Wheeling and Dealing

The onetime Presidential crony and political "fixer" finally tells his story:

How sex was peddled to Senators for votes.

How a football franchise was bought in the Senate.

How J.F.K. bartered a quashed indictment for an OK of his nuclear-arms treaty.

What L.B.J. really thought of the Kennedys.

How the Watergate Gang tried to dig up dirt on the Democrats.

I had Never Believed that I would go to jail.

Even during sensational Congressional hearings fueled by some Senators who loved to see their names in print (while others may have feared that same fate, should I tell all I was presumed to know), even through countless investigations by FBI and tax agents, even through Federal-grand-jury proceedings culminating in my indictment on nine criminal counts, even through the long trial and my subsequent conviction, and through the endlessly complex appeal processes, I simply had not believed that I would be sent to jail.

Certainly, I had not believed it on that October day in 1963 when--not a little angry and drunk--I impulsively resigned as Secretary to the Majority of the United States Senate.

Nor had I believed it, seven years later almost to the day, when the U.S. Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the findings of my trial judge, Federal judge Oliver Gasch of the District of Columbia.

In my secret parts, I refused to accept that I was jail bound even after the Supreme Court of the United States, just before Christmas in 1970, denied my petition for certiorari. That meant that my legal appeals were exhausted and that I must prepare to live in prison for a maximum period of three years.

As the family car pulled away from my home in the Spring Valley section of Northwest Washington, where I'd once been a neighbor to Lyndon B. Johnson, I was obliged at last to re-examine my faith in miracles. It dawned with a physical finality that only a car wreck could prevent my surrendering the next morning to U.S. marshals in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, there to begin my term in Federal prison.

It would be convenient to the art of storytelling if I could claim that during that long ride over hazardous highways, I mused on how Bobby Baker had fallen so far and so fast. Bobby Baker: pal of Presidents, advisor to the mighty, a political mover and shaker, hailed as "the 101st Senator" by, among others, John F. Kennedy. "The last man I see at night," Lyndon Johnson often had said, "and the first man I see every morning."

Bobby Baker, who'd been rumored as a possible future governor or Senator from his native South Carolina and who had not been entirely innocent of savoring that rumor. Bobby Baker, who had cavorted with lobbyists and show folk and athletic heroes as well as the political biggies, and whose country-boy heart perhaps had enjoyed it a shade too much. Bobby Baker, who had been at least a paper millionaire, a kid up from scratch and a compulsive hustler. Bobby Baker, who had assisted Senators in their well-intended public programs as well as in their less noble--if entirely human--ambitions of money and the flesh.

The truth is, however, that on that night ride toward Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, I was alternately morose and pointlessly manic. Not for a long time would I become introspective about my life; not for longer still would I begin to understand much of what had happened to me, or why, or be able even to marginally sort out which portions of the blame might accrue solely to me or which portions might properly be assigned to other men or institutions. It is an ongoing process and probably shall continue throughout my life.

•

On the morning of June 1, 1972, my prison ordeal was over. I slept little on my final night and arose in great excitement. The press knew I was coming out of jail; a covey of reporters and cameramen awaited me. I said to them, "Sixteen months and eighteen days ago, I told you I would do my duty and do it with honor. I have. Thank you." I did not respond to their questions but ducked into the car driven by my wife and set out toward the free life. In fact, given the pillorying I'd taken from the press, I rather enjoyed being in a position of not giving a damn that its members stood on the side of the road and howled for more particulars as we sped away. Once we arrived in Washington, there was a pleasant surprise: Old friends--not elected politicians but people I'd worked with, drunk with, done business with, gone to football games with--had arranged a welcome-home party for me at Duke Zeibert's Restaurant. They gave me a standing ovation when I walked in. Did it make me feel good? You're damn right it did. I'd been a little short on standing ovations for quite a while.

I had no way of knowing that only 16 days later a band of burglars would break into an office in the Watergate complex and that their capture, in time, would cause the Nixon Administration to apply the screws and threaten me with yet another stretch in jail.

•

I originally arrived in Washington in 1942, innocent in my half-formed belief that Congress comprised a collection of nature's noblemen come together to form a more perfect Union. The scales eventually would drop from my eyes.

In retrospect, I suppose one might say that I had a little of Sammy Glick in me. Ambition was honorable in the society I had been raised in; however, I tried constantly to learn, to serve, to improve myself.

One learned, too, the human frailties harbored by each Senator. Senator Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri, when sober, was a kind and gentle man. When drunk, however, he became an abusive tyrant, one who railed and cussed at his subordinates. Consequently, I danced attendance upon Senator Clark in the early part of the day and then, as the hours passed and he began to show signs of inebriation, I made myself scarce. I learned that Republican Senator Charles McNary of Oregon, an Irishman with a twinkle in his eye and a man I much admired for his friendly countenance and ability, simply could not see a skirt pass by without compulsively chasing it. For a while, I distrusted Senator Robert Wagner, Sr., of New York--a truly nice man--because, as part of the normal initiation rites, he once sent me to the Senate Document Room to fetch a nonexistent "bill stretcher."

Of all the Senators in my early Washington years, my favorite was a small, unassuming man from Missouri. Harry Truman was the most genteel man I ever met. Not once did I see him act imperiously toward lowly page boys. "Young man," he would say--not "Sonny," as so many called us--"Young man, when it's convenient, could you please get me a glass of water?" Or, "Young man, would you mind calling my secretary and asking her to send me such and so?" In any popularity contest among page boys or Senators, I think Truman would have won in a landslide.

From my earliest days as a knickers-clad page boy, I had heard whispers of what Senator might be entertaining his secretary on the office couch, which Senator's legs had betrayed him in chambers or in a hideaway office after a five-martini lunch and what Senators had their hands out. These originally were little more than rumors, the prattle of subordinates spying on their masters, and sometimes may have been suspect in the specifics. As I climbed in the Senate hierarchy, however, I would find them true in a general sense and come to know my own secrets.

One of my earliest discoveries was that the storied Capitol Building--so massive and awesome to the eye with its grand expanses of marble, impressive columns, burnished desks, silk drapes and general aura of polish--contained dozens and dozens of hideaway nooks and crannies not visible to the naked eye; it was as if the original architects had anticipated that legislators might require a special solitude, though I'm uncertain as to whether they knew the extent to which many Senators would utilize the hideaway nests for their private recreations. These spaces were highly coveted by the powerful, and particularly by the playful.

I learned early on that should one be asked to seek out one of the hidden offices and gently rap on the door as a signal that the Senator locked away there should hurry to the legislative chamber, one should not assume that the Senator is alone. Such Senators as Dennis Chavez of New Mexico, Tom Hennings of Missouri, Burnet Maybank of my home state, Pete Williams of New Jersey or Clair Engle of California might be having no more than a quick visit with John Barleycorn. Old or new ladyfriends, however, might be found in the company of the Alben Barkleys, Estes Kefauvers, Jack Kennedys, Lyndon Johnsons or Bob Kerrs, among others. (Senator Kerr was not, strictly speaking, a compulsive skirt chaser: For years, he carried on what amounted to a monogamous love affair with one of his secretaries, who later was paid--according to what she told me--$50,000 to not write her memoirs.)

Although I partied with certain Senators and made informal introductions of others to eager young ladies who'd let it be known they were out for a good time, I drew the line at furnishing them professionals. Only once was I literally badgered to produce a woman for a Senator's gratification. He was a deep-dyed Southerner, a real mushmouth whose name I do not intend to use, because he's still alive, still in the Senate and probably needs no more problems.

The Senator telephoned my office one afternoon, sounding as if he'd been locked up in a bourbon distillery for about three days, to insist that I find a lady to accommodate his passions. I said, "Senator, I just wouldn't know how to go about that." He called again a few minutes later to insist that I bring a woman to his Virginia home. "My wife's away and my dick's so hard a cat wouldn't scratch it," he said. "I'll pay real good." Again, I demurred. The third time the statesman called, he said, "Bobby, I'm gonna keep on callin' you till pussy shows up on my doorstep. And if you don't bring me pussy, I ain't bringing you no more votes." I said I'd see what I could do.

I walked to a hotel bar near the Senate, where I knew a young cocktail waitress rumored to do a little minor-league hustling in her spare time. Wayne Bromley, a lobbyist friend, went with me. "I don't want to know anything about the arrangements," I told the cocktail waitress, "but I know where there's a horny Senator with money in his pocket." She said give her a few minutes to find someone to replace her on the shift.

Bromley, the girl and I drove out to a well-appointed home about 20 minutes from Capitol Hill. When we arrived, the randy Senator was standing in the center of his dining room, holding on to the table with both hands; despite such support, he was swaying in invisible breezes. "Senator," I said, "this is Miss Smith and she's your date for the afternoon."

