Under Cover of Night

[Sandy Larsen]

21 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

I think Lyndon Johnson was planning to murder JFK as soon as he got on the Democratic ticket and as soon as he was actually elected Vice President in November of 1960.

 

OMG, it's really hard to take you seriously when you say things like that.

 

[Robert Morrow]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

OMG, it's really hard to take you seriously when you say things like that.

 

Robert Morrow: "I think Lyndon Johnson was planning to murder JFK as soon as he got on the Democratic ticket and as soon as he was actually elected Vice President in November of 1960."

Lyndon Johnson was EXTREMELY UNHAPPY at being JFK's vice-presidential pick even though LBJ and Sam Rayburn had sexually blackmailed and strongarmed the compromised, unhinged sexual degenerate JFK (and weakling I should add) into putting LBJ onto the 1960 Democratic ticket. John Kennedy was quite concerned that his unhinged, degenerate, hyper-adulterous "lifestyle" would soon explode into the public realm and become a dangerous issue in the 1960 campaign. Evelyn Lincoln, his secretary, famously said she spent "half her time" dealing with JFK's paramours.

I should add the Kennedys were never going to admit to anyone HOW and WHY Lyndon Johnson was able to get onto the 1960 Democratic ticket because it would reflect quite poorly on John Kennedy: showing just how compromised he was and how he buckled under to the strongarm tactics of LBJ/Rayburn.

In the days after the 1960 Democratic convention LBJ would regularly, privately issue death threats against the Kennedys. In fact, he would do this every time (his humiliator) Robert Kennedy's name came up. LBJ spent the 1960 general election drunk as a skunk prowling down the aisles of his hotel rooms trying to get female reporters to have sex with him. LBJ's aides, such as George Reedy, were amazed he could function in this condition. On the night of the 1960 Democratic election, a time when candidates would normally be euphoric at their winning national elections, LBJ was in as a foul, nasty and a sour mood as one could be. That is because he knew the Kennedys totally hated his guts, did not trust him and they had all the power and he had none.

On the day of the 1961 Inauguration, the crooked Bobby Baker, LBJ's longtime partner in kickbacks and crime, his fellow manipulator of the U.S. Senate, said that John Kennedy would not live out his term and that he would die a VIOLENT DEATH.

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. 

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]

The reason John Connally, the LBJ aide who urge Johnson to take the vice presidency, who would tell Robert Caro about literally everything but would not telling him what Lyndon Johnson said about Robert Kennedy was because LYNDON JOHNSON WOULD ISSUE A DEATH THREAT AGAINST ROBERT KENNEDY EVERY TIME RFK'S NAME CAME UP.

On the night of the victory of the JFK-LBJ ticket, or rather early in the morning on Nov. 9^th, 1960, Lyndon Johnson was very unhappy, with a rude and surly attitude. Journalist Margaret Mayer:

Before she was a journalist for the Dallas Times-Herald, Margaret Mayer used to work for LBJ, so she knew him well.

QUOTE

           Lady Bird was happy; she was going to enjoy being Second Lady, she thought, and she did. Besides, she was always glad when a campaign was over, victorious or not. Lyndon? Did he hoot and holler? Did he even smile except for the photographers? He did not. He was demonstrably morose.

          Margaret Mayer: “The night he was elected vice-president – very late, when it was quite apparent that he and Kennedy had been elected – I don’t think I saw a more unhappy man. He had been at the Driskill Hotel with the Homer Thornberrys, the Connallys, Jesse Kellam, and sometime after midnight, maybe one in the morning, they all came downstairs and went across the street to an all-night café on Seventh Street.

          “There was no jubilation. Lyndon looked like he had lost his last friend on earth, and later he was rude to me, very rude, and I tried to remind myself he was unhappy, but he did the same thing the next day in the TV station. He was rude to just about everybody. Now I’ve known Lyndon a great many years, and I’ve never known him to act like that.

          “It was clear to me and a lot of other people that even then he didn’t want to be vice-president.”

 UNQUOTE

 [Merle Miller, Lyndon: An Oral Biography, p. 273]

 Picture of Dallas Times-Herald reporter Margaret Mayer here:

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2013/10/25/jim-lehrer-news-changed-forever-on-nov-22-1963/

 Margaret Mayer - https://discoverlbj.org/item/mayerm

Here is a link to LBJ henchman Bobby Baker's prediction of JFK's VIOLENT DEATH which occured on INAUGURATION DAY January 20, 1961 literally at the moment JFK was sworn in as president:

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.

