50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did LBJ Tell Mistress CIA Eliminated JFK?

Although the Warren Commission Report blamed the assassination of JFK in 1963 on Lee Oswald, U.S. President Johnson apparently told his mistress, Madeline Brown, that the CIA was responsible for the elimination of JFK on November 22, 1963. In his 1992 book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell wrote the following:

"As I was completing the manuscript of this book, it was suggested that I get in touch with Madeline Brown. Between 1948 and 1969, Brown maintains that she was a mistress of Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ's handwriting on numerous letters to Brown has been verified by analysts, and today it is generally accepted that her son Steven, who died of cancer in 1990, was a son of the former president.

"Brown, today 67 [in 1992], came from a wealthy Dallas family, the Duncans, which made its money in real estate and ranching. She decided to go public with what Johnson once imparted to her about the Kennedy assassination...

"Before the assassination, according to Brown, `Lyndon Johnson told me that the Kennedys would never embarrass him again. It was not a threat, but a promise.' Then, as 1963 passed into history, they were together at a New Year's Eve party. `I said to Lyndon, I've got to have my mind put at ease,' Brown remembers. `People are saying you are responsible for the assassination, and I've got to know.' Well, he had a terrible temper tantrum, as he often did. Then he told me: IT WAS THE OIL PEOPLE AND THE CIA.'"

(Downtown 4/14/93)