Jack Shafer: Bill Moyers's Memory
Last month in a letter to Slate, former Johnson administration official Bill Moyers dismissed my recent column that criticized him for—among other things—instructing the FBI to investigate Barry Goldwater's staff. The Goldwater stuff was "very old news," he wrote, pointing to a Newsweek column he wrote about it in 1975.
Dodging criticism by citing his March 10, 1975, Newsweek column ("LBJ and the FBI") is a standard Moyers move. When a 1991 New Republic feature dinged him about Goldwater, Moyers pointed to the Newsweek piece. He referenced it again that year when a Washington Post Q&A touched on Goldwater. A recent letter to the Wall Street Journal also relies on his been-there, dealt-with-it-in-Newsweek defense. When a Washington Post investigation exposed Moyers' role in investigating the sexual orientation of Johnson staffers last month, he once again blamed Hoover, although he now confessed an unclear memory of the era.
What does Moyers say in the Newsweek column? The context in which the column appeared bears mentioning: Congressional hearings were revealing abuses of power at the FBI. According to the New York Times news story (Feb. 28, 1975, paid), Justice Department officials confirmed that Moyers had "asked the bureau to gather data on campaign aides to Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Presidential candidate … on behalf of President Johnson a few weeks before Election Day. …"
The 1975 column blames the Goldwater probe on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; Moyers writes that Johnson burst into his office one day proclaiming, "Hoover was just here. And he says some of Goldwater's people may have trapped Walter—set him up."
Walter was Walter Jenkins, Johnson's long-serving and most trusted aide. News of Jenkins' arrest for having sex with another man had just broken, and with the 1964 presidential election just a few weeks off, the Johnson administration was panicking at the thought that the scandal might cost them the White House....
Read entire article at Slate
Dodging criticism by citing his March 10, 1975, Newsweek column ("LBJ and the FBI") is a standard Moyers move. When a 1991 New Republic feature dinged him about Goldwater, Moyers pointed to the Newsweek piece. He referenced it again that year when a Washington Post Q&A touched on Goldwater. A recent letter to the Wall Street Journal also relies on his been-there, dealt-with-it-in-Newsweek defense. When a Washington Post investigation exposed Moyers' role in investigating the sexual orientation of Johnson staffers last month, he once again blamed Hoover, although he now confessed an unclear memory of the era.
What does Moyers say in the Newsweek column? The context in which the column appeared bears mentioning: Congressional hearings were revealing abuses of power at the FBI. According to the New York Times news story (Feb. 28, 1975, paid), Justice Department officials confirmed that Moyers had "asked the bureau to gather data on campaign aides to Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican Presidential candidate … on behalf of President Johnson a few weeks before Election Day. …"
The 1975 column blames the Goldwater probe on FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover; Moyers writes that Johnson burst into his office one day proclaiming, "Hoover was just here. And he says some of Goldwater's people may have trapped Walter—set him up."
Walter was Walter Jenkins, Johnson's long-serving and most trusted aide. News of Jenkins' arrest for having sex with another man had just broken, and with the 1964 presidential election just a few weeks off, the Johnson administration was panicking at the thought that the scandal might cost them the White House....