 We're interviewing today, former Congressman Jack Brooks at his home in Beaumont, Texas. Congressman Brooks went to the House in the 1950s, one of the youngest members of Congress. 52. 1952, and was a friend of President Johnson's all of the years. He was in Washington after he left Washington, very close to him. We're delighted that they're participating in this project. Glad to be here with you, Bob. Jim Watson, talk about Johnson. You know, Lyndon Johnson, most people think of him as a very activist working guy, did a lot of things, big leader, all that, didn't he? But I think that his most significant thing in my own relationship is a very thoughtful man. A very careful, kind man and a thoughtful man. Most people don't know that much about him. But he was the kind of a president that if I told him that your wife was ill, he would thank me. You remember Congress was a important staff member or something, he just didn't know it. And he'd send him some flowers, he'd call them, he was concerned. He'd take the time to do that. And not many people do that, Johnson did. Any time that I had an acquaintance, we had a mutual acquaintance who had a problem, he wanted to know and he'd try and do something about it, which is pretty nice. When he thought, when he was first president, he thought the next year, he knew he wasn't that well, he knew he wouldn't be here that long, and he thought he ought to be nice to people that he wanted to be nice to. He wanted my son, Jeb Brooks, who was just a little baby at that time, to come by and have his picture made with him. He had seen him at my house earlier, came by and seen him when he was just this big a baby. But the picture wasn't any good and had a big mirror in the background. It didn't come out very well. And Johnson was careful about handling babies. And so when we got, and we had, our time to be there was a fixed time, two o'clock. And I was concerned about that because I wanted it to be at two o'clock. Because little babies are scheduled to be happy and cheerful then after at three o'clock, he might be crying and difficult. And so we, I was there on time and they, we got in on time. And Johnson was very gracious and kind and thoughtful, but he held that little boy about this high, and he didn't give him a hug because Johnson had a cold and he didn't want to give that baby the cold, didn't want to run the risk. Now that's a pretty thoughtful guy. I never forget when he was not president at the ranch, dying really. He wanted us to come out there and bring Jeb and Kate. We didn't have Kimberly, our third child then. This was after he was president a few couple of years or so after that. And so he, we came out the ranch. He ordered up a helicopter for, and I think Bird took him on that tour actually. Seed the exotic animals and look at the ranch. Sharon, my assistant, went with us then and he took Sharon and the children, Charlotte. They went looking around and had a good time. And I sat and visited with, with Linda Johnson and we had a good visit. As we always did, we had a lot to talk about. And he had the Texas University football team there, most of them there for lunch to entertain Jeb. Johnson thought a lot about other people. Nobody, how many people think that? You don't hear them writing much about that. But Johnson was a good, thoughtful man. When did you first meet him? I first met Linda Johnson when I was in the state legislature. The legislature when I was 23. And I was there in the legislature and he was, I was in 1946. And in the next year or two, Johnson was in there visiting, coming into Austin. Came down the legislature and I met him just briefly. And was impressed with him. Of course, he was tall and personable. Didn't have any big long conversation or anything. And then I met him again, of course, when I went to Congress in January of 53. And Johnson was a major help to me. Sam Rabin was really my mentor. I had a drink with Mr. Rabin most every night. He told me that. He said, the first day I swore in Johnson, I mean, Speaker Rabin said, Son, I want you to come have a drink with me tonight and every night as long as we're both here. And on many of the, and I did, and on many of those occasions, Johnson would come over. I can hear him now. Pick up the phone. Yep. Yep, we're still here. Yep. Yep, we'll see. We'll be here. Thank you. Johnson coming over. It would be seven o'clock at night, you know. We'd already been there for an hour and a half. But Johnson had come late. And his, one of his main ploys in coming over was to get Rabin and the house to move on, to hold some real sticky bill. Keep it in the house as long as possible so that Johnson could orchestrate the handling of it when this hot potato got to the Senate. He'd know what the subcommittee vote was, the committee vote, and the Senate vote. And he'd know just how you're going to handle it just like a wizard. He would run it right through just handle it beautifully where it would take us months and months to fathom out. And I would, on the other hand, tell Rabin, we ought to vote on it tomorrow. I'm ready to vote. This is just a pain to us. Let's get it over with. Don't hold it. Let's vote on it now. Why delay? Johnson didn't like that. He wanted to move slowly. So he'd have time to get everything set. He was a rascal. And another thing the rascal would do, if you had a picture made, and I have one made with a good picture, made it during the campaign of 1960 with Jack Kennedy and Linda Johnson and me. I was in the middle and got one on each side. Well, you know, I'm not very