Sixtieth Anniversary of the Warren Report

James DiEugenio's On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Warren Report is available at the Kennedys And King assassination investigation site.  This is an excellent overview of the main points of the Warren Commission Report.  The Warren Report is basically government issued propaganda supported by a compliant media.  Its failings are why the majority of the public doesn’t believe the official story of John Kennedy’s death and started the overall decline of public trust in the government.  As has been seen over the years since 1964 this lack of trust has not been misplaced. 

As DiEugenio explains, 

“Yet, both CBS and NBC broadcast specials on the Warren Report on the day it was issued to the public.  How could anyone have read the 888 pages, digested it, and then put together, respectively, a 2 hour program, and a 1 hour program vouching for the validity of that report?  For that is what happened.  The NBC show was hosted by Frank McGee and supported by Tom Pettit, who was right on the scene when Jack Ruby killed Lee Oswald. The CBS special was hosted by Walter Cronkite, with Dan Rather in support.  Was doing such a thing not a violation of journalistic ethics?  It was the equivalent of taking a government press release and announcing it as factually truthful to tens of millions of people, without any review.”

Read more here:

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/warren-commission-report-60-years-later

7 Of The Worst JFK Books

There are so many bad books on the JFK assassination it wasn’t hard picking the eight.  What follows is a mix of different styles and angles, with Family of Secrets selected for its JFK section.  For the most part the books listed here mostly feature the pro-government account. Why?  Because the government’s official story is flawed and those authors ignore that fact for a variety of reasons only known to them. In some instances, such as Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, the book is deceptive in its narrative and deeply flawed in its accounting of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. 

#7 The Interloper by Peter Savodnik
Apparently rushed out for the 50th year anniversary of JFK’s death,  this dreck of a book by Peter Savodnik is awful in so many ways I could almost make it #1 on the list.  For a guy that traveled the world doing research there is literally nothing new in this book but another reframing of Oswald as the hapless, disgruntled loser with delusions of grandeur. Made even worse are the many mistakes in the book, such as Savodnik stating that Lee and mother lived in Manhattan for 6 weeks.  Not only did they never live there, but the address listed is one they never lived at.  They actually lived in the Bronx for over a year.  Even more importantly, the author totally ignored the CIA/ONI false defector program to the Soviet Union.  It’s a well documented piece of the story and the author can’t bare to mention it at all.  Logically, he can’t because it disrupts his fiction of Oswald being a misguided loner hoping desperately to fit in.  Certainly not worth a purchase for the same old song and dance in a different package.

#6 Oswald’s Tale by Norman Mailer 
As I have said in the past, the trouble with books by Norman Mailer is there is too much of Norman Mailer in them.   A man who was truly a legend in his own mind, Mailer is another man that started out a conspiracy believer to later throw in the towel and side with the status quo.  With an ego so huge that hardly any books can bear the weight of it, the great man of American Letters tackles the character of Oswald in his usual infuriating way.  Infuriating, meaning at certain junctures he injects metaphors better suited for fiction.  He refers to Oswald as a ghost, the First Ghost he says.  Oh brother, I cringe.

Unfortunately, it’s all the same old song and dance with the same old tired conclusions.   Mailer makes a valiant attempt in trying to peer into the soul and consciousness of Lee H. Oswald despite his lack of psychiatric credentials.  Mailer offers his reader the standard account of the shiftless, troubled loser with delusions of grandeur dreaming of making his mark on history.  However, there is one stumbling block Mailer trips over as many others have before him–that stumbling block is motive.  There basically isn’t one and everybody knows it.  Oswald never expressed any dislike or ill will towards Kennedy.  So Mailer will have to put on his Dr. Phil hat and soldier on with the delusions of grandeur profile.  And like Bugliosi, Posner, and O’Reilly, he ignores the controversial events of Oswald’s life, including what if he was being impersonated, what if he was a possible government operative, and what was going on with the Mexico city trip? He instead opts for the standard accounting, albeit with literary flourishes that only an author like Norman Mailer can type up. 

#5 Blood, Money & Power by Barr McClellan
Barr McClellan’s book covering the LBJ did-it-theory.  There have been many written on this angle, and this one is among the worst. McClellan states up front that we can never know the exact details for the conspiracy hatched between Johnson and his attorney Edward Clark.  So he tells his readers that he will make use of “historical fiction” for those parts.  Isn’t that special?  This is the main reason one should never use this book as a source. Unfortunately, many LBJ conspiracy authors do. 

Lyndon Johnson is indeed a character worth considering in conspiracy as he was one of the most conspiratorial men that ever lived.  A supreme manipulator of people and events he was a master of everything that crossed his path.  He did so many bad things in his life, and was such a disreputable character totally devoid of scruples that it boggles the mind in regards to what he got away with.  Or for that matter, how he could live with himself. (Apparently not an easy thing with his psychotic breaks covered up as “exhaustion.”) If there was ever an unindicted criminal running loose it was LBJ.  But karma works and it all came grinding to a halt when the Marines landed in Vietnam.  Knee deep in big muddy and Big Fool says to push on, sang Pete Seeger.  A classic case of having the chickens come home to roost.  Oh boy, did they ever!

Barr McClellan’s account is pairing of Lyndon Johnson with his co-conspirator attorney Edward Clark, the only man the author says that Johnson ever trusted.  The duo starts their alliance early on in the careers of each with Clark being instrumental in keeping Johnson out of his various predicaments, especially the major vote rigging in the 1948 senate race.  McClellan gets hired by the Clark law firm so his intent here is to provide the reader with inside information on how it all went down.  But as stated above, some of this narrative is going to be made up by the author since he doesn’t have access to all the facts.  He claims he is told cryptic statements from law firm partners, John Coates and Don Thomas, about how Clark arranged the assassination of Kennedy.  Well, that would let LBJ largely off the hook if he is not scheming too.  If it happened this way, boy, did the CIA and other enemies get lucky.

The actual details of the assassination are a mixture of fact, fiction, and nonsense.  In this scenario, Oswald is paired with another shooter, one Malcolm Wallace.  McClellan alleges he is LBJ’s personal hit-man and there is some truth to that.  Wallace was arrested for the murder of a local golf pro and told a detective he had to return to Washington as he worked for LBJ.  Later, he got off with a slap on the wrist, never serving any time for the homicide.  Even in terms of Texas law that was a blatant misuse of justice.  Anyway, according to McClellan, Wallace sneaks in the school book building and makes his way to the sixth floor to team up with Oswald.  Here things get out of kilter. McClellan has Oswald taking the first shot that misses, but strangely, not the one you might think.  Meanwhile, Mac Wallace shoots and hits Kennedy in the back, with the bullet passing through to break up and incredibly, send a fragment to wound James Tague standing on Commerce street.  Wow, more crazy physics than the Magic Bullet Theory!   Oswald’s second shot hits Gov. Connelly in the back causing all of his injuries.

But he’s not done yet!  McClellan has an anonymous character named “Junior” available from the grassy knoll for the kill shot.  Not much on this guy other than Junior is supposed to be a crack shot.  He pulls the trigger and the assassination is completed.  Junior disappears into history, or rather, into McClellan’s fantasy world. Malcolm Wallace sneaks out wearing a dark suit and flashes his Secret Service credentials to anybody nearby in another make-believe incident.  And Oswald, well, we all know what happens to him. 

So there you have the essentials of this awful book.  Presenting stories as history, complete with invented dialog, is absurd and the real facts get lost in the clutter.  So much is left out, particularly Oswald’s life and the employment of Jack Ruby to silence him.  It’s all LBJ and his crooked lawyer and few others have a play in this, especially the usual suspects–Mob, CIA, Russians, Cubans, and so on.  So few people are involved, there’s hardly a plot to muster up.   And the bit about Mac Wallace’s bullet disintegrating resulting in Tague’s wounding is weird and not supported by any facts or any other research.  McClellan doesn’t cite anything on this improbable happening for proof.  And Junior?  Could he be one of the good ole’ boys working down at the local Jiffy Lube?

