US Politics

OpinionUS politicsThe Democrat blocking progressive change is beholden to big oil. Surprised?Alex KotchJoe Manchin owns millions of dollars in coal stock, founded an energy firm and Exxon lobbyists brag about their access to him. Republicans fundraise on his behalf Tue 20 Jul 2021 06.13 EDTLast modified on Tue 20 Jul 2021 08.09 EDTAs “thousand-year” heat waves caused by the climate crisis rock the west coast and biblical floods engulf major cities, Senate Democrats are negotiating a $3.5tn budget package that could include an attempt to slow the use of fossil fuels over the next decade.One prominent senator is very concerned about proposals to scale back oil, gas and coal usage. He recently argued that those who want to “get rid of” fossil fuels are wrong. Eliminating fossil fuels won’t help fight global heating, he claimed, against all evidence. “If anything, it would be worse.”Which rightwing Republican uttered these false, climate crisis-denying words?Wrong question. The speaker was a Democrat: Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.West Virginia is a major coal-producing state. But Manchin’s investment in dirty energy goes far beyond the economic interests of the voters who elect him every six years. In fact, coal has made Manchin and his family very wealthy. He founded the private coal brokerage Enersystems in 1988 and still owns a big stake in the company, which his son currently runs.In 2020 alone, Manchin raked in nearly $500,000 of income from Enersystems, and he owns as much as $5m worth of stock in the company, according to his most recent financial disclosure.Despite this conflict of interest, Manchin chairs the influential Senate energy and natural resources committee, which has jurisdiction over coal production and distribution, coal research and development, and coal conversion, as well as “global climate change”.He even gave a pro-coal speech in May to the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) while personally profiting from Enersystems’ coal sales to utility companies that are EEI members, as Sludge recently reported.Manchin is one of many members of Congress who are personally invested in the fossil fuel industry – dozens of Congress members hold Exxon stock – but he is among the biggest profiters. As of late 2019, he had more money invested in dirty energy than any other senator.How can this be? Wouldn’t basic ethics prevent someone from being in charge of legislation that could materially benefit them? Unfortunately, conflict-of-interest rules in the Senate are remarkably weak. And guess who is seeking to strip conflict-of-interest rules from a 2021 democracy reform bill?Joe Manchin.His proposal “leaves out language that S 1 would add to federal statute prohibiting lawmakers from working on bills primarily for furthering their financial interests”, Sludge reported.Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, has used the evenly split chamber to block Joe Biden’s agenda. In the process he has become arguably the most powerful person in Washington. Hardly any Democratic legislation can pass without his vote.That’s a problem – especially given that Manchin sometimes seems like he’s an honorary Republican. Earlier this month the Texas Tribune and other publications reported that Manchin was heading to Texas for a fundraiser hosted by several major Republican donors, including oil billionaires.Manchin, along with Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has vowed to protect the filibuster – a rule, frequently used to empower white supremacists, that requires 60 votes for most Senate bills to pass. That includes vital voting rights legislation, passed by the House, that is the only way to stop the Republican party from eviscerating what’s left of our democracy in the name of the “big lie” of voter fraud.Because of his uniquely powerful position as a swing vote, Manchin can rewrite major legislation to his liking – effectively dictating the legislative agendas of Congress and the White House.It appears that Manchin will have his way with the White House’s infrastructure package as well, and his changes will probably be more devastating, given the climate emergency we live in.Manchin isn’t just sticking up for the coal industry and his family’s generational wealth; he’s doing the bidding of oil and gas executives, who also stand to lose money if the nation transitions away from toxic fuels.Manchin’s political campaigns are fueled by the dirty energy industry. Over the past decade, his election campaigns have received nearly $65,000 from disastrously dishonest oil giant Exxon’s lobbyists, its corporate political action committee, and the lobbying firms that Exxon works with. A top Exxon lobbyist recently bragged about his access to Manchin.In the 2018 election cycle, his most recent, Manchin’s campaign got more money from oil and gas Pacs and employees than any other Senate Democrat except then North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp. Manchin was also the mining industry’s top Democratic recipient in Congress that cycle.If Biden wants to have any kind of legacy, he needs to stand up to Manchin, a member of his own party, and work with the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to get him in line. I don’t fully know why Biden permits the West Virginian to dictate his own presidential policy agenda. But what is crystal clear is that the leader of the United States should be doing a whole lot more.
