11/22/63: The Day Democracy Died in America

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Here is an essay by Tom Cahill on the role of Lyndon Johnson in the JFK assassination. Note: my own views are that Lyndon Johnson was certainly a key player in the 1963 Coup d'Etat but that he and his Texas oil men arranged to have CIA/elements of US military do it. Gen. Ed Lansdale was probably a very key player in the JFK assassination; he was both CIA and Air Force.

November 22, 1963: The Day Democracy Died in America

by Tom Cahill Email address: tcahill@mcn.org

November 22, 1963 (Public domain. Please post especially where prohibited.)

http://www.gay-bible.org/other/cahill.htm

THE DAY DEMOCRACY DIED IN AMERICA

By Tom Cahill Email address: tcahill@mcn.org

George W. Bush is no anomaly. His administration is no real

departure from the direction in which the U.S. government has been going

since WW II and especially since democracy along with the Democratic Party

and organized labor died in Dallas with John Kennedy more than four

decades ago.

"Understand Dallas, that is the start of the cure of the cancer on

the presidency," wrote Carl Oglesby in "The Yankee And Cowboy War,"

way back in 1976 with "Watergate" in mind. In the past quarter century,

much in American politics has changed and for the worse.

"Even more than the rest of the South, Texas has been the buckle on

the U.S. gun belt," wrote Kevin Phillips more recently in "American

Dynasty; Aristocracy, Fortune and the Policy of Deceit in the House of

Bush" (2004). "Texans, in particular, have had an extra hawkish chromosome

or two, likewise caring little whether the rest of the world agreed or

disagreed," wrote Phillips.

Then Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was a central figure in the

conspiracy to assassinate Pres. John Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. This is

the verdict of recently published books and a TV documentary aired in

November 2003.

Unimportant ancient history? Perhaps. But have you noticed how

over the past four decades, the Democratic Party has drifted further and

further to the right under the domination of the "military-industrial

complex?" This now famous euphemism for fascism was a warning coined by

Pres. Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address, January 17, 1961, which

to the present day has been virtually ignored.

Four decades after the assassination, the USA has another

president who is polarizing the country with an unpopular war and--like

LBJ--his sanity as well as motives are being questioned by growing numbers

of people, according to books and polls. Did the murder in Dallas lay the

groundwork for the present hostile takeover of the country by neo-fascists?

This is why solving the murder of JFK may be as important today as it was

forty years ago.

Several books have been written about Lyndon Johnson's emotional

condition and in the 2003 documentary it was mentioned that LBJ's

psychiatrist was offered $1 million to not reveal anything the then

ex-president told him during his treatment for severe depression not long

before Johnson's death in 1973.

But for me, the best evidence that Johnson was sick and sinister

enough to at least encourage JFK's assassination and help cover it up is

well-documented in the book by D. Jablow Hershman, "Power Beyond Reason:

The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson" (2002).

"There are professionals and programs in place to deal with a

president's physical illness but no machinery to deal with mental illness,"

writes Hershman.

In the very first sentence of chapter one, Hershman writes, "A

Texan is president again and this country is fighting a war again." But I

sharply disagree with her second sentence when she observes, "Beyond that,

there seems to be few parallels between the Vietnam War and the war on

terrorism in which we are currently engaged." Fast-moving events since

she wrote the book may have changed her mind.

'BUSH ON THE COUCH'

Like the "wartime president" more than three decades ago, Pres.

George W. Bush's integrity and mental state are being questioned and

monitored by an increasing number of citizens. Bush's earlier life of

alcohol and drug use if not abuse is being examined closely, especially

during the period when he allegedly flew multimillion dollar jet fighters

in the Texas Air National Guard, then "disappeared," went "AWOL," or

"deserted" for awhile.

Early in Bush's White House residency, Dr. Helen Caldicott, the

Australian physician, environmentalist and anti-nuke activist, said the

President required "psychiatric intervention."

But more recently, on June 4, 2004, Doug Thompson wrote in "Capitol

Hill Blue," "President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and

wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides

privately express concern over their leader's state of mind." Continues

Thompson, "In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the

President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums

against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as 'enemies of

the state.'" This is not only reminiscent of LBJ but also Richard Nixon

and Ronald Reagan in their final days in the White House.

