Mildred Stegall and County Sheriff Howard Stegall

[John Simkin]

When Lyndon B. Johnson became Vice President in 1960 he decided he would record some of the telephone calls he made or received. He then arranged for his personal assistant Mildred Stegall to make transcripts of these conversations. He told her that he wanted to use them to help him write his memoirs. From what we know of LBJ it is highly probable that he wanted to use this material to blackmail the people who he was talking to. He also exchanged this information with J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI. Mildred Stegall clearly was someone who he could trust.

On 3rd June, 1961, Henry Marshall was found dead on his farm by the side of his Chevy Fleetside pickup truck. His rifle lay beside him. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. County Sheriff Howard Stegall decreed that Marshall had committed suicide. No pictures were taken of the crime scene, no blood samples were taken of the stains on the truck (the truck was washed and waxed the following day), and no check for fingerprints were made on the rifle or pickup. Billie Sol Estes, later claimed that Lyndon Johnson had arranged for Mac Wallace to kill Marshall. Mac Wallace was of course the man whose fingerprint was found in the Texas School Book Depository.

Does anyone know if Mildred Stegall and Howard Stegall were related?

[William Kelly]

When Lyndon B. Johnson became Vice President in 1960 he decided he would record some of the telephone calls he made or received. He then arranged for his personal assistant Mildred Stegall to make transcripts of these conversations. He told her that he wanted to use them to help him write his memoirs. From what we know of LBJ it is highly probable that he wanted to use this material to blackmail the people who he was talking to. He also exchanged this information with J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the FBI. Mildred Stegall clearly was someone who he could trust.

On 3rd June, 1961, Henry Marshall was found dead on his farm by the side of his Chevy Fleetside pickup truck. His rifle lay beside him. He had been shot five times with his own rifle. County Sheriff Howard Stegall decreed that Marshall had committed suicide. No pictures were taken of the crime scene, no blood samples were taken of the stains on the truck (the truck was washed and waxed the following day), and no check for fingerprints were made on the rifle or pickup. Billie Sol Estes, later claimed that Lyndon Johnson had arranged for Mac Wallace to kill Marshall. Mac Wallace was of course the man whose fingerprint was found in the Texas School Book Depository.

Does anyone know if Mildred Stegall and Howard Stegall were related?

That's a real good question John.

Mildred Stegall is certainly a ringer

The Sphinx - BK

STEGALL, MILDRED. Staff Assistant. Worked for Walter Jenkins and Marvin Watson. Responsibilities included liaison with FBI, administrative and personnel matters. Included are files of Walter Jenkins, 1940-1964. 1940-1973. A small file on Johnson's 1948 Senate campaign is open. (107 linear feet)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JM1QHrBnWQsJ:www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/holdings/presiden.asp+Mildred+Stegal&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Mildred Stegal

The FBI's Secret File on César Chavez by Richard Steven Street

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAQUARTERLY • VOLUMELXXVIII • NUMBER

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-sQDprVs41EJ:farmworkermovement.com/ufwarchives/FBI-CEC/fbi_chavez.pdf+Mildred+Stegal&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

…as was her custom, Mildred Stegall. a special

assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson who served as the desig-

nated White House recipient of FBI reports, wrote to Cartha De-

Loach requesting a "Full Field Investigation" of Chavez, who was

supposedly being considered for a staff position. Such requests were

routine matters in the Johnson administration, which so often sent

the FBI's people into their files that Stegall, also known as "the

sphinx" because of her quiet, shadow-figure role as keeper of "spe-

cial files," thought the administration misused the arrangement.

http://farmworkermovement.com/ufwarchives/FBI-CEC/fbi_chavez.pdf.

The White House Tapes LBJ Library

http://www.whitehousetapes.net/tapes/johnson/overview

Thsecretaries gave the recorded Dictabelts and their identifying belt slips and any transcripts to Roberts who later gave them to Mildred Stegall, who was responsible for maintaining these files. The transcripts, apparently, were stored separately from the Dictabelts and filed in two series: a white carbon copy in an alphabetical name file, filed according to the last name of the person speaking with the President, and a yellow carbon copy in a chronological file, filed according to the date that the conversation took place. [47]

The Dictabelt collection is not complete: at least one Dictabelt recording is missing. According to the Presidents Daily Diary for Thanksgiving Day 1966, Johnson spoke to Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas from his Ranch in Texas. The Diary entry for that telephone call noted that the "belt [was] destroyed on President's instruction." [48]

Johnson, according to Stegall, considered these records to be extremely sensitive, stating: "on an average of once every six months from 1964 until his death he would ask me for my assurance that this material was in a secure vault. He repeatedly stressed that no one was to have access to it." [49]

Stegall kept these recordings locked in a large safe in her office in the West Wing of the White House. Later, after Johnson left the white House and returned to Austin, Texas, Stegall was the custodian of these Dictabelts, and these materials were not specifically identified in President Johnson's original Letter of Intent of August 13, 1965. [50]

Notes:

[18] Bill Gulley with Mary Ellen Reese, Breaking Cover, Simon and Schuster (New York: 1980)

[46] Ibid. From their research, Johnson Library archivists believe that the conversation summaries were prepared during the post-presidential period.

