LBJ and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Part 1

In 1964 the historian, James Evetts Haley, published a book called A Texan Looks at Lyndon. (1) It was a best seller and it is claimed that in Texas only the Bible outsold Haley's book in that year. In the book Haley attempted to expose Johnson's corrupt political activities. This included a detailed look at the relationship between Johnson and Billy Sol Estes. Haley pointed out that three men who could have provided evidence in court against Estes, George Krutilek, Harold Orr and Howard Pratt, all died of carbon monoxide poisoning from car engines.

Haley also looked at the case of Doug Kinser, the boyfriend of Johnson’s sister, Josefa Johnson. Haley implies that Kinser had discovered details of Johnson’s political corruption.

At mid-afternoon on October 22, 1951, thirty-year old "Mac" Wallace drove up to the Pitch and Putt course, walked in on "Doug" Kinser at the keeper's house and shot him dead. Wallace fled, but was caught, indicted for murder with "malice aforethought," and released on $30,000 bond. Strangely, no counsel appeared for him at first; only William E. Carroll, "a university friend," who somehow arranged the bond - later reduced to $10,000; while Carroll refused to say who the counsel would be.

Strangely too, District Attorney Bob Long called in a psychiatrist. Wallace, arrogant throughout the hearing, refused to see him. Still with no attorney, but with his "University friend" contending he was being held "without cause," and with bond posted, District Judge Charles A. Betts issued a writ of habeas corpus and released him.

He was brought to trial in the 98th District Court of Travis County before Judge Betts, with John Cofer, Johnson's every ready and able lawyer in times of trouble, and Polk Shelton, as attorneys for the defense. Cofer was not unduly searching hi his examination of jurors, but qualified each on his attitude toward the "suspended sentence law".

The case went to trial. District Attorney Bob Long - notwithstanding the identity of the car, a bloody shirt and a cartridge of the same caliber as used in the shooting, found in Wallace's possession, and witnesses who heard the shots and saw the departure of a man who fit Wallace's description - described it as "a near perfect murder."

Wallace did not take the stand. No evidence was presented to suggest cause or extenuating circumstances. Cofer simply filed a brief, one-page motion for an instructed verdict, pleading that there was no evidence upon which the State could "legally base a judgment of guilt." Long said nothing whatever in rebuttal. After less than two hours of testimony which was shut off so "abruptly" that it "left the packed courtroom with jaws ajar." Long urged the jury to "punish Wallace in whatever degree you can agree upon."

Thus after one of the briefest and most perfunctory trials of a prominent murder case on record, even in Texas, the jury nonetheless found, March 27, 1952, that Wallace was, as charged, guilty "of murder with malice aforethought." Its penalty, a five-year suspended sentence - for murder in the first degree.

Long was on his way out of the courtroom while the verdict was being read. His staff seemed "dumbfounded," but his own comment to the press was no less strange than his action: "You win cases and you lose them... usually everything happens for the best." Somewhat understandable, therefore, was the comment of The Austin Statesman that this case, "marked from the start to finish by the unusual," had left the people of Austin shocked and "quizzical.'' (2)

Haley points out that Johnson had known Wallace since October, 1950, where they worked together at the United States Department of Agriculture in Texas. Haley implies that Wallace carried out the murder on the orders of Johnson. Wallace was also having a relationship with Josefa Johnson. The relationship did not last and Josefa died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 25th December, 1961. (3)

In A Texan Looks At Lyndon, Haley does not actually accuse Johnson of being involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. However, he asks why Johnson agreed to become Kennedy’s running mate:

Johnson wanted power and with all his knowledge of political strategy and his proven control of Congress, he could see wider horizons of power as Vice-president than as Senate Majority Leader. In effect, by presiding over the Senate, he could now conceive himself as virtually filling both high and important positions - and he was not far from wrong. Finally, as Victor Lasky pointed out, Johnson had nursed a lifetime dream to be President. As Majority leader he never could have made it. But as Vice-president fate could always intervene. (4)

Although the book was a bestseller in Texas it had little impact on the rest of the country. However, one person who did read it was the journalist, Joachim Joesten (5). In 1964 Joesten published Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy?. (6) In the book Joesten claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Dallas Police Department and a group of right-wing Texas oil millionaires conspired to kill Kennedy. Joesten openly accused Police Chief Jesse Curry of being one of the key figures in the assassination.

Joesten was deeply influenced by Haley’s book on LBJ:

Haley's book may not be a masterpiece in the strictly scholarly sense, and it is certainly not a bible of my political creed, but as source material it is invaluable. For the author is not only a fellow-countryman of Lyndon B. Johnson, but an insider of Texas politics and an old political pro in his own right. A self-styled 'Jeffersonian Democrat' and conservative, Haley has been for years active in regional politics and in 1956 he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Governor.

That this biography of Lyndon B. Johnson is coloured to a considerable extent by bitterness at his own failure in the political game, as well as by an ingrained dislike of the Rooseveltian tradition (which, alas, also produced LBJ) and a generally ultraconservative stance, I do not doubt. Still, even after making generous allowance for possible exaggeration due to these factors, there remains in his book so much well-documented fact that it cannot possibly be bypassed by anyone seeking enlightenment about the dark recesses of the Johnson story.

The principal merit of Haley's A Texan looks at Lyndon lies in exploring those parts of Johnson's past that have been most zealously kept from view by the official biographers. In particular, the author relates in great and obviously authentic detail how Lyndon B. Johnson got started on his long and crooked road to the White House through a fraudulent vote. (7)

Joesten used some of this material in Oswald: The Truth (8). He linked Kennedy’s death to his plan to increase taxes on oil millionaires. He believed that people like H. L. Hunt (9) arranged for Kennedy to be replaced by Johnson to stop this happening.

In his book Disinformation, Misinformation, and the "Conspiracy" to Kill JFK Exposed (1987) Armand Moss argued:

Instigating the writing of this book - or writing it - was the first covert propaganda undertaken by the Russians in their disinformation campaign, which would subsequently evolve at the same time as the mis- and disinformation circulated in the U.S. and Europe.

Joachim Joesten, a member of the German Communist party before the war, travelled to Russia in 1932–33. He came to the United States from Sweden through the Soviet Union in 1941. He was in charge, or took charge of the disinformation campaign in Germany. Two weeks after the tragedy he spent five days “investigating” in Dallas. He and his wife had a date for dinner on the day of his return, December 11, 1963, but his wife found a note when she got home in the evening telling her that he had left for Europe. One cannot help wondering what caused his unexpected and abrupt departure. (10)

Despite the claims of his critics, Joesten provided some useful information on Johnson’s early political career. He also established information about those he claimed were involved in this conspiracy. In How Kennedy Was Killed (1968) Joseten quoted an interview he had with Dr. Albert E. Burke, who attending a meeting at Hunt’s home in Dallas in 1961.

I have listened to communists and other groups that can only be called enemies, accuse us of the worst intentions, the most inhuman ways of doing things, as the most dangerous people on earth, to be stopped and destroyed at all costs... But nothing I have heard in or from those places around us compared with the experience I had in the Dallas home of an American, whose hate for this country's leaders, and the way our institutions worked, was the most vicious, venomous and dangerous I have known in my life. No communist ever heard, no enemy of this nation has ever done a better job of degrading or belittling this country. That American was one of this nation's richest and most powerful men!

It was a very special performance by a pillar of the American community, who influences things in his community. It was a very special performance because in that living room during his performance - in which he said things had reached the point where there seemed to be 'no way left to get those traitors out of our government except by shooting them out' during that performance, there were four teenagers in that room to be influenced. His views were shared on November 22, 1963. (11)

Recently I discovered from Burke’s daughter, Helen Burke, that her father paid a heavy price for talking to Joesten. (12)

In his book, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Joseten developed the idea that Johnson was involved in the assassination. He believed that the event was directly linked to Johnson’s relationship with Bobby Baker:

The Baker scandal then is truly the hidden key to the assassination, or more exact, the timing of the Baker affair crystallized the more or less vague plans to eliminate Kennedy which had already been in existence… The threat of complete exposure which faced Johnson in the Baker scandal provided that final impulse he was forced to give the go-ahead signal to the plotters who had long been waiting for the right opportunity. (13)

In 1968 Evelyn Lincoln (14) published her book, Kennedy and Johnson. It included the following passage:

As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields.' 'I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' Mrs. Lincoln went on to write "I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' 'He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'at this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.' (15)

The following year W. Penn Jones (16) claimed that in 1963 Kennedy decided that Johnson was to be replaced by George Smathers (17):

Bobby Baker was about the first person in Washington to know that Lyndon Johnson was to be dumped as the Vice-Presidential candidate in 1964. Baker knew that President Kennedy had offered the spot on the ticket to Senator George Smathers of Florida... Baker knew because his secretary. Miss Nancy Carole Tyler, roomed with one of George Smathers' secretaries. Miss Mary Jo Kopechne had been another of Smathers' secretaries. Now both Miss Tyler and Miss Kopechne have died strangely. (18)

It has been argued that the possible loss of the vice presidency provided Johnson with a motive to remove Kennedy from power. However, Robert Kennedy rejected the idea that his brother intended to replace Johnson as Vice President. He told John Bartlow Martin in 1964: “There was never any intention of dropping him (Johnson). There was never even any discussion about dropping him.” (19)

In 1975 the Los Angeles detective, Hugh McDonald (20), published his book, Appointment in Dallas. (21) In the book, McDonald argued that the assassination was arranged by the Soviet Union. After the publication of the book, McDonald was contacted by Anatoli Cherenkov of the KGB. Cherenkov claims that Mikhail Tsymbal (KGB chief in Paris) had a meeting with Lyndon B. Johnson in Helsinki, Finland, in the summer of 1963. At this meeting John was told that John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert Kennedy, intended to have him prosecuted over the Bobby Baker (22) affair. In order to save himself from being sent to prison, Johnson is told he will have to cover-up the assassination of Kennedy. According to Cherenkov, Johnson agreed to these demands. An account of this meeting appeared in LBJ and the JFK Conspiracy:

Johnson rose again and walked over to the window in back of the Soviet agent. On this bright, sunny day the conversation seemed unreal to him. Staring out of the window he tried to keep his composure intact. The solid look of the buildings helped. They were real. The azure blue color of the sea surrounding Helsinki reminded him of the Texas gulf in the spring. They were on the second floor. He could see people below, walking rap¬idly, hurrying about their business. He envied them. He, the Vice President of the United States, would have changed placed with the poorest of them. Instinctively, Lyndon Johnson knew the purpose of the meeting. He hunched his huge shoulders, turned around and walked back to his chair. "You're right. Bob Kennedy would get me if I gave him a chance. They both hate me. Give them the information you have, and they will destroy me."

"Much more than destroy you politically, Mr. Johnson. You know, of course, of Mr. Kennedy's investigation into the affairs of a Robert Baker?"

"I know. He'll never make it there."

"You are wrong. He is going to succeed in opening up that affair. We know this, Mr. Johnson, because we're part of the process. When that happens, you not only will be destroyed politically, you will go to prison, which is exactly what Robert Kennedy and the President,, want. There is no escape, sir, if John Kennedy remains President of your country."

Johnson leaned forward, no longer nervous but hard, tough, a fighter. "What do you propose?"

Tsymbal poured tea then pinned the Vice President with his dark eyes. "I propose, sir, to assassinate President dent John F. Kennedy, thereby making you the President. That fact will solve your problems and many of ours."

Johnson never blinked an eye. "Where do I fit in?" The question represented complete surrender to the Russian.

"Your part is simple. The action is planned in every detail. You will not want to know those plans. We understand that the President will be in Dallas, Texas. You must give us the details of that trip. After the assassination we will expect you to arrange an investigation that keeps our government in the clear. For these small things, Mr. Johnson, we offer you the Presidency of the United States and your reputation."

Johnson's voice lowered in resignation. "Who gets that information?" "A Mr. Albert Osborne," the Russian answered triumphantly. "He will be at the Hilton Hotel in Dallas. Send it in a plain envelope so if it falls into the wrong hands, no one can trace it. On the upper left corner of the envelope write the name `Mason,' just that single word. After the action, call us on a secure line at the first possible moment, and we will have a plan for the coverup investigation. At that time, my friend, you will be the President of the United States."

Johnson nodded and stood up. "Mr. Tsymbal, it has been an important and useful meeting."

The Russian walked him to the door and held it open, speaking so that those in the outer office could hear. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Vice President. Please tell President Kennedy that Premier Khrushchev sends his best wishes." (23)

As you can see, the book is written as a novel. It has no index, notes or references. It is of course a lot of nonsense and is not to be taken seriously. It is never explained what motives Cherenkov had for telling McDonald this story. We are supposed to believe that Nikita Khrushchev plans the assassination of Kennedy because of his humiliation during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As Kennedy is such an effective Cold War leader, he has to be removed and replaced with the far more accommodating Johnson.

On 9th August, 1984, Douglas Caddy, a lawyer employed by Billie Sol Estes (24), wrote to Stephen S. Trott at the U.S. Department of Justice. In the letter Caddy claimed that Estes, Lyndon Johnson, Mac Wallace and Cliff Carter had been involved in the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, Ike Rogers, Coleman Wade, Josefa Johnson, John Kinser and John F. Kennedy. Caddy added: "Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders." (25)

This claim was restated in Estes’ book, JFK, the Last Standing Man (co-written with William Reymond) in France (26) . When interviewed by the American journalist, Pete Kendall, Estes said: “He (Johnson) told me if I wouldn’t talk, I would not go to jail.” Estes has had no contact with Johnson’s other long-ago associates, he said, since the book’s publication. “About all of them are dead, really. I think I’m about the last one standing.” That’s partly why, he said, he wasn’t interested in doing a book sooner. “I’ve been accused of being dumb,” he said, “but I’m not stupid.” (27)

Madeleine Brown (28) has claimed that she was the long-term mistress of Lyndon Johnson. On 24th February, 1992, Brown gave an interview on the television show, A Current Affair. Brown claimed that on the 21st November, 1963, she was at the home of Clint Murchison (29). Others at the meeting included J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, John J. McCloy, Richard Nixon and Haroldson L. Hunt. At the end of the evening Johnson arrived:

Tension filled the room upon his arrival. The group immediately went behind closed doors. A short time later Lyndon, anxious and red-faced, re-appeared. I knew how secretly Lyndon operated. Therefore I said nothing... not even that I was happy to see him. Squeezing my hand so hard, it felt crushed from the pressure, he spoke with a grating whisper, a quiet growl, into my ear, not a love message, but one I'll always remember: "After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat - that's a promise." (30)

Brown also made this claim in her book Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Brown used this book to argue that Johnson was involved in the assassination of Kennedy. She also provided more information about her attendance at the Murchison party:

On Thursday night, November 21, 1963, the last evening prior to Camelot's demise, I attended a social at Clint Murchison's home. It was my understanding that the event was scheduled as a tribute honoring his life long friend, J. Edgar Hoover, whom Murchison had met decades earlier through President William Howard Taft, and Hoover's companion and assistant, Clyde Tolson… The impressive guest list included John McCloy, Richard Nixon, George Brown, R.L. Thornton, H.L. Hunt, and a host of others from the 8F group. (31)

Gary Mack has rejected this suggestion that Johnson attended this party:

Madeleine has claimed over the years that she attended a party at Clint Murchison’s house the night before the assassination and LBJ, Hoover and Nixon were there. The party story, without LBJ, first came from Penn Jones in Forgive My Grief III (pages 84-86). In that version, the un-credited source was a black chauffeur whom Jones didn’t identify, and the explanation Jones gave was that it was the last chance to decide whether or not to kill JFK. Of course, Hoover used only top FBI agents for transportation and in the FBI of 1963, none were black. Actually, there is no confirmation for a party at Murchison’s. I asked Peter O’Donnell because Madeleine claimed he was there, too. Peter said there was no party. Madeleine even said there was a story about it in the Dallas Times Herald some months later (which makes no sense), but she had not been able to find it. Val Imm (Society Editor of the Dallas Times Herald) told Bob Porter (of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza staff) recently she had no memory of such an event and even looked through her notes - in vain.

Could LBJ have been at a Murchison party? No. LBJ was seen and photographed in the Houston Coliseum with JFK at a dinner and speech. They flew out around 10pm and arrived at Carswell (Air Force Base in northwest Fort Worth) at 11:07 Thursday night. Their motorcade to the Hotel Texas arrived about 11:50 and LBJ was again photographed. He stayed in the Will Rogers suite on the 13th floor and Manchester (William Manchester - author of The Death of a President) says he was up late. Could Nixon have been at Murchison’s party? No. Tony Zoppi (Entertainment Editor of The Dallas Morning News) and Don Safran (Entertainment Editor of the Dallas Times Herald) saw Nixon at the Empire Room at the Statler-Hilton. He walked in with Joan Crawford (Movie actress). Robert Clary (of Hogan’s Heroes fame) stopped his show to point them out, saying “. . . either you like him or you don’t.” Zoppi thought that was in poor taste, but Safran said. (32)

On 29th May, 1998, Walt Brown (33) gave a press conference where he claimed that a previously unidentified fingerprint on a box found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository belonged to Malcolm “Mac” Wallace (34):

Brown presented data showing a 14-point match between Wallace's fingerprint card, obtained from the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the previously unidentified print, a copy of which was kept in the National Archives. The match was made by A. Nathan Darby, an expert with certification by the International Association of Identifiers.

The Texas researchers forwarded their findings to the Dallas Police Department, who passed it on to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Copies have also gone to Assassination Records Review Board, the federal panel created to oversee the identification and release of records relating to the JFK assassination. [/COLOR[COLOR=red]](35)

Malcolm Wallace was of course the man named by Billy Sol Estes of being responsible for the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, Ike Rogers, Coleman Wade, Josefa Johnson, John Kinser and John F. Kennedy. Therefore, it was argued that this evidence linked Johnson to the killing of Kennedy.

LBJ and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Part 2

Barr McClellan (36) was the next person to argue that Johnson was involved in the plot to kill Kennedy. In 1966 McClellan joined the legal firm of Clark, Thomas and Winters, based in Austin, Texas. At that time the firm was run by the partners Edward Clark, Sam Winters, Don Thomas and Frank Denius. The company was closely associated with Lyndon B. Johnson and the Democratic Party in Texas. McClellan's work included advising on political strategy, campaign contributions, media issues and labour disputes.

In 1972 McClellan became a full partner in the legal firm. It was only at this stage that he was told about the illegal activities of the firm. John Cofer explained how the partners dealt with criminal activity: "In short, we helped plan crimes and keep the clients out of trouble." Soon afterwards he discovered that one of the partners, Edward Clark, had been involved in planning the assassination of Kennedy.

In 2003 McClellan published Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK. (37) In the book McClellan argues that Lyndon B. Johnson and Edward Clark were involved in the planning and cover-up of the assassination of Kennedy. McClellan also named Malcolm Wallace as one of the assassins. McClellan argues that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil millionaires such as Clint Murchison and Haroldson L. Hunt. McClellan claims that Clark got $2 million for this work.

The assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 per cent. It remained unchanged during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan this resulted in a saving of over 100 million dollars to the American oil industry. Soon after Johnson left office it dropped to 15 per cent.

McClellan’s book is no more than a re-hash of the claims made by J. Evetts Haley, Joachim Joesten, Hugh McDonald, Billie Sol Estes, Walt Brown and Madeleine Brown. His only real contribution to solving the mystery concerns office gossip about the activities of Edward Clark and John Cofer.

In November, 2003, Nigel Turner (38) produced a television programme entitled The Guilty Men where he argued that Lyndon Johnson was involved in planning the assassination of Kennedy. Turner made use of evidence provided by Billie Sol Estes, Walt Brown, Madeleine Brown and Barr McClellan. Other researchers involved in programme included Ed Tatro, Rick Russo, Glen Sample, and Gregory Burnham.

Turner also found another witness that provided support for the Clint Murchison party on the eve of the assassination. May Newman, a seamstress and companion to Virginia Murchison, claimed:

I remember well the night before the assassination. I worked with a man called Jule Feifer, black man, which was Virginia Murchison's chauffeur. He got a call from her stepson John at the big house. They were having a big party for a very special guest that was coming from Washington to go to the party, by the name of Bulldog, which I found out later was J. Edgar Hoover. And he said he was very excited about doing this going on this trip to the airport to take this very special guest to a very special party, big party. And I asked him when he came back if he got a good tip. And he said no and he was very, very upset. He had to go back that night to take J. Edgar Hoover to the airport to go back to Washington and he still didn't get a tip. (39)

The Guilty Men came under immediate attack from those who do not believe that Johnson was involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. For example, Dave Perry (40) looked at the people providing the evidence against Johnson. He pointed out that Nigel Turner "is the only "documentary" film writer, producer and director I know of to receive a censure from members of British Parliament. Because of his research practices there was also an attempt to remove British Central Television's ITV franchise based upon "penalties (for) inaccurate broadcasters."

Perry goes on to point out that in October, 1982, Barr McClellan was “found guilty of forging a $35,000 deed of trust” and that in September 1988, Madeleine Brown was “convicted of forging a relative's will”. He also highlights Billie Sol Estes’s long criminal history.

Perry goes on to look at the rest of the evidence presented in the programme. He makes use of Gray Mack’s research to show that the party at Clint Muchison’s house never took place. Perry also points out that in November, 1963, Murchison was at his Glad Oaks Ranch near Palestine, Texas, recovering from a stroke.

Nor is Perry convinced by the fingerprint evidence. He admits that Nathan Darby did a "blind" study comparing a fingerprint found on one of the boxes in the Kennedy assassination "sniper's" nest against Malcolm Wallace's fingerprint card. However, he dismisses this evidence as unreliable as he used a “inked print photocopy and a latent print photocopy”. Perry argues that “Dr. Brown's assertion in The Guilty Men that the fingerprint match is a "slam dunk" belies the fact that photocopies rather than original photographs were used for the comparison.” (41)

It does seem the evidence presented against Johnson so far is not very strong. It is indeed fairly clear that Johnson was a corrupt politician and that he might well have been aware of people like John Kinser being killed on his behalf. However, there appears to be little evidence to show that Johnson was clearly involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Nor should we expect to find such evidence.

Let us imagine that in 1963 Johnson decided that it would be in his best interests to have Kennedy removed from power. How would he have done this? He would almost certainly have used someone else to organize the assassination. If I had to guess who this might be, I would have thought it was someone like Fred Black (42). This person would have used people who had no connection at all with Johnson. The last person that they would have employed would have been Malcolm Wallace, a convicted murderer, who had links to Johnson via Billie Sol Estes.

Does this mean that it is impossible to find evidence that links Johnson to the assassination of Kennedy? No, it just means that the task is far more difficult.
Larry Hancock (43) takes an interesting approach to this problem. In his book, Someone Would Have Talked, he takes a close look at Johnson’s behaviour after the assassination.

