Yes, LBJ Ordered The Hit On Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. For His Anti-Vietnam War Stance

As thousands gather in Memphis to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  we still contend with a corporate media that keeps churning out the B.S. that King's. assassin was James Earl Ray.   Of course, as in the case of a prior "lone nut" narrative, Ray's personality traits have been thoroughly brewed then distilled by the "authorities" yielding a: "career criminal, bitter racist... and loner"  in the words of author William Pepper.

In his riveting 2003  talk  An Act of State - The Execution of Martin Luther King -  Pepper described his in -depth interview (along with Ralph Abernathy) of the alleged King assassin, James Earl Ray:

"He had a virtually non-existent marksmanship score when he took his test in the Army. He didn’t know much about guns. When he was instructed to buy a weapon that became the throw-down gun in the assassination he bought a .243 Winchester rather than a thirty-ought-six [.30-06] that he was told to get. He didn’t know the difference between them. When he showed the weapon he had bought to Raul, who was controlling him, he sent him back to exchange it. It was a matter of record. He went back and exchanged this one rifle for another the next day. That’s not something he thought of himself. It just was the wrong gun. The guy wanted a .30-06 caliber rifle so they had a .30-06 rifle as the throw-down gun. So he had to go back and exchange it. After the interview we became convinced, Abernathy and I became convinced that he was not the shooter. We didn’t know what other role he might have played. But it was clear he was not the assassin of Martin Luther King."

This "Ray did it"  twaddle could be accepted - more or less - up until  the Jan. 1998 Baltimore Sun revelations which referenced the U.S. Army's admission that its intelligence agents had monitored the public appearances of Rev. King in Memphis.  These disclosures then could be seen to dovetail with earlier revelations (from William Pepper's 1995 book, Orders to Kill)  that an Alpha 184 unit had been in Memphis and the purpose was not at all benign. They were to serve as backup to a hired contract killer (via New Orleans' crime boss, Carlos Marcello) - but more on this later. For the moment readers can refer to the image of the attached orders issued to the 20th AFG Alpha 184 team members.  Let me note before moving on, that such orders could not have come from any old government lackey or official, not even J. Edgar Hoover or then Attorney General, Ramsey Clark.  No, they could only have come from the top dog himself, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

For those who've been involved in deep politics research, and especially got their "baptism" with the Kennedy assassination, it's abundantly clear the lone nut assassin in the King case is another  cover story. In fact, all the evidence - including from LBJ's role in the Kennedy assassination - masterminding the plan from Big D-   we know he is the one who also engineered the King assassination. And why not? He'd already gotten away with the first assassination via the cover fraud "investigation" known as the Warren Commission, which even  54 years later has gullible twits buying it lock, stock, and barrel. Emboldened by that, why not take down Rev. King too - who'd become a gadfly over the Vietnam War?

The incredulity of too many in the face of these facts traces to how King has mainly been erected as a civil rights totem in the last 50 years. This hyper emphasis has minimized his fierce pacifism - especially against the Vietnam War- which brought him into direct conflict with Johnson.  An April, 1998 Baltimore Sun piece by Colman McCarthy  ('A Fierce Advocate of Pacifism') summarized how King had been turned into a one-dimensional Milquetoast by the media:

"All the textbooks, for sure, carry excerpts from the 'I Have a Dream' speech. After three decades of being sentimentalized into an historical relic mummified by the formaldehyde of nostalgia, King has been marginalized in ways never thought possible while he was around to defend himself."

McCarthy, like Pepper, cites the powerful moral voice against Johnson's war - and yes, it was his war, given he signed the original NSAM (273) formalizing it, and then confected the Tonkin Gulf incident to justify a massive troop commitment. (Again, for more on the backstory of LBJ's NSAM -273 check out the information in the link below:

http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM273.html )

Among the more visceral words of Dr. King (ibid.):

"We have destroyed Vietnam's two most treasured institutions - the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops... We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men."

