John Simkin

I don't know but he was interviewed by William Matson Law for his book, In the Eye of History: Disclosures in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence (2005).

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

Wallace moved to the right in 1950, Roosevelt didn't like him because of his ties to McCarthy, Stevenson didn't like him because Kennedy defeated him but he campaigned for him anyway

Wallace did not move to the right. Wallace was a target of McCarthyism (supported by the Kennedy family). Wallace was the only leading politician willing to take on the racism in the Deep South.

Henry Wallace took on Harry Truman and Thomas Dewey. In the 1948 Presidential Election. His running-mate was Glen H. Taylor, the left-wing senator for Idaho. The programme of Wallace and Taylor included new civil rights legislation that would give equal opportunities for black Americans in voting, employment and education, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Bill and increased spending on welfare, education, and public works. Their foreign policy program was based on opposition to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.

Wallace travelled to the Deep South and called for the end of the Jim Crow laws. He was attacked at every point he stopped and made a speech. One of his followers said: "You can call us black, or you can call us red, but you can't call us yellow." Wallace commented: "To me, fascism is no longer a second-hand experience. No, fascism has become an ugly reality - a reality which I have tasted it neither so fully nor so bitterly as millions of others. But I have tasted it."

Glen H. Taylor also campaigned against racial discrimination. In Alabama he entered a public hall through an entrance marked "Colored". He pointed out in his autobiography, The Way It Was With Me (1979): "I was a United States senator, and by God, I wasn't going to slink down a dark alley to get to a back door for Bull Connor or any other bigoted son of a bitch. I'd go in any goddamned door I pleased, and I pleased to go in that door right there." Taylor was arrested and at a subsequent trial he was fined $50 and given a 180-day suspended sentence on charges of breach of peace, assault, and resisting arrest.

Did JFK attack Jim Crow laws in the 1960 Presidential Election campaign? No, but as Robert Kennedy later pointed out, he was sent into the Deep South to promise no legislation to end Jim Crow laws.

The reason that Wallace supported Nixon in 1960 was the Democratic Party was still seen as the "racist" party in American politics.

By 1968 Henry Wallace was dead. In 1960, he supported Nixon vs John Kennedy.

I know it is difficult to understand today, but in 1960 Henry Wallace, like many people in America at the time, considered JFK as more of a "cold war warrior" than Nixon. Especially over the subject of Cuba, where Eisenhower/Nixon, had been criticised over the way they had dealt with Castro.

I would argue that this was a domestic bombing. Take a look at other outrages that have taken place over the years during this week.

The Guardian have an interview with Oliver Stone today.

http://www.guardian....rica-went-wrong

Stone raises the issue of how different US history would have been if Henry Wallace had not been removed as vice president in 1944. I agree. It is a little known story but well worth finding out about. I have written about it in great detail here:

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

I heard Oliver Stone being interviewed on BBC radio yesterday. He was asked about the JFK assassination. He showed very little interest in the case and admitted that his film was very much speculation about what happened.

One the daging things that happened during the Red Scare was that anyone to the left of J.Edgar Hoover became known as a dangerous radical. Heywood Broun wrote in the New York World (23rd October, 1926): "Free speech is about as good a cause as the world has ever known. But, like the poor, it is always with us and gets shoved aside in favour of things which seem at some given moment more vital." Unfortunately, too many people are only in favour of free speech when they they agree with the speaker.

Anthony Lewis, the journalist has died. Lewis worked for 32 years as a columnist for the New York Times. Does anyone know if he ever wrote about the JFK assassination?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/25/anthony-lewis-dies-times-journalist

I imagine that most members of the Forum will agree that the official belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of John F. Kennedy has been the most significant cases of miscarriages of justice since the war. However, you would not know this by the way that the country’s most significant journalists have treated the case. For example, Walter Lippmann, later admitted he thought that Kennedy had been killed as part of a conspiracy but was unwilling to write about it in his newspaper column.

