Robert Novak on Lyndon Johnson "drunk as a loon" on 3/31/60

Robert Novak on LBJ on March 31, 1960: "drunk as a loon"

            But LBJ knew what I was writing about him as indicated in a bizarre incident two months after my liberal revolt column. Late in the evening of March 31, 1960, I was drinking in the Members Bar of the Press Club with my good friend Bob Jensen of the Buffalo Evening News (as I often did after my marriage collapsed). Somebody burst into the bar to say LBJ was in the club's ballroom, "drunk as a loon." Jensen and I went to check.

            The report was not exaggerated. Johnson was attending the seventieth birthday celebration of Bascom Timmons, a famous Texas journalist who headed his own Washington news bureau. To my surprise, found the majority leader without aides or limo. LBJ, who until then showed little interest in me and absolutely no affection, spotted me and wrapped one of his long arms around me. "Bob," I like ("lahk" was the Texas pronunciation) you," he drawled drunkenly, "but you don't like me." He chanted it over and over, embracing me and swirling me in a little dance.

            Celebrants at the Timmons birthday party, mostly Texans, were as drunk as Johnson, and uninterested in saving the majority leader from embarrassment. So, Bob Jensen and I guided the much taller man to the elevator, down to the National Press Building's 14th Street lobby, and out into a taxi to be taken home.

            The next day, a cool, immaculately groomed Senator Johnson was seated, as usual, in the majority leader's chair on the Senate floor prior to the noon convening time. That was the only time reporters were permitted on the floor, huddled around Johnson's chair for five minutes of questions and answers. Johnson often, as he did on this occasion, kept his eyes down reading what was in front of him and then looked up suddenly, registering seeming surprise at seeing himself surrounded by reporters. When he did that this time, he stared at me, exclaiming: "Well, Novak, saw you at the Press Club last night. Got a little drunk out, didn't it?" The other reporters chuckled appreciatively, thinking it was I who had been "a little drunk," as LBJ intended.

[Robert Novak, "The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting in Washington," p. 56-57]

Lyndon Johnson had deep, deep CIA military ties

Lyndon Johnson and his deep, deep CIA/military connections. LBJ was their "go to guy" in Congress for enormous amounts of funding.

Lyndon Johnson, since the early 1950's, was one of a handful of senators/congressmen giving congressional oversight over the newly created CIA. Also, Lyndon Johnson and his aide Walter Jenkins had "Q clearance" for atomic and nuclear material related matters. That was the highest clearance given at that time and it was the equivalent of what President Eisenhower himself had. In other words, LBJ and Walter Jenkins had access to *everything* relating to nuclear/atomic matters. My source for this was someone who worked for Lyndon Johnson (not privileged to say who, yet).

Q clearance: http://en.wikipedia....iki/Q_clearance

Additionally, during the 1950's, there was no more powerful figure in Congress who was an advocate for CIA/military spending than Lyndon Johnson. By the late 1950's, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson was wielding power in Washington, DC that was not much less than President Dwight Eisenhower.

Lyndon Johnson during these times was establishing deep CIA/military ties that paid off in spades for him during the JFK assassination. Here is a passage that illustrates LBJ's associations at the highest levels with CIA/military. LBJ was their congressional "go to guy" for enormous amounts of money including black budget intelligence funding.

[Evica, "A Certain Arrogance," p.215]
 When Senator Lyndon B. Johnson became chair of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Science, the Texas powerbroker had been able to wear two significant military/intelligence hats, chairing both the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee and Aeronautical and Space Science. In 1959 and then in 1960 during Senate hearings called "Missiles, Space, and Other Major Defense Matters," Johnson gave a splendid "I'm shocked" response to testimony from the Bureau of the Budget, the Joint Chiefs, and from a raft of "military experts." Even Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense cooperated with Senator Johnson in establishing the fictional but crucial "missile gap." A typical LBJ topic- how big was his "missile" opposed to any one else's- had been established (despite its military fiction), and, given LBJ's enthusiastic support, it became a major political argument in the JFK/LBJ presidential campaign, an issue often mistakenly attributed to John F. Kennedy himself.

