JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK

by L. Fletcher Prouty

  As the reader will have noted, this has been a primary objective of this autobiographical book of mine. This is one reason why Stone used parts of it in his script.

  I have tried to put the Kennedy assassination in proper prospective with a chronological time-line as a guiding star. I recall well the first acts of the Cold War that began in 1944, even before the end of the hot war known as World War II. I have underscored the beginning of the warfare in Indochina that actually began on the same day as the surrender of the Japanese on September 2, 1945, and of the Korean War that the “Big Four” at the Teheran Conference so amply provided for in November 1943.

  With this time-line, it became imperative that I fit the assassination of the President into the most crucial of periods: the twenty years from 1955 to 1975 that the military-industrial complex had set for the superescalation of the warfare in Vietnam. It was then, in late 1963, that President Kennedy, in full coordination with his closest team of top-level advisers in the White House and in the Pentagon, signed his National Security Action Memorandum #263 of October 11, 1963. This directive, among many other things, ordered that 1,000 U.S military personnel be brought home by the end of 1963, and that the bulk of U.S. personnel be withdrawn by the end of 1965. NSAM #263 and its accompanying policy became the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” That carefully crafted and determined policy in the impending climate of Kennedy’s assured reelection in 1964 led directly to the consensual decision at the highest levels that the President must be killed and that control of the U.S. government must be put in other hands. In other words, Kennedy’s Vietnam policy announcements made a coup d’etat necessary.

  This was the burden of the Stone film. The inclusion of this little-known NSAM #263 in the film became the principal point of attack of the big guns that were leveled at Stone, Garrison, and myself. It really is amazing that the most vitriolic attacks were those that attempted to inform the public that there was no such directive. The furor over that one item, NSAM #263, was evidence that Stone had hit his target. This alone uncovered the “Why?” of the assassination.

  In the film’s closing scenes between “Garrison” and “Man X,” who was a representation of this author, one could feel the tension build in every audience in every theater. When “Man X” says “Why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?” the audience is forced to look at the real cause of the assassination and not at some prearranged fabrication of that terrible event. Stone had succeeded in carrying the theme from the comprehensive, widespread scope of the early and disorganized misapprehensions of the assassination lore, as typified by the Warren Commission’s report, through the specific tensions of the Garrison trial in New Orleans to the summit of activity in Washington, and then attacked the real issue, “Why was John F. Kennedy killed?”

  It was altogether fitting, it was purely masterful, that Stone had those last scenes filmed on the mall in Washington, D.C., between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument with the rising dome of the Capitol building looming over Costner (Garrison) and Sutherland (Prouty) in the distance. Only a few steps farther down the road from there, the Kennedy Center itself is overlooked by the old faded yellow brick building that was CIA headquarters and the long-time office of Director of Central Intelligence Allen W. Dulles until Kennedy fired him. The setting itself was classic. This scene tells its own story. This is the heart of the District of Columbia. It is the place where so much of that fatal decision, for the U.S. government and for all of us, was made by the cabal.

  And with those words about the film and its terrific impact on all assassination buffs of all kinds and all beliefs, I wish to close with a few words that have become more meaningful with the passage of the decades since November 22, 1963. During my nine years in the Pentagon, I can recall no month that was more hectic, more confused and more explosive than January 1961, the last month of the eight-year Eisenhower administration and the month during which Kennedy was inaugurated. There was something about that period that bore some special message of its own—for the future. What was happening, especially there in the Pentagon, was not simply the routine changing of the guard. That month carried its own message, a premonition of sinister things to follow.

  The closely knit Eisenhower team was so confident that Nixon would be elected that they had arranged such things as the annual budget, procurement schedules and other long-range objectives, including the Vietnam War, the anti-Castro activities, and the space program, for the Nixon administration to carry out. These plans included big-ticket items such as the Air Force’s scheduled procurement of the new TFX swingwing fighter aircraft at $6.5 billion, among others. The Kennedy election, assuring a drastic change in key positions up and down the line, put all of those plans in jeopardy. No one stood more to lose than our friends in the highly dedicated industrial sector of the nation, particularly in the military-industrial group.

  Then, on January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower delivered his Farewell Address to the American public. Oliver Stone chose to open his film JFK with a few selected lines from that memorable speech:

  . . . The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the Federal Government . . . In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist . . . We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. . . .

