John Simkin

William Buckley’s racism has already been discussed here: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5078 Here is an extract from a previous post: Buckley was particularly concerned with the sympathy that Eisenhower and Nixon showed towards racial integration and voting rights. In an article entitled “Why the South Must Prevail” (24th August, 1957) the journal argued that the Deep South was “right to disenfranchise blacks from voting in elections”. In an editorial of the same edition, Buckley wrote that the whites were the advanced race and that uneducated blacks should not be allowed to vote. He was particularly concerned that if given the vote, blacks would vote for socialistic measures to solve their economic problems. Buckley argued that liberals who pursued the “absolute right of universal suffrage for the Negro were endangering existing standards of civilization". According to Buckley, this was not only true of America. He was also concerned about what was taking place in countries that were part of the old empires. He advanced the theory that “acceding to black demands for independence and one man, one vote, whites were inviting a return to barbarism” Buckley’s racism is dealt with in John B. Judis’ book, William F. Buckley, Jr. Patron Saint of the Conservatives, Simon and Schuster, 1988. Judis quotes extensively from articles he wrote for the National Review. However, Buckley was at his most racist when he wrote to fellow racists such as his good friend, Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

Tim, You're a bit quick to savor the moment, aren't you? While John believes Dillon was not involved, there was a little rider in his statement wasn't there? Namely, "you need to ask why forces within the CIA were so keen to have Dillon in JFK's Cabinet". Well............why? Or do you deny this to be the case? Why? I think I might have an answer to why Phil Graham wanted Dillon to become Secretary of the Treasury. In order to answer this we need to go back to the selection of Johnson as Kennedy's vice president. In 1960 Lyndon Johnson’s closest political supporters urged him to enter the race when John F. Kennedy emerged as favourite to win the Democratic Party nomination. Sam Rayburn was especially keen for Johnson to defeat Kennedy. So was John Connally who established a Citizens-for-Johnson Committee. As Ralph G. Martin, pointed out, Johnson felt no need to campaign against Kennedy as he was convinced he “would destroy himself on the religious issue”. (1) Theodore H. White argued in “The Making of the President” that it was impossible for Johnson to win by taking on Kennedy from the beginning. “These men (Johnson, Rayburn and Connally) knew that the Johnson candidacy could not be muscled by seeking individual Convention delegates…. Their plans rested squarely on their control of Congress, on the enormous accumulation of political debts and uncashed obligations that, between them, Johnson and Rayburn had earned over years of the legislative trade.” (2) It was not until 5th July, 1960, that Johnson finally declared himself an official candidate. Johnson had been forced to leave it as late as this because he was unwilling to resign as Majority leader of the Senate. He therefore had to wait until Rayburn and himself had recessed Congress on 3rd July. Johnson immediately went onto the attack by pointed out that: “Those who have engaged in active campaigns since January have missed hundreds of votes. This I could not do – for my country or my party. Someone had to tend the store.” (3) Johnson now portrayed the front-runner as being “too young and “too inexperienced” (4) He also tried to get as Kennedy via his father. He described Joe Kennedy as being pro-Hitler. He was therefore opposing John Kennedy as he “did not want any Chamberlain umbrella man!” (5) Johnson also made reference to Kennedy’s health, pointing out that he had Addison’s disease. (6) Despite this dirty tricks campaign, Johnson was unable to stop Kennedy being nominated. Johnson was obviously upset by this result but comforted himself with the fact that as Majority leader, he remained the second most powerful man in American politics. The great surprise is that Johnson was willing to sacrifice this power in order to become Kennedy’s running-mate. In his book, The Making of the President, Theodore H. White, expresses shock at both Kennedy’s decision to offer Johnson’s the post, and his eventual acceptance of what appeared to be a demotion. White adds that this mystery will only be solved by “tomorrow’s historians”. (7) The idea that Johnson should be Kennedy’s running-mate was first suggested by Philip Graham of the Washington Post. Graham, the key figure in the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, had been campaigning strongly for Johnson to get the nomination. However, when Graham arrived at the Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles on 8th July, Johnson told him that Kennedy would win by a landslide. Graham then had a meeting with Robert Kennedy and was finally convinced that Johnson had indeed lost his race to be the presidential candidate. According to Katharine Graham, her husband and Joe Alsop, arranged a meeting with John Kennedy on 11th July. Alsop started the conversation with the following comment: “We’ve come to talk to you about the vice-presidency. Something may happen to you, and Symington is far too shallow a puddle for the United States to dive into.” Graham then explained the advantages that Johnson would “add to the ticket”. What is more, it would remove Johnson as leader of the Senate. (8) Kennedy agreed that Johnson would be a great asset. He knew that Johnson could deliver Texas. As Victor Lasky pointed out: “Every phase of the state’s election machinery from precinct tally clerk to the State Board of Canvassers was in the hands of Organization (read LBJ) Democrats.” (9) Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine, interviewed Kennedy on the eve of the Los Angeles convention. He later claimed that Kennedy told him: “if I had my choice I would have Lyndon Johnson as my running mate. And I’m going to offer it to him, but he isn’t going to take it.” (10) After the meeting with Graham and Alsop, Kennedy told his aide, Kenneth P. O’Donnell, that it made sense to have Johnson on the ticket but he knew that he would never accept the position as it would mean he would lose his powerful position in the Senate. Kennedy assured O’Donnell that Stuart Symington, “who was acceptable to both the labor leaders and the Southerners” would be his running-mate. (11) The mystery that has to be explained is not that Johnson was offered the post, but that he accepted it. Bobby Baker has provided an interesting account of the discussions that went on about the possibility of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. Baker describes how Johnson told him that Kennedy was coming to see him at his hotel. John Connally was of the opinion that Kennedy would offer him the job. Johnson asked Baker what he should do. Baker replied: “It’s no disgrace to hold the second highest office in the land and be one heartbeat away from the presidency.” Connally added that Johnson would be able to deliver Texas for Kennedy. At this stage Johnson appeared to be against the idea. He told Baker that he would have “trouble with some of my Texas friends if I decide to run.” Sam Rayburn was one of these “Texas friends” who was strongly opposed to the suggestion that Johnson should become Kennedy’s running-mate. He quoted another Texan, John Nance Garner, who held the post under Franklin D. Roosevelt, as saying: “The office ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” However, according to Baker, John Connally and Phil Graham “worked on” Rayburn until he “came round” to the idea that Johnson should become Kennedy’s running-mate. There still remained a significant number of opponents to Johnson’s strategy. Baker adds in his autobiography that “several Texas congressmen, spoiled by LBJ’s special attentions to their pet legislative schemes, begged him not to leave his powerful Senate post.” (12) According to Baker, one of Johnson’s political friends resorted to threats of violence against Johnson if he became the vice-presidential candidate. This was oil millionaire, Robert S. Kerr. In their book, The Case Against Congress, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson claim that “Robert S. Kerr, oil millionaire, uranium king, cattle baron and Senator from Oklahoma… dominated the Senate’s back rooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” (13) Pearson and Anderson point out that Kerr main concern in Congress was to preserve the oil depletion allowance. In “Wheeling and Dealing” Baker described what happened when Kerr arrived at the meeting in Johnson’s hotel room: “Kerr literally was livid. There were angry red splotches on his face. He glared at me, at LBJ, and at Lady Bird. ‘Get me my .38,’ he yelled. ‘I’m gonna kill every damn one of you. I can’t believe that my three best friends would betray me.’ Senator Kerr did not seem to be joking. As I attempted to calm him he kept shouting that we’d combined to ruin the Senate, ruin ourselves, and ruin him personally.” Johnson responded to this outburst by telling Baker to take Kerr in the bathroom and “explain things to him”. Baker did this and after hearing about the reasons for Johnson’s decision to accept the post, “Senator Kerr put a burly arm around me and said, “Son, you are right and I was wrong. I’m sorry I mistreated you.” What did Baker tell Kerr that dramatically changed his mind on this issue? According to Baker, he told Kerr: “If he’s elected vice-president, he’ll be an excellent conduit between the White House and the Hill.” What is more, if Kennedy is defeated, Johnson can blame it on Kennedy’s religion and be the likely victor in the attempt to be the Democratic Party candidate in the 1964 election. (14) Kerr would have been well aware of this argument before he entered the bathroom with Baker. If Kerr did change his mind about Johnson’s becoming Kennedy’s running-mate, then Baker told him something else in the bathroom. Maybe he explained that Johnson would become president before 1964. What we do know is that Kennedy’s close political advisers were shocked when Johnson accepted the post. They, like Kennedy himself, expected him to reject the offer. Why would Johnson give up his position as the second most powerful position in the country? Kenneth P. O’ Donnell was highly suspicious of Johnson’s motives. When he mentioned this to Kennedy he replied: “I’m forty-three years old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States. You’ve traveled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate.” (15) The problem with this argument is that Johnson was also aware that as Vice President he would lose his political power. This is why Kennedy told his aides that Johnson would turn the offer down. Yet there is evidence that Johnson was desperate to become Kennedy’s running-mate. One of Kennedy’s most important advisers, Hyman Raskin, claims that Kennedy had a meeting with Johnson and Rayburn early on the morning after his nomination. According to all other sources, at this time, these two men were strongly opposed to the idea of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. However, Kennedy told Raskin a different story. Johnson was very keen to join the ticket and “made an offer he could not refuse”. Raskin took this to mean that Kennedy was blackmailed into offering Johnson the post. (16) This view is supported by another of Kennedy’s close advisers. Pierre Salinger was opposed to the idea of Johnson being Kennedy’s running-mate. He believed that the decision would lose more votes than it would gain. Salinger believed that Kennedy would lose the support of blacks and trade unionists if Johnson became the vice-presidential candidate. Although Johnson would deliver Texas his place on the ticket would mean Kennedy would lose California. A few days after the decision had been made, Salinger asked Kennedy why? He replied, "The whole story will never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be." Salinger also got the impression that Kennedy had been blackmailed into accepting Johnson. (17) Kennedy must have been very concerned about this development. Why would Johnson blackmail him into accepting a post that had less power than the one that he already had? It only made sense if Johnson was going to continue using this strategy as vice president. Maybe this was