LBJ, the Bureau of the Budget, and Funding the CIA and the Pentagon

 Having for several years tanked in every encounter with the Pentagon, the Bureau of the Budget took another dive during  the 1960 LBJ Senate hearings as the Bureau wore the somber colors of Eisenhower's "administrative failures." Senator Johnson was able to generate "a litany of military requests" that became, in fact, a Defense Department "shopping list." Throughout the Eisenhower Administration, Senator Johnson was the crucial ally of the military/intelligence coalition as it collected its funding from inside the Pentagon budget, especially after the heavily  publicized threats of Soviet space and missile programs. The softest entry for the U.S. intelligence's black budget operations then became the hot areas of "air" and "space," specifically through the U.S. Air Force's programs in research and development, and then through NASA, hence Johnson's 1959-1960 Senatorial pressure on the Eisenhower White House that was topped by his 1960 Senate hearings.

 What followed were the "research and analysis" contracts (with their significance intelligence dimensions) for aircraft and space companies and think tank/development corporations funded by the Pentagon, all of them ostensibly working for the Air Force and the U.S. "aerospace" program. For LBJ and Texas, following his collaboration with the USAF, aerospace research and development (both in the government and business), the Budget Bureau, and with covert intelligence operations hidden inside persistent Pentagon funding appeals, the payofff was staggering: "As President, [LBJ] .... helped engineer the greatest Pentagon raid on the [U.S.] treasury since World War II. Among other results was a gigantic defense-industry boom for his home state, Texas."

Johnson had elected to join the Budget Bureau/Pentagon/black budget intelligence team in the early 1950's, collecting Senatorial power and privilege; then as Vice President he acquired more potency for U.S. space and missile programs, the only areas that really mattered to him and Texas, unti he "rode the tiger of military [and covert intelligence] spending into the White House ...[and] it rode him out."

[Evica, "A Certain Arrogance," p.215]

George Herbert Walker Bush can't remember where he was when JFK was assassinated!!

George Herbert Walker Bush does not remember where he was on the day of hte JFK assassination, although he was a US Senate candidate staying in a Dallas Hotel, the Sheraton


On November 22, 1963, George and Barbara headed to Tyler, Texas (population thirty-five thousand), where he was scheduled for a luncheon speech to the Kiwanis Club, a group of one hundred men, meeting at the Blackstone Hotel.
"I remember it was a beautiful fall day," recalled Aubrey Irby, the former Kiwanis vice president. "George had just started to give his speech when Smitty, the head bellhop, tapped me on the shoulders to say that President Kennedy had been shot. I gave the news to the president of the club, Wendell Cherry, and he leaned over to tell George that wires from Dallas confirmed President Kennedy had been assassinated.
"George stopped his speech and told the audience what had happened. 'In view of the President's death,' he said, 'I consider it inappropriate to continue with a political speech at this time. Thank you very much for your attention.' Then he sat down.
"I thought it was rather magnanimous of him to say and then to sit down, but I'm a Republican, of course, and I was all for George Bush. Kennedy, who was bigger than life then, represented extremely opposite views from Bush on everything."
The luncheon meeting adjourned, and George hurried across the street to meet Barbara at the beauty salon for their scheduled flight to Dallas. Before leaving the city, George called the FBI in Houston. Files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act document George's 1:45 p.m. call to the Houston field office: "Bush stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent days ... He stated that one James Milton Parrott has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston."
The man George turned in was an unemployed twenty-four-year-old who had been honorably discharged from the Air Force upon the recommendation of a psychiatrist. He was also a John Bircher who had vigorously opposed George during Bush's campaign for GOP chairman of Harris County. During his interview with the FBI, Parrott said he was a member of the Texas Young Republicans and had been active in picketing members of the Kennedy administration but that he had not threatened the President's life.
Years later, when he was running for President, George would claim that he never made the call. Documents were then produced that refreshed his memory. He also claimed that he did not remember where he was the day John F. Kennedy was killed- "somewhere in Texas," he said. George Bush is possibly the only person on the planet who did not recall his whereabouts that day, although his wife clearly remembered their being in Tyler. She said that at the time of the assassination she was writing a letter in the beauty salon and that they left shortly after hearing the news. They flew to Dallas en route to Houston, and in Dallas they had to circle Love Field several times while the second presidential plane was taking off to return to Washington, D.C.
"The rumors are flying about that horrid assassin," Barbara wrote in her letter. "We are hoping that it is not some far right nut, but a 'commie' nut. You understand that we know they are both nuts, but just hope that it is not a Texan and not an American at all."
George and the three other candidates vying for the GOP Senate nomination suspended campaigning for several weeks but resumed after the first of the year.

