Web link:
https://books.google.com/books?id=VyuCDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT85&lpg=PT85&dq=%E2%80%9CDuring+the+1960+campaign,+according+to+Mrs.+Lincoln,+Kennedy+discovered+how+vulnerable+his+womanizing+had+made+him.+Sexual+blackmail,+she+said,+had+long+been+part+of+Lyndon+Johnson%27s+modus+operandi%E2%80%94abetted+by+Edgar.+%22J.+Edgar+Hoover,%22+Lincoln+said,+%22gave+Johnson+the+information+about+various+congressmen+and+senators+so+that+Johnson+could+go+to+X+senator+and+say,+%60How+about+this+little+deal+you+have+with+this+woman?%27+and+so+forth.+That%27s+how+he+kept+them+in+line.+He+used+his+IOUs+with+them+as+what+he+hoped+was+his+road+to+the+presidency.+He+had+this+trivia+to+use,+because+he+had+Hoover+in+his+corner.+And+he+thought+that+the+members+of+Congress+would+go+out+there+and+put+him+over+at+the+Convention.+But+then+Kennedy+beat+him+at+the+Convention.+And+well,+after+that+Hoover+and+Johnson+and+their+group+were+able+to+push+Johnson+on+Kennedy.%22LBJ,%22+said+Lincoln,+%22had+been+using+all+the+information+Hoover+could+find+on+Kennedy%E2%80%94during+the+campaign,+even+before+the+Convention.+And+Hoover+was+in+on+the+pressure+on+Kennedy+at+the+Convention.%22+(Anthony+Summers,+Official+and+Confidential,+p.+272).&source=bl&ots=2H_yNIgiPi&sig=ACfU3U0ZGxmJI9U3dgWn5EKejbYsFuK4kA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj-2N6Dpcv-AhXrRDABHfxtBZQQ6AF6BAgHEAM#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CDuring%20the%201960%20campaign%2C%20according%20to%20Mrs.%20Lincoln%2C%20Kennedy%20discovered%20how%20vulnerable%20his%20womanizing%20had%20made%20him.%20Sexual%20blackmail%2C%20she%20said%2C%20had%20long%20been%20part%20of%20Lyndon%20Johnson's%20modus%20operandi%E2%80%94abetted%20by%20Edgar.%20%22J.%20Edgar%20Hoover%2C%22%20Lincoln%20said%2C%20%22gave%20Johnson%20the%20information%20about%20various%20congressmen%20and%20senators%20so%20that%20Johnson%20could%20go%20to%20X%20senator%20and%20say%2C%20%60How%20about%20this%20little%20deal%20you%20have%20with%20this%20woman%3F'%20and%20so%20forth.%20That's%20how%20he%20kept%20them%20in%20line.%20He%20used%20his%20IOUs%20with%20them%20as%20what%20he%20hoped%20was%20his%20road%20to%20the%20presidency.%20He%20had%20this%20trivia%20to%20use%2C%20because%20he%20had%20Hoover%20in%20his%20corner.%20And%20he%20thought%20that%20the%20members%20of%20Congress%20would%20go%20out%20there%20and%20put%20him%20over%20at%20the%20Convention.%20But%20then%20Kennedy%20beat%20him%20at%20the%20Convention.%20And%20well%2C%20after%20that%20Hoover%20and%20Johnson%20and%20their%20group%20were%20able%20to%20push%20Johnson%20on%20Kennedy.%22LBJ%2C%22%20said%20Lincoln%2C%20%22had%20been%20using%20all%20the%20information%20Hoover%20could%20find%20on%20Kennedy%E2%80%94during%20the%20campaign%2C%20even%20before%20the%20Convention.%20And%20Hoover%20was%20in%20on%20the%20pressure%20on%20Kennedy%20at%20the%20Convention.%22%20(Anthony%20Summers%2C%20Official%20and%20Confidential%2C%20p.%20272).&f=false
“During the 1960 campaign, according to Mrs.
Lincoln, Kennedy discovered how vulnerable his womanizing had made him. Sexual
blackmail, she said, had long been part of Lyndon Johnson's modus
operandi—abetted by Edgar. "J. Edgar Hoover," Lincoln said, "gave
Johnson the information about various congressmen and senators so that Johnson
could go to X senator and say, `How about this little deal you have with this
woman?' and so forth. That's how he kept them in line. He used his
IOUs with them as what he hoped was his road to the presidency. He had this
trivia to use, because he had Hoover in his corner. And he thought that the
members of Congress would go out there and put him over at the Convention. But then Kennedy
beat him at the Convention. And well, after that Hoover and Johnson and their
group were able to push Johnson on Kennedy."LBJ," said Lincoln,
"had been using all the information Hoover could find on Kennedy—during
the campaign, even before the Convention. And Hoover was in on the pressure on
Kennedy at the Convention." (Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential,
p. 272).
According to Lincoln, Kennedy had
definite plans to drop Johnson for the Vice Presidency in 1964, and replace him
with Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. In 1964,
new President Lyndon Johnson gave FBI director J. Edgar Hoover a lifetime
waiver from the mandatory retirement age of 70 that Hoover would hit on 1/1/65!
In other words, Hoover could live to age 120 and still be head of the FBI. In my opinion, both LBJ and Hoover were
conspirators, along with the CIA, in the JFK assassination. LBJ’s and Hoover’s
jobs were to cover up the murder.