And even more recently, Harper Collins published a book by Justin

A. Frank, MD, titled "Bush On The Couch; Inside the Mind of the

President" (2004). It's a 272-page psychoanalysis of George W. Bush.

Megalomania, paranoia, untreated alcohol abuse, thought disorders, and even

sadism are some of the emotional problems of the President explored by Dr.

Frank who is Director of Psychiatry at George Washington University.

"President George W. Bush is taking powerful antidepressant drugs

to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia," according to

Teresa Hampton, editor of Capitol Hill Blue (www.capitolhillblue.com) July

28, 2004. White House physician, Col. Richard J. Tubb, prescribed the

drugs after a recent incident. Asked about his relationship with Enron

exec Ken Lay at a press conference July 8, 2004, the President stormed out

of the room and screamed at an aide backstage, "Keep those motherxxxxers

away from me. If you can't, I'll find someone who can."

LBJ ON THE COUCH

Without such medical credentials but with her own experience with

bipolar illness, Hershman contends LBJ was the worst kind of manic

depressive and got sicker as he got older and acquired more power. His

last decade of life was a living hell for him and everyone within his very

wide range. As if this wasn't bad enough, she believes he was paranoid to

boot.

I, too, have been diagnosed bipolar but much less severe and I may

be close to healed since in the past four years I have had episodes of

neither mania nor depression. After reading Hershman's book, with my own

experience to call upon, I think Hershman makes a very convincing diagnosis

of Pres. Johnson. And in his introduction to "Power Beyond Reason," Dr.

Gerald Tolchin, professor of psychology at Southern Connecticut State

University, agrees with the author.

In her 1983 bestseller, "Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream,"

Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote of LBJ's "extreme oscillations of mood," his

"obsessional, delusional thinking," and his "mercurial temperament."

Before at least three elections, he got so depressed he considered

withdrawing. Before another three elections, he had to be hospitalized.

"The votes were for him expressions of love," according to Goodwin who

quoted Johnson saying in 1968, perhaps the worst year of his life, "If the

American people don't love me, their descendants will."

Just one symptom of LBJ's paranoid bipolar illness was his

bold-faced lies and his dangerous manipulation of Congress. Just one

example was the fiction he himself created of the North Vietnamese attack

on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin that led to a major escalation of the

most controversial and divisive conflict in US history. This eventually

led to youngsters in Washington, DC, chanting within earshot of the

President who claimed he was deeply pained by it, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many

kids did you kill today?" And when he announced on March 31, 1968, he

would not seek a second term, many of the same young people sang, from "The

Wizard of Oz.," "Ding, dong, the witch is dead, the wicked old witch is

dead."

Revelations by Hershman as well as others about Johnson in recent

years now give even more credence to Barbara Garson's 1965 play, "MacBird."

In this parody of Shakespeare's "MacBeth," a tale of a man goaded by his

ruthlessly ambitious wife into murdering the king to gain the crown for

himself, Garson accuses Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, of orchestrating

the assassination of Pres. John Kennedy. The play was an instant hit since

early on many shared Garson's suspicions.

'THE GUILTY MEN'

In early February 2004, Pres. Johnson and his widow, now 91, were

back in the news...about the assassination. Mrs. Johnson, former

Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and former LBJ aides Jack Valenti

and Bill Moyers joined together to demand an investigation of facts

presented in a TV documentary aired in November 2003 about Johnson's role

in the murder of JFK.

Called "The Guilty Men," the documentary was a segment of a series

titled, "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" during "JFK Week" on the History

Channel.

The documentary is "the greatest, most damaging accusation ever

made against a former vice president and president in American history,"

wrote Pres. Ford in a letter Jan. 23, 2004, according to the Associated

Press, Feb. 3. Pres. Ford is the last surviving member of the Warren

Commission.

"I'm puzzled, bewildered, that a distinguished enterprise like the

History Channel would put on the air such garbage, such ugliness. It makes

one sick," said Valenti soon after the documentary aired in November 2003.

Valenti is author of a book about LBJ titled, " A Very Human President"

(1975). Yet Valenti once said LBJ was a "mean bully" who "could humiliate

you , both publicly and privately," according to Hershman.

Although the documentary was thoroughly fact-checked before

broadcast, "The History Channel apologized to its viewers and to Mrs.

