Every element of this game is based on actual events and political realities as they existed between 1963-1973. In painstaking detail, this game teaches players how Lyndon Baines Johnson assumed power by coup and in doing so, examines the national consequences of JFK's assassination 40 plus years later.
This open source game, brought to you by the makers of Political Doublespeak Translator Pro, will be released under a Creative Commons license, meaning no money will be accepted for it. The aim is to educate Americans, not profit from their grief.
Here's a walk-through....
The Setting...
It's 1963... the US is in the birthing pains of an explosive civil rights movement. You are the Vice President of the United States and are to be dropped from the ticket, leaving you open to prosecution for mob ties (the Billy Sol Estes Affair) and the murder of a federal agent in '61, Henry Marshall, for which you stand to indicted.
In the late 1950s, the United States Department of Agriculture began controlling the price of cotton, specifying quotas to farmers. The limited production hurt Estes' businesses. He responded by expanding into cotton production himself. Over the next few years he developed a massive fraud, claiming to grow and store cotton that never existed, then using the cotton as collateral for bank loans. During this same period he became involved in Texas Democratic state politics and made political contributions to U.S. Senator and later Vice President of the United StatesLyndon Johnson.[3]
On June 3, 1961, Estes' local contact at the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, Henry Marshall, was found dead in his car with five gunshot wounds on a remote part of his own ranch. Justice of the Peace Lee Farmer attributed Marshall's death to carbon monoxide poisoning brought about from a hose attached to the exhaust pipe of his car. The body was buried without an autopsy. The suicide verdict was later overturned..[4]
On April 4, 1962, Estes' accountant, George Krutilek, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Krutilek had been questioned by the FBI about Estes the day before.
As a result of these deaths and an investigation into his business practices, on April 5, 1962, Estes and several business associates were indicted by a federal grand jury on fifty-seven counts of fraud. Estes was accused of swindling investors, banks and the federal government of at least $24 million. through false agricultural subsidy claims on cotton production and the use of non-existent supplies of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer as collateral for loans. He was eventually found guilty of additional federal charges and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Two of Estes' associates, Harold Orr and Coleman Wade, were also indicted but died of carbon monoxide poisoning (apparent suicides) before they went to trial. Estes was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to eight years in prison. Howard Pratt, manager of a Chicago fertilizer supply company, was also found dead in his car from an apparent carbon monoxide poisoning. There was also a half bottle of liquor in his car; however, after testing, no alcohol was present in Howard's body.
The high-profile case generated extensive national press coverage and was the first topic of President John F. Kennedy's press conference on May 17, 1962. As a result of the financial and political scandal, Kennedy apparently began to consider dropping Johnson as his running mate in the 1964 election.
As Johnson, you rationalize that the end justifies the means. To become president, and enact the Great Society you envision, you see the murder of political opponents as a necessary evil. This is such a dick character flaw your very surname becomes slang for giant penis. (When you hear someone refer to his tool as a "Johnson" you now know where the term came from.)
Motive: Your only hope of avoiding trial, let alone political survival, is to kill the president by using his segregationist political enemies to do the dirty work for you.
Means: The mob wants Kennedy's head for his attack on the Mafia, as do several high-level CIA operatives who had formed ties with them since World War II's OSS (Office of Strategic Services), particularly during the attempts to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro in Operation Mongoose in preparation for the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion.
Opportunity: As for the segregationists in the deep south and the Klan, President John F. Kennedy is detested and threatened for his Catholicism, (2) and his stand on civil rights,(3) particularly after sending federal troops to the University of Alabama in a stand-off with Gov. George Wallace. The Klan threats to is life begin in earnest thenceforth.
