The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4)

by Robert A. Caro

concluded that “Investigation has not substantiated the security allegations against subject nor does she apparently have the high-level sex contacts she originally boasted of.” Not a week earlier, however, Harold Macmillan had resigned as prime minister of Great Britain, brought down by the “Profumo Affair,” in which the British defense minister, John Profumo, was caught in “impropriety” with a call girl who was also the mistress of a Russian naval attaché—a concatenation of circumstances that raised the spectre of security breaches. The parallels between the Profumo affair and the rumors about Elly Rometsch’s White House connections and about her spying would turn her boasting into a big story if the press got wind of it. Robert Kennedy, who, as Evan Thomas puts it, “From the outset … understood that the merest whiff of a sex-and-spies scandal could be threatening to the president,” had, in August, arranged to have her quietly deported, and the matter had appeared closed. If she had no connection to Johnson or Kennedy, however, Ms. Rometsch certainly had one to Bobby Baker’s club, and now, with Baker big news, she was news, too, and she certainly had the figure (35–25–35) and face (an “Elizabeth Taylor look-alike,” one reporter called her) and, apparently, sexual proclivities (“Lesbian prostitute,” was how Mollenhoff described her in his notes; the German Defense Ministry was to mention her “somewhat nymphomaniacal inclinations”; another source said simply, “She would do...

them was

we land. Nothing long. Make it brief. We’ll have plenty of time later to say more.” Together the three Texans composed a draft, and Fehmer typed it and gave it to him. It was short, but Johnson could always improve a statement—and this one didn’t have to be cleared with anybody. He made it more personal, changing their line “The nation suffers a loss that cannot be weighed” to “We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed,” and more dramatic, reversing two phrases in the last sentence. The draft said, “I ask God’s help and yours”; he changed it to “I ask for your help—and God’s.” The question of where the congressional leadership meeting would be held was important. McGeorge Bundy seemed to feel that Johnson could hold it in—and indeed could immediately begin to work out of—

Wisconsin and Karl Rolvaag of Minnesota, both in Washington for the funeral, on the line at the same time. Mentioning that they had visited him on one of his trips to the Mayo Clinic, Johnson said, “You came to see me when I was sick. I don’t forget. Now you let me know if there’s anything I need to know out there. I’m going to depend on you.” OF ALL THE PROBLEMS facing Lyndon Johnson, one of the most delicate—and, to his mind, most urgent—was to persuade key Kennedy Administration figures to remain in their jobs. While his plea on Friday that they stay on had worked with McNamara, Rusk and Bundy, it hadn’t with O’Brien, O’Donnell or Sorensen, and on Saturday it quickly became apparent how difficult it was going to be to keep with him some of the other most visible symbols of the Administration. When, early Saturday morning, Johnson woke its public face, Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, to ask him to stay in his job,

“I’ll

principles. But I can ask Harry Byrd—and he might oblige me—to stay away [during the vote].” Reading the Byrd text, however, Johnson had found one point very clear: the unshakable, immovable solidity of

hold this thing [the tax cut bill] until they

validity, however (and like so many