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JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
Paperback
Published April 1, 2011
About the author
L. Fletcher Prouty
14 books39 followersCol. Prouty spent 9 of his 23 year military career in the Pentagon (1955-1964): 2 years with the Secretary of Defense, 2 years with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and 5 years with Headquarters, U.S. Air Force. In 1955 he was appointed the first "Focal Point" officer between the CIA and the Air Force for Clandestine Operations per National Security Council Directive 5412. He was Briefing Officer for the Secretary of Defense (1960-1961), and for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In this capacity Col. Prouty would be at the nerve center of the Military-Industrial Complex at a time unequalled in American History. He has written on these subjects, about the JFK assassination, the Cold War period, and Vietnamese warfare, and the existence of a "Secret Team". He backs up his his work with seldom seen or mentioned official documents - some never before released.
In this capacity Col. Prouty would be at the nerve center of the Military-Industrial Complex at a time unequalled in American History. He has written on these subjects, about the JFK assassination, the Cold War period, and Vietnamese warfare, and the existence of a "Secret Team". He backs up his his work with seldom seen or mentioned official documents - some never before released.
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May 15, 2024
THE ‘MAN X’ OF OLIVER STONE’S FILM GIVES HIS BROAD ‘CONSPIRATORIAL’ VIEWS
Leroy Fletcher Prouty (1917-2001) served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. After his retirement, he became a bank executive, and a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy---particularly of the CIA. He was also acknowledged by filmmaker Oliver Stone as ‘loosely’ the inspiration for the ‘Mr. X’ character in his film, ‘JFK.’
Oliver Stone wrote in his Introduction to this 1996 book, “Fletcher Prouty is a man whose name will go down in history… He will be erased from the present history books, his version of history suppressed, his credibility denied, his integrity scorned. Yet in time he will endure. Young students in the twenty-first century … will come back to his writings in the alternative written press… and discover through Colonel Prouty no less than the ‘Secret History’ of the United States, circa 1944 to the present. With this single volume, Colonel Prouty blows the lid right off our ‘Official History’ … [This book] will anger you and make you sad. You will never view the world again in the same light.” (Pg. vii)
The Introduction adds that on January 15, 1992, Oliver Stone appeared before the National Press Club in Washington D.C., and he was asked whether the ‘X’ character in his film really existed, and he replied, “Let me just say that Man X exists. He’s here today on the podium. He is Fletcher Prouty… From 1955 to 1964 he was in the Pentagon working as chief of special operations and in that capacity was with the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy years. He was responsible for providing the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA… that is, ‘Black Operations.’” (Pg. xiv)
Prouty wrote in the Introduction, “I’ve been ridiculed and worse for suggesting the existence of a conspiracy as though only kooks and cranks and extremists suggest the existence of such a thing. But this is the wrong city in which to ridicule people who believe in conspiracies. Is it inconceivable that the President of the United States could sit at the heart of a criminal conspiracy designed to cover up a crime? We know that happened. We would have impeached [Nixon] for it had he not resigned… Is it so farfetched to believe in a high-level conspiracy involving the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the air force, and the CIA to bomb a neutral country and then lie about it in military reports to the rest of the country? But it happened, perhaps more than once…. Is it inconceivable that a campaign manager, later to become the director of Central Intelligence, negotiated with a foreign country to keep American hostages imprisoned until after a presidential election, in order to ensure the election of his candidate?... I think, no one thinks it is out of the question anymore. So when [this book] suggests that a conspiracy involving elements of a government, people in the CIA, people in the FBI, perhaps people associated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff… might have conspired to kill JFK because he was going to sharply change the direction of American foreign policy, is it not appropriate at least to look there for evidence?” (Pg. xx)
He wrote in the Preface, “This book is a firsthand account of the years since World War II. It carefully documents a major sector of the Cold War from 1943 to 1975 by recognizing the strategically elegant ‘Saigon Solution’ as the long-range plan that was designed and employed by the by the international power elite to bridge, profitably, that first thirty years … After that they took advantage of the so-called energy crisis of the seventies and the equally contrived financial crisis of the eighties to make unbelievable sums of money from those valuable sources that must include the global trade in drugs. There are some readers who are unaccustomed to this ago-old concept of the ‘power elite.’” (Pg. xxii-xxiii) Later, he adds, “By November 22, 1963, despite the Pentagon Papers’ contrived omission of that fact of history, Kennedy was dead. By November26, 1963, President Johnson had signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of the Kennedy policy announced in NSAM #263 and in March 1964, LBJ signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War … That was the ‘Saigon Solution.’ That is the historical and factually biographical material of this book.” (Pg. xxxiv-xxxv)
