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Thomas Hale Boggs


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Barnard Fensterwald provides an interesting commentary on Thomas Hale Boggs in Assassination of JFK: Coincidence or Conspiracy (1974) pages 96-105

"You have got to do everything on earth to establish the facts one way or the other. And without doing that, why everything concerned, including every one of us is doing a very grave disservice. Thus House Majority Leader Hale Boggs delivered an admonishment of sorts to his Warren Commission colleagues on January 27, 1964. Along with Senator Richard Russell, and to a lesser degree, Senator John Sherman Cooper, Congressman Boggs served as a beacon of skepticism and probity in trying to fend off the FBI and CIA's efforts to "shade" and indeed manipulate the findings of the Warren Commission.

Like Russell, Boggs was, very simply, a strong doubter. Several years after his death in 1972, a colleague of his wife Lindy (who was elected to fill her late husband's seat in the Congress) recalled Mrs. Boggs remarking, "Hale felt very, very torn during his work [on the Commission] ... he wished he had never been on it and wished he'd never signed it [the Warren Report]." A former aide to the late House Majority Leader has recently recalled, "Hale always returned to one thing: Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission - on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it... "

Almost from the beginning, Congressman Boggs had been suspicious over the FBI and CIA's reluctance to provide hard information when the Commission's probe turned to certain areas, such as allegations that Oswald may have been an undercover operative of some sort. When the Commission sought to disprove the growing suspicion that Oswald had once worked for the FBI, Boggs was outraged that the only proof of denial that the FBI offered was a brief statement of disclaimer by J. Edgar Hoover. It was Hale Boggs who drew an admission from Allen Dulles that the CIA's record of employing someone like Oswald might be so heavily coded that the verification of his service would be almost impossible for outside investigators to establish. Boggs and Dulles had the following exchange:

"Thomas Boggs: So I will ask you. Did you have agents about whom you had no record whatsoever?

Allen Dulles: The record might not be on paper. But on paper [we] would have hieroglyphics that only two people knew what they meant, and nobody outside of the Agency would know and you could say this meant the agent and someone else could say it meant another agent."

Congressman Boggs had been the Commission's leading proponent for devoting more investigative resources to probing the connections of Jack Ruby. With an early recognition that "the most difficult aspect of this is the Ruby aspect," Boggs had wanted an increased effort made to investigate the accused assassin's murderer.

Boggs was perhaps the first person to recognize something which numerous Warren Commission critics would write about in future years: the strange variations and dissimilarities to be found in Lee Harvey Oswald's correspondence during 1960 to 1963. Some critics have advanced the theory that some of Oswald's letters - particularly correspondence to the American Embassy in Moscow, and later, to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee - may have been "planted" documents written by someone else. In 1975 and 1976, the investigations of the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Congressional groups disclosed that such uses of fabricated correspondence had been a recurring tool of the FBI's secret domestic COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence] program as well as other intelligence operations. In any event, Warren Commission member Boggs and Commission General Counsel Lee Rankin had early on discussed such an idea:

"Rankin: They [the Fair Play For Cuba Committee] denied he was a member and also he wrote to them and tried to establish as one of the letters indicate, a new branch there in New Orleans, the Fair Play For Cuba.

Boggs: That letter has caused me a lot of trouble. It is a much more literate and polished communication than any of his other writing."

It is also known Boggs felt that because of the lack of adequate material from the FBI and CIA the Commission members were poorly prepared for the examination of witnesses. According to a former Boggs staffer, the Congressman felt that lack of adequate file preparation and the sometimes erratic scheduling of Commission sessions served to prevent those same sessions from being adequately substantive. Consequently, Boggs cut down his participation in these sessions as the investigation stretched on through 1964.

Author Sylvia Meagher has cited one of the more telling examples of the frequent inability of the Warren Commission to coordinate its members' involvement in these sessions, as illustrated by the following exchange in Warren Commission Volume 3:

"Chairman Warren: Senator Cooper, at this time I am obliged to leave for our all-day conference on Friday at the Supreme Court, and I may be back later in the day, but if I don't, you continue, of course.

