The Passage of Power

by Robert A. Caro

  “Set up a date”: Reedy to Johnson, March 5, “Memos—March 1963,” Box 8, Vice Presidential Aides’ Files of George Reedy. “LBJ last night”: NYHT, March 28, 1963.

  Inviting Marian Anderson: J. Frank Dobie, “Texas Barbecues: 1903 and 1963,” Congressional Record, May 17, 1963, pp. A3138–39.

  African-American press club scene: Rosemarie Tyler, “LBJ Outstanding at CPC 20-Year Dinner,” Washington Afro-American, May 25, 1963.

  Roberts had: Busby interviews with Garth E. Pauley, in Pauley, LBJ’s American Promise: The 1965 Voting Rights Address.

  A few days before: Busby interview.

  Lead story: “JOHNSON SAYS NATION WILL NOT BE FREE TILL ALL ARE BLIND TO COLOR,” WP, May 31, 1963. So short: Garth Pauley, “The Genesis of a Rhetorical Commitment,” in James Arnt Aune and Enrique D. Rigsby, eds., Civil Rights Rhetoric and the America Presidency, pp. 155–97. “eloquence”: Editorial, “A Voice from the South,” WP, June 1, 1963. Text of speech: Garth Pauley, “Remarks of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Memorial Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania—May 30, 1963,” sound recording, Audiovisual Archives, LBJL. See Branch, Pillar of Fire, p. 92.

  Working himself up; pureness of his motives: See Caro, Master, particularly “The Compassion of Lyndon Johnson” chapter.

  Not part of drawing up: White, Lee OHs; McPherson, Reedy, Sorensen interviews. “Fifteen minutes alone”: Norbert Schlei to RFK, “Comments of the Vice President on the Civil Rights Legislative Proposals,” June 4, 1963; Schlei OH, cited in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 348; Reedy interview. At 10 a.m.: Daily Diary, June 3, 1963; Reedy interview; Roberts OH. He gave some: “Edison Dictaphone Recording, LBJ-Sorensen, June 3, 1963,” OH Collection, LBJL. The next morning: Daily Diary, June 4, 1963. “A Southern preacher”: Schlesinger interview. “A very serious”: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 971. When at another meeting: NYHT, June 5, 1963.

  “For a couple of weeks there”: Reedy interview. Once: Schlei to Robert Kennedy, June 4, 1963, Box 11, “Attorney General—General Correspondence,” Robert Kennedy Papers, JFKL.

  “I’ve got a date”: Louis Martin OH, LBJL.

  Enlarging CEEO’s jurisdiction: “Transcript of Proceedings—Mtg. of July 18, 1963,” pp. 96–143, Box 11, OH Collection, LBJL; Reedy to Johnson, June 10, 1963; Reedy to Johnson, undated, “Personal and Confidential,” “Memos—June 1963,” Box 8, VP Aides’ Files—Reedy, LBJL; NYHT, June 23, 1963. “I checked”: Lee White OH, LBJL; White OH, JFKL; Shesol, Mutual Contempt, p. 84.

  Conference Room B: Committee on EEO, Minutes of the Seventh Meeting, May 29, 1963, OH Collection, LBJL; Dallek, Flawed Giant, pp. 36–37; Lemann, Promised Land, p. 138; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, pp. 335–36. “Within a matter”: Conway OH, JFKL, LBJL. “He wanted”: Lawson OH.

  “In late summer”: McPherson OH, interview. “Than I had ever”: Busby interview. Grabbing the phone: Wright interview. “Humiliated”: For example, “Bobby came in the other day to our Equal Employment Committee, and I was humiliated” (Johnson to Sorensen, Edison Dictaphone recording). Had, in Johnson’s mind: Wright, Busby, Reedy, McPherson interviews.

