On the morning of May 11, 1966, Supreme Court Justice Byron White called FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's top assistant, Cartha "Deke" DeLoach, with a special request.

Could he come by with friends for a special tour of FBI headquarters? The answer was an immediate yes, and early that afternoon, White showed up at the FBI's D.C. headquarters with two of his law clerks and a college-age male friend from California.

The group toured the FBI Building for more than 90 minutes, and in a memo placed in White's FBI file, White was described as "most congenial throughout," and "quite interested in firearms."

The memo was one of dozens released this month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act filed after White's death on April 15, 2002. Under the law, most privacy considerations that keep the government from disclosing FBI files during a person's life fall away upon death.

Included in the file are new details about a man who assaulted White in 1982 in Salt Lake City as White was about to give a speech - the first assault on a Supreme Court justice in nearly a century. Another memo provides new information about White's hospitalization in 1962, when he was deputy attorney general in Robert Kennedy's Justice Department.

But mainly the file chronicles the occasional contacts between White and the FBI, a relationship that evolved into a cordial, routine friendship between White and Director Hoover. When Hoover died in 1972, White was the only associate justice to join Chief Justice Warren Burger at Hoover's funeral.

"It wasn't a specially close friendship," recalls White's biographer Dennis Hutchinson, law professor at the University of Chicago. "But Hoover was very careful to keep good relations with people like Justice White."

In and of itself, the 1966 special tour of the FBI Building is unremarkable, matched by several other family tours mentioned in the file and dozens of other small favors that Hoover and his aides showered on top officials - including Supreme Court justices - of all stripes.

It was all part of Hoover's unrelenting campaign to curry favor with - and keep tabs on - those in power, says Alexander Charns, a Durham, N.C., lawyer who wrote the 1992 book "Cloak and Gavel" on the relationship between the FBI and the Supreme Court. Charns has seen the FBI file on White. "It was the same public relations brown-nosing machine that Hoover carried out so well," says Charns.

There were numerous times when Hoover needed friends on the high court, Charns contends, and May 1966 was one of them - making White's tour of the FBI that month especially significant.

The FBI's eavesdropping practices were under increasing scrutiny at the time, and a pending case involving lobbyist Fred Black Jr. brought the Supreme Court into the controversy.

Black, a business associate of disgraced Lyndon Johnson aide Bobby Baker, was fighting his conviction on tax-evasion charges. In his petition to the Supreme Court, Black claimed among other things that the government had coerced his lawyer into betraying confidences in the case.

The Court routinely denied review in the case on May 2, 1966, but then Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall had more to say on the issue. It had come to his attention that in the course of its investigation, the FBI had bugged Black's hotel room and office in 1963. During the surveillance, the FBI overheard some conversations between Black and his lawyers. Marshall wanted to inform the Court of the new information as a sort of "confession of error" in which the government tells the justices about incorrect or improper handling of a case.

Hoover, according to FBI documents obtained by Charns, vehemently opposed Marshall's plan to tell the Court about the bugging. The embarrassing information, Hoover feared, would hurt him in ongoing FBI - Justice Department turf wars. Marshall informed the Supreme Court anyway in a highly unusual filing on May 24, prompting the justices on June 13 to order the government to detail the surveillance of Black. But in issuing the order, the Court noted that White refused.

In a separate letter to White, according to Charns' book, Marshall reminded the justice that he had received a letter from Hoover about the FBI's surveillance policies while serving as deputy AG. Hoover had sent a copy of the memo to Marshall. Since those policies were now at issue, White - a likely Hoover critic in the dispute, in Charns' view - took himself out of the Black case.

