Iran protested the United States and United Kingdom for their roles in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Wednesday, implicating the two nations in the attack, the official Iranian Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Saturday.

Iran sent a letter to the Swiss embassy in Tehran – the only official diplomatic channel between Iran and the United States in Tehran – saying that CIA-led operations in the Islamic Republic are known, and blaming the US for supporting “terrorist groups against Iran.”

Tehran also sent a letter to the British Foreign Ministry, claiming British intelligence operations aided in the killing of the 32-year-old Roshan in a car bomb.

The letter cited a quote by Foreign Intelligence Service Head (MI6) John Sawers, who said that the UK was beginning intelligence operations against Iran, according to IRNA.

Iran demanded a response from both governments.

The Islamic Republic has blamed the violent death of Roshan on the CIA, Israel and now MI6. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton summarily denied the charges and Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Israel had no role in the attack, to the best of his knowledge…

[continues at the Jerusalem Post]

Iran Affairs

I’m sure you’ve heard about the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US and bomb the Israeli embassy etc. which was supposedly “directed by factions of the Iranian government” (whatever that means.)

Simple question: Why? Suppose the alleged plot was successful – then what? Apart from risking a major diplomatic incident, what would Iran have to gain from doing any of this? Would Saudi Arabia or Israel simply disappear? Are the Iranians just crazy people who like to blow up places for no real gain?

There have been many such ‘terror plots’ foiled in the US – and the one thing they all had in common was that there was a government informant who was involved and even instigated the plot by recruiting some otherwise hapless and simple-minded “terrorists” and provided them with the tools and financing – including buying them the military boots that were later presented in their trial as evidence of their militancy, as well as the cameras that they used to photograph their intended targets.

How hapless and simple-minded? Remember Jose Padilla who was supposedly going to launch a nuclear “dirty bomb” attack? Did you know he was planning to convert plain uranium ore (i.e. rocks) into enriched uranium … by swinging a bucket of the stuff in a circle over his head? Yes folks, these are the “terrorists.”

Of course the line between informant and agent provocateur is very negligible. Some of you may remember Tommy the Traveler, a government agent who traveled to college campuses across the US and infiltrated student anti-war movements, in order to provoke them into committing acts of violence for which they could be arrested?

Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal.

The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him. She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy.

The tapes were recorded with leading historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963, and had been sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston.

The then Mrs Kennedy, who went on to marry Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, had ordered that they should not be released until 50 years after her death, with some reports suggesting she feared that her revelations might make her family targets for revenge. She died 17 years ago from cancer aged 64 and now her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, has agreed to release the recordings early.

It’s well known that in March 1981, John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan. What is not well known is that several years later, the life of President Reagan and the life of his vice president, George H.W. Bush, were threatened again — in fact, not just once.

“In the space of 18 months, four situations came to the attention of the Secret Service,” says Robert Fein, who in the mid-1980s worked with the Secret Service as a psychologist. Two were convicted, and two were sent to psychiatric facilities, Fein says, though the government didn’t exactly advertise it.

So Fein and Secret Service agent Bryan Vossekuil undertook the most extensive study of assassins and would-be assassins ever done. In the Secret Service Exception Case Study Project, they identified 83 people who had completed assassinations or made assassination attempts since 1949 — some cases known to the public, some not — and collected every document they could find. Fein and Vossekuil also went to visit many of these people in jail. Most said they’d be very glad to talk, Fein recalls.

The researchers asked prisoners how they chose targets, how they prepared. They inquired about their motives, every intimate detail of their process. After they asked these questions, they combined the answers with other sources and analyzed the information. In 1999, they published their results in The Journal of Forensic Sciences.

The insights of this study are interesting to review in light of the Arizona shooting. Perhaps the most interesting finding is that according to Fein and Vossekuil, assassinations of political figures were almost never for political reasons.

“It was very, very rare for the primary motive to be political, though there were a number of attackers who appeared to clothe their motives with some political rhetoric,” Fein says.

What emerges from the study is that rather than being politically motivated, many of the assassins and would-be assassins simply felt invisible. In the year before their attacks, most struggled with acute reversals and disappointment in their lives, which, the paper argues, was the true motive. They didn’t want to see themselves as nonentities.

“If the objective is notoriety or fame, that’s the most efficient instrumental mechanism by which to achieve that. I don’t mean to be flip about that, but a public official is likely to bring them a substantial amount of recognition instantly, without having to achieve something,” says Randy Borum, a professor at the University of South Florida who worked on the study.

And one thing Borum and Fein say about choosing a political figure — as opposed to choosing a show-business celebrity — is that the would-be assassins are able to associate themselves with a broader political movement or goal. That allows them to see themselves as not such a bad person. In this way, Borum says, assassins are basically murderers in search of a cause.

