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

[W. Niederhut]

[Jeff Carter]

54 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

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.

This entire paragraph is absolutely false. You haven't "proven" anything other than the observable truth that you simply do not know what you are talking about. 

[Rob Clark]

4 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

" 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. "

 

One guy here, (Me) with a podcast that prattled on about this issue 2 years ago now, and for much more than 20 mins. I actually do know what I'm talking about, and your willful ignorance to get even the most basic of facts right is pathetic. The only reason you and Osanic "doth protest too much", is because you make money selling Prouty's lies and stories. 

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Rob Clark said:

One guy here, (Me) with a podcast that prattled on about this issue 2 years ago now, and for much more than 20 mins. I actually do know what I'm talking about, and your willful ignorance to get even the most basic of facts right is pathetic. The only reason you and Osanic "doth protest too much", is because you make money selling Prouty's lies and stories. 

The podcast in question was premised on a misunderstanding which had the effect of actively misleading the listening audience, and occurred due to a failure to “read the footnotes”  -which is its own sort of irony.

The ARRB panel’s critique was premised on a single non-definitive sentence from Prouty’s 1992 book, and is a very thin marker to deign absolutist terms such as “truth” and “lies”, particularly in light of multiple definitive statements to the contrary.

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

The podcast in question was premised on a misunderstanding which had the effect of actively misleading the listening audience, and occurred due to a failure to “read the footnotes”  -which is its own sort of irony.

The ARRB panel’s critique was premised on a single non-definitive sentence from Prouty’s 1992 book, and is a very thin marker to deign absolutist terms such as “truth” and “lies”, particularly in light of multiple definitive statements to the contrary.

     Rob Clark, as I recall, is another one of those McAdams-type Prouty defamers who, upon questioning, never read either of Prouty's books.  Instead, he "did his own research" at McAdams.edu.

     Some of those guys come out of the woodwork here, periodically, to tag team their McAdams colleagues who are engaged in Swift Boat Vetting Col. Prouty on social media.

    

[Michael Griffith]

There continues to be an embarrassing and inexcusable amount of denial and evasion in this thread over Prouty's demonstrably bogus claims. Let's bring the discussion back to the facts:

-- Prouty's one and only source for his claim that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference is a single sentence in William Gibbons' 1994 book The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War. Gibbons provided no source for the statement. The statement appears in the middle of a paragraph about British opposition to a postwar trusteeship for Indochina. It is obvious to everyone except Prouty’s supporters that Gibbons simply confused and conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference.

The sentence that Prouty quotes from Gibbons' book says that at the Tehran Conference, Chiang and Stalin approved FDR's proposal for an Indochina trusteeship. But every other source ever written on the subject says (1) that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference, (2) that Chiang approved the trusteeship proposal at the Cairo Conference, and (3) that the trusteeship was only briefly discussed at the Tehran Conference. Here are just a few of the sources that document these facts:

Negotiating China's Destiny in World War II (Stanford University Press, 2014), by Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary, Stephen MacKinnon (editors). See especially pages 196-200, 206-207, 226-229. The book is available online via Amazon Kindle (I have the Kindle edition).

“The Cairo Conference, 1943,” article on the U.S. State Department's website, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/wwii/107184.htm.

“Madame Chiang Kai-shek to President Roosevelt,” State Department website, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943China/d140. The 12/5/43 letter that Chiang’s wife wrote to FDR in which she detailed her and her husband’s travels following the Cairo Conference. She stated that they flew from Cairo to Karachi, then from Karachi to Ramgarh, then from Ramgarh to Chabau, and then from Chabau to Chungking. Surely if she and her husband had gone to the Tehran Conference, she would have mentioned this noteworthy item in her letter to FDR.

Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, the Conferences at Cairo and Tehran, 1943, White House Files, Log of the Trip, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943CairoTehran/d353. This is the detailed White House log, the "Log of the Trip," of FDR's trip to Cairo, his actions at the Cairo Conference, his trip to Tehran, his actions at the Tehran Conference, and his return trip to Cairo for the second Cairo meeting.

"(Mis)-Interpretations of the 1943 Cairo Conference: The Cairo Communiqué and Its Legacy among Koreans During and After World War II," International Journal of Korean History, 2/28/2022, by Mark Caprio, https://ijkh.khistory.org/journal/view.php?number=559.

