Johnson Lyndon Baines - LBJ: the Mastermind of the JFK Assassination

LBJ

The Mastermind

of the JFK

Assassination

Phillip F. Nelson

Skyhorse Publishing

This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife, Karen,
without whose love, understanding, and patience I would
not have been able to complete it.

Copyright 2011 by Phillip F. Nelson

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

www.skyhorsepublishing.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61608-377-9

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to the people who have been immensely helpful to me in the process of completing this book. For the first edition, they included Noel Twyman, Doug Horne, and Larry Hancock, the authors of some of the best, most comprehensive works on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Noels book covered the complexities of this subject more comprehensively than any other author, and Dougs book added even more depth to that body of information. Larrys book, originally published in 2006, contains a wealth of information he had gathered from his review of thousands of documents, White House diaries, telephone logs, and tape recordings. Moreover, Larry assisted me by doing a peer review of an early draft of the manuscript and continued to offer suggestions as further work on the firstand then the secondedition of the book was prepared.

The author of the most important book ever published on the Warren Commission, Gerald McKnight, PhD, was also very supportive to me before and after the first edition of the book was published. Douglas Caddy, the former attorney for Billie Sol Estes who assisted Estes in his attempt to come clean with the Justice Department in 1984, has also been very helpful to me in gaining a better understanding about that incident and the reasons the effort was unsuccessful. Author James H. Fetzer, PhD, has been particularly accomodating in assisting with a number of improvements for this editionincluding the revision to the shot sequence narrative that is arguably the best summary ever written on that pointas well as supporting the book through his book reviews, essays, and his postings on various Internet forums.

Thanks to one of many acts of kindness by researcher Robert P. Morrow, of Austin, Texas, I made contact with other longtime researchers, including Connie Kritzberg, who was a news reporter/editor for the Dallas Times Herald in 1963; her firsthand memories have troubled her ever since that tragic weekend. Connies account of having a news report she wrote on November 22, 1963, surreptitiously co-opted by the FBI has been added to this edition because of its gravity; it was one of the first indications that unseen forces were already at work to manage the outcome of the case and was one more incident among the many which must not be lost in the shuffle as so many of the details become more and more blurred with time.

The many other books listed in the bibliography have all contributed in some way to the development of this book. They represent the most likely aspects which have been combined and distilled into a story which probably could have been proven in court decades ago, if the facts now known had then been available.

Finally, I am very indebted to Tony Lyons, of Skyhorse Publishing, for the opportunity of having the book professionally redone, and David Schwartz, for his valuable work in transforming the original manuscript into a much easier read while simultaneously strenghening the case regarding Johnsons involvement in JFKs assassination. I am also grateful to Yvette Grant in the Skyhorse production department, whose help with numerous corrections and her meticulous eye was much appreciated. The result is a greatly improved book, one that will be much more likely to eventually cause the general public to begin to accept the awful truth of what happened in Dallas nearly fifty years ago.

INTRODUCTION

When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains,. however improbable, must be the truth.

SHERLOCK HOLMES
(A. C. DOYLES THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET)

I n 1963, I was a recent high school graduate who had begun working at Chicagos OHare Airport to save money for college; like everyone else alive at that time, I was stunned at the assassination of JFK and confused about the character of the new president, Lyndon Johnson. The only thing widely known about him were stories that magazines such as Look, Colliers, Life, and Time had recently printed; the stories were generally discomforting because they seemed to produce more questions than answers about the new president.

While working in the main terminal one day in the summer of 1964, Henry Wade, the Dallas district attorney, and his wife approached the counter to check in for a flight to Traverse City, Michigan; Wades name had often appeared in news accounts coming from Dallas. They both looked bored and tired after their flight from Dallas but immediately responded when I asked, Are you the Henry Wade of Dallas? Mrs. Wade was the first to respond with a smile and an excited Yes! Henry also managed a little smile, and nodded; there was at least a streak of shyness about him, which came as a surprise for some reason. Apparently, no one else had recognized them, and neither would I have if I hadnt seen their tickets. This was before the Warren Report was published, and I resisted the urge to ask Mr. Wade any questions regarding his most important, if fleeting, case; I merely stated my hope that their work (by their, meaning everyone involved in the investigation and adjudication) would soon resolve the confusion and distress that continued to afflict the country. He said thanks, and left with Mrs. Wade to board the airplane.

What I know now, but didnt then, is that Henry Wade was merely one man of many who were being managed by that same new president to go along with a number of odd requests from Washington, all of which were shrouded in a mysterious blanket of national security concerns related to Kennedys assassination. The cold war was reaching the boiling point; in fact, it had remained on high heat since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and people argued over whether Kennedy had handled it well or not. Those who felt he had not thought he had missed an opportunity to invade Cuba and send Castro packing and rid the Western Hemisphere of the Soviet Union and the menace of Communism. When the verdict of the Warren Commission was announcedthat the assassination was the work of a single lone nut?the continued declaration of the national security canard, especially with respect to locking away all the remaining evidence (that which wasnt already destroyed) for seventy-five years, began to ring hollow: If the crime was such a simple case of a lone nut, a misguided Communist, why exactly was so much of the case being treated so secretly?