by Hill, Clint
“Something has got to be done,” he said. “Nowadays, a poor kid can’t even get a job pumping gas if they don’t know how to read or write.” He went on to tell the reporters that one in five Americans lived below the poverty level of $3,000 a year, and this sweeping education reform would help level the playing field so that every American child had access to quality education.
The reporters sat there, drinking their Scotch, listening intently, surely still a bit stunned that the president had invited them upstairs, on a whim, like it was the most natural thing in the world. And then Charlie Mohr, the seasoned and tenacious reporter from the New York Times, jumped in and asked the president about U.S. policy in Vietnam.
The president stood up from his seat and said, “Come with me.”
He led the reporters out of the Yellow Room, down the center hall, and to the elevator. They took the elevator to the ground floor and emerged just across from where my office used to be, then walked out the mansion past the flower room and the swimming pool, down the colonnade, and into the Oval Office. He flipped on the light and then walked behind the desk and said, “Hey, you guys haven’t eaten, have you?”
In fact they hadn’t.
The president squatted down next to his desk and picked up an enormous wooden box.
Dropping the box on his desk—it must have weighed twenty-five pounds—he said, “I got these Israeli figs. A gift from the prime minister of Israel.”
The box was covered in cellophane, which the president tried ripping off with his fingers, but that was futile. Without batting an eye, LBJ reached into his trouser pocket, whipped out a tiny pocketknife, and began slicing through the yellow cellophane. Strips of cellophane were flying everywhere as he slashed the wrapper to shreds. The reporters exchanged glances. It was astonishing. The President of the United States carries a pocketknife?
Once the cellophane was removed, the president opened the box and held it out to the reporters. “Here y’all. Have some dinner.”
Then he turned to Jack Valenti and said, “Jack, bring me the Hopkins speech.”
Valenti scurried down the hall to another office and returned with a stack of typewritten pages.
“We’re still working on it, Mr. President,” he said as he handed it to Johnson.
The president looked at the reporters and said, “This is the speech I’m going to make tomorrow night at Johns Hopkins University outlining our policy towards Vietnam. Now, I’m gonna read it to you, but you cannot reveal anything until we release it tomorrow.”
So there they were, the reporters, bedraggled from walking in the rain, sitting in the Oval Office, eating Israeli figs from a box as Lyndon Johnson tested out this very important speech on them. He explained the commitment our nation had made more than a decade earlier to help South Vietnam defend its independence and the moral obligation we had to carry out that promise, building to the thrust of the speech—a one-billion-dollar aid package to Southeast Asia, and a bombing halt if Ho Chi Minh would agree to peace talks.
When he finished reading, he turned to the reporters and asked, “What’s the lead?”
Sid Davis, the radio man, said, “I’d lead with the bombing halt.”
Muriel Dobbin and Charlie Mohr, both print reporters, said, “No, no. The billion-dollar development aid.”
Turning to Valenti, President Johnson said, “Print people like numbers.”
Then he turned back to the reporters, his brow furrowed, and looked earnestly into the eyes of each one, turning from one to the next.
“What does Ho Chi Minh want? Roads? Dams? Bridges? A cheaper and more effective means of growing rice? Hell, if I only knew what he wants, we could find a compromise to peace. All he’s got to do is meet with me.”
The president truly believed that if he could just get a face-to-face meeting with the leader of the Vietcong, if he could figure out what the man needed, and what we could provide, he could sway him, manipulate him, just as he did to get things passed through Congress.
By this time the reporters had been in the White House for well over an hour, but Johnson had one more thing he wanted to share. “Come on with me,” he said. “I want to show y’all something.”
Back to the mansion and upstairs they went, down the hall to the Lincoln Bedroom. The centerpiece of the large room was the bed itself, which, with its intricately carved mahogany headboard that stood against the wall like the back of a throne, had been witness to a century of presidential burdens.
“Sit down on the bed,” President Johnson said to the reporters.
“Oh no, Mr. President,” they said. “We can’t sit on that bed.”
The president insisted. “No, I want you to sit on the bed. Everybody else does. We have visitors who come here and sleep on the bed.”
Muriel Dobbin, the spunky, red-haired, Scottish-born reporter for the Baltimore Sun, and the only female of the group, piped up and said, “All right, Mr. President, I’ll sit on the bed.”
The fellows followed her lead, and once they were seated, the president explained why he’d brought them up there. In a somber voice, he said, “I come down here virtually every morning about two o’clock, and I sit on that bed. I pick up the phone and I call the Situation Room, and I say, ‘How many of my boys are out there?’ ”
The only light in the room was coming from the hallway, so it was difficult to see the president’s expression, but the desperation in his voice was unmistakable.
“I may stay here through the night, and I keep calling to find out how many of my boys didn’t come back today.”
The reporters sat there, speechless. This was a side of Lyndon Johnson none of them had ever seen before.
He walked over to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and said, “You know, doing what is right is easy. The problem is knowing what is right.” He looked up at the president who had weathered the burdens of the Civil War and said, “I sure hope I have better generals than he did.”
With that, he led the four reporters back downstairs, out to the North Portico, and bid them good night.
