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 ____________________________________________________________________________________ LBJ LBJ was on board with the assassination of JFK as someone who would stand to gain the world, as he perceived it, by JFK’s demise. LBJ’s main contribution to the operation was to sign Executive Order 11130 and appoint Allen Dulles as the actual lead committee member on the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission, named for Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren (Chairman), was the investigative body that purposely incorrectly determined how JFK was murdered. Warren, a doddering old fool at this point, didn’t do much at all during the investigation, nor did committee members Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Senator John Cooper of Kentucky, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, nor former World Bank President John McCloy. But Jewish
Zionist Arlen Spector, an attorney from Philadelphia, was recommended by Gerald Ford to be the Junior Counsel for the Warren Commission and a lead investigator. The aggressive and ambitious Spector was a major player in the whitewashing of JFK’s murder. BTW: Spector eventually became a senator from Pennsylvania, was a political chameleon that flip-flopped from Democrat to Republican then back to Democrat whenever convenient and strongly advocated gay rights, supported affirmative action and supported illegal immigration amnesty. House Minority Leader from Michigan, Gerald Ford, was a big help to Dulles and even sponsored the “magic bullet” baloney that Arlen Spector and Norman Redlich invented which was accepted as plausible by his fellow “investigators.” Ford was so helpful with the white washing of the investigation
that he was eventually maneuvered into the vice-presidency and
ultimately the presidency as a reward. Thankfully, Ford did not win his bid for a second presidential term because of his pardon of Nixon being his first act as president. Americans were self-righteously angry at Nixon for lying about something as trivial as the Watergate break-in and Ford suffered for it. At least six of the fifteen lawyers working on the Warren Commission were Jews: Arlen Spector, Samuel A Stern, Wesley Liebeler, Melvin Aaron Eisenberg, Norman Redlich and David W. Belin. Of the twelve individuals on the Warren Commission support staff, six were Jewish. Norman
Redlich later became Chairman of the National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress and was later in life known to become incensed at the very mention of JFK conspiracy theories. BTW: The American Jewish Congress suspended activities on July 13th, 2010 after being relieved of operating funds by Wall Street uber-scammer Bernie Madoff. So basically, LBJ made the main assassination orchestrator, Alan Dulles, the main orchestrator of the cover-up surrounded by willing stooges. Now, why would LBJ do that knowing what had transpired between JFK and Dulles if he wasn’t totally on board? Four days
after JFK’s murder, Johnson signed the National Security Action Memorandum 273 which essentially confirmed JFK’s Vietnam withdrawal policy. It would take the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which occurred nine months later, to drag the nation into the Vietnam quagmire. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a fraud, or false flag, a manufactured incident perpetrated on August 2nd, 1964 designed to rally the American masses to war in South-East Asia; a war that America shamefully lost after ten years of dirty fighting with 58,000 Americans killed and 240,000 wounded. If you were to ask why we were fighting in Vietnam at the time, the usual answer was, “we are there to stop communist aggression, if Vietnam falls all of South East Asia will fall under the jackboot of godless communism,” which was as big a crock of bullshit then as fighting Al Qaeda is today. There is no statute of limitations on murder, especially mass murder and barbarity on the scale of which was perpetrated upon the innocent citizenry of Vietnam by “We the People” of the United States of America. The perpetraitors of the Viet Nam debacle got away with their evil war... But there is always hell to pay. Let’s examine some of the players who were pressuring Johnson into and escalating a full scale protracted war in Vietnam... besides the usual Joint Chiefs of Staff... and Robert S. McNamara who was surely qualified (wink, wink) to become the 8th Secretary of Defense because he had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Corps during WWII; and he was the first non-Ford-family president of the Ford Motor Company prior to being selected as Secretary of Defense by JFK. The Rostow brothers, the sons of Jewish Russian socialists, were a big influence on LBJ. Eugene V. Rostow was Dean of the Yale Law School when he was asked to become LBJ’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Walt Whitman Rostow had been JFK’s Deputy National Security Advisor and became LBJ’s National Security Advisor on April Fool’s Day (how poetic), 1966 until January 20, 1969. Walt had served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), under the “Father of American Intelligence,” William “Wild Bill” Donovan, during WW II as part of a committee that selected German targets for U.S. bombardment. The
incendiary bombing of Dresden horrors can be laid at Rostow's feet. Immediately after Germany’s unconditional surrender, Walt became Assistant Chief of the German-Austrian Economic Division in the U.S. Department of State in Washington. He then became the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe in 1947. We can easily deduce that Walter Rostow was one of the key players in the murderously punitive Morgenthau Plan that was perpetrated upon the demolished and helpless German nation. Walt
Rostow was considered a staunch anti-communist, which doesn’t ring true considering the man’s parents were Russian born socialists. He was very prominent for his role in shaping U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s. Jewish German-born Henry Kissinger replaced Walt Rostow as U.S. National Security Advisor beginning with the Nixon administration. Zionist Jew Leslie Gelb
