A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

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A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby barracuda » Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:12 am

Image

"The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers."

These are the words, spoken by “X” in Oliver Stone’s film JFK which are so often associated with Lieutenant Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, an advisor on the film itself, as well as the basis for the shadowy characterization memorably portrayed Donald Sutherland. These words themselves, however, did not belong to or originate with Prouty. They appear in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, as a quotation from another book, the Report from Iron Mountain by Leonard Lewin, which at the time, Prouty considered to be a government document. However, it was not:

But in the 1990s, Lewin discovered that bootleg editions of his book were being distributed by and to members of rightwing militia groups who claimed it was an authentic report. His 1972 admission seemed to have bypassed rightwing America. Lewin sued for copyright infringement, though the groups argued it was a public domain document – i.e. an official document – and that Lewin’s name as author was part of the government deception. In short, they argued that the publication was genuine, but, once leaked, the government did damage control and claimed it was a hoax, asking Lewin to admit to it.

The judge ruled in favour of Lewin, and all remaining copies were turned over to him. But… In 1993, the book made an appearance in the controversial movie JFK, in such a way that it was one of the most powerful scenes of the movie; a scene that “explained” why there was – could be? – a conspiracy why the “military-industrial complex” would want to kill Kennedy. How did this happens? Because Col. Fletcher Prouty believed the Report was authentic and cited it as such in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy –which was worked into the film script, Fletcher being portrayed by Donald Sutherland, meeting Kevin Costner (Jim Garrison) in Washington – a meeting that never occurred in reality. Stone used a section from Prouty’s book that comes from the Report and worked it into the dialogue: “The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers. . . . War readiness accounts for approximately a tenth of the output of the world's total economy.” For Stone – and many others – it was clear that the government was a co-existence of various interest groups: the oil industry; the pharmaceutical industry; but mainly, the military-industrial complex… warmongers.

In his book, Prouty goes in more detail, writing that the Group’s existence “was so highly classified that there is no record, to this day, of who the men in the group were or with what sectors of the government or private life they were connected.” Still, he claimed to have managed an exclusive interview with a “purported member of the Iron Mountain Special Study Group", who told Prouty he "believes that the group's mission was delineated by McNamara, William Bundy, and Dean Rusk." In 1996, Simon & Schuster reprinted the Report, with a new introduction, underlining that the book was a political satire.


Why did Prouty decide to invent such an interview and include it in his book? Perhaps to give himself a measure of authority with the types of organizations and individuals who had seen fit to distribute the Lewin novel as factual – extreme right wing patriot militia. This is exactly what you might expect, though, from someone on the advisory board of the Populist Action Committee, the anti-Semitic and blatantly national socialist arm of holocaust denier Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby, and an organization dedicated to promoting the public candidacies of members of the American Nazi Party, including Art Jones and David Duke. The membership list of that board is a real who’s who:

The members (and their descriptions) as of March 9, 1992 included:

Abe Linclon Austin (Monetary Scientist) Mike Blair (Investigative Reporter) Ken Bohnsack (Founder, Sovereignty) Robert Brock (Black Nationalist) Howard Carson (Publishing Consultant) Capt. G. Russel Evans (Historian) Lt. Col. James (Bo) Gritz (US Army, ret.) Dr. Martin A. Larson (Author) Roger Lourie (President, Devin-Adair publishing) Donald A. MacPherson (Constitutional Attorney) Pauline Mackey (Treasurer, ret. David Duke for President) Tom McIntyre (Former Chairman, Populist Party) Eustace Mullins (Author) John Nugent (Financial Consultant) Lawrence Patterson (Editor & Publisher, Criminal Politics) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (US Air Force, ret.) John Rakus (President, National Justice Foundation) John Rarick (Former Congressman, D-Louisiana) Vince Ryan (Editor, The Spotlight) Sherman Skolnick (Chairman, Committee to Clean Up the Courts) Maj. James H. Townsend, Ret. (Editor & Publisher, The National Educator) James P. Tucker (President, National Media Services) Tom Valentine (Host, Radio Free America) Raymond E. Walk (President, Rayan Associates, Inc.) Robert Weems (Founding Chairman, Populist Party)


Prouty prepared to act as a character witness on Carto’s behalf during the latter’s dropped libel suit against Mel Mermelstein. And his book, The Secret Team was reprinted by the Institute for Historical Review in 1992, a noted neo-nazi, holocaust revisionist organization.