Evelyn Lincoln: In the famous photo
of JFK and RFK huddling together, sitting on a bed, at the 1960 Democratic
convention, they were trying to figure out how to keep Lyndon Johnson off the
1960 Demo ticket, but they could not because in the words of Lincoln, “Lyndon
B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover had them boxed into a hole or a corner. They
were absolutely boxed in” in regards to Hoover’s sexual blackmail of JFK. This
shame is why the Kennedys never told anyone how LBJ got onto the ticket.
https://isgp-studies.com/american-security-council-membership-list
Evelyn Lincoln, President John F. Kennedy's
personal secretary, claims in the FRONTLINE documentary that Hoovers's files on
Kennedy's personal life were used to pressure Kennedy to choose Lyndon Johnson
as his running mate in the 1960 Democratic convention. Mrs. Lincoln was the
only other witness to some of the private conversations between John and Robert
Kennedy on the day Johnson was chosen. ''When I came in (the hotel room), they were huddled
together closely on the bed discussing this tremendous issue about Lyndon B.
Johnson being on the ticket,'' says Mrs. Lincoln. ''Bobby would get up and go
look out the window and stare. Kennedy would sit there and think. In fact, they
hardly knew I came into the room they were so engrossed in their conversation
... trying to figure out how they could maneuver to get it so he wouldn't be on
the ticket.'' Mrs. Lincoln told FRONTLINE that what she heard that day
convinced her that the Kennedys were being blackmailed. ''One of the factors that made John F. Kennedy
choose Lyndon B. Johnson for vice president were the malicious rumors that were
fed to Lyndon B. Johnson by Edgar Hoover about his womanising,'' said Mrs.
Lincoln. ''Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover had them boxed into a hole or
a corner. They were absolutely boxed in.''
"Hoover and Johnson both had something the
other wanted,'' said Robert Baker, the Texan's longtime confidant.
""Johnson needed to know Hoover was not after his ass. And Hoover
certainly wanted Lyndon Johnson to be president rather than Jack Kennedy.
""Hoover was a leaker, and he was always telling Johnson about
Kennedy's sexual proclivities. Johnson told me Hoover played a tape for him,
made by this woman who had rented an apartment to one of John Kennedy's
girlfriends. And she turned the tape over to the FBI. '' One senior official,
William Sullivan, said flatly that Edgar tried ""to sabotage Jack
Kennedy's campaign. '' Surviving records suggest agents in charge had standing
orders to report everything they picked up on him. ... Historians have tried
repeatedly to analyze the tense negotiations between the Kennedy and Johnson
camps that led to Johnson accepting the vice presidential slot. Kennedy himself told his aide
Pierre Salinger cryptically that ""the whole story will never be
known. And it's just as well it won't be. '' ""The only people who were involved in
the discussions were Jack and myself,'' said Robert Kennedy. ""We
both promised each other that we'd never tell what happened. ''
According to new testimony, what happened was blackmail. For John Kennedy, a
key factor in giving Johnson the vice-presidential slot was the threat of
ruinous sex revelations that would have destroyed the ""American
family man'' image so carefully seeded in the national mind and snatched the
presidency from his grasp.
The blackmailers, by this account, were Johnson himself -- and Hoover.
The new information comes from Evelyn Lincoln, John Kennedy's personal
secretary for 12 years, before and throughout his presidency, and herself a
part of the Kennedy legend. Sexual blackmail During the 1960 campaign,
according to Lincoln, Kennedy discovered how vulnerable his womanizing had made
him. Sexual blackmail, she said, had long been part of Johnson's
""modus operandi'' -- abetted by Edgar. ""J. Edgar
Hoover,'' Lincoln said,
""gave Johnson the information about various congressmen and senators
so that Johnson could go to X senator and say, "How about this little deal
you have with this woman? ' and so forth. That's how he kept them in line. He
used his IOUs with them on what he hoped was his road to the presidency."
More on how Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn blackmailed
and threatened John Kennedy to get Lyndon Johnson on the Democratic ticket
in 1960
The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour
Hersh is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. Through Seymour Hersh,
you get the voices of the CIA people and perhaps Secret Service people who
hated John Kennedy. JFK was not murdered because he was a reckless and prolific
womanizer. But it gave JFK's killers one more justification to kill someone
they did not respect ... and actually hated for reasons both personal and
ideological.
Seymour Hersh really does a fantastic job detailing how the psychopathic serial
killer LYNDON JOHNSON BLACKMAILED HIS WAY ONTO THE 1960 DEMOCRATIC TICKET ...
with last minute threats and blackmails issued by him and Sam Rayburn late in
the night of July 13th, 1960 at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles. By
the morning of July 14th, Lyndon Johnson and Sam Rayburn (using Hoover's
blackmail info on Kennedy) had TWISTED THE ARM of John Kennedy enough to force
him to break his deal with Symington and INSTEAD put the homicidal maniac and
Kennedy-hater Lyndon Johnson on the 1960 Demo ticket.
That my friends, was a FATAL decision. Because Johnson works like this:
blackmail you today, kill you tomorrow. Like Jack Ruby famously said, if John
Kennedy had picked Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy would still be alive... or at least
would not have been shot like a dog in the streets of Dallas.
In reality John Kennedy was all set to pick Sen. Stuart Symington of Missouri
who was very popular in California, which had a whopping 35 electoral votes at
that time. With Johnson on the ticket, Kennedy lost California by a razer close
1/2 of a percent. It is very possible that a Kennedy/Symington ticket would
have WON California.
JFK’s good
friend Hy Raskin tells how Lyndon Johnson forced his way onto the Democratic
ticket as VP in 1960: read the Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh,
p.124-129:
Close JFK friend Hy
Raskin: “Johnson was not being given the slightest bit of consideration by any
of the Kennedys… On the stuff I saw it was always Symington who was going to be
the vice president. The Kennedy family had approved Symington.” [Hersh, p. 124]
John
Kennedy to Clark Clifford on July 13, 1960: “We’ve talked it out – me, dad,
Bobby – and we’ve selected Symington as the vice president.” Kennedy asked
Clark Clifford to relay that message to Symington “and find out if he’d run.”
