Review of Joan Mellen's new book on LBJ

[Roy Wieselquist]

Roy: Because JM discounts Madeleine Brown, that seems to be end of it for JM. But what about the other ten million pieces of evidence that point at LBJ? Both circumstantial and physical.

Can you please name the ten million pieces of evidence that insinuate LBJ into the plot to kill Kennedy?

I will settle for five million if you are busy.

James,

Thanks for taking it easy on me with the five million. Your intuition is correct that I am busy. My book, due around the year 2030, is behind schedule.

(conservative figures)

- 3,060,000 needless war dead in Southeast Asia

- 500,000 " " " " Indonesia (the rottenest genocide in history)

- 500,000 " " " " Congo, Mid East, Brazil (+ Caribbean, Latin American in general) a wild guesstimate

+_______1 multi-trillion debt that never was or will be paid; US from world's creditor to world's debtor

4,060,001

How did all these massive massacres happen after Kennedy? LBJ had to pay the pipers, and that's what it cost. From the Nelson Rockefeller-John McCloy-Allen Dulles-Claire Booth Luce-H L Hunt types to the mechanics pumping out Bell helicopters. They had LBJ over enough barrels to fill a distillery. They didn't have to send him a telegram that said, "Give us what we want so you can continue doing what you want, whatever the inferno that is." And they all wanted pretty much the same thing, robbing and killing the workingman for fun and profit.

Less than half of November 22 --

1 How much trouble for LBJ to sleep on AF2 from Houston to Ft. Worth, and be fresh as a daisy for a midnight rendezvous at Murchison's? Still he had some dark bags under his hooded eyes that day.

1 The argument over the seating for the parade, as beautifully excused in the CTKA article by Vazakas, Coogan, and Dragoo, linked in your comment #43. [Anything worked on by Phil Dragoo could not possibly be any more efficient, organized, colorful, clear. Talk about economy of language! And V V and S C are no slouches. It's easy to see why that article is so highly rated.] BUTTTTTTTTTTT -- what circular logic, what ad hoc ergo propter hoc! Mrs. Yarborough is not even invited to dinner at the Governor's Mansion, and Connally seats Ralph, senior U. S. Senator from Texas, at the children's table. But "the feud", RY (only Southern Senator to vote for every post WW2 civil rights bill) vs. JBC and LBJ is a false equality. When RY was p.o.ed at the Malevolent Duo, he had plenty of good reason. Vice versa, mysterious motives and ulterior motives. You bet because RY could smell a rat, and the Prince and King Rat knew it. IMHO, not only did JBC and LBJ know it was highly dangerous to be in X-100, they knew about this wild card on the loose named Lee Harvey Oswald. Who had been befriended by "fellow-traveler" Mac Wallace, who had his own set of beefs against John Con. (Both had been student union president at UT years apart, but oh how different their success rate had been after college.)

1 Look at John Con's face and demeanor that morning. That's one scared Texan. He doesn't know whether to faint, scream or load his diaper.

1 Textbook example of "excited utterance" (blurted in a scary situation before someone has time to think and couch his reaction) -- John Con screaming, "Oh no no no, THEY are going to KILL us ALLLLLLL!" Jackie was always amazed at the inordinate volume and suddenness of this.

1 Can anyone deny that LBJ owned JBC, had him on a leash? Same JBC who demanded the route and destination, used idiotic subterfuges (found out later, but excused again) to get his (LBJ's) way.

1 Nellie Connally hunkering down in the car right before they hit the Kill Zone. Nothing like LBJ but still...

1 Nellie repeatedly telling JBC, "Hush." She knew he could accidentally let the cat out of the bag. She was a piece of work herself, hard-hearted progeny of bushwhacker stock. She'd had the head of her eldest child Kathleen (an almighty Southern woman!) half blown off by a shotgun. In Florida, sort of opposite analogous to the de Mohrenschildt assassination. And teenaged Kathleen Connally's white-trash husband got away with it, in true Southern white-trash, dirt-bag fashion. So poor, multi-suffering Nellie Connally had no sympathy for anyone else. (Probably not even her husband who stole so hard for her, went to prison in the early 1980s owing an eighth of a BILLION dollars) "They" had taken her slaves, her right as a superior Southern woman. And "they" had taken her first-born daughter.

