LBJ's Death? Murder? Suicide?

[Nancy Eldreth]

All of this talking more into Watergate.

A missed point so overlooked.

LBJ two weeks I believe when Nixon told him "NO you will not tell it about the three hours because it is a National Security Reason." Only a few weeks later LBJ died.

This is in Halderman's Dairy. IF I am remembering correctly.

So, I did wonder if he did himself in, murdered or natural death.

Somewhere I had read that LBJ was found with poison in him and it is not known whether he took his own life or was killed.

I have wondered myself and this is a big thing if true that poison was found in him.

LBJ was hot and angry with it because he said, :well I will tell it. Why Nixon said OH NO YOU WON'T.

Good for Nixon on this. He had LBJ corned and LBJ knew it. More to this than what meets the eye is for sure on this cornering.

Nixon said some things that were also so very much overlooked. He said about the three hours cover up that it is dealing with the confidentality of others and that is why I will not say it to honor that confidentality of them.

So, this didn't have anything to do with what most thought that it did.

It isn't a scandel thing it was a business issue and could not be told. He stated it deals with several people.

Most over looked underminded by the Washington post NOT TO PUT THE FULL SIDE IN ON THEIR OWN REPORTING.

A good reporter DOES MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO GET ALL SIDES OF A STORY and I have to say they didn't do that THEY SLANTED THE STORY THAT THEY CREATED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

True, Halderman Dairy wasn't released out until much later but Nixon did address this comment on record and it was SO OVER LOOKED AND NOT FOLLOWED UP.

[Pat Speer]

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same incident or not, Nancy, but I'm pretty sure you're misreading this incident to make Nixon look like the good guy. He was anything but. This is what I've gathered from the many books I've read.

When word got out about Nixon's use of bugs, Nixon was desperate to point the finger at other Presidents who'd used wiretaps. I believe he first asked Connally to ask LBJ to come forward and admit that he'd bugged people too, but Connally refused. He then asked Haldeman to make the approach (or was it Ehrlichman?). Anyhow, LBJ told them to buzz off, and that if Nixon went public with stories about his bugging people he'd tell the public the REAL story, which was that LBJ had bugged Nixon himself for National Security reasons because he suspected Nixon was interfering with the 1968 Peace Talks in order to help himself get elected. If one reads the memoirs of LBJ, Dean Rusk and Clark Clifford, they all agree that LBJ had surveillance put on some of Nixon's people, Mitchell and Agnew to be precise, due to his suspicions they were sending messages through a a woman named Anna Chenault to President Thieu of South Vietnam, and telling Thieu that if he refused to go to the peace talks he'd get a better deal once Nixon was elected. This is called TREASON by the way. Clifford wrote that the evidence was convincing. Anyhow, LBJ aide Califano recalled that right before the election LBJ became sure of his suspicions and begged Humphrey to make the evidence public, but that Humphrey wanted to win without resorting to such ugliness. I vaguely recall that in recent years, someone, probably Anthony Summers, tracked down Ms. Chennault and she confirmed the whole story. Anyhow, a lot of LBJ's bitterness in his final years apparently came from the knowledge that Tricky Dick had stabbed him in the back, but that there was nothing he could do about it. This leads me to suspect that Nixon had something on LBJ as well--could it be knowledge of the Kennedy assassination? Just thinking out loud.

Anyhow, the papers of the South Vietnamese Government were released in a book called The Palace Files and these papers revealed that Nixon and Kissinger's peace proposals in 1974 were virtually identical to Harriman and Johnson's peace proposals in 1968. Thus, Nixon extended the war by five years for his own political purposes. The man was a crook and a traitor.

Edited April 14, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Nancy Eldreth]

LJB should have been in prison this is a known fact when he was in Senate in Texas. The man was horrible.

WHO IS WHO HERE?

I got news for you Ladybird was no nice gal either. She still is like a hawk. It is so showing "say what Ladybird says on the number of shots she said three so THREE IT STOOD." When we know for a fact that there was far more than three shots fired.

It is also shown that LBJ did in fact duck before the first bullet was fired in the car line up in Dallas. I was wrong on it's timing by he knew all right.

How to make the scales shift well corruption knows no leader.

Was Nixon set up it is a fact in Watergate that indeed he was.

As more and more facts comes out we know this.

I am not to much into Vietnam but it was Johnson who started the darn war that should never have been.

[Mark Knight]

Nancy, I believe you're mistaken on LBJ and Vietnam. Through the US participation in SEATO--the SouthEast Asia Treaty Organization, a NATO-like structure--the US became involved in Vietnam in 1954, after the French disaster at Dien Bien Phu.

That would have been under the Eisenhower administration.

Under the Kennedy administration, the US sent "advisors" to train the ARVN soldiers. It was well documented, however, that the American "advisors" often had to fight to defend themselves after the ARVN soldiers turned tail and ran on the battlefield.

In October of 1963, JFK drafted NSAM [National Security Action Memo] 263, in which he stated his plan to reduce US involvement by 1,000 troops by the end of 1963...and McNamara and others state their belief that JFK planned to pull ALL American forces out of Vietnam by 1965.

But NSAM 263 was never made public during JFK's lifetime, and on November 23, 1963 NSAM 273 --which ESCALATED American involvement in Vietnam-- was revealed to LBJ [it had evidently been drafted prior to JFK's assassination, but never signed], and it had LBJ's signature by November 26, 1963.

