The first person to accuse Lyndon Johnson of murder was the sitting governor of Texas Allan Shivers who accused Lyndon Johnson of the 1952 prison murder of Sam Smithwick who was going to tell Coke Stevenson all about the Box 13 voting fraud in Jim Wells County that gave Lyndon Johnson the 1948 Texas Senate Democratic nomination. Forty-one years later in 1997 the first family of civil rights, the King family, went on national TV, ABC News, and accused Lyndon Johnson of murdering MLK. The New York Times covered this revelation the next day on June 20, 1997 in a story entitled Son of Dr. King Asserts LBJ role in Plot.
Author Roger Stone has detailed in his book The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ that Richard Nixon, Barry Goldwater and the KGB, then the world’s largest foreign intelligence service, all came to the ultimate conclusion that Lyndon Johnson had murdered John Kennedy. Jack Ruby, the man who murdered Oswald, made several statements indicting Lyndon Johnson in the JFK assassination, including saying that if Jack Kennedy had made Adlai Stevenson his vice president, then the JFK assassination would never have happened. Likewise, Air Force Gen Joseph J. Cappucci, the man in charge of Air Force counterintelligence and someone who was very close to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, also indicted Lyndon Johnson in the murder of John Kennedy. See my 2014 interview with Jan Amos. Hoover, of course, and LBJ were blood brothers. Immediately post JFK assassination, Robert Kennedy suspected that Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover may have played a role in it. RFK later focused his attention on the CIA and mafia as well.
Even Ben Barnes, who sits on the Board of Trustees of the LBJ Foundation, and who was Lyndon Johnson’s golden boy political son, has privately told a major lobbying client of his that Lyndon Johnson murdered John Kennedy.
The most important book ever written on Lyndon Johnson is Peter Hounam’s 2003 book Operation Cyanide which presents a compelling case that Lyndon Johnson was behind the USS Liberty murders which occurred on June 7, 1967. LBJ had ordered Israel to sink an American ship, murdering all 294 Americans on board, so it could be blame on Egypt and the United States would have a golden pretext, based on a nefarious false flag attack, to enter the Six Day War and bomb/take out Nasser of Egypt who over the course of the past ten years had drifted into the Soviet camp. That plan was foiled when to things happened: the USS Liberty miraculously did not sink and the Russians made some heated threats over the nuclear hotline “red phone” with LBJ. The only way to explain Lyndon Johnson’s behavior during the Six Day War and at other times is that LBJ was a “functional lunatic” just as some folks are “functional alcoholics.” Except that when one is a lunatic, he or she is by definition dysfunctional and not just a little bit drunk. McGeorge Bundy later said that in his last days of working for LBJ, that Lyndon Johnson distinctly reminded him of Joseph Stalin. Bundy left the Johnson Administration in 1966, but he was called back into the Administration in 1967 to manage the US response to the Six Day War.
In 1956 Texas Governor Allan Shivers accused Lyndon Johnson - of the murder of the 1952 prison murder of Sam Smithwick
[Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 250]
In 1948, a deputy sheriff in Alice named Sam Smithwick had become involved in a dispute with a local radio commentator who was then denouncing him for operating a string of beer joints. Hearing that the clean government crusader was going to mention one of his children in a disparaging way, Smithwick sought out his nemesis, pulled his .45, and shot him dead, a deed for which he was sentenced to life in prison. In 1952, Smithwick wrote Coke Stevenson from prison, insisting that five days before the shooting, two Mexican Americans had delivered into his hands the contents of Box 13 from the famous 1948 senatorial campaign. In return for leniency from the state, he was willing to produce them. Stevenson set out immediately for Huntsville and the state prison. “I had left the ranch and got as far as Junction,” Calculatin’ Coke recounted, “ when I got the information that he was dead.”
Indeed, the former deputy sheriff was found hanging from the bars of his cell. Shivers’s friends began spreading the word that Johnson together with South Texas political boss Archie Parr had had Smithwick murdered to cover up their theft of the 1948 senatorial election. LBJ went so far as to confront Shivers over the matter, but he, of course, denied it. “I think it was a psychopathic case - an old, ignorant man about to die trying to get himself out of the pen, and getting no answer, committed suicide.”
From Washington LBJ sought to put the matter in perspective. “I don’t know what a convicted murderer might have done prior to committing suicide in an attempt to get release from prison,” but Stevenson’s (and Shiver’s) release of the letter was “a continuation of a fight by a group of disgruntled, disappointed people.” Nevertheless, Johnson was shocked. “Shivers charged me with murder,” he later told Ronnie Dugger with incredulity. “Shivers said I was a murderer!”
[Randall Woods, LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, p. 250]
“According to Johnson, in 1956, Governor Allan Shivers of Texas accused him of having had Smithwick murdered. The charge understandably enraged Johnson. [Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising, p. 347]
Lyndon Johnson to journalist Ronnie Dugger: “Shivers said I was a murderer!” (1956)
In 1956, when Shivers and Johnson were fighting each other for political control, “Shivers charged me with murder,” Johnson, with great incredulity, told me. Speaking from his four-poster bed late one night in the White House, Johnson said that Shivers had made a speech accusing him of Smithwick’s murder, and in San Antonio “the reporters came running up to me saying Shivers had charged me with murder, and what did I want to say about it?” Obviously Johnson had dismissed the charge, but he did not say so, rather repeating indignantly, “Shivers said I was a murderer!” Shivers, shown this account of what Johnson said, told me, “I don’t care to discuss it.”
[Ronnie Dugger, The Life and Times of Lyndon Johnson, pp. 340-341]
ABC News: “Do you believe that Lyndon Johnson was part of the plot to kill your father?
Dexter King - on national TV in 1997 with the entire MLK family sitting around him: “Yes, I do.”
ABC NEWS: "What's more, Dexter King believes the plot went all the way to the White House." (See Dexter King's remarks as to who it was he believes was behind his father's assassination -- at 1:03:10).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=097u5blYeaE
Son of Dr. King Asserts L.B.J. Role in Plot
By KEVIN SACK
Published: June 20, 1997
Three months ago, Dexter Scott King declared that he and his family believed that James Earl Ray was not guilty of the murder of his father, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tonight, in a televised interview, Mr. King asserted that President Lyndon B. Johnson must have been part of a military and governmental conspiracy to kill Dr. King.
''Based on the evidence that I've been shown, I would think that it would be very difficult for something of that magnitude to occur on his watch and he not be privy to it,'' Mr. King said on the ABC News program ''Turning Point.''