From 1960 to 1963, the ruling hierarchy of Lionel Corporation was General John B. Medaris, Roy Cohn and Joe Bonanno (Joe Bananas), a top Mafia man from New York, Las Vegas, Tucson and Montreal, Canada. Lionel Corporation during this period did over ninety percent of their business with the space agency and army ordnance furnishing such items as electronic equipment, rocket parts, chemical warfare agents and flame throwers. Also, during this period, General Medaris, though having retired in 1960, remained on active duty as special advisor to Army Intelligence in the Pentagon. The Lionel Corporation management was in direct contact with Louis Mortimer Bloomfield who, among other things, was a lawyer with offices in Tangiers, Morocco and Paris, France. Bloomfield was also the president of Heineken's Brewers, Ltd., Canada. General Medaris was a director of one of the land speculation companies of Bobby Baker and Senator George Smathers in Florida. Joe Bonanno (Joe Bananas) in his capacity as a Mafia leader, was associated in the Havana and Las Vegas gambling with L.J. McWillie, Clifford Jones and others.

In addition to J. Edgar Hoover's close association with Roy Cohn, he was also a long time friend of General Medaris. Joe Bonanno (Joe Bananas) had been a personal informer for J. Edgar Hoover for over a decade during 1963. Grant Stockdale, ex-United States Ambassador to Ireland and former George Smathers Administrative Assistant and a stock holder and officer in Bobby Baker's vending machine and Florida land transactions, knew and was closely associated with almost all of the top figures in the cabal. Shortly after President Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963, Grant Stockdale was pushed, shoved or fell from the fourteenth story of a Miami building and was killed immediately in the fall. As an officer in the Bobby Baker enterprises, Grant Stockdale had particular knowledge of a good part of the workings of the cabal and his death was one of a series made necessary to protect the group from public exposure...

Fred Black of Washington, D.C. was a lobbyist for North American Aircraft and business associate with Bobby Baker and Clifford Jones. Black has confirmed the connection between Jones, McWillie, Baker, Ruby and ex-Cuban President, Prio.

After November 22, 1963, Black publicly told many people in Washington, D.C. he had informed J. Edgar Hoover that an income tax conviction against him must be reversed or he would blow the lid off Washington with revelations of the assassination conspirators. Lobbyist Black prevailed upon J. Edgar Hoover to admit error before the Supreme Court where his case was reversed in 1966. Hoover did well to rescue Black from the conviction. Fred Black, while socially drinking with acquaintances in Washington has, on numerous occasions, been reported to have told of J. Edgar Hoover's and Bobby Baker's involvement in the assassination through Las Vegas, Miami and Havana gamblers. He named some of these as the Fox Brothers of Miami, McLaney of Las Vegas, New Orleans, Havana and Bahamas, Cliff Jones of Las Vegas, Carlos Prio Socarras of Havana, Bobby Baker and others. He stated there was also a connection in that some of the gamblers were Russian emigres.

Don Reynolds, Washington, D.C. businessman and associate of Bobby Baker and who had a number of questionable business transactions with Walter Jenkins on behalf of Lyndon Johnson, also gave testimony concerning Bobby Baker's involvement with the principals and he has stated on numerous public occasions that this group was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Black was a stockholder with Baker in the Waikiki Savings & Loan Association in Honolulu. The other members were Clifford Jones and his law partner, Louis Weiner. There was the Farmers and Merchants State Bank in Tulsa where Jones joined Baker and Black in a stock deal and brought in a Miami pal by the name of Benny Sigelbaum, a courier of funds and documents to the Swiss banks for Permindex and the Syndicate.

Of all the enterprises, none could compare with the controversial Serv-U Corp., a Baker-Black controlled vending- machine firm. Ed Levinson, president of the Fremont Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, was also a partner. Grant Stockdale, President of Serv-U and his money is covered later. Formed late in 1961, Serve-U Corporation provided vending machines for the automatic dispensing of food and drink in companies working on government contracts. In the next two years, Serv-U was awarded the lion-share of the vending business at three major aerospace firms - North American Aviation, Northrop Corporation and Thompson Ramo Wooldridge's Space Technology Laboratories. Baker and Black each bought stock in the company for $1 a share, while the others paid approximately $16 a share.

