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

[Sandy Larsen]

[deleted]

[Sandy Larsen]

17 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

It is my understanding that the production of “official history” by Library of Congress researchers for government departments is a task taken with seriousness and attention to factual detail. In this case, a contrary opinion has been expressed holding that the author of one of these histories made not just one but two massive errors in a single sentence, and it somehow got past the proofreading and into print. This doesn't rise above the mere expression of opinion, as there is no corresponding evidence of previous sloppiness on behalf of the author or of general poor attention to detail in these works.

Also, as has been shown, a meeting between Chiang Kai-Shek and Stalin in Teheran was announced in a contemporaneous newspaper article, and the diplomatic discussions in preparation of such meeting are detailed in a more recent scholarly paper. It is quite a remarkable coincidence that Prouty’s supposed “deranged fantasy” (as portrayed) is supported by such disparate sources.

 

Now that you've reminded me of those things, I see that you are right. And the fact that most sources say that Chiang Kai-shek didn't attend is proof that the meeting was a tightly -- but not perfectly -- held secret.

If Mike can't see that, he's got a real problem with his reasoning.

 

[Jeff Carter]

46 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Now that you've reminded me of those things, I see that you are right. And the fact that most sources say that Chiang Kai-shek didn't attend is proof that the meeting was a tightly -- but not perfectly -- held secret.

If Mike can't see that, he's got a real problem with his reasoning.

 

Yes, and the diplomatic discussions detailed in the scholarly paper establishes that a desire for secrecy imposed on such meeting was a specific negotiating point for the Soviets, and for specified reasons. 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Sandy,

    What evidence has Michael Griffith presented to support his claim that Chiang Kai-shek and/or his delegates did not meet, secretly, with Stalin in Tehran?  On the contrary, Prouty, himself, flew the delegates to Tehran in a VIP Lockheed Lodestar.

     Griffith's timeline has been debunked, in which he claimed that Chiang and his delegates could not have met with Stalin en route to Karachi from Cairo.

      Meanwhile, the larger picture in this Tehran debate is that Griffith has posted a redundant series of false, defamatory claims about Prouty on the forum during the past year-- apparently, for the purpose of promoting the false impression that Prouty was not an honest, rational witness of CIA and U.S. military ops.

      This 30 year-old Prouty defamation campaign is similar to the well known U.S. government defamation campaigns attacking the credibility of Prouty's associates, Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone.

Addendum:  It looks like my response (above) to Sandy's question got buried at the bottom of the page within one minute of my post.

So, I want to remind people that we have a tree and a forest here.

Griffith's Tehran conference claim is his latest tree.

The forest is the 30 year U.S. government defamation campaign to create a false impression that Prouty was not an honest, credible witness of U.S. Deep State history.

[James DiEugenio]

👋 Nice one William.

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/28/2023 at 2:35 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Yes, and the diplomatic discussions detailed in the scholarly paper establishes that a desire for secrecy imposed on such meeting was a specific negotiating point for the Soviets, and for specified reasons. 

This is gibberish and nonsense. I already answered this bogus argument, and answered it with scholarly sources that are actually about the Tehran Conference and/or Chiang Kai-shek, not a lone unsourced sentence in a book about the Vietnam War. 

On 10/28/2023 at 2:47 PM, W. Niederhut said:

Addendum:  It looks like my response (above) to Sandy's question got buried at the bottom of the page within one minute of my post.

So, I want to remind people that we have a tree and a forest here.

Griffith's Tehran conference claim is his latest tree.

The forest is the 30 year U.S. government defamation campaign to create a false impression that Prouty was not an honest, credible witness of U.S. Deep State history.

Sheesh, who are you people? Is this some kind of game to you? The U.S. Government has had nothing to do with any alleged conspiracy to smear Prouty. Many of the critics who have exposed Prouty's false and nutty claims have been ardent, anti-Deep State, anti-right-wing liberals and Scientology whistleblowers who responded to Prouty's disgraceful lies in defense of Hubbard and Scientology. 

If there is still a government operation whose goal is to discredit the case for conspiracy in JFK's death, that operation must be thrilled with your embarrassing refusal to face the facts about Prouty.

No one--and I mean no one--has done more harm to the case for conspiracy than Prouty.

[W. Niederhut]

Let me guess.

Will our forum's favorite, Orwellian propagandist, Michael Griffith, also claim that the CIA and their mainstream media propagandists didn't work to systematically smear Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone?  Geez...

