05-09-2010, 07:07 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-09-2010, 07:15 AM by Robert Morrow.)
The reason Lyndon Johnson was pleading/demanding that Jackie ride in his car in the Texas motorcades was because he did not want her brains to get blown out, too. Because Lyndon Johnson thought he was a gallant "Southern gentleman." But slaughtering her husband, and father of her two children and the President of the United States was a great idea in the sociopathic mind of Lyndon Johnson. Also, on the morning of the assassination in Dallas (11/22/63) Johnson was trying to get John Connally in his car and put Ralph Yarborough into the kill zone in JFK's car.
Sen. George Smathers, U.S. Congress 1946-1968: I came back to Washington with the President. He was lying down. They had a bed in the Air Force One for him to lie on. So he said, “Gee, I really hate to go to Texas. I got to go to Texas next week and it’s just a pain in the rear end and I just don’t want to go. I wish I could get out of it.” And I said, “Well, what’s the problem?” He said, “Well, you know how Lyndon is.” Lyndon was Vice President. “Lyndon wants to ride with me, but John Connally is the governor and he wants to ride and I think that protocol says that he’s supposed to ride and Johnson wants Jackie to ride with him.” And Connally was, at that time, a little bit jealous of Lyndon and Lyndon was a little jealous of him, so it’s all these fights were going on. He said, “I just don’t want to go down in that mess. I hate to go. I wish I could think of a way to get out of it.”
Transcript from PBS "American Experience - The Kennedys Part II - The Sons" available on line here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/kennedys-transcript/
about 1/2 way down the page on the transcript.
You can watch the George Smathers’ clip here at PBS. It is at the 1 hour 44 minute 30 second mark:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/kennedys/player/
I asked a fellow JFK researcher: Does it seem funny that Lyndon Johnson would be asking to be in JFK’s car if Lyndon knew that JFK was going to be slaughtered in a kill zone during the motorcade? The key point is that nothing that Lyndon Johnson ever did in his life justifies giving him “the benefit of the doubt.” Precisely the opposite. And here was his reply:
Re: “But the part that puzzles me is Johnson wanting to ride with Kennedy.”
JFK Researcher: I wouldn’t worry about this at all, and here’s why:
I agree that Smathers' interpretation of "Johnson wants to ride with me" was in error. Secret Service regulations forbade the President and Vice-President riding together in the same car. At the time of the Dallas visit, there was a feud going on between Texas Democrats with the conservatives of the Johnson-Connally faction against the more liberal Democrats led by Sen. Ralph Yarborough, a JFK supporter. Yarborough was the one riding in Johnson's car with LBJ and Lady Bird.
It has been reported that on the morning of the assassination, LBJ came to the President's suite at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth and a loud argument broke out between the men. The subject of their disagreement, it was said, was the seating arrangements for the Dallas motorcade. Johnson, it appears, was making a last ditch attempt to get Connally out of JFK's car by using the excuse that Yarborough didn't want to ride with HIM. (Which was true.) But I believe that the seating arrangements were for a purpose --- to show solidarity by having Connally with JFK and Yarborough with LBJ, so there was NO WAY JFK was going to budge on the seating arrangements.
Had Kennedy yielded to Johnson's demands, which would have put Yarborough in JFK's limo, Yarborough, instead of Connally, would have been shot along with Kennedy.
More on that in a second.
H.L. Hunt, Johnson's financial backer and mentor, had a religious foundation called the LIFELINE FOUNDATION. It enjoyed religious status and Federal exemption from income taxes. But in its weekly radio broadcasts, its messages were more political than religious and and when I say political, I mean anti-JFK.
In the weeks before the assassination, Hunt's radio program blasted the Administration and its policies.
It accused JFK of bypassing Congress to follow a line enunciated from Moscow.
It was a time, Lifeline broadcasts cried, for "extreme patriotism".
( Source: POWER TO DESTROY, The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon by John A. Andrew III,, published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2002-- pg 97)
Many of the funds that were "donations" to these tax-exempt religious organizations were in fact earmarked for right-wing extremist groups. These religious organizations allowed contributors to make donations to right-wing extremist groups and receive a tax deduction for them.
In 1961, the President asked Walter and Victor Reuther to come up with a plan to combat these extreme right-wing forces. Known as the "Reuther Memorandum", one of the things that the document suggested was to "choke off the flow of money to the radical right by challenging groups' tax-exempt status".
( ibid. pg 21)
Hence, the IRS' Ideological Organizations Project ( IOP ) was formed.
A March 9, 1962 IRS internal memo listed the first groups to be investigated. Among them were Hunt's Lifeline Organization ( Dallas District ) , the John Birch Society ( for which "Lifeline" was a front ) and the National Indignation Convention, Dallas District.
