The JFK Conspiracy

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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.

Another example of a left/right information alliance involves Dan Brandt, creator of the Namebase software program, an immensely useful computer tool which searches a huge index of CIA-related publications and documents. Brandt has created a non-profit group with a board of advisors composed of both left and right critics of U.S. intelligence agencies, including LaRouche-defender Fletcher Prouty who is listed as being on the advisory board of Liberty Lobby's Populist Action Committee.³⁰ On the other hand, Brandt is highly critical of the LaRouchians.

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