One valuable feature of this book is the way the author draws from and consolidates prior conspiracy books claiming LBJ was a major player, If not the prime instigator, in the plot to kill JFK. Another plus is Stone's personal conversations about the assassination with contemporary figures, such as Richard Nixon, with whom the author spent many hours following Nixon's departure from office (Stone at one time had worked as a young man on Nixon's presidential campaigns).
Among what I would call the "bombshells" in the book are the following:
1. Richard Nixon was among many millions who saw on TV Lee Harvey Oswald killed by Jack Ruby. His response to an aide at that moment was, "I know that guy." The aide did not ask whom Nixon recognized since he worked in an environment where you only spoke to Nixon when spoken to. Years later, after he was out of office, Nixon is quoted as having said to the author that he recognized the shooter as Jack Ruby, someone he knew back in the day when Nixon was a congressman on the House Un-American Activities Committee and Lyndon Johnson had asked that Jack Ruby be hired to act as LBJ's informant on what was going on. Nixon referred to Ruby as "Johnson's guy." The fact that LBJ had known Jack Ruby for a long time and Ruby had worked for him previously in a clandestine manner adds a lot of credence to the book's conclusion that LBJ had a part in Kennedy's death and the cover-up of the facts following the assassination.
2. JFK's motorcade route through Dallas was not published in the Dallas newspapers until the morning of November 22, 1963. Given that Oswald had to travel from Irving, Texas to Dallas to get to work, he would not have had access to what was published in the newspapers until after he got to work, at the earliest, about three hours before the assassination. The actual motorcade route was not established until November 18, 1963, so nobody, including the Secret Service, had any knowledge before then about where the route would actually be. It seems logical to conclude that someone with inside knowledge passed the route on to Oswald, assuming he was the shooter.
3. I was unaware that there was another fingerprint found on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository that was identified as being from the pinky finger of a Mac Wallace. This was the same Mac Wallace for whom LBJ spent an inordinate amount of time and effort in getting a suspended sentence (ultimately expunged) for a conviction of first-degree murder in Texas. The author links Wallace to a number of other subsequent murders that benefited LBJ at critical times in his career.
4. I was unaware that there was a soldier on leave in Dallas that day, Gordon Arnold, who happened to be standing near the fence at the back end of the grassy knoll. He had just completed basic training which included having to deal with live ammunition and was filming the motorcade passing by. He is clear and convincing on YouTube in describing how he felt a bullet pass behind and near his left ear at the time of the third and fatal shot to Kennedy's head. He was not asked to testify before the Warren Commission, even though someone impersonating a CIA officer demanded and confiscated Arnold's film when the record shows there were no CIA or Secret Service personnel at Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination. It is also notable that the critical frames of the Zapruder film were suppressed for so many years by the FBI until the public finally got to see in 1977 the massive damage done to Kennedy from the one frontal shot and how his head was propelled backwards, something Arnold probably also caught on film.
5. I was unaware that just seconds prior to the first shots ringing out on Elm Street, LBJ ducked down so far into the back seat of his limousine following the Secret Service car that followed Kennedy's car, that in a photograph taken at that moment he is not even visible in the back seat next to Lady Bird.
6. The book does a credible job of showing how the Warren commission was a hurried whitewash of facts so that the desired result of the lone shooter would be established.
7. Also credible are the accounts of people who worked at or frequented Jack Ruby's strip club who recall that on more than one occasion they saw Ruby and Oswald altogether. The author also points out that after Ruby left the Texas Book Depository he had traveled by bus and was walking in a direction very near Ruby's apartment when he had the encounter with Officer Tippit. Stone suggests from this fact that it could have been Oswald's plan to link up with Ruby. Stone leaves unexplained how anybody other than Oswald could have killed Officer Tippit, or why Oswald would have done that if he was not one of the shooters.
8. The book points out the sad irony of Frank Sinatra being the person who probably put into motion the players and events that led to Kennedy's assassination. Sinatra was a friend of Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, and through Giancana Chicago was delivered to Kennedy and thus the election in 1960. In 1961 Joe Kennedy suffered a stroke and could no longer talk, and his sons John and Bobby did not honor the promises their father had made to the mob for the money and votes they got in order to win the election. Instead of going easy on the mob, Bobby Kennedy mounted an aggressive campaign to destroy them. Giancana suffered a huge loss of face with the rest of the Mafia for having been suckered by Sinatra. Giancana even went so far as to put out a hit on Sinatra. Giancana later withdrew the contract on Sinatra only because he didn't want to be responsible for killing such a talented singer.
One thing that comes through in all the conspiracy theories is that there was a rich collection of powerful people all of whom would have been glad to see Kennedy dead. I think it is not improbable that there could've been more than one conspiracy afoot at the time of Kennedy's assassination and that they may or may not have known of one another until they literally bumped into each other on November 22, 1863. Of course, after taking big factual stretches to support improbable theories on things like the trajectory of the bullets and their number, and coming up with shaky explanations for the sound recording of the shots recorded on one of the Dallas police officer's Dictabelt tape, it is possible, though I think remote, that Oswald was the lone shooter. I think it is reasonable that a large number of Americans, myself included, simply don't accept that. With so many powerful people with strong motives, and the way the autopsy was botched and other evidence contaminated or lost, and the follow-up investigation clearly manipulated, it is hard to think otherwise.
Stone could have, and in my mind should have left LBJ's culpability at around the level of his knowing what was going to happen without necessarily having to have orchestrated or initiated the plot itself. There simply is no evidence to show that LBJ was the one who hatched and directed the assassination. There is, however, plenty of evidence that he was involved in the cover-up. Stone makes a strong circumstantial case in that direction, but I think he undercuts his own credibility by making some major leaps of faith that LBJ masterminded the assassination.
So much surrounding the Kennedy assassination is one big Rohrschach test. People tend to see what they want to see. The controversy over LBJ's role in JFK's death will certainly never go away. It is a legacy LBJ probably richly deserves regardless of his degree of participation in the plot. He certainly was a major mastermind in the cover-up.
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Three can keep a secret - if two are dead.
A fantastic book that would make you Question everything with in the CIA, FBI and Johnson.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2014
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Amazon Customer
Clearly close to the truth of the Kennedy assassination and Johnson's criminal career
Reviewed in Australia on August 1, 2022
Barry Francis
Exposing the Dark Legacy of LBJ
Reviewed in Canada on December 24, 2013