It's all about the CIA and the military-industrial complex "controlling the past"-- the false historical narrative.

Michael Griffith reminds me of those government-employed propagandists in the novel, 1984, who spent their work days writing false copy about historical and current events in order to manipulate the masses.

This isn't rocket science.

If the American public learned the truth about history-- e.g., about JFK's murder, and PNAC's 9/11 "New Pearl Harbor" op-- would the military-industrial complex still be able to control the present and future?

Doubtful. As GHWB said, toward the end of his life, "If the American people knew what we Bushes had done, they'd lynch us in the streets."

And the Leo Straussian Neocons (Wolfowitz, Feith, et.al.) always believed that the ignorant American masses had to be manipulated to support PNAC's expensive military objectives.  The same thing was true in the case of killing JFK in order to escalate the U.S. wars against communism in Vietnam, Indonesia, and throughout the Third World.

Griffith is working as a verbose salesman for U.S. military-industrial mythology.

Edited October 31, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Michael Griffith]

Objective, reasonable grownups who have done any serious reading on the subject of WW II diplomacy and/or Chiang Kai-shek will look at Gibbons' single unsourced statement and will quickly and easily recognize that Gibbons simply conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference. One obvious indication of this is found in Gibbons' very next sentence, where he recounts that FDR told Churchill that Chiang had told him that he did not want to control Indochina and did not want to administer a trusteeship in Indochina (p. 4). This is exactly what Chiang told FDR at the Cairo Conference. 

What Gibbons clearly intended to say is that Chiang and FDR discussed the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference and that Chiang approved the proposal, and that FDR then notified Stalin of this fact at the Tehran Conference and that Stalin agreed with the trusteeship idea. 

This is why every other government source and scholarly study on the Cairo and Tehran conferences and/or on Chiang says that Chiang only attended the Cairo Conference and then went home to China, and that only Stalin, FDR, and Churchill attended the Tehran Conference. In previous replies, I have cited and quoted some of the numerous sources that document these facts. 

The kind of error that Gibbons obviously made happens occasionally when authors make a passing comment about a subject that is not the topic of the book and is not even the topic of the paragraph. 

And it bears repeating that Prouty's other Tehran claim--that FDR persuaded Stalin to get Mao to stand down--is demonstrably bogus. As I have proved, the subject of Mao's operations was never even discussed at the Tehran Conference. 

I notice that the Prouty apologists in this thread have made no effort to defend Prouty's zany claim that Ibn Saud (the king of Saudi Arabia) attended the Cairo Conference.  Prouty was fond of just making up factoids to make himself look important and to give the illusion of appearing to have inside knowledge of important historical events. 

Finally, I would note that in Prouty's 1975 speech at Yale, the same speech in which he claimed that Ibn Saud attended the Cairo conference, Prouty repeated his false claim that he worked with the Secret Service on presidential protection. 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

Objective, reasonable grownups who have done any serious reading on the subject of WW II diplomacy and/or Chiang Kai-shek will look at Gibbons' single unsourced statement and will quickly and easily recognize that Gibbons simply conflated the Cairo Conference with the Tehran Conference. One obvious indication of this is found in Gibbons' very next sentence, where he recounts that FDR told Churchill that Chiang had told him that he did not want to control Indochina and did not want to administer a trusteeship in Indochina (p. 4). This is exactly what Chiang told FDR at the Cairo Conference. 

What Gibbons clearly intended to say is that Chiang and FDR discussed the Indochina trusteeship at the Cairo Conference and that Chiang approved the proposal, and that FDR then notified Stalin of this fact at the Tehran Conference and that Stalin agreed with the trusteeship idea. 

This is why every other government source and scholarly study on the Cairo and Tehran conferences and/or on Chiang says that Chiang only attended the Cairo Conference and then went home to China, and that only Stalin, FDR, and Churchill attended the Tehran Conference. In previous replies, I have cited and quoted some of the numerous sources that document these facts. 

The kind of error that Gibbons obviously made happens occasionally when authors make a passing comment about a subject that is not the topic of the book and is not even the topic of the paragraph. 

And it bears repeating that Prouty's other Tehran claim--that FDR persuaded Stalin to get Mao to stand down--is demonstrably bogus. As I have proved, the subject of Mao's operations was never even discussed at the Tehran Conference. 

