that is, that JFK was the 'dissenter' in the room. Don't recall context, or what was said about that part of the book.

It's just proof that publishing is still a bit different from almost any other industry.

The likely profit (if there even is one) from this project would make shareholders at most companies revolt and strip the CEO of his cushy job.

We should enjoy it while we can because I'm not sure how long it's gonna last.

I hope this thread is still around in two months, because that's how long it's gonna take me to read the damn thing and see if I notice any other mistakes.

for the earlier volumes, I sensed a weakened product this time around. After also reading his first project, The Power Broker, which was monumental in its detail and density like the two and maybe third of the LBJ books, this one seemed more sketchy, more filled with generalizations, plus some overly sympathetic short cuts about RFK in particular but also others. I don't know how to describe it, like he was accepting and relaying anecdotal stereotypes about people that he was getting from other sources instead of from his own scrutiny.

Your assessment in business terms makes sense. It's sort of like this man's work is the last gasp of this type of effort, like the movies about cowboys who were caught in the transition from the Romantic (fictional) Old West into the "modern" era.

Anyway, thanks for the insight. It's a different side from the joking (but still very smart) persona.

Last edited Wed Jun 6, 2012, 11:26 AM - Edit history (1)

After all that has come out after 48 years, to deny that the government - specifically military intelligence with the full cooperation of Vice President Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK for many reasons both personal and ideological- to deny that - is the equivalent of Holocaust denials. Elite peer pressure is the reason Caro does that and does not even seek the truth.

The sub rosa war with LBJ, Cuba policy, and tax breaks for Texas oil men were the 3 big reasons for the JFK assassination. Vietnam is #4 (JFK was very hesitant to go in.)

Here is my review of Caro's "Passage of Power." Caro does roll the ball forward by highlighting the great hatreds of the Kennedys and LBJ.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R18CJB9URMZ2QK/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0679405070&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

I am not the first person to call Lyndon Johnson a murderer.

And neither was E. Howard Hunt, the longtime CIA operative who organized the Bay of Pigs fiasco and who hated the Kennedys, and who before he died told his son St. John Hunt that Lyndon Johnson and the CIA colluded to murder John Kennedy. (2007)

Nor was Barr McClellan who was a lawyer for Lyndon Johnson and who wrote the book, "Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK" (2003).

Nor was Billie Sol Estes (still alive today 2012 & never interviewed by Caro) who was Lyndon Johnson's cut-out for doing business and kick backs on a massive scale (multiple $ millions). Estes, at the urging of Texas Ranger Clint Peoples, himself a close observer of LBJ's corruption for decades, went to court in the 1980's and confessed to a grand jury that Lyndon Johnson, Cliff Carter, he and Malcolm Wallace planned the murder of US Agricultural official Henry Marshall in June, 1961. The Marshall murder had been classified by Johnson cronies as death by suicide by 5 shots of a bolt action rifle - a now hilarious miscarriage of justice ruling in 1961.

Nor was Madeleine Brown, an inner circle mistress of Lyndon Johnson who had a son Steven Mark in 1950 with LBJ, and for 20 years before her death in 2003 told thousands of people that Lyndon Johnson had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination. LBJ called her on the day of the JFK assassination and said: "That son-of-a-bitch crazy Yarborough and that _____ ______ Irish mafia bastard Kennedy, will never embarrass me again!" [Texas in the Morning, p. 167]

Nor were tens of thousands anti-Vietnam protestors in the late 1960's the first to consider Lyndon Johnson a murderer as they chanted "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today?"

The *first* person I know who called Lyndon Johnson a murderer was the Governor of Texas, Allan Shivers who accused Lyndon Johnson to his face for the murder of Sam Smithwick in prison in 1956. Smithwick was involved in the 1948 ballot stuffing in Duval County that got "Landslide Lyndon" *elected* over Coke Stevenson in the 1948 Democratic primary. That was when in Texas a Democratic primary nomination was a de facto general election win. Smithwick was in jail and threatening to talk about the Box 13 scandal.

Robert Dallek: "According to Johnson, in 1956, Governor Allen Shivers of Texas accused him of having had Smithwick murdered. The charge understandably enraged Johnson." (Dallek, "Lone Star Rising," p. 347) So there you have it, people, including a high elected Texas official who knew well the nature and character and lack thereof of Lyndon Johnson have been calling him a murderer since 1956.

