Posted on 05/25/2018 6:25:54 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Is it unthinkable that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would spy on a presidential campaign for political purposes? I can personally attest that it has happened beforeduring Barry Goldwaters 1964 campaign.
Every poll agreed that President Lyndon B. Johnson would easily win the election against the conservative Sen. Goldwater of Arizona. But LBJ wanted a landslide so he could implement his Great Society vision without resistance and go down in history as one of Americas greatest presidents. For Johnson, extremism in the pursuit of victory was no vice.
Thus was born Johnsons Anti-Campaign to smear Goldwaters candidacy. The operation was run from the second floor of the West Wing by veteran Washington-based Democrats like Leonard Marks, who would become director of the U.S. Information Agency, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor and later a U.S. senator from New York.
Typical of their black-bag politics was scheduling Democratic speakers before and after Goldwaters appearance in a city, smothering his message with pro-Johnson, anti-Goldwater rhetoric. Advance knowledge of Goldwaters travel schedule and advance copies of his remarks were provided by a spy the Central Intelligence Agency had planted in Goldwater headquarters.
Former intelligence officer E. Howard Hunt, best known for his role as an orchestrator of the Watergate bugging, told a Senate committee in 1973 that his CIA superior had ordered him to infiltrate the Goldwater campaign. Hunt claimed to have questioned the order, only to be told that it had been a personal request of President Johnson and that the information he recovered would be delivered to a White House aide.
CIA Director William Colby confirmed the White Houses role in the illegal surveillance while addressing a congressional hearing in 1975.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“Hunt told a Senate committee”
I remember this being front page news and the lead story in all the news broadcast in the early 70’s. /S
I would bet $100 the FBI spied in the 2012 campaign too. Along with the IRS targeting conservatives.
I didn’t say that. I just pointed out history. Keep your ignorant additions to yourself.
No but his many many paper files.
I would like to take this opportunity, as a Texan, to apologize for our great state producing such an ugly character on the pages of history.
Thank you
I’ve heard a lot...but never heard LBJ was a KKK member...got citations I can pull...would love to post that...
“Also, I was married at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, a decision I now regret.”
—
I wouldn’t regret it,don’t turn against the first lady because you dislike her spouse-——that’s what the Dems are doing to Melania.
.
Lyndon B. Johnson in the KKK?
In an internal FBI report from May 1964, an informant told the FBI that the Ku Klux Klan said it had documented proof that President Johnson was formerly a member of the Klan in Texas during the early days of his political career. The documented proof was not provided.
Tom Jackman
There were also rumors at the time...
Well, then - what WAS your point in bringing up that little tidbit from history? If you weren’t doing a ‘everybody does it’ what were you doing?
I’m more than willing to apologize when I hear the reason for the comment.
thanks for the link
Maybe everyone wouldn’t do it, if those who did were prosecuted, sent to jail, and stripped of their pensions.
With Roosevelt in the White House, however. Hoover found himself on the other side of the fence: The FBI occasionally reported to the Roosevelt administration on the former president's political activities. In July 1940, Roosevelt specifically directed the Bureau to investigate Hoover and Richey after receiving a tip from newspaper columnist Marquis Childs. Childs told Roosevelt that Hoover and Richey, when attending the recent Republican National Convention, had sent cablegrams to Vichy France. These communications, Childs surmised, were intended to elicit a statement from Pierre Laval, the former French premier and at that time a Nazi collaborator, indicating that Roosevelt had already made "definite commitments" to send United States soldiers abroad. Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr., in turn, relayed President Roosevelt's request for an investigation to Edward A. Tamm, an FBI assistant director. The president wanted to know the exact contents of the Hoover-Richey cablegrams. Bureau agents responded by checking with every trans-Atlantic communication company in New York City, but failed to locate any record of the alleged cablegrams.
Thereafter, Hoover may have been kept under some type of surveillance. In February 1941, the FBI director sent a report to the White House detailing the former president's luncheon conversation with the British ambassador. Lord Halifax, regarding Winston Churchill's opposition to Hoover's proposed plan to ship food and other supplies to unoccupied areas of France. The full extent of the FBI's surveillance of Hoover and concomitant dissemination to the White House of information detailing his activities is not known. J. Edgar Hoover and other FBI officials were clearly willing to ingratiate themselves with any incumbent president.
Compared to shooting Jack Kennedy in the throat and head, what’s a little spying on a presidential candidate, right?
This next civil war is going to be a real mess.
FDR, his administration riddled with agents of Stalin, was the Obama of the 20th century.
He gave the USSR half of Europe, all of China and the A-bomb, just for starters.
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