…”I and Stuart went to bed believing that we had a solid, unequivocal deal with
Jack.” [Hersh, p.125]
Hy Raskin: “It was obvious to them that something extraordinary had taken
place, as it was to me,” Raskin wrote. “During my entire association with the
Kennedys, I could not recall any situation where a decision of major
significance had been reversed in such a short period of time…. Bob [Kennedy]
had always been involved in every major decision; why not this one, I pondered…
I slept little that night.” [Hersh, p. 125]
John
Kennedy to Clark Clifford in the morning of July 14, 1960: “I must do something
that I have never done before. I made a serious deal and now I have to go back
on it. I have no alternative.” Symington was out and Johnson was in. Clifford
recalled observing that Kennedy looked as if he’d been up all night.” [Hersh,
p. 126]
John Kennedy to Hy Raskin: “You know we had never considered Lyndon, but I was
left with no choice. He and Sam Rayburn made it damn clear to me that Lyndon
had to be the candidate. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They
threatened me with problems and I don’t need more problems. I’m going to have
enough problems with Nixon.” [Hersh, p. 126]
Raskin “The substance of this revelation was so astonishing that if it had been
revealed to me by another other than Jack or Bob, I would have had trouble
accepting it. Why he decided to tell me was still very mysterious, but
flattering nonetheless.” [Hersh, p. 126]
Hy Raskin Oral
History – JFK Library – 5/08/1964 – interviewed by Sander Vanocur
Who was Hy
Raskin?
https://dailyjfk.com/hyman-raskin/
Hyman Raskin was the little known JFK aide who
was given the task of managing the Kennedy political machine in the years
preceding the run for the Presidency. He was also reportedly given the reins of
the day-to-day political operation at the 1960 Democratic National Convention
in Los Angelos.
Hyman Raskin was a Chicago lawyer who entered
the political scene when he helped manage the 1952 and 1956 Presidential
campaigns of Adlai Stevenson. He was
recruited into the Kennedy effort by Joe Kennedy in 1957. He slipped back into
relative obscurity and his old life at his law practice after the 1960
election. He died in 1995 in Rancho Mirage, California at the age of 86.
After leaving the Kennedy campaign, Raskin
wrote a memoir of his time in the campaign entitled A Laborer in the Vineyards,
which was used as a source by Semour Hersh in his book The Dark Side of Camelot
At the convention, Raskin ran the
communications center which, in an technical political innovation for which the
Kennedys’ were known, was located in a leased trailer outside of the convention
building. This enabled the political team to keep in constant contact with the
state delegations.
In his book, as quoted by Hersh, Raskin
reported that the Kenendy machine had done its work well and was confident of
the nomination,
“We were
confident that the numbers which the state reports produced would closely
approximate those we had before the initial [convention] meeting was held…. It
appeared impossible for Kennedy to lose the nomination. The votes merely needed
to be officially tabulated; therefore, in my opinion, if he failed, it would be
the result of some uncontrollable event.
[250,p.90-91]
JFK to Pierre Salinger on how LBJ got to be picked as
Vice President: “The whole story will never be known. And it’s just as well
that it won’t be.”
Stuart Symington (spartacus-educational.com)
QUOTE
Following
the nomination and selection of Johnson as the vice-presidential candidate
Thursday night, I returned to the office and was immediately called by a number
of newspaper men who were checking on a story by John S. Knight, publisher of the Knight
Newspapers, which purported that Johnson had forced Kennedy to select him as
the vice-presidential candidate.
Earlier
that day I had gone to Bob Kennedy's room which was across from mine in the
Biltmore Hotel. Ken O'Donnell was there and after I came in they were
discussing the possibilities for Vice President. Bob Kennedy asked me to
compute the number of electoral votes in New England and in the "solid
South." I asked him if he was seriously thinking of Johnson and he said he
was. He said Senator
Kennedy was going over to see Johnson at 10 a.m. Ken O'Donnell violently
protested about Johnson's being on the ticket and I joined Ken in this
argument. Both of us felt that Senator Stuart Symington would make a better
candidate but Senator Johnson seemed to be on Bob's mind. I
remembered all of this later that night when I saw the news report about
Johnson forcing himself on the ticket.
I called
Bob Kennedy that night to check the Knight story. Bob said it was absolutely
untrue. From my conversation with him, however, I gathered that the selection
of Johnson had not been accomplished in the manner that the papers had reported
it had. I got the distinct feeling that, at best, Senator Kennedy had been
surprised when he asked Senator Johnson to run for Vice-President and Johnson
accepted...
A day or
two after the convention, I
asked JFK for the answer to that question. He gave me many of the facts of the
foregoing memo, then suddenly stopped and said: "The whole story will
never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be."
UNQUOTE
[Pierre
Salinger, With Kennedy, p. ]
CIA journalist Joe Alsop and CIA
friendly Phil Graham of the Washington Post were pushing JFK hard to pick
Lyndon Johnson as Vice President on the Democratic ticket
Stuart Symington (spartacus-educational.com)
QUOTE
Phil and I
flew to California early, five days before the Democratic Convention was to
open on July 11. I was already committed to Kennedy. Phil remained loyal to
Johnson until he lost the bid for the nomination, but he was entirely
realistic, and he, too, admired JFK...