Prouty had, perhaps just as meaningfully, an extremely friendly association with the Church of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. He had a long history of publishing in Scientology's Freedom magazine. and was employed by the CoS as an “expert witness” regarding Hubbard’s claims regarding his war record, for which he submitted a sworn affidavit testifying to to the impeccability of Hubbard's Naval Intelligence credentials in Scientology v. Armstrong. This affidavit was prepared only four years after the trials for Operation Snow White, a trial to determine culpability in a series of infiltrations and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of it in more than 30 countries by members of the church, and which culminated in the conviction and imprisonment of a number of high-ranking scientologists including the wife of L. Ron Hubbard. By the way, guess who wrote the authorised biography of L. Ron Hubbard? That's right!

As long as we're at it, we might as well acknowledge his work with Lyndon LaRouche as well, and throw in the fact that he was issued a CIA commendation for the creation of an Air Force worldwide system for "Military Support of the Clandestine Operations of the CIA" in 1954.

And did you know he’d seen a UFO? Funny thing is, that's not one of the reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby Hugh Manatee Wins » Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:28 am

I'll refute/qualify all your misgivings tomorrow.

I have to get up in a few hours for works so later.

Oh, but note that you are having it two ways-
> You don't trust him for being the Air Force-CIA liasson in 1954
yet...he tells us in great detail as nobody else does...what he knows from being that inner circle person.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby barracuda » Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:32 am

That's just it, Hugh - I'm not sure why I should trust what he says about that, in light of his soiled résumé.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby stefano » Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:53 am

Thanks barracuda.

I've read The secret team on Hugh's recommendation and learnt a lot from it. The most important parts, about the start of the secret team under Colby and Dulles are pretty well substantiated from other sources though and the whole book makes sense. When you say you don't trust him, what does that mean? Does he cover up things that you've learnt elsewhere that you think are important? What do you think he tries to divert attention from?
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby barracuda » Thu Jul 29, 2010 3:43 am

I'm interested in just how carefully I need to adjust my understanding of Prouty's broader message in light of his affiliations with the far right and Scientology. Every text has a perspective, and The Secret Team is no different. Are there aspects of his ideas, about the JFK assassination or the omniscient hidden cabal of intelligence puppetmasters, which are colored by these tendencies? I wonder now. His perspective is vehemently pro-military, pro-American. Years ago, I built a minor corner of my belief systems around his writing and talks about JFK, and much of the information I presented above comes as a surprise to me, so I'm throwing it out there for discussion, as part pf a personal re-evaluation, more or less.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby Brentos » Sat Jul 31, 2010 11:20 pm

That is pretty interesting about Prouty's biography of Hubbard. Could it be due to both knowing each other through their intelligence backgrounds?
Like any information, I try to take it with a pinch of salt, let it simmer on the backburner and see if it rings true over time. The source of the information may have faults, but it doesn't mean that all their information is bad, and with an open mind you may see a bigger picture. No one is perfect. A classic example is Eustace Mullins. He has done some very detailed, ground-breaking research, that many have taken, but he is indeed an anti-semite.

I think with Prouty, because he was on the inside, you have to take his soiled resume as a given. Perhaps with his pro-military opinions, he thinks he is being a realist, or maybe something else?

His quote:
"The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers." is very true in practice. Though now, it is no longer termed just 'war', but 'emergencies'.