"Cairo Conference and Tehran Conference," https://www.nvlchawaii.org/cairo-conference-and-tehran-conference/.

The Cairo Conference of 1943: Roosevelt, Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang (McFarland, 2011), by Ronald Heiferman. See especially pages 148-159. The book is available online via Amazon Kindle (I have the Kindle edition).

"Back-to-Back-to-Back Conferences: Cairo to Tehran to Cairo," George C. Marshall Foundation website, https://www.marshallfoundation.org/articles-and-features/back-to-back-to-back-conferences-cairo-to-tehran-to-cairo/.

"Sextant Conference," JCS website, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/WWII/Sextant_Eureka3.pdf.

The Cairo Conference: A Forgotten Summit, by Zhu Shaokang, https://www.fhk.ndu.edu.tw/site/main/upload/6862ac282432fc1fde400aa74f317621/journal/81-12.pdf. Professor Shaokang discusses the fact that both Chiang and Stalin were determined to *avoid* meeting, and that they did not meet in Cairo or Tehran.

"The Tehran Conference, 1943," State Department website, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/tehran-conf.

"Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam," House of Lords Library, https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/tehran-yalta-and-potsdam-three-wartime-conferences-that-shaped-europe-and-the-world/.

Eureka Summit: Agreement in Principle and the Big Three at Tehran, 1943 (University of Delaware Press, 1987), by Paul Mayle. Available on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/eurekasummitagre0000mayl/page/n1/mode/1up. An exhaustive look at the Tehran Conference. Chiang was not there, and the trusteeship idea was discussed only briefly. Stalin had no dog in the hunt on the issue of a trusteeship in Indochina, since the Soviets would play no role in it, per FDR's proposal. FDR obtained Chiang's approval of the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference to make sure that China did not swoop down into Indochina after the war, given China's history of occupying large chunks of Indochina, especially Vietnam, for long periods of time in the past. Stalin was indifferent about the Indochina trusteeship and was happy to say he agreed with the idea during the very brief discussion about it (by "very brief," I mean no more than a few minutes at the most). Stalin, however, was intensely interested in Manchuria, Korea, and the Kuril Islands.

My Dear Mr. Stalin: The Complete Correspondence Between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin (Yale University Press, 2005), edited by Susan Butler with a foreword written by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Available on the Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/mydearmrstalinco0000roos/page/n8/mode/1up. Not so much as a trace of a hint that Chiang attended the Tehran Conference, much less that Chiang and Stalin met at the conference. Also, Butler and Schlesinger both say nothing about Chiang being in Tehran.

-- Prouty's claim that at the Tehran Conference, FDR and Stalin agreed to have Stalin order Mao to stand down has zero support in the record. Not a single available record on the conference mentions such an agreement, nor does a single record state that Mao was even mentioned at the conference. No such agreement or discussion appears in the available Soviet and American records of the conference.

-- Prouty's claim that he had pictures from his trip with the Chinese delegation to Tehran is a revealing blunder, another one of his gaffes in trying to provide bogus details to make his story seem credible. His claim begs the question: Why didn't he include at least one of these alleged photos in his book JFK, especially given the fact that in his book and in his interviews he acknowledged that all other sources on the Tehran Conference say that Chiang was not there? His alleged photos would have been monumentally historic evidence. Where are these alleged photos?

I'm reminded of Prouty's claim that he took notes during his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group. For years Prouty said, and wrote, that he had taken notes during this putatively historic phone call. Yet, when the ARRB asked about the notes, he said, "Oh, I think they're long gone"! Yeah, I bet his alleged Tehran-trip photos were "long gone" as well. They were long gone because they never existed.

By the way, during his ARRB interview, Prouty claimed for the first time ever that he had not called the 112th but that they had called him! Until that point, Prouty had always said he had called them. And, incredibly, he told one of his ARRB interviewers that the phone call may not have been legitimate because the person who called him didn’t sound legitimate!

-- Prouty's stunning claim that Mao's Communists posed a greater threat to Chiang during WW II than did the Japanese is an absolute howler. It's further proof that he had no clue what he was talking about.

