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

A Tale Of Two Presidents

“But many other more telling facts indicate that Obama is but a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites – commercial, financial, military – governs with the same core policies regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the unelected elite. That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely in practice to dictatorship, not democracy.”

Finian Cunningham

“A supposedly transformative president normalizes the criminal perversions of his predecessor and appears to have the fight in him only to beat the legacy of FDR into an unrecognizable pulp.”

Jeff Wells

When one starts studying the political and corporate forces that John F. Kennedy skirmished with behind the scenes in the alley ways of government, one can get a sense of how great this silent and hidden struggle was. Kennedy’s battles are only now coming to light and add more credibility that there were many that would not mind seeing him dead. Just follow the trail and see who all benefited. Everybody has a motive here except the man credited with the crime.

From the military industrial establishment lusting for war in Southeast Asia, to the contractors positioning themselves for a piece of the action, to the independent paramilitary operations being conducted by the CIA, to the host of other power brokers tucked away in their fiefdoms, John F. Kennedy stands now as the lone man standing in opposition to them. In many ways he is the last authentic President the United States. He attempted to govern as if the buck really did stop with him. These corporate and political powers are the ones with the greatest motive to stop him and have a far greater motive to assassinate the President than the man credited with the crime.

JFK may have understood that not only would these hidden power brokers rule the People from a distance but might also control any future President.

Strange Days Have Found Us
Which brings to the modern era with Barack H. Obama, the most mysterious man ever elected President of the United States. In the past, the public has not been privy to various personal details regarding the lives of their leaders. Franklin Roosevelt was never seen in a wheelchair and the press conspired with him in this regard. John Kennedy’s dalliances with numerous women, were unknown till years later as was his Addison's disease; a serious illness that nearly took his life as a young man. His successor, Lyndon Johnson we know was one of the most amoral and uncouth human beings that ever lived. Other Presidents had issues only lately coming to light.

With Barack Obama, even is less is known and to the point of being a total mystery, his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, not withstanding. He’s a man who seemingly walked out of a fog. Other than having a wife and two daughters his experience with women is unknown. (Where are the girlfriends? All of these politicos are haunted by them.) The controversy over his birth records aside, there are virtually no existent records available on him. All educational records from Kindergarten through law school are sealed or not available; thesis papers do not exist; no Harvard Law Review articles, a requirement to be the editor which Obama briefly was, have ever been released except for a questionable six-page unsigned summary; medical records, never released; Chicago law practice records, never released; appointment calendar for service in the Illinois State Senate, never released (Corsi, Appendix, 316-328). Even more telling is the legal expense in the millions to make sure all of these records are never made known.

Consider this–there is more witness testimony of shots coming from the grassy knoll than there are witnesses or documentation that Barack Obama attended or graduated from Columbia University. There are no released grade transcripts, photos, and only a few people have come forward to say they knew him during the Columbia period (a Sohale Siddiqi has come forward but was not attending classes with him. See USA Today link HERE).

(And it does not end with Obama but extends to his mother and her parents. No records exist of Ann Dunham’s two marriages, her passport records–since destroyed–or her hospital records at the time of Barack's birth. Speaking of Obama’s birth records, there are none of his mother, her parents and grandparents. Other things abound–researchers found numerous instances of Ann Dunham using aliases. Also, her father’s military service records are not available.)

Even Barak Obama’s list of professions is dubious. His tenure as a law “professor” is a myth–he was a mere instructor and never held a tenured position either as a professor or as an associate professor. His colleagues thought little of him, this man whose charisma would in the future, blossom on the world stage. The law license he once held is gone too. There are two stories on this. One, that he voluntarily given up since he no longer needs it while conducting the duties of President. And two, the story that he had lied on his Illinois Bar exam on a question of whether he had ever used an alias. He had–Barry Soetoro–his Indonesian name from his adoptive father which he used, along with his Indonesian passport to travel to Pakistan in the early 1980’s. (Please read my UPDATE on this below.)

Lastly, there is the issue of his Social Security number. The initial story was that researchers have discovered that Obama’s SSN belongs to that of a woman born in in 1890 in Connecticut. SSN are single use numbers, retired at the death of the person issued the number. However, a search of the Social Security Death Index shows this to be apparently false. See HERE for a complete explanation of Obama’s SSN being legitimate. Despite that, other Social Security numbers have been discovered for variants of Obama’s name. Probably more so for an uncommon name like this and so many owners of SSN’s for that name.

It’s not perplexing that mainstream media doesn’t cover any of this. They are more or else useless as a public watch dog. It’s more the Courts. Third party investigators have routinely had their challenges tossed out with rulings of “no standing”. Even the latest law suit over the Connecticut Social Security number was recently denied. It’s a legal hot potato alright, and only independent critics have an interest in the issue it seems. The important factor though, is that all legal challenges have been dismissed.