I thought it might be interesting to compare the way journalists dealt with the most important miscarriage of justice before the war. This was the conviction of Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco in 1920. The men were accused of killing Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli during a robbery.

Both men were foreign-born anarchists and this was the time of the Red Scare (a response to the Russian Revolution). In 1920 thousands of immigrants with left-wing views were deported from America. Vanzetti and Sacco had alibis and investigative journalists had even discovered who had really killed Parmenter and Berardelli.

The nation’s leading journalists behaved honourably in this case and demanded their release. This included Heywood Broun, Walter Lippmann (in his liberal period), John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Eugene Lyons, Freda Kirchway, Floyd Dell, etc. Significant figures in Europe also became involved including Bertrand Russell, John Galsworthy, Arnold Bennett, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells and Anatole France.

Over the next few years there were several appeals but Vanzetti and Sacco remained on death-row. In 1927 Governor Alvan T. Fuller appointed a three-member panel of Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuel W. Stratton, and the novelist, Robert Grant to conduct a complete review of the case and determine if the trials were fair. This was a sort of Warren Commission.

The committee reported that no new trial was called for and based on that assessment Governor Fuller refused to delay their executions or grant clemency. Walter Lippmann, who had been one of the main campaigners for Sacco and Vanzetti, argued that Governor Fuller had "sought with every conscious effort to learn the truth" and that it was time to let the matter drop and allow the men to be executed.

Heywood Broun, the most popular columnist in America at the time, refused to let the matter drop. Broun is an interesting case. He held left-wing opinions that were not shared by any of the newspaper owners who ran his syndicated column. However, he was so popular with the public they could not afford not to include his articles.

Broun was employed by the New York World (at $30,000 a year the highest paid journalist in America). On 5th August he wrote in his column: "Alvan T. Fuller never had any intention in all his investigation but to put a new and higher polish upon the proceedings. The justice of the business was not his concern. He hoped to make it respectable. He called old men from high places to stand behind his chair so that he might seem to speak with all the authority of a high priest or a Pilate. What more can these immigrants from Italy expect? It is not every prisoner who has a President of Harvard University throw on the switch for him. And Robert Grant is not only a former Judge but one of the most popular dinner guests in Boston. If this is a lynching, at least the fish peddler and his friend the factory hand may take unction to their souls that they will die at the hands of men in dinner coats or academic gowns, according to the conventionalities required by the hour of execution."

The following day Broun returned to the attack. He argued that Governor Alvan T. Fuller had vindicated Judge Webster Thayer "of prejudice wholly upon the testimony of the record". Broun had pointed out that Fuller had "overlooked entirely the large amount of testimony from reliable witnesses that the Judge spoke bitterly of the prisoners while the trial was on." Broun added: "It is just as important to consider Thayer's mood during the proceedings as to look over the words which he uttered. Since the denial of the last appeal, Thayer has been most reticent, and has declared that it is his practice never to make public statements concerning any judicial matters which come before him. Possibly he never did make public statements, but certainly there is a mass of testimony from unimpeachable persons that he was not so careful in locker rooms and trains and club lounges."

However, it was his comments on Abbott Lawrence Lowell that caused the most controversy: "From now on, I want to know, will the institution of learning in Cambridge which once we called Harvard be known as Hangman's House?" The New York Times complained in an editorial that Broun's "educated sneer at the President of Harvard for having undertaken a great civic duty shows better than an explosion the wild and irresponsible spirit which is abroad".

Ralph Pulitzer, the owner of the New York World, decided to stop Broun writing about the case after a board meeting on 11th August. As Richard O'Connor, the author of Heywood Broun: A Biography (1975) has pointed out: "The editorial board's decision certainly was defensible if one takes into account the climate of the twenties... The country was acutely aware of what some newspapers termed the Red Menace, now that all hope that the Bolshevik dictatorship in Moscow might crumble or be overthrown had vanished."

