We have devoted the past 8 episodes to studying the life of Lyndon Johnson, with an eye towards whether he had any involvement in the assassination of his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy. In this episode, we review all of the remaining claims against Johnson that we have not yet addressed, and then summarize what we know about Lyndon B. Johnson’s role in the assassination of President Kennedy.
We have devoted the past 8 episodes to studying the life of Lyndon Johnson’s, with an eye towards whether he had any involvement in the assassination of his predecessor, President John F. Kennedy.
In this episode, we review all of the remaining claims against Johnson that we have not yet addressed, and then summarize what we know about Lyndon B. Johnson’s role in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Colonel Burris
Let’s circle back to someone we mentioned for the first time in the last episode, Colonel Howard Burris, Vice President Johnson’s military aide.
When Colonel Burris accompanied Johnson on a May 1961 trip to Vietnam, it marked the beginning of an back channel between Johnson and the CIA, which provided Johnson with unfiltered intelligence information that President Kennedy was not aware of.1 Burris was closely tied to Johnson. He was regularly in contact with Johnson’s right hand man, Cliff Carter. He also used Bobby Baker’s office from time to time.2 And, according to Larry Hancock, Burris made a mysterious trip to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch on the day before the assassination. We don’t know the purpose of this trip.3
We’ll cover Burris again when we get to the Military. But, to the extent Johnson would need a reliable back channel to the CIA and the Military, without involving President Kennedy’s administration, he had that in Colonel Burris.4
LBJ Before The Assassination
If Lyndon Johnson was involved in the plot to kill President Kennedy, we would expect there to potentially be some clues in the form of his actions before and after the assassination.
Some researchers argue that Allen Dulles met with Lyndon Johnson at his ranch in Texas before the assassination. We know that Dulles did visit Johnson at his Texas ranch in 1960.5 In David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard, Talbot says that Dulles visited Johnson at his ranch in the summer of 1963 as noted in an August 15, 1963 Chicago Tribune article with a photo QUOTE “that showed the Vice President astride a horse, while a beaming Lady Bird and Dulles looked on.”6
However, upon further examination, the photo of Dulles and Johnson was published in papers around the country in August of 1963 as part of a story about Lady Bird Johnson as a hostess.7 The picture of Johnson and Dulles was a file photo from a prior visit – almost certainly the 1960 visit. In other words, Allen Dulles did not visit Lyndon Johnson at his ranch just before the assassination.
While LBJ wasn’t plotting with Allen Dulles at his ranch in 1963, he apparently was plotting something else on the night before the assassination – changing John Connally’s seat in the motorcade. According to author Craig Zirbel, Vice President Johnson came to President Kennedy’s suite to demand that the motorcade seating be changed. Johnson was slated to sit with his political enemy, Senator Ralph Yarborough. But, instead, Johnson wanted to ride with his long-time close friend and political ally, Governor John Connally. President Kennedy did not go along with Johnson’s request.8 According to author William Manchester, the argument was so loud that the First Lady asked what it was about, to which the President responded QUOTE “That’s just Lyndon. He’s having a bad day.”9 Witness Max Peck said that Johnson QUOTE “left that suite like a pistol” with “long legs pumping and looking furious.”10
The idea that Lyndon Johnson would want to ride with his dear friend instead of his enemy is really not that surprising. But, for a grown man to throw a fit to the president about a seating arrangement implies that the issue had higher stakes than just who Johnson’s traveling companion would be during a 10 mile drive through Dallas. Yes, there was bad blood between Johnson and the Kennedys, and, perhaps Lyndon Johnson was just that petty. Still, it is also not crazy to say that it looks like Johnson is trying to do a last minute switcharoo to protect his boy, John Connally, and put his enemy, Senator Yarborough, in harm’s way.
This is one of those issues where the sourcing is not that strong for such an important point. Craig Zirbel says that the hotel staff heard the substance of the conversation, without specifying who it was. William Manchester does confirm that the argument happened, without commenting on what it was about. But, it would be nice to know who specifically heard these details given the incendiary nature of the claim from Zirbel.