Jim D., let me tell you a secret -- they're all white trash. It may be getting somewhat better (but it's probably too late), but the American South in general, and Texas in particular, and Dallas in most particular, is the world's depository of murderous, work-allergic, back-shooting human offal.

Okay, Jim, you got me for now. This is harder than I thought. That's only 4,060,008 pieces of evidence that LBJ was Prime Mover in JFKA. A couple more so I can round it up to 4,060,010:

Johnson on AF-One. Why didn't he take his own plane that had all his stuff on it? (Answer: He wanted to keep an eye on "the enemy" who had been so good to him, though not good enough for Texas Pure D White Trash.) Last of all for now, the wink from cancerous Albert "Winky" Thomas.

This is not an exhaustive list. Far from it. A good exercise, it's making me think.

Edited September 16, 2016 by Roy Wieselquist

[James DiEugenio]

Roy:

1. These foreign policy reversals that you name at the beginning, those reversals would have happened if LBJ was in on the plot or not. They also would have happened if Kennedy had been defeated in 1964 by say Goldwater or Nixon. And, in fact, Nixon and Kissinger continued reversing JFK's foreign policy years later. Simply because, unlike Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon and Goldwater simply had no sophistication or sensitivity about these kinds of issues, especially in the Third World. Which are the three places you mention.

And by the way, these reversals were not just Johnson's doing, there were other entities and personages involved. And some of them were sandbagging Kennedy's foreign policy while he was alive e.g. the CIA in Congo. So when you write that LBJ had to do these things to "pay the piper", Johnson would have done them if there was a "piper" to pay or not. For instance, as John Newman shows, in Vietnam LBJ disagreed with Kennedy's approach from 1961. Does this mean he was plotting to kill JFK that early? Well, in Philip Nelson's opinion, probably yes. But only someone as biased and non objective as Nelson would buy into that.

2. I don't really follow your second point. There was an argument and strong disagreement about the treatment of Yarborough on Kennedy's Texas visit. There seems little doubt about that. Kennedy favored Yarborough in this disagreement. And he verbally went to bat for him.

The rest of what you write, again, does not compute with me. Are you saying that Ralph Y. understood there was something more behind this disagreement besides the fact that Connally hated his guts and was out to hurt him politically in the eyes of the voters? You seem to imply that Ralph Y. somehow knew about a Texas plot presumably involving LBJ and JBC. Can you please refer me to any primary evidence from the senator about this? As I would be interested to read it. I don't mean what someone else said about it, but what the senator himself said. The rest of what you write here, that somehow LBJ and JBC knew about Oswald, and he had been befriended by Wallace etc. this all seems to me to be right out of Barr McClellan's fairy tale of a book. I read that volume and was flabbergasted by the stuff the guy made up. I mean do you also think Oswald was on the sixth floor firing at the motorcade?

3. Connally's expression that morning is not evidence. Unless you can tell us what he was thinking. Again, if you can, please inform me of where this is since I missed that also.

4. I like the way you applied emphasis to the word "all" in Connally's quote. Where did you get that piece of information? Again, I missed that one.

5. Your comments about Nellie Connally and LBJ hunkering down on Elm Street are not borne out by the evidence. As I have said, Robert Groden completely vitiated this argument about LBJ in his book Absolute Proof, leaving Nelson without a leg to stand on. (See pgs. 271-72) Nellie actually talked to JFK and commented on how appreciative the crowd was. (I am sure someone like Nelson would say this was a gambit to lull him to sleep.)

6. The debate about the destination of the motorcade was the Trade Mart vs the Women's Center. Connally, because of his political orientation, favored the former. Since he thought he could hit up his backers for more money there. But beyond that, as Vince P shows in his book, the important point about the route being changed had nothing to do with that decision. It came the night before. And it included the dogleg. (Survivor's Guilt pgs.105-12)

And BTW, the idea you float about LBJ having JBC on a leash at the time, this is not supported by the accounts I have read. At this time, Connally was at his peak of power in Texas, and LBJ's image had declined in his home state. This is one reason why the White House went through Connally on this.

Your concluding comments about Nellie Connally elude me. Are you actually saying she was part of the plot? Calling her White Trash will not get you very far forensically. And I note that you do not mention the harpoon to your argument. Namely that both JBC and Nellie both thought Kennedy was killed as part of a conspiracy. In fact, Connally actually said he never thought for one second that a single gunman pulled off the assassination. And this goes beyond what he and his wife said before the WC, to demolish the Single Bullet Fantasy.

In Joe McBride's book, Into the Nightmare, you will read a very underreported story by Doug Thompson who founded the Washington journal Capitol Hill Blue. In 1982, he had the opportunity to talk to Connally about the assassination. He asked him if he thought Oswald killed Kennedy. Connally replied, "Absolutely not. I do not for one second believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission." (p. 418) And you can ask Robert Groden about this also, since Connally said the same thing to him.

What you wrote above saddens and disheartens me. For it indicates that the work of people like McClellan, Nelson and Roger Stone have actually made converts within the research community. Even though all three men violate the central tenets of what is supposed to be scholarly work. Evidently the sheer bombast in their books has impressed you, and perhaps others. Which reverses the whole order of what scholarship should be: analysis first, evaluation later. By making pretentious pronouncements like "LBJ as mastermind of the JFK assassination", and "LBJ, the man who killed Kennedy", this has apparently impressed some people.

To me, it has always been the other way around. We should not reason deductively about this case, but inductively. I was hoping that was the lesson I was getting across in my writings. I guess I was not as successful as I thought.

Edited September 16, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Dawn Meredith]

Re Jim D's comment:

"BTW, Estes was the guy who also propagated the whole James Melvin Liggett as body alterationist in the JFK case, and that moron Nigel Turner then bought into it and helped ruin his and our credibility by putting it on his last Men Who Killed Kennedy series. Liggett was allegedly flown out of Love Field to Washington with, get this, not the actual JFK body, but a lookalike. I won't go any further with this, because only Nigel Turner could believe it. But, in his grand tradition, Estes said that Liggett was also a serial murderer who killed six people to cover up his story. A and E got sued over this Liggett crap and wisely settled before trial."

I do not know of Estes involvement in the Liggett matter but it was J Harrison who brought this information to Nigel Turner.

[Roy Wieselquist]

James,

Thanks so much for that informative reply, really. I'm seeing, more and more, how many experts in the field believe that LBJ was NOT a prime mover. I had no idea. I guess I ASSumed that it's so obvious.

No serious researcher thinks he had NO idea it was coming, but I am so surprised by how many seem to think LBJ was just along for the ride. Not me. And that's not only from McClellan and Nelson. Don't forget Zirbel, the first to lay it out. I love me some Craig Zirbel.

By the way, James Douglass doesn't go into LBJ's part because that's not the purview of The Unspeakable. That's about the REASONS for the coup. JFK signed his death warrant at least 20 times, 20 different ways. The LBJ-did-it books are more about the HOW, as opposed to the WHY.

Roy:

1. These foreign policy reversals that you name at the beginning, those reversals would have happened if LBJ was in on the plot or not. They also would have happened if Kennedy had been defeated in 1964 by say Goldwater or Nixon. And, in fact, Nixon and Kissinger continued reversing JFK's foreign policy years later. Simply because, unlike Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon and Goldwater simply had no sophistication or sensitivity about these kinds of issues, especially in the Third World. Which are the three places you mention.

True that LBJ and Goldwater had no sophistication about these issues, quite the opposite; both of them, especially AuH20, could barely read, whereas Kennedy read to practically a morbid extent. Goldwater may have nuked Hanoi if given the chance. Nixon's different in sophistication. He inherited LBJ's war and removed combat troops pretty fast for America, though he sure did bomb the joint.

True that JFK was holding back the dogs of war, practically alone. So, in your mind, SE Asia is a moot point vis a vis LBJ's part in the plot. It seems to me like putting the cart before the horse because Nam was a big bonus for the coup. I can't see it being that massive and fast without some kind of thieves' bargain. There's just no accounting for it. Has there been a crazier, more sudden war in all history?