To think what Barr McClellan could have written on LBJ’s involvement, if any, in the assassination.  He was given the opportunity to be employed by Johnson’s law film but apparently, did not have enough access to properly research the subject.  When it comes down to it, he’s really out of the loop.  He does mention one tantalizing thing–the top floor of the law firm is where the files of the clients are stored.  And way in the back, under a special lock, are all the files pertaining to Lyndon Baines Johnson.  Oh, what a treasure trove lies concealed there!

#4 Ultimate Sacrifice by Lamar Waldron
I feel sort of sorry for Lamar Waldron. He’s sort of a Don Quixote figure in the annals of JFK research.  Like Quixote, he suffers from serious lapses of judgement in both professional and personal life.  Billed as the “Ultimate JFK Historian” Waldron has co-authored several books on the JFK assassination from the “Mob did it” angle making him the leading authority.  His books are filled with unnamed sources, questionable scholarship, and poor citing of references.  Probably his most remarkable claim, along with co-author Thom Hartmann, is of an alleged second planned invasion of Cuba set for December 1st, 1963 called “C-Day.”  This C-Day plot is not alluded to by any other researchers and there isn’t any documentation that I know that has been cited on this. It’s a bunch of hokum.  David Talbot, author of Brothers, asked Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara if he was aware of such an event and he said he was not. 

One troublesome area of Waldron’s version of the Kennedy assassination is the notion that JFK and Bobby were deeply involved in this Cuban plot; either turn Castro by peaceful means or send in people to knock him off.  So if they are in league with the anti-Castro Cubans and the Mob to accomplish this, then why would they murder JFK a few days before the invasion?  It doesn't make sense.  The proof for this and other scenarios is flimsy at best.

For Lamar Waldron, the Mob is responsible for many conspiracies from the JFK assassination to Watergate.  While many have documented a lot of CIA machinations, they always get a pass from Waldron. His recent book on Nixon and Watergate, the Mob pops up again to ensnare Nixon, although Nixon is supposed to be good buddies with them going back years. 

Picking on the Mob does have its advantages.  For example, Lamar Waldron gets very good reviews for his books in the mainstream media while virtually all conspiracy authors of JFK books get largely ignored.  As we know from the Church Committee hearings the CIA spent millions of dollars–under the table money–to buy off editors and writers in mainstream media outlets.  No wonder Waldron gets such high praise.  The CIA will never get their dirty linens exposed. 

In the end, Lamar Waldron blows a lot of smoke with his Mob fantasies not to mention creating cooked up scenarios that are inadequately documented.

#3 Killing Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly
I remember the days when Bill O’Reilly was a reporter for Inside Edition and did some hard hitting pieces on the JFK assassination.  I wish the old Bill O’Reilly that looked into this case with a critical eye would have returned here for an encore.  Sadly, that’s a thing of the past.  Now being a major media figure on FOX he’s gone to the dark side of the Force.  Do they have some pictures on this guy?  Anyway, this book, co-authored with Martin Dugard (who probably did all the work) is another rehashing of the assassination from the Warren Commission perspective of a lone gunman and no conspiracy.  It follows the standard path of Poser and Bugliosi which is to cherry pick the evidence and in O’Reilly/Dugard’s exposition, ignore everything that has happened since the Warren Report was issued in 1964. That would include Ramsey Report, the Rockefeller Commission, Jim Garrison’s investigation and trial of Clay Shaw, the Church Committee hearings, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigation in the late 1970’s, the late 90‘s Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) release of files and sworn witness testimony, and the other released documents gained from FOIA requests made by independent researchers.  I should also add the 26 volumes of Warren Commission hearings and collected evidence as well since documents there contradict the final report.  Of course, the lone nut gang must take this path to make sure the lone gunman theory appears viable.  They treat the Warren Report as if it’s a holy document; the Word of God comes down from the mountain top, above reproach.

It’s really a bad book because it is agenda driven and leaves out any evidence that points to a conspiracy, or for that matter, anything that gives us insight to a different Lee Oswald than what we’ve been told. Talk about beating a dead horse, O’Reilly/Dugard even have Oswald proclaimed as a “crack shot” for heaven’s sake!  Even a first grader knows that’s a joke.

It’s a huge bestseller mainly because Bill O’Reilly used his position on a top rated cable news show to send it to the top of the charts, otherwise this empty suit of a JFK book would be in the discount bin with Reclaiming History and Case Closed.  It will probably be the best selling t​ome ever for the official government sanctioned account.  But that will be its only claim to fame. 

#2 Reclaiming History by Vince Bugliosi

Vince Bugliosi, the man who single handedly changed the image of peaceful, harmless hippies into demonic, zoned-out crazies, tries his hand at Warren Commission defense in this 1,600+ page tome. Weighing in at around 5 pounds don’t drop it on your foot–I did and it hurt! Commonly referred to as a door-stop, it certainly fulfills this purpose. As far as reframing Oswald for John Kennedy’s murder it serves that purpose as well, though Bugliosi has to pull a host of clever lawyer tricks out of his hat and constantly move the goalposts around to score his points. The Straw Men get the hell beat out of them forcing these fellows to wish they were made of stronger stuff. The book starts out reasonably well but it’s not long before the nasty Bugliosi shows up to insult and ridicule critics of the official story in every way imaginable. So obsessed with lampooning critics as “conspiracy theorists” at times he goes off the rails and starts accusing people of conspiracy theory who don’t even invent theories. People such as Dr. David Mantik who simply went to the National Archives and discovered that some of the x-rays of JFK were apparent frauds. That is not a theory but a fact. Never mind, Dr. Mantik is labeled a theorist anyway.

The trouble with Bugliosi’s arguments is they look good at first till you start digging deeper. A good example, goal post shifting is when he states that if there is a shooter on the grassy knoll his angle is off, meaning his shot would pass through Kennedy’s head from ear to ear–not from front to back. This seems logical. However, the only way he accomplishes this is by placing the shooter at the wrong place behind the picket fence to begin with. He has to do this since he has dumped all witness testimony, over 50 witnesses, who heard shots coming from the knoll. All nice and tidy tricks till you ponder it. 

As many have said, Reclaiming History is a prosecutorial brief. “Oswald is guilty as sin,” begins the esteemed prosecutor. And that indeed, is all this book is ever going to be. It’ll never be an objective investigation into what happened or the possibility that Oswald was innocent. History in this book is a backdrop to the linear path to Oswald’s guilt. There is no drama to take place here as Bugliosi has let his reader know what the end result will be. He tries to convince the reader that the Magic Bullet Theory really does make sense. That the Zapruder film really does show Kennedy shot from the back, despite what your lying eyes tell you. And if you don’t believe him, you aren’t very bright. The contrary evidence and witness testimony has to be dumped to make all of this plausible. However, the members of the Lone Nut crowd all do this. Anything that looks suspicious is just coincidence or a fluke. 

Reclaiming History is a book to fool the people that haven’t studied the Kennedy assassination in any depth. I have the sense that Vincent Bugliosi is a devious character. He was sued for slander in the early 1970’s and had to pay a $12,500 settlement to his former milkman. Bugliosi used the powers of his office to stalk the guy, get his unlisted phone number, and generally badmouth him all over. Why? Because he thought the milkman was shagging his wife. Whoa there! So if you want to believe anything this peculiar man has to say, it’s up to you.

Vince Bugliosi, the man who single handedly changed the image of peaceful, harmless hippies into demonic, zoned-out crazies, tries his hand at Warren Commission defense in this 1,600+ page tome. Weighing in at around 5 pounds don’t drop it on your foot–I did and it hurt! Commonly referred to as a door-stop, it certainly fulfills this purpose. As far as reframing Oswald for John Kennedy’s murder it serves that purpose as well, though Bugliosi has to pull a host of clever lawyer tricks out of his hat and constantly move the goal posts around to score his points. The Straw Men get the hell beat out of them forcing these fellows to wish they were made of stronger stuff. The book starts out reasonably well but it’s not long before the nasty Bugliosi shows up to insult and ridicule critics of the official story in every way imaginable. So obsessed with lampooning critics as “conspiracy theorists” at times he goes off the rails and starts accusing people of conspiracy theory who don’t even invent theories. People such as Dr. David Mantik who simply went to the National Archives and discovered that some of the x-rays of JFK were apparent frauds. That is not a theory but a fact. Never mind, Dr. Mantik is labeled a theorist anyway.