Another assumption people make about assassins is that they’re insane — people completely divorced from reality. But this study — to a degree — rejects that idea as too simplistic. Yes, the authors write, many of the people were experiencing or had experienced serious mental health issues: 44 percent had a history of depression, 43 percent a history of delusional ideas, 21 percent heard voices. But, as Fein points out, the way these people sought to address what they saw as their main problems — anonymity and failure — wasn’t inherently crazy.

“There’s nothing crazy about thinking that if I attacked the president or a major public official, I would get a lot of attention. I would get a lot of attention. My goal was notoriety,” Fein says. “That’s why I bought the weapon.”

Who believes that WikiLeaks’ revealing of classified information warrants a penalty of death for the leakers? Surprisingly (or not), many of our leaders and political pundits do. PeopleOKWithMurderingAssange.com collects quotes from mainstream sources calling for the killing of Julian Assange, suggesting that the assassination of whistle blowers has become a respectable thing to endorse:

“This fellow Anwar al-Awlaki, a joint U.S. citizen hiding out in Yemen, is on a ‘kill list’. Mr. Assange should be put on the same list.” — G. Gordon Liddy (Former White House Adviser, talk show host)

“I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead? Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?” — Jonah Goldberg (Editor-at-large of National Review Online)

“Julian Assange should be targeted like the Taliban.” — Sarah Palin

An aide to Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) tells CBS News that the Indiana Republican plans to introduce legislation next week that would encase the House Gallery in “a transparent and substantial material” such as Plexiglas that would keep members of the public from being able to throw explosives or make other attacks on members on the House floor.

Burton has introduced similar legislation in the past. It reads in part, “The Architect of the Capitol shall enclose the visitors’ galleries of the House of Representatives with a transparent and substantial material, and shall install equipment so that the proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives will be clearly audible in the galleries.”

A past version of the legislation, which will be reintroduced in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday, references past attacks on Congress. Among them are a 1915 bombing by a man protesting U.S. involvement in World War 1, the shooting of five members of Congress by Puerto Rican nationalists during a House vote in 1954, and a the placing of a bomb by the Weather Underground in a Senate bathroom in 1971. (The bomb went off early and no one was hurt.)

Burton is not the only lawmakers pressing for extra security precautions in the wake of the Giffords shooting. Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois announced today that he is pushing to have members’ office budgets increased to cover additional security measures. The new GOP House cut members’ budgets by five percent last week. Jackson says that cut should be reversed and another ten percent should be added to budgets to cover installing cameras at district offices, hiring security guards and other measures.

Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman’s intentions.

King is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. The proposed law follows the Saturday shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and a federal judge that left six dead, including the judge, and 14 wounded.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation’s most outspoken gun-control advocates, is backing King’s measure and is expected to put the weight of his pro-gun-control organization behind it.

It is already illegal in the U.S. to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of a school. King’s legislation to make it illegal to knowingly carry a gun within 1,000 feet of the president, vice president, members of Congress or judges of the Federal Judiciary, would offer government officials the same protection.

Jared Lee Loughner, charged with Saturday’s shootings, has invoked his right to silence, leaving us ignorant of his motives. Sources disagree on his politics — an acquaintance calls him an “extreme” liberal; a government memo links him to a “racial-realist” journal (one that denies any ties to him). His online writings point to an unhinged mind. But though much remains unclear, people are withdrawing some of their first theories, which rashly labeled the shootings a Tea Party / Republican plot.

Replacing those accusations is a broader look at how the shooter may have responded to intense political rhetoric. Critics again blame the right-wing, mainly Sarah Palin, whose PAC last year produced an image with crosshairs on congressional seats such as Giffords’. It was only a slight escalation from the usual manner of treating politics as war (Targeted districts, swiftboating, battleground states, political campaigns). But it was an escalation, and people called Palin out on it. Giffords herself spoke against it, stating her fears of a possible response.

Some critics now ask Palin to apologize for the graphic , which her site has now removed. The petition reads: “Violent threats have consequences.” Fine. We must all consider our words’ consequences. And reducing vitriol would improve politics.

But other people want to go further. Thousands across the web now call for victims’ families to sue Sarah Palin, or for us to charge her criminally for inciting violence. Some, without a trace of irony, post these suggestions to ACLU message boards. Pennsylvania’s Rep. Bob Brady has proposed a bill banning imagery that uses gun-sights or cross-hairs. Like those from elsewhere on the political spectrum, these critics, after a tragedy, are forgetting Americans’ rights under the law. The First Amendment allows figurative calls to arms — and much, much more.