Johnson and her family for airing the show," according to the Los Angeles

Times, April 6, 2004. The public declaration was made April 7 in a

televised rebuttal called "The Guilty Men: An Historical Review" in which

three historians agreed LBJ's involvement in the assassination was

"entirely unfounded and does not hold up to scrutiny." One of the

historians, Professor Robert Dallek of Boston University said the

documentary was "corrupt, dishonest and deceitful." Yet it was admitted

that of the more than eighty percent of the American public who believe

there was a conspiracy to kill JFK, almost twenty percent think LBJ was

involved.

In an editorial Feb. 13, 2004, "The New York Times," called the

documentary "harebrained," "what-if fantasizing," and the "stuff" of "Texas

conspiratorial satires." And the paper supported the conclusion of the

Warren Commission despite polls that show an overwhelming majority of the

American people across the political spectrum reject the investigation

controlled by Pres. Johnson soon after the murder that obviously

changed--and quickly--the course of world history.

But of what value is public opinion? More damaging to the

credibility of the major media that has long and consistently supported the

Warren Commission was the finding of the House Select Committee on

Assassinations (HSCA). Under the weight of new evidence in 1979, the HSCA

as much as admitted the Warren Commission was a cover-up. The Committee's

feeble finding--couched in legalese and bureaucratic gobbledygook--there

was "probably" a conspiracy. Of course this revelation has not received

much media exposure over the past two and a half decades.

'MEDIA POWER IS POLITICAL POWER'

Needless-to-say, but please indulge me anyway, "The New York Times"

is arguably the most influential newspaper of the major, corporate-owned,

for-profit media which in turn is collectively the Ministry of Propaganda

for the US military-industrial complex.

Especially in this most critical presidential election year, an

accusation that a vice-president of the United States and member of the

Democratic Party conspired with members of the far right to kill a sitting

president also of the Democratic Party will not play well with voters who

in increasing numbers believe conspiracy is synonymous with politics. One

need only look at how under Republican leadership, the Democrats--with an

able assist of the major media--in 2003 helped literally "sell" to the

American public the war on Iraq. Less than a year later, with the

"liberation" going badly, Democrats and the major media left the sinking

ship of state.

A more interesting investigation might be into how the recent

controversial assassination documentary ever got aired in the first place

since the History Channel is part of the major media consortium. The

Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, has misinformation,

disinformation, and infotainment down to an art, thoroughly refining the

work of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda

And remember, it was the major media that in early 2004 shot down

Howard Dean, at the time front-runner for the Democratic Party nomination,

not long after he pledged to break up major media control of information

in America.

"Yellow journalism" is nothing new. Remember how William Randolph

Hearst rushed to judgment about the sinking of the US battleship "Maine"

in 1898 and stirred up such high emotions in his newspapers nationwide,

that the US ended up colonizing Cuba, the Philippines and Hawaii. Many

decades later, in an investigation led by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the US

Navy discovered the ship--fueled by coal--was blown apart by an accidental

explosion of coal dust.

In his 1983 book, "The Media Monopoly," Ben Bagdikian, a professor

of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote, "Media

power is political power." And the fifty corporations, that at that time

(in 1983) dominated the major print and electronic media, helped set the

national agenda, he warned. Conflict of interest abounds within these

corporations where public information has become an industrial byproduct.

The US is endangered by the spreading truth blackout, Bagdikian insisted.

Two decades later, only five major corporations now control most

of the information that Americans depend on to make important decisions

like who gets the lease on the White House and for how long. And since

November 22, 1963, it has been the major media that has rarely failed to

denigrate JFK assassination sleuths as "conspiracy nuts."

One such investigator of the JFK murder, Ed Tatro, a college

professor in Massachusetts, was one of five researchers featured in the

History Channel documentary. He has been writing a book about the

assassination since soon after it occurred. The reason he hasn't finished

the book is because new and important information keeps surfacing. When in

a telephone conversation early in 2004 , I told him I thought LBJ was at

the very pinnacle of the pyramid of the conspiracy, he told me he wouldn't

go as far as that. But, he said, since 1968 he has believed Johnson was a

"central" figure in the assassination.

LBJ'S 'MURDER INC.'