was the director of Policy and Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1967 to 1968, and was the director of the Pentagon Papers Project (McNamara’s secret history of the Vietnam conflict). Gelb became president of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1993 and was made the President Emeritus in 2012. He co-authored a laughably ridiculous book titled, "The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked." Henry Kissinger was chosen by Nixon; or
rather Nixon was directed to choose Kissinger because of his experience as a Harvard mover and shaker in the Department of Government and at the Center for International Affairs. He was a consultant to the National Security Council’s Operations Coordinating Board in 1955 and 1956, and the Study Director in Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations at the same time. Kissinger worked for the Rockefeller Brothers on their Special Studies Project where he directed the Panel on International Security Objectives and Strategy. Henry’s Jewish Harvard buddy, Milton Katz, directed the Panel on International Economic and Social Objectives and Strategy for the Special Studies Project. Katz had been the general counsel to the European headquarters of the Economic Cooperation Administration, which was part of the punitive Morgenthau Plan, and eventually became the chief of the reconstruction oriented Marshall Plan. A Jewish elitist journalist, Walter Lippmann, was LBJ’s most trusted informal advisor who was even presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by LBJ on September 14th, 1964. Lippmann’s catch-phrase, "Manufacture of Consent" could be best illustrated by the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that occurred six weeks prior to his receiving the medal. Lippmann and political scientist, Gabriel Almond, published what was to become known as the Almond-Lippmann Consensus that was based on three assumptions: 1. Public opinion is volatile, shifting erratically in response to the most recent developments. Mass beliefs early in the 20th century were “too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or appeasing in negotiations or too intransigent.” 2.
Public opinion is incoherent, lacking an organized or a consistent structure to such an extent that the views of U.S. citizens could be best described as non-attitudes.” 3. Public opinion is irrelevant to the policy making process. Political leaders ignore public opinion because most Americans can neither “understand nor influence the very events upon which their lives and happiness are known to depend.” I think the third assumption says it all regarding politicians’ attitudes towards their constituents...in other words, “Let them eat cake while we do what we want.” And his point #2 is spot-on correct...! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________   How LBJ's Vietnam War Paralyzed His Mideast Policymakers By Grace HalsellIn the summer of 1967, Iwas a staff writer for President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. I was aware of that year's Middle East crisis but, like most Americans, understood little about it other than the fact that it involved Jews and Arabs. In that year I did not know a single Arab, and possibly LBJ did not either. Like most Americans, I was pro-Israel, Israel having been sold to most all of us as the underdog.
Everyone around me, without exception, was pro-Israel. Johnson had a dozen or more close associates and aides who were both Jewish and pro-Israel. There were Walt Rostow at the White House, his brother Eugene at State, and Arthur Goldberg, ambassador to the United Nations. Other pro-Israel advisers included Abe Fortas, associate justice of the Supreme Court; Democratic Party fundraiser Abraham Feinberg; White House counsels Leo White and Jake Jacobsen; White House writers Richard Goodwin and Ben Wattenberg; domestic affairs aide Larry Levinson; and John P. Roche, known as Johnson's intellectual-in-residence and an avid supporter of Israel.
Everyone around me, without exception, was pro-Israel.
I did not "know," but could sense, that events of great portent were transpiring. I heard rumors of CIA Director Richard Helms sending a warning to LBJ that the Israelis were about to attack, and the president getting word from Moscow that if the Israelis attacked any Arab country, the Soviets would go to that nation's defense.
I could see the comings and goings of Abe Fortas and Arthur Goldberg, and I knew that Walt Rostow, in particular, had close Israeli connections, and met frequently with Israeli Embassy Minister Ephraim (Eppy) Evron.
On occasion I saw a strikingly attractive blonde woman who, I learned, was an ardent supporter of Israel and a woman of whom the president was fond. Her background sounded like material from a spy novel. She was born Mathilde Galland in 1927in Italy, where she was reared as a Roman Catholic. Then, when her family returned to her father's birthplace in Switzerland, she became a Lutheran.
While a student in Geneva, she fell in love with a young Bulgarian Jew, David Danon, who had been brought up in Palestine and exiled by the British for his association with the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist group led by Menachem Begin. Danon was studying to become a medical doctor, but spent most of his time recruiting and carrying out secret Irgun operations throughout Western Europe.
In later interviews with former Time reporter Donald Neff, Mathilde said that as a teenager she saw Danon as a dashing and heroic figure, an activist dedicating his life to the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine. He was a personal friend of the Stern Gang terrorists, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who killed British resident minister Lord Walter Moyne in Cairo during World War II, and the Irgun terrorists who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946,with heavy loss of life. As bloody as these actions were, Mathilde said, she saw them as heroic. They represented the depth of the convictions of Danon and the Irgunists—and drew her to them.
