At 2:38 p.m. Central Standard Time on November 22, 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson raised his right hand in the cramped conference room of Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas.
His left hand rested on a Catholic missal mistaken for a Bible, found in President Kennedy’s bedroom.
Twenty-seven people crowded into the small stateroom. There was no air conditioning. Four jet engines warmed up outside. The temperature rose, and everyone was sweating.
To Johnson’s right stood Lady Bird Johnson, his wife. To his left stood Jacqueline Kennedy, still wearing her bloodstained pink Chanel suit, still in shock, still covered in her husband’s blood.
She had refused to change. “Let them see what they’ve done,” she had said.
Federal Judge Sarah Hughes, the first woman ever to administer the presidential oath, read the words slowly. Johnson repeated them.
White House photographer Cecil Stoughton stood on a leather couch, camera raised, capturing the moment. He shot frame after frame, 19 photographs total, from different angles and expressions.
Then, seconds after the oath was complete, something strange happened. Something captured in a single photograph that would haunt conspiracy researchers for decades.
Lyndon Johnson, just sworn in as president, standing next to a grief-stricken widow still wearing her husband’s blood, turned around. He looked back over his shoulder and smiled.
A wide, unmistakable smile.
He was looking at Congressman Albert Thomas, his longtime friend from Texas. And Albert Thomas, standing in the back, surrounded by somber faces and shocked officials, winked.
He smiled back. A knowing grin. A conspiratorial smirk.
The photograph is called “The Wink.”
The famous photograph from that day shows Johnson center frame, right hand raised, left hand on the missal. His expression is solemn. Jackie Kennedy is to his left, grief-stricken. Lady Bird Johnson is to his right, composed.
Somber faces surround them. The weight of history is captured in black and white.
But that photograph was carefully staged. Photographer Cecil Stoughton suggested the positioning. He placed Jackie Kennedy next to Johnson and angled her away from the camera so the blood stains on her suit wouldn’t show.
Johnson wanted Jackie there. He insisted.
Some historians say it was to show continuity, to reassure the nation that this wasn’t a coup. Others say Johnson wanted her there as a prop, as evidence that he was the legitimate successor.
Jackie didn’t want to be there. She was in shock and traumatized. She had been holding pieces of her husband’s skull in the limousine. She had cradled his shattered head in her lap.
Less than two hours after watching him die, she was being asked to stand next to Lyndon Johnson while he became president. Johnson insisted, and Jackie, numb and broken, complied.
Stoughton took his photographs. Nineteen frames. The official record.
But one frame captured something different. Something unscripted.
The photograph shows Johnson seconds after taking the oath, turning around, looking back, and smiling. Not a polite smile or a nervous smile, but a wide, genuine smile. The smile of a man who just got exactly what he wanted.
In the background is Albert Thomas, congressman from Texas, Johnson’s friend for decades. Thomas is smiling back. More than smiling, he’s winking. His right eye closed. A knowing expression.
The photograph first appeared in David Lifton’s 1980 book, “Best Evidence.” It shocked researchers. This wasn’t grief. This wasn’t solemnity. This was celebration.
Albert Richard Thomas was born April 12, 1898, in Nacogdoches, Texas. He was a Rice Institute graduate, a University of Texas Law School graduate, a district attorney, and a U.S. Congressman since 1937.
He served 26 years in the House of Representatives. He was chairman of the House Defense Appropriations Committee, a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, and a member of the “Suite 8F” group.
The Suite 8F group was the most powerful political machine in Texas, named after a suite in the Lamar Hotel in Houston where they met. The group included Texas oil billionaires, defense contractors, and politicians.
Men like George Brown of Brown and Root, oilman Hugh Roy Cullen, banker Gus Wortham, and their political operatives, Lyndon Johnson and Albert Thomas.
These men controlled Texas. They controlled federal contracts. They controlled defense spending. They made fortunes from government appropriations.
Lyndon Johnson was their man in Washington. Albert Thomas was their second man. Together, they funneled billions of dollars to Texas companies through defense contracts, oil subsidies, and NASA facilities.
It was Albert Thomas who secured the location of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Thomas was Johnson’s closest ally in Congress. When Johnson was Senate Majority Leader, Thomas was his counterpart in the House. They spoke constantly and coordinated strategies.
On November 21, 1963, Albert Thomas accompanied Kennedy and Johnson to Texas. He was on the plane to San Antonio, to Houston, to Fort Worth.
On November 22, he was in the motorcade in Dallas. He witnessed the assassination. He rode to Parkland Hospital. He got on Air Force One with Johnson.
So why did Albert Thomas wink at Lyndon Johnson seconds after Johnson became president?
The official explanation is that it was nothing. A moment of relief. A reassuring gesture between old friends. Thomas was telling Johnson, “You’ve got this. You can do this.”
But the conspiracy explanation is darker. Much darker.
The wink was a signal. A confirmation. “We did it. We pulled it off. You’re president now.”
A moment of shared knowledge between two men who knew the truth: that Kennedy’s assassination wasn’t random, wasn’t the act of a lone gunman, but was planned, executed, and successful.
Johnson, turning around and smiling not at his wife, not at Jackie Kennedy, not at Judge Hughes, but at Albert Thomas, was acknowledging the success.
This interpretation sounds extreme until you look at the other photographs from that day.
Lady Bird Johnson was smiling in multiple photographs. Not the polite, composed smile of a woman trying to maintain dignity during tragedy, but genuine, happy expressions.
In one photograph taken moments before the oath, Lady Bird is beaming, radiant, as if this is the happiest day of her life.
Lady Bird Johnson knew her husband was about to become president. She was about to become first lady. After years as second lady, a role she hated, she was ascending to the highest position in the land.
