HHH and LBJ December 19, 1997 -- Manipulator. Manhandler. Friend. Foe. Each of those adjectives, and many others, have been used over time to describe one of the most colorful, most successful, most loved and most reviled presidents of our age: Lyndon Baines Johnson. And each of those qualities is apparent in abundance in once-secret telephone recordings of Johnson that have been released during the past year by the [28]Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. Reports about the tapes during the past 12 months have revealed everything from the President's state of mind on the day he decided to commit U.S. troops to Vietnam to the brand of pants the president loved the best Haggar. But for Minnesotans, some of the tapes -- presented for the first time ever in public -- reveal a precious historical record from one the state's favorite sons, Hubert Humphrey. Conversations with Humphrey, the ambitious senator who rode his "politics of joy" to the White House as LBJ's vice president, appear in many of the 14 hours of recordings that WCCO-TV's Pat Kessler obtained from the LBJ Library. In a WCCO-TV "Dimension" that aired tonight, Kessler (pictured) examined the political dance the president put Humphrey through in the Minnesotan's quest for the vice presidency. We hear loud and clear the mutual respect between these two powerful men. We hear Johnson's suspicions of his running mate, even in the moments just before choosing to run with Humphrey. Most importantly, we hear directly from the mouths of these great, ill-starred leaders, the fatal promise of loyalty the president sought and received from Humphrey as a condition to offering him the second highest office in the land. As Kessler told Channel 4000, it was a promise that put Humphrey into lock-step with Johnson on the disastrous war in Vietnam. It was a promise that simultaneously put the presidency itself almost within Humphrey's grasp while also placing the office, forever, out of his reach. Courtesy of Kessler and WCCO-TV, Channel 4000 here presents some of those LBJ tapes, included here in the [29]RealAudio format: The LBJ Tapes HHH and LBJ May 2, 1964: Making the ambitious Minnesotan squirm audibly, on this tape LBJ gives Humphrey a dose of the president's legendary rancor. Already well aware of the senator's vice-presidential aspirations, Johnson takes Humphrey to task for leaking to the press information shared by LBJ during a private meeting in the Oval Office. The conversation seems to be about negative publicity over the upcoming 1964 civil rights bill. Also revealed here: Why LBJ held the dog up by his ears. ([30]Audio File, 3 minutes, 51 seconds: [31]RAM) LBJ: "I read that story, and I thought it was just a friend, my friend, talking too much up there. I just thought you had a severe way of expressing it you just talked when you ought've been listenin'; that's a problem all of us got, with dogs and everything else." HHH: (Laughing) "Well yes." LBJ: "I read the story and it looked like it came right from you, and you just said, 'Oh, God Almighty, I just caught hell.' I've got a diary and it shows that Senator Kennedy came in three minutes after I talked with you, but he wasn't in the room and no one was in the room with me." HHH: "I'm not being critical of you at all." LBJ: "I know it, but I don't want to hurt you, I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to build you up. I'm trying to make you the greatest man in the world." LBJ May 14, 1964: Passage of the [32]Civil Rights Act is still two months away when LBJ and Humphrey discuss it in this recording. Humphrey sounds stressed as he describes his agonizing attempts to pull the Senate together to approve the landmark legislation. But the task is a crucial one: the president warns Humphrey that passage of the bill could mean outright revolution in the United States unless it is reached in a bipartisan fashion. ([33]Audio file, 6 minutes, 51 seconds: [34]RAM) LBJ: "Now, do you think you've got this civil rights (bill) in decent shape? HHH: "Yes, sir. I'm having a little trouble on the civil rights, but my groups up there, the leadership conference people, are just up in arms. They generally are over anything. Mr. President, we've got a much better bill than anybody even dreamed possible. We haven't weakened this bill one damned bit. In fact, in some places, we've improved it. That's no lie, we really have." LBJ: "What you've got to do is tell these leadership people this one thing, the thing that we are more afraid of than anything else: We'll have real revolution in this country when this bill goes into effect. Now, I've got to go on television in a fireside chat and say to 'em, 'Now, it took us 10 years to put this Supreme Court decision into effect in education. We've got to appeal to all of you to come and put this law into effect.' And unless we have the Republicans helping put down this mutiny, we'll have mutiny in this goddamned country. So, we've got to make this an American bill, and not just a Democratic bill. They've got to be glad that Republicans have participated." HHH: "My God, we're going so far in this bill that it's going to be the greatest advance in 100 years." June 19, 1964: After word reaches LBJ in San Francisco that Humphrey's son is ailing with a malignant tumor, the president phones Humphrey to wish he and the boy well. LBJ is a month away from offering the vice presidency to Humphrey but leans on him hard as a pivotal player in passing his history-making 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was scheduled for a vote that day. That dependency is reflected in the abrupt way the president shifts topics from Humphrey's son to immediately pressing politics. But before parting, LBJ's voice is kindly as he returns to the subject of Humphrey's son. ([35]Audio file, 4 minutes, 13 seconds: [36]RAM) LBJ: "Count me in if there's anything in the world we can do." HHH: "I know that. Lady Bird called. She was so sweet, too, though." July 