Transcripts For CSPAN2 Robert Caro At The LBJ Library 20240712

Texas. Mr. Caro is the author of a four volume biography of the 36th president. Here is the 2003 tour of the lbj library. First time i came here, i was looking for the papers and came around the corner like this. This is what i saw. The only moment in my life, the moment in my life when i felt my quitting. I was really overwhelmed. What you are looking at here the papers of Lyndon Baines johnson, the 36th president of the United States. Pulitzer prize winning author robert caro has been sifting through the millions of papers of Lyndon Johnson for 26 years. Recently booktv joined mr. Caro to learn how he conducts research for his multivolume biography, the years of Lyndon Johnson. During our visit robert caro also spoke at the lbj library for the first time. Over the next two hours youll see parts of thats beach interspersed with abof that speech interspersed with a id be happy to take questions if anybody has a question they would like to ask. Keto is how you came to write about Lyndon Johnson. What was it about him he attracted to come to texas and take on this lifelong challenge. That was a terrific question. The question is, what attracted me to Lyndon Johnson, why did i decide to read about him in the first place . Him abtaught that in democrac power comes from being elected but he had more power than anyone who was elected any mayor or governor, he held it for 48 years, if i could figure out where he got the power and right about that idea explaining something what attracted me to Lyndon Johnson as i wanted to do the same thing with national power. I feel that there is no public figure in the old second half of the 20th century as Franklin Roosevelt who understood political power and like Lyndon Johnson. The thing attracted me to him which i didnt know it was him take me 20 years to get here was this torn when he abjust like moses did something that no one else had done. He said, the senate never worked since the civil war since the days of webster clay and calhoun, except during the six years that johnson was its majority leader. If i could figure out how he did it when no one else can, then i will be showing something new about legislation. But i didnt really realize what path my research would take. Robert caro, we are here at the lbj library in austin texas. How long have you been coming to this place . I think i started either very beginning of 77 or the very end of 76, i cant remember anymore, that would be about 26 years. You are saying something about you eat lunch out here. When we are here together we bring sandwiches and eat over there on the hillside under those trees. Is not afraid of hard work, all of his books attest to that to the amount of research day in and day out research. Its not just impressive, its almost intimidating, particularly so when you think that the books, lengthy as they are is a distillation of research he has done. Texas is fortunate, indeed the whole country is fortunate, now and in the future that the lives whose story he has chosen to tell is not of Lyndon Johnson. Please welcome robert caro. [applause] [applause] thank you for the invitation to speak tonight. I appreciate it. Ive always wanted to speak here at the library so i could thank in the building that are covers of the Lyndon Johnson library. This is my first opportunity to do so. I now many of the archivers who helped me so much in the first two volumes have retired but i remember all of them. Two people i still archiver and still helping me here tonight, Claudia Anderson and linda in thanking them i want to thank all their colleagues who are really my colleagues too. I guess the significance that i was never asked to talk before. They have a very Access Program here speakers. To which i think most if not all johnson biographers were invited to talk. They have constant symposium to bring 15, 20 historians biographers to talk about the event. I was never invited to produce bait in any of them. Until i was asked to give the speech by the new director of the library, betty sue flowers. I was invited by the old director about two months before he had been director here for 32 years and never invited me. About two months before he left he invited me. I decided to wait for another director. Did you prepare your speech any differently than you normally would . Yes, i saw something that i didnt mean, two of the archivist, one of them sitting here right now, Claudia Wilson edison, i said if i had been asked to speak before there wouldve been a lot of archivers who had worked with me for years helping me with these that i wanted to thank here in the building we worked together. Now they have all retired. All a new group of archivers, all the ones who worked with me for years have retired except claudia and linda. So i think abso i thanked them and all of the rest. I think to the archivers who worked here, the people who have degrees in history, instead of going into teaching, they went into archival research. They really know whats in these files. Its just baloney to say you can come in here as a historian and do the work without their help. There is no way in the world anyone can know whats in these files. For all these years theyve been directing to the right places. So when you say that the administration in this library has not looked in favor on my books. Why would that be . I think you have to ask them. [laughter] thats quite an understatement, i will leave it like that. I think the archives here have never stopped helping me and im very grateful. When i first arrived here late in 1976, early 1977, im not even sure of exactly when, i remember standing in the atrium, the great hall of the library at the foot of that big staircase and looking up at that glass wall behind where there is four floors of red covered boxes that contained his papers. Really being overwhelmed. I was looking for the papers and i came around the corner like this, this is what i saw. The only moment in my life, maybe not the only moment, but in moment in my life when i felt like quitting. I was really overwhelmed. What you are looking at here are the papers of lyndon Lyndon Baines johnson, the 36th president of the United States. Not only the papers of his presidency, the papers of his own life, of his career as Vice President , his time in the senate, Senate Majority leader, his time as a congressman in the congressional papers, even before that, a lot of personal papers from his youth. Each of those you are looking at four floors, i dont know how many feet these boxes go back, but its a lot, each of those boxes, which is bound as i recall in the redbook room, the president ial seal, thats the little round thing you can see on each box. Stamped on it in 24 karat gold, if i have that correct. Each of those boxes contains johnsons papers. Internal memos within his office that he wrote to people about his or his staff wrote to him. Letters that came into him. C sent out. His calendars as Senate Majority leader, what he had to do on the floor that day. Speech, text, and texts in different drafts and all. Transcripts of telephone conversations before they were taping them. That sort of thing. Each of those boxes can hold, and a lot of them unfortunately do, 800 pages. So the Johnson Library today says they have 44 million documents, 44 million pieces of paper. What we are reliving here, thanks to you, is the first moment i saw these and my heart really sunk at what was ahead of me. Just look at it, i will say this though, if you care about politics and that the use of political power in the United States, there is not much you cant find out, or at least get a hint of that, in these papers. Its all there. If you have access really to the complete files and internal memoranda, there it is on paper. Of course you always have to supplement what youve learned with interviews, you asked the people who wrote the