Oswald as designated patsy; from Bart Kamp's new book

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

You missed Ralph Kramden incredulously asking about Max Holland. 

Max Holland lives rent free in Ralph Kramden’s head.  Who knew?

[James DiEugenio]

Ben:

Alsop:  For summing up the results of the FBI inquiry in a way that will be completely coherent, detailed and will carry unchallengeable convictions and this carrying conviction is just  as important as carrying on the investigation in the right way,,, and I worry about this Post editorial.

LBJ: And I worry about the Post period...but

Alsop: Well, I do too...but I'd like you to get ahead of them and if you have...if you make this decision and have Moyers call Friendly or Kay instead of being...well you know...this is what we ought to to this is what ought to be done and then what you do being denounced as inadequate, they'll be put so hard and will do you a tremendous piece and I'm sure you will have the strongest possible support...it will be thought that everything has been done that needs doing...

 

Alsop knows just how to get to Johnson because after getting  the committee idea into his head--which LBJ did not want to do-- and giving him instructions on how to announce it through Al Friendly, this is what follows:

Alsop: I hate to interfere sir, I only dare to do so because I care so much about you.

And how does LBJ reply?

LBJ:  I know that Joe

Alsop then backtracks since he knows he had made headway.  But note what he says at the end:

Alsop: From the public relations standpoint and from the standpoint of carrying conviction...there is that missing key which is easy to supply without infringing upon Texas' feelings or sovereignty.

Alsop played Johnson like a fiddle, hitting all the right notes of flattery, of empathy, of fondess and sympathy, but never losing sight of what he really wanted.  And it is pretty obvious he has been colluding, not just with Eugene Rostow and Acheson, but with Friendly and Wiggins and Graham at the Washington Post and Reston at the Ny TImes.. In fact, when LBJ was ready to announce he called Alsop in advance.

Within 72 hours this reversal will be complete and LBJ will now endorse the Commission idea.  In fact, on the 28th he calls Eastland to shut down a senate committee hearing on Kennedy's murder.  In fact, there will be not one congressional inquiry that got off the ground.

In his book The Vantage Point, LBJ essentially said Eugene Rostow first called the White House suggesting a Commission idea.  Then Alsop and Acheson also endorsed it. For once, Johnson was telling the truth.  It was a masterful job by them all. The player got played.

Edited October 5, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

 

[Cliff Varnell]

LBJ following orders.

Harriman shows up at 18:36.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Cliff Varnell

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Ben:

Alsop:  For summing up the results of the FBI inquiry in a way that will be completely coherent, detailed and will carry unchallengeable convictions and this carrying conviction is just  as important as carrying on the investigation in the right way,,, and I worry about this Post editorial.

LBJ: And I worry about the Post period...but

Alsop: Well, I do too...but I'd like you to get ahead of them and if you have...if you make this decision and have Moyers call Friendly or Kay instead of being...well you know...this is what we ought to to this is what ought to be done and then what you do being denounced as inadequate, they'll be put so hard and will do you a tremendous piece and I'm sure you will have the strongest possible support...it will be thought that everything has been done that needs doing...

 

Alsop knows just how to get to Johnson because after getting  the committee idea into his head--which LBJ did not want to do-- and giving him instructions on how to announce it through Al Friendly, this is what follows:

Alsop: I hate to interfere sir, I only dare to do so because I care so much about you.

And how does LBJ reply?

LBJ:  I know that Joe

Alsop then backtracks since he knows he had made headway.  But note what he says at the end:

Alsop: From the public relations standpoint and from the standpoint of carrying conviction...there is that missing key which is easy to supply without infringing upon Texas' feelings or sovereignty.

Alsop played Johnson like a fiddle, hitting all the right notes of flattery, of empathy, of fondess and sympathy, but never losing sight of what he really wanted.  And it is pretty obvious he has been colluding, not just with Eugene Rostow and Acheson, but with Friendly and Wiggins and Graham at the Washington Post and Reston at the Ny TImes.. In fact, when LBJ was ready to announce he called Alsop in advance.

Within 72 hours this reversal will be complete and LBJ will now endorse the Commission idea.  In fact, on the 28th he calls Eastland to shut down a senate committee hearing on Kennedy's murder.  In fact, there will be not one congressional inquiry that got off the ground.

