We requested a lot of boxes, looking through a lot of file folders
that, from their description in the “Finding Aids,” one would assume
contained nothing of use to me—and the wisdom of Alan’s advice was
proved to me again and again. Someday, I hope to be able to leave behind
me a record of at least a few of the scores and scores of times that
that happened, some of which may be of interest, at any rate to
fellow-historians; for now, I’ll give just one example. I had decided
that among the boxes in which I would at least glance at every piece of
paper would be the ones in Johnson’s general “House Papers” that
contained the files from his first years in Congress, since I wanted to
be able to paint a picture of what he had been like as a young
legislator. And as I was doing this—reading or at least glancing at
every letter and memo, turning every page—I began to get a feeling:
something in those early years had changed.
For some time after
Johnson’s arrival in Congress, in May, 1937, his letters to committee
chairmen and other senior congressmen had been in a tone befitting a new
congressman with no power—the tone of a junior beseeching a favor from a
senior, or asking, perhaps, for a few minutes of his time. But there
were also letters and memos in the same boxes from senior congressmen in
which they were doing the beseeching, asking for a few minutes of his time. What was the reason for the change? Was there a particular time at which it had occurred?
Going
back over my notes, I put them in chronological order, and when I did
it was easy to see that there had indeed been such a time: a single
month, October, 1940. Before that month, Lyndon Johnson had been
invariably, in his correspondence, the junior to the senior. After that
month—and, it became clearer and clearer as I put more and more
documents into order, after a single date, November 5, 1940, Election
Day—the tone was frequently the opposite. And it wasn’t just with
powerful congressmen. After that date, Johnson’s files also contained
letters written to him by mid-level congressmen, and by other
congressmen as junior as he, in a supplicating tone, whereas there had
been no such letters—not a single one that I could find—before that
date. Obviously, the change had had something to do with the election.
But what?
At that time, I was constantly flying back and forth
between Austin and Washington. Papers don’t die; people do, and I was
giving first priority to interviewing the men and women who, during the
nineteen-thirties, had been members of a circle of New Deal insiders to
which the young congressman from Texas had been admitted.
One member of this circle was Thomas G. Corcoran, a pixieish,
ebullient, accordion-playing Irishman known as Tommy the Cork, who had
been an aide to Franklin Roosevelt and had since become a legend in
Washington as a political fixer and a fund-raiser nonpareil. I just loved
interviewing Tommy the Cork. He was at that time in his late seventies,
but if he came into the lobby of his K Street office building while I
was waiting for the elevator, he would say, “See you upstairs, kid,” as
he opened the door to the stairwell. And often, when I reached the
eleventh floor, where his office was situated, he would be standing
there grinning at me when the elevator door opened. He was, in the best
sense of the word (truly the best to an interviewer anxious to learn the
innermost secrets of political maneuverings), totally amoral. He cared
for nothing. Once, on a morning that we had an interview scheduled, I
picked up the Washington Post over breakfast in my
hotel room to see his name in big headlines and read a huge story about
his role in a truly sordid Washington scandal. I expected to find a
broken, or at least a dejected, man when I was ushered into his office.
Instead, he gave me a big grin—he had the most infectious grin—and, when
I didn’t bring up the subject of the
story but he could tell it was on my mind, he said, “It’s just free
advertising, kid, free advertising. Just as long as they spell my name
right.”
Tommy the Cork had once told me about one of his most
effective fund-raising techniques. When the man he was asking for money
wrote a check and handed it across the desk to him, Mr. Corcoran, no
matter what the amount—no matter if it was more than he had hoped
for—would look at it with an expression of disdain, drop it back on the
man’s desk, and, without saying a word, walk toward the door. He had
never once, he told me—exaggerating, I’m sure, but how much?—he had
never once been allowed to reach the door without the man calling him
back, tearing up the check, and writing one for a larger amount. And
now, when I asked Mr. Corcoran what had changed Lyndon Johnson’s status
in October, 1940, he said, “Money, kid, money.” Then he added, “But
you’re never going to be able to write about that.” I asked why not.
