LBJ reading about Jackie at his desk the day the WCR is delivered

[David Josephs]

I was looking at the color photo of the WC giving LBJ the report when I noticed the magazine on his desk

I inverted and enlarged it...

http://redbud.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/kennedy/Oath%20of%20Office/C732-1-WH64.htm

LBJ was sitting at his WH desk reading a gossip mag and looking at pix of Jackie (is that Jackie?)

when the WC members show up? Just felt creepy and was wondering if anyone else noticed this...

DJ

[Greg Burnham]

I was looking at the color photo of the WC giving LBJ the report when I noticed the magazine on his desk

I inverted and enlarged it...

http://redbud.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/kennedy/Oath%20of%20Office/C732-1-WH64.htm

LBJ was sitting at his WH desk reading a gossip mag and looking at pix of Jackie (is that Jackie?)

when the WC members show up? Just felt creepy and was wondering if anyone else noticed this...

DJ

Creepy, if true.

The opposing page's headline is: "Let's Talk Fur" -- but I can't tell for certain if it's Jackie or not.

[David Josephs]

I was looking at the color photo of the WC giving LBJ the report when I noticed the magazine on his desk

I inverted and enlarged it...

http://redbud.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/kennedy/Oath%20of%20Office/C732-1-WH64.htm

LBJ was sitting at his WH desk reading a gossip mag and looking at pix of Jackie (is that Jackie?)

when the WC members show up? Just felt creepy and was wondering if anyone else noticed this...

DJ

Creepy, if true.

The opposing page's headline is: "Let's Talk Fur" -- but I can't tell for certain if it's Jackie or not.

That's got to be one of the strangest sights on a presidential desk - ever. and there's nothing else on the desk!

Maybe Dulles brought it in... he was such a jokester...

[Guest Robert Morrow]

I don't think it is weird at all. Lyndon Johnson had murdered (or was in on the plot) her husband John F. Kennedy and LBJ for the rest of his life was obsessed with keeping this little unpleasant fact secret.

So Johnson was obsessed with the Kennedys. Obsessed that Robert Kennedy was out to get him (despite the fact Johnson controlled the federal government.)

Around July 4th, 1964, Robert Kennedy had called LBJ and put Jackie on the phone. It seems the Kennedys were doing some lobbying to have Robert Kennedy put on the 1964 Democratic ticket. Instead RFK ran for NY Senate and was elected with Johnson campaigning for him.

For Johnson, his relationship with the Kennedys, especially Jackie, was critical. We now know Robert and Jackie Kennedy IMMEDIATELY suspected that the JFK assassination was an "inside job" and some sort of a coup d'etat. In later years, according to Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy was at one point CONVINCED that Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK. And there is that famous photo taken outside the White House, where Robert Kennedy is holding something in his fist, and LBJ looks surprised. The photographer of the photo told Madeleine Brown that RFK said to Johnson, "Why did you have my brother killed?" as he hit a column.

Lyndon Johnson was a basketcase and for the rest of his life he was obsessed with the Kennedys, and I think in mortal fear that the truth of the JFK assassination would be discovered.

Having said all that, remember Lyndon Johnson wanted Jackie to ride in HIS limo in Texas.

Lyndon Johnson wanted JACKIE to ride in his car in Texas!! Source: Sen. George Smathers, a good friend of JFK (11/18/63 talk on Air Force 1)

**Lyndon did not want Jackies brains to get blown out, too**

Sen. George Smathers, U.S. Congress 1946-1968:

I came back to Washington with the President. He was lying down. They had a bed in the Air Force One for him to lie on. So he said, Gee, I really hate to go to Texas. I got to go to Texas next week and its just a pain in the rear end and I just dont want to go. I wish I could get out of it. And I said, Well, whats the problem? He said, Well, you know how Lyndon is. Lyndon was Vice President. Lyndon wants to ride with me, but John Connally is the governor and he wants to ride and I think that protocol says that hes supposed to ride and Johnson wants Jackie to ride with him. And Connally was, at that time, a little bit jealous of Lyndon and Lyndon was a little jealous of him, so its all these fights were going on. He said, I just dont want to go down in that mess. I hate to go. I wish I could think of a way to get out of it.

