The Passage of Power

by Robert A. Caro

  Nor can the losses incurred during the Johnson presidency be measured only in numbers. “It is difficult … to remember, much less … to understand, the extent to which ‘the President,’ any President, was revered, respected,” before Lyndon Johnson, Tom Wicker was to write shortly after Johnson’s presidency ended; difficult to remember so thoroughly had respect and reverence for the institution disappeared during that presidency. It is difficult for most Americans today—more than forty years, two generations, after that presidency ended—to remember, or to understand, such reverence for a President, or for the institution of the presidency, so lasting has been the damage inflicted on it. While much of the damage was inflicted by Richard Nixon, Johnson’s successor, it was under Johnson that the damage began.

  The story of the presidency of Lyndon Johnson will be different in tone from the story of the transition in part because the elements of his personality absent during the transition were shortly to reappear. Yet for a period of time, a brief but crucial moment in history, he had held these elements in check, had overcome them, had, in a way, conquered himself. And by doing so, by overcoming forces within him that were very difficult to overcome, he not only had held the country steady during a difficult time but had set it on a new course, a course toward social justice. In the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, this period stands out as different from the rest, as perhaps that life’s finest moment, as a moment not only masterful but, in its way, heroic.

  If he had held in check these forces within him, had conquered himself, for a while, he wasn’t going to be able to do it for very long.

  But he had done it long enough.

  DEBTS

  SOURCES

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Debts

  SOMETIMES, despite all my words, words fail me.

  They fail me even when trying to acknowledge what my wife, Ina Caro, has done for this book. On all of my previous books she has been the whole team—the only person besides myself who has done research on the four volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson or on the biography of Robert Moses that preceded them, the only person I would ever trust to do so. During the years I have been working on this fourth volume, Ina wrote a second book of her own, and quite a wonderful one, too. And yet she was still the whole team, finding time not only to write her book but to do for my book the research in archives and libraries that she does so incomparably well. Words fail me in trying to acknowledge this. All I can say to my beloved idealist—in words from my heart—is “thank you.”

  I FIND MYSELF in a similar quandary when I try to find words to acknowledge what a group of other people have meant to me. Forty-two years ago—in 1970—I brought the half-completed manuscript of The Power Broker to the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house. Since that time, my editor—on all five of my books—has been Bob Gottlieb. I have tried before to express my gratitude for the generosity with which he has lavished his time and his talent, a unique editorial intelligence, on these books. He was just as generous with this book, and all I can do is to say, again from the heart, thank you.

  With me on that first book was Katherine Hourigan, then a young assistant editor and now Knopf’s managing editor. She has played a vital, indispensable role not only in the editing of these books, but in their production. Over the years she has come to be a great friend, a friend to my books and to me. I thank her for being such a friend.

  In the room with me so many years ago was the agent who, in 1970, agreed to represent me: Lynn Nesbit. I have said about Lynn that “she has always been there when I need her.” I can’t find any words more fitting than that to thank her now.

  All three of these immensely talented, energetic and dedicated people were there with me forty-two years ago, and they are with me today. That fact alone makes me a very lucky author.

  THERE IS A FURTHER REASON that I consider myself lucky. Sonny Mehta, the president of Knopf, came to that publishing house in 1987. So he has been my publisher for only twenty-five years—a mere quarter of a century. In that time, they say, the world of publishing has changed. But, in his dealings with me, Sonny hasn’t changed. Not once in twenty-five years has he asked me (or had anyone else ask me) when I am going to be finished with my book. I have literally never once—in forty-two years—heard that question at Knopf. Never once, as I have proposed expanding the number of volumes in The Years of Lyndon Johnson from three to four and now to five, has he presided over that expansion with anything other than encouragement, and indeed enthusiasm. Not many people in publishing, it seems to me, would have had the understanding and patience that Sonny has shown with me: an understanding of what I am trying to do with my books, and an understanding also that it might take a long time to do it.

  PEOPLE AT KNOPF have meant the world to me. One is Andrew W. Hughes, Knopf’s vice president of production and design, who has supervised the production of all four Johnson volumes. He has given me beautiful books, and I thank him for that. In addition, my insistence on rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting—rewriting with my books in galleys and even in page proofs, even in the last stage of page proofs—has presented everyone at Knopf with daunting problems, and Andy somehow solves them. (As his father, Andrew L. Hughes, solved not only legal but literary problems for me during decades which began when I was a young investigative reporter at Newsday, and he was its attorney.) Thank you, Andys, both of you.

  The comments Tony Chirico makes about my books are always perceptive, and his support of the whole Johnson project has meant more to me than I can easily express.

