Charles Drago Wrote:What would be most helpful to me as I read the "mastermind" book are your responses to my previous questions, Jim.

And to these:

What is your model for the JFK conspiracy?

Are you familiar with the Evica/Drago three-tiered (Sponsor/Facilitator/Mechanic) model?

Was LBJ at the very top of the Sponsorship level of the JFK conspiracy?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to order the hit on JFK?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to take this world-historic action even if the financial, industrial, and military interests who were above Cold War differences objected?

Was LBJ the "mastermind" of the anti-FDR plot broken up by Smedley Butler?

Did LBJ rule the world?

By the way, I define "Sponsor" as, in this case, a master to whom presidents and other grand puppets answer.

Charles Drago Wrote:Thank you, Peter, for your cogent and powerfully stated assessment of LBJ's relative position in the power structure that struck John.

The "Mastermind" book -- which I'm reading -- so far has offered absolutely NOTHING to persuade anyone with intimate familiarity with the evidence in the JFK case in particular and 20th century deep polititics in general that Johnson was anything other than a Facilitator of a conspiracy whose Sponsors were so far above his pay scale as to be as invisible to him as the dark side of the moon.

The author, Phillip Nelson, does offer cogent analyses of LBJ's facilitation efforts. And then repeatedly he makes the leap to "mastermind" without providing a scintilla of evidence to support the charge.

Noel Twyman, the deservedly respected author of Bloody Treason, is quoted on Nelson's website thusly:

"This book is very comprehensive about Lyndon Johnson as related to the JFK assassination. Nelson strips away the restraints and tells all that is known about the criminal character of LBJ. He plunges fearlessly into 'the unspeakable' about him. Nelson deliberately avoids going into scientific and forensic detail, without compromising his story. It is a well written book, easy to read, and exhaustive in its summations of the scores of other writers on this profoundly disturbing time in history."

Noel and I stand in near-total agreement. Alas, Nelson does not come close to telling us "all that is known" about LBJ's involvement in the assassination -- even as he repeatedly tell us more than is known -- and Noel does not see fit to comment on the "mastermind" claim, let alone define "mastermind" in this context.

Also quoted by Nelson is this passage by Jim Fetzer:

"Brilliant and pivotal, bringing coherence to our understanding . . . From first chapter to last, this is a beautifully written, intellectually captivating, and ultimately persuasive account of the role of LBJ in the assassination of JFK."

Alas, Nelson is absolutely incoherent whenever he makes the "mastermind" charge -- one that he leaps to without a shard of supporting evidence. Regarding his work's central conceit, Nelson persuades no one except those predisposed to avoiding the terrible truth revealed by LBJ's role not as "mastermind" of the hit but rather/only as faithful retainer to the true Sponsors of JFK's murder.

Folks, as we near the 50th anniversary of the death of our last president, we shall see paraded before us a platoon of False Sponsors. Prior to the ascendency of LBJ in that role, we were given E. Howard Hunt's deathbed "confession." Anyone care to wager who the next patsy will be?

(It looks like the Leonardo DiCaprio adaptation of Legacy of Secrecy will resurrect the Mob-did-it False Sponsor tale. One waits breathlessly for the endorsers of Nelson to jump on Leo's bandwagon.)

Make no mistake: Both EHH and LBJ conspired to kill John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But neither of them can be placed on the Sponsor level.

One is left mystified by Nelson's lamebrained "mastermind" charge. Why go there?

Here's one possible answer: The best way to bestow historical absolution upon LBJ is to inflate his role in the JFK assassination to the degree of absurdity. Thus all evidence for his complicity in the conspiracy will be flushed down history's toilet along with the patently absurd "mastermind" charge.

Another disastrous side effect of the "Mastermind" endorsements: its boosters' favorable comparison of Nelson's disinformation volume to James Douglass's utterly superb, incisive, and sound JFK and the Unspeakable.

It is Phillip Nelson's JFK: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination that is in all respects unspeakable -- in the Douglass sense of the word.

Dawn Meredith Wrote:

Charles Drago Wrote:What would be most helpful to me as I read the "mastermind" book are your responses to my previous questions, Jim.

And to these:

What is your model for the JFK conspiracy?

Are you familiar with the Evica/Drago three-tiered (Sponsor/Facilitator/Mechanic) model?

Was LBJ at the very top of the Sponsorship level of the JFK conspiracy?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to order the hit on JFK?

Did LBJ have the ultimate authority to take this world-historic action even if the financial, industrial, and military interests who were above Cold War differences objected?

Was LBJ the "mastermind" of the anti-FDR plot broken up by Smedley Butler?

Did LBJ rule the world?

By the way, I define "Sponsor" as, in this case, a master to whom presidents and other grand puppets answer.

I essentially agree with CD's points herein. However just because LBJ did not mastermind the plot does not exclude him from being up to his eyes in it from the start. Many plots were afoot. Which one succeeded will be forever shouded in mystery. People that powerful are not about to confess, inspite of E Howard's little talk to St. John. After seeing his wife Dorothy murdered 12/8/72, I have long suspected the old boy would say something before shuffling off. Some truth mixed in with bs. Spies like him take their deepest secrets to the grave.

