from   Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview I*
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION 
The LBJ Library Oral History Collection is composed primarily of interviews conducted for the Library by the University of Texas Oral History Project and the LBJ Library Oral History 
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LAWRENCE F. O'BRIEN ORAL HISTORY, INTERVIEW I 
PREFERRED CITATION 
For Internet Copy: 
Transcript, Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview I, 9/ 18/ 85, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. 
For Electronic Copy on Diskette from the LBJ Library: 
Transcript, Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview I, 9/ 18/ 85, by Michael L. Gillette, Electronic Copy, LBJ Library. 
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION 
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY 
AND 
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY LIBRARY 
Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interview of Lawrence F. O'Brien 
In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Title 44, United States Code, and subject to the terms and conditions hereinafter set forth, I, Lawrence F. O'Brien of New York, New York, 
do hereby give, donate and convey to the United States of America all my rights, title and interest in the tape recordings and transcripts of the personal interviews conducted on September 18, 
October 29, October 30, December 4, December 5, 1985; February 11, February 12, April 8, April 9, June 25, July 24, July 25, September 10, September 11, November 20, November 21, 
December 17, December 18, 1986; April 22, April 23, June 18, June 19, July 21, July 22, August 25, August 26, September 23, September 24, November 3, November 4, December 10, December 
11, 1987 at New York, New York and Cotuit, Massachusetts and prepared for deposit jointly in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library 
This assignment is subject to the following terms and conditions: 
(1) The transcripts shall be available for use by researchers as soon as they have been deposited in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. 
(2) The tape recordings to which the transcripts relate shall be in the possession of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and shall not be available for use or review of or by any source 
during my lifetime and for a period of time thereafter ending with the 10th year anniversary of the date of my death. At such time, access to the tape recordings by 
researchers shall be permitted but only for the limited purpose of background use, and researchers may not cite, paraphrase, or quote therefrom under any circumstances. 
(3) During my lifetime, I retain all copyright in the material given to the United States by the terms of this instrument. Thereafter the copyright in the transcripts shall pass to the United 
States Government. During my lifetime, researchers may publish brief "fair use" quotations from the transcripts without my express prior consent in each case, but no 
other quotations from the transcripts shall be published, except with my express prior approval in writing. 
(4) Copies of the open portions of the interview transcripts, but not the tape recordings, may be provided by the library to researchers upon request, subject to the terms, conditions 
and restrictions set out herein. 
(5) Copies of the interview transcripts, but not the tape recordings, may be deposited in or loaned to research institutions other than the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library or the John 
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Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, subject to the terms, conditions and restrictions set out herein. 
Signed by Lawrence F. O'Brien on April 5, 1990. 
Accepted by Donald Wilson, Archivist of the United States, April 25, 1990. 
Original Deed of Gift on file at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, 2313 Red River, Austin, TX 78705. 
ACCESSION NUMBER 92-12 
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INTERVIEW I 
DATE: September 18, 1985 
INTERVIEWEE: LAWRENCE O'BRIEN 
INTERVIEWER: Michael L. Gillette 
PLACE: Mr. O'Brien's office, New York City 
Tape 1 of 5, Side 1 
G: Let me ask you first to review some of the episodes at the 1960 [Democratic National] Convention and particularly Lyndon Johnson's selection as vice president. 
O: As they headed into the convention, our game plan, to secure the nomination over that two-year period after Kennedy's re-election to the Senate, was based on utilizing primaries 
selectively. We felt that we had to be awfully concerned about the party pros accepting a Catholic nominee, for obvious reasons. It presented difficulties, too. As it turned out, 
that was exactly the case. So we attempted to very carefully orchestrate our primary effort and my recollection is that we wound up in seven primaries. We negotiated out of 
some major primary states--California, Ohio, Pennsylvania--in a variety of ways; we'd stay out if this happened or that happened, and whatever commitments could be made for the 
future, favorite sons in some instances, like [Michael] DiSalle in Ohio, Pat Brown's activities in California and the rest. 
But the effort was to build up within the party a recognition that Kennedy could be a strong candidate for president regardless of the aspect of his religion. And in doing that 
we really were fortunate because of the seven primary states, three or four of them were rather easy marks for us. Avoiding major states where we required a great deal of money 
and organization was very helpful. And the primary focus in terms of national attention and party attention really became Wisconsin and West Virginia. The Hubert Humphrey 
efforts in Wisconsin and West Virginia did elicit a great deal of media attention. And the West Virginia primary, where it was predicted Kennedy would lose but he ultimately won, 
really was the catalyst that moved us forward. 
So then we had to focus our attention on the party pros, whether it was Michigan, Ohio, California, Pennsylvania--the major delegate states that we had some degree of 
entree to. It was very difficult because, interestingly enough, it wasn't a matter of liking or disliking Kennedy. It was a matter of self-preservation among the pros, and the most 
difficult people to deal with in the final analysis, as we headed toward Los Angeles, were Catholic pros. David Lawrence was governor of Pennsylvania; Mike DiSalle was 
governor of Ohio; Dick Daley was the kingpin, of course, in Chicago and, therefore, Illinois. In each instance there was deep concern--Bill Green was a powerhouse in 
Pennsylvania, also--that the nomination of Kennedy could bring down the ticket in their states, the governorship or a Senate contest or a local contest. So [we had] to persuade 
them that while they thought Jack was a nice guy and all the rest, the political reality was 
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O'Brien --Interview I --2 
that he could be a winner and, consequently, could indeed be a help to them in their individual state efforts to maintain party control. 
So, going into Los Angeles, we had continuing question marks. My recollection is that Mayor Daley did not join the Kennedy effort until Los Angeles. David Lawrence and 
Bill Green still were concerned. Pat Brown was off again, on again. He had an Adlai Stevenson situation in California. We weren't locked in. 
But, nevertheless, once we had completed our primary route in those seven states--and that included Maryland, Oregon--we were able to organize quite well in all of 
them. They were doable in terms of our resources, and we were successful. And in the process, as I said, we had elicited a terrific amount of national attention and, obviously, a 
great amount of professional Democratic Party people's attention. So we developed a system of checking and rechecking every delegate. Bobby Kennedy and I jointly put 
together an organization for Los Angeles in which every state delegation was assigned to a Kennedy person, and that Kennedy person, whether it was Abe Ribicoff or John Bailey 
or whoever--and there were a large number of them then--would literally live with the delegation. That was the contemplation; regardless of whether they were delegates from 
their own states, they would literally live in the hotel where the delegation was located that they were assigned to monitor. 
So each morning for several days prior to the opening of the convention, we would meet at our headquarters in Los Angeles and each of these assigned people would go 
over, name by name--it was a rather tedious task--the delegates of the state or states in a couple of instances, two or three small states put together, that they were responsible for. 
So we got to caucuses--the route that Lyndon Johnson and other candidates were obviously following in Los Angeles--going around to the various caucuses. I remember 
particularly the California caucus--still trying to lock up those last pieces. But we had a pretty clear idea that we had the nomination. Now, it could be taken away. You could 
have dissipation of delegate strength, particularly if you had a major party leader that had a change of heart or change of mind. But the objective was to win on the first ballot. 
G: Did you feel then that if it didn't go over on the first ballot that you might have some erosion? 
O: Yes, we felt that that would create a danger and certainly make it much more difficult. I remember the California caucus, because while you had candidates--we had Scoop 
[Henry] Jackson, as I recall, Stu Symington, we had a number of them, and we had Lyndon Johnson. 
Jack Kennedy and I were returning to our hotel from the California caucus when I told Kennedy in the car that the Johnson delegation had extended an invitation to Kennedy 
to appear before the Texas delegation. I immediately followed up by saying, "Of course, there's no point to that. First of all, you're not going to gain a darn thing. Secondly, you'll 
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O'Brien --Interview I --3 
get into a direct confrontation," because Lyndon Johnson would appear jointly with him and it might cause problems. And I attempted to persuade Kennedy not to do it. I felt 
that there was no valid point to it. Kennedy thought about it. His first reaction was "yes, I've got a lot of other things to do." But it was a long trip in; I think we were out in 
Hollywood somewhere at this California caucus--you know the travel problems on the roads in Los Angeles. And the more Kennedy thought about it, the more intrigued he 
became with it. He then concluded before we got to the hotel that he was going to appear later that afternoon before the Texas delegation. It kind of intrigued him. I therefore had 
lost the argument. My argument was obviously based on what I thought was political reality, delegate counts. 
So he did appear, and from that came the long-remembered comment that Kennedy made that he thought Johnson was certainly the greatest majority leader the 
Senate had ever had, and he, Kennedy, was going to do everything possible to ensure that he continued as majority leader. And so nothing negative occurred, we gained no 
delegates, but it achieved a dimension of publicity. The Johnson-John Connally effort to stop Kennedy--which was an obvious effort I would have been making if I were with 
them--was intense. And our continuing delegate counts showed that we were withstanding that effort. 
We then had the unexpected. That was the appearance of Adlai Stevenson and Eleanor Roosevelt at the convention in an attempt to swing the convention with the 
enthusiasm of the moment. However, the efforts we had expended over that long period of time stood us in good stead because, again, there was no erosion. So when the actual 
balloting started, we were very confident that we were going to win on the first ballot, and we did. In fact, I think, as I recall it, we were within three votes of our head count when 
the roll call was completed. 
Then, at that moment, after the nomination, Kennedy chose to appear before the convention that night even though he was to formally accept the nomination at that 
stadium the following day or a couple of days later. But through this entire effort, we had had no serious contemplation of a running mate. 
G: You'd never talked to Kennedy about that before? 
O: Oh, you know, there were a lot of names out there and I guess we probably talked at one time or another about eight or ten possibilities. So I think the enthusiasm of the moment, 
the culmination of a couple of years of effort, the fact that we had achieved the nomination was so overwhelming to all of us that we just didn't focus. So after that long night, we all 
went to bed in the early hours of the morning, I received a call from Kennedy early--it probably was 6: 00 a. m. or something like that--to immediately join him in his suite. So I 
hastily dressed and went down to the suite, and there were several people there, of course, Bobby, Ken O'Donnell, and now I don't recall the others. And I don't recall specifically 
how this had taken place over a matter of very few hours, but Jack Kennedy had made a decision that he'd like to have Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --4 
I don't know what came first in terms of whose great thought it was. There were those that later claimed it was their thought; Joe Alsop claimed that and Phil Graham 
claimed that. But I think in the normal course of events, Jack Kennedy came up with this idea, because I think perhaps he was probably the first to focus on "Are you going to be a 
footnote in history as a nominee for the presidency or are you indeed going to achieve election?" And you had the South and the Southwest; you had this whole problem of 
bringing a high degree of unity in terms of the ticket to this campaign effort, and it was a stroke of genius. I can't lay any claim to participating in it in terms of it being a stroke of 
genius. 
G: When Kennedy mentioned this, were these the elements that he cited? 
O: Basically, he felt that it would achieve great balance on the ticket and that now we had just come off within hours of, not a bitter struggle, but certainly a vigorous struggle with 
Lyndon Johnson, who was our prime opposition as we got to the close-out of the nominating process. 
G: So you're convinced that the offer was not intended as one that Johnson would decline? 
O: Oh, no, we were not at all sure he'd accept. No. In fact, it caused turmoil, off-again, on-again activity over a period of a couple of hours. Johnson was in his suite, as I 
recall--it was just below Kennedy's--and Sam Rayburn was there and others. It was a matter of some time elapsing and I believe that there was, during that period, [the feeling 
that] no, he won't accept. Sam Rayburn was absolutely adamant that he not accept; a quote attributed to him is "I'll shoot you, Lyndon, if you take this," something to that 
effect. He felt very strongly about it. 
G: Let me ask you to go back to that suite, the Kennedy suite, and the initial meeting when the proposition of asking LBJ to serve as the nominee of vice president. What was your 
reaction to it? 
O: I was stunned. Because I guess whatever little thought I ever gave to the second place on the ticket, I don't think I ever focused at all on having your major opposition wind up your 
running mate. Now, obviously, that's something that's happened many times in American political history, but somehow or other if I ever really gave more than a fleeting thought to 
Lyndon Johnson, it would be in the context, "Heck, Lyndon Johnson would not accept second spot. He's the majority leader of the Senate. He isn't going to sacrifice what he 
has to be on this ticket." So I never gave it any serious thought myself. Maybe I was thinking of Stu Symington or whoever. 
G: Was Symington your own personal choice? 
O: I didn't have one. There were half a dozen people that obviously would be the people on a list that you would ultimately select from. None of them were stick-outs in the sense that, 
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O'Brien --Interview I --5 
boy, this has got to be it. But see, Lyndon Johnson was another dimension. He wasn't one of these fellows that really never had a chance to be nominated but had gone through 
some of the exercise and, consequently, had reasonably high national visibility and therefore could be on the ticket. Now this was entirely different. Of course, part of the 
problem was that some of our most ardent supporters in acquiring the nomination would be nothing short of appalled with a decision of this nature, in the event Lyndon Johnson 
accepted. That wasn't a happy task that Jack assigned his brother, Bob, who was to go up and visit with Governor G. Mennen Williams and Walter Reuther, and advise them of the 
decision. 
G: Was this at that early meeting that he asked his brother to--? 
O: Once it was determined that Lyndon Johnson would accept the nomination, there were a couple of assignments. I remember, because immediately as part of that you had to think 
about your own supporters and what their reaction would be, and I guess you would direct your thought process immediately to Michigan, to G. Mennen Williams and to 
Walter Reuther. They were very liberal. They were certainly in leadership roles in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Reuther as the head of the UAW obviously was a 
very prominent and important force in the activity that brought about the nomination. Bobby was charged with that duty, and Bobby was not at all enchanted with the selection 
of Lyndon Johnson. 
G: What was his reaction? 
O: As mine, I think he was shocked, probably for different reasons. I'm going back twenty-five years, but I would react in terms of trying to put the numbers together right 
away rather than any of the philosophical views or the rest. But there had been some fairly bitter moments in the process. As for Bobby Kennedy, it was his nature to strongly 
react pro and con to most things. I think that he perceived attacks on his brother Jack as highly personal as far as he was concerned. 
G: So he felt this should eliminate Johnson? 
O: Yes. So Bobby first had to accustom himself to this, and then take on the job of smoothing some of what would be obviously ruffled feathers. 
G: How did the discussion go between the two Kennedy brothers, can you recall? 
O: Some of that discussion was just between the two of them. 
G: Really? 
O: Yes. 
G: By the time you came, was this still being debated? 
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O'Brien --Interview I --6 
O: No, this was off and on, but Jack would go in the other room, Bob might go in another. You know, this was one of these totally unstructured situations. Everybody, I think, was 
in somewhat of a daze. The whole thing was unfolding, and as the minutes went on, will he or wouldn't he if he was offered? And then he's offered, would he take it? No, he 
won't, and then the word would come back, well, no, he's not going to take it, and then, well, he'll think about it some more. This sort of thing just went on and on. The key to it 
all was that Jack Kennedy had made up his mind this was absolutely the right thing to do, and there were no alternatives. 
During the course of this activity, you got to the stage where Lyndon Johnson agreed to take it. Before this would ever become public knowledge--it was still confined 
to this room and Lyndon Johnson's suite--it was necessary to round up all of the potential vice presidential nominees one by one and have them come in and meet privately with Jack 
Kennedy, where Jack Kennedy would tell them individually that he had made his decision. Part of that brought Scoop Jackson to becoming national chairman during the campaign. 
It was just an unbelievable experience in every respect. It absolutely shook all of us, because to my knowledge, I don't know who might have whispered in Jack's ear or 
something like that. I certainly didn't. I know my mind was wide open. When I got that call that morning, obviously I knew the subject. The subject was now let's go over the list 
and let's get a consensus among the half-dozen of us that were intimately involved with Jack and the campaign and let's put this to bed, because we're going to have a session of 
the convention starting at noon and we've got to resolve this. I didn't go into his suite with any thought in my mind about Lyndon Johnson, not only that he'd be on the list, [but] 
there would be no list. It would be Lyndon Johnson. I did not know Lyndon Johnson intimately at all. Perhaps I had met him once or twice. 
But, anyway, people fanned out and there were tasks to do. You had to decide who was going to place him in nomination, who was going to second the nomination. 
Then the report back from the Michigan delegation was that they were totally displeased, and then there was the threat that this would be a floor fight. So that required all kinds of 
posturing on the convention floor and all kinds of assurances that we had everybody in place and that the motion to close the nominations and the motion to declare the election 
of Lyndon Johnson be made from the floor. I forget now, but Abe Ribicoff was a party to it in the Connecticut delegation. There was someone else; in case the chair didn't 
recognize one, they'd recognize the other. John McCormack was up on the platform with Rayburn. So all of this was part of what had to be done before the afternoon. At a point 
when things settled down in the suite, people moved out to carry on their tasks, including Bobby going up to whatever hotel it was to meet with Walter Reuther and the Governor. 
G: Soapy Williams? 
O: Soapy Williams. There were other assignments. You knew what your soft spots were. You knew there was going to be some strong adverse reaction. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --7 
Then Lyndon Johnson came into the suite. And I remember that because Jack Kennedy took a call or went off into another room for a while, so that left Lyndon 
Johnson and me alone. At which point Johnson said to me just what I have stated, "You and I don't know each other well at all. I know of you and obviously you know of me. 
But I want to tell you something. In making this commitment, I am going to do everything humanly possible to help this man and to help this ticket. I am going to do 
everything physically and mentally that I'm capable of doing in the interests of this campaign and this ticket. And I want you and whoever else that handles this campaign to 
tell me what I should be doing, assign tasks to me. I don't care how difficult the task might be. Move me everywhere and anywhere you can. I am totally committed, and 
you're going to find that I am everything that you would want me to be in terms of being a running mate." It was a very impressive monologue. I was impressed. I started even then 
adjusting. I don't know as it had fully penetrated with me that, by gosh, this was a coup and this was something that was going to really have an impact on this election. 
But anyway, that's what took place, and I must say, throughout the campaign, Lyndon Johnson did everything he had committed to do. 
G: Who were the other people considered for the vice presidential nomination? 
O: No one had been, as I said, contacted even indirectly regarding it, and we had not had any kind of a formalization of discussion regarding it. But as I recall it, and I'll miss some 
names, but Symington sticks out, Scoop Jackson sticks out, Orville Freeman was another fellow on that list, also Humphrey. And it seems to me there were a couple more who 
elude me at the moment. When I say half a dozen, I think there were half a dozen names that were bandied about by the press as potential VP candidates. 
G: Were there any other southerners considered? 
O: I don't know of any. It's probably somewhat remote, but only because of his position and his early advocacy of Kennedy that the name of Terry Sanford might have come up. 
G: That's who I was wondering about. 
O: Yes. 
G: What in particular did you hope Johnson would add to the ticket's electability? 
O: I think first of all it gave what we like to term geographical balance. He was nationally prominent and he was from Texas; Kennedy was the nominee and he was from 
Massachusetts. Johnson, as majority leader and for other reasons obviously, had entree to the South and the Southwest. He was eminently acceptable on the ticket, and more than 
that, with some degree of enthusiasm on the part of any number of southerners. As for Kennedy, his strength was in the West, the industrial Midwest, and the East. And it 
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O'Brien --Interview I --8 
seemed that they complimented each other in that sense, in terms of a campaign. There was no great disagreement between them regarding the issues and their views on where 
they might tend or hoped to go once they achieved election. 
G: Did you ever do a state-by-state breakdown of what numerically Johnson could add to the election? 
O: No. All of that might have been something we kicked around after the fact, but I can tell you that I don't think, even though I'm trying to reflect on it after twenty-five years, my 
reflections today would alter in any meaningful sense what actually occurred. It was out of the blue; there was an initial disbelief, there was concern on the part of Bobby about 
our supporters and their reactions. And then there was the problem of making sure that you kept a pleasant relationship with all the candidates or potential VP nominees. All of 
that was swirling around the suite. And you had a time frame. You had to try to smooth the ruffled feathers of a number of liberals in the Democratic Party that had supported 
Kennedy. You didn't have that kind of problem with a Dick Daley or a Dave Lawrence, or those people; they were political pros and it wouldn't take more than a few minutes for 
any of them to say, "Well, this sounds good." 
G: Was there anybody that served as a go-between between the Johnson forces and the Kennedy forces? You know, Jim Rowe and Phil Graham have been mentioned as people 
who shuttled back and forth. 
O: No, I don't think so. I think it was a relatively easy matter. There were people, I don't know how many people were around Johnson at that point, but I don't think the 
structuring of it in any sense ever occurred. In other words, "All right, you speak to so-and-so," or "You do this and you do that, and then you have him speak to Johnson or 
to Rayburn. "This just. . . . If you had had two days to plan this coup, I'm sure you would have had it well orchestrated and well organized, and everybody would know what 
everyone else was doing. But we, who had some reputation, at that hour at least, of being fairly good organizers and all the rest, found ourselves without a game plan other than 
"let's get him," which was Jack Kennedy's game plan. 
G: Jack Kennedy did go down to the Johnson suite that morning and talk with him. 
O: Yes. Yes. 
G: It's unclear exactly what was said, but apparently there was no outright, formal offer at that point, is that correct? 
O: It was a feeler, yes. 
G: It was a feeler. Okay. 
O: Yes. Because, you see, he had to wrestle, too, with if you placed it in a formal context 
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O'Brien --Interview I --9 
and it was turned down, that could be adverse to this campaign. So how do you get to putting the thought across, avoiding the formalization, and yet getting the temperature? 
G: Did Kennedy come back from that meeting with the notion that Johnson would accept it? 
O: That he would be thinking about it. But Sam Rayburn got into that picture at some stage, and Rayburn was doing everything he could on the basis of their lifelong friendship to 
dissuade him. 
G: Now, Kennedy did talk to Rayburn at this point, didn't he? 
O: Yes. 
G: Do you recall the circumstances of that? 
O: No. There was just a lot of movement up and down the stairway. 
G: Then Robert Kennedy went and talked with the Johnson people--Johnson, Rayburn, Connally, and the like--and told him of the opposition to LBJ, particularly in the Michigan 
delegation, and suggested maybe that he consider the chairmanship of the DNC as an alternative to VP. Do you remember that? 
O: No. 
G: Do you have any--? 
O: No. No. And I can say this, in the group meeting with Kennedy present, there was never a reference to that. 
G: Really? 
O: No. Not in my recollection. Because I know, twenty-five years later, what my reaction would have been to that. I would have thought that was ridiculous, to put it mildly. I 
think it would have bordered on the insulting rather than getting the objective accomplished. 
G: Well, why would Robert Kennedy have done this? 
O: Robert Kennedy was not enamored with the whole concept. He had a responsibility to fulfill his brother's direction, and Bob was good at that, and as the years went on, Jack 
Kennedy never at any fleeting moment was other than president of the United States. His brother was the attorney general and his brother was his confidant and adviser, but the 
decision maker sat in the Oval Office and the decision maker sat in the suite that day. It took some doing, and obviously Bobby wasn't saying "I'm going to fight my brother" or 
anything, but it took some doing, first of all, to have Bobby get to the point of the 
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O'Brien --Interview I --10 
accommodation, and then to carry out his responsibilities as a spokesman for his brother with Johnson, Rayburn, as well as Williams and Reuther and the rest. And I don't confine 
it to Williams and Reuther; there were others that were aroused, and there was the threat. 
I don't want to overemphasize the threat of a floor fight, but I must say when you're engaged in something like that you don't just overlook any possibility of difficulty 
arising, and the threat was made. We didn't contemplate that somehow or other they could defeat Johnson on the floor, but, obviously, we were contemplating how to avoid 
this. So before the Michigan delegation got into the act and there was a roll call, you had to plan something, because you didn't want to walk out into that convention with that kind 
of controversy if you could avoid it. 
G: It would have been an embarrassment. 
O: Of course. So, you see, this was not a simple matter. I'm talking about 6: 00 or 6: 30 a. m., or whatever it was, to noontime, when all of these things occurred--the fanning-out 
process around the city. 
G: Did Jack Kennedy ever seem to waver on Johnson during the course of this? 
O: Not to my recollection. 
G: This has been one possible explanation. 
O: Waver on Johnson? 
G: On his choice of Johnson as the nominee. 
O: I don't recall it. If that occurred, I didn't perceive it. 
G: All right. Now let me ask you to describe the anti-Kennedy propaganda that seemed to come from the Johnson forces. Was this, do you think, the genesis of the friction between 
some of the Kennedy people and the Johnson people? 
O: I suppose so. As it got to D-day, hour by hour the effort on the part of the Johnson people seemed to us to become more intense, more personalized. There were all kinds of 
rumors around and circulation of stories about Kennedy's health and that sort of thing. 
G: How could you trace these to the Johnson people? 
O: Well, we really tabbed John Connally and a lady whose name eludes me. 
G: Oh, India Edwards, yes. 
O: Yes. Whether rightly or wrongly, we felt that was the source and that Connally was a 
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O'Brien --Interview I --11 
good bare-knuckle fighter and this was desperation. It was a little bit like it happened by sheer coincidence that I was being interviewed by Mike Wallace up in the booth at the 
time of the Adlai Stevenson demonstration. And Mike Wallace, in his inimitable style, started in saying, "Well, look at this! Look at this, I'm looking out the window of the 
booth. The aisles are jammed and the enthusiasm is great. You people have felt you had this set and now look at this. This could turn out to be a debacle for you." My only 
comment was, "Mike, why don't you look at the floor? The delegates are all in their seats. The people in the aisles, the demonstrators with the balloons and the horns and 
everything, all came from the balconies." And that was really what was happening and it meant little or nothing. But, of course, if you're a reporter, you're hoping that something 
like that will occur so it's a much better story. 
But on the Johnson side it didn't take that form at all. It was the difficult, difficult situation that you have when it's clear that your opponent has "pledges," quote, unquote, 
that indicate he's going to win that nomination and on the first ballot. How do you try to peel off some of that support? How do you try to disrupt this bandwagon? And that's 
really the position Johnson was in. You resort to whatever comes to your mind, I guess. I don't recall that I reacted to the attacks the Johnson people were making or the effort 
they were expending in a very, shall I say, personalized manner. I think that I had enough years behind me in politics to kind of ride with that. 
But there were those among us in this little handful of people who had not had that background. And, of course, you had Bobby, who was reacting much more strongly than 
I was because it was his brother they were attacking. 
G: Had he had a dislike for Johnson before this point, do you think? 
O: I don't recall. I don't think there was anything like a relationship or contact between the two of them that would have brought about any. . . . 
G: Okay. The health accusations are well known. What else did Johnson's forces promote, do you recall? Was there any anti-Catholic propaganda? 
O: I don't really recall any. I think that what happened with the Johnson forces, as Lyndon Johnson years later told me when we discussed a lot of this in a different context, was that 
he had a team out there dealing with delegates. He wasn't in primaries, but he had them fanned out across the country during that same period. These fellows would meet back in 
Washington and report on their findings and delegate count and Johnson felt his people had failed him because they had given him all kinds of reports over those months that gave 
him a true belief that he had a good shot at the nomination. I don't recall now, but I remember Johnson and I discussing specific states in conversations over the intervening 
years. 
G: North Carolina, Arizona. . . . 
15
O'Brien --Interview I --12 
O: Yes. And he said, "I got counts from my people, and then, my God, it was just the other way around!" He told me on a number of occasions that he thought truly that he had a 
good organization in the field with accomplished pros, and that their organized effort in the delegate hunt was productive, and their reports to him, which he insisted upon--I'm 
sure he did--being specific, were very encouraging. And he was truly taken aback to find there was so much air in all of this and that we somehow or other--this is [in] nonprimary 
states--had due to our efforts, as he pointed out, clandestinely really made an impact state by state on these elected delegates. He insisted that there were times when he had X 
number of delegates in certain states and somehow or other we were able to shake them loose. I don't know if he was giving us too much credit; I think he probably never had 
them. 
G: Anything else vis-a-vis Johnson at the convention? 
O: No. I think that he exhibited a little concern in that suite in the conversation about the upcoming session to nominate the VP. He was obviously totally aware of the 
disenchantment of some of those Kennedy supporters, the opposition indeed of a number of prominent Kennedy supporters. He exhibited to me, in the conversation, a confidence 
that we'd get that resolved, but it was clear, too, that he was concerned that having made this commitment it could turn out to be a debacle, and that would be not only devastating 
to us but to him, too. He did exhibit that. But I must say in the context of that discussion, he also went on to talk about what his role would be. 
Tape 1 of 5, Side 2 
G: At the point that Johnson agreed to go on the ticket with Kennedy, did he have any requirements with regard to patronage or responsibilities as vice president? Did he want 
any conditions? 
O: Not that I'm aware of. None. I think that what transpired was that the assignments given Johnson, which he readily accepted throughout the campaign, were the rather traditional 
assignments of a VP candidate. A great deal of emphasis was placed on the train through the South and all of this sort of thing, but also a great deal of emphasis on the travel in the 
Midwest, in states like Indiana is a good example, where the nominee has the big street parades and all the rest. The VP candidate gets in there and speaks to smaller groups and 
hits a lot of the smaller communities that the candidate doesn't, this type of thing. Johnson, as I recall it, never had a complaint to make of any kind, and acquitted himself 
admirably. 
And at no time, and this went on beyond when I really got to know the man in the White House and the rest, was his loyalty to Kennedy questioned by me. I resented some 
of the writings of later years, indeed by some of my colleagues, that indicated that the relationship between Kennedy and Johnson was not of the level that some people might 
have thought, and that Kennedy contemplated dropping him from the ticket at the time of re-election. Never a word such as that was ever uttered in my presence. Never. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --13 
G: Anything to the contrary that might--O: 
To the contrary, I cite one incident, as it never left my mind. I don't recall the circumstances of the meeting that was to take place, but we, by that I mean the special 
assistants--that would be Ken O'Donnell, [Theodore] Sorensen, and me, but probably more Ken O'Donnell than me--were involved. The instructions were that any meeting of a 
substantive nature that we were going to have in the White House, and that would involve, obviously, contemplation of messages to Congress or other decisions, 
automatically the Vice President was to be invited. If he was out of the country or something, perhaps it would be well to reschedule the meetings so he could be present. 
An occasion arose and we were in the Cabinet Room, and there were a number of us sitting there, and it had to do with some kind of domestic message. As I say, I don't 
remember the specifics, but I do remember the President sitting down. We just barely got started, and it hit him, and he said, "Where is the Vice President?" Everybody just looked 
at him. And it turned out we had neglected to notify the Vice President. Kennedy expressed his views in the strongest terms. 
G: What did he say? 
O: Well, he said in substance, "Don't let this ever happen again. You know what my rules are, and we will not conduct meetings without the Vice President being present. I want 
his input, and I don't want this ever to happen again, and I want to be darn sure that it doesn't." He couldn't have been stronger. That incident really, I think, exemplified the 
professional relationship between the two men. Now, I'm not suggesting that Johnson and Kennedy became social buddies any more than I was a social buddy of Jack Kennedy's. 
But in a professional sense, Jack Kennedy was extremely appreciative of Johnson's support, which was evidenced in every way. I had a relationship of fourteen years with 
Jack Kennedy; I wasn't at social events with him. We had a friendship of fourteen years, but my relationship with him was not one of an intimate buddy from college days or what 
have you. So in the Johnson relationship--they were two entirely different types of fellows; they accommodated each other. I'm not saying it was love and affection for 
Johnson, although I never heard Kennedy say a bad word about Lyndon Johnson in all of those years. But, certainly, as president he wanted to ensure that the role of the Vice 
President was as meaningful a role as could be provided and that he wanted the Vice President at his right hand. 
G: How would you assess LBJ's relationship with Bob Kennedy during this period, not the later period, but during this transitional [period]? 
O: I don't recall anything untoward in the early stages. I was involved between those two men at a later stage, but I don't recall anything in those early days. 
G: Writers have suggested a bad chemistry between the two. Was this at all evident at the time? 
17
O'Brien --Interview I --14 
O: Not at that time. 
G: Do you think that after the convention, when both the Johnson forces and the Kennedy forces were working on the general election, was there sort of a good feeling between the 
two camps, or how would you describe the working [relationship]? 
O: Yes, because I was responsible for the organization. I was national director of the campaign. Bobby Kennedy was the campaign manager. But as far as staff melding and all 
the rest of this, I have no recollection of anything other than upbeat. Following the selection of the vice presidential candidate, you selected the Democratic national chairman 
the day following the formal convention. We then met with all of our Kennedy leaders across the country before we left Los Angeles. We had schedules and material already 
prepared. We had an intensive briefing session with them. We then set up a series of regional meetings across the country to get to the grassroots, or as close as we could, of 
the party organization and the Kennedy activists across the country, in an organizational context. We toured the country, and we had eight or nine organizational meetings in a 
period of I think probably seven to ten days. We just flew across the country and met in all the major areas and brought in everybody we could from the surrounding areas or in 
some instances three or four surrounding states. We had representatives of all the elements of the campaign, the women's division and the Citizens [for Kennedy], Whizzer 
[Byron] White and people like that. There was a team and I'd conduct the meetings. We made every effort to put in place what really had been our organizational effort in 
Massachusetts when Kennedy defeated [Henry Cabot] Lodge all the way back in 1952. It was a basic fundamental manual we followed that maximized the potential. So off we 
went. The candidate went his way and we went ours, which is the way it should be. 
G: One final question on the convention itself. In your own mind, did you ever come up with a reason why Johnson agreed to step down as majority leader to accept the vice 
presidential [nomination]? 
O: No, I didn't. I think there was one probable misjudgment that Johnson made, and that was if he were no longer majority leader but vice president of the United States it would [not] 
significantly change his position and role in the Senate among his colleagues. That took place in the early stages of the Congress. Although I don't recall the details, apparently 
Lyndon Johnson made some effort to retain a formalized leadership position even as vice president, and he was advised, which I think he probably should have anticipated, that he 
was no longer a member of the club. It wasn't personal, but you're no longer a member of the club, my friend. And I think that bothered him because, and we'll get into it later, 
there were times when he made comments to me that indicated he was bothered by that. 
We then went on through the campaign and there was one element of surprise at Hyannis Port on election night, and that was the closeness of the election. I remember 
while flying to Hyannis election day recalling the Harris and Gallup polls and the others that showed Kennedy a winner a week before the election, which was comforting. They 
18
O'Brien --Interview I --15 
then started to close over that weekend, and they were quite close as of election morning. I was somewhat disbelieving. But as the night unfolded, it turned out, as we know, to be 
a very, very close election. It was a long night. 
As a matter of fact, when it was decided that we would go to the national guard armory in Hyannis and claim victory with all the Kennedy family and entourage, I went 
with the group, but I was still just a little uneasy. I didn't like the way this was turning out--the closeness of it. So I went into a side office while all of this excitement was 
unfolding and called Chicago. I didn't locate the Mayor, but I did talk to an election official or somebody who was in a position of authority, and my simple question was, 
"Has the count been completed in Illinois?" He said that it had just been completed downstate. While Daley had been accused of thievery over the years, we were fully aware 
of the games played by the Republicans downstate, so they tried to get the downstate vote in before the final count in Cook County. He said there were approximately 25,000 votes 
for Kennedy which as yet had not been officially recorded, and downstate was already complete. So we had squeezed out Illinois. 
I came out of the office and Ted White was standing there. Ted was a perceptive fellow, and he had gone through the entire campaign with us. He said, "I bet I know who 
you were talking to." And I said, "Who was I talking to?" He said, "You were talking to Dick Daley." I said, "No, I wasn't," which was a truthful answer, and I walked away from 
him. But that was an indication of my concern. 
G: The story goes that in later years Jack Kennedy at troublesome times would say he was going to demand a recount in Illinois. 
O: (Laughter) 
G: Do you think that Daley threw in some extra votes? 
O: No. Because we had the reverse of that, a very close margin, with Humphrey, when I ran the Humphrey campaign [in 1968], which went in the wrong direction. No, there was a 
degree of hanky-panky somewhere in Illinois, but I always felt that whatever it was--and I had no knowledge of it and if it indeed existed--it appeared to be in the southern part of 
the state, because they were very adept at that sort of thing. No, it was just a darn close race. You could look across the results and Illinois didn't stick out in any sense. You lost 
a couple here and there by small margins, you won a couple by small margins--more than a couple, it was a very, very close election. 
G: Texas was relatively close, too. 
O: Yes. 
G: Do you recall any of the problems there? 
19
O'Brien --Interview I --16 
O: No, that was Johnson's territory. We went through the whole campaign thinking that "Lyndon is going to carry Texas for us, just don't dwell on it. It's in his hands and we're 
confident," but it was close. The whole election, actually, when you think about it, was extremely close; closer than we had anticipated. We eked it out, that's about what it 
amounted to. And the fact of the matter is we lost twenty-one seats in the House in that election. 
G: Did you play any role in Kennedy's speech to the Baptist ministers in Houston? 
O: I was with him. Contrary to what was the prevailing view after the speech and I guess historically is the view, I never accepted the feeling that he had turned something around. 
G: Really? 
O: No. I was with him, and I remember being in the elevator with him and going to the hall. You could always depend upon Kennedy to acquit himself well. I saw so many occasions 
over those fourteen years of association that I certainly didn't have any feeling that it was going to be otherwise. Obviously, the Houston ministers conference was going to treat 
him cordially. There wasn't going to be any conflict. He'd make his presentation and leave. But I never accepted that it impacted on the election. 
I think that what happened on the religious issue is underscored by the West Virginia primary. Lou Harris was our pollster. That was prior to Lou Harris becoming a 
national pollster. And I remember he'd have a pad just like that one, and he'd do his polling, and we'd sit in the lobby of that Kanawha Hotel down there, and he'd go over his 
numbers and I would tell him about certain arrangements that had been made, to be slated with county slates I thought would be helpful, and we might adjust the numbers a little bit 
in that regard. But the fact of the matter was that the Sunday before the West Virginia primary we were rained out on a tour; it called for a plane tour and we were grounded. 
So Kennedy and I were sitting in the hotel and we were depressed. The conversation went along these lines: "Well, if we come within two or four percentage points of Hubert, 
maybe we can claim some sort of a moral victory, because everybody's predicting we're going to lose and the polls indicate we're going to lose." That was really our view, and the 
scope of the victory was very surprising to us. 
G: Well, isn't it correct that you got a lot of sheriffs behind you and other county [officials]? 
O: Well, we got the organization, because it is an organization state--but you have to remember that was their first presidential primary. There was no interest on the part of 
the pros. The last item on that ballot as far as they were concerned was the presidential primary. No interest. I remember talking to the clerk of courts in a county trying to get 
slated on the slate they'd have printed to pass out to the voters. I regretted what I said to him, because I suggested that a) I was confident that Kennedy would be the next president 
of the United States; b) I wanted him to understand that we would never forget him, that the White House door would be open to him. And he said to me, "O'Brien, stop there. I 
20
O'Brien --Interview I --17 
can work this out. He seems to be a nice guy and I don't mind him being on the slate. But I couldn't care less about the White House door. I don't know if there's more than a 
handful of people in this whole state [who've] ever been in the White House. But," he said, "I want to have you understand I'm not interested in the White House; I'm solely 
interested in the courthouse," and that was the story of West Virginia. 
But we worked hard at it and it was helpful to tie in to some of the county organizations around the state. But the fact of the matter was that later that Sunday 
afternoon, reporters had gone off on tours of their own during the day, and some of them had visited churches. Almost invariably the preacher or minister in his sermon spoke 
about the primary. And I guess, at least from what they detected, it was in the context of "let's not be what people think we are. We resent it." There was a distinct statewide 
reaction to this repeated media suggestion that because Kennedy was a Catholic he couldn't carry the state. Something had to happen in those twenty-four or forty-eight 
hours. Now, Kennedy had the debate, maybe there was a delayed reaction from the Kennedy-Humphrey debate, because Kennedy had acquitted himself extremely well in the 
debate. Kennedy had gone on television that Sunday. No script, just went on for the half-hour, and he talked about his heritage and his religion and his contemplation of the 
future and his country. You know, Kennedy was an excellent communicator. 
So all of those things, you see, probably went into the mix when Tuesday came. But there was great pride across West Virginia, interestingly enough, in Kennedy winning 
that primary, because they felt that an unfair weight had been put on them. I really believe to this day something had to happen to change the Lou Harris poll that showed us losing 
by six or eight percentage points, and we were hopeful that we might reduce the two to four, and we won strongly. 
G: Critics have argued that the victory was a result of Joe Kennedy having pumped a lot of money into the effort. 
O: I'll tell you, any money that was pumped into West Virginia I had knowledge of and made decisions concerning. And I'll tell you, the entire expenditure in West Virginia in that 
primary wouldn't have financed a Congressional election in Massachusetts. 
G: Did you feel that you had adequate financing in that primary? 
O: Yes, because it really was Kennedy at the mine shafts, Kennedy on the street corners, Kennedy with FDR [Jr.] traveling around. And what we found was that all over West 
Virginia you'd go into these homes, go into stores, and there was a picture of Roosevelt. That made an impact. No question that we tried to organize West Virginia, as we tried to 
organize anything we were ever engaged in. And we had Bob McDonough, that was the local Kennedy director, and he was very good, very dedicated, and did an excellent job. 
And there were any number of West Virginia folks with Bob that formed the campaign effort there. We had an extremely well organized campaign, because as I said early on, 
we're dealing with seven primaries in relatively small states. If you take New Hampshire 
21
O'Brien --Interview I --18 
and a couple of others that were walk-through primaries, or Maryland, we really had Oregon, Wisconsin, West Virginia. And West Virginia became pre-eminent off the results 
of the Wisconsin primary that preceded it. We had won Wisconsin, but the press across the country said that it was a moral victory for Hubert Humphrey because we hadn't come 
up to the press' predictions. We came very close to our own but not to the press' predictions. Bobby Kennedy and I had to hustle the next morning to West Virginia on the 
"Caroline" and meet with McDonough, and we traveled to four or five locations to reassure our own troops in West Virginia that indeed we had won the Wisconsin primary, 
and they were not to believe the media claims. 
I came out of West Virginia with great admiration for those people. Also, I think I learned a lot. I know Jack Kennedy learned a lot and he never forgot it. 
G: Well, the story goes that it was that experience that really made him aware of the poverty in this country. 
O: That's right. And you have to realize the breakthrough, and this was this man's breakthrough. Sure, there was an organization; there was O'Brien doing his thing or 
whatever. But the fact of the matter is that to see this man waiting in a mine shaft for those miners to come up all blackened and stick out his hand and say, "I'd like to meet 
you," and then visit with them. He had to break through. He had to break through. This didn't happen easily, but he did break through. They did accept, but not at the outset. It 
was a difficult task. 
G: Remarkable. Did you play a role in the television debates? 
O: Yes. 
G: What was your [role]? 
O: Well, the role was really in trying to take advantage of an opportunity in terms of early acceptance. Our absolute conviction, certainly mine, [was] that if we could get to those 
debates, Nixon would live to regret it. The total understanding we had [was] that Nixon felt completely otherwise, as evidenced by the failure of Nixon to go back and take a look 
at the Lodge-Kennedy debate in Massachusetts, and to take a look at the Humphrey-Kennedy debate in West Virginia. Nixon was very self-assured. 
The debates were something that we wished for and anticipated from the day the agreement was formalized. I was with him at all four debates. Jack Kennedy was a 
remarkable fellow and I had great admiration for him or I wouldn't have gone through all I did with him on these things. I never had a moment's discomfort when it came to Kennedy 
going one-on-one under any set of circumstances. He had a lot of guts. He was an extremely courageous guy. Really, it was just like with the Texas delegation; he couldn't 
resist it. Even if it might have hurt, he just couldn't resist it. He couldn't resist going to the Houston ministers conference. That sort of thing got his adrenalin flowing, and I think 
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O'Brien --Interview I --19 
that without question, particularly in retrospect on the closeness of the election, those debates, or that debate really, the first one, had a tremendous impact. I had occasion to 
recall it recently. Some reporter called me. Apparently it's the twenty-fifth anniversary of the debate coming up in the next few days. And I remember it vividly. There wasn't that 
much planning. There were position papers and Jack took whatever opportunities he could between stops to brief himself. You know, you're pretty limited on how deeply you 
can get into it. But there was the regular briefing procedure with Ted Sorensen and others providing material. 
But that debate was not a substantive debate, nor did you contemplate it would be. You don't know what's going to happen. But the question is, what is the mass audience 
perception going to be? And when we gathered in Chicago for that debate, in that holding room Kennedy had already taken a look at the studio, just as Nixon had. Kennedy had 
suggested it was too cold in the studio and insisted they turn up the heat a little bit. As we sat in the holding room, I remember there were some sandwiches and tea, and Kennedy 
did pour a cup of tea for himself. Nobody else touched anything, Joe Kennedy, Ken O'Donnell--there were about five or six of us, including Ted Sorensen, I guess. I was a 
wreck. 
G: Were the Nixon people in the same area? 
O: No, they were on the other side of the studio. Time starts to run; now you're just checking your watch. And there were ten minutes or so to go, or probably between 
fifteen and ten minutes to air time. There was no outward indication at least of any Kennedy concern. He was very self-composed. But there wasn't a normal conversation 
taking place, and I really couldn't stand it, so I walked out of the room and strolled down the hall. Down the hall a short distance, I realized that was the door to the studio, so I 
opened the door, walked in, closed the door and stood there. There were a number of staff people, camera crews and all that, finalizing everything, checking the lights, et cetera. 
And I looked across this very large studio and noted a fellow pacing up and down alone, and it was Nixon. As I watched him, at one point he went over and checked the podium, 
where his position would be, and he went back. And even with my rather poor eyesight I could see that this man was heavily made up. He just didn't quite look like Nixon in a 
way. But clearly I was observing a fellow that was terribly uptight. 
Then the countdown over the loudspeaker began, and I am still standing there. Nixon hasn't left the studio. And the countdown came and I don't recall the exact minutes, 
but four minutes to air time there's no Kennedy. Three minutes to air time, there's no Kennedy. At which point I'm semi-hysterical standing there, and I'm just about to say, 
"God, didn't you hear the--?" And at perhaps two minutes to air time the door opened, Kennedy walked in, moved directly to the podium and stood. Nixon, looking ill at ease, 
took his position, attempted to speak to Kennedy--Kennedy nodded. And they were on the air. 
After that debate, I visited the press room. There were hundreds of press present, 
23
O'Brien --Interview I --20 
many of whom I knew, and I asked, "What do you think?" While they were relatively noncommittal, it was clear to me that the prevailing attitude was Kennedy had done a 
great job. He had won that debate; to what degree might vary from writer to writer. 
Then I went over to the hotel lobby, which was jammed with all the Daley pros, Dick Daley's organization, and I started to chat with some of them. Then it hit me, and I 
started to say, "What do you think the two major issues were?" Nobody had the faintest idea. There was fleeting reference to Quemoy and Matsu, but nobody there had any real 
idea of the debating points. 
The next day, it was the first stop in Indiana--Evansville--and the crowd at the airport was two to three times what we had experienced at earlier stops. In a few hours 
that debate had made a major impact. I was at all four debates with Jack, and all he had to do was just play out the other three. 
There's no question that first debate had a real impact. Now, there are those that say, "If you just read the transcript." And others will say, "Well, if you'd listened to it on 
radio you would have concluded it either was a draw or Nixon won." The fact is that it was the first, it placed every candidate from then on in a tough position on debates, to this 
day. Debates now take place at every level of politics all over America. People even started to debate empty chairs. 
The Jack Kennedy I knew and saw in action was a remarkable fellow when it came to a crisis. He came up to it. Typical of him was his handling of the Bay of Pigs. It was a 
disaster, and he, figuratively, went out on the White House steps and said to the American people, "My fellow Americans, I goofed. I have absolutely blown this. I let you down. 
All I can say to you is I hope I've learned a lesson. I pledge to do better in the future." My God, the polls showed his ratings went up off disaster, not down! So that really was 
the type of courageous man you were dealing with. 
While we had attempted at all times to be as organized as we could be in the political context, in the elections in Massachusetts, in the nomination quest and the 
election, we now focused on the future in specific terms, programmatically. I remember very well being with him at Palm Beach. He put together his cabinet. Each cabinet 
member selected then met with me, generally over dinner in my suite at the Mayflower Hotel, to review his role as a member of the team. I made it very clear that the President--G: 
What does this encompass, can you--? 
O: Everything they would be engaged in would focus on the President. The President's programs--i. e., legislative programs--would be a responsibility shared by every cabinet 
member. Each cabinet member would be in communication with us on the selection of all his top people in his department, and we would be advising him. 
Now, that was an integral part of the process. Some of these people were 
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O'Brien --Interview I --21 
relatively new to me. Bob McNamara was a good example. I spent an evening in my suite at the Mayflower with Bob McNamara, telling him as best I could, as diplomatically 
as I could, the political facts of life as we saw them, now that he was a member of the team. And this fellow had not had an experience like that before. So, you know, you had 
to be very careful about how you presented it. It might take a few hours over dinner before you finally painted the whole picture. 
G: Were they all receptive to this element, dimension? 
O: Yes. I think in a couple of instances you had to be. . . . Some obviously not only were receptive, but they knew the name of the game, but there were others that just never had 
been in politics. Then, with all of that, while sitting in Palm Beach and the selection process is reasonably completed, we're talking about the White House staff, about 
relations with the Congress, and we look at, I guess they call it, the green book where it listed the positions in departments, agencies, starting with the White House staff, and it 
was like looking at a Christmas catalog. 
The President-elect and I are looking at this book, thumbing through it and discovering all of those goodies. We talked about the White House, and I think it again 
underscored our lack of basic understanding of the whole process, the separation of powers, in terms of how you deal with the Congress. Because I remember that the top 
special assistant to Eisenhower, Bryce Harlow, was special assistant for congressional relations. And then there was an administrative assistant for personnel and Kennedy 
suggested to me that we combine the two jobs, because we both understood personnel meant patronage. It sort of fitted, congressional relations-patronage, and the title would 
be special assistant for congressional relations and personnel. And we both thought that was a whale of an idea, and that's what happened. 