Mr. King, who heads the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, suggested that the Army and Federal intelligence agencies were involved in his father's assassination, in Memphis on April 4, 1968.
''I am told that it was part and parcel Army intelligence, C.I.A., F.B.I.,'' he said in the interview. ''I think we knew it all along.''
Mr. King's older brother, Martin Luther King 3d, said in the television interview that Mr. Ray had ''basically nothing to do with this assassination.''
Mr. Ray, 69, is dying of liver disease in a state prison hospital in Nashville. He originally confessed to the killing and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Several days later, he recanted, saying that his lawyers had encouraged him to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty.
A Congressional inquiry and studies by several historians have concluded that Mr. Ray was almost certainly involved in the killing, although others may have played a part in a conspiracy.
The notion of a conspiracy by the Army and intelligence agencies to kill Dr. King has long been expounded by William F. Pepper, Mr. Ray's lawyer, who is seeking a trial for his client. In recent months, Mr. King, his three siblings, and their mother, Coretta Scott King, have apparently embraced Mr. Pepper's theories.
In the broadcast, Forrest Sawyer of ABC undermined at least part of Mr. Pepper's theory by introducing Mr. Pepper to Billy Eidson. Mr. Eidson is a retired Army officer whom Mr. Pepper has described as the leader of a unit that was ready to kill Dr. King if the assassin did not succeed.
Mr. Pepper has asserted that Mr. Eidson was himself later assassinated. After being presented with Mr. Eidson, Mr. Pepper said, ''I acknowledge that maybe I was provided with wrong information.''
In March, Dexter King traveled to Nashville to meet with Mr. Ray, and told him face to face that he and his family believed Mr. Ray's declarations of innocence.
With the King family's support, Mr. Pepper has won court approval for new ballistics tests on the rifle linked to Mr. Ray and the killing of Dr. King. Mr. Pepper hopes that new forensic methods will prove that the rifle did not fire the fatal shot. The tests have been completed, but a hearing has yet to be held on the results.
In the ABC program, Mrs. King and Andrew Young, formerly a top aide to Dr. King as well as a former chief delegate to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta, called on President Clinton to appoint a commission to investigate the killing again. Mrs. King proposed that anyone with information about the assassination be granted amnesty.
Neither Mr. Young nor any of the Kings could be reached for comment today.
Sen. Barry Goldwater (1973) was convinced that Lyndon Johnson was behind the JFK assassination
Goldwater told Jeffrey Hoff that in October, 1973
At the 2012 Dallas JFK Lancer conference I ran into JFK researcher Jeffrey Hoff of Arizona. Jeffrey Hoff was a leadership position in the local Cochise County Democratic Club from 1980-1983. He used to be a member of SDS in the 1960's. Now he installs "off the grid" solar systems. I briefly interviewed Hoff on Saturday, November 17, 2012 in Dallas, TX, at the JFK Lancer conference.
Jeffrey Hoff told me that in October, 1973 he met Barry Goldwater at a Republican political picnic in Willcox in Cochise County, AZ. I asked him how he ended up at a Republican picnic and he told me his friend Louise Parker, a friend and "real estate lady" from an Arizona "pioneer" family, had invited him. She said do you want to meet Barry Goldwater? Hoff said yes.
When Hoff met Sen. Barry Goldwater, Hoff, who had a keen interest in the JFK assassination, brought up that topic. Sen. Barry Goldwater told Hoff in October, 1973, that he (Goldwater) was convinced that Lyndon Johnson was behind the JFK assassination and that the Warren Commission was a complete cover up.Hoff got the impression that Goldwater had told others privately the same thing. I asked Hoff how confident was Goldwater when he was making these statements. Answer: Goldwater was very confident.
Jeffrey Hoff currently (2012) lives about 35 miles from Pierce, AZ. Lyndon Johnson died in January, 1973. J. Edgar Hoover had died in May, 1972. Allen Dulles died in January, 1969.
Barry Goldwater also read and complimented Fred Newcomb's book Murder From Within (1974) on the JFK assassination. Newcomb pointed the finger at the Secret Service, with deep suspicions of LBJ.
Barry Goldwater: "... the book ... seems to be very concise, detailed and documented" which he told Fred Newcomb in a letter complimenting his book. (Sen. Jesse Helms and Russell Long also read this book according to Tyler Newcomb, the son of Fred Newcomb.)
Jack Ruby called Lyndon Johnson a “Nazi” of the worst order” and said that if JFK had picked Adlai Stevenson instead of LBJ, Kennedy would still be alive.
(Damn straight.)
And here is Jack Ruby saying it was "the man in the office now"
A year after his conviction, in March 1965, Ruby conducted a brief televised news conference in which he stated: "Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world."When asked by a reporter: "Are these people in very high positions Jack?", he responded "Yes."
Jack Ruby also said to his jailer: "Now there're going to find out about Cuba, the guns, New Orleans and everything"
The book has been re-released (2011) and retitled as "Murder From Within: Lyndon Johnson's Plot Against President Kennedy."
Roger Stone on what Richard Nixon thought about the JFK assassination in a May, 2013, interview with the Daily Beast
Nixon “never flatly said who was responsible [for Kennedy’s death]. But he would say, ‘Both Johnson and I wanted to be president, but the only difference was I wouldn’t kill for it.”
Still, the juiciest parts of Stone’s book may be a series of interviews he conducted with his former boss Nixon toward the end of the former president’s life. According to Stone, Nixon “never flatly said who was responsible [for Kennedy’s death]. But he would say, ‘Both Johnson and I wanted to be president, but the only difference was I wouldn’t kill for it.”
When pressed on who he thought killed Kennedy, Nixon “would shiver and say, ‘Texas,’” said Stone. The KGB had concluded by 9/16/65 that Lyndon Johnson was behind the JFK Assassination.
Hoover sent a memo on 12/1/66 informing LBJ of this
JFK Assassination Review Board
Releases Top Secret Documents
Anna K. Nelson, American University
Copyright © Organization of American Historians
This is one of the jewels produced by the ARRB: a memo from J. Edgar Hoover dated 12/1/66 (and sent to LBJ on that day) which stated that as of September, 1965 the Soviets were telling their KGB agents in America that they had concluded that Lyndon Johnson was behind the JFK assassination.
Also, go to page 1,492-1,496 of Doug Horne's Volume V of his book "Inside the Assassinations Record Review Board." The leader of the FBI records team Phil Golrick told author Doug Horne that "the specific language in the FBI report indicates that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance, not human intelligence, and it should be considered a very reliable record of what the KGB had been telling its own people behind closed doors in its own Residency in New York City." (Horne, p. 1493, Volume 5, Inside the ARRB).