“Because you’re never going to find anything in writing,” he said.
For
some time, I was afraid that Mr. Corcoran was right. From what I had
already learned about Johnson’s obsession with secrecy, I was prepared
to believe that in this particularly sensitive area he had made sure
that there was going to be nothing to find. And the Cork was right on
another point, too: without something in writing—documentation, in other
words—even if I discovered what had happened I wasn’t going to be able
to put it in my book. But the change in Johnson’s status—the fact that
during October, 1940, this young congressman had been elevated to a
place of some significance in the House of Representatives—made me feel
it was imperative that I find out and document what had happened in that
month.
Alan’s words were in my mind. I had been looking at only
Lyndon Johnson’s general “House Papers,” but these boxes might not be
the only ones that dealt with Johnson’s early congressional career.
There were also, for example, those LBJA files, containing letters and
memos to and from “close associates.” I hadn’t even begun turning the
pages in them.
Corcoran had said that the answer to my question
was money, and if money was involved the place to start looking was
Brown & Root, the Texas road-and-dam-building firm, whose
principals, Herman and George Brown (Root had died years before), had
been the secret but major financiers of Johnson’s early career; by 1940,
Brown & Root had already begun receiving federal contracts through
Johnson’s efforts. When it came to money, there were no closer
associates than Herman and George. I didn’t have much hope of finding
anything in writing, but their files were files in which I should
nonetheless have been turning every page.
I started doing that
now. I requested Box 13 in the LBJA “Selected Names” collection and
pulled out the file folders for Herman. There was a lot of fascinating
material in the files’ two hundred and thirty-seven pages, but nothing
on the 1940 change. George’s correspondence was in Box 12. There were
about two hundred and thirty pages in his file. I sat there turning the
pages, every page, thinking that I was probably just wasting more days
of my life. And then, suddenly, as I lifted yet another innocuous letter
to put it aside, the next document was not a letter but a Western Union
telegram form, turned brown during the decades since it had been
sent—on October 19, 1940. It was addressed to Lyndon Johnson, and was
signed “George Brown,” and it said, in the capital letters Western Union
used for its messages: “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE CHECKS BY FRIDAY … HOPE THEY ARRIVED IN DUE FORM AND ON TIME.”
It
also named the people who were supposed to have sent the checks—six of
Brown & Root’s business associates. And Tommy Corcoran had been
wrong: Lyndon Johnson had for once put something in writing. Attached to the telegram was a copy of his response to George. “ALL OF THE FOLKS YOU TALKED TO HAVE BEEN HEARD FROM,” it said. “I
AM NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THEIR LETTERS, SO BE SURE TO TELL ALL THESE
FELLOWS THAT THEIR LETTERS HAVE BEEN RECEIVED … YOUR FRIEND,
LYNDON B. JOHNSON.” Johnson had added by hand, “The thing is
exceeding my expectations. The Boss is listening to my suggestions,
thanks to your encouragements.”
So there was the proof that
Johnson had received money from Brown & Root in October, 1940 (and
that it had brought him into some sort of contact with “the Boss,”
Johnson’s name for President Franklin Roosevelt). But how much had the
six donors sent? Why hadn’t Brown & Root sent the money itself? And,
more important, what had happened to the money? How did Johnson use it?
What was the mechanism by which it was distributed? There was no clue
in the telegram, or in Johnson’s reply. But the money had come from
Texas, and George and Herman had friends who, I knew, had contributed,
at the Browns’ insistence, to Johnson’s first campaigns. Most of the
contributors, I had been told, were oilmen—in Texas parlance, “big
oilmen.”
I started calling for the big oilmen’s folders. And, sure enough, there was a letter,
dated in October, from one of the biggest of the oilmen, Clint
Murchison. Murchison dealt with senators or with the Speaker of the
House, Sam Rayburn, the leader of the Texas delegation; he hardly knew
the young congressman; in his letter to Johnson, he misspelled his name
“Linden.” But he was evidently following Brown & Root’s lead. “We
are enclosing herewith the check of the Aloco Oil Co… . for $5,000,
payable to the Democratic Congressional Committee,” his letter said.
