Interview with LBJ's mistress on JFK assassination
This is Robert Gaylon Ross interview with Lyndon Johnson's mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown. She claims that LBJ told her that he had John F. Kennedy killed. There is also a series available on Google Video entitled "The Men who Killed Kennedy."
Lyndon and Madeleine
Pat ShannanLarger factions than anyone could imagine at the time carried out the murder and cover-up of President John F. Kennedy. It was the "Crime of the Century," and they got away with it. The orders came from the very top of the "Shadow Government."
Lee Harvey Oswald was the most maligned man of the 20th century. Unlike John Wilkes Booth of assassination notoriety a century earlier, he was not the main player in the nefarious plot to murder the president. Confused and reluctant to speak in the early hours after his arrest - not knowing exactly what he should say - Oswald came to the realization of the enormity of what had just been dropped on his back, demanded legal counsel, and announced to the news cameras one of the few truths spoken about the case for years to come: "I am a patsy."
Indeed, he was. There were at least two Oswalds masquerading in various CIA roles for not only months but for years prior to November 22, 1963. We shall explore the evidence later in this series.
There were many potential motives and suspects explored and projected over the subsequent years - once the Warren Commission Report was released and immediately debunked - with maybe a half dozen being worthy of consideration.
1. Right-wing extremists in the South who were upset with JFK's liberal policies, especially that of shoving school integration down their throats faster than they wanted to swallow it.
2. Left-wing Cubans, under the direction of Castro, in retaliation for the several attempts on Fidel's life by the American CIA. This was Bobby Kennedy's initial reaction. He was cognizant of the "contract" out on Castro and had approved of the plan. Barely an hour after the murder he told a CIA contact, "One of your guys did it," believing the shooter to be a double agent.
3. The Mob, under the direction of three main players - Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante, and Sam Giancana - who were disturbed by the intervention of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy's Justice Department into their affairs. Marcello had been illegally kidnapped and deported, Trafficante had served time in prison, and Giancana had been "snubbed" by the administration after using his influence to swing the key city of Chicago to JFK in 1960's election.
4. Lyndon Johnson and the Texas oil cartel.
5. The Military/Industrial complex. JFK had ordered 1,000 "advisors" home from Vietnam by Christmas and the balance was to be removed by 1965. This was removing the potential for $billions to be earned by the warmongers.
6. The (almost) never-mentioned Israeli connection
While appearing to be reasonable motives on the surface, especially in the immediate aftermath, numbers 1 and 2 simply do not stand up to in-depth scrutiny. The hi-tech precision of the hit, the lack of a related suspect, and the foolhardy assumption that this would have changed any governmental policy all eliminate motive #1. LBJ had scarcely settled into office before civil rights packages were coming out of Congress like candy bars from a vending machine. And while Fidel Castro may have had an ego as big as a cathedral, he was not stupid. If such a plot could have been tied to a foreign enemy, it would have meant a full-scale war by the next morning. In Cuba's case, this would have meant total annihilation in a matter of hours. Lee Oswald had been affiliated with Cuban right-wing gunrunner David Ferrie since 1956, before joining the Marines. But he was a current member of the anti-Castro group in New Orleans. His distribution of "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets on the streets New Orleans and his embrace of Marxism on a local radio interview were a Machiavellian ruse - designed to portray him as the opposite of what he was and to further cement one or both of the theories that "Castro Did It" and with the help of a "lone nut." This also became the foundation for the news media to forever portray Oswald as a left-wing extremist, but it simply wasn't true. As illustrated by the pre-planned set-up, Motive #2 was more likely an arranged subterfuge designed to sway the spotlight away from the real culprits. Both of these motives are also eliminated as potential theories by the same factor that sets aside the next one, only more so.