  “There have been”: NYT, WP, May 9, 1963. “Assuming”: NYT, WP, Nov. 1, 1963. “That’s preposterous”: Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy, p. 218. “Everybody”: O’Donnell OH. “What do you mean”: Fay, The Pleasure of His Company, p. 259. “There was no”: Guthman and Shulman, eds., Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words, p. 389. “Reports”: Johnson, The Vantage Point, p. 2. “The ticket was definitely”; “emphatically”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 605. “I have never”: Frankel, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 308. “In the back room”: Thomas, Dateline: White House, p. 121. “Obsessed”: Reedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, p. 63. “His complaints”: Baker with King, Wheeling and Dealing, p. 144.

  Polls: AA-S, Sept. 20, 1963; WES, Aug. 25, 1963; WP, June 30, 1963. The August 25 poll said Goldwater would beat Kennedy in six southern states if the election were held then. “I don’t know”; “Lyndon never”: NYHT, Aug. 27, 1963. “Said they doubted”: Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 1963. “The President”: Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 24, 1963. “If the solid”; “written off”: NYT News Service in HC, July 2, 1963. “New political”: Allen and Scott, “Washington Report,” AA-S, Oct. 1, 1963.

  “The mere mention”: AA-S, Oct. 2, 1963. About the same: HC, July 2, 1963.

  With the Texans who mattered: Brown, Clark, Connally, Kilgore, Oltorf, Yarborough interviews. “Basically”: Brown interview. “Transcended”: Oltorf interview. “Lyndon as vice”: “Washington Whispers,” USN&WR, Jan. 21, 1963. “He had promised”: Clark interview. “Loopholes!”: Oltorf interview.

  The same Belden Poll: AA-S, Grand Rapids Press, Sept. 22, 1963. “One thing”: Connally interview. “Still had”; “John controlled”; “almost”: Kilgore interview. “After”: Connally interview. “I had frankly”: “Hearings before the Select Committee on the Assassination,” 1978, pp. 13, 14. “The one thing”: Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson, p. 197. “Did not”; “no desire”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,” pp. 5, 11. “Well, Lyndon”: “Hearings,” p. 14; Connally with Herskowitz, In History’s Shadow, pp. 170–71; Connally interview.

  “John Connally wanted”: Hugh Sidey, “Jackie Onassis’ Memory Fragments on Tape,” Time, April 24, 1978. “That thought”: Connally, In History’s Shadow, p. 173. “The last thing”: Yarborough interview. “Less viable”: Bradlee, Conversations, p. 237.

  “He’d like”: Bartlett, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 307. Reedy went: Reedy interview. “Strongly conscious”: Fay, The Pleasure, pp. 3, 4.

  Connally’s trip to Washington: Connally interview; Connally, In History’s Shadow, pp. 171–73. “Irritated”: Connally, In History’s Shadow, p. 173. “Hurt”: Connally interview. Talking to the ghostwriters of his autobiography during his retirement, Johnson said, “The President got Connally up without telling me about it and got Connally to the White House and they agreed on this November date, and I heard Connally was in town and I … asked him what it was all about and he said well he assumed that the President would tell me if he wanted me told.… They had agreed on this date. This was the first I knew about the date” (Transcript, “Tape Recording between Lyndon B. Johnson, Jack Valenti, and Bob Hardesty,” March 8, 1969, pp. 7, 8, OH Collection, LBJL. And on another tape recording he made during his retirement, Johnson said, “Kennedy wanted to identify with Connally—Connally’s stock was high” (Johnson, “Reminiscences of Lyndon B. Johnson,” August 19, 1969, transcript of tape recording, OH Collection, LBJL). Johnson was to say that Kennedy’s “poll in Texas showed that only 38% of the people approved of what he was doing as President. And this poll pointed out that if we were to have any chance whatever in the ’64 campaign against Goldwater, we had to have the state machinery and the leadership of the state Governor, John Connally, because the Governor is a powerful leader.… And he also wanted to have the machinery of the state in back of him in the form of the Governor” (CBS News Special—LBJ: “Tragedy and Transition,” May 2, 1970.