Tape 2 of 5, Side 1 
O: --press relations and personnel, and we were busily engaged, among other things, or I was, in the upcoming inauguration, because there again, we wanted to ensure that all our 
friends and loyal supporters around the country had an opportunity to participate in this great event. So again we were involved in organizational activity. Simultaneously, I had 
to work on my assignment. I had no perception of it, no knowledge of it, even to the point where perhaps somebody might have to steer me toward the Hill. 
The fact of the matter was that all I could do and did was talk to a couple of people that had had some White House experience in Democratic administrations: Dave 
Bell, Clark Clifford, Charlie Murphy. They'd tell me about it, give me a feel for it, and relate how the President, President Truman, or [in the case of] Jim Rowe, President 
Roosevelt, handled their relationships with the Hill in the context of their legislative programs. There had been no formalization at any time; it was just sort of 
seat-of-the-pants. The President might make a call or send somebody to see someone. But it wasn't organized. I guess I wasn't shocked or stunned because I didn't know 
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O'Brien --Interview I --22 
whether it required organization. 
We took the occasion to ask a couple of old hands that were knowledgeable to give us a written evaluation or analysis of this kind of activity. One was Clark Clifford, 
the other was Dick Neustadt. We did know that the first occasion for the White House to have a formalized congressional relations entity was under Eisenhower with Bryce 
Harlow. I hadn't met Bryce Harlow, and inauguration was upon us. Bryce Harlow had called me and had offered his services, which I deeply appreciated. It turned out after I 
did get to know him that he was just a really fine fellow. He was very helpful. 
But in any event it began to penetrate what Bryce Harlow's role was in this formalized congressional relations activity in the Eisenhower Administration. And it 
seemed to me, from what little I'd learned, in fleeting moments before actually going in the White House, that the congressional relations activity in the Eisenhower Administration 
had focused on blocking legislation, avoiding its arrival at the White House for a potential veto, because they were dealing with a Democratic Congress and they had no very 
meaningful legislative program of their own. So it was sort of, if you can call it that, a negative approach: see what you can do up there to stop Democrats from enacting 
legislation that we disapprove of. 
The Clark Clifford presentation, as I recall it, was [to] have a White House activity that was very limited in staff, was not involved in a public context, tried to avoid general 
knowledge of its existence, and did not engage the departments and agencies in joint activity. Let them (departments and agencies) handle their own matters directly with the 
Congress. 
Dick Neustadt chose to chat with me as part of a written outline that he presented and his view was just the opposite--that you should enlist the aid in an organized sense of 
everyone you could throughout the administration. This was a big effort--you were dealing with five hundred and thirty-five people--and as you would not have a large White 
House staff, you'd have to look elsewhere for support. And it wasn't because of any knowledge I had of what was going to transpire, but I guess by nature most of my life had 
been organizing and maximizing the potential. I knew some congressmen and senators, but not well, and only in the political context, certainly not in the legislative context. So I 
decided that we ought to try to build an organization in the executive branch. I had been forewarned by both Clifford and Neustadt that it was a very sensitive area. The separation 
of powers was there, and it certainly could be counterproductive if you didn't handle whatever activities you engaged in with an understanding of this great sensitivity, impact, 
or recognition of the constitutional provisions. 
In any event, none of this was in place come Inauguration Day. I had developed a list of possible staff people. Somewhere along the line Mike Manatos was brought to my 
attention. I contacted Mike and asked if he'd like to join the White House staff as the Senate representative. Henry Hall Wilson, similarly, who had been very active in the 
Kennedy campaign, very close to Terry Sanford, and a member of the state legislature in 
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O'Brien --Interview I --23 
North Carolina--I asked him to join us. And I had a fellow that was associated with me and continued to be associated with me intimately over his lifetime, and that was Claude 
Desautels. These were supplemented from time to time by others over those years: Chuck Daly, who later was vice president of Harvard and the University of Chicago; Dick 
Donahue, a very prominent, very able attorney from Massachusetts and a long-time Kennedy associate. And there were others in later years, but basically the White House 
staff started with Manatos, Henry Hall Wilson, and Claude Desautels, my administrative assistant, and my long-time secretary, Phyllis Maddock. 
G: Was there anybody that you tried to get that you couldn't get to join the staff? 
O: No, and I really didn't know what to look for. You have to understand that this was from ground zero, and all of the organization that ultimately took place over the first few 
months of the Kennedy Administration, putting it in place and refining it, was not remotely in place or really carefully thought out by inauguration time. In fact, it was so, if you will, 
disjointed that we all went into the White House the day after inauguration and we didn't even have office assignments. 
I hadn't seen Bryce Harlow. I called Bryce; I was just stuck with the inauguration. Again, it was the politics of it. I didn't want any disappointed long-time Kennedy 
campaign leaders. And I concentrated on all of that, and Phyllis went over to the White House. I got to call Bryce and apologize that I haven't been back to him, and I was 
looking forward to sitting down with him. Well, Phyllis went over. He said, "Well, maybe some of the details of the way the White House operates I can go over with Phyllis." And 
that was very kind of him. She went over and spent several hours with him. That was the extent of my knowledge of it. I'd never been in the building, even as a tourist. 
So we walked in, with the staff, and looked around the two floors. I don't think I even knew the basement was there. And I found this corner office on the second floor, 
and I noted that there was space for two secretaries and a conference room, and about three offices. So I planted myself in the center office and my staff on each end. And that's 
how the office was established. Somebody then suggested that everybody on the staff go downstairs to the Fish Room, outside the Oval Office, to be sworn in. I didn't go 
downstairs. I was never really sworn in. (Laughter) 
Now what do you do, where do you go and how do you put this together? Well, I received this call from a fellow that was over in the EOB building next door--the old State 
Department. He introduced himself to me on the phone and said he was looking forward, along with the personnel staff, to meeting their new boss. And he knew it was premature, 
but inasmuch as it was snowing he thought he would get directions from me regarding my decision on whether or not to close down the federal establishment early that day. I was 
obviously taken aback, and I said, "Well, let me get back to you." So I called Phyllis in and I said, "Let's see if we can find what department of government has responsibility for 
the Weather Bureau." Lo and behold, there was a fellow by the name of Dan [Clarence Daniel] Martin, Jr., who was under secretary of commerce, who had been a staunch 
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O'Brien --Interview I --24 
Kennedy supporter from California, and under him came the Weather Bureau as we noted in the table of organization. 
Well, that was a relief, because I knew Dan intimately, and I called him. And I said, "How are you doing?" "Fine." I said, "What decision are you going to make today, 
Dan, on closing the federal establishment?" Of course, he didn't know a thing more about what I was talking about than I did when this Lyons called me. "God, what?" I said, 
"Well, the Weather Bureau [is under you]." He said, "It is?" And I said, "Yes, you're responsible for the Weather Bureau. So you'd better just check on what the procedure has 
been in the past, determine whether the projected snowfall justifies early departure of the federal employees for their homes, and I'll give you the extension number of Mr. Lyons, 
and you can advise him on your decision." I hung up. In addition, there were half a dozen telegrams laying on my desk inviting me to various functions, get-acquainted functions, of 
federal unions, employee unions. It hit: personnel wasn't what the President and I had envisioned at all. This was the job of maintaining liaison with the various elements of the 
federal employee establishment, which was of no interest to me whatsoever. I then had Phyllis check with the printing office; it was too late to eliminate "and personnel" from my 
title in the Congressional Directory, so it stayed there for a year. And I never did to this day meet Mr. Lyons or any of the staff over in the EOB building. 
So with that, and with all of the excitement of this new experience, we scheduled the first leadership meeting with the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, the 
weekly breakfast meeting, four days after the inauguration. The first order of business in the House would be the vote on expanding the Rules Committee. So at the leadership 
breakfast, the President welcomed the leaders; pointed out that there would be a leadership breakfast on a regular basis, and we chatted for a while. 
Then the President said to the Speaker, "You have the vote on expanding the Rules Committee scheduled as the first order of business." The Speaker said, "Yes, as a 
matter of fact, we're going to vote tomorrow." And the President, I'm sure, assumed that everything was in order. It was a fairly routine activity in the house. Mr. Rayburn said, 
however, "I'm concerned about it." "Oh?" "Yes, as a matter of fact, I don't think we have the votes. It's very, very difficult, and we've had compromise after compromise on what 
to do with the Rules Committee, but now this expansion and the assignment of these new members to the Rules Committee would give us, as we saw it, just a majority, that's all, to 
bring your program to the floor." So whatever else was discussed at the leadership breakfast eludes me, and probably everything else that might have been discussed that 
morning eluded me because I was in a state of semishock. 
So after the leadership breakfast the President and I discussed this and it dawned on us that, my God, we can't let this go forward. So the Speaker was contacted. 
G: Did you call him or did the President call him? 
O: The President called him. And he came down again that afternoon, and as a result of the 
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discussion he agreed to postpone it for a week. And if you want a cold shower, you've had it; if you wanted to learn how congressional relations are supposed to function, you're 
going to have a quick learning process, and we had to try to develop a head count. 
There were some close and friendly Democrats up there we contacted who we thought would be in a position because of their seniority to be helpful to us in trying to 
determine what the true story was. There was no head count or anything; Rayburn was worried--that was his gut feeling, and it turned out he was right, of course. 
So we got together with Congressmen Frank Thompson, Carl Elliott, Bob Jones, I believe, and went over every member of the House and their perception on how these 
fellows could be categorized at that point. Got hold of Bobby, and Stu Udall, [who] was a former member of the House and was now in the cabinet; got hold of Andy Biemiller of 
the AFL-CIO, and we tried to put together to the best of our ability a head count, and that head count showed that we would lose the Rules fight by at least seven votes, probably 
more. That was our most optimistic view. 
I have some statistics here, because I wanted to recall it. You take the breakdown of the House at the outset of the Kennedy presidency. First, we had lost twenty-one 
Democrats in the Kennedy presidential election victory. The coalition, so-called, of southern Democrats and Republicans was well known, and it had been effective in many 
ways during the Eisenhower period. My notes indicate the vote was scheduled for January 25 and it was postponed to January 31. That may or may not be accurate. 
G: That's what my notes show, too. 
O: At that moment, the House consisted of 174 Republicans, 151 Democrats, non-southern, 108 southern Democrats, and two vacancies. So clearly, the only way this could be put 
together was to get a minimum of twenty Republicans, as we tried to put numbers to this, a third of the southern Democrats, and a united non-southern Democratic vote. The 
southern Democrats had been subjected to a great deal of pressure and media attention back in their districts, to varying degrees throughout the South, opposing any change in 
the Rules Committee, Judge [Howard] Smith or the others. And I remember Overton Brooks of Louisiana saying that it was so difficult. After the fact he told me that he had 
been viciously attacked by his local media and he had a cross burned on his lawn. So that was what we were up against. 
But the time was utilized to the best of our ability. We didn't have the staff, you know, in agencies or departments of government; we just went at it, one on one, phone 
calls and what have you. During the entire course of that several days, we did not involve the President. The President finally made one call, and that was to the chairman of the 
North Carolina delegation, Harold Cooley, and he asked Cooley if he couldn't help--on the basis of our head count there was a serious problem with the North Carolina delegation. 
We felt maybe this was the delegation that might take a second look, or some of them. Cooley convened them--he'd agreed to do that--and I assume that he probably didn't exert 
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O'Brien --Interview I --26 
any great pressure on them, but they did discuss the matter, discuss the President's interest, and Cooley then told the whole world that the President had called him. Then 
some of the media decided that if he had called Cooley, he must have been calling the world, which wasn't the case. 
But anyway, the effort was expended to the best of our ability, and the end result was that we won by five votes. And I believe that we got--what?--twenty-two 
Republicans. 
G: That's right. 
O: I had it broken down. Yes, twenty-two Republicans. We got thirty-four southern Democrats, which was close to one-third of the southern Democrats, and we got a solid 
additional Democratic vote, and we won by five votes. 
Now, first of all, as belated as our recognition of the seriousness of this problem [was], the effect a loss would have had on anything we attempted to do with the Congress 
would have been far-reaching, but we had salvaged it for the moment. If we had failed, there wouldn't have been, in my judgment, any Kennedy program during that two-year 
period that would have gotten to the floor of the House. 
The other aspect of it, however, was that with the effort we expended over about a week, with the closeness of the vote, with the anticipation that you were not apt to get 
twenty Republican votes in many matters up there, clearly we were faced with a very difficult situation, but at least we had salvaged enough so that we would have a chance to 
give it a real try in due course. 
But it was a lesson, and that lesson brought me to the realization that I'd better move as quickly and as vigorously as possible to put together an organized congressional 
relations entity in the executive branch of government. And so we proceeded posthaste. And that, as it unfolded, took the form of weekly, written, detailed reports that had to be 
submitted by noontime every Monday from every department and agency, reviewing what had transpired between their department or agency and the Congress the prior week, 
projecting what they anticipated the next week and beyond, and explaining to the best of their ability any failure of movement, and [they were] to be as specific and detailed as 
possible. 
We then, in our small staff, would analyze and evaluate those reports on Monday afternoon, compile the salient elements for the President's night reading on Monday night, 
and develop the agenda, at least the domestic side of the agenda, legislative side of the agenda, for the President for the breakfast meeting with the congressional leaders on 
Tuesday morning. In addition, the some-forty congressional relations people from these departments and agencies would meet with us regularly at our direction, in the White 
House, and we would review, face-to-face, the entire legislative program, so that all departments and agencies knew their responsibility and the responsibility of their 
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O'Brien --Interview I --27 
respective bosses in the cabinet. It extended even well beyond their own departments and agencies, so that they were responsible, indeed, got specific assignments from time to 
time, for legislative matters that didn't relate to their department or agency directly. 
We then endeavored to orchestrate Kennedy's contact with the Congress, and that took a variety of forms. We put into effect briefing sessions with selected members of 
Congress, probably specific committee members depending on the issues at the moment, in the White House. Twenty or thirty members would come in, and the President would 
meet with them directly and review the specific matter of the moment. We had individual meetings with key members of Congress that would come in the back door, if you will, of 
the White House, not on the President's schedule: Bob Kerr, Wilbur Mills, people like that, on a regular basis. 
We would develop a program where every department and agency that had good news to announce, contracts in a member's state or district, or whatever--Defense 
Department contracts would be a good example--were to advise us of these decisions and the anticipated announcement, and we developed in the White House, on my staff, a 
procedure to notify "friendly" quote, unquote, members of the House and Senate, twenty-four hours in advance of these announcements from the department or agency so 
that they could get out their own press releases to their local media. 
How do you utilize the President? At this point I think it's worth mentioning that President Kennedy had spent four terms in the House, eight years; one term in the Senate, 
six years. He had been on the Hill fourteen years, but he had not been part of the establishment on the Hill. He had not been a total, full-time activist in that sense. He did 
not have the kind of seniority in either the House or Senate, obviously, to be a prime mover. He was very much junior to all his former colleagues, and how do you utilize him? 
The Cooley experience indicated that you would husband the President's direct intervention, that you never wanted to reach a point where the President's direct 
involvement would cause members on the floor to say, "Oh, I got another call from the President today." You wanted that member, if he said anything, to say, "What do you 
think, buddy, happened? I got a call from the President today." He talked to the President of the United States. And that, of course, was the way to go, and it was the 
only way you could maintain presidential impact, hopefully at a given moment under extreme circumstances. 
G: Was the key to doing that limiting the President's--? 
O: It was ensuring that anytime the President intervened, it would have an individual or collective impact. Whether it succeeded in accomplishing the purpose was another thing. 
But there would be a recognition on the Hill that you don't hear directly from the President, or the President will not call you down to the White House unless he is directly, 
seriously involved and this means everything to him. And you've tried to use every other source of persuasion to the fullest in every conceivable way before you bring the President 
into the act, and you try to avoid doing that because there will always be another time. If 
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O'Brien --Interview I --28 
there's not a need for it, a perceivable need, then you shouldn't do it, and you shouldn't--my responsibility was to husband the President's time and effort, and the easy 
route was to say, "Here's a list, Mr. President. In your spare time why don't you call these thirty fellows? Or have them come down one by one?" It just didn't make sense; it would 
be counterproductive over the long haul. It would be meaningless ultimately. 
Just as a statistic, through this organized effort, in 1961, the first year of President Kennedy's term, he presided over thirty-two leadership breakfasts. He had ninety group 
meetings the first year in the White House, by personal invitation of the President, meeting directly with selected groups of members of the House and Senate. He had five hundred 
members, the entire Congress, at one time or another at coffee hours, which were informal. They weren't briefing sessions, they were just little social hours. We had a 
regularly scheduled ceremony every bill signing--we made sure that we extended personal invitations to appropriate members of Congress to participate in every bill signing. Every 
member of the Congress received a letter personally from the President on his birthday with birthday greetings. I took the occasion to send a letter to every member, too, on his 
birthday. That became an established procedure. I had the Sequoia made available to me to take out small groups of members at appropriate times--and this became a regular 
event--for a three-hour trip on the Potomac, where we'd have a buffet dinner and maybe an accordion player, at times, or a sing-along. We would leave the dock at 6: 00 p. m., 
return at 9: 00. And that became the greatest tool available to us, and I utilized it to the fullest. It became a great bore to be on that Sequoia for my wife for three hours, 
sometimes two and three times a week. (Laughter) 
G: When we talked last time, you made the comment, I suspect not in jest, that you felt that one of President Carter's biggest mistakes was selling the Sequoia. 
O: (Laughter) I guess you shouldn't say we were appalled. It isn't that big a thing in that sense, but I certainly reflected upon the Sequoia when I read about the President and his 
economy drive--all presidents have economy drives, but we'll get into those. President Kennedy had one and President Johnson had one. So Jimmy Carter had his, and the 
Sequoia was just a great help in maintaining this dialogue and improving this relationship and getting better acquainted, whatever way you want to describe it. There was nothing 
approaching it. For instance, I was in Washington just two weeks ago, and I was talking to some of our old friends. Two members that I talked to brought up the Sequoia to me 
and reflected on the times that I had invited them on the Sequoia. And they never saw it again. 
G: Well, you described at length how you found out about the White House proper, and allocated your own office space, and things of this [nature]. How did you become aware 
of the Sequoia and--? 
O: I became aware of it in the sense that it was one of two, as I recall, presidential yachts. And it was the largest of the two and therefore it could accommodate more people. And 
the recognition that it is a presidential yacht, the president can designate the utilization of 
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it as he sees fit, and the president doesn't use it very often. So that moment it occurred, the light went on and I thought to myself, "It's too bad to have that yacht [and] staff over 
there on the dock somewhere. I can think of a way to utilize it, hopefully effectively." And I spoke to the President about it, and I had the free use of the Sequoia, unless the 
President was using it, on a designated time frame, from then on. 
G: Were there others that you had to negotiate times with, or did you have first dibs after the President? 
O: No, first dibs after the President. I don't recall any time being told that the Sequoia would not be available when I wanted it. 
G: Did you go out on it with the President first, before this, at least to become--? 
O: No. 
G: You just found out that the yacht existed and--? 
O: There were a couple of occasions with President Kennedy and President Johnson that I was on the Sequoia, not related to this activity but, no, all I knew was, hey, how many 
people can it accommodate, and how many people can be handled reasonably? They have a pleasant little trip down to Mount Vernon and have the salute and the music play and 
turn around and come back. And [you] utilize that three hours of confinement to make it as pleasant as you can, with food and drink, but also circulate and put little groups 
together on the Sequoia so that at the end of the three hours you've felt you might have made your sales pitch, hopefully effectively, and not to such an extent that you turn 
anyone off, so that they did leave feeling that it was a social hour but incidentally there was some conversation about some pending legislation that they were significantly 
involved with. 
G: Would you speak generally to the group or would you speak one on one to--? 
O: One on one. Or when you got with one, then you'd keep your eyes open and maybe you'd want to bring one or two more into that little corner of the boat for that little chat. 
G: Did you normally organize the trips around a legislative issue? Let's say if a bill was coming to a vote, would you get the people who were--? 
O: You tried to, but it didn't work out quite that way because you wanted to utilize it as often as you could. So there were times where you just tried to anticipate that you would be 
busily engaged with these fellows say a month or two from now, and it wouldn't hurt a bit to just get to know them better, have them know you better, and have a pleasant social 
evening with them prior to trying to convince them to be supportive. 
G: Say, for example, if you had a labor bill, minimum wage or something like that and you 
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O'Brien --Interview I --30 
were working on this particular element, would you have lobbyists or people from, let's say, the labor movement, invited as well? 
O: No, this was confined. No, I wouldn't do that. I thought about that, frankly, but then I thought, "That's just takes away some of the niceties of the whole thing." So it was 
confined to my wife and me with one or two members of the White House staff, depending on the circumstances. And it was always a melding of senators and 
congressmen; you never did an exclusive either way, sort of balanced it that way. And really, it was an opportunity that was there, available. These people were all on standby 
on the Sequoia, just waiting for the President or under the President's direction, somebody to say, "Okay, tonight you're going out." 
But what else can you do? You see, in that first year, literally, as a statistic, President Kennedy had 2,500 individual contacts with members of Congress. Now, that's 
really from our records. That took all those forms that I enumerated, but that's direct contact: there's been a chat; there's been a briefing; there's been a visit under any number 
of circumstances. This doesn't include any contacts that we on the staff made at all. This was presidential. So at the end of the year we felt that we had utilized his time fairly. He 
and I had a standing sort of--I don't know how to describe it, but I'd say, "Mr. President, I've got three dates I'd like to put on the calendar for some coffee hours or briefings. I 
have a few dates, and I think we ought to get it done." "Well, all right, come on, level with me. How many dates and what are you involving me in?" He'd always agree. You 
know, I tried to make it just as light as I could and get by and say to Ken O'Donnell, "Okay, it's done. Put them on the schedule." 
But he was accommodating. I had to recognize we had our problems--it did involve his New Frontier program--but he had problems that extended far beyond that, 
and his time had to be properly utilized. And it couldn't be wasted; it couldn't be something to engage in small talk, it had to have some meaning to it if I was carving out of 
his schedule X amount of time over a period of weeks and months. 
And how do you supplement it? We came up with another idea, and this was all part of trying to do an organized effort. We decided to have Sunday brunches at my 
home. We had rented a house in Georgetown, and so that became a regular activity of ours. We tried to meld members of Congress and their wives with members of the media, 
and I was really surprised how successful they were, because it would be a simple sort of breakfast, a little buffet--just have a table and have some bacon and scrambled eggs and 
baked beans or something, and a bloody mary if you wanted it. That was the extent of it. And it would start at noontime and go just like any social time you have at your home, a 
couple of hours or so, and people would drift away. 
I remember the first one I had. There'd be a half a dozen media people I'd invite: Joe Alsop, who at that time was an extremely important member of the media; his column 
was extremely important to everybody. And I invited Joe, and Joe came, and Joe was so struck by the whole thing and the people he met that the next day he called me and asked 
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me if I would include him in some future ones because he just enjoyed it so much and it meant a lot to him. He met people. What amazed me about those meetings was that, 
particularly on the House side, you had important members of Congress: Wilbur Mills, Al [Albert] Thomas, the fellow that was chairman of the Appropriations Committee from 
Texas--G: 
Oh, George Mahon. 
O: George Mahon. You know, another twenty of that level in Congress that--this is long before House reform. And to have a brunch and to have three or four fellows like that 
along with half a dozen, or whatever it was, younger members of the House and Senate, and have Walter Lippmann and Joe Alsop, people like that, saying to me, "Who is that 
fellow over there?" Or having Al Thomas say, "That's Walter Lippmann? I've never met him." Or "That's Joe Alsop? I've never met him." What I realized early on was that with 
all of these people reporting about Washington, particularly the more senior and more widely known columnists and senior reporters, a great deal of their personal contact and 
concentration was on the Senate side of the Congress. 
Tape 2 of 5, Side 2 
O: The brunch [was part of] that continuing effort, again, I repeat the cliche: maximize your potential. And the objective--I'd have members of my White House staff at these 
brunches--we were trying in every conceivable way to get to know these people, to have some reason for contact. They talked about patronage, you know, as though you could 
control the Congress through some patronage device. And it was just not realistic; it never has been and never will be. First of all, it's very limited. Sure, Congress might 
recommend somebody to be an assistant secretary of something or other. Maybe six congressmen recommended somebody; maybe three or four senators recommended 
somebody. An ultimate decision has to be made and there are going to be nine disappointed people and one that feels pleased. That's a task that has to be discharged. 
What do you do in servicing these people or trying to ensure that they know that you care about them, you're interested in them, and you recognize their importance? And all of 
these things I've discussed are all part of it. 
Now, constantly, every day, I had reams of phone calls from the Congress, from members of the House and Senate, and sometimes it was a hang-up on a constituent 
inquiry; maybe a department or agency was aggravating the member because he couldn't get a response, that sort thing. And we were quick to do that. Every cabinet member 
knew that Larry O'Brien calling him called for an immediate response. 
G: You were sort of an ombudsman for the Congress then in terms of [inaudible]. 
O: You did; that was part of it, too. And it was just a part of trying to be as alert as you could, and as communicative as you could with these people. And oftentimes the day 
would end and you hadn't completed your phone calls, but all of us on the staff, four or 
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five of us, would see to it that our phone lists were complete. And we knew that complete meant that that return call had been made, or attempted, even if it were six or seven or 
eight o'clock at night. No answer in the office, maybe you'd call the man's home. You tried to find some way of letting a man know that you did return his call, although you 
[had] missed each other, and not have that hang over. 
All of that was geared to the day, which was every day, that you were going to drop by offices. You'd walk in, and the staff would know who you were at least--you 
were from the White House. And the member would not be reluctant to see you, and in most instances, frankly, he would be pleased that you dropped by. Now, that drop-by may 
be at the time when you're trying to prevail upon the member to change his point of view and support you. People used to envision that that was some kind of a weapon that you 
could use or something, but it was human relations. And I'll tell you, out of every five occasions when we or any one of us would try to persuade a member to come aboard who 
was reluctant or a question mark or indeed, had indicated he was voting wrong as we saw it, I'd say four out of five times those efforts were personalized: "The President would 
appreciate it." And I remember [on] so many occasions, I'd say, "Gee, don't do this. The President's having a hell of a time as it is. You know it's tough up here." And very 
honestly, I think that was more effective than debating the substance. 
Now, they'd talk about constituents: "Well, I'd like to go along with you, but this is going to hurt me." We had the cardinal overriding rule: you never, never suggest 
remotely to a member that he should commit political hara-kiri to support the President. Understand, he was elected to office; none of us have been. There's only one guy 
downtown in that White House that was elected to anything and his name is Kennedy, and up there, there were five hundred and thirty-five people that have constituents and want to 
stay in office and you've got to be realistic, you've got to be understanding, and on the occasion when the fellow says sorry, but no, don't take it personally at all. There'll be 
another occasion when maybe it will be yes, or maybe, or I'll abstain, or I'll pair, or something. Somewhere along the line, if you stay with it, and you communicate and you 
get to know people more and more, there's going to be a greater tendency on the part of that individual to try to be helpful to you somewhere, somehow. As long as it isn't going 
to cause him great political harm, at least potentially. 
For example, foreign aid, which we will get to. Ultimately, and it took a long time to get into this, [we would] do an analysis of the expenditures of foreign aid money 
district by district. People disliked foreign aid but if you could point out to them over in Missouri that X number of dollars flowed into companies and to employees in Missouri of 
foreign aid money as part of that foreign aid budget, that could be helpful in suggesting to the members' constituents that it wasn't a giveaway program, that they got a piece of the 
action. 
Now, I don't know, but you kept trying to think of these things, to develop them. Then the most sensitive part of it, and that was the difficulty because you had to be so 
careful. When I started in the job, first of all, I didn't know Mr. Rayburn. I had to get to 
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know him somehow. I would see him at the leadership breakfasts, I understood that, but I had to be up there and I had to see if I couldn't be a fellow who could drop in with some 
regularity and have a nice pleasant visit. And that applied to the Speaker on down through the key people in the Congress, in the House and in the Senate. 
G: Was Rayburn approachable in that sense? Could you set up an appointment and just go and--? 
O: At the outset it wasn't easy. He didn't make it difficult, but it was something that took him out of his normal pattern; here was this guy from the White House, you know. So I made 
the point when I'd make an appointment in advance, and I'd get the appointment but when I went in, I would play it as low key as possible and elicit from Mr. Rayburn conversation 
about Sam Rayburn and his life and his background and his experiences. And over a period of time it got so that I would drop in regularly, the blinds would be drawn; his 
eyesight was obviously deteriorating. He was using the spittoon and hitting it remarkably well, and he would talk about the Texas Rangers and the porch on his house that he used 
for an office, and all of the years, and how he tries to tell these members that you get this publicity in Washington, you enjoy the Washington social life, but you won't be here long 
if you don't remember back home and pay attention to back home, and all of this. 
Well, that's going on. On the Senate side, Mike Mansfield is extremely supportive and without my effort said to me at the outset, "This back room in my office suite, this 
room is yours to come and go as you please and have any meetings you want to in here." 
G: So was that your base on the Hill then? I was going to ask you about that. 
O: Yes. 
G: Did you keep any staff there or did--? 
O: Oh, no, no. 
G: Did you requisition some of their staff? 
O: No, on the Senate side, let's talk about Mike's role. Hubert was the number-two fellow in the leadership, but Mike was--I don't know whether I'd call him reticent--not a gregarious 
guy, let's put it that way, but very interested in the President's program, and he had been a Lyndon Johnson supporter for the nomination. But he was a staunch, loyal, just 
completely committed and dedicated supporter of the New Frontier program and Kennedy. And it was nice to be able to come into the back door of that room, and I 
would go and have a cup of coffee with him during the course of the day. Mike Manatos had the daily contact responsibilities, but I would be in with him [Mansfield], and 
depending on what was going on at the moment, he would arrange to have somebody go out on the floor and call in the appropriate senators, whether it was Bob Kerr, Clint 
Anderson, or what have you, so we could talk about our interests in the legislation, maybe 
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O'Brien --Interview I --34 
talk about an amendment or whatever. And then he'd even have a group of senators come in at lunch from time to time, where he'd serve lunch and I'd sit there, and he'd say, "Okay, 
Larry, now you tell them your sad story," or "Go ahead." And I'd make my pitch. Now, my God, you know, that's of tremendous value. Well, in the course of this, and with 
Rayburn, it got so that I didn't make an appointment. I didn't have to. I would drop in, and I would say, "Is the Speaker in?" "Oh, wait a couple of minutes; he's got somebody in 
there. I'm sure he'll be glad to see you." So it became informal, dropping by. 
So then it got to the next stage. With John McCormack I had a personal problem, at least I envisioned it might be, because I had been a Young Turk back in Massachusetts 
in the Kennedy group that got into a big battle with the McCormack people over control of the party structure there. And being an arrogant young guy, as you're apt to be when 
you're young, I thought that those old geezers ought to be thrown out and we'd take over. And it became a real riot in Massachusetts, not to get into all of that. But that was in the 
background. So it was with a little trepidation that I would walk in to see John. Well, to the contrary, John couldn't have been more cooperative and pleasant and gave me advice 
right from the start. Carl Albert and Hale Boggs were tremendous guys, and Sam--you know, he was a little remote, but at least I had established some contact with him. And so 
had Henry Hall Wilson. 
In any event, you've got to take it to another stage, and that's where the sensitivity came in. It was unheard of, I'm sure unprecedented, to have a joint head count, [between 
the White House staff and the congressional leadership], House and Senate--to sit down, actually in a room on the Hill, compare notes on the members of the House and the 
members of the Senate, with the leadership of the House and Senate, the Democratic leadership, and work out a joint head count. Now you're getting perilously close to 
violating the separation of powers, and there was a little flak on the House side in that regard. Because as this moved along, Rayburn and McCormack would call in the regional 
whips, and then we'd go over the whole--well, you know, you might as well set up shop up on the Hill, you're just about at the verge of that. There was no outward indication of 
any disturbance about it, but, I can't remember who it was, finally I saw an item in a column one day that one of the whips had said that he had registered his objection to the 
Speaker or the leadership about the incursion of the White House--O'Brien and his people from the White House--who had moved into activities up there that he felt weren't 
appropriate or proper in terms of the separation of the Congress and the White House. But that blew over, and I never had it brought directly to my attention. 
So over a period of time and then through the Johnson period [there were] even more refinements, more activities, so that it was a totally accepted procedure. And it was 
unprecedented. It wasn't motivated by any great strokes of smartness or genius or anything else; it was purely trying to utilize what you had available to try to cope with 
your responsibilities to promote the President's program with the Congress. And how do you do it? You did it the best way you could and tried to personalize it in human terms. 
G: Tell me, what was the significance of the joint head count? Did that give you an added 
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O'Brien --Interview I --35 
leverage because of the dynamics between the two? How did that work? 
O: Well, it was a cross reference and double check, for one thing, because you get to John Smith and we'd say, "Our information on John Smith is that he's right." The regional whip 
or the leader would say, "I question that. What's your source?" And then you go into that: "Because I feel that he has not made up his mind, that he's a question mark." So you 
go over name after name, and then [when] you get to the end of it, you have the number of rights, the number of wrongs, and the number of question marks. Then you get to what 
are the possibilities, and you put together a possibility list. Then you determine whether one of the whips or somebody else should be contacting the member, or somebody from 
downtown ought to be contacting the member again, or jointly you should be contacting the member, or the member should be asked by Sam Rayburn, and later John McCormack, 
who vigorously got into all of this, to come into his office to have a personal chat and McCormack would, incidentally, take on a lot of this. He would bring them off the floor 
all day long one-by-one to try to see if he couldn't sell them. So you pooled your intelligence. 
Now, you had an outside part of the head count and that was the White House outside, not White House-Congress jointly outside. And that would be head counts that 
we'd engage in that we would bring into the White House Biemiller and others in the AFL-CIO, maybe depending on the circumstances the teachers' federations or whatever, 
unions of one sort, or people that are natural allies, or allies in this given instance. Then you would bring them in and you'd work the head count there. That head count would be 
utilized after you refined as best you could the joint head count on the Hill. 
G: I see. But in these joint head counts on the Hill, would you have the House leadership and the Senate leadership there together? 
O: No, no. 
G: Oh, by joint you mean joint White House and legislative [liaison staff], but you wouldn't combine the two legislative sides? 
O: No. On the Senate side, of course, it was always much simpler. You know, it's again the numbers. So we'd sit in Mansfield's office on the Senate side, and Bobby Baker, who was 
in a key position in those early days, would join in the head count. And Mike would call in probably the chairman of the appropriate committee, or others, whatever, and we'd 
work out the head count of the hundred. Now, you're working out a head count of four hundred and thirty-five over on the other side and it can be much more complex. 
On the Senate side, you could get to that bottom line pretty well with the contributions. Baker was very good, you know. He was very knowledgeable and he'd 
just be around the floor and then he'd check out the ten or eleven and just see what the feel was. We would be talking to them directly. We had occasions, as you know, in these 
legislative struggles, to deal with the Republican side of the aisle. Ev [Everett] Dirksen, 
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O'Brien --Interview I --36 
specifically, was dealt with with regularity. On the House side [we dealt with] Charlie Halleck, Gerry Ford, and a handful of others up there that were in key positions. At times 
you'd find a friendly member. [William] McCulloch was a stalwart in the whole civil rights struggle in the House Judiciary Committee, and he was the senior minority member of the 
committee. 
But you knew that you'd better not spin too many wheels. You knew that under normal circumstances the maximum number of Republicans that you could attempt to do 
business with in a New Frontier legislative proposal probably was limited to no more than thirty, and that was based on the districts they represented. And on the Senate side it 
wouldn't be any more than [a handful], if indeed it was a handful. [Jacob] Javits comes to my mind, because Javits was a New York congressman and therefore there'd be an 
inclination on the part of Javits--or John Lindsay when Javits was a New York senator or Lindsay a New York congressman. Now, Lindsay voted with us on some occasions 
because it was in his best interests to do that. 
(Interruption) 
It should be mentioned at this time that it might be well to consider the role of the Vice President in the legislative process, because apparently, and I never had direct 
knowledge of this but it was perceived by me, [he had some] sensitivity regarding the initial treatment he received in terms of his colleagues in the Senate and what his 
continuing role would be with them. I think that bothered him for a long time. I'll tell you that we never had a Senate head count in Mike Mansfield's office, or a substantive 
discussion with a senator or senators in Mike Mansfield's office, without requesting the presence of the Vice President, who was across the hall in his office. And the Vice 
President would come over and join us, because there'd generally be a group or something where we were sitting around a table. And he'd participate fully in all of the give and take, 
and the guessing games at times about attitudes, or the perception of why I thought [someone] might be for or against, and all the things that go into trying to develop a 
majority vote. 
But you have to remember, too, that in the Senate we had a much easier time. The Senate was strongly Democratic anyway, even though it had its composition of southern 
Democrats. The fact is that you had a pretty darned good shot at an up vote, a plus vote, most of the time in the Senate, if you put the work and effort into it. I'm not suggesting it 
was just a simple rollover, but it was just easier to handle, easier in the sense that the number of people you were dealing with, the Democratic-Republican breakdown in the 
Senate, and you had Mansfield and Humphrey in the leadership, both of them working arduously on behalf of the program. And the Vice President would participate in all these 
meetings, and his input was always sought and welcomed. But nevertheless, I was never quite sure--I never discussed it with the Vice President, or later President for that 
matter--but I always had the feeling that he was sensitive to what he perceived as somewhat of a change in the attitude of senators toward him, because he was no longer a 
member of the club. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --37 
G: Was he more tentative than he had been before, do you think? 
O: Seemed to be or--yes. And certainly I didn't see any indications of personal effort along the often-reported, traditional, Johnson nose-to-nose, chest-to-chest persuasion. He had 
stepped back from that. But he was ever present and involved and interested. It didn't even have to do with the Senate. I remember on one occasion, when it had to do with I 
think perhaps Medicare, and we had that long bout with Medicare that extended into the Johnson presidency. We had Kerr-Mills; we had Wilbur Mills' reluctance to go with our 
program; we had the terrific effort being made by the American Medical Association and others to block all this; we had in Kerr, obviously, on the Senate side a very strong 
member that wielded a lot of power. All of this added up to an effort that extended, as you know, over a long period of time before we began to approach a breakthrough. 
I remember, and I believe it was in that context, at some stage I was talking to the Vice President, and I may have suggested to him that perhaps he could talk to Wilbur 
Mills, or three or four members in the House. It might not even have been Medicare, but I think it involved three or four key members of the House on this particular issue. This 
was in the White House one day, and we had just left a meeting in the Cabinet Room and were standing in the hallway. And he said, "Well, sure, I'll be happy to. I'll get hold of 
them. But Larry, I just wonder about my influence on them. I just wonder about my impact. I'm not sure that it really may mean as much as you think," something like that, 
that indicated to me that that was a feeling he retained throughout. 
When I first took over the task, he contacted me and we visited, and he at that time said he was fully prepared and would have the time to do it and he was located up in 
the Senate, to be a total participant in the effort and that he fully intended to do that. Which was great. And he invited my wife and I out to his house one evening and we spent 
a long evening just chatting. And it was clear--this was early on--that he envisioned that he could make a continuing significant contribution to the movement of the New Frontier 
program in the Congress generally and in the Senate specifically. And he undertook that with these head counts and these meetings we'd have and these strategy sessions we'd 
have. But I don't think he felt, as time went on, as comfortable as he had envisioned in this activity, or that he was really making the impact he had hoped to make. 
G: Do you think it was a result of that caucus where it was [inaudible]? 
O: I think that was part of it. It had to be. I never, as I said, was intimate with what took place, I was just on the periphery of that activity. But it became widely known that there 
had been an impasse of sorts or a degree of conflict, or that Lyndon Johnson had been diplomatically advised that he was not going to be playing the role he envisioned. 
G: Do you think it had to do with his own disillusionment with the vice presidency in general and perhaps--? 
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O'Brien --Interview I --38 
O: No. I think that, no, it was more personal than that. It was that he was a member of the club for a long time, and somehow or other he was--what do they do with people on 
occasion? They become a member emeritus, sort of. You know, you're just not as intimate with us as you used to be; you can't be. You're in the executive branch of 
government, you know, therefore you can't be. 
This whole thing involved two very different human beings, Jack Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, during an eight-year span at different periods, having the same 
responsibility and the same goals, objectives, whether it was called the New Frontier or the Great Society. But [they were] very different kinds of people. 
Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but while I think of it, these meetings that I have described and these contacts that Jack Kennedy had, Jack Kennedy would not force 
the issue with a group of senators or congressmen or a mixed group in terms of securing their support. He would present his case, he would respond to questions, he'd engage in a 
vigorous exchange of views and all the rest, but he would stop short of sort of putting the finger on the fellow's chest and saying, "Are you with me? You've got to be with me," 
that sort of sales pitch. In that area, he didn't feel that degree of comfort or that "we're old buddies," you see. I mean, he knew them all, they all knew him, but he wasn't an intimate, 
really, of any of them in the final analysis. Maybe there were two or three congressmen or a couple of senators that he had close friendships with but it was there, he was the 
president of the United States and he had been junior among them, and it wasn't his nature, to use the vernacular, to put the arm on you directly, frontally. But he would 
vigorously present his views and his arguments. 
Now, Lyndon Johnson in the same set of circumstances, the same kind of a grouping or meeting, would make an effort, before that meeting ended, to really get a 
complete, total commitment from the individual or individuals within a group. It was a difference in approach. But you see, both men recognized that within the time limits 
imposed upon them as president, that it was of overriding importance to try to get their program enacted. Sure, you have foreign policy, you have crises, you have all the rest, but 
this is integral to the whole activity and integral to establishing a record and making progress. 
In both cases, with both men, I attended every cabinet meeting from day one with President Kennedy. The cabinet members sat at the cabinet table. Those of us [on the 
White House staff], the three or four or whatever it was that might be in there for a purpose as participants in the meeting, would sit along the wall. But the legislative 
program would be on the agenda every cabinet meeting, without fail. It would be on the formal agenda of the meeting. Therefore I would be a participant at that point in the 
meeting, in terms of discussing the progress, or lack of it, of the legislative program. When I became a member of the cabinet with President Johnson, it was a simple matter of 
moving from the wall to a seat at the table. But the item was still on the agenda--there was very little discussion of the Post Office Department in cabinet meetings--and when the 
item came up, I would handle the presentation. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --39 
There was another difference. I would report at the cabinet meeting as a noncabinet member, with President Kennedy, on progress or lack of progress. And 
Kennedy would allow comments [from] the appropriate members of the cabinet, naturally, as we discussed these matters. And that was it. With Lyndon Johnson, when my end of it 
would be completed, he would literally point the finger at the specific members of the cabinet, about lack of progress. And he would want to know, not from me, but from 
whoever it might be, why. And "When's the last time you saw the chairman of the committee?" "Have you been up on the Hill recently?" and, you know, all of that. That 
was another added dimension, just the approach to things of the two very different kinds of men. 
Furthermore, at the leadership breakfasts, while Kennedy was content to have the full discussion of the legislative program and have Mike Mansfield and the Speaker and 
McCormack and whoever, or Humphrey, report on what they anticipated and when a bill might come up and what the committee progress looked like and all the rest of it, and 
you'd have a full-blown discussion, Lyndon Johnson wasn't satisfied with that. So we developed flow charts, and at each leadership breakfast somebody on the staff would get 
up there in the dining room and put those flow charts up on easels, show what progress had been made since the prior week, listing the legislation, having a big circular thing with 
a dial on it or whatever. Then everybody would have to turn to the flow chart and stare at it while the President wouldn't only verbalize this, but he would actually specify 
percentages of progress to date in terms of the overall program, what percentage of bills were out of committee, what percentage of bills had passed either house, either body, and 
so forth. So that was an additional refinement, which is a reflection on the man's approach to things. 
G: How did the flow charts get started? 
O: I don't remember. I think I had the Defense Department--we got some department to make these flow charts. I really don't know. I think it was my reaction to President 
Johnson, frankly, that he would be so specific. The general discussion, fine. But then he'd be so specific that it might be better to have flow charts. Well, flow charts, the first time 
we ever put them in the leadership breakfast, [it] startled the devil out of the leaders. Because they looked, and you were coming perilously close to where some leader might 
say, "Hey, wait a minute, I really don't work for you." (Laughter) "You're asking me all these questions, the man needs to know why the color hasn't changed or--" 
G: That's incredible. 
O: But that, anyway, is part of the role of the Vice President, Lyndon Johnson, in the legislative process and I think his personal perception regarding it, and the approach of 
both Presidents to the legislative process. 
G: Fascinating. You mentioned that you went out to his house for dinner, and that you met 
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O'Brien --Interview I --40 
with him when you first got that job. What advice did he give you in terms of dealing with the Congress? 
O: I think he refrained from any specific advice. There were two other couples present. One was Bobby Baker and his wife, and I must say--it was a Texas congressman and his wife. 
Jack Brooks. I didn't think after twenty-five years I'd recall who was at dinner that night, but I think I have it right. 
The conversation after dinner really went along the lines of the struggle, the House situation, the Senate situation, the New Frontier program, the activities that we were 
jointly engaged in, and Bobby Baker's ability to contribute in terms of head counts and giving us counsel and up-to-date knowledge on what was transpiring. The Vice 
President--his office was up there and he was alert to everything and would continue to be, and the three of us would be in communication, along with Mike Mansfield, on a 
regular basis. And I don't recall that he ever said, "And here, A, B, C, D, is what you ought to contemplate doing." I think it was very general, but clearly, we're part of a very 
small team up in the Senate, the three of us along with Mike. 
G: You've mentioned that he did participate in those meetings, but do you think he was utilized as much as he should have been on the Hill? 
O: I don't know. I think he was kept advised of and privy to everything. He was kept abreast of what we might have determined was the current state of something, where the holes 
and the individual problems were, whether it was substantively with the legislation under consideration or with the member of the Senate or House that we were trying to persuade. 
He was privy to all of that. And I was not, frankly, other than I'll bet [on] a rare occasion--one I recall of asking him specifically--I didn't feel I was in a position to say to 
the Vice President of the United States, "Will you contact these five fellows?" On a couple of occasions it occurred, only in general conversation. My responsibility was to be 
sure that he was fully abreast of everything that was going on, and from that point on he would make his contribution to progress as he saw it. You know, you were not dealing 
around the table as with a cabinet member; you were dealing with the Vice President of the United States. Now, I would feel fairly comfortable--I would feel comfortable, I 
wouldn't say fairly--saying to John Gardner or Bob McNamara or anybody, "Here's what I think you ought to do, and you want to get back to that chairman and from what we've 
learned you've just got to--" you know, that kind of conversation, not arrogant or anything, but just sort of you're on an even keel, among equals, in a sense. But with the 
Vice President of the United States, it would not be seemly to say, "By the way, this is what I think you ought to do." He had all the facts, he had all the problems before him, he 
could make his own judgments on how he could be most effective. 
G: You've covered a lot of ground here, and I want to ask you to go back in some detail on some of the various facets of your congressional relations job. First of all, let's talk a little 
bit more about the Sequoia. I would like for you to describe, if you will, a trip on it. You mentioned some of the elements of it, but tell me how you would describe an evening. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --41 
What did it entail? 
O: Well, first of all, I'm not familiar with yachts, but the Sequoia to me was rather an impressive yacht, or boat or whatever you call it. I recognized it as a tool that was highly 
usable. By the same token, at least on the first few occasions, it was a pleasant experience. I think the crew was composed probably of about seven people. It would 
leave the dock promptly [at six o'clock], or as promptly as we could. Sometimes there was a delay of ten or fifteen minutes while one of our guests and his wife hadn't arrived, 
but we found that guests arrived promptly as a rule. It would be very unusual for it to have any undue delay. There was never a declination of an invitation that I can recall on 
it. Maybe a fellow had a conflict on a date and asked to be considered the next time out, but I don't recall anyone saying, "Oh, that's nice, but I'm not interested." This had not 
been a boat that members of Congress were used to being aboard. 
The trip was carefully structured so that six o'clock was an appropriate departure time because an hour out you would probably be at the point where you would give a 
signal to start serving food. An hour and a half out, you were at Mount Vernon where this little recorded ceremony would take place with the flags flying, and [then] the boat 
would turn around. 
The first hour, generally, was sitting around, roaming around, just small talk, and everyone with a drink of one sort or another. Occasionally we'd bring an accordion player 
aboard, so you might have a sing-along, depending on the nature of the group as you got a feel for them. And sometimes yes, sometimes no, maybe it was just the accordion player, 
or maybe you decided to tell the accordion player to take a long break because it wasn't that kind of a group. 
But you tried to make everybody comfortable; it was a very pleasant boat to be on. It was roomy, and it had the two decks. Along about the end of the first hour, you had 
figured who you would like to chat with for a few minutes, to get things rolling. And you would make that effort. My wife would be visiting with the ladies, and I'd make the effort 
to have three or four individual or two or three-member group conversations to start to get the ball rolling on whatever I felt the subject or subjects should be. We would then try 
to build on that by enlisting more discussions or conversations which might wind up with six or eight members at the prow or somewhere having a chat. But not heavy, not heavy. 
I didn't envision one of those trips as a trip where I did a head count, that hopefully positions would be altered from what I perceived to be the positions of the various people 
on that boat before the trip started. I wanted to leave a good feeling. The follow-up would be with them in their office or elsewhere, so it was a trip not where any member 
would leave and say, "Gee, that damned trip, that O'Brien or some staff guy just was a pain in the neck." 
G: You didn't try to exact a commitment out of them? 
O: No, nothing like that. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --42 
G: Okay. 
O: We'd talk about current events, current activities. You might switch it to baseball, and you might talk about any subject. And there'd be a little music playing, and then we had 
these little tables they could put up around. I think we could accommodate, for a buffet dinner, somewhere around thirty-four to thirty-six people fairly comfortably in the various 
parts of the boat. 