Alex Kotch is an investigative reporter and editor with the Center for Media and Democracy, a nationally recognized watchdog that leads award-winning investigations into the corruption that undermines our democracy, environment, and economic prosperity
This article was produced in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy
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RepublicansState Republicans shun lawmakers critical of Trump and his big lieInternal battles may ultimately weaken the party, critics suggest Daniel Strauss in Washington@ More

Bill ClintonBill Clinton fancied an Indian rather than tea with the QueenThen US leader also turned down Chequers dinner because he wanted to ‘be a tourist’, archives show Caroline DaviesMon 19 Jul 2021 19.01 EDTLast modified on Tue 20 Jul 2021 00.09 EDTBill Clinton turned down tea with the Queen and dinner at Chequers because he wanted to “be a tourist” and try out an Indian restaurant during his first official visit to the UK with Tony Blair as prime minister, formerly classified documents reveal.Downing Street wanted to pull out all the stops for a visit seen as crucial to “establishing a good working relationship” between the new prime minister and the then US president. Buckingham Palace contacted No 10 to say “HM the Queen would be very pleased” to invite the Clintons to tea at 5pm on their brief one-day detour from summits in Paris and The Hague.But, though “very grateful for HM the Queen’s invitation”, the Clintons would “wish to decline politely”, recorded Blair’s private secretary, Philip Barton, nor was the White House “attracted to our suggestion of a dinner at Chequers”.Instead, Clinton wanted time to go shopping – “he has said that he wants to be a tourist” – and had “expressed an interest in trying Indian food”, according to a Downing Street briefing note released by the National Archives.A lot was riding on the visit, with the British and Americans agreeing it needed to “show the president and the prime minister to the wider world as young, dynamic and serious leaders”.The Americans were keen for a “fun” and “photogenic” outside event. Foreign Office suggestions – which all went nowhere – included a lunchtime jamming session “for the president (saxophone) and the prime minister (guitar) to play together briefly (with or without other musicians who might be at the lunch)”. Another was a “look in a pub (the Americans like them)”.No 10’s suggestions for a “stroll in Trafalgar Square” before visiting the Sports Cafe in Haymarket, where both men “could be shown how to play various sophisticated computer games by a group of children” were “firmly” rejected by the White House as “not serious enough”.In the event, the Clintons ended up with free time between a joint press conference and dinner. Rather than an Indian restaurant, dinner for the Blairs and Clintons was at the French restaurant Le Pont de la Tour near Tower Bridge, where the £298.86 invoice shows the two couples dined on grilled sole, halibut, wild salmon and rabbit.Ahead of the visit, there were concerns at the White House that the Clintons had recently sojourned in Barbados at a house belonging to Sir Anthony Bamford, “a well-known Conservative supporter”. There were fears “this might be misunderstood or misinterpreted in London”, the documents reveal. The White House said the president did not know Bamford at all. “But the property he owns happens to be particularly well situated from a security and other points of view.”During the 29 May 1997 visit, Clinton was to be shown around the Cabinet Room, prompting the then cabinet secretary, Robin Butler, to remind Blair’s principal private secretary, John Holmes, of the former US president Richard Nixon’s inauspicious visit to the cabinet room in 1969.As later recounted by Roy Jenkins, the chancellor at the time, as Nixon reached for milk for his coffee, he “mysteriously succeeded in picking up a crystal inkwell and pouring its contents over his hands, his papers and some part of the table”. As “horror” broke out on the British side, Sir Burke Trend – the then cabinet secretary – poured cream over his own trousers, “although it was not clear whether this was because he was so shocked or because he felt the president would feel less embarrassed if carelessness verging on slapstick appeared to be a Downing Street habit”, Jenkins later wrote. Nixon was led out to “nailbrushes and pumice stones”, which were “unavailing” and returned with hands still stained, “a real Lady Macbeth scene”, and his concentration “completely ruined”. In a handwritten note, Butler wrote: “I hope I will not be asked to emulate the sacrifice of my predecessor.”TopicsBill ClintonNational ArchivesTony BlairPolitics pastUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

