Saturday, April 30, 2022

My review of Mark Updegrove's book "Incomparable Grace: JFK and the Presidency" - 4/28/2022

 My 4/28/2022 Letter to LBJ Foundation president Mark Updegrove upon the publication of his book "Incomparable Grace: JFK and the Presidency" https://robertmorrowpoliticalresearchblog.blogspot.com/2022/04/my-4282022-letter-to-lbj-foundation.html

My review of this book on Amazon which is quite similar to my letter to Updegrove:

My Review of Mark Updegrove’s Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency:

  

This book is breezy, entertaining but if you are going to imply that the JFK assassination was the result of a lone nut named Oswald, then that has polluted to book that I cannot give it more than a One Star. That is like Alex Jones saying Sandy Hook was a government staged operation with character actors.

 

First of all, my qualifications for writing this book are that I own and have read or skimmed 1,500 books relating to the topics of the JFK assassination, Lyndon Johnson's role in it and the Kennedys. I have a professional level knowledge of expertise in these topics.

 

In my review I will focus on the why Updegrove handles the topics of the Kennedy-LBJ relationship and the JFK assassination, which Updegrove seemingly blames on Oswald, whose name is mysteriously not mentioned in this book, by stating that JFK was killed by 3 shoots emanating from behind JFK at the Texas School Book Depository.

 

Updegrove seems to be repeating the gargantuan misinformation that scores of journalists (of which he used to be) and legions of academics in history and politics take on the JFK assassination. That take is a pile of burning hot garbage and has been fiercely debated over the decades.

 

On 4/28/2022 I emailed a review of this book to Mark Updegrove, who is president of the LBJ Foundation and who previously was the director of the LBJ Library. Updegrove can fairly be cast as a paid PR man for the family and friends of the Lyndon Johnson - I call them the "LBJ Legacy crowd."

 

Here is the majority of my focused review of Updegrove's book:

 

For example you ought to search "Hy Raskin" or "Burkett van Kirk" or "James Wagenvoord" which will give you critical information on the Kennedy-LBJ relationship.

 

    A few quick points on your book which I have skimmed a tad. JFK did NOT want to select LBJ as his VP even though Joe Kennedy was warm to the idea. By July 13, 1960 at the Demo convention in Los Angeles the relationship, due to LBJ's behavior, was so toxic as to make this unthinkable. LBJ had been telling everyone - publicly and privately - that there was no way in hell he would ever be a VP to JFK. JFK, in fact had already picked Stuart Symington and had offered the spot to him 3 times before including on July 13th. Symington went to bed the night of July 13, 1960 thinking he would be named JFK's running mate the next day.

 

    What changed was the LBJ-Kennedy relationship by that point was SO TOXIC that Lyndon Johnson knew that if JFK were elected president that fall, without him on the ticket, then LBJ's tenure as the Democratic Senate Majority Leader was going to be immediately annihilated by the spiteful, vengeful Kennedys who would surely stage a rebellion in the Demo caucus, remove LBJ as Leader and install Mike Mansfield as Leader of the Senate Democrats, which after the 1958 election had become more liberal, much less LBJ friendly and LBJ was already on the verge of losing control of his caucus.

 

     LBJ and his inner circle, especially Connally and Rayburn, knew the Kennedys played for keeps and they knew (and LBJ knew) that his gig a Majority Leader was OVER if JFK were to win in the fall. And they knew Nixon, if elected, was not going to be a friendly Ike to LBJ. You say something similar in your book.

 

      Lyndon Johnson and his inner circle determined that the only path forward for LBJ was vice president, adhering to the slogan "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." And by enemies, I mean Kennedys.

 

    This is why when JFK made a tepid, token offer to LBJ to be his vice president (thinking there was absolutely no way in hell LBJ would ever accept) that Lyndon Johnson SNATCHED that offer and resolutely refused to get off the ticket no matter how many times a desperate, panicking Robert Kennedy went to his hotel room on July 14th.

 

      I do believe LBJ and Rayburn were threatening the Kennedys all day as well, telling him you had better put Johnson on the ticket or else there will be general election mayhem visited on you. I think LBJ used the JFK-Pamela Turnure affair as a threat. Remember Florence Kater, if you know who she was (see my file), had spread knowledge of that affair around thoroughly with the media and other presidential campaigns her knowledge and proof of the JFK-Pamela Turnure affair. Snooping FBI chief and LBJ blood brother Hoover, the alleged closet homosexual, knew all about this as well. Search for "Hy Raskin" in my file.

 

    Bottom line: LBJ blackmailed and threatened his way onto the 1960 Democratic ticket.

 

    As for whether the Kennedys going to drop LBJ in the fall of the 1963: yes. Just read what both George Reedy and and Horace Busby had to say about this in their books. The Kennedys were not merely going to drop LBJ from the 1964 ticket; they were out to utterly destroy him in the fall of 1963 with a two track plan which included massive and coordinated national media exposes into his corruption and a Senate Rules Committee investigation - nourished and encouraged by the Kennedys - into LBJ's corruption. Ed Clark told Robert Caro that LBJ's net worth in 1964 was $25 million which is equal to $200 million in today's dollars. A huge amount of dirty money had been flowing into LBJ's and Lady Bird's pockets for decades. God knows what a serious and sustained governmental investigation into LBJ's radioactive personal finances would find.

