The exoneration of Lyndon Johnson?

[Paul Brancato]

Roger - focus on one thing for a sec. Do we know that LBJ ordered the body to be taken from Parkland? If so, who did he so order?

[Roger Odisio]

13 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Roger - focus on one thing for a sec. Do we know that LBJ ordered the body to be taken from Parkland? If so, who did he so order?

From Pat on p.3 in this thread:

From Jack Valenti's 1975 defense of Johnson, A Very Human President.  Valenti sat with Johnson on the plane while waiting for Mrs. Kennedy, and was intimately aware of Johnson's thoughts during this period. "before Air Force One departed for Washington, Johnson had also made his first command decision, on his own, to wait for the body of the dead president to be brought aboard before he gave an order to be airborne. This was an intuitive decision and a good one." So... Johnson, a man famous for seeking advice, had decided not to leave without the body, and had come to this decision entirely on his own, after reaching Air Force One. Hmmm..." 

I said Johnson ordered the body to be brought to the plane because he knew Jackie would accompany it and, more importantly, because he could not let Dr. Rose do the autopsy.

The scuffle in the hallway when Dr. Rose briefly resisted was with what is usually termed the secret service, at least one of whom had a weapon.  In any case, it's clear that Johnson knew who to call because the body was delivered to the plane.

[Paul Brancato]

27 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

From Pat on p.3 in this thread:

From Jack Valenti's 1975 defense of Johnson, A Very Human President.  Valenti sat with Johnson on the plane while waiting for Mrs. Kennedy, and was intimately aware of Johnson's thoughts during this period. "before Air Force One departed for Washington, Johnson had also made his first command decision, on his own, to wait for the body of the dead president to be brought aboard before he gave an order to be airborne. This was an intuitive decision and a good one." So... Johnson, a man famous for seeking advice, had decided not to leave without the body, and had come to this decision entirely on his own, after reaching Air Force One. Hmmm..." 

I said Johnson ordered the body to be brought to the plane because he knew Jackie would accompany it and, more importantly, because he could not let Dr. Rose do the autopsy.

The scuffle in the hallway when Dr. Rose briefly resisted was with what is usually termed the secret service, at least one of whom had a weapon.  In any case, it's clear that Johnson knew who to call because the body was delivered to the plane.

Seems to me that there is something missing in this particular moment. It’s implied but not stated. And it’s unclear who went into parkland machine guns drawn. So it could be another entity, military probably, and what Valenti saw may have been LBJ following orders. 

[Roger Odisio]

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

Seems to me that there is something missing in this particular moment. It’s implied but not stated. And it’s unclear who went into parkland machine guns drawn. So it could be another entity, military probably, and what Valenti saw may have been LBJ following orders. 

I haven't read the book but as far as I know Valenti didn't say anything about Johnson getting a call; just making one. Which in your scenario means Johnson was told, before sitting with Valenti on the plane, to order the body sent to the plane.

 

The Secret Service and others were there with the body before the incident but not, as far as I know, with machine guns drawn.  Someone drew a weapon when Dr. Rose tried to stop them in the hallway.

 

What led you to the idea that something was missing in Pat's account?

 

Unless you think Johnson really was innocent of the plot and didn't know what was happening, why would he as president take orders from the military about such an important matter?

 

If it's true Johnson was just following orders, Valenti was fooled.  He referred to Johnson's call as "his first command decision" that was "an intuitive decision and a good one".

[Benjamin Cole]

4 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

So far this thread has seen 3.1k views and had 118 comments. But there has been very little push back or even response to the points I have made.

 

Let me try to refocus the thread by summarizing what I'm saying,

 

The plotters would not only have devised plans to murder Kennedy--how, when, where, and by whom--but also have planned two other plot elements before attempting the murder:  1. how to get away with it: cover up their role  and blame someone else, and 2. how to achieve the policy changes that motivated the murder in the first place. All of these things were crucial; they had to have been in place before the murder. The plan for the murder and coverup had to have been of one piece.  The planners were not amateurs.

