Customer Reviews

The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969

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As a personal memoir, this account of the Johnson presidency must be taken with a grain of salt, but overall, it is an interesting firsthand account of the considerations, assumptions, and goals that guided President Johnson in his decisions. Predictably, quite a bit of space is devoted to Vietnam, but aside from his defensive justifications in foreign policy, Johnson highlights the accomplishments and triumphs that were closest to his heart, domestic achievements like his civil rights legislation, the war on poverty, etc. Overall, the reader gets an impression of Johnson as a tireless worker with good intentions who did the best he could. The book is easy to tackle, being rather concise for memoirs of a presidential term (compare with Kissinger's near 1400 pages), well-written, and interestingly personal (instead of "the U.S. did so-and-so", you get "I thought that" "I said" "I called", etc.). It is not revelatory, it is not a complete history, and it is not the big picture, but it is an account of the decision-making process from a "vantage point". It is Johnson's personal apologia, his self-justification, his case for his own memory as an American president.

Johnson is a President that has been very caricatured by the left and the right. It is essential to read the man in his words.

"The Vantage Point" is fairly concise and contains many hidden gems from his stories about different legislators, his personal motives during the Presidency in both politics and policy, and his views on the structure of government. Regardless of your views about Johnson a fuller, more intelligent man emerges.

This book is not perfect it is occasionally long-winded. However, it wonderfully achieves its objective of putting the reader in Johnson's shoes and revealing the inner workings of Johnson.

The Vantage Point by Lyndon Johnson is an in-depth look at the Johnson Administration. The book focuses on a wide variety of accomplishments and events, both domestic and foreign, which shaped the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson. The reader learns of the struggles that the conflict in Vietnam presented Johnson with, and begins to develop an accute understanding for the actions he took. In addition to the war in Vietnam, Johnson tells of the War on Poverty here in the United States. It becomes quite apparent that President Johnson was not a crooked politician, but a man of action who had the well-being of his fellow man at heart. Although some of the reading tends to be a little "dry," the author manages to instill a sense of respect, in his readers, for all he has done for America.

[Robert Morrow - researcher into the 1963 Coup d'Etat. I have 200+ books related to the JFK assassination. Google my essay "LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK"]

The only reason you would want to buy this book is if you are an academic and have to read ALL the books on LBJ. Otherwise pass. Go to Amazon Listmania and search for "Hey, Hey LBJ" list of books on the *real* Lyndon Johnson. It is very critical to read: http://www.amazon.com/LBJ-Mastermind-Assassination-Phillip-Nelson/dp/1453503013

Lyndon Johnson was one of the top two biggest criminals in American politics the past 60 years. The other one would be CIA George Herbert Walker Bush (read The Immaculate Deception by Russell Bowen). The only way to describe LBJ is ultra-corrupt.
Lyndon Johnson was a wicked man, as worthy of Texas Death Row as any many sitting on it now (certainly more worthy than the *innocent people* who have been on death row.) Lyndon Johnson was the most critical figure in the JFK assassination. LBJ had a personal hit man named Malcolm Wallace who he used to kill many folks before he got to John Kennedy.

The usurper LBJ's presidential biography is quite a boring book. Like Bill Clinton's book, it looks like it was written out of his day timer. Actually, LBJ's girlfriend Doris Kearns was the ghostwriter for this book. I highly suggest getting a copy of the Sally Quinn article in the Washington Post dated 8/24/75 entitled "A Tale of Hearts and Minds." Doris Kearns met LBJ in the summer of 1967 when she was a White House fellow. LBJ immediately tried to seduce her (everyone knows JFK was a horn dog; but did you know LBJ once said about JFK "I've gotten more women by accident than he has gotten on purpose"?) LBJ ended become quite attached to his new girlfriend Doris Kearns and Doris says he even asked to marry her!!

