Fletcher Prouty, Mark Lane,
JFK Assassination Theories,
& the Fascist Right
=========================================================
I am posting this at the request of some folks who are
active in this conference. Please do not deluge me with
E-mail. When I use the terms conspiracist, conspiracism,
and conspiracy theory, I mean theories for which there is
inadequate information to draw reasonable conclusions. I
am well aware that there are numerous actual conspiracies,
especially among government officials. I have worked on
many lawsuits against the FBI and CIA trying to prove
such conspiracies. -Chip Berlet
=========================================================
Excerpted & adapted from:
RIGHT WOOS LEFT:
Populist Party, LaRouchian, and Other
Neo-fascist Overtures To Progressives, And Why
They Must Be Rejected
November 22, 1993
by Chip Berlet [cberlet@igc.apc. org]
Copyright 1993, Political Research Associates
Peacenet conference
Local BBS (617) 221-5815 (2400, 8,N,1)
For electronic viewing only, unmodified
distribution is authorized, for printed
copy of current version send $7.50 to:
Political Research Associates
678 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 702
Cambridge, MA 02139 (617) 661-9313
=========================================================
Populist Party/Liberty Lobby
Recruitment of Anti-CIA Critics
It was the casualties of the Vietnam war that
crystallized a right-wing critique of U.S.
foreign policy that denounced U.S. reliance on
covert action, counterinsurgency and political
deals as tactical alternatives to military
confrontation to achieve geo-political goals. The
right-wing analysis raised questions that many
citizens were asking. If we didn't want to fight
a war to win in the traditional sense, then why
did all those soldiers have to die? What was the
purpose? Where was the benefit to the U.S.? Who
gained from this process? These questions were
not asked only by persons on the right, but the
answers and theories the right developed were far
different than those proposed by the left.
The public debate over this issue expanded in
1973 with publication of the book "The Secret
Team: The CIA and its Allies in Control of the
United States and the World" by retired Air Force
Colonel and intelligence community critic L.
Fletcher Prouty. While in the military, Prouty
was assigned to provide Air Force support for
clandestine activities of the CIA. During the
last nine years of military service, Prouty was
the Pentagon Focal Point Officer through which
CIA requests for military assistance were
channeled, first for the Air Force, and
eventually for the entire Department of Defense.
In his book, Prouty criticized the CIA's penchant
for counterinsurgency and clandestine operations,
which he argued prolonged the war in Vietnam and
resulted in the unnecessary deaths of many U.S.
soldiers. Given his experience and knowledge of
CIA activity, Prouty has become an influential
critic of the agency, and has gained an audience
across the political spectrum. [f-13]
The Liberty Lobby's "Spotlight" newspaper took
Prouty's original thesis and overlaid it with a
conspiracy theory regarding Jewish influence in
U.S. foreign policy. The "Secret Team" apparently
became the "Secret Jewish Team" in their eyes.
Sometime in the 1980's, a number of right-wing
critics of U.S. intelligence operations,
including Prouty, began to drift towards the
"Spotlight" analysis. They began to feed
information from their sources inside the
government to publications and groups that
circulate conspiracy theories alleging Jewish
influence and control over world events.
Prouty's "The Secret Team" was recently
republished by the Institute for Historical
Review (IHR). IHR promotes the theory that the
accepted history of the Holocaust is essentially
a hoax perpetrated by Jews to benefit the state
of Israel. Noontide Press, in essence the book
and pamphlet distribution arm of the Institute
for Historical Review, is the largest distributor
of pro-Nazi, anti-Jewish, white supremacist
literature in the United States. Noontide Press
also distributes such titles as "Auschwitz: Truth
or Lie--An Eyewitness Report," "Hitler At My
Side," and "For Fear of the Jews."
==========================================
Prouty's topic at the opening session of the 1990
Liberty Lobby Convention was "The Secret Team."
