Douglas Caddy

Elon Musk reinvents Twitter for the benefit of a power user: Himself (msn.com)

More than 1 in 6 Americans now 65 or older as U.S. continues graying (msn.com)

He made these predictions on Dec. 26 for 2023. The former president of Russia is in an alter reality somewhere. He predicted Musk would be elected president. Musk also is in an alter reality somewhere. Medvedev Gives His 10 New Year Predictions, Musk Calls 'Epic Thread' (substack.com)

As Mystery Objects Get Shot Down, U.S. Sets Up New Task Force on UFOs - WSJ

Wow!! This is really serious. Trump laptop could trigger new investigation: legal analyst - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism

NORAD Doesn't Rule Out Aliens, NYT Changes Story On It (mediaite.com)

NORAD Doesn't Rule Out Aliens, NYT Changes Story On It (mediaite.com)

A/K/A Marjorie Trailer Greene

Trump was issued subpoena for folder marked ‘Classified Evening Briefing’ discovered at Mar-a-Lago | Donald Trump | The Guardian

"She yelled 'xxxx' when President Biden gave his State of the Union." This was posted on Facebook.

Russia’s plans to seize eastern Ukraine could take two years, says Wagner boss | Ukraine | The Guardian

FBI searches and finds one additional classified record in Pence's home (msn.com)

Lots of inside gossip by Twitter employees about Musk. Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count (platformer.news)

Great photo here US says China balloon could collect intelligence signals | AP News

The five Republican justices on the Supreme Court who are Catholic embrace this radicalism in their opinions in many instances. This includes Chief Justice Roberts. The justiciar system in America is on the road to being ruled by religious beliefs rather than by the law. FBI Memo Warns against 'Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’ | National Review

I loved his music. Burt Bacharach dies at 94 | AP News I have watched this countless times. In Performance at The White House | Burt Bacharach and Hal David: The Library of Congress... | Season 2012 | PBS

Thank you, Joe, for this. I shall use it in the book I am writing.,

Large Numbers of Americans Want a Strong, Rough, Anti-democratic Leader - Nextgov