In his book The Vantage Point, LBJ essentially said Eugene Rostow first called the White House suggesting a Commission idea.  Then Alsop and Acheson also endorsed it. For once, Johnson was telling the truth.  It was a masterful job by them all. The player got played.

OK, let me read the Gibson piece, and read the Alsop-LBJ entire transcript, and respond.

I am not sure we disagree entirely, as I suspect Katzenbach, who was an E. Rostow protege, was also a CIA asset. 

Katzenbach seems more hands on in the creation of the WC, and in fact was the de facto US AG at the time. 

LBJ played by Joe Alsop? Well, maybe, and it was before my time, although I have studied the time period and the LBJ presidency a lot. 

Kramden: "You think LBJ was played by Alsop? Alsop? Joseph Alsop?" 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[Benjamin Cole]

10 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Decent analysis from Uber-Establishment TIME, depending on how one defines “much of the world” in the concluding line.

What America's Plutocrats Today Should Learn From Past Generations

https://time.com/6072132/americas-plutocrats-learn-past-generations/

<quote on, emphasis added>

There’s an emerging consensus in America today that the accumulation of vast wealth by a handful of individuals is untenable for our democracy. Balancing the other-worldly success of a few in contrast with the challenges many still face is one of the thornier dilemmas of a post-COVID-19 world where those gaps have grown ever wider. The recent analysisof the tax rates of the mega-rich—which showed that the 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet, paid a paltry $13 billion in federal taxes on income and gains of $400 billion over a four year period 2014 and 2018—is just the latest powerful example.

There is, however, an earlier moment in the American past that points to a better balance: that those with great power bear great responsibility, that private gain should not be detached from public good, that the flows of money can create but also disrupt, and that you can’t endlessly beggar the commons. There’s no going back of course—and given how elites of an earlier time were an exclusive club, we wouldn’t want to, but that past does offer some hints of what might work today.

The apex of that formula, where elites of wealth and privilege answered a call to service even as they were, admittedly, self-serving, was during and after World War II, and the exemplar was the private investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman.

At the end of World War II, much of Europe was devastated. Japan had been devastated not just by two atomic bombs but by successive rounds of conventional bombings. Swaths of destruction extended throughout southeast Asia, China, and into Southern Europe. And the United States? It had suffered grievous casualties but its infrastructure and industrial capacity were untouched, and its relative power had never—and has never—been greater. And at that crucial juncture, American companies, the U.S. government and a slew of highly privileged individuals came together to craft a post-war global order, provide massive economic aid to Europe and Japan to rebuild, and set the parameters for trade and commerce that remain the operating code for the planet to this day.

The world-order that was crafted, cemented by American leaders and U.S. leadership underpinned by the dollar, was only possible because those who had benefitted most from the evolution of American capitalism understood that they had a responsibility to preserve and maintain a collective order. They did not act selflessly—the system they erected served their interests. And in light of rigid ideology of Cold War that took hold, how they acted around the globe was far from perfect. But they nonetheless crafted a model of sustainable capitalism that juxtaposed private gain to the public good to create a potent formula that enriched both the U.S. and parts of the world and for a time at least didn’t lead to the wide gaps between winners and losers so troubling today.

Founded at the turn of the 19th century by an Irish linen merchant named Alexander Brown who was fleeing the sectarian violence of Belfast, Brown Brothers became one of the most influential merchant in the U.S. in the decades before the Civil War, as one of the dominant cotton merchants (and thereby deeply complicit with slavery) but also a staunch supporter of the Union cause and the Republican party. They helped create the transatlantic trading system, innovating with financial instruments such as letters of credit that underpinned the whole system. They propelled American trade with the wider world in the later part of the 19th century, and became one of the pillars of an emerging WASP elite at the turn of the 20th century, centered around elite schools such as Groton and Yale, interlinked by professional and personal bonds.

And then, during the Great Depression, the partners of Brown Brothers, led by the great-grand-children of Alexander, merged with one of the great railroad fortunes and its scion Averell Harriman to become Brown Brothers Harriman.

They had a particular culture of noblesse oblige. In an interview in the 1920s, Averell Harriman explained, “It is indefensible for a man who has capital not to apply himself diligently to using it in a way that will be of most benefit to his country.” Another partner, Robert Lovett, who served in increasingly higher positions starting during World War II and culminating in his elevation to Secretary of Defense in 1950, never wavered from his mantra that his affluence and standing in society made it incumbent on him to serve the public good.