The Senator looked past me, squinted at the woman and said, "Honey, less me and you fuck." The girl later told a friend of mine that she'd extracted $100 and cab fare. The Southern Senator in question tended to avoid me for a while after that, but I found that his vote was easier to obtain than previously.

If you can't always tell a book by its cover, then the same may be said for some Senators. When Estes Kefauver of Tennessee died, after establishing his public image as a warmaker against organized crime and corporate gougers or bilkers, many were shocked to learn that a large chunk of his $300,000 estate was made up of stock in drug companies he had been charged with regulating.

I was not the least bit shocked. For one thing, I'd long heard stories that Senator Kefauver was among those Senators who willingly put themselves up for sale; he didn't particularly care whether he was paid in coin or in women. What always amazed me was that the press didn't tumble to the story. More than once, Senator Kefauver skated on the thin ice of trouble by attempting to seduce women, one of them a comely newswoman, through tactics bordering on the strong-armed; I recall fretting within Democratic circles, after he'd been nominated for Vice-President in 1956, that such dangerous news might become public.

I once delivered $25,000 in cash that was earmarked for Senator Kefauver. I handed the money over to a Kefauver staff man in his committee office in the old Senate Office Building. That, in itself, was a violation of the law. It's forbidden even to hand over a legitimate campaign contribution--to say nothing of an out-and-out bribe--on Federal property.

I can't say that the staff man knew what the money was for, but I certainly knew it was for the purpose of the Kefauver subcommittee's finding that George Preston Marshall, owner of the Washington Redskins football team, held an illegal monopoly with his so-called Redskin Television Network. This network profitably televised the Redskins games throughout the Southern states.

The money to influence the Kefauver decision had been paid by certain interests in Texas. It was delivered to me by one of the Texans' employees who knew his way around the back rooms of power. I, in turn, handed it over to the Kefauver staff man. More is implied than stated in such transactions. As I recall, I handed him the money in a briefcase the courier had given me and simply said, "I hope you'll get this to the Senator with the compliments of some Texas friends." He nodded, accepted the briefcase without comment and launched into a discussion of Democratic politics.

People who wonder why the Dallas Cowboys--Washington Redskins football rivalry seems to be among the most bitter in the National Football League may better understand after reading this story. A group of Texans badly wanted to gain a profitable N.F.L. franchise for Dallas. They ran into trouble in the form of stiff opposition from Marshall, the Redskins' owner, who as one of the founding fathers of the N.F.L. claimed unusual power and influence.

Marshall was by then an old man and an old-fashioned racist who wouldn't hire a black player until Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall forced it by a political power play in 1961. Udall simply told Marshall that his lily-white football team would not be permitted to play in the new D.C. stadium, built with tax funds, unless blacks joined the squad. The Redskins then signed Bobby Mitchell, the fleet running back who'd starred at the University of Illinois.

Marshall long had considered the South to be his team's natural territory and his personal preserve. He was adamantly against sharing the South with a Texas-based team certain to divide regional loyalties at the expense of his pocketbook; at the time Dallas went into the league, the N.F.L. had no Southern-based team. Marshall's proprietary instinct, wholly robber baron in character, may well have been rejected by an honest subcommittee; but with millions at stake, the Texans took no chances.

I was approached by the courier, whom I knew as a fellow reveler and high roller in Washington.

"Bobby," he said over drinks in my office, "my job and my ass are on the line. I've got to lock up that damn football franchise for Texas and I've been told not to leave any stone unturned."

I remember that it was after hours and my office--with the employees gone--was as hushed as a corporate lawyer's on Wall Street. In the quiet, I said, "Have you got any money to spend?"

"Sure," he said. "But how much?"

I said, "I don't have any idea. But you need to see Senator Kefauver. Explain your problem. If I know Estes Kefauver, he'll play the ball once you put it in his court."

The courier said, "Can you arrange the appointment?"

I said, "No sweat."

I arranged the appointment. The next thing I knew, the courier brought a briefcase into my office, handed it over and said, "There's $25,000 cash in there. Will you get it to a fellow named so-and-so?" And I did.

Clint Murchison, Jr., a powerful Texas industrialist, later applied whimsical thumbscrews to Marshall in an effort to remove his opposition to the Dallas franchise. In company with my law partner, Ernest Tucker--and at Clint's suggestion--I bought from composer Barnee Breeskin the rights to the Redskins' official song, Hail to the Redskins. Barnee, fortunately for our cause, found himself in financial straits at the time we approached him and eagerly accepted our offer without knowing why we wanted the song--which Marshall, generally a shrewd businessman, had astonishingly neglected to buy. You couldn't make that sort of basic boo-boo when engaged in a pissing contest with the Murchisons. Anyhow, Tucker and I bought the song for $2500. Our price for the Redskins' being able to continue to use the song: withdrawal of Marshall's opposition to the Dallas N.F.L. franchise. Since Marshall's band was left with only Dixie as an alternate fight song, we got what we asked. The Murchisons, naturally, had provided the $2500 to buy the song. Thus, for peanuts, they (continued on page 176) Wheeling and Dealing (continued from page 114) assured themselves of a franchise now probably worth $20,000,000.

The Murchisons understood how business sometimes was done in the hardball world of Washington politics. Although in 1960 the Murchisons backed Richard Nixon for President, and gave him Lord knows how much money, they had their Washington operative bring a bet-hedging $10,000 in cash for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket. The loyal courier and I flew to New York City, where, outside an office building owned by the Kennedy family, we traded handshakes with Bobby Kennedy and then handed him the money in a white envelope. He whisked it to the safety of his inner coat pocket and, as with so many people to whom I have made cash deliveries, seemed eager to see our departing dust.

•

Money flew fast and loose on Capitol Hill in the Fifties and Sixties. As we learned in the later Watergate investigations and in more recent scandals involving the buying of Congressmen by the government of South Korea, it still does. There's another verse to that song: As long as men and women in politics, or in the business world, thirst for power and the good life, it always will. No matter how many ethics committees or codes of conduct or campaign expenditure laws are passed, the eager and the greedy will find ways to get theirs. "Money talks and bullshit walks," my father used to say; I've never found a reason to disagree with him.

No one ever bought me for cash, though I mindlessly imitated the common practice of many Senators, and the prevailing institutional mores, in accepting more subtle forms of bribery. I realize that now; had I stopped to examine the original values instilled in me, I would have realized it then. Like many a country boy exposed to the bright lights and the good life, however, I enjoyed it and wanted more. More wine. More women. More song. More money. More power.

My social friends, from the time I reached my mid-20s, were almost all powerful men, whether Senators or businessmen. They had far more money than I, enjoyed more perks, lived better. Not only did I want to share the good life with them, it was a point of pride to carry my financial weight in their company. I did not want to accept their charity by having them pick up my checks or consider me to any degree a moocher or a dead beat. In short, I faced the old problem of keeping up with the Joneses--and those Joneses could not be kept up with on a Government salary ranging at various times between $10,000 and $19,000 annually.

I therefore entered into business deals with Senators, lobbyists, a J.F.K. Cabinet member and other public officials or former politicians. I have no doubt that those opportunities would not have come had I been anyone but who I was. I have no doubt that the hundreds of thousands of dollars I borrowed from banks, and the generous lines of credit they extended to me, often through the intervention of Senator Kerr--who was, after all, the second-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, and therefore influential in tax matters--might not have been so readily available had I not been Bobby Baker and well connected at the top. No question about it.

Invariably, as one became trusted by Senators and then friendly with them, there would be opportunities to get in on the ground floor: to make investments or buy stock in cases where maybe somebody knew a little something nobody else knew. Such as what specific ruling might soon be expected from a regulatory agency. Or what parcel of land might be going up in value due to the coming of a new highway or housing development or military base. Sometimes the young employee offered such opportunities didn't know whether his sponsor knew anything or not, or what it might be if he did, but you didn't ask questions in the absence of volunteered details.

My investments did not immediately excite Dun & Bradstreet, though I made money at a more rapid clip than I'd been accustomed to. As the years passed, I became increasingly friendly with Senator Kerr, who was a wealthy co-owner of Kerr-McGee Oil Industries, as well as blooded cattle, ranches, real-estate developments, banks, blue-chip stocks and you name it; there's no doubt that he was the richest man in the Senate when he died on January 1, 1963. Money was Senator Kerr's god; given our budding friendship and his preoccupation with money, it seems only natural that he would have given me my first investment opportunity.