TexasFive Texas Democrats who fled state in protest test positive for CovidState representative Gene Wu says they have ‘little to no symptoms, which is the point of the vaccine’ Vivian Ho and agenciesMon 19 Jul 2021 11.47 EDTTwo more Texas lawmakers who left their state to hobble efforts to pass voting restrictions have tested positive for the coronavirus, raising to five the number of infected people in the delegation.‘​​I think it kicked ass’: how Texas Democrats fought for voting rights by fleeing the stateRead moreState representative Trey Martinez Fischer of San Antonio said in a statement he had tested positive.“I am quarantining until I test negative, and I am grateful to be only experiencing extremely mild symptoms,” he said.“When my Texas House Democratic colleagues and I broke quorum to stop anti-voter legislation, we knew that tactic would come with real personal sacrifice.“Just as these new variants sweeping the country are more aggressive than ever, the wave of anti-voter legislation in this country is worse than we’ve seen in generations. That’s why, I will continue the fight for voting rights with every single fiber of my being.”A person familiar with the delegation told the Associated Press the number of infected members had risen to five. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and requested anonymity.More than 50 Texas lawmakers traveled to Washington last Monday aboard a private charter flight. A caucus official has said all had been vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “breakthrough” infections – vaccinated people becoming infected – are rare.After a photo showed the Democrats maskless on the plane, Republicans and others criticized the lawmakers for traveling without masks. But federal guidelines don’t require masks to be worn on private aircraft.“That is the beauty of being vaccinated,” said another state representative, Gene Wu. “Every single person who has tested positive so far have little to no symptoms, which is the point of the vaccine. If nothing else, we want this to be a reminder to all Americans: get your stupid shot now.”Kamala Harris, who met last week with members of the Texas delegation, went to Walter Reed military hospital on Sunday for a routine doctor’s appointment, a White House official said. No other information was released, and the White House did not respond to questions about Harris’ the vice-president’s visit.After some of the lawmakers tested positive for the virus, Harris’ spokesperson said Harris and her staff were not at risk of exposure because they were not in close contact with those who tested positive and added that the vice-president and her staff were fully vaccinated.The Democrats fled the state to deny the Republican-controlled legislature the necessary quorum to pass the voting laws.TopicsTexasCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Guantánamo BayBiden administration transfers its first detainee out of GuantánamoTransfer of Abdullatif Nasser suggests Biden is making efforts to reduce population, which now stands at 39 A More

Climate crimesOilHow a powerful US lobby group helps big oil to block climate action The American Petroleum Institute receives millions from oil companies – and works behinds the scenes to stall or weaken legislationSupported byAbout this contentChris McGrealMon 19 Jul 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 19 Jul 2021 06.38 EDTWhen Royal Dutch Shell published its annual environmental report in April, it boasted that it was investing heavily in renewable energy. The oil giant committed to installing hundreds of thousands of charging stations for electric vehicles around the world to help offset the harm caused by burning fossil fuels.On the same day, Shell issued a separate report revealing that its single largest donation to political lobby groups last year was made to the American Petroleum Institute, one of the US’s most powerful trade organizations, which drives the oil industry’s relationship with Congress.Contrary to Shell’s public statements in support of electric vehicles, API’s chief executive, Mike Sommers, has pledged to resist a raft of Joe Biden’s environmental measures, including proposals to fund new charging points in the US. He claims a “rushed transition” to electric vehicles is part of “government action to limit Americans’ transportation choice”.Shell donated more than $10m to API last year alone.And it’s not just Shell. Most other oil conglomerates are also major funders, including ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, although they have not made their contributions public.The deep financial ties underscore API’s power and influence across the oil and gas industry, and what politicians describe as the trade group’s defining role in setting major obstacles to new climate policies and legislation.EmbedCritics accuse Shell and other major oil firms of using API as cover for the industry. While companies run publicity campaigns claiming to take the climate emergency seriously, the trade group works behind the scenes in Congress to stall or weaken environmental legislation.Earlier this year, an Exxon lobbyist in Washington was secretly recorded by Greenpeace describing API as the industry’s “whipping boy” to direct public and political criticism away from individual companies.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat and strident critic of big oil’s public relations tactics, accused API of “lying on a massive industrial scale” about the climate crisis in order to stall legislation to combat global heating.“The major oil companies and API move very much together,” he said.Whitehouse said the oil and gas industry now recognizes it is no longer “socially acceptable” to outright deny climate change, and that companies are under pressure to claim they support new energy solutions that are less harmful to the environment. But that does not mean their claims should be taken at face value.