Lyndon Johnson Tapes

[John Simkin]

Article on the LBJ Tapes. Does anyone know if any of the new tapes refer to the JFK assassination and cover-up.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news...1/18/18lbj.html

New LBJ White House tapes released

Against backdrop of war, economy and elections, Johnson soldiers through end of 1966

By Asher Price

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, November 18, 2006

On Oct. 5, 1966, Robert McNamara spoke by phone with President Lyndon Baines Johnson in one of their routine Vietnam War briefings.

"Frankly," McNamara, the secretary of defense, told the president, "we're going to just snow the place under with bombs, and I'm doing it purposely to make them cry 'Stop.' "

"Purposely for what?"

"To make them cry 'Stop.' "

"Oh, yes, cry. Cry, that's the word I missed."

That recording of Johnson, made at the White House, was among a batch of recordings released for the first time Friday by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. The batch, which totals 58 hours, covers the period from August through December 1966, when Johnson was weighing the direction of the Vietnam War and the economy, bracing for rough midterm elections and piecing his way through everyday personal issues such as how to address a wedding gift to his daughter.

At times, politics and personal matters intersect, such as when the president grapples with whether he can borrow air conditioning equipment from an airline to cool off his daughter's wedding even as a strike threatens to disrupt the nation. (He decides he can't.)

"Let 'em sweat if they need to," LBJ told Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson.

The White House recordings were intended to be sealed for 50 years after Johnson's death. But in 1993, in response to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the presidential library began releasing the tapes.

With the 50-year restriction effectively broken, the library decided to release all the materials as they were documented and archived.

Five hundred and twenty-two hours of tapes, or 87 percent of the collection, have been released.

Just under 2 percent of the available material has been withheld because of national security concerns, restrictions by agencies such as the FBI or the possibility of embarrassing a living individual.

The recordings — available to the public at $8 per CD, or $464 for the 58 discs — have proven crucial.

"Not only was this the only time a President had ever taped himself from the beginning until the end of his presidency," wrote historian Michael R. Beschloss in his book "Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964." "It would also be a vital new means of understanding Lyndon Johnson, who. . . was such a different person in private from in public."

The recordings are for the real history buff. The sound is scratchy or is simply background office noise while callers are on hold. Much of it is illuminating as a view into the day-to-day thinking and negotiations of the president.

"It's a little haunting," Carpenter said in an interview. "I cared about him. The fact is it takes you back in history. It's healthy."

The informal recordings bring out some candid moments that are hard to find in written documents, said Regina Greenwell, a senior archivist at the library.

"That persuasive nature is very evident in telephone conversations," she said. "He did not do that in documents; he did it in one-on-one conversations with people. They call it the Johnson treatment."

In one conversation with House Minority Leader Gerald Ford just before the 1966 election, Johnson essentially delivers a soliloquy about Vietnam.

"We don't want to live out there because we like the climate," Johnson says.

"Hell no," echoes Ford.

Lighter moments

"I'm working on my budget, and I'm working on my State of the Union, and I'm grinding away day and night and I've got to — the Vietnam thing is going bad," Johnson tells Vermont Gov. Philip Hoff just after Christmas in a telephone conversation recorded at the LBJ Ranch.

The latter part of 1966 had been rough for Johnson. Politically, his Democrats lost dozens of seats in a midterm referendum on the direction of the war, and, in the South, on new civil rights legislation. Personally, he complains of a polyp on his throat that concerns doctors and damage from gallbladder surgery the previous year that has left his "intestines pressing to come out."

But there were bright spots, too, especially just about any conversation between the president and his wife, Mrs. Johnson. They were peppered with angels, honeys, and darlings. On one August occasion, they discuss how to package a gift of a $1,000 bond for their daughter and her fiancé.

"To our dear, beloved children who give us great pride, strength and hope, Mother and Daddy," is the inscription Johnson tells Mrs. Johnson he has dreamed up.

"Oh, honey I think that's great," chirps Mrs. Johnson.

But even three years after President Kennedy's assassination, the Johnsons were still dealing with the fallout, including the fate of the Catholic missal that belonged to John F. Kennedy that Johnson used aboard Air Force One when he was sworn in as president. Mrs. Johnson had given it to an archivist, but the Johnsons were wondering whether they must return it to the Kennedys.

"The fact that it's got those initials on it — JFK — indicates that it is his property and don't you think in the minds of the ordinary man a person's property ought to be returned to them?" Mrs. Johnson asks Abe Fortas, a longtime confidante and a Supreme Court justice.

