Preserving Their Legacy

By Mat Wilson

"Preserving Their Legacy" is the product of 32 years of groundbreaking research by historian, Mat Wilson. By definition, every murder involving more than one person is not a theory. It is a conspiracy and as every good researcher knows, one breakthrough leads to another.

History has finally spoken and the words of JFK have been confirmed:"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

Indeed, the legacies of icons like Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and Ernest Hemingway have been distorted by mythology, and this book will therefore surprise you because it will challenge your assumptions with compelling evidence.

As Plato told us all those years ago, "strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool."

Historical events like the Kennedy assassination have long been exploited by amateurs and it's time for history to end the speculation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mat Wilson
• Release date: Feb 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301754403

Mat Wilson

"Preserving Their Legacy" is the product of 32 years of groundbreaking research. History has confirmed the undertstanding that John F. Kennedy conveyed when he said, "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." The legacies of icons like Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon and Ernest Hemingway have been distorted by mythology and "Preserving Their Legacy" will therefore surprise because it will challenge your assumptions with compelling evidence. Cause is inferred from a series of events and sequences. Systematic misrepresentation temporarily misdirects but the concealed past is ultimately excavated through time-consuming, historical research. In the meantime, the validity of groundbreaking research is temporarily marginalized by the common phenomenon that Plato defined when he said, "strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool." The confusion is understandable. Historical events like the Kennedy assassination have long been exploited by amateurs but history contains unfounded speculation through well researched books like "Preserving Their Legacy". Initially titled "Preserving The Legacy", it is evidently responsible for spawning fictitious novels like "The Memoirs of John F. Kennedy." At its best, biography is not something you say about somebody you have never met. Meaningful biography is history digested; what we believe is frequently mere fiction and it is evidently human nature to blur the distinction. ***Astute readers provide opportunity to explain flaws: Posting on the Amazon news groups, Michael Robinson wrote: "The one thing which is 'surprisingly missing' from this book, as I see in the preview, is: footnotes. You make statement upon statement in this book, yet you cite no corroborating sources other than your own authority. This, after a little time, can be a bit wearisome ... but it also denies the curious reader the easy ability to pursue on his own a tantalizing point that you have just raised. Any piece of formal writing needs footnotes to support what is being said. It also occurs to me that your Foreword does not really do its part in setting the stage for the book: describing what premises you intend to raise, and how you intend to raise them. ("Go ahead," wink wink, "sit on the edge of the bed at least for a little bit, and tell me how good it's going to be.") The table of contents can serve as a strong indicator of how the book as a whole will fall, but right now it's a list of dead people. You certainly have done an excellent job with the cover. Talk the book up in blogs frequented by people who are interested in this sort of thing, and hand free review-copies to the people who run those blogs. It's possible that you're a bit too-close to this. For example, consider the following sentence from the first chapter: "... and that should be clear to you because you have read J. Edgar Hoover's memorandum dated November 29, 1963." Huh? How could I have done that? You need to include that public document right here in your book. However, instead, with that passing sentence, you rush on to your next conclusion. Reviewers and editors can probably help you reorganize some of this material to present it more effectively, and inserting (hundreds of ...) footnotes would greatly improve its impression as a scholarly work. Certainly, this book should sell." Michael Robinson is absolutely correct. I just thought that all my footnotes were not vitally important in electronic format (an unnecessary distraction)? because I have tried to note the authors of quotations and references in the body of the text and the bibliography identifies all the sources. Key historical documents are references like the oral histories of people like Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy, Historical Materials (documents, oral histories, presidential presidential papers...) in the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library and that is all made clear in the bibliography as well. More importantly, Mr. Robinson notes that I speak of J. Edgar Hoover's memorandum dated November 29, 1963 as if everybody had read it and that is because in a previous version of my book, I had actually posted the memorandum in my foreward along with an article written by Dorothy Kilgallen dated that very same day. Unfortunately, when I revised the foreward, I neglected to revise the first chapter to reflect these changes. For those who are equally perplexed by my reference to Hoover's "smoking gun memorandum" I post it here for your review. http://mdatoz.com/document The above noted memorandum is a key historical document and my personal inadequacy is rather insignificant compared to the need to prove that my conclusions rely upon the historical record.

