Donald Sutherland 1935-2024, played "X" in Oliver Stone's film "JFK"

[Ron Bulman]

15 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

At the 39 second mark above, that is a young John Newman carrying the NSAMs to Lemnitzer.

That is very fitting.

I've read Mr. X was based on Prouty.  Listening to the above closely for the first time in years Sutherland says "Cuba was turned over to my department as Operation Mongoose."   Doesn't that sound more like Lansdale?  As Prouty was an advisor on the film, was the character possibly his interpretation of Lansdale?  Or am I way off base here?

[W. Niederhut]

30 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

That is very fitting.

I've read Mr. X was based on Prouty.  Listening to the above closely for the first time in years Sutherland says "Cuba was turned over to my department as Operation Mongoose."   Doesn't that sound more like Lansdale?  As Prouty was an advisor on the film, was the character possibly his interpretation of Lansdale?  Or am I way off base here?

Ron,

    Lansdale never spilled any beans about CIA ops in Vietnam, or the JFK assassination.  In fact, Lansdale tried to disparage Prouty's revelations about CIA special ops-- claiming that Prouty was merely a pilot.  (Prouty was actually a briefing officer and the main Joint Chiefs liaison to the CIA for special ops in 1963.)

    Also, if I recall correctly, Jim Garrison did actually consult with Prouty in the course of his investigation and prosecution of Clay Shaw.

    

Edited June 21 by W. Niederhut

[Matt Cloud]

25 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Ron,

    Lansdale never spilled any beans about CIA ops in Vietnam, or the JFK assassination.  In fact, Lansdale tried to disparage Prouty's revelations about CIA special ops-- claiming that Prouty was merely a pilot.  (Prouty was actually a briefing officer and the main Joint Chiefs liaison to the CIA for special ops in 1963.)

    Also, if I recall correctly, Jim Garrison did actually consult with Prouty in the course of his investigation and prosecution of Clay Shaw.

    

"Mongoose was pure Black-Ops."  Still gives me chills.   Right up there with "The horror ... the horror."

 

Anyway:

 

1. "A former Defense Department official said yesterday that he drafted contingency plans that 'may' have included Fidel Castro's assassination.

The former offical, Maj. Edward G. Lansdale (USAF-retired), hinted strongly, but refused to confirm, that the orders to draw up the plans came from the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy."  George Lardner, The Washington Post, May 21, 1975, available at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510128-5.pdf.

2. "General Lansdale is now working for Mr. Roswell Gilpatrick, Deputy Secretary, DOD, who will be Defense's representative to the 54-12 committee. It was speculated that this move would obviate the present functions of General Erskine's office and as a result Colonel Prouty might not enjoy his current association with the Agency. ... /s/ John N. McMahon." Staff meeting Minutes, March 14, 1961, available at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81B00961R000100030053-5.pdf.

Sounds to me like a little Good Cop/Bad Cop might be going on between Messrs. Lansdale and Prouty ...

 

 

 

[W. Niederhut]

22 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

"Mongoose was pure Black-Ops."  Still gives me chills.   Right up there with "The horror ... the horror."

 

Anyway:

 

1. "A former Defense Department official said yesterday that he drafted contingency plans that 'may' have included Fidel Castro's assassination.

The former offical, Maj. Edward G. Lansdale (USAF-retired), hinted strongly, but refused to confirm, that the orders to draw up the plans came from the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy."  George Lardner, The Washington Post, May 21, 1975, available at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510128-5.pdf.

2. "General Lansdale is now working for Mr. Roswell Gilpatrick, Deputy Secretary, DOD, who will be Defense's representative to the 54-12 committee. It was speculated that this move would obviate the present functions of General Erskine's office and as a result Colonel Prouty might not enjoy his current association with the Agency. ... /s/ John N. McMahon." Staff meeting Minutes, March 14, 1961, available at https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81B00961R000100030053-5.pdf.

Sounds to me like a little Good Cop/Bad Cop might be going on between Messrs. Lansdale and Prouty ...

 

 

 

Matt,

   Lansdale was a skilled manipulator-- a master of psy ops-- whom Prouty described as a "chameleon."

   He was also a favorite of Allen Dulles, following his success with Magsaysay in the Phillippines.

   Should we take anything Lansdale said about his CIA black ops (and psy ops) at face value?

   And, unlike his colleague, Ed Lansdale, Prouty never worked directly for the CIA-- nor did Prouty ever sign a CIA NDA.

   Reading between the lines, Prouty also disapproved of Lansdale's sociopathic "fun and games."

    We've discussed this subject at length on the forum.

[Ron Bulman]

17 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

And, unlike his colleague, Ed Lansdale, Prouty never worked directly for the CIA-- nor did Prouty ever sign a CIA NDA.

   Reading between the lines, Prouty also disapproved of Lansdale's sociopathic "fun and games."

    We've discussed this subject at length on the forum.