In 1941, the founding editor of Time, Henry Luce, dubbed the moment the beginning of “The American Century,”which left a legacy of international institutions ranging from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization to the World Health Organization to an economic system underpinned by the dollar that is still in place. Luce himself was part of what we know call “the Establishment,” a group almost entirely white men connected by a small set of schools and economic interests. Luce had gone to Yale, as had the four leading Brown Brothers partners of his age: Averell Harriman, Roland Harriman, Robert Lovett and Prescott Bush. They had helped Luce launch his media empire. They had all pledged to the elite society Skull & Bones, and their close affinity later led to a backlash (during the Vietnam War) that there was something seriously awry with democracy when a small cabal of WASP elites was pulling the levers of power to their advantage.

In a few short years in the 1940s and into the 1950s, this coterie framed the rules and institutions that define American national security and the global international system to this day. It doesn’t matter whether you celebrate or denigrate that: we live in the world that they made. Lovett and Averell Harriman were integral to every major foreign policy decision during the seven years of the Truman administration from 1945-1952. Harriman served as secretary of commerce, then administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe and then coordinator for all U.S. aid to Europe in the early 1950s before becoming governor of New York. Lovett served as the number two twice to General George C. Marshall, first in the state department and then the Pentagon before himself becoming secretary of defense for the final years of the Korean War. Prescott Bush then went on to serve two terms as a Republican senator from Connecticut, as well as being the father to one president and grandfather to another.

Their post-war architecture was derived from formula that had made them and their class and by extension the United States rich and powerful: a world governed by an elite and by rules that transcended any one individual or firm. They had helped establish the dollar as the most reliable currency. With the Bretton Woods system (named after the hotel in New Hampshire where the details were hashed out), they engineered the replacement of the British pound, which had been the fulcrum of international trade and commerce for almost two centuries, with the dollar. That made sense, given the relative strength of the U.S. economy at the end of the war, but it nonetheless put partnerships such as Brown Brothers and an entire class of financiers along with the U.S. government as the issuer of dollars in a privileged position in global commerce, which they gladly took advantage of. That dollar-denominated world, more than anything other than U.S. military might, has ensured the primary of the country ever since.

And they also were integral to the creation of that military might. Lovett during the war helped create the modern air force and then been one of the designers of the modern Pentagon and the national security apparatus at the White House: the national security council, and the CIA. He was a staunch Cold Warrior, and under his aegis, the Pentagon developed the first peacetime standing military in American history.

Finally, in one of the more overlooked contributions at the time, Lovett was central to the signing of the multi-nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which eventually turned into the World Trade Organization and was founded on the belief that more free-flowing commerce between nations bound by consensual rules would expand the arc of global prosperity, which it undoubtedly did even as in time it came to threaten domestic industry in multiple countries.

Beginning in the 1960s and intensifying in the decades since, the system these men created has come under closer scrutiny for assorted ills: it made America rich but also led to stunted development in much of Africa, Latin America and parts of East Asia; it hyper-charged global trade, but privileged American rules, the dollar and U.S. companies; and the standing army was used and abused with disastrous consequences not just in Vietnam but in multiple countries throughout the world.

Many of those critiques hold water, but it remains true that these men, and a firm such as Brown Brothers, saw a responsibility to address the common good and not just their own pocketbooks. Lovett, a Republican, supported many of the financial regulations of the New Deal including the separation of commercial and investment banking in the Glass-Steagall Act and the formation of a regulator in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He also went into government service because he believed that it was his responsibility as someone with more to give back and help as he could. Harriman and Bush were both deeply ambitious men of their class, but they too had an unquestioned belief that, as Harriman put it, “public service is a duty.”

The formula of elites cleaving to an ideal of public responsibility unfolded in an era where the gap between the very wealthy and the average worker was a comprehensible multiple of perhaps 20 to 1. Today it is over 300 to 1. They were a closed insular class but they were nonetheless connected to the world around them. Lovett told a story of getting ready to take the train to work from his Long Island home at early one morning when his wife answered the phone and it was Truman calling to ask him to come to Washington. Lovett barked that he was going to miss his train until he realized who was on the other end. He was rich, privileged and called to serve, but he still took a commuter train to work, not a car and driver.