It was still raining slightly, and as they walked down the driveway the reporters were silent, barely able to believe what they’d just experienced. Each of them was already writing the story in their heads. As they approached the Northwest Gate, finally Sid Davis could hold it in no longer. He turned to Muriel Dobbin and blurted out, “Can you believe what just happened? We’ve got one hell of a story!”
At that moment, just as they were about to leave the White House grounds, they heard the sound of someone running toward them. They turned, and there was Jack Valenti, breathless, a look of anxiety on his face.
“Now listen, you guys,” he said as he caught up to them. “Everything, and I mean everything, you heard in there is strictly off the record. You got that?”
Reluctantly, the reporters agreed. And each of them kept their word.
It was only recently that Sid Davis shared this story with me, and the profound impact it had on him as a young reporter. He would go on to have an impressive career, eventually becoming Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief of NBC News. But on that rainy evening, he was able to see the president as a man, a man who carried unimaginable burdens on his shoulders.
“He was the loneliest man in the world that night,” Davis said.
In the coming years, I too would witness President Johnson’s lonely burden, many times over. But on that night in April 1965, Lyndon Johnson still had hope for peace; he still believed he could bring an end to the Vietnam War.
WE HAD LEARNED that twenty thousand college students from around the country were planning a demonstration against U.S. policy in South Vietnam in front of the White House on Saturday, April 17. Being that it was Easter weekend, President and Mrs. Johnson were at the LBJ Ranch, but there were indications protestors would show up there too, so we had agents working double shifts to ensure we had adequate protection.
Secretary of Defense McNamara and his wife were houseguests for the
weekend, and as was typical, President Johnson wanted to show his guests around the area.
“We’re goin’ on a ride, boys!” he hollered toward the command post as he jumped into his white convertible with the secretary of defense in the front passenger seat and their wives in the back, and sped away. The on-duty agents scrambled into the station wagon and took off after him, with no idea where he was going.
The president roared off down the gravel road. Minutes later, he stopped in front of the small house where he was born. LBJ was immensely proud of his humble beginnings, and every visitor to the ranch invariably got a look at “the birthplace,” where on August 27, 1908, Lyndon Baines Johnson came into the world and spent the first five years of his life. After a quick eight-minute stop the president had the car in gear, speeding off toward the neighboring Scharnhorst Ranch.
The president’s car was equipped with a two-way radio system, which he used constantly while he was driving. White House Communications Agency (WHCA) personnel ran the system from the communications trailer near the main house, and they would connect him with whomever he wanted to speak. It was an unsecured radio transmission that could be heard by anyone on that frequency, and while we could monitor all the communications, so too could anyone else in the area.
The president would pick up the radio receiver, hold it to his mouth, press the button, and say, “Base, this is Volunteer. Get me Dale Malechek.”
He’d give the ranch foreman instructions about clearing brush or tending to the cattle. Click. The next minute it was, “Base, this is Volunteer. Get me Marvin Watson.”
On this particular occasion, once WHCA got Chief of Staff Watson on the line, the president gave instructions to postpone invitations to the prime ministers of Pakistan and India. Not necessarily something you’d want anyone else to intercept.
With one hand holding the radio and the other hand intermittently guiding the steering wheel or pointing to objects of interest along the way, the president was tour guide, master of his ranch, and commander in chief, all while speeding down the road at sixty miles an hour. In the follow-up car behind him, we just did the best we could to keep up, constantly trying to anticipate his next move.
After an hour-long tour of the Scharnhorst Ranch, the president got on the highway and drove straight to Johnson City, nearly twenty miles away. As we passed cars going the opposite direction, you could see the brake lights go on as the drivers inevitably did a double take, wondering if that was really the President of the United States and the secretary of defense driving down the highway in an open-top car, like they were on a joyride.
From there it was on to his boyhood home, where he’d lived from the time he was five years old until he graduated high school. The house was being reconstructed as a historic site, and the president loved to walk through the house, sharing remembrances of his childhood with his guests—the outhouse in the backyard, the small bedroom where he’d shared a bed with his brother, Sam. I think he felt that if people saw where he’d come from, they’d understand why he stood for the things he did. He hadn’t grown up privileged, yet he’d made the most of what God had given him, and here he was, the leader of the free world.
The tour went on for four and a half hours, with the group finally returning to the LBJ Ranch for lunch. Fortunately, we had not run into any protestors, but the day wasn’t over yet, and we had no idea what the president had in mind for the afternoon’s activities.
Around 2:30 p.m., the president and his entourage—which now included two of his secretaries and Marvin Watson, along with the McNamaras and Mrs. Johnson—emerged from the house and headed toward the helicopter pad.
“Goin’ for a chopper ride, boys!” the president called out.
With no indication of where he was going, but having been through this routine many times before, we put agents in two separate vehicles and headed toward the Haywood Ranch, where the president kept his boats. On the way there, the agents in the helicopter radioed that the chopper was headed to the Davis Ranch, not the Haywood. A flurry of curse words spewed from the agents in the car as we changed course and hightailed it to the Davis Ranch to get there before the chopper landed.
