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

[Cliff Varnell]

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I totally 100% agree with you that Averell Harriman was the driving force behind the Diem coup and very probably the assassination of Diem.

Why was that?  Because Diem sought rapprochement with the North, threatening continued US military presence in SE Asia?

3 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I just don't see any evidence that Harriman 3 weeks later arranged the murder of JFK, especially if Lansdale was involved in JFK's murder.

Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57:

<quote on>

At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association. </q>

The top four Kremlinologists at the time were George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, Llewelyn Thompson and Averell Harriman.

According to their biographies, Bohlen was traveling in Europe that day, and Kennan spent a quiet day of mourning up in Princeton with Robert Oppenheimer.  In his WC testimony Thompson said there were no discussions of Soviet involvement.

So Harriman lied.  How could he possibly have known there was no Soviet involvement unless he knew who did it?

He had Diem whacked to insure continued US military presence in So. Vietnam — the same motive for killing Kennedy.  Or so I reasonably speculate.

I don’t buy the claim Lansdale was involved with the JFKA.  He and David Phillips were psy-op specialists, more suited to the LHOA.

 

[Robert Morrow]

3 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Why was that?  Because Diem sought rapprochement with the North, threatening continued US military presence in SE Asia?

Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57:

<quote on>

At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association. </q>

The top four Kremlinologists at the time were George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, Llewelyn Thompson and Averell Harriman.

According to their biographies, Bohlen was traveling in Europe that day, and Kennan spent a quiet day of mourning up in Princeton with Robert Oppenheimer.  In his WC testimony Thompson said there were no discussions of Soviet involvement.

So Harriman lied.  How could he possibly have known there was no Soviet involvement unless he knew who did it?

He had Diem whacked to insure continued US military presence in So. Vietnam — the same motive for killing Kennedy.  Or so I reasonably speculate.

I don’t buy the claim Lansdale was involved with the JFKA.  He and David Phillips were psy-op specialists, more suited to the LHOA.

 

On the weekend of the JFK assassination, Lyndon Johnson made multiple attempts to convince others that the Soviets or communists were involved in the JFK assassination. LBJ tried this with key JFK aide Ted Sorensen and also Alexander Haig came across this as well. Doesn't that seem a tad suspicious to you? A deflection? LBJ's behavior. I need to look up those references for you.

[Roger Odisio]

36 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

On the weekend of the JFK assassination, Lyndon Johnson made multiple attempts to convince others that the Soviets or communists were involved in the JFK assassination. LBJ tried this with key JFK aide Ted Sorensen and also Alexander Haig came across this as well. Doesn't that seem a tad suspicious to you? A deflection? LBJ's behavior. I need to look up those references for you.

I don't think that's right, Robert.  Johnson raised the idea of a war with the SU to bully Warren into heading the WC to frame Oswald.

One of the small reasons he so readily agreed to the the Vietnam war, besides disagreeing with JFK's plan to pull out, was to give the war mongers something to get them off his back about a war with the SU.  Which he wanted no part of. He was evil but not that kind of crazy.

After Bobby, Sorenson was the closest aide to JFK in the administration. Johnson had a problem with all of the close aides selling them the Oswald story.  But I doubt if he used the treat of a war with the SU to get them to go along. It would not have worked with them and he knew it.

[Robert Morrow]

22 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

I don't think that's right, Robert.  Johnson raised the idea of a war with the SU to bully Warren into heading the WC to frame Oswald.

One of the small reasons he so readily agreed to the the Vietnam war, besides disagreeing with JFK's plan to pull out, was to give the war mongers something to get them off his back about a war with the SU.  Which he wanted no part of. He was evil but not that kind of crazy.

After Bobby, Sorenson was the closest aide to JFK in the administration. Johnson had a problem with all of the close aides selling them the Oswald story.  But I doubt if he used the treat of a war with the SU to get them to go along. It would not have worked with them and he knew it.

I have not had time to type in the relevant sections of Ted Sorensen's book and Al Haig's memoir. That is exactly what LBJ was doing. Give me a couple of days. I do have this from Alfred Steinberg, a seasoned insider journalist of the era. This is LBJ at Parkland Hospital already pushing "The commies did it."

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 Medecine 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. 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

Robert, your challenge is to find LBJ claims of a commie conspiracy after the 7pm EST meeting with Harriman — other than what he told Warren to get the Chief Justice on board with the new commission.

