Free Legacy of Secrecy by Lamar Waldron Page A

B.
    Johnson. Both had been excluded from both the coup planning and the
    Cuba Contingency Plans due to the animosity between them and Bobby
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    LEGACY OF SECRECY
    Kennedy. Bobby had long been frustrated by Hoover’s reluctance to go
    after the Mafia, and by the FBI director’s racism. As for LBJ, Bobby had
    never gotten over their clashes when LBJ ran against JFK for the 1960
    presidential nomination.
    However, LBJ and Hoover were good friends, and by mid-November
    1963, both probably knew something big was brewing about Cuba,
    because of reports from FBI agents about the Kennedys’ exile leaders,
    and incidents like the one involving the Dallas gun dealer. Also, Hoover
    would have known about the FBI’s involvement in maintaining the
    secrecy surrounding the November 1963 Chicago and Tampa assassina-
    tion attempts against JFK.
    Recently documented information about the state of Hoover’s and
    LBJ’s relationships with JFK by mid-November 1963 is important,
    because some researchers have claimed that Hoover and LBJ were
    behind JFK’s assassination, even though no credible evidence has ever
    surfaced. Their most suspicious activity occurred during the cover-ups
    following JFK’s murder, but extensive evidence now shows that Bobby
    Kennedy was equally involved, and that all three men had the same
    goal: to suppress information that could have triggered a dangerous
    confrontation with the Soviets.
    By November 1963, Hoover was secure in his job even if JFK were
    reelected, thanks to a deal arranged the previous month. Hoover had
    first almost exposed—but had then agreed to cover up—JFK’s liaison
    with an East German beauty. Anthony Summers first documented the
    meetings that resulted in Bobby and JFK’s agreement to keep Hoover on
    as FBI director, even past normal retirement age and into JFK’s possible
    next term, if information about the liaison was suppressed.30
    JFK had been introduced to the East German woman by Bobby Baker,
    Lyndon Johnson’s former aide. The press was starting to devote atten-
    tion to Baker’s and Johnson’s activities in November 1963. But because
    what would become known as the Bobby Baker scandal touched JFK and
    involved members of both parties, it would soon be shut down. Some
    writers have said that JFK was going to drop LBJ from the ticket in 1964
    because of the scandal, thus giving LBJ a theoretical motive to risk killing
    JFK. But JFK could hardly dump LBJ because of a scandal in which the
    President was also involved. Also, it would have made little sense for
    JFK to publicly tie himself to LBJ in numerous public events in Texas in
    November 1963 if he planned to dump LBJ a few months later.31
    Rumors have long swirled that Hoover and Richard Nixon were
    in Dallas, meeting with powerful Texas oilmen, the night before JFK’s

Chapter Two
33
    assassination; by some accounts, LBJ was also at the meeting, which
    somehow involved JFK’s murder. However, LBJ’s busy schedule that
    evening is well documented, and no credible evidence exists that places
    the FBI director in Dallas on that date.32 Although Nixon was in Dallas
    for a Pepsi convention, press reports verify that he was seen in public
    with Pepsi board member Joan Crawford at a Dallas nightclub during
    the time when he was supposedly meeting secretly with Hoover.
    However, in November 1963, Hoover was keeping a crucial secret
    from the Kennedys and the Secret Service. The FBI had tracked to Texas,
    and then lost, a man using the name of Jean Souetre. Souetre was a for-
    mer French officer who had been part of an attempt the previous year
    to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle by spraying his car
    with gunfire.33
    The story of the CIA’s involvement in the JFK-Almeida coup plan, and in
    the intelligence failures that led to JFK’s death, centers on AMWORLD
    and CIA official Richard Helms. Unlike the Agency’s Director, John
    McCone, and the CIA’s number-two man, General Marshall Carter,
    Helms was a