Phil has applied to join the forum, but has not been approved as yet. I post this on his behalf. As I have previously explained, LBJ was the pivotal member of the plot, since it could not have gone forward without him. Those who are familiar with the reports of Madeleine Duncan Brown, Billy Sol Estes, Barr McClelland, and E. Howard Hunt should appreciate what I am asserting. The plan was to take out JFK and that no one would pay a penalty for participating in the assassination. ONLY LBJ COULD CONTROL THAT. Plus Lyndon was a very "hands on" guy, who even sent his chief assistant, Cliff Carter, to Dallas to make sure all of the arrangements were in place. I respect those who hold different views, but were it not for LBJ, as Jack Ruby observed, JFK would not have been taken out. I regard this as one of the best books ever published about "The Big Event" and am just the least bit distressed to find worthies like Charles Drago being so dismissive of others like Robert Morrow, who, in my opinion, is on the right track. I am troubled that ad hominems may now become as prevalent here as they are at the EF, especially since one reason for creating the DPF was to rise above them there. As Lyndon told Madeleine, the CIA and the oil boys decided that JFK had to be taken out. But the person who benefited the most from that was LBJ himself. And he took steps to insure that it would be successfully executed and successfully covered up. He was the pivot. As Ruby observed, after being granted a new trial,
http://www.jfkmurdersolved.com/ruby.htm
Jack: Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts, of what occurred, my motives. The people had, that had so much to gain and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.
Reporter : Are these people in very high positions Jack?!
Jack : Yes. . . .
Jack: "When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson--if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy"--[and was] asked if he would explain it again, Ruby continued, "Well, the answer is the man in office now."
Rebuttal to Joe Green's Review of LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination
by Phil Nelson
Mr. Green should be commended for his up-front, candid acknowledgement that he found his latest assignment distasteful: "This particular genre of Kennedy book is admittedly one I find less useful than others." There was never any doubt, after reading that comment, whether the review would be free of any preconceived bias. And with that, he proceeded to offer the reader his most thoughtful commentary about reading a book that he viewed with disdain even before opening it to the first page. He evidently accepted this assignment very grudgingly because it is apparent in his review that he never really understood it. Had he read it more thoroughly, with an open and curious mind, his impressions might have been more in line with other reviewers of the book.
But that result was never in doubt, even four months ago when Jim DiEugenio began making it clear that he didn't expect this book to be worthy of a well reasoned review, which was about the same time his man Seamus Coogan began publicly attacking the book as soon as it was published, declaring that "his side" would demolish it even as he vowed never to read it. Many of their posts alluded to the long-awaited book by Ed Tatro, essentially positing the official CTKA attitude that no "LBJ did it" book by anyone other than Tatro would ever be satisfactory to them. Well, the problem is, there is no such book by Tatro and no real indication that there ever will be. I've been waiting for two or three decades for someone else to write this book and would have gladly not done so myself if he or someone else had done it. Now, let's suppose that Ed Tatro never publishes a book; does that mean that Johnson's possible role in the assassination will forever be "off limits" for anyone else to ever explore? If so, long live Tatro!
The long-established rule at CTKA, apparently, is to disparage any book that attempts to analyze the assassination if it contains even a hint of criticism of JFK's personal life and reckless attitudes as perceived by his enemies. In fact, Kennedy created some of the very "vulnerabilities" to his enemies which caused some of them not only to hate him viciously, but led them to rationalize his killing as being a patriotic act. It was this phenomenon that must not be ignored in exploring the events that led to the assassination. Unfortunately, that has been declared out-of-bounds by the folks at CTKA, as evidenced by Green's repeated lament: "What does this have to do with the book? We were talking about Lyndon Johnson, right?" This material was put into a section properly labeled as "JFK's vulnerabilities" and thoroughly described as such; perhaps in his zeal to dismiss all of this material, Mr. Green overlooked that fact.
That rule also explains why James Douglass' book (which I agree is one of the best and is, by the way, within the same "genre" as my book) has been rated so highly by this group. Nary a word about any of the "darker side of Camelot" was included here, so of course it passed this hurdle. It further explains why Douglass was given a pass on using the rather wild and uncorroborated claims of Robert Vinson regarding his trip on a CIA owned four engine airplane (the equivalent of a DC-6, which was used extensively by airlines in the 1950s) which purportedly landed, and then took off again, on the shores of the Trinity River south of Dallas. If anyone else had used that story, they probably would have been savagely attacked for it, but in DiEugenio's review of the book, he glossed over the story in this ho-hum manner:
". . . this double was ultimately flown out of Dallas on a military transport plane. This is based on the testimony of retired Air Force officer Robert Vinson."