only the first of many threats of blackmail. Would Johnson use his position to force Kennedy to appoint his friends such as John Connally and Fred Korth to important positions in his administration? Kennedy must also have considered another possibility. Did Johnson plan to replace him as president? This seems to have been on Kennedy’s mind when he told Kenneth O’Donnell that he did not intend to die in office. Given these events, it is possible that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was considered as early as 1960. If so, it is important to look closely at those people who played important roles in obtaining for Johnson the post of vice president. It is important to try and work out what was said in the meetings that went on between John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the short period before the announcement was made concerning the vice presidency. We know from Kennedy’s political advisers that their poll results showed that Stuart Symington would make the best candidate. Johnson would win votes in the South but would lose a lot more in other parts of America. It was calculated that with Symington on the ticket they would lose Texas but win California. As a result of these discussions, Clark Clifford was dispatched to Symington to offer him the post. (18) It is true that Kennedy did consider Johnson for the post. He told Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine that “if I had my choice I would have Lyndon Johnson as my running mate. And I’m going to offer it to him, but he isn’t going to take it.” (19) Kennedy said the same thing to Kenneth P. O’Donnell. Kennedy made clear he wanted Johnson as vice president because he did not want him as leader of the Senate. Kennedy was convinced that Johnson would block his legislation as majority leader. However, Kennedy added that Johnson would never be willing to accept the post because it would mean giving up the second most powerful position in American politics. (20) Therefore, the story put forward by Hyman Raskin (21) and Pierre Salinger (22) that Kennedy was blackmailed into giving the post to Johnson is probably true. The next question was why would Johnson want this post? It was obviously a package deal. Johnson would want more than just being vice president. He would want other guarantees. To answer this question we need to discover what the concerns were of Johnson’s backers. Some researchers have claimed that there were concerns about Kennedy’s policies on civil rights. This is not true. Kennedy was unwilling to give any commitment to pushing for new civil rights legislation. As Richard D. Mahoney points out in his book, Sons and Brothers: “As senator, Kennedy had zigzagged through the long obstacle course of civil rights legislation, siding in most cases, as a Ted Sorensen memo to Bobby proudly explained in December 1959, ‘with our friends in the South.’ He meant white friends.” (23) As Mahoney goes on to point out: “The most entrenched and skilled leaders of that majority in the Senate – McClellan of Arkansas, Eastland of Mississippi, Ervin of North Carolina, and Fulbright of Arkansas – were all vehement opponents of civil rights as well as close friends of Bobby Kennedy.” Kennedy admits in several interviews that were recorded as part of the Oral History Project, that he had several conversations with people like McClellan and Eastland during the campaign to assure them that the Kennedy administration would not promote the “civil rights issue”. (24) Harris Wofford, Kennedy’s special assistant for civil rights, supports this view in his memoirs, Of Kennedys and Kings. He points out that Kennedy was forced into taking a stand on the issue because of the activities of Martin Luther King and pressure groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For example, Kennedy did all he could to get the Freedom Riders to call off their activities in 1961. (25) The issue that most concerned Johnson and his backers was Kennedy’s threat to the Texas oil industry. Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson were the most important supporters of the oil industry in Congress. In the 1950s Dwight Eisenhower had shown himself to be a good friend of Texas. In the 1952 presidential election, the oil industry backed the Republican Party. This was reflected in Eisenhower’s appointment of Robert B. Anderson as Secretary of the Treasury. Before his appointment, Anderson was president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. In this post he introduced legislation beneficial to the oil industry. (26) One of Eisenhower’s first actions as president was to stop a grand jury investigation into the “International Petroleum Cartel”. Eisenhower justified his action as the need to maintain “national security”. Eisenhower’s behaviour had an impact on the oil lobby. “In 1956, officials at the nations biggest oil companies gave nearly $350,000 to Republicans while giving less than $15,000 to Democrats.” (27) Eisenhower was personally rewarded by the oil industry. Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson reported that Eisenhower’s farm was paid for by three wealthy oilmen, W. Alton Jones, Billy Byers and George E. Allen. The Internal Revenue Service discovered that these three oilmen gave Eisenhower more than $500,000 at the same time he was making decisions favourable to the oil industry. In their book, The Case Against Congress, Pearson and Anderson point out that on 19th January, 1961, the day before he left the White House, “Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 per cent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action.” One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order was a company called Cities Service. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the men who helped pay for Eisenhower’s farm. Three months later, Jones flew in a small plane to visit the retired president. The plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash. No one was ever able to explain why Jones was taking such a large sum of money to Eisenhower. (28) As a U.S. senator, John F. Kennedy voted to reduce the depletion allowance. (29) Texas oilmen were obviously concerned when Kennedy became the front-runner in the 1960 presidential election. It is true that Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were in a position to try and block the move in Congress. However, Kennedy had the potential to draw attention to this unfair tax loophole. As Sam Rayburn pointed out, if the oil depletion allowance was debated in Congress: “They’d cut it to fifteen, ten, five percent – maybe even take it away altogether. Do you think you could convince a Detroit factory worker that the depletion allowance is a good thing? Once it got on the floor, it would be cut to ribbons.” (30) In order to win votes in Texas, Kennedy changed his position on the oil depletion allowance. This was probably something that was negotiated by Johnson. In October, 1960, Kennedy wrote a letter to his Texas campaign manager outlying his policies on the oil industry. He said he wanted to make “clear my recognition of the value and importance of the oil depletion allowance. I realize its purpose and value… The oil-depletion allowance has served us well”. (31) Kennedy’s support for the oil industry was reflected in the appointment of John Connolly as Navy Secretary. Connolly was of course Sid Richardson’s attorney and a long-time lobbyist for the oil industry. This was a post that brought with it the power to issue lucrative contracts to Texas oil companies. When Connolly resigned to become governor of Texas, he was replaced by another one of Johnson’s Texan friends, Fred Korth. He was of course forced to resign in October, 1963, as a result of another Texan corruption scandal, the awarding of the TFX contract to General Dynamics. (32) The person who decided on the oil depletion allowance was the Secretary of the Treasury. This post was held by Clarence Douglas Dillon. This was a surprising appointment because Dillon had been a major contributor to the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. As a reward Dillon was appointed as Ambassador to France. In 1959 Eisenhower appointed him as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. He was therefore responsible for the economic policies and programs of the Department of State and for coordinating the Mutual Security Program. Dillon attended several Foreign Ministers meetings. In 1959 he was one of the founders of the Inter-American Development Bank. Why then did Kennedy appoint someone who was clearly someone who had spent his adult life attacking the policies of the Democratic Party? The answer appears in Katharine Graham’s book, Personal History: “Right after the election, he (Phil Graham) started talking to and writing the president-elect about appointments to the new administration. Both Phil and Joe Alsop thought Kennedy ought to appoint our friend Douglas Dillon as secretary of the Treasury. Dillon was a liberal Republican who had served as undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower administration and had contributed to the Nixon campaign, so this didn't seem like a strong possibility.” (33) Therefore, the same people, Phil Graham and Joe Alsop, who convinced Kennedy to take Johnson as vice president, were also behind the appointment of Clarence Douglas Dillon. Were they also working on behalf of Johnson and Rayburn when they put forward Dillon’s name? Was his role to block any attempts to reduce the oil depletion allowance? Kennedy was to change his mind on the oil depletion allowance when he became president. One study showed that the depletion allowance was saving oilmen in the region of $300 million a year. (16) An investigation by “representatives on Capitol Hill estimated that the depletion allowance had cost American taxpayers $140 billion in revenue” (over 700 billion in today’s prices). (34) In 1963 Kennedy announced his intention to close a number of corporate tax loopholes, including the depletion allowance. Was this the policy that got Kennedy killed? What we do know is that Johnson cancelled Kennedy’s tax reforms and the oil depletion allowance remained in operation. (35) Notes 1. Ralph G. Martin, A Hero For Our Time, 1983 (page 155) 2. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 53) 3. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 524) 4. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 160) 5. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 525) 6. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1961 (page 160) 7. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 525) 8. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 117) 9. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 206) 10. Katharine Graham, Personal History, 1997 (pages 282-283) 11. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 58) 12. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 122) 13. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 218) 14. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 123-126) 15. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (page 132) 16. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 126-127) 17. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 221) 18. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 126) 19. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, 1966 (page 87) 20. Ralph G. Martin, A Hero For Our Times, 1983 (pages 156-7) 21. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 122) 22. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 221) 23. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 126) 24. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, 1966 (page 87) 25. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers, 1999 (page 117) 26. Edwin Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, 1988 27. Harris Wofford, Of Kennedy and Kings, 1980 (pages 103-200) 28. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (pages 142-147) 29. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 91) 30. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (pages 438-440) 31. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 32. Anthony Champagne, Congressman Sam Rayburn, 1984 (page 151) 33. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (page 144) 34. Katharine Graham, Personal History, 1997 (page 292) 35. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 92) 36. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 37. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 93)

