Brown claimed she saw the Suite 8F group together the night before the Kennedy assassination, at a party in Murchison’s Dallas mansion. Other guests she claimed to have seen at the party were Richard Nixon, who saw the meeting only as a social function, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who, as a semi-regular attendant of Suite 8F gatherings, knew the more sinister intentions of the gathering.
“He hobnobbed with those people,” Brown said of Hoover, “particularly Clint.”9
Hoover had been friends with Murchison for many years, accepting free vacations to his California estate, Hotel del Charro, to curry favor. Staying at the Murchison’s hotel, Hoover would rub shoulders with Big Oil , the CIA, and the Mafia. He would frequent the local Del Mar racetrack also owned by Murchison. Similar to Johnson’s relationship with Murchison, Hoover’s was mutually beneficial.
“Hoover alerted his Del Mar buddies Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson to forthcoming regulatory agency—and Supreme Court—decisions, through their Washington lobbyist Tommy Webb,” Curt Gentry wrote in J. Edgar Hoover: A Man and the Secrets. “In return, in addition to picking up the tab for Hoover’s and Tolson’s annual southern California vacations, the two Texas wheeler dealers (Murchison and Richardson) gave the FBI director tips on oil stocks and, on more than a few occasions, complimentary stock.”10
The relationship between the construction firm Brown and Root and Lyndon Johnson, which started in 1937 with the building of the Marshall Ford Dam, would be a blueprint for the Suite 8F crowd.
Prior to the construction of the Austin-area dam, Brown and Root, a company founded by brothers Herman and George Brown with Dan Root, was a small construction business primarily building roads to accommodate the rapidly growing use of automobiles.11 With their business dwindling in the Depression era, Brown and Root turned to former Texas state senator and behind-the-scenes player Alvin J. Wirtz to help secure the dam project.12 Wirtz, who would later become a Suite 8F member, used his government influence and persuasion to acquire the dam project for Brown and Root, a company that had never built a dam before.13 As Brown and Root became more connected with the government, they were frequently awarded big contracts for which they were not the best qualified.
“To be road builders, you have to know about concrete and asphalt,” George Brown said at the time. “You have to learn something about bridges. Once you learn these things, it’s only a step, if you’re not afraid, to pour concrete for a dam. And if you get into the dam business, you’ll pick up a lot of information about power plants … each component of a new job involves things you’ve done before.”14
The dam project caught a snag when Brown and Root found out that it was not being built on land owned by the federal government, which made its construction unlawful. Wirtz in turn got the twenty-eight-year-old Lyndon Johnson, who was looking for support in run for US Congress, to petition the president for his allowance to continue construction.15
Franklin Roosevelt, impressed by Johnson and his voracious support for the New Deal, gave the project his blessing.
“Give the kid the dam,” directed the president.16
It would later be said that the life and career of Johnson was built on the Marshall Ford Dam. The same was true of Brown and Root and their business of plying politicians with favors and money to get government contracts.
It was, in the words of Johnson, “a joint venture … Wirtz is going to take care of the legal part, and I’m going to take care of the politics, and you’re going to take care of the business end of it … The three of us together will come up with a solution that will improve the status of all three of us.”17
In 1947, Brown and Root founded Texas Eastern Transmission. For a $143 million cash investment, the company had bought the “Big Inch” and “Little Inch” pipelines, which had been laid during World War II and carried oil from Texas up to the Northeastern United States.18 Interest in Texas Eastern Transmission was bought by many of the Suite 8F crowd including Ed Clark, the attorney known as the “secret boss of Texas,” a man Barr McClellan connected to many a Johnson crime.
When Johnson reached the Senate, Brown and Root pushed him to help put an end to federal regulation of the oil industry. Deregulation would privatize the business for Texas Eastern Transmission, allowing them to dramatically raise the prices on natural gas, reaping a huge profit for the company and its investors. In order for the deregulation to become reality, Johnson would have to rid the Federal Power Commission (FPC) of its head, Leland Olds, a strict enforcer of the Natural Gas Act of 1938.
