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Lyndon Baines Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson
On 4/23/63, Vice President Lyndon Johnson made a round of appearances in Dallas and during the day’s activities, Johnson spoke to 2,000 business and civic leaders. Included in Lyndon’s remarks, on page 22 of the Dallas Times-Herald of 4/24/63, are the quoted paragraphs:
“He said the President of the United States is like a pilot and the election is when the nation picks an airplane and a pilot for the next four years. ‘Once you pick him, and you’re flying across the water in bad weather, don’t go up and open the door and try to knock him in the head. He’s the only pilot you have and if the plane goes down, you go with it.”
“‘At least wait until next November’, before you shoot him down.”
Several authors have published LBJ-did-it books, including Glenn Sample/Mark Collom The Men on the Sixth Floor, Barr McClellan’s Blood Money & Power, How LBJ Killed JFK, and and Philip Nelson’s LBJ: Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination. These stories share many common themes. As outlined in Robert Caro’s excellent multi-volume biography, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, LBJ dreamed of becoming President from a young age. He was well known as a driven, corrupt and ruthless politician. Johnson’s 1949 US Senate race against ex-Governor Coke Stevenson, where LBJ prevailed by 87 votes out of almost 1 million votes cast is widely viewed as won through voter fraud in Jim Wells County. Many LBJ-did-it conspiracists point to LBJ’s association with Malcolm (Mac) Wallace. Wallace first met LBJ in 1944 when Wallace was student body President at UT Austin and invited LBJ to speak at the university. LBJ and Wallace’s paths crossed again in 1951 when Wallace shot John Kinser who had been having an affair with Josefa Johnson, LBJ’s sister. Wallace was found guilty of murder in the first degree and although the jury voted to give him life in prison, the judge gave him a five year suspended sentence and released him. Some see the behind the scenes influence of LBJ in this outcome but there is scant evidence.
The theory of Mac Wallace as LBJ’s personal hit man gained ground in 1983 when Billy Sol Estes was released from prison. Estes was owner of a fertilizer and irrigation pump company in Texas who in 1953 was named one of America’s 10 outstanding young men by the US Junior Chamber of Commerce. In the late 1950’s he became involved in a scam to obtain federal agricultural subsidies for growing and storing non-existent cotton crops which was to net him as much as $21 million per year. In 1960, he was investigated by Henry Marshall of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. Billy Sol Estes approached LBJ aide Cliff Carter for assistance. In June 1961 Marshall was found dead, having been shot five times by a bolt action rifle and the Sheriff quickly ruled the death a suicide although a subsequent investigation ruled the case a homicide. Estes’ accountant was also found dead of a “suicide”. In 1962 Estes and two co-conspirators were charged with fraud, although the two co-conspirators quickly died under suspicious circumstances. Estes went to prison in 1965 and was released in 1983. In 1984 he testified to a grand jury that the Marshall killing was performed by Mac Wallace under the orders of LBJ who was afraid that his own role in the scam would be uncovered. On 9th August, 1984, Estes’ lawyer, Douglas Caddy, wrote to Stephen S. Trott at the U.S. Department of Justice. In the letter Caddy claimed that Estes, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mac Wallace and Clifton C. Carter had been involved in the murders of Henry Marshall, George Krutilek, Harold Orr, Ike Rogers, Coleman Wade, Josefa Johnson, John Kinser and John F. Kennedy. Caddy added: “Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders.” The grand jury rejected the testimony of Billie Sol Estes. Carter, Wallace and Johnson were all dead and could not confirm Billie Sol’s testimony. However, the Grand Jury did change the verdict on the death of Henry Marshall from suicide to death by gunshot.
In the 1990’s John Fraser Harrison checked to see if one of the unidentified fingerprints on the boxes in the 6th floor snipers nest could be matched to Mac Wallace. He send a copy of the print and Mac Wallace’s booking fingerprints to a fingerprint authority named Nathan Darby, who found fourteen points of match:
That announcement unleashed a torrent of LBJ-did-it books, but, as with all the evidence in the JFK case, it remains heavily contested. See for example: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace and Is Malcolm Wallace fingerprint a myth?
