JFK: The CIA, Vietnam And The Plot To Assassinate John F. Kennedy (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
The epistolary gods have been hard at work in attempting to prevent me from reading this book. The first attempt to purchase this publication went awol in the post. When I finally managed to get my hands on a copy, I've been inundated with other demands on my time. Reading has had to be severely cut and consequently I've had this on the 'go' for the past couple of weeks, which for me, is too long for a book of just three hundred and fifty pages.L.Fletcher Prouty's 'JFK-The CIA,Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy', originally published in 1996 is the second work from this author following 'The Secret Team:The CIA and it's Allies in Control of the United States and the World', first published in 1973. Prouty also acted as an advisor for Oliver Stone's 'JFK' and was suppposedly the inspiration for the character 'X' played by Donald Sutherland in that movie. The titles of Prouty's books, along with their controversial claims are sufficient to draw flack from his critics. He writes, "As a result I am aware I may be attacked in the same fashion as Oliver Stone even before his movie JFK appeared in the theatres. The attack consists of words like conspiracy and paranoia similar to the verbal accusations during the Inquisition. To attack someone as conspiracy prone because he does not believe the cover story that one lone gunman killed the President is ridiculous. By now it has become clear that there was a plan to murder Kennedy in order to escalate the Vietnam war and decimate most of the less-developed countries through a form of banker-managed predatory economic warfare. Conspiracy is far from the operative word. This is planning at its best or worst, depending on your point of view. Furthermore, paranoia cannot properly be used to define someone who studies economics and history and reveals certain facts."It should be pointed out in any review of this book that Prouty does not delve into the minutiae of Dallas. He does not ask of the 'who' or 'how', but fixes his focus on the 'why'. As Sutherland in 'JFK' speaks the lines, "Why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?" As the book title indicates, much of this work concentrates on the covert activities of the CIA and their machinations in Indochina dating from the end of WWII. The plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy arrives late in the text and offers no insights into the murder. Perhaps that is just as well because on p305 is written, "Why did Dr.James Humes, the man who did an autopsy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, burn his original notes?" I did get the impression that Prouty wrote this book over a number of years, due to the very many repeated facts and phrases that it contains. However, from WWII through to '64 this author was a military pilot in a number of theatres and rose to the rank of colonel. He was chief of special ops for the JCS while Kennedy was President, involved with the provision of military support for the CIA's secret operations.There are some oft quoted texts throughout in here, that have clearly influenced the 'X' factor, principally 'Report from Iron Mountain' by Leonard C. Lewin. (1967). 'The Critical Path' by R. Buckminster Fuller and 'Winston Churchill' by Henry Pelling. (1974). Also I found interesting little snippets of intrigue appear, such as the involvement of McGeorge Bundy in the 'Bay of Pigs' fiasco.I feel this book is important. It may be viewed as 'alternate history', but when written by someone who was twenty three years in the Air Force, a briefing officer in the Pentagon from 1955 through to 1963, who served as liason between the Department of Defence and the CIA, also in the office of the Secretary of Defence and the office of the JCS. Prouty was important as having first hand knowledge of the mechanics, modus operandi and factual history of the CIA's covert ops during the post WWII period through to the coup in '63.