“This [Olds’s defeat] transcended philosophy, this would put something in their pockets,” said former Texas Governor John Connally. “This was the real bread-and-butter issue to these oilmen. So this would prove whether Lyndon was reliable, that he was no New Dealer. This was his chance to get in with dozens of oilmen—to bring very powerful rich men into his fold, who had never been for him, and were still suspicious of him. So for Lyndon this was the way to turn it around: take care of this guy.”19
Johnson, in his plan to rid the oil industry of Leland Olds, would chair the subcommittee investigating Olds’s renomination to the FPC in 1949. Helping Johnson dig dirt on Olds was Alvin Wirtz, who along with representing the interests of Johnson and Brown and Root, was also a Texas oil lobbyist. The key to the attack on Olds was painting him as a communist by using articles written by the FPC head that were printed in communist magazines through a newswire twenty years before.
“Yes, unbelievable as it seems, gentlemen, this man Leland Olds, the man who now asks the consent and approval of the senate to serve on the Federal Power Commission, has not believed in our constitution, our government, our congress, our representative form of government, our churches, our flag, our schools, our system of free enterprise,”20 said Texas Congressman John Lyle to the subcommittee.
Following the hearings, the character of Olds was effectively damaged, his career was ruined, and Texas oil had the deregulation they needed and the politician they wanted in Lyndon Johnson.
Getting in bed with Big Oil helped Johnson with cash and connections. While campaigning for a Senate seat in 1948, he advocated for the oil-depletion allowance. When he won, Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn fought any legislation against what amounted to a massive tax break.
The depletion allowance was a loophole for Texas oilmen to avoid paying heavy taxes on income. It was “a special provision of the federal income tax under which oil producers can treat up to 27.5% of their income as exempt from income tax-supposedly to compensate for the depletion of oil reserves. In effect, this provision gave the oil industry (and a few others) a lower tax rate than other industries.”21
John Kennedy, when campaigning for president, realized the importance of upholding the depletion allowance. It went hand-in-hand with putting Johnson on the ticket to elicit the Southern vote. Furthermore, Joe Kennedy had been a big supporter of and prospered from Big Oil. A strong stance against the allowance could have easily killed Kennedy’s chances of victory.
“I am not kidding when I say we are lost,” John Connally told Lyndon Johnson during the 1960 presidential campaign. “If Kennedy comes out for the repeal—or anything that can be interpreted that way—there is no power on earth that can save us.”22
Kennedy, while campaigning, wanted to make “clear my recognition of the value and importance of the oil-depletion allowance. I realize its importance and value… . The oil-depletion allowance has served us well.”23 His words assured Big Oil and the men of Suite 8F.
Like the Mafia and the CIA’s cold warriors, the oilmen would see a very different and unexpected man when Kennedy became president. On January 24, 1961, less than a week after his inauguration, President Kennedy presented a bill to Congress that “called into question both the principle and the rates of the fiscal privileges, the improper use of tax dollars, and the depletion allowance.”24
There is no doubt that Kennedy saw a danger in Big Oil’s massive profits gained through ben
eficial legislation.
“Now is the time to act,” said Kennedy. “We cannot afford to be timid or slow.”25
Once again, Kennedy would make powerful enemies who would require his exit from office to continue their flow of massive subsidized wealth.
In stark contrast to the Kennedys, Johnson was always about helping those who helped him. In the years following the Marshall Ford Dam project, Brown and Root had also got involved in military projects, beginning with building boats for the Navy.