  10. The Protégé

  “There was”; “closed the door”; “You could sense”; “as grim”: McDowell OH; Elizabeth A. Shedlick interview. “The press of business”: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 14, 1963. Schedule changes: Copenhagen Berlingske Tidende, Sept.13, 1963. Canceled: WP, Sept. 14, 1963; DMN, Sept. 14, 1963. “An official guest”: Copenhagen Aktuelt, Sept. 15, 1963. Told the State Department aides: Sarah McClendon, “Re conversation with Dick Schreiver,” undated, p. 5, McClendon Papers.

  The call had been: Des Moines Register, Sept. 18, 1963; Rowe, The Bobby Baker Story, p. 50; “It was reported by friends that the Baker problem was on his mind,” (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 273). Hill’s lawsuit: G. R. Schreiber, “A Special Report—Onward and Upward with Serve-U,” Vend, Oct. 1, 1963, pp. 71–74. See also NYT, Oct. 8, 1963, which puts it this way: “The company said in the suit that it had retained Mr. Baker to help it obtain placement of vending machines in a government con
tractor’s plants and also alleged that he had interfered to cause cancellation of one of its own contracts.…” “Taken money to”: Murray Kempton, “The Vendor,” The New Republic, October 19, 1963.

  Landau was given a tip: “And recognized immediately the explosive implications of [the] suit” (Laurence Stern and Erwin Knoll, “Washington: Outsiders’ Expose,” Columbia Journalism Review, Spring 1964, pp. 18–23). Other accounts say he was making a routine check of court filings and recognized Baker’s name (Rowe, Bobby Baker Story, p. 49; Baker with King, Wheeling and Dealing, p. 175. An official of Serv-U assured Landau: WP, Sept. 12, 1963. “Considerable soul-searching”: Laurence and Knoll, “Washington.”

  Schreiber had allowed: McClendon interview. The “protégé”: G. R. Schreiber, “Special Report.” One of its stockholders; business dealings: The WP was to report that Baker and his partners had sold their Carousel Motel to Serv-U for $1,200,000 (WP, Oct. 3, 1963).

  “He panicked”: Reedy OH. “The way”: Reedy interview. Fortas suggested: Reedy OH III. “Oh my God”: Reedy OH III. “That was just stupid”: Reedy OH XXI. Johnson claiming he was not responsible for Baker’s election: Steele, Oct. 28, 1963: “Bobby Baker? He was nominated as Secretary of the Senate by his own senator, Olin Johnston, seconded by Matt Neely; I didn’t have anything to do with it and he was here even before I came.” “Once Confidential Memoranda Prepared by John Steele for the editors of Time, August ’61–Sept. ’68,” LBJL.

  Provence call; Jenkins talking to McClendon: “Sarah McClendon to The Secretary, Standing Committee of Correspondents, Senate Press Gallery,” April 8, 1964, p. 4 (in author’s possession—hereafter identified as “McClendon to Secretary”); McClendon interview, OH. The words she says Jenkins used vary in each of these versions, but the gist is the same. Jenkins was later to recite the details of the McClendon confrontation to, among others, Reedy, Busby, and Margaret Mayer, a reporter for the Dallas Times-Herald, who was a friend of Busby’s and had once worked for Johnson. In their interviews with me, the gist of the Jenkins-McClendon conversation is the same.

  “With a mixture”: Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Jan. 1, 2007. “She didn’t know”: Andrea Mitchell, quoted in WP, Jan. 9, 2003.

