The Path to Power (135 page)

But the opinion of the six agents who had been working on the Brown & Root investigation for eighteen months was not to carry much weight in its ultimate disposition. Johnson and Wirtz had seen Roosevelt on January 13. On that day, a new agent, who had no previous knowledge of the case, was sent to Texas from the IRS bureau in Atlanta, Georgia, to make a “separate investigation” of it. Arriving in Texas on January 17, this new agent began studying the case. He proved to be a quick study indeed. Three days later, he told Werner, “The case as it now stands does not have quite enough evidence, in my opinion, for the Chief Counsel’s office to pass it for prosecution but there is ample to sustain the 50% penalty.” The next day, he confirmed this, adding that, as Werner put it in his diary, “he would recommend against making a prosecution case in view of Brown & Root, Inc.’s participation in the war effort.” Then he left for Washington, D.C.

The Georgia agent had also told the Texas agents that “he could see no reason why we should not be permitted to finish our investigation of certain unfinished work which we had detailed to him.” But this work was, in fact, never to be finished. On February 15, IRS Chief of Intelligence W. H. Woolf told Cooner that it had been decided, based on the facts “now in hand,” that there was insufficient evidence on the Brown & Root, Inc., case to “sustain criminal prosecution,” and that the “likelihood of developing proof adequate for that purpose is too remote to justify further extension of the investigation.” The Texas agents were ordered to submit final reports on the “basis of the facts now in hand.”

Agents who had actually been working on the case felt that the facts “now in hand” only scratched its surface; because of the earlier orders that “no outside persons were to be interviewed,” they had been restricted until recently to interviewing Brown & Root officials; only within the past few months had they begun talking to members of the organization that had received the questionable contributions: the Johnson campaign. In fact, they had talked only to a handful of campaign aides—all low-level. They had not talked to the campaign’s higher-ups: Wirtz, for example. They had not talked to the candidate. They did not agree with the Georgia agent’s conclusion that the facts “now in hand” were insufficient for prosecution, but even if he were correct, they felt that if they were allowed to investigate the link between Brown & Root and the Johnson campaign thoroughly, much new evidence would be developed.

Werner asked, apparently on behalf of the rest of the team, to be allowed to continue the investigation. On March 2, he received his answer: he was ordered to drop the case—at once, and forever. A letter from Chief of Intelligence Woolf reiterated that the case was to “be reported by the
examining agents on the basis of facts
now in hand
with a view to placing the case in line for disposition under routine field procedure. … A further extension of the investigation as proposed by Special Agent Werner will be inconsistent with this finding and it is accordingly directed that the case be disposed of as indicated above.”

On June 28, Werner submitted his final report on Case S.I.-19267-F, showing tax deficiencies of $1,099,944 and a penalty of $549,972. But even this was to be scaled down. After a series of further conferences between IRS officials and Wirtz, Brown & Root was ultimately required to pay a total of only $372,000. There were of course no fraud indictments, no trial, no publicity. Franklin Roosevelt had already done so much to advance Lyndon Johnson’s career. In this instance, it may be he who saved it.

I
N THE FLOOD
of endorsements from “big names” in Washington on behalf of Lyndon Johnson’s senatorial bid, had one name been, for most of the campaign, conspicuously absent?

Sam Rayburn’s coldness in October, 1940, when he had been reluctant to endorse Johnson for a post with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, had been thawed somewhat by Johnson’s performance in that role; Rayburn knew how much he owed Johnson for helping to preserve the Democratic majority in the House, and thereby helping
him
keep the Speakership. Rayburn was a man who always paid his debts. After the campaign, he was again courteous to Lyndon Johnson on Capitol Hill.