 

Often coup planners can choose the replacement for the victim.  Not in this case.  If Kennedy was killed Johnson would replace him.

 

The basic plan was to kill Oswald after the murder, before he could talk to a lawyer.  And to frame him.

 

The coverup and framing Oswald began immediately after the murder (an indication they were preplanned).

 

*Snatching the body from Dr. Earl Rose, who had jurisdiction over it and was prepared to do the autopsy, and flying it to DC where they could control the autopsy. This was a top priority.  Allowing Dr. Rose to do the autopsy would have almost certainly destroyed the killers' Oswald story.  The DC autopsy was designed not to reveal what happened but to conceal as much of it as they could.

 

We know Johnson ordered the body to be seized when he got back on the plane to fly to DC.  But he had a problem. His advisers thought he must get the hell out of Dallas and fly to DC as soon as possible for his own safety. When asked to return to DC with Johnson, Jackie Kennedy had made it plain she would not leave the body.  Johnson's order to take the body addressed that--Jackie would come to the plane with the body--as well as preventing the autopsy by Dr. Rose. 

 

But that would delay the flight.  How to justify the delay waiting for Jackie and the body, since they could easily have taken AF2 Johnson had abandoned when they were ready?

 

Johnson insisted he wanted to be sworn in by a judge before flying to DC and later tried to insist, falsely, that Bobby had suggested that when Johnson asked him for advice.  A judge had to be found to do it. 

 

Johnson probably knew, or if he didn't, someone on staff could have told him, he was already president the moment Kennedy was legally declared dead.  The swearing in ceremony was unnecessary, particularly under the circumstances; it normally was just window dressing for the public.  But  it served its purpose for Johnson. The body arrived to the plane before the judge and he had accomplished his first task in the coverup.

 

*The message to Air Force One to those staffers coming back from Dallas that said no matter what  you people think you saw [particularly you Kennedy people], we have officially solved the murder. It was done by a lone assassin. There has been a lot of discussion about convincing the public of the Oswald story, but the first task in the coverup was convincing those in Washington to go along.

 

*Asking Oswald for his alibi in their first interrogation so they could set out to destroy evidence of it (he had not yet been killed). The day of the murder they threatened Buell Frazier with the death penalty if he didn't tell them what they wanted to hear. They visited Lovelady that night to show him Altgens 6 because they were afraid Oswald might be the prominent figure on the steps, as he had claimed.  They started tailing Vickie Adams because her story of descending of the back steps threatened to negate the story they were preparing for Oswald.

 

Oswald was murdered about 46 hours after Kennedy. That opened up almost limitless possibilities to frame him. It also required an investigation to produce a explanation for the murder that could satisfy the public, since there would be no trial. That meant the Justice Dept, but Bobby was incapacitated and would soon be gone. 

 

Johnson took over and immediately that weekend stopped other inquiries by the Texas AG and Congress.  He would instead set up a commission of figureheads with only lawyers on staff, but no investigators, whose job it was to gather any information that could be used to frame Oswald, while  ignoring or distorting any thing else. And put Allen Dulles on it to ensure that it would not into delve into any role for the CIA and the war mongers, but instead reach the preplanned verdict.

 

Johnson was in full charge of the coverup.  Which, as I said, had been part of the plan.  

 

Time to make some logical connections, beyond assessing what Johnson did after the murder.--whether they indicated innocence or guilt. If the other plotters knew that Johnson  would have a crucial role to protect them, run the coverup, and be in a position to make some of the important policy changes they wanted, why wouldn't he have been part of the premurder planning? The fact that Johnson's subsequent actions do in fact indicate guilt, not innocence, adds substance to this question.

