DID LBJ ARRAN GE THE KILLING?
Kremlin said it had evidence JFK’s deputy was to blame
THE Kremlin claimed to have information showing Lyndon B Johnson – John F 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.
The shocking claim that Kennedy’s vicepresident Johnson was responsible for his death has surfaced before – but the new documents have revealed the Soviet Union claimed to have evidence backing the 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.
Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962 and married a woman from Minsk, in modern-day 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 Soviets
had evidence to link Johnson to his predecessor’s assassination. 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 nearly 20 per cent of Americans believed Johnson had some hand in the 1963 assassination.
Even Kennedy’s wife Jackie was said to have had suspicions. Billie Sol Estes, a former business partner of Johnson who claimed to know the truth, died in 2013.
Millionaire Estes, who was a convicted fraudster, sensationally alleged in 1984 that Johnson had ordered eight killings, including that of Kennedy.
According to Estes, a Johnson aide named Malcolm Wallace persuaded nightclub owner Jack Ruby to recruit Oswald.
Wallace then joined Oswald in his sniper’s nest overlooking the Dallas motorcade route and fired one of the shots that killed the president, he claimed.
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 John- son 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 Kennedy.
They argued that Johnson hated the Kennedys, who had treated the crude and surly Texan with contempt.
Kennedy’s brother Robert described Johnson as a ‘mean, bitter, vicious… animal’.
It was also claimed that Johnson suspected Kennedy was about to drop him as his running mate in the forthcoming 1964 election. Family and friends of Johnson, who died in 1973, have always strenuously denied the allegations against him.