I notice that the Prouty apologists in this thread have made no effort to defend Prouty's zany claim that Ibn Saud (the king of Saudi Arabia) attended the Cairo Conference.  Prouty was fond of just making up factoids to make himself look important and to give the illusion of appearing to have inside knowledge of important historical events. 

Finally, I would note that in Prouty's 1975 speech at Yale, the same speech in which he claimed that Ibn Saud attended the Cairo conference, Prouty repeated his false claim that he worked with the Secret Service on presidential protection. 

Your logic fails because it leaves the author asserting that Stalin was in Cairo, which he clearly was not. It also fails through its narrow focus on a single sentence, without reference to the further contextual data points, such as the Reuters piece announcing the meeting and the research paper outlining the diplomatic discussions ahead of the Conferences. In your last post you claimed the latter was “gibberish”.

Prouty said there was only one single official confirmation that Chiang Kai-shek attended, in some capacity, the Teheran Conference. He was correct in saying that, and he also accurately identified the source. You have put up a ridiculous fight over this very simple matter, and that stems entirely from the fact that you have started from your conclusion and have been working back from there. The problem with that method is that with every glitch in the veracity of your pronouncements, the map you have followed looks increasingly like a road to nowhere.

[Michael Griffith]

On 10/28/2023 at 1:45 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

Now that you've reminded me of those things, I see that you are right. And the fact that most sources say that Chiang Kai-shek didn't attend is proof that the meeting was a tightly -- but not perfectly -- held secret.

If Mike can't see that, he's got a real problem with his reasoning.

Holy cow. This is just so sad and so embarrassing. It is surreal that we are even having this discussion. It is not just that "most sources" say that Chiang did not attend the Tehran Conference, it is that ALL sources, both government and scholarly, including all primary sources, say that he did not attend--the only exception is a single solitary unsourced sentence buried in a book about the Vietnam War. And, incredibly, you guys cling to that one sentence and dismiss all other sources on the subject. 

If you can't see that the lone unsourced statement was an honest mistake that simply conflated the Cairo and Tehran conferences, you have a real problem with your reasoning and objectivity. As I've noted, the very next sentence after the unsourced mistake makes it clear that Gibbons was referring to the Cairo Conference regarding Chiang and to the Tehran Conference regarding Stalin.

If you can't see that Prouty's tale about his Tehran trip is full of holes, full of obvious indications of fraud, you have a real problem with your reasoning and objectivity. I refer to Prouty's gaffe about pocketless jumpsuits, his gaffe about stopping for refueling when he was allegedly flying a plane that could have easily made the trip to Tehran with plenty of fuel to spare (let me guess: you'll say he "forgot" to fill up his tank before he left Cairo!), his silly tale about Churchill being held up at a Soviet checkpoint for lack of ID, his culturally ignorant tale that the Chinese delegation stood up in their cars and mocked the British delegation during the alleged checkpoint delay, and his fiction that FDR persuaded Stalin to order Mao to stand down (when that subject was never even discussed at the conference). 

If you can't see that Madame Chiang's 12/5/43 letter to FDR destroys Prouty's tale, you have a real problem with your reasoning and objectivity. 

It is disturbing that you folks brush aside the fact that not a single person who attended the Tehran Conference and who wrote about their experiences at the conference mentioned seeing Chiang or the Chinese delegation in Tehran or at the conference. I think it is especially telling the Elliott Roosevelt and Sarah Churchill, both of whom wrote extensively about their experiences at the Tehran Conference, failed to confirm a single part of Prouty's Tehran fable. Elliott Roosevelt never mentioned seeing the Chinese group at Habanaya Airport in Iraq or in Tehran. Sarah Churchill never said a word about the alleged Soviet checkpoint delay or about seeing Chiang and his group at the conference. And on and on and on we could go. 

Shall we talk about the fact that the Church Committee exposed Prouty as a fraud? Are you aware of this fact? 

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

Prouty’s ARRB interview was not the first time he back-peddled all over the place. In the mid-1970s, Prouty made the zany claim that E. Howard Hunt told him that Alexander Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House. When Prouty’s claim became a news item when Butterfield angrily denied it, Prouty started waffling, offering the lame excuse in a phone interview that “they” may have “told me the wrong name in order to cover up the real informer." Oh, of course. And my dog ate my homework.

Senator Frank Church, a staunch liberal and fierce critic of the CIA, investigated Prouty’s claim and did not find a shred of evidence for it. When the Church Committee pressed Prouty on the matter, he admitted he had no evidence to support his claim.