Peter Dale Scott has talked about the Continuation of Government (COG) now being used since 9-11 to supersede the Congress & Senate. But before that, the actual War Powers act was used multiple times by presidents to force through 'Change'. For example it was used in 1933 by Roosevelt to confiscate all privately owned gold from americans. The increased 'war powers' of the state really means more control over the populace. Isn't war and 'war powers' what Orwell was getting at in 1984? And supposedly he was a bit of an insider too. I think things have come to pass, that we are close to what they say. The mainstream media is thoroughly compromised and propagates myths to serve this.

IIRC, the latest wikileaks 'leaked' documentation points the finger at Pakistan and the ISI squandering all our 'aid' money in actually arming the 'taliban' (propaganda term for anyone in afghanistan who wants the US out) to fight the US. Hmmn, could it be that in reality, this is deliberate, not an oversight, to prolong the war (and profits)? Anyone who has read Smedley Butler (similar to Prouty in some ways) has heard of the profit motive of war.

I'm a cynic/skeptic anymore of pretty much everything pandering as mainstream 'hard facts', since modern civilization itself is a ponzi scheme/confidence game built on fraud. So his abiotic oil article(s) interested me very much. The science makes a lot of sense too, in terms of it being possible vs shallow organic matter only. But Im still on the fence with abiotic oil.
sorry, this turned into an essay, and I'm probably still not addressing your question:

"Are there aspects of his ideas, about the JFK assassination or the omniscient hidden cabal of intelligence puppetmasters, which are colored by these tendencies?"
I would say yes, of course.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby stefano » Sun Aug 01, 2010 2:57 pm

Bump... Hugh, please, your thoughts here would genuinely be interesting.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby 8bitagent » Sun Aug 01, 2010 5:43 pm

stefano wrote:Bump... Hugh, please, your thoughts here would genuinely be interesting.



I agree, Hugh has to be one of the most dialed and wizardry minds I've seen on disseminating the JFK topic as well as government/spook op shenanigans and deep state politics from 20th century America.

I'm curious what Hugh or all of you think of the veracity of the "confession" of E Howard Hunt, who previously had gone to court to battle libel(claiming he was involved in JFK), only to on his death bed claim such really was the case.

I'm curious which whistleblowers, witnesses and JFK experts people on here might find dubious.



also, I didnt know seeing a UFO(government craft or otherwise) was grounds for suspicion of character. Dennis Kuncinich has said such, and he's one of the only few Democrats on the hill I can respect.
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby jingofever » Sun Aug 01, 2010 6:09 pm

stefano wrote:Bump... Hugh, please, your thoughts here would genuinely be interesting.

About a year ago he and compared2what? went over this: here.

barracuda wrote:Why did Prouty decide to invent such an interview and include it in his book?

It wasn't necessarily an invention, he may have been duped by a “purported member of the Iron Mountain Special Study Group."
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NPR tackles Scientology.

Postby MinM » Thu Feb 10, 2011 6:47 pm

barracuda wrote:Image

"The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers."

These are the words, spoken by “X” in Oliver Stone’s film JFK which are so often associated with Lieutenant Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, an advisor on the film itself, as well as the basis for the shadowy characterization memorably portrayed Donald Sutherland. These words themselves, however, did not belong to or originate with Prouty. They appear in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, as a quotation from another book, the Report from Iron Mountain by Leonard Lewin, which at the time, Prouty considered to be a government document. However, it was not:

But in the 1990s, Lewin discovered that bootleg editions of his book were being distributed by and to members of rightwing militia groups who claimed it was an authentic report. His 1972 admission seemed to have bypassed rightwing America. Lewin sued for copyright infringement, though the groups argued it was a public domain document – i.e. an official document – and that Lewin’s name as author was part of the government deception. In short, they argued that the publication was genuine, but, once leaked, the government did damage control and claimed it was a hoax, asking Lewin to admit to it.