  McClendon’s article: “PROBE DEALS OF LYNDON’S FORMER AIDE” (by Sarah McClendon, North American Newspaper Alliance), Des Moines Register, Sept. 18 1963. The Bobby Baker story had been floating around Washington for years. “Possibly no story illustrates the limitations of Senate reporting as it has been done in recent years better than the Bobby Baker story in Washington,” wrote James McCartney of the Chicago Daily News Washington Bureau. “Gossip about his power and influence as well as about the fortune he has amassed has been common in the Senate press gallery. Any reporter with eyes could see him wheeling and dealing on the Senate floor.… The facts that he own a restaurant franchise in North Carolina and has been the co-owner of a plush motel on the Atlantic Ocean have been common knowledge.… Yet Senate press gallery regulars exhibited an astonishing lack of interest in writing about Bobby Baker” (James McCartney, “Vested Interests of the Reporter,” originally in Nieman Reports, Dec. 1963; reprinted in Lyons, Reporting the News). It wasn’t just press gallery regulars who hadn’t been reporting it. Drew Pearson had known as far back as April 27, 1960, that, as his associate Jack Anderson reported, “For a couple of years, I have been picking up rumors that my friend, Bobby Baker, has been peddling his influence on Capitol Hill.… Yesterday I did a little checking on Bobby.… Baker is vice president of an insurance firm, Don Reynolds Associates.… Bobby … has been a friend and source of mine for years” (Anderson to Pearson, April 27, 1960, Drew Pearson Papers).

  Baker: McClendon, “Re conversation with Dick Schreiver,” undated.

  Jenkins had the editor: “McClendon to Secretary,” p. 4. Jenkins telephoned McClendon: McClendon ms., McClendon Papers; McClendon OH, interview. “We have your story”: Indeed he did, she recalls. Jenkins said “he had in his hand a copy of the story I had sent to Texas” (McClendon ms., p. 14). “I was given the impression”: “McClendon to Secretary,” p. 6; McClendon interview. While “Walter knew”: McClendon ms., pp. 13, 14; McClendon OH I, interview. Jenkins was later to relate these events to, among others, Reedy and Busby. Only one newspaper: Des Moines Register, Sept. 18, 1963. Willard Edwards article: Chicago Daily Tribune, Sept. 23, 1963. “It was”: Laurence Stern and Erwin Knoll, “Washington: Outsiders’ Exposé,” Columbia Journalism Review, spring 1964, p. 19. And the next Monday: Newsweek, Oct. 7, 1963.

  “With plants”; “It is”: Murray Kempton, “The Vender,” The New Republic, Oct. 19, 1963. “Just trying to sell”: Reedy OH III. One “horrible”: Reedy interview.

  “Bobby”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 182. “I knew”: Eleanor Randolph, “BOBBY BAKER BACK, CHIP ON SHOULDER,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 21, 1977. “He’s using Lady Bird”; Johnson was petrified”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 182. “Lyndon B. Johnson might”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 271. “He lied”: Chicago Tribune, Aug. 21, 1977.

  “We spoke”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 182. “Very private”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 261. “Is it going to be”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 272. “Put in a kind word”; “I don’t want”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 268. “It became too obvious: Baker, Wheeling, p. 276.

  Baker was, of course, his protégé: Caro, Master of the Senate, pp. 390–94.

  $11,025; $1,791,186: U.S. Senate, Committee on Rules and Administration, Report on Financial or Business Interests of Officers or Employees of the Senate, Report No. 1175, 88th Cong., 2nd Session, 1964 (referred to hereafter as Senate Rules Committee First Report). “The man most harmed”: WES, Oct. 10, 1963. The article: WP, Oct. 6, 1963.

  “Friendly lines”; Washington folklore”; Voted to censure: Frederic W. Collins, “Senator Williams—Public Eye,” NYT, Feb. 9, 1964. “Something”: NYT, Feb. 9, 1964. IRS investigation: Hoffecker, Honest John Williams: U.S. Senator from Delaware, pp. 160–61. None resonated: McCullough, Truman, pp. 742–47, 863. Add a dimension: NYT, July 21, 1954. And during: Hoffecker, Honest John Williams, pp. 131–32. His performance: NYT, Feb. 9, 1964. “A growing army”: WES, Nov. 1, 1963. “The conscience”: NYT, Dec. 18, 1970. “Usually echoed”: Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 282.

