Prouty on Vietnam: NSAM 263 and 273 60 years on

[Roger Odisio]

13 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The President Has Been Shot, Charles Roberts  (p. 141) A reporter for Newsweek, Roberts was on AFI and met McGeorge Bundy at Andrews.

<quote on, emphasis added>

I remember looking at (McGeorge) Bundy because I was wondering if he had any word of what had happened in the world while we were in transit, whether this assassination was part of a plot. And he told me later that what he reported to the president during that flight back was that the whole world was stunned, but there was no evidence of a conspiracy at all.

<quote off>

Yeah, Bundy knew that for a fact, Cliff.

[Greg Doudna]

On Robert Morrow’s claim that Lansdale killed JFK: so far as I can see the only claimed evidence is argument that he was in Dealey Plaza, and motive. Is that it? That’s insubstantial, not evidence of killing Kennedy, a wild leap. Thousands of civil servants had motive in the sense of passed over for promotion or fired from a job or disagreed on policies, motive is not proof of anything. Did Prouty have anything more than the Dealey Plaza photo claim? So what if that was Lansdale? How go from that to he killed JFK? Why not rephrase that to that’s enough to put Lansdale on a short list of maybe only 5000 or 10,000 possible suspects, at least the vast vast majority of whom are assuredly completely innocent. Would that not be more accurate reasoning?

Edited February 6 by Greg Doudna

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

@Roger Odisio & @Jeff Carter,

Wow!

Thinking aloud...

It has been my belief for a long time now that the CIA used the Mexico City incident to paint Oswald as being in cahoots with Russia (via Kostikov) and Cuba (via Sylvia Duran's contacts, $6500 payment. etc.) to kill Kennedy for them. Thus setting a pretext for invasion of Cuba or war with Russia, which the generals wanted.

This thing with McGeorge Bundy now has me thinking that the plan signed off by Bundy's group (whoever that is) had no plans of implicating the communists.

I must respectfully disagree, Sandy.

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

 

And that the generals influenced a group of CIA people to piggyback onto the Bundy plot the part about Cuba and Russia being behind the assassination.

But when Bundy's group got wind of the faked evidence pointing to Cuba and Russia, they quickly put the kibosh on that. Bundy's group apparently had no interest in having a conflict with the communists, other than Vietnam, and declared Oswald the lone killer.

 

In my view the Skull & Bones crew (Harriman, Bundy, Daddy Bush and his boy George) pulled the plug on the Commies-Did-It Scenario only because the designated patsy was captured and not killed.

[Roger Odisio]

14 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

@Roger Odisio & @Jeff Carter,

Wow!

Thinking aloud...

It has been my belief for a long time now that the CIA used the Mexico City incident to paint Oswald as being in cahoots with Russia (via Kostikov) and Cuba (via Sylvia Duran's contacts, $6500 payment. etc.) to kill Kennedy for them. Thus setting a pretext for invasion of Cuba or war with Russia, which the generals wanted.

This thing with McGeorge Bundy now has me thinking that the plan signed off by Bundy's group (whoever that is) had no plans of implicating the communists. And that the generals influenced a group of CIA people to piggyback onto the Bundy plot the part about Cuba and Russia being behind the assassination.

But when Bundy's group got wind of the faked evidence pointing to Cuba and Russia, they quickly put the kibosh on that. Bundy's group apparently had no interest in having a conflict with the communists, other than Vietnam, and declared Oswald the lone killer.

 

Don't go overboard with Bundy and leave out Johnson, Sandy. 

Salandria characterized Bundy as a war hawk in service to the warfare state and establishment elites.  But he was working for Johnson after the murder.  Johnson was calling the shots.

Johnson lusted after the presidency his whole life and was not about to let it go up in smoke because of a war with the SU.  That was not just something he used to bully Warren on to the WC.

[Sandy Larsen]

15 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

I must respectfully disagree, Sandy.

In my view the Skull & Bones crew (Harriman, Bundy, Daddy Bush and his boy George) pulled the plug on the Commies-Did-It Scenario only because the designated patsy was captured and not killed.

 

I like your thinking more, Cliff. It eliminates the need for two plots (the original AND the piggyback) and two perpetrators (? plotters under Harriman/Bundy AND the CIA).