Another assassination sleuth featured in the History Channel

documentary in November 2003 is Barr McClellan, an attorney who worked for

LBJ in the late Sixties. Much of the film was based on his book, "Blood,

Money and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK" (2003). McClellan claims two men

close to Johnson helped arrange for him more than a dozen murders

including that of LBJ's own sister, Josefa, and...John Kennedy.

One of the men was Ed Clark, LBJ's top confidant known as the

"secret boss of Texas" with ties to big oil moguls as well as the Brown

brothers of Brown and Root Construction Company. The other was Clifton

C. Carter, an aide to LBJ and his liaison with the Democratic National

Committee.

Carter was the uncle by marriage of my late ex-wife, the former

Mary Sue Howse whose first husband, Don Shepard, worked briefly for then

Sen. Johnson in the late Fifties. Mary Sue, who changed her name to

Sedonia Cahill when we married in 1970, was the granddaughter of Bill

Garrett of Kerrville, Texas, who was an early and influential supporter of

Johnson. In the late Thirties, both Garrett and Johnson were rare--for

Texas--FDR, New Deal, liberal Democrats. But while Johnson abandoned the

progressive wing of the Democratic Party after WW II, Garrett remained.

In September 1971, Carter met with Billy Sol Estes, a major donor

to LBJ's fortune who was later convicted of defrauding the US government of

millions. Included in their discussion were eight murders by Estes' count

and seventeen murders by Carter's count. And, at that time, Carter

expressed fears for his own life. Two days later, Carter died

unexpectedly, according to McClellan, and in his sleep, according to

Sedonia.

In 1984, before a grand jury in Texas, Estes told of the eight

murders he knew LBJ ordered. And he implicated Carter as well as Malcolm

Wallace, the shooter of some of the victims and whose fingerprint was found

in the Book Depository.

A 'SOCIAL' IN DALLAS

In "The New York Times" hit piece on the History Channel

documentary, the editorial trashed McClellan stating, "The book is rich in

patently unhistorical touches, insisting that Johnson was at a shadowy

meeting on the eve of the assassination..." Many of us who haven't yet

healed from the trauma of the very public execution and have hung on every

word written or spoken about the deed, have long known about the party in

honor of J. Edgar Hoover at the North Dallas home of Clint Murchison, a

right-wing Texas oil baron, the night of November 21, 1963, the very eve

of the assassination. At the "social," as Madeline Brown called it, were

H.L. Hunt, even further to the right of Murchison and perhaps one of the

richest men in the world at that time; and George R. Brown, of the company

known today as Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton with

construction sites in Iraq. During the Sixties, Brown and Root constructed

bases in Vietnam and helped make Johnson the richest president ever, far

more wealthy than JFK.

Others at the party were John McCloy, who later served on the

Warren Commission; and Richard M. Nixon, who years later may have ordered

the Watergate break-in to find out what the Democrats knew about the

assassination. Till his dying day, Nixon denied ever being in Dallas at

the time of the assassination. But as an attorney for Pepsi Cola, he was

placed in Dallas then at a meeting of the company, reported in an article

in the "Dallas Morning News" published Nov. 22, 1963, just hours before

perhaps the most history-changing murder in modern times.

Madeline Brown, author of "Texas In The Morning: The Love Story of

Madeline Duncan Brown and Lyndon Baines-Johnson" (1997), died in 2002--but

after she was videotaped by Nigel Turner, producer of "The Guilty Men." In

the documentary, she tells how a surprise late arrival at the party was her

longtime lover. Immediately after Johnson stepped in the door, a group of

men including those named above, sequestered themselves in another room for

awhile. When Johnson emerged, he went to her, squeezed her hand tightly

and whispered, "After tomorrow, those blankety-blank Kennedys will never

embarrass me again. That's not a threat; that's a promise," said Brown on

camera. In her book, she quoted her paramour as using the more profane,

"goddam Kennedys."

Thus far the scenario that may come closest to the murder in Dallas

is the movie "Executive Action" released in 1973 and starring Burt

Lancaster and Robert Ryan. Writers for the film were Donald Freed, Dalton

Trumbo, and Mark Lane who was one of the earliest assassination sleuths.

The movie disappeared for many years, but has resurfaced in video shops.

