Under Cover of Night

[James DiEugenio]

Those are two really good books Ron, especially Battling Wall Street.  I think that is the best book on Kennedy's economic policies. The chapter there on the steel crisis is the best I ever saw.

And I think this essay is in the other book of his The Kennedy Assassination Cover Up. 

Yes, I think its accurate to say that McCloy made that remark.  At least I have seen it credited to him more than once.  And I have to say he sure as heck followed through on it as anyone can tell from what he did with CBS in 1967. Which we tried to show in JFK Revisited.

If you look at the line up, there were two Republicans from Congress, one from the senate and one from the House; there were two Democrats from congress, same parallel. You then had two exalted statesmen types in McCloy and Dulles, and then you had the Chief Justice who was a former prosecutor and was now such a hero to the liberal community for Brown vs Board and the Gideon case, which began the public defender standard. I think that is the cross section that LBJ was trying to effect. And I think LBJ understood that in those Ozzie and Harriet days, the media would make no objection to its superifciality.

 

Edited April 27 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Rigby]

9 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

 Not to digress but I've wondered for years about the selection and role of John J. McCloy.  The "Chairman" of the East Coast Establishment.  He (also?) said they were there to "settle the dust" if I remember right.

Two views on Pax Americana: 

John J. McCloy, letter to fellow Philadelphian George Wharton Pepper:

"In the light of what has happened, I would take a chance on this country using its strength tyrannously…We need, if you will, a Pax Americana," (Kai Bird. The Chairman: John J. McCloy: The Making of the American Establishment [NY: Simon & Schuster, 1992], p.661) 

John F. Kennedy, speech delivered at the American University in Washington, June 10^th, 1963:

"What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by weapons of war…"

[Joe Bauer]

14 minutes ago, Paul Rigby said:

Two views on Pax Americana: 

John J. McCloy, letter to fellow Philadelphian George Wharton Pepper:

"In the light of what has happened, I would take a chance on this country using its strength tyrannously…We need, if you will, a Pax Americana," (Kai Bird. The Chairman: John J. McCloy: The Making of the American Establishment [NY: Simon & Schuster, 1992], p.661) 

John F. Kennedy, speech delivered at the American University in Washington, June 10^th, 1963:

"What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by weapons of war…"

There it is.

[Robert Morrow]

10 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Great article by Donald Gibson.  Hard to believe it's nearly 30 years old.  I've got Battling Wall Street and The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up.  All I've read by him is good.  Not to digress but I've wondered for years about the selection and role of John J. McCloy.  The "Chairman" of the East Coast Establishment.  He (also?) said they were there to "settle the dust" if I remember right.

John J. McCloy - an arms control hardliner who JFK had to remove (and replace with Averell Harriman) to get a deal done with the Soviets on the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in summer 1963 - was also very good friends with Lyndon Johnson's pal Texan Clint Murchison, Sr. and also very good friends with LBJ's long time fixer, legal genius Abe Fortas. I happened to be friends with Barr McClellan and he has told me many times that Ed Clark, who admitted being involved in the JFK assassination, was the lawyer for the Murchison interests of Dallas. In fact Frank Denius, another lawyer at Ed Clark's law firm, was the nephew of Wofford Cain who was a business partner with Clint Murchison.

1) there is this nugget from 1963 which shows the close personal ties between John J. McCloy and Clint Murchison, Sr.: 

"That summer, McCloy relaxed more than he had for many years. He hunted whitewings with Clint Murchison on the Texas oil man's Mexico farm." [Kai Bird, The Chairman, p. 542] That is the SAME John McCloy who Lyndon Johnson appoints to the Warren Commission on 11/29/63 later in that year.

 Now check out this passage from the biography Clint: Clint Williams Murchison by Ernestine Orrick Van Buren who was Murchison's personal secretary for 20 years. 