Not to put too fine a point on it, but most researchers do not put a whole lot of credence in this particular item. So what we can discern about the CTKA methodology here is that, if you write a book that avoids criticism of Kennedy and thoroughly praises him in practically every page, that earns you a pass for the use of any material which would not otherwise pass muster; not even a tiny caveat or minor qualification, mind you. Nothing that questions the veracity of that account was noted.
Another favored tactic of the CTKA crew is to denigrate the sources of any information which it deems to be unfavorable. In the case of Seymour Hersh, anything he says is discarded with a snide comment about his lack of credibility, based upon the completely spurious charge that he is somehow in the pocket of the CIA. Never mind the fact that Hersh has been battling the CIA and Pentagon for approximately forty years and is the least likely candidate for "CIA stooge" that one can imagine. Charging him with that is beyond absurd; it is simply laughable. His position as the best and most prolific investigative reporter of our times has been well established, except for anyone associated with the CTKA organization, who evidently have to submit to DiEugenio's dogma that he was and is somehow 180 degrees opposite of this. He should be judged on the basis of his entire body of work, and the awards he has received not least of which is the Pulitzer Prize which vindicate him and reveal the conflicted position of CTKA regarding his reputation. Quoting from a more "balanced" source, a ten year old article in Salon.com, the controversy about Hersh's book can be summarized as:
The story of the reaction to "The Dark Side of Camelot" ended up being much bigger than the book itself, which,
truth be told, contained less new information than confirmation and amplification of known Kennedy misdeeds.
[1]
So in fact, much of the dirty laundry on John F. Kennedy was already public knowledge before Seymour Hersh wrote his book; he merely corroborated the charges and gave them additional support and publicity. The CTKA folks seem to understand that, because they never deny the charges, they merely seek to cover them up; instead, they undermine any book that repeats them through innuendo and the premise that Hersh is not credible and this was all decided years ago when DiEugenio ran him over with the CTKA bus.
The fact is, Seymour Hersh is truly a great and iconoclastic figure whose well-earned but controversial reputation as a great investigative reporter is secure. He is comparable to, and arguably the contemporary embodiment of, the legendary I. F. Stone in the minds of objective observers. The folks who continue to take swipes at him for revealing the very secrets that Bobby Kennedy was attempting to contain have demonstrated that they have a greater interest in hiding truths than they do exposing them.
(Subsequent to the original posting of this rebuttal on the Education Forum, a lengthy exchange occurred between Mr. DiEugenio and me regarding his assertions that Seymour Hersh was a CIA stooge. He referenced a book which, he said, showed that Hersh knowingly withheld the fact that the My Lai massacre was part of Operation Phoenix. I then traced that reference to the original source, which indicated the exact opposite of DiEugenio's assertions. In fact, it confirmed that he DID state clearly all along that this was the case. The specific facts of that are appended to this rebuttal and can be found below).
It is not possible to understand the complexities of the JFK assassination unless one first understands the underlying dynamics of what caused so many people to hate JFK; those are the key people who became involved in the crime, either as part of the pre or post assassination conspiracies. But the CTKA knee-jerk reaction to anyone who dares reference Hersh makes one wonder just who really has the biggest "axe to grind." A list of other names was also mentioned of people who are on the same (apparently lengthy) list of unworthy sources who cannot be referenced for much the same reason: General Alexander Haig (and, by extension, Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann) Ronald Kessler, Nina Burleigh, Deborah Davis and Donald Wolfe. And, of course, Gus Russo, who, despite his questionable (subjective) conclusions, was referenced in the book on a few points which were pegged to objective factual findings.
Interestingly, no mention was made of Joseph Califano's comment that "as Robert Kennedy pressed for tougher actions, I thought: he is obsessed with Castro; he is pursuing a total war with Castro." Was it merely because Califano's reputation as a liberal Democrat saved him, while Haig's standing as a (marginally) conservative Republican caused him to be thrown overboard? Why was one name trashed and the other one ignored? They were saying essentially the same thing: Is that what drives CTKA's search for truth and justice?
Barr McClellan has been repeatedly attacked by DiEugenio for the lack of documentation of some of his references. For example, DiEugenio doesn't approve of how he referred to conversations he had with other attorneys in Ed Clark's law firm. Maybe Barr has learned that, whenever he is told top secret stuff by others that he should always get them to swear to their comments in an affidavit? He has established a policy, due to this deficiency and Barr's use of "faction" which he explains as simply a story telling device, McClelland's book is only eligible for referencing as a source for the Nathan Darby material. This keeps all of McClelland's unique insights into the "darker side of LBJ" under wraps and verboten as citations to other works. And, speaking of LBJ's "mental issues", it is noteworthy that Green made no comment at all about that point, which is arguably one of the most important issues raised by the book, regardless of everything else he did find reason to question.