In the middle of the 20th century, elites more or less understood that they had an obligation to public service; in the early 21st century, that is hard to be found. The world that Brown Brothers Harriman and their class created was hardly flawless, and it was deeply exclusive, but it was a coherent system of rules and responsibilities that on balance benefitted not just the United States but much of the world for many years.

</q>

CV--

I actually agree with large parts of the above commentary, although everything is on steroids today, from the globalists, to the gigantic scale of international enterprises (and investment houses), to incredibly more powerful and heavily financed intelligence state. 

Ralph Kramden agrees with this commentary too. 

[Benjamin Cole]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Ben:

Alsop:  For summing up the results of the FBI inquiry in a way that will be completely coherent, detailed and will carry unchallengeable convictions and this carrying conviction is just  as important as carrying on the investigation in the right way,,, and I worry about this Post editorial.

LBJ: And I worry about the Post period...but

Alsop: Well, I do too...but I'd like you to get ahead of them and if you have...if you make this decision and have Moyers call Friendly or Kay instead of being...well you know...this is what we ought to to this is what ought to be done and then what you do being denounced as inadequate, they'll be put so hard and will do you a tremendous piece and I'm sure you will have the strongest possible support...it will be thought that everything has been done that needs doing...

 

Alsop knows just how to get to Johnson because after getting  the committee idea into his head--which LBJ did not want to do-- and giving him instructions on how to announce it through Al Friendly, this is what follows:

Alsop: I hate to interfere sir, I only dare to do so because I care so much about you.

And how does LBJ reply?

LBJ:  I know that Joe

Alsop then backtracks since he knows he had made headway.  But note what he says at the end:

Alsop: From the public relations standpoint and from the standpoint of carrying conviction...there is that missing key which is easy to supply without infringing upon Texas' feelings or sovereignty.

Alsop played Johnson like a fiddle, hitting all the right notes of flattery, of empathy, of fondess and sympathy, but never losing sight of what he really wanted.  And it is pretty obvious he has been colluding, not just with Eugene Rostow and Acheson, but with Friendly and Wiggins and Graham at the Washington Post and Reston at the Ny TImes.. In fact, when LBJ was ready to announce he called Alsop in advance.

Within 72 hours this reversal will be complete and LBJ will now endorse the Commission idea.  In fact, on the 28th he calls Eastland to shut down a senate committee hearing on Kennedy's murder.  In fact, there will be not one congressional inquiry that got off the ground.

In his book The Vantage Point, LBJ essentially said Eugene Rostow first called the White House suggesting a Commission idea.  Then Alsop and Acheson also endorsed it. For once, Johnson was telling the truth.  It was a masterful job by them all. The player got played.

OK, I read the entire Alsop-LBJ transcript. 

Alsop makes a stab at an not-entirely defined blue-ribbon commission, but then wavers and waffles and even backpedals.  

I will grant that somehow Alsop got 14-15 minutes of LBJ's time on a day when time was precious. even by Presidential standards. So LBJ must have thought Alsop was at least worth placating, or pandering to, and possibly actually worth listening to.  

I would not underestimate LBJ's cunning or political street smarts. 

LBJ was never fond of the old Ivy League WASP elite foreign policy crowd. The feelings were mutual, judging from the how the Kennedys regarded LBJ. 

My take is LBJ talked with neighbor Hoover, and it was decided that the FBI would control the JFKA investigation, and the WC would do nothing, hence Warren (a placeholder), and Dulles and McCloy (CIA).

An interesting question is whether Katzenbach was a CIA asset. By 1965, McCone is recommending Katzenbach as the new CIA director. 

That suggests a relationship between Katzenbach and the CIA. But what relationship? 

 

[Roger Odisio]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

OK, I read the entire Alsop-LBJ transcript. 

Alsop makes a stab at an not-entirely defined blue-ribbon commission, but then wavers and waffles and even backpedals.  

I will grant that somehow Alsop got 14-15 minutes of LBJ's time on a day when time was precious. even by Presidential standards. So LBJ must have thought Alsop was at least worth placating, or pandering to, and possibly actually worth listening to.  

I would not underestimate LBJ's cunning or political street smarts. 

LBJ was never fond of the old Ivy League WASP elite foreign policy crowd. The feelings were mutual, judging from the how the Kennedys regarded LBJ. 