It is important to try and work out what was said in the meetings that went on between John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in the short period before the announcement was made concerning the vice presidency. We know from Kennedy’s political advisers that their poll results showed that Stuart Symington would make the best candidate. Johnson would win votes in the South but would lose a lot more in other parts of America. It was calculated that with Symington on the ticket they would lose Texas but win California. As a result of these discussions, Clark Clifford was dispatched to Symington to offer him the post. (1) It is true that Kennedy did consider Johnson for the post. He told Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine that “if I had my choice I would have Lyndon Johnson as my running mate. And I’m going to offer it to him, but he isn’t going to take it.” (2) Kennedy said the same thing to Kenneth P. O’Donnell. Kennedy made clear he wanted Johnson as vice president because he did not want him as leader of the Senate. Kennedy was convinced that Johnson would block his legislation as majority leader. However, Kennedy added that Johnson would never be willing to accept the post because it would mean giving up the second most powerful position in American politics. (3) Therefore, the story put forward by Hyman Raskin (4) and Pierre Salinger (5) that Kennedy was blackmailed into giving the post to Johnson is probably true. The next question was why would Johnson want this post? It was obviously a package deal. Johnson would want more than just being vice president. He would want other guarantees. To answer this question we need to discover what the concerns were of Johnson’s backers. Some researchers have claimed that there were concerns about Kennedy’s policies on civil rights. This is not true. Kennedy was unwilling to give any commitment to pushing for new civil rights legislation. As Richard D. Mahoney points out in his book, Sons and Brothers: “As senator, Kennedy had zigzagged through the long obstacle course of civil rights legislation, siding in most cases, as a Ted Sorensen memo to Bobby proudly explained in December 1959, ‘with our friends in the South.’ He meant white friends.” (6) As Mahoney goes on to point out: “The most entrenched and skilled leaders of that majority in the Senate – McClellan of Arkansas, Eastland of Mississippi, Ervin of North Carolina, and Fulbright of Arkansas – were all vehement opponents of civil rights as well as close friends of Bobby Kennedy.” Kennedy admits in several interviews that were recorded as part of the Oral History Project, that he had several conversations with people like McClellan and Eastland during the campaign to assure them that the Kennedy administration would not promote the “civil rights issue”. (7) Harris Wofford, Kennedy’s special assistant for civil rights, supports this view in his memoirs, Of Kennedys and Kings. He points out that Kennedy was forced into taking a stand on the issue because of the activities of Martin Luther King and pressure groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For example, Kennedy did all he could to get the Freedom Riders to call off their activities in 1961. (8) The issue that most concerned Johnson and his backers was Kennedy’s threat to the Texas oil industry. Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson were the most important supporters of the oil industry in Congress. In the 1950s Dwight Eisenhower had shown himself to be a good friend of Texas. In the 1952 presidential election, the oil industry backed the Republican Party. This was reflected in Eisenhower’s appointment of Robert B. Anderson as Secretary of the Treasury. Before his appointment, Anderson was president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. In this post he introduced legislation beneficial to the oil industry. (9) One of Eisenhower’s first actions as president was to stop a grand jury investigation into the “International Petroleum Cartel”. Eisenhower justified his action as the need to maintain “national security”. Eisenhower’s behaviour had an impact on the oil lobby. “In 1956, officials at the nations biggest oil companies gave nearly $350,000 to Republicans while giving less than $15,000 to Democrats.” (10) Eisenhower was personally rewarded by the oil industry. Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson reported that Eisenhower’s farm was paid for by three wealthy oilmen, W. Alton Jones, Billy Byers and George E. Allen. The Internal Revenue Service discovered that these three oilmen gave Eisenhower more than $500,000 at the same time he was making decisions favourable to the oil industry. In their book, The Case Against Congress, Pearson and Anderson point out that on 19th January, 1961, the day before he left the White House, “Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 per cent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action.” One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order was a company called Cities Service. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the men who helped pay for Eisenhower’s farm. Three months later, Jones flew in a small plane to visit the retired president. The plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash. No one was ever able to explain why Jones was taking such a large sum of money to Eisenhower. (11) As a U.S. senator, John F. Kennedy voted to reduce the depletion allowance. (12) Texas oilmen were obviously concerned when Kennedy became the front-runner in the 1960 presidential election. It is true that Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were in a position to try and block the move in Congress. (13) However, Kennedy had the potential to draw attention to this unfair tax loophole. As Sam Rayburn pointed out, if the oil depletion allowance was debated in Congress: “They’d cut it to fifteen, ten, five percent – maybe even take it away altogether. Do you think you could convince a Detroit factory worker that the depletion allowance is a good thing? Once it got on the floor, it would be cut to ribbons.” (14) In order to win votes in Texas, Kennedy changed his position on the oil depletion allowance. This was probably something that was negotiated by Johnson. In October, 1960, Kennedy wrote a letter to his Texas campaign manager outlying his policies on the oil industry. He said he wanted to make “clear my recognition of the value and importance of the oil depletion allowance. I realize its purpose and value… The oil-depletion allowance has served us well”. (15) Kennedy’s support for the oil industry was reflected in the appointment of John Connolly as Navy Secretary. Connolly was of course Sid Richardson’s attorney and a long-time lobbyist for the oil industry. This was a post that brought with it the power to issue lucrative contracts to Texas oil companies. When Connolly resigned to become governor of Texas, he was replaced by another one of Johnson’s Texan friends, Fred Korth. He was of course forced to resign in October, 1963, as a result of another Texan corruption scandal, the awarding of the TFX contract to General Dynamics. (16) The person who decided on the oil depletion allowance was the Secretary of the Treasury. This post was held by Clarence Douglas Dillon. This was a surprising appointment because Dillon had been a major contributor to the presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. As a reward Dillon was appointed as Ambassador to France. In 1959 Eisenhower appointed him as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs. He was therefore responsible for the economic policies and programs of the Department of State and for coordinating the Mutual Security Program. Dillon attended several Foreign Ministers meetings. In 1959 he was one of the founders of the Inter-American Development Bank. Why then did Kennedy appoint someone who was clearly someone who had spent his adult life attacking the policies of the Democratic Party? The answer appears in Katharine Graham’s book, Personal History: “Right after the election, he (Phil Graham) started talking to and writing the president-elect about appointments to the new administration. Both Phil and Joe Alsop thought Kennedy ought to appoint our friend Douglas Dillon as secretary of the Treasury. Dillon was a liberal Republican who had served as undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower administration and had contributed to the Nixon campaign, so this didn't seem like a strong possibility.” (17) Therefore, the same people, Phil Graham and Joe Alsop, who convinced Kennedy to take Johnson as vice president, were also behind the appointment of Clarence Douglas Dillon. Were they also working on behalf of Johnson and Rayburn when they put forward Dillon’s name? Was his role to block any attempts to reduce the oil depletion allowance? Kennedy was to change his mind on the oil depletion allowance when he became president. One study showed that the depletion allowance was saving oilmen in the region of $300 million a year. (18) An investigation by “representatives on Capitol Hill estimated that the depletion allowance had cost American taxpayers $140 billion in revenue” (over 700 billion in today’s prices). (19) In 1963 Kennedy announced his intention to close a number of corporate tax loopholes, including the depletion allowance. Was this the policy that got Kennedy killed? What we do know is that Johnson cancelled Kennedy’s tax reforms and the oil depletion allowance remained in operation. (20) Notes 1. Ralph G. Martin, A Hero For Our Times, 1983 (pages 156-7) 2. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 122) 3. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 221) 4. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 126) 5. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, 1966 (page 87) 6. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers, 1999 (page 117) 7. Edwin Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, 1988 8. Harris Wofford, Of Kennedy and Kings, 1980 (pages 103-200) 9. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (pages 142-147) 10. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 91) 11. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (pages 438-440) 12. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 13. Anthony Champagne, Congressman Sam Rayburn, 1984 (pages 151 -155) 14. John Bainbridge, The Super-Americans, 1961 (page 218) 15. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 92) 16. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (page 144) 17. Katharine Graham, Personal History, 1997 (page 292) 18. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 92) 19. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 20. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 93)

The 1957 Act was altered so much in Congress that is was hardly a civil rights act by the time it was passed. That is why another act had to be passed in 1964.