 

The other plotters knew Johnson.  They knew of his ambition to be president.  They probably knew, as he said later to McNamara, that he never agreed with Kennedy's plan to pull out of Vietnam but kept his mouth shut.  They also knew of Johnson's volatility, whether or not you believe Newman's claim that he was drunk most of the time.

 

There simply was too much at stake for them to leave Johnson's crucial role in the plan unverified by Johnson himself before they took the chance to murder Kennedy.

 

Of all of the people who wanted Kennedy dead, which meant Johnson would be president, Lyndon Johnson was at or near the top of the list of those who wanted it most and had the power/ability to make it happen. 

 

I haven't even mentioned what followed the JFKA:  a systematic destruction of much of the leadership of a left opposition to the war mongers who had seized power.  Johnson was in a position to try to stop any of that but did not.

 

RO-

Yes, all true.

But, in the EF-JFKA we have also seen the excellent and necessary skeptical parsing of the evidence against LHO. 

Some here believe LHO was entirely innocent and even uninvolved in the JFKA, based upon rigid examination of the evidence against him. 

If one adopted that approach to exonerating LBJ..what would it look like?

In other words, you have been hired as LBJ's defense counsel, and you are going to work hard and research deeply, and put the best case forward that LBJ had nothing to do with the JFKA.  

How would you argue that case?

If we do that for LHO, then we should apply the same standard for Dulles, LBJ, Mac Wallace, whoever. 

BTW, I happen to believe there was a small conspiracy around the JFKA. LHO was inveigled into it.  

PS  "Asking Oswald for his alibi in their first interrogation so they could set out to destroy evidence of it (he had not yet been killed)."-RO

Is not that a somewhat normal question to ask? I would ask such a question of a murder suspect.  That means LBJ was behind the JFKA? 

 

 

 

 

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

I haven't read the book but as far as I know Valenti didn't say anything about Johnson getting a call; just making one. Which in your scenario means Johnson was told, before sitting with Valenti on the plane, to order the body sent to the plane.

 

The Secret Service and others were there with the body before the incident but not, as far as I know, with machine guns drawn.  Someone drew a weapon when Dr. Rose tried to stop them in the hallway.

 

What led you to the idea that something was missing in Pat's account?

 

Unless you think Johnson really was innocent of the plot and didn't know what was happening, why would he as president take orders from the military about such an important matter?

 

If it's true Johnson was just following orders, Valenti was fooled.  He referred to Johnson's call as "his first command decision" that was "an intuitive decision and a good one".

LBJ was apparently going nuts on the flight home. If he was the mastermind that doesn’t make sense. He was the beneficiary, and probably knew what was going down. Guilty as charged up to a point, but I don’t see him as the guy at the top. 

[Ron Bulman]

If the plotters knew in advance they were setting up a patsy on the 6th floor of the TSBD, I.E. that the official story would be all shots came from the rear, and, they knew there would be shots from the front, they knew they had to control the autopsy (maybe even do a little pre autopsy reconnaissance).  Thus it had to be done at a military facility by military pathologists (not necessarily forensic ones!) that they could control. 

It's not impossible LBJ and possibly someone in the SS was told prior to the assassination regarding JFK's body, don't leave Dallas without it.

[Joe Bauer]

We've all heard the tape-recorded call between LBJ and Hoover where LBJ runs by Hoover the names of the players he wants on the Warren Commission.

Hoover responds favorably to each one. He specifically praises Jerry Ford as a good man.

One assumes LBJ got his list without Hoover's input.

And I don't believe LBJ just sat by his lonesome and came up with this list on his own.

Someone presented LBJ with the list he read off to Hoover.

Who was this person or group?

Whoever they were, they picked Dulles, McCloy, Ford and all the rest.

Whoever came up with this list is in the top hierarchy of control and influence in the entire investigation creation scene. These are your real power brokers.

If there is a well-researched and well documented book or two that tells us who these Commission creators were please share this.  They were telling LBJ who they wanted on the Commission. All they needed was for LBJ to rubber stamp their choices.

