This is not just another conspiracy theory.....a quote from
Gen. Alexander Haig:
"He [Johnson] said 'we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president.' And the reason was that there would be a Right-wing uprising in America, which would keep the Democratic party out of power for two generations. He [Johnson] was convinced Castro killed Kennedy, and he took it to his grave."
NOTHING that LBJ did would surprise me, in fact I still wonder if he wasn't behind the whole thing. A lot of his character defects were revealed in a (CNN, of all things) report about the real story of his "earning" a Bronze Star. According to the guys who served with him, it was as a result of a phoney report on his involvement with an aborted mission in which he even bailed before the entire mission was aborted. He has to be the biggest phoney politician ever. (I think Kerry must have learned about this and decided that phoney medals were the way to the top)
And a so called right wing uprising over the death of Kennedy?
Some corrections and some information about LBJ’s wartime experiences.
First, LBJ was directly commissioned from the House of Representatives into the USN as a Lt Commander.
Second, LBJ was conducting a “fact finding tour” of the Southwest Pacific Theater the summer (1942) before a re-election campaign.
There is a picture of LBJ poorly dressed (sleeves rolled up, tie half undone and wheel hat on the back of his head) as a USN LtCmdr standing near a B-17C being used as a long range transport. The aircraft had run out of gas in central Australia.
Third, the B-26 the LBJ rode in departed the airbase about the same time as the rest of the aircraft but returned about a hour earlier than the rest of the mission survivors flying on just one engine.
There is no way that a twin engine aircraft flying on one engine is faster than the same series aircraft flying on two engines.
The medal the General McArthur ordered presented to LBJ was the Silver Star - not the relatively minor Bronze Star. (The Bronze can we rewarded for combat support while the Silver Star is only awarded for heroic acts).
Lastly, shortly after the award of the Silver Star LBJ was ordered by Congress to return to the US because he had important, war related, business to perform in Congress.
You an web crawl and easily find numerous references to everything except the photo. That I am still looking for (its worth a cold one when I find it).
It was worse w/ LBJ - It was a Silver Star, not a Bronze Star.
The White House Bio: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/lj36.html
and CNN's report, "The story behind LBJ's Silver Star":
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/johnson.silver.star/story/storypage.html