"JFK's own dirty trick" by Mark Feldstein [For Nixon to call Kennedy "a dirty politician" is rich]

[James H. Fetzer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...ailarticle

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JFK's own dirty trick

By Mark Feldstein
Friday, January 14, 2011; A21

Fifty years ago next week, Richard Nixon stood uncomfortably on the Capitol's inaugural platform and watched his rival John F. Kennedy being sworn in as president. "We won" the election, Nixon fumed, "but they stole it from us."

Indeed, the dirty tricks that helped defeat Nixon were more devious than merely the ballot-stuffing of political lore. In one of the least-known chapters of 20th-century political history, Kennedy operatives secretly paid off an informant and set in motion a Watergate-like burglary that sabotaged Nixon's campaign on the eve of the election.

It began in the fall of 1960, when the Kennedy campaign spread word that Vice President Nixon had secretly pocketed money from billionaire Howard Hughes, whose far-flung business empire was heavily dependent on government contracts and connections. Reporters for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Time magazine corroborated the allegations, but their editors feared publishing such explosive information in the last days of the tightly fought campaign.

So the Kennedys turned to two crusading liberal columnists, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, who had been attacking Nixon for the past decade. It was "a journalistic atrocity" to conspire with "the Kennedy hawkshaws to help us get the goods on their opponent," Anderson admitted, but scoring a scoop to destroy Nixon was simply too tempting to pass up.

Anderson dropped by the Washington office of Kennedy lawyer James McInerney. With "a pride that only the diligent investigator can know," Anderson recalled, the Kennedy operative pulled out "a neatly arranged packet which I devoured unceremoniously."

The confidential documents revealed how Hughes had funneled to the Nixon family $205,000 (worth about $1.6 million today) using various intermediaries, including one of Nixon's brothers, to disguise the transaction. Later evidence would show that the vice president had personally phoned Hughes to ask for the money, which was used to help Nixon pay for an elegant, 9,000-square-foot Tudor house in Washington with eight bedrooms, six bathrooms, a library, a butler's pantry and a solarium.

How did JFK's campaign obtain this incriminating evidence? By paying the contemporary equivalent of $100,000 to a Los Angeles accountant named Phillip Reiner, one of the Hughes middlemen used to conceal Nixon's role in the deal. Reiner was a Democrat who recently had had a falling-out with his partners. With his attorney, Reiner had contacted Robert Kennedy, his brother's campaign manager. Soon after, a break-in occurred at the accountant's old office - and the Kennedys suddenly acquired a thick file filled with secret records documenting Nixon's shady deal. (Reiner's estranged partner filed a burglary report with the police, but the crime was never solved.)

With hard evidence in hand, the Kennedy camp passed the dirt to Anderson.

News outlets around the country trumpeted the revelations in headlines. The political hit inflicted maximum damage on Nixon and reinforced his conviction that his enemies in the press and politics were out to get him.

Days later, Kennedy was elected president by the narrowest margin in American history to that point. Nixon and his advisers blamed the Hughes scandal. Accurate or not, this perception haunted Nixon for the rest of his public life.

Nixon always believed he was the true winner of the 1960 campaign. He called the Kennedys "the most ruthless group of political operators ever mobilized" and said they "approached campaign dirty tricks with a roguish relish" that "overcame the critical faculties of many reporters."

Indeed, the mysterious break-in to recover Nixon's incriminating financial documents convinced him that such burglaries were standard practice in national politics. Nixon vowed that he would never be caught unprepared again, and he ultimately established his own corps of hard-nosed operatives to carry out espionage and sabotage, which culminated in the botched break-in a dozen years later at the Watergate office of the Democratic Party.

A half-century afterward, Washington still lives with the residue of the Kennedys' little-known dirty trick, which helped unleash our modern scandal culture and continues to influence politics and media today.

Mark Feldstein, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, is the author of "Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington's Scandal Culture."

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[Albert Doyle]

So one can imagine if Nixon had heard of a plot to kill Kennedy or knew of one afterwards that there would be no love lost nor would Nixon be compelled to rush forward and report it. And that's without considering even worse possibilities.