7, 1964: Speaking with his friend and political ally, Texas Gov. John Connally, President Johnson gets a gloomy assessment of his re-election chances in the south against Republican Barry Goldwater. The governor tries to dissuade Johnson from choosing either Humphrey or Bobby Kennedy as a running mate, because of their liberal civil rights records. ([37]Audio File, 15 minutes, 36 seconds: [38]RAM) Connolly: "If Bob Kennedy's on the ticket, heaven and hell couldn't save South Carolina. Humphrey's not much ahead of Bobby, all on account of civil rights." July 7, 1964: Shortly afterward, LBJ speaks with Humphrey about the situation, detailing Humphrey's own lack of support in the south. LBJ has yet to offer the vice presidency to Humphrey. During the conversation, LBJ also openly discusses other possible running mates, such as Kennedy and fellow Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, apparently in an attempt to make Humphrey strive harder for the job. ([39]Audio File, 6 minutes, 33 seconds: [40]RAM) LBJ: "They want somebody who's unheard of. Not one single governor, not Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, not a single one -- not one -- will say they'll vote for the ticket if this man's on it." July 30, 1964: In this conversation with attorney and LBJ crony Jim Rowe, the president directs his friend to pay a visit to Humphrey and sound him out about the terms under which he'd accepted the vice presidency. The president tells Rowe to make it clear he plans to continue talking to a few other people about the job through the following weekend. In any case, the deal would be off, he says, if Humphrey or anyone else would be unwilling to pledge utter loyalty to the president. It is a pledge Humphrey will accept and never break, to the ruin of his own presidential aspirations. ([41]Audio File , 4 minutes, 56 second: [42]RAM) LBJ: "I want to be sure that they understand that ain't nobody goin' to be runnin' against me for eight years. They're going to be following my platform, and gonna be supportin' me and gonna be loyal to me like I was to Kennedy." Rowe: "I don't think you'll have a bit of problem on that." LBJ: "He better make up his mind now whether he's ready to go with me, all the way, on my platform, on my views, on my politics. And I'm always willing to listen to him and I'll always consider what he's got to say. But when I make up my mind, I don't want to have to kiss the ass of the vice president. Just see if he wants to be considered under those circumstances. ... I've got to be sure he won't be runnin' against me four years from now." July 30, 1964: Later that night, Humphrey calls back. He sounds excited and awed to be this close to the vice-presidency. Johnson is obviously conscious of the importance of the moment because he can be heard asking a White House receptionist to be sure to capture it on tape. . ([43]Audio File, 3 minutes, 12 seconds: [44]RAM) Quote graphic HHH: "I want to come right to the point with you. If your judgment leads you to select me, I can assure you unqualifiedly, personally and with all the sincerity in my heart, complete loyalty." LBJ: (Hushed) "Yeah. I, I know that." HHH: "I just wanted you to know that. LBJ: " I know that." HHH: "And that goes for everything. All the way, the way you want it. Right to the end of the line." Aug. 14, 1964: Johnson has now offered Humphrey the vice presidency, and presses the senator for details of a bill to create the Food Stamp program, part of Johnson's War on Poverty. A $75 million bill has been introduced, and LBJ wants to know if the program will do any good in the inner cities if it passes. There is also an interesting passage in which Humphrey details the need to get oil-industry lobbyists at work pushing the president's agenda in Indonesia or Vietnam. ([45]Audio File, 8 minutes, 44 seconds: [46]RAM) LBJ: What do we do? Will (Food Stamps) do any good in the cities?" HHH: "Yes, it very definitely will help in these cities. It'll be very helpful too in some of the southern areas and we ought to get it." (Later, Humphrey addresses Indonesia:) HHH: Esso and these boys are going to lose all their damn money over there if we don't do something. And I think we've got to put those fellows to work (lobbying). If they want to save any of their oil interests over there, they'd better start doing some work over here." Aug. 14, 1964: LBJ, in another chat with his running mate, talks about the 1964 presidential election. Against the backdrop of violently agitated civil unrest, LBJ impresses upon Humphrey that the election is no sure thing, despite the popular projections. ([47]Audio File, 5 minutes, 33 seconds: [48]RAM) LBJ: I think we have a pretty good party and I think we have a good chance to win. I don't think it's as good as anybody thinks it is. This is an extremely dangerous election. Aug. 14, 1964: Later in the same conversation, LBJ talks to Humphrey about the Democratic party ticket and about Martin Luther King. The president is angry about the attempt by black civil rights supporters to unseat the Democratic National Convention delegation from Mississippi, in order to put in its place a delegation more racially representative of the state's population. LBJ considers it political suicide on the part of the Mississippi activists. Humphrey concurs. ([49]Audio file, 8 minutes, 48 seconds: [50]RAM) LBJ: "We throw them out and if we do they write a blank check to Goldwater for 15 states. We better just try to see if the Negroes don't realize they've got the president, they'll have the vice president, they've got the law, they'll have the government for four years that will be fair with them and be just with them. And why in the living hell do they want to hand, shovel, Goldwater 15 states? That's the only thing I see from it. Do you see any good that can come from it?" HHH: "Not one damn bit of good. Not one bit. We're just not dealing with what I call emotionally stable people, Mr. President."