As McCarthy points out, no textbook quotes Dr. King in this respect. Which is exactly why - in order to grasp why Johnson would have him killed - people need to grasp the severity of MLK's anti-war stance and the rage it stoked in LBJ.  As King's unswerving opposition to the War increased Johnson became enraged at the prospect of its threatening his precious civil rights and "Great Society" legacy. He also worried about King's promise to bring hundreds of thousands to the Capitol for a poor people's march that summer.    McCarthy recalls how the media at the time tried to back King away from his anti-War mission, e.g.:

"The corporate media's reporters and editorial writers dismissed King as being far out of his depth with his anti-military views. The New York Times and Washington Post instructed King to stick to racial issues and leave weighty foreign policy matters to sophisticated people - like the pro-Vietnam War editorial writers at the Times and the Post. To King critics Carl Rowan and J. Edgar Hoover, anti-war equaled anti-American.  Rowan, a courtier to the warmonger Johnson, accused King of being duped by people 'more interested in embarrassing the U.S. than anything else."

Johnson himself just wanted King to STFU and cease criticizing the War.  Each King moral censure struck Johnson and his Texas Pride like a body blow. According to Pepper (p. 350) , it was Hoover who intimated (to oil baron H.L. Hunt)  the only way possible to stop King was to "completely silence him" , i.e. a kill, an assassination.  Hunt,  at the time, wanted to discredit King by repeated personal attacks via his 'Life Line' program which aired in 398 cities. No doubt LBJ - who was a close friend of Hoover's - was also informed this was his only way to escape the latter day, anti-War  "Jeremiah".

That LBJ was fully capable of masterminding the earlier JFK hit we pretty well know, at least those who have been prepared to follow the leads, evidence and indicators.  Credit here to Steve Kornacki  who first reported (with documents) on the peril Johnson faced  in the tightening Bobby Baker scandal. This was  in his ‘UP’ journal on MSNBC, the morning of Nov. 23, 2013. Using tapes and media documents, Kornacki showed that Johnson was about to be exposed as an influence peddler in conjunction with the Bobby Baker scandal by LIFE magazine in its upcoming issue. He faced not only being knocked from the 1964 ticket but severe prosecution and ultimate disgrace- with the money trail to be published. Hence HE stood to gain the most, at just the right instant of time, with JFK killed. Getting JFK to travel to Dallas,  where LBJ had control at multiple points (including the motorcade route) , was half the effort.

We know now (in retrospect)  a feral rat like Johnson wouldn't have taken this lying down or passively, given some 21 years later his role in the murder of a Texas agricultural official (Henry Harvey Marshall) was exposed e.g.



So we have a damned good idea of what LBJ was capable of. and we know the motive: LBJ felt he was screwed out of the Presidency at the 1960  LA convention, where the Kennedy campaign team did a neat end run about him  and  JFK already had the nomination sewed up at the first roll call – unbeknownst to the hot-headed Texan. LBJ accepted JFK’s offer for VP – but only grudgingly. Meanwhile, he stewed over time, entering the Oval office almost at will in the mornings – according to Kennedy’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln, as she described in her book: Kennedy and Johnson,  (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968, pp. 149-151 ).  He felt he was entitled to be top dog or at least be co-president and even proposed on one occasion a “shared presidency” – at which point Jack kicked him out of his office and gave him some more scut work to do. 

Those who wish to examine the document basis in more detail are advised to get hold of Philip Nelson's, 'LBJ - The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination' which makes a profoundly credible case for Johnson's involvement - again noting Kennedy's removal cleared the way for Johnson to  accede to the Presidency and escape a long prison sentence.  The Warren Commission was his vehicle for clearing any culpability - using his pal Hoover as the "cleanup man". (E.g. ensuring that no controverting evidence -i.e.  to that painting Oswald as the lone nut assassin- found its way before the Commissioners.)

Now, what put Rev. King in LBJ's sights?  Basically, it was King's ever increasing willingnss to condemn and criticize the Vietnam War.  LBJ felt especially betrayed by Martin, given what he (LBJ) thought were his contributions to advancing civil rights.  So LBJ wanted King's voice silenced once and for all. He'd gotten too much attention on the Vietnam issue, and it undermined LBJ's "great legacy" - having already taken control of all of Kennedy's ideas and programs and pushed them through. 

Pepper- in his 2003 speech-  observed that:

 "Martin King was killed because he had become intolerable.  It was not just that he opposed the war and was going to the bottom line of a number of the major corporations of the United States, those forces that essentially rule the world at this point in time - the transnational entities. 

But more importantly, I think the reason is because he was going to bring a mass of people to Washington in the spring of '68 and that was very troubling."

Pepper also noted  that what incepted his further investigation into the King killing was an article  by journalist Steve Tompkins in the Memphis Commercial Appeal.  It dealt with the infiltration of the civil rights movement and black leaders by U.S. military intelligence.