I consider this to be of gargantuan significance for understanding the JFK assassination. It is up there with Gen. Ed Lansdale being photographed at TSBD. Up there with Antonio Veciana identifying "Maurice Bishop" aka David Atlee Phillips with Oswald.
This is extremely important because it I s coming from Soviet internal intelligence, not their propaganda organs (who were accusing the Texas oil men closely associated with LBJ). FBI counter-intelligence discovered in the mid 1960's that the Soviets believed internally that Lyndon Johnson was behind the JFK assassination. The Russians at that time had the largest foreign intelligence agency in the world. They were quite competent, too, having stolen our complete atomic bomb secrets in the early mid 1940's.
The FBI found out what the Soviets were telling their KGB Residency in New York through electronic surveillance.
http://www.indiana.e...feb/jfk.html#d1
Hoover sent this memo to Lyndon Johnson on 12/1/1966. (Johnson's mental condition in that time period was not good at all. I think the stresses of Vietnam as well as his participation in the JFK assassination were weighing heavily on him.)
Document 1
1 - Mr. DeLoach
1 - Mr. Wick
1 - Mr. Gale
1 - Mr. Sullivan
1 - Mr. Branigan
1 - Mr. Lenihan
December 1, 1966
REACTION OF SOVIET AND COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS TO THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
A source who has furnished reliable information in the past and who was in Russia on the date of the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy advised on December 4, 1963, that the news of the assassination of President Kennedy was flashed to the Soviet people almost immediately after its occurrence. It was greeted by great shock and consternation and church bells were tolled in the memory of President Kennedy.
According to our source, officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 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 rose out of a carefully planned campaign in which several people played a part. They felt those elements interested in utilizing the assassination and playing on anticommunist sentiments in the United States would then utilize this act to stop negotiations with the Soviet Union, attack Cuba and thereafter spread the war. As a result of these feelings, the Soviet Union immediately went into a state of national alert.
Our source further stated that Soviet officials were fearful that without leadership, some irresponsible general in the United States might launch a missile at the Soviet Union. It was the further opinion of the Soviet officials that only maniacs would think that the "left" forces in the United States, as represented by the Communist Party, USA, would assassinate President Kennedy, especially in view of the abuse the Communist Party, USA, has taken from the "ultraleft" as a result of its support of peaceful coexistence and disarmament policies of the Kennedy administration.
62-109060
REL:kas
(8)
REACTION OF SOVIET AND COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS TO THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
According to our source, Soviet officials claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald had no connection whatsoever with the Soviet Union. They described him as a neurotic maniac who was disloyal to his own country and everything else. They noted that Oswald never belonged to any organization in the Soviet Union and was never given Soviet citizenship.
(CG 5824-S*)
A second source who has furnished reliable information in the past advised on November 27, 1963, that Nikolai T. Fedorenko, the Permanent Representative to the Soviet Mission to the United Nations, held a brief meeting with all diplomatic personnel employed at the Soviet Mission on November 23, 1963. During this meeting, Fedorenko related for the benefit of all present the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and stated that Kennedy's death was very much regretted by the Soviet Union and had caused considerable shock in Soviet Government circles. Fedorenko stated that the Soviet Union would have preferred to have had President Kennedy at the helm of the American Government. He added that President Kennedy had, to some degree, a mutual understanding with the Soviet Union, and had tried seriously to improve relations between the United States and Russia. Fedorenko also added that little or nothing was known by the Soviet Government concerning President Lyndon Johnson and, as a result, the Soviet Government did not know what policies President Johnson would follow in the future regarding the Soviet Union.
According to our source, Colonel Boris Ivanov, Chief of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) Residency in New York City, held a meeting of KGB personnel on the morning of November 25, 1963. Ivanov informed those present that President Kennedy's death had posed a problem for the KGB and stated that it was necessary for all KGB employees to lend their efforts to solving the problem.
According to our source, Ivanov stated that it was his personal feeling that the assassination of President Kennedy had been planned by an organized group rather than being the act of one individual assassin. Ivanov stated that it was therefore necessary that the KGB ascertain with the greatest possible speed the true story surrounding President Kennedy's assassination. Ivanov stated that the KGB was interested in knowing all the factors and all of the possible groups which might have worked behind the scenes to organize and plan this assassination.
REACTION OF SOVIET AND COMMUNIST PARTY OFFICIALS TO THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
Our source added that Ivanov also emphasized that it was of extreme importance to the Soviet Government to determine precisely what kind of man the new President Lyndon Johnson would be. Ivanov said that President Johnson was practically an unknown to the Soviet Government and, accordingly, the KGB had issued instructions to all of its agents to immediately obtain all data available concerning the incumbent President. Ivanov said that it would be necessary for KGB personnel to gather and correlate all information concerning President Johnson, including his background, his past working experience and record in Congress, his present attitude toward the Soviet Union, and particularly all information which might have bearing upon the future foreign policy line he would follow (NY 3653-S*)
On September 16, 1965, this same source reported that the KGB Residency in New York City received instructions approximately September 16, 1965, from KGB headquarters in Moscow to develop all possible information concerning President Lyndon B. Johnson's character, background, personal friends, family, and from which quarters he derives his support in his position as President of the United States. Our source added that in the instructions from Moscow, it was indicated that "now" the KGB was in possession of data purporting to indicate President Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F. Kennedy. KGB headquarters indicated that in view of this information, it was necessary for the Soviet Government to know the existing personal relationship between President Johnson and the Kennedy family, particularly between President Johnson and Robert and "Ted" Kennedy.
Billie Sol Estes’ 1984 letter to the US Justice Dept. regarding 8 murders of Lyndon Johnson
Before LBJ Cliff Carter died, he and Billie Sol Estes had a conversation and Cliff Carter told Estes that as far as he knew, Lyndon Johnson had murdered 17 people. Estes only mentioned eight of these murders, mainly the ones he had direct knowledge of, in his 1984 letter to the US Justice Department.
