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LBJ
IN A NUT SHELL: The Most Incredible Story Never Told:LBJ’s Order to Destroy the USS Liberty
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON is a president who has escaped the scrutiny and judgment of history despite considerable documentation that should make him an outstanding candidate for historical review, critique, and analysis. His primary biographer, Robert Caro, consistently gets rave book reviews from mainstream media for his disingenuous puff piece books on LBJ. It’s entirely possible that LBJ is the most evil or one of the most evil presidents in US history. (ILLUSTRATION: The USS Liberty post-Israeli attack)
Some researchers believe that LBJ was the mastermind behind JFK’s assassination and researcher Phillip F. Nelson wrote a book documenting his investigation on this issue: LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination.
gave the order to Israel to bomb and utterly destroy the USS Liberty and its entire crew of 294 Americans. Astoundingly, when the mission went awry and Sixth Fleet Commanders were ordering the rescue of the besieged and bloodied USS Liberty crew, LBJ ordered that rescue operations be called back, at least twice. Against all odds, the USS Liberty survived but after the attack, 34 Americans lay dead. Except for four worthless .50 caliber machine guns, the USS Liberty was unarmed and defenseless against the far superior firing power of the Israeli navel and air force armada that descended upon it with relentless and unspeakable terror.
Not a whole lot has been written about the USS Liberty. It’s just another critically important issue that has been buried in history, but two extraordinary books document the truth. James M. Ennes Jr., is a retired US Naval Officer and a survivor of the Liberty attack who wrote a book that documents his investigative disclosure of the truth, here.
Peter Hounam, an investigative journalist, wrote Operation Cyanide, Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III. Hounam’s extraordinary book, published in 2003, relies heavily on the work of Ennis and also documents numerous interviews that Hounam conducted with the USS Liberty survivors as well as other folks in the US, British, and Israeli governments.
The “official” story of the USS Liberty, according to the government and mainstream media version of the event, is that on June 8, 1967 the Israelis accidentally bombed the Liberty off the coast of Egypt and killed 34 American sailors.  Lyndon B. JohnsonThe real story is that President Johnson, who was being battered in the polls over the Vietnam War and facing a general election loss and even losing the Democrat primary, [encouraged] the Israelis to bomb the Liberty to create a casus belli and to secure a Gulf-of-Tonkin-style resolution to explode the world into war — because in America everybody loves an outraged and indignant president who will use the full force of the military at the slightest provocation, even a government-planned false flag attack.
The USS Liberty, however, encompasses far more than a murderous psychopathic American president resorting to hideously evil deeds to get re-elected. In addition to ordering the total destruction of the USS Liberty and potentially sending 294 Americans to a watery grave in the Mediterranean Sea, LBJ also ordered the nuclear bombing of Cairo, an event specifically designed to create a nuclear war by blaming the entire USS Liberty affair on Russia or Egypt. More horrifying, it’s documented that US planes were on emergency standby orders as pilots waited on the runways in their planes armed with nuclear weapons. The nuclear bombing of Cairo was called off only three minutes before the nuclear bomb drops.
As fate would have it, LBJ’s plan blew up in his face and the world got a reprieve from a US-induced nuclear holocaust. How did all this happen? First, it must be understood that the USS Liberty was supposed to be destroyed and sunk within minutes and without any survivors.
The actual attack on the USS Liberty commenced at 2:00 p.m. Israel time on June 8, 1967. The USS Liberty was 13 miles off the coast of Gaza and moving slowly at five knots. The crew had observed several flyovers by Israeli reconnaissance planes earlier in the day.
When the USS Liberty was struck, it was struck with an awesome force. According to USSLiberty.org, a website created by the survivors to document and expose the truth, the ship was first struck by Israeli fighter aircraft:
“Israeli fighter aircraft launched a rocket attack on USS Liberty. The aircraft made repeated firing passes, attacking USS Liberty with rockets and their internal cannons. After the first flight of fighter aircraft had exhausted their ordnance, subsequent flights of Israeli fighter aircraft continued to prosecute the attack with rockets, cannon fire, and napalm. During the air attack, USS Liberty’s crew had difficulty contacting Sixth Fleet to request assistance due to intense communications jamming. The initial targets on the ship were the command bridge, communications antennas, and the four .50 caliber machine guns, placed on the ship to repel boarders.
After the Israeli fighter aircraft completed their attacks, three Israeli torpedo boats arrived and began a surface attack about 35 minutes after the start of the air attack. The torpedo boats launched a total of five torpedoes, one of which struck the side of USS Liberty, opposite the ship’s research spaces. [20] Twenty-six Americans in addition to the eight who had been killed in the earlier air attacks, were killed as a result of this explosion.
Following their torpedo attack, the torpedo boats moved up and down the length of the ship (both the port and starboard sides), continuing their attack, raking the ship with cannon and machine gun fire.[21] In Malta, crewmen were later assigned the task of counting all of the holes in the ship that were the size of a man’s hand or larger. They found a total of 861 such holes, in addition to “thousands” of .50 caliber machine gun holes.”, link here.
USS Liberty Timeline, here.
The above information is critically important because it proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the Israelis were well aware that the USS Liberty was a well-marked US spy ship. US spy ships are extremely easy to spot because, as telecommunication vessels, they are loaded with wires, antennas and other communication gear that are easily recognized and identifiable (unlike Russian spy ships that were realistically camouflaged as trawlers and fishing boats). The reason it’s important to understand this is because the cover-up of of the USS Liberty incident was so flimsy and fictitious that both the US and Israeli governments officially stated that the USS Liberty was mistook for an Egyptian vessel that hauls horses. This is simply impossible.
As the timeline unfolds, it’s clear that the attack on the USS Liberty had two goals: 1. first destroy and disable all communication capabilities and 2. sink the ship, her crew and guarantee that there were no survivors. The timeline continues:
At this point, the USS Liberty was being pummeled by air and sea with everything that attack planes and motorized torpedo boats (MTB’s) could possibly throw at them. The decks were ablaze from napalm fires, the ship was being torpedoed by the Israeli Navy and bombs and rockets from the air rained down on them.
