Nelson's LBJ Mastermind book

[Phillip F. Nelson]

You got me, Nelson.

I am the illegitimate son of Lyndon Baines Johnson and Priscilla Johnson McMillan, and I commend you on ferreting out our "deeply hidden secrets and ulterior motives."

I just left LBJ's cryogenically preserved head after a lengthy meditation.

(Yes, we've frozen the mastermind's mind in anticipation of the day he can return to consciousness and take his rightful place in atop the pantheon of James Bond villains -- "the most evil and brilliant" of them all!)

It has been decided: Let's come out of the closet and celebrate the truth as you've discovered it.

LYNDON WAS THE MASTERMIND!

The heirs of Richard Nixon and Thomas Jefferson, I understand, are expressing their dismay at your characterization of LBJ as our "most evil and brilliant" president. But I say, Screw 'em! When you're right, you're right!

All of us at the ranch thank you for honoring our fallen -- but not for long -- leader.

But if it's not asking too much, would you do us one more favor?

Please show a cynical world how LBJ was the mastermind of the MLK and RFK hits. I mean, in your own words, "who else" could have done them in?

Thanking you in advance,

Charles "Gentleman Bird" Drago

Thank you Charles. Very profound. Clearly one of your better posts. I'll get to the MLK and RFK hits in my next book; watch for it in 2013.


Jim, he may have cited the reference to the news item in his book, but the actual news article which he wrote that it referred to was dated August 25, 1970. Hersh wrote it, look it up. He "owned" that story throughout that period.

You are (intentionally?) misinterpreting the "long quote" from his book. Again, it says,

"There was no conspiracy to destroy the village of My Lai 4; what took place there had happened before and would hapen again in Quang Ngai province--although with less than drastic results. The desire of Lt. Colonel Barker to mount another successful, high enemy body count operation in the area. The desire of Ramsdell to demonstrate the effectiveness of his operations, the belief shared by all the principals that everyone living in Son My was staying there by choice because of communists....And the basic incompetence of many intelligence personnel in the Army--all those factors combined to enable a group of ambitious men to mount an unnecessary mission against a nonexistent enemy force, and somehow to find the evidence to justify it all."

This is a poignant reflection of the horror that was going on, not a rejection of "Phoenix" involvement. He isn't "trying to have it both ways" -- what he is saying here is that this particular highly violent operation wasn't part of the original campaign, yet it was the inevitable but unplanned result of the campaign; that the "principals" became so caught up in the general ramp up of violence that they took it to still another level of destruction.
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When I read that line ". . .another successful, high enemy body count operation in the area. . ." it evoked the recollection that this was the ultimate manifestation of (guess whose) repeated instructions to his military leaders: "Kill more Viet Cong, we need bigger body counts". Yes, this operation in March, 1968 (the same month "you know who" announced that he was not going to re-run for the presidency that year) was the extended, ultimate and inevitable result of his pleas for "more dead Viet Cong".

The wrong man was arrested for war crimes.

Have at it. . .I am really going to disappear now for a few weeks. You're Welcome, Charles.