Larry points out Johnson’s initial response was to believe the assassination was part of some sort of communist conspiracy. At 1.15 pm Malcolm Kilduff asked Johnson to make a statement on what had happened. Johnson’s response was: “No. Wait. We don’t know whether it’s a Communist conspiracy or not.” Larry adds: “Johnson’s first concern after the shooting appears to be in regard to a conspiracy.” (44)

This is supported by the phone call Johnson made to Robert Kennedy soon after the assassination. According to Arthur M. Schlesinger: “First he (Johnson) expressed his condolences. Then he said… this might be part of a worldwide plot.” (45)

However, despite this view, Johnson does not act as if a communist conspiracy was taking place:

There is not a single record of Johnson’s attempting to contact the National Command Center, the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense or asking about the location of the officer with the missile launch codes. Despite his initial remark, Johnson did not make a single call or contact that would indicate he was worried about a Communist conspiracy or national security. (46)

According to William Manchester, Johnson phoned Hoover at 7.25 pm. However, there is no record of this in Johnson’s official diary. Nor has the tape of this conversation survived. (47)

Larry points out that Cliff Carter (48) phoned Henry Wade (49), Dallas District Attorney, three times that Friday night. According to Wade, Carter said that “any word of a conspiracy – some plot by foreign nations – to kill President Kennedy would shake our nation to its foundation. President Johnson was worried about some conspiracy on the part of the Russians… it would hurt foreign relations if I alleged a conspiracy – whether I could prove it or not… I was to charge Oswald with plain murder.”

Carter also made similar calls to Texas State Attorney Waggoner Carr (50) and Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry (51).

There seems to be a contradiction between Johnson’s actions following the assassination and what Johnson (and his representatives) were saying about the event. Johnson clearly gave the impression that he thought there was a communist conspiracy but did not behave as if thought this was the case.

We get an insight into this by the recorded conversation (52) that took place between Johnson and Hoover on 23rd November, 1963:

J. Edgar Hoover: I just wanted to let you know of a development which I think is very important in connection with this case - this man in Dallas (Lee Harvey Oswald). We, of course, charged him with the murder of the President. The evidence that they have at the present time is not very, very strong. We have just discovered the place where the gun was purchased and the shipment of the gun from Chicago to Dallas, to a post office box in Dallas, to a man - no, to a woman by the name of "A. Hidell."... We had it flown up last night, and our laboratory here is making an examination of it.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Yes, I told the Secret Service to see that that got taken care of.

J. Edgar Hoover: That's right. We have the gun and we have the bullet. There was only one full bullet that was found. That was on the stretcher that the President was on. It apparently had fallen out when they massaged his heart, and we have that one. We have what we call slivers, which are not very valuable in the identification. As soon as we finish the testing of the gun for fingerprints ... we will then be able to test the one bullet we have with the gun. But the important thing is that this gun was bought in Chicago on a money order. Cost twenty-one dollars, and it seems almost impossible to think that for twenty-one dollars you could kill the President of the United States.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Now, who is A. Hidell?

J. Edgar Hoover: A. Hidell is an alias that this man has used on other occasions, and according to the information we have from the house in which he was living - his mother - he kept a rifle like this wrapped up in a blanket which he kept in the house. On the morning that this incident occurred down there - yesterday - the man who drove him to the building where they work, the building from where the shots came, said that he had a package wrapped up in paper... But the important thing at the time is that the location of the purchase of the gun by a money order apparently to the Klein Gun Company in Chicago - we were able to establish that last night.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September?

J. Edgar Hoover: No, that's one angle that's very confusing, for this reason - we have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there. We do have a copy of a letter which was written by Oswald to the Soviet embassy here in Washington, inquiring as well as complaining about the harassment of his wife and the questioning of his wife by the FBI. Now, of course, that letter information - we process all mail that goes to the Soviet embassy. It's a very secret operation. No mail is delivered to the embassy without being examined and opened by us, so that we know what they receive... The case, as it stands now, isn't strong enough to be able to get a conviction... Now if we can identify this man who was at the... Soviet embassy in Mexico City... This man Oswald has still denied everything. He doesn't know anything about anything, but the gun thing, of course, is a definite trend.

Lyndon B. Johnson: It definitely established that he - the same gun killed the policeman?

J. Edgar Hoover: That is an entirely different gun. We also have that gun...

Lyndon B. Johnson: You think he might have two ?

J. Edgar Hoover: Yes, yes, he had two guns... The one that killed the President was found on the sixth floor in the building from which it had been fired. I think that the bullets were fired from the fifth floor, and the three shells that were found were found on the fifth floor. But he apparently went upstairs to have fired the gun and throw the gun away and then went out. He went down to this theater. There at the theater was where he had the gun battle with the police officer.

Lyndon B. Johnson: I wonder if you will get me a little synopsis and let me have what developments come your way during the day and try to get to me before we close up for the day. (53)

From this recording we can see that Hoover and Johnson have already been in communication about the assassination. Johnson asks Hoover: “Have you established any more about the visit to the Soviet embassy in Mexico in September?”

Hoover’s reply makes it clear that Lee Harvey Oswald (54) was not acting alone. This statement shows that Hoover is aware that there was a conspiracy to Kennedy. He is already aware that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City. It is clear that someone was trying to implicate Oswald in some pro-Castro plot. The idea of a lone gunman is completely undermined. (We will see later that Hoover believed that there were at least two gunman involved in the assassination of Kennedy). Hoover rightly goes on to explain that the evidence from Mexico City has created terrible problems for the investigation. As Hoover says: “The case, as it stands now, isn’t strong enough to be able to get a conviction.”

Johnson does not respond to this information. He must also realize that Oswald has been fitted up for the crime. However, he changes the subject and asks a question (a very silly question) about the gun that killed Tippit.

Johnson and Hoover also had a telephone conversation about the case at 1.40 pm on 29th November. This time it is a long and detailed conversation. The following appears to be relevant in explaining Johnson’s views on the assassination.

Lyndon B. Johnson: … Now Walter tells me - Walter Jenkins - that you've designated Deke (Cartha DeLoach) to work with us, like you did on the Hill, and I tell you I sure appreciate that. I didn't ask for it 'cause ... I know you know how to run your business better than anybody else... We consider him as high-class as you do. And it is a mighty gracious thing to do. And we'll be mighty happy We salute you for knowing how to pick good men.

J. Edgar Hoover: That's mighty nice of you, Mr. President, indeed. We hope to have this thing wrapped up today, but could be we probably won't get it before the first of the week. This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story there is of this man Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban embassy and then coming back to this country with it. We're not able to prove that fact, but the information was that he was there on the 18th of September in Mexico City and we are able to prove conclusively he was in New Orleans that day. Now then they've changed the dates. The story came in changing the dates to the 28th of September and he was in Mexico City on the 28th. Now the Mexican police have again arrested this woman Duran, who is a member of the Cuban embassy... and we're going to confront her with the original informant, who saw the money pass, so he says, and we're also going to put the lie detector test on
him.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Can you pay any attention to those lie detector tests?

J. Edgar Hoover: I wouldn't want to be a party to sending a man to the chair on a lie detector... We've found many cases where we've used them - in a bank where there's been embezzlement - and a person will confess before the lie detector test is finished. They're more or less fearful of the fact that the lie detector test will show them guilty psychologically... Of course, it is a misnomer to call it a lie detector because what it really is is the evaluation of the chart that is made by this machine and that evaluation is made by a human being.... On the other hand, if this Oswald had lived and had taken the lie detector test and it had shown definitely that he had done these various things together with the evidence that we very definitely have, it would just have added that much more strength to it. There is no question but that he is the man now - with the fingerprints and things we have. This fellow Rubenstein down there - he has offered to take the lie detector test but his lawyer has got to be, of course, consulted first and I doubt whether the lawyer will allow it. He's one of these criminal lawyers from the West Coast and somewhat like an Edward Bennett Williams type - and almost as much of a shyster.

Lyndon B. Johnson: (laughs) Have you got any relationship between the two yet?

J. Edgar Hoover: No, at the present time we have not. There was a story down there...

Lyndon B. Johnson: Was he ever in his bar and stuff like that?

J. Edgar Hoover: There was a story that this fellow had been in this nightclub that is a striptease joint, that he had. But that has not been able to be confirmed. Now this fellow Rubenstein is a very shady character, has a bad record-street brawler tighter, and that sort of thing-and in the place in Dallas, if a fellow came in there and couldn’t pay his bill completely, Rubenstein would beat the very devil out of him and throw him out of the place... He didn't drink, didn't smoke boasted about that. He is what I would put in a category of one of these - egomaniacs. Likes to be in the limelight. He knew all the police in that white-light district... and he also let them come in, see the show, get food, liquor, and so forth. That s how, I think, he got into police headquarters. Because they accepted him as kind of a police character, hanging around police headquarters They never made any moves, as the pictures show, even when they saw him approaching this fellow and got up right to him and pressed his pistol against Oswald s stomach. Neither of the police officers on either side made any move to push him away or grab him. It wasn't until after the gun was fired that they then moved.... The Chief of Police admits that he moved him in the morning as a convenience and at the request of motion-picture people, who wanted to have daylight. He should have moved him at night... But so far as tying Rubenstein and Oswald together we haven't as yet done. So there have been a number of stories come in, we've tied Oswald into the Civil Liberties Union in New York, membership into that and, of course, this Cuban Fair Play Committee which is pro-Castro and dominated by Communism and financed, to some extent, by the Castro government.

Lyndon B. Johnson: How many shots were fired? Three?

J. Edgar Hoover: Three.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Any of them fired at me?

J. Edgar Hoover: No.

Lyndon B. Johnson: All three at the President?

J. Edgar Hoover: All three at the president and we have them. Two of the shots fired at the President were splintered but they had characteristics on them so that our ballistics expert was able to prove that they were fired by this gun. The President-he was hit by the first and third. The second shot hit the Governor the third shot is a complete bullet and that rolled out of the President's head It tore a large part of the President's head off and, in trying to massage his heart at the hospital on the way to the hospital, they apparently loosened that and it fell off onto the stretcher. And we recovered that... And we have the gun here also.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Were they aiming at the President?

J. Edgar Hoover: They were aiming directly at the President. There is no question about that. This telescopic lens, which I've looked through-it brings a person as close to you as if they were sitting right beside you. And we also have tested the fact that you could fire those three shots... within three seconds. There had been some stories going around... that there must have been more than one man because no one man could fire those shots in the time that they were fired...

Lyndon B. Johnson: How did it happen they hit Connally?

J. Edgar Hoover: Connally turned to the President when the first shot was fired and I think in that turning, it was where he got hit.

Lyndon B. Johnson: If he hadn't turned, he probably wouldn't have got hit?

J. Edgar Hoover: I think that is very likely.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Would the President have got hit with the second one?

J. Edgar Hoover: No, the President wasn't hit with the second one.

Lyndon B. Johnson: I say, if Connally hadn't been in his way?

J. Edgar Hoover: Oh, yes, yes, the President would no doubt have been hit.

Lyndon B. Johnson: He would have been hit three times.

J. Edgar Hoover: He would have been hit three times from the fifth floor of that building where we found the gun and the wrapping paper in which the gun was wrapped... and upon which we found the full fingerprints of this man Oswald. On that floor we found the three empty shells that had been fired and one shell that had not been fired... He then threw the gun aside and came down…

Lyndon B. Johnson: Well your conclusion is: (1) he's the one that did it; (2) the man he was after was the President; (3) he would have hit him three times, except the Governor turned.

J. Edgar Hoover: I think that is correct.

Lyndon B. Johnson: (4) That there is no connection between he and Ruby that you can detect now. And (5) whether he was connected with the Cuban operation with money, you're trying to...

J. Edgar Hoover: That's what we're trying to nail down now, because he was strongly pro-Castro, he was strongly anti-American, and he had been in correspondence, which we have, with the Soviet embassy here in Washington and with the American Civil Liberties Union and with this Committee for Fair Play to Cuba... (55)

As Ron Ecker has pointed out on the JFK Forum, this conversation shows that both Johnson and Hoover believe that Connally was shot by a gunman in front of the motorcade (56). Both men talk about “they” and appear to accept that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

Hoover goes further than that. He believes that this is a communist conspiracy. He points out that Oswald is linked to several organizations: Cuban Fair Play Committee, American Civil Liberties Union and the Socialist Worker Party. What we do know is that Hoover had a strong hatred for these three groups. He is on record as believing they were all communist-front organizations.

Lyndon Johnson’s apparent belief in a communist conspiracy is illustrated by a phone call he made to Richard B. Russell (57) on 29th November. Russell is reluctant to be a member of the Warren Commission. Johnson tells him:

Lyndon B. Johnson: It has already been announced and you can serve with anybody for the good of America and this is a question that has a good many more ramifications than on the surface and we've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and chuck us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. [/COLOR[COLOR=red]](58)

Johnson now takes the view that the public must not be allowed to know that Kennedy has been killed as a result of a communist conspiracy. He makes the same point to Charles Halleck, House Minority Leader. This time the inevitable war “could involve our losing thirty-nine million people”. (59)

Johnson tells Russell that: “The Secretary of State came over here this afternoon. He's deeply concerned, Dick, about the idea that they're spreading throughout the Communist world that Khrushchev killed Kennedy. Now he didn't. He didn't have a damned thing to do with it.” (60)

These conversations show that Johnson is gradually developing a strategy to deal with the Kennedy assassination. It is not clear who he believes is really behind the assassination. What he is determined to do is to avoid the public believing that it was a communist conspiracy. Instead, it is important that the public believe that Oswald was the lone assassin.

Although these conversations took place on the 29th November. This strategy had been in operation since at least the 25th November. This is illustrated in Nicholas Katzenbach (Attorney General of the United States) memo:

It is important that all of the facts surrounding President Kennedy's Assassination be made public in a way which will satisfy people in the United States and abroad that all the facts have been told and that a statement to this effect be made now.

1. The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.

2. Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat - too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced.

3. The matter has been handled thus far with neither dignity nor conviction. Facts have been mixed with rumour and speculation. We can scarcely let the world see us totally in the image of the Dallas police when our President is murdered.

I think this objective may be satisfied by making public as soon as possible a complete and thorough FBI report on Oswald and the assassination. This may run into the difficulty of pointing to in- consistencies between this report and statements by Dallas police officials. But the reputation of the Bureau is such that it may do the whole job. The only other step would be the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions. This has both advantages and disadvantages. It think it can await publication of the FBI report and public reaction to it here and abroad.

I think, however, that a statement that all the facts will be made public property in an orderly and responsible way should be made now. We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort. (61)

Despite the evidence that Hoover has provided linking Oswald with left-wing groups, the KGB, the Soviets, Castro’s Cuban government, etc., Johnson is determined to believe that Oswald was the lone gunman.

Johnson wants people to believe the reason for this is his fear of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Russell and Halleck do not question the logic of this argument. What Johnson appears to be saying is that if the public becomes convinced that Oswald was part of a conspiracy that involved Fidel Castro, he would come under such political pressure he will be forced to order an invasion of Cuba. If he does this, the Soviet Union will order a nuclear attack on the United States. As this will result in the deaths of 40 million Americans in the first hour, he therefore has to cover this conspiracy up and instead convince the world that Oswald was a lone assassin.

Yet the historical evidence suggests that this would never have happened if the United States invaded Cuba. The Soviets would have reacted in the same way as the American did when they invaded Hungary in 1956? The whole of the Cold War shows that both sides were given freedom to control their own geographical area. The argument that unless Oswald is found guilty of being the lone assassin, there will be a nuclear war is ridiculous. Yet, Johnson uses it over and over again.

LBJ and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy: Part 3

Johnson must have been aware that he was taking a terrible risk trying to cover up the assassination. Within minutes of Kennedy being killed, rumours began to circulate that Johnson had organized the assassination. This is not surprising as he had the best motive for wanting Kennedy dead. If he was not involved in the conspiracy, it was in his best interests to insist on a full and open investigation into the assassination. This would have been the best way to have cleared his name. The fact that Johnson did not do this suggests two possibilities: (1) Johnson was involved in the assassination; (2) Johnson was concerned that the investigation of the assassination would uncover information that linked him to other serious crimes.

It could well be true it was the first of these reasons. However, I suspect it was the “other serious crimes” that Johnson was really concerned about.

A close examination of Johnson’s taped telephone conversations in the weeks following the assassination reveal that he spent a large part of his time attempting to cover up another story. This is the story of a man called Don B. Reynolds (62)

Reynolds was a U.S. consular official in Berlin after the war. On his return to the United States he established a company called Don Reynolds Associates in Silver Spring, Maryland. Reynolds was a friend of Bobby Baker (63) , who was at this time working for Johnson. In 1957 Reynolds was asked to arrange Johnson's life insurance policy.

In 1963 Senator John Williams of Delaware began investigating the activities of Bobby Baker. As a result of his work, Baker resigned as the secretary to Johnson on 9th October, 1963. During his investigations Williams met Reynolds and persuaded him to appear before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee.
Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his committee on 22nd November, 1963, that Johnson had demanded that he provided kickbacks in return for him agreeing to this life insurance policy. This included a $585 Magnavox stereo. Reynolds also had to pay for $1,200 worth of advertising on KTBC, Johnson's television station in Austin. Reynolds had paperwork for this transaction including a delivery note that indicated the stereo had been sent to the home of Johnson.

Reynolds also told the Senate Rules Committee of seeing a suitcase full of money which Bobby Baker had described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". His testimony came to an end when news arrived that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

As soon as Johnson returned to Washington he contacted B. Everett Jordan to find out what Reynolds had said about Johnson. It was worse than he thought. He was particularly concerned about Reynolds’ comments about the TFX contract. This story dates back to when Kennedy appointment of Fred Korth (63) as his Navy Secretary. According to insiders, Korth only got the post after intense lobbying by Johnson. Korth had been president of the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, Texas, and a long time friend of Johnson.

Soon afterwards, Korth awarded a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the TFX, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. Rumours soon began to circulate that both Johnson and Korth had received kickbacks for this order. Korth was forced to resign and Johnson was expected to go the same way. As Peter Scott points out in his book, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK:

According to President Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, Bobby Kennedy was also investigating Bobby Baker for tax evasion and fraud. This had reached the point where the President himself discussed the Baker investigation with his secretary, and allegedly told her that his running mate in 1964 would not be Lyndon Johnson. The date of this discussion was November 19, 1963, the day before the President left for Texas.

A Senate Rules Committee investigation into the Bobby Baker scandal was indeed moving rapidly to implicate Lyndon Johnson, and on a matter concerning a concurrent scandal and investigation. This was the award of a $7-billion contract for a fighter plane, the TFX, to a General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth. Navy Secretary Fred Korth, a former bank president and a Johnson man, had been forced to resign in October 1963, after reporters discovered that his bank, the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, was the principal money source for the General Dynamics plant. (64)

The testimony of Reynolds brought Johnson back to the heart of the scandal. He could only survive if he could stop Reynolds’ testimony from being published. Johnson got his aide, Walter Jenkins, to talk to Jordan. As Bobby Baker reveals in Wheeling and Dealing (65), Jordan was one of those politicians under Johnson’s control. On 6th December, 1963, Jordan told Jenkins “… they ain’t going to get anything out of Everett. I can tell you that… I’m trying to keep the Bobby (Baker) thing from spreading… Because hell, I don’t want to see it spread either. it might spread (to) a place where we don't want it spread… Mighty hard to put out a fire out when it gets out of control."
Understanding what this comment means is crucial in grasping how Lyndon Johnson covered up both his involvement in the TFX scandal and the Kennedy assassination.

The story begins with Robert Kerr (66), the owner of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries. In November, 1948, Kerr was elected to the Senate. Over the next few years he established himself as the most influential men in Congress. According to the journalist, Milton Viorst: "Kerr was a self-made millionaire who freely and publicly expressed the conviction that any man in the Senate who didn't use his position to make money was a sucker. In a body where few of the members are averse to earning a fast buck, Kerr was the chief of the wheelers-and-dealers."

Kerr served on several key committees including the Finance and Public Works committees. He also forged alliances with key senators, such as Lyndon Johnson and George Smathers. Another key recruit was Bobby Baker. Kerr’s major strategy was to get people involved in his corrupt activities. This provided them with money in the short-term. However, once involved, they became under his total control.

Baker explains in Wheeling and Dealing how he was recruited by Kerr:

In 1949, Senator Kerr offered me the opportunity to buy one hundred shares in Kerr-McGee Oil Company. "It's a growing company, Bobby," he told me. "Nothing's a sure shot unless you've got a gun, but this is the next thing to it." That was good enough for me. Though I was going to George Washington University at night, and then to law school classes; though my salary was only about $6,500, and my net worth, including furniture, could not have been more than $5,000; I rushed home to Pickens to borrow the necessary $3,800 from an attorney named Julian Wyatt. He let me have it on my signature. Before long, I'd made about a $10,000 profit on Senator Kerr's advice. (67)

The first investment was legal. It is only with later investments did Baker and the other senators get involved in companies that they had to keep quiet about. Once part of this network, these politicians lost their freedom and had to obey Kerr’s orders. Baker played an important role in these entrapments. The other key figure of the team was Lyndon Johnson (68). In 1955 Johnson was elected majority leader of the Senate. He was now in a position to control who became chairman of the Senate committees. This he did with great success over the next five years.

In 1960 Johnson made a bid to become the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. Johnson used smear tactics against his main opponent John Kennedy. This included stories about all the Kennedy family. During the campaign the offices of two of Kennedy’s doctors, Eugene Cohen and Janet Travell were broken into and ransacked for medical records. (69) Baker describes a meeting he had with Robert Kennedy (70) in Los Angeles. When Baker tried to make a friendly comment Kennedy reacted badly:

Bobby Kennedy immediately grew so red in the face I thought he might have a stroke. “You’ve got your nerve,” he snapped. “Lyndon Johnson has compared my father to the Nazis and John Connally and India Edwards lied in saying my brother is dying of Addison’s disease. You Johnson people are running a stinking damned campaign, and you’re gonna get yours when the time comes!” (71)

Kennedy eventually won 806 votes. Johnson came second with 409 and Stuart Symington with 86. As a result of the bad feeling between the two men, Kennedy’s advisers believed that Johnson would not be offered the opportunity to be his running-mate in the forthcoming presidential election. According to Pierre Salinger, the post was going to go to Stuart Symington. (72)

Ted Sorenson claims that Kennedy did consider Johnson for the job. He pointed out that the Harris Public Opinion Polls had shown that Johnson, along with Hubert Humphrey, would both win votes for the Democrats in the election. (73) However, Sorenson, like other Kennedy advisers, did not believe he would accept the post. Nor did Kennedy who told Sorenson, “frankly, I don’t see why he should take a demotion”.