J Leland Atwood: We had this consultant whom Dutch Kindelberger hired. His name was Fred Black. He was supposed to get all the information on how to advise people in Washington, and he got into quite a bit of trouble, and Dutch Kindelberger had hired him on some basis, some people's recommendation, I don't remember who. He was very well connected in Congress, or appeared to be, and we employed him for several years. He got us in trouble through his relationships with Bobby Baker, who was the famous wheeler dealer back there that got involved with the savings and loan people and all that, and so eventually I had to let Fred go. Dutch Kindelberger had died in the meantime.

Martin Collins: Who did Black report to?

J Leland Atwood: I think he reported to Dutch Kindelberger first. I'd begun to consult him, actually. I thought he could do us some good in various ways. But Dutch had him finally reporting to, administratively at least, to Ted Braun, who lived here in Los Angeles. His company is still going. It's a public relations firm. But Ted is dead. Dutch thought Ted Braun might make sure that Black was reputable and things like that. But he did get into the Bobby Baker thing. I don't know that they ever tried to pin anything on Fred, but it was just nasty publicity. He'd talked us into putting in the vending machine system which was presumably a normal deal, but it turned out that Bobby Baker owned most of it. Bobby got a lot of Congressional raking over. Fred didn't get any sanctions or anything, but he just was classified as many consultants are today as some kind of an unnecessary type around Washington. So we finally took over the vending machine business and it was run by our employee group that handled the recreation facilities for the company, and I finally had to let Fred go. He had involved himself in a kind of a double dealing situation and then concealed it. Our lawyers thought it was what you might say, conflict of interest. I guess it was. So I let him go.

Martin Collins: This would have been in relation to a North American contract?

J Leland Atwood: No, it was in relation to the vending machine thing. Neither he nor Baker had disclosed their ownership in that, and our lawyer thought that it was conflict of interest and I'm sure it was. So I let him go. I fired him. He got into trouble afterwards. I heard that he's recently been in jail because he's been laundering money, accused of laundering drug money in one of the banks there in Washington.

Martin Collins: Do you recall, before Fred Black was hired as a consultant for North American, what his activities were? Was he a lobbyist in the modern parlance?

J Leland Atwood: Well, he'd done some work for AVCO and reportedly for General Electric. They were not considered competitive companies at that time. They were making engines and other things. Jim Kerr was head of AVCO then - and oh yes, Black had been involved in a lot of Missouri politics down there. He came from Joplin, Missouri, originally.

Martin Collins: What was the need for somebody, at this particular time, to do the kind of job that Fred Black apparently was doing, this intense, very personal liaison with Congress?

J Leland Atwood: Well, Dutch was very upset when the Navaho was cancelled. I told you about all that. He wasn't as much of a technical man as you might think here. He was very, very strong on his practical things, but I think he felt that the cancellation of the Navaho was something political. I didn't feel that way about it at all. I think it wasn't. In fact, it might have been overdue for cancellation, considering the ballistic missile progress. But he went back to Washington, went around to all the Congressmen he could reach,and Ted Braun went with him, and he protested long and loud around the corridors of everywhere. It didn't do him any good, of course. I think that expedition might have somehow gotten somebody to recommend this Fred Black to him. It's the only explanation I can put on it. I'm not sure of the timing either, but it's about correct. His feeling was that if you made your position strong enough to Congress, and clear enough, you might get some help. That's a very common thought in the world today, and sometimes it works, I guess, and sometimes it doesn't. I read these Congressional hearings with a great deal of interest. People like Deaver and the latest one, Watt, and things like that. I guess the possibilities are there in many many ways. But anyway, that was Fred Black's tenure.

Colonel Trinidad Oliva was also the key CIA contact in the Guatemalan government, working under his half-brother, the defense minister. Trinidad Oliva coordinated all "foreign aid" coming through the CIA conduit ICA, the International Cooperation Administration, the forerunner of the Agency for International Development, AID.