Edited December 19, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Roger Odisio]

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

If the plotters knew in advance they were setting up a patsy on the 6th floor of the TSBD, I.E. that the official story would be all shots came from the rear, and, they knew there would be shots from the front, they knew they had to control the autopsy (maybe even do a little pre autopsy reconnaissance).  Thus it had to be done at a military facility by military pathologists (not necessarily forensic ones!) that they could control. 

It's not impossible LBJ and possibly someone in the SS was told prior to the assassination regarding JFK's body, don't leave Dallas without it.

Yes, the plotters obviously had worked out the Oswald story in advance of the murder.  Yes, they had set up a crossfire at the scene because the most important thing of all in the project was to, as much as possible, make sure they got Kennedy.  It has been pretty well established that there were more than 3 shots from more than one direction and probably two to the head.

So, yes, they knew beforehand they had a problem with a real, independent autopsy they could not control that would almost certainly expose what they did.  

Johnson ordered the body to be taken from the local pathologist with the jurisdiction over the autopsy, Dr. Earl Rose, and transported to his plane because he understood the problem.

That was him running the coverup.  I don't see any reason to think someone else told him to do it. Neither, it seems, did Jack Valenti when he wrote up the episode in his book of sitting there when Johnson gave the order.

 

[Robert Morrow]

4 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

LBJ was apparently going nuts on the flight home. If he was the mastermind that doesn’t make sense. He was the beneficiary, and probably knew what was going down. Guilty as charged up to a point, but I don’t see him as the guy at the top. 

Air Force steward Doyle Whitehead: Lyndon Johnson and his people were drunk, laughing and celebrating on Air Force One in the hours following JFK’s murder

“Doyle Whitehead: Memories of serving three U.S. presidents on Air Force One” by Ruth Laney for Country Roads on October 24, 2016

https://countryroadsmagazine.com/art-and-culture/history/doyle-whitehead/

As a steward on Air Force One, Doyle Whitehead saw the making of history, such as this moment when Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Doyle Whitehead vividly recalls where he was on November 22, 1963, when he learned that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. He was aboard Air Force One (AF1) watching the presidential motorcade on television.

Riding in a slow-moving motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Kennedy was fatally struck when three shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street. His wife Jacqueline, wearing a pink Chanel suit and matching pillbox hat, was seated beside him. Riding with them were Texas governor John Connally, who was wounded, and his wife Nellie. The Lincoln Continental raced to Parkland Hospital, where doctors made a futile attempt to save Kennedy’s life. At 1 pm, he was pronounced dead.

Confusion reigned as Kennedy’s staff tried to absorb the shocking news. “We didn’t know what was going to happen,” Whitehead said in a recent interview. “We thought we might be under attack. Everything was in such chaos—you can just imagine.”

Whitehead, one of four stewards assigned to the president’s plane, had flown with JFK on every mission, including to Vienna in 1961 and Berlin in 1963, both important milestones for the JFK administration. That morning, he had flown from Fort Worth to Love Field in Dallas, where JFK and Jackie were greeted by an adoring crowd. Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his entourage had made the trip on Air Force Two. 

After the shooting, said Whitehead, Johnson, now president, boarded the plane and went straight to the cockpit, ordering pilot James Swindal to take off. According to Whitehead, Swindal refused. “I flew him [Kennedy] here, and I’m going to fly him home,” the pilot said.

About 2:45 pm, a bronze casket carrying Kennedy’s body was brought aboard. “The bulkhead and six seats had to be removed to get him on the plane,” said Whitehead. Jackie Kennedy, still in her pink suit covered with blood, appeared to be in shock. “I asked her if she wanted to change clothes, but she said no,” Whitehead recalled. 

After U. S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas Sarah Hughes (a longtime friend) had sworn in Johnson, with a stunned Jackie at his side, the plane took off. Whitehead retreated to the cabin where the president’s casket lay. Inside were Jackie and her Secret Service agent Clint Hill.

