The Path to Power (140 page)

W
HITE
, O
WEN
P.:
Texas: An Informal Biography
. New York: Putnam’s; 1945.

W
HITE
, T
HEODORE
H.:
America in Search of Itself
. New York: Harper; 1982.

———
In Search of History
. New York: Harper; 1978.

———
The Making of the President, 1960
. New York: Atheneum; 1961.

———
The Making of the President, 1964
. New York: Atheneum; 1965.

———
The Making of the President, 1968
. New York: Atheneum; 1969.

W
HITE
, W
ILLIAM
S
MITH
:
The Professional: Lyndon B. Johnson
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin; 1964.

W
ICKER
, T
OM
:
JFK and LBJ: The Influence of Personality upon Politics
. New York: Morrow; 1968.

W
ILSON
, R
ICHARD
W.,
AND
B
EULAH
F. D
UHOLM
:
A Genealogy: Bunton—Buntin—Bentun—Bunting
. Lake Hills, Iowa: Graphic; 1967.

W
OODWARD
, B
OB, AND
S
COTT
A
RMSTRONG
:
The Brethren
. New York: Simon and Schuster; 1980.

WPA:
Texas: A Guide to the Lone Star State
. New York: Hastings House; 1940.

———
Washington: City and Capital
. Washington, D.C.: G.P.O.; 1937.

ABBREVIATIONS

Greenbrier scene and Marsh’s offer:
Described to the author by George Brown. Confirmed by Lady Bird Johnson, who was not on the blanket, but who was at the Greenbrier that week and was present at discussions of Marsh’s offer, of which she says: “It certainly would have done a lot for our financial security.” She recalls that “Charles was saying that a great future lay ahead of him (Lyndon) and he ought not to have to worry about money, and this would free him from such cares.” Also confirmed by two other members of the group at the Greenbrier, Sam Houston Johnson and by Marsh’s private secretary, Mary Louise Glass Young. Mrs.
Young says Marsh’s offer was worth not three-quarters of a million but a million dollars, and that during the discussions that week of Marsh’s offer, people would say to Johnson, attempting to persuade him to accept it: “Lyndon, it’s a
million
dollars!”
“Burn this”:
For example, on Johnson to Luther E. Jones, Dec. 6, 1931, Jones Papers. “He loses”: Malone,
Jefferson and His Time
, Vol. I, p. xi.

Buying votes in San Antonio:
See p. 277.
Money in Johnson’s own campaigns:
See Chapters 34, 35.
His use of money in others’ campaigns:
See Chapters 32, 35.

“The greatest electoral victory”:
Theodore H. White,
The Making of the President, 1968
, p. 22.

One of the richest men:
Life
, Aug. 21, 1964, examined the Johnson holdings in detail, and estimated their total value at “approximately $14,000,000”—even without the assets of what
Life
described as “a somewhat mysterious entity called the Brazos-Tenth Street Company,” an Austin firm whose activities were tightly interwoven with the Johnsons’. “If the assets of Brazos-Tenth are added—as many knowledgeable Texans think they should be—the total rounds off at more than $15,000,000,”
Life
said.

Public estimates by Johnson’s own financial advisors were much lower. In the
Life
article, for example, the principal trustee of Johnson’s financial interests, A. W. Moursund, placed the figure at “about $4,000,000.” In that same year, the White House released its own financial statement, which placed the Johnson capital at $3,484,000. However, the
Wall Street Journal
, in analyzing that statement, said that “by employing a number of technically accepted accounting devices, it projects a grossly understated idea of the current dimensions of the Johnson fortune.” (Kohlmeier, “The Johnsons’ Balance Sheet,”
The Wall Street Journal
, Aug. 20, 1964.) The true market value of the Johnson broadcasting interests alone is estimated at $7 million, the
Journal
reported on Mar. 23, 1964; “one broadcasting executive who is not associated with the corporation but who has long known the Johnsons indicates that net earnings may now exceed $500,000 annually.” Private estimates by some of Johnson’s financial advisors are much higher than the publicized estimates. In its Aug. 20, 1964, article, the
Journal
noted that “Some intimates back home in Austin calculate it [the Johnsons’ net worth] would be in the neighborhood of $20,000,000.” Even this figure is considered low by the attorney who was for twenty years one of Johnson’s most trusted advisors in Texas, Edward A. Clark, partner of the powerful Austin law firm named, at the time of Johnson’s Presidency, Clark, Thomas, Harris, Denius and Winters, the firm that handled the bulk of the Johnson family financial interests. The author asked Clark the worth of these interests at the time Lyndon Johnson became President. Several days later he replied, after apparently checking his firm’s records: “It would have been—you mean his net worth?—about $25,000,000 at the time.”

