The Passage of Power

by Robert A. Caro

  But Lyndon Johnson never took no for an answer, and he wasn’t going to take no now. As soon as he was informed of Warren’s refusal to serve, he telephoned the chief justice and invited him to the Oval Office. Warren, a man of great determination, may have been determined not to serve, but when he arrived, as he was to recall, there were “only the two of us in the room.” Lyndon Johnson had him one on one. The chief justice may have believed that there were no words that could move him, but Johnson found some. Reminding Warren that he had served in the Army during World War I, the President said he was sure that if he asked him to put on his uniform again, he would do it, “and you’d go fight if you thought you could save one American life.”

  It wasn’t just one American life that might be involved now, Lyndon Johnson said. It was thirty-nine million. “If Khrushchev moved on us, he could kill 39 million in an hour,” and “these wild people are charging Khrushchev killed Kennedy, and Castro killed Kennedy, and everybody else killed Kennedy,” and if Khrushchev felt threatened because of what these rumors might cause America to do, he just might move on us. “And all I want you to do is look at the facts, and bring any other facts that you want in here and determine who killed the President,” and end the rumors, Lyndon Johnson said. “But here I’m asking you to do something and you’re saying no, when you could be speaking for 39 million people. Now I’m surprised that you, the Chief Justice of the United States, would turn me down.”

  Tears came to Warren’s eyes, Johnson was to write in his memoirs. Warren does not confirm that in his, merely writing that he said, “Mr. President, if the situation is that serious, my personal views do not count. I will do it.” Then, says Warren, “he thanked me, and I left the White House.” It hadn’t even taken that long—according to the White House log, twenty-two minutes at most. It’s possible to make a sale quickly, even a very big sale, if the salesman is good enough.

  THAT LEFT RUSSELL. Johnson had had to do a quick reading of Warren; he had had years to read Richard Brevard Russell, and he had read him all the way through. Russell may have thought his refusal to serve on the commission had ended the matter, but a few minutes after Johnson had put down the receiver at the end of his call to Winder, he picked it up again to call Everett Dirksen and tell him the names of the panel’s members, and Russell was one of the names. “He didn’t want to take it, but he will,” Johnson said. “I’m going to make him do it.” And he knew how to make him do it: he had Pierre Salinger type up, and hand to the White House press corps, a press release announcing the formation of the commission, and the names of the seven people he had appointed to it, and Russell’s name was one of the seven.

  He waited awhile, because he didn’t want Russell to know about the announcement until newspapers had set it in type, and until presses were rolling with the next day’s editions. Then, at 8:55 that evening, he had the White House operators put in another call to Winder.

  When Richard Russell picked up the phone, he was in a good mood. When Johnson said, “Dick, I hate to bother you again, but—” he interrupted his caller to say in a friendly tone, “That’s all right, Mr. President.” But that mood didn’t last long. “I wanted you to know that I’d made the announcement,” Johnson said. “Announcement of what?” Russell asked in a puzzled tone. Johnson read him the text of the press release: “The members are Chief Justice Earl Warren, chairman; Senator Richard Russell, Georgia.…” Russell protested. “Well now, Mr. President, I … just can’t serve on that commission.… I couldn’t serve there with Chief Justice Warren. I don’t like that man.… I don’t have any confidence in him.”

  “Ah, Dick,” Johnson said. “It’s already been announced.… It’s already done. It’s been announced.”

  In an astonished tone of voice, Russell said, “You mean you’ve given that—”

  “Yes, sir, I mean I gave it—I gave the announcement and it’s already in the papers, and you’re on it.”

  Russell didn’t go quietly. “Mr. President, you ought to have told me you were going to name Warren,” he said, and when Johnson said, “I told you! I told you today I was going to name the Chief Justice, when I called you,” Russell refused to let that misrepresentation stand. “No, you did not!” he said. “You were talking about getting somebody on the Supreme Court.… You didn’t tell me you were going to name him.” But the arguments Johnson used on Russell—and their effect on Russell—showed how deeply he had read into the text.

  He used the arguments he had used with Warren—in very much the same words, because Russell, too, had served in the armed forces: “We’ve got to take this out of the arena when they’re testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that, and that—kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. And … you’d put on your uniform in a minute”—and when at first they proved less effective than they had with the chief justice, he appealed to the motivation that always worked most effectively with Russell: his patriotism and sense of duty, telling him that he might not want to serve with Warren, but “you can do anything for your country. And don’t go to giving me that kind of stuff about you can’t serve with anybody. You can do anything.

  “You never turned your country down,” Lyndon Johnson told Richard Russell. “This is not for me, this is your country.”