-- Prouty's equally stunning claim that Chiang would have sided with the Japanese had he not been controlled by T. V. Soong is ridiculous mythology. First of all, as we've established, Soong did not control Chiang but was subordinate to Chiang. Second, Chiang's hostility toward the Japanese and his determination to fight them is profusely documented.

-- Prouty's bunk about Churchill being delayed at a Soviet checkpoint in Tehran due to a lack of ID because he was wearing a pocketless military jumpsuit is another piece of silly fiction that, naturally, finds no support in any source, including Sarah Churchill's extensive accounts of her experiences at the Tehran Conference. Plus, there were no pocketless British jumpsuits. For that matter, there were also no Soviet, American, French, or Canadian pocketless jumpsuits, as anyone can confirm in 15 minutes via Google.

-- Prouty claimed, in writing, that he had "worked with military presidential protection units" and that he had "worked on what is called 'presidential protection.'" But, he royally back-peddled from these claims during his ARRB interview. He admitted that his duties did not include presidential protection. He said, “Quite frankly, other than knowing Presidential protection exists, that’s about all I was required to know," and added, "The only time I was personally involved -- and I think that was just for familiarization early in my assignment for this work -- was when I went to Mexico City.... that was my first and last course with them.... I flew the airplane to Mexico City for them."

And, incidentally, the ARRB established that there was no such thing as "military presidential protection units." I worked in military intelligence in the Army for 21 years, and I never heard of such units.

-- Finally, for many years Prouty led everyone to believe that he had been sent to the South Pole shortly before the assassination to prevent him from interfering in the Dallas security arrangements. In his book JFK, Prouty said that he had always “wondered, deep in my own hear,” if he had been sent to the South Pole to keep him “far from Washington,” and that he had “observed and learned” many things that led him to believe that “such a question might be well founded” (p. 284). Moreover, Prouty said that it “seemed strange” to him that he was ordered to go on the South Pole trip because the trip “had absolutely nothing to do with my previous nine years of work” (p. 284).

Prouty convinced Oliver Stone to include the strange-sinister-South-Pole-trip claim in Stone’s 1991 movie JFK.

Yet, when Prouty was interviewed by the ARRB, he said nothing about his professed suspicions about why he was sent to the South Pole. In fact, he admitted that the trip was “so routine” that he “didn’t give it a thought.” When asked specifically if he believed there was anything sinister about the trip, he answered, “Oh, no.”

Gee, it’s too bad Prouty didn’t tell these things to Oliver Stone before Stone released his movie, hey? Following Prouty’s ARRB interview, critics pounced on his admission and used it to further attack Stone’s movie.

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

for many years Prouty led everyone to believe that he had been sent to the South Pole shortly before the assassination to prevent him from interfering in the Dallas security arrangements.

Absolutely incorrect. Prouty’s references to the trip, over the years, amount to exactly what he told the ARRB panel. I submitted a representative example yesterday. Here is another:

"In November 1963, when I was Chief of Special Operations with the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, I was sent to Antarctica with a large group of VIPs, industrialists, newsmen, and others.  We went there to witness a most important event.  A small nuclear plant was going to be activated at the Navy Base of the shore of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica; and from that moment on all water, all heat, and all electricity for that huge scientific establishment was going to provided by that tiny, inconspicuous nuclear plant."   (“Water”)

 

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

In his book JFK, Prouty said that he had always “wondered, deep in my own hear,” if he had been sent to the South Pole to keep him “far from Washington,” and that he had “observed and learned” many things that led him to believe that “such a question might be well founded” (p. 284).

This is an accurate quote, but Griffiths somehow misses the two most important qualifying words in the sentence: “wondered” and “might”.

“I have always wondered, deep in my own heart, whether that strange invitation that removed me so far from Washington and from the center of all things clandestine that I knew so well might have been connected to the events that followed.”

This sentence is the single basis for the ARRB panel’s “allegation”. Leaving aside the fact it was published in 1992, a full year or two after the JFK script had been written, one must ask how this sentence could be considered in any way definitive - as portrayed by the ARRB panel, Litwin and Griffiths? The words “wonder” and “might” establish this as a non-definitive thought experiment, and to jump on Prouty over it seems an exercise in denying the man his own thoughts, just as the criticism over Teheran involve an effort to deny Prouty his own personal experiences.