The trouble with Bugliosi’s arguments is they look good at first till you start digging deeper. A good example, goal post shifting is when he states that if there is a shooter on the grassy knoll his angle is off, meaning his shot would pass through Kennedy’s head from ear to ear–not from front to back. This seems logical. However, the only way he accomplishes this is by placing the shooter at the wrong place behind the picket fence to begin with. He has to do this since he has dumped all witness testimony, over 50 witnesses, who heard shots coming from the knoll. All nice and tidy trick till you ponder it. 

As many have said, Reclaiming History is a prosecutorial brief. “Oswald is guilty as sin,” begins the esteemed prosecutor. And that indeed, is all this book is ever going to be. It’ll never be an objective investigation into what happened or the possibility that Oswald was innocent. History in this book is a backdrop to the linear path to Oswald’s guilt. There is no drama to take place here as Bugliosi has let his reader know what the end result will be. He tries to convince the reader that the Magic Bullet Theory really does make sense. That the Zapruder film really does show Kennedy shot from the back, despite what your lying eyes tell you. And if you don’t believe him, you aren’t very bright. The contrary evidence and witness testimony has to be dumped to make all of this plausible. However, the members of the Lone Nut crowd all do this. Anything that looks suspicious is just coincidence or a fluke. 

Reclaiming History is a book to fool the people that haven’t studied the Kennedy assassination in any depth. I have the sense that Vincent Bugliosi is a devious character. He was sued for slander in the early 1970’s and had to pay a $12,500 settlement to his former milkman. Bugliosi used the powers of his office to stalk the guy, get his unlisted phone number, and generally badmouth him all over. Why? Because he thought the milkman was shagging his wife. Whoa there! So if you want to believe anything this peculiar man has to say, it’s up to you.

Vinc​ent​ Bugliosi RIP, 1934-2015

#1 Case Closed by Gerald Posner 
They seem to promote guys like Gerald Posner every decade.  He was the 90’s poster boy for Warren Commission defense.  Vincent Bugliosi was picked for the role in the first decade of the 21st century.  Bill O’Reilly gets the honor for the second decade.  Posner still has his boyish looks all these years later though his face has been resharpened so many times he’s developed that plastic look of an android.  Looks aside, his book takes the Numero Uno slot as the worst book ever in JFK assassination literature.  Why?  ​L​et me count the ways.

Posner had no background in JFK research and it shows.  Like the others that have followed, Posner uses the same sleight of hand tricks to insure Oswald’s guilt. (Yes, he’s another lawyer.)  He omits facts, has easily proven errors in evidence and logic, and generally makes stuff up.  There are wrong dates, erroneous names, even geographical locations are misapplied.  His book is in effect, an attempt to discredit everybody or anything that reeks of conspiracy in the case.  And with a lap dog press he got away with it for a while till the Internet appeared to unveil the trickery.

One of Posner’s worst acts is to claim interviews with people that later state they never spoke to him, such as star witness James Tague who Posner has three citations on.  Tague said he never met or spoke to him.  Tague was one of many people that have come forward outing Posner on bogus interview claims.

Basically, Posner is a hack, brought on board with promises of unprecedented access to CIA files.  The CIA being the duplicitous bunch they are, used him for a foil.  One silly flub was when Posner stated on a cable TV documentary that he had documents proving that Oswald and David Ferrie were not in the CAP together at the same time.  He states the same thing in his book as well.  Then later a picture emerged of both of them at a CAP outdoor meeting.  Oops!  Posner was fooled about Ferrie getting kicked out of the CAP in the mid 1950‘s, ignoring that Ferrie started his own branch in another town which apparently the 14 year-old Oswald joined.  Actually, Posner’s mistakes got so bad even Bugliosi had to take him to task in his book for numerous errors. 

One more thing.  Posner resorts to using computer aided studies conducted by Failure Analysis Associates, to prove the lone bullet theory.  He makes it appear he commissioned the firm to do this work for him.  FAA in turn, refutes any of these claims. It was actually data created for the American Bar Association's mock trial of Oswald, and both sides used it.  Oh, and by the way, Oswald was not convicted in the mock trial.

In later years Posner got in trouble for plagiarism and had to hire an attorney  (Mark Lane of all people!).  None of this is surprising considering Posner’s machinations committed in Case Closed.  It all finally caught up with him.  Karma is a lady not to be trifled with.


And there you have it.  My eight of the worst JFK assassination books of all time.  I could have enlarged greatly, such as JFK and UFOs and so on but decided to pass on wading through that cesspool.  I’ll update the list in the future should I find books that are even more offensive than the ones listed here.  There probably are.

Robert Caro Drops The Ball

“In attaining this influence, he 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.”

Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power, Introduction

With The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro delivers his forth volume in his award winning biography of Lyndon Johnson.  Caro is the biographer of Johnson and has made it his life's work.  The books in the series of noted for their frank and brutally honest portrayal of LBJ who was a complex character–part brilliant politician and manipulator of events, and part madman with outbursts of rage, cruelty, immorality, uncouth manners, dark depressions and narcism.  Caro from the beginning labels Johnson a pathological liar and then precedes to prove it through hundreds of examples of the pathology.  JFK called him a "chronic liar."  RFK said Johnson would lie even when he didn't have to.  He's a sociopath with little regard or respect for other people, only using empathy when it suited his political aims.  LBJ was his own god.  

If I find any fault in these books, it's not in the writing of them or the details presented but in reading about what a despicable person Johnson was and what depths he went to achieve his goal in life and that was the Presidency of the United States.  With a deep sense of inferiority he wore from hard scrabble upbringing in the Texas hill country, he dreamed of being somebody important and being President was it.  Reading about Johnson in a book it's hard to live with him and harder still to imagine how anybody else could in actual life.  If you haven't read these books before then read one and wait a year or more before you read the next.  Distance is needed, least this vile man’s presence comes to find a home in you.

The main problem with The Passage of Power is that Caro appears to have altered the formula for what made his books so great.  His other books are the epitome of truthful biography and excellent historical research, all superbly edited and they represent fine works of literature.  Caro is the man that is going tell us everything and blow it all wide open.  And he does through the first three books.  However, this latest tome is an empty vessel.  I would term it Robert Caro Lite. In the other books there is information on LBJ’s life and deeds that you will not find in any other book.  New discoveries about Johnson’s character and deeds await the reader.  This tome reads like a summary of what it could have been, as if a large amount of detail was sacrificed; there are odd lapses of scholarship; at least one chapter, such asThe Back Stairs, regarding Johnson’s becoming the vice presidential candidate is a confusing mess spurning Johnson’s knack for blackmail; many major issues are not properly dealt with and numerous personalities are paid no heed.

That Thorny Issue

In The Passage of Power, Robert Caro has to deal with a thorny issue for any mainstream historian and that's the Kennedy assassination.  There is an apparent ease of conspiracy thought in the case, the step child of an incomplete and politicized  investigation.  For a Pulitzer Prize winning author such as Caro, conspiracy in the JFK murder is the creepy uncle that one seeks to avoid sitting by at the holiday dinner table.  To be fair, he documented a host of other conspiracies in Johnson's rise to power and fame.  It's just this one conspiracy, that of the Kennedy murder, that is avoided.  Caro just reports what people at the time would have known, that the President was killed and they nabbed a suspect in the murder.  That’s all we’ll be told about the assassination in this book.  The Warren Commission is assembled in this timeline but no report issued; more on that saga in the final installment.  However, I don’t except Caro to do anything but tow the party line.

Robert Caro, the man that was out to leave no stone unturned, has apparently lost his nerve and left many stones where he found them.  Three stones he doesn't touch at all are:  Billy Sol Estes, Malcolm Wallace and Madeline Duncan Brown.  The obvious question here is why all three are avoided and the answer it a simple one–because they all involve conspiracy of one form or the other.  They all share another thing–they are all problematic with troubling stories regarding their involvement.  