If these higher estimates are correct, during the twenty-one years following the purchase of the Johnson radio station—twenty-one years during which Lyndon Johnson continually held public office—the Johnson fortune increased at a rate of close to a million dollars per year.

Among the articles valuable for a discussion of the Johnson wealth is the
Wall Street Journal
article quoted above and articles in the same newspaper on Mar. 23, 1964, and Aug. 11, 1964; the
Washington Evening Star
, June 9, 1964;
Newsday
, May 27, 28, 29, 1964.

“Springing up side by side”:
Wall Street Journal
, “The Johnson Wealth,” Mar. 23, 1964.
Largely fiction:
Among the many articles of the time that showed his connection with the broadcasting business that was in his wife’s name are the
Washington Evening Star
, June 9, 1964; the
Wall Street Journal
, Mar. 23, 1964 (“President Johnson, as Well as His Wife, Appears to Hold Big Personal Fortune”);
Life
, Aug. 21, 1964;
Newsday
, May 27, 1964.
Worth $7 million:
Wall Street Journal
, Mar. 23, 1964; confirmed by Clark;
Life
put the worth of the radio-television interests at $8,600,000.

A “blind trust”:
When Johnson became President, he announced that he was placing all his business affairs in a so-called “blind trust,” with which he said he would have no connection so long as he was President. The principal trustee was A. W. Moursund, who did not respond to the author’s requests for an interview. But during much of Johnson’s Presidency, Moursund’s partner in the Johnson City law firm of Moursund and Ferguson was Thomas C. Ferguson, a longtime Johnson ally in Hill Country politics, a former judge and a former chairman of the State Board of Insurance. Ferguson says that shortly after he became President, Johnson had a direct line installed in that law
office that connected it to both the White House and the Johnson Ranch on the Pedernales. Ferguson says that there was on the phones in both his and Moursund’s offices “a button that wasn’t labeled anything, but when you pushed that, you got the White House’s board in Washington.” Moursund had a similar line in his home, Ferguson says. The author asked Ferguson if Johnson conducted personal business over these telephone lines. “Oh, yeah,” Ferguson replied. “He and Moursund were talking every day.” During the Presidency? the author asked. “Oh, yeah. I don’t guess there was a—You see, Moursund was trustee of all his property: one of these blind trusts—it wasn’t very blind. ’Cause every night he told Moursund what to do. …” Often, Ferguson said, the two men talked at night. “Johnson,” he said, “would go to bed … and lay there in bed and talk to Moursund.” Most of the talk, Ferguson says, concerned the many businesses—banking, radio and television broadcasting, ranching—in which the President or his family had financial interests. “A lot of [it] was Johnson saying to Moursund, ‘Well, I want to do this,’ ‘I want to do that’—‘I want to get this piece of land,’ ‘I want to stock certain places and certain things.’ And of course at that time anything Moursund said stood up throughout the Johnson properties … and he would carry out what the President would tell him he wanted done. … It was a very unblind trust as far as that trust was concerned.” And did Ferguson himself conduct business for Johnson while Johnson was President? “Myself? Oh, yes,” Ferguson said, and gave details of a number of business transactions. He said that the President would also be in frequent communication with Jesse C. Kellam, president of the Texas Broadcasting Corporation, key to the Johnson broadcasting empire whose name had been changed from the LBJ Corporation when Johnson became President, and would give Kellam instructions as to the conduct of that business.

