RE: John Connally’s Problem with the Truth

And Why He Changed What He Said Immediately After Being Shot: “They are going to kill us both!”

In the previous blog, “Why JFK Went to Texas,” I examined how LBJ and his long-time sycophant John Connally teamed up to manipulate President Kennedy to visit Texas in November, 1963 under the pretext of “healing” the Texas Democratic party and improve the poll numbers for the JFK / LBJ ticket in preparation for the 1964 election.  It was also noted that he later lied about what he said (according to what Jacqueline Kennedy told William Manchester) in his “Excited Utterance” upon being shot: “They are going to kill us both.” After his recovery, and for the rest of his thirty years on planet Earth, “both” was changed to “all,” apparently because someone told him that the “b” word was too revealing of his prior knowledge. But that was just the beginning of a very long list of related lies.

The real objective was far more sinister than merely having JFK fix Johnson’s and Connally’s feud with Senator Ralph Yarborough; it was about executing an “executive action” that would change the course of history and the very nature of America: On November 22, 1963 the USA began a major shift in direction, away from JFK’s vision of a peace-seeking, consensus developing, benevolent nation committed to uniting its people, to that of a paranoiac “National Security” culture with a war machine that seized control of its foreign and domestic policies, moving it toward becoming a world-wide hegemony with the military presence to enforce its will anywhere on the globe.

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After I published the previous blog, David Martin (a.k.a. “DCDave) called my attention to an essay he had written over six years ago relating to other Connally prevarications. His article, titled “John Connally, JFK, and Truth Suppression,” can be found here.  Though I thought that I had read most of Martin’s essays at one time or another, this was one I had not previously seen. 

Within that article Martin subjected some of Connally’s statements to his patented “Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression” analytical device to demonstrate the many ways John Connally unwittingly used those very techniques to reframe numerous other facts into a framework that was more compliant with what would become the “official story” as designed by the Warren Commission (a.k.a. “The Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald).  These excerpts illustrate Martin’s findings:

So how does he manage to tell the assembled media with their sea of microphones in so many words that two plus two equals three and to do it so persuasively and with such apparent conviction?  He simply draws liberally upon the “Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression.”    First, he employs #7, “Invoke Authority.”  He would never question the work of “men whose patriotism has been manifested so many times in so many ways over such a long period of time.”  As Mark Antony said about Julius Caesar’s assassins in his famous speech in Shakespeare’s play, “They are all honorable men.”

Next, he employs #2, “Wax indignant.”  “It is shocking to me that in the backlash of tragedy journalistic scavengers such as Mark Lane attempt to impugn the motives of these members individually, cast doubts upon the commission as a whole, and question the credibility of the government itself,” he says.  How dare they!

Then it’s quickly on to #6, “Impugn motives.”  “We should turn our attention to doing a little research on and evaluation of the credentials of these self-appointed experts who with no evidence, no new facts, nevertheless use distortion, inference, innuendo in order to cast doubts and create confusion. ” 

[ . . . ]

Connally goes on, “And I suspect that a searching investigation into their own credentials will divulge that their motives have political overtones and that their views have been given prominence out of all proportion to their value.  I think it’s time that we pause and reflect on who these individuals are, rather than calling for a further investigation, which in my judgment is neither warranted, justified, or desirable.”  No one has ever questioned motives with more vigor. 

When Connally says that the critics have “no new evidence, no new facts” he comes very close to #15, “Baldly and brazenly lie.”  I guess it depends upon what he means by the word “new.”  The 26 volumes of raw documents are full of facts that undermine the official conclusion, as amply illustrated by Sylvia Meagher in her 1967 book, Accessories after the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report.  Lane and Meagher and others in many cases just pointed out facts that had been published but had not been emphasized or were simply ignored in the final summary report.  In that very narrow sense, one might say that they were not “new.”

Then, in the question and answer period, it’s time for #10, “Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.”  “No one, no one,” he says, “however clairvoyant or how wise could ever say with finality that [sic] would satisfy everybody in this world precisely what happened, and I think we ought to quit trying to do so because I think it’s an impossible task and I don’t care what kind of a body you constituted.  I think you’d have a problem of them taking uncertain things of them making interpretations and evaluations of their own and forming a conclusion that might or might not agree with the Warren Commission and then where would you be?  You’d just have somebody else’s opinion.”

One additional excerpt from Martin’s concluding paragraph remains pertinent nearly seven years later; the point he makes portends that the truths will remain hidden until some later generation– free of the bondage created by the myths left in the wake of the 1963 coup d’état – discovers those ancient truths:

Good luck on getting any of your friends who still parrot the Warren Commission line to read any of these books [that point to LBJ’s role in the assassination].  In lieu of that, you might press this short article upon them.  Again, good luck.  You might well conclude that you have simply learned too much for your own good and pretty soon you’ll feel like Dilbert trying to talk sense to his pointy-haired boss.