Rating: 
Summary: A coup d'etat -- the murder of JFK by his vice-president LBJ
Review: I found this book to be utterly compelling, forgiving the "faction" sections in favor of the real facts presented. Barr McClellan, former attorney of Lyndon B. Johnson, steps forward and claims that LBJ assassinated JFK. The evidence better be good.The key piece of evidence given is a latent fingerprint. It was taken from a box, possibly used as a sniper's mount, on the 6th Floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building (TSDB) where Oswald allegedly shot at Kennedy. But the fingerprint is not Oswald's. An expert chosen by McClellan was shown the latent print with no prior knowledge of its context, and found that it matched a fingerprint on record for a Texan named Mac Wallace. The affidavit of this expert, Nathan Darby, is impressive, as are his credentials. Darby found a minimum of 14 matching points, whereas the FBI had inferior prints and far fewer matching points from the barrel of the gun Oswald ostensibly used. (Publishers Weekly, in their recent review, referred to this key latent print as a questionable "smudge," and devalued the book as a result. But on what basis? The reader should note that the Warren Commission took this latent print extremely seriously; so seriously that they circulated an internal memorandum among themselves -- exhibited in the book -- expressing "anxious" concern over it.) That memorandum and the latent fingerprint set the stage. Together they are certainly worthy of examination -- and of a book, if the right links can be proven. That this book is written by Barr McClellan, Texas insider and former lawyer for Johnson, makes the potential all the more compelling. From behind the wall of the attorney-client privilege, the details come forward. The question then becomes this: If the latent print proves Mac Wallace was on the sixth floor of the TSDB, then what was Wallace's relationship to LBJ's inner circle? Wallace, it turns out, was the lover of Josefa Johnson, LBJ's sister. Wallace murdered Douglas Kinser, her other lover, in a fit of rage. The trial was handled by LBJ's attorneys, Edward Clark and associates. (Clark, a Texas super-lawyer, was the kingmaker behind Johnson and the leader of their group. He made Barr McClellan the youngest partner in his law firm.)
Wallace was convicted of the murder, but walked away with a suspended sentence. Soon after his conviction, Wallace was hired at LTV, a company owned by D.H Byrd, a player in Texas big oil.
Clark got him the job. It so happens that Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building. The connections do not end there. Read the book for the whole story. It's really worth the time. The chain of causation explaining Wallace's link to the Clark-LBJ inner circle is fascinating -- and very probably incriminating. The beginning of the text is a little circuitous, but McClellan hits his stride soon enough and lays the evidence bare. Walt Brown - a very good, solid JFK author and noted assassination expert -stands behind McClellan. Bottom line for this reader: If Darby's 42 years as a fingerprint expert are valuable; and if the Warren Commission did not see this print as a "smudge," but as a key piece of evidence to be reckoned with - and they documented it as such -- then McClellan has some very real evidence and a strong case. See for yourself, I say. There is enough evidence presented in the book to enable careful readers to form an opinion of their own. (Note: The details of LBJ's life are also compelling on their own. Here is a bio on him written by someone who represented his political and money interests.)
Rating:
Summary: Plausible and interesting conspiracy theory
Review: Ever since John F. Kennedy was assassinated there has been no shortage of conspiracy theories. Most take one or two minor pieces of evidence and build it into a full-blown theory. Rarely has someone with inside information come forward with a detailed theory. Barr McClellan has had that access to inside information as a member of the legal firm of Edward A. Clark that represented Lyndon B. Johnson's private as well as public needs. Being privy to this information and having access to individuals who were charged with protecting the president as well as promoting his agenda has lead him to the conclusion that when you follow all the details, ultimately L.B.J. and his lust for power are what lead to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Perhaps the most fascinating part of McClellan's book is his insight into the real Lyndon B. Johnson and his associates. McClellan provides a thorough background and history of Johnson from his early years through his presidency. The evidence presented is not conclusive, however it does provide enough of a convincing argument to show that it is not only a possibility, but totally consistent with the personalities, histories, and desires of the people involved. "Blood, Money & Power" is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Rating: 
Summary: LBJ took the IRT down to 1st street USA
Review: This guy really doesn't like LBJ. He is also a lawyer and writes like one: 1. the book could have been at least 1/3 shorter with an editor who actually edited, and 2. he is writing to persuade to his viewpoint. All that being said, the book is a compilation of really nasty suspicions, the basis for the suspicions in Texas history and politics and LBJ's history and politics, and a few facts consistent with those nasty suspicions. As a theory, it hangs together well.