“Now comes the bad part,” said Whitehead. “Johnson and his people celebrated on the plane ride back to Washington. He was a heavy drinker. He drank about half a fifth of Cutty Sark [Scotch] on the flight back. They were laughing and talking about ‘what we gon’ do now.’ They were so loud we had to shut the door so Jackie wouldn’t hear them.”

Washington was in mourning. On Sunday, November 24, Kennedy’s new mahogany casket was placed in the Capitol rotunda. Jackie invited the AF1 crew to share their grief. “It was a crew of eighteen people,” said Whitehead. “She gave us one hour with the casket. She came in for just a few minutes and told us how much he enjoyed Air Force One. He loved that airplane.”

Whitehead, who had been a steward on AF1 since the Eisenhower years, wondered what lay ahead. Even when asked to stay on, he wasn’t sure he wanted to work for Johnson, who had a reputation for being difficult. Today Whitehead tells stories of LBJ ordering a plane to take off without his wife Lady Bird when she ran a few minutes late and tossing daughter Luci’s excess luggage onto the tarmac. “He was mean and demanding, but at times he was jovial.”

How Whitehead came to hobnob with presidents as a young man is a story that seems to amaze even him. “I guess God intended for me to be there,” he said. “I grew up on a hundred-acre farm in rural Gloster, Mississippi. We were dirt poor; we raised what we ate.” 

[Read: Richard Lipsey was an eyewitness to the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy]

After graduating from Oxford High School in 1954, Whitehead had trouble finding a job. The Korean War had ended a year earlier, and veterans were given preferred status. “The closest employment within fifty miles was in Natchez—the Armstrong Tire and Rubber plant, a paper mill, an asbestos-siding plant. Fifty, sixty, seventy-five people applied for every job. They’d come out and say, ‘We gon’ hire two, and they gon’ be veterans.’

“I said, ‘Okay, I’ll be a veteran.’ I went to the [U.S. Army] recruiting office. I wanted to be a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. The recruiter said, ‘It will be six months before I can get you in a class.’

“The Air Force guy said, ‘I can get you out today.’ So I joined the Air Force. I was in basic training, and I planned to go to school to be a heavy-equipment operator. But the Air Force had a dire need for air-traffic specialists for long flights to dangerous areas. They told us we would draw hazard pay. I would draw thirty dollars a month extra, and I needed the money.

“They had forty volunteers and they used a physical exam to do the elimination. I was five-feet-nine and weighed 132. I could put a hundred-pound bag on my shoulder and walk across a plowed field. I was one of twelve selected. My first assignment was to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. I went to Greenland, Saudi Arabia, the Azores. We were flying back and forth, moving troops.” 

Whitehead recalled a harrowing experience when he had been in the Air Force for only six months. “It was 21 December 1954. We were coming from the Azores to Bermuda, an eight-hour flight. We were hauling freight and corpses. We got just about to the point of no return [halfway through the flight] when an engine went out on the right side. After another hour, the other engine on the right side went out. We were continually dropping. We had to jettison everything, including our own baggage, into the ocean. The corpses were the only thing we did not throw out. The landing was good. I felt like getting down on my knees and kissing the ground.”

In 1958, Whitehead joined the VIP Unit in Washington. “They needed twelve people to be stewards on three jets. These were the first three Boeing 707s, with four stewards in each crew. I wound up making that twelve. I stayed four months, going through an expanded background investigation. I had to have Top Secret clearance. 

“I was still young and green and learning and eager. In 1959, President Eisenhower’s plane was scheduled to leave in two hours when one of his stewards had a heart attack. They pushed me up on Ike’s airplane and we flew Mamie to Denver. I stayed for the remainder of the Eisenhower regime.”