He notes, “When he is up against a team of determined financiers, transactional industrialists, and their crack Wall Street lawyers, even the President of the United States can be frustrated, misled, and confused. Harry S. Truman became President… after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while the country was deeply involved in the greatest armed conflict of history---the world war against the Axis powers … he had never heard of the secret work on the atom bomb… Harry Truman was not aware of, nor acquainted with, the reality of that invisible superpower elite that Winston Churchill called the ‘High Cabal.’” (Pg. 20)
He says, “Because there is no way to wage war with the H-bomb, there is no proper strategic role for today’s armed forces. Thus, WWIII must be directed covertly by the so-called intelligence services… it is sometimes no more than a conflict of the ‘make war’ scenario, with the CIA, or the KGB, creating and supporting both sides. The prevalence of worldwide terrorism shows this to be so.” (Pg. 41)
He states, “Another common misconception is that the CIA acts by and for itself. This is not quite true. It is an ‘agency.’ It carries out the orders of others, as their agent. The CIA is the opening probe, the agitator or facilitator… It seldom if ever makes plans…. Right behind it comes its strong and ever-present allies, the rest of the government infrastructure, along with the willing support of the entire military-industrial and financial community.” (Pg. 50)
He asserts, “The next stage of the Americanization of Vietnam was being set. The plan was to destroy the ancient villages and to replace them with all the advantages of the Western way of life. Someone had decided it was time for the Vietnamese to have the luxury of fast-food hamburgers and friend chicken, not to mention Cadillacs and TV, served up with the American brand of home-view violence of ideology… But Indochina was slated to be the next area for Malthusian destruction, and the Americans and the Vietminh knew how to do it…” (Pg. 79)
He argues, “The directed escalation of the war began under Johnson, as we shall see. Had Kennedy lived, all the madness that happened in Vietnam after 1964 would not have taken place. President Kennedy had vowed…to have all U.S. personnel out of Vietnam by the of 1965. Kennedy’s death brought about a total reversal of that carefully structured White House policy and that sincere promise to the American people.” (Pg. 116-117)
He recounts, “Kennedy was directing that U.S. military forces be used against any Cold War adversary, whether or not there had been a declaration of war. This was a revolutionary doctrine… and if these presidential directives … had become operationally effective, they … would effectively have removed the CIA from Cold War operations and limited the CIA to its sole lawful responsibility, the coordination of intelligence… Kennedy was taking charge…Kennedy [chose] the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the CIA to become his strong right arm… Kennedy asserted a power of the presidency that he assumed he had, but when his orders were delivered… he discovered that his power was all but meaningless… In the great struggle between Kennedy and the entrenched power sources of Washington, as personified by the CIA and its allies… the President learned that his weapons were powerless and his directives unheeded. Beginning in July 1961 he set out to change that situation.” (Pg. 168-169)
He says of smaller Third World countries, “In such an economy, the ins, regardless of politics, control these lucrative franchises, and the outs do not… The leaders of the Contras… wanted their valuable U.S. franchises back. For this they were willing to kill. For this the CIA helped them kill… The basic motivations are always the same. Money lies at the root… In Vietnam the money spent amounted to more than $220 billion. This is why an in-depth recapitulation of the Vietnam era is important in shedding light on the events of today.” (Pg. 217-218)
He asserts, “the essence of covert operations directed and carried out by the government of the United States… is the denial of the international concept of nation-state sovereignty… [With] the destruction of sovereignty and disregard for the rule of law… will go property rights… and the rights of man.” (Pg. 230-231)
After he returned from an assignment to the South Pole, he was invited to take a 2-day trip to the Alps, which is where he learned of JFK’s assassination: “I have always wondered… whether the strange invitation that removed me so far from Washington and from the center of all things clandestine that I knew so well… I do not know the answer to that question… It seems that those who planned the murder of the President knew the inner workings of the government very well. This fact is made evident not so much by the skill with which the murder of the President was undertaken as by the masterful cover-up program that has continued since… when the warfare in Indochina moved from a low-intensity conflict, as seen by President Kennedy, to a major operation---a major war---in the hands of the Johnson of the Johnson administration.” (Pg. 284-285) Later, he adds, “The Kennedy administration … with the near certainty that the President would be reelected, was diametrically opposed to many of the great power centers of our society. He had to go.” (Pg. 311)
He asserts, “no less than $220 billion went to the CIA’s war in Indochina… Because of the success of that type of ‘money-making’ war, it is not too difficult to be persuaded that a similar and more excursion lies not too far in the future.” (Pg. 333)
“The answers to the source of the decision to murder John F. Kennedy are not in government files… It was he goal of Oliver Stone and of those of us who worked with him that the truth about the murder of John F. Kennedy be brought to as many viewers as possible… this has been a primary objective of this autobiographical book of mine. This is one reason why Stone used parts of it in his script.” (Pg. 350) He notes that in Stone’s film, “‘Man X’ was a representation of this author.” (Pg. 351)
He concludes, “It has been my endeavor, since 1985 when I first sat down at my computer, to write the story of the Cold War as few have seen it, to explain what took place at the close of World War II that led to the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and to describe the events that led to the assassination of John F. Kennedy… and answer the question WHY that terrible event was planned and executed…” (Pg.