The new Institute for Historical Review's
Noontide Press edition of Prouty's book "The
Secret Team" was released at the Liberty Lobby
conference. Prouty assured the audience it was an
"enormous privilege" to have his book republished
by the Institute for Historical Review, a group,
Prouty claimed, that keeps people "from revising
history." Prouty thanked Willis Carto and Tom
Marcellus of IHR for the "guts and good sense" to
republish his book. [f-24] Following Prouty to
the Podium was Eustace Mullins, who spoke on
"Secrets of the Federal Reserve."
Prouty has been a guest at least nine times on
Paul Valentine's Radio Free America
program--syndicated by Liberty Lobby. An ad in
"Spotlight" for a tape of Prouty's January 23,
1991 interview reads: "Was Bush's War [against
Iraq] actually a "Secret Team" operation? Col.
Fletcher Prouty, expert on this government within
a government, argues that it has all the
earmarks."
Prouty also moderated a panel where Bo Gritz wove
a conspiracy theory which explained the U.S.
confrontation with Iraq as a product of the same
"Secret Team" outlined by Prouty. Spotlight's
coverage of the Gritz presentation featured a
headline proclaiming "Gritz Warns...Get Ready to
Fight or Lose Freedom: Links Drugs, CIA, Mossad;
Slams U.S. Foreign Policy; Alerts Patriots to
Martial Law Threat."
Other conference speakers and moderators at the
September 1990 Liberty Lobby convention included
attorney Mark Lane, who has drifted into
alliances with Liberty Lobby that far transcend
his role as the group's lawyer, and comedian and
activist Dick Gregory, whose anti-government
rhetoric finds fertile soil on the far right.
Dick Gregory also spoke in 1991 at the January
19th antiwar rally in Washington, D.C. Organizers
of the antiwar event say they were unaware of
Gregory's previous appearance at the Liberty
Lobby meeting.
Mark Lane and Dick Gregory co-authored a 1977
book on the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr., and both have circulated complex
conspiracy theories about other world events
which could account in part for their drift
towards the conspiratorial Liberty Lobby network.
============================================
The JFK Conspiracy
The Oliver Stone film "JFK" stimulated nationwide
interest in conspiracies. Some right-wing
paranoid theories are woven into the film, not
surprising since Fletcher Prouty was an advisor
to Stone, and the film's character "Mr. X" was
primarily based on Prouty. Several of the film's
themes echo conspiracist claims appearing in a
John Birch Society magazine article on the JFK
assassination by Medford Evans. The article was
first published in September 1967 and was
reprinted in April 1992 in the Birch magazine
"The New American" to catch the wave of publicity
around the Stone film. In the article, Evans
discusses rumors that Lyndon Johnson may have
engineered the Kennedy assassination, considers
the assassination a "coup d'etat" . and suggest
the American Establishment had JFK killed. The
publisher complains, however, that "if Oliver
Stone is seriously trying to indict the CIA,
defense contractors, Big Oil, Big Business, the
news media, and a host of others, he errs in
suggesting that the whole business was a
right-wing plot. These are not individuals of the
Right."
As the film "JFK" was making headlines, Prouty
was promoting the new IHR edition of his book on
the CIA, "The Secret Team" and Lane was promoting
his new book on the Kennedy Assassination,
"Plausible Denial," in tandem with the film.
Prouty wrote the introduction to Lane's book.
Stone highlighted the research of Prouty in a
December, 1991 "Op-Ed" article in the "New York
Times" . Prouty was widely discussed as a model
for the "Mr. X" character featured in the Stone
film, and Prouty served as an advisor to the
film. Both Prouty and Lane have been featured on
nominally progressive radio stations discussing
the JFK assassination. There has been a
reluctance to discuss some of these issues among
some progressives, for instance a new film by
respected documentarians Daniel Schechter and
Barbara Kopple, "Beyond 'JFK': The Question of
Conspiracy," features Lane and Prouty but makes
no mention of the controversy surrounding
their affiliations.