Was Nixon set up? It was his own words on tape that brought him down...taped on his own White House taping system. Nixon's own words proved that he had been involved in the obstruction of justice. It's awfully hard to be "set up" to confess, especially if you hadn't done anything wrong. No, the truth is, Nixon was dirty. And LBJ was also dirty. One's guilt doesn't absolve the other.

But LBJ never got a presidential pardon "for any crimes he may have committed"; Nixon did. Quite an unusual application of the presidential pardon, as they are usually granted only AFTER a conviction for a crime. As far as I know, Nixon's presidential pardon was the ONLY one ever granted PRIOR TO a trial or conviction. To me THAT says a mouthful about Gerald Ford's beliefs on Nixon's guilt.

[Ron Ecker]

LBJ told them to buzz off, and that if Nixon went public with stories about his bugging people he'd tell the public the REAL story, which was that LBJ had bugged Nixon himself for National Security reasons

Pat,

I remember this differently, at least insofar as it is covered in The Haldeman Diaries. Haldeman wrote that LBJ warned Nixon that if he went public with so and so, then LBJ would go public with - and here there was an editorial insertion that said, as I recall, "deleted for reasons of national security."

I'll have to try to find the passage again, but I remember being struck by the fact that someone (presumably at the CIA which has been given the right to read books like Haldeman's before they're published to delete anything that the people have no right to know about) openly deleted from Haldeman's book what LBJ had threatened to reveal.

Ron

[Jack White]

Mary Ferrell once wondered whether LBJ was poisoned

by the Secret Service...something about eating apple pie

with sodium morphate. He was alone at the ranch with

only his SS man present when he died of a heart attack.

Jack

[Pat Speer]

LBJ told them to buzz off, and that if Nixon went public with stories about his bugging people he'd tell the public the REAL story, which was that LBJ had bugged Nixon himself for National Security reasons

Pat,

I remember this differently, at least insofar as it is covered in The Haldeman Diaries. Haldeman wrote that LBJ warned Nixon that if he went public with so and so, then LBJ would go public with - and here there was an editorial insertion that said, as I recall, "deleted for reasons of national security."

I'll have to try to find the passage again, but I remember being struck by the fact that someone (presumably at the CIA which has been given the right to read books like Haldeman's before they're published to delete anything that the people have no right to know about) openly deleted from Haldeman's book what LBJ had threatened to reveal.

Ron

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You're right, Ron, and in Stone's Nixon he has Haldeman mumble something into Ehrlichman's ear. This country still isn''t ready to face up to Nixon's guilt. I remember reading a review of Anthony Summers' book on Nixon that covers this, and it was all the reviewer could talk about, saying that it was absolutely preposterous. Never mind that Johnson and Rusk discuss Nixon's likely interference in their memoirs, and that Califano says LBJ was convinced, and that Clifford says he himself was convinced, or that Ms. Chennault and Thieu felt betrayed by Nixon and talked about it afterwards.

It is sad, of course, that the CIA or whoever would envoke National Security over something so obviously political. The American people need to be told the truth so this kind of thing won't happen again. Wait a sec, it already has...

[Tim Gratz]

Mark wrote:

Was Nixon set up? It was his own words on tape that brought him down...taped on his own White House taping system.

BUT...BUT

If Nixon had nothing to do with ordering the break-in

If in fact it was a CIA operation (look at the participants)

IF McCord, no dummy, deliberately taped the door so the break-in would be discovered

IF Butterfield was working for the CIA and deliberately revealed the existence of the taping system

THEN while it would be true that Nixon hung himself, he did so with CIA rope!

And, Mark, I have a question for you for which I would appreciate an honest answer:

Have you read either "Silent Coup" or "Secret Agenda"? If not, you should.

[Guest Eugene B. Connolly]

LBJ's behaviour in the motorcade before the shots were fired has always struck me as curious. While everyone else in the motorcade was looking at the crowds LBJ was looking up at the buildings. This can be clearly seen in some of the motorcade film footage.

Did LBJ know something was going to happen?

EBC

[Pat Speer]

Mark wrote:

Was Nixon set up? It was his own words on tape that brought him down...taped on his own White House taping system.

BUT...BUT

And, Mark, I have a question for you for which I would appreciate an honest answer:

Have you read either "Silent Coup" or "Secret Agenda"?  If not, you should.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Tim, have you read McCord's A Piece of Tape? If you did, I bet you'd realize that McCord had a personal axe to grind, and wanted to drag down as many of the President's men as possible. He takes great satisfaction in recounting how they tried to buy him off, and make him take a fall, and how the Justice department cooperated with Nixon in the cover-up. It was personal for him. Who was there in the CIA by 73 who could orchestrate such a thing? And to what ends? To place Spiro Agnew, the bumbling stooge, in power?

Of course, if Nixon had got wind of such a plan it might explain why he turned on Agnew. Read Agnew's book, or Goldwater's; it was Nixon who forced him out, without ever telling Agnew why. My personal theory: Nixon felt there was room for only one crook at the White House.

Edited April 15, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Tim Gratz]

Hold on a minute, Pat:

Didn't Nixon say: "I am not a crook!"

I have not, however, read McCord's book. What was the "personal axe" he had to grind? Do you believe he helped botch the burglary to accomplish this purpose?

Edited April 18, 2005 by Tim Gratz