Gil Jesus asked at the beginning of this topic if I had anything to contribute. I wrote about Billie Sol Estes in my autobiography, Being There: Eyewitness to History, published in 2018. Here is that chapter: CHAPTER SEVEN BILLIE SOL ESTES AND LBJ After the Texas Policy Institute under a Moody Foundation grant sponsored a highly successful conference that I had organized in Galveston on the Star Wars project in 1983, Shearn Moody asked that I visit him at his ranch there. He told me that he had received a phone call from his former lobbyist in Austin, Jimmy Day, who was then in the federal prison in Big Spring, Texas. It appeared that Day had moved on to Washington, D.C. after he was no longer working for Shearn and had gotten himself in big trouble there. As explained to me by Shearn, Day on a visit to the White House had clandestinely heisted some White House stationery and then wrote fraudulent letters on it recommending his superior lobbying talents. Shearn termed the felony charge against Day as being “puffery.” In any event Day had called Shearn to say that he wanted Shearn to talk on the phone with another prisoner. When Shearn inquired who that might be, Day said that it was Billie Sol Estes, an infamous criminal whose notoriety approached historical proportions. Day gave the phone to Billie Sol who then informed Shearn that he wanted to tell all he knew about his close criminal relationship over many decades with President Lyndon Johnson who had died ten years earlier in 1973. He asked Shearn for a grant from the Moody Foundation that would enable him to do this. Shearn, a history buff, requested that I visit with Billie Sol in prison and get more details. A few weeks later I traveled to Big Spring and met with Billie Sol who told me that he had a story to tell about LBJ that would rock the world. I advised him that the best way to do so would be to write a book and his response was that he would think about it. As our meeting ended I said that I would report back to Shearn what he had told me in the event there was a possibility of a Moody Foundation grant. Nothing more happened until early January 1984, about six months after my prison visit, when Billie Sol telephoned Shearn from his home in Abilene and said that he had been released from prison and wanted to tell his story in a book under a Moody Foundation grant. Shearn asked that I travel to Abilene and confer further with Billie Sol. Shearn said that for a foundation grant to be awarded it would require a tax-exempt entity agreeing to sponsor Billie Sol’s proposal. I arrived in Abilene and talked with Billie Sol who readily agreed that writing a book was the best way to tell his story. This was because after I had visited him in prison he had encouraged his daughter, Pam, to write a book, which she did, “Billie Sol Estes, King of the Wheeler-Dealers.” Her book had been well received and gotten lots of publicity. He said his daughter’s book was only concerned with how the family survived while he was in prison and did not contain any substantive disclosures of his criminal activities with LBJ. He boasted that his tell-all book would be a best-seller. I explained to him that a tax-exempt entity had to be the recipient of the foundation grant under which Billie Sol would write his book. He said that would be no problem and picked up the phone and called the President of Abilene Christian University who agreed to meet us later that afternoon. Billie Sol was a prominent member of the Church of Christ and the university was affiliated with that Church. At the meeting the university president agreed that if a Moody Foundation grant were forthcoming to the university a portion of it would be allocated for Billie Sol to write his book. Upon returning to Galveston I reported this to Shearn who said that he would sponsor such a Moody Foundation grant in the amount of $500,000 of which $400,000 would go to Abilene Christian University for its unrestricted purposes and $100,000 to Billie Sol. A short time later I returned to Abilene and informed both the university president and Billie Sol of Shearn’s intention of getting a grant approved at the next quarterly meeting of the foundation’s trustees. When I told Billie Sol this news he responded that to disclose what he knew of his and LBJ’s criminal activities he would need to receive immunity from prosecution from the U.S. Department of Justice. By a twist of fate I found myself in a position of possibly securing such immunity. Investigative Research Foundation, which had received Moody Foundation grant, was preparing to sponsor a National Conference on Terrorism, this being 1984 when few persons were talking about it. As the organizer of the conference I had retained as a consultant Edward Miller, former associate director of the FBI, to assist in developing the speakers list and agenda. Miller and former assistant director of the FBI, Mark Felt, had been convicted of doing illegal “black bag” jobs against members of the Weather Underground and other far left-wing radical grounds engaged in illegal activist activities such as exploding a bomb in the U.S. Capitol