memos, what they meant, what was really happening. But the base of my work, i think of all historians work, if they are lucky enough to have some thing like this, its the papers. Blackandwhite. You can interpret different ways. But thats the start of the interpretation is what you see there. You have any idea how this compares to other president ial libraries in the volume . Sure. Because either i or i should say my wife, she does a lot of the work in president ial libraries, one or the other of us went to the roosevelt president ial library, which is so small and intimate. Its a fraction of this. A tiny fraction of this. So is the truman library. The Eisenhower Library gets a little larger. Then the Kennedy Library i have not yet been to but there i think we have something more approaching this kind of volume. But johnson wanted all the papers of his administration, the cabinet officials memos, in this one place. It was not long after i began researching that i was told how Lyndon Johnson as a young congressman, 32 years old, first began to get national power. When you read through the papers in the Johnson Library, you see through the memos that he is writing to other congressmen as a young congressman and that the congressmen are sending back to him, you can see a very abrupt change in his status. It occurs in a single month october 1940 just before the election of november 1940, before that Lyndon Johnson when he writes a senior more powerful congressman is doing so under the tone of a junior congressman as supplicating asking for a favor. Then suddenly right after that election day these memos are coming into Lyndon Johnson and they are from senior congressmen and on the tone of, linden, can i please have a few moments of your time. I wondered what had happened and i asked at that time i was interviewing the gentleman that some of you might remember the name tommy the court. Thomas j corcoran, Franklin Roosevelts advisor, he betook johnson under his wing as soon as johnson came to washington as young congressman. I asked corcoran what had happened, he said, money, kid. Used to call me kid. Money, kid, money. But you are never going able to write about that, kid. I said why not . He said he will never find anything in writing. Of course mr. Corcoran was right that i couldnt write anything of help that if i couldve documented but for a long time, perhaps years, i thought he was right when he said i would not be able to find anything. But in line with what alan had said, i was trying to read not only the internal files of Lyndon Johnsons office but also the other files, all the other files, letters that anyone had written to him. Many of them are kept in the Johnson Library in separate files. One day in another file suddenly, i can see it to this day as im turning papers that had nothing to do with anything, in which i wasnt interested, suddenly there was the yellow slip of an old telegram. It was dated in 1940, october 19, 1940, it was signed george brown. And it said in capital letters in the telegram lyndon, you were supposed to have the checks by friday. Hope they arrived in due form. Attached to it was Lyndon Johnsons telegram and replied george, all the folks you talked to have been heard from. I am not acknowledging their letters, so be sure to tell them that their letters have been received. In another box in Lyndon Johnsons house of representatives papers, in a folder that could not have had a more and oculus label the label was general and arranged. There is another list, that listing told what each of these checks were. That they were six of them for 5000 from subcontractors or brown and root who had contributing money to democratic congressman. 30,000 total. A huge sum in politics at that time. Of course, those of you who read my first volume know what happened, johnson was a political genius and he saw something he had potential source of power that no one else had. He was acquainted with two different groups, the texas natural gas and oil barons and contracting barons like brown and root who had needed political influence in washington and were able to pay for it in the form of Campaign Contributions. Johnson also knew the liberal congressman from the north that needed Campaign Contributions. He got himself attached to the organization practically nonexistent call the Democratic Campaign committee, Democratic Congressional campaign committee. He made sure that anybody who wanted to contribute money in texas understood that they should contribute to him and therefore they made sure that the congressmen knew if they wanted money they had to get it from him. Therefore he made himself in an instant the conduit between the Campaign Contributions of texas and the congressman had the rest of the country. He gave it outcome of the money that came in, as Lyndon Johnson always did, in a way that increased his power to the maximum. In another box in Lyndon Johnson library there is a ab there are pieces of paper with typing on it, i forget now who typed them, i think john conley and Walter Jenkins did the typing, perhaps the secretary dorothy nichols. The lefthand column is the name that the congressman who asked for the money scores and scores of names. The next phone is why that congressman needed money. Need another round of ads, need money for pole lodges, if i could just get money for travel expenses i think we can pull the selection out. The next column is how much money he wanted. The amounts were very small then compared to modern amounts, made 1000 2000. In the lefthand margin written in hand, Lyndon Johnsons hey own handwriting, his decision as to what to do with each of these requests. They are in his writing other words, lets say the guy asked for 1000, it would be okay 1000 or just five hundred or no or no out i asked Cohen Jenkins what these words meant. He said that meant no out meant that Lyndon Johnson would never give this man money. That is power. It is a particular type of power. You will never see a more raw example of it used. The proof was almost pieces of paper just lying in the Lyndon Johnson library all this time. You also learn not only about that but about johnsons ruthlessness. Out meant never. He was not just a congressman anymore but he was a congressman with power over other congressman. That was the first step on his rise to national power. I was doing the congressional period, the senate period, i said i was going to look at every paper because thats an a a manageable thing. There was 300 some boxes of congressional papers, and 2083 boxes i think of senate papers. He really could, it was a lot of work, you could look to that stuff. A lot of it was form letters. If you look through everything you sometimes find things that said the most nonsignificant things and the most unexpected places because johnson often would write on the back of a letter or envelope, some instructions. Sometimes something very significant, it would be dropped by some secretary decades passed in a file folder. There it would sit until it was opened by the archivists and then read by someone like me. But i remember i walked up these abi wanted to read what was printed on this great granite pillar here, which are quotations from Lyndon Johnson. I remember to this day just standing here and looking up at this thing and saying, how in the world am i ever going to deal with this . One of the things that i tried to do when im going to files and papers is something i was taught, not while i was writing books, but before that, when i was a reporter a very young reporter just out of princeton. I was doing reporting for newsday, a paper on long island, which was very oldfashioned crusading type of newspaper. It was almost the first thing that i was taught. I went there not long after i graduated from college. I was, in fact, the first graduate of an Ivy League School who had ever gone to work in the newsday sitting room. The managing