4th March. The Oval Office. Lyndon Johnson, fifty-six, a tall, restless, overbearing man, presides over a relatively informal meeting at which early evening drinks have been served. Present are J. Edgar Hoover, now seventy, a fastidiously dressed, lizard-skinned figure, overweight but strangely dainty in his movements; his assistant Cartha ‘Deke’ DeLoach, forty-four, attentive to the point of obsequiousness; Nicholas Katzenbach, forty-three, the Attorney General; and, to one side, the Special Assistant to the President, Jack Valenti, forty-three.
Hoover I would say, Mr President, that to all intents and purposes, Martin Luther King is a Communist. Am I overstating the case, Deke?
DeLoach Well, no, Director, understating it, if anything. I’d say he’s definitely a Communist.
Hoover At the very least, he’s an instrument in the hands of subversive forces. Less than two years ago, in this very room, King promised President Kennedy that he would break with Stanley Levison, a known Communist, so-called financier, Jewish.
He pauses impressively.
I can tell you that now, as we speak, King is sitting in the Americana Hotel in New York, Room …
He snaps his fingers impatiently.
DeLoach 4323.
Hoover … Room 4323, being briefed by Levison.
Johnson Is that so? Edgar, you’re just as sharp as ever you were in the thirty years I’ve been privileged to know you.
Hoover Well, thank you, Mr President.
Johnson Jack, go ahead and freshen Mr Hoover’s drink, will you?
Valenti leaps to his feet, but Hoover waves him aside.
Hoover I always say you make the best mint julep in Washington, bar none, but I have to be going in a minute.
Johnson You do?
Hoover As long as you’re going to be seeing King tomorrow, I thought I should give you a little more background on him.
Johnson You don’t like him very much, do you, Edgar?
Hoover I have nothing against him personally, Mr President. He’s just a hypocritical degenerate. And Time magazine made him Man of the Year! They must have had to dig down to the bottom of the garbage can for that one. And then, if that doesn’t take everything, they give him the Nobel Prize! That fraud, that cheap, opportunistic burrhead!
Johnson Degenerate?
Hoover We have him on tape, shouting out … you tell him, Deke.
DeLoach He’s shouting out: ‘I’m fucking for God!’ Right here in Washington, in the Willard Hotel.
Johnson Glory be.
DeLoach And he’s doing it in front of eight or ten guys standing round watching, all of them buck naked.
Hoover All right, Deke, we get the picture.
Johnson You sure about this?
Hoover Nobel Prize for tomcatting, that’s the only Nobel Prize he should ever get.
Katzenbach Plenty of people feel the same as you do, Mr Hoover. Or worse. There were several death threats when he went down to Selma earlier this week, we had to warn him.
Hoover You warned him?
Katzenbach Well, yes.
Hoover If I may take the liberty, Mr Attorney General, I’m not sure that was such a smart idea.
Katzenbach Oh? Why not?
Hoover See, we get to process so many of those things at the Bureau, most all of them from crazies, that we have to make a judgement which ones to pass along. And with someone like King, who’s a self-publicist, who chooses to put himself in harm’s way, we have a policy not to indulge him with information he’s probably just going to look to exploit.
Johnson Well, now, Edgar, when you get in one of these threats, I’m sure you set your people to watch out for him, even if he doesn’t know it’s happening.
Hoover says nothing, seems to be formulating some response.
I think you should.
Hoover Of course, Mr President.
Johnson How’s Clyde doing?
Hoover He’s down in La Jolla, Mr President, working on something.
Johnson His tan, that’d be my guess.
Amid general laughter, Hoover, a strained smile on his face, rises to his feet, which causes DeLoach to spring up beside him.
Always wonderful to see you, Edgar.
Hoover What a pleasure, Mr President.
Johnson Jack’ll walk you down to your limousine.
Valenti’s already on his feet. Johnson nods to DeLoach.
Deke.
DeLoach A great honour to visit with you, sir.
Johnson You take care now.
Valenti escorts them out. Johnson clinks some ice cubes into his glass and pours himself a large Cutty Sark. Then he looks at Katzenbach, shaking his head.
How d’you like that queer old bastard? Isn’t he a piece of work?
Johnson Ain’t easy to get him out the door, is it?
Katzenbach I always try to meet in his office. Otherwise I can never get rid of him.
Johnson Lucky for him he’s got everybody’s balls in a vice. And that Deke DeLoach!
Katzenbach Yes.
Johnson He’d kiss my ass in Macy’s window and say it smelled like a rose.
He takes a swig of scotch and his expression changes to complete seriousness.
Nick, have I ever asked you to tap anybody’s line?
Katzenbach No, Mr President.
Johnson Don’t you have to authorise every wiretap?
Katzenbach Every one made by the FBI. Not the other agencies, Defense or the IRS, though I think it would be a good idea if I did …
Johnson Well, I want this brought down to an irreducible minimum. And only in the gravest cases. I want you to authorise them, and then, by God, I want to know about them. I’m a red-hot one-million-two-per-cent civil liberties man and I’m against wiretapping, period. So get up the strongest letter you can and tell all the agencies no one is to be tapped, except by signature of the Attorney General.
Katzenbach A letter to all the agencies?
Johnson Yeah. For me to sign.
Katzenbach All right, Mr President.
Johnson That’s how Hoover got the whammy on our friend King, right?
Johnson Well, who authorised that wiretap?
Katzenbach Uh, that would have been my predecessor.
Johnson Bobby. I might have known. What the hell was he thinking?
Katzenbach I guess it was to do with Levison, you know, King’s Communist associates.
Johnson Well, I don’t want to know about it.
He thinks for a moment, head nodding.
See, that’s why nobody can ever fire that old cocksucker. He has the whammy on everybody. All the same, I’m not sure I don’t prefer to have him inside the tent pissing out.
He takes another swig of whisky, chuckles, shakes his head.
‘I’m fucking for God’!