Then after dinner, the last hour of the trip, you'd probably stay pretty much social, because then there was a blending of the members and their wives, all sort of mixed 
together in what was truly a social occasion. Very light touch. Really what you were building was if the member enjoyed the trip, that was going to make it, hopefully, a little 
easier to talk to him about substance in a week or two. It was all just part of the "let's maintain contact" activity. 
Now, there would be times, however, as the boat approached the nine o'clock docking, where the conversations had taken a turn that I felt we ought to pursue it for 
another fifteen minutes or half-hour, at which time I would tell the captain not to dock. No one knew the difference. We'd just float out there and maybe dock at nine-thirty. The 
Captain would wait for my signal. 
Tape 3 of 5, Side 1 
G: Did the congressman ever ask to have important constituents included or was it strictly a--? 
O: No. No, I don't recall that ever occurring. I think it was a recognition that it could be only a small group. It is sort of a White House invitation. I think there were a few 
occasions when a congressman would say, "Can I bring my daughter? My wife is back home," or something like that, but not to extend it beyond their own invitation. 
G: How about important supporters of the President, say, members of the President's Club or something like this? 
O: None. 
G: It was strictly congressional, or legislative? 
O: Yes. Yes. 
G: I see. 
O: I never contemplated extending it because--maybe I was wrong, I don't know--it seemed to me, first of all, this was government property. I'm sure that we on the staff never 
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O'Brien --Interview I --43 
considered bringing anybody but the members of Congress aboard. 
G: In your own mind, as you look back over that span of years, can you recall specific occasions where you think that ride on the Sequoia might have made a member more 
favorably disposed toward a bill? 
O: I'm afraid I can't. I'll tell you what we derived from this, too, perhaps, that was very helpful, was discussion with a senator or congressman involved by committee assignment 
in the same legislative struggle. And to have exchanges of views, senator and congressman, relating to the Senate or the House, or their individual perceptions of the 
Senate or the House, or a senator's perception of the House or vice versa, while you listened in on it, was helpful. I think, frankly, conversations took place on that boat 
between houses in terms of those members that otherwise probably never would have taken place, and maybe understandings, not formal understandings, but better 
understanding of the relative views occurred. Now, that could have occurred up in the hallway on any given day, but many of these members, interestingly enough--it was like 
the media and the members at those brunches--the sort of void between the two bodies in terms of regular communication was interesting to me. Because you would have, once 
you got the discussions going, exchanges of views that clearly, as I recall them, were evidence that they hadn't discussed this before somehow, or they hadn't really had any 
in-depth discussion, if in-depth meant five or ten minutes on a boat. 
G: Was it an educational process for you yourself, finding out--? 
O: Yes. Oh, I think I got a feel of--as I say, no one was ever solicited to make a commitment on the boat. But I must say that there were nights that I left the Sequoia having probably 
a little different view of a member's attitude toward something than I otherwise would have had or that I previously had, that I didn't have it figured right. 
G: Were there ever any problems, either mechanical problems--I mean, did the boat ever break down or did you ever run aground or did you ever have problems with people 
getting sick or anything like that? 
O: No. None of those problems that I can recall. Nor did I ever have an occasion, with all of that activity, where you might have had a problem of having somebody leave the boat in 
some disrepair. (Laughter) 
G: Prematurely either. Well, now LBJ used it quite a bit, particularly toward the end of his presidency. 
O: Yes. 
G: Were you still able to use it as frequently under Johnson? 
O: Yes, I think that under Johnson, as time went on, there probably wasn't as frequent use--I 
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O'Brien --Interview I --44 
don't have any copies of logs or anything--for a couple of reasons: one, he used it more often than Kennedy. Kennedy, incidentally, would use the smaller boat quite often. 
Secondly, the Great Society program was going like gangbusters and a great deal of your time and attention was devoted to the flow. It was moving so rapidly that it wasn't so 
much solicitation but working on the mechanics of getting committee activities through, and there was a great willingness to enact the program and a great effort expended. And 
we had some elbow room, to use a phrase, in the House after the 1964 election that afforded us some degree of comfort. It certainly didn't relax us but, my gosh, at least you 
had a reasonable break there in that tenuous situation that occurred on every major roll call during the early years. 
G: Let me ask you about another form of transportation, and that's travel on Air Force One and use of presidential jets. Did you utilize this as a way to have contact with 
congressmen and senators, to get credit--? 
O: More apt to use it as a way of recognizing them. Let's cite an example. If you're going to use Air Force One and you're going to Illinois, in the course of the day, on the ground 
you're going to be in two or three congressional districts and probably two or three nearby congressional districts and you have two senators. You're apt to just focus on that. The 
accompanying legislative party would be the people that appropriately represent the areas, the state or locality that you're going to. There probably were occasions when you--well, 
for example, if you were going to view a military display, a carrier, I remember an occasion like that, or going to a dedication of a major dam or waterway of some sort, in 
addition to the obvious members that would be involved, if it were on the carrier you're really then focusing on committees. If it were with Wilbur Mills and [John] McClellan and 
those people in Arkansas to dedicate a public works project, included also would be appropriate members, bipartisanly, of the committees that were involved in the 
consideration and ultimate enactment of the legislation that brought about the project. It was a very sensitive area, and you wanted to be very, very careful to not make a mistake. 
G: How could you do that? 
O: Well, that you didn't overlook some fellow that rightly belonged--and you know, it was brought to my attention in a little conversation I had with an old friend that I visited the 
couple of days I spent in Washington a few weeks ago, Jake Pickle. It's interesting, because with all of our effort to do things right and cover every base and ensure that 
proper recognition was forthcoming at all times, Jake started to chat with me about my time as postmaster general. I was sworn in as postmaster general in a little town called 
Hye, Texas, near the [LBJ] Ranch. And Jake went over to his desk--we were sitting near it--and he had this pretty, nicely-bound book, which was really a little thumbnail history of 
every post office in this district that for some purpose at one time he had distributed. And on the cover is a picture of my swearing in, because it was [in his district]. 
We were sitting around and talking about how that was typical of Lyndon, you know, that he'd think of going to Hye, Texas. And I got into reminiscing with Jake about 
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Lyndon telling me about--the name eludes me at the moment [Levi Deike]--the postmaster in this little combination grocery store and post office in Hye, Texas, how this fellow was 
one of nine brothers and they had a baseball team and Lyndon as a young fellow was on a baseball team that played their team and they were competitors, and how finally then, I 
assume, Congressman Johnson probably had an opportunity to name a postmaster in Hye, Texas and how he named this fellow postmaster, and here he is, he's still there. This was a 
place where he mailed his first letter, and he used to love to come in as a young fellow when this fellow had this barrel cheese and you'd take this knife or scoop and take a piece 
of cheese and how he was looking forward now to going through this as part of the little ceremony, that out on the porch I'm going to be sworn in and the press, they were already 
out there. It was all lovely. 
This was going on in the motorcade getting to Hye, Texas, to the post office. So I was sitting with the President in his car, and we get out, and there's the postmaster 
standing on the porch along with the group to greet him. So the first thing, Johnson introduced me to him. He said, "Here's your new boss," you know, typical of the way the 
President would [talk]. He said, "Now, tell him who made you postmaster here." And the fellow said, "Jim Farley." 
(Laughter) 
It was unbelievable. You could not have written a script. (Laughter) The President looked at him, he said, "Well, it was great seeing you. Well now, let's go in and 
get some of that good cheese." There wasn't any good cheese in there; there was all that packaged [cheese]. (Laughter) And the President's trying to open up a package. Well, 
anyway, Jake and I were going through this, chuckling away. 
Jake says, "Look at that picture again." [Homer] Thornberry had been the judge by then, I guess, that swore me in, and there's various people in the picture. No Jake 
Pickle. Well, I don't think I ever knew or it ever penetrated with me. Jake said, "I was never so mad in my life. I wasn't invited! And it's in my congressional district!" And he 
said, "I got the word to him. He called me for two weeks; I wouldn't take his phone calls. I finally got over it, but I was bitter. That guy there was in the middle of my district. It 
was one of the biggest things that's ever happened in that area. You're swearing in a cabinet member. He's the president of the United States and, Christ, you don't invite the 
congressman!" And I thought to myself, boy, no matter how much effort you make, as we're talking about Air Force One and the Sequoia and trying to keep all of this in some 
degree of balance and trying to avoid or at least minimize the number of mistakes you make or the number of hurt feelings that you create and all the rest of it, obviously you 
don't get it all done by any means, but you try mightily to do it. 
But there was a great overriding sensitivity, and logically so, rightly so, to this whole area of recognition on the part of the White House. It was overriding. Talk about 
utilization, what did we have to utilize? The advance notices I've talked about and all the other things. And you keep looking for other ways of having this continuity of contact, 
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O'Brien --Interview I --46 
this little bit of service that can be rendered. 
And we went to the White House tours. I remember it because there was a Republican holdover that was the tour director or something, and he was the brother of a 
famous general who was the military aide to Eisenhower. I forget his name now, a nice man. And somebody said, "Gee, you ought to throw him out." We hesitated to do that 
and didn't do that. He had been around there for years and it was sort of a career for him, so we put another fellow in with him, a friend, so that we would be sure that everything 
went right. And you know, it was an important matter for a member of Congress that he would have a group coming in or individuals that were very important in his district or 
state, and one of the things they liked to do while they're in Washington is visit the White House. They had an alternative: they could get in a long line that went for blocks and 
visit the White House, or you could have the VIP tour, which was a tour that was not a formalized thing but could be arranged in the morning. Well, we were very sensitive to 
that, very attentive to it, and God knows how many VIP tours we put together, groups from two to fifty. That was very important. If a congressman or senator couldn't get 
these important constituents, and I never knew of an occasion where they overdid it, say, "Well, I've got seven hundred people," that sort of thing. These were people that really 
were important to him politically, and he'd be careful because that was all logged, that was part of our record on contact with them. But we found that was very important. Now, 
that's a minuscule, minor thing in a sense, isn't it? But for that fellow to say to Jack Smith and his wife and their friends or whatever, "I've arranged something for you that nobody 
else has." 
So there again, we had no hesitancy, very frankly, when the fellow who was not supportive at all called for a VIP tour, to tell him sorry, but we don't have the space that 
morning. 
G: Was there a genuine space problem with those tours? 
O: No. 
G: You didn't have a scheduling problem at all? 
O: No. 
G: Even at a late date you could squeeze somebody in if you--? 
O: Always arranged to do it. Now, another aspect of it, too, what else is there? There are also invitations to the White House dinners and important functions. 
G: Were these to congressmen themselves rather than to their constituents? 
O: Well, yes. I didn't get into that. I would get slightly into the big contributor list because I had a knowledge of it from my--
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O'Brien --Interview I --47 
G: The campaign? 
O: The campaign. But really what would happen over at the other wing was there would be an allocation, not just hard-bitten, but [from] Bess Abell and the people that were working 
on this. I would submit a list of a dozen, or a list of eight or ten, to these functions. No, we were allowed to fit in some--say, what would the accommodation be, seventy couples, 
a hundred and forty people, whatever those functions are--ten or twelve of our folks there. 
G: Did this element of congressional liaison, the White House dinners, change from Kennedy to Johnson? 
O: I don't recall it did. 
G: Let me ask you again about travel. How about the use of the smaller planes, the Jetstars? Did congressmen and senators want to be able to use those for travel and [inaudible]? 
O: Yes. There was travel. That was handled really on the Hill. 
G: Really? 
O: Yes. They would go to the leadership and the leadership would make the request of the Defense Department. There were occasions, I suppose, when we were involved, but 
normally these were--we had an example that was highly publicized recently, didn't we, of a fellow going to South America or somewhere, and it turned out he was the only member 
on the plane and the Speaker had submitted the request and listed half a dozen members. I don't know. 
G: Did you ever use air transportation to get members back for a vote where you really needed them to be there? 
O: Yes. 
G: Can you describe any of these? 
O: I don't remember the specific votes. It was more apt that we did it. No question about it. I can't with specificity detail times it occurred, because what strikes me the minute you 
asked me that was a sort of an en masse return, crisis returns, where members might have been back home or there was a break in the sessions. I think the Cuban missile crisis is an 
example where we had to just fan out planes across the country to get the appropriate members bipartisanly back for briefings. But there were times when we quietly got plane 
transportation from an air base or something for a fellow to get back to vote. 
G: Would that generally go through your office or would that go through--? 
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O'Brien --Interview I --48 
O: Well, yes, that would, or through Mike Mansfield because we would note that, "Well, gee, this fellow can't make it. He's got a speaking engagement. If we could only figure out 
some way on transportation we could get him back in time for the vote. Otherwise commercially he can't." That sort of [thing]. It was rare, but there were times. 
G: Now, you had, in addition, Camp David and I guess later the LBJ Ranch, earlier Hyannis Port and maybe the Florida [compound at] Palm Beach. Did President Kennedy and 
President Johnson use these other residences to entertain congressmen and senators, to lobby them? 
O: No. No. 
G: Did you ever use Camp David for that purpose? 
O: No. I went to Camp David because we were authorized to use it, so I was there a number of times, but never with any members of Congress. No. The homes or residences of the 
presidents were never taken into account. If President Johnson had members of Congress down to the Ranch that was his own doing and for his own reasons and purpose. It had 
nothing to do with me at all. 
G: But did you see him using this as a lobbying device? 
O: No, I don't think so. I doubt it. I can remember being down there on a couple of occasions at the Ranch. There might have been a couple of old Senate friends there or 
something. I don't think that--if he did, I wasn't aware of it. 
G: Another element--of course, there are all kinds of appointments, but I'm thinking particularly here of administrative appointments to regulatory agencies. For example, 
some have suggested that this was a way to get Dirksen's cooperation so often; if you would give him a certain percentage of minority appointments to the federal regulatory 
commissions that he would play ball more. 
O: Well, if that actually took place, it took place between Dirksen and the President. 
G: Really? 
O: Yes. I would relay to the President requests of that nature. It would be a judgment that would be made solely by him. If you were at a level of appointment that was presidential 
and, again, at a high enough level that invariably you had recommendations, suggestions, from various sources, and if President Johnson had a particular arrangement with Ev 
Dirksen, I was not involved in it. Where we were engaged was [in appointments in the departments], but we gave up the process after a while and I notice each president and 
their staff seems to reach [that stage]. In the early Kennedy days we would [have], as I told you, these initial meetings with the cabinet members where it was made clear to them 
that all appointments at the top probably four levels or five levels emanated from the 
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O'Brien --Interview I --49 
White House. That was all fine and that was all understood, but in no time at all you had a significant stack of folders of open appointments. We then would have a weekly 
meeting in my office that would include Ralph Dungan, Ken O'Donnell, Dick Maguire and me. I think there were four of us, but definitely Dungan and O'Donnell. And we'd take it 
on a case-by-case basis, each opening. Well, heck, our idea was to get rid of everybody that we felt didn't belong, and that would get you to a fifth level a lot of times. They were 
all schedule "C" appointments or presidential appointments, and we insisted up front, as I suspect probably every administration does and some undoubtedly have been more 
successful than I think we were, that there were two motivations. One, obviously, was these were significant patronage appointments. And secondly, we were intent that we 
were going to have our own team across government. 
Well, invariably in those folders there would be a folder, assistant secretary of commerce or even below that, whatever the title is, in commerce. And you'd have letters 
of recommendation along with outside letters of recommendation or political considerations, recommendations from members of Congress for constituent appointment. 
And you'd make an ultimate determination. You'd weigh it politically and certainly you'd weigh it in terms of competency and qualification, and that was first. Then if you got to 
that and say, well, this fellow is qualified; he'd stand the test, then you'd go to those who were supporting him, sometimes no one, if he was a thought of our own. And I'll have to 
tell you that we probably engaged in that for a number of months and [on] rather a formal basis, a weekly meeting, Friday afternoon. Hopefully we'd have a little spare time we 
could put to this. And if you had thirty or forty folders, the meeting would terminate and you still had twenty-eight folders, because you just didn't have all the necessary 
information and elements in place to make a judgment. And if it was a presidential appointment, it was going to be referred to the Oval Office, and if there was some political 
gain out of it, that obviously would have to be carefully structured. 
Also, you had the unfortunate aspect of all of this that if you were going to make a decision and it had a political element in it, there were probably four or five people, or 
maybe eight or ten people who were going to be grievously disappointed. That also had to be considered in the political context. What we tried to work out oftentimes was--if 
not top or even top three level of presidential appointments but a lot of these appointments or openings were involved--that if it was a disappointment to someone, John 
Bailey, who was national chairman of the Democratic Party, would notify the person that we're sorry but it didn't work out. If it was the favorable side of it, obviously depending 
on the importance of it, the President would notify the fellow directly or we would notify the member on behalf of the President. Then sometimes it was somewhat routine. 
All of that, in terms of its impact, very honestly, on the legislative program, in my judgment after my experience, is minimal. I think it's grossly exaggerated. It may be 
because of the way we went about it, but I can tell you that we drifted away from it. I can't honestly tell you today whether that process with that little committee--probably 
self-anointed, I don't know--terminated in any formalized sense. I think we just got sick of it. You had other things to do and you weren't accomplishing much. From Friday to 
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Friday there was no real input, and really what it came to is making sure you didn't cause some political problems if they could be avoided. 
It all added up to--there were two things happened. For example, the experience I had one time. We were not satisfied with what we perceived the degree of cooperation to 
be in the Defense Department. And it went to a level that was important to us, but yet it wasn't overriding. This wasn't the President and Bob McNamara. But I talked to the 
President about it and decided that while McNamara--[ where] this activity would come directly to his attention, it worked smoothly. And McNamara in no way was trying to put 
people in place over there that rightly should be decided by the White House. But perhaps in the branches it wasn't quite that well understood. 
So it was decided I would call the three secretaries in individually--air force, navy and army--and I did. And one was John Connally--there was no better pro around. I had 
John in. John said, "If you ever run into a problem involving my outfit, just get to me directly because I won't tolerate [it]. I know this has got to be done professionally." 
Great. We talked about other things. 
My recollection is the army and air force secretaries needed a little advice. It was just a matter of saying, "Hey, fellows, keep an eye on things." But one of them gave me a 
lecture--he was our appointee--to the effect that I had to recognize, and, consequently, the President would have to recognize that his outfit is in place today, had been in place for 
years, and will be there long after we're gone. And that he wasn't about to be involved in any activities that could be construed as politics. I told him I appreciated his views and we 
said goodbye and I reported to the President. He wasn't there long. 
Now that sounds harsh and very political. It was very political, but not harsh. Because what happens is a president, a new administration, never gets a handle on the 
bureaucracy. That fellow in a sense was right; he applied it to his own department. But that is an attitude throughout the bureaucracy. "Listen, Ike Eisenhower is over there, 
Richard Nixon is there, Gerry Ford is there, Jimmy Carter is there, Lyndon Johnson is there, Jack Kennedy is there, I'm still here and I've got certain rights and I don't have to 
implement the policies of the current administration. I was here before they came and I'll be here after they're gone. I'm not in the political arena; I'm a public servant." 
You recognize, at the outset, the overriding importance that your policies and views be the views and policies of the entire executive branch of government. It's got to 
be one policy, and there's one boss, there's one leader, and he's been elected by the people. And you must be sure to dismiss where necessary, make adjustments where necessary, 
and make replacements appropriately. So there's a bit of political involvement, too, because you're going to be recognizing people that you feel you owe something to. In 
some instances you're not. But, overridingly, you want those people in every department and agency at top levels that have any meaningful decision-making to be in tune with the 
president and the White House. And I'm here to tell you that every administration has approached it in this manner. In all candor, some of it has to do with patronage, where 
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O'Brien --Interview I --51 
you have all these nice jobs and, after all, they belong to you, or your people ought to be in them. But set that aside. Overridingly, how can you function if you don't have 
enthusiastic support for your leadership across the executive branch? And you're never going to accomplish it. 
I haven't had a conversation like this with people in other administrations that might have been in comparable positions. Indeed, obviously, I haven't had such a 
conversation with any former presidents. But my guess is that every new administration entering the White House has that in mind and feels it's a top priority--a first order of 
business and assumes that it can be done, in an orderly fashion, rather quickly--to have your whole team, at all the appropriate levels, in place across the board. Then after a few 
months, either you have a small army that does nothing else but monitor that activity, or it slips away and you go on about your business, your paramount assignment. 
Now I'll guess again. My guess is that the Reagan Administration has been more effective in accomplishing this than perhaps any administration in my time. And I say that 
because I have the feeling that there is an assigned group, clandestine if you will, that focuses solely on that aspect of government and that they have done it in a very systematic 
and professional manner. That's my guess. But I'm equally sure that short of that, having people--intimate staff, people close to you, a president--undertake this effort is doomed to 
fail. Maybe no harm has really been done, but it is not going to succeed as you envisioned it. 
G: Let me ask you about the congressional liaison representatives from the departments. Did you select those people or were they people selected by the cabinet officers? 
O: As we initiated this and I mentioned these approximately forty people across government that I considered part of our liaison process, I would say the vast majority of them were 
already in place and had been selected by the cabinet member with our approval. They would generally be at the assistant secretary level. Our concern, very frankly, was to 
upgrade their position in the table of organization because I was taken aback when we finally got to who they were and where they were in the table of organization, how closely 
they related and worked with the department head, and what their depth of competency was and all the rest. I found--and this was historic--that in some cases they were relatively 
low-level people that had little or no contact with the department head. Some worked under some assistant secretary and really didn't have the close, ongoing relationship that 
we felt was essential, because of our perception of the role of the cabinet member in the legislative process. And we were successful in a number of instances in upgrading to a 
higher level. But it was a problem. But as time went on and replacements occurred over the eight-year period, the level was raised in most instances and the quality was raised, 
because it had been built into the system by then. And you can't be a cabinet member trying to account for what hasn't gone right and go back to your office and say, "Gee, 
what's the name of the fellow that's the congressional relations guy here?" You'd better by that time have had enough sense to say, "Boy, I've upgraded and have the best man 
available and he lives with me!" 
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G: Was there a problem of getting these people to reflect the White House view as well as the view of their particular department? 
O: Not really, because the White House staff, as small as it was, was involved directly with them. Say you had a farm bill and Orville Freeman is working arduously with his people 
to promote that farm bill, and it's difficult. Orville knew that we not only shared his concern, we were direct participants. We were working together; we were head counting 
and they were working with us each step of the way--subcommittee, committee, to the floor. We were intimately involved at each step. We would expect, therefore, that Orville 
and his people, when the time came and it was the foreign aid bill or minimum wage or whatever, would respond because of their close relationship with members of the 
Congress who were on the Agriculture Committee and would pitch in with us in an across-the-board effort to promote that legislation. So Orville Freeman and the others 
knew that the President was totally alert to progress or lack of it, that there was a full commitment--it was part of the Great Society program or the New Frontier program. But 
beyond that, he could look for help wherever it could be found from other departments and agencies who recognized they had a responsibility to Orville. He in turn would be 
helpful, when his time came, with the members of the Congress that he had an intimate relationship with. So you tried not to overlook any possibility of contact, any possibility 
of an inch gained in getting that vote. 
Therefore, I don't think at any time that we could quarrel about the attitude of the team. For example, when I sat in the White House and spent three or four hours every 
week or two with the forty people and the White House staff, I'd conduct the meeting and we'd review every major legislative item. Now, everybody is involved in the effort. 
They're all listening; they're all part of it, they're all taking notes. So when it got to agriculture, for example, I would say, "Okay, let's get on to this," and everyone knew that 
whatever contribution they could make to the overall effort was not only expected, it was demanded. 
G: Let's get back to the congressional side of the appointment process. I just assumed that congressmen and senators were much more interested in judgeships than they were other 
types of appointments. Is this correct? 
O: That was very important and a lot of judgeships came about during those years. There were increases in the number of judgeships, along with the normal attrition. 
G: Sure. Well, you had fifty new judgeships here in 1961, so. . . . 
O: Yes. There would be the political input, and my role would be to make known congressional interest as it was brought to my attention. The ultimate discussions 
regarding that would be between Bobby and the President. They would have a full awareness of the political repercussions. 
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G: Did congressmen or senators ever withhold a needed vote on something or bottle up a bill until they got some sort of guarantee that their man would be appointed? 
O: I can't recall a specific instance; it might have occurred. Regarding judgeships, it might have occurred. Those were important appointments. 
Tape 3 of 5, Side 2 
O: --a humorous aspect to it. There was a congressman named Mike Kirwan in the House that was a very interesting fellow--had an interesting background. He had the seniority to 
be chairman of a subcommittee of Appropriations. He had a favorite phrase: "You get the point I mean?" That was repeated often by Mike, who I thought the world of, got 
along very well with. But Mike had one hang-up in life; he wanted to build an aquarium in Washington. I never knew and I don't know to this day just what motivated him--whether 
he was just a lover of fish or what. 
Senator Wayne Morse made a speech out in Oregon, talking about public works projects of much significance to the state of Oregon that were in progress through the 
Congress. For some reason he chose to mention Mike Kirwan and his aquarium and how ridiculous it was. Well, somebody took the occasion to call it to Mike's attention that he 
had been ridiculed by Wayne Morse publicly and Mike Kirwan immediately took steps to block about three, as I recall it, significant Oregon projects in this committee. Wayne 
Morse had learned of that and became hysterical. We were depending on Wayne Morse in the area of education and he was most important at that time. 
Well, Wayne tried to apologize to Mike. It meant nothing and, knowing Mike as I did, I knew that once he established his position, you had a case on your hands. Wayne 
Morse brought his problem to our attention and placed it on the President's desk. So we had to get to Mike, and the President agreed to sign the bill establishing an aquarium that 
Mike would get passed. Well, you can well imagine the President. He couldn't think of one reason in the world to sign a bill of that nature, but he did come up with the one 
reason. We assured Mike that he had our full cooperation on the aquarium. 
Mike, in turn, after some more considerable thought--he left Wayne Morse hang around for quite a while--allowed as though he was going to release his hold, which he 
did, on the projects. Then the aquarium bill came down and I called Mike and said, "I'm pleased to tell you, Mike, as we discussed many times, the President is signing your 
aquarium bill." I thought it would be a simple thank you, "thanks for letting me know," but no, Mike said, "When is he going to sign the aquarium bill?" I said, "Well, I'll have to 
check," because that wouldn't call for a signing ceremony. He said, "I want to be there." 
So we established the time for the President to sign the aquarium bill. Mike was there to look over his shoulder to ensure that he signed it and have a picture taken by the 
White House photographer. We did avoid a public display, however, but that resolved Wayne Morse's problem and resolved a problem placed on our desk. Of course, the 
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aquarium never was built. I cite this because it involved two very interesting and unusual characters, Wayne Morse and Mike Kirwan. 
But it's amazing what you could run into. I don't know about somebody saying, "I refuse to vote for this unless my man is appointed judge." I would think in most instances 
his man, if he met the qualifications of the bar association and was truly qualified, the appointment went forward. 
We had this foreign aid struggle, which was apparently a struggle that every president had engaged in from the time Congressman Otto Passman had control of the 
foreign aid bill. We ran into trouble, all kinds of trouble with Passman, and we found we ran into trouble with a fellow by the name of [D. B.] Saund, who was a congressman from 
California. That trouble arose because a VA hospital in his district was among those on a list to be closed, and rightly so. In fact, it was a fire hazard. But Saund was totally upset. 
He made it loud and clear that he'd do everything he could to oppose the legislation. We didn't have much of an alternative but to ride it out, but there was just an interesting little 
side bar to it. Saund had sent us a large, beautifully framed photograph that had been taken of the President and his grandson, I believe, for a presidential autograph, and it came 
to me. So Phyllis hid the photograph and Saund started to inquire about it. And we played out the string with Saund about "we'll look it up," and "sorry for the delay," and 
this went on and on and on and the photograph wasn't forthcoming. Saund became very disturbed but it wasn't really doing much for us. It was Phyllis' idea and I played along 
with it. Finally we released the photograph, but we let Saund stay upset for two or three months. It gave us maybe a little bit of personal satisfaction, but it wasn't a significant 
contribution to altering the situation. 
I'm trying to think back, but it would be pretty blatant and you might have your suspicions regarding a fellow's position on a legislative proposal. You might feel that 
perhaps he would foot-drag or maybe we'd have a problem with him because he wasn't going to get what he wanted, whether it was a project or an appointment. But, frankly, I 
don't remember an incident. Whenever it was reasonable and feasible, you'd accommodate a member. 
G: With the southerners on the Judiciary Committee in the Senate, did you have trouble getting liberal judges and black judges cleared? 
O: Yes, to some extent. Again, I can't be specific. I wish I could go back into the files that might reveal some of this, but it was difficult because we often compromised. We often 
felt that we would have much preferred to have a more liberal appointee or a black appointee, and there were times when we were stymied. More and more, as time went on, 
there was stronger inclination on the part of the southerners to go in our direction. So to some extent, belatedly perhaps, too slowly, it came about, and to some extent at least it 
adjusted itself. 
Again, I don't know of a situation when an appointment or a project became such a 
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direct confrontation that you totally capitulated to avoid the loss of a meaningful bill. I don't know of one that ever occurred in that context. Now, there may have been nuances 
of that, but it would not be good sense or good judgment really on the part of a congressman or a senator to take a stand that might become public on something like that. 
See, he'd have to be very, very careful to avoid that, and there's always tomorrow. What I found, even in despair or disappointment was that a member had the capacity to 
recognize there's always tomorrow. It is quite a decision to make on the part of a member of Congress to cut his ties, no matter how tenuous he might feel they are at the moment, 
or how disappointed he might be. It is, first of all, extremely poor judgment. Secondly, it makes no political sense, and thirdly, you have to assume he is reasonably realistic as he is 
a political animal. Consequently, that White House remains awesome at all times, and there is always tomorrow. You don't want to be in a position where you can't pick up that 
phone. 
G: Well, did you have a formula for naming Republican members of boards that required a certain split in Democrats and Republicans? 
O: Yes, we always looked for friendly Republicans or nonaligned. 
G: Did you? 
O: Yes. Where the law compels you to have a political balance on a board or commission, obviously you sought--G: 
Well, you had some Republicans in the cabinet, too. 
O: Sure. 
G: Okay. What about the problem of closing military installations and VA hospitals? You mentioned the one example. Was there a legislative relations element here? Did you have 
any flexibility, first of all? Could you leave something open--? 
O: We did, but you tried to move forward in those areas with some hope of some degree of success. Perhaps it would be piecemeal. But projects to a great extent are beyond the 
control of a president; they are often negotiated on the Hill. Until there is such a thing as an item veto, it will always be thus. The Christmas tree at the end of each session will be 
appropriately decorated. I sound like a cynic and I am in that regard. Unfortunately, I don't see an answer to all of that. I share Reagan's view regarding item vetoes. I think it's 
senseless the way this process is conducted. VA hospitals, I guess, are a good example. In the normal course of things, VA hospitals in some instances became archaic. They 
were underused. So were air bases, et cetera, and certainly I would never suggest that the maximum effort not be made to act in those areas. 
But I remember one situation during the President Johnson period. I paid my usual visit to Mike Mansfield one morning for a cup of coffee. Mike was a pipe smoker, 
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and he clenched the pipe in his teeth. I didn't discern at first blush that Mike seemed to be even more reticent than was normally the case. We had become very close friends and had 
a very pleasant relationship. I went into the inner room and his fellow poured the coffee, and Mike said, "Okay," gritting his teeth, "explain it to me." It was my good luck I didn't 
know what he was talking about, and I didn't. One thing led to another. He said, "The closing of that hospital." I still was at a loss. And the conversation went on. 
It turned out that Ramsey Clark, who was on the White House staff at some point, had been designated by President Johnson to look into waste, and Ramsey had come up 
with a list of VA hospitals that should be closed. Apparently, the announcement of the closings was made and then Mansfield was visited by somebody to inform him that a VA 
hospital in his state was being closed. Mansfield had had no prior contact, there had been no discussion with him, and Mike made it clear to me that this was intolerable. I must say, 
I was sitting with a very angered majority leader. I frankly didn't know, so I called the White House in Mike's presence to be informed. The mistake had been compounded by 
not even telling the congressional relations office in the White House about this. At least that relieved me somewhat in terms of my personal relationship with Mike, because Mike 
finally was convinced that I didn't know and that he had hit me with something that I was completely unaware of. 
So then the story unfolded. The President [decided that] despite Mike's ardent support of the Great Society program and his position in the Senate, he could not be made 
an exception and there was no way that that hospital was not going to be closed. The task of the White House was to put together a team immediately to start publicizing the plus 
factors of closing these installations, including Mike's. We were going to undertake a media effort on this. So people were assigned all over the place to contact press and issue 
releases. This got to the boiling point, and so the House Veterans Affairs Committee decided to have hearings on the closing of the VA hospitals. And lo and behold, the 
Majority Leader of the Senate arrived to testify at the hearing in the House. (Laughter) 
And this went on. We had one of our regular meetings of the congressional relations people, and the President would periodically drop in to give a pep talk or sit in 
and listen to the deliberations. But he stopped in this night and lectured everybody in the room on the need to close these hospitals, that this was intolerable, and he was going to 
bring some discipline, some cost savings to this bureaucracy. Mike Mansfield was not at all persuaded; if anything, he had become more adamant. And the end result was that 
Mike's hospital was not closed, and I don't believe the program went forward to finalization. I'd have to check the records on that. 
But it's an example, I think, of how you may become stymied. You might be well motivated, as Ramsey was, and the President receiving his report was enthusiastic. 
Ramsey had found an area of cost savings, and he was right. But it's difficult. 
It reminds me of a conversation that President Kennedy had with Al Thomas. Al Thomas came in to see me one day and he, by that time, had become a very helpful senior 
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member of Congress in terms of moving our program. We owed him a lot. He said they were going to have a testimonial for him in Houston, [honoring his] years in Congress. 
He allowed as though he'd be highly honored if the President would consider appearing. I, as Mike Kirwan used to say, got the point he meant, and when we finished the discussion I 
told him I would check it out and get back to him. I thought, he's here in the White House, why don't I just pick up my phone to the President and see if he's available and 
have Al drop by and say hello. So that happened and [they] chatted. I advised the President of Al's request and the President said that he would certainly take it into 
consideration and see if something could be worked out. 
But in the course of the chat--and Kennedy was awfully good at this sort of thing--something was said about the Hill and Jack said to Al, "Al, God, they think I've got 
a lot of power down here, everything going for me. You know that isn't the case. You know it's very difficult. But you know also I'm from Massachusetts, and I keep my eye on 
that state. I want my state to get its fair share of any goodies that emanate from the Hill. Now, you know, Al, that you can do a lot for my state now." (Laughter) And he was 
right. In that context there is a lot of power wielded on the Hill and it comes to the Christmas tree and it comes to the process. A well-placed member of Congress, House or 
Senate or both, or a well-placed group of members can get an awful lot done by way of expending federal funds for "meaningful activities" that a president can't get done. 
G: Is it fair to say that you would be much more reluctant to close a hospital or a military installation in Carl Hayden's state than you would, say, in H. R. Gross' district or 
something like that? 
O: Oh, sure. You mentioned H. R. Gross. Now I may be unfair to him, but I don't recall him in support of any proposals of ours, even indirectly. In fact, he would go to the ends of 
the earth to register his opposition in every conceivable way, often using parliamentary procedure. I would say if there was a VA hospital in Gross' district on that list, not only 
would Gross not receive the courtesy of advance notice of its being closed, he wouldn't receive the courtesy of discussing it after the fact. But fortunately there weren't that 
number of H. R. Grosses up there. 
G: Of course, Gross was not only negative but he was relatively powerless, I guess, particularly contrasted with someone like Hayden. 
O: Yes, he was. But you see, "there's always tomorrow" thinking manifested itself most significantly to me in an incident that occurred that involved the civil rights bill. If you 
needed to recall a lesson, an occurrence such as this does it forcibly. We were desperate, regarding the House Judiciary Committee, in an effort to secure a civil rights bill of some 
meaning from that committee to try to get it into legislative discussion and enactment. And we were stymied. Nick Katzenbach was deeply involved, and others in Justice. We 
were all involved in this. 
You had a situation on the committee where southern Democrats were opposed to 
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any civil rights legislation. Republicans were disinterested. Non-southern Democrats, liberal Democrats, wanted a much stronger civil rights bill than we were trying to spring 
from the committee. Manny [Emanuel] Celler, the chairman, was being cooperative, realistic, trying to get a decent bill out of there. McCulloch of Ohio, the senior 
Republican, was very much involved and very positive in his efforts. 
So now you have a situation where there's sort of a three-way split. There was a liberal congressman from Chicago who on a preliminary vote had voted against the bill on 
the basis that it just didn't do the job as he saw it. He went back to Chicago for his weekends and he'd go on interview programs proclaiming to the heavens how he was 
going to block any civil rights bill that wasn't total as he saw it. I contacted Dick Daley, who obviously had named the congressman--you don't get elected, you got named out 
there in Daley's time--and explained to the Mayor what the situation was. The Mayor said he certainly was not going to tolerate that and would speak to him directly. The fellow 
chose to defy the Mayor, or continued to talk that way and would not cooperate. I must say after a few months, he announced he wouldn't be seeking re-election. 
While that was going on and we were endeavoring in every way to build a majority vote in that committee, desperation led us to, I guess, our old friend Charlie Halleck, the 
minority leader. So I had Charlie Halleck down to the White House, and the President explained his dilemma, asked Charlie if he could see his way clear to be of some help, and 
assured him it would be deeply appreciated. Charlie, to our great surprise, said, by gosh, he thought he could help and would. He set a time to report back his findings; [that] is the 
way he put it. He said, "I'll go back and check individually with my fellows"--the Republicans on the committee--" and see what I come up with." 
The time came, and we were on tenterhooks waiting to hear from Charlie. I was in the Oval Office, and I guess it was by noontime three days later [that he was to report]. 
Whatever it was, the time came and went, and the call didn't come from Charlie. Half an hour or more went by and as you have to carry this to the last inch, the President called 
Charlie to determine why he hadn't he heard from him. Charlie apologized. He said, "I had delayed the call because I had another contact I wanted to make, but I think I've been 
able to be helpful," and he specified that there would be a few additional Republican votes in support of this compromise civil rights bill. Charlie Halleck made a most significant 
contribution to getting that bill sprung from the committee. One congressman lost his seat in Congress because of his position. The point of the story is, there is always tomorrow, 
and who knows when the time might come when a member up there might help, even though you're poles apart. 
And with Halleck, I liked him, and Halleck was a fellow that enjoyed what Sam Rayburn used to call the Board of Education. So we'd get to a confrontation on the floor 
and Charlie would grab me shortly before the vote, when you're getting to D-day, and Charlie would say, "O'Toole"--and I don't know to this day why he called me O'Toole, but 
that was his nickname for me for some reason or other--" got you this time." I'd say, "I don't think so." And this kind of conversation would take place. I'd say, "No, I think we'll 
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win by twelve." "No, you're going to lose by seven." I said, "Okay, right after the vote we'll have a drink together." "Okay." And we'd beat them every time. And we'd have the 
drink together down in the recess of the Capitol. Charlie would say, "O'Toole, I'll get you the next time." It was that kind of a relationship. You understood that Charlie was never 
going to give you a vote; Charlie's job was to block everything he could possibly block. Gerry Ford, who succeeded him as minority leader, wasn't a Charlie Halleck in that sense. 
He wasn't any more cooperative, but the relationship was a little easier and not as confrontational. And maybe there was a time when Gerry tolerated us getting something 
done that he might have been able to stop, you know, a vote here or there. 
But the only point of it all is that you never foreclosed the possibility, and when you talk about a legislative record, sure, you can do it statistically--and I did; I tried to put 
the best public relations front on it I could. But deeply and sincerely, in those first couple of years particularly, we were more than satisfied with the results stemming from our 
experience with the Rules fight and our continuing serious problems in the House. Every major vote was by a short margin. We lost a couple, amazingly not more than a couple of 
major roll calls, but we didn't win any by big margins, and it was a struggle every inch of the way. And when you do it as a statistic--and I've done it--the statistics of those first 
two years compared to the Eisenhower years were phenomenal. In fact, our first year was better than any year since Roosevelt. 
There were things you did that your better judgment should have led you not to do. There was a stage in the Medicare struggle where we--it wasn't the congressional 
relations group--were determined to light a fire under Wilbur Mills, and you lit the fire by going to the public. And you had a vehicle because you had the senior citizen 
organizations and you were going to have these massive rallies in various major cities of the country. I believe Madison Square Garden was the first stop, and we had the rally. 
The rally made little or no impact but antagonized Wilbur Mills. Subsequent rallies were dropped. The fact of the matter is that you were not going to sway Wilbur Mills, a 
congressman from Arkansas in a locked-in congressional district, by publicly attacking him. 
G: Sure. Were there other ways that you could reach members of Congress through their constituents? 
O: Yes, there were. We always were trying to enlist a constituent approach to the members. 
G: How did you do this? 
O: Well, what we did--and this was over a period of time. In foreign aid, we tried to provide every member with information regarding its impact dollarwise in his district or state. We 
then took on the task of trying to do a backgrounder on each member of the House, because our focus was on the House battles, to a great extent. It wasn't directly in our 
office; we assigned it to departments. But what we wanted to know, in addition to his bio, was what organizations he belonged to, what were the sources of his campaign 
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support, what were his hobbies and social activities, what schools members of his family attended, where were they located, what were his basic interests, his religious affiliation. 
[We wanted] basic information that might lead us to individuals or groups in the district that he had particular involvement with to enlist their support and direct contact with the 
members. 
It was a refinement, really, of what we tried to do in other areas. Its utilization was not awfully broad, but there were times when it was of some help. It was also part of 
the effort to get to know him, to know about him, and his relationship to his district. He often had labor affiliations and some labor unions were stronger supporters than others. 
Some labor unions had particular weight in his district. You would have the DNC urge the international union to contact local union reps. But while we and the departments and 
agencies were engaged, the facilities of the DNC were utilized on an arm's length basis. 
But to get back to the statistical evaluation through the eight years; I recall finally in the Johnson years we sought items we didn't win to avoid batting 1000 per cent. We 
had to seek out something to give it a bit of balance or it would not be accepted by anyone. But that brings into play the art of the possible, the art of compromise. When the 
chips are down on a minimum wage bill not totally to your liking, [are you going to] say, "We're not pleased with it; we're not happy with it, it is not what we sought?" Or when 
Sam Rayburn asks, "What is your decision?" I'm not going to call the White House and call the President. The President early on--this was President Kennedy--had made my role 
clear to the Congress. Initially, some members would call him to engage in legislative discussions. He'd ask, "Have you talked to Larry O'Brien about this?" "Well, no, I 
haven't." "Well, you should talk to Larry." It didn't take long for them to recognize Larry O'Brien was not a messenger boy from the White House; he spoke for the President. 
Well, I did. If I used my head, I could speak for the President. But God help me if I spoke for the President and it turned out that I shouldn't have. So you made those 
judgments. 
Tape 4 of 5, Side 1 
O: I wouldn't think for a moment, at that time, that I would respond as I did and have the President say later, "Why would you have done that? That isn't what I wanted, and to hell 
with them." So I said, "Let's go," and we went and we lost by one vote the next day. We recouped most of it by the time it got through the Senate and conference. 
But the point I want to make is this is the art of the possible, the art of compromise. Was this a half a loaf or more? I judged that day it was. What I didn't say 
when I said, "Let's go," was what I knew: "We'll be back for the other half of the loaf," and we were. 
So when you review the statistics, what was our record in 1961? We submitted fifty-three proposals and thirty-three were enacted. The point is that it was a good record. 
That's fine, but I don't want to gild the lily. It was an imposing, impressive statistic. It 
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showed more action in terms of legislative enactment than had taken place for a long time, under the stress brought about by the loss of the twenty-one seats when Kennedy was 
elected president and the consequent problem of trying to unravel the southern Democrat-Republican coalition, which we succeeded in doing over the long haul. 
But it isn't fair for O'Brien or anyone else to proclaim these statistics without postscripting that it does not mean that if thirty-three out of fifty-three proposals were 
enacted, they were enacted in toto. They weren't, I'm sure. In many instances, the ultimate enactment signed into law at a bill signing ceremony might not encompass all the 
elements of the President's request. But it did represent significant progress. So you put that into the equation. It isn't just the batting average. Let's evaluate the content. 
That is the way the process works and that's the way it should be conducted, because all we could lay claim to, and not by public pro-pronouncements but internally, 
[is] that we had recognized that we had to build an invisible bridge over a chasm between the executive branch and the Hill. And it had to be accomplished, as again I repeat, simply 
in human terms, always recognizing the sensitivity of what we were engaged in and the potential for disaster. The bridging was one thing, but the violation of the constitutional 
separation of powers, even by remote accusation by one member of Congress, could destroy your effort. John McCormack, Sam Rayburn, Mike Mansfield, any one of those 
leaders, or indeed any whip in the House, or almost any member could proclaim that this was unacceptable, that it should stop immediately, and that the Congress should not allow 
itself to be encroached upon in any way by people from the White House moving into an area where they didn't belong. The door would have been closed. 
That's what you were dealing with. And it took time to get to the point where no one would consider such action. And then there were days, I'll tell you, when that little 
item that's on--I don't think it was a little item, it was in a column, and I'll tell you, that caused me loss of sleep. I had to be concerned when a member might say, "Wait a minute, 
I'm a regional whip and I've got to talk to my leaders. This is just unseemly, this guy O'Brien and his people getting directly involved in our internal discussions and head 
counts." Now, if that had been picked up, we would have been out of business. 
I guess never again will that be a matter of serious concern because I'm sure people would say, "That evolved in the Kennedy-Johnson era and became part of the 
system." [Some would reply], "Well, what are you talking about; I'm sure that's the way it always functioned." When I tried to determine how it functioned and I [was] told, well, 
Tommy the Cork would go up the Hill on his own when he felt like it or President Truman would call a member, and that was the extent of congressional relations, it was news to 
me. I never knew how it functioned. I had no background or experience in this area. I'd been on the Hill for two years as a young fellow, as an administrative assistant to a buddy 
of mine that was elected to Congress. "You managed my campaign," Foster Furcolo said to me. "I don't know anything about this House of Representatives. Why don't the two of 
us go down?" and I did for two years, and that was enough for me. I didn't have any interest in continuing. . . . So I came home and stayed home until Jack Kennedy 
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remembered that we had met on a few occasions and decided he'd try to re-enlist me in politics. 
G: You mentioned at lunch that--you emphasized how much this consciousness was raised by that Rules Committee fight. Let me ask you to elaborate on that again. 
O: Well, it's probably difficult to understand--I guess it's difficult for me in reflection--that a president-elect and a new administration would engage in all the activities inherent in 
moving to president--inauguration day, cabinet appointments, establishing [or] possibly contemplating relationships in the whole foreign policy area, to have a concept of a New 
Frontier program, that basically would be advocacy of the elements of a party platform--and not focus completely on day one, recognizing that the Rules Committee 
traditionally had been the bottleneck for all liberal proposals, had successfully for years blocked every movement of a liberal nature, had to be altered in some way somehow or 
you were not going to be in business. And [you] get with your designated congressional relations assistant to the first leadership breakfast, now that you are president, and for the 
first time recognize that this change in the Rules Committee, which you are aware of is not going to succeed. You are sitting there with a whole New Frontier program that's just 
gone down the drain and you can sit and twiddle your thumbs for at least two years. 
And yet it didn't penetrate. Nobody had checked it. There had been no communication with the Speaker. There was no understanding of the Speaker's 
depression regarding the possibility of success. And people would say, "Well, how could you let that [happen]?" Sure, you had an inauguration and you went to the inaugural balls 
and named cabinet members and whatever else you were doing, but, for God's sake, why in that interim period wasn't a major effort mounted with the incoming Congress to ensure 
that there would be a change in the make-up of the Rules Committee? 
First, I didn't even know about it, I guess. I'm sure I didn't, because I didn't pay any attention. I didn't contemplate ever dealing with the Congress. After I was 
designated as the fellow who was going to deal with the Congress I didn't devote one hour to planning it, even to the point of not getting around to going over to the White House 
and meeting a fine man that I was going to succeed in that role, who had opened the door by contacting me and saying he was available to me for whatever length of time that I 
desired, to be helpful in a nonpartisan manner, because I was taking over a role that he was familiar with. And yet you sat there at the leadership breakfast and it was sort of, 
"Oh, by the way, you will be enacting this Rules Committee change." 
So the shock effect apparently was there, but it wasn't there immediately, or why did not the President of the United States say to the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives during the course of that discussion, before the breakfast terminated, "We must have a postponement of the vote." Obviously the penetration took a little more time 
than that. Then the desperation of the situation and the end result of this debacle penetrated to the point where you call the Speaker of the House and say, "You've got to 
come back down. I want to talk to you." And you have the talk, and Sam Rayburn, very 
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honestly, didn't think there was any real hope to enact that rules change. The postponement was the first request that the new President made of him and, of course, 
he'd acquiesce to it. That was a rather harmless request, to postpone it for a week, a few days. But I'm sure that Sam Rayburn left that Oval Office saying, "That poor guy's got a 
lot to learn, because a few days isn't going to make any difference." 
G: Did you consider alternatives to enlarging the committee, possibly purging [William] Colmer? 
O: Those were discussed somewhere along the route, maybe internally in the House. Who in the new administration was engaged in those discussions I don't know and never did. 
Because what we had that morning was the expansion of the committee, which differed from removal of the chairman, or reorganization of the committee--thoughts that I assume 
had been considered by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, the Dick Bollings and the others. But if they were communicating any of that to the President-elect or his 
representatives, I certainly was not privy to it and consequently, I was oblivious. I'll tell you right now, even twenty-five years later when I think of it, when I think of what losing 
would have meant, my gosh! 