editor of the newspaper really couldnt stand that there was an ivy league or working there. His name was alan hathaway, ive never encountered anything like him at princeton. He was a creature out of another age. The age of a chicago newspaper was in the 1920s. Allen, who had never gone to college himself, had been the city editor of the First American back when he was 19 years old in chicago. If you saw him, you saw a guy, broad shoulders, one of these big stomachs that i was a strong stomach. He had a huge redhead, it was very red because he drank a lot. One of the reasons he didnt like iv leaguers who are College Graduates in general for that matter, particularly iv leaguers, they didnt like to drink with them. He wore outfits, black shirts with yellow ties were brown shirts with white ties and he distrusted iv leaguers. I was literally the First Ivy League ato be in the city editor. Allen was really infuriated when he got back from vacation and found out that i was there. He wouldnt speak to me for weeks or months. This is actually easy for him to do. I was the low man on the totem pole. The way newsday worked then, we didnt have a sunday newspaper. The low man on the totem pole worked saturday afternoon and saturday night, covering the city desk because then he could just write a memo with whatever news there was and leave it for the real reporters who would come in and write it sunday from afor mondays paper. One saturday night just before i was going to go home i got a call from somebody and the federal Aviation Administration newsday was then crusading in the faa, he said if somebody had come down he would let them go to the files all night. I frantically called my editors trying to get a real Investigative Reporter but but he could be reached. Finally he said, youll have to go down there. I went down and i spent at, i remember, the entire night going to the files. I wrote a memo and went home. I was going home to new jersey then because we lived in new jersey where i worked for a newspaper there for a few minutes after college. I was quite sure i wasnt going to make it at newsday because i didnt have experience. They had a probationary period at the end of six months they could simply let you go and i was sure i was going to be fired at that point. So i told my wife we shouldnt move. Every night i would drive home to new jersey. Early monday morning, very early, i got a call from alan secretary and she said, alan wants to see you immediately. I said to my wife, thank god we didnt move. [laughter]. I drove across the George Washington bridge, i can still remember that day, i walked into the newsday city run it was an old fashion crowded sitting room. I could see the huge redhead bending over something reading something intently in june said go over, as i walked toward him, i could see that what he was reading was my memo. I walked into the office, i didnt say anything, after a while he looked up and he said, i didnt know anyone from princeton could go to files like this. He said, from now on, youre doing investigative work. With my usual presence of mind i said, but i dont know anything about it. [laughter] any looked up at me and he growled, just make sure you turn every page. Dont assume a dam thing. Turn every page. Now, the last time i looked, the Lyndon Johnson library had 44 million pages. Turning that number of pages is impossible of course, it would take you quite a few lifetimes. Now that im on the presidency, the period to which probably 90 of these documents i can even consider doing that. Now we are up on the eighth floor of the Johnson Library and this is the reading room . This is an area thats closed to the public. You have to be an accredited researcher to use it. When you want to do research in those boxes that we saw down there, the four floors of boxes, you sit in this room, you put in the request form for the box or boxes that you want. An archivist goes down and brings them up to you on your desk if youre here for a while and you accumulate a few theres a whole cart of boxes you are using. Sometimes you could actually go down, if you call for one thats in that first row of boxes and you can see the gap of the hole in the box, a line of boxes there which is the box thats upon your desk. Thats what happens, the boxes are brought up when you want to read them, to this room. Do you have any idea how many boxes you looked through . Well, i have a rough abi dont want to make a misstatement. A rough estimate . A rough estimate abwell, im sure its more, probably a lot more than 3000. We would come into the reading room here, there is always an archivist sitting at the desk. Sometimes there is no one here but me. Or me and my wife. Sometimes there are other researchers, as you see here. This is the way the boxes that you saw, these are from the stacks of boxes in the four floors of boxes you saw downstairs. And when you request the box, you fill out the request slip. This is the request slip. An archivist goes and gets the box and brings it up and puts it abif youre using one they put on your desk. If youre working with a lot of boxes at once, as i usually am, you have a cart in which can hold i think 15 boxes. So these are the boxes that i asked for about a month ago. They are called the Vice President ial aides file aand they are the first 15 of about 40 of these boxes. Ive gone through some of these already. This is what the books look like when you open them. Of course they each looked different. This is a marker ablet me just tell you, i dont know if your camera, open threeo1b003. This is in the handwriting of one of the archives ab archivist, Claudia Wilson, who is quite devoted to history, has been helping me in the most cooperative way for however many years, 26 years. When an archivist abevery file, before a researcher can look at it, has to be opened. That means that it has to be cleared. There are three grounds on which either the entire folder can be closed or document can be closed or evens sentence, one is national security, two is if it will embarrass or harass the living person, three is a catchall phrase that was included i think by abthe Lyndon Johnson deed of gift that gives a Library Great discussion over what they can open or close. But a file cant be looked at by a researcher like me until its been open. So claudia was working, they finally gave the archivists the goahead to open these folders, so they were working as fast as they could, they were literally abi dont remember if i said this outside, working one day ahead of me a lot of the time. This was opened on march 21 of this year and i looked at it right after that, possibly the very next day. When an archivist finishes opening a file, i should have said she writes it in her handwriting, right up at the top the date that its open. That is the first date that any researcher can look at one of these files. So you really said, when i open this file was looking at things that had not been seen, as far as i know, since Lyndon Johnson left the white house in january 1969. You have abthis is typical, these are memos, memorandum, says august 1, 1962. Memorandum to the Vice President from george reedy. Sort of a poignant first question he said johnson is asked for advice from reedy, he is getting asked, what are the papers are saying . What is the Vice President doing . Why has Lyndon Johnson disappeared from the public view now that hes Vice President. Reedy was always frank with johnson. Its part of the reason he finally got fired. He would stop objecting to the vietnam war. Reedy says the question raised by so many newspaper men, what is the Vice President doing . Hes not going to be answered satisfactorily by mere activity or by Public Relations moves. Here he has an entire strategy laid out as to what johnson should do, to start making his influence felt. But reedy also concludes here for the time being there is no conclusive answer to what