UNQUOTE

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]

All of these threats occurred YEARS before the JFK assassination and before Lyndon Johnson was issuing threats about JFK to his mistress Madeleine Brown literally on the morning of the JFK assassination.

Lyndon Johnson to Madeleine Brown:

“After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again- that’s no threat- that is a promise!” [Madeleine Brown, Texas in the Morning, p. 166] 

Lyndon Johnson on the morning of 11/22/63 to Madeleine Brown:

“That son-of-a-bitch crazy Yarborough and that goddamn  xxxxing Irish mafia bastard Kennedy, will never embarrass me again!” [Madeleine Brown, Texas in the Morning, p. 167]

Lyndon Johnson on the morning of 11/22/63 to Madeleine Brown:

"His snarling voice jolted me as never before - "That son-of-a-bitch crazy Yarborough and that goddamn xxxxing Irish mafia bastard, Kennedy, will never embarrass me again!"

I managed to say, "I'm looking forward to tonight," when he blasted out even louder, "I've got about a minute to get to the parking lot to hear that bastard!", and he slammed down the phone. I was startled ... an uneasiness gripped me over Lyndon's actions and temper." [Madeleine Duncan Brown, Texas in the Morning, p. 167]

Edited April 23 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

JFK’s notes from the 1960 campaign show he was concerned that his sexual promiscuity would hurt him in the election. JFK wrote these notes after developing laryngitis on the campaign trail:

 “I got into the blondes.”

 “I suppose that if I win my poon [slang term for sex] days are over. I suppose they are going to him me with something before we are finished.”

Web link:  JFK's sexual preferences and fear of being exposed as an adulterer revealed in notes | Daily Mail Online  - Daily Mail, March 9, 2020, Ryan Fahey reporter.

[James DiEugenio]

This book I think is a good example of when theorizing about what happened to JFK takes precedence over data and analysis.

If you read the second part of my review, what Fetter does with Mexico City is another example of making theory first and then shoving data into it.

He wants to conclude that the whole Mexico City mess was about freezing RFK in place.

Which is not, for instance, what John Newman thinks. Or Peter Scott as another example.  And I think they have done more work on that than Fetter has.

Scott, for example, has come up with the whole Phase 1 and Phase 2 idea.  That Mexico CIty was done to jump start a war on Castro, but then when LBJ and Hoover put the brakes to that, the idea was to make Oswald into a sociopathic loner model. 

 I have never seen anyone put forth what this book does.  And as I pointed out, with evidence, he does not prove his idea.

 

[Stu Wexler]

Is he claiming Oswald was part of an RFK assassination plot vs Castro?  I think that goes too far in linking to RFK. But I absolutely think that Oswald may have gotten caught up in a Castro assassination plot and that helps explain some/most of what happened in Mexico City and parts of what happened in New Orleans. I think Garrison proposed that at one point. And I believe David Kaiser thinks it is a distinct possibility. That has been where I have been at for some time.

[Sandy Larsen]

14 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

18 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

OMG, it's really hard to take you seriously when you say things like that.

14 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

Lyndon Johnson was EXTREMELY UNHAPPY at being JFK's vice-presidential pick even though LBJ and Sam Rayburn had sexually blackmailed and strongarmed the compromised, unhinged sexual degenerate JFK (and weakling I should add) into putting LBJ onto the 1960 Democratic ticket.

 

And you come across as a sensationalist.

You're like a walking, talking National Enquirer, IMO. I think that Jim D. must have you on Ignore, given that he doesn't respond to your ridiculous charges.

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

11 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Scott, for example, has come up with the whole Phase 1 and Phase 2 idea.  That Mexico CIty was done to jump start a war on Castro, but then when LBJ and Hoover put the brakes to that, the idea was to make Oswald into a sociopathic loner model. 

 

I agree with Peter Dale Scott on that. The plotters' hoped that Johnson would decide to invade Cuba in retaliation for the assassination. (Or even a first nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, at a time when it was thought that America would prevail.) This is Phase 1.

But if Johnson chose to reject the Cuban/Soviet evidence, the plotters wanted to make sure that the Johnson Administration could blame it on Oswald alone. The reason being so the investigation would focus on Oswald and not on identifying the real plotters (CIA elements). For that purpose, the plotters made arrangements in advance to alter photos and films as necessary and as possible, and to control the autopsy. All so that the evidence would indicate gunshots only from the rear.

