Over the past few years a spate of books and articles has
emerged pointing the finger of guilt at Lyndon Johnson for the murder of
President John Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. We believe that
the case is overdone, with the very distinct possibility that Johnson is only
guilty of complicity in the coup's aftermath in order to preserve his life.
We had veered from that position after initially stating it
a few years ago, when we were swept up with parts of the Johnson did it hysteria. We
never believed that Johnson was the mastermind, but we came to believe that he
was a cheer leader and possible participant in The Big Event. Much circumstantial
evidence supported a plausible case against Johnson.
Some of the key evidences against Johnson include his abrupt
and brutal eviction of Jackie Kennedy from the White House after her husband’s
assassination, his complete reversal of Kennedy’s Vietnam withdrawal policy,
his many crimes in which he was implicated vis a vis Bobby Baker, Billy
Sol Estes, Mac Wallace, and legions more, all of which gave Johnson strong
motivation to replace Kennedy as commander-in-chief. And let’s not forget the
story that Kennedy planned to dump Johnson in the 1964 race.
There was also the close association of Johnson with John
Connally who was deeply involved in the crime, thus creating guilt by
association.
Recently we came across material from John Hankey which
returned us to our earlier Johnson position, namely that Johnson was caught up in events over which he had little control. Hankey’s proposition is all the
more attractive due to the shrill and inundating chorus of claimants charging
Johnson with guilt, recalling to mind the Shakespearean line, “Methinks the
lady doth protest too much.”
This relates closely to the allegation by Hunt in his so
called death bed confession that Johnson was guilty. As Hankey notes, this is
probably a sign of innocence, as Hunt, the mother of all scum bags and
murderers, was simply lying one last lie as he gave up his last putrid breath.
To put a blunt point on Hunt’s moral and criminal squalor,
Hankey relates how Hunt planted forged memos in the National Archives
documenting Kennedy’s authorization to murder South Vietnam’s Diem. The truth
is that the CIA in an act of treason and rebellion defied Kennedy by murdering
Diem.
Hankey notes that Johnson’s withdrawal from the 1968
election is completely at odds with power lust driving someone to murder. Why
would Johnson give up the presidency so easily if he spent and risked so much,
including murder, to obtain it?
Johnson’s tapes indicate contempt for the military brass,
men who could easily be mistaken for cave dwelling troglodytes. Johnson wrote
that the war in Viet Nam was an unwinnable and foolish squandering of men. Yet
he went along with it. But the larger question remains - why would Johnson speak ill of men with whom he was supposed to conspire for an aggression he found so foolish?
In conversations with Senator Russell Long, whose arm he twisted to serve
on the Warren Commission, Johnson expressed that he didn’t believe the lone gunman
theory, and on rare occasion expressed privately his complete contempt for the
Warren Commission Report.
One could argue that Johnson was patronizing Long, but this comment is one of a string suggesting that Johnson had no confidence in the lone nut theory, and thus was not a member of the cabal which murdered the president.
The problem is that Johnson was, like E Howard Hunt, a
scumbag and easy target. But being a scumbag is not the same as being a
murderer, but made him an easy target for Bush Crime Syndicate member Barr McClellan who painted Johnson as the murderer.
The best explanation of Johnson’s actions is that he was
caught in a vice. In order to preserve his own life, he needed to play his role
as the coup leaders' stool pigeon in hope that the corrupt Nazi regime would not end his career the way it ended his predecessor's.
Another story Hankey reports is that of a conversation with
Connally and Johnson where the former tells the latter that Oswald was an agent
of Cuba’s Castro, and thus grounds for invasion of Cuba. This argument is
precisely what the murderers promulgated but Johnson told Connally he would
have nothing to do with it, strongly implying that Johnson was not a member of
the murder cabal because he was not "on message."
More significantly it shows that Johnson was not
blackmailable on this point as he would indeed be if he were part of the
conspiracy against Kennedy.
In a turn of the tables against Johnson, Hankey suggests with credible logic that Johnson’s ability to pass Medicare when previous
attempts failed is that Johnson had blackmail information on many Republican
Congressmen who were in some way associated with the murder. Hankey cites Paul Kangas on this angle, but we admit that it is speculative.
In perhaps the highlight of his brief on Johnson, Hankey
strongly suggests that Johnson was murdered. The former president did not aid
his cause when he told the The Atlantic in June 1971 that the US was running
Murder, Inc in the Caribbean, most likely short hand for the larger murder
enterprise of the CIA in the United States in 1963 and beyond.
Hankey quotes historian Stephen Ambrose's introduction
to the Bob Haldeman biography that if Johnson did not call off investigations
into improprieties in the 1972 campaign that Nixon would reveal that Johnson had bugged Nixon’s
plane in the 1968 campaign. But Johnson had bugged Nixon’s plane because he
found out that Rockefeller thug Henry Kissinger was in Vietnam sabotaging the
peace talks just as George Bush would do with Jimmy Carter’s attempt to release
hostages prior to the 1980 election.
Johnson then threatened, according to his diary, on January
12, 1973, that he would release information about Nixon and … Unfortunately the Carter NSC
excised the information due to “national security.” The only threat to national
domestic security was revelation that Nixon was involved in sabotaging the
Paris Peace Talks. Or did it also include the “Bay of Pigs thing” – the Kennedy
murder?
When Johnson died 10 days later, it was no accident suggests
Hankey. His silence was required and thus obtained.
We give our endorsement of the Hankey scenario because it
fits the facts better than other theories and accounts for the accusers'
vehement assaults on Johnson – who is no saint by any stretch of the
imagination. We thus come full circle in our view of the case, proving the old adage that the first guess is usually the best guess.
Reference
John Hankey,
www.thedarklegacy.com, accessed 11/16/2013
Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.