    "Clint was in La Jolla during the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, in July 1960, and he avidly followed the proceedings on television. The avalanche of superb organization which gave John F. Kennedy the nomination on the first ballot was a huge disappointment. When the word was flashed that Lyndon Johnson had accepted the vice-presidential spot on the Kennedy ticket, Clint Murchison listened in cold disbelief.
    In December 1963, soon after Lyndon Johnson became president following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there was a soft rap on the bedroom door where Clint was napping. It was Warren Tilley, butler at Gladoak Farms. "Washington calling, Mr. Murchison. The president [Lyndon Johnson] wants to speak with you. 
    A brief silence followed. Then through the closed door came the muffled voice of Clint Murchison. "Tell the president I can't hear him." Clint resumed his nap."*
*Virginia Murchison Linthicum Interview, September 20, 1980
         [Ernestine Orrick Van Buren, Clint, pp. 317-318]

John J. McCloy was a Good Friend of LBJ insider Abe Fortas who helped Lyndon Johnson pick the Warren Commission

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4-wWuVBbqU

 LBJ and Abe Fortas, 11/29/63, 1:15 PM

 LBJ: “What would you think about John McCloy instead of General Norstad?”

 Abe Fortas: “I think that would be great. He is a wonderful man and a very dear friend of mine. I am devoted to him.”

 Jim DiEugenio: Lyndon Johnson and John McCloy were friends and colleagues:

 QUOTE

 As Kai Bird’s biography of McCloy, The Chairman, makes clear, Johnson and McCloy were friends and colleagues. But there is another point about how Midgley was convinced to go along with McCloy’s view of the Warren Commission. Around the same time he married Furness, he received a significant promotion, elevated to executive editor of the network’s flagship news program, “The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.” This made him, in essence, the top news editor at CBS, a decision that required the consultation and approval of Salant, Cronkite and Stanton – and very likely the CNEC.

 UNQUOTE

 [“How CBS News Aided the JFK Cover-up,” Jim DiEugenio, Consortium News, 4/22/2016]

 

[Robert Morrow]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Great article by Donald Gibson.  Hard to believe it's nearly 30 years old.  I've got Battling Wall Street and The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up.  All I've read by him is good.  Not to digress but I've wondered for years about the selection and role of John J. McCloy.  The "Chairman" of the East Coast Establishment.  He (also?) said they were there to "settle the dust" if I remember right.

November 23, 1963 – John McCloy cables the new president Lyndon Johnson and offers to do anything he can to help LBJ

 QUOTE

           On the morning of November 22, 1963, McCloy had breakfast with Dwight Eisenhower, and shortly afterward heard the news from Dallas. The young president he had served in so many ways was dead.

           Early the next morning, he cabled Lyndon Johnson that he was “stunned and shocked at the terrible loss to the nation … If I can do anything to help, you know I am available.”

 UNQUOTE

 [Kai Bird, The Chairman: John J. McCloy: The Making of the American Establishment, p. 544]

And the answer was "Well, you can help me cover up the JFK assassination."

Remember John McCloy had a working relationship with LBJ and he was extremely good friends with LBJ insiders Clint Murchison, Sr. and Abe Fortas. Because he was such good friends with these people McCloy, like all the other true insiders, was acutely aware of the LBJ-Kennedy "hate relationship."

Clint Murchison, Sr. (1895-1969) - https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/murchison-clinton-williams-sr

QUOTE

He acquired numerous life-insurance companies, banks, bus lines, publishing firms, heavy industrial building materials companies, and an assortment of companies serving such leisure activities as hunting, fishing, travel, and gardening. He was a cattleman throughout his life and acquired extensive ranches in Mexico and East Texas. He experimented in improving cattle strains and in developing superior grazing grasses. He was an avid sportsman, who entertained friends, business associates, and celebrities at his private hunting and fishing retreats in Texas and Mexico.

UNQUOTE

 

 

Edited April 27 by Robert Morrow

[James DiEugenio]

Kai Bird's book is a very powerful portrait of McCloy.