That explains how the medical and photographic coverup could be done as quickly as it was! (I used to believe that this was a part of the LBJ/FBI coverup, rather than part of the plotters' plan. But that idea made no sense because the LBJ administration couldn't possibly have acted so fast.)

 

[Robert Morrow]

7 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

And you come across as a sensationalist.

You're like a walking, talking National Enquirer, IMO. I think that Jim D. must have you on Ignore, given that he doesn't respond to your ridiculous charges.

 

 

One of my favorite stories about John Kennedy is told by famous author Lawrence Wright whose father in 1950 was a local banker in Ponca City, Oklahoma and he was also the head of the local Chamber of Commerce. Lawrence Wright's father was asked to arrange a speech for Congressman Kennedy and when he talked with JFK's advance people he was told that Cong. Kennedy required that services of a prostitute for his trip to Ponca City, OK.

Even though JFK was not married in 1950, this is exactly how he behaved his entire adult life up until the moment of his death. The night before JFK's death, on 11-21-1963, he invited his friend Pam Am stewardess Layte Bowden Dopp (Florida State Univ. Homecoming Queen, 1956) up to his suite at the Hotel Texas and she did not go because she assumed Kennedy would make a sexual advance on her. JFK and Jackie were sleeping in different rooms. You can read this in Layte's memoirs Under the Radar in Camelot.

Read the accounts of Evelyn Lincoln, Hy Raskin and Pierre Salinger and one can figure out how Lyndon Johnson was able to strong arm his way onto the 1960 Democratic presidential ticket: SEXUAL BLACKMAIL, threats to embarrass JFK in an election where JFK was already that his rampant womanizing would become a political issue. JFK wrote on a piece of paper that year "I got into the blondes" and he expected to be "hit with something" as the campaign progressed. LBJ and Sam Rayburn could have used any number of JFK's trysts to embarrass Kennedy, but I think the one they honed in on was the JFK-Pamela Turnure affair which Florence Kater had spread far and wide to the media that was not yet reporting on it.

The wife of CIA William King Harvey, who hated JFK's guts, said that John Kennedy required the services of TWO PROSTITUTES when he traveled to Rome. There is a video of Mrs. William King Harvey saying this.

What does this all add up to? John Kennedy was an 1) unhinged 2) hyper-promiscuous 3) compromised 4) reckless rampaging adulterer and it bit him in the fanny when he was shamefully forced to put Lyndon Johnson on the 1960 Democratic ticket as VP. LBJ forced/strongarmed his way onto the ticket because he knew the Kennedys, if elected, would immediately have him removed as Senate Democratic Majority Leader.

JFK later said no one will ever know how LBJ got onto the ticket and that is a good thing: because the truth about is a humiliation of John Kennedy and it shows his weakness in crumbling to bully LBJ as well as his poor character.

Putting LBJ on the ticket was a fatal mistake by JFK and it directly led to his assassination.

Lawrence Wright:

https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1988/november/was-dallas-a-city-of-hate/

QUOTE

Daddy had his own dark thoughts about Kennedy. As a younger man he had had political ambitions of his own. Like Kennedy, he was a war hero; like Kennedy, he hoped to trade his wartime glory for public office. Kennedy was a young congressman from Massachusetts when my father made arrangements for him to speak in Oklahoma, at the Ponca City Chamber of Commerce, which my father chaired. Clearly there were advantages in an alliance between my father and this young political star. My father was expected to supply whatever the congressman needed, and what he needed was an ample and varied supply of Oklahoma women-no, not dinner dates, my father was instructed, just sexual companions. It was the moment my father’s own political aspirations died. He saw then the secret appetites of the public man, and he understood how his own appetite for power might lead him to violate his vows to God. He did not even go to hear Kennedy speak.

UNQUOTE

[“Was Dallas A City of Hate?” Lawrence Wright, D Magazine, 11-01-1988]

Lawrence Wright wrote that in 1988 and in 2013 in Dallas he told the exact same story at a symposium on the JFK assassination in Dallas. You can find it at the 21-minute mark here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_J0j2RYdg

 

 

[Robert Morrow]

Jackie Kennedy’s cartoons from the 1960 campaign show a cartoon of Lone Star “Texans” Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn shaking hands with JFK. The big Texan LBJ is squeezing a tiny frail JFK’s hand to the point that it hurts:

 https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2024/01/jackie-kennedy-knew-all-about-lyndon.html

 Daily Beast article on Jackie’s 1960 campaign cartoons:

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/jackie-kennedys-jfk-cartoons-1 (7th cartoon down is Jackie’s cartoon of how LBJ and Sam Rayburn treated JFK at the 1960 Democratic convention. Notice how LBJ is crushing the hand of a noticeable smaller and diminished and pained John Kennedy.)

