Did Johnson Murder Kennedy?

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.