And its not pretty.  I mean wait until you get to the Klaus Barbie stuff and the Japanese internment.

Which leads to the question:  why did JFK have him in his administration?

[Roger Odisio]

On 4/26/2024 at 7:37 PM, James DiEugenio said:

The Warren Commission was not Johnson's invention, that is not accurate.

Johnson did not want a blue ribbon commission. 

He had to be convinced to do it by, first Eugene Rostow, and then Alsop.  And Alsop then told him that the Washington Post was going to come out with that idea also. LBJ did not want it and Alsop's conversation with him was a masterful piece of flattery, persuasion, and massaging to get him to construct it.

I mean, everyone knows what happened after. It was a mess.  But what did anyone expect with Hoover running the inquiry?  Hoover actually was on record as closing the case before Katzenbach was. In fact, I now think that his memo the night before might have been the model for Katzenbach's.  About 80 per cent of the inquiry  was done by Hoover. In second was the Secret Service, and as we all know--Elmer Moore for one--they were about as bad as the FBI was. Does anyone even want to talk about the CIA, and that stunt they pulled in Mexico CIty?  Which even Hoover saw through after about six weeks.

So with those three bodies doing the inquiry, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion.  But then you had the MSM basically encouraging it and accepting it and then giving it a rocket boost when it came out. It is really bizarre to me how the MSM did not scream, or even object, to the WC having closed hearings.  Not one peep.  And the only witness who complained was Mark Lane.  I mean closed hearings on the public execution of the president?

As per Dulles, remember, Talbot in his biography of the man, revealed that he was the one commissioner who lobbied for the job.  Therefore, it might not have been solely LBJ's decision on that one.  But he clearly understand after that this was a mistake, and I think he tried to cover it up.

Gibson does a good job going through what happened in the 5 days between the death of Oswald and Johnson announcing the WC. He has the timeframe right.  He rightly emphasized that until Oswald was killed there would have been a trial, not an investigation.

 

But his conclusion that the WC created to do that investigation was not Johnson's idea, but came from others like Alsop and Rostow is not supported by his article.

 

In his call, Joe Alsop suggests Johnson appoint three jurists, one from Texas, to take the FBI's findings and present them to the public.  The Left, he says, will not buy an FBI report and anyway they don't write very well. He specifically says he is "not suggesting an investigative body" to Johnson. Instead he is offering PR, not legal, advice about how to handle the process.

 

Rostow's advice is no more on point.  He suggests a panel of distinguished citizens--maybe former Gov Tom Dewey, or Nixon, *but no Supreme Court Justices* because the public has been so shook by the behavior of the Dallas police they are not believing anything.

 

Do either of these suggestions sound like what became the Warren Commission? If not, how did we get the kind of WC we know about, where what happened that day is ignored or distorted in order to frame Oswald.

 

Johnson's initial response to Alsop is a glaringly false attempt at diversion. He doesn't want people to think he is pulling the strings.  He says he favors a Texas investigation by the AG there because they have jurisdiction. We can't have outsiders (like him!) telling Texans their integrity is no good. There can be no carpetbag trials. We're not going to haul people from Texas and try them in New York.

 

Reminder: Johnson is the guy who ordered Kennedy's body to be snatched from Dr. Rose. who had jurisdiction in Texas, so he could take it back to DC for a fake autopsy.

 

The real question here is not whose idea it was to create some kind of official body to lay the facts in front of the public. No, the real question is whose idea was it to create a commission for the purpose we know the WC carried out. We know that person or persons wasn't Alsop or Rostow or anyone Gibson mentions in his article.

 

Johnson also knew the public needed to be reassured, but he knew there was more to forming a commission than that.  He needed to have confidence that the official investigating body would reach the preordained conclusion that Oswald was guilty and acted alone.  Naming the 6 figureheads and Allen Dulles as commissioners was the first step in that process. Hiring only a bunch of lawyers to massage the evidence followed.

 

A little background will help with the question.