Mathilde became so enamored of the Jewish struggle and of Danon's daring undercover operations in Europe that she converted to Judaism and married Danon. Then she, too, became an Irgun agent.
Reporter Neff, in his book entitled Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East, documents Mathilde's role as a young "gun-runner" for the Jewish terrorist group. "As a seemingly innocent petite and pretty blonde out for a bicycle ride along Switzerland's borders," wrote Neff, "she in reality was taking messages and explosives into neighboring France and Italy—to be passed on to the Irgunists.
Five years after the creation of Israel obviated the need for pretty blonde gunrunners, Mathilde received a Ph.D. in genetics at the University of Geneva in 1953.She and Danon then moved to Israel, where she became a cancer researcher at the Weizmann Institute. After the birth of a daughter, she and Danon separated. While still at Weizmann, however, she met and later married the rich—and 20 years her senior—Arthur Krim, a motion picture executive who became finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee.
American Jews such as Krim and Abraham Feinberg—a New York banker and the first Jew to become a prominent moneyraiser in presidential campaigns—were by then bringing in well over half of the Democratic Party's funds. Thus it was natural that such fund-raisers would become very important to many Democratic candidates—and particularly to the leader of the Democratic Party, Lyndon B. Johnson.
LBJ often invited the Krims to his Texas ranch. There also were many instances in which Arthur and Mathilde were guests at the White House, and other times when, for many days running, Mathilde—without her husband—was a guest there. The Krims built a house near the LBJ ranch known as Mathilde's house, and Johnson often traveled there by helicopter.
Advice and Counsel LBJ Part 2The Krims, as well as other Jewish Americans who were closely associated with Johnson, advised and counseled him on the events leading up to the Six-Day War of June 1967. On the Memorial Day weekend in May 1967, Mathilde and her husband were guests at the LBJ ranch. On arrival at the ranch, Johnson learned that the Soviets had warned the U.S. that if Israel attacked an Arab state, the Soviets would go to the aid of that state. The State Department was preparing a message for LBJ to send to Israel.
While awaiting the draft message, Johnson got behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental and took Mathilde and Arthur Krim for a drive over the hill country. They were at a neighbor's house when an aide brought Johnson a message drafted by the State Department for Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. It relayed to Israel Moscow's warning that "if Israel starts military action, the Soviet Union will extend help to the attacked party."
After reassuring Eshkol of America's interest in Israel's safety, the draft message cautioned: "It is essential that Israel not take any preemptive military action and thereby make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities." The president strengthened the warning by adding two words so that the sentence read, "It is essential that Israel JUST MUST NOT take any preemptive military action. . ."
On June 3, Johnson traveled to New York to deliver a speech at a Democratic Party fund-raising dinner. He moved on to a $1,000-a-plate dinner dance, sponsored by the President's Club of New York, whose chairman was Arthur Krim. While at the table, fund-raiser Abe Feinberg leaned over the shoulder of Mathilde Krim, seated next to Johnson, and whispered: "Mr. President, it [Israel's attack] can't be held any longer. It's going to be within the next 24 hours."
On June 4, Johnson went to the home of his close adviser and friend, Justice Abe Fortas. The following day, June 5, Rostow woke Johnson with a phone call at 4:30 a.m. "War has broken out," Rostow said. The Israelis had attacked Egypt and Syria.
Mathilde Krim was a guest at the White House and, before going to the Oval Office, and apparently before waking Lady Bird or notifying anyone else, Johnson dropped by the bedroom where Mathilde was sleeping and gave her the news: "The war has started."
At 7:45 a.m., Johnson talked—for the first time—on the hot line with Moscow. Soviet Premier Aleksi Kosygin expressed the hope that the United States would restrain Israel. Both leaders vowed to work for a cease-fire.
On that day—June 5, 1967—I walked the White House corridors as the telephone lines and news tickers recorded developments of the first morning of the war that would change the Middle East. I learned that in the war's first hours, Israeli planes had destroyed the air forces of both Egypt and Syria on the ground.
Unconcealable Glee LBJ Part 3
Several U.S. officials in a State Department Operations Room briefing could not conceal their glee over Israel's successes. With a wide smile, Eugene Rostow said, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, do not forget that we are neutral in word, thought and deed."
At the State Department's noon briefing on June 5, press spokesman Robert J. McCloskey repeated those words for reporters. (Since the U.S. was not neutral but totally supportive of Israel, however, this statement would need—over the next several weeks—endless clarification.)
Also on June 5, Arthur Krim wrote a memo to the president saying: "Many arms shipments are packed and ready to go to Israel, but are being held up. It would be helpful if these could be released." Johnson got the shipments on their way.
