Review of Joan Mellen's new book on LBJ

[Douglas Caddy]

Decades ago when Jay Harrison was compiling evidence on LBJ, Billie Sol Estes and Mac Wallace, I visited him in his trailer in Austin. He described to me the research in which he was engaged. I later received three binders containing documents on the three aforementioned persons that Jay had compiled. A year ago I gave a set of the most relevant of these documents, a pile about a foot and a half high, to Roger Stone and also to Robert Morrow. I also gave these to a highly credible person whom I am not at liberty to name but who is legend in Texas history and who knows plenty about the murdering trio.

I am exploring the feasibility to reproducing these documents and making them available to those who want to see them.

I plan to cite some of them in my review of Joan Mellen's new book.

Anyone who sees these documents compiled by Jay Harrison when quickly realize that there remains a big story not yet told about LBJ, Billie Sol Estes and Mac Wallace. Hopefully Robert Caro will tell this saga in the fifth installment of his LBJ biography that he is working on now. This may the reason why Caro did not even mention Billie Sol or Mac Wallace in his most recent volume that covered the years Billie Sol and Mac Wallace had contact with LBJ.

Barr McClellan, Dawn Meredith and I have lived in Texas and we know what it was like when LBJ exercised supreme power both within the state and nationally. This knowledge sets us apart from others in the JFK assassination community who may live in California or Pennsylvania or elsewhere. Texas was a world of its own when LBJ and his cronies held sway in the Lone Star State.

Edited October 2, 2016 by Douglas Caddy

[Glenn Nall]

Jim,

Well, to tell the truth, it's not just Billy Sol Estes' assertions that suggest this connection; taken with other, known facts (and reputable proponents), I happen to be convinced of an LBJ/Wallace "less-than-honorable" relationship. That he was convicted of the murder of John Kinser, and was defended by Johnson's attorney, got a 5 year suspended sentence for murder and promptly got enough of a security clearance to get a job with none other than DH Byrd's Defense Contracting Company Temco, is more than enough to tell me that, with the proper motivation, even liars tell some of the truth.

But that's really not what I'm getting at. I'm seeing it more along these lines: in this "phenomenon" of JFK Assassination Research, it seems to me that there are two fundamental trails of "investigation." Some areas seem geared toward the discovery of guilty conspirators, and some areas only to prove that a conspiracy occurred. While the study of the ballistics and acoustics and witness testimony of evidence contrary to the Warren Report in Dealey Plaza is admittedly fascinating, and certainly justified, I'm not sure how "proof" of a fourth bullet or of a frontal shot or of medical malfeasance in Dallas or in Bethesda gets anyone closer to exposing any particular conspirator. Proof that that photo is of Edward Lansdale in Dealey Plaza might do so, or that Howard Hunt was there (actually, this has been proven in a court of law), or George Bush.

I'm just saying that discussing the many possible bullet trajectories or finding that Mac Wallace was, in fact, on the 6th floor is all well and good, but I don't see where one would go from there.

Edited October 3, 2016 by Glenn Nall

[Glenn Nall]

BTW, let me add something else that her book does.

She actually explains how the John Kinser jury ended up doing what they did.

And the guy who was instrumental here, but not crucial, was Polk Shelton not Cofer.

You can read about it in my review. There is a lot of unique and, I think, valuable research in this book.

According to Mellen?

And Cofer still represented Wallace, right...?

[Glenn Nall]

I have always thought that the whole LBJ/Wallace connection was not what it was made out to be.

I am not done with Joan's book, but she is the first person to do a really full biography of Wallace. No one else had done it. And so far it does not look like the guy remotely was a hit man.

The significance of his being there is that it would it would fulfill the ideas of Bill Sol Estes. To my knowledge he was the first person to fully implicate Wallace in the JFK hit.

And Wallace is known to have "dated" LBJ's wacky-named sister... don't you find all of these "coincidences" a bit smelly? After a time, all the tedious explanations of tedious coincidences start to ring hollow, no matter how factual they may be...

[Dawn Meredith]

I have always thought that the whole LBJ/Wallace connection was not what it was made out to be.

I am not done with Joan's book, but she is the first person to do a really full biography of Wallace. No one else had done it. And so far it does not look like the guy remotely was a hit man.