is the Vice President doing. While im now oversimplifying what reedy is saying, because you havent been given very much to do. But this is a typical reading. George reedy, could you tell people who he was . George reedy worked for Lyndon Johnson for a long time. He was his press secretary, starting in 1952 all the way up to 1965. He was a big bear of a man. He was a socialist, one might favorite people in the world. He and i became very friendly. A big bear of a man, had a problem with his feet so abhe was brilliant. Johnson hired him, he was the Senate Correspondent of united press. He was very respected by everyone. He was respected by his colleagues, the press corps, he was respected by senators. He was a very slow talking, very thoughtful man. He developed this abof course it ended badly, as often aides relationships with Lyndon Johnson ended badly in the white house, he was basically fired abbut before that he worked for johnson for 13 years. He went everywhere with him. Whenever you see a trip in the senate when johnson is going campaigning even for another senate, reedy is along. I have a lot of interviews with mr. Reedy, by the time i got to him, if thats the right word, he was teaching journalism at Marquette University in milwaukee. So i used to fly out there. If you want to know something poignant, i mean, i never met him before, he would talk to me all day and then want to go out to dinner, his wife had died. His wifes name was lillian, sometime before. I once said to him, i hope im not taking up too much of your time mr. Reedy, he said, you dont understand, out here nobody even knows the names of the people we are talking about. I have nobody to tell these stories to. I think of george reedy i think of the word lonely. A brilliant man. Wrote very good books. His memoir of Lyndon Johnson is really quite a wonderful piece of work. Its called simply lbj in contrast to my book i think is less than 200 pages. Very good. Johnson wanted to make a point but say to the Southern Senate abto take example from my last book, why the self should start being friendly to humphrey. What he would do, he and reedy would sit down and work out together the reasons that the southern senators should do this thing that they really didnt want to stop the strategic reasons. Then he would say to reedy, type a memo and reedy would type up the memo. Johnson would read it and he would edit he would say lets do this, leave out this. Reedy would retype it. Usually, not always, johnson would say to reedy, dont sign it, dont say who it is to, sometimes reedy would sign it, sometimes it would decide. Dont say who it is true. It would just be a memo laying out these reasons, then johnson would know abthis is a genius. He would say, richard russell, dix, i dont agree with this. But george has all these reasons here where we ought to be friends, you and humphrey. Some of these arguments are hard to answer, whether you take a look at them. And because the senators would realize the memo came from reedy, the arguments were so cogent, it was a great tool of persuasion of johnson. Now im up to the vice presidency and ive been asking for many years for the papers, reedys memos, during the vice presidency to be open. For whatever reason the library wants to say they were not opened to me. Now there is a new administration a what might be a reason for that . I think they said they didnt have enough manpower to open newspapers but ive been asking them to be open for a long time. With the new director came in january she asked what she could do for me, great change of attitude down here, i said i really need a lot of papers opened and she asked what they were, there are a lot of boxes, hundreds of boxes that are close that should have been opened a long time ago. I started with these, which are called the Vice President ial aides files of george reedy. You take a document like that, how might Something Like that make it into the book . I would abif he was still alive, in the past, i would go to george reedy, also i would look to hear for the drafts of the different memos. Often is misleading, not that often, sometimes you have reedys original handwritten notes and things that he tossed out. I would ask reedy, whats the story behind this memo . What did the president and Vice President johnson want . Why were you writing this memo . Mr. Reedy would abhes done it before he died for a lot of this period, he would tell me what the thinking was, what the problems were, what they were trying to address. In a lot of these memos they will deal with other people. You know, this is the way we ought to approach senator richard russell, the abso then russell was dead by the time i would talk to russells assistance. And say, what did senator russell think when he got this memo . What was his thinking about the problem at this time . You try to whatever extent you can or should go to the people who were mentioned in here or you know were involved in the problems that this memo is supposed to solve. And you asked them what was really happening. Of course that often changes your First Impression that you got from the memo because also often the written word doesnt give you the full story. What can you do if thats impossible . If you cant talk to anybody . You cant talk to them anymore b then you are very frustrated. And thats a real problem thats occurring with me right now because of course mr. Reedy is just one of many, the johnson aides are dying from this period. What i do often down here, many of these memos which deal with johnson running against president kennedy for the president ial nomination in 1960, did i use the word money . Some are written by a man named Charles Herring senior, i dont know if you want to tell me to tell the story. Sure. I started interviewing mr. Herron, a very independent, a littleknown aid of johnson over a lot of different years. A state senator for about 20 years. I started interviewing him in 1978, we became very friendly. I had an interview, nothing to do it johnson, the senate period covered by the last one, i had an interview with him for these 10 or 12 years. When i came across an interesting memo from him on how johnson sent him out to the western states in 1960 to get delegates and he signs hes too late, johnson postponed his race, he ripped back he was always very frank with johnson. Youre too late. I said it would be great to talk to mr. Herring again but i guess hes dead. I looked up in the austin phone book and there was Charles Herring senior, theres another Charles Herring junior. I called them up and i said mr. Herron disses robert caro i dont know if you remember me. He remembered me. I went over and had this fascinating interview with him on what was like to try to be rounding up delegates against the kennedys. Then of course like all the interviews that went on, he had all this other information about other things. I would go back to him. Im constantly combining to whatever extent i can the written research, the research into written materials which you see here with interviewing to supplement what you have here. You also can find in the Johnson Library, and again, turning every Page Committee another folder that simply has seemingly nothing to do with this. There is a letter from johnson to sam rayburn, in that letter we see the philosophy, we dont have to wonder, we see the philosophy by which Lyndon Johnson stored these Campaign Contributions should be made. Because rayburn, of course, was a man who simply would never understand the use of money so he was asking in the year not 1940 but the year 1942 he was asking his friends in texas to give 100 or 200 to him to pass along to congress. Johnson writes in a tone of anger, these 200 droplets will not get the job done. What johnson tells rayburn to do is to select 30 men, lets call the minutemen, johnson says, each of them should raise 5000 for a total of 150,000, 30 men, 5000 