Sen. Cooper: I will this morning. If I can't be here this afternoon whom do you want ' to preside?

Chairman Warren: Congressman Ford, would you be here this afternoon at all?

Rep. Ford: Unfortunately, Mr. McCloy and I have to go to a conference out of town.

Chairman Warren: You are both going out of town, aren't you?

Sen. Cooper: I can go and come back if it is necessary.

Chairman Warren: I will try to be here myself. Will Mr. Dulles be here?

Mr. McCloy: He is out of town."

On April 5, 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs took the floor of the House to deliver a speech that created a major stir in Washington for several weeks. Declaring that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was incompetent and senile, and charging that the FBI had, under Hoover's most recent years adopted "the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler's Gestapo"; Boggs demanded Hoover's immediate resignation. Boggs also charged that he had discovered that certain FBI agents had tapped his own telephone as well as the phones of certain other members of the House and Senate. In his emotional House speech, Boggs went on to say Attorney General Mitchell says he is a law and order man. If law and order means the suppression of the Bill of Rights . . . then I say "God help us." As the Washington Post noted, "The Louisiana Democrat's speech was the harshest criticism of Hoover ever heard in the House . . . It was the first attack on Hoover by any member of the House leadership."

At the time, Boggs' startling speech created a sensation in Washington. Observers were uncertain as to his exact motivations in demanding Hoover's resignation, and there was an immediate critical reaction from Hoover's various defenders. It has been reported that sources within the FBI and the Attorney General's office began spreading stories that Boggs was a hopeless alcoholic. However, it was not until almost four years later that the motivation behind Boggs' outburst came into clearer focus.

On January 20, 1975, the Washington Post and other news organizations reported that solid evidence had been uncovered about the existence of what Hoover and the FBI had long denied they possessed: secret damaging dossiers on various members of the House and Senate, compiled through various forms of surveillance. On the following day, January 21,1975, Washington Post reporter Ron Kessler made a further disclosure:

"The son of the late House Majority Leader Boggs has told The Post that the FBI leaked to his father damaging material on the personal lives of critics of its investigation into John F. Kennedy's assassination. Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. said his father, who was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination and its handling by the FBI, was given the material in an apparent attempt to discredit the critics [of the Warren Commission].

The material, which Thomas Boggs made available, includes photographs of sexual activity and reports on alleged communist affiliations of some authors of articles and books on the assassination.

Boggs, a Washington lawyer, said the experience played a large role in his father's decision to publicly charge the FBI with Gestapo tactics in a 1971 speech alleging the Bureau had wiretapped his telephone and that of other Congressmen."

As will be seen, the details about the FBI's secret surveillance of the leading critics of the Warren Commission were later reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975. The Senate investigators finally established that FBI Director Hoover not only had prepared secret "derogatory dossiers" on the critics of the Warren Commission over the years, but had even ordered the preparation of similar "damaging" reports about staff members of the Warren Commission. Whether FBI Director Hoover intended to use these dossiers for purposes of blackmail has never been determined.

Although it was not until eleven years after the murder of John F. Kennedy that the FBI's crude harassment and surveillance of various assassination researchers and investigators became officially documented, other information about it had previously surfaced.

Mark Lane, the long time critic of the Warren Report has often spoken of FBI harassment and surveillance directed against him. While many observers were at first skeptical about Lane's characteristically vocal allegations against the FBI, the list of classified Warren Commission documents that was later released substantiated Lane's charges, as it contained several FBI files about him. Lane had earlier uncovered a February 24, 1964 Warren Commission memorandum from staff counsel Harold Willens to General Counsel J. Lee Rankin. The memorandum revealed that FBI agents had Lane's movements and lectures under surveillance, and were forwarding their reports to the Warren Commission.

In March, 1967, the official list of secret Commission documents then being held in a National Archives vault included at least seven FBI files on Lane, which were classified on supposed grounds of "national security." Among these secret Bureau reports were the following: Warren Commission Document 489, "Mark Lane, Buffalo appearances;" Warren Commission Document 694, "Various Mark Lane appearances;" Warren Commission Document 763, "Mark Lane appearances;" and Warren Commission Document 1457, "Mark Lane and his trip to Europe."