But the thaw was only partial. The greatest favor Rayburn had bestowed on him—entrée to the “Board of Education,” where crucial House decisions were made and strategy was discussed—was withdrawn; no longer, when Rayburn left the Speaker’s chair in the late afternoon and headed for the room in which the House leaders met, did he invite Johnson to “come on down.” Had the Speaker guessed—or learned—how Lyndon Johnson had betrayed his friendship; how, to help his own career, the young man of whom he had been so fond had turned the President against him by falsely portraying him as the President’s enemy? To an effusive letter from Johnson in November, 1940, after the campaign had ended, there was no reply. A month later, Johnson arranged to be one of the speakers at an “appreciation banquet” held for Rayburn in Dallas, and played a high card to a man who so desperately wanted a son: Johnson said he had been a young boy accompanying his father to the State Legislature when he had first met Sam Rayburn; ever since, he said, he had regarded Mr. Sam as “like a father to me.” When, however, Congress reconvened in 1941, Johnson found the door to the Board of Education still closed to him, and it remained closed all that year; during this year, encountering House parliamentarian Lewis Deschler
late one afternoon on the landing of the staircase near the Board room, he said, almost shouting: “I can get into the White House. Why can’t I get into that room?”

This was a rare outburst, however. It was not in Lyndon Johnson’s interest for Capitol Hill to become aware that he was no longer on intimate terms with the Speaker, so few hints of the true state of affairs escaped his lips. As for Sam Rayburn, whose grim face had turned only harder now that he held at last the gavel—and the power and the responsibility that came with it—no one would have dared to ask him. It was generally assumed, therefore, that the relationship was intact. Johnson’s staff hoped the Speaker would come to Texas and campaign for Johnson, and they were sure he would at least endorse him—and they were planning to make the endorsement a centerpiece of the campaign by emphasizing it, over and over, in a series of newspaper advertisements and in brochures. When they learned that Rayburn had, during the week of April 22, helped dissuade Wright Patman from making the race, they were sure he had done so on Johnson’s behalf, and that the endorsement would follow shortly.

It didn’t, and approaches were therefore made to the Speaker. At first, they were indirect; one was made, still in late April, through Representative Poage of Waco, who told Johnson of Rayburn’s response: “He said that he did not feel that he should make any kind of statement in the ‘Record,’ although he was writing all of those that he had an opportunity telling them that he was definitely for you.”

Private letters were not sufficient; what was needed was a public endorsement, and it was needed early in the campaign. During the next weeks, Rayburn was pressed harder and harder, but no endorsement was forthcoming. On May 29, Johnson telegraphed John Connally—and one of the significant aspects of this telegram is that Johnson is asking someone else to call Rayburn rather than doing it himself—
YOU OR SENATOR [WIRTZ] CALL RAYBURN TODAY AND ASK HIM IF HE WILL RELEASE OR PERMIT YOU TO RELEASE STATEMENT … TO THE EFFECT THAT HE IS GOING TO VOTE FOR AND SUPPORT ME FOR SENATOR. … TELL HIM THIS OUGHT TO BE DONE TODAY IN ORDER TO HELP US GET ORGANIZED IN NORTH TEXAS
. No Such Statement was released.

Johnson’s puzzled aides began to wonder about the enthusiasm of even the private support that Rayburn was supposedly providing. Rayburn was a powerful force not only in his own seven-county congressional district but all across North Texas. The courthouse politicians in the little towns that dotted the prairies north of Dallas awaited only Mr. Sam’s word to swing into action for Lyndon Johnson. The word did not come. By June, the puzzlement among Johnson’s supporters was finding expression in letters. Warren Bellows wrote Connally expressing concern about the situation in North Texas. Judge Loy in Grayson County is very powerful up there, he said,

Replying on June 3, Connally had to confess that “We tried to get Rayburn to call him. However, I don’t think he ever did. … We are trying to get Rayburn to come to Texas to make a speech, but I don’t know what luck we are going to have.”