each. Johnson then writes to rayburn the following sentence, there isnt any reason why with the wealth and consideration that has been expended, that we should fall down on this. There you have it, the naked philosophy, pure self interest. Why are we asking and why would they give . Because of the wealth and consideration that has been extended. The favors that we did for these people. You can document a lot with papers and i think the more time here willing to spend looking to them, the more real documentation that you can find. This is a memo, nobody was ever better it then george reedy with press advice. How to handle the press. He is a memo johnson is on a trip to turkey when his Vice President , reedy writes him a memorandum saying that abc news wants to minutes of sound film for you. He says the reporter will use the balcony of istanbul hilton so he could have istanbul as a backdrop. He would ask the following crew three questions. He said, what do you think of the people youve met on this trip. To this he would reply by describing the dedicated anticommunism and their determination to try to achieve freedom and progress. Next question that youll be asked. One of the problems of the countries in which you have been. To this you would reply by describing their efforts to modernize their nations into the 20th century. Finally, youll be asked, what have been the results of the trip thus far . To which he would reply, reedy writes, by expressing the hope that greater understanding of mutual problems have been achieved. And then reedy says, since abc news abone of johnsons real problems is that the press doesnt want to cover him because hes only Vice President. Reedy says, since abc is the only network that sent anything with us i would recommend doing this. [laughter] these files also contain some a athese are memos from reedy, filed literally by months, august 1962, memos september 1962, and marked one because i wanted to show you the significant things. Some of them are just funny, a lot of them probably 99 percent of them are stuff that is never going to make it into your book. Then you come across something thats really important, i mean, you couldve stopped somewhere here, this is so much work, what are you getting out of it . Right . Here in january 1963 its a very different kind of memorandum. Johnson has asked, hes very worried about abim going to oversimplify it, and in the early stages of my research, what im saying to you right now im i find out that more but this is what i think this memo deals with at this moment. Im going to have to do a lot more interviewing and looking at a lot more stuff to know. Johnson is very concerned that, this memo is dated january 12, 1963, it is from george reedy to Lyndon Johnson. Johnson is, i knew already from reedy, very concerned about being dropped from the ticket in 1964. He is asked to reedy to find out, he knows there is a lot of derogatory stories about him floating around washington, he is asked to reedy to find out source of these stories and to give him a memo on the whole situation. Okay. Im now going to probably oversimplify this and say once more that what im gonna tell you i might find out is wrong. What this memo really says is that its not 1964 that you have to be worried about, mr. Vice president , its 1968. He says, the washington memorandum to the Vice President from george reedy, personal and confidential, the word confidential is crossed out because the archivist, Claudia Anderson, felt it was all right for me and of course any other researcher, to read it. The Washington Press press corps convinced that there is a well organized move afoot to groom Bobby Kennedy from the presidency in 1968 and to shove you aside. This is clear from personal conversations, and from such articles in the paragraphs in businessweek. He lets johnson know, because reedy is always frank with him and levels of him, that this is serious. He says, it is unlikely that these articles are plants, then he explains why, okay. And he explains why they are a athen he says why are they being leaked. He says, well, the press automatically poses the question, if Bobby Kennedy is running for the presidency, whom does he have to beat . There is no other democratic figure on the scene right now to be considered as president ial candidate. You rise automatically in the press answers its own question by saying if Bobby Kennedy wants to be president he has got to be Lyndon Johnson. Therefore hes going to try to do it. And reedy then goes into, he says this dialogue will probably continue so long as Bobby Kennedy appears to be making up bit for the presidency. In other words, its not going to go away. Can i say once more i dont know if this is true this is reedys interpretation of what has happened. Then he says, because reedy is quite a brilliant man. There are drawbacks to this to look foolish. On the other hand, this is what he underlines. On the other hand, some thought must be given to the point that these stories might well be an asset, they are unpleasant reading and deeply disturbing but on the other hand, they paint a picture of you as an underdog fighting against the well organized vogt and underdog is still a popular figure. Hes got all these reasons, we have assumed the speculation on davis is a president ial candidate in 1968 as a debit, he underlines instead its probably a credit. So long as Bobby Kennedy is in. I more wanted to show you this is an example. Its not that i have found, i certainly havent, what you would call headlines a big disclosures in these boxes. You have here is a picture of the internal thinking considerations, worries, strategizing within a very small office because this wasnt the presidency, they were very few people that johnson relied on during the vice presidency. Also the Vice President s files of other aides and i dont think most of those are open yet but im hoping they will be open soon. I look through all of them, those people who are still alive i will talk to them of course i will talk to as many people in the kennedy camp. They seem to be mostly alive. They are Younger Generation and ive talked to them to get the other side of all this stuff. Its impossible to think anyone was interested in history, i just love when people keep asking me, youve been working on Lyndon Johnson for so many years, are you bored . I have to say, how could you be bored . I cant wait to get in here every morning and see what im going to find because its poignant material, sad material, infuriating material. Because johnson and his strategizing he is not always a nice guy. These books are the product of robert caro and his research team, a team that consists of exactly one person, his wife ina. She is an author in her own right, and the only one bob trusted to do research for him. She did research in the rural life during johnsons boyhood that was such a vivid part of the first volume. And she is here tonight and am wondering if you would stand up and be recognized. [applause] [applause] you mentioned normally when you are working here, your wife ina is with you . Normally she is. This trip shes normally sitting at the desk, i will tell you why shes not here today. Shes finishing, shes on the very last chapter of her own second book. She is a terrific author in her own right. She is a historian who wrote the road from the past traveling from history and france. It printing. Very proud very great book shes finishing her second book on how you learn about history. Shes not here but shes usually sitting there and has been working for so many years with me on these books. Shes the only researcher, theres nothing wrong with it, i know other historians able to use whole teams of researchers, ive never been able to use a researcher other than ina, who looked have to look at every thing myself. Shes the only person that i really could trust to do research on the book. Shes really quite a great