On 12th August 1927 Pulitzer published a statement in the newspaper: "The New York World has always believed in allowing the fullest possible expression of individual opinion to those of its special writers who write under their own names. Straining its interpretation of this privilege, the New York World allowed Mr. Heywood Brown to write two articles on the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in which he expressed his personal opinion with the utmost extravagance. The New York World then instructed him, now that he had made his own position clear, to select other subjects for his next articles. Mr. Broun, however, continued to write on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The New York World, thereupon, exercising its right of final decision as to what it will publish in its columns, has omitted all articles submitted by Mr. Broun."

Broun now went on strike and after sales of the New York World fell by over 50,000, it was agreed that he could write whatever he wanted. However, by this time, Vanzetti and Sacco, had been executed.

On 23rd August, 1977, Michael Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts, issued a proclamation, effectively absolving the two men of the crime. "Today is the Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Memorial Day. The atmosphere of their trial and appeals were permeated by prejudice against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views. The conduct of many of the officials involved in the case shed serious doubt on their willingness and ability to conduct the prosecution and trial fairly and impartially. Simple decency and compassion, as well as respect for truth and an enduring commitment to our nation's highest ideals, require that the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti be pondered by all who cherish tolerance, justice and human understanding."

We do not know what Heywood Broun would have said about the JFK assassination because he died of pneumonia on 18th December, 1939. However, it is highly unlikely that a newspaper would have been willing to run his column at the time.

On 22nd August, 1938, Heywood Broun was called before the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He had been accused of being a communist and a member of communist-front pressure groups such as the National Committee to Aid the Victims of German Fascism, the National Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners, the National Tom Mooney Council of Action and the National Scottsboro Committee of Action. Broun denied being a member of the American Communist Party but agreed that he had joined groups campaigning against the conviction of Tom Mooney and the Scottsboro Boys and the imprisonment of the political opponents of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany.

The following year he was sacked by Roy W. Howard, the owner of the New York World-Telegram, because of his support for President Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. As Broun had warned many years previously, once newspapers were owned by a few wealthy individuals, dissent opinion would be squashed.

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

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

It does seem like it was Hearst who gave Pegler his soapbox.

It is true he was employed by William Randolph Hearst who syndicated his column. However, he died in 1951. His son, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., was more liberal in his outlook. He actually won the Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for a series of articles on the Soviet Union that reflected these views. Hearst was also concerned by the number of newspapers who had stopped taking Pegler's column. This was a period when he was a member of the John Birch Society and was describing people like Eisenhower as being under the control of communists. Hearst sacked Pegler on 14th August, 1962. Pegler claimed that "I have a great deal of information which has become inapplicable until now because I couldn't get it published. This censorship had been going on a long time." He then went on to say that one of the stories that Hearst had stopped him from writing about was John Kennedy's corrupt relationship with Billie Sol Estes.

I discovered today that when JFK was elected Westbrook Pegler said "democracy is for bums... this country needs a dictator". Pegler eventually was sacked by Hearst in 1962 because of what he considered to be his growing extremist political views. According to Pegler, Hearst had refused to publish 15 articles about JFK. It would be interesting to know what he said about JFK in these articles.

Pegler later admitted that in May, 1957, he had a meeting with Mafia boss, Frank Costello, and asked him "Can you kill a fellow for me?" Costello asked him who it was. When he discovered it was Earl Warren (he blamed Warren for the 1954 civil rights ruling) he refused: "With those Federals, you can get into trouble".

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

I believe that Russ Baker will also be publishing a book on the assassination of JFK this year.

The 2005 edition of "The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories" is available for a 1d here.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1843534452/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used

FBI agent Arthur Murtagh appeared before the US House Select Committee on Intelligence on 18th November, 1975. He claimed that at a meeting of senior FBI agents DeLoach told them: "The other night, we picked up a siuation where this senator was seen drunk, in a hit-and-run accident, and some good-looking broad was with him. We got the information, reported it in a memorandum, and by noon the next day, the senator was aware that we had the information, and we never had trouble with him on appropriations since."