tall. Kennedy is a little bit taller than I am, so Kennedy said, stand by me like this. Johnson, the rascal who is already taller than both of us, would sit back, stand back about this far. And every photographer in the world knows that that makes the image that much higher. And after he's over with, I admonished Johnson for that ploy. He just laughed. He did it all the time. If you look at the pictures, you'll see that if he has somebody that's four feet high, he'll stand behind him like this, so he looks like he's six feet taller than them, instead of just four feet taller. Oh, he was a rascal about things like that. Now, I would say something else about him. In 1937, when he and Albert Thomas were elected to Congress, I was a junior in high school, a freshman in high school, worked that summer for ten cents an hour. It was a wonderful time of life. But I needed that money. And they had a difference about who was going to be on the Appropriations Committee. And Albert Thomas won. It was a tough fight. Johnson suspected Albert of getting some member of the committee that was making that decision out of the hospital and getting a proxy from a man that was almost dead of everything. And Thomas said that Johnson was demanding and didn't have the experience to do it and shouldn't have had it anyhow. Anyhow, they were not, though nobody realized that, the best of friends for many years. When I came to Congress in 1953, they were still enemies. They both had allegiances to some of the same people in Houston, George Brown and others. And they were all friends. And they built the NASA space station. Johnson put the cloud on the Senate for the money. Johnson and Thomas handled the money in the house. And George Brown selected the site in Houston. And it all worked out fine. But I knew that they were not happy because when I would visit with Johnson, he'd say, and I visited with Thomas. Thomas was my bosom friend. I loved him. And Thomas would say, you know, I see you down there with Johnson all the time. You better watch him. I'll tell you really now, Jack. And Johnson would say, now, you know, you better keep an eye on old Albert. You know why those Secret Service men were on the running board when Roosevelt went to Houston and Thomas was there. They didn't want Thomas to steal his watch. They kept working on me. They didn't want me to get carried away with the evil of the others, which I thought was kind of funny. And so one day Charlotte and I decided when he had bought a Pearl Mester's house out there in Washington, a nice place to entertain. And I said, Charlotte said, we ought to get them together. She knew about this, I had told her. And so we invited them both, tried to get them both to talk to Thomas, Johnson, if we could not have Albert and Lyra out and we'd all have dinner together. And Johnson was willing. And we set a time and an evening and we went out there, the six of us, and they were gracious. We had a drink, got to visit him a little, break in the ice a little, and we had another drink. And Thomas started talking about one of the things he had done to Johnson. And then Johnson started talking about one of the things he'd done to Thomas. And I tell you, we had more and more drinks and more and more incidents came up. And Johnson reminded me that while we had had a little falling out about a federal judge, he said, even I didn't have to pick federal judges when I was a congressman, Jack. You shouldn't have had anything to do with that. And Thomas, Thomas just watched that argument we'd had about some land in Houston that he got mad at me about. He wanted it given back to the people that donated it to Rice. He wanted it given back to them or something. The federal government had given it to the government and he wanted the government to give it back to him. I wanted the government to sell it to the high bidder with a lot of money. But anyhow, they got, we didn't eat until pretty late, eight pretty late, and had several drinks. And Charlotte drove me home and Lyra got Albert home and Johnson just made it upstairs to bed. But after that, Johnson and Thomas were friends and they loved each other and they got along fine. And I thought that was well worth doing. It wasn't good for adverse legislators because between Johnson, with me working on it and fingering them good and Thomas working on their appropriations and Johnson not being supportive, some of them got into real trouble because that combination was powerful with the Johnson and Thomas operation. I thought it was fine. Just love. You were in Congress and had developed a good deal of seniority by the time LBJ became president and when all the great society That's correct. In my opinion, it was one of the great congresses in the history of the country with all that great society by this last year. Oh sure. You want to talk about that? Well, I was far at all. That suited me fine and I helped on it. When you went down to visit with Johnson, Charlotte and I did often to have dinner with him, quietly. He talked about a lot of things. And he had a lot of assignments for other people. When you work for him, he tell you about this and this. He wanted done this week and this and this. He always had a whole hat full of problems that he wanted you to work on. And I did. And it was very successful. Civil rights, for example, Johnson was far. Kennedy had been far. We were going to do it. I was working on the legislation with Emmanuel Sulla, who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee from New York. A very wonderful erudite