LBJ

by Phillip F. Nelson

  Clearly, Estes’s checkered past causes anyone to be skeptical about his general credibility; therefore the veracity of his statements regarding Johnson’s involvement is open to debate. Yet one man—a man whose impeccable credentials and highly regarded reputation among Texas law enforcement officials, a man who knew Estes for more than two decades and was responsible for his finally being arraigned—Texas Ranger Captain Clint Peoples, felt that Estes’s unique knowledge of Johnson’s history of criminal conduct was the key to solving the “crime of the century.” Captain Peoples made the judgment that Estes was then a convincing witness who should be listened to; clearly, Peoples considered the man’s character at that point in time and felt that it justified giving him an equal measure, at least, of the “benefit of the doubt” so long extended to Lyndon B. Johnson. After working on his own time for many years to break the Wallace murders open, and tie him directly into the Kennedy assassination as well, as he was about to announce his findings, his car was broadsided by a large truck, immediately killing him. According to Madeleine Brown, who had gotten to know him and had furnished information to him regarding Mac Wallace, “His wrists showed marks (that apparently were caused) from handcuffs.”172 Captain Peoples knew too much and was still a threat to certain people and institutions as late as 1992. The statements made by Billie Sol Estes, therefore, are vindicated not by the author but by the estimable Ranger Captain Clint Peoples, whose intimate knowledge of the people and events related to this sorry chapter of American history more than offset any sway of doubt about the veracity of Estes. Interestingly, and perhaps coincidentally, both of Johnson’s key assistants in carrying out the darker dealings he determined were necessary died in mysterious ways two years before Johnson, in 1971: Mac Wallace died on January 9, 1971, when his late-model car mysteriously lost its steering capability at an inopportune time and ran off the road a few miles south of Pittsburg, Texas. The “accident” was also facilitated by the “stuffed” tailpipe, which caused carbon monoxide to seep into the interior of the car. At the time, Wallace was working for L&G Oil, in Longview, Texas, and had reportedly pressured Ed Clark for more money, based upon his past deeds.* Cliff Carter died of pneumonia in September of that year when, apparently, no penicillin could be located anywhere in Washington DC.173 Twenty-one years later, the former Texas Ranger who became a U.S. marshal, Clint Peoples, told a friend of his on June 19, 1992, that he had documentary evidence (a fingerprint) that Mac Wallace was involved in JFK’s assassination at the Texas School Book Depository building—four days before he was killed in the mysterious automobile accident.174

  Johnson went to great lengths to ensure that no audit trails would exist that might allow an investigator to establish any connection with himself to any of these murders. One such method he adopted was to avoid ever sending Wallace on commercial airlines, thus ensuring that his name was not on airline passenger manifests. Douglas Caddy, the onetime attorney for Billie Sol Estes, confirmed to this author that Estes stated to him that Johnson would always arrange transportation on military aircraft for these deadly trips:

  In 1984 I was administering grants from the Moody Foundation of Galveston, Texas to several tax-exempt organizations. A trustee of the foundation wanted to give to grant to Abilene Christian University that would partially be used to underwrite a book to be written by Billie Sol Estes about his first hand knowledge of Lyndon B. Johnson. In order to get the background information necessary so that the grant might be approved, the trustee asked me to visit Billie Sol Estes in Abilene, which I did. At that time Billie Sol Estes outlined to me the proposed contents of his book, which dealt, among other topics, with murders commissioned by LBJ. He indicated that LBJ over the years employed Malcolm Wallace as a stone cold killer to murder certain individuals who posed a threat to LBJ’s political ambitions. Billie Sol Estes told me that Johnson arranged at times for Malcolm Wallace to use a U.S. military plane to transport him to the location where the victim would be found. The pilots of the plane had no idea of the purpose of the trip, only that they were to provide transportation. Once Malcolm Wallace completed his assignment, he would reboard the military plane for the return trip. The Moody Foundation trustee was eager to get the grant approved so that Billie Sol Estes could write his historical account of LBJ but Abilene Christian University withdrew its interest in the grant after Billie Sol Estes testified before a Robertson County, Texas, grand jury about the roles of LBJ and Malcolm Wallace in the murder of Henry Marshall.175

  The modus operandi of Johnson and his hit team from the first murder to the last contained a common thread of characteristics (akin to crime scene DNA) that can be reduced to this: There was a single murderer of all the victims noted earlier, from Doug Kinser on through all the rest before JFK, and that was Mac Wallace: He consistently acted hurriedly and carelessly in all of these cases, just as he did in the first murder in which he was found guilty by a jury, yet let off the hook through the political muscle of Lyndon B. Johnson. The evidence left by the killer of Henry Marshall—the furtive attempt to try to make his death look like suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning—was also consistent with the murders of others connected to the Estes scandal. Also, the crime scene in Marshall’s murder closely resembled that in Kinser’s: signs of a struggle, multiple gunshot wounds; all indications that the murder was sloppily planned and carelessly executed.