Transcript from PBS "American Experience - The Kennedys Part II - The Sons" available on line here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/kennedys-transcript/

about 1/2 way down the page on the transcript.

You can watch the George Smathers clip here at PBS. It is at the 1 hour 44 minute 30 second mark:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/kennedys/player/

I asked a fellow JFK researcher: Does it seem funny that Lyndon Johnson would be asking to be in JFKs car if Lyndon knew that JFK was going to be slaughtered in a kill zone during the motorcade? The key point is that nothing that Lyndon Johnson ever did in his life justifies giving him the benefit of the doubt. Precisely the opposite. And here was his reply:

Re: But the part that puzzles me is Johnson wanting to ride with Kennedy.

JFK Researcher: I wouldnt worry about this at all, and heres why:

1. The Smathers on-camera statement was made decades later, so there has to be some allowance here for a slight jumbling in recollection and re-transmission

2. (and more important) :very likely, Lyndonwhen he talked to JFK about this-- dissembled (as he always seemed to do), beat around the bush, and very likely sent a confusing message to JFK, which, in the re-telling to Smathers, may have been jumbled (and/or misunderstood) ; and then we have (as noted in my point 1) the re-telling, by Smathers, to a camera, decades later.

So this is a very interesting problem of separating the signal from the noise (as they say in information theory); and I think what is truly important is that Smathers remembers JFK complaining, on 11/18, and on a ride aboard AF-1 from Florida, that (a) he didnt want to go to Texas and ( among the many problems he had to deal with was this business of LBJ wanting Jackie to ride with him.

This interview by Smathers provides really excellent first hand evidence of the extent to which JFK was being personally lobbied, by his own Vice President, on matters pertaining to the Texas tripi.e., on getting him to go there (to Texas, AND to Dallas) in the first place; and then to the extent of the actual configuration of which car she would ride in, in the Dallas motorcade (!). If it werent for Smathers, all wed have is the mealy-mouthed cop-out language of Sorensen, and others like him.

3. Also, please do note the logical problem if LBJ really wanted to ride with JFK: IF that little snippet of a quote were to be taken seriously (and I do not take it seriously), then the actual configuration (i.e. Car-seating) would be that Lyndon Johnson would want to be in the same car as JFK, so if that were to be sothen how could it then be that LBJ wanted Jackie to ride with him? The phrase ride with him implies separate cars. Clearly.

And, finally, for the same reason that the President and the vice President do NOT ever fly on the same aircraft, I am positive thatjust on those grounds aloneit would be a complete violation of security for the President and the Vice Presient to appear in an open car together.

So my appraisal of this re-transmission (by Smathers) of what he heard JFK saying, is that: (a) Lyndon was making a bunch of noise, complaining about this and that; and ( buried in that noise was his real message; and that his real message was that he, as a galaant Texas, wanted the Presidents wife to ride with him. I think that the rest of what Smathers heardor thinks he heard, and then re-transmitted, in this interviewis simply false.

And again, let me repeat my reasons for saying so. . .

Because:

(1) Common sense rules out that the Pres and the Vice Pres would ride in the same limo. (Ever).

(2) IF LBJ really wanted to ride with JFK, then his request that he wanted Jackie to ride with him would make no logical sense.

OK. . . Those are my beliefs about this remarkable little piece of information.

First of all; I think its valid; and secondly, it shows what a sneaky bastard LBJ wasto try to actually lobby the President so that he would not have his wife within inches, and it would make him an easier target.

Of coursehad LBJ succeeded in this gambit, he would have to have had a lot of explaining to do afterwards, to credibly explain why Jackie was not seated next to her husband, in Dallas, as she obviously was in other cities.

