Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ

One valuable feature of this book is the way the author draws from and consolidates prior conspiracy books claiming LBJ was a major player, If not the prime instigator, in the plot to kill JFK. Another plus is Stone's personal conversations about the assassination with contemporary figures, such as Richard Nixon, with whom the author spent many hours following Nixon's departure from office (Stone at one time had worked as a young man on Nixon's presidential campaigns).Among what I would call the "bombshells" in the book are the following:1. Richard Nixon was among many millions who saw on TV Lee Harvey Oswald killed by Jack Ruby. His response to an aide at that moment was, "I know that guy." The aide did not ask whom Nixon recognized since he worked in an environment where you only spoke to Nixon when spoken to. Years later, after he was out of office, Nixon is quoted as having said to the author that he recognized the shooter as Jack Ruby, someone he knew back in the day when Nixon was a congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee and Lyndon Johnson had asked that Jack Ruby be hired to act as LBJ's informant on what was going on. Nixon referred to Ruby as "Johnson's guy." The fact that LBJ had known Jack Ruby for a long time and Ruby had worked for him previously in a clandestine manner adds a lot of credence to the book's conclusion that LBJ had a part in Kennedy's death and the cover-up of the facts following the assassination.2. JFK's motorcade route through Dallas was not published in the Dallas newspapers until the morning of November 22, 1963. Given that Oswald had to travel from Irving, Texas to Dallas to get to work, he would not have had access to what was published in the newspapers until after he got to work, at the earliest, about three hours before the assassination. The actual motorcade route was not established until November 18, 1963, so nobody, including the Secret Service, had any knowledge before then about where the route would actually be. It seems logical to conclude that someone with inside knowledge passed the route on to Oswald, assuming he was the shooter.3. I was unaware that there was another fingerprint found on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository that was identified as being from the pinky finger of a Mac Wallace. This was the same Mac Wallace for whom LBJ spent an inordinate amount of time and effort in getting a suspended sentence (ultimately expunged) for a conviction of first-degree murder in Texas. The author links Wallace to a number of other subsequent murders that benefited LBJ at critical times in his career.4. I was unaware that there was a soldier on leave in Dallas that day, Gordon Arnold, who happened to be standing near the fence at the back end of the grassy knoll. He had just completed basic training which included having to deal with live ammunition and was filming the motorcade passing by. He is clear and convincing on YouTube in describing how he felt a bullet pass behind and near his left ear at the time of the third and fatal shot to Kennedy's head. He was not asked to testify before the Warren Commission, even though someone impersonating a CIA officer demanded and confiscated Arnold's film when the record shows there were no CIA or Secret Service personnel at Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination. It is also notable that the critical frames of the Zapruder film were suppressed for so many years by the FBI until the public finally got to see in 1977 the massive damage done to Kennedy from the one frontal shot and how his head was propelled backwards, something Arnold probably also caught on film.5. I was unaware that just seconds prior to the first shots ringing out on Elm Street, LBJ ducked down so far into the back seat of his limousine following the Secret Service car that followed Kennedy's car, that in a photograph taken at that moment he is not even visible in the back seat next to Lady Bird.6. The book does a credible job of showing how the Warren commission was a hurried whitewash of facts so that the desired result of the lone shooter would be established.7. Also credible are the accounts of people who worked at or frequented Jack Ruby's strip club who recall that on more than one occasion they saw Ruby and Oswald altogether. The author also points out that after Ruby left the Texas Book Depository he had traveled by bus and was walking in a direction very near Ruby's apartment when he had the encounter with Officer Tippit. Stone suggests from this fact that it could have been Oswald's plan to link up with Ruby. Stone leaves unexplained how anybody other than Oswald could have killed Officer Tippit, or why Oswald would have done that if he was not one of the shooters.8. The book points out the sad irony of Frank Sinatra being the person who probably put into motion the players and events that led to Kennedy's assassination. Sinatra was a friend of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, and through Giancana Chicago was delivered to Kennedy and thus the election in 1960. In 1961 Joe Kennedy suffered a stroke and could no longer talk, and his sons John and Bobby did not honor the promises their father had made to the mob for the money and votes they got in order to win the election. Instead of going easy on the mob, Bobby Kennedy mounted an aggressive campaign to destroy them. Giancana suffered a huge loss of face with the rest of the Mafia for having been suckered by Sinatra. Giancana even went so far as to put out a hit on Sinatra. Giancana later withdrew the contract on Sinatra only because he didn't want to be responsible for killing such a talented singer.One thing that comes through in all the conspiracy theories is that there was a rich collection of powerful people all of whom would have been glad to see Kennedy dead. I think it is not improbable that there could've been more than one conspiracy afoot at the time of Kennedy's assassination and that they may or may not have known of one another until they literally bumped into each other on November 22, 1863. Of course, after taking big factual stretches to support improbable theories on things like the trajectory of the bullets and their number, and coming up with shaky explanations for the sound recording of the shots recorded on one of the Dallas police officer's Dictabelt tape, it is possible, though I think remote, that Oswald was the lone shooter. I think it is reasonable that a large number of Americans, myself included, simply don't accept that. With so many powerful people with strong motives, and the way the autopsy was botched and other evidence contaminated or lost, and the follow-up investigation clearly manipulated, it is hard to think otherwise.Stone could have, and in my mind should have left LBJ's culpability at around the level of his knowing what was going to happen without necessarily having to have orchestrated or initiated the plot itself. There simply is no evidence to show that LBJ was the one who hatched and directed the assassination. There is, however, plenty of evidence that he was involved in the cover-up. Stone makes a strong circumstantial case in that direction, but I think he undercuts his own credibility by making some major leaps of faith that LBJ masterminded the assassination.So much surrounding the Kennedy assassination is one big Rohrschach test. People tend to see what they want to see. The controversy over LBJ's role in JFK's death will certainly never go away. It is a legacy LBJ probably richly deserves regardless of his degree of participation in the plot. He certainly was a major mastermind in the cover-up.