  Others at Knopf have also been helping my books along for many years: Paul Bogaards, Anne Messitte, Nicholas Latimer, Russell Perreault, Carol Carson. As I walk around the halls of my publishing house, they seem filled with the friends of decades. (And they are filled for me also with the faces of friends no longer there: Bill Loverd and the late Nina Bourne.) For me, The Years of Lyndon Johnson has been a great journey, and all of you at Knopf have accompanied me on it. My gratitude also to Maria Massey, who was trapped by my insistence on editing and re-editing myself, and somehow overcame the obstacles I thus placed in her path. And to Lydia Buechler, Cassandra Pappas, Jessica Freeman-Slade and Vimi Santokhi.

  ANOTHER COMPANION on every stage of the Johnson journey has been Claudia Wilson Anderson, supervisory archivist at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. She was at the library when Ina and I first arrived to start our research there in 1976, and her unparalleled knowledge of what is in the vast files there—forty-four million documents at last count—and the helpfulness with which she has always worked with Ina and me to find what we are looking for is a demonstration that, as I have said before, she is an historian in the highest sense of the word.

  AT THE JOHNSON LIBRARY also I would like to thank Tina Houston, Linda Seelke, Barbara Cline, Ted Gittinger, Jennifer Cuddeback, Regina Greenwill, Allen Fisher, Bob Tissing, John Wilson, Laura Eggert, Lara Hall, Margaret Harmon, Chris Banks, Will Clements and Eric Cuellar.

  ALTHOUGH THE FOCUS of this volume, unlike the last one, is not primarily on the Senate, there is a lot on the Senate in it, so again I must thank Donald A. Ritchie, the Senate historian, for years of help. No one knows the history of the Senate better than he, and he has put that knowledge at my right hand with a generosity that makes me once again deeply indebted to him.

  His predecessor, Richard A. Baker, retired during the early stages of this book, but I am grateful to him, too, for his help.

  CAROL SHOOKHOFF’S tireless typing and retyping and deciphering of my manuscripts was an integral part of this book, as was her perceptive criticism.

  JUDE WEBRE’S assistance in obtaining newspaper and magazine articles, always quickly and cheerfully, from the Columbia University and other libraries was invaluable to me in doing this book.

  Sources

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  ANY RESEARCHER ATTEMPTING to re-create the period of Lyndon Johnson’s life covered in this book must be very grateful to two
of Johnson’s staff members.

  One is Walter Jenkins. The men closest to Johnson (not that anyone was ever really close to Lyndon Johnson)—his allies in Washington, Texas, New York and across the country—knew that if Johnson was on the Senate floor or otherwise unavailable, the way to get a message to him was by giving it to Jenkins. Jenkins would write it down—often verbatim: he had been a high school speedwriting champion back in Texas—on a yellow legal pad, and then would type up the messages (or have his assistant, Mildred Stegall, type them up) and hand them to Johnson at the first opportunity. These telephone transcript files, kept in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, in a collection labeled “Office Files of Walter Jenkins, Series 2,” therefore furnish an authentic, sometimes almost minute-by-minute, picture of the information coming in to Johnson, and of his activities, in the years 1957 through 1964. In addition, during the years before Johnson routinely taped telephone calls, his method of obtaining a verbatim record of calls he considered important was to have Jenkins listen in on an extension—having first unscrewed the mouthpiece so that the person on the other end of the line couldn’t hear him breathing—and take down the conversation. These conversations are in a collection at the Library labeled “Notes and Transcripts of Johnson Conversations.” Johnson wanted these notes and transcripts kept indefinitely. When I asked Jenkins why none of them were ever thrown out, he replied that they were kept because “He [Johnson] wanted to remind them”—wanted to be able to recall, and to tell the people he had been talking with, what favors he had done for them, or what they had agreed on, for example. There are three boxes of the “Series 2” and “Notes and Transcripts” papers—or, by the Library’s estimate of 800 pages per box—about 2,400 pages. Additional notes and transcripts can be found in other files—for the subjects being discussed—in the Johnson Senate Papers.

  The other staff member from the period covered in this book who deserves history’s special gratitude is George Reedy, a Lyndon Johnson assistant for fifteen years and, as readers of the last volume will recall, the assistant whom Johnson most relied on for strategic advice during the years of his Senate triumphs. Johnson once complained of Reedy, “When you ask George the time, he tells you how to make a watch,” and it is true that his memoranda to Johnson often go into the background of the subject matter before getting to the point, and often make not a single point, but rather lay out all possible options, with analyses of each. Frustrating though this may have been for Reedy’s boss, it is wonderful for the historian. The “Vice Presidential Aide’s Files of George Reedy,” which include not only his memos but the material he was working from and the attachments of such material he gave to Johnson along with the memos, fill forty-six boxes in the Johnson Library. Except for a handful or two of these boxes, they have all been opened to researchers. Other Reedy memos for the periods (before Johnson became Vice President and for the weeks following the assassination) that are also covered in this book—together with attached material—can be found in the Senate Political Files, the Johnson Senate Papers, and the early Presidential Papers, including the Diary Backup Files. While no one (including me) has counted the number of pages that have been opened in all of the Reedy files, the number may be in the area of forty thousand. I don’t know how many of these pages I’ve read, but I’ve read a lot of them.