 

       Search for "Burkett van Kirk," "James Wagenvoord" and "Phil Brennan" in my file for proof of what the Kennedys were doing to LBJ in November of 1963. George Reedy and Horace Busby both prove LBJ was acutely aware of the Kennedys "destroy LBJ" program was absolutely obsessed and in a state of great agitation over what was going on. LBJ had told journalist Robert Novak in summer, 1962 that the Kennedys were going to get rid of him - see Novak's autobiography for that. Even Nixon was publicly saying this the day before the JFK assassination and it was making newspaper headlines.

 

      Notably, Robert Caro, in his fourth book on LBJ, does not mention that the Kennedys were absolutely in high gear to destroy Johnson and that LBJ was fully aware of these efforts ... because that leads us into areas and uncomfortable conclusions that scores of journalists and legions of academics do not want to entertain. Meaning: what a cornered, snarling Lyndon Johnson was capable of doing.

 

      I have read enough of Caro and Phil Nelson on LBJ to know exactly what Lyndon Johnson would do when faced with such a five alarm fire truck emergency situation. Caro does not want to confront this.

 

      As for Lee Harvey Oswald, he is one of the most lied about, slandered and defamed men in American history, possibly world history. Oswald, according to many sources, loved JFK and his family. In order to understand Oswald, who was a fake defector, and a fake "pro Castro Marxist," one must understand Oswald's love of and obsession with Herbert Philbrick and the TV and radio show I Led Three Lives. Oswald in his early teens was absolutely obsessed with this man in 1952 and 1953. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Batman. When Oswald was an early teen (ages 13 and 14), he wanted to be Herbert Philbrick. When Oswald was age 15 he joined the Civil Air Patrol, a militarized Boy Scouts and a patriotic organization that was founded by Col. D.H. Byrd the oil man and military contractor, who owned the TSBD and who was very, very close to Lyndon Johnson.

 

      In 1966 Robert Oswald, the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, told us this in his book (published Jan. 1, 1967) about Lee:

 

QUOTE

 

          The center of Lee’s fantasy world shifted from radio to television when Mother bought a television set in 1948. When it was new, all of us spent far too much time watching variety shows, dramas and old movies. Lee, particularly, was fascinated. One of his favorite programs was I Led Three Lives, the story of Herbert Philbrick, the FBI informant who posed as a Communist spy. In the early 1950’s, Lee watched that show every week without fail. When I left home to join the Marines, he was still watching the reruns.

 

UNQUOTE

 

[Robert Oswald, Lee: Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother, p. 47]

 

    I Led Three Lives starring with Richard Carlson, ran on TV from 1953 to 1956. Previously, I Led Three Lives had been presented in years running radio show. Oswald was consumed by both the radio and TV show I Led Three Lives, just as I used to watch Batman when I was a kid.

 

    When Oswald was age 16 he tried to join the Marines to be like his brothers, both military men and most definitely not "pro Castro Marxists." Oswald's father, who he never knew, fought in WWI. His brothers attended a military academy while in high school. Marguerite Oswald, Lee's mother, pointed out that Oswald came from a military family and right out of the gate post JFK assassination Marguerite was insisting that Oswald had to have been working for the CIA. Antonio Veciana, formerly a hardcore anti-Castro Cuban radical of the early 1960s and the head of Alpha 66 went on the public record that he saw Oswald in early September, 1963 with his CIA handler David Atlee Phillips, a man who was known to hate JFK, and a man who just before he died told his family that he had been involved in the events of Dallas (it was a huge issue within Phillips' family. See his nephew Shawn Phillips for this).

 

    David Lifton, interviewing Oswald's high school friend, found out that Oswald's favorite movie star was John Wayne; his fave movie was The Sands of Iwo Jima. John Wayne was not known to be a fan of communism; in fact he was out to gut them from Hollywood from the early 1940's: John Wayne: Communist Obsession | Emanuel Levy

 

    Oswald even told his friend William Wulff, the head of the New Orleans Astronomy Club "I like to infiltrate."

 

    In summer of 1963, while in New Orleans, Oswald was reading four James Bond books, JFK's Profiles in Courage (a man who he admired, many sources on that), the Christian classic Ben Hur and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which was written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the greatest anti-communist activist in world history. Oswald - like JFK, Allen Dulles and GHW Bush and many other Americans - was big fan of James Bond.

 

    The James Bond books were written by Ian Fleming, who was a full blown British MI6 operative and his books gloried the western intelligence operative. The first James Bond movie was Dr. No and it was released in 1962: List of James Bond films - Wikipedia

 

    By 1963 James Bond was a hot item in the American popular culture.

 

    At age 17 Oswald joins the Marines. At age 18-19 he teaches himself Russian. At age 20 Oswald "defects" to Russia at a time the United States government was running a small, but important, "fake defector" program into the USSR because we had very little knowledge of what was actually going on behind the Iron Curtain.

