|
Probing LBJ's motives, writer stokes a conspiracy theory |
|
By The Hill Staff
|
|
Posted: 11/25/03 12:00 AM [ET] |
With the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination comes the inevitable flood of new books, videos and television documentaries all seeking to capitalize upon the public’s insatiable desire to understand the tragic events of Nov. 22, 1963. Barr McClellan’s book, Blood, Money & Power, fits nicely into the genre of conspiracy literature that attempts to look beyond the act of a lone gunman to find far more sinister motives in the death of John F. Kennedy.
McClellan, a lawyer who once worked for Texas attorney Ed Clark, takes the reader on a complicated and often rambling journey through the intricacies of Texas history, big oil money and good-ol’-boy politics. His thesis is that Clark masterminded Kennedy’s assassination with Lyndon Johnson, who was destined to be dropped from the Democratic ticket in 1964.
McClellan places three gunmen in Dealey Plaza — Everett “Mac” Wallace, Lee Harvey Oswald and the grassy-knoll shooter known euphemistically as “Junior.”
The assassins allegedly fired four shots. With the exception of Oswald, they were able to escape disguised as Secret Service agents. One partial fingerprint is offered as conclusive evidence. Jack Ruby then was dispatched to eliminate Oswald. In return for his participation in the conspiracy, Ruby received a lawyer. “There were probably more benefits,” McClellan writes, “related to help for family members and friends. The record is far from clear and probably lost forever.” Of course, all of the key participants are conveniently dead and therefore unable to defend themselves.
McClellan justifies his methodology and research by claiming that he “had to rebuild documents from extensive personal recollection and public files.” The book has no bibliography, and what footnotes it does contain appear at mysterious and unpredictable intervals. Pages pass without a single citation, followed by a flurry of footnotes that resemble mini-epistles rather than providing solid, substantive documentary support.
In one case, McClellan cites a Gallup survey that “a solid 70 percent of Americans believe there was a conspiracy and that Johnson participated in some way.” This proves only that most Americans know little about the Kennedy assassination and probably saw Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. Ignorance is not factual support.
McClellan continually makes broad accusations and generalizations without providing sources. He sees the genesis of the Kennedy assassination in the failed 1933 attempt on President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s life. “In that one event,” McClellan writes, “Johnson realized how assassination could change government dramatically, how easy it was to do, and how just a firearm could improve or terminate a politician’s fortunes. … He saw that assassinating a president was not something that was investigated with diligence, that the assassin would likely be tagged an anarchist.”
Really? At that time, Kennedy was 15 years old and attending classes at Choate — yet his fate already was sealed as if he were a participant in an unfolding Greek tragedy. McClellan continues his brief chronicle of American assassination by absurdly stating: “Historians traditionally regard John Wilkes Booth as a loner, virtually an anarchist despite the fact several conspirators were involved.” This is patently untrue; competent scholars and teachers accurately have viewed and portrayed the Lincoln assassination as a political act, the dénouement of the Civil War.
There is no doubt that Johnson was a flawed man. He understood and exercised power. But that does not make him a murderer, nor does it make him complicit in the assassination of the president. Rather, 40 years after the fact, it is time for the nation to finally consign the Kennedy assassination to the annals of history by requiring the same rigorous methodology and scholarship demanded for other historical events.
That means that the federal government must allow free and open access to archival documents, files and materials and even put some of the more significant artifacts of the assassination on public display. This can be done in a respectful manner, as so skillfully illustrated by the current exhibits at Ford’s Theater.
Until then, we will continue to face rampant speculation, rumor and innuendo about Kennedy’s untimely death. No one wants to believe the truth that a great man died for nothing.
Incidentally, the publisher of Blood, Money & Power is offering on their web page the exiting new DVD The Roswell Crash: Startling New Evidence about the government’s space alien cover-up. Now there is a real conspiracy.
Bigler is the director of the James Madison Center at James Madison University.
Book reviewed:
Blood, Money & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK
By Barr McClellan
480 pages; $24.95
Hanover House, 2003
|
|