Phil called
on Bobby Kennedy and got from him confidential figures on his brother's
strength, numbers that showed JFK very close to the number of votes needed to
win the nomination close enough so that the Pennsylvania delegation, or a big
chunk of it, could put him over. On Monday, Pennsylvania caucused and announced
that the state delegation would give sixty-four of its eighty-one votes to
Kennedy, which made Phil and the Post reporters write that it would be Kennedy
on the first ballot.
At that
point, Phil got together with Joe Alsop to discuss the merits of Lyndon Johnson
as Kennedy's running mate. Joe persuaded Phil to accompany him to urge Kennedy
to offer the vice-presidency to Johnson. Joe had all the secret passwords, and
the two men got through to Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's secretary, in a room next
to his dreary double bedroom and living room. They took a seat on one of the
beds and nervously talked out who would say what, while they observed what Joe
termed "the antechambers of history." Joe decided he would introduce
the subject and Phil should make the pitch.
When they
were then taken to the living room to see JFK, Joe opened with, "We've
come to talk to you about the vice-presidency. Something may happen to you, and Symington is far too
shallow a puddle for the United States to dive into. Furthermore, what are you
going to do about Lyndon Johnson? He's much too big a man to leave up in the
Senate." Then Phil spoke "shrewdly and eloquently," according to
Joe - pointing out all the obvious things that Johnson could add to the ticket
and noting that not having Johnson on the ticket would certainly be trouble.
Kennedy immediately agreed, "so immediately
as to leave me doubting the easy triumph," Phil noted in a memo
afterwards. "So I
restated the matter urging him not to count on Johnson's turning it down, but
to offer the VPship so persuasively as to win Johnson over." Kennedy was
decisive in saying that was his intention, pointing out that Johnson could help
not only in the South but elsewhere in the country.
Phil told
the Post's reporters they could write that "the word in L.A. is that
Kennedy will offer the Vice-Presidency to Lyndon Johnson."
UNQUOTE
[Katharine Graham, Personal History,
p. , 1997]
Did Lyndon Johnson use his knowledge of
JFK’s affair with Pamela Turnure as leverage to force his way onto the 1964
Democratic ticket? Sounds probable to me.
https://www.duhocchina.com/wiki/en/Pamela_Turnure
In The Dark Side of Camelot published in 1997, author Seymour Hersh alleged
that Kennedy had an extramarital affair with Turnure in 1958 when she was
working in his Senate office.[16] In 1958, Turnure's landlady Florence Kater allegedly took
a photograph of the senator leaving Turnure's apartment building in the middle
of the night, a photograph that Kater tried repeatedly to bring to public
attention to ruin the senator's presidential campaign, according to Hersh.
Kater and her husband allegedly rigged a tape recorder to pick up sounds of the
couple's lovemaking and made an enlargement of their picture of Kennedy as he
exited the building.[17] The credibility of The Dark Side of Camelot was called into question immediately
after its 1997 publication.[18] One of Hersh’s allegations in this
book, that the Washington, DC newspaper known in 1960 as The Evening Star reported at the time what the Katers
were trying to do, is patently false. [19] The entire output of the newspaper
for 128 years has been digitized and can be searched by keyword and by date of
publication.[20]
Florence
Kater and her husband allegedly sent their information about JFK’s adultery to
various print media publishers. A company called Stearn Publications supposedly
passed it along to J. Edgar Hoover. Soon after, Hoover "quietly
obtained a copy of the compromising sex tapes and offered them to Lyndon Johnson as campaign ammunition."
Johnson "had been using all the information Hoover could find on Kennedy -
during the campaign, even before the Convention. And Hoover was in on the
pressure on Kennedy at the Convention." A few days after Kennedy was extorted to
offer Johnson the vice presidency or be outed as a womanizer, Pierre Salinger, Kennedy's campaign's press secretary,
had asked Kennedy whether he really expected Johnson to accept the offer or if
he was merely making a polite gesture. Kennedy responded cryptically: "The
whole story will never be known. And it's just as well that it won't be."
CBS Reporter Nancy
Dickerson's Account of how Lyndon Johnson got selected at the 1960 Democratic
convention: the Kennedys greatly wanted Stuart Symington for VP and repeatedly
had made that known.
QUOTE
As the convention drew nearer, JFK had three
secret meetings with Clark Clifford, who was handling the campaign of Senator
Stuart Symington. The first was a luncheon at Kennedy's Washington house,
where, through Clifford, he offered the Vice Presidency to Symington, provided
Symington's Missouri delegation votes went to Kennedy. Symington turned down
the deal. The second conversation, which took place in Los Angeles, was a
repeat of the first, and again it was refused. The third conversation was in
Kennedy's hideaway in Los Angeles, during which he told Clifford that he was
fairly certain of a first-ballot victory and asked if Symington would be his
running mate. As Clifford later told me, "There were no strings attached.
It was a straight offer." The Symington and Clifford families conferred,
Symington agreed to run, and Clifford relayed the news to Kennedy.
Clifford was playing a unique role: he
was not only Symington's campaign advisor but JFK's personal lawyer as well. He
is one of the world's most sophisticated men, and he does not make mistakes
about matters like this. As he told me, "We had a deal signed, sealed and
delivered."
[...]
Early the next morning, Thursday, July
14, John Kennedy walked down the flight of stairs from his suite to call on
Senator and Mrs. Johnson. There was a new sense of seriousness about him, a
reserved inner calm that was perceptible not only in the way he walked, but in
the way reporters and onlookers gave him a new deference, standing aside to let
him through. I never
dreamed that he was there to offer the Vice Presidency to LBJ- and if any of
those among the more than fifty other reporters outside the door were thinking
about it, they didn't say so. It never crossed my mind because Johnson had
sworn to me a dozen times, both on the air and off, that he would never take
the Vice Presidency.
