67. Education Forum Q&A with Douglas Caddy: educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=18833&st=0&gopid=247779.
68. Ross, Gaylon, Robert, RIE. “Madeleine Brown Interview” www.youtube.com/watch?v=POmdd6HQsus.
69. Dallas Morning News, August 14, 1985.
70. Talbot, Brothers, pg. 32
71. Estes, Billy Sol, pg. 69.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LOCATION
Why Dallas? It is important to understand LBJ’s control of law enforcement and local government in Dallas County when Kennedy arrived in town for the parade. At the time, the Mayor of Dallas was Earle Cabell, the brother of Charles Cabell, whom JFK had fired from the CIA after the disaster of the Bay of Pigs invasion in which CIA-trained Cuban exiles attempted to invade the island. The mayor and his brother hated JFK. They were Johnson men.
The mayor helped LBJ secure the loyalty of Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. Strangely, Curry would appear at Johnson’s sleeve for all of the days in the aftermath of the president’s murder. It was clear that Johnson, through Curry, was controlling the Dallas Police Department.
Over one thousand deputies of the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department were called to their department auditorium on the morning of November 22 and told expressly, “You are in Dealey Plaza as observers. No matter what you see or hear, take no law enforcement action. You are there in respect for the presidency of the United States as observers and not law enforcement officers.”
This would explain the strange actions of the Dallas Police Department in the aftermath of the president’s shooting. The Texas School Book Depository building was not sealed as a crime scene, and the building was swarmed by reporters, thrill seekers, and tourists creating mayhem. The entire building was never searched. The search of the sixth floor was bungled: No evidence was photographed as found, most was marred with the fingerprints of police handlers, and the legally required “chain of evidence,” documentation of strict evidence control was willfully violated.
Likewise, LBJ’s relationship with Secret Service Director John Rowley is also underestimated by many of those examining the JFK murder. They both served in the National Youth Administration under Roosevelt and were friends beginning in the ’40s. There is no other way to explain the serious lapses in Secret Service protocol during Kennedy’s trip to Dallas on November 22, 1963. The 120-degree turn to get to Dealey Plaza where the president’s limousine would drop below 40 MPH was against all Secret Service mandates. Agents were directed not to ride on the limousine bumper; the two agents normally assigned to walk beside the car at the rear axle were called off. A stunning and widely available Internet video shows agents being pulled from their normal positions by superiors. It is quite simple to conclude that Rowley was in Johnson’s pocket. And then one must examine the alleged shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oswald was hired by the Texas School Book Depository on October 16, 1963, just two days shy of his twenty-fourth birthday. Thirty-seven days following his start of the job, President Kennedy was gunned down. After Oswald allegedly shot dead Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit, he was taken into police custody and within hours was named the lone assassin.
A big challenge to conspiracy theorists who question a lone gunman theory is Oswald’s acquisition of the job only a month before the assassination. In fact, Oswald’s job came through Ruth Paine, who Oswald’s estranged wife Marina was staying with. The Oswalds were introduced to Paine none other that George de Mohrenshildt, who we shall see was Oswald’s CIA handler.
“Even the presidential motorcade that drove beneath the sixth floor window where Oswald was, that motorcade wasn’t even determined until November 18, just four days before the assassination” said Vincent Bugliosi, author of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. “Does any rational person believe that the CIA of the Mob would conspire with Oswald to kill the president within four days of his coming to Dallas?”1
The faulty argument hinges on the major assumption that the conspirators had no authority concerning the route of the motorcade. Indeed, the route is only revealed to the public on the morning of November 22 when the Dallas Times Herald prints the map in its morning newspaper.
Interestingly, Oswald could only have known of the president’s route via the Times Herald, but he traveled from Irving, Texas so early that he could not have seen the newspaper until he arrived in the city and made the instant decision to murder John F. Kennedy.
The Warren Commission claims that he brought the alleged murder weapon, a bolt-action rifle, from Irving in a long, brown paper bag. Of the five people who said they saw Oswald that morning, three said that he had no brown paper bag. Two people, nineteen-year-old Buell Wesley Frazier and his sister, claimed that they saw Oswald with a package, but it was almost a foot shorter than the length of a disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle.
Bugliosi is correct in his claim that a route was determined on November 18. Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, chief of the Dallas Secret Service office, Forrest Sorrels, and Secret Service advance man Winston Lawson met on that day to conduct a dry run of the drive from Love Field to the Trade Mart. Upon reaching Dealey Plaza, Curry pointed down Main Street.
“And afterwards there’s only the freeway,”2 Curry said to the two Secret Service agents.
Farewell America, a 1968 book published in France under the pseudonym James Hepburn detailed the trial run when it reached Dealey Plaza, an open area of downtown Dallas boxed in by tall buildings and expressways:
But instead of turning right into Houston Street in the direction of Elm Street, as the motorcade did on November 22, Curry turned left in front of the Old Court house, and neither Lawson nor Sorrels followed the parade route past that point, where they would have been obliged to make a 90-degree right turn into Houston Street, followed 70 yards later by a 120-degree turn to the left into Elm Street. Had they done so, it might have occurred to them that the big presidential Lincoln would be obliged to slow down almost to a stop in order to make that second turn. This type of double turn is contrary to Secret Service regulations, which specify that when a presidential motorcade has to slow down to make a turn, “the entire intersection must be examined in advance, searched, and inspected from top to bottom.” Curry, however, brought the reconnaissance to an end at the very point where it became unacceptable (as well as unusual) from the point of view of security.3
The original route had been mapped out by Kennedy advance man, Jerry Bruno, who had wanted a luncheon at the Women’s Building following the motorcade. The HSCA 1979 report on the motorcade states that the “Secret Service initially preferred the Women’s Building for security reasons, and the Kennedy staff preferred it for political reasons.”4 The route for the Women’s Building would have had the motorcade pass by Dealey Plaza briefly at a high rate of speed, “without taking any turns in or around the Plaza.”5
Johnson’s man, Texas Governor John Connally would not have it. Connally argued passionately with Bruno for the Dallas Trade Mart as the venue for the luncheon. Located on the Stemmons Freeway, the Trade Mart would force the route through Dealey Plaza—the kill site. Connally’s unwavering position on the Trade Mart, the only point of contention in Kennedy’s five-city tour of Texas, ignited a quarrel between the Kennedy and Johnson people.
“The feud became so bitter that I went to the White House to ask Bill Moyers, then deputy director of the Peace Corps and close to both Connally and Johnson, if he would try to settle the dispute for the good of the president and his party,” Bruno wrote in a November 14 journal entry. “On this day, [Kennedy scheduler] Kenny O’Donnell decided that there was no other way but to go to the mart.”6
The next day, Bruno affirmed in his journal the White House approval of the Trade Mart and Connally’s unusual behavior preceding it.
“I met with O’Donnell and Moyers, who said that Connally was unbearable and on the verge of cancelling the trip. They decided to let the governor have his way.”7
Br
uno had not seen anything like it in his three years as advance man for the president.
“Either we select the stops and run the trips, or the president can stay home,” Connally told Bruno. “We don’t want him.”8
Johnson accessory Cliff Carter also attempted to force the Trade Mart as the luncheon location. Carter, according to Bruno, “kept insisting that Connally was the best man for Kennedy in Texas, and he should be allowed to run the whole trip.”9
Never had local hosts been so adamant on a specific location, and the stance was made especially questionable considering the security challenges of the Trade Mart.10 Due to the concerns for the president’s safety in Dallas, the city itself had been questioned as a suitable location for campaigning.
“Dallas was removed and then put back on the planned itinerary several times,” wrote Evelyn Lincoln. “Our own advance man urged that the motorcade not take the route through the underpass and past the Book Depository, but he was overruled.”11
Connally and Carter were simply acting on the wishes of their man Lyndon. Connally and Johnson went back a long way politically. The governor had served as Johnson’s administrative assistant and for decades worked as his campaign director. When Johnson asked for something, Connally delivered.
