Horace Busby: Lyndon Johnson was aware by Nov. 4, 1963 while he was out
of the country in Luxembourg that the Kennedys had sent a SWAT team of over FORTY
national reporters to Texas to utterly destroy him
QUOTE
A mirthless
smile played across the vice president’s lips, and he seem almost apologetic. “You
may not believe what’s happening, but you may as well know.” Then he began
relating what he had been learning from Walter Jenkins.
On Monday, as
the vice president arrived in Luxembourg, teams of newsmen from major national
publications began arriving almost simultaneously in Austin and Johnson City,
as well as the major metropolitian centers of Texas. None of the reporters were
known figures of the Washington press corps, but upward of forty correspondents
thus far had been identified in different parts of the state. At first, when
the newsmen began making their presence known, it was assumed that they were
arriving to do advance stories on President Kennedy’s visit. One of the senior figures,
however, quickly revealed the true purpose. Talking with an attorney whom he
mistakenly believed to be a Johnson enemy, the newsman said: “We’re here to do
a job on Lyndon Johnson. When we get through with the sonofabitch, Kennedy won’t
be able to touch him with a ten-foot pole in 1964.”
It appeared to
be a dragnet operation. The investigative teams were spreading out over the
state, talking with attorneys, bankers, businessmen, and known political
enemies of the vice president. Four or five publications were represented, but
many questions from the different teams were almost identical. Evidently,
someone had compiled and distributed a master dossier on the vice president’s
twenty-six-year career in rough-and-tumble Texas politics; some questions, for
example, involved campaign charges dating back to before World War II. “Whoever’s
behind it,” the vice president conceded, “has done one hell of a thorough job.”
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 129-130]
Longtime LBJ aide, speechwriter and friend Horace Busby, describes how
Lyndon Johnson had seen up close and personal previous vice presidents removed from
the party ticket and vice presidency.
QUOTE
This was an
old and popular game of power in Washington. “Dumping the vice president” began
with Hannibal Hamlin, Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president, who was removed
from the Republican ticket in 1864 largely because of President Lincoln’s own
petulance and jealousy. Most vice presidents since had experienced the threat.
During his own career in Washington, Lyndon Johnson had seen FDR’s first two
vice president’s, John Nance Garner and Henry A. Wallace, “dumped” at
Democratic conventions, and he had empathized with Vice President Richard M.
Nixon in 1956, when a White House cabal had almost succeeded in persuading President
Dwight Eisenhower to select a new running mate for the second term.
In those
cases, the patterns were strikingly similar. Attacks against the incumbents cam
from within the “palace guard” at the White House or from among the power
brokers in control of the party; in each instance, the objective was to control
the line of succession – to dictate who would take over the party and perhaps
the White House upon completion of the incumbent president’s term. The stakes
had never been the vice presidency – that was virtually an irrelevancy – but,
rather, the presidency itself.
When the vice
president paused in his monologue, I asked the obvious question. The simultaneous
arrival of the various teams of newsmen, the similarity of their dossiers and of
our questions, the commonality of their revealed purposes – these things wer
not coincidence. “Who,” I asked “is orchestrating this?”
Lyndon Johnson
made a face. He tucked his chin down, frowned and shook his head reprovingly,
as though dealing with a youngster. “Buzz,” he said, pretending to be surprised,
“you’ve been around too long to have to ask a question like that.”
Of course I
was not asking from ignorance or innocence. At any level of politics, one always
knows the adversaries; at the level of the vice presidency, involved as that
office is with the intrigues of the reigning court, sensitivity rises far
higher. But my question was purposeful. For three years, since the election in
November, 1960, Lyndon Johnson had sealed his lips; even in the most private
and confidential conversation, he would not permit himself to acknowledge that
he had critics, detractors, or adversaries anywhere within the new administration.
The principle might be commendable. “Nothing and nobody,” he explained, “is
ever going to divide the president and me, and I’m not going to say anything to
anybody, not even my wife, that might get back to the president and cause him a
moment’s concern.” The discipline was exacting and inflexible, but it irritated
some of us close to the vice president: he carried it, we thought, to the point
of unreality. I wanted to draw him out.
“You mean –” I
began, but he did not permit me to finish my question.
“I don’t mean
anybody,” he snapped. “You can guess the answer, dammit, but I’m not about to start
naming names.”
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 131-132]
Longtime LBJ aide and friend Horace Busby describes Lyndon Johnson, on
Friday, Nov. 8 in Brussels, Belgian being extremely concerned about the
nature of his potential “exit line” from the Kennedy Administration
QUOTE
As we passed
the darkness of an ancient cathedral, he stopped abruptly, pushed his hat far
back on his head, and turned toward me.