Rosselli and Trinidad then helped the murderous old Gen. Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, one of Úbico's assassins with close ties to mob partner Trujillo, to become head of state. Mario Sandoval Alarcón. "the father of Latin America's death squads," organized the right-wing of Castillo's party into the National Liberation Movement and hired himself out to Trinidad and Rosselli.

The same year that Johnny Rosselli helped the CIA engineer the change in the Guatemalan government, he was asked by his Syndicate associates to put together Giancana in Chicago, Costello in New York, Lansky in Miami, and Marcello in New Orleans for the huge $50 million Tropicana construction project in Las Vegas. According to Fred Black, a political fixer who was close to Rosselli, Bobby Baker and Lyndon Johnson, Rosselli's influence was such that he gave orders to the Dorfmans, who controlled the Teamsters' huge Central States Pension Fund. During the 50's and 60's, it was Johnny Rosselli who "set up protection" in Las Vegas.

Throughout 1956 and 57 Rosselli travelled back and forth from Mexico City, the planning center for all CIA operations in Latin America, and Guatemala City. An experienced ICA operative noted that "John had access to everyone and everything that was going on there. He had an open door at the embassy in Guatemala, and in Costa Rica. He was in there plenty of times. I know because I saw him. He supplied information to the government, and had a hand in a lot of the intrigues that were going on."

This means, operationally, that Johnny Rosselli's interests became the CIA's interests. "Throughout Latin America," notes Frank McNeil, a junior political officer in the Guatemalan Embassy in 1960, "there were two American governments - one intelligence and one official." McNeil's boss, Ambassador John Muccio, learned of the Bay of Pigs invasion force being trained in Guatemala only after the story broke in The New York Times. As John Kennedy found out to his chagrin, Rosselli, his Syndicate and Batistiano allies, had more operational clout than the State Department.

Fred Black was a superlobbyist who drew a $300,000 salary from North American Aviation. He was paid another $75,000 or so per year by Melpar, Inc., a subsidiary of North American. His other income sources, and I'm not sure what they were, brought him an income of about a half million dollars per year in the late 1950s and early 1960s - and you can imagine what they would translate to in terms of present values. But a half million per year just wasn't enough money for Fred Black. He was a playboy of the first order; if he couldn't go first class, then he wouldn't take the trip.

He kept a hotel suite at the Sheraton-Carlton in Washington where he and his friends - and I was among them-repaired to conduct business, drink, play cards, or entertain ladies. Though we did not then know it, that suite was bugged by the FBI. They must have heard some interesting doings. Black also owned a huge home which shared a backyard fence with Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, after Johnson bought Perle Mesta's house in the exclusive Spring Valley section of Northwest Washington.

Black thought nothing of betting $5,000 on a horse race. He lost thousands at cards to Senator Kerr. What he didn't lose at the racetrack or to Senator Kerr he lost to Las Vegas casinos. He had a quick eye and a grand way with shapely ladies. He loved booze. In short, Fred Black thought little more about tomorrow than did a fattening hog; though he always filed his income tax returns in timely fashion, he rarely had the money to pay his taxes when due.

Senator Kerr and Fred Black originally proposed to go into the vending machine business together. There was big money to be made, Kerr said, by gaining a near monopoly on soft drink, candy, and cigarette machines to be installed at sites where companies were performing defense-related work that depended on government contracts. I've heard that Clark Clifford, the Washington lawyer-lobbyist who's been close to every Democratic administration beginning with Harry Truman's, talked Senator Kerr out of investing in the scheme because it clearly would constitute a conflict of interest on Kerr's part.

Senator Kerr then told Fred Black, "I want to help Bobby Baker. I'll get you the financing if you guys want to go into the vending machine business. There's a fortune to be made." True to his word, Senator Kerr obtained a $400,000 loan for us from the Fidelity National Bank and Trust Company of Oklahoma City, in which he owned stock. We spent the money for vending machines, installing them-among other places-at North American Aviation and at several subsidiary sites. Within a couple of years the Serv-U Corporation we founded-along with my law partner, Ernest Tucker; a Las Vegas hotel-casino man, Eddie Levinson; and a Miami investor and gambler, Benjamin B. Siegelbaum - was grossing $3 million annually. I owned 28.5 percent of the Ser-U Corporation in those days - none now.

