#1234 – Col. Fletcher Prouty
- UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL OPERATIONS (Ratcliffe 1999), CHAPTER 1
- I came on duty before the beginning of WWII, an ROTC cavalry unit
- Active duty with the 4th Armored Division July 10th 1941
- I reported to Creighton W. Abrams from my own home town
- I began flight training in Maxwell Field in Alabama about May of 1942
- In February of 1943 I was in Africa with the Air Transport Command
- We flew General Smith into Saudi Arabia to meet representatives of Standard Oil
- That’s the first clandestine exercise I was ever involved in
- We established an operating base during the Cairo Conference
- In Teheran, Churchill had no ID, the Russians weren’t going to let him through
- Success at Teheran enabled Chiang Kai-shek to put more pressure on the Japanese
- American generals supported Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese
- A few miles below the Turkish Syrian border, 750 American former prisoners of war
- I realized that some of my passengers were Nazi intelligence officers
- This group did contain men who had been selected by Frank Wisner of the OSS
- I never saw devastation equal to what I saw in the Soviet Union
- January of ’45 I began flying the Pacific, four-engine transport work
- The atom bomb had been used, this was mid-August, the Japanese had quit
- We flew up to Tokyo on September 1st, 1945
- At Atsugi air base, here were our enemies, they came over and helped us
- Equipment for 500,000 men going to Hanoi in Indochina
- Hiroshima, I flew very low over the area and had a good look at it
- The decision had been made to establish an Air Force ROTC
- I taught a very interesting course called “The Evolution of Warfare”
- I visited Werner Von Braun to write about rockets and missiles
- The Korean War broke out in June of 1950
- I was one of five officers selected to initiate a new Air Defense Command
- A difficult period, because of the enormous devastation power of the atom bomb
- Spring of ’52, I was the Military Manager of Tokyo International Airport
- Out of Tokyo we ran a regularly scheduled Embassy Run
- Civil Air Transport, were delivering supplies to the French, fighting Ho Chi Minh
- I met Colonel Lansdale and his organization in Vietnam
- I was selected to attend the Armed Forces Staff College, in Norfolk, Virginia
- One of the courses was a hypothetical NATO confrontation through Europe
- It just shocked the whole group, the impact of what nuclear weapons could do
- The hydrogen bomb would wipe out any city, you cannot fight war with that
- I went to the Pentagon from that schoo, to the Air Force Plans Office, in July of 1955
- General Thomas White told me NSC had published Directive Directive 5412, in 1954
- The Department of Defense would provide support for clandestine operations
- “Military Support of the Clandestine Operations of the United States Government”
- I was the “Chief of Team B,” in charge of clandestine operations, for the Air Force
- The Economy Act of 1932 became the heart of the covert program
- We created literally hundreds of false military organizations
- The 1234 Logistics Squadron really belongs to CIA
- This clandestine system we established, we called “Tab-6”
- Mr. Dulles sent me around the world to many of his stations
- In Athens there was a camp for people we call, “mechanics” (hit men, gunmen)
- Thousands of ex-Nazis were being brought to the US for their various skills
- We could paratroop people in following a massive nuclear attack
- “Special Forces” were created for that post-strike purpose
- Hitler’s chief of intelligence, Reinhardt Gehlen, became a U.S. Army general
- European command began looking on CIA as a “Fourth Force” in nuclear warfare
- From 1945 until 1965, CIA was the operating command for military forces in Vietnam
- CIA had quite an air force, operated and maintained under “Air America”
- New Year’s Eve of 1958-59, I waited for CIA orders to go into Cuba
- Senator Kennedy understood events going on in Vietnam and Laos and in Cuba
- President Kennedy was briefed, 3,000 instead of 300 and an invasion was planned
- The first objective for the program: they must destroy the aircraft
- Three B-26 bombers destroyed all but three of Castro’s combat-capable aircraft
- McGeorge Bundy reversed the President’s decision and said, “no air strike tomorrow.”
- We didn’t need air cover, those Cuban jets were supposed to be rubble by sunrise
- We had to cover Vietnam with helicopter maintenance people
- A great number of those were cover military; they were involved with the CIA
- By the summer of ’63 Kennedy had made up his mind to get out of Vietnam
- NSAM 263, otherwise known as the Taylor/McNamara Trip Report of October ’63
- By the end of 1965 all U.S. personnel will be out of Vietnam
- President Diem was killed in Vietnam
- Ed Lansdale came to me one day, “Fletch, how would you like to go to the South Pole?”
- I was out of Washington from, I think, the 10th of November until November 28th
- That time, unequaled in history, Vietnam War, the death of Kennedy, other strange events
- The Secretary of Defense established an office called the Office of Special Operations
- Providing for Department of Defense support in connection with special operations activities
- We had to work with Treasury, with FAA, with Customs, we had to have cleared people
- As intricate as anything we did in the days was handling money
- NSA is eyes and ears, a purely technical or mechanical job
- Communications channels exist all over the world, floating around, all vibrating away
- CIA activities are much different from the NSA activities
- Lansdale was a good operator, but not the man to be the boss
- Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza Video