Gov. Shivers made his charges of Lyndon Johnson orchestrating the Smithwick murder 8 years before the J. Evetts Haley book "A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power" which sold more copies in Texas in 1964 than the Bible did.

I have found that people don't like it when you lie about them; but what they really *hate* is when you tell the truth about them.

Gov. Allan Shivers supported Lyndon Johnson, a man who he thought was a cold blooded murderer, for president in the 1960 Democratic primary. Now, why would Shivers do such a thing? It is called the tyranny of power. LBJ had power in 1960 and even though Shivers knew in his heart LBJ was a murderer, the tyranny of power required that Shivers support native Texan Lyndon Johnson for Texas.

And it is the tyranny of power that makes author Robert Caro feel that he is compelled to ignore 48 years of very fine JFK assassination research that points to the culpability of both Lyndon Johnson and military intelligence in the JFK assassination. They usually don't dish out Pulitzer prizes and other prestigious awards to those who call a U.S. President a murderer.

Just as families don't like to discuss incest; media, academic and government elites of countries don't like to discuss assassinations and coup d'etats that make them look like citizens of a banana republic. It just not a pleasant topic, especially when there are so many compromised organizations Presidency, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, both Democratic and Republican parties and the CIA/CFR controlled media that have tried to cover up the unpleasantness in Dallas for 48 years. Not to mention that the United States is so preachy to other countries about their states of democracy.

I think that the Bush family in particular has a lot to lose with an honest discussion and investigation into the JFK assassination. A deep analysis of GHW Bush and the events of Dallas might mean the end of Bushes at the national level of politics.

Lyndon Johnson and his Texas oil men used their CIA/military connections to murder John Kennedy for a host of reasons, both personal and ideological. 48 years after the JFK assassination it is time for mainstream academia, journalism and the U.S. government to finally acknowledge the ugly realities of the JFK assassination and the man who more than anyone else was responsible for it: Lyndon Johnson.

48 YEARS OF VERY FINE JFK ASSASSINATION RESEARCH IGNORED BY ROBERT CARO

Historians, including Robert Caro - at the risks of some hoots from the establishment - need to start assimilating into their books and narratives the very fine body of research that now exists on the JFK assassination from authors and researchers such as Phillip Nelson, Walt Brown, Ed Tatro, Joachim Joesten, Craig Zirbel, Noel Twyman, Doug Horne, David Lifton, Joan Mellon, Harry Livingstone, Barr McClellan, Madeleine Duncan Brown, Billie Sol Estes, James Tague, Connie Kritzberg, Thomas Buchanan, Anthony Summers, Vincent Salandria, Martin Schotz, Michael Morrisey, John Newman, Jerry Policoff, Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Russ Baker, Bruce Campbell Adamson, Wim Dankbaar, Rodney Stich, Judyth Vary Baker, Mark Lane, James Douglass, Casey Quinlan, Fletcher Prouty, Jim Garrison, Larry Hancock, Fabian Escalante, Robert Groden, Charles Crenshaw, Oliver Stone, Ed Haslam, Harry Yardum, Robert Gaylon Ross, Jim Marrs, George Michael Evica, Gary Shaw, Craig Ciccone, James Fetzer, Vince Palamara, William Turner, Penn Jones, William Turner, and John Judge.

Jim DiEugenio needs to be read on JFK's very dovish foreign policy and the possible role of Allen Dulles in helping to orchestrate the JFK assassination.

You can read legendary JFK researcher Bruce Campbell Adamson, Russ Baker, Wim Dankbaar and Paul Kangas on the likely role of CIA George Herbert Walker Bush in the JFK assassination.

"Years later, when he was running for President, George [Herbert Walker Bush] would claim that he never made the call. Documents were then produced that refreshed his memory. He also claimed that he did not remember where he was the day John F. Kennedy was killed- "somewhere in Texas," he said. George Bush is possibly the only person on the planet who did not recall his whereabouts that day ..." [Kitty Kelley, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," pp. 212-213]

Robert Caro's "Passage of Power," because of its treatment of the JFK assassination in such an incredible and dismissive fashion is an epic fail.

