Horace Busby Memoirs (new book);

[Don Roberdeau]

Good Day.... From the following article concurrent with the release of longtime LBJ crony HORACE BUSBY's book of memoirs, it sounds like even more affirmations and (hopefully) details that the KENNEDY's (and others) did not want LBJ on the 1964 Democratic presidential ticket....

....from the "Scripps Howard News Service"....

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?acti...=BUSBY-03-02-06

<QUOTE>

Horace Busby was LBJ's right-hand man

By PERRY FLIPPIN

Scripps Howard News Service

02-MAR-06

As a 24-year-old news reporter in Austin, Texas, Horace Busby was recruited in 1948 to become the "idea man" for then-U.S. Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson.

During the next 20 years, Busby was a confidant, speechwriter, quasi-therapist and friend to the man who would become the 36th president and Texas' foremost political figure in the 20th century.

Now, six years since Busby's death, his son, Scott, has published Busby's memoirs, "The Thirty-First of March," which portrays in vivid detail LBJ's final days in office.

The Washington Post has called it "the best and most-honest book we have about LBJ."

The Houston Chronicle praised it as "a brief and brilliant memoir."

Nobody except Lady Bird was better acquainted with Johnson than Busby, who was born in Fort Worth and became editor of The Daily Texan while a student at the University of Texas at Austin.

His father, an old-school Church of Christ evangelist, hoped young Horace would become a minister. Journalism, he counseled, "is the shortest road to hell."

The elder Busby was appalled that his son would consider a job with the Hill Country congressman, whom he knew drank whiskey, danced, played forty-two and "whooped it up at parties sometimes."

In an eight-page letter, the old man cautioned, "Lyndon, you know, is a Digressive" meaning he had fallen away from the Church of Christ and thrown in with the Disciples of Christ, who use instrumental music in worship.

The younger Busby accepted LBJ's offer sight-unseen and set out to "put some Churchill" in the congressman's public utterances. Although Johnson could rage unmercifully at his employees and drive them to exhaustion, he pushed himself even harder.

Johnson wanted electricity and telephones for people living in the country, affordable health care, good schools, safe highways and comfortable retirement improvements for ordinary people. He was the last of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Dealers," who were loathed by people of wealth.

Busby, who coined the term "The Great Society," describes LBJ's controversial victory over former Texas Gov. Coke Stevenson in 1948, his disappointing loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960, the devastating assassination in 1963 and the decision delivered via national television on Sunday night, March 31, 1968 to quit politics.

For Busby, his ringside seat with LBJ's meteoric rise is mingled with the grand and the mundane.

He applauded his employer's determination to make civil rights a hallmark of his legacy. He deplored efforts by White House insiders in 1963 to dump LBJ from the ticket.

He fumed at Johnson's churlish behavior toward friends and associates intent on helping advance his career.

Johnson singled out Busby to write his unforgettable valedictory: "I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

Early in 1968, Johnson told Busby, "I have made up my mind. I can't get peace in Vietnam and be president, too."

Busby writes with warmth and insight about the man who could be endearing and infuriating, ebullient and morose, insecure, paranoid, devious, coarse, brooding and brilliant.

In his book "The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson," author Eric Goldman wrote, "More than any other member of his staff, Lyndon Johnson believed Horace Busby thought and felt like him."

Reading Busby's inviting prose makes it clear why he was Johnson's favorite. Unfortunately, none of LBJ's Senate years are included, lost from Busby's writings.

In the end, the president asked Busby to help him achieve one last ambition: "I tell you what we'll do," LBJ told his aide, "We'll go back down to Texas, and I'll buy us a newspaper.

"You can be the editor, and I'll be the publisher.

"I guess I've always wanted to be a big ... publisher someday.

"We'll turn that state upside-down," he continued, clapping his hands.

"We'll take on the oil crowd, and the utilities and all the fat cats.

"We'll run 'em out of Austin, and we'll keep (them) running across the Red River all the way to Kansas."

Busby declined the offer, staying in Washington, D.C., to edit his own business newsletter until his health failed in the 1990s.

It was no accident that LBJ held such esteem for Houston Harte, the San Angelo Standard-Times publisher at the time, even attending the newspaper mogul's funeral in 1972. Johnson died 10 months later.

