Charles Drago Wrote:Myra, in a story as complex and riddled with disinformation as is the JFK conspiracy, we must be at pains to define our terms with the ultimate precision.
Again, what do you mean by "set up"?
Did LBJ coordinate the logistics? Did he conceive the drama? Did he have the expertise to oversee the hit on the operational level?
Or are you suggesting that he set the plan in motion? That he was the authority from which all else was released?
Do you view LBJ as a Sponsor? A False Sponsor and/or Facilitator?
I'm not trying to be difficult, believe me. My own learning curve, steep and daunting, is far from being fully traversed.
Johnson was a hillbilly thug with a CEO's brain and a steroid addict's balls. To the real Sponsors of the hit, he was an expendable simpleton to be used and abused.
LBJ was danced through a pre-hit cotillion in which he was seduced into the plot, encouraged to think he was giving orders, and then, on the night before the Sponsors' Christmas, he was told how the real world worked.
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Why did Senate Majority Leader LBJ accept the warm pitcher of piss VP job Charlie? As a Southerner he was unlikely to be elected President, which he was determined to be at any cost.
LBJ backer Senator Robert Kerr, of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, was furious at LBJ's VP acceptance of the VP slot and reportedly slapped Bobby Baker when Baker told him. However, once the strategy was explained Kerr apologized & shook Baker's hand.
What was the strategy?
In 1963 Don B. Reynolds told the FBI that friend Bobby Baker said the "SOB" Kennedy would never live out his term & would "die a violent death," providing possible explanation for LBJ's otherwise puzzling acceptance of the VP slot.
Charles Drago Wrote:...
Landslide Lyndon was a cowering wreck on the 22nd, and forever after he obeyed orders. The threat of exposure hung heavily over him, and he facilitated the cover-up out of fear.
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Where did you get that info? From Talbot's book "Brothers"? Talbot, and anyone else who claims LBJ was a cowering wreck on the 22nd is wrong.
Look at the attached photos taken immediately before and after the murder. That is no cowering wreck. That is a smug conspirator looking forward to drop-kicking JFK's rocking chairs out of the white house.
Myra Bronstein Wrote:Why did Senate Majority Leader LBJ accept the warm pitcher of piss VP job Charlie? As a Southerner he was unlikely to be elected President, which he was determined to be at any cost.
LBJ backer Senator Robert Kerr, of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, was furious at LBJ's VP acceptance of the VP slot and reportedly slapped Bobby Baker when Baker told him. However, once the strategy was explained Kerr apologized & shook Baker's hand.
What was the strategy?
In 1963 Don B. Reynolds told the FBI that friend Bobby Baker said the "SOB" Kennedy would never live out his term & would "die a violent death," providing possible explanation for LBJ's otherwise puzzling acceptance of the VP slot.
Where did you get that info? From Talbot's book "Brothers"? Talbot, and anyone else who claims LBJ was a cowering wreck on the 22nd is wrong.
Look at the attached photos taken immediately before and after the murder. That is no cowering wreck. That is a smug conspirator looking forward to drop-kicking JFK's rocking chairs out of the white house.
While CD has made very good points in this thread, Myra's points are the ones that always come back to my forefront. The more I studied the life of Landslide Lyndon the more culpable he became. Having people killed as he rose to power was as natural as stealing elections. And he was an absolute "smug conspirator" on 11/22/63, demanding and wielding his new power all that day, no fear that he could be next. He absolutely knew better.
He would come to be "a cowering wreck" toward the end of his term, but it appeared to me that this was because the public so turned on him over Vietnam. Perhaps too he realized at some point the magnatude of this particular murder. I do not see LBJ as the prime sponser- those persons remain behind the veil- but he's no false sponser either. Far from it. Who had the most to lose at that moment in time? And who had the most to gain on 11/22/63? Same man: Lyin' Lyndon.
Dawn
For a most interesting look at Lyndon toward the end of his life when he truly did become a "cowering wreck", Barr McClellen's book "Blood Power and Money" offers rich insights.
MB -- The strategy might as easily have been to await JFK's removal from office via resignation in the wake of public exposure of what to LBJ and associates would have been Kennedy's well-known sexual and medical "infirmities."
MB -- In a report by HSCA investigator Mark Flanagan on his telephone interview with Godfrey McHugh, one finds the following:
"During [the flight from Dallas to D.C. on 11/22/63], McHugh began looking for Johnson to discuss the situation. The pilot told McHugh that Johnson had already boarded Air Force I. McHugh had encountered difficulty in locating Johnson but finally discovered him alone, 'hiding in the toilet in the bedroom compartment and muttering, "Conspiracy, conspiracy, they're after all of us."' McHugh then attempted to calm Johnson."
This is consistent with behavior observed during the motorcade -- including actions prior to the shooting.
We also look to Johnson's additional talk of conspiracy in which he names as probable sponsors either Texas oil people, Castro, the mob, or intelligence agents/agencies. I hear messages being sent.
As for the swearing-in photos: that ole pole cat knew when to slap on a smile for the photogs.
DM -- LBJ is either a Sponsor or he's not. Can't have it both ways.
He's not.
To be clear, I hold Lyndon Baines Johnson to be a co-conspirator in the murder of JFK. But I do NOT identify him as a Sponsor, or prime mover, of the assassination.