[Kitty Kelley, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," pp. 212-213]

George W. Bush and his cover up of the JFK assassination; Jay Epstein using his name to interview Billy Joe Lord

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=964&pid=250408&st=90&#entry250408

Jack White:

You left this off of your list of Bush connections:

GEORGE BUSH JR. indirectly in 1976 employed Billy Joe Lord, who was Lee Harvey Oswald's roommate on the ship in 1959 when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union. Lord filed an affidavit with the FBI against Edward Jay Epstein the last person to interview de Mohrenschildt. Epstein's writers threaten Lord to go to his employer, George Bush Jr. hinting that his father was CIA Director. Epstein's good friend is Bill Clinton's personal adviser, Sidney Bluemthal. (See Astrix * for more on Billy Joe Lord).

The time George Taylor almost hit LBJ going 100 mph in 1967

The time George Taylor almost hit LBJ going 100 mph in 1967
George Taylor on 6/11/11, telling about his 1967 LBJ experience:

“As a lad of 21 in 1967 my interests were fast cars and faster women. My sole political statement was in 1964. I heard the Beatles singing about no god, no country and the brotherhood of man. I removed the radio from my car and threw it into the trash. I missed the rock-and-roll of my youth...but it was a small price to pay for a clear mind.

My "hot rod" was certainly not the one songs were written about. It was a 1961 Falcon that I fitted with a high performance V8 that I feel would have run 135 mph. It was in that car in 1967 my 65 year old father Jack Taylor and I were returning from a family visit in Tucson.

The roads were good and the weather was clear. There was little traffic and even at 100 mph I found myself getting passed. We pulled out of Fredericksburg and were about half way of the 30 miles or so from Johnson City Texas on State Hwy 290. I was running about 100 mph when to my left across a prairie I saw what I felt was a tornado. As the "tornado" got closer I realized it was a black Lincoln driving at high speed across the prairie. We were traveling at the same angle and would have intersected had I not slowed down. The Lincoln went through a barbed wire fence. The big car "rooster tailed" as it left the dirt and entered the highway slinging gravel and debris ahead of me. The black "tornado" pulled away from me at speeds well above 100 mph heading east on 290. In just moments it was gone. But for a glance I saw the driver looking as drunk as Hooter Brown. The prairie was the LBJ Ranch and the driver was LBJ.

We stopped in Johnson City for fuel. It was up to 35 cents a gallon. Seemed like only months before it was 27.9 cents. A little before that I had bought fuel for 7.9 cents in a "gas war". I told the gas station owner I was young but realized 7.9 cents was too cheap. He just laughed and told me I had no idea what was going on. The drill was to put the independents out of business. He told me when I was grown I would not believe what gas would cost. At 35 cents a gallon I was starting to understand.

Pop asked where he could find the drug stores in Johnson City. The pump jockey (yes..for 35 cents they filled the tank for you). The attendant laughed and said there are no "stores"...just one of each. There was only one drug store in 30 miles.. left at the light and a few blocks up.

Pop asked the druggist a question about a medication and then asked what the chances were of the president coming in the drug store. The druggist answer was just what pop wanted to hear..."not a chance in hell...I barred the sob from my drug store". Pop said you barred the President of the United States from his hometown drug store... the only drug store in 30 miles? Yes...that damned pillhead Lyndon comes in here with a list of drugs he wants. I tell him I need a doctors prescription. Lyndon explodes. Says there is no higher law in the land than a Presidential Order and he is ordering the druggist to fill the drug list. The druggist tells LBJ that he is not getting anything without a prescription from a doctor. LBJ explodes. The druggists tells LBJ he can have his goons take the druggist out back and work him over...but he is not getting drugs. The druggist told LBJ to get out and not come back.

It was and interesting civics lesson my high school had not prepared me for.

A side note per the JFK investigation. My brother Alfie was a crack pool player who hung at the Cotton Bowling Palace in Dallas. It was a hub of nightlife and frequented by Jack Ruby. Alfie figured the feds would swoop down on the Cotton Bowling Palace and investigate all the known Ruby associates. No fed ever showed. It was as if an investigation was not necessary and they already knew everything they needed to know.

I knew throwing away my radio was a good thing.”

George Taylor
Postscript from George:
“I was heading east...the ranch to my left to the north.. The Lincoln was heading southeast at an angle and we made eye contact as he pulled in front of me. If he was not high he was doing a great W C Fields impersonation. GT”