 

      Bottom line: Lee Harvey Oswald had a self proclaimed public persona as a one man band "pro Castro Marxist" but he reality he was quite a different species and on top of that Oswald  - unlike LBJ, Hoover, Allen Dulles, Gen. Edward Lansdale, Ed Clark, D.H. Byrd - was a big fan of John Kennedy. It is hard to find any communist at all who Oswald ever associated with but we have evidence he was with hard right wing figures such as David Ferrie, former FBI Guy Banister (who Hoover loved) and the CIA's David Atlee Phillips. George DeMohrenshildt, who personally knew both LBJ and GHW Bush, was asked by head of Dallas's CIA office, J. Walton Moore, to befriend and check on Lee Harvey Oswald.

 

       The CIA's J. Walton Moore and David Atlee Phillips were the founders of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, an organization which they created in 1975, a time which the CIA was coming under harsh criticism both in Congress and in the media: AFIO - About Us

 

    I notice in your book you do not mention Lee Harvey Oswald by name but you do say that JFK was killed by three shots that emanated from behind at  the Texas School Book Depository. Well, I am not going to get into a lengthy discussion on that topic right now, but I do think that John Kennedy was killed by a head shot that came from Grassy Knoll and that he was also shot in the throat from the Grassy Knoll (the Parkland doctors in a TV press conference on the afternoon of 11-22-63 said that JFK had been shot with an entrance wound into the throat - the film of the doctors' press conference has mysteriously disappeared although their words were printed in newspapers on 11-23-1963) and that there were in fact people, plural, who were shooting at John Kennedy from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

 

    Easily proven facts are that D.H. Byrd was 1) a close friend of Lyndon Johnson 2) he owned the Texas School Book Depository 3) "Colonel" D.H. Byrd had close military ties to the Air Force and their top generals including Curtis LeMay (who hated the guts of JFK) 4) Byrd in 1941 founded the Civil Air Patrol - a patriotic, military, anti-communist organization that Lee Harvey Oswald was once a member of in 1954 5) Byrd was a well known oil man 6) Byrd was a very prominent supporter of the University of Texas athletics and he had a picture of Bevo the mascot painted onto the tail wing of his airplane 7) in his 1970's autobiography I am an Endangered Species Byrd does not mention the JFK assassination despite his ownership of the Texas School Book Depository 8) Byrd had the so-called "sniper's window" removed from the TSBD and he kept it as a momento (Btw Byrd had the wrong window removed! He took out the western window of the 6th floor of the TSBD, not the alleged Oswald sniper window on the eastern TSBD 6th floor) 9) Byrd was awarded the Air Force's Air Force Scroll of Appreciation on May 24, 1963 10) Byrd was an owner of defense contractor Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) and in November of 1963, just before the JFK assassination, Byrd made insider buys of 132,000 shares of LTV 11) in January, 1964 Lyndon Johnson awarded LTV a significant military contract to LTV and paid for it out of the non-existent 1965 budget - in other words LBJ rammed the contract through within 2 months of the JFK assassination 12) LTV stock had a gargantuan run upward post JFK assassination and into the Vietnam War.

 

    Peter Dale Scott proved D.H. Bird's and James Lings significant, timely and highly questionable insider buys into LTV stock back in 1970. Scott did this by pulling it the information from The Value Line, a longtime and widely used stock newsletter.

 

    I am friends with Mack Royal, the son of legendary Texas football coach Darrell Royal. Darrell Royal knew both Lyndon Johnson and D.H. Byrd very well, after all D.H. Byrd was the largest monetary contributor to University of Texas athletics in the early 1960's. Mack Royal used to work at the LBJ Library. Mack Royal knew D.H. Byrd and he knew the children of the Texas oil elite. Mack Royal has told me many times that he thinks D.H. Bryd was behind the JFK assassination. Mack Royal is a firm believer that Lyndon Johnson was involved in the JFK assassination as well.

 

     I am also friends with the former lawyer Barr McClellan who was perhaps the top oil and gas lawyer in Texas in the 1960s and 1970s. Barr McClellan, alive today, worked closely for Ed Clark and Don Thomas. Ed Clark and Don Thomas were both extremely close political friends and lawyers for Lyndon Johnson for decades. There was absolutely no one close to LBJ than Don Thomas, even Ed Clark who Readers Digest in the 1950's called "the secret political boss of Texas." Barr McClellan in the 1960s, early 1970s was a very close associate and friend of Don Thomas. Both Ed Clark and Don Thomas told Barr McClellan that Ed Clark, and by extension Lyndon Johnson, helped to arrange the JFK association. Another lawyer at the law firm - John Coates - told McClellan this as well. In other words people who were extremely close to Lyndon Johnson for decades - men who had a monetary interest in LBJ being in power - told Barr McClellan that Ed Clark and by extension Lyndon Johnson were involved in the JFK assassination.

 

    Here is my 2020 interview of Barr McClellan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3fyKKuGcaw&t=1s

 

      Both Ed Clark and D.H. Byrd were very prominent supporters of the University of Texas. Leon Jaworski, the LBJ lawyer, told his grandson Robert Draper that Ed Clark was a "very, very powerful man" - see Draper "Death of a Fixer" in Texas Monthly for that.