scholar. A lovable man. I had been on his committee. It was the first one. I went on that one second. He was wonderful to me. And I helped Manny on that, worked on it with him pretty steady. I was on his subcommittee, which helps. That's the right one to be on, if you're on a subcommittee. We got that passed. And Johnson was good about it, always very supportive. I heard some people say, Tip O'Neill had something to do with it. I didn't know what. The committee made up of a lot of Southerners and they were difficult. And on the night, on the morning, we were going to have the markup on the Civil Rights Bill. Two of Kennedy's stalwarts from the Justice Department. One of them called me and said, I hope you can come down and see the chairman now. He's concerned about this bill. Chairman Manny Sulla. I went down the committee and there they were with Sulla. Sulla looked like he was a little perturbed. And I said, Manny, I said, you came to Congress the year I was born. You've been here for 40 years. What do you care what those dissident members say or think about you or anything else? Nothing. We go in there, gavel that thing through, recognize the people we need to make appropriate motions. Don't recognize them, gavel it through, take the vote, and it'll pass. Going away. Don't worry about it. That's all there is to it. He said, pull the drawer open. Old school. Pull the drawer open with his desk. Pull out a bottle of whiskey. He said, let's serve a drink on each eye. He had a little drink. I had a little drink. The two hot shows from the Justice Department, the Big Shots. He didn't offer them a drink, say another damn word to them, put the top on the bottom, put it back in his drawer, closed it, and got up and went in and had the meeting. I liked that. I thought it worked out beautifully. But anyhow, Johnson's programs had a way of getting done because what people don't understand is that Johnson was a connoisseur at Congress. He served in the House. He served in the Senate. He worked on subcommittees, worked on committees. He worked in management, scheduling, conference committees. He knew the intricate details of how a bill goes. And he also knew, superimposed on all of this, knowledge of the mechanics of the operation, which are fairly detailed and sometimes can be a little tricky. He understood people. He understood what motivated members of Congress in the Senate. And he knew how to persuade them. And he was not adverse to picking up the phone and talking to them or going to see them. Talking to them with their lapels, ruining their damn lapels. He liked to check on people's lapels. And he was fun. He was fun. I'll tell you another thing. One time we had a dinner in the White House. Before that, I had a bill to have independent auditors, internal auditors for each agency in the government, not to restrict the management. But as a management tool, they would report to the secretary of whatever the agency was. And I think it was four months, five months, three months. If they had not taken any action at all, then they would send the report to me, my subcommittee, government operations at the time. And then I would have taken it and moved it from there and done fine. I would have got them a little publicity and a little adverse comment and a little investigation. And we'd have seen what they would do to save that money or more efficiently operate their agency. I didn't have any awe of how they ran them, you understand. And so a couple of the agencies weren't for it, as you can understand. Some of them, they don't want anybody to know that they're not inefficient or that they're wasting money. So they were not supportive of the legislation. And Johnson asked me one time how it was going. I told him we had some problem with some of the agencies. Well, he said, who? And I told him. And he called them and they wrote letters and said that we have thought this over and really believe that it would be useful. You can see their arms had been twisted and their hands were hurting but they signed those letters and we passed it in the committee and in the house. We went to the Senate and some of those same dissidents got some senator to hold it. And I was having dinner at the White House that night, just Johnson and Leonard and Charlotte and I. And I said, well, we're still having trouble with that old boy. And he said, yes, I know. The phone rang and he'd already got his staff. They'd been tracking that senator down. And that senator was at an airport. Johnson took the phone off from the table, got it from the table and walked the phone over here, talking to him on the phone and he talked to him about it. He had some projects in his state that were very important to him and Johnson says he'd been looking at them and he was looking at them pretty hard. But he was concerned about this legislation that Jack Brooks had sent over on internal auditors for the various agencies and he thought it was worthwhile and useful and he hoped that the senator could see it that way and take his hold off that legislation. And the senator, after that discussion of those projects in his state, decided that he could, that minute, take the hold off. And the bill passed and it was signed. Now that's Johnson helping and he knows how to help. Now there are not many people that I knew as president and I knew all the president, St. Truman, that were that good at picking up a phone and talking to people and persuading them and getting action. Johnson was a wonderful guy, a wonderful friend. I enjoyed that. That was fun. Let me see what