“The question as to whether they’re even sincere about that, or whether this is just ‘Climate is a hoax 2.0’, is an unknown at this point,” he added.Shell has defended its funding by saying that while it is “misaligned” with some of API’s policies, the company continues to sit on the group’s board and executive committee in order to have “a greater positive impact” from within. The petroleum firm claims that its influence helped manoeuvre API, which represents about 600 drilling companies, refiners and other interests such as plastics makers, toward finally supporting a tax on carbon earlier this year.With Biden in the White House and growing public awareness of global heating, there are signs API’s influence may be weakening as its own members become divided on how to respond.The French oil company Total quit the group earlier this year over its climate policies. Shareholder rebellions are pressing Exxon and Chevron to move away from dependence on oil. Top clean energy executives at Shell quit in December over the pace of change by the company.API is also fighting a growing number of lawsuits, led by the state of Minnesota, alleging that the trade group was at the heart of a decades-long “disinformation campaign” on behalf of big oil to deny the threat from fossil fuels.But despite threats to API’s lasting influence, Whitehouse argues the trade organization represents the true face of the industry. Instead of using its considerable power to push for environmentally friendly energy laws, API is still lobbying to stall progress with the oil industry’s blessing.“Their political effort at this point is purely negative, purely against serious climate legislation. And many of them continue to fund the fraudulent climate denialists that have been their mouthpieces for a decade or more,” Whitehouse said.Since API was founded in 1919 out of an oil industry cooperation with the government during the first world war, it has evolved into a major political force with nearly $240m in annual revenue.Its board has been dominated by heavyweights from big oil, such as Rex Tillerson, the Exxon chief who went on to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state, and Tofiq Al Gabsani, the chief of Saudi Refining, a subsidiary of the giant state-owned Aramco oil giant. Al Gabsani was also registered as a lobbyist for the Saudi government.API also hired professional lobbyists, including Philip Cooney, who went on to serve under George W Bush as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality until he was forced to resign in 2005 after tampering with government climate assessments to downplay scientific evidence of global heating and to emphasise doubts. Shortly afterward, Cooney was hired by Exxon.API came into its own as the realities of the climate crisis crept into public and political discourse, and the industry found itself on the defensive. The trade group, which claimed to represent companies supporting 10m jobs and nearly 8% of the US economy, played a central role in efforts to combat new environmental regulations.In many cases, API was prepared to carry out the dirty work that individual companies did not want to be held responsible for. In 1998, after countries signed the Kyoto Protocol to help curb carbon emissions, API drew up a multimillion-dollar disinformation campaign to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-issue”. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.Much of this is the basis of several lawsuits against API. The first was filed last year by the Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, who accuses the group of working alongside ExxonMobil and Koch Industries to lie about the scale of the climate crisis. The suit alleges that “previously unknown internal documents” show that API and the others well understood the dangers for decades but “engaged in a public-relations campaign that was not only false, but also highly effective” to undermine climate science.The city of Hoboken in New Jersey is also suing API, claiming that it engaged in a conspiracy by joining and funding “front groups” that ran “deceptive advertising and communications campaigns that promote climate disinformation and denialism”.The lawsuits allege that API funded scientists known to deny or underplay climate changes, and gave millions of dollars to ostensibly independent organisations, such as the Cato Institute and the George C Marshall Institute, which denied or downplayed the growing environmental crisis.“API has been a member of at least five organizations that have promoted disinformation about fossil-fuel products to consumers,” Ellison alleges in Minnesota’s lawsuit. “These front groups were formed to provide climate disinformation and advocacy from a seemingly objective source, when, in fact, they were financed and controlled by ExxonMobil and other sellers of fossil-fuel products.”It wasn’t always this way.When Terry Yosie joined API in 1988 as vice-president for health and environment, the trade group had spent years funding scientists to research climate issues after hearing repeated warnings. In 1979, API and its members formed the Climate and Energy Task Force of oil and gas company scientists to share research.Yosie, who moved to API from the Environmental Protection Agency, controlled a $15m budget, part of which he used to give workshops on climate change by EPA officials and other specialists.“I brought them together in front of oil industry senior level executives for the sole purpose of making sure this industry had some understanding as to what other significant stakeholders thought about climate change, where they saw the issue evolving, what information they were relying on,” he said.When Yosie left API in 1992, he believed oil the lobby group was still serious about addressing the growing evidence of climate change. But a year later, it disbanded the task force at the same time that Exxon abandoned one of the industry’s biggest research programmes to measure climate change.Yosie believes that confronted with the true extent of the looming disaster, API and the oil companies ran scared, choosing instead to pursue an agenda informed by climate denialism.