Another conversation with Johnson from the Hotel Texas that night came to light thirty years later. Elliot Janeway was an economic adviser to Lyndon Johnson and was a fundraiser for Johnson’s campaign for president in 1960.11 According to Gordon Ferrie (no relation to David), before Janeway’s death in 1993, Janeway confided to Ferrie that the night before the assassination at Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, there was a meeting between Janeway, Lyndon Johnson, and John Connally. Lady Bird Johnson and Mrs. Connally were also present. During this meeting, Johnson said it was necessary to go along with the plot to kill Kennedy.12
Finally, there is a controversy about whether Johnson ducked down before the shots were fired based on a photo by James Altgens. This picture was taken just after Kennedy had been shot, but before the deadly head shot. When we look two cars back in the photo, it appears that Johnson is nowhere to be seen in his seat. Of course, if Johnson knew that there were going to be shots fired in Dealey Plaza, that would be a reason for him to duck down. And, the photo does look like he ducked.
But, there are two counterpoints to be made on that topic. First, the photo was taken after at least one shot had been fired. So, it is possible that Johnson did duck, but he was simply reacting to the gunfire (although, as you can see from the photo, most other people did not assume it was gunfire, but they were searching for what the sound was). The other issue is that, according to Jim Marrs, he interviewed Senator Ralph Yarborough who was in the car with Johnson about Johnson ducking down, and Yarborough told Marrs QUOTE “It just didn't happen.... It was a small car, Johnson was a big man, tall. His knees were up against his chin as it was. There was no room for that to happen.”13
LBJ After The Assassination
We talked about LBJ’s actions before the assassination. But what did he do immediately after the assassination?
There is some evidence that Johnson was worried about a larger conspiracy in the aftermath of Dealey Plaza. At Parkland Hospital, Press Secretary, Malcolm Kilduff, told Johnson that he needed to announce President Kennedy’s death. Johnson then told Kilduff to wait until he left the hospital to make the announcement. Johnson said QUOTE "I think I had better get out of here...before you announce it. We don't know whether this is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they are after me as well as they were after President Kennedy, or whether they are after Speaker McCormack or Senator Hayden. We just don't know."14 Johnson similarly told biographer, Merle Miller, QUOTE “"I asked that the announcement be made after we had left the room...so that if it were an international conspiracy and they were out to destroy our form of government and the leaders in that government, that we would minimize the opportunity for doing so."15
Although Johnson said he was worried about an international conspiracy, there is no record of him attempting to contact the national command center, the White House situation room, the joint chiefs of staff, or the secretary of defense. If there was a threat, Johnson didn’t take any action on it.16
Navy Admiral, Tazewell Sheperd briefed Johnson when he returned to the White House from Dallas. Shepherd said QUOTE “there was no sense of an imminent nuclear war” upon Johnson’s return.17 The fact that Johnson was saying that he feared an attack, but was taking no actions to stop such an attack, suggests that he was either incompetent, perhaps choking under the pressure of the moment, or possibly, that he did not actually believe that such an international conspiracy was really happening.
On the other hand, Democratic National Committee advance man, Martin Underwood, told Vince Palamara that President Johnson sent him to Mexico City in 1966 to get information about what really happened to try to clear Johnson’s name as a potential conspirator. Underwood said that Mexico City CIA Station Chief, Win Scott, told him that the CIA, the FBI, and the mafia all QUOTE “knew JFK was going to be hit.” Underwood also asked Scott if Lyndon Johnson was involved in the assassination, to which Scott replied QUOTE “not in any way, none whatsoever.” Underwood provided typed notes to Palamara from his 1966 meeting with Win Scott, but while the notes confirmed the meeting, they did not provide any details about what Scott said.18
Fresh LBJ Did It Arguments
Over the course of the Solving JFK series on LBJ, we’ve put forth many anecdotes and witness claims that paint the former president in a negative light, some of which potentially implicate him in the assassination. Now, I’d like to quickly lay out a few additional arguments for Johnson’s involvement in the assassination that we have not yet discussed.
First, the biggest enemy of the United States thought Lyndon Johnson was involved. In a December 1, 1966 FBI memo, a source who furnished reliable information to the FBI in the past from the Soviet Union said that the KGB believed that Johnson was behind President Kennedy’s assassination. Soviet Communist Party officials QUOTE “believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the ‘ultraright’ in the United States to effect a coup. They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part....”19
A few paragraphs later, that same memo says QUOTE “Our source added that ….the KGB was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.”20 This information speaks for itself. We can’t easily dismiss some level of involvement from Johnson when even the KGB thinks he did it.