Another big oilman was Charles F. Roeser, of Fort Worth: the amount
mentioned in the letter I found from him was again five thousand, the
payee the same.
So the recipient was the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee, which had previously been nothing more than a
moribund subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee. There were a
lot of file folders in Boxes 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the Johnson House papers
labelled “Democratic National Committee.” Those boxes contained
thirty-two hundred pages. Some of the folders had less than inviting
titles. “General—Unarranged,” for example, was a thick folder, bulging
with papers that had been sloppily crammed into it. When I pulled it
out, I remember asking myself if I really had to do
“General—Unarranged.” But Alan might possibly have been proud of me—and I
wasn’t very deep into the folder when I was certainly grateful to him.
One of the six people George Brown said had sent checks was named
Corwin. In “General—Unarranged,” not in alphabetical order but just
jammed in, was a note from J. O. Corwin, a Brown & Root
subcontractor, saying, “I am enclosing herewith my check for $5,000,
payable to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.” Five
thousand dollars. Had each of the six men mentioned in Brown’s letter
sent that amount?
The “Unarranged” file contained letter after
letter with details I knew I could use. And in other folders I came
across letters in which that same amount was mentioned: for example,
from E. S. Fentress, who was the partner of Johnson’s patron, Charles
Marsh. I knew that one of the biggest and the most politically astute of
the oilmen was Sid Richardson. I looked under the name “Richardson” in
file folder after file folder in different collections, without any
luck. What was the name of that nephew of his whom Richardson, unmarried
and childless, allowed to transact some of his business affairs? I had
heard it somewhere. What was it? Bass, Perry Bass. I found that name and the donation—“Perry R. Bass, $5,000”—in yet another box in the House papers.
Letters
from many big Texas oilmen of the nineteen-forties—who needed
guarantees that Congress wouldn’t take away the oil-depletion allowance,
and that other, more arcane tax breaks conferred by the federal
government wouldn’t be touched—were scattered through those boxes. And
all the contributions were for five thousand dollars. Of course, they must
be. I suddenly remembered what I should have remembered earlier. Under
federal law in 1940, the limit on an individual contribution was five
thousand dollars. How could I have been so slow to get it? Well, I got
it now. The Brown & Root contribution to the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee, funnelled through the company’s
business associates, had been thirty thousand dollars, a substantial
amount in the politics of that era, and, in fact, more money than the
committee had received from the D.N.C., its parent organization. And
there were so many additional five-thousand-dollar contributions from
Texas!
But there was a next question: how had this money resulted
in such a great change in Lyndon Johnson’s status in Congress? How had
he transmuted those contributions into power for himself? He had had no
title or formal position with the Democratic Congressional Campaign
Committee; he had tried to get one, I had learned from other files, but
had been rebuffed.
I found the answer in those LBJA files. He had
had George Brown instruct each of the Brown & Root contributors, and
had had the other Texas contributors instructed similarly, to enclose
with their checks a letter stating, “I would like for this money to be
expended in connection with the campaign of Democratic candidates for
Congress as per the list attached.” Johnson had, of course, compiled the
list, and, while the checks received by the lucky candidates might have
been issued by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, each
candidate received a telegram from Johnson, saying that the check had
been sent “AS RESULT MY VISIT TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE FEW MINUTES AGO.”
Before
the campaign was over—in that single month, October, 1940—Lyndon
Johnson had raised from Texas, and had distributed to congressional
candidates, campaign funds on a scale seldom if ever before given to
Democratic congressional candidates from a single, central source. The
documents in those boxes of Johnson’s House papers made that clear.
As
I turned the pages in those boxes, I found other documents.