This is where the story turns extraordinarily heroic from human ingenuity that pretty much killed LBJ’s grand plan. One of the USS Liberty’s communication transformers had been down and not functioning, something the Israeli’s must have known in advance because it wasn’t destroyed or even hit. A courageous crew member managed to fix it by stringing long wires across a burning deck and rendered it operable, and, of course, capable of sending out a mayday message to numerous US aircraft that permeated the area. However, the Israeli planes had high tech jamming equipment that successfully jammed the signal. It’s probably also true that at that point the Israeli’s were not much concerned with the USS Liberty sending out a message because they believed that all communication equipment was knocked out permanently.
Peter Hounam writes in Operation Cyanide, “Liberty radioman Richard Sturman concluded that the attackers had carefully prepared for the attack with the specific intention of preventing the ship communicating with the outside world. To do so effectively they must have had prior knowledge from shore-based receivers of the five frequencies being used by the ship, so that jamming gear could be tuned to them. Sturman recalled his anger when he discovered that the international distress frequency, used for Mayday messages, was also jammed”.
The astute crew however made a startling discovery. The Israeli jamming capabilities did not work when they were actually engaged bombing and the USS Liberty crew had windows of a few seconds of opportunity in between strikes to send out a message.
Hounam writes, “At first, the signalmen felt their task was hopeless. Plane after plane was swooping in on the ship, firing cannon, shooting missiles and dropping napalm….Then someone spotted that there was a respite from the jamming, lasting just a few seconds, when the attacking planes fired their missiles. Halman grabbed the opportunity and shouted into the mike, ‘Any station, this is Rockstar. We are under attack by unidentified jet aircraft and require immediate assistance!'”. On the USS Saratoga (call-sign ‘Schematic’) the radioman picked up the message but it was garbled, possibly by further jamming. “Rockstar, this is ‘Schematic,’ he said. ‘Say again, you are garbled.'”
Eventually, the USS Liberty message was acknowledged and authenticated 10 minutes after the attack began. The USS Saratoga confirmed Liberty’s message with “Roger, Rockstar. Authentication is correct…”. The messaged bounced everywhere and was even acknowledged by two US embassies in the region. Furthermore, it was impossible for the Pentagon not to know of Liberty’s attack as all messages are also automatically routed to the Pentagon and other government agencies. The Israelis must have also intercepted the radio message.
The Liberty crew was relieved and believed that help was on the way. Wrong! Although fleet commanders quickly ordered rescue operations, twice the rescue missions were ordered called back by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a close friend and trusted associate of LBJ. In fact, it’s documented that during one of the conversations between the the Sixth Fleet Commander and McNamara, LBJ got on the phone and roared, “We will not embarrass an ally,” to reinforce McNamara’s direct command from LBJ to not rescue the ailing USS Liberty and her crew.
According to James Ennes, the entire attack lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes, although some crew members believe it was longer. Unquestionably, the attack was sheer hell for those on board the USS Liberty and the agony was prolonged by the fact that help from the Sixth Fleet never arrived as expected.
Then something extraordinary happened. The Israelis stopped attacking despite having more than enough firepower to finish the job of sinking the USS Liberty and her crew. Its been documented that the Israelis had commando helicopter crews hovering above the USS Liberty with a crew to finish the job. Clearly, the USS Liberty crew expected to die.
But with the message out and everybody knowing about it, including the Russians who knew what was going because they were close by in their own disguised spy ships as they intercepted the message or possibly even observed the USS Liberty being attacked, the Israelis panicked, called off the attack and never finished the job. Eventually, the surviving crew was rescued and many were badly injured.
Hounam documents an interview with one of the injured USS Liberty crew members, Joe Lentini:
Shockingly, the USS Liberty tragedy did not begin at 2:00 p.m. Israeli time according to the sanitized official version. It began earlier. According to Hounam, he interviewed a retired Air Force pilot, Jim Nanjo, who spent 20 years on the H-bomb attack force. The job of such pilots who lived on US air bases was to be ready to jump into a plane and carry out orders immediately.
Nanjo told Hounam about how he was awakened on the morning of 6/8/67 between 2:00 a.m. and no later than 4:00 a.m. by an alert that told him an emergency situation existed and he needed to man his plane immediately. Other bomber pilots were also manning their planes and revving up their engines waiting for the “go” order and their orders. They knew nothing about their mission and Hounam writes:
Hounam also documents that Nanjo was aware that other US Air Force bases were under the same highest alert in Guam, Britain, Moron, Spain as well as in the US. What was Nanjo carrying? Hounam writes:
It’s well documented that LBJ and his trusted Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, were deeply and personally involved in the USS Liberty tragedy, the cover-up of the truth and even a scheme to explode the world into nuclear warfare.
To comprehend the severity of the situation, it’s imperative to understand the Cold War, the backdrop against which it was played, the prevalent paranoia at the time of the Communist threat and the incredible rise of America’s military industrial complex to the world’s sole superpower. Many who knew LBJ well feared that he was unstable, mentally ill, a psychopath, or even worse. He was notoriously crude and vulgar. Denis Healey, the Secretary of Defense in Britain so despised and distrusted LBJ that he wrote in his memoirs:
That LBJ was mad is validated by his numerous actions that fueled his personal ambitions over the decades and in the summer of 1967. LBJ was obsessed with one thing and one thing only: reelection. He was in grave danger of losing the presidency and his power. That he would do anything to maintain that power is 100% consistent with the depth of his evil.
But LBJ was also an extraordinarily clever master politician who profoundly understood how a raucous game of geopolitics could be played and manipulated to his own advantage, especially when it came to courting the approval of the American people. Vietnam was already a whopper of a failure and LBJ’s war was growing more unpopular by the second.