Building that caused a crack in the building’s famous dome. President Ronald Reagan had pardoned them, asserting they were heroes and not criminals. The key person who had shepherded their pardon process to success was Stephen Trott, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division in the Justice Department. Miller believed that he and I could get an appointment with Trott to discuss Billie Sol receiving a grant of immunity. About this time Billie Sol voluntarily appeared before a grand jury in Robertson County and testified that LBJ was behind the 1961 murder of U.S. Department of Agriculture official Henry Marshall. The Dallas Morning News of March 23, 1984 in a front page article headlined “Billie Sol Links LBJ to Murder” reported “Franklin, Texas -- Convicted swindler Billie Sol Estes told a grand jury that Lyndon B. Johnson was one of four men who planned the 1961 murder of an agricultural official, sources close the grand jury said Thursday. “The sources said Estes testified that the group feared the official would link Estes’ illegal activities to the vice president. “Estes, who testified before the Robertson County Grand Jury Tuesday, told grand jurors that Johnson felt pressure to silence Henry Harvey Marshall of Bryan, a regional USDA official in charge of the federal allotment program, sources said.” Marshall had been shot five times in the chest and his bolt-action .22 caliber rifle was found nearby in the field where he died. As a result of Estes’ testimony the 1984 grand jury voted to change the official death certificate of Marshall entered in 1961 as “Wound by Gunshot Self Inflicted Suicide by Gunshot Wounds Self-Inflicted” to “Wound by Gunshot Homicide by Gunshot Wounds.” Estes’ testimony and the action of the Robertson Country grand jury created a sensation throughout Texas. Estes appearance before the grand jury had been arranged by Clint Peoples, the U.S. Marshal for the Northern District of Texas. Peoples had followed Estes career as a businessman and criminal for 25 years, starting when he was first a Texas Ranger. Estes had introduced me to Peoples and I visited Peoples in his Marshal’s office in the U.S. Courthouse in Dallas on several occasions. During one of these visits Peoples’ pulled out a file from a cabinet that contained a large quantity of material on Estes and LBJ and showed me about a dozen photographs of Henry Marshall’s body when he had been found dead in the field. In “Taking care of business: Lawman solves slaying after 23 years of trying,” the Dallas Times Herald of March 23, 1984, reported For 23 years, solving the murder of Henry Marshall was lawman Clint Peoples’ No. 1 piece of unfinished business. But Tuesday, the U.S. Marshal’s questions were answered when convicted con man Billy Sol Estes made good on a long-standing promise to Peoples and told a Robertson grand jury everything he knew about the case. “I feel more relieved now than I’ve felt in my life,” Peoples said Thursday afternoon. Peoples, the U.S. Marshal for Northern Texas since 1973, originally investigated the case in March 1962, when he was a Texas Ranger. It was one of the very few cases he could not solve. “I said that as I lived, I would try to solve this case, although I didn’t know if I ever would,” said Peoples, now 73. He entered the case when the trail was cold…. In 1979, Peoples escorted Estes on a flight from Dallas to the La Tuna federal penitentiary near El Paso after Estes was convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy of mail fraud to conceal assets to avoid paying back taxes. According the Peoples’ book, he queried Estes about the Marshall murder and said it always had haunted him. Estes said he knew Marshall was murdered, the book says, and often wanted to tell the ranger that he was “looking in the wrong direction.” When Peoples asked which way to look, according to the book, Estes said he should look at “people who had the most to lose.” “Should I be looking in the direction of Washington?,” Peoples asked. “You are now definitely on the right track,” the book quotes Estes as saying. In her book, “Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas,” Professor Joan Mellen goes to extraordinary shameful lengths to attack and darken the character of U.S. Marshal Clint Peoples, a truly great American whom I feel privileged to have known. Mellen’s book, nevertheless, is definitely worth reading to get an overall picture of what Texas was like when LBJ and his crooked cronies ruled the state unchallenged. Mellen focuses in her book on Malcolm (Mac) Wallace, whom Billie Sol asserted was a stone cold killer that LBJ used when necessary. In her book, Mellen writes, “Mac Wallace is a case in point, his history with Lyndon Johnson is a window into Johnson’s methods. Wallace’s story is so intriguing because, unlike other of Johnson’s acolytes, it is difficult to prove what he did for Lyndon Johnson and what Lyndon Johnson did, in turn, for him. More than any other of Johnson’s protégés and acolytes, Wallace’s connection to him remains cloaked in secrecy. “In the major events of Mac Wallace’s life, Lyndon Johnson remains