LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Phillip F. Nelson

Author:Phillip F. Nelson [Nelson, Phillip F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Lyndon Johnson’s November Dilemma

The Baker scandal was looming as a major roadblock to Lyndon Johnson’s political career and therefore his dream of becoming president. He knew all about Bobby Kennedy feeding information to Senator Williams and to the Life magazine reporters right out of the Justice Department; there was very little that his chief collaborator, J. Edgar Hoover, didn’t know about, especially in Washington and at the Department of Justice. The situation for Johnson had now become so desperate that his nemesis, Bobby Kennedy, had even begun working to help his protégé, Bobby Baker, to avoid incriminating himself. According to Drew Pearson, Kennedy called Baker, telling him, “‘Get off the phone. You shouldn’t be talking’ warned Kennedy cryptically. In view of the Justice Department’s recent [1966] revelation that wire taps and electronic devices were used to monitor some of Baker’s conversations, the warning is highly significant.”157 Clearly, by the fall of 1963, Kennedy had begun using every tool at his disposal to move the subject of the Justice Department investigation away from Johnson’s enablers and underlings and directly at the vice president himself. Johnson had replaced Baker as the real subject of Robert F. Kennedy’s investigations. RFK had even begun using IRS investigators in order to use Johnson’s legal problems as leverage to force him off the ticket if he, as expected, attempted to fight the Kennedys in order to hold on to his position. One of these investigators, Walt Perry, told author Gus Russo in 1992 that Billie Sol Estes had “funneled $10 million in bribes to Johnson and that Bobby Kennedy had contacted Estes in prison, making him an offer: ‘If you testify against Johnson, you’re out [of prison].’ Billie declined the offer, saying, ‘If I testified against him [Johnson], I’d be dead within twenty-four hours.’”158

All of the talk around Washington about Lyndon Johnson being knocked off the Democratic ticket in 1964 was not only known to him but was his central concern. The Kennedys denied it publicly, but behind the scenes, the decision had been made to replace Johnson. Colonel Burris, Johnson’s military aide, said in 1992, “He was really down. 1963 was the beginning of the end for Johnson. He was cut out; they were not giving him anything, and the message was basically: ‘We don’t want you and we don’t want your opinion.’ He knew that he was going to be thrown off the ticket and that was going to be the end for him.”159 As further confirmation of the above, JFK’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, wrote that JFK had revealed to her, shortly before he left for Texas, that he had grown weary of Johnson and his precarious legal issues, which threatened the entire administration:

As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back, he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, “You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career.

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