Walt Rostow, in a memo to the president, referred to the results of Israel's surprise attack on Egypt and Syria as "the first day's turkey shoot." On June 6, in another memo to the president, Walt Rostow recommended that the Israelis not be forced to withdraw from the territories they had seized—short of peace treaties with the Arab states.
"If the Israelis go fast enough and the Soviets get worried enough," he wrote, "a simple cease-fire might be the best answer. This would mean that we could use the de facto situation on the ground to try to negotiate not a return to armistice lines but a definitive peace in the Middle East."
Mathilde Krim, still a guest in the White House, left for meetings in New York. Before departing, however, she wrote out a statement supportive of Israel which she asked the president to deliver "verbatim to the American people." Johnson was sufficiently impressed with her comments to, later in the day, read some of them to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. But the president did not, as she had asked, read them to the American people.
Jordan, treaty-bound to come to the aid of Egypt and Syria if either were attacked, had done so and, on June 7, Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem. Also on June 7, Wattenberg and Levinson wrote in a memo to Johnson that the U.N. might attempt "to sell Israel down the river."
They urged LBJ to support Israel's claim to the territories seized militarily. They referred to McCloskey's statement that the U.S. was neutral, suggesting LBJ issue a statement affirming total support for Israel which, they said, might stop American Jews from meeting in Lafayette Square to protest the "neutrality" statement.
While Johnson never minded getting pro-Israel advice from such close friends as Mathilde Krim or Abe Fortas, he apparently resented advice from relatively minor White House staffers such as Wattenberg and Levinson. Seeing Levinson he stormed:
"You Zionist dupe! You and Wattenberg are Zionist dupes in the White House! Why can't you see I'm doing all I can for Israel! That's what you should be telling people when they ask for a message from the president for their rally." As LBJ abruptly stormed off, Levinson reports, he stood there, "shaken to the marrow of my bones."
Meanwhile, on the night of June 7, the USS Liberty , a Navy "ferret" ship equipped to monitor electronic communications, had approached within sight of the Gaza Strip so the National Security Agency personnel aboard could intercept the military communications jamming the airwaves. The president retired at 11:30 p.m., but White House logs reported that at one minute to midnight he got a call from Mathilde Krim, still in New York.
By June 8, despite U.S. and Soviet demands for a cease-fire, the Israelis were planning one more attack to take Syria's Golan Heights. Perhaps to prevent U.S. intelligence from learning of their plan, despite Syria's acceptance of the cease-fire, the Israelis dispatched planes to the USS Liberty. One roared over the Liberty so closely that the portholes of the aircraft's reconnaissance cameras were clearly visible. Lieutenant James M. Ennes, deck officer, saw on its wings Israel's insignia, the Star of David.
The Liberty Assault LBJ Part 4Ennes glanced at the U.S. flag atop his ship's tall mast. If he could see the Israeli pilots in their cockpits, he reasoned, the pilots could certainly see the large U.S. flag. It was not long after the last of several such Israeli reconnaissance flights, however, that an Israeli aircraft swooped down and fired rockets directly at The Liberty. Rocket fragments and 30mm bullets punched through the heavy deck plating—and through the flesh of the stunned crewmen. Then more planes—with cannon and napalm—turned the Liberty into a floating hell of flames and screaming men.
The Israeli attacks killed 34 Americans and wounded 171. The ship was partly flooded when an Israeli torpedo boat hit the U.S. ship with a torpedo below the water line. Another machine-gunned the ship's life rafts when the crew tried to launch them.
Only by a miracle did The Liberty remain afloat. But its threat to Israel's plans was finished. The next day, June 9, Israeli forces attacked and captured the Golan Heights. On Saturday, June 10, the war's sixth day, Israel agreed to a cease-fire.
It was Rostow who first notified Johnson of the assault on the Liberty. Asked who did it, Rostow said he did not know. Later the Israelis said they had done it, by mistake.
Johnson sent an immediate report to Kosygin that the Israelis had torpedoed a U.S. ship. Thus the Kremlin now knew about the Israeli attack, but the American people did not. From the beginning, the Johnson administration covered it up. Surviving crew members were separated from each other and the Navy was ordered to make certain that no survivor talked with any reporter—or to anyone else—about the assault on the USS Liberty .
It went virtually unnoticed. Not only the crew of the USS Liberty , but all Americans were victims. Johnson and most of those who entered and left the Oval Office were oriented toward Israel. For that matter, I too, was ready and eager to believe in 1967 that the Arabs, not the Israelis, had started the war and that the bombing raid on the USS Liberty was not intentional, but a mistake.
While there can be no moral justification for the White House cover-up orders to the Navy after the assault on the Liberty, from hindsight Johnson's political motivation is obvious. It was the same motivation that led him subsequently to listen to the Jewish friends and advisers who urged him not to put any pressure on the Israelis to relinquish territories they had seized in the Six-Day War.