But what is quite remarkable is that Caro can't say a word about the growing Billy Sol Estes scandal of 1962 which reached the national media and was a huge story at the time and not a word is said about it.  To be fair, this is a long and convoluted story, too detailed to go into here (see links below), but the implications were enormous and Johnson was in deep trouble.  (Johnson claimed no knowledge of Estes, which is a lie, but during grand jury testimony in 1984, Estes would pin various murder conspiracies, including Kennedy’s death, on Lyndon Johnson.)  On the other side of scandals, the Bobby Baker episode is fully documented as if to throw a bone to Johnson’s bad Karma coming due.  But that wasn't the only fire that needed to be put out so Johnson could save his hide and win his prize.  In many ways, not documenting the Estes affair shows Caro has taken a timid approach to this matter–when he is not ignoring other important issues.   

(And that weak-kneed pattern is quite evident with ignoring Johnson's long term lover Madeline Brown.  Caro has no qualms in mentioning the other two paramours, Alice Glass and Helen Douglas in his earlier works, but can't muster up a single word about Madeline Brown.  Of course Brown alleges the famous meeting of conspirators at Clint Murchison's home in Dallas the night before the assassination and claims her son was sired by LBJ.  Her story is well known with numerous interviews, a TV appearance in the History Channel’s The Men Who Killed Kennedy and her book, Texas in the Morning. It’s juicy conspiracy stuff alright and too scary go there!)

Johnson's Side of the Story

A contradictory incident is Robert Caro's reporting of Johnson's reaction to the first shot being fired.  It's all told from Johnson's perspective, a man we are told in the first book is a pathological liar.  LBJ's testimony was that Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood as soon as he heard the first shot, jumped into the backseat and pushed Johnson to the floor and sat on him for protection.  Youngblood told this same story in sworn testimony to the Warren Commission.  

There are two problems with this.  One, is the famous Altgens photograph, which shows the Presidential limo after the first shot with Kennedy clearly clutching at his throat and also shows the Vice President's car and all that can be seen is Lady Bird and Senator Ralph Yarborough in the back seat looking towards the crowd on the sidewalk.  LBJ is nowhere to be seen.  Youngblood said he was up looking around while holding Johnson down, seeking possible shooters.  That business can't be seen in the photograph either.  Also of note is Lady Bird and Sen. Yarborough’s posture in the car, both looking at the crowd but never down to where Johnson and Youngblood are supposed to be.  Shouldn’t Lady Bird’s focus be on her husband?  It’s as if neither of them are aware what is going on with the backseat tussle or noticing the first shot which by this time, has already been fired.

Even more interesting is that Ralph Yarborough denied this event ever happened, that Youngblood never jumped into the backseat and used his body as a shield for Johnson.  He never mentioned it in his sworn affidavit to the Warren Commission.  He maintained his version of what happened till late in life including a 1980 interview he gave to researcher David Lifton.  Caro said he interviewed Yarborough five times.  And this issue never came up?  If it did it won’t be reported in this book.

So what Caro does is relate only Johnson's side of this affair while never giving the reader Yarborough's dissenting view.  Why not give both sides and let the reader decide?  It’s a perplexing thing to do after giving hundreds of incidents of Johnson's lying.  Even his nickname was "Lying Lyndon" (and in college Bull as in bull shit).  And notice the quote above from the first book’s introduction in regards to a “bottomless capacity for deceit, deception and betrayal...”  Yet for some peculiar reason Caro believes LBJ, and wants his readers to believe him as well, despite evidence to the contrary.  

Conclusion

There's a lot more I could say here but I'll pass so I don't go to sleep with an angry heart.  In this book, unlike the others in the series, we are treated to a kinder, gentler, Lyndon Johnson; almost a sympathetic figure.  Poor Lyndon...shunted to the outside, ignored by his Senate colleagues, powerless, lonely, downcast, mocked by the Kennedy insiders and snubbed at every opportunity.  Boo-hoo!  Chickens do come home to roost and with LBJ they would be legion and back breaking in a few years hence.  What fine justice to see the Master Manipulator of people and things cross the ring of fire where he tried everything and it just wasn’t enough.  What a blow to that massive ego!  

The Passage of Power is a mixed bag of highlights and lowlights that assures it will never be the best book in the series.  The other books held new discoveries on the life and times of Lyndon Johnson.  To students of the subject this book is much of what they will already know and excludes a lot that they do know.  Some areas do shine such as Johnson's dealings with the Kennedy clan, particularly Bobby, and how smooth the transition of power was after Kennedy's death.  However, that is not enough to rise above the general ho-hum.

In the end, The Passage of Power does not represent an author at the peak of his form but instead on the wain.  I'm hoping the final book returns to prominence, if that is possible.

Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson:

The Path to Power

Means of Assent

The Master of the Senate

The Passage of Power

Addendum

Naval Career.  In describing John Kennedy's naval career, Caro disregards the fact that JFK started out in naval intelligence.  As reported in Curt Gentry's biography on J. Edgar Hoover, Kennedy's career in intelligence was compromised with an affair with a married woman, Ingrid Arvad, who was a friend of Hitler's and a suspected Nazi spy.  Hoover had his agents taping the affair in progress and word eventually got back to daddy Joe Kennedy and Jack was sent to the Pacific (Gentry, The Man and the Secrets, p.467-471). 

Stevenson Aide.  Speaking of flaws, the most unusual one in the book is Caro's accounting of a talk LBJ gave the Adlai Stevenson camp in the 1960 campaign, basically demanding that they have nothing to do with Kennedy.  Caro sources the conversation from an unnamed Stevenson aide (p.93).  Since when do historians resort to using unnamed sources to present historical facts?  I don't recall Caro doing this in the earlier books.  Nor do I recall any author doing this in nonfiction.

Billy Sol Estes.  Going back to the Billy Sol Estes scandal, it was mentioned by Ben Bradlee in his book, Conversations With Kennedy on pages 105-106.  Bradlee, a close friend of the President reports that JFK was very much interested in the case that involved on it’s outer reaches the death of Henry Marshall, a Federal agriculture agent that was shot 6 times and originally ruled a suicide which was later changed to homicide.  It was speculated at the time that Henry was killed as an end result to an extramarital affair.  We know now that this was not the case and other researchers have pinned the crime on LBJ crony Malcolm Wallace.  Once again, Robert Caro makes no mention of the controversy surrounding the deceased agent and the resulting fallout.  (Especially ironic since Conversations With Kennedy is listed in the bibliography.)

Sources and Links

The Estes Scandal

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKestes.htm

Chapter 4, LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination by Philip F. Nelson

Malcolm Wallace Biography

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwallaceM.htm

The Men Who Killed Kennedy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=853LEQLKN6I

All the Way with LBJ

Here is a web page with audio clips of Lyndon Johnson discussing numerous issues during the 1964 campaign.

http://allthewaywithlbj.com/

For more audio recordings of Presidents such as the following:

Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard M. Nixon

Go to the Miller Center, University of Virginia to listen to those.  Transcripts available there as well.

http://millercenter.org/academic/presidentialrecordings

Vinnie and the Doubles

I decided to do something I hadn't in a long time. Crack open Vince Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, his massive 1600-page tome and see what he had to say on record about the Lee Oswald impersonations. Of course, I knew it was going to be a debunking of the whole thing but I wanted to see at what lengths he would go to quash it. As usual, that chapter is filled with his usual doses of invective, sarcasm, unfair dismissals, omissions and specious arguments.

Bugliosi Rips On John Armstrong

Bugliosi starts out defining researcher John Armstrong as the leading proponent of the Oswald doppelganger theory. In Armstrong’s book, Harvey and Lee, he proposes that Oswald was being impersonated as young as the age of 13 and the CIA found a boy resembling him of Eastern European descent that spoke Russian well and blended the two personalities or boys into one identity. I know, a farfetched idea. Not only that, but if Oswald is being impersonated as a teenager then he has to have a mother impersonated as well. With Bugliosi’s keen legal mind and sharp wit, this appears to be easy pickings for him to debunk.

