worked for the U.S. Antarctic Projects Officer for many years. In fact I had received his congratulations in a valued letter of 2 July 1959 for work done then, more than four years earlier. The fact that I was working on another Antarctic project on Nov 22, 1963, was simply a part of my official military duties over the years.” (Prouty)

That is essentially what Prouty told the ARRB panel as well. The panel, in their Summary of the interview, then claimed Prouty could not “back up the suspicions he mentioned in the excerpt from the book”. The “suspicions” constitute a brief non-definitive thought experiment influenced by the “JFK” film - which is the actual source of the “sinister motivation” concept referred (an example of the dramatic licence occasionally inserted into the script, as long acknowledged). The panel were entirely unaware Prouty was reiterating a longstanding and oft-stated account of his experience. The contemporary critics are not surprisingly also completely clueless on this matter, although it doesn’t prevent their insistence that Prouty engaged in a “climb-down”, a “retraction” or that “he finally admitted the claim was false in his ARRB interview”.

On 10/10/2023 at 8:06 AM, Michael Griffith said:

LOL! You mean like Prouty’s “first-hand experience” in supposedly being sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements?! (He finally admitted the claim was false in his ARRB interview.)

Simply put, reiterating a position which one has consistently held over many years does in no possible or conceivable way constitute a “climb-down”, a “retraction”, or an admission of “false” claims, and insisting it does does injury to commonly held definition and the factual record. It underscores the essential bad-faith by which these critics are operating, and establishes the poster responded to here is effectively trolling the Forum.

Michael Griffith · October 11, 2023

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

more repetitive irrelevant long-debunked information. the above "factoid" is representative:

Antarctica: a key node in a merry-go-round of circular reasoning. The idea that Prouty was forced, at the ARRB interview in 1996, to walk-back or retract his concepts of ”sinister motivation” sending him to Antarctica in November 1963 began with the ARRB panel, and has found eager vouching by a posse of contemporary critics including Griffiths, Litwin, and two guys with a podcast who prattled on about this issue for about 20 minutes back in August. None of these people actually know what they are talking about, and continued repetition of this pathetic talking point only underlines their ignorance.

I can identify at least five essays, as part of a record which dates back to the 1970s, in which Prouty discusses the trip. This is a representative example of a consistent presentation:

“I had worked for the U.S. Antarctic Projects Officer for many years. In fact I had received his congratulations in a valued letter of 2 July 1959 for work done then, more than four years earlier. The fact that I was working on another Antarctic project on Nov 22, 1963, was simply a part of my official military duties over the years.” (Prouty)

That is essentially what Prouty told the ARRB panel as well. The panel, in their Summary of the interview, then claimed Prouty could not “back up the suspicions he mentioned in the excerpt from the book”. The “suspicions” constitute a brief non-definitive thought experiment influenced by the “JFK” film - which is the actual source of the “sinister motivation” concept referred (an example of the dramatic licence occasionally inserted into the script, as long acknowledged). The panel were entirely unaware Prouty was reiterating a longstanding and oft-stated account of his experience. The contemporary critics are not surprisingly also completely clueless on this matter, although it doesn’t prevent their insistence that Prouty engaged in a “climb-down”, a “retraction” or that “he finally admitted the claim was false in his ARRB interview”.

Simply put, reiterating a position which one has consistently held over many years does in no possible or conceivable way constitute a “climb-down”, a “retraction”, or an admission of “false” claims, and insisting it does does injury to commonly held definition and the factual record. It underscores the essential bad-faith by which these critics are operating, and establishes the poster responded to here is effectively trolling the Forum.

Your replies are what smack of bad faith. I've already proved in this thread that Prouty clearly suggested, in writing, that he was sent to the South Pole to keep him from intervening in the Dallas security arrangements. Prouty repeated this tale to Oliver Stone when he acted a consultant for Stone's 1991 movie JFK. This is why Oliver Stone included the claim in the movie.

It is amazing that you are pretending that Gibbons could not possibly have committed just a single blunder in a passing comment on a topic that was not even the subject of the paragraph or the book, but, according to you, every other historian who has ever written about the Tehran Conference has blundered by saying that Chiang did not attend the conference! You're also saying that all those other historians have further blundered by not saying that Chiang and Stalin approved the Indochina trusteeship in Tehran.

You have one source that supports Prouty's fable. I have literally hundreds that refute it. Yes, there was talk of a Chiang-Stalin meeting at one point, but, as I documented, both Chiang and Stalin eventually shot it down and in fact proved determined to avoid meeting.

By the way, I recently stumbled across the video of another Prouty interview. He appeared on a TV show produced by anti-Semitic nutjob Lyndon LaRouche in 1992 (LINK). No sensible person in their right mind would have appeared on that show.

Anyway, during the interview, from 2:40 to 3:29, Prouty claimed that he had pictures that corroborated his story that he flew the Chinese delegation to Tehran. Well, then, where are those pictures? Why didn't he ever publish them? Why didn't he include them in his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy? Huh? Why?

During that same segment of the interview, Prouty also said that he introduced Elliott Roosevelt to the Chinese delegation when he allegedly stopped at Habanaya Airport. Humm, well, then it is especially odd that Elliott said nothing about this noteworthy event in his extensive accounts of his experiences at the Cairo and Tehran conferences.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Michael Griffith

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

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