The Passage of Power

by Robert A. Caro

  Insurance laws: WES, March 11, 1964. “Precisely my point”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 83.

  Unfortunate echoes: Senator Williams was to draw the comparison himself: “I see no difference in the acceptance of an expensive stereo than in the acceptance of a mink or vicuña coat, a deep freeze, or an oriental rug” (NYT, Jan. 3, 1964).

  “He hated that word”: Reedy interview. “He knew”: Busby interview.

  There had been speculation: The story of Lyndon Johnson’s relationship with the TV stations will be discussed in the next volume, because it was in 1964 that it became a matter of public record and public controversy. The story of his earlier relationship is in Caro, Means of Ascent and Master of the Senate. For articles that summarize the 1964 revelations, see WES, June 9, 1964; Wall Street Journal, March 23 and Aug. 11, 1964; Newsday, May 27–29, 1964; and Life, Aug. 21, 1964. Five Texas cities: Chicago Tribune, Oct. 25, 1964.

  “All that is owned”: Johnson, quoted in Caro, Means, p. 88. His denials had omitted: Caro, Means, pp. 105–06. Mollenhoff, who was working very closely with the committee’s staff, writes that “Although Vice-President Johnson contended, before and since, that he had no interest and no voice in the L.B.J. Company radio and television enterprises, Reynolds said it was the L.B.J. Company that paid for the insurance policy on the Vice-President’s life. The company could not insure Johnson unless he was a person of such value to the firm that he would be regarded as a valuable, key man in the firm’s operations, Reynolds suggested” (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 299). Reedy explains that “At KTBC they had a reason for Johnson wanting to have that kind of a policy. Texas is a community property state. That meant that if he died, half of KTBC would go into the Johnson estate, where it would have to pay inheritance taxes. In order to pay the inheritance taxes they would have had to sell KTBC at a loss. So they wanted a very heavy strong insurance policy on his life” (Reedy OH XXI).

  He had been boasting: Caro, Means, p. 106. By 1963, he was not merely a millionaire but a millionaire many times over. Life was to put the net worth of Lyndon and Lady Bird at $14,000,000 (Aug. 21, 1964); the WSJ put the estimated market value of the television holdings alone at “around $7,000,000 that year” (March 23, 1964). John Barron of the WES put the figure at $9,000,000 (June 9, 1964). Johnson disputed each appraisal, and put the figure at about $4,000,000.

  “Trading out”; “lived in fear”: Deathe interview. Reynolds was telling the senator about campaign contributions: For example, one from North American’s Fred Black, who, Reynolds said, handed [Bobby Baker] an envelope containing money and said: “Here’s $10,000 for our next President, our boy Lyndon” (“Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium and Matters Relating Thereto—Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration,” United States Senate, Part 2, Testimony of Don B. Reynolds, Dec. 1, 1964, p. 162).

  “The important point”: “Statement by U.S. Senator Tom McIntyre (D-N.H.),” Oct. 7, 1963 (in author’s possession); Pearson and Anderson, The Case against Congress, p. 139. “The exchange”: Newsweek, Oct. 14, 1963. These funds had been raised and dispensed at Johnson’s direction: Caro, Master, pp. 403–13. Had not been asked: WP, Oct. 5, 7, 1963.

  “Bobby’s work”: NYHT, NYT, WP, Oct. 5, 1963. “Not entirely”; “for once with the united”: Kempton, “The Vender.”

  “baker called”: WP, Oct. 7, 1963. “Many senators”: Baker, Wheeling, pp. 271–72. Shortly before: Sen. Williams was later to tell the Senate that Mansfield had reported to him that “Mr. Baker had tendered his resignation rather than meet with us” (CR, May 18, 1965), p. 10,845. “Baker is a protégé”: WP, Oct. 8, 1963. “Theirs was a close”: WES, Oct. 9, 1963.

  “Magically disappear”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 180.

  “The integrity”: NYT, Oct. 11, 1963. “Had old Senate hands”: Newsweek, Oct. 21, 1963. “Something of”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 184. “Too soft-hearted”; “He is as hard”: George Dixon, WP, Nov. 13, 1963. “Oh, I went over”; removing autographed picture: Rowe, Bobby Baker Story, p. 61. Postponing: CCC–T, Oct. 29, 1963. “The logical”: Chicago Daily News, Oct. 29, 1963.

  A drumfire: For a summary, WES, Oct.25, 1963. “Near the home”: Time, Nov. 8, 1963. “A Chinese houseboy”: CDN, Oct. 29, 1963.

