“Now if the assassination of JFK was not an opportunistic event perpetrated by one assassin, but rather a carefully planned public execution, then it was absolutely imperative to fix a specific date in a specific Texas city for a motorcade to move slowly at noon through an insecure location with multiple weapon locations. With a JFK calendar filled with events to be attended in Washington, overseas and around the country, the plotters needed an extremely persuasive argument to insure that John F. Kennedy would come to Texas when they wanted him to.” —George Michael Evica, November 1993
Connally’s Secret
My fellow Texan, former Governor John B. Connally (JBC), had a big, dark secret when it came to his personal involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Which, unfortunately, he took to his grave.
The following quote and photo are from a Facebook post by Alan L. Kent, January 7, 2015:
Painting by Fort Worth artist Leslie Lanzotti Solomon
While Superman’s instincts were sound, it is doubtful that JFK would have told him that he was going to Texas to “mend fences.” Because that’s not why he made the trip in November of ‘63, although that is the generally accepted narrative. In reality, Kennedy was sitting pretty from an electoral perspective at that time. As was the Democratic Party nationally. The people who were in trouble were the conservative Democrats in Texas — particularly Gov. Connally — and Vice president Johnson. George Michael Evica, after an intense study of the reasons for the Texas trip, and of the responsibility for the planning of that trip, summarized: “Kennedy intimates have verified that Kennedy was not going to Texas to mend anyone’s Democratic fences, despite the repetition of the Warren Commission, House Select Committee on Assassinations, LBJ, and Connally. All these assertions are simply not true.” As Kennedy men Larry O’Brien and Kenny O’Donnell put it, “That wasn't the trip we planned.”
The real reason Kennedy went to Texas at that time was the lure of a testimonial dinner for his long-time friend, Congressman Albert Thomas. Thomas, who had been diagnosed with cancer, was the powerful head of the House Appropriations Committee, and a Kennedy ally. The invitation to Kennedy to attend the Houston dinner (and, in the normal course of things, to plan Texas trips to San Antonio and Dallas) was issued not by Thomas himself, but by the “dinner committee” that was planning the event. The chairman of that committee was long-time Connally and LBJ man Jack Valenti. Subsequently, the Johnson/Connally Texas interests would take nearly complete control of the planning for the trip, including the vital selection of the Dallas luncheon site, a decision in which Connally and pliant Texas-based Secret Service agents trumped the wishes of the Kennedy White House planners, and which resulted in the President’s motorcade being sent down the now-familiar slow, vulnerable route through Dealey Plaza.
This is a long story, and not a pretty one. It is a story that - like much else involving the murder of JFK — has been told very poorly by mainstream historians. George Michael Evica, from a 1993 presentation based on his research into this affair: “Remember who set it up. John Connally and his associates got very early control of the entire Texas trip. They got very early control of the Dallas itinerary. They got control of the luncheon site which determined the motorcade route. And that motorcade route from Love Field to the Trade Mart had to go through Dealey Plaza. Accepting passively those turns meant you put John F. Kennedy under the guns.”
So, while Superman was right to be suspicious of the “Cowboys,” his warning would have been even stronger had he known the full story! (Painting by Fort Worth artist Leslie Lanzotti)
Alan Kent is a longtime, excellent researcher and student of President Kennedy’s murder. JBC’s suspected role as a conspirator in JFK’s assassination is an area of ignorance by most other students of the conspiracy. They gratuitously argue over whether he was a conspirator or innocent. Study the late Professor George Michael Evica’s ASK ‘93 Connally workshop, as Alan Kent did, and you will clearly see JBC was a conspirator.1
Almost nobody knows that evidence. Evica argued that Connally was a direct conspirator, controlling the kill-zone motorcade route selection all year. LBJ had plausible deniability all year, as he would have had to. Right-wing Texas Democrats JBC and LBJ argued with JFK, the night before Dallas, to replace Connally in the President’s limousine with left-wing Democrat, Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough. Yarborough was a political nemesis of Johnson and Connally. Fortunately for Yarborough, JFK won that argument.
In my Zapruder-film essay,2 I presented evidence that Connally was the targeted second victim. But I did not address why he was targeted. Given Evica’s evidence, Connally was one of the first conspirators designated to be eliminated. JBC survived by a fluke, and he and his wife, Nellie, used his knowledge as life insurance for the rest of their lives.