LETTER #2 - FROM DOUGLAS CADDY (lawyer for Billie Sol Estes)
August 9, 1984 Mr. Stephen S. Trott
Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, D. C. 20530 RE: Mr. Billie Sol Estes Dear Mr. Trott: My client, Mr. Estes, has authorized me to make this reply to your letter of May 29, 1984. Mr. Estes was a member of a four-member group, headed by Lyndon Johnson, which committed criminal acts in Texas in the 1960's. The other two, besides Mr. Estes and LBJ, were Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace. Mr. Estes is willing to disclose his knowledge concerning the following criminal offenses: I. Murders 1. The killing of Henry Marshall
2. The killing of George Krutilek
3. The killing of Ike Rogers and his secretary
4. The killing of Harold Orr
5. The killing of Coleman Wade
6. The killing of Josefa Johnson
7. The killing of John Kinser
8. The killing of President J. F. Kennedy. Mr. Estes is willing to testify that LBJ ordered these killings, and that he transmitted his orders through Cliff Carter to Mac Wallace, who executed the murders. In the cases of murders nos. 1-7, Mr. Estes' knowledge of the precise details concerning the way the murders were executed stems from conversations he had shortly after each event with Cliff Carter and Mac Wallace. In addition, a short time after Mr. Estes was released from prison in 1971, he met with Cliff Carter and they reminisced about what had occurred in the past, including the murders. During their conversation, Carter orally compiled a list of 17 murders which had been committed, some of which Mr. Estes was unfamiliar. A living witness was present at that meeting and should be willing to testify about it. He is Kyle Brown, recently of Houston and now living in Brady, Texas. Mr. Estes, states that Mac Wallace, whom he describes as a "stone killer" with a communist background, recruited Jack Ruby, who in turn recruited Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Estes says that Cliff Carter told him that Mac Wallace fired a shot from the grassy knoll in Dallas, which hit JFK from the front during the assassination. [The letter continues …]Sincerely yours,Douglas Caddy
James Bamford has a good list of high American officials who know Israel intentionally attacked the USS Liberty. But even Bamford has not figured out the very unpleasant and horrible reason why: http://www.fas.org/sgp/eprint/bamford.html The reality is LBJ ordered them to do it and Israel, by attacking an American ship, was taking a gargantuan risk and doing something against her national interest.
The USS Liberty, Israel & President Johnson’s Order to Destroy the USS Liberty
By Judy Morris
Lyndon Baines Johnson is a president who has escaped the scrutiny and judgment of history despite considerable documentation that should make him an outstanding candidate for historical review, critique and analysis. His primary biographer, Robert Caro, consistently gets rave book reviews from mainstream media for his disingenuous puff piece books on LBJ. It’s entirely possible that LBJ is the most evil or one of the most evil presidents in US history.
Some researchers believe that LBJ was the mastermind behind JFK’s assassination and researcher Phillip F. Nelson wrote a book documenting his investigation on this issue: LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination.
However, one of greatest unknown chapters in LBJ’s presidency is that he personally gave the order to Israel to bomb and utterly destroy the USS Liberty and its entire crew of 294 Americans. Astoundingly, when the mission went awry and Sixth Fleet Commanders were ordering the rescue of the besieged and bloodied USS Liberty crew, LBJ ordered that rescue operations be called back, at least twice. Against all odds, the USS Liberty survived but after the attack, 34 Americans lay dead. Except for 4 worthless 50 caliber machine guns, the USS Liberty was unarmed and defenseless against the far superior firing power of the Israeli navel and air force armada that descended upon it with relentless and unspeakable terror. Not a whole lot has been written about the USS Liberty and its just another critically important issue that has been buried in history but two extraordinary books document the truth. James M. Ennes Jr., a retired US Navel Officer and a survivor of the USS Liberty who wrote a book on the USS Liberty that documents his investigative disclosure of the truth, here. The “official” story of the USS Liberty according to the government and mainstream media version of the event is that on June 8, 1967 the Israelis accidentally bombed the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt and killed 34 American sailors.
The real story is that President Johnson, who was being battered in the polls over the Vietnam War and facing a general election loss and even losing the DNC primary, ordered the Israelis to bomb the USS Liberty to create a casus belli to secure a Gulf of Tonkin style resolution to explode the world into war because in America everybody loves an outraged and indignant president who will use the full force of the military at the slightest provocation, even a government planned false flag attack.
The USS Liberty, however, encompasses far more than a murderous psychopathic American president resorting to hideously evil deeds to get re-elected. In addition to ordering the total destruction of the USS Liberty and sending 294 Americans to a watery grave in the Mediterranean Sea, LBJ also ordered the nuclear bombing of Cairo, an event specifically designed to create a nuclear war by blaming the entire USS Liberty affair on Russia or Egypt. More horrifying, it’s documented that US planes were on emergency standby orders as pilots waited on the runways in their planes armed with nuclear weapons. The nuclear bombing of Cairo was called off only 3 minutes before the nuclear bomb drops.
As fate would have it, LBJ’s plan blew up in his face and the world got a reprieve from a nuclear US induced holocaust. How did it happen? First, it must be understood that the USS Liberty was supposed to be destroyed and sunk within minutes and without any survivors.
The actual attack on the USS Liberty commenced at 2:00 p.m. Israel time on June 8, 1967. The USS Liberty was 13 miles off the coast of Gaza and moving slowly at 5 knots. The crew had observed several flyovers by Israeli reconnaissance planes earlier in the day.
When the USS Liberty was struck, it was struck with an awesome force. According to USSLiberty.org, a website created by the survivals to document and expose the truth, the ship was first struck by Israeli fighter aircraft:
“Israeli fighter aircraft launched a rocket attack on USS Liberty. The aircraft made repeated firing passes, attacking USS Liberty with rockets and their internal cannons. After the first flight of fighter aircraft had exhausted their ordnance, subsequent flights of Israeli fighter aircraft continued to prosecute the attack with rockets, cannon fire, and napalm. During the air attack, USS Liberty’s crew had difficulty contacting Sixth Fleet to request assistance due to intense communications jamming. The initial targets on the ship were the command bridge, communications antennas, and the four .50 caliber machine guns, placed on the ship to repel boarders.
After the Israeli fighter aircraft completed their attacks, three Israeli torpedo boats arrived and began a surface attack about 35 minutes after the start of the air attack. The torpedo boats launched a total of five torpedoes, one of which struck the side of USS Liberty, opposite the ship’s research spaces. [20] Twenty-six Americans in addition to the eight who had been killed in the earlier air attacks, were killed as a result of this explosion.
Following their torpedo attack, the torpedo boats moved up and down the length of the ship (both the port and starboard sides), continuing their attack, raking the ship with cannon and machine gun fire.[21] In Malta, crewmen were later assigned the task of counting all of the holes in the ship that were the size of a man’s hand or larger. They found a total of 861 such holes, in addition to “thousands” of .50 caliber machine gun holes.“, link here. USS Liberty Timeline, here. 0600: Israeli Nord 2501 Noratlas (flying boxcar) reconnoiters Liberty….