The Middle East has always been a disaster (some things never change), at least since oil came into play and the modern nation state of Israel was created by the United Nations in 1948. The rise of Arab nationalism was also heating up as Egyptian President Gamal Nasser and the Marxist styled Baathist movements were flourishing. Syria and Iraq had shed western imposed monarchs and were raising their own brand of dictators. Israel was becoming America’s unofficial 51st state as the Evangelical movement was rising in anticipation of fulfilling Biblical prophecy now that Israel existed for the first time since Biblical times.
The bellicose rhetoric blossomed as Arab leaders publicly vowed to destroy Israel. This was nothing new and even the Israelis perceived that such utterances were an appeasement to the neurotic Arab street rather than an actual threat. Still, that didn’t stop Israel from launching the preemptive Six Day War.
The significance of the Six Day War as it relates to the USS Liberty is that the USS Liberty was bombed on the fourth day of the Six Day War — that Israel had actually won during the first hour of the first day of the Six Day War when it wiped out the entire Egyptian Air Force. The geopolitical drama of the Middle East is acutely linked to the Cold War because the Soviet Union was arming and funding Middle East regimes, notably Egypt and Syria. The Middle East was a pawn on the chessboard of America vs. the Soviets during the Cold War because influential dominance of the region was a key goal of both nations. Of course, the obviously oily nature of Middle East natural resources was considered a prize.
Israeli Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin paid a visit to former Israeli Prime Minster David Ben Gurion who is Israeli’s most esteemed national hero, loved and respected by all. Ben Gurion was appalled at the prospects of war with Egypt or anybody, and is reported to have told Rabin, “You made a mistake…. You led the state into a grave situation. We must not go to war.”
Rabin was reportedly horrified that he didn’t have the blessing of Ben Gurion for a preemptive war. Ben Gurion isn’t shy about war; in fact, he was the leader of Israel’s War of Independence when Israel was the the target of Arab military violence right after the UN declared Israel a nation. Though a fighter and even a terrorist according to some, Ben Gurion preferred peace and negotiation with his cantankerous Arab neighbors because war was always hideously destructive.
Who was behind the Six Day War and why? It’s highly unlikely that Israel unilaterally initiated the Six Day War without specific instructions and support from the US. Some observers believe that the US and LBJ engineered the Six Day War as part of America’s Cold War strategy to humiliate the Soviet Union and and advance US hegemony in the Middle East.
Furthermore, it’s ludicrous to accept that Israel accidentally bombed the USS Liberty and it’s clearly obvious that the official US/Israel version is so flimsy a cover-up that any citizen journalist using his Google fingers could credibly research enough facts to blow that lie to shreds.
However, the USS Liberty incident was far more sinister. Nasser, other Arab leaders, and Arab journalists tended to believe that the U.S. and Britain were behind the Six Day War and actually participated. The consensus in the Arab world was that the entire Israeli Air Force wasn’t sufficient in numerical strength to accomplish the now infamous Israeli aerial armada that struck the Egyptian Air Force with such a devastating force that the entire Egyptian Air Force was demolished. Moreover, it appears that the Arab world was clueless about US plans to start a war with Egypt through its proxy Israel and/or that the nuclear bombing of Cairo was on the table. Hounam writes:
Hounam interviewed a guy named Joe Sorrels who back in the 1960s was doing freelance special operations and intelligence work for the US and Britain. Sorrels was no ordinary technician with skills; his function was sufficiently important that he personally met Meir Amit, head of the Mossad, the Israeli secret service. Hounam writes:
The USS Liberty survivors had organized over the years and met periodically to share research and contribute their version of what happened on June 8, 1967. At a 5/4/2002 gathering, Hounam met with Moe Schafer and shared his recollection of two important USS Liberty events:
The story told by Moe Schafer about Admiral Martin confirming that the US planned to nuke Cairo is also a story that is validated by Air Force pilot Jim Nanjo in California and a member of the H-bomb attack force. Nanjo didn’t know that Cairo was the target, only that he and other crews were on standby to take off and drop nuclear bombs. Nanjo could never understand why he was called out of bed in the middle of the night on June 8, 1967 (California time) before the USS Liberty was attacked by Israel. Nanjo also confirmed that he knew that other nuclear bomb units were under the same alert in Guam, Britain, Moron, Spain as well as in the US.
That a U.S. president would give an order to nuke Cairo, explode the world into nuclear war and destroy an unarmed and defenseless U.S. military vessel with a crew of nearly 300 is beyond incomprehensibly evil. This is something that the USS Liberty survivors have struggled with over the decades but the more they analyzed their own research and eyewitness accounts, the more they were convinced that no other conclusions could be drawn. The hardest thing for the survivors to accept relative to what happened that day was the fact that their own government, the very same government they swore an oath to serve as a matter of patriotism and duty to their county, would do such a thing.
In the context of the “red meat” geopolitical ramifications that occurred on June 8, 1967, there are several extraordinary takeaways.
1. The USS Liberty crew member who string wired a telecommunication device on the burning and napalmed deck of the ship and facilitated Liberty’s ability to get a message out played a key role in averting a disaster of Biblical proportions. Once the message got out, everybody got it including the Israelis, the Pentagon, NSA, the White House, the president, other U.S. intelligence and defense agencies, the State Department, U.S. Embassies, and the Soviets whose outstanding spy capabilities didn’t miss a thing. The cat was out of the proverbial bag.
2. The Israelis acknowledged their role in the USS Liberty attack and vigorously collaborated with the U.S. in the “it was an accident” cover-up. Unquestionably, the Israelis do have blood on their hands. But in a perverse sort of way, the Israelis may have deliberately sabotaged the attack because they did indeed have the firepower to quickly sink the USS Liberty and her crew — but they didn’t. There are accounts about Israeli pilots who were carrying out their orders by dropping their bombs into the Mediterranean Sea on purpose. Whether they did it as a matter of conscience or on direct orders, we’ll never know.
