The REAL man Donald Sutherland played in film JFK!

Leroy Fletcher Prouty was born in Massachusetts on 24th January, 1917. He graduated from Massachusetts State College in 1941 with a Bachelor's degree.

During the Second World War he served as a army tank commander. He later joined the United States Air Force (USAAF) and in 1943 became the personal pilot of General Omar Bradley. Later that year he flew Chiang Kai-shek to the Tehran Conference.

Prouty also became involved in work for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In 1945 he served on Okinawa and was involved in transporting the bodyguard of General Douglas MacArthur to Tokyo. In 1946 Prouty was assigned by the U.S. Army to Yale University. In 1950 he established Air Defense Command and during the Korean War was based in Japan where he was Military Manager for Tokyo International Airport.

In 1955 Prouty was assigned to coordinate operations between the USAAF and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). For the next nine years he worked for the Pentagon. He was Briefing Officer for the Secretary of Defense (1960-61), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chief of Special Operations (1962-63).

Colonel Prouty retired from the United States Air Force (USAAF) in 1964 and was awarded the Joint Chiefs of Staff Commendation Medal. He later worked for the General Aircraft Corporation (1964-65) and First National Bank (1965-68). He was also a senior director of a government and military marketing organization.

In 1973 Prouty published his book The Secret Team. In this controversial work Prouty claimed that the CIA had worked on behalf of the interests of a "high cabal" of industrialists and bankers. Prouty thought that the Executive Actionprogramme had not only been used against foreign leaders. He also claimed that the CIA was involved in the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Prouty even named Edward Lansdale as the leader of the operation. He claimed he was in Dallas on the day of the assassination: "He was there like the orchestra leader, coordinating these things."