"No, ma'am, not a historic object of this sort," says Fortas. "I don't think the Kennedys will say that, and I don't think that the average person will ever think it ought to be returned.''

"I think they will, I think they are doing this," says the president. "You steal a Bible, and then next week you steal something else."

"Well, I would just ignore that," responds Fortas. "I think it would be so unreasonable. . . . Because this is a Bible, this is a book that now belongs to the people of the United States."

The book now sits on display at the LBJ museum in Austin.

The telephone conversations, full of talk about troop deployments and domestic spying programs, draw easy comparisons with today's political landscape.

"I don't want any of this bugging," Johnson says about wiretapping. "I don't give a damn whether its legal, illegal. I just don't want any of it done."

In the same conversation, with adviser Clark Clifford, Johnson discussed the government's bugging of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I would think it would really rock a good many people," Johnson says. "It's pretty hard to tie him in with the security of the nation. I'd be just as happy to see it stopped as anybody. We'd like to see the whole thing over with."

The stresses of the war and of politics are released now and then in the tapes.

Johnson's most pitched vitriol seems reserved for members of his own party who abandoned him when his popularity flagged to make their own headlines.

"I wouldn't retrace a damn step of it," he says, "and I don't mean to."

"A bunch of nincompoop politicians," he continues. "They sold themselves for a little ABC stuff. All the buzzards they sit around, they smell something a little bit dead, they like to fly down and take a piece out of it, that's what's happening.

"The good Lord will take care of you, and in due time I'll be back on top."

[Robert Howard]

Article on the LBJ Tapes. Does anyone know if any of the new tapes refer to the JFK assassination and cover-up.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news...1/18/18lbj.html

New LBJ White House tapes released

Against backdrop of war, economy and elections, Johnson soldiers through end of 1966

By Asher Price

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, November 18, 2006

On Oct. 5, 1966, Robert McNamara spoke by phone with President Lyndon Baines Johnson in one of their routine Vietnam War briefings.

"Frankly," McNamara, the secretary of defense, told the president, "we're going to just snow the place under with bombs, and I'm doing it purposely to make them cry 'Stop.' "

"Purposely for what?"

"To make them cry 'Stop.' "

"Oh, yes, cry. Cry, that's the word I missed."

That recording of Johnson, made at the White House, was among a batch of recordings released for the first time Friday by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. The batch, which totals 58 hours, covers the period from August through December 1966, when Johnson was weighing the direction of the Vietnam War and the economy, bracing for rough midterm elections and piecing his way through everyday personal issues such as how to address a wedding gift to his daughter.

At times, politics and personal matters intersect, such as when the president grapples with whether he can borrow air conditioning equipment from an airline to cool off his daughter's wedding even as a strike threatens to disrupt the nation. (He decides he can't.)

"Let 'em sweat if they need to," LBJ told Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson.

The White House recordings were intended to be sealed for 50 years after Johnson's death. But in 1993, in response to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the presidential library began releasing the tapes.

With the 50-year restriction effectively broken, the library decided to release all the materials as they were documented and archived.

Five hundred and twenty-two hours of tapes, or 87 percent of the collection, have been released.

Just under 2 percent of the available material has been withheld because of national security concerns, restrictions by agencies such as the FBI or the possibility of embarrassing a living individual.

The recordings — available to the public at $8 per CD, or $464 for the 58 discs — have proven crucial.

"Not only was this the only time a President had ever taped himself from the beginning until the end of his presidency," wrote historian Michael R. Beschloss in his book "Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964." "It would also be a vital new means of understanding Lyndon Johnson, who. . . was such a different person in private from in public."

The recordings are for the real history buff. The sound is scratchy or is simply background office noise while callers are on hold. Much of it is illuminating as a view into the day-to-day thinking and negotiations of the president.

"It's a little haunting," Carpenter said in an interview. "I cared about him. The fact is it takes you back in history. It's healthy."

The informal recordings bring out some candid moments that are hard to find in written documents, said Regina Greenwell, a senior archivist at the library.

"That persuasive nature is very evident in telephone conversations," she said. "He did not do that in documents; he did it in one-on-one conversations with people. They call it the Johnson treatment."

In one conversation with House Minority Leader Gerald Ford just before the 1966 election, Johnson essentially delivers a soliloquy about Vietnam.

"We don't want to live out there because we like the climate," Johnson says.

"Hell no," echoes Ford.

