Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 23, 1993 TAG: 9309230017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The picture emerges from 30-year-old phone transcripts, the earliest recorded in the Johnson presidency, that were made public Wednesday by the National Archives.
The transcripts show that Johnson initially balked at the idea of having a federal commission investigate the Kennedy assassination.
"This is under Texas law. . . . We don't send in a bunch of carpetbaggers. . . . That's the worst thing we could do right now," Johnson told syndicated columnist and friend Joe Alsop in a phone conversation Nov, 25, 1963, three days after the assassination.
At the urging of aides, however, Johnson quickly realized that an independent panel was needed to allay fears of a conspiracy or coverup.
Four days after the Alsop conversation, Johnson appointed some of the nation's most prominent figures to the Warren Commission, which ultimately concluded that Kennedy had been killed by a single assailant, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The transcripts show, however, that the awesome tragedy that thrust Johnson into the Oval Office was not forgotten in the business of assuming the presidency.
"Needless to tell you, I'm most anxious for you to continue just like you have been, because I need you more than he did," Johnson told Kennedy congressional liaison Lawrence F. O'Brien on Nov. 25.
"I don't expect you to love me as much as you did him," Johnson told the man who was among the closest of Kennedy friends, "but I expect you will after we've been around awhile."
"Right, Mr. President," O'Brien replied.
The very first call recorded in the transcripts is one Johnson made aboard Air Force One less than a hour after he was sworn in as president and left Dallas with Kennedy's body. The recipient was Nellie Connally, the wife of Texas Gov. John Connally, who was wounded in the attack.
"We are praying with you, darling, and I know that everything is going to be all right, isn't it?" Johnson said. "God bless you darling. Give him a hug and a kiss for me."
At the same time, Johnson appeared eager to get Congress to pass any piece of legislation that would signal to the public his presidency was under way.
"I'm going to urge Congress to go ahead and act now, but I don't know what we're going to get out of them in the way of tax and civil rights in the next three weeks," Johnson confided in a telephone conversation with civil rights leader Whitney Young the day before Kennedy was buried. "We're just beginning to fight."
The transcripts showed that establishing a panel to investigate Kennedy's murder preoccupied Johnson during his first week in office.
Sensitive to procedural concerns and expressing some home-state parochialism, Johnson at first favored having a Texas panel do the work.
He quickly altered his views, listening to senior aides and legal experts who urged him to create a federal panel. Soon, he was arguing their view just as strenuously.
And Johnson's ability to massage powerful men into doing his bidding was evident when he persuaded Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia to serve on the commission headed by then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
"I don't like that man. . . . I don't have any confidence in him at all," Russell said of Warren in a phone conversation with Johnson.
Johnson replied, "You can serve with anybody for the good of America."
Russell continued to argue, and Johnson turned up the heat.
"You've never turned your country down," the president admonished him. "This is not me. This is your country."
Russell capitulated.
by CNB