In at least one documented instance, the CIA had been equally avid in "compiling" information on another critic, the noted European writer Joachim Joesten, who had written an early "conspiracy theory" book, titled Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy (Marzani and Munsell Publishers, Inc., 1964, West Germany). A Warren Commission file (Document 1532), declassified years later, revealed that the CIA had turned to an unusual source in their effort to investigate Joesten. According to the document, which consists of a CIA memorandum of October 1, 1964, written by Richard Helms' staff, the CIA conducted a search of some of Adolph Hitler's Gestapo files for information on Joesten.

Joachim Joesten, an opponent of the Hitler regime in Germany, was a survivor of one of the more infamous concentration camps. The Helms memorandum reveals that Helms' CIA aides had compiled information on Joesten's alleged political instability - information taken from Gestapo security files of the Third Reich, dated 1936 and 1937. In one instance, Helms' aides had used data on Joesten which had been gathered by Hitler's Chief of S.S. on November 8, 1937. While the CIA memorandum did not mention it, there was good reason for the Third Reich's efforts to compile a dossier on Joesten. Three days earlier, on November 5, 1937, at the infamous "Hossbach Conference," Adolph Hitler had informed Hermann Goering and his other top lieutenants of his plan to launch a world war by invading Europe."

In late 1975, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that featured the questioning of top FBI officials, Senator Richard Schweiker disclosed other secret FBI surveillance of Warren Commission critics. Senator Schweiker disclosed new information from a November 8, 1966 memorandum by J. Edgar Hoover, relating to other dossiers on the critics. According to Schweiker, "Seven individuals [were] listed, some of their files... not only included derogatory information, but sex pictures to boot.

During the Senate Committee session, Schweiker also disclosed that "we came across another FBI letter several months later on another of the critic's personal files. I think it is January 30, 1967. Here, almost three months apart, is an ongoing campaign to personally derogate people who differed politically. In this case it was the Warren Commission [critics].

As will be seen in the chapter on "Links to Watergate," copies - of the FBI's "derogatory dossier" on another leading Warren Commission critic, associated with Mark Lane, were later distributed through the Nixon White House by secret Nixon investigator John Caulfield, John Dean, and H. R. Haldeman's top aides.

Still further information relating to FBI-CIA surveillance of the Warren Commission critics was disclosed in January, 1975 by Senator Howard Baker and the New York Times. On January 17, 1975, the Times disclosed that Senator Baker had come across an extensive CIA dossier on Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., the Director of the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, during the course of Baker's service on the Senate Watergate Committee. Senator Baker was then probing various areas of CIA involvement in the Watergate conspiracy. The New York Times reported that Baker believed the dossier on Fensterwald indicated that the Agency was conducting domestic activities or surveillances - prohibited by the Agency charter's ban on domestic involvement.

Among the items contained in the CIA dossier on Fensterwald was an Agency report of May 12, 1972 titled "#553 989." The CIA report indicated that this detailed surveillance was conducted under the joint auspices of the CIA and the Washington, D. C. Metropolitan Police Intelligence Unit. D. C. Police involvement with the CIA, which in some cases was illegal, subsequently erupted into a scandal which resulted in an internal police investigation in 1975 and 1976, as well as a Congressional investigation.

The May 12, 1972 CIA report on Fensterwald states:

"On 10 May 1972, a check was made at the Metropolitan Police Department Intelligence , Unit concerning an organization called The Committee To Investigate Assassinations located at 927 15th Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. . . .

On 10 May 1972, a check was made (DELETION)

On 11 May 1972, a physical check was made of 927 15th Street .... to verify the location of the above-mentioned organization. This check disclosed that the Committee To Investigate Assassinations is located in room 409 and 414 of the Carry Building."

After setting forth a room by room analysis of the offices and businesses located on the same floor as the Committee, the report went on:

"A discreet inquiry was made with (DELETION) of this building showing no government interest concerning the Committee To Investigate Assassinations. This source stated that on a daily basis that traffic coming and going from this office is very busy. This source stated that on a daily basis the office is operated by two individuals one of whose name is Jim."