historian in her own right, more than that, we think alike and when she says theres something here you want to look at, she always knows, of course ina does a lot of research on her abmy books. Really groundbreaking stuff, the depth of his racism and hatred of blacks and his genius on the other side as a political legislative leader. Came from mine is Research Week after week. I dont know that theres a simple answer to it, sometimes i cut out an area for ina to deal with herself. This next book shes going to do head start, thats a program i want to really want to examine in depth and she studied educational theory. I want to know everything about his stuff i want to know the genesis of it from the first memo, first time the idea exploded to Lyndon Johnson and before Lyndon Johnson was presidency. All with the Political Considerations which went into setting up program what was johnsons thinking. And also analyzing it down to the present day why has it worked and what respect hasnt it worked. To what extent hasnt it worked because from the very beginning with the funds for it diluted because they had to go to the vietnam war, i dont know the answer. I dont know the answers to these things but thats can be one of the things thats an area that ina will do the research. That of course is months and months of work. You said that now you are using a laptop computer. [laughter] one thing im interested in is when you have a document and you need to save information, do you copy the document . How does that information wake its way to your office or your book . Good question. If you saw me here come up until this last month i always took my notes here on a typewriter. I write in one hand, so many people ask if i continue writing my books in longhand. You still use a typewriter or you switch to a computer . I write in longhand that i go to a typewriter for a few drafts. Im never gonna change that. Im right here in the Lyndon Johnson Library Going quietly nuts on the eighth floor these days because ina has persuaded me to use a computer to take notes. If i ever get some of my pages to stick around and not disappear im sure its gonna be a great time. [laughter] the archivist one of them said to me, you always look so happy now you look a lot happier. I believe that i can use a computer to take notes and i can put things into many different files, really time consuming what say there was something in here. Had to make a separate piece of paper for each one and put it into the separate file. This last trip i have a computer here except in the moments when its picked up take very detailed notes. What i want to i dont want to just go into the next memo, i want to understand it as much as i can so that when i come to other memos in the same subject i thought to something already, i know the significance of that i take very detailed notes, last month i was here doing this and i think i took him to think i took 87 pages of legal space, legal size single space of notes. When there is an important memo like the one i xeroxed. I have the exact document and have the exact document back in new york theres a lot of xeroxing. These are xerox requests back in their commode boxes with xerox requests with various researchers. I dont think there are any for me because theyve done all the xeroxing from my last trip and sent it up to me in new york but normally you would see several boxes. You want something xerox do you take one of these, two of these and put one on the front and one on the back of the letter that you want or memo that you want to xerox and then in the front of the box you right xerox request form which you get up there and put it in the front of the box and when youre done with the box they take it away from you and put it back there and then xerox is come up to new york. I said what i would explain before what took me so long and the three volumes became for. You can find out from the papers what Lyndon Johnson did. But what if you also want to find out the effect of what Lyndon Johnson did . The effect on other people . This is something i wanted to do they were so perceptive in his words its probably better than any way i could say it tonight. But i was never interested in writing biographies. I never had the slightest interest in doing that. From the first time i thought about writing a biography of robert moses, i thought about the times of the person and the forces that shape them with that political power because in a democracy it shapes all of our lives. I came to see more accurately or honestly i felt, but what i believe to portray political power the way it should be, it is necessary to show not only it is acquired on whom or for whom you want to try to show the effective power. And how about if you want to show not just what Lyndon Johnson did but what he was to his personality . Where did he come from . How did dad affect what he was like . Researching the wife of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, all of those questions came together for me in texas hill country. So many of you tonight must be familiar with hill country so i dont know if you can understand how strange it was someone like me born and spent his entire life in new york suburbs. Sometimes i would be in new york in the morning and take a plane nonstop fly down and rent a car and go to the hill country sometimes on those days i felt i was going from one end of the world to the other because a place of crowded streets and buses and get into this car and drive to this land with austin had not extended out yet to the hill country and very few meat miles out the land was so empty and isolated i could just see it was totally different from anything that i knew. And empty and lonely place the hill country as we know its so big it is 24000 square miles you can put all of new england into hill country and still have enough room left over for pennsylvania. [laughter] when johnson was growing up it was literally one person per square mile. There were more people by the time i got there it was an empty and lonely place you could drive long stretches without passing another car. When you say how much is done in other places . The first volume i said before i moved to a house in the hill country and we lived there for a large portion of those three years so we can visit the farmers and the ranchers who had grown up with Lyndon Johnson and formed the First Political machine. And there i learned of the effects of electricity that i never even dreamed when i started. This is the greatest story i ever heard. Not only the greatest story but if you are interested in what im trying to do to show the effect of political power , its such a pure wonderful way of looking at that. Here you have thes People Living in isolated ranges they dont have electricity. What was their life like and Everything Else because of the efforts of this one man who was a political genius and how did that change their lives . I realized i was hearing something doing these interviews over and over again you hear about the young Lyndon Johnson a lot of them are not pleasant but over and over again typing my notes i realized someone said to me a version of the word no matter what he was like we love him because he brought to life i know intellectually what that meant when he became congressman in 1937 there was no electricity in the hill country he promised he would bring them electricity and he did. He created the coop which is the Worlds Largest electric. But i came from new york and wasnt understanding when i was getting into. In new york electricity was they are you just turn the light switch. The full significance of what they were saying went right by me for a long time. I did not understand what it meant not to have electricity or their lives was like without it but because then they can have movies or radios and it was hard to get anything because the hill country was so separated one of the most