So you say, what were your reactions, what did you do? It was a scramble. I had nothing in place. The President now has this knowledge; he's gotten the postponement, 
and what do you do about it? So you have a few days before the lynching takes place. But how do you utilize the few days? And as I have described to you, I guess it just came 
to your mind to seek help wherever you might find it, and you learned a phrase that you probably never heard of in your life, or never paid any attention to, called head count. 
You learned that a head count is a dreary, difficult, tough process that you're going to be engaged in repeatedly over a number of years. There's nothing very glamorous about a 
head count. 
G: Did you have to get these counts directly from the members, or could you get it from, let's say, their legislative aide? 
O: Sometimes, depending on the legislative aide, you learned that some legislative aides could speak for their member just as the members learned that I could speak for the President. 
And sometimes many of those legislative aides could not speak for the member. There were occasions when you would get part of that count out of, for example, the AFL-CIO 
that had a real lock on some members. And if a commitment from Joe Smith was relayed to me or in the course of our meetings on the head counts, depending on who it was and 
who was giving me the message and who had made the contact and what conversation had ensued, it could be something that I would say, "Okay, let's go. Checkmark. Right." 
I'll tell you this, in every head count we were engaged in we were as conservative as we could be. I've used this cliche till friends of mine get sick of hearing me, because I 
have a tendency to do it and I'm going to do it again. I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than grievously disappointed. It's just my nature. I'm not an optimist by nature; I'm a 
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pessimist by nature. I like to think I'm a realist by nature. That's really how I rationalize in my mind, that if you tell me we're going to win something, I'm going to tell you several 
reasons why I don't think we will. It's a protective mechanism, I guess. 
The other aspect of this, too, the last thing I thought I would be involved in in the Kennedy Administration was the role that I finally had. It never entered my mind. I 
honestly think to this day it was in part Kennedy trying to envision how I could be helpful. I had an intimate acquaintance with him professionally, politically. It was probably not a 
bad idea that this little team stay reasonably intact; there were only three or four of us that had gone the distance and in whom he had total trust and confidence, and that's generally 
what happens with the White House staff. And then Kennedy is thinking, well, the Congress, that's an extremely significant element of what we're going to be engaged in, 
and O'Brien, politically, he's gotten along with people and he has wide acquaintances. I imagine that was in his thought process. Then the two of us, two geniuses, come up with 
"Well, we'll tie personnel in. Then we have the whole package and O'Brien runs the show." But if you were looking for a congressional relations guy, "O'Brien isn't suited for 
this." I think it was a matter of whatever was in Kennedy's thought process--on congressional relations, anyhow. I simply said, "Yes, well, sure, why not?" That's what it 
amounted to. 
There's one other aspect of all of this and I've tried to stay focused on it. Now that I'm in what amounts to retirement, I've tried to adjust to retirement. I think I'm entitled to 
it. My friends and associates can't understand how I could even contemplate retirement while everybody else in the world seems to be able to contemplate theirs. I don't 
understand that myself. 
But in any event, I had to compensate somehow, find a way to compensate, for basic limitations in my life. I am no great intellect. I think I'm an average guy with normal 
interests in family and in your country and what you have been taught to believe in. That is that every person is entitled to the fullest opportunity for education and progress in this 
country. There are certain basic fundamental commitments under our democracy. And that whether you are a precinct captain or a member of the school committee or the block 
committee or you're trying to erect a playground in your neighborhood for your kids, you've got to extend yourself beyond your personal ambitions and you've got to make a 
contribution. You owe it. It is a basic responsibility of citizenship in this great democracy. Both my parents were born in Ireland. They came here as immigrants. And 
my father would say to me, as much as he loved Ireland and was proud of being Irish, "Thank God that I was able to come here," and he appreciated every moment of it. And 
so did my mother, who worked hard as a young gal in Springfield. 
So you say, okay, you're no hero, you're just another guy. But recognize your limitations. Don't just accept them and do nothing about them and not try to improve 
yourself. That isn't the point. The point is that in the competition of life, in the competition of the political arena and the competition of government, you have a role and 
you must fulfill that role to the best of your ability. And there's probably one thing you 
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can do that will bring you up a notch and make you more productive, and that is work harder and longer than the opposition, and if you do that, perhaps that's a compensating 
factor that makes the battle a little more equal. Maybe that opposition may be brighter, may be more innovative, creative, or whatever, but if you tackle the job and work harder 
and longer and have a total commitment, you're going to bring your level of performance up and you'll get into a fair competitive situation. That's what I've always believed. 
So when this darn thing came along, heck, how would you ever wind up being in congressional relations? Indeed, how would you ever wind up being postmaster general? 
That isn't a career opportunity. How would you wind up being commissioner of a major professional sports league? Was that something that you contemplated? Of course not. 
These things happen because I guess the ebb and flow of life are beyond your control. You make no plans. My career plans--I suppose if all this hadn't happened at an early 
stage I would have wound up practicing law in my home town. And I'm not suggesting I wouldn't be happy and probably even happier than I have been, but that didn't happen. 
But are you going to say to President-elect Kennedy, "Hey, hold it a minute. I haven't the slightest idea about congressional relations"? God, there must be a million people out 
there that have an intimate knowledge of the Congress, how it works, how it functions, its history and all the rest. But no, what the hang, if that's what he wants me to do I'll do the 
best I can and learn it as rapidly as I can. 
But the Rules [Committee] fight, as I told you, wound up not only in a victory, but somebody up there was on our side and particularly my side, because I'll tell you, months 
might have elapsed to accomplish what we reasonably accomplished in about thirty days. 
G: Do you think that Rules fight had a similar impact on President Kennedy? 
O: Yes. 
G: Did that suddenly cause him to be much more interested in legislative--? 
O: It startled, stunned him. Believe me, by the time the postponed vote came along, nobody had to tell us what impact that Rules decision would have on us. We had awakened. We 
had put away the tuxedos and all the rest and said, "Boy, oh, boy, it's the real world." 
G: Let me ask you a little bit more about that Rules fight and see if I can jog your memory with some questions here. You did get a lot of Republican support. 
O: Yes. 
G: What was the key to that? 
O: I think that for the most part if you--and I haven't done this in years, I did it then, but I believe it was twenty-two Republicans [who voted with us]. In each instance you could 
quite easily determine the motivation for support: it was their constituency. I'm not saying 
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they didn't have a higher level of motivation, but the reality was their constituency and they tried to reflect [it]. Even though they had an R next to their name, they were what 
we would call Republican moderates. God knows what they would be considered in the context of a Reagan Republican Party. 
G: Here, I have a list of them. 
O: Yes. Every one of these fellows, I'll bet. Yes. 
G: Well, there's been some suggestion that Joe Martin was particularly helpful in getting Republican support. 
O: He could have been; he really was trying to be helpful. But I'll tell you, there are two turnaround districts in Connecticut where for several elections people were in and out like 
a revolving door. Because, remember, they had the single-lever ballot in Connecticut. Boy, did that switch that delegation. That would go from five-one one way to five-one 
the other way every couple of years. So I can see that--[ Charles] Mathias in Maryland we know. Mathias has been consistent through his whole career as a liberal. [Silvio] Conte, 
the same thing, western Massachusetts. [F. Bradford] Morse, the same thing in his district in Massachusetts. [William] Bates, I would put Bates with Martin. I remember 
these guys well. Conte is still there, and Conte and Morse were good friends of mine. It was like Javits as a Republican senator; he was a Republican because that was the 
opportunity he had to go to the House in the first place--take the Republican nomination. It was wide open there and he seized the opportunity. 
[Thomas] Curtis I can't account for. [Chester] Merrow and [Perkins] Bass, again, very heavily contested districts in New England. New Jersey, [William] Cahill; he later 
became governor, and [Florence] Dwyer. I don't recall the districts of [Frank] Osmers and [George] Wallhauser, but Cahill and Dwyer, they again were in the category of Lindsay, 
Conte. Oh, Cahill, as I used to say to him at times, "Why aren't you a Democrat?" You'll see the others: [Seymour] Halpern, Lindsay, [Paul] Fino. Those are the three Republican 
votes from districts where they had lucked out and were holding the seats and they were in the same category as Javits was statewide. 
Ayers of Ohio--knowing Bill Ayers, as I did, I can't account for him. [William] Scranton--very honestly, I thought Scranton was an outstanding legislator. He later 
became governor of Pennsylvania, and was a very classy fellow. Then he sought the Republican nomination for president and they weren't about to. . . . [Alvin] O'Konski was 
from a typical district. [James] Fulton and [Robert] Corbett, I'm not that familiar with them. 
And I'm not knocking it; there's a Joe Martin influence in here, but overridingly, of the twenty-two I think we can select fourteen to fifteen of those votes that would be votes 
that probably on several other occasions supported [the administration]. I would think all of those supported minimum wage, for example. Each one of those fourteen or fifteen 
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O'Brien --Interview I --67 
would be supporting civil rights legislation. 
G: I'm going to ask you about some southern Democrats, too. Well, would you say that Rayburn worked with Martin more than you did? 
O: Yes. Now, during the course of those several days I don't recall any direct contact with Martin. 
G: What was Rayburn's role in the fight? What did he do? 
O: Well, I think you'll find it right here. You look at that Texas [delegation list]. Now, you look--[ Olin] Teague, [John] Young--G: 
Well, [W. R.] Poage. 
O: --[ Bob] Casey. You're talking about some real conservatives in there. 
G: Yes, that's right. 
O: Now, Brooks, [Frank] Ikard to some extent, Mahon, [Wright] Patman, Al Thomas, Thornberry, Jim Wright, I'd say it's half and half. Half of these fellows would feel that 
they had had enough of this coalition and they'd like to see it more equitable, and the others would be influenced by Rayburn. 
G: Do you think Rayburn called in a lot of chits across the board in the Congress to get this thing through? 
O: Yes. I neglected to mention that we kept Rayburn fully apprised of what our findings were, and the Speaker's office was kept almost hourly apprised of what our head counts 
were revealing. We would have a lot of communication. I initially did not know Rayburn intimately, but I must say that I was very intrigued with this man and, as the months rolled 
by, I formed a relationship that became pleasant and comfortable. And he gave a lot, you know, letting old Larry hang around. 
As you know, Sam wasn't a fellow that did a lot of talking; he wasn't overly verbal. But from the time that he postponed the vote [until] the vote was taken, I have no doubt 
in my mind that he did everything he could to try to secure support. Because there again, Rayburn was not in the camp of the Rules Committee leadership. He wasn't a liberal in 
the sense that we northerners look at liberals. But by the same token, he was, despite his opposition to Lyndon Johnson [going] on the ticket in Los Angeles, a great respecter of 
the presidency. And [he] recognized that national leadership emanates from the presidency. So consequently I cannot document to you what Rayburn did on the Rules 
fight except I know that he was fully committed. At the leadership breakfast--there's no question, because I was there--Rayburn was distressed, but just felt it wasn't doable, that it 
wasn't going to happen. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --68 
G: Sure. Was there an argument that maybe we ought to compromise and try to--? 
O: There wasn't any further compromise. Where were you going? 
G: Well, Smith had evidently made some offers to compromise--O: 
Oh, I know, but--G: 
--to clear some of the bills or. . . . 
O: Yes. It would have been a big mistake to ever get into this deal with Smith involving X bills. I think I probably would have accepted defeat before I'd do that. He was a courtly 
southern gentleman and all the rest but you're going to put your destiny in his hands? Not the President of the United States that I knew. 
G: How did Smith resist this administration push to change the nature of his committee from conservative to--? 
O: Well, what he did, his observable resistance--well, I don't know as it was particularly observable; that wasn't the nature of Smith. As I say, [he was a] courtly southern 
gentleman, always very correct, but an adversary. He was like Harry Byrd; there was no way that he could intellectually or emotionally accept our concept of what was best for 
this country. And it just wasn't in the cards. In fact, I think there was a uniqueness about Virginia anyway in the political context that extended beyond just the southern Democrat. 
You know, they were in a world of their own, as was evidenced by Harry Byrd in later years. 
And yet in personal terms, it's just amazing, as I reflect. They were among the nicest people I knew down there, and I can remember flying with the President down to 
Harry Byrd's apple festival. We never missed an opportunity, even if the odds were a thousand to one against you; you might get somewhere, like the Halleck story. He 
couldn't be a nicer, more pleasant fellow, and his son [Harry Byrd, Jr.]--I saw him not many months ago; we had just a great reunion. I was very happy to see him and he 
seemed to feel the same way. So there wasn't any of this sniping, backbiting, meanness; at least overtly. It never occurred. I don't remember having a real mean argument with a 
member of Congress in eight years. But I must say--well, look at those with some of the same background, nevertheless, closer to Virginia than to liberal Massachusetts: Al 
Thomas, George Mahon, Carl Vinson. Carl Vinson became very supportive of President Kennedy. The walk in the Rose Garden was one aspect of their relationship. But Vinson, 
with his respect for the presidency, he stepped away from the B-70 fight. 
You know what really happened--after the first year you could discern it. With Kennedy, he was a really unknown with these fellows. Now, he's an attractive, youngish 
guy, and they didn't have any dislike for him, but he was a breed of cat that they didn't 
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O'Brien --Interview I --69 
know. Like Carl Albert said to me one day, "I got to know this fellow and rapidly." Of course, he [Albert] was in the leadership. He said, "I got to love him. I'd do anything for 
him! Of course, I really didn't know him before he became president." And see, we can talk--and I guess I've talked inordinately about the organizational aspect of this and the 
team aspect, but let's not overlook what in the final analysis made it work and that is one man. 
Like the observers; I remember Ted White particularly. It was one of the most interesting election campaigns in history. White reacted accordingly, and White was 
fulsome in his praise of the Kennedy people, the so-called Irish Mafia. But heck, does that amount to--I always said, "What's the number you put on it?" in terms of victory. The 
contribution to that victory, the result of it can be attributed, if you had to use a statistic, somewhere between 93 and 96 per cent, probably closer to 96 per cent, to the candidate. 
There might be 3 to 4 per cent in there that could be attributed to organizing and maximizing the potential. And the same applied in the White House, with Kennedy sitting 
there with the twenty-one seat loss and all that and a razor-thin margin of victory and no mandate of any kind. His coattails didn't mean a thing to anybody who was in the 
Congress; that hadn't helped them get there. 
So it had to be his personality, his style, the way he handled himself. And I think that members, any number of them were impressed with Kennedy's reaction to the Bay of 
Pigs, and you can compare that to the reaction that Nixon had to Watergate. I mean, this is a man who had strong gut reactions--he had courage, he'd step out there, he had no 
hesitancy to admit failure, errors. And as these members got to know him, an affection for him grew. They liked him. And that's why I used to appeal to them on a personal basis: 
"He really needs you. Don't do this to him." I remember telling a congressman one day, early on, "Gosh, out there in that press gallery"--Clem Zablocki was the congressman, and 
it was one of those votes where it wasn't going to do Clem any political good and it might even cause a little political harm. McCormack talked to him and I was talking to him, and 
I remember the last thing I said when he was leaving McCormack's office to go back to the floor was, "Gee, Clem"--because he was an early-on supporter of Kennedy and I 
thought that was the kind of appeal you could make. We didn't talk about the substance of the legislation or anything else. I said, "Gee, out there up in that press gallery they have 
their pencils poised to give it to Jack. You can't--." I mean, listen, that would appeal to me. 
G: Sure. That's great. Let me ask you about some of the lobbyist groups, pro and con, on the Rules Committee fight. On the pro side you had the ADA, the AFL-CIO, the National 
Farmers Union. Did any of these groups that I've named perform an extraordinary role here? Were any of them particularly helpful? 
O: I can't specify the help, but they were helpful. I can be more specific about the AFL-CIO because Andy Biemiller's activity was more observable to me and we were sort of in 
tandem during this effort. The other activities might be less direct. But certainly the AFL-CIO had a real impact. 
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O'Brien --Interview I --70 
G: Well, did organized labor have more machinery for involvement in this sort of legislation? 
O: Yes. Well, they do; it's the nature of their organization, a Washington-based organization, but Andy was a former member of Congress and a very hard-working, dedicated fellow 
that enjoyed widespread support on the Hill. He was well thought of and I found him consistently supportive on the subsequent fights--and there were many of them involving 
the AFL-CIO obviously--and he had a staff that was broader-based than the others. Of the lobbying groups, the AFL-CIO effort with Biemiller would probably have to be ranked 
as probably more effective than the others. I can't really document that but it would be my judgment. 
G: The newspapers indicated that LBJ did some lobbying as well. Do you recall what he--? 
O: I don't recall the specifics but there's no question about it. He shared our concern and recognized what the end result could be. 
G: What did Bob Kennedy do for the effort? 
O: He had a lot of contact with the AFL-CIO, with various labor officials--Tape 
4 of 5, Side 2 
O: --he traded on. 
G: You're talking about Stu Udall? 
O: Yes. Concentrated on some long-time friends he had as a member of the House. Really, Bobby would be a natural for us, "Come on, Bobby. Boy, we're in another battle. Here 
we go. We thought we had a little honeymoon here, and bang." With Stu, he'd be thought of, as we sat there and tried to figure this out, because he was one cabinet 
member who was a former member of the House. And in trying to get a breakdown of the House, you went to people that already had a close friendship and relationship with the 
President and were--well, two of the three of them were from parts of the country where they could be effective. Elliott and Jones--they could be talking to their southern 
colleagues and see if they could pick up a vote here and there. 
G: On this particular issue did you get any complaints about the lobbying? 
O: I think everything happened so fast, frankly, I don't recall any complaints. It would be pretty hard to complain because those of us involved hadn't even been to the Hill yet, and 
it was moving so rapidly and that vote was coming, so there wasn't an interim period where people could start criticizing. 
G: Okay. Here is--
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O'Brien --Interview I --71 
O: Let's hold that for a minute. 
G: You see the list of southern Democrats that supported this enlargement. As you look it over, there were what?--four from Alabama, none from Mississippi, quite a few from 
Kentucky, quite a few from Louisiana. 
O: Yes. Yes. 
G: Are there any names there that you recall a little personal arm-twisting? 
O: Yes, I talked to a lot of them personally, but whether you'd call it arm-twisting or not, I don't know, but any number of them. First of all, on the Alabama list you have Carl Elliot, 
right? 
G: Yes. 
O: Who was intimately involved, along with Jones. You see that one presidential call was nonproductive, to Cooley in North Carolina. Oren Harris of Arkansas, it must have been 
instinct with him. Not all of these, but just about every one of them were talked to individually by us as part of that several-day effort. 
G: How about Mills? How did you get Mills? 
O: I don't know. [Dante] Fascell, he's a little different, you know, Florida and that district; there'd be an inclination. He wouldn't have been part of the so-called coalition, anyway. 
Vinson was a stick-out because, see, Vinson had become intrigued with the Kennedy candidacy when we campaigned in the South, and he had appeared with Kennedy at a 
couple of major functions down there. And that's the nature of Vinson, a class fellow in every sense. On Kentucky, I knew them all. [Frank] Burke would be the most obvious 
supporter. The rest of them, I can't account for them other than their individual decisions on the basis of their personal views. 
I'm not suggesting that we turned all these people around. Our guess was that if the vote had taken place in the first instance, we would have lost by seven to fifteen 
[votes]. The best we could hope for was by seven, so really what you're talking about in this whole effort is that we switched a dozen people. And so, consequently, a good 
number of these people we're looking at now, these names are people that intended to vote in the first instance for the Rules change. Boggs, of course, was part of the 
leadership from Louisiana. Albert, part of the leadership from Oklahoma, and I'm sure [Ed] Edmondson would have supported us by the nature of his district. But with [Tom] 
Steed and [Victor] Wickersham I'm sure Albert accounted for that. Tennessee, well, [Ross] Bass might have been there. I think there's a combination in here and Texas. The 
most impressive part of this break-out is that it brought a third of the so-called southern Democrats to us, which we had to have. It was almost a third, as I recall. And a good 
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O'Brien --Interview I --72 
portion of Texas would be Rayburn and Johnson--because that's a darn good vote for a rules change out of the Texas delegation. You turned [?] one, two, three, four, five, six, 
seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. 
G: You've mentioned that Elliott was intimately involved in this. How do you mean? 
O: Well, he had been one who agreed to sit for hours with us from the outset in evaluating each member of the House. That was a session I had over in the Mayflower Hotel and 
Elliott was supportive from the outset. He had been very strongly supportive of Kennedy in the election campaign. So Elliott and Jones, as I recall it, and Topper 
Thompson--Frank Thompson from New Jersey--were fellows that had had a direct involvement in the campaign. Elliott and Jones were southern. I guess our judgment 
probably was these were three fellows that would be hopefully willing to sit down and go over every Democrat in the House of Representatives, giving us an evaluation of what we 
could anticipate or what their pluses or minuses were in terms of our program. So that kind of detailed evaluation that took place was a clear indication that these fellows, Elliott, 
Jones particularly, Thompson obviously, would be most supportive. 
G: The lobbying against the enlargement, the NMA, the National Association of Manufacturers, real estate boards, and the chamber of commerce, anything extraordinary 
here about their lobbying? 
O: No. Frankly--we're talking about six days, I guess, from the time of awakening--I'm sure that I knew [but] I have no recollection of paying any attention whatsoever to what they 
were doing. Because first of all, whatever they were doing, so be it, there wasn't much we could do about it. To counter any inroads they might be making was something that we 
didn't have the luxury of time and manpower to do. So our total thrust was in terms of garnering enough votes for passage. I would think that probably the opposition lobbying 
groups were in the same position as the key players on the Hill that were in opposition to change--that they shared Rayburn's view, or Rayburn shared their view, that this was 
going to be relatively close but it would go down to defeat. So perhaps that enforced, brief period of intensive lobbying on our part didn't make that much of an impact on the 
opposition. I really wonder whether they caught up with it or recognized that it was creating some change. 
G: At the time of the vote did you think that you had the votes? 
O: At the time of the vote my recollection is that we thought we would squeak by. Now, I probably would have said, "We'll settle for one; we may get two, we could get five." And 
I might have even said there's a shot at getting a majority of seven to ten. It landed about where we expected it would land. We felt that with the question marks up to the last 
minute we could have a ten-vote margin, but we also were not totally confident we were going to prevail. If we felt we could get up to a ten-vote margin and we wound up with 
five, obviously we thought we might lose by a couple. It could be that kind of a. . . . 
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G: Was there an awareness on your part of who would go on the committee once it was enlarged? 
O: I don't think we even got into that, because we had assurances that people would be on the committee that would be favorable to us and interested in our position. As it turned 
out, we had one fellow that went on the committee that became very difficult in another struggle at a later date. 
G: Was this [James] Delaney? 
O: Delaney, yes. 
G: What was Rayburn's reaction to the victory? 
O: He was, as his usual Rayburn style, low key, a little smile, a slight chuckle, pleased. 
G: Did he ever say anything to characterize what it meant to him or what it meant in terms of the Congress? 
O: No. No, I don't think we ever got into that. 
G: How about Kennedy? What was his reaction? 
O: Relief. A great sigh of relief. 
G: Really? 
O: Yes. And my best recollection of his comment [is], "Now we're in business." 
G: Is that right? 
O: Yes. 
G: Any other memorable reactions to it that you recall? 
O: Not that I can think of. I think the overriding reaction remains my initial reaction to learning about all this. (Laughter) I think probably while it was uphill after that, it in a 
sense was a little bit downhill. As far as my personal reaction, I didn't jump up and down with joy. I think my reaction was a melding of pleasure and relief. 
[Interruption] 
G: Let me ask you about the omnibus judgeship bill. We talked about this briefly in setting up the legislative agenda. This should be on the first page [of the outline of legislative 
issues] there. Do you have that? 
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O'Brien --Interview I --74 
O: Oh, I see. Wait a minute. Yes. 
G: This was the opportunity to name almost sixty judges. Did you see this as a political advantage? 
O: Yes. We saw it as an advantage because we were anxious to adjust the courts, if we possibly could, to the fullest extent possible in terms of attitude and thrust. The additional 
judges would afford an early opportunity to bring to the bench people that would be--I hate to use the word because sometimes it isn't appropriately 
descriptive--conservative-liberal or people that have a point of view that would more closely approximate the President's point of view than those who were currently sitting, 
for the most part. It isn't something that is discernible in specifics; it's just something that would have an impact on what we accomplished in terms of interpretation and 
implementation. Therefore, the importance was there, the reality of being able to name a large number of new judges. It seemed to be eminently doable, frankly, because obviously 
many of the people voting for this increase would see in it some advantages for them down the road when the actual appointing process went into effect. 
G: Sure. Eisenhower had tried to [pass a similar bill]. 
O: So it's the type of legislation that you have a feeling political reality, if nothing else, will dictate its enactment. 
G: Sure. This brings me to the question of the division of judicial appointments in Texas between Johnson and Yarborough. Were you privy to this or did you help negotiate or 
accommodate? 
O: I was privy to it certainly. I heard a lot from Ralph Yarborough concerning it. We had a number of discussions. 
G: What was Yarborough's position? 
O: Well, Yarborough's position was that we should adhere to tradition, and the input of a senator who would participate in confirmation was tradition. And it was hard for Ralph to 
quite conceive of the role of a vice president, if he incidentally happened to come from Texas, in this process. It was a very touchy situation. As you know, the 
Yarborough-Johnson sensitivity was something that existed right to the end, the end being Dallas, and I suppose beyond. But just to focus on that period, it had a lot to do with 
much of the planning for the Texas trip. Al Thomas was pre-eminent in that decision to visit Texas, but Ralph's position was certainly well known to us and repeatedly voiced by 
Ralph. 
G: He had been a Kennedy supporter before Los Angeles. 
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O: That's right. I wasn't in a decision-making role in terms of allocation, but I was dealing regularly with Ralph Yarborough, seeking his support, and trying, in my own way, to 
accommodate his sensitivities to the best of my ability to bring about some kind of equity. But I came to the end of that particular road in Fort Worth when I had the discussion 
with President Kennedy up in his room and found that the early [news] stories, the first day of the trip, had been headlined Yarborough-Johnson. I decided, with Kennedy's 
knowledge and acquiescence, to see if I could find Yarborough before the motorcade formed to go to the airport to go to Dallas. That's all part and parcel of my involvement in 
all of this. It went to the legislative program; it went to the patronage, it went to the perceived slights, from Yarborough's point of view, and perceived unfair handling of some 
of his problems, and that was all an ongoing situation. 
I stepped outside the hotel door and he was there; he had come down early. So we talked and I told him that I recognized his affection for the President, his support of 
the President, his high regard for the President, all the rest, but what he wasn't recognizing was he was doing the President harm and would continue to harm the President during the 
course of this trip by his actions in not sharing the car with the Vice President. There were several buses of press, and the press were already aboard waiting for the principals 
to come down and form the motorcade. And I said to Ralph, "You just look at those buses and you're the story. There's no way you'd want it, I wouldn't think. And that's 
grossly unfair to the President." Yarborough didn't say too much, kind of mulled it over in his mind, and he said, "Well, fine, I'll get in the car." That was about it, and just within a 
moment, the Vice President came out and I quickly stepped over to him to advise him that Yarborough would be riding with him. 
G: What was Johnson's reaction to that? 
O: He nodded, but I don't think he said anything. 
G: I wonder if he was surprised. 
O: I don't know. You had to get this done quickly and, of course, what happened as a result of all that is that when I got off the plane at Dallas and the Vice President and the 
President were working the fence, handshaking, Ralph sort of standing there, I did not go to my designated car. I hung back to be sure that I saw the two of them back in the car, 
the Vice President and Yarborough, for the trip into Dallas. But then again, I guess, with my approach to things, I wanted to see it with my own eyes and hope that nothing might 
have occurred in the intervening half-hour that had changed it. And they got in the car and then I had to hasten and jump into a car that was handy, one of the open cars, and that 
car contained three or four, maybe five--it was crowded--members of the Texas delegation. 
G: Oh, congressmen? 
O: Yes. 
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G: Who did make the decision about the division of those judgeships? 
O: I don't know. 
G: Was it Kennedy? 
O: I don't know. I don't know how it was worked out. 
G: Was there ever any consideration of letting Yarborough name all of them? 
O: I'm not aware of that either. I don't recall--and it's pretty vague in my recollection--that there was a feeling on the part of the Vice President that he was prepared to accept that 
kind of a solution, to let Yarborough name them all. I think that Lyndon Johnson hung in there somewhat through this, and I know this much, that the President was very anxious 
to accommodate the Vice President while recognizing the really inherent historic rights that the Senator had. It was a tough one. 
But as to the ultimate resolution, I was not involved, I don't believe, or I would recall it. I was involved with Yarborough from time to time on other patronage. I don't 
even remember the details; it might even have gotten to postal patronage, you know. He was very alert to what he felt were his rights. You did have a man on the one hand that 
was a staunch early supporter and a United States senator. On the other hand, you had a fellow that had agreed to go on the ticket and made one significant contribution to victory. 
Somehow, somewhere, you had to reconcile all that and come up with some kind of a solution that might have both sides kind of reluctant regarding the conclusion, but 
nevertheless, even if it was with reluctance, accept it. 
But overall, the omnibus judgeship bill was not a matter of over-riding, desperate lobbying in a priority sense. There was a strong feeling from the outset that this would 
work itself out as it did. 
G: Okay, you've talked about the foreign aid bill at some length, and you did write about that in your book [No Final Victories]. 
O: I think it's worth adding a postscript--because Otto Passman was a chore. He aggravated the President no end. He aggravated the leadership no end. John McCormack would 
become totally exercised regarding Otto. He was elusive in terms of pinning him down. There were a number of occasions when we thought we had formalized an agreement and 
found that Otto didn't recognize that to be the case. He was emotionally involved to a high degree. He was downright impossible. I don't think there was a more difficult 
exercise in my years in the White House than the exercise that took place regarding foreign aid and Passman. He was no different with President Kennedy than he had been 
with his predecessor. And I'm trying to recall, and I can't, a meeting we had on this subject where there was bipartisan attendance over in the White House in the living 
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quarters when we were trying to work this out. I can't recall a Republican leader present at that time that made the comment, perhaps it was Senator Dirksen, but the comment was 
made that he recalled vividly being at similar meetings with Eisenhower regarding Passman and that he drove Eisenhower completely up the wall to the point where 
Eisenhower had told the Republican leaders that he never wanted to see Passman's face again. He said he just drove him crazy, just exactly what he was doing with Kennedy. 
So it wasn't a matter of selecting Kennedy out for any reason. It was the terrible misfortune to have a man, by virtue of seniority, in control of legislation that he detested 
and who felt that his role was not to organize the legislation and resolve any problems attendant to it. Somehow his role was to kill it all if he possibly could someday, and that 
made for a very, very difficult situation. If you asked me to select one member of Congress, House or Senate, that caused the President and the White House the most 
difficulty, interestingly enough I'd have to designate a democrat--I think small "d"--named Passman. 
G: How did you deal with him? 
O: I don't know as I ever did. I had a lot of contact with him but I never felt that I was dealing with him. I guess it's like anything else. When I first became acquainted with him 
I anticipated being able to deal with him, and as time went on he wore me out, too. He was impossible. There was a bright moment with a Charlie Halleck, and there were other 
things that happened, and you never, as I've said repeatedly, foreclosed a possibility, but with this man it was just an intensive, almost bitter struggle to the end. It just complicated 
our lives, because he accused us of all kinds of activity to exert pressure on him. I don't know whether he construed us to be a bunch of devils incarnate or just the horrible enemy 
or what. As for John McCormack, who was in many ways a living saint and who somehow could find good in everyone, the worst thing I ever heard him say was, "I hold 
him in minimum high regard." Passman just drove him up the wall, too. 
G: (Laughter) Was there any pressure that you could apply in other respects? 
O: None. None. He was in a world of his own. Why a man who had that view regarding foreign aid wouldn't at some point say, "I don't belong here in this discussion and debate 
and I can better serve my constituents in some other area." But I think that he would never contemplate that because he really, truly felt that he was driving nails into the 
foreign aid coffin and someday he'd secure the lid. 
G: Did Passman have a counterpart in the Senate that was troublesome? 
O: No, I don't recall, no. See, there were two areas that you had to confront on a regular basis. Foreign aid was one. There wasn't really anybody that I know in the House that 
was voting for foreign aid because he really was enamored with it. It was well understood by all, including your loyal supporters, that foreign aid was a burden, that nothing was to 
be gained by way of constituent support or political support out of supporting foreign aid. 
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What everybody had to weigh was to what degree it was adverse to their political interests. That didn't mean there weren't a lot of members that didn't recognize its validity 
and the necessity. But it was a burden. 
The other burden was the debt ceiling. And the debt ceiling is where the opposition party would have a lot of fun with you. The only thought you had through that 
miserable exercise was that sooner or later there had to be an increase; they couldn't avoid it. But no one wanted to vote to increase the debt ceiling, and my guess is that roll calls 
would reveal that we may have been close to zero on Republican support for a debt ceiling increase. But those were the two areas that had built-in problems and you had to work on 
those two necessary legislative actions, recognizing that there was no real constituency. 
G: In foreign aid President Kennedy did introduce the concept of a multi-year approach to it, and this was criticized as back-door spending. 
O: Yes. 
G: How did you deal with this issue? 
O: Well, actually our motivation was obvious. Was there some way you could avoid this battle regularly? It started all over again about a week after you took a breath, it seemed. 
That's the way it was and it was awfully frustrating, so you felt at least you could take a shot at maybe trying to avoid an annual fiasco. That was our motivation and our 
approach. (Laughter) 
G: On issues like this, did you ever ask for more than you thought you could get, thinking that they were going to cut something? 
O: Sure, within reason, but you'd always go on the up side because you just anticipated that at best you would be in an area of dollar compromise ultimately anyway. 
G: The creation of AID was that year, too, and again you had the multi-year funding question. 
O: Yes. Well, actually, multi-year funding you approached as sort of what have we got to lose and, who knows, maybe you might luck out, at least in part, because it was the route 
to travel anyway. It made sense. But that didn't mean that it was persuasive. 
G: There was a very close vote in the Senate on that AID measure, an amendment by Styles Bridges to prohibit any military aid to any countries that traded with communist countries. 
O: That's right. 
G: And you defeated that by a two-vote margin in the Senate. Do you remember that vote? 
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O: I don't remember the specifics of it, but Bridges really put in a major effort on that. He really did. He fought for that vigorously. I don't recall Bridges during that time being so 
totally involved in anything comparable to the effort that he expended there. He really made it very difficult. 
G: Did you sense the China lobby at work here? 
O: Yes. Because he pulled out all the stops that he was capable of pulling out. The record shows that he came awfully, awfully close to achieving his goal. I don't recall whether we 
anticipated it to the degree that it unfolded at the outset. Maybe we did, but I doubt it, because it became so intense it was surprising to us, as was the close vote. 
It's funny, when you mention Bridges and ask for recollections of someone, and this is no personal reflection on Bridges, but the one area of Bridges' activity that 
immediately comes to the forefront is this very exercise. I don't recall anything else particularly. While Bridges was obviously not a supporter, I don't recall him playing 
important or decisive roles in opposition. I mean, I don't think that he had that much weight in the Senate. But in this instance, he had, as it turned out, a very appealing 
argument. 
G: Well, he must have died shortly thereafter. I mean, he died during this period. 
O: Yes. 
G: Okay, you talked about Saund of California and the closing of the VA hospital there on AID. Passman evidently made a point of criticizing the administration lobbying on that 
measure, and even cited that LBJ had brought in Ayub Khan from Pakistan to give pep talks. Was this the case? 
O: I don't recall that it was the case at all, but I must say, anything that came to Passman's mind, I'll tell you, he articulated it. Passman could envision that the entire administration 
had dropped everything that it was engaged in and its sole effort was to defeat Passman. You could have suggested anything to Otto Passman and he would be a believer, saying, 
"They're doing this, that, or the other thing." I mean short of--G: 
He said Shriver visited every congressional office on the Hill. 
O: He's right. 
G: Shriver did? Why Shriver, because of the Peace Corps? 
O: Yes. And Sarge Shriver applied to this effort every fiber of his being. I had become acquainted with Sarge way back in 1952. At that time he worked for Joseph Kennedy in 
the Merchandise Mart, and he was on leave to us in the Massachusetts Senate campaign. And I recall very well that he was a man of inordinate drive and capacity for work. He 
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O'Brien --Interview I --80 
had a high degree of enthusiasm for whatever he was engaged in. And I will say this, that Sarge was as effective an administration official on the Hill as anyone I can think of. He 
was indefatigable. As you see, I'm a great admirer of his, because not only did he do that on the Hill, which I personally observed and was involved in, but every assignment that 
he's had. I've also noted that through his private sector life, he's applied the same effort. He and his wife have done just an outstanding job of organizing and directing the Special 
Olympics. It is one of the best programs for the disadvantaged that's ever been created, to the degree that I made a point, as commissioner of the NBA, to ensure that a major 
portion of our public service announcements that we had available to us on national television were devoted to the Special Olympics, along with contributions that players and 
coaches and others in the NBA made over the years. 
I wanted to say all that because Sarge Shriver to me in a lot of ways epitomizes what is termed a dedicated public servant. It was brought into focus in this effort, and that 
wasn't the only time Sarge tramped through the corridors up there. 
G: I'm sure we'll get to a lot of his help later when we get to the poverty program and other things, but in addition to this foreign aid measure this year, can you recall any other 
lobbying that he did? 
O: Well, on the whole Peace Corps obviously. I think a great deal of the success is due to Shriver and the reaction to him on the part of the members up there. There would be any 
number of occasions when I would be chatting with a member and he would reflect on his contacts with Sarge and how impressed he was with him. I think that, you know, if you 
could have had twenty-five Sarge Shrivers around, life would have been probably a lot more comfortable. 
G: Did both Presidents Johnson and Kennedy recognize this talent? 
O: Yes. Very much so. I think that President Johnson had his difficult moments trying to evaluate the various members of the Kennedy family, but with Sarge he saw early on a 
fellow that was outstanding. He held him in high regard. 
Tape 5 of 5, Side 1 
G: --purged from the subcommittee. 
O: In the first place, as far as the White House was concerned, we weren't in the business of issuing threats or encouraging purges. If, indeed, we would ever contemplate something 
like that, the last fellow that we would involve ourselves with in that regard would be Otto Passman, because it would have given him great joy; his martyr complex would have been 
further spotlighted, and he would have had great pleasure in making public pronouncements in this area forever. 
So, no, Otto Passman was, as I said, a very unusual guy. He was unique; he was 
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O'Brien --Interview I --81 
not well regarded among his colleagues. He was considered a bit of an off-beat character. He had this foreign aid hang-up and he had a great deal of control over foreign aid 
legislation. I have no knowledge that Passman was a contributing factor in any meaningful sense in any other area in the Congress. 
G: Did LBJ ever have any formula for dealing with him, or did he--? 
O: Not that I recall. I don't think there was a person in Washington who had a formula. Obviously the Republican administration had tried, and if he could aggravate Ike 
Eisenhower no end, then similarly aggravate his successor no end, and aggravate his own party's leadership in the House no end, I think that was it. There wasn't any formula to 
deal with Otto Passman. 
G: Okay. You mentioned the Peace Corps. Let me ask you briefly, apparently there was a little opposition to the Peace Corps, is that right? 
O: Yes. 
G: Where did the title come from, do you know? 
O: No, I don't. There was little opposition. It fitted in terms of the launching of the administration, the pronouncements of the new President, his aspirations and goals, and 
interestingly enough, it cut across the spectrum on the Hill. Members were early on, up front, intrigued with it. Which, incidentally, I must say was surprising to me. I don't 
remember specific members who expressed support for the Peace Corps, but I do recall that I was very much surprised with some of the early support and the sources from which 
it came. But I think you would again have to make reference to Sarge. I think that the reaction to Sarge personally was a very significant factor. 
G: How did Shriver end up with that assignment, do you recall? 
O: No, I don't. I don't [know] what conversations might have taken place within the family. I think that his reactions would be extremely positive in an area such as that. Re the 
members of the family--Steve Smith was in Washington for a while. I believe he had an assignment in the Defense Department, and there might have been another assignment. 
But I recall a conversation with Steve; Steve just didn't feel comfortable in Washington, in the administration. It wasn't his bent, and Steve really was anxious to go back to New 
York and the Kennedy Foundation. I remember having dinner with Steve one night, just the two of us. Our wives were on vacation. And you know, Steve is a very able fellow. 
But it was of interest to me that as he had a brother-in-law who was president of the United States, Steve could have carved out a career that would be meaningful in his 
brother-in-law's administration, but that didn't fit with him. 
G: Well, there still have been suggestions that Shriver was an outsider for the family, though, because he was an in-law rather than a--do you think there's an element of truth in that? 
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O'Brien --Interview I --82 
O: Well, the family, that's--we could spend several hours on the family, because obviously I had ample opportunity over many years to closely observe the family, and that's a story in 
itself. But I think when you're talking about in-laws, male or female, you have to remember the Kennedy family is a very closely-knit family with a very strong-willed father 
who had views that he had no hesitancy to express. I think it was a natural evolvement that if you married into the family, you were expected to become part of the family's way 
of life, whether it was touch football or whatever. 
So in that sense you're an outsider, and you accommodate yourself to the family, and you become a full participant in the Kennedy family life, which was a very active life 
among all of them. They're all active in sports and all that sort of thing. I think Sarge would come by that naturally anyway, because he was an excellent tennis player--I 
shouldn't say was, I assume he still is. And Steve Smith was athletically inclined, had a great interest in sports, so the fit is there. 
I think where I saw resistance to being encircled by the family was with Jackie. And I can remember occasions sitting on the porch at the compound in Hyannis with 
Jackie, with touch football going on, male-female participation to the fullest, and other physical activities, and Jackie felt very relaxed not participating. I would be a 
nonparticipant and sit with her. And Jackie had an independence of her own in terms of what her interests were. She did not drop all her interests and assume all the interests of 
the Kennedy group. 
So you can get into a lot of discussion; that's why to say Sarge was an outsider, I don't accept. I think that that was a marriage, he and Eunice, that couldn't have been more 
perfect. You know, there aren't many almost perfect marriages. I remember at their wedding over at the Waldorf, while Sarge was an employee of her father, they had mutual 
interests from the outset in the Special Olympics and in other activities they have engaged in together. They are both very religious and, you know, it was just a darned good fit. 
G: You didn't see, then, any kind of cleavage between Shriver as an in-law and the Kennedy brothers as natural siblings? 
O: That became a matter of public discussion at the time that Sarge was selected as a candidate for vice president by George McGovern, and inasmuch as I was one of the two 
or three, whatever it was, being considered by McGovern to take over the role of Tom Eagleton, I had a very close look at all of that. And there was a lot of talk about how the 
Kennedys would feel about Sarge seeking public office as a candidate for vice president. I never found that there was any concern on the part of the Kennedys. But that was when a 
lot of people suggested that perhaps the Kennedys feel that only Kennedys seek public office; that if you're not a Kennedy, even though you're a member of the family, that's 
probably not appropriate. But I never saw any evidence of that. 
And Sarge did what he always does: as a candidate for vice president he never 
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O'Brien --Interview I --83 
stopped running for vice president. He just devoted every waking minute for months to that effort. I don't know, it's hard for me to listen to all the stories, because some of these 
stories are repeated and repeated until they become, supposedly, factual. And I've often sat and thought, well, that isn't the way I saw it. And I felt on many of these occasions 
that I was in a position where I could view it, and that isn't the way it was. But that's the way media portrayed it and so be it. 
End of Tape 5 of 5 and Interview I 
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    [ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
 *Pages 1--67 from  Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview II*
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION 
The LBJ Library Oral History Collection is composed primarily of interviews conducted for the Library by the University of Texas Oral History Project and the LBJ Library Oral History 
Project. In addition, some interviews were done for the Library under the auspices of the National Archives and the White House during the Johnson administration. 
Some of the Library's many oral history transcripts are available on the INTERNET. Individuals whose interviews appear on the INTERNET may have other interviews available on 
paper at the LBJ Library. Transcripts of oral history interviews may be consulted at the Library or lending copies may be borrowed by writing to the Interlibrary Loan Archivist, LBJ Library, 
2313 Red River Street, Austin, Texas, 78705. 
1
LAWRENCE F. O'BRIEN ORAL HISTORY, INTERVIEW II 
PREFERRED CITATION 
For Internet Copy: 
Transcript, Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview II, 10/ 29/ 85, by Michael L. Gillette, Internet Copy, LBJ Library. 
For Electronic Copy on Diskette from the LBJ Library: 
Transcript, Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview II, 10/ 29/ 85, by Michael L. Gillette, Electronic Copy, LBJ Library. 
2
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION 
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY 
AND 
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY LIBRARY 
Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interview of Lawrence F. O'Brien 
In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Title 44, United States Code, and subject to the terms and conditions hereinafter set forth, I, Lawrence F. O'Brien of New York, New York, 
do hereby give, donate and convey to the United States of America all my rights, title and interest in the tape recordings and transcripts of the personal interviews conducted on September 18, 
October 29, October 30, December 4, December 5, 1985; February 11, February 12, April 8, April 9, June 25, July 24, July 25, September 10, September 11, November 20, November 21, 
December 17, December 18, 1986; April 22, April 23, June 18, June 19, July 21, July 22, August 25, August 26, September 23, September 24, November 3, November 4, December 10, December 
11, 1987 at New York, New York and Cotuit, Massachusetts and prepared for deposit jointly in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library 
This assignment is subject to the following terms and conditions: 
(1) The transcripts shall be available for use by researchers as soon as they have been deposited in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. 
(2) The tape recordings to which the transcripts relate shall be in the possession of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and shall not be available for use or review of or by any source 
during my lifetime and for a period of time thereafter ending with the 10th year anniversary of the date of my death. At such time, access to the tape recordings by 
researchers shall be permitted but only for the limited purpose of background use, and researchers may not cite, paraphrase, or quote therefrom under any circumstances. 
(3) During my lifetime, I retain all copyright in the material given to the United States by the terms of this instrument. Thereafter the copyright in the transcripts shall pass to the United 
States Government. During my lifetime, researchers may publish brief "fair use" quotations from the transcripts without my express prior consent in each case, but no 
other quotations from the transcripts shall be published, except with my express prior approval in writing. 
(4) Copies of the open portions of the interview transcripts, but not the tape recordings, may be provided by the library to researchers upon request, subject to the terms, conditions 
and restrictions set out herein. 
(5) Copies of the interview transcripts, but not the tape recordings, may be deposited in or 
3
loaned to research institutions other than the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library or the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, subject to the terms, conditions and restrictions set out 
herein. 
Signed by Lawrence F. O'Brien on April 5, 1990. 
Accepted by Donald Wilson, Archivist of the United States, April 25, 1990. 
Original Deed of Gift on file at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, 2313 Red River, Austin, TX 78705. 
ACCESSION NUMBER 92-13 
4
INTERVIEW II 
DATE: October 29, 1985 
INTERVIEWEE: LAWRENCE F. O'BRIEN 
INTERVIEWER: Michael L. Gillette 
PLACE: Mr. O'Brien's office, New York City 
Tape 1 of 4, Side 1 
G: Let me start with a couple of general points that were raised by your papers. One, the problem of a congressman who is following a project through the various stages that it has 
to go through in the cabinet department and agency and BOB, and so he's fairly well abreast of each stage. Is it possible for him to learn, just through keeping abreast of it, the 
outcome before the White House does, or before you do, or the member that you want to notify first? 
O: Well, depending on his seniority in the Congress and, obviously, his direct relationship to the project by virtue of his committee assignment, that was conceivable and undoubtedly 
occurred. We made every effort to husband all of this information to impact it to the best of our ability and to the point where we worked out a program with the Bureau of the 
Budget, as well as all the departments and agencies, to try to get that first notice in there and to have the member--the friendly member--have the opportunity to make the 
announcement prior to the department, agency or any other governmental source. I think even the fellow that might have been tracking a particular project by virtue of his 
committee assignments, even under those circumstances, would probably not go public until there was a definitive, on-the-record decision. But I must say that if that were the 
case and he had the knowledge that you suggest, then our call to notify him would not have the impact that we'd like it to have. 
But I think those were unusual situations and I must say that it was a dangerous area in a lot of ways. I think our concern really went to a public discussion of this 
procedure. There was nothing basically wrong with it. We were not, in that process, endeavoring to dictate every decision in government. It was purely an effort to maintain 
and improve this individual relationship with these people. 
But you always had to be concerned that this could become a matter of public discussion and it could be reported in such a way that it would look devious. We had that 
occur. As I recall, it might have been the Wall Street Journal that made an effort to dig into these procedures and failed. There were a lot of denials of procedures internally, I'll 
admit to that. We carried it to a considerable extreme in the case of the two senators from Maine, Ed Muskie and Margaret Chase Smith. Bob McNamara became very exercised 
about this procedure, particularly when he was confronted by Senator Smith and accused of giving advance notice to Ed Muskie. Ed Muskie seemed to have statements in the 
Maine newspapers regarding decisions that were affecting the state of Maine; military 
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O'Brien --Interview II --2 
projects, bases in Maine. 
She was on the committee and McNamara became so concerned about it that he went to the President and said that he thought that this procedure should be closed out 
because it was embarrassing. The President discussed it directly with me, and the President and I quickly agreed the project would continue, the effort would continue, the 
procedure would continue. It was obviously very helpful. But, in order to pacify Margaret Chase Smith, we set up a situation in which Ed Muskie sent us a letter objecting 
strenuously to some procedure under which Margaret Chase Smith, in his judgment, was given notice ahead of him when it should have been joint. That was made known to 
Margaret Chase Smith--Ed Muskie was concerned because he felt that she was getting preference because of the committee on which she was serving. That closed that out and 
we heard nothing further. 
But that one media effort to delve into this procedure, which didn't cause any waves, was just about all I can recall that occurred. Now, it depended on the district, too. 