The significance of his being there is that it would it would fulfill the ideas of Bill Sol Estes. To my knowledge he was the first person to fully implicate Wallace in the JFK hit.

No Wallace was just a guy who got very lucky. Killed in cold blood in broad daylight, was tried and convicted, defended by LBJ's personal atty, and got a suspended sentence. Happens all the time in Tx.

[Glenn Nall]

I have always thought that the whole LBJ/Wallace connection was not what it was made out to be.

I am not done with Joan's book, but she is the first person to do a really full biography of Wallace. No one else had done it. And so far it does not look like the guy remotely was a hit man.

The significance of his being there is that it would it would fulfill the ideas of Bill Sol Estes. To my knowledge he was the first person to fully implicate Wallace in the JFK hit.

No Wallace was just a guy who got very lucky. Killed in cold blood in broad daylight, was tried and convicted, defended by LBJ's personal atty, and got a suspended sentence. Happens all the time in Tx.

and immediately hooked up with Byrd, and Associates.

[Dawn Meredith]

Decades ago when Jay Harrison was compiling evidence on LBJ, Billie Sol Estes and Mac Wallace, I visited him in his trailer in Austin. He described to me the research in which he was engaged. I later received three binders containing documents on the three aforementioned persons that Jay had compiled. A year ago I gave a set of the most relevant of these documents, a pile about a foot and a half high, to Roger Stone and also to Robert Morrow. I also gave these to a highly credible person whom I am not at liberty to name but who is legend in Texas history and who knows plenty about the murdering trio.

I am exploring the feasibility to reproducing these documents and making them available to those who want to see them.

I plan to cite some of them in my review of Joan Mellen's new book.

Anyone who sees these documents compiled by Jay Harrison when quickly realize that there remains a big story not yet told about LBJ, Billie Sol Estes and Mac Wallace. Hopefully Robert Caro will tell this saga in the fifth installment of his LBJ biography that he is working on now. This may the reason why Caro did not even mention Billie Sol or Mac Wallace in his most recent volume that covered the years Billie Sol and Mac Wallace had contact with LBJ.

Barr McClellan, Dawn Meredith and I have lived in Texas and we know what it was like when LBJ exercised supreme power both within the state and nationally. This knowledge sets us apart from others in the JFK assassination community who may live in California or Pennsylvania or elsewhere. Texas was a world of its own when LBJ and his cronies held sway in the Lone Star State.

Amen Doug.

But I don't expect the truth about this from Caro. I fact I doubt he will even go near it.

I just listened to an interview with Stone for the first time ever. Most interesting. I agreed with a lot of it, but I do not see LBJ was the mastermind, just deeply involved. And I said THAT day one at age 14 .

I no longer believe Joan had a mission for the truth. But that is as far as I will go on a forum.

I spoke with Nathan Darby's son today to see if he had any proof - aside from his personal recollection- that his father had kept up his certification. He is not certain if such still exists. I also told him about an alleged note his dad had sent to the IAI and his response to that was "then let her produce this note". (Which no one will I am sure as I know that never occurred).

J had told me about meeting with you Doug and had a copy of your book. A funny Jism: One day after I had returned from court he called and just told me to go find a copy of that day's Wall St journal. Nothing else. (Cryptic as usual) then to call him back So I did. Then it was "open to such and such a page", then lo and behold there was an editorial by you about your days as Watergate atty. I was taken aback as I knew you had represented Billy sol in his letters to AG Trott (etc). "Strange bedfellows", I thought at the time.

I hope someone does a TRUE bio of Mac. Not a whitewash. He was truly a stone cold killer. I have a lot more on my mind about this but have a very early morning. I wonder if non Texan residents are quick to dismiss the TX connection out of some Democratic loyalty to LBJ. It simply baffles me.

Dawn

[James DiEugenio]

I have always thought that the whole LBJ/Wallace connection was not what it was made out to be.

I am not done with Joan's book, but she is the first person to do a really full biography of Wallace. No one else had done it. And so far it does not look like the guy remotely was a hit man.

The significance of his being there is that it would it would fulfill the ideas of Bill Sol Estes. To my knowledge he was the first person to fully implicate Wallace in the JFK hit.

No Wallace was just a guy who got very lucky. Killed in cold blood in broad daylight, was tried and convicted, defended by LBJ's personal atty, and got a suspended sentence. Happens all the time in Tx.

