[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

have happened, as against the competing versions of what we know did not happen.” 720
In this respect, Stone resembled any historian marshalling his evidence to make an
argument. The director also was examining a seminal event at the height of the Cold
War, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stone’s film can be seen as an attempt, with
the end of the Cold War, to come to terms with that period of American history.
Prouty’s book “JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F.
Kennedy outlined some of the ideas Stone used in the film, particularly in the key scenes
involving “X.” The book was first published in 1996 after the release of JFK, but
Prouty had already discussed his ideas in an earlier book called the Secret Team and in
articles. Prouty’s views also showed how Oswald became a secondary figure in a vast
conspiracy. Prouty argued that a “power elite” or “high cabal” decided to kill Kennedy
because he threatened a system in which the military-industrial complex benefited from
the Vietnam War. “In Vietnam,” Prouty argued, “the United States won precisely
nothing, but that costly war served the primary purposes of the world’s power elite. For
one thing, they benefited splendidly from the hundreds of billions of dollars that came
their way.” Wars in proxy nations also provided “access to the natural resources and
human, low-cost assets” of Vietnam and other countries. 721 Kennedy threatened this
arrangement by his attempts to pull out of Vietnam, and rein in the CIA and Pentagon.
Prouty’s conspiracy theory is so all-encompassing that it resembles nothing less
that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In fact, Prouty was criticized for his connection
720
JFK: The Book of the Film, 408.
721
L. Fletcher Prouty, “JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F.
Kennedy, (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009 (1996)), 235-236,
316