Thinking back now, it sounds like a comedy skit of the Keystone Kops variety, with agents radioing back and forth trying to figure out what the president was going to do next, and when we got it wrong, swiftly finding the best place to turn around or take a shortcut to beat the chopper, but at the time it was frustrating as hell.
Once we got to the Davis Ranch, the president and his guests got out of the helicopter and were met by the president’s good friend Judge Albert W. Moursund.
The president had obviously called Moursund, who was waiting there with a vehicle to take everyone on a tour of his ranch. Now, by this time, the McNamaras had seen the LBJ Ranch, the Scharnhorst Ranch, the Lewis Ranch, and now the Davis Ranch. They’re all in the Texas Hill Country, and to be honest, every damn ranch looked the same. But no one would dare say that out loud to the president.
After an hour of driving around the Davis Ranch, the entourage was back in the helicopter. We had an inkling the lake at Haywood Ranch would be the next stop, and we sent a car ahead so the agents could prepare the boats. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later the chopper arrived, and the guests split up into two motorboats. President Johnson got behind the wheel of the small motorboat and, for the next hour, sped up and down the lake with Secretary McNamara and the president’s secretary, Vicki McCammon, water-skiing behind, while we raced alongside in security boats.
At around six o’clock, the president and his guests returned to the beach house for drinks and snacks. It had been a beautiful day, the weather was still warm, and everyone was having a wonderful time. Meanwhile, all the agents had been running around trying to keep up with them since eight in the morning, with no time or place to get any food. Shortly before eight o’clock, the president informed us they were taking the helicopter to the Wesley West Ranch for dinner. So a couple of agents stayed with the president, and the rest of us jumped into our vehicles and drove ahead to the West Ranch. It was probably as much a surprise to Mr. and Mrs. West as it was to us, but that was the way President Johnson operated. A last-minute phone call, a question of “What’s for dinner?” and then a quick helicopter ride to the friend’s ranch to enjoy a hastily prepared meal. This seemed to be a standing arrangement between Johnson and his friends. Oftentimes the friends received a last-minute invitation to dine at the LBJ Ranch. Somehow it always worked out because, I suppose, Lyndon Johnson was like this long before he was president, and his friends adapted and were willing to make a quick adjustment in plans.
Finally, we all returned to the ranch at ten o’clock that evening. The president had a rub and went to bed, and those of us who had been on duty since eight in the morning drove back to Austin for the night.
TWO AND A half weeks later, another crisis erupted. On April 24, President Johnson got word that a civil uprising in the Dominican Republic was under way in an attempt to overthrow the pro-American dictator. The situation escalated quickly, with rumors circulating that Fidel Castro was behind the rebellion, and by April 28, the country was out of control. With 1,500 American citizens in the country, and worried that the Dominican Republic could turn into another Cuba, beginning a “domino effect” of Communism in the Western Hemisphere, President Johnson authorized American troops to descend on the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti.
He knew that sending thousands more American soldiers into yet another foreign conflict was not going to be popular, but in a televised speech with daughter Luci by his side, President Johnson explained that more U.S. troops were needed to help return order to the country, to distribute food and medical supplies, and to safely evacuate U.S. citizens and other refugees.
“I want you to know that it is not a light or easy matter to send our American boys to another country, but I do not think the American people expect their president to hesitate or to va
cillate in the face of danger just because the decision is hard, when life is in peril,” he said.
Six months after the high of winning the election in a huge landslide, President Johnson was now dealing with three major crises—racial divisiveness, Vietnam, and now the Dominican Republic—all of which were on the verge of exploding.
IN THE FALL of 1965 President Johnson began suffering from fairly severe abdominal pain. The medical staff had determined that he needed to have gallbladder surgery, and while the surgery was scheduled for Friday, October 8, no announcement had yet been made to the press. The president was concerned about how his operation would be perceived by the American public and whether it should be announced prior to the procedure, or if he should simply wait until it was over and he was on the mend. He needed advice, and there was only one person who could tell him the best way to handle it.
Shortly before 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, October 5, ASAIC Lem Johns had a driver pull up to the South Portico of the White House in an unmarked Oldsmobile sedan. The door of the White House opened, and out came photographer Yoichi Okamoto, accompanied by Jack Valenti and President Johnson. Okie slipped into the front seat with Lem Johns and the driver as Valenti and the president ducked into the rear. With another unmarked sedan filled with agents following closely behind, the Oldsmobile proceeded out the Southeast Gate and headed to Anacostia Naval Station.
It was a strictly off-the-record movement—no motorcycle escorts, no police presence, and absolutely no press.
At Anacostia, we boarded an unmarked helicopter and flew to Andrews Air Force Base. Agents had secured an area of the base for the helicopter to land near two airplane hangars, and when the president departed the helicopter, we led him between the two hangars to where a JetStar was parked, obscured from view.
Inside the JetStar, General Eisenhower was awaiting President Johnson’s arrival. The purpose of the meeting for LBJ was twofold: to discuss myriad international issues and ask for advice on how to handle his upcoming surgery with the press.