Paul Trejo

Bill, many thanks for posting the link to Bill Simpich's article: Printing: THE JFK CASE: THE TWELVE WHO BUILT THE OSWALD LEGEND (Part 7: The hand-off from De Mohrenschildt to the Paines) I find I agree with everything Simpich wrote -- a rarity in my world. I will explore him further, with emphasis on the General Walker case. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Patrick, IMHO you have a worthy goal, although you might underestimate the many barriers. Researchers agree on very little, as you may find in your exploration of the Forum. That said, your dream of a multimedia timeline is interesting. For example, Bill Kelly posted an example of a timeline in the recent article by Bill Simpich: Printing: THE JFK CASE: THE TWELVE WHO BUILT THE OSWALD LEGEND (Part 7: The hand-off from De Mohrenschildt to the Paines) In this article by Bill Simpich, just about every other sentence is a hyperlink that takes the reader to an FBI document to be used as a proof-text. This is a great idea, and is just what we need. The difficulty with any time-line is that many people will clash over a "fact". For example, the CIA offers a timeline of Lee Harvey Oswald that stipulates that on 22 November 1963 at 12:30PM Oswald shot JFK from the 6th floor TSBD building. That is hotly debated -- and that is only the tip of the iceberg. If you say -- let's only add to the timeline those items that 90% of people agree upon, your next big challenge will be the maintenance of voting records. I suspect that we are years away from a "Wikipedia" style of time-line for the JFK case -- although I hope I'm wrong about this. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

That's very interesting material, Lee, because it shows that Michael Paine was splitting hairs with the Warren Commission. He told Ray and Mary La Fontaine that if the Warren Commission ever asked him directly if Oswald had ever shown him one of the Backyard Photographs, that he would have admitted it. He was telling the truth, sort of, because in the cases you cited, the Warren Commission never directly asked him if Oswald showed him one of the Backyard Photographs. (Clearly, in the face of all these allegations, Paine was sifting through the questions with a fine-toothed comb, seeking loopholes.) For example, in that first excerpt from his WC testimony, Paine told Liebeler that he and Ruth "didn't know he had a rifle." This means that the rifle that he saw in the Backyard Photograph might have belonged to somebody else, for all he really knew. Also in that example, Liebeler asked Michael Paine if he ever heard or observed Oswald practicing with a rifle. Again, Paine probably told the truth when he said no. Just because Oswald showed him a Backyard photograph, that is not the same as hearing him or observing him practice with a rifle. It's splitting hairs, but it's still the truth. Also, in that second excerpt from his WC testimony, Liebeler asked Paine if the FBI "or any other investigatory agency of the Government" ever showed him a Backyard Photograph. Liebeler did not ask if Oswald showed him a Backyard Photograph. So, Paine simply told the truth -- the FBI asked him after JFK was dead to identify the place where Lee was standing in the Backyard Photograph. Evidently Paine did not withhold the Neely Street address from anybody, as he also gave that address to Will Fritz. So, Michael Paine did not lie to the Warren Commission. They never asked Paine specifically if he ever saw the Backyard Photograph before the JFK assassination. Paine told Ray and Mary La Fontaine that he would have been truthful if they had asked him that question -- but they never asked him that specific question. I always believed that the Warren Commission treated Michael Paine with kid gloves. Regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Terri, in my opinion it doesn't matter if anybody comes forward with their confirmation or not (aside from the fact that violence might be the result). What matters is that you are courageous enough to stand up for your personal truth, despite critics and hecklers. Although you can't name the person you suspect, and so nobody can research that avenue, it is enough, in my opinion, that you have named the culture and the kind of person that killed JFK. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