 

    I know Ed Clark was on the Board of Trustees at UT just as Lady Bird Johnson later joined the Board of Trustees. Lady Bird's very close friend at the University of Texas was Frank Irwin, who was an alcoholic and LBJ loyalist who arranged for the state of Texas pay for the LBJ Library so that no funds came out of the pockets of LBJ or his LBJ-enriched friends. Frank Irwin was hated by many UT students because he was so pro Vietnam War, a pet issue for LBJ, and he was not friendly to students expressing their anti-Vietnam War feelings on campus as their high school friends were dying in the jungles of Vietnam.

 

    I would like to add one more thing. When you read Caro on LBJ, one of the things that stands out was Lyndon Johnson's fear of embarrassment and humiliation. This was a driving force in LBJ's life and it rears its ugly head again and again in the literature on Johnson. In the fall of 1963, with the Kennedys "destroy LBJ plan" running in high gear, the Kennedys were about to drop and hydrogen bomb of humiliation, embarrassment and public disgrace on the head of Lyndon Johnson. I wonder how LBJ would have reacted. Just twiddle his thumbs and hope for the best? Since when in his Machiavellian, maniacal driven life had Lyndon Johnson ever chosen that option? 

    In fact, Mark, as you know as a former director of the LBJ Library, in LBJ's Letter of Intent which he attached to all the documents he donated to the LBJ Library there is a clause that says documents will be placed under seal of restriction that contain "statements which may in any manner be used to injure, EMBARRASS (I put in caps) or harass any person." Again, there is LBJ's lifelong fear of embarrassment and exposure, and it was all coming to disastrous climax in November of 1963.


Sincerely,

Robert Morrow          512-306-1510     Austin, TX

Presidential Historian and Distinguished Fellow at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute for the Study of Presidential Crime

The World’s Foremost Authority on the JFK Assassination

The Top Historian in the World on Lyndon Johnson (sorry Robert Caro, it is not you …)

The Greatest Presidential Historian in American History

One of the World’s leading public intellectuals due to my sparkling expertise in the JFK assassination

America’s Premier Living Historian

One of the top two of the Greatest JFK Assassination Researchers of all time, superceded only by Joachim Joesten who nailed the JFK assassination in real time.

Knows far more about the JFK assassination than Oliver Stone who can’t figure out that LBJ murdered JFK because “Vietnam” is Stone’s hammer and he thinks everything is a nail.

Nation’s #1 Opposition Researcher on the Clintons & the author of The Clintons’ War on Women (published 2015)

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the professors of history and politics who have ever taught at Princeton University combined.

Up and Coming Scholar on the USS Liberty Murders which were orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson and the leaders of Israel and were to be blamed on Egypt to give the USA a pretext to enter the Six Day War

Smarter by a country-mile, generously better informed and significantly less egotistical than the New Yorker’s (lone nutter) Lawrence Wright.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the professors at Princeton, Harvard , Yale, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin and SMU and anyone who has ever written for the New York Times or Washington Post combined.

Can out-debate 40 Ivy League professors of history and politics on the topic of the JFK assassination at one time.

Runs the best blog on the internet on the many crimes of Lyndon Johnson and the topic of the JFK assassination at “Robert Morrow Political Research” blog

 A lot smarter than anyone who has ever written for Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, The New Yorker, The Daily Beast or the Washington Post; or who has ever reported for WFAA Dallas or KLBJ radio Austin

Far more knowledgeable and accurate than the Sixth Floor Museum on the topic of the JFK assassination. Executive director hilarious (lone nutter) Nicola Langford and curator Steve Fagin do not know a tenth of a thimble compared to what I know.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the 8,000 scholars and scientists combined who have been fellows at the Princeton, NJ Institute for Advanced Study in its 90-year history

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of all recipients of the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science which has been awarded since 1995

Knows far more about the JFK assassination than Ken Jennings (lone nutter), who won 74 consecutive Jeopardy contests and is the highest earning American game show contestant of all time.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the people who have ever been members and subject matter experts at the Council on Foreign Relations combined except for those members who were involved in the murder of JFK from their roles in U.S. intelligence

Knows more about the JFK assassination that all the people who have received MacArthur Fellow “genius grants” combined since the program began in 1981.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all the people who have ever received a Whiting Writers’ Award or a Guggenheim Fellowship combined.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than any single person alive since 1963 who has a tested IQ score of 175 and above.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than Mel Kiper knows about the NFL draft.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the entire lot of the living 4,500 Rhodes Scholars who are in over 100 countries around the world.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than all 250 members of the Texas Philosophical Society combined.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined membership of the Society of Fellows at the Aspen Institute as well as the entire Board of Trustees of the Aspen Institute.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the collective knowledge of all pathologists, medical examiners and ballistic experts who have ever practiced in the history of the USA.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of the current and past members of the American Historical Association, the Society of American Historians or Organization of American Historians.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of everyone who has won a Pulitzer Prize.