In 1967, President Johnson felt he needed all the support he could get to I 'win" in Vietnam. Many American Jews were liberals outspokenly opposed to the war there. Johnson was told if he gave all out support to Israel—which would include ignoring the Israeli attack on the Libertyinfluential Jewish Americans would stop opposing his Vietnam policies.
In a memo to the president, Wattenberg, whose parents had moved to the U. S. from Palestine and who was known as a strong supporter of the Jewish state, said flatly that if the president came out with strong support for Israel, he would win American Jewish support for the war in Vietnam. Many American Jewish leaders are "doves" on Vietnam, Wattenberg wrote, but "hawks" on a war with Arab states.
A "Bonus" for Johnson LBJ Part 5"You stand to be cheered now by those (American Jewish leaders) who were jeering last week," Wattenberg wrote the president. He added that the Mideast crisis could be "a bonus" for Johnson. All-out support of Israel, he predicted, would "help turn around 'the other war'—the domestic dissatisfaction about Vietnam."
The support given by the American Jewish leaders "was welcome to the president," as reporter Donald Neff observed, when at every turn he was being attacked by critics, particularly in the media, of his Vietnam policy.
I was, at the time, a typical American. I was convinced back then that the Arabs had started the war and deserved what they got. I didn't try to reason how, if the Arabs had started the war, they were surprised with their air forces on the ground and how it was that Israel so easily seized all of Palestine, including the rest of Jerusalem. Instead, like millions of Americans, I was thrilled by the might of "little Israel."
Yet, despite the euphoria around me, what I saw in the White House planted questions in my mind. As Americans we had just passed through a dangerous Middle East conflict that threatened to explode into World War III. There were two parties to the conflict, Arabs and Jews. But for weeks on end I had seen only one set of advisers who could call or see Johnson whenever they pleased. The Arabs had no voice, no representation, no access, whatsoever.
It was only later that I came to reflect on how America, which devoted so much of the efforts of its "best and brightest" to the problem of Vietnam, had in 1967 quite unwittingly stumbled into a Middle East quagmire that, long after the fall of Saigon, would continue to enmesh U.S. soldiers and diplomats, and project an image of double standards and insincerity onto U.S. diplomacy all over the world.
Far more than his failed policies in Vietnam, the Middle East policies that LBJ allowed to fall into place in the June 1967 war would remain to haunt the U.S. for decades to come.
Grace Halsell, a Washington-based writer, is the author of Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics, as well as several other works of nonfiction. ___________________________________________________________________
LBJ, Fortas, Krim & IsraelDec 19 2008History News Network, 12/19/08 – Given the context in which he operated—the necessities of the Cold War tilting the United States toward conservative Arab states; a U.S. public opinion far less favorable to Israel than what exists today, when both nations face the common threat of radical Islamist terrorism—LBJ was the most pro-Israel President in U.S. history.
Johnson concluded his presidency by authoring the selling of Phantom planes to Israel. Continuing with some clips from the newly released LBJ tapes, LBJ discusses the matter in this conversation with Abe Fortas (who the President had just nominated as chief justice for the Supreme Court). Johnson lashes out at Missouri senator Stuart Symington—making the transition from a stalwart Cold Warrior to among the most effective Senate critics of Cold War foreign policy.
The discussion also offers insight into the pro-Israel lobbyists with whom LBJ associated—Abe Feinberg, a major Democratic fundraiser from New York who had close ties to the Israeli government; and Arthur Krim, an entertainment lawyer who would serve as a chief fundraiser for the LBJ Library.
Clip is below; draft transcript below the fold.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I’ve got to make a decision on those [Phantoms], and I want to make it as soon as—far enough ahead of time, before I go out [of office], not to be the last thing.
But I want the Russians to turn me down on disarmament. I’ve got a letter in his [Alexsey Kosygin’s] lap now.
And this idiot of a [Stuart] Symington has sent us word that if I don’t give Israel the Phantoms, that he’s going to kill our [foreign military] sale bill, where we can sell planes. If I don’t go ahead and give ‘em to ‘em [the Israelis].
And I can’t do it until Kosygin answers me. He’s not going to pee a drop with me: I know that. But I’ve got to have that behind me so I’ve got that as an excuse. [I can] say, “By God, I’ve tried everything. I tried a conference, I tried a proposal, I tried letters, I tried meetings, I pled with him. And finally he turned it down, and I just—there’s no other alternative. I have no course in the world except this.”
ABE FORTAS: Yeah. That’s right.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And that’s what I’m trying to do.
Now, I never have told anybody I’m going to give ‘em to ‘em [the Israelis]. But I made up my mind a long time ago I was going to give ‘em to ‘em. But I’m not going to give ‘em to ‘em unless I can protect myself. I’m not going to be a goddamned arms merchant! I’m going to make them [the Soviets] to be the outlaws if I can.