invisible. Yet one truth is irrefutable. Everything that was positive and promising in Wallace’s life came to him before he made the acquaintance of Lyndon Baines Johnson and joined Johnson’s circle.” Billie Sol asserted that Mac Wallace murdered USDA official Henry Marshall upon the orders of LBJ. In the wake of the Robertson County Grand jury action Edward Miller made an appointment for the two of us to visit Assistant Attorney General Stephen Trott in the Justice Department. As a result of that meeting I received the follow letter from Trott dated May 29, 1984: Dear Mr. Caddy: RE: Billy Sol Estes I have considered the materials and information you have provided to me in connection with your representation of Billy Sol Estes. I understand that Mr. Estes claims to have information concerning the possible commission of criminal offenses in Texas in the 1960's and that he is willing to reveal that information at this time. I also understand that Mr. Estes wants several things in exchange for this information, such as a pardon for the offenses for which he has been convicted and immunity from any further prosecution among other things. Before we can engage in any further discussions concerning Mr. Estes' cooperation or enter into any agreement with Mr. Estes we must know the following things: (1) the information, including the extent of corroborative evidence, that Mr. Estes has about each of the events that may be violations of criminal law; (2) the sources of his information; and (3) the extent of his involvement, if any, in each of those events or any subsequent cover-ups. Until we have detailed information concerning these three things we cannot determine whether any violations of federal criminal law occurred which are within our jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute and, if so, whether the information is credible and otherwise warrants investigation. Accordingly, if we are to proceed with meaningful discussions concerning Mr. Estes' proffered cooperation, we must receive a detailed and specific written offer of proof from you setting forth the information noted above. The government will hold your offer of proof in strictest confidence and will not make any use of it other than to determine the credibility of the proffered information and whether it warrants further discussions with or debriefings of Mr. Estes. I must make sure that several things are understood at this time concerning Mr. Estes' proffered cooperation. First, if after reviewing your offer of proof we decide the information that Mr. Estes can provide is credible and in all other respects warrants further investigation -- a decision which will be made unilaterally by the government -- it will be necessary for Mr. Estes to be interviewed and to reveal everything he knows about the possible criminal violations. He will have to do so completely, truthfully and without guile. Second, it must be understood that the government is not now making specific promises to Mr. Estes except with respect to the confidentiality and use of your offer of proof as noted above. If it is decided that Mr. Estes should be interviewed, the extent of promises concerning the confidentiality or use of the statement or promises of reward or consideration to Mr. Estes, if any, will be determined only after we receive a detailed written offer of proof from you. Above all else, I must emphasize that Mr. Estes must act with total honesty and candor in any dealings with the Department of Justice or any investigative agency. If any discussions with or debriefings of Mr. Estes take place after receipt of your offer of proof and if any agreement ultimately is reached after Mr. Estes provides a statement, the government will not be bound by any representations or agreements it makes if any of his statements at any time are false, misleading or materially incomplete or if he knowingly fails to act with total honesty and candor. Sincerely Stephen S. Trott Assistant Attorney General Criminal Division Upon receipt Trott’s letter I conferred with Billie Sol who provided me with information that would be contained in a letter of proffer to be sent back to Trott in response. His daughter, Pam, was present when he disclosed the information to me. Here is my letter back to Assistant Attorney General Trott: August 9, 1984 Mr. Stephen S. Trott Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division U.S. Department of Justice Washington, D. C. 20530 RE: Mr. Billie Sol Estes Dear Mr. Trott: My client, Mr. Estes, has authorized me to make this reply to your letter of May 29, 1984. Mr. Estes was a member of a four-member group, headed by Lyndon Johnson, which committed criminal acts in Texas in the 1960's. The other two, besides Mr. Estes and LBJ, were Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace. Mr. Estes is willing to disclose his knowledge concerning the following criminal offenses: I. Murders 1. The killing of Henry Marshall 2. The killing of George Krutilek 3. The killing of Ike Rogers and his secretary 4. The killing of Harold Orr 5. The killing of Coleman Wade 6. The killing of Josefa Johnson 7. The killing of John Kinser 8. The killing of President J. F. Kennedy. 