The Israelis were in fact terrified of an Arab-Soviet alliance and they dreaded unleashing a global and regional nuclear war because they believed they would indeed be a target for annihilation. The Israelis were, however, motivated to engage in some level of warfare to expand their own obsession with real estate. The Israelis wanted land and after the Six Day War they indeed ended up with the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Syria’s Golan Heights.
It’s entirely possible that the Israelis thwarted LBJ and his draconian plans but it’s also true that Israel played along with the US but only to the extent that it could maneuver something out of it for Israel….
3. The Soviets were well aware of what was going on relative to the USS Liberty and probably even LBJ’s plan to spark a US-Soviet confrontation through its proxies in the Middle East, especially Egypt. There was considerable ‘buzz’ between DC and Moscow on June 8, 1967 and it’s entirely possible that Moscow screamed to DC something that went like this but in diplomatic language: “Hey you idiots, we’re on to you, we know what you did and if you take it any further we’ll tell the whole damn world about it and expose your president for the murderous psychopath that he is.” The Soviets did not want war.
4. Only the president of the United States could give the order to launch warplanes loaded with nuclear bombs and only the president could give the order to recall the order.
That LBJ was such a demented power-mad psychopath who directly and personally issued orders that brought the planet within three minutes of a nuclear holocaust that would vaporize all or part of Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world, with a 1960s population of over 8 million (now 20 million), should be shocking for clueless Americans — but it’s not shocking for the very few journalists and folks who researched and dug for the truth. However, what is even more shocking is that LBJ’s role in the Six Day War and the USS Liberty, as well as his grand schemes to reorder the world and even create a nuclear war to feed his ambitions, continues to be covered up in the United States.
LBJ didn’t do this alone and his close associates in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, and intelligence agencies were all complicit and willing partners. Furthermore, LBJ was indeed angry that he was somewhat restricted by the Constitution and Congress. An Israeli diplomat, Eppie Evron, recalled a meeting he had with LBJ on 5/26/67 as documented by Hounam:
To be sure, LBJ was lamenting his own lack of power and resented any accountability to anyone. For a power-mad autocrat like LBJ, consulting with Congress or requesting Congressional action was humiliating and beneath him.
(For more on the false-flag Gulf Tonkin Resolution, see … Sifting through the lies, propaganda and disinformation definitely requires an open mind, diligence and the ability to astutely decipher geopolitical consequences and intentions that are deliberately obfuscated, twisted, and distorted by government and the media.
We do in fact live under the cloud of a dangerous, unaccountable, secretive, and shadow government that plots unspeakable evil.
The USS Liberty cost American taxpayers $40 million but was sold for scrap in 1970 for just $101,000. Things only got worse for LBJ and he announced on 3/31/68 that he would not seek re-election, probably because he couldn’t bear losing in a primary or general election. LBJ dropped dead of a heart attack on 1/22/73 and is still revered as one of America’s greatest liberal progressive Democratic presidents despite his attempts to explode the world into nuclear war, despite his direct orders to sink the USS Liberty, despite murdering millions of Asians, and despite being responsible for over 58,000 names on the Vietnam Memorial of Americans who died in Vietnam.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: For additional information on the incredible criminality of Lyndon Baines Johnson and his relationship with Jewish gangster-murderer Jack Ruby and others, see the video interview with Johnson’s mistress Madeleine Brown.
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Source: read the full article at the Judy Morris Report
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 ____________________________________________________________________________________ LBJ LBJ was on board with the assassination of JFK as someone who would stand to gain the world, as he perceived it, by JFK’s demise. LBJ’s main contribution to the operation was to sign Executive Order 11130 and appoint Allen Dulles as the actual lead committee member on the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission, named for Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren (Chairman), was the investigative body that purposely incorrectly determined how JFK was murdered. Warren, a doddering old fool at this point, didn’t do much at all during the investigation, nor did committee members Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Senator John Cooper of Kentucky, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, nor former World Bank President John McCloy. But Jewish
Zionist Arlen Spector, an attorney from Philadelphia, was recommended by Gerald Ford to be the Junior Counsel for the Warren Commission and a lead investigator. The aggressive and ambitious Spector was a major player in the whitewashing of JFK’s murder. BTW: Spector eventually became a senator from Pennsylvania, was a political chameleon that flip-flopped from Democrat to Republican then back to Democrat whenever convenient and strongly advocated gay rights, supported affirmative action and supported illegal immigration amnesty. House Minority Leader from Michigan, Gerald Ford, was a big help to Dulles and even sponsored the “magic bullet” baloney that Arlen Spector and Norman Redlich invented which was accepted as plausible by his fellow “investigators.” Ford was so helpful with the white washing of the investigation
that he was eventually maneuvered into the vice-presidency and
ultimately the presidency as a reward. Thankfully, Ford did not win his bid for a second presidential term because of his pardon of Nixon being his first act as president. Americans were self-righteously angry at Nixon for lying about something as trivial as the Watergate break-in and Ford suffered for it. At least six of the fifteen lawyers working on the Warren Commission were Jews: Arlen Spector, Samuel A Stern, Wesley Liebeler, Melvin Aaron Eisenberg, Norman Redlich and David W. Belin. Of the twelve individuals on the Warren Commission support staff, six were Jewish. Norman
Redlich later became Chairman of the National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress and was later in life known to become incensed at the very mention of JFK conspiracy theories. BTW: The American Jewish Congress suspended activities on July 13th, 2010 after being relieved of operating funds by Wall Street uber-scammer Bernie Madoff. So basically, LBJ made the main assassination orchestrator, Alan Dulles, the main orchestrator of the cover-up surrounded by willing stooges. Now, why would LBJ do that knowing what had transpired between JFK and Dulles if he wasn’t totally on board? Four days
