Nelson's LBJ Mastermind book

[Kenneth Kapel]

LBJ was a tool, an instument used by the people that controlled him, he was at their mercy. Big money buys the politicians, and LBJ was owned by the Hunts, Murchisons,Browns,Crowns, and others. These people had their own intelligience networks, along with the CIA, FBI, ONI,and other National Secuity State agencies to do the masterminding. LBJ was a tool. Yes he wanted JFK dead and was glad to be of help, but mastermind never.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Before the bell rings for the next round of this epic title fight, I will add my own tuppence halfpenny's worth. I am speaking in my personal capacity, and not as a Moderator of this forum.

This has been a valuable thread attempting to get to the core nature of the role that LBJ played in the assassination of JFK. All parties agree that LBJ had an important role. The argument is fundamentally over how critical his involvement was, and for what period of time.

The usual Marquess of Queensberry rules have so far been suspended in this bout.

My own view is that attacks on the intellectual capacity or reasoning power of another member, especially when couched in insulting language, add nothing to this debate.

It is clear that the protagonists are extremely knowledgable and highly intelligent.

Personally, I have enjoyed this passionate and robust exploration of the role of LBJ, and learnt much from it. In my judgement, it would be an even better and more valuable discussion if all parties agreed primarily to argue the evidence and interpretations of that evidence.

[Albert Doyle]

The thing about this issue is it is so obvious just from looking at it. When one looks at the Kennedy Assassination landscape one can see the arrangement as it lay. In the natural order of the Serengeti Plain a wild jackass doesn't give orders to big elephants, lions, and jackals. Those creatures exist in the food chain on their own.

[David Sellers]

Anyone who thinks that Lyndon Johnson was going to be riding in an open car in the very motorcade in which the only man standing between him and the presidency was going to be assassinated by a cross fire and NOT TAKE CHARGE OF THAT EVENT has lost their grip on reality. As Billy Sol first explained to William Raymond, a French investigative reporter, and later repeated in his book, A TEXAS LEGEND, Lyndon even sent Cliff Carter, his chief administrative assistant to Dallas to make sure that all of the arrangements were in place to effect the transition of governance from JFK to him.

Couldn't these things also show us LBJ had advanced knowledge of the crime without him being the "mastermind" of the crime?

LBJ was a man who was linked to many murders so I don't doubt he had it in him to order this, but JFK was a just too big of a target for him to do this on his own word IMO. The removal of a president will effect many people in power as each person brings different things (and backers) to the office, and I can't see LBJ being able to remove JFK (and this severing the deals his father made with their backers) without consent of these powerful forces.

LBJ was crafty, but he was not of the "royal" stuff like JFK (I read recently all but one or two presidents have direct family ties to the monarchies of Europe) was so I would have to think he was approached and told to participate. He would get what he wanted (the presidency) and he would avoid the possibility of going to jail so why would he say no?

JFK's father (JPK) once said that 50 men run this country and even that number might be too high! These men decided it was time for JFK to go and LBJ was but one tool for them to utilize.

LBJ would say many times before he died that it was a conspiracy and he fingered the CIA as the doers of it. The CIA also is a tool of these men from what I have read over the years.

[David Sellers]

Phil Nelson, H. Howard Hunt, Barr McClelland, Billy Sol Estes, Madeleine Duncan Brown,
not to mention Jack Ruby and many other experts, including Nigel Turner and Jim Fetzer.

All this shows us is these folks would not be privy to those above the president who were pulling his strings. Most Americans believe the president actually has full powers to govern and set his own path, but this is not true. He is given a mandate to follow and if he deviates from it a la JFK he is removed from office or weakened to the point of being ineffectual in his policies (i.e. Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon).

The men around and above the president are the key ones and we couldn't expect folks like the ones you mentioned to know who they were so they think LBJ was the end all in this matter.

Mr. Morrow does seem to know about these men (or least some of them) so it is really baffling to me why he thinks LBJ was the mastermind.

I agree with Mr. Drago that this is not an issue worth arguing over, but the reality of that will of course will be determined by each of you.

[Charles Drago]

Thank you, Mr. Sellers.

I would submit to you the argument that IS worth making: To elevate falsely LBJ or anyone else to a Sponsor role in the JFK assassination is to protect the true Sponsors, prolong the coverup, open the serious, honorable critical community to ridicule, and further Balkanize that already fractured community.

Best,

Charles

[Phillip F. Nelson]

It is true that I did not read, or even hear of, Seymour Hersh's first book, My Lai 4, which Mr. DiEugenio has noted in his post above. When this story broke, I was doing service for my country; but not in Vietnam, where LBJ would have preferred, but in the Peace Corps in Brazil, thanks to his fallen predecessor, JFK. I was there in the jungle, close to the Amazon, and communications with the outside world were extremely limited. In fact it was limited to the mail, and I was lucky to receive anything other than weekly letters from home. Anyway, I had read Hersh's book Cover Up in 1972, but lost my copy somewhere in the intervening years. I thought that I had remembered that he did talk about the Phoenix program in that book; when I checked Jim's sources (and found that he was saying precisely the opposite of what the book said), I found that my recollection was correct, and that Valentine confirmed it in his 1992 book.