It was Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, who urged Kennedy to ask Johnson to become his running mate. Graham did this knowing that Johnson would say yes. Baker describes a meeting that took place on 14th July, 1960. At the meeting were Johnson, John Connolly, Bill Moyers and Lady Bird. For the first time Baker discovered that Johnson was considering accepting the post. However, Johnson had a problem because his two closest political friends, Sam Rayburn and Robert Kerr, were completely against the idea. Rayburn told Johnson what a former Vice-President, John Nance Garner had said after four wasted years: “The office ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”

While this discussion was going on Robert Kerr entered Johnson’s hotel suite:

Kerr literally was livid. There were angry red splotches on his face. He glared at me, at LBJ, and at Lady Bird. "Get me my .38," he yelled. "I'm gonna kill every damn one of you. I can't believe that my three best friends would betray me." Senator Kerr did not seem to be joking. As I attempted to calm him he kept shouting that we'd combined to ruin the Senate, ruin ourselves, and ruin him personally. Lyndon Johnson, no slouch as a tantrum tosser himself, had little stomach for dealing with fits thrown by others; he motioned me to take Senator Kerr into the bathroom and mumbled something about explaining things to him.

Senator Kerr was a huge man-six feet four inches, and about 250 pounds-and as I turned to face him in the bathroom he slammed me in the face with his open palm. It sounded like a dynamite cap exploding in my head. I literally saw stars. My ears rang. Tears were streaming down Kerr's face as he shouted, "Bobby, you betrayed me! You betrayed me! I can't believe it!" (74)

Baker then goes on to explain how he convinces Kerr that it would be in all their interests if Johnson becomes Kennedy’s running-mate. This includes the claim that (i) Johnson and Kennedy offer a well-balanced ticket and therefore will win the election; (ii) Johnson will lose support in the Democratic Party if he turns him down; (iii) Kennedy will take revenge on Johnson if turns him down and will “cut off Senator Johnson’s political pecker”; (iv) as Vice President Johnson will be “an excellent conduit between the White House and the Hill”.

According to Baker, on hearing this, Kerr puts his arm around him and said: “Son, you are right and I was wrong. I’m sorry I mistreated you.” We are supposed to believe that Kerr was incapable of working out these four points for himself and that it took Baker’s words of wisdom to convince him. This is of course all baloney.

This might well have been the scene where Baker convinces Kerr that this was a sensible strategy. However, it is unlikely that the above four arguments were used. I suspect that Baker informed Kerr that despite losing his job as Senate Majority Leader, Johnson would retain his political power. How was this? There could be only one answer. Johnson had drawn Kennedy into their corrupt network. Not with money, but with sex. Baker had been supplying Kennedy with women. That would not normally be a problem for Kennedy. However, Baker had ensured that the future president had become involved with women who could do him a great deal of harm.

Baker reassures Kerr that his main concerns would be dealt with by having Johnson as Vice President. This includes his fears that he will lose control over the important Senate Committees. He was also reassured about another matter. While Kennedy was in the White House, the oil depletion allowance would be kept at 27.5 per cent.

Kennedy had his own story of what happened. He told his advisers that he was determined to get Johnson removed as leader of the Democrats in the Senate. Kennedy was convinced that Johnson would use his power to block his legislation. Therefore, he was paving the way for Mike Mansfield, to become leader in the Senate. Johnson was made vice president because it would remove his power (this was of course the very reason why his friends said he would turn the job down).

Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, gives another version of events in his book, With Kennedy (75) . Salinger was strongly opposed to the decision. So was Kenneth O’Donnell, who described it as a “double-cross” and the “worst decision that JFK ever made”.

Salinger recalls a conversation with Kennedy a few days after the convention. He asked him again why he had made this strange decision. Kennedy repeated the argument that it enabled him to get Mike Mansfield as leader of the Democrats in the Senate. When Salinger questioned the logic of these arguments, Kennedy admitted: “The whole story will never be known. And it’s just as well that it won’t be.”

Salinger claims that he did not know what Kennedy was on about. However, there seems to be only one explanation. Kennedy was blackmailed into having Johnson as his vice president.

Robert Kerr found that Bobby Baker’s promises about a Kennedy presidency came true. Baker was amply rewarded and when he faced possible bankruptcy during the building the Carousel Motel, Kerr bailed him out. It is probably relevant that Kerr was not willing to come up with the money until Baker’s business partner, Alfred Novak, committed suicide.

In 1961 Kerr came up with another money making scheme. His chosen partner was Johnson’s buddy, Fred Black. They established a vending machine company called Ser-U Corporation.

There was big money to be made, Kerr said, by gaining a near monopoly on soft drink, candy, and cigarette machines to be installed at sites where companies were performing defense-related work that depended on government contracts. I've heard that Clark Clifford, the Washington lawyer-lobbyist who's been close to every Democratic administration beginning with Harry Truman's, talked Senator Kerr out of investing in the scheme because it clearly would constitute a conflict of interest on Kerr's part.

Senator Kerr then told Fred Black, "I want to help Bobby Baker. I'll get you the financing if you guys want to go into the vending machine business. There's a fortune to be made." True to his word, Senator Kerr obtained a $400,000 loan for us from the Fidelity National Bank and Trust Company of Oklahoma City, in which he owned stock. We spent the money for vending machines, installing them - among other places - at North American Aviation and at several subsidiary sites. Within a couple of years the Serv-U Corporation we founded-along with my law partner, Ernest Tucker; a Las Vegas hotel-casino man, Eddie Levinson; and a Miami investor and gambler, Benjamin B. Siegelbaum - was grossing $3 million annually. I owned 28.5 percent of the Ser-U Corporation in those days… (76)

According to William Torbitt (77) there was others involved in Ser-U Corporation. This included Grant Stockdale (78) , George Smathers and Clifford Jones:

Grant Stockdale, ex-United States Ambassador to Ireland and former George Smathers Administrative Assistant and a stock holder and officer in Bobby Baker's vending machine and Florida land transactions, knew and was closely associated with almost all of the top figures in the cabal. Shortly after President Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Grant Stockdale was pushed, shoved or fell from the fourteenth story of a Miami building and was killed immediately in the fall. As an officer in the Bobby Baker enterprises, Grant Stockdale had particular knowledge of a good part of the workings of the cabal and his death was one of a series made necessary to protect the group from public exposure...

Fred Black of Washington, D.C. was a lobbyist for North American Aircraft and business associate with Bobby Baker and Clifford Jones. Black has confirmed the connection between Jones, McWillie, Baker, Ruby and ex-Cuban President, Prio…
Of all the enterprises, none could compare with the controversial Serv-U Corp., a Baker-Black controlled vending-machine firm. Ed Levinson, president of the Fremont Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, was also a partner. Grant Stockdale, President of Serv-U and his money is covered later. Formed late in 1961, Serve-U Corporation provided vending machines for the automatic dispensing of food and drink in companies working on government contracts. In the next two years, Serv-U was awarded the lion-share of the vending business at three major aerospace firms - North American Aviation, Northrop Corporation and Thompson Ramo Wooldridge's Space Technology Laboratories. Baker and Black each bought stock in the company for $1 a share, while the others paid approximately $16 a share. (79)

This passage is not completely accurate. Grant Stockdale was not President of Serv-U Corp. This post was held by Eugene Hancock, one of Stockdale’s business partners.

Robert Kerr died suddenly on 1st January, 1963. Black and Baker continued to run Serv-U Corp but during the summer of 1963 the men became involved in a dispute with Ralph Hill, the owner of the Capitol Vending Company. Hill filed a suit against Baker and Serv-U Corporation for $300,000. This story was picked up by a reporter and details appeared in the Washington Post (80)

This news story worried Lyndon Johnson and he sent Walter Jenkins to talk to Baker. According to Baker, Jenkins said: “Reporters have been around asking questions and he’s afraid Bobby Kennedy’s putting them up to hanging something on you so as to embarrass him.” Later, Jenkins again contacted Baker and urged him to settle the lawsuit in order to stop the case reaching the courts. Baker refuses to do this claiming he is convinced that Ralph Hill will back down. (81)

The Hill suit against Baker came to the attention of John J. Williams (82) of Delaware. Williams had been elected to the Senate in 1946. He was determined to bring an end to political corruption and became known as the "Sherlock Holmes of Capitol Hill". During a 15 year period his investigations resulted in over 200 indictments and 125 convictions. (83)

Williams began investigating the activities of Sev-U Corporation and was probably responsible for a series of stories that started appearing in the press about Baker’s business activities. This included a story about how Baker was using the home of Carole Tyler to provide parties where “Washington’s powerful and mighty” met attractive women.

Hugh Scott (84) of Pennsylvania joined Williams in his campaign. Johnson attempted to stop Scott by threatening disclosures about his relationship with lobbyist, Claude Wilde. Johnson also told Scott that he would use his influence to “close down the Philadelphia Navy Yard unless Senator Scott closed his critical mouth”. (85) Scott refused to back down and when Barry Goldwater (86) began calling for a full-scale Senate investigation, senior members of the Democratic Party decided they had to take action and on 7th October, 1963, Baker was forced to resign as Johnson’s political secretary.

By this time both Baker and Johnson had another problem as Don B. Reynolds now contacted Williams about his story. It was Reynolds’s evidence before the Senate Rules Committee that gave Johnson so much concerns during the weeks following the assassination.

Johnson had a two-pronged strategy. He used his considerable political influence to keep the story from becoming public. This included threats against those like Williams and Scott who were attempting to reveal the full details of the story. This ended in failure and on 17th January, 1964, the Senate Rules Committee voted to release to the public Reynolds' secret testimony. Johnson was forced to talk about the issue at a press conference on 23rd January, 1964.

Johnson’s strategy now had to change. His main concern now was to discredit Reynolds as a witness. To help him do this J. Edgar Hoover (87) passed to Johnson the FBI file on Reynolds. A tape recording of a meeting that took place on 27th January, 1964, between Johnson, Walter Jenkins, Bill Moyers, Abe Fortas and Jack Valenti has survived. (88) At one point Johnson tells his men to leak these stories to journalists Drew Pearson (89) and Bill White. Abe Fortas boasts that he will be able to convince “Drew to do it”. He was wrong, Pearson refused to use these smear stories and instead, it was left to his colleague, Jack Anderson (88) to break the story.

On 5th February, 1964, the Washington Post reported that Reynolds had lied about his academic success at West Point. The article also claimed that Reynolds had been a supporter of Joseph McCarthy and had accused business rivals of being secret members of the American Communist Party. It was also revealed that Reynolds had made anti-Semitic remarks while in Berlin in 1953.

This story created more problems for Johnson than for Reynolds. The New York Times reported that Johnson had used information from secret government documents to smear Reynolds. It also reported that Johnson's officials had been applying pressure on the editors of newspapers not to print information that had been disclosed by Reynolds in front of the Senate Rules Committee.

Larry Hancock has pointed out that at this stage Johnson thought that he might be “the first United States President to end his term in prison.” (90) Robert Winter-Berger later reported that on the 4th February, 1964, he was discussing public relations with John McCormack in his Senate office. Johnson barged into the office and not aware of Winter-Berger’s presence told McCormack: “John, that son of a bitch (Bobby Baker) is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I’m gonna land in jail.”

Johnson became embarrassed when he realised Winter-Berger was in the room. However, Winter-Berger reassured him by saying he could help Johnson with this problem. The following day he was meeting Nathan Voloshen, an experienced fixer for organized crime. Johnson then said to Winter-Berger: “Tell Nat that I want him to get in touch with Bobby Baker as soon as possible – tomorrow if he can. Tell Nat to tell Bobby that I will give him a million dollars if he takes this rap. I’ll see to it that he gets a million-dollar settlement.” (91)

As David E. Scheim has pointed out: “Given a subsequent scandal involving intercessions for Mobsters from McCormack’s office at Voloshen’s behest, the recounted tirade would hardly have been exceptional in that office. And the Baker case did indeed involve some close friends of LBJ, including Texas oil magnate Clint Murchison.” (92)

When questioned about the testimony of Don Reynolds, Johnson always concentrated on the issue of the stereo. He admitted that Baker had given the Johnson family the stereo. As Merle Miller pointed out:

He (Johnson) said the families frequently exchanged gifts; he said further that he and Lady Bird had used the stereo for a period. What happened after that was rather vague; apparently the set had been given to some other friendly family. Who, why, and whether or not the Baker family often sent such expensive gifts to the Johnson family would forever remain a mystery. (93)

What Johnson was unwilling to talk about was the $100,000 payoff for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract. This was political dynamite and if proved, would have resulted in Johnson going to prison.

John McClellan (94), the chairman of the McClellan was also chairman of the Permanent Investigations Committee, and the person responsible for investigating the TFX contract, said that he wanted to interview Don Reynolds about this matter. However, for some reason the committee did not resume its investigation until 1969, after Johnson had left office.

The reason why Johnson survived this crisis was partly a result of the pressure he applied on the key figures in the investigation. However, the truth of the matter was that the political elite had no desire to remove another president. It was bad enough losing one by assassination, to lose another soon afterwards for corruption, would have severely damaged the democratic system.

Is there any evidence that links the assassination to the Bobby Baker scandal? I think there is. It is now clear that the FBI was involved in investigating the business activities of Bobby Baker and Fred Black in 1963. As Baker pointed out in Wheeling and Dealing:

He (Fred Black) kept a hotel suite at the Sheraton-Carlton in Washington where he and his friends - and I was among them-repaired to conduct business, drink, play cards, or entertain ladies. Though we did not then know it, that suite was bugged by the FBI. They must have heard some interesting doings. (95)

Baker also points out that a large number of politicians, including Gerald Ford, visited Black’s hotel suite at the Sheraton-Carlton. If Baker and Black were involved in the assassination of Kennedy, Hoover would have known about it. If so, Hoover would have told Johnson. Although it is unlikely Johnson would have been involved in the assassination, he might well have known it was going to take place. This would partly explain why his actions after the assassination suggested that he knew it was not part of a communist conspiracy to undermine the American government.

The other link concerns the Serv-U Corporation. This was a scam that involved a lot of politicians. After the death of Kennedy, all these political figures, did what they could to cover up the events surrounding the assassination. That is, except one, Grant Stockdale.

Stockdale was a close friend of George Smathers. In 1949 Smathers introduced Stockdale to his friend, John Kennedy. The three men remained close for the next twelve years. In 1959 Stockdale was director of the Florida State committee to elect Kennedy. After Kennedy won the nomination, Stockdale actively campaigned for him in West Virginia, Oregon, and New York. He was also a member of the Democratic Party's National Finance Committee.

Stockdale also formed a close business partnership with Smathers. Their company, Automatic Vending, was involved in providing vending machines to government institutions.

In March, 1961, President Kennedy appointed Stockdale as Ambassador to Ireland. Later that year Automatic Vending was sued for improper actions in getting a contract at Aerodex but the suit was eventually dismissed. However, Stockdale resigned. He remained involved with vending machines and both Smathers and himself were financially linked with Serv-U Corporation.

Smathers fell out with Kennedy over his policy towards Cuba, but Stockdale remained close and on 26th November, 1963, he flew to Washington and talked with Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy. On his return Stockdale told several of his friends that "the world was closing in." On 1st December, he spoke to his attorney, William Frates who later recalled: "He started talking. It didn't make much sense. He said something about 'those guys' trying to get him. Then about the assassination."

Edward Grant Stockdale died on 2nd December, 1963 when he fell (or was pushed) from his office on the thirteenth story of the Dupont Building in Miami. Stockdale did not leave a suicide note but Smathers claimed that he had become depressed as a result of the death of Kennedy.

Stockdale’s wife said similar things about her husband’s death. We now know that is not true. When I raised the issue on the JFK Forum (95) I received an email from Grant Stockdale’s daughter, Anne Stockdale:

Yes I guess that is factual (my posting), except I thought that when he came home from Ireland, that he no longer had any $ interest in Vending Machines. One thing I do know is that Kennedy asked Daddy to go to the Air Force Base South of Miami to see if (against Kennedy's orders) bombs were being loaded on the planes. Bombs were being loaded on the planes!! I believe one of the reasons Daddy was killed was because he knew that the Government was being run by the Military Complex.

The Military Complex didn't want the American People to realize (and still don't ) that they were calling the shots. Daddy knew he was being followed... & he told Mom that they were going to get him... and they did. There was an attempt on my life also several days after Daddy's funeral . I realize now that this was a scare tactic to silence my Mother... i.e. if you speak about anything, Your kids are dead. It worked!! (96)

Did Stockdale know about the plot to kill Kennedy? Did he tell Robert and Edward Kennedy (97) what he knew? If so, why did they refuse to take action? Was it anything to do with the fact that Johnson had entrapped the Kennedys into a scandal that they knew would ruin their political careers?

Bobby Baker reveals in Wheeling and Dealing that Johnson cut off all communication with him after he resigned in October, 1963. However, in September, 1972, Walter Jenkins telephones him and arranges for Baker to visit Johnson at his home in Texas.

After dinner Johnson goes for a walk with Baker. He tells Baker that he wanted to come to his aid: “But Bobby Kennedy would have crucified me… If there was any way in the world I could have turned off the investigation when I became president, I’d have gladly done it. But I knew it would be politically disastrous, and perhaps even legally disastrous.” (98)

It was not until the next day that Johnson raised the subject that most interested him. “LBJ gave me a sideways look and said, “Bobby, what’s gonna be in that book I hear you’re writing? Is it gonna be one of those kiss-and-tell books?”

According to Baker, he replied that he was “still in the outline and research stage, that the book hadn’t yet been fully formed in my mind.”

One can assume that Baker told Johnson he was safe. As he writes in the book, if he had told the full story at the time he would have caused serious trouble for several of his political friends:

Might I not have been better off, years earlier, had I indicated a willingness to talk before the Senate investigating committee rather than take the fifth amendment? Wouldn't the good senators have been eager to shut down the hearings and sweep everything under the rug had I begun to name names and tell all I knew of loose campaign money, outright bribes, conflict-of-interest investments, sex habits, and so on?

Once I had started it, however, it's doubtful if the press or a few self-advertised reformers would have permitted the corruption issue to die. I'm certain that some senators might have chosen not to run for re-election or might have been defeated had I originally named them even as marginal business partners. Certainly many senators would have found themselves in highly embarrassing circumstances, to say the least. Lyndon B. Johnson might have incurred a mortal wound by these revelations. They could have denied him the presidency, or driven him from office as later happened to Richard Nixon. (99)

Baker adds the reason he decided not to “chirp like a canary” was because he would not “have liked myself very much had I turned informer.” Baker does not mention the million dollars negotiated by Nat Voloshen. (100)

LBJ and the Assassination of JFK: Notes and REferences

(1) J. Evetts Haley: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhaleyE.htm

(2) J. Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964) pages 107-109.

(3) Josefa Johnson: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjohnsonJ.htm

(4) J. Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964) page 199.

(5) Joachim Joesten: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjoesten.htm

(6) Joachim Joesten, Oswald, Assassin or Fall Guy? (1964)

(7) Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1968)

(8) Joachim Joesten, Oswald: The Truth (1967)

(9) Haroldson L. Hunt: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhuntHL.htm

(10) Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy Was Killed (1968) page 58.

(11) Armand Moss, Disinformation, Misinformation, and the "Conspiracy" to Kill JFK Exposed (1987) page 93.

(12) Email from Albert Burke’s daughter (30th August, 2004)

(13) Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1968)

(14) Evelyn Lincoln : http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKlincoln.htm

(15) Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson (1968)

(16) W. Penn Jones: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKjonesP.htm

(17) George Smathers: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsmathers.htm

(18) W. Penn Jones Jr, Texas Midlothian Mirror (31st July, 1969)

(19) Robert Kennedy, In His Own Words (1988) page 336

(20) Hugh McDonald: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmcdonaldH.htm

(21) Hugh McDonald, Appointment in Dallas (1975)

(22) Bobby Baker: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerB.htm

(23) Hugh McDonald, LBJ and the JFK Conspiracy (1979), pages 146-47.

(24) Billie Sol Estes: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKestes.htm

(25) Douglas Caddy, letter to Stephen S. Trott at the US Department of Justice (9th August, 1984)

(26) Billie Sol Estes and William Reymond, Le Dernier Temoin (2003)

(27) Pete Kendall, Hood County News (21st November, 2003)

(28) Madeleine Brown: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbrownM.htm

(29) Clint Murchison: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmurchison.htm

(30) A Current Affair (24th February, 1992)

(31) Madeleine Brown, Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson (1997) pages 1966-67

(32) Gary Mack, memo, 14th May, 1997

(33) Walt Brown: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbrownW.htm

(34) Malcolm Brown: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwallaceM.htm

(35) John Kelin, Fair Play Magazine (1998)

http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_.../breakthru.html

(36) Barr McClellan: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmcclellan.htm

(37) Barr McClellan, Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK (2003)

(38) Nigel Turner: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKturnerN.htm

(39) May Newman, The Guilty Men (November, 2003)

(40) Dave Perry: http://home.comcast.net/~dperry1943/guilty.html

(41) Walt Brown replied by email to a question on the latest state in the confirmation of the Malcolm Wallace fingerprint evidence: Interested parties who did not want to get the typical "Oswald did it alone and don't bother" answer took the print issue to experts at Interpol, and, I'm told, hearsay-wise, that a match was confirmed. I can't prove that, but that is what I was told. Nathan worked or worked/is working on that one print for several years, and he just turned 90.” (18th November, 2004)

(42) Fred Black: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerF.htm

(43) Larry Hancock: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhancock.htm

(44) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked, (2003) page 256

(45) Arthur M. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times (1978) page 609

(46) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked, (2003) pages 256-57

(47) William Manchester, The Death of a President (1967)

(48) Cliff Carter: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcarter.htm

(49) Henry Wade: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwadeH.htm

(50) Waggoner Carr: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcarrW.htm

(51) Jesse Curry: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcurryJ.htm

(52) While LBJ was Vice President used an Edison Voicewriter to record his telephone conversations. After he became President he began to use a Dictaphone Dictabelt. The dictating equipment used to record the conversations was attached to the telephone line. Johnson signalled to the secretary when he wanted a conversation recorded, and she pressed a switch located at her desk to activate the machine. It appears from the content and nature of the recordings that the secretaries often left the machine running and recorded many conversations inadvertently.

(53) Taped telephone conversation between J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Baines Johnson (10.01 on 23rd November, 1963).

(54): Lee Harvey Oswald: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoswald.htm

(55) Taped telephone conversation between J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Baines Johnson (1.40 pm on 29th November, 1963).

(56) http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1740

(57) Richard B. Russell: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrussell.htm

(58) Taped telephone conversation between Richard B. Russell and Lyndon Baines Johnson (8.55 pm on 29th November, 1963).

(59) Taped telephone conversation between Charles Halleck and Lyndon Baines Johnson (6.30 pm on 29th November, 1963).

(60) Taped telephone conversation between Richard B. Russell and Lyndon Baines Johnson (8.55 pm on 29th November, 1963).