 

When the assassinations planners decided to go with the Oswald story but kill Kennedy in a crossfire with multiple shooters, they knew there would be a lot of work to do to obscure that discrepancy, to make their story believable. They planned to eliminate Oswald before he could talk to a lawyer, and they did.  That meant there would have to be an official investigation into the murder. They must have worked out a plan for that too before the murder.

 

For much of the important part of the coverup work--control of the body and autopsy, creating the official investigation, etc.--they would have to depend to some extent on the new president, Johnson. They would need some assurances from him on his role in the coverup, as well as his acquiescence to making the policy changes that motivated the murder in the first place. They were not going to go ahead with the murder without a plan they had confidence in to get away with it, blame someone else, and get the policy changes they wanted.

 

That means Johnson must have participated in the pre-murder planning.  In that process it's likely he developed some ideas of the kind of official investigation that would be needed once Oswald was murdered.  The actual Warren Commission that Johnson proposed, for whom he picked the commissioners, and whose perfidy we saw in action, *was* Johnson's idea. It was his solution to the dilemma.

 

 

 

[Roger Odisio]

On 4/26/2024 at 4:29 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Oh I don't know, Roger. Maybe whatever it was that got the whole police force out to arrest Oswald... which they did at Texas Theater.

I didn't say it was valid evidence.

 

 

Say what?

LBJ was hoping for a death bed confession from Oswald. Why would he have hoped for that if he knew Oswald was innocent?

Of course LBJ and Hoover thought Oswald was guilty.

 

 

That IS the easy choice!

 

 

I'll let J. Edgar Hoover tell you. Here is what he said to LBJ over the phone regarding the evidence implicating Cuba:

"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, but the information was that he was there on the 18th of September in Mexico City and we are able to prove conclusively he was in New Orleans that day. Now then they've changed the dates. The story came in changing the dates to the 28th of September and he was in Mexico City on the 28th. 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."

Oswald reportedly had been paid $6500 for the hit in the Cuban Consulate. And was paling around with Silvia Duran and some Cuban officials while in Mexico City. (This according Elena Garro, June Cobb, and Gilberto Alvarado.) And then there was the evidence that Oswald met with KGB assassinations chief Valeriy Kostikov at the Soviet Embassy. And the letter Oswald supposedly sent to the Soviet Embassy in Washington DC saying that he had conducted his business with Comrade Kostin (i.e. Kostikov).

 

One other quick answer.  When they arrested Oswald at the theatre shortly after the murder, they had no evidence of him killing Kennedy. They arrested him because he was the designated patsy.

[Joe Bauer]

Sometimes it makes more sense to just go back to the simplest look at the reality of America in 1963 regards the most powerful groups and individuals who owned and controlled the majority of it's wealth, political, military and intelligence agency influence and policies, and to honestly and responsibly acknowledge and understand how truly powerful they were and how everyone of them felt JFK and RFK were "the greatest threat " to their status quo.

JFK was truly...their mortal enemy! 

Organized crime ( massive wealth and influence nationally and even internationally. ) 

Texas oil ( richest men on Earth at that time) and everyone connected to them including corrupt politicians both in Texas and D.C., especially LBJ. Throw in Hoover, McCloy and so many others.

Eastern establishment wealth and power. McCloy and others.

Old school Intelligence agency power and influence. Dulles, Angleton, Cabell, the whole cabal. How much did Dulles hate JFK both before and especially after he was insultingly fired by him? "He thought he was a little God!"

Top military generals like Lemay and Lemnitzer and probably most of the military high command.

Massive, well established corporate interests made hugely rich by good-ole-boy government contract influence that JFK was not a part of. Include those with international business wealth like United Fruit, Pepsi and hundreds of others. JFK's anti-Pax Americana ideology was anathema to them all.

Hundreds of thousands of hot-headed Cuban expatriates who blamed the BOP on JFK and wanted his head.

Tens of millions of raging hate filled segregationists who considered liberal racial policy JFK and RFK their worst enemy ever.