Level 1: Befriend the President's Deadliest Enemies
You make secret alliances with the deadliest enemies of the president: ultra right-wing segregationists in Washington DC (which includes the KKK), and the FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, who was also to be fired in '64. As Vice President, you also have certain powers to assist your endeavor: you can summon friends in the CIA and ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), and when you do, you can recruit disgruntled, rogue CIA agents fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, intelligence assets with deep ties to the Mafia. The Mafia, incidentally, is now under attack by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as are CIA operatives with ties to the same. You will need support from all of the president's enemies should the coup proceed as planned. Your private lawyer advises you also have to have a patsy ready upon assuming power, someone to be arrested immediately to give you time to destroy evidence and divert attention from yourself. The New Orleans plan for a motorcade assassination was actually based on one formulated for another target, Castro, but now an attempt will be made to do this in Dallas. The plan, (1) as described in Miami surveillance tapes of Klansman Joseph Milteer on Nov. 9, 1963; calls for, and depends upon a successor allied with the coup plotters. You accept this role, and coincidentally, your Secret Service code name on November 22, 1963, is "Volunteer". Your challenge is to create a plausible assassin. You can frame a CIA double-agent who has just returned from Russia, or choose from any number of "lone nut" scenarios. If you cannot make the correct secret alliances or create a plausible patsy, you lose the game.
FBI-Miami Police Dept. Miami recording of Klansman Joseph Milteer, Nov. 9, 1963
Level 2: Convince a Suspicious President to Walk into Your Ambush
You have to convince the president to visit your home state, where you can control the local authorities in Dallas which are then Klan-run, and lead him into an ambush without killing your friend, whom Kennedy has seated in front of him because he's suspicious of your motives and is aware of Klan death threats as he goes into Texas You must convince him to go to Dallas by presenting a myriad of arguments, or lose the game.
Level 3: Divert Attention from Yourself
You have to divert attention from yourself since it is immediately suspected you were involved in the plot. You have a choice of newspapers, (1) television networks, and magazine sympathetic to your plight that will demonize anyone who questions your integrity. Since the patsy will get a trial, you realize you have to silence him before that happens, because there is no way the evidence against him could convict him. This part of the game is timed.
You also have to set up a phony commission to bring plausibility to the "lone nut" theory. The man you choose to lead this commission is a Klan leader from California. Your challenge is to protect the Klan element in the assassination while condemning them publicly, appearing fair and racially sensitive. When the physical evidence and dozens of witness defy the argument that only one gunman fired, you have to get a spin master to make your case plausible. Enter Arlen Specter. He's a Jew, so any appearance of bias towards the Klan will appear non-existent. However, Specter, like Warren, LBJ, Gerald Ford, and Hoover, is also Scottish Rite; and he knows that though not all the Scottish Rite approves of the Klan, the fact remains that the SR created the KKK and even put a Klansman on the Supreme Court in 1939. As such, if he goes after them, he goes after himself and those who promised to advance his political career. Your challenge is to look at Specter in the eyes, without instinctively punching his lights out: if you do, your penalty is that he will get another newspaper to release his version of events. This is also the bloodiest part of the game, because you have to kill witnesses and there are many. If your hit men kill the wrong one, you lose the game.
John J. McCloy. Proof the Warren Commission was formed before the assassination. Met with Johnson and Nixon on night prior to assassination.
Dallas Morning News, November 22, 1963. Johnson knew he'd be fired. This article was published on the day of President Kennedy's assassination. The night prior, Nixon met with Warren Commission member John McCloy and Lyndon Johnson.
As such, if he goes after Klan segregationists, he goes after himself and those who promised to advance his political career. Your challenge is to look at Specter in the eyes, without instinctively punching his lights out: if you do, your penalty is that he will get another newspaper to release his version of events. This is also the bloodiest part of the game, because you have to kill witnesses and there are many. If your hit men kill the wrong one, you lose the game.
"Tension filled the room upon his arrival. The group immediately went behind closed doors. A short time later Lyndon, anxious and red-faced, reappeared... Squeezing my hand so hard, it felt crushed from the pressure, he spoke with a grating whisper, a quiet growl, into my ear, not a love message, but one I'll always remember: "After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again - that's no threat - that's a promise.".
