by Carlhole » Tue 16 Jan 2007, 07:06:58
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('shakespear1', 'L')BJ was a very very Shady character to begin with, even if he didn't get the ball rolling for this.

He was the political operator that nursed Halliburton from a hatchling with the contracts that let it hit the big time - allowed it to become the Great Satan that it is today.
If you watch "The Guilty Men" at the link above, the highlight of the whole thing is a meeting between LBJ, Hoover, E.L. Hunt (I think, or was it Murchison, another oil man?), Nixon and Brown (of Brown & Root). Wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that!?
LBJ's mistress said he had flown into an uncontrollable rage after that meeting and was screaming into the phone at her saying "That's the last time that Irish mafia embarasses me". That's not a threat, that's a promise!"
He sounds like a guy whose overwheening ambition and lust for power was just almost too much to contain in his own skin. You have to wonder what psychological processes drives someone to feel that much desire for power. Maybe it's all in the genes. I have a hard time trying to understand those kinds of people - although I've never met one quite as terribly awesome as LBJ seems to have been. He's been dead since '73 and the film said some people in Texas are still scared of him.