And by the way, these reversals were not just Johnson's doing, there were other entities and personages involved. Of course, and they were all LBJ's partners in crime, from LeMay to Dulles to E H Hunt to Brown, et al. And some of them were sandbagging Kennedy's foreign policy while he was alive e.g. the CIA in Congo. So when you write that LBJ had to do these things to "pay the piper", Johnson would have done them if there was a "piper" to pay or not. For instance, as John Newman shows, in Vietnam LBJ disagreed with Kennedy's approach from 1961. Again, evidence FOR Johnson's leadership involvement in the murder. He extorted his way onto the ticket and said (something like), "25% of presidents die in office and I'm a gambling man." Does this mean he was plotting to kill JFK that early? He sure would have loved it. Well, in Philip Nelson's opinion, probably yes. But only someone as biased and non objective as Nelson would buy into that. LBJ had practically unlimited means, motive, and the Dallas, TX opportunity.

2. I don't really follow your second point. There was an argument and strong disagreement about the treatment of Yarborough on Kennedy's Texas visit. The disagreement was not a matter of taste like the preference for chocolate or vanilla ice cream. There was no good reason for it from JBC and LBJ. RY had every reason to make a stink. There seems little doubt about that. Kennedy favored Yarborough in this disagreement. And he verbally went to bat for him. That's the heroic kind of guy we lost in JFK.

The rest of what you write, again, does not compute with me. Are you saying that Ralph Y. understood there was something more behind this disagreement besides the fact that Connally hated his guts and was out to hurt him politically in the eyes of the voters? You seem to imply that Ralph Y. somehow knew about a Texas plot presumably involving LBJ and JBC. RY surely didn't KNOW at the time, but he must have had his suspicions sometime later. He was sharp and not afraid. He never backed off witnessing: 1. smelled gunsmoke at street level; 2. heard automatic (Trans: rapid or numerous) gunfire; 2. saw Gordon Arnold hit the dirt and figured, correctly, that he was trained in combat. Can you please refer me to any primary evidence from the senator about this? I've seen him talking some in his later years, but as for references, I have trouble figuring out my own notes from yesterday. Sorry, really. As I would be interested to read it. I don't mean what someone else said about it, but what the senator himself said. The rest of what you write here, that somehow LBJ and JBC knew about Oswald, (LBJ, somewhat of a micromanager at times, and had his information tentacles out everywhere had to know about LHO, the guy, the great hero who was most fighting all these assassination attempts; JBC maybe in the dark) and he had been befriended by Wallace etc. (I make my own prima facie case about this -- too long to get into here, though I do find McClellan's conjection 'faction' reasonable)this all seems to me to be right out of Barr McClellan's fairy tale of a book. I read that volume and was flabbergasted by the stuff the guy made up. I mean do you also think Oswald was on the sixth floor firing at the motorcade? Yes, but that's a whole 'nother story, a quarter orhalf a book. In short, LHO tried to stop the murder of democracy. At the end there, he saw the fascists were going to succeed, so he made them pay a little by popping JBC twice and the windshield trim (trying to hit the obviously complicit Greer) once. From the western end of TSBD. Remember LHO's garbage rifle shot high and to the right.

It was the first fragging of the Vietnam War, and one of the few retaliations against the New Confederacy.

There were at least 6 other shots, 3 hitting JFK. At least 3 hit outside the limo, maybe 5. At least 8 gunmen, at least 5 firing. They had backups for the backups. And that's not including gunmen on Stemmons Freeway, atop Cobb Stadium and across the road, just in case. I believe there were even explosives at hand for the last-ditch fallback. Pretty weird, huh? But I have my reasons.

3. Connally's expression that morning is not evidence. Unless you can tell us what he was thinking. Again, if you can, please inform me of where this is since I missed that also. Johnny Boy ready to burst into tears or throw up, at the gala event of his life? He was thinking about the line of fire; that's just logic. Ralph Y. was beaming all day though he was being treated like garbage by his own state party.

4. I like the way you applied emphasis to the word "all" in Connally's quote. Where did you get that piece of information? From Jackie's recountings, mostly. Also, in the Z-film, around 230 I think, that long open, twisting mouth is a long LLLLLLLL. It goes on. Again, I missed that one.

