Leroy
Fletcher Prouty was born in Massachusetts on 24th January, 1917. During
the Second World War he served as a army tank
commander. He later joined the United States
Air Force (USAAF) and became involved in work for the Office
of Strategic Services (OSS). In 1950 he established Air Defense
Command and during the Korean War was based
in Japan.
In
1955 Prouty was assigned to coordinate operations between the USAAF
and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
For the next nine years he worked for the Pentagon. He was
Briefing Officer for the Secretary of Defense (1960-61), Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Special Operations (1962-63).
Colonel Prouty retired
from the United
States Air Force (USAAF) in
1964 and was awarded the Joint Chiefs of Staff Commendation Medal.
He later worked for the General Aircraft Corporation (1964-65) and
First National Bank (1965-68). He was also a senior director of a
government and military marketing organization.
In
1973 Prouty published his book The Secret
Team. In this controversial work Prouty claimed that the
CIA had worked on behalf of the interests of a "high cabal"
of industrialists and bankers. Prouty thought that the Executive
Action programme
had not only been used against foreign leaders. He
also claimed that the CIA was involved in the killing of President
John
F. Kennedy.
Prouty even named Edward Lansdale as
the leader of the operation. He claimed he was in Dallas on the day
of the assassination: "He was there like the orchestra leader,
coordinating these things."
Prouty worked as Creative
Advisor (1990-91) for Oliver Stone's film, JFK.
Prouty also published JFK: The CIA, Vietnam,
and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (1992). In
this book Prouty argued that Kennedy had been killed by a elements
of the United States military and intelligence communities.
Leroy
Fletcher Prouty died
of organ failure following stomach surgery on 5th June, 2001.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Forum Debate: Leroy Fletcher Prouty
Forum Debate on Watergate
(1)
L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate
John F. Kennedy (1992)
As the presidential
motorcade began its procession through the streets of Dallas, we note
that many things which ought to have been done, as matters of standard
security procedure, were not done. These omissions show the hand of
the plotters and the undeniable fact that they were operating among
the highest levels of government in order to have access to the channels
necessary to arrange such things covertly.
Some of these omissions
were simple things that were done normally without fail. All the windows
in buildings overlooking a presidential motorcade route must be closed
and observers positioned to see that they remain closed. They will
have radios, and those placed on roofs will be armed in case gunmen
do appear in the windows. All sewer covers along the streets are supposed
to be welded to preclude the sewer's use as a gunman's lair. People
with umbrellas, coats over their arms, and other items that could
conceal a weapon are watched.
(2)
L. Fletcher Prouty, The
Secret Team (1973)
The Secret Team (ST)
being described herein consists of security-cleared individuals in
and out of government who receive secret intelligence data gathered
by the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) and who react to
those data, when it seems appropriate to them, with paramilitary plans
and activities, e.g. training and "advising" - a not exactly
impenetrable euphemism for such things as leading into battle and
actual combat - Laotian tribal troops, Tibetan rebel horsemen, or
Jordanian elite Palace Guards.
Membership on the Team,
granted on a "need-to-know" basis, varies with the nature
and location of the problems that come to its attention, and its origins
derive from that sometimes elite band of men who served with the World
War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under the father of them
all, General "Wild Bill" William J. Donovan, and in the
old CIA.
The power of the Team
derives from its vast intragovernmental undercover infrastructure
and its direct relationship with great private industries, mutual
funds and investment houses, universities, and the news media, including
foreign and domestic publishing houses. The Secret Team has very close
affiliations with elements of power in more than three-score foreign
countries and is able when it chooses to topple governments, to create
governments, and to influence governments almost anywhere in the world.
Whether or not the Secret
Team had anything whatsoever to do with the deaths of Rafael Trujillo,
Ngo Dinh Diem, Ngo Dinh Nhu, Dag Hammerskjold, John F. Kennedy, Robert
F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and others may never be revealed,
but what is known is that the power of the Team is enhanced by the
"cult of the gun" and by its sometimes brutal and always
arbitrary anti-Communist flag waving, even when real Communism had
nothing to do with the matter at hand.