The film portrays the oily, sinister types who were at the party in Dallas

the eve of the assassination.

Just how many "coincidences" does it take to make a conviction.

Many people have been executed in America on far, far thinner evidence.

THE SEXUAL PREDATOR

LBJ called Brown "Miss Pussy Galore" and "threatened to brand her

in bed like a cow," according to Jan Jarboe Russell in her book, "Lady

Bird" (1999). In 1951, Brown had a son by Johnson. Child support

payments for Steven Brown from Lyndon Johnson stopped after the President's

death in 1973. In 1987, Steven filed a $10.5 million law suit against Lady

Bird, claiming she denied him his "legal heirship." Not long after being

arrested by the US Navy and hospitalized under mysterious circumstances,

Steven died before trial in 1991. He was forty years old.

Russell describes LBJ as a "robust lover" and a "sexual gorilla."

In her book, Hershman describes Johnson as a sexual predator whose hobby was humiliating people--including Lady Bird--sexually and in public. Once while driving his

Lincoln on his ranch with two aides in the back, Lady Bird on the right

front seat, and a female friend in the middle, Johnson had his hand up the woman's dress,

according to Jarboe.

In a conversation not long after we were married, Sedonia, who was

especially beautiful and genteel, painfully alluded to Johnson's "hobby"

which may have been the reason her first husband quit the then Senator's

staff and the young couple returned to Texas after a short time in

Washington, a city both liked very much. Just by the expression on her

face, I knew Sedonia well enough by then to not ask for details.

In the sci-fi movie, "Time Quest: What if JFK had lived?" (2002),

a visitor from the future tells the Kennedy brothers that Jack would be

murdered twice, once by gunmen (plural) and later by character

assassination...by the media exposing every detail possible about his

womanizing.

While LBJ's promiscuity is only now being revealed, JFK may have

been the first president whose sex life was made public, and soon after his

death. It was as if J. Edgar Hoover who taped many of JFK's amorous

telephone conversations starting while he was in the Navy, was waiting in

the wings for Kennedy's death to tattle on him.

Now known to history as a loathsome blackmailer, racist, prude,

megalomaniac, and more, Hoover's reputation is even worse to some of us

survivors of COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program against the

New Left in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Two memos from my FBI

files indicate it may have been COINTELPRO that set me up to be beaten,

gang-raped and otherwise tortured while jailed for civil disobedience in

Texas in 1968 because of my activism against the war in Vietnam.

Bobby Kennedy, JFK's attorney general and Hoover's boss, once

called the director, a "mean, bitter, vicious animal" that fit perfectly

Hoover's mug and moniker, "Bulldog." Like many associated with the JFK

assassination and LBJ's Murder Inc., Hoover died "unexpectedly" on

May 2, 1972. Cause of death--"undiagnosed heart disease." He was 77.

SOME REASONS JFK WAS ASSASSINATED

I maintain a long list of reasons, available on request, why Pres.

Kennedy was murdered. I would place close to the top, a fact that "The

New York Times" cannot dispute. The Kennedy team was going to dump LBJ for

the 1964 election campaign and Johnson knew it. The Kennedy's were also

going to force into retirement J. Edgar Hoover after the '64 election and

Hoover knew it.

As if that wasn't bad enough for Johnson's massive ego, his

chickens were coming home to roost. Johnson knew that Atty. Gen. Kennedy

was aware of much of the fraud and murders in Texas connected to him and

he feared he would die in prison.

Anyone who enjoys murder mysteries knows to look for motive, means

and opportunity. John Kennedy was far more popular with the voters than

when he first ran for the presidency. But he had made a lot of very

dangerous enemies among the rich and the powerful. An old saying in Texas

is, "xxxx with the bull, you get the horn." To the military, members of

the vast intelligence community, the oil magnates and other industrialists,

Lyndon Johnson was the absolutely perfect replacement for the "radical"

from Massachusetts.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, R.I.P. OR REFORM

Lyndon Johnson was as close to a dictator as the US has yet come.

And exactly like another world-class tyrant, Johnson was a loquacious

know-it-all, a crashing bore who could pontificate for hours, and a crude

and ill-mannered boor. He was irascible, suspicious and vindictive. And

above all, just like Adolph Hitler, Johnson was the consummate actor. LBJ

made up his mind about something, then bribed, bullied or blackmailed

others to go along.