Just hours before boarding Air Force One for the last time, LBJ told Busby: "When I get back down to that ranch, I'm going to get up every morning and do just exactly what I've always wanted to do for 40 years _ nothing."

In his boyhood, LBJ had been told by his father that he had "a lazy streak." He had lived out his career fearful that people would think he did not "work hard enough."

Busby accurately foresaw the rise of the Republican Party in the Old South and the powerful partnership created by the media, Hollywood and academia.

As TIME magazine's Hugh Sidey observed: Busby "viewed it all as another chapter in the great and wonderful political drama in which he had taken part."

<END QUOTE>

**some notes.... HORACE BUSBY (born 1924, died 2000)

**On 24NOV63 the USSR's DOBRYNIN showed up at the WH and popped a thick file about OSWALD while-in-Russia on BUSBY's desk and declared "Oswald's not one of ours."

**on some date before 11-29-63 (before WC formed) LBJ tasked BUSBY with making WAGGONER CARR head-up command of the investigation

**longtime advisor to LBJ since 1948; was in his UPI office on 11-22-63 when teletype flashed assassination news (in a 2005 article it says his wife was in LBJ's home)

**BUSBY coined the term "The Great Society" that LBJ used in speeches

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJu...y/JFK911MM.html

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6827500/

http://www.wcnc.com/sharedcontent/washingt....1ee328c60.html

Best Regards in Research. Honored to be yours in the pursuit of The Truth,

Don

Don Roberdeau

U.S.S. John F. Kennedy, CV-67, "Big John," Plank Walker

Sooner, or later, the Truth emerges Clearly

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T ogether

E veryone

A chieves

M ore

"From a moral standpoint, Johnson had no use for religion except for the political benefits that it bestowed upon him. He had no use for the sanctity of marriage except for the voting benefits it offered to him as a 'married man.' And, his desire for alcohol, just like with sex, was excessive. In short, moral rules relating to his personal conduct had no effect on stopping him from getting what he wanted."

----CRAIG ZIRBEL, summarizing LBJ's amoral characteristics that may have contributed, along with 4 on-going criminal investigations implicating LBJ, to LBJ's motivations for wanting President KENNEDY assassinated, "The Texas Connection" (pg.108)

[Pat Speer]

I found Busby's memoir in a used book store and picked it up for a few bucks. I found it quite engrossing. It has a few little bombshells on which the CT community can feast. I don't remember anyone writing about these when the book came out.

When writing about 11-22, he says that he believed the motorcade and Texas trip were gonna be the end of the road for LBJ. He writes that LBJ's staff had been hearing rumors that on the night of the 22nd JFK was gonna lower the boom and tell Lyndon he was off the ticket. He says that they originally thought these rumors were coming from the White House, but found that they were coming from Yarbrough's people. Busby felt that driving through Dallas in a motorcade was unwise, and that something was gonna happen--someone would throw something or some protesters would get in the way of the car--and that this, along with LBJ's inability to bring peace and cohesion to the Texas Democratic Party, would be used as a pretext to force Lyndon from the ticket. LNTs, of course, have long insisted that LBJ was definitely gonna be on the ticket, and that speculation he would be forced from the ticket was conspiracy nonsense, and here we have one of LBJ's closest advisers stating that he thought LBJ was done for! Amazing. Did this get any press when it came out? The book was found in a cardboard box after Busby died. I suspect he saw that his concerns re the motorcade were gonna feed suspicions of conspiracy, and that this hindered his completion of the book.

Busby's book is also informative re LBJ's state of mind in the days following the assassination. He explains how LBJ was concerned that any talk of conspiracy would come right back at him. He also explains how the Russians played "Me no Alamo." Evidently, the Mexican soldiers captured by Sam Houston after the Battle of the Alamo wanted their captors to know that they weren't personally involved in the massacre, and would cry out in protest "Me no Alamo." Within days of the assassination, the Russians presented LBJ with a file on Oswald, designed to convince him they weren't involved, thus "Me No Alamo!"

Anyhow, if you come across the book for cheap or in a Library, you may find it worth a gander.

[Michael Hogan]

I found Busby's memoir in a used book store and picked it up for a few bucks. I found it quite engrossing. It has a few little bombshells on which the CT community can feast. I don't remember anyone writing about these when the book came out....