The most powerful and wealthy segregationist organizations were run by super aggressive extremists types ( Joseph Milteer? ) who wanted JFK dead. Not countered and/or politically marginalized ..."dead!"

There's even more.

All of these America based JFK hating and fearing groups breathed a sigh of interest protecting relief when JFK was removed...with many of them even celebrating his death. 

"Life in the Murchison household was joyous when JFK was killed. Like the champagne and caviar flowed for a week. I was the only one who grieved for JFK and his family." Live-in Virginia Murchison seamstress/housekeeper Mae Newman.

One can imagine the mood in the Bill Harvey household ( Harvey was CIA chief in Rome at that time) upon learning of JFK's death. Harvey's widow in a later life interview related her and her husband's deep hatred for not just JFK but his wife and RFK too.  Ms. Harvey described them as "real scum."

At the same time Ms. Harvey recounted her husband's deep affection and respect for their great friend Mafioso Johnny Roselli. "My husband used to say that if he were in a jam..."Johnny" would be the one he'd want riding shotgun with him."  Crazy, seditious minded talk I know...but true! 

JFK was looked upon as a threat more and hated more and his death wished for more ( and celebrated more ) by so many super wealthy, corrupt and powerful interests in this country well beyond any foreign country and their leaders and people.

In total much more a suspect motivation factor in the consideration of who gained the most by his removal...imo anyways.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 29 by Joe Bauer

[James DiEugenio]

Roger, your reply to Gibson above is, to say the least, rather weird.

Plain and simple: LBJ did not want a blue ribbon commission. 

The record indicates that the first guy to suggest this to the White House was Gene Rostow on the 24th. RIght after Ruby shot Oswald. And Rostow had already talked to Katzenbach.  Rostow tells Moyers this had to be done, the appointment of a commission and Moyers  tells him he will bring it to Johnson's attention. And Rostow said he had talked to one other person about this matter already.  Further, Walter Jenkins was also cognizant of the idea that day.  Since he wrote a note about it.

On the 25th, in a call with Hoover, Johnson voices his opposition to it and calls it "very bad".  But he is aware that some have gone to the Washington Post about the idea. He wants an FBI report that would then be passed on to the AG. HIs second suggestion is a Texas Court of Inquiry to be supplemented by the FBI.

Now that is where LBJ was right before the Alsop call on the 25th and its all in B and W, right in Gibson's essay.

It was clearly the Alsop call that changed Johnson's mind on this issue. Because at the beginning of the call, he still is insisting that the Texas authorities take the inquiry since its a state crime.  And he thinks they should be supplemented by the FBI.

It was at this point that Alsop took over the call and he invokes the Washington Post and the name of people like Dean Acheson to serve on the Commission.  And the FBI would serve as the investigatory body.

WIthin 72 hours LBJ reversed himself and supported the Commission.  So no, the Warren Commission was not Johnson's idea. The other stuff you have in there does not relate to what Gibson is saying here. Its theorizing.

[Robert Morrow]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Roger, your reply to Gibson above is, to say the least, rather weird.

Plain and simple: LBJ did not want a blue ribbon commission. 

The record indicates that the first guy to suggest this to the White House was Gene Rostow on the 24th. RIght after Ruby shot Oswald. And Rostow had already talked to Katzenbach.  Rostow tells Moyers this had to be done, the appointment of a commission and Moyers  tells him he will bring it to Johnson's attention. And Rostow said he had talked to one other person about this matter already.  Further, Walter Jenkins was also cognizant of the idea that day.  Since he wrote a note about it.

On the 25th, in a call with Hoover, Johnson voices his opposition to it and calls it "very bad".  But he is aware that some have gone to the Washington Post about the idea. He wants an FBI report that would then be passed on to the AG. HIs second suggestion is a Texas Court of Inquiry to be supplemented by the FBI.

Now that is where LBJ was right before the Alsop call on the 25th and its all in B and W, right in Gibson's essay.