after JFK’s murder, Johnson signed the National Security Action Memorandum 273 which essentially confirmed JFK’s Vietnam withdrawal policy. It would take the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which occurred nine months later, to drag the nation into the Vietnam quagmire. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was a fraud, or false flag, a manufactured incident perpetrated on August 2nd, 1964 designed to rally the American masses to war in South-East Asia; a war that America shamefully lost after ten years of dirty fighting with 58,000 Americans killed and 240,000 wounded. If you were to ask why we were fighting in Vietnam at the time, the usual answer was, “we are there to stop communist aggression, if Vietnam falls all of South East Asia will fall under the jackboot of godless communism,” which was as big a crock of bullshit then as fighting Al Qaeda is today. There is no statute of limitations on murder, especially mass murder and barbarity on the scale of which was perpetrated upon the innocent citizenry of Vietnam by “We the People” of the United States of America. The perpetraitors of the Viet Nam debacle got away with their evil war... But there is always hell to pay. Let’s examine some of the players who were pressuring Johnson into and escalating a full scale protracted war in Vietnam... besides the usual Joint Chiefs of Staff... and Robert S. McNamara who was surely qualified (wink, wink) to become the 8th Secretary of Defense because he had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Air Corps during WWII; and he was the first non-Ford-family president of the Ford Motor Company prior to being selected as Secretary of Defense by JFK. The Rostow brothers, the sons of Jewish Russian socialists, were a big influence on LBJ. Eugene V. Rostow was Dean of the Yale Law School when he was asked to become LBJ’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Walt Whitman Rostow had been JFK’s Deputy National Security Advisor and became LBJ’s National Security Advisor on April Fool’s Day (how poetic), 1966 until January 20, 1969. Walt had served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), under the “Father of American Intelligence,” William “Wild Bill” Donovan, during WW II as part of a committee that selected German targets for U.S. bombardment. The
incendiary bombing of Dresden horrors can be laid at Rostow's feet. Immediately after Germany’s unconditional surrender, Walt became Assistant Chief of the German-Austrian Economic Division in the U.S. Department of State in Washington. He then became the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe in 1947. We can easily deduce that Walter Rostow was one of the key players in the murderously punitive Morgenthau Plan that was perpetrated upon the demolished and helpless German nation. Walt
Rostow was considered a staunch anti-communist, which doesn’t ring true considering the man’s parents were Russian born socialists. He was very prominent for his role in shaping U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the 1960s. Jewish German-born Henry Kissinger replaced Walt Rostow as U.S. National Security Advisor beginning with the Nixon administration. Zionist Jew Leslie Gelb
was the director of Policy and Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1967 to 1968, and was the director of the Pentagon Papers Project (McNamara’s secret history of the Vietnam conflict). Gelb became president of the Council on Foreign Relations in 1993 and was made the President Emeritus in 2012. He co-authored a laughably ridiculous book titled, "The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked." Henry Kissinger was chosen by Nixon; or
rather Nixon was directed to choose Kissinger because of his experience as a Harvard mover and shaker in the Department of Government and at the Center for International Affairs. He was a consultant to the National Security Council’s Operations Coordinating Board in 1955 and 1956, and the Study Director in Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations at the same time. Kissinger worked for the Rockefeller Brothers on their Special Studies Project where he directed the Panel on International Security Objectives and Strategy. Henry’s Jewish Harvard buddy, Milton Katz, directed the Panel on International Economic and Social Objectives and Strategy for the Special Studies Project. Katz had been the general counsel to the European headquarters of the Economic Cooperation Administration, which was part of the punitive Morgenthau Plan, and eventually became the chief of the reconstruction oriented Marshall Plan. A Jewish elitist journalist, Walter Lippmann, was LBJ’s most trusted informal advisor who was even presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by LBJ on September 14th, 1964. Lippmann’s catch-phrase, "Manufacture of Consent" could be best illustrated by the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that occurred six weeks prior to his receiving the medal. Lippmann and political scientist, Gabriel Almond, published what was to become known as the Almond-Lippmann Consensus that was based on three assumptions: 1. Public opinion is volatile, shifting erratically in response to the most recent developments. Mass beliefs early in the 20th century were “too pacifist in peace and too bellicose in war, too neutralist or appeasing in negotiations or too intransigent.” 2.
Public opinion is incoherent, lacking an organized or a consistent structure to such an extent that the views of U.S. citizens could be best described as non-attitudes.” 3. Public opinion is irrelevant to the policy making process. Political leaders ignore public opinion because most Americans can neither “understand nor influence the very events upon which their lives and happiness are known to depend.” I think the third assumption says it all regarding politicians’ attitudes towards their constituents...in other words, “Let them eat cake while we do what we want.” And his point #2 is spot-on correct...! ___________________________________________________________________________________________________   How LBJ's Vietnam War Paralyzed His Mideast Policymakers By Grace HalsellIn the summer of 1967, Iwas a staff writer for President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House. I was aware of that year's Middle East crisis but, like most Americans, understood little about it other than the fact that it involved Jews and Arabs. In that year I did not know a single Arab, and possibly LBJ did not either. Like most Americans, I was pro-Israel, Israel having been sold to most all of us as the underdog.
Everyone around me, without exception, was pro-Israel. Johnson had a dozen or more close associates and aides who were both Jewish and pro-Israel. There were Walt Rostow at the White House, his brother Eugene at State, and Arthur Goldberg, ambassador to the United Nations. Other pro-Israel advisers included Abe Fortas, associate justice of the Supreme Court; Democratic Party fundraiser Abraham Feinberg; White House counsels Leo White and Jake Jacobsen; White House writers Richard Goodwin and Ben Wattenberg; domestic affairs aide Larry Levinson; and John P. Roche, known as Johnson's intellectual-in-residence and an avid supporter of Israel.
Everyone around me, without exception, was pro-Israel.
I did not "know," but could sense, that events of great portent were transpiring. I heard rumors of CIA Director Richard Helms sending a warning to LBJ that the Israelis were about to attack, and the president getting word from Moscow that if the Israelis attacked any Arab country, the Soviets would go to that nation's defense.
I could see the comings and goings of Abe Fortas and Arthur Goldberg, and I knew that Walt Rostow, in particular, had close Israeli connections, and met frequently with Israeli Embassy Minister Ephraim (Eppy) Evron.
