The Men Who Murdered President Kennedy...REDUX-REDUX!

[Cliff Varnell]

Robert, you continue to reinforce the observation that Harriman/Bundy had more power than LBJ over the official US Government position on Lone Nut Oswald.

The same dynamic prevailed years later in regard to Vietnam.

Edited March 11 by Cliff Varnell

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

19 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Lyndon Johnson, behind the scenes, told many people over the years that Fidel Castro murdered JFK before the Kennedys could murder him.

18 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Since the Lone Nut Scenario fell apart for a majority of people by ‘66 it’s no surprise LBJ needed someone else to blame privately.

 

There is good reason for LBJ to believe that the assassination was an international communist plot, and that Castro was intimately involved.

Those of us who have studied the Lopez Report and related material know that the earliest indications after the assassination were that the Cubans and Russians had arranged with Oswald to have JFK killed. Oswald was (supposedly) given a $6500 down payment to get the killing done. That's the reason that Mexican Consulate employee Sylvia Duran and several of her acquaintances were arrested right away and questioned.

Of course, the truth is that it was all a CIA false flag operation designed to have the Cubans/Russians blamed, thereby creating a pretext for Cuban invasion or a first nuclear strike on the Soviet Union at a time when it was thought that the Americans had the nuclear advantage. Clearly the military generals were the instigators of the CIA's plan.

The fact that Harriman and Bundy were against the idea of the assassination being a communist plot proves that they were NOT the instigators of the CIA's plot. Same thing with Johnson. The military generals were. (Though Harriman and Bundy learned of the plot immediately after the assassination.)

 

The following shows why LBJ thought it was a communist plot.  At 1:40 on 29th November, Hoover told LBJ on the telephone:

"This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story there is of this man Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban embassy and then coming back to this country with it. We're not able to prove that fact... Now the Mexican police have again arrested this woman Duran, who is a member of the Cuban embassy... and we're going to confront her with the original informant, who saw the money pass, so he says, and we're also going to put the lie detector test on him."

There are numerous other indications of a (CIA faked) international commie plot. For example, (faked) intercepted mail from Castro to Oswald encouraging him to kill Kennedy. And the (faked) intercepted letter from Oswald to the Russian Embassy in Washington where he says that he conducted business with (KGB assassinations chief) Kostin/Kostikov.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The fact that Harriman and Bundy were against the idea of the assassination being a communist plot proves that they were NOT the instigators of the CIA's plot.

Or it proves that the arrest of Oswald made their plan to blame Castro untenable.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

7 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

The fact that Harriman and Bundy were against the idea of the assassination being a communist plot proves that they were NOT the instigators of the CIA's plot.

Or it proves that the arrest of Oswald made their plan to blame Castro untenable.

 

Good point.

I am going to add that possibility to my working theory.

 

[Roger Odisio]

38 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Good point.

I am going to add that possibility to my working theory.

 

But the planners of the murder knew it was not a commie plot.  If you think Johnson actually believed the commies did it, based apparently mostly some things he *said*, that means either he was not in on the plot or he was dissembling or diverting attention from himself because, under the classic logic of "who benefits", he had to know he was a prime suspect, at least for those few people interested in finding out what happened.

I think the evidence is clearly on the side of the latter.  Based on the logical idea that as the new president he was essential to the success of the murder.  And based on his actions immediately following the murder that began the coverup.  For example, holding up the departure of AF1, while he was supposedly worried about a Soviet attack at any moment, to get the body aboard so the autopsy  could be controlled in Washington.  Even to the point of insisting he had to be sworn in on the plane (no doubt he knew he already was president under the Constitution) and only by Judge Hughes who had to be fetched.  To give himself a reason to hold up the plane while waiting for the body.

[Roger Odisio]

56 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

But the planners of the murder knew it was not a commie plot.  If you think Johnson actually believed the commies did it, based apparently mostly some things he *said*, that means either he was not in on the plot or he was dissembling or diverting attention from himself because, under the classic logic of "who benefits", he had to know he was a prime suspect, at least for those few people interested in finding out what happened.