Book preview

FOREWORD

Too many people are still the victims of unsolved, murder/suicides which continue to shock and surprise. Preserving Their Legacy offers a glimpse into this ignored phenomenon.

Moreover, it offers a revealing glimpse into the politics of today through the recognition that domestic cold war turbulence has been replaced by a new hysteria which is proving to be even more disruptive, and we need to recognize it.

If we do not know where we have been, we do not know where we’re going, and having lost faith in a media that has largely abandoned the responsibility to expose the truth, we are still stuck in a past that journalist Dorothy Kilgallen described thuswise:

It is a dark chapter in our history, but we have the right to read every word of it. It cannot be kept locked in a file in Dallas.

Kilgallen was a tenacious reporter who was determined to get to the bottom of all the mystery surrounding the murder, not only of JFK, but also of Lee Harvey Oswald. She demanded a thorough and credible investigation and had managed to obtain a private interview with Jack Ruby, the man who shot Oswald. She told friends that she had information that would break the case wide open. Two other reporters Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe, had both been killed after making similar claims and as a precaution, Dorothy Kilgallen had given her interview notes to her friend, Margaret Smith.

On 8th November, 1965, Kilgallen, was found dead in her New York apartment. She was fully dressed and sitting upright in her bed.

The notes of her interview with Ruby and the article she was writing on the case had disappeared. Her friend, Margaret Smith, who had been given the notes on the case, died two days later.

The truth is not a mystery by change, and Preserving their Legacy is a thoroughly researched account of a dark chapter that has not ended because history has always repeated.

This is the book Dorothy Kilgallen would write if she were still alive.

Chapter 1

Splendid Contrasts

Bar

October 3, 1960 -one of the most fateful days in the lives of Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy. Kennedy defeated Johnson’s bid for the Democratic nomination and went on to run for the presidency. Johnson received the consolation prize and became Kennedy’s running mate in the bid to take the White House. The odd collusion produced the winning ticket -John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th President of the United States and Lyndon Johnson was his reluctant Vice President.

Lyndon Johnson didn’t leave any memoirs about the stressful relationship he shared with Kennedy while he was his Vice President. Kennedy planned to write his when he retired… Regardless, the secrecy and deceit that Johnson and cohorts maintained has leaked out, bit by bit.

The tension produced by two personalities as different as Johnson and Kennedy was inevitable. Ted Sorensen, White House adviser and Special Council to the President (1961-64) aptly described the stark contrast in the following terms: It is hard to imagine a man more different from Kennedy than Lyndon Johnson. His success in the ways of Capitol Hill had made him cunning where JFK was candid, secretive instead of open, preferring the process of maneuver to the substance of decision. As Kennedy’s term progressed, he grew more and more concerned about what would happen if LBJ ever became President.

It is therefore no surprise that Kennedy and Johnson drifted further and further apart as the Kennedy Administration progressed. In particular, Johnson retreated behind a wall of silence as Kennedy became more and more convinced that secrecy discouraged freedom, damaged credibility and challenged democratic ideals.

Kennedy sought to apply the belief that freedom and peace demanded accommodation rather than confrontation and began to forge a foreign policy that challenged the impending lunacy of the Cold War.

In the eyes of the paranoid zealots that the Cold war had spawned, the openness that Kennedy encouraged was lunacy and it was violently opposed.

The Cold War had defined an unchallengeable course of action that was aggressively maintained by destroying anybody who opposed it, and Kennedy was just another roadblock that had to be removed.

As soon as Eisenhower was succeeded, the Kennedy Administration was overcome by the sweep of the ideological, Cold War tide and the President blindly approved what is now called the ill-timed and ill-planned invasion of Cuba. In actual fact, the hopeless plan to launch a successful invasion through a band of Cuban revolutionary exiles was neither ill-fated, nor ill-planned. It was a grotesque miscalculation organized by zealots within Kennedy’s administration.

Blood thirsty Cold Warriors who had sought to coax the President into declaring an all-out military assault on Cuba had deliberately lied to President Kennedy because he had made it absolutely clear to them that the Bay of Pigs operation must be carried through without any combat action by the USA military forces.