===============================================
"Spotlight" used the opportunity of the release
of Oliver Stone's film "JFK" to promote Fletcher
Prouty, Mark Lane, and Victor Marchetti. Prouty
was an advisor on the film and was the model for
the film's character "Mr. X." Prouty and Lane
went on book promotion tours in tandem with the
film. "Spotlight" wove its coverage of the film
"JFK" around its theories about Jewish "dual
loyalist" control of the U.S. government and the
claim that the Israeli intelligence agency,
Mossad, controls CIA covert operations.
While concern over Reagan Administration
participation in joint intelligence operations
with Mossad is legitimate, the use of
anti-Zionism as a cover for conspiracist
anti-Jewish bigotry can be seen in an article in
the August 24, 1981 issue of "Spotlight" :
"A brazen attempt by influential
"Israel-firsters" in the policy echelons of the
Reagan administration to extend their control to
the day-to-day espionage and covert-action
operations of the CIA was the hidden source of
the controversy and scandals that shook the U.S.
intelligence establishment this summer."
"The dual loyalists, whose domination over the
federal executive's high planning and
strategy-making resources is now just about
total, have long wanted to grab a hand in the
on-the-spot "field control" of the CIA's
worldwide clandestine services. They want this
control, not just for themselves, but on behalf
of the Mossad, Israel's terrorist secret police."
"Spotlight" not only rails against
"dual-loyalist" Jews in government, but also has
praised the Nazi skinhead movement and reported
favorably on the "spirit" of the Nazi Waffen SS
during World War II.
Prouty is quoted in the October 8, 1990 edition
of "Spotlight" as saying the enemy of the
American people is the CIA along with "usury, the
political parties, the media and our textbooks."
The issue of usury (high interest rates) is often
coupled with a bigoted critique of Jewish
financial influence and power, and whether or not
that was the way Prouty meant it to be taken, in
the context of a Liberty Lobby conference, the
anti-Jewish inference would be drawn by many in
the audience.
Prouty also was quoted in the "Spotlight" as
saying that "If anybody really wants to know
what's going on in the world today he should be
reading "The Spotlight." Prouty refused to
confirm or deny the accuracy of the quote in an
interview with the author. [f-17]
======================================================
In 1974, Marchetti, a former executive assistant
to the deputy director of the CIA, co-authored
"The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence," a
well-received best-seller and the first book the
CIA tried to suppress through court action. By
1989, however, Marchetti had been recruited into
a close alliance with Carto's Liberty Lobby
network. In 1989, Marchetti presented a paper at
the Ninth International Revisionist Conference
held by the Institute for Historical Review. The
title of Marchetti's paper, published in IHR's
"Journal of Historical Review," was "Propaganda
and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures
History." Marchetti edits the "New American View"
newsletter, which as one promotional flyer
explained, was designed to "document for
patriotic Americans like yourself the excess of
pro-Israelism, which warps the news we see and
hear from our media, cows our Congress into
submission, and has already cost us hundreds of
innocent, young Americans in Lebanon and elsewhere."
Marchetti describes himself as a person whose
"intelligence expertise and well-placed contacts
have provided me with a unique insight into the
subversion of our democratic process and foreign
policy by those who would put the interests of
Israel "above" those of America and Americans."
Marchetti is also the publisher of a
Japanese-language book "ADL and Zionism,"
written by LaRouche followers Paul Goldstein and
Jeffrey Steinberg.
Marchetti was co-publisher of the "Zionist Watch"
newsletter when it was endorsed in direct mail
appeals on Liberty Lobby stationery by the now
deceased Lois Petersen, who for many years was
the influential secretary of the Liberty Lobby
board of directors. The October 5, 1987
"Spotlight" reported that Mark Lane had been
named associate editor of "Zionist Watch," which
at the time was housed in the same small
converted Capitol Hill townhouse as Liberty
Lobby/" Spotlight." "Zionist Watch" featured a
conspiracist critique which saw Israel
controlling U.S. foreign policy.
