Nelson's LBJ Mastermind book

[James H. Fetzer]

Here's a summary by Robert Morrow that has it right about LBJ and JFK:

John Kennedy was an out-of-control Sex Freak [Morrow's word: I would say, sex addict or "enthusiast"] who had many, many affairs. People who deny this are Kennedy groupies, not interested in the truth. It is not "slander" of someone if you really are a Sex Freak like John Kennedy or Bill Clinton who idolized JFK and tried to be just like him. (LBJ was also a notorious womanizer.)

That is too bad because if you don't understand this, then you will never understand that the ONLY reason Lyndon Johnson got on the Democratic ticket in 1960 was through the use of SEXUAL BLACKMAIL on John Kennedy to FORCE John Kennedy to put him on the Demo ticket.

On the night of July 13th, 1960, Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn, using Hoover's dossier on John Kennedy used SEXUAL BLACKMAIL to force John Kennedy to put Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic ticket. Lyndon Johnson was not on short list of JFK for Vice President. He was not on the long list. LBJ was not on the list - period.

But John Kennedy picked because he was forced to. And that was an extremely dangerous thing because putting Lyndon Johnson a heartbeat away from the world's most powerful job would be about like putting Ted Bundy in a Florida sorority at 2PM.

Kennedy's close and trusted personal secretary for 12 years was Evelyn Lincoln. Here is a report about the Johnson blackmail:

Evelyn Lincoln, JFK's secretary, reports that Johnson, with J. Edgar Hoover's dark help, got on the 1960 Democratic ticket by using BLACKMAIL on the Kennedys:

"During the 1960 campaign, according to Mrs. Lincoln, Kennedy discovered how vulnerable his womanizing had made him. Sexual blackmail, she said, had long been part of Lyndon Johnson's modus operandiabetted by Edgar. "J. Edgar Hoover," Lincoln said, "gave Johnson the information about various congressmen and senators so that Johnson could go to X senator and say, `How about this little deal you have with this woman?' and so forth. That's how he kept them in line. He used his IOUs with them as what he hoped was his road to the presidency. He had this trivia to use, because he had Hoover in his corner. And he thought that the members of Congress would go out there and put him over at the Convention. But then Kennedy beat him at the Convention. And well, after that Hoover and Johnson and their group were able to push Johnson on Kennedy."LBJ," said Lincoln, "had been using all the information Hoover could find on Kennedyduring the campaign, even before the Convention. And Hoover was in on the pressure on Kennedy at the Convention." (Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 272).

According to Lincoln, Kennedy had definite plans to drop Johnson for the Vice Presidency in 1964, and replace him with Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. In 1964, new President Lyndon Johnson gave FBI director J. Edgar Hoover a lifetime waiver from the mandatory retirement age of 70 that Hoover would hit on 1/1/65! In other words, Hoover could live to age 120 and still be head of the FBI.

In my opinion, both LBJ and Hoover were conspirators, along with the CIA, in the JFK assassination. LBJ's and Hoover's jobs were to cover up the murder.

More on how Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn blackmailed and threatened John Kennedy to get Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic ticket in 1960:

The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Through Seymour Hersh, you get the voices of the CIA people and perhaps Secret Service people who hated John Kennedy. JFK was not murdered because he was a reckless and prolific womanizer. But it gave JFK's killers one more justification to kill someone they did not respect ... and actually hated for reasons both personal and ideological.

Seymour Hersh really does a fantastic job detailing how the psychopathic serial killer LYNDON JOHNSON BLACKMAILED HIS WAY ONTO THE 1960 DEMOCRATIC TICKET ... with last minute threats and blackmails issued by him and Sam Rayburn late in the night of July 13th, 1960 at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles. By the morning of July 14th, Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn (using Hoover's blackmail info on Kennedy) had TWISTED THE ARM of John Kennedy enough to force him to break his deal with Symington and INSTEAD put the homicidal maniac and Kennedy-hater Lyndon Johnson on the 1960 Demo ticket.

That my friends, was a FATAL decision. Because Johnson works like this: blackmail you today, kill you tomorrow. Like Jack Ruby famously said, if John Kennedy had picked Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy would still be alive... or at least would not have been shot like a dog in the streets of Dallas.

In reality John Kennedy was all set to pick Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri who was very popular in California, which had a whopping 35 electoral votes at that time. With Johnson on the ticket, Kennedy lost California by a razer close 1/2 of a percent. It is very likely that a Kennedy/Symington ticket would have WON California.

Read the Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh, p.124-129:

Close JFK friend Hy Raskin: "Johnson was not being given the slightest bit of consideration by any of the Kennedys… On the stuff I saw it was always Symington who was going to be the vice president. The Kennedy family had approved Symington." [Hersh, p. 124]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford on July 13, 1960: "We've talked it out me, dad, Bobby and we've selected Symington as the vice president." Kennedy asked Clark Clifford to relay that message to Symington "and find out if he'd run." …"I and Stuart went to bed believing that we had a solid, unequivocal deal with Jack." [Hersh, p.125]

Hy Raskin: "It was obvious to them that something extraordinary had taken place, as it was to me," Raskin wrote. "During my entire association with the Kennedys, I could not recall any situation where a decision of major significance had been reversed in such a short period of time…. Bob [Kennedy] had always been involved in every major decision; why not this one, I pondered… I slept little that night." [Hersh, p. 125]

John Kennedy to Clark Clifford in the morning of July 14, 1960: "I must do something that I have never done before. I made a serious deal and now I have to go back on it. I have no alternative." Symington was out and Johnson was in. Clifford recalled observing that Kennedy looked as if he'd been up all night." [Hersh, p. 126]

John Kennedy to Hy Raskin: "You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don't need more problems. I'm going to have enough problems with Nixon." [Hersh, p. 126]

Raskin "The substance of this revelation was so astonishing that if it had been revealed to me by another other than Jack or Bob, I would have had trouble accepting it. Why he decided to tell me was still very mysterious, but flattering nonetheless." [Hersh, p. 126]

Jim:

I have now read two more of Kennedy's inner circle first person memoirs on this whole LBJ as VP subject: Powers and O'Donnell, and Salinger's.

With little variance, they back up Sorenson and Schlesinger. And I should add, it is clear that none of these three men wanted LBJ as VP.

In each case, it is clear that LBJ was the favorite and that he was the only man JFK seriously considered. There is no mention of this extension of an offer to Symington in any of these four books. And I repeat, these were the closest men to Kennedy at the time to write about the subject. For instance, Schlesinger got hold of a memo written by Phil Graham after the convention. Because it was Graham and Alsop who were pushing for LBJ--not LBJ himself.

Now unless you can come up with a credible source written by one of Kennedy's advisers from this time period, then I do not find Hersh's reliance on a con man like Raskin 35 years later to be deserving of any worth at all. Especially since nothing else in Hersh's book is worth believing either.

You can always say that all five men were involved in a conspiracy and cover up, but then you have to extend it out to Alsop, Graham and JFK himself. And recall, THe O'Donnell and Powers book was written in 1972, many years later. ANd as I said, neither they nor Salinger liked LBJ. They preferred someone else, like Freeman, Jackson, or Symington. And they still do not back up Nelson's thesis.