Dawn,

You have not even read the book yet and you are pronouncing judgment on it!

Would you go into court without reading the other side's briefs?

Joan actually did what all these other authors did not. She actually did some research on the ground. And she found out about the circumstances of that trial, things that no one has ever written about before. Namely that there was a ringer on the jury.

Did you know that? Did Jay? Did Caddy?

If you did, I don't ever recall you writing about it. Why not?

But yet, you go ahead and trash a book you are not familiar with. Is this in the name of Jay Harrison?

Who BTW, actually thought that Wallace did not die in that car accident.

Edited October 3, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

And Doug:

For anyone to praise the work of Barr McClellan, I mean please.

That guy is as phony as a three dollar bill. And his book was one of the very worst in the literature. Maybe even worse than The Men on the Sixth Floor.

I mean it was not even a book, it was really more like a novel, with Oswald firing from the sixth floor.

I think that McClellan was a deliberate decoy to distract everyone on the 40th. Unfortunately, the two idiots, NIgel Turner and Alex Jones fell for the blowhard.

I mean if Barr McClellan is what you have to offer, you are lost.

[James DiEugenio]

My comments on the blowhard Barr McClellan:

In 2003 Texas attorney Barr McClellan published his book Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK. Here he presented his theory that LBJ was the prime instigator who authorized the murder of JFK. McClellan was an attorney who in 1966 went to work in the law firm Clark, Thomas & Winters in Austin, Texas. This law firm represented LBJ’s interests, including advising on political strategy, campaign contributions, media issues and labor disputes. McClellan became a full partner in the firm in 1972 and left after a dispute with Ed Clark. McClellan claimed that Don Thomas, one of the partners, revealed to him in 1973 the truth about the president’s murder. Thomas allegedly said that LBJ confessed to him a month before his death that he had ordered attorney Ed Clark to organize the assassination of Kennedy. LBJ had also confessed this to his psychiatrist while being treated for depression. Thomas also claimed that LBJ asked him to reveal the truth to the world after he was dead to redeem himself from guilt. McClellan was astounded by these revelations but kept quiet until after Thomas’s death. In fact, at the 40th anniversary when the book was published, no one was around to contradict him. Not LBJ, not Thomas, not Clark, and of course, not the LBJ constant, Mac Wallace, who died in a car accident in 1971. That makes it kind of convenient to go on TV and say you knew Johnson killed John Kennedy.

This book, like Billy Sol Estes, and like a similar Johnson did it product, The Men on the Sixth Floor, says that Johnson was in on the Henry Marshall murder. Except in the Estes version, Clifton Carter arranged the murder. In the McClellan version its Ed Clark who did the arranging. But again, McClellan never advances any credible evidence that Johnson had anything to do with Estes’ scams. Which makes it easy for him to avoid the question of why Johnson would do such a thing. But, with McClellan, no evidence is really needed. Estes had LBJ responsible for about eight murders. McClellan goes way beyond that. LBJ was a veritable Murder Incorporated, responsible for eleven confirmed killings and with nine more possible ones.

Why would Thomas reveal all this to McClellan? Why would LBJ tell Thomas in the first place? This is how the author explains it. He sets forth a long conversation that he says Thomas told him about. Shortly before Johnson died in 1972, Thomas was at his ranch. Johnson now started to tell him about how he had Kennedy killed. Why did he say this? Because his presidency had collapsed, his reputation was nil, and he thought this confession would elevate his low image! Which is why he wanted Thomas to broadcast it after his death. Yep, that’s what he says. Maybe LBJ really was over the edge at the time? Or maybe it never happened. The psychiatrist himself did not reveal anything and neither he nor LBJ left anything written. McClellan’s whole book is like this. A series of sensational disclosures is made, and one goes looking for the annotation. Or even some corroboration. Its not there. Or if its there, it is so nebulous as to be meaningless. And when I say sensational, I mean it. Consider this string of accusations: Clark brokered a deal with Joe Kennedy to put LBJ on the 1960 ticket. LBJ learned about the art of assassination from the attempt on FDR and Thomas was involved in the famous heist of the senate seat from Coke Stevenson in 1948.