LBJ Motive
LBJ Motive
Another angle in looking at LBJ as suspect is motive. LBJ was extremely ambitious and wanted to be President, but no doubt shared the view of his fellow Texan, Vice President John Nance Garner that the Vice Presidency was “not worth a warm bucket of piss.” After his Vice Presidential nomination in 1960 many people asked LBJ why he accepted the nomination and he told several people the same thing he told Clare Booth Luce: “Clare, I looked it up: one out of every four Presidents has died in office. I’m a gamblin’ man, darlin,’ and this is the only chance I got.” Unfortunately, the Vice Presidency did not go well for LBJ. He was loathed by Bobby and ignored by JFK. JFK was singularly unsuccessful in dealing with Congress; he was unable to get any of his civil rights legislation through Congress and could barely get a budget bill passed, yet he refused to utilize LBJ, who was the most masterful congressional tactician of his time. LBJ was by all accounts extremely frustrated in his role, yet remained subservient and respectful even in the face of humiliations by JFK and Bobby. Starting in the fall of 1963 LBJ had even more to worry about as rumors of his corruption began to swirl in Washington. Despite being a civil servant for most of his adult life, by 1963 LBJ had amassed a fortune of many millions of dollars. As Robert Caro recounts, in the fall of 1963 LBJ’s protégé Bobby Baker had been investigated for improprieties in the Senate when he was Senate Majority Leader LBJ’s right hand man. Baker resigned from his position of Secretary of the Senate on October 7, 1963 amid allegations of running a call girl operation at the Quorum Club that catered to politicians, taking bribes and kickbacks, and running a vending machine company, Serv-U Corporation that obtained monopoly positioning among government contractors. Baker’s resignation did not stop the scandal, as the Senate Rules Committee expanded its investigation to LBJ. An article published in Life magazine on Nov. 18 quoted one anonymous source calling Baker “Lyndon’s bluntest instrument in running the show.” Rumors about LBJ’s corruption had reached JFK, who on November 14 reportedly told his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, that he was planning to dump LBJ from the ticket in 1964. LIFE magazine had sent a team of reporters to Texas and was planning run a multi-part story on Lyndon Johnson’s Money. A former LIFE editor has said that Bobby Kennedy was working with the editors of LIFE on this story to take down LBJ, and the story was due to run on November 27, 1963.
One of LBJ’s approaches to making money was to sell political influence to people in return for their purchasing advertising on the Texas TV and radio stations networks which were owned by Lady Bird Johnson. On the morning of November 22, Bobby Baker’s former partner, Don Reynolds was in Washington, testifying to two Senate Rules Committee staffers. Reynolds had brought along cancelled checks and invoices which demonstrated these kickbacks. When JFK was shot, the Senate Rules Committee investigation and the LIFE magazine exposé were scrapped. Bobby Baker was convicted in 1967 of larceny, fraud and tax evasion and served 16 months in prison.
LBJ undoubtedly knew he had a close brush with political oblivion. There is an unsubstantiated report that in February 1964, he said “that son of a bitch [Bobby Baker] is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I’m gonna land in jail…I practically raised that motherfucker, and now he’s gonna make me the first President of the United States to spend the last days of his life behind bars.”
Following the assassination there were several rumors that LBJ was behind JFK’s death, including one from the Soviet Embassy, but these rumors never got traction.
As Pat Speer relates, after the assassination on the plane from Dallas to Washington Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary, jotted down a list of those she considered suspects for his murder. This list was not made public until 2010. At the head of a murderer's row of "KKK, Dixiecrats, Hoffa, John Birch Society, Nixon, Diem, Rightist, CIA in Cuban fiasco, Dictators" and "Communists" was someone Lincoln knew very well, someone sitting right there on the plane with her--"Lyndon."
While LBJ had motive, it is unclear that he had the means to kill JFK. The assassination was performed in LBJ’s home state, but nothing has come out to show LBJ’s direct involvement with Oswald, the Secret Service, anti-Castro Cubans, the mafia or the Dallas Police. For this reason many conspiracy theorists are skeptical of the idea of LBJ involved in pre-assassination planning.
Here are some arguments for LBJ’s involvement: The Assassination of JFK: Johnson vs. Dulles
Here are some arguments against LBJ’s involvement: Evaluating the Case against Lyndon Johnson
Other Potential Plotters
Other Potential Plotters
Castro
Castro
The Castro-did-it theory was pushed heavily by many in the Cuban exile community, given the obvious links between Oswald and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and their desire for another invasion of Cuba. Jean Daniel was meeting with Castro on November 22 when word of JFK’s assassination came in. Daniel reported that Castro turned to him and said, “This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed!” Perhaps Castro was play acting, or perhaps the assassination was done by his G2 intelligence service without his knowledge. On September 7, 1963 Castro had purportedly warned the US against assassination plots when he told AP reporter Daniel Harker, “If US leaders are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe. Let Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves since they too can be a victim of an attempt that can cause their deaths.” The Castro-did-it theory can’t be ruled out, but there just isn’t much evidence to support it, and it’s hard to see how Castro could have managed all the aspects of the plot, other than perhaps manipulating Oswald either as a patsy or as the lone gunman.
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union
The Soviets-did-it theory is not tremendously popular, but does have some advocates. According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, at the time deputy director of foreign intelligence for Gheorghe-Dej’s Romania, in his book Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination , Dej was visiting Moscow at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pacepa writes:
“According to Dej’s account, when Khrushchev finished reading that cable [from the KGB in Washington saying that Kennedy had ordered a naval quarantine of Cuba], his face was purple. He looked inquiringly at [KGB chief] Semichastny, and, when the terrified general nodded, Khrushchev ‘cursed like a bargeman’. Then he threw Semichastny’s cable on the floor and ground his heel into it. ‘That’s how I’m going to crush that viper,’ he cried. The ‘viper,’ Dej explained in telling the story, was Kennedy.