Bugliosi from his End Notes (CD-ROM), page 565:

"John Armstrong actually went on to publish a 983-page book in 2003 called Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald, in which he carries his fantasy about a double Oswald to such absurd lengths that not only doesn’t it deserve to be dignified in the main text of my book, but I resent even having to waste a word on it in this endnote."

Ironically, Bugliosi states that Armstrong's book and theory doesn't "deserve" to get mentioned in his book, while in fact, he does mention John Armstrong's name and work numerous on pages 1021-1022 at the start of his “The Second Oswald” chapter. 

Bugliosi does bring up a lot of good points showing gaping holes in Armstrong's doppelganger theory. Indeed, there are lots of loose ends with it. But just as Bug constantly vamps on conspiracy researchers for omitting facts to make their plots work out, Bug does exactly the same thing when dealing with just about every controversial issue and the Oswald doubles is no exception. (It's also funny how he harps on researchers for making dumb, embarrassing mistakes. Bugliosi has his fair amount as well. On page 239, he mentions Chet Huntley broadcasting JFK info on ABC–not! It's NBC. And this is just one of dozens of goofy errors he makes. Apparently, he has no shame.)

A case in point is Palmer McBride, who claimed to be friends with Lee Oswald when they worked at Pfisterer Dental Laboratory in 1957-1958. From the official Warren Report account, during this time, Oswald is supposed to be in the Marines in Japan and later in Taiwan. Bugliosi pulls every trick out of his bag to make McBride look like an unreliable witness. And, most importantly, define him as the only witness. Actually, he is not and Armstrong documents other people that knew Lee Oswald in New Orleans in this 1957-58 time period. These include numerous employees, members of the local amateur astronomy club and the president of Pfisterer (Armstrong, pg. 172-174, 184-186 and 188-189). 

North Dakota Incident

Part of the Oswald doppelganger legend is the mysterious account of him appearing as a teenager in a Stanley, ND trailer park (Armstrong, pg. 69-72) in the summer of 1953. Grungy looking, riding a beat-up bike, going by the name of Harvey and talking up Marxist ideology, this character tells a young William Timmer who befriends him, that he is going to kill the President one day. It's a strange tale to say the least. If you don't believe it, I can understand. I don't know what to think about this story with its strange undercurrents. Under the official account, Oswald is living with his mother in New York as she works retail.

However, after Lee defects in 1959 he gives an interview with Aline Mosby for the UPI where in her article, he mentions living briefly in North Dakota. Bugliosi dismisses John Armstrong's account of this in Harvey and Lee (the definitive book on Oswald impersonations–see my review HERE) accusing him of not seeing that it's a typo in the published article and claiming Mosby has New Orleans, "N O" in her original notes.

Here is where Bugliosi launches into a full deception on this issue. What he omits, and what John Armstrong documents, is there are two sets of notes. One set is handwritten and one set is typewritten. The handwritten notes of which the article derives from "N D" for North Dakota in them. The typewritten notes were made five years later upon request for the Warren Commission. They contain "N O" in them.  See how Bugliosi confuses the issue? The actual typo is in the newer, typed version, not in the published article or the handwritten notes.

I could say this is an example of Bugliosi at his worst, but he is far from done.

We are still left with the strange account of a teenaged Oswald peddling his bike around in a dusty, oil boom town trailer park. What would be the point of his impersonation at this point? To build a legend of Ozzie the Commie? Who knows...

The Hoover Memo

Here is the famous quote from FBI Director Hoover's June 3, 1960 memorandum:

"Since there is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald's birth certificate, any current information the Department of State may have concerning the subject will be appreciated."

This quote has really made the rounds over the years. It places the source of Oswald being impersonated in the bowels of the government itself, by Hoover's acknowledgment of the possibility. Bugliosi counters the conspiracy advocates by pointing out that they are ignoring the preceding paragraph where Hoover quotes some of Marguerite Oswald's concerns about her son's whereabouts. Bugliosi implies that Hoover gets the idea of Oswald being impersonated from his mother's worries (pg. 1025).

However, at no point in that paragraph does Marguerite state or imply that her son is being impersonated. Indeed, she is worried for his safety, saying he took his birth certificate with him, enrolled at a college in Switzerland and expresses concern about her letters to him being returned.

Bugliosi could dislocate his shoulder with this wacky stretch! I do not see how Hoover could have assumed impersonation from Oswald's mother's anxiety. Bugliosi backtracks a bit when he admits, "...it would appear that Hoover used rather loose language in speculating about the possibility of an impostor."

Whatever. I think it's quite possible that Hoover had learned of the impersonation of Oswald from other sources. In fact, I think that is what is implied in Hoover's statement. He is also asking for more information from the DOS–but does he ever get it? However, it's absurd that he could have gotten the idea from Oswald's mother not getting her letters to her son, or Lee's enrollment at Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland where he never appears.

Her main concern is a mother’s concern–where is my son at?

The Furniture Store Incident
Another notorious event in the Oswald impersonator saga is when Lee, wife and daughters, show up for a visit to the Furniture Mart in Irving, Texas. According to store owner Mrs. Edith Whitworth, they entered because of a gun repair sign still in the window left there from the previous owner. Lee with a rifle in hand is looking to have a part replaced. He is told about the misleading sign and eventually they leave (pg. 1029-1030).

The issue here is that this event occurs during a day in early November when Lee is at work. Once he starts on October 16 at the Texas School Book Depository, he never takes a day off. The clock is ticking down. This serves as the benchmark for the numerous Oswald sightings (outside of work) that will occur from then on till the day of the assassination.

This will give cause for Bugliosi to write off not only Mrs. Whitworth's account but also that of her friend Mrs. Gertrude Hunter, also a witness to Oswald and family appearing in the store that day. He will confidently state, "The likelihood of these women's story being true is practically nil."

Well, not if Oswald is being impersonated! And if it's happening, these two women are witnesses to the fact.

Marina says she never visited the store with Lee and kids. Bugliosi, as usual, treats Marina as a reliable source, above reproach, as he does all witnesses that follow the lone nut scenario. Only those that are at odds with the official story are put under the Bugliosi anal exam. He won't question her character or truthfulness as she lies her way through her Commission testimony. Actually, Marina contradicted herself so many times one of the staff lawyers wanted to put her under cross-examination. Too bad it wasn't done. And Marina today, has totally flipped and believes her late husband to be innocent.

Another important point here in this episode is that these two women are both witnesses to Oswald driving a car. That's a big no-no among the Defenders of the Faith. This gives another tidbit for Bugliosi to dismiss in their account because the Warren Report states that Oswald can't drive. There are, however, numerous sightings of Oswald driving (Armstrong, pg. 752 ).

However, both women give their testimony to the Warren Commission and get a chance to meet Marina and the girls in person. They both easily identified. Marina stood out to them anyway, because she never spoke a word when they allege she was in the store. They apparently felt this odd.

Bugliosi, when he finds a witness he doesn't like, tries to discredit them with any little thing. The best he could do here was dig up a sister-in-law of Mrs. Hunter that accused her of being prone to telling “tale tales.” Lame. Vinnie, I'm sure we can find somebody in your family that would say the same thing about you.

Mexico City
Nothing quite like "Oswald's Magical Mystery Tour" to Mexico City in the fall of 1963 to muddy the waters of the JFK assassination. Needless to say, it remains one of the more enigmatic events of Lee Oswald's short life. Too involved to go into here, Jeff Morley does a good job in his book, Our Man in Mexico. Check out John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA as well. If you want an even higher level of detail that ramps up the high strangeness, then check out John Armstrong's Harvey and Lee. There is also the Lopez Report, link below.

In short, Oswald gets the bug to go back to Russia (unexplained) and for some odd reason needs to travel via Cuba to get there. (Interesting that he didn't have to do this the first time.) Many have speculated that his real mission was to be sent on an assassination attempt on Castro, but we'll never know for sure. Bugliosi never defines Oswald's purpose in Mexico either. At any rate, his attempts to get travel visas to either country fail and he soon returns to Texas.