The judge ruled in favour of Lewin, and all remaining copies were turned over to him. But… In 1993, the book made an appearance in the controversial movie JFK, in such a way that it was one of the most powerful scenes of the movie; a scene that “explained” why there was – could be? – a conspiracy why the “military-industrial complex” would want to kill Kennedy. How did this happens? Because Col. Fletcher Prouty believed the Report was authentic and cited it as such in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy –which was worked into the film script, Fletcher being portrayed by Donald Sutherland, meeting Kevin Costner (Jim Garrison) in Washington – a meeting that never occurred in reality. Stone used a section from Prouty’s book that comes from the Report and worked it into the dialogue: “The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers. . . . War readiness accounts for approximately a tenth of the output of the world's total economy.” For Stone – and many others – it was clear that the government was a co-existence of various interest groups: the oil industry; the pharmaceutical industry; but mainly, the military-industrial complex… warmongers.

In his book, Prouty goes in more detail, writing that the Group’s existence “was so highly classified that there is no record, to this day, of who the men in the group were or with what sectors of the government or private life they were connected.” Still, he claimed to have managed an exclusive interview with a “purported member of the Iron Mountain Special Study Group", who told Prouty he "believes that the group's mission was delineated by McNamara, William Bundy, and Dean Rusk." In 1996, Simon & Schuster reprinted the Report, with a new introduction, underlining that the book was a political satire.


Why did Prouty decide to invent such an interview and include it in his book? Perhaps to give himself a measure of authority with the types of organizations and individuals who had seen fit to distribute the Lewin novel as factual – extreme right wing patriot militia. This is exactly what you might expect, though, from someone on the advisory board of the Populist Action Committee, the anti-Semitic and blatantly national socialist arm of holocaust denier Willis Carto’s Liberty Lobby, and an organization dedicated to promoting the public candidacies of members of the American Nazi Party, including Art Jones and David Duke. The membership list of that board is a real who’s who:

The members (and their descriptions) as of March 9, 1992 included:

Abe Linclon Austin (Monetary Scientist) Mike Blair (Investigative Reporter) Ken Bohnsack (Founder, Sovereignty) Robert Brock (Black Nationalist) Howard Carson (Publishing Consultant) Capt. G. Russel Evans (Historian) Lt. Col. James (Bo) Gritz (US Army, ret.) Dr. Martin A. Larson (Author) Roger Lourie (President, Devin-Adair publishing) Donald A. MacPherson (Constitutional Attorney) Pauline Mackey (Treasurer, ret. David Duke for President) Tom McIntyre (Former Chairman, Populist Party) Eustace Mullins (Author) John Nugent (Financial Consultant) Lawrence Patterson (Editor & Publisher, Criminal Politics) Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (US Air Force, ret.) John Rakus (President, National Justice Foundation) John Rarick (Former Congressman, D-Louisiana) Vince Ryan (Editor, The Spotlight) Sherman Skolnick (Chairman, Committee to Clean Up the Courts) Maj. James H. Townsend, Ret. (Editor & Publisher, The National Educator) James P. Tucker (President, National Media Services) Tom Valentine (Host, Radio Free America) Raymond E. Walk (President, Rayan Associates, Inc.) Robert Weems (Founding Chairman, Populist Party)


Prouty prepared to act as a character witness on Carto’s behalf during the latter’s dropped libel suit against Mel Mermelstein. And his book, The Secret Team was reprinted by the Institute for Historical Review in 1992, a noted neo-nazi, holocaust revisionist organization.

Prouty had, perhaps just as meaningfully, an extremely friendly association with the Church of Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard. He had a long history of publishing in Scientology's Freedom magazine. and was employed by the CoS as an “expert witness” regarding Hubbard’s claims regarding his war record, for which he submitted a sworn affidavit testifying to to the impeccability of Hubbard's Naval Intelligence credentials in Scientology v. Armstrong. This affidavit was prepared only four years after the trials for Operation Snow White, a trial to determine culpability in a series of infiltrations and thefts from 136 government agencies, foreign embassies and consulates, as well as private organizations critical of it in more than 30 countries by members of the church, and which culminated in the conviction and imprisonment of a number of high-ranking scientologists including the wife of L. Ron Hubbard. By the way, guess who wrote the authorised biography of L. Ron Hubbard? That's right! ...