0603: Reconnaissance aircraft reports to Israeli naval headquarters that “GTR-5” is written on the ship, identifying it as an NSA intelligence vessel.
0720: Fresh American flag is raised….
1000: Two unmarked, rocket-armed, delta-winged jets circle Liberty three times. Liberty officers can count rockets and see the pilots, but see no identifying marks on the plane. The jets radio Israeli headquarters that the ship is flying an American flag….
1055: Pinchas Pinchasy, naval liaison officer at Israeli air force headquarters, reports to Naval Headquarters that the ship cruising slowly off El Arish is “an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy, named Liberty, whose marking was GTR-5.”…
1100 & 1130: Israeli reconnaissance aircraft again circle Liberty.
The above information is critically important because it proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Israelis were well aware that the USS Liberty was a well marked US spy ship. US spy ships are extremely easy to spot because as telecommunication vessels, they are loaded with wires, antennas and other communication gear that are easily recognized and identifiable (unlike Russian spy ships that were realistically camouflaged as trawlers and fishing boats). The reason it’s important to understand this is because the cover-up of of the USS Liberty incident was so flimsy and fictitious that both the US and Israeli governments officially stated that the USS Liberty was mistook for an Egyptian vessel that hauls horses. This is simply impossible.
As the timeline unfolds, it’s clear that the attack on the USS Liberty had two goals: 1. first destroy and disable all communication capabilities and 2. sink the ship, her crew and guarantee that there were no survivors. The timeline continues. 1358: Two unmarked delta-winged Mirage jets attack Liberty. After taking out gun mounts, they target ship’s antennae and bridge with heat-seeking missiles.
1424: Three French-built 62-ton Israeli motor torpedo boats approach Liberty in attack formation.
1435: Torpedo boats launch five German-made 19-inch torpedoes at Liberty. One torpedo strikes starboard directly into NSA area, accounting for 25 of the 34 men who would be killed. Torpedo boats then circle, machine-gunning the ship with armor-piercing projectiles for another 40 minutes.
At this point, the USS Liberty was being pummeled by air and sea with everything that attack planes and motorized torpedo boats (MTB’s) could possibly throw at them. The decks were ablaze from napalm fires, the ship was being torpedoed by the Israeli Navy and bombs and rockets from the air rained down on them.
This is where the story turns extraordinarily heroic from human ingenuity that pretty much killed LBJ’s grand plan. One of the USS Liberty’s communication transformers had been down and not functioning, something the Israeli’s must have known in advance because it wasn’t destroyed or even hit. A courageous crew member managed to fix it by stringing long wires across a burning deck and rendered it operable, and, of course, capable of sending out a mayday message to numerous US aircraft that permeated the area. However, the Israeli planes had high tech jamming equipment that successfully jammed the signal. It’s probably also true that at that point the Israeli’s were not much concerned with the USS Liberty sending out a message because they believed that all communication equipment was knocked out permanently.
Peter Hounam writes in Operation Cyanide “Liberty radioman Richard Sturman concluded that the attackers had carefully prepared for the attack with the specific intention of preventing the ship communicating with the outside world. To do so effectively they must have had prior knowledge from shore-based receivers of the five frequencies being used by the ship, so that jamming gear could be tuned to them. Sturman recalled his anger when he discovered that the international distress frequency, used for Mayday messages, was also jammed”.
The astute crew however made a startling discovery. The Israeli jamming capabilities did not work when they were actually engaged bombing and the USS Liberty crew had windows of a few seconds of opportunity in between strikes to send out a message.
Hounam writes “At first, the signalmen felt their task was hopeless. Plane after plane was swooping in on the ship, firing cannon, shooting missiles and dropping napalm….Then someone spotted that there was a respite from the jamming, lasting just a few seconds, when the attacking planes fired their missiles. Halman grabbed the opportunity and shouted into the mike, ‘Any station, this is Rockstar. We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance!”. On the USS Saratoga (call-sign ‘Schematic’) the radioman picked up the message but it was garbled, possibly by further jamming. ”Rockstar, this is Schematic,’ he said. ’Say again, you are garbled.’”
Eventually, the USS Liberty message was acknowledged and authenticated 10 minutes after the attack began. The USS Saratoga confirmed Liberty’s message with ‘Roger, Rockstar. Authentication is correct…’. The messaged bounced everywhere and was even acknowledged by 2 US embassies in the region. Furthermore, it was impossible for the Pentagon not to know of Liberty’s attack as all messages are also automatically routed to the Pentagon and other government agencies. The Israeli’s must have also intercepted the radio message.
The Liberty crew was relieved and believed that help was on the way. Wrong! Although fleet commanders quickly ordered rescue operations, twice the rescue missions were ordered called back by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a close friend and trusted associate of LBJ. In fact, it’s documented that during one of the conversations between the the Sixth Fleet Commander and McNamara, LBJ got on the phone and roared ‘We will not embarrass an ally’ to reinforce McNamara’s direct command from LBJ to NOT to rescue the ailing USS Liberty and her crew.
According to James Ennes, the entire attack lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes, although some crew members believe it was longer. Unquestionably, the attack was sheer hell for those on board the USS Liberty and the agony was prolonged by the fact that help from the Sixth Fleet never arrived as expected.
Then something extraordinary happened. The Israelis stopped attacking despite having more than enough firepower to finish the job of sinking the USS Liberty and her crew. It’s been documented that the Israelis had commando helicopter crews hovering above the USS Liberty with a crew to finish the job. Clearly, the USS Liberty crew expected to die.
But with the message out and everybody knowing about it, including the Russians who knew what was going because they were close by in their own disguised spy ships as they intercepted the message or possibly even observed the USS Liberty being attacked, the Israelis panicked, called off the attack and never finished the job. Eventually, the surviving crew was rescued and many were badly injured.
Hounam documents an interview with one of the injured USS Liberty crew members, Joe Lentini.
I woke up, it was pitch-black and I was in water. I tried to stand up and put my weight on my left leg and it wouldn’t support me, obviously I fell back down; I didn’t know at the time I had six broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a fractured skull, both tympanic membranes in my ears were blown out, shrapnel all over me in my body…it never occurred to me that I didn’t have a leg and it never occurred to me that I was about to die.
