Elvis is Alive

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB_ElvisandJFK12341342397.html

Lance Stewart Sun, 27 Jan 2009 7:47 AM

Los Angeles -- Elvis is dead, right? All you have to do is go to Graceland and see the gravestone indicating that Elvis Aaron Presley is buried there....Ah Ha! That’s not how his middle name was spelled. It should be "Aron". I don’t know if there is someone in there or not (maybe Jimmy Hoffa?) but it’s not Elvis. Here’s what happened:

In November 1963, Elvis was rich and bored and looking for something to add spice to his life. We all know he was running with the wrong crowd and he was starting to dabble with drugs that were seriously affecting the minimal judgment he had to begin with. He was still embittered at the government for making him serve in the Army and he wanted to lash out in some way. How best to do this? Think "Dallas". Think "grassy knoll".

He almost managed to get away with it, too. The Warren Commission made its report (the single shooter, the magic bullet and all that) and things were fine and dandy...except for John Sherman and Allen Dulles. Sherman, a Republican Senator from Kentucky (first elected to finish the term of one Happy Chandler (who had resigned his Senate seat to become the Commissioner of Baseball) and Dulles (former chief of the CIA) wouldn’t play ball. No one on the commission (which also included future president Gerald Ford) really believed that Oswald was the only shooter but LBJ needed things resolved quickly and the Commission was more or less forced to make its absurd claims.

LBJ had promoted that whole Great Society thing which is basically socialism (he was really a Socialist Marxist but of course he couldn’t come right out and say that...he’d already thrown out the first pitch at a Reds game and people were starting to read all kinds of things into that). He also claimed people could have both guns and butter which is quite true as long as you’re willing to stick the next generation (or two or three or four) with the bill.

Where did this whole "guns and butter" thing come from? In the mid-1960s Bank of America was aggressively promoting the use of its new credit card and LBJ was given one of the cards by the Bank. He used it in a PR stunt (to kind of lift the spirits of the nation during some of the dark days of the Vietnam War by showing a lighter side of himself and to promote the economy which needed to be strong to generate the tax revenue necessary for his big dreams) and he thought it was pretty neat that he was able to purchase things without actually paying for them (what he didn’t realize is that the Bank of America was just covering his expenses from this little PR "shopping" stunt). Of course these were the days before Vietnam Vets going "postal", Columbine, and Vice-Presidential hunting accidents so people generally still embraced the 2nd Amendment. LBJ was planning a hunting trip and ended up purchasing a rifle, and some copper solvent with which to clean it. In Texas, this copper solvent is commonly referred to as "butter". On the way back to the White House a reporter asked him how things had gone on the shopping trip and LBJ famously held up his new credit card and drawled, "I got a gun and some butter and didn’t even have to pay." Of course the headlines in the paper the next day referred to the President claiming that people can have both "Guns & Butter" and the term stuck.

But, we digress...

By the early 1970s LBJ was out of office, the Great Society wasn’t so great after all, the U.S. was preparing to withdraw from Vietnam in disgrace, and Nixon wasn’t exactly popularizing the office of the President. In January of 1973 LBJ died in Texas and later that year Nixon’s VP, Agnew, resigned and Gerald Ford became the new Vice President. Sherman and Dulles finally felt the freedom to quietly re-open the investigation of the JFK assassination. Dulles still had some sources in the CIA and they were able to get Gerald Ford to give a "nudge" to those who were uncooperative. It was a long, lonely investigation, but the unmistakable conclusion that Sherman & Dulles came to by 1977 was that there was a second shooter behind the grassy knoll and that the shooter was none other than Elvis Presley. Ford, Sherman, and Dulles met with President Carter about the situation. Carter was a nice Southern boy but not the greatest of Presidents. Sherman and Dulles thought that having Ford join them in the meeting would help lend credibility to their case but they underestimated the animosity that Carter still held for Ford after their recent campaign which had ended less than a year prior to this meeting.

We know that those good Southern boys don’t easily knuckle under when Northerners (Ford was from Michigan, Dulles from New York) try to revive that old "Northern Aggression" thing so he dispatched one of his aids to warn Mr. Presley. Elvis was getting old and fat in Vegas and was too tired to try to face the media circus that a court battle would turn into. He was in his "Doors" phase and was enthralled with the way that Jim Morrison had faked his death and decided that this was the way to go...and the rest is history.

November 2013 will mark 50 years from the JFK assassination. In 1978 the law was changed and there is now no statute of limitations for prosecuting murder but before 1978 the federal statute of limitations for murder was 50 years and because JFK was killed prior to the change in the law, anyone involved in his murder will be "home free" in November of 2013. This will also be the time when the Christmas 2013 shopping season is in full swing and is when Elvis Presley plans to release his 10 Album Boxed Set which is being produced in Hawaii by Jim Morrison. It is expected to easily top all previous album sales records and will mark Elvis’ and Jim Morrison’s successful return to the spotlight.

Story by Lance Stewart
Mr. Stewart is the Associate Editor of the Los Angeles Bureau of the Wall Street Journal. This article is excerpted from his new book Elvis & JFK to be published by Putnam in the Summer of 2009. Mr. Stewart can be reached at lance.stewart@wsj.la.com