That’s why, for the rest of his life, Connally impossibly supported the Warren Commission’s lies but not its single-bullet fantasy. After being President Nixon’s Treasury Secretary, JBC switched to the Republican Party and was put on Nixon’s short list to replace Vice President Spiro Agnew. Nixon said JBC was his top pick to succeed him as president. JBC wanted out of the limo. He knew. And so did Nixon.
Connally continued as a conspirator thereafter, albeit incongruously. He knew world-class sharpshooters would not miss. But that was not enough to keep him from getting last-minute cold feet. When the Yarborough gambit failed, Connally had to trust his co-conspirators — until he was hit. He screamed, “My god, they’re going to kill us both!” (Within a week, JBC had changed the word “both” to the more innocent sounding “all.”) That’s the picture painted by Evica’s facts. JBC was smart and savvy. He knew all the JFK haters intimately. Look at what he did that whole year. Compartmentalized or not, he knew.
The initial trip planners were “Connally men,” Sons of the Republic of Texas. To be in the Son’s elite subgroup, the Knights of San Jacinto, so it is said, one has to be a direct descendant of the Texas Revolution generation.
Nonetheless, several “Connally men” were Knights of San Jacinto, like Jack Valenti, so I was told. They followed Connally to LBJ’s team, not vice versa. JBC was expendable, mostly because he knew too much, and his role in getting JFK in the kill zone was easily detectable.3
The best way to misdirect attention from Connally’s role was to kill him. The lying, damage-control gymnastics disguising Connally’s role, which Evica revealed, were necessary only because JBC survived.
Moyers’ Secret
Another of my fellow Texans, Bill Moyers, also has a big, dark secret when it comes to his personal involvement in the Kennedy assassination. “The Bill Moyers?” you ask. "The Bill Moyers who became a liberal icon and the most trusted man in American broadcast journalism since Walter Cronkite? The one who became a personal and political aide as an intern to Lyndon Baines Johnson and rose to be his White House Press Secretary? The one who got a Master of Divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and became a Baptist minister? The one who reported that the biggest story of our time is how the right-wing media has become the propaganda arm of the GOP? The one who, in early 2014, reported that the other biggest story of our time is a ‘must-read essay’ — former GOP congressional analyst Mike Lofgren’s analysis of America's Deep State?4 The Bill Moyers who joined other LBJ loyalists and Warren Commission apologists, including Jack Valenti, in accusing the History Channel of libel, threatening legal action against A&E Television Networks, owner of the History Channel, resulting in killing further broadcasts of Nigel Turner’s nine-part documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy?”5
Yes, that Bill Moyers.
LBJ aide Bill Moyers in the oval office. File: LBJ Bill Moyers jpg, Wikimedia Commons
Moyers, who is still alive as of this writing, needs to be subpoenaed and asked under oath specific questions about his role in the planning of the motorcade route.
In George Michael Evica’s 1993 talk on the planning of President Kennedy’s Dallas motorcade, he presented a detailed analysis of the evidence for his conclusion that:
“John Connally and his associates got very early control of the entire Texas trip. They got very early control of the Dallas itinerary. They got control of the luncheon site which determined the motorcade route. And that motorcade route from Love Field to the Trade Mart had to go through Dealey Plaza. Accepting passively those turns meant you put John F. Kennedy under the guns….the forces that impelled Connally and his associates to demand their choice of the luncheon site and therefore their motorcade route, taking the twisting legal turns in deadly Dealey Plaza had scheduled John F. Kennedy to die on Elm Street in Dallas, Texas at noon on November 22nd 1963.”
Bill Moyers was working closely with those Connally associates controlling the motorcade route decisions. Evica argued for questioning Moyers and his representative, Elizabeth Harris, about a specific area.
From the transcript:
MR. EVICA: …Alright, now we have a discussion, [1963, Nov.] 17th and the 18th, and we’re not told who Elizabeth Harris is. Elizabeth Harris argues, she says, practically against the entire Connally group, for publication of the route, “We’ve got to get the people out. This is a people’s motorcade. Please, let’s have it come out.” And they say no.
AUDIENCE: Wasn’t she with Moyers from what we know?