Rating:
Summary: Should definitely be a Pulitzer Prize winner
Review: This should definitely be a Pulitzer Prize winner. The book is fascinating!
The theory of LBJ as a co-conspirator to JFK's murder is not only interesting, but also highly probable. Look at the players who handled the investigations, Jaworski, Hoover, Clark, Fortes, Sol Estes and Clint Murchison, all evil incarnate. Too bad we can't reach into the grave and prosecute them. Justice would be served only when the name Lyndon B. Johnson name is STRICKEN from the annals of American History. Thank you Mr. McClellan for going beyond the façade of spoken legal ethics espoused by many and practiced by few in the legal community. You have given some respectability to those who practice the profession. It is more honorable to do justice than to speak it, and the work you have put forth is both a full accounting and should generate justifiable consequences for the LBJ legacy and the continued lies of his heirs. Extremely interesting is the way Texas Politics was handled then, at the time of the Boston-Austin connection. The similarities to today's Texas-Washington political machinations are strikingly similar!
Rating:
Summary: A coup d'etat -- the murder of JFK by his vice-president LBJ
Review: I found this book to be utterly compelling, forgiving the "faction" sections in favor of the real facts presented. Barr McClellan, former attorney of Lyndon B. Johnson, steps forward and claims that LBJ assassinated JFK. The evidence better be good. The key piece of evidence given is a latent fingerprint. It was taken from a box, possibly used as a sniper's mount, on the 6th Floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building (TSDB) where Oswald allegedly shot at Kennedy. But the fingerprint is not Oswald's. An expert chosen by McClellan was shown the latent print with no prior knowledge of its context, and found that it matched a fingerprint on record for a Texan named Mac Wallace. The affidavit of this expert, Nathan Darby, is impressive, as are his credentials. Darby found a minimum of 14 matching points, whereas the FBI had inferior prints and far fewer matching points from the barrel of the gun Oswald ostensibly used. (Publishers Weekly, in their recent review, referred to this key latent print as a questionable "smudge," and devalued the book as a result. But on what basis? The reader should note that the Warren Commission took this latent print extremely seriously; so seriously that they circulated an internal memorandum among themselves -- exhibited in the book -- expressing "anxious" concern over it.) That memorandum and the latent fingerprint set the stage. Together they are certainly worthy of examination -- and of a book, if the right links can be proven. That this book is written by Barr McClellan, Texas insider and former lawyer for Johnson, makes the potential all the more compelling. From behind the wall of the attorney-client privilege, the details come forward. The question then becomes this: If the latent print proves Mac Wallace was on the sixth floor of the TSDB, then what was Wallace's relationship to LBJ's inner circle? Wallace, it turns out, was the lover of Josefa Johnson, LBJ's sister. Wallace murdered Douglas Kinser, her other lover, in a fit of rage. The trial was handled by LBJ's attorneys, Edward Clark and associates. (Clark, a Texas super-lawyer, was the kingmaker behind Johnson and the leader of their group. He made Barr McClellan the youngest partner in his law firm.)
Wallace was convicted of the murder, but walked away with a suspended sentence. Soon after his conviction, Wallace was hired at LTV, a company owned by D.H Byrd, a player in Texas big oil.
Clark got him the job. It so happens that Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building. The connections do not end there. Read the book for the whole story. It's really worth the time. The chain of causation explaining Wallace's link to the Clark-LBJ inner circle is fascinating -- and very probably incriminating. The beginning of the text is a little circuitous, but McClellan hits his stride soon enough and lays the evidence bare. Walt Brown - a very good, solid JFK author and noted assassination expert -stands behind McClellan. Bottom line for this reader: If Darby's 42 years as a fingerprint expert are valuable; and if the Warren Commission did not see this print as a "smudge," but as a key piece of evidence to be reckoned with - and they documented it as such -- then McClellan has some very real evidence and a strong case. See for yourself, I say. There is enough evidence presented in the book to enable careful readers to form an opinion of their own. (Note: The details of LBJ's life are also compelling on their own. Here is a bio on him written by someone who represented his political and money interests.)