Further, because these critics are largely unaware of Prouty’s wide body of work, they are blissfully ignorant that the original source of the “suspicions” over the Antarctic trip was actually Bud Fensterwald, as expressed at the time of the HSCA. Prouty: “Bud Fensterwald had selected me for no apparent reason to become a member of his CIA committee, we were having lunch together. He said...out of the blue... "Fletch did you ever wonder why you were selected to go to the South Pole?"    (Mongoose Cycle 1961-62)

 

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Moreover, Prouty said that it “seemed strange” to him that he was ordered to go on the South Pole trip because the trip “had absolutely nothing to do with my previous nine years of work” (p. 284).

But Prouty is correct - the overseeing of a small nuclear reactor at McMurdo had no relation to his previous assignments. This is confirmed in part by a letter of commendation for Prouty’s good work sent by James Mooney Antarctic Projects officer to General Thomas D. White July 2, 1959.

 

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Prouty convinced Oliver Stone to include the strange-sinister-South-Pole-trip claim in Stone’s 1991 movie JFK.

Completely untrue, and I highly doubt Griffith has any personal knowledge of the discussions  informing the JFK screenwriters. He has simply made this up. The “claim” was an acknowledged dramatic embellishment.

 

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Yet, when Prouty was interviewed by the ARRB, he said nothing about his professed suspicions about why he was sent to the South Pole.

Because the "professed suspicions" do not exist.  Prouty simply reiterated what he had always said about the purpose of the trip.

 

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Following Prouty’s ARRB interview, critics pounced on his admission and used it to further attack Stone’s movie.

There was no "admission", and in truth, the critics did little more than reveal their own lack of knowledge over the topic, and their inability to understand the role of  dramatic license in construction of the JFK screenplay. The continuing stubborn insistence that this moronic talking point is in any way convincing is merely an expression the obvious confusion and bad faith of this self-appointed star-chamber.

[Kirk Gallaway]

This article is well worth the read. It reveals of the conflict Oliver Stone was faced with during the shooting of JFK, which eventually came to a boiling point between Stone, Prouty and John Newman.

https://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100whox.html

 

First Stone's initial reaction to the charges of Prouty's right wing connections, then the introduction of John Newman.

Stone -- whose father is Jewish, as it happens -- seemed unconcerned. After being assured by Prouty that he was neither a racist nor an anti-Semite ("I never met a Jew I didn't like," said Prouty) but merely a writer in need of a platform, he rejected advice to drop the colonel as a technical adviser and to rewrite Mr. X so that Prouty could not be identified. "I'm doing a film on the assassination of John Kennedy," said Stone, "not the life of Fletcher Prouty."

The bullheadedness had an element of calculation, because by then, Stone had recruited a Vietnam adviser with far more heft than Prouty, an active-duty US Army major named John Newman.

Meticulous, low-key, methodical -- everything, in sum, Prouty was not -- Newman had been quietly working with Stone since the spring of 1991. He'd first learned of the film from a publishing friend who informed him that Stone had an assassination movie in the works, in which Vietnam would figure prominently. Stone's thesis, the friend had said, was that Kennedy, had he lived, would have withdrawn from Vietnam -- precisely the subject that Newman, a highly experienced intelligence specialist, had been privately researching for his Ph.D. thesis for nearly a decade. During that time, he had ferreted out fifteen thousand pages of documents -- three times the total of the Pentagon Papers -- and interviewed scores of top-ranking sources. The data, checked and rechecked, had led him, bit by bit, doubt by doubt, to an explosive conclusion: Not only had Kennedy put in motion the withdrawal just weeks before his death, but an intricate secret operation, involving the US Saigon command and certain US-based foreign-policy officials, had been systematically deceiving the White House about the disastrous course of the war.

*****

The showdown onset with Stone, Prouty and Newman.:

The showdown took place in an Interior Department office that had been made over to appear like the Pentagon lair of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While technicians set lights for the next scene, Stone summoned Prouty and Newman and came right to the point. Prouty's association with Livingstone must immediately end. No more information was to be provided to him, and Prouty was to do his utmost to ensure that he would not publish anything that would discredit the film. Then Stone turned to Prouty's misreading of the critical NSAM. "What's the story, Fletch?" he asked.