Mark Lane is the legal representative of Liberty
Lobby and other Carto enterprises, which in
itself is not indicative of any political
affiliation. But Lane is also an active apologist
for the Institute for Historical Review and
Willis Carto. Writing in his book "Plausible
Denial," Lane contends that "I have never
heard an anti-Semitic expression" from Carto.
[f-14] Lane uses his Jewish background and past
leftist credentials to divert attention from
Carto's role as the leading purveyor of racist,
anti-Jewish and pro-Nazi literature in the U.S.
Lane describes in "Plausible Denial" how he was
recruited into the Carto network through the late
Haviv Schieber, who Lane describes in glowing
terms as a Jewish activist fighting for peace in
the Middle East.
Schieber is more accurately described as an early
supporter of the ultra-right Jabotinsky Zionist
movement. Schieber broke with Zionism and the
state of Israel when he came to believe it had
been seized by the socialist and communist forces
he despised. Schieber's diatribes claiming
Zionist control of Congress were regularly
reported in Carto's "Spotlight" newspaper, which
referred to Schieber as "an outspoken
anti-communist and critic of Israel." [f-15]
Schieber's views were also promoted by Andrew I.
Killgore, publisher of "Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs." Lane, Schieber, Jewish
anti-Zionist Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, Killgore, and
right-wing Christian radio broadcaster Dale
Crowley, Jr., became the leading exponents of a
right-wing anti-Zionist critique in Washington,
D.C. in the mid-1980's. It was Schieber who, over
breakfast in 1980, convinced Lane to contact
Carto, as modestly described by Lane in
"Plausible Denial" :
"I discovered before breakfast was concluded,
however, that E. Howard Hunt, the convicted
Watergate burglar and official of the Central
Intelligence Agency, had filed a lawsuit against
Victor Marchetti, a former high-ranking officer
with the CIA and against Liberty Lobby, Inc.,
publisher of "Spotlight," for an article
Marchetti had written and "Spotlight" had
published about the assassination of President
Kennedy....Haviv had a new...mission. I would
represent the defendants, Marchetti and the
newspaper; we would win, thus establishing the
truth about the death of President Kennedy; and a
national newspaper that published a dissenting
view of Middle Eastern affairs would survive."
[f-16]
=================================================
The Liberty Lobby Populist Action Committee
In 1991 Liberty Lobby announced the creation of
the advisory board of the Populist Action
Committee. The "Spotlight" ran a major feature on
the formation of the advisory board with
photographs of the persons announced as appointed
to launch the Committee:
Bo Gritz, briefly ran as David Duke's running mate,
later ran for president with support from
the Populist Party.
Fletcher Prouty, right-wing CIA critic, author of
"The Secret Team."
Abe Austin, described as an Illinois
businessman and expert on money;
Mike Blair, "Spotlight" writer whose articles
on government repression were highlighted by
Project Censored;
Ken Bohnsack, an Illinois resident called the
founder of the Sovereignty movement;
Howard Carson, a "Spotlight" distributor;
William Gill, president of the protectionist
American Coalition for Competitive Trade;
Boyd Godlove Jr., chairman of the Populist
Party of Maryland;
Martin Larson, a contributor to "The Journal
of Historical Review" which maintains the
Holocaust was a Jewish hoax;
Roger Lourie, president of Devin-Adair
Publishing;
Pauline Mackey, national treasurer for the
1988 David Duke Populist Party Presidential
campaign;
Tom McIntyre, national chairman of the
Populist Party from 1987-1990;
John Nugent, who ran for Congress from
Tennessee as a Republican in 1990;
Lawrence Patterson, publisher of the far-right
ultra-conspiratorial "Criminal Politics"
newsletter;
Jerry Pope, chair of the Kentucky Populist
Party;
John Rakus, president of the National Justice
Foundation;
Hon. John R. Rarick, former Democratic House
member now in Louisiana;
Sherman Skolnick, a Chicagoan who has peddled
bizarre conspiracy theories for over a decade;
Major James H. Townsend, editor of the
"National Educator" from California;
Jim Tucker, "Spotlight" contributor who
specializes on covering the Bilderberger banking
group;
Tom Valentine, Midwest bureau chief for
"Spotlight" and host of Liberty Lobby's Radio
Free America;
Raymond Walk, an Illinois critic of free
trade;
Robert H. Weems, founding national chairman of
the Populist Party.
