The Path to Power

by Robert A. Caro

  Public estimates by Johnson’s own financial advisors were much lower. In the Life article, for example, the principal trustee of Johnson’s financial interests, A. W. Moursund, placed the figure at “about $4,000,000.” In that same year, the White House released its own financial statement, which placed the Johnson capital at $3,484,000. However, the Wall Street Journal, in analyzing that statement, said that “by employing a number of technically accepted accounting devices, it projects a grossly understated idea of the current dimensions of the Johnson fortune.” (Kohlmeier, “The Johnsons’ Balance Sheet,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 20, 1964.) The true market value of the Johnson broadcasting interests alone is estimated at $7 million, the Journal reported on Mar. 23, 1964; “one broadcasting executive who is not associated with the corporation but who has long known the Johnsons indicates that net earnings may now exceed $500,000 annually.” Private estimates by some of Johnson’s financial advisors are much higher than the publicized estimates. In its Aug. 20, 1964, article, the Journal noted that “Some intimates back home in Austin calculate it [the Johnsons’ net worth] would be in the neighborhood of $20,000,000.” Even this figure is considered low by the attorney who was for twenty years one of Johnson’s most trusted advisors in Texas, Edward A. Clark, partner of the powerful Austin law firm named, at the time of Johnson’s Presidency, Clark, Thomas, Harris, Denius and Winters, the firm that handled the bulk of the Johnson family financial interests. The author asked Clark the worth of these interests at the time Lyndon Johnson became President. Several days later he replied, after apparently checking his firm’s records: “It would have been—you mean his net worth?—about $25,000,000 at the time.”

  If these higher estimates are correct, during the twenty-one years following the purchase of the Johnson radio station—twenty-one years during which Lyndon Johnson continually held public office—the Johnson fortune increased at a rate of close to a million dollars per year.

  Among the articles valuable for a discussion of the Johnson wealth is the Wall Street Journal article quoted above and articles in the same newspaper on Mar. 23, 1964, and Aug. 11, 1964; the Washington Evening Star, June 9, 1964; Newsday, May 27, 28, 29, 1964.

  “Springing up side by side”: Wall Street Journal, “The Johnson Wealth,” Mar. 23, 1964. Largely fiction: Among the many articles of the time that showed his connection with the broadcasting business that was in his wife’s name are the Washington Evening Star, June 9, 1964; the Wall Street Journal, Mar. 23, 1964 (“President Johnson, as Well as His Wife, Appears to Hold Big Personal Fortune”); Life, Aug. 21, 1964; Newsday, May 27, 1964. Worth $7 million: Wall Street Journal, Mar. 23, 1964; confirmed by Clark; Life put the worth of the radio-television interests at $8,600,000.

  A “blind trust”: When Johnson became President, he announced that he was placing all his business affairs in a so-called “blind trust,” with which he said he would have no connection so long as he was President. The principal trustee was A. W. Moursund, who did not respond to the author’s requests for an interview. But during much of Johnson’s Presidency, Moursund’s partner in the Johnson City law firm of Moursund and Ferguson was Thomas C. Ferguson, a longtime Johnson ally in Hill Country politics, a former judge and a former chairman of the State Board of Insurance. Ferguson says that shortly after he became President, Johnson had a direct line installed in that law office that connected it to both the White House and the Johnson Ranch on the Pedernales. Ferguson says that there was on the phones in both his and Moursund’s offices “a button that wasn’t labeled anything, but when you pushed that, you got the White House’s board in Washington.” Moursund had a similar line in his home, Ferguson says. The author asked Ferguson if Johnson conducted personal business over these telephone lines. “Oh, yeah,” Ferguson replied. “He and Moursund were talking every day.” During the Presidency? the author asked. “Oh, yeah. I don’t guess there was a—You see, Moursund was trustee of all his property: one of these blind trusts—it wasn’t very blind. ’Cause every night he told Moursund what to do. …” Often, Ferguson said, the two men talked at night. “Johnson,” he said, “would go to bed … and lay there in bed and talk to Moursund.” Most of the talk, Ferguson says, concerned the many businesses—banking, radio and television broadcasting, ranching—in which the President or his family had financial interests. “A lot of [it] was Johnson saying to Moursund, ‘Well, I want to do this,’ ‘I want to do that’—‘I want to get this piece of land,’ ‘I want to stock certain places and certain things.’ And of course at that time anything Moursund said stood up throughout the Johnson properties … and he would carry out what the President would tell him he wanted done. … It was a very unblind trust as far as that trust was concerned.” And did Ferguson himself conduct business for Johnson while Johnson was President? “Myself? Oh, yes,” Ferguson said, and gave details of a number of business transactions. He said that the President would also be in frequent communication with Jesse C. Kellam, president of the Texas Broadcasting Corporation, key to the Johnson broadcasting empire whose name had been changed from the LBJ Corporation when Johnson became President, and would give Kellam instructions as to the conduct of that business.