When JFK became president in 1961, he invited Whitehead to be on his crew. “He was a jewel, completely different from Johnson,” said Whitehead. “He loved that airplane, and he loved us. In one of the rare moments he didn’t have a lot on his mind, he asked for a beer. I gave him a Heineken. The glass held ten ounces. He asked, “What do you do with the other two ounces?’ I said, ‘We throw it away.’ We weren’t allowed to drink while on duty.”

Whitehead recalled the president’s teasing him about the name of his high school. “He would tell people, ‘Did you know I have a steward on my plane who went to Oxford?’”

JFK was rumored to have had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, and Whitehead said the actress flew on AF1 twice. “She was listed as a secretary, not by name. She was a beautiful person to look at as long as she kept her mouth shut. She talked off the wall a lot, especially if she’d had a drink.”

Whitehead recalled slipping forbidden candy to young Caroline Kennedy, whose stern British nanny Maude Shaw wouldn’t allow the children to indulge their sweet tooth. “Caroline called me Whitey,” he said.

Whitehead flew with LBJ only through mid-1966. “A lot of things went into that decision. I was never home on holidays or special days, and LBJ was a terrible person to work for.”

In 1966, Whitehead got a one-year assignment to Vietnam, where the U.S. had combat troops. “That was the only thing I ever did in the military. We would do resupply missions. I was flying dignitaries into and out of Vietnam, all over the country. My one year there, I flew 665 hours in a combat zone.”

In the fall of 1969, Whitehead was assigned to a worldwide goodwill tour with astronauts Neil Young, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, who had flown to the moon on Apollo 11 in July. “We wanted to show them to the world. We went to twenty-four different countries, thirty-three different cities. The press chartered a plane to follow us around.”

In November 1970, said Whitehead, “I flew with Mrs. Kennedy to Charles de Gaulle’s funeral. I asked her for President Kennedy’s rocking chair, and she gave it to me. It was a folding chair with cushions to support his back. It went with him on the plane. He’d sit in it when he was preparing to give a speech. After he was assassinated, the archives got everything off that airplane—sheets, towels, anything he had touched—except for that chair. I took it off the aircraft and stored it in my office in case somebody called for it. When we flew to France, I asked Jackie if I could have it, and she gave it to me.”

Whitehead’s last mission was with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In January and May 1974, Kissinger engaged in “shuttle diplomacy,” short flights among Middle East capitals to deal with the fallout of the October 1973 war. “Every day we went to Damascus, Syria, and back. Every fifth day we went to Alexandria, Egypt. Dr. Kissinger was friendly but absent-minded. He’d go to the bathroom and forget to zip his pants up. We had to look him over before he got off the airplane.”

Whitehead, now eighty, lives with his wife Barbara in Busy Corner, Mississippi. Last summer, he visited the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at the Wright-Patterson base near Dayton, Ohio. Its exhibits include SAM 26000, better known as Air Force One, which Whitehead flew on during the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson. He estimates that he flew nearly ten thousand hours during his career.

“When I became a steward in 1959, I had only been out of high school for five years,” he said. “I pole-vaulted myself from a hundred-acre farm to Air Force One in five years.” 

[Robert Morrow]

On 12/18/2023 at 12:23 AM, Ron Bulman said:

Fetzer?

Fetzer printed Evelyn Lincoln's letter in one of his books. She was responding to someone who asked her about who she thought murdered JFK. Evelyn Lincoln, from the moment of the JFK assassination to the end of her life believed that Lyndon Johnson was involved in the JFK assassination.

[Joe Bauer]

57 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

Fetzer printed Evelyn Lincoln's letter in one of his books. She was responding to someone who asked her about who she thought murdered JFK. Evelyn Lincoln, from the moment of the JFK assassination to the end of her life believed that Lyndon Johnson was involved in the JFK assassination.

Thanks for posting the actual letter.

[Sandy Larsen]

5 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

“Now comes the bad part,” said Whitehead. “Johnson and his people celebrated on the plane ride back to Washington. He was a heavy drinker. He drank about half a fifth of Cutty Sark [Scotch] on the flight back. They were laughing and talking about ‘what we gon’ do now.’ They were so loud we had to shut the door so Jackie wouldn’t hear them.”