Shockingly, the USS Liberty tragedy did not begin at 2:00 p.m. Israeli time according to the sanitized official version. It began earlier. According to Hounam, he interviewed a retired Air Force pilot, Jim Nanjo, who spent 20 years on the H-bomb attack force. The job of such pilots who lived on US air bases was to be READY to jump into a plane and carry out orders immediately.
Nanjo told Hounam about how he was awakened on the morning of 6/8/67 between 2:00 a.m. and no later than and 4:00 a.m. by an alert that told him an emergency situation existed and he need to man his plane immediately. Others bomber pilots were also manning their planes and revving up their engines waiting for the “go” order and their orders. They knew nothing about their mission and Hounam writes:
Nanjo was in no doubt that the world was near to Armageddon that day…
There was however one other significance of his story that he had not spotted. The klaxons had woken him at between 1 am. and 4 am; he was certain it was no later, but the Liberty was not attacked until 5 am California time. How were the American military and their commander in chief, Lyndon Johnson, able to anticipate the attack, and yet apparently not know the Israelis were behind it.
Hounam also documents that Nanjo was aware that other US Air Force bases were under the same HIGHEST alert in Guam, Britain, Moron, Spain as well as in the US. What was Nanjo carrying? Hounam writes:
Even after 35 years, he was reluctant to provide details of the bombs carried by his squadron that morning.: ‘Other than to say it was a weapon of mass destruction. I am not able to give you the nomenclature.’. Thenhe confirmed that they were carrying thermonuclear weapons – H-bombs…“
It’s well documented that LBJ and his trusted Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, were deeply and personally involved in the USS Liberty tragedy, the cover-up of the truth and even a scheme to explode the world into nuclear warfare.
To comprehend the severity of the situation, it’s imperative to understand the Cold War, the backdrop against which it was played, the prevalent paranoia at the time of the Communist threat and the incredible rise of America’s military industrial complex to the worlds sole superpower. Many who knew LBJ well feared that he was unstable, mentally ill, a psychopath or even worse. He was notoriously crude and vulgar. Denis Healey, the Secretary of Defense in Britain so despised and distrusted LBJ that he wrote in his memoirs:
Lyndon Johnson was a monster….
[He was] one of the few politicians with whom I found it uncomfortable to be in the same room. Johnson exuded a brutal lust for power which I found most disagreeable. When he said, “I never trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket“, he really meant it. He boasted about acting on the principle, “Give me a man’s balls, and his heart and mind will follow.“… Source: Operation Cyanide
That LBJ was mad is validated by his numerous actions that fueled his personal ambitions over the decades and in the summer of 1967 LBJ was obsessed with one thing and one thing only: reelection. He was in grave danger of losing the presidency and his power. That he would do anything to maintain that power is 100% consistent with the depth of his evil.
But LBJ was also an extraordinarily clever master politician who profoundly understood how raucous game of geopolitics could be played and manipulated to his own advantage, especially when it came to courting the approval of the American people. Vietnam was already a whopper of a failure and LBJ’s war was growing more unpopular by the second.
The Middle East has always been a disaster (some things never change), at least since since oil came into play and the modern nation state of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948. The rise of Arab nationalism was also heating up as Egyptian President Gamal Nasser and the Marxist styled Baathist movements were flourishing. Syria and Iraq had shed western imposed monarchs and were raising their own brand of dictators. Israel was becoming America’s unofficial 51st state as the Evangelical movement was rising in anticipation of fulfilling Biblical prophecy now that Israel existed for the first time since Biblical times.
The bellicose rhetoric blossomed as Arab leaders public vowed to destroy Israel. This was nothing new and even the Israelis perceived that such utterances were an appeasement to the neurotic Arab street rather than an actual threat. Still, that didn’t stop Israel from launching the preemptive Six Day War.
The significance of the Six Day War as it relates to the USS Liberty is that the USS Liberty was bombed on the 4th day of the Six Day War that Israel had actually won during the first hour of the first day of the Six Day War when it wiped out the entire Egyptian Air Force. The geopolitical drama of the Middle East is acutely linked to the Cold War because the Soviet Union was arming and funding Middle East regimes, notably Egypt and Syria. The Middle East was a pawn on the chessboard of America vs. the Soviets during the Cold War because influential dominance of the region was a key goal of both nations. Of course, the obviously oily nature of Middle East natural resources was considered a prize.
Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin paid a visit to former Israeli Prime Minster David Ben Gurion who is Israeli’s most esteemed national hero, loved and respected by all. Ben Gurion was appalled at the prospects of war with Egypt or anybody, and is reported to have told Rabin “You made a mistake….You led the state into a grave situation. We must not go to war”. Rabin was reportedly horrified that he didn’t have the blessing of Ben Gurion for a preemptive war. Ben Gurion isn’t shy about war; in fact, he was the leader of Israel’s War of Independence when Israel was the the target of Arab military violence right after the UN declared Israel a nation. Though a fighter and even a terrorist according to some, Ben Gurion preferred peace and negotiation with his cantankerous Arab neighbors because war was always hideously destructive.
Who was behind the Six Day War and why? It’s highly unlikely that Israel unilaterally initiated the Six Day War without specific instructions and support from the U.S. Some observers believe that the US and LBJ engineered the Six Day War as part of America’s Cold War strategy to humiliate the Soviet Union and and advance U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.
Furthermore, it’s ludicrous to accept that Israel accidentally bombed the USS Liberty and it’s clearly obvious that the official US/Israel version is so flimsy a cover-up that any citizen journalist using his Google fingers could credibly research enough facts to blow that lie to shreds.
However, the USS Liberty incident was far more sinister. Nasser, other Arab leaders and Arab journalists tended to believe that the U.S. and Britain were behind the Six Day War and actually participated. The consensus in the Arab world was that the entire Israeli Air Force wasn’t sufficient in numerical strength to accomplish the now infamous Israeli aerial armada that struck the Egyptian Air Force with such a devastating force that the entire Egyptian Air Force was demolished. Moreover, it appears that the Arab world was clueless about US plans to start a war with Egypt through its proxy Israel and/or that the nuclear bombing of Cairo was on the table. Hounam writes:
Before Day Four of the war, Nasser had been accusing the US and Britain of directly assisting Israel. After the hot-line exchange about the Liberty, he was convinced of it. Of course, he was not aware that the ‘reconnaissance planes’ had in fact been on their way to bomb Cairo or…..that an atomic device could have been detonated.
Hounam interviewed a guy named Joe Sorrels who back in the 1960′s was doing freelance special operations and intelligence work for the U.S. and Britain. Sorrels was no ordinary technician with skills; his function was sufficiently important that he personally met Meir Amit, head of the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hounam writes:
From his viewpoint, it seemed the Israelis were responding to pressure from the United States to eradicate Nasser; Israel was not the prime mover….