Coming from Massachusetts--I was from the Second Congressional District--there was a congressman by the name of [Edward] Boland, who was a lifelong friend of mine, as a 
matter of fact. Just to apply this to the individual congressman, Boland would receive this twenty-four or forty-eight-hour advance notice and he would contact the newspapers and 
media in his district with a statement. And that would be page one news usually. Now, that was the nature of the district. The largest city in the district was one hundred 
seventy-five thousand, the city of Springfield, [and there were] a lot of smaller cities and smaller communities. And the impact was there and it, obviously, was of great assistance 
to the Congressman. 
However, you could be one of fifteen congressmen in the city of New York, and perhaps there's very little of this that was of any great help because in New York, just as 
any other major metropolitan area--but I think New York is obviously a good example--congressmen get lost in the shuffle. And their effort to get into print in New York is a 
very difficult one. So perhaps some project affecting Greater New York would be shared by so many members of Congress that it would very much lessen the potential impact. 
But overall it was a resource, it was as simple as that, and a resource that we [used] on a trial basis in 1961. [We continued] refining it operationally and indeed, 
mechanically, so this was an automatic, day-to-day procedure and encompassed everything we could put our hands on in the executive branch of government. As we 
refined that and noted how meaningful it could be in most instances, we were not going to relinquish that because of Senator Smith, or indeed Bob McNamara, who in fairness to 
him, did not have a political background. He was not as sensitive to the PR value of this in terms of an open door up on the Hill, if not the actual vote of a member in a given set of 
circumstances. 
But it was of concern to some of the people in the administration. I think an example was referred to in a memo [by] Elmer Staats. Elmer was a career fellow and he 
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O'Brien --Interview II --3 
was at Budget and that would be a source in that you could be advised and counselled by Budget, [which] in turn would probably give you a little lead time in some departments 
and agencies at times so you could anticipate these opportunities. But there was a recognition on the part of the people there that this was something that we valued, that it 
was not in any sense suggesting to Budget or anyone else that they take action in any way. It was just after the fact that we wanted the information, but before the general 
procedural announcement and that was all. 
G: Yes. 
O: And they accepted that and recognized it and, consequently, even people that would not be politically oriented or not perhaps have direct concern about the legislative process 
were very cooperative and understanding. The guidelines were established and were confidential. As time went on and it became more refined, it became an adjunct of the 
operation of the Congressional Relations office in the White House that was as automatic as opening the doors each day. 
G: Well, how specifically did you bring all the departments and agencies into line in following this procedure? 
O: Well, you started with a basic premise, and I'm sure I'm going to be repeating myself on some of these things but editing will take care of it ultimately, I hope. But where was the 
starting point, what was the concept? First of all, and I think every president-elect and his associates go through this process and take it very seriously. Now that you have the reins 
of power, you are going to make every effort to ensure that the executive branch of government reacts to your interest, your goals. That means that you want to put in place 
in every important slot in government people who a) are competent and b) very importantly, share your goals. And that, over a period of time, has frustrated every 
administration in my judgment; actually placing these people in position. It frustrated us. But in the excitement of an approaching inauguration, the day the President named his 
cabinet and the rest, we were not oblivious to this. We didn't have it refined or in some documented form. But the President and I, and the President and all of us--the President-elect--
knew where we wanted to go and that the control aspect was going to be extremely important. We were going to exercise every effort we could to bring it about. 
For example, and I think this was without exception, as the President designated his cabinet members on the steps of his home in Georgetown, or whatever form was taken 
to make these announcements, immediately, that designee was advised that his first order of business was to sit down with me. At that time I was staying in the Mayflower Hotel, 
and I had arranged, whether it was just a one-on-one session or dinner in the suite, that there would be a solid, in-depth discussion of the goals and the aspirations of the 
administration and what we would envision from the White House to be the team role of each cabinet member. And it varied somewhat. Stew Udall would be very familiar with 
the procedure; there's no need to try to outline it or detail it to Stew, so you chat with him rather informally. With Doug Dillon or Bob McNamara, it would be necessary to review 
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O'Brien --Interview II --4 
all this very carefully. These were men of high quality; you wanted to be absolutely sure they weren't, right at the outset after they're appointed, receiving suggestions that could 
remotely be construed as anything but a proper manner of doing things. 
But you really took off from one premise--everything focuses on the President. Every action taken, every department and agency must focus on the President. It's the 
President's program; the President is the boss; the President must at all times be cast in the best light possible. When negatives occur, the responsibility must be absorbed as much as 
possible by the cabinet member or whomever. There's only one program, and, while the effort will be expended by each cabinet member obviously in behalf of the program that 
directly involves his department, he has the responsibility to be part of the overall effort to bring about the enactment of the New Frontier program. It is essential that all top-level 
appointments be cleared by the White House. If the cabinet designee has an interest in making a recommendation in a given instance, it certainly will be looked at, and looked at 
carefully. There will be times, however, when the cabinet member will be informed as to who the President would like to see in a designated position in the departments and 
agencies, and that has to be an accepted procedure. And all of that, of course, was the beginning of an effort to bring under the direction of the White House as much as you 
could of the executive branch of government in the interests of the President. There were a couple of isolated instances that I recall where there was some slight resistance, or some 
resistance, to this procedure as time went on. 
G: Can you give specifics here? 
O: Well, interestingly enough, if a cabinet member had a political background--some did--there was an acknowledgement of this and acceptance of it. This wasn't anything 
surprising at all; this is the way the procedure would be and certainly should be. But if you did not have that political background and you were not probably as sensitive to this, 
then you had to adjust to it. The adjustment process wasn't difficult, because there again, you know that there's one boss and it's the president. Everybody is on the team, but it's 
the president you look to at all times for leadership. Your responsibility goes to the president in every aspect of the performance of your duties and responsibilities. That's 
nothing that isn't obvious. But the adjustment to it in a couple of instances was not immediate and there was at least what we perceived to be some foot-dragging. I think one 
member of the original cabinet of President Kennedy that had difficulty with it was the Postmaster General, Ed Day. Ed talked to me on a number of occasions and to others in 
the White House and he felt that "White House staff," quote, unquote, were interfering with the conduct of his office by making suggestions to him of one sort or another which 
he resented. 
G: These were like where to build the post office or jobs or--? 
O: Some of that, but even to the point of suggestions as to commemorative stamps. You can picture the pressures being exerted in that area at that time, and I learned it directly later 
on as postmaster general. I understood it, but it became part of my own direct activities 
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O'Brien --Interview II --5 
for which I took certain steps by way of forming committees that were helpful. But if you, as the postmaster general, receive a call from Larry O'Brien, and it is suggested by Larry 
O'Brien that it would be in the interest of the President and the administration and our relationship with the Congress to have a stamp, of the fifteen or so commemorative 
stamps that were issued each year, and the Postmaster General felt that perhaps there was somebody else or some other entity that perhaps should be so honored, I think that 
perhaps Ed Day would feel, "I don't understand this, there seems to be politics in this." Well, of course, there was politics in it. 
But I mention Ed because he came from a business background. He was a senior officer in a major company. He came from the West Coast. He had a close association 
with Adlai Stevenson initially. He was an early Kennedy supporter. He was recommended to us when we were sorting out cabinet suggestions by some people on the 
West Coast. The President-elect had an interest in having a businessman in the cabinet to achieve balance. Anyway, as the process unfolded, Ed Day became the designee, to his 
utter surprise and amazement because he never sought the post. And I remember rather vividly Ed being asked to get on the earliest plane he could to come to Washington for a 
discussion with the President-elect, and [he] had no idea just what was to be discussed. 
Well, that was the background of it. Now, Ed Day was a very able fellow and, as a matter of fact, I believe stayed pretty much in postal activities in the private sector after 
he left the Post Office Department. But some of Ed's stated concerns became a matter of general knowledge in the White House and of specific knowledge to the President. There 
were discussions regarding Ed to the effect that he seemed to register more objection to this procedure than others and, after all, the Post Office Department was a source. 
G: Sure. 
O: But Ed I don't think really enjoyed being in that position. I can understand that. That was contra to his experiences in the private sector in the high-level positions he had held in the 
business community. He did not, of course, have the political background that would probably help in bringing him along on this process. Whatever the reasons were--and 
there was nothing personal and there was respect for Ed and I respect him to this day. I knew him probably better in later years than I did at that time, because we were in touch 
with each other on a number of occasions in postal matters in later years. But Ed chose to leave the cabinet. And I suggest that there were probably a couple of other situations 
somewhat similar, that you do have a little of that. I don't know whether arrogance was shown toward Ed. That would not be my way of doing things. 
As part of this communication process, it was well understood throughout the administration that a cabinet member would make himself available promptly in response 
to a Larry O'Brien telephone call. Now, that didn't mean that everybody on that White House staff could pick up the phone and call a cabinet member. Maybe others did and 
made attempts in their own way to exert pressures of one sort or another; I'm sure things like that probably occurred. And that would aggravate me. It would aggravate me, 
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O'Brien --Interview II --6 
because I was in that position in later years. But if it was held to the President and his immediate designee, so to speak, the cabinet member should not react adversely. He 
might want to discuss it or he might even object to a particular appointment. If so, that appointment may not be made because, after all, you weren't going to foist upon a member 
of the cabinet an assistant secretary or deputy that was not going to work effectively with him. 
So a lot of give and take took place. This was not a matter of just calling him in and saying, "Here is your deputy, and here are your assistant secretaries." That was a 
matter of discussion and oftentimes those decisions were made jointly. I don't want to belabor that. I don't want, also, to suggest that we were all just nice folks, that we weren't 
a little hard-bitten, a little driven. After all, there was an overriding objective and every resource had to be put into play to achieve that objective. 
So I would say without question--and that applied over the years that I was involved with both Presidents, Kennedy and Johnson--that the understanding and 
cooperation at the cabinet level were good. There was a rare occurrence when--and I have certainly understood--for example, when Bob McNamara became concerned. After 
all, if I were up there before Maggie Smith--and Maggie Smith starts to berate me for a procedure that obviously was in place--and I'm sitting there saying I'm doing the best I can 
and "Well, I'm not quite familiar with that, I'll look into it," sort of thing, I can understand that if a fellow has had a long political background, he probably can play that one out. 
But if you don't and you don't really like the procedure anyway, you're apt to have strong views concerning it. 
But that was part and parcel of the initial effort to try to have as clear an understanding as you could, [but] that was a role the President-elect did not want to 
undertake. If he were sitting with a fellow who was ultimately his designee for a position in the cabinet--probably after consideration of any number of others and after the decision 
was made and the announcement was made--it wasn't seemly for the President to say, "By the way, Joe, I want to be sure you understand how this works and how it's played out." 
That was a role I could undertake. I had an understanding with the President-elect that it was simply in the context of explaining how we envisioned relations with the Congress 
and how efforts in the legislative program would play out and, also, that we had political responsibilities in terms of appointments and assignments. No one was going to be foisted 
on any of these people who was inept and not fully qualified. 
G: Well, in the case, let's say, of the Labor Department where you had a large interest group that was close to the Kennedy campaign, would they have more influence in the naming of 
subcabinet positions? 
O: If they chose to exercise influence, they could have more influence to some degree than perhaps other private sector entities. But interestingly enough, there wasn't that pressure. 
I think that went to the basic feeling of organized labor as reflected in George Meany's style--and he was the fellow that was in place during our years--and a desire on the part of 
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O'Brien --Interview II --7 
Meany and organized labor and COPE to preserve an independence. And, also, when you think about it, [to] be able to react as they saw fit without being inhibited by favors 
rendered to them. There was not, as I recall it, any pressure points involving labor that impacted on the top-level designees in the Labor Department. I'm not suggesting that the 
President-elect might not talk to George Meany about who he had in mind as secretary of labor. I'm sure that you would not be naming people at the top level of the Labor 
Department if the AFL-CIO, or indeed the UAW, had strong objections to that individual. But that never occurred, because we were in a friendly climate and there were 
opportunities to name people that labor would have no objection to. 
As time went on, labor preserved its rights. We weren't at all times in accord. Even in battles over amendments to legislation, whether it was minimum wage, the whole 
Taft-Hartley efforts and all the rest over the years, there were times when labor was not enamored with our decisions or our actions. But Andy Biemiller, who was George 
Meany's key representative in the legislative process, was a former congressman who had been long with the AFL-CIO, was respected on the Hill and a fellow I found very easy to 
work with. He had a good understanding and he was a dedicated labor man. [Alexander] Barkan is another example of a fellow who fought labor's battles. They fought them with 
everything they had, intensively. But I don't think they wanted to be inhibited by any even indirect suggestion that "Hey, you shouldn't be in strong opposition to this particular 
action that's being undertaken, because look what we've done for you. You've got your pals in place in the Labor Department." They preferred it otherwise and that's the way it 
was. 
G: On the point that you mentioned earlier, the relationship between the White House staff and the cabinet officer, you've been both. And I want to ask, on the basis of both 
perspectives, was it ever a problem to establish whether or not the White House staff member was in fact speaking for the President rather that just himself or his own office? 
O: Not that I recall. While I can only speak for the Congressional Relations staff, or I guess I could speak generally, certainly, it seems to me--and I'm sure this occurred in any number 
of ways--that, for example, Ken O'Donnell, because of his acknowledged close proximity to the President, calling a cabinet or subcabinet member would be understood by that 
person as an authorized call. Certainly any call I made to the cabinet members, or they made to me, probably 90 plus per cent of those calls related to the legislative program, to 
requests of cabinet members to do certain things, make certain contacts, or discussions about progress or lack of progress in a given instance. Each cabinet member, I'm sure, or 
agency head, would not consider that a discussion with me was not a presidentially-approved discussion; that I was [not] in a role that was totally accepted as a spokesman 
for the President. That applied after a relatively brief period of time on the Hill, and I've reflected on that before. 
G: Yes. 
O: The operation on the Hill was far more sensitive than operating with your own colleagues 
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O'Brien --Interview II --8 
in the executive branch. That kind of activity within your own group was no problem at all, but certainly on the Hill you had to be very concerned about how this would unfold. 
And certainly, if I were a member and if I had known Jack Kennedy while we had been colleagues and now he is the President, it would be kind of nice, if I wanted some action in 
a given area or I wanted to suggest legislation or get concurrence on some action I was going to take as a committee chairman, to just pick up the phone and call the President. 
Now, obviously, the reality is that no president is in the position to be constantly engaged in that sort of activity. But by the same token, if you're up there on the Hill, you want to 
test the procedure. You want to at least find out about this fellow O'Brien, who may not be very well known to you, indeed, determine if you can get a definitive answer on 
whatever you're seeking. And if he is totally supported by the President, you don't have any qualms about it, so there's no need to be going to the President. 
President Kennedy early on was sensitive to that, too, and he started to receive some of those calls and he would give them the same response, "Have you discussed this 
with Larry O'Brien?" "No, I haven't." "I'd urge you to do it because Larry is in the position to work it out with you and certainly he'll report back to me." There was only a 
very brief period of time when bypassing Congressional Relations and going directly to the source was really the case. There was an acceptance of that, and it was evidenced in a 
variety of ways, so I felt comfortable. By the same token, once that was established, another responsibility was placed on me and the people that worked with me. When you 
did make a statement or take a position you'd better be able to back it up, and you had to be sure of the President's confidence in you and your judgment. So you reflected on those 
factors when you made any comments or responses. 
But, initially, how do you go about something like this when, at the outset, you try to determine what resources you have, how broad and deep a team you can develop to 
carry on this task of promoting a program with five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress? You just try to ferret out these elements of resource and coordinate them. 
But, as I said, in the climate of the sensitivity of separation of powers, there lies the difference. You can exert pressure in the executive branch, and, if a fellow wants to defy 
you, then that's too bad for him. I would hope you wouldn't be arrogant in the process, because we were all on the same team. But there's that separation up there on the hill, and 
what you're trying to do is move in with people who are decision-makers who, hopefully, at no time will feel you are just being too wise, too smart, or too forward. 
That was really what it was all about, and a lot of it was trial and error. On reflection, I can't tell you when we decided that we would have regular meetings during 
congressional sessions in the White House with the top congressional liaison person in each department and agency. It happened relatively early, but it didn't happen Day One. 
And all of these other refinements--were we thinking of the use of the Sequoia in January, February, March of 1961? These refinements came bit by bit as you tried to implement 
the process you had established. 
Before discussing the role of the President, let me reiterate that the Congressional 
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O'Brien --Interview II --9 
Relations process started with a president and a staff member he designated who were unsure of how it should be undertaken and unaware of the limited informal activities in 
this area in past administrations. From Day One, the need to husband the President's time and safeguard his influence became self-evident. You could not allow the effort you were 
undertaking to reach the point where direct contact with the President was simply a routine matter on Capitol Hill. Presidential contact had to be something that impressed a 
member of Congress and happened on rare occasions. When he received a direct call from the President or an invitation to come down to have a meeting with the President that was 
impressive and the Congressman or Senator reacted accordingly. If a member reached the point of saying, "Oh, hell, there's another call from the President," then you lost the single, 
overriding resource you had available to you. 
G: Sure. Was LBJ more inclined to have a day-to-day contact with members of the Congress than Kennedy was? 
O: I would say yes. With Kennedy I would try to husband his time by very carefully developing the effort that I'd like to have him make in a given instance. If that meant 
having six members of Congress to the White House because we have clear, definite information that they are very much in question and that only presidential effort could 
bring them into line, then I would make that request to the President. I would be very, very careful to make it only when I had determined we'd exhausted every possibility and 
there was one last opportunity and that was the President. I would make that request, and I would not be hearing from President Kennedy saying, "I haven't heard from you in a 
week about calls you want me to make or some social occasion or some meeting with a member. What's going on?" It was quite different. He would hear from me, and I would 
make the request. On every occasion, sometimes perhaps a little reluctantly, the President would undertake it. I think he felt that these contacts were kept to the absolute minimum, 
and he knew the motivation would have to be one of last resort--that there was a need for presidential participation. 
Now President Johnson would inquire. As we talked about legislative struggles and I would give him a current version of a head count, he would note that there were 
members who were not listed right and they should be, in his judgment. My job then became somewhat different, because I would want to keep him removed from direct 
contact as much as possible, again feeling if you do that around the clock there's no impact left after a period of time. While I knew that Johnson's intense interest in a program, 
obvious-lei, was motivating him and that there was no time day or night he wasn't prepared to charge in, I think his readiness to participate created a different kind of 
responsibility for me. And I tried with some degree of success--
G: Did you succeed in this way? 
O: Yes--
Tape 1 of 4, Side 2 
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O'Brien --Interview II --10 
G: You were saying that there were times when you would even ask him if the President wanted you to make a call. Is that right, or he would ask you if he--? 
O: No, he would ask me if I wanted him to make some calls. I had to fight it a little bit because of his intense interest in the progress of the legislation. 
G: Was he more inclined to make calls that you didn't know about than President Kennedy would have been? 
O: He might have, although I must say that, to my knowledge at least, I don't know what personal or old friendship calls he might make from time to time, but calls that were aimed 
to the process, to vote-getting and the rest, he would talk to me about them first. He recognized this, and we had candid discussions. I'd say, "Mr. President, you just can't do 
this. There are twenty-two more we're working on, and we haven't exhausted this yet, and I don't want you [to] because it just isn't right, and I'd argue with him about it. And he'd 
say, "Well, okay, but let me know now. Don't let it go by if you want me to call, or you want to call those fellows down, okay, I'm ready." 
I guess the extent of it was epitomized by my call to him one morning, which I guess I referred to, in the early hours of the morning when I knew he was just awake. I 
had been up all night, and we had lost a battle in the House. But anyway we lost it in the early hours of the morning in a very tough struggle, and Charlie Halleck had prevailed. 
And you're depressed and you leave the Hill, it's four or four-thirty in the morning, and you're heading home and then you decide to not go to bed at all. But you owe it to the 
President to advise him of the negative as well as the positive, and so you wait dutifully till six-thirty, a quarter of seven, whatever it was, and you call the President and advise him. 
Then President Johnson is saying, "When did this happen?" I said, "It was the early hours of the morning." And he said, "Why didn't you call me? You should have called me and 
told me about it." Then I'll never forget, he said, "You know, when you're up there bleeding, I want to bleed with you. We have to share these things." I never got over that. 
G: Isn't that amazing? 
O: Of course, the last thing in the world I would have done is wake him up to tell him. (Laughter) I'm sure it was momentous at the moment, important and significant. It was 
so important and significant I can't recall the specific incident. But I think it typified the intensity of our effort at all times. He was just great that way, and obviously when a 
fellow says that to you, your boss, the President of the United States, you're not about to change your practice and say, "Well, now he has told me, 'Why don't you call me at three 
or four o'clock in the morning and wake me up. '" No, you're not going to do it, but I think it just underscored his personal involvement and his strong support for what you 
were doing. 
G: You were an old friend and ally of President Kennedy long before he assumed the 
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O'Brien --Interview II --11 
presidency, and much less so with Lyndon Johnson. Were you as comfortable arguing with LBJ or trying to persuade him to do what you thought ought to be done? Was he as 
approachable to you in this sense? 
O: In a way probably even more so. 
G: Why is that? 
O: I think the nature of the fellow, his style, his personality. I think, as I keep referring for want of the use of a better word, the husbanding of presidential involvement. On the 
Kennedy side, I think that it was probably something that President Kennedy never gave any great thought to, that even on the group events and all the efforts we made to ensure 
communication that I've referred to in the past, I would try to work out a schedule where he would meet for social hours or with an entire group in an important matter. And I 
would try to schedule those well in advance and put them into his overall schedule. And it would have been a rarity--there were some occasions, but rare occasions--when I would 
disrupt his schedule and say, "You've just got to move into this now, and calls have to be made, or you have to see Charlie Halleck." Because that incident is one that stays in my 
mind, on civil rights. 
But with President Johnson I would not--let me go back a little bit. I don't recall that at the end of a day, you know, when you get to six, seven o'clock in the evening, or 
whatever, that President Kennedy was apt to call and say, "Well, I know all this activity has been going on. What's it look like?" With President Johnson, he would similarly 
know there was a lot of activity going on involving a vital piece of legislation on the Hill. But he'd call and want to know what's going on. And that would generally lead to saying: 
"Come on in. You've got to come downstairs." I was one flight over the Oval Office. You go down there and you might spend several hours discussing that and a myriad of 
other things until Mrs. Johnson would keep pleading with the President to go to the living quarters and have a bite to eat. 
So I felt very comfortable. I think that I enjoyed him, for one thing. I hadn't known him well, but in very short order I liked his openness. I was not a Johnson fellow. 
After all, after Dallas, you had two layers of staff for a while, until things melded reasonably well. Now, that didn't affect me at all on the Congressional Relations side, but 
I think that there were [conflicts]. You know, Ken O'Donnell was the appointments secretary, Jack Valenti was sitting right in the hallway there, and there was Walter Jenkins. 
The President's feeling in the transition was retain the Kennedy staff, but I also want my own people. I would think that in Ken O'Donnell's role, outside the Oval Office door and 
with a new president in there, it probably wasn't very workable. While with me, the fellows, the Johnson people, no matter what their assignments were, joined me at his 
urging in participating in the legislative effort. That applied to every Johnson person in the White House over the years that I was there. 
For example, Bob Hardesty became a key fellow. We worked out a system of 
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O'Brien --Interview II --12 
trying to load down the Congressional Record with pro-Great Society comments of all sorts, placing them on the Hill for insertion. Well, that was another dimension. And Bob, 
who was an extremely able guy who had been at the Post Office Department, was very knowledgeable. Not only was he an excellent writer and very quick in developing 
statements for the Record--statements that we'd ask members to enter--but he also was good at seeing that they were properly disseminated. And as you know, our old friend 
[Jake] Jacobsen had a role in the White House which we didn't have in the Kennedy White House. He received delivery of that Congressional Record in the wee hours of the 
morning at his home, and had that Record completely reviewed and duly noted with clips so that the President could take an early-morning look at the results of all these efforts 
we're making. 
Now, you reach that point and then what else is there you can do? There's always something more you can add to this overall effort. But we'd get into head counts in tough 
times when it appeared close and it was a real drive to bring about success. The President would, for example, look over the head count of the Texas delegation, because he was 
always interested [in it], and he'd have very forceful and candid comments about everyone, particularly if there was a question mark or a "no" next to the name. (Laughter) Then the 
next thing you know, Marvin Watson and others would be on the phone calling old Texas buddies. You know, all of this was going on. There was no limit to the effort and no limit 
to what you might undertake within some degree of reason, to get back to my old phrase, to maximize the effort. 
Now, that was the Johnson White House and that was the Great Society program, and consequently, what did I want? I'm a member of the staff in one area of activity and 
you want presidential support for your efforts? Boy, you had it coming out your ears! (Laughter) You had all you could cope with and more by way of support. There was an 
army. 
G: President Johnson, though, did have a reputation for berating his staff. Was this a tendency that at times made you reluctant to confront him with something that you felt 
was wrong? 
O: Not at all. I guess there will be disbelievers, but I can tell you that in my years associated with Lyndon Johnson I never had anything remotely like a confrontation. 
G: Really? 
O: Now, having said that, I think people wouldn't believe it. But I would hear he had some heated discussion with Bill Moyers or George Reedy or whomever. Never in my 
presence. I mean I never was a witness to any of that. And I assume that I heard enough about that sort of thing that such occurrences took place. I can't recall meanness or 
nastiness expressed by the President. 
I must say that because of his personality and his openness--I've always had the 
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O'Brien --Interview II --13 
reputation of being rather verbose myself and, Lord knows, Lyndon Johnson had that reputation, so the two of us together, on a matter that could be resolved in five or ten 
minutes could result in an hour of discussion. But it never posed a problem to me at all. 
I can say this: that whatever did not go right regarding the Great Society program and its enactment certainly was not due to any failure on the part of Lyndon Johnson to 
devote maximum effort to it. I'd have to take that responsibility myself, and there may have been occasions when perhaps I should have said to the President, "Why don't you 
make these calls?" which he would have done without hesitation. I really had followed the same procedure I did with Kennedy, that you go to the President and insert him into a 
battle only when every other possibility has been exhausted. 
I do remember--it was a discharge petition on District of Columbia home rule--I ran into that buzz saw one night. I was sitting in the outer office, the small office outside 
the Oval Office, with the President and we were going over this discharge petition. At this point the liberals, the Joe Rauhs and the rest of them, had given up on the Hill. They 
claimed there was no way you could get the necessary signatures on the discharge petition. Each time you came close, some people would withdraw their names. But I 
guess I mentioned the twenty-two--I don't know why it sticks in my mind--but there were twenty-two nonsignatories to the discharge petition that had no good reason not to sign. 
In the conversation with the President, I revealed this to him. We were talking and I had the head count in my pocket and here are these twenty-two. Now, these are twenty-two 
liberal Democrats. And this could make the difference. Well, I couldn't stop him. He proceeded to pick up the phone and gave the White House telephone operator the names 
of the twenty-two and chased them all over town. I don't recall he had caught all twenty-two by the time I went home, but he stayed with it. He'd have some conversations with 
them, I'll tell you. I thought, now we're going to have presidential involvement in this matter when there were probably other occasions when it could have been more significant 
and I had not [asked him]. But this was inadvertent. But once he saw those twenty-two names and reflected on a few of them, nothing could stop him. 
G: What would he say to them on the phone, for example? 
O: [He'd] say to them, "Come on, you can't do this. This is ridiculous. Listen, I'm putting you down. I'm sitting here with Larry and we're talking about this and there's no way you 
can. . . . Is that right, you'll do it tomorrow? Come on now." There would be little or no conversation on the other end; it was always sort of one-sided. He just worked them over 
and it succeeded. But the fact of the matter is, I thought later, "I don't know. Perhaps I should have picked my spots a little better." (Laughter) As I say, I didn't go to him. 
There's no way I would have gone to him and said, "Here's twenty-two names. I'm going to sit with you, and let's make twenty-two phone calls." Why, I wouldn't have deigned to 
do something like that! That's probably as good an example as I can cite of my association with him and the personal effort he would undertake. It was amazing to see it 
all unfold. And his conversations were figuratively nose to nose. If it was in person it would have been nose to nose, hand on the shoulder and whacking the back. He was 
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O'Brien --Interview II --14 
verbalizing the same sort of thing on the telephone, and it was an example of the need to husband his activities. Because if he did that every night of the week, there might have 
been people on the Hill that didn't want to take his phone call. (Laughter) 
G: Let's go again to the question of notification of projects. It's clear from your files that this is something that members of Congress were keenly interested in, having that notification 
so they could get what you described as that front page story in the Springfield newspaper, something like that. I notice that sometimes even when you did give them 
advance notice that they might not get the word out before some of their competitors did. Was this a problem? 
O: It was a problem at times. 
G: And they would blame you, or they would blame your office even though they got the advance notice. They might not react as quickly--
O: Every minute of the day there's something happening somewhere, in some department or agency that can impact on this and be helpful. So you're doing all you can to keep your 
hands on every aspect of it. These calls became routine. And Claude [Desautels] or somebody in the office would call the member's administrative assistant and say, "Now 
we'll have the following information--just jot it down A, B, C, D--and your boss can make the announcement. He ought to make it promptly." And not to excuse inadvertency at 
times, we found that a lot had to do with the reaction of that person in that office. And then a member would learn that some colleague had made some announcement where they 
had adjoining districts or the mix was such that it involved more than one member of the House and, of course, you'd have the Senate. If you had a Democrat in the Senate, of 
course, he could be making the announcement on a statewide basis as the member was on a district basis. 
When those occasions arose, interestingly enough, it was often due to the inadvertency of the member's office, the failure to recognize the immediacy of it. 
Sometimes there was a scream from the member. Then the member would recognize that this called for action on his part to ensure that when that call was received, [the 
announcement was made]. After all, there were days when you might be making fifty calls and you had to spread it out. The person designated on our call list was the one that 
would get the message, and we'd advise that member, "That call was made at such and such a time"--it was logged--" and the information was provided." And it wasn't unusual 
for the member to check it out in his own office and find that's where it occurred. Now, there may have been times where there was failure on our part; I'm sure those situations 
occurred, too. But it was again to the best of your ability. And I would say the overall impact of this procedure far overrode any failures on our part or the member's office to 
follow through. 
G: Some Republicans accused you of more or less being secretive or withholding information from them. This was the charge that they made in this connection. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --15 
O: Well, I guess the charge was valid. If withholding meant their office wasn't called, then that was withholding. 
G: Okay. Now, another dimension of this, and we talked about it last time, was the matter of patronage. I have a note that Dick Donahue handled a lot of your patronage. 
O: Yes. 
G: Tell me how this worked. 
O: Well, patronage, it took a wide dimension; it might even go to trying to get some clerk in an office promoted. There were many of these little items that might have been somewhat 
meaningful to the member or probably just a pain to the member that he wanted to get rid of in terms of some constituent pressures on him. It could run to all kinds of--it 
oftentimes had to do with postmasterships, rural mail carriers, lower-level positions in departments and agencies at the regional level, all over the lot. 
Much of it would be a congressman or a senator responding to a constituent by sending you a letter. And you had to make judgments, and Dick Donahue was excellent in 
this area. If that member sent a letter saying, "I am pleased to recommend John Smith, who is a most deserving constituent of mine, for consideration to be deputy assistant 
regional something or other in Omaha," Dick could--and that was as a result of conversation between Dick and me--pretty much construe that it wasn't of overriding 
interest. You would put it into the mix and you'd make an inquiry about it--I'm really talking about an amazing variety of recommendations. [If the check revealed that] it didn't 
make sense or was unfair to other employees or there'd be jumping a [grade], you wouldn't have any hesitancy to send a letter back or make a phone call, whichever way 
Dick wanted to do it, and say, this just isn't going to work. And you found that it was only the rare occasion that that member would put up a fight, but he wants something in 
writing saying that we've seriously considered [it]; there'll probably be another opportunity for John Smith in the future. Then he can send the copy of the letter, and so his 
constituent got a negative but at least the constituent knew that the member had made a plea for him. You might not think that would be the case, but most of the fellows on the 
Hill were realists. 
Now, if the fellow on the Hill said, "When you get a chance I'd like to have you drop by. I'd like to talk about a constituent of mine that you're just going to be so 
impressed with." Or which was more often the case, the fellow said, "I want to drop down. Can I set up an appointment and come down and visit you in your office to discuss 
this?" Then you're dealing with a serious case in terms of the interest of the member. Accordingly you may have to nudge this a little bit. Perhaps, if everything else is equal or 
close to equal, then it's going to work. However, in much of this our referral would be to the Democratic National Committee. While we retained the active interest in making a 
determination, we would be quick to say, "This is being referred to John Bailey." If the 
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O'Brien --Interview II --16 
decision was negative and it was in an area other than just routine, a notch or two beyond or higher at times, John Bailey would be the one that would have to notify the member 
that this wasn't doable. 
So you're not really sitting with a documented, written check list of procedure. You're making political judgments, always having in mind the retention of friendship, the 
improvement of friendship and contact. And weighing all of this sort of thing, it's a difficult area. But often you would find that whether John Smith or Joe Brown in a 
regional office of the Small Business [Administration] or whatever was given this new assignment, it was not significant. Either one could qualify so why not do it for the fellow 
that the congressman was interested in? 
G: Did you ever have a situation where you desperately wanted a guy appointed because that was the formula for, say, getting an important piece of legislation passed? If you could do 
something for this congressman or senator, you felt like he would be right on an issue and--? 
O: No. I'll tell you, however, situations somewhat like that did occur from time to time. If it was clear to us that the appointment should not be made, the qualifications just weren't 
there, and it was just counterproductive to satisfy the member of Congress, we made that determination up front. We stayed with it. There were any number of times that we 
would deny the request. That just was part of the procedure. And you would try to do it in the best possible manner. You would always have it reflect some serious 
considerations, some thought, and you would be candid. You'd say, "Listen, it doesn't add up; the department head"--or whatever it might have been--" says that this man has been 
interviewed early on for this position [and] has been turned down for the following reasons," or whatever. 
If you ever allowed yourself to be lulled into that sort of procedure, it would be counterproductive and the wrong procedure to follow in the best interest of the President. 
Because invariably, even at somewhat lower levels, this is going to come back to haunt you and you shouldn't do it. It just isn't right to do it, and you just have to bite the bullet. 
We were biting so many bullets in that area, in patronage, all the time that you were inured to a return call saying, "I can't understand this." Inured to it, you had to be, because with 
that fellow up there on the Hill in that particular instance the answer is no, it's not going to be done. You're just hopeful that in follow-ups there'll be other areas, patronage or 
whatever it might be, where he's going to be pleased with your answers and judge you've been fair to him. You're talking about quality in government and competency and if you 
can't fulfill that to the best of your ability despite pressures, then you have failed. And you couldn't have a Dick Donahue or anyone else sitting there feeling that his job was to put 
the square peg in the round hole because some guy yelled at him from the Hill. You just couldn't do it. 
G: Did you ever want to effect an appointment and have John Bailey or the Democratic National Committee say no, that--? 
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O'Brien --Interview II --17 
O: No, they weren't in a position to say no. 
G: Is that right? 
O: And that's no reflection on John Bailey. That was an area I had a great sensitivity to because, coming from political organization, I felt that the role of the Democratic National 
Committee should be enhanced, we should be supportive. I'll have to say that just wasn't the case. I think unfairly in the Kennedy period, and I'm trying to recall the Johnson 
period, the Democratic National Committee was cast in the role that the party entity seems to have been in historically. When you are the chairman and your party is in the White 
House, there's a world of difference. I was chairman of the Democratic National Committee when the party was out of office, and there's a role that you can develop in 
terms of being a spokesman on the attack of the incumbent administration. Obviously, there's no patronage involved if you're out of office, and you can perform that role. It's a 
role somewhat like the current role of Paul Kirk--trying to always seek harmony and develop programs as an out party. But once the party is in, [that role changes], and I've 
never quite understood that. I remember at that time at the early stages I was trying to make an effort--I don't suggest it was a very vigorous one--to be sure there was a 
continuing recognition on the part of the staff of the existence of the national committee and the need to have it a viable, functioning entity. 
But as time went on, you just sort of forgot the national committee was there. The national committee became a vehicle when we needed to cover something of a negative 
nature that John could take the rap for, or when we would feel that conceivably the national committee could have some impact, for example, in developing party interest and 
support out in the field for the legislative program. I think the committee was in a position to be helpful in that area, and I also candidly admit that we never utilized it as we should 
have. 
G: Let's talk about some specific kinds of appointments: ambassadorships; was this a part of the patronage process as well? 
O: Yes. 
G: Tell me what the criteria would be here. 
O: What you tried to do was to achieve a degree of balance between career appointees and non-career appointees. It's part of the attitude in the White House, and I don't know 
whether this had been the attitude of other administrations. If you had a fellow who had played a significant role in your campaign, he probably had a resume that would reflect a 
considerable degree of success in the private sector. Secondly, the fellow was expressing keen interest in being recognized, perhaps a direct request to be considered for an 
ambassadorship. Yes, the answer is that there were a number of political appointments to ambassadorships, reflecting the President's appreciation for efforts expended on his behalf. 
21
O'Brien --Interview II --18 
G: Well, what if the--? 
O: On the career levels, there was resentment. If you're a career foreign service officer and your ultimate ambition is to reach the ambassadorial level and you find that your 
opportunities are cut by 50 or 60 per cent by virtue of political appointments at the ambassadorial level, you don't appreciate the process. By the same token, those in the 
White House haven't any great concern about your lack of appreciation. So how much are you willing to take by way of adverse criticism generated by the career people or 
generated by the academicians and the rest that frown upon this process? You can take a good deal to fulfill what you think is your role in the appointment process. 
G: What was President Kennedy's view of this dilemma here? His own father had been an ambassador, and I dare say a political appointee. 
O: Yes. I think anyone that is not career is political, and whether it's because he was a heavy donor or whether he has great connections in the private sector, whatever it is, it's 
political. And there are only two designations: either career or political, and I don't think there's an in-between designation. 
I don't know as I ever had a conversation with President Kennedy as to his views in this area. You have in a secretary of state an understanding fellow; you'd better have an 
understanding fellow or he shouldn't be secretary of state. I don't envision it reaching the point in the foreseeable future where that level of appointment is based solely on career 
service. If you had no patronage at all, you'd be better off, let's start with that. And I think very frankly that any president would say, "I don't want to be bothered. I don't want 
to hear from anyone that has a personal interest in being ambassador or people advocating his or her appointment as ambassador, because that's a burden I don't want to carry." The 
fact of the matter is that the two presidents I knew were not that persuaded that the foreign service produces the quality and competency at the ambassador level that it thinks 
it does. 
So it goes beyond patronage. After all, the president can appoint anybody he darn pleases, subject to confirmation, and ignore the foreign service entirely. I think presidents 
have wanted to maintain some balance to have in some of the sensitive, key ambassador spots people that share his view on foreign policy [who are] not bogged down in the 
bureaucratic aspects of things. Now, there are small country ambassadorships that oftentimes are purely political, where you weigh it and say, "Now, there are no great 
conflicts that exist or will occur and this fellow wants to be an ambassador." I hate to even name a country, but some way-out place where he's never going to be heard from 
again until he sends in his resignation. 
To summarize, any president would prefer that there is no such thing as patronage. It's an overall pain in the neck; it may have an occasional plus factor but there's a lot of 
negative in it. You've got to remember the old saying in politics: every time you make an 
22
O'Brien --Interview II --19 
appointment, you've made one ingrate and created at least ten enemies. But it's there, it's part of the process. I think when it comes to the State Department, a president doesn't 
necessarily look at it that way. He is just not, and I think rightly so, that comfortable with the bureaucracy of the State Department that he's inherited. He's just not that sure the 
State Department is going to reflect his policies. It's the old story: presidents come and go, and I'm still here. When I advocated the removal of the Post Office Department from 
cabinet status, I realized, as a politician, all these thousands--
Tape 2 of 4, Side 1 
G: --I think [?] that was all for the good. 
O: You might say, "Look at this list of openings where we can assign our friends and supporters to positions." I have never felt there was a plus factor in patronage. It's a way 
of political life. It's there. Somebody has to designate people to hundreds of positions at the third or fourth level. That has to be done, but as to the political benefit derived from 
it, I think it's minuscule. 
If you look at it coldly, I think a member of Congress would be reasonably willing to just forego all of this. I know that when I made the recommendations regarding the 
Post Office Department, surprisingly there was very little adverse reaction on the Hill on the grounds of patronage. I don't recall any great uproar in that regard, because I think 
most of those members feel as I do, "If I could only get rid of all of that nonsense." How in God's name do you ever name a postmaster in Yanktown, Ohio, without creating a 
bunch of enemies? Then the animosity extends to their relatives and friends and you gain nothing. It's something that you were kind of forced into and you have to do, and so one 
guy thinks you're a hero. You say for just the exercise of some kind of power, look at the price you paid. And it isn't worth it. 
G: Yes. Well, now, on the matter of ambassadorships, did members of Congress exert influence or pressure to have friends or supporters of theirs named to ambassadorial 
posts? 
O: I don't recall specifically. At least I wasn't involved. There might have been instances of that. Actually when it comes to ambassadorships, if there's a presidential preference I 
think there's a widespread recognition that this is the president's patronage. 
G: Yes. 
O: Subject to confirmation. You might get into a ruckus somewhere, and I'm sure there were occasions when the president couldn't care less who the ambassador was; he had nobody 
particularly in mind. I'm sure there must have been some senators that had people in mind and hoped they would be considered by the President. This is a presidential appointment 
in the real sense. You have a right to object to it in confirmation. 
23
O'Brien --Interview II --20 
G: You sound like it was a fairly isolated case. 
O: Yes. Now, you know Matt McCloskey was appointed by President Kennedy as ambassador to Ireland. Matt McCloskey was treasurer of the Democratic National 
Committee. He was an extremely successful contractor, had developed a major construction business in Pennsylvania. He was a dedicated Democrat. He was a 
significant fund raiser. He was a thoroughly decent, honorable fellow that deserved recognition for the services he had rendered and the efforts he had expended in behalf of 
the election of President Kennedy. And Matt McCloskey was of Irish heritage; that was incidental, but it sort of fit. How do you recognize your indebtedness and responsibility to 
Matt McCloskey? Matt isn't at your doorstep demanding anything, that wasn't his nature. But it was pleasing to suggest to Matt that he might enjoy being ambassador to Ireland 
for a period of time, and Matt reacted very favorably to it and went to Ireland, and incidentally was loved over there. 
But there you are. So that's patronage? Should some foreign service officer have gone to Ireland? Ireland is an ambassadorship, incidentally, that's widely sought for 
obvious reasons. One, it's a friendly country. Two, it's a country that does not request anything of the United States. Three, it has to be one of the finest embassies in the world. 
It's just a very pleasant place to be, with people that love America and Americans. Controversy and problems are almost nonexistent. It can be an enjoyable experience. So 
that was the story of Matt McCloskey. 
Now, some fellow might be designated ambassador to a newly-emerged Third World country with a population of a million, two hundred thousand people in desperate 
poverty. And you could have a fellow who is anxious to be an ambassador and has credentials. He might wind up there, because if he wants to be an ambassador that's where 
you feel you could comfortably and safely place him without being concerned. 
So what you get to is, do you sit there with a formula: X per cent will be career, X per cent will be political? No, I don't think so, but I think in the general weighing of this 
over a period of time, it has a degree of balance, never the way it should be in terms of the foreign service or on the political side, because suspicion of the State Department is rather 
strong in the political world, as you know. It's shared widely, fairly or unfairly. That is one department that the people who have political backgrounds have looked at with a 
jaundiced eye. That may not exist to that degree today. What I remember are members of Congress in key positions on the foreign policy side in their committees--I can think of 
John Rooney--who felt they were striped pants cookie pushers. And that's what you've got and really you're antagonistic to them. You exercise your power, because you just 
don't buy them, and that's unfortunate as the devil. 
So when you talk about patronage affecting ambassadors, you're saying, "Wait a minute. I'm not going to be overly concerned about some career guy whose nose is out of 
joint, or some of the third or fourth level State Department people who were there long before I got here and will be there after I've left. They can talk to some of these 
24
O'Brien --Interview II --21 
columnists and try to stir the pot, but I'm not going to buy it." 
G: If there were a really sought-after post like this Irish ambassadorship, would you get involved and help analyze or distill the competition, say if you have two or three people in 
the running for this job, and help make a decision on which one would be the most suitable? 
O: No, not really. My experience with that was Matt, but we had others over there. I could have injected myself into that sort of thing, but I really didn't. I remember a fellow calling 
me after Jimmy Carter was elected saying he wanted to be ambassador to Ireland and would I contact Jimmy Carter in his behalf. It was clear to me I didn't have that kind of 
relationship with Jimmy Carter. I was in the sports world at that point. This fellow was making a valiant effort to secure this post. If he were calling me, he must have been 
calling every living Democrat. And I don't recall who it was, but I do recall he wasn't named. 
But I think, in dwelling on Ireland, I'm talking about something that's unique, it's different than some of the others. I didn't sit with the President to urge the appointment of 
an ambassador or urge that a candidate not be appointed. Now, obviously I have gotten requests and I relayed them, but I did not insert myself into the ultimate decision-making 
process. I just didn't bother. 
But I do recall, though, President Kennedy naming an ambassador to Vietnam. He was trying to determine what to do with Vietnam and he came up with a brilliant idea: 
why not call in Henry Cabot Lodge, who he had defeated for the Senate, who was a Republican and a nationally-known figure, and see if he could convince him to go to 
Vietnam? He figured that would be helpful, having a widely-known Republican as ambassador to Vietnam. He's having these problems with Vietnam, and [it would] give it 
some political balance. Get him in, and it's taking a little gall on my part to even suggest it to him--I'm paraphrasing. The feeling among us is that Cabot would certainly not accept 
it, and I remember the President's reaction after he met with Cabot and he did accept. He was absolutely amazed that he would accept it. 
G: But it was your idea to--? 
O: No. 
G: Oh, it wasn't? Whose idea was it? 
O: I don't know. I assume it was the President's idea. But the reason that I recalled it was that Lodge went to Vietnam and shortly thereafter I received a call from Dean Rusk and 
Averell Harriman to tell me that Cabot had been in contact with them and wanted them to urge the President to send me to Vietnam to assist him in organizing the situation. Thank 
goodness they were friends of mine, and we agreed the message was not going to be relayed to the President because he might think about it for a minute! (Laughter) So that 
25
O'Brien --Interview II --22 
was as close as I came to foreign service. 
(Interruption) 
G: We were talking about ambassadorships and diplomatic patronage and there was a case that you did assist in with a Mr. [Salvatore] Bontempo, is that right? Bontempo, B-O-N-T-
E-M-P-O. 
O: I recall the name, yes. 
G: This was a more minor position, but it was something that was apparently important to the Italian-American members of Congress. I think it was a deputy assistant secretary for 
something, and you--
O: Yes, I do recall that. 
G: --did advance that appointment. 
O: The background of that was that the Italian-American members on the Hill on a number of occasions had expressed their concern about, as they saw it, lack of recognition of Italian-Americans 
in important levels of the administration. And Bontempo was a name put forward by, I think, Pete Rodino and some of the others up there. That would be an Italo-American 
appointment. And I did react to their interest directly to the President, and this was worked out and he was designated. That really was not reacting to the thrust of the 
complaint. It was a rather localized appointment. It certainly did not impact on establishing a record of recognition. You have to label that as not so much an Italo-American 
appointment as an appointment that resulted from intense lobbying on the part of Pete Rodino and probably some others that were Italian-Americans, but that was about 
the extent of it. 
But this continued to be a problem. Not that we were reluctant at all to react to it. It was the old story: to find an appropriate appointee for an appropriate position. A 
fellow who had achieved some significant recognition was Tony Celebrezze who was mayor of Cleveland. Tony had become well known around the country and, certainly as 
we saw it, well known in Italian-American circles. The opportunity did finally present itself and my recollection was that it was secretary of HEW. And we, feeling that the 
record was going to show definitively that we had recognized the Italian-American in a significant way, carefully structured the appointment of Tony Celebrezze. 
To maximize this appointment and its impact on the Italian-American community, we should make sure that selectively we made confidential phone calls in advance to some 
of our friends, staunch supporters, to advise them of this. I believe it was probably Pete--obviously Pete Rodino would have been one of the [supporters]; he probably would have 
been first and foremost in terms of these phone calls. I talked to Pete, advised him of this upcoming appointment, which would be announced within a day or hours, asking that the 
26
O'Brien --Interview II --23 
call be kept confidential. And I was somewhat taken aback because Pete's--and this was also stated by others--reaction was "Tony is a fine fellow, but he's not really well known; 
he's not a national figure. He isn't really well known in the Italian-American community nationally." Well, talk about puncturing the balloon. Perhaps they felt "We're not going 
to succumb to this single appointment to the cabinet. We want to come back for more." That would be totally understandable. But, fortunately, when the appointment was 
announced and he took over, it was widely recognized in the Italian-American community. 
But I think our congressional friends just were not that impressed and I really anticipated this was going to be one of the most pleasant calls or series of calls I'd ever 
make, because there would be widespread approbation and I could even envision wild enthusiasm. But that wasn't the case. It sort of fell a little bit flat. But it wasn't the wrong 
thing to do by any means; Tony was a very able fellow and acquitted himself well in his post. So forgetting the ethnic aspect of it, it worked out well in any event. But it didn't 
get the job done. I think you had to have a sense of humor at that point and say, "Well, gosh, we sat around here really thinking we came up with a blockbuster and it turned out 
that it wasn't accepted as such." 
But there again, that's not an ambassadorial appointment. But what goes into the equation? We've been concentrating on appointments as ambassadors. We want to have 
our administration representative of our supporters and the party as a whole. And those in the Democratic Party are ethnic groups, whether it be Polish-Americans, Italian-Americans, 
German-Americans, various ethnic groups, they're in there, too. So you're not confined in that sort of patronage process to saying, "Well, who are the largest donors to 
the campaign?" In one instance it might be a fellow that donated significantly to the campaign in terms of money or of effort. Or it might be someone who didn't necessarily 
play a significant role in the campaign but is representative of a group, and that way we're honoring the group. However, I think if you didn't have to be engaged in this at all, 
everybody would be better off and you could go about your business and not be making the enemies that you do make in the appointment process. 
