Roger J. Stone
Is this the Penultimate CIA hangout position, or just another “Case Closed?”, October 22, 2013
Herbert L. Calhoun
This is an interesting theory. In fact it is a slightly more robust and sophisticated off-shoot of the “renegade CIA officers did it” theory. However, the critical element — of linking it to Clint Murchison — shows up here as being mostly rhetorical, and thus is weak at best. The language used on page 155 is that “Murchison could have easily arranged the meeting between Cord Meyer and LBJ.” However, is it unfair to point out that the authors are way too far down the road and into the weeds to be using as the finally linking connection, a “mealy-mouth” phrase such as “could have easily been arranged?”
In any case, the LBJ/Cord Meyer angle is an E. Howard Hunt death bed concoction. Which raises another fair question to ask: Who in their right mind would believe anything that E. Howard Hunt would say, especially since he never admitted being the third “faux tramp” taken from a train in full view of the world and arrested only yards away from the Grassy Knoll the day of the assassination? Is that what he refers to as being a “bench warmer?” And with the exception of “Poppy Bush,” and Richard Nixon, Hunt is also the only man in the known universe who did not know where he was on the day JFK was murdered? (Did he not lose a million dollar law suit to the Liberty Lobby and Spotlight Magazine on the basis of lying about where he was on that fateful day?) And did his son, St. John Hunt, not confirm that Court verdict by insisting that his mom had told him “that daddy is on a business trip to Dallas” — as well as recognizing his father unmistakably as being the third tramp in the picture shown across the world on that fateful day?
It must be said too that this “LBJ/Cord Meyer did it” version, spun from Hunt's devious mind, still retains the same old contours of, and smells like, CIA disinformation. Perhaps this is the last in a fifty-year long series of CIA hangout positions. Let's hope the next theory will be the one that finally moves up the stairs to the top of the Langley hierarchy. This is a long-winded way of saying that the parts of this well-researched and well-rehearsed narrative do not all fit into a single completed puzzle: The sum of the parts are still much greater than the whole? It leaves the JFK assassination still “an over-determined system,” with too many left over parts pointing in every conceivable direction? (Just like a successful intelligence operation is supposed to do, right?)
To wit: We now know that there were at least four teams of shooters in Dealey's Plaza that fateful day — six if you consider LBJ's designated hit man, Mac Wallace, and Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone, as separate teams. As well, a cascading sequence of theories have evolved over time that are best defined by a single dimension: how far away from the nest of high-level vipers residing deep within the bowels of Langley, they were.
First there was the lone nut commie theory. Then there was the Castro friendly Communist cabal theory that LBJ used to recruit Earl Warren to Chair the Warren Commission. Then there was the violent anti-Castro cabals in combination with David Ferrie and Clay Shaw — the Jim Garrison theory. Then there was the New Orleans branch of the mob theory. Then the mob in cahoots with renegade CIA agents and anti-Castro revolutionaries, theory. Then the Jimmy Hoffa did it theory.
Now its the LBJ and Cord Meyer did it theory. And even though the book pointed to yet another theory, in the end it left “the GHW Bush and his CIA friend's did it” theory, hanging in the air. May I suggest that since with these last two theories, we have already breached the gates of Langley, there is nothing really left to do but to go straight to the top of the Langley pyramid and finally pin the tail on the donkeys they belong to: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms and James Jesus Angleton. Fifty years later, we know that nothing could have happened without them knowing about it and directing it, so why are we still pussy-footing around with these low-level theories? Yes, LBJ was a crude megalomaniacal sociopath but always at the beck and call of the plutocratic oil interest. Never and independent operator. So, the sixty-four thousand dollar question is: was LBJ, Ed Clark and Cliff Carter capable of pulling off such a complex operation? I seriously doubt it?
Regarding having an “over-determined system” and the cowardly omitted Poppy Bush theory, may I ask: What do we now do with all the recently uncovered extra parts, that when carefully connected, lead directly to GHW Bush's door steps as being the most likely CIA operational manager of the JFK assassination? To wit: He succeeded Richard Nixon as head of “Operation 40,” the anti-Cuban group of trained and operation ready assassins (that even this book suggests morphed from a “get Castro hit team,” into a “get JFK hit team.”) And this remains true even if at the time Mr. Bush was still “plausibly denying” that he was in the CIA at all. Despite his denials, it nevertheless has been argued that GHWB, among many other things, was also the moving force behind Watergate (helping from his CIA perch, with his hand-picked team working as plumbers in the White House basement), to oust Richard Nixon.
Plus, one of Bush's best friends, John Ashton Crichton, as this book so astutely points out, was all over the assassination map in the run up to the assassination and during the motorcade: from helping LBJ and John Connelly plan JFK's trip to Dallas, to being a close friend of the owner of the Book Depositary building, DH Bryd; to having his key aide drive the lead car in the motorcade, to being a ranking officer in the Texas 488th military intelligence detachment (that had close ties with the DPD and that was instructed to “stand-down” the day of the assassination), to being a close friend of LBJ, Clint Murchinson and HL Hunt, both of whom are reputed to have financed the murder.
Moreover, Bush's friend Crichton also attended the assassination-eve final coordination party at Clint Murchinson's house. Add to this the fact that Bush, through “Operation 40,” continued to have long-term ties to both E. Howard Hunt, the Cubans he served as case officer for, and the radical factions of the anti-Castro movements; that Bush was also a close friend to George de Mohrenschidlt, who was directed by J. Walton Moore, a CIA operative and Bush friend, to babysit LHO when he returned from Russia (De Mohrenschidlt was also rumored to have received $200k after the assassination while working in Haiti on a project for Zapata Oil, GHW Bush's CIA front company); and a Bush/Crichton theory comes more and more into focus and into the realm of plausibility.
Finally and most importantly, is the fact that George Herbert Walker Bush is one of only three people who also has claimed not to know where he was when JFK was shot (the other two, as noted above, are Richard Nixon, and E. Howard Hunt).
Yet, Bush, inconveniently has caught his tail in a web of gratuitous lies of his own making in this regard. He has in fact been caught red-handed deploying a series of pre-positioned alibis for not having been in Dealy's Plaza, when there is in fact a wealth of contrary evidence that proves beyond any doubt that he was in fact there?
This evidence is made of solid gold and includes among others, a paper trail of FBI memos that not only proves that he was there, but also proves that he was in the CIA at the time of the assassination. Interestingly, included in most of the hard evidence are Bush's own clumsy attempts to cover his trail. However, the piece de resistance is an undeniable picture of him standing in front of his friend DH Bryd's Book Depositary Building at high noon on 11/22/63. How is Mr Bush ever going to explain away this gold-plated but contrary evidence?
So, what are we to make of this book as we near the 50th Anniversary of the JFK assassination? I believe it is an honest effort to finally get at the truth: that LBJ clearly was heavily involved in both the planning and the cover-up phases of the assassination. However, I also believe that the JFK assassination was a much too complex conspiracy to have been run out of a “mom-pop”-like shop as LBJ's suite 8F at the Huston Lamar Hotel was.
LBJ, Cliff Carter and Ed Clark may have been able to bend business and politics to their will, but they were still “small time operators” no matter how much they saw themselves as an omnipotent “shadow government;” and no matter how much others wish to see them as “untouchables.” The JFK assassination was a massive undertaking that required a lot of moving parts; a virtual army of “cut outs,” and an overseer with a panoramic vantage point over all of those moving parts, and a huge budget accountable to no one. This leaves only one possibility: the nest of vipers at the top of the clock tower in Langley.