poignant things they would say is we love Franklin Roosevelt he saved my farm. We heard about his fireside chats but we can never hear them of course movies and radios entertainment the lack of electricity had deeper significance than that because there were no pumps they had to bring out the water themselves. The streams run dry so you have to get the water from wells and because of the water table you have to go down 75 feet. Thats what they had to get the water. It had to be brought up from the women and the farm wives because the husbands are out in the fields all day and they were so poor as soon as your children are old enough to work to pick cotton they would be sent to work during harvest time and other times on farms and wealthier areas for a dollar a week. And any purpose you can think of and to bring a bucket add a time and then carry it to the house. And the average farm family was 72000 gallons a year. But it was hard to know what it meant and an elderly woman. And have a wonderful gift of people and to get them and to say you are a city boy. And then they take me to the well thats covered with boards. And they dropped the bucket down and to know how heavy a bucket of water is. And the never tried to pull up and it was heavy and they would say its too heavy for me. And then they would walk away from the well like that in the whole life i will never forget i swear because these women could carry two buckets at a time use the yoke just like cattle to carry the water to the house. And to see how band. And i just assumed that i was bent like this before i was thursday before i was 40. They were all that 40 and all that 35 and they were bent and stooped. One woman said i swore i would not look like my mother when i got married but as soon as the first baby came and i had to start bringing up the water i knew i would look exactly like my mother. When johnson runs for congress for the first time 1937, he promises to bring electricity. He is a political genius and he has a line if you look like me will no longer shoot look like your mother. [laughter] and then there was bankruptcy some years before and into those isolated ranchers and then about the dam getting that built first. So roosevelt cant stand it and every time he would see me he would say ask about the dam. And then they say give the kids a damn. [laughter] and then he has to get the electrification to break every rule because they had a minimum population density before they would string lines. If i recall he had to get nine separate federal agencies to break their rules to lay the lines but he did it. They didnt get electricity to 47 or 48 but the people who got it remember all their lives the day they saw the cruise come in across the hill. They would set the picnic table outside for the cruise with the best linen and to china because it was a great day in their life. The electricity came and people started to name their children for Lyndon Johnson. Changing the lives of 200 farmers and ranchers the effect of power and that the hill country of texas thats about as clear as you can find. So for example the fascination the warner report and then the gulf of tonkin. Let me do the second forced with the assassination i dont know what i will do on that. And that the assassination is almost unique. But the gulf of tonkin is very much to the point because no matter how much has been written about something , sometimes the whole story hasnt been true senator fulbright held extensive hearings and that he read the first volume and he took me through even hour by hour so sorry it has taken me so long and there are new things about the gulf of tonkin. With the johnson civil rights legislation. And i tried to do one thing which i talked about before, not just limiting myself. I always try to say these papers show how power is acquired. And two of the great things of the presidency is civil rights. And thats the great thing we will live in a small southern city. Long enough so we can see how Lyndon Johnson civil rights legislation and what was the actual effect in peoples lives were the streets paved with the Better School house . And when they saw him driving down the street and then i do intend to show and what that means with the Major Industrial power makes for with a third world country. Heres a quote from Lyndon Johnson speaking about himself. Im just like a fox. I can see the jugular but i always keep myself in writing and on a leash and just like when he mastered the senate and in his very first year 1949 he sees the jugular and the stories with what he sees and again a slow process of awakening and there was a process in the Johnson Library but it was treated over two or three pages and those who knew Lyndon Johnson all through the years and senators and congressmen. And why they were not admiring of this man we had done so much. And once again i started to realize i was hearing the name and then said why dont you like Lyndon Johnson . To be thank you would ever forget so i start to look into the leeland knoll story as an idealistic new dealer working for Franklin Roosevelt all his life and he believed and to reap the reasonable profits with the monopoly of Natural Resources because as he said himself who owns the river if not the people . And in 1949 johnson was man sworn into the senate and the lintels with the federal federal Power Commission and then the campaign for the senate and then to defeat the nose we nomination and then to be acquainted with so many senators and those that liked and admired and respected him for his fairness. And johnson finds judgment and learns back in the 19 twenties and then a young reporter doing for wire service and doesnt work for newspapers but the Associated Press and whatever they subscribe and then to have the byline if you want. And then the federated press with those 80 newspapers 79 mainstream but one was the communist daily worker and then to find the bylined one the byline they find 54 times that appeared. Lyndon johnson has the 54 pages and has them bound together and distributes them to senators to persuade them and appointed chairman of the subcommittee on destroys in a cross examination based on the articles and help us to defend themselves against the crossexamination and of course they can even remember the articles. Johnson had told me they had to prepare for the hearings and then to give the speech on the floor of the senate. Do we want a commissioner or commissar . And then they were defeated. Fiftyeight years old, Civil Servant all his life and then cannot get a decent job in government again or any company in the industry. So who would hire a communist . He lived the rest of his life as a poor man and that is only part of it. And those that that were his friend and friends for 20 years. They would not speak to her anymore when they saw her on the street and would not talk to her they were afraid to be talking to someone they thought was the wife of a communist. Doing research is very complicated there are unpleasant moments that happened. But nothing from this volume was nothing more upsetting than to hear about the scene outside the open door of the subcommittee room destroying the course of the examination and is standing out with his wife and more than one young staffer and johnson comes out and puts his arm around his shoulder and says we are still friends . Nothing personal its just politics. That was politics and was very effective and senators were very afraid of this new freshman senator. What will you be looking at . I have something i want to look at they are not out open but there is a new administration here to have more favorable consideration im hoping they will be open for for a mile at least and the vice presidency is historically significant for the rest of his life and then of course after he took over the presidency the incredible command the incident command to step into the job to keep the government