JFK: What we know now that we didn't know then

[Adele Edisen]

Well, when you are wrong, you are wrong. And both Adele and Coogan are wrong. LBJ was the guy who pressured JFK to come to Texas. He even told Henry Gonzales that he didn't want to make the trip, but that Lyndon was insisting. Connally was the one who, apparently faking a phone call to the White House, claimed that Kenny O'Donnell had approved the change of venue to the Trade Mart, even though the Secret Service felt it was less secure than The Women's Forum. I think those who want to get this straight ought to do more research, especially LBJ: MASTERMIND OF JFK'S ASSASSINATION.

To All,

From my reading of two books, and from a posting I believe I made on this forum, if not on another forum some years ago, Lyndon Johnson and his staff tried to keep Kennedy from visiting Dallas during this swing through Texas. I recommend these readings, if you have not already done so.

THE 31st OF MARCH by Horace Busby, speechwriter and confidant of LBJ's. The title refers to the date, March 31, 1968, when Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not be seeking the presidency in November, 1968. Perhaps even more significant is Busby's description of a speech he wrote for LBJ in 1967 that was to be delivered at the end of Johnson's 1967 State of the Union speech to make the same declaration, but which he did not deliver even though it was in his pocket when he spoke.

JOHNNY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE by Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers. Both authors were very close to John Kennedy.

Both books cite Lyndon Johnson urging Kennedy and his staff and planners to skip the Dallas visit, because the city did not carry the Kennedy-Johnson ticket in the 1960 election, and because Lyndon and Ladybird Johnson were ill-treated when campaigning in Dallas in 1960. They were hit by agitators' signs and spit upon in the lobby of the Adolphus Hotel as they walked through it.

Adele Edisen

There are other sources as well such as Vince Palamara and William Manchester. John Connally was also deeply opposed and funnily enough worried about the security of the Trademart.

Jim,

I have a great deal of respect for you, but if I am wrong, then the two books, THE THIRTY-FIRST OF MARCH and JOHNNY, WE HARDLY KNEW YE, are also wrong on the issue of Lyndon Johnson's persistent pleading to Kennedy and his staff to not visit Dallas on the trip to Texas. I don't mind being wrong, because from that I may learn something I had not known before, and I am not afraid to be wrong, except when being wrong could physically hurt another human being.

I first met Madeleine Duncan Brown in November 1991 at the first ASK Conference in Dallas. Dr. Jerry Rose had published my article, "From April to November and Back Again" in his journal. "The Third Decade", Novembe 1991 issue. He and I met for the first time at this meeting and since he knew that I knew no one else there, he escorted me about to introduce ne to researchers and 'celebrities', one of whom was Madeleine. I knew nothing of her and her story, which I learned some years later on the Rich DellaRosa Forum when I became a member.

I do not have anger towards her. Rather, I have a great deal of empathy and sympathy for her. As any psychologist and psychiatrist knows, the loss of a child has the most devastating effect on people, especially women who have borne and raised them. This loss can affect a person's own sense of self, the ego. Depending on the healthy strength of that ego, the grief and loss can be handled, even if the grief never leaves. Madeleine lost her son and her lover and protector who had provided for her and him as well. She, in a sense, had been abandoned.

When young children are emotionally and/or physically abused, their growing, fragile ego can be badly hurt. They often conceive of a fantasy world that is safe and free of harm. To them it becomes real and true. Its purpose is to protect the sense of self from further harm and pain. Similarly, an adult with severe losses of a child, especially a woman, a mother whose ego is vulnerable, may devise a delusional system which protects the rest of her ego from the pain and hurt. To argue or try to disprove such beliefs creates much resistance. As Freud himself once pointed out, that to argue with a delusion only makes it stronger.

This is how I have come to understand Madeleine Brown and her story. I don't know whether this could be acceptable to you and others, but it is based on my readings of Freud, Adler, Jung, James, and many others, and being around a lot of psychiatrists, and knowing women friends who had lost a child, or even lost two children at the same time. The loss and its memory never disappears.

Adele Edisen