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks, Robert!

Just wanted to add my name to the list of people thanking you for this database of probable Kennedy assassination conspirators.

In my thirty years of research on this subject, I’ve come up with only a much shorter list of names that I’m convinced were involved in the killing, but every one of them appears on your list in a prominent way!  Thanks so much!
 

[Cliff Varnell]

9 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I have not had time to type in the relevant sections of Ted Sorensen's book and Al Haig's memoir. That is exactly what LBJ was doing. Give me a couple of days. I do have this from Alfred Steinberg, a seasoned insider journalist of the era. This is LBJ at Parkland Hospital already pushing "The commies did it."

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 Medecine 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. 

 

Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock, pg 289.

<quote on>

On Friday night the White House placed telephone calls to Dallas DA Henry Wade, to Texas State Attorney General Carr and Police Chief Curry requesting that they avoid any official statements, charges, or discussion relating to conspiracy.  Johnson’s aide Cliff Carter was making the calls and if the individual in question raised objections, President Johnson was used as the authority for the message.  </q>

[Robert Morrow]

6 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock, pg 289.

<quote on>

On Friday night the White House placed telephone calls to Dallas DA Henry Wade, to Texas State Attorney General Carr and Police Chief Curry requesting that they avoid any official statements, charges, or discussion relating to conspiracy.  Johnson’s aide Cliff Carter was making the calls and if the individual in question raised objections, President Johnson was used as the authority for the message.  </q>

While at the SAME TIME, Lyndon Johnson was telling everyone he could BEHIND THE SCENES that JFK had been killed by a COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY. And within a week, LBJ was telling this to Earl Warren as well, saying millions will die in a NUCLEAR WAR if we don't cover this thing up. This was a deflection.

LBJ did not want any public talk of "conspiracy" because ... he had just "conspired" to murder JFK.

[Robert Morrow]

15 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Robert, your challenge is to find LBJ claims of a commie conspiracy after the 7pm EST meeting with Harriman — other than what he told Warren to get the Chief Justice on board with the new commission.

Ted Sorensen and Al Haig. I have not had time to type this up.

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

While at the SAME TIME, Lyndon Johnson was telling everyone he could BEHIND THE SCENES that JFK had been killed by a COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY. And within a week, LBJ was telling this to Earl Warren as well, saying millions will die in a NUCLEAR WAR if we don't cover this thing up. This was a deflection.

LBJ did not want any public talk of "conspiracy" because ... he had just "conspired" to murder JFK.

“Everyone he could”?

Sorensen, Haig and Warren were “everyone he could”?

Not much of a lobbying effort.  Looks like ol’ Lyndon took his marching orders from the “Wise Men” elites.

As always.

https://www.politico.com/story/2010/03/johnson-meets-with-the-wise-men-march-25-1968-034945

Johnson meets with ‘The Wise Men,’ March 25, 1968

On this day in 1968, as pessimism over U.S. prospects in Vietnam deepened, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with 14 informal advisers. In 1945, some of them had forged a bipartisan foreign policy based on containing the Soviet Union. They went on to craft key institutions like NATO, the World Bank and the Marshall Plan. They were known, collectively, as “The Wise Men.”

They met with LBJ after being briefed by officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. They had been informed of a request from Gen. William Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, for additional troops in the wake of perceived U.S. setbacks in the Tet Offensive.

Present at the White House meeting were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Dean, Douglas Dillon, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Robert Murphy, Cyrus Vance and Gens. Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. 

In the words of Acheson, who summed up the recommendations from 11 of the men, “we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.” Murphy, Taylor and Fortas dissented. 

That was a change from Johnson’s first series of such meetings, on Nov. 1-2, 1967. Then, the Wise Men had unanimously opposed leaving Vietnam. “Public discontent with the war is now wide and deep,” Bundy had said, but he told Johnson to “stay the course.” 

<quote off>

After the March 1968 meeting Lyndon dropped out of the Prez race and began peace negotiations with North Vietnam.

Who headed those negotiations?

W. Averell Harriman.

 

Edited March 9 by Cliff Varnell

[Roger Odisio]

Cliff:

 

Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock, pg 289.