Journalists in the major media and networks also need to incorporate the 48 years of very fine research into stories and books about the JFK assassination. Most of the authors above will flat out tell you Lyndon Johnson and/or military intelligence murdered John Kennedy with LBJ and his neighbor of 19 years, J. Edgar Hoover, in charge of the cover up. Allen Dulles was placed on the Warren Commission to manipulate that farce.

I debated whether to Robert Caro's "Passage of Power" a 1-star or a 2-star. I do think this book has some value in adding to the historical record. However, based on the fact that Caro has been studying Lyndon Johnson for 35 years and given the fact that Caro has an obsession with the use of power, especially its dark usages, and that the JFK assassination was the ultimate act of dark power and the ultimate expression of Lyndon Johnson's dark use of power ... and the fact that Robert Caro still wants to clap for the "Emperor Who is Wearing No Clothes," this effort is awarded a well-deserved 1-star.

The one good thing the book does is to underscore just how much the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson hated each other. I think that will eventually be the hook that pulls folks into understanding the ugly realities of the JFK assassination.

THE KGB HAD CONCLUDED BY SEPT. 1965 THAT LYNDON JOHNSON WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE JFK ASSASSINATION

By September 16, 1965, the Soviet KGB had concluded that Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the JFK assassination. On 12/1/66 J. Edgar Hoover sent a memo to LBJ which stated:

"On September 16, 1965, this same source reported that the KGB Residency in New York City received instructions approximately September 16, 1965, from KGB headquarters in Moscow to develop all possible information concerning President Lyndon B. Johnson's character, background, personal friends, family, and from which quarters he derives his support in his position as President of the United States. Our source added that in the instructions from Moscow, it was indicated that "now" the KGB was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy. KGB headquarters indicated that in view of this information, it was necessary for the Soviet Government to know the existing personal relationship between President Johnson and the Kennedy family, particularly between President Johnson and Robert and "Ted" Kennedy."

Google: "REACTION OF SOVIET AND COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS TO THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY" and you will find this blockbuster Hoover memo to LBJ that the ARRB got released in the late 1990's. The KGB in the early 1960's had the world's largest foreign intelligence service. They had a keen interest in finding out the truth about the JFK assassination because they were almost framed for it. They were quite competent, too, having stolen our atomic secrets in the 1940's.

Again, this is the kind of historical gold that Robert Caro should be making jewelry with, yet he chooses to leave it laying on the ground as he walks over it to pick up a twig; Caro is no doubt fascinated by LBJ passing Kennedy's tax bill (a whopping 28 mentions in the index).

Have you ever seen the movie "Naked Gun" with Leslie Nielsen standing in front of the exploding fireworks factory? The part where Nielsen as Sgt. Frank Drebin is waving his hands to the assembled crowd and saying "Excuse me. All right. Come on - nothing to see here. Please disperse! Nothing to see here. Please!"

That would be Robert Caro and his treatment of Lyndon Johnson's and military intelligence's role in the JFK assassination, also known as the "Passage of Power."

LYNDON JOHNSON ON 12/31/63 TOLD MADELEINE BROWN THAT TEXAS OIL MEN AND THE CIA WERE BEHIND THE JFK ASSASSINATION

In the early 1980's, a key mistress of Lyndon Johnson, Madeleine Duncan Brown, came public with some information that I think is the key to understanding Lyndon Johnson's Passage of Power. Madeleine was very close to LBJ and even had a son Steven Mark with LBJ in 1950. Here is what Madeleine said in her book Texas in the Morning and what she told anyone who would listen for 20 years:

In the night 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 bull___, Madeleine Brown!" he yelled. "Don't tell me you believe that ____!"
"Of course not." I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.
"It was Texas oil and those ______ renegade intelligence bastards in Washington." [Brown; Texas in the Morning, p. 189]

Madeleine says that Johnson told her this at the Driskill Hotel on New Year's Eve 12/31/63. LBJ is confirmed by his schedule and contemporary accounts as being at the Driskill Hotel that night. LBJ kept a room there on retainer for his trysts. It is still there today, room #254 known as the Blue Room or the Presidential room, and you can rent it today in year 2012 for $600 to $1,000 per night depending on the season.
Robert Caro had 20 years to have a sit down interview with Madeleine Brown and he never did. Dozens of JFK researchers have had hundreds of talks and interviews with Madeleine Brown before she died in 2002.