If you are arguing that conservative members of Congress proved they were not racist because they voted for Civil Rights legislation in 1964, does that mean they were racist in previous years because they voted against this legislation?

What do members think of the decision to send David Irving to prison? http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6170

The spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre definitely criticised the decision on C4 news. However, he seemed keen to make the point that it has been impossible for the last 30 years to get the Austrian authorities to prosecute former Nazi war criminals. It seems to me that is a far more important thing to do than to send bad historians to prison. (Irving dropped out of university before completing his physics degree at Imperial College). In a way, Austria is trying to recapture the past. After all, Nazi Germany imprisoned left-wing historians during the 1930s. The Soviet Union also imprisoned historians. As Khrushchev once said “historians are dangerous people”. Even during the height of the Cold War in the early 1950s, the United States did not imprison left-wing historians (they only blacklisted them and made it very difficult for them to get work). The American academic Deborah Lipstadt, the world’s leading authority on Holocaust deniers (the author of the book Denying the Holocaust) and the woman who defeated Irving in court in 2000, condemned the verdict. As she pointed out, the decision had played right into the hands of the Nazis. It has given them publicity and highlighted the fact that certain countries in the world are unwilling to discuss different interpretations of history. As Rosa Luxemburg once said: “Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.” That was true when she wrote it in 1918 and it is true today.

Interesting article by Paul Oestreicher in today's Guardian. Paul Oestreicher was a member of the Church of England's general synod and director of the Centre for International Reconciliation, Coventry Cathedral; he is now a chaplain at the University of Sussex. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1713544,00.html The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, is right. His reaction to the Anglican synod's call for sanctions against Israel is understandable. Hatred of Judaism - now commonly called anti-semitism - is a virus that has infected Christendom for two millennia. It continues to stalk the world despite its most virulent outbreak in Nazi Germany. It should not be left untreated. For too many it remains the unlearned lesson of the Holocaust. It should haunt decent Christians for generations to come. The German pope knows that particularly well and is on the battle lines against it. On this issue, nothing divides him from the Archbishop of Canterbury and most other church leaders. If, as some now think, today's Jews are the Muslims - hatred transferred - that simply means there is a battle to maintain our common humanity on more than one front. All collective hatreds poison the body politic. I say this as the child of a German Jewish-born father who escaped in time. His mother did not. I say it as a half-Jewish German child chased around a British playground in the second world war and taunted with "he's not just a German, he's a Jew". A double insult. But I say this too as a Christian priest who shares the historic guilt of all the churches. All Christians share a bloody inheritance. If I feel all that in my guts and know it in my head, I cannot stand by and watch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - one of the world's most dangerous outbreaks of collective hatred - as a dispassionate onlooker. I cannot listen calmly when an Iranian president talks of wiping out Israel. Jewish fears go deep. They are not irrational. But I cannot listen calmly either when a great many citizens of Israel think and speak of Palestinians in the way a great many Germans thought and spoke about Jews when I was one of them and had to flee. If the Christian in me has good reason to be ashamed, so now does the Jew in me. I passionately believe that Israel has the right, and its people have the right, to live in peace and in secure borders. But I know too that modern Israel was born in terror and made possible in its present Zionist form by killing and a measure of ethnic cleansing. That is history. Tell me of a nation with an innocent history. But the Zionism at the heart of Israeli politics is about the present and the future. It makes me fear for the soul of Israel today and the survival of its children tomorrow. The Israel characterised by the words of Golda Meir that "there was no such thing as Palestinians ... they did not exist" is an Israel that is inevitably surrounded by enemies and that can only survive militarily and economically as a client state of the world's only superpower, for now. Nor can its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East last for ever. Peace cannot be made by building a wall on Palestinian land that makes the life of the miserably conquered more miserable still. A Palestinian bantustan will be a source of unrest and violence for ever. I say all this despairing of the Israel I love. Its people are my people. The Palestinians are my neighbours. I wish they had stronger and better leaders. I wish their despairing young people had not been driven to violence. Just as I understand Jewish fears, I understand their despair. Only an Israel that understands that too can change it. And there are Jews in Israel and in the diaspora who know it. Most of them, out of a fear of being thought disloyal, are afraid to say what they know to be true. The state of Israel has become a cruel occupying power. Occupations, when they are resisted, are never benevolent. They morally corrupt the occupier. The brave body of Israeli conscientious objectors are the true inheritors of the prophets of Israel. They are the true patriots. What nation has ever loved its prophets? But the main objective of my writing today, is to nail the lie that to reject Zionism as it practised today is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of Hitler's racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail. It is highly effective. It condemns many to silence who fear to be thought anti-semitic. They are often the very opposite. They are often people whose heart bleeds at Israel's betrayal of its true heritage. I began with the recognition that the cancer of anti-semitism has not been cured. Tragically, Israel's policies feed it - and when world Jewry defends Israeli policies right or wrong, then anger turns not only against Israel, but against all Jews. I wish it were mere rhetoric to say that Israeli politics today make a holocaust the day after tomorrow credible. If the whole Muslim world hates Israel, that is no idle speculation. To count on Arab disunity and Muslim sectarian conflict and a permanent American shield is no recipe for long-term security. There are Israelis who know all that, and there are Jews around the world who know it. In Britain, Jews for Justice for Palestinians organises to give Jewishness a human face. Tell them they are anti-semites and they will laugh bitterly, for the charge hurts deeply and is a lie. Prophets such as Uri Avnery give all this eloquent expression, but are heard by only a few. The media are afraid of a lobby that is quite prepared to do them serious damage. Yes, of course, there are many who express their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Some are Christians. They deserve respect. If, whether wisely or not, they call for sanctions, that does not make them Jew-haters - not in theory and not in practice. My concern, however, is to express solidarity with the Israel that is not represented by its leaders or popular opinion. Once, in the days of Hitler, there was another Germany represented by those in concentration camps alongside Jews and Gypsies, the martyrs who are celebrated today. There is such an Israel too. Its voices are still free to speak, though often reviled and misunderstood. That Israel has my solidarity, as all Jews have my love and prayers.

Jewish organizations have been quick to condemn this verdict. As a spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center pointed out, it is virtually impossible to get the Austrian authorities to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Yet they send someone for prison for 3 years for saying it did not happen. In doing so they have turned someone who needs to be detained under the Mental Health Act into a martyr.

Report on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4733820.stm British historian David Irving has been found guilty in Vienna of denying the Holocaust of European Jewry and sentenced to three years in prison. He had pleaded guilty to the charge, based on a speech and interview he gave in Austria in 1989. "I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz," he told the court in the Austrian capital. Irving appeared stunned by the sentence, and told reporters: "I'm very shocked and I'm going to appeal." An unidentified onlooker told him: "Stay strong!". Irving's lawyer said he considered the verdict "a little too stringent". "I would say it's a bit of a message trial," said Elmar Kresbach. But Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK's Holocaust Educational Trust disagreed. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism dressed up as intellectual debate. It should be regarded as such and treated as such," Ms Pollock told the BBC News website. Fears that the court case would provoke right-wing demonstrations and counter-protests did not materialise, the BBC's Ben Brown at the court in Vienna said. Irving arrived in the court room handcuffed, wearing a blue suit, and carrying a copy of Hitler's War, one of many books he has written on the Nazis, and which challenges the extent of the Holocaust. Irving was arrested in Austria in November, on a warrant dating back to 1989, when he gave a speech and interview denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. He was stopped by police on a motorway in southern Austria, where he was visiting to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity. He has been held in custody since then. During the one-day trial, he was questioned by the prosecutor and chief judge, and answered questions in fluent German. He admitted that in 1989 he had denied that Nazi Germany had killed millions of Jews. He said this is what he believed, until he later saw the personal files of Adolf Eichmann, the chief organiser of the Holocaust. "I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now," Irving told the court. "The Nazis did murder millions of Jews." In the past, he had claimed that Adolf Hitler knew little, if anything, about the Holocaust, and that the gas chambers were a hoax. In 2000, a British court threw out a libel action he had brought, and declared him "an active Holocaust denier... anti-Semitic and racist". On Monday, before the trial began, he told reporters: "I'm not a Holocaust denier. Obviously, I've changed my views. "History is a constantly growing tree - the more you know, the more documents become available, the more you learn, and I have learned a lot since 1989." Asked how many Jews were killed by Nazis, he replied: "I don't know the figures. I'm not an expert on the Holocaust." Of his guilty plea, he told reporters: "I have no choice." He said it was "ridiculous" that he was being tried for expressing an opinion. "Of course it's a question of freedom of speech... I think within 12 months this law will have vanished from the Austrian statute book," he said.

