More from Joan Mellen: Halliburton Connections

Jim Garrison often asked during his investigation: Cui Bono? Who benefits? A friend of mine living near “Langley Forks” in Virginia pointed out to me some interesting connections. The Texas School Book Depository, from which some, but not all, of the shots were fired on November 22, 1963, was owned by one D. H. Byrd. Byrd also founded and was the commander of the Southwest post of the Civil Air Patrol, which included Louisiana and the troop led by David Ferrie, among whose cadets was Lee Harvey Oswald.

In November, 1963, one of Byrd's companies, LTV, a major defense contractor, was almost bankrupt. Defense contracts flowing from the Vietnam War changed that, and by 1968 the stock had increased geometrically in value. Meanwhile we know that President Kennedy opposed vehemently a protracted ground war, and that as soon as he was dead, Lyndon Johnson dispatched thousands of troops to Vietnam.

Among Byrd's associates was a man named Neil Mallon, the skull and bones classmate of Prescott Bush. Mallon headed a company called Dresser Industries, and it was Dresser who sent George H. W. Bush, his friend Prescott's son, west to Texas in 1949. It was for Mallon that the first President Bush named one of his sons. Mallon built Byrd's barite plant in Mexico, barite a product involved in oil drilling.

Dresser Industries was bought by Halliburton in 1998, and at that time the Kellogg subsidiary of Dresser became part of Brown and Root. Brown and Root itself had been bought by Halliburton in 1962. It is less well known that Brown and Root profited not only from the war in Iraq, but first from Vietnam. Having recognized the role of Brown and Root, and discovering that George Brown was a CIA asset (as the CIA's own released documents confirm), Jim Garrison hoped to investigate Brown's role.