 

<quote on>

 

On Friday night the White House placed telephone calls to Dallas DA Henry Wade, to Texas State Attorney General Carr and Police Chief Curry requesting that they avoid any official statements, charges, or discussion relating to conspiracy.  Johnson’s aide Cliff Carter was making the calls and if the individual in question raised objections, President Johnson was used as the authority for the message.  </q>

 

Robert:  While at the SAME TIME, Lyndon Johnson was telling everyone he could BEHIND THE SCENES that JFK had been killed by a COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY. And within a week, LBJ was telling this to Earl Warren as well, saying millions will die in a NUCLEAR WAR if we don't cover this thing up. This was a deflection.

 

LBJ did not want any public talk of "conspiracy" because ... he had just "conspired" to murder JFK.

 

RO: These two points are contradictory, Robert. Johnson was raising the specter of a commie conspiracy with Warren soon after the murder in order to convince Warren he was needed to head the WC.  The point for Warren to understand was that the public must be reassured that Oswald did it or all hell would break loose.  That was to be Warren's main job.  Johnson needed reassurance that Warren was willing to do that.

 

Johnson had carefully assembled the guys he could trust to frame Oswald. Including his co-conspirator Allen Dulles, who was to make sure the CIA was kept out of it. Johnson had already stopped investigations in Texas and the Congress in order to centralize everything in the WC where the outcome could be controlled.

 

As to the claim that Johnson was telling everyone he could that the commies did it, the question you must ask is, why would he do that?  If he was really trying to convince people of that, was he willing to risk war with the SU as the logical outcome of his claim?  He knew there were many groups, not just generals, who would eagerly snap up the idea of a war with the SU.

 

The answer is clearly no. He knew that Kennedy had rejected out of hand the proposal of the generals for a preemptive strike on the SU early in his administration when intelligence was saying the US had a clear weapon superiority.  That superiority apparently was gone by the fall of '63. 

 

The idea of MAD (mutually assured destruction) was taking hold.  Less that a decade later Nixon signed the ABM treaty with the SU based on the idea that MAD was the real deterrent to nuclear war, not missile defense systems.  Those systems in fact made war more likely if some fool thought a preemptive strike could work.

 

Again, Johnson was evil but not crazy enough to want a war with the SU. One reason he so readily agreed to the Vietnam war was get the generals off his back about confronting the SU. In those days the SU was unlikely to intervene in Vietnam, which was China's bailiwick.

 

Johnson was a master manipulator.  In the early days after the murder did he mention he thought the murder was a commie conspirator?  Yeah, probably. For what reason in each case we will probably never know, nor is it worthwhile to spend time trying to figure out. One thing is clear, those statements were not made with the aim of inciting a war.  He had chased the presidency for too long to have it go up in smoke with a nuclear war.

 

Ironically that happened anyway, slowly, with the disaster that was Vietnam.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

Apart from  LBJ involvement in the plot to kill JFK.  It served his purposes to alert Warren  of the possible threat of  USSR involvement and the risk of nuclear war,  and then to switch his story after meeting Harriman, if  in fact as Cliff says, he was taking orders from the "Wise men" or even just confused and relying on Harriman as his foremost Soviet authority. Any discrepancy in LBJ's private statements and public announcements would be understood by Warren and others.

 

Sort of an aside, in light of the Nichter's recording where Lodge informs JFK  that Diem was to be overthrown, and JFK expresses some regret but acquiesces  and his eventual personal recording made in early November 63 where he expresses regret after the deed was done.

 

I've been to many countries in the last 5 years  and Vietnam is truly fascinating. I was in "Ho Chi Minh City," affectionately referred to by the natives there as "Saigon." I went to  Independence Palace, the seat of government that was overthrown in 1975. I took many pictures there  as well as the Vietnam War Museum. I took this picture of Nguyen Cao Ky's office (below)

 

Ky's involvement in the 1963 coup against President Diem led to his appointment to the air force command. Following a military coup led by Nguyen Van Thieu in 1965, Ky became premier, and was Nguyen Van Thieu's vice-presidential running mate in the 1967 election.

 

Anyway, look whose picture is immediately behind where his left shoulder would be.

