Final_Judgment

[268] Final Judgment 329
Pearson was backing Johnson's CIA-backed plans to expand the war in
Vietnam (the issue over which JFK and the CIA had been at loggerheads
leading to a final showdown). 720
Floating an anti-communist story (i.e. linking a communist dictator to
the murder of the martyred president) then, would also have the side effect of
whipping up anti-communist hysteria which would have been helpful to the
"anti-communist" offensive in Vietnam that proved so beneficial, as we
have seen, not only to the CIA, but also to the Meyer Lansky Crime
Syndicate and its allies in Israel.
The Pearson-Johnson relationship had other implications as well.
According to Scott, Pearson had used his column to leak government
information about a key witness, one Don Reynolds, who was providing
evidence against Johnson's longtime crony and reputed bag-man, Bobby
Baker." 721
(Baker, as we saw, in Chapter 6, was not only an independent operator
on his own, but a front man for a variety of LBJ's corrupt business
ventures. Baker conducted more than a few deals with close associates of
Meyer Lansky, most notably Ed Levinson, a director of Mossad operative
Tibor Rosenbaum's Banque de Credit International (BCI).
(As we noted in Chapter 15, Rosenbaum's BCI, of course, was one of
the chief shareholders in Permindex, the shadowy entity that played so
central a role in the CIA-Mossad conspiracy against John F. Kennedy.)
EARL WARREN CONNED
Drew Pearson's own interest in JFK assassination cover stories was of
long standing. In fact, according to Scott's research, it was Pearson himself
who told Chief Justice Earl Warren, early in the Warren Commission
investigation, that the CIA-Organized Crime plots against Castro had
backfired and that Castro had retaliated and ordered the assassination of
Kennedy? 722
According to Pearson's own longtime legman, John Henshaw, Warren
and Pearson had traveled together to the USSR shortly after the JFK
assassination. There Pearson was introduced to Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev. Apparently one of the subjects discussed by Pearson and
Khrushchev was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 723
Henshaw noted that a "top secret" classified document buried in the
National Archives in Washington (signed by CIA Director Richard Helms)
was designated, "Discussion between Chairman Khrushchev and Mr. Drew
Pearson regarding Lee Harvey Oswald." 724
This was one of the documents that Chief Justice Warren ordered sealed
for 75 years. The secret talks between Pearson and the Soviet dictator were
never recorded in Pearson's gossip column. It was apparently during this
period that Pearson first promoted the Castro conspiracy theory which later
came to the public's attention in 1967.
However, at the time of the Warren Commission investigation, the
chief justice evidently believed there was a basis for Pearson's story, and