LBJ's Texas White House "Our Heart's Home"

CHAPTER 5 Creating the First Remote White House

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Lyndon B. Johnson's ascendance to the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy inaugurated a new era for the nation as well as for the ranch on the Pedernales River. In the throes of a cataclysmic tragedy, the nation mourned its lost leader and turned to its new one with decidedly mixed emotions. Johnson himself had to be perplexed by the whims of fate; in a terrible instant, all he had wished for had come true, but through the most bizarre and horrifying of circumstances. Unable or unwilling to secure the office by election, Johnson faced the much harder task of earning it through action—under the microscopic watch of the nation and the world. He would have to prove himself worthy of the mantle he had inherited rather than won, a gargantuan and daunting task in the late autumn and winter of 1963.

The tragedy brought out the best in Johnson. In the period immediately following the assassination, his most statesmanlike qualities, his leadership ability, and his desire for conciliation stood out of the fear, turmoil, and dashed hopes of the nation. The assassination in Dallas offered a frightening specter, for the president had gone to Texas, in the words of Kennedy aide Kenneth O'Donnell, "as a faith-healer" to mend a fight among Texas politicians that posed problems for the Democrats in the upcoming 1964 elections. With the stain on the nation emanating from Texas, Johnson had to demonstrate not only his own worthiness but that of his hallowed home state as well. Among his gestures were personal letters to each member of the deceased president's immediate family, a blanket request to all Kennedy cabinet members to stay on, and his insistence at walking behind Kennedy's caisson to Arlington National Cemetery despite the objections of security professionals. His willingness to expose himself to potential danger as well as other kindnesses to the Kennedy family inspired a long and laudatory handwritten note from Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the president's widow. "Thank you for the way you have always treated me—the way you and Lady Bird have always been to me—before, when Jack was alive, and now as President," the grieving Mrs. Kennedy wrote. Her testimonial to Johnson's consideration spoke volumes about the new president's manner in these difficult circumstances. "To me, Johnson's conduct in that period . . . was perhaps his finest hour," said Charles Roberts, Newsweek contributing editor and White House correspondent. "He couldn't have been more considerate, not only of Jackie but of all the Kennedy people. He was thoughtful. He was thinking ahead."¹ This gracious caliber of leadership marked the transition period to the new Johnson administration.

For the nation and the world, the transfer of power to Johnson was fraught with peril. Here was a new American leader, older and more mature, yet rural and seemingly less polished than his slain predecessor. Undoubtedly Johnson was a man of substance, but he was of a different appearance and manner than Kennedy. Johnson was a large man "with preposterous ears and a Texas twang," biographer Merle Miller wrote—a different sort of image than that projected by the suave and stylish John Kennedy.² The iconography of leadership changed in an instant, from the rough and tumble touch-football games on the lawn at Hyannisport to the more bucolic, more homey, but more geographically distant and culturally remote setting of the LBJ Ranch.

The presidency became the signal moment in the history of the ranch. The dilapidated place that had belonged to Johnson's aunt and uncle, Frank and Clarence Martin, became an essential part of the political infrastructure of the nation as well as a symbol of healing. In the aftermath of the assassination of Kennedy, when the nation was racked by paroxysms of sorrow and doubt, the symbolic importance of the ranch setting grew. More than ever before, the ranch on the Pedernales River harkened back to a "better" America, a more placid, more sturdy, less tendentious American past. It was clearly Texan at a moment when Texas was tainted, a symbolic joining of the best and the worst at once. Transformed into a combination of command post and getaway for the leader of the free world, the ranch became one of the headquarters of decision making for the nation and the world. It became a pragmatic, functional, efficient place, even as it represented a less complicated past.

With Johnson in the presidency, the ranch developed new importance that far surpassed its role as the vice president's estate. What had largely been a retreat of ancillary importance became the second most significant location in the nation after the White House. The little stone house and its many additions had become the home of the president of the United States, a symbolic significance for which Johnson had long been preparing the ranch but that caught him and the nation by surprise. The development of the ranch in the previous decade had become, in an instant, only the precursor of a more fundamental transformation. Indicative of the change was the new name that the press and soon everyone gave the Pedernales property: instead of the LBJ Ranch, it became the Texas White House.