G: Were appointments ever made to remove someone from the position that they were currently in? Let's say, if you had a member of Congress or someone who was a problem 
where he was, did you ever, say, offer him a judgeship or ambassadorship or something like that in order to get him out of the way? 
O: I don't recall a specific instance, but if there was an opportunity to do that, you would, and maybe we did. 
The name eludes me at the moment, but we had a fellow in Louisiana who had played a key role in the election process. There was a threat--and you take all threats 
seriously--that there would be a problem in terms of finalizing the electoral college vote of the state of Louisiana. I was at Palm Beach with the President-elect when we had this 
called to our attention. Someone in that delegation had decided to try to have some of the electors avoid voting for Kennedy and create some disruption, and that might cause some 
27
O'Brien --Interview II --24 
kind of legal fallout. We certainly didn't need that sort of thing. This fellow played a key role first in notifying us of the existence of this and then in resolving the situation so this 
didn't take place. In addition, he also had been a staunch Kennedy supporter from the early days in Louisiana, and that wasn't easy to be. 
But the aftermath was this man was named head of the civil defense. He took on his duties and he had some ideas on civil defense that there was nothing basically wrong 
with except that we couldn't supplement his ideas financially. This sort of drifted on, and then one day this fellow was discussing with me again some of his ideas for fallout 
shelters. He contemplated visiting the Pope to discuss the utilization of churches in the United States as potential fallout shelters. This was getting a little bit beyond us. He was 
well motivated and all the rest and he rightly felt we weren't paying enough attention. And I guess it would be hard to quarrel with that. He became disenchanted with his role, and 
we became somewhat concerned about the scope of the role he had undertaken. The net result of it all was he left that post and became a federal judge and, as far as I know, may 
still be sitting. 
So patronage can take all kinds of forms, but I don't recall saying, "Let's pull out from the group this individual in the Congress that is in a key position who is very 
troublesome and let's give him the high honor of promoting him to the judiciary or to an ambassadorial post, because then that will either create an opening that can be better filled 
or eliminate a problem." 
G: Did you ever consider an ambassador to the Vatican while President Kennedy was president? 
O: I don't recall any consideration. I not only have no recollection of that, but I would assume that that was not in our thoughts. I would also assume it was not in the 
presidential thought process either. If you reflect on our difficulties in education legislation on the private school issue and the sensitivity to it in the White House, I can't 
believe that anybody was sitting around talking about the Vatican. 
G: This was an issue you didn't need. (Laughter) 
O: There's an issue I don't think we would have touched with a hundred-foot pole under the circumstances. 
G: Okay, now let me ask you about patronage from a negative standpoint. Did you ever get pressure from members of Congress to try to get you to remove someone who was giving 
them problems in their district or someone that they found obnoxious? An enemy, a political enemy, in an important position either in their state or in their district that was 
causing them problems? 
O: Well, I don't recall anything like that at the national level. So going to the state and district [level], something tells me that situations like this probably did occur. In the 
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O'Brien --Interview II --25 
normal evolvement of transition, you've tried to focus on the national level--departments, agencies, Washington-based, at the top and down three or four levels in these departments 
and agencies--and you haven't succeeded in completing that task, you [will] have holdovers at various regional and state levels of the federal bureaucracy that you haven't 
gotten to. In fact, [you] probably don't even know [they] exist. 
So, again, I am sure that there were situations of that nature where we were reminded by members of Congress that certain people were in place for a year or longer 
after we had taken office that should have been replaced. And you would act accordingly to replace these people. But the reason for the existence of that situation was just the 
enormity of the whole thing. But, yes, a congressman or senator would be very sensitive to that, because he or his staff, who had dealt with these people over a period of time, had 
found that they had no cooperation. And then to see that person still in that regional office in the bureaucracy at a level where the person could be removed and replaced, there 
would be cause, in political terms, for complaint. At the national level I don't have any recollection of senators or congressmen charging into the White House saying, "You've 
got to get rid of so-and-so, he's causing us great difficulty." 
But when you get to a lower level of the bureaucracy, where the appointment process still exists on a regional or local level, clearly when that was called to our 
attention we took action to replace that person with a, if you will, friendly person. But that would be something called to our attention and I'll tell you, with the limitation of two 
terms for the presidency, those people called to our attention would probably have remained in place throughout the terms of both President Kennedy and Johnson. As I've 
indicated earlier, we found it downright impossible to clean house across the board at the levels we had envisioned. 
Now, I think later administrations would probably have attacked that problem more efficiently than we did. By the end of the first year the effort we had undertaken, 
including filling existing openings, had not succeeded because we were unable to come up with qualified persons. It drifted away from us. We went into that second year saying, "I 
just can't devote any more time to that." It just disappeared and those people continued in place in many instances. If you couldn't fill obvious openings at the third or fourth level 
and you left those openings there month after month, clearly you couldn't get to removing people that should have been removed. 
G: You've mentioned earlier, I think, working at a government salary, and apparently salary was a consideration because Robert Kennedy in 1961 introduced legislation to raise the 
allowable salary for some attorneys in the Justice Department. Do you recall that legislation and--? 
O: Yes, vaguely. My recollection has been aided by a memo that I've seen recently. Bobby's motivation in trying to adjust salaries of lawyers in the Justice Department is something 
that I didn't quarrel with. But the reality of it should have been pretty obvious at the outset. There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of lawyers in government, and I found 
29
O'Brien --Interview II --26 
that when I became postmaster general there were some twenty-five or thirty full-time lawyers on the staff of the postmaster general, which I didn't realize until I arrived there. 
So to single out Justice Department lawyers and to try to adjust their salary just opened a Pandora's box. 
G: Yes. You indicated, too, in the memorandum that there were some jurisdictional problems in this issue in terms of what committee it would go to, I gather, and the Civil 
Service. 
O: Yes, that existed, too, but the whole idea. If I'm a lawyer over in the State Department or in Commerce or wherever and I see this effort to adjust the salaries and levels of the 
lawyers in Justice--lawyers in other departments are doing legal work, too--how do you justify something like that without it affecting the whole executive branch? And I assume 
if I'm an accountant, then I couldn't understand why lawyers should be singled out either. At a minimum, it's going to cause a great deal of rancor. As to the jurisdictional aspects, I 
don't recall specifically, but there were problems in that area, too. 
G: Do you recall the civil rights aspect to this, too, with the time of the Freedom Rides and--? 
O: Well, that was a part of it, too. There were people on the Hill that felt that you wanted to upgrade a bunch of folks that were busily engaged in monitoring their districts, as they 
saw it; that, of course, was very sensitive. And in reality, of course, there was a great thrust on the part of the department under Bobby, great emphasis placed in this area. And 
a great number of lawyers were engaged, and there was a flow of them all through the South. I suppose if you're sitting there and you're a conservative Democrat from the 
South and you've had a lot of comment from constituents regarding this activity, you're resentful. Then to compound it all, it is suggested that we ought to upgrade these fellows. 
I think reality eluded some people at that time. Taking a particular group of lawyers and upgrading them in terms of salaries would be disturbing to some members of Congress and 
many government attorneys. I don't know how you would expect to get widespread approbation. 
Tape 2 of 4, Side 2 
G: [Did you] talk with the Attorney General about these problems? 
O: I don't recall specifically. Certainly some of the fellows on my staff and Nick Katzenbach or others over at the Justice Department must have discussed it. Because while it wasn't 
one of the primary legislative items on our agenda, clearly the problems that it was causing and the reactions that were emanating from the Hill would indicate there had to be some 
discussions of it. I don't recall them specifically. 
G: What tack would you take when you were having to deal with some of the conservative southerners about these issues? 
30
O'Brien --Interview II --27 
O: I think we never had any hesitancy to--there was never a thought that we not move vigorously to pursue equality and justice. That was a given. 
G: Even the southerners accepted this? 
O: No, not necessarily. They knew that we were engaged; they knew the position of the President and his brother, the Attorney General. He's a vigorous attorney general and 
hard-hitting. 
G: Well, yes, but--
O: That afforded an opportunity to complain about--
G: To err the other way. But you were the point man for the administration in that you were the one on the Hill, and when someone let's say like Jim Eastland or Jamie Whitten or 
someone would complain to you about working with the Freedom Riders or something like that, how would you respond to them? How did you handle the touchy issue of civil 
rights? 
O: Well, the fact of the matter is that it wasn't that touchy in that sense, because the Jamie Whittens and the rest of them at that stage, I'm not suggesting that they accepted all this 
or they were at all pleased. It was politically troublesome to them and all the rest, but it was within the framework of existing law and procedure and was the responsibility of the 
administration. Go back to that period--you're talking about 1962. The whole battle between southern Democrats and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party was ongoing, 
but there wasn't yet any meaningful civil rights legislation. 
You would sit there and say, "This is going on, but there's a limit to how much they can do or how they can do it, and they'll be fought every step of the way. We're not 
yet engaged in a major civil rights struggle in the Congress." That came later. Let's face it, the Democratic Party claimed to be a national entity, but party platforms were but a 
piece of paper. If you're a southern Democrat, you made your views known regarding the platform of the party. But all of that had not caused the ultimate disruption. The 
Democratic Party got away with that for a long time. They could have the semblance of liberalism, pro-civil rights and all the rest, the commitment, the pledges, the platforms, the 
enunciations on the part of northern leaders and liberal leaders. But the reality was it hadn't resulted in any meaningful action. 
So the stymying was effective and continued to be effective, and it resulted in a big brawl before it finally was brought about. So you had defections in the South, but the fact 
of the matter was in 1960 Jack Kennedy was an advocate of civil rights, meaningful civil rights. That was one of the commitments he made, and in addition to that he was a 
Catholic. And with all of that, he carried six southern states. 
G: Yes. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --28 
O: You have to remember that at the time we went into the White House in January of 1961, there was a long record of southern Democrat-Republican coalition opposition to national 
Democratic policies. By that, I mean policies enunciated by the Democratic Party as a national entity. And that was an accommodation the coalition had reached and it was very 
effective, and they had, in addition to civil rights, stymied the progressive legislation in many areas and had done it very effectively. When we arrived, having won the presidency 
by a paper-thin margin after eight years of Eisenhower, that coalition was very much in place. We found that out in a hurry in the Rules [Committee] fight. And it took a lot of 
doing, over a period of time, before that opposition began to erode. 
G: While we're on the matter of civil rights in this early period of the Kennedy Administration, the 1961 period, was there a policy that cabinet members and others in the 
administration would not appear at segregated functions around the country? 
O: It was well understood. 
G: Really? 
O: No. 
G: You felt free to--? 
O: No, I don't think we ever approached that in those terms at all. 
G: Because I saw a memo in your files to indicate that someone--I don't think he was a cabinet member, but he was perhaps someone who was high up in the administration--
[was] wondering whether a function he was going to attend in Louisiana was integrated or whether it was segregated, because there seemed to be some question about. . . . 
O: I don't recall that, but I think it might have been in another context. I don't know. Perhaps he might have been tentatively scheduled to attend a function that was segregated. 
I say that only because I so vividly recall our problems in Louisiana, the northern vs. southern of Louisiana. It was awfully tough territory for us in the presidential election. 
And the degree of opposition to Kennedy in northern Louisiana probably was not surpassed anywhere else in the South. 
G: Really? 
O: Perhaps. I'm saying that because of my personal recollections, because I remember being in northern Louisiana as part of our campaign effort and finding that it was very clear that 
the animosity toward Kennedy was wide-spread. Not that anybody tried to hit me over the head, but it was obvious and affected those who deigned to support us. Our hope in 
Louisiana was that in New Orleans and the South, we'd be able to overcome what was significant opposition to Kennedy. So if we're talking about a possible visit to Louisiana 
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O'Brien --Interview II --29 
[by] somebody in the administration, it might have been by a member of Congress to address an audience that might have been a segregated group. That would be a sensitive 
area to have one of our people appearing before a redneck group. It should not have happened, if it did, but I don't recall it. 
G: Back to the story of campaigning in north Louisiana, was the opposition an anti-Catholic opposition, do you think? 
O: Yes. 
G: Was that the key issue? 
O: Yes, very much so. 
G: Well, why did they support you anyway, or at least the state--? 
O: The state did. 
G: The state did, but why did--you even had people there who were willing to support the ticket but not--
O: Yes. Well, there were some. And again there was a meeting as part of our travels. I recall being present. I recall that the meeting was not particularly impressive. I recall that 
I spent little time there following the meeting. There wasn't anybody that suggested that I didn't have a right to be in northern Louisiana. But it was clear to us that we had a coterie 
of staunch supporters that were really putting it on the line by even acknowledging publicly they were supporting Kennedy in that particular area. And that was reflected, as I 
recall, too, in the Rules fight. [There was] a congressman from that area that was really berated by the press and had a cross burned on his lawn over his support of us in the Rules 
fight. So that was the intensity of it. It was strange to be in the same state and travel through the rice country and through New Orleans and have the enthusiasm and great 
crowds when Kennedy was there, or going back organizationally and having great meetings. It was as though you were in a separate state. But that was the situation there. 
G: I had one more question about patronage, and that regards a note that the patronage in New York City was done through the Mayor's office. Mayor [Robert] Wagner had a role 
in that, and Congressman [Leonard] Farbstein was very upset that the Mayor was controlling, or at least influencing--having a role in the patronage process. 
O: Yes, well--
G: How did it work in New York? 
O: Well, the Mayor had a role in it, that's my recollection. And the Mayor was very supportive. More than that, however, the party organization in the state of New York and 
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in New York City was not, other than [in] isolated areas of northern New York--Buffalo is a good example--very effective. In many parts of the country the organization was in a 
state of disarray. That was not confined to the city of New York. To have some kind of organizational support, a mayor of New York is by virtue of his office in a strong position. 
He can put resources into a campaign effort. And if the city Democratic committee of New York is not strong, I think there's a tendency to move toward party leaders who are 
not dependent on party organization but have their own capabilities. And as I recall Bob Wagner, that would be the case. 
There's another aspect of that, too. On patronage, again--I reflect back to my home district to make the comparison--if Congressman Boland up in the Second District 
of Massachusetts had patronage of whatever degree in those various federal entities that might be located in his district, that was a very simple procedure and you were dealing 
with Eddie Boland. You might get a little touch of a Democratic senator. But you deal in New York [City] on any level of patronage and you don't--these congressional districts are 
all melded. No congressman in New York had anything more going for him than whatever seniority he had in the House, certainly at the local level. It is my recollection 
there were probably fifteen members of Congress in the city of New York, and there's one mayor. And the mayor is pre-eminent in terms of local politics. The congressmen, in 
several instances through the party structure in New York, the borough structure and all the rest, are designated like Cook County. And the mayors had an input into the 
designation. It would have been very natural, without recalling the specifics, for Bob Wagner to have input on patronage in New York. And the criticism of a particular 
congressman probably didn't impact greatly on us, because the political reality is obvious. We had six, probably, congressmen in New York that had seniority in the House that 
made them important in terms of the Congress. But there's little meaningful patronage involved that didn't cross congressional lines there and you didn't have a strong-man 
congressman saying, "Hey, you can't come into New York," or "You can't make a determination on appointments without me, and I insist that I make the appointments." 
You're very apt to look to a friendly mayor. 
G: Were New York City and Chicago fairly typical then of the mayors' involvement in the--? 
O: No, not really, because [Richard] Daley had both: he had control of the city in the elective office of mayor, and he had control of the city in the organizational office of chairman of 
the Cook County Democratic Committee. And he handled both jobs simultaneously. He spent time in the mayor's office and time in his office in the Cook County Democratic 
Committee headquarters. 
The only comparable organizational situation to Cook County would have been in Philadelphia with Bill Green who, as a congressman, really controlled the congressional 
delegation, controlled the activities of the city, and worked in close harmony with David Lawrence, who at that time was governor of Pennsylvania. I think, including Cook 
County, Philadelphia was the most effective Democratic Party organization in the country. It was the first organization, to my knowledge, that had everything on computers, that 
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registered voters three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and had a million or two million dollar-budget for the operation of the city committee. I remember going to a meeting at 
Bill Green's request during our campaign and finding at that meeting that there were people at the door at desks and everybody attending had to check in, and that included 
every judge in Philadelphia, to be sure that his or her attendance was duly noted so that Bill Green would know who was present. There was nothing like that in New York. 
There was Joe Crangle and his predecessor up there in Erie County, Buffalo, and the Mayor of Albany who were extremely well organized and I must say well controlled and 
local patronage was fully utilized--not federal patronage, local patronage--to maintain an organization. But in the city of New York it was rather an amorphous situation, so if 
there was anybody in New York that could call shots it would be the Democratic mayor. 
G: But did you rely on the mayors quite often for this purpose? Were they--? 
O: I think when there were potential appointments coming up or openings of some degree of significance that would be based in New York that it would be very probable that--I don't 
think we would rely on the mayor or the mayor would have the final and only say. But certainly we would encourage the mayor's input and give it serious consideration. 
G: Now, I have another note on patronage that indicates that you avoided judicial appointments, that you yourself did not get involved in that. Is that accurate? 
O: That's right. Yes. 
G: Did you nonetheless have this pressed upon you by members of Congress? 
O: Yes, there were occasions, and I'd simply relay their requests or suggestions. I had no direct involvement, nor did I want any. Now, that was something that I did not envision 
as part of my activities and that I was far better off having it well understood on the Hill that I didn't have any significant input in these areas. 
G: If ambassadors were not considered congressional patronage, judgeships were--
O: Yes. 
G: --I suppose to a large extent. They really did take an active role in--
O: Well, sure, because of the tradition that you have a senator up there that would either put that slip in the slot or take the slip out of the slot. And you could have one of your 
appointees spend a long time in purgatory before he'd ever serve on the bench. So there was some give and take in that area, obviously, but that was not incorporated in the day-to-
day patronage activities or an area that we might be engaged in Congressional Relations. 
G: It's amazing that you could keep out of that area. . . . 
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O'Brien --Interview II --32 
O: Well, I think that it was understood. See, in both of those areas you did have the element of Senate confirmation and that makes a difference. Patronage beyond Senate 
confirmation is one thing, but when it entails Senate confirmation, then again you're going to make ten enemies to every one [friend]. I think the less it's related to Congressional 
Relations the better off everyone is on our end, or was. And it wasn't planned that way, it just evolved that way. 
G: And did it remain this way under Lyndon Johnson? 
O: Yes, as far as any involvement on my part was concerned, yes. 
G: Was it handled primarily through the Justice Department, is that the--? 
O: In the Kennedy period, the major input was Justice, yes. 
G: Did it vary under Johnson? 
O: I don't know. I say Kennedy period because Bobby obviously took an active interest in this whole area. Under Johnson, I'm not even sure how it evolved. 
G: Let's move on to public works as another, I guess, example of the carrot, and the carrot and stick Time magazine cover. How did you use public works as part of your--? 
O: Not nearly to the degree that people would envision, because we well understood that, overridingly, public works was an element of congressional maneuvering. We had limited 
say. That reminded me of a conversation that the President had with Congressman Al Thomas, and I think that pretty much summed it up. It was very pleasant and really in a 
humorous vein, but nevertheless accurately described the situation. The President pointed out to Al, in his key role in the House in Appropriations, and Mike Kirwan, in his key role 
in Public Works, he would hope that people like Al and those at a similar level with similar power in the House would keep him in mind because he came from Massachusetts and 
he'd like to think that Massachusetts would get a fair shake now and then in terms of projects or what have you that could be designated to a state. He would hope that Al and 
his associates would look upon him kindly and remember he came from Massachusetts, and they might from time to time just give him a little bit of the crust of that pie. 
You had probably ways of stalling implementation and you probably could find ways through failure to utilize funding that sort of after the fact could have some impact. 
But as far as the initiation of projects, in fact the congressional provision for funding projects, the whole story of public works and analogous items up there, we had limited 
impact. I think people didn't see it that way, and I read article after article about the heavy hand in the White House, the rubber stamp in the Johnson period, the rubber stamp 
situation in the Congress, and this was all supposedly due to some great power of the presidency that impacted directly on all these members, and that they just had to sit and 
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worry and nervously play these things out because they'd have to fear that the President would come right down on their head. In the real world that wasn't the case. 
So when you're talking about the carrot and the stick, I'd heavily weight it to the carrot. I think that that was the way we approached it, because if you're a colleague and 
I'm taking care of you, you're taking care of me, and the next one's taking care of both of us, and it's all within the confines of the congressional process. It's pretty darn hard to be 
sitting down at the other end of the Avenue in the White House and suggesting that a particular project not be approved or that it not be funded. And all you have by way of a 
tool is you can do some things in the White House after the fact that would cause a member of Congress to finally wake up to the fact that you weren't overly happy with him. 
But that bore on the delaying aspects of it and other related areas. But I think, to sum it up, what should be understood by students and observers, particularly those that 
report much of this, I always separate out the viewers and the doers. I always did. I guess because the viewers used to disturb at times, because they had simplistic answers as 
to how government should function. They, also, to a great extent, had a misconception of the power of the presidency in terms of wheeling and dealing with the Congress. I always 
felt many of them never understood that a great deal of the motivation had to do with the substance of the legislative proposals and the innate good of the proposal in terms of its 
impact on our fellow Americans, and that part of that equation was the attitude of the Congress, individually and collectively, toward the president of the United States who was 
the advocate. They were finally the people that would dispose. So there was a stick of sorts, but not nearly as large and as heavily weighted as I think most of observers construe 
it to be. 
G: Was there a noticeable difference under Johnson as against Kennedy? Did Johnson tend to rely on the stick more than Kennedy had? 
O: I don't know. I don't think he had any more going for him with the stick. The stick was the same stick. Maybe he utilized it a little differently, I don't know. What is the stick? 
I've said this before, but I think it's a prime example of the weight of that stick and the effect and impact of it. And you go about closing VA hospitals and you proceed in such a 
way that the Majority Leader of the United States Senate is not advised in advance that a hospital in his state is on the list of the sixteen, seventeen, or whatever it was hospitals that 
were to be closed because they were archaic or under-used. Good, solid reason to close them. And the President of the United States and the Majority Leader of the Senate are in 
conflict immediately. I'm not suggesting that Mike Mansfield would have accepted that decision if he had been notified in advance, but the fact that he had no notification at all, 
and to proceed, as he saw it, arrogantly and arbitrarily to announce the closing of a hospital and leave him in the totally embarrassing position of being a senator and majority 
leader and not knowing it, incurred his enmity no end for a period of time. 
Well, it also got the President's back up, and the President made up his mind that those hospitals were going to be closed come hell or high water, and he devoted an 
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inordinate amount of time and effort to bring that about and failed. And I think it's an example of presidential power in terms of the stick. Sure, if somebody on that Hill is 
causing you problems, and by gosh you're just sick of it, and that obviously happened on any number of occasions, the opportunity might present itself. And what form could it 
take? Maybe that fellow did get around to a very important constituent with a great deal of influence in his district, wanting certain recognition that you could give that fellow on 
behalf of the congressman if you cared to, and you denied it. Now, that's a stick. But, see, that sort of thing is there. That's probably an example. 
But I noticed in going over some notes, some reference to Jennings Randolph and a project being derailed after he had failed to vote in our interest in a very important 
matter. That occurred, I'm sure, and probably there was some indication that was rather blatant. And maybe if it was blatant at that time, and I don't recall the details, it probably 
wasn't the--it may have been counterproductive. So it's not that simple. I know that Jennings Randolph incurred our enmity to a great degree at a time. I know that we did 
everything possible emanating from the state of West Virginia to convince Randolph otherwise in that particular vote, and it failed. We know that it was a significant vote 
because if Randolph, as we saw it, had voted with us in that instance, the President of the Senate would have been able to cast the deciding vote, because it was that close. And we 
lost, and when you lose by a very narrow margin you're apt to take it to heart more than you would otherwise, dwell on it more and be more disturbed. I know that Jennings 
Randolph was not held in high regard in the White House for a period of time, and if that lack of regard because of that vote was reflected by derailing a project that embarrassed 
him and caused him problems, sort of so be it. But I'm not at all sure that it had a positive impact and probably was more our venting our spleen than being practical people, saying 
Jennings overall hasn't been that bad a guy and has voted with us more often than not and we haven't any great problem with him except in this instance, and the best thing for us to 
do is swallow this and go on and we'll have Jennings the next time. Now, that would be our normal procedure. So there were probably occasions when we, in fact, maybe even 
[acted] in a fit of pique. We were human, too. 
But I never got over--I repeated it ad nauseam to my own people, to the Congressional Relations people and anybody that ever cared to listen to me--that you 
never, never go to that Hill and try to convince a member of Congress to commit political hara-kiri. Every one of them had been elected to office. There's one guy downtown that's 
been elected; none of us had been. And have that in mind; whatever the elements are available for persuasion, do so in that context. If it's not in his interest in his district but 
not overridingly adverse to his interest, there's always the possibility that you can persuade him, or we can persuade him, or the President can persuade him. But if it is clearly 
something that's going to cause him serious political difficulty in his district and he tells you no, carry it out to the end, but try to understand. And there's always tomorrow. 
Tape 3 of 4, Side 1 
G: --a problem with a VA hospital in Florida. 
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O: I don't remember that. 
G: I don't know whether it was one that [Spessard] Holland was interested in or what, but it was a question where you had a difficult political problem there with a public work. 
O: With a project? 
G: Yes. 
O: It was a VA hospital? 
G: I think so, yes. 
O: I don't remember it. 
G: Okay. I notice in going through the files--
O: Before we get off this subject, I hope I've made it clear what I think of patronage and the real impact of patronage. I did have a situation one time regarding a senator that I 
thought was quite interesting. That was when Strom Thurmond left the party. He was, of course, a member of the Senate but he was no longer a Democrat. Strom came to see me 
and couldn't understand why he would be discontinued as a source for recommendations for postal appointments in his state and sat there and actually just refused to accept it. He 
had to finally, but I couldn't get over the fact that he would feel that, having left the party, he should remain on the roster. That was one fallout from patronage that had its 
humorous aspect. 
G: I read about an occasion in which President Kennedy appeared on a platform in California at a speech and simply wouldn't allow the local congressmen, or a local congressman, to 
be on the podium with him, because this guy had voted against foreign aid or had not been supportive of the administration or something like that. Do you recall that incident? It 
was a very deliberate--
O: I don't recall that incident, but we did have trouble with a member of Congress. I believe it was on the foreign aid program. It was of a serious nature. He went out of his way to 
oppose us and be of assistance to Otto Passman in his annual exercise. And that was due to a VA hospital. 
G: That was [D. S.] Saund, I think, S-A-U-N-D. 
O: Yes, Saund. We were limited in the use of the stick there, too. But that was very aggravating, because from our position this was a totally justifiable action we were taking. 
There was no merit to Saund's argument in opposition to this thing. And then to have Saund to go to your underbelly where anybody can take a shot at you--that's an easy one, 
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that's a free one. And our resentment was strong. If that's the congressman that wasn't on the platform, I don't know, but it could well have been. 
G: Yes. 
O: Incidentally, you might overlook members at times. You didn't do it very often but one aspect of that would be who is going to fly on the president's plane. He's going to 
California and you're going to have a number of members of Congress. You would start with the Democratic senator or senators, the congressmen from the district or districts 
each instance that he was going to stop in. Then beyond that, of course, you have some leeway and you make some judgments. We would put together the list and try to 
recognize support beyond the call of duty. And then the reverse, there might be times when we neglected to think of somebody that might have enjoyed the trip or gotten some 
exposure from it, because we felt he hadn't earned that right. Now, there again, it's a rather small item, but there were times when it could be quite significant, because that was 
an area in which there was great congressional interest, no matter how they were voting. There was overriding interest in being part of the traveling party. There are a myriad of 
other things of that nature: how often you were invited to White House functions might have something to do with your voting record. But there again, those are the elements of 
the stick; it isn't a very large, heavy stick that you can wield. 
G: One memorandum involved Florida again and I think it was a request from the Hill to have the President come down to Florida to dedicate something or be there, and it was 
something that Holland was interested in. Holland I gather was even trying to piggyback on the President's friendship with [George] Smathers, and you, or someone on your staff, 
wrote that the President gets to see Smathers when he's in Washington, that that's not an excuse to go to Florida and dedicate this thing. And besides, Holland hadn't supported the 
administration at all. He hadn't been helpful at all so [you were] recommending against the trip. 
O: Yes. Well, we'd do that. In fact, that probably was construed by us as an opportunity to send a message. And we'd have no hesitancy on that. That was one where there was no 
real negative to it, you're right, because Senator Holland was a nice, gentlemanly fellow who I don't recall supported us in any meaningful way during my experiences with him. 
G: Now, last time you did talk about the foreign aid bill in 1961 but there are a couple of other items related to that that I want to ask you about. One concerns Wayne Hays; I 
have a note that he was very helpful on the floor in that fight. Do you recall specifically what he did? 
O: Well, that's what I recall, is help. Wayne was a colorful figure in the Congress. He was an outspoken fellow. He received quite a good deal of attention; he was quite aggressive. 
And when he got into a battle or showed an interest in getting into something to be of assistance to you, he could be helpful. He was the kind of a guy you'd just as soon have 
on your side rather than in the opposition on that Hill. I don't recall the specifics of his 
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help; I recall that he was a help. Wayne would rather enjoy involving himself in debate and discussion in that battle because of the position of Otto Passman. 
G: Oh, really? 
O: That would be right up Wayne's alley; he'd enjoy just taking Otto on. You didn't have to go far to determine Wayne's views or positions. And if Wayne registered enthusiasm, it 
would be our tendency to enlist him in the battle and play some role in it. 
G: Kennedy evidently, as part of his strategy, sought quite a bit of help from the GOP on this piece of legislation. 
O: You had to. Foreign aid was a nightmare. Innately you're dealing with an item that comes up to haunt you regularly. It is a classic example of a responsibility to request legislative 
action when there's hardly a member of Congress that would have any concern about negative political fallout by opposing. Foreign aid was generally referred to as a 
giveaway. It was ridiculous. It's like the debt ceiling--a vote against increasing the debt ceiling, that's as safe as voting for motherhood. You vote against foreign aid, that's great, 
too. You can demagogue the devil out of both of those, and a lot of people did demagogue the devil out of them. 
So, consequently, in approaching foreign aid and the debt ceiling, but the focus on foreign aid, your appeal really came to "Hey, you can't do this to me. You can't do that to 
him. Come on, he may in some ways feel as you do about a lot of this, that there are elements of softness in this program and there's a lot of unfairness in terms of 
distributions." 
I think I mentioned it before. Our efforts in foreign aid even reached the point where we actually took the foreign aid dollars and broke them down district by district. 
We concluded that probably eighty cents of every dollar went into products or into services that were helpful and created employment in congressional districts. And we just 
took all the four hundred and thirty-five congressional districts, broke them down, and determined just where the money flowed. We provided this to members looking for a 
handle where they could say, "Yes, I voted for it because--," then try to get the local media to publicize the benefit to that district that might push the congressman a little bit. 
This was motivated by some degree of desperation. How do you handle a legislative item that hasn't any constituency really. 
G: No base. 
O: Compounding that, you had a person who had the reins of foreign aid in his hands, Otto Passman, who detested foreign aid but could not and would not step aside and let 
somebody else handle it. So you had an issue that had no constituency, a general tendency to ridicule it as a giveaway, and you had a fellow that had your destiny in his hands who 
had every intention to do what he could to destroy it. You put all that together and you've 
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O'Brien --Interview II --38 
got a problem. 
G: Yes. 
O: I remember one of the meetings we had, a top bipartisan leadership meeting. [We'd] try to get away from the demagoguery and have the Dirksens and Hallecks say, "Oh, come on, 
we'll have a little fun with you and push you around, but there has to be a foreign aid program and we'll try to help work it out or at least not stand in the way of it." I think it 
was Ev Dirksen who told the President, "I remember a similar meeting, bipartisan, with Eisenhower. Eisenhower said, 'I want to tell you one thing. Don't ever, any one of you, 
suggest to me that I allow Otto Passman in this building. I never want to see that man again in my life! '" So there was that understanding that Otto Passman wasn't being a 
partisan at all, he was just against everything and everybody that was involved. 
G: I noticed that Kennedy did get a message of support on foreign aid from former President Eisenhower. Do you recall how that evolved, or was this part of--? 
O: I believe that in this area, as well as in other areas, the former President was helpful. There was a very pleasant relationship in the White House between my predecessor, Bryce 
Harlow, and all of us. And Bryce Harlow remained very close to Eisenhower. Eisenhower had a great deal of confidence in him. It was apparent to us that if you 
wanted to communicate with Eisenhower--of course you could president to president--just to feel things out or determine an attitude or potential area of help or assistance, Bryce 
Harlow was the appropriate person to contact. He was in that role on occasions. I communicated with Bryce Harlow, not specifically on the Eisenhower contacts, but on a 
variety of matters. We became friends and remained friends throughout those years, and I can't answer to this day but what I think of it. It was the night of the 1968 election and I 
was in Minneapolis. It was in the early hours when what was unanimously agreed by media to be a lost cause before the polls opened was turning out to be something 
otherwise, a relatively close election. 
G: Very close, yes. 
O: I was with Hubert and a call came which I did not receive immediately. In fact, there was a considerable delay before I received a note that this person wanted to talk to me, and it 
was Bryce Harlow calling from Nixon's headquarters. My curiosity was aroused but by the time I got the message, it was all over and in that mental state I never got back to the 
call. Several times afterwards I thought of it in terms of running into Bryce and saying, "I've just got to know why you were calling me that night." I'd still be curious about it. 
But Harlow was every inch a gentleman, and extremely bright. He had close contacts in the Nixon Administration. 
G: Yes. He served a similar transition function. 
O: Yes. So in response to the foreign aid and the Eisenhower support, I don't remember 
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O'Brien --Interview II --39 
specifically asking Harlow to intervene with Eisenhower, but somewhere along the line you can be sure he was involved in that expression of support. 
G: Another element of this bipartisan support evidently was President Kennedy getting some of his high-level Republican appointees to help in the matter. Do you recall that 
component of it? 
O: Yes. You had some, not an inordinate number, but there were some acknowledged national figures that were Republicans that were in the administration, and they were 
communicated with regularly. I had occasions to talk to them, the President did, and we tried to utilize their potential whenever we could at their discretion. It was never an effort 
to push them into anything, but they were very willing people. An example of that is Doug Dillon; he was an active participant in some of our legislative efforts. 
G: I mentioned the note of the one example of the congressman who wasn't on the platform with President Kennedy. Apparently there was another one who, after not supporting 
foreign aid, found a federal project missing from the budget subsequently. A new federal building or something was deleted from the budget after that. Do you recall who that was 
or the specifics? 
O: No, but I certainly would not suggest it didn't happen. 
G: One interesting aspect of this whole executive-legislative relationship that I hadn't considered before was the navy. I noticed that you wanted to be notified of which 
congressmen were getting these trips by the navy to Guantanamo or places like that so you could keep tabs of what kind of perks they were getting, presumably. 
O: It wasn't confined to the navy. 
G: (Laughter) Well, why do you say--? 
O: The air force or--yes. 
G: Tell me what the range of these activities were. 
O: Traditionally the majority leadership will authorize travel. We said, wait a minute, the Defense Department and those airplanes and ships aren't part of the legislative branch. 
And while we were not going to go so far as to establish a procedure that there was no way a member of Congress could be on a boat or a plane without our approval, we were 
sure as the devil going to try to come up with some idea, some procedure where that fellow was made aware--by the leader that he went through, whether it was [John] 
McCormack or whoever it might be at the moment, [Carl] Albert--that the trip was approved or his presence was approved only because it had been relayed to the White 
House for consideration. I don't recall an instance where we denied it, maybe we did somewhere. But it was just another little piece of the action to remind him that, if we care 
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to, we could have a procedure at the snap of a finger where the navy or the air force had no authority to designate and that it had to be approved at the White House level in the 
Commander in Chief's office. In other words, we are watching a little closer than you may think we are. 
G: Well, there were apparently a lot of congressmen taking these naval cruises to--I guess they were inspection trips or something of that nature. 
O: Still are. 
(Laughter) 
O: Yes, that was the extent of it. I wouldn't suggest that there weren't times that we didn't react, as I said, in a fit of pique or just a little bit of arrogance. But I don't really think that 
there was--there could have been but not to my [recollection]--a time when you carried it to the extent that you had really caused a problem that would be counterproductive and an 
enemy was made. I'd put this in the category of the VIP visits to the White House or social visits or inclusion in formal dinners or the Sequoia or the rest. We realized that a 
great deal of this went on and there was no White House involvement, they--the members--dealt directly through the naval liaison or air force liaison until they duly got a memo, 
"Get a plane in place and we're going to six countries in Europe." And we all know they're junkets and we all know that it goes on I think probably to a greater extent than 
ever despite the fact that there's been a lot of focus of attention on this over the years. 
G: Well, presumably this would be something that the leadership would exercise some discretion on in terms of--
O: Yes. 
G: --who deserved to go and who didn't. 
O: Yes, and we left it up to them. 
G: Is it correct that Sam Rayburn was very much opposed to a lot of these junkets, that it was very difficult--? 
O: Yes, he was. First of all, Sam Rayburn didn't take junkets. Secondly, he was a firm believer in constituent service, constituent attention. He'd say these "fellers" that become 
enamored with the Washington social life or seeing their name in some society column, by God, they'll keep doing that and overlooking their [constituents] back home and they're 
going to pay a price. This traveling around the world, doing all this sort of thing, no, he was very much turned off on all that. It wasn't because he didn't travel; he just didn't 
believe in that. He just thought it was a rip-off--most of it. I'm not suggesting that there aren't times when it isn't justifiable but, boy, there are a lot of times when it simply isn't. 
He felt very strongly about that. 
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G: Do you think he felt that it reflected badly on the prestige of the institution, too? That that might have been--? 
O: Yes, that was part of it, too. The institution, in the final analysis, was Sam Rayburn's life--and his overriding pride in it and his great desire to at all times protect it. So anything of 
that nature that he considered negative concerned him. And I don't know what he said to his colleagues, but he never had any reluctance to being candid with me. We'd chat about 
it. He'd sit on his porch and see those constituents in his home district, and, by gosh, that's what it's all about. They've sent you here, you respond. 
G: The question of congressional travel, could it work in reverse? For example, if you wanted a member of Congress or the Senate out of the way for a vote and you knew he 
was wrong on an issue and it was a close vote, could you concoct a trip for him, an attractive trip to get him out of the way? 
O: Not really. That would be pretty obvious. But the reverse of that, however, happened often; we'd provide transportation for them to get back. 
G: To get back. 
O: Oh, yes. We utilized the military in that regard. If a fellow had a speaking engagement--of course, there was a lot of negotiation with the Congress, the House and Senate, in 
terms of the scheduling of legislation and the checking and rechecking on potential attendance in close votes--there were occasions where we'd provide military 
transportation to get him back. There were rumbles on the Hill at times regarding that, but we chose to get it done and worry about the fallout afterward. And there were times 
where we had no hesitancy to have it public knowledge--that was in crisis times. If Congress was not in session or something, there were occasions when we arranged rather 
massive military movements to ensure that those that the President wanted to meet with were available--the Cuban Missile [Crisis] would be a good example. [It occurred] at a 
point when they were out of session, and we had planes all over the skies making sure they were back. But on an individual vote basis, there were times we did that. 
G: On the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example--we'll get to that and I want to ask you about that in detail--but for now, how did you present it to them, or whoever called them present 
it to them? I mean obviously they wouldn't go into great detail over the phone. 
O: No, it's very simple. There was a situation that has arisen that just demands your presence, and the President has asked me to contact you directly and say that you must be 
here. Not an order, "you must be here," [but] "in your interest and the national interest, you must be present." And I never had anyone--I can think of a Republican senator from 
California. I remember it because a fighter plane brought him in from California and he had never had that experience with the helmet--
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O'Brien --Interview II --42 
(Laughter) 
G: He what--he--? 
O: With the helmet on--
(Laughter) 
--and everything, whatever kind of plane it was. Kuchel. 
G: Thomas Kuchel. 
O: Yes. But they wouldn't question me on that. They knew that a call was not made unless it really, truly was urgent. And we'd make every effort with both presidents, but that sort of 
crisis occurred at times in the Kennedy period. And it was essential, as the President saw it, that the appropriate members of Congress be briefed and that each person present be 
solicited to express his views and comments or recommendations, if nothing but for the record. Not the public record, but the record, because we knew that when something like 
that occurred, you knew that the only comments would probably be, "Whatever you decide, Mr. President, we support you." 
G: I have an impression that perhaps Lyndon Johnson did, on occasion, plan a trip to a congressman's district to coincide with the need for him to be away from a particular vote 
or something. 
O: That could have happened, I just don't recall it. 
G: It was not a pattern? 
O: It was a pretty sophisticated operation, but it wasn't a pattern. It could have happened. It's intriguing. 
G: Well, I think in particular when some of the poverty legislation was up and civil rights legislation, didn't he go to Appalachia and take some of those members that might have 
been wrong on--? 
O: Yes, I do recall there was a trip of that nature. 
G: Was that a coincidence there? 
O: I don't know. It's a little intricate, really. I mean, people see through that pretty easily. If you have them in Appalachia today, you might find the vote has been postponed until next 
week. 
G: Yes. Okay, let's see. Let me ask you about the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. Were you 
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O'Brien --Interview II --43 
involved at all in any of the administration's discussion? 
O: No. 
G: How did you learn of the invasion? 
O: I learned of it just prior to the President advising congressional leaders regarding it. I was present with him when it was in process and a debacle was imminent. I was not involved 
prior to that. And I became involved again because of the need to advise and the need to inform. So--
G: Well, describe the occasion where you were with him when it became evident that the plan was not working. 
O: I was in the group in his office. It was one of those informal things. It had reached the point where it was clearly a debacle. And my reaction was a pure political reaction, I'm 
sorry to say, but that was my gut reaction: "My God, we've been around here a brief period of time. We've just gotten our feet wet. We're trying to move things. The 
President is trying to exercise leadership, and this blow to the solar plexus has got to be politically devastating. [It] will set him back and the administration back significantly in 
terms of public approval." 
The CIA and the Defense Department before we arrived had been staunch advocates. I'm not suggesting, and I don't know, whether there was any great reluctance 
on the part of the President to go forward with it, but certainly their presentation to him was very, very strong. Their evaluation of it was all on the positive side from "highly 
professional people," quote, unquote. They had devoted a lot of time and effort to putting this into place. There had been communication between [Allen] Dulles and the top staff of 
the CIA and a half a dozen of us, the top staff of the White House. We had dinner one evening in a restaurant in Washington. This wasn't the subject, and it was sort of just to 
get to know each other. That didn't indicate there would be continuing communication, but this was a new administration, a new White House, and I think the CIA people wanted 
us to know who they were and they wanted to at least meet us. And that's all I knew about the CIA. 
But I did feel we were in for a devastating political situation in terms of public reaction. Jack Kennedy met difficulty and potential disaster in an extremely courageous 
way. He did what came naturally to him. Not due to any suggestion on my part, he figuratively stepped up to it almost like standing on the White House steps and saying, 
"My fellow Americans, I've completely goofed. I've really made a terrible mistake," wrong judgment and what have you. No indication he was totally disturbed with the 
advisers that he had inherited and the advice they had given him. 
Tape 3 of 4, Side 2 
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O'Brien --Interview II --44 
O: He was extremely candid in accepting full responsibility. And to our utter amazement the next Gallup Poll showed a significant rise in support for him, which was a real lesson to 
me that I reflected on years later. I'd like to think I would react the same way in his position. I don't know. Who knows? But I think I'd be trying to figure out how, 
politically speaking, you could handle something like this. It's amazing about the public generally, and how they react. They reacted to his candor and his admission, if you will, 
of guilt, and it was a plus. Not planned that way, not conceived that way, and certainly not envisioned that way by me. 
On a later occasion, I saw a president in a position of his own doing, but nevertheless a position that was devastating: Watergate. And I've always felt, and I 
remember thinking about it at the time, as I was personally involved. I was the victim of Watergate. If this man had the guts, the innate character, to step out on those White 
House steps and say, "My fellow Americans, this is what I did and all I can say to you is I deeply regret it. I hold myself accountable for my staff or anybody in this government that 
did wrong, and I can only commit that I'll never allow something like this to happen again," he would have completed his presidency. 
We're talking about all kinds of procedures and patronage and negotiations with the Congress, but you cannot divorce the human element from all of this in the final 
analysis. It comes right back to that. 
G: While you were with President Kennedy was there any discussion of supplying the air support that was evidently canceled, the second round of that? 
O: No. I wasn't involved. 
G: Did you feel like there was a division within the White House with regard to how to handle the Bay of Pigs once they saw that it was not working, or whether some people 
who advocated--? 
O: No. No, I can't testify to comments that might have been made by other members of the staff. I certainly didn't have any specific suggestion. And it was a little bit like the 
meeting I described with the leadership of the Congress, the President, in the time of crisis. No one is going to suggest or urge that the president take this action or that action. 
I think you feel comfort in saying, "It's your baby, Mr. President." There's a tendency to reflect that Bobby directed Jack's mind. I can testify that wasn't the case. Jack was well 
able to make his own determinations and decisions, and he made them on so many occasions where I had involvement. He had great respect for Bobby, appreciated his 
advice and counsel. In the final analysis, he would make his decision, and, of course, into the equation would be Bobby's views. He greatly respected him, but Bobby didn't make 
his decisions. He made his own. 
G: What impact did the Bay of Pigs have on President Kennedy's own thinking about the reliability of CIA and military questions? 
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O'Brien --Interview II --45 
O: He became quite cynical. He felt he had been entrapped. I think it left--not because we spoke about it at any great length however--an imprint in the sense that he had a degree of 
cynicism regarding recommendations that were forthcoming in the future. He had learned his lesson. 
G: Yes. 
O: "It's a fait accompli. Let's go forward." 
G: His explanation to the members of Congress during this period, any insights on that? 
O: No, it was no different than his explanation to the people. 
G: There's an indication that it may have even helped him in one respect in that the House did, right after that, approve a six hundred million dollar special fund for Latin American 
development, which I gather had not been considered that feasible before. 
O: Yes, that's right. I don't know as you could document that, but it clearly indicates that his handling of the situation was helpful. To what degree, no one will ever know, but there 
was a plus element in it. They read the Gallup Polls, too. 
G: Yes. Was Kennedy surprised by the Gallup Poll when it did show--? 
O: I don't recall any specific conversation. We were. I would assume he was. 
G: Let's talk about education legislation, which is a big item in each of these years. Do you recall the problem of sorting out all of the various elements, the higher education 
component, the parochial school aid, the medical school aid, and the public school aid at this point? 
O: What do you mean by sorting out? 
G: Well, keeping the different elements separated so that you could pass the ones that had the chance, and the priorities, which ones should come first, or packaging them. You had a 
tremendous range of--
O: Yes. 
G: In fact, this was one of the criticisms, that there were too many, rather than focusing your efforts on one. Let me ask you to discuss this whole area. 
O: Well, the reason there was such diversity goes to the depth of commitment of the president in this area, the very strong views he had regarding the federal role in the field of 
education, which all of us shared. I felt very, very strongly about it. But there were two 
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O'Brien --Interview II --46 
areas that--there were a couple of others, but two--I sort of focused on: one was what we could accomplish to ensure reaching the goal of full educational opportunity; second was 
Medicare, for personal reasons, my own family and the devastating costs. You had that additional element in your thought process. 
The strategy on what came first and how it was segmented I don't think was really an initial strategy. It naturally evolved. You wanted to propose in just about every 
meaningful area of education. Could you encompass this in an omnibus package? Could you segment it and some pass and some not? 
I'll have to say that the impact of the religious problem was not confined to elementary or secondary [education]. My guess is I didn't envision the depth and 
seriousness of that impact initially. I recognized there was this sensitivity and we were not going to include any aspects of private aid and assistance. But how that would impact and 
undermine much of what we were proposing, I did not sense. We should have understood that if Kennedy, in launching this far-reaching program, had avoided any private [school] 
assistance and was not a Catholic, it would not have hit the way it did. We were not totally sensitive to it, because we didn't really dwell on any of this. We didn't say, "Isn't it 
a shame?" or "Shouldn't there be--?" We simply were constitutionalists. If you were tempted to work out something in this area, you were in no position to do so in any event. 
We were the beneficiaries of the expansion of the Rules Committee, for example. Out of that Rules Committee came at least one member that wouldn't have been there if we hadn't 
had an expanded Rules Committee, and he turned out to be a key to this problem. 
G: This is [James] Delaney, isn't it? 
O: Yes. I think we should have recognized it. Delaney's opposition, obviously, was constituent, and understandable. And yet he had a great affection for the President, total 
supporter of the President. Couldn't he overcome this in terms of saying, "In some way I'll go the route on this but you have to advocate next year something more," something by 
way of negotiation. But he was totally adamant. And part of that had to be that Delaney resented that this fellow Kennedy would ignore this entire area purposely because he was 
a Catholic. There was something very negative in all of this, from Delaney's perspective. And yet you have a tremendous commitment in this area. This is one that you are 
emotionally involved in--this whole education situation. So no matter what strategies were considered the fact of the matter is that the cloud over the whole exercise in my 
recollection--and I may be exaggerating this, there were other problems, of course--basically and fundamentally was that a guy had purposely ignored his own people, because 
he was embarrassed. And your defense, "Wait a minute, the Constitution is clear, the Supreme Court decision, everything is there," so it made no sense to try this. Oh, no, 
they're not going to buy that. They would have bought it from John Smith, but they weren't going to buy it from Jack Kennedy. 