Then there is Johnson himself. In the moments before the oath, he was calm, composed, almost businesslike. He gave orders. He made phone calls. He coordinated the transition.
He behaved like a man who had been preparing for this moment.
Conspiracy researchers point out that Johnson knew Kennedy was planning to drop him from the 1964 ticket. Johnson knew the Bobby Baker scandal was about to destroy him. Johnson knew Life magazine was preparing an exposé that could send him to prison.
Then Kennedy was shot, and everything changed instantly. The scandals disappeared. The investigations stopped. The exposé was cancelled.
Johnson became president. The timing was perfect. Too perfect.
There was also a significant delay before the oath. Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital at 1:00 p.m. Johnson left the hospital at 1:20 p.m. and arrived at Air Force One at 1:33 p.m.
But he didn’t take off. He waited for over an hour.
The official explanation is that Johnson wanted Judge Sarah Hughes to administer the oath. He insisted on waiting for her to arrive.
But there’s another explanation. Johnson was waiting for Jackie Kennedy. He wanted her on that plane. He wanted her in the photograph. He needed her presence to legitimize his presidency.
Jackie didn’t want to leave Parkland Hospital. She refused to leave her husband’s body. Eventually, under pressure, she agreed to go to Air Force One. She insisted Kennedy’s body come with her.
At 2:18 p.m., Kennedy’s casket was loaded onto the plane. Jackie boarded shortly after. Only then did Johnson proceed with the oath.
The oath took 28 seconds. At 2:38 p.m., Lyndon Johnson became president.
At 2:41 p.m., three minutes later, Air Force One took off for Washington. That was Johnson’s first order as president: get airborne, get out of Dallas, get away from the crime scene fast.
During the flight back to Washington, something else disturbing happened. Multiple witnesses reported it.
Johnson went into the presidential bedroom, Kennedy’s bedroom, and sprawled on the bed. He smoked a cigar and laughed hysterically.
Not nervous laughter. Not shock. Hysterical laughter. The laughter of a man who had just pulled off the impossible.
Jackie Kennedy remained in the back of the plane, sitting next to her husband’s casket, numb and destroyed.
There is something else strange about the wink photograph. The original negative is missing.
In 1995, researcher Richard Trask wrote “Pictures of the Pain,” a comprehensive book about the photography of Kennedy’s assassination. Trask interviewed Cecil Stoughton extensively and examined the contact sheets from Air Force One.
Trask discovered that all of Stoughton’s negatives from the swearing-in ceremony exist, except one. The negative for the wink photograph is missing.
The photograph exists only as a copy negative, a reproduction, not the original.
Someone didn’t want that original negative to exist. Someone removed it from the archives. Someone made sure the highest quality version of the wink could never be analyzed or examined.
This raises another question. Is the wink photograph real or was it fabricated?
Some researchers claim the photograph is fake. They point to technical inconsistencies. The lighting doesn’t match other frames. The contrast is too high. The grain structure is different.
But other experts disagree. They say the photograph is authentic. The lighting differences are explained by Stoughton switching cameras mid-ceremony. The high contrast is due to the lack of flash. Stoughton shot with available light because the plane was being powered up and external power had been disconnected.
The out-of-focus Thomas is explained by movement. He was winking, which involves movement, which would cause slight blur.
In 2017, a blogger analyzed the photographs extensively. His conclusion: the photograph is real, but the wink was captured accidentally.
Stoughton had put his first camera down. He thought he was done shooting. Then he grabbed his second camera and fired off one more frame. In that frame, he caught Thomas winking, something Thomas thought no one would see.
That explanation makes the photograph even more sinister. If Thomas thought no one was watching, the wink becomes more genuine, more revealing. An unguarded moment of celebration.
Stoughton himself described the photograph as “sinister.” That’s the word he used. Not inappropriate. Not awkward. Sinister.
Albert Thomas died on February 15, 1966, less than two and a half years after Kennedy’s assassination. He died in Washington, D.C., at age 67.
He never commented publicly on the wink photograph. He never explained it. He never addressed the theories. He died before most conspiracy theories had been invented, before the photograph became famous.
His widow, Lera Thomas, was elected to complete his term. She became the first woman to represent Texas in Congress.
The Albert Thomas Convention Center in Houston was named in his honor.
The photograph remained filed away in the archives, largely ignored until David Lifton published it in “Best Evidence” in 1980.
Suddenly, researchers couldn’t stop talking about it. The wink captured something undeniable: inappropriate behavior.
Two men smiling and winking at each other seconds after the president of the United States was sworn in following an assassination, in the presence of the murdered president’s widow, still covered in his blood.
No matter how you interpret it, relief, reassurance, conspiracy, celebration, it’s wrong. It’s inappropriate. It’s disturbing.
It raises the same question people have asked for over sixty years. What did Lyndon Johnson and Albert Thomas know? And when did they know it?
In the official photograph, the one published everywhere, Johnson looks solemn, appropriate, presidential. But that was the pose. That was the performance.
The wink captured what came after. When Johnson thought the performance was over. When he turned around. When he let his guard down for just a second and smiled at his friend, who winked back.
That’s the photograph that haunts researchers. That’s the image that won’t go away.
Grief doesn’t smile. Trauma doesn’t wink. Tragedy doesn’t celebrate.
But conspiracy does. Victory does. Success does.
On Air Force One on November 22, 1963, in the seconds after Lyndon Johnson became president, someone captured a moment that shouldn’t exist.
A smile. A wink. A celebration.
The photograph exists. The wink is real. And somewhere in that smile, in that moment of celebration on a day of national tragedy, lies a truth we’re not supposed to know.