the first time was. Well, we might talk about one other thing. I was in the motorcade in Dallas on the 22nd, interesting day, anniversary date. That's correct. And I heard those shots. I knew there were shots. I wasn't being shot at before. I wasn't being shot at this time, thank goodness. And the car speeded up and we went to the hospital. I got out and Larry O'Brien was just in shock, staggering along and the policeman wasn't going to let him in. Dallas policeman of that way. And I told him he was the aide to president Kennedy and that he should be admitted to the hospital and we went on in and the secret service pulled me off to where Johnson was. They had Johnson behind him in a little car around the corner with Bird and with Homer Thornberry who had gotten there. He liked Homer Thornberry, congressman from Austin, as you know. And we stayed there for a while and Johnson said, I want you to take Bird to go and see Jackie and Nelly. Did you do that? So I did. We went to see Jackie. Jack was lying out there in a room there with a sheet over his head dead as a post. And Jackie was a little disheveled and Bird saw him. Then we went upstairs to where they had Nelly. I told Nelly, quit crying and I didn't think that Conley was hurt badly. He was going to be fine. And I gave her my handkerchief. She wiped her little eyes. Quit crying. And then we left there. And we got back and the secret service. There was some pressure for Johnson to say he was present and Johnson said he wasn't about to do anything until we had the coroner's report. Johnson was not running toward being present when the president had not been declared dead by our coroner other than by everybody they saw him but that's not the official declaration. And so he waited until that was done. When that was done the secret service wanted him out of there because they didn't know how many shooters there were in the area. And so he said we'll take two cars. They take two cars and I'll go in one, Jack, you go with Bert and the other and home will go with me. So that's the way we left. And we went to the airport. We got to the airport, got on the plane, fisting around a little bit and talking to Johnson. My suggestion was we get sworn in now right there because he said well why? I said well, but two reasons. One the country should not be in trauma and anguishing over no president for a period of time. Internationally it's not wise to have no head of a nation for any period of time. I said besides that, well I get along with him fine and we've had a good relationship. Bobby Kennedy hates your guts and you're not too fond of him and he will screw up this ceremony some way just as sure as we're sitting here. And it'd be a lot better to call Sarah Hughes and get Sarah out here. You made her a federal judge and she'd be delighted to come out here and swear you in. Well, they did that. And Sarah came, incidentally I don't think they ever found the Bible. I don't know who got the Bible. It wasn't me, the Bible that they swore him in on. And Albert Thomas was in that picture and Jack Valenian, Holman, Secret Service people, Jackie, Byrd and Johnson and a couple other people and that was about it. Pretty crowded in that airport in the cockpit in some part of that airplane. And that was over with. And we went to Washington and I called Charlotte. Charlotte was supposed to meet me in Austin. We were going to Austin or Houston, I think it was, for Austin for a big ceremony. And I told her I was going to Washington and to meet me there when she could. Bless her heart, I loved her, I was fine. Somebody complained about that one time about my calling from the plane. I never rippled. And so we went to Washington and finally got off and got all that done. Johnson and I had, I think we had dinner that night. And the next night we visited with him. He was just getting set up. He called me and wanted to come have dinner with him. He would send a car to pick us up. I told him about Charlotte. Well, yeah, he wanted Charlotte, especially Charlotte. He loved Charlotte. He would, you know. So it worked out all right and we had a good relationship just from where it'd go on that presidency, didn't it? And I was for Hubert Humphrey. I argued strong for Hubert Humphrey to be a vice president when he was running. And Hubert was a good vice president. I think it was a tragedy that he didn't get elected. It wasn't Johnson's fault. I mean, it just, nuances of politics are very funny. I always said that anybody can get beat. I didn't think it was going to be me, but I was in 94. Democrats kind of sat on their hands and Republicans coalesced and Republicans work hard for their candidates and they'll vote for any Republican. Any Republican, I tell you what, the devil himself said he was a Republican. They'd vote for him quick and support him, give him a lot of money. And that happened in 94. We had lost a lot of good Democrats. Although it was a blessing for me, my wife was ecstatic, tickled to death. And I had Kimberly on my arm. Then she was about 17, 18-year-old, pretty little girl like that, telling television here at home at the end of the election. I said, well, the people have spoken. It's been a challenging life and I've appreciated it. And you've spoken and I know that you'll get everything you so richly deserve. My opponent that they had elected and they did get it, nothing. And for two years, and of course, I didn't like getting beat. I didn't mind leaving Congress. I was ready to leave Congress. I'd had enough of that. And so I didn't quit campaigning. And for