Did Lyndon Johnson do it?

The theory starts with the oldest question in murder: who benefits. Johnson became president. Gallup noted in 2013 that the Oscar-winning film JFK “implied that President Lyndon Johnson may have been involved.” [1]

In 2013 Roger Stone, the Republican operative, published The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ. Hugh Aynesworth, who covered the assassination as a Dallas reporter in 1963, reviewed it for the Washington Times, found it entertaining, and said it was built on unreliable witnesses. [2]

The handwritten chart that E. Howard Hunt left his son, published by Rolling Stone in 2007, puts “LBJ” at the top. Hunt himself always denied any part in the killing. See Hunt and the tramps. [3]

Some versions of the theory have Johnson meeting plotters in Dallas the night before the shooting. His vice-presidential diary for 21 November 1963 records him in Houston with the presidential party: the President’s suite at 8:00 pm, the Albert Thomas dinner at 8:45, Carswell Air Force Base near Fort Worth at 11:05, and the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth at 11:30 pm. [1]

Malcolm Everett “Mac” Wallace is the man LBJ theorists cast as Johnson’s gunman. In 1998 a fingerprint examiner, Nathan Darby, signed an affidavit dated 9 March saying he had matched a Wallace print to an unidentified latent print from the Depository. [1][2]

A second examiner, Harold Hoffmeister, had confirmed the match in a blind test. On 16 April 1998 he wrote to the FBI renouncing that confirmation. The FBI examined the print and reported on 15 March 1999 that it “is not a fingerprint of Malcolm Everett Wallace.” [2]