Kennedy vehemently rejected the ploy to be drawn into a war against Cuba and CIA Director Allan Dulles conceded the manipulative effort to commit the United States into an unprovoked war against Cuba when he said:

We felt that when the chips were down -when the crisis arose in reality, any action required for success would be authorized rather than permit the enterprise to fail.

Thankfully, the plan to provoke a Cuban invasion failed because that would have led to nuclear war with Russia. Kennedy had refused to let the enterprise dictate policy and Allan Dulles was promptly fired.

The President accepted responsibility for the botched invasion plan but historians have neglected to adequately credit Kennedy for derailing a nuclear war when he refused to be manipulated by zealots like Allan Dulles.

Ironically, the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion, the most often cited embarrassment of the Kennedy administration, is often used to promote the claim that Kennedy was a reckless Cold Warrior. In actual fact, President Kennedy was assassinated because he refused to accept the mindless commitment of American combat troops in Vietnam. The Bay of Pig reflected the manipulative tactics of Kennedy’s reckless adversaries, he was not the architect of that fiasco.

Kennedy opposed the secrecy and the deception of Cold War politics and challenged all extreme points of view. The sharp contrast between the openness he came to embrace and the secrecy of people in his own Administration is a direct consequence of diametrically opposed views, and the attempt to conceal these striking differences betrays all the deception.

In the final analysis, we will discover that all the lies were predictable and they were deliberately and routinely promoted to cover up the truth about the assassination of the President. Secrecy and deception with a purpose reveals self-serving distortions which provide the opportunity to unravel the truth. The journey has been an incredible challenge because voices like Dorothy Kilgallen have been silenced, but they did their job. They have retained their credibility while those who opposed them have lost theirs and we are therefore in a better position to confirm their initial suspicions about the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Unlike Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson was a defiant character who resented every authority except his own, and the manipulative, artful dodger routinely masterminded schemes in total secrecy in order to pre-empt thoughtful opposition. The behind-the-scenes operator who pulled strings to consolidate power was anything but a conciliatory negotiator who embraced the substance and the style of the Kennedy Administration. Even as a young man, Johnson mirrored the consistent character traits that guided his political career in Washington. The hunger for power, the extreme defiance and the drive to use and manipulate everyone around him were lifelong traits which dictated the phenomenal achievements as well as the phenomenal blunders of Lyndon Johnson.

The dominant will of Lyndon Johnson was always a triumphant force. When he graduated from high school, he defiantly rejected a parental life-long wish to have a son attend college. The obstinate young man traded the opportunity to receive an education for a year of odd jobs -he picked fruit, washed dishes, waited on tables and worked on a road gang driving bulldozers. In the end, it was the toil of paving heat-drenched Texas county highways for a dollar a day that prompted Lyndon Johnson to attend San Marcos College in 1927.

At San Marcos, campus politics were exclusively controlled by an in crowd of athletes known as the Black Stars. Johnson tried to join the Black Stars but he was rejected. Widely known as the biggest liar on campus and having earned the nick-name Bullshit Johnson, the future President was not exactly in a position to open a door on the strength of his credibility.

Despite his lack of integrity, Johnson came to dominate the political climate at San Marcos and he cultivated the opportunity through a rival, political group, the White Stars. When they were formed, Johnson promptly set his sights on the effort to join the new, less popular organization, but like the Black Stars, the White Stars also rejected O1 Bull.

Johnson was not subject to discouragement. He befriended three quiet country boys who thought that he was entertaining, and after repeatedly submitting his name for nomination, the White Stars finally granted him membership. Members began to feel sorry for him, and according to the co-founder; What difference did it make? I mean the White Stars weren’t supposed to be any big deal.

To most, the White Stars were just another opportunity to meet girls, but to Lyndon Johnson, the secretive organization was a vehicle which satisfied his thirst and drive for power. Indeed, Johnson managed to singlehandedly turned the otherwise obscure organization, the White Stars, into the dominant political force on campus.