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. In the cases of murders nos. 1-7, Mr. Estes' knowledge of the precise details concerning the way the murders were executed stems from conversations he had shortly after each event with Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace. In addition, a short time after Mr. Estes was released from prison in 1971, he met with Cliff Carter and they reminisced about what had occurred in the past, including the murders. During their conversation, Carter orally compiled a list of 17 murders which had been committed, some of which Mr. Estes was unfamiliar. A living witness was present at that meeting and should be willing to testify about it. He is Kyle Brown, recently of Houston and now living in Brady, Texas. Mr. Estes states that Mac Wallace, whom he describes as a "stone killer" with a communist background, recruited Jack Ruby, who in turn recruited Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Estes says that Cliff Carter told him that Mac Wallace fired a shot from the grassy knoll in Dallas, which hit JFK from the front during the assassination. Mr. Estes declares that Cliff Carter told him the day Kennedy was killed, Fidel Castro also was supposed to be assassinated and that Robert Kennedy, awaiting word of Castro's death, instead received news of his brother's killing. Mr. Estes says that the Mafia did not participate in the Kennedy assassination but that its participation was discussed prior to the event, but rejected by LBJ, who believed if the Mafia were involved, he would never be out from under its blackmail. Mr. Estes asserts that Mr. Ronnie Clark, of Wichita, Kansas, has attempted on several occasions to engage him in conversation. Mr. Clark, who is a frequent visitor to Las Vegas, has indicated in these conversations a detailed knowledge corresponding to Mr. Estes' knowledge of the JFK assassination. Mr. Clark claims to have met with Mr. Jack Ruby a few days prior to the assassination, at which time Kennedy's planned murder was discussed. Mr. Estes declares that discussions were had with Jimmy Hoffa concerning having his aide, Larry Cabell, kill Robert Kennedy while the latter drove around in his convertible. Mr. Estes has records of his phone calls during the relevant years to key persons mentioned in the foregoing account. II. The Illegal Cotton Allotments Mr. Estes desires to discuss the infamous illegal cotton allotment schemes in great detail. He has recordings made at the time of LBJ, Cliff Carter and himself discussing the scheme. These recordings were made with Cliff Carter's knowledge as a means of Carter and Estes protecting themselves should LBJ order their deaths. Mr. Estes believes these tape recordings and the rumors of other recordings allegedly in his possession are the reason he has not been murdered. III. Illegal Payoffs Mr. Estes is willing to disclose illegal payoff schemes, in which he collected and passed on to Cliff Carter and LBJ millions of dollars. Mr. Estes collected payoff money on more than one occasion from George and Herman Brown of Brown and Root, which was delivered to LBJ. In your letter of May 29, 1984, you request "(1) the information, including the extent of corroborative evidence, that Mr. Estes sources of his information, and (3) the extent of his involvement, if any, in each of those events or any subsequent cover-ups." In connection with Item # 1, I wish to declare, as Mr. Estes' attorney, that Mr. Estes is prepared without reservation to provide all the information he has. Most of the information contained in this letter I obtained from him yesterday for the first time. While Mr. Estes has been pre-occupied by this knowledge almost every day for the last 22 years, it was not until we began talking yesterday that he could face up to disclosing it to another person. My impression from our conversation yesterday is that Mr. Estes, in the proper setting, will be able to recall and orally recount criminal matters. It is also my impression that his interrogation in such a setting will elicit additional corroborative evidence as his memory is stimulated. In connection with your Item #2, Mr. Estes has attempted in this letter to provide his sources of information. In connection with your Item #3, Mr. Estes states that he never participated in any of the murders. It may be alleged that he participated in subsequent cover-ups. His response to this is that had he conducted himself any differently, he, too, would have been a murder victim. Mr. Estes wishes to confirm that he will abide by the conditions set forth in your letter and that he plans to act with total honesty and candor in any dealings with the Department of Justice or any federal investigative agency. In return for his cooperation, Mr. Estes wishes in exchange his being given immunity, his parole restrictions being lifted and favorable consideration being given to recommending his long-standing tax leins being removed and his obtaining a pardon. Sincerely yours, Douglas Caddy The full four letters can be found online using google. Two other