Robert Caro: zero interviews of Madeleine Brown. I think that tells us mountains about Robert Caro's scholarship or lack thereof. It simply inexcusable for a historian of his caliber to just ignore someone who gives us information that is key to understanding the JFK assassination.

Robert Caro: zero interviews of Billie Sol Estes, Barr McClellan, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, Fletcher Prouty, Jim Garrison, name 100 other important figures in JFK assassination research. It is hard to learn history when you close your eyes, twiddle your thumbs in your ears and chant like a child " Na-na-na-na I can't hear you! Na-na-na-na-na I can't hear you!"

Lyndon Johnson's signature achievement - the civil rights act - was his "get out of jail card" for the JFK assassination. Many liberals justifiably believed that LBJ was behind the murder of JFK, so he had to give them something. Civil rights was LBJ's bone to the liberals who deeply distrusted him. The real agenda of LBJ was to keep himself out of jail and free himself from the Bobby Baker scandal, preserve the oil depreciation allowance for other oil executive perps in the JFK assassination, reward hawks in CIA/military and let his good buddy and neighbor of 19 years J. Edgar Hoover keep his job.

"SOMETIMES I THINK THAT WHAT HAPPENED TO KENNEDY MAY HAVE BEEN DIVINE RETRIBUTION." - LYNDON JOHNSON

Gus Russo:

"In his oral history, Robert Kennedy bitterly recounted a remark that Johnson supposedly made to someone else after the assassination. "When I was young in Texas, I used to know a cross-eyed boy," Johnson said. "His eyes were crossed, and so was his character... That was God's retribution for people who were bad - and you should be careful of cross-eyed people because God put his mark on them ... Sometimes I think that what happened to Kennedy may have been divine retribution." JFK himself had slightly crossed eyes.

[Leo Janos, LBJ speechwriter, Church Committee interview by Rhett Dawson, Oct. 14, 1975 ... also Gus Russo, Live by the Sword, p. 377]

I HAVE ALWAYS THOUGHT THERE WAS A LOT OF TRUTH IN THIS PASSAGE:

From Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, 3rd edition 1998 p. 638-639]:

"The Role of deep-cover CIA officer, Trenton Parker, has been described in earlier pages, and his function in the CIA's counter-intelligence unit, Pegasus. Parker had stated to me earlier that a CIA faction was responsible for the murder of JFK ... During an August 21, 1993, conversation, in response to my questions, Parker said that his Pegasus group had tape recordings of plans to assassinate Kennedy. I asked him, "What group were these tapes identifying?" Parker replied: "Rockefeller, Allen Dulles, Johnson of Texas, George Bush, and J. Edgar Hoover." I asked, "What was the nature of the conversation on these tapes?"

I don't have the tapes now, because all the tape recordings were turned over to [Congressman] Larry McDonald. But I listened to the tape recordings and there were conversations between Rockefeller, [J. Edgar] Hoover, where [Nelson] Rockefeller asks, "Are we going to have any problems?" And he said, "No, we aren't going to have any problems. I checked with Dulles. If they do their job we'll do our job." There are a whole bunch of tapes, because Hoover didn't realize that his phone has been tapped. Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, 3rd edition p. 638-639]

I don't think Robert Caro knows who the legendary Rodney Stich is or who Trenton Parker (still alive, probably in Colorado) is. So much for Caro's omniscient research; the man is completely unaware of cutting edge JFK research.

LYNDON JOHNSON TO DR. CHARLES CRENSHAW ON 11/24/63:
"I want a death-bed confession from the accused assassin. There's a man in the operating room who will take a statement. I will expect full cooperation in this matter."
Note: Johnson was not asking to find out *who* sent Oswald or if there were *others,* if it was a conspiracy. Use your thinking cap to figure out why.

THE KENNEDYS WERE ON THE VERGE ON POLITICALLY EXECUTING LYNDON JOHNSON ON 11/22/63

James Wagenvoord to John Simkin (in November, 2009):

"I've been reading through you web site and believe that I can add one of the final jigsaw puzzle pieces that affect the timing of JFK's Dallas trip and the nervousness of LBJ during the weeks preceding the killing. At the time I was the 27 year old Editorial business manager and assistant to Life Magazines Executive Editor. Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine, based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major newsbreak piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker. On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the '64 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time. At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US. The top management of Time Inc. was closely allied with the USA's various intelligence agencies and we were used after by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public. Life's coverage of the Hoffa prosecution, and involvement in paying off Justice Department Memphis witnesses was a case in point.