Prouty began by saying that he had confused the four-page draft NSAM 273 with the one-paragraph NSAM 263. When Stone, who had seen both documents, appeared dubious, Prouty switched tactics, claiming that the draft NSAM was a forgery and that the source from which it had come -- namely, the Kennedy Library -- had been "infiltrated." At that, Newman tore into him. Prouty was wrong, he said: about Bundy, about "infiltration," about the NSAMs, about the entire case. Unaccustomed to being dressed down by a junior officer, Prouty erupted. "Fletcher really went into orbit," recalled a witness to the meeting. "He jumped up and went into this long tirade about his forty years and how he had done everything and written everything and briefed everybody and if that wasn't good enough for Oliver, he was quitting."

At length, Stone managed to pacify Prouty and the session ended in edgy detente. The incident, though, seemed to mark a turning point for Stone, not only in his unquestioning regard for Prouty, from whom he gently began to distance himself, but in his attitude about the assassination and his film. Never again would he wax quite so rhapsodic about Garrison, whose appalling blunders he had belatedly begun to appreciate. Among his staff, which had long been trying to wean him from the DA, there was hope that, in editing, Stone would loop in a line or two, making his new skepticism clear. Under the growing influence of more of the serious buffs, he was now even willing to admit doubt, not that there had been a conspiracy, or that Vietnam had been its ghastly consequence, but doubt in the certainty that he knew everything.

 

 

 

[Rob Clark]

20 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

The podcast in question was premised on a misunderstanding which had the effect of actively misleading the listening audience, and occurred due to a failure to “read the footnotes”  -which is its own sort of irony.

The ARRB panel’s critique was premised on a single non-definitive sentence from Prouty’s 1992 book, and is a very thin marker to deign absolutist terms such as “truth” and “lies”, particularly in light of multiple definitive statements to the contrary.

Actually, the ARRB's critique was premised on the cumulative remarks of Prouty throughout the 70's, 80's & 90's, his articles and books, statements made to Stone for JFK, correspondence with other researchers, and conference speeches. People like Livingstone and Weisberg smelled a rat long before the ARRB exposed Prouty as a fraud.

17 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

     Rob Clark, as I recall, is another one of those McAdams-type Prouty defamers who, upon questioning, never read either of Prouty's books.  Instead, he "did his own research" at McAdams.edu.

     Some of those guys come out of the woodwork here, periodically, to tag team their McAdams colleagues who are engaged in Swift Boat Vetting Col. Prouty on social media.

    

I love when people like you are afraid to engage people like me directly. It tells me all I need to know. If you only knew a third of what you think you know about me, this diatribe would be comical, however it's just sad & pathetic. I'm actually on the conspiracy side of things, but even more so than that, the truth of things. I put Prouty on the same level as Judyth Baker, James Files, Chauncy Holt, Beverly Oliver and a host of other frauds that have tried to make money off the assassination by injecting themselves into the lore and muddying the waters of truth. Oh... and just because someone wrote a book, doesn't mean that what's in between the covers has any substantial value whatsoever.  Here's a list of people that didn't or don't now believe what Prouty claimed.... Harrison Livingstone, Viktor Krulak, Harold Weisberg, Oliver Stone, John Newman, Col. Rudolph Reich of the 316th INTC, two prattling podcasters, & the entire ARRB.

[Jeff Carter]

43 minutes ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

This article is well worth the read. It reveals of the conflict Oliver Stone was faced with during the shooting of JFK, which eventually came to a boiling point between Stone, Prouty and John Newman.

https://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100whox.html

 

First Stone's initial reaction to the charges of Prouty's right wing connections, then the introduction of John Newman.

Stone -- whose father is Jewish, as it happens -- seemed unconcerned. After being assured by Prouty that he was neither a racist nor an anti-Semite ("I never met a Jew I didn't like," said Prouty) but merely a writer in need of a platform, he rejected advice to drop the colonel as a technical adviser and to rewrite Mr. X so that Prouty could not be identified. "I'm doing a film on the assassination of John Kennedy," said Stone, "not the life of Fletcher Prouty."