And if we consider what Roger wrote about NSAM 273 having been written for Johnson, the plot seems to have gone like this...

Someone among the Skull & Bones crowd decides it's time to go for Kennedy. They pass it off to the CIA to plan it. Someone adds that they'd get more bang for the buck if they implicate the commies... this will please the generals. Harriman/Bundy inform Johnson that he needn't worry about his impending scandals, he just needs to play along. (They might have blackmailed him, to ensure he go along rather than having to get his approval.)

It was assumed that Oswald would indeed be killed, and so Harriman/Bundy order a retaliatory military strike on Cuba. (I add this because, in James Hosty's book, he said that military aircraft were on their way to Cuba, but then called back.)

It is learned that Oswald survived, and so the aircraft were called back. In addition, it is decided by Harriman/Bundy to scrap the communist angle. They contact Air Force One to inform them there was no conspiracy and that the killer had been caught.

However, the CIA continued on with their communist plot angle. It seems like they never wanted to give up on that.

Anyway, something like that.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

38 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

Don't go overboard with Bundy and leave out Johnson, Sandy.

 

Roger,

Suppose it was Bundy's idea to kill Kennedy, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't ask Johnson what he thought of the idea. I mean, that's treason talk there, not to mention murder.

Or suppose it was Johnson's idea. Similar problem

Unless they were close buddies.

There must have been a close-knit group of men who knew they could talk to each other without fear of being ratted on. I think that's the reason Cliff brings up Skull & Bones.

 

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

On Robert Morrow’s claim that Lansdale killed JFK: so far as I can see the only claimed evidence is argument that he was in Dealey Plaza, and motive. Is that it? That’s insubstantial, not evidence of killing Kennedy, a wild leap. Thousands of civil servants had motive in the sense of passed over for promotion or fired from a job or disagreed on policies, motive is not proof of anything. Did Prouty have anything more than the Dealey Plaza photo claim? So what if that was Lansdale? How go from that to he killed JFK? Why not rephrase that to that’s enough to put Lansdale on a short list of maybe only 5000 or 10,000 possible suspects, at least the vast vast majority of whom are assuredly completely innocent. Would that not be more accurate reasoning?

Greg - for the record, Prouty never speculated that “Lansdale killed JFK” or had a direct operational role in the assassination itself.

In his letter to Prouty in response to the photo and the Lansdale ID, Krulak asked: “What was he (Lansdale) doing there?” That is a fair question. To the extent that he speculated, Prouty thought Lansdale, using his public relations and covert operations background, may have been assigned to create cover stories and red herrings - such as the bizarre march of the tramps.

Of course, Lansdale may have just been there because he was in the area and the President was in town. Or the figure might not be Lansdale at all, and the similar identification points may just be coincidental. In my opinion, although of interest, very little of the important information Prouty had to share hinges in any way on this identification, and it is therefore of secondary value.

[James DiEugenio]

It was LBJ and Hoover who clamped down on the commie angle and they did it quickly through the Dallas Police.

John Newman told me that by the end of 1962, everyone hated Kennedy, throughout the Pentagon and the CIA.

First, he refused for the second time to invade Cuba, and it was pretty clear by this time he was not going into Vietnam. That was made manifest at the May 63 Sec Def meeting, which we showed in JFK Revisited. That was one of the key declassifications of the ARRB.

But clearly, LBJ did not want any kind of commie plot that would make him face off against Russia or Cuba. He makes that clear very quickly.  And Hoover goes along with it.

My only question about this is: did LBJ really buy into this Mexico City scenario?  Because Hoover points out to him that there are serious problems with it. And six weeks later Hoover notes in writing that its  CIA BS.

The net result is that the JCS gets their escalation in Vietnam, one that Kennedy would not give them. This is why I think that Vietnam is one of the major reasons for the plot. How did Burris get the real intel reports that were being disguised in order to deceive Kennedy?  But he did and LBJ knew the true situation.  And he went to work within days to go ahead and solve the problem.  Moise, Logevall and Goulden all describe how Johnson assigned Sullivan and Bill Bundy to map out a secret plan to get the USA into the war.  This included NSAM 288 which Fletcher called a milestone toward war, and even how to get congress on board, that is writing the Tonkin Gulf resolution before it happened. And then attacking the north over one bullet to one ship.