(61) Nicholas Katzenbach, memo (25th November, 1963)

(62) Don B. Reynolds: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKreynoldsD.htm

(63) Fred Korth: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkorth.htm

(64) Peter Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) page 220

(65) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 184

(66) Robert Kerr: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkerrR.htm

(67) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 56

(68) Lyndon Johnson: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjohnsonLB.htm

(69) Richard D. Mahoney, Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (1999)

(70) Robert Kennedy: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyR.htm

(71) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 118

(72) Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966) page 46

(73) Ted Sorenson, Kennedy (1965) pages 162-63

(74) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 126

(75) Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966) page 46

(76) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 170

(77) William Torbitt: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKtorbitt.htm

(78) Grant Stockdale: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstockdale.htm

(79) http://scribblguy.50megs.com/torbitt3.htm

(80) Washington Post (12th September, 1963)

(81) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) pages 175-76

(82) John J. Williams: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwilliamsJ.htm

(83) G. R. Schreiber, The Bobby Baker Affair (1964)

(84) Hugh Scott: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKscottH.htm

(85) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 195

(86) A full transcript of this meeting can be found in Michael R. Beschloss’s book, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (1997 pages 186-189)

(87) J. Edgar Hoover: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhooverE.htm

(88) Drew Pearson: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApearsonD.htm

(89) Jack Anderson: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAandersonJ.htm

(90) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked, (2003) page 196

(91) Robert Winter-Berger, The Washington Payoff: An Insider’s View of Corruption in Government (1972) pages 65 and 66

(92) David E. Scheim, The Mafia Killed President Kennedy (1988) page 224

(93) Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography (1980)

(94) John McClellan: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmcclellanJ.htm

(95) http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=943

(96) Email from Anne Stockdale (16th June, 2004)

(97) Edward Kennedy: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyE.htm

(98) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 267

(99) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) pages 271-72

(100) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm

It seems to me that the calculations behind LBJ becoming vice president are crucial to understanding how he thought this position would better serve his ravenous appetite for the presidency itself. Victor Lasky's point that "fate could always intervene" (meaning JFK's death) seems far more likely to be the relevant consideration than that noted by James Haley regarding greater Senatorial power as V.P. (contrasted with the JFK motive to remove LBJ from his Majority Leader status in favor of a far more reasonable Mike Mansfield). We know that it was the Texas contingent that was most stridently encouraging Lyndon's decision to accept the V.P. nomination, most publicly, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. These are the same people who would have been most aware of a previous Texan who had accepted that position, John Nance Garner, and his conclusion that the vice presidency is "not worth a warm bucket of piss."

Tim

QUOTE

We have just discovered the place where the gun was purchased and the shipment of the gun from Chicago to Dallas, to a post office box in Dallas, to a man - no, to a woman by the name of "A. Hidell."... We had it flown up last night, and our laboratory here is making an examination of it.

John, the above reference to Hidell being a woman, is curious to say the least for two reasons: firstly, the HSCA asked Col Robert Jones if MI had a file on a "Ana Hidell"; secondly, because Hoover goes on to explain in answer to who "A Hidell" by responding that it was an alias that Oswald used.

How that could have been known is not reflected in any of the records. According to Martello, the NOPD did no investigation after Oswald's arrest, and the report on FBI investigation shows no reference to do doing any investigation of "A Hidell.

For this, and other compelling reasons, I conclude that Oswald never had any Hidell ID him as claimed.

Do you have a description of Wallace and his age in '63?

I agree that the decision by Johnson to accept the offer of the vice presidency is a key issue in understanding the events surrounding the assassination in 1963.

It is important to examine the thinking of both Kennedy and Johnson when it became clear who would win the nomination. Kennedy’s key advisers admit there were good reasons to invite Johnson to be his running mate. For example, Ted Sorenson believed that Kennedy needed a Southern Democrat in order to placate the anti-civil rights power base. (1) Robert Kennedy agreed, but pointed out he had already had negotiations with senior figures such as James Eastland and Herman Talmadge and convinced them that a JFK administration posed no threat to their interests. (2)

Kenneth O'Donnell (3), Pierre Salinger (4), Walter Reuther (5), Ralph Dungan, Arthur Goldberg, Jack Conway, and Alex Rose agreed with Robert Kennedy. They thought any attempt to get Johnson would upset the civil rights movement and trade unionists. They all had meetings with Kennedy and came away convinced Johnson would not be on the ticket. This is why O’Donnell later called it the “great betrayal”. He felt this way because he had told important figures on the left of the party that Kennedy would never select Johnson.

These advisers were not only opposed to Johnson for political reasons. They had been appalled by Johnson’s smear tactics in the final weeks of the campaign. As Paul Conkin has pointed out: “Johnson’s last-minute effort to stop Kennedy produced reckless charges and innuendos had infuriated Kennedy’s staff.” (6)

As a result of these discussions, John Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to sound out Stuart Symington of Missouri for the post. (7, Unger, 243) As Arthur Schlesinger has argued, no one in the Kennedy camp was opposed to Symington. However, Kennedy himself favoured Orville Freeman of Minnesota for the job (8)

However, the one thing that all his advisers were in agreement about was that Johnson would never accept the post. In doing so, he would lose his political power-base. All Johnson’s senior advisers were against him becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. This includes Sam Rayburn who phoned him when he heard rumours that Johnson would be offered the job. He said: “They are going to try to get you to go on the ticket. You mustn’t do it. It would be a terrible thing to do.” Johnson agreed, but claimed he would not be asked anyway. Homer Thornberry, also heard this rumour and phoned Johnson and “emphatically advised him not to touch the Vice Presidency” (9) . John Connally agreed and was “vehemently opposed” to the idea.

The most important opponent was Robert Kerr. It was Kerr who had used Johnson to get control of the powerful Senate committees. Without this, Kerr and his network would face the prospect of senate investigations into their corrupt business activities.

According to Bobby Baker it was Graham who was working behind the scenes on his behalf. He had been promoting the idea of George Smathers as Kennedy’s running-mate. Philip Graham argued that he would help him win Florida. However, Kennedy had felt Smathers had betrayed him during the campaign (after making a bid for the nomination himself, he had switched his support to Johnson).

Graham now tried to convince Johnson to accept the post. He told Johnson that this would free him from his Texas base and turn him into a national leader. That Johnson could use the post to become president at a later stage of his career. However, this argument is not very convincing. Johnson was nine years older than Kennedy. The earliest he could run for the presidency was in 1968. He would then be over 60 whereas Robert Kennedy would have been 43. It is therefore highly unlikely that Johnson could have used this post to become president, unless John Kennedy died in office. As Johnson told Clare Boothe Luce: “One out of every four presidents has died in office. I’m a gambling man darling, and this is the only chance I got.” (10)

As Baker recounts in Wheeling and Dealing, once Johnson changes his mind, the others followed. As I pointed out earlier, while this discussion was going on Robert Kerr entered Johnson’s hotel suite:

Kerr literally was livid. There were angry red splotches on his face. He glared at me, at LBJ, and at Lady Bird. "Get me my .38," he yelled. "I'm gonna kill every damn one of you. I can't believe that my three best friends would betray me." Senator Kerr did not seem to be joking. As I attempted to calm him he kept shouting that we'd combined to ruin the Senate, ruin ourselves, and ruin him personally. Lyndon Johnson, no slouch as a tantrum tosser himself, had little stomach for dealing with fits thrown by others; he motioned me to take Senator Kerr into the bathroom and mumbled something about explaining things to him.
Senator Kerr was a huge man-six feet four inches, and about 250 pounds-and as I turned to face him in the bathroom he slammed me in the face with his open palm. It sounded like a dynamite cap exploding in my head. I literally saw stars. My ears rang. Tears were streaming down Kerr's face as he shouted, "Bobby, you betrayed me! You betrayed me! I can't believe it!" (11)

Baker then goes on to explain how he convinces Kerr that it would be in all their interests if Johnson becomes Kennedy’s running-mate. This includes the claim that (i) Johnson and Kennedy offer a well-balanced ticket and therefore will win the election; (ii) Johnson will lose support in the Democratic Party if he turns him down; (iii) Kennedy will take revenge on Johnson if turns him down and will “cut off Senator Johnson’s political pecker”; (iv) as Vice President Johnson will be “an excellent conduit between the White House and the Hill”.

According to Baker, on hearing this, Kerr puts his arm around him and said: “Son, you are right and I was wrong. I’m sorry I mistreated you.” Later he tells Johnson that if he does not accept the post: “I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”

Baker reassures Kerr that his main concerns would be dealt with by having Johnson as Vice President. This includes his fears that he will lose control over the important Senate Committees. He was also reassured about another matter. While Kennedy was in the White House, the oil depletion allowance would be kept at 27.5 per cent.

Rayburn was also convinced by arguments put forward by Texas congressman, Wright Patman. However, it is not recorded what those reasons were. All we know is that Rayburn phoned Johnson with the words: “I am a damn sight smarter than I was last night.” As Dalleck points out: “It is inconceivable that as astute a politician as Rayburn needed instruction on what Johnson’s presence on the ticket would mean. (12)

Robert Kennedy remained opposed to Johnson right up to the end and even tried to intervene after his brother had offered him the post. According to John Connally, Robert insisted: “Lyndon has got to get off this ticket… He’s got to withdraw”. Graham phoned up John Kennedy to ask what was happening. Kennedy replied: “Oh, that’s all right. Bobby’s been out of touch and doesn’t know what’s been happening.” (13)

Kennedy had his own story of what happened. He told his advisers that he was determined to get Johnson removed as leader of the Democrats in the Senate. Kennedy was convinced that Johnson would use his power to block his legislation. Therefore, he was paving the way for Mike Mansfield, to become leader in the Senate. Johnson was made vice president because it would remove his power (this was of course the very reason why his friends said he would turn the job down).

Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, gives another version of events in his book, 'With Kennedy'. (14) Salinger was strongly opposed to the decision. So was Kenneth O’Donnell, who described it as a “double-cross” and the “worst decision that JFK ever made”.

Salinger recalls a conversation with Kennedy a few days after the convention. He asked him again why he had made this strange decision. Kennedy repeated the argument that it enabled him to get Mike Mansfield as leader of the Democrats in the Senate. When Salinger questioned the logic of these arguments, Kennedy admitted: “The whole story will never be known. And it’s just as well that it won’t be.”

Salinger claims that he did not know what Kennedy was on about. However, there seems to be only one explanation. Kennedy was blackmailed into having Johnson as his vice president.

Notes

1. Ted Sorenson, Kennedy (1965) pages 162-63

2. Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (1988)

3. Kenneth O'Donnell, Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye (1972)

4. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966)

5. Walter Reuther: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAreuther.htm

6. Paul Conkin, Big Daddy From the Pedernales (1986) page 152

7. Irwin Unger, Debi Unger, LBJ: A Biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1999) page 243

8. Arthur Steinberg, Sam Johnson's Boy (1968) page 529

9. Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (1965) page 42

10. Irwin Unger, Debi Unger, LBJ: A Biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1999) page 244

11. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 126

12. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) 576

13. Arthur Steinberg, Sam Johnson's Boy (1968) page 532

14. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966) page 46

CE Exhibit 1141:


LANCE A . GARCIA, Assistant Manager, Retailers' Commercial Company, Room 212 Delta Building, 348 Baroone Street, advised that this credit agency was a subsidiary of the Retail Credit Company of New Orleans, Louisiana, and further advised that his agency handled credit investigations only and explained that they dealt with nationally affiliated companies as well as some local companies in New Orleans on credit matters.

GARCIA examined his files for the following listed names and explained that he thoroughly checked on conceivable variations in spellings, as well as in pronunciations' of these ones and stated that he could find no listings identifiable with these persons contained within the files:

LEE HARVEY OSWALD
A.J. HIDELL:
ALEX HIDELL,
ANA HIDELL

____________________________________________


John

Stockdale clearly knew something about the assassination. To be "suicided" so soon after the assassination tells us two things: he knew something and 2. It was feared he'd go public. Brings to mind thae story of CIA guy Gary Underhill who claimed CIA killed JFk, then "committed suicide" in May of '64. I think Penn Jones first wrote about him, later Garrison , and he's in JIm Marrs' list of deaths in "Crossfire".

Good research on LBJ.

Dawn

Excellent article with astute analysis! Have you seen an aticle by Phil Brennan, a GOP House aide? He states that Hill came to him in literal fear for his life becauseof pressure from Bobby Baker. Brennan advised Hill that his only way out was to go public by filing suit against Baker. Later Brennan introduced Hill to Sen. Williams.

Brennan:
Sometimes I wonder: if I had not met Hill and convinced him to go public with the story, and the Bobby Baker case and Lyndon's part in it had not come out as a result, would Dallas not have happened? I don't like to think about that.


Here is the cite to the Brennen article:

http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/brennen.htm

Mac Wallace was 42 years one month when JFK was assassinated. For more details see:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwallaceM.htm

This is the best picture I have of Mac Wallace. Maybe James Richards has a better photograph?

Hi Nic, if this was in response to me... thanks.

But Garcia was interviewed on 23nov63. There was no investigation of Hidell by NOPD or FBI after the August arrest. If Oswald was truly carrying FPCC cards signed by "A Hidell", they would have looked into this person.

I knew he'd been interviewed, but I figured I'd throw that in there anyway.

Maybe James Richards has a better photograph? (John Simkin)

Meet Malcolm Wallace.

James

I knew you would not let me down. The one I uploaded is only a photocopy of Wallace and appears in all the books. These are new to me. Where do they come from?

Thank you for the link. Another example of collective intelligence at work. I will email Phil Brennen and maybe he will join the seminar. I think the following passage is especially interesting (1) :

To make a long story short, Baker advised Hill to go into the vending machine business and promised him he'd arrange to get some major defense contractors to install the machines, which vended soft drinks, sandwiches, cigarettes and the like.

There was only one catch - Baker wanted under-the-table payoffs for his part in setting up what would be a very lucrative business opportunity with tens of thousands of potential customers who worked in defense plants.

True to his word, Baker got a number of defense contractors to agree to allow Hill the exclusive right to install his vending machines on their premises. It was an opportunity to print money by the barrel, and with those golden contracts in hand, Hill was able to go to the bank and borrow all the funds he needed to buy the vending machines and go into business. For a while he prospered - as did Baker.

But whatever he was paying Baker was not enough to satisfy the man who, for all intents and purposes, had the Senate under his thumb. He saw that the members of the Democrat majority got whatever they wanted - money, bimbos, LBJ's help, you name it. They were all in his pocket.

He could arrange multimillion-dollar contracts for the defense industry or take them away if he wanted. He was LBJ's guy and was all-powerful and a very dangerous man to have as an enemy, a fact Ralph Hill learned when Baker put the bite on him for bigger payoffs.

The problem for Hill was that he had big payments to make on the loans he'd taken out to buy the equipment and set himself up in business, had some pretty steep overhead, and simply didn't have enough left over to boost his payments to Baker.

He tried to explain that fact of life to Baker, but the secretary of the United States Senate wasn't having any. He simply repeated his demands and threatened Hill that if he didn't pay up he'd see that Hill lost all those juicy defense plant contracts.

Bad went to worse, Baker made good on his threats, and Hill was facing bankruptcy. Moreover, it was made known to him that if he didn't simply fold his tent and go off without making trouble for Baker, he might meet with an unfortunate - and probably fatal - accident.

But Hill was facing bankruptcy and the loss of everything he had, and he simply would not give up. He was fighting for his life. And he had the guts to hang in there.

He asked me to help him. But I was completely a creature of the House side of Capitol Hill - the Senate side was foreign territory and, I hate to admit it, I didn't even have the vaguest idea of who this Bobby Baker, the Senate's imperial potentate, was.

I told Hill that his only way out was to expose Baker publicly, to get the story out - once it was public, Baker could not afford to retaliate. I advised Hill to file suit against Baker, laying out all the sordid details in the complaint, and once he had served Baker, to give me the complaint papers and I'd see that the media on the Hill got their hands on copies.

He did and I did - and I now found myself a potential target, not only of Baker's but of the media as well, but that's another story. I was able to get only two reporters to write the story - the late Clark Mohlenhoff, one of the best investigative reporters in Washington, and one other whose name I don't recall.

For the most part, the Washington press corps kept the lid on the story - until the late Bob Humphrey, then the GOP Senate leadership's spokesman, an incredibly gifted strategist and a mentor, asked me to tell the story to the late Delaware Republican Sen. John Williams, a crusader for good government and a crackerjack of an investigator.

Sen. Williams asked me to introduce him to Hill and I did. They got together with some Senate investigators for the GOP minority and Hill told them the whole story, including the part played by Vice President Johnson. Williams got his committee to launch an investigation and the lid came off.

A few days later, the attorney general, Bobby Kennedy, called five of Washington's top reporters into his office and told them it was now open season on Lyndon Johnson. It's OK, he told them, to go after the story they were ignoring out of deference to the administration.

And from that point on until the events in Dallas, Lyndon Baines Johnson's future looked as if it included a sudden end to his political career and a few years in the slammer. The Kennedys had their knives out and sharpened for him and were determined to draw his political blood - all of it.

In the Senate, the investigation into the Baker case was moving quickly ahead. Even the Democrats were cooperating, thanks to the Kennedys, and an awful lot of really bad stuff was being revealed - until Nov. 22, 1963.

By Nov. 23, all Democrat cooperation suddenly stopped. Lyndon would serve a term and a half in the White House instead of the slammer, the Baker investigation would peter out and Bobby Baker would serve a short sentence and go free. Dallas accomplished all of that.

Sometimes I wonder: If I had not met Hill and convinced him to go public with the story, and the Bobby Baker case and Lyndon's part in it had not come out as a result, would Dallas not have happened? I don't like to think about that.

There has always been a aspect of the Bobby Baker case I have not been able to understand. Hill told Baker he planned to go to the press with his story. Baker ignored these threats. As Brennen points out, the story was slow to get out. Before publishing their story reporters contacted Johnson. He was furious and he told Baker to sort it out with Hill before the story got published. (2) For some reason, Baker refused claiming that the story would not go public. He was wrong and in September, 1963, the story appeared in the September edition of the Vend magazine (3).

The story was then picked up by the Washington Post (4) and became big news. It was as a result of this story that Don Reynolds contacted John Williams. Some else tipped off Williams about the parties that Baker had been holding for politicians, business contacts, members of the underworld and women of easy virtue (very few were actually prostitutes) at Carole Tyler’s home. It was also revealed that Tyler’s home was actually owned by Baker.

The question is why did Baker not sort it out? Baker just claims it was the biggest mistake of his life. I suspect Baker is not telling the truth about Hill. Is it possible that the it was already out of Baker’s control. That some powerful figure was already setting up Johnson? That Johnson was being moved into a position that would guarantee that he would participate in the cover-up.

Notes


(1) Phil Brennan, Some Relevant Facts About the JFK Assassination (19th November, 2003)

(2) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) pages 175-76

(3) Vending Magazine (September, 1963)

(4) Washington Post (12th September, 1963)

Thanks John and James,

I wanted to check how close he was to the Baker/Rowland suspect. I suppose he could pass for early 30s, and the dark hair is a match. If weight also matched, I could use those sightings to rule him out.

Not sure if you're aware, but there may be some exciting developments on the fingerprint evidence next year through a researcher in Ohio named Jim Olmstead.

Could you provide more details about this? Is Jim Olmstead checking Nathan Darby's original research?

If Mac Wallace's fingerprint is identified as being the one found in the TSBD, does it prove that he was there on the day of the assassination? Is it not possible that Wallace touched the box and it was then placed in the TSBD to implicate Johnson? This would then have given Johnson a good reason to suppress this evidence and to ensure that a cover up took place.

John,

The FBI said in a memo on the 23ed that the images lifted by Day from the triggerguard were of no value. In a legal sense, this means that they cannot be sad to belong to any particular individual. Using software developed by the FBI, Jim has concluded that the prints do have value... and may match an individual whose prints are in the DPD files.

Jim was in the process of trying to get the FBI interested when 9/11 happened. Any small chance they may have taken up the "cause" was lost at that time.

I don't want to get into a debate -- or even a discussion on this, as I am bound at some point to misrepresent Jim's work.

However he did a presentation at the Wecht conference last November, and a DVD set of the conference is now available line. A google search should find it.

As a result of his presentation, he now has some expert help, and as I understand it, he is planning to take further action on the issue in the coming year.

I have argued that I believe LBJ was set-up as a patsy in order to persuade him to cover up the Kennedy assassination. I therefore believe that the Baker Scandal was forced out into the public domain by the conspirators to kill Kennedy. I have examined Baker’s role in this. I now want to look at the role played by Don Reynolds in this conspiracy.

The LBJ tapes show that there was a concerted effort to smear Reynolds. On 5th February, 1964, the Washington Post reported that Reynolds had lied about his academic success at West Point. The article also claimed that Reynolds had been a supporter of Joseph McCarthy and had accused business rivals of being secret members of the American Communist Party. It was also revealed that Reynolds had made anti-Semitic remarks in the early 1950s.

A few weeks later the New York Times reported that Lyndon B. Johnson had used information from secret government documents to smear Reynolds. It also reported that Johnson's officials had been applying pressure on the editors of newspapers not to print information that had been disclosed by Reynolds in front of the Senate Rules Committee.

It was assumed that the information came from FBI files? However, one has to ask why the FBI were keeping a file on Reynolds in the 1950s. Support for Joseph McCarthy and making anti-Semitic remarks are hardly likely to create much concern at the FBI. Is it possible that this information came from the CIA? If so, why would the CIA be interested in Reynolds?

I did some research into the background of Reynolds and discovered that in the early 1950s he was working as a U.S. consular official in Berlin. He was therefore in Berlin at the same time as Maxwell Taylor, John McCloy, David Morales, Ted Shackley and William Harvey. He also shared their right-wing views.

Was Reynolds used to manipulate Johnson? Why does Reynolds accept a pay-off before giving evidence against Johnson on the day Kennedy was assassinated? He appears to be willing to do this after the assassination. Reynolds is quoted as saying “it is one thing to give evidence against a vice-president, it is something else to give evidence against a president”. Was that the only reason he went quiet after the assassination?

Just before JFK was assassinated he upset people like Clint Murchison and Haroldson L. Hunt when he talked about plans to submit to Congress a tax reform plan designed to produce about $185,000,000 in additional revenues by changes in the favourable tax treatment until then accorded the gas-oil industry. Kennedy was particularly upset that Hunt, who had an annual income of about $30,000,000, paid only small amounts of federal income tax.

In Barr McClellan’s book, Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK (1) he argues that the assassination was paid for by oil millionaires. McClellan claims that Clark got $2 million for this work.

The assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 per cent. It remained unchanged during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan this resulted in a saving of over 100 million dollars to the American oil industry. Soon after Johnson left office it dropped to 15 per cent.

