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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