And then there is the Kennedy murder. Again, unlike with Estes, it was Clark who set this up, not Carter. Somehow Leon Jaworski got involved with a search for a second assassin, the first--it goes without saying—was Mac Wallace. Again, there is no evidence for this Jaworski allegation. Or any reason why it was Jaworski who Clark called. And there is no evidence advanced that Clark knew Wallace. Further, McClellan says he has no idea how Wallace met Oswald or interested him in the plot. So he just says that Wallace met Oswald at a print shop in Dallas in 1962. But there is no evidence in the record that Oswald had anything printed in 1962. McClellan then has Oswald firing at the motorcade with Wallace from the sixth floor. Even though there is no credible evidence Oswald was there at that time. The assassination scenario for McClelan differs from The Men on the Sixth Floor. In the latter there are three assassins Oswald, Wallace, and a Chickasaw Indian named Loy Factor. In the McClellan version Oswald and Wallace are up there, but the third assassin is on the knoll. If you can believe it, in defiance of the ballistics evidence, McClellan has Oswald killing Tippit and shooting at Edwin Walker. In other words, Barr McClellan did not know anything about the evidence in the JFK case; and he didn’t care to learn. So he just wrote what he wanted in defiance of the facts.

There is also the evidence of self-interest and personal motive since McClellan left the company after a heated dispute with Ed Clark. Not only would he have taken his revenge against Clark but he would have become famous as the man who solved the case. Or, alternatively, he distracted everyone at the 40th anniversary with his whimsical fantasy.

[James DiEugenio]

And the above is really a capsule review.

I could have gone on and on over this pile of propaganda.

It was so bad that even Walt Brown, who was supposed to have helped the author, could not believe the ultimate result. Brown called the final draft, faction.

I actually think its worse than that.

Don't get me started on Barr BS McClellan. Because he and Nigel Turner killed us at the fortieth.

Edited October 3, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Sandy Larsen]

Sandy, you wrote:

"Expert systems are not very good. If they were they would be widely used."

......but the FBI's AFIS Automated Fingerprint Identification is in very wide use and has been for some time...could you give us a reference for your statement?

Larry,

I believe that my statement, "Expert systems are not very good. If they were they would be widely used" is self evident. A matter of common sense.

While it is true that the AFIS is a fingerprint matching system, it is not an Expert System. After potential matches are found using AFIS, a human examiner is used to make an identification. If that were not the case, we would have no need for human examiners. Or at least not so many.

Now, as I said before, a given Expert System is probably better than some experts -- those who aren't very or highly competent. I'll add that, generally speaking, a given Expert System is probably sufficient for simple cases. I imagine that AFIS is better than some print examiners. I looked to see if I could find any evidence of that, and here's the best I could find:

"It is commonly asserted that human matchers are ‘more accurate’ than AFISs (Meagher, 2005). This remains an untested assumption. Moreover, such an assertion would, of course, depend heavily on the parameters under which ‘accuracy’ is to be measured. One could design trials in which an AFIS would almost certainly outperform an LPE, or vice versa, depending on the parameters of the trial, such as the number of comparisons demanded, time requirements and so on." (Source)

Edited October 3, 2016 by Sandy Larsen

[Sandy Larsen]

The Texas Wallace print that was utilized by Jay was termed almost unusable by Garrett.

I believe that what Garrett was given is NOT the same as what Darby had. I say that because Darby found 14 matching points. Garrett could make out only 7 of these on the copy he was given.

[Sandy Larsen]

Just a question:

What exactly is the significance of "proving" that Mac Wallace either was there or was not there, aside from gaining some real satisfaction if he is shown to have been there?

Where exactly does this get anyone?

Presence of a Mac Wallace print gives a clue as to what role Vice President Johnson played.

The presence of Mac Wallace's fingerprint tells me that Johnson might have been blackmailed into cooperating with the assassination. It seems that blackmail was a popular method for the CIA at the time. For example, James Angleton had a photo of J. Edgar Hoover homosexually involved with a man.

[Sandy Larsen]

And [Joan Mellen] found out about the circumstances of that trial, things that no one has ever written about before. Namely that there was a ringer on the jury.

James,

Didn't the "ringer" ask for a life imprisonment? (As opposed to the rest of the jury, who asked for the death sentence.)

And then didn't the judge overrule the jury and give Wallace only a 5 year sentence? After which he suspended the sentence and immediately freed Wallace?