the next two years, I continued my efforts to see that we had a decent Congressman down here. And at the end of two years, one of my former interns was elected and he's still being elected as Congressman. We beat that character thoroughly. He hadn't been elected to anything since, statewide or otherwise. And his last job, he got fired from over in Galveston County. But his wife worked for NASA. And I never did get her fired. I thought that would be petty. You know, I'd have fired him in a minute. But I thought it would be petty for the advantage of his wife. I just didn't do that. I thought that'd be a little much. Some people say that's not like me, but I didn't do it. He was a very funny man and a great storyteller. Johnson? Well, Judge Kreitz was the double six in Domino's. If you were playing in Domino's when you had Judge Kreitz, double six, he played with, who did I play with? Johnson and Mahon. And it might have been Sam. Sam Johnson, his brother, played with us. We were beating. He was beating Mahon pretty good. Talking about Judge Kreitz and a few other little things he did. Somebody told him he was making a mistake beating Mahon, but he didn't worry him. He did worry him, though, and I played him Domino's out at the hospital when he had his operation, and I beat him. That irritated him. That was good for him. Keep his blood pressure up. And I'm the one that'd tell him no sometimes. One time he had a bill to do something, I forget what it was, and I told him that's a foolish idea. It's not going to pass. It's not far. I don't think it'll work. We're not going to do that in Congress. I don't believe. Yes, we are. You just don't want to help, you know, and you just raise all kind of hell with you. Like you were just shot him or something. You just don't want to be for the program. Brooks, you're just not helping. Well, I said there's not going to pass. And it didn't. And he never mentioned it again. Some of the ends kind of thought that Brooks would get checked out by not always agreeing. But I never did. Because Johnson knew I told him the truth, what I thought was the truth. And it often turned out to be the case. So, yeah, we did all right on that. I'll tell you one thing. It's back on his being thoughtful. We were sitting in the little gallery on the second floor, at the White House. We were back there having a drink after supper one night talking about just this thing. Appointments that he had lots of appointments to make. I had told him one time you ought to let Yarba have an appointment every now and then. I said, you've got more than you've got time to make. We hunt for good people. And let old Yarba have some of them. I'm happy. And Johnson said, well, if you were president would you give them to him? Well, that's a hard answer. He knew me pretty well. And the answer is I probably wouldn't have given him any either. And Johnson did. But if we were talking about that, that's one of the things. We were talking about appointments. And we had an understanding of what he was doing then. And he said, you know, I said how about old Lindley Beckworth? Why don't we get him doing something? He was bright, he was back in East Texas. He said, yeah, he'd make a good judge. We could be appointed federal judge, special judge. They need one in New York. And he called old Lindley, talked to him about it. Lindley Beckworth, a former congressman to his house in Big Bunnels. But that's one of those wild stories. I didn't see him do it. But I'd believe it. And so he made Lindley a federal judge and he was very happy as a federal judge for did a good job for I guess six, eight, ten years. But Johnson liked to pick up and help people. He would. Well, let's see now. He was going to come to the farm in October of 1963 when he was vice president. He was going to come to the farm for spend the night. And I went to the ranch with him with Bert and I called Charlotte to tell her we're going to come in the next morning. And I asked her, the president is perfectly willing, the vice president is willing, to pick you all up in Jasper. You and you could come out and spend the night whether we'd have drinks, dinner. It wouldn't take hour. But Charlotte said, declined that invitation. She'd been working like a dog, getting the house all cleaned up and tidied up and organized. Her ten-year renovation had been done in a week in anticipation of the vice president coming. She didn't have her hair done. Nails weren't done. She was not prepared to leave and go get in the plane and go anywhere. She didn't come. And so we came the next day and instead of staying one day, Johnson stayed two days, two nights. He slept in the front room of that old house built in 1856. And I hadn't made it fix the new bathroom up there. There was the old bathroom was a regular tub. But at an angle, the supports underneath that old bathroom had deteriorated and the tub was not level. And in addition to that there was a lot of iron in the water and the bottom of the tub was brown. Have you ever seen one of those tub with the brown bottom? Anyhow, that's the way it was. Johnson and Bird never said one word about that. They didn't mention that, you know, they understood about those kind of things. They were not stuffy people and they didn't say a word about it. That suited them fine. It worked. They didn't say a word. And I told them we'd have a few people there to visit with him. We had about ten for dinner. My mother and a few close personal friends and we had one dinner downtown at another man's house at E.P. Lindsey a very wealthy Democrat