(1917-2001) served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under US President John F. Kennedy. A former colonel in the United States Air Force, he retired from military service to become a bank executive, and subsequently became a critic of US foreign policy, particularly the covert activities of the CIA about which he had considerable inside knowledge. Prouty was assigned to coordinate operations between the USAF and the CIA in 1955. As a result of a CIA Commendation for this work he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the US Air Force, and was promoted to Colonel being assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
With the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Robert McNamara and the abolishment of the OSO, he was transferred to the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to create a similar worldwide office. He was the Chief of Special Operations with the Joint Staff all during 1962–1963. He was ordered to travel as the Military Escort officer for a group of VIPs who were being flown to the South Pole, November 10–28, 1963 at the United States Navy Base at McMurdo Sound, Antarctica – so he was out of the way during the JFK assassination.
Prouty was an early critic of the CIA who argued that the organisation was a clandestine arm of the secret government from the outset. In his important book The Secret Team, he describes the claim that the CIA exists to provide intelligence information to the president as “the CIA’s most important cover story”, a cover story designed to obscure the CIA’s main interest, what he calls “fun and games”, i.e. clandestine operations. He states that employees were placed in other US government institutions whose true loyalty was to their CIA commanders, allowing them to silently subvert other government operations. He stated that Allen Dulles commanded this “focal point network” until his firing by John F. Kennedy, until command passed to Richard Helms.
JFK Assassination
The Kennedy assassination has demonstrated that most of the major events of world significance are masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of enormously powerful people who are not of one nation, one ethnic grouping, or one overridingly important business group. They are a power unto themselves for whom those others work. Neither is this power elite of recent origin. Its roots go deep into the past. – Fletcher Prouty (1992) 3
In 1975, Prouty appeared with Richard Sprague at a news conference in New York and presented photographic evidence of a conspiracy. He suggested that the assassination was a coup d’état to stop the President from taking control of the CIA after the Bay of Pigs. Prouty pointed out that the movement of Kennedy after a bullet struck his head was consistent with a shot from the grassy knoll. He also drew attention to the suspicious actions of the “Umbrella Man”.
False flag terrorism to create pretext for war
In his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, he describes how the CIA was used to instigate psy-ops and paramilitary (terrorist) activities in Vietnam to create the pretext required for an open declaration of war and for the entry of the U.S. military into the conflict. This was a strategy reserved not just for Vietnam, but had become the general U.S. foreign policy in all regions that were considered threats to the Cold War Grand Strategy, Any country that was observed to hold views that were not aligned with U.S. foreign policy could not simply be invaded in most scenarios, but rather, the ground would need to be prepared to create the justification for a direct military invasion.
I have been to such training programs at U.S. military bases where identical tactics are taught to Americans as well as foreigners. It is all the same…these are the same tactics that were exploited by CIA superagent Edward G. Lansdale [the man in charge of the CIA Saigon Military Mission] and his men in the Philippines and Indochina.
This is an example of the intelligence service’s ‘Fun and Games.’ Actually, it is as old as history; but lately it has been refined, out of necessity, into a major tool of clandestine warfare.
Lest anyone think that this is an isolated case, be assured that it was not. Such ‘mock battles’ and ‘mock attacks on native villages’ were staged countless times in Indochina for the benefit of, or the operation of, visiting dignitaries, such as John McCone when he first visited Vietnam as the Kennedy appointed director of central intelligence [after Kennedy fired Allen Dulles].
Other
In Oliver Stone’s film JFK Fletcher Prouty formed the basis of the insider ‘Mr. X’.
