Billy Sol Estes, cover boy for complex crimes
Billy Sol Estes, the infamous Texan con man who made multiple visits to prison after his complex web of mortgage fraud and agriculture swindles came to light in the early 1960s, died May 14, in Granbury, Texas, at age 88. (As if on cue, Mother Nature unleashed a tornado on Granbury the very next day, killing six people.)
Among Estes’ legacies: the allegation that Lyndon Johnson orchestrated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Roger Stone, right-wing conspiracy theorist
Roger Stone, a Republican political operative famed for his hardball tactics, is publishing a book arguing that Lyndon Johnson organized the assassination of President Kennedy. And he claims he has evidence to prove it. We’ve heard that line before, so I’m skeptical.
The most interesting disclosure Stone has made so far concern his conversations with former President Richard Nixon. As the Daily Beast reported:
“According to Stone, Nixon “never flatly said who was responsible [for Kennedy’s death]. But he would say, ‘Both Johnson and I wanted to be president, but the only difference was I wouldn’t kill for it.”
On Monday morning, January 14, President John F. Kennedy woke up prepared to give his third State of the Union address on Capitol Hill. He would never give another.
The past few days had been spent in intense preparation. JFK had shaped the address to focus on managing the Western coalition arrayed against the Soviet Union while proposing a three-year $10 billion tax cut to sweeten prospects for his liberal agenda on Capitol Hill. Read more
Once President Johnson decided to back the idea of a Presidential Commission, he moved swiftly. By Friday, November 29, his selections had solidified, reluctant participants arm-wrestled into service, and the Commission was announced. It was to be headed by the most reluctant participant of all, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, and the story of how Johnson got him on board is revealing.
First, the names had to be run by the all-powerful FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Johnson was coy, asking if Hoover was “familiar with this proposed group they’re trying to put together?”
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“…we’ve got to take this out of the arena where they’re testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and kick us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour…”
- President Johnson, telling Senator Richard Russell why he has been named to the Warren Commission.
Three days earlier, President Johnson had resisted the idea of a Presidential Commission inquiry into President Kennedy’s assassination, telling Joe Alsop “we don’t send in a bunch of carpetbaggers” and “the President must not inject himself into, ah, local killings.” To which Alsop had replied “I agree with that, but in this case it does happen to be the killing of the President.” Read more
President Johnson’s address to a joint session of Congress called on the nation to “let us continue”, an echo of Kennedy’s inaugural “let us begin anew”. Johnson began what would become a masterful use of Kennedy’s memory and his own considerable legislative skills in passing such seemingly intractable legislation as the 1964 Civil Rights bill. This is one of the greatest ironies of the assassination: it enabled LBJ to accomplish what Kennedy probably could not have.
In the wee hours the day following JFK’s assassination, the confusion-clouded military autopsy of the slain president was concluded and the body delivered to the White House. In Dallas Lee Harvey Oswald remained in policy custody, undergoing interrogations of which no recordings were made. President Johnson began his first day as the new President.
In his first phone call with famed and feared FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Johnson received some surprising news. As “curious history” noted on another post this morning, “Hoover clearly states that the man in Mexico didn’t look like Oswald nor did the voice match. He states that it is a “different man”.
“Curious history” asks: “What do you make of that? The transcript is part of the LBJ library and seems as a credible source.”
Indeed, it is a credible source. The transcript of the call contains the following exchange: Read more
Jesse Ventura, your friendly neighborhood soldier of fortune, proves to be a well-informed, if over-the-top, student of the JFK case in this video.
The host of “Conspiracy Theory” show, Ventura sometimes goes beyond what is in the historical record. He also has a strong factual foundation for key allegations.
Ventura’s bottom line: JFK was killed by “the same old military industrial complex.”
How do Ventura’s claims and sources stack up?