The Mob played an active part and was a tool of the assassination plotters. But then so were the hierarchy of the Dallas police and the county sheriff's department. (Just how much more brazen can conspirators be than to stage the crime of the century in full view of Sheriff Decker outside his office window?) The underworld used Jack Ruby to both help set up Oswald and then eliminate him in the Dallas Police Station. But these "tools" simply did not have the ability and where-with-all to:
1] forcibly steal the body at gunpoint from the rightful Texas jurisdiction
2] sabotage Washington-area telephone communication for an hour
3] falsify the D.C. autopsy results on the spot
4] remove all evidence from custody of the Dallas Police and Sheriff's Department and deliver it to the FBI
5] manufacture false evidence, deliver it to the Warren Commission and leak it to the press on the same day, and
6] create lifetime liars out of the highest elected and appointed officials in the land, as well as news commentators.
However, this is not to suggest that the Mobsters were blameless.
The overall operation required the cooperation of the Palace Guard, and the details of the plot point straight to the elite princes in the ivory tower. It involved numbers 3,4, and 5. This murder was a palace coup far more intricate but just as blatant as the one 2,007 years earlier when the senators personally rammed the knives into the helpless body of Julius Caesar. In our era's assassination, the victim never had a chance to utter a sound, but before sundown millions would be issuing the query for him: "Et Tu, Lyndon?
Another of these anti-Castro mercenaries and former CIA operative was Gerry Hemming. According to the 1981 publication, The Fish is Red, Hemming confided to authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner that he had grown weary of the revolution in 1960 and left Cuba. He formed an instruction corps called Interpen in order to train others in revolutionary combat. His quest to raise funds for the operation took him to Texas where he received donations from no less than Clint Murchinson and Nelson Bunker Hunt. Once, in 1962, when the subject of assassination came up at the Texas Club in Dallas, where Hemming was lecturing, one of the oil men piped up that Castro was not the one who should be killed but his boss, Jack Kennedy. Hemming complained that he had little success in collecting any substantial donations from the other wealthy oil men on his list. "They wanted nothing less than a Normandy invasion for their money," he said.
But this may have been where and when the seeds were planted for the crop that was to be harvested at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. It was Nelson Bunker Hunt who had co-sponsored the black bordered, "Welcome Mr. Kennedy" screed, which was published in Section One of the Dallas Morning News that day. Hundreds of Kennedy - Wanted for Treason posters were handed out on the street during the parade.
In 1994, I began a series of interviews with a former CIA pilot who had fallen from grace a decade earlier after he began to blow the whistle on the agency's part in the American drug activity. He had been confined for more than six years in the Springfield, Missouri federal "hospital" and force-fed mood and mind altering drugs. Because of a promise not to put his name in print during his lifetime, we shall refer to him throughout as "The Colonel."
The Colonel, himself, is a book walking around waiting to be published but never will. He was an OSS pilot in WWII and moved over to the CIA in the year of its birth, 1947. He admitted committing some despicable acts "in the name of democracy" (such as the kidnapping and murder of the Shah of Iran and his whole family in 1952 - a mission headed up by Norman Schwartzkopf, Sr., father of the celebrated Army General) but finally put his foot down in 1983, when it came to drugging American kids.
The Colonel would always wince when reminded of the tap dance of "the only two adults in America" who couldn't remember where they were the day Kennedy was shot - George Bush and Richard Nixon. "I knew where both the lying !@#$%*&! were," he said with a beaming grin. "They were right there in Dallas with me. We were at Clint Murchinson's house at a party the night before the assassination." The Colonel said that it was he who had flown the "triangular assassination team" into Dallas but was reluctant to discuss any further details either then or in our several subsequent interviews, finally becoming visibly angered at my repeated inquiries.
Private investigation had already turned up the Murchinson party that took place on Thursday night, November 21st, but the reports were all third party hearsay with no participants or eyewitnesses willing to talk. A book or two had mentioned it in passing, but there was nothing solid until now. Suddenly the unasked question became Did The Colonel read this somewhere or had he really been there? He recited a whole laundry list of muckety-mucks which I was fairly confident had never been published before, in addition to Nixon and Bush and including Henry Kissinger, J. Edgar Hoover, H. L. Hunt, and Lyndon Johnson. I wanted to believe, but it was out of the mouth of only one source, so the interview was tucked into a file drawer for future reference. I needed some confirmation, and that would be four more years in coming.