So Buyer Beware when it comes to this book, the result of a psychopath dictating it to his sycophant girlfriend. I *highly* suggest going to Amazon Listmania and search for "Hey, Hey LBJ" list of books about the real Johnson.
Also read this book: http://www.amazon.com/LBJ-Mastermind-Assassination-Phillip-Nelson/dp/1453503013

The LBJ-CIA Assassination of JFK

Lyndon Johnson made a dirty deal with CIA Republicans to murder John Kennedy in the 1963 Coup d'Etat. (People like Clint Murchison Sr., H.L. Hunt, Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, top Nelson Rockefeller aide Henry Kissinger, McGeorge Bundy, George Herbert Walker Bush and Gen. Edward Lansdale all are excellent candidates for elite sponsorship.) Lyndon Johnson and Allen Dulles may very well have been co-CEOs of the JFK assassination; with the CIA in charge of the killing of JFK, and Lyndon Johnson and (his close friend and neighbor of 19 years in Washington, DC) FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in charge of the cover up.

Clint Murchison, Sr - more so than even H.L. Hunt - was a key player in the JFK assassination because of his close ties to the inner core of US intelligence (Allen Dulles, Nelson Rockefeller, John J. McCloy), close ties to Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, bankers Rockefellers; Murchison was even friends with key Kennedy-hater mafia godfather Carlos Marcellos of New Orleans. Not only that, Murchison, Sr. was a patient and partner of Dr. Alton Oschner, the former president of the American Cancer Society and who ran covert cancer research for the CIA. Oschner, likewise was a Kennedy-hater. John Simkin: "One of Ochsner's friends described him as being `like a fundamentalist preacher in the sense that the fight against communism was the only subject that he would talk about, or even allow you to talk about, in his presence."
When JFK was slaughtered, Russia's Khrushchev was literally crying, fearing nuclear war. Cuba's Castro worried and feared an US invasion and gave an impressive speech the next day deconstructing the CIA's deception provocation for war. Meanwhile at Clint Murchison's home, their family maid May Newman describes the scene: "The mood in the Murchison family home was very joyous and happy. For a whole week after like champagne and caviar flowed, every day of the week. But I was the only one in that household at that time that felt any grief for his assassination."
The Warren Commission should have really been called the "Allen Dulles Commission" because he controlled it and made it the farce that it was. Dulles was probably an elite sponsor (i.e. murderer), as well as certainly Lyndon Johnson. The 3 hardcore cover up artists on the Warren Commission were the 3 Council on Foreign Relations members: Allen Dulles (president CFR 1946-50), John J. McCloy (then chairman of the CFR 1953-1970) and Gerald Ford (CFR member, later president). John J. McCloy was a Rockefeller man, former head of Chase Manhattan bank, and very deep US intelligence since the OSS days. John J. McCloy's nickname was "Chairman of the American Establishment," and he mixed at the highest levels of business, intelligence and he was close to the Kennedy-hating Texas business elite. Cover up artist Gerald Ford was secretly reporting to Hoover and the FBI what the Warren Commission was doing. In 1970, Newsweek called Gerald Ford the CIA's "best friend in Congress." The CFR especially 40 years ago, was heavily Rockefeller influenced and it top players were deep CIA.

The CIA has been called the military wing of the CFR; and actually that is not too far from the truth. The CFR was in its heyday from 1950-1990.

John Kennedy was despised by and did not control his CIA nor his Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Lyndon Johnson's reasons to murder were out of his deep desperation and fear of what would become of him after his imminent expulsion from the 1964 Democratic ticket and his fears of going to jail over the exploding Bobby Baker scandal. LIFE magazine, being fed extremely damaging info by Robert Kennedy, was set to run an expose on Lyndon Johnson's corruption that would blow him out of the water once and for all (Dec. 6th issue, but due to be printed and mailed on 11/29/63: source James Wagenvoord who worked at LIFE then). Bobby Baker was the protégé of a wildly corrupt LBJ in the Senate; Lyndon Johnson was like both a dad and a big brother to Bobby Baker (who named two of his children after LBJ: Lynda and Lyndon). Both Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Baker were receiving tremendous amounts of under-the-table money while Johnson was running the Senate. The Kennedys and LIFE Magazine were literally days away from politically executing Lyndon Johnson with the rope of the unraveling Bobby Baker scandal. After vaporizing the despised Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy was going to replace LBJ most likely with Terry Sanford of North Carolina or possibly his good friend George Smathers of Florida as VP on the 1964 Democratic ticket.

The Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson were having a sub rosa fight: Jack and Robert Kennedy brought knives to the battle and Lyndon Johnson brought guns and it was settled on 11/22/63 at 12:30 PM in Dallas.

Lately, I have been studying the role of McGeorge Bundy, the National Security Advisor for JFK and Henry Cabot Lodge, JFK's insubordinate ambassador to Vietnam who Kennedy was planning to fire on Monday, 11/25/63. It is probable that both McGeorge Bundy and Henry Cabot Lodge were involved some way with the JFK assassination. McGeorge Bundy, astonishingly, was already drafting sharp escalations to JFK's Vietnam policy NSAM 273 (which JFK would not have approved) on 11/21/63, the night before the 1963 Coup d'Etat! McGeorge Bundy was also assuring others very quickly on 11/22/63 that there was no conspiracy to kill JFK, at a time when it was impossible for him (or anyone) to credibly be saying that. Bundy later ran the Ford Foundation from 1966-1979.

JFK's Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, who ran the Rockefeller Foundation from 1952-1961, and was also a hawk on Vietnam, is another one who merits close scrutiny in the Coup of 1963. Kennedy had appointed Rusk because it was unlikely that the Senate would confirm JFK's first choice J. William Fulbright, who later became a prominent opponent of the Vietnam War. After the 1963 Coup d'Etat, Rusk lasted through all the blood and guts of Vietnam and all the way through Jan., 1969, as Johnson's Secretary of State. Walt Rostow (CFR), another Vietnam hawk, replaced McGeorge Bundy (CFR) as National Security Advisor in 1966. The CFR and the Rockefellers, not John Kennedy, lusted for the Vietnam War.

The midlevel murderers (field operations) of JFK would include CIA guys like Richard Helms, James Angleton, David Morales, William King Harvey, E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, David Atlee Phillips and perhaps Cord Meyer. Deputy Harry Weatherford is a good candidate to have been on the Records Building as a sniper. Influential mobster Johnny Roselli was especially close friends with the CIA's William King Harvey, a rabid Kennedy hater. The most likely mafia godfathers involved would be Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, particularly in the Jack Ruby murder of Oswald and perhaps in the JFK Assassination as well and other murders in the post assassination cover up.

We now know Lyndon Johnson was far worse than he is presented in current biographies. Far beyond ballot stuffing, bribery, massive under-the-table kickbacks, and being a consummate and pathological liar, Lyndon Johnson was murdering a lot of people in Texas to cover up his eye popping corruption. A prime example is the murder of US agricultural official Henry Marshall in June, 1961, and who then Vice President Lyndon Johnson arranged to have murdered. In the 1980's, Billie Sol Estes, a close and corrupt partner of LBJ, began confessing to the murders that he, Lyndon Johnson, Cliff Carter and LBJ's personal hit man Malcolm Wallace committed. Lyndon Johnson, a manic depressive - and at times a barely functioning psychopath - murdered perhaps 10-20 people to avoid exposure before he got his knife wet with John Kennedy's blood.

Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn taking advantage of Hoover's dossier on JFK, used sexual blackmail and other threats on John Kennedy on the night of July 13th at the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles to force Kennedy to put LBJ on the ticket. Johnson was not on JFK's short list for VP; he was not on the long list. LBJ was not on the VP list - period. Johnson made a hostile take over of the vice presidential slot.

John Kennedy told his close friend Hy Raskin: "You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems and I don't need more problems. I'm going to have enough problems with Nixon." Evelyn Lincoln, JFK's secretary for 11+ years, also confirms that Lyndon Johnson used sexual blackmail combined with other threats to force JFK to put LBJ on the 1960 Democratic ticket.