 "One paragraph" from the Tompkins article in particular caught his eye. It noted that on the day of Rev. King's  assassination a Special Forces Alpha 184 team was in place, and no one understood at the time why this 6-man  sniper unit was present in Memphis. Pepper then approached Tompkins, who conceded this introduced a whole other dimension to the case - which was now not nearly as closed as the media would have had us believe.  Once a copy of the (original) Top Secret order was obtained, it was game on.

Pepper's breakthrough (and what led to his book 'Orders to Kill')) arrived on learning that a film existed of the King assassination. It was in the hands of Army psyops (psychological operations) officers who had been in Memphis that day to take photographs of everything, including any vehicles passing in the vicinity of the Lorraine Motel. One of the recording officers, as Pepper noted - in his speech and in the book - just happened to spin his camera around on hearing the shot, toward the bushes in front of the motel, thereby catching the actual assassin - a lone white man - not James Earl Ray. 

As described by Pepper (pp. 484-85) "it clearly appears the hit was to be carried out by a civilian contract killer with the Army snipers there as backup shooters if the contract killer cold not make the shot or he failed to kill Dr. King".

Pepper conjectured the contract killer was likely arranged by New Orleans' Mob boss Carlos Marcello, whose territory would have included Memphis and the southwest. Meanwhile, two members of the Alpha 184 team (Capt. Billy Eidson and Lt. Robert Worley)  "either died or were killed in the years following the events of April 4, 1968" .   Two other members of the Alpha 184 team,  a  "Warren" and "Murphy" (pseudonyms - from the file records),   realized a clean up operation was underway and "left the country".   Another member - the central communications operator "went into hiding in Canada" and another member "J.D." was killed some years later.  In many ways, the cleanup operation followed the witness elimination template after the JFK assassination - and this has been shown to be mathematically substantiated by Richard Charnin in his book,  Reclaiming Science- The JFK Conspiracy, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-jfk-assassination-book-all-serious.html

For those interested in the details of Pepper's investigation into the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination I suggest getting hold of the book Orders to Kill, or at least availing themselves of this abbreviated account of Pepper's findings from the  transcript of the 2003 speech he gave:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/WFP020403.pdf

James Douglass ('JFK and the Unspeakable')  has held all of us to account for not seeing that all the 1960s assassinations (JFK, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X) were interconnected, all orchestrated for the end of silencing powerful voices. Also, each killing, according to Douglass, made the next one easier because we all became susceptible to the anti-conspiracy mindset pushed by the Operation Mockingbird -compromised media. Too many thereby became  enmeshed in the media's lies that "one lone nut" was involved each time. Hence, to the extent we gave the media's apparatchiks a pass we became accomplices and parties to the "unspeakable" 

But in all of this, there is a clear path showing LBJ was instrumental in at least two of the killings -whether his hagiographers and sometime fans - wish to admit that or not.  That is what is truly unspeakable.

HBO's LBJ Movie 'All The Way' - Good, But More Hagiography Than History

Which portrayal do you accept: The scum ball who helped plan JFK's killing, or the rising civil rights star who brought two major pieces of legislation to finality. In fact, both can easily be valid - with the latter helping to burnish the reputation of the assassination architect.


"Who controls the past controls the future.  And who controls the present controls the past.”

In those immortal words of George Orwell (from ‘1984’) we at once beheld the importance of history in determining the quality of our lives, and outcomes of public policy. Sadly, and I hate to say this – too many liberals don’t know their own past, the nation’s past, and don’t want to. They believe merely because they are scribes at Salon.com, HuffPo or some other site, they’re entitled to weigh in on recent history and distort it. Worse, they want to remain gloriously ignorant - steeped more in hagiography, or misplaced hero worship – than actual history.

This leads us to Ph.D. history student Matthew Rosza, writing in salon.com last month, who exhorted  all liberals to watch the HBO premier movie 'All The Way', to see the analogies to our current election - with Hillary in the similar position to LBJ (not exactly outside the establishment) and the GOP's Barry Goldwater playing the 1964 version of Donald Trump.

