Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Octafish to attend JFK assassination conference. Do you think JFK still matters? [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)250. L. Fletcher Prouty was a heroic figure...
...the guy believed in his oath of office.
I've read several of his books and quoted him on DU. In one work, he reported then-vice president Richard Nixon was the CIA-White House "Action Officer," ostensibly for President Eisenhower and CIA Director Allen Dulles.
Here's an early example from DU2:
An excerpt from the book "The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy"
Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty
Birch Lane Press, 1992 - hard cover, 1st edition
EXCERPT
The Pentagon Papers
EXCERPT
One of the most important narratives of this event was written by Edward G. Lansdale in his autobiography In the Midst of Wars. Few Americans, if any, knew Ngo Dinh Diem and the situation in Vietnam from 1954-68 better than Ed Lansdale. He wrote:
As the prisons filled up with political opponents, as the older nationalist parties went underground, with the body politics fractured, Communist political cadre became active throughout South Vietnam, recruiting followers for action against a government held together mainly by the Can Lao elite rather than by popular support. The reaped whirlwind finally arrived in November 1963, when the nationalist opposition erupted violently, imprisoning many of the Can Loa and killing Diem, Nhu, and others. It was heartbreaking to be an onlooker to this tragic bit of history.
It was some time before the news became known that Diem had fled to Cholon and been captured and killed there. This news was flashed around the world; this was the story that everyone heard. The public never heard of the planned flight to Europe that the Kennedy administration had arranged for him.
Thus it was that the file of routine cable traffic between Washington and Saigon eventually became known with the release and publication of the Pentagon Papers. This is how it happened that Howard Hunt was able to locate certain top-level messages to and from the White House and Ambassador Lodge in Saigon that contained information referring to "highest authority"--the cable traffic code for President Kennedy.
None of these messages contained any reference to a plot to kill President Diem and his brother or came even close to it. Concealed within these messages were carefully worded phrases that gave Ambassador Lodge the information he needed in order to direct all participants into action and to begin the careful removal of the two brothers to Europe by commercial aircraft.
According to information that came out during the Watergate hearings, those files that had been forged to smear President Kennedy were put in Hunt's White House safe, where they remained until discovered by investigators later.
SNIP
There is much about this episode that has become important upon review. There are those who have been so violently opposed to Jack Kennedy and all that he stood for that they have stooped to all kinds of sordid activities to smear him while he was alive, to attack his brother Bobby while he was still alive, and to hound Sen. Edward Kennedy to this day. Nixon's gratuitous reference to Kennedy's "complicity in the murder of Diem" after a decade of silence on that subject speaks for itself. The efforts of Howard Hunt and Chuck Colson (both employees of the White House at the time) to dig up old files in order to besmirch the memory of President Kennedy provide another example.
CONTINUED...
http://www.maebrussell.com/Articles%20and%20Notes/Pentagon%20Papers.html
DU2 SOURCE: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Octafish/541
The MIC is just a front for the ownership class to make money off the big chess board. President Kennedy tried to stop that game.
The Guns of Dallas
The reason for the assassination
was to control the power of the presidency.
EXCERPT...
As we prepare now to celebrate the beginning of the third century of the founding of this country, we wonder if we live in the land of the free. We wonder if at least we still have a government of the people and by the people. Certainly, it is no longer a government for the people. The sound throughout the land is ugly: there is frustration, hate, and fear. We must act while there may still be time.
There is a grave conspiracy over the land. The people have come alive because of Vietnam and Watergate; but they have scarcely scratched the surface. A President and a Vice-President have been forced to resign. A President has been shot to death. Two Presidential candidates have been shot, one of them killed. Many of the President's men have been forced to leave, some have gone to jail; others are still under indictment.
Yes, history has been made by a series of murders, but not enough has been done to solve them. The trial of Watergate was the trial of the cover-up. There has been no trial about the real crime of Watergate. There has been no trial of the big power behind Watergate. The Hunts, Liddys, McCords, and the Cubans were not drawn into that drama solely for their own interests. They were working for someone much higher up. They were all pawns, just like Nixon was. This is a game for the biggest stake of allabsolute control of the government of the United States of America; and, with control of this government, control of the world. And yet the real crime underlying all of this has not even been identified, stated, and charged. The real criminals still walk the streets, run their corporations, control their banks, and pull strings throughout their political and financial machines.
This control mechanism did not start in 1972 with Watergate. It began, in a tentative way, in the Korean War era, when the military and the executive branch found out how easy it was to fool the Congress and the American public. And with that recognition, power-hungry and money-mad industrialists began to usurp more and more power. And when those rifles crackled over Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 and John F. Kennedy's brain was splattered across the road, they had made their move into the big time. They took over control of the President and of the Presidency. The man they had killed was no longer a problem and they had made certain that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, heard and remembered the sound of those guns. It is the sound of those guns in Dallas, and their ever-present threat, which is the real mechanism of control over the American government.
It is possible now to reconstruct the scenario of that day, and, with new information, to show why the murder of JFK may properly be called the "Crime of the Century." If we the people of the United States do not demand its resolution this year, it will stand in the way of a free election in 1976. It will doom a third century of democratic government in this country.