“As the climate issue began to move from the periphery to the centre stage, I think there was a collective loss of confidence in the entire industry, a fear that this was not a debate that was winnable,” he said.API and its financial backers founded a front organisation, the deceptively named Global Climate Coalition, to drum up purported evidence that the climate crisis was a hoax. In the late 1990s, the GCC’s chairman, William O’Keefe, was also API’s executive vice-president, a man who falsely claimed that “climate scientists don’t say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth”.API and the GCC led attacks on Bill Clinton’s support for the Kyoto protocol with a “global climate science communications plan” that misrepresented the facts about global heating.The relationship between API and big oil remained exceptionally close throughout. Exxon’s chief executive served on the lobby group’s executive committee for most of the past three decades, and the two worked together in promoting denialism over the climate crisis.The focus of API’s efforts were on Congress, where it led the industry’s opposition to policies, such as the 2009 cap-and-trade legislation to control carbon emissions.“Most of the funding for the Republican party, and probably a very considerable amount of the big dark money funding behind the Republican party, comes out of the fossil fuel industry,” said Whitehouse. Last year, API indirectly gave $5m to the conservative Senate Leadership Fund to back Republican election candidates (many of whom question climate science), and to the campaigns of members of the energy committees in both houses of Congress.The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long agoRead moreGrowing public disquiet, and the departure of oil-friendly Donald Trump from the White House, shifted the ground for API. In March it launched a Climate Action Framework, which for the first time endorsed policies such as carbon pricing. It also stated its support for the Paris climate agreement.API called the plan “robust” but others noted the lack of specifics and its sincerity was called into question when an Exxon lobbyist was caught on camera earlier this year saying that a carbon tax will never happen and that support for the measure was a public relations ploy intended to stall more serious measures.And between API’s lost support from Total, and the Shell executives who resigned in December over what they regarded as the company’s foot-dragging on greener fuels, there are signs of shifting attitudes within the industry itself.Shell and BP have said they will continue to review their support for API. Shell said that where it disagrees with API’s position, the company “will pursue advocacy separately”.However, Peter Frumhoff, director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is sceptical that there has been any significant change in direction.“I think it’s fair to say that API and its prominent member companies have have a broadly shared goal, which is to keep the social licence of the oil and gas industry operating, and therefore enabling them to continue to extract oil and gas for as long as possible, as profitably as possible,” he said.This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate storyTopicsOilClimate crimesFossil fuelsEnergyUS politicsRoyal Dutch ShellnewsReuse this content More

US newsPriscilla Johnson McMillan obituaryJournalist, author and historian who knew both President John F Kennedy and his alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald Michael CarlsonMon 19 Jul 2021 04.54 EDTLast modified on Mon 19 Jul 2021 05.38 EDTPriscilla Johnson McMillan, who has died aged 92 after a fall, was the only person who could claim to have known both President John F Kennedy and his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. As a young college graduate, Johnson was befriended by Senator Kennedy while she worked in his office; a few years later she interviewed the young Oswald soon after he showed up in Moscow wishing to defect to the Soviet Union.After the assassination, Johnson was given exclusive access to Oswald’s Russian widow, Marina, and her ensuing book, Marina and Lee (1977), became a key document in establishing Oswald as a lone disturbed assassin. It also prompted many researchers to point to Johnson’s close ties to the US intelligence community, not least when she received similarly exclusive access to Joseph Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, when she defected to the US, and worked with her through translating her bestselling 1967 memoir Twenty Letters to a Friend.Johnson’s career grew from her unexpected interest in Russian language and culture. Her father, Stuart Johnson, a financier, was heir to a textile fortune; he was her mother, Mary Eunice Clapp’s, second husband. Patricia was born in Glen Cove, New York, and grew up on the family’s estate, Kaintuck Farm, in Locust Valley, Long Island.She was educated at Brearley school in New York, then at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, one of the elite “seven sisters” female colleges, where she became the first graduate majoring in Russian studies and was active