But Rosza's premise is totally off base, as when he writes:

"Like Johnson in 1964, Clinton in 2016 is hampered by her problematic background on racial justice issues, from fueling the mass incarceration of racial minorities to supporting a welfare reform bill that disproportionately impacted African Americans. Also like Johnson, though, Clinton has now vowed to fight for important civil rights measures, including overhauling drug sentencing laws, prohibiting racial profiling, and forbidding employers from asking applicants about their criminal history. If she is elected, the non-white voters who helped put her into office will have a right and responsibility to hold her feet to the fire and make sure she gets these things done… but to do that, of course, she must become president first."

But Rosza's  take is too superficial, as telegraphed by even remotely considering Barry Goldwater in 1964 as playing an analogous role to Trump in 2016. In fact, there was no comparison, given Goldwater may have been many things but he was not a bloviating buffoon. Indeed, at Loyola University (New Orleans)  ca. September, 1964, nearly half the student body was hyped over the prospect of having a President Goldwater. Massive student rallies were held and you had to get to classes early to avoid the congestion in the quad. They viewed his conservatism as solid and real - unlike the way Trump's version is seen today.

Rosza's arguments mainly fail because while he dredges up a docudrama history of LBJ from HBO's movie  'All The Way',  he excludes all the real pre-presidential history we now know (such as revealed in Phillip F. Nelson's book imaged above). This,  even as he references  Hillary's actual history via her "problematic background" i.e. on racial justice issues etc.. The result is that he essentially compares the hagiography of one with the history of the other. This in fact is the primary thread that runs through his article: Hillary's actual historical problems, bad decisions vs. only the limited ones we get too see on HBO's  TV movie on LBJ. (To be fair the movie only covered LBJ's first year or so in office, but this is all the more reason not to make comparisons with Hillary._

Most of us who have pursued the documents track since the release of records via The JFK Records Act, have been seeking the skeleton key, if you will, or the linchpin that ties together all the disparate, apparently unrelated facts  of the Kennedy assassination– originally portrayed by the media as “coincidences”, "oversights"  or “mistakes”.  At the time too many of us, excessively gullible, accepted the media's blarney instead of they're being premeditated actions of LBJ to cover his own ass. These included LBJ orders issued for:

-        All of Kennedy’s clothing, including the bullet –holed suit coat - destroyed.

-        The blood spattered and bullet- impacted limousine ordered dispatched to  Detroit,, where it was cleaned, disassembled, then completely rebuilt then sent to Ohio

-        Zapruder film (altered with attempted juxtaposition of frames

-     Original autopsy notes of Dr. J.J. Humes   (burned)

-        Kennedy’s skull (re-imaged using mattes in re-done autopsy photos to make the massive wounds appear in the front and the entry wound in the rear- to comport with the Warren Commission Single Bullet theory[1])

-        Kennedy’s brain (missing from the time the body arrived at Bethesda). The brain would have shown the path of 'cavitation' clearly and added to the weight of evidence for a frontal shot.

Over the years many of us began thinking that none of the preceding were coincidence or error – but deliberate- ordered by LBJ to cover his nefarious tracks, including via the ruse of the Warren Commission which HE created!  I mean, Oswald couldn’t have done those things. Nor could any of these have been done by the Mafia, angry Cubans or even rogue CIA agents. The orders had to come from the top, since the evidence was all material, and in addition under control (at various times) of federal agencies, including: FBI and Secret Service.  In fact, the relevant records disclose that none other than Cliff Carter (one of the co-conspirators found guilty in the Henry Harvey Marshall slaying) gave orders for the actions which, if refused, were followed up by Johnson himself making telephone demands.

Johnson also violated federal and state laws with assorted usurpations, destruction of material evidence (as listed above) , not to mention hijacking Kennedy’s body instead of allowing the autopsy to be performed at the same Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

Further, by of his creation of The Warren Commission on November 29, 1963, LBJ acquired the total power to block any House, Senate or Texas state investigations, while awarding himself the power to control all evidence that might possibly surface, and either ignore it, suppress it or allow it to be distorted- thereby further distancing himself, all in the name of “seeking justice”.  To quote a notable wit: “To commit the perfect crime it is only necessary to be in charge of the investigation that follows.”

Thus after much deliberation, we realized (some reluctantly) it could only have been ONE man – LBJ – who also had the most to lose if he didn’t get rid of Kennedy at just that juncture of time. In the words of author Phillip F. Nelson (Chapter 6: The Conspirators, in LBJ: The Mastermind of the Kennedy Assassination, p. 317):

“The crime could only have been accomplished with at least the acquiescence and foreknowledge of the only man capable of choreographing the massive cover-up which was immediately launched. It is axiomatic that since the cover-up started before the shots were fired, the order for JFK’s assassination could only have come from his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.”