Deke DeLoach became friends with Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1950s. It was DeLoach who arranged with Johnson, who was the Senate majority leader, to push through legislation guaranteeing J. Edgar Hoover, a salary for life. DeLoach later recalled: “There was political distrust between the two of them, but they both needed each other." However, he denied that the two men worked together to blackmail politicians. In his book, Hoover's FBI (1995), DeLoach argued: "The popular myth, fostered of late by would-be historians and sensationalists with their eyes on the bestseller list, has it that in his day J. Edgar Hoover all but ran Washington, using dirty tricks to intimidate congressmen and presidents, and phone taps, bugs, and informants to build secret files with which to blackmail lawmakers." According to DeLoach this was not true.

Ronald Kessler, the author of The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (2002) has suggested that DeLoach was involved in blackmailing Senator Carl T. Hayden, chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, into following the instructions of Hoover. J. Edgar Hoover. In April 1962, Roy L. Elson, Hayden's administrative assistant, questioned Hayden's decision to approve the $60 million cost of the FBI building. When he discovered what Elson was saying, DeLoach "hinted" that he had "information that was unflattering and detrimental to my marital situation... I was certainly vulnerable that way... There was more than one girl... The implication was there was information about my sex life... I interpreted it as attempted blackmail."

The day following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, called J. Edgar Hoover and requested that DeLoach be assigned to the White House. DeLoach was involved in the investigation of the assassination of Kennedy. In one memo sent to Clyde Tolson, DeLoach claimed that Johnson "felt the CIA had something to do with the plot" to kill Kennedy. According to David Talbot, DeLoach "dismissed the president's dark mutterings as simply his efforts to reassure himself that the Warren Report was correct." Richard Helms added: "I didn't know whether (Johnson's conspiracy talk) was just like the fly fisherman flick over the water to see if he has any takers, or whether he really believed it."

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

Cartha (Deke) DeLoach has died aged 92.

According to Ronald Kessler, the author of The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (2002) DeLoach successfully blackmailed Senator Carl T. Hayden, chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, into following the instructions of J. Edgar Hoover. In April 1962, Roy L. Elson, Hayden's administrative assistant, questioned Hayden's decision to approve the $60 million cost of the FBI building. When he discovered what Elson was saying, DeLoach "hinted" that he had "information that was unflattering and detrimental to my marital situation... I was certainly vulnerable that way... There was more than one girl... The implication was there was information about my sex life... I interpreted it as attempted blackmail."

FBI Special Agent Arthur Murtagh also testified that DeLoach was involved in the blackmail of politicians on government committees. He claimed that DeLoach told him in November 1963: "The other night, we picked up a siuation where this senator was seen drunk, in a hit-and-run accident, and some good-looking broad was with him. We got the information, reported it in a memorandum, and by noon the next day, the senator was aware that we had the information, and we never had trouble with him on appropriations since."

The day following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson, called J. Edgar Hoover and requested that DeLoach be assigned to the White House. DeLoach was involved in the investigation of the assassination of Kennedy. In one memo sent to Clyde Tolson, DeLoach claimed that Johnson "felt the CIA had something to do with the plot" to kill Kennedy. William C. Sullivan argued in The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI (1979): "Since Johnson felt he had to protect himself against any last minute surprises from the Kennedy camp, he turned to the FBI for help. He asked Hoover for a special security team of a dozen or so agents to be headed by Cartha D. ("Deke") DeLoach, Courtney Evans's successor to the job of White House liaison. Ostensibly the agents would be there to guard against threats to the president, but this security force was actually a surveillance team, a continuation of the FBI's surveillance on Martin Luther King in Atlantic City. By keeping track of King, LBJ could also keep track of RFK. With the help of the FBI, Johnson spied on Teddy Kennedy during a trip Kennedy made to Italy."