I decided to do some research into the origins of these tax concessions enjoyed by the oil industry. The story is an interesting one.

Sid Richardson (2) and Clint Murchison (3) were both involved in providing Johnson with election funds. However, in 1952, they decided to support Dwight Eisenhower in his election campaign. Part of the deal was that Eisenhower should appoint Robert Anderson as his Navy Secretary. Anderson was a close friend of Lyndon Johnson. During the Second World War Anderson purchased the KTBC Radio Station. (4) In 1943 he sold it to Johnson for $17,500. By 1951 the station was earning $3,000 a week. (5)

According to Robert Sherrill (6):

Anderson, a resident of landlocked Fort Worth, knew nothing of naval affairs before he got the post, but that hardly matters; all he needed to know was that Texas is the largest oil-producing state and that the Navy is the largest consumer of oil as well as leaser of valuable lands to favored oil firms. From this producer-consumer relationship things work out rather naturally, and it was this elementary knowledge that later made John Connally (who had for several years, through the good offices of his mentor Lyndon Johnson, been serving as Sid Richardson's attorney and who later became executor of the Richardson estate) and Fred Korth, also residents of Fort Worth, such able secretaries of the Navy, by Texas standards.

In 1956 Richardson and Murchison tried to persuade Eisenhower to drop Nixon and select Anderson as his running mate. Eisenhower refused but did agree to appoint Anderson as his Secretary of the Treasury (7):

Eisenhower, on the urging of Richardson and Lyndon Johnson, named him to the office of Secretary of Treasury, and on June 21 (1957), ten days after selling his gift oil property, Anderson was free and clear to tell the Senate Finance Committee that he held no property that would conflict with his interest in the cabinet post.

A few weeks later Anderson was appointed to a cabinet committee to "study" the oil import situation; out of this study came the present-day program which benefits the major oil companies, the international oil giants primarily, by about one billion dollars a year.

When Johnson arrived back from Dallas one of the first things he did was to phone Robert Anderson. It is not known what the two men talked about. However, other conversations were taped and this included Anderson providing advice to Johnson on the Baker Scandal (8).

Despite Johnson’s close relationship with Anderson, he is not mentioned in Robert A. Caro’s books: Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (9) and Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (10).

In 1987, Robert Anderson was found guilty of tax evasion. This was related to possible money laundering involving an unregistered off-shore bank that he operated. He was disbarred and sent to prison. He died in 1989.

Notes

(1) Barr McClellan, Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK (2003)

(2) Sid Richardson: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrichardsonS.htm

(3) Clint Murchison: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmurchison.htm

(4) Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 247

(5) Robert A. Caro, Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (2002) page 424

(6) Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (1967) page 144

(7) Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (1967) page 145

(8) Michael R. Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964 (1997)

(9) Robert A. Caro, Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power (1982)

(10) Robert A. Caro, Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (2002)

I have collected together the information I have so far on Robert Anderson at:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKanderson.htm

Please let me know if you have any information on this man. I am especially interested in links with Bobby Baker and Fred Black.

I have had an email about Robert Anderson. The person wishes to remain anonymous. I thought it was worth posting as it might help others researching Anderson.

Regarding the Robert Caro LBJ biography project: You state that Robert B. Anderson is not mentioned in Volumes 1 & 3. He is mentioned, however, in Vol 2, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent (pages 83 & 84). The mention of Anderson, in name, is brief and has to do with the fact that he was one of the three owners of the Austin, Texas radio station that was later purchased by the Johnsons (officially, only Lady Bird). The description of the whole story of the radio station purchase, however, takes up much of the chapter entitled, “Buying and Selling.”

Another book I have that mentions Anderson is the James Reston, Jr., biography, The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally (pages 165-167). It states that after Eisenhower was elected, Sid Richardson influenced him to appoint Anderson as Secretary of the Navy. It goes on to discuss speculation that Anderson might have been in a position to help Clint Muchison out of tax problems with the famous Hotel Del Charro in California, when he later became Secretary of the Treasury. It seems an upset man from San Diego had written a letter to newspaper columnist Drew Pearson in which he asked, “…Why doesn’t the Treasury Department rule on this dodge? …One reason the Treasury Department wasn’t interested could have been that Richardson’s own man, Robert B. Anderson, had moved from the Navy Department to the Treasury Department.”

I have always found it fascinating to read about the goings on at the Hotel Del Charro.

Eisenhower Declassified by Virgil Pinkley (with James F. Scheer) has two interesting refs:

1) When Anderson was Secretary of the Navy Eisenhower gave him the mission of desegregating the Department of the Navy. Book says the Texas Democrat Anderson "lit up" and accomplished the mission in 90 days. (pages 346-347)

2) After the 1956 election Eisenhower faced Democratic majorities in both houses of congress, so he called Anderson back from private business in New York and asked him to be Secretary of the Treasury. That was only part of the story, what he really wanted Anderson for was to be his confidential liaison with Anderson's Texas friends House Speaker Sam Rayburn and Senate Majority Leader LBJ. (page 359)

Thy Will Be Done - The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil by Gerard Colby (with Charlotte Dennett).

1) In 1954 Nelson Rockefeller was appointed chairman of the (Operations Coordinating Board) OCB's 5412 Committee (also called the "Special Group"). Other members were Undersecretary of State Hebert Hoover, Jr., Defense Undersecretary Robert B. Anderson (representing Defense Secretary Wilson), and Allen Dulles (representing the CIA). I am a little confused on the Anderson timeline, i.e., when he went from Secretary of the Navy to Under Secretary of Defense to private business in New York, then back to Sec of the Treasury, etc.. Describes the Special Group as only second to the President in having responsibility for managing covert operations, but actually more powerful than the President. (page 851 note 21)

2) As Treasury Secretary shoot down an Eisenhower idea to work with the Soviet Union to aid third world countries (sounds crazy but one needs to read the whole thing). (page 328)

3) Re: LBJ transition from JFK foreign-aid policies. CIA director John McCone advised LBJ to bring back Anderson to head the Alliance for Progress (I don't see if he actually took this post). (page 422)

4) LBJ sent Anderson on a mission to Peru re: oil business. (page 538-539)

5) Re: Senate Rules Committee hearings on Bobby Baker. This is a long footnote that mentions Anderson's ties to Nelson Rockefeller and describes him as a former major stockholder in Delada Oil. Refs to: "On Delada, see Bernard B Nossiter, _'Ex-Treasury Chief Received Oil Funds,' Washington Post, June 16, 1970." (page 880 note 6)

My editorializing on this second book: Extremely important work with tons of vital information but also seriously flawed. It paints an extremely inaccurate picture of the role of the Rockefeller family in world power circles. I strongly feel that this must have been deliberate.

Another message from my anonymous contact. I believe this to be very important information. I will explain later today.

Thy Will Be Done - The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil by Gerard Colby (with Charlotte Dennett), (page 880 note 6)

6. Four Texans were named in Senate Rules Committee hearings in connection with payoffs and loans to Baker: Thomas E. Webb, Clint Murchison, Jr., Robert H. Thompson, and Bedford Wynne. Webb was involved in a Florida land-development loan from Hoffa's Teamsters Pension Fund, and Murchison's Tecon Corporation allegedly paid Webb to negotiate the loan (see John Masher, "Murchison Associate Reveals Baker Tieup in Joint Venture," Dallas Morning News, January 29, 1964). Webb and Murchison employee Thompson were also involved in questionable loans to Baker arranged by Dallas banker Robert H. Stewart.

Finally, Wynne took a "salary" from Murchison's Sweetwater Development Company that was criticized in an army audit of Sweetwater's construction of a North Carolina desalination plant built with federal contracts. Baker, after recommending Wynne hire the law firm of New York Congressman Emmanuel Celler to help in the project, received $2,500 of the $10,000 Sweetwater paid the Celler firm in legal fees ("Didn't Know Firm, Murchison States," Dallas Morning News, February 5, 1965). Both Stewart and Wynne were directors of the Great Southwest Corporation, a venture in real estate holdings located between Dallas and Fort Worth, in which Nelson Rockefeller and his brothers had a large stake through Rockefeller Center, Inc. This was part of Nelson's growing business ties with conservative Texan oil and financial principals, including Robert B. Anderson, a major stockholder in Delada Oil, controlled by Bedford Wynne's uncle, T. L. Wynne (and after Anderson's sellout to return to the Eisenhower administration, 50-percent-controlled by Nelson's IBEC), and real estate developer Trammel Crow, a director of Great Southwest. Control of Southwest, according to congressional investigators, "was tightly centered in the Rockefeller and Wynne families" (House Committee on Banking and Currency. Staff Report, The Penn Central Failure and the Role of Financial Institutions [Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970], part III, p. 30; see also Congressional Record, January 26, 1965, p. 1313, and Senate Committee on Rules, Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium [Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 19641, pp. 859-87). On Stewart, see Senate Committee on Rules, Financial or Business Interests of Officers or Employees of the Senate (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 987ff. On Delada, see Bernard B. Nossiter, "Ex-Treasury Chief Received Oil Funds," Washington Post, June 16, 1970.

In 1966, Baker was convicted of fraud and taking bribes and was subsequently imprisoned. Wynne, Murchison, and Webb denied any wrongdoing and were not charged with any crime.

More on Anderson

In Johnson's memoirs, The Vantage Point, he records that on the day after the assassination, Eisenhower drove down to Washington and made out a list describing what he'd do if he was in Johnson's shoes. Number one on the list was that Johnson should send for Anderson to confer on general subjects. Later on, LBJ sent Anderson to Panama and Egypt as a special ambassador.

The Making of the President 1964 by T. White p.74 reflects that Eisenhower wanted Anderson to run for President instead of Goldwater, but that Anderson actually supported Johnson. On p. 369 it says that Anderson was a member of the National Independent Committe for Johnson and Humphrey.

A number of other books reflect that Anderson had once owned the TV station Lady Bird ended up with and that Anderson advised Johnson throughout his Presidency. The Beschloss books of LBJ transcripts include a number of calls to Anderson.

One rare book that mentions Anderson is Robert Keith Gray's Eighteen Acres Under Glass. In this book, Gray, Eisenhower's Secretary of the Cabinet, says that he'd vote Bob Anderson for King. He says that Anderson had been Ike's dream choice for Vp in 56, and that, with Dulles and Herter travelling so much, Anderson was usually third in line behind Ike and Nixon at the cabinet meetings. Evidentally, Anderson knew his numbers and was low-key and impressive as hell.

The only thing I found on Anderson which might lead somewhere would be that in Ben Bradlee's memoirs, A Good Life, he mentions a scandal involving Anderson. On page 237, he says that Kennedy cancelled all 24 White House subscriptions to the New York Herald-Tribune after it failed to print a word on Senator Stuart Symington's investigation of stock piling policies. Evidently, this investigation revealed that, while the government lost nearly a billion dollars, some producers dealing with the government had made 700-1000 percent, and that 3 members of Eisenhower's cabinet, George Humphrey, Arthur Fleming, and Robert Anderson had made windfall profits. Sure would be curious as to what the investigation revealed and whether or not any of the companies involved were from Texas... It might also be interesting to know if any criminal charges were ever pondered and if and when they went away.

Thank you for this. Two immediate responses:

(1) I think it is highly unlikely that Eisenhower did want Anderson to be his VP. That is what Murchison and Richardson wanted to buy but Eisenhower refused. Instead, he gave Anderson the far more important post of Secretary of the Treasury (Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967, page 145). That raises the question why Murchison and Richardson wanted Anderson to be VP? Was it the same reason that they wanted Johnson to be Kennedy’s VP?

(2) Anderson was sent to prison in 1987 as a result of his role in this scandal. I did not know that Stuart Symington was behind the investigation of Anderson. This could be relevant. Symington had been under the control of Murchison and Richardson in the 1950s. However, his support for the “oil industry” made him unpopular with other sections of the party. In an attempt to win the Democratic nomination in 1960 he broke all links with this group. Symington was defeated by Kennedy for the nomination. At the Democratic convention Kennedy was expected to select Symington as his VP. At the last minute, Kennedy, to the surprise of all his closest advisers, he selected Johnson instead. Was Symington gaining revenge by exposing Anderson? Or was there another reason for this investigation?

More on Anderson. Some of this is good.

The Murchisons by Jane Wolfe reveals on p. 274 that in June 1961, John Murchison was victorious in a proxy fight for the control of Allegheny Corporation. He made himself president temporarily, but was rumored to have offered the position to Robert Anderson and John McCloy, both of whom turned it down.

In Stephen Ambrose's Eisenhower the President on p. 607 it says that when Kennedy visited Eisenhower a week before assuming power he asked Ike about Symington's report, which was shocking in its assertions of Anderson's wrongdoing. Ike told him the report was so useless as to be ridiculous, and urged Kennedy not to act "until he himself could become well acquainted with the problem." "Eisenhower himself stressed to Kennedy the seriousness of the balance-of-payments problem (and later subjected Kennedy to a forty-five minute lecture from Robert Anderson on the subject). "I pray the he understands it," Eisenhower wrote in his diary."

On p. 609, Ambrose describes a meeting of Ike, his cabinet, and the CIA, where Ike proposed creating a reason for the U.S. to attack Cuba before he left office, to which Secretary of State Christian Herter proposed that the U.S. fake an attack on Guantanamo. This story is repeated in Bissell's Reflections of a Cold Warrior, but in Ambrose's account Anderson is there and he said that "rather than break relations, he favored vigorous action, now, to "get rid of Castro." He wanted the CIA to get going."

So here we have a Texan with ties to the Murchisons, who is also a former Secretary of the Navy, and is additionally a strong advocate of the CIA and its removal of Castro, as one of Ike's and LBJ's top advisers. I see why John is so interested in him.

As I stated on another thread, Oswald was Marines, a branch of the Navy, and ONI must have known about him, or was controlling him...not that he was the lone gunman of course, but that his staged antics and frame came out of the naval side of things......Robert Anderson looks like the point man......

As Dept. Secretary of Defense he was at the top of the security clearance pyramid and had access to all sorts of Cold War Plans and Programs....

As Secretary of Treasury he had control of the Secret Service until C.D. Dillon came in and probably had hired or at least had influence with people like Emory and Greer....so he would be a Navy Texas Oil Republican DDOD Secretary of Treasury with ties to Murchison and Richardson, and the man who "gave" LBJ his lucrative radio station.....

Then there is this
quote
In 1954 Nelson Rockefeller was appointed chairman of the (Operations Coordinating Board) OCB's 5412 Committee (also called the "Special Group"). Other members were Undersecretary of State Hebert Hoover, Jr., Defense Undersecretary Robert B. Anderson (representing Defense Secretary Wilson), and Allen Dulles (representing the CIA). I am a little confused on the Anderson timeline, i.e., when he went from Secretary of the Navy to Under Secretary of Defense to private business in New York, then back to Sec of the Treasury, etc.. Describes the Special Group as only second to the President in having responsibility for managing covert operations, but actually more powerful than the President. (page 851 note 21)
unquote

Robert Anderson, like Robert Lovett and Nelson Rockefeller, these are the type people who held themselves above the law and saw themselves as fit to pass judgment on the capacity of the President and order executive sanctions
...............
WAS THE JFK ASSASSINATION "LEGAL"???????

I believe all this is linked to Eisenhower’s Military Industrial Complex speech. As you probably know, the speech originally referred to the term “Military Industrial Congressional Complex”. Objections were raised and the word “Congressional” was removed. According to the person who wrote the speech, Malcolm Moos, Eisenhower was deeply concerned about a powerful group in Congress who were working closely with the armaments industry. If that was the case, Eisenhower was talking about the group led by Johnson and Russell. As he appeared to be concerned by what Robert Anderson was up to, he would have been aware of the link with Richardson, Murchison, Kerr and the Brown brothers.

Your reference to McCone is interesting. One of the things we know about Johnson’s political career is that he insisted on unanimous reports. I think we can therefore say that everyone on the Warren Commission was linked in to Johnson’s corrupt dealings before the assassination. All of them were controllable. The big question is why Johnson put Russell under so much pressure to serve on the commission? This is followed by a second question. Why was Russell so keen not to serve?

Richard Russell was his own man. As Governor of Georgia, he was more powerful than even Gene Talmadge, because he worked better with the National Democratic Party than Talmadge. Richard Russell was longtime chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, and chaired the Intelligence Subcommittee.

He was as powerful in his day, over intelligence, as the entire Joint Committee on Intelligence is today. Basicallly he ran the congressional Intelligence oversight function out of his back packet, no investigations, no leaks, no Church/Kean type investigative oversight, just Senator Russell keeping an eye on the CIA and NSA during the Cold War....that is why Johnson wanted and needed him on the Warren Commission.

He did not want to serve because he knew "that dog won't hunt"

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell Partnership: Part 1

In the first part of the seminar I have attempted to look at the evidence that links Lyndon Johnson with the assassination. I have concluded that although this evidence proves that LBJ played a crucial role in the cover-up, there is no evidence available that shows he was involved in the planning of the assassination. This does not mean that he did not take part in the conspiracy. In fact, I am pretty convinced that he did. What I am saying is that we are unlikely to ever find the evidence that this was the case. This is not surprising as LBJ was a master of concealing his true role in political events. However, I do believe that we do have evidence that helps to fully explain why JFK was assassinated.

The story begins in 1948 when Johnson attempted to be elected to the Senate. His main opponent in the Democratic primary in Texas (then a one party state, contested elections occurred in primaries, not in the general election) was Coke Stevenson. Johnson won by 87 votes but Stevenson accused him of ballot-rigging. The man suspected of organizing this was John Connally, the future governor of Texas. The same man who was in the car when Kennedy was assassinated.

Coke Stevenson obtained an injunction preventing Johnson's name from appearing on the ballot for the general election. Abe Fortas represented Johnson in this long-drawn out dispute. The case was investigated by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Johnson was eventually cleared by Hoover of corruption and was allowed to take his seat in the Senate. This marks the beginning of Hoover’s close relationship with Johnson.

Johnson already had a powerful friend in Congress: Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. Rayburn, who did not have any children, had virtually adopted Johnson as his son. On the surface, Rayburn kept his distance from Johnson. Behind the scenes he was to play a crucial role in helping Johnson become an important political force.

Soon after Johnson entered the Senate he phoned a 20 year old Senate page called Bobby Baker: “Mr. Baker. I understand you know where the bodies are buried in the Senate. I appreciate it if you’d come by my office and talk to me.” (1) During their meeting Johnson told Baker “I want to know who’s the power over there, how you get things done, the best committees, the works.” Baker’s replied: “Dick Russell is the power”. (2)

Russell was the leader of the Southern Caucus. However, this was not enough to become the most powerful man in the Senate. Russell also had control over a significant number of other Democratic senators. More importantly, he also had a great deal of influence over some Republican senators. How did Baker know about this? Because Baker was involved in delivering the envelopes filled with cash. This is what Johnson meant when he said to Baker “you know where the bodies are buried”.

Baker not only knew who was willing to sell their votes, he knew who could be blackmailed into submission. As Evan Thomas pointed out Baker “made it his business to know things: who owed whom a favour, who was drunk, who was on the take, who was sleeping with his secretary.” (3) Baker was to be very useful to Johnson. It was the start of a very fruitful relationship.

Baker also told Johnson that Russell was a lonely bachelor. Johnson immediately realized that he could employ the same strategy with Russell that he had with Rayburn. He could become the loyal son that he never had. Interestingly, Johnson always avoided being in the company of Rayburn and Russell at the same time. It was very important that they both did not know that he treated them both the same. As Jim Rowe told Robert Caro: “Lyndon didn’t want his two daddies to see how he acted with the other one.” (4)

Russell was well-known to be the leader of those who were determined that no effective civil rights legislation should be passed by Congress. Russell told his constituents in 1935: "As one who was born and reared in the atmosphere of the Old South, with six generations of my forebears now resting beneath Southern soil, I am willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and insure white supremacy in the social, economic, and political life of our state as any man who lives within her borders." (5)

In 1935 Russell was involved in the fight against attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation. The 1935 Costigan-Wagner bill proposed federal trials for any law enforcement officers who failed to exercise their responsibilities during a lynching. Russell applied pressure on Franklin Roosevelt to persuade him not to support this bill. Roosevelt succumbed and refused to speak out in favour of the bill that would punish sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. He argued that the white voters in the South would never forgive him if he supported the bill and he would therefore lose the 1936 presidential elections. (6)

Russell, like most politicians from the Deep South, was a racist. He was much more than that. He saw his role as a defender of those rights that had been threatened by the Confederate defeat in the Civil War. Russell knew he was outnumbered. To win the war he needed allies from outside the Deep South. Russell suspected he was destined to lose over the issue of civil rights unless he linked it up with another issue. That issue was one of government regulation. The sort of government regulation that had been introduced by Roosevelt as part of his New Deal. To people like Russell, this was an example of the evils of socialism and was part of the worldwide communist conspiracy. As one of fellow senators told Robert Caro: “There was no more ardent cold warrior in Congress than Dick Russell.” (7)

Russell was also an avid supporter of increased military spending. His dominance of the Armed Services Committee for more than a quarter of a century, helped him promote this cause. As he was also the leader of the Southern Caucus, he was also able to manipulate other important committees. As one reporter pointed out at the time: “It has not escaped the notice of other senators who are interested in projects for their districts or in good committee assignments for themselves that Russell, like the Lord, has the power both to give and to take away.” (8)

The situation was well summed up by the New York Times: “Like the Confederate commander of a century ago, Robert E. Lee, Richard Bevard Russell of Georgia is also a master of tactics and strategy and a much respected, even beloved adversary.” (9) Unknown to this reporter, senators from outside the Deep South also had other reasons to treat Russell with respect.

Russell was totally opposed to government regulation of industry. He was less vocal about this though as regulation brought in by Roosevelt had resulted in keeping down costs down of things like gas and electricity.