  His mistress: “Carole was my lover,” Baker said in Wheeling (p. 177). Discovered townhouse: Des Moines Register, Oct. 23, 1963. “Chain-smoking”: Time, Nov. 8, 1963. “dwell and entertain”: Life, Nov. 8, 1963. “Baker’s high-flying”: Time, Nov. 8, 1963. “party house”: Des Moines Register, Oct. 23, 1963. It was also termed a “high-style hideaway for the advise-and-consent set” (Ben H. Bagdikian and Don Oberdorfer, “Bobby Was the Boy to See,” SEP, Dec. 7, 1963).

  “Just an ice cube’s”; “romantic caucuses”: “A Senate Inquiry into Sugar & Spice,” Newsweek, Nov. 11, 1963. “Intimate”; “smoky”: WP, Oct. 26, 1963. “Discreet”: WES, Oct. 27, 1963. “The ceiling is red”: NYT, Nov. 1, 1963.

  “Clad”; had worked at; “associating with”: Des Moines Register, Oct. 26, 1963; Time, Nov. 8, 1963; Smith, Grace and Power, p. 410. “Expelled”: Clark Mollenhoff broke the story in the Des Moines Register, Oct. 26, 1963. See also his Oct. 29, 1963, story. “At the direction of the Attorney General, Rometsch was quietly deported to West Germany,” Thomas says (Robert Kennedy, p. 256).

  The official with whom: Thomas, Robert Kennedy, p. 255. “Fueled”: Smith, Grace and Power, p. 386. “Expensive lifestyle”: Smith, Grace and Power, p. 386. “Investigation has not substantiated”: Wannall to Sullivan, July 12, 1963, quoted in Thomas, Robert Kennedy, p. 244; Des Moines Register, Oct. 31, 1963.

  “From the outset”: Thomas, Robert Kennedy, p. 256.

  “Elizabeth Taylor”: Thomas, Robert Kennedy, p. 255. “Lesbian prostitute”: Thomas, Robert Kennedy, p. 265. “somewhat nymphomaniacal”: Newsweek, Nov. 11, 1963. “She would do anything”: Life, Nov. 22, 1963.

  Robert Kennedy asked: Thomas, Robert Kennedy, pp. 267, 268. the bobby baker bombshell: Life, Nov. 8, 1963.

  Tom Connally funeral: NYHT, Oct. 31, 1963; Oltorf interview. As a newly elected; never to antagonize: Caro, Master, pp. 132–33, 151.

  Baker told McCloskey: “Testimony of Don. B. Reynolds, Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, Part I,” Jan. 9, 17, 1964, pp. 3–8, 112. Baker himself said flatly that Reynolds “told the truth with respect to … the D.C. Stadium deal” (Baker, Wheeling, p. 194). McCloskey won—and selected Reynolds: “Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium, and Matters Related Thereto,” Hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, Part 2, Testimony of Don B. Reynolds,” Dec. 1, 1964, p. 139.

  $73,631; $10,000; $4,000: “Testimony of Reynolds,” p. 112. “Bobby had indicated that by having produced Senator Johnson, that he had access to top clients for me, that he would introduce me around,” Reynolds testified. “And when I met Mr. McCloskey, sir, and I got this performance bond, it was prima facie evidence of his ability to get and produce for me, and it was for services rendered, sir” (“Testimony,” p. 115). See also WES, Sept. 1, 1964.

  “Bag man”: “Investigations—Parties & Payments,” Time, Dec. 11, 1964. Instructed to deliver: Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 364. no more than $5,000: “Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium,” Part 2, p. 145. Three such deliveries: “Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium,” Part 2, pp. 145, 161.

  Violated: WES, March 11, 1964. Reynolds told; Williams obtained a photostat: “Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium,” Part 2, p. 146. “I was the man”; Reynolds “told the truth”: Baker, Wheeling, p. 194.

  “An expert”: O’Donnell, Powers, and McCarthy, “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,” p. 386. The main topic: White, The Making of the President, 1964, p. 28. White also says, “They discussed television possibilities” for the Convention, “decided that the renomination of Lyndon Johnson would be staged on Wednesday evening.…” But the discussants may not have included John Ken
nedy. “The President, sitting cross-legged on a cushion in his customary place, was more observer than participant.” “Led to”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 604. “The nonexistence”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 605.

  “Because everyone”: Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson, pp. 199, 200. “To do this”; “verbatim”: Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson, pp. 204, 205. “Alerted”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, p. 605. “In eleven”; “unruffled”: Sorensen, Kennedy, pp. 55, 263. “Welcoming”: Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p. 687. She was described as a rattlebrained woman: Schlesinger, Sorensen interviews. “The ammunition”: Lincoln interview.