Next, we have Jack Ruby on tape, apparently implicating Lyndon Johnson in the crime. Ruby says that if Adlai Stevenson were the Vice President the assassination never would have happened. Here’s the recording:
“I mention about Adlai Stevenson, if he was Vice President there would never have been no assassination of our beloved President Kennedy.
This recording of Ruby could be taken to mean that the plotters disagreed with Adlai Stevenson’s politics, but they agreed with Johnson’s politics. Or, the more sinister interpretation is that Johnson was the one behind the assassination.
What about the opinion of Jackie Kennedy? According to entertainer Eddie Fisher, his one time girlfriend, Pam Turnure, who was the Press Secretary for the First Lady, told him that Jackie Kennedy told her on the flight from Dallas back to Washington QUOTE “Lyndon Johnson did it.”22 This is one more nugget of hearsay, that would not be admissible in court, but is interesting nonetheless.
Attorney Morris Wolff worked on civil rights legislation in the Kennedy Administration alongside Bobby Kennedy.23 After the assassination, Wolff went on to work with Senator John Sherman Cooper on getting the civil rights bill passed. In that role, he ended up spending a lot of time with Senator Cooper while Cooper was on the Warren Commission. Wolff says that Senator Cooper told him the following about the Warren Commission QUOTE “They want to bury the truth under a pile of stones. I think Lyndon Baines Johnson was involved in the planning and execution of Kennedy’s death.”24
We also have the claim of long-time CIA officer, E. Howard Hunt, that Lyndon Johnson was at the top of the hierarchy for the planning of President Kennedy’s murder. Hunt is an important figure in the case overall, and we’ll be coming back to cover his career and claims in depth later. But, to make a very long story short, at a time when Hunt believed he didn’t have much time left to live due to failing health, Hunt made a confession to his son, St. John Hunt. He told St. John the identity of the planners of the JFK Assassination.
Hunt put LBJ at the top of the list, and then drew a line to Cord Meyer, who was in charge of covert action for the CIA. From there, Hunt also implicated CIA officers David Atlee Phillips, Bill Harvey, and David Morales, as well as Frank Strurgis, Antonio Veciana, and a French gunman on the grassy knoll. Hunt said that he was just a benchwarmer in the assassination plot. While Hunt’s statement may be self-serving and incomplete, it is, at a minimum, worth noting that a former high level CIA officer put Lyndon Johnson at the top of the conspiracy.25
LBJ Conclusion
So, where does that leave us? Remember, we already determined that Johnson was involved in the cover-up of the assassination after the fact, due to the phone call with Hoover on the day after the assassination where Hoover tells Johnson about an Oswald impostor in Mexico City. The audio from the full phone call was intentionally erased, but the part of the transcript that remains makes it clear that Johnson knew about the Mexico City Oswald impostor issue and never brought it up again, even though he used that same Mexico City meeting where Oswald was impersonated to pressure Earl Warren and Richard Russell to join the presidential commission to review the assassination.
So, LBJ was complicit in the cover-up. But, what about the assassination planning? Given what we know, let’s apply the classic investigatory technique of the means, motive, and opportunity test to see where Johnson objectively ranks as a suspect.
First, we turn our attention to whether Johnson had the means to order the assassination. Given what we learned over the last few episodes, the assassination eve Murchison party almost certainly did not happen and Mac Wallace’s fingerprint was not found on the 6th floor. However, the audio tape presented to the world this year by Billie Sol Estes’s grandson, Shane Stevens, does complicate matters. Just when I was ready to rule out Mac Wallace’s involvement, this tape comes in and revives the possibility that Wallace was somehow involved – if both the tape and the substance of what is being said are legitimate. I also believe it is possible that Estes was recording a false story for the tape to implicate Wallace and to protect Henry Marshall’s real killer. But, whether or not the tape is authentic, I do not see any possible way that Mac Wallace planned the assassination overall, not in the way Cliff Carter and Estes are implying on the tape.
Billie Sol Estes would have us believe that Wallace connected with Jack Ruby, who then connected with Lee Harvey Oswald. But, that doesn’t address what Oswald was doing in the Soviet Union, or New Orleans, or Mexico City. Are we to believe that Mac Wallace set up the Mexico City trip? Did Mac Wallace procure an Oswald imposter to talk to Kostikov at the Soviet Embassy? The answer to all of those questions for me are a resounding, no way. There is simply no evidence to support Mac Wallace as the chief plotter.
Now, outside of Mac Wallace, did Johnson have the means to control the assassination? Potentially, yes. He had relationships with military generals and the CIA through Colonel Burris. He also had relationships with intelligence agencies from his time in the House and Senate, not to mention his personal friendship with ousted CIA director, Allen Dulles. So, could LBJ have created the plot and set it in motion? I believe he could have had some role in that. It’s just that we don’t have any direct evidence for it. Still, if Johnson was involved and if the assassination was successful, as it ended up being, Johnson would have the means to control the investigation, and a compliant J. Edgar Hoover to help. That’s exactly what happened.
The next question is whether LBJ had a motive for killing President Kennedy. This is an easy one. Aside from achieving his lifelong goal of becoming President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson had other strong motives to get rid of JFK. In the Fall of 1963, the walls were caving in around Johnson. The Billie Sol Estes investigation and the Henry Marshall murder sullied Johnson’s reputation. The Bobby Baker investigation would have led to Johnson’s arrest according to Life Magazine editor, James Wagenvoord.26 And, on the day of the assassination, Don Reynolds was testifying about how Johnson required kickbacks for doing business with him.
When Johnson became president, he was able to sweep all of those misdeeds under the rug in the name of coming together as a country after President Kennedy’s death. Indeed, CIA director, John McCone met with President Johnson on November 30, 1963 and wrote in a subsequent memo that Johnson QUOTE “brought up a number of very personal problems” and asked that McCone and McGeorge Bundy, QUOTE “as a team…help him solve some of his problems.”27 Similarly, a February 13, 1964 FBI report says that President Johnson confiscated the Bobby Baker file from the Department of Justice while Attorney General Robert Kennedy was out of the office on a peace mission trip.
We also cannot forget that Johnson and the Kennedy’s had an intense disdain for one another, so much so that insiders believed Johnson would not be on the 1964 ticket as Vice President, had President Kennedy lived. So, yes, LBJ had a very strong motive to want President Kennedy gone.
Finally, did Johnson have the opportunity to plan the assassination? Determining whether someone had opportunity is much easier if you are accusing them of committing the crime. When the accusation is that the person planned the crime, it becomes more difficult to clearly sort out this question. There is one person who sticks out to me when it comes to LBJ and opportunity: John Connally.28
As noted in Episode 70, John Connally wasn’t just the governor of Texas. He was Lyndon Johnson’s extremely close confidant. In addition to serving in the Navy with LBJ, Connally worked at LBJ’s radio station, served as his congressional assistant, managed his losing 1941 Senate campaign and his winning 1946 House re-election campaign, served as a strategist on Johnson’s notorious 1948 Senate campaign, and acted as the chief surrogate for Johnson in the 1960 presidential campaign before Johnson lost the top spot on the ticket to Kennedy.29 And, don’t forget that upon becoming Vice President, Johnson got Connally the job as Secretary of the Navy, which positioned Connally to run for Governor of Texas.30
I point out how close John Connally’s relationship was with Johnson because it was Governor Connally who insisted that the Trade Mart be used for the site of Kennedy’s speech. And, according to White House advance man, Jerry Bruno, the Secret Service decided to go forward with the Trade Mart out of deference to Connally.31 After the assassination, Lyndon Johnson and John Connally remained close, even operating a gold mining company together.32
In conclusion, I find that Lyndon Johnson, with the assistance of J. Edgar Hoover, covered up the assassination after the fact. I find it inconclusive, but likely, that Johnson had some sort of foreknowledge regarding the assassination. And I find the question of whether Lyndon Johnson had any role in planning the assassination to be inconclusive. It is possible, but not proven.
NEXT TIME ON SOLVING JFK: We’ll have a recap and rebuttals episode on Lyndon Johnson with Jeff Crudele from JFK: The Enduring Secret.
Automated transcript
Machine-generated from the audio and unedited, so names and spellings may be wrong. Tap a timestamp to play from that point.
