Lyndon B. Johnson Had A Unique Relationship With Every Element Involved In The JFK Assassination
Editor’s Note: as the Trump administration has released some 80,00 pages and over 1,100 documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, we found this post by former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone interesting and we’ll see if any of those documents incriminate LBJ…
Lyndon Johnson was under investigation for two of the biggest scandals in American political history: the Bobby Baker scandal and the Billie Sol Estes scandal.
The Senate hearings into Bobby Baker began on November 22, 1963. Johnson had also heard that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was telling people Johnson would be dropped from the 1964 ticket, prosecuted, and sent to prison.
In fact, Drew Pearson, the most influential syndicated columnist at the time, had already written a column set to be published on November 23, 1963—the day after JFK’s assassination. In it, he accused Johnson of taking a massive bribe in exchange for securing a defense contract for General Dynamics.
Lyndon Johnson was a man staring into the abyss. From his perspective, it was kill or be killed.
Johnson had a unique relationship with every element involved in the assassination of JFK:
As Senate Majority Leader, Johnson took the unusual step of appointing himself to the Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations, which oversaw the CIA’s secret black budget. In this role, he effectively became the CIA’s paymaster, overseeing its massive budget growth throughout the 1950s.
Additionally, Lyndon Johnson’s next-door neighbor was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover knew that in 1964, he would reach the mandatory retirement age, and the Kennedys intended to force him into retirement. However, that mandate could only be waived by the President of the United States. Johnson’s daughters both referred to Hoover as ‘Uncle Edgar,’ reflecting their close relationship—one strengthened by Johnson tripling the FBI’s budget in the 1950s.
As far as the mob was concerned, Johnson was taking payoffs from Carlos Marcello to protect his illegal gambling operations in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The bagman for these transactions was a man named Jack Halfen, who was later convicted of a minor crime. In an astonishing turn of events, he received a full presidential pardon on November 23, 1963.
The banks made it clear to Johnson that they opposed a silver-backed dollar, which JFK had supported.
Kennedy was also in conflict with the State of Israel. Israel sought to develop nuclear weapons, but Kennedy opposed the idea. After JFK’s assassination, President Lyndon Baines Johnson approved Israel’s pursuit of the nuclear bomb.