“We didn’t know the stern from the aft—I mean the bow—of the boat,” George Brown later said.26
Four days after the death of President Kennedy, Johnson signed National Security Action Memorandum 273 (NSAM 273), setting the stage for increased assistance to the South Vietnamese, which would not only be a military effort but a, “political, economical, social, educational, and informational effort.”27
The signing of NSAM 273 nullified President Kennedy’s own memorandum, NSAM 263, set “to withdraw the bulk of US personnel by the end of 1965.” Kennedy’s view of the turmoil in Vietnam was realistic. “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there,” Kennedy said in an interview with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963. “In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.”28
Where Kennedy saw a futile effort and an unforgivable death toll, Johnson saw opportunity and a commitment to his donors. During the Kennedy administration, in keeping good relations with the war hawks, Johnson was provided with intelligence reports on Vietnam that were held back from JFK.29
Johnson had “a charm based on pure self-interest,” said journalist Murray Kempton, “which makes him, in a sense, the only truly Marxist materialist political figure we have ever had.”30
Four months later, after signing NSAM 273, Johnson initiated NSAM 288, signing into action an American takeover of the activities in Vietnam. And in August of 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, two separate confrontations perceived as North Vietnamese aggression against American ships would give Lyndon Johnson the impetus needed to push the Vietnam War to a full launch. In reality, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was full of bent truths and fabrications. During the first confrontation on August 2, it was discovered later (and not initially reported by the Johnson administration) that the destroyer USS Maddox had fired first. The second confrontation, on August 4, was not a confrontation at all.
“For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there,” Johnson would later say of the incident.31
Along with Raymond/Morrison-Knudsen and J. A. Jones Construction, Brown and Root, by then a subsidiary of Halliburton, were given roughly 90 percent of construction projects in Vietnam.32 Working under the acronym RMK–BRJ, these companies dubbed themselves the “Vietnam Builders.”33
Speaking about the need of construction in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara would explain that military involvement “in a country of this sort requires the construction of new ports, warehouse facilities, access roads, improvements to highways leading to the interior of the country and along the coasts, troop facilities, hospitals, completely new airfields, and major improvements to existing airfields, communications facilities, etc.”34
Over a billion dollars was paid to the companies for the construction projects, sparking the interest of Donald Rumsfeld, then a young congressman, who pushed for a probe into the “thirty-year association between LBJ as congressman, senator, vice president, and president”35 and Brown and Root.
Seeing the potential for malfeasance, Rumsfeld said “under one contract between the US government and this combine, it is officially estimated that obligations will reach at least $900 million by November 1967 … Why this huge contract has not been and is not now being adequately audited is beyond me. The potential for waste and profiteering under such a contract is substantial.”36
Bell Helicopter, the company that contributed to Johnson’s 1948 Senate campaign with money and transportation, also found fortune in Vietnam. It was given a contract to mass-produce the signature UH-1 Huey gunship helicopter for transporting troops and supplies as well as performing reconnaissance work.37
“We went from shipping fifty helicopters to shipping two hundred helicopters per contract order,” said a former Bell employee. “That was a huge jump.” The employee added that “Vietnam made Bell.”38
A note written from George Brown to Johnson in his early years as a congressman is revealing of Johnson’s loyalties:
Dear Lyndon,
In the past I have not been very timid about asking you to do favors for me and hope that you will not get any timid about asking you to do favors for me and hope that you will not get any timidity if you have anything at all that you think I can or should do. Remember that I am for you, right or wrong, and it makes no difference whether I think you are right or wrong. If you want it, I am for it 100 percent.39
It was a model for success that would continue for decades. In 1995, Halliburton would hire former congressman and Washington insider Dick Cheney. To benefit the company, Cheney would provide the ability to “open doors around the world and to have access practically anywhere… . There was a lot that he could bring in the way of customer relationships.”40
NOTES
1. Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson, pgs. 204–205.
2. Ibid.
3. Baker, Wheeling and Dealing, pg. 34.
4. Caro, Master of the Senate, pg. 336.
5. Briody, The Halliburton Agenda, pg. 121.
6. Ibid, pgs. 133-134.
7. Ross, www.youtube.com/watch?v=POmdd6HQsus.
8. Houston Chronicle, August 4, 2003.
9. Ross, www.youtube.com/watch?v=POmdd6HQsus.
10. Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and his Secrets, pg. 383.