Speaker 0We've devoted the last eight episodes to studying the life of Lyndon Johnson. With an eye towards whether he had any involvement in the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. In this episode, we review all of the remaining claims against Johnson that we have not yet addressed and then summarize what we know about Lyndon B. Johnson's role in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Speaker 2In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. The flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died and come to the end.
Speaker 1This is solving JFK. I'm your host, Matt Crumpton.
Speaker 0Let's circle back to someone we mentioned for the first time in the last episode. Colonel Howard Burris, Vice President Johnson's military aid. When Colonel Burris, a company Johnson, on a May, nineteen sixty-one trip to Vietnam, it marked the beginning of a back channel between Johnson and the CIA, which provided Johnson with unfiltered intelligence information that President Kennedy was not aware of. Burris was closely tied to Johnson. He was regularly in contact with Cliff Carter, Johnson's right hand man. He also used the office of Bobby Baker from time to time. And, according to Larry Hancock, Colonel Burris made a mysterious trip to Lyndon Johnson's ranch on the day before the assassination. We still don't know the purpose of that trip. We'll cover Burris again when we get to the military. To the extent Johnson would need a reliable back channel to the CIA and the military without involving President Kennedy's administration, he had that in Colonel Burris.
Speaker 0If Lyndon Johnson was involved in the plot to kill President Kennedy, we would expect there to potentially be some clues in the form of his actions before and after the assassination. So what did Johnson do before the assassination? We just heard that Colonel Burris came to his ranch the day before. Some researchers also argue that Alan Dullis met with Johnson at his ranch in the summer of nineteen sixty three. We know that Dullis did visit Lyndon Johnson at his ranch in nineteen sixty. In David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard, Talbot argues that Johnson was visited by Dullis at his ranch in the summer of sixty-three. Talbot's source for this claim is an August fifteenth nineteen sixty-three Chicago Tribune article with a photo quote that showed the vice president a stride a horse while a beaming lady bird and Dullis looked on. On further examination, this photo of Dolas and Johnson was published in papers across the country in August of nineteen sixty three as a part of a story about Lady Bird Johnson as a hostess.
Speaker 0The picture of Johnson and Dolas was a file photo from a prior visit, almost certainly the nineteen sixty visit. In other words, Alan Dullis did not visit Lyndon Johnson at his ranch just before the assassination. While LBJ wasn't plotting with Dullis at his ranch in nineteen sixty-three, he apparently was plotting something else on the night before the assassination, changing John Connelly's seat in the motorcade. According to author Craig Zerbel, Vice President Johnson came to President Kennedy's suite and demanded that the motorcade's seating be changed. Johnson was slated to sit with his political enemy, Senator Ralph Yarbro. But instead, Johnson wanted to ride with his longtime close friend and political ally, Governor John Connelly. President Kennedy did not go along with Johnson's request. According to author William Manchester, the argument was so loud that the first lady asked what it was about to which the president responded, quote, that's just London.
Speaker 0He's having a bad day. Witness Max Peck said that Johnson, quote, left that sweet like a pistol with long legs pumping and looking furious. The idea that Lyndon Johnson would want to ride with his dear friend, instead of his enemy, is really not that surprising. For a grown man to throw a fit to the president about a seating arrangement, implies that the issue had higher stakes than just who Johnson's traveling companion would be during a tin mile drive through Dallas. Yes, there was bad blood between Johnson and the Kennedy's. And perhaps Lyndon Johnson was just that petty. Still, it's also not crazy to say that it looks like Johnson is trying to do a last minute switcheroo to protect his boy, John Connelly, and put his enemy Senator Yarbro in harm's way. This, of course, can only be true if Johnson knew what was about to happen. This is one of those issues where the sourcing is not that strong for such an important point.
Speaker 0Craig Zerbel says that the hotel staff heard the substance of the conversation, but he doesn't provide any names. William Manchester does confirm that the argument happened, but he doesn't say what it was about. It would be nice to know who specifically heard these details given the potential incendiary nature of the claim from Zerbel. Another conversation with Johnson at the hotel Texas that night came to light thirty years later. Elliott Janeway was an economic advisor to Lyndon Johnson, and was a fundraiser for Johnson's campaign for President in According to Gordon Ferry, no relation to David before Jane Ways death in nineteen ninety three, Jane Ways confided to Ferry that the night before the assassination at Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, there was a meeting between Jane Ways, Lyndon Johnson and John Connelly. Lady Bird Johnson and Mrs. Connelly were also present. During this meeting, Johnson said it was necessary to go along with the plot to kill Kennedy.