there that did a good job for us and for them. But the few friends that had about 2,000 people came by, had three bands and had him come to the house Charlotte and Bird and the president had them first go down to Silor's house down the road about 2 miles and we had a gotten some limousines, got a hold of some limousines and had them pick them up down there and bring them up to the crowd when the crowd was all there. They came rolling in fine. Got out all nice. Johnson's there and everybody's out. Gonna go take him up to the stand make some comments. And it was a white dog about this high just howling barking bothering everybody and my friend Wilton Inman who was a county agent there and my good friend still is kicked that dog out off the ground about this far and he ran off howling never saw him again and the crowd was sitting like this looking at Johnson and Bird never said a word. They didn't get excited about it. Now there'd be eight people wanting to call the Humane Society for kicking that dog out of the way like it should have been. But anyhow Johnson made a good speech and we visited a minute there and Johnson admired the pretty girls in the band. A little weather corruption every place and he said hell there's something right here in Beaumont right now. Well I recall that and I still can see that picture of that senior citizen that he was handing the first check to A.W. Schlesinger we were still helping them they were friends of my family from Louisiana and they run a assisted living home here in Beaumont and my mother was there for a while but back at the farm he stayed at that farm in the same room that I later had Sam Rabin was there so it's an nicest dark room Sam Houston was in that house too some years before I had it and Johnson just he had a good time I think I think he enjoyed it the bird did Had Lady Bird Johnson of course was a sweetheart always was but she was a real help to Lyndon Johnson not only did he love her his wife and mother of his children but she was a real strong supporter and a good advisor she was a good judge of political matters even and of course she helped run their business it was originally her money and they parlayed it and did very well with a little management from Johnson and active management by her and they did very well Johnson liked that business part fine he just didn't have much time for it I remember we were talking in New Orleans had a ceremony and people wondering what we were talking about or what we were talking about was I had started a little bank and Johnson of course had a small bank of interest too and he was telling me that you don't ever loan money to your directors he had nothing but wealthy directors they didn't borrow any money I thought to myself I wouldn't work out that way my directors borrowed lots of money and most of all I paid it back but Johnson was fun fun right and now they had the convention in 1960 in New Jersey and it was a big party we had a good time had a good time and Charlotte and I went well that wasn't in 1960 that must have been in 1968 or 64 no the convention in 1960 was that in New Jersey Los Angeles well this one was after that oh 64 64 64 was the one yeah we had in August about the time Charlotte's birthday they had a big party lasted into Charlotte's birthday I told them it was all for her and it was a good election a good election Johnson did well of course now in the senate it was a lot of fun for a fairly young member of congress to be over visiting with the majority leader and I see in the evenings he maybe have four or five or six senators over having a drink talking to them and it was a good time to know them and I met a lot of important senators on a good basis and so with Rayburn and then later McCormick those folks speakers and so forth I had a good life as far as political power and there would be no other taxis members of congress over there of course and no other members of congress period over there and Johnson came down here a lot of times for when I'd have a fundraiser Johnson would come for a big fundraiser Johnson came a couple of times one time he didn't even tell us he was coming just started to arrive last minute we were delighted and it worked out fine but he would just do that he he wanted me to when he was vice president one time we were swimming we had like the pool warmer Johnson and I said we'd turn it some gun up other people liked it cooler we liked it warmer so we turned it up and had those distinguished associates he had from the Philippines serving us drinks and alders which was a good way to live in the pool and Johnson and I had a good time Johnson was living well making a lot of money out of those television stations and he said you know what he just quit Jack I'll give you some land build you a big house out there on the lake we'll go out there and we'll make some money and have some fun I said Johnson I said Mr. Vice President you're not going to do that and I'm not either but it's a nice offer and I appreciate it but we're not going to do that and you're not either and we didn't it was just a thought you know the pressure of being vice president with Bobby hating him all the time but got to him occasionally and bothered him he didn't say that but it was fun he was just a nice guy I don't I just think of a hundred things he did that were nice you were with him all during the agonies of the war yep he didn't like the war he didn't like the war but you know it's pretty hard to stop a war when the other side doesn't want to quit and my theory was that the Vietnamese