Senate counsel Burkett van Kirk and James Wagenvoord of Life Magazine both confirm Robert Kennedy was feeding their investigations of LBJ's corruption

 Burkett van Kirk confirms that Robert Kennedy was feeding damaging information on Lyndon Johnson's corruption to the Senate Rules Committee in fall, 1963, in attempt to destroy LBJ. The Kennedys were working with the Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee to take down LBJ because LBJ was too close to the Democrats.

 

 SEYMOUR HERSH:

 QUOTE

             In a series of interviews for this book, Burkett Van Kirk, who was chief counsel in 1963 for the Republican minority on the Rules Committee, told me of his personal knowledge of Bobby Kennedy's direct intervention. "Bobby was feeding information to 'whispering Willie'" - the nickname for Senator John Williams. "They" - the Kennedy brothers, Van Kirk said - "were dumping Johnson.." Williams, as he did earlier with Donald Reynolds's information about Lyndon Johnson, relayed the Kennedy materials to the senior Republican on the Rules Committe, Carl Curtis. The attorney general thus was secretly dealing with Williams, and Williams was dealing secretly with Curtis and Van Kirk. The scheming was necessary, Van Kirk told me, because he and his fellow Republicans understood that a full-fledged investigation into Bobby Baker could lead to the vice president. They also understood, he said, that the chances of getting such an investigation where slim at best. The Democrats had an overwhelming advantage in the Senate - sixty-seven to thirty-three - and in every committee. The three Republicans on the ten member Rules Committee, Van Kirk said, had little power. "We never won one vote to even call a witness," he told me. The investigation into Bobby Baker and Lyndon Johnson would have to be done in a traditional manner - by newspaper leak.

 

            Van Kirk, who was named after his grandfather Senator E. J. Burkett of Nebraska, said that Bobby Kennedy eventually designated a Justice Department lawyer that fall to serve as an intermediary to the minority staff; he began supplying the Republicans with documents about Johnson and his financial dealings. The lawyer, Van Kirk told me, "used to come up to the Senate and hang around me like a dark cloud. It took him about a week or ten days to, one, find out what I didn't know, and two, give it to me." Some of the Kennedy-supplied documents were kept in Williams's office safe, Van Kirk said, and never shown to him. There was no doubt of Bobby Kennedy's purpose in dealing with the Republicans, Van Kirk said: "To get rid of Johnson. To dump him. I am as sure of that the sun comes up in the east."

 UNQUOTE

 [Seymour Hersh, "The Dark Side of Camelot," pp. 406-407]

  

Burkett Van Kirk on how Don Reynolds had the proof of Lyndon Johnson’s corruption as he testified to a closed session of the Senate Rules Committee in the morning of November 22, 1963.

 Van Kirk was interviewed  in the History Channel’s documentary LBJ vs. The Kennedys: Chasing Demons and it aired on June 1, 2003.

 Burkett Van Kirk:

 QUOTE

 Don presented a good case. He could back it up. Everything he had, he had a receipt for. It’s hard to argue with a receipt. Or a cancelled check. Or an invoice. It’s hard to argue with documentation.

 UNQUOTE

 [Burkett van Kirk in the History Channel’s LBJ vs. The Kennedys: Chasing Demons, 2003] also in [Robert Caro, Passage of Power, p. 664]

  Robert Caro on the Senate Rules Committee investigation into Bobby Baker and Lyndon Johnson

 QUOTE

 Mollenhoff, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register was, in Novemer 1963, working closely – and on virtually a daily basis – with Senator Williams and the Rules Committee staff. He was to write that “It was a few minutes before 10 A.M. when Reynolds and Fitzgerald were escorted to Room 312, where two committee staff members (Van Kirk and Drennan) waited.” Mollenhoff was to report that “in the first two hours, the questioning ranged over the whole scope of Baker’s financial operations,” including those concerning the District of Columbia Stadium (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295-97).

          The journalist Sy Hersh had a series of interviews with Van Kirk, and writes that “at ten o’clock” Reynolds walked with his lawyer into a small hearing room… and began providing … Van Kirk … with eagerly awaited evidence” (Hersh, Dark Side of Camelot, p. 446). Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska, the ranking Republican member of the Rules Committee, who was told in 1963 about Reynolds’s testimony by Van Kirk, confirmed that Reynolds had provided  documentation. Also Curtis Files, Curtis Papers; Curtis interview. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295-98; Rowe, The Bobby Baker Story, pp. 84-86; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, pp. 602, 611.

 UNQUOTE

 [Robert Caro, Passage of Power, pp. 664-665]

James Wagenvoord of LIFE Magazine came forward in 2009 and revealed that LIFE Magazine was preparing a “crusher” expose of Lyndon Johnson that would utterly destroy him and it was to be published one week after the JFK assassination.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=8smSeEOthZkC&pg=PT299&lpg=PT299&dq=james+wagenvoord+education+forum&source=bl&ots=JS-bt2F41A&sig=ACfU3U2u-XhxO7mw_mMzPQdFiayxayZmjw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjSz-7Cv6zmAhUK5awKHR4oBPwQ6AEwAnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=james%20wagenvoord%20education%20forum&f=false

LIFE Magazine, being fed damaging info by RFK, was on the verge of running a story on 11/29/63 that would have annihilated Lyndon Johnson’s political career once and for all

Source: James Wagenvoord who in 1963 was the 27 year old assistant to LIFE Magazine’e managing editor; this issue would have been dated 12/6/63 and mailed out 11/29 and 11/30/63 (Friday/Saturday mailing)

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14966&st=0  

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

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

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

Biography of James Wagenvoord: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwagenvoord.htm

LIFE Magazine was within days of breaking a major story on Lyndon Johnson that would have been extremely politically damaging to him. By 11/22/63, the political career of Lyndon Johnson was hanging by a thin, thin thread and Robert Kennedy, having told the Washington press corps that it was open season on Johnson, was about to cut it with scissors:

In 1963 Johnson got drawn into political scandals involving Fred Korth, Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. According to James Wagenvoord, the editorial business manager and assistant to Life Magazines Executive Editor, the magazine was working on an article that would have revealed Johnson's corrupt activities. "Beginning in later summer 1963 the magazine, based upon information fed from Bobby Kennedy and the Justice Department, had been developing a major newsbreak piece concerning Johnson and Bobby Baker. On publication Johnson would have been finished and off the 1964 ticket (reason the material was fed to us) and would probably have been facing prison time. At the time LIFE magazine was arguably the most important general news source in the US. The top management of Time Inc. was closely allied with the USA's various intelligence agencies and we were used after by the Kennedy Justice Department as a conduit to the public."

The fact that it was Robert Kennedy who was giving this information to Life Magazine suggests that John F. Kennedy intended to drop Johnson as his vice-president. This is supported by Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary. In her book, Kennedy and Johnson (1968) she claimed that in November, 1963, Kennedy decided that because of the emerging Bobby Baker scandal he was going to drop Johnson as his running mate in the 1964 election. Kennedy told Lincoln that he was going to replace Johnson with Terry Sanford.

Don B. Reynolds appeared before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee on 22nd November, 1963. Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his committee that Johnson had demanded that he provided kickbacks in return for him agreeing to a life insurance policy arranged by him in 1957. This included a $585 Magnavox stereo. Reynolds also had to pay for $1,200 worth of advertising on KTBC, Johnson's television station in Austin. Reynolds had paperwork for this transaction including a delivery note that indicated the stereo had been sent to the home of Johnson. Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract".