JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy ANNOTATION
Millions have been gripped by Oliver Stone's film JFK and its premise that the plot to assassinate Kennedy originated beyond the highest levels of government. In the movie, the advocate of this theory is a character named "X, " who explains how and why this plot came about. Now his identity can be revealed: "X" is L. Fletcher Prouty, who was Chief of Special Operations during the Kennedy years.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Millions have been gripped by Oliver Stone's film JFK and its premise that the plot to assassinate Kennedy originated beyond the highest levels of the U.S. government. In the movie, the advocate of this theory is a character named "X" played by Donald Sutherland, who, as the film's "Deep Throat," explains how and why this plot came about. As Stone acknowledged, "X" not only was faithfully depicted in the film, but also as the film's creative adviser provided fully documented information and analysis that helped shape the script. This mystery man was not a fabricated character, as some critics contend. His identity can now be revealed: "X" is L. Fletcher Prouty, a former top-level "military-CIA" operative and the author of JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. Now, for the first time, Prouty presents in book form the explosive thesis that influenced Oliver Stone from the time he first began reading the author's writings in the late 1980s. Among the author's revelations in JFK:. Kennedy's plan to change the course of the Vietnam conflict and to remove all U.S. military personnel from that country by the end of 1965 created enormous concern at the center of the military-industrial complex and led directly to his assassination. Upon receiving the report of the Cuban Study Group from Gen. Maxwell Taylor after the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, Kennedy vowed to "shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces." He began by firing longtime Director of Central Intelligence Allen W. Dulles and his top aides. The army set up a full-fledged covert operation derisively named Operation Camelot to thwart Kennedy's efforts to end the war. President Johnson reversed Kennedy's orders to wind down in Vietnam immediately following Kennedy's murder. And in March 1964 he set the course for massive troop escalation. Why Kennedy was ultimately against the war and why he was really murdered. Brilliantly written and researched over nearly eight years, JFK is rivetin
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Prouty, who was a Washington insider for nearly 20 years--in the last few of them as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Kennedy--has a highly unusual perspective to offer on the assassination and the events that led up to it. Familiar to moviegoers as the original of the anonymous Washington figure, played by Donald Sutherland in the Oliver Stone's movie JFK , who asks hero Jim Garrison to ponder why Kennedy was killed, Prouty leaves no doubt where he stands. The president, he claims, had angered the military-industrial establishment with his procurement policies and his determination to withdraw from Vietnam, and had threatened to break the CIA into ``a thousand pieces'' after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. His death was in effect a coup d'etat that placed in the White House a very different man with a very different approach--one much more acceptable to what Prouty consistently calls ``the power elite.'' Although he declares that such an elite has operated, supranationally, throughout history, and is all-powerful, he never satisfactorily explains who its members are and how it functions--or how it has allowed the current East-West rapprochement to take place. Still, this behind-the-scenes look at how the CIA has shaped postwar U.S. foreign policy is fascinating, as are Prouty's telling questions about the security arrangements in Dallas, his knowledge of the extraordinary government movements at that time (every member of the Cabinet was out of the country when Kennedy was shot) and his perception that most of the press has joined in the cover-up ever since. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)
Library Journal
Prouty, the mysterious ``X'' in Oliver Stone's JFK , promises to explain why Kennedy was assassinated. Instead, he delivers a muddled collection of undocumented, bizarre theories, most significantly that a super-powerful, avaricious power elite engineered the Cold War and all its pivotal events--Korea, Vietnam, the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs, and the Kennedy assassination. Although they are never identified, these shadowy technocrats, working through the CIA, allegedly had Kennedy murdered because he was on the brink of ending America's commitment to Vietnam, along with its billions of dollars of military contracts. Prouty avoids some very important issues. Would Kennedy, a Cold War warrior's warrior, have indeed ended American support for Diem? And why couldn't the omnipotent power elite ensure the election of Richard Nixon, its preferred candidate, in 1960--especially since Kennedy won by only .02 percent? A much better choice is John M. Newman's JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power ( LJ 3/15/92). See also James DiEugenio's Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case , reviewed in this issue, p. 123.--Ed.-- Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp . Lib., King of Prussia, Pa.
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