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Originally Posted by debaserr
(Post 2210209)
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One of the best biographies on a US President I've ever read. Can't wait for the next one.
I'm not sure how much I buy LBJ being involved, though he was conniving and calculated. I never read the book, but Roger Stone (yeah, that Roger Stone) wrote a book about the evidence that points to LBJ being involved. Here's a quote from Stone taken from a Salon interview - he's not a fan of the Caro books:
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Johnson's right-hand man, Secretary of the U.S. Senate Bobby Baker, says on Inaugural Day 1961, a very cold day, that John Kennedy will not live out his term and he will die a violent death. Johnson's motives are very clear. Not only was he being dumped from the ticket in 1964— indeed, Evelyn Lincoln, President Kennedy's personal secretary, says in her memoir he told her on the eve of leaving for Dallas that he was dumping Johnson— but Johnson was under investigation in two enormous scandals: the Bobby Baker scandal, Bobby Baker the Senate secretary was splitting bribes with Johnson, but more importantly, the Billie Sol Estes scandal.
Sol Estes was a flamboyant Texas wheeler-dealer and he and Johnson were involved in corrupt practices including federal contracts. Robert Caro wrote a four-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson but if you check the index there's no mention of Sol Estes, he's missing. I went and checked and in terms of coverage the Billie Sol Estes got twice the coverage at the time than the Baker scandal did, but it's been airbrushed out of history by Caro. Why? I'll tell you why: because Sol Estes, after he comes out of prison, has nothing to gain and informs the Justice Department of Johnson's involvement in the death of John F. Kennedy. Therefore, I presume, if Caro introduced the character he would have to tell the whole story, so it's better just to airbrush Billie Sol out of the picture.
Caro lies by omission; he should be stripped of his Pulitzer. He is intellectually dishonest, but he's more interested in going to the right Upper East Side cocktail party than he is in historical truth.
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https://www.salon.com/2015/01/28/rog...gop_trickster/
Wikipedia gives a short and dirty on these allegations by Billie Sol Estes that Stone is referring to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie...edy_and_others
Take it all with a grain of salt, of course. |