It was clearly the Alsop call that changed Johnson's mind on this issue. Because at the beginning of the call, he still is insisting that the Texas authorities take the inquiry since its a state crime.  And he thinks they should be supplemented by the FBI.

It was at this point that Alsop took over the call and he invokes the Washington Post and the name of people like Dean Acheson to serve on the Commission.  And the FBI would serve as the investigatory body.

WIthin 72 hours LBJ reversed himself and supported the Commission.  So no, the Warren Commission was not Johnson's idea. The other stuff you have in there does not relate to what Gibson is saying here. Its theorizing.

It doesn't matter that it was Joe Alsop who changed LBJ's mind on having a commission, what matters is it was LYNDON JOHNSON WHO PICKED THE MEMBERS OF THE "so called" WARREN COMMISSION.

Lyndon Johnson wanted to rig the cover up with a Texas Court of Inquiry.

Really, all he wanted was a rubberstamp of anything Hoover's FBI would say.

But, after Oswald was killed in police custody in DALLAS, it was politically unfeasible to rig the cover up of the JFK assassination with a Texas Court of Inquiry led by Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr and LBJ lawyer Leon Jaworski.

So, Lyndon Johnson created HIS commission, HIS Presidential Commission to investigate the death of John Kennedy, and LBJ rigged it with HIS personal friends Sen. Russell, Cong. Boggs, John J. McCloy and also Allen Dulles. Earl Warren was picked to give a liberal window dressing to the Commission and I truly don't think LBJ would have picked Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R-KY) if he knew how close Sen. Cooper was to President Kennedy.

Lyndon Johnson specifically told Gerald Ford, and you can hear it on YouTube, I am picking you because you have CIA expertise.  

LBJ appoints Gerald Ford to the Warren Commission and specifically says he (LBJ) wanted someone on the House Appropriations Committee “who knows CIA over in your shop” (referring to Ford).

 Time of LBJ-Gerald Ford phone call: Nov. 29, 1963, 18:52 = 6:52PM CST.

 https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/secret-white-house-tapes/lbj-appoints-gerald-ford-to-the-warren-commission

 (Ford): Yes, Mr. President. How are you, sir?

(President Johnson): Happy Thanksgiving. Where are you?

(Ford): I'm home, sir.

(President Johnson): You mean Michigan?

(Ford): No, no, I'm here in Washington—

(President Johnson): You're here in Washington? Well, thank God there's somebody in town! [Ford chuckles.] I was getting ready to tell [James] MacGregor Burns he's right about the Congress. They couldn't function.

(Ford): I thought your speech was excellent the other day.

(President Johnson): Why, thank you, Jerry. Jerry, I got something I want you to do for me.

(Ford): Well, we'll do the best we can, sir.

(President Johnson): I've got to have a top, blue-ribbon presidential commission to investigate the assassination. And I'm going to ask the Chief Justice to head it, and then I'm going to ask John [J.] McCloy and Allen Dulles.

(Ford): Right.

(President Johnson): And I want it nonpartisan. Now, I'm not going to point out I got five Republicans, two Democrats, but I'm going to do that, and I'm just . . . then you forget what party you belong to and just serve as an American.

And I want [Richard B.] Dick Russell [Jr.] and [John] Sherman Cooper, John Cooper, of the Senate. [Ford acknowledges.] Dick's on Armed Services over there, and I want somebody on Appropriations who knows CIA over in your shop—

(Ford): Right.

(President Johnson): —from the Appropriations angle, 'cause I'm covering the Armed Services angle with Russell.

(Ford): Right.

(President Johnson): I want to ask [T.] Hale Boggs [Sr.] and you to serve from the House—

(Ford): Well, Mr. President—

(President Johnson): —it'll be McCloy, and Dulles, and Ford, and Boggs, and Cooper, and Russell, and Chief Justice Warren as chairman.

(Ford): Well, you know very well I would be honored to do it, and I'll do the very best I can, sir.