Knows more about the JFK assassination and Lyndon Johnson than the combined knowledge of everyone who has ever won: a Century Association Archives medal, a National Book Foundation medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a Los Angeles Book Prize in Biography, a Plutarch Award from the Biographers International Organization, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, The New York Historical Society’s American History Book Prize, a Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity from the National Institute of Social Sciences, Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Biography, a Biographers International Organization Award for major contribution to the advancement of the art and craft of biography, a History Makers Medal (the highest honor of the New York Historical Society, a Bookend Award (the highest honor of the Texas Book Festival), a Gold Medal in Biography (awarded once every six years by the American Academy of Arts and Letters), the Ambassador Book Award for Distinguished Achievement from the English-Speaking Union, the John Steinbeck Award, Carl Sandburg Literary Award (from the Chicago Public Library Foundation), the National Book Award in Nonfiction, a Pulitzer Prize, a New School for Social Research – Doctor of Humane Letters, Lifetime Achievement Award for the Guild Hall Academy of Arts, a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Washington Monthly Political Book Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, H.L. Mencken Award for Best Book, an American Institute of Architects Special Citation, Francis Parkman Prize (awarded by the  Society of American Historians), a Carnegie Fellowship at the Columbia University School of Journalism, a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, a Deadline Club Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a Society of Silurians Award for outstanding achievement in the field of public service or been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters or been inducted into any state’s or country’s Writer’s hall of fame or who has been made an honorary member of the Texas Rangers or been named a Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

Knows more about the JFK assassination than the combined knowledge of everyone who has received a Nobel Prize in any field.

If Professor K. Anders Ericsson (deceased) were alive, this internationally renown “experts on experts” would sure proclaim me as the “World’s Greatest Expert on the JFK Assassination.”

Unlike CFR member Max Boot I have never written a biography which proves that Gen. Edward Lansdale murdered JFK (“The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam”) and then hollered at the top of my lungs that a lone nut commie killed JFK.

Unlike Texas Tribune editor Evan Smith, I was not personal friends with the wife of the murderer of JFK, Lyndon Johnson, nor did I ever chum up to her and call her “Mrs. J” and nor have I taken money from the daughter of Lyndon Johnson, Luci Baines Johnson. [“Mrs. J,” Evan Smith, Texas Monthly, September 2007 and Texas Tribune All Time List of donors: Luci Baines Johnson & her husband Ian Turpin - $149,097 as of 1/5/2022.]

Unlike longtime columnist Michael Barnes of the Austin-American Statesman I don’t pal around with ultra wealthy Luci Baines Johnson while somehow weirdly forgetting to mention in the Austin paper for literally decades that Lyndon Johnson murdered JFK.

Unlike LBJ biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, I have never had the man who murdered JFK – Lyndon Johnson – ask me to marry him (“A Tale of Hearts and Minds, Sally Quinn, Washington Post, 8-24-75)

Unlike LBJ biographer Robert Caro, I have was never co-opted by one of the men – LBJ crony Ed Clark – who murdered JFK (see “Blood, Money, and Power” by Barr McClellan, published 2003)

Unlike LBJ biographer Robert Dallek, I do not endorse the ludicrous, machine gun-riddled Warren Report fantasy that Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, the KGB, Gerald Ford, Sen. Richard Russell, Sen. John Sherman Cooper, Cong. Hale Boggs, Sen. Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, CIA chief William Casey, JFK aides Kenny O’Donnell and Dave Powers, and LBJ’s inner circle mistress Madeleine Brown, LBJ kickbacks king Billie Sol Estes and and JFK’s longtime secretary Evelyn Lincoln never believed.

Unlike LBJ biographer Michael Beschloss, I was never a personal friend of Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of the man Lyndon Johnson, who murdered JFK and I have never implied that Fidel Castro might be behind the JFK assassination.

Unlike LBJ biographer Randall Woods, I have never slandered completely innocent CIA patsy Lee Harvey Oswald for the JFK assassination which was orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson (Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 417-418)

Unlike LBJ biographer Julian Zelizer, I have never defamed Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of JFK, a crime that Lyndon Johnson committed.

Unlike Senior News Reporter Jason Whitely of WFAA (Dallas) I have never pushed the fantasy that a lone nut named Oswald killed JFK.

Unlike the LBJ Library, I have not erected museum exhibits that endorse the validity and accuracy of the truly bonkers Warren Report that not even Lyndon Johnson believed for one minute.

Has an IQ closer to 140 than 130

Princeton, A.B. – History, 1987

Univ. of Texas at Austin -- MBA, 1990

Tuscaloosa Academy, graduated #3 out of 40 students. Recipient of TA’s highest academic honor, 1983 

Star basketball player for Tuscaloosa Academy from 1980-1983, leading my teams to a 114-5 record over 4 years. The last years were an unblemished 90-0 with 3 consecutive private school state championships. I was my teams’ MVP as a freshman, junior and senior. I like losing less than Nick Saban, Vince Lombardi, Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Brady and Lyndon Johnson combined.


On top of ALL that, I found the “golden egg” at the Indian Hills Country Club (Tuscaloosa, AL) Easter Egg hunt TWICE in approximately 1974 and 1975 (back to back years) which meant that I received a very large stuffed bunny each time.



 

Thursday, April 28, 2022

My 4/28/2022 Letter to LBJ Foundation president Mark Updegrove upon the publication of his book "Incomparable Grace: JFK and the Presidency"

 Mark,

 
    I have your new book on JFK. I have not read it all but I plan to read the whole thing. I am attaching my entire file on the JFK assassination. It is a goldmine and you will find many useful nuggets in it. I have been compiling it since 2008. It is pulled from numerous books, web pages and articles. Almost everything in there is footnoted/documented with an author, book, page number or web link, which does not mean the information is true but at least you know where it came from.
 