  Two days after Eisenhower’s address, I walked into the office of Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates at the close of the business day, as had been my custom for months, prepared to give him a few brief words on what was taking place in the business of “providing the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA”—more specifically, an update on the status of the Cuban Exile operations—later to be known as the Bay of Pigs operation. On that late afternoon, a blizzard was raging outside. From the Pentagon we could barely see the buildings of Washington across the Potomac. And, on that late hour, as I approached Mr. Gates’s office, I saw that the hallway, the anteroom, and his office were jammed with well-wishers. This was to be his last day as secretary of defense. As I look back at those nine years, I have always believed that he was the best and most qualified man ever to hold that office. As Mr. Gates was in no position for a briefing at that curtain-lowering time, his secretary ushered me into the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense James Douglas, another able gentleman. He greeted me with his characteristic smile, strolled across his office, and leaned against the window sill. As I looked over his shoulder, I saw nothing but raging snow. I said, “Mr. Douglas, I have briefed you from time to time over the past six years. I regret that this will be our last briefing.” Then I went on to give him a report on the status of the Cuban Exile program that the Eisenhower administration had started, as a formal C.I.A. activity, back in March 1960.

  When I finished the brief report, I asked an essential question, “Each time I have come in here, or into Mr. Gates’s office, I have known that you gentlemen were well aware of the subject of these briefings over the years, and of their background; but tomorrow, when I come in here, there will be some new men to be briefed. Can you tell me, do I have to go back to B.C. or early A.D. with that briefing, or may I assume that they have been informed of the subjects I shall be covering?”

  Mr. Douglas turned away and looked out at the snow and the dim outline of the city. Finally he turned back, and said, “Prouty, I’ll be damned if I know what to say. I haven’t met the bastards and I haven’t the slightest idea what they know and what they do not know. They have never asked us for such information.” Of course he was referring to Robert McNamara, the new secretary of defense, and to Roswell Gilpatric, the new deputy
, a totally new team in both person and political ideology, let alone “military strategy in the days of the hydrogen bomb.” This was the best characterization, that I can recall, of the climate that existed in Washington between the two administrations since that unexpected election of John F Kennedy.

  Few people have realized the true atmosphere of the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition, and nowhere else in the government was that transition more acrimonious than in the Pentagon. As a military officer I worked with the Gates team and without a break continued along with the McNamara team.

  I cite this fact, at the close of my book, because as I look back over those years it has become clear to me that the Kennedy victory at the polls, in 1960, was perhaps as much a cause of his eventual assassination, in 1963, as anything else. There was no way he could win against the in-place power centers, including that of the military-industrial complex, as President Eisenhower himself had warned.

  As you can see, such things have nothing to do with a “lone gunman” (Oswald), with Fidel Castro and the Cubans, with the Mafia, and all the rest of the lore that has blossomed since November 22, 1963. They are a part of the true story, and the others are parts of the essential “cover story” that has lived and been made to flourish since mid-November 1963.

  Stone asked me to become a technical advisor as he developed the script for his film back in July 1990. He came to my home a few days after I had triple bypass coronary surgery in October 1990 and gave me a copy of the initial version of the script. I noticed as I studied it that he was arranging things so that the general public would have “a level playing field.” He wanted those who knew little about the details of the assassination and its aftermath to get a good comprehensive view of the entire situation.

  Then, as Stone himself learned more about the assassination, he chose the work of two highly regarded researchers and writers: Jim Garrison and Jim Marrs, along with the experienced photography expert, Bob Groden. Garrison was an excellent selection because he was the first and only official member of any court jurisdiction in the country to do what ought to have been done in Texas, where the crime had taken place, i.e., take it into a court for trial. With this endeavor Jim had put many of the actual facts of the assassination into the record and had advanced public knowledge of the crime and of its raging cover story, including the Warren Commission ruse. With Jim Marrs, Stone had one of the finest and most honest technicians in the investigation business.

  It has been my endeavor, since 1985 when I first sat down at my computer, to write the story of the Cold War as few have seen it, to explain what took place at the close of World War II that led to the Korean and Vietnamese wars, and to describe the events that led to the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and answer the question why that terrible event was planned and executed. In this endeavor I had the invaluable assistance of Oliver Stone, Jim Garrison, and so many others dating from the eventful days of my own military career.

  As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “There is properly no history; only biography.” With this work, I have added a bit of autobiography.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Victor H. Krulak, lieutenant general, USMC (Ret’d), my boss and friend in the Pentagon during the Kennedy years.

  To Oliver Stone, for discovering in my ideas and experience the ingredient that made the theme of his great movie a challenge to America.

  To my son, David, his wife, Bonnie, and my daughters, Jane and Lauren, all computer experts, without whose encouragement and assistance I could never have accomplished the burden of this work.

  To Lauren Michele Prouty, again because she did all the computer chores essential to the technical quality of the final product.

  To my editor, Hillel Black, for his understanding a complex manuscript and an intricate subject and for his inspiration.

  To Thomas Whittle, editor of Freedom. magazine, for recognizing the value of this work and publishing some of these earlier articles.

  To Michael Baybak, my literary agent, for steering me through the intricate pathways of publishing with good sense and good humor.

  NOTES

  General note: This work is based on a nineteen-part magazine series first developed by the author with and published by Freedom magazine, the investigative journal of the Church of Scientology.

  Chapter 1: The Role of the Intelligence Services in the Cold War

  1 Report From Iron Mountain, Leonard C. Lewin (New York: Dial, 1967).

  2 Read chapter 13, “A Conflict of Strategies” in Gen. Victor H. Krulak’s First to Fight (Naval Institute Press, 1984).

  3 It is significant to note that much of this important legislation was written by Clark Clifford at the time he was a naval officer assigned for duty in the Truman White House.

  4 See Henry Pelling, Winston Churchill (London: Macmillan, 1974).

  5 The case of Gen. Reinhard Gehlen will be discussed below. Gehlen, head of Hitler’s Eastern European Intelligence Division, surrendered to American army officers before the fall of Nazi power and later was made a general in the U.S. Army for intelligence purposes by an act of Congress.

  6 “The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War,” GPO, April 1984.

  7 The Diaries of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., by Campbell and Herring, 1975.

  8 “The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War,” GPO, April 1984.

  Chapter 2: The CIA in the World of the H-Bomb

  1 Office of Strategic Services, “Problems and Objectives of United States Policy,” April 2, 1945.

  2 Dulles by Leonard Moseley, Dial Press, 1978.

  3 “Clandestine Operations Manual for Central America” Desert Publications, 1985.

  Chapter 3: The Invisible Third World War

  1 Leonard C. Lewin, Report From Iron Mountain (New York: Dial, 1967).

  2 We note that President Marcos of the Philippines had been in trouble and that the public had been rising against his harsh regime . . . especially since the murder of his principal opponent, Sen. Benigno Aquino, in August 1983. During a visit to Manila, the director of central intelligence, then William Casey, made a modest suggestion that President Marcos ought to hold an election. At the same time we noted the rise of a new Communist-inspired insurgency there. The same Robin Hood tactic used again. At that point, the director of central intelligence knew and held the winning hand.

  3 This was a pivotal meeting in developments leading to the steady escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Gen. Graves B. Erskine was serving as the special assistant to the secretary of defense for special operations. As such he was responsible for all military contacts with the CIA, for the National Security Agency, and for certain contacts with the Department of State and the White House.

  With the “Magsaysay Scenario” in mind, it is interesting to note that Allen Dulles had with him at this meeting both Edward G. Lansdale, whom he was sending to Saigon from Manila to head the Saigon Military Mission (SMM), and the station chief for the CIA in Manila, George Aurell. Others present were: Adm. Arthur Radford; Mr. Roger M. Kyes, assistant secretary of defense; Adm. Arthur C. Davis; Mr. Charles H. Bonesteel; Colonel Alden; and Gen. Charles P. Cabell, deputy director of central intelligence. NOTE: The author was assigned to the Erskine office, 1960—62, during a nine-year period in the Pentagon. He served as the senior air force officer for the duties of the Office of Special Operations.

  4 This officer was the same Edward G. Lansdale who had skillfully and successfully brought about the election of President Magsaysay in the Philippines. He was being moved to Vietnam to see if he could work the same magic with Ngo Dinh Diem, the Vietnamese exile who was being transported from the United States to Saigon to become the president of the nation-to-be: South Vietnam.

  5 The CIA’s Saigon Military Mission was introduced into Indochina in June 1954. For the United States this marked the actual beginning of what we call the Vietnam War. The CIA had operational control over all forces of that war from 1954 to 1965, when the U.S. Marines, under U.S. military command
, hit the beaches of Vietnam. The CIA’s role was dominant during those years in this phase of WW III, which cost $220 billion, millions of noncombatant lives, and the lives of 55,000 American servicemen.

  Chapter 4: Vietnam: The Opening Wedge

  1 Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the “vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.” Fuller noted also, “Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country. The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers.” See Fuller’s Critical Path, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981).

  2 Potsdam Conference, held in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, in July 1945. This conference was attended by Truman, Churchill, and Stalin. Churchill was defeated in British parliamentary elections during the conference, and he was replaced by the newly chosen prime minister, Clement Attlee. (General Source: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952—54, Volume XIII, “Indochina” [two parts], Government Printing Office, 1982.)

  Chapter 5: The CIA’s Saigon Military Mission

  1 Foreign Relations of the United States: 1952—54. Department of State, Washington, D.C.

  2 “Twenty-six Disastrous Years” Hugh B. Hester, Brig. Gen., U.S. Army (Retd).

  3 Leonard Moseley, Dulles (New York: Dial Press, 1978).

  4 A State Department euphemism for the various indistinct governments of Indochina at that time.

  5 This special committee on Indochina consisted of the DCI, Allen W. Dulles; the under secretary of state and former DCI, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith; the deputy secretary of defense and former vice president of the General Motors Corp., Roger M. Kyes; and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Arthur S. Radford.