In this particular case, nothing proves that the image influenced the shooter. And if it did influence him, Palin need not have foreseen that it would have. The image was a political rallying cry to fellow party members. We might avoid similar calls from now on, but we don’t criminalize all that may motivate deranged assassins. If we did, we would have to ban Catcher in the Rye and permanently incapacitate Jodie Foster.

Even if the image’s designers could have foreseen its consequences, they did not intend them, which should remove criminal liability. Yet even if they did intend them — and this is what people so easily forget — the law would still protect that speech. Sarah Palin could have, for the sake of argument, declared: “Citizens! You should shoot all the Democrats in Congress.” The law would have protected her.

We punish dangerous speech only when it incites imminent lawless action. So if you were present on Saturday in Tuscon and urged the shooter to act, you would have broken the law. If you instructed him beforehand to act on that day and in that place, you would have broken the law. But advocating lawbreaking in general, despite the consequences that may follow, merely expresses an opinion. The Constitution protects that, even if the opinion is objectionable or dangerous.

This standard exists, in part, because of the ACLU. In 1964, Klan leader Clarence Bradenburg called for “re-vengeance” against blacks and Jews at a televised rally. This invitation for violence earned him a fine and a sentence of up to ten years. But the ACLU defended Brandenburg all the way to the Supreme Court, which then revised the legal standard for criminal speech.

Bradenburg v Ohio legalized racist speech and other violent calls to action. It also allowed legitimate political advocacy that had for the previous 50 years been illegal. According to the First Amendment, you may advocate anything, even positions the majority abhors, and argue for it however you want — so long as you don’t infringe on someone else’s rights. Others’ interpretation of your message does not undermine your right to express it. Not do the criminal actions others may later take.

People must choose their words carefully. But encourage self-restraint — don’t ask the government for censorship.

TUCSON — Prosecutors charged Jared L. Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old college dropout, with five federal counts on Sunday, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, in connection with a shooting rampage on Saturday morning that left six people dead and 14 wounded.

Evidence seized from Mr. Loughner’s home, about five miles from the shooting, indicated that he had planned to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, according to documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix.

Special Agent Tony M. Taylor Jr. of the F.B.I. said in an affidavit that an envelope found in a safe in the home bore these handwritten words: “I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and “Giffords.”

Mr. Loughner, who is believed to have acted alone, is in federal custody and is scheduled to make his first court appearance before a magistrate judge in Phoenix on Monday.

Ms. Giffords was in critical condition after surviving, against the odds, a single gunshot wound to the head at point-blank range. Her doctors were cautiously optimistic that she would survive, and said on Sunday that they had removed nearly half of her skull to prevent damage from the swelling of her brain.

An outpouring of grief was on display all over Tucson, where friends of the many victims joined complete strangers in lighting candles and offering tear-filled prayers. From the back of the temple Ms. Giffords attends, Naomi Present, the distraught daughter of a rabbi, cried out on Sunday morning, “Why, why, why, why?”

Many across America were asking the same thing, and the state found itself on the defensive, with its top lawmakers asserting that Arizona was not a hothouse of ugly rhetoric. President Obama called on Americans to observe a moment of silence at 11 a.m. Monday in honor of the wounded and dead…

[continues in the New York Times]

At the New World Order Report, Jonathan Elinoff provides a much more extensive presentation of how I introduce 9/11 in my lectures and essays. (He barely mentions 9/11 as it turns out — but he doesn’t really need to because of all the other Truth he presents that paves the way!)

My own approach to 9/11 has been not only about the reality of the dark side of human nature, but all about context — amply demonstrating that 9/11 is just one more monstrous manipulation of world events — and that OF COURSE “our leaders” would do it, because just look at how many times they’ve done it before!

But of course that means newbies coping with the SHOCK that almost all of the U.S. and World History we’ve been taught is JUST ONE BIG FAIRY-TALE. I’m convinced, though, that all that truth is about to “bust out all over.” And this compendium of facts from J. Elinoff just may be one of the Internet catalysts to help it happen.

Only problem is — no matter how much he has condensed the reports and even video clips of news broadcasts that prove it all — this thing is almost as long as a book! And it’s infested with some typos and code glitches that make it look a little bit of a mess. I would LOVE to edit it down and clean it up (especially to send to every newspaper editor I know), but that’s WAY too much time and effort.

So here it is, AS it is. Be aware: even with only a quick skim through it is still OF GREAT VALUE!