That is another issue altogether. Sure there are people who call themselves "socialist", "communists" and "liberals" who are racist. I am still waiting for you to name somebody who was a "conservative" who took a leading role in the civil rights movement.

When would you like to meet. The E-HELP group meet twice a year: once in the spring and once in the autumn. April/May and September/October. Will these months cause you any problems?

We are short of venues for our six meetings. Please add details if you are willing to hold one of the meetings.

If you share Pedro's views please post details of yearly cost of internet usage.

I am currently filling in this section of the application form. I have so far added the following: 9 x Inspiration 9400 laptops. 9 x Creative Webcam Live Ultra 9 x JVC hard disk camcorder Model GZ MG 70 Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this.

Some relevant facts about the possible link between the oil depletion allowance and the assassination of JFK: The House Ways and Means Committee (which writes tax policy) was under the control of Sam Rayburn (1937-1961). He personally interviewed members of Congress who applied to join this committee. As the historian, Robert Bryce pointed out: “If the congressmen didn’t agree with Rayburn on the oil depletion allowance, they didn’t get on Ways and Means”. (1) Texas was at the heart of American oil development in the 1930s and 1940s. All the great names of the oil industry, J. Paul Getty, H. L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, D. H. Byrd, R. E. Smith, John Mecom and Glenn McCarthy, “belong to Texas” (2) In the 1930s and 1940s Texas was virtually a one-party state. Therefore it was necessary for the oil industry to control the local Democratic Party. As one historian has pointed out: “Every phase of the state’s election machinery from precinct tally clerk to the State Board of Canvassers was in the hands of… the Democrats.” (3) Sam Rayburn was the most important supporter of the oil industry in Congress in the 1930s and 1940s. Rayburn was Lyndon Johnson’s mentor. For example, during his 1948 election campaign, Johnson called for the oil depletion allowance to be raised to 30%. (4) However, the situation began to change in the 1950s. The Democratic Party had moved to the left under Roosevelt. This trend was maintained under Truman. Therefore, in 1952, the oil industry backed Dwight Eisenhower. This was reflected in his appointment of Robert B. Anderson as Secretary of the Treasury. Before his appointment, Anderson was president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. In this post he introduced legislation beneficial to the oil industry. (5) One of Eisenhower’s first actions as president was to stop a grand jury investigation into the “International Petroleum Cartel”. Eisenhower justified his action as the need to maintain “national security”. Eisenhower’s behaviour had an impact on the oil lobby. “In 1956, officials at the nations biggest oil companies gave nearly $350,000 to Republicans while giving less than $15,000 to Democrats.” (6) Eisenhower was personally rewarded by the oil industry. Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson reported that Eisenhower’s farm was paid for by three wealthy oilmen, W. Alton Jones, Billy Byers and George E. Allen. The Internal Revenue Service discovered that these three oilmen gave Eisenhower more than $500,000 at the same time he was making decisions favourable to the oil industry. In their book, "The Case Against Congress", Pearson and Anderson point out that on 19th January, 1961, the day before he left the White House, “Eisenhower signed a procedural instruction on the importation of residual oil that required all importers to move over and sacrifice 15 per cent of their quotas to newcomers who wanted a share of the action.” One of the major beneficiaries of this last-minute executive order was a company called Cities Service. The chief executive of Cities Service was W. Alton Jones, one of the men who helped pay for Eisenhower’s farm. Three months later, Jones flew in a small plane to visit the retired president. The plane crashed and Jones was killed. In his briefcase was found $61,000 in cash. No one was ever able to explain why Jones was taking such a large sum of money to Eisenhower. (7) As a U.S. senator, John F. Kennedy voted to reduce the depletion allowance. (8) Texas oilmen were obviously concerned when Kennedy became the front-runner in the 1960 presidential election. It is true that Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn were in a position to try and block the move in Congress. However, Kennedy had the potential to draw attention to this unfair tax loophole. As Sam Rayburn pointed out, if the oil depletion allowance was debated in Congress: “They’d cut it to fifteen, ten, five percent – maybe even take it away altogether. Do you think you could convince a Detroit factory worker that the depletion allowance is a good thing? Once it got on the floor, it would be cut to ribbons.” (9) In order to win votes in Texas, Kennedy changed his position on the oil depletion allowance. This was probably something that was negotiated by Johnson. In October, 1960, Kennedy wrote a letter to his Texas campaign manager outlying his policies on the oil industry. He said he wanted to make “clear my recognition of the value and importance of the oil depletion allowance. I realize its purpose and value… The oil-depletion allowance has served us well”. (10) Kennedy was to change his mind on this issue when he became president. One study showed that the depletion allowance was saving oilmen in the region of $300 million a year. (11) An investigation by “representatives on Capitol Hill estimated that the depletion allowance had cost American taxpayers $140 billion in revenue” (over 700 billion in today’s prices). (12) In 1963 Kennedy announced his intention to close a number of corporate tax loopholes, including the depletion allowance. Was this the policy that got Kennedy killed? What we do know is that Johnson cancelled Kennedy’s tax reforms and the oil depletion allowance remained in operation. (13) Despite LBJ’s protection of the oil industry, Texas and most of the Deep South began to support the Republicans in elections. This of course had more to do with LBJ’s civil rights policies than his support of the oil industry and the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex. Conservatives and the far right now united under the banner of the Republican Party. When Richard Nixon was elected to power he showed no interest in removing the oil depletion allowance. This is not surprising when one considers the amount of money the oil industry paid into Nixon’s campaign funds. (14) In 1966 George H. W. Bush was elected to the House of Representatives. He represented Houston’s Seventh District. This included River Oaks, the place where all the city’s oil barons lived. Bush’s campaign funds mainly came from the oil industry. Understandably, he was one of the most significant supporters of the oil depletion allowance. (15) Support of the oil depletion allowance now became associated with right-wing Republicans. (Maybe that is why Tim Gratz seems so keen to protect the oil industry?) As Herbert S. Parmet wrote when discussing Bush’s lobbying on behalf of the oil industry: “In an era when civil rights became the great moral issue that galvanized liberals, the targeted oil depletion allowance was not far behind.” (16) In 1969 a debate began in Congress about the removal of the oil depletion allowance. On 12th November, 1969, Bush arranged a meeting between David Kennedy, Nixon’s treasury secretary and leading oil barons from Texas. In February, 1970, Nixon decided that the oil depletion allowance would stay at 27.5 per cent. In a letter Bush wrote to the treasury secretary. He thanked him for meeting his oil friends: “I was also appreciative of your telling how I bled and died for the oil industry.” (17) In 1975, a Democrat-dominated Congress repealed the bulk of the oil depletion allowance. In 1979 Jimmy Carter introduced a windfall profits tax, which placed an extra levy on the oil industry’s enormous profits. (18) In 1980 George Bush became vice president under Ronald Reagan. The following year Reagan signed a bill giving $6 billion in tax breaks to the oil industry. The oil depletion allowance was back in another name. Notes 1. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 50) 2. Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift, 1975 (pages 33-39) 3. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 58) 4. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 50) 5. Robert Sherrill, The Accidental President, 1967 (pages 142-147) 6. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 91) 7. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (pages 438-440) 8. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 9. Anthony Champagne, Congressman Sam Rayburn, 1984 (page 151) 10. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 92) 11. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 12. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 93) 13. Jim Marrs, Crossfire, 1989, (page 277) 14. Kirkpatrick Sale, Power Shift, 1975 (pages 228-232) 15. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 91) 16. Herbert S. Parmet, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee, 2000 (page 126) 17. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, 1991 (page 754) 18. Robert Bryce, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, 2004 (page 159)

Thought members might be interested in an email I received in response to my posting on this thread: I've had the great good fortune to accidentally stumble across a number of people, each of whom contributed little bits of anecdotal knowledge. Because it is anecdotal, I cannot accord it any great weight, but thought you might be interested in the following bit of trivia. About 20-plus years ago, I met a black man named Moses who told me he had been LBJ's limo driver at the '60 Democratic National Convention. He told me that he had overheard various conversations in the rear of his vehicle and that - contrary to popular wisdom and the received history - it was Rayburn who had tried to convince LBJ to accept the Veep slot on the '60 ticket. When Johnson demurred, saying it was a pointless and powerless position from him to fill, Rayburn said it would place him "within a heartbeat of the Presidency." Johnson said words to the effect of "So what? JFK's younger and healthier than me and will no doubt outlive me." Rayburn then concluded with "Accidents do happen, Lyndon." Moses told me he thought it was a sinister comment at the time, and for that reason it stuck in his mind. When later events transpired to catapult LBJ into the Presidency, Moses could never shake the feeling that this had all been a contingency plan from the outset. He didn't strike me as a fantasist or xxxx. In fact, he was reluctant to tell me what he knew, and I think only relented because it was quite apparent to him that this Canadian chap with whom he was speaking - all fresh faced and ever so earnestly, naively interested in solving the crime of the century - wasn't a Yankee spook or conspirator who could do him harm.

