#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 ...