Similarly, the depiction of Robert Caroanother holder of many professional awards including the Pulitzer, arguably the greatest presidential biographer everas someone who cannot be trusted, is equally disingenuous. This isn't the first time DiEugenio's group has attempted to do that. In his review of Douglas Horne's Volumes 4 and 5, DiEugenio stated that "Caro got reamed by Ronnie Dugger though when in his effort to pull out all the stops to demonize LBJ's senate race, Caro tried to make Coke Stevenson into a sort of Jacob Javits figure." That unique take on Caro's work suggests that Dugger somehow bested Caro; I don't think that is the impression most knowledgeable people have regarding that particular point. In the same thread, DiEugenio also said this about how some biographers have embellished Johnson's ugliness:
"Calling Lyndon Johnson a psychopath to me simply does not have a lot of forensic value these days. I mean, it don't know if he was or was not. I wasn't around him in any close sense and I do not know anyone who was. I do know that in the last say 30 years or so the tendency in biography is to make your subject as ugly as possible since that is the way publishers are convinced they will sell the most books. So as with many of the anti-Kennedy biographies e.g. Reeves, Horowitz and Collier etc, the recent biographies of LBJ e.g. Dallek and Caro, have tended to make LBJ out to be a little worse than Shakespeare's Richard III."
This attitude of Johnson as just a low-brow version of a regular guy is apparently the official doctrine of the CTKA reviewers, as it was restated by Green in equally pedantic terms:
"Now these sources do little harm to the early part of the book because Johnson's character is well-established. He was a low-class sort of a person, prone to vulgar and over bearing displays of machismo in public, and employing men like Mac Wallace who were murderous criminals. And if you take all these famous incidents a face value, and then string them in tandem over the years, then hey! Maybe LBJ does seem like the sort of man who, were it within his power, could have had the president killed and not be halted by any moral barriers."
In other words, at CTKA, the take on Johnson is evidently along these lines: "While he may have been a low class megalomaniac narcissist and stone cold killer who had a personal hitman, you can't just assume that by stringing along all those old incidents, these patterns might connect to the JFK assassination. Hey! cut LBJ a break, he was never convicted of anything." The key to ever solving the crime lies in understanding just how evil Johnson was; it was his criminal mind and his control over people which led him to successfully recruit others to join his cause.
WHOA, HOSS:
I found this statement, where Green begrudgingly admitted that perhaps Lyndon did have a few character faults, to be stunningly absurd for anyone who purportedly read the book:
To say the least, Lyndon Johnson was an unappealing personality. It would not necessarily be surprising, in the abstract, if he had foreknowledge or tacitly approved of the assassination. He might even have been directly involved, although one can argue that.
I do not think, however, that at this date, given the documentary evidence, an explanation which ignores the larger political forces of the national security state can be taken seriously.
So, my book "ignores the larger political forces of the national security state?" And this from a person who simultaneously criticizes its length, saying it should have been shortened from 700 pages to 200? Maybe he missed entire chapters which were dedicated to explaining how the "national security state" (through Dulles, Angleton, Harvey, etc. etc.) interfaced with Johnson and was given the impetus to proceed in the end with the knowledge that he, as president, would provide the ultimate protection for everyone involved; without that, the enterprise would be doomed. Did I note every other possible name of potential directors of the "national security state"? No, because if I had, the book would have grown even larger and besides, the book attempted to focus on Johnson's role as the key organizer (thus the title). Maybe if I had chosen another title, without the word "Mastermind" and used the term "national security state" a little more generously, then the CTKA folks would have read it a little closer and even understood the real theme of the book, which was simply that Johnson was the critical mass to the plot and arguably the original initiator; I just assumed that anyone who actually read the book would eventually figure that out. As Jim Fetzer noted so eloquently above, "Describing LBJ as the "mastermind" does not imply that he was responsible for mopping the floors or sorting out the paperclips." I would only add to my friend Jim's sentence, "or even participating in any of the downstream planning or execution, except for the motorcade itself." I hope this umpteenth re-explanation of that term also answers DiEugenio's comment above: "to say that someone as unsophisticated as LBJ "masterminded" the whole thing, just does not match up to how complex and multi- tiered the conspiracy was." If not, please re-read, beginning at "As Jim Fetzer noted . . ." A lot of people have inferred their own definition of the term "Mastermind" in a way that was not implied in the book.