11. Briody, The Hallibuton Agenda, pg. 25.
12. Ibid, pgs. 37–40.
13. Ibid, pgs. 40–43.
14. Ibid, pg. 44.
15. Ibid, pg. 47.
16. Ibid, pg. 54.
17. Ibid, pg. 61.
18. Caro, Master of the Senate, pg. 246.
19. Ibid, pg. 248.
20. Ibid, pg. 254.
21. Hepburn, Farewell America pg. 217.
22. Bryce, Cronies, pg. 91.
23. Ibid, pg. 92.
24. Hepburn, Farewell America, pg. 235.
25. Ibid.
26. Briody, The Halliburton Agenda, pg. 85.
27. NSAM 273.
28. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, pg. 189.
29. Baker, Russ. Family of Secrets, pg. 99.
30. Firing Line, June 6, 1966.
31. Goulden, Truth is the First Casualty, pg. 160.
32. Chatterjee, Haliburton’s Army, pg. 23.
33. Ibid, pg. 24.
34. Ibid, pg. 25.
35. Ibid, pg. 27.
36. Ibid.
37. Bryce, Cronies, pg. 106–107.
38. Ibid, pg. 107.
39. Briody, The Halliburton Agenda, pg. 63
40. Bryce, Cronies, pg. 188.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEELER DEALERS
If there was one thing Bobby “Little Lyndon” Baker could learn from Lyndon Johnson, it was to put one’s personal welfare above the good of the nation. Brown and Root had lifted Johnson through the ranks of government. With the presidency, the company and the politician would be among the few beneficiaries of war in Vietnam.
From Suite 8F and dealing directly with Johnson, Baker made the connections and learned the tricks that would define his career. He watched as Johnson shook down television executives for better advertising rates or accepted prodigious amounts of money from multiple benefactors for his own personal use.1 Baker kept this knowledge close, to protect a man he revered.
During the height of a
scandal that would consume Baker, Johnson was more than happy to accept Baker’s silence concerning his questionable business affairs.
The business venture that would spark the investigation into Baker’s questionable finances was Serv-U, a Washington vending machine business, which Baker had started with his friend Fred Black. Serv-U come under fire from Ralph Hill, the president of Capitol Vending, who charged that Baker was obtaining his vending machines by offering assistance in the acquisition of defense contracts, a twist on an old Johnson ploy.2 The fire spread quickly, and more of Baker’s questionable actions began to surface, including allegations that he furnished prostitutes for politicians at a social club located in a hotel near the Senate offices.
One senior senator recalled that “girls were solicited on government telephone lines, taken to the place, and entertained the prospective customer.”3
On October 7, 1963, Baker resigned as secretary of the US Senate majority. By the end of the month, the buzzards were circling over Johnson. The vice president’s reaction was first to panic. Then, he severed all ties to Baker.
When asked for a response concerning the growing scandal, Johnson refused to issue a comment.4
On the morning of November 22, 1963, as the presidential motorcade made its way through Dallas, the Bobby Baker scandal had shifted focus to the vice president. For a man who had begun his public service career devoid of money, Johnson, as a civil servant, had become rich beyond comprehension. That morning, Don Reynolds, a Baker associate, told the Senate Rules Committee about an insurance policy that he had arranged for Johnson. He testified that, at the suggestion of Baker, he had given the Johnson family a stereo set that cost over $500 and bought $1,200 worth of advertising on the radio and television station owned by Johnson’s company.5 More damaging in his testimony was the admission that Reynolds had seen Baker with a suitcase containing $100,000 to be delivered to Johnson—a payoff for steering a government contract to General Dynamics.6 This same Don Reynolds told the FBI in 1964 an eyebrow-raising comment uttered by Bobby Baker on Inauguration Day January 20, 1961, just as Kennedy was being sworn into office. As reported by Jay Epstein in the December, 1966 issue of Esquire, Baker, to whom LBJ famously referred as his “right arm,” said “Words to the effect that the SOB [John Kennedy] would never live out his term, and that he would die a violent death.”
The Man Who Killed Kennedy Page 19