After reading the article released by Cracked.com, I decided to update and revise their work. The article gave me a chuckle because it lacked many famous and much larger conspiracy theories that became known. Their article had only listed seven. I can name 33 and I am about to release a revised list soon with 75. The article I read at Cracked can be viewed here, but don’t waste your time, all of that is in this article and more.

Most people can’t resist getting the details on the latest conspiracy theories, no matter how far-fetched they may seem.  At the same time, many people quickly denounce any conspiracy theory as untrue … and sometimes as unpatriotic or just plain ridiculous. Let’s not forget all of the thousands of conspiracies out of Wall Street like Bernie Madoff and many others to commit fraud and extortion, among many crimes of conspiracy. USA Today reports that over 75% of personal ads in the paper and on Craigslist are married couples posing as single for a one night affair. When someone knocks on your door to sell you a set of knives or phone cards, anything for that matter, do they have a profit motive?  What is conspiracy other than just a scary way of saying “alternative agenda”?  When 2 friends go to a bar and begin to plan their wingman approach on 2 girls they see at the bar, how often are they planning on lying to those girls?“  I own a small business and am in town for a short while. Oh yeah, you look beautiful.”

Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy.  However, it has come almost exclusively to refer to any fringe theory which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning. To conspire means “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end. ”The term “conspiracy theory” is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at stealing power, money, or freedom, from “the people”.

To many, conspiracy theories are just human nature. Not all people in this world are honest, hard working and forthcoming about their intentions.Certainly we can all agree on this.So how did the term “conspiracy theory” get grouped in with fiction, fantasy and folklore?  Maybe that’s a conspiracy, just kidding.  Or am I? …

[continues at New World Order Report]

The Bush team stopped using its harshest interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, years before leaving office. [Supposedly. - G.G.] And in Mr. Bush’s second term, Congress passed legislation bringing federal statutes into alignment with policies like military commissions and surveillance without warrants.

As a senator, Mr. Obama voted for the 2008 bill authorizing the surveillance program, which he has continued since taking office. He voted against a 2006 bill authorizing military commissions, but it passed anyway. While Mr. Obama initially halted the trials, he has since proposed reviving them in a revised form.

Mr. Obama has also drawn fire from human rights advocates for fighting to prevent detainees in Afghanistan from having habeas corpus rights. But his legal team notes that the 2006 Military Commissions Act contains a provision saying such prisoners may not challenge their detentions in court.

Still, Mr. Obama has also continued other Bush-era policies where statutory law is murkier or absent — like the C.I.A.’s “extraordinary rendition” program in which detainees are transferred to other countries and the invocation of the “state secrets” privilege to shut down some lawsuits. (The administration is reviewing both policies.)

And after grappling with how to close the prison at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama proposed a new system of preventive detention to deal with those terrorism suspects who, he says, would be hard to prosecute and dangerous to release.

But Mr. Obama’s insistence that he would create such a preventive detention regime only with Congressional authorization may pose little pragmatic obstacle, because he can claim lawmakers have already granted it.

In 2004, the Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, that Mr. Bush could detain — indefinitely, without trial and on domestic soil — a man accused of fighting for the Taliban. It cited Congress’s authorization to use military force against the perpetrators of the 2001 attacks, which remains on the books.

To be sure, Mr. Obama has made some significant changes to Bush policies. He closed the Central Intelligence Agency’s long-term prisons and required strict adherence to antitorture rules. He also released secret legal memorandums about interrogation.

Those changes have opened him up to attacks from the right. In particular, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused Mr. Obama of abandoning the Bush-Cheney strategies, suggesting that Mr. Obama would bear direct responsibility for any future terrorist attack.

Mr. Obama has embraced Mr. Cheney’s premise that he is an agent of change, as his campaign rhetoric suggested he would be. In a speech in May, Mr. Obama described his policies as “a new direction from the last eight years.”

But Jack Goldsmith, a top legal official in the Bush administration, said the claim of a vast gulf between Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism policies and those at the end of Mr. Bush’s tenure was false.

“There is a faux debate that something new is afoot and both the Obama administration and Cheney have an interest in that being the case, but it’s just not true,” he said. “It just serves almost everyone’s political interests to make it seem like something brand new is happening, but it’s mostly window dressing for just what was going on before.”

Divide et imperum.

Read more here.

Before I launch into an extended rant about the recent BP exploision, I wanted to highlight something that I thought was very important.

At a recent Washington Correspondents Association, President Barack Obama made an off-handed joke about using predator drones to keep the Jonas Brothers off his daughters. I know that this is one of those many times where I’m going to be told that I’m overreacting.

But let’s think for a second about the record of Barack Obama. A man who ran for office on promises of “hope and change” quickly proved that he was the same type of establishment hack as the man who sat in the chair before him. This was proven, above all, by maintaining the status quo in the Department of Defense, despite being elected in large part due to a massive backlash against American involvement in two imperialist wars.