The bullheadedness had an element of calculation, because by then, Stone had recruited a Vietnam adviser with far more heft than Prouty, an active-duty US Army major named John Newman.

Meticulous, low-key, methodical -- everything, in sum, Prouty was not -- Newman had been quietly working with Stone since the spring of 1991. He'd first learned of the film from a publishing friend who informed him that Stone had an assassination movie in the works, in which Vietnam would figure prominently. Stone's thesis, the friend had said, was that Kennedy, had he lived, would have withdrawn from Vietnam -- precisely the subject that Newman, a highly experienced intelligence specialist, had been privately researching for his Ph.D. thesis for nearly a decade. During that time, he had ferreted out fifteen thousand pages of documents -- three times the total of the Pentagon Papers -- and interviewed scores of top-ranking sources. The data, checked and rechecked, had led him, bit by bit, doubt by doubt, to an explosive conclusion: Not only had Kennedy put in motion the withdrawal just weeks before his death, but an intricate secret operation, involving the US Saigon command and certain US-based foreign-policy officials, had been systematically deceiving the White House about the disastrous course of the war.

*****

The showdown onset with Stone, Prouty and Newman.:

The showdown took place in an Interior Department office that had been made over to appear like the Pentagon lair of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. While technicians set lights for the next scene, Stone summoned Prouty and Newman and came right to the point. Prouty's association with Livingstone must immediately end. No more information was to be provided to him, and Prouty was to do his utmost to ensure that he would not publish anything that would discredit the film. Then Stone turned to Prouty's misreading of the critical NSAM. "What's the story, Fletch?" he asked.

Prouty began by saying that he had confused the four-page draft NSAM 273 with the one-paragraph NSAM 263. When Stone, who had seen both documents, appeared dubious, Prouty switched tactics, claiming that the draft NSAM was a forgery and that the source from which it had come -- namely, the Kennedy Library -- had been "infiltrated." At that, Newman tore into him. Prouty was wrong, he said: about Bundy, about "infiltration," about the NSAMs, about the entire case. Unaccustomed to being dressed down by a junior officer, Prouty erupted. "Fletcher really went into orbit," recalled a witness to the meeting. "He jumped up and went into this long tirade about his forty years and how he had done everything and written everything and briefed everybody and if that wasn't good enough for Oliver, he was quitting."

At length, Stone managed to pacify Prouty and the session ended in edgy detente. The incident, though, seemed to mark a turning point for Stone, not only in his unquestioning regard for Prouty, from whom he gently began to distance himself, but in his attitude about the assassination and his film. Never again would he wax quite so rhapsodic about Garrison, whose appalling blunders he had belatedly begun to appreciate. Among his staff, which had long been trying to wean him from the DA, there was hope that, in editing, Stone would loop in a line or two, making his new skepticism clear. Under the growing influence of more of the serious buffs, he was now even willing to admit doubt, not that there had been a conspiracy, or that Vietnam had been its ghastly consequence, but doubt in the certainty that he knew everything.

 

Kirk - Anson's Esquire piece was discussed at length here:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/old-wine-in-new-bottles-fletcher-prouty-s-new-critics-recycle-the-past

There are many reasons why it can be fairly characterized as a "hatchet-job".

[Jeff Carter]

23 minutes ago, Rob Clark said:

Actually, the ARRB's critique was premised on the cumulative remarks of Prouty throughout the 70's, 80's & 90's, his articles and books, statements made to Stone for JFK, correspondence with other researchers, and conference speeches. People like Livingstone and Weisberg smelled a rat long before the ARRB exposed Prouty as a fraud.

The Antarctica "allegation" boils down to a single sentence published in 1992.

The ARRB military panel - which was the sole body within the wider Board to specifically examine Prouty's work - clearly formed prejudicial conclusions before interviewing Prouty, were largely uninformed regarding his work, and made serious factual errors both during the interview and in the subsequent Summary. Individual panel members expressed strong endorsement for the Warren Commission's conclusions, and expressed firm opinion that nothing at all was amiss with the Secret Service's presidential protection actions on Nov 22, 1963.

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

 

[W. Niederhut]

29 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

Kirk - Anson's Esquire piece was discussed at length here:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/old-wine-in-new-bottles-fletcher-prouty-s-new-critics-recycle-the-past

There are many reasons why it can be fairly characterized as a "hatchet-job".