Former Warren Commission member Hale Boggs would no doubt have been pleased that these activities of the FBI and CIA were finally brought to light. As his son has pointed out, Boggs' denunciation of J. Edgar Hoover in April of 1971 was based in part on his knowledge of the FBI's murky surveillance of Warren Commission critics. Whether Boggs believed the FBI's surveillance of him was based on the fact that he himself had privately become a fierce critic of Commission's conclusions is not known.

On October 16, 1972, Hale Boggs vanished during a flight in Alaska from Anchorage to Juneau. Despite a thirty-nine-day search by the Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard, no trace of the twin-engine plane on which Boggs was traveling has ever been found.

Had he been alive today, Boggs would probably have become Speaker of the House, having held the number two leadership post in the Congress at the time of his disappearance. There is no doubt Boggs would have been a singularly important figure in any re-opening of the Kennedy case.

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...

So I think Boggs was not fooled and was murdered. Anyone else have an opinion or info about Bogg's feelings on the WC?

Myra

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I have some sort of - I hesitate to use this tierm- but "sixth sense" about these things. And in October 1972 I did not even know who Hale Boggs was, BUT I was very suspicious of this plane crash. It did not seem to me that it was an accident. I had heated discusiions about this at the time. I had not yet done serious research into the JFK assassination- (tho believed it to be conspiracy from day one). Then in the period between 73-76 I read about 40 books on the assassination. In his interview with Playboy Garrison credited Huey Long -( or was it Russell, don't remember)- with getting him (Garrison) interested in re-visiting the assassination of JFK. But according to Mellen- who I believe- this was to cover for Hale Boggs.

I have heard that Bogg's signature on the WCR was actually forged. May be folklore, but he was not fooled and I think he was about to go public when his plane went missing.

Not for a moment do I believe that his daughter does not know the truth. But to keep her job she whores out her father's memory.

Dawn

Just for emphasis, as mentioned in separate posts in this thread:

-No bodies were found,

-No parts of an airplane were found,

-Nothing was found--no evidence of a crash at all.

From one of John's posts:

"On October 16, 1972, Hale Boggs vanished during a flight in Alaska from Anchorage to Juneau. Despite a thirty-nine-day search by the Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard, no trace of the twin-engine plane on which Boggs was traveling has ever been found."

Before Bogg's disappearance assassinations were carried out with guns. Bogg's "accident" seems to have been a watershed event in that airplanes with left-leaning politicians were thereafter dropping like flies.

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...

Whether selling Hitler or the WC, one certainly wants to secure the BEST of the "creative writing" school of thought.

Hee hee, well said.

In fact I believe the CIA was importing nazi "talent" well before the end of WW2. Can't remember where I read this, either Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (book, not periodical) or Prouty's book ("JFK, The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy"). Gosh they sure plan ahead. Years ahead, maybe decades.

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  • 1 month later...

Ken Sobrero, a member of JFK Lancer, asked this question on 28th November:

"Is there anyone who could shed light on the circumstances regarding FBI agents raiding the archives at Tulane University library. Apparently the FBI confiscated all files having to do with Lee Harvey Oswald from the archives of the late congressman Hale Boggs. Former member and outspoken critic of the Warrren Commission."

When asked for more details he replied:

"I spoke with the curator again by phone and he has confirmed the following, and, should explain why no one has been responding to this post. Curator Wilbur Meneray has been with the Tulane library for 32 years, yet he can not confirm how or when the raid took place. The library only became aware of the missing Oswald files after finding a receipt left behind by FBI agents. Yet Mr. Meneray defended the actions of the FBI but contradicted himself by stating we constented to all the FBI requests regarding the Oswald files. He must be talking about after the fact if he had no idea when the FBI actually took possession of files. Complete BS. This all started with the post 'When did Oswald arrive at theater' . The issue was to be corroborated by the Dallas Morning News historical archives, and/or the same editions in possesssion of the TSBD museum."