 That is a pretty good summary of how LBJ “strongarmed” his way onto the 1960 Democratic ticket. The JFK-LBJ ticket was seemingly an act of friendship but in reality an act of hostility and one of the parties was “forced” to go along with it. No wonder the JFK-LBJ relations were so rancid during JFK’s presidency.

 No wonder Robert Kennedy was out to utterly destroy Lyndon Johnson in the fall of 1963! (I wonder how LBJ would feel about that?)

[James DiEugenio]

No Stu, that is not it.

He is saying that somehow RFK had knowledge of the third phase of the CIA plots to kill Castro.

And therefore when the name Rolando Cubela came up in a CIA cable, this froze him in place.

I replied that if one looks at the CIA IG Report, this does not work.  Because they say that the plots were never  given presidential approval and were kept from all three presidents, Ike, JFK and LBJ. And Helms specifically forbade that Cubela have any kind of meeting with RFK. He does not even prove that RFK saw this cable.

[James DiEugenio]

That is a pretty good short summary of what Scott has put forth Sandy.

And unlike Fetter, it does fit the evidence.

But I have always wondered if Johnson really believed what Hoover was telling him.  Because after proffering this evidence, Hoover tells him that the picture is not Oswald and the voice on the tape is not either.  I have never known what to make of this.  Maybe LBJ realized he was being tricked and decided to call it off?

But this is what is so odd about Fetter,: he never pursues this question!

Edited April 24 by James DiEugenio

[Robert Morrow]

10 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

That is a pretty good short summary of what Scott has put forth Sandy.

And unlike Fetter, it does fit the evidence.

But I have always wondered if Johnson really believed what Hoover was telling him.  Because after proffering this evidence, Hoover tells him that the picture is not Oswald and the voice on the tape is not either.  I have never known what to make of this.  Maybe LBJ realized he was being tricked and decided to call it off?

But this is what is so odd about Fetter,: he never pursues this question!

LBJ's and Hoover's phone call occurred Saturday morning on 11/23/1963. Here is what LBJ did on the afternoon of Saturday 11/23/1963:

Lyndon Johnson personally told Dallas Police Detective Capt. Will Fritz to STOP questioning Oswald on late in the afternoon on 11/23/63

 There is an extremely important passage in Noel Twymann's Bloody Treason; it is on pages 792 to 803 of the hardback version. Twymann details and confirms Lyndon Johnson PERSONALLY calling Will Fritz late on Saturday 11/23/63 and telling him to QUIT interrogating Oswald. 

The fix had been in on Oswald beginning 14 minutes after the JFK assassination when Marguerite Oswald’s 1960 physical description of him to the FBI was broadcast all over the Dallas police radio five times within 24 minutes.

Author Noel Twymann spoke to 2 people: Frank B. Harrell and Jim Leavelle. Here is what Twymann says about his meeting with Harrell:

"He was very cooperative. He remembered the lunch and confirmed that Captain Fritz told that story, that Lyndon Johnson had called and ordered Captain Fritz to pull off questioning Oswald."

 [Noel Twymann, Bloody Treason, p. 794]

"Harrell says that Fritz was 'pulled off because he was getting too close.' He said that in 'a couple of more hours he'd have broken Oswald, but they pulled Oswald out.'"

[Noel Twymann, Bloody Treason, p. 794]

 

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, how did Johnson eventually find out about the plots?

It was the Drew Pearson story through Johnny Roselli.

When that got into the papers, LBJ told Helms he wanted a report on this.

That is how we got the CIA IG Report.

After reading it, Johnson told his assistant he now thought the CIA was involved in JFK's murder.

Although he never said that in public.  The closest he got I think was when he said Oswald was likely not working alone. He had some help.

 

Edited April 24 by James DiEugenio

[Robert Morrow]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, how did Johnson eventually find out about the plots?

It was the Drew Pearson story through Johnny Roselli.

When that got into the papers, LBJ told Helms he wanted a report on this.

That is how we got the CIA IG Report.

After reading it, Johnson told his assistant he now thought the CIA was involved in JFK's murder.