A Federal grand jury has returned indictments that portray Austin as the crossroads of a multistate cocaine ring that hid its profits in real and phony businesses, the Austin American-Statesman reported Sunday.

More than $1 million of the money was moved between Austin and a Washington bank in an effort to disguise its source, according to the indictments.

The two indictments returned December 9th in Washington charge 15 people with cocaine importation, bank fraud, mail fraud, and income tax violations and racketeering.

The Indictments said ring profits were invested in "real estate, businesses and other ventures" in Texas, New Jersey, California and Washington, D.C.

According to the indictments, the cocaine scheme began in 1976 but did not spread to Texas until 1978.

The ringleaders are listed as Lawrence G. Strickland Jr., who once lived in Austin and most recently in the Washington area, and Fred B. Black Jr., a Washington resident who was once an associate of Bobby Baker, a protege of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Strickland's brother-in-law, William G. Hessler, was vice president at the Riggs National Bank branch in the Washington Watergate building. Hessler allowed Black to make deposits there without complying with federal currency laws, the indictments said.

Fred B. Black Jr., an aerospace lobbyist who became ensnared in a political scandal in the early 1960's, died Friday at a nursing home in Wheaton, Md. He was 80 and lived in Bethesda, Md.

He died of heart failure, his family said.

Mr. Black was widely known in Washington as a friend of politicians in his role as a consultant for military contractors in the post-World War II arms and space races.

His downfall stemmed from his secret partnership with Robert G. Baker in the Serv-U Corporation, a vending machine business. Mr. Baker was Secretary of the Senate and a longtime aide to Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1963 a rival vending company's lawsuit against Serv-U disclosed the Baker-Black partnership. That prompted a Senate investigation into Mr. Baker's dealings with a lobbyist, and both men were also prosecuted on charges of income tax evasion.

In 1964, Mr. Black was convicted of evading $91,000 in taxes and sentenced to up to four years in prison. The conviction was later overturned, and Mr. Black was acquitted in a second trial.

In 1982, he was prosecuted on charges involving a scheme to launder more than $1 million in Colombian cocaine money. He served seven years in prison.

Mr. Black was born in Webb City, Mo., and grew up in nearby Carterville. He went to Washington as an acquaintance of Harry S. Truman, then a Senator from Missouri.

His marriage to the former Nina Lunn ended in divorce. He is survived by a son, Fred 3d, of Annandale, Va., and two daughters, Nina Black of Washington and Nola Murphy of Bethesda.

Baker went to great lengths in his own book to relate his business activities and even his financing to Senator Kerr of Oklahoma, merely mentioning that "additional" investment came from a "hotel-casino" man named Eddie Levinson and a Miami investor and gambler Benjamin B Sigelbaum.

He makes only brief mention that Fred Black had helped him with introductions to Levinson and Sigelbaum.

Baker describes Fred Black as a "super lobbyist" for North American Aviation, among other clients. We are already familiar with Black as a close friend and long time associate of John Roselli. Black's importance to both Baker and Johnson may be further indicated in an April 21 telephone call from President Johnson to Cyrus Vance, a call in which Johnson indicated to Vance that he was especially sensitive to charges of corruption.

He instructed Vance to ensure that the press should find no grounds for charges of bribery in his administration. The call had been prompted by newspaper coverage of the trial of Fred Black in which Black had been charged with taking $150,000 on behalf of the Howard Foundry Company to intervene with the Air Force in a $2.7 million claim against that firm. 360 The Chicago-based Howard Foundry was one of Black's two employers of record, paying him $2,500 per month while North American paid him $14,000 a month.