“Look at John Connally,” Johnson said. “I can call John Connally at midnight, and if I told him to come over and clean my shoes, he’d come running. That’s loyalty.”12
As a member of Suite 8F and as a Johnson campaign stalwart, Connally learned from many of the vice president’s business connections.
Working Johnson’s 1948 Senate bid, Connally collected money from Brown and Root, oil tycoons and other business interests, and a lot of money passed through his hands. “A hell of a lot,” said Connally. “I’d go get it. Walter [Jenkins] would get it. Woody would go get it. We had a lot of people who would go get it, and deliver it… . I went to see [Taylor oil baron] Harris Melasky three or four times… . I handled inordinate amounts of cash.”13
Later, Connally benefited from these associations. In the 1950s, he became an attorney for Sid W. Richardson, an oil executive and co-owner of the Del Mar Racetrack. He ran Richardson’s business ventures in Texas and Jamaica and later became an executor of Richardson’s estate.14
In 1969, after leaving the governorship of Texas, Connally was named to the board of directors for Brown and Root,15 the company that had financed Johnson’s political career and the main beneficiary from the war in Vietnam. Subsequently, President Nixon appointed Connally to his foreign advisory board.16 The plum appointment symbolized the continued patronage between the government and big business.
Nixon also appointed Connally as secretary of the treasury and tried to dump Vice President Agnew to maneuver Connally onto the 1972 Republican ticket.
Concern for Connally’s safety would prod Johnson into an argument with Kennedy during the early evening hours of November 21. Johnson had been summoned to the Kennedy suite at the Rice Hotel in Houston. The argument that unfolded focused on the seating arrangement of the motorcade.
Johnson Aide Bobby Baker said in 1961 that JFK would not live out his term.
Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford would change autopsy reports to hide the truth.
The LBJ “treatment” was intimidating.
LBJ knew how to use power to his advantage.
Nixon knew who really killed Kennedy.
Nixon told me: “Lyndon and I both wanted to be President, the difference was I wouldn’t kill for it.”
My attempts to ask George Bush about his whereabouts on November 22, 1963, have been unsuccessful.
LBJ on Bobby Kennedy: “Ill slit his throat if it’s the last thing I do.”
Lawyer Roy Cohn and his mob client “Fat” Tony Salerno told me in 1979 that “Lyndon did it.”
Richard Nixon recognized Jack Ruby as a Johnson associate who he met in 1947.
Jacqueline Kennedy wrote: “I never like Lyndon Johnson and I never trusted him.”
Robert Kennedy said LBJ was “an animal.”
LBJ would try to get protégé and Governor John Connally switched out of the Presidential car—November 22, 1963.
Senator Ralph Yarborough, the leader of the liberal wing of the Democratic party in Texas, was bitterly playing into Johnson’s hand. Yarborough, who believed Johnson had worked with Connally to exclude him from planning the president’s trip, refused to ride in the same car as the vice president. Johnson, with knowledge of the conspiracy to assassinate the president, was clearly using this as leverage to ride with Connally the following day. Kennedy, though, was adamant about Johnson riding with Yarborough as a sign of party solidarity. In order to protect his friend Connally, LBJ wanted Yarborough in the president’s limousine and Connally moved to the vice president’s car in the motorcade. The president and vice president argued bitterly over the seating.
Jackie Kennedy, in a neighboring room, heard the argument and walked in just as Johnson stormed out, “like a pistol.”17
“He sounded mad,” Jackie said to John.
“That’s just Lyndon,” Kennedy responded. “He’s in trouble.”18
Jackie then impulsively relayed to John her distaste for Governor Connally.
“But, for heaven’s sake, don’t get a thing on him because that’s what I came down here to heal,” Kennedy replied. “I’m trying to start by getting two people in the same car. If they start hating, nobody will ride with anybody.”19
President Kennedy later gave strong instructions of the Dallas motorcade arrangements to White House aide Larry O’ Brien.