This seems to be a very important story. Does anyone else know anything about it?

http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.p...53112&page=

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Ken Sobrero, a member of JFK Lancer, asked this question on 28th November:

"Is there anyone who could shed light on the circumstances regarding FBI agents raiding the archives at Tulane University library. Apparently the FBI confiscated all files having to do with Lee Harvey Oswald from the archives of the late congressman Hale Boggs. Former member and outspoken critic of the Warrren Commission."

When asked for more details he replied:

"I spoke with the curator again by phone and he has confirmed the following, and, should explain why no one has been responding to this post. Curator Wilbur Meneray has been with the Tulane library for 32 years, yet he can not confirm how or when the raid took place. The library only became aware of the missing Oswald files after finding a receipt left behind by FBI agents. Yet Mr. Meneray defended the actions of the FBI but contradicted himself by stating we constented to all the FBI requests regarding the Oswald files. He must be talking about after the fact if he had no idea when the FBI actually took possession of files. Complete BS. This all started with the post 'When did Oswald arrive at theater' . The issue was to be corroborated by the Dallas Morning News historical archives, and/or the same editions in possesssion of the TSBD museum."

This seems to be a very important story. Does anyone else know anything about it?

http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.p...53112&page=

According to the Tulane Library webpage, they have 200 linear feet of records in the Hale Boggs Collection.

I emailed the Curator, Wilbur Meneray. If I get a response, I'll post it here.

http://www.tulane.edu/%7Elmiller/PoliticalCollections.html

http://www.tulane.edu/~lmiller/ManuscriptsHome.html

Edited by Michael Hogan
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  • 7 months later...

Excerpts from Without Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon and the Crimes of Camelot by Jerry Zeifman, former Chief Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee(1995)

"After Hale's disappearance, Lindy and Hale's brother, a Jesuit priest in New Orleans, were fearful that he had been murdered because of his inside knowledge about the role of the FBI, CIA, and organized crime in events leading up to the Kennedy assassination--knowledge that he had acquired as a member of the Warren Commission and that might also have some relevance to Watergate.

Congresswoman Boggs had expressed her fears to Congressman Bill Hungate as well as to me and Peter Rodino in the strictest confidence."

"In 1971 Boggs had made an extraordinary speech on the House floor. The then-majority leader accused the Department of Justice of using "Gestapo-like" police-state tactics that included bugging the offices and homes of members of Congress and other political leaders--and in some cases using illegally obtained information to blackmail public officials."

"The unreported truth was that when Boggs made the speech he ws undergoing psychiatric treatment for manic depression, and the CIA and FBI were concerned that his judgement had become sufficiently impaired to endanger national security."

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Excerpts from Without Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon and the Crimes of Camelot by Jerry Zeifman, former Chief Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee(1995)

"After Hale's disappearance, Lindy and Hale's brother, a Jesuit priest in New Orleans, were fearful that he had been murdered because of his inside knowledge about the role of the FBI, CIA, and organized crime in events leading up to the Kennedy assassination--knowledge that he had acquired as a member of the Warren Commission and that might also have some relevance to Watergate.

Congresswoman Boggs had expressed her fears to Congressman Bill Hungate as well as to me and Peter Rodino in the strictest confidence."

"In 1971 Boggs had made an extraordinary speech on the House floor. The then-majority leader accused the Department of Justice of using "Gestapo-like" police-state tactics that included bugging the offices and homes of members of Congress and other political leaders--and in some cases using illegally obtained information to blackmail public officials."

"The unreported truth was that when Boggs made the speech he ws undergoing psychiatric treatment for manic depression, and the CIA and FBI were concerned that his judgement had become sufficiently impaired to endanger national security."

Also killed with Rep. Boggs was Rep. Nick Begich, Sr. of Alaska.

His son, Dr. Nick Begich, is a frequent guest on the international radio show coasttocoastam. He has commented on his father’s death several times when being interviewed, always leaving the impression that he thinks there is more to the story that just a tragic plane crash.

His website is www.earthpulse.com. Below is his biography as posted on the coasttocoastam web site under guests who have been interviewed.