I think the evidence is clearly on the side of the latter.  Based on the logical idea that as the new president he was essential to the success of the murder.  And based on his actions immediately following the murder that began the coverup.  For example, holding up the departure of AF1, while he was supposedly worried about a Soviet attack at any moment, to get the body aboard so the autopsy  could be controlled in Washington.  Even to the point of insisting he had to be sworn in on the plane (no doubt he knew he already was president under the Constitution) and only by Judge Hughes who had to be fetched.  To give himself a reason to hold up the plane while waiting for the body.

It's always wise to pay more attention to what Lyndon did than what he said.  By that time, after a long career in Washington, he had become a master manipulator of people and facts.

[Ron Bulman]

On 3/4/2024 at 10:49 PM, Robert Montenegro said:

I'll say the same thing to you gentlemen that I said to Mr. DiEugenio, in my very humble opinion, I believe that if there was a command & control structure representing the conspirators who pulled off this most heinous crime, it is Allen Welsh Dulles.

 

Allen Dulles is in the eye of the hurricane, representing all of the other elements on this list, and by virtue, permanently putting the other elements on this list in his pocket...

Douglas Caddy posted this in the Water Coolers forum today.  I found it interesting.  Given Robert's statement I thought it might be relevant here.

Why Allen Dulles Killed the Kennedys (foreignpolicyjournal.com)

[Robert Morrow]

12 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

There is good reason for LBJ to believe that the assassination was an international communist plot, and that Castro was intimately involved.

Those of us who have studied the Lopez Report and related material know that the earliest indications after the assassination were that the Cubans and Russians had arranged with Oswald to have JFK killed. Oswald was (supposedly) given a $6500 down payment to get the killing done. That's the reason that Mexican Consulate employee Sylvia Duran and several of her acquaintances were arrested right away and questioned.

Of course, the truth is that it was all a CIA false flag operation designed to have the Cubans/Russians blamed, thereby creating a pretext for Cuban invasion or a first nuclear strike on the Soviet Union at a time when it was thought that the Americans had the nuclear advantage. Clearly the military generals were the instigators of the CIA's plan.

The fact that Harriman and Bundy were against the idea of the assassination being a communist plot proves that they were NOT the instigators of the CIA's plot. Same thing with Johnson. The military generals were. (Though Harriman and Bundy learned of the plot immediately after the assassination.)

 

The following shows why LBJ thought it was a communist plot.  At 1:40 on 29th November, Hoover told LBJ on the telephone:

"This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story there is of this man Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban embassy and then coming back to this country with it. We're not able to prove that fact... Now the Mexican police have again arrested this woman Duran, who is a member of the Cuban embassy... and we're going to confront her with the original informant, who saw the money pass, so he says, and we're also going to put the lie detector test on him."

There are numerous other indications of a (CIA faked) international commie plot. For example, (faked) intercepted mail from Castro to Oswald encouraging him to kill Kennedy. And the (faked) intercepted letter from Oswald to the Russian Embassy in Washington where he says that he conducted business with (KGB assassinations chief) Kostin/Kostikov.

 

Sandy, why don't you explain to me why in Ultra Right Wing Dallas where so much anti-JFK had been emitted in the months before the JFK assassination, with those legions of people warning JFK not to go to Dallas because of the radical right wing environment.... WHY did Lyndon Johnson - before John F. Kennedy was already in rigor mortis, probably while JFK was still in surgery, WHY was Lyndon Johnson IMMEDIATELY blaming the JFK assassination on a communist? Because JFK had just signed the Nuclear Test Ban treaty in October? Because JFK was publicly trying to sell the Russians excess American wheat to feed their starving people in the winter?

Well before Oswald was arrested; well before the Saturday LBJ-Hoover phone call in the morning (where the audio has disappeared, but a transcript still exists), Lyndon Johnson was pushing the line communists have killed JFK while so many others thought it was a Dallas right winger.