FORTAS: Sure. I think that’s very good.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Now, that’s what I’m trying to do.
And this little Eppie is the only one I think that’s got sense enough in their organization to see it. He sees it all the time. He’s just as bright as that goddamned [unclear] dog of mine. He catches everything that comes along without telling him. So he helps.
But Symington is just the biggest muddlehead I ever saw. I thought you and Clark Clifford could advise somebody. [teasingly] Are all of your clients muddleheads like me and Symington? [Fortas laughs heartily.] I don’t understand it.
FORTAS: Well, Stuart is absolutely one. I don’t know—he’s just got . . . Hell, I just don’t understand. Is this [issue] this fellow Solomon now?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, no! Solomon’s a smart cookie. He’s bound to have plenty of sense.
No, no. I think he [Symington] just wants to be head of the Israel—get credit for ‘em. And they think, you know—the ones that don’t know think you ought to.
I haven’t had one goddamned bit of trouble with a fellow like Eppie [Evron, Israel’s ambassador to the United States] or [Abe] Feinberg. They’re smart. [Arthur] Krim.
FORTAS: isn’t this fellow Feinberg wonderful?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: He is just the finest I ever saw. Except Krim. Krim’s the best man.
FORTAS: Oh, yes. Well, he’s just—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Krim’s the smartest. Krim’s the only one that I know of that’s like you. Feinberg is damn near like you, but Feinberg’s got a little eye on business. He goes over there and sells his Coca-cola. [Fortas laughs.] And he looks after his bank a little bit—
FORTAS: Yes.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: —and I don’t even think . . . This Krim is as pure as any person I ever saw.
FORTAS: He really is.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: He’s got a soft voice. He has none of the aggressiveness that you would associate with a Wall Street lawyer.
FORTAS: He really is a fine man.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: [with Fortas concurring] He’s no oversell, no overkill. He sits here . . . I see him damn near every week, and he comes down here—he was here last night (I came down here)—because I just like to listen to him. He’s so soft, and sweet, and kind, and soothing. I let him see every damn document that comes in. He reads anything. I never have heard of one little thing he ever said.
FORTAS: Yeah. Well, he’s a saint..
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_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________-  Front Page of Pacific Stars and Stripes, October 4, 1963 The Stars and Stripes newspaper reported six weeks before his assassination, as he planned ahead for the 1964 election, that JFK had sent Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor to Vietnam on an “inspection” mission to provide a basis to accomplish his own pre-established objective: To bring 1,000 of the military advisors home by that Christmas, and to bring all the remaining men back after his reelection, by the end of 1965.
Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who served under the Joint Chiefs of Staff as “Chief of Special Operations” during the Kennedy Administration, wrote a lengthy memorandum to researcher Harold Weisberg in May, 1991 (the full document appears on page 2 of this essay) with the front page of the above article attached to it. He expressed “surprise” that this very important information, embodied in National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 was ignored by practically all historians. In summary of this document, he explained that JFK had begun planning in May or June of 1963 to absolutely withdraw 1,000 men by the end of the year and all the rest by the end of 1965, regardless of the state of the war. He explained how the trip by Secretary McNamara and General Maxwell was merely “just for headlines” when they returned with a “report” that had been written by Bobby Kennedy and Marine General Victor Krulak.
The New York Times on October 3rd downplayed the same story (among other newspapers, and people, like Noam Chomsky, still repeat) , under the headline “Vietnam Victory by the End of ’65 Envisaged by U.S. — Officials Say War May Be Won if Political Crisis Does Not Hamstring Effort.” That single headline, like the story itself, twice stated that only a “victory” by South Vietnam would result in bringing troops home. Professor Chomsky — self-identified as the “smartest man alive” and brilliant beyond description — has still not read and comprehended this essential point, since he has repeatedly stated that he never studied the JFK assassination because “it made no difference in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.” According to the document that he has ignored for decades, the difference was that, instead of bringing 15,000 men home in 1965, in the decade that began that year, 10,000,000 men were sent into that absurdly meaningless morass. No difference?
As this document attests, it was never JFK’s intention to condition withdrawal on “winning” the war: he intended to pull all of the advisors out regardless of how the Vietnam Civil War (as it was then) played out; that point has been well established many years ago by a number of researchers.[1] That not-so-subtle difference in how these two versions of the same story was rendered was not nearly the last time this deceit was asserted. But the Times version — a false meme at the time — morphed into the accurate version when President Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson took the reins of power, after which the question of pulling troops out would always be connected to “winning” it.
Within days of becoming president Lyndon Johnson started down the road of Americanizing the Vietnam War by reversing Kennedy’s plans to withdraw from it by 1965. Instead, Johnson began the escalation during that same period and continued, all during his reign in the White House, to steadily increase US military presence and commitments, even as he publicly lamented how he had “inherited” the mess.