In an interview DeLoach gave in 1991 he claimed: "Mr. Hoover was anxious to retain his job and to stay on as director. He knew that the best way for the F.B.I. to operate fully and to get some cooperation of the White House was for him to be cooperative with President Johnson... President Johnson, on the other hand, knew of Mr. Hoover’s image in the United States, particularly among the middle-of-the-road conservative elements, and knew it was vast. He knew of the potential strength of the F.B.I. - insofar as being of assistance to the government and the White House is concerned. As a result it was a marriage, not altogether of necessity, but it was a definite friendship caused by necessity.”

William C. Sullivan pointed out that by 1964 Deloach was a "member of Johnson's inner circle... and had a direct line to LBJ's White House". This included providing information from FBI files on Barry Goldwater during the presidential campaign of 1964. Tim Weiner, the author of Enemies: A History of the F.B.I. (2012) has argued: “DeLoach was always at L.B.J.’s beck and call, night and day... He was a talented political hatchet man, a trusted deputy to Hoover. He was also crucial to intelligence investigations conducted during the Johnson presidency.”

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

G. W. B. - Grey & relevant?

JFKcountercoup: Grey and Relevant ? By G.W. Blakey

Like you I have found Robert Blakey's contributions to the email group fascinating. Except for Tink Thompson and yourself, most of the others don't appear to be very interested in his views.

Has anyone come across Issac Don Levine? He was born in Russia and during the Cold War worked closely with people like Whittaker Chambers, Walter Krivitsky and Victor Kravchenko.

According to John V. Fleming, the author of The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War (2009): "Isaac Don Levine was a notorious reactionary if not an outright Fascist... An important pillar of Isaac Don Levine's career was his ability to get exclusives with people prominently in the news. A native speaker of Russian, he often had a comparative advantage in dealing with Russians abroad.... He was still going strong at the time of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, when he gained unique journalistic access to Marina Oswald, the Russian-born widow of the assassin."

http://www.spartacus...RUSlevineID.htm

I always thought that one of the more important books on political assassination is Levine's "Mind of the Assassin" in which he demonstrates that Ramond Mercader, Trotsky's assassin, was a Soviet agent from a family of Soviet agents.

And I always wondered if Oswald read that book and when he was in Mexico City, did he look up the apartment where Trotsky was assassinated by Mercader?

BK

Issac Don Levine specialized in befriending defectors. He then helped them write anti-communist books. I wonder if Levine had contacted Oswald when he arrived back from the Soviet Union. Levine also had very good contacts with the intelligence agencies.

Walter Krivitsky worked for the KGB. He defected to the United States in 1937. Krivitsky once told Whittaker Chambers: "Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a good natural death."

Krivitsky was found dead in the Bellevue Hotel in Washington on 10th February, 1941. At first it was claimed that Krivitsky had committed suicide. However, others claimed his hiding place had been disclosed by a Soviet mole working for MI5 and had been murdered by Soviet agents. Whittaker Chambers definitely believed that he had been killed by the KGB: "He had left a letter in which he gave his wife and children the unlikely advice that the Soviet Government and people were their best friends. Previously he had warned them that, if he were found dead, never under any circumstances to believe that he had committed suicide."

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

Whittaker Chambers was a close friend of Walter Krivitsky. He definitely believed that he had been killed by the KGB: "He had left a letter in which he gave his wife and children the unlikely advice that the Soviet Government and people were their best friends. Previously he had warned them that, if he were found dead, never under any circumstances to believe that he had committed suicide." Krivitsky once told Chambers: "Any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a good natural death."

Has anyone come across Issac Don Levine? He was born in Russia and during the Cold War worked closely with people like Whittaker Chambers, Walter Krivitsky and Victor Kravchenko.

According to John V. Fleming, the author of The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War (2009): "Isaac Don Levine was a notorious reactionary if not an outright Fascist... An important pillar of Isaac Don Levine's career was his ability to get exclusives with people prominently in the news. A native speaker of Russian, he often had a comparative advantage in dealing with Russians abroad.... He was still going strong at the time of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, when he gained unique journalistic access to Marina Oswald, the Russian-born widow of the assassin."