At the Dallas Preparedness Expo in 1998, I stopped by the book booth being attended by Madeleine Duncan Brown, the 73-year-young author of Texas in the Morning, the story of her 21-year intermittent love affair with Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1950, she had given birth to Lyndon's out-of-wedlock son and received a cash delivery of $500 a week from Lyndon's lawyer until shortly after Lyndon died in January of 1973. From her book, I learned that she was a longtime friend of Clint Murchinson and had been at that party in his home on November 21st.
Bingo! I immediately got Madeleine on the phone and began grilling her. I already could tell that she would pull no punches, but how much did she remember? She had named so many more than The Colonel had volunteered to remember, so I specifically recalled his two favorites for her.
"Do you remember George Bush and Henry Kissinger being there?" I almost yelled into the phone. (She had already named Nixon in her book.) No, unfortunately, she didn't, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Bush and Kissinger were very obscure characters in 1963, and ones who did not yet carry much public recognition. But there was no doubt now that the party took place and that Madeleine was there. She remembers many of the details as if it were last week.
Clint Murchinson was the owner of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League, an oil-rich multi-millionaire, and longtime supporter of Lyndon Johnson. He had called Madeleine in the afternoon to invite her to come along that evening. He did not mention that Lyndon would be dropping by later that night, after his dinner engagement in Fort Worth with President Kennedy's entourage.
A Strange Coalition
As an eyewitness, Madeleine Brown tells us of what must have been one of the largest and secret bi-partisan gatherings of governmental bigwigs to ever gather in Texas. When LBJ did arrive, he strode to the bar where Madeleine was seated and chatted for a moment while the bartender poured for him his favorite libation. He was soon summoned to join the others and the group moved with their cigars and drinks into the large library room, and the double doors were closed behind them. She confirmed that others in the private circle included the two highest-ranking men in the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson; oilmen and industrialists H. L. Hunt, George Brown, and R. L. Thornton; ousted (by JFK) CIA Director Allen Dulles, brother of John Foster, the former Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration; and John J. McCloy, Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank. These were some of the most powerful men in the United States, and we find it of interest that at least two, McCloy and Allen Dulles, were laterhandpicked by LBJ to sit on the Warren Commission, in order to portray the fraudulent "investigation" conclusions to the American people.
Madeleine Brown drops another bombshell on us. During the hour or so duration of this mysterious meeting, as she sat nursing a drink at the bar in Murchinson's den, another acquaintance of hers walked in with a prostitute in tow. It was none other than Jack Ruby.
She is not suggesting that Ruby was invited for the pow-wow but rather only to drop off the woman. It was common knowledge among this group that Ruby was the supplier of female favors whenever the Washington bigshots came to town. She knew Jack well, and she says he sat with her and had one drink before leaving alone.
When the meeting adjourned, a visibly agitated Lyndon came over and stood next to her while he ordered another drink from the bartender. He then said something that will ring in her ears as long as she lives. We quote from her text:
I knew how secretively Lyndon operated. Therefore, I said nothing . . . not even that I was happy to see him. Squeezing my hand so hard it felt crushed from the pressure, he spoke with a grating whisper - a quiet growl into my ear not a love message, but one I'll always remember: "After tomorrow, those !@#$% Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat, that's a promise."
Lyndon left immediately to return to Fort Worth. She had hoped to meet him for a brief love tryst at the Dallas hotel the next afternoon, but those plans were thwarted when Johnson suddenly had other things to do as the new President of the United States.
Was Johnson part of a conspiracy to murder his boss? Madeleine has always believed it. The preceding excerpt from her life certainly suggests prior knowledge on his part, at the very least. He had the motive to cooperate - being elevated to the highest position of power in the world is no small reward - and was an overly active participant in the cover-up.