Mr. Green apparently confused my attempt to describe two sides of some events as itself being "confused". My actual confusion was that I erroneously assumed that typical readers would be able to tell the difference and understand that implicitly. But in regard to the Bay of Pigs issue, I even went to some lengths in the narrative to clarify it for those folks who might have otherwise missed the point, as in this passage:
Kennedy would never concede that withholding the air strike had caused the failure of the invasion, though the military had pleaded with him, using that very argument. It is easy to see, from different prisms, how Bissell and Cabell could blame Kennedy for the failed mission because he did not act as they assumed he would, yet understand how JFK instinctively knew that he had been sabotaged into not only authorizing the project, but being outmaneuvered in its execution.
A few paragraphs later, I again led off with "The CIA men, of course, portrayed the debacle quite differently. In their view. . ." Curiously, of all the "criticisms" of the book that I have read, this is the only one which proved me wrong on the assumption that typical readers would understand both points of view.
I knew that there would be some discussion of the Altgens photograph, which I contend shows, by the absence of Johnson's image in it, that he had previous knowledge of where the killing zone would be. It is clear to me, and other objective people, using an un-retouched, high quality photo or jpeg image, that Johnson is not to be seen; one would think that any attempt to rebut that point might consist of a strong and thorough analysis, based on blow-up copies and accompanying sketches, which at least attempts to spot LBJ's ear, or nose, or "whatever". But that would be wrong; Green's proof is simply his single sentence: "Except I can see LBJ in the photograph, as can most others." This perfunctory treatment of the photo is reflective of the overall quality of the review itself. On the original thread where this was discussed we witnessed a number of people posting that they were also convinced that he was the "white spot" while others tried to make the case (with the help of modified and enhanced photographs) that he was in the "dark blurry" area. Yet no one was able to make a convincing case of either of these; ultimately, it came down to their wordswhich were essentially the same as Green'swhich claimed that he was visible. I'd like to see what a jury of objective people would say about that, but if the other reviews I've seen have any relevance, it appears that more typical people (you know the kind, objective folks, without another agenda) appear to agree with me: Johnson is not in the photograph. But, to respond to those who claim to see him in the "white splotch" that would necessarily also mean that he was so far to the side of the car, and lower in profile to Lady Bird, that it would then mean that he was in the process of ducking. In either case, the point remains.
But the most difficult issue I have with Green's review is his mis-statement of a number of points:
~ He indicated that I stated that JFK had knowledge of the assassination attempts on Castro. In the passage he references, I said only that Bissell and Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the pending invasion of Cuba; never did I state that JFK had knowledge of the CIA attempts on Castro himself (though in the second edition I will clarify the referenced sentence to indicate the briefing was on the planned invasion; I have no reason to suspect that JFK didor did nothave such knowledge, I simply don't know). Any references to attacks on Castro were intended to apply to the government of Cuba.
~ In the section regarding Johnson's relationship with LeMay, Green jumps from what I was describing in 1961-63 to what happened in 1965 as Johnson attempted to micro manage the war: "This last remark simply isn't true. Even in pro-LeMay biographies, one gets the clear sense that LeMay counseled Lyndon Johnson in full commitment, an immense bombing campaign into North Vietnam." What does that have to do with how Johnson was feeding secrets through his back channels two to four years before that?
~ His "Meat of the Argument" comment is misstated: "LBJ got along better with the Department of Defense than JFK did. (Although Nelson does, curiously, quote Howard Burris from John Newman's book
JFK and Vietnam, saying that he didn't believe Johnson had a "very deep" understanding of political issues.) Which is odd for a "mastermind."
That is not what the quote said. I refer you to page 131: "I don't think he had a really deep perception and comprehension of what the whole scene was about." The context was about Vietnam, and the military and intelligence reports about it and the overall social, geopolitical and historical dimensions of the place.
(i.e. he had "no clue" even then about the implications of U.S. involvement in the war). The next sentence after the one quoted should have cleared up any misunderstandings he had: "According to author John M. Newman, Johnson's views "were rooted in the superficial politics
of Washington, not in the underlying realities of the situation in Vietnam."
These are the kinds of misstatements that could only result from either preconceived biases or superficial reading and analysis. Perhaps Mr. Green will have a chance to reread the book in its second edition, coming out next year with a new publisher. Next time, it would be helpful if he tried to read it with a clearer and more curious mind; if so, he will also better understand the "big picture" being described.