  Bobby Baker and Friends

  The biggest threat facing LBJ throughout the summer and fall of 1963—greater than the Billie Sol Estes affair, which had been mostly contained at long last—was the ongoing Senate investigation of Johnson’s loyal aide and protégé, a man he often referred to as his “son”: Bobby Baker. (“I have two daughters,” Johnson used to say. “If I had a son, this would be the boy.”)176 Baker had worked in the Senate since 1943, when he was a fourteen-year-old page. From Lyndon’s election to the Senate in 1948, he knew that Johnson would be the key to his success, and Johnson likewise knew that he could train this boy and make him his protégé. If there was ever a question about how to handle a delicate problem, or an obstinate senator, Bobby would learn it from his mentor and boss. He came to be called the “one hundred and first senator” and was the closest person in Washington to Lyndon Johnson. Bobby even bought two houses (first on 30th Place, then on 52nd Street) next to Johnson’s in order to be as close as possible at all times to him. In the same block on 30th Place lived J. Edgar Hoover and the superlobbyist Fred Black, a very close associate and friend of Johnny Rosselli over many years.*

  Baker was hired by Johnson in 1955 as the secretary to the Senate majority leader. After the 1960 elections, Baker retained his position as Senate secretary under the wing of Senator Bob Kerr. In only eight years, while his salary doubled to $19,600, he reported (probably understated) his net worth as $2,166,866, which had grown from about $10,000 at the start. Despite his $20,000 salary, Baker had ownership interests in nine different corporations, including his own vending company, a travel agency, and one of the first high-rise hotels in Ocean City, Maryland, the Carousel. As the finishing touches were being put on the Carousel in the spring of 1962, the worst northeaster storm in history pounded the East Coast, from the mid-Atlantic northward to New England, destroying or heavily damaging thousands of homes, hotels, and/or other businesses; the damages to the Carousel were heavy as well, causing Baker and his partners to have to increase their already-sizeable investment even more. Baker had to tap some of his friends for more funds at that time: “I went to the best friend I ever had around the Capitol … Vice President [Johnson].”177

  Baker had also talked a friend, Alfred Novak, his wife, and brother into investing in the hotel and used the leverage of their money to build it. But they were more conservative than Baker and became very concerned when he kept expanding the building to include fancy restaurants and a nightclub. “The Novaks found themselves tied up in a scary three-way partnership which had $75,000 invested in real estate and its names on some $584,000 in mortgages and notes”17
8 (in 1962 money; the 2010 equivalents would be $469,000 and $3,650,000 respectively). Alfred Novak was afraid of losing his shirt and began complaining to Baker about his concerns. “On the morning of March 3, 1962, Mrs. Novak found him dead in the garage, the car engine running and the door open only a few inches.”179 It may only be a coincidence that this method of what was assumed to be a suicide was strikingly similar to one of the methods used in a series of murders of men involved in the Billie Sol Estes case committed during virtually the same time period. To strengthen his financial position, Baker arranged for additional loans from his friends Eddie Levinson, a Las Vegas hotel/casino man, and Benjy Siegelbaum, a Miami investor and gambler, to bail out Novak’s estate and finish the Carousel. When the hotel finally opened on July 22, 1962, the guest of honor at the grand opening—amid “a bevy of lush and scantily dressed beauties as hostesses”—was none other than Vice President Lyndon Johnson.180

  Although Johnson claimed to have only attended this for a few minutes before returning to Washington, his account was not credible, considering the news reports of it: “Bob Baker went into the hotel business with a 50-state splash that opened his [motel/casino], six miles north of Ocean City … Guests watched the limousine arrival of Vice President Johnson”181 According to North, “Given the obvious closeness of Baker to Johnson, it is safe to assume at this point that the aide well knows of the Vice President’s dislike for the Kennedys. It is not known whether Levinson and/or Siegelbaum are present at this gala event, but their absence would be surprising.”182 Johnson’s prevarication about how long he was there was no doubt intended to obscure the question of whom he met and partied with at the gala event. He must have enjoyed his trip to Ocean City, since he made a second appearance there three months later, in October; one of the party girls who was also there was the lovely Ellen Rometsch, who “was said to have organized a ring of Government girls to provide party fun.”183