354-355)
This book is more a collection of conspiracy theories, than containing much of factual interest about the JFK assassination.
Leroy Fletcher Prouty (1917-2001) served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. After his retirement, he became a bank executive, and a frequent critic of U.S. foreign policy---particularly of the CIA. He was also acknowledged by filmmaker Oliver Stone as ‘loosely’ the inspiration for the ‘Mr. X’ character in his film, ‘JFK.’
Oliver Stone wrote in his Introduction to this 1996 book, “Fletcher Prouty is a man whose name will go down in history… He will be erased from the present history books, his version of history suppressed, his credibility denied, his integrity scorned. Yet in time he will endure. Young students in the twenty-first century … will come back to his writings in the alternative written press… and discover through Colonel Prouty no less than the ‘Secret History’ of the United States, circa 1944 to the present. With this single volume, Colonel Prouty blows the lid right off our ‘Official History’ … [This book] will anger you and make you sad. You will never view the world again in the same light.” (Pg. vii)
The Introduction adds that on January 15, 1992, Oliver Stone appeared before the National Press Club in Washington D.C., and he was asked whether the ‘X’ character in his film really existed, and he replied, “Let me just say that Man X exists. He’s here today on the podium. He is Fletcher Prouty… From 1955 to 1964 he was in the Pentagon working as chief of special operations and in that capacity was with the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy years. He was responsible for providing the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA… that is, ‘Black Operations.’” (Pg. xiv)
Prouty wrote in the Introduction, “I’ve been ridiculed and worse for suggesting the existence of a conspiracy as though only kooks and cranks and extremists suggest the existence of such a thing. But this is the wrong city in which to ridicule people who believe in conspiracies. Is it inconceivable that the President of the United States could sit at the heart of a criminal conspiracy designed to cover up a crime? We know that happened. We would have impeached [Nixon] for it had he not resigned… Is it so farfetched to believe in a high-level conspiracy involving the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the air force, and the CIA to bomb a neutral country and then lie about it in military reports to the rest of the country? But it happened, perhaps more than once…. Is it inconceivable that a campaign manager, later to become the director of Central Intelligence, negotiated with a foreign country to keep American hostages imprisoned until after a presidential election, in order to ensure the election of his candidate?... I think, no one thinks it is out of the question anymore. So when [this book] suggests that a conspiracy involving elements of a government, people in the CIA, people in the FBI, perhaps people associated with the Joint Chiefs of Staff… might have conspired to kill JFK because he was going to sharply change the direction of American foreign policy, is it not appropriate at least to look there for evidence?” (Pg. xx)
He wrote in the Preface, “This book is a firsthand account of the years since World War II. It carefully documents a major sector of the Cold War from 1943 to 1975 by recognizing the strategically elegant ‘Saigon Solution’ as the long-range plan that was designed and employed by the by the international power elite to bridge, profitably, that first thirty years … After that they took advantage of the so-called energy crisis of the seventies and the equally contrived financial crisis of the eighties to make unbelievable sums of money from those valuable sources that must include the global trade in drugs. There are some readers who are unaccustomed to this ago-old concept of the ‘power elite.’” (Pg. xxii-xxiii) Later, he adds, “By November 22, 1963, despite the Pentagon Papers’ contrived omission of that fact of history, Kennedy was dead. By November26, 1963, President Johnson had signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of the Kennedy policy announced in NSAM #263 and in March 1964, LBJ signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War … That was the ‘Saigon Solution.’ That is the historical and factually biographical material of this book.” (Pg. xxxiv-xxxv)
He notes, “When he is up against a team of determined financiers, transactional industrialists, and their crack Wall Street lawyers, even the President of the United States can be frustrated, misled, and confused. Harry S. Truman became President… after the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, while the country was deeply involved in the greatest armed conflict of history---the world war against the Axis powers … he had never heard of the secret work on the atom bomb… Harry Truman was not aware of, nor acquainted with, the reality of that invisible superpower elite that Winston Churchill called the ‘High Cabal.’” (Pg. 20)
He says, “Because there is no way to wage war with the H-bomb, there is no proper strategic role for today’s armed forces. Thus, WWIII must be directed covertly by the so-called intelligence services… it is sometimes no more than a conflict of the ‘make war’ scenario, with the CIA, or the KGB, creating and supporting both sides. The prevalence of worldwide terrorism shows this to be so.” (Pg. 41)