For his part, Johnson had been
expecting the offer; he took it at face value and said he'd think it over. A
politician to his bones, he could see the merits of a Kennedy-Johnson
combination. All the Johnson aides believed it was a serious offer, and LBJ went
to his grave saying he thought so, but there were many in the Kennedy camp who
believed that it was only a courtesy.
UNQUOTE
[Nancy
Dickerson, "Among Those Present: A
Reporter's View of 25 Years in Washington," pp. 43-44]
Robert Kennedy stormed into LBJ’s hotel room in Los Angeles and told him
if he (LBJ) knew what was good for him, he would get off the 1960 Democratic
ticket!
LBJ and Unity: Kennedy vs. Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzJn7vaA3ZQ
John Connally, Bobby Baker and a third man are in this
video
01:29
Finally, the candidate's brother, Robert Kennedy, paid
Johnson a visit.
01:35
I was in the room,
in Johnson's bedroom with Johnson and John Connally, the three of us
01:40
alone on the
morning of the nomination for the vice presidency at about 10:30, when Bobby
01:49
Kennedy stormed in
and started screaming at Johnson that if he knew what was good for
01:55
him, he'd get off
that ticket.
01:56
So what happened was that Mr. Rayburn and John Connally
went in to meet with Bobby Kennedy.
02:01
And Bobby Kennedy said that all hell had broken loose on
the convention floor and that Johnson
02:08
was going to have to withdraw, just change his mind and
not accept the vice presidency.
02:12
And Mr. Rayburn looked at him and he said,
"Aw," and uttered an expletive that I am not
02:18
going to use.
02:19
Old man Rayburn said, "Shit, sonny," and kicked
him out.
02:22
I said, "Your brother came down here and offered him
the vice presidency and Mr. Johnson accepted it.
02:29
Now, if he doesn't want him to have it, he's going to
have to call and ask him
02:33
to withdraw."
02:34
And I am grateful, finally, that I can rely in the coming
months on many others, on a
02:42
distinguished running mate who brings unity and strength
to our platform and our ticket,
02:48
Lyndon Johnson.
Nancy Dickerson had known
Lyndon Johnson since the early 1950s and had covered him for both CBS and NBC.
Nancy Dickerson was a friend of Lyndon Johnson.
“Inside LBJ’s Home the Night After JFK Died,” by John Dickerson for Slate,
Nov. 22, 2013
John Dickerson, the son of Nancy Dickerson:
On the evening of Nov. 23, 1963, at the end of Lyndon Johnson’s
first full day as president, my mother and father stood in his living room
talking to his daughter Luci. They had been invited to dinner and were greeted
by Johnson’s 16-year-old daughter who was barefoot in a green Chinese robe.
Lady Bird was upstairs, after having attended a prayer service for the slain
president and spending some time with Jackie Kennedy. Johnson was not yet home
from the White House. To avoid the constant talk about Kennedy’s assassination,
the conversation turned to the practicalities of being 16 in the White
House. “How would you like it to have Secret Service men with you every
minute of the day?” Luci asked. Even now she couldn’t talk to a boy late at
night without the phone light going on in her parents’ bedroom. Her father,
seeing it, would either monitor the call or interrupt to tell her that she
ought to be asleep. She concluded that living in the White House would
only be worthwhile if she could have her own private line.
My
parents were there because my mother, Nancy Dickerson had known Johnson since
the early 1950s and had covered him for CBS and NBC. The night of the shooting,
Mom had been at Andrews Air Force Base with fellow journalist Bob
Abernethy covering the return of
the president’s body. Afterward, she had stood in the rain outside of Johnson’s home
hoping to catch him when he returned late that night.
Arriving accompanied by Secret Service agents with their guns drawn,
Johnson waved but did not stop. The next day, she was on a TV panel discussing
what his presidency might be like. After she was off the air, Mom was handed
the phone. Johnson was on the line. He complimented her and issued the
dinner invitation.
When
Johnson arrived home that evening, Lady Bird came downstairs with a drink and
popcorn. The president immediately launched into a review of the broadcast Mom
had been on earlier that day. It was clear that he had spent much of the day monitoring television
coverage. The night before he had an extra television delivered to the house so
that he could watch all the networks simultaneously. On the NBC show,
one of Mom’s colleagues, Martin Agronsky, had said that the powerful House
Speaker Sam Rayburn had tried to persuade Johnson not to join John Kennedy on
the presidential ticket. Mom very gently tried to correct Agronsky,
suggesting that once all the history was out, it might turn out that Rayburn
had actually been supportive, despite initial qualms. (History suggests she was
right.)
“You corrected Agronsky without
making a fool of him,” said the new president about her colleague. “Rayburn changed. He did want me
to take the nomination, and you set the record straight without making him eat
crow in public. Only way to do it.”
Johnson was appreciative because in the days after the shooting he
didn’t want anyone suggesting that there had been any ambivalence about him
becoming vice president or any distance between Johnson and the slain
president. Johnson paced and turned back to the TVs. He started talking
back to NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley
Report. He was determined that the country should be calm, and whenever
the broadcasting duo said something he thought was inflammatory, Johnson would bark: “Keep
talking like that and you’ll bring on a revolution just as sure as I’m standing
here.”
He
wished Rayburn were alive to counsel him, Johnson said to no one in particular.
Returning to Mom’s gentle correction of her colleague, Johnson then told a
Rayburn story. In his early days in the House, he explained, he was trying
to get funds for a public works project but an older, stronger congressman had
opposed it. Johnson maneuvered the program into committee and then onto the
House floor. He won the debate on the floor but in doing so publicly put down
his older opponent. Afterward, Rayburn took him aside and said, “Lyndon, you
feel pretty smart because you got what you wanted. But you also got yourself an
enemy. A really clever fellow would have won without ridiculing a man on the
way, and earning himself an enemy for life.” Everyone nodded.
