Miscellaneous incomplete manuscripts for books pertaining to the JFK assassination(4 of 5)
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OCR Page 1 of 19558
THE YANKEE AND COWBOY WAR
"The Whole Bay of Pigs Thing"
59
AGency
decision, but we do know that Nixon was the chief political
advocated clandestine war, or Special Forces warfare, as an
officer of the decision-making body, the Special Group of
alternative to conventional military and diplomatic options
the National Security Council. Further, Johnson writes that
and thus got the U.S. involved untenably in Cuba and
"in the
made reconstruct[ing its decision, one process impression by which comes the "Special through Group'
Vietnam. This is an intriguing and subtle dispute: the spies
very
proving we should trust them and not the soldiers, the
strongly: Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a major partici-
soldiers proving the spies lie and it is they who saw the truth.
pant. Eisenhower himself has said publicly that there was no
Prouty supports Haynes Johnson's view that Eisenhower
plan for an invasion while he was in office; that the only plan
did not support the decision to invade Cuba. He writes, "In
was to train guerrillas. His contention varies so sharply with
fact, all of the Eisenhower-era schemes were extremely
the facts that an explanation for the discrepancy must be
modest when it came to action against Cuban soil and
sought, for Eisenhower's integrity cannot be questioned."
property. "11 In an interview I had with Prouty in Washing-
Such an explanation is offered by Air Force Colonel L.
ton in May 1973, he added an interesting detail. What
Fletcher Prouty (ret.), now an executive at Amtrak. Prouty
Eisenhower had approved in the way of an anti-Castro
is one of several intelligence-community insiders who have
action program, said Prouty, was a thirty-three man project
come forward over the past several years with exposé-
looking toward the feasibility of forming a guerrilla base in
memoirs variously supporting the theme that there is, in
the countryside. But within days of the election of Kennedy,
Prouty's phrase, "a Secret Team" operating clandestinely
says Prouty, "orders came down" (he does not say from
within governmental structures toward ends it unilaterally
where) to change the 33s on the program's personnel records
defines as "vital to the national interest." Prouty worked as
into 3300s.
the DIA's "Focal Point Officer" for all interaction between
One might find it an incredible spectacle were it not before
the CIA and the Pentagon. If the CIA needed something
us as a model, so to speak, that Howard Hunt himself, black-
from the Navy for project x, or something from the Army for
propagandist par excellence, sat down with gluepot, a
project y, Prouty knew. He did this kind of work for some
typewriter, a Xerox copier, a light-table, an X-acto knife,
eight years, operating as a staff-briefing officer to the Joint
and sample and related communiques from the inner-
Chiefs and the secretary of defense on vital policy
sanctum files of the State Department to prove in 1972 that
memoranda. His claims therefore have a certain interest. (At
the Kennedys in 1963 had ordered the assassination of Diem
one point in his book, The Secret Team, he uses the phrase,
and his brother-in-law Nhu as well as the coup that toppled
"my membership in the Secret Team." He never goes into
them from power. This makes it easier to picture someone
this or tells us why, when, how or indeed if he left it, why he is
like Prouty-big distinguished, honorable-sneaking
telling on it now, etc.)
around the office at night with a flashlight carefully typing in
Prouty's main purpose in this book is to counter Daniel
two zeros after every 33 in all the records of the anti-Castro
Ellsberg's thesis that the CIA was largely right about
guerrilla project, records which may for that matter at that
Vietnam and the Department of Defense largely wrong.
moment have been few.
Prouty says it was the other way around. It was in reality
Thus it was, in any case, according to Prouty, that the
such "hardnosed liberals" as the CIA's Tracy Barnes and
myriad approvals of the 33-man job were fobbed off on
Edward Lansdale (for whom Ellsberg worked in Vietnam)
Kennedy by the pro-invasion group as approvals of a much
and Kennedy's chief military adviser Maxwell Taylor who
bigger project, the Bay of Pigs invasion.
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