Lighter moments

"I'm working on my budget, and I'm working on my State of the Union, and I'm grinding away day and night and I've got to — the Vietnam thing is going bad," Johnson tells Vermont Gov. Philip Hoff just after Christmas in a telephone conversation recorded at the LBJ Ranch.

The latter part of 1966 had been rough for Johnson. Politically, his Democrats lost dozens of seats in a midterm referendum on the direction of the war, and, in the South, on new civil rights legislation. Personally, he complains of a polyp on his throat that concerns doctors and damage from gallbladder surgery the previous year that has left his "intestines pressing to come out."

But there were bright spots, too, especially just about any conversation between the president and his wife, Mrs. Johnson. They were peppered with angels, honeys, and darlings. On one August occasion, they discuss how to package a gift of a $1,000 bond for their daughter and her fiancé.

"To our dear, beloved children who give us great pride, strength and hope, Mother and Daddy," is the inscription Johnson tells Mrs. Johnson he has dreamed up.

"Oh, honey I think that's great," chirps Mrs. Johnson.

But even three years after President Kennedy's assassination, the Johnsons were still dealing with the fallout, including the fate of the Catholic missal that belonged to John F. Kennedy that Johnson used aboard Air Force One when he was sworn in as president. Mrs. Johnson had given it to an archivist, but the Johnsons were wondering whether they must return it to the Kennedys.

"The fact that it's got those initials on it — JFK — indicates that it is his property and don't you think in the minds of the ordinary man a person's property ought to be returned to them?" Mrs. Johnson asks Abe Fortas, a longtime confidante and a Supreme Court justice.

"No, ma'am, not a historic object of this sort," says Fortas. "I don't think the Kennedys will say that, and I don't think that the average person will ever think it ought to be returned.''

"I think they will, I think they are doing this," says the president. "You steal a Bible, and then next week you steal something else."

"Well, I would just ignore that," responds Fortas. "I think it would be so unreasonable. . . . Because this is a Bible, this is a book that now belongs to the people of the United States."

The book now sits on display at the LBJ museum in Austin.

The telephone conversations, full of talk about troop deployments and domestic spying programs, draw easy comparisons with today's political landscape.

"I don't want any of this bugging," Johnson says about wiretapping. "I don't give a damn whether its legal, illegal. I just don't want any of it done."

In the same conversation, with adviser Clark Clifford, Johnson discussed the government's bugging of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I would think it would really rock a good many people," Johnson says. "It's pretty hard to tie him in with the security of the nation. I'd be just as happy to see it stopped as anybody. We'd like to see the whole thing over with."

The stresses of the war and of politics are released now and then in the tapes.

Johnson's most pitched vitriol seems reserved for members of his own party who abandoned him when his popularity flagged to make their own headlines.

"I wouldn't retrace a damn step of it," he says, "and I don't mean to."

"A bunch of nincompoop politicians," he continues. "They sold themselves for a little ABC stuff. All the buzzards they sit around, they smell something a little bit dead, they like to fly down and take a piece out of it, that's what's happening.

"The good Lord will take care of you, and in due time I'll be back on top."

The Catholic Missal item seems very odd to me, wonder what that was all about? Also the passage invoking restrictions on 2% of the items for "the possibility of embarrassing a living individual."

Embarrassed, in what sense of the word?

If the HSCA had been even moderately interested in REALLY solving the assassination, among the items on the 'to do' list would have been an extensive questioning of Lady Bird. I hope no one challenges me to a duel, for my last comment; but if so, I can give them Dick Cheney's phone number, I hear he's looking for a new hunting partner.

[John Simkin]

The Catholic Missal item seems very odd to me, wonder what that was all about? Also the passage invoking restrictions on 2% of the items for "the possibility of embarrassing a living individual."

Embarrassed, in what sense of the word?

I assume he is talking about Gerald Ford. I would not be surprised if the tapes did not include details of how Hoover and LBJ blackmailed Ford into behaving himself. See Bobby Baker's memoirs about the FBI tapes on the Fred Black/Gerald Ford meetings.

[Thomas H. Purvis]

Article on the LBJ Tapes. Does anyone know if any of the new tapes refer to the JFK assassination and cover-up.

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news...1/18/18lbj.html

New LBJ White House tapes released

Against backdrop of war, economy and elections, Johnson soldiers through end of 1966

By Asher Price

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Saturday, November 18, 2006

On Oct. 5, 1966, Robert McNamara spoke by phone with President Lyndon Baines Johnson in one of their routine Vietnam War briefings.

