'Apply the Watergate Rule -- it's not the crime, it's the cover up stupid'

When LBJ assumed the Presidency, Hoover's direct link into the White House was re-established. Johnson's official relationship with Hoover was enhanced by personal friendship as well. "As majority leader [in the Senate], Johnson already had neen receiving a steady stream of reports and dossiers from the Director ...which he prized both as a means of controlling difficult senators and as a gratification of earthier instincts. For President Johnson, secrets were in themselves prerequisites of power . . . No chief executive praised the Director so warmly. In an executive order exempting Hoover, then sixty nine, from compulsory retirement at seventy, Johnson hailed him as 'a quiet, humble and magnificent public servant . . . a hero to millions of citizens and an anathema to all evil men. . . . The nation cannot afford to lose you . . . No other American, now or in our past, has served the cause of justice so faithfully and so well' ("Johnson Hails Hoover Service, Waives Compulsory Retirement," NYT, May 9, 1964)." -- -- from "The Age of Surveillance, The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System," by Frank Donner, (c) 1980, Knopf.

The following memorandum, written by Hoover immediately after his meeting with President Johnson, just seven days after the assassination of President Kennedy, is a remarkable document to say the least. There is much information imparted in the memo regarding just how fluid and unstable the cover story about who killed JFK still was shaping up to be at that time. By analyzing the discrepancies between the story Hoover briefed Johnson about on November 29th, and what the final cover story handed down by the Warren Commission would claim almost a year later, we can better appreciate the degree to which the final "official report" was sculpted to fit the constraints the Commission was forced to adhere to, regardless of the actual facts of the assassination.

This document is what is known in bureaucracy-speak as a "memo for the record." It was a customary practice in the upper levels of the bureaucracy in the days before electronic technology in Washington, D.C. An official of high rank would usually return to her or his office after such a meeting and dictate a memorandum of as many details of the discussion as could be remembered. It was a way of recording one's own professional dealings for future reference.

Hoover starts out recounting that Johnson brings up "the proposed group" --what will become the Warren Commission-- --to study the report Hoover is trying to complete by the end of the same day. This has been initiated by Johnson to prevent an independent investigation by Congress of the assassination (Reagan tried to do the same thing with the Tower Commission). Johnson would publically announce the creation of the Warren Commission later that same day. This was a critical move by Johnson: by appointing the Warren Commission, they effectively bottled up Bobby Kennedy, they bottled up the Senate, and they bottled up Texas. The Tower Commission didn't succeed in pre-empting an investigation by Congress. In the end, the Warren Commission didn't either, but it did kept the cork in place, preventing any other "official" examination, for well over another decade.

It is interesting to note that of all the people listed at the bottom of page one, retired General Lauris Norstad (who had been head of the NATO forces at SHAPE headquarters in Europe before his retirement) was the only one who somehow succeeded in not serving on this Presidential Commission. Earl Warren did NOT want the job and had sent a memo ahead to the Oval Office, before he answered LBJ's summons, stating he would not participate in such a commission. But when push came to shove, Johnson's formidable powers of persuasion turned Warren's `no' into a `yes.' Apparently, even such focused persuasion could not win Norstad's agreement.

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