You can listen to all the phone calls that President Lyndon Johnson participated in on November 22nd, 1963, the day JFK was assassinated, through to the end of the month. All of them, that is, except for the call Johnson had with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at 10AM on the morning of November 23rd. The audio of that particular conversation was erased. However, somewhat inexplicably, a transcript has survived. The second page of that transcript is what can only be called a bombshell. It reveals two things that the president and the FBI Director did not want the American people or the Soviets to know. First, it revealed that the FBI had pictures of someone using the name Oswald visiting the Soviet Embassy down in Mexico City, and the picture did not correspond to the Oswald they had in custody. In other words, someone had been impersonating Oswald, possibly for the purpose of implicating the Soviets in killing of the U.S. president. Second, it revealed that all mail going to the Soviet embassy was opened and read by the FBI before being delivered. It’s not surprising that someone made the decision to erase this (and only this) tape. The information about the mail-opening was probably sufficient to justify erasure, but the part about Oswald raised the specter of a right-wing conspiracy. Meanwhile, the fact that Oswald had a Russian wife and had lived in Russia raised the specter of a Soviet-backed plot. President Johnson needed to control the narrative even before he had a firm grip of the facts. And Johnson was quickly faced with pressure originating from the Washington Post to create a commission of inquiry into the assassination. He had another conversation with Hoover on the 25th, in which they discussed the problems with a commission. Hoover compared the Post to the Daily Worker, while Johnson said “sometimes a Commission that is not trained hurts more than it helps.” Nonetheless, he could not avoid appointing one. But he made sure that the people on the Commission understood that the wrong conclusions could result in a nuclear war with the Soviets.
On the 29th, Johnson had another conversation with Hoover, in which he argued that the only way to avoid congressional investigations was to appoint an independent one. Johnson decided that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, should chair the Commission, and he announced (without consulting him first) that Senator Dick Russell of Georgia would also be serving. Sen. Russell did not want to serve on a commission with Warren because of the deep unpopularity of the Warren Court in the segregated South. When LBJ called Russell to inform him of his press release, a facinating conversation ensued. But the most interesting part is that LBJ told Russell that he needed him to serve because “we’ve got to take this out of the arena where they’re testifying that Krhuschev and Castro did this and did that and check us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour…” It was the same threat that he used to convince Warren to chair the commission, and it was a line he would use several other times on the tapes.
I mention all of this not to have a debate about what really happened. I mention it because long before LBJ had any firm idea about how the assassination was pulled off, how many shooters there might have been, who was behind Oswald (if anyone), who was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City, or many other issues of grave concern, he had already decided that he needed a Commission to assure the people that the communists had not been responsible. And he came to that conclusion because it was more important that we avoid a nuclear war than that the American people learn all the facts, no matter where they might lead.
President Obama faces similar choices right now because no one knows what the treasure-trove of documents that were seized at bin-Laden’s compound might say about who assisted bin-Laden in avoiding detection for ten years. It is very possible that the answers could justify very strong action against Pakistan or even, conceivably, other nation-states. American opinion has cooled considerably in the decade since 9/11, but could still be aroused mightily if certain information came to light.
The president must weigh these competing considerations. If it isn’t in our interests to be in a state of war with some other country, it may not be in our interests to know all the facts.
That’s a heavy burden for a president to bear.
