Between You and Me Page 2

  Among other things, Treyz said, “We deeply regret this error and feel that it does a grave injustice to a distinguished public servant and author.”

  I was incensed that my employers had caved in to the Kennedys.

  The way I saw it, the ABC apology was a humiliating insult to Pearson, who, for all his reputation as a loose cannon, was a seasoned journalist and no stranger to litigation; through the years he had weathered more than a few libel suits with no serious damage to his career. As for the Kennedys, I believed they were bluffing.

  There is a postscript to this episode. In the spring of 1991, I interviewed Clark Clifford on 60 Minutes. He was eighty-four years old and in the deep twilight of his long and extraordinary career. In his

  [ 11 ]

  B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E

  prime, Clifford had been one of the most influential advisers ever to move through the corridors of power in Washington, and when I talked to him that spring, he’d just written his autobiography, Counsel to the President. Most of the interview focused on his very close relationship with three of our most dynamic Democratic presidents: Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson. But what the viewers of 60 Minutes did not see that evening was the part of our conversation dealing with the 1957 Drew Pearson controversy.

  Thirty-four years later, Clifford revealed to me just how angry the Kennedys had been:

  “My phone rang, and it was Senator Kennedy. He said, ‘I must see you at once.’ He then came to my office and said, ‘I’ve written a book, as you know, Profiles in Courage. Drew Pearson said I didn’t write the book, and it’s terribly upsetting to me.’ About that time, the phone rang for Senator Kennedy. It was his father. He listened to him awhile and thensaid, ‘Father, I’ll put Clark on.’ I get onthe phone.

  He said, ‘This is Ambassador Kennedy.’ I said, ‘Yes, Mr. Ambassador.’

  He said, ‘Sue the bastards for fifty milliondollars.’ ”

  As he recalled that brusque order, Clifford let out a hearty laugh. He thensaid he assured the former ambassador that “we are going to look into it,” but the senior Kennedy’s only response to that was to repeat his previous command: “Sue the bastards for fifty milliondollars.”

  Even after I heard that story, I was not convinced that if push had come to shove, the Kennedys would have sued us. In the context of the elaborate preparations he was making to run for president, the last thing the senator and those close to him would have wanted was a highly publicized court fight over the question of who had written Profiles in Courage.

  Whatever the case, the Kennedy camp stuck to its guns. A few

  [ 12 ]

  P R E S I D E N T S

  weeks after my interview with Pearson, the senator invited me to his office on Capitol Hill, where he showed me his notes for the book and insisted that Pearson had it all wrong. Over the years, Sorensen has been steadfast in his assertion that he was not the author of Profiles in Courage. But his disavowal has not gone unchallenged. In a 1980 book called Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy, the historian Herbert Parmet detailed his thorough investigation of the creative process that produced Profiles in Courage and came to the conclusion that it was essentially ghostwritten. “The research, tenta-tive drafts and organization were left to the collective labors of others,” Parmet wrote, “and the literary craftsmanship was clearly the work of Ted Sorensen.”

  C l i n t H i l l

  T H E F L A P O V E R T H E P E A R S O N interview was my only contact with the illustrious politician who had been my boyhood neighbor.

  During the years when Kennedy was in the White House and leading us across the New Frontier, I had various assignments that took me to cities at home and abroad, but Washington was seldom one of them. Fact is, I was going through a series of twists and turns as I jumped around from one job to another, and I didn’t settle down until March 1963, when I went to work for CBS News, which has been my professional home ever since. In September of that year, CBS

  launched a new midmorning news show, and I was assigned to anchor it; that’s what I was doing on November 22, the day the shots rang out in Dallas.

  Many of us who lived through the shock and the grief of that day

  [ 13 ]

  B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E

  were inclined to view the Kennedy assassination as a ghastly aberra-tion, the kind of horrific deed that simply did not happen in a civi-lized society and would never occur again in our lifetime. That naive assumption was shattered by subsequent events, for instead of being an isolated tragedy, Kennedy’s murder was the first in a wave of com-parable assaults on political leaders that persisted over the next decade and beyond. The two most charismatic black leaders of the civil rights era were gunned down by assassins, Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King, Jr., three years later. And just two months after King was killed, a second Kennedy was slain in the midst of his own campaign for president. In 1972, at another campaign stop in another presidential race, Alabama governor George Wallace was shot. He survived that attack, but the wounds he suffered left him paralyzed for life. And in September 1975, President Gerald Ford was the target in California of two assassination attempts that took place within seventeen days of each other.

  Every fresh act of violence rekindled memories of the first Kennedy assassination, and not long after the attempts on President Ford’s life, I interviewed the Secret Service agent who had been assigned to Kennedy’s car on that dreadful day in November 1963. His name was Clint Hill, and over the years he’d refused to talk in public about what had happened in Dallas, or about any other aspect of his work with the Secret Service. But Hill had been granted early retirement in the summer of 1975, and now that he was no longer on active duty, he agreed to appear on 60 Minutes to answer questions—

  for the first time—about the assassination he had witnessed from such close range.