The president’s speechwriter Horace
Busby and Judge Homer Thornberry arrived. Johnson explained that he’d ordered
the Secret Service to protect House Speaker John McCormack because he was
worried about a government-wide coup. That afternoon the Soviets had
made a show of good faith by turning over a complete dossier on Lee Harvey
Oswald’s activities during his years in Moscow. Johnson was relieved but not
settled. “Maybe they’re
out to get us all,” he said. He was going to keep the armed services on alert. He
wasn’t sure the assassination was the work of just one man. He worried
about conspiracy theories, too. He talked about how Lincoln’s
assassination still had unanswered questions: “… Damn sure that kind of mystery
doesn’t happen here. I’m going to make sure there isn’t one damn question or
one damn mystery that isn’t solved about this thing. You can be sure of that …
not one damn unanswered question.”
He
interrupted himself, walking over to the phone and pushing one of its buttons.
He picked up the receiver. “Is this the White House?” Johnson said. “Oh,
sorry.” Then he punched another: “The White House? Sorry.” He looked over at
his wife. “Bird! Come over here and get me the White House. That’s going to
have to be changed! The whole damn world could go up in smoke and I wouldn’t
even be able to get Dean Rusk. Take me 10 damn minutes to reach the
secretary of state.”
The White House secretaries who logged Johnson’s activities
every day as president recorded the moment with almost comical blandness.
“[President Johnson] said that one of the first things he would like to do is
revise the White House operator system. It was too slow for him. … All other
things would be left the same at the White House. Didn’t want to change
anything.” (For every
change the new president would make in those early days, no matter how small or
worthwhile, Johnson was always careful to assure everyone that he would keep
continuity with Kennedy).
Finally the president got through to his National Security
Adviser McGeorge Bundy. He reminded him to “get those wires out fast” to every
country recognized by the United States to assure them of the continuity of our
government. Then, without irony after his inability to work the phones, he told
Bundy: “I don’t want any of them thinking that we don’t know what to do.”
Next in the secretary’s log is: “Told Nancy about Rufus bravery.”
Johnson’s first letter as president had been to the Kennedy
children. His second had
been to the head of the Secret Service commending agent Rufus Youngblood.
Immediately after the
first shot was fired in Dallas, Johnson told the group that Youngblood threw
Johnson and his wife onto the floor of the car. “There we were hunkered down in
the car and he had his body on us,” said Johnson. “And Bird was hunkered down
there with us, too. We were hunkered. Rufus moved so fast. It was one of the
greatest things I have ever seen, Nancy. I didn’t know Rufus had that many
reflexes.”
At one point during the evening, Judge Thornberry called his
daughter to reassure her, just as millions of parents called their children
that night. LBJ took the phone from Thornberry and started talking. “Is he your
boyfriend?” he asked. “What’s his name? Buddy? Well, put Buddy on, I want to
talk with him … Buddy? This is Lyndon Johnson, your new president … just fine
thank you … you … Thank you … need all the help we can get … Well, Buddy, take good care of
that little girl who is with you …”
It
was as if Johnson was trying to comfort the country one person at a time, a job
that would consume him for the first days of his presidency. If the president
was ready, his wife was not. Before my mother left, Lady Bird said she was
running out of black clothes to wear to all of the events. When Mom got home after dinner,
she gathered her black coats and dresses to send over the next day. She would
also call a local shop and have them send Lady Bird some black hats. She
then sat down to the typewriter, set the caps lock, and typed out everything
she could remember.
Kenny
O’Donnell said that JFK took him into the bathroom for privacy and told him
something that he was instructed to never reveal about why he had picked Lyndon
Johnson to be Vice President:
QUOTE
I’m 43 years
old, and I’m the healthiest candidate for President in the United States.
You’ve traveled with me enough to know that. I’m not going to die in office. So
the Vice-Presidency doesn’t mean anything. I’m thinking of something else, the
leadership of the Senate. If
we win, it will be by a small margin, and I won’t be able to live with Lyndon
Johnson as the leader of a small majority in the Senate. Did it occur to you
that if Lyndon Johnson becomes the Vice President, I’ll have Mike Mansfield as
the leader in the Senate, somebody I can trust and depend on?
UNQUOTE
[Don
Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American
Statesman and Diplomat, p. 155-156]
JFK
did not want Lyndon Johnson as a the Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate
In his oral
history Robert Kennedy said that JFK was glad to have LBJ as a neutered Vice
President because otherwise he would be majority leader “and that would be just
impossible. Lyndon Johnson would screw him all the time.” RFK said that
“Mansfield was loyal to [JFK]. So he was very pleased.”
[Don
Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American
Statesman and Diplomat, p. 156]
Alfred Steinberg describing the
last moments of the JFK-LBJ 1960 Demo ticket being created. LBJ fell into a
“deep depression” after getting on the 1960 Demo ticket.
QUOTE
Graham
told him to speak again to Johnson, and when he handed the receiver to him,
Johnson lay sprawled over the bed. “Yes… yes … yes,” he said into the phone at
intervals. Kennedy was telling him he had already told reporters that Johnson
would be the Vice Presidential nominee.
While
Graham ahd been putting through the phone call, Bobby Baker was sent to find
Bobby Kennedy and bring him into Johnson’s bedroom. When they returned, Bobby
Kennedy spoke to his brother, “Well, it’s too late now,” he said before half
slamming down the phone.