  The other law firm involved was Clark, Thomas, Harris, Denius and Winters. Edward A. Clark, Johnson’s Ambassador to Australia during his Presidency, had, for twenty years before that, been a key Texas ally of the President, and, since the death of Alvin Wirtz in 1951, his right-hand man in confidential state political matters as well as the attorney through whom he handled much of his personal business. Clark’s account of Johnson’s business dealings as President will be recounted in detail in the later volumes; on the subject in general, he said that Johnson sometimes spent several hours a day during his Presidency conducting personal business. The author asked him to check this point. At their next interview, Clark said he knew this because, “Heck, we keep a record of a client’s calls.” He said he would not allow the author to see that record. He said that only some of this time was spent speaking to him, but that he knew Johnson was spending considerable additional time discussing business affairs with Moursund, because they were affairs in which he, Clark, was involved. And, like Ferguson, Clark said that the President also frequently spent time on the phone with Jesse Kellam. Clark said that the use of direct lines ensured that White House telephone logs and operators would have no record of these calls. Kellam would not discuss these matters with the author.

  During Johnson’s Presidency, the existence of the private telephone lines was reported in an article by a team of Wall Street Journal reporters who conducted an unusually thorough investigation of Johnson’s financial situation. On August 11, 1964, the Journal reported that Moursund “is linked by private telephone circuit to the LBJ Ranch and the White House. He can pick up his phone and almost instantaneously talk with the President.” Nonetheless, Moursund told the Journal that because of the trust, “the Johnsons don’t know what is going on” in their businesses. The Journal said that Moursund was “heated” in “declaring that certain business operations are entirely independent of any Johnson interest—and never mind confusing ‘clues’ to the contrary”; the Journal then detailed many such clues.

  1. The Bun ton Strain

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, brochures, and documents: ON THE HILL COUNTRY:

  Billington, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier; Fehrenbach, Lone Star (of the many general histories of Texas, Fehrenbach’s most faithfully reflects contemporary accounts of early life in the Hill Country and views of it given by the children and grandchildren of its founders); Frantz and White, Limestone and Log: A Hill Country Sketchbook; Gillespie County Historical Society, Pioneers in God’s Hills; Goodwyn, Democratic Promise; Graves, Hard Scrabble and Texas Heartland: A Hill Country Year; Jordan, German Seed in Texas Soil; Kendall, Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition; Maguire, A President’s Country; Marshall, Prophet of the Pedernales; Moursund, Blanco County Families for One Hundr
ed Years; Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas; Pelzer, The Cattleman’s Frontier; Porterfield, LBJ Country; Schawe, ed., Wimberley’s Legacy; Speer, A History of Blanco County; Thomas, ed., Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth; Webb, The Great Frontier and The Great Plains; Webb and Carroll, Handbook of Texas; WPA, Texas: A Guide to the Lone Star State.

  Bessie Brigham, “The History of Education in Blanco County” (unpublished Master’s Thesis), Austin, 1935.

  Darton, “Texas: Our Largest State,” National Geographic magazine, Dec., 1913; Joseph S. Hall, ed., “Horace Hall’s Letters from Gillespie County, Texas, 1871–1873,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Jan., 1959; Jones, “What Drought Means,” NYT magazine, Dec. 23, 1956; Mary Nunley, “The Interesting Life Story of a Pioneer Mother,” Frontier Times, Aug., 1927, pp. 17–21; Edwin Shrake, “Forbidding Land,” Sports Illustrated, May 10, 1965.

  William Bray, “Forest Resources of Texas,” U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Forestry, Bulletin No. 47, Washington, D.C., 1904; Henry C. Hahn, “The White-Tailed Deer in the Edwards Plateau Region of Texas,” Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission, Austin, 1945; A. W. Spaight, “The Resources, Soil and Climate of Texas,” Report of Commissioner of Insurance, Statistics and History, Galveston, 1882.

  Department of Agriculture, Records of the Federal Extension Service, Record Group 33, Annual Reports of Extension Field Representatives, Texas: Blanco County, Burnet County, Hays County, Travis County, 1931–1941, National Archives.

  ON THE BUNTONS:

  Harwell, Eighty Years Under the Stars and Bars; Hunter, ed., Trail Drivers of Texas; Pickrell, Pioneer Women in Texas; Wilson and Duholm, A Genealogy: Bunton-Buntin-Bentun-Bunting.