Mexico City, I think, is the most easily proven of all of the Oswald impersonation accounts. Not for Vincent Bugliosi of course because if Oswald is being impersonated that means other people are aware of his movements and actions. He’s supposed to be a nobody. The lone nut supporters have to maintain Oswald's loner status at all costs. Never mind that the likes of J. Edgar Hoover and the Mexico City CIA station chief, Win Scott, both believed that Oswald was being impersonated.

There is a lot going on here, but basically, somebody calls the Russian embassy claiming to be Lee Oswald and speaks broken Russian asking questions about things that Oswald should already know the answers to. Oswald is known to be a very good Russian speaker so this is probably somebody else. Lee Oswald calls the Cuban embassy asking questions speaking in good Spanish. Oswald is not known to speak Spanish at all. Both embassies are bugged and later, FBI agents will listen to the tapes and determine that it is not Oswald's voice they hear. Hoover is so convinced he tells Lyndon Johnson and he uses it as an argument to convince Chief Justice Earl Warren to chair the Commission. (Bugliosi wants us to believe the tapes were destroyed in October of 1963. But Morley in his book says that Station Chief Scott kept a copy in his safe. Basically, for insurance. Mr. B is incorrect. The tapes were around long after the assassination, long enough for FBI agents to give them a listen.)

The Silvia Odio Incident
Yet another legendary story in the JFK assassination. In brief, a Cuban immigrant was staying with her sister when one day on September 26, three men came to the door–two Hispanic men (probably Cubans) and one caucasian, who was introduced as Leon Oswald. They were seeking financial help to fund a take-down of Castro as they knew her father was once a (former) wealthy Cuban businessman. Suspicious, she turned them away and a few months later recognized Lee Oswald on TV as the accused assassin, the same man who had appeared at her door as “Leon.” Her story was fluffed off by the Warren Commission but later accepted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s.

Her account of meeting Oswald is widely accepted among researchers and even Bugliosi begrudgingly accepts her story. Though he is clearly uncomfortable delving into it. His troubled mind rambles on for scads of pages. He issues numerous speculations, looks at moving dates around and all kinds of malarkey to ease his torment. The last straw, trying to find a way to trash Odio’s character fails him so the esteemed prosecutor ultimately concludes she most likely was visited by Oswald and his Cuban friends.

And like most investigators, he totally ignores the fact that there is more than one witness here–Silvia’s sister Annie. It was her apartment, she opened the door to these men, saw them closely, and overheard the conversation. Bugliosi pretends she doesn’t exist, a serious omission of fact. Of course, a second witness gives more legitimacy to the story. (It should be pointed out that Annie Odio was never interviewed by the FBI, the Warren Commission, or the HSCA.)

The issue here is, that the same time that Oswald is at the Odio’s door the day of September 26, he is supposed to be on the bus in Mexico heading towards Mexico City. Of course Bugliosi is having nothing of this doppelganger business, fluffing that off as a wad of conspiracy theorist gaga.

The Warren Commission when dealing with issues like this usually resorts to ignorance. They state in the Report that Oswald’s bearings that day can, “...not strictly accounted for.” How’s that for an easy way out?

But no matter what, Lee Oswald visiting Silvia Odio with Cubans is not evidence of a conspiracy! Or so says Mr. B.

In Summary
Vincent Bugliosi, in Reclaiming History is an example of a bull in the China shop style of investigation. Most of the book is ghost written. Other researchers have pointed out its flaws. It’s funny and a tad embarrassing to see what Bugliosi puts himself through in order to prove the Government’s lone gunman theory. I guess when one is paid a million dollar cash advance, a guy’s gotta do what guy’s gotta do. The more he goes on, kicking over the straw men he props up to seemingly win his arguments, slicing and dicing conspiracy-aligned researchers for nasty fun, the more he shows how shallow the Warren Commission’s case on Lee Oswald is.

Whether there was a double of Lee Oswald running about lose in the American landscape is a separate issue open to endless speculation and debate. I think Bugliosi is wrong to place the genesis of such theories in the minds of kooks and amateur investigators. As written previously, the impersonation issue is very familiar to powerful people in the FBI and the CIA who believe it possible, at least with the Mexico City episode.

A final point. The Warren Commission’s 26 volumes of collected evidence has two separate sets of educational records on Lee Oswald from the fall of 1953 with Oswald attending both schools at the same time–one set in New York and one set in New Orleans. He can’t be in two places simultaneously so he’s either being impersonated or else somebody is creating phony documents, the latter being a felony. These records not only contradict the Warren Report but the documents contradict themselves. The main point being, these records are coming from the government’s own investigation. Something is not right here and we can’t count on Vincent Bugliosi's closed mind to objectively find out what is going on.

Sources
Bugliosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History; Armstrong, John, Harvey and Lee; Morley, Jeff, Our Man In Mexico; Newman, John, Oswald and the CIA

The Lopez Report
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/hsca/contents_hsca_lopezrpt_2003.htm

Book Review: JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fletcher Prouty

The hidden history of the Vietnam War

“We do not have precise answers as to why we gave U.S arms to Ho Chi Minh in 1945 and then a few years later provided Ho’s enemy, the French, with $3 billion of our arms. The situation is not supposed to be clear.”

L. Fletcher Prouty

The tile to L. Fletcher Prouty’s second and last book is a bit misleading. While Prouty does cover the JFK assassination and provides a good rationale for his murder by a gang of plotters, he spends a great deal of time in an area he knows very intimately–Vietnam. During his stellar career in the Air Force he was involved with clandestine operations there, going back to the early 1950’s when the French were still there and involved in a ground war with Ho Chi Minh’s army. Prouty provides the proper historical context the launched the war and why the Untied States got involved in the first place. And in Prouty’s view it started with the CIA’s involvement there. John Kennedy early on saw what the CIA was capable of doing behind his back with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He saw the ramping up for war in Indochina and his attempts to thwart it by his signing of National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 which would have gotten our forces out of Vietnam by 1965.

But Kennedy died, his successor Lyndon Johnson signed a NSAM of his own countermanding the order, and the rest is sad and tragic history.

The CIA and Vietnam
The final role towards the end of Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty’s military career was as liaison officer between the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon and the CIA. He covers this in great detail in his book, The Secret Team, an excellent look into how the military-industrial-intelligence establishment works within the confines of the National Security State. In that book, Prouty shows the barrier between intelligence and the military becomes so blurred it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. While The Secret Team may appear to be a dull read for some, but if you can pay attention long enough, the reader will be awarded with some amazing anecdotes and a glimpse of the behind the scenes maneuvering of intelligence operations.

The CIA under Allen Dulles went from being a “quiet arm of intelligence” for the president and expands instead into a covert action agency capable of overthrowing democratically elected governments and installing puppets that will be more friendly towards United States interests, mainly business. The Cold War against communism is the stated outward goal but there is a lot more going on out of sight which amounts to a high stake, deadly poker game.

One thing I found surprising was to learn is that the CIA was in control of all United State’s military operations in Vietnam from 1954 to 1965, when the Marines officially took over. You will not read that in most history books. You will not see that on any documentaries about the Vietnam War on TV. It’s part of the hidden history that every so often gets out. And our meddling there actually goes as far back to 1945 when the Japanese withdrew and the French, who had long been there using it as a colony moved back in to a people that thought their time for independence had come. Not exactly a view shared by the French and their business interests. From then to 1975, Indochina existed in a state of war in one form or another.

Of course, this all raises other questions. For example, when and how did the CIA get the authority, obviously not Constitutional, to conduct military operations using military personnel around the world as they saw fit? Col. Proudy tells us. The other secretive agency, the National Security Council didn’t want the military to have the responsibility of doing covert operations. So it was handed to the CIA in the NCS 10/2 Directive. However, they didn't have the men for combat operations so that gave birth to Special Forces, such as the Green Berets and the other outfits that followed.

Prouty tells us that Eisenhower was leery of this arrangement and he wrote the following note on the 10/2 Directive:

“At no time will the CIA be provided with more equipment, etc., than is absolutely necessary for the support of the operation directed and such support will always be limited to the requirements of that single operation.”