As for your "who had the most to lose/gain at the time?" question, I strongly disagree with the answer you proffer. How can we weigh anyone's appreciation of imminent loss except subjectively? LBJ stood to lose his freedom and thus, by definition, his political office. Those who profited -- economically and spiritually -- from the Cold War had at risk their fortunes (in the broadest meaning) and those of their families for untold genrations to come. Passionately anti-Castro Cubans risked losing their homeland. Rabid patriots saw their country in peril.
As far as the sponsor issue goes (with me being an almost complete numpty on JFK obviously), I thought the recently referenced John Judge footage in which he related the anecdote of his mother said it all.
It was the military-industrial-intelligence-organized-crime-complex.
The Joint Chiefs order to rework new troop numbers and their prediction of 57,000 US troop deaths from the Vietnam war (uncannily accurate btw), three days after JFK caught bullets (in other words the very next "working" day), is clarity itself.
There's no more mystery.
The sponsors were the war lobby. All of them: the Pentagon (who love bang-bang); the arms companies and war "materiel" boys; the banking and finance community to finance the whole package; the political muscle to see it through; the organized crime families to "manage" the drugs train, prostitution and other proscribed activities that are all factored into a big war; the big construction companies to build the infrastructure needed to house, feed and otherwise accommodate half a million men of war; the medical big shots and big pharma to repair the resultant ravaged and mangled men of war, the airlines for shipping out the troops...
The list is endless. The cost was enormous.
And it is the ordinary guys in the street who are expected to pay for it and are also chosen (obviously) to bleed for it, and to pay what the generals and politico's like to call "the ultimate sacrifice" --- as they swill their Jack on the rocks and puff on their Habana cigars from the comfort of a luxury club or restaurant (hey, no bleeding or paying for them).
The war lobby remains in place today.
Let's also remember what especially significant facts that Fletcher Prouty revealed in his JFK book. At the end of WWII al the accumulated US military surplus was placed in two great 50/50 blocks. One block was shipped to Korea and the other to French Indochina (Vietnam).
The World War was now over so new ones were planned. And this is why the CFR's "War and Peace Study Project" (beginning 1939) has never been made public even to this day because in the words of the CFR the study would:
Quote:...guide American foreign policy in the coming years of war and the challenging new world that would emerge after.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
David Guyatt Wrote:As far as the sponsor issue goes (with me being an almost complete numpty on JFK obviously), I thought the recently referenced John Judge footage in which he related the anecdote of his mother said it all.
It was the military-industrial-intelligence-organized-crime-complex.
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This is true and accurate, but it is too general for me.
I want more granularity/names: of gov't agencies, groups, and individuals.
It is not sufficient to say the MIC done it case closed.
Of course they done it.
Now for the details...
The problem with apportioning blame is where do you stop? In truth those responsible were a cast of thousands -- tens of thousands. They all closed their eyes to the coup d'etat because they all wanted it and all benefited from it.
If you know the "why" then everything else falls into place.
But know that Allen Dulles was one of the key players in the War & Peace Study Group - and, of course, the CIA and the Waren Commission. Know that the Rockefeller Foundation financed the study. Know also that Allen Dulles served Rockefeller as his lawyer. As he did Prescott Bush and Harriman.
While the names of some (or all?) of the shooters are known, the only real identity you can place on those responsible for JFK's assassination is the "ruling elite" of the day. WE could also call it "business" or "corporate America", but mostly let's agree to call it "human greed" -- for that is what ultimately drove the underlying agenda.
Today the Dulles brothers are long gone, Harriman is gone - his wife Pamela continued using her considerable influence well into the Clinton presidency, and the Bush and Rockefeller clans still pull some (but certainly not all) of the strings...
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
David Guyatt Wrote:The problem with apportioning blame is where do you stop? In truth those responsible were a cast of thousands -- tens of thousands. They all closed their eyes to the coup d'etat because they all wanted it and all benefited from it....
If we can't name all the perps then we shouldn't name any of the perps?
I reject this logic.
It's the same logic, in my view, used by those who insist that there was/is no point in impeaching Bush/Cheney; they're just puppets, the tip of the iceberg bla bla bla. Well they should be impeached jailed puppets then. And we should go after the rest of them too.
Back to the JFK case, it will never click with people if we just say the MIC done it. It's too nebulous. People need to, and have a right to, know exactly which gov't agencies used their tax dollars to murder their president and exactly which gov't agencies used their tax dollars to cover up the president's murder, and exactly which groups and individuals were accessories in the gov't crimes. Then it will be much more clear how and why the same things are occuring today.
Myra Bronstein Wrote:This is true and accurate, but it is too general for me.
I want more granularity/names: of gov't agencies, groups, and individuals.
It is not sufficient to say the MIC done it case closed.
Of course they done it.
Now for the details...
Define "government."
As for the Military-Industrial Complex -- you're right, Myra. Too general (pun intended).
In Charles' model I place the MIC as facilitators, not sponsors.
The sponsors, who are protected by many layers of secrecy,
I believe are the international bankers and their many stooges.
I need not name them; they are well known.
Some of these are both sponsors AND facilitators, so the line
gets blurred. Not all are Americans. A good place to look for
sponsors is in secret organizations: Skull & Bones, Bilderbergers,
TLC and CFR.
These sponsors may not actually ORDER murders. They just
let their wishes be known, and stooges do the dirty work. That
way, their hands never get dirty.