JFK Researcher #2 commented on George Smathers comments:

I agree that Smathers' interpretation of "Johnson wants to ride with me" was in error. Secret Service regulations forbade the President and Vice-President riding together in the same car. At the time of the Dallas visit, there was a feud going on between Texas Democrats with the conservatives of the Johnson-Connally faction against the more liberal Democrats led by Sen. Ralph Yarborough, a JFK supporter. Yarborough was the one riding in Johnson's car with LBJ and Lady Bird.

It has been reported that on the morning of the assassination, LBJ came to the President's suite at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth and a loud argument broke out between the men. The subject of their disagreement, it was said, was the seating arrangements for the Dallas motorcade. Johnson, it appears, was making a last ditch attempt to get Connally out of JFK's car by using the excuse that Yarborough didn't want to ride with HIM. (Which was true.) But I believe that the seating arrangements were for a purpose --- to show solidarity by having Connally with JFK and Yarborough with LBJ, so there was NO WAY JFK was going to budge on the seating arrangements.

Had Kennedy yielded to Johnson's demands, which would have put Yarborough in JFK's limo, Yarborough, instead of Connally, would have been shot along with Kennedy.

More on that in a second.

H.L. Hunt, Johnson's financial backer and mentor, had a religious foundation called the LIFELINE FOUNDATION. It enjoyed religious status and Federal exemption from income taxes. But in its weekly radio broadcasts, its messages were more political than religious and and when I say political, I mean anti-JFK.

In the weeks before the assassination, Hunt's radio program blasted the Administration and its policies.

It accused JFK of bypassing Congress to follow a line enunciated from Moscow.

It was a time, Lifeline broadcasts cried, for "extreme patriotism".

( Source: POWER TO DESTROY, The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon by John A. Andrew III,, published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2002-- pg 97)

Many of the funds that were "donations" to these tax-exempt religious organizations were in fact earmarked for right-wing extremist groups. These religious organizations allowed contributors to make donations to right-wing extremist groups and receive a tax deduction for them.

In 1961, the President asked Walter and Victor Reuther to come up with a plan to combat these extreme right-wing forces. Known as the "Reuther Memorandum", one of the things that the document suggested was to "choke off the flow of money to the radical right by challenging groups' tax-exempt status".

( ibid. pg 21)

Hence, the IRS' Ideological Organizations Project ( IOP ) was formed.

A March 9, 1962 IRS internal memo listed the first groups to be investigated. Among them were Hunt's Lifeline Organization ( Dallas District ) , the John Birch Society ( for which "Lifeline" was a front ) and the National Indignation Convention, Dallas District.

( ibid. pg 29)

In February 1963, ( at a time when Oswald was "buying" his weapons ), the IRS recommended revocation of the tax-exempt status for Hunt's "Life Line". Lifeline had run into problems with the IRS because "approximately 50%" of its publications were "in the nature of propaganda. These releases discussed only one side of an issue and were not consistent with the purposes of an exempt educational organization".

(ibid. pg 33 )

Now here's the kicker.

A Senate Sub-Committee was scheduled to hold hearings in January 1964 on the tax-exemption status of religious organizations with extremist political viewpoints.

The Chair of that Sub-Committee ? Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas.

( ibid. pg 34 )

Had Yarborough been in Kennedy's car instead of Connally, HE would have been the one shot up, not Connally. There would have been no hearings, no investigation of Hunt's organization and others.

I find this all extremely interesting in lieu of the fact that Johnson tried so hard, even up to the last minute, to change the seating arrangements for the Dallas motorcade.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Robert Morrow

[Guest Robert Morrow]

In my posts I often try to stress what a perfect psychopath and master manipulator Lyndon Johnson was. Other modern presidents who fit this category would be George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton (ha!, she thought she was president) with Richard Nixon bringing up the rear.

Lyndon Johnson was perfectly capable of killing a man's wife, then flirting and cuddling up to his widow (who secretly despised him). It is kind of like the mafia - one mafia don will kill another mafia don ... then send flowers to the man's widow, go to the funeral, hug the widow, etc., then maybe sit down and eat spaghetti with them, "Isn't it just HORRIBLE what happened to Vinnie? The bastards. Don't worry sweetheart (the widow) we will take care of you."