The above production flaws accentuate the tilt in the book that I noted earlier. Although it's a bit difficult to discern, the conspiracy I see Hancock postulating here is a kind of rogue, loosely knit, willy-nilly operation. A set of Cubans is at the bottom committing the crime (he points toward Felipe Vidal Santiago). The supervisor of this plot is Roselli, who Hancock terms the "strategist". Since Roselli has connections to the CIA, the implication is this is where Phillips and Morales come in. To top the machinations as depicted by Hancock - and in a rather original stroke - he brings in Roselli's friend and super Washington lobbyist Fred Black. He says Black is the guy who saw President Johnson right after he took office and had some blackmail material on him and this is why LBJ went along with the cover-up.

Where does this information appear to come from? Newly declassified ARRB files perhaps? Nope. It's from another rather questionable book that the author uses. This is Wheeling and Dealing, by the infamous Bobby Baker. Now again, to go into all the problems with using a book like this and with someone like Baker would take a separate essay in itself. Suffice it to say, Baker had such a low reputation and was involved with so many unsavory characters and activities that RFK pressed then Vice-President Johnson to get rid of him before the 1964 election. The Attorney General was worried some of these activities would explode into the press and endanger the campaign. Liking the protection his position with Johnson gave him, Baker resisted. He then fought back. One of the ways he fought back was by planting rumors about President Kennedy and a woman named Ellen Rometsch. The resultant hubbub, with daggers and accusations flying about, is the kind of thing that authors like Seymour Hersh and Burton Hersh make hay of in their trashy books. (I didn't think it was possible, but Burton Hersh's book Bobby and J. Edgar is even more awful than The Dark Side of Camelot. It is such an atrocity, I couldn't even finish it.) Suffice it to say, Baker was forced out in October of 1963. Researcher Peter Vea has seen the original FBI reports commissioned by Hoover about Rometsch and he says there is nothing of substance in them about her and JFK. I am a bit surprised that Hancock would try and pin the JFK cover-up on information furnished by the likes of Baker and Black.

This is all the more surprising since the author includes material from John Newman's latest discoveries about Oswald, James Angleton, the CIA and Mexico City. To me this new ARRB released evidence provides a much more demonstrable and credible thesis as to just how and why Johnson decided to actively involve himself in the cover-up.

To make his Black/Baker theorem tenable on the page, Hancock leaves out or severely curtails some rather important and compelling evidence. In 1996, Probe published a milestone article by Professor Donald Gibson entitled "The Creation of the Warren Commission" (Vol. 3 No. 4 p. 8). It was, and still is, the definitive account of how the Warren Commission came into being. And it was used and sourced by Gerald McKnight in the best study of the Warren Commission we have to date, Breach of Trust, published in 2005. According to this evidence declassified by the ARRB, there were three men involved in pushing the concept of the Warren Commission onto the Johnson White House. They were Eugene Rostow, Dean Acheson, and Joseph Alsop. (There is a fourth person who Rostow alluded to but didn't name in his call to Bill Moyers on 11/24. Ibid p. 27) This trio sprung into action right after Oswald was shot by Ruby. And they began to instantly lobby Moyers, Walter Jenkins, Nick Katzenbach, and President Johnson to create what eventually became the Warren Commission. To say that Hancock gives short shrift to Gibson's seminal account is a huge understatement. He radically truncates the absolutely crucial and stunning phone call between LBJ and Alsop of 11/25. One has to read this transcript to understand just how important it is and just how intent and forceful Alsop is in getting Johnson to do what he wants him to. (The Assassinations pgs. 10-15.) By almost eviscerating it, Hancock leaves the impression that it is actually Johnson who was pushing for the creation of a blue ribbon national committee and not Alsop! (Hancock pgs 327-328) I don't see how any objective person can read the longer excerpts and come to that conclusion. So when Hancock states (p. 322) categorically that "President Johnson was the driving force in determining and controlling exactly how the murder of President Kennedy was investigated," I am utterly baffled at how and why he can write this. The sterling work of both Gibson and McKnight show that this is a wild and irresponsible exaggeration.