This is a very potent book and a must-read for anyone interested in the assassination of President Kennedy, or the CIA, or the Vietnam War. For the author, these things were all related, and he may very well have been right. Filmmaker Oliver Stone certainly thought so, and used this book as one of the pillars of his film "JFK", and the author as the basis for the character Mr. X. I read through it with great interest, but also some trepidation.Prouty was a high-ranking pilot and military intelligence officer from World War II up through the Vietnam Era. He knew how the military and the CIA did things, and was privy to a lot of highly classified activity, such as the dark side of intelligence work - assassinations, plots, manipulation of foreign leaders and the like. He personally knew the major players and was present at key meetings. He was convinced that JFK was killed by a group of conspirators at the highest levels of our government and "military-industrial complex", and that the president was knocked off because of his plan to keep the US out of the Vietnam War. He does a fine job of documenting Kennedy's intention to do so and identifies the National Security Action Memo where he orders the withdrawal to begin. He was assassinated not long after this, and President Johnson reversed the action.Prouty points to a number of things that strongly suggest a conspiracy, and states that while the killing was not pulled off terribly well, the cover-up was. There are people in the corridors of power whose job it is to plan assassinations and spread propaganda in foreign lands - it is not inconceivable that they might do something along those lines in the USA. Tensions were running very high in those days, and Kennedy was in constant bureaucratic conflict with leaders of CIA and the military. For example, Gen. Lemnitzer, head of the Joint Chiefs during part of the Kennedy presidency, once secretly called for false flag terrorist bombings to take place in Miami and New York to provide a pretext for invading Cuba. Kennedy ended up demoting him. However, the book falls short of making a truly convincing case.What is wrong here? First and foremost, Prouty seems paranoid. He makes numerous references to a shadowy cabal of unnamed people that secretly guides pretty much all world events. His writing should have been better edited - the book is not badly written, but there is a lot of repetition and the organization is shaky. Also, so far as I know, Prouty stands alone. No other similarly situated people have come forward to corraborate his account. And at no time does he claim to have had knowledge of an assassination plot or to have participated in it. Could such a thing have really been accomplished by a small group of plotters, say Johnson, Hoover, Dulles, the head of the Secret Service, and a couple of generals, without the knowledge of their underlings? It is interesting to speculate about this, but speculation is all it is. It is worth pointing out that this book is not only about the JFK situation. It is also a fascinating presentation on the roles of the intelligence services and the U.S. military in the Vietnam War era. It is definitely worth reading, and deserves its place as one of the most intriguing exhibits in the murkiest chapter of all American history.
What do You think about JFK: The CIA, Vietnam And The Plot To Assassinate John F. Kennedy (2003)?
I thought that perhaps this book would shed some new light on the Kennedy assassination but it was a bit disappointing in that regard. I did however learn a lot about the CIA and its role in the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the run up and conduct of the Viet Nam War. While the author talked about the "power elite" and why they wanted Kennedy out of the way, more disturbing were examples of disregarding or disobeying direct orders from the Commander and incidents where the President was unaware or not told of things that were happening. It makes one wonder if the president is not on the "need to know" list, who is calling the shots. Since the author was on the staff of some high ranking military officials in the Pentagon, he had access to much inside information.
—Steven Howes
What continues to astound me is that there are agencies, major media outlets and history books that insist that Lee Oswald was the lone gunman who assassinated JFK. While I have no access to the key evidence or documents around the event, Prouty's background makes him a credible witness. In addition, the information he unveils about Vietnam fills in pieces of a puzzle that have eluded me for forty years. Having served in the Army during the conflict, his explanation of events matches everything I witnessed or experienced during that time. If even half the allegations in this book are true, then we are governed by a very dark group of powerful people.
—Timothy
This is an important book. Unfortunately, it's also a poorly written one, inferior in organization and composition to his equally important The Secret Team.One of the infelicities of composition is the amount of repetition. This is accountable by the fact that the basis for this book was a series of articles published for a magazine. Each chapter has an introduction and these are, naturally, repetitious. The text is also studded with retrospective and prospective announcements, presumably additions to the original articles. Interestingly, the magazine in which these articles first appeared is a publication of the Church of Scientology. This dubious association, however, does not appear to have influenced Prouty's arguments.As regards the substance of this book and his prior one, Prouty writes as an insider, discussing in this case the history of Vietnam policy from 1945 until the U.S. defeat in the seventies. In his view, that war, and all armed conflicts, acknowledged and surreptitious, since the deployment of thermonuclear weapons have been fought primarily to enhance the power of ruling elites, most of whom 'govern' from the shadows. Modern warfare is not to 'win' military victory so much as to enhance profits, despite well-engineered disinformation to the contrary. In his view, Kennedy was murdered for having threatened these powers by, among other things, intending to withdraw from the lucrative Vietnam conflict and to disempower the C.I.A., the convenient mechanism of elite mechinations.Personally, I don't buy Prouty's arguments--not because they're wrong but because they're incomplete and only circumstantially evident. A similar book might have been written (and some have) focusing on Kennedy policies as regards Cuba, for which much circumstantial evidence is also available. What's clear is that Kennedy had a lot of enemies, many with the motives and means to assassinate him, some of them connected to agencies of his own government, prominent among them the F.B.I. and, especially, the C.I.A., both of whom benefitted from the murder. That various interests in what Prouty, following Eisenhower, calls 'the military-industrial complex' also had motive and also benefitted is also true, but to assign to them agency is, in my opinion, unproven. They are not, after all, a monolith and Kennedy was no socialist.Such reservations notwithstanding, this is an important and unusually informed position worthy of note and might well be read with other such insider books, such as the more recent Confessions of an Economic Hitman.
—Erik Graff
