[1066AD]

Even if it's true, why would LBJ want that ? Not just power lust, has to be more.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: "Even if it's true, why would LBJ want that ? Not just power lust, has to be more."

Something more? How about to avoid going to prison with Bobby Baker? How about his connections to Mac Wallace and some murders? Those are a couple of my guesses.

[kjo]

LBJ in the fall of '63 was headed for prison. Word had already leaked to him that he was being replaced on the '64 ticket by NC Governor Terry Sanford. LBJ was going to be called by the Senate (Ken Keating R-NY was leading the investigation) sometime before Christmas, about his relationship with Bobby Baker.

Johnson was headed for a big fall; the only way he could save himself was if he were President. As POTUS, during some of the most tense days of the Cold War he knew that Congress would not touch him.

He was right. It worked. The funny thing is, just about the only people who believe the Warren Report today are the media elite.

Yeah, they would be the last to know.

[ggekko60506]

"Even if it's true, why would LBJ want that ?"

The book "The Texas Connection" by Craig Zirbel powerfully corroborates E. Howard Hunt's de facto deathbed confession and also exaplins LBJ's multiple motivations for wanting to usurp the Office of the Presidency.

In 1963 LBJ faced a number of dilemmas that were on the verge of ending his political career and sending him to prison. Among his problems were the following:

*The Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes
scandals were being investigated by the
Justice Department with increasing
urgency. These scandals were also being
picked by the National Press.

Booby Baker was Johnson's chief of staff
and he had orchestrated a particularly sordid
influence peddling scheme, apparently under
Johnson's direction, in exchange for legislative
favors.

Billy Sol Estes was a "good old boy" and Johnson
confidante who had been paid millions of dollars
by the Agriculture Department to manage farmland
under the Department's Crop Support program. The
only problem with this arrangement was that 99%
of the "farmland" was under a huge lake somewhere
in Texas.

The revelation of Johnson's involvement in either
of these emerging scandals would have undoubtedly
led to a conviction and long prison sentence ala
Spiro Agnew.


*The Kennedys hated Johnson and considered
him an embarrassment and a political liability;
JFK planned to dump Johnson from the 1964
Presidential ticket.

*Johnson nurtured a messianic conviction that
he was entitled to be President that it has been
stolen from him by the Kennedy Familiy's money and
the political influence of Joseph Kennedy.

JFK's death by assassination solved all of these problems for Johnson in a unique way.

After Johnson became President he immediately ordered the Justice Department to terminate the Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes investigations. Johnson avoided the humiliation of being dumped from the ticket and a hated political rival was gone.

Right-hand man assassinations are, by far, the most common types of political assassinations observed in World History. Tons of ink have been spilled on all sorts crazy assassination theories (the CIA, the Cubans, the Mafia) while ignoring the most obvious prime suspect.

"Cui Bono" should always be the primary focus of any murder investigation. Lyndon Johnson was the man who uniquely benefited from the death of JFK and a competent investigation of the assassination should have put him on the top of the list of suspects.