[James H. Fetzer]

Yes. And Madeleine told me that he (Nixon) had been driven out to the home of Clint Murchison the night before the assassination by a local Republican leader, who worked in the same building where Madeleine was a young advertising executive. Others who were present included J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, H.L. Hunt, George Brown (of Brown & Root), and John J. McCloy, whom Lyndon would later appoint as a member of The Warren Commission. LBJ showed up late in the evening and these heavy-hitters disappeared into a board room. After 15-20 minutes, the meeting broke up and Lyndon strode over to her. She expected him to whisper sweet-nothings in her ear, but instead he told her, in a hateful tone of voice, that after tomorrow he wasn't going to have to put up with embarrassment from those goddamn Kennedy boys any longer. Six weeks later, during a rendezvous at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, on New Years' Eve, when she confronted him with rumors, rampant in Dallas at the time, that he had been involved, since no one stood to gain more personally from the assassination, he blew up at her and told her that the oil boys and the CIA had decided that JFK had to be taken out. I mention this, not because the story may not be familiar, but because I heard it from Madeleine herself. The final segment of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy", Part 9, "The Guilty Men", was devoted to this matter and included corroborating testimony from the chauffeur who drove Edgar to the meeting and others who were present at the time. It is therefore unsurprising in the extreme that this segment has been suppressed (along with "The Smoking Guns" and also "The Love Affair").

So one can imagine if Nixon had heard of a plot to kill Kennedy or knew of one afterwards that there would be no love lost nor would Nixon be compelled to rush forward and report it. And that's without considering even worse possibilities.

[Charles Drago]

It is therefore unsurprising in the extreme that this segment has been suppressed (along with "The Smoking Guns" and also "The Love Affair").

A deep political fact of life: Material undernourished by truth may be suppressed in order to magnify its importance.

Such an act qualifies as an exercise in disinformation.

[Dawn Meredith]

Yes. And Madeleine told me that he (Nixon) had been driven out to the home of Clint Murchison the night before the assassination by a local Republican leader, who worked in the same building where Madeleine was a young advertising executive. Others who were present included J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, H.L. Hunt, George Brown (of Brown & Root), and John J. McCloy, whom Lyndon would later appoint as a member of The Warren Commission. LBJ showed up late in the evening and these heavy-hitters disappeared into a board room. After 15-20 minutes, the meeting broke up and Lyndon strode over to her. She expected him to whisper sweet-nothings in her ear, but instead he told her, in a hateful tone of voice, that after tomorrow he wasn't going to have to put up with embarrassment from those goddamn Kennedy boys any longer. Six weeks later, during a rendezvous at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, on New Years' Eve, when she confronted him with rumors, rampant in Dallas at the time, that he had been involved, since no one stood to gain more personally from the assassination, he blew up at her and told her that the oil boys and the CIA had decided that JFK had to be taken out. I mention this, not because the story may not be familiar, but because I heard it from Madeleine herself. The final segment of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy", Part 9, "The Guilty Men", was devoted to this matter and included corroborating testimony from the chauffeur who drove Edgar to the meeting and others who were present at the time. It is therefore unsurprising in the extreme that this segment has been suppressed (along with "The Smoking Guns" and also "The Love Affair").

So one can imagine if Nixon had heard of a plot to kill Kennedy or knew of one afterwards that there would be no love lost nor would Nixon be compelled to rush forward and report it. And that's without considering even worse possibilities.

This is a very curious story. Ms. Brown also said that the party was written up in the Dallas paper but the story was never found. Jay Harrsion put a lot of time into trying to find this write up without success. (Jack, Jim can you address this point?) Then there is the employee who worked for Murchinson who was also on THe Guilty Men and said the party occurred and named the guests backing up Ms. Brown's claim. (I had forgotten about the driver until just reading it) Yet LBJ was also giving a speech hours away. I wondered if his twin like cousin was perhaps standing in.

All in all this story is pretty incredible and difficult to believe. I too found Ms. Brown credible when I met her in Dallas in 1998. And charming. BUT I have always wondered if she loved the man so much why did she spill so much of his alleged dirty laundry? In part this may be answered by the way their son was treated. It is even speculated that his death in his 20s may have not been natural.

A curious mess, indeed.

Dawn

[Jim DiEugenio]

Dawn:

I have never put any stock in the Murchison party tale. I once did a lot of work on it and traced the exact line of it. It is all second and third hand stuff that originated with Penn jones, who said he talked to some chaffeur who was allegedly there. It then grew arms and legs until the point that LBJ, Nixon, and if you can believe it Hoover and McCLoy were there. What pure sliced baloney.

And please do not ever even mention Nigel Turner again. How that guy wasted a golden opportunity just completely aggravates me. What a complete goofball he turned out to be. Playing right into the hands of the enemy.

But let us turn to this story above, which now surfaces--how many years after the fact? In the Washington Post of course. WHo is it sourced to? Jack ANderson of course. Felix Rodriguez's best buddy. The guy who had the Watergate story BEFORE IT HAPPENED, and still let it occur. There is a piece of Sy Hersh accomodation for you.

