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Ron Paul See other Ron Paul Articles Title: How Lyndon Johnson Expropriated Control Over the Pentagon and CIA Soon After the Inauguration of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration How Lyndon Johnson Expropriated Control Over the Pentagon and CIA Soon After the Inauguration of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration And How Robert Caro Missed LBJ’s End Run Around JFK’s Rejection After attempting to get President Kennedy to officially assign him oversight responsibility of “all national security issues” — and failing in that audacious act — Johnson set out to achieve the same result using his innately brazen guile. Documents within his own “LBJ Library” provide a window into how he went about doing this, behind JFK’s back. Robert Caro, in his book The Passage of Power, described Johnson’s attempt to achieve his goal of being the first vice president to ever wield real power; it was as if LBJ had planned all along to prove his favorite dictum: “Power is where power goes.” Though Mr. Caro used that phrase as the title of the chapter where he recounted a number of illustrations of how LBJ demonstrated his ability to leverage his nominal power in his various political positions to aggregate even more of it, Mr. Caro nevertheless missed some of the most brazen examples. In one such instance, he did cite the failed attempt by Johnson, in the first week after the inauguration, to get President Kennedy to cede unprecedented power to him, and how that was summarily rejected by JFK. Ironically, it appears as though Mr. Caro, despite the magnitude of Johnson’s insubordinate act — which left his aides George Reedy and Jim Rowe “flabbergasted … the most presumptuous document any Vice President had ever sent to his President” [1] — was not aware of the fact that the rebuffed Johnson then went around his back in a secret power grab that successfully gave him essentially the same level of power on an ad-hoc basis. In describing the first, failed attempt, Caro explained that upon taking office as the vice president Johnson wrote a draft copy of an executive order granting himself power over the Pentagon, the CIA and the NSA, in fact all agencies related to national security matters. The proposed executive order was prepared such that it was all ready for the President’s signature when Johnson sent it to him. But President Kennedy ignored it, responding to Johnson on January 28th without reference to his defiance, undoubtedly surprised by his V.P.’s audacity and a bit miffed by his brazenness. Instead, he merely authorized Johnson to “review policies relating to the national security,” as Caro put it, “a meaningless phrase that conferred no power at all.” [Ibid]. Despite Caro’s attempt to find the original document, for obvious reasons, someone (mysteriously unknown, but obviously a very powerful and devious person in a position to do so subsequent to JFK’s passing) decided long ago that it would not be made available for future researchers. Nevertheless, Caro did describe it according to people who had seen the original — and multiple revised drafts of it before it was finally sent to President Kennedy — along with Caro’s conclusion that “no executive order bearing on the Vice President and national security was ever issued.” The Maintenance of Robert Caro’s Incredible Credentials Mr. Caro has gone to considerable lengths to establish his credentials as the preeminent biographer of Lyndon Johnson and curator of some of the most obscure facts of LBJ’s long political history — from his earliest years through high school, college and working as a congressional aide, then congressman, senator, vice president and president. To illustrate the emphasis he puts on this: In a recent article he wrote for The New Yorker magazine, Caro recalled that in his first job as a newspaper reporter for Newsday in 1959, he had been admonished by the senior editor to always “Turn every page. Never assume anything. Turn every goddam page.”[2] In a April 21, 2019 article “The more facts you collect, the closer you come to the truth” in the UK newspaper The Guardian by Rachel Cooke, Mr. Caro was interviewed by her. She chose as the title a quotation from him which suggests that his obsession is ferreting out every truthful detail of LBJ’s career, which he has now personally discovered, analyzed, documented and published. [3] Yet despite his stellar reputation, there are some facts, and closely-associated persons, which (who) do not appear in his narrative. The Johnson-initiated “executive order” summarized above will be further examined below as an exemplar of that point: Because nowhere in Caro’s writings has he revealed how Johnson actually went behind JFK’s back to secretly countermand his decision. In what can only be described as the most arrogantly insubordinate acts of any vice president in history (comparable only to an act by Secretary of State William Seward to attempt to become as powerful as a Prime Minister that would have reduced President Lincoln’s role to that of a figurehead akin to the Queen of England) Lyndon Johnson — having failed in his attempt to dupe Kennedy into delegating to himself control over military and intelligence matters — secretly arrogated to himself the same power, despite the absence of an executive order to officially convey it. Thanks to the research of the intrepid journalist/publisher Thomas H. Lipscomb, who provided me with documents from the LBJ Library related to Johnson’s appointment of Air Force Colonel Howard L. Burris to be his military attache’, we gain insight into how LBJ created his “backchannels” to the Pentagon and CIA that other researchers have long noted. Many of them agree that Burris was involved in Johnson’s most malevolent machinations, including the assassination of JFK. In fact one of the most knowledgeable, experienced and widely known JFK researchers, Edgar F. Tatro, confirmed that point to me in an email, stating that “Burris is a major player in the JFK conspiracy.” Yet, having been protected throughout his career by secrecy protocols and secure military files, Col. Howard Burris remains as one of the most enigmatic of the figures known to have been involved. Mr. Caro noted Burris’ general role as Johnson’s military aide, but the incidents he cites generally relate to Burris’ observations about Johnson and their interactions in mundane peripheral matters. In my own books, I have explored certain instances of his appearances in critical places at strategically interesting times. Johnson had, for example, requested Col. Burris to meet the presidential party at the LBJ Ranch on the evening of November 22, 1963, with select copies of ‘Eyes Only’ documents for a meeting at which Johnson supposedly planned a confrontation with JFK on foreign policy issues, Yet, the plausibility of such a meeting, with dozens of people there in a party mood (presumably to celebrate a successful trip — absent JFK’s murder) would have precluded that. Johnson must have had other contingencies in mind regarding the need for Burris, and secret military documents, to be available to him that evening, possibly relating to a back-up plan had something gone wrong with the plot and its cover-up. Suffice it to say that Burris is an intriguing fellow whose actions and manipulations remain an enigma. Mr. Lipscomb, the journalist noted above, is intensively engaged into further research on Howard L. Burris that may break new ground on understanding his role in the “Crime of the Century.” How LBJ’s secret backchannels were developed The second phase of LBJ’s power ploy began in the month of February shortly after JFK rejected Johnson’s first effort to accomplish his objective with presidential authority. By the end of that month, LBJ’s office issued a press release announcing the Burris appointment late in the day on the last Friday of February, apparently to make it official while minimizing its impact and the number of potential readers. The clipping below thus appeared in morning newspapers on Saturday, February 25, 1961: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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