Posted on 08/20/2003 6:18:44 PM PDT by new cruelty
GULFPORT, Miss. - (KRT) - The father of the White House press secretary claims in his upcoming book, "Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K.," that former President Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Barr McClellan, father of White House press secretary Scott McClellan and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan, is preparing for a Sept. 30 release of a 480-page book by Hannover House that offers photographs, copies of letters, insider interviews and details of fingerprints as proof that Edward A. Clark, the powerful head of Johnson's private and business legal team and a former ambassador to Australia, led the plan and cover-up for the 1963 assassination in Dallas.
Kennedy was shot and killed while throngs watched his motorcade travel through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Vice President Johnson was sworn in as president shortly after on Air Force One.
"(Johnson) had the motive, opportunity and means," said McClellan, 63, who was a partner in an Austin law firm that served Johnson. The book, McClellan said in an exclusive interview at his Orange Grove home, is about "(Johnson's) role in the assassination. He was behind the assassination, how he was and how it all developed."
McClellan and his wife have lived in Gulfport since 1998, where his wife's family lives. McClellan consults for some businesses on the Coast and writes books.
McClellan said he includes information in the book that alludes to Johnson's role in the assassination. An example is a story that was told to him by the late Martin Harris, former managing partner at the law firm, as told to Harris by Clark.
McClellan writes in his book that in a 1961 meeting on Johnson's ranch outside Johnson City, Texas, Johnson gave Clark a document that may have helped the assassin:
"Johnson suddenly let Clark go. `That envelope in the car,' he said quietly, almost an afterthought, `is yours.' Stepping toward the car, he muttered, `Put it to good use.' He turned, putting his arms across Clark's shoulders, pulling him along, (and) the two walked toward the convertible.
"As they drove back to the ranch, Clark opened the envelope. It contained the policy manual for protection of the president."
Barry Bishop, senior shareholder of Clark's former law firm, defended the attorney.
McClellan's theory is "absurd," Bishop said over the phone. "Mr. Clark was a big supporter of Mr. Kennedy. The day that President Kennedy was assassinated, there was going to a be a dinner that evening in Texas. Mr. Clark was a co-sponsor of that dinner."
McClellan's book is just one of numerous conspiracy theory books that criticize the conclusion of the FBI's investigation of the assassination, that found that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.
According to the Warren Commission's 1964 report, "Examination of the facts of the assassination itself revealed no indication that Oswald was aided in the planning or execution of his scheme."
But that hasn't stopped people from writing books that challenge the Warren Commission's findings. Other ideas about who was behind the assassination include U.S. intelligence agents, the Mafia, Nikita Khrushchev, the military-industrial complex and Cuban exiles.
So why should people believe McClellan? What makes his book different?
"The big beauty is, (readers) don't have to believe a word I say," McClellan said. "They can believe the fingerprint examiner. They can believe the exchange of memos and letters."
"The book is the evidence," said Cecile McClellan, McClellan's wife, who has edited much of the book. "When you read that book and look at those exhibits, and say, `Do I believe this?' There it is … It's like (McClellan is) a lawyer presenting this book to the jury. You make your own decision. He's putting it all out there."
The theory that Johnson was involved is "exceedingly unlikely," said John C. McAdams, who is an outspoken supporter of the Warren Commission's findings and teaches a course on the JFK assassination at Marquette University in Milwaukee. "What did he (McClellan) find in the documents, and what does it, in fact, indicate? If he's looking at all the documents everyone else is looking at, I would want to know which documents he's interpreting as L.B.J."
Eric Parkinson, president of Truman Press Inc., the parent company of Hannover House, said the book comes out at a good time.
"Now, 40 years later, it's appropriate that this additional information be brought to light. It (the book) will provide closure for a lot of people."
McClellan began working with Clark in 1966 and said he had no role in the conspiracy. But he did hear rumors about it.
"When I first started work there and was told that Clark was behind the assassination, I didn't believe it. It was, `This guy you really liked, John Kennedy - he was killed by the guy you're working for now.' I think I went into a bad case of denial."