In 1949, Senator Kerr offered me the opportunity to buy 100 shares in Kerr-McGee Oil. "It's a growing company, Bobby," he told me. "Nothing's a sure shot unless you've got a gun, but this is the next thing to it." That was good enough for me. Although I was going to George Washington University at night, and then to law school classes; although my salary was only about $6500 and my net worth, including furniture, could not have been more than $5000, I rushed home to Pickens to borrow the necessary $3300 from an attorney named Julien Wyatt. He let me have it on my signature. Before long, I'd made about a $10,000 profit on Senator Kerr's advice.

George Smathers, the urbane and handsome junior Senator from Florida, offered my next investment opportunity. Smathers, his assistant Scotty Peek and I shared a high appreciation for the good life. We all had a little high roller in us; we'd reveled together a bit by the time Senator Smathers suggested I buy stock in the Winn-Dixie company in the amount of $2100. I bought in and made a small profit. A bit later, Smathers permitted me to buy into a land deal near Orlando and I eventually made about $7000 as my end of the profits. I learned through Smathers, chairman of the Transportation Subcommittee, of a pending railroad merger of Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard and bought into both companies on a small scale, ultimately realizing about $1000 in gains. As Secretary to the Majority, I inquired as to the status of the postal-rate bill and learned from the staff of Senator Olin Johnston's Post Office and Civil Service Committee that low mass-mail postal rates would continue. I therefore bought stock in the Spiegel Mail Order House, at ten cents on the dollar, and made more than $10,000. Other and bigger investments would come later, and those would cause me grief in time, but at the moment, I was satisfied with my connections and felt that at last I might be on my way.

To Senator Kerr, the answer to everything was money. If you had enough of it, you could do anything you wanted. If you didn't, then you were unlikely to accomplish very much and you simply were not a free man. Like many a good businessman, Bob Kerr knew that it took money to make money. He knew the value of investments and he held that not all investments had to be made in stocks and bonds or commodities or real properties: You could buy people. He would make loans or campaign contributions or gifts to his colleagues if it would woo their votes for his favored causes. Many of his favored causes, of course, put money into his own pocket. Senator Kerr could look upon an "investment" in another Senator as simply a smart business practice, another form of refurbishing the factory or retooling the machines. Where Senator Johnson at least worried about the appearances of (continued on page 236) Wheeling and Dealing (continued from page 176) conflict-of-interest actions, Bob Kerr openly defended his pursuit of the almighty dollar whether to friend or to critic. "It happens that my personal interests coincide with those of Oklahoma," he liked to say. "It's a happy union and I don't apologize for it."

Where Lyndon Johnson never suggested even the straightest investment opportunity, Senator Kerr urged me to accumulate and to build the largest possible fortune. "Money is the most powerful substance known to man," he said. "A man who doesn't have money can't operate. Why, if I don't have at least $5000 on me as pocket change, I'm afraid that taxi drivers won't pick me up."

Senator Kerr didn't confine himself to Capitol Hill in attempting to buy influential friends. He once astonished Interior Secretary Stewart Udall by saying, "Mr. Secretary, you're from Arizona and you ought to be in the cattle business. I'd be happy to help you get started." Udall said, well, he didn't have the money to start a herd and, besides, he had about all he could handle attending to his job as a Cabinet member. "That's no problem," Senator Kerr airily said. "I'll sell you the brood stock to begin your own herd and you can have them on credit. Pay when it's handy." Udall declined the offer: He didn't own enough land to run a big herd. "Hell," Senator Kerr said, "let me keep your herd on my land. My ranch hands can look after 'em for you and sell off the beef when the time comes. It won't cost you a cent. You can claim your herd when you've got your own land--and I'll make you a loan to buy the land." Udall, who as Interior Secretary was the keeper of vast oil reserves, knew another potential Teapot Dome when he saw it, and so he mumbled his thanks and took his leave. Senator Kerr approached the matter another time or two before giving up on Udall.

I discovered in 1962 that if Senator Kerr bought some Senators, he was not above putting himself up for sale should the price be right.

President Kennedy had sent to the Senate a tax bill that would have taxed savings-and-loan companies at the rate the commercial banks were taxed on their profits; this would have amounted to about a five percent increase in taxes for those institutions. We are talking about $43,000,000. Really big money. Predictably, the savings-and-loan boys reacted as if they'd found a dead mouse in their soup kettle. Despite all the savings-and-loan people could do--and their members from all across the nation descended on Washington like a swarm of locusts in a lettuce field, buttonholing their Senators and Representatives in an effort to stop the bill--it went forward. The Senate Finance Committee favorably reported the tax bill out on July 10, 1962; the bill passed the full Senate on September sixth of that year. Since the House had passed a slightly different version, it became necessary for a conference committee, comprised of members of both legislative bodies, to iron out the differences and present a bill acceptable to both bodies.

What happened then is the story as I told it at my subsequent trial: I was approached by Glen Troop, chief lobbyist for the United States Savings and Loan League, who was an old friend, and he was having conniptions. "Bobby, that fucking bill will ruin us," he said. "We figure it will cost us a minimum of $43,000,000 annually. We just can't live with it. My ass is on the line. Help me."

"What can I do?" I asked.

"Give us some help with Senator Kerr," he said. "He's on the conference committee and he can kill or amend that bill."

I said, "Are you crazy? He's one of the sponsors of that bill. He's a commercial banker and he's not favorably disposed toward your people."

We were eating lunch in the Quorum Club and I paused over my steak to permit Troop to respond. He said, "Bobby, we'll do anything to kill that bill."

"Well," I said, "I'll have to go to Senator Kerr carrying a lot of ammunition. I can't just say, 'The poor savings-and-loan boys have stepped in deep shit and I'd appreciate your helping 'em out.' Frankly, I doubt there's much that can be done. Your arguments have been presented in committee and on the floor in both houses and you got your ass beat."

Troop urged me to have lunch with several of his clients, top guns of the nation's larger savings-and-loan companies. He set it up at the Statler-Hilton. Among those who attended were Kenneth Childs, representing the Home Savings and Loan Association, which had 23 branches and more than two billion dollars in assets; Howard Ahmanson, board chairman of the Home Savings and Loan Association; Stuart Davis, a director of Great Western Financial Corporation; Charles Wellman of the First Charter Financial Corporation; Glen Troop also was present. I did not feel they made a strong case, and so--a few days later, after having told them to come to me with more compelling arguments--I hosted a luncheon for the same executives in my Capitol Hill office. Again, they failed to overwhelm me with information. Ultimately, however--at Troop's urging and because he was my good friend--I approached Senator Kerr and began to lay out their case.

Senator Kerr astonished me by cutting me off in midsentence. "My friend," he said, "I have no sympathy for those bastards. I'm a commercial banker and I feel strongly that they should pay equal taxes. But if you trust the people you're dealing with, tell them it will cost them $400,000 if I'm successful in their behalf."

I simply couldn't believe it. Couldn't find any words to say. While I knew that Senator Kerr worshiped money, I couldn't believe he'd reverse himself on a bill important to commercial bankers, himself included. Yet he was saying that for $400.000 he'd sell out his banker buddies.

"This won't be an easy job," he grumbled. "Jack Kennedy and Wilbur Mills are allied for the bill. I'll be fighting the entire power apparatus. And I'll need my money in cash."

When I found my voice, I said, "Senator, can you stop or amend the bill at this late date?"

He said shortly, "If I didn't think I could, I wouldn't make the proposition."

When I reported that conversation to Troop, the lobbyist dropped his mouth open and said, "Jesus shit!" Then he said, "Let me talk to my people and get back to you. I'm not at all sure we can raise that much money."

I secretly felt relieved and half hoped he could not raise it. I'd started feeling uneasy about my role in the scheme. Not that I permitted myself to think it through and say to myself, Baker, you're breaking the law. Don't do it. Don't get involved in a conspiracy. No, I pushed those thoughts away. But I did feel vaguely uneasy and had bad karma. Even though I'd seen a lot and had closed my eyes to a lot, that one felt different. How many times since have I wished I'd listened to those nervous ripples within myself!

Within hours, however, Troop called me back and said, "Tell your man he's got a deal."

[Kerr eventually received only partial payment, according to Baker's testimony. There was further testimony at the trial that both supported and contradicted Baker's account of the Kerr cash incident.]

•

I grew closer each day to Lyndon Johnson. Soon I was one of the guests he often took to his Northwest Washington home, on 30th Place and across the street from J. Edgar Hoover's house, to share dinner on short notice. Poor Mrs. Johnson. Nightly, she telephoned the office, about 6:30 P.M., to urge her husband to come home for dinner and to rest. Most likely, he'd promise to be home in an hour. An hour later, she'd call and he'd ask for 30 minutes more. By ten o'clock, perhaps, he'd telephone to say, "We're on the way. And I'm bringing a few folks with me." He might take two or he might take five. Mrs. Johnson bore those invasions of guests, who'd already sampled the grape during late sessions in her husband's office, with patient grace; her cook, Zephyr Wright, often grumbled of late meals and of not being given an earlier and reliable head count. Perhaps after arriving home, full of talk and liquor, L.B.J. would want another Scotch and soda or two before going to the table. Once seated, however, he ate like a starved dog. I've seen him wolf down god-awful platters of the heavy Southern cooking he preferred; it's little wonder that he suffered massive heart attacks, the way he drove himself and given his habits of food, drink and cigarettes.