Although he never said that in public.  The closest he got I think was when he said Oswald was likely not working alone. He had some help.

 

Lyndon Johnson on 4/3/1967 told his Chief of Staff Marvin Watson that the CIA had something to do with the JFK assassination https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62412#relPageId=60&search=In_this%20connection,%20Marvin%20Watson%20called%20me%20late%20last%20night (FBI Deke DeLoach memo -see page 2)

I should add that Lyndon Johnson, behind the scenes, told many people for years that FIDEL CASTRO was involved in the JFK assassination. LBJ was immediately, within minutes of JFK's death, blaming a communist for the JFK assassination, which is weird with all the pre-Texas trip radiation about all the hard right wing atmosphere in Dallas.

On 4/3/1967 he told Marvin Watson he was convinced the CIA was involved in the JFK assassination. Marvin Watson, in a panic, late at night called LBJ's man at the FBI Deke DeLoach and told him. DeLoach then memorialized this in an FBI memo dated 4/4/1967.

But a mere 6 weeks after the JFK assassination at Austin, TX's Driskill Hotel LBJ told one of his top mistresses Madeleine Brown that "Texas oil and xxxxing renegade intelligence bastards in Washington" were involved in the JFK assassination (Madeleine Brown, Texas in the Morning, p. 189)

Lyndon Johnson is confirmed as being at the Driskill Hotel by contemporary press reports and his presidential daily schedule late in the evening of 12/31/1963 New Year's Eve.

Madeleine Duncan Brown was a mistress of Lyndon Johnson for 21 years and had a son with him named Steven Mark Brown in 1950. Madeleine mixed with the Texas elite and had many trysts with Lyndon Johnson over the years, including one at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX, on New Year's Eve 12/31/63.

    Late in the evening of 12/31/63, just 6 weeks after the JFK assassination, Madeleine asked Lyndon Johnson:

    "Lyndon, you know that a lot of people believe you had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination."    

    He shot up out of bed and began pacing and waving his arms screaming like a madman. I was scared!

    "That's bullshit, Madeleine Brown!" he yelled. "Don't tell me you believe that crap!"

    "Of course not." I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.

    "It was Texas oil and those xxxxing renegade intelligence bastards in Washington." [said Lyndon Johnson, the new president.]  [Texas in the Morning, p. 189] [LBJ told this to Madeleine in the late night of 12/31/63 in the Driskill Hotel, Austin, TX in room #434 which is now known as the Governor’s Suite and rents for $500-600/night in 2018. LBJ kept this room on retainer for business and as a place to tryst with his mistresses. LBJ and Madeleine spent New Year’s Eve ‘63 together here.  

(Another separate Room is #254 -today it is known as the "Blue Room" or “LBJ Suite” or  the "Presidential room" and rents for $700-1,000/night as a Presidential suite at the Driskill; located on the Mezzanine Level.)

 Madeleine Brown died on June 22, 2002.

 LBJ kept room #434 permanently reserved at the Driskill Hotel. It is now known as the “Governor’s Room” and it is located on the 4^th floor of the Driskill, middle room, facing 6^th street to the South  https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/discovering-lbjs-austin/

 “Discovering LBJ’s Austin” by Madelyn Herzog for Texas Monthly, May 6, 2013:

 QUOTE

 The Johnsons—whose marriage was enduring, if not as idyllic as their courtship—stayed in the Driskill Hotel many times. Room 434, a fourth-floor suite with a balcony overlooking Sixth Street, was permanently reserved for the president. In November 1948, 1960, and 1964, the Johnsons gathered with friends and supporters in the hotel’s Jim Hogg Parlor to watch the election returns come in.

 UNQUOTE

 

Edited April 24 by Robert Morrow

[Sandy Larsen]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

But I have always wondered if Johnson really believed what Hoover was telling him.  Because after proffering this evidence, Hoover tells him that the picture is not Oswald and the voice on the tape is not either.  I have never known what to make of this.  Maybe LBJ realized he was being tricked and decided to call it off?

 

I imagine that LBJ didn't want to make a rush decision on retaliating against a foreign nation, particularly against a nuclear power like the Soviet Union. At the same time, Katzenbach and others were advising against blaming any conspiracy whatsoever, and placing the blame squarely on LHO. That probably seemed like an easy way out to LBJ. If it later turned out there was indeed a communist conspiracy, he could always retaliate in some fashion at that time.