  In preparing for that interview, I learned that the shooting in Dallas had left Hill deeply troubled and stricken with guilt. Nonetheless, I was caught off guard by the raw, visceral anguish he displayed when I brought up the subject.

  [ 14 ]

  P R E S I D E N T S

  W A L L A C E : CanI take you back to November twenty-second in 1963? You were onthe fender of the Secret Service car right behind President Kennedy’s car. At the first shot, you ran forward and jumped on the back of the president’s car—in less than two seconds—pulling Mrs. Kennedy down into her seat, protecting her. First of all, she was out on the trunk of that car—

  H I L L : She was out of the backseat of that car, not on the trunk of that car.

  W A L L A C E : Well, she was— She had climbed out of the back, and she was on the way back, right?

  H I L L : And because of the fact that her husband’s—part of his—her husband’s head had been shot off and gone off to the street.

  W A L L A C E : She wasn’t— She wasn’t trying to climb out of the car? She was—

  H I L L : No, she was simply trying to reach that head, part of the head.

  W A L L A C E : To bring it back?

  H I L L : That’s the only thing—

  At that point, Hill broke down; tears streamed down his face. I sat in silence for a moment or two and then gently asked if he would prefer to move away from this painful memory and talk about something else. But he made it clear that he wanted to go on, and so, after he’d regained his composure, I continued to question him about that day.

  W A L L A C E : Was there any way— Was there anything that the Secret Service or Clint Hill could have done to keep that from happening?

  H I L L : Clint Hill, yes.

  [ 15 ]

  B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E

  W A L L A C E : “Clint Hill, yes”? What do you mean?

  H I L L : If he had acted about five-tenths of a second faster, or maybe a second faster, I wouldn’t be here today.

  W A L L A C E : You mean you would have gotten there and you would have taken the shot?

 
H I L L : The third shot, yes, sir.

  W A L L A C E : And that would have been all right with you?

  H I L L : That would have been fine with me.

  W A L L A C E : But you couldn’t. You got there in less than two seconds, Clint. You couldn’t have gotten there. You don’t—

  you surely don’t have any sense of guilt about that?

  H I L L : Yes, I certainly do. I have a great deal of guilt about that.

  Had I turned in a different direction, I’d have made it. It’s my fault.

  W A L L A C E : Oh, no one has ever suggested that for an instant!

  What you did was show great bravery and great presence of mind. What was on the citation that was given you for your work on November twenty-second, 1963?

  H I L L : I don’t care about that, Mike.

  W A L L A C E : “Extraordinary courage and heroic effort in the face of maximum danger.”

  H I L L : Mike, I don’t care about that. If I had reacted just a little bit quicker, and I could have, I guess. And I’ll live with that to my grave.

  I’ve never interviewed a more tormented man. Hill’s agony was so deep, so poignant, that I couldn’t resist getting swept up by it, and there were times during our conversation when I could feel my own tears welling up. Many of our viewers were no less affected, as we learned from the letters that flooded into our office in the days following that broadcast.

  [ 16 ]

  P R E S I D E N T S

  In our interview, Hill said that a “neurological problem caused by what happened in the past” had prompted his doctors to urge him to accept retirement from the Secret Service at the still-youthful age of forty-three. When the camera wasn’t rolling, he was even more candid. What our audience wasn’t told was that he was suffering from severe depression.

  In the years since our 1975 interview, I’ve inquired about Hill from time to time to see how he was doing and to pass along my best wishes. But I didn’t have any direct contact with him again until the fall of 2003, when all the media were turning their attention to the fortieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. I wanted to know if Clint would be willing to revisit the subject in another interview with me. When I called him at his Virginia home just outside Washington, he greeted me warmly, and although he made it clear he did not want to talk any more about that day in Dallas, he assured me he was fine and that the misery he’d gone through was now behind him. He had finally managed to put his demons to rest, and he no longer blamed himself for the death of John F. Kennedy.

  L y n d o n J o h n s o n

  T H A T T R A G E D Y I N D A L L A S E L E V A T E D Lyndon Johnson to the presidency, and I had a memorable encounter with him two years after his stormy reign in the White House had come to an end. The occasion was a 60 Minutes piece on the opening of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in the spring of 1971. The event was considered so major that Don Hewitt, the executive producer of 60

  Minutes, elected to fly to Texas with me and our production crew to take part in our coverage of the story.

  [ 17 ]

  B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E

  Johnson had been practically hounded from office by the groundswell of opposition to his war policies in Vietnam. By the time he left the White House, he had become an almost desolate figure, no longer welcome in the high councils of his own party. Since then, he’d been living as a virtual recluse on his ranch in the Texas Hill Country, where, according to some reports, he was so consumed by bitterness that he spent a lot of his time brooding over his fate and nursing his grievances.

  Johnson’s resentment extended to the press, which he blamed for having fanned the flames of protest that undermined his presidency, and for the most part, he had turned a cold shoulder to reporters. But the opening of his presidential library put him in a more receptive mood. The library had been conceived as a lasting memorial to the great achievements of his domestic policy, and now that it was ready to be unveiled to the public, Johnson was not only willing but eager to cooperate with the media. So much so that when he learned we were planning to do a 60 Minutes story on the opening, he invited Hewitt and me to be his guests at the ranch. Nor was that all. When we arrived at the airport, Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, were on hand to greet us and take us under their wings. Even by the larger-than-life standards of Texas hospitality, it was an expansive, even effusive welcome, which we appreciated.