  In addition to his close relationship with Lyndon Johnson, with whom he skimmed money through favors made and traded, influence peddling, and governmental job appointments, Baker had managed to ingratiate himself into the government bureaucracy that controlled the awarding of contracts for many areas of governmental commerce. This enabled him to award routine contracts and broker deals for companies interested in doing business with the government. One of the businesses that Baker so successfully ran on the side was his vending company, Serv-U Corporation, which allowed him to place his equipment and snacks and sodas into factories doing business with the government. It was this company that became his downfall, all because a competitor wanted a piece of the action. But before he formed his own company, he had extracted fees from other vending companies for being awarded contracts for such businesses.

  An example of Baker’s control over routine government contracts occurred in 1962, when Ralph L. Hill, owner of the Capitol Vending Company, came to Baker to get a contract to place vending machines on government-controlled property. For a fee of $5,600, Baker gave Hill such a contract with Melpar Inc., a subsidiary of North American Aviation. Hill did not realize that this fee would have to be paid annually, so when it came up for renewal in 1963, Baker wanted another $5,600. Hill complained that the fee was too high, and Baker then tried to force Hill to sell him his company, but Hill refused. Baker wanted to squeeze Hill out of the Melpar contract so his own company, Serv-U Corp., could take it over. Baker then threatened to cancel Hill’s contract, causing a fierce argument between the two.184 Ralph Hill also knew Speaker McCormack, whom he appealed to several times, asking him to get Vice President Johnson to force Baker off his back. Johnson apparently did not take Hill’s early threats seriously enough, and Baker failed to respond to these entreaties; the feud escalated into personal threats between other congressmen on both sides of the rotunda, many of whom had become the subjects of Baker’s own “confidential files”—another tactic learned from the master—through their appearances at another of Baker’s businesses: the Quorum Club. There were many other facets of the Bobby Baker enterprises that require elucidation, in order to fully understand the context and strength of the case against Lyndon B. Johnson, as it existed on the morning of November 22, 1963.

  Other Bobby Baker Ventures

  The Quorum Club was a private club started by Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Baker on the second floor of the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill. Its “membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connecteds who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations,” according to Baker.185 He is either being credulous, facetious, or coy here, because, unbeknownst to the partygoers, they only thought they were sharing secrets; in fact, the FBI had bugged the lounge, and Baker himself was even making his own tapes of the conversations at certain tables. This was not a unique situation, however, as Baker’s (and Johnson’s) friend Fred Black Jr., a major defense lobbyist, “kept a hotel suite at the Sheraton-Carlton in Washington where he and his friends … repaired to conduct business … or entertain ladies. Though we did not know it then, that suite was bugged by the FBI.”186

  Baker got to know all the good-looking young women working at the Senate, and a few high-class prostitutes as well, to provide entertainment for the politicians at the Quorum Club. The Quorum provided Hoover (and therefore, Johnson) much information for his files on the sexual activities of politicians; it also reaped even more valuable evidence about other chicanery being practiced by those same men, such as their acceptance of bribes for their influence in getting legislation passed that benefited certain companies willing to pay for it. In addition to the Quorum, another party place was owned by Baker, a town house on Capitol Hill that he rented to his secretary and mistress, Carole Tyler (she would eventually die in a plane crash, ironically on the beach directly in front of the Carousel).

