General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: GHW Bush, JFK's assassination, the CIA and drugs [View all]Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)Douglass simply doesn't go where he doesn't have much proof--and he tries to avoid innuendo and speculation. He does not implicate LBJ but neither does he exonerate him--and he certainly discusses LBJ's part in the coverup. One of the things Douglass narrates is how LBJ learned of the CIA's misdirection to Russia--it was from J.Edgar Hoover (of all people)--and that was the trigger for the coverup, in Douglass' view. (LBJ didn't want the American people--who, believe me, where very upset, as a population--to add pressure on him to nuke Russia in retaliation.) This implies that LBJ didn't know of the CIA involvement, or that's how I interpreted Douglass. (Maybe he meant to leave it as an open question.) I have no idea if he is familiar with the book you mention, "Blood, Power and Money." I haven't read it, so I can't make a judgement of its assertions or its sources.
My suspicions of LBJ are circumstantial. He was tight with the Texas oil establishment--one of the more evil forces in the world, to this day. He benefited in a very obvious way--succeeding to the presidency. He was extremely ambitious and was never happy as JFK's VP. And he was a powermonger and, in the end, a total son-of-a-bitch, who murdered ONE MILLION Southeast Asians in the Vietnam War (Nixon murdered the other million) and some large portion of over 55 thousand U.S. soldiers--for what? FOR WHAT?! To please Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, and U.S. war profiteers! So, yeah, I can believe he was in on it--but I have huge respect for Douglass and if he doesn't think that LBJ was part of the plot, that would give me pause. As I said, I didn't know about this incident in the book you mention. I just Googled the incident...
http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/estes.htm
...and, relying on this account, I have to say that the word of Billie Sol Estes (a notorious big time con man, tied to LBJ) is, to say the least, suspect. And, if he went to jail for LBJ, he might have reason to lie about him later, out of bitterness. I also think that Douglass so well-establishes that the CIA (or a group within CIA headed by Richard Helms, and probably ultimately headed by Allen Dulles) was the perpetrator of JFK's murder that other possible perps just fall away. They also had the resources and assets to set such a complicated plot, full of misdirections, in motion. It could be that Estes' shooter, Wallace, was involved--and that LBJ was involved--but would Estes/LBJ's corrupt dealings--even if it included a murder--be LBJ's motive for this momentous action, of assassinating the President. You'd think he would have less high-risk methods of dealing with such problems.
The account I just read doesn't really address whether Estes/Wallace/LBJ might have been in league with the CIA, but I really do not believe that Estes/Wallace/LBJ could have pulled off what the CIA pulled off--the extremely tangled web of the Oswald patsy and the Oswald "double" (that Douglass explains in detail), the trip to Russia, the trip to Mexico, the "Fair Play For Cuba Committee," the "handling" of the real Oswald and all the rest. They could have been plugged into it. They were not the designers.