CONTINUED...
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/GoD.html
Ratical's good. Here's a good online resource -- I believe run by Len Osanic -- for Fletcher Prouty, including interviews...
http://www.prouty.org/
Thank you for sharing, rwsanders. That's how democracy operates.
Edit history
Please sign in to view edit histories.
265 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
RecommendedHighlight replies with 5 or more recommendations
Octafish to attend JFK assassination conference. Do you think JFK still matters? [View all]
Octafish
Oct 2013
OP
Five years ago, DU2 had a pair of mammoth threads that I can longer access...
Octafish
Oct 2013
#169
Kick/Rec. Yes, it matters because of the word you used - truth. It's in ever increasingly short
NRaleighLiberal
Oct 2013
#6
No...thank YOU for what you are doing - and always do for us here...and for teaching me a new word!
NRaleighLiberal
Oct 2013
#191
Thanks, notadmblnd! People wonder why the USA tortures children, invades innocent countries...
Octafish
Oct 2013
#199
I imagine that to be the case for the under-educated who believe history is not relevant.
LanternWaste
Oct 2013
#139
Thanks for your POV, pscot. There are many CIA papers that bear direct relevance...
Octafish
Oct 2013
#202
JFK's Assassination was/is a watershed moment in our nation's history, it is of great importance.
Uncle Joe
Oct 2013
#13
Yes, it matters. But looking ahead Mother Nature is going to kick human ass. IT WILL BE UGLY.
hunter
Oct 2013
#15
When it comes to the disease, we must strike at the root -- the radical approach.
Octafish
Oct 2013
#231
Good posts rebutting the willing ignorance of the JFK CTists, but you may as well be shouting
stopbush
Oct 2013
#146
For many, and, on certain levels, I'd go as far as to say "most" if not all. As for the economy,
whathehell
Oct 2013
#91
Of course not. You're still young & immature enough to think calling us "old" is a debate strategy
whathehell
Oct 2013
#116
I'm pretty sure that, being in possession of all the academic information you have, in addition
whathehell
Oct 2013
#163
Sorry, Brad, unlike yourself, I'm not a man of any color -- I'm a female, like Juajen, who also
whathehell
Oct 2013
#227
What I meant by that is, it seems to be the moment when the other side decided to just start killing
stranger81
Oct 2013
#51
Exactly. All the same political actors benefited from each "lone nut" assassination.
villager
Oct 2013
#88
Superficially, no it wasn't. but there is a fundamental yes underlying that time.
Egalitarian Thug
Oct 2013
#197
Exactly. I doubt the deniers have ever fired a shot, much less from elevation
Link Speed
Oct 2013
#22
2 shots out of 3 on a target ranging from less than 60 to less than 100 yards away?
Spider Jerusalem
Oct 2013
#105
Justice demands one ex-Secret Service Agent and one ex-FBI Agent testify before Congress...
Octafish
Oct 2013
#252
Interestingly enough I'm currently reading a book by L. Fletcher Prouty about the subject...
rwsanders
Oct 2013
#25
Thanks Octafish, that's the book I'm reading. So far it is very sad as it kind of picks up where...
rwsanders
Oct 2013
#251
Dismissing conspiracy theories about the assassination is not making light of the event. n/t
Bolo Boffin
Oct 2013
#41
And you do so in violation of the SOP for GD and the Terms of Service for DU.
Bolo Boffin
Oct 2013
#166
Correct. ALSO is the operative word. It was bigger than Oswald there was a likely conspiracy
avaistheone1
Oct 2013
#93
It was fifty years ago. It's a very cold case. The original investigation may indeed
struggle4progress
Oct 2013
#46
I'm not a 'boomer' whatever that is, and it very much interests me. It is part of the history of
sabrina 1
Oct 2013
#87
It most certainly is still relevant. You see how our country STILL won't speak to Cuba?
loudsue
Oct 2013
#70
I believe that open-minded persons never close the door. We know we are fed propaganda
rhett o rick
Oct 2013
#72
considering how long it takes to get things declassified I would say it does still matter.
liberal_at_heart
Oct 2013
#76
We are on the threshold of a grand and open conspiracy to destroy Constitutional government.
gordianot
Oct 2013
#81
I think Lincoln's assassination IMO matters a great deal more than Kennedy's
Hippo_Tron
Oct 2013
#185
Michael Parenti: The JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State
Junkdrawer
Oct 2013
#119
Hoping for a great conference, looking forward to your comments on it. Rec. n/t
Judi Lynn
Oct 2013
#160
I think some of JFKs wish list like civil rights, programs for the poor
arely staircase
Oct 2013
#242
It matters as much as our Constitution due in part to its first establishment.
Festivito
Oct 2013
#186
JFK threw himself upon the broken barricade between democracy and the fascist national security stat
hedda_foil
Oct 2013
#229
I have traveled to almost every continent and one thing I have seen almost everywhere
DonRedwood
Oct 2013
#241
I now realize that Daniel Brandt's Name Base is back online-it's wonderfully easy to use-KICK
bobthedrummer
Oct 2013
#247
I am excited for you Octafish. I know you are going to enjoy this symposium.
avaistheone1
Oct 2013
#260