As long as we're at it, we might as well acknowledge his work with Lyndon LaRouche as well, and throw in the fact that he was issued a CIA commendation for the creation of an Air Force worldwide system for "Military Support of the Clandestine Operations of the CIA" in 1954.

And did you know he’d seen a UFO? Funny thing is, that's not one of the reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

The Church Of Scientology, Fact-Checked: Journalist Lawrence Wright: NPR
On what the Church of Scientology said about Hubbard's war records

"I asked Tommy Davis to square the records that we had with the church's own records of Mr. Hubbard's war records. And he said, 'Well, we the church were also puzzled about it until we found an expert who clarified all this.' And he said the man who did that was Mr. X in Oliver Stone's movie JFK who in real life was a man named Fletcher Prouty, who had been involved in inner circles of the American Defense Department. And Prouty, who also had worked for the church, had told them that Hubbard had actually been an intelligence agent, and the records were, as he said, sheep-dipped. That's apparently a term of art in intelligence that maintains that there were two sets of records. And we obtained all of Mr. Hubbard's military records, and there was no second set of records. There was no evidence that he had ever acted as an intelligence agent during the war in any serious capacity, and that he had never been wounded." ...


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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Feb 10, 2011 7:49 pm

Yes, I was a bit surprised to see him show up at the end of this 26-page barnburner in the New Yorker (wasn't there a thread about this?)

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011 ... act_wright
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Re: A few reasons I don't really trust L. Fletcher Prouty.

Postby D.R. » Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:59 pm

Back to Leonard Lewin for a moment;
The late Ace Hayes told me that he had a personal phone call with Lewin about "The Report From Iron Mountain".
Lewin confirmed that the book was political satire.
That doesn't mean that he didn't know actual elites in think tanks that were cranking out those ideas.
I have a hardcover copy of Iron Mountain and it is strikingly similar to the "Continuity of Goverment" plan.
Prouty caught Oliver Stone off-guard with his populist party connections. He is one of those old intel guys, like Gene Wheaton, who can spin a tale in the direction he wants it to go.
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Re: NPR tackles Scientology.

Postby compared2what? » Sat Feb 12, 2011 6:15 am

MinM wrote:"I asked Tommy Davis to square the records that we had with the church's own records of Mr. Hubbard's war records. And he said, 'Well, we the church were also puzzled about it until we found an expert who clarified all this.' And he said the man who did that was Mr. X in Oliver Stone's movie JFK who in real life was a man named Fletcher Prouty, who had been involved in inner circles of the American Defense Department. And Prouty, who also had worked for the church, had told them that Hubbard had actually been an intelligence agent, and the records were, as he said, sheep-dipped. That's apparently a term of art in intelligence that maintains that there were two sets of records. And we obtained all of Mr. Hubbard's military records, and there was no second set of records. There was no evidence that he had ever acted as an intelligence agent during the war in any serious capacity, and that he had never been wounded." ...

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 15#p369815


I don't really think that it behooves an opponent of propaganda to give the last word to what readers will naturally take to be Lawrence Wright's full account of how trustworthy Prouty's word is from the perspective of second-generation Scientology aristocrat/official spokesperson Tommy Davis. Of all people :roll:

Especially if you're then going to cut him off before he has time to elaborate in order quickly to toss to a very emotionally persuasive and highly dramatic fictional cinematic depiction of events going down in exactly the way Fletcher Prouty (and only Fletcher Prouty) says they did -- oddly unsupported (and, indeed, partly contradicted) by the basic, mundane common-and-garden-variety documentary record though they may be -- and then finish up by show-casing Hugh's impassioned and large-type rebuttal of anti-Semitism in The Secret Team that nobody has actually accused it of having.

