Lyndon Johnson considered putting Nelson Rockefeller on the 1968 ticket as Vice President

[Guest Robert Morrow]

Nancy Dickerson (nee Hanschman) was a reporter who was very, very close to Lyndon Johnson. Her book "Among Those Present: A Reporter's View of 25 Years in Washington" is a golden nugget and an important read.

My views on the JFK assassination are that Lyndon Johnson and his Texas oil executive supporters used their CIA/military contacts to murder John Kennedy. I am more sure of Texas oil involvement in the JFK assassination than the Rockefellers, but I keep finding material that makes me condlude that Nelson Rockefeller was involved in the JFK assassination. The Texas oil men, particularly Clint Murchison, Sr., had good ties to the Rockefellers through John J. McCloy who was a "Rockefeller man" and the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1953 to 1970. In fact, Murchison and McCloy went dove hunting on Murchison's ranch in the summer of 1963. I am sure they were saying awful things about John Kennedy.

Allen Dulles was yet another "Rockefeller man" who had close ties to the ultra powerful Suite 8F group of Texas business and political leaders. Allen Dulles was president of the CFR in 1949 and McGeorge Bundy was secretary of the CFR then. Bundy, as the National Security Advisor on 11/22/63, behaved in way that simply was not rational as he promoted the "lone nut" theory within hours of the JFK assassination. Senator Lyndon Johnson in the early 1950's was one of just a mere handful of congressional overseers of the CIA - this is a little known fact and extremely important. When I think of LBJ, I think of inner circle CIA for a very long time. Lyndon Johnson in the 1950's was the single most important congressional appropriator/overseer of the military-industrial complex.

CIA and Air Force general Ed Lansdale was identified at Dealey Plaza (really 5 feet west of TSBD) in the 3 tramps photo by his peers Col. Fletcher Prouty and Gen. Victor Krulak. If Ed Lansdale was involved in the JFK assassination, then Allen Dulles, whose conduct on the Warren Commission was so outrageous, probably was, too. And if Dulles was involved at a high level, then it is very reasonable to concluded that Nelson Rockefeller was as well. That means knowing about & approving of the JFK assassination - an inner circle plotter.

I think it is a lead pipe cinch that Lyndon Johnson was one of the key plotters of the JFK assassination and anyone he was very close to - whether it was H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison or Nelson Rockefeller - has to be considered a candidate for being an inner circle plotter of the JFK assassination. The Hunts, the Murchisons and the Rockefellers were the richest men in America and the world in 1963 and Lyndon Johnson was very close personal friends with all of them.

I should also mention that in 1964, after he lost the Republican nomination, Nelson Rockefeller did not support Barry Goldwater in the general election. The Rockefellers already had their man: Lyndon Johnson!

And then there is the 1975 Rockefeller Commission which was yet another whitewash of the JFK assassination. David Belin, one of the guys who invented the absurd "Magic Bullet Theory" on the Warren Commission, was the executive director or chief counsel of the Rockefeller Commission.

With that in mind, I present this nugget for your perusal -

Nancy Dickerson: Lyndon Johnson considered putting Nelson Rockefeller on the ticket as Vice President for the 1968 general election.

"In the last year of the Kennedy Administration, there was much talk about whether or not he would "dump Johnson" as his running mate for the second term. When asked about it directly at a news conference, he was unequivocal and said, in part, "I don't know what they will do about me, but I'm sure that the Vice President will be on the ticket if he chooses to run." A couple of weeks later at dinner I asked LBJ whether he thought Kennedy would dump him, and he brushed the question aside, saying that he never thought about it. But during the next course it was he who brought up the subject again, and he repeated word for word all of Kennedy's press-conference answer, adding, "That doesn't sound like I'm not going to be around, does it?"

Years later when Hubert Humphrey was having dinner at our house, I naively asked him whether it wasn't a relief to have as President a man who had been through the tortures of the post himself and understood what it is like, to which Humphrey replied, "There is no President who understands." I knew what he meant later when LBJ, Humphrey, Jack Valenti, Dick and I had an impromptu dinner at the Moyers' house. The President became expansive about those he loved and those he didn't, and then started talking about his choice for Vice President the next time around. There were rumors Hubert would be dumped, and LBJ did nothing that night to discourage them; in fact, he encouraged them. He mentioned the need for national unity during a war, and said that it might best be achieved by naming a Republican as a running mate. He extolled the virtues of Nelson Rockefeller, declaring him to be the "right kind of Republican" to form a consensus ticket. In effect, he was warning Humphrey that he had better not stray from the fold on the Vietnam war, or he would be replaced. Humphrey was humiliated, and the more Johnson played his cruel cat-and-mouse game, the more humiliated he felt. I clenched my teeth and wondered how he could take it.