On occasion I saw a strikingly attractive blonde woman who, I learned, was an ardent supporter of Israel and a woman of whom the president was fond. Her background sounded like material from a spy novel. She was born Mathilde Galland in 1927in Italy, where she was reared as a Roman Catholic. Then, when her family returned to her father's birthplace in Switzerland, she became a Lutheran.
While a student in Geneva, she fell in love with a young Bulgarian Jew, David Danon, who had been brought up in Palestine and exiled by the British for his association with the Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist group led by Menachem Begin. Danon was studying to become a medical doctor, but spent most of his time recruiting and carrying out secret Irgun operations throughout Western Europe.
In later interviews with former Time reporter Donald Neff, Mathilde said that as a teenager she saw Danon as a dashing and heroic figure, an activist dedicating his life to the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine. He was a personal friend of the Stern Gang terrorists, led by Yitzhak Shamir, who killed British resident minister Lord Walter Moyne in Cairo during World War II, and the Irgun terrorists who blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946,with heavy loss of life. As bloody as these actions were, Mathilde said, she saw them as heroic. They represented the depth of the convictions of Danon and the Irgunists—and drew her to them.
Mathilde became so enamored of the Jewish struggle and of Danon's daring undercover operations in Europe that she converted to Judaism and married Danon. Then she, too, became an Irgun agent.
Reporter Neff, in his book entitled Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East, documents Mathilde's role as a young "gun-runner" for the Jewish terrorist group. "As a seemingly innocent petite and pretty blonde out for a bicycle ride along Switzerland's borders," wrote Neff, "she in reality was taking messages and explosives into neighboring France and Italy—to be passed on to the Irgunists.
Five years after the creation of Israel obviated the need for pretty blonde gunrunners, Mathilde received a Ph.D. in genetics at the University of Geneva in 1953.She and Danon then moved to Israel, where she became a cancer researcher at the Weizmann Institute. After the birth of a daughter, she and Danon separated. While still at Weizmann, however, she met and later married the rich—and 20 years her senior—Arthur Krim, a motion picture executive who became finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee.
American Jews such as Krim and Abraham Feinberg—a New York banker and the first Jew to become a prominent moneyraiser in presidential campaigns—were by then bringing in well over half of the Democratic Party's funds. Thus it was natural that such fund-raisers would become very important to many Democratic candidates—and particularly to the leader of the Democratic Party, Lyndon B. Johnson.
LBJ often invited the Krims to his Texas ranch. There also were many instances in which Arthur and Mathilde were guests at the White House, and other times when, for many days running, Mathilde—without her husband—was a guest there. The Krims built a house near the LBJ ranch known as Mathilde's house, and Johnson often traveled there by helicopter.
Advice and Counsel LBJ Part 2The Krims, as well as other Jewish Americans who were closely associated with Johnson, advised and counseled him on the events leading up to the Six-Day War of June 1967. On the Memorial Day weekend in May 1967, Mathilde and her husband were guests at the LBJ ranch. On arrival at the ranch, Johnson learned that the Soviets had warned the U.S. that if Israel attacked an Arab state, the Soviets would go to the aid of that state. The State Department was preparing a message for LBJ to send to Israel.
While awaiting the draft message, Johnson got behind the wheel of his Lincoln Continental and took Mathilde and Arthur Krim for a drive over the hill country. They were at a neighbor's house when an aide brought Johnson a message drafted by the State Department for Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. It relayed to Israel Moscow's warning that "if Israel starts military action, the Soviet Union will extend help to the attacked party."
After reassuring Eshkol of America's interest in Israel's safety, the draft message cautioned: "It is essential that Israel not take any preemptive military action and thereby make itself responsible for the initiation of hostilities." The president strengthened the warning by adding two words so that the sentence read, "It is essential that Israel JUST MUST NOT take any preemptive military action. . ."
On June 3, Johnson traveled to New York to deliver a speech at a Democratic Party fund-raising dinner. He moved on to a $1,000-a-plate dinner dance, sponsored by the President's Club of New York, whose chairman was Arthur Krim. While at the table, fund-raiser Abe Feinberg leaned over the shoulder of Mathilde Krim, seated next to Johnson, and whispered: "Mr. President, it [Israel's attack] can't be held any longer. It's going to be within the next 24 hours."
On June 4, Johnson went to the home of his close adviser and friend, Justice Abe Fortas. The following day, June 5, Rostow woke Johnson with a phone call at 4:30 a.m. "War has broken out," Rostow said. The Israelis had attacked Egypt and Syria.
Mathilde Krim was a guest at the White House and, before going to the Oval Office, and apparently before waking Lady Bird or notifying anyone else, Johnson dropped by the bedroom where Mathilde was sleeping and gave her the news: "The war has started."
At 7:45 a.m., Johnson talked—for the first time—on the hot line with Moscow. Soviet Premier Aleksi Kosygin expressed the hope that the United States would restrain Israel. Both leaders vowed to work for a cease-fire.
On that day—June 5, 1967—I walked the White House corridors as the telephone lines and news tickers recorded developments of the first morning of the war that would change the Middle East. I learned that in the war's first hours, Israeli planes had destroyed the air forces of both Egypt and Syria on the ground.
Unconcealable Glee LBJ Part 3
Several U.S. officials in a State Department Operations Room briefing could not conceal their glee over Israel's successes. With a wide smile, Eugene Rostow said, "Gentlemen, gentlemen, do not forget that we are neutral in word, thought and deed."
At the State Department's noon briefing on June 5, press spokesman Robert J. McCloskey repeated those words for reporters. (Since the U.S. was not neutral but totally supportive of Israel, however, this statement would need—over the next several weeks—endless clarification.)
Also on June 5, Arthur Krim wrote a memo to the president saying: "Many arms shipments are packed and ready to go to Israel, but are being held up. It would be helpful if these could be released." Johnson got the shipments on their way.