5. Your comments about Nellie Connally and LBJ hunkering down on Elm Street are not borne out by the evidence. Nellie's window is the only one that's not all the way down, and hers is mostly up. The odds are 1 in 6. She's down low, that's all there is to it. Unless she was 4 feet tall, which she was not. As I have said, Robert Groden completely vitiated this argument about LBJ in his book Absolute Proof, leaving Nelson without a leg to stand on. The hunched down "listening to the radio" excuse didn't happen? (See pgs. 271-72) Nellie actually talked to JFK and commented on how appreciative the crowd was. Right. "Yew caint say Dallas doesn't luuuv (she did draw it out) yew, Mr. Prisidint." Darn right. She was relieved about all these bad vibes she had been feeling, was seeing the end in sight.

Oh, I could go into the psych implications of that statement. It's too much really. (I am sure someone like Nelson would say this was a gambit to lull him to sleep.)

And it was soon to be literally true, what she said. Because JFK replied something like, "You certainly can't." And then he was hit in the throat and used his last bit of speaking to exclaim, "My God, I'm hit!" Which Kellerman heard. And Jack never could say anything again. So that non-sympathetic witch was right.

6. The debate about the destination of the motorcade was the Trade Mart vs the Women's Center. Connally, because of his political orientation (vanilla vs. chocolate ice cream, right?), favored the former. Since he thought he could hit up his backers for more money there. (Ticket sales lagged. JBC didn't give a rat's patoot about that luncheon.) But beyond that, as Vince P shows in his book, the important point about the route being changed had nothing to do with that decision. It came the night before. And it included the dogleg. (Survivor's Guilt pgs.105-12) SS advanceman Jerry Bruno was there long before that. He was astounded by the whole thing. Bruno didn't find out until much later that when JBC made a big scene about chewing out Dave Powers or Kenny O'Donnel over the phone (from TX to the White House right when they sat down to lunch!) -- that it never happened.

That's all I can reply to now. In all the articles and posts I've been reading about the LBJ part in 11-22 these last few days, only one mentions the great Craig Zirbel. That was the CTKA article by Vasakas, Coogan, and Dragoo that you linked early in this topic.

The best about CZ's The Texas Connection (I haven't read his latest yet; didn't know about it until going through all this) is his beautiful explication and enumeration of Right-Hand Man Aided assassinations through history. That's one of the keys to LBJ's part in JFKA. It just could not have happened without at least LBJ's okay. But now you have me thinking that's all it is, was.

Nawwww. Back to reality. You know and I know that filthy devil Lyndon Baines Johnson was pushing for the murder as much as anybody, though there sure were (and are) plenty of those anybodies. Mastermind is an oxymoron in LBJ's case. But Prime Mover is not. What does your gut, informed by countless pieces of evidence, tell you? Come on, admit it.

You and Joan Mellen, and I'm seeing many of the other greats, suffer from a minor affliction -- don't conclude until you can nail the bastard to a cross in a tough court. There is such a thing as too high standards. Moderation in all things.

[James DiEugenio]

This is the problem I get into whenever I get into these disagreements about the alleged roles of Bush or Johnson in the JFK case.

In fact, the Hankey types have actually gone on JFK forums and attacked me because I critiqued Baker's book about Bush. Nelson did an editorial on his site also attacking me and CTKA because we printed Green's negative review of his book.

Everyone knows what bad presidents those two men were. And what bad people they were. To me its just a matter of degree as to how far you want to go and, more importantly, what rules of evidence you wish to use. For instance, you say that somehow Nixon and Kissinger were an improvement over LBJ on Indochina because they removed troops.

Not so sure about that. For two reasons. First, as we know today, Nixon sabotaged LBJ's peace plan by using Claire Chennault to get South Vietnam not to cooperate with Johnson's attempts to get a truce before the 1968 election. Second, Nixon and Kissinger expanded the war to an unprecedented degree into Laos and Cambodia. The latter resulted in a horrendous epic tragedy that destabilized Sihanouk, caused the overthrow of Lon Nol, and brought to power Pol Pot and his killing fields. To this day no one knows how many people died because of Pol Pot's murderous regime. But most reliable estimates put the number at above a million. It got so bad that Vietnam had to invade Cambodia to put a stop to it.