The above production flaws accentuate the tilt in the book that I noted earlier. Although it's a bit difficult to discern, the conspiracy I see Hancock postulating here is a kind of rogue, loosely knit, willy-nilly operation. A set of Cubans is at the bottom committing the crime (he points toward Felipe Vidal Santiago). The supervisor of this plot is Roselli, who Hancock terms the "strategist". Since Roselli has connections to the CIA, the implication is this is where Phillips and Morales come in. To top the machinations as depicted by Hancock -- and in a rather original stroke -- he brings in Roselli's friend and super Washington lobbyist Fred Black. He says Black is the guy who saw President Johnson right after he took office and had some blackmail material on him and this is why LBJ went along with the cover-up.

Where does this information appear to come from? Newly declassified ARRB files perhaps? Nope. It's from another rather questionable book that the author uses. This is Wheeling and Dealing, by the infamous Bobby Baker. Now again, to go into all the problems with using a book like this and with someone like Baker would take a separate essay in itself. Suffice it to say, Baker had such a low reputation and was involved with so many unsavory characters and activities that RFK pressed then Vice-President Johnson to get rid of him before the 1964 election. The Attorney General was worried some of these activities would explode into the press and endanger the campaign. Liking the protection his position with Johnson gave him, Baker resisted. He then fought back. One of the ways he fought back was by planting rumors about President Kennedy and a woman named Ellen Rometsch. The resultant hubbub, with daggers and accusations flying about, is the kind of thing that authors like Seymour Hersh and Burton Hersh make hay of in their trashy books. (I didn't think it was possible, but Burton Hersh's book Bobby and J. Edgar is even more awful than The Dark Side of Camelot. It is such an atrocity, I couldn't even finish it.) Suffice it to say, Baker was forced out in October of 1963. Researcher Peter Vea has seen the original FBI reports commissioned by Hoover about Rometsch and he says there is nothing of substance in them about her and JFK. I am a bit surprised that Hancock would try and pin the JFK cover-up on information furnished by the likes of Baker and Black.

This is all the more surprising since the author includes material from John Newman's latest discoveries about Oswald, James Angleton, the CIA and Mexico City. To me this new ARRB released evidence provides a much more demonstrable and credible thesis as to just how and why Johnson decided to actively involve himself in the cover-up.

To make his Black/Baker theorem tenable on the page, Hancock leaves out or severely curtails some rather important and compelling evidence. In 1996, Probe published a milestone article by Professor Donald Gibson entitled "The Creation of the Warren Commission" (Vol. 3 No. 4 p. 8). It was, and still is, the definitive account of how the Warren Commission came into being. And it was used and sourced by Gerald McKnight in the best study of the Warren Commission we have to date, Breach of Trust, published in 2005. According to this evidence declassified by the ARRB, there were three men involved in pushing the concept of the Warren Commission onto the Johnson White House. They were Eugene Rostow, Dean Acheson, and Joseph Alsop. (There is a fourth person who Rostow alluded to but didn't name in his call to Bill Moyers on 11/24. Ibid p. 27) This trio sprung into action right after Oswald was shot by Ruby. And they began to instantly lobby Moyers, Walter Jenkins, Nick Katzenbach, and President Johnson to create what eventually became the Warren Commission. To say that Hancock gives short shrift to Gibson's seminal account is a huge understatement. He radically truncates the absolutely crucial and stunning phone call between LBJ and Alsop of 11/25. One has to read this transcript to understand just how important it is and just how intent and forceful Alsop is in getting Johnson to do what he wants him to. (The Assassinations pgs. 10-15.) By almost eviscerating it, Hancock leaves the impression that it is actually Johnson who was pushing for the creation of a blue ribbon national committee and not Alsop! (Hancock pgs 327-328) I don't see how any objective person can read the longer excerpts and come to that conclusion. So when Hancock states (p. 322) categorically that "President Johnson was the driving force in determining and controlling exactly how the murder of President Kennedy was investigated," I am utterly baffled at how and why he can write this. The sterling work of both Gibson and McKnight show that this is a wild and irresponsible exaggeration.