John, where did you find any papers from the LSC? The MSC has letters to the LSC, but nothing much from the LSC. Also, would those Shreveport Councilor articles that mention Walker appear at a time before the JFK assassination? Where did you find those? If you aren't using US archives, what resources are you using, may I ask? Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Anyway, can we please get back to the theme of this thread -- the Joachim Joesten book, How Kennedy Was Killed (1968)? I have an open question about Joesten's opening chapter that accuses the Dallas Police Department of direct involvement in the JFK assassination. The Dallas DPD had control of the grassy knoll. They controlled who came in and who went out of the area behind the picket fence of the grassy knoll. I also found a bit more on this suspicion in Walt Brown's book, Treachery in Dallas (1995), for whom the JFK conspirators had to have five special traits: (i) to be home-grown American; (ii) to hate JFK enough that nobody would chicken out; (iii) to be rifle experts; (iv) to blend in naturally with Dallas streets; and (v) to be above official investigation. Bingo, thought Walt Brown, the DPD "fits this profile perfectly." This group would also have at least two key people at the top of the chain of command. Besides this, the DPD could control the motorcade route, the manpower, the crime scenes, the evidence, news reporters, the suspects to release, the suspects to hold, their visitors and their safety. For Walt Brown, "no crime scene involved in the assassination was ever truly sealed." It took the DPD forty-two minutes before they arrived at the sixth floor of the TSBD building to look around. When Ricky White came forward in the 1990's and accused his own father, a DPD cop, of killing JFK, and his mother backed his story, where did that investigation lead - nowhere? Are Walt Brown and Joachim Joesten the only two writers that wrote a chapter on this question? Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Well, John, it appears as though I will need to buy a vowel. I have looked high and low for a book about the Lousiana Sovereignty Commission (aka. Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission) and found nothing anywhere. There is no entry in Wikipedia about it. There is no chapter in any history book about it. There is, however, a wonderous web site about the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, and they display some correspondence that they held with the Lousiana Sovereignty Commission in the 1960's -- but it is sparse and mostly useless. So I contacted the State of Louisiana, specifically in their Department of Archives and History. They told me that their archives are tiny compared with the Mississippi, and they could find very, very little -- next to nothing about it, aside from a few invoices and memos about scheduled meetings. Some of the names on the memos included John Deere, Jack Gould, John Satterfield and Earle Johnston, but I found nothing important written by these men. Oddly, in the whole internet, the most active thread on the Sovereignty Commission in general is the thread that you started back in 2006, as I recall. Goldwater's name came up as an exploiter of this sort of group. The most interesting character, IMHO, was Louis W. Hollis, evidently the national leader of the Sovereignty Commission, who wrote that screed with which you opened your old thread, namely, the FIVE POINT ACTION PROGRAM. I did enjoy reading that article -- it is substantial. I also tend to favor your theory -- that the people who could write such inflammatory rhetoric about Black Americans, so openly and so shamelessly, would be the prime candidates to carry out Executive Action violence against JFK. This corresponds with my budding theory that names ex-General Edwin Walker -- who was very close to Ross Barnett and various White Citizen Council groups, and who lived in Dallas and who also believed that RFK was out to kill him. So -- I'm interested in finding out more -- not speculation, but hard historical documents. Yet I could not find out, as you suggested, the names of the leaders of the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission. Where did you find that information? Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Ian, I believe you might be referring to the Ray and Mary La Fontaine book, Oswald Talked (1996). That's an interesting read because they also cite Michael Paine's confession that Lee Harvey Oswald actually showed him one of the Backyard Phtotos back in April of 1963. MIchael never told Ruth about that, but he said he would have told the Warren Commission if they would have asked him. Yet the WC never asked him, so he didn't tell anybody until 1993, when the Fontaines asked him. I also note that only one negative of the Backyard Photos has ever been found -- and that was in the Oswald possessions -- and that corresponds to Marina's memory that she clicked the button only once. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Terri, I appreciate the name of Jerry Mitchell, and I now want to speak with him. This is a breakthrough for my own theory. Many thanks for the name. I believe the problem of obtaining justice for lynchings in the 1960's is immense, involving mobs of people and millions of dollars of legal fees which poor counties don't have. Some lynchings were revenge killings for race-mixing at a time when race-mixing really was prohibited in Southern statutes -- so the legal battles could take years, make headlines and be humiliating to hundreds or even thousands of people. Although there is no statute of limitations on the crime of murder, the public official who pushed forward such justice might be killed himself -- even today. The Confederate flag still flies high in some counties in the Deep South. As for the "confiscation of weapons" in 1963, levied on the Cuban Exile training camps like Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, used by groups like Alpha 66 with help from Minutemen and the KKK, it was life or death for the Cuban Exiles, but it was even more serious for rightists in the USA -- it was a Constitutional question. Should the Federal government abolish the 2nd Amendment? These are fighting words beyond the KKK, beyond the WCC's, beyond the Minutemen, beyond the John Birch Society. Millions upon millions of Americans consider it tyranny to speak of abolishing the 2nd Amendment. Even today, politicians accuse President Obama of trying to abolish the 2nd Amendment. This question mobilizes millions of Americans. It isn't true of course, but it makes lots of people hate the President. It wasn't true of JFK, either. JFK did not outlaw the possession of weapons -- he shut down Cuban Exile training camps, which is a different matter. This was about the Cuban Missile Crisis and its aftermath, when JFK was trying to convince the USSR to back away from Cuba, after removing their missiles. The rightists claimed that JFK really let the missiles remain in Cuba. It was their very real paranoia that JFK was arming Cuba, Yugoslavia and the USSR and disarming the USA. The claims against JFK (like the claims that Sarah Palin made about Obama last year) said that JFK was a Marxist and a Communist. The right-wing really hasn't changed much since the 1960's -- they still represent about 33% of the USA and still accuse their opponents of Communism. Still not a majority -- but they are trying like mad. It's not just that the so-called confiscation of weapons angered the KKK more than the race-mixing at Ole Miss, but it angered millions of more Americans who had nothing to do with the KKK. And this gave the KKK more credibility and more power. I agree with you, Terri, that it was like throwing fuel on the fire. There is a book written by Judge Tom Brady called, Black Monday (1954), which was the first and most popular book that the WCC ever distributed. It is a protest against Brown v. The Board of Education, and against race-mixing specifically. Tom Brady believed in the science fiction fantasy that all great ancient Empires were white, and only fell because colored people took them over. Brady wrote that Cleopatra was white. He even wrote that the Mayan kings were white. This was his science fiction fantasy, and he sold it to millions of people in the South, including Governors, Congressmen, Senators, Judges, Doctors, Lawyers, Professors, Bankers, Businessmen and Society Ladies. The South ran with Brady's doctrine of white supremacy like Nazi Germany ran with Madame Blavatsky's doctrine of Aryan supremacy. The WCC said they wanted to keep the KKK and its thug violence out of their movement -- but the history of the Deep South proved that they could not make that happen. The KKK would come in anyhow and wreak violence. Even then, the WCC did plenty of damage by ruining Black people economically, by getting them fired from their jobs, and getting banks to call in their loans. As for Cuba, while it is true that the Mafia -- including the Dixie Mafia -- wanted to get their old stomping grounds back from Castro, they were not the driving force behind the push to kill Castro. There is a problem with Communism that cannot be tolerated by the US Constitution. Western Law is based on private property -- and Communism undermines that. While it is true that private property is subject to abuses, for example, organized crime, the ancient institution of private property is the foundation of Western Law. The USSR was the great experiment to prove that people could live without private property, and the proof of its failure was in 1990 when the USSR finally collapsed upon itself. We can't blame the Mafia for the drive against Castro. The vast majority of Americans wanted Castro overthrown. If not for the USSR protecting Cuba in 1963, I feel sure that Castro would have been overthrown. Even JFK and RFK held secret plans to to overthrow Castro -- but they had to be secret, and not out in the open like Lake Pontchartrain. Sadly, the right-wing failed to understand this. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Terri, I still think that Cuba was the main issue on the mind of the JFK killers -- that along with race-mixing in public schools. I think JFK was naive when it came to the South. JFK was a rich Yankee who grew up in a bubble. He knew nothing about life in the South, except what he read in books. When he saw the "Wanted for Treason: JFK" handbills in Dallas on the last day of his life, he turned to Jackie and said, "We are in nut-country now." So, JFK imagined that this right-wing hatred of JFK was limited to a tiny minority of Americans, whom he could call, "nutty." He failed to realize something that LBJ clearly saw -- that the extreme right wing in the USA had been galvanized over the twin issues of Cuba and the massive resistance to Brown v. The Board of Education, which was decided by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. LBJ saw clearly that perhaps 33% of all Americans were sympathetic to the extreme right, especially as regards their own white children in public schools. The resistance was massive -- and JFK was dimly aware of it. But LBJ stood up to the killers of JFK. They wanted the USA to invade Cuba, and they wanted to roll-back Brown v. The Board of Education, and they wanted to impeach Earl Warren. That is what they dreamed of achieving by killing JFK. As evidence I submit the open letter to JFK written by ex-General Edwin Walker, a frequent speaker at White Citizens' Council meetings. http://www.pet880.co...Open_Letter.JPG In this letter, written on 26 September 1962, that is, on the eve of the racial riots at Ole Miss University, Edwin Walker goes on and on about Cuba, even above the issue of Ole Miss, which was fresh on his mind. LBJ saw all this cleary. LBJ knew who killed JFK, at least at the group level. And LBJ was not afraid of them. They just killed JFK over Cuba -- they might kill LBJ over Cuba, but LBJ stood firm. He refused to invade Cuba, and he refused to reverse Brown v. the Board of Education, and he refused to impeach Earl Warren. LBJ frustrated the JFK killers after the fact. LBJ also used Earl Warren to cover-up the evidence that the right-wing in the USA killed JFK. LBJ had a good reason -- National Security. The active right-wing in 1963 was massive -- representing perhaps 33% of all Americans. To pick a fight with the South again might have turned into a new Civil War. In the midst of the Cold War that was even more dangerous. LBJ, Hoover, Dulles and Earl Warren did the right thing by covering up the JFK murder. Vietnam was barely on the radar in 1963. Finally, Terri, about the presence of Guy Banister in Terry, Mississippi, your home town, I will (when I get more time) look up the Mississippi Clarion Ledger newspaper articles of that period. I know very little about Mississippi newspapers today -- but I will know more about them in coming months. As far as city records go for Terry and Byram, Mississippi, it would take a lot of effort on my part to obtain them. Finding somebody who lives in those towns who is also interested in this question would be a great help. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Why don't you provide a detailed description of your claims for the Forum, Ray? I'm sure others would like to read them as well. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Thank you, Ray, for actually providing some hard evidence for my consideration. I've always said that I'm open to new information, and my theory isn't a stone slab. Yet you overspoke just a tad, Ray, when you said my theory is "blown out of the water". I think what you meant to say is that my battleship has taken one torpedo. If (and only if) your analysis is correct, then I will have to forego my speculation that the copies possessed by the Dallas Police Department were given to them by the managers at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. If (and only if) Oswald did not take the cut-out photographs possessed by the Dallas Police Department (which showed up years later) then I must find two other explanations right away: (1) How did the DPD come to be in possession of the BYP cut-outs? (2) What made the managers at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall dismiss Lee Oswald precisely during the period when the Backyard forgeries were constructed with sophisticated equipment (like the equipment at JCS to which Oswald had daily access)? Fortunately, these are not difficult to repair. (1a) I'm content to theorize (along with others) that the DPD over the years worked with some JFK researchers to try to duplicate the BYP and to show how it could be done. (2a) I can still retain my theory that the managers of JCS dismissed Oswald during the period of the BYP precisely because he was abusing expensive, sophisticated photographic equipment at that very same period in time. Yes - perhaps it was a direct hit, Ray. But it was minor. My theory was not blown out of the water. It's still afloat. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

So, Lee, I take it that you disagree with my theory. That's OK. I disagree with your theory, too. Regards, --Paul Trejo