--------

Dr. Nick Begich serves as Executive Director of The Lay Institute on Technology, Inc., a Texas non-profit corporation. He is also the publisher and co-owner of Earthpulse Press Incorporated, an Alaska based organization. Dr. Begich is the eldest son of the late United States Congressman from Alaska, Nick Begich Sr., and political activist Pegge Begich. He is well known in Alaska for his own political activities. He was twice elected President of both the Alaska Federation of Teachers and the Anchorage Council of Education. He has been pursuing independent research in the sciences and politics for most of his adult life.

Begich received his doctorate in traditional medicine from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines in November 1994. He co-authored with Jeane Manning the book Angels Don't Play This HAARP; Advances in Tesla Technology. Begich has also authored Earth Rising I & II, both with the late James Roderick. He has published articles in science, politics and education and is a well known lecturer, having presented throughout the United States and in nineteen countries. He has been featured as a guest on thousands of radio broadcasts reporting on his research activities including new technologies, health and earth science related issues. He has also appeared on dozens of television documentaries and other programs throughout the world including BBC-TV, CBC-TV, and TeleMundo.

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  • 2 months later...

It is interesting that something I came across in the book "The Kennedy Assassination Tapes" pp389-394 (Max Holland, 2004) has not been mentioned in this thread. Here are the key parts:

In a conversation between (acting) Attorney General Ramsey Clark and LBJ on Feb 20, 1967, regarding the investigation that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison had launched, the following appears:

"Still, Clark is already discomfited by one 'nutty' aspect of the story, namely the rumor that Garrison is allegedly linking Johnson with the conspiracy. As fantastic as this rumor sounds, its source is credible. It comes via Representative Hale Boggs, whose district encompasses much of New Orleans, putting him in a position to know whereof he speaks. Boggs, of course, was also on the Warren Commission, which puts him in a bit of a dilemma. Whereas he might be inclined to speak out against Garrison (whom he apparently dislikes) and denounce the DA's probe, it is risky to attack a prosecutor who shares the same jurisdiction. To Clark, any allegation about Johnson's involvement is an early indicator that Garrison might be deranged.

"It perhaps comes as a surprise to Clark that Johnson treats the whole matter with considerable equanimity, not even swearing or muttering to himself when Clark brings up Bogg's story. The president's reaction is in marked contrast to his response last October when the insinuation first surfaced. As it turns out, the news from New Orleans is far from the wildest story making the rounds. Johnson asks Clark if he has heard about an even more fantastic rumor in Washington, one that was conveyed personally to the president by syndicated columnist Drew Pearson, considered something of a renegade by his Washington peers. The story, which Johnson heard a month earlier, is that after the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle the CIA sent men into Cuba to assassinate Fidel Castro, who then retaliated. And as if the implications of that weren't staggering enough, Pearson also says that Robert Kennedy concocted the plots against Castro, as they occurred in the days when he was 'riding herd' on the agency for his brother.

......

Clark: ....I had heard that Hale Boggs was sayin' that he - Garrison - was sayin' that...or privately around town [was saying] that it [the assassination] could be traced back [to you]...or that you could be found in it some place, which...I can't believe he's been sayin' that. the bureau says they haven't heard any such thing, and they['ve] got lots of eyes and ears. 'Course, that was a [credible] fella like Hale Boggs. But Hale gets pretty emotional about people that he really doesn't like, and people who have fought him and been against him, and I would be more inclined to attritube it to that. Either that, or this guy Garrison [is] just completely off his rocker.

Johnson: "Who did Hale tell this to?

Clark: [somewhat in disbelief] Apparently Marvin [Watson]

Johnson: [aside to Watson] [Did] Hale tell you that - Hale Boggs - that this fella [Garrison, this] district attorney down there, said that this is traced to me or somethin'?

Watson: Privately he [Garrison] was usin' your name as having known about it [the assassination]. I said [to Boggs], Will you give this information to Barefoot Sanders? Ramsey was out of town, this was Saturday night. He [boggs] said, I sure will. So I asked the operator to get Barefoot and Ramsey together, and they did.