running and i really want to explore that in detail so i will call for as many boxes to deal with that. Telling the story it sounded like doctor jekyll and mr. Hyde and i was thinking that would be for corporate interest and then he mentioned the humanitarian side so tell us more it seems on one side he was as mean as the devil and the other a gracious man. With Lyndon Johnson it is a complicated story he has immense capacity and is very compassionate i believe he always wanted to help poor people and those of color and did it when it seemed impossible. I dont think well have the civil rights legislation we have today if he hadnt done that we have seen the story not only compassionate but a gift to make compassionate and meaningful to mobilize the powers of government to bring powers to electricity to the hill country. Thats one side and then you see total ruthlessness and cruelty for its own sake people asked me why do you hate Lyndon Johnson . I dont. I dont love him i dont even think of like and dislike or love or hate are relevant terms we are in the library of a man who did things in america nobody else could have done but to do something other than he was is a service to history. I see one comparison between the Johnson Administration and the Current Administration with the Bush Cheney Administration and in its capacity. [laughter] [applause] which of course is a subsidiary of halliburton now. Do you see other parallels they have gone through in a crisis to give them some experience and exercise of power . I will take a pass we really dont know whats going on until you research it for yourself i go through the newspapers and take notes and then go and read the memos and the internal stuff and over and over the last trip down here he said thats not happened was at all so i will take the test. But the three chapters you have done and went on dick russell that after working at the capital for a few years and i have done some research, a lot of people in texas criticize high you put stephenson on the paddle like with rayburn and russell you did a great job in some people say you just didnt get stephenson right. I know they did and those who do are ignoring the fact the simple fact i portrayed a guy who was most popular public official in the history of texas. Indisputable the only man who was elected to all three highest offices. Speaker and Lieutenant Governor and governor i think the only man in the state who carried all 254 counties. Not just popular but a legend and call the cowboy governor. I wanted to show what he was running against and what he had to defeat and that was the legend of stevens and seemed impossible because the last time he carried all 254 counties but we see by the end of the Campaign Johnson has destroyed the legend so in political power and development it was the first use of media politics on this scale in the history of texas at this scale and i wanted to show the power of negative politics could destroy even a legend thats why wanted to look at that legend and it is true stephenson really was a poor boy at the age of 14 created a freight line night after night and created a great ranch and even have the telephone back in his ranch not wanting to deal with politicians i have no sympathy with that criticism if it has a validity to leave out his racial views because he was racist the reason i left it out because race was not an issue in that campaign because johnsons view was precisely the same as stephenson. Johnson removed it from the race as an issue in his first speech and said president truman is attempting to establish a police state. Not only against legislation with the poll tax but also with lynching as a federal crime. When he wrote about the campaign it was never mentioned and never an issue. I know johnsons view were very different so it takes a long time to explain where he was and 48 so i decided not to put it in the second volume because i think the criticism is right that i should a step back from the campaign i knew it was coming in this volume but i know it would take so many years to get it done. In 1990 on book notes he said it would take two or three years to write. [laughter] whatever i say now it doesnt mean much but i do hope this will not take as long as the last one. I have done all the interviews that i can. And i took them through the presidency. But the same time the more you stay the more you see how much there is to do. I dont think my predictions are worth a damn. [laughter]. Thats a real frustration the library is open from 9 00 a. M. To 5 00 p. M. That on a normal weekday i want to be here when they open in the morning and im at the front door waiting because 935 is not enough time. I get very tired after four or five hours. The first thing i do is read what i wrote the day before i used to work long hours and then i realize every day im throwing out everything i did the last hour and i was exhausted but these papers you can go through a long time. And youre really frustrated you have to leave at 5 00 oclock and then not open on the weekends. And then you take a break and i drink a lot of coffee. I cant drink it in this room but i can sitting on the couch sometimes if im here alone i eat lunch are sometimes ill take a break for lunch and eat sandwiches. You could work in here for 12 hours . Oh yes. Its not that hard youre just taking notes. Yes. There are days you get so engrossed one minute its 9 00 oclock and then the archivist as we close in ten minutes in the whole day has disappeared. It is fond and thrilling in my opinion. Now i am into volume four and with johnson it is complicated. I use the term with him the strands of dark and light are intermingled because what does johnson do with the power from things like destroying the new and old he is it to become majority leader as a United States senator. He uses the power to push through the 20 years to stop all legislation and uses the power to create the disability benefits the start of medicare and medicaid and the time period covered by the last book and in 1957 passing the first civil rights bill since reconstructio reconstruction. I will take more of your time but when he sets out there are 14 Standing Committees in the senate they are chairman of the nine of them they stop every bill for 82 years. It seems absolutely impossible if you know anything about political power of Lyndon Johnson or anything else could get a civil rights bill through to see him get the bill through vote by vote is not just the legislative power that legislative genius. The presidency of johnson is a watershed presidency. I use that in a very specific sense it is a Continental Divide that is the way it was with the presidency of Lyndon Johnson america is a very different place when he became president and when he left the presidency changed its civil rights and the Great Society he had the credibility gap to try to find the effective power and what Lyndon Johnson passed they might not have it today and to live in the black community to see what difference it made also to go to vietnam because he wants to see what a Major Industrialized nation means so we will be working on the eighth floor here on the papers and once again it will be beyond the papers again. Thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] you are watching the tv cspan2 summer series bench watch focusing on one author and his or her body of work. Robert caro is our topic and the author of six books one of them being the powerbroker published first 1974 with the life and times of robert moses the city planner who transformed much of new york city and in 2007 he talked about his subject. I have been a historian and biographer robert caro has been interested in examining how power works in a democracy now doing this on a National Scale with his work on Lyndon Johnson that began on a local scale the process of writing the powerbroker it began when bob was a reporter