  Another particularly valuable collection in the Johnson Library, especially for a researcher interested in Johnson’s long-running fight with John F. Kennedy for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, is the Senate Political Files described below. The “Political Files” contain the office files and memoranda of various Johnson assistants, including not only Jenkins and Reedy but Colonel Kenneth E. BeLieu, Horace Busby, John Connally, Harry McPherson, Gerald Siegel and Warren Woodward. And then there are the various files, individually identified in the chapter notes, of memoranda and letters from such Johnson allies as Thomas G. (Tommy the Cork) Corcoran, Abe Fortas and James Rowe Jr.

  Written material comprises only part of the sources for this book. Another part are my interviews with the people involved with Johnson during this period. For example, Walter Jenkins and I spent quite a bit of time together before his death in 1985. As for George Reedy, I describe my interviews with him in the Note on Sources for my previous volume, Master of the Senate. Often in my ears as I was writing The Passage of Power were the words I heard frequently in Reedy’s gruff voice when, in my search for some additional piece of information, I would telephone him in the nursing home in Milwaukee to which he was confined: “I was hoping you would call back. One point I didn’t make clear …”

  Jenkins and Reedy—and so many other Johnson aides and allies—were generous with their time.

  John Connally would not even respond to my requests for an interview during the seven years I was researching my first volume—a considerable loss to me, since Connally, in Johnson’s estimation “the only man tough enough to handle Bobby Kennedy,” was, until 1962, when he began his independent career in elective office by running for governor of Texas, the man who throughout Johnson’s career had been the person Johnson turned to for advice and assistance with his most difficult problems. He was, moreover, Johnson’s campaign manager in 1960. As I have noted previously, some two years after my first volume was published, “Governor Connally said he had read the book, and now wanted to talk to me at length. He told me that the only way in which he could free the requisite bloc of uninterrupted time would be at his ranch in South Texas. For three days there, we talked, from early in the morning until quite late at night, about his thirty-year association with Lyndon Johnson. Governor Connally had told me that he would answer any question I put to him, without exception. He was true to his word, and discussed with me—as indeed he also did at a subsequent lengthy interview—with considerable, and sometimes startling, frankness, perhaps a score of pivotal events in Lyndon Johnson’s life in which he was a key participant. His interviews were especially valuable because, in more than one case, he [was] the only participant in those events still alive. I am all the more grateful to him because his silence about some of these events that he broke in talking to me was a silence that had lasted for decades.”

  As for Horace Busby, the line in the last letter he wrote to my wife, Ina, from a hospital in Santa Monica a few weeks before he died—“it will be hard on Robert, nobody else can tell him about the vice presidency”—was often in my mind during the time I was writing about those three sad years in Lyndon Johnson’s life (even though Buzz had in fact talked to me at length about the vice presidency). I describe my interviews with Busby, too—scores of interviews—in the Note on Sources in Master of the Senate.

  In attempting to learn about and describe Johnson’s campaign for the presidency, I also made use of other files kept by Jenkins and other members of Johnson’s staff that document what Johnson did with the information that was coming in.

  The other basic source for Johnson’s campaign for the presidency are my interviews with the people on Johnson’s staff during this period: Jenkins himself (in a series of interviews with me before his death in 1985), Reedy, Busby, and Colonel Kenneth E. BeLieu, Yolanda Boozer, Ashton Gonella, Harry McPherson, Mary Rather and Siegel, and with Johnson’s Washington allies Corcoran, Fortas and Rowe, and with Johnson’s brother, Sam Houston Johnson, and with all the others cited in the chapter notes that follow.

  I had not long begun researching the fight between Kennedy and Johnson for the 1960 nomination when I realized that the western and mountain states had been a key battleground, and that two of the key figures in the duel for those states had been, on the Johnson side, Irv Hoff, and on the Kennedy side, the clan’s youngest brother, Ted. In 1960, then twenty-eight years old and a relative political novice, Edward M. Kennedy was initially assigned to those states because the Kennedys felt there was little chance of taking them away from Johnson. Luckily for me, both of these men were willing to talk with me at length about what transpired in the West. Senator
Kennedy asked me what he could do to be truly helpful to me. I said that if he really wanted to help, he would have someone find the notes, including notes on individual delegates, that he had been given by Kennedy headquarters and that he took out west with him, and go over them with me, so that I would know in detail what happened there. He did that: During a memorable weekend talking with me in his home in Washington, the senator went over his trip to the West (on which he first proved that, novice or not, he was a possessor of all the Kennedy political magic) state by state and almost delegate by delegate. As it happens, few of the specific incidents the senator recounted have made their way into the book, but the overall understanding he gave me of the battle informs, page after page, what I wrote. It does so because it tallies so perfectly with what the man working those states for the other side—the Johnson side—told me. Irvin Hoff was as generous with his time as Senator Kennedy was with his.