After that exchange, the course of the conversation turned to the even more 'fantastic rumor' about the assassination attempts on Castro.

I think that Johnson's reaction to this news speaks volumes. And the fact that these comments were coming from one of the members of the WC, a highly respected congressman, is particularly insightful. His death by plane crash in a desolate part of Alaska a few years later, and one year after his lambasting of Hoover, and the disappearance of many of his records from Tulane after that, only adds to the mystery of what he really knew.

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Phil, from your post it appears you are saying that highly respected Rep Boggs was ENDORSING Garrison's theory that LBJ was involved. If you do mean to so imply, I must respectfully disagree.

I do not read it that way AT ALL. Boggs was reporting what Garrison was up to (besides 79 inches) to a loyal aide to LBJ (Marvin Watson).

The articles states that Boggs disliked Garrison and wanted to denounce him but was constrained by the political realities.

In no way is there an inference that Boggs distrusted LBJ; it was Garrison he distrusted.

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Peter wrote:

Thank you for that Phil. Very interesting indeed! I, personally, have always been MOST suspicious of Bogg's death. A sidenote. 15 years ago I contacted Kokie Roberts [sp?] of NPR fame, Boggs' daughter and asked her politely if I could interview her PRIVATELY about her father and his strange death. She wouldn't touch the subject with a ten-foot poll an said the death was an accident and there was nothing more to be considered

Peter, very few (if any) polls are ten-feet in length but many poles are.

What did Johnson have to fear from Boggs? Please offer evidentiary support and not merely your theories which we all know anyway. And while you are at it, any evidence that the plane crash was suspicious.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Tim, I understand how you're reading that. It is a bit circular, but I don't see any indication that Boggs was doubting the essence of Garrison's reasoning either. In fact, the way the clip is worded, "As fantastic as this rumor sounds, its source is credible. It comes via Representative Hale Boggs", and "Boggs' story", etc. seems to suggest that Boggs not only doesn't disagree but perhaps even endorses Garrison's theory despite the fact he doesn't like Garrison. Apparently, Ramsey Clark had the same opinion on that since he was clearly bothered by the implication, more so than LBJ even.

Peter, I think that over the years, Cokie Roberts, like so many others in DC, has accepted the conventional wisdom that the Warren Commission was right despite all the questions that surrounded it and that to question its basic premise is tantamount to instantly losing one's professional credibility as a journalist. Which is to say, unfortunately, that, according to the CW, it is more important to adopt the LN theory and not to be perceived as a CT at any cost, even finding out the truth of your own father's demise.

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Phil, what was incredible to Boggs was that Garrison was actually going to suggest LBJ involvement.

Remember it says Boggs had wanted to denounce Garrison.

Had Boggs believed Garrison's theory, he would not have gone to Marv Watson, for heaven's sake!

I mean, he might as well have gone to Jack Valenti and told him, "I think your boss did it"!

It is as clear as the nose on my face (and it's a pretty big nose) that Boggs backed LBJ not Garrison.

Of course whether or not Boggs believed Garrison is irrelevant to whether or not LBJ actually did it. Of course Garrison had no evidence against LBJ so Boggs had no "insider's knowledge." AND--since Garrison had no evidence, why would Boggs believe him?

I think we are getting bogged down in this.

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Phil, what was incredible to Boggs was that Garrison was actually going to suggest LBJ involvement.

Remember it says Boggs had wanted to denounce Garrison.

Had Boggs believed Garrison's theory, he would not have gone to Marv Watson, for heaven's sake!

I mean, he might as well have gone to Jack Valenti and told him, "I think your boss did it"!

It is as clear as the nose on my face (and it's a pretty big nose) that Boggs backed LBJ not Garrison.

Of course whether or not Boggs believed Garrison is irrelevant to whether or not LBJ actually did it. Of course Garrison had no evidence against LBJ so Boggs had no "insider's knowledge." AND--since Garrison had no evidence, why would Boggs believe him?

I think we are getting bogged down in this.

How do you explain Ramsey Clark's reaction, which pretty clearly indicates he was shocked?

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