My take is LBJ talked with neighbor Hoover, and it was decided that the FBI would control the JFKA investigation, and the WC would do nothing, hence Warren (a placeholder), and Dulles and McCloy (CIA).

An interesting question is whether Katzenbach was a CIA asset. By 1965, McCone is recommending Katzenbach as the new CIA director. 

That suggests a relationship between Katzenbach and the CIA. But what relationship? 

 

I'm not buying the assertions that various Washington denizens--like Harriman, Joe Alsop, and certainly not Katzenbach--were making decisions or even importantly influencing what LBJ did after the murder.  As if LBJ, the master manipulator, was a wet behind the ears newbie to Washington power. 

 

He had been in Washington for 26 years. When he arrived he bought a house across the street from Hoover.  Over the years they became joined at the hip. LBJ soon learned the ins and outs of Washington power and became one of the most powerful Senate Majority leaders in the history of that institution.  By then he had his people planted allover Washington.  Probably no one has ever understood the levers of power as he did.

 

That transcript you read, Ben, of Alsop "convincing" LBJ about the value of appointing a commission was pure LBJ diversionary theater.  He needed no convincing,

 

He killed an investigation in Texas by the AG there (murder was not a federal crime at the time and an investigation, like the autopsy, was their responsibility).  He stopped a Congressional inquiry. 

 

Most importantly, he wanted no investigation at all (he knew who did it).  The idea of appointing 7 great Americans to front for the framing of Oswald and burying any real information about what happened was a natural for him.  

 

The WR was to be finished amid fulsome praise by the major media for it's thoroughness (If you haven't read the New York Times' disgusting review when the WR came out, you should) before he faced the voters in the fall of '64.

 

Six of the seven commissioners had day jobs and were so out of touch that, e.g., Sen Russell later said he didn't believe the magic bullet "explanation" without apparently realizing that destroyed the WR.

 

Allen Dulles was the essential member, there to protect any knowledge of the CIA.  Johnson floated the idea that Bobby suggested he pick Dulles, a laughable claim. The fact that it was taken seriously is another testament to LBJ's control of the situation.

 

I'll go another step further.  The murder itself would never have happened without Johnson's knowledge and participation as a crucial element in the planning.   

 

In killing a popular president, the planners were taking a big gamble. The plan had to have two threshold elements. (1) Some assurance they would get away with the murder.  (2) Some assurance that the new president would go along with what they wanted afterward.

 

As the new president Johnson was the only person who could give both assurances. He certainly was not going to go after them.  The Warren Commission plan to frame Oswald and stifle any investigation was likely in place before any shots were fired.  The message to AF1 that afternoon that a lone assassin had already been captured is an indication of that.

 

A few years after the murder Johnson remarked to McNamara that he never agreed with Kennedy's plan to pull out Vietnam, but kept his mouth shut.  The killers from the "top echelons of the government" (Salandria's phrase) knew that, as well his other foreign policy views that allowed them leeway to do what they wanted.

 

With one exception. There would be no attack on Cuba or a preemptive strike at the Soviet Union as the generals wanted. He had lusted after the presidency for decades.  He wasn't about to allow his chance to go up in smoke with a nuclear war.

 

 

[Pat Speer]

Some are missing something. LBJ was never gonna allow an independent and thorough investigation. Those advising him to form the Warren Commission were advising him not on how to cover up the crime--that was a given--but how to convince the public it had been a thorough job. The mannequin had been picked out--the Warren Commission was just the clothing put on the mannequin. 

Heck, some of those pushing the commission on Johnson may have been naive enough to think Warren would get to the bottom of it. 

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I'm not buying the assertions that various Washington denizens--like Harriman, Joe Alsop, and certainly not Katzenbach--were making decisions or even importantly influencing what LBJ did after the murder.  As if LBJ, the master manipulator, was a wet behind the ears newbie to Washington power. 

How would that preclude LBJ taking the wise counsel of a high level co-conspirator?

[Roger Odisio]

28 minutes ago, Pat Speer said:

Some are missing something. LBJ was never gonna allow an independent and thorough investigation. Those advising him to form the Warren Commission were advising him not on how to cover up the crime--that was a given--but how to convince the public it had been a thorough job. The mannequin had been picked out--the Warren Commission was just the clothing put on the mannequin. 

Heck, some of those pushing the commission on Johnson may have been naive enough to think Warren would get to the bottom of it. 