"Frankly," McNamara, the secretary of defense, told the president, "we're going to just snow the place under with bombs, and I'm doing it purposely to make them cry 'Stop.' "

"Purposely for what?"

"To make them cry 'Stop.' "

"Oh, yes, cry. Cry, that's the word I missed."

That recording of Johnson, made at the White House, was among a batch of recordings released for the first time Friday by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. The batch, which totals 58 hours, covers the period from August through December 1966, when Johnson was weighing the direction of the Vietnam War and the economy, bracing for rough midterm elections and piecing his way through everyday personal issues such as how to address a wedding gift to his daughter.

At times, politics and personal matters intersect, such as when the president grapples with whether he can borrow air conditioning equipment from an airline to cool off his daughter's wedding even as a strike threatens to disrupt the nation. (He decides he can't.)

"Let 'em sweat if they need to," LBJ told Liz Carpenter, press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson.

The White House recordings were intended to be sealed for 50 years after Johnson's death. But in 1993, in response to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the presidential library began releasing the tapes.

With the 50-year restriction effectively broken, the library decided to release all the materials as they were documented and archived.

Five hundred and twenty-two hours of tapes, or 87 percent of the collection, have been released.

Just under 2 percent of the available material has been withheld because of national security concerns, restrictions by agencies such as the FBI or the possibility of embarrassing a living individual.

The recordings — available to the public at $8 per CD, or $464 for the 58 discs — have proven crucial.

"Not only was this the only time a President had ever taped himself from the beginning until the end of his presidency," wrote historian Michael R. Beschloss in his book "Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963-1964." "It would also be a vital new means of understanding Lyndon Johnson, who. . . was such a different person in private from in public."

The recordings are for the real history buff. The sound is scratchy or is simply background office noise while callers are on hold. Much of it is illuminating as a view into the day-to-day thinking and negotiations of the president.

"It's a little haunting," Carpenter said in an interview. "I cared about him. The fact is it takes you back in history. It's healthy."

The informal recordings bring out some candid moments that are hard to find in written documents, said Regina Greenwell, a senior archivist at the library.

"That persuasive nature is very evident in telephone conversations," she said. "He did not do that in documents; he did it in one-on-one conversations with people. They call it the Johnson treatment."

In one conversation with House Minority Leader Gerald Ford just before the 1966 election, Johnson essentially delivers a soliloquy about Vietnam.

"We don't want to live out there because we like the climate," Johnson says.

"Hell no," echoes Ford.

Lighter moments

"I'm working on my budget, and I'm working on my State of the Union, and I'm grinding away day and night and I've got to — the Vietnam thing is going bad," Johnson tells Vermont Gov. Philip Hoff just after Christmas in a telephone conversation recorded at the LBJ Ranch.

The latter part of 1966 had been rough for Johnson. Politically, his Democrats lost dozens of seats in a midterm referendum on the direction of the war, and, in the South, on new civil rights legislation. Personally, he complains of a polyp on his throat that concerns doctors and damage from gallbladder surgery the previous year that has left his "intestines pressing to come out."

But there were bright spots, too, especially just about any conversation between the president and his wife, Mrs. Johnson. They were peppered with angels, honeys, and darlings. On one August occasion, they discuss how to package a gift of a $1,000 bond for their daughter and her fiancé.

"To our dear, beloved children who give us great pride, strength and hope, Mother and Daddy," is the inscription Johnson tells Mrs. Johnson he has dreamed up.

"Oh, honey I think that's great," chirps Mrs. Johnson.

But even three years after President Kennedy's assassination, the Johnsons were still dealing with the fallout, including the fate of the Catholic missal that belonged to John F. Kennedy that Johnson used aboard Air Force One when he was sworn in as president. Mrs. Johnson had given it to an archivist, but the Johnsons were wondering whether they must return it to the Kennedys.

"The fact that it's got those initials on it — JFK — indicates that it is his property and don't you think in the minds of the ordinary man a person's property ought to be returned to them?" Mrs. Johnson asks Abe Fortas, a longtime confidante and a Supreme Court justice.

"No, ma'am, not a historic object of this sort," says Fortas. "I don't think the Kennedys will say that, and I don't think that the average person will ever think it ought to be returned.''

"I think they will, I think they are doing this," says the president. "You steal a Bible, and then next week you steal something else."

"Well, I would just ignore that," responds Fortas. "I think it would be so unreasonable. . . . Because this is a Bible, this is a book that now belongs to the people of the United States."