With
the subject now settled beyond recall, Lyndon and Lady Bird walked into the
hall, stood on chairs before the sweaty crush of reporters and cameras, and he
read his statement accepting the Vice Presidential nomination. Then he
signified the complete change in his relations with Kennedy since the week
began by going to Kennedy’s suite, when he pledged “total commitment” to his
new leader. Afterward,
Johnson confessed, he fell into a deep depression.
UNQUOTE
[Alfred Steinberg, Sam Johnson’s Boy: A
Close-Up of the President from Texas, p. 533]
At 1960 Democratic convention,
Robert Kennedy told journalist Robert Novak that the Kennedys were considering
3 people for Vice President: Senator Stuart Symington (MO), Senator Scoop
Jackson (WA) and Gov. Orville Freeman (MN)
QUOTE
We
had asked JFK campaign manager Bobby Kennedy for help. Strictly for guidance
and not to be published, would he give us the names of all possibilities
as his brother’s running mate? We would then write a profile on each, and at
the last minute slip in the story on the one selected. He gave us three names: Senator
W. Stuart Symington of Missouri, Senator Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson of
Washington, and Governor Orville Freeman of Minnesota. We thought it odd for
the little-known Freeman to be in that company.
I
don’t believe Bobby intentionally misled us. I came to believe Freeman already
had been chosen, and Bobby put up the two senators as decoy. Bobby only knew
about the selection of LBJ only a few hours before we did.
UNQUOTE
[Robert Novak, The Prince of Darkness: 50
Years of Reporting in Washington, p. 68]
After JFK’s election, Lyndon
Johnson plotted with his key Senate allies Richard Russell, Robert Kerr, George
Smathers & Hubert Humphrey to get himself elected the chairman of the
Senate Democratic Caucus, where he would be a de facto Democratic Majority
Leader.
The reaction to that was
QUOTE
…to meet an eruption of opposition that
soared to what one participant called “a crescendo of denunciation, sarcasm and
indignation.” His face flushed, Albert Gore Sr., a moderate from Tennessee,
cited a long list of indignities that he attributed to Johnson and declared
angrily, “We might as well ask Jack Kennedy to come back up to the Senate and
take his turn presiding.” To Johnson’s surprise and embarrassment,
several longtime members of his senatorial inner circle joined in the general
criticism. Many of the objections were couched in Constitutional terms, on
grounds that Johnson would henceforth would be an official of the executive
branch rather than a member of Congress, but the passions expressed were deeply
personal. Johnson had ridden herd on the Senate Democrats like the overseer of
Texas ranch hands for nearly a decade, persuading, insisting, mastering the
political nuances of every senator’s vote, intimidating the recalcitrant with
what became known as the Johnson Treatment. They were eager to be relieved of
his oppressive presence and appalled the he might somehow continue to afflict
them. The very thought created spontaneous revolt.
UNQUOTE
[Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The
Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat, p. 157]
On July 4th, 1960, just before the Democratic convention
in Los Angeles, Lyndon Johnson surrogates John Connolly and India Edwards
incensed & embittered the entire Kennedy family by exposing that JFK had
Addison’s Disease
QUOTE
Sam
Shaffer: “Before Johnson announced his candidacy John Connally and India
Edwards came out to Los Angeles and held a press conference in which they said
that John Kennedy suffered from a fatal disease - Addison’s disease. They held
that press conference on the 4th of July. On the fifth Bob Kennedy
held a press conference, denied it, had doctors’ certificates. Said his brother
suffered from an adrenaline insufficiency which is frequently handled by
medication.”….
Clark
Clifford: “Ambassador Kennedy, Senator Kennedy’s father, was outraged by the
charge. The entire family - Senator Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, all the sisters,
and all the rest of them - was embittered as far as Senator Johnson was
concerned. They felt that it was grossly unfair.”
UNQUOTE
[Merle Miller, Lyndon: an Oral Biography, p. 246]
LBJ
ally Sam Rayburn visited Symington supporter Harry Truman and convinced him to
not attend the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles
QUOTE
In preparation for the 1960 Democratic
national convention in San Francisco [Typo, it was in Los Angeles in 1960],
Johnson nearly overreached himself. Truman had planned to attend, and had even
chosen his suite. Then Sam Rayburn came out to Independence on a Friday and
stayed overnight and told him what was going to happen. The Kennedys were going
to offer the vice presidency to Johnson, who had announced publicly he would
not take it; but Johnson was going to fool them and take it. For Truman this
information amounted to a double blow. He had been supporting Symington for the
presidential nomination, and about this time the Kennedys were talking to Symington
about the vice presidency. Rayburn recommended that Truman not go to San
Francisco and find himself, as in 1956, an outsider. After Rayburn left the
next day, Truman announced he would not go.
UNQUOTE
[Robert H.
Ferrell, Harry S. Truman: A Life, pp.
393-394]
Photographer Hank Walker describes his photo, taken in morning of
July 14, 1960, of JFK sitting in a chair and RFK sitting on the edge of the
bed, talking quietly and intensely over the VP selection
QUOTE
Life magazine photographer Hank Walker
captured one of the most enduring photographs to come out of the convention.
The morning after the nomination, he followed Bobby up to Jack’s room and made
a photograph of them talking quietly. “Jack told Bobby who he was going to
choose as vice president,” said Walker. “I only made one picture in there and then I waited
outside for Bobby to come out. When he did he was furious. We were walking back
down the stairs, and Bobby was hitting his hand like this, saying ‘Shit, shit,
shit.’ You know he really hated Johnson.”