I doubt Johnson needed a lot of advice about convincing the public, but, yeah, he listened to others' ideas about that (including Alsop).  Convincing the public, however, was mainly the job of the sycophantic media, which is still at it 60 years later.

And as we have seen over the years whether the public is on board with what happens in Washington often matters little.

The more important job for the planners was getting the rest of Washington to go along and Johnson was a master at that. The message to AF1 was the first salvo in that effort.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Roger and Ben:

The obvious question then is why did LBJ not announce a commission idea on the 24th?

I mean that would have been the obvious reaction to Ruby killing Oswald on live TV would it not?

Eugene Rostow sure thought so. So did Alsop.  So did Kay Graham, Wiggins, and Friendly and Reston. Rostow's reaction was something like:Dallas is resembling a wild west show.  First JFK, then TIppit and now Oswald.  How can anyone buy this police force and DA that allows the prime suspect to get shot on national TV.

But yet Johnson is not thinking that.  And technically he is correct, murder is a state crime.  And there is no law at that time to make the murder of a president a federal one.  Rostow is first about a blue ribbon commission and he even suggests people in both number and specifics like 7 or 9, and people like Tom Dewey or Bill Story.

Why?

"Because world opinion and American opinion is just now so shaken by the behavior of the Dallas Police that they're not believing anything."

Rostow had talked to Katzenbach more than once, but thought he was not getting through since the man seemed groggy to him. Rostow said he talked about this commission idea with someone else who he does not name. But he tells Moyers he is telling him since he wants LBJ to know that this is the best idea since what is happening in Dallas is too far out.  Moyers repeats the idea and Rostow says yes that is what he means..  And there is evidence that Katzenbach did already get the idea from Rostow; its a memo from Jenkins to LBJ in which Jenkins mentions Katzenbach floating the idea of a commission.

On the 25th LBJ is talking to Hoover and he says he thinks the commission is a very bad idea. Because that would probably necessitate White House appointments.  He wants a Texas Court of Inquiry--which did get off the ground--supplemented by an FBI report to the DOJ.  But even at this point, he has heard about Friendly, Graham, and Wiggins wanting a Commission.

Alsop then calls on the 25th, and LBJ is still supporting a Texas court of inquiry at the start. But its Alsop who is the one who loosens his moorings on this.

Let me add two points that are not explicit yet.

First, the idea that somehow LBJ was a wizard in all things political is a myth set up by people like Caro and Nelson in order to sell books.  LBJ screwed up his own chance to be president in 1960 in a complete miscalculation that overestimated his torque and underestimated what JFK was doing that year.  Second, LBJ sowed the seeds of his own destruction at the hands of Bill Fulbright with that idiotic invasion of the Dominican Republic. So please do not throw this mythology at me right out of A Texan Looks at Lyndon, a book which was written for the John Birch Society.

Second, Alsop starts the dialogue off after LBJ suggests a Texas Court of Inquiry by asking: will there be someone outside of Texas? What all these people understood was that this had to be taken out of Dallas first, and preferably out of Texas completely.  Because with the murder of Oswald by Ruby, it was clearly suggested the Dallas police might have been involved. And if that was the case, how could one trust someone like Wade or Fritz to get to the bottom of that?

 

Edited October 5, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

.With one exception. There would be no attack on Cuba or a preemptive strike at the Soviet Union as the generals wanted. He had lusted after the presidency for decades.  He wasn't about to allow his chance to go up in smoke with a nuclear war.

What makes you think Khrushchev would initiate a war the USSR couldn’t win just because the Americans were bombing Cuba?

[Roger Odisio]

14 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

How would that preclude LBJ taking the wise counsel of a high level co-conspirator?

What wise counsel was that, Cliff?  By whom?

Before the first shot, Johnson knew what he had to do. Sure he took advice around the edges about how best to do it.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

I doubt Johnson needed a lot of advice about convincing the public, but, yeah, he listened to others' ideas about that (including Alsop).  Convincing the public, however, was mainly the job of the sycophantic media, which is still at it 60 years later.

And as we have seen over the years whether the public is on board with what happens in Washington often matters little.

The more important job for the planners was getting the rest of Washington to go along and Johnson was a master at that. The message to AF1 was the first salvo in that effort.

 

And LBJ’s meeting with Harriman was the second salvo.  Salandria suspected a “high level WASP plot” — Harriman and Bundy fit the bill.