The other law firm involved was Clark, Thomas, Harris, Denius and Winters. Edward A. Clark, Johnson’s Ambassador to Australia during his Presidency, had, for twenty years before that, been a key Texas ally of the President, and, since the death of Alvin Wirtz in 1951, his right-hand man in confidential state political matters as well as the attorney through whom he handled much of his personal business. Clark’s account of Johnson’s business dealings as President will be recounted in detail in the later volumes; on the subject in general, he said that Johnson sometimes spent several hours a day during his Presidency conducting personal business. The author asked him to check this point. At their next interview, Clark said he knew this because, “Heck, we keep a record of a client’s calls.” He said he would not allow the author to see that record. He said that only some of this time was spent speaking to him, but that he knew Johnson was spending considerable additional time discussing business affairs with Moursund, because they were affairs in which he, Clark, was involved. And, like Ferguson, Clark said that the President also frequently spent time on the phone with Jesse Kellam. Clark said that the use of direct lines ensured that White House telephone logs and operators would have no record of these calls. Kellam would not discuss these matters with the author.

During Johnson’s Presidency, the existence of the private telephone lines was reported in an article by a team of
Wall Street Journal
reporters who conducted an unusually thorough investigation of Johnson’s financial situation. On August 11, 1964, the
Journal
reported that Moursund “is linked by private telephone circuit to the LBJ Ranch and the White House. He can pick up his phone and almost instantaneously talk with the President.” Nonetheless, Moursund told the
Journal
that because of the trust, “the Johnsons don’t know what is going on” in their businesses. The
Journal
said that Moursund was “heated” in “declaring that certain business operations are entirely independent of any Johnson interest—and never mind confusing ‘clues’ to the contrary”; the
Journal
then detailed many such clues.

Books, articles, brochures, and documents:
ON THE HILL COUNTRY:

Billington,
Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier;
Fehrenbach,
Lone Star
(of the many general histories of Texas, Fehrenbach’s most faithfully reflects contemporary accounts of early life in the Hill Country and views of it given by the children and grandchildren of its founders); Frantz and White,
Limestone and Log: A Hill Country Sketchbook;
Gillespie County Historical
Society,
Pioneers in God’s Hills;
Goodwyn,
Democratic Promise;
Graves,
Hard Scrabble
and
Texas Heartland: A Hill Country Year;
Jordan,
German Seed in Texas Soil;
Kendall,
Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition;
Maguire,
A President’s Country;
Marshall,
Prophet of the Pedernales;
Moursund,
Blanco County Families for One Hundred Years;
Olmsted,
A Journey Through
Texas; Pelzer,
The Cattleman’s Frontier;
Porterfield,
LBJ Country;
Schawe, ed.,
Wimberley’s Legacy;
Speer,
A History of Blanco County;
Thomas, ed.,
Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth;
Webb,
The Great Frontier
and
The Great Plains;
Webb and Carroll,
Handbook of Texas;
WPA, Texas:
A Guide to the Lone Star State
.

Bessie Brigham, “The History of Education in Blanco County” (unpublished Master’s Thesis), Austin, 1935.

Darton, “Texas: Our Largest State,”
National Geographic
magazine, Dec., 1913; Joseph S. Hall, ed., “Horace Hall’s Letters from Gillespie County, Texas, 1871–1873,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly
, Jan., 1959; Jones, “What Drought Means,”
NYT
magazine, Dec. 23, 1956; Mary Nunley, “The Interesting Life Story of a Pioneer Mother,”
Frontier Times
, Aug., 1927, pp. 17–21; Edwin Shrake, “Forbidding Land,”
Sports Illustrated
, May 10, 1965.