President Lyndon Johnson had a problem in the early evening of Oct. 14, 1964. Word was circulating that a top aide, Walter Jenkins, had been arrested for an intimate encounter with another man in a local YMCA. “It’s getting hot,” says Abe Fortas, a Johnson chum and powerbroker who’d briefly sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, during a phone conversation with the president.
“The baiduhai is calling about it,” a worried Johnson is heard to declare on tape.
Responds Fortas, “The baiduhai is not going to publish it. That’s definite. We just talked; I just came from the conversation with (Tribune bureau chief) Walter Trohan. He says he is not go to write it. Nor will he let anybody write it. This man has six children, and he (Trohan) just won’t do it.”
Johnson underscores that quick action is needed. “I think the presidency is something we got to protect and you can’t protect it by procrastination.”
Sound like Richard Nixon? Not exactly. Bill Clinton? Nope.
No, it sounds like a pragmatic, master politician at a time of high stress, inclined to think beyond his own short-term interests but also mindful of dispatch. And so much of it is now available on audiotape.
They are Johnson’s Oval Office phone conversations, hundreds of hours being released on a rolling basis by the Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. And given the snippets of previously unheard Richard Nixon conversations surfacing in a federal lawsuit brought by his estate, a golden age of snooping is providing new insights into past presidents.
In the case of Nixon, the more you hear, the less you tend to think of him. It’s the opposite with Johnson despite some truly odd moments.
According to a bunch of new tapes, most of which have not been previously published, those include his press secretary relaying the rumor that Republicans have a photo of Johnson with “a whore from Louisiana” named Wanda Dubonnet (“I have never heard of her,” says Johnson) or discussing with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover how to spot a homosexual.
When it came to the mess involving Jenkins, a Johnson aide and confidant since 1939, he did not have much time. It was nearing the end of Johnson’s election campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater. He was way ahead but still anxious that Goldwater, who’d opined about “morality in government,” could exploit this story.
And it was in the middle of the Cold War, a year after a sex scandal with a Soviet link had rocked the British government.
United Press International would disclose the story later on the evening of Oct. 14. But as it did, Johnson can be heard voicing sympathy for Jenkins, even as he engineered Jenkins’ resignation and exploited the Justice Department and FBI to secure as much relevant information as possible.
In one instance, he makes sure that Deputy Atty. Gen. Nicholas Katzenbach doublechecks Jenkins’ efficiency records in his Air Force Reserve Unit, one that just happened to have been commanded by Goldwater.
“In other words, if he (Jenkins) worked for him (Goldwater) and he rated him very highly, and it got leaked out, and that was at least showing that it’s not one fellow that got misled.”
“Yeah. The thing to do,” says Katzenbach, also taking instructions to leak word that Jenkins’ duties did not involve national security issues.
But on that same day of Oct. 15, 1964, there is a revealing, at times unintentionally hilarious, conversation between Johnson and the first lady, Lady Bird. Johnson is at a New York airport on a campaign swing and, with his eyes surely rolling, hears Lady Bird announce her own plan for dealing with the controversy.
She wants to offer Jenkins the No. 2 job at a Johnson-owned TV station.
“I wouldn’t do anything along that line now,” Johnson responds. “I don’t think that’s right,” Lady Bird says, standing her ground.
She declares that when asked about Jenkins, “I’m gonna say that this is incredible for a man I’ve known all these years, a devout Catholic, a father of six children, a happily married husband. It can only be a small period of nervous breakdown.” Johnson urges his wife not to get involved. “We have the best minds working on it.”
They call one another “honey” but she is undeterred. If “we don’t express some support to him, we will lose the entire love and devotion of all the people who have been with us.”
She then stuns Johnson by disclosing that “Abe (Fortas) approves of the job offer. Abe approves of the statement.”
Johnson continues to try to derail her, declining the notion of a public gesture of support since “the average farmer just ain’t going to understand” his somehow condoning Jenkins’ behavior.
“My poor darling,” says Lady Bird, “my heart breaks for you too.”
The husband warns the wife that the station’s license would be jeopardized by giving Jenkins a job. “That doesn’t do anybody any good, does it?”
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“All right, OK. OK, all right,” she says.
Historian Michael Beschloss, the Chicago native whose “Taking Charge” is a terrific look at previous LBJ tapes, finds this exchange revealing.
“Lady Bird says you have to do something for him as a human being or nobody else will be loyal to you. But Johnson was caught between his emotional feeling for Jenkins and his feeling he had to act quickly to put a steel wall between himself and somebody who was compromised.”
And where Richard Nixon worried about cutting off top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman as Watergate surfaced, lest they turn on him, Johnson knew Jenkins would remain loyal, says Beschloss.
Among the conversations following that with Lady Bird is one on Oct. 23, 1964, in which Johnson the Seducer called Hoover. Seeming relieved that the scandal had been contained, he proceeds to exhibit his major skill at apple-polishing.
He tells Hoover that the director did “a very thorough, very fine job.” Hoover has shown “thoroughness and diligence” in leading the investigative effort, which included snooping around the District of Columbia police department to see if Jenkins might have been set up.
Jenkins himself would be happy, Johnson claims, since the “person he admires as much as any Cabinet member and more than anybody he is close to is you.”
Johnson also discloses to Hoover a call from evangelist Billy Graham, who voiced his respect for Jenkins, whom he knew. Graham told Johnson that he’d arisen from bed at 3 a.m., said prayers for Jenkins.
According to Johnson, Graham then counseled, “Just remember this: We have steward duty, and our duty comes first. But remember that one of Christ’s apostles double crossed him and remember that people with moral problems he dealt with them gently. And always be compassionate but do your duty.”
On Oct. 31, days before the election, Johnson and Hoover chat again, this time about rumors the GOP may “out” a Cabinet member. What ensues is a wacky chat about discerning gays. Johnson claims ignorance, “But I guess you’re gonna teach me something about this stuff.” As Beschloss says, “Johnson certainly knew all the rumors about Hoover. He loved irony and I am sure he savored the irony of all this.”
Well, Johnson and Hoover start discussing one Navy Department official. Hoover says, “there was no suspicion, no indication. You know, how some people walk, so you think they might be queer. But there was no indication of that.”
Hoover, a man who we now know liked to occasionally put on a dress, also says: “You know, I often wonder what the next crisis is going to be. I swear I can’t recognize (gays) and I don’t know anything about it.”
“It’s a thing,” says the FBI chief, “that you just can’t tell sometimes, just like in cases like Jenkins. There is no indication in any way.”
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James Warren and Michael Tackett of the Tribune’s Washington bureau are hosts of “Unconventional Wisdom” at 7:05 p.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720.