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