Walt Rostow, in a memo to the president, referred to the results of Israel's surprise attack on Egypt and Syria as "the first day's turkey shoot." On June 6, in another memo to the president, Walt Rostow recommended that the Israelis not be forced to withdraw from the territories they had seized—short of peace treaties with the Arab states.
"If the Israelis go fast enough and the Soviets get worried enough," he wrote, "a simple cease-fire might be the best answer. This would mean that we could use the de facto situation on the ground to try to negotiate not a return to armistice lines but a definitive peace in the Middle East."
Mathilde Krim, still a guest in the White House, left for meetings in New York. Before departing, however, she wrote out a statement supportive of Israel which she asked the president to deliver "verbatim to the American people." Johnson was sufficiently impressed with her comments to, later in the day, read some of them to Secretary of State Dean Rusk. But the president did not, as she had asked, read them to the American people.
Jordan, treaty-bound to come to the aid of Egypt and Syria if either were attacked, had done so and, on June 7, Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem. Also on June 7, Wattenberg and Levinson wrote in a memo to Johnson that the U.N. might attempt "to sell Israel down the river."
They urged LBJ to support Israel's claim to the territories seized militarily. They referred to McCloskey's statement that the U.S. was neutral, suggesting LBJ issue a statement affirming total support for Israel which, they said, might stop American Jews from meeting in Lafayette Square to protest the "neutrality" statement.
While Johnson never minded getting pro-Israel advice from such close friends as Mathilde Krim or Abe Fortas, he apparently resented advice from relatively minor White House staffers such as Wattenberg and Levinson. Seeing Levinson he stormed:
"You Zionist dupe! You and Wattenberg are Zionist dupes in the White House! Why can't you see I'm doing all I can for Israel! That's what you should be telling people when they ask for a message from the president for their rally." As LBJ abruptly stormed off, Levinson reports, he stood there, "shaken to the marrow of my bones."
Meanwhile, on the night of June 7, the USS Liberty , a Navy "ferret" ship equipped to monitor electronic communications, had approached within sight of the Gaza Strip so the National Security Agency personnel aboard could intercept the military communications jamming the airwaves. The president retired at 11:30 p.m., but White House logs reported that at one minute to midnight he got a call from Mathilde Krim, still in New York.
By June 8, despite U.S. and Soviet demands for a cease-fire, the Israelis were planning one more attack to take Syria's Golan Heights. Perhaps to prevent U.S. intelligence from learning of their plan, despite Syria's acceptance of the cease-fire, the Israelis dispatched planes to the USS Liberty. One roared over the Liberty so closely that the portholes of the aircraft's reconnaissance cameras were clearly visible. Lieutenant James M. Ennes, deck officer, saw on its wings Israel's insignia, the Star of David.
The Liberty Assault LBJ Part 4Ennes glanced at the U.S. flag atop his ship's tall mast. If he could see the Israeli pilots in their cockpits, he reasoned, the pilots could certainly see the large U.S. flag. It was not long after the last of several such Israeli reconnaissance flights, however, that an Israeli aircraft swooped down and fired rockets directly at The Liberty. Rocket fragments and 30mm bullets punched through the heavy deck plating—and through the flesh of the stunned crewmen. Then more planes—with cannon and napalm—turned the Liberty into a floating hell of flames and screaming men.
The Israeli attacks killed 34 Americans and wounded 171. The ship was partly flooded when an Israeli torpedo boat hit the U.S. ship with a torpedo below the water line. Another machine-gunned the ship's life rafts when the crew tried to launch them.
Only by a miracle did The Liberty remain afloat. But its threat to Israel's plans was finished. The next day, June 9, Israeli forces attacked and captured the Golan Heights. On Saturday, June 10, the war's sixth day, Israel agreed to a cease-fire.
It was Rostow who first notified Johnson of the assault on the Liberty. Asked who did it, Rostow said he did not know. Later the Israelis said they had done it, by mistake.
Johnson sent an immediate report to Kosygin that the Israelis had torpedoed a U.S. ship. Thus the Kremlin now knew about the Israeli attack, but the American people did not. From the beginning, the Johnson administration covered it up. Surviving crew members were separated from each other and the Navy was ordered to make certain that no survivor talked with any reporter—or to anyone else—about the assault on the USS Liberty .
It went virtually unnoticed. Not only the crew of the USS Liberty , but all Americans were victims. Johnson and most of those who entered and left the Oval Office were oriented toward Israel. For that matter, I too, was ready and eager to believe in 1967 that the Arabs, not the Israelis, had started the war and that the bombing raid on the USS Liberty was not intentional, but a mistake.
While there can be no moral justification for the White House cover-up orders to the Navy after the assault on the Liberty, from hindsight Johnson's political motivation is obvious. It was the same motivation that led him subsequently to listen to the Jewish friends and advisers who urged him not to put any pressure on the Israelis to relinquish territories they had seized in the Six-Day War.
In 1967, President Johnson felt he needed all the support he could get to I 'win" in Vietnam. Many American Jews were liberals outspokenly opposed to the war there. Johnson was told if he gave all out support to Israel—which would include ignoring the Israeli attack on the Libertyinfluential Jewish Americans would stop opposing his Vietnam policies.
In a memo to the president, Wattenberg, whose parents had moved to the U. S. from Palestine and who was known as a strong supporter of the Jewish state, said flatly that if the president came out with strong support for Israel, he would win American Jewish support for the war in Vietnam. Many American Jewish leaders are "doves" on Vietnam, Wattenberg wrote, but "hawks" on a war with Arab states.
A "Bonus" for Johnson LBJ Part 5"You stand to be cheered now by those (American Jewish leaders) who were jeering last week," Wattenberg wrote the president. He added that the Mideast crisis could be "a bonus" for Johnson. All-out support of Israel, he predicted, would "help turn around 'the other war'—the domestic dissatisfaction about Vietnam."
The support given by the American Jewish leaders "was welcome to the president," as reporter Donald Neff observed, when at every turn he was being attacked by critics, particularly in the media, of his Vietnam policy.