It began to cause problems extending far beyond Delaney. The National Education Association public comments that were being made just exacerbated the 
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O'Brien --Interview II --47 
problem. That then brought the private school sector, Catholics predominantly but others in the private school sector, into play with barbed debate and all that. It didn't create a 
schism perhaps because there probably wasn't unity of purpose. But it certainly eliminated up front any hope of a united effort on the part of the organized people in the field of 
education. You had a battle ongoing. There weren't that many of the same religion as Kennedy in the White House, but I think there was a perception probably that the White 
House was loaded with people like us, so-called Irish Mafia. But the fact of the matter is, if you looked at our representation, it probably would be comparable to previous 
administrations. But nobody ever paid any attention--we didn't, we never took a head count or anything like that. Who cared? That was our attitude. But I guess I have 
mentioned this before and I'm repeating myself, but I had to, even in the high good humor of Cardinal Cushing. 
G: [Richard] Cushing, wasn't it? 
O: In the very pleasant way that he delivered the message to me one night in Paul Young's Restaurant. He came over to my table, and you know the accent, you probably recall 
Cushing. 
G: Brogue, yes. 
O: I stood and greeted him. "How's Jack?" I said, "He's fine." "Well," he said, "I haven't seen him in a while." I said, "Oh, gosh--" "Well," he said, "I like him; you know, we've 
known each other all our lives. But I want you to tell him something. I don't want to embarrass him. I am in and out of Washington every now and then and sometime I'd like 
to drop by just to say hello, and he can bring me in the back door so nobody will know I'm there." He said, "Billy Graham visits quite often, and he should come in the front door 
and I think that's great. But just tell him not to worry about it, that if I could come by and say hello sometime at his convenience and he doesn't have to explain my presence." You 
know, laughing, kidding, sort of arm around my shoulder. 
So that ended the conversation. Cushing was never going to publicly cause any problem. There was none of that. It was just that he had a feeling that perhaps Jack was a 
little sensitive in this area. And not too long afterward the Cardinal was in and we all dropped in to visit with him in the Oval Office. All I'm saying is, and I don't want to 
exaggerate it in terms of the education battle, but I think that we were a little insensitive to reactions of people that were in significant positions. Not to dwell on it or make it the 
overriding issue, clearly it would be a mistake also to simply dismiss it, because it did have an effect. 
I don't remember the details, we had occasion I think the following year to extend some education programs. I found myself in my White House office with the 
representatives of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO, and we were sharing assignments on head counts. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --48 
G: Is that right? One follow-up question on the Cardinal Cushing story. Did that subsequent visit to the White House that he made result from--? 
O: Not really. 
G: I assume that you told President Kennedy about this. 
O: I mentioned it to him, and we had a chuckle over it. It wasn't that serious and, as far as Cushing was concerned, there was a very warm friendship between the two of them. And 
it's like everything else. You're in there in the White House, you don't sit with a chart up on the wall, "When was the last time I saw Cushing?" or this one or that one. 
G: But do you think Kennedy was reluctant to bring him in? 
O: No. I think it was a matter of the Cardinal not contacting the White House. He hadn't contacted the White House in a period of time. If the Cardinal wanted to come in and say 
hello to Kennedy, he would have been ushered in immediately. I think it was a combination of that and the Cardinal giving me a little ribbing about "Gee, Billy Graham 
walks in and out of the front door, so tell Jack I'll go in the back door just to say hello." 
G: Now, [Francis] Cardinal Spellman was heavily involved in this education issue as an adversary. He was on Delaney's side. 
O: Yes. 
G: How did you deal with him? 
O: We didn't. I didn't. 
G: Did you get any help from Cardinal Cushing on this matter? 
O: I don't recall his involvement. I don't think the hierarchy ever really got to the point. We weren't really getting this job done in any event. Did it come to the point of massive 
confrontation, I think that really the way the dice rolled in this thing, you had a Delaney, you had a Hugh Carey that was trying to figure out ways to build a bridge, which was the 
way you'd try to handle this or any other matter. 
As far as Spellman was concerned, Spellman was known to be a conservative. He was assumed to probably be a Republican, although those fellows I assume don't walk 
around with their party designation on their sleeve. The only contact I ever had with Spellman was in terms of stamp collecting after I became postmaster general. But others 
might have talked to him. But I'll tell you, if you said to me at the outset, "Well, obviously there's some trouble brewing and why don't you see if we can't get hold of Spellman or 
have the President contact Spellman," I would have suggested, "Forget it." Spellman would have been in opposition to much of the Kennedy program that had nothing to do 
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O'Brien --Interview II --49 
with the private schools and education. That's his track record. That wouldn't be Cushing's track record. He made no bones of being an avowed liberal. 
G: Two very different. . . . 
O: Oh, yes. 
G: John McCormack was known to favor the parochial school element. How did you come to terms with McCormack? 
O: Well, John McCormack did everything he could to try to bring Delaney into line. What would be overriding with John McCormack was the innate need for the program. And 
this was a Democratic Party program, and John McCormack at no time evidenced the concerns that Delaney evidenced. John McCormack was every inch a team player, every 
inch the supporter of the president; that applied to Johnson or Kennedy or any Democratic president. And he was not, and he always told me that, a person that would go public in 
opposition to a president even of the opposite party, [because of] his great respect for the office. But with Kennedy, he was just a dedicated advocate. So with McCormack and the 
other leaders up there, the effort was to convince Delaney to give us what we construed was the decisive vote. 
My recollection is that on one evening when we invited Congressman Delaney down to visit with the President that Tip O'Neill came with him. And the Delaney I knew, 
very honestly, he was a very forthright guy. He was a fellow that didn't quibble about position. You had it up or down with Delaney on any issue. And in this instance this 
fellow was adamant. Wilbur Cohen must have this in great detail. Wilbur, as I've told you before, was most aggressive, and had an innate knowledge of the subject and all its 
intricacies. We sat in my office on different occasions trying to develop strategies including a time when Hugh Carey was present with several of us and talked about loaning 
textbooks. 
So Delaney was a loner, because even those that shared his religious convictions were just intensely interested in moving this legislation. 
G: I have a press account that indicates that during this period there was a showdown between McCormack and Rayburn; McCormack wanting some inclusion of parochial 
school aid here, and Rayburn determined to get the public school aid to a vote first and get that cleared--
O: That could have happened. 
G: --and reportedly McCormack acquiesced. Do you have any knowledge of that meeting? 
O: No, because I had no problem with McCormack in this area. That would not foreclose McCormack, if he thought of it, going the route of Hugh Carey, for example. 
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McCormack has strong religious convictions. And he followed his convictions to his credit. I'm not suggesting that McCormack would not have embraced the Hugh Carey 
proposal or similar proposals. He was not a constitutionalist in this. I think the reality of whether or not you could get enactment of education [legislation] was apparent to him. 
So I would not suggest that he and Rayburn didn't have that discussion. But what kind of inclusion? See, that's really what you were up against. What kind of inclusion? You have 
the religious aspect of this but let's face it, that isn't any different than conflicts that exist in any legislative proposal. How do you bridge them? If you sat and said, "Well, let's have a 
significant inclusion of private school aid." At that time you're going to lose the support of the NEA totally and a good piece of the Congress. So how do you build a bridge that 
keeps people in place for a roll call so you can get legislation enacted? That's no different than the effort to have a meaningful civil rights bill. It's all part of the process. 
G: One of the press accounts blamed Secretary [Abraham] Ribicoff for not being clear-cut in advocating the public school rather than public and private, and also for vacillating on the 
administration's view that there was a constitutionality of across-the-board aid to public schools. 
O: I don't recall. 
G: You don't feel that Ribicoff was a problem at the time? 
O: I don't recall him as a problem. 
G: How in the world did you--? 
O: What may be in some people's minds and what they say and do may be two different things. It's a program that we all had embraced up front. That's where you are. If you 
have some problems with this and you see some overriding negatives in terms of impact on the President as a result of a road you're going to travel, you should up front include 
that in the equation when the decision process is in place. You've put this on your agenda and there you are, and you have a variety of education legislation, you have a chairman of 
the committee, Adam Powell, that you may or may not find on any given day and you have all the rest of this. 
But I said perhaps it was my insensitivity or failure to recognize the dimensions of this problem as it would unfold. And I'm not trying to place my light conversation with 
Cushing in that category at all. I'm just saying that there were elements in here that I should have understood better than I did. And I had no problem with advocacy of 
education legislation that didn't include private schools. I'm a realist, and I might feel there ought to be some way to be helpful to private schools, but that wasn't what we were 
involved with. We had a proposal; it did not include private schools. Now you've got to make every effort to enact [it]. In the process of compromise, if somebody says to me, 
"Well, maybe we can get away with a little bit of private school," I'll buy that. It's the old story of maybe I haven't the whole loaf or maybe there's part of it that you prefer not to 
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O'Brien --Interview II --51 
have, but, my God, does the end justify the means? And I'm sure I'd sit there, as I did with Hugh Carey that night, saying, "Great, I can see where this might help us move this." 
G: Well, there was even at the time a formula being discussed whereby you could, say, under NDEA money allocate some to private schools for science and medical research and 
things like that? 
O: Yes. Yes. They weren't buying. (Laughter) 
G: Was this offered at the time to get some of these advocates of parochial school aid to go along or wait--? 
O: We thought we were stating the obvious, that there was this area of potential assistance. 
G: Yes, but they didn't buy it? And what you're saying is you should have just been more explicit, is that right? 
O: I think that there should have been a greater attempt up front, and it would have called for the creativity of everybody. There should have been two things: one, the anticipation that 
this area could be very troublesome, and, secondly, a full exploration of any possibility of bridging in any conceivable way at the outset. It was difficult; it probably was impossible, 
but it wasn't completely explored. And I'm not faulting anyone. I fault myself, I guess, because as a Catholic I should have anticipated some of these people that I knew very well 
could be very adamant on this subject to the point where even their affection for the President wouldn't be enough. I don't think I envisioned that--that doesn't mean that we 
would have scuttled the program. But I think that we should have been a little better in tune with what we could anticipate, and conceivably the Hugh Carey type of proposal 
might have been in the equation in some earlier stage and that might have had some impact. 
But who knows? The fact is that the President was in an impossible situation in which to negotiate anything. Sure, you could say, "There's funding in another area that 
can be [used]," but that really. . . . And we all know that constitutional provisions, court decisions, are always subject to interpretation and review. You know, you're not really 
totally leveling--it's a little bit of a cop-out. And there are times when that's all right and it works, but in this instance it didn't. And I think really what's interesting about it is that it 
did bring into focus the power that could be exercised by a handful, indeed one person, at a given moment and that you had underestimated his strength of purpose--his 
commitment. 
Tape 4 of 4, Side 1 
G: --ironic in a sense because the fight over the Rules Committee had been launched to eliminate that one-person control. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --52 
O: That's right. But there wasn't any real fallout that I would call mean or bitter or rancorous. In fact, that includes Delaney. Delaney wasn't in there screaming or hollering; 
he was in there as a soft-spoken, adamant fellow that was not going to be--his view wasn't going to be affected no matter who talked to him. That's all, and accept it. Because there 
were other problems, you know, that the committee--so much of our legislation then and later was funneling into the Labor and Education Committee. 
And Adam Powell was certainly an extremely interesting guy to know. I got to know him intimately. But he could be an exasperating fellow and he could be particularly 
exasperating to a man like John McCormack, a straight-arrow fellow that was very businesslike concerning the function of the Congress, its various committees, its timetables 
and all the rest. And to find that one of his committee chairmen was elusive and difficult to pin down in terms of schedules tested John's temper on a number of occasions. But 
McCormack would, in meetings we'd have in his office that attempted to persuade Adam to a) schedule hearings; b) have a timetable for mark-up; and c) be supportive and 
available on the floor as an advocate when it was scheduled, all of that was in the context of the reverend. John would always refer to Adam as reverend. And he'd say, "Now, 
Reverend, this," and "Reverend, you must do that," and "Reverend, I ask you or plead with you to do this." (Laughter) And there was a little bit of humor to it all. 
So John McCormack found himself one Sunday morning in my office at the White House with Carl Albert and me because we can't find Adam Powell again. Through the 
White House switchboard we finally located Adam Powell in Bimini and really got him on the telephone, and there's the Speaker of the House of Representatives--I guess he was the 
speaker by then, he might have still been majority leader--pleading with Adam Powell to return from Bimini and saying, "Now, Reverend"--( Laughter)--and then saying to me, "He 
says he can't, hasn't any transportation." I said, "We'll provide the transportation." "Reverend, we'll have a plane waiting." (Laughter) And this is on a Sunday, and Adam 
was down there, whatever he was doing down there--( Laughter)--[ he] couldn't care less at the moment. And yet when he would focus, he was great. When he would focus, he was 
an impressive fellow. He really could conduct committee hearings and do his job. The problem was getting him to focus. And the net result of it is there was a lot of heavy 
leaning on the part of us in the White House on Jim O'Hara on that committee. 
G: Oh, really? 
O: We leaned on Jim excessively and Jim tried in a lot of ways to fill in for Adam in trying to move things along. And there were some stalwarts on the committee, too, several. 
G: There were strong personalities. One of the attributes that is accredited to Adam Clayton Powell was that he was able to keep Edith Green in line to some extent, to get her 
cooperation. Was this a problem and was he able to do--? 
O: Well, Edith had very strong views in this area. She was one of the original supporters of Jack Kennedy, as you know, and couldn't have been more staunch in her advocacy from 
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day one regarding his candidacy, but in this area it was very troublesome to Edith to have any private school aspects to this. And there were other areas, too, where Adam--Adam 
Powell had a capacity to disarm you. He really did; he did with me. As aggravated as you would get, as frustrated as you would get, when you finally got Adam into the office or 
you were in his office, after a half an hour of Adam's storytelling you found you were warm friends all over again, everything was going to be halcyon, everything was going to 
go on schedule until the next time. But he had that capacity. He had some real leadership qualities and he had a great sense of humor. And he knew he was driving everybody mad 
and rather enjoyed it. 
G: Can you give me an example of his sense of humor? 
O: Yes. I had an experience with him one day. He came into the White House. For some reason, he was in my office--and I should divert for a moment. Adam, to my knowledge, 
was the only person that I ever knew that addressed the President as Jack. And he did on a number of occasions, which always startled me. I don't know whether it startled the 
President or not, but it startled me. But Adam had a purpose in most things he did. But he was sitting there and he smoked these long, thin cigars. He was talking about his 
church in Harlem. I guess in membership it was the largest church in America; I don't know, my recollection was something like ten, fifteen thousand, fourteen thousand, 
whatever it was, members of the church. And he said, "Of course, I have a semiannual census." 
G: Oh, a census of the congregation. 
O: Yes, a census. And he said, "I have this semiannual census," and he had just thousands of members. And I said, "Why would you have a census twice a year?" He said, "Well, 
there's a five-dollar fee when they do a census, and the church has to be supported." And he did, he had a tremendous following and [was] a tremendous preacher. And he would 
meld his Sunday services, and I think every cabinet member wound up preaching at Adam's church at one time or another. He would just really demand the appearance of 
these people. 
Then he got into some other area and it was obvious to me--he had a big smile on his face throughout all this and he knew that he was titillating me a little bit. I don't know 
how much of it was an exaggeration or just--and then he wound up, he said could he say hello to the President before he left. Well, obviously, he could say hello. I wasn't about to 
tell him the President was otherwise engaged. And we dropped in the Oval Office to say hello. To this day, I've never quite understood, or maybe I misunderstood, but he said to 
me, "Larry, let me finally say something to you. Always remember, where there's smoke, there's fire." And I remember I sat there and I thought, "I must have misunderstood what 
he just said." On the other hand, the son of a gun, I probably didn't misunderstand what he said, because he burst out into laughter. And he's laughing and I'm sitting there 
absolutely thunderstruck and I had no comment; I didn't know what in God's name you could say. And that ended the conversation. We went in and [said], "How are you, 
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O'Brien --Interview II --54 
Jack?" to the President. (Laughter) And he gave him one of his thin cigars. 
Later on when I was out of [the government] and he was a former congressman, I'd see him occasionally. He was a sports buff, basketball buff, and I'd run into him in 
Madison Square Garden here. And even then he was wearing the T-shirt and the big medallion and chain. He always was an impressive-looking fellow and he always attracted 
attention. We would just kid around for a few minutes. He loved to tickle you, kid you, get you off balance. You didn't know quite how to respond to him. If you responded in 
kind, you might be in a real trap, so the best thing to do is just not say anything. But I thoroughly enjoyed him, with all his aggravations. 
G: What was Kennedy's attitude toward him? 
O: Liked him. 
G: Did he? 
O: Yes. 
G: How did he assess him? Do you recall what he--? 
O: Basically he understood, he knew what the problems were, what we were going through. He was kept fully abreast of all of this. But he couldn't refrain from a big grin, and some 
kind of kidding would take place. It was awfully difficult to have a serious conversation with Adam. 
G: Really? 
O: Yes, I mean he wasn't going to focus that long on anything serious. He brought his son in occasionally to White House ceremonies. He was a big, good-looking young man. I've 
lost track of him, but he was anxious to have his son get a feel for government, but I don't think the son ever followed that course. I don't know. 
G: LBJ and Adam Clayton Powell--
O: I don't remember about that. 
G: Did you ever hear Johnson talk about him? 
O: No, I don't recall. I think that there was a different situation, too. I don't recall also how much of the Johnson period Adam bridged. Do you? 
G: Well, let's see, I think--
O: It could have been all of--
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O'Brien --Interview II --55 
G: --at least through 1966. Well, I think Perkins took over in 1967 or something like that. 1966 or 1967, some time in there. 
O: When was he defeated? Powell was defeated at some point by Charlie Rangel in the primary here. 
G: Well, I don't--but he was removed, wasn't he, as chairman of the committee and I think that took place--
O: Oh, he got in all kinds of--
G: --about 1966 or 1967. Perkins took over. 
O: No, I don't recall. Also, I do recall that the period we're talking about was an extremely difficult one for us, you know--always that handful of votes margin if you prevailed, 
always just on tenterhooks on anything major, and that applied in committees and the floor of the House. So the attention directed to Adam, and the role that we had to seek from 
Adam was so significant. He was the focal point at times of White House discussion and leadership discussion. Now, perhaps I'm not recalling Johnson's reaction to Powell only 
because perhaps it wasn't as significant a situation as it was in our days because of the change in the Congress. 
G: Sure. We'll take up that later. In this particular year, though, in 1961 you did get him to refrain from adding that antisegregation rider to the education bill. How did you do that? 
O: I honestly don't remember. I was trying to think of what we gave him, but I don't recall that we gave him anything. Maybe if you jog my memory on that. I think he played that 
out for a while--he wasn't a spoiler. Really, when everything is said and done, all the Adam Powell stories and all of his unusual behavior and all the rest of it, he wasn't innately 
a mean fellow at all. He could articulate his views very well and he was truly at that point one of the black leaders in this country. But he was not a spoiler, he was not mean, and 
his tendency was to be on the team, when you finally got him to focus. It was more focus than anything else. Now, he would take something like that, play out the string, just to get 
everybody into an uproar and then he would make a determination probably not to include it because that would kill the legislation. So he'd let it go. What did you give him? What 
was the quid pro quo? I haven't any recollection of a quid pro quo. 
G: I have a note that indicates here that perhaps he felt that Kennedy would withhold aid from segregated schools through executive action. 
O: Could be, I don't remember. 
G: You don't recall this being discussed? 
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O'Brien --Interview II --56 
O: No. I'll say this. The more I think about it, there had to be a quid pro quo. It would have been foolish of Adam to let go of that weapon or just drop it without some kind of 
compensating factor. And that could be in the area. 
G: Well, he had brought up that rider every year, every time the school bill came up. 
O: Yes, I know it. He did a lot of things every year. But it's interesting, isn't it. There are people you meet such as Adam, who are unique in their way, in their attitudes and their 
actions and can be a source of concern and aggravation to you. But I think the absence of real meanness or deviousness makes if easier to put up with those people. There were 
people that I didn't overly respect, a handful of them. There were people that you were not overly impressed with. By the same token, there were many people that you were 
most impressed with. But I don't recall that I became embittered with any individual up there. And I think in the case of Adam Powell, in the final analysis, when you really focus 
on the record, Adam Powell made a real contribution. I really do. 
I think he outlived his position with the blacks in Harlem. I always equated, interestingly enough, the attitude of the blacks toward Adam to the attitude of the Irish 
toward James Michael Curley. So I related to a lot of this because we recognized, if we allowed ourselves to think about it, that James Michael Curley might be a rogue, but we 
refused to accept that or acknowledge it. We were very defensive concerning him, and we remained loyal to him, and why? Because with all of these aspects of Curley, he had great 
leadership qualities. He arrived on the political scene in Massachusetts at a time when people of my heritage were seeking someone that would have the courage to speak up and 
fight the establishment. And he did all that, and it was a breakthrough. But the very same people that admired [him] for all that, in a period of time lost admiration for Curley. They 
admired a new type of leader by the name of Jack Kennedy. But the man at the moment, at the time, performed a role in terms of breakthrough and recognition. 
That's exactly what happened with Adam Clayton Powell. He might have been somewhat of a rogue, as Curley was to some degree, but the fact remains that at that time 
and place he spoke out, he took on the establishment, he took on the anti-black members of Congress head on. He defied them. He did unusual things. He acted in an unusual 
manner. He did not conform to the precepts of the establishment. All of that was applauded by his constituency. And then the breakthrough to some degree occurred and 
then they turned elsewhere. A Charlie Rangel became the congressman from the same district, an entirely different kind of fellow with whom they are very comfortable in terms 
of representing them. So it's the man at the time, and I often--and I think I might have even mentioned it in my book--in my association with Adam would think of Curley 
because there was a lot of similarity in terms of--
G: He was really the product of an earlier era, wasn't he, and outlived that era? 
O: That's right. And outlived it. Yes. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --57 
G: Describe his relationship with the southerners, particularly the older--this was at a time when segregation was still in. 
O: Yes. I was not privy to any relationship he had with them upon arrival in the Congress. I've heard a lot of stories about that. 
G: What? Can you recall any? 
O: Well, only that [when] Adam arrived, he was a very imposing individual on arriving at that scene. There was nothing about Adam--he had no reluctance whatsoever to step right up 
there and say, "Here I am, boys, take it or leave it, and that's your problem." (Laughter) "And I'm going to be here a while and you're going to hear a lot from me." (Laughter) I 
think perhaps by the time I got around to knowing Adam that some of that had toned down. I don't know. I never had any of the southern Democrats that I dealt with, and the 
senior fellows in the House or Senate, refer to Adam in any racially derogatory sense at all. I think by then they had become sort of accustomed to him around there. They might 
kid about Adam and Adam's travels and his social activities, but it was never in a racial context that I can recall. Even with all the problems that the leadership had with him, it 
never was in a racial context. None of that. It was more the fellow as he was, chairman of a committee, and he was unique. 
G: Did Rayburn ever talk about him when you had these talks with Rayburn? 
O: I don't recall, no. 
G: Could Rayburn, or later McCormack, employ any devices to keep him on the job and keep him from taking these treks to the islands or wherever he went? I noticed this was a 
problem even in 1961 and 1962, having him in town for an important committee session. 
O: Oh, sure. The President of the United States or no one else could contain Adam or handle him. But, see, Adam never resented your trying to find him and all that. (Laughter) He 
just remained aloof. So even when you found him, he just laughed. I can remember I chased him all over Washington night after night, and of course he had a staff all geared to 
avoidance. 
G: Really? 
O: Oh, sure. They would get messages to him, or they didn't really know where he had gone, or perhaps he was out to dinner. Nobody ever knew where he was. Nobody ever could 
find him, and you'd leave messages in every place you could imagine, and if Adam chose to, he might get back to you in a day or two, or he might not get back to you at all. You'd 
have to start all over again. (Laughter) And everyone obviously worked at it, but, as I told you, I think the best example of our inability to handle him was that Sunday when I looked 
around my office and saw the people sitting there, one purpose in mind: to get Adam Powell, find him in Bimini and get him back to Washington for the following day. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --58 
No, I don't know how the senior southern Democrats felt about him. They never expressed it, nor did I detect any individual or collective effort to go after him in any way, 
either. 
G: He seems to have really run his committee with a strong hand, too. Was that the case? Did he--? 
O: You bet. Listen, Adam Powell was a very intelligent man, very bright when he put his mind to it. That was all, just put his mind to it. If that fellow didn't run off to Bimini, 
believe me, he would have gone in the history books as one of the great powers in the Congress, because he had the tools. When he utilized those tools, he was impressive. 
And again, I've repeated it often, but it's amazing, because it's an absolute reality. It was only when you could get him to open the kit of tools and use them, and it was hard. Hard, 
difficult as it could be. 
G: Was there anyone, say, a professional staff member on the committee that you relied on to help with Powell? 
O: No, there was no one on the committee that had any control over him at all or any authority to speak for him. He had an interesting office, the lights would be down low and 
music in the background if you walked in. He had a lifestyle of his own. 
G: (Laughter) One of the newspaper assessments of the first session of Congress stated that it was a miracle that the education bill emerged from the House committee intact. And the 
same article cited your efforts to get the bill through the committee. Do you recall what you did in working with different members of that Education and Labor Committee? 
O: Not in any detail, as I reflect on that period. It was a basically strong committee. There were some very able people on that committee. I don't know, I never tried to analyze or 
evaluate that. But if you think of a couple of the people I've mentioned, and there were others. . . . The communication with the committee was constant, not necessarily with the 
chairman, but constant. And as far as moving the committee one-on-one and head-counting the committee and that sort of thing, that wasn't the problem. There was a lot of 
work involved in sensitive but very meaningful areas. The committee had quite a plateful in those years. And it was necessary to have an inordinate amount of contact with the 
individual members of the committee, again because of Adam. You obviously couldn't depend on Adam to maintain full contact and personally head-count his own committee; 
he wouldn't devote the time and attention to that. And that's why I mentioned Jim O'Hara and mentioned Hugh Carey. And there were others; if I looked at the makeup of the 
committee it would refresh my memory. But I think probably necessity dictated that you handle that committee even more intimately than you normally would because of the lack 
of communication on a regular basis with the Chairman. So, other than that, I don't think there was any-thing unique or unusual, it was just a matter of degree in terms of the effort 
to spring that legislation out of the committee. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --59 
G: Do you recall the issue of advancing the elementary [school] aid first and then the aid to higher education? 
O: No, I don't recall it. 
G: Do you recall Edith Green's position here? 
O: Not really. Reflecting on Edith, the only area that was troublesome to us was Edith's position on the issue we talked about. Edith otherwise was a stalwart in this area and 
widely recognized as an expert in the field. I don't want to call it an aberration, it wasn't; it was the strong view she had in the one specific area. But as far as the commitment to 
education that we envisioned, she shared that and very strongly. 
G: The strong view with regard to parochial school aid? 
O: Yes, but she also had a strong view toward education, toward legislation in the field of education as long as you weren't discussing parochial school aid in that context. She was 
very well thought of in the field of education, too. In organized education across the country she was held in very high regard. 
G: Well, I guess the teacher groups were very supportive of her, too. 
O: Yes. Well, that's really where you get to the NEA. 
G: You had an element of opposition from the southern conservative congressmen, the Dixiecrats, throughout the Congress on this. Did you have any strategy for making 
headway with them? 
O: Not any overall strategy, no. Some of that was basically opposition to the program generally, and there was a continuing sort of negative or opposition aspect involving some 
of those fellows that over an extended period of time you kept working on. But applying it to a specific proposal such as this area, there wasn't any unusual strategy. We used to 
maintain our batting average with them and I'm sure you probably have noted that it became almost a statistical concentration on our part. How many were there at the 
beginning? How many were there as time unfolded? And there was the knowledge that you had to reduce that opposition to a certain number before you would have any comfort 
in terms of a majority vote, and it really was reduced to that number, utilizing everything available to us, all the things we have enumerated. 
But the fact of the matter is, and I think that's worth reflecting on again, you have a President that went into office and the members of Congress were not, with rare 
exception, intimately acquainted with him. Granted, he had spent fourteen years in the Congress, but it was split between the House and Senate. His absenteeism in the House 
was well known. The senior members in the House really didn't get to know him well. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --60 
Obviously, a John McCormack knew him but not because he was a member of the House. But there were very few exceptions. And as time went on and leadership breakfast led 
into leadership breakfast, week after week after week, you could just see the change. 
Sam Rayburn is a good example--the warm relationship that ultimately developed between those two fellows, the sharing of concerns about their physical well-being, the 
things that finally become subjects of conversation among people that feel comfortable with each other. Now, that's a long way from the Sam Rayburn in Los Angeles. Carl 
Albert right up front. The President took to Carl Albert immediately; he didn't know him well, he didn't know these people well, other than John. He knew Mansfield a little better. 
Obviously, he knew Hubert Humphrey more in combat than. . . . But I remember Carl Albert as an extremely impressive fellow, awfully, awfully able, and in no time at all we 
recognized that. The President would repeatedly say to me, "Carl Albert is such an impressive fellow." He says, "God, I'm really impressed with him." And there was 
nobody more supportive of Kennedy in those early troublesome days than Carl Albert. 
But, you see, that's where you came from, and how do you get to a point where Carl Vinson takes a walk through the Rose Garden and then has a change of heart, and he 
really had been placed in that position by a fellow on his staff. I remember sitting with him after the Rose Garden visit and he pulled back that demand he had in--
G: This is the RS-70? 
O: Yes. I mean that's the sort of thing that was happening every day. I keep referring to Al Thomas because of the tie-in to the visit to Texas. But these fellows became acquainted 
with Jack Kennedy. They really had never known him. He had three terms in the House. He was just another guy that came by once in a while--didn't hold any key position in the 
House. And as time went on, it was heartwarming to me to see this unfold, as he got to know these people. And that had so much to do with the progress we made. Like you 
say, you made a reference to some comment about my activities or the staff activities with the committee--the Labor and Education Committee. If there was any degree of success 
in that effort, I can tell you that I was dealing with people that liked the guy downtown; they liked him personally. 
G: There's one story that I read, perhaps you can put it in context and maybe amplify it. The story goes that President Kennedy would call a southern congressman after each wrong 
vote and not reprimand him or upbraid him, but simply say that he understood that the congressman had to vote that way and he realized that his constituency required him to do 
so, et cetera. And they would talk amiably. Then one time when President Kennedy really needed the fellow's support--he was heading a subcommittee--then Kennedy called him 
and elicited his support and didn't get his vote, but did get him to help clear the bill by getting other members of the subcommittee to do that. Does this sound accurate? 
O: Yes, it was accurate. 
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O'Brien --Interview II --61 
G: Can you tell me who it was and what the--? 
O: I don't know in that instance; it could have been Mendel Rivers. But this was on a very selective basis, not a mass production sort of thing. Some of the more senior southerners 
were not people that were in opposition because of some deep distaste for the White House or anything like that. It was basically a reflection of constituency. And we felt 
there had to some day be breakthroughs with a number of these people. And on a very selective basis I would give a list to the President to make those calls. 
G: These would be calls after a vote to just chat with them and get to--? 
O: Yes, and in the cases where they voted against you, because you always kept looking down that road. You knew you had to break through sometime. You could sit and react 
adversely that day, but that wasn't going to cure anything, because there had to come a time when there could be breakthroughs. I mentioned Mendel Rivers, because Mendel 
Rivers had a very close and warm relationship with John McCormack. Mendel would say to me at times, "Well, in the final analysis, Larry, I'm a McCormacrat." And he liked the 
President. He was one of many who said, "I like that guy. I run into him, I see him down there at the White House. He invites me down, we shoot the breeze, and he doesn't push 
me around, or try to." And that was all the equation. You might have it reflected in a pair. You haven't gotten these fellows to the point where they're going to vote on the 
record in that roll call. There can be an abstention, something can happen. It wasn't an up or down "vote for me," or "if you vote against me, that's it." There were ways they could 
help if they had a mind to, and you had to cultivate that willingness to be helpful. And it was done in a variety of ways. The fact of the matter is that a fellow like Rivers, there 
were any number of others, could be of some real meaningful help and it would not be reflected in the record. 
G: Yes. 
Tape 4 of 4, Side 2 
G: --perhaps a teller vote or something of this nature? 
O: Sure, all kinds of things. But in the Rivers situation particularly, that was a very close friendship, he and McCormack. And it was interesting, because Mendel was a mercurial 
sort of fellow. But he made no bones about his admiration for John McCormack and, as time went on, he acquired a very pleasant attitude toward Jack Kennedy, too. 
G: Well, I assumed that a pair was fairly automatic, that it was almost a courtesy that one member gave to another. 
O: Yes, that's right, but listen, a pair, there are ways where it can work. You bring that other member into interaction in terms of an ultimate roll call. It's an intriguing parliamentary 
procedure. You can do an abstention--you had commitments at times to await a vote after 
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O'Brien --Interview II --62 
the second or third go-around. This was before the electronic devices and "if needed." Oftentimes the "if needed" didn't occur because we would survive without it. But if a 
fellow said, "I'll vote with you only if needed," then you've made some progress. 
G: That's an interesting concept, because in your papers, on your little tally sheets, I saw that a lot, "if needed." 
O: Yes. Now, who knows? The call went out "if needed" on occasions. On occasions it didn't. It was a gamble on the part of that member, too, who didn't want to vote with you. 
If the call came, and those people were all spotted on the floor, everybody knew what their role was. To hang back on roll calls, that's a usual procedure anyway. It took forty-five 
minutes for a roll call in those days in the House. And the fellow would step up and could make the difference. But more often than not, the need didn't arise, so the test 
wasn't ultimately given. 
G: Was there a tendency at all to overuse that and to say to a member that his vote was needed when in fact you had a pretty good margin? 
O: No. No. You would try like the devil not to overuse it, because you wouldn't try to call a fellow off the floor. This is operated out of the speaker's office. And you have the 
running count from the gallery and we have our people there, and then you'd call them off [the floor] and say, "It's clear that you're needed." I mean you don't use that just to 
position a fellow. And that was all you had a right to expect of them. 
So really what you needed was a Carl Vinson or someone to persuade a couple of members on his committee to get a bill out of committee in the form we wanted; to go 
along while not even putting himself on the spot. Because of his position as chairman, he could get people to do that. I guess that minimum wage struggle that I discussed at some 
point--I don't recall whether it was here in this context or otherwise--was a prime example of working together to try to salvage a meaningful bill. 
We could talk about the House almost exclusively, but the Senate was there throughout all this. But your problems in the Senate were less penetrating than in the 
House. So you had some elbowroom that you didn't have in the House, for one thing; the head-counting was much easier in the Senate than the House for the obvious [reason]. 
You had the same kind of leadership situation--intimate, close-in, mutual effort leadership in the Senate as you did in the House, with Mansfield and Humphrey and Smathers over in 
the Senate. You had the same kind of access and exchanges of information and all the rest of it, and you had, to some extent, the same situation where there would be the occasions 
when members of the Senate were not going to vote with you, that there was no way you could persuade them to, and you understood it. But there was some way somehow, and 
you'd sometimes suggest it. Because you didn't want to walk away empty-handed, so you'd suggest whatever might come to your mind. 
So oftentimes it was a little bit of informal assistance that was hardly discernible, 
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O'Brien --Interview II --63 
but it was another grain of sand because you can't get away from it and it will carry on throughout our discussions. As I've said repeatedly--something I learned early on--there 
are a lot of bodies up here on the Hill, and it's awfully hard to keep track of them all, awfully hard to adequately service them in whatever way you can be of service. It's 
impossible to become intimately acquainted with every one of them, so you do have to determine focus as time goes on. 
But in the final analysis, the substance is important and nobody is demeaning that aspect, but the difference can be the attitude toward the president reflected by assistance 
in some form, minuscule as it may be on occasion, because of a general atmosphere of willingness to help if it's realistic politically to do so. No one among those we dealt with 
regularly up there--and that was a broad-based group, both the House and Senate--had any motivation other than to try to be helpful if they could, as long as you did not become 
arrogant, would not try to be self-important, and that you recognized their political problems. That was overriding--that you were sensible in your dealings with them and 
you weren't excessive in your efforts to persuade them. All of that comes into it, and how do you put that into a procedural manual. It's dealing with people--certainly it wasn't 
unique with us. Every president has engaged in the same activity to some degree, but what we did was broaden it, deepen it, and formalize it, and keep him abreast of the 
progress we were making, one-on-one or one by one. 
G: The outcome of the education measure, of course it was defeated that session, and Congress did extend aid to impacted areas and National Defense Education funds for two 
years. President Kennedy had wanted a one-year extension only. And he signed that measure with extreme reluctance. Can you recall that--? 
O: No, but that wasn't the only measure he signed with extreme reluctance. I don't recall the specifics of it. It really didn't represent that old cliche about "Well, we had to settle for 
half a loaf." I think we considered this a very modest portion of the loaf to the point where you wonder whether it was worth a damn and maybe you ought to rise up on your 
haunches and give it to them, hit them with it. But anyway. 
End of Tape 4 of 4 and Interview II 
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    [ Part 3: "Attached Text" ]
 *Pages 1--64 from  Lawrence F. O'Brien Oral History Interview III*
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION 
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LAWRENCE F. O'BRIEN ORAL HISTORY, INTERVIEW III 
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION 
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON LIBRARY 
AND 
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY LIBRARY 
Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interview of Lawrence F. O'Brien 
In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Title 44, United States Code, and subject to the terms and conditions hereinafter set forth, I, Lawrence F. O'Brien of New York, New York, 
do hereby give, donate and convey to the United States of America all my rights, title and interest in the tape recordings and transcripts of the personal interviews conducted on September 18, 
October 29, October 30, December 4, December 5, 1985; February 11, February 12, April 8, April 9, June 25, July 24, July 25, September 10, September 11, November 20, November 21, 
December 17, December 18, 1986; April 22, April 23, June 18, June 19, July 21, July 22, August 25, August 26, September 23, September 24, November 3, November 4, December 10, December 
11, 1987 at New York, New York and Cotuit, Massachusetts and prepared for deposit jointly in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library 
This assignment is subject to the following terms and conditions: 
(1) The transcripts shall be available for use by researchers as soon as they have been deposited in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library. 
(2) The tape recordings to which the transcripts relate shall be in the possession of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and shall not be available for use or review of or by any source 
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(3) During my lifetime, I retain all copyright in the material given to the United States by the terms of this instrument. Thereafter the copyright in the transcripts shall pass to the United 
States Government. During my lifetime, researchers may publish brief "fair use" quotations from the transcripts without my express prior consent in each case, but no 
other quotations from the transcripts shall be published, except with my express prior approval in writing. 
(4) Copies of the open portions of the interview transcripts, but not the tape recordings, may be provided by the library to researchers upon request, subject to the terms, conditions 
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(5) Copies of the interview transcripts, but not the tape recordings, may be deposited in or loaned to research institutions other than the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library or the John 
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Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, subject to the terms, conditions and restrictions set out herein. 
Signed by Lawrence F. O'Brien on April 5, 1990. 
Accepted by Donald Wilson, Archivist of the United States, April 25, 1990. 
Original Deed of Gift on file at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, 2313 Red River, Austin, TX 78705. 
ACCESSION NUMBER 92-14 
4
INTERVIEW III 
DATE: October 30, 1985 
INTERVIEWEE: LAWRENCE F. O'BRIEN 
INTERVIEWER: Michael L. Gillette 
PLACE: Mr. O'Brien's office, New York City 
Tape 1 of 4, Side 1 
G: Yesterday we were talking about President Kennedy and the southern members of Congress. Let me ask you to elaborate on the administration's relationship with Carl 
Vinson. 
O: I think the relationship as it progressed with Vinson was somewhat typical of the improvement in relationship that took place involving several senior southern Democrats. 
George Mahon would be an [example]. The better acquainted the President and these members became, the greater the tendency was on the part of the southern Democrat to at 
times even seek opportunities to be helpful without violating his established record and his constituency attitudes. Vinson in a sense epitomized the courtly South, the total 
gentleman who was at all times courteous to you, at all times willing to listen to your point of view, at no time react negatively. He was invited, as many of them were--senior 
southern Democrats--to the White House in various formats. So as the months progressed, Vinson and the President really got to know each other, and it was good, 
because the President admired Vinson greatly. 
I can recall Carl Vinson sitting in a discussion in the Speaker's office--Sam Rayburn was speaker--regarding the minimum wage bill. There was Carl Vinson, a senior 
member of the House, an important member of the House. His being there and participating in the discussion, trying to determine how you could amend this bill so that it 
could achieve passage in the House, was an indication of what was transpiring in a climate that was conducive to this kind of rapport. We made a decision regarding that bill and we 
lost by one vote on the House floor, and then recaptured most of this in the Senate and in conference. But I think when you had reached the point where Carl Vinson and others 
would become active participants in this, it was an indication of a growing attitude that "We'd like to find some areas where we can help this young guy downtown. We like him 
and we want to support him wherever we can." 
Now, this was not in the climate of an intensive, difficult, civil rights fight. On the civil rights legislation, as we were saying earlier, I think you have to say that while civil 
rights was in the fore-front over an extended period of time, the reality was the improbability of actual enactment of civil rights legislation that would impact 
tremendously on what was perceived, at least, to be southern attitudes that had been in place for decades. That's a somewhat different climate. 
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O'Brien --Interview III --2 
You were operating in a climate where you're talking about education, setting aside any religious aspects that were involved in education struggles, where you're talking 
about medical research, or you're talking in terms of minimum wage or things of that nature. They were not individually and collectively proposals that were accepted with 
open arms by southern Democrats, certainly. They were proposals with a heavy liberal tinge to them. They did reflect the national party and the platform of the party. But [we 
wanted] to get these fellows involved rather than just in direct opposition, as in the old concept of the southern Democrat-Republican coalition. And now you have fellows, 
whether it's the [Albert] Thomases, the Mahons, the Vinsons and others--there were any number of them--with whom one way or another we're communicating and we're sharing 
problems. Not totally, however. They're not going to march to the House floor and stand up and wave their arms in support. But they had reached the point where they didn't want 
to be opposed for the sake of opposition. Rather, they didn't mind the President achieving some record of progress, and in that context and within those guidelines, let's 
communicate and maybe we can help. 
Now, we've talked about varieties of help and it took a variety of ways, but you get Vinson, and it became widely publicized, the walk in the Rose Garden. And it was for 
several hours, probably twenty-four hours, a very touchy situation. Vinson had made it clear that he was in opposition to this presidential request, that he was going to be sure 
that it wasn't carried through. The President was extremely upset, and you had a confrontation. Now, the confrontation is taking place after a period when there's a 
pleasant, friendly relationship that has developed. And the Rose Garden walk was a walk undertaken by the President and Vinson with no one else. But following that there was a 
determination to try to resolve this problem. I don't remember the details of it, but I remember that it was "let's draft a letter." Ted Sorensen was involved in that process. 
Then it was determined that Ted would accompany me if there was need to discuss the language and the wording and I would visit with Carl Vinson. Really, now in retrospect, 
you wonder why this was so significant and overridingly important, but in any event we all thought it was at that time. 
But I remember being in Vinson's office and he was the same Carl Vinson I had gotten to know, courteous and low-key. We discussed this. He had a staff man with him 
and it was Ted and I. And the conversation led to presenting the letter. I at least, and I think Ted shared that view, realized that the staff representative, and I can't even 
remember his name, who was a very key staff fellow with Vinson, was the adamant one. He was the one that was just absolutely adamant about any kind of compromise or 
adjustment, and even as Vinson talked, this fellow would move into the conversation in very strong protest. In fact, almost to the point where I didn't appreciate it. His views 
were unequivocal and there was no way of compromising it. Frankly, after a lengthy conversation, Vinson started to debate with his own staff fellow. As I recall it, the 
ultimate conclusion was that Vinson overruled the staff member, said that he found this acceptable and we would shake hands on it. He was pleased that this had been resolved in 
this manner. 
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O'Brien --Interview III --3 
So we resolved that, what could have been a very serious setback for us in terms of our relationship with Carl Vinson. But I think it was a lesson, too, because it's an 
example, I guess, of what you would run into occasionally. You rarely could be sure of it. Because of the scope of the activities of members of Congress--particularly in the Senate, 
incidentally--there is a tendency over time to have great reliance on the fellow or gal who is close to you on the staff, a great reliance. It grows as time goes on because you haven't 
the time to be as deeply immersed in these issues as the people on your staff. That was a good example of it. In the low-key discussion phase--now also let's reflect back--we 
didn't accomplish that with Vinson that meeting; obviously the President had accomplished that with Vinson in the Rose Garden. Vinson had left the Rose Garden clearly having in 
mind, "I'm absolutely open to try to work something out and I want to." And the staff fellow felt this was his ball game and he didn't want to see it closed out this way. It 
became an ego trip for him. But there you are. The relationship continued to be a warm one between the President and Vinson. 
G: What did President Kennedy say to him in the Rose Garden? 
O: I have no idea. 
G: He never told you what they [discussed]? 
O: No, we never got into it, other than he said, "Well, you know, we had a pleasant chat." But I certainly didn't get the indication from him at all that Vinson had said, "Prepare a 
letter and let's close this out." Not at all. What he had gotten from Vinson was a willingness to consider some proposal that he might make. It was a darn important walk. 
G: There were two levels of issues on that. One was the suitability of the aircraft, I gather, whether it was any good, and the other was the prerogative of the President to advance 
this program rather than be directed--O: 
That was the key aspect of it, and that was what was so disturbing to the President. Vinson had confronted him in terms of presidential prerogative and he was going to see to 
it that the President was not able to exercise his prerogative. That's a dangerous area; that's touchy, that's difficult. And in the process perhaps the quality of the plane got a 
little bit lost. 
G: When you talked with Vinson later with the staff man there, did Vinson seem aware that the plane was not what it should be? 
O: I don't recall that we really got into the quality of the plane particularly. It had gotten to the point where this is now sort of public knowledge, this will be overblown, as Carl 
Vinson saw it. He wasn't trying to cause personal problems for the President. He respected the presidency and the office. But it would be misconstrued and it really got to, 
without verbalizing it, a man sitting behind a desk who it became quite clear was prepared to [say], "Let's just get away from this, let's smooth it over and go on. I don't want to be 
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O'Brien --Interview III --4 
labeled in this way, and the President obviously is very disturbed with this matter. And my ego isn't flowing at all. Let's work it out." And to have him have to debate his own staff 
fellow to work it out was what I recall most vividly. I thought to myself, "God, if I were sitting with President Kennedy in a similar staff role, I'm not at all sure the President 
wouldn't look at me and say, "You've been around too long." It was clearly the role that this fellow had achieved with Vinson that hit me, that he could deign to keep insisting and 
rebutting his boss and basically refusing to acquiesce. It became a matter of Carl Vinson having to persuade his own man. 
G: Do you recall whether the staff member was on Vinson's personal staff or whether he was on the committee staff? 
O: I don't recall, and in fact I wouldn't be able to identify him now. I sure as the devil could have identified him for several years, though, and recall his name, but it eludes me now, 
because I never quite got over the role he was playing that day. Your fear was that this fellow's attitude and the position he insisted on maintaining can blow this up. 
G: How common was it for staff members to exercise this kind of influence over a member? 
O: Well, it was hard to identify but it was not uncommon. It was not uncommon, because we would try to identify staff people up there, committee staff people particularly, of course, 
as to their role and the extent of their authority and that went to their relationship with the chairman of the committee. And there were any number of very senior staff people. They 
were very much included in our regular contact on the Hill, and of course there would be times when you would deal directly with a staff person. It wouldn't be a common practice, 
but it really wasn't that uncommon for a staff person to [meet with us] if you were developing language or developing an amendment. It was generally in the context of the 
chairman's willingness to have it done and just work out the details. Very often this would be between the congressional relations person and others in the department or agency and 
the staff person. 
I think it would have been a mistake to ignore the role of senior staff people on some of those committees, and we tried to avoid that. As you know, some of them are 
very much career people and, interestingly enough, in the minority-majority aspect, you didn't get it in the House very often. But the minority staff member could be very senior, 
too, and obviously very knowledgeable regarding the activities of the committee and the legislation under consideration--more knowledgeable perhaps than any member on the 
committee, including the chairman. 
That remains the case today. I had an occasion not long ago on a matter of some interest to me and to the sports world to go down to Washington. I was asked if I would 
visit some old friends. So I went down and I selectively, because I could [only] spend one full day, had seven or eight appointments. I obviously went on seniority on the 
committee. But the prior evening, I took occasion to have dinner with the senior staff person of the committee, which was very helpful in terms of getting a feel of things. So I 
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O'Brien --Interview III --5 
hadn't changed my practices. 
G: One of the press accounts in 1961 stated that Vinson was absolutely the key to the administration's success in that whole session of Congress, 1961. 
O: I wouldn't go that far, but I would place him right up there in the front ranks. I could count on my fingers the people that were key. I don't think you could go that far, because 
I don't think there was [any] one member of Congress that that should be attributed to. 
G: Are there any other areas where he was essential in legislation? 
O: I think, in general, on the legislation for which he was included in the leadership meetings on the Hill. And, interestingly enough, we've talked about a rather unique relationship that 
Mendel Rivers had with John McCormack. First of all, at that period in 1961, obviously the relationship that Vinson, et al., had with Speaker Rayburn was a very close one. If 
you look back on the record of McCormack's rise in the leadership--and he was very proud of this and repeated it constantly to me--his rise in the leadership up to and 
including the speaker's position was to a great extent due to the tremendous support he had from southern Democrats, even though John McCormack in his entire voting career 
had never voted against a Democratic Party proposal. But in personal terms, he had this great relationship and it was duly recorded in the support he had through the ranks as a 
leader. 
So with Carl Vinson, you had the obvious Carl Vinson-Rayburn relationship, but you had sort of a--I shouldn't say amazing; it's not amazing. But what you wouldn't 
anticipate [is the] relationship that McCormack had with all these senior southern Democrats, which carried on through McCormack's speakership. I think the surprise 
factor was if there was a consistent liberal Democratic voting record in the entire House of Representatives over thirty years, it was McCormack's. But it didn't seem to affect his 
relationship at all with these people; in fact, they supported him strongly. 
G: With regard to Vinson, do you think that his support of the administration was advanced somewhat by that Lockheed plant in Marietta? 