(President Johnson): You do that, and keep me up to date, and I'll be seeing you.

(Ford): All right. Thank you very much—

(President Johnson): Thank you.

(Ford): —and I'm delighted to help out.

(President Johnson): Thank you, Jerry.

(Ford): Thank—

 Gerald Ford became a member of the House Appropriations Committee in 1951

 https://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/ford/biography.html

 Ford became a member of the House Appropriations Committee in 1951, and rose to prominence on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, becoming its ranking minority member in 1961. In 1963 President Johnson appointed Ford to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1965 Ford co-authored, with John R. Stiles, a book about the findings of the Commission, Portrait of the Assassin. He once described himself as "a moderate in domestic affairs, an internationalist in foreign affairs, and a conservative in fiscal policy." 

Robert Morrow: In 1970 Newsweek called Cong. Gerald Ford “the CIA’s best friend in Congress.” Web link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Newsweek+calls+Gerald+Ford+the+CIA%27s+man+in+Congress&va=b&t=hc&ia=web&iai=r1-4&page=1&sexp=%7B%22cdrexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22recipeexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22biaexp%22%3A%22b%22%2C%22msvrtexp%22%3A%22b%22%7D

Edited April 28 by Robert Morrow

[Robert Morrow]

Sen. John Sherman Cooper, while he was a member of the Warren Commission: “I think Lyndon Baines Johnson was involved in the planning and execution of Kennedy’s death.” Source: his aide Morris Wolff (born 11-30-1936 and still alive in March, 2024)

Morris Wolff contact info: phone [contact me and I will give it to you] and email is moewolff657@gmail.com

QUOTE

He was still by something that had just occurred, and he sputtered, “They have it all wrong. They refuse to look at the facts. The forensics are right there. One bullet came in from the front, and the President grabbed his neck, and his head shot back in the open limousine. The car had slowed down in front of the Texas School Depository. The next shot came in from the back, from a window on the 7^th floor, the top floor of the Book Depository building on Dealey Plaza. A third shot came from behind the motorcade, jerking his head backward as he slowly passed the area. It was the shot fired by Lee Harvey Oswald, one of two or three killers. At least two were active that day, one from in front and the second from the back. The forensics clearly show there were at least two separate shooters, and they were standing in different places, one from the grassy knoll and one high in the office building. Our new President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, now wants to cover up and move on. I want to delay and get all the facts. They are covering the facts and putting their collective heads in the sand. LBJ pretends to give me the green light to press forward with the investigation. But he is secretly telling the others to bring the hearings to a quick close.”

Senator Cooper was boiling mad, somewhat out of control for the only time that I had ever witnessed. “They want to bury the truth under a pile of stones. I think Lyndon Baines Johnson was involved in the planning and execution of Kennedy’s death.”

As his driver to and from the Warren Commission hearings, I got to hear the latest scoop on the way back. I was not just his legal counsel but also had become “Maxie the Taxi.” Cooper selected me to convey him to and from the Supreme Court building for the hearings headed by Earl Warren, and that was a lesson van.

UNQUOTE

[Morris Wolff, Lucky Conversations: Visits With the Most Prominent People of the 20^th Century, p. 112]

Edited April 28 by Robert Morrow

[James DiEugenio]

Its not safe to take LBJ at his word, especially on Vietnam and what happened there after JFK was killed or on Bobby Kennedy.

But in his memoir, he says that the first person who pushed the idea of a blue ribbon commission was Gene Rostow, backed up by Alsop, and he adds the name of Rusk. I wonder if Rusk was the guy in the room with Alsop who Alsop referred to but did not name. (And recall that Alsop also mentioned Acheson.)

So this appears to be an instance where he actually was telling the truth. Not often but...

[Roger Odisio]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Roger, your reply to Gibson above is, to say the least, rather weird.

Plain and simple: LBJ did not want a blue ribbon commission. 