[47] Copies from one file are not always in the other. In the post-presidential period, Stegall continued to add transcripts and summaries to the files as they were prepared. These files were used extensively in preparing The Vantage Point.

[48] November 24, 1966, The President's Daily Diary, Box 8, LBJ Library.

[49] Memo of Transfer, Stegall to Middleton, January 29, 1973, and attachment dated July 17, 1973, LBJ Library.

[50]Stegall also controlled access to the Cabinet Room recordings series, and these recordings were not specifically included in the 1965 Letter of Intent.

[51] Breaking Cover, p. 79. See also: telephone interview with Albright, December 12, 1995. See Appendix B for a 1968 diagram of the West Wing of the White House.

[52] "Memo for the Record: Meeting with Mildred Stegall and Yolanda Boozer," August 25, 1993, LBJ Library.

[53] Telephone interview with Wilson on April 15, 1996. See also: Telephone interview with Gordon Olson, April 15, 1996; telephone interview with Albright, December 12, 1995; Breaking Cover, pp. 78-79.

[54] Telephone interview with Wilson, April 15, 1996.See also: telephone interview with Robert Dalton, Executive Officer of WHCA, 1965-1969, December 1, 1995.

Edited April 14, 2010 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

Does anyone know if Mildred Stegall and Howard Stegall were related?

Wouldn't Douglas Caddy know?

[John Simkin]

That's a real good question John.

Mildred Stegall is certainly a ringer

The Sphinx - BK

STEGALL, MILDRED. Staff Assistant. Worked for Walter Jenkins and Marvin Watson. Responsibilities included liaison with FBI, administrative and personnel matters. Included are files of Walter Jenkins, 1940-1964. 1940-1973. A small file on Johnson's 1948 Senate campaign is open. (107 linear feet)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JM1QHrBnWQsJ:www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/holdings/presiden.asp+Mildred+Stegal&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Mildred Stegal

The FBI's Secret File on César Chavez by Richard Steven Street

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAQUARTERLY • VOLUMELXXVIII • NUMBER

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-sQDprVs41EJ:farmworkermovement.com/ufwarchives/FBI-CEC/fbi_chavez.pdf+Mildred+Stegal&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

…as was her custom, Mildred Stegall. a special

assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson who served as the desig-

nated White House recipient of FBI reports, wrote to Cartha De-

Loach requesting a "Full Field Investigation" of Chavez, who was

supposedly being considered for a staff position. Such requests were

routine matters in the Johnson administration, which so often sent

the FBI's people into their files that Stegall, also known as "the

sphinx" because of her quiet, shadow-figure role as keeper of "spe-

cial files," thought the administration misused the arrangement.

We now know that LBJ and Hoover shared secret files (see how they together tried to destroy the character of Don Reynolds). Maybe, Hoover did not trust LBJ and Mildred Stegall was also working for the FBI. Stegall's decision not to destroy LBJ transcripts is an interesting one. However, it is only by the passing of the JFK Act that they were published. Maybe we should not read too much into this.

The thing that strikes you when you study the corruption of LBJ is just how much control he had over officials in Texas. County Sheriff Howard Stegall's decision that Henry Marshall committed suicide is just one example. The most amazing was when Mac Wallace was found guilty of killing John Kinser. Eleven of the jurors were for the death penalty. The twelfth argued for life imprisonment. Judge Charles O. Betts overruled the jury and announced a sentence of five years imprisonment. He suspended the sentence and Wallace was immediately freed.

According to Bill Adler of The Texas Observer, several of the jurors telephoned John Kinser's parents to apologize for agreeing to a "suspended sentence, but said they did so only because threats had been made against their families."

[Douglas Caddy]

Does anyone know if Mildred Stegall and Howard Stegall were related?

Wouldn't Douglas Caddy know?

I don't know but if I can find out I shall post an answer.

[John Dolva]

as of recent changes my access to the world through the internet is slowly being eroded, perhaps because I refuse a lot of ''permissions''. However, while I can still go to the MSC files I can't use the search function. It's one place I would look. I often have and on occasion come across relevant items in a search and it often involves a lot of jumping and aka's etc and often I come up empty handed. All I can offer is the suggestion of a search of its database, sometimes iterating the item (url, + / -) to get it in context etc.