The book now sits on display at the LBJ museum in Austin.

The telephone conversations, full of talk about troop deployments and domestic spying programs, draw easy comparisons with today's political landscape.

"I don't want any of this bugging," Johnson says about wiretapping. "I don't give a damn whether its legal, illegal. I just don't want any of it done."

In the same conversation, with adviser Clark Clifford, Johnson discussed the government's bugging of Martin Luther King Jr.

"I would think it would really rock a good many people," Johnson says. "It's pretty hard to tie him in with the security of the nation. I'd be just as happy to see it stopped as anybody. We'd like to see the whole thing over with."

The stresses of the war and of politics are released now and then in the tapes.

Johnson's most pitched vitriol seems reserved for members of his own party who abandoned him when his popularity flagged to make their own headlines.

"I wouldn't retrace a damn step of it," he says, "and I don't mean to."

"A bunch of nincompoop politicians," he continues. "They sold themselves for a little ABC stuff. All the buzzards they sit around, they smell something a little bit dead, they like to fly down and take a piece out of it, that's what's happening.

"The good Lord will take care of you, and in due time I'll be back on top."

The Catholic Missal item seems very odd to me, wonder what that was all about? Also the passage invoking restrictions on 2% of the items for "the possibility of embarrassing a living individual."

Embarrassed, in what sense of the word?

If the HSCA had been even moderately interested in REALLY solving the assassination, among the items on the 'to do' list would have been an extensive questioning of Lady Bird. I hope no one challenges me to a duel, for my last comment; but if so, I can give them Dick Cheney's phone number, I hear he's looking for a new hunting partner.

The Catholic Missal item seems very odd to me, wonder what that was all about?

It is what was utilized when LBJ was sworn in aboard AF1.

There was no "Bible" present, and thus the Catholic Missal which belonged to JFK/The Kennedy's was used since no one had a bible.

LBJ wanted to keep it!

[Myra Bronstein]

The Catholic Missal item seems very odd to me, wonder what that was all about?

It is what was utilized when LBJ was sworn in aboard AF1.

There was no "Bible" present, and thus the Catholic Missal which belonged to JFK/The Kennedy's was used since no one had a bible.

LBJ wanted to keep it!

Of course he did. I'm surprised he didn't insist on exhuming President Kennedy's casket and displaying it--like a hunting trophy--in HIS library. He probably figured there was no body there so why bother.

Anyway, I doubt Johnson said too much that's incriminating since he knew he was on tape, though there must be a reason that 13% of the tapes have been withheld. But I'd love to know if there's any evidence of his blackmailing tactics in any context on the tapes. I assume he saved that strategy for in person discussions.

[William Kelly]

After the swearing in, the missile was not returned to the AF1 bedroom, but was handed to someone at the scene, someone who had access to thes scene, who has kept it ever since. Not LBJ.

In addition, Mad Max Holland's book on the Assassination Tapes has exceprts and info on the taped LBJ conversations that are relative to the assassination that were released by JFK Act. His analysis is faulty however.

BK

Edited November 19, 2006 by William Kelly

[Thomas H. Purvis]

After the swearing in, the missile was not returned to the AF1 bedroom, but was handed to someone at the scene, someone who had access to thes scene, who has kept it ever since. Not LBJ.

In addition, Mad Max Holland's book on the Assassination Tapes has exceprts and info on the taped LBJ conversations that are relative to the assassination that were released by JFK Act. His analysis is faulty however.

BK

According to one researcher, Judge Hughes, somewhat by accident, kept the book. However, LBJ apparantly want to get his hands on it for his own collection of presidential items.

[William Kelly]

After the swearing in, the missile was not returned to the AF1 bedroom, but was handed to someone at the scene, someone who had access to thes scene, who has kept it ever since. Not LBJ.

In addition, Mad Max Holland's book on the Assassination Tapes has exceprts and info on the taped LBJ conversations that are relative to the assassination that were released by JFK Act. His analysis is faulty however.

BK

According to one researcher, Judge Hughes, somewhat by accident, kept the book. However, LBJ apparantly want to get his hands on it for his own collection of presidential items.

Thom, William Manchester gets into the missing missile and while I agree it was kept by someone as a souvineer, I don't think it was Hughes or LBJ, or it would have surfaced by now at the LBJ Library.

Hughes is not innocent of all either, as LBJ & Co. pressured JFK into appointing her to the bench, and she served as a board memeber on one of the CIA Front Funds - I think it is San Jacinto Foundation, which puts her in the game.

BK