The LBJ/Baker piece was in the final editing stages and was scheduled to break in the issue of the magazine due out the week of November 24 (the magazine would have made it to the newsstands on Nov.26th or 27th). It had been prepared in relative secrecy by a small special editorial team. On Kennedy's death research files and all numbered copies of the nearly print-ready draft were gathered up by my boss (he had been the top editor on the team) and shredded. The issue that was to expose LBJ instead featured the Zapruder film. Based upon our success in syndicating the Zapruder film I became Chief of Time/LIFE editorial services and remained in that job until 1968."

PHIL BRENNAN ON RFK'S EFFORTS TO USE THE MEDIA TO GET RID OF LYNDON JOHNSON:

Google: "Some Relevant Facts about the JFK Assassination"
"For the most part, the Washington press corps kept the lid on the story - until the late Bob Humphrey, then the GOP Senate leadership's spokesman, an incredibly gifted strategist and a mentor, asked me to tell the story to the late Delaware Republican Sen. John Williams, a crusader for good government and a crackerjack of an investigator.
Sen. Williams asked me to introduce him to Hill and I did. They got together with some Senate investigators for the GOP minority and Hill told them the whole story, including the part played by Vice President Johnson. Williams got his committee to launch an investigation and the lid came off.

A few days later, the attorney general, Bobby Kennedy, called five of Washington's top reporters into his office and told them it was now open season on Lyndon Johnson. It's OK, he told them, to go after the story they were ignoring out of deference to the administration.
And from that point on until the events in Dallas, Lyndon Baines Johnson's future looked as if it included a sudden end to his political career and a few years in the slammer. The Kennedys had their knives out and sharpened for him and were determined to draw his political blood - all of it.

In the Senate, the investigation into the Baker case was moving quickly ahead. Even the Democrats were cooperating, thanks to the Kennedys, and an awful lot of really bad stuff was being revealed - until Nov. 22, 1963.
By Nov. 23, all Democrat cooperation suddenly stopped. Lyndon would serve a term and a half in the White House instead of the slammer, the Baker investigation would peter out and Bobby Baker would serve a short sentence and go free. Dallas accomplished all of that. "

CIA AND AIR FORCE GENERAL ED LANSDALE IDENTIFIED AT DEALEY PLAZA.

This is yet another golden nugget of JFK research missed by Caro. Ed Lansdale was the CIA's expert of coups, assassinations and propaganda. He was identified as at Texas School Book Depository by his peers Col. Fletcher Prouty and Gen. Victor Krulak. Google " Krulak Letter: Dealey Plaza Photos and Lansdale Identity"

A whole book could be written on this; does not make the index of Caro. It is just really sad Robert Caro is blithely unaware of all this stuff.

ANTONIO VECIANA IDENTIFIES HIS CIA CONTACT "MAURICE BISHOP" AKA FORT WORTH'S CIA DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS WITH LEE HARVEY OSWALD

By now the reader is asking, is this a review about Lyndon Johnson or the JFK assassination? That is the whole point, you can not credibly discuss Lyndon Johnson unless you go deep into the JFK assassination, military intelligence and the sub rosa battles that the Kennedys were having with Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover and elements of the JCS for 3 and 1/2 years.

Antonio Veciana, David Atlee Phillips - not in Caro's book. George DeMohrenschildt (Oswald's best friend and CIA connected) - yet another critical name familiar to JFK research no where to be found in Caro's 712 pages. DeMohrenschidt knew both GHW Bush and Lyndon Johnson. See the work of Bruce Campbell Adamson for that.