  Young and Burdick called in: Sen. Clark said Baker had announced that Burdick and Young had “withdrawn their candidacies.” The WP reported Young as saying: “I wanted very much to be on Judiciary. I wrote to everyone on the Steering Committee.” Blakley and Long had less seniority. Humphrey said Baker told the Steering Committee that Burdick and Young “weren’t interested” in Judiciary Committee seats” (DMN, Nov. 15, 1963). Ted Lewis, “Capital Stuff,” NYDN, Nov. 19, 1963. Yarborough was also to say that Baker kept him off Judiciary: WP, Nov. 17, 1963. “In the peculiar”; “tambourine”: Keith Wheeler, “Scandal Grows and Grows in Washington,” Life, Nov. 22, 1963. Paul Douglas; Moss: WP, Nov. 17, 1963.

  One word: Reedy interview.

  “I began to pick up”; went to Hunt’s office: Lambert interview. “The deeper”: Sackett interview. No fewer than nine: In addition to Wheeler, Lambert, and Sackett, they were Mike Durham, Mike Silva, Bill Wise, Audrey Jewett, Kenneth Reich, and Hal Wingo. A meeting was scheduled: Lambert, Sackett interviews.

  Reynolds began testifying: “Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium,” Part 2, Testimony of Don B. Reynolds, p. 192. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p. 295.

  Lyndon Johnson had flown: Pre-Presidential Daily Diary, Box 3. “You two guys”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 20. “This was”: Fehmer OH II. “Much cleaning”; “many telephone”: Carpenter, “Liz Carpenter’s Recollections of President Kennedy’s Assassination,” Box 4, Special Files–Assassination. Horseflesh influx: Carpenter, “Recollections.” “Tepid”; hand towels: “Breakfast … in room,” “President Kennedy’s Trip to Texas,” The President’s Appointment File [Diary Backup], Box 1, LBJL. “This is how”; “Will he”; “that was still”; “If you don’t”: Abell OH I.

  “A real flavor”: Carpenter, “Recollections.” “On one”; “The image”: Russell, Lady Bird, pp. 215–16.

  “In a rage”: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 20. “I’m not surprised”: Reston, The Lone Star, p. 264. “What Connally and Johnson are trying”; Yarborough had been assigned: Manchester, The Death of a President, p. 73; O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 21. When Youngblood: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 73. “Henry, can I”; “Awkward”; When a reporter; “Well, I told him”: Manchester, Death of a President, pp. 73, 74.

  “I’ve bugged him enough”: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 79.

  “There definitely was not”: Johnson, quoted in Manchester, Death of a President, p. 82. The waiters heard; “What was that all about?” Manchester, Death of a President, p. 82. “There was all of this”: Jacqueline Kennedy, quoted in Miller, Lyndon, p. 311.

  Kennedy had asked Thomas: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 78. “Like a pistol”: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 82. Jones shared with him: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 86.

  11. The Cubicle

  Moments at the Love Field reception and the motorcade that are not footnoted are from the author’s watching of newsreels of the events.

  Johnson telephoned: Reedy interview. “Twice at San Antonio”: LAT, Nov. 22, 1963. “Curt”: Chicago Tribune, Nov. 22, 1963. “Mrs. Kennedy”: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 114. Johnson had had to ask: Manchester, The Death of a President, p. 121–22. The depth of Johnson’s pain was hinted at when during his retirement he was reminiscing about the trip. Saying that Yarborough had not ridden with us, he maintained, “I didn’t care, but the newspaper boys went wild. It was the biggest ever since de Gaulle farted. There were headlines the next morning and all kinds of queries … ‘Was it true that Yarborough would not ride with the Vice President?’ ” (Johnson, “Reminiscences of Lyndon B. Johnson,” Aug. 19, 1969, transcript of tape recording, p. 4, LBJL). Brace and bandage: Dennis Breo, JFK’s dean, and John K. Lattimer, Lincoln and Kennedy: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations. New York: Harcourt, 1980, quoted in Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, p. 59. Lattimer writes that after Oswald’s first shot, the “corset prevented him from crumpling down out of the line of fire, as Governor Connally did. Because the President remained upright, with his head exposed, Oswald was able to draw a careful bead on the back of his head” (Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln, p. 171, quoted in Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 59). “All right, let’s go”: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 117.