LBJ Choreographs the Americanization of the Vietnam Civil War
Shortly after he became President, Lyndon Johnson tasked his National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy with drawing up a joint operation with South Vietnam to “bully” North Vietnam into attacking U.S. Navy warships as the means to provoke a clash that would ensure his long-desired plan to Americanize the Vietnam War.
That plan was set to begin, not coincidentally, exactly three months before the 1964 presidential election, as a way to guarantee a patriotic “rush” and thus ensure his victory. Yet the North Vietnamese leadership sensed a set-up and balked; there was no attack on either the USS Maddox or USS C. Turner Joy — both Navy destroyers sent at Johnson’s direction into the Gulf of Tonkin for the very purpose of provoking a confrontation.
The original incident on August 2, 1964, if it occurred at all, was little more than “a shot across the bow” set off by a local commander, not by anyone of rank in North Vietnam. Two days later, the reality was that the only military action involved imaginary boats engaging in a phantom three-hour “battle” that had more in common with modern-day video games than reality. The only shots taken—hundreds of high-explosive shells fired by American guns—were wasted as they fell into the sea.
Commander James Stockdale, after spending the night flying over the Maddox and Turner Joy, reported on his return: “No boats, no boat wakes, no ricochets off boats—nothing but black sea and American firepower.” He also stated that he and other pilots were shocked when they realized the next day that the tenor of the messages emanating from Washington did not appear to acknowledge that there had been no attack. During all of the confusion (it isn’t clear whether it was the cause or the effect), the communications network virtually collapsed due to the number of FLASH messages being transmitted; this caused the overloaded system to slow to a crawl. Among the messages which should have stopped the panic, sent by the senior officer aboard to officials in the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House stated:[2]
REVIEW OF ACTION MAKES MANY RECORDED CONTACTS
The only thing that attacked the Maddox or Turner Joy was bad weather conditions; the confusion was caused by a frantic crew primed to expect an imminent attack; they did not realize that their commander in chief had a hair-trigger finger and was anxious to portray himself as a great, wise and patient leader who wanted the public to think that he was fighting mightily to avoid the very war that he was simultaneously, and secretly, trying desperately to provoke.
Oklahoma Congressman and House Majority Leader Carl Albert had overheard a telephone conversation (evidently, not coincidentally), as Johnson was trying to enlist supporters for the cause; Johnson had held Albert over after a breakfast presentation with other House leaders. The telephone call, between LBJ and DEFSEC McNamara, was about a report regarding the two destroyers supposedly under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Albert heard Johnson say, “’I’ll tell you what I want. I not only want those patrol boats that attacked the Maddox destroyed, I want everything at that harbor destroyed; I want the whole works destroyed. I want to give them a real dose.”[3]
Like many cowards, Johnson loved to “talk tough.” He often used the phrase “going for the jugular” to describe how vicious he could be when he thought his honor, or political position, was under attack. “‘They thought they could frighten the President of the United States,’ he said after Vietcong terrorist attacks had brought retaliatory US air strikes to the North, adding: ‘They just didn’t know this President.’”[4]
On 7 August 1964, Johnson’s skills with meticulously-timed choreography was on full display as he went to Congress armed with the draft resolution that he had McGeorge Bundy prepare in advance of these “attacks,” which authorized him to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” It was intended to give him a “blank check” to conduct the war in complete autonomy, using the armed forces however he wished in Vietnam, free of congressional supervision.
Johnson’s success in his cunningly designed false flag operation resulted in the nearly-unanimous passage of a joint resolution by Congress. The only votes against it came from Senators Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK). Gruening stated that his opposition was based upon “sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business, which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated”. In retrospect, those simple and straightforward words were the most profoundly rare and brilliant ones spoken by anyone that day on Capitol Hill.  Johnson cunningly used the Vietnam issue as part of his presidential campaign, positioning himself as doing everything he could to contain America’s Communist enemies while steadfastly avoiding war, in contrast to the saber-rattling Senator Goldwater. While he wanted to portray himself as prudent and cautious compared to Goldwater, he also did not want to appear to be a “pushover” for some “tin-horn dictator of a fourth rate” country. Simultaneously with the escalation, through the next three years – with the help of the “Deep State” establishment and their mainstream media (MSM) reporters – he would falsely complain about how his hands were tied, that the “quagmire” had been started by his predecessors. Adding more contradictory lies to the mix during the same time frame, Johnson repeatedly assured the American people that things were going well there, even while acknowledging that they would have to carry “perhaps for a long time the burden of a confusing and costly war in Vietnam.”