LBJ was possibly blaming the JFK assassination on a communist even before 1PM CST, the official time of JFK's death. And he was definitely blaming it on a communist between 1:20-1:26 PM when he talked with acting press secretary Malcolm Kilduff.

Johnson was blaming the death  of JFK on a communist while he was at Parkland Hospital. No one was talking about Kostikov at this time.

Lyndon Johnson to Malcolm Kilduff, after Kiduff asked if he could make a statement that the president was dead:

"No, wait. We don't know if it's a communist conspiracy or not. I'd better get out of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?" [Sam Johnson's Boy, Steinberg, p. 606, published in 1968]

QUOTE

          When they reached the hospital, Johnson jumped out of the car and held his left bicep with his right hand while he rushed indoors with five Secret Service agents, leaving Lady Bird with Yarborough.  Rumors spread that he had been shot, that he had suffered a heart attack. Once inside the hospital, Johnson and the agents were ushered to the rear of the Minor Medicine area, where between deep sniffs from his nasal inhalator, he said repeatedly, “The International Communists did it!” …Nor had Salinger’s chief assistant Andrew Hatcher, gone to Texas, because Kennedy had been considerate of the anti-Negro bias in that Southern state. This was the reason Malcolm Kilduff, another assistant press secretary, was present at the hospital and became the first person to call Johnson “Mr. President.” Kilduff had come to Booth 13 to ask his permission to make a statement that Kennedy was dead, but Johnson barked at him, “No, wait. We don’t know whether it is a Communist conspiracy or not. I’d better get out of here and back to the plane. Are they prepared to get me out of here?”

UNQUOTE

          [Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the President from Texas, pp. 605-606, published in 1968]

           Alfred Steinberg was a seasoned journalist who knew Lyndon Johnson very well, up close and personal. One could rightfully call Alfred Steinberg a journalist insider of his era.   

 

 

 

Edited March 13 by Robert Morrow

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

WHY did Lyndon Johnson - before John F. Kennedy was already in rigor mortis, probably while JFK was still in surgery, WHY was Lyndon Johnson IMMEDIATELY blaming the JFK assassination on a communist?

 

Robert,

That's a good question.

It could be that it was LBJ who instigated the CIA into planning the assassination, and thus was fully aware of it from the start. But that makes little sense because he wouldn't have approved of the plot creating a pretext for war with Cuba or Russia. That is precisely what he wanted to have covered up!

Here is what I think:

In the very beginning LBJ figured it was either a far-right nut job who had killed Kennedy, or a communist conspiracy.

LBJ had been a Texas politician for years and never feared being killed by his own people. But he did fear being killed by communists. And so he wanted to get himself to safety.

Now, later on is a different story. He learned that it did look like a communist plot. He knew that the WC 's job was to cover that up. But he continued on knowing that the evidence pointed to a communist conspiracy.

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

17 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Robert,

That's a good question.

It could be that it was LBJ who instigated the CIA into planning the assassination, and thus was fully aware of it from the start. But that makes little sense because he wouldn't have approved of the plot creating a pretext for war with Cuba or Russia. That is precisely what he wanted to have covered up!

Here is what I think:

In the very beginning LBJ figured it was either a far-right nut job who had killed Kennedy, or a communist conspiracy.

LBJ had been a Texas politician for years and never feared being killed by his own people. But he did fear being killed by communists. And so he wanted to get himself to safety.

Now, later on is a different story. He learned that it did look like a communist plot. He knew that the WC 's job was to cover that up. But he continued on knowing that the evidence pointed to a communist conspiracy.

 

 

Before Lyndon Johnson was immediately blaming the JFK assassination on a communist in ultra right wing Dallas (no one else was at that moment), this preceded that: continual private death threats toward the Kennedys who he was acutely aware were out to utterly destroy him in November, 1963:

Robert Caro describes the LBJ-RFK relationship post 1960 Democratic convention, where RFK had moved heaven and earth attempting to keep LBJ off the 1960 Democratic ticket. Caro:

 QUOTE

John Connally, who during long days of conversation with this author was willing to answer almost any question put to him, no matter how delicate the topic, wouldn't answer when asked what Johnson said about Robert Kennedy. When the author pressed him, he finally said flatly: "I am not going to tell you what he said about him." During the months after the convention, when Johnson was closeted alone back in Texas with an old ally he would sometimes be asked about Robert Kennedy. He would reply with a gesture. Raising his big right hand, he would draw the side of it across the neck in a slowing, slitting movement. Sometimes that gesture would be his only reply; sometimes, as during a meeting with Ed Clark in Austin, he would say, as his hand moved across his neck, "I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do." 

UNQUOTE

[Robert Caro, The Passage of Power, p. 140]

Bobby Baker (LBJ’s right hand man and bag man) told Don Reynolds on Inauguration Day 1/20/61 that the s.o.b. John Kennedy would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death

Bobby Baker, one of Lyndon Johnson’s closest associates, said this during the inauguration of John Kennedy

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerB.htm

[“A Primer of Assassination Theories,” Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire, 12/01/1966]

QUOTE

In January of 1964 the Warren Commission learned that Don B. Reynolds, insurance agent and close associate of Bobby Baker, had been heard to say the FBI knew that Johnson was behind the assassination. When interviewed by the FBI, he denied this. But he did recount an incident during the swearing in of Kennedy in which Bobby Baker said words to the effect that the s.o.b. would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death.

Web link to Esquire article: https://classic.esquire.com/article/1966/12/01/a-primer-of-assassination-theories

[“A Primer of Assassination Theories,” Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire, 12/01/1966]

Journalist Alfed Steinberg: Lyndon Johnson was so concerned about the Kennedys dropping him from the 1964 Democratic ticket that he developed severe stomach pains

QUOTE

A midwestern Senator who travelled with Johnson on a fall fundraising affair for Senator Thomas Dodd remarked to his colleagues that Johnson had remarked lugubriously during their New England visit that “I am going to be out for a second term. Jack has another man in mind for Vice President.” So concerned was Johnson over what he believed would be his political doom that he developed severe stomach pains.

UNQUOTE

[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 589]

Lyndon Johnson told Robert Novak in summer 1962 that the Kennedys were losing the cold war against the Soviet Union, losing to conservatives in Congress and that Robert Kennedy was planning to dump him off the 1964 Democratic ticket.

Robert Novak later married Geraldine, a secretary to LBJ

           Notice how Johnson is telling Novak in the summer of 1962 how the Kennedy Administration was "losing" the cold war to the Russians. This is before the fall, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I imagine Johnson was using these same arguments with the generals, the Texas oil men and the military intelligence in the lead up to the JFK assassination.

         Robert Novak:

 QUOTE

           "After a Texas-style cookout, LBJ reclined, nearly prone, by the swimming pool. It was just the two of us drinking Scotch, and he spoke with a candor he never bestowed on me before or after. He felt the Kennedy administration was in serious trouble, losing the cold war to the Soviet Union and losing the legislative war to conservatives in Congress. He said that he had done everything the Kennedys had wanted, including foreign missions that only guaranteed him bad publicity.

          He was repaid with insults and humiliation, especially from the attorney general. Johnson was sure Bobby Kennedy was plotting to dump him in 1964. "But I'm going to fool them," he said. "I'm going to pack it in after the term ends and go home to Texas." That would have been a huge scoop, but I knew Johnson was just blowing off steam.

          As for going back to Texas, the political environment there was hardly more congenial for LBJ than it was in Washington. Johnson's protege, John B. Connally, had just won the Democratic nomination for governor of Texas, which still all but guaranteed election in Texas. As secretary of the Navy, Connally had been the highest Kennedy administration official bearing the LBJ brand.

           But campaigning for governor, Connally removed the brand. With JFK and LBJ both unpopular in Texas, Connally ran against the administration he had just left, and won. Talking about Big John in that summer evening in 1962 led Johnson into self-pity. "John has turned my picture to the wall," LBJ told me. "You know I would never turn his picture to the wall."

