Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (61 page)

This eighty-seven-vote edge earned Johnson the sobriquet of "Landslide
Lyndon" and began one of the longest legal feuds in Texas history.

Johnson's opponents claimed the 87-vote "correction" in the 1948 election
came only after frantic phone calls between Johnson and George Parr, a
powerful South Texas political boss known as the "Duke of Duval County".

The controversy continued into 1977, when Luis Salas, the local election judge, admitted to the Dallas Morning News the he had certified
fictitious ballots for Johnson on orders from Parr, who committed suicide in
1975. Salas told newsmen, "Johnson did not win that election; it was
stolen for him." But more troubling than this case of common political
fraud was the series of deaths and federal government interference with
investigations into Johnson's activities.

One of these deaths was Bill Mason, a South Texas newsman investigating the Duval incident, who was murdered by Sam Smithwick, a Parr
associate who in turn was found hanged in his prison cell after saying he
was willing to talk.

As far back as 1941, the IRS had initiated investigations of Johnson's
finances, but had been blocked by orders from Johnson's mentor, President Roosevelt.

In 1954, the Austin District IRS Collector Frank L. Scofield was removed
from office accused of forcing political contributions from his employees.
Scofield was aquitted of these charges but in his absence, all of the IRS
files relating to Johnson and Brown & Root were placed in a Quonset hut
in South Austin, which mysteriously caught fire destroying the evidence.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, both Johnson and his protege John
Connally had offices in Fort Worth. Johnson operated out of the Hotel Texas,
the site of Kennedy's breakfast speech the morning of November 22, 1963.

It was here in Fort Worth that both Johnson-and Connally came into
contact with gamblers, who in turn were later connected to Jack Ruby as
well as anti-Kennedy Texas oilmen.

W. C. Kirkwood was known as a "gentleman gambler" because he
never allowed anyone in his high-stakes poker games who was on a salary.
He did not want to be the cause of someone's children going hungry.
Kirkwood conducted his big-time gambling at a luxurious sprawling Spanishstyle complex known as The Four Deuces-the street address was 2222 on
Fort Worth's Jacksboro Highway, notorious for its taverns and prostitution. It was here, under the protective eye of off-duty policemen, that men
like H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchinson, and others joined Sam Rayburn and
his protege Johnson for hours of Kirkwood-provided hospitality.

Retired Fort Worth policeman Paul Bewley recalled for this author
that while providing security for Johnson's Hotel Texas office suite, the
one man who had unquestioned access to Johnson was W. C. Kirkwood.

Assassination researchers note that Kirkwood's son, Pat Kirkwood,
hosted Kennedy's Secret Service guards the night before his trip to Dallasand that both the Kirkwoods and Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shared
a common close friend in gambler Lewis J. McWillie.

Ruby and McWillie-who at one time operated his own gambling
establishment in Dallas, the Top of the Hill Club-had tried to open a
casino in Cuba in 1959 and had participated in gun-running schemes.

Yet, despite this link between Jack Ruby's friend McWillie through
the Kirkwoods to oilmen and Lyndon Johnson, neither the Warren Commission nor the House Select Committee on Assassinations apparently felt
the need to fully investigate these associations.

In 1951, Johnson had been elected Democratic whip in the Senate. Two
years later, at only forty-four years of age, Johnson became the Senate's
majority leader.

Johnson used his powerful position to best advantage, according to
author Caro, who told the Atlantic Monthly:

For years, men came into Lyndon Johnson's office and handed him
envelopes stuffed with cash. They didn't stop coming even when the
office in which he sat was the office of the vice president of the United
States. Fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in sealed envelopes
was what one lobbyist for one oil company testified he brought to
Johnson's office during his term as vice president.

There is evidence that Johnson also profited from cash contributions
from the mob. Jack Halfen-a former associate of Bonnie and Clyde,
Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, and Carlos Marcello-was the mob's
gambling coordinator in Houston. On trial for income tax evasion in 1954,
Halfen revealed how Houston gambling netted almost $15 million a year
with 40 percent going to Marcello, 35 percent to Halfen, and 25 percent to
Texas police officials and politicians.