Peter, I agree with what you wrote about the backyard pics. Marina is another who could tell much more. But I believe her fear is genuine. As is that of her family. They know many have died for talking or threatening to talk. She has been on "our side" a very long time.

Regardless of what is thought about Jesse Ventura or the content of his tv
show, the fact that he is doing this fills a much needed void on the political wasteland that is tv. I salute him.

Dawn

Albert Doyle Wrote:I agree with Charles. It's a serious mistake to give too much credit to Johnson. It's like accepting an offer that the other side is all too willing to pay and thinking you got a good deal. You're accepting the "offer" too quickly, and in doing so are allowing some very heavy players off the hook. The value of the credit that is being placed on Johnson, and its tone of importance, rightly belongs on the real players above Johnson. When you make a big issue of Johnson being the mastermind, deserving exposure he has escaped up to now, you expend the energy and surprise needed for those who actually deserve that credit in that way. In effect, you are doing a very damning and valid - yet equally unjust "limited hang-out" which only benefits the real masterminds. When you focus on Johnson you swing the teeter totter towards Johnson's side when it most rightly belongs on the shadow government side with all its diverse players including Angleton, Dulles, the oligarchs, CIA/mob underground, etc.

And, it's a mistake to say Johnson was irreplaceable. Johnson was just a bridge to Nixon, who was the heir apparent all the way back to 1960 when he was expected to be in place but was upset by a young populist president who swung himself into power on the enthusiasm towards a change in the miring politics of the Cold War.

Therefore using the specific word "mastermind" makes the semantic mistake of throwing the switch and giving Johnson credit that rightly and deservedly belongs to others. There's a very simple way to look at this, Johnson is long dead and gone, but the real masterminds are still very much in power, and that's the way you have to look at it. Johnson can be seen as an evil king who killed Kennedy but those who really know what killed Kennedy know it was a broader inertia and momentum that correctly belongs elsewhere.


Charles is entirely and 100% correct.

James H. Fetzer Wrote:It kinda makes you wonder why Jack Ruby said it wouldn't have happened if somebody else had been vice president. Curious.

Albert Doyle Wrote:I agree with Charles. It's a serious mistake to give too much credit to Johnson. It's like accepting an offer that the other side is all too willing to pay and thinking you got a good deal. You're accepting the "offer" too quickly, and in doing so are allowing some very heavy players off the hook. The value of the credit that is being placed on Johnson, and its tone of importance, rightly belongs on the real players above Johnson. When you make a big issue of Johnson being the mastermind, deserving exposure he has escaped up to now, you expend the energy and surprise needed for those who actually deserve that credit in that way. In effect, you are doing a very damning and valid - yet equally unjust "limited hang-out" which only benefits the real masterminds. When you focus on Johnson you swing the teeter totter towards Johnson's side when it most rightly belongs on the shadow government side with all its diverse players including Angleton, Dulles, the oligarchs, CIA/mob underground, etc.

And, it's a mistake to say Johnson was irreplaceable. Johnson was just a bridge to Nixon, who was the heir apparent all the way back to 1960 when he was expected to be in place but was upset by a young populist president who swung himself into power on the enthusiasm towards a change in the miring politics of the Cold War.

Therefore using the specific word "mastermind" makes the semantic mistake of throwing the switch and giving Johnson credit that rightly and deservedly belongs to others. There's a very simple way to look at this, Johnson is long dead and gone, but the real masterminds are still very much in power, and that's the way you have to look at it. Johnson can be seen as an evil king who killed Kennedy but those who really know what killed Kennedy know it was a broader inertia and momentum that correctly belongs elsewhere.


Charles is entirely and 100% correct.

James H. Fetzer Wrote:In Charles' language of SPONSORS/FACILITATORS/MECHANICS, all that I have intended by the use of the term "mastermind" is that LBJ was the crucial facilitator[.]

James H. Fetzer Wrote:[LBJ] had links to all of the forces opposed to JFK[.]

James H. Fetzer Wrote:[W]ithout LBJ's complicity, which even extended to making sure "all the arrangements" were in place for the assassination, it could not have taken place.

James H. Fetzer Wrote:[LBJ] was the one person whose engagement was indispensable to [the assassination's] taking place. Everyone else was "replaceable", even Lee Oswald, except for LBJ. He, after all, was the person who would decide whether the full powers of the government would be unleashed to uncover and expose those responsible.

James H. Fetzer Wrote:The principal reason Bobby was taken out, after all, is that he had declared he would do exactly that!

James H. Fetzer Wrote:I would like to believe that this explains my position, which, alas, has not been adequately appreciated by some whom I admire, who have imposed a different meaning than the one I had intended. I hope this clarified the matter and leaves no doubt in anyone's mind by what I and, I have no doubt, Phillip Nelson, whom I have interviewed, have meant by the use of the term "mastermind", which is entirely accurate with regard to what he and I intended.