[Nancy Dickerson, "Among Those Present: A Reporter's View of 25 Years in Washington," p. 230]

I have always thought there was a lot of truth in the following passage:

From Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, 3rd edition 1998 p. 638-639]:

“The Role of deep-cover CIA officer, Trenton Parker, has been described in earlier pages, and his function in the CIA's counter-intelligence unit, Pegasus. Parker had stated to me earlier that a CIA faction was responsible for the murder of JFK … During an August 21, 1993, conversation, in response to my questions, Parker said that his Pegasus group had tape recordings of plans to assassinate Kennedy. I asked him, "What group were these tapes identifying?" Parker replied: "Rockefeller, Allen Dulles, JOHNSON of Texas, GEORGE BUSH, and J. Edgar Hoover." I asked, "What was the nature of the conversation on these tapes?"

I don't have the tapes now, because all the tape recordings were turned over to [Congressman] Larry McDonald. But I listened to the tape recordings and there were conversations between Rockefeller, [J. Edgar] Hoover, where [Nelson] Rockefeller asks, "Are we going to have any problems?" And he said, "No, we aren't going to have any problems. I checked with Dulles. If they do their job we'll do our job." There are a whole bunch of tapes, because Hoover didn't realize that his phone has been tapped. Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, p. 638-639]

Astoundingly, Republican Nelson Rockefeller was the TOP (behind the scenes) choice of

Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1968!

From Robert Dallek’s book Flawed Giant, pp. 544-545]

Lyndon Johnson’s deep alliance with CIA and Eastern Establishment

“Johnson’s choice as his successor was New York’s Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The two men had a high regard for each other. Johnson saw Rockefeller as a sensible moderate who, in Lady Bird’s words, “was a good human being, a person who was for the disadvantaged, who was a man of compassion, with a capable and effective mind, and capable of being effective, getting things done.” He also believed that Rockefeller was the one man who could beat Bobby Kennedy, no small asset in Johnson’s mind.

Rockefeller reciprocated Johnson’s feelings. He saw the President as “a great statesman and great American patriot.” Rockefeller said later: “He was a tremendous guy.” They and their wives enjoyed a warm personal relationship. Nelson recalled how frank his wife Happy could be with Lyndon, telling him at the ranch not to drive so fast or drink too much. “She was successful in getting him to slow down, which I don’t think most people were.” …

Toward the end of April [1968], Johnson invited the Rockefellers to the White House for dinner, where he urged the governor to declare for the Republican nomination. “He was very friendly about ’68, and very supportive of me for ’68,” Rockefeller said. Johnson also told him he would never campaign against him. Happy Rockefeller remembered how during that evening Johnson urged Rockefeller to run. “He did want Nelson to be President,” she said. Johnson encouraged others to back Rockefeller as well. On April 7, after Irwin Miller, a prominent member of “Republicans for Johnson” in 1964 had asked whether the president would object to his chairing a Draft Rockefeller Committee, LBJ have Miller “a full speed go-ahead.”

Rockefeller did not need much prodding. On April 10, following a brief conversation with Johnson at New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where they attended Archbishop Terence Cooke’s installation, Rockefeller announced his “availability” for the Republican nomination. On April 30, after the White House evening, Rockefeller declared himself a candidate for the presidency.” [Robert Dallek, A Flawed Giant, p. 545]

Additionally, Nelson Rockefeller was quite the hawk on Vietnam, even urging JFK to use TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS against North Vietnam in 1961!

[James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 321-322]

“John Kennedy was turning. The key to understanding Kennedy's presidency, his assassination, and our survival as a species through the Cuban Missile Crisis is that Kennedy was turning towards peace. The signs of his turning are the seeds of his assassination.

Marcus Ruskin worked in the Kennedy Administration as an assistant to National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. Not long after the Bay of Pigs, Raskin witnessed an incident in the Oval Office that tipped him off to Kennedy's deep aversion to the use of nuclear weapons.

During the president's meeting with a delegation of governors, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, expressing his irritation at the guerilla tactics of the Viet Cong, said "Why don't we use tactical nuclear weapons against them?"

Raskin, watching Kennedy closely, was in a position to see what happened next. The president's hand began to shake uncontrollably.

JFK said simply, "You know we're not going to do that."

But it was the sudden shaking hand that alerted Raskin to Kennedy's profound uneasiness with nuclear weapons, a mark of conscience that would later turn into a commitment to disarmament"

[James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pp. 321-322]

Edited November 11, 2012 by Robert Morrow