According to Sorrels the war plans went well, the driving force being the US…
Sorrels described as ‘horse shit’ the commonly-held notion that Israel fought this war on its own: ‘Anybody working around intelligence knows it isn’t true’. He repeated that Operation Cyanide was a secret plan to start a war against Egypt….
He said Israel’s only motive was to grab territory, nothing more, and it was elements in the United States who were pushing them to invade Egypt…”
The USS Liberty survivors had organized over the years and met periodically to share research and contribute their version of what happened on June 8, 1967. At a 5/4/2002 gathering, Hounam met with Moe Schafer and shared his recollection of two important USS Liberty events.
Before the attack he was cleaning the moon-bounce dish and watched as an Israeli plane flew low over the ship taking photographs….it was confirmation of the testimony of other eyewitnesses that Israel was well aware of the ship’s presence.
The second memory from after the attack was much more significant. Moe said he was hurt by shrapnel during the assault….Unlike most of the injured who had already been taken away to the USS America, he was loaded into a helicopter and flown to the USS Davis, the flagship of Sixth Fleet commander Admiral Martin. The next morning he was sitting on his bunk with two or thee other injured men when Martin came in to see them.
Shafer said he seemed to want to tell someone about what had happened before he would be obliged through pressure from above to clam up: ‘Not only did Admiral Martin tell me that four jets were on their way to the Liberty with conventional weapons [and were recalled]; he stated that four were on their way to Cairo loaded with nuclear weapons. He stated they were three minutes from bombing them [the Egyptians]. He also said that the jets could not land back on the carrier with nuclear arms and they had had to land in Athens. He stated this from my beside while on the Little Rock [the codename of the flagship] after the attack.
The story told by Moe Schafer about Admiral Martin confirming that the US planned to nuke Cairo is also a story that is validated by Air Force pilot Jim Nanjo in California and a member of the H-bomb attack force. Nanjo didn’t know that Cairo was the target, only that he and other crews were on standby to take-off and drop nuclear bombs. Nanjo could never understand why he was called out of bed in the middle of the night on June 8, 1967 (California time) BEFORE the USS Liberty was attack by Israel. Nanjo also confirmed that he knew that other nuclear bomb units were on under the same alert in Guam, Britain, Moron, Spain as well as in the US.
That a U.S. president would give an order to nuke Cairo, explode the world into nuclear war and destroy an unarmed and defenseless U.S. military vessel with a crew of nearly 300 is beyond incomprehensibly evil. This is something that the USS Liberty survivors have struggled with over the decades but the more they analyzed their own research and eyewitness accounts, the more they were convinced that no other conclusions could be drawn. The hardest thing for the survivors to accept relative to what happened that day was the fact that their own government, the very same government they swore an oath to serve as a matter of patriotism and duty to their county, would do such a thing.
In the context of the red meat geopolitical ramifications that occurred on June 8, 1967, there are several extraordinary takeaways.
1. The USS Liberty crew member who string wired a telecommunication device on the burning and napalmed deck of the ship and facilitated Liberty’s ability to get a message out played a key role in averting a disaster of Biblical proportions. Once the message got out, everybody got it including the Israelis, the Pentagon, NSA, the White House, the president, other U.S. intelligence and defense agencies, the State Department, U.S. Embassies and the Soviets whose outstanding spy capabilities didn’t miss a thing. The cat was out of the proverbial bag.
2. The Israelis acknowledged their role in the USS Liberty attack and vigorously collaborated with the U.S. in the “it was an accident” cover-up. Unquestionably, the Israelis do have blood on their hands. But in a perverse sort of way, the Israelis may have deliberately sabotaged the attack because they did indeed have the firepower to quickly sink the USS Liberty and her crew but they didn’t. There are accounts about Israeli pilots who were carrying out their orders by dropping their bombs into the Mediterranean Sea on purpose. Whether they did it as a matter of conscience or on direct orders, we’ll never know.
The Israelis were in fact terrified of an Arab-Soviet alliance and they dreaded unleashing a global and regional nuclear war because they believed they would indeed be a target for annihilation. The Israelis were, however, motivated to engage in some level of warfare to expand their own obsession with real estate. The Israelis wanted land and after the Six Day War they indeed ended up with the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and Syria’s Golan Heights.
It’s entirely possible that the Israelis thwarted LBJ and his draconian plans but it’s also true that Israel played along with the U.S. but only to the extent that it could maneuver something out of it for Israel. Israel is dependent on U.S. foreign aid and as an ally, Israel’s goals and national interests do in fact collide with U.S. goals and intentions. Israel cannot realistically refuse the U.S. anything which is precisely why Israel is constantly gaming its relationship with the U.S.
3. The Soviets were well aware of what was going on relative to the USS Liberty and probably even LBJ’s plan to spark a US-Soviet confrontation through its proxies in the Middle East, especially Egypt. There was considerable ‘buzz’ between DC and Moscow on June 8, 1967 and it’s entirely possible that Moscow screamed to DC something that went like this but in diplomatic language “Hey you idiots, we’re on to you, we know what you did and if you take it any further we’ll tell the whole damn world about it and expose your president for the murderous psychopath that he is”. The Soviets did not want war.
4. Only the president of the United States could give the order to launch warplanes loaded with nuclear bombs and only the president could give the order to recall the order.
That LBJ was such a demented power mad psychopath who directly and personally issued orders that brought the planet within 3 minutes of a nuclear holocaust that would vaporize all or part of Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world with 1960′s population of over 8 million (now 20 million), should be shocking for clueless Americans but it’s not shocking for the very few journalists and folks who researched and dug for the truth. However, what is even more shocking is that LBJ’s role in the Six Day War and the USS Liberty, as well as his grand schemes to reorder the world and even create a nuclear war to feed his ambitions, continues to be covered up in the U.S.
LBJ didn’t do this alone and his close associates in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department and intelligence agencies were all complicit and willing partners. Furthermore, LBJ was indeed angry that he was somewhat restricted by the Constitution and Congress. An Israeli diplomat, Eppie Evron, recalled a meeting he had with LBJ on 5/26/67 as documented by Hounam.
“Then he went on to say, “I, Lyndon Johnson, have to get congressional approval if I want to act as President of the United States. Otherwise, I’m just a six-foot-four Texan friend of Israel”. (That description stuck in my memory.) “But you and I, the two most powerful people in Washington, are going to get Congress to pass another Tonkin resolution.”….