So I hate to break this to Rosza and others (like Elias Isquith, Maureen Dowd and even Bill Maher),  but most of us who’ve been involved in deep politics and researching the JFK assassination have finally come to realize that LBJ indeed was involved as one of the prime architects in taking him out – for all the reasons I delivered in the LBJ hagiography post from January 5th last year, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/01/hagiographers-masquerading-as.html

We only regret it took us over 20 years to realize Craig Zirbel was right all along! (Dating from his 1991 expose of Johnson's role in 'The Texas Connection'.

Unsaid in that blog post, not yet revealed, is the way LBJ secretly courted the military to fire up the Vietnam War though Kennedy was steadfastly against it – ultimately made clear in his National Security Action Memorandum 263. Hence, the lingering smoking gun of Johnson’s guilt pertains to his disgusting back channel efforts to curry favor with the military (especially prime JFK hater Gen. Curtis Lemay). This entailed setting up a network to receive actual Vietnam intelligence behind Kennedy’s back – while ensuring the spooks and Pentagon sources delivered only doctored pap to JFK.  In many nations, this would be regarded as high treason, and anyone who did it (and found out)  put before a firing squad.

Much of the credit in digging up the relevant records goes to Military Science Professor John Newman in his book, JFK and Vietnam which documents that by November 24, 1963 – two days after Kennedy was dead (and before he was even laid to rest)-  a policy shift transpired toward massive commitment to American military forces in Vietnam – despite Kennedy’s NSAM 263. 

In the words of another researcher, Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, p. 30) it also proves that Johnson – since 1961  - "had been the ally of the Joint Chiefs and especially Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay."  Let us recall for reference it was LeMay who compared Kennedy to Neville Chamberlain when he refused to go all out and bomb Cuba and invade it during the Cuban Missile crisis.

Peter Dale Scott summaized Johnson’s treason nicely (p. 31):

“A back channel had been established whereby ‘the boys in the woodwork’ were feeding (Howard) Burris and Johnson a steady stream of accurate Vietnam intelligence reports which were denied to the President.”

These latter were almost uniformly false and “optimistic"

He goes on (ibid.):

“Meanwhile, U.S. Army Intelligence in Honolulu kept producing a second series of reports, more accurate and gloomy. These were denied to the President and McNamara but supplied by a secret intelligence back channel to Johnson”

If this duplicity was all there was it would be bad enough but the real smoking gun – I’d even say fired gun – goes off when it is learned how a secret NSAM (273) had been prepared by Johnson that effectively nullified Kennedy’s restrictions for further U.S. Vietnam involvement set out in NSAM 263..

Johnson’s NSAM 273   “deleted Kennedy’s restrictions and sanctioned plans for U.S.operations to begin shortly thereafter”. (That is, after Nov. 21 – one day before JFK was shot dead in Dallas).  In other words, the fell plans for reversing Kennedy’s NSAM were already in existence a day BEFORE JFK was killed. Scott notes (p. 30) a draft of this NSAM 273 had presumptively been readied for Kennedy to see. (The draft prepared for Kennedy’s signature spoke only of “additional resources” given by the South Vietnamese to fight North Vietnam – as per JFK’s original instructions in NSAM 263 – but this was the part deleted.)

Peter Dale Scott correctly observes that in the wake of this perfidy most media sources (e.g. Michael Specter in the NY Times) and talking heads (e.g. Noam Chomsky) have prattled that “NSAM 273 continued Kennedy’s policies” which it did nothing of the sort – as I showed. Scott further observes (p. 29)  that "even the Nation participated in this obfuscation of the record."  The Nation?  That icon of liberal media? You'd better believe it.

Lastly, let’s bear in mind the NSAM 273 perversion led directly to an even greater outrage, the fabricat.tion of the Tonkin Gulf incident  in August 1964, when two U.S. gunboats - the Turner Joy and Maddox-  were allegedly attacked without provocation. This precipitated the Tonkin Gulf Resolution which directly led to the massive expansion in ‘Nam. As I’d previously written in March, 2013:

In other words, LBJ and  the U.S. aggressors used it as a pretext to demand the Gulf of Tonkin resolution and launch a war that killed nearly 58,000. LBJ had finally delivered on his promise to the military-industrial complex to give them their war in return for having assisted in Kennedy's killing and its massive cover up.