How any honest historian could say that Kennedy would have done those things--when all the evidence points the other way--is just beyond me.

[Roger Odisio]

45 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Roger,

Suppose it was Bundy's idea to kill Kennedy, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't ask Johnson what he thought of the idea. I mean, that's treason talk there, not to mention murder.

Or suppose it was Johnson's idea. Similar problem

Unless they were close buddies.

There must have been a close-knit group of men who knew they could talk to each other without fear of being ratted on. I think that's the reason Cliff brings up Skull & Bones.

 

In Salandria's words, Bundy was telling those coming back to DC on the planes, particularly those from the Kennedy administration, that JFK was killed by those "above and beyond punishment".  That is, those at the center of power in Washington. 

That means Allen Dulles and Lyndon Johnson.  Each with his own reasons for wanting Kennedy dead.  In Johnson's case, he had the fate of the killers in his hands, were he innocent and want to investigate.

That means the murder would not have happened without the involvement of each.  You can fill out the rest of the roster as you wish.

 

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

On Robert Morrow’s claim that Lansdale killed JFK: so far as I can see the only claimed evidence is argument that he was in Dealey Plaza, and motive. Is that it? That’s insubstantial, not evidence of killing Kennedy, a wild leap. 

Greg,

     It's hardly a "wild leap," given Lansdale's history of running black ops and psy ops for Allen Dulles and the Company.

     Lansdale told Prouty in (?) October of 1963 that he would be engaging in some "fun and games"-- following his "retirement" from the CIA/USAF at the end of October-- which Prouty understood as slang for "black ops."

     I started a thread here about three years ago about Prouty's "Lansdale Hypothesis," which Prouty had outlined in a letter to Jim Garrison.   Prouty had a number of reasons for believing that Lansdale may well have been involved in helping to organize the JFK assassination op and mainstream media psy op.

     It's a hypothesis which, like any legitimate hypothesis, can be refuted by a single definitive contrary fact.  Confirmation of the hypothesis is a more complicated, long-term process, which is difficult in cases of sophisticated black ops, where the agents are skilled at covering their tracks and creating false narratives.

     Unfortunately, whenever the subject of Prouty's observations of CIA history, Vietnam, Ed Lansdale, et.al., arises on the forum, Michael Griffith always floods the zone with horse manure.

     

Edited February 6 by W. Niederhut

[Sandy Larsen]

46 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

It was LBJ and Hoover who clamped down on the commie angle and they did it quickly through the Dallas Police.

 

But Jim, there's pretty good corroborated evidence that Bundy was telling those on Air Force One that it wasn't a conspiracy and that the killer had been captured.

Are you saying that LBJ and Hoover communicated before that, while LBJ was flying back to Washington?

 

[James DiEugenio]

Sandy:

Has anyone ever heard that tape?

If so, I would like to see a real transcript.

[Sandy Larsen]

27 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sandy:

Has anyone ever heard that tape?

If so, I would like to see a real transcript.

 

According to Vince Salandria, it is recorded in both Theodore White's Making of the President and Pierre Salinger's With Kennedy. Salinger tried to get the tape from NARA for Salandria, but it had magically disappeared! This was back in 1968.

The content of the messages was also confirmed by Robert Manning, Kennedy's Asst. Sec of State for Public Affairs, in 1993. He had been on Air Force One.

 

[Jonathan Cohen]

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

To the extent that he speculated, Prouty thought Lansdale, using his public relations and covert operations background, may have been assigned to create cover stories and red herrings - such as the bizarre march of the tramps.

While you might find the tramps arrest "bizarre," thanks to the research of Mary and Ray LaFontaine, we know definitively that the three tramps in the photographs were, in fact, actual tramps - and not CIA agents or anything of the sort.

[Benjamin Cole]

CT'ers: When convicting people of the JFKA...use the same level of scrutiny and skepticism when refuting claims that LHO did it. 

CT'ers will examine in the most minute detail (as they should) all evidence against LHO, and develop elaborate counter-arguments and alternative narratives. All good. 

But then CT'ers will say "Lansdale did it" on rather flimsy evidence. Anybody is quoted saying anything, despite a lack of recordings or same-day written evidence. 

Suspects from Nazis to French right-wingers to Jews to Mormons to Mafia to Cubans to members of the military-Deep State community have all been convicted by JFKA researchers.