At the heart of the Team,
of course, are a handful of top executives of the CIA and of the National
Security Council (NSC), most notably the chief White House adviser
to the President on foreign policy affairs. Around them revolves a
sort of inner ring of Presidential officials, civilians, and military
men from the Pentagon, and career professionals of the intelligence
community. It is often quite difficult to tell exactly who many of
these men really are, because some may wear a uniform and the rank
of general and really be with the CIA and others may be as inconspicuous
as the executive assistant to some Cabinet officer's chief deputy.
(3)
L. Fletcher Prouty, The
Secret Team (1973)
By the time Cuban
operations had been expanded to the point that they had become the
beginnings of the Bay of Pigs operation, activity of all kinds had
been discovered and compromised by the press of the world. There were
no more secrets. The participation and support of the United States
was known to be taking place in Puerto Rico, Panama, Guatemala, and
Nicaragua, in addition to some unscheduled action in Mexico. Yet the
ST continued to launch an increasing number of special operations
without regard for real secrecy.
There was not only a breakdown
in the traditional ethics of international relations but there was
also a serious degradation of the usual high standard of technical
operational methods within the Government. The flights from Guatemala
themselves were not tactically sound nor were they politically effective.
Most of these flights not only failed miserably to accomplish what
the CIA thought they would do, i.e., put in place underground cadres
of guerrillas and provide equipment and communications material for
other underground groups in Cuba; but as a result of their amateurism
and failures, they played into the hands of Castro. They never did
become a rallying point for anti-Castroites. On the contrary, they
exposed and compromised them and led to many unnecessary firing-squad
deaths. The flight paths, by their crossing and recrossing, pinpointed
and exposed ground-reception parties, which were mopped up by Castro's
troops; in other cases, aircraft were lured over drop-sites that proved
to be ambushes. The whole series of operations exposed the weaknesses
of ClA's tactical capacity. The CIA cannot properly direct large operations.
It has led many small ones successfully; but has failed miserably
in a number of large ones.
(4)
Lalo
J. Gastriani, Fair
Play Magazine, The
Strange Death of Dorothy Hunt (November,
1994)
In the latest issue
of Steam Shovel Press in an article by photo analyst Jack White, L.
Fletcher Prouty describes one of several known Tramp photos. This
particular photo shows the tramps being escorted along a service entrance
to the TSBD wall comprised of two high chain-link gates with large
diamond-shapes in the center of each. The tramps are facing the camera
and a man is seen walking in the opposite direction, back to the camera.
Prouty believes that the man walking away from the camera is Edward
Lansdale. Lansdale, a planner with the Air Force Directorate and then
the CIA-affiliated Office of Special Operations, worked closely with
E. Howard Hunt. Lansdale's specialty, according to Prouty, who claims
to have also worked closely with him, was staging real-time covers,
diversions, and the general "smoke screens" under which
assassinations took place. When asked to explain, Prouty alleges that
it was Lansdale's job to provide "actors", and "screenplays"
for certain black operations deployed by the covert operatives.
(5)
L. Fletcher Prouty, An Introduction
to the Assassination Business (1975)
Assassination is big business.
It is the business of the CIA and any other power that can pay for
the "hit" and control the assured getaway. The CIA brags
that its operations in Iran in 1953 led to the pro-Western attitude
of that important country. The CIA also takes credit for what it calls
the "perfect job" in Guatemala. Both successes were achieved
by assassination. What is this assassination business and how does
it work?
In most countries there
is little or no provision for change of political power. Therefore
the strongman stays in power until he dies or until he is removed
by a coup d'etat - which often means by assassination...
The CIA has many gadgets
in its arsenal and has spent years training thousands of people how
to use them. Some of these people, working perhaps for purposes and
interests other than the CIA's, use these items to carry out burglaries,
assassinations, and other unlawful activities - with or without the
blessing of the CIA.