The record indicates that the first guy to suggest this to the White House was Gene Rostow on the 24th. RIght after Ruby shot Oswald. And Rostow had already talked to Katzenbach.  Rostow tells Moyers this had to be done, the appointment of a commission and Moyers  tells him he will bring it to Johnson's attention. And Rostow said he had talked to one other person about this matter already.  Further, Walter Jenkins was also cognizant of the idea that day.  Since he wrote a note about it.

On the 25th, in a call with Hoover, Johnson voices his opposition to it and calls it "very bad".  But he is aware that some have gone to the Washington Post about the idea. He wants an FBI report that would then be passed on to the AG. HIs second suggestion is a Texas Court of Inquiry to be supplemented by the FBI.

Now that is where LBJ was right before the Alsop call on the 25th and its all in B and W, right in Gibson's essay.

It was clearly the Alsop call that changed Johnson's mind on this issue. Because at the beginning of the call, he still is insisting that the Texas authorities take the inquiry since its a state crime.  And he thinks they should be supplemented by the FBI.

It was at this point that Alsop took over the call and he invokes the Washington Post and the name of people like Dean Acheson to serve on the Commission.  And the FBI would serve as the investigatory body.

WIthin 72 hours LBJ reversed himself and supported the Commission.  So no, the Warren Commission was not Johnson's idea. The other stuff you have in there does not relate to what Gibson is saying here. Its theorizing.

Jim,

You've ignored my point and simply repeated what you said before. I'm not going to call your post weird, but you ought to think twice before resorting to such tactics. Ignoring a person's point and simply repeating the same things is not how conversations are supposed to work.

My point is, saying Johnson did not want "a blue ribbon commission" is not the right question ask.  Who was it that wanted, not just any commission, but the kind of commission the WC was and was able to bring it to fruition?

Clearly that was not Alsop or Rostow, whose suggestions to Johnson weren't even on point to what happened.  Alsop says right out he wasn't suggesting a new Investigative body to Johnson but rather some people to take the FBI findings already made and better present them. He was, he said, only offering Johnson PR, not legal, advice. 

Alsop's suggestion had nothing to do with Johnson's ultimate creation of the WC.  He did *not* change Johnson's mind 

In fact, Johnson's mind was not changed at all despite what he claimed. Only the gullible believe he really wanted an investigation in Texas, beyond his ability to name the investigators and control the result, based on the transparently false reasoning he offered Alsop, as I explained.  My earlier post left out one other thing he said to Alsop about preferring a Texas investigation:  my lawyers tell me the president must not inject himself into "local killings".  Could there anything more phony than that? Even Alsop had to remind him that it was the US president who was killed, sir.

How unpleasant it is to see you resorting to the old CIA trick to dismiss what I said: I have the facts; you're just theorizing. In fact there was no theorizing involved in what I said. I took facts and deduced their logical connections to reach a conclusion about what happened.  You can challenge the facts or the logic but it won't do to claim I was merely theorizing.

For example, I assume you accept as fact that the planners of the murder chose Oswald as the patsy to blame and resolved to kill him before he could talk to a lawyer, thus eliminating a trial.  Which they did.  That meant there would have to be an official investigation. The POTUS had been murdered; it was no small matter.

It follows that before the murder, in fact as a condition that must be met in order to go ahead with the murder, the planners must have considered how to do that investigation to give themselves a good enough chance to get away with it.

We know as the new president the responsibility fell to Johnson to create and staff that investigation. We know that in the end the WC lied about, distorted, ignored, and destroyed evidence in order to reach a pre-ordained conclusion that Oswald was guilty and acted alone. Absolving the actual killers. The WC's purpose was not to find out what happened, but to conceal it.

You don't have to believe that Johnson was involved in this train of events but it seems pretty clear to me that he was not only involved but essential to acheving most of it.  If not Johnson, who?

Go ahead, Jim, take a whack at that if you disagree.

[Ron Bulman]

Sorry Jim, under cover of night made me think of . . .