I thought, “He’s telling me that Congress is never going to give him permission to use military force.”….
To be sure, LBJ was lamenting his own lack of power and resented any accountability to anyone. For a power mad autocrat like LBJ, consulting with Congress or requesting Congressional action was humiliating and beneath him.
The survivor of the USS Liberty have created a website, USS Liberty Memorial, to honor the fallen and document the truth. Because the USS Liberty has created a firestorm of raging anti-Semites and Jew haters, the website has a disclaimer affirming that it has no connection with any of these groups. The USS Liberty Memorial web site abhors the racist and extreme positions taken by antiSemitic, Holocaust denial, conspiracy theorist and other such groups which often seek to identify with us and to usurp our story as their own. We have no connection with and do not support or encourage support from any of these groups including National Alliance, National Vanguard, The New Order, National Socialists, The French Connection, Liberty Lobby, American Free Press, Republic Broadcasting, USS Liberty Radio Hour, Storm Front or other such groups. We wish harm to no one and encourage social justice and equality for everyone; we seek only accountability for the criminal acts perpetrated against us and can do that without help from hate-mongers.
On the Israeli side, the group of pro-Israel, anti-American critics of our story, while small, persists in launching loud, vicious ad hominem attacks on anyone who attempts to discuss the deliberateness of the attack. These anti-American apologists refuse to discuss the facts of the case. Instead, they rely on propaganda and charge anyone who questions the Israeli position with being antiSemitic.
Sifting through the lies, propaganda and disinformation definitely requires an open mind, diligence and the ability to astutely decipher geopolitical consequences and intentions that are deliberately obsfucated, twisted and distorted by government and the media.
We do in fact live under the cloud of a dangerous, unaccountable, secretive and shadow government that plots unspeakable evil.
The USS Liberty cost American taxpayers $40 million but was sold for scrap in 1970 – $101,000. Things only got worse for LBJ and he announced on 3/31/68 that he would not seek re-election, probably because he couldn’t bear losing in a primary or general election. LBJ dropped dead of a heart attack on 1/22/73 and is still revered as one of America’s greatest liberal progressive Democratic presidents despite his attempts to explode the world into nuclear war, despite his direct orders to sink the USS Liberty, despite murdering millions of Asians and despite being responsible for over 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial of Americans who died in Vietnam.
Author Phil Nelson on LBJ causing the deaths of his two pilots Harold Teague and Charles Williams on Feb. 17, 1961 - LBJ forced the 2 men to fly in WHITEOUT conditions from Austin to the LBJ Ranch. They crashed & died.
Only a few weeks into the new administration, in early February 1961, it became apparent that the initial meeting between Mac Wallace and Henry Marshall had not been successful—evidently, Marshall was too honest and incapable of accepting either bribes or threats—and the situation continued to spiral out of control. Johnson’s actions at this point can only be described as hysterical. Estes was insisting on another meeting, and Ed Clark pressed Johnson to fly to Pecos to meet with him again to come up with a plan to contain the potential calamity if Marshall was not immediately stopped from his ongoing “persecution” of Billie Sol.
So, on a day in which Johnson was apparently having a particularly serious manic/irritability attack, only one month after the newly minted Kennedy-Johnson administration took office, he would lose any remaining rationality in a screaming fit that he had by telephone to his pilots, who had stayed over in Austin and who had the audacity to attempt to talk Lyndon out of a flight that day—Friday, February 17, 1961—because of “below minimum” weather conditions. In a hysterical blind rage, on a cold, foggy, and overcast evening in south Texas, after hearing Ed Clark tell him he had to meet again with Estes, Johnson called for his airplane to pick him up and expected immediate obedience. He had trained all his other minions to obey his every command—who were these men to think they did not have the same duty to pay proper homage to him, the vice president of the United States? Of all the accounts noted within these pages of Lyndon Johnson’s narcissism, arrogance, and condescension toward the people who worked for him, this incident was clearly the most egregious. His reckless disregard for the safety of the pilots, when their caution impinged on his need to pursue his own criminal conduct, illustrates his abject arrogance better than any words could possibly convey.
Pilot Harold Teague was advised by the Austin airport against making the flight. When Teague complained and tried to refuse to make the flight because of the extremely dangerous weather conditions and the lack of ground control instruments at the landing strip, “Johnson is said to have exploded, venting his profanity upon the pilot, demanding to know ‘what do you think I’m paying you for?’ and again ordering him to ‘get that plane’ to the ranch.” Yet Lyndon B. Johnson would not—could not—let some yokel trying to observe standard minimum visibility aircraft safety rules override him, the vice president of the United States. Johnson had never seen a rule that couldn’t be bent or broken at his whim; we can be sure that he told the pilots something like, “To Hell with those rules, who do you work for, the Austin airport manager or me? Get that God Damn airplane over here now!” This kind of reaction can be surmised, not only from everything we know already about the real Lyndon Johnson, but from the actual results in the official records, as reported through newspaper accounts of the time, describing the tragic aftermath, which are briefly summarized in the following paragraph.
Johnson ordered the pilots into the air to pick him up under threat of losing their jobs. Teague finally agreed and nervously called his wife to tell her they had been ordered to make the flight, before whispering to her that he loved her and asked her to remember that. Minutes later, as “Johnson’s Convair roared into the murky night, flying above the hilly terrain . . . hopelessly groping down for lights they could not see, had at last flown into a cedar-covered hill.” As the pilots searched for the runway through the fog, having no radio beams with which to locate it, they kept flying lower and lower trying to find the runway until finally they flew too low and the plane crashed into a rocky hillside near the boss’s ranch. The two pilots were killed instantly, paying the ultimate cost of disobeying flight rules—not because they decided to do that but because Lyndon B. Johnson insisted on it—as a result of extremely high-risk maneuvers. It was not the first, nor would it be the last, time that men paid with their lives to satisfy the whims of Lyndon B. Johnson; the irony would be that, had he been on board the aircraft, those same flight rules would have remained inviolate. This single incident speaks volumes about the numerous flaws—apparent from his earliest years, based upon his grandmother’s prescient comments noted earlier—in the character of Lyndon B. Johnson.
When you think of George Hamilton, if at all, you think of the walking precautionary example for artificial tanning. Maybe you think of Tom Hagen’s replacement as the Corleone Family lawyer in Godfather III (if you acknowledge that the movie exists). But there was a time in the 60s when George Hamilton was the bee’s knees and hob-knobbing with the rich and powerful.