The success of White Star political candidates was essentially due to the determination and the tireless campaigning of Lyndon Johnson, whose greatest forte was to look a man in the eye and do a convincing job of selling him his viewpoint. In one-on-one salesmanship, Lyndon was the best.

When political tact and aggressive campaigning was not enough, Johnson created elaborate plots to defeat meritorious political rivals like Medie Kyle, a voracious reader, and a brilliant student who received in reality the A’s that Johnson only said he received…

Legitimate tactics were no match for behind-the-scenes manipulations that targeted and destroyed Johnson’s political opponents. When fellow student like Medie Kyle posed a threat to his political aspirations, Johnson simply created a regulation that disqualified Kyle’s candidacy, and he had worked behind his back so secretively that Johnson’s involvement was not even suspected.

The astounding, shameless deception that Lyndon Johnson practiced was cultivated and maintained without deviation. Indeed Johnson cheerfully greeted him on campus and sustained the impression that he and Kyle were the best of friends, concealing the fact that he was responsible for disqualifying his candidacy.

The political disqualification of a worthy political candidate did not matter as long as the details were not publicly promoted.

This well developed ability to deceive became an instrumental tactic of Johnson’s capacity to develop political influence. Obsessive and secretive to the point where even some of his close allies did not always know what he was doing; Lyndon Johnson was a master of leak-proof conspiracies and by the time he graduated from college he had snatched all political power away from the best-qualified candidates and had created a political clique which was entirely under his control.

Under the directorship of Lyndon Johnson, White Star candidates won election after election, and despite repeated victories, even the fact that there existed a political organization called the White Stars was not known outside the group. Indeed, White Star membership was so secretive that: No three White Stars could ever be seen talking together on campus, for example; should three find themselves together, meaningful glances would indicate which one should leave. White Star meetings, previously held down at the creek or in members’ rooms in their boardinghouses, were now, at Johnson’s suggestion, moved to the two-story Hofheinz Hotel, where, Johnson pointed out, no passerby could peep through the windows.

This phenomenal secrecy and deception was constitutionally maintained through ingenious laws which provided members the ability to lie with a straight face. According to the by-law that institutionalized deception, immediately upon being asked if he is a member of the [White Stars] group, the member is -upon the very asking of the question -automatically expelled, so that he can answer ‘No’, -he will be readmitted at the next meeting.

Schooled in secrecy and deception and consumed by a ruthless drive to dominate political affairs, the unchallengeable will of Lyndon Johnson invariably triumphed. Robert A. Caro, Johnson’s biographer, aptly exposed the dangerous scope of Johnson’s obsession to exercise power when he said it was so fierce and consuming that no consideration of morality or ethics, no cost to himself -or to anyone else -could stand before it. Johnson’s peers confirm Caro’s indictment. According to the observations of those who knew him best, Lyndon was always the string-puller behind the scenes. He found those he could use, and used them, and those he couldn’t, he worked behind the scenes to put them down.

Peer-assessments were practically unanimous in the assertion that Johnson was the type of character who was snaky all the time. He got power by things you or I wouldn’t stoop to.

Even those who claimed that Lyndon Johnson was the type of person who would cut your throat to get what he wanted are not off the mark, and the most striking aspect of these negative assessments is that Johnson himself evidently endorsed them.

In 1970, two years after leaving the White House, Johnson returned to San Marcos where he and four of his former professors reminisced. Johnson’s particular reflection concerned the San Marcos political exploits that he had orchestrated and according to the former President of the United States: It was my first real big dictat -Hitlerized operation, and I broke their back good. And it stayed broke for a good long time.

Had a tape recorder not been running to inadvertently record the fact that San Marcos politicking was merely the first of a series of big dictats, one would perhaps be inclined to suggest that Johnson was misquoted, but he wasn’t. And if San Marcos was not his last big dictate or Hitlerized operation, is he actually talking about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? If the glove fits, it is silly to question it.

In his own words, Johnson’s first big dictat was a pretty vicious operation for a while. They lost everything I could have them lose.