Make no mistake, this historically  reconstructed Texas turd - so blindly idolized by too many uninformed liberals-   is nothing but a verminous traitor, racist and murderer. He not only saw to it Kennedy would meet his death in Dallas (including by altering the motorcade route and venue for his Dallas speech) but also created a phony commission to cover it up even as he manufactured a document to expand the war in Vietnam leading to monumental loss in blood and treasure.

If one can therefore watch 'All the Way' as basically a work of selective fiction -  which skirts over how LBJ ascended to power (it was no "accident" of history as the intro voiceover tries to portray)then s/he can't go too far wrong. The film can then be enjoyed as a docudrama glossing over LBJ's most serious character defects (and treachery)  even as it probably exaggerates his cruder habits. (E.g.  showing him talking to Hubert Humphrey while seated on an opened door  Oval office toilet then wiping his ass, as HHH turns away.)

Hillary may have a checkered past in terms of her ill-advised Iraq war vote, the Libya intervention, Wall Street connections and some inconsistencies regarding racial issues, but none of those remotely compare to what Johnson did to our 35th President  And for that he will live on in infamy for many of us, irrespective of how the media and LBJ lackeys, hagiographers try to portray him as a basic, cornpone hero for civil rights.

Hillary, if she becomes President (the first woman in U.S. history) will have earned it, and not because she masterminded an assassination of anyone to secure power. Then portrayed it as an "accident" of history and a terrible "burden" (boo hoo)  that was totally unsought -- as HBO does with the depiction of LBJ's ascension to the oval office..

See also:

http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM273.html

Hagiographers Masquerading As Historians: The REAL Reason The Movie 'Selma' Is Being Attacked

Hagiography is an ancient literary art, perfected through antiquity via the practice of whitewashing the lives of saints to make them appear much better, more superior, than they really were. Carried to an extreme an expert hagiographer could make a veritable slime ball seem like the most perfect and decent human ever to walk the Earth. As you would gather from this, the word means to portray someone as much better than they were. Originally confined to devotional books, hagiography has recently entered the historical realm to make certain political personalities, politicians, past presidents appear much better than they were.

Alas, it is when hagiography eclipses facts and history that the critical mind must take note and understand when the wool is being pulled over its eyes.  Sadly, too many in the U.S. today are unprepared to cast a critical eye on goings on, far less be disposed to expose a so-called history as really pulp hagiography.

But this is not surprising because historians themselves can often become trapped in their own bullshit and believing whatever they want to - especially concerning some past politician currently regarded as some hero, say of civil rights.

Such is the case now, as we witness another movie subject to slurs and attacks based on the claim that "it gets history wrong". WHOSE history? That which is real and unvarnished or that of a hagiographer out to reconstruct the person to be something he never was? The movie to which I refer is the soon to be released 'Selma' and the subject of the criticism is how one Lyndon Baines Johson is portrayed within it - basically as a reluctant civil rights warrior and even racist.

But those who complain don't have one remote clue about LBJ and what a feral, bastard rat he was- a likely architect of the JFK assassination, as well as a racist pig through and through who once referred to the emergent civil rights bill as the "nigger bill". But don't take my word! Do your own research!

So why are all these schwein hund latter day "historians" crawling out of the woodwork to hurl invective and criticism at an authentic portrayal of LBJ in the film?. Well, because at heart they can't handle the truth and are actually hagiographers of LBJ as opposed to genuine historians.

They are determined to reconstruct his image and cleanse it to make this pig some kind of hero with a legacy as opposed to a filthy scum ball not much better than Dick Cheney.

Salon.com's Joan Walsh  was actually one of the few to get the contretemps between Johnson and King as she observed last year, in her piece ('The Radical MLK We Need Today') :

"King crossed some Democrats and labor leaders when he turned against the Vietnam War in 1967, after his unparalleled Riverside Church speech. He knew the war was not only wrong, but was making Johnson’s alleged “War on Poverty” fiscally impossible"

Though she doesn't venture into the plot to kill Martin, we in the deep politics community are aware that once he came out aggressively against the Vietnam War his days were essentially numbered.  We know from more than a year earlier LBJ had his pal J. Edgar Hoover monitor Rev. King's comings and goings - who he spoke to, who he affiliated with, as well as his motel rooms We also know - despite the Neolib media wanting to cover it up- LBJ had already gotten away with the crime of the century in the JFK assassination, using the bogus Warren Commission as a Potemkin investigation to cover his crime.