Like dumping Vietnamese out of helicopters until one of them talked?

[Matt Cloud]

47 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Matt,

   Lansdale was a skilled manipulator-- a master of psy ops-- whom Prouty described as a "chameleon."

   He was also a favorite of Allen Dulles, following his success with Magsaysay in the Phillippines.

   Should we take anything Lansdale said about his CIA black ops (and psy ops) at face value?

   And, unlike his colleague, Ed Lansdale, Prouty never worked directly for the CIA-- nor did Prouty ever sign a CIA NDA.

   Reading between the lines, Prouty also disapproved of Lansdale's sociopathic "fun and games."

    We've discussed this subject at length on the forum.

Neiderhut,

We've got two individuals in play.   You want to take one side versus another.  Okay.  Has Prouty not skillfully manipulated you?  Are you sure?  I take you to be a sure-knowing sort.  Does Prouty ever really spill the beans?  No, he doesn't.  It's all "black-ops" and "psy-ops," parlor games to quote the line from Stone, to keep you wet in the trousers.  Does he mention John McMahon?  No?  Why not?  "The Secret Team."  Ask Danny Sheehan why not.  

Didn't Lansdale train Pham Xuan An at Orange County Community College?  An, as you may be aware, was the decade-long double agent in South Vietnam who probably single-handedly gave away more U.S./SVN intelligence to the North than any other single individual, including the '72 peace proposal, the Lom Son 719 operation and various (failed) POW rescues.  (He was promoted to full reporter on the TIME magazine masthead at about that time.)  Did An play Lansdale, your "skilled manipulator?"  That would be interesting to pursue, no matter how much you have "discussed" anything, anywhere. 

    

[Matt Cloud]

8 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Neiderhut,

We've got two individuals in play.   You want to take one side versus another.  Okay.  Has Prouty not skillfully manipulated you?  Are you sure?  I take you to be a sure-knowing sort.  Does Prouty ever really spill the beans?  No, he doesn't.  It's all "black-ops" and "psy-ops," parlor games to quote the line from Stone, to keep you wet in the trousers.  Does he mention John McMahon?  No?  Why not?  "The Secret Team."  Ask Danny Sheehan why not.  

Didn't Lansdale train Pham Xuan An at Orange County Community College?  An, as you may be aware, was the decade-long double agent in South Vietnam who probably single-handedly gave away more U.S./SVN intelligence to the North than any other single individual, including the '72 peace proposal, the Lom Son 719 operation and various (failed) POW rescues.  (He was promoted to full reporter on the TIME magazine masthead at about that time.)  Did An play Lansdale, your "skilled manipulator?"  That would be interesting to pursue, no matter how much you have "discussed" anything, anywhere. 

    

And for the record the CIA -- post Dulles, certainly -- hated Lansdale.  He was "unacceptable."  See para. 7 here:

 

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/discussion - secretary ru[14877261].pdf

 

You don't know what you are talking about. 

 

Edited June 21 by Matt Cloud

[James DiEugenio]

Garrison did not meet Fletcher until after he wrote On the Trail of the Assassins.

Fletcher liked the book so much he wrote him a really interesting, rather lengthy, letter about it.

What I think the narration means is that Mongoose became such a project that they needed a lot of support from Prouty's office.

Fletcher told Len that he thought Lansdale overdesigned Mongoose to the point that almost no one could figure out what the heck was really happening.

[Matt Cloud]

13 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Garrison did not meet Fletcher until after he wrote On the Trail of the Assassins.

Fletcher liked the book so much he wrote him a really interesting, rather lengthy, letter about it.

What I think the narration means is that Mongoose became such a project that they needed a lot of support from Prouty's office.

Fletcher told Len that he thought Lansdale overdesigned Mongoose to the point that almost no one could figure out what the heck was really happening.

This is not far off, Jimbo.  Lansdale and Robert Kennedy wanted to stick it to Castro and remove the damn thorn in the side of the Kennedy admin.  CIA -- despite your repeated insistence otherwise -- wants Castro in Cuba.  Until you get this, you will not solve anything.

[James DiEugenio]

Prouty's advice to Stone about the NSAM's and about Vietnam was really right on.

I mean it was a shock to the system.  The first showed how Kennedy was sent reeling by the Bay of Pigs and its aftermath.  (I will be writing about the latter on my substack in a column titled, "The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired".)

Secondly, the whole Vietnam episode really sent everyone for a loop. There had been so little written about this up to that time eg. Scott, Prouty, O'Donnell and Powers, and it had such limited exposure that it was like visiting the far side of the moon. And that includes me.

How could something that was really so clear and obvious--the reversal of JFK's policy in Indochina-- have been kept so secret for so long?  And also something that was so monumental. For many people of that era, Vietnam was the defining issue of the time. It showed millions the whole ugly underside of what America had become.  I mean, here we were slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in order to prop up a dictatorship that had no real support.   In other words, the screaming, scraggly protestors were right, and Johnson and Nixon were not just wrong, they were BSing America.