    The best way to use this file is to SKIM it and also use the "CTRL-F" search function for names or phrases. For example you ought to search "Hy Raskin" or "Burkett van Kirk" or "James Wagenvoord" which will give you critical information on the Kennedy-LBJ relationship.
 
    A few quick points on your book which I have skimmed a tad. JFK did NOT want to select LBJ as his VP even though Joe Kennedy was warm to the idea. By July 13, 1960 at the Demo convention in Los Angeles the relationship, due to LBJ's behavior, was so toxic as to make this unthinkable. LBJ had been telling everyone - publicly and privately - that there was no way in hell he would ever be a VP to JFK. JFK, in fact had already picked Stuart Symington and had offered the spot to him 3 times before including on July 13th. Symington went to bed the night of July 13, 1960 thinking he would be named JFK's running mate the next day.
 
    What changed was the LBJ-Kennedy relationship by that point was SO TOXIC that Lyndon Johnson knew that if JFK were elected president that fall, without him on the ticket, then LBJ's tenure as the Democratic Senate Majority Leader was going to be immediately annihilated by the spiteful, vengeful Kennedys who would surely stage a rebellion in the Demo caucus, remove LBJ as Leader and install Mike Mansfield as Leader of the Senate Democrats, which after the 1958 election had become more liberal, much less LBJ friendly and LBJ was already on the verge of losing control of his caucus.
 
     LBJ and his inner circle, especially Connally and Rayburn, knew the Kennedys played for keeps and they knew (and LBJ knew) that his gig a Majority Leader was OVER if JFK were to win in the fall. And they knew Nixon, if elected, was not going to be a friendly Ike to LBJ. You say something similar in your book.
 
      Lyndon Johnson and his inner circle determined that the only path forward for LBJ was vice president, adhering to the slogan "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." And by enemies, I mean Kennedys.
 
    This is why when JFK made a tepid, token offer to LBJ to be his vice president (thinking there was absolutely no way in hell LBJ would ever accept) that Lyndon Johnson SNATCHED that offer and resolutely refused to get off the ticket no matter how many times a desperate, panicking Robert Kennedy went to his hotel room on July 14th.
 
      I do believe LBJ and Rayburn were threatening the Kennedys all day as well, telling him you had better put Johnson on the ticket or else there will be general election mayhem visited on you. I think LBJ used the JFK-Pamela Turnure affair as a threat. Remember Florence Kater, if you know who she was (see my file), had spread knowledge of that affair around thoroughly with the media and other presidential campaigns her knowledge and proof of the JFK-Pamela Turnure affair. Snooping FBI chief and LBJ blood brother Hoover, the alleged closet homosexual, knew all about this as well. Search for "Hy Raskin" in my file.
 
    Bottom line: LBJ blackmailed and threatened his way onto the 1960 Democratic ticket.
 
    As for whether the Kennedys going to drop LBJ in the fall of the 1963: yes. Just read what both George Reedy and and Horace Busby had to say about this in their books. The Kennedys were not merely going to drop LBJ from the 1964 ticket; they were out to utterly destroy him in the fall of 1963 with a two track plan which included massive and coordinated national media exposes into his corruption and a Senate Rules Committee investigation - nourished and encouraged by the Kennedys - into LBJ's corruption. Ed Clark told Robert Caro that LBJ's net worth in 1964 was $25 million which is equal to $200 million in today's dollars. A huge amount of dirty money had been flowing into LBJ's and Lady Bird's pockets for decades. God knows what a serious and sustained governmental investigation into LBJ's radioactive personal finances would find.
 
       Search for "Burkett van Kirk," "James Wagenvoord" and "Phil Brennan" in my file for proof of what the Kennedys were doing to LBJ in November of 1963. George Reedy and Horace Busby both prove LBJ was acutely aware of the Kennedys "destroy LBJ" program was absolutely obsessed and in a state of great agitation over what was going on. LBJ had told journalist Robert Novak in summer, 1962 that the Kennedys were going to get rid of him - see Novak's autobiography for that. Even Nixon was publicly saying this the day before the JFK assassination and it was making newspaper headlines.
 
      Notably, Robert Caro, in his fourth book on LBJ, does not mention that the Kennedys were absolutely in high gear to destroy Johnson and that LBJ was fully aware of these efforts ... because that leads us into areas and uncomfortable conclusions that scores of journalists and legions of academics do not want to entertain. Meaning: what a cornered, snarling Lyndon Johnson was capable of doing.
 
      I have read enough of Caro and Phil Nelson on LBJ to know exactly what Lyndon Johnson would do when faced with such a five alarm fire truck emergency situation. Caro does not want to confront this.
 
      As for Lee Harvey Oswald, he is one of the most lied about, slandered and defamed men in American history, possibly world history. Oswald, according to many sources, loved JFK and his family. In order to understand Oswald, who was a fake defector, and a fake "pro Castro Marxist," one must understand Oswald's love of and obsession with Herbert Philbrick and the TV and radio show I Led Three Lives. Oswald in his early teens was absolutely obsessed with this man in 1952 and 1953. When I was a kid, I wanted to be Batman. When Oswald was an early teen (ages 13 and 14), he wanted to be Herbert Philbrick. When Oswald was age 15 he joined the Civil Air Patrol, a militarized Boy Scouts and a patriotic organization that was founded by Col. D.H. Byrd the oil man and military contractor, who owned the TSBD and who was very, very close to Lyndon Johnson.
 