But in private, to the few with whom he chose to confide the truth – as he did to his CIA briefer Colonel John Downie, in his last session with Johnson in 1966, after Downie had repeatedly “urged him to get out of Vietnam – a frustrated LBJ pounded the table and exclaimed, ‘I cannot get out of Vietnam, John, my friends are making too much money.’”[5]
The Long-Delayed Truth of LBJ’s False Flag Op Finally Revealed
Almost immediately after the passage of the resolution, the iconoclastic independent journalist I. F. Stone, writing in “I.F. Stone’s Weekly” – using evidence drawn from a close reading and analysis of published accounts – became the first American journalist to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson’s account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident.[6] Unfortunately, Stone’s newsletter had a very limited circulation, so not very many people knew about it since the major newspapers and broadcast networks carefully avoided such critiques.
Shortly after that, essays questioning the rationality of the military build-up began, notably in such “underground” publications as Ramparts. In 1965, William F. Pepper wrote “Children of Vietnam,” for example, showing the tragic effects of the earliest American involvement in crossing the line – from JFK’s military “advisors” to LBJ’s combat troops.[7] In numerous other contemporaneous magazines – both underground and avant-garde, but rarely “MSM”types – the premises and rationale of the war, the absence of any discernible national interest in the expenditures of blood and treasury were closely examined and found wanting.
As early as the last half of the 1960s decade, authors such as Joseph Goulden (Truth is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin Affair and Reality) established that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a pretext developed in the White House to force Congress to adopt a resolution for Johnson to use to escalate the war without the need to get further congressional support after he won reelection. The young Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Peter Arnett adroitly described the situation: “The South Vietnamese Army is sick. Like the society which created it, it is riddled with factionism, nepotism, corruption, inefficiency, incompetence, and cowardice. . . It often lacks the will for combat and is increasingly prone to let Americans do the fighting.”[8]
In 1968, author and former Lieutenant Colonel William R. Corson added specific context to these points when he wrote that the 25th Division of the Vietnamese army (Army of the Republic of Vietnam — ARVN) participated in approximately 100,000 operations during 1966, yet engaged in enemy contact less than 100 times. Of all the conventiona l military terms such as combat patrol, raid, search-and-destroy and reconnaissance patrol, the one which best described their “combat” operations was “search and avoid.”[9]
Yet, despite the emergence of the truth during the decades of the 70s, 80s and 90s, it took another 40 years for the government to finally acknowledge that the second Tonkin incident, on August 4, 1964, was a lie about an attack that never happened.[10]
In the meantime, many “historians in name only (HINOs),” — too many to list, but two of whom typify that group, Robert Dallek and David Halberstam — who were too incurious to seek out the true facts of actual historic events, continued repeating the lie. Despite the many challenges to the official government pronouncements, continuing to automatically treat them as “fact” even when much of it was dubious at best and absurd at worst, did nothing to promote government credibility. The opposite result was inevitable as the MSM continued to raise no questions about the failing premise.
To summarize, it can be said that:
End Notes: [1] Galbraith, James K. “Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam,” The Boston Review September 1, 2003 (Galbraith references Robert McNamara’s assertion, in his 1995 book In Retrospect, that President Kennedy decided on October 2, 1963 to begin the withdrawal of U.S. forces; he then traced eighteen months of detailed steps which JFK had taken to lead up to a planned withdrawal. Galbraith also cited John Newman’s seminal 1992 book JFK and Vietnam, which put Kennedy’s long-term strategy in historic context, and explained why the key parts of it were not contained in the Pentagon Papers released in 1971).
A summary of this material is contained in my blog titled “The Keepers of State Secrets: Noam Chomsky and Bill Moyers (Among Others), on a Mission to Hide the Worst Treasons of the 1960s?” which can be viewed HERE.
[2] Dunn, Si. Dark Signals: A Navy Radio Operator in the Tonkin Gulf and South China
[3] Dallek, Robert, Flawed Giant, p. 150
[4] Geyelin, Philip, Lyndon B. Johnson and the World, p. 113
[5] Pepper, William F. The Plot to Kill King, p. xxxiv
[6] Wikipedia, I. F. Stone page
[7] Nelson, Phillip F., LBJ: From Mastermind to The Colossus , p. 364
[8] Op. Cit. (Pepper, Appendix B pp. 347-373)
[9] Corson, William R. The Betrayal, p. 98
[10] Patterson, Pat (Lt.Cmdr. U.S. Navy) “The Truth about Tonkin” Naval History Magazine, Feb. 2008 (See here) ____________________________________________________________________
Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? – an update!!A few months ago, the Associated Press reported that newly released tapes from US president Lyndon Johnson’s White House office showed LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The news agency pointed out that during the Johnson presidency (1963-1969), “the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.”
According to Jewish law, if a person’s mother is Jewish, then that person is automatically Jewish, regardless of the father’s ethnicity or religion. The facts indicate that both of Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish.
Telephone conversation # 9658, sound recording, LBJ and WILLARD WIRTZ, 2/22/1966, 10:34AM (Item)
Telephone conversation # 5603, sound recording, LBJ and TELEPHONE OPERATOR, 9/18/1964, time unknown (Item)
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