Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Let's get back to the ramifications if Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was assassinated. And again, I don't have any proof; rather just a very suspicious looking case. But, at this point in time, I think it's more likely that he was assassinated than not.  

The first thing that comes to mind is that if "killing Kennedys" was in mindset of the Deep State during World War 2, then as soon as JPK Jr. was dead, then JFK was batter-up. I should think that they were watching him very closely, and as soon as it was apparent that JFK had replaced his older brother as his father's new surrogate to become President, they may have started dreaming up a catastrophe for him too. 

So, did they consider killing JFK early on, before he became President? Did JFK have any brushes with death between 1944 and 1963? Remember that the CIA tried numerous times and numerous ways to kill Fidel Castro, but they never did. He ended up dying at a ripe old age- despite his trademark cigar smoking, although he eventually gave it up.   

But, even if the answer is no about JFK, it still changes the landscape a lot because, I, like most, believed that the idea of killing him didn't start until 1961 with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. They were so mad at him for not sending the Air Force in, they resigned to kill him. But, there is one exception I already knew of: Lyndon Baines Johnson. If you haven't read LBJ: Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Phillip Nelson you should. Phil says that LBJ was absolutely drooling about killing Kennedy as early 1959. He says that Johnson knew that he didn't the national popularity to win the White House, and although he was a candidate who ran against Kennedy, he did not expect to win. It was all posturing to get on the ticket as Veep.  And it was blackmail. Johnson threatened to expose the true state of JFK's health, which was bad, and he also threatened not to deliver Texas, which Kennedy needed to win. So really, JFK had no choice but to put Johnson on the ticket, much as he despised him. 

It was a very weird pairing. They weren't even friends. But, how far did it go for LBJ? Did he really seriously think then that he was going to kill Kennedy? Phil says yes.  He makes the point that LBJ came from a short-lived family, and he had already had a massive heart attack; plus, he was a heavy smoker and drinker. Phil says that LBJ realized that he wasn't going to live that long. So, Phil thinks that Johnson wanted the Veep spot only as a stepping stone and with the concrete intention of offing Kennedy.

Of course, that had nothing to do with Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., but, if he was assassinated, then I have to think that a "facilitated circuit" existed for the murder of his brother. In other words, whatever inherent resistance there was to killing JFK would have had to be less if his brother was killed before him. It greased the wheels. That's what I'm saying.