  There was, furthermore, a new tone, a tone of command, as if to remind Russell that it was not just Lyndon Johnson talking now but the President. When Russell continued to protest, the Texas twang rode over the Georgia drawl. “You’re my man on that commission. And you are going to do it! And don’t tell me what you can do and what you can’t, because … I can’t arrest you. And I’m not going to put the FBI on you. But you’re goddamned sure going to serve, I’ll tell you that!” And when Russell continued to balk—“I think you’re sort of taking advantage of me, Mr. President”—the attack switched from the patriotic to the personal. “I’m gonna take a helluva lot of advantage of you, my friend, because you—you made me and I know it, and I don’t ever forget.… I’ll be taking advantage of you a good deal,” Johnson said. “I’m a Russell protégé, and I don’t forget my friends.” The childless Russell was paternally fond of his nephew Robert E. Lee Russell Jr., and Johnson had, over the years, invested time in making a friend of Bobby Russell, and he brought his name in. “You are going to do what’s right, and if you can’t do it, you get that damned little Bobby up there, and let him twist your tail and put a cocklebur under it.” There was a hint of the possibility of a federal appointment. “Where is he?” Johnson asked. “You just tell him to get ready, because I’m going to need him.”

  The conversation continued, for the senator received a much harder sell than the chief justice, and although there were signs that Russell was weakening, Johnson still didn’t have him. “I don’t know when I’ve been as unhappy about a thing as I am this”—“This is awful,” Russell said. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I haven’t got the time.” When Johnson said, “I don’t want to beg you, by God, to serve,” Russell replied, “I know, but this is a sort of rough one now.”

  It had been essential to stop the other investigations, Johnson said to Russell, and his use of Russell’s name had done that. “Jim Eastland, he said this is the best thing that ever happened.” Before Russell’s name was invoked, “they had a full-scale investigation going, Dick, with the TV up there.” He had had no choice but to appoint him, Lyndon Johnson said, and his voice dropped to the earnest deferential tone of a protégé talking to “the Old Master.” How else could he have stopped the congressional circus that would have been so harmful to America, Lyndon Johnson asked Richard Russell. “How do I stop it? How do I stop it, Dick? Now don’t tell me that I’ve worked all day and done wrong!”

  And that last twist did the trick. “I didn’t say you’d done wrong!” Richard Russell said. “If it is for the good of the country you know damned well I’ll do it. And I’ll do it for you, for that matter.” And when, despite this remark, an instant later Russell was sti
ll expressing reservations so that Johnson still could not be certain that his acceptance was final, Johnson resumed the tone, reminding Russell of a very intimate—and significant—moment in their relationship.

  “Dick,” he said, “do you remember when you met me at the Carlton Hotel for breakfast in 1952? When we had breakfast there one morning, and I became Leader?”

  “Yes, I think I do,” Russell said. No one can be certain of what was said at the breakfast, but it had occurred on November 9, 1952, a week after the elections in which the Senate Democratic Leader, Ernest McFarland of Arizona, had lost his Senate seat.

  Russell could have had the leadership for the asking, but as had always been the case, he didn’t want it, and during that week he had several conversations with Johnson, who did, and in one of them, reported Evans and Novak, who interviewed both men that month, Russell suggested that Johnson should take the job, and Johnson’s reply was that he would do so—on condition that Russell would change his desk in the Senate Chamber so that he would be sitting directly behind the Leader’s desk; he needed Russell close to him, Johnson said, because he would be constantly asking for his guidance. Now, in this November, 1963, call, he was saying that he still needed Russell, that that was why he had appointed him to the commission. “Do you think I’m kidding you?” Lyndon Johnson asked.

  Over the telephone line from Winder—heard clearly in the recording of this conversation—came a chuckle from the old senator, amused, fond. “No, I don’t think you’re kidding me,” Richard Russell said.

  And the bottom line was the ineluctable fact: the announcement of Russell’s appointment to the commission had already been made, was already public knowledge—and therefore Russell’s refusal to accept it would be not merely a quiet refusal but a public rejection of an assignment that the President considered important to the country, a slap in the President’s face from a man who revered the institution of the presidency, and a public slap as well in the face of a man with whom he had worked for many years, and who was, indeed, his protégé, a slap in the face of a man with whose wife and family he had spent so much time. “If you hadn’t announced it, I would absolutely” have refused it, Russell said, quite firmly. “Yes, I would.” But Johnson’s announcement had left him no choice, and he knew it. “I’m not going to say any more, Mr. President, because I’m at your command, and I’ll do anything you want,” he said. “I hope to God you’ll be just a little bit more … deliberate and considerate next time. But this time, of course, if you’ve done this, I’m going to do it and go through with it, and say I think it’s a wonderful idea.”

  “Well, you are damned sure going to be at my command—you are going to be at my command as long as I’m here,” Johnson said, and, “worked up,” “revved up” by this time, he didn’t stop escalating his appeals even after Russell’s surrender. “I don’t give a damn if you have to serve with a Republican, if you have to serve with a Communist, if you have to serve with a Negro, if you have to serve with a thug, you’re going to serve,” he said, and then switched abruptly to the personal again. “No one has ever been more to me than you have, Dick—except my mother,” he said. “I bothered you more and made you spend more hours with me telling me what was right and wrong than anybody except my mother.” Was “mother” insufficient? A man had, after all, two parents. “I haven’t got any daddy, and you’re going to be it,” he said. Richard Russell laughed—although the man who hated the “Warren Court” was now a member of the Warren Commission.