“I don’t care if you have to throw Yarborough in the car with Lyndon. But get him there.”20
Along with control over the route, it was essential that the powers within had dominion over the security detail in Dealey Plaza. “Assistant Chief Batchelor would coordinate the security pre-operation among various elements and agencies,” Police Chief Curry said. “As [advance man] Lawson suggested the speeds and timed the route, Assistant Chief Batchelor wrote down the number of men to be assigned at each intersection.”21
On the day of the assassination, there were no Secret Service agents assigned to the Plaza. The area remained unchecked by security—an engineered snafu.
“This is the greatest single clue to that assassination,” said former Air Force intelligence officer L. Fletcher Prouty. “Who had the power to call off or drastically reduce the usual security precautions that are always in effect whenever a president travels? … The power source that arranged that murder was on the inside … They had the means to reduce normal security and permit the choice of a hazardous route. It also has had the continuing power to cover up that crime.”22
It was “a freak of history that this short stretch of Elm Street would be the assassination site, and the Texas Book Depository Building was virtually ignored in the security plans for the motorcade,”23 Chief Curry later added.
That “freak of history” was meticulously planned. That the kill zone was abandoned by the Secret Service was a detail enacted by James Rowley, head of the Secret Service and close friend of the vice president. Rowley would also have a hand in the reaction time of the Secret Service protecting the presidential limousine, the expeditious cleaning and reconstruction of the vehicle following the hit, and the ordering of John Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital before an autopsy could be conducted. On his return to Andrews Air Force Base from Dallas, Rowley would be the first person to greet and confer with President Johnson.24
Johnson would become increasingly frantic in the waning hours preceding the November 22 motorcade from Love Field. Following the plane ride from Houston to Ft. Worth later that evening, Johnson attended the party at Clint Murchison’s mansion. The gathering, attended by Murchison, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, H. L. Hunt, and assassin Mac Wallace, was alleged by Johnson’s mistress Madeleine Brown. It was later confirmed by May Newman, an employee of the Murchison family.
“They were having a b
ig party for a very special guest that was coming from Washington to go to the party by the name of Bulldog, which I found out later was J. Edgar Hoover,”25 Newman recalled. Critics who question the validity of the party have been quick to point out that Hoover was back at work at the Justice Department late the next morning. Hoover could not have attended the party, it is contested, because he could not have gotten back to work in time. But Hoover had many private jets at his disposal, including those of the oilmen, and could have flown to and from Dallas at any time necessary.
The event took an ominous turn with the arrival of Johnson.
“It must have been eleven o’clock, the party was breaking up at that time, and it shocked everyone that he came in,” said Brown. “Of course I was thrilled to see him. Normally I knew his agenda when he was in Texas, but that night I did not know that he was coming. They all went into this conference room.”26
Behind closed doors, the intentions of the gathering became clear: These men had not assembled for a party, but to plan a funeral.
Hoover, Murchison, Hunt, and Johnson had a shared urgency—they were all fighting for their livelihood. In two years’ time, if the Kennedys still maintained power, Hoover would be retired, Johnson would be incarcerated, and Big Oil would be significantly minimized. Hunt famously said about the Kennedys that there was “no way left to get these traitors out of our government except by shooting them out.”27 This meeting was a final review to confirm the plan set in place to do exactly that.
When Johnson emerged from the private meeting, he was apoplectic.
Grasping Brown’s arm, he growled into her ear, “After tomorrow those SOBs will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat, that’s a promise.”28 Calling Madeleine Brown the next morning from his hotel, a simmering Johnson repeated the ominous threat.29
The countdown was in its final hours.
With Hoover committed to the plot, Johnson had keenly scanned the political horizon to see if anyone else would be smart enough to figure out that there had been a coup d’état. One man worried him, a man as cunning, daring, and driven as he himself. A man whose ambition to be president burned just as brightly as his own: former Vice President Richard Nixon.
The Man Who Killed Kennedy Page 22