I’ve never been big on John F Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. I’ve been willing to entertain them, and have even read books pushing them, but they never quite seemed to close their cases; their evidence is weak and indirect, or often just wrong. (That’s “cases”, plural, because each book had a different theory.) After reading them and also the standard account (as in Posner’s Case Closed), I think Oswald did it and that he was the sole shooter. The grassy knoll? As Fred Reed puts it, “The knoll is self-evidently the last place in Dallas to put a sniper.” Recently, though, I did read a book, itself not at all pushing any conspiracy theory, which had me pondering a much smaller and simpler conspiracy than any of the popular ones.

That book is the fourth volume of Robert Caro’s Lyndon Johnson series, The Passage of Power. Caro adheres to the highest standards of historical accuracy. He didn’t just visit the Hill Country, where Johnson grew up, when writing his first volume; he lived there for years and really got to know people. He didn’t just go with the rumors about Johnson stealing his first Senate election; he tracked down the main perpetrator of “Box 13” and got a written confession. He doesn’t speculate in the way that I’m about to, but he provides a solid base for speculation.

The relevant chapter is the one preceding the chapter about the assassination itself. It makes the case that:

  1. Kennedy was about to drop Johnson from the ticket. He’d never liked Johnson or even respected him; Johnson’s support had been necessary for his first election, but was not going to be neccessary for re-election. Johnson had been given few responsibilities as Vice President, and had personally been treated contemptuously by the Kennedy “Camelot” crowd.

  2. Johnson’s misdeeds were catching up to him. The Bobby Baker scandal had broken. Also, Johnson had made a lot of money from politics in unsavory ways, notably by people and corporations buying advertisements on his TV station (nominally his wife’s). Press investigations were in progress that might have landed him not just in political exile but in prison. (Once he became President, planned articles were simply dropped; his ruthlessness was well known. This was a man who’d said “I don’t want loyalty. I want loyalty. I want him to kiss my ass in Macy’s window at high noon and tell me it smells like roses. I want his pecker in my pocket.”)

So to Johnson, the assassination meant the difference between being the most powerful man in the world versus infamy or even jail. Of all the people who had motive, his was the strongest.

And Texas was his power base. From his years in Congress, he had more than a thousand cronies there who owed him their jobs. So JFK Conspiracy Lite goes like this:

One of LBJ’s men in Dallas happened to know about an unstable and violent individual, Lee Harvey Oswald, no fan of America or JFK. He quietly pulled strings to get Oswald a job at the Texas School Book Depository, and dropped hints in Oswald’s ear about how great an opportunity he would have to express his “love” for the President as their motorcade passed by.

They’d have been subtle hints: Oswald would still have thought the assassination was just his own doing. But under careful questioning, he might have revealed that there was an artful prompter who had given him the idea (and the position from which to accomplish it). Or given time to think, he might have come to that conclusion himself.

So another unstable and violent individual, Jack Ruby, was brought into play: someone talked to him about what a shame it would be if Mrs. Kennedy had to go through the trauma of testifying at the murder trial, and mentioned that by the way Oswald was going to be transferred to another prison in a public spectacle, and wouldn’t it be nice to show up and give him some “love”. (The idea of sparing Mrs. Kennedy was the barely-plausible reason Ruby gave for the killing.)

That’s it; that’s the whole conspiracy theory. (I said this was the “lite” version.) No CIA, no Mafia, no FBI (except after the fact to not look too closely into things, due to the aforementioned ruthlessness). Notice that everything is deniable; even if all that artful prompting had been recorded (not that there was ever any chance of that, but even if), it would be difficult to use it to sustain a criminal case. So the FBI, even if they caught a whiff of it, would be reluctant; their mindset is geared toward producing convictions in a court of law.

It also is quite obviously failure-prone. Oswald might have changed his mind. Ruby might have missed the transfer (as indeed he almost did; he arrived later than the scheduled time). But those failures would not be of the sort that would recoil on the perpetrators; they would just make the attempt even more plausibly deniable. (“I was just joking around with him; of course nothing came of it.”)

And there’s almost certainly no way to confirm it. Even if one of the perpetrators survived to this day, his confession might be dismissed as an old man’s hallucinations.

But it’s still tantalizing enough to get me to look into the evidence.

And I can’t really get it to work.

The Warren Commission interviewed about everyone they could find who knew Oswald. Of those, hardly any had known that he had a rifle; he’d kept that hidden. And hardly any seem like the sort of people who might be involved in a political conspiracy: they were mostly just ordinary people.

There is one exception, and that’s an outstanding one: George de Mohrenschildt. He knew about the rifle: Oswald had even sent Mohrenschildt a photo of himself holding it. He also pretty much knew that Oswald was the one who had tried to assassinate General Edwin Walker. (He’d joked with him about being the shooter, and got a guilty-ish response.) He’d helped Oswald out a lot, and Oswald genuinely respected him. And he was very much an international man of mystery who was involved in very odd things.