Even the only moderately critical Wikipedia article on Prouty attacks him over his bogus claim:

          On July 12, 1975, prior to closed-door questioning by the staff of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Prouty told reporters that Alexander Butterfield was a contact for the CIA at the White House.[20] He said he had learned the information over four years earlier from E. Howard Hunt while doing work for the National League of Families.[20][21] Prouty said that most federal government departments, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, had similar CIA contacts and that he assumed that former president Richard Nixon was aware of Butterfield's role.[20][21] Senator Frank Church said the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities had found no evidence that the CIA planted an undercover agent within the White House or other government agencies.[20]

         A few days later, Prouty partially walked back his comments in a telephone interview: "They may have told me the wrong name in order to cover up the real informer."[21] In a telephone statement to UPI that same day, Butterfield called the allegations "wholly false and defamatory" and stated that he had never met nor seen Hunt and had just recently heard of Prouty.[21] In an interview with CBS News from Eglin Air Force Base where he was serving his prison term for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, Hunt denied the allegation calling it an "unfortunate invention on Mr. Prouty's part."[22] Also interviewed by CBS, Prouty again stated it was Hunt who told him about Butterfield.[22]

         In a personal letter sent to Roger Feinman at CBS News Radio on July 14, 1975, Harold Weisberg expressed his belief that "the clear inference of the Prouty connection is that as a CIA man Butterfield pulled the plug on Nixon."[23]

         On July 19, Church said that his committee found that there was "no scintilla of evidence" to support Prouty's allegations, and that his committee had ruled out the possibility that Butterfield served as a liaison officer for the CIA.[24] Church also stated, "on close interrogation, Mr. Prouty is unable to substantiate his earlier statement and acknowledges this to be the case."[24] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty)

How many times does this guy have to be caught peddling false claims before his defenders will admit he was a fraud and a crackpot?

[Jeff Carter]

On 11/6/2023 at 9:15 AM, Michael Griffith said:

Prouty’s ARRB interview was not the first time he back-peddled all over the place. In the mid-1970s, Prouty made the zany claim that E. Howard Hunt told him that Alexander Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House. When Prouty’s claim became a news item when Butterfield angrily denied it, Prouty started waffling, offering the lame excuse in a phone interview that “they” may have “told me the wrong name in order to cover up the real informer." Oh, of course. And my dog ate my homework.

Senator Frank Church, a staunch liberal and fierce critic of the CIA, investigated Prouty’s claim and did not find a shred of evidence for it. When the Church Committee pressed Prouty on the matter, he admitted he had no evidence to support his claim.

Even the only moderately critical Wikipedia article on Prouty attacks him over his bogus claim:

          On July 12, 1975, prior to closed-door questioning by the staff of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Prouty told reporters that Alexander Butterfield was a contact for the CIA at the White House.[20] He said he had learned the information over four years earlier from E. Howard Hunt while doing work for the National League of Families.[20][21] Prouty said that most federal government departments, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, had similar CIA contacts and that he assumed that former president Richard Nixon was aware of Butterfield's role.[20][21] Senator Frank Church said the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities had found no evidence that the CIA planted an undercover agent within the White House or other government agencies.[20]

         A few days later, Prouty partially walked back his comments in a telephone interview: "They may have told me the wrong name in order to cover up the real informer."[21] In a telephone statement to UPI that same day, Butterfield called the allegations "wholly false and defamatory" and stated that he had never met nor seen Hunt and had just recently heard of Prouty.[21] In an interview with CBS News from Eglin Air Force Base where he was serving his prison term for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, Hunt denied the allegation calling it an "unfortunate invention on Mr. Prouty's part."[22] Also interviewed by CBS, Prouty again stated it was Hunt who told him about Butterfield.[22]

         In a personal letter sent to Roger Feinman at CBS News Radio on July 14, 1975, Harold Weisberg expressed his belief that "the clear inference of the Prouty connection is that as a CIA man Butterfield pulled the plug on Nixon."[23]

         On July 19, Church said that his committee found that there was "no scintilla of evidence" to support Prouty's allegations, and that his committee had ruled out the possibility that Butterfield served as a liaison officer for the CIA.[24] Church also stated, "on close interrogation, Mr. Prouty is unable to substantiate his earlier statement and acknowledges this to be the case."[24] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty)

How many times does this guy have to be caught peddling false claims before his defenders will admit he was a fraud and a crackpot?