murders bedsides that of Henry Marshall merit examination here because they are interrelated. These are the murders of John Kinser in 1951 and of Josefa Johnson, Lyndon’s sister in 1961, ten years later. The inside flyleaf of Mellen’s book is illuminating. It reads: Perhaps no other president has a more ambiguous reputation than Lyndon Johnson. A brilliant tactician, he maneuvered colleagues and turned bills into law better than anyone. But he was trailed by a legacy of underhanded dealings, from his “stolen” Senate election in 1948 to kickbacks he artfully concealed from deals engineered with Texas wheeler-dealer Billie Sol Estes, defense contractors, and his Senate aid Bobby Baker. On the verge of investigation, Johnson was reprieved when he became president upon John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Among the remaining mysteries of his life has been LBJ’s relationship with Malcolm “Mac” Wallace, who, in 1951, shot a Texas man having an affair with LBJ’s loose-cannon sister Josefa, also Wallace’s lover. When arrested, Wallace coolly said, “I work for Johnson…I have to get back to Washington.” Charged with murder, he was overnight defended by LBJ’s powerful lawyer John Cofer, and though convicted, amazingly received a suspended sentence. He then received a secret security clearance to work for LBJ friend and defense contractor D.H. Byrd, which the Office of Naval Intelligence tried to revoke for years without success. Billie Sol claimed that John Kinser was killed by Mac Wallace upon being ordered to do so by LBJ because Josefa had disclosed too many of LBJ’s secret criminal activities that threatened his goal of ascendancy to the presidency. In 1984 I arranged for Lucianne Goldberg, a prominent literary agent in New York City who later became famous in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, to meet with Billie Sol and me in Abilene to discuss his writing a book and getting it published. Among the murders he disclosed at our meeting with that of Josefa Johnson, LBJ’s sister. Billie Sol asserted that in 1961, Josefa was served on Christmas Eve a portion of a cake that contained poison and that she died the next day and was quietly buried the following day in the Johnson family cemetery on the Johnson ranch. Billie Sol in his autobiography “Billie Sol Estes: A Texas Legend” writes about this: For a time after the Kinser death, Josefa Johnson kept her mouth shut, but soon there were additional reports of her talking. In the end it was decided she could never be trusted. On Christmas day [1961] she became ill and died. I was told she was given poison. When Cliff [Carter] told me this, I had an empty feeling in my stomach. My family is dear to me. I would never consider doing something to them. I believe Lyndon was guided by the vision of his destiny and considered the sacrifice was needed by the people. In 1971, my discussion with Cliff Carter centered on his disgust with the murders. At the meeting in Abilene attended by Lucianne Goldberg, Billie Sol remarked about the mysterious circumstances that surrounded the death of the daughter of John Connally who died on her wedding night. Lucianne was familiar with the mystery. Billie Sol added that the only man LBJ was ever afraid of was John Connally, one of LBJ’s political allies, because Connally was even more ruthless than LBJ. As the result of Edward Miller and I meeting with Assistant Attorney General Trott he arranged for three young FBI agents to examine the agency’s file on Billie Sol to determine if the pursuit of granting immunity to him was warranted. They concluded it was and the three agents and I flew from Washington to Abilene to meet with Billie Sol to hear what he had to say. Billie Sol showed up at the meeting at a hotel with his daughter, Pam, and immediately stated he would not talk to the FBI agents and was withdrawing from negotiations to gain immunity. He was adamant about this, so the three agents departed and flew back to Washington. Billie Sol in his autobiography writes: After a further series of letters, a meeting was set up at a hotel in Abilene. As the day approached, I received a series of telephone calls from my Italian friends. I was informed my discussions with the Justice Department was a mistake. They insisted that if I appeared to be going through with the discussions, my life would end. I do not know how they found out about the discussions. Now I may be dumb but I am not stupid and I do not have a death wish. In my letter of proffer to Assistant Attorney General Trott in which I listed in behalf Billie Sol what he would disclose I purposely omitted one startling and controversial item for fear that it would cause the Justice Department to reject outright any discussion of immunity. This was that Billie Sol had confessed to me that he had paid a $500,000 bribe to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark when the Supreme Court was considering a case in which Billie Sol was appealing his conviction for violating Texas law. Billie Sol said that the $500,000 in cash was delivered to President Johnson on Johnson’s plane at an airport in Texas by