Prouty has been appearing at conferences and on
radio programs sponsored by the Liberty
Lobby, but claims "there was never a handshake"
concerning his official appointment to the
Populist Action Committee. [f-18] Prouty
nonetheless admits that he is aware his name is
being publicized in that capacity and refuses to
ask his name be dropped from the list.
Skolnick also says he was never "officially"
asked to be on the advisory board, but although
he is aware he was named to the panel, he refuses
to distance himself from the board or Liberty
Lobby. [f-19]
======================================
Critics of the Christic thesis say the "Secret
Team" was not a cabal operating against the will
of the president or the CIA, but was an illegal,
secret government-sponsored operation established
by CIA director William Casey and coordinated by
White House aide Oliver North, with assistance
from a network of ultra-right groups who were
determined to circumvent the will of Congress.
This "Enterprise" at times worked closely with
the Mossad and carried out clandestine
counterinsurgency missions. Some of these
counterinsurgency missions were based on the same
model of pacification used by U.S. Special Forces
and clandestine CIA operations in Vietnam. It is
just this emphasis on counterinsurgency and
clandestine operations rather than direct
military battles that forms the basis of
criticism in Fletcher Prouty's book "Secret
Team." Prouty criticized the CIA for promoting
covert action techniques which he traced to the
influence of the British intelligence service MI5
on the Office of Strategic Services (OSS),
precursor to the CIA. Prouty said such meddling
and convoluted efforts at fighting communism
resulted in the needless deaths of American
servicemen. There is no evidence of any obvious
anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in the original
Prouty book.
======================================================
Lyndon LaRouche has picked up support for his
campaign to get released from prison from a
number of right-wing extremists, including
retired Air Force Colonel and intelligence
specialist Fletcher Prouty, a leading light among
ultra-right researchers, who also works with the
quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby. Prouty has issued a
statement declaring that "instrumentalities of
the government have hounded" LaRouche and
"created wrongs where none existed before."
===========================================
[Re: Prouty's cites to "Report From Iron Mountain"
In at least one case, Craig Hulet moves beyond
conspiracism into elevating a satire to
documentary status. Hulet labels as fact material
from the book "Report from Iron Mountain." Hulet
refers to the work as if it were a secret
government document. Actually, "Report from Iron
Mountain" is an allegorical critique of the
pro-militarist lobby and a well-known example of
political satire. [f-26]
26. "Report from Iron Mountain" is to a large degree a veiled
attack on Herman Kahn and the school of geo-political
strategy that developed around him at the Hudson
Institute, an ultra-conservative think tank. Several of
the footnotes refer to Kahn and Hudson Institute
studies i.e. Kahn: Section 1, footnote 4 (p. 103),
Section 5, footnote 10 (p. 105), Section 8,
footnote 1, (p. 108); and Hudson Institute: Section 8,
footnote 3, (p. 109). Moreover, the overall philosophy
adopted in the book is consistent with Hudson
Institute study papers and Kahn's writings. (See Kahn's
"On Escalation" and "Thinking About the Unthinkable."
Also of interest is the book by two former Hudson Institute
analysts, Edmund Stillman and William Pfaff who later
rejected that school of thought and wrote "The
Politics of Hysteria."
While an excellent philosophical discussion of
the errors of the Cold War, it should be noted
that it was produced by Leonard C. Lewin,
described on the book jacket as a "critic and
satirist" who was editor of "A Treasury of
American Political Humor." Apparently Hulet
didn't get the joke. Even the Institute for
Historical Review, which sells "Report from Iron
Mountain," says in its current "Noontide Press"
catalog: "was it the actual text of a secret
report...or a brilliant satire? Judge for yourself."
