LBJ's right arm Bobby Baker told Don Reynolds on Inauguration Day, 1961 that JFK would die a Violent Death and would not live out his term

Bobby Baker (LBJ’s right hand man and bag man) told Don Reynolds on Inauguration Day 1/20/61 that the s.o.b. John Kennedy would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death

Bobby Baker, one of Lyndon Johnson’s closest associates, said this during the inauguration of John Kennedy 

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

(11) Edward Jay Epstein, Esquire Magazine (December, 1966)

QUOTE

In January of 1964 the Warren Commission learned that Don B. Reynolds, insurance agent and close associate of Bobby Baker, had been heard to say the FBI knew that Johnson was behind the assassination. When interviewed by the FBI, he denied this. But he did recount an incident during the swearing in of Kennedy in which Bobby Baker said words to the effect that the s.o.b. would never live out his term and that he would die a violent death.

UNQUOTE

Lyndon Johnson told Robert Novak in summer 1962 that the Kennedys were losing the cold war against the Soviet Union, losing to conservatives in Congress and that Robert Kennedy was planning to dump him off the 1964 Democratic ticket.

Robert Novak later married Geraldine, a secretary to LBJ

  

          Notice how Johnson is telling Novak in the summer of 1962 how the Kennedy Administration was "losing" the cold war to the Russians. This is before the fall, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I imagine Johnson was using these same arguments with the generals, the Texas oil men and the military intelligence in the lead up to the JFK assassination.

         

Robert Novak: 

QUOTE 

          "After a Texas-style cookout, LBJ reclined, nearly prone, by the swimming pool. It was just the two of us drinking Scotch, and he spoke with a candor he never bestowed on me before or after. He felt the Kennedy administration was in serious trouble, losing the cold war to the Soviet Union and losing the legislative war to conservatives in Congress. He said that he had done everything the Kennedys had wanted, including foreign missions that only guaranteed him bad publicity.

          He was repaid with insults and humiliation, especially from the attorney general. Johnson  was sure Bobby Kennedy was plotting to dump him in 1964. "But I'm going to fool them," he said. "I'm going to pack it in after the term ends and go home to Texas." That would have been a huge scoop, but I knew Johnson was just blowing off steam.

          As for going back to Texas, the political environment there was hardly more congenial for LBJ than it was in Washington. Johnson's protege, John B. Connally, had just won the Democratic nomination for governor of Texas, which still all but guaranteed election in Texas. As secretary of the Navy, Connally had been the highest Kennedy administration official bearing the LBJ brand. 

          But campaigning for governor, Connally removed the brand. With JFK and LBJ both unpopular in Texas, Connally ran against the administration he had just left, and won. Talking about Big John in that summer evening in 1962 led Johnson into self-pity. "John has turned my picture to the wall," LBJ told me. "You know I would never turn his picture to the wall." 

QUOTE 

[Robert Novak, The Prince of Darkness, pp. 90-91]

 

David Lifton analysis of what Lyndon Johnson was telling Robert Novak about his major bad blood with the Kennedys in summer, 1962.

 

David Lifton email to Robert Morrow on 2/18/2020

 

2/18/2020 - 8:20 AM CST

 

Robert, 

 

I think you missed an important “data-point.”

 Note the following quote:

 " He was repaid with insults and humiliation, especially from the attorney general. Johnson  was sure Bobby Kennedy was plotting to dump him in 1964. "But I'm going to fool them," he said. "I'm going to pack it in after the term ends and go home to Texas." That would have been a huge scoop, but I knew Johnson was just blowing off steam.

 Forget about what Novak thinks; and focus on what LBJ said.

By stating this to Novak, LBJ was creating a public record of his having no future political ambition(s).  Rather, his intent is to “go home to Texas.”  IMHO: This statement is his (somewhat weak) attempt to create the appearance that he has no future political ambition; thus, removing him as having a “personal motive” in the upcoming assassination of JFK.   Think about it. . : The bank robber is outside the bank; a key person says, “I don’t know what you guys think you’re up to, but I’ve got to go to the bathroom.  Is there a bathroom nearby?  Oh well, I’m going down the street to that Texaco station. I think they have a toilet.”  etc etc. So. . . He’s no longer at the scene of the crime; he’s not “in charge.” He was just there, but that’s of no consequence, because he left when he suddenly needed to go to the nearest bathroom, down the street.” 