I am surprised that you were surprised by this point of view. Anyone who studies Nazi occupation of other countries knows that it was not bad for everyone. That is why in every country you had Nazi collaborators. This was a moral decision people made. In every country the majority agreed to give into the Nazi tyranny. This is true of countries in Western as well as Eastern Europe. For some people, they did not have a choice of accepting Nazi tyranny. Jews did not have the opportunity to ignore Nazi atrocities. Nor did those who were identified as being “communists” or “socialists”. Don’t you remember going round that excellent Museum of Resistance in Toulouse? The curator’s talk fully illustrated why the minority resisted and the majority kept their heads down in Nazi controlled Europe.

As you have made reference to my status as an educator” let me first provide my academic credentials. I have taught American history for over 25 years. I am also the author of the book "Race Relations in the United States" (1988) and the creator of the "Encyclopaedia of the American Civil Rights Movement": http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcivilrights.htm We will also need to define what we mean by the term “conservative”. The term comes from the Latin word “servare” which meant to “keep and preserve”. The word was first used in a political sense by J. Wilson Croker in 1830. The word still retains the meaning that it did in the 19th century. That is, to describe a political ideology is that is “resistant to change” or “opposed to liberal reforms”. The political liberal comes from the Latin word “liber” which meant freedom. In Europe in the 18th century the word liberal began to mean “tolerance” and “lack of prejudice”. Later the term “liberal” was used to describe a political party (in the same way that “conservative” was used by those on the right of the political spectrum). Starting from the 19th century, conservative political parties became defenders of the “status quo” whereas liberals were in favour of reform. Now let us look at the struggle for civil rights in the United States. The beginning of the modern movement can be dated to the formation of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAnaacp.htm The NAACP was established by Mary White Ovington, a journalist working for the New York Post. This was as a response to reading an article by William English Walling, entitled "Race War in the North", that described the atrocities being carried out against African-Americans. Walling ended the article by calling for "a powerful body of citizens to come to their aid". Both Ovington and Walling were both members of the American Socialist Party. However, early supporters included members of the Republican and Democratic parties. In all cases, they identified with the “liberal” or “left” wing of the party. This is understandable as the leadership of the two main political parties were opposed to the NAACP campaign for equal rights. The NAACP campaigned against what was known as “Jim Crow” laws. After the American Civil War most states in the South passed anti-African American legislation. This included laws that discriminated against African Americans with concern to attendance in public schools and the use of facilities such as restaurants, theaters, hotels, cinemas and public baths. Trains and buses were also segregated and in many states marriage between whites and African American people was illegal. It was these “Jim Crow” laws that inspired Hitler. He claimed that the legislation used against Jews in Nazi Germany was based on those used against blacks in America. He concluded from this that the United States would never go to war against Germany on the grounds of racism. Hitler was of course right about this. It took the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the Americans to get involved in the war. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjimcrow.htm The NAACP also fought a long campaign against lynching. In 1919 it published Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889-1918. The NAACP also paid for large adverts in major newspapers presenting the facts about lynching. To show that the members of the organization would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in Atlanta, considered at the time to be one of the most active Ku Klux Klan areas in America. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlynching.htm The term lynching probably derived from the name Charles Lynch (1736-96), a justice of the peace who administered rough justice in Virginia. Lynching was originally a system of punishment used by whites against African American slaves. However, whites who protested against this were also in danger of being lynched. On 7th November, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy, the editor of the Alton Observer, was killed by a white mob after he had published articles criticizing lynching and advocating the abolition of slavery. After the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 the number of lynching of African American increased dramatically. The main objective of the KKK was to maintain white supremacy in the South, which they felt was under threat after their defeat in the Civil War. It has been estimated that between 1880 and 1920, an average of two African Americans a week were lynched in the United States. In 1884 Ida Wells, editor of Free Speech, a small newspaper in Memphis, carried out an investigation into lynching. She discovered during a short period 728 black men and women had been lynched by white mobs. Of these deaths, two-thirds were for small offences such as public drunkenness and shoplifting. George Henry White, the last former slave to serve in Congress and the only African American in the House of Representatives, proposed a bill in January, 1901 that would have made lynching of American citizens a federal crime. He argued that any person participating actively in or acting as an accessory in a lynching should be convicted of treason. White pointed out that lynching was being used by white mobs in the Deep South to terrorize African Americans. He illustrated this by showing that of the 109 people lynched in 1899, 87 were African Americans. Despite White's passionate plea, the bill was easily defeated. There was a decline in lynching during the First World War but more than seventy blacks were murdered in this way in the year after the war ended. Ten black soldiers, several still in their army uniforms, were amongst those lynched. Between 1919 and 1922, a further 239 blacks were lynched by white mobs and many more were killed by individual acts of violence and unrecorded lynchings. In none of these cases was a white person punished for these crimes. Several trade unionists were also lynched. This included two members of the Industrial Workers of the World, Frank Little (1917) and Wesley Everest (1919). Dr. Arthur Raper was commissioned in 1930 to produce a report on lynching. He discovered that "3,724 people were lynched in the United States from 1889 through to 1930. Over four-fifths of these were Negroes, less than one-sixth of whom were accused of rape. Practically all of the lynchers were native whites. The fact that a number of the victims were tortured, mutilated, dragged, or burned suggests the presence of sadistic tendencies among the lynchers. Of the tens of thousands of lynchers and onlookers, only 49 were indicted and only 4 have been sentenced." The NAACP hoped that the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 would bring an end to lynching. Two African American campaigners against lynching, Mary McLeod Bethune and Walter Francis White, had been actively involved in helping Roosevelt to obtain victory. The president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, had also been a long-time opponent of lynching. Robert F. Wagner (Democrat) and Edward Costigan (Republican) agreed to draft a bill that would punish the crime of lynching. In 1935 attempts were made to persuade Roosevelt to support the Costigan-Wagner bill. However, Roosevelt refused to speak out in favour of the bill that would punish sheriffs who failed to protect their prisoners from lynch mobs. He argued that the white voters in the South would never forgive him if he supported the bill and he would therefore lose the next election. The Costian-Wagner Act received support from liberal members of both parties, however, the conservatives in Congress were in the majority and the legislation was easily defeated. You can now see why Hitler did not fear being criticized by American politicians. The NAACP continued in its struggle against Jim Crow laws and lynching. It was joined in the struggle against this tyranny by left-wing political parties such as the American Socialist Party, American Labor Party and the American Communist Party. However, the two mainstream political parties refused to adopt policies against this racist ideology. The 1940s saw important developments in the struggle for civil rights. In 1941 Philip Randolph and Baynard Rustin began to organize a march to Washington to protest against discrimination in the defense industries. In May, 1941, Randolph issued a "Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense on July, 1, 1941". By June estimates of the number of people expecting to participate reached 100,000. Roosevelt attempted to persuade Randolph and Rustin call off the demonstration. When this failed, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 barring discrimination in defence industries and federal bureaus (the Fair Employment Act). As a result of this action Randolph called off his proposed march. In 1942 three members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), George Houser, James Farmer and Berniece Fisher established the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Members of CORE had been deeply influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India. The students became convinced that the same methods could be employed by African Americans to obtain civil rights in America. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfor.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcore.htm In early 1947, the Congress on Racial Equality announced plans to send eight white and eight black men into the Deep South to test the Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in interstate travel unconstitutional. Organized by George Houser and Bayard Rustin, the Journey of Reconciliation was to be a two week pilgrimage through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. The Journey of Reconciliation began on 9th April, 1947. The team included George Houser, Bayard Rustin, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, Louis Adams, Joseph Felmet, Worth Randle and Homer Jack. Members of the Journey of Reconciliation team were arrested several times. In North Carolina, two of the African Americans, Bayard Rustin and Andrew Johnson, were found guilty of violating the state's Jim Crow bus statute and were sentenced to thirty days on a chain gang. However, Judge Henry Whitfield made it clear he found that behaviour of the white men even more objectionable. He told Igal Roodenko and Joseph Felmet: "It's about time you Jews from New York learned that you can't come down her bringing your niggers with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your black boys thirty days, and I give you ninety." The Journey of Reconciliation was the start of a long campaign of direct action by the Congress on Racial Equality. It was followed by the formation of organizations such as the The American for Democratic Action (ADA), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAada.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsclc.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsncc.htm As we now know, it was because of the efforts of these organizations that eventually brought an end to Jim Crow laws and lynchings (although a large number of white and black civil rights activists were murdered while working for equality in the southern states). In all my research of the civil rights movement in the United States I have studied the lives of hundreds of brave men and women who risked their own well-being in order to overcome injustice. I found plenty of liberals, socialists, communists and others of various left-wing views. However, I have yet to discover one who could be described as a conservative. After all, they were all too busy defending the status quo.