The main problem with Mohrenschildt being involved in the assassination is that for months before it, he was living in Haiti, pursuing a business project of his there. It’s conceivable that he talked to Oswald over the phone, but that’s hardly the way to do the sort of delicate manipulation that’d be required. In that era, international phone calls were rare and expensive; and Oswald was sharing the phones of his various hosts. (It’d be hard to positively prove that Mohrenschildt was in Haiti for the whole time, and never made any return visits to Texas, but him living in Haiti still weighs strongly against his being the artful prompter.)

Another problem is that the Texas School Book Depository, though it sounds like a government institution, was actually a private company, so not the sort of place an LBJ crony would have worked for. And the people who mentioned the job opening to Oswald are known, were quite ordinary people, and had nothing to do with Mohrenschildt.

I saw only one thread which still might be connected. The Warren Commission was curious enough about Mohrenschildt to interview a number of people who knew him, and the first was Paul M. Raigorodsky, a pillar of the local Russian emigré community. One of the things he said was that Mohrenschildt knew and had business dealings with Herman and George Brown.

Anyone who has read Caro’s volumes will have his ears perk up at the mention of those men. They and their company were perhaps Lyndon Johnson’s strongest backers, and were amply repaid. They provided the money that he provided to many Congressmen for their political campaigns, thus giving him huge sway over Congress. In return, he personally appealed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and got them a large dam-building contract that hugely boosted their company. And that was just the start of their long relationship.

Yet Caro makes clear that they were very competent men: by no means the sort of people who only can do business by political favoritism and who wither as soon as political backing dries up. Such people are more common than not, but the Browns were in the “not” category. Their company (eventually Brown and Root, and today Kellogg, Brown, and Root) is still large and respected. But they weren’t above using political favoritism; and they had long experience of providing dirty money for LBJ. They would have known about his political woes at that time; and Mohrenschildt might have told them about Oswald.

Here’s the relevant passage (from page 17 of volume 9 of the Warren Commission hearings):

Mr. Jenner. Do you know of any business interests of De Mohrenschildt in Houston?

Mr. Raigorodsky. In Houston?

Mr. Jenner. Yes; in the last 5 years, let’s say?

Mr. Raigorodsky. Yes; he told me that he was going to see Herman and George Brown — they are brothers.

Mr. Jenner. What business are they in?

Mr. Raigorodsky. Well, again, don’t put this down.

Mr. Jenner. Off the record.

(Discussion between Messrs. Jenner and Davis and the witness, Mr. Raigorodsky, off the record.)

Mr. Jenner. Now; I want this on the record.

Mr. Raigorodsky. George has been friends with many, many influential people in many cities.

Mr. Davis. In all of them, I imagine.

Mr. Raigorodsky. Yes.

Mr. Jenner. Is he a namedropper — is he a man who seeks to be friends of important people?

Mr. Raigorodsky. No — he was my friend, I was his friend — he was Jake Hamon’s friend and Jake Hamon was his friend.

Mr. Davis. How often did De Mohrenschildt see him ?

Mr. Raigorodsky. Jake?

Mr. Davis. No; how often did George De Mohrenschildt see Herman and George Brown?

Mr. Raigorodsky. I don’t know, but he has been going to Houston quite often. In fact, he told me that everything is settled — he is going to deal with them in that Haiti situation, and then Herman died.

Mr. Jenner. Do you know of any particular business that he had in Houston?

Mr. Raigorodsky. No.

Mr. Jenner. What information do you have regarding his interests or business in Houston — I take it that it came from his making statements to you?

Mr. Raigorodsky. That’s right, except in his dealing with John De Menil, in which John De Menil sent me the copies of the letters — you see, there is a copy from John De Menil.

Mr. Jenner. Where do you have information as to whether he was required to or did make regular trips, a trip every 4 or 5 weeks, to Houston?

Mr. Raigorodsky. He — I can’t answer that.

Somehow, even his answer as to what business the Brown brothers were in was not something Raigorodsky wanted to have on the record.

The Warren Commission did not take up this line of inquiry. They did not, for instance, ask Mohrenschildt himself about his connection to the Browns. (Nor did they ask anyone else that I noticed).

And at this distance, I can’t see a good way to take this line of inquiry any further either. The above sorts of possibilities are at least immune to the usual objection to conspiracy theories, that being that they would require far too many people to remain silent. Still, I obviously haven’t proved anything. And given the number of people who try to “read between the lines”, it’s worth adding: don’t. I don’t mean anything more here than I’m saying. The JFK Conspiracy Lite possibility is too weak a thread to hang anything serious on. It’s for idle amusement; nothing more.

Indeed, as a general principle, it’s best never to read between the lines, even when (perhaps especially when) the writer actually does want you to do so. When he hints all around something instead of saying it directly, there’s a reason, and it’s often that it isn’t actually true. Reading between the lines is so tempting to do, and so widely done… but don’t. If there’s anything I’ve learned the hard way about politics and public affairs, it’s never to read between the lines.