in the United World Federalists (UWF), dedicated to effective world cooperation, primarily to prevent nuclear war.After an MA at Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University), in 1953 she joined the staff of the newly elected senator Kennedy, researching French Indochina. They became friends; he would call her regularly for chats. She denied any romance, “I didn’t love him; he was mesmerising but he was just someone I knew.” She was rejected when she applied to join the CIA, ostensibly because of her ties to the UWF. Oddly, her interviewer was Cord Meyer, who in 1947 had been the first president of the UWF; now he headed the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, aimed at influencing media. She did translation work for a review of the Soviet press, spending much time in Russia. On Kennedy’s recommendation, she received a grant to study the Soviet legal system, and again did translation work at the US embassy. She met Truman Capote, travelling with a US production of Porgy and Bess, and is mentioned in his book The Muses Are Heard.In 1958 she joined the North American News Alliance (NANA), and in November 1959 arrived in Moscow just a day after Aline Mosby of United Press International had filed a story on Oswald’s defection. The US consul John McVickar, himself a CIA man, recommended she interview Oswald, who was at her hotel; her report on the four-hour session appeared in NANA-affiliated papers.Mosby noted that Johnson lived in the Metropol, unlike other press in their state-assigned office/residence, saying “she was a very nice person and had good connections”. Johnson was one of many journalists expelled from Russia in the wake of the Russians shooting down of an American U2 spy plane; Oswald had been a radar operator at the Atsugi, Japan base from which U2s flew.She became a visiting fellow at the Russian research centre at Harvard, returning to Russia in 1962 and writing a memorable piece for Harper’s magazine about the Soviet writer Boris Pasternak’s funeral. On her return she was interviewed by Donald Jameson, the head of the CIA’s Soviet Russia division, who described her in a memo as someone who could “be encouraged to write the articles we want … but it’s important to avoid making her think she’s being used as a propaganda tool.”Then, in November 1963, came the news of Kennedy’s assassination by Oswald; Johnson gasped as she realised: “I know that boy.” Her 1959 profile of Oswald was immediately reprinted, but with a few changes, including a final line that did not appear in the original: “This was the stuff of which fanatics are made.”In 1964, when Marina was being held incommunicado, under threat of deportation, Johnson moved in with her. With her Russian and knowledge of Lee, she won Marina’s trust, but her book did not appear until 1977. While researching it, Johnson co-edited a collection of essays, Khrushchev and The Arts: The Politics of Soviet Culture (1965). She returned to Kaintuck, where Alliluyeva lived while they worked on her memoir.Johnson married the journalist George McMillan in 1966; he covered the civil rights movement in the south, and published, in 1977, Making of an Assassin, showing how Martin Luther King’s alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, acted alone. They divorced in 1980.Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s Assassination of John F Kennedy finally appeared, coincidentally, just as the House select committee on assassinations reopened the case. Johnson testified in closed session; large sections of her HSCA testimony are redacted whenever she is asked about her intelligence connections. Her book was a major influence on Norman Mailer’s Oswald’s Tale; Mailer blamed Oswald’s killing of the president on his sexual frustration with Marina, and jealousy of JFK. By this time Marina began to distance herself from Johnson’s conclusions, saying “it was up to Priscilla to fish out all the facts and everything”.In 1988, Johnson added another line to her Oswald interview, telling Dan Rather of CBS that Oswald had told her: “I want to give the people of the US something to think about.” Eventually, Marina would claim she was “misled by the ‘evidence’ presented to me by government authorities … I am now convinced Lee was an FBI informant and did not kill President Kennedy”.Priscilla’s obituary of Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists led to her being asked to write about the hearings that declared J Robert Oppenheimer, the “father” of the atomic bomb, a security risk when he opposed building an H-bomb.She received extensive access to the archives of the Los Alamos Atomic Laboratory, but as with Marina and Lee, the research overwhelmed the writing. When The Ruin of J Robert Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Modern Arms Race finally appeared in 2005, it was a year after a massive Oppenheimer biography by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin had won a Pulitzer prize. But her portrayal of the political shift that left Oppenheimer on the outside won praise.On the 50th anniversary of the assassination, Marina and Lee was reissued. Johnson wrote of Oswald’s “unfitness for any conspiracy outside his own head”. Oddly enough, the description also would suit a hapless someone who was, as Oswald himself claimed, a “patsy”.Johnson is survived by a niece, Holly-Katharine Johnson, who is working on her biography.TopicsUS newsUS politicsJohn F KennedyRussiaNew YorkCIATruman CapoteobituariesReuse this content More