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
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