However, let us not jump at conclusions. While motive #4 cannot be totally eliminated, it also cannot stand on its own. While the vice president certainly would have been an essential player, he did not have the ability to orchestrate such a complex operation on his own. Yet surely the real architects knew that once he became president, he would be a main cog in the cover-up, which indeed was the case. We will discuss more of the charlatan's performance, particularly that following his ascension to the throne, in future segments.
Meanwhile, remember that the evil deed took place on Johnson's turf, the one territory that he could control; it was a Johnson man, Dallas Mayor Cabell, who had officially diverted the parade route that week to swing awkwardly through Dealey Plaza and into the trap; it was Johnson who held up the flight of Air Force One until the body could be unlawfully spirited away and loaded aboard; it was Johnson who telephoned the doctors at Parkland Hospital two days later, while they were trying to save Oswald, begging for a deathbed confession; and it was Johnson who handpicked the Warren Commission. But he, too, took his secrets to his grave in 1973.
Madeleine Brown tells of her next rendezvous with her lover at the Driskoll Hotel in Austin, which is even more revealing. It was a New Year's Eve party on December 31, 1963. Sipping bubbly champagne on the feather bed, she burst forth with what had obsessed her for the past six weeks. Again, we revert to her words:
"Lyndon, you know that a lot of people believe you had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination."
He shot up out the bed and began pacing and waving his arms screaming like a madman. I was scared.
"That's BS, Madeleine Brown!" he yelled. Don't tell me you believe that crap."
"Of course not," I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.
"It was Texas oil and those !@#$% renegade intelligence !@#$%&$ in Washington."
"What are you talking about?" I asked, my eyes bulging.
Hell, that !@#--$%-#--!@#$% Irish Mafia Kennedy - with advice from the Invisible Government - came out for suicidal cuts in the oil depletion allowance. More than 280 million dollars per year! He stopped a half dozen mergers under the Anti-Trust Act. In `62's snag, the market dropped one hundred and thirty-seven billion !@#$% dollars. Steel fell fifty percent, and he had the impertinence to talk about `rollback' of prices or worse, a freeze. This was war, Madeleine, to some rich, fat cats in Texas you and I both know. He campaigned on an increased defense budget. Then he made plans to close fifty-two bases in 25 states, plus 25 overseas bases, and he was getting ready to quit in Southeast Asia. And for the first time in history, he had sent in one intelligence agency, the FBI, to dismember another agency, the CIA. America simply could not have this!"
"Who were the Texas oil men, Lyndon? Who are we talking about.?" I asked boldly.
He turned and looked me straight in the eyes with a cold glare, saying, "Behind every success there is a crime. Do you remember what I told you years ago, Madeleine? You see nothing, you hear nothing, you say nothing." As he stormed off to the bathroom, he added, "I can see that I've already told you too much. I should have listened to my own advice."
Madeleine Duncan Brown has no doubt that Lyndon told her the truth. She believes that LBJ and the Texas oil cartel did what they what they felt they had to do to protect their own interests.
A sad footnote to the Madeleine Brown story revolves around her son, Steven, who for years had been asking her about his real father. The last time Madeleine had seen Lyndon alive in 1969, she had implored him to go public with the truth, but he had refused, preferring to protect his reputation. Over the years Madeleine had managed to avoid the issue with Steven, but even she felt it might be time to enlighten him now. She feared the thought of dying without telling him. When she finally moved forward, he was livid to learn the truth - something he had silently suspected.
In June of 1987, Steven Mark Brown filed a $10.5 million lawsuit against Lady Bird Johnson for his rightful share of his father's estate, believing that in a public forum the truth would come out. However, Steven underestimated the power of his enemies. After a short period of drastic harassment and intimidation, during which he refused to back off, Steven disappeared. Madeleine hired a private detective who found him three months later in a hospital bed at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Steven died of cancer at age 39 two years later, and the suit was never settled.