  The next morning we were roused from our beds bright and early.

  Johnson, reveling in his role as über-host, was eager to give us a tour of the ranch. Along with two other guests, we were herded into his white convertible, and with LBJ himself at the wheel, we took off on the sightseeing ride at an alarmingly high speed. At one point, as we ca-reened around the large spread, the former president swerved off the road and hit the brakes. He’d seen something that clearly distressed him. “Hewitt,” he barked, “you want to pick up that candy wrapper?”

  [ 18 ]

  P R E S I D E N T S

  Hewitt, sitting next to me in the back, snapped to attention. “Mr.

  President?” he exclaimed in a startled tone.

  Johnson turned and glared at Don, then gestured toward the offensive object. “That candy wrapper,” he reiterated. “How about picking it up?”

  It was obvious he had no intention of resuming our tour until his order had been carried out, and so, while the rest of us sat in the convertible and watched with amused approval, Hewitt sheepishly got out and did his part to combat the crime of littering at the LBJ ranch.

  He stuffed the candy wrapper into his pocket and returned to the car.

  But before he had a chance to get in, Johnson began to pull away, with Hewitt trotting along behind us in pursuit. This antic sideshow did not last long; once Johnson realized he had been a bit too hasty, he stopped the car again and let Don back in.

  On reflection, the candy-wrapper incident shouldn’t have surprised us that much, for throughout his long career in Washington, Lyndon Johnson had a well-earned reputation for being almost compulsive in his need to exert authority and dominate all who came into his presence. While it was true that he was no longer the political force he’d been during his years in power, he continued to rule his own turf. At the LBJ ranch, he was still the commander in chief.

  Back in 1964, when LBJ was in the exuberant early days of his presidency, reporters covering him wrote and broadcast vivid accounts about his harrowing high-speed rides around the ranch. On at least one of those occasions, Johnson drove with just one hand on the wheel, while in the other one, he clutched a beer can from which he heartily guzzled. Once a can was empty, he invariably flung it out the window. In writing about that, some reporters observed that the president’s behavior was hardly in keeping with the campaign the First Lady had recently adopted as her pet project: a major effort to

  [ 19 ]

  B E T W E E N Y O U A N D M E

  clean up and beautify the nation’s parks and highways. In light of our experience with the candy wrapper, I can only conclude that by 1971, Lady Bird had brought her husband around to her way of thinking. As students of formal religion are well aware, there is no greater passion than the zeal of a convert.

  Later that day we drove over to the new library, situated on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Hewitt and I had decided to structure our piece in the form of a tour, with President Johnson as our guide. We went through a couple of informal re-hearsals that afternoon to get the feel of things and set up camera angles. Even in those dry runs, the former president displayed understandable pride as he led us past exhibits honoring his achievements in civil rights, Medicare, and other landmark programs that fell under the heading of the Great Society. When we moved into a much smaller area in the library that dealt with foreign policy, he called our attention to an exhibit on the 1967 Six-Day War in the Middle East. But in glancing around, we couldn’t help noticing that the war in Vietnam was conspicuously absent. When I asked Johnson about
that, he turned somber and spoke almost in a whisper. “We don’t have that one filled in yet,” he said. “Besides, I’ve already talked about Vietnam over and over again. So there’s no need to talk about it here.”

  Hewitt and I looked at each other in disbelief. Don began to argue that we couldn’t ignore Vietnam, that it was an essential part of LBJ’s presidency. Johnson refused to budge. “I don’t want to talk about Vietnam,” he snarled. Turning to me, he said that if I brought up Vietnam while the cameras were rolling, he would cut off the tour on the spot and “send you boys packing.”

  That was enough to alarm Hewitt, who promptly walked away, leaving me alone with Johnson. After a brief silence, I decided to try

  [ 20 ]

  P R E S I D E N T S

  to persuade him from a different angle, one that would be both in-gratiating and combative, a dual tactic Johnson himself had often employed to great effect. I told him that I’d been a fervent admirer of his ever since the Eisenhower years, when he had demonstrated his political genius as majority leader in the U.S. Senate. I said that even back then I thought he was exactly the kind of president the country needed—a white southerner with progressive views on the race issue—and that when the forces of history and fate later conspired to put him in the White House, he had more than lived up to my high expectations. In particular, I said, he deserved the highest praise for the strong civil rights legislation he maneuvered through Congress during his first two years in office, since there was no question in my mind that he had done more to advance the cause than any president since Lincoln. “But then,” I said, “everything turned sour, Mr. President, and you know why?”

  “Why?” he rasped.

  “Because you let that war get out of hand.” I took a deep breath and then forged ahead, man-to-man. “Vietnam fucked you, Mr. President, and so, I’m afraid, you fucked the country. And you’ve got to talk about that!”