  Edythe Johns Whitley, “Kith and Kin of Our President, Lyndon Baines Johnson,” Nashville, 1967.

  Lorena Drummond, “Declaration Signer,” SAE, March 22, 1931; “h.,” “Col. John W. Bunton,” Weekly Statesman, Sept. 4, 1879; Josephine A. Pearson, “A Girl Diplomatist From Tennessee Who Matched Her Wits With a Mexican Ruler,” Nashville Tennessean, Jan. 8, 1935; T. C. Richardson, “Texas Pioneer Plays Part in State’s Progress,” Farm and Ranch, June 7, 1924; T. U. Taylor, “Heroines of the Hills,” Frontier Times, May 1973, pp. 14–24.

  Arthur W. Jones, “Col. John and Mary Bunton”; “N.,” “Another Veteran of the Republic Gone Home”; Lon Smith, “Col. John and Mary Bunton,” “An Address in the State Cemetery at Austin,” March 2, 1939, from “Printed Material: Newspaper Clippings,” all in Box 25, Personal Papers of Rebekah Baines Johnson.

  ON THE JOHNSONS:

  Bearss, Historic Resource Study … Lyndon B. Johnson National Historic Site, Blanco and Gillespie Counties, Texas; Rebekah Johnson, A Family Album; also, “The Johnsons—Descendants of John Johnson, A Revolutionary Soldier of Georgia: A Genealogical History,” 1956; Moursund, Blanco County Families; Speer, A History of Blanco County.

  Rebekah Baines Johnson gave her son a draft of A Family Album in 1954 with a covering letter that begins: “Here are some of the stories you desire.” This contains material different in some details from that in the published Family Album and is referred to as “Rough Draft.”

  Hall, ed., “Horace Hall’s Letters”; Andrew Sparks, “President Johnson’s Georgia Ancestors,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine, March 1, 1964.

  “Pedernales to Potomac,” Austin American-Statesman Supplement, Jan. 20, 1965; “The Record-Courier-Blanco County Centennial Edition,” Aug. 1, 1958.

  Interviews:

  Ava Johnson Cox, Ethel Davis, John Dollahite, Stella Gliddon, Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt (RJB), Sam Houston Johnson (SHJ), Clayton Stribling, Mrs. Lex Ward.

  NOTES

  He would say; LBJ repeated this to college classmates and deans, and to residents of the Hill Country. Pool, LBJ (p. 50), says, “According to a cherished Pedernales Valley story, a proud grandfather rode through the countryside to announce to the neighbors that ‘A United States Senator was born today, my grandson.’” In Singer and Sherrod, Lyndon Baines Johnson, p. 87, Lyndon Johnson is quoted as saying: “The story goes that the day I was born my granddaddy saddled up his biggest gray mare, Fritz, and rode into town, looking as proud as if he had won the Battle of The Alamo singlehanded. He announced to everyone that a U. S. Senator had just come into the world. It was kind of a joke with my playmates as I was growing up. …” Among other books in which one version or another appears is Mooney, The Lyndon Johnson Story, pp. 28–29. Of numerous articles in which it appears, one is “Lyndon B. Johnson, Boy of Destiny,” by a Fredericksburg resident, Bruce Kowert (Boston Globe, Dec. 15, 1963). But none of the Johnson relatives or their Hill Country neighbors interviewed remembers that episode. In the “Rough Draft” of the family album, which she gave to Lyndon in 1954, his mother wrote (p. 2) that “when Lyndon was about three years old”, his grandfather wrote in a letter that Lyndon is “as smart as you find them,” and that he expected him “to be a United States Senator before he is forty.” “He has the Bunton strain”: RJB; Cox. In the published A Family Album (p. 17), his mother says: “Aunt Kate Keele [said] that she could see the Bunton flavor.”

  The “Bunton eye” and personality: Among others, Cox, SHJ, RJB, Mrs. Lex Ward. “Shadow of sadness”: “Joseph L. Bunton,” in Harwell, p. 88.

  Encounter on the plains: Eli Mitchell, quoted in Pearson, “A Girl Diplomatist.” At the first battle: Ibid.; “N.,” “Col. John W. Bunton.” “Towering form”: Captain Jesse Billingsley, quoted in Drummond, “Declaration Signer.” Leader of the sevenman patrol: Jones, “Col. John and Mary Bunton,” p. 3, says he was the leader. Smith, “Col. John and Mary Bunton,” p. 3, and Johnson, Album, p. 126, say he was “one of the seven men who captured Santa Anna.” “To the present generations”: “h.,” “Col. John W. Bunton.” Wild journey: Smith, “Col. John and Mary Bunton,” pp. 3, 4; Pearson, “A Girl Diplomatist.” “Commanding presence”; “eloquent tougue”: Drummond, “Declaration Signer”; Smith, p. 3. Texas Rangers bill: Pearson, “A Girl Diplomatist”; Jones, “Col. John and Mary Bunton,” p. 3. Retirement: Johnson, Genealogy, p. 16; “h.,” “Col. John W. Bunton,” p. 2; Jones, “Col. John and Mary Bunton,” pp. 4–5; Cox; SHJ. A further indication of the respect in which he was held, Jones wrote, is that he was chosen to be Administrator of the estate of the legendary hero of the Alamo, Jim Bowie.