So now, here comes Anderson and Pearson, in the WP guise of 'crusading liberals" now dumping out this story. And this of course is supposed to justify Nixon breaking into Watergate.

Get this, the implication is that the Kennedys paid a 100K, for what? SOmeone to break into some lawyer's office? Come on. Or they paid the lawyer the 100K and he phonied up a break in? Why? Why not just slip the documents to a cut out surreptitiously. Happens all the time.

Anderson had ties to the Hughes corporation for a long time. And this Hughes sloan to Nixon's brother had been out there for years. In fact, Jim Phelan, who also had ties to Hughes, knew about it for long time.

Jack ANderson has been muddying the waters on the JFK case for decades. All the way back to 1967, when he interviewed Garrison and wrote it up for the FBI. He then tried to blame the assassination on Castro by screwing up the whole CIA assassination plot, and then implicating Bobby in the whole mess.

Anderson and the WP, in bed again.

[Seamus Coogan]

Yes. And Madeleine told me that he (Nixon) had been driven out to the home of Clint Murchison the night before the assassination by a local Republican leader, who worked in the same building where Madeleine was a young advertising executive. Others who were present included J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, H.L. Hunt, George Brown (of Brown & Root), and John J. McCloy, whom Lyndon would later appoint as a member of The Warren Commission. LBJ showed up late in the evening and these heavy-hitters disappeared into a board room. After 15-20 minutes, the meeting broke up and Lyndon strode over to her. She expected him to whisper sweet-nothings in her ear, but instead he told her, in a hateful tone of voice, that after tomorrow he wasn't going to have to put up with embarrassment from those goddamn Kennedy boys any longer. Six weeks later, during a rendezvous at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, on New Years' Eve, when she confronted him with rumors, rampant in Dallas at the time, that he had been involved, since no one stood to gain more personally from the assassination, he blew up at her and told her that the oil boys and the CIA had decided that JFK had to be taken out. I mention this, not because the story may not be familiar, but because I heard it from Madeleine herself. The final segment of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy", Part 9, "The Guilty Men", was devoted to this matter and included corroborating testimony from the chauffeur who drove Edgar to the meeting and others who were present at the time. It is therefore unsurprising in the extreme that this segment has been suppressed (along with "The Smoking Guns" and also "The Love Affair").

So one can imagine if Nixon had heard of a plot to kill Kennedy or knew of one afterwards that there would be no love lost nor would Nixon be compelled to rush forward and report it. And that's without considering even worse possibilities.

This is a very curious story. Ms. Brown also said that the party was written up in the Dallas paper but the story was never found. Jay Harrsion put a lot of time into trying to find this write up without success. (Jack, Jim can you address this point?) Then there is the employee who worked for Murchinson who was also on THe Guilty Men and said the party occurred and named the guests backing up Ms. Brown's claim. (I had forgotten about the driver until just reading it) Yet LBJ was also giving a speech hours away. I wondered if his twin like cousin was perhaps standing in.

All in all this story is pretty incredible and difficult to believe. I too found Ms. Brown credible when I met her in Dallas in 1998. And charming. BUT I have always wondered if she loved the man so much why did she spill so much of his alleged dirty laundry? In part this may be answered by the way their son was treated. It is even speculated that his death in his 20s may have not been natural.

A curious mess, indeed.

Dawn

My full treatise on Alex Jones can be seen here.

http://www.ctka.net/2010/coogan_ajones_pt1.html

It never made its way to the Deep Politics Forum. Though I am sure most people have seen the full thing by now.

As it stands I hope that when combined with Jims knowledge of the Brown party stories evolution that these excerpts from the article single out a number of the problems with her story for anyone interested.

Seamus.

9:36 Minutes: Johnson and Pussy Galore:

Almost on top of Jones "blue blood" call, he then promotes Madeleine Brown. Brown may have met Democratic congressman Lyndon Johnson at a party in 1948 in Austin, and may have been one of his many female friends. It's ironic that Johnson purportedly bestowed the name Pussy Galore on her because Miss Galore, like Brown, is a fiction. (Bennett Woods, LBJ Architect of American Ambition, pg, 247). Brown's most way-out claim is that she was present at a secret party in Texas where Richard Nixon, John McLoy, J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, and oil baron Clint Murchison, Sr.or his son Junior, depending on whose concocted story you readand other luminaries planned Kennedy's assassination on the evening of the 21st of November, 1963.