 QUOTE

 [Robert Novak, The Prince of Darkness, pp. 90-91]

 

 

 

Edited March 13 by Robert Morrow

[Sandy Larsen]

18 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Before Lyndon Johnson was immediately blaming the JFK assassination on a communist in ultra right wing Dallas (no one else was at that moment), this preceded that: continual private death threats toward the Kennedys who he was acutely aware were out to utterly destroy him in November, 1963:

Robert Caro describes the LBJ-RFK relationship post 1960 Democratic convention, where RFK had moved heaven and earth attempting to keep LBJ off the 1960 Democratic ticket. Caro:

 QUOTE

John Connally, who during long days of conversation with this author was willing to answer almost any question put to him, no matter how delicate the topic, wouldn't answer when asked what Johnson said about Robert Kennedy. When the author pressed him, he finally said flatly: "I am not going to tell you what he said about him." During the months after the convention, when Johnson was closeted alone back in Texas with an old ally he would sometimes be asked about Robert Kennedy. He would reply with a gesture. Raising his big right hand, he would draw the side of it across the neck in a slowing, slitting movement. Sometimes that gesture would be his only reply; sometimes, as during a meeting with Ed Clark in Austin, he would say, as his hand moved across his neck, "I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do." 

UNQUOTE

[Robert Caro, The Passage of Power, p. 140]

Bobby Baker (LBJ’s right hand man and bag man) told Don Reynolds on Inauguration Day 1/20/61 that the s.o.b. John Kennedy would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death

Bobby Baker, one of Lyndon Johnson’s closest associates, said this during the inauguration of John Kennedy

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbakerB.htm

[“A Primer of Assassination Theories,” Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire, 12/01/1966]

QUOTE

In January of 1964 the Warren Commission learned that Don B. Reynolds, insurance agent and close associate of Bobby Baker, had been heard to say the FBI knew that Johnson was behind the assassination. When interviewed by the FBI, he denied this. But he did recount an incident during the swearing in of Kennedy in which Bobby Baker said words to the effect that the s.o.b. would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death.

Web link to Esquire article: https://classic.esquire.com/article/1966/12/01/a-primer-of-assassination-theories

[“A Primer of Assassination Theories,” Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire, 12/01/1966]

Journalist Alfed Steinberg: Lyndon Johnson was so concerned about the Kennedys dropping him from the 1964 Democratic ticket that he developed severe stomach pains

QUOTE

A midwestern Senator who travelled with Johnson on a fall fundraising affair for Senator Thomas Dodd remarked to his colleagues that Johnson had remarked lugubriously during their New England visit that “I am going to be out for a second term. Jack has another man in mind for Vice President.” So concerned was Johnson over what he believed would be his political doom that he developed severe stomach pains.

UNQUOTE

[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, p. 589]

Lyndon Johnson told Robert Novak in summer 1962 that the Kennedys were losing the cold war against the Soviet Union, losing to conservatives in Congress and that Robert Kennedy was planning to dump him off the 1964 Democratic ticket.

Robert Novak later married Geraldine, a secretary to LBJ

           Notice how Johnson is telling Novak in the summer of 1962 how the Kennedy Administration was "losing" the cold war to the Russians. This is before the fall, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I imagine Johnson was using these same arguments with the generals, the Texas oil men and the military intelligence in the lead up to the JFK assassination.

         Robert Novak:

 QUOTE

           "After a Texas-style cookout, LBJ reclined, nearly prone, by the swimming pool. It was just the two of us drinking Scotch, and he spoke with a candor he never bestowed on me before or after. He felt the Kennedy administration was in serious trouble, losing the cold war to the Soviet Union and losing the legislative war to conservatives in Congress. He said that he had done everything the Kennedys had wanted, including foreign missions that only guaranteed him bad publicity.

          He was repaid with insults and humiliation, especially from the attorney general. Johnson was sure Bobby Kennedy was plotting to dump him in 1964. "But I'm going to fool them," he said. "I'm going to pack it in after the term ends and go home to Texas." That would have been a huge scoop, but I knew Johnson was just blowing off steam.

