From Proutypedia

Col. L. Fletcher Prouty



Proutypedia (est. 2014) is an online resource dedicated to the life and works of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty. It provides an index of topics mentioned by Prouty in his many written works and recorded interviews. It also serves as a guide to issues surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy.





Creation

Proutypedia was started in early 2014. It is owned by Len Osanic, who conducted a series of interviews with Col. L. Fletcher Prouty in the 1990s. Together with Prouty, Osanic created prouty.org, Prouty's official website, which Osanic still maintains.

Reasons for Creation

A high-level Pentagon official in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, Colonel L. Flether Prouty came under fire in the 1970s for his voicing his suspicions that elements inside the United States Government were responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy and not Lee Harvey Oswald. As a result, Prouty was attacked by some as a ‘crackpot’[1], a judgment seemingly at odds with a distinguished career at the highest levels of the Pentagon. While associates such as Oliver Stone[2] defended Prouty in the 1990s when controversy again raged around the Kennedy assassination, saying that Prouty’s critics were involved in character assassination and attack journalism, attempts to marginalize Prouty and to minimize his credibility continued throughout the 1990s until the time of his death in 2001, when weak connections to an anti-semitic group were played up in the mainstream press in Prouty’s obituary - even though it was conceded that “Prouty himself never espoused such beliefs.”[1]

On Wikipedia, the effort to marginalize Prouty continues today. Prouty’s biographical entry has been the site of a ten-year edit war, as result of which mention of Prouty’s own official website has been blocked from Wikipedia. Prouty’s entry on Wikipedia has been used at various times to present him in as unfavorable a light as possible using a set of smears and insinuations to confuse and frighten readers unfamiliar with Prouty's work.

Far from being a ‘crackpot’, Prouty was in fact a decent, upright man who after his retirement shared his extensive first-hand experience and inside knowledge about clandestine operations during the Cold War with any who would listen. Proutypedia has been created as a resource for those interested in the life and views of Colonel Prouty as well as various claims made about him. Prouty will be of special interest to scholars of twentieth-century American history as a high Pentagon official who candidly discussed the operations of power in government behind the official facade, particularly when they assumed the form of clandestine operations.

Editing Policy

Unlike Wikipedia, Proutypedia is a closed wiki. Entries may only be edited by account holders. Account holders receive a direct invitation from the admin.

Contributors are encouraged to discuss changes to entries on the Discussion tab before making changes directly. Contributors are also referred to the Proutypedia Style Guide, a convenient reference sheet on how to use Mediawiki markup language on Proutypedia.

Getting started

New visitors to Proutypedia are invited to read the following articles:

References