  Don Reynolds walked in; had brought documents with him: No transcript of Don Reynolds’s testimony exists in the files of the Senate Rules Committee at the National Archives, and if it exists anywhere else, the author has not been able to find it. After an extensive search of the archives and of Senate records, the Senate Historian Donald A. Ritchie said, “There was less archival control of Senate committee records in those days and some documents of consequence were not preserved.” A written summary made of the interview is referred to during the Rules Committee hearings in January 1964 (“I am reading from notes, a summary of testimony—it is called ‘Summary of Mr. Reynolds in Executive Session,’ ” Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania says at one point [p. 103 of the Senate hearings of Jan. 9, 17, 1964]), but that cannot be found, either. The questioning of Reynolds was led by the Rules Committee’s minority counsel, Burkett Van Kirk. Both he and Drennan had died before I could interview them, or, to be more accurate, before I knew it was necessary to interview them, but Van Kirk was to recall Reynolds’s testimony on November 22, 1963, for a television documentary: “LBJ vs. Kennedy—Chasing Demons,” The History Channel, 2003. “Don presented a good case. He could back it up. Everything he had, he had a receipt for. It’s hard to argue with a receipt. Or a cancelled check. Or an invoice. It’s hard to argue with documentation.” Mollenhoff, the Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter for the Des Moines Register was, in November 1963, working closely—and on virtually a daily basis—with Senator Williams and the Rules Committee staff. He was to write that “It was a few minutes before 10 A.M. when Reynolds and Fitzgerald were escorted to Room 312, where two committee staff members (Van Kirk and Drennan) waited.” Mollenhoff was to report that “in the first two hours, the questioning ranged over the whole scope of Baker’s financial operations,” including those concerning the District of Columbia Stadium (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295–97).

  The journalist Sy Hersh had a series of interviews with Van Kirk, and writes that “at ten o’clock” Reynolds “walked with his lawyer into a small hearing room … and began providing … Van Kirk … with eagerly awaited evidence” (Hersh, Dark Side of Camelot, p. 446). Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska, the ranking Republican member of the Rules Committee, who was told in 1963 about Reynolds’s testimony by Van Kirk, confirmed that Reynolds had provided documentation. Also Curtis Files, Curtis Papers; Curtis interview. Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295–98; Rowe, The Bobby Baker Story, pp. 84–86; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, pp. 602, 611.

  The Life meeting: Graves, Lambert, Sackett interviews. “With every”: Lambert interview.

  “I don’t care”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 156. “If he doesn’t:” O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 23. See also Manchester, Death of a President, p. 113. If he valued: Manchester, Death of a President, p. 116. “Yarborough’s going”: O’Brien, No Final Victories, p. 157. Taking Connally: O’Donnell and Powers, “Johnny, We Hardly,” p. 26.
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br />   “Kennedy weather”: Manchester, Death of a President, p.122. “There is Mrs.”: Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 27. “There never”: Robert J. Donovan, quoted in Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, p. 27. O’Brien made sure: O’Brien, No Final Victories, pp. 156–57.

  Senate hearings: In “Construction of the District of Columbia Stadium, Part II,” “Testimony of Don B. Reynolds,” p. 192,” Reynolds says he testified from “about 10 to 1,” but the committee’s counsel says, “You were interviewed practically the whole day,” and Mollenhoff, who was working closely, on a daily basis, with the committee’s staff, writes that “It was almost time for the usual noon luncheon break when the insurance man got started on his story of how he had been pressured into taking advertising time on the L.B.J. television station … and about the gift stereo.… It was about 12:30 P.M., Washington time—11:30 A.M. in Dallas, Texas—when Van Kirk and Drennan suggested they send a girl for sandwiches and milk, rather than interrupt Reynolds’s testimony by going out to eat. The questioning and the discussion of the L.B.J. Company’s affairs, as Reynolds knew them, went on” (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, pp. 295–97). Also see Rowe, Bobby Baker Story, pp. 84, 85; Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy, pp. 602, 611; Curtis interview. “Mr. President”: Nellie Connally, From Love Field, p. 7.

  In Washington, at about the same time, Reynolds was showing: Between 1:30 and 2:30, “he [Reynolds] produced records to substantiate his story” (Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy, p.297). The invoices and checks are Exhibits 7 (p. 36), 8–11 (pp. 38–41), 12 (p. 43) in of “Reynolds Testimony,” Part 1, Jan. 9, 17, 1964, which is when they were introduced into the public record at open hearings of the committee. On page 97, the committee’s counsel notes “they are in the examination of Don B. Reynolds. They are in the original.”