MR. EVICA: She’s Moyers’ advance person. That’s very scary. She was very close to Moyers. She was operating with the Austin Secret Service office with Bill Moyers and with the people choosing the motorcade route. So I would immunize Elizabeth Harris because it seems to me that we’re very close to discovering how they manipulated it. Because on that same day in Washington, the Washington correspondents around Salinger — they finally know that the President’s going — and they say, “No, we’re giving out no routes whatsoever. They will not be published,” the same day that Elizabeth Harris in Dallas is arguing for the Austin Connally office, as the assigned representative of Bill Moyers, to publish the route. On the same day, therefore, they decide in Dallas to publish, and in Washington they refuse to give the routes out because the Secret Service said it was dangerous. Alright? You can hear, right through the publication of the motorcade routes, that disinformation set of contradictions.
AUDIENCE: At this time, when was the motorcade route published?
MR. EVICA: When was it published?
AUDIENCE: It was the 19th.
MR. EVICA: Absolutely, the 19th. ...John Connally and his associates got very early control of the entire Texas trip. They got very early control of the Dallas itinerary. They got control of the luncheon site which determined the motorcade route. And that motorcade route from Love Field to the Trade Mart had to go through Dealey Plaza. Accepting passively those turns meant you put John F. Kennedy under the guns….the forces that impelled Connally and his associates to demand their choice of the luncheon site and therefore their motorcade route, taking the twisting legal turns in deadly Dealey Plaza had scheduled John F. Kennedy to die on Elm Street in Dallas, Texas at noon on November 22nd 1963.
[Tape 2, Side A, transcript pp. 69-70]
Bill Moyers should not be allowed to take his secret to the grave, as John Connally was. Moyers needs to be held legally accountable — NOW.
Richard Bartholomew, Transcript: “John Connally's Role in the Planning of the Trip,” New Leads and Revelations, Break-out Topics, Assassination Symposium on John F. Kennedy, Hyatt Regency Hotel at Reunion Square, Dallas, Texas, November 18-22, 1993, Saturday, November 20, 1993.
Richard Bartholomew, “Z-film–Red Frame, White Light,” The Deep State in the Heart of Texas, San Antonio, Texas, Say Something Real Press, 2018. pp. 380-384.
In early April, 1963, the date for Kennedy’s trip to Texas was set for November 21st. The occasion was an appreciation dinner in Houston for Kennedy’s friend, Texas Congressman Albert Thomas. On April 23rd, Lyndon Johnson made a cryptic statement at a press conference in Dallas that included a phrase about reporters figuratively shooting Kennedy during his Texas trip. The next day, April 24th, Marina Oswald moved into the home of her friend Ruth Hyde Paine. That same day, Lee Harvey Oswald departed for New Orleans, arriving on April 25th. On April 26th, George Wing acquired a used Rambler station wagon from C.B. Smith Motors, an Austin, Texas dealership owned by C.B. Smith, a life-long student of Latin America, and one of Lyndon Johnson's closest friends. The sales manager was Smith’s son, C.B. Smith, Jr. The salesman, R.L. Lewis, died under unusual circumstances seven weeks after Kennedy’s assassination. The senior Smith’s mentor, Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb, was an intimate friend of those planning Albert Thomas’ dinner. Webb died suddenly in late April, 1963, in a one-car accident near Austin. (p. 140)
From Penn Jones, Jr.’s book, Forgive My Grief IV (1976):
On April 23, 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson made a round of appearances in Dallas, including a stop for a press conference at The Dallas Times Herald in which he predicted President Kennedy would visit Texas later in the year. Johnson gave the general schedule which included a Dallas luncheon.
During the day’s activities, Johnson spoke to 2,000 business and civic leaders in the Crystal Ball Room of the Baker Hotel. Included in Lyndon’s remarks, according to page 22 of The Times Herald of April 24, are the quoted paragraphs:
He said the President of the United States is like a pilot and the election is when the nation picks an airplane and a pilot for the next four years.
COMMON DANGER
“Once you pick him, and you’re flying across the water in bad weather, don’t go and open the door and try to knock him in the head. He’s the only pilot you have and if the plane goes down, you go with it.
“At least wait until next November before you shoot him down.”
November 1963 was not a Presidential election year! Did this man who had been an office holder for twenty-five years forget his election calendar? (pp. 1-2)
April 21 is San Jacinto Day in Texas, the anniversary of Sam Houston’s victory over Santa Anna. The Sons of the Republic of Texas, and its elite subgroup, The Knights of San Jacinto, meet every April in commemoration. In 1963, this group formed the “dinner committee” that planned the Albert Thomas dinner.
Michael S. Lofgren, “Anatomy of the Deep State,” BillMoyers.com, February 21, 2014. Accessed Jan. 30, 2023. https://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/#1