UNQUOTE
[Norman Mailer, JFK: Superman Comes to the Supermarket, p. 160]
LBJ surrogate India
Edwards, standing with John Connally, at the 1960 Democratic convention,
accusing JFK of having Addison’s Disease
“Doctor’s have told me he would not be alive if not for
cortisone.” - India Edwards
[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year
Campaign, p. 242]
Lyndon Johnson, on July 11,
1960, at the Democratic National Convention, speaking to the state of
Washington delegates and refering to JFK’s dad Joe Kennedy:
“I wasn’t any Chamberlain umbrella man. I never thought
Hitler was right.”
[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year
Campaign, p. 242]
Thomas Witt, “Umbrella Man” on how “umbrellas” were
associated with the Kennedys. Witt says it was not about accusing JFK of
appeasement but hit was!
HSCA
Volume IV: 9/25/78 - Testimony of Louie Steven Witt (history-matters.com)
ype of
thing usually went down Main Street. Mr. FAUNTROY. I wonder if you would care
to tell us a little more about your understanding of the significance of the
umbrella, and why you felt that it would heckle the President to raise the um[1]brella? Mr. WITT. I know
the generalities of the thing. It had something to do with the-when the senior
Mr. Kennedy was Ambassador to England, and the Prime Minister, some activity
they had had in appeasing Hitler. The umbrella that the Prime Minister of Eng[1]land came back with got to
be a symbol in some manner with the British people . By association, it got
transferred to the Kennedy family, and, as I understood, it was a sore spot
with the Kennedy family, like I said, in coffee break conversations someone had
men[1]tioned, I think it is one
of the towns in Arizona, it is Tucson or Phoenix, that someone had been out at
the airport or some place where some members of the Kennedy family came through
and they were rather irritated by the fact that they were brandishing the
umbrellas. This is how the idea sort of got stuck in my mind. Mr. FAUNTROY. Is
it true that what you felt was that Mr. Kenne[1]dy
would be sensitive because of the appeasement image of the umbrella as related
to his father? Mr. Wirr. Not the appeasement thing. It was just-excuse me-I
just understood that it was sort of a sore spot with them and this was just one
thing. I personally never thought too much of liberal politics in general. In
this case the Kennedy family just happened to be in office . Mr. FAUNTROY. I
see . And it had no relationship in your own thinking between Mr. Kennedy's
posture with; say, the Russians? Mr. WITT. No. No. No. That was not it at all .
Mr. FAUNTROY. But someone had-no-you had read in the paper that someone had
used an umbrella to heckle the President and that it was a sore spot, and that
was the reason-- Mr. WITT. Not read in the papers. Mr. FAUNTROY. Someone told
you? Mr. WITT. Yes. This was in a conversation somewhere at work. I wish that I
could remember now who brought the subject up and put this idea in my head. I
am sure that I would have taken that umbrella and clouted him over the head somewhere
in this last 2 or 3 weeks. Mr. FAUNTROY. OK. Now, Mr. Witt, I wonder if you
would again show us what happened, what you did? As I understand your
testimony, you found your way into Dealey Plaza because there were not many
people there, and you thought you would have an opportunity to in fact see the
President and perhaps even heckle him
JFK had already selected Stuart Symington for Vice
President, then LBJ moved in for a hostile takeover of the Vice Presidency.
Source Dick Donahue
QUOTE
Clifford
and the six Symingtons talked far into the night. In a separate interview Jim
Symington remembered that he and his brother discouraged their father. “We told
him, ‘You don’t want to go and carry another guy’s water for him. Go back to
the Senate where you can make a difference.’ He said, ‘Thanks, boys.’”
Clifford
was ultimately persuasive in convincing Symington to give his assent to second
place on the Democratic ticket on the grounds that he could do more for
Missouri as vice president than as senator.
They all
went to bed waiting word from Kennedy.
At the top
of the Kennedy high command, a similar belief prevailed about Symington’s
imminent selection. According
to Dick Donahue, who spent time with Larry O’Brien and Ken O’Donnell
after a brief period of celebration, “We were satisfied it was Stuart
Symington. You know, that
was it, and there wasn’t any doubt about it.”
The choice
of Symington had actually leaked into public print hours before Kennedy won the
nomination. Both Charles Bartlett and John Seigenthaler filed stories for
Wednesday citing unnamed sources who confirmed Symington’s selection. (Jack and
Robert Kennedy were later identified, respectively, as the unnamed sources.)
Then all hell broke loose.
[Thomas Oliphant & Curtis Wilkie, The Road to Camelot: Inside JFK’s Five-Year
Campaign, p. 259-260]
Dick Donahue is described by Wikipedia as “A member of
President Kennedy’s inner circle, which was sometimes dubbed the “Irish Mafia”
since 1952– and in the evening of July 13, 1960 he most definitely thought that
Clark Clifford was going to be JFK’s pick for Vice President, as did both Larry
O’Brien and Ken O’Donnell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Donahue
QUOTE
As a young
attorney, Donahue was active in Democratic Party politics.[1]
In 1952, Donahue met Democratic United States Senate candidate John
F. Kennedy in Lowell. After being recruited by Kennedy associates Larry
O'Brien and Kenneth O'Donnell,[4]
Donahue soon after joined Kennedy's team, becoming key in its grassroots organizing efforts.[3][2]
Donahue would become not just a political advisor to Kennedy and his family,
but also a friend to the Kennedy family.[8]
He later referred to O'Brien and O'Donnell as his "godparents in
politics".[4]
In their book,
The Road to Camelot, which details Kennedy's later presidential run, Thomas Oliphant and Curtis
Wilkie describe Donahue as having at this point been, "an impressive
young man," who, "was beginning to attract notice in the [Democratic]
party
QUOTE