As noted in the "Addendum" piece to Jim Fetzer's post #22 above, DiEugenio originally stated categorically that Hersh had been denying the linkage to the Phoenix Program all along, ever since his original reporting in 1969. (All of this started back on the Education Forum, but then went to the JFK Lancer Forum, before being transplanted here last week. It's as though Jim is "running but can't hide" from mewhich sounds weirdly like Charles Drago was saying about me.) I KNEW that this charge against Hersh was untrue, and protested the distortion immediately, without having even double-checked the sources. Well, it turns out that I was right, of course, and stated that Hersh was anything but "a CIA stooge", as portrayed by DiEugenio:

"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."

Nowhaving backed away from his original and specious claim that Hersh was a CIA stooge who covered up Phoenix for forty years, DiEugenio backed that particular charge down to two years. Jim is now claiming that the Phoenix stuff did not come out until Hersh's book Cover Up in 1972. Here is what Jim said just yesterday:

#120
Now, Nelson insinuates that in footnotes to the Valentine book--which he previously tried to discredit--Doug uses articles written by Hersh in the Ny Times to mention Phoenix. Not so. Doug uses excerpts from the second book. . .

#124
"I was very clear in the above as to why Nelson is wrong about Hersh. I provided titles, dates of the books, straightened out his mis citations, and actually quoted from the second book.

Of those three specific citations in that book to Seymour Hersh, only two were to his book Cover Up, contrary to what DiEugenio just stated so emphatically in his posts yesterday. But the first citation was to his blockbuster article in the New York Times, dated August 25, 1970, which was the first time that anyone publicly suggested that the CIA, through Phoenix, was responsible for Mai Lai. This came only two months after he had published My Lai 4.

So, it turns out that he kept it away from the public a maximum grand total of two months. But it was still HIS NAME in the byline when the story came out on August 25, 1970 in the NY Times. So, the most that could be said about Hersh's "keeping it back" was NOT the two years as he explained it, but for only two months (which is probably explained by hisor, more likely, his publisher'sdesire for caution in handling such an explosive scoop and his desire to cross check sources).

All of the other vague accusations being dogmatically asserted by Jim lack sufficient specificity to evaluate properly; but, whatever it is he thinks might indicate Mr. Hersh is a CIA stooge I can guarantee you are either simply incorrect or distorted in some way. If he is willing to furnish me the specifics of his charges, I will be glad to investigate them thoroughly and come back here in February with a full report (which would be a second exception to my own vow, but don't worry, this won't go on forever). I just feel very strongly that Mr. Hersh has been the victim of a savage and unprovoked attack and when this happens, someone needs to own up to it. For the rest of January, however, I will not return to this site due to numerous conflicting priorities.

OK, I violated my own vow to never return to this website. This "special exception" was not intended to defend myself or the book, but the honorable name of Seymour M. Hersh. However, unlike Mr. Drago, whose chagrin over "his friend" Jim Fetzer's mild rebuke belies how sensitive he is to ad hominem attacks on himself, I do not choose to engage in such childish tactics. When I level criticism at someone or some thing, it is not just empty (and inherently meaningless) attacks on a person's character. But if the examples I cite show that, through their deeds, their character must be flawed, that is not something that I can be blamed for; in that case, the blame must reside at the source of the deed.

All of those ad hominem attacks on me, BTW, even before I had been admitted as a (temporary) member were clearly of the kind that your more objective and rational members will recognize immediately for what they are and from whom they came.
And they belie, I contend, deeply hidden secrets and ulterior motives, as noted in the previous post and which still stand. No attempt has been made to rebut them, not even a lame one, which I am confident others on this forum will find equally disturbing.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I am sure everyone missed you Phil.

BTW, if you are using the online version of Valentine's book, which you said you were, then you are wrong. He sources his material to Hersh's book specifically.

He does not name Hersh as the author of those newspaper pieces.

You did not even know that Hersh wrote two books on the subject. I like the way you try and excuse that. You were out of country at the time. Phil, the book is 40 years old. You could not pick it up in a library? I did. If I am going to use a guy as controversial as Hersh to smear JFK, then I want to know if he is credible. You did not seem to care.

And you ignore the long quote I used to show that he was still trying to have it both ways, even in his second book. Even though it was now strongly suspected that the Phoenix Program was behind the massacre. See, what Hersh does in Cover Up is quite clever. And its the only way to reconcile that long quote, which you avoid, with his mentioning of Phoenix. See, he could not avoid the issue now. So he tried to say that Quang Ngai province--which happened later-- was actually a result of Phoenix. But he wants to to keep My Lai in question. Which is why he writes, "There was no conspiracy to destroy the village of My Lai 4..." (p. 97, Cover Up) When in fact, if it was a Phoenix operation, it had to be. Especially in light of the massive cover up which happened afterwards, which resulted in no jail time for anyone.

Dead wrong about the two months also. Take a look when the letter by Ridenhouer went out and how long Hersh took to write his first book.

And keep on ignoring what else I wrote about Hersh Phil: Watergate, KAL OO7, Loomis and when he started the Dark Side of Camelot.

If I were you I would do the same.

[Charles Drago]

And they belie, I contend, deeply hidden secrets and ulterior motives, as noted in the previous post and which still stand.

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

[David Guyatt]

Charles "Gentleman Bird" Drago

:lol: