From the San Francisco Chronicle via SFGate, November 18, 1996:
One of the first questions any murder investigator asks is cui bono -- who benefits.
In the case of the John F. Kennedy assassination, whose 33rd anniversary falls on Friday, new answers have come from a recent economic study called "Friends in High Places: The Wealth Effects of JFK's Assassination on the Assets of LBJ's Supporters."
The study, by Claremont-McKenna College economist William Brown Jr., was published this year in Public Choice, a leading social science journal.
Brown measured the impact of Kennedy's death on stock prices of major firms connected to Vice President Lyndon Johnson. His goal was to gauge the power of special interests -- in this case, those in Johnson's orbit -- to influence national policy for their own gain.
He wasn't trying to point the finger at any group for the murder itself, just trying to determine its economic consequences.
Brown looked at 63 firms, grouped into four portfolios: companies headquartered in Texas, aerospace contractors, domestic oil companies and firms closely tied to Brown and Root, a huge Texas construction firm.
All those business groups were major financial backers of Johnson and stood to profit by his move into the White House.
Historians note, for example, that the brothers George and Herman Brown, owners of Brown and Root, bankrolled Johnson's first congressional campaign in 1937, in return for which Johnson used his influence to swing a $27 million federal dam project their way.
In later years, Brown and Root officials pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Johnson's campaigns, while growing rich on federal contracts.
Brown the economist (and no relation to Brown and Root) found that between November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, and November 26, the first day the stock market reopened, the value of the 63 Johnson-related firms jumped 0.85 percent more than the rest of the market.
Firms connected with Brown and Root did even better, increasing in value an average of 1.64 percent.
Aerospace firms saw their value rise three-quarters of a percent more than the market right after the assassination.
And no wonder: Business Week, in its last pre-assassination issue, reported that "a major cut in defense spending is in the works." Johnson, more hawkish than Kennedy, eventually reversed that cut with a major escalation of the Vietnam War.
Of all defense firms, perhaps none had a greater stake in the sudden transfer of power from Kennedy to Johnson than General Dynamics, whose main aircraft plant was located in Fort Worth, Texas.
Its stock climbed from $23.75 on November 22 to $25.13 on November 26, and by February 1964 was up over $30, a jump of around 30 percent in three months.
Shortly before the assassination, General Dynamics was the subject of a major influence peddling investigation by the Senate Government Operations Committee.
The investigation centered around the Pentagon's controversial award of a $7 billion contract in 1962 to General Dynamics for the TFX fighter-bomber, later known as the F-111. It was the largest aerospace contract of its time and rescued the firm from a deep financial hole.
An Air Force financial analyst said General Dynamics' bid was up to $400 million more expensive than the rival bid from Boeing. In addition, Defense Department memos suggested that Boeing's design was "operationally superior."
The Senate investigation turned up the fact that one of the key participants in the selection of General Dynamics was Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatrick, who was the firm's special counsel before joining the administration in 1961.
Another key player in the selection was Navy Secretary Fred Korth, who had been president of the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, a major holder of General Dynamics deposits. Before joining the administration, Korth used his political influence in Washington to promote General Dynamics contracts.
The Senate investigating committee held hearings on the growing TFX scandal on November 20, only two days before the assassination. It planned to return the following week to hear testimony from Korth. But no more hearings were held after Johnson took power.
On November 22, in a separate inquiry into government corruption, another Senate committee heard testimony about an alleged $100,000 cash payoff to Vice President Johnson in connection with the TFX contract. That investigation also went nowhere after the assassination, notes Peter Dale Scott, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, in his 1993 book "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK."
Only fringe conspiracy theorists would conclude from these facts that General Dynamics, Brown and Root or the "military-industrial complex" more generally, had Kennedy killed. They may have preferred Lyndon Johnson, but there's no evidence they wanted Kennedy dead.
But the facts speak tellingly about how accidents of history can affect great fortunes.
A postscript for assassination buffs: No individual stood to lose more from the TFX scandal than Chicago investor Henry Crown, who owned 20 percent of General Dynamics. His personal attorney, Albert Jenner, became a senior staff attorney on the Warren Commission, in charge of investigating the possibility of a conspiracy.
In later years, Jenner also represented Chicago labor racketeer Allen Dorfman. Dorfman's stepfather Paul, a leading figure in the Chicago mob, ran the Waste Handlers Union in Chicago in 1939 with Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's future killer.
Both Dorfmans hated the Kennedy family. Robert Kennedy had hauled them before a Senate crime panel in the late 1950s, where they took the Fifth Amendment.
Allen Dorfman was murdered, gangland-style, in 1983 in the company of another friend of Ruby, Irwin Weiner. Attorney Jenner obtained Weiner's acquittal in a 1975 federal labor racketeering case after the government's leading witness was shotgunned to death....
....MUCH MORE
There's more to the story but we'll leave it at this for now.