It's important to note that John J. McCloy was a member of the now discredited Warren Commission which "investigated" the assassination, appointed by none other than Johnson. Nixon himself was in Dallas on the day of the assassination.
Level 5: Stay in Office
Your challenge is to stay in office. It's 1967. The Garrison Trial in New Orleans is bringing national attention to your role in the Kennedy assassination in a clever and deliberately roundabout way. Though not naming you directly, Jim Garrison introduces evidence that condemns you as he tries Clay Shaw for conspiracy, and Americans witness the Zapruder film (1) for the first time. Even members of the Warren Commission, particularly Hale Boggs, begin to question Johnson's role in the assassination. "As Hale Boggs been sayin', you could be found in it someplace..." (This audio from an FBI wiretap of Johnson speaking with then AG Ramsey Clark.)
The war hawks want to collect on its favor and wage unlimited war in Vietnam, and the Klan wants blood because you passed the Civil Rights Act to redeem your ill-gotten road to power, passing the same civil rights legislation the man you murdered had presented and fought for before he died. To appease the Klan and the military industrial complex (which includes elements of the broadcast media), you offer two sacrificial lambs: Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Both championed the Civil Rights Act and opposed the Vietnam war. By now, Sen. Robert Kennedy suspects you were behind his brother's assassination in Dallas, and decides to run for President. (Hoover's infamous wiretaps and bugging of King and RFK confirm this) Publicly, however, RFK's suspicions are tacit. By all accounts, the popular young senator is a shoo-in for the presidency in 1968. If he becomes President, RFK controls the military, and you're a dead man. Anyone who helped you conceal or perpetrate the crime may at the very least, expect to spend the rest of their lives in prison, if not executed for treason. Your challenge is to eliminate Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, before RFK can become President. Also aware of Johnson's complicity is Martin Luther King. If anything happens to RFK, Johnson knows he will tell all he knows.. So before you get to RFK, you have to get King. If you choose the wrong hit men, or kill Kennedy before King, you lose.
White House Tapes: 1967. Johnson and AG Ramsey Clarke discuss the Garrison trial, Warren Commission member Hale Boggs, the latter who has come to suspect Johnson's involvement in the Kennedy assassination.
Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are now murdered. Hundreds of thousands of protesters haunt your every move, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?" is a refrain that you cannot escape. You realize that for every enemy you kill, another arises with even more enmity. Your friends in the lodge and temple now fear and suspect you, and vie to replace you. Your challenge is to leave a legacy that won't appear as a stain in American history; control the nationwide riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and to do as many good deeds as you can before your friends in the Washington cabals catch wind of it and threaten to talk.
Level 7: Retire and Survive
You retire from politics, and refuse to run again in 1968. You now spend the rest of your life dodging assassins who fear you might talk. Almost all of your conspirators are dead or murdered by 1977. Those who abetted Johnson, such as Arlen Specter and Gerald Ford, remain the easiest tie to unravel the Johnson coup. It is for this reason the Scottish Rite decides Arlen Specter must become Senate Judiciary Chair in 2005, to prevent non-masonic federal judges from being appointed and to prevent the appointment of Supreme Court nominees that threaten the SR or the Ku Klux Klan. Exposure of the latter promises a Washington purge of Democrats and Republicans, but especially Republicans ranging from Orrin Hatch to Trent Lott.
Regardless, they cannot unring the bell, and the bell has been rung.
In LBJ Reloaded everyone loses but the military industrial complex (GE, Westinghouse, etc), the Washington cabals and the print and broadcast media. The latter, though the most critical and vulnerable target for citizen reprisal, is the least suspected of malfeasance but in due time will reap a chilling come-uppance. As will the cabals.
LBJ Reloaded. The only winners are those who don't play.
Kennedy and King Assassinations 
Level 1: Befriend the President's Deadliest Enemies
Level 2: Convince a Suspicious President to Walk into 
Level 3: Divert Attention from Yourself
Level 4: 
Level 5: Stay in Office
Level 6: Leave a Legacy that's Not Murder and War