“General—Unarranged” contained another list. There were two typed
columns on each of its thirteen pages, typed by either John Connally or
Walter Jenkins; each of these Johnson assistants later told me that he
had been the one who had typed them. In the left-hand column were the
districts of congressmen who had asked the Congressional Committee for
money. In the second column were the names of the congressmen and the
amount that each had asked for—tiny amounts, in the terms of later
eras—and what, in the congressman’s own words, he needed it for. “MUST HAVE $250 BY THURSDAY NIGHT FOR LAST ISSUE ADVERTISING,” for example. Or “$350 BY THURSDAY. HAVE SET UP MACHINERY TO REACH 11,000 ADDITIONAL VOTERS.” Others wanted five hundred dollars “FOR WORKERS IN SPANISH AND ITALIAN DISTRICTS” or “$1,000 ON NOVEMBER 1 TO HIRE POLL WATCHERS,” or wrote, “CHANCES BRIGHT … IF WE CAN GET RIGHT AWAY $14 FOR EACH OF FIVE COUNTY PAPERS AND $20 FOR TITUSVILLE HERALD.”
And
there was a third column on the page, or, rather, handwritten notations
in the left-hand margin, notes dealing with each congressman’s request.
The handwriting in that column was Lyndon Johnson’s. If he was
arranging for the candidate to be given part or all of what he’d asked
for, he wrote, “OK—$500,” or “OK—$200,” or whatever the amount was he
had decided to give. If he did not want the candidate to be given
anything, he wrote, “None.” And by some names he wrote, “None—Out.”
(What did “None—Out” mean? I later asked John Connally. “It meant
he”—the candidate—“was never going to get anything,” Connally said. “Lyndon Johnson never forgot, and he never forgave.”)
Johnson
had identified a source of financing for congressional races across the
United States, a source that in the past had been used principally on
behalf of Presidential or senatorial candidates: Texas money. Using the
power of the mighty Speaker, Sam Rayburn, he had made sure the money
came only through him. When, in 1940, officials of the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee attempted to go around him, to the
source, writing directly to the oilmen to request contributions, the
oilmen had asked Rayburn whom to send the money to, and then, following
the Speaker’s instructions, had replied not to the committee but to
Lyndon Johnson, writing, in the words of Charles Roeser, “I
HAVE DECIDED TO SEND MY CONTRIBUTION … TO YOU… . I AM …
LEAVING IT UP TO … YOU, TO DECIDE IN WHAT DISTRICTS THESE FUNDS CAN
BE BEST USED.” And Johnson was not only deciding which candidates
would get the money; he was making sure the candidates knew they were
getting it from him. “I want to see you win,”
he said to them in his letters and telegrams. And here is some money to
help. By the time the congressmen got back to Washington in November,
after the elections, and talked to one another, the word was out. There
was a lot of gratitude for what Johnson had done, Walter Jenkins said:
“He was the hero.”
Moreover, the congressmen were going to need money for future
campaigns, and they had learned that a good way to get it—in some cases
the only way—was through Lyndon Johnson. “Gratitude,” I was to write,
“is an emotion as ephemeral in Washington as elsewhere, but … not
merely gratitude but an emotion perhaps somewhat stronger and more
enduring—self-interest—dictated that they be on good terms with him.” In
that single month, Lyndon Johnson, thirty-two years old, just three
years in the House, had established himself as a congressman with a
degree of influence over other congressmen, as a congressman who had
gained his first toehold on the national power he was to wield for the
next thirty years. For someone interested in the sources of political
power, as I was, those boxes in the Johnson Library contained
incontrovertible evidence of the use to which economic power could be
put to create political power.
To my way of thinking, I had just
one question left, and there was only one man who could answer it. I
might know the answer, but knowing it wasn’t proving it. Herman Brown
had died before I started on my Johnson books. I had to talk to George.