  THE FORMATION of the commission was greeted with an overwhelming chorus of praise—for both its mandate and its membership. The huge headlines in the Republican Herald Tribune might have been written by Johnson himself: WARREN HEADS PRESIDENT’S PANEL, they said. ITS PURPOSE—TO REVEAL EVERY FACT.

  The commission’s membership “represents a broad power structure, cutting across party and executive lines,” the Herald Tribune said. “It includes leading figures ranging from Mr. McCloy” to Ford, “a leading congressional Republican.… In Mr. Dulles, the President has selected one of the most famous intelligence experts in U.S. espionage history.” And the inclusion of the two men Johnson considered key had the effect he wanted; almost immediately the body became known as the Warren Commission, and with the announcement that Russell was on the investigating panel, talk of other congressional investigations quickly died away. Although it had taken a few days for Johnson to understand that the Texas course on which he had originally been insisting was misdirected, when he did, he demonstrated on the new course the same sureness of touch he had been exhibiting in other areas. He had come to the presidency with an understanding of the need to build confidence, and of the need, as a crucial element in accomplishing that end, to end “skepticism and doubt” about the assassination, particularly because of the possibility—in that Cold War era—of doubts escalating into disaster. Far-fetched? No more so than a Balkan bullet leading to a world conflagration. And, with the appointment of the Warren Commission, he may have felt—and, for a time, the country felt—he had accomplished that end. The widespread praise for its creation was echoed, ten months later, by the reaction when it issued its report, which found that a single gunman, Oswald, was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that no conspiracy was involved, either by the Soviet Union or Cuba or anyone else. Before the Warren Commission’s report, only 29 percent of the American public had believed Oswald had acted alone; a poll taken shortly after the report’s release showed that that percentage had risen to 87. That confidence would not last for long, in part because of the discovery of gaps in the commission’s work, in part because of a flood of books—a flood that has continued to this day—that claimed to have discovered evidence of conspiracies, involving, among others, the CIA, the Mafia, and Lyndon Johnson himself. A House of Representatives Select Committee that was established in 1976 to restudy the assassination did little to resolve the controversies; its report, released in 1979, concluded that John Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy, but while it ruled out the Soviet Union or Cuba as the origin of this conspiracy, it said it was unable to identify who had been involved in it. By 1983, 75 percent of Americans disbelieved the lone gunman theory, and felt a conspiracy was involved, and the percentage has held relatively steady in polls taken since. In no poll was there consensus about the conspiracy’s origin or members; in a 2003 Gallup Poll 18 percent of Americans felt Lyndon Johnson was indeed involved. Since that time, more books, as well as television programs, have put that theory forward. However, as I’ve said earlier, nothing that I have found in my research leads me to believe that whatever the full story of the assassination may be, Lyndon Johnson had anything to do with it. At the time, the crucial weeks and months following the assassination, the formation of the commission accomplished its purpose. The fact that the crime was being investigated by a commission of men with reputations for integrity, that its chairman was a public figure with a uniquely high reputation for integrity, and that its report initially was greeted with respect, helped calm America’s unease over the assassination of its President. The Warren Commission “brought us through a very critical time in our history,” Lyndon Johnson would write in his memoirs. “I believe it is fair to say that the Commission was dispassionate and just.” The second sentence in that statement would not, if evaluated at the time this book is published, enjoy universal acceptance. But the first sentence should. And the country had been brought through that “critical time”—that crisis in the national history, those initial days and weeks after the assassination in which anxiety about conspiracies could have escalated—because of Lyndon Johnson’s decision to create the Warren Commission. It was a difficult decision for him to make. It went against his nature—against his desire, his need, for control, and for the secrecy which is a form of control—control and secrecy that he would have had had he insisted that the investigation into the assassination be made by a Texas court of inquiry that was under his thumb and by an FBI hea
ded by a longtime ally. But he made that decision, sacrificed control and secrecy, and, moreover, turned over the investigation to a man he hardly knew and whose independence was already a legend, when, that Friday afternoon, he asked Earl Warren to come to the Oval Office. It was not his speech to Congress alone that had demonstrated, in these early days, that Lyndon Johnson was “not a fluke of history, but a President.”

  18

  The Southern Strategy

  THEN HE HAD to turn back to Capitol Hill—to Congress.

  Much of Lyndon Johnson’s accomplishment thus far in his presidency—creating an impression of continuity by holding the Kennedy men and of competence by his first speech—had been, while important, symbolic in nature. Dealing with Congress wouldn’t be symbol but substance, indispensable substance, the very essence of governing in a democracy, for in dealing with Congress a President was dealing with a democracy’s very heart: the creation of the laws by which it was governed.