I enjoyed drinking with Johnson, and though we shared the cup many times, I judged him drunk on only four or five occasions. Indeed, he often lectured his employees, associates and, in particular, his only brother, Sam Houston Johnson, on the evils of drink.

In more private circumstances, in his office at night or in his house, Johnson was not so particular. Once, when we were celebrating one or another of his legislative victories, we got absolutely belly-crawling, grass-grabbing drunk. Leaving his Majority Leader's office in the Capitol, I slipped on the marble floor and reflexively clutched at him as I went down; we ended in a tangled heap. "Goddamn, Bobby," L.B.J. said, "help me up before the damned Republicans see us."

Johnson had an eye for the ladies, though he was not as compulsive about it as John F. Kennedy. He loved to hear gossip of Kennedy's sexual escapades; I was in a position to keep him posted on numerous occasions. J.F.K. knew that I'd helled around in the company of ladies other than my wife, and, in fact, I made it possible for Kennedy himself to meet a couple of lovelies in whom he'd expressed pointed interest. Consequently, when President Kennedy occasionally summoned me to the White House to discuss pending legislation or some political problem, he frequently ended the sessions by amazingly frank recitations of a recent sexual adventure.

After one such meeting, I returned to my Capitol Hill office to be told that Vice-President Johnson, then presiding over Senate debate, had called three times; he urgently needed to see me the moment I arrived from the White House. I rushed to the Senate chamber. As soon as he spotted me, L.B.J. beckoned me forward. I could feel the eyes of press-gallery regulars, Senators and tourists in the visitors' gallery as I approached the presiding podium. Johnson intently leaned forward and whispered, "Is ol' Jack gettin' much pussy?" His eyes sparkled as I related the latest Kennedy tale, though he kept his face as carefully composed as though we were discussing the arms race with Russia.

(Once during J.F.K.'s Senate years, I had occasion to seek him out in the Senate restaurant. He was in the company of a mutual friend and lobbyist, Bill Thompson, and one of the prettiest women I had ever seen. I had no more than approached their table when Thompson said, "Bobby, look at this fine chick. She gives the best head in the United States." I could not believe my ears and didn't know whether to squat or go blind. I attempted to splutter out my message to Senator Kennedy and, at the same time, sneak glances at the beautiful, smiling lady who was being so highly advertised. J.F.K. saw my discomfort and laughed: "Relax, Bobby. She's from Paris and she doesn't understand a word of English. But what Bill's saying is absolutely right!")

It was an open secret among insiders that Lyndon Johnson for years carried on affairs with various Capitol Hill women. I also heard reports that he romanced at least one comely newswom-an and the wife of a Congressman. Shortly after L.B.J. was elected Vice-President, he told President Kennedy that the Congressman in question must be appointed to a Federal job in a distant city because of widely circulated reports of L.B.J.'s cavorting with the Congressman's wife; that was done. L.B.J. himself never personally reported such incidents to me, however: I learned this from the Hill's active grapevine. He was much more closemouthed about his extramarital activities than was John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to relish sharing the details of his conquests; although he was not without charm or wit in relating the clinical complexities, he came off as something of the boyish braggart. Those who have frequented beer-hall or locker-room sessions will know what I mean. Lyndon Johnson, prone to scatological references and extraordinarily proud of being well endowed, often joked of sex and endorsed it in general: He did not, however, volunteer his specific escapades. I made certain not to ask. For one thing, I didn't want him asking about mine.

There was a sensational flap during the "Baker scandal" hearings about a pretty German woman, Ellen Rometsch, whom I knew. A lot of people knew Ellen. Married to a German army sergeant stationed at an embassy, Ellen was a lady about town who sometimes frequented the Quorum Club. That was a private club, in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill, that I had helped found. Its membership was comprised of Senators, Congressmen, lobbyists, Hill staffers and other well-connecteds who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games and shared secrets in private accommodations. All in all, it was about as sinister a place as a People's Drugstore. I'm not saying that nobody ever left the Quorum Club to share a bed with a temporary partner, or that certain schemes were not hatched there, but I could make the same statement of Duke Zeibert's, The Rotunda, the Palm or dozens of other Washington watering places where the elite meet. When I met my downfall, however, the' media made much of a nude painting on the wall and of scarlet drapes. Mercy!

The fat was in the fire, of course, when the ever-bellicose Senator John J. Williams, an avid reader of Jack Anderson's column, learned there that I was an official of the Quorum Club and that Ellen Rometsch--who'd once had an affair with a Soviet-embassy attaché--had been seen in that club. Suddenly, Ellen Rometsch was the greatest threat to national security since Alger Hiss. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had her rush-deported to Germany in order to save the republic. What the newspapers did not say, possibly because I've never admitted it before--but which Robert F. Kennedy definitely knew--was that Ellen Rometsch had been one of the women Jack Kennedy had asked me to introduce him to. I accommodated him.

•

The presumption among politicians, reporters, the man in the street and those I did time with was that Lyndon Johnson helped me make considerable sums of money, that he somehow feathered my nest. Nothing could be more off target. L.B.J. simply was not a man to share. Not once did he offer me so much as an investment opportunity. But as to his own wealth, it was no accident that Austin, Texas, was for years the only city of its size with only one television station. Johnson had friends in high places among those who controlled the broadcast industry. George Smathers was his man in the Senate. Bob Bartley, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, just happened to be a nephew of L.B.J.'s patron, Speaker Sam Ray burn. You can bet that others in the regulatory agencies, including those who granted broadcast licenses, were aware of those friendly connections and of Johnson's great power. L.B.J. demanded, and received, the opportunity to pick and choose programs for his monopoly station from among those offered by all three of the major networks. No other television station in America had such a unique and cozy arrangement.

Once, in the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, where we had gone to attend a Bonds for Israel rally, I witnessed Lyndon Johnson twist the arm of an NBC network executive in order that L.B.J. might line his pockets. Senator Johnson told the network man that he wanted his station paid national advertising rates for the network commercials it carried. "But, Senator," he was told, "your market isn't big enough down there. The local affiliate is paid according to its share of the audience. Yours just isn't large enough to qualify."

"I say it is," Johnson retorted. "I know how you fellows work--you can do anything you want to. Well, want to!" The network officials thought it over and decided they wanted to.

Johnson often received credit for generous acts when they had been accomplished by the use of other people's money. He ordered me, in my role as treasurer of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, to pay for all airline tickets and $100 Stetson hats he urged upon notables visiting his Texas ranch. Those who received those gifts had no way of knowing they were paid for from the committee's pot, which legally belonged to all Democratic Senators, and was not L.B.J.'s to spend on his personal whims. Johnson several times complained to Keith Linden of Harvey Aluminum that the ballpoint "L.B.J. pens" he gave away as souvenirs were excessively expensive. When Linden failed to take the hint, the Senator bluntly told him, "Keith, now, you aluminum folks have mastered the mass-production technique and I want you to find a way to produce those ballpoint pens for me at a reasonable cost." Linden came through, though possibly at a loss to his company, and Johnson literally gave away hundreds of thousands of the pens. Of course, they prominently advertised his name and his office. He had no compunctions against using his corporate airplane for political or self-promoting purposes and might have been puzzled had anyone called him to account for it. Like many public men grown accustomed to the trappings of high office, he accepted without question his right to do as he pleased. And, like many public men, he reached that point where he no longer could distinguish between Lyndon Johnson the private citizen and Lyndon Johnson the political czar. If you play a role long enough, you become the role itself.

There is a mistaken impression that I was Lyndon Johnson's chief fund raiser. Not that I didn't raise some funds for him; his primary money men, however, were John Connally and George R. Brown of Brown & Root Construction Company. ("Sweet George R. Brown," Johnson staffers used to sing in their private recreations.) Those men, and Walter Jenkins, knew far more about the sources of L.B.J.'s political money than I ever did.

Sometimes, however, I was pressed into service. At the conclusion of the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, L.B.J. wore a sad hound-dog's look as he said, "Bobby, we're broke and we owe $39,000 for a hotel bill out here. I don't know where in hell to get it. All I know is we've gotta have it today. See what you can do." Wonderful! Here I am, exhausted from the fratricidal wars over L.B.J.'s selection as Vice-President on the Kennedy ticket, wanting nothing but a hot bath and a week of sleep, and I've got to find $39,000 blowing around on the ground.