These are not meaningless distinctions. They are important historical issues. And we should be interested in them. Just as we should follow the evolving writings of people on this case, and on JFK himself. For example, Zirbel changed his tune in his second tome. He now wrote that it was really LBJ and the Mob that killed Kennedy. Hmm. He completely missed that point the first time around. And BTW, he based this revision on that whole Chuck Giancana/Hersh/Russo myth about the "Double Cross" in the Illinois primary. That story has already been seriously questioned. But it will be utterly demolished in a future book on the subject. But this is the kind of author Zirbel is. And its why he gets on the cover of National Enquirer.

Finally, its not a matter of nailing someone to the cross. It is simply this: today we have an additional 2 million pages of documents. So we should be able to back up the accusations we make with genuine evidence, and not just real or assumed character smears. That approach might be good for Alex Jones, but my goal in this case has never been to be part of a circus sideshow.

Edited September 17, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Chris Newton]

What's Joan's take on the USS Liberty incident? That crew deserves some justice.

[James DiEugenio]

I have not read the book yet Chris.

It is supposed to be in transit to me now.

[Douglas Caddy]

Steve Morgan wrote on Facebook (Sept. 18 or 19, 2016):

I used to work for Halliburton; it was an open secret and much discussed at the time. Some of the men I worked with were among the original employees of Halliburton and even had known and worked for Roy and Earl Halliburton. This included the man who originally hired me shortly after I separated from the Marines. He told me that Roy and Earl Halliburton wee the "laughingstocks" of the oil patch when they first began to discuss their theories of "cementing" , i.e. bonding the casing to the walls of the drilled well bore by the use of displacement until they proved their theory was functionally sound; which made them instant millionaires. Later when I went into the exploration phase of the petroleum industry, I worked with men who had been on the "Mo-Hole", later designated the "Deep Sea Drilling Project". a plan to drill into the earths crust which was thankfully unsuccessful and the blowout would have been a live and active volcano. The fact that Lady Bird was 51% owner of the stock in Brown and Root had been an open secret. All of the contracts for the Mo Hole Project circa 1966, had been farmed out to Halliburton and it's associate companies. Of Course: this was part of the Democratic Johnson Administration apparatus. A Young Republican attorney from Illinois at the time named Donald Rumsfeld, discovered that LBJ and his wifes company and those connected with it had a monopoly for services to be provided with the lucrative Mo-Hole project. This was at the beginning of the height of the anti war movement and the 1968 election was coming up. LBJ ordered the original contracts for the Mo-Hole project scrapped immediately, the project to be renamed "The Deep Sea Drilling Project" and bids sent to competitors before Rumsfeld, known to be ruthless, could embarrass Lady Bird and the Johnson Administration. That Lady Bird Johnson owned 51 per cent or controlling interest in the stock of Brown and Root is a fact.

[Glenn Nall]

Did the Navy give Mellen authentic fingerprints? (Sorry... I had to ask.)

isn't this, sadly, the case? these days in particular with suspect Federal officials falling from the sky - as I've 'researched' this event through the years, the more the question of top-down impropriety must be considered in so many particular instances...

a bit of a symptom of the assassination ever since, to speak the truth. The Fed has become more and more oligarchic and untrustworthy from thence forth.

Did North Viet Nam really attack us in the Gulf of Tonkin? Well, did the government tell us the truth? Did so-and-so win the election? Well, did the government make available the real results?

The perennial, permeating paranoia only a select few are honored to possess.

[Roger DeLaria]

Did the Navy give Mellen authentic fingerprints? (Sorry... I had to ask.)

isn't this, sadly, the case? these days in particular with suspect Federal officials falling from the sky - as I've 'researched' this event through the years, the more the question of top-down impropriety must be considered in so many particular instances...

a bit of a symptom of the assassination ever since, to speak the truth. The Fed has become more and more oligarchic and untrustworthy from thence forth.

Did North Viet Nam really attack us in the Gulf of Tonkin? Well, did the government tell us the truth? Did so-and-so win the election? Well, did the government make available the real results?

The perennial, permeating paranoia only a select few are honored to possess.