There are real victims of American attacks on Pakistan with predator drones, many of them children. Over a thousand civilians are known to have been killed by predator drone attacks since they began in Pakistan. Further, Barack Obama has ordered not just predator drone attacks that kill civilians in Afghanistan. He is also the first President in world history to order an assassination against an American citizen.

Full Article at Black Sun Gazette

The New York Times reports:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.

American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.

Read more from the New York Times

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UNBELIEVABLE! That’s all we can say about having Jim Marrs on this episode of The Black Fridays Podcast!

Our time was too short, but Jim graciously spoke with us about his book Crossfire, socialism in America, white gold, and his first novel, The Sisterhood of the Rose.

Jim is an American former newspaper journalist and author of books and articles on a wide range of alleged cover ups and conspiracies. Marrs is a prominent figure in the JFK conspiracy press and his book Crossfire was a source for Oliver Stone’s film JFK.

He has also written books asserting the existence of government conspiracies regarding aliens, 9/11, telepathy, and secret societies. He was a news reporter in the Dallas–Fort Worth area and has taught a class on the Kennedy Assassination at University of Texas at Arlington. Marrs is a member of the Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

The endless tangle of questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds, time sequences and inconsistent testimony that has surrounded the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and has obsessively fascinated, if not entirely blinded, two generations of self-styled assassination investigators, probably never will be satisfactorily resolved. Each new release of documents from the various bureaucracies involved in the nearly half century old investigation may only deepen the apparent contradictions.

Within this morass of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey Oswald. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was found in the sniper’s nest at the Texas Book Depository. So was his palm print. He had also bought the ammunition. His cartridge cases were found near the body of a murdered policeman on the route of his flight.

In light of such evidence, the issue that ought to have concerned Americans was not Oswald’s technical guilt but whether he was involved with others in the assassination. Oswald was not a “loner” in the conventional sense. Ever since he was handed a pamphlet about the Rosenberg prosecution at the age of 15, he was a joiner, seeking affiliations with groups at home and abroad. When he was only 16, he wrote the Socialist Party, “I am a Marxist and have been studying Socialist Principles for well over five years,” and he requested information about joining their “Youth League.” He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, The Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA– correspondence that brought him under surveillance by the FBI.

[Read more at The Huffington Post]

According to the book by Steven M. Gillon The Kennedy Assassination — 24 Hours After via huffpo:

It was standard practice for the plane to take off as soon as the commander-in-chief was onboard. Even after McHugh had ordered the pilot to take off, however, “nothing happened.” According to the newly declassified transcript, Mrs. Kennedy was becoming desperate to leave. “Mrs. Kennedy was getting very warm, she had blood all over her hat, her coat…his brains were sticking on her hat. It was dreadful,” McHugh said. She pleaded with him to get the plane off the ground. “Please, let’s leave,” she said. McHugh jumped up and used the phone near the rear compartment to call Captain James Swindal. “Let’s leave,” he said. Swindal responded: “I can’t do it. I have orders to wait.” Not wanting to make a scene in front of Mrs. Kennedy, McHugh rushed to the front of the plane. “Swindal, what on earth is going on?” The pilot told him that “the President wants to remain in this area.”

McHugh, like most members of the Kennedy entourage, did not know that Johnson was onboard. They believed that the new president was on his own plane flying back to Washington. If LBJ was on the plane, McHugh wanted to see for himself. Since he had not seen Johnson in the aisle — and at 6′4″ Johnson would be tough to miss — McHugh assumed that he must then be in the bedroom. When he checked there Johnson was nowhere to be seen. The only place on the plane he had not inspected was the bathroom in the presidential bedroom.

What McHugh claimed to have witnessed next was shocking. “I walked in the toilet, in the powder room, and there he was hiding, with the curtain closed,” McHugh recalled. He claimed that LBJ was crying, “They’re going to get us all. It’s a plot. It’s a plot. It’s going to get us all.’” According to the General, Johnson “was hysterical, sitting down on the john there alone in this thing.”

I soon discovered that McHugh had told a similar story when he spoke by phone with Mark Flanagan, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Ironically, McHugh gave the interview to the HSCA a week before he sat down with the Kennedy Library in May 1978. “McHugh had encountered difficulty in locating Johnson but finally discovered him alone,” Flanagan wrote in his summary to the Committee. Quoting McHugh, the investigator noted that the General found Johnson “hiding in the toilet in the bedroom compartment and muttering, ‘Conspiracy, conspiracy, they’re after all of us.’”