I went to Bart Lytton, president of Lytton Savings and Loan, with the sad tale. He required persuading. "I don't have that much available," he said. "Even if I did, I wouldn't want it on record that I'd given it."

I assured Lytton that he'd be protected and stressed the benefits of incurring L.B.J.'s good will. "On the other hand," I said, "he can be a miserable prick if he feels someone has let him down." Bart groaned but motioned me into a public men's room nearby.

Lytton and I furtively entered a common stall in the men's room, like a couple of fags, where he gave me two $10,000 personal checks made out to cash. I delivered them to L.B.J., who took one look and said, "Hell, Bobby, this is just a little over half of it!"

I said, "Yes, and you can let someone else get the rest of it, someone who knows more rich folks than I do."

Shortly after the 1960 campaign began, Walter Jenkins called me one day to go to New York to pick up $25,000 contributed by Harold Geneen of I.T.&T.; this was the same Harold Geneen who later came under fire after one of his lobbyists, Dita Beard, wrote an injudicious memo saying that Nixon's original Attorney General, John Mitchell, had agreed to put the fix in for I.T.&T. in an antitrust case. I did not see Geneen personally but was handed the cash by a nervous functionary who spoke in hushed tones and seemed eager to witness my departure.

Later, after my troubles surfaced, one of ten I.T.&T. executives who'd been pressured to "donate" toward the 1525.000 kitty--to circumvent the law forbidding corporations from making political contributions--complained to Senator Williams of Delaware, who tried to make a big deal of my courier's role. Washington's politicians, attempting to protect L.B.J. and J.F.K.--and who, perhaps, wanted to protect themselves in similar cases--glossed over the affair and nothing much came of it.

•

Often the merits or demerits of a bill have little or nothing to do with whether or not it becomes law. If certain people in power reach a private trade or accommodation, then it likely will become law. If not. then it may not.

John F. Kennedy might not have gotten his nuclear-arms-limitation treaty with Russia had it not been for the alleged indiscretions of an Eisenhower White House staffer whom we shall call Joe Jones. My old friend, the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois, told the story to me and to my physician, Dr. Joe Bailey. It happened this way:

Attorney General Robert Kennedy and other Democrats took office loaded lor bear. One of the scores they had to settle was that President Eisenhower's Attorney General, Herbert Brownell. had sent Matthew Connelly and T. Lamar Caudle of the Truman Administration to prison--for alleged irregularities in public office. The Kennedy crowd was determined to find similar punishable instances of official malfeasance among Ike's old confidants. President Eisenhower, in retirement, got wind of this, and particularly that a Federal grand jury in Philadelphia was on the verge of indicting his aide, Jones, whose wife was very close to Mamie Eisenhower. Mrs. Eisenhower reported her fear that Jones might commit suicide and asked Ike to intervene with President Kennedy.

Ike called Senator Dirksen and said, "Ev, I'm embarrassed to ask you this favor, but I understand a grand jury has voted, or is about to vote, to indict Jones for income-tax evasion and he's simply in a terrible state. You and I know, Ev, that if the Government is determined to find irregularities in anyone's tax returns, then irregularities may be found almost every time."

"Mr. President," Dirksen said, "what can I do?"

"I need your good offices," Ike said. "I don't really know John Kennedy. I've met with him only twice in my life. Ev. I was President for eight years and I think I have the respect of the American people and I want to retain it. I believe the day will come when President Kennedy will need the public assistance of a former President whose name has prestige and who's beyond partisan arrows. I'd like you to ask President Kennedy, as a personal favor to me, to put the Jones indictment in the deepfreeze. You have the authority to advise him he'll have a blank check in my bank it he will grant me this favor."

According to Dirksen, he called the White House and met at 5:30 P.M. that same day with President Kennedy. After they'd had a drink, he said. "Mr. President, I would like for you to surrender your title for a few minutes and join me for a stroll in the Rose Garden to discuss a very personal and private matter. It simply must be two friends--Jack and Ev--talking on a personal basis."

The two men went into the Rose Garden, where Senator Dirksen relayed Ike's message. J.F.K. said he had no knowledge of the matter hut volunteered to return to the Oval Office and telephone the Attorney General, his brother Bobby. R.F.K. affirmed that the Jones indictment was to be announced at a press conference in Philadelphia the next day. "Cancel it and do it now," Senator Dirksen quoted President Kennedy. "Don't sign the indictment. Place it in the deepfreeze."

Robert Kennedy is said to have responded, "This will destroy us politically, to grant a special favor to a tax evader."

Evidently, they had a hot exchange that culminated in J.F.K.'s saying, "I'm President. If you can't comply with my request, your resignation will be accepted."

Within a few weeks, the Kennedy Administration had been beaten decisively in Congress on a number of issues. The nuclear-arms-limitation treaty was before the Senate and needed to be ratified by a two-thirds majority. J. Edgar Hoover and other conservatives were leaking information that the Russians would destroy us in time should the treaty be ratified. My head count showed that we could get a simple majority--but would fall short of the necessary two thirds. After Senator Dirksen made an eloquent speech against the treaty, I telephoned President Kennedy and told him all was lost. "Maybe not," He said.

Those cryptic words later caused me to check with Senator Dirksen to see what had happened. It was then he told me of the Jones story and concluded, "President Kennedy called me to the White House and said, 'Ev, I must write a check on you and Ike. This atomic treaty is important to me and to the country and, I think, to all mankind. It's imperative that it be approved. Ike said I had coin in his bank, and you say I have coin in yours.'

"I told the President," Senator Dirksen said, "that, yes, we owed him one. He then said, 'Ev, I want you to reverse yourself and come out for the treaty before the Senate votes. We'll call it square on that other matter.'"

Dirksen said, "Mr. President, you're a hell of a horse trader. But I'll honor my commitment and I'm sure that General Eisenhower will." Both men came out for the bill, and that's how J.F.K. got his nuclear-arms-limitation treaty.

•

I was the man to whom people came when they wanted to cut a big deal and I was the man who went to my powerful superiors to relay the offers. I recall when a man who'd been in Princeton with John F. Kennedy (J.F.K. spent a semester there before transferring to Harvard) approached me with a flat $1,000,000 offer if he might be named Ambassador to England, France, Italy, Germany or Spain. This was during the 1960 campaign; I arranged to see Jack Kennedy at his apartment in the Waldorf Towers in New York. After exchanging pleasantries with Mrs. Jackie Kennedy, I told the Democratic nominee that I needed to confer with him. He led me into the kitchen unit of the Waldorf apartment and peeled an orange while I named the New York socialite who'd made the offer and related what he required for his money.

Senator Kennedy, talking low so as to save his voice for the campaign stump--and possibly so that his wife might not hear--said, "Bobby, you were right in coming straight to me rather than to go through intermediaries. But first, Bobby, that guy's simply a prick. Second, we could all go to jail should this go any further; it's illegal as hell to sell ambassadorships. As much as we need the money, there's no way we can do it. That prick would be the first one to tell." The Senator did not lecture me on the impropriety of having approached him with an illegal offer; nor did he pick up the telephone to alert the Justice Department. He treated it as an offer he found expedient and prudent to refuse, and there was no moralizing.

•

There can be no doubt that Lyndon Johnson deeply despised Bobby Kennedy, and vice versa. They simply had terrible chemistry between them. But for L.B.J., however, Kennedy might never have been confirmed as his brother's Attorney General. That is something I know for sure. I saw it happen.

Many Senators had serious reservations about Bobby Kennedy's confirmation. Lyndon Johnson was one of those. He saw it as his duty, however, to assist President Kennedy where he could and he knew that opposition to Bobby's confirmation would grow unless it could be nipped in the bud. "I don't like the little son of a bitch and I never will," Johnson gloomed as we shared a drink in his office after work. "But I think any President has the right to choose his own people, even if they happen to be kin to him. I've got a brother. Sam Houston. He drinks too much, but before the booze got 'im, he performed many valuable services for me.

"Unless there's overwhelming evidence for cause against a President's nominee, the Senate ought to confirm him. Otherwise, you can tie a President's hands and take away the tools he needs. It's a different matter if some of boy hasn't got sense enough to pour piss out of a boot, but I don't think you can say that about Bobby Kennedy. He may be a snot-nose, but he's bright."

"I don't know Bobby Kennedy real well," I said, "but I've got no reason to doubt his competency."

"Well," Lyndon Johnson said, "Dick Russell is absolutely shittin' a squealin' worm. He thinks it's a disgrace for a kid who's never practiced law to be appointed as the highest lawyer in the land. Personally, I agree with him. Russell and a lot of others fear that the Justice Department might become too politicized with the President's brother heading it. They might have a point. But I don't think Jack Kennedy's gonna let a little fart like Bobby lead him around by the nose. If I learned anything in the last year, it's that Jack Kennedy's a lot tougher, and maybe a lot smarter, than I thought he was."