Did henry Marshall really commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest 5 times? Was box 13 in LBJ's 1948 senate race an honest vote? Was it an honest investigation?

[James DiEugenio]

C'mon Roger: That is just silly.

We know the later grand jury reversed that decision about Marshall.

So are you now going to say well that was all about LBJ and Billy Sol Estes?

Ok, what is your evidence for that besides Billy Sol who really does not have a lot of credibility today, and is in fact kind of a loud mouthed BSer?

BTW, have you read the Mellen book yet and inspected her evidence?

[Glenn Nall]

C'mon Roger: That is just silly.

We know the later grand jury reversed that decision about Marshall.

So are you now going to say well that was all about LBJ and Billy Sol Estes?

Ok, what is your evidence for that besides Billy Sol who really does not have a lot of credibility today, and is in fact kind of a loud mouthed BSer?

BTW, have you read the Mellen book yet and inspected her evidence?

culprits aside, surely you're not saying Marshall inhaled a bunch of CO by himself and then shot himself 5 times with a rifle, of all things, because the CO wasn't painful enough...?

Edited September 24, 2016 by Glenn Nall

[Glenn Nall]

C'mon Roger: That is just silly.

We know the later grand jury reversed that decision about Marshall.

So are you now going to say well that was all about LBJ and Billy Sol Estes?

Ok, what is your evidence for that besides Billy Sol who really does not have a lot of credibility today, and is in fact kind of a loud mouthed BSer?

BTW, have you read the Mellen book yet and inspected her evidence?

and the manner of death was changed, eventually, if memory serves. which it sometimes really does.

[Glenn Nall]

Did the Navy give Mellen authentic fingerprints? (Sorry... I had to ask.)

isn't this, sadly, the case? these days in particular with suspect Federal officials falling from the sky - as I've 'researched' this event through the years, the more the question of top-down impropriety must be considered in so many particular instances...

a bit of a symptom of the assassination ever since, to speak the truth. The Fed has become more and more oligarchic and untrustworthy from thence forth.

Did North Viet Nam really attack us in the Gulf of Tonkin? Well, did the government tell us the truth? Did so-and-so win the election? Well, did the government make available the real results?

The perennial, permeating paranoia only a select few are honored to possess.

Did henry Marshall really commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest 5 times? Was box 13 in LBJ's 1948 senate race an honest vote? Was it an honest investigation?

and Vince Foster, and Bush's WMD's, and 5 Immunity deals for nothing consequential, and...

[James DiEugenio]

OMG Glenn, talk about going over the edge.

What I am asking for here is:

1.) Credible sources and 2.) Connective tissue

As I have noted previously, the whole Henry Marshall thing has been around since at least 1964 with that RW nut J. Evetts Haley and his quickie Bircher book A Texan Looks at Lyndon. Now, he was the first to make this accusation about somehow LBJ being involved with the Marshall killing based on his relations with Estes. That connection was not in the original articles that exposed the actual circumstances of the crimes Billy Sol committed that sent him to prison.

So Haley brought in all this other paraphernalia about Wallace etc to make it sound as if there really was some substance to it.

Now, we flash forward to 1984. What does Estes do: He adapts all this Haley stuff for the grand jury reopening. But then he goes even further and says LBJ planned the murder of JFK, and he has tapes from some of LBJ's henchmen to prove it. Only problem is, everyone he accuses of being involved is conveniently dead.

And guess what? Billy Sol passed away without anyone ever seeing or listening to those tapes.

I do not consider Haley a credible source and I do not consider Billy Sol a credible source. And neither man provides any credible evidence to provide any connective tissue to their sensational accusations of murder and mayhem.

If we do not ask for that, then we are settling for is what I call "JFK folklore", which reminds me of the days when people actually used the Torbitt Document as a credible source. (Which, you may like to know, considered LBJ as a prime mover in the plot.) The problem being that Torbitt's "documentation" was nothing but mythology based upon documents that did not check out and, in fact, did not even exist. (See Destiny Betrayed, pgs. 323-24) IMO, it was deliberate obfuscation.

Today, with 2 million more pages of declassified documents, excuse me if I do not want to stand in the muck with Haley and Billy Sol.

Edited September 24, 2016 by James DiEugenio