As Election Day neared with still no word from Rayburn, puzzlement turned to anger. The arrogant Marsh, the only one of Johnson’s supporters who would dare to express it to Rayburn himself, did so; in mid-June, he telegraphed the Speaker:

Sam Rayburn finally endorsed Lyndon Johnson on June 20, two months after he had been asked to do so—and just a little more than a week before Election Day, too late for the endorsement to be of maximum use. Moreover, the Speaker’s public statement was accompanied by little private support. The definitive statement on the extent of Rayburn’s backing of Johnson in the senatorial race was the result in Rayburn’s own congressional district, in which 31,000 votes were cast. Johnson received only 7,000 of them.

Following the race, Rayburn’s true preference in it became clearer. He had become acquainted with Gerald Mann, whose hometown in Sulphur Springs was not far from Bonham, and had liked the young man—a feeling that was reciprocated; “I was very fond of Sam Rayburn,” Mann says. Although Johnson was already gearing up for another try at the Senate seat in 1942, Rayburn may have had another young man in mind for the post. On September 2, 1941, with Mann on his way to Washington, Rayburn tried to arrange for him to meet the President; the Speaker told Pa Watson that he thought a “short visit with [the] President would help all [the] way down the line.” Had Rayburn wanted Mann all along—and endorsed Johnson only after he had become convinced that the under-financed Attorney General had no chance to defeat the hated O’Daniel? Johnson was able to fend off this threat for a while. Watson told Rayburn that he was sure there would be no difficulty arranging for an appointment with the Attorney General of
Texas, but he was wrong about that. On September 11, Watson was informed that “Miss Tully says the President does not want to see Gerald Mann at this time. Mr. Mann ran against Lyndon Johnson for Senator, and Johnson is now in Virginia recovering from a tonsillectomy, and the President wants to see him first.” When Rayburn insisted, an appointment was arranged for the next time Mann was in Washington. But the appointment was made for a Sunday, and the Sunday happened to be December 7.

P
EARL
H
ARBOUR
restored—in an instant—the relationship between Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson.

During the senatorial campaign, Johnson had promised, “If the day ever comes when my vote must be cast to send your boy to the trenches, that day Lyndoti Johnson will leave his Senate seat and go with him.” So popular had that promise proven in hawkish Texas that the candidate repeated it in almost every major speech, and in every form of campaign literature. Though his seat was still in the House, the promise could not be broken—not if he wanted to continue to have a political career in Texas. Johnson had some months previously been commissioned a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve, and on December 11 he was placed on active duty. Rising in the House, he said, “Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent for an indefinite leave of absence.”

“Is there objection to the request of the Gentleman from Texas?” Rayburn asked. There being none, Rayburn said, “So be it.”

The story of the naval service of Lyndon Johnson was to prove a very complicated one; as his actions during the war, and his own, private, statements to contemporaries were to demonstrate, it was a story motivated by considerations at least as much political as patriotic. But to Sam Rayburn, to whom some things were very simple, there was nothing complicated at all about a brave young man in uniform going off to fight for his country, perhaps to die. Rayburn was a profoundly silent man, determined that no one ever be able to guess his feelings. But as the coldness of a father toward an estranged son melts in a moment when the boy is in danger, so Rayburn’s coldness to Lyndon Johnson melted now. Their exchanges of friendly letters had long since dried up—there had been none for more than a year—but Johnson wrote one on December 18, a few days before he was to depart for the West Coast. He was worried about the Speaker’s health, he said; he hoped Rayburn would take care of himself. During the next few months, he said, “you must carry a burden that few—if any—men in our country can carry. You have never shirked a duty or failed a responsibility. You won’t now—unless the old physical self cracks up. So take this suggestion from one much less experienced than yourself: ‘Get fitted.’” The letter was signed: “Just one who respects you and loves you—LBJ.” Sam Rayburn folded over that letter several times—until it was small enough to fit into his billfold. He carried it
around in his billfold for a long time. Then he placed it in a special drawer in his desk: the drawer in which he kept the letters from his mother. When, eighteen years later, officials of the Sam Rayburn Library itemized the contents of that drawer, the letter was still there.