“Buzz,” he
said, “I’ve had a good run of it. I’ve done a lot more and come a lot farther
than anybody who came from where I come ever had any right to expect.” Agent
Kivett had approached closely, checking whether some assistance might be
needed. The vice president turned and glowered until he moved on out of
earshot, then Lyndon Johnson leaned in very close, until his face almost
touched mine, and his clenched fists began pumping up and down.
“If they want me
to go, all they have to do is say so and I’ll be gone in five minutes.” His
voice fell to a hoarse and confidential whisper. “I don’t care about that, it’s
their business. What I do care about, my friend, is one thing.” He stopped and
stood erect, turning to look in all directions. The street and the sidewalk were
empty except for the two of us and Jerry Kivett, now half a block away. The
vice president leaned in close again. Lips set tight, he spoke firmly. “I care
about the exit line.”
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 134-135]
Longtime LBJ aide Horace Busby on the torrent of rumors and inquiries from
reporters in mid November,1963 that JFK was going to drop Lyndon Johnson from
the 1964 ticket
QUOTE
In Washington,
where I had remained, rumors ran amuck. Each day newsmen were calling George
Reedy or Walter Jenkins or myself to check out the stories – always on “good
authority” – that President Kennedy’s purpose in planning to spend the night at
the LBJ Ranch was to break the news that Lyndon Johnson would not be on the
ticket in 1964. When we traced these stories back to their sources, the origins
lay not at the White House or among Kennedy intimates but among Texans in
Washington friendly to Senator Yarborough. Repetition, nonetheless, had its
effect, intensifying tensions, magnifying worries, expanding out imagination of
what might go wrong on the Texas journey.”
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 139]
Longtime LBJ aide and speechwriter Horace Busby describes how he, his
wife and the “Johnson men” were opposed to a motorcade for JFK in Dallas
because of the vitriolic right wing atmosphere
QUOTE
Mary V. handed me the front page of a recent issue. “Read this,”
she said. “Someone has lost their mind.” It was a story announcing that, on his
visit to Dallas, President Kennedy would ride in an open-car motorcade from
Love Field to the site of his luncheon address.
“I can’t
imagine your friends in the Secret Service letting the president do that,” she
said. I agreed with her. The thought of physical danger to the president did
not occur. Our memories were still fresh, though, of 1960, when the vice
president and Mrs. Johnson were mobbed in a Dallas hotel lobby. An ugliness had
crept into Dallas politics which perplexed many Texans. Only a few weeks
earlier there had been a nasty attack on Ambassador Adlai Stevenson when he
spoke there. An open-car motorcade was an obvious invitiation for more episodes
– ugly signs, jeering chants, or perhaps an egg tossed at the presidential limousine.
The next day I
voiced my concern to Walter Jenkins and learned that he shared it. In fact, he
told me, Governor Connally, Cliff Carter and all the Johnson men participating
in plans for the Kennedy visit were counseling against the Dallas motorcade.
But our interests and the interests of the Kennedy people were hopelessly at
odds. We were thinking, selfishly perhaps, of avoiding street incidents which
would acutely embarrass Vice President Johnson.
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 140]
QUOTE
On Friday, all
those concerns would come together – the president’s ride through Dallas, the
ticket sales for the fund-raising dinner at Austin, the climax at the LBJ Ranch
after the politicking was done. November 22 was a day we all faced with dread.
On Thursday, November
21, I lunched with Leonard Marks at a club frequented by Washington’s
television and radio reporters. Since my conversation with the vice president
in Brussels, I had come to a gloomy but inescapable conclusion that Lyndon Johnson’s
days in that office were numbered; if the end did not come the following day in
Texas, ugly times were clearly ahead for us all in Washington. I did not want
to be around; the toll of peripheral involvement in palace politics was too great.
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 141]
Longtime LBJ aide and friend Horace Busby and his secretary Patty Scott
were on pins and needles in Washington, DC as they worried over JFK’s reception
in Dallas in real time on Nov. 22, 1963
QUOTE
… with my secretary, Patty Scott, I remained at the office,
buckling down to meet the early evening deadline for my copy. Patty had
recently come to Washington from Dallas; she shared my concern over President
Kennedy’s reception in the city. As the time neared for the presidential party
to arrive at Love Field, she began an almost continuous vigil over the Teletype
machine. We kidded each other about our Texas paranoia, but Patty remained
anxious. “You never know what those kooks are going to do,” she said.
Then it came:
the longest, the most unreal, the most terrible minute I had ever known.
UNQUOTE
[Horace Busby, The Thirty-First of March, pp. 142]