My current thinking on US intelligence agent Lee Harvey Oswald is that he was indeed involved in the JFK assassination, but he was a patsy who shot NO ONE that day, neither John Kennedy nor Officer J.D. Tippit. Both murders were complete frame jobs. Oswald was a fake defector to Russia and his behavior in New Orleans 1963 was all about Oswald's sheep dipping as he passed out pro-Castro flyers and pretended to be a "pro-Castro Marxist." Meanwhile Oswald was working in concert in New Orleans with folks like David Ferrie and Guy Bannister whose politics were the equivalent of a 1960's Strom Thurmond or Jesse Helms. Oswald's fake public persona as a "pro-Casto Marxist" meant that he was an ideal pick as a patsy and his likely knowledge of and/or participation in the JFK Assassination meant that he had to be murdered quickly. The folks who killed Oswald wanted a "dead Red" not a "talking head." The JFK assassination was a deception provocation intended to facilitate a US military invasion of Cuba. It was that bad and ugly. A US invasion of Cuba might have provoked a broader war with Russia and from the point of view of some like Air Force General Curtis LeMay that was fine because, astoundingly, he wanted to wage and "win" a nuclear WWIII. Curtis LeMay hated Kennedy so much that a child could have recruited him into a plot to kill Kennedy. LeMay told Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis that he was an appeaser equivalent to Neville Chamberlain for not bombing Cuba.

That was the pool of sharks John Kennedy was swimming in: a desperate and psychopathic serial killer Vice-President Lyndon Johnson who was literally murdering a string of people down in Texas and who was waging a sub rosa war with the Kennedys, an out-of-control CIA hell bent on a coup; an FBI director Hoover who detested JFK and who was close friends and neighbors with LBJ, and a JCS military brass who wanted to invade Cuba, wage the war in Vietnam, and Curtis Lemay who, according to Robert McNamara, wanted to wage full scale nuclear war with Russia, giving them the "Sunday punch" while the USA still had first strike capability. Add to that the white hot mafia hatred that Robert Kennedy was engendering with his prosecutions. This same mafia had been working hand in glove with their friends the CIA to take out Castro in Cuba. Think of these enemies of JFK as fasces: "a bundle of wooden sticks with an axe blade emerging from the center, which is an image that traditionally symbolizes summary power and jurisdiction, and/or strength through unity."

The elite domestic murderers of JFK did it for many reasons, both personal and ideological. At the core it was Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, and the shadow government of Texas oil barons and the Rockefellers. It was not either/or the Western "Cowboys" or the Eastern "Yankees" who murdered John Kennedy: it was the elites of both.

I always want to learn and I am always willing to change my mind. Two excellent books to read on the JFK assassination are 1) LBJ: Mastermind of JFK's Assassination (2010) by Phillip Nelson [...] JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters (2008) by James Douglass. I also highly recommend: 3) Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot 4) The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh 5)Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty by Russ Baker.

The Vietnam War chapters are a priceless contribution to any study of that tragic event. No study of the Vietnam War is complete without at least hearing LBJ out first. This book was written with the assistance of Doris Kearns, but other than that it is a fine book. I don't buy the stuff about the so-called "Great Society" but she certainly did, and her book about that set back an accurate appraisal of this man a thousand years.
Michael Lind argues in his recent book (Vietnam The Necessary War) that Johnson had only one logical course of action in Vietnam, and that he chose it properly. It was the middle course between withdrawal and invasion of North Vietnam. The college kids called Lyndon a murderer and war-criminal and that hurt him deeply. They never called the enemy 'war criminals', even though they assassinated thousands of village leaders in both North and South Vietnam long before the first GI landed there. This is LB's chance to tell his side of the Nam dilemma and why he did what he did. We don't have to agree with him, but shouldn't we give him a hearing? This should be required reading in all our higher schools, but that's not going to happen.
The saddest thing about this book is that I am only the third person ever to review it on Amazon! 8,000 people have probably reviewed the latest Harry Potter book, and only two before me have reviewed Vantage Point. That's my vantage point on the historical ignorance of America and its current sound-byte education system.