I
F TO
S
AM
R
AYBURN
Lyndon Johnson was the brave young man going off to war, there was a brave young wife staying behind, the shy, timid young woman, when he had first met her almost as lonely in Washington as he was, to whom his heart had gone out in paternal fondness—and who had repaid him, and more than repaid him, by making him feel at home in the Johnsons’ apartment.

After his initial trip to the Coast, Lyndon Johnson returned to Washington. In February, he left again—this time, it was reported, for the South Pacific. He and John Connally, also in Navy uniform, left from Union Station, and Lady Bird Johnson and Connally’s wife, Nellie, went down to the station to say goodbye.

So did Sam Rayburn. He had abruptly announced that he was going down to the station with them. The giant terminal was, in Lady Bird’s word, a “hubbub,” jammed with sailors, soldiers and marines, their women kissing them goodbye. Amid the tumult, Rayburn stood alone, square and silent as he always stood, well behind the young couple of whom he was so fond. As the Johnsons said goodbye to each other, he said nothing. His face was as expressionless as ever.

But after the train had pulled out, he came up to Lady Bird and Nellie. His words were not tender; only if you knew Sam Rayburn would you know what was behind them. “Now girls,” Sam Rayburn said, with the gruffness of a man who could never be cheerful no matter how hard he tried, and who knew it, but who was determined to be as cheerful as he could—“Now girls, we’re going to get us the best dinner in Washington.”

I
N UNDERSTANDING
what many perceptive men had so much difficulty in understanding—the bond that, for the next twenty years, made Sam Rayburn the ally of a man so utterly opposite to him in both principles and personality—part of the answer lies in Lady Bird Johnson’s sweetness and graciousness, and in the shyness that made Rayburn so fond of her. While Lyndon was away during the war, the Speaker hovered over Lady Bird, paternally protective, smoothing her work as she tried to run her husband’s office in his absence, providing evenings out for her—and for the wives of other young men who were off to war, not only for Nellie Connally but for Elizabeth Rowe, Jim’s wife, for example.

Of all the proofs of the power of Lady Bird’s graciousness, perhaps none is more convincing than the fact that she made Sam Rayburn feel at
home in her home; for the rest of his life he would come to dinner as often as several times a week; the only stipulation he made was that “that blamed television set” be turned off. She had his favorite recipes down pat, and, with her unfailing warmth, made him feel she was happy to prepare them—when the Johnsons acquired a cook, the cook was taught how to make cornbread and chili the way Mr. Sam liked them. The bond between Lady Bird and Mr. Sam was to become strong. Talking of “the Speaker,” she says with a fierceness very unusual for her: “He was the best of
us
—the best of simple American stock.” In his times of sorrow—when a brother or sister died—her heart went out to him; on the occasion of one death, she wrote him: “We wish we could put our arms around you today. Your sadness is ours, too.” Rayburn was to write her: “Your friendship for me is one of the most heartening things in my life.” During Lady Bird’s pregnancies, the Speaker’s concern about her health was so deep as to amuse those who witnessed it. He was constantly asking Johnson to telephone her to find out if she was all right; once, when Johnson did not immediately do so, he rasped: “Go call her this minute.”

Then came the children: Lynda Bird in 1944 and Lucy Baines three years later. Sam Rayburn had wanted a child so badly, but he had had none, and never would. He loved Lyndon’s. He would sit for hours with one of the girls on his lap, patiently listening to her gabble; as soon as Lynda Bird could talk, he taught her a sentence: “We are just two old pals.” He gave them birthday parties at his apartment, inviting perhaps ten or twelve of their friends; the children’s parents stared as they watched the little girls or boys sitting on the Speaker’s lap, or reaching up to hug him—this man whom other men only feared. One of these fathers, the lobbyist Dale Miller, says that he realized watching Sam Rayburn what he had never known—that “He was a kind man, but he would be distressed if he ever thought you had found that out.” Lyndon Johnson’s family became Sam Rayburn’s family—the family he had never had.