Pultizer Prize-winning author Robert Caro will speak at the New York Historical Society on November 21, 2013. His four volume biography of Lyndon Johnson has some serious historical lapses that must be addressed.
Caro had 20 years but never sought an interview with Billie Sol Estes, the LBJ associate who said he had JFK killed. Caro never interviewed Madeleine Duncan Brown, Johnson’s longtime mistress who said LBJ told her the night before the assassination, “After tomorrow I won’t have to put up with those bastards anymore.”
Then there is the question of Malcolm Mac Wallace. Robert Caro knows of Malcolm ‘Mac’ Wallace, and knows his ties to LBJ’s sister. He knows the Kinser murder involving a man, John Douglas Kinser, who was blackmailing LBJ with things he learned from the future president’s sister, with whom Kinser enjoyed an intimate relationship. Caro knows Wallace worked at a USDA patronage job arranged by LBJ when he murdered Kinser.
Caro knows LBJ’s personal attorney John Cofer represented Wallace at trial. Caro knows Wallace told Sheriff’s deputies when arrested that he has to “get back to work for Senator Johnson.” Caro also knows LBJ camped out at a nearby Hotel awaiting Wallace’s trial, and that Wallace was convicted of murder and sentenced to a 5 year suspended sentence.
Caro knows Wallace went to work immediately for a defense contractor named Temco, owned by D. H. Byrd, cousin of US Senator Harry F. Byrd and a major LBJ donor and confidant. Caro knows LBJ secured the job for Wallace.
Caro knows LBJ gave Temco (later LTV) a multi-million dollar defense contract only three months after Kennedy’s death.
Caro knows D.H. Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building. Caro knows Wallace’s fingerprint was found in the sniper’s nest.
Caro knows Mac Wallace was a Marine Corps marksman. Malcolm ‘Mac’ Wallace is LBJ’s hitman, but in three volumes, Robert Caro doesn’t mention him.
I will correct the record and painstakingly outline Robert Caro’s intellectual lapses in my book, The Man Who Killed JFK: The Case Against LBJ.