Of course, there is much more direct evidence of Soviet involvement in the assassination: that is Oswald’s meeting with Kostikov, the Mexico City KGB agent who was allegedly associated with the KGB assassination and sabotage department. In the last chapter we looked at the hypothesis that this interaction was deliberately overblown by the plotters in order to force the investigation into a lone nut scenario. But an alternate view could be that the KGB met with Oswald to plan the assassination. The Oswald phone transcripts are innocuous, but the actual conversations may have been less innocuous and perhaps Oswald spent the rest of his Mexican trip meeting with Soviet plotters. The Soviets certainly had sophisticated capabilities and could have for example forged Secret Service documents. It is hard to reconcile a Soviet plot with anti-Castro Cuban, Mafia, or Dallas Police involvement, but if Oswald killed JFK by himself, it's possible that it was on orders from the KGB.
William Greer, limo driver at Z312. Note his right hand is not on the steering wheel
Secret Service Agent William Greer
Secret Service Agent William Greer
A long running theory on assassination blogs holds that the fatal head shot was administered by one of the secret service agents in the motorcade. The limousine driver, William Greer can be seen in the Zapruder film with his body turned around toward JFK at Zapruder frame 312. According to this theory, Greer had a handgun in his right hand and fired it at almost point blank range into JFK’s left temple. While you don’t see Greer’s right hand in the Zapruder film, some conspiracy theorists believe that his hand was simply painted out of the film. There is some evidence to support this theory. Doctors McClellan and Jenkins as well as one of the priests who administered last rites at Parkland Hospital all said that they saw a bullet hole in JFK’s left temple. There is no visible damage to JFK’s left temple in the autopsy photos or X-rays. Many conspiracy theorists discount these reports as the witnesses being confused between their left and right, however, these are the same theorists that believe that both the Zapruder film and the autopsy photos were faked and the Parkland witnesses were correct in witnessing a blowout to the back of the head, so one would think that the Greer-did-it theory would be at least as plausible by their standards.
There is more damning testimony by photographer Hugh Betzner who testified “I also remember seeing what looked like a nickel revolver in someone’s hand in the President’s car or somewhere immediately around his car.”
Jackie Kennedy
Jackie Kennedy
The theory that Jackie shot JFK is based on the same evidence that we discussed above: a wound to the left temple and a pistol in the Presidential limousine. Jackie was uniquely positioned to have pulled out a derringer when the shooting started and delivered a coup de grâce to her husband, who had humiliated her with his bimbo escapades. This theory is popular on the internet, perhaps with those who have a dark sense of humor, and there are other pieces of evidence, such as Jackie’s Jesuit training and her relationship to the CIA. See:
JFK murdered by his wife Jacqueline The Jesuit Assassin
Secret Service Agent George Hickey
Secret Service Agent George Hickey
A 1992 book by Bonar Menninger titled Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, posits that JFK’s fatal head shot was delivered by Agent George Hickey, standing up in the follow up car with an AR-15 rifle, when the car lurched and the rifle accidently discharged. The theory is bolstered by several Dealey Plaza witness accounts including Jean Hill who testified to the Warren Commission that she heard three shots such as those fired from a bolt action rifle, then a flurry of four to six shots which she thought could be the Secret Service firing back with automatic weapons.
Pat Speer points out that the Bronson film which was taken at the time of the head shot does not show any unusual movement in the backup car, however Speer fails to take into account that the Bronson film may have been tampered with.
UFOs
Most conspiracy theorists believe JFK was killed for conventional political purposes, but a new theory has arisen, supported by recently declassified top secret documents, which could suggest that JFK was killed because he wanted the release of Above Top Secret UFO information. See this paper.
James Files
A 2008 book by Wim Daankbar, titled Files on JFK: Interviews with Confessed Assassin James E. Files, and More New Evidence of the Conspiracy that Killed JFK, details the confession of James Files, who claimed to be the shooter on the Grassy Knoll that fired the fatal head shot. Files’ story is that the CIA together with the Mafia planned the assassination. There’s little corroboration for the story and the trajectory, at a point approximately 35’ west of the corner of the picket fence, seems to be the wrong direction for the head shot, but it’s a theory that’s gotten a lot of interest on the internet.
Conclusions?
Conclusions?
Now you've read it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. How do you put it together? Do you think that since JFK was such a good man, he must have been brought down by an evil cabal? Did the government's complicity in covering up any hints of conspiracy hide complicity in the assassination plot itself? How could a kind and reasonable man like Earl Warren deliberately mislead the American public unless he had evil intent? In our last class, we'll let down our hair and discuss what we really think about the terrible tragedy of November 22, 1963; the event caused America to lurch into a disastrous war in Vietnam which in turn, led to the disaffection between the American public and our government. What would America be like if JFK had not been killed? We can only dream.
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