Billie Sol and his lawyer, John Cofer. LBJ later disbursed the bribe to Justice Clark, who originally was from Dallas and was part of the Texas Mafia Here is a summary of the case in which Estes alleged that a bribe was paid: 381 U.S. 532 (85 S.Ct. 1628, 14 L.Ed.2d 543) Billie Sol ESTES, Petitioner, v. STATE OF TEXAS. No. 256. Argued: April 1, 1965. Decided: June 7, 1965. opinion, CLARK concurrence, WARREN, DOUGLAS, GOLDBERG concurrence, WARREN, HARLAN dissent, STEWART, BLACK, BRENNAN, WHITE dissent, WHITE, BRENNAN See 86 S.Ct. 18. John D. Cofer and Hume Cofer, Austin, Tex., for petitioner. Waggoner Carr, Austin, Tex., and Leon Jaworski, Houston, Tex., for respondent. Justice CLARK delivered the opinion of the Court. The question presented here is whether the petitioner, who stands convicted in the District Court for the Seventh Judicial District of Texas at Tyler for swindling, was deprived of his right under the Fourteenth Amendment to due process by the televising and broadcasting of his trial. Both the trial court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found against the petitioner. We hold to the contrary and reverse his conviction. The average American citizen would be shocked upon hearing that a U.S. Supreme Court justice had taken a bribe in a case and had even written the court’s opinion in the case. No doubt that the same citizen would be shocked upon learning that another Srpreme Court justice, who had been appointed to the bench by President Johnson, was accused to accepting money then forced to resign from the court. Here an article from politico.com on the subject: Abe Fortas resigns from Supreme Court May 15, 1969 By Andrew Glass 05/15/2008 04:12 AM EDT On this day in 1969, Abe Fortas, denying he had done anything wrong, resigned from the Supreme Court to return to private law practice. In stepping down, Fortas became the first Supreme Court justice to resign under threat of impeachment. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson nominated Abe Fortas (1910-1982), at the time an associate justice, to succeed Earl Warren as chief justice. In becoming the first such nominee to appear before a Senate committee, Fortas faced hostile questioning about his relationship with LBJ, which had improperly continued while he served on the high tribunal. Fortas cemented his friendship with the future president in 1948 when LBJ sought the Senate nomination in Texas. He won the Democratic primary contest by 87 votes. His opponent, Coke Stevenson, persuaded a federal judge to take Johnson’s name off the general election ballot while allegations of corruption — including 200 votes cast in alphabetical order for LBJ — were investigated. But after Fortas persuaded Justice Hugo Black to overturn the ruling, Johnson managed to win the general election. On the Senate floor, conservative senators mounted a filibuster against the chief justice nomination, using as a wedge issue Fortas’ acceptance of a $15,000 fee for a series of university seminars. When supporters could muster only 45 of the 59 votes needed to end debate, Fortas asked the president to withdraw his name — becoming the first nominee for that post since 1795 to fail to win Senate approval. Soon, a larger problem arose. In 1966, Fortas took a secret retainer from the family foundation of Wall Street financier Louis Wolfson, a friend and former client subsequently imprisoned for securities violations. The deal provided that in return for unspecified advice, Fortas was to receive $20,000 a year for life. Disclosure of the retainer effectively ended Fortas’ judicial career. John Cofer represented Billie Sol in his 1965 case before the Supreme Court. Cofer, like Fortas, was involved in rigging the 1948 election that sent LBJ to the Senate. Cofer was Mac Wallace’s attorney in the 1951 homicide trial in which Wallace was found guilty of homicide with malice aforethought in the murder of John Kinser but was awarded a suspended sentence. Cofer was Billie Sol’s attorney in his state and federal criminal cases. One of the more startling disclosures in Billie Sol’s autobiography is his belief that the deaths of Mac Wallace, Cliff Carter and John Cofer were not natural. Apparently each of them knew too much about LBJ’s criminal activities and LBJ’s secret financial empire. In 1998 California producer Lyle Sardie released a fascinating and encompassing documentary, “LBJ: A Closer Look.” It traces Johnson’s fraudulent rise to power and his behind the scene involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. I was privileged to be among those interviewed in the documentary, which can be viewed on YouTube.

Leslie: I shall contact Lee Shepherd on Facebook and call his attention to your extensive posting above and ask him if he would be agreeable to supplementing your posting with any additional information he may have. Thank you for all that you do on this and other aspects of the assassination of JFK. I never met Hank but corresponded with him and was shocked at his passing. He was a brilliant man.

Launching the Clinton Administration Russia Policy in 1993 | National Security Archive (gwu.edu)