Russell’s power came from the way he linked these issues together. People like George and Herman Brown, Clint Murchison, Sid Richardson, H. L. Hunt, etc. were all racists who were willing to fund extreme right-wing groups. But more importantly than that, they were businessmen who wanted to make money. Russell knew that these men would be willing to pay a considerable amount of money out in bribes in order to get these profitable government contracts.
For example, George and Herman Brown’s company, Brown & Root was given a contract in 1941 to build sub-chasers and destroyers. This contract was eventually worth $357,000,000. Yet until they got the contract, Brown & Root had never built a single ship of any type. (10)

In December, 1948, Johnson went to see Russell. He asked if he could be a member of his Armed Services Committee. At first he was highly suspicious of Johnson. He was known to be a keen supporter of the New Deal and in favour of government regulation of industry. Johnson was also considered to be a liberal on civil rights issues. Russell was encouraged by the fact that Johnson was corrupt and willing to sell any of the ideals he appeared to have. This approach lost him the love of Helen Douglas, who was a genuine liberal, but after all, money and power were always more important to Johnson than sex. (11)

John Connally later recalled that when you saw the two men together “Russell would be doing the talking. He (Johnson) would be sitting quietly, listening, absorbing wisdom, very much the younger man sitting at the knees of the older man.” (12)

As with Rayburn, Johnson used Lady Bird to get close to Russell. She played the role of the dutiful daughter. It was not long before Russell was spending most weekends at Johnson’s home. Johnson’s daughter, Lynda Bird, later said: “Daddy was the kind of man who believed it was more important to invite Richard Russell… over for Sunday breakfast than to spend the time alone with the family. (13)

Johnson had to prove to Russell that he was willing to abandon his liberal past. This included his first speech in the Senate on 9th March, 1949. The speech was an attack on Harry Truman’s proposed civil rights legislation that would have given black Americans protection against lynching and discrimination in employment. It would also have made it easier for them to vote. In the speech Johnson argued that Truman’s proposals were a call “for depriving one minority (white people living in the Deep South) of its rights in order to extend rights to other minorities”. (14)

Johnson told the Senate that he also disliked lynching. However, lynching was already dying out and therefore “rendered such a law virtually unnecessary”. Johnson also objected to the idea that a “Federal Government can by law tell me whom I shall employ”.

Johnson had passed his first test. He had shown he was a loyal member of the Southern Caucus. However, in terms of his long term career, this was a dangerous thing to do. He therefore tried to give the impression he was never a member of this group. This has been accepted by many historians. In her book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote: “he (Johnson) declined Russell’s invitation to join the Southern Caucus”. (15) In their biography, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power, Rowland Evans and Robert Novak wrote: “In his first weeks as a Senator… Johnson made clear that he would not attend the Southern Caucus.” (16)

This was of course completely untrue. As Robert Caro points out in his book, Master of the Senate, Richard Russell gave an interview in 1971 where he admitted that Johnson was a loyal member of the group. He added “He (Johnson) attended all of them (meetings of the Southern Caucus) until he was elected Leader”. Russell admitted that he went along with Johnson’s wishes to keep his attendance a secret. (17)

In 1948 there was only one senator from the South who was not a member of this group (Claude Pepper from Florida). The following year, another senator stopped attending. That was Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Like Johnson, Kefauver had long-term ambitions to become president.

In 1949 Robert Kerr of Oklahoma attempted to introduce a bill which would have ended federal price control over natural gas. It had support from his own company, Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, as well as Humble Oil, Brown & Root, Phillips Petroleum, etc. Although passed by Congress, Truman vetoed the bill. (18)

The oil companies had to think of another way to remove federal price controls. Russell, decided that this was a task that was worth giving to Johnson. Russell therefore told Johnson to destroy Leland Olds, the head of the Federal Power Commission. Olds had been a radical journalist and a member of the American Labor Party in the 1920s. By the 1930s he was a loyal follower of Franklin D. Roosevelt and eventually he appointed him as head of the Federal Power Commission. In this post Olds advocated tough regulation of these industries. In 1948 he was nominated by Truman to serve a third term as chairman of the FPC.

As Robert Dalleck has pointed out in Lone Star Rising: “Texas oil and gas interests and anyone who saw those industries as synonymous with the well-being of the state viewed Olds as an unmitigated foe who would give the FPC an anti-industry and anti-Texas majority for several years.” (19)

It was vitally important to Russell’s backers that Olds was removed from office. The big producers were planning substantial price increases. It was claimed that an increase of five cents per one thousand cubic feet of natural gas would boost the value of the Texas Panhandle holdings of Phillips Petroleum by 400 million dollars.

Others wanting to put up prices was the Kerr-McGee Oil Company. Its owner, Robert Kerr, had just been elected to the Senate to represent Oklahoma and was desperate to get rid of Olds. Others who believed this included George and Herman Brown. They owned the Big Inch and Little Inch natural gas pipelines. The brothers, shared the view with Kerr, Murchison, and Richardson, that Olds would never allow these price increases. Therefore, Russell was supplied with the necessary amount of money to get him removed from power.

Russell decided that Johnson, as a well-known supporter of the New Deal, would make the ideal candidate to destroy Olds. As John Connally pointed out: “This (the defeat of Olds) was the real bread-and-butter issue to these oilmen. So this would prove whether Lyndon was reliable, that he was no New Dealer. This was his chance to get in with dozens of oilmen – to bring very powerful rich men into his fold who had never been for him, and were still suspicious of him.” (20)

Johnson was appointed chairman of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, that was to look at the record of Olds. Russell and Johnson packed this subcommittee with their supporters. Alvin Wirtz, the lobbyist for many Texas oil and natural gas companies, was put in charge of research into Olds’ background. Edward Clark helped him in this task. Clark, the owner of 40,000 shares in a Texas oil company (purchased at seven cents a share) was employed by Clint Murchison as his legal and political adviser. Clark said he was only in it for the money and could not care about communists, Wirtz, on the other hand “hated Reds almost as intensely as he did blacks”. (21)

In his career, Olds had written over 1,800 articles. Wirtz found 54 which he felt could be used against Olds. These were mainly written in the 1920s when Olds had been a socialist. During the hearings these articles were used to accuse Olds of being a Marxist. At the end of the subcommittee’s hearings, Johnson was able to get a unanimous report that Truman’s nomination as head of the Federal Power Commission should be rejected.

In the debate in the Senate only Wayne Morse (Oregon), Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota), William Langer (North Dakota), Paul Douglas (Illinois) and George Aiken (Vermont) were willing to speak up for Leland Olds. Humphrey made a passionate speech in defence of Olds:

“If Mr. Olds had the courage to stand up in the 1920s and say that he did not like the kind of rotten business practice, God bless him. Those who should be on trial tonight are those who sat serenely and did not raise a finger of protest when millions of people were robbed, families were broken, homes were destroyed, and businesses were bankrupted.”

Humphrey could do nothing against Johnson’s unanimous report claiming that Olds was a communist. On 12th October, 1949, the Senate rejected him by 53 to 15. To celebrate their victory, Sid Richardson hosted a week long party on his private island in the Gulf of Mexico (St. Joseph Island). Johnson and Richardson were joined by oil millionaires, Clint Murchison, Herman Brown, Amon Carter and Myron Blalock. (22)

Mon Wallgren, a former senator, was appointed as the new head of the Federal Power Commission. During Wallgren’s chairmanship, the policies and regulations that Leland Olds had instituted were removed.

Some of Johnson’s friends were deeply shocked by his destruction of Olds. Tommy Corcoran, no liberal, told Johnson that “it was the rottenest thing he’d ever done”. Ben Cohen described Johnson’s role in this as “shameful”. (23)

As Alfred Steinberg has pointed out, one of Harry Truman’s major objectives was to “eliminate existing special favouritism… by knocking out tax havens and the major loopholes, his economists estimated, tax revenues would increase by four billion dollars. Unfortunately for Truman, the major tax haven was the 27.5 per cent depletion allowance to oil producers, which reduced their tax bills to an insignificant level and made millionaires a common sight in the industry.” (24)

This measure had been introduced during the depression in the late 1920s. It was seen as a temporary measure but the Southern Caucus, organized by Richard Russell, managed to protect it from both Roosevelt and Truman. As the man behind the original legislation, Tom Connally from Texas said, “it became political suicide for any congressman from any oil state to oppose the depletion allowance.” (25)

Russell now arranged for Johnson to become Ernest McFarland’s chief whip. McFarland was the ineffective Senate Majority Leader. Johnson gradually took over McFarland’s duties.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell Partnership: Part 2

In 1952 the group led by Russell faced a serious problem. The two candidates Adlai Stevenson (Democrat) and Dwight Eisenhower (Republican), both posed a threat to the interests of the oil and gas industry. Eventually it was decided to back Eisenhower. Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson agreed to provide Eisenhower with a large sum of money. They also agreed to join forces with J. Edgar Hoover to run a smear campaign against Stevenson. (26)

Part of the deal was that Eisenhower should appoint Robert Anderson as his Navy Secretary. Anderson was a close friend of Lyndon Johnson. During the Second World War Anderson purchased the KTBC Radio Station. (27) In 1943 he sold it to Johnson for $17,500. By 1951 the station was earning $3,000 a week. (28)
According to Robert Sherrill (29):

Anderson, a resident of landlocked Fort Worth, knew nothing of naval affairs before he got the post, but that hardly matters; all he needed to know was that Texas is the largest oil-producing state and that the Navy is the largest consumer of oil as well as leaser of valuable lands to favored oil firms. From this producer-consumer relationship things work out rather naturally, and it was this elementary knowledge that later made John Connally (who had for several years, through the good offices of his mentor Lyndon Johnson, been serving as Sid Richardson's attorney and who later became executor of the Richardson estate) and Fred Korth, also residents of Fort Worth, such able secretaries of the Navy, by Texas standards.

Soon after being elected, Eisenhower stopped a grand jury investigation into the “International Petroleum Cartel” citing reasons of “national security”. (30) Eisenhower had already starting paying back the generous support he had received from the oil industry.

In 1954 Paul Douglas began making speeches in the Senate about the need for tax reforms in order to eliminate special privileges such as the oil depletion allowance. Douglas attempted to join the important Finance Committee. He held seniority priority and should have been given one of the two available seats on the committee. Johnson had to apply considerable pressure on Harry Byrd, the chairman of the Finance Committee, to stop this happening. (31)

In 1955 Johnson became majority leader of the Senate. Russell and Johnson now had complete control over all the important Senate committees. This was proving to be an expensive business. The money used to bribe these politicians came from Russell’s network of businessmen. These were men usually involved in the oil and armaments industries.

The collection of this money was arranged by a team of men. This included Edward Clark, Bobby Baker, Tommy Corcoran, John Connally, Cliff Carter, Jesse Kellem and Walter Jenkins. The money was collected in cash and then delivered to the politicians in paper envelopes by Baker. This was an important part of the process as it openly implicated these politicians in political corruption. Once in, it was impossible to get out. They could be relied upon to do as they were told for the rest of their political careers.

Johnson did not have his money delivered in this way. According to Edward Clark, these companies purchased advertising time on Johnson’s radio station, KTBC (32). This was confirmed by Don Reynolds in his testimony to the Senate Rules Committee (33).

In 1956 Richardson and Murchison tried to persuade Eisenhower to drop Nixon and select Anderson as his running mate. Eisenhower refused. He was no doubt worried why these Texas oil millionaires wanted their man to have a job with such little power as a Vice President. Did they expect Eisenhower to die in office?

Johnson attempted to become the Democratic Party presidential candidate in 1956. He failed and once again it confirmed to the Southern Caucus that it was probably impossible for one of them to ever get the nomination. Adlai Stevenson was elected as the Democratic candidate. Johnson refused to campaign for him and his business friends gave their cash to Eisenhower instead. He told friends that he was not upset when Stevenson was once again defeated by Eisenhower.

According to John Connally, large sums of money was given to Johnson throughout the 1950s for distribution to his political friends. “I handled inordinate amounts of cash”. A great deal of this came from Clint Murchison. Connally said this increased after he became Richardson’s personal attorney in 1951. (34)

Cornel Wilde worked for the Gulf Oil Corporation. In 1959 he took over from David Searls as chief paymaster to Johnson. He testified that he made regular payments of $10,000 to Walter Jenkins. (35)

This money was classed as “campaign contributions”. Edward Clark told Robert Caro that: “If Johnson wanted to give some senator money… Johnson would pass the word to give money to me or Jesse Kellam or Cliff Carter, and it would find its way into Johnson’s hands”. Bobby Baker had been used for transporting money but by 1959 Carter and Clark no longer trusted him. Clark reports that he did not trust Carter either and felt like Baker, was keeping some of the cash being provided by these companies. (36)

By the mid 1950s virtually every politician in Washington knew what was happening. Some because they were receiving the bribes. Others, because they had rejected approaches to join the network being run by Russell and Johnson.

In 1956 there was another attempt to end all federal price control over natural gas. Sam Rayburn played an important role in getting it through the House of Representatives. This is not surprising as according to John Connally, he alone had been responsible for a million and a half dollars of lobbying. (37)

Paul Douglas and William Langer led the fight against the bill. Their campaigned was helped by an amazing speech by Francis Case of South Dakota. (38) Up until this time Case had been a supporter of the bill. However, he announced that he had been offered a $25,000 bribe by the Superior Oil Company to guarantee his vote. As a man of principal, he thought he should announce this fact to the Senate.

Johnson responded by claiming that Case had himself come under pressure to make this statement by people who wanted to retain federal price controls. Johnson argued: “In all my twenty-five years in Washington I have never seen a campaign of intimidation equal to the campaign put on by the opponents of this bill.” (39)

Johnson pushed on with the bill and it was eventually passed by 53 votes to 38. However, three days later, Eisenhower, vetoed the bill on grounds of immoral lobbying. Eisenhower confided in his diary that this had been “the most flagrant kind of lobbying that has been brought to my attention”. He added that there was a “great stench around the passing of this bill” and the people involved were “so arrogant and so much in defiance of acceptable standards of propriety as to risk creating doubt among the American people concerning the integrity of governmental processes”. (40)

Senators called for an investigation into the lobbying of the oil industry by Thomas Hennings, the chairman of the subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. Johnson was unwilling to allow a senator not under his control to look into the matter. Instead he set up a select committee chaired by Walter George of Georgia, a member of the Southern Caucus. (41) Johnson had again exposed himself as being in the pay of the oil industry. (42)

Drew Pearson of the Washington Post picked up on this story and wrote a series of articles about Lyndon Johnson and the oil industry. (43) Pearson claimed that Johnson was the “real godfather of the bill”. Pearson explored Johnson’s relationship with George and Herman Brown. He reported on the large sums of money that had been flowing from Brown & Root, the “big gas pipeline company” to Johnson. He also referred to the large government contracts that the company had obtained during the Second World War.

Pearson also quoted a Senate report that pointed out there was “no room for a general contractor like Brown & Root on Federal projects”. Nevertheless, Johnson had helped them win several contracts including one to build air-naval bases in Spain.”

Johnson was now in serious trouble and sought a private meeting with Pearson. He offered the journalist a deal, if Pearson dropped the investigation, he would support Estes Kefauver, in the forthcoming primaries. Pearson surprisingly accepted this deal. He wrote in his diary: “I figured I might do that much for Estes (Kefauver). This is the first time I’ve ever made a deal like this, and I feel unhappy about it. With the Presidency of the United States at stake, maybe it’s justified, maybe not – I don’t know.” (44)

The decision by Eisenhower to veto this bill angered the oil industry. Once again Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison began negotiations with Eisenhower. In June, 1957, Eisenhower agreed to appoint their man, Robert Anderson, as his Secretary of the Treasury (45):

Eisenhower, on the urging of Richardson and Lyndon Johnson, named him to the office of Secretary of Treasury, and on June 21 (1957), ten days after selling his gift oil property, Anderson was free and clear to tell the Senate Finance Committee that he held no property that would conflict with his interest in the cabinet post.

A few weeks later Anderson was appointed to a cabinet committee to "study" the oil import situation; out of this study came the present-day program which benefits the major oil companies, the international oil giants primarily, by about one billion dollars a year.
Liberals in the Senate became angry in 1957 over Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Bill. They first of all complained about the weakness of the original bill. Then they turned on Johnson when he assigned the bill to the Judiciary Committee. This was under the chairmanship of James Eastland, the most extreme racist in the Senate. As one historian pointed out, this resulted in the bill “being buried” by Eastland. (46) Joseph Rauh commented that it was now abundantly clear that Johnson was “running the Democratic party for the benefit of the Southern conservative viewpoint.” (47)

Johnson came under attack from members of his own party. Joe Clark from Pennsylvania campaigned for more northern liberals on the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Johnson refused and Clarke later told a friend: “I despised the guy… He was a typical Texan wheeler-dealer with no ethical sense whatsoever, but a great pragmatic ability to get things done”. (48)

On 23rd February, 1959, William Proxmire made a speech where he accused Johnson of using doctorial methods to control what was going on in the Senate: “There has never been a time when power has been as sharply concentrated as it is today in the Senate.” Proxmire pointed out that Johnson had developed a system that gave him “one-man rule”. He had that at no time in the senate’s history had power been “so sharply concentrated.” (49)

Johnson responded that: “I do not know how anyone can force a senator to do anything. I have never tried to do so.” (50) A few days later, in the full hearing of more than eighty senators, Johnson screamed out instructions to Allen Frear of Delaware, during a vote on removing a special tax loophole that had been enjoyed by the Du Pont Corporation. Frear was known as “200 per cent Johnson man”. However, on this occasion he seems to have got confused about which way he should have voted. “Change your vote, Allen!” shouted Johnson. Frear did as he was ordered and voted for the amendment. Clearly, Johnson had not been receiving any money from Du Pont Corporation. During the trial of Bobby Baker it emerged that Frear had been receiving regular envelopes stuffed with cash from Robert Kerr of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries. (51)

Proxmire received a lot of private support from senators. However, they asked him to keep their names out of it. Proxmire said that a typical response was: “You’re right. Keep it up, give it to him. But there was nothing open about that because frankly they were afraid of him. They feared his power.” (52)

Richard Russell told Proxmire that his behaviour “reminded him of a bull who had charged a locomotive train… That was the bravest bull I ever saw, but I can’t say a lot for his judgment. (53)

In January 1960, Albert Gore joined the attack. He stated that the Senate Democratic Policy Committee “should represent all the Democrats in the Senate, not merely one.” Johnson eventually agreed to hold a meeting for Democrats in the Senate. However, Johnson won an easy victory in persuading them to accept him as “total boss of the Policy Committee”. Only 12 voted against Johnson. This reflects the small number of senators not under his control. (54)

According to Drew Pearson, during the summer of 1960, Henry Luce, the publisher, “secretly assigned ace reporter Herbert Solow to dig up the facts about… Johnson’s radio and television holdings”. Solow came back with a report that… Johnson radio-television empire had prospered while Johnson served on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee which votes out funds to the Federal Communications Commission.” The story never appeared in Luce’s magazines. Pearson speculated that as Luce was supporting Nixon, the Solow material was only going to be used if Johnson won the nomination. (55)

By 1960 some took the view that Johnson’s power was in decline. The events of recent years had shown clearly that he was under the control of the oil industry in Texas. His manipulation of the people under his control illustrated that he was totally opposed to black civil rights. Although he had attempted to disguise the fact that he was a key member of the Southern Caucus, this strategy had failed. Johnson now knew he would find it impossible ever to get the Democratic Party nomination.

The Southern Caucus realised that Johnson would not win the 1960 nomination. Therefore they had to do a deal with John F. Kennedy, the man who seemed certain to win the prize. Robert Kennedy was dispatched to negotiate the Southern Caucus. In the book, Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words, he admits that he had talks with Jim Eastland, John Stennis, Dick Russell, Herman Talmadge and George Smathers about future policy. As a result deals were done concerning both civil rights and labour legislation. However, it is not reported if they discussed the 27.5 per cent depletion allowance. (56)

As I have explained earlier, John Kennedy’s decision to select Johnson as his running mate surprised both men’s advisers. The key question is why did Johnson give up his considerable power in the Senate in order to be marginalized by Kennedy as his vice president?

One man who realized this was significant was Dwight Eisenhower. He devoted his last speech as president to something he called the "Military Industrial Complex". (57)

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen...

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

As Robert Higgs has pointed out, the Military Industrial Complex began during the Second World War (58):

The government itself became the dominant investor, providing more than $17 billion, or two-thirds of all investment, during the war. Besides bankrolling ammunition plants, the government built shipyards, steel and aluminum mills, chemical plants, and many other industrial facilities. Thanks to government investment and purchases, the infant aircraft industry soared to become the nation's largest, building 297,000 aircraft by the war's end. One might justifiably call this government investment "war socialism."

But it had a peculiarly American twist that makes "war fascism" a more accurate description. Most of the government-financed plants were operated not directly by the government but by a relatively small group of contractors. Just twenty-six firms enjoyed the use of half the value of all governmentally financed industrial facilities leased to private contractors as of June 30, 1944. The top 168 contractors using such plants enjoyed the use of more than eighty-three percent of all such facilities by value. This concentration had important implications for the character of the postwar industrial structure because the operator of a government-owned, contractor-operated facility usually held an option to buy it after the war, and many contractors did exercise their options.

The arrangements created in 1940 and refined during the next five years completely transformed the relations between the government and its military contractors. In the words of Elberton Smith, the official army historian of the mobilization, the relationship "was gradually transformed from an 'arms length' relationship between two more or less equal parties in a business transaction into an undefined but intimate relationship." The hostility that businessmen had felt toward the government in 1940 evolved into a keen appreciation of how much a company could gain by working hand-in-glove with the military.

Eisenhower's speech was written by Malcolm Moos. He later pointed out that the text of the speech was altered at the last moment. The group that Eisenhower was warning about was originally described as the “Military Industrial Congressional Complex”. Objections were raised and Eisenhower agreed to remove the word Congressional.

This fact provides new meaning to this speech. Eisenhower was actually referring to the group in Congress run by Johnson and Russell. Eisenhower was also aware that these politicians were being funded by people like Clint Murchison and Herman Brown. In 1952 Eisenhower had agreed for their man, Robert Anderson, to enter his cabinet. Later he was to hold the important post as Secretary of the Treasury. In this post he introduced legislation beneficial to the oil industry. (59)

Eisenhower had been fully comprised during his own presidency. He had been unable to act after he had taken the money in order to allow Robert Anderson into his government. All Eisenhower could do was warn Kennedy of the problems that he faced. As Pat Speer has pointed out, Kennedy visited Eisenhower a week before assuming power. According to Eisenhower’s diary, the two men talked about a scandal involving Anderson. (60)

During the Kennedy presidency Johnson had to rely on Russell to keep control of the Congress. The money needed to do this was in short supply. Three of their main financial sponsors had died: Sid Richardson (September, 1959), Herman Brown (November, 1962) and Robert Kerr (January, 1963).

The civil rights issue had also become a big political issue. The Freedom Riders had caused significant embarrassment to the Kennedy administration. Robert Kennedy was furious when he discovered that J. Edgar Hoover had failed to take action when he received information from Gary Rowe (an undercover FBI agent) that the Ku Klux Klan planned to beat up the riders in Birmingham, Alabama. Rowe later told Henry Wofford, Kennedy’s special adviser on civil rights, that instead of stopping the violence, FBI agents had been “taking movies of the beatings.” (61)

Robert Kennedy began to realize that it was impossible to come to any acceptable agreement with the political leaders of the Deep South. (62) He decided to send in marshals to protect the Freedom Riders. He was pleased to discover that this action was popular with the public. A Gallup poll showed that 70% approved of Kennedy’s action. More importantly, around 50% of those question in the Deep South also thought Kennedy was right to do this. (63) Kennedy began to wonder whether it would be possible for a strong civil rights bill to get through Congress.