I was, at the time, a typical American. I was convinced back then that the Arabs had started the war and deserved what they got. I didn't try to reason how, if the Arabs had started the war, they were surprised with their air forces on the ground and how it was that Israel so easily seized all of Palestine, including the rest of Jerusalem. Instead, like millions of Americans, I was thrilled by the might of "little Israel."
Yet, despite the euphoria around me, what I saw in the White House planted questions in my mind. As Americans we had just passed through a dangerous Middle East conflict that threatened to explode into World War III. There were two parties to the conflict, Arabs and Jews. But for weeks on end I had seen only one set of advisers who could call or see Johnson whenever they pleased. The Arabs had no voice, no representation, no access, whatsoever.
It was only later that I came to reflect on how America, which devoted so much of the efforts of its "best and brightest" to the problem of Vietnam, had in 1967 quite unwittingly stumbled into a Middle East quagmire that, long after the fall of Saigon, would continue to enmesh U.S. soldiers and diplomats, and project an image of double standards and insincerity onto U.S. diplomacy all over the world.
Far more than his failed policies in Vietnam, the Middle East policies that LBJ allowed to fall into place in the June 1967 war would remain to haunt the U.S. for decades to come.
Grace Halsell, a Washington-based writer, is the author of Journey to Jerusalem and Prophecy and Politics, as well as several other works of nonfiction. ___________________________________________________________________
LBJ, Fortas, Krim & IsraelDec 19 2008History News Network, 12/19/08 – Given the context in which he operated—the necessities of the Cold War tilting the United States toward conservative Arab states; a U.S. public opinion far less favorable to Israel than what exists today, when both nations face the common threat of radical Islamist terrorism—LBJ was the most pro-Israel President in U.S. history.
Johnson concluded his presidency by authoring the selling of Phantom planes to Israel. Continuing with some clips from the newly released LBJ tapes, LBJ discusses the matter in this conversation with Abe Fortas (who the President had just nominated as chief justice for the Supreme Court). Johnson lashes out at Missouri senator Stuart Symington—making the transition from a stalwart Cold Warrior to among the most effective Senate critics of Cold War foreign policy.
The discussion also offers insight into the pro-Israel lobbyists with whom LBJ associated—Abe Feinberg, a major Democratic fundraiser from New York who had close ties to the Israeli government; and Arthur Krim, an entertainment lawyer who would serve as a chief fundraiser for the LBJ Library.
Clip is below; draft transcript below the fold.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: I’ve got to make a decision on those [Phantoms], and I want to make it as soon as—far enough ahead of time, before I go out [of office], not to be the last thing.
But I want the Russians to turn me down on disarmament. I’ve got a letter in his [Alexsey Kosygin’s] lap now.
And this idiot of a [Stuart] Symington has sent us word that if I don’t give Israel the Phantoms, that he’s going to kill our [foreign military] sale bill, where we can sell planes. If I don’t go ahead and give ‘em to ‘em [the Israelis].
And I can’t do it until Kosygin answers me. He’s not going to pee a drop with me: I know that. But I’ve got to have that behind me so I’ve got that as an excuse. [I can] say, “By God, I’ve tried everything. I tried a conference, I tried a proposal, I tried letters, I tried meetings, I pled with him. And finally he turned it down, and I just—there’s no other alternative. I have no course in the world except this.”
ABE FORTAS: Yeah. That’s right.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: And that’s what I’m trying to do.
Now, I never have told anybody I’m going to give ‘em to ‘em [the Israelis]. But I made up my mind a long time ago I was going to give ‘em to ‘em. But I’m not going to give ‘em to ‘em unless I can protect myself. I’m not going to be a goddamned arms merchant! I’m going to make them [the Soviets] to be the outlaws if I can.
FORTAS: Sure. I think that’s very good.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Now, that’s what I’m trying to do.
And this little Eppie is the only one I think that’s got sense enough in their organization to see it. He sees it all the time. He’s just as bright as that goddamned [unclear] dog of mine. He catches everything that comes along without telling him. So he helps.
But Symington is just the biggest muddlehead I ever saw. I thought you and Clark Clifford could advise somebody. [teasingly] Are all of your clients muddleheads like me and Symington? [Fortas laughs heartily.] I don’t understand it.
FORTAS: Well, Stuart is absolutely one. I don’t know—he’s just got . . . Hell, I just don’t understand. Is this [issue] this fellow Solomon now?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: No, no! Solomon’s a smart cookie. He’s bound to have plenty of sense.
No, no. I think he [Symington] just wants to be head of the Israel—get credit for ‘em. And they think, you know—the ones that don’t know think you ought to.
I haven’t had one goddamned bit of trouble with a fellow like Eppie [Evron, Israel’s ambassador to the United States] or [Abe] Feinberg. They’re smart. [Arthur] Krim.
FORTAS: isn’t this fellow Feinberg wonderful?
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: He is just the finest I ever saw. Except Krim. Krim’s the best man.
FORTAS: Oh, yes. Well, he’s just—
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: Krim’s the smartest. Krim’s the only one that I know of that’s like you. Feinberg is damn near like you, but Feinberg’s got a little eye on business. He goes over there and sells his Coca-cola. [Fortas laughs.] And he looks after his bank a little bit—
FORTAS: Yes.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: —and I don’t even think . . . This Krim is as pure as any person I ever saw.
FORTAS: He really is.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: He’s got a soft voice. He has none of the aggressiveness that you would associate with a Wall Street lawyer.
FORTAS: He really is a fine man.
PRESIDENT JOHNSON: [with Fortas concurring] He’s no oversell, no overkill. He sits here . . . I see him damn near every week, and he comes down here—he was here last night (I came down here)—because I just like to listen to him. He’s so soft, and sweet, and kind, and soothing. I let him see every damn document that comes in. He reads anything. I never have heard of one little thing he ever said.
FORTAS: Yeah. Well, he’s a saint..
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