Did LBJ plot assassination?
Kremlin said it had evidence JFK’s deputy was to blame
THE Kremlin claimed to have information showing Lyndon B Johnson – President Kennedy’s successor – was involved in the assassination plot, the newly released documents reveal.
The KGB was said to be ‘in possession of data purporting to indicate ... Johnson was responsible for the assassination of the late President John F Kennedy’, according to a memo sent in 1966 by the FBI director at the time.
The shocking claim that vice president Johnson was responsible for JFK’s death has surfaced before – but the new documents have revealed that the Soviet Union claimed to have evidence backing the conspiracy theory.
Moscow was said to be in fear that the assassination could be used by American military leaders to whip up anti-Soviet sentiment and even lead to an attack, the memo revealed.
JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962 and married a woman from Minsk, Belarus. The memo, based on information from a US intelligence mole in the Soviet Union, was written by FBI director J Edgar Hoover.
It was forwarded to the White House with the title ‘Reaction of Soviet and Communist party officials to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy’. It read: ‘KGB headquarters indicated that in view of this information, it was necessary for the Soviet government to know the existing personal relationship between President Johnson and the Kennedy family, particularly that between President Johnson and Robert and Ted Kennedy.’
Nearly two years later, the US source said information came through from KGB headquarters in Moscow, saying the KGB had evidence to JFK’s to link assassination. President Johnson
The emergence of the possible existence of such evidence in Russia will give the conspiracy theory new life. As recently as 2003, a Gallup poll found that nearly 20% of Americans believed LBJ had some hand in the assassination.
Even JFK’s wife Jackie was said to have had her suspicions.
Billie Sol Estes, the last man who claimed to know the truth, died in 2013.
Estes, a fast-talking millionaire, was a convicted fraudster and former business partner of LBJ.
He sensationally alleged in 1984 that Johnson had ordered eight killings, Estes, Kennedy. a including Johnson According that aide of named President to Malcolm nightclub owner Wallace Jack persuaded Ruby to recruit Lee Harvey Oswald. Wallace then allegedly joined Oswald in his sniper’s nest overlooking the Dallas motorcade route and fired one of the shots that killed the president. Oswald was later shot by Ruby, ensuring the conspiracy remained secret, said Estes. His allegations never went further after prosecutors ruled they couldn’t be corroborated as both Johnson and Wallace were dead. A dozen writers have since published books putting Johnson at the heart of a high-level Texas conspiracy – supposedly involving Dallas oil magnates, as well as elements of the FBI, CIA and Secret Service – to kill President Kennedy. They argued that Johnson hated the Kennedys, who treated the crude and surly Texan with contempt. Robert Kennedy described Johnson as a ‘mean, bitter, vicious… animal’. It was also claimed Johnson suspected JFK was about to drop him as his running mate in the forthcoming 1964 election. Johnson’s family and friends have always strenuously denied the allegations.