LYNDON JOHNSON MADE MADELEINE'S NANNY DISAPPEAR FOREVER - LBJ WOULD HAVE HAD HER KILLED OR "DISAPPEARED" AND NOT THOUGHT TWICE ABOUT IT

"Dale Turner, our mate... came up missing and I've never found her since," says Madeleine of the woman who was basically the nanny to her two children and had been with Steven since he was born. She says LBJ spotted Dalel observing the two of them together at a hotel in San Antonio and it upset him. "He covered his tracks very well," says Madeleine. "He didn't want anyone to know about our relationship, so after Dale saw him he told me that I would have to tell her goodbye. I said 'I can't do that, she's been with us ten years!' And he said, 'I said you'll have to tell her goodbye.' After we were returned to Dallas she called me at work and told me that she had some very important business, and I said, 'That's fine Dale, go take care of it, just take the boys to my mother's, [who] we lived close to.' I said, 'Take all the time you want.' She lived in with us and that was very convenient... Dale never did return. We had the "color law" in Texas in those years. If you did report a [missing] black, they could care less. It's very sad and tragic, but it did happen... Through the years I have tried to find her or find out what happened." She heard 'Mac Wallace' took care of her implying LBJ's orders caused the murder of the woman who had been the nanny of the President's son.

LYNDON JOHNSON USE SEXUAL BLACKMAIL, INTIMIDATION AND STRONGARM TACTICS TO GET ON THE 1960 DEMOCRATIC TICKET

Evelyn Lincoln as told to Anthony Summers:
"During the 1960 campaign, according to Mrs. Lincoln, Kennedy discovered how vulnerable his womanizing had made him. Sexual blackmail, she said, had long been part of Lyndon Johnson's modus operandi--abetted by Edgar. "J. Edgar Hoover," Lincoln said, "gave Johnson the information about various congressmen and senators so that Johnson could go to X senator and say, `How about this little deal you have with this woman?' and so forth. That's how he kept them in line. He used his IOUs with them as what he hoped was his road to the presidency. He had this trivia to use, because he had Hoover in his corner. And he thought that the members of Congress would go out there and put him over at the Convention. But then Kennedy beat him at the Convention. And well, after that Hoover and Johnson and their group were able to push Johnson on Kennedy."LBJ," said Lincoln, "had been using all the information Hoover could find on Kennedy--during the campaign, even before the Convention. And Hoover was in on the pressure on Kennedy at the Convention." (Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 272).

MORE ON HOW LYNDON JOHNSON AND SAM RAYBURN MADE A HOSTILE TAKE-OVER OF THE VICE-PRESIDENCY ON THE NIGHT OF JULY 13, 1960

Read the Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh, p.124-129:
Close JFK friend Hy Raskin: "Johnson was not being given the slightest bit of consideration by any of the Kennedys... On the stuff I saw it was always Symington who was going to be the vice president. The Kennedy family had approved Symington." [Hersh, p. 124]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford on July 13, 1960: "We've talked it out - me, dad, Bobby - and we've selected Symington as the vice president." Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to relay that message to Symington "and find out if he'd run." ..."I and Stuart went to bed believing that we had a solid, unequivocal deal with Jack." [Hersh, p.125]

Hy Raskin: "It was obvious to them that something extraordinary had taken place, as it was to me," Raskin wrote. "During my entire association with the Kennedys, I could not recall any situation where a decision of major significance had been reversed in such a short period of time.... Bob [Kennedy] had always been involved in every major decision; why not this one, I pondered... I slept little that night." [Hersh, p. 125]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford in the morning of July 14, 1960: "I must do something that I have never done before. I made a serious deal and now I have to go back on it. I have no alternative." Symington was out and Johnson was in. Clifford recalled observing that Kennedy looked as if he'd been up all night." [Hersh, p. 126]

John Kennedy to Hy Raskin: "You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don't need more problems. I'm going to have enough problems with Nixon." [Hersh, p. 126]

Raskin "The substance of this revelation was so astonishing that if it had been revealed to me by another other than Jack or Bob, I would have had trouble accepting it. Why he decided to tell me was still very mysterious, but flattering nonetheless." [Hersh, p. 126]

ROBERT CARO ON LYNDON JOHNSON:

"And by 1941, also the major patterns of his entire life are established and clear. In attaining this influence, he has displayed a genius for discerning a path to power, an utter ruthlessness in destroying obstacles in that path, and a seemingly bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal in moving along it"

My question: yet Lyndon Johnson is an innocent babe in the JFK assassination? Do you really think Lyndon Johnson was going to sit around twiddling his thumbs while the Kennedy brothers are on the verge of politically executing and personally destroying him?