Speaker 0Finally, there's a controversy about whether Johnson ducked down before the shots were fired, based on a photo by James Altjins. This picture was taken just after Kennedy had been shot, but before the deadly headshot. When we look two cars back from the presidential limo in the photo, it appears that Johnson is nowhere to be seen in his seat. Of course, if Johnson knew that there were going to be shots fired in Dealy Plaza, that would be a reason for him to duck down. And the photo does look like he ducked. There are a couple of counterpoints on that topic. But first, the picture was taken after at least one shot had already been fired. So it's possible that Johnson did duck, but he was simply reacting to the gunfire. Although, as you can see from the photo, most other people did not assume that it was gunfire, but you can see people looking around to see where the sound came from. The other issue is that, according to Jim Mars, he interviewed Senator Ralph Yarbro, who was in the car with Johnson about Johnson ducking down.
Speaker 0And Yarbro told Mars, quote, it just didn't happen. It was a small car. Johnson was a big man, tall. His knees were up against his chin as it was. There was no room for that to happen. We talked about LBJ's actions before the assassination, but what did he do immediately after Kennedy was shot? There is some evidence that Johnson was worried about a larger conspiracy in the aftermath of Dealy Plaza. At Parkland Hospital, Malcolm Killduff, the press secretary, told Johnson that he needed to announce President Kennedy's death. Johnson then told Killduff to wait until he left the hospital to make the announcement. Johnson said, quote, I think I'd better get out of here before you announce it. We don't know whether this is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they're after me as well as they were after President Kennedy or whether they're after Speaker McCormick or Senator Hayden. We just don't know.
Speaker 0Johnson similarly told Biographer Merle Miller, quote, I asked that the announcement be made after we had left the room so that if it were an international conspiracy and they were out to destroy our form of government and the leaders in that government that we would minimize the opportunity for doing so. Although Johnson said that he was worried about an international conspiracy, there is no record of him attempting to contact the National Command Center, the White House situation room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the Secretary of Defense. If there really was a threat, Johnson's actions did not reflect that. Navy admiral Tayswell Shepherd briefed Johnson when he returned to the White House from Dallas. Shepherd said, quote, there was no sense of an imminent nuclear war upon Johnson's return. The fact that Johnson was saying that he feared an attack, but was taking no actions to stop such an attack suggests that he was either incompetent, perhaps choking under the pressure of the moment, or possibly that he did not actually believe that an international conspiracy was happening.
Speaker 0On the other hand, Democratic National Committee Advanceman Martin Underwood told Vince Palamara that President Johnson sent him to Mexico City in nineteen sixty-six to get information about what really happened so that he could try to clear Johnson's name as a potential conspirator. Underwood said that Mexico City CIA station chief Winscott told him that the CIA, the FBI and the Mafia, all, quote, new JFK, was going to be hit. Underwood also asked Winscott if Lyndon Johnson was involved in the assassination, to which Scott replied, quote, Not in any way, none whatsoever. Underwood provided Palamara with typed notes from his nineteen sixty-six meeting with when Scott. While the notes confirmed that the meeting happened, they did not provide any details about what Scott said. Over the course of the Solving JFK series on LBJ, we've put forth many anecdotes and witness claims that paint the former president in a negative light, some of which potentially implicate him in the assassination.
Speaker 0I'd like to now quickly lay out a few additional arguments for Johnson's involvement in the assassination that we have not yet discussed. The biggest enemy of the United States thought Lyndon Johnson was the chief conspirator. In a December first, nineteen sixty-six memo, a source who furnished reliable information to the FBI in the past, from the Soviet Union, said that the KGB believed that Johnson was behind President Kennedy's assassination. Soviet Communist Party officials, quote, believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the ultra-right in the United States to affect a coup. They seemed convinced that the assassination was not the deed of one man, but that it arose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part. A few paragraphs later that same memo says, quote, our source added that the KGB was in possession of data, purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy.