Daniel, You mean...you were being sarcastic? --Paul

Well, that's right, Daniel. No doubt that paranoid type of thinking sounds bizarre to us in the early 21st century, but a half-century ago we should not be surprised to witness people thinking that way. The NAACP seems like a courteous group of people to us today -- and no doubt they were always courteous (otherwise, they could hardly have been as successful as they have been). However, reading speeches by Strom Thurmond back in the 1950's, one gets the idea that the NAACP were a bunch of wild savages. Medgar Evers lived with this sort of prejudice his entire life. It was not a small thing in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina, although it was a small thing in California where I grew up. In Southern California we had outspoken white-supremacists, but there were very few, and widely regarded as nutty and not at all as Christian, which was the culture (and remains so). Also, Black Americans were not seen as a major social problem where I grew up. The Watts riots got lots of news coverage, but aside from a few isolated incidents, race was not a news item. Probably this is because the population of Black Americans in Southern California was about 10%. The case is different in the Deep South. First, the population of Black Americans in the Deep South is often 50% in many counties, and up to 80% in some counties. In those counties where the population of Black Americans is the highest, that is precisely where the loudest and most persistent white-supremacists lived. They regularly elected white-supremacists to high office, including Congress and the Senate. They regularly used the "N" word, not only at home, but also in public places and even in high-office. Medgar Evers was profoundly aware of all this. He could see the paranoia rise in his home town. He knew he was about to be killed. And he was. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Right, Daniel, because Meredith's point was that Medgar Evers had increasing premonitions that he was going to die. Evers knew that the NAACP was making tremendous strides in 1963, thanks to recent Federal Court decisions, and he believed the South was not ready for such an upsurge in changes for Black rights. He heard the speeches given by the Massive Resistance to US Civil Rights, and they were impassioned, suffering, like a fighter on the ropes. Evers grew up in the South. He knew the people. He knew that if the NAACP did not throw the white-supremacists a bone from time to time, that they would act out. Evers knew how much they could take. He was certain he was going to be killed very soon -- and he was. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Robert, it seems that Joachim Joesten was not alone in his European obsession with the JFK case. Bertrand Russell, famed philosopher, was also busy with his own JFK conspiracy theories. It was a big European hit in the 1960s. Bertrand Russell put his money on Mark Lane. Joachim Joesten put his money on Jim Garrison. BTW, the story from the link you posted from the Mary Ferrell site appears to be an advertising blurb written by Joesten himself, posted as a news story in order to sell more copies of his 1968 book, How Kennedy was Killed. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Well, Ian, I maintain that even if Oswald tried to kill ex-General Edwin Walker, that doesn't prove anything about the JFK killing. George De Mohrenschildt's explanation of this Backyard Photo in his possession was that he found it by surprise in Haiti. He and Jeanne were rummaging through their storage space, and she found a green box containing English instruction recordings which she had lent to Marina Oswald. They could not remember when Marina returned this to them. She opened it up, and there, next to the records, was a Backyard photograph. The signature on the back was clearly from Oswald. The handwriting matched, according to experts. But the Russian phrase, "Hunter of fascists, ha ha ha," wasn't written in Oswald's handwriting. George De Mohrenschildt said the handwriting was probably by Marina Oswald, because that was her peculiar sense of humor -- always denigrating Oswald. I agree with you that George could not wait to dump Oswald and move to Haiti. By the way, George's contract, which was worth more than $300,000 in 1963 (about $3 million in today's dollars) was mainly for oil exploration in Haiti, and not a contract for production. As for the alleged hypnotist act, I don't believe it was hypnosis that motivated Oswald -- what motivated Oswald, according to George De Mohrenschildt, was that Oswald loved being the center of attention. Perhaps for the first time in his life, Oswald was getting lots of attention from older rich men. I believe that Oswald loved this attention. Oswald was male-oriented (as proved by his continual mistreatment of Marina). Attention from important white males was all-important to Oswald, IMHO, and that is what motivated him to behave like a fool. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Ray, I believe we must make allowances for the fact that English was Marina's second language. "Held the camera up to her eye" is a stock English phrase -- what one traditionally did with a camera in older days. She probably meant to say "looked into the camera viewfinder," but she didn't have the vocabulary for that. As for the missing foilage in the cut-out photograph, I admit it's an issue, and I don't have a final answer, however, when it comes to making photographic forgeries, the possibilities are endless. Does anyone doubt that somebody playing around with a photograph using state-of-the-art equipment could do almost anything he dreamed up? Best regards, --Paul Trejo

This is all conjecture and innuendo, Robert. This is the same level of argument that convicted Lee Harvey Oswald. I advise you to try to see beyond the political hatred of LBJ. The conspirators who killed JFK wanted an invasion of Cuba, first, foremost and last. That was their goal. They didn't get their goal. LBJ made sure that they didn't get their goal -- even though they walked away free. If any of the JFK conspirators are still alive today, they get to see a Communist Cuba every morning when they wake up. That was the legacy of LBJ. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

Thanks David, for the vote of confidence. I take your remarks to mean that Oswald's cool head about the photographs is suspicious behavior. A normal person, shown forged photographs of himself, would have complained like crazy, and Oswald liked to complain. Oswald seemed a little too familiar with these photographs -- whether he himself was the forger or not, he probably saw them before. But Occam's razor tells me that Oswald had the means ready-to-hand at JCS. Best regards, --Paul Trejo

bump

OK, Lee, it's good to know what points you consider higher priority. My position has always been that I believe the sworn testimony of Marina Oswald. I am aware that this Forum is divided on this topic -- some completely believe her, some completely disbelieve her, and others pick and choose what they will believe from what she testified. Going by Marina Oswald's testimony -- the woman who spent the most time with Oswald for the last three years of his short life -- Lee Harvey Oswald was a disturbed, wife beating loser. Now -- just because I accept that portrayal doesn't mean that I believe that Oswald shot JFK. I say that Oswald was innocent of the shooting of JFK. I think the evidence shown by JFK researchers for the past half century is convincing -- Oswald was innocent of the JFK shooting. I cannot agree, however, that Oswald was an innocent choir boy. Just because Oswald was human -- he had flaws just like the rest of us have flaws -- this is not enough to convict Lee Harvey Oswald of the murder of JFK. I was most disappointed in CBS correspondent Walter Cronkite when he preached his defense of the Warren Report on national TV, listing all of Oswald's sins -- he was a xxxx, a tempermental man, and a Communist sympathizer. And based on that list of sins, Cronkite concluded that Oswald deserved to take the full blame as the lone JFK assassin. I used to respect Cronkite, but after that performance I was ashamed of Cronkite. You don't convict a man of murder just because he's a sinner. It's beyond immoral. That's what I'm arguing. Even though Oswald was everything that Marina Oswald said he was -- that does not make him the killer of JFK. Marina repeatedly said that she didn't have enough evidence to know for sure -- but based on the evidence that the WC and the FBI allowed her to see, it did seem to her that Oswald was guilty. Later, after she saw more evidence from JFK researchers, she reasonably changed her opinion. The shooting at Walker on 10 April 1963 is a case in point. The one and only witness we have that suggests that Oswald was guilty of that shooting is Marina Oswald. According to her testimony, Oswald came home at midnight, clearly upset, and he confessed to her that he shot at Walker that night. She was devastated. That was the tear in their relationship that she knew could never heal. She wanted out -- but what could she do? She was pregnant in Dallas and could hardly speak English. OK, I accept Marina's testimony. But that doesn't mean that I believe the story that Oswald told her. I believe that Oswald lied to Marina. He told her he was alone. IMHO he wasn't alone. He told her he was on foot. IMHO he wasn't on foot. He told her he buried his gun. IMHO he didn't bury his gun. But she honestly repeated the lies that he told her. She had nothing else to report. Well -- there was also the matter of the photographs. She admits that she pressed the button on that Imperial Reflex only