          As for going back to Texas, the political environment there was hardly more congenial for LBJ than it was in Washington. Johnson's protege, John B. Connally, had just won the Democratic nomination for governor of Texas, which still all but guaranteed election in Texas. As secretary of the Navy, Connally had been the highest Kennedy administration official bearing the LBJ brand.

           But campaigning for governor, Connally removed the brand. With JFK and LBJ both unpopular in Texas, Connally ran against the administration he had just left, and won. Talking about Big John in that summer evening in 1962 led Johnson into self-pity. "John has turned my picture to the wall," LBJ told me. "You know I would never turn his picture to the wall."

 QUOTE

 [Robert Novak, The Prince of Darkness, pp. 90-91]

 

• RFK hated LBJ.
• LBJ hated RFK.
• Bobby Baker predicted JFK's death.
• LBJ was afraid he'd be dropped from the ticket, and was telling others that JFK was losing the cold war.

Okay.

So what's you point?

 

[Robert Morrow]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

• RFK hated LBJ.
• LBJ hated RFK.
• Bobby Baker predicted JFK's death.
• LBJ was afraid he'd be dropped from the ticket, and was telling others that JFK was losing the cold war.

Okay.

So what's you point?

 

Lyndon Johnson's Motive for the JFK Assassination.

Lyndon Johnson would regularly make death threats in reference to Robert Kennedy which happened to be quite similar to what LBJ told his mistress Madeleine Brown on the morning of the JFK assassination as she relates in her book: "That son-of-a-bitch crazy Yarborough and that goddamn f____g Irish mafia bastard Kennedy, will never embarrass me again!"

LBJ would say that is a promise and not a threat.

Bobby Baker, LBJ's right hand man and bagman, predicted a VIOLENT DEATH for John Kennedy on inauguration day of January 20, 1961.

Bobby Baker was telling this to DON REYNOLDS who at the exact moment a bullet was going into JFK's head, was giving closed door testimony on Lyndon Johnson's corruption for the Senate Rules Committee to Burkett van Kirk, who was the GOP counsel for the Republicans on the Senate.

The Kennedys were working with the Senate Republicans to take down LBJ because Johnson was too close to the Democrats.

Burkett van Kirk conirms that Robert Kennedy was feeding damaging information on Lyndon Johnson's corruption to the Senate Rules Committee in fall, 1963, in attempt to destroy LBJ. The Kennedys were working with the Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee to take down LBJ because LBJ was too close to the Democrats.

 

 SEYMOUR HERSH:

 QUOTE

           In a series of interviews for this book, Burkett Van Kirk, who was chief counsel in 1963 for the Republican minority on the Rules Committee, told me of his personal knowledge of Bobby Kennedy's direct intervention. "Bobby was feeding information to 'whispering Willie'" - the nickname for Senator John Williams. "They" - the Kennedy brothers, Van Kirk said - "were dumping Johnson.." Williams, as he did earlier with Donald Reynolds's information about Lyndon Johnson, relayed the Kennedy materials to the senior Republican on the Rules Committe, Carl Curtis. The attorney general thus was secretly dealing with Williams, and Williams was dealing secretly with Curtis and Van Kirk. The scheming was necessary, Van Kirk told me, because he and his fellow Republicans understood that a full-fledged investigation into Bobby Baker could lead to the vice president. They also understood, he said, that the chances of getting such an investigation where slim at best. The Democrats had an overwhelming advantage in the Senate - sixty-seven to thirty-three - and in every committee. The three Republicans on the ten member Rules Committee, Van Kirk said, had little power. "We never won one vote to even call a witness," he told me. The investigation into Bobby Baker and Lyndon Johnson would have to be done in a traditional manner - by newspaper leak.