      In 1966 Robert Oswald, the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald, told us this in his book (published Jan. 1, 1967) about Lee:
 

QUOTE

          The center of Lee’s fantasy world shifted from radio to television when Mother bought a television set in 1948. When it was new, all of us spent far too much time watching variety shows, dramas and old movies. Lee, particularly, was fascinated. One of his favorite programs was I Led Three Lives, the story of Herbert Philbrick, the FBI informant who posed as a Communist spy. In the early 1950’s, Lee watched that show every week without fail. When I left home to join the Marines, he was still watching the reruns.

UNQUOTE

[Robert Oswald, Lee: Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald by His Brother, p. 47]

    I Led Three Lives starring with Richard Carlson, ran on TV from 1953 to 1956. Previously, I Led Three Lives had been presented in years running radio show. Oswald was consumed by both the radio and TV show I Led Three Lives, just as I used to watch Batman when I was a kid.

    When Oswald was age 16 he tried to join the Marines to be like his brothers, both military men and most definitely not "pro Castro Marxists." Oswald's father, who he never knew, fought in WWI. His brothers attended a military academy while in high school. Marguerite Oswald, Lee's mother, pointed out that Oswald came from a military family and right out of the gate post JFK assassination Marguerite was insisting that Oswald had to have been working for the CIA. Antonio Veciana, formerly a hardcore anti-Castro Cuban radical of the early 1960s and the head of Alpha 66 went on the public record that he saw Oswald in early September, 1963 with his CIA handler David Atlee Phillips, a man who was known to hate JFK, and a man who just before he died told his family that he had been involved in the events of Dallas (it was a huge issue within Phillips' family. See his nephew Shawn Phillips for this).
 
    David Lifton, interviewing Oswald's high school friend, found out that Oswald's favorite movie star was John Wayne; his fave movie was The Sands of Iwo Jima. John Wayne was not known to be a fan of communism; in fact he was out to gut them from Hollywood from the early 1940's: John Wayne: Communist Obsession | Emanuel Levy
 
    Oswald even told his friend William Wulff, the head of the New Orleans Astronomy Club "I like to infiltrate."
 
    In summer of 1963, while in New Orleans, Oswald was reading four James Bond books, JFK's Profiles in Courage (a man who he admired, many sources on that), the Christian classic Ben Hur and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich which was written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the greatest anti-communist activist in world history. Oswald - like JFK, Allen Dulles and GHW Bush and many other Americans - was big fan of James Bond.
 
    The James Bond books were written by Ian Fleming, who was a full blown British MI6 operative and his books gloried the western intelligence operative. The first James Bond movie was Dr. No and it was released in 1962: List of James Bond films - Wikipedia
 
    By 1963 James Bond was a hot item in the American popular culture.
 
    At age 17 Oswald joins the Marines. At age 18-19 he teaches himself Russian. At age 20 Oswald "defects" to Russia at a time the United States government was running a small, but important, "fake defector" program into the USSR because we had very little knowledge of what was actually going on behind the Iron Curtain.
 
      Bottom line: Lee Harvey Oswald had a self proclaimed public persona as a one man band "pro Castro Marxist" but he reality he was quite a different species and on top of that Oswald  - unlike LBJ, Hoover, Allen Dulles, Gen. Edward Lansdale, Ed Clark, D.H. Byrd - was a big fan of John Kennedy. It is hard to find any communist at all who Oswald ever associated with but we have evidence he was with hard right wing figures such as David Ferrie, former FBI Guy Banister (who Hoover loved) and the CIA's David Atlee Phillips. George DeMohrenshildt, who personally knew both LBJ and GHW Bush, was asked by head of Dallas's CIA office, J. Walton Moore, to befriend and check on Lee Harvey Oswald.
 
       The CIA's J. Walton Moore and David Atlee Phillips were the founders of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, an organization which they created in 1975, a time which the CIA was coming under harsh criticism both in Congress and in the media: AFIO - About Us
 
    I notice in your book you do not mention Lee Harvey Oswald by name but you do say that JFK was killed by three shots that emanated from behind at  the Texas School Book Depository. Well, I am not going to get into a lengthy discussion on that topic right now, but I do think that John Kennedy was killed by a head shot that came from Grassy Knoll and that he was also shot in the throat from the Grassy Knoll (the Parkland doctors in a TV press conference on the afternoon of 11-22-63 said that JFK had been shot with an entrance wound into the throat - the film of the doctors' press conference has mysteriously disappeared although their words were printed in newspapers on 11-23-1963) and that there were in fact people, plural, who were shooting at John Kennedy from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
 