( ibid. pg 29)
In February 1963, ( at a time when Oswald was "buying" his weapons ), the IRS recommended revocation of the tax-exempt status for Hunt's "Life Line". Lifeline had run into problems with the IRS because "approximately 50%" of its publications were "in the nature of propaganda. These releases discussed only one side of an issue and were not consistent with the purposes of an exempt educational organization".
(ibid. pg 33 )
Now here's the kicker.
A Senate Sub-Committee was scheduled to hold hearings in January 1964 on the tax-exemption status of religious organizations with extremist political viewpoints.
The Chair of that Sub-Committee ? Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas.
( ibid. pg 34 )
Had Yarborough been in Kennedy's car instead of Connally, HE would have been the one shot up, not Connally. There would have been no hearings, no investigation of Hunt's organization and others.
I find this all extremely interesting in lieu of the fact that Johnson tried so hard, even up to the last minute, to change the seating arrangements for the Dallas motorcade.
Lyndon Johnson wanted Jackie to ride in his car. Source: Sen. George Smathers, a good friend of JFK (11/18/63 talk on Air Force 1)
Lyndon did not want Jackie’s brains to get blown out, too
Lyndon did not want Jackie’s brains to get blown out, too
Sen. George Smathers, U.S. Congress 1946-1968: I came back to Washington with the President. He was lying down. They had a bed in the Air Force One for him to lie on. So he said, “Gee, I really hate to go to Texas. I got to go to Texas next week and it’s just a pain in the rear end and I just don’t want to go. I wish I could get out of it.” And I said, “Well, what’s the problem?” He said, “Well, you know how Lyndon is.” Lyndon was Vice President. “Lyndon wants to ride with me, but John Connally is the governor and he wants to ride and I think that protocol says that he’s supposed to ride and Johnson wants Jackie to ride with him.” And Connally was, at that time, a little bit jealous of Lyndon and Lyndon was a little jealous of him, so it’s all these fights were going on. He said, “I just don’t want to go down in that mess. I hate to go. I wish I could think of a way to get out of it.”
Transcript from PBS "American Experience - The Kennedys Part II - The Sons" available on line here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/kennedys-transcript/
about 1/2 way down the page on the transcript.
You can watch the George Smathers’ clip here at PBS. It is at the 1 hour 44 minute 30 second mark:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/kennedys/player/
I asked a fellow JFK researcher: Does it seem funny that Lyndon Johnson would be asking to be in JFK’s car if Lyndon knew that JFK was going to be slaughtered in a kill zone during the motorcade? The key point is that nothing that Lyndon Johnson ever did in his life justifies giving him “the benefit of the doubt.” Precisely the opposite. And here was his reply:
Re: “But the part that puzzles me is Johnson wanting to ride with Kennedy.”
JFK Researcher: I wouldn’t worry about this at all, and here’s why:
- The Smather’s on-camera statement was made decades later, so there has to be some allowance here for a slight jumbling in recollection and “re-transmission”
- (and more important) :very likely, Lyndon—when he talked to JFK about this-- dissembled (as he always seemed to do), beat around the bush, and very likely sent a confusing message to JFK, which, in the re-telling to Smathers, may have been jumbled (and/or misunderstood) ; and then we have (as noted in my point 1) the re-telling, by Smathers, to a camera, decades later.
So this is a very interesting problem of separating “the signal from the noise” (as they say in information theory); and I think what is truly important is that Smathers remembers JFK complaining, on 11/18, and on a ride aboard AF-1 from Florida, that (a) he didn’t want to go to Texas and (b) among the many problems he had to deal with was this business of LBJ wanting Jackie to ride with him.
This interview by Smathers provides really excellent “first hand” evidence of the extent to which JFK was being personally lobbied, by his own Vice President, on matters pertaining to the Texas trip—i.e., on getting him to go there (to Texas, AND to Dallas) in the first place; and then to the extent of the actual configuration of which car she would ride in, in the Dallas motorcade (!). If it weren’t for Smathers, all we’d have is the mealy-mouthed cop-out language of Sorensen, and others like him.
3. Also, please do note the logical problem if LBJ really wanted to ride with JFK: IF that little snippet of a quote were to be taken seriously (and I do not take it seriously), then the actual configuration (i.e. Car-seating) would be that Lyndon Johnson would want to be in the same car as JFK, so if that were to be so—then how could it then be that LBJ “wanted Jackie to ride with him”? The phrase “ride with him” implies separate cars. Clearly.
And, finally, for the same reason that the President and the vice President do NOT ever fly on the same aircraft, I am positive that—just on those grounds alone—it would be a complete violation of security for the President and the Vice Presient to appear in an open car together.