Rating: 
Summary: Important-needs more corroboration
Review: After reading some 80 books on the Assassination of JFK,& accepting that there was some type of conspiracy, the most important thing to know is-who was behind it? I believe there was some rogue- off the shelf conspiracy between Cuban Exiles, mafia, & ultra right wing types in the New Orleans-Dallas underground,plus possible renegades from florida that were associated with the failed bay of pigs invasion and there's much to support this, however after reading this book you will find that the owner of the Texas Schoolbook Depository was a good friend of LBJ at the time of the Assassination and he had huge investments in the Miltary Industrial Complex. This man Mac Wallace, a cold blooded killer worked for a subsidiary of the owner of the TSBD, & can be traced directly to Lyndon Johnson when LBj's lawyers got him out of a first degree murder conviction in 1951. This man Wallace, allegedly left a fingerprint in the sniper's nest and this print has been corroborated as Author McLellan relates by interpol in the back of the book.Several things the Author does not mention, or just briefly, that makes me now believe Johnson was right in the thick of it at the highest levels is this(besides the several scandals swirling around LBJ-Billie Sol Estes- and Bobby Baker at the time of the Assassination & the very important point made by Barr McLellan is that the business problems by any one of thenm including powerful Oilmen were all linked by a long history of shady goings on) Hoover and LBJ hated Kennedy- they were neighbors in Wahington for 18 years! The only way the Assassnation could be pulled off is with their connivance. Hoover immediately is pushing the lone nut story before any investigation had begun, also, as we've seen the crime scene was under control of LBJ and friends, as well as the whole Texas trip, the nightspot where members of the Secret Service were drinking the night before was also frequented by LBJ and his friends, the admiral who appears to have controlled the Autopsy-President Kennedy's physician Dr. Burkley stayed on with LBJ and is at the black heart of this whole case in regards to many disappearing Autopsy Photos,disappearing brain, skull fragments, that have vanished, tissue slides, so you can't say this about anyone else or any agency, Only LBJ had all these connections, the power to make the unthinkable happen. McLellan opens the door on Johnson, but doesn't quite slam it.Hopefully, there will be some type of follow up.
Rating:
Summary: Did the Council on Foreign Relations Encourage the Writing?
Review: This interesting work blames the entire JFK assassination on LBJ and his chief attorney Edward Clark with Malcom "Mac" Wallace and Lee Harvey Oswald serving as the only triggermen. It places them both in the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the shooting. However, it seems obvious that if Wallace was involved at all, he may have been the "Badgeman" seen in the Moorman Polaroid photo, which would place him in the "Grassy Knoll" area instead of the depository. The face in that snapshot looks like Mac Wallace. Oswald could not have been in the infamous sixth-floor window. The author's son, Scott McClellan, served as President George W. Bush's Press Secretary until a recent move to a more prestigious administration post. Since Bush is a member of the Order of Skull & Bones and undoubtedly beholden to the family that foundered of the Council on Foreign Relations, their followers and other secret societies, it seems likely that the author may have been encouraged by the upper echelons of the CFR to alter his book to cast blame for the assassination on Lyndon et al. After all, he, Clark and Wallace, like Oswald, are all dead. And as a lawyer Barr McClellan most assuredly knows that you can't libel the dead. This work may well be nothing more than another attempt to coverup the real perpetrators of the coup d'Etat in America on November 22, 1963; to again mislead researchers with yet another red herring.
Rating: 
Summary: Load of Paranoid Conspiracy-theorist B.S.
Review: The review title says it all. This is mostly food for the anti-Johnson people to consume in their hateful attempts to pin the death of JFK onto a generally unpopular figure among the Former-hippie-turned-yuppie crowd. As long as money rolls in from some kind of an audience of readers, the integrity of the writing doesn't matter in this case...
Rating:
Summary: Valenti pressures the History Channel, and proves the point!