Speaker 0This information speaks for itself. We can't easily dismiss some level of involvement from Johnson when even the KGB thinks he did it. Next, we have Jack Ruby on tape, apparently implicating Lyndon Johnson in the crime. Ruby tells a reporter that if Adly Stevenson were the vice president, the assassination never would have happened. Here's the recording.
Speaker 2Now this recording of Ruby could be taken to mean that the plotters disagreed with Adly Stevens politics, but they agreed with Johnson's. Or the more sinister interpretation is that Johnson was the one behind the assassination.
Speaker 0What about the opinion of Jackie Kennedy? According to entertainer Eddie Fisher, his one-time girlfriend, Pam Turner, who was the press secretary for the first lady, told him that Jackie Kennedy told her on the flight from Dallas back to Washington, quote, Lyndon Johnson did it. This is one more nugget of hearsay that would not be admissible in court, but is interesting nonetheless. Attorney Morris Wolff worked on civil rights legislation and the Kennedy administration alongside Bobby Kennedy. After the assassination, Wolff went on to work with Senator John Sherman Cooper on getting the civil rights bill passed. In that role, he ended up spending a lot of time with Senator Cooper when Cooper was on the Warren Commission. Wolf says that Senator Cooper told him the following about the Warren Commission, quote, they want to bury the truth under a pile of stones. I think Lyndon Baines' Johnson was involved in the planning and execution of Kennedy's death.
Speaker 0We also have the claim of longtime CIA officer, E. Howard Hunt, that Lyndon Johnson was at the top of the hierarchy for the planning of President Kennedy's murder. Hunt is an important figure in the case overall, and will be coming back to Hunt later to cover his career and claims in depth. To make a very long story short, at a time when Hunt believed that he didn't have much time left to live due to his failing health, he made a confession to his son, St. John Hunt, about the identity of the planners of the assassination. At the very top of the list, Hunt put LBJ, and then drew a line to cordmire, who was in charge of covert action for the CIA. From there, Hunt also implicated CIA officers David Atley Phillips, Bill Harvey, and David Morales, as well as Frank Sturgis, Antonio Vesciana, and a French gunman on the grassy nose. Hunt said that he was just a bench warmer in the assassination plot.
Speaker 0While Hunt's statement may be self-serving and incomplete, it is at a minimum worth noting that a former high-level CIA officer puts Lyndon Johnson at the top of the conspiracy. So where does that leave us? Remember, we already determined that Johnson was involved in the cover-up of the assassination after the fact due to the phone call with Hoover on the day after the assassination where Hoover tells Johnson about an Oswald imposter in Mexico City. The audio from the full phone call was intentionally erased, but the part of the transcript that remains makes it clear that Johnson was aware of the Mexico City Oswald imposter issue and never brought it up again. Even though he used that same Mexico City meeting where Oswald was impersonated to pressure Earl Warren and Richard Russell to join his presidential commission to review the assassination. So LBJ was complicit in the cover-up, but what about the assassination planning?
Speaker 0Let's apply the classic investigatory technique of the means, motive, and opportunity test to see where Johnson objectively ranks as a suspect. First, we turn our attention to whether Johnson had the means to order the assassination. We now know that the assassination Eve, Merchison Party, almost certainly did not happen, and that Mac Wallace's fingerprint was not found on the sixth floor. However, the audio tape presented to the world this year by Billy Soul Estus' grandson Shane Stevens does complicate matters. Just when I was ready to rule out Mac Wallace's involvement, This tape comes in and revives the possibility that Wallace was somehow involved. If both the tape and the substance of what is being said are legitimate. I also think it's possible that Estus was recording a false story for the tape to implicate Mac Wallace and to protect Henry Marshall's real killer. But whether or not the tape is authentic, I don't see any possible way that Mac Wallace planned the assassination overall.
Speaker 0Certainly not in the way Billy Solestus and Cliff Carter are implying on the tape. Estus would have us believe that Wallace connected with Jack Ruby, who then connected with Lee Harvey Oswald. But that doesn't address what Oswald was doing in the Soviet Union. or New Orleans or Mexico City. Are we to believe that Mac Wallace set up the Mexico City trip? Did Wallace procure an Oswald imposter to talk to Costa Cove at the Soviet Embassy? The answer to all of these questions for me is a resounding no way. There is no credible evidence in my view to support Mac Wallace as the planner of the assassination. Now, outside of Mac Wallace, did Johnson have the means to control the assassination? Potentially, yes. He had relationships with military generals and the CIA through Colonel Burris. He also had relationships with intelligence agencies from his time in the House and Senate, not to mention his personal friendship with ousted CIA director Alan Dullis.