He states, “Another common misconception is that the CIA acts by and for itself. This is not quite true. It is an ‘agency.’ It carries out the orders of others, as their agent. The CIA is the opening probe, the agitator or facilitator… It seldom if ever makes plans…. Right behind it comes its strong and ever-present allies, the rest of the government infrastructure, along with the willing support of the entire military-industrial and financial community.” (Pg. 50)
He asserts, “The next stage of the Americanization of Vietnam was being set. The plan was to destroy the ancient villages and to replace them with all the advantages of the Western way of life. Someone had decided it was time for the Vietnamese to have the luxury of fast-food hamburgers and friend chicken, not to mention Cadillacs and TV, served up with the American brand of home-view violence of ideology… But Indochina was slated to be the next area for Malthusian destruction, and the Americans and the Vietminh knew how to do it…” (Pg. 79)
He argues, “The directed escalation of the war began under Johnson, as we shall see. Had Kennedy lived, all the madness that happened in Vietnam after 1964 would not have taken place. President Kennedy had vowed…to have all U.S. personnel out of Vietnam by the of 1965. Kennedy’s death brought about a total reversal of that carefully structured White House policy and that sincere promise to the American people.” (Pg. 116-117)
He recounts, “Kennedy was directing that U.S. military forces be used against any Cold War adversary, whether or not there had been a declaration of war. This was a revolutionary doctrine… and if these presidential directives … had become operationally effective, they … would effectively have removed the CIA from Cold War operations and limited the CIA to its sole lawful responsibility, the coordination of intelligence… Kennedy was taking charge…Kennedy [chose] the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the CIA to become his strong right arm… Kennedy asserted a power of the presidency that he assumed he had, but when his orders were delivered… he discovered that his power was all but meaningless… In the great struggle between Kennedy and the entrenched power sources of Washington, as personified by the CIA and its allies… the President learned that his weapons were powerless and his directives unheeded. Beginning in July 1961 he set out to change that situation.” (Pg. 168-169)
He says of smaller Third World countries, “In such an economy, the ins, regardless of politics, control these lucrative franchises, and the outs do not… The leaders of the Contras… wanted their valuable U.S. franchises back. For this they were willing to kill. For this the CIA helped them kill… The basic motivations are always the same. Money lies at the root… In Vietnam the money spent amounted to more than $220 billion. This is why an in-depth recapitulation of the Vietnam era is important in shedding light on the events of today.” (Pg. 217-218)
He asserts, “the essence of covert operations directed and carried out by the government of the United States… is the denial of the international concept of nation-state sovereignty… [With] the destruction of sovereignty and disregard for the rule of law… will go property rights… and the rights of man.” (Pg. 230-231)
After he returned from an assignment to the South Pole, he was invited to take a 2-day trip to the Alps, which is where he learned of JFK’s assassination: “I have always wondered… whether the strange invitation that removed me so far from Washington and from the center of all things clandestine that I knew so well… I do not know the answer to that question… It seems that those who planned the murder of the President knew the inner workings of the government very well. This fact is made evident not so much by the skill with which the murder of the President was undertaken as by the masterful cover-up program that has continued since… when the warfare in Indochina moved from a low-intensity conflict, as seen by President Kennedy, to a major operation---a major war---in the hands of the Johnson of the Johnson administration.” (Pg. 284-285) Later, he adds, “The Kennedy administration … with the near certainty that the President would be reelected, was diametrically opposed to many of the great power centers of our society. He had to go.” (Pg. 311)
He asserts, “no less than $220 billion went to the CIA’s war in Indochina… Because of the success of that type of ‘money-making’ war, it is not too difficult to be persuaded that a similar and more excursion lies not too far in the future.” (Pg. 333)
“The answers to the source of the decision to murder John F. Kennedy are not in government files… It was he goal of Oliver Stone and of those of us who worked with him that the truth about the murder of John F. Kennedy be brought to as many viewers as possible… this has been a primary objective of this autobiographical book of mine. This is one reason why Stone used parts of it in his script.” (Pg. 350) He notes that in Stone’s film, “‘Man X’ was a representation of this author.” (Pg. 351)
He concludes, “It has been my endeavor, since 1985 when I first sat down at my computer, to write the story of the Cold War as few have seen it, to explain what took place at the close of World War II that led to the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and to describe the events that led to the assassination of John F. Kennedy… and answer the question WHY that terrible event was planned and executed…” (Pg.
354-355)
This book is more a collection of conspiracy theories, than containing much of factual interest about the JFK assassination.
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