In talks with federal officials while serving a prison term, Halfen told how
Johnson had been the recipient of more than $500,000 in contributions over
a ten-year period while in the Senate. He said Johnson, in turn, had help the
crime syndicate by killing antirackets legislation, watering down bills that
could not be defeated, and slowing congressional probes into organized crime.

Halfen substantiated his close ties to Johnson with photographs of
himself and Johnson on a private hunting trip and a letter from Johnson to
the Texas Board of Paroles written on Halfen's behalf.

According to published reports Johnson also received large-scale payoffs
from Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa. A former senatorial aide, Jack
Sullivan, testified that he witnessed the transfer of a suitcase full of money
from a Teamster lobbyist through a Maryland senator to Johnson's chief
aide Cliff Carter.

Also recall that one of Johnson's "trusted friends," Bobby Baker, had
long and documented mob connections. Baker once wrote:

"A New Orleans businessman rumored to be well connected with the Mafia
had once sought me out to inquire whether President Lyndon Johnson
might be willing to pardon Hoffa in exchange for one million dollars."

The Johnson administration's anticrime record is dismal. Racket busting
came to a virtual halt. During the first four years following the assassination, Justice Department organized-crime section field time had dropped
by 48 percent, time before grand juries by 72 percent, and the number of
district court briefs filed by that section by 83 percent.

Yet another example of Johnson's willingness to circumvent the law for
his career's sake came in 1960, when he decided to run for president
despite continually denying this decision. At the urging of Johnson, Democratic legislators in Texas rushed through a law that superceded an old
statute forbiding a candidate from seeking two offices at the same time.

Thus Texas voters witnessed the bizarre spectacle of Johnson running
for vice president on Kennedy's liberal national ticket while also running
for Texas senator on the state's conservative Democratic ticket.

One can easily imagine Johnson's anger and hurt when the Democratic
Party in 1960 handed its presidential nomination not to this long-time standard
bearer, but instead to John F. Kennedy, a relative newcomer. Johnson
lamented to friends: "Jack was out kissing babies while I was passing bills."

Knowing how Kennedy's top supporters detested him, Johnson must
have seen Kennedy's nomination as a major roadblock in his drive for the
presidency. He was therefore pleasantly surprised when Kennedy offered
him the vice president's position on the ballot. This offer, coming as it did
after an often-bitter contest between the two men, has been the subject of
much debate. It now seems clear that Kennedy never really believed that
Johnson would swap his Senate power for the empty honor of being vice
president. He made the offer as a conciliatory move, fully expecting
Johnson to turn it down. But Johnson saw it as an opportunity to get one
step closer to the presidency and promptly accepted. Reminded by friends
that the office of vice president carried little importance, Johnson said:
"Power is where power goes."

The Kennedy forces were shocked. How could Kennedy pick Johnson,
who stood for almost everything they hated? It has been speculated that
Kennedy accepted Johnson because it seemed necessary to have Johnson's
help in swinging the 1960 election in southern and western states.

This proved prophetic. It was only through the tireless efforts of Johnson that six crucial southern states-including Texas-were kept in the
Democratic column.

In Texas this was accomplished very simply. According to Haley, both
Johnson and Rayburn warned the state's oilmen that if they voted for Nixon
and the Democrats won, the oilmen could kiss the oil depletion allowance
good-bye. So oil money helped swing the state for Kennedy-Johnson,
despite a national Democratic platform that called for repealing the
allowance-mute testimony to their belief in Johnson's power and hypocrisy.

As vice president, Johnson was a changed man. Gone were his power and his enthusiasm. There was almost constant friction between this
old-style political powerbroker and the new breed of Kennedy men. Johnson's brother, Sam Houston Johnson, wrote about the treatment of his
brother as vice president:

.. . they made his stay in the vice presidency the most miserable three
years of his life. He wasn't the number two man in the administration;
he was the lowest man on the totem pole ... I know him well enough
to know he felt humiliated time and time again, that he was openly
snubbed by second-echelon White House staffers who snickered at him
behind his back and called him "Uncle Cornpone."

By the fall of 1963, rumors were rife that Johnson would be dumped
from the 1964 Democratic national ticket. In fact, the day of Kennedy's
assassination, the Dallas Morning News carried the headline: NIXON PREDICTS JFK MAY DROP JOHNSON. Consequently, Johnson made several trips
abroad, most probably to escape the daily humiliations in the White House.

Soon after Johnson became vice president, yet another investigation into
his financial dealings got underway. This time it involved a big-time Texas
wheeler-dealer named Billie Sol Estes. Henry Marshall, a Department of
Agriculture official, was looking into Estes' habit of acquiring millions in
federal cotton allotment payments on land which was under water or
actually owned by the government. Marshall was particularly interested in
Estes' connections with his long-time friend, Lyndon Johnson. However,
before any official action could be taken, Marshall was found dead in a
remote section of his farm near Franklin, Texas. He had been shot five
times in the abdomen. Nearby lay a bolt-action .22-caliber rifle.

Five days later, without the benefit of an autopsy, a local peace justice
ruled Marshall's death a suicide.

(In 1985 Estes, after being granted immunity from prosecution, told Texas
media that Johnson had ordered Marshall's death to prevent his connections
with Estes from being exposed. Later that year, a Texas district judge
changed the official verdict of Marshall's death from suicide to homicide.)

At least three other men connected with the Estes case died in unusual
circumstances.

By the time of the Kennedy assassination, dead witnessess, missing
evidence and interference with official investigations were nothing new to
Lyndon Johnson.

It may also be highly significant that during the years of Johnson's rise
to power in Washington, one of his closest friends-in fact, a neighbor
who frequently was his dinner guest-was none other than FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover, who also was no stranger to the manipulation of politically
sensitive investigations.

After becoming president, Johnson was encouraged to retire the crusty
Hoover. But Johnson-possibly aware of the damaging evidence Hoover could provide against him-declined, saying: "I'd rather have him inside
the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in."

Although it was against established security practice for the president
and the vice president to be together in public, Johnson was riding only
two cars behind Kennedy in the fateful Dallas motorcade.

At Parkland Hospital, Johnson was informed of Kennedy's death and then
urged to make a public statement by Kennedy's assistant press secretary
Malcolm Kilduff. As reported by author Jack Bell, Johnson told Kilduff:

No, Mac . . . I think I had better get out of here and get back to the
plane before you announce [Kennedy's death]. We don't know whether
there is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they are after me as well as
they were after President Kennedy, or whether they are after Speaker
McCormack or Senator Hayden. We just don't know.

It is significant to look at some of the circumstances surrounding
Johnson and his reactions to the assassination.

Although Johnson mentioned his fears of a "worldwide conspiracy"
loudly in the hours immediately after Kennedy's death, there appears to
have been no action to counter such a threat.

While the Texas border was closed for a couple of hours, there was no
widespread closing of United States borders and major airplane and ship
terminals were not shut down. Furthermore, while some units were placed
on stepped-up status, there was no full-scale military alert, despite the
commander-in-chief's stated fear of a "worldwide conspiracy."

It has seemed strange to researchers that, while Kennedy's men wanted
to leave Dallas as quickly as possible, it was Johnson who demanded that
the entourage remain at Love Field until he could be sworn in as president
by federal judge Sarah T. Hughes.

Hubert Humphrey, who later became Johnson's vice president, once
correctly stated: "A vice president becomes president when there is no
president. Later, when he takes the oath, he puts on the cloak of office.
But that act is purely symbolic."

After arriving back in Washington, Jackie Kennedy explained to Robert
Kennedy that the delay in returning was due to Johnson, who told her the
attorney general had told him to take the oath of office in Dallas. Robert
Kennedy was surprised and replied that he had made no such suggestion.
Johnson compounded this lie months later in his deposition to the Warren
Commission, when he again stated that it was Attorney General Kennedy
who had urged him to take the oath immediately.