What is your point? I did not mention Democrats and Republicans. I was instead talking about conservatives and liberals.

It is of course wrong to say that all conservatives are racists. However, it is accurate to say that in a historical sense, all racists are conservatives. For example, in the United States in the 1960s, conservatives supported the racist view that African-Americans should be denied the vote in the Deep South. Tim’s hero, William Buckley was one of the conservative “intellectuals” who argued this racist philosophy (it was based on the idea that African-Americans in the Deep South were not “intelligent” enough to be given the vote). The past is always embarrassing for conservatives. This is why Tim is so reluctant to admit to the political policies he favoured in the past. The same is not true of liberals who were active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. They were right then and they are right about civil rights today. What will Tim Gratz be saying about his views on Guantanamo Bay in 20 years time?

In their book, The Case Against Congress, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson claim that “Robert S. Kerr, oil millionaire, uranium king, cattle baron and Senator from Oklahoma… dominated the Senate’s back rooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” (1) Pearson and Anderson point out that Kerr main concern in Congress was to preserve the oil depletion allowance. According to Bobby Baker, Kerr was furious when he discovered that Johnson had agreed to be Kennedy's running-mate in 1960. In “Wheeling and Dealing” Baker described what happened when Kerr arrived at the meeting in Johnson’s hotel room: “Kerr literally was livid. There were angry red splotches on his face. He glared at me, at LBJ, and at Lady Bird. ‘Get me my .38,’ he yelled. ‘I’m gonna kill every damn one of you. I can’t believe that my three best friends would betray me.’ Senator Kerr did not seem to be joking. As I attempted to calm him he kept shouting that we’d combined to ruin the Senate, ruin ourselves, and ruin him personally.” Johnson responded to this outburst by telling Baker to take Kerr in the bathroom and “explain things to him”. Baker did this and after hearing about the reasons for Johnson’s decision to accept the post, “Senator Kerr put a burly arm around me and said, “Son, you are right and I was wrong. I’m sorry I mistreated you.” What did Baker tell Kerr that dramatically changed his mind on this issue? According to Baker, he told Kerr: “If he’s elected vice-president, he’ll be an excellent conduit between the White House and the Hill.” What is more, if Kennedy is defeated, Johnson can blame it on Kennedy’s religion and be the likely victor in the attempt to be the Democratic Party candidate in the 1964 election. (2) Kerr would have been well aware of this argument before he entered the bathroom with Baker. If Kerr did change his mind about Johnson’s becoming Kennedy’s running-mate, then Baker told him something else in the bathroom. Maybe he explained that Johnson would become president before 1964. What we do know is that Kennedy’s close political advisers were shocked when Johnson accepted the post. They, like Kennedy himself, expected him to reject the offer. Why would Johnson give up his position as the second most powerful position in the country? Kenneth P. O’ Donnell was highly suspicious of Johnson’s motives. When he mentioned this to Kennedy he replied: “I’m forty-three years old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States. You’ve traveled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate.” (3) The problem with this argument is that Johnson was also aware that as Vice President he would lose his political power. This is why Kennedy told his aides that Johnson would turn the offer down. Yet there is evidence that Johnson was desperate to become Kennedy’s running-mate. One of Kennedy’s most important advisers, Hyman Raskin, claims that Kennedy had a meeting with Johnson and Rayburn early on the morning after his nomination. According to all other sources, at this time, these two men were strongly opposed to the idea of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. However, Kennedy told Raskin a different story. Johnson was very keen to join the ticket and “made an offer he could not refuse”. Raskin took this to mean that Kennedy was blackmailed into offering Johnson the post. (4) This view is supported by another of Kennedy’s close advisers. Pierre Salinger was opposed to the idea of Johnson being Kennedy’s running-mate. He believed that the decision would lose more votes than it would gain. Salinger believed that Kennedy would lose the support of blacks and trade unionists if Johnson became the vice-presidential candidate. Although Johnson would deliver Texas his place on the ticket would mean Kennedy would lose California. A few days after the decision had been made, Salinger asked Kennedy why? He replied, "The whole story will never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be." Salinger also got the impression that Kennedy had been blackmailed into accepting Johnson. (5) Kennedy must have been very concerned about this development. Why would Johnson blackmail him into accepting a post that had less power than the one that he already had? It only made sense if Johnson was going to continue using this strategy as vice president. Maybe this was only the first of many threats of blackmail. Would Johnson use his position to force Kennedy to appoint his friends such as John Connally and Fred Korth to important positions in his administration? Kennedy must also have considered another possibility. Did Johnson plan to replace him as president? This seems to have been on Kennedy’s mind when he told Kenneth O’Donnell that he did not intend to die in office. Given these events, it is possible that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was considered as early as 1960. If so, it is important to look closely at those people who played important roles in obtaining for Johnson the post of vice president. Notes 1. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (page 132) 2. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 126-127) 3. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 221) 4. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 126) 5. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, 1966 (page 87)

In 1960 Lyndon Johnson’s closest political supporters urged him to enter the race when John F. Kennedy emerged as favourite to win the Democratic Party nomination. Sam Rayburn was especially keen for Johnson to defeat Kennedy. So was John Connally who established a Citizens-for-Johnson Committee. As Ralph G. Martin, pointed out, Johnson felt no need to campaign against Kennedy as he was convinced he “would destroy himself on the religious issue”. (1) Theodore H. White argued in “The Making of the President” that it was impossible for Johnson to win by taking on Kennedy from the beginning. “These men (Johnson, Rayburn and Connally) knew that the Johnson candidacy could not be muscled by seeking individual Convention delegates…. Their plans rested squarely on their control of Congress, on the enormous accumulation of political debts and uncashed obligations that, between them, Johnson and Rayburn had earned over years of the legislative trade.” (2) It was not until 5th July, 1960, that Johnson finally declared himself an official candidate. Johnson had been forced to leave it as late as this because he was unwilling to resign as Majority leader of the Senate. He therefore had to wait until Rayburn and himself had recessed Congress on 3rd July. Johnson immediately went onto the attack by pointed out that: “Those who have engaged in active campaigns since January have missed hundreds of votes. This I could not do – for my country or my party. Someone had to tend the store.” (3) Johnson now portrayed the front-runner as being “too young and “too inexperienced” (4) He also tried to get as Kennedy via his father. He described Joe Kennedy as being pro-Hitler. He was therefore opposing John Kennedy as he “did not want any Chamberlain umbrella man!” (5) Johnson also made reference to Kennedy’s health, pointing out that he had Addison’s disease. (6) Despite this dirty tricks campaign, Johnson was unable to stop Kennedy being nominated. Johnson was obviously upset by this result but comforted himself with the fact that as Majority leader, he remained the second most powerful man in American politics. The great surprise is that Johnson was willing to sacrifice this power in order to become Kennedy’s running-mate. In his book, The Making of the President, Theodore H. White, expresses shock at both Kennedy’s decision to offer Johnson’s the post, and his eventual acceptance of what appeared to be a demotion. White adds that this mystery will only be solved by “tomorrow’s historians”. (7) The idea that Johnson should be Kennedy’s running-mate was first suggested by Philip Graham of the Washington Post. Graham, the key figure in the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, had been campaigning strongly for Johnson to get the nomination. However, when Graham arrived at the Democratic Party Convention in Los Angeles on 8th July, Johnson told him that Kennedy would win by a landslide. Graham then had a meeting with Robert Kennedy and was finally convinced that Johnson had indeed lost his race to be the presidential candidate. According to Katharine Graham, her husband and Joe Alsop, arranged a meeting with John Kennedy on 11th July. Alsop started the conversation with the following comment: “We’ve come to talk to you about the vice-presidency. Something may happen to you, and Symington is far too shallow a puddle for the United States to dive into.” Graham then explained the advantages that Johnson would “add to the ticket”. What is more, it would remove Johnson as leader of the Senate. (8) Kennedy agreed that Johnson would be a great asset. He knew that Johnson could deliver Texas. As Victor Lasky pointed out: “Every phase of the state’s election machinery from precinct tally clerk to the State Board of Canvassers was in the hands of Organization (read LBJ) Democrats.” (9) Hugh Sidey of Time Magazine, interviewed Kennedy on the eve of the Los Angeles convention. He later claimed that Kennedy told him: “if I had my choice I would have Lyndon Johnson as my running mate. And I’m going to offer it to him, but he isn’t going to take it.” (10) After the meeting with Graham and Alsop, Kennedy told his aide, Kenneth P. O’Donnell, that it made sense to have Johnson on the ticket but he knew that he would never accept the position as it would mean he would lose his powerful position in the Senate. Kennedy assured O’Donnell that Stuart Symington, “who was acceptable to both the labor leaders and the Southerners” would be his running-mate. (11) The mystery that has to be explained is not that Johnson was offered the post, but that he accepted it. Bobby Baker has provided an interesting account of the discussions that went on about the possibility of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. Baker describes how Johnson told him that Kennedy was coming to see him at his hotel. John Connally was of the opinion that Kennedy would offer him the job. Johnson asked Baker what he should do. Baker replied: “It’s no disgrace to hold the second highest office in the land and be one heartbeat away from the presidency.” Connally added that Johnson would be able to deliver Texas for Kennedy. At this stage Johnson appeared to be against the idea. He told Baker that he would have “trouble with some of my Texas friends if I decide to run.” Sam Rayburn was one of these “Texas friends” who was strongly opposed to the suggestion that Johnson should become Kennedy’s running-mate. He quoted another Texan, John Nance Garner, who held the post under Franklin D. Roosevelt, as saying: “The office ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.” However, according to Baker, John Connally and Phil Graham “worked on” Rayburn until he “came round” to the idea that Johnson should become Kennedy’s running-mate. There still remained a significant number of opponents to Johnson’s strategy. Baker adds in his autobiography that “several Texas congressmen, spoiled by LBJ’s special attentions to their pet legislative schemes, begged him not to leave his powerful Senate post.” (12) According to Baker, one of Johnson’s political friends resorted to threats of violence against Johnson if he became the vice-presidential candidate. This was oil millionaire, Robert S. Kerr. In their book, The Case Against Congress, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson claim that “Robert S. Kerr, oil millionaire, uranium king, cattle baron and Senator from Oklahoma… dominated the Senate’s back rooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s.” (13) Pearson and Anderson point out that Kerr main concern in Congress was to preserve the oil depletion allowance. In “Wheeling and Dealing” Baker described what happened when Kerr arrived at the meeting in Johnson’s hotel room: “Kerr literally was livid. There were angry red splotches on his face. He glared at me, at LBJ, and at Lady Bird. ‘Get me my .38,’ he yelled. ‘I’m gonna kill every damn one of you. I can’t believe that my three best friends would betray me.’ Senator Kerr did not seem to be joking. As I attempted to calm him he kept shouting that we’d combined to ruin the Senate, ruin ourselves, and ruin him personally.” Johnson responded to this outburst by telling Baker to take Kerr in the bathroom and “explain things to him”. Baker did this and after hearing about the reasons for Johnson’s decision to accept the post, “Senator Kerr put a burly arm around me and said, “Son, you are right and I was wrong. I’m sorry I mistreated you.” What did Baker tell Kerr that dramatically changed his mind on this issue? According to Baker, he told Kerr: “If he’s elected vice-president, he’ll be an excellent conduit between the White House and the Hill.” What is more, if Kennedy is defeated, Johnson can blame it on Kennedy’s religion and be the likely victor in the attempt to be the Democratic Party candidate in the 1964 election. (14) Kerr would have been well aware of this argument before he entered the bathroom with Baker. If Kerr did change his mind about Johnson’s becoming Kennedy’s running-mate, then Baker told him something else in the bathroom. Maybe he explained that Johnson would become president before 1964. What we do know is that Kennedy’s close political advisers were shocked when Johnson accepted the post. They, like Kennedy himself, expected him to reject the offer. Why would Johnson give up his position as the second most powerful position in the country? Kenneth P. O’ Donnell was highly suspicious of Johnson’s motives. When he mentioned this to Kennedy he replied: “I’m forty-three years old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States. You’ve traveled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the leadership in the Senate. If we win, it will be by a small margin and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate.” (15) The problem with this argument is that Johnson was also aware that as Vice President he would lose his political power. This is why Kennedy told his aides that Johnson would turn the offer down. Yet there is evidence that Johnson was desperate to become Kennedy’s running-mate. One of Kennedy’s most important advisers, Hyman Raskin, claims that Kennedy had a meeting with Johnson and Rayburn early on the morning after his nomination. According to all other sources, at this time, these two men were strongly opposed to the idea of Johnson becoming Kennedy’s running-mate. However, Kennedy told Raskin a different story. Johnson was very keen to join the ticket and “made an offer he could not refuse”. Raskin took this to mean that Kennedy was blackmailed into offering Johnson the post. (16) This view is supported by another of Kennedy’s close advisers. Pierre Salinger was opposed to the idea of Johnson being Kennedy’s running-mate. He believed that the decision would lose more votes than it would gain. Salinger believed that Kennedy would lose the support of blacks and trade unionists if Johnson became the vice-presidential candidate. Although Johnson would deliver Texas his place on the ticket would mean Kennedy would lose California. A few days after the decision had been made, Salinger asked Kennedy why? He replied, "The whole story will never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be." Salinger also got the impression that Kennedy had been blackmailed into accepting Johnson. (17) Kennedy must have been very concerned about this development. Why would Johnson blackmail him into accepting a post that had less power than the one that he already had? It only made sense if Johnson was going to continue using this strategy as vice president. Maybe this was only the first of many threats of blackmail. Would Johnson use his position to force Kennedy to appoint his friends such as John Connally and Fred Korth to important positions in his administration? Kennedy must also have considered another possibility. Did Johnson plan to replace him as president? This seems to have been on Kennedy’s mind when he told Kenneth O’Donnell that he did not intend to die in office. Given these events, it is possible that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was considered as early as 1960. If so, it is important to look closely at those people who played important roles in obtaining for Johnson the post of vice president. Notes 1. Ralph G. Martin, A Hero For Our Time, 1983 (page 155) 2. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 53) 3. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 524) 4. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 160) 5. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 525) 6. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1961 (page 160) 7. Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, 1968 (page 525) 8. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 117) 9. Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (page 206) 10. Katharine Graham, Personal History, 1997 (pages 282-283) 11. Victor Lasky, It Didn’t Start With Watergate, 1977 (page 58) 12. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 122) 13. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 218) 14. Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, 1978 (pages 123-126) 15. Drew Pearson & Jack Anderson, The Case Against Congress, 1968 (page 132) 16. Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 1998 (page 126) 17. Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy, 1966

From my reading of the subject, very few people outside of Texas were aware of the oil depletion allowance. However, some politicians did make a fuss about it. In 1933, Henry Morgenthau, Roosevelt's treasury secretary, made attempts to get it removed. His attempts were blocked by powerful figures in Congress. A study done by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1949 revealed that Texas oil millionaires were saving a fortune from the oil depletion allowance. The following year President Harry Truman attacked it by saying "I know of no loophole... so inequitable." However, he was unable to do anything about it because of the activities of Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. Dwight Eisenhower made no attempt to bring it to an end. This is not surprising. A key figure in his administration was Robert B. Anderson (Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Treasury). Before joining the government, Anderson was president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association. As Robert Sherrill points out in the Accidental President: “Anderson, a resident of landlocked Fort Worth, knew nothing of naval affairs before he got the post, but that hardly matters; all he needed to know was that Texas is the largest oil-producing state and that the Navy is the largest consumer of oil as well as leaser of valuable lands to favored oil firms. From this producer-consumer relationship things work out rather naturally, and it was this elementary knowledge that later made John Connally (who had for several years, through the good offices of his mentor Lyndon Johnson, been serving as Sid Richardson's attorney and who later became executor of the Richardson estate) and Fred Korth, also residents of Fort Worth, such able secretaries of the Navy, by Texas standards.” The most important critic of the allowance was William Proxmire. He did not enter the Senate until 1957. The following year he began "criticizing the oil depletion allowances enjoyed by Johnson’s friends in Texas." Johnson’s reaction to this attack was to prevent Proxmire from getting a seat on the Finance Committee. Proxmire was now determined to expose Johnson. On 23rd February, 1958, he made a speech claiming that “there has never been a time when power has been as sharply concentrated as it is today in the Senate.” This was followed by another speech where he accused Johnson of “one-man rule”. Johnson reacted by making a speech in the Senate on 28th May where he claimed that “this one-man rule stuff is a myth”. He added: “I do not know how anyone can force a senator to do anything. I have never tried to do so.” As Alfred Steinberg pointed out: “Most members, conservatives as well as liberals, enjoyed a burst of laughter involving Johnson’s pious declaration to Proxmire”. It was only when Kennedy became president that attempts were made to deal with this tax loophole. The oil depletion allowance saved a small group of men millions of dollars every year. If anybody had a motive to kill JFK it was the Texas oil millionaires.