  Baker, Black, and Hoover all passed information to LBJ regarding many politicians, the use of which explains how Johnson managed to survive other scandals, such as the aforementioned TFX and Billie Sol Estes episodes, that might have forced anyone else to have already resigned.187 The Serv-U Corporation was set up with financing arranged by Senator Kerr; other investors were solicited, including Baker’s lawyer, Ernest Tucker, and his friends Eddie Levinson and Benjamin B. Siegelbaum. By 1963, the business was grossing millions annually, functioning as a near monopoly on soft drink, candy, and cigarette sales from machines installed at sites where companies were performing defense-related work that depended on government contracts.188 It had been awarded the lion’s share of business at three major aerospace companies; at North American Aviation alone, it raked in $2.5 million annually from the California plants.189 Baker had done business with Jimmy Hoffa and a number of Mob figures in Las Vegas, Chicago, and New Orleans through Eddie Levinson. He was also involved with Clint Murchison in a meatpacking plant in Haiti that was kicking back thousands to Baker.190 In two cases, the slaughterhouse in Haiti failed USDA inspections because of poor sanitary practices, but after a trip to the Dominican Republic with Johnson, Baker’s leverage with the Department of Agriculture expanded, and he managed to help get the meatpacking operation approved despite the hygienic issues. The Haitians became dissatisfied with the product, and Murchison’s other lobbyist, Irving Davidson, brokered a new deal to allow the meat to be sold in the United States. Baker’s cut of a half cent per pound continued under the newer, more lucrative deal.191 As described by Peter Dale Scott, “While working for Johnson, Baker became the epitome of Washington wheeler-dealer sleaze. Repeatedly, he fronted for syndicate gamblers Cliff Jones and Ed Levinson, in investments which earned super-profits for himself and another military-industrial lobbyist, his friend Fred Black Jr. In exchange he intervened to help Jones and Levinson obtain casino contracts with the Intercontinental hotel system.”192 On August 21, 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson met with Bobby Baker and Fred Black and a senior executive from North American Aviation in his Executive Office Building. Normal
ly, he would take the necessary precautions and avoid meeting with his cronies in his official offices, since doing so would be recorded in the office’s daily log. It is not clear why Johnson had let down his guard on this occasion but the danger this posed to Johnson, if any of these three were foolish enough to confront him, could potentially expose him to blackmail.193

  The luck and the political influence and the resulting financial successes enjoyed by Bobby Baker during his years on Capitol Hill, as the “son” and protégé of Lyndon Johnson, began unraveling in early September 1963. With a little help from information supplied to him by Robert Kennedy, Senator John J. Williams of Delaware initiated an investigation into Baker’s activities as part of his desire to eliminate political corruption on Capitol Hill. Kennedy’s motive was to force Lyndon Johnson off the ticket in 1964 by getting this story into the press well ahead of the start of the campaign. Baker had been surrounded by unsavory characters and activities, which caused Kennedy to worry that this story would blow up in the middle of the 1964 campaign, becoming a major scandal for the entire administration, jeopardizing not only the reelection of JFK but the Democratic majority in Congress. Clearly, Johnson’s days in the Kennedy administration were numbered; in order to have him removed and for the dust created by the skirmish to have time to settle, his “retirement” would have to be announced within the first four or five months of 1964, which would have left his remaining time as vice president no more than about six months. Such a chain of events would have, of course, eliminated any possibility of his lifetime obssession ever being satisfied.

  Senator Williams already had a reputation as the Sherlock Holmes of Capitol Hill for his previous work; during a fifteen-year period his investigations resulted in over 200 indictments and 125 convictions. Williams was a humble, self-effacing man, beyond reproach, tenaciously dedicated to performing his duties as a public servant and intent on cleaning up the inner bureaucracy of the federal government by exposing bribery, sales of political influence, conflicts of interest, and all other sins of a government he did not quite trust. During his service in the Senate, he was rightly referred to as “the conscience of the Senate.” Senator Williams became the prime mover in bringing about the investigation of Baker, during which he leaked information to his primary media contact: Clark Mollenhoff of the Des Moines Register, who wrote a series of stories about Baker’s business activities. He had observed firsthand the activities of Bobby Baker and quickly found that his suspicions of a conflict of interest with his Serv-U Corporation were valid indeed. Fellow committee member Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania joined Williams in his campaign, prompting a cataclysmic implosion that rocked the entire Senate: Lyndon Johnson had attempted to stop Scott by threatening to make public information about his relationship with certain lobbyists and told Scott that he would use his influence to close down the Philadelphia Navy Yard unless he backed off. When Scott refused, the lid blew off in the full Senate, causing Barry Goldwater to demand an official Senate investigation. In the meantime, Johnson knew that Robert Kennedy had been passing information about the Baker case to Senator Williams to assist him in investigating Baker. This was revealed in interviews that Burkett Van Kirk, chief counsel for the Republicans on the Rules Committee, gave to Seymour Hersh for his book, The Dark Side of Camelot. Bobby even assigned a Justice Department lawyer to serve as an intermediary to the minority (Republican) staff to supply them with documents about Johnson and his financial dealings with Baker. As Seymour Hersh reported, “There was no doubt about Bobby’s motive in providing this information to the Republicans, Van Kirk said: ‘To get rid of Johnson. To dump him. I am as sure of that as I am that the sun comes up in the East.’”194 Van Kirk also told Hersh, “There’s no doubt in my mind … that Reynold’s testimony would have gotten Johnson out of the vice presidency.”195