So my appraisal of this “re-transmission” (by Smathers) of what he heard JFK saying, is that: (a) Lyndon was making a bunch of noise, complaining about this and that; and (b) buried in that “noise” was his real message; and that his real message was that he, as a “galaant” Texas, wanted the President’s wife to ride with him. I think that the rest of what Smathers heard—or thinks he heard, and then re-transmitted, in this interview—is simply false.
And again, let me repeat my reasons for saying so. . .
Because:
(1) Common sense rules out that the Pres and the Vice Pres would ride in the same limo. (Ever).
(2) IF LBJ really wanted “to ride with JFK,” then his request that he wanted Jackie “to ride with him” would make no logical sense.
OK. . . Those are my beliefs about this remarkable little piece of information.
First of all; I think its valid; and secondly, it shows what a sneaky bastard LBJ was—to try to actually lobby the President so that he would not have his wife within inches, and it would make him an easier target.
Of course—had LBJ succeeded in this gambit, he would have to have had a lot of explaining to do afterwards, to credibly explain why Jackie was not seated next to her husband, in Dallas, as she obviously was in other cities.
I agree that Smathers' interpretation of "Johnson wants to ride with me" was in error. Secret Service regulations forbade the President and Vice-President riding together in the same car. At the time of the Dallas visit, there was a feud going on between Texas Democrats with the conservatives of the Johnson-Connally faction against the more liberal Democrats led by Sen. Ralph Yarborough, a JFK supporter. Yarborough was the one riding in Johnson's car with LBJ and Lady Bird.
It has been reported that on the morning of the assassination, LBJ came to the President's suite at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth and a loud argument broke out between the men. The subject of their disagreement, it was said, was the seating arrangements for the Dallas motorcade. Johnson, it appears, was making a last ditch attempt to get Connally out of JFK's car by using the excuse that Yarborough didn't want to ride with HIM. (Which was true.) But I believe that the seating arrangements were for a purpose --- to show solidarity by having Connally with JFK and Yarborough with LBJ, so there was NO WAY JFK was going to budge on the seating arrangements.
Had Kennedy yielded to Johnson's demands, which would have put Yarborough in JFK's limo, Yarborough, instead of Connally, would have been shot along with Kennedy.
More on that in a second.
H.L. Hunt, Johnson's financial backer and mentor, had a religious foundation called the LIFELINE FOUNDATION. It enjoyed religious status and Federal exemption from income taxes. But in its weekly radio broadcasts, its messages were more political than religious and and when I say political, I mean anti-JFK.
In the weeks before the assassination, Hunt's radio program blasted the Administration and its policies.
It accused JFK of bypassing Congress to follow a line enunciated from Moscow.
It was a time, Lifeline broadcasts cried, for "extreme patriotism".
( Source: POWER TO DESTROY, The Political Uses of the IRS from Kennedy to Nixon by John A. Andrew III,, published by Ivan R. Dee, Chicago 2002-- pg 97)
Many of the funds that were "donations" to these tax-exempt religious organizations were in fact earmarked for right-wing extremist groups. These religious organizations allowed contributors to make donations to right-wing extremist groups and receive a tax deduction for them.
In 1961, the President asked Walter and Victor Reuther to come up with a plan to combat these extreme right-wing forces. Known as the "Reuther Memorandum", one of the things that the document suggested was to "choke off the flow of money to the radical right by challenging groups' tax-exempt status".
( ibid. pg 21)
Hence, the IRS' Ideological Organizations Project ( IOP ) was formed.
A March 9, 1962 IRS internal memo listed the first groups to be investigated. Among them were Hunt's Lifeline Organization ( Dallas District ) , the John Birch Society ( for which "Lifeline" was a front ) and the National Indignation Convention, Dallas District.
( ibid. pg 29)
In February 1963, ( at a time when Oswald was "buying" his weapons ), the IRS recommended revocation of the tax-exempt status for Hunt's "Life Line". Lifeline had run into problems with the IRS because "approximately 50%" of its publications were "in the nature of propaganda. These releases discussed only one side of an issue and were not consistent with the purposes of an exempt educational organization".
(ibid. pg 33 )
Now here's the kicker.
A Senate Sub-Committee was scheduled to hold hearings in January 1964 on the tax-exemption status of religious organizations with extremist political viewpoints.
The Chair of that Sub-Committee ? Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas.
( ibid. pg 34 )
Had Yarborough been in Kennedy's car instead of Connally, HE would have been the one shot up, not Connally. There would have been no hearings, no investigation of Hunt's organization and others.
I find this all extremely interesting in lieu of the fact that Johnson tried so hard, even up to the last minute, to change the seating arrangements for the Dallas motorcade.
