Thursday, March 19, 1998
   
   The Humphrey tapes
   
   President Lyndon Johnson bugged the phone conversations of his own
   vice president, Hubert Humphrey, according to a new LBJ biography.
   
   The evidence is compelling. LBJ was deeply suspicious of his vice
   president. It was a marriage of political inconvenience, and when
   Humphrey ran for president in his own right, LBJ all but openly
   sabotaged his campaign.
   
   While no one doubts LBJ was fully capable of wiretapping Humphrey, if
   he did, it is unlikely that Johnson ever listened to the tapes. He
   didn't even listen to the vice president in person.
   
   Humphrey was a legendary nonstop talker whose answer to every question
   was to propose an eight-point, or 10-point or 12-point program, each
   point elaborated in full and at length.
   
   The image of a talker like Johnson spending hours listening to tapes
   of a talker like Humphrey is just too ludicrous to hold in the mind.