As I mixed our second round of drinks, Johnson said, "Jack's asked me to tone down the Dixiecrats and I need you to help me. We've got to make a real crusade out of this, because it's the first thing he's asked me to do and it's very personal with him. You know, he wasn't any too hot about appointing Bobby, but old Joe Kennedy just insisted on it." Johnson sampled his drink and then said, sarcastically, "Well, since the old bastard bought the office, I guess he's got a right to get his money's worth." Although L.B.J. grew to sincerely like Jack Kennedy, and to admire him in many ways, his bitterness at having lost to him--and at having lost his Senate power--occasionally spilled over.

"I want you to lead all our Southern friends in here by their yingyangs," Johnson said, "and let me work on 'em. We've got to smooth Dick Russell's feathers, and kiss ol' Jim Eastland's ass, and mute Strom Thurmond's brayin'. I'm gonna put it on the line and tell 'em it's a matter of my personal survival."

Which is exactly what he did. "Now, look," he'd say, standing nose to nose with recalcitrant Senators, kneading their lapels, "Jack Kennedy's put this tiling square on my head. It's the first job he's given me, the first test he's put me to, and if I have to go back and say, 'Mr. President, I'm sorry, but I can't persuade my friends to confirm your brother,' why, shit, I'm ruined before I get started. You think he's gonna trust me with anything else, huh? Now, there's gonna come a time when you"--and here L.B.J. might poke his target in the chest--"come to me and ask me to get the Administration to build you a dam or appoint you a judge or some-thin". And if I don't have any influence with my President, because you wouldn't help me confirm his brother, where's that gonna leave us, huh? You think Jack Kennedy's likely to break his back tryin' to help us, huh?"

With some Senators, L.B.J. made Bob-In Kennedy's youth and lack of experience appear to be assets: "Now, I don't think anybody's gonna shove Jack Kennedy around. I thought I could"--a wry grin--"and I bear the scars of battle because of it. You think he's gonna let his little brother take him over? Why, don't you know Bobby Kennedy won't get to go to the bathroom unless Jack Kennedy feels like takin' a pee? But if Bobby's rejected and some tough old lawyer who wants to impress the President gets the job, we could have ten times more trouble out of him than we'd have with a baby brother!"

To oil-state Senators, he would confide, "During the campaign, Jack Kennedy told me, 'Lyndon, my father's made a big fortune and I believe that of the $10,000,000 in my trust fund, about $1,000,000 is invested in oil. I can assure you that I'm not going to preside over the destruction of my own fortune and you can tell your oil friends this. As long as I'm President, nothing is going to happen to the oil-depletion allowance.' " Then he would say, "Jack Kennedy's gonna take care of you. Now, how about helpin' me take care of him?"

Lyndon Johnson particularly leaned on Dick Russell with his argument that if he failed to achieve the confirmation of Bobby Kennedy, he would be ruined "before I get started." It was this reasoning, I'm certain, that caused Senator Russell to grumpily agree not to make a fight. As Johnson saw Senator Russell waver, he applied the clincher: "He's gonna be confirmed. It can be by a big margin and everybody can feel good, or it can be close and embarrass everybody. Now, what good will it do me if (continued on page 254) Wheeling and Dealing (continued from page 250) Dick Russell--the best friend I've got in the whole world--gets up and snorts and fusses and embarrasses me and the President and the President's brother and his momma and daddy?"

•

It's easy, now, to say that Bobby Baker--or anyone else--should have known better; that there is no free lunch, that the piper must always be paid for his tune. But that's in retrospect: after the fact, postprison, post-Watergate. But when you are young and hungry, and you see Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators and Cabinet members living the good life free of the normal restraints--riding high and mighty and receiving public adulation despite their private sins or errors--and when those same powerful men are blowing smoke up your ass and inviting you to join the feast, well, you are likely to sit down at the table and not worry about the eventual tab or think that you are the likely one to pay it.

Shortly after my release in 1972, the Nixon Administration was continuing in its public pronouncements to treat the Watergate case as "a third-rate burglary," though the world now knows that frantic efforts were going on behind the scenes to limit the investigation, to stonewall it and to cover up. Despite the early diggings of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of The Washington Post, and the complaints of Senator George Mc-Govern and other Democrats, the public was paying only scant or perfunctory attention. About the time that Republicans were convening to renominate the Nixon-Agnew ticket--which would put the time at August of 1972--I received alarming news from an attorney who was a fellow graduate of American University Law School. He had been accused of having given illegal advice in connection with a securities fraud case. My fellow grad's attorney, Benton Becker--later President Ford's lawyer and the one who would work out the agreement pardoning Richard Nixon--had prepared a memorandum for my friend, the guts of which was that the Government would not be interested in plea bargaining with him unless he could provide crucial evidence to convict Bobby Baker or some other prominent Democrat.

"Convict me of what?" I asked him.

"Anything," he said. "Tax evasion or securities fraud or whatever."

Some time later, I was taking the holiday air at my old haunt, the Carousel Motel in Ocean City, over the Labor Day weekend in 1972, and had just returned from a walk along the beach, when the switchboard operator told me that she had an urgent telephone message for me. The message slip instructed me to immediately call a Mr. Gregory in Key Biscayne, Florida. Staring at the unfamiliar name awhile, I had a hunch. I then called the Miami operator and found that the phone number "Mr. Gregory" had left was that of the Key Biscayne Bank & Trust Company. Since I knew no one there except Bebe Rebozo, whom I had met in the past, I knew he had to be Mr. Gregory.

I went to a safer phone than I thought my Carousel room might provide and called the Key Biscayne number. Although it was a Sunday afternoon, Bebe Rebozo's secretary answered. I told her to tell him that "Bill Thompson" was calling. Bebe came on the line and said, "We need to talk about a business venture and I'd like you to fly here immediately. If you can arrange to get here late tonight, we can meet for breakfast. I'll have you on your way by noon." He said he would make reservations for me at the Key Biscayne Hotel in Key Biscayne and would see me there at seven o'clock the following morning.

We had breakfast in my suite. As soon as he entered, Bebe pressed one finger against his lips--until he'd turned the television set on to a high-decibel level. We sat close together. Bebe Rebozo said, "Bobby, I know you're a Democrat, but how do you feel about Senator McGovern?"

I said, "I think he's a decent man, but he's not my cup of tea. I think the nut liberals have captured him and I'm afraid of some of their wild schemes. I don't think he'd be good for the country."

Rebozo nodded. He tapped me on the knee and said with a half-smile, "Good! Would you like to help our President?"

I gave careful thought to my response and then said, "Well, I'm not real sure how I'd go about it. I'm not the most popular man in America, you know."

"What do you know on Larry O'Brien?" Bebe Rebozo blurted.

I said, "Bebe, I don't really know anything on him. I don't like the bastard and I know enough about politics to figure he might be vulnerable in the campaign-contribution category, but I couldn't prove a thing."

"Try," he said.

"I just don't have the goods," I said. "Honest. I was never close to the man; we never operated in the same ball park, even though we were on the same team."

"What Democrat can you give us? They're trying to kill us with this Watergate fiasco. We gotta fight back."

What Democrat can you give us? If I'd had any doubts that my new harassments were tied to Republican fears of a Watergate explosion, they flew off on wings.

"Have you heard anything about what really happened at Chappaquiddick? Did O'Brien play a big role in that?"

"Bebe," I said, "I was out of fashion among Democrats long before Chappaquiddick. Except for Jack Kennedy himself, I was never even reasonably close to the Kennedy people. I'm afraid I just can't help you."

Rebozo said, "Well, keep your ears open. Think about it."

Almost immediately after returning to Washington, I had another message from Mr. Gregory. It asked that I call him at an unfamiliar number in Key Bis-cayne. I did that from a pay telephone and was instructed to call President Nixon's personal attorney, Herb Kalmbach of Newport Beach, California, who then was staying at the Regency Hotel in New York. "Call as Bill Thompson," Re-bozo instructed. "Use a safe telephone."

Once I'd reached Kalmbach, he asked me to meet him the next day in the main lobby of the Waldorf Astoria. "There's a big clock there," he said, "or I think it's a clock. It's a round ornament embedded in the tiles in the center of the lobby. There are divanlike seats on all sides of it. Sit facing the Lexington Avenue entrance."

I had never met Kalmbach and knew little about him; Watergate had not yet catapulted him to infamy. Almost on the dot of the appointed hour, a distinguished-looking, impeccably dressed man entered the lobby of the Waldorf and after circling the centerpiece clock a half-dozen times, like Indians zeroing in on a wagon train, he stepped forward and said, "Mr. Bill Thompson?"