    Easily proven facts are that D.H. Byrd was 1) a close friend of Lyndon Johnson 2) he owned the Texas School Book Depository 3) "Colonel" D.H. Byrd had close military ties to the Air Force and their top generals including Curtis LeMay (who hated the guts of JFK) 4) Byrd in 1941 founded the Civil Air Patrol - a patriotic, military, anti-communist organization that Lee Harvey Oswald was once a member of in 1954 5) Byrd was a well known oil man 6) Byrd was a very prominent supporter of the University of Texas athletics and he had a picture of Bevo the mascot painted onto the tail wing of his airplane 7) in his 1970's autobiography I am an Endangered Species Byrd does not mention the JFK assassination despite his ownership of the Texas School Book Depository 8) Byrd had the so-called "sniper's window" removed from the TSBD and he kept it as a momento (Btw Byrd had the wrong window removed! He took out the western window of the 6th floor of the TSBD, not the alleged Oswald sniper window on the eastern TSBD 6th floor) 9) Byrd was awarded the Air Force's Air Force Scroll of Appreciation on May 24, 1963 10) Byrd was an owner of defense contractor Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) and in November of 1963, just before the JFK assassination, Byrd made insider buys of 132,000 shares of LTV 11) in January, 1964 Lyndon Johnson awarded LTV a significant military contract to LTV and paid for it out of the non-existent 1965 budget - in other words LBJ rammed the contract through within 2 months of the JFK assassination 12) LTV stock had a gargantuan run upward post JFK assassination and into the Vietnam War.
 
    Peter Dale Scott proved D.H. Bird's and James Lings significant, timely and highly questionable insider buys into LTV stock back in 1970. Scott did this by pulling it the information from The Value Line, a longtime and widely used stock newsletter.
 
    I am friends with Mack Royal, the son of legendary Texas football coach Darrell Royal. Darrell Royal knew both Lyndon Johnson and D.H. Byrd very well, after all D.H. Byrd was the largest monetary contributor to University of Texas athletics in the early 1960's. Mack Royal used to work at the LBJ Library. Mack Royal knew D.H. Byrd and he knew the children of the Texas oil elite. Mack Royal has told me many times that he thinks D.H. Bryd was behind the JFK assassination. Mack Royal is a firm believer that Lyndon Johnson was involved in the JFK assassination as well.
 
     I am also friends with the former lawyer Barr McClellan who was perhaps the top oil and gas lawyer in Texas in the 1960s and 1970s. Barr McClellan, alive today, worked closely for Ed Clark and Don Thomas. Ed Clark and Don Thomas were both extremely close political friends and lawyers for Lyndon Johnson for decades. There was absolutely no one closer to LBJ than Don Thomas, even Ed Clark who Readers Digest in the 1950's called "the secret political boss of Texas." Barr McClellan in the 1960s, early 1970s was a very close associate and friend of Don Thomas. Both Ed Clark and Don Thomas told Barr McClellan that Ed Clark, and by extension Lyndon Johnson, helped to arrange the JFK association. Another lawyer at the law firm - John Coates - told McClellan this as well. In other words people who were extremely close to Lyndon Johnson for decades - men who had a monetary interest in LBJ being in power - told Barr McClellan that Ed Clark and by extension Lyndon Johnson were involved in the JFK assassination.
 
    Here is my 2020 interview of Barr McClellan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3fyKKuGcaw&t=1s 
 
      Both Ed Clark and D.H. Byrd were very prominent supporters of the University of Texas. Leon Jaworski, the LBJ lawyer, told his grandson Robert Draper that Ed Clark was a "very, very powerful man" - see Draper "Death of a Fixer" in Texas Monthly for that.
 
    I know Ed Clark was on the Board of Trustees at UT just as Lady Bird Johnson later joined the Board of Trustees. Lady Bird's very close friend at the University of Texas was Frank Irwin, who was an alcoholic and LBJ loyalist who arranged for the state of Texas pay for the LBJ Library so that no funds came out of the pockets of LBJ or his LBJ-enriched friends. Frank Irwin was hated by many UT students because he was so pro Vietnam War, a pet issue for LBJ, and he was not friendly to students expressing their anti-Vietnam War feelings on campus as their high school friends were dying in the jungles of Vietnam.
 
    I would like to add one more thing. When you read Caro on LBJ, one of the things that stands out was Lyndon Johnson's fear of embarrassment and humiliation. This was a driving force in LBJ's life and it rears its ugly head again and again in the literature on Johnson. In the fall of 1963, with the Kennedys "destroy LBJ plan" running in high gear, the Kennedys were about to drop and hydrogen bomb of humiliation, embarrassment and public disgrace on the head of Lyndon Johnson. I wonder how LBJ would have reacted. Just twiddle his thumbs and hope for the best? Since when in his Machiavellian, maniacal driven life had Lyndon Johnson ever chosen that option?
 
    In fact, Mark, as you know as a former director of the LBJ Library, in LBJ's Letter of Intent which he attached to all the documents he donated to the LBJ Library there is a clause that says documents will be placed under seal of restriction that contain "statements which may in any manner be used to injure, EMBARRASS (I put in caps) or harass any person." Again, there is LBJ's lifelong fear of embarrassment and exposure, and it was all coming to disastrous climax in November of 1963. 
 
    My file on the JFK assassination is attached. There are many useful golden nuggets in it. You may use it however you wish and you may forward it to anyone else so that they might find something useful.
 
Respectfully,
 
Robert Morrow
 
Presidential Historian and Distinguished Fellow at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Institute for the Study of Presidential Crime
 
Austin, TX     512-306-1510