Tight Leash
David Talbot in Brothers, describes John Kennedy’s behind the scenes battles with the CIA, the Pentagon and its Generals. Where Kennedy was his own man standing up to strongmen such as the cigar chomping General Curtis Lemay, the duplicitous CIA Director Allen Dulles, or even the head of the Federal Reserve, William McChesney Martin, Jr., when he issued the silver certificate notes which ate into the central bank’s profits, Obama doesn’t seem to have the spine for such heroics. He seems content in his ever expanding role of a puppet to them, as he parades around as a Roman Emperor to the rest of the world. One can almost see the strings attached to him. He knows that if he steps too far out of line what will become of him. He made a lot of promises as they all do to get elected, but with Obama, I don’t think he lied by not fulfilling many of them. His interaction with the machinery of government is tightly managed and all of the centers of power Kennedy wrestled with are still there, more numerous and as powerful as ever.

I harken back to comedian Bill Hicks’ routine on how a new President is handled. He’s taken into a darkened room, a screen comes down and he’s shown a film of the Kennedy assassination but from an angle no one has seen before. It’s the angle from the grassy knoll. When it’s finished, the lights come on, the screen goes up and the men there, the real power brokers, say to him, “Any questions?” And the President elect says, “What’s my agenda going to be?” A wisecrack, but I wonder if it really happens that way. I’m sure the speculation of it lingers like an unwelcome guest in every new President’s mind. As we know from other sources, people close in have their doubts. Why else would Bill Clinton have his friend and Attorney General Webster Hubble look into the assassination? He wanted to know more. He may have feared for his own life from the Men behind the curtain. Naturally, Hubble got nowhere.

Manchurian Candidate?
Most likely not. That would be too easy, too expected. However, Barack Obama’s path to power is guided by the rich and powerful. There may be intelligence connections running all thorough this, there usually is, but the blend is such it’s hard to tell who is who. All presidential hopefuls are in need of powerful benefactors, and even John Kennedy with all his money, charm and charisma needed his father’s mob connections to affect the outcome of the 1960 election. With Barack Obama, his climb to the top was an amazing thing to watch. Here is a man who spent his life as a nobody with no distinguishing achievements except for being elected to public office twice and not spending much time not doing much in either roles as State Senator and then as a member of the Federal Senate. He expressed no leadership skills in either position. Nor authored any legislation.

When a President has 5 or more hours to play golf that is President with not much to do. And you would think that job would have enough tasks going on to keep one busy 24 hours a day. Apparently, the heavy hitters are doing the real work. President Obama is called in to do the scripted public appearances when a situation is called for. After all, it’s all theater–it’s when he ad libs he is at his worse. Check out the old film clips online to see how good Kennedy was at handling impromptu press conferences and off the cuff quips. He always portrayed a commanding presence and seems at liberty in purpose and action to his modern counterpart who drifts ambivalently from one affair to the next, as if his steps are ordered and the outcome matters not.

Somebody once said that Barack Obama’s greatest fear is being found out he is a phony. Maybe so. Perhaps he is more afraid of the Puppeteers.

UPDATE:
Since posting this piece I’ve added some new links below and made a few corrections. Also, I’m a bit leery of using Snopes.com as a source. I have the feeling they are agenda driven. I have uncovered some strangeness with their version of the truth regarding Obama's law license.

For example, in their debunking the “myth” that Obama lost his license as a result of a disciplinary action through the Illinois State Supreme Court, on Snopes there is a page (HERE) supposedly showing a record from the IARDC showing that Obama voluntarily retired his law license. Interestingly enough, this page is mostly a graphics file. There is an iardc.org not link for this supposed page (HERE) so I went there. What loads are empty form fields. Curiously, there is a date of admission for an unnamed lawyer for 12/30/1899. And, the same thing appears for Michele Obama as well. Odd. So, the page on Obama (and his wife) as seen in the graphics file does not load the same information.

But there is a search so I typed in Obama’s full name. He is not listed as a licensed attorney for the state Illinois. As stated in the search results page: “Your search terms do not match the record of any lawyer licensed in Illinois.”

So it’s all very strange and this didn’t increase my trust in Snopes. I think something fishy is going on here. Snopes is posting a link on a graphic for a page that does not exist. And, they do it twice. Nevertheless, no real evidence that Barack Obama lost his law license due to fibbing about his using an alias. But no evidence against it either.


Sources
Talbot, David, Brothers; Corsi, Jerome, PHd., Where’s The Birth Certificate?; Barack, Obama, Dreams Of My Father; Mars, Jim, Crossfire

Finian Cunningham quote: “The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant ‘President’”. Link: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=25853&context=va

Jeff Wells quote, “We Are The Monsters We've Been Waiting For”. Link: http://rigint.blogspot.com/

Barak Obama’s phony SSN debunked
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/ssn.asp

E-Verify 'Flags' Obama's Social Security Number
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=0c63abc741fff5c4813d80e0a&id=3fce429d69&e=8b6f594bd3

Western Center for Journalism
http://www.westernjournalism.com/exclusive-investigative-reports/the-mystery-of-barack-obama-continues/

Barack Obama Columbia essay, Sundial.
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM116_obamaessay.html

Sohale Siddiqi, one of the few people to know Barack Obama during the Occidental College and Columbia University years. Mentions other friends and roommates as well.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2008-05-15-3144401415_x.htm