O: Well, certainly it wasn't adverse to progress. I don't know as I place a great deal of credence in that. Again, it goes back to our prior discussion and the whole broad 
so-called area of patronage and power. Carl Vinson's position in the Congress was such that he could exercise a great amount of power. That probably is a little comparable to Al 
Thomas putting the space program into Houston. I don't think anybody in the White House could claim that they placed the space program in Houston. 
So again it's the tendency to seek out. And I'm sure there were people in media saying, "Well, why is Carl Vinson"--particularly after the Rose Garden when everybody 
was just waiting for this big, total blowup--and, oh, the press in Washington would just have a glorious seven days at least out of this. I'm sure there are people saying, "Well, 
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O'Brien --Interview III --6 
why? What does Vinson owe Kennedy?" Well, he didn't owe Kennedy anything in that sense. 
You have to remember one thing, and it's a statistic that I had brought to my attention on any number of occasions. I remember having dinner with Senator [Herman] 
Talmadge at his house one evening, just the two of us. We had a nice, pleasant evening, and with great glee he reminded me two or three times during that evening of the vote 
Kennedy received in Georgia in his candidacy for president re the vote in Massachusetts, and the statistic, I don't recall it now, but it seems to me he had a 60 or 62 per cent vote 
from Georgia as against a 58 or 59 or 60, whatever it was, in Massachusetts. You might say that was an aberration, but the fact of the matter was that he was very, very proud of 
that and so was Carl Vinson. 
See, these Georgians, they were southern Democrats, but there was no way you could suggest that those fellows in Georgia, or the people in Georgia, had any animosity 
to or any ill feeling toward a Catholic Jack Kennedy. By gosh, the record showed that they strongly supported him. So that was a little different than the statistics you could cite 
elsewhere, you know. So you didn't have these fellows sitting in the Congress with a concern about a constituent attitude toward Kennedy. Maybe his program and policies, 
but not in any--G: 
In discussions with President Kennedy, did he consider the Lockheed plant, though, a means of improving the relationship with Vinson? 
O: I don't recall that. I don't know what he considered, frankly, but we never deluded ourselves. We might try to get a little piece of the action or that sort of thing, but you 
were naive if you thought you were going to a Carl Vinson and remind him of the great progress he had made in behalf of his constituency which we could have derailed or that 
"he could not have done it without us." Even if there was some of that, you never tried to utilize it; that would be blatant and it could very well be counterproductive. The reality of 
the situation was that we recognized our limitations in this area, or put it the other way, that this whipping members of Congress into line through patronage, through public 
works, through this, through that, was a grossly exaggerated situation. 
G: Well, would it be fair to say then that the administration in the case of the Lockheed place really didn't have any discretion to put it anywhere else, that Vinson was exercising a 
power that he had? 
O: The only discretion you could have had in a case of that nature is if someone similar to Vinson was fighting Vinson. Then conceivably there might have been a grain of effort that 
could have been expended on behalf of one or the other. But I think what you would have done in a case like that, if there was a big battle being waged regarding Lockheed and its 
location, was to keep as far away from it as you could. 
G: Well, you did have another Vinson in a sense in the Senate, but he was also from Georgia, 
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O'Brien --Interview III --7 
Richard Russell. Let me ask you to describe President Kennedy's relationship with him. I'm talking about during this early period, before the civil rights [legislation]. 
O: Yes. Well, Russell was a giant in the Senate. There was something about his demeanor. He was different than Vinson. 
G: How would you contrast them? 
O: Well, I think Russell was more reserved. I would not say in any sense that he was blunt, but you didn't have the easy conversational relationship with Russell--I'm applying it to 
myself now--as you would have with Vinson. You had the same degree of courtesy and all the rest. 
But my feeling now, looking back on Russell and the many times he was in the White House, he was a leader in the Senate and any crisis situations included Russell, his 
committee position. I think that President Kennedy looked upon Russell as somewhat of a giant in the Senate. I wouldn't suggest that President Kennedy was in awe of him, but I 
would suspect that he had the same reactions that I did, that it was easier to deal with Vinson than with Russell. I'm not too sure that if you had a similar situation and walked in 
the Rose Garden with Russell, that it might have worked out the same way. Russell was not an antagonist, none of them were. But Russell was sort of in a class by himself. 
G: Was he less likely than Vinson to support progressive legislation? 
O: Yes. Yes, that's true. I guess if you want to use the word, he was to some degree more conservative than Vinson. 
G: Was he ever helpful to you in your liaison role? 
O: On general legislation or specific legislation, I don't recall anything unique or unusual about his voting habits. I think, again, in the off-the-record, if you will, activities and his 
key role in the Senate and his key committee position in the Senate that he was not a negative force. I think if you got to the military in terms of legislation, you found that 
Russell was a solid fellow and was not negative or obstructionist. I think, without question, he took his role very seriously, and that was really his area. That was really 
what I think to a great extent absorbed Russell. So on the general day-to-day, week-to-week legislative activities, the head-count process and the rest in the Senate with 
Mike Mansfield, Russell was not a key factor. I mean the contact with Russell directly in all of the promotion of our program was limited. 
G: Was the Vice President used for his long associations with some of these southern committee chairmen? 
O: Yes. You know, we've touched on the Vice President's role, but I think it's worth considering it again, because I'm trying to be as objective as I can and I'm paying the price 
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O'Brien --Interview III --8 
of trying to recall two decades ago. I don't think you can overlook the Vice President's reaction to what was an attitude on the part of the Senate as a whole toward him as vice 
president at the outset of the Kennedy Administration. I have to conclude that it was disappointing to him and a setback to him. He had to be surprised, because I don't think 
he would have tried to travel that route if he had anticipated the attitude that would be expressed. 
Then you go on from there--these are little things, but I think they go into the equation. The majority leader's office that he occupied in the Senate was a very elaborate 
office. He, as vice president, retained that office. I hadn't been on the Hill prior to all of this, but he not only retained that office, he spent a lot of time in it. Now, perhaps the 
record would show that that was phased out over a period of time, but I'm just thinking about my first neophyte reactions to all this when I went to the Hill. 
Mike Mansfield, as the majority whip under Johnson, occupied the appropriate office of the majority whip. He really was, I assume, designated by Johnson as majority 
whip; he was very much the number-two man, accountable to the Majority Leader at all times. But then you have to go beyond that, however, to Mike Mansfield's style, his 
nature. Mike was a very reserved gentleman, who I admire tremendously. I hadn't met a fellow who had served in three branches of the armed services, who had joined the service 
when he was underage and then came back from all of that and vigorously sought an education and became a teacher. He had no ego, none. I'm recounting this because I 
arrive up there to get acquainted and try to determine how all of this works. I guess my first reaction was, dropping into the Vice President's office, I thought it was the vice 
president's office traditionally, [and] dropping into Mansfield's office, that that was the majority leader's office traditionally. After a short period of time I became aware that 
wasn't the case. And you would get the nuances of some of these developments as time went on. 
While we are talking about Mike Mansfield, [I remember] I had occasion to go out to Montana with the President. I don't recall just what the purpose of the visit was; it was 
part of some trip. But that gave me the opportunity to meet, I recall, a brother of Mike Mansfield's, who I believe was a fireman in the town. The very modest lifestyle that was 
his background, the serious economic problems of the whole mining industry, all of this unfamiliar to me. You had to be impressed. And I was also dependent upon him for 
support and guidance, direction. I received that to the fullest and we achieved a very warm friendship. 
When we would get to a serious discussion regarding pending legislation, initially we would be meeting in Mike's inner office and we would always make the point of 
ensuring the presence of the Vice President. It was touchy. You would meet in the Majority Leader's office and then you'd advise the Vice President that this meeting was 
going to take place, it was going to include the following, and if his schedule allowed, would he join us? And he did. We would sit there; it would be probably Bobby Baker 
and a couple of other senators [concerned with] whatever the subject was at the moment. 
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O'Brien --Interview III --9 
We'd discuss strategy and then go through a head count. I can remember there were those occasions. And the Vice President would participate, but certainly did not at any time 
take over any leadership role of the meeting. He made no attempt to do that. He would defer to Mike. In other words, he was participating like a key senator that had come into 
the office to discuss the specific legislation. I think it was fortunate, with the potential sensitivities that could have existed between the two men, that nothing like that ever 
occurred, because you didn't have a Mike Mansfield who really gave a darn where his office was or what kind of chairs he might have or anything else. It obviously meant 
nothing to him. 
But I think there had to be some feeling on the part of Lyndon Johnson of some degree of discomfort. I don't know. I obviously had no discussion with him and what I 
received any time I requested it from him was every effort he could expend, and that included conferring with former colleagues on important matters legislatively. So as a 
participant, whether it was [at] the leadership breakfast downtown or whether it was in the cabinet meetings--where of course at all times the legislative program and its progress or 
lack of it was a major item of discussion and always on the agenda--he was there and involved. I probably shouldn't dwell on this as much as I am because, frankly, I didn't 
consider any of that my business. I was not acquainted with the history and the personalities in the Senate. All I was aware of was that there had been some disturbance 
on the part of some people up there regarding what they perceived to be Johnson's idea of what his continuing role should be. 
I guess I've referred to it before in these early stages. I don't have the date, but I spent an evening with him at the home he had recently acquired. 
G: The Elms. 
O: And Bobby Baker was there with his wife, my wife and I, and a Texas congressman--Brooks. 
G: Jack Brooks? 
O: Jack Brooks and his wife. We spent the entire evening discussing strategies and how to go about congressional relations in a very pleasant session that extended into a very late 
evening. Clearly we were invited, along with Baker and Jack Brooks, who was an old friend of his, so the Vice President could give me a feel of things and an opportunity for 
briefings from a fellow who obviously knew the Senate intimately, Bobby Baker. But I'm not at all sure that the Vice President's comfort level was as high as it should be from that 
early stage of the changeover on. 
Tape 1 of 4, Side 2 
G: In your papers there are reports from Mike Mansfield's office, I think from Frank Valeo, of these key meetings with Senate leaders to really thrash out divergent views on 
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O'Brien --Interview III --10 
legislation. I was impressed with simply the fact that you obtained those, that you were privy to all of that information. 
O: That's another indication of the relationship that was established between the White House and both branches. That's a good example of it. I can't envision something like that 
taking place in earlier administrations. It wouldn't take place because nobody would conceive of the meeting notes in the Majority Leader's office being transmitted to the 
White House. It was unprecedented. 
But the fact is that Valeo, when he took over from Baker, conceived his role to be a bridge between the Majority Leader's office and the White House Congressional 
Relations office. There was constant communication. Mike Manatos would spend time with Valeo regularly, but you can be sure that those notes were not sent to the White 
House without the approval of his boss. Mike Mansfield just became intimately involved in the whole procedure. We had a share in--you know, this was one ball game. Mike had 
an approach to all of this that was interesting, and there may have been times when this kind of set me back a little bit because his approach was manifested--I don't know whether 
these notes reveal any of this or not--by Mike instructing Valeo to go out on the floor and bring in Senator X, Y and Z. And then [he would say], "Larry, you talk to him directly," 
and Mike would sit there. But he would leave it to me; it was my responsibility to carry the ball. 
That would be extended on occasions where there'd be greater significance attached to whatever we were engaged in. And I'm sure on more than one occasion Mike 
would say, "Here's what I'll do. Tomorrow I'll get all these fellows"--and we put together a list--for lunch in his office. I don't remember what the subject was, and it might have 
been the first occasion this occurred because I must say that I was a little nervous about the whole procedure. Here's a guy that's on a staff down at the White House and all of a 
sudden there are twelve or sixteen senators at this long table having lunch; Mike is on one end of the table and he places me on the other. We'd have one of those very mediocre 
quick lunches and Mike would say, "Now, you know what the subject is," or "We asked you to come in, and now I'm going to turn it over to Larry. Larry, you go ahead now." 
My preference, I guess, would have been for Mike to go ahead and I could chip in here and there. But that was his style. People might say he did it by committee, sort of, but 
everybody was included. There was no gossip, no secret, behind-the-wall stuff. You have a pitch to make, you're trying to get these votes, you're trying to get some unity, or trying 
to get this amendment adopted, or you're trying to get the feel. "Let's get them in here. Let's sit them down. Now you go ahead and talk to them and ask them." 
G: Did these luncheon meetings take place fairly often or was it--? 
O: That would be when it got to the point where the people that Mike felt should be involved in the discussion would be ten, twelve or sixteen senators. Most often [it was less]. I 
remember that little corner of his inner office, which was a large room. This fellow would serve coffee, and it was [at] a round table in sort of an alcove that would accommodate up 
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O'Brien --Interview III --11 
to--there'd be Mike and I and three, four, maybe up to five or six senators as you spread the circle a little bit. 
The luncheon was not a normal procedure, but that was when you've got to communicate with twelve to sixteen members and you might as well get them all in. 
"Now, I'll get them in for you and have them sit down. I'm in accord with what you're trying to do and I will so state, but you've got to speak on behalf of the President." It kind 
of put me to the test a little bit, and I must say that I was a little tense about that sort of thing in the earlier days. And there was the basic problem that you could inadvertently or 
indeed stupidly cross that line one inch and not be suitably deferential and all the rest, and all of a sudden there might be some fellow saying, "Wait a minute, what is this? What's 
going on here?" 
G: Did that happen to you? 
O: No. 
G: Did President Kennedy believe that Mansfield was too pessimistic on legislative matters, too cautious? 
O: He knew he was cautious. Mike was a fellow that wanted to have things in place and have a total understanding they were in place before you took the next step. But I don't recall 
that President Kennedy considered that a negative at all. That again was part of his style. What he had in Mike wasn't an overly verbose fellow. With his pipe particularly, he might 
respond in rather clipped sentences. But he was a very direct fellow. You need not be concerned about Mike's attitude or position. If you asked what he thought the status or 
the hope or expectancy was, he would tell you. Now, there were times when that wasn't what you wanted to hear, and I think that you could construe that as meaning he's a 
pessimist by nature and he doesn't wage battle as aggressively or in the style that we'd like to see. I think what you would do anyway with a fellow like that is accommodate to his 
style and act accordingly, because you never had any question in your mind about his dedication and commitment. That was his style, and let's face it, the record we had on the 
Senate side would indicate that there was nothing wrong with his style. 
But his sensitivity, and we'll get to it later, regarding the White House role, mine specifically, was that I was totally accepted by Mike Mansfield. Whatever hour of the day 
or night I was in or out of his office, Mike was available and we'd chat, even if it was just discussing the weather or some sporting event, have a cup of coffee and chat. But I didn't 
realize until the situation occurred with the trade bill that Mike wasn't about to have his office overrun or the corridors overrun with White House or executive branch people 
charging around the place. That turned out to be a sensitive matter at one point. 
G: On the trade bill, is that right? 
O: Yes. Mike directed me to order our private-sector citizen trade people to remove 
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O'Brien --Interview III --12 
themselves from proximity of the Senate Chamber, and [he] was not going to allow them to have the use of his inner office for discussions, as I had that use. I dutifully calmed all 
that down. There was nothing these fellows were doing wrong. They were all gung ho and aggressive and they were inadvertently making their presence too widely known, and 
their efforts were just too obvious and in too close proximity. It was all right for me to have the access I had, but I had to under-stand that just didn't include some army. 
Obviously I attended to that as diplomatically as I could, as quickly as I could. There was no further reference to it. But that is just an indication of the fellow's style. 
G: After LBJ became vice president, how important was Bobby Baker to the Senate operation? 
O: Well, first, Bobby Baker was known to the President-elect. Bobby Baker had, as I guess the record will show, a very unique role in the Senate. If you needed a head count, Bobby 
Baker would have a head count for you in a matter of hours. If you needed a projected attendance count for next Thursday, Bobby Baker would be able within an hour to tell you 
who's going to be present, who wouldn't be and why. 
G: Did this involve an extraordinary talent in itself? Was it simply a mechanical operation? 
O: No, I think it had a significant degree of talent in there. Obviously I didn't know Bobby Baker at all until I was introduced to him. But his role, which I did assume was the role 
he had under Johnson, was an interesting role. I was very interested in this fellow and these titles in the Senate, staff titles, although at first they meant nothing to me. You pick 
up a little bit each day and you try to keep as quiet as you can and be as observant as you can and try to put the cast in place. There wasn't any briefing session for me in all of this 
sort of thing; you had to pick it up as you went along. But the Baker role, for example, with Mansfield, that's when I met Baker, obviously. Baker was a fellow still doing what 
he always did. Mike would say, "We have a partial roll call; we have ten members who we have no idea where they stand on this," and Baker would be assigned to check them 
out during the day and come back with whatever intelligence he could to determine our follow-ups. And that was an integral part of the activity. I don't remember in the time 
frame when Baker departed and Valeo came aboard. You might jog my memory on that, but I don't know--G: 
1963, I think, was when he left. 
O: Was it that late? 
G: Yes, I believe that's right. 
O: Because Baker got into all the problems he had and a change took place. I think it was Mike Mansfield's nature, too, that if he took over a post, took over as majority leader, that 
he took over staff accordingly and there weren't any decisive changes. 
16
O'Brien --Interview III --13 
Incidentally--the comparison between the two--Valeo carried on in basically the same task, but Valeo was, if you can put it this way, more of a student of the legislation, 
had a keen interest in the substance. I don't know what his background was, but he came across to you as a fellow that was quite knowledgeable regarding the legislative program 
in detail, while Bobby Baker was not that way. Bobby was more interested in the game, the way it was played, the ebb and flow and the give and take of votes and amendments 
rather than any great involvement in the substance per se. 
G: Did you have any opportunity to observe some of his extralegal activities, practicing law, or misuses of office while he was--? 
O: No. I don't recall--I'm sure I met Baker's wife on a few occasions. 
G: Dorothy, I think it was. 
O: Yes. But we didn't have any social contacts. Beyond his role and my role, I have no recollection of ever having dinner with Baker or having a drink with Baker off the Hill. I 
had no idea what Baker's extracurricular activities would be, if any, I'm sure during that period. I think as I discuss Bobby now, I do recall that he had a very close relationship, 
I'm not saying confined to one senator, but certainly with Bob Kerr. I remember it came across very quickly to me that his relation with Kerr and I'm sure others--and I don't know 
why I cite Bob Kerr but I think probably that's accurate--that while he had this relationship with a number of senators with his ability to communicate with them, that the relationship 
with Kerr seemed to be much more intimate than with the others. And let's face it, in dealing with the Senate, Kerr was a powerhouse up there. 
G: Why was he a powerhouse? 
O: I think through his own personality, frankly. He was very aggressive, somewhat dictatorial, demanding--not that he demanded anything of me--but all of this came through 
in terms of the personality of the guy. We made efforts to establish a relationship with him as we did with every-one else. I think it was more difficult; we were more uncertain. It 
wasn't to convert him to a liberal Democrat, but you just didn't get to the intimacy or the relaxed atmosphere that we did with many of the conservative Senate Democrats. 
I was not with the President when he visited Kerr's ranch on some occasion, but I remember Ken O'Donnell telling me--I think he and Dave Powers accompanied the 
President. I'm sure it was part of some trip. I would normally be on a trip involving congressmen or senators, but what-ever occurred, I wasn't there. But apparently Senator 
Kerr pointed out to them that he owned everything looking to the horizon and as far as the eye could see. Then the concern of Ken and Dave--I guess they probably stayed 
overnight--was that there would not be a drink available. I'm not too sure that one or both of them didn't sneak a little drink in with them in the anticipation that they wouldn't have a 
chance to have a cocktail. But Kerr was known to be a total abstainer. I guess he was probably a Baptist; I don't know, but followed rigidly the precepts of whatever his 
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O'Brien --Interview III --14 
religious convictions were. 
All of that was in it, so I can't suggest to you that I established a high comfort factor with Bob Kerr. I tried. There was nothing negative, but I didn't have that feeling. 
I could deal with a lot of other senators much more easily than I could with Bob Kerr. But I guess Kerr's name came into this discussion because of Bobby Baker's relationship 
with him. 
G: Yes. Kerr seems to have been quite close to the financial institutions and also the oil interests. Of course, he himself was an oilman. 
O: I'm sure it's Kerr I'm talking about. I can remember a conversation with him and his describing his earliest stages as a lawyer and how he acquired his obviously significant 
wealth. As a young lawyer, in these early explorations, he became a recognized expert on the legal documents necessary to acquisition of these potential oil sites. But the key to it 
was that a lot of these--what they call them, wildcatters?--needed to have this legal work done and in most instances didn't have money to pay for it. So Kerr established early on 
this procedure that he would do probably hundreds of these agreements, and in lieu of a fee take a percentage of the action. And the law of averages played out over a period of 
years. It was quite interesting, and he was very proud of his approach to the practice of law and how he was thinking way ahead though he, too, didn't have any financial 
resources. 
G: One more question about JFK and the southerners: in terms of appealing to the South, the Democrats in Congress, he did increase price supports for cotton and rice and tobacco and 
some of these products. Was this a factor? How did this come into play in enlisting their support? 
O: Well, it was helpful. The record of the White House regarding southern senator interests was a pretty good one. We went along; we were sensitive to their interests. We worked 
with them and we achieved some pluses. I could not say we had a specific plus that resulted in a specific vote, but it helped in a general climate. 
But, you know, it's interesting. You're talking about Kerr and talking about Dick Russell, but you could talk about a number of others who by dint of seniority had achieved 
significant positions in the Senate. Envision the living quarters in the White House as part of our practice of having a group of senators invited in, perhaps ten or a dozen, carefully 
selected because of what might be pending. Obviously included, if it were ten or a dozen sitting in a semicircle in one of the living rooms of the quarters with the President sitting in 
a rocking chair, would be the Dick Russells, generally, the Bob Kerrs, sometimes bipartisanly there'd be the Ev Dirksens along with them. And there's going to be hopefully 
a sales pitch, because there was a purpose in having this meeting. You can socialize just so long and then get to the subject at hand, because these meetings probably wouldn't last 
more than an hour or an hour and a half in the late afternoon. 
18
O'Brien --Interview III --15 
The President would state his views. Now, here's a president of the United States sitting there who was, indeed, a neophyte in the Senate, very much junior, not in the 
power structure of the Senate. And here are all these fellows that he knows, but not intimately. It created a climate. At least in his mind he found it, I think, difficult. He 
would espouse his views and he could always articulate his views well, present his case, exchange some comments around the circle, but the bottom line to even informally 
head-count them, you wouldn't reach that point. He probably would have been more comfortable if he had never known them. I think that's natural. There was a slight 
reticence. I'm mentally pushing him because I want out of it all I can get, in terms of doing a little more head-counting tomorrow. But he would not attempt to put them on 
the hook. 
G: Did Mrs. Kennedy play a role in building bridges, ties to these senior members of Congress? 
O: No, not any individual effort in that regard. She followed the basic first lady procedure. She visited the Hill on rare occasions. I know she paid a couple of visits to the Senate. 
What do they call that, where they all get together and sew or whatever they did? There were carefully orchestrated invitations to White House functions, and she was always 
briefed as to the attention that should be paid. She did that extremely well with these members of Congress and their wives and would devote a good deal of attention to them. 
But on an individual basis, to seek or maintain contact, unlike Lady Bird, there wasn't that to any great degree. There again, she just didn't know these people, didn't know most of 
them at all, while of course Lady Bird knew them all intimately. But her role was basically confined to the traditional first lady role and there wasn't anything in terms of my end of 
the business that was unique or unusual, other than in the social concepts. 
For example, these meetings I'm talking about in the living quarters, you'd always make a point that she would be knowledgeable as to who was going to be there, and at 
some point generally [she would] come in briefly to say hello and shake hands with everyone and welcome them, but not participate in the discussions. There wasn't any time 
in my organized legislative relations efforts that I put her specifically into the equation. 
For example, I just thought about it, we were talking early on about the involvement of Mrs. Johnson, not only in beautification but her general considerable 
interest in the legislative program and its progress. It was not at all unusual for me to be chatting with her about matters at the moment which interested her a great deal, even little 
personality clashes, that sort of thing, a little scuttlebutt regarding the legislative progress. And it was not unusual for her to call me when she would be noting something transpiring 
and ask me what I thought or how was it going or was that factual that she had just read, something of that nature. I don't recall Jackie Kennedy engaged in that kind of activity. 
G: I suppose the tradition of first ladies was really more like Jacqueline Kennedy than Lady Bird Johnson. 
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O'Brien --Interview III --16 
O: Yes, I would think so. And, of course, you go to Jackie Kennedy's interests: the arts, refurbishing the White House was a great interest to her. Her background and her areas 
of interest were such that they really didn't get to what she might have construed a little bit mundane, things such as head counts. (Laughter) 
G: You've discussed that minimum wage bill and have written about that in your book as well, so I won't ask you to repeat that, but--O: 
I'm not going to repeat any of it other than just to underscore once more that I think I used it often. I used it in the book and we've discussed it in great detail, because it 
contained just about all the elements in a legislative struggle, including a one-vote loss after all of the manipulation and maneuvering. I think it's a microcosm of efforts we 
undertook. It had all the elements in it. 
G: The Republicans charged that three of the Democratic conferees, [William] Ayres, Adam Clayton Powell and James Roosevelt, who had supported the administration bill, failed to 
fight for the House version. Do you recall that and what the problem was there? 
O: No, I don't recall specifics on that. That was the accusation and what was the ground for it? Was there a suggestion that they had some reason to drag their feet? I really don't 
know. 
G: I was going to ask you what the reason might have been. 
O: Yes. I just don't know. 
G: The bill in its final version did exempt federal workers, but I noticed that Kennedy included federal workers under an executive order. Do you recall that? 
O: In the various phases of compromise, exclusions became part of com-promise. Clearly one of the most difficult areas of exclusion that we were forced to accept were laundry 
workers. I don't recall specifics on federal employees other than the recognition that you could do a give-up in that area because you had a way of compensating for it. So that 
wasn't too tough. Or the persuasion on the part of friendly people trying to help us enact legislation that if we would accept that, it would be helpful in moving the legislation. We 
did have a recognition during the course of this that there was a way to resolve it. That was probably a little easier to give up than the laundry workers. 
G: Yes. 
O: Actually, when the bill was completed we probably had a half a loaf, maybe a little better than a half a loaf, but that was the philosophy we followed. We're not walking down from 
the Hill without taking a half-loaf, with the total commitment in our minds we'll be back for the rest of it. 
20
O'Brien --Interview III --17 
G: Was this strategy of using an executive order to get what you couldn't achieve in legislation fairly typical of President Kennedy? 
O: If the opportunity presented itself, there was a distinct awareness of it and no reluctance to utilize it. That was our view, and I'm sure that view was implemented on occasions. But 
we all had a pretty clear understanding of that. You might be stymied in a lot of ways and this great power of the presidency wasn't quite what observers thought it was. It can be 
awfully frustrating, but if you have this procedure available to you, you're going to utilize it without hesitancy. That was our attitude, and the actual implementation I haven't any 
great recollection. But I do have a distinct recollection of not only our awareness of it, but our desire to utilize it. 
G: Did members of Congress object to this? 
O: Oh, yes, that's one area where they'd give you a little bit of heat. But that was an area where we weren't going to listen particularly. 
G: Did they have any recourse? 
O: Well, I suppose long range in a variety of ways they could have some recourse, but that was the gamble you took. There was always a tendency of, sure, listen, if you've tweaked 
somebody individually or collectively or put their nose a little bit out of joint and they're not pleased with what you've done, a) they have to recognize you have the authority to do 
it. Secondly, to get even in any form is an indirect procedure that might manifest itself in some way somewhere down the road. But your expectancy was that--really in any 
important way--that would not occur, because there's always tomorrow and there's another subject to discuss. 
G: Richard Russell seems to have been one of those who was especially sensitive about government-created things that were not a result of legislation. 
O: Well, that's part of the Russell I was trying to describe. You have to remember that Russell was not unique in the sense that he did feel that, indeed, he was very well qualified 
to be president of the United States. I think the record shows that he had that feeling early on. But I think that is played out on the part of some senators by being inordinately 
sensitive to the executive branch activities, retaining, at least in their mind, the power of the Congress, the authority of the Senate, and the need to achieve advice and consent, 
approbation and approval in just about every instance. The presidential powers were limited to a greater degree than actuality in the minds of some of them. That's by the very 
nature of their seniority and their position in the Senate, and perhaps a little bit of feeling that they'd do a better job if they were there. 
G: One of the criticisms of using this form of action, executive order rather than legislation, is that it does not achieve for the measure the same status that an act of Congress would. 
21
O'Brien --Interview III --18 
O: Well, it's sure as the devil better than nothing. It might not achieve the same status, but there's a real probability it will achieve the same goal. 
G: Two other examples: one, the Peace Corps was established initially through executive order. Why was that? 
O: The Peace Corps bordered on the revolutionary in concept and initial reaction to that concept. If you think back on the Peace Corps, that was a little bit far out to a lot of 
people. If the opportunity presented itself to put it in place, you were going to seize that opportunity, because I think extended discussion on that proposal in legislative terms 
could have doomed it or severely restricted it. If you had a starting point, you could get into a position of saying, "Listen, here it is. Now let's talk about implementation and 
procedures" Even in terms of very liberal New Frontier legislative program, this would have to be termed unique. 
G: But once it was set up and once you did have the legislation, it was not apparently that controversial. I mean it passed easily enough. 
O: Amazingly so. It wasn't [controversial]. I'll give you my own reaction. I was surprised at the broad acceptance of it once it was in place. I felt it would be subject to conservative 
opposition and controversy. I think the early reporting of Peace Corps activities was very upbeat. I think it really extended beyond somebody saying, "Well, I'm a conservative," or 
a liberal. The uniqueness of it and, as far as I'm concerned, its progress and its record were surprising to me and very pleasing. But I must say there was some trepidation when 
we were first at the concept stage. 
Tape 2 of 4, Side 1 
O: I don't know the current status [of the Peace Corps], whether it's at the level of involvement and intensity that existed during those early years or just where it is now. Do 
you? I don't know. 
G: No. Your papers reflect almost a struggle within the administration on the Peace Corps in behalf of its advocates to get it considered among the top priority programs to be enacted 
and an attempt to get the President to embrace the Peace Corps as really a top priority. 
O: Yes, that's true. 
G: Do you recall this issue and how it--? 
O: That's true. It wasn't a split with the administration in terms of whether or not there should be a Peace Corps or whether the proposal had great merit. It went to those that 
like to describe themselves as realists--that would include me--and those that we construed to be a little bit dreamers, and that would include a number of my colleagues. 
The problem with the Peace Corps within the administration was to upgrade it or have it 
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O'Brien --Interview III --19 
at the level that the staunch, enthusiastic advocates wanted it and the level that we envisioned in terms of how many battles can you wage. There was certainly a difference 
in the temperature on the part of many of us, and I must say that I think I probably fitted in the category of the fellow saying, "Hey, I think it's great. It's just as impressive as the 
devil. Marvelous idea. But now, how do you get it into formulation?" And what are the priorities here? How many battles can you take on? I can remember Ken O'Donnell and I 
discussing this, because we were both practical; hard-bitten perhaps a little, saying, "You wouldn't quarrel with anyone about the merits of something like this but, gee whiz. . . ." 
So that was resolved by the procedure that was followed putting it in place. And I must say there was total accord on the part of all of us, no matter what our concerns were 
about putting it in place at the outset or the form of putting it in place. Indeed, it was a shining star in the firmament of our accomplishments. 
G: There was the issue of whether or not to include it as a part of AID or within the State Department or to establish it as a separate agency. Do you recall this? 
O: Yes, I recall discussions concerning it, but I don't recall specifics. I'm not persuaded even now that there was a great weight placed on putting it in the State Department. I think 
there was a feeling of independent status pretty much from the outset even in general discussions of the pros and cons. 
G: I have a note that Mike Manatos had been quoted as saying that LBJ had not helped to advance that legislation and that was very disturbing to Johnson, and he even called 
Manatos and called Bill Moyers. Do you recall that? 
O: No. 
G: Was he helpful on it? 
O: My recollection is he was. I have no recollection that Johnson didn't share the general view regarding it. It's conceivable that Johnson might have shared my view that this was a 
difficult task. But I would wonder about the supposed Mike Manatos statement. 
But when you think of the Great Society programs and the general attitude that Lyndon Johnson had toward matters of this nature, there's no question in my mind that he 
was in total accord with the concept and pleased with the results. But if he had stated that we might have some difficulties with some people, I could have been quoted accordingly. 
G: One of your memoranda indicates that [Sargent] Shriver and Moyers were practically living on the Hill, lobbying for--O: 
That's true. I've said this before, and I think it's worthy of [repeating]. 
G: You've talked about Shriver, I think, yes. 
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O'Brien --Interview III --20 
O: Yes. Shriver and Moyers made a great team in this effort. My view [is] that these are two men of exceptional abilities. Shriver was the leader. What was so pleasing was you had 
two men that were extremely aggressive in promoting their views. You can have people that are wedded and dedicated, but then do you have this aggressive promotion and ability 
to communicate that can be so important in moving something in the Congress? And Sarge Shriver, I don't think I ever have a conversation with Sarge that I don't walk away 
renewing my admiration in his enthusiasm for whatever he's involved in. As you know, I give him high marks. And when you talk about Bill and Sarge on the Hill, I'm sure they 
wore out a couple of pairs of shoes in the process. 
G: A note indicates that they even made some progress with Otto Passman. Do you recall that? 
O: I would suspect the record probably doesn't indicate that, but then I'm saying that off the top of my head. But I'll give them high marks for trying. 
(Laughter) 
But if they made more progress with Passman than we did in foreign aid--well, any progress they made with Passman would be more than we made with foreign aid. But you 
know, it's worth commenting on that. That's an example of the activities of those two fellows. You'd have difficulty finding a couple of fellows in Washington, knowing Otto 
Passman and knowing his record and background and his attitude, that would deign to make the effort. And they made the effort, obviously, but maybe I'm being a little cynical 
and maybe the record shows otherwise, but if they persuaded Otto Passman in this area, I should have been back to Sarge and Bill Moyers to take over the foreign aid effort, too. 
They were a good team, those two fellows. 
G: Moyers was terribly young at the time. 
O: Oh, God, and I don't think--and there are exceptions to this--but that is drudgery, what I was engaged in. There were even attempts somehow that I've read or heard over those 
years to glamorize what I was engaged in. I was engaged in gut, hard work that hardly allowed you to ever sleep. You know, I loved it; I loved every minute of it. But if it were 
not an effort expended in the promotion of the New Frontier and Great Society programs, and you put it into another context and suggest to me I make a similar effort, there's no 
effort I can imagine in life that would have intrigued me to do what I did during those years. I lived and breathed it. You had setbacks and pitfalls constantly. You sweated out 
every darn vote on the Hill. It was endless. One struggle of that nature in a year would have been enough, but yet you were back to it day after day after day. And when Bill and 
Sarge were up doing what they did, that represented total dedication. That represented a complete commitment. To recognize that if you could only get the darn thing done and 
get a presidential signature on it, it was going to make a contribution to progress affecting a lot of people. My gosh, for any other reason, you'd say, "You've got to be crazy. I can 
24
O'Brien --Interview III --21 
find a better job than this." 
G: Let's move to the Area Redevelopment Bill. This has always been described as a fulfillment of a campaign pledge that President Kennedy made in the [1960] campaign. 
O: I'm sure it was one of a number of pledges that were made; a recognition of the problems that ought to be attended to in these areas. 
G: I was going to say, did it come out of that West Virginia primary? 
O: I can tell you that his commitment to West Virginia was total. Come hell or high water, he was going to repay the people of West Virginia a debt he owed to them because of the 
support they had given him, the confidence they had expressed in him. It was a topic of conversation on the part of the President constantly. 
G: Really? 
O: I don't think I can exaggerate his depth of commitment, and that there was going to be area redevelopment. There was going to be a focus on West Virginia. He would have the 
record show that he was responsive and recognized their problems. But the element of appreciation of their support for him was very much a significant part of all this. 
Of course, while you focused on West Virginia, you took it as extending through a whole region, and to other regions that equally merited some special attention. 
G: Paul Douglas was, I guess, the chief sponsor of the bill and the head of a task force to resolve this. Do you recall working with Douglas on this? 
O: Yes. I recall working with Douglas on this and on a variety of other matters, I think probably truth-in-packaging, truth-in-lending and other matters of that nature. I want to 
say that I've just described the drudgery of the job, but if you wanted to point to a significant element of pleasure in the job, becoming acquainted with Paul Douglas and 
working with him was one of the highlights of my experience in congressional relations. We've talked about unique and unusual people and I guess you would anticipate that in an 
entity called the Congress of the United States you're going to run into more than the normal number of unique and unusual people. That's how a lot of them got there. But 
Paul Douglas is a stick-out. 
There was one problem he had in the Senate, incidentally, and we might as well talk about it. It was a little bit perhaps the problem that Hubert Humphrey had in politics. 
Paul Douglas was construed by some people to be too soft because he was so nice and so decent and so honorable. And maybe that lessened his impact. He was not a 
wheeler-dealer. I might have discussions with other members of the Senate I wouldn't have with Paul Douglas on things we might do to bring certain things about, not of a 
devious nature but more the give and take of the political arena. But Paul Douglas was a 
25
O'Brien --Interview III --22 
man that rightly was on a pedestal as a human being. He was a marvelous human being and it was an absolute pleasure to go into Paul Douglas' office, whatever the 
circumstances were, to visit with him, to meet with him, to discuss the business at hand with him. It was an absolute pleasure. And if I had to sit down and list people that left a 
lasting impression, he'd certainly be on that list. 
G: On the Area Redevelopment Bill, there were several issues. One was whether the administrator would be directly responsible to the president or under the secretary of 
commerce. And Douglas did agree to accept the latter arrangement. Do you recall that? 
O: Not specifically. My best recollection is that initially you had a decided preference in that area. Now, if that was going to be compromised away in some form remained to be seen. 
But I don't recall Douglas--it might have been the case--objecting particularly to that. You put it in the context that he accepted. I don't know whether Douglas had a 
preference, but I don't recall Douglas having any serious objections. 
G: Now, the other controversy surrounding the bill was a question of back-door spending, direct Treasury financing rather than congressional appropriation. Here it seems that 
President Kennedy reversed himself in initially going along with the congressional appropriation and then seeking a direct financing. Do you recall that? 
O: I recall that there was a reversal, and the motivation for it or what was entailed in bringing it about, I don't recall. But that's correct, that the initial approach was--G: 
Do you think he felt he could get more money if he didn't have to--? 
O: I don't know. You could make some assumptions, but I don't recall it well enough. I think that you probably would have a preference to go in that direction anyway. And why 
he initially didn't attempt it and then reversed himself, I don't know. It's a little cleaner from the executive branch point of view anyway. 
G: One press account indicates that the success of this legislation was due to the way the southerners were handled. 
O: Well, I don't know that the way they were handled would differ particularly from the way we attempted to handle them generally in legislation. I think that you have an element 
here, though, that differs probably rather significantly from some of the other proposals where we attempted to work with the southerners. I think you had a lessened degree of 
concern; there was some, but a lessened degree regarding the fallout from implementing this legislation in terms of equal rights, civil rights and the rest. It was a different 
dimension, a different category. It really went to regions; it went to need, it went to programs. Regardless of what your views might be on some social legislation, you 
certainly would have a common interest in the need for federal involvement in areas like West Virginia, for example. My recollection was that this was a more comfortable battle 
for us than some of the others. 
26
O'Brien --Interview III --23 
G: Another legislative issue that I wanted to ask you about was the temporary unemployment compensation fight. Here you had the principle of pooling or sharing the resources among 
the states and then using the funds where they were most needed for unemployment situations. This was a real close battle; I think you won by two votes in defeating the 
[Harry] Byrd amendment to throw out the pooling principle. 
O: Well, that was the heart of it. You know, if Byrd had prevailed, what have you got? You've got a shell. 
G: That's right. 
O: Sure. And you know it isn't human nature to share. (Laughter) You have to get over that little hurdle. But without that pooling principle, really, what did you have? 
G: Describe what you recall of that battle. 
O: I think I just did, perhaps to the best of my recollection, because the battle really was focused on how do you convince people they ought to share. It's a basic human attitude 
that has to be overcome. And what are you faced with? It was a pretty simple process: listen, if you don't have pooling, we had nothing. We probably wouldn't be interested in 
the shell, because the implementation would be nonexistent or the possibilities of implementation. And Byrd was going to kill that bill. I don't know how you would 
describe it, but Byrd didn't envision anything particularly of interest [in it] to him and the state of Virginia. And Byrd would gravitate in that direction philosophically. I'm not 
talking about the sharing side or the pooling, but even though I've said it's a different climate, you're really not into social problems directly. You're talking about regions. You 
have a lot of automatic support from places that you wouldn't get support for other legislation. 
So you're starting to add that up and weighing it, and so it made it a little tough. It was more than a little tough. But the possibility of succeeding--you look at that roll call 
and you'll find it a very strange one, odd, for obvious reasons. You had people on this program that probably weren't working on anything else that you engaged in. And for the 
obvious reasons. Once you get into area or regional programs, then you quickly in your head count, just put them down right. Even though if you went back to the same fellow 
the next day, he might not even talk to you. (Laughter) 
G: The note I have indicates that there was considerable administration pressure to get this. 
O: You bet. As I told you early on, there was presidential motivation that extended beyond the ordinary. 
G: Labor Department estimates showed that nine states would really benefit from this, and these included Alaska, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, 
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O'Brien --Interview III --24 
Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Is this where you focused your efforts to get the--? 
O: You bet. And you'll note in that list we would have liked to have had a few more large states, but we had some pretty large delegations in that list. 
G: Well, you got [Jacob] Javits and [Kenneth] Keating and [Hugh] Scott and [Clifford] Case and [Thomas] Kuchel. 
O: Yes. That, coupled with our established friends, squeezed it out. That's about what it amounted to, but even with those you list, however, we shouldn't let the record suggest 
that Javits and Kuchel and Case didn't vote with us on other occasions. But you take a thing like that. If you could have made the case that dire need would relate to nineteen 
states, you would feel that this wasn't any big battle; you could get this accomplished. But it was a close one. 
G: But you did get thirty-nine Democrats on that bill, and that's, I would say, a fairly high--O: 
That was probably a high-water mark. Not necessarily true, but when you consider the opposition and the closeness of the Byrd amendment, obviously you needed them all plus 
a few that joined the team briefly. 
G: Did you have much contact with Byrd? 
O: Yes. A fair amount of contact, pleasant and nonproductive. 
(Laughter) 
The contact extended to flying with the President in a helicopter down to his apple orchards or whatever it was and everything else imaginable. (Laughter) But not 
productive. 
By the time Johnson was dealing with him and we got him positioned on Medicare, that was probably the highlight. And the President positioned him very beautifully. Harry 
wasn't sure just what direction he was going or what had happened to him, but--G: 
This was when LBJ had the press conference and--? 
O: Yes, yes. Which had to be one of the most pleasant experiences I ever had. 
G: What did he do? 
O: Well, he just put the words in his mouth and left him on the record. And we chuckled for a good while after the fact. No, I don't think that [Harry Byrd] Sr.--I don't recall that he 
ever relented. Harry Byrd, Jr. was a carbon copy of his dad, with the additional factor that he was a little more with this century. But his personality was somewhat the same. Harry 
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O'Brien --Interview III --25 
Byrd could be as pleasant a fellow as you'd ever want to meet, and he had fine apples, but he was in another world. You talk about conservatism. You have the epitome of it with a 
facade of pleasantness and courteousness. 
G: I wonder by the time of the Kennedy Administration how much he controlled that committee, his committee. 
O: Well, there was slippage. 
G: Who did you rely on in the Finance Committee? 
O: I don't recall anybody as a stick-out. I think that we combed that committee frequently. It was one-on-one almost across the board, because we were never naive enough to 
anticipate that there would be the slightest movement on the part of Byrd. So you had to go around him. That was a committee where you made no attempt to hide the fact you 
were trying to go around him. 
Now, there were other occasions where you tried to be very diplomatic and very careful because you didn't want fellows back-stepping any more than it was. That sort of 
thing was awfully hard to weigh at times. But with Byrd, as pleasant a fellow as he was, we had no illusions at all, and we knew that to work with that committee you had to work 
around Byrd to put together committee views that were difficult, because in almost every instance you were trying to convince members of that committee to override their 
chairman. And to a far greater extent than I think exists today, that was an awfully, awfully difficult thing to do. 
You're always faced with that dilemma. Knowing all that, recognizing all that, not being naive, you never allowed yourself to pass up an opportunity. You didn't say, "My 
God, why spend a whole Sunday after-noon down on that darn farm of his?" You know it isn't going to do a thing for you. But yet you say, "Well, if you don't come out, the day 
might come when you'll wish you had." I guess you just never foreclosed anything, but that was way out. Give you a basket of apples and that was about it. Or what was it, 
apples we were eating? Apples, and it seems to me we were eating strawberries or something, too. I don't know. I think probably the visit was worth it. I may have gone 
down there a couple of times, but I remember being there and leaving saying, "Now I've just been in another world. This is just beyond my comprehension and never the twain 
shall meet." 
(Interruption) 
G: Okay, I have two pieces of legislation here, the Juvenile Delinquency Act and the Youth Training Bill, which included the youth conservation corps that Humphrey was so 
enthusiastic about. Do you recall those measures? 
O: I don't recall them in any great detail. Those are measures that really were, to some 
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extent, a carryover from the Democratic Party traditional position that almost goes back to New Deal concepts. I don't recall them in the context of the legislative struggle. They 
were in there, obviously. They had some priorities, but they were on a list of several measures that we were working on and it did reflect a particular point of view of Hubert. 
He was a very strong advocate and very much involved. But in the nitty-gritty of the legislative struggle, I have very little recollection. 
G: Okay. In the case of the Juvenile Delinquency Act, Robert Griffin, the Republican, wanted to limit the project to a pilot program in Washing-ton, D. C. His amendment was 
first accepted on a teller vote and then defeated on a roll call, a much larger vote; you had practically double the number of members voting. Do you recall bringing in the additional 
members? 
O: I don't recall the specifics, but it would fall in a normal procedure. The teller vote generally reflected just what that reflects, and if you lost a teller vote, you obviously had a 
prior head count. Teller votes were very, very troublesome to us always. It was always the problem of getting people involved. The member back in his office just was not going 
to react to anything other than the bells for a roll call, and even then you'd have to sweat out whether or not he broke off that constituent meeting in time to dash over and be 
recorded. I would say on that that the defeat--I'm sure there were other incidents of that nature--on the teller vote would not have shook us, that we had done our job in advance 
in terms of a roll call, that we had assurances, that we had the votes and that it would come to efforts that we did undertake--and they were very difficult--to check out 
absenteeism as quickly as possible, even right in the Speaker's office. And it was not unusual for people to jump on the telephones and call offices and all this sort of thing. 
But it was a tough one, to cover that whole army quickly in a matter of a forty-five-minute period. And I remember the forty-five minutes because we used to time 
some of these roll calls and they averaged about forty-five minutes. And that's all the working time you had on absenteeism or vote change. So rushing off the floor and having 
somebody grab a member and shoot him into the Speaker's office and try to convert him, you were up against a very difficult time frame. So on the vote side of it, I have no 
recollection of the vote. But, as you mentioned, the teller vote and the size of the ultimate roll call and the margin of the ultimate roll call, that would not have been an unusual 
occurrence. 
G: How did you know how a member had voted on a teller vote? 
O: Really didn't, except observation. You always had staff people in the balcony. We didn't have computers; you'd have a fellow with a pad, or more than one at a key moment. 
Observation and quick notes and dash down the stairs and into the office off the floor and do a recap, and try to come up with as much intelligence as we could. Hit or miss I guess 
is the answer to it, but you did the best you could and we never came up with a more sophisticated way of handling it. A teller vote, that was the toughest of all. 
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O'Brien --Interview III --27 
G: Another measure passed by both the House and Senate was aid for dependent children. This was an emergency anti-recession measure proposed by Kennedy to make families of 
unemployed workers with dependent children temporarily eligible for public assistance. Did the administration, while billing this as a temporary anti-recession measure, view it in 
terms of a possible long-term, permanent reaction to--? 
O: Not that I recall. No, it was a reaction to the circumstances of the moment. In fact, my recollection would be pretty clear in that regard. I recall that measure and I have no 
recollection that it was envisioned as a foot in the door. 
G: Really? 
O: There might have been some people that envisioned it, but I didn't. 
G: Anything on the give and take of getting that through? Social Security benefits were broadened as well, and the reduction in the retirement age [enacted]. Do you recall that 
struggle? 
O: Well, I'd place that in the category--in terms of the breadth of the effort expended--that was major. That did go to short-term and long-range and had all the elements of a major 
effort. My recollection is this included a heavy involvement with Wilbur Cohen and his people. I think I'm accurate on that. But it was a broad-based effort with involvement to 
some degree of department and agency people that were not directly involved in the legislation. This was one where you broadened your base of operation as much as 
possible in terms of member contact. A lot of planning, a lot of thought went into that one. It was pretty far-reaching. 
G: Anything on the key to its passage? 
O: No, I don't think there was any magic there. I think it was launching as major an effort as you could, but I don't recall anything magic. 
Tape 2 of 4, Side 2 
O: I know I'm accurate in this regard. Not because of your commitment but because of the realities of the situation, you couldn't put into play a massive effort every time. You had 
to weigh that somewhat. There were times when you carried out your effort as a team effort, and you did not call on people that normally wouldn't be in the process. Having 
said that, you feel, well, you had a lessened effort in some instances than others. I think it was just the reality of how much you could get done and how best you could do it. Also 
you weighed it on the basis of the opposition, actual or anticipated; the difficulties in the committee, the delay in getting a rule, all of those things went into it. 
So you would find times when you would have a legislative proposal that seemed to grow in urgency and attention through the span of the struggle, because the struggle 
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itself engendered more effort and broadened your activities, and it became more intense. But sliding between the cracks from time to time were pro