Prouty testified to the Church Committee on July 15, 1975. The session was eventually declassified and can be read in full. Claims that he dissembled in any way, “walked back” information or “admitted he had no evidence” are not at all supported by the transcript. Claims that the testimony “exposed Prouty as a fraud” is not at all supported by the transcript. Contemporaneous claims against Prouty published in Time Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and CBS are contradicted by the transcript.

Note that suspicions regarding Butterfield can be found in most of the Watergate revisionist work, including Secret Agenda, Silent Coup, and Family of Secrets. To claim that it was just a “zany” theory on Prouty’s behalf is simply wrong.

Here is more information on Butterfield:     https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbutterfield.htm

The Church Committee transcript features Prouty relating information about persons such as Robert Mullen, Joseph Califano, Al Haig, Butterfield, etc which would later be independently confirmed in work published well before Prouty’s Church Committee interview was declassified.

the transcript can be accessed here:  https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1372#relPageId=1

[Michael Griffith]

On 11/7/2023 at 9:27 PM, Jeff Carter said:

Prouty testified to the Church Committee on July 15, 1975. The session was eventually declassified and can be read in full. Claims that he dissembled in any way, “walked back” information or “admitted he had no evidence” are not at all supported by the transcript. Claims that the testimony “exposed Prouty as a fraud” is not at all supported by the transcript. Contemporaneous claims against Prouty published in Time Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and CBS are contradicted by the transcript.

Note that suspicions regarding Butterfield can be found in most of the Watergate revisionist work, including Secret Agenda, Silent Coup, and Family of Secrets. To claim that it was just a “zany” theory on Prouty’s behalf is simply wrong.

Here is more information on Butterfield:     https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbutterfield.htm

The Church Committee transcript features Prouty relating information about persons such as Robert Mullen, Joseph Califano, Al Haig, Butterfield, etc which would later be independently confirmed in work published well before Prouty’s Church Committee interview was declassified.

the transcript can be accessed here:  https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1372#relPageId=1

Holy smokes. You don't see Prouty back-peddling and finally admitting, when strongly pressed, that he had no evidence to back his claim that Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House??? You don't see this plainly and clearly in the transcript??? Really??? If you are so incapable of being objective about Prouty's gibberish, it makes me seriously question your research on other issues. 

Simple question: Yes or No: Is it not true that even Frank Church said that his committee found no evidence whatsoever that Butterfield was a CIA contact in the White House? Yes or No? The answer is Yes. 

Another question: Yes or No: Is it not true that Prouty finally admitted that he had no evidence to support his claim about Butterfield? To any objective reader, the answer is obviously Yes.

How can you be so gullible as to believe that E. Howard Hunt would have said this to Prouty in the first place? 

BTW, where are the Tehran-trip pictures that Prouty said he took? Those pictures would be massively important and genuinely historic evidence, if they existed. How could he have failed to preserve them? Where are his notes of his alleged stand-down phone call with the 112th MI Group? Those notes could have been forensically tested to see if the paper and ink matched the time period. Is it not obvious that the alleged letter to Prouty from Krulak was a forgery, given Krulak's recorded interview with Harrison Livingstone? 

Are you going to try to defend Prouty's zany claim that Ibn Saud participated in the Cairo Conference?

 

Edited November 9, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Jeff Carter]

Prouty’s interview for the Church Committee speaks for itself. Because it was a classified session, he is free to describe in great detail the methodology of embedded CIA representatives across varying levels of government, and the means by which discerning insiders could navigate who was what. In lesser detail, Prouty tried to achieve the same years later when describing Oswald’s Marine activities to the clueless ARRB Board. Here, at the Church Committee, his interviewers are not naive and so quite a bit of information is shared - a lot of which would find independent confirmation years later.

On the other hand, in 1975, there was a parallel rendering of Prouty’s appearance to the Church Committee in the mainstream press, triggered it appears by a leaked limited hangout which produced a superficial pseudo-controversy which didn't rise much above the level of demands that Butterfield’s “CIA Agent” badge be produced for all to see. This superficiality is compounded by the fact the granular detail of the pseudo-controversy lies dormant in paywalled legacy media archives, and exists for quick reference only as compressed summaries on Wikipedia. 

Basically, the determined Prouty hatchet-job crew have been reduced to demanding the production of Oswald or Butterfield’s “Secret Agent” badges, or calling for “forensic tests” of 50-year-old scraps of Amtrak stationary.