Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K. [Closed-captioned, Colour, Full Screen] [Hardcover]

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.)

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.

The author opens with a detailed biography of Lyndon Johnson that removes the veneer of 'presidentiality' from Johnson and shows him as a greedy, fearful, mean man with an all-consuming need for power. McClellan then builds his case against Johnson by describing events earlier in Johnson's life in which foul acts were performed for a momentary advantage. Quite a bit of detail is provided about the stuffing of the ballot box which allowed Johnson to win his seat in the US Senate in 1948 and also about the murder of the USDA inspector, Henry Marshall, who was on the trail of fraud being perpetrated on the Department of Agriculture. The original investigation found that Marshall had committed suicide...with five bullets in his body delivered by a close Johnson associate, Mac Wallace. Another murder victim was Doug Kinser who was threatening to bring scandal to Johnson. Mac Wallace was then convicted of killing Kinser but, thanks to Johnson's power over the Texas legal system, was sentenced to 5 years in prison and given a suspended sentence.

It is Wallace that the author alleges was one of the trigger men in the sniper's nest along with Oswald. As proof, the author matches a fingerprint found on a box in the sniper's nest with one of Wallace's earlier fingerprints obtained for the Kinser murder to place Wallace on the 6th floor of the School Book Depository. The author provides a lot of other interesting information such as pointing out that it was Johnson who arranged for Kennedy to visit Texas on November 22, 1963 and that Johnson had given a copy of the Secret Service plans for protecting the president to the conspirators.

McClellan also claims that there was a third trigger man on the grassy knoll who he does not identify and he claims that the conspirators wore suits and used fake Secret Service badges to identify themselves to police and escape the scene after the shooting. There is some credibility to this as many of the shooting eye witnesses and police officers reported encountering secret service agents in Dealey Plaza after the shooting and yet the Warren Commission established that not a single secret service agent was present in Dealey Plaza other than those riding on vehicles. One of the weaker parts of the book is where McClellan claims that the entire conspiracy was the work of a crooked Johnson lawyer named Ed Clark. It seems much more likely that the conspiracy was large enough that the lawyer Clark was working closely with other a handful of rogue agents from the CIA and the secret service and that the final conspiracy was a 'team' effort.

This is an interesting book that fleshes out a lot of missing pieces of the assassination puzzle and makes some of the earlier stuff attributed to Johnson, such as his phone call to the Parkland Hospital ER seeking a dying confession from Oswald, much more believable.

After reading this book, you will never again look the same way at the famous photo of Johnson getting a wink from Congressman Albert Thomas on board Air Force One after being sworn in as the president following Kennedy's killing.