Johnson capacity to be ruthless, cruel, dictatorial and brutal, accords with the historical record and there is every reason to believe that his tactics were transferred from San Marcos to Washington. In College, he secretively targeted political candidates like Medie Kyle. In Washington, it was the Kennedys who stood between him and his political ambitions and in 1964, when Robert Kennedy refused to withdraw his candidacy for the vice presidency, an impromptu regulation effectively disqualified every cabinet member, to obscure the simple fact the only real target of this sweeping decision was Robert F. Kennedy.

Amazingly, Lyndon Johnson manipulated the entire, vice-presidential selection process to disqualify the potential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, and that is certainly a Hitlerized operation which betray his paranoid obsession to impose total control.

The significance of this kind of secrecy and manipulation is quite extraordinary. For example, at San Marcos, he was, at once, the most detested individual as well as the most influential, and in Washington, he would not have been tolerated without managing to conceal the real truth about how power was snatched away from the Kennedys.

John F. Kennedy valued the spirit of Jeffersonian democracy; the idea of equality, freedom, and most of all, the conviction that the people’s control over the government was supreme. Johnson valued the triumph of the big dictat. Politically, as John Caro indicated, Johnson survived because he enlisted all his energy and all his cunning in a lifelong attempt to obscure not only the true facts of his rise to power and his use of power but even of his youth, he succeeded well.

Regardless, the huge credibility gap between Johnson’s public declarations and private dealings was well known in Washington. He even had the temerity to falsely claim that the relationship between himself and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was strictly formal and professional

The truth is Hoover and Johnson had been longtime Washington neighbors, close personal friends, and even unindicted, criminal co-conspirators who evaded criminal prosecution through the capacity to impose secrecy and to evade censure for acting like they were above the law. The relationship was so vital that when Johnson left the White House, he told Nixon that Hoover was the only person he could entirely trust and rely upon, and he was certainly not referring to any professional relationship.

In fact, Johnson always used Hoover for unofficial duties like spying on his political enemies and on those who opposed the Vietnam War. Their covert relationship had all the earmarks of police state justice or Hitlerized Operations as Johnson had referred to his tendency to operate without adherence to any formal restrictions.

Despite public claims to the contrary, Washington insiders knew that not a day went by without a direct communication from Johnson to Hoover’s FBI, but that relationship was not publicly acknowledged.

Like the secret relationship between Johnson and the White Stars in College, the working relationship between Hoover and Johnson is responsible for dictating the truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and that should be clear to you by now because you have read J. Edgar Hoover’s memorandum dated November 29, 1963.

Even Lyndon Johnson’s book Vantage Point does not acknowledge the close working relationship between Hoover and Lyndon Johnson aside from two brief mentions relating to the formal relationship between the Director of the FBI and the President of the United States. This work is therefore nothing more than an acknowledgement of what Hoover and Johnson failed to publicly disclose –there is no conspiracy theory to discredit.

As Senate Majority Leader in 1954, nobody maneuvered bills through the Senate more efficiently than Lyndon Johnson. An expert at promoting consensus through a barrage of dictatorial gimmicks that discouraged debate, Johnson operated on the assumption that his will was not subject to any opposition. Dissent disturbed Johnson’s sense of control and the slightest strife or criticism was fiercely challenged until opposition was extinguished. Deliberation and debate was always trumped by the demand for consensus.

One of the tactics that Johnson had mastered was his tendency to get Senators to agree to a bill before taking a vote. Such unanimous consent agreements, as they were called, sustained the comfort level of a man who was evidently so pathologically obsessed with the need to forge consensus he characteristically nipped dissent in the bud. As Johnson came to expect unanimous consent agreements he became increasingly intolerant towards any Senator who defied his will and he literally forged (as in forgery) unanimous consent agreements without even bothering to solicit prior consent.

The occasional Senator who opposed what was essentially a phony unanimous consent agreement was more apt to go along with anything that Johnson recommended rather than develop the necessary will to defy the relentless convictions and expectations of Lyndon Johnson. Faced with opposition, Johnson simply isolated and bombarded each and every dissenter with an angry soliloquy that made the non-conformists feel downright treasonous and more often than not, unanimous consent agreements, forged or otherwise, were invariably endorsed.

Johnson created a political climate where debates grew shorter and less important and particularly divisive issues demanded greater tact, not greater thought.