LBJ's propensity to remove obstacles by murder was finally uncovered by 1984, in a Dallas Morning News headline article, e.g.

Billie Sol Estes reported that Johnson had Henry Harvey Marshall, a USDA official in charge of the federal cotton allotment detail,  killed because he had attempted to link Estes’ nefarious dealings to the then Vice-President.  While Estes ended up doing prison time, he did have his say before a grand jury (which subpoenaed him) after his release in 1984. As reported in news story, Estes linked Johnson and two others to the slaying of Marshall.  

 In the follow-up grand jury investigation, Johnson, his one-time aide Cliff Carter, and ‘Mac’ Wallace were all deemed “co-conspirators in the murder” of Marshall[1].

Re: the JFK assassination, most of us in deep politics firmly believe that Vietnam was the “Devil’s deal” LBJ struck with his JFK assassination collaborators, in order that he be catapulted into office – while facing  felony charges(barely days before) .  This isn’t “blowing smoke” either. As Steve Kornacki reported in his ‘UP’ journal on MSNBC, the morning of Nov. 23, 2013. Using tapes and media documents, Kornacki showed that Johnson was about to be exposed as an influence peddler in conjunction with the Bobby Baker scandal by LIFE magazine in its upcoming issue.

A paper trail of bank statements and payments was to have been included, and as Kornacki pointed out a Senate investigation would likely have ensued with LBJ being dumped from Kennedy’s 1964 ticket.  In other words, LBJ had by far the most to gain from JFK’s assassination, since he’d then be next in line as President, and not have to face justice in the Baker scandal. Just consider the contrasts: dishonor and imprisonment versus ascension to the top office in the land and the power to set in motion an “investigation” that would not only hide the real culprits but quash the Baker episode in its tracks.

Philip Nelson, whose book ‘LBJ – The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination’ – is noteworthy for its exacting documented detail, observes (Chapter 6: The Conspirators, p. 317):

“The crime could only have been accomplished with at least the acquiescence and foreknowledge of the only man capable of choreographing the massive cover-up which was immediately launched. It is axiomatic that since the cover-up started before the shots were fired, the order for JFK’s assassination could only have come from his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.”

He goes on to note that no other conceivable person, whether Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt….or Lee Harvey Oswald…" had the motive, means, the opportunity, the demonstrated pattern of previous criminal – even murderous conduct, and the resolve to see it through.”

All this may appall some delusional,  Pollyanish Americans, and I can picture some of them holding fingers to their ears  and doing a screaming song:  ‘La la la la la la..nay....nay....nay”.. But they had better damned well wake up to the facts. This guy not only saw to it Kennedy was offed, and he could take his sordid place in history without being prosecuted, he also paved the way for the massive expansion of the Vietnam war (via the Tonkin Gulf incident- and resolution) as payback to his nefarious  allies (especially in the national security state) who helped him do it! 

As for the Civil Rights Act, let's get it clear that the conception for the bill was largely due to JFK, but his assassination prevented completion of the process. LBJ,  then, though a reluctant civil rights warrior, realized he could kill two birds with one stone by getting the legislation through: 1) Further adding to his cover (as assassination mastermind) by deflecting attention to Kennedy's bill and its successive passage, and 2) building a basis for a legacy to take hagiographers (nee, 'historians') minds off his actual deeds - making them build him up as some latter day civil rights 'hero'.

Do not believe it! Johnson was an exploitative sewer rat, who expediently used civil rights and the voting rights act to build his so-called legacy and deflect attention away from his real and ongoing misdeeds - including the bogus Warren Commission as a cover-up device for the Kennedy assassination. As one HuffPo author put it:

LBJ was an awful man. He only promoted and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act because he thought it was politically expedient. He disagreed violently and kept it a secret, something I think is unreservedly detestable. Or is it a common politician's disease?
Let's look at another quote attributed to "Great Society & Civil Rights Hero" LBJ:

"These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again."

The best thing anyone can do in the midst of all the anti-Selma blather is to go see the movie and tune out the cacophony of zeros trying to disparage it. And if they claim creds of a "historian" - don't buy that either. They are merely  LBJ hagiographers masquerading as historians!

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1rIDmDWSms