Speaker 0So is it possible that LBJ set the plot in motion? I believe it is possible. It's just that we don't have any direct evidence for it. Still, If Johnson was involved and if the assassination was successful as it ended up being, Johnson would have the means to control the investigation and a compliant J. Edgar Hoover to help. And that's exactly what happened. The next question is whether L. B. J. had a motive for killing President Kennedy. This is an easy one. Aside from achieving his lifelong goal of becoming president of the United States, Lyndon Johnson had other strong motives to get rid of JFK. In the fall of nineteen sixty-three, the walls were caving in around Johnson. The Billy Solestice investigation and the Henry Marshall murder, Sully Johnson's reputation. The Bobby Baker investigation would have led to Johnson's arrest, according to Life magazine editor James Wagenford. And on the day of the assassination, Don Reynolds was testifying about how Johnson required kickbacks for doing business with him.
Speaker 0When Johnson became president, he was able to sweep all of those misdeeds under the rug in the name of coming together as a country after President Kennedy's death. CIA Director John McCone met with President Johnson on November thirty of nineteen sixty three and wrote in a subsequent memo that Johnson quote brought up a number of very personal problems and asked that McCone and McGeorge Bundy quote as a team helped him solve some of his problems Similarly, a February thirteenth nineteen sixty four FBI report says that president Johnson confiscated the Bobby Baker file from the Department of Justice while attorney general Robert Kennedy was out of the office on a peace mission trip. We also cannot forget that Johnson and the Kennedys had an intense disdain for one another. So much so that insiders believed Johnson would not be on the nineteen sixty-four ticket as Vice President had President Kennedy lived.
Speaker 0So yes, LBJ had a very strong motive to want President Kennedy gone. Finally, did Johnson have the opportunity to plan the assassination? Determining whether someone had opportunity is much easier if you're accusing them of committing the crime. When the accusation is that the person planned the crime, it becomes more difficult to clearly sort out this question. There is one person who sticks out to me when it comes to LBJ and opportunity. Governor John Connelly. As noted in episode seventy, John Connelly wasn't just the governor of Texas. He was Lyndon Johnson's extremely close confidante. In addition to serving in the Navy with LBJ, Connelly worked at LBJ's radio station, served as his congressional assistant, managed his losing nineteen forty-one Senate campaign, and his winning nineteen forty-six house reelection campaign. served as a strategist on Johnson's notorious, nineteen forty-eight Senate campaign and acted as the chief surrogate for Johnson in the nineteen sixty presidential campaign before Johnson lost the top spot on the ticket to Kennedy
Speaker 0Don't forget, upon becoming Vice President, Johnson got Connelly the job as Secretary of the Navy, which positioned Connelly to run for Governor of Texas. I point out how close Governor Connelly's relationship was with Johnson because it was John Connelly who insisted that the trademark be used for the site of Kennedy's speech. And according to White House Advanceman Jerry Bruno, the Secret Service decided to go forward with the trademark out of Deference to Connelly. After the assassination and after Johnson's presidency, Johnson and Connelly remained close, even forming a partnership to operate a gold mine. In conclusion, I find that Lyndon Johnson, with the assistance of Jay Edgar Hoover, covered up the assassination after the fact. I find it inconclusive, but likely that Johnson had some sort of foreknowledge regarding the assassination. And I find the question of whether Lyndon Johnson had any role in planning the assassination to be inconclusive.
Speaker 0It is possible, but it's not proven. Next time on Solving JFK, we'll have a recap and rebuttals episode on Lyndon Johnson with Jeff Crudell from JFK, the Enduring Secret. If you heard anything that you believe is out of context, or if you have additional information to offer, you can let us know at solving JFK podcast at gmail.com. Please provide citations to the record for any fact that you're relying on. For transcripts, sources, and official podcast merchandise, visit solving JFK podcast.com. Thanks for listening. Visit solvinggfkpodcast.com for more information.