My slant of the JFK assassination is that it was a coup d’état, ladies and gentlemen. I submit for your consideration the following facts which prove it was a coup (overthrow of the current regime):1. JFK moved towards detente with both the USSR and Cuba2. JFK realized we could assist Vietnam, but could not win a ground war; after all, it was a civil war.3. JFK sought to make CIVIL RIGHTS a centerpiece of his 1964 re-election campaign4. JFK defied the National Security Apparatus; he deferred attacking (using nuclear warheads) Russia; he deferred invading Cuba (during Cuban Missile Crisis)5. He fired Dulles, Bissell, and Cabell (brother of Dallas Mayor) after Bay of Pigs6. He intended to dump Johnson (investigated for graft and connections to Sol Estes, and Bobby Baker) from his 64 re-election ticket, favoring Senator Sanford of Connecticut, or Smathers ofFlorida7. JFK sought to withdraw from Vietnam by 1965. He also sought to dismantle the Cold War, Atmospheric Nuclear Testing, and the Arms Race “MAD” (Mutually Assured Destruction) stock piling of nuclear weapons by USA and USSR.8. Both His Newspaper Association Speech and his American University Commencement Speech signaled a change towards peaceful conflict resolution as opposed to sending in the US forces to force resolution to conflict9. Both the JCS, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and Naval Intelligence, the Mob, Anti-Castro Cuban, Big Oil, Banking, and Steel (and so many more groups) opposed Kennedy’s military, intelligence, civil rights, business, and foreign relation policies10. Had JFK won re-election, his powerful opponents feared a Kennedy Dynasty (8 years of Bobby, followed by 8 years of Ted)11. Secret Service Agent Holden exposed the Chicago Plot; Racist Milteer exposed the Dallas plot and conspiracy to “pick someone up to throw off the public.” The Chicago hit was called off when FBI and Secret Service where “informed” of the pending hit. Chicago (cancelled), Tampa/Miami, and Dallas were the Major cities Kennedy would travel in November ’63.12. The coup planners carefully manipulated events behind the scenes. Johnson controlled Texas politics (Big Oil controlled Johnson), Texas was the Oil Capital of the USA. Oil changed the dynamic of power nationally from the North to the South. Bell Helicopter was Headquartered in Texas. The major defense contractors were in Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were in Texas. Dallas police were in Texas, and the FBI was in Texas. Hover and Johnson, two top controllers of the cover-up and D.C. neighbors, were in danger of being dumped or retired by Kennedy.13. Joint Chiefs vehemently opposed Kennedy.14. In 1963, the “fabric” of American Society was dictated to by an integrated Military, Financial, Industry, Intelligence, Political, Mobster, News, Religion, and Educational hierarchy – what Peter Dale Scot calls “Deep Politics.” A former slave (Fredrick Douglass) stated that “Power concedes nothing without a demand.”15. After Kennedy was slaughtered, Johnson was on hand to usurp the Presidency. Oswald was on hand to be apprehended. Ruby was on hand to silence the patsy. Enter the Warren Commission, fully sponsored by enemies of John F Kennedy to further protect their (Rockefeller/Bush/Hughes/Johnson/Hoover/Dulles/Military-CIA/Oil/Banking) interests.16. Detente with Russia ended, Vietnam escalated, and detente with Cuba ended. Assassination as a political solution took Malcolm X(civil rights, anti-war), Medgar Evers (civil rights), Martin L King (civil rights, anti-war), Bobby Kennedy (civil rights, anti-war) and a host of uncompromising world leaders over the years. Martin Luther King, opposing the Vietnam escalation, declared shortly before he was killed that “the biggest murderer in the world is my own government.A coup d’état is not a mystery, but is has become a great American parlor game. Who stands to profit from war, assassination, and power shifts? It is the elite classes. Power in American is NOT in the hands of the people, but the rich and powerful. We vote or remove politicians from office – predictable! The elites and the powerful start and stop industries, wars, movements, news, and trends. We are but sheep under their directions. Kennedy was an uncompromising world leader who challenged the power elites status quo arrangement of interlocking levels of powerful people across vast domains and countries. We think country (USA); power elites think global. Kennedy thought globally and he presented a threat to global status quo interests – the elites. Kennedy had to die so that the elites could continue to enjoy their privileged positions and world hegemony. Communism has never been a threat to America, but it was cleverly used as a shield to carry out arms build-up, rogue investigations, to topple leaders from power, coup d’état of foreign leaders by the elites (using the CIA).