Armed with an impressive barrage of back breaking ploys that discouraged thoughtful debate, Johnson’s unrivalled capacity to obtain consensus was remarkable.

In The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Path to Power, Robert A. Caro describes how Johnson manipulated the Senate through late night sessions or periods of lull, followed by a frenetic burst of activity. The thought process behind the Johnsonian dissent control gimmicks included tactics like exploiting the simple fact that a tired Senator was far more willing to go along with his suggestions at midnight than in the day when issues were normally debated.

Johnson’s phenomenal capacity to manipulate made him a commanding Senate Majority Leader, but when he was Kennedy’s Vice President, he was relatively powerless and resigned himself to the understanding that he would never be able to exercise a satisfying degree of control as long as Kennedy was the President.

The vice presidency is an office that did not normally carry a great deal of power, and Johnson, as his role dictated, had to rely entirely on the confidence and discretion of President Kennedy. Before accepting the post, Johnson entertained the hope that, in his own words, power is where power goes, but the reality was far less attractive and more confining. Nothing tormented Johnson more than the realization that he was merely a puppet on a string as long as Kennedy was alive. Indeed, Johnson detested his powerless stint as the Vice President so profoundly, that in 1968, despite a multitude of problems and disappointments, the most painful episode the forlorn and dejected Johnson could recall was his service as Vice President. According to Johnson: No one knows what it is to be President until he is, and no one knows what it is to be Vice President, thank God, until he is. Everyone wants to talk to the President, get his quotes, but you sit there like a bump on a log, trying not to get in the way. You have no authority, no power, no decisions to make, but you have to abide by the decisions another man makes. If you’re independent, you’re disloyal, and if not, you’re a stooge or a puppet.

Remarkably, this President who had sent 30,000 boys to their graves in Vietnam, was more troubled by the thought of being Kennedy’s powerless Vice President than he was about the irresponsible, dictatorial tactics that had dragged America to war in Southeast Asia, simply because Lyndon Johnson managed to forge national consensus at the expense of the murder of President John F. Kennedy.

It is remarkable that the only thing that troubled Lyndon Johnson in 1968 was the lack of power as Kennedy’s Vice President when he was directly responsible for the futile sacrifice of 30,000 American lives. Naturally, Johnson rejected this characterization, and the former, embattled President angrily declared: Whatever power I’ve had, I’ve used it. I’ve used it for good. I’ve tried to use it for human beings. His good intentions however, did not reduce the tragic consequences of his Hitlerized operations.

By the time Johnson became President, he had practically made an exact science out of the politics of propaganda and control. Obsessed by the drive to control the news through press leaks rather than through objective reporting, one of Johnson’s first White House tasks was to relentlessly court the press and to make it clear that the success or failure of a reporter was directly linked to the news items that he, President Lyndon Johnson, had the power to make available. Johnson promised to make journalists who covered his Presidency the best-informed reporters in Washington.

The attempt to transform the press into his private army of propagandists was blatant and crude. According to the President: There’s no reason why the members of the White House press corps shouldn’t be the best-informed, most-respected, highest-paid reporters in Washington. If you help me, I’ll help you. I’ll make you all big men in your profession.

A master at making offers that were difficult to resist, the press often swallowed the bait that Johnson delivered. The disarming Johnson treatment was honed to perfection. Deluded by good intentions that trumped every ethical consideration, Johnson vowed to be candid and wooed the press through the one-on-one salesmanship trademark that saw Johnson lean forward as he spoke in an earnest, accommodating, soft drawl:

You’ll know everything I do, Johnson promised. You’ll be as well informed as any member of the Cabinet. There won’t be any secrets except where the national security is involved. You’ll be able to write everything. Of course.

His peculiar tendency to craft a national security-motivated justification to excuse every fraud, every manipulation, and every crime, was ultimately responsible for violating principle the Constitution of the United States is supposed to protect. In the final analysis, the only security that Johnson protected was his own. In the process, he violated the hopes, the dreams and the aspirations of American citizens who did not support the secretive, national security-motivated agenda that dictated the predictable, criminal course of action that Johnson obsessively pursued.

If one of the functions of the