 

Oh, come on! How can it be that, with Jackie aboard as well as some JFK loyalists, Johnson and his guys were partying and getting drunk?

I'll bet that Whitehead was just bitter about how LBJ took over JFK's airplane and greatly embellished the story to make LBJ look bad.

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Oh, come on! How can it be that, with Jackie aboard as well as some JFK loyalists, Johnson and his guys were partying and getting drunk?

I'll bet that Whitehead was just bitter about how LBJ took over JFK's airplane and greatly embellished the story to make LBJ look bad.

There are just too many stories recounted first and second hand by even LBJ loyalists that describe LBJ doing and saying outrageously inappropriate things. Many gross and crude.

Like LBJ leaving bathroom doors wide open during meetings and defecating or urinating loud enough for his staff or meeting attendees to hear or even smell this?

Also accounts of him making bragging comments about his private part's size and his prowess in utilizing it with manly abandon?

I remember listening to one of his taped White House conversations to a tailor in another city ( New York? ) made while he was sitting right inside the Oval Office.

He good-ole-boy drawlingly talked about the tailor making damn sure his pants crotch area was cut long enough to avoid any pulling tightness on his "bung hole."

We know "for a fact" that LBJ did drink a lot. And not beer. LBJ kept a lot of aides and security on edge because of his unpredictability in his words and actions especially while drinking.

LBJ's long time mistress Madeline Brown recounted that Lyndon used foul language all the time.

One could reasonably conclude that LBJ was knocking back some stiff ones on his 3 to 4 hour flight back to DC from Dallas.  To steady his own nerves and anxiety and to be able to show the national and world press he was in calm and responsible control upon landing?

LBJ apologists use downplaying terms like "salty" and good-ole-boy "humorous' when describing LBJ's more outrageous words and actions that many others would term "shockingly gross and crude" and even somewhat "sadistic" in their offensive intent and context. Include "bullying" in that latter lexicon of LBJisms.

Time we quit coloring LBJ with a false reality wash of socially appropriate respectability that was just not him.

The man was for sure much more crass and crude not just in his private personal life interactions but even at times in his professional political ones versus any other president in our entire history.

You tell them Som-Bit**** if they don't agree to what I'm a tellin em I'm a gonna rub their faces in Texas Steer manure s***!

LBJ to Senator Richard Russell ... Dick, you're damn well gonna serve on the Warren Commission whether you like it or not! And I don't wanna hear another GD word about it!"

And freely using the word "nigg***" in discussing racial policy matters.

You tell em Lyndon...YEEEE HAWWW!

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Robert Morrow]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Oh, come on! How can it be that, with Jackie aboard as well as some JFK loyalists, Johnson and his guys were partying and getting drunk?

I'll bet that Whitehead was just bitter about how LBJ took over JFK's airplane and greatly embellished the story to make LBJ look bad.

 

 

We do know one thing for a fact: Doyle Whitehead was an Air Force Steward on Air Force One on the ride back from Dallas on 11-22-1963. We also know that both Jackie Kennedy and Evelyn Lincoln, JFK's secretary of 12 years, on that same airplane IMMEDIATELY suspected Lyndon Johnson of being involved in the JFK assassination. 

Whitehead says that on the ride back from Dallas Lyndon Johnson drank about half "a fifth of Cutty Sark," which is like drinking about 10 beers in two hours. That is some power drinking right there. I wonder of Lyndon Johnson was nervous about something? During this time period LBJ called up his investment broker and Dallas lawyer Pat Holloway heard him say he needed to sell his "goddamn Halliburton stock" - that is in Russ Baker's book Family of Secrets. Halliburton, the year before had bought out LBJ's longtime sugar daddies and Brown and Root and later KBR made a ton of money off of the Vietnam War.