So, hey: Flag on play.

First of all, Lawrence Wright has a couple of things that are a little less misleadingly ambiguous to say on the subject of those military records:

Davis later sent me a copy of what he said was a document that confirmed Hubbard’s heroism: a “Notice of Separation from the U.S. Naval Service,” dated December 6, 1945. The document specifies medals won by Hubbard, including a Purple Heart with a Palm, implying that he was wounded in action twice. But John E. Bircher, the spokesman for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, wrote to me that the Navy uses gold and silver stars, “NOT a palm,” to indicate multiple wounds. Davis included a photograph of medals that Hubbard supposedly won. Two of the medals in the photograph weren’t even created until after Hubbard left active service.

After filing a request with the National Archives in St. Louis, The New Yorker obtained what archivists assured us were Hubbard’s complete military records—more than nine hundred pages. Nowhere in the file is there mention of Hubbard’s being wounded in battle or breaking his feet. X-rays taken of Hubbard’s right shoulder and hip showed calcium deposits, but there was no evidence of any bone or joint disease in his ankle.

There is a “Notice of Separation” in the records, but it is not the one that Davis sent me. The differences in the two documents are telling. The St. Louis document indicates that Hubbard earned four medals for service, but they reflect no distinction or valor. In the church document, his job preference after the service is listed as “Studio (screen writing)”; in the official record, it is “uncertain.” The church document indicates, falsely, that Hubbard completed four years of college, obtaining a degree in civil engineering. The official document correctly notes two years of college and no degree.

On the church document, the commanding officer who signed off on Hubbard’s separation was “Howard D. Thompson, Lt. Cmdr.” The file contains a letter, from 2000, to another researcher, who had written for more information about Thompson. An analyst with the National Archives responded that the records of commissioned naval officers at that time had been reviewed, and “there was no Howard D. Thompson listed.”

The church, after being informed of these discrepancies, said, “Our expert on military records has advised us that, in his considered opinion, there is nothing in the Thompson notice that would lead him to question its validity.” Eric Voelz, an archivist who has worked at the St. Louis archive for three decades, looked at the document and pronounced it a forgery.


(That's from the article, near the very end, for all the verification fans out there. BTW.)

And second of all, though I'm going just from memory here and therefore absolutely urge everyone to fact-check and (if called for) correct this, IIRC, Prouty wasn't just acting as, like, some impartial passer-by who was good enough to lend the Co$ an impartial-expert-insider hand simply because he happened to be in the neighborhood when the authenticity of Hubbard's military records was called into question.

I believe that he was, in point of fact, being paid by the Church to attest their non-fraudulence in connection with...I forget which of the many lawsuits Scientology was then a party to. But I'm practically positive that's the reason that Prouty's on the record with any position at all on such a comparatively minor issue. He was their hired gun.

Did none of that strike you as relevant enough to mention, or what?
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X= Richard Case Nagell + L. Fletcher Prouty

Postby MinM » Sat Feb 12, 2011 10:42 pm

Image
Solving for X, Zachary Sklar explains 25-minutes into this real audio clip, and the beginning of this one, that X is a composite character based on Nagell and Prouty. Specifically, an actual conversation that Jim Garrison had with Richard Case Nagell, while the rest of the character is fleshed out in the person of L. Fletcher Prouty.
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Re: X= Richard Case Nagell + L. Fletcher Prouty

Postby compared2what? » Sun Feb 13, 2011 3:00 am

MinM wrote:Image
Solving for X, Zachary Sklar explains 25-minutes into this real audio clip, and the beginning of this one, that X is a composite character based on Nagell and Prouty. Specifically, an actual conversation that Jim Garrison had with Richard Case Nagell, while the rest of the character is fleshed out in the person of L. Fletcher Prouty.


Uh-huh. And Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada, serving at the pleasure of Her Majesty, the Queen.

What's your point?
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