Missing LBJ-McGeorge Bundy Conversations?

[Larry Hancock]

As far as being in the dark, perhaps the simplest answer is that they knew the President had already been at risk by US and CIA backed Cuban exiles - and perhaps rogue CIA officers working with them.  Which clearly were RFK's very earliest suspicions.  If that were true they would be protecting themselves and the CIA as an entity at the height of the Cold War - not being in the dark and suspecting the very worst would be pretty close to the same thing.

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

As far as being in the dark, perhaps the simplest answer is that they knew the President had already been at risk by US and CIA backed Cuban exiles - and perhaps rogue CIA officers working with them.  Which clearly were RFK's very earliest suspicions.  If that were true they would be protecting themselves and the CIA as an entity at the height of the Cold War - not being in the dark and suspecting the very worst would be pretty close to the same thing.

And that is a better explanation for why they are still hiding files

[Benjamin Cole]

On 4/2/2023 at 7:35 AM, Paul Brancato said:

McGeorge Bundy on his own, calling the plays? I’m thinking out loud here. Hoover is pissed, if not yet then very soon. How could McB know that declaring Oswald the lone and unconnected assassin would work? What did McB know and when did he know it? It wasn’t Hoover who helped him. Who knew the truth about Oswald, the man they were going to pin everything on? Angleton for sure is one. My guess is that whoever was guiding McB left no phone record, but they were referenced in the missing phone tapes, hence the disappearance of those conversations. 
If the story of Oswald as a Soviet or Cuban asset had been pushed forward it would not have stood up later. But was that the reason that Bundy, and LBJ, went lone assassin? Many CIA agents and assets went immediately into high gear, in Miami, in Mexico City, New Orleans with the Communist Oswald story. It’s oft repeated that in order to avoid the likelihood of political pressure being bought to bear on LBJ to attack Cuba or the USSR, Oswald’s Communist credentials were quashed. This ran counter to what most CIA agents had been up to for months. In the shorter term this basic explanation seems to explain the lone assassin scenario put forth and adhered to by everyone pretty much immediately. But over time it’s been weakened considerably. Oswald’s leftist credentials haven’t held up. Yet thousands of documents are still being withheld. Surely this is not the Big Secret. McB and the others knew there had been multiple shooters right away. Did they really think they were protecting the nation by not revealing the erstwhile assassin’s connections to Cuba and the USSR? Or were they protecting the real assassins? I don’t think they were in the dark, at least not completely. 

Paul-

If I had to guess, Bundy was not front-running or the power behind the lone-nut angle, but likely agreed that "for the sake of the nation" the LN angle had to be the government-official story line. 

It really looks like LBJ was the impetus for the LN angle, and of course LBJ had authority and Bundy did not. 

LBJ may have legitimately feared a large war unless the LN angle was taken. That fear might have been instilled into him by the intel-state. Both deceptively (to hide intel connections to LHO) and in reality. LeMay only needed an excuse to incinerate 100 million or so Russians.  

Side note: Bundy became so tight with LBJ that, reportedly, RFK was miffed, and referred to him as a "turncoat." 

Most likely, Bundy and LBJ were hashing out the prospects of the LN angle, and the dire need to sell that storyline to the public, in the missing conversations.  

IMHO