Review: Anyone questioning the veracity of Barr McClellan's information would be fully convinced after watching the embarassing job of back-peddaling that Jack Valenti and other powerful Johnson administration millionaires forced upon the History Channel in a rebuttal of November's broadcast of "the Guilty Men" documentary (based in part on some of the evidence in McClellan's insightful book). Three dubious "historians" were paid to rebut the evidence in McClellan's book and the History Channel documentary... but instead of dissecting any of McClellan's 68 exhibits of courtroom quality evidence, they chose instead to attack his character through complete falsehoods about McClellan's past. They glossed over McClellan's 14 years as a member of the Clark Law Firm (handling all of the legal, personal and professional business transactions for L.B.J.), and blatantly lied about the circumstances surrounding McClellan's departure from the firm and their attempts to discredit him with accusations (...)(which were fully dismissed and characterized as harrassing abuses of power by the Clark-Texas-Power mob). Now the Texas / Johnson apologists have pressured the History Channel to present a one-hour "discussion" about the facts presented in McClellan's book and the "Guilty Men" documentary. So why didn't they discuss the evidence? Could it be that it's easier to attack the messenger than disprove the obvious message? I've been ashamed of Johnson and his organized mob for decades... now I'm ashamed that the History Channel would succumb to the bullying of rich and powerful old men, all of whom made millions on the back of Johnson, and on the blood of our soldiers killed in Vietnam. Kudos to McClellan for not being intimidated by this old-generation of corrupt Texas politicians.
Rating:
Summary: Sad Truth
Review: This might seem like another "conspiracy" book, but this
author has a unique perspective in that he worked in the
Dallas law firm that represented LBJ for many years, so
he is able to unveil the sad truth about that President
unlike other writers.
He entered the firm about the time LBJ's political career
was ending, but as the senior partner came to trust him,
and as he worked directly with the second-senior partner,
he came to learn many, many secrets about how LBJ operated
and how he achieved his political position.
This writer does, indeed, know where the bodies are buried,
and he names the names of judges, prosecutors and business
leaders who took bribes to cover up LBJ problems and crimes,
as well as who illegally advanced his career. From the
well-known stolen Senate election of 1948, where he tells
exactly who crept in at night to add names to a precinct's
polling book so the votes counted wouldn't exceed the possible
number of voters, on through the murder of a man who might
have exposed some unsavory facts about LBJ's sister, to the
most famous murder in modern times, that of President Kennedy.
LBJ's character is shown perfectly for what he was; the
lowest of sleazy politicians, who stopped at literally nothing
to advance his own fortunres and career.
Even in the matter of the murder of a man who ran around with
LBJ's sister, and who threatened to expose her personal habits,
LBJ wasn't worried about his sister at all, but how the bad
publicity might reflect on him and his ambitions.
As to the Kennedy murder, many theories abound, but this author
supplies significant details of interest. Basically, he says
that Oswald was, in fact, set up as a patsy, as Oswald claimed
immediately after he was apprehended by the Dallas PD, and he
relates the activities of the man recruited by LBJ's lawyer
to eliminate JFK, and the other 2 men who were at the scene
of the JFK murder and who participated.
This book would have benefited from a little better editing.
For example, the author names the man who was recruited to
shoot JFK, and gives many details of his history and movements,
and he then, early on, suggests he knows the name of the other
shooter of a fatal bullet, but that he can't quite name him
right now, and he is waiting on a little further proof. But that it will be forthcoming. Then, unhappily, later in the
book, the author plainly says the identity of the other shooter,
the man on the grassy knoll, will never be known. So, which is
it?
But he still has so many details, anyone interested in that
chapter in our history will want to read what he has to say.
And the writer tries a little too hard to distance himself from
any possible wrongdoing with his frequent claims of attorney-client privilege. He even reports that his partners learned
details of serious crimes in advance, but that they, and later
he, were prevented from revealing any of those facts by virtue
of that legal privilege. Baloney. Attorney ethics do not
allow a lawyer who learns facts of a crime in advance to keep
quiet and cover up the crime. Such action makes the lawyer part
of a criminal conspiracy or, at least, an accessory before the
fact.
Now some attorneys do, in fact, cover up crimes, but that is
now ethically permitted, and the attorney-client privilege does
not apply to protect either the attorney or the client.
It is hard to believe an attorney would make such assertion, but
the writer seems to be trying to distance himself from any
possible charge of wrongdoing.
But this is still interesting reading, and it is definitely a
"must" for anyone curious about what happened to JFK and why.
Such interested people will have to read this first-hand
account of the facts of the conspiracy.
|