  Inviting Ralph Hill: “In the Office of Senator Williams, Sept. 30, 1963, 10:30 a.m–12:30 p.m., Report of Mr. Ralph Lee Hill …,” Box 33, Folder 148, John J. Williams Papers, University of Delaware Library; WP, Oct. 6, 1963; SAE, Chicago Sun–Times Special by Sandy Smith, Oct.6, 1963; Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 277–78. The discussions between Reynolds and Williams would continue all through October.

  Reynolds told Williams that a “political connection”: Kempton, “The Vender.” “Because … of his social contacts”: Senate Rules Committee First Report, p. 38. Johnson had mentioned; “told Senator Johnson”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 83.

  Reynolds secured; whose premium would be paid: “Memorandum to: The Files, From: L. P. McClendon and W. Ellis Meehan, Subject: Interview with Walter Jenkins, Re: Life Insurance Sales by Don Reynolds,” Dec. 16, 1963, “Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, Jan. 9, 17, 1964, Part I, Testimony of Don B. Reynolds, pp. 33–35, 93–95, 108, 121. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 299.

  Baker brought him; Johnson told him jovially: “Testimony of Don B. Reynolds, accompanied by James F. Fitzgerald, counsel,” “Financial or Business Interests of Officers and Employees of the Senate, Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate,” Jan. 9, 17, 1964. Reynolds says (p. 108) that he gave Johnson a $50,000 policy, but Baker says there were two policies, each for $100,000 (Baker, Wheeling, p. 83). “Was delighted”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 83. Baker also said, “I knew that if I testified to the total truth, then Lyndon B. Johnson, among others, might suffer severely. Suppose they asked me whether Lyndon Johnson had, indeed, insisted on a kickback from Don Reynolds in the writing of his life insurance policy. A truthful answer would torpedo the Vice
President. Suppose they asked me what I knew of campaign funds for Johnson, or, for that matter, President Kennedy” (Baker, Wheeling, p. 185).

  Jenkins called him in: Eleanor R. Lenhart to Williams, “Memo—Visit from Mr. Reynolds at which time he was talking with the Senator with the knowledge that I was taking notes,” Oct. 28. 1963; John J. Williams to files, “Memo—Don Reynolds Insurance Partner,” Oct. 28 (but appears to be Oct. 29), 1963, both Box 32, folder 120, John J. Williams Papers, University of Delaware Library. See also Williams to files, Nov. 4, 1963, “The checks are to be furnished tomorrow night”; Williams to files, “Visit from Mr. Don Reynolds today. Mr. Reynolds brought in cancelled check for payment to LBJ’s station for $208 and also …,” Nov. 18, 1963, both Box 32, folder 120. “Prodded” him: Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 298. Purchasing $1,208 of airtime: Reynolds, “Testimony,” pp. 104–08.

  The stereo: “Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, Jan. 9, 17, 1964, Part I, Testimony of Don B. Reynolds,” pp. 37–42 (with exhibits of checks and invoices). Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 297, 298. Jenkins would later deny, again and again: For example, in an interview with investigators for the Senate Rules Committee, “Memorandum, Dec. 16, 1963, To: The Files, From L. P. McClendon and W. Ellis Meehan,” “Testimony,” pp. 93–95. “He [Johnson] took the stereo”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 196. Baker also says that Reynolds “had originally volunteered to waive his cash commission on the policy and then had reneged,” but this in itself would have been illegal. “Testimony,” p. 4 (WES, March 11, 1964), and Reynolds’s own testimony about the circumstances in which he was forced to buy the advertising time and stereo contradicts Baker’s statement. Reynolds, “Testimony,” pp. 105–08. “A kickback pure and simple”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 196. A “shakedown”: Reynolds, quoted in Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 298. Proof: “Reynolds Exhibits 8, 9, 10, 11,” pp. 37–41. $1,000 check: Reynolds Exhibit 7, “Testimony,” p. 36. $208 check: Reynolds Exhibit 26, “Testimony,” p. 120, also pp. 119–21.