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

I have been interested in the discussions about the release of FBI files concerning the JFK assassination. It is possible that the unwillingness to release the files has anything to do with the assassination.

I have recently been writing about Victor Kravchenko. During the Second World War he served as a Captain in the Red Army on the Eastern Front. In 1942 Joseph Stalin had ordered all former engineers and other vital industrial experts to return to concentrate on increasing military production of armaments. After being vetted by the NKVD he was posted to the Soviet Purchasing Commission in Washington that was involved in implementing the Lend Lease agreement in the summer of 1943.

Kravchenko had been a supporter of Leon Trotsky and a close friend of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who had been executed by Stalin in 1937. While in the US he came into contact with David Dallin, a former leader of the Mensheviks who had emigrated to the country in 1940. Dallin also introduced Kravchenko to Lilia Estrin, Isaac Don Levine, Max Eastman and Eugene Lyons. Kravchenko also had meetings with the FBI where he had conversations about the possibility of defecting from the Soviet Union.

Kravchenko told the FBI that the Washington office of Soviet Purchasing Commission was under the control of a covert NKVD team. The author of The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War (2009) has pointed out: "All the executives of the commission were Communist Party members, though most, including Kravchenko, were under instructions to conceal that fact. The most important business was conducted in closed meetings attended only by Party members. In the typical pattern of domestic Soviet industries, there were secret police spies everywhere."

On 1st April, 1944, he sought political asylum in the United States. A few days later the New York Times reported that Kravchenko was "accusing the Soviet Government of a double-faced foreign policy with respect to its professed desire for collaboration with the United States and Great Britain and denouncing the Stalin regime for failure to grant political and civil liberties to the Russian people." The newspaper went on to add: "Mr. Kravchenko declined for patriotic reasons to discuss matters bearing on the military conduct of the war by Soviet Russia or to reveal any details bearing upon economic questions, particularly as they affect the functioning of lend-lease as handled by the Soviet Purchasing Commission and in Russia."

In 2006 Gary Woodward Kern decided to write a book about Kravchenko and discovered that most of the FBI files on him were classified on the grounds of national security. Even those they were willing to release they were heavily redacted. Kravchenko was dead but he had spoken to friends about what he told the FBI in 1943-44. This enabled Kern to discover what had been redacted. It was information about illegalities and profiteering on the part of the American contractors supplying the Soviets as part of the Lend Lease agreement. It seems that the FBI wanted to protect these companies.

Victor Kravchenko died from a gunshot wound in New York City on 25th February 1966. Officially his death was recorded as a suicide. However, his son Andrew believes he was the victim of a Soviet assassination. The released FBI files show that Lyndon B. Johnson took a strong interest in Kravchenko's suicide. He demanded that the FBI determine if his suicide note was authentic or a Soviet fabrication.

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

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair

I have just come across this article about the death of Travis Harvard Whitney by Heywood Broun. Whitney died on 8th January 1934. A search on the web showed that he had been completely forgotten. I have created a page on him to try and remedy this.

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

Heywood Broun, It Seems to Me (1935)

William James said that mankind must find a moral equivalent for war. Blow, bugles, blow, and let us put a ribbon with palms upon the breast of Travis Harvard Whitney. No soldier could have been more gallant than the man who crumpled at his desk in the Civil Works Administration. Before he would submit to being taken to the hospital where he died, Whitney insisted on giving directions to his assistants as to how the work should go on. He was torn with agony but it was his commitment to put two hundred thousand men and women back to work. This was just something which had to be done.

I saw him once, and in the light of his death I am not likely to forget. He called up to say that if the Newspaper Guild would furnish him a list of unemployed reporters he thought he could place some under the CWA.

"When do you want to see us" I asked.