Firstly, Johnson himself was seen by a few thousand people and filmed that night in the company of President Kennedy at the Houston Coliseum. Johnson didn't arrive in Fort Worth until 11.05 pm on the night of the 21st of November, and it is roundly reported that he wound up his day in the same hotel at a very late hour with his advisors. (William Manchester, Death of a President, pgs. 135, 138).

The same goes for Dick Nixon, who was in town that night with Joan Crawford. This was widely reported in the Dallas press and was still being reported until fairly late that evening. (The Dallas Morning News, Friday, November 22, 1963, Section 1-19) Kai Bird's autobiography describes John McCloy hearing the news of the assassination while having breakfast with former President Eisenhower. (The Chairman, p. 544) As for Hoover, according to Anthony Summers, it is highly likely (to the point of absolute certainty) that J. Edgar Hoover, like McCloy, was nowhere near Texas at the time. For instance, the next day he was calling Bobby Kennedy from his Washington office at around 1:34 P.M EST with news of the shooting. (Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 394).

In fact, in none of the standard biographies of HooverPowers, Theoharis, Gentry, or Summersdoes anyone note him being in Texas that evening. A Dallas-to-Washington round trip is around 3-4 hours each way. Why would two very powerful and highly visible 68-year-olds fly to Dallas, Texas to meet with Johnson at some ungodly hour, well after 11:00 P.M CST, compromising themselves in the process, and then fly back from Dallas, arriving home anywhere between 3:00-5:00 AM the following morning? Why do all that when a sinister meeting in Washington could have easily been arranged prior to events. And anyway, as Jim DiEugenio has said, the idea of organizing the plot just a night before is silly (Please see: Jim DiEugenio; Black Op Radio, Show #476, May 28, 2010.) ........................................

Had Jones (or his researchers) ever bothered to look around the Kennedy critical community, he would have found that potential "Johnson did it" allieslike Doug Weldonrepeatedly tried to interview and question Brown with legitimate questions; yet she constantly evaded such questioning. (Doug Weldon: Spartacus Education Forum, post of 4/25/10)

But the hypocrisy and contradiction surrounding Brown continues unabated. Jones' top researcher, Paul Watson, makes a big deal about Johnson's highly improbable statement to Brown, "Those SOB's will never embarrass me again." What Watson doesn't tell anybody is that Johnson had also told Brown that oilmen and the CIA had killed Kennedy. The evidence clearly shows that Johnson had grave doubts about the assassination, and was unconvinced, as was Hoover, with the evidence days after the assassination. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 283)

[James H. Fetzer]

Well, I don't understand your skepticism. There is nothing all that "curious" about the story. There were many social events at the Murchison's, especially when Edgar was in Dallas on his way to the Del Mar. I know another person who was also very close to Madeleine and knows the story and that the event occurred. Just what was there about Nigel Turner's "The Guilty Men" that you question? All these pieces fit into a complex puzzle, which, when you have enough pieces, resembles Lyndon Baines Johnson. And Steven died of bone marrow cancer. He made the mistake of making a claim against the estate seeking recognition of his status as LBJ's son and paid a heavy price for it. I had more than 100 conversations with Madeleine and I most certainly believe in her.

Yes. And Madeleine told me that he (Nixon) had been driven out to the home of Clint Murchison the night before the assassination by a local Republican leader, who worked in the same building where Madeleine was a young advertising executive. Others who were present included J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, H.L. Hunt, George Brown (of Brown & Root), and John J. McCloy, whom Lyndon would later appoint as a member of The Warren Commission. LBJ showed up late in the evening and these heavy-hitters disappeared into a board room. After 15-20 minutes, the meeting broke up and Lyndon strode over to her. She expected him to whisper sweet-nothings in her ear, but instead he told her, in a hateful tone of voice, that after tomorrow he wasn't going to have to put up with embarrassment from those goddamn Kennedy boys any longer. Six weeks later, during a rendezvous at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, on New Years' Eve, when she confronted him with rumors, rampant in Dallas at the time, that he had been involved, since no one stood to gain more personally from the assassination, he blew up at her and told her that the oil boys and the CIA had decided that JFK had to be taken out. I mention this, not because the story may not be familiar, but because I heard it from Madeleine herself. The final segment of "The Men Who Killed Kennedy", Part 9, "The Guilty Men", was devoted to this matter and included corroborating testimony from the chauffeur who drove Edgar to the meeting and others who were present at the time. It is therefore unsurprising in the extreme that this segment has been suppressed (along with "The Smoking Guns" and also "The Love Affair").