I think it is more constructive to think of Lyndon Johnson and George Herbert Walker Bush as mafia dons, with a political/PR machine busy burnishing their images.

Lyndon Johnson makes cowboy love to Jackie post assassination

Flirts with widow after slaughtering JFK, wants to be daddy of Caroline and John-John; LBJ was a textbook psychopath.

From LBJ: Architect of American Ambition:

During his first five weeks in office, Johnson called Jackie numerous times. Instinctively, awkwardly, he attempted to make what Hubert Humphrey referred to as cowboy love to her. A conversation the first week in December was typical: Your picture was gorgeous. Now you had that chin up and that chest out and you looked so pretty marching in the front page of the New York Daily News … well, LBJ said I just came, sat in my desk and started signing a log of long things, and I decided to I wanted to flirt with you a little bit…. Darling, you know what I said to the Congress Id give anything in the world if I wasnt here today … Tell Caroline and John-John Id like to be their daddy!

[LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, Randall Woods, p. 423]

George Reedy, former press secretary for Lyndon Johnson: http://www.absolutea...cs/George_Reedy

George Reedy on Lyndon Johnson:

"He may have been a son of a bitch, but he was a colossal son of a bitch."

"Not only did Johnson get somewhat separated from reality, he had a fantastic faculty for disorienting everybody around him as to what reality was."

"What was it that would send him into those fantastic rages where he could be one of the nastiest, most insufferable, sadistic SOBs that ever lived and a few minutes later really be a big, magnificent and inspiring leader?"

In his book, Lyndon B. Johnson: A Memoir by George Reedy… Reedy is quoted on his book flap as calling LBJ a bully, a sadist, lout, and egoist. He describes LBJ as magnificent, inspiring leader; the other that of an insufferable bastard.

from Phillip Nelson, author of LBJ: Mastermind of JFKs Assassination:

"JFK once said that Lyndon was a chronic xxxx; that he had been making all sorts of assurances to me for years and has lived up to none of them.12 Robert Kennedys description of Johnson, which can be heard on the referenced Web site, was that he was mean, bitter, vicious, an animal, in many ways; I think hes got this other side to him that makes his relationships with other human beings very difficult, unless you want to kiss his behind all the time."

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. . . "Bobby later complained that Johnson lies all the time. Im telling you, he just lies continuously, about everything. In every conversation I have with him, he lies. As Ive said, he lies even when he doesnt have to.195 (emphasis added) JFK agreed on this point, telling Jackie on the evening of November 21, 1963 that Lyndon Johnson was incapable of telling the truth.196 Similar statements had been made by people who knew him when he was younger: classmates who routinely called him Bull (for Bullxxxx) Johnson because he lied so much that he was considered the biggest xxxx on campus; but beyond that, there was no difference to him in truth or falsehood, the facts were whatever he deemed them to be; he was, in one classmates words, a man who just could not tell the truth.197 Most men would be embarrassed to be caught in a lie, but not Johnson: men who knew him in Texas agreed that even when caught in a lie, he wouldnt flinch; he would resume lying again about the same thing, almost immediately.198 Caro points out that this was not just a nickname used behind his back; it was used by other students to his face: Howya doin, Bull?

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Robert Caro spent several years interviewing people who knew him during those years and concluded: By the time the researcher completes his work on Lyndon Johnsons college years, he knows that one alumnus had not been exaggerating when he said, A lot of people at San Marcos didnt just dislike Lyndon Johnson; they despised Lyndon Johnson.

Here is Robert Caro again on LBJ:

"And by 1941, also the major patterns of his entire life are established and clear. In attaining this influence, he has displayed a genius for discerning a path to power, an utter ruthlessness in destroying obstacles in that path, and a seemingly bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal in moving along it" .... [And that, my friends, is the KIND and GENTLE side of Lyndon Johnson ... yeah LBJ murdered John Kennedy with help from the CIA. Robert Morrow] That Caro quote is on p. 803, Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Edited July 1, 2011 by Robert Morrow