___________________________________
APPENDIX: Regarding the Allegation that Seymour Hersh was a CIA Plant:
"The Veneration of Seymour Hersh"
For many years (who knows how long?) the folks at CTKA, following their leader just as Sheeple do, have disgracefully smeared the name of one of the greatest, most prolific American patriots of the Twentieth Century. The man we should all honor for his incredible achievements, especially the exposure of My Lai. It took a man with brass cajones to expose the massacre there and, with it, the fact that there was a little program called Operation Phoenix along with it.
But, in their attempt to banish Seymour Hersh's book "The Dark Side of Camelot", from being used as a credible source for anything else, the CTKA organization has attempted to demolish Hersh's fine reputation as a great and iconoclastic figure who deserved nothing but praise from his fellow citizens. Instead, we were told exactly the opposite of the truth in this recent snippit from a post at the Education Forum. This has been going on for decade(s?) and the record needs to be corrected immediately.
---------------------
From a posting on the Education Forum "Joe Green's Review of LBJ the Mastermind":
__________on 27 December 2010 - 10:16 PM, said:
Blah, Blah, Blah...........
"Obviously, if you had the evidence for doing such things you would not have spent so much time regurgitating the likes of Sy Hersh and his completely discredited book "The Dark SIde of Camelot". I mean, do you know anything about the man? Apparently not. Hersh has been in bed with the CIA since the beginning of his career. Yes, that is true. Hersh started his career off by covering up a simple fact: That the My Lai massacre was part of Operation Phoenix. Which was one of the darkest CIA secrets of the Vietnam War. Hersh's book goes to all kinds of absurd lengths to conceal that fact, explicitly saying that the massacre was not part of any kind of operational conspiracy. Hersh did such a nice job covering it up that we had to wait for a real reporter, Doug Valentine, to show us My Lai was part of Operation Phoenix. But Hersh did such good cover up work that Phoenix was then exported to Central America, against the Contras."
_________________________
Something about all of that didn't make sense to me. Here we have a famous reporter and author, Seymour Hersh, who I have always felt was the "real hero" of that incredibly insane time in the history of this country. I acknowledge that there have been some controversies in his past, and much of his work is a bit controversial, but that's what happens when you're a true iconoclast, working on exposing truths to a nation not always receptive to the truth. But here, we are talking about the despicable trashing of a guy who was all alone on the fringes of the mighty military and intelligence machine, whose record to most thinking Americans is unblemished, among the general public. There was something wrong with that picture.
So I looked on Amazon to see if I could find anything in the book he had cited (The Phoenix Program Douglas Valentine) which might clarify all of this. Fortunately, the book is partially on-line, and there was a description of Operation Phoenix on pp. 342-435. Guess who Valentine has referenced three times as stating, both in his news reports and his subsequent book, Cover Up, that indeed the My Lai massacre was a part of Operation Phoenix. None other than the great Seymour Hersh!
Here are the excerpts, right out of Valentine's book, just so you don't have to bother looking them up for yourself:
.............
P.342
On August 25, 1970, an article appeared in the New York Times (by Seymour Hersh) hinting that the CIA, through Phoenix, was responsible for Mai Lai. The story line was advanced on October 14, when defense attorneys for David Mitchella sergeant accused and later cleared of machine-gunning scores of Vietnamese in a drainage ditch in My Laiciting Phoenix as the CIA's "systematic program of assassinations," named Evan Parker as the CIA officer who "signed documents, certain blacklists," of Vietnamese to be assassinated in My Lai. When we spoke, Parker denied the charge.
P. 343
In Cover-up, Seymour Hersh tells how in February 1968 Ramsdell began "rounding up residents of Quang Ngai City whose names appeared on Phoenix blacklists." Explained Ramsdell: "After Tet we knew who many of these people were, but we let them continue to fumnction because we were controlling them. They led us to the VC security officer for the district. We wiped them out after Tet and then went ahead and picked up the small fish." The people who were "wiped out", Hersh explains, were "put to death by the Phoenix Special Police.
P. 344
"As Hersh notes parenthetically, "Shortly after the My Lai 4 operation, the number of VCI on the Phoenix blacklist was sharply reduced."
......................
What __________ stated in the above thread, and has been repeating for many years, is the exact opposite of what was actually in the book. How many of his other assertions about Hersh would withstand the scrutiny of someone who had the time to track them all down and unparse the words used to drag his name through the mud? This is a major disservice to someone who ought to be venerated by all of his fellow countrymen.
Does this not vindicate my guy Hersh? Or, do I have to track down everything else uttered about him to correct the record?
Can we please take Seymour Hersh off the blacklist now??
[1] From Salon 1/18/2000 article by David Rubien:
http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2000/01/18/hersh