once. I consider that a fact. Also, she said that Oswald had made a photography book of pictures of Walker's house. We have some of those photographs, and Marina said she recognized one or two. Oswald took those, she testified. Now -- I find it unfortunate that these photos "formed part of the narrative that ultimatey condemned" Oswald of killing JFK. In my opinion, these photographs -- and the fact (from Marina's testimony) that Oswald was involved in shooting at Walker -- should never be a part of what condemns Oswald of killing JFK. There's no direct connection between the two events -- the one in April and the other in November 1963. The relationships are far more complex. Getting back to the point -- we have Marina's testimony of Oswald's confession, and we have the photographs of Walker's house and we have the one legitimate Backyard photograph and we have (as many readers also believe) several fakes that were made from one original. What is the easiest way to explain all this evidence? I cannot rely on the WC, Jim Garrison or the HSCA. Relying only on common sense -- and holding fast to Marina's testimony -- the most straightforward explanation for all these photographs is that Lee Harvey Oswald made them himself using sophisticated equipment that was available to him at that very time -- at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. It's not a "dynamite" discovery. It's surprising to me that nobody has ever proposed this before (to the best of my knowledge). Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

Robert, many if not most politicians of the early 1960's in the South played ball at some level with the powerful white-supremacy movement. We cannot be surprised that LBJ was among them. As George Wallace and others showed, it was impossible in those days to get elected unless one played ball with the KKK in many communities. We must add to the KKK the upsurge of the white-collar White Citizens' Council (WCC) which boasted a quarter-million dues-paying members in not only the South but also the North, with a substantial presence in the US Congress. Actually, it was in the Congressional film studios that the WCC made their weekly films -- almost free of charge. So, the WCC was subsidized by the US Congress. To this degree Terri Williams is correct to emphasize that, in the 1960's, the white-supremacist movement was predominant throughout the USA. If attitudes are radically different today, after the killing of JFK, we must recognize that LBJ is the one who made that radical change in our lives. Whatever a politician's motivations -- it is the politician's decisions and deeds that characterize his or her legacy. As for the JFK assassination, I quickly agree that LBJ led the cover-up of the JFK conspiracy. LBJ (along with Hoover, Dulles and Earl Warren) knew exactly who the conspirators were -- and that is precisely why they insisted upon concealing their identities. Furthermore, I believe Terri Williams is also correct in identifying the white-supremacist movement as completely central to the JFK conspiracy. Nevertheless, I reject any suggestion that LBJ was the leader of the plot to kill JFK. (Even if Madelyn Brown is telling the truth, and LBJ learned the night before that H.L. Hunt was involved in a JFK elimination plot, LBJ was in no position to do anything about it without endangering his own life.) The reason LBJ covered up the JFK conspiracy was not because he was part of it. On the contrary. The JFK conspirators wanted to push the USA to invade Cuba. LBJ did not invade Cuba. That is tangible proof that LBJ was not part of the conspiracy. Instead, the reason the LBJ covered up the JFK conspiracy was exactly the reason that he gave (and that Hoover, Dulles and Earl Warren gave) namely, National Security. In my humble opinion, LBJ (along with Hoover, Dulles and Earl Warren) knew that if the truth was told, there would be a Civil War in the USA. They also knew that if a Civil War broke out in the USA, the USSR would be tempted to get involved, and that would start World War Three. So, to prevent World War Three, LBJ (along with Hoover, Dulles and Earl Warren) held back the truth about the JFK assassination. It was a matter of National Security in 1964 for the WC, and it was the same matter of National Security in 1979 for the HSCA. I repeat -- the fact that LBJ did not invade Cuba is sufficient proof that LBJ was not the leader of the plot to kill JFK. He was only the leader of the plot to cover-up the plot. Hoover's gambit, "the lone-nut assassin," instantly won LBJ's approval. So, whenever Hoover leaked his story to the press (which was often) we can be assured that LBJ was also behind those leaks. Best regards, --Paul Trejo <edit typos>

What? Yes, this is expounded in the latest book by James Meredith, A Mission from God (2012). It was co-authored by William Doyle. Best regards, --Paul