McClellan said he learned of Clark's role several times, from Clark and others in the law firm, including while he was acting as Clark's lawyer. The case involved the 1969 application for Clark to drill an oil well and name it after himself.
At the time, McClellan said he asked Clark about the rumors he had been hearing. He said Clark talked in code, but he said, "He wanted the payoff for it. When you mention Dallas, you were talking about the assassination. We had a discussion about it. That's in the book, pretty much verbatim."
But why didn't McClellan go public with the information back then?
"When you get inside the attorney-client privilege, you find out a whole lot," McClellan said. "At the time I thought everything I learned was privileged. I've since found out that there's no privilege for lawyers who plan crimes," he said, referring to Clark.
McClellan said he left the law firm in 1982 because Clark wanted him to represent a company that would conflict with interests of McClellan's other clients. Then, he said, Clark sued him over a personal loan. McClellan counter-sued. Then the bank holding the loan sued.
"When I found out what they were going to do to me, I got mad. The gloves came off. I said, `Forget it. They're not going to get away with this anymore.'"
But it took years before McClellan was able to publish the book that he said supports his assassination theory.
Finally in 1994, the 14-year legal battle with the lawsuits ended with dismissals. By that time, Clark had been dead for two years.
McClellan said he was trying to get a book out in 1984, while Clark was alive. "He knew I was going public - from the affidavits in one of those three lawsuits," McClellan said. And he said a book agent he approached in 1984 told him to "do an investigation."
So he began.
"I wanted to be comfortable with what I knew," McClellan said. He said it took a long time to verify fingerprints with several experts and to find a publisher.
"A lot of it wouldn't have been available except that old Clark's records" were bequeathed to Southwestern University, McClellan said, making them available for research. Previously "they were stored in his private records. I'm sure if he had thought about it before he died, he would have probably thrown away a few."
McClellan had been writing bits and pieces of the book since he left the law firm. He logged numerous hours of research and 10 researchers helped him, he said.
Supporters and detractors have talked to McClellan about possible repercussions from the book, McClellan said, but he's not losing any sleep.
McClellan said he hasn't had any overt threats. He said people imply retributions, like suggesting that "I'm not going to make it in Austin. `You're going to be out of here.'"
McClellan said at least some in his family accept his work on the book.
"They said, `OK, I guess that's what Dad's doing now,'" McClellan said.
But he said he has not had the chance to ask sons Scott and Mark for their reactions.
"I assume that they know about it," McClellan said. "They know what I'm doing. They're not going to comment on it. The oldest, Mark, was then maybe 15 when I left the law firm."
When asked if he was concerned for the safety of his twin sons, Dudley, an Austin lawyer in private practice, and Bradley, a Texas state associate attorney general, McClellan said: "The Democrats are pretty much out of power, really, in the state of Texas. So as far as Republicans go, they're in good shape. My ex-wife (Carole Keeton Strayhorn) - she's the comptroller of the state of Texas. There's really none of this influence or anything like that."
"A decade of Hellary is one scary thought"
Yes indeed.
I recall now that it is the 22nd amendment that is relevant amendment rather than the 25th, but still if the president dies past the midway point of his elected term, the vice president can serve out the rest of the term and be elected twice as president yielding a total of up to ten years in office.
Jan. 20th, 200?
Hillary Clinton's hair turns into snakes, President turns to stone!
Jan. 21st, 200?
Hillary Clinton sworn in as President!
After further review the replay shows it was the 22nd amendment and not the 25th amendment. That's a five yard penatly, but still first down.
The grassy knoll was to the right of the motorcade, and immediately after the shots people were seen running toward it because they believed that's where they came from.
And I agree, the Warren Report was a joke and has since been discredited. The government itself has now concluded it was likely there was more than one gunman. But I think they knew that from the very beginning and covered it up.
Hope I didn't confuse you or me!!