Stone's film was viciously attacked largely for that reason. But today just look at the works of not just Newman and Prouty, but also people like David Kaiser, James Blight and Gordon Goldstein. IMO, nothing shows us just how bad the MSM was and is than the fact that such an epochal truth was successfully hidden for decades.

And incredibly, is still resisted today.

Edited June 21 by James DiEugenio

[Matt Cloud]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Prouty's advice to Stone about the NSAM's and about Vietnam was really right on.

I mean it was a shock to the system.  The first showed how Kennedy was sent reeling by the Bay of Pigs and its aftermath.  (I will be writing about the latter on my substack in a column titled, "The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired".)

Secondly, the whole Vietnam episode really sent everyone for a loop. There had been so little written about this up to that time eg. Scott, Prouty, O'Donnell and Powers, and it had such limited exposure that it was like visiting the far side of the moon. And that includes me.

How could something that was really so clear and obvious--the reversal of JFK's policy in Indochina-- have been kept so secret for so long?  And also something that was so monumental. For many people of that era, Vietnam was the defining issue of the time. It showed millions the whole ugly underside of what America had become.  I mean, here we were slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in order to prop up a dictatorship that had no real support.   In other words, the screaming, scraggly protestors were right, and Johnson and Nixon were not just wrong, they were BSing America.

Stone's film was viciously attacked largely for that reason. But today just look at the works of not just Newman and Prouty, but also people like David Kaiser, James Blight and Gordon Goldstein. IMO, nothing shows us just how bad the MSM was and is than the fact that such an epochal truth was successfully hidden for decades.

And incredibly, is still resisted today.

Jim, Allen Dulles was fired because he did not subscribe to the 5412 committee's view of liberal wars.   That's all there is to it.  

 

[David Andrews]

7 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

  CIA -- despite your repeated insistence otherwise -- wants Castro in Cuba.  Until you get this, you will not solve anything.

Matt - Could you explain this a bit?  If there's a longer post on this, please direct me.

[W. Niederhut]

9 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

Neiderhut,

We've got two individuals in play.   You want to take one side versus another.  Okay.  Has Prouty not skillfully manipulated you?  Are you sure?  I take you to be a sure-knowing sort.  Does Prouty ever really spill the beans?  No, he doesn't.  It's all "black-ops" and "psy-ops," parlor games to quote the line from Stone, to keep you wet in the trousers.  Does he mention John McMahon?  No?  Why not?  "The Secret Team."  Ask Danny Sheehan why not.  

Didn't Lansdale train Pham Xuan An at Orange County Community College?  An, as you may be aware, was the decade-long double agent in South Vietnam who probably single-handedly gave away more U.S./SVN intelligence to the North than any other single individual, including the '72 peace proposal, the Lom Son 719 operation and various (failed) POW rescues.  (He was promoted to full reporter on the TIME magazine masthead at about that time.)  Did An play Lansdale, your "skilled manipulator?"  That would be interesting to pursue, no matter how much you have "discussed" anything, anywhere. 

    

Get a clue, Matt.

You need to study our detailed forum discussions about the credibility of Prouty and Landale's sociopathy.

And, incidentally, I spent my career dealing, professionally, with personality disorders.

What are the signs of sociopathy in Lansdale's history?

[W. Niederhut]

10 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Like dumping Vietnamese out of helicopters until one of them talked?

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Give that man a cigar!

[Matt Cloud]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Matt - Could you explain this a bit?  If there's a longer post on this, please direct me.

Well let's start out at the superficial level and take it from there.  On the one hand, the refrain around here is that the CIA is right-wing para-military neo-imperialist fascist org that has done what it has wanted and gotten away with it.  Okay.  We have evidently too a "coup" in Dallas to ensure the death of your liberty and really bring home the point.

That's on one side.  On another side, we look at 65 years of history and Cuba and see that that island nation was remained stuck in time.  In spite of the all-powerful CIA and its hatred of Castro and communism.  How has this managed to happened?  Threat of nuclear exchange?  Why there and not elsewhere?  Not enough proxies to the fighting in this case?

Or could it be that having communist Cuba around enables scarring Presidents, Congress and the American people whenever needed, not unlike Iran and North Korea, to effect changes in policy?  Same goes for U.S. economics.  It was already well-suspected if not known outright that Soviet economic product could not keep pace withe West (Walt Rostow was no 6-percenter), yet leading texts like Samuelson's Economics since the late 50s predicted otherwise, that the dreaded "crossover point" was coming.  Good God.  Until of a sudden Samuelson dropped the point and the scary chart -- without explanation, let alone apology -- right about 1986 -- 87, just as the Wall was about to come down, right exactly where the chart had said the Crossover Point would come. Mid-80s.  Huh.   

Having a boogeyman can be a helpful motivator.