"Come down now," he answered.

We expected to find an office and an office boy and probably a couple of secretaries, but Whitney had a desk thrust right in the middle of a large and bustling room. He sat there and rode the tumult like a city editor. There were no preliminaries of any kind. The tall, gaunt man with deep-sunken eyes began by asking: "Now when do I get that list?"

I've heard so much about red tape and bureaucracy that I didn't suppose he meant immediately. "It will take a little time," I told him. "We haven't got a very big clerical force or much office space, and of course John Eddy will have to check up on the names for you. Let me see - this is Thursday - suppose we get you that list a week from Saturday and then on Monday we can really begin to get to work on it."

He indicated impatience. "That won't do at all," he said. "You don't understand. This is a rush job. Every day counts. Can't you let me have part of the list the day after tomorrow? This ought to be done right away. Can't you call me on the phone tonight?"

"Where can I get you after dinner?" I asked. "Right here."

"How late?"

"I can't tell. I'll be here until I finish."

Travis Whitney made good that promise. He worked all day and he worked all night. He knew he was critically ill when he took the appointment. Doctors had told him of the necessity of rest and probably of an operation. "I think I can last," was his rejoinder.

And he set himself to win that race. Two hundred thousand jobs before the end came. I think it was Lord Nelson who had an ensign lash him to a mast at the battle of Trafalgar. Whitney's courage was better than that. He chained himself to his desk by a sheer act of will.

The people around could see him grow dead gray in the late hours. Almost you could hear the step of his adversary advancing. But all he said was, "We must hurry." He felt not only the pangs of his own physical torture but the bite of the wind upon the bodies of men who walked the streets without shelter.

I don't know what the economic philosophy of Travis Whitney may have been. He didn't have time to talk about it. "Some day" just couldn't fit into his scheme of things. His thought was of two hundred thousand jobs which must be made and handed out without delay. He had the harassed look of a flapjack cook in a lumber camp. "Right away" rang in his ears like a trumpet call. Maybe somebody came and said to him, "But don't you realize that you're not solving anything? This is just a temporary expedient. When the revolution comes..."

And I imagine Travis Whitney turned a deaf ear and only said, "Two hundred thousand jobs and this has got to be now."

He couldn't make the life force last until he had surged across the line. They put him on his shield and carried him away, and I hope that on his tomb will be written "Killed in action."

Unquestionably this shambling, thin man peering a little dubiously through glasses had a concern. It was a passion. I suppose it is a little difficult to make paper work seem as exciting or romantic as cavalry charges. But you see he had found his moral equivalent for war. And I rather think that when next I hear the word "heroism" my immediate mental association will not be that of any brass hat on a hill but of Travis Whitney bent over his desk. And maybe I will see him as a man against the sky. And I will hear him as he says, "More gently, death, come slower. Don't touch me till my job is done."

I have Dugger's The Politician: Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson - The Drive for Power From the Frontier to the Master of the Senate (1982).

The JFK assassination is mentioned on exactly 2 pages in that book. Nothing about LBJ's potential involvement in it. Nothing about LBJ covering up the JFK assassination. The Warren Commission is NOT EVEN mentioned in this book.

Of course there is nothing about the assassination. The book does not cover that period of LBJ's career (Dugger makes that clear from the title of the book.) However, Dugger is very good on the corruption of LBJ from a New Dealer to a mouthpiece of the oil and construction industries.

The answer is Charles Edward Marsh. He was a multimillionaire newspaper owner who was a strong supporter of the New Deal. Johnson owed the beginning of his political career to Marsh. In 1936 Johnson was a candidate for Austin's Tenth Congressional District. When he was told by Welly Kennon Hopkins that Johnson was a passionate "New Dealer" he ordered the editors of his two newspapers in Austin to back him. Hopkins claimed that Johnson's victory was in "no small part thanks to Marsh's editorial support" and suspected that he helped the young politician "as a way of extending his own influence".