....Anyhow, if you come across the book for cheap or in a Library, you may find it worth a gander.

Available for one dollar plus shipping:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResu...p;x=74&y=15

[Terry Adams]

"We'll take on the oil crowd, and the utilities and all the fat cats.

"We'll run 'em out of Austin, and we'll keep (them) running across the Red River all the way to Kansas."

How does this fit in with his friendship with Murchison and other oilmen that have so long been looked at as his close allies, as well as wanting him in the presidency. These very people have been looked at at LBJ's co-conspirators, HAVEN'T THEY?

Terry

[Pat Speer]

"We'll take on the oil crowd, and the utilities and all the fat cats.

"We'll run 'em out of Austin, and we'll keep (them) running across the Red River all the way to Kansas."

How does this fit in with his friendship with Murchison and other oilmen that have so long been looked at as his close allies, as well as wanting him in the presidency. These very people have been looked at at LBJ's co-conspirators, HAVEN'T THEY?

Terry

I've commented on this before, Terry. While it's usually assumed LBJ had a close relationship with the oilmen, he really only had a close relationship with Connally, and Connally's friends, and they often weren't speaking to each other.

My interest in this case was spurred on by something my mother told me--that LBJ had the Secret`Service tail my father in the late 60's. I thought this was nonsense, until i realized that my father's boss, a Texas oilman named Johnny Mitchell, was a close friend of CIA/mob go-between Robert Maheu's, and that Johnny Mitchell had called press conferences in the 60's, denouncing LBJ. In one very pointed press conference, mid-67 if I recall, Mitchell said that the Wildcatters weren't gonna support LBJ's policies in Vietnam, if this led to an increased reliance on foreign (read Arab) oil.

IF LBJ thought (or knew) Texas oilmen were behind JFK's death, Mitchell's statements could have been taken as a warning. BTW, Mitchell and his brothers were close family friends of the Maceo brothers, the rum-running, gambling and drug-running bosses of Texas from the 30's to the 50's. The Maceos are purported to have had a close relationship with Carlos Marcello.

I'm not sure what to make of it, but I no-longer believe my mother's story is nonsense.

[Alan Kent]

I found Busby's memoir in a used book store and picked it up for a few bucks. I found it quite engrossing. It has a few little bombshells on which the CT community can feast. I don't remember anyone writing about these when the book came out.

When writing about 11-22, he says that he believed the motorcade and Texas trip were gonna be the end of the road for LBJ. He writes that LBJ's staff had been hearing rumors that on the night of the 22nd JFK was gonna lower the boom and tell Lyndon he was off the ticket. He says that they originally thought these rumors were coming from the White House, but found that they were coming from Yarbrough's people. Busby felt that driving through Dallas in a motorcade was unwise, and that something was gonna happen--someone would throw something or some protesters would get in the way of the car--and that this, along with LBJ's inability to bring peace and cohesion to the Texas Democratic Party, would be used as a pretext to force Lyndon from the ticket. LNTs, of course, have long insisted that LBJ was definitely gonna be on the ticket, and that speculation he would be forced from the ticket was conspiracy nonsense, and here we have one of LBJ's closest advisers stating that he thought LBJ was done for! Amazing. Did this get any press when it came out? The book was found in a cardboard box after Busby died. I suspect he saw that his concerns re the motorcade were gonna feed suspicions of conspiracy, and that this hindered his completion of the book.

Busby's book is also informative re LBJ's state of mind in the days following the assassination. He explains how LBJ was concerned that any talk of conspiracy would come right back at him. He also explains how the Russians played "Me no Alamo." Evidently, the Mexican soldiers captured by Sam Houston after the Battle of the Alamo wanted their captors to know that they weren't personally involved in the massacre, and would cry out in protest "Me no Alamo." Within days of the assassination, the Russians presented LBJ with a file on Oswald, designed to convince him they weren't involved, thus "Me No Alamo!"

Anyhow, if you come across the book for cheap or in a Library, you may find it worth a gander.

Johnson's V.P. military aide Howard Burris told Gus Russo that Johnson knew that he was going to be "thrown off the ticket" in '64, and that "that was going to be the end for him." Whether or not Johnson would actually have been dumped has always struck me as almost beside the point. Clearly he BELIEVED that he was to be tossed. And that his political career (which was, for Johnson, virtually his life) was over.