Yes, it's unfortunate that even Kirk Gallaway has been consistently duped by the Prouty defamation propaganda in the M$M, and on social media.

Kirk even believes, oddly, that John Newman had "more heft" than a highly decorated USAF colonel who served as the Joint Chiefs liaison to the CIA for Special Ops, and was involved in writing portions of the Pentagon Papers and the McNamara Taylor Report.

This is what happens when people fail to study the primary source material of an historical witness and, instead, base their opinions on CIA propaganda.

[Michael Griffith]

20 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Absolutely incorrect. Prouty’s references to the trip, over the years, amount to exactly what he told the ARRB panel. I submitted a representative example yesterday. Here is another:

"In November 1963, when I was Chief of Special Operations with the Joint Staff in the Pentagon, I was sent to Antarctica with a large group of VIPs, industrialists, newsmen, and others.  We went there to witness a most important event.  A small nuclear plant was going to be activated at the Navy Base of the shore of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica; and from that moment on all water, all heat, and all electricity for that huge scientific establishment was going to provided by that tiny, inconspicuous nuclear plant."   (“Water”)

This is an accurate quote, but Griffiths somehow misses the two most important qualifying words in the sentence: “wondered” and “might”.

“I have always wondered, deep in my own heart, whether that strange invitation that removed me so far from Washington and from the center of all things clandestine that I knew so well might have been connected to the events that followed.”

This sentence is the single basis for the ARRB panel’s “allegation”. Leaving aside the fact it was published in 1992, a full year or two after the JFK script had been written, one must ask how this sentence could be considered in any way definitive - as portrayed by the ARRB panel, Litwin and Griffiths? The words “wonder” and “might” establish this as a non-definitive thought experiment, and to jump on Prouty over it seems an exercise in denying the man his own thoughts, just as the criticism over Teheran involve an effort to deny Prouty his own personal experiences.

Further, because these critics are largely unaware of Prouty’s wide body of work, they are blissfully ignorant that the original source of the “suspicions” over the Antarctic trip was actually Bud Fensterwald, as expressed at the time of the HSCA. Prouty: “Bud Fensterwald had selected me for no apparent reason to become a member of his CIA committee, we were having lunch together. He said...out of the blue... "Fletch did you ever wonder why you were selected to go to the South Pole?"    (Mongoose Cycle 1961-62)

But Prouty is correct - the overseeing of a small nuclear reactor at McMurdo had no relation to his previous assignments. This is confirmed in part by a letter of commendation for Prouty’s good work sent by James Mooney Antarctic Projects officer to General Thomas D. White July 2, 1959.

Completely untrue, and I highly doubt Griffith has any personal knowledge of the discussions  informing the JFK screenwriters. He has simply made this up. The “claim” was an acknowledged dramatic embellishment.

Because the "professed suspicions" do not exist.  Prouty simply reiterated what he had always said about the purpose of the trip.

There was no "admission", and in truth, the critics did little more than reveal their own lack of knowledge over the topic, and their inability to understand the role of  dramatic license in construction of the JFK screenplay. The continuing stubborn insistence that this moronic talking point is in any way convincing is merely an expression the obvious confusion and bad faith of this self-appointed star-chamber.

This is just so silly and so sad. Even when confronted with Prouty's own words, you ignore their clear meaning and implausibly spin them as innocently as you can. 

By any rational, honest, objective assessment, Prouty clearly and plainly indicated that he believed he was sent to the South Pole for sinister, ulterior motives. I should have quoted the rest of what he said on the subject to make this even clearer. 

Prouty undeniably said that he found it "strange" that he was being sent to the South Pole. Yet, he told the ARRB that there was nothing strange or sinister about the trip and that it was "so routine" that he thought nothing of it. That's not what he told Oliver Stone either. (FYI, Prouty himself said in his 1992 interview on the anti-Semitic nutjob LaRouche's TV program that he acted as a consultant to Oliver Stone on the movie JFK.)

Prouty clearly lied when he claimed for years that he worked on presidential protection. He was nice enough to fess up to his tale to the ARRB. And, no, there was no such thing as "military presidential protection units."