had nothing to lose they were using Chinese soldiers and they just ran them down there by ten thousand a month that no week could come through from China and they'd send them on into the front lines and we'd kill them and they'd send some more and so there wasn't any pressure on the Vietnamese management government they just wanted to keep on fighting they apparently thought they'd derive some benefit from that personally I thought it was a waste of time Vietnam was a tough miserable war lost a lot of people didn't accomplish very much Johnson didn't start the war and he didn't end it they didn't want it ended and I'm sure Jerry Ford was discouraged that he was over with but they were just tough people to deal with and guerrilla warfare in somebody else's country is a hard one to win just hard to win when you have people that don't mind dying individuals they can create a lot of trouble before they die each one and that makes for a lot of problems we're faced with that not quite that but another one of those non-ending troubles in Iraq now this is Johnson's war thank God but we can win the war but the disposition of the government and the effect on those people and how it's going to affect the stability of that area of the world will be in controversy for generations will be a big, big chaos and we'll be in charge of it and as I told you earlier visiting with you I'll bet we get a lot of cooperation from France on that they'll all want to tell us how to do that and it won't be easy a Saddam has been able to run the country with the gun and the Shiites and the Kurds, he kills them often as he can or with poison gas and that's one of the problems we have with this guy he's such a wasteful when it comes to using weapons of mass destruction against his own people there's nothing to keep him from using it against other people in the world even more sophisticated delivery systems or or poisons he's not a good guy now Johnson when he was president he was not always sometimes senators would be giving him trouble and I you know it would be recalculating difficult not cooperative and I told him I said he'd be dealing with them working with them I said well Mr. President as a majority leader you'd have called him up and pulled his chain good because I'd hurt him do it and I knew he could and would he said well Jack you got to understand the president has got to use more discretion when he has his hand on the throttle with so much power you can hurt somebody you don't really want to hurt and so he was careful about how he used that power with people he didn't want to hurt anybody and and he didn't he didn't now when back on being thoughtful I tell you what we were visiting at the ranch one time Charlotte and I were we were on a boat wandering around one of those lakes out there and we got to talk about the families Charlotte's mama Inez Wilson in Cameron, Texas went to Southwestern where Johnson went to school and he knew that we had talked about that before we got to talking about it he wanted to know how she was doing she was doing fine he said well why don't we have our idea for supper tonight well Charlotte called her and made arrangements that they could be and they sent the plane to pick them up in Cameron or her in Texas wherever they landed the plane brought them to the ranch, had dinner had a wonderful time now there are not many people that are that thoughtful that will send a plane to get your mother-in-law or your mother and a new husband and fly them out here and have dinner with them wine and dynamite and treat them right and just not many people that would do that but Johnson did he won and they spent the night at the ranch they loved it they talked about it till they died one I don't read that I just say that you can't say that Johnson was not a major force in the country and you've got a lot of people that are going to give you all the details of his legislative accomplishments and all that business and while I participated in it and voted for 99% of it I don't know what I voted against not much but I just did not want to spend my time analyzing what the historians have already got written down in the record and they didn't know him anyhow they're not going to talk about these things they didn't know him from Adams or Fox they know about the legislation and all this and when he was there and all that has nothing to do with the real stuff of the man and I liked him thought he was a good man a wonderful man who did much for this country who wanted to do things for this country and who did them I think history should show that you passed the legislation that saved the presidential libraries well that might be so yep the National Archives independence act you got them out from under the General Services Administration which wanted to destroy the libraries I understand I hadn't told about that you would be interested in that and the library sure they would that ought to be part of the record of the library yes it should be well that's true well you all have done a good job down there and I think you want to say that even better because Lady Bird Johnson has continued to nurture it to encourage it in every way because she's smart and she's got a good perception of what history ought to be and what the future ought to be she wanted to preserve it all and she has been a strong and stalwart supporter of the program and the project she certainly has yeah she still is all right Robert it's good to see you again great wonderful glad your children are well Jim found his way down here yes quit recording