           Van Kirk, who was named after his grandfather Senator E. J. Burkett of Nebraska, said that Bobby Kennedy eventually designated a Justice Department lawyer that fall to serve as an intermediary to the minority staff; he began supplying the Republicans with documents about Johnson and his financial dealings. The lawyer, Van Kirk told me, "used to come up to the Senate and hang around me like a dark cloud. It took him about a week or ten days to, one, find out what I didn't know, and two, give it to me." Some of the Kennedy-supplied documents were kept in Williams's office safe, Van Kirk said, and never shown to him. There was no doubt of Bobby Kennedy's purpose in dealing with the Republicans, Van Kirk said: "To get rid of Johnson. To dump him. I am as sure of that the sun comes up in the east."

 UNQUOTE

 [Seymour Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, pp. 406-407]

 Burkett Van Kirk on how Don Reynolds had the proof of Lyndon Johnson’s corruption as he testified to a closed session of the Senate Rules Committee in the morning of November 22, 1963.

 Van Kirk was interviewed  in the History Channel’s documentary LBJ vs. The Kennedys: Chasing Demons and it aired on June 1, 2003.

 Burkett Van Kirk:

 QUOTE

 Don presented a good case. He could back it up. Everything he had, he had a receipt for. It’s hard to argue with a receipt. Or a cancelled check. Or an invoice. It’s hard to argue with documentation.

 UNQUOTE

 [Burkett van Kirk in the History Channel’s LBJ vs. The Kennedys: Chasing Demons, 2003] also in [Robert Caro, Passage of Power, p. 664]

 Robert Caro on the Senate Rules Committee investigation into Bobby Baker and Lyndon Johnson

 QUOTE

 Mollenhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register was, in Novemer 1963, working closely – and on virtually a daily basis – with Senator Williams and the Rules Committee staff. He was to write that “It was a few minutes before 10 A.M. when Reynolds and Fitzgerald were escorted to Room 312, where two committee staff members (Van Kirk and Drennan) waited.” Mollenhoff was to report that “in the first two hours, the questioning ranged over the whole scope of Baker’s financial operations,” including those concerning the District of Columbia Stadium (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295-97).

          The journalist Sy Hersh had a series of interviews with Van Kirk, and writes that “at ten o’clock” Reynolds walked with his lawyer into a small hearing room… and began providing … Van Kirk … with eagerly awaited evidence” (Hersh, Dark Side of Camelot, p. 446). Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska, the ranking Republican member of the Rules Committee, who was told in 1963 about Reynolds’s testimony by Van Kirk, confirmed that Reynolds had provided  documentation. Also Curtis Files, Curtis Papers; Curtis interview. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295-98; Rowe, The Bobby Baker Story, pp. 84-86; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, pp. 602, 611.

 UNQUOTE

 [Robert Caro, Passage of Power, pp. 664-665]

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 14 by Robert Morrow

[Ron Bulman]

On 3/4/2024 at 11:53 PM, Robert Montenegro said:

 

I would have to agree with this evaluation.

 

Within the US Secret Service you had overlapping chains of command that by their very nature, could be by-passed & manipulated in real time—especially if key communication relays are being shut down (remember all of the reports of communication networks being shut down in and around Dallas and Washington, D.C.?)

 

 

Thanks, maybe I'm not a lone nut.

[Leslie Sharp]

Before Roger Stone's "LBJ Did It" consumes this thread entirely — and with the indulgence of Robert Montenegro who has generously provided the most comprehensive database of its kind to date — the influence of Clark Mollenhoff's reporting warrants review from a broader perspective than has been promoted thus far:

. . . Sy Hersh notes that Clark Mollenhoff’s reporting included reference to Delaware Senator Williams’ access to an account of [Ellen] Rometsch’s life in D.C. over a period of more than two years, and that having been born in East Germany, she still had relatives on “the other side of the iron curtain.” Mollenhoff had added, either parenthetically or based on information provided him by his sources within the government, “The possibility that her activity might be connected with espionage is of some concern for security investigators because of the high rank of her male companions.” Thus, Mollenhoff revealed to the public that in July, the FBI had started investigating the possibility that Ellen was a Soviet spy, and that “with less than a week’s notice, she and her husband were sent back to Germany . . . at the request of the State Department.” 

Hersh observes that Mollenhoff, who had covered labor corruption during the 1950s, had been an enthusiastic supporter of Bobby Kennedy’s work as general counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee. Writes Hersh, “The two men had grown apart—the specifics of their dispute could not be learned for this book—and the increasingly conservative [emphasis added] Mollenhoff had begun to write extensively, and critically, of the Kennedy administration’s decision in late 1962 to bypass Boeing and award the TFX contract to General Dynamics. Writes Hersh, Mollenhoff’s reporting “was taken most seriously by Bobby Kennedy.”

Indeed, reporter Mollenhoff’s conservative leaning was apparent in public settings when in October of 1962 when he participated on a panel, “Washington Cover-Up” at Georgetown University alongside the president of the Ukraine Congress Committee of America (UCCA) and Georgetown economics professor Lev Dobriansky, evidenced in a photo in The Ukraine Weekly, and in ensuing years Mollenhoff was not shy about his commitment to anti-communism. A brief mention in an article dated Saturday, April 20, 1974 in The Ukraine Weekly, under the headline, “Anti-communist League Holds 7th Conference In Washington,” provides a window into his public support of the World Anti-communist League (WACL). 

Hosted in D.C. by the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), the conference boasted some twenty-five speakers representing both free nations and countries under Communist suppression, including autocrat General Anastazio Somoza of Nicaragua and the Hon. Jaroslav Stetsko, former Prime Minister of Ukraine and head of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) since its inception as well as leader of the Organization of Ukranian Nationalists (OUN). The US affiliate of Stetsko’s ABN, The American Friends of Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations is infamous among Kennedy researchers for its leading member Spas Raikin being tapped to meet Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife Marina as they arrived from the USSR. 

Among the US speakers at the 1974 WACL conference were prominent Republicans including future congressman John McCain, conservative journalist William F. Buckley, and Prof. Dobriansky. The lengthy article in The Ukraine Weekly continues to describe the events, “The first reception, hosted by three members of the American press, John Chamberlain, King Features Syndicate columnist, Robert Hurleigh, Mutual Broadcasting System columnist, and Clark Mollenhoff, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and Washington Bureau Chief of the "Des Moines Register and Star" was held at the National Press Club.”

Of interest to researchers in pursuit of significant domestic and foreign intrigues in the decades following the assassination implicating yet another web of ideologically aligned forces, at the time of the 1974 WACL conference attended by Mollehnhoff and Dobriansky, the Cowles Communication / Des Moines Register board included Ret. General George Olmsted, close friend to Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke who resigned from the navy before President Kennedy had served a full year as president to join Texaco, one of four Rockefeller concerns to secure exclusive drilling rights in Saudi Arabia. Olmsted was the force behind the financial empire that within the decade would be caught up in the BANK OF CREDIT AND COMMERCE (BCCI) scandal. 

Later in this investigation, the network of WACL and Stetsko’s ABN, tied to the assassination of Ukranian Stepan Bandera who led the OUN said to be most closely aligned with Mussolini’s fascism before his assassination, and their affiliation with General Charles Willoughby and General Edwin A. Walker — both named frequently by Lafitte — will assume greater significance.

For now, in light of the Ellen Rometsch scandal widely exposed by Mollenhoff who was first to compare it to the Profumo Affair and the possibility that more than blackmail was in play, it is important to draw attention to several Lafitte entries:

NYC Rest guide ad.
Talk of Ella R. photographs
. . . in NY at Previews
—Lafitte datebook, September 17, 1963

Meet with Willoughby at
(Ella R) others at
49 East 53rd St.
NYC
—Lafitte datebook, October 15, 1963

 

 

[Robert Montenegro]

On 3/12/2024 at 9:17 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Douglas Caddy posted this in the Water Coolers forum today.  I found it interesting.  Given Robert's statement I thought it might be relevant here.

Why Allen Dulles Killed the Kennedys (foreignpolicyjournal.com)

 

I'd have to agree with the premise of Mr. Swanson's article.

 

"...an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials..." murdered the President of the United States.

 

And it was extremely compartmentalized...