  “Big country”; “far behind”; the frontier; the “bloodiest years”: Fehrenbach, pp. 255–56, 276–86, 298, 302, 313–20, 501. To the very edge: See Figure 1, Jordan, p. 23; Fehrenbach, pp. 276, 279–80, 286, 313–20.

  Rancho Rambouillet description; arriving with Uncle Ranch; wife scaring off Indians: Pearson, “A Girl Diplomatist.” “A large impressive”: Johnson, Album, p. 90. Robert Bunton’s biography: Wilson and Duholm, pp. 18, 19; Cox; SHJ. A “substantial planter”: Johnson, Album, p. 89. All over six feet: Wilson and Duholm, p. 32. Military career: Ibid., p. 19. Raising cattle: Caldwell County Ad Valorem Tax Rolls, 1870–1880, Texas State Archives. Philosophical Society: Handbook of Texas, Vol. I, p. 246. “Absolutely truthful”; “an idealist”; “an excellent conversationalist”: Cox, SHJ; Johnson, Album, p. 90. “Charity begins at home”: Johnson, Album, p. 73. “Leaving a handsome estate”: Brown and Speer, Encyclopedia of the New West, p. 575. Desha Bunton: Richardson, “Texas Pioneer.” “Very proud people”: Mrs. Lex Ward. Selling off, but holding on: Pearson, “A Girl Diplomatist.” The ranch was finally sold off on Oct. 10, 1981, but only because the Bunton heirs got a very good price for it.

  Cardsharps: Wilson & Duholm, p. 32. They say that it was James Bunton, who owned half the herd, who said nothing, but family lore says it was Robert (Cox, SHJ). Renting out pastures: Connolly, in Hunter, ed., p. 190. Retiring comfortably: RJB, Cox. The West Texas rancher was Lucius Desha Bunton of Marfa.

  The Hill Country was beautiful: Schawe, p. 240 and passim; Hunter, passim; Fehrenbach, p. 606; Frantz and White, p. viii; Graves, Heartland, pp. 12–16, 24 ff, and Hard Scrabble, p. 11. Horace Hall, who came to the Hill Country in 1871, called
it “a beautiful country … high hills wooded with rich valleys, with tall grass over a horse’s back,” Hall, p. 342. Also, descriptions of early days from Cox, Gliddon, and elderly residents who heard them from their parents or grandparents.

  “The cabins became”; “A man could see”: Fehrenbach, pp. 286, 301. “Grass knee high!”: Hall, p. 351. “My stirrups!”: Hunter, ed.; an “early pioneer” quoted in AA-S, Nov. 19, 1967.

  The grass and the soil: Thomas, ed., esp. pp. 49–69, 115–33, 350–66, 721–36; Graves, Heartland, p. 23. Role of fire: Thomas, ed., pp. 57, 119–26; Hahn, “White-Tailed Deer,” p. 7; Bray, “Forest Resources,” p. 28; Graves, Hard Scrabble, p. 12. Failure to understand: Fehrenbach, p. 606; Graves, passim.

  The rain: Webb, Plains, pp. 17–27; Bray, “Forest Resources,” pp. 28, 29; Fehrenbach, pp. 606, 607. A small shrub; mulberry bushes: Engelmann, quoted in Bray, “Forest Resources,” p. 29. Cactus; “too low”: Bray, “Forest Resources,” p. 4. “Well-defined division”: Vernon Bailey, “Biological Survey of Texas, 1905,” quoted in Webb, Plains, p. 32. “Divided”: O. E. Baker, Agricultural Economist in the U.S. Bureau of Agricultural Economics, in Yearbook of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1921), quoted in Webb, Plains, p. 19. “West of 98”: Graves, Hard Scrabble, p. 20. “Sound and fury”: Fehrenbach, p. 273.

  “A conspiracy”: Fehrenbach, pp. 605, 607. “Kendall’s victims”: Speer, p. 12; Brigham, p. 9. “The springs are flowing”: Frantz and White, p. viii. “Erratic moves”: Richard Blood, the Weather Bureau’s climatologist for Texas, quoted in Jones, “What Drought Means.”