Apparently, everyone, of a certain age, knows where they were on 22nd November 1963, I was in a in my mother's womb, around six months away from making my début into this ever-changing, unpredictable world. Even so, like many other '60's born children, the events of that day have fascinated me to no lesser degree than if I had been sitting in front of a black and white, cocktail styled, television set watching grainy pictures of those history changing tragic events. The following year, 1964, the year of my birth was meant to be Kennedy's apogee, the triumph that would firmly place him in the pantheon of two term American Presidents. The purpose of this book is to tell us why and how he never reached that goal.It is a book that has a blistering start. The authors certainly, from the very first paragraph, do not hold back. The theme of a no holds barred account is laid immediately. Accusations fly from every possible angle. We are given an in-depth account of LBJ's character; which some may find surprising. The authors provide us with a profound piece of work. In constructing a case against LBJ, the authors meticulously place the various pieces of the 'prosecution' jigsaw step by step, finally reaching their conclusion. The final summary is quite unusual as it does not only review the facts already presented, but also brings us a number of new facts. If there is a weakness, and it is a pedantic one, it is that the wealth of information can be overwhelming. There is a danger that the reader can be smothered by arguments and evidence that towards the middle of the book, appear to be going off piste. The events described at this mid point in the book also appear to be rather Byzantine. However, the book does regain its compelling reading in its final third.Is it possible that all these events centred around one man? Well the authors do give their up most to convince us, and we will have to be the judges of that argument. Overall, I cannot, and I really mean I cannot, emphasize enough how this is a fascinating and gripping read. Importantly, for me, it does do its job, it does turn history on its head. Just get through that mid point and you will not regret it.

Read many books on the JFK Assassination and this one I have to say is the most compelling and nails it for me. LBJ was the mastermind and with elements of the CIA & Mafia they pulled it off. LBJ was as crooked as they come and had was facing prosecution and jail time in 1964 on several corruption charges. The CIA wanted their war in Vietnam and the Mafia were being hounded by RFK. Dallas oilmen were also involved as they stood to lose millions if JFK amended the oil depletion allowance.The book shows LBJ was involved in several political murders including using hit men one of who’s fingerprints were found on cardboard boxes in the sniper’s nest at the Texas School Book Depository after the assassination. It is also interesting that eyewitness testimony showed LBJ ducking down in his limousine 10 seconds BEFORE the first shots rang out on 22/11/63! It’s a good read and the author really makes the case of LBJ being the mastermind behind it all.

I certainly remember where I was when I was told Kennedy had been assassinated and as a 14 year old schoolboy who told me. Roger Stone's book is probably the best written and most likely account of the CONSPIRACY I've read thus far and answers the questions of WHY it was necessary to "remove" The President and really, it WAS all 'The Usual Suspects'. It's interesting that having believed I knew all those likely involved in the plot and the SECOND CONSPIRACY to cover-up what exactly happened, there were 20 or so more who I had never even heard of. While in no way excusing LBJ from his part I have to say that JFK really brought about his own demise by being too open towards LBJ, The Texan Serpent whose God was the dollar bill.

Roger Stone seems like a righteous sort of fellow so I thought I would try his book. I don't know much about the Kennedy stuff, so I was keen. But as I write this review, I only got as far as chapter 1.I read the preface and the introduction. But then chapter 1 is just completely silly and not believable by anyone in their right mind.I can't quote in this review the obscenities Roger Stone attributes to LBJ because Amazon will not allow it. But chapter 1 is definitely not believable and therefore I will not be reading any more of it.

A compulsive and totally convincing account. Well presented and revealing. It makes one realise just how corrupt and criminal a country the United States was at that time. I fear it is now even worse and this book makes one wonder if they have ever had a worthy President. Certainly not for at least the last hundred years. Money and big business is the heartbeat no nothing must stand inits way.