I said, "Yes, good to see you." We shook hands.

Kalmbach seemed frightened. In a low voice, he said, "Follow me about 20 paces to the rear and we'll find a quiet place for lunch."

Over lunch, Kalmbach seemed almost desperate to uncover dirt involving Larry O'Brien. "As I told Bebe," I said in hushed tones, "I just don't know a thing on the man." I was at a loss.

Then Kalmbach said, "Tell me about the TFX fix." Halfway through my recitation of how big politicians and big defense firms reach mutually beneficial accords, he impatiently waved his hand and said, "I know all that, too. Did O'Brien anything to do with the TFX decision?" I said that I doubted it; that, in the period we were talking about, O'Brien had been more Indian than chief. His prominence came later.

"Hell," I said, "I doubt if President Kennedy thought enough of O'Brien's abilities, outside of his political grunt-work and a minor talent for tactics, to bring him on the inside. I can guarantee you he wasn't on a level with Bob Me-Namara and the other biggies who made the TFX decision. O'Brien didn't amount to much until Lyndon Johnson made him Postmaster General."

"Well," Kalmbach said, "do you have anything on him from the Johnson era?"

"No," I said. "Mr. Kalmbach, you've gotta remember that by the time L.B.J. got to the White House, I wasn't around."

That news made Kalmbach morose. He toyed with his food, pushing it around on his plate, barely nibbling at it. I had the notion he didn't particularly enjoy what he was doing, though maybe that was because he was failing to bring home the expected bacon. After a bit, he said, "Well, it might be convenient for you should your memory improve." It was then I knew he was tough: not the goody-goody he later represented himself as being during the Watergate hearings and at his subsequent trial.

I said, "Look, Mr. Kalmbach, I'm damn near desperate to live my life without additional complications. If I had what you wanted, I'd give it to you. My martyr instincts are pretty damn well depleted by now. But I don't think it would do anybody any good for me to make up bullshit information."

"Oh, no, no," he said hastily. "That would be counter productive. We've got to be certain of our facts. But we do hope you'll continue to search your memory." We talked politics for a bit in general terms; I then launched into a long discourse about my recurring problems with the Justice Department. Kalmbach's eyes seemed to glaze over; I had the impression he was pretending to listen but that his mind was on vacation in a distant place. This is a smart man, I thought, but he's a cold fish.

Kalmbach soon called for the check, paid cash and suggested that I linger at the table until he'd left the restaurant. Throughout our meal, his eyes had darted and searched the room, as if someone might be coming after us with a bench warrant. Kalmbach gave the room a final sweeping search, nodded abruptly and took his leave. The next time I saw him, he was on television, describing himself to the Ervin committee as a duped and innocent man.

•

My problems with investigators or the highly placed who tried to intimidate me didn't end until after the Nixon Gang got oil my back--and they didn't get off fit until the desperate scramble to save their own asses gave them no time to create mischief for others. I try not to hate people, or even to carry around more grudges than can be comfortably lifted, but I confess to experiencing a mean little shudder of joy on the day that a grand jury labeled my self-righteous prosecutor, William O. Bittman, as an "unindictcd coconspira-tor" for his role as a middleman between the Nixon White House and his client, Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, in the matter of hush money paid to keep the lid on that historic case of constitutional malfeasance.

I was forced to walk a tightrope during the Watergate investigation. Probers for the Special Prosecutor's staff called me in to ask why I had been trading telephone calls with Bebe Rebozo. I could not afford to say that I'd been sought out and asked, under the implied threat of going to jail again, to make a fall guy of Larry O'Brien or other Democrats. Perhaps I should have done so, but I knew it would explode into another headline-making nightmare for me. I'd had my fill of that.

Consequently, when the Special Prosecutor's staffers asked me why I'd trafficked in conversation with Bebe Rebozo, I said, "I've known him for years. We've been social friends and we've talked over potential business deals. No law against that, is there?" Did I recall what we'd specifically talked about within recent weeks? "Listen, when you have as many problems as I have, it's hard to remember what you had for breakfast yesterday." Had we discussed Watergate in any fashion? "No." Then I decided to take the offensive: "Now I have a question: How did you know that we'd talked at all? You've got several dates there on a piece of paper. For reasons of public relations, or politics, we used fake names when calling each other. Sometimes we called from pay telephones. My God, is no phone in America safe from electronic snooping? I don't intend to answer another question until I get some answers." The investigators, on the defensive, soon decided to leave me alone. Exactly what I wanted. The last thing I needed was to get caught in a squeeze between the Nixon Administration and its political investigators: Once bit, twice shy. Perhaps it was a reaction to having been tapped and bugged by so many Governme nt agencies in my own right, but at any rate, I got word to Bebe that the prosecutor's boys might be listening in on his calls and he should proceed with extreme caution.

•

Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, a Republican member of the Ervin committee, sent word that he would like to see me at his home during the Watergate hearings. Although I did not know Senator Baker well, I long had been a friend of his wife, Joy, the daughter of the late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois. After we'd had a drink, Senator Baker suggested we take a stroll in his rose garden. We walked for a bit and he said, "Bobby, I wanted to get out of the house, because I can't be certain it's not bugged. With everything we're learning about the FBI, the CIA and even the White House itself--well, I just don't know whom to trust." He went on to ask whether I'd picked up anything from my Democratic contacts that might indicate what Watergate had been all about in the first place: "What in the name of God did they think they would find in Larry O'Brien's office? Why did they take that foolish risk when they already had the election won?" I told the Senator I was as puzzled as he was and had not even a helpful rumor to pass on.

That was shortly after Alexander Butterfield had astonished the world by revealing the existence of the White House taping system: that President Nixon had gone so far as to bug himself and anyone who had contact with him. "It seems too pat, too set," Senator Baker said. "Butterfield's rumored to have been a CIA mart. The Watergate burglars had CIA connections. CIA tracks turn up everywhere we look." Did President Nixon have such dirt on the CIA that its top dogs feared he'd destroy them, and did they, in turn, "accidentally" reveal the White House tapes through Butterfield? Again, I had to plead that I had no special information. I was puzzled by why Senator Baker had asked to see me: What could I know of the CIA? Probably he knew I'd been in contact with Bebe Rebozo and maybe he'd heard I'd been subjected to pressures by figures involved in the Watergate investigation and cover-up. Was he, then, attempting to extract information that might honestly aid him in his investigative deliberations? Or, conversely, could he, as a leading Republican, be conducting a fishing expedition for the Nixon White House in an attempt to learn what damaging or embarrassing things I might have heard? I asked myself those questions as we walked in the Senator's tree-lined neighborhood. I feared to say anything of substance, though I've never found Senator Baker to be anything but friendly, considerate and a gentleman. I simply had seen so much of intrigue, illegal wire taps, perjury, double crosses and threats that I had reached an advanced stage of paranoia and confusion that left me wondering--just as Senator Baker wondered--whom to trust. So I said nothing then--and, indeed, until now--to indicate any contact with Watergate characters.

•

One afternoon in September 1972, not long after Rebozo and Kalmbach had held my feet to the fire, I received a telephone call at my Washington home from Walter Jenkins. It was the first time I'd heard from L.B.J.'s old Texas staff chief since he'd telephoned me in 1964 to say that President Johnson would like my thoughts on whom he should choose as Vice-President. (I had argued for Senator Eugene McCarthy, who probably would have proved a disastrous selection. As the Vietnam war worsened, Johnson and McCarthy would have had the worst fratricidal split since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his V.P., John Nance Garner, had fallen out over the third-term issue.) Not many months after that call, Jenkins would resign from the White House staff following his arrest on a morals charge and would disappear to Texas. I had heard nothing from him since.

"Bobby," he said, "keep this strictly in the family. President and Mrs. Johnson would like to invite you and Mrs. Baker to spend a weekend at the L.B.J. ranch soon--if you're interested."

"Of course I'm interested, Walter. Tell The Leader I'm at his beck and call. I couldn't be more delighted."

We agreed on a date in early October; Jenkins said he'd get back to me with details and again cautioned, "This is to be very private. No publicity before, during or after." I said that was fine with me and then asked, "Walter, do you know if The Leader wants to see me for any particular reason?"

Jenkins hesitated while I listened to the telephone wire hum across the miles to Texas. Then he said, "Well, Mr. Johnson isn't in the best of health. He's been seeking out old friends lately. I think he's mending fences."

It was a beautiful sunny October day when my wife and I flew into Austin. Jenkins met us at the airport and quickly ushered us into his car, as if eager to hide us. En route to his office, I said, "Walter, level with me. How ill is he?"

Jenkins said, "I'm afraid he's worse off than people know. He's absolutely preoccupied with his death and talks about it far too much. He's drinking and smoking again. I worry about him."