Well, that sounds reasonable even though Eisenhower might as well jotted down his desires to Santa Claus. Things went to hell by the time the Bay of Pigs invasion crashed and burned. And it’s gotten no better over time. It’s mirrored in the early combat operations conducted after the 9-11 attacks in Afghanistan which were operated by the CIA. The ongoing drone missile attacks are a further extension of that. It is now known they are running their own prisons in foreign countries. What is the legal and Constitutional basis for this? Because they can? Yes, of course–because they can. And Lord knows who are in this prisons and what treatment they are getting, or how many have died there, or what their faces look like.

Going back to Vietnam, Prouty views it as two-sided civil war. One side is the communists waging war against the non-communists. The second side is the forced relocation (from a Geneva peace accord) of the northern people, the Tonkinese Vietnamese, 1.1 million strong to south Vietnam. A different people with a different culture and religion (Catholic as opposed to the southerns that were Buddhist), they over whelmed the infrastructure of the south. Prouty sees this as one of the major causes for the war in Vietnam. From this, the Viet Kong guerrilla army emerges. And not because they start out being communists, but because they fear being pushed out by the Northerners and took up arms against them in order to survive. Into this cauldron is sent the young blood of this nation to be shredded. First with special forces and later the Marines.

L. Fletcher Prouty wants us to know it’s a war the CIA got us into. And John
Kennedy saw it coming by issuing NSAM #263 which Proudy says he helped coauthor.

The End Result
Despite being such a good chronicler of the entanglement of the Vietnam war
and John Kennedy’s behind the scenes struggles with power brokers, L. Fletcher Prouty stumbles a bit here and there. For example, he lists one of the ships involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion listed as the Zapata, but none where. Look at the declassified CIA memo HERE to see the ships involved. In another section I found odd was the account of Richard Nixon and where he was on the day of the assassination. It’s quite well documented that he was in Dallas the night before, for a Pepsi bottler’s convention, Nixon being the lead council, and flew out the day of, at 9:00 A.M. Yet Prouty insists that Nixon was in Dallas at the moment of the assassination which would put him there at past noon. It simply can’t be from everything that has been published on the case. True, Nixon does change his story many times in regarding to his actions on that day. So I was mystified as to why Prouty would get this wrong since he is generally spot-on with the other issues he deals with. Basically, I get the feeling he is more versed with the issues he dealt with personally in his military career, both as a participant and an observer. Never the less, it is odd he makes these sort of mistakes in his accounting as he seems spot on with everything else.

Though the book has “JFK” in the title and his picture on the cover, there is not much here in regards to his death or a conspiracy. You’ll read more about that in Oliver Stone’s forward (the director of JFK would model the Mr. X character after Prouty).

L. Fletcher Proudy comes off as the honest insider. Everything he says that he has experience with and first hand knowledge of, has a ring of truth to it. And you can be sure it’ll be something you never read anywhere else or thought of before.


Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (November 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1602397317
ISBN-13: 978-1602397316
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches

Errata
The latest version of JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy has a new and additional forward by Jesse Ventura.

The Secret Team
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1602392293/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_1

BOOK REVIEW: The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Accent to Power, Means of Assent, and The Master of the Senate by Robert A. Caro


Trying to define Lyndon B. Johnson in one phrase is a challenge.  On one hand, he did good things for the poor people of Texas hill country. He made sure they had paved roads and electrical power. He was instrumental in placing himself in positions to award jobs to the jobless during the Great Depression. On the other hand, he embodies the worst of human behavior. The hard scrabble upbringing forged a man that would do anything (literally) to be successful in life and avoid the failures of his father, Sam Johnson, a former State legislator who went on to become a failed businessman whom the younger Johnson resented. Growing up the laughing stock because your daddy owes everybody money in town with a do-nothing mother altered a mind that was ripe for the picking. Or so they say, as one can never really know what made Lyndon Johnson that ogre that he became.

I got into reading Robert Caro’s three volume biography on LBJ because I wanted a closer look at the man that benefited the most from John Kennedy’s death. And, who has often been viewed as a suspect in the crime. A study of Johnson’s life and character is decent into darkness but also political genius. An astuteness that lets him anticipate situations and deftly work around them or deflect an oncoming blow. He laid down a course of action and never veered from it. A man that knew no shame in anything he did from stabbing his friends in the back to cheating on his wife (sometimes in their own home, with her there). And underneath it all was that drive to be the top dog because from an early age he wanted the top job–the Presidency of the United States. Then he wouldn’t be like that man, his father. The man that went from wearing suits and ties to the dirty clothes of a road crew foreman. The man that lost the family farm and dishonored the family name.

The Man

As I read through these volumes I was left with the dread that maybe monsters really do exist. After reading these books I felt dirty–as if I had spent too long playing the mud. It’s amazing how long he kept up so much criminal activity for so long with nobody finding out about it.

Johnson’s treatment of people was two-fold. First, the brown-nosed his career path with those in power; flattery and sweet words for older men whose power was on the wane and only had their memories of past victories to comfort them as they slowly faded into background noise. It served Johnson well on his climb as it was something nobody else would venture to do. He did it everywhere from the college dean, past Sam Rayburn in the Congress, to Richard Russell in the Senate, to Franklin Roosevelt in the Oval office.

Secondly, his treatment of people below him was beyond the pale and showed a sadistic streak. Fundamentally, a man with no empathy for his subordinates. In his early days he drove those that worked under like slaves, working them long hours till late at night, day after day, 7 days a week, with only allowing short breaks. Once a Johnson man, you belonged to him for life. His ability to dominate even the strongest opponent and make him submit to his will was his most remarkable trait. The trait of turning people into obedient, mind numbed slaves. A psychic vampire. Those that worked for him lived in fear of his wrath. Though as Robert Caro points out, an intelligent, independent person would not last long with Johnson and would move on. A farmer wouldn’t treat his cows this badly and expect them to produce milk, but LBJ did and got the milk too. And this abusive nature never changed from the time he was a Congressional aide, to NYA director, to Congressman, to Senate Majority Leader.

Nettie Connally, wife of John and who would one day be in the crosshairs at Dealey Plaza, was Johnson’s secretary for a few years. Once, when she didn’t answer the phone quickly enough he threw a book at her. She got off easy. Another secretary accidentally handed Johnson the wrong decanter of whisky. He accused her of poisoning him and threw it across the room shattering it. She had to clean up the mess. If somebody had an insecurity, Johnson took cruel pleasure in exploiting it. Once, when a newly divorced secretary delivered coffee he didn’t like, he told her it was no wonder she couldn’t keep a husband making such lousy coffee.

His wife, Lady Bird (Claudia Taylor) probably had the worst burden to bear and did so with a great deal of grace and charm. She was the number one slave, making sure the master had breakfast in bed, his pen and wallet in his pockets and his clothes properly laid out in the morning. She would be required to have meals ready to eat at any time of the day or night as Johnson was always bringing people over. And she would, graciously greeting all who entered their home with a warm smile. And, of course, there were all of her husband’s infidelities to deal with which somehow she ignored through that brain-dead love of hers for him. The man would not only grope women in front of her, but carry on with them in their own house at night, with her there. Robert Caro said he never understood her and one can see why. She is an interesting character in regards to how much abuse she endured and still remained faithful and loving to the end.

Of course we are familiar with Johnson’s habit of discussing policy with Senators, talking to reporters, and giving dictation while sitting on the toilet. Once again, another trait started early in his career. But it was far worse than that. This is a man that would proudly display his penis to other men in public restrooms and ask the question, “Ever seen anything this big before?” Not easily embarrassed, Johnson had no qualms about public urination in the House parking lot. While other men may hide behind a car or bush, not so with LBJ. He didn’t mind if the secretaries walking by witnessed him watering the lawn or not. Just as he didn’t care if people saw him walking around Capitol Hill hand-in-hand with Congresswoman Helen Douglass when he was having an affair with her.

The Assassination of Leland Olds

In all three books some truly awful deeds are recorded on Lyndon Johnson. vNothing really stopped his maneuvers to nix the reappointment of Leland Olds, the chairman of the Federal Power Commission. vOlds had been an effective Chairman but his regulation ran afoul of the Texas Oilmen who hated the restraints and Johnson saw a way to ally with them as he would need their financial help in the years ahead (and to gain their trust). Like all things LBJ this take-down was over the top and beyond the pale in viciousness. Poor Leland, he never saw the ambush coming.