I notice you punted on Prouty's gibberish about the notes he supposedly took during his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group and about the phone call itself. This was just more of his bunk. Any sane, truthful person would have made copies of those potentially historic notes and would have carefully safeguarded the originals. 

the criticism over Teheran involve an effort to deny Prouty his own personal experiences.

Oh, sheesh. Unbelievable. First off, several of his claims about Chiang and Tehran have nothing to do with his alleged "personal experiences."  Chiang was never "controlled" by Soong.  I defy you to find one Asia/WW II scholar who will say that Mao's forces posed more of a threat to Chiang during WW II than the Japanese did. I also defy you to find one Asia/WW II scholar who will say that at the Tehran Conference, FDR got Stalin to agree to order Mao to stand down--Mao and his forces were never even discussed at that conference. 

As for Prouty's alleged "personal experiences," this brings us to Prouty's wild tale that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference, and that Prouty personally flew the delegation to Tehran. You guys rely on one obviously errant, unsourced statement buried in a book about the Vietnam War and ignore the hundreds of records and scholarly sources that prove that Prouty's tale is pure fiction.

By the way, where are Prouty's alleged Tehran-trip photos of the Chinese delegation? 

 

[Jeff Carter]

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Even when confronted with Prouty's own words, you ignore their clear meaning and implausibly spin them as innocently as you can. 

There is such thing as the English language and grammatical sentence structure. We’ve both quoted the specific sentence in question. Your analysis of the sentence’s syntax is extremely poor.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Prouty clearly lied when he claimed for years that he worked on presidential protection. 

Prouty never claimed to ”work on presidential protection.” You lie. Your reading comprehension skills range from middling to atrocious, trending toward the latter often in coordination with your expressed ulterior agendas.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

And, no, there was no such thing as "military presidential protection units."

There is a developed body of scholarship which flatly contradicts your assertion.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

I notice you punted on Prouty's gibberish about the notes he supposedly took during his alleged phone call with the 112th MI Group and about the phone call itself. This was just more of his bunk.   

The notes exist. I’ve seen them myself. You are wrong.

 

4 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

this brings us to Prouty's wild tale that Chiang and his delegation attended the Tehran Conference, and that Prouty personally flew the delegation to Tehran.

Basically, your entire argument concerning events related to the Cairo-Teheran Conferences amounts to an appeal to the demonstrably shallow limits of your own knowledge base, coupled with a generalized trashing  of all other points-of-view so to bolster the requirements of your lame and often factually-challenged talking points. I am very confident that you know next to nothing about WW2 era flight suits, refuelling schedules, the composition of the Chinese delegation, security arrangements at Teheran, or proofreading protools at the Library of Congress. Yet you blather on incessantly about all these things, often presented within an invective-laden torrent of ill will. Your entire purpose here on this Forum is to cause disruption and distribute toxic energies.

Edited October 13, 2023 by Jeff Carter

[W. Niederhut]

On 10/12/2023 at 12:43 PM, Rob Clark said:

 

I love when people like you are afraid to engage people like me directly. It tells me all I need to know. If you only knew a third of what you think you know about me, this diatribe would be comical, however it's just sad & pathetic. I'm actually on the conspiracy side of things, but even more so than that, the truth of things. I put Prouty on the same level as Judyth Baker, James Files, Chauncy Holt, Beverly Oliver and a host of other frauds that have tried to make money off the assassination by injecting themselves into the lore and muddying the waters of truth. Oh... and just because someone wrote a book, doesn't mean that what's in between the covers has any substantial value whatsoever.  Here's a list of people that didn't or don't now believe what Prouty claimed.... Harrison Livingstone, Viktor Krulak, Harold Weisberg, Oliver Stone, John Newman, Col. Rudolph Reich of the 316th INTC, two prattling podcasters, & the entire ARRB.

Rob,

    Your ignorance and dishonesty about Prouty's career and work is, frankly, embarrassing.

     I'm reminded of our last discussion on the subject, where it was obvious that you knew nothing about Prouty, and had never read either of his books.

     My advice is to limit your punditry to subjects that you properly understand.

     Also, if you really believe that Prouty's writings about Deep State history are comparable to Judyth Baker's, you need to do some serious remedial reading.

Edited October 13, 2023 by W. Niederhut