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Writer's pictureFred Litwin

Was Fletcher Prouty an Antisemite?

Updated: Oct 9, 2021

Fletcher Prouty had a history of crackpot relationships: he consulted for the cult-like Lyndon LaRouche organization, he advised the lawyers working for the Church of Scientology, and he was a speaker at the 1990 Convention of the Liberty Lobby, a far-right organization whose founder, Willis Carto, believed that the Jews were “public enemy number one.” Prouty not only appeared on their radio program Radio Free America ten times, he was also an advisory board member of their Populist Action Committee, which had been formed to support a variety of bigoted candidates for public office.


The Institute for Historical Review, a Carto organization that denied the Holocaust, republished Prouty’s 1973 book, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World in 1991. According to Edward Jay Epstein, a long-time JFK researcher, “When the Liberty Lobby held its annual Board of Policy convention in 1991, he [Prouty] presented a special seminar, ‘Who is the Enemy?’ which blamed the high price of oil on a systematic plot of a cabal to shut down oil pipelines deliberately in the Middle East. ‘Why?’ he asked and explained to the seminar: ‘Because of the Israelis. That is their business on behalf of the oil companies. That’s why they get $3 billion a year from the U.S. taxpayer.’” In a private letter, Prouty elaborated and said that “major pipelines from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and others are dry because of Israeli threats and unrest.”


Here is a report sent to Oliver Stone about Carto and his organizations.


Stone was also sent this article from The Guardian:




None of this mattered to Oliver Stone. Robert San Anson wrote a history of the making of the film JFK in Esquire magazine, and he recounts that when Prouty was asked about Carto’s belief that the Holocaust never happened, he replied that “I’m no authority in that area.” He quotes a Stone assistant saying, “If this gets out, Oliver is going to look like the biggest dope of all time.” In July 1991, Jane Rusconi, Stone’s research assistant, wrote him a memo that said, “Basically, there’s no way Fletcher could be unaware of the unsavory aspects of the Liberty Lobby. The Anti-Defamation Leagues keeps a close watch on the Liberty Lobby and are very aware of Fletcher’s involvement. It could come back to haunt us if we don’t find a way to deal with this.”


Stone repeatedly excused Prouty, noting in one forum that “he never made any single one anti-semitic comment” and that “he joined the Liberty Lobby late in life.”


So, was Prouty antisemitic? Well, you'll have to check my book, On The Trail of Delusion, for some very interesting evidence.


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