Kennedy had also started to take on the oil industry. The Kennedy Act, passed on 16th October, 1962, removed the distinction between repatriated profits and profits reinvested abroad. While this law applied to industry as a whole, it especially affected the oil companies. It was estimated that as a result of this legislation, wealthy oilmen saw a fall in their earnings on foreign investment from 30 per cent to 15 per cent. (64)

On 17th January, 1963, President Kennedy presented his proposals for tax reform. This included relieving the tax burdens of low-income and elderly citizens. Kennedy also claimed he wanted to remove special privileges and loopholes. He even said he wanted to do away with the oil depletion allowance.

The oil depletion allowance permitted oil producers to treat up to 27.5 per cent of their income as tax exempt. It was originally introduced to compensate for the depletion of fixed oil reserves. In reality, it gave the oil industry a lower tax rate. It was estimated that oilmen might lose nearly $300 million a year if the depletion allowance was diminished. Kennedy defended this action by arguing that “no one industry should be permitted to obtain an undue tax advantage over all others.” (65)

As Donald Gibson has pointed out in his book Battling Wall Street: “He (Kennedy) “focused on large oil and gas producers who were manipulating a 1954 law to avoid taxes and gain an advantage over smaller producers. He also proposed changes in foreign tax credits which allowed U.S. based oil, gas, and mineral companies to avoid paying U.S. taxes.” (66)

The Russell/Johnson group was facing another problem in 1963. The Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker scandals were being reported for the first time. People like Ralph Hill and Don Reynolds were willing to testify before the Senate Rules Committee. In October, 1963, Fred Korth, the Navy Secretary, was forced to resign over the FX Scandal. The following month Reynolds was due to testify that Johnson also received a $100,000 payment for arranging the FX contract. (67)

During these weeks of gradual revelation and proposed government legislation, the Russell/Johnson group must have considered the possibility of assassinating Kennedy. With Johnson as president, all those problems could be dealt with. Johnson would not only be able to halt the legislation, he would also be in a great position to cover-up both the scandals and the assassination.

They had a major problem. How could they possibly arrange the assassination of Kennedy without it ever being linked back to them. After all, it was clear to all who would be the major beneficiaries of the death of Kennedy. Looking at Johnson’s past record, he is likely to have had the idea of getting another group to carry out the deed. No doubt he had a few conversations with his mate J. Edgar Hoover about this. Clint Murchison was also likely to have been involved in these discussions. Hoover’s preference would have been a communist conspiracy. Especially if it included those subversive left-wing groups such as Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Socialist Worker Party. Maybe someone like David Morales (68) was brought in to discuss the logistics of the operation. He had plenty of friends in organisations such as Interpen (69) and Alpha 66 (70) who might carry out such an operation.

The problem with this analysis concerns the outcome of these events. Some got everything they wanted out of the operation. That includes Johnson and the Texas oil men. However, Hoover did not get his communist conspiracy, the Cubans did not the overthrow of Castro and Russell and the racists in the Deep South were unable to prevent the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. What went wrong? Or was there someone else pulling the strings.

Notes and References

1. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978, page 34

2. Robert Parker, Capitol Hill in Black and White, 1986

3. Evan Thomas, The Man to See, 1991, page 182

4. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 211

5. Richard Russell, letter to Eugene Talmadge (9th December, 1935)

6. Lynching: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm

7. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 180

8. Meg Greenfield, The Man who led leads the Southern Senators, The Reporter (21st May, 1964)

9. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 202

10. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 406

11. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, pages 141-45

12. John Connally, In History’s Shadow, 1993

13. Jan Jarboe Russell, Lady Bird, 1999, Page 155

14. Lyndon Johnson, speech in the Senate, 9th March, 1949

15. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, 1976, page 106

16. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power, 1966, page 32

17. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 219

18. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968, page 432

19. Robert Dalleck, Lone Star Rising, 1999 page 375

20. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 248

21. Edward Clark: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKclarkE.htm

22. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 305

23. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 288

24. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968, page 292-293

25. Tom Connally, My Name is Tom Connally, 1954

26. Anthony Summers, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, (1993) page 181

27. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 247

28. Robert A. Caro, Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate (2002) page 424

29. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (1967) page 144

30. Jim Marrs, Crossfire (1989) page 276

31. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968, page 406-407

32. Robert Caro, Means of Ascent (1990) page 103

33. Don Reynolds, testimony before the Senate Rules Committee (23rd November, 1963).

34. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 407

35. Securities and Exchange Commission v Gulf Oil Corporation (26th April, 1978)

36. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate, 2002, page 407

37. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968, page 432

38. Francis Case, speech in the Senate (3rd February, 1956)

39. Lyndon Johnson, speech in the Senate (3rd February, 1956)

40. Dwight Eisenhower, diary entry (11th February, 1956)

41. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 498

42. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968, page 433

43. Drew Pearson, Washington Post (26th 27th and 28th April, 1956)

44. Jack Anderson, Confessions of a Muckraker (1979) page 315

45. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (1967) page 145

46. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 498

47. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy (1968) page 436

48. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, LBJ: Exercise of Power (1968) page 213

49. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 548

50. Lyndon Johnson, speech in Senate (28th May, 1959)

51. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) pages 158-162

52. William Proxmire, Lyndon Johnson and the U.S. Senate (1986)

53. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 548

54. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy (1968) pages 512-513

55. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 571

56. Robert Kennedy, In His Own Words (1988)

57. Dwight Eisenhower, television speech (17th January, 1961)

58. Robert Higgs, World War II and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, Freedom Daily Magazine (May, 1995)

59. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President (1967) page 145

60. Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower the President (1984) page 607

61. Henry Woffard, Of Kennedys & Kings (1980) page 152

62. Robert Kennedy, In His Own Words (1988) pages 82-102

63. Gallup Poll, June, 1961

64. Jim Marrs, Crossfire (1989) page 277

65. John F. Kennedy, speech (17th January, 1963)

66. Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street (1994) page 23

67. Fred Korth: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkorth.htm

68. David Morales: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmorales.htm

69. Interpen: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKinterpen.htm

70. Alpha 66: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKalpha.htm

I agree, that if my theory is to stand up, that JFK was assassinated because of his change in position on topics such as civil rights, the Cold War and the MICC, then I have to explain why LBJ forced Richard Russell and his fellow racists to accept the 1965 Civil Rights Act. This is even more surprising given LBJ long record of public hostility to civil rights.

Johnson first speech in the Senate was an attack on Harry Truman’s proposed civil rights legislation that would have given black Americans protection against lynching and discrimination in employment. It would also have made it easier for them to vote. In the speech Johnson argued that Truman’s proposals were a call “for depriving one minority (white people living in the Deep South) of its rights in order to extend rights to other minorities”. (1)

Liberals in the Senate became angry with Johnson in 1957 over Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Bill. They first of all complained about the weakness of the original bill. Then they turned on Johnson when he assigned the bill to the Judiciary Committee. This was under the chairmanship of James Eastland, the most extreme racist in the Senate. As one historian pointed out, this resulted in the bill “being buried” by Eastland. (2) Joseph Rauh commented that it was now abundantly clear that Johnson was “running the Democratic party for the benefit of the Southern conservative viewpoint.” (3) This is why the civil rights activists were so upset when LBJ was selected as JFK's running mate.

The fact that LBJ was a racist is not only shown by his political record. It is also supported by information from his friends who claim he was a nasty racist in private (apparently he called his black servants “niggers” in front of people).

There is two possible reasons for this action. LBJ was being blackmailed by a liberal in JFK’s government who knew who was responsible for the assassination. This helps to explain why Richard Russell changed his mind on the subject.

When the bill was first introduced Russell told the Senate: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states." Russell organized 18 Southern Democratic senators in filibustering this bill. With the help of conservatives in the Republican Party he would have had no difficulty in blocking the bill.

Although in public LBJ and Russell were in great conflict over the civil rights bill, this is not reflected in the taped telephone conversations between the two men. In fact, they appear to be the best of friends and the issue is never raised.

On the 15th June, 1964, Russell privately told Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey, the two leading supporters of the Civil Rights Act, that he would bring an end to the filibuster that was blocking the vote on the bill. This resulted in a vote being taken and it was passed by 73 votes to 27.

Why did Russell do this? Had he been converted to the issue of civil rights? No. One answer is that both Johnson and Russell were being blackmailed into passing this legislation.

There is another possibility. When LBJ signed the 1965 Civil Rights Act he made a prophecy that he was “signing away the south for 50 years”. This proved accurate. In fact, the Democrats have never recovered the vote of the white racists in the Deep South. This is the electorate that now gives its support to the Republican Party. A new alliance has therefore taken place between the white racists, right-wing conservatives and Christian fundamentalists.

Maybe that was the long-term objective. It has resulted in the liberals in America losing all political power. Was that the long-term objective of the conspiracy?

Notes

1. Lyndon Johnson, speech in the Senate, 9th March, 1949

2. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising (1991) page 498

3. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy (1968) page 436

Robert Dallek is of course fully aware of LBJ’s racist past. It is fully documented in his book, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times. (1) Historians such as J. Evetts Haley (2) , Joachim Joesten (3), Robert A. Caro (4), Alfred Steinberg (5), Robert Sherrill (6), Rowland Evans and Robert Novak (7) have pointed out that in the early 1930s LBJ appeared to hold left of centre political opinions. Although he was not noted as a civil rights campaigner, he definitely had a deep sympathy for the plight of poor whites. Of course, this was not an unusual position to take during the Depression. It has to be remembered that in the 1930s Huey Long became a popular politician in the Deep South with a plan to redistribute wealth. Long told the Senate: "Unless we provide for redistribution of wealth in this country, the country is doomed." He added the nation faced a choice, it could limit large fortunes and provide a decent standard of life for its citizens, or it could wait for the inevitable revolution.

Johnson’s reputation as a liberal increased with his close involvement with the administration of the New Deal. However, as he told Herman Brown in 1937, this was a very complex issue and it was wrong to see him as a liberal. In fact, he was like all leading politicians in Texas, a staunch right-winger. (10)

As his biographers have pointed out, it was virtually impossible for someone to hold left of centre views and make it in politics in Texas. Only someone like Ralph Yarborough managed to do this. (11)

Dallek takes the view that LBJ retained these liberal views from his youth and once in power became determined to get the law changed. This is a nice idea but I cannot think of one example in world history where this has happened. There is a reason for this. It is called Leon Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance theory. Festinger discovered that in time people’s view of the world reflects their behaviour. (12) This is the basis of anti-racist discrimination laws. If you can make people behave in a certain way for any length of time, their opinions will change accordingly. Therefore I believe it is impossible for me to believe that LBJ had retained his liberal beliefs of his youth. In fact, to cope with the guilt he must have felt, he needed to really believe in the stances that he took over issues like civil rights.

Others have argued that LBJ remained a racist but was concerned about his place in history. If this was true, why was he not concerned about this in other aspects of his policy. For example, today, LBJ is more remembered for escalation the Vietnam War than getting the 1965 Civil Rights Act passed.

The other issue that needs to be addressed is why LBJ was allowed to do this. Throughout his career his political decisions had been under the control of his financial backers. People like George and Herman Brown, Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison, H. L Hunt, etc. As well as all being oil billionaires they had something else in common – they were all white supremacists. Over the years they had invested millions of dollars in funding organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society. It is true that Herman Brown and Sid Richardson were dead by 1965 but the others were still alive and very much active in politics. They also knew where all the bodies were buried and could have brought him down anytime they liked. Yet Richard Russell and the financial supporters of the Southern Caucus, decided to step back and allow the legislation to be passed. It is one of the largest political mysteries of modern times. It can only be answered by being aware of information that has never entered the public domain.

Notes and References

1. Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times (1991

2. J. Evetts Haley, A Texan Looks at Lyndon (1964) page 199.

3. Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1968)

4. Robert Caro, Means of Ascent, 1990

5. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968

6. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967

7. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, LBJ: Exercise of Power (1968)

8. Huey Long: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlongH.htm

9. Huey Long, speech in the Senate, February, 1934

10. Robert Caro, Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power, 1982, page 472

11. Ralph Yarborough: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKyarborough.htm

12. http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/dissonance.htm

Robert Kennedy is one possibility. This would help to explain why he kept quiet about his suspicions that his brother had been killed as a result of a conspiracy. From comments made soon after the assassination he thought it was a CIA/Anti-Castro Cuban plot. He probably suspected that LBJ was involved in the conspiracy. Anyway, he definitely knew he was involved in the cover-up.
However, I reject this idea. The main reason was that RFK detested LBJ. He would have hated the idea of LBJ getting the credit for civil rights legislation. Anyway, RFK was not fully committed to civil rights in 1964 (see the private interviews he gave to John Bartlow Martin and Anthony Lewis during this period). (1) However, I do suspect that RFK would have revealed what he knew about the assassination if he had gained power in 1968. That is why he had to die when he did.

My candidate would be Ralph Yarborough. (2) Unlike LBJ, Yarborough retained his commitment to civil rights. He was the only member of the Senate representing a former Confederate state to vote for every significant piece of civil rights legislation that was passed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Yarborough came from Texas and was fully aware of how LBJ had corrupted every senior politician in the state. Although LBJ and Richard Russell (3) were unable to get Yarborough to sell out his principles on civil rights, he was drawn into the network of corruption based around the activities of the oil billionaires. This was the main method of keeping people quiet about the MICC. Once part of the network, it was impossible to expose it.

Yarborough was appalled by the assassination of JFK. He was not the only one in the LBJ network who thought they had gone too far this time. Richard Russell was another. This was one of the reasons he was reluctant to join the Warren Commission.

Yarborough knew that if he came out with what he knew he would be exposed as someone who was also politically corrupt. Like Robert Kennedy, Yarborough was very protective of his reputation. Yarborough therefore calculated that he could gain maximum revenge by forcing LBJ and Russell to pass the 1965 Civil Rights Act.

You ask why Yarborough was allowed to live if he knew so much about LBJ and the assassination? I imagine for the same reasons why two other men that I know of are still alive although they have a considerable amount of information about the assassination. What you do is you place the documentary evidence that you have with your lawyer. This is locked away with instructions for it to be opened if you die in suspicious circumstances. Photocopies of this information is placed with several other people with the same instructions. Once this has been done, the person is safe.


Notes

(1) Edwin Guthman & Jeffrey Shulman, Robert Kennedy in His Own Words (1988)

(2) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKyarborough.htm

(3) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrussell.htm

As I have argued earlier, the Military Industrial Congressional Complex network began in 1937 when Lyndon Johnson joined up with the Brown brothers. Herman Brown (1) died in 1962. George Brown (2) decided to sell the business to Halliburton. As well as joining Halliburton, he also served on the board of other companies involved in the MICC.

During the Vietnam War Brown & Root won a $380 million contract to build airports, bases, hospitals and other facilities for the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. By 1967, the General Accounting Office had condemned Brown and Root “for massive accounting lapses”. Brown & Root became a target for anti-war protesters who called the firm the embodiment of the "military-industrial complex" (3).

Current criticism over Halliburton's lucrative Iraq contracts has some historians drawing parallels to a similar controversy involving the company during Lyndon B. Johnson's administration. Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam - allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts from the White House and war profiteering. Back then, the company's close ties to President Johnson became a liability.

In his book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate, Robert Bryce argues that Texas’ powerful crony network, centered around the energy industry, has come to dominate national politics. Bryce traces how Texas energy companies and law firms have propelled politicians from Lyndon B. Johnson to George W. Bush to power and how the candidates rewarded their backing once in office. (4)

Dan Briody’s book, The Halliburton Agenda, explains the workings of the MICC works in America today. (5) In 1992 Dick Cheney, head of the US Department of Defence, gave a $3.9m contract (a further $5m was added later) to Kellog Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The contract involved writing a report about how private contractors could help the Pentagon deal with 13 different “hot spots” around the world.

The KBR report remains a classified document. However, the report convinced Cheney to award a umbrella contract to one company to deal with these problems. This contract, which became known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme (Logcap), was of course awarded to KBR. It is an unique contract and is effectively a blank cheque from the government. KBR makes it money from a built in profit percentage. When your profit is a percentage of the cost, the more you spend, the more you make.

KBR’s first task was to go to Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope. KBR arrived before the US Army. Over the next few months KBR made a profit of $109.7m. In August 1994 KBR made $6.3m in Rwanda. Later that year they received $150m profit from its work in Haiti. KBR made its money from building base camps, supplying troops with food and water, fuel and munitions, cleaning latrines and washing clothes.

The contract came up for renewal in 1997. By this time Cheney had been appointed as CEO of Halliburton. The Clinton administration gave the contract to Dyncorp. The contract came to an end in 2001. Cheney was now back in power and KBR won back the Logcap contract. This time it was granted for ten years. The beauty of this contract is that it does not matter where the US armed forces are in action, the KBR makes money from its activities. However, the longer the troops stay, the more money it makes.

KBR is now busy in Iraq (it also built the detention cells in Guantanamo Bay). What is more Halliburton was given the contract for restoring the Iraqi oil infrastructure (no competitive bid took place).

Cheney sold his stock options in Halliburton for $30m when he became vice president. He claimed he had got rid of all his financial interests in Halliburton. However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) discovered that he has been receiving yearly sums from Halliburton: $205,298 (2001), $162,392 (2002), etc. They also found he still holds 433,333 unexercised stock options in Halliburton.

Notes and References

1. Herman Brown: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbrownH.htm

2. George Brown: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbrownG.htm

3. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483

4. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate (2004)

5. Dan Briody, The Halliburton Agenda (2004)

This statement reflects our different political ideology. I believe that economics is at the core of all political decision making. Therefore it is economics that will explain the JFK assassination. As I pointed out at the beginning of the thread, JFK posed a serious threat to the wealth of the Texas oilmen. As a result of the Kennedy wealthy oilmen had seen a fall in their earnings on foreign investment from 30 per cent to 15 per cent. It is estimated that the proposed removal of the oil depletion allowance would result in a loss of around $300 million a year. (1) We are talking about large sums of money. In fact, when the oil depletion allowance was eventually reduced, it resulted in Clint Murchison going bankrupt. This was an issue of survival. They could not continue in business without the oil depletion allowance.

As far as the people involved I would claim that the key members of the MICC in 1963 included Lyndon Johnson (2) , Richard Russell (3), George Brown (4), Clint Murchison (5) and John McCone (6).

It is of course impossible to say if any of these men were involved in the decision to assassinate JFK. They would never have left any evidence behind that would have won a conviction in court. People with that sort of power work like that. You say: “John suggests some rich old bastards were greedy enough not only to overlook whatever religious or moral scruples they might have for murder, but also to risk the death penalty.” My point is that “rich old bastards” never put themselves at risk of the death penalty. That is one of the advantages of being rich and powerful. You get other people to do the killing for you.



This strategy was not adopted because it would not have worked. I assume that when you talk about JFK’s “sex scandals” you are referring to his relationship with Ellen Romesch. It is true that JFK had been sleeping with a Soviet spy. However, LBJ’s supporters could not use this story to impeach JFK. Any investigation into this affair would have revealed how JFK met Romesch. As Bobby Baker revealed in Wheeling and Dealing, he was the one who got JFK involved with Romesch. Everybody knew that Baker was LBJ’s fixer. (7) It would have been clear to everyone concerned that JFK had been set up by LBJ. He would never have been able to replace JFK in 1964.

Anyway, LBJ would not have been vice president in 1964. You seem to have forgotten that Don Reynolds testified in a secret session of the House Senate Rules Committee on the day that that JFK was assassinated, that LBJ had been getting a rake-off for setting up the TFX contract. (8) LBJ’s friend, Fred Korth, had already been forced to resign as Navy Secretary because of this contract. (9) It was only by becoming president on the 22nd November that LBJ could survive. If he had left it any later, LBJ would himself have been impeached. This would have resulted in a full exposure of how LBJ and the MICC was controlling the distribution of arms contracts.

Notes and References

1. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, 1989, page 277

2. Lyndon Johnson: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjohnsonLB.htm

3. Richard Russell: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrussell.htm

4. George Brown: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbrownG.htm

5. Clint Murchison: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmurchison.htm

6. John McCone: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmccone.htm

7. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978, pages 78-79

8. Don Reynolds: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKreynoldsD.htm

9. Fred Korth: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkorth.htm

I am myself slightly uncomfortable about the Malcolm Wallace fingerprint. I am not sure it existed. Even if it did, I am not sure Hoover was aware of it at this stage of the investigation. Hoover had files on all leading American politicians and would have known a great deal about Johnson’s past. Hoover would have been aware that Wallace was a problem for Johnson. However, from the LBJ’s tapes it would seem that Johnson was in control of the situation. Hoover would have been unhappy with Johnson’s decision to go for the “non-political, lone gunman” theory. Yet he eventually agreed to this strategy. As I have explained, there were political reasons why Hoover did this. Maybe LBJ blackmailed him into this position. We know via Bobby Baker’s Wheeling and Dealing (1) and Robert Caro's Master of the Senate (2) that like Hoover, LBJ had files on everyone who was anyone. Hoover was himself very vulnerable (his homosexuality along with his passion for wearing women’s clothes). Apparently there were photographs of this that were in the possession of Meyer Lansky. According to Lansky, this was the reason why Hoover claimed that the Mafia did not exist. These photographs might have been obtained by Carlos Marcello who spent holidays with Hoover and Clyde Tolson. (3)

Other than the fingerprint, Loy Factor is the other source of information on this. Factor claims that Oswald, Wallace and himself were the three gunman in the TSBD. Factor is another James Files. He was serving a 44 year sentence for murder and had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain by making this confession. Interesting, Glen Sample, Factor’s leading advocate (4) insists that the Wallace fingerprint is not genuine. (5)

Notes and References

1. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978)

2. Robert Caro, Master of the Senate (2002)

3. Anthony Summers, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993) pages 242-245

4. Mark Collum and Glen Sample, The Men on the Sixth Floor (1995)

5. http://home.comcast.net/~dperry1943/drbrown.html

John, your post notes the conflict in recollection (or accuracy) over whether JFK was going to dump LBJ in 1964. I think the statement by RFK was probably correct. It would no political sense for JFK to dump Lyndon before the 1964 election. After the election would be a different story.

I recently came across this passage from Ch 56 of Richard Reeves "President Kennedy: Profile of Power." It refers to JFK's political discussions with Sen George Smathers in Miami on Monday, November 18, 1963:

[Smathers] brought up newspaper stories that Kennedy was considering dropping Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. "George, you have some intelligence, I presume," Kennedy said sarcastically. "Can you see me now in a terrible fight with Lyndon Johnson, which means I'll blow the South? You know, I love this job, I love every second of it.. . Smathers, you just haven't got any sense, and if Lyndon thinks that, he ought to think about it. I don't want to get licked. I really don't care whether Lyndon gets licked, but I don't want to get licked and he's going to be my vice-president because he helps me!"