Governor Connally's Wrist Wound and CE-399.
The criticality of the bullet is that it is tasked to account for the seven wounds to exclude additional shots and the subsequent explosion of the lone gunman theory.
The trajectory of the rear shot with throat exit is likewise impossible with its entry placed at the FBI's measurements, which are corroborated by autopsy measurements.
The throat exit is denied by the Parkland personnel who stipulate it was a wound of entry.
This bestseller recounts the defamation case brought by E. Howard Hunt against the newspaper Spotlight and its publisher Liberty Lobby. Hunt sued because of a 1978 article by another former CIA officer, Victor Marchetti, who wrote that an internal CIA memo had surfaced that placed Hunt in Dallas on the day of JFK's assassination. In the process of defending the newspaper, Lane was able to take depositions from David Atlee Phillips, Richard Helms and Stansfield Turner.
The trial featured the testimony of Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro's former mistress, in which she said that she had been with Hunt, Frank Sturgis and Jack Ruby in Dallas on November 21. The jury concluded that Hunt lied about his whereabouts on the day of the assassination.
PS: In the book it says Hunt claimed to be home in Virginia on the day of the assasination, but his wife and kids never supported his story. Who here over the age of 55 doesn't remember where they were on that day?
She is making the calculation you infer and others as well:
E.g., that only another domestic terror event on the scale of September 11 will sufficiently damage Bush's numbers and the GDP to get her disgusting carcass into the Oval Office.
Crucifixes, strands of garlic, and dedicated grass-roots counter-campaigning will save us and our posterity from that nightmare scenario.
I've got the Milton, Ingraham, Noonan, and Olson books on her, and can check.
Posner's argument hinges on the timing of Oswald's employment at the Texas Book Depository. He proved that the itinerary of the motorcade could not have been known to Oswald prior to his taking the job. Neither the decision to go to Dallas nor the itinerary had been decided upon in the WH until after Oswald had aready started working in the book depository. Ipso facto, according to Posner, it was sheer dumb luck that gave Oswald access to a sniper's perch on the day Kennedy came through Dallas.
Now here's the twist. Posner's theory assumes that WH officials had clean hands. He writes only about the public disclosure of the decision to go to Dallas. For Posner it is the date of the public disclosure that forecloses the possibility that Oswald could have known to get a job at the TBD. But if high level officials in the WH knew a good deal earlier of Kennedy's intention to go to Dallas, and the decision was simply held to a small circle for a period of time, then Posner's theory falls apart. And if one of those officials was Lyndon Baines Johnson, then McClennan's theory is not disposed of by Posner, and Johnson conceivably could have plotted to put a sniper at that spot on that day.
In the fall of 1968, Hillary informed her thesis advisor, political scientist Alan Schechter, that she would write a paper questioning how much control poor people should have over programs designed for their benefit. She interviewed Alinsky, and concluded that Johnson-era programs did not go far enough. The problems of poverty made it necessary for a fundamental shift in the structure of power.
Vince Foster did not have his Honda keys on him until Craig Livingstone brought them to the morgue.
The devil is in the details.
9.1.4 Oswald had an alibi.
False. Oswald has no alibi for the time of the shooting. He was seen by fellow employees approximately thirty minutes before the shooting; and in the second floor lunchroom by the TSBD supervisor and a cop approximately ninety seconds after the shooting. In the late seventies, a former TSBD employee (Carolyn Arnold) told author Anthony Summers that she had seen Oswald fifteen minutes before the shooting, but her fellow employees dispute her account.
9.1.5 Oswald could not have escaped from the sixth floor in time.
False. The TSBD is 30x30 yards square. A cop approximated he saw Oswald in the second floor lunchroom ninety seconds after the shooting. Considering that a reasonably fit young man like Oswald can run at least 400 yards in ninety seconds, there is no reason to believe he couldn't have gone from the sixth to the second floor in that time and still had time to conceal the gun behind boxes. At any rate, the route was timed and verified as possible.
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