When Dorothy and I drove up to the gates of the L.B.J. ranch the following afternoon, a Secret Service man told us to wait in the library, because the former President was taking a nap. A few moments later, however, a buzzer sounded and another Secret Service agent bounded into the back part of the Johnson ranch house. He soon returned, beckoning us to follow.

I was so unprepared for L.B.J.'s appearance when we entered his bedroom, I'm afraid my face registered shock. Lyndon Johnson was very fat, most pale and white-haired; he'd aged far more than his infrequent newspaper photos had led me to expect. There was an oxygen mask by his bed, which he frequently used to aid his breathing; he was removing it from his face as we walked into the room. He put on a big smile, however, and after kissing my wife, he gave me a warm embrace. "Bobby," he said, "it's been a long time. Too long."

With that, he launched into a discussion of his health woes. "I went to see Dr. DeBakey down in Houston about open-heart surgery and I consulted Dr. James Cain and others at the Mayo Clinic, but they all thought the operation would be a waste of time and that I might die on the operating table. I've got cancer, too, you know." I was astonished: Nobody knew that in 1972. L.B.J. had another surprise ready: "When they removed those throat polyps when I was President," he said, "they found out they were malignant. Of course, we didn't make that public. And later, when I had my gall bladder removed and the press jumped on me for showing my scar--well, hell, I did that on purpose, so rumors wouldn't get started I'd had a cancer operation. If the damn President has much more than a hangnail, the stock market goes crazy." He gulped from the oxygen mask and his color began to improve.

Later in the afternoon, we sat on the patio, overlooking the Pedernales River, watching several workmen install new sod in the yard; our discussion soon drifted to politics.

"Leader, what do you think of Nixon as President?"

L.B.J. said, "He's treated me with respect--and that's more than I can say for a lot of Democrats. Half of 'em, you know, they've turned my picture to the wall. President Nixon's sent Henry Kissinger to brief me, he consults with me personally. I've made it a point to refrain from expressing my opinions and beliefs since I left the White House. No President needs a former President lookin' over his shoulder or second guessin' him and poppin' off."

I asked whether he missed the Presidency. "Bobby, the Presidency is worse than being in jail."

I said, "I kinda doubt that, Mr. Leader."

L.B.J.'s cheeks colored slightly at my personal reference, but he didn't otherwise acknowledge it; He said, "When everybody was riotin' in the streets over Vietnam, I got as high as 500 death threats a week. We kept it out of the papers, but more than 20 people scaled that big high fence at the White House, trying to get to me. If I wanted to go to Mass with my daughter Luci, I had to go at two o'clock in the mornin'--sneaking around like a tire thief, so some nut wouldn't kill me. It's a terrible feeling knowing that so many people want to hurt you, when you're doing the best you know how for your country. Any President of any political party has my sympathy and my prayers. I miss the action sometimes--but I don't miss the office."

As dusk began to settle over the hill country and the ranch workmen headed for their homes, L.B.J. began to ruminate about his own Cabinet. "I'll always love Dean Rusk, bless his heart. He stayed with me when nobody else did. You know, Rusk came to me and said he was gonna have to resign and I asked him why. And he said that his daughter was gonna marry a Negro and it might embarrass the Administration. It was the only time I ever got mad at Dean Rusk. I told him, 'This is the most progressive Administration in the civil rights field in history, and you're gonna quit it over that? You better start thinkin' right. I want the Johnson Administration to practice what it preaches.'

"Bob McNamara started out being a good man. But he got worried he was on the wrong side of the war after his Kennedy friends turned against it, and so he started wringin' his hands and flip-floppin'. Stewart Udall, he was always kissin' up to Lady Bird, but sometimes I couldn't count on him when I needed him--or even find him. He'd be off floating down a goddamn river or watching some tame Indians dance. Willard Wirtz, my Labor man, got to liking the Georgetown crowd too much. You know, ol' Harry Truman said his biggest mistake was appointing Tom Clark to the Supreme Court. Well, my biggest mistake was appointing Tom's son, Ramsey, as my Attorney General. He couldn't make up his mind about a fish fry. Wanted to go around preachin' bleeding-heart stuff, but he never did a damn thing. I heard Dick Nixon make a campaign speech against Ramsey Clark one night and I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn't cheer it.

"Hell, even some of my old staffers let me down. Bill Moyers, I made that kid, then he took up with the Kennedys and got to the point where he knew ten times as much as I did. George Reedy went off and wrote a book that made me sound like a mad king without even mentioning my name. It's funny--the only one of my old hands that has much to do with me is Walter Jenkins. And, hell, even Walter won't pick up the telephone and call me. I always got to call him."

I could see that L.B.J. was getting into one of his self-pitying moods and I tried to head him off at the pass. "Leader," I said, "what does your heart truly say to you about George McGovern?"

"Bobby," he said, "I despise the s.o.b."

"Then how," I asked, "could you have invited him to your ranch and told the world you'd vote for him in November?"

We had left the ranch house as this conversation began; L.B.J. drove toward an old farm house on the hill near his private airstrip. He seemed restless and couldn't be still. Johnson thought about my question for a moment and said, "Well, he's my party's nominee. But understand one thing, Baker: I didn't invite McGovern to the ranch. Sargent Shriver--and I genuinely like him and respect him--called and asked if he and Senator McGovern could visit me here at the ranch. I invited 'em to lunch. And goddamn if they didn't arrange a big press conference without consulting me! I was so pissed off I came within an inch of canceling the luncheon. But Lady Bird said, 'No, Lyndon, it would create havoc within the party.' And I decided, well, no use in creating a big stink. The Democratic ticket's already in so much trouble it's a bad joke.

"Bobby, I can't understand why Marvin Watson and George Christian and those other boys of mine joined John Connally's Democrats for Nixon movement. John's a damn fool to turn on the party that elected him governor as long as he wanted it. He's gonna regret it one day. George McGovern, why, he couldn't carry Texas even if they caught Dick Nixon fuckin' a Fort Worth sow. There just wasn't any need for John to get out front. It's embarrassing to me. Now, hell, John could sneak around and vote Republican--but he didn't have to beat his breast and yodel like Tarzan!"

Of the Kennedys, he said, "Well, they're all dead except Ted and I never knew him well. He's still the fair-haired boy where the national press is concerned. You know, if I'd killed a girl like he did, then they'd have wanted to send me to the electric chair. Jack Kennedy always treated me fairly and considerately. Mrs. Kennedy did, too. When I was Vice-President, Jackie sent me a handwritten note asking my help in getting funds for her restoration of the White House. I helped her all I could and she was truly warm and good to me--right up until Jack was assassinated. After that, I don't know, it seemed like she and the other Kennedys seemed to somehow blame me for it. Maybe it was because it happened in Texas. We invited her to the White House and tried to do all we could for her, but we didn't get much of a response." Again, Lady Bird injected soothing words about the character and strength of the Kennedy women. L.B.J. sat silently, puffing a cigarette. He seemed jittery and impatient and soon broke in to suggest that his wife show my wife her flower beds.

When we were again alone, Johnson returned to the subject of what he called "the pitiful inadequacy" of Ramsey Clark as Attorney General. I said, "Leader, pound for pound, Edward Bennett Williams was the ablest lawyer in Washington and he definitely wanted to be part of your team. He'd have jumped at the chance to be your A.G."

L.B.J. looked startled and said, "Then why in hell didn't he tell me? Why didn't you tell me?"

I refrained from saying that L.B.J. hadn't been noted for his attempts to contact me during his White House years. Instead, I said, "Well, it's difficult for a man to seek an office that you've filled with the son of an old friend."

Johnson said, "I wish I'd known of Ed Williams' interest. But a President is surrounded by so many problems and has so many people grabbing at him, he seldom has time to sit back and think. You wind up reacting, when you oughta be acting on a positive plan, because there's seldom time to think things through. You run around putting your fingers in the leaks, trying to patch this or that up, but it's all too hully-gully.

"You know, I often think it's a good thing that Hubert Humphrey never got to be President--for his own good as well as the good of the country. He can't say no to anybody about anything, he hasn't got much more spine than a small gill and he runs his mouth 90 miles an hour without thinking about what he's saying. Hubert, he'd have promised a half dozen people to appoint 'em to the same office, and then he never would have slowed down long enough to appoint any one of 'em. He'd probably have had a crisis in the White House about every two hours and I think the office would have driven him absolutely crazy."

"We traded handshakes with Bobby Kennedy and then handed him the money in a white envelope."

"Senator Kerr didn't confine himself to Capitol Hill in attempting to buy influential friends."

"Rebozo nodded and said with a half-smile, 'Good! Would you like to help our President?'"