Crimes such as these, some
of which have remained open for years, cannot be solved by any one
individual. But there are patterns and motives that serve to expose
methods. In 1963, about one month before President John F. Kennedy
was murdered in Dallas, a prominent Washington lawyer died. It was
ruled a suicide because it appeared that he had put his own rifle
in his mouth and pulled the trigger. His name was Coates Lear, and
he was a law partner of Eugene Zuchert, then Secretary of the Air
Force. Lear knew a lot about special airlift contracts and about the
plans for Kennedy's fatal visit to Texas. Then, for unexplained reasons,
he began drinking excessively. And when he drank, he talked. Soon
he was dead.
The same pattern fits the
case of William Miles Gingery, the scenario of whose death we have
outlined above. He had been promoted to chief of the office of enforcement
of the Civil Aeronautics Board. He had found many irregularities in
that office when he took over, and he was scheduled to appear before
Senator Edward M. Kennedy's Committee of Administrative Practices
and Procedures.
Gingery, a nondrinker,
had begun drinking and was obviously terribly upset. One night he
was found dead. His death, in early 1975, was ruled a suicide; it
was found that he had put the muzzle of his rifle into his mouth and
fired.
These are interesting cases.
There were many reasons why both of these men might have been assassinated
and they both died in the same manner. That type of "suicide"
is one of the trademarks of the professional "mechanic,"
the kind of killer who works in the international assassination game...
Eventually, practitioners
of assassination by the removal of power reach the point where they
see that technique as fit for the removal of opposition anywhere.
That was why President Kennedy was killed. He was not murdered by
some lone, gunman or by some limited conspiracy, but by the breakdown
of the protective system that should have made an assassination impossible.
Once insiders knew that he would not be protected, it was easy to
pick the day and the place. In fact, those responsible for luring
Kennedy to Dallas on November 22, 1963 were not even in on the plan
itself. He went to Texas innocuously enough: to dedicate an Air Force
hospital facility at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio. It was
not too difficult then to get him to stop at Fort Worth - "to
mend political fences." Of course, no good politician would go
to Fort Worth and skip Dallas. All the conspirators had to do was
to let the right "mechanics" know where Kennedy would be
and when and, most importantly, that the usual precautions would not
have been made and that escape would be facilitated. This is the greatest
single clue to that assassination. Who had the power to call off or
drastically reduce the usual security precautions that always are
in effect whenever a president travels? Castro did not kill Kennedy,
nor did the CIA. The power source that arranged that murder was on
the inside. It had the means to reduce normal security and permit
the choice of a hazardous route. It also has had the continuing power
to cover up that crime for twelve years.
(6)
Edward
Lansdale, quoted by Cecil B. Currey
in his book Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American (1998)
I continue to be surprised
to find Fletcher Prouty quoted as an authority. He was my "cross
to bear" before Dan Ellsberg came along. Fletch is the one who
blandly told the London Times that I'd invented the Huk Rebellion,
hired a few actors in Manila, bussed them out to Pampanga, and staged
the whole thing as press agentry to get RM (Magsaysay) elected. He
was a good pilot of prop-driven aircraft, but had such a heavy dose
of paranoia about CIA when he was on my staff that I kicked him back
to the Air Force. He was one of those who thought I was secretly running
the Agency from the Pentagon, despite all the proof otherwise.
(7)
Robin
Ramsay, Who Shot JFK
(2002)
The idea that Kennedy
was too radical for the military-industrial complex is the thesis
behind the two motion pictures about the case: the dull 1973 version.
Executive Action, which starred Burt Lancaster, and Oliver Stone's
JFK. Stone emphasised Vietnam: Kennedy was shot to stop withdrawal
from Vietnam. This is the thesis of the late L. Fletcher Prouty, former
US Air Force Colonel, who had a remarkable book. The Secret Team,
published in America in 1973. Prouty was a really important insider,
not only the US Air Force's liaison officer with the ClA's covert
operations in the 1950s, but someone who had also been in charge of
presidential security. As former liaison with the CIA, Prouty had
watched the growth of the agency covert operations. As a security
officer, Prouty looked at the events that day in Dallas and saw the
absence of presidential security. As Prouty pointed out, the absence
of security is all you need to arrange.
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