One out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man.

Lyndon Johnson had many years of government positions where he learned how to get things done, and to profit from it. His first elected position was to the House of Representatives in 1937 where he became a staunch supporter of Franklin Roosevelt's “New Deal”. The President recognized and appreciated his loyalty.

When World War II came about he was drafted and spent time inspecting naval ship building in Texas... although he would have preferred to be in Washington. When Roosevelt wanted a better idea of what was going on in the South Pacific, he called on Johnson because he could be trusted. Here he used a movie camera to record the conditions the men were experiencing and even received a Silver Star for riding along on a high risk mission, even though the plane had some sort of mechanical failure and had to turn back.

After his time in the service he return to the House until 1948 when he ran for the US Senate in the Democrat primary against the popular governor, Coke Stephenson. It was during this election that Bell Helicopters supplied him with one of their units to move him around the state. Helicopters were something new on the scene and quite a novelty as he would land in the Texas towns and cause such a stir that people would flock to see him and hear what he had to say.  This was just the beginning of support the future president would receive from arms manufacturers.  Beyond this, payments up to $50,000 a year from New Orleans crime boss, Carlos Marcello secured protection from the mobsters enemies in Washington.

When the polls closed, Johnson was behind by a little more then three hundred votes. However, the next day's tally showed him squeaking by with less than a hundred vote margin. Since Texas was essentially a one party state at the time, this election was for all the marbles.

Of course Stephenson cried “Foul!!!” and took his case to the Texas Supreme Court, and the US Supreme Court, eventually to the Senate itself. During all these challenges, Johnson's attorney John Cofer showed his worth by defeating every one of them.

It was from this election that his detractors developed a name for him and his narrow margin of victory – Landslide Lyndon.

John Cofer proved a valuable ally numerous times going forward – such as keeping Lyndon's and Mac Wallace's name out the investigation into the murder of Henry Marshall. He was also Wallace's attorney when he was convicted of killing John Kinzer in front of multiple witnesses, but received s five year suspended sentence. Cofer was also the defense attorney for Johnson's crony Billy Sol Estes. He refused to let Estes testify as it could have been embarrassing for the Vice President. These were just a few of the times Cofer removed speed bumps on Johnson's rise to power. He possibly even had a hand in guiding Josepha's coroner's report.

In 1960 both Lyndon Johnson and John Kennedy were seeking the Democrat nomination for president. As it turned out the young, wealthy John Kennedy got the nod. Even though they were both Democrats, they came from two different worlds. One was from wealth and privilege and the other from the rough and tumble political world where people didn't always play nice. Johnson saw his competition as a young punk with little experience running anything and the Kennedy brothers saw him as a crude and unsophisticated “Uncle Cornpone”.

It took some observers by surprise when Johnson took the number two spot behind the young Senator. When privately asked by Clare Booth Luce about the choice, he commented, “one out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin'.” He hated going from being the most powerful man in the Senate to the neutered vice president responsible for nothing.

Coming into the summer of 1963 Lyndon Johnson knew his days were numbered as it was an open secret that he was to be replaced on the 1964 ticket. President Kennedy was visiting Texas in June and on the sixth of that month Lyndon Johnson and John Connally cornered him the Cortez Hotel in El Paso. The Texans insisted that the President return to their state to shore up support for the coming year. Kennedy resisted, believing it unnecessary, but at the conclusion of the high volume discussion, he relented and agreed to come back into the state controlled by his vice president.

As the summer progressed, Attorney General was working on the plan to remove Johnson by releasing information to Time Magazine and they were printing stories about Johnson and his cronies like Billy Sol Estes. In fact the issue following November 22 would have pretty much ended Johnson's political career. Instead, it displayed frames from Abraham Zapruder's film and Bobby Kennedy was effectively neutered.

The night before the events in Dallas, Lyndon Johnson was one of a number of Texas monied men, at the home of Clint Murchison. His, oft time companion, Madeleine Brown, says he told her that after tomorrow, the Kennedy's wouldn't embarrass him any more. The “official story” as promoted by the law enforcement and intelligence communities as well as the folks at the Sixth Floor Museum and their media followers is that this meeting never happened.

What happened and why? Some things are evident to the casual observer and some are not. Kennedy was pretty much committed to withdrawing American soldiers from Vietnam. The CIA was committed to preventing the communist takeover of the country as well as not being broken up in many small pieces as President Kennedy promised after the Bay of Pigs disaster. He wanted no part of the games Allen Dulles was playing on the devil's chessboard. J Edgar Hoover did not want to be forced from his position by federal age restrictions. Bell Helicopter and a host of other defense contractors saw a greater war as an immensely profitable enterprise to be pursued.

What happened to America? In the three years of Kennedy's presidency, a little more that 130 Americans died in Vietnam. Under Lyndon Johnson, that was a good week. The point is that the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution opened the door increased wealth for Lyndon Johnson as well as the likes of Bell Hellicopter as they cranked out thousands of “Huey” helicopters that came to symbolize the war. Things were going so well for the suits in charge of everything they didn't even care that the Tonkin event never happened.

Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President
by Robert Dallek

Robert Dallek's brilliant two-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson has received an avalanche of praise. Michael Beschloss, in The Los Angeles Times, said that it "succeeds brilliantly." The New York Times called it "rock solid" and The Washington Post hailed it as "invaluable." And Sidney Blumenthal in The Boston Globe wrote that it was "dense with astonishing incidents."
Now Dallek has condensed his two-volume masterpiece into what is surely the finest one-volume biography of Johnson available. Based on years of research in over 450 manuscript collections and oral histories, as well as numerous personal interviews, this biography follows Johnson, the "human dynamo," from the Texas hill country to the White House. We see LBJ, in the House and the Senate, whirl his way through sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, talking, urging, demanding, reaching for influence and power, in an uncommonly successful congressional career. Then, in the White House, we see Johnson as the visionary leader who worked his will on Congress like no president before or since, enacting a range of crucial legislation, from Medicare and environmental protection to the most significant advances in civil rights for black Americans ever achieved. And we see the depth of Johnson's private anguish as he became increasingly ensnared in Vietnam.

Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam
by Larry Berman

By 1968, the United States had committed over 525,000 men to Vietnam and bombed virtually all military targets recommended by the joint Chiefs of Staff. Yet, the United States was no closer to securing its objectives than it had been prior to the Americanization of the war. The long-promised light at the end of the tunnel was a mirage. This absorbing account reveals the bankruptcy of the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, the failures of political reform in South Vietnam and the bitter bureaucratic conflicts between the US government and its military commanders.