Marsh met Johnson for the first time in May 1937. Marsh's secretary later recalled: "The first thing I noticed about Johnson was his availability. Whenever Marsh would ask Lyndon to come by for a drink, no matter that Lyndon was a busy man, he would always come. He was always available on short notice.... He was very deferential. Very, very deferential. I saw a young man who wanted to be on good terms with an older man, and was absolutely determined to be on good terms with him." Harold Young, one of Johnson's close friends, watched the young politician "play" many an older man. However, he felt that "he had never played one better than he did Charles Marsh".

Marsh was a strong anti-Nazi and he joined forces with Johnson in eventually helping hundreds of Jewish refugees to reach safety in Texas through Cuba, Mexico, and other South American countries.

Texas newspapers were overwhelmingly against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but Marsh's six Texas newspapers, including the influential Austin American-Statesman in the state capital, supported the New Deal. As a result, Roosevelt agreed to Marsh's request to see him. Edwin M. Watson, his appointment secretary, wrote on 14th July, 1939: "Put Mr. Charles Marsh down for an appointment with the President on Wednesday. Mr. Marsh is the owner of a large string of papers supporting the President in Texas." Marsh decided to take this opportunity to introduce Roosevelt to his new protégé, Lyndon Johnson.

In late 1939 Marsh discovered that Johnson was having an affair with his live-in mistress, Alice Glass. Marsh's eldest daughter by his first marriage, Antoinette Marsh Haskell, said he knew that she had been unfaithful in the past but her relationship with Johnson infuriated him. After loudly berating Johnson, Marsh threw him out. The next morning Johnson returned and apologized. He also promised to end the relationship with Alice and Marsh forgave him. Antoinette commented: "They didn't let her come between them. Men in power like that don't give a damn about women. They were not that important in the end. The were not that important in the end. They treated women like toys. That's just the way it was." Marsh eventually married and divorced Glass. Johnson then resumed his affair with Alice.

In 1948 Marsh backed Johnson against Coke Stevenson. During this election Johnson claimed he was like Marsh on the left of the party. However, once he won the election, he associated himself with the right in the Democratic Party. In 1949 Johnson mounted a smear campaign against Leland Olds, chairman of the Federal Power Commission. Olds had managed to lower the prices of electricity. This upset Johnson's friends in the Texas oil industry. As Robert Bryce, the author of Cronies: Oil, The Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate (2004) pointed out: "Johnson saw that the best way to take care of Olds was to brand him a Communist. In the 1920s, Olds had worked for a wire service, and during that time he'd praised some aspects of the system of government in Russia." Olds was forced to resign. Ronnie Dugger pointed out that by joining in the political crucifixion of Leland Olds - driving in the nails himself - Johnson had used most of the tricks of what would come to be known as McCarthyism, and he nauseated some of his colleagues, but he had achieved his purpose - he had convinced the oilmen back in Texas that he was their man."

Marsh broke with Johnson over this issue. In 1953 Marsh was bitten by a mosquito and contracted a grave form of malaria. As Jennet Conant the author of The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (2008), has pointed out: "By the time the doctor arrived, he was near death. Marsh refused to let go. Although he rallied, the high fevers, followed by a series of devastating strokes that damaged his brain. He was never again able to speak more than a few words. To see such a dynamic force struck down broke Dahl's heart."

Philip Kopper, the author of Anonymous Giver: A life of Charles E. Marsh (2000), claims that Johnson called on Marsh after arriving back in Washington. According to Marsh's nurse, Johnson attempted to speak to Marsh: "He got no reply, and as the silence lengthened, he blanched." He turned to Marsh's wife and with tears in his eyes, asked, "Where are Sam (Rayburn) and Charles now, when I need them." Charles Edward Marsh died on 30th December, 1964.

Johnson continued her sexual relationship with Johnson but according to Robert A. Caro, their relationship finally ended as a result of their bitter disagreement over the Vietnam War, which she passionately opposed.

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

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