There is no doubt Robert Kennedy claimed that there was no attempt to dump Johnson in 1963. He told John Bartlow Martin in 1964: “There was never any intention of dropping him. There was never even any discussion about dropping him.” (1) However, Penn Jones claims that Johnson was to be replaced with George Smathers. (2) I think this is highly unlikely as by 1963 JFK and Smathers were in dispute over Cuba. Smathers had been trying to pressurize JFK into ousting the Castro government. This pressure was relentless and JFK eventually lost his temper and told him that he must never mention this subject again. The two men had been close (both privately and politically). By 1963 JFK’s views had changed dramatically. The two men had in fact fallen out during the 1960 presidential campaign. JFK was furious with Smathers for supporting LBJ during the campaign for the nomination. Smathers even refused to help JFK get the Florida vote. At the time, JFK feared that this would stop him getting the nomination. If JFK had agreed that Smathers would be his running-mate in 1964, it was as a result of extreme pressure (or blackmail) from the Southern Caucus.

Evelyn Lincoln claims that JFK told her he intended to replace Johnson. This is reported in her book Kennedy and Johnson. (3) Lincoln says that JFK was thinking of appointing Terry Sanford. If this is not true, what motive would Lincoln have for lying? In fact, we now know she was telling the truth. Lincoln’s papers were donated to the Kennedy Library. These were released to JFK researchers in 1997. It was discovered that there are contemporaneous stenography notes corroborating her 1968 claim that LBJ was going to be dumped. (4)

The real question is why did Robert Kennedy lie about this issue? The answer is contained in the RFK interview with Martin. (5) RFK is clearly uneasy when Martin returns to the issue of dumping Johnson. Martin is under the impression that JFK was considering dumping LBJ because of the Bobby Baker case. RFK replies:

There were a lot of stories that my brother and I were interested in dumping Lyndon Johnson and that I’d started the Bobby Baker case in order to give us a handle to dump Lyndon Johnson. Well, number one, there was no plan to dump Lyndon Johnson. That didn’t make any sense. Number two, I hadn’t gotten really involved in the Bobby Baker case until after a good number of newspaper stories had appeared about it.

This is again a lie. RFK had been investigating the Baker case for sometime. How do we know? Well the main figure in the Senate trying to raise the links between LBJ and the Baker scandal was John Williams, the Republican senator for Delaware. Burkett Van Kirk, who was chief counsel for the Republican minority on the Senate Rules Committee, admitted in an interview he gave in 1997 that RFK had been leaking information about Baker to Williams. Van Kirk claims that the Kennedy brothers were doing this because they were trying to dump Johnson. (6)

Unfortunately this strategy backfired. Johnson found out what the Kennedy’s were up to. He knew how to get the Kennedys to change their mind on this issue. He therefore tipped off Hoover about the brothers involvement with Ellen Rometsch. When Hoover told the Kennedys that Rometsch was a Soviet spy they knew they were in serious trouble. Especially when they heard from Baker that he had “tapes and photographs” of these sexual activities. (7) They did not only involve Rometsch. They also included JFK having sex with Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang. (8) That was a problem because these two women, both initially from communist countries, had been named as part of the spy ring that had trapped John Profumo, the British War Minister, a few months earlier. RFK became convinced that if this story got out, JFK would be forced to resign.

It was these attempts by RFK to suppress this story that led to assassination of JFK. I will look at this issue in more depth in a later posting.

Notes and References

1. Edwin Guthman & Jeffrry Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (1988) page 336.

2. W. Penn Jones Jr, Texas Midlothian Mirror (31st July, 1969)

3. Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson (1968)

4. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 408

5. 1. Edwin Guthman & Jeffrry Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (1988) page 389.

6. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 406

7. Telephone conversation between Lyndon B. Johnson and George Smathers (10th January, 1964)

8. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 391

Incredible post, John!

No question JFK would have had to resign if the stories you have refered to were made public. Perhaps your follow-up post will respond to this issue: if anyone such as LBJ or Hoover had wanted to get rid of JFK all they would have had to do was publicize the stories.

Accepting your scenario, is it possible someone could have suggested to Bobby, to the effect, if these stories had come out your brother would have had to resign in disgrace and history would record him as the first president ever to resign. Now we have made him a martyr just like Lincoln.

Finally, although I have not read the Guthman-Schulman book, I'm quite sure that in that book RFK denied that there had ever been plots to kill Castro, a demonstable falsehood because the CIA had briefed him on the CIA/Mafia polts on May 7, 1962. So many of his "own words" as recorded by those men are subject to question.

Hoover and LBJ were unwilling to reveal the story as they know that it would have also led to their downfall. This is what RFK tells Hoover on 28th October when he orders him to suppress the story. This is why LBJ was so clever by getting Baker to set up the Honey Pot trap at the Quorum Club and at Carole Tyler’s house. This not only involved filming the sexual antics of all the leading senators. It also included obtaining evidence that they were taking bribes from the MICC. This made it impossible for any of them to give evidence. This included his two main critics, John Williams and Hugh Scott. This is made clear by Johnson telephone conversation to George Smathers on 10th January, 1964. The result was that after the assassination of JFK, none of them, including RFK, could say why it really happened. The cover up was complete.

I recently came across a discussion of how the Baker scandal was "contained" after LBJ became president. From Ch 14 of Rick Perlstein's "Before the Storm" (2001):

"In late January [of 1964] when Republicans tried to get Walter Jenkins, Johnson's most intimate aide, to testify before a Senate subcommittee investigation, Johnson put in the fix. Two psychiatrists appeared to testify that an appearance would – literally - kill him. [Republican] Carl Curtis moved to call Jenkins to the stand anyway. He lost 6-3 in a party line vote. . . . Curtis lost again when he moved to make the record of the session public. The investigation closed without a single Administration witness being called."

Only three senators attempted to expose the LBJ/Bobby Baker scandal: John Williams, Hugh Scott and Carl Curtis. The LBJ tapes reveal that he spent a great deal of time talking to friends about how to keep these three men quiet. The Honey Pot Scheme (see next posting) sorted out Williams and Scott. The tapes do not reveal if LBJ/Baker were able to find out anything about Curtis. It is possible that he was indeed an honest politician. However, he could not continue the fight on his own. Curtis also knew that if the story came out it would reveal the corrupt activities of his friends in the Senate. He did however publish his memoirs, Forty Years Against the Tide, in 1986. I have just ordered a copy via Abe Books. I will be interested in discovering if he reveals anything he found about LBJ in the book.

An investigation of the Quorum Club is vital to understanding how LBJ managed to cover up the assassination of JFK. It also explains how he managed to suppress details of the Fort Worth TFX scandal that should have forced him to resign in 1963.

The Quorum was a private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill that had been established by Bobby Baker. As Baker pointed out in Wheeling and Dealing its "membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connecteds who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations". (1)

The last passage of this quotation helps to explain what happened at the Quorum Club. The leading politicians only thought they were sharing “secrets in private accommodations”. In fact, their activities were being recorded. The Quorum was not only used to gather evidence of the sexual activities of politicians. It was also used to gather concrete evidence that politicians were taking bribes paid for by the Military Industrial Congress Complex. In this way, all those capable of exposing LBJ, were fully compromised.

The Quorum was not the only place this evidence gathering took place. Private parties held at the home of Carole Tyler was another source of obtaining incriminating information. So also was Fred Black’s hotel suite at the Sheraton-Carlton in Washington. (2) It was here that LBJ got the necessary information to blackmail Gerard Ford. (3)

Hoover helped LBJ obtain this information. Some of this information was used to help uncover criminal activity. However, most of it was used to apply pressure on politicians to act in a certain way. (4)

Baker used young women working at the Senate and high-class prostitutes to provide the entertainment for the politicians. He also used three women who had been born in communist countries but had fled to the west: Ellen Rometsch, Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang. (5) These three women were brought in to deal with John and Robert Kennedy. It was impossible to get to the brothers with money. Evidence that they were sleeping with women other than their wives would not have been enough. The only thing that could bring them under control was evidence that they had been sleeping with communist spies.

Not that JFK and RFK were aware these women were spies. In fact, it is possible that they were not spies. Nor did the brothers give the women any classified information. All this was unimportant. What mattered was the public perception of these events.

JFK became very concerned with something that took place in the UK on 2nd March, 1963. George Wigg (6) had made a speech where he referred to rumours that John Profumo, the British minister of war, was having an affair with a prostitute named Christine Keeler. (7) A few weeks later Profumo made a personal statement where he admitted he knew Keeler but denied there was any impropriety in their relationship.

At the time few people were aware of the significance of these events. JFK was one of those who did know why this was the start of a very big story. Ben Bradlee reports that JFK became obsessed with the case. He even got David Bruce, the American ambassador to the UK to provide regular information on the Profumo story. As Bradlee reports in his book, Conversations With Kennedy: “Kennedy ordered all further cables from Bruce on the subject sent to him immediately.” (8)

Bradlee believed JFK was interested in the case because it “combined so many of the things that interested him: low doings in high places, the British nobility, sex and spying”. However, this was not the main reason JFK was interested in this case. JFK was scared that the same thing that had happened to Profumo was about to happen to him.

You see, George Wigg, had been told by a MI5 contact that Christine Keeler was also having an affair with Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché. (9) It was believed that a man called Stephen Ward, had arranged for Profumo to meet Keeler at a private parties. Ward had in fact being doing what Bobby Baker had been doing in Washington. Both men had even used the same women. This included Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang, two women that JFK had sex with in 1960 (10)

As further details were revealed Profumo was forced to resign on 5th June. Stephen Ward committed suicide (or was murdered) and this stopped the full story being revealed at the time. (11)

Hoover of course knew all about JFK involvement with Ellen Rometsch, Maria Novotny and Suzy Chang. Novotny and Chang were back in London but JFK was still sleeping with Rometsch. Apparently she was the most exciting woman he had ever had sex with and was reluctant to loose her.

John McCone also knew all about what had been happening. He had been told by Cleveland Cram, deputy chief of the CIA station in London. Cram had got the information from Charles Bates, the senior FBI man in London. (12)

In July 1963 FBI agents questioned Romesch about her time in East Germany. They came to the conclusion that she was probably a Soviet spy. This information was now passed onto RFK, who arranged for LaVerne Duffy to take her back to Germany. Duffy was an inspired choice. He was not only a close friend of JFK who could be trusted, he was also involved in a passionate affair with Romesch. In fact, Romesch was in love with Duffy. He was the one man who could get Romesche to do as she was told.

Kennedy now contacted Hoover and asked him to persuade the Senate leadership that the Senate Rules Committee investigation of this story was "contrary to the national interest". He also warned that other leading members of Congress would be drawn into this scandal and so was "contrary to the interests of Congress, too". (13)

It had now become a game of bluff. RFK suspected that Hoover would be unwilling to leak the full story. To do so would expose him as setting up a Honey Trap to obtain evidence against his president. RFK was right but Hoover gambled and increased the stakes. Along with Johnson he needed to keep the pressure on JFK and RFK because of the Bobby Baker case. Hoover therefore leaked the story to one of his assets, Clark Mollenhoff. On 26th October, 1963, Mollenhoff wrote an article in The Des Moines Register claiming that the FBI had "established that the beautiful brunette had been attending parties with congressional leaders and some prominent New Frontiersmen from the executive branch of Government... The possibility that her activity might be connected with espionage was of some concern, because of the high rank of her male companions". (14)

Mollenhoff did not name Rometsch or Kennedy. But he did say that John Williams "had obtained an account" of this woman’s activity and planned to pass this information to the Senate Rules Committee, the body investigating Bobby Baker. This was a direct message to JFK and RFK. Hoover and LBJ had discovered that RFK had been passing information about the Baker case to Williams. This was revealed in an interview that Burkett Van Kirk gave to Seymour Hersh in 1997. (15)

Kirk was chief counsel in 1963 for the Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee. He said that the information that Curtis and Williams were getting about Baker, was coming from RFK. The reason for this, according to Kirk, was to “dump Johnson” as vice president. The warning was clear, unless, JFK backed off, he would be exposed as a president who had been sleeping with a Soviet spy. JFK acknowledged that he could not survive the story being published. Harold Macmillan had resigned prime minister in October, 1963, over the Profumo scandal, although he was allowed to say it was on health grounds. (16)

Kennedy knew that even if he soldiered on he would be defeated in 1964. He therefore decided to agree to Hoover’s terms and said he would help cover up the Baker scandal. The problem was that it had gone too far. Williams had now been contacted by Don Reynolds with information that LBJ had been receiving a rake-off from the Fort Worth TFX contract. Reynolds was now due to testify on 22nd November, 1963. (17) Although it was in a closed session, LBJ knew that Williams would leak it to the press. LBJ had no option. JFK had to die before 22nd November. It was only as president could he cover up this story.

As Reynolds told John Williams after the assassination: "My God! There's a difference between testifying against a President of the United States and a Vice President. If I had known he was President, I might not have gone through with it."

One of the most important sources of information that supports this view of events is a telephone call made by LBJ to George Smathers on 10th January, 1964. (18)

Lyndon Johnson: Have you heard about this tape recording that's out?

George Smathers: No.

Lyndon Johnson: Well, it involves you and John Williams and a number of other people.

George Smathers: You mean, some woman?

Lyndon Johnson: Yep.

George Smathers: Yeah, I've heard about it. And it involves Hugh Scott.

Lyndon Johnson: But it's a pure made-up deal, isn't it?

George Smathers: I don't know what it is. I never heard of the woman in my life... But she mentions President Kennedy in there.

Lyndon Johnson: Oh yeah, and the Attorney General (Robert Kennedy) and me and you and everybody. And I never heard of her.

George Smathers: Thank God, they've got Hugh Scott in there. He's the guy that was asking for it. But she's also mentioned him, (laughs) which is sort of a lifesaver. So I don't think that'll get too far now. (Everett) Jordan's orders.

Lyndon Johnson: Can't you talk to him? Why in the living hell does he let Curtis run him? I thought you were going to talk to Dick Russell and go talk to Curtis and make Dirksen and them behave.

George Smathers: Jordan has assured me over and over again.

Lyndon Johnson: Well, he's not strong enough though, unless someone goes and tells him now.

George Smathers: That's right. Now Dick Russell is the man that ought to do it. And I've asked Dick to do it and Dick has told me that he would....

Lyndon Johnson: They had this damned fool insurance man, in and they had him in a secret session and Bobby (Baker) gave me a record player and Bobby got the record player from the insurance man (Don Reynolds). I didn't know a damned thing about it. Never heard of it till this happened. But I paid $88,000 worth of premiums and, by God, they could afford to give me a Cadillac if they'd wanted to and there'd have been not a goddamned thing wrong with it.... There's nothing wrong with it. There's not a damned thing wrong. So Walter Jenkins explained it all in his statement. This son of a bitch Curtis comes along and says, well, he wouldn't take any statements not sworn to. They had their counsel come down and Walter Jenkins handled it, told him exactly what was done.... A fellow said Manhattan is the only company that would write on a heart attack man.... Bobby said, "Hell now, wait, let my man handle it and he'll get a commission off of it." So we said all right... Now he said - Walter - "I'll swear to it." "No, I want a public hearing so I can put it on television." Now that oughtn't to be. Now George, I ought not to have to get into that personally.

George Smathers: Absolutely not.... And Dick Russell has got to exercise his influence. He must do this and I think you've got to talk to him about it and just say you've got to do it. I'll talk to Jordan. Jordan thinks I'm guilty of something. So he thinks I may be covering up trying to protect myself. Hubert has been really good in this and, believe it or not, Joe Clark' has finally gotten the picture and he's trying to stop it now. But Hugh Scott and Carl Curtis are going wild, and Jordan doesn't have enough experience or enough sense to gavel them down and shut them up. But if Dick will talk to him-really talk to him and say

Lyndon Johnson: I think he needs to talk to Curtis too. Why don't you tell Dick to do that?

George Smathers: I will. I've already talked to him.

Lyndon Johnson: I hate to call him.... Get Dick to go see Curtis in the morning and just say, "Now quit being so goddamn rambunctious about this, Carl."

George Smathers: Can I tell Dick this is not right and you know about it? And naturally it makes you apprehensive and you've got all these damn problems and to have this little nitpicking thing. It's just not fair.

Lyndon Johnson: It's not.

George Smathers: So I'll do it.

Lyndon Johnson: Tell him he's the only one can do it. And he can do it. And if he was involved I'd damned sure walk across the country and do it.

George Smathers: Exactly. All right, that's a damned good thought and I'll do it. I've already talked to him about it, but I

Lyndon Johnson: The FBI has got that record.' Now you know I think you ought to leak it. I don't know who you can leak it to. But I've read the goddamn tax report and I've read the FBI report and there ain't a goddamn thing in it that they can even indict him on. The only thing that they can do is that he puffed up the financial statement, which everybody's done. If he pays that off, they couldn't convict him on that....

George Smathers: They won't print that 'cause I tried to leak that the day before yesterday to ... two different sources and it hasn't been printed. They just want to print this ... ugly stuff.... That Curtis is mean as a snake. (Everett) Dirksen sat in the room the night of the day after you became President with me and Humphrey and agreed that this thing ought to stop and that he would get Curtis to stop it. ... You know, there's some statement about Dirksen and Kuchel with this German girl.' So he said, "It is just ridiculous and it ought to stop.". . . . I think we can handle everybody on our side. Howard Cannon is the smartest fellow over there, but he's a little afraid to do anything because he himself figures he was involved out in Las Vegas. So he's a little afraid to be as brave as he ought to be. ... I'll tell Dick this. I've already told him once, but

Lyndon Johnson: Tell him he ought to talk to Dirksen and Curtis both. Please do it, and also Jordan. He's just got his work cut out Monday 'cause they're going to meet Tuesday and they're going to want a public hearing.' And then that's a television hearing, and then a television hearing about my buying some insurance. And what in the goddamn hell is wrong with my buying insurance? I paid cash for it, wrote them a check for it, made my company the beneficiary, and they didn't deduct it. No tax deduction. We'll do it after we pay our taxes. We pay the premium-only reason being if I died, my wife would have to pay estate tax on me on account of she'd have to sell her stock and they want the company to have some money to buy her stock so she doesn't have to lose control of her company.


Notes and References

1. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) pages 78-80 and 180-81

2. Tony Mauro, A Peek Into Justice White’s FBI File (2003)

3. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 170

4. Anthony Summers, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (1993)

5. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997)

6. George Wigg: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRwigg.htm

7. John Profumo: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRprofumo.htm

8. Ben Bradlee, Conversations With Kennedy (1976)

9. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 391

10. Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, Honey Trap (1987)

11. Philllip Knightley and Caroline Kennedy, The Profumo Case and the Framing of Stephen Ward (1987)

12. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 392

13. Meeting between Robert Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover on 28th October, 1963.

14. Clark Mollenhoff, The Des Moines Register (26th October, 1976)

15. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) page 406

16. Harold Macmillan: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRmacmillan.htm

17. Don Reynolds: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKreynoldsD.htm

18. Telephone conversation between Lyndon Johnson and George Smathers (10th January, 1964)

You received an email from Stockdale's daughter?

Adele Edisen

In his book The Dark Side of Camelot, Seymour Hersh provides some interesting insights into why Johnson became Kennedy’s vice presidential candidate. He interviewed several of the figures involved in these negotiations. This included Clark Clifford who states that Stuart Symington had been JFK choice all along and that he was actually told the night of the nomination that he was to get the job. Clifford was the one who told Symington. He then reported back to JFK that he had said yes. This is backed up by another JFK aide, Hyman Raskin, before he died he wrote an unpublished memoir of these events. (1)

Raskin points out that LBJ and Sam Rayburn asked for a meeting with JFK soon after the nomination. This took place early the next morning. Rayburn and Clifford did not attend the meeting. However, JFK emerged to say that LBJ would now be his running-mate. Clifford was given the task of telling Symington that JFK had changed his mind. JFK told Clifford that he had never gone back on a deal like this but after his meeting with LBJ and Rayburn he “had no alternative”.

Clifford was never told why JFK had “no alternative”. However, it had nothing to do with winning the election. True they won Texas but by having LBJ on the ticket they knew they would lose California (as they did). Their polling showed that Symington was crucial if they were to win this state.

JFK did tell Raskin why he had changed his mind: “You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don’t need more problems.”

Evelyn Lincoln, JFK’s personal secretary, was also aware of what happened. She told Anthony Summers that Hoover had been involved in the plot to get LBJ as JFK’s running mate. (2) Lincoln believes it was Hoover’s evidence of JFK’s womanizing that was being used to blackmail him to put LBJ on the ticket.

I personally doubt this was the case. There were several attempts to blackmail JFK with a wide variety of potentially damaging affairs he had with some very dubious women during 1960. JFK never paid up and these stories were taken to the press. The most significant of these was Florence Kater who had photographs and tape-recordings of his affair with Pamela Turmure. When JFK refused to pay up she passed this evidence on to the press and the FBI. JFK responded by threatening Kater that he would get her and her husband dismessed from their jobs. (3)

The press refused to publish the story and so she followed JFK around with a placard that showed a photograph of JFK attemting to cover his face while leaving Turmure’s apartment. Despite this campaign by Kater, JFK refused to end his affair with Turmure. In fact, after he became president he appointed Turnure as Jackie’s press secretary.

The fact that LBJ blackmailed JFK to become vice president raises other issues. One reason JFK did not consider LBJ for the job was the belief that he would refuse. Everyone knew that the job would reduce LBJ’s power. That is why all of LBJ’s cronies, including Rayburn, were totally opposed to the idea of him being vice president. Rayburn told Johnson what a former Vice-President, John Nance Garner had said after four wasted years: “The office ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.”

As Bobby Baker points out, this all changed on the eve of the nomination. At a meeting held in LBJ’s hotel room, all his backers changed their mind on the matter. The reason that Baker gives for this is completely unconvincing. Maybe LBJ’s comment that president’s had a habit of dying in office indicates the real reason he was so desperate to become vice president. (4)

Notes

1. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) pages 121 to 130

2. Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential (1993) pages 271 to 273

3. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot (1997) pages 107 to 110

4. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing (1978) page 126

John,

Were you aware that at the time of the assassination, Cliff Carter’s brother, General Marshall S. Carter, was deputy director of the CIA?

According to Palamara (link below), he was appointed by JFK in 1962, on the recommendation of Nelson Rockefeller.

This is surprising to me in that despite all the discussion and speculation about the CIA of that era, I had never heard of General Carter till happening across the Palamara link. How or why did this deputy director remain so unknown?

Seems to me that as CIA deputy director and Cliff Carter’s brother, he could have been a significant contact in any conspiracy involving the CIA and LBJ.

LBJ named him head of the National Security Agency in 1965.

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/VP/0006-VP.html

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/mscarter.htm

Ron