 IMHO: That’s what LBJ was doing with Novak. Creating a “political alibi.”  I disagree with Novak. Johnson was not “blowing off steam.”  He knew about—and was probably up to his neck—the upcoming plan to “get rid of JFK” . (And remember: it was LBJ who—as Manchester reported, based on extensive interviews with Jackie and with Kenneth O’Donnell’—pleaded with JFK to make the Texas trip ; and who (according to Jackie)“lured” him to go to Texas. And that’s the word that she used: “lured” — and that’s after all the editing of what Manchester originally wrote. The word “lured” remained. G-D only knows what the original draft stated, before the editing by Sorensen (remember that?).

 So, the central notion that LBJ (according to the evidence  was deeply involved in getting Kennedy to “make the trip”; but, simultaneously was planning  to “go home to Texas”—is absurd. That’s just plain nonsense.  As I’ve heard they would say, down there in Texas: “That dog won’t hunt!”.

 DSL

 P.S. Also. . 

Lyndon Johnson told Robert Novak in summer,1962 that the Kennedys were losing the cold war against the Soviet Union, 

For Johnson to be saying this is significant because (a) That would echo the sort of thing coming from a Curtis Lemay, (and others of that ilk); and second: since when does a Vice President take up a political position that is so completely different than his boss, the President, who is pursuing reasonable compromise, so that the world is peaceful, and things don’t escalate into a nuclear exchange?  IMHO.  DSL

 Political Journalist and author Alfred Steinberg: LBJ was so concerned about being dropped from the 1964 Democratic ticket that he developed severe stomach pains in the fall of 1963

 Alfred Steinberg: 

QUOTE 

By the fall of 1963 talk was common in Washington that Johnson would be dropped from the 1964 ticket because he had turned into a negative factor. A Midwestern senator, who traveled to Connecticut with the Vice President for a fund-raising affair for the Vice President’s pal Senator Tom Dodd, reported to his Senate colleagues afterward that Johnson had lugubriously remarked during their New England visit, “I’m going to be out of it for a second term. Jack has another man in mind for Vice President.” So concerned was Johnson over what he believed would be his political doom that he developed severe stomach pains. But in this instance, the doctor’s diagnosis found it a coincidence of timing, that he was suffering from an oversupply of calcium and should eliminated milk from his diet.

 UNQUOTE 

[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A Close-Up of the President from Texas, p. 589]

 Lyndon Johnson told Liz and Leslie Carpenter in the fall of 1963 that he was get off the 1964 Democratic ticket before the Kennedys could kick him off of it. Liz Carpenter was a longtime LBJ partisan who became Lady Bird’s press secretary in the White House 

(LBJ’s “right hand man” Bobby Baker had resigned as Secretary of the Senate on 10/7/63)

 

QUOTE

 But denying any intent to dump Johnson was good politics. There is no doubt that if scandal sank the vice president, not a tear would have been shed in the White House. More important, Johnson believed the Kennedys wanted him off the ticket. Shortly after the Baker scandal broke, Johnson had dinner with friends, including Liz and Leslie Carpenter. Johnson's car took the couple home and Johnson rode with them. "Park in the driveway and let's talk a few minutes," Johnson said. "I think I'm going to announce that I'm not going to run again for vice president so that I can get off that ticket before they try to knock me off. What I would like to do is go back to Texas and be president of Southwest Texas State Teachers College."

 UNQUOTE

 

[Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 414, Leslie Carpenter oral history]

McGeorge Bundy believe that if JFK had not been killed, the Vietnam War "as we know it" would never have happened.

 

McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor for both JFK and LBJ, believed that if Kennedy had remained president, the Vietnam War as we know it would never have happened

 QUOTE 

In a discussion with another colleague, James Blight of Brown University, “Mac said there were no missed opportunities,” Blight noted. “None, except the ‘opportunity’ that was irretrievably lost when Kennedy was felled and replaced by Johnson. He said he believes both sides of the argument: had Kennedy lived, there would have been no Vietnam War as we know it; and with Johnson in the White House, it was (in combination with Hanoi’s intransigence) destined to unfold like the tragedy it became.” … 

Bundy argued that the no-combat-troop policy imposed by Kennedy was of fundamental significance for America’s history in Vietnam. “If Lyndon Johnson had not reversed that decision,” Bundy wrote, “the Vietnam War as America came to know could not have happened.” 

UNQUOTE

 [Gordon M. Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam, p. 231-232]