With his huge bulk towering over his adversary, LBJ would grab the

man, drive a rigid finger into the man's chest each time he made point

after point, and to further rattle his prey, with his own knees, he would

bang those of the man often leaving them black and blue. This was called

the "Johnson treatment," according to Alfred Steinberg in "Sam Johnson's

Boy; A Close-up Of The President From Texas" (1968).

More than a decade before Sen. Joe McCarthy's communist witch hunt

unjustly devastated America's left wing, LBJ--the former liberal, FDR "New

Dealer"-- was red-baiting in Texas where he later became known as

"Landslide Lyndon" and "Lyin' Lyndon" for stealing the US Senate election

of 1948. Early in his career, LBJ wrapped himself in the American flag

and under the umbrella of national security, he bilked the nation for all

he could. He became a "political general" and the "senator from the

Pentagon," according to Ronnie Dugger in his book, "The Politician;

The Life And Times Of Lyndon Johnson" (1982).

"Just get me elected, and you can have your war," Johnson told the

Joint Chiefs of Staff in December 1963. Three years later Johnson claimed,

"If it (the Vietnam War) belongs to anyone, it's my war." And, Hershman

reports in "Power Beyond Reason," "On one occasion, Johnson became

exasperated with the reporters who kept asking why the US was fighting in

Vietnam. The President unzipped his pants, extracted his penis and

announced, 'This is why.'"

Johnson's work to control--or kill--the Democratic Party began in

earnest in the critical year of 1952 when the Party passed into the hands

of the big corporations, according to Dugger. Then Senate majority leader,

Johnson helped sell the country mainly to big oil and the defense industry.

Johnson's cynicism was unlike anything known before in American history,

wrote Dugger who knows Texas and national politics like few others and is

now a guiding light of the Alliance for Democracy.

Lyndon Johnson didn't have a sincere molecule in his huge (6'4")

body. Like he used patriotism, he used Christianity. In his book, Dugger

describes God's late night visits to Pres. Johnson in the White House

which sound much like Pres. Bush's relationship with the deity. As scary

then as now, US presidents have the power to destroy much of the world.

Probably just grandstanding, then Sen. Johnson said in 1948, nuclear

warfare is "ours to use, either to Christianize the world or pulverize it."

Could Johnson be cueing Bush from beyond the grave?

Arrogant to the max, especially as president, Johnson exercised his

rank and his favorite past time of humiliating people to the extreme. When

a Secret Service man complained to Pres. Johnson that he was urinating on

the agent's leg, LBJ replied, "I know I am. It's my prerogative," writes

Hershman. Does this sound like "A Very Human President?"

Whether Johnson led or participated in the coup d'etat or not, his

war on Vietnam was a sharp turn to the right for America from which not

only the Democratic Party but also organized labor and democracy itself has

yet to recover.

"The Kennedy assassination remains...the best route into recent

American history, " wrote Robin Ramsay in his book, "Who Shot JFK?" (2002).

And if the Democratic Party doesn't soon purge itself of the same big

corporations that own and operate the GOP, then we can "Say Goodbye To

America," the title of a book by Matthew Smith on "New Perspectives On The

JFK Assassination" (2001).

"The Vietnam war alone generated 'business' to the value of $200

billion," according to Smith who believes JFK was murdered on orders from

big business which he was in process of divesting of power in favor of the

people.

With a long history of heart disease, LBJ had a fatal attack Jan.

22, 1973, at his ranch on the Pedernales River. The ultimate alpha male

was 65.

"When he died, Johnson was in fact an old man, twisted by the

failure of the Vietnam war and the chaos of civil unrest, his hair long and

with speckled brown spots on his flesh. He had become his own worst

nightmare," wrote Jarboe.

John Kennedy's ghost will forever haunt each anniversary of his

passing and each presidential election campaign at least until the truth of

his murder satisfies the majority. Meanwhile Lyndon Johnson may carry

forever the epithet "the ugliest American."

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Bump. Excellent article by Tom Cahill & worth re-reading.

Tom Cahill:

Probably just grandstanding, then Sen. Johnson said in 1948, nuclear

warfare is "ours to use, either to Christianize the world or pulverize it."