I
had known that wasn’t going to be easy. George and Herman had been
proud of their attitude toward interviewers; they had often boasted,
with some exaggeration, that neither of them had ever given an
interview, and that neither of them ever would. I had been trying to
talk to George ever since I started on Lyndon Johnson, with no results,
or indeed response. When I telephoned and left a message with his
secretary, he never called back; when I wrote him letters, there was no
reply. After I became friends with Brown & Root’s longtime chief
lobbyist, Frank (Posh) Oltorf, I asked Posh to intercede, and he did,
several times—after which he told me quite firmly that Mr. Brown was
never going to talk to me. And, if he didn’t, I was going to have a hard
time proving in my book why Brown & Root had
given the money—or, indeed, why in the decades after 1940 it had given
Lyndon Johnson such an immense amount of financial backing.
Sometimes
a sudden thought does the job. One day, I found myself in the little
Texas town of Burnet. In the courthouse square, among the weathered
storefronts, there was a handsome new building bearing the legend
“Herman Brown Free Library.”
All at once, something occurred to
me. George had loved and idolized his older brother, who had really been
more like a father to him. Since Herman’s death, George had been
building public monuments to him all over Texas, not only Herman Brown
public libraries but a Herman Brown Hall for Mathematical Sciences, at Rice University.
There
was a telephone booth nearby. From it I telephoned Posh, and asked him
to call George one more time. Posh said that he wasn’t going to do that.
I’m only asking you to call one more time, I said, and I want you to
say just one sentence: tell him that, no matter how many buildings he
puts Herman Brown’s name on, in a few years no one is going to know who
Herman Brown was if he’s not in a book.
I don’t
remember Posh’s reply, but he evidently made the call. The next morning,
very early, before I was awake, the phone rang, and it was Mr. Brown’s
secretary, asking what time would be convenient for me to meet with him.
At
the meeting, I thought that Mr. Brown and I got along very well. When I
was ushered into his office, I found myself with a
seventy-nine-year-old man who was almost blind but still vigorous and
clear of mind. After he and Herman had begun, in the nineteen-thirties,
to build the Marshall Ford Dam, the biggest project on which Brown &
Root had ever embarked, and had sunk much of the firm’s money into it,
they had found that, because of a quirk in the law, the dam was, in
Brown’s words, “illegal.” “We had already built the cableway. That cost
several hundred thousands of dollars, which we owed the banks… . We
had put in a million and a half dollars,” he explained to me. The
federal government was supposed to appropriate the money for the dam in
its 1937 session, but it had now been discovered that any appropriation
wouldn’t be legal. The Browns were facing bankruptcy. Johnson, new to
Congress though he was, had worked out a device to make the dam project
legal. And the Browns had been grateful. (“Remember that I am for
you, right or wrong, and it makes no difference if I think you are
right or wrong. If you want it, I am for it 100%,” George wrote him, in
another letter that I found.) And Johnson had done more for the Browns,
had seen to it that they received the biggest contract they had ever
received: to build the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station. He’d then seen
that they were given more contracts—contracts worth hundreds of millions
of dollars—to build subchasers and destroyers for the Navy, this
despite the fact that, as Mr. Brown told me, “We didn’t know the stern
from the aft—I mean the bow—of the boat.”
At the end of our
interview, which lasted an entire day, Mr. Brown said that he had
enjoyed it, and would I like to meet again. I said I would, and we went
to lunch at the Ramada Club. Afterward, he took me to see the legendary
“8-F,” Suite 8-F at Houston’s Lamar Hotel, where the biggest of Texas’s
big oilmen and contractors met to map out the state’s political future.
amazing article. those oil tax breaks basically underpinned the profitability of what was a very risky industry for decades. they played a key role in the fates of a lot of presidents. FDR, of course, was beholden to the three texans who held the position of speaker of the house in a row in the 1930s for passage of his new deal programs. later on, political scientist thomas ferguson pinpoints one of the key factors in the fall of carter and the rise of reagan in carter ending the oil depletion allowance. it was the 1980 election when the oil industry switched from backing democrats to backing republicans, where they have remained to this day. there was actually an earlier democratic president who apparently wanted to end it too: jfk. many conspiracy theories surrounding his assassination foreground figures who were members of suite 8-f, and their belief that they would have a friendly face in an lbj presidency.
