Lyndon Johnson for 2024

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Since when? 

Almost every war has been based on lies and propaganda.

Johnson, a true believer in the Domino Theory and responsible for the Gulf of Tonkin hoax, didn't need concrete evidence for other conflicts.

Hence the US government's justification for obstructing or burying investigations into the conspiratorial leads in the JFK case.

It's generally a good practice to avoid asking the questions that you don't want to know the answer to...

Sorry, there was no Gulf of Tonkin hoax. Hoax as in deliberate deception. Are you talking about the second attack? No, there was no second attack by the North Vietnamese; that was based on faulty information. But it wasn't a hoax. It was the fog of war. And there was a first attack. And LBJ had to rely on information given to him by his people. He didn't make this up.

In my view, even if there was no attack at all at that time the US and Hanoi were headed for a direct confrontation. At some point, at some time. The North wanted to take over the South and after Diem's removal they stepped up their attacks. The US decided that that was a threat to our security (it wasn't but that's how they - JFK and then LBJ - saw it). It was inevitable that the two sides were going to clash given the nature of the situation. Unless we were to simply leave.

As to the assassination: We had the WC, the HSCA and numerous investigations by the news media. CBS news, ABC news, the Washington Post, the NY Times.

You believe all of these investigations were obstructed by the government?

Look, I know I'm defending in LBJ a horrible guy. Clearly, he was corrupt, he lied and he personally was in some ways worse than Trump. I said some <g>. But I think he was sincere in going after racism, in dismantling segregation, and in trying to help poor people. And I think he truly hated the war. He didn't want it but felt trapped. That doesn't excuse the duplicity, the incompetency; but it does go to his motives which I don't think were pure evil.

[Jon Banks]

What evidence is there that he restricted the ability of the WC to look for a conspiracy?

He didn’t need to. The FBI (Hoover) and CIA (Dulles) kept the WC staff in the dark about the issues that concerned Johnson.

It has been well documented that there were multiple coverups. The CIA even admits to it.

https://www.politico.eu/article/yes-the-cia-director-was-part-of-the-jfk-assassination-cover-up/

Of course it’s a Limited Hangout. They admit that some things were kept from the WC. I suspect that Angleton and maybe Helms knew much more than McCone about Oswald.

Aside from that, Ambassador Thomas Mann claimed that he was discouraged from looking into the Oswald’s Mexico City ties.

Also, some WC staffers admit that they were kept in the dark about Oswald’s Mexico City trip.

Whether they were told “not” to investigate conspiracies or kept in the dark about potential conspiratorial leads doesn’t really matter does it?

Politico:


David Slawson, a retired University of Southern California law professor who, 51 years ago, was the commission’s chief investigator searching for evidence that might have pointed to a foreign conspiracy in JFK’s murder. In interviews for a new edition of my 2013 history of the assassination, Slawson said he is now convinced the commission was the victim of a “massive cover-up” by the CIA and other agencies to hide evidence that might have identified people in Mexico City who knew and encouraged Oswald to carry out his threat when he returned to the United States...

Ambassador Mann appears to have had similar suspicions. After retiring from the State Department, he told House investigators in 1977 that he had never stopped believing that Oswald had been part of a conspiracy somehow linked to Cuba, and that the CIA and other agencies had refused to investigate Oswald’s activities in Mexico “because it would have resulted in the discovery of covert U.S. government action” that somehow involved Cuba.

In memoirs published in 1987, former FBI Director Clarence Kelley, Hoover’s immediate successor, revealed that, after having a chance to read through the bureau’s raw files on the Kennedy assassination, he, too, came to believe that Mexico held the key to unanswered questions about the president’s murder. “Oswald’s stay in Mexico City apparently shaped the man’s thinking irrevocably,” Kelley wrote...”

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/jfk-assassination-lee-harvey-oswald-mexico-116195

The consistent trend in the US government’s JFK assassination investigations is that people who in good faith wanted to investigate the case and rule out a conspiracy were kept in the dark about relevant facts or conspiratorial leads...

Correction: LBJ did say in his last interview before leaving the Presidency that "I never believed that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger."

Are there any? And why would he not want to deal with a conspiracy done by, for example, the Mob?

I don’t know how Johnson felt about the Mob. He didn’t say much about them as far as I know.

Again, outside of RFK’s crusade against organized crime, the Federal government didn’t do much about the Mob until after Hoover left the FBI.

Hence, why I suggested that the Mob benefited from JFK’s assassination more than any other potential conspirator...

[Jon Banks]

Max Holland has an account of LBJ apparently learning for the first time - in 1967 - about the assassination plots directed at Castro. His account suggests that this shaped LBJ's views about who assassinated JFK. In effect, LBJ believed that JFK was killed by Castro in retaliation for those attempts.

Obviously, this doesn't prove that LBJ didn't think Castro was involved before this. Are there any accounts of LBJ thinking so in 1964? LBJ did say in that last interview while president that:
"I never believed that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger." So that's evidence that at the time of the WC investigation he believed in a conspiracy.

Holland's piece, including transcripts of calls LBJ made about the issue, is here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/holland_atlantic.htm

I've cited Johnson's own words. He said he "never" believed Oswald acted alone. He didn't qualify it the way you are trying to do.

Others like RFK for example also publicly supported the Warren Report while saying and doing contradictory things in private.

It makes perfect sense IMO that Johnson learned about the CIA's anti-Castro stuff as soon as he was sworn in if not earlier. The idea that he wasn't told about it until 1967 seems highly unlikely. 

[Jon Banks]

Sorry, there was no Gulf of Tonkin hoax. Hoax as in deliberate deception. Are you talking about the second attack? No, there was no second attack by the North Vietnamese; that was based on faulty information. But it wasn't a hoax. It was the fog of war. And there was a first attack. And LBJ had to rely on information given to him by his people. He didn't make this up.

In my view, even if there was no attack at all at that time the US and Hanoi were headed for a direct confrontation. At some point, at some time. The North wanted to take over the South and after Diem's removal they stepped up their attacks. The US decided that that was a threat to our security (it wasn't but that's how they - JFK and then LBJ - saw it). It was inevitable that the two sides were going to clash given the nature of the situation. Unless we were to simply leave.

As to the assassination: We had the WC, the HSCA and numerous investigations by the news media. CBS news, ABC news, the Washington Post, the NY Times.

You believe all of these investigations were obstructed by the government?

Look, I know I'm defending in LBJ a horrible guy. Clearly, he was corrupt, he lied and he personally was in some ways worse than Trump. I said some <g>. But I think he was sincere in going after racism, in dismantling segregation, and in trying to help poor people. And I think he truly hated the war. He didn't want it but felt trapped. That doesn't excuse the duplicity, the incompetency; but it does go to his motives which I don't think were pure evil.

Gulf of Tonkin aside, my view that most, if not all wars, are based on lies or misleading information still stands. And yes, sometimes it's just the Fog of War, not an intentional attempt to mislead people about the causes of the conflict.