So one can imagine if Nixon had heard of a plot to kill Kennedy or knew of one afterwards that there would be no love lost nor would Nixon be compelled to rush forward and report it. And that's without considering even worse possibilities.

This is a very curious story. Ms. Brown also said that the party was written up in the Dallas paper but the story was never found. Jay Harrsion put a lot of time into trying to find this write up without success. (Jack, Jim can you address this point?) Then there is the employee who worked for Murchinson who was also on THe Guilty Men and said the party occurred and named the guests backing up Ms. Brown's claim. (I had forgotten about the driver until just reading it) Yet LBJ was also giving a speech hours away. I wondered if his twin like cousin was perhaps standing in.

All in all this story is pretty incredible and difficult to believe. I too found Ms. Brown credible when I met her in Dallas in 1998. And charming. BUT I have always wondered if she loved the man so much why did she spill so much of his alleged dirty laundry? In part this may be answered by the way their son was treated. It is even speculated that his death in his 20s may have not been natural.

A curious mess, indeed.

Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

Jim D, we agree to disagree about Nigel Turner. I loved that show. Yes there were some serious errors but overall it was a marvelous series and that it was on tv right after JFK was wonderful. Got lots of people thinking about the assassination as conspiracy.

I totally agree about Jack Anderson, he has lied about JFK and the assassination as long as I can remember. In the 70's trying to link Castro ...I never trusted him.
Remember he also lied about Tom Eagleton, McGovern's first veep choice. Said he had a drunking driving conviction. A total lie.

I loved Anthony Summer's work Conspiracy BUT I don't trust him. He went out of his way to smear Jim Garrsion trying to link him to the Mob. And of course Garrison called him "One of the CIA's more accomodating prostitutes".

Thanks Jim F for reminding me of Steve. I knew that a long time ago but had forgotten the details.

Now the party? I just don't know. It just seems way to pat to be believed. And Ms Brown had a powerful motive to augment her story. I absolutely believe she was LBJ's mistress and that they had a son. If he was indeed murdered because he made a claim then I can see why she would tell all and then some.

I see neither Jim nor Jack has addressed the society column- Van Ims or something like who allegedly wrote of the party. The column was never to be found. Why would Ms. Brown say there was such a story? Revenge perhaps?
Dawn

[James H. Fetzer]

Bear in mind, Dawn, that newspaper articles can appear after-the-fact, as in the case of the (obviously fabricated) article about Robert Adams (which includes the wrong day of the week and of the month, Thursday, the 23rd, for his alleged photo in Dealey Plaza), but they can also disappear. I know of a reporter in Dallas whose story about the Parkland press conference was changed by an editor to add that the physicians were not sure if the wounds had been caused by one shot or two, which was not in the original story, and a similar sentence appears in Tom Wicker's classic coverage in The New York Times. I did not mean to ignore this question, but I want to do some research before I respond about it. This report has been around a long time and this woman was not vengeful or motivated by money. She was simply telling the story of her love affair with LBJ, which was on the order of common knowledge in Dallas at the time. Lyndon showed up very late and someone--it could be Robert Morrow or Phil Nelson, I'll have to check--has studied the time line and found that it was possible for him to have made the visit to Murchison's home that evening. The meeting would hae been pointless without him, of course, since it was a final ratification of going forward with the assassination. There are spiteful people involved today, but Madeleine was most certainly not among them. I'll get back on this.

Jim D, we agree to disagree about Nigel Turner. I loved that show. Yes there were some serious errors but overall it was a marvelous series and that it was on tv right after JFK was wonderful. Got lots of people thinking about the assassination as conspiracy.

I totally agree about Jack Anderson, he has lied about JFK and the assassination as long as I can remember. In the 70's trying to link Castro ...I never trusted him.
Remember he also lied about Tom Eagleton, McGovern's first veep choice. Said he had a drunking driving conviction. A total lie.

I loved Anthony Summer's work Conspiracy BUT I don't trust him. He went out of his way to smear Jim Garrsion trying to link him to the Mob. And of course Garrison called him "One of the CIA's more accomodating prostitutes".

Thanks Jim F for reminding me of Steve. I knew that a long time ago but had forgotten the details.

Now the party? I just don't know. It just seems way to pat to be believed. And Ms Brown had a powerful motive to augment her story. I absolutely believe she was LBJ's mistress and that they had a son. If he was indeed murdered because he made a claim then I can see why she would tell all and then some.

I see neither Jim nor Jack has addressed the society column- Van Ims or something like who allegedly wrote of the party. The column was never to be found. Why would Ms. Brown say there was such a story? Revenge perhaps?
Dawn