I take this to mean, whatever JFK's misgivings about how Diem was disposed of, the leaders of the coup thought they had JFK's good graces.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/077qbxDs-JBr-fuahbjvMtVPw

JFK's personal recording on Nov 1st, 1963,   expressing regret about details of Diem's removal,and taking blame and assigning who was on which  side of the decision. .

 

https://fullmeasure.news/news/shows/jfk-vietnamK

[Joe Bauer]

Over the years I have occasionally considered the following contemplation:

A different take on the response of every branch and ancillary entities of our government and military to the assassination of the President of our nation.

If any foreign adversary nation government had actually facilitated the murder of JFK, even if brilliantly fire wall distanced from them officially through 50 layers of misdirection to the most disconnected hit squad or even deranged or Manchurian Candidate patsy...one would think that every intelligence gathering agency in America would have combined their world's best skills into one massive, all-out, act-of-war level of concern cooperative effort to find out if they did and which one.

Our President was just taken out!

Outside of a full-on attack with troops and bombs, the murder of your adversary's chief of state must rank as the most aggressive act-of-war action an enemy state could perpetrate upon another - right?

If that highest level act-of-war aggression scenario actually took place due to the planning and coordination of one of our adversary nations, our entire military, every intelligence gathering entity, every government investigative agency, every elective branch of our government, every news organization should have immediately mobilized their efforts into one "massive and cooperative" single intelligence gathering effort equal to or at least close to that which we undertook upon the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

By 1963, I have to believe we had the most sophisticated and skilled intelligence gathering apparatus ever created. If there was proof ( even half ) that JFK's murder was planned and carried out by an adversary nation no matter how deviously and cleverly disguised as the action of a lone nut...we would have discovered the true perpetrators through an all-out combined and cooperative effort to do so imo.

I think the huge majority of Americans fully assumed that our most powerful military and civilian leaders and organizations would be so outraged at the murder of their President that they would have automatically blasted their way into the unprecedented all-out fully cooperative investigative effort as I describe above.

Did they? Did the Chief's of Staff, the Pentagon, every military intelligence branch, the FBI, etc. work as one? 

If they did, even to a higher than normal degree, I can't accept that they wouldn't have found out who was truly responsible for the murder of their President.

And if it was the Soviet Union, please enlighten us to the reciprocal punitive actions we took in response?

LBJ put the fear of all-out war in the minds of those he needed to follow his post-JFKA agenda. Strongly inferring to them that it was the SU that had JFK taken out...but we couldn't retaliate to save the world from even greater death and destruction?

So, if true, shouldn't we still have done something extra-ordinarily punitive to them? Or, did we give the Soviets a non-retaliatory pass on the JFKA?

I mean, if LBJ's scary warning excuse to Earl Warren and others was true...and we didn't respond in some half-way serious degree what else could you call it? 

Or we didn't because we knew they were not the perpetrators?

I don't think our military and intel-world and civilian agencies did seriously combine their brain trusts into investigating who really did JFK. And if so...that suggest to me they weren't seriously committed to finding the main behind-the-scenes perpetrators.

Or, they already knew the guilty party wasn't a foreign adversary nation?

Just some rage filled minimum wage loser wanna be. Who just got lucky with one of the worst and cheapest old rifles one can buy to defeat a small army of security forces protecting the President of the United States.

And who then ran down some old wooden stairs to a "see inside window" employee lunch room to grab a Dr. Pepper, calmy drink this and then walk down to the first floor entrance lobby to stand around for at least a few seconds more before then walking a couple of blocks to get on a city bus and then catching a taxi to complete his successful escape run?

Did Dulles, Lemay, LBJ, Hoover et al really want to know who did JFK? 

 

 

Edited March 10 by Joe Bauer

[Joe Bauer]

1 hour ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

Anyway, look whose picture is immediately behind where his left shoulder would be.

JFK...and whose picture was just behind his right shoulder...Ed Lansdale.

[Benjamin Cole]

When the GOP-Bush stole Ohio and the 2004 election through absentee ballots, they had a cover story in place and even promulgated during voting. It was the "evangelical" vote that put Bush over the top. 

This is standard procedure for a wide range of covert ops. Have a plausible cover story and few experts ready to turn media in the "right" direction. 

After the JFKA, there was chaos, wildly varying stories and accusations, loose cannons everywhere. 

This suggests that the perps of the JFKA were not hooked into a larger power structure, pre-JFKA. 

Just IMHO.