Johnson started by delaying the reappointment hearings for months. That gave his associates time to dig up dirt, in this case, articles Olds had published years earlier in liberal publications. For the hearing itself they brought him people to attack Olds’ character, calling him such names as, punk, jackass, traitor, and other baseless charges. These people were given as long as they wanted to trash Old’s character while the witnesses for him were given short shifts, and rushed along with Johnson displaying a huge watch to time them.  The Senators, including Johnson, badgered Olds in testimony, constantly interrupting him, with accusations against him and his work as FPC chief and questions about articles he had written that he had little memory of.

If Clarence Thomas thought that he had experienced a “hi-tech lynching” in front of a Senate committee, that was mild in comparison to the vicious character assassination that befell Leland Olds. The ugliness on display probably wouldn’t be shown in front of TV cameras today. Politicians, ever careful about appearance, would shy away from these tactics as they had to when they sought to rake Oliver North over the coals at the Iran-Contra hearings. A huge public backlash forced them to retreat.

As usual, after the smoke cleared, Lyndon Johnson got his way and another free, first class ticket to Hell–as if he needed another one. Leland Olds was destroyed and his life and career in public service never recovered. His replacement, a do-nothing crony, let regulations lapse, much to the delight of the Oilmen.

In an ironic moment, typically Johnsonian, during a recess in the hearing, LBJ walked past Leland Olds in the hall and remarked to him how it all was nothing personal, just politics, and...could we still be friends? Obviously, the words of a man that had no thought, no inkling, living in total oblivion of the pain of others.

Nobody Likes Cheaters

Once again, all of Johnson’s early character traits he exhibited early on. The stealing of the 1948 Senate election from Coke Stephenson wasn’t the first time he did that. In college, his group the White Stars (the Black Stars didn’t like him and wouldn’t let him join) so he rigged the student council elections to get his people into the choice spots. The Black Stars never knew what hit them as Johnson got himself and his people in charge of student government. Later, as a Congressional aide, he took the Little Congress, a social club of aides and turned it into a political organization to benefit himself. Stuffing the ballot boxes worked till he was called on it.

Means of Accent, the second book of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Caro documents in great detail the corrupting of the voting process that allowed the stealing of the 1948 election. For Johnson, it was his last chance to advance his political career towards his final goal as President, and it was hang fire or nothing. As Caro points out, Johnson’s crookedness shocked even the old-timers in how brazen and blatant it was, as if he had no higher authority to answer to.

It’s my favorite of the three books. It's a great contrast between the personalities. Coke, former Texas Governor and a man of honor and ethics from the old school, where a man’s word was his bond. And Lyndon, a man with no scruples about anything, whose word was whatever it meant to whomever he was talking to at the time. Robert Caro does a great job in chronicling the event, probably the best ever, in rich detail. One remarkable scene is when he places the reader in the dusty streets of Alice, Texas just after the election as Coke and former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer go to investigate the ballot boxes. Hamer, whose legendary career included gunfights killing 53 men and sported the 17 scars of those gun battles. (His most famous case was the ambush on Bonny and Clyde after a 102 day hunt.) A dangerous scene ensued with armed goons blocking the way to the bank where the election records were being kept. Marching straight ahead, Frank Hamer never broke his stride and they fell away in his wake. The goons attempted to enter after Coke, but big Frank stood in the doorway eyeing them down with his hand resting on his holstered gun, keeping them at bay, while Coke and his attorneys viewed the voter’s tally sheet and poll list. They found evidence of fraud but were never able to deliver on it in court. Johnson’s attorneys delayed the release of the aforementioned voter records and contents of ballot box 13, just long enough for Supreme Court Justice Black to pull the plug, fearing a violation of state’s rights issues. (Those records have since long disappeared as has ballot box 13; but not the photograph of it.) Johnson walks away with a steal.

A tragic story as the bad guys win. But there is a happy ending. Coke Stephenson retires to a quiet life of a Texas rancher, marries a lovely woman he loves dearly, and she gives him the delight of his life, a daughter. Lyndon Johnson gets his comeuppance in the 1960s as his Presidency is bogged down in an unpopular war, sapping the life out of his blood. He gets to the mountain top and finds it a lonely destination. The lapel grabbing, chest pointing, space invader can’t do a damn thing. Meanwhile, the 1948 theft is never far behind and follows him wherever he goes, adding to the public’s distrust of the man. It stares him in the face on the mountain top. He dies a crazy loon, the respect he so craved departed far from him.

Robert Caro’s Hot Potatoes

Probably the most ironic thing about this series of excellently written thoroughly researched books is what is missing. Apparently, there are areas of investigation that are too seedy even for Caro to venture into. Over two-thousand pages and he cannot mention Madeline Brown one time though he has no problem mentioning Johnson’s other lovers.  And it was known in Texas that she was Johnson's favorite with an affair that is supposed to have lasted 21 years and produced one child, a son. Mac Wallace, another character widely known to have worked for Johnson as a thug, a man with a murderous past, makes no appearance either. Even a pivotal figure, such as Edward Clark, Johnson’s personal attorney for many years, is portrayed as a minor player in Johnson’s life. In fact, I don’t recall Caro ever mentioning that Clark was Johnson’s attorney or took care of so much of his business. Yet according to Bar McClellan, who started working in Clark’s law firm in 1966 (author, Blood, Money, And Power), it was Clark that helped Johnson cover up his many crimes, which includes the stealing of the 1948 senate election. Clark and Johnson, according to McClellan, made good foils for one another, the corrupt lawyer paired with corrupt politicians.  Caro interviewed Clark but was cut off after Means of Ascent was published. I think Caro, wanting to be taken seriously by his fellow peers and the mainstream media, decided to leave these sleeping dogs to snooze. He seems far more interested in the intricacies of Johnson’s political maneuvering, which is well explained and fascinating to learn, rather than traversing even greater conspiracies such as the wasteland that lies on the horizon of the JFK assassination.

Unfortunately, we get two histories out of this business. The “official” one from the likes of Caro, Dallek, Goodman, Manchester, and so on. And then there is what actually happened which lives on the Internet and is investigated by that other tier of writers–those souls toiling away who will never win the Pulitzer Prize for their efforts, but add much to the total picture of what happened. Anyway, the official history gives us the official characters of the narrative–the other stuff that went on you are not supposed to know. It’s all strained through a political filter. This is why we need Net Neutrality to stand so the other side of the story gets told. 

The End Game

In the The Master of the Senate, Lyndon Johnson is positioned for his final drive to the presidency. All that work and years of scheming; he had the path clear by 1958-59. He made a stab at the 1956 convention just to be beaten out by another man he hated, Adlai Stevenson. And then that charming Kennedy boy comes along and takes it away from him in 1960. Did it anger him enough to have JFK taken out? We need more evidence of Lyndon Johnson’s murderous intent, if there was one, to resolve that. He wasn’t happy, we know that for certain. As Caro says of his character: “...the utter inability to comprehend the questions of morality or ethics raised by his actions, an utter inability to tell that there was even a possibility that he had violated accepted standards of conduct and might be punished for that violation.”

And that was just it–he was never punished for his violations of the accepted standards of conduct. He didn’t lose his wife by cheating on her, even when he did it their own home with her sleeping alone. He had political operatives stuff a ballot box and write up phony voter tally sheets. There was nobody there to indict him of fraud, conspiracy, and bribery that it took to get that done. He wasn’t ever reprimanded for anything he did that was wrong.  It only ended when he achieved his goal. In his last days he was left alone and broken.

Nevertheless, a great read for what it is. If you think LBJ had JFK murdered there is a great deal of back-story here detailing Johnson's amoral personality and his criminal, conspiratorial life that will add fuel to the fire. There is actual sowing and reaping and Lyndon Johnson reaped at the end of his life.

And lastly, for those that dismiss vote rigging as being possible, Lyndon Johnson was a living example of it.