YOU HAVE *GOT* TO READ A SALLY QUINN WASH-POST ARTICLE TITLED "A TALE OF HEARTS AND MINDS" DATED 8/24/75 ABOUT DORIS KEARNS

Another one of LBJ's sychopants was is Doris Kearns (Goodwin), an LBJ flirtation as well as biographer. Her husband Richard Goodwin is on the record as to how scarily mentally unhinged LBJ was a president as he collapsed under the weight of Vietnam and covering up for his role in the JFK assassination. Doris Kearns, presidential historian, is yet another one who has never told the full truth on LBJ.

Maybe it was because she was sleeping with him. You have *got* to read a Sally Quinn WashPost article titled "A Tale of Hearts and Minds" dated 8/24/75.

Sally Quinn:

"Doris Kearns also told authors Richard Harwood and Haynes Johnson about her relationship with LBJ in an interview that Sally Quinn refers to:

"They both took copious notes. In the interview Kearns told the reporters that her relationship with President Johnson was extraordinarily complicated, that she was still having trouble placing it in perspective, that she was troubled about how to handle her personal relationship with Johnson when she published her own book.

She told them that the essence of their relationship was that LBJ was in love with her, the he "pressed me very hard sexually the first year," that he courted her aggressively, the he asked her to marry him, that he was jealous of other men in her life.""

LBJ (age 59) was asking Doris Kearns (age 24) to marry him. My question: what was Lady Bird going to do?

Throw rice at the wedding?

BILL CLINTON ASKED WEBB HUBBELL IN 1993 TO FIND OUT WHO KILLED JFK AND ARE THERE UFO'S?

This is the same Bill Clinton who favorably review "Passage of Power" for the NYT.

Webb Hubbell: "Of my many regrets at that moment, I remember thinking that I hadn't accomplished something the President had asked me to do when I [he means Clinton] was first elected. "Webb," he had said, "if I put you at Justice, I want you to find two answers for me. One, Who killed JFK? And two, Are there UFO's?" He was dead serious. I had looked into both, but wasn't satisfied with the answers I was getting."

[Webb Hubbell, "Friends in High Places," p. 282]

LBJ TELLS THE JOINT CHIEFS AT CHRISTMAS, 1963 - GET ME ELECTED AND I WILL GIVE YOU YOUR WAR IN VIETNAM

"Just let me get elected, and then you can have your war." [Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History, Viking, 1983, p. 326] Stanley Karnow's source for that LBJ quote was Gen. Harold K. Johnson, the Army chief of staff.

Lyndon Johnson was capable of absolutely *anything.* Read the book Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson by D. Jablow Hershman. I consider it a psychological smoking gun to the JFK assassination.

(Halliburton had bought out Brown & Root in 1962.)

JIM GARRISON ON LYNDON JOHNSON, DECEMBER, 1967:

"President Johnson is currently the most active person in the country protecting the assassins of John Kennedy." (12/26/67) We now know that LBJ, the FBI and the CIA (the perps) were sabotaging Garrison's investigation. "Why? Because of power - because if people knew the facts about the assassination they would not tolerate the people in power today. Keep in mind who profits most. Who appointed the Warren Commission? Who runs the FBI? Who runs the CIA? The President of the United States." - Jim Garrison (12/26/67)

Jim Garrison also said, "President Johnson is currently the most active person in the country in protecting the assassins of John Kennedy."

"President Johnson must have known by the time of the arrest that Oswald did not pull the trigger."

LBJ HAD NO PHOTOS OF JOHN KENNEDY IN HIS HOME AT THE LBJ RANCH

"After Johnson died, Secret Service agents guarding Lady Bird were amazed to find that even though their home was crammed with photos of Johnson with famous people, not one photo pictured him with JFK." [Ronald Kessler, "In the President's Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the line of Fire and the Presidents they Protect, p. 21]

Lyndon Johnson 11/21/63 to Madeleine Brown:

"After tomorrow those ______ Kennedys will never embarrass me again- that's no threat- that is a promise!" [Texas in the Morning, p. 166]

"If Lyndon B. Johnson has any brains left, he'll blow them out before the law gets to him. That way he could at least escape the pinnacle of infamy and save his country from foundering in an abyss of national shame." [Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Johnson, p. 268]