[Richard Kimball]

Growing up in Texas, I saw many of LBJs dealings first hand. The LBJ/Huey Long politician from the south was a special breed of politician. Much of what he did is only reported in rumors, because the only witnesses are guys like Billy Sol Estes, who was so crooked you had to count your fingers after you shook hands with him. Sol Estes claimed that LBJ ordered several murders. One was a government agent that was investigating illicit farm subsidies to LBJ cronies. I do know that one agent was found by his car with three gunshot wounds from a rifle and the local judge ruled it a suicide.

Additionally, George Parr, the Duke of Duval as he was known, was the county boss of Duval County. LBJ won his first House race primary when box 13 out of Duval came in several hours late, pushed LBJ over the top, and the last hundred people voted in alphabetical order. When the election board ordered an investigation, the warehouse with all the Duval County ballot boxes burned down. A reporter was investigating Duval County. One night, his son, who was an adult and looked somewhat like his father, was murdered in their garage. Nobody was ever convicted, but it's considered, at least around here, pretty certain that Parr ordered a hit and the illegals that carried it out hit the wrong guy. Parr finally got caught in some other illegal dealings and ended up committing suicide. With guys like Parr and LBJ, in Texas, at that time, there was no law. They did what they wished. There have been claims that John Connally (in the car with Kennedy when he was hit, and also was injured) was the bag man for the bribe to Parr. Connally denied any involvement. To understand Texas politics of the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties, imagine Chicago, only more corrupt, it was a lot easier to hide the bodies, and all the newspapers were part of the club. Most of the papers and TV stations were run by Dem operatives.

LBJ owned the only television station in Austin, and through his power with the FCC, prevented any other station except channel 7 from being in Austin for most of his life. This was a city with around 1/2 million people in the broadcast range, and Waco had more TV stations.

There are apocryphal stories, which can't be proven, but have been passed on by people who would be in a position to know, that indicate LBJ had severe mental problems. Supposedly, he did things like pulling his penis out at a cabinet meeting and saying, "Ho Chi Min will never get ahold of this," ordering Pierre Salinger to eat all his peas at a staff meeting, and numerous other stories about him degrading his subordinates in bizarre manners.

I'm not defending any of the others you've mentioned, but you really had to live around here when LBJ was in power to realize how crooked he was.

[UCANSEE2]

Thanks for the very informative response.

I am sure everything you mention has some good possibility of being true.

I think LBJ was a megalomaniac.

Yet, I still think he was human, and considered the loss of further lives (of soldiers) something he could not bear on his shoulders.

His party, his own actions, put him between a rock and a hard spot. Everyone else had to pay for him to get out gracefully.

It may be that with Obama, it will be the same.