Johnson felt a level of comfort at his ranch that he enjoyed nowhere else, a sentiment crucial to the reinvention of the ranch as a remote White House. "The best place to talk to a man is on your own ground," Dale Malechek reported being frequently told, and others, especially McGeorge Bundy, encouraged Johnson to utilize the ranch as more than his home. Johnson believed he had more control on the ranch, "more willpower to influence people there," in Malechek's words, and with his deep-seated need to have people around him, he enjoyed having people visit the ranch. The fusion of the ranch as both place of business and home ground Wt with Johnson's political and personal philosophies.³

The president required a range of services and facilities that were unavailable even to the vice president, and Johnson's predilection for spending time at his Texas home meant in essence that a second communications, security, protocol, and administrative structure parallel to the one in Washington, D.C., had to be established at the ranch. Johnson loved his ranch and spent as much time there as he could, but as president he required all the support systems necessary to perform the duties of his office. The geographic location of the ranch created logistical problems for planners. Johnson was the first U.S. president from the South since Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921 and, despite his rural roots in a region known for its degree of urbanization, the first genuinely Sun Belt and western president in the nation's history.⁴ His ascendance was a precursor of fundamental changes in the signs and symbols of American society and politics; it created numerous problems simultaneously that forced his staff to improvise, to invent solutions.

Johnson's manner of running the presidency and his needs were different from those of any of his predecessors. With a home far from Washington, D.C., and strong filial ties to his home state, Johnson lacked the luxury of the proximity of Kennedy's Hyannisport or the desire for a farm at Gettysburg or for the federally owned retreat at Camp David. Chauvinistically, he wanted to be in Texas whenever possible. He would often tell Lady Bird to be ready to leave for Texas in less than one hour, but both were so devoted to their home state that she barely objected to the lack of notice. This fealty to state or region of origin was a common trait in American politics. But Johnson was the first president from a distant state who could have the desire to spend a great deal of time at home accommodated. Meeting his needs required something new and different on the American political landscape. Johnson's presidency created the first remote White House, the first time in American history that a leader of the nation could meld a desire to be far from the nation's capital with the demands of leading the country.

As was the case in his first Senate campaign, Johnson had to invent the processes that would allow him to accomplish his ends. In 1948, he had enlisted technology as the way to spread his message. Besides inundating the state with political advertising, Johnson hired a helicopter and flew from town to town. The aircraft itself generated great interest in rural Texas and created a venue from which to spread his message. In the 1948 campaign, Johnson foresaw the future of communications.⁵ His use of technological campaigning foreshadowed its later importance.

At his ranch, Johnson also anticipated future developments in the use of various forms of communications media. He installed the systems that allowed him to make his Texas office into a second Oval Office, enabling him to govern far away from Washington, D.C. The ranch became "an extension of his office," in the words of Maj. James U. Cross, who piloted Johnson's plane and later served as armed forces aide to the president.⁶ In this, Johnson served as a model for later developments in communications protocol and procedure. Politicians had utilized radio and television communications since the first availability of these revolutionary technologies; as happened to some silent-screen stars with the coming of synchronized soundtracks in the movies, some politicians, in particular Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, were undone by the image television projected of them. Johnson understood how to use new forms of communication better than most politicians. He was the first president truly to utilize postwar technology to govern rather than to campaign, to understand its implications for the way the nation could be run and to use it to implement policy. This gave him the option, in fact the choice, of governing from afar, of utilizing his home in a manner that no previous president could.

Johnson's frenetic pace of governing required a significantly enhanced infrastructure at the ranch. Every aspect of the place—from roads to communications systems, from security and housing to the airstrip—had to be rethought and redesigned after Johnson became president. In the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, presidential security became the paramount concern, but as the outlines of the Johnson presidency became clearer, a full-scale physical transformation of the property along the Pedernales River began to take place.

The development of communications facilities was a primary consideration. Johnson was the president who, in the words of Newsweek's Charles Roberts, "made the [tele]phone an instrument of national policy," who brought the dependence on communications so characteristic of modern government to the presidency. "He could practically crawl through that [telephone] wire," George Reedy remembered, and it was essential to his way of conducting business. Johnson spent as much as eighteen hours a day on the telephone. By 1958, Johnson had a telephone in his automobile, an amenity that attracted much attention because it was so rare. He was the envy of his peers; when Senator Everett Dirksen, a curmudgeon about new technologies, finally had a telephone installed in his car, he called Johnson to inform him. "Wait, Ev," Johnson is purported to have replied. "I've got to answer my other line." Johnson also had a phone with a thirty-five-foot cord in a metal box on a post in the backyard of his Austin home. He could talk in the yard and even walk into the house with this cord.⁷

Telephones were more than necessary for Johnson; they were elemental. For the ranch to serve as a remote White House—a place from which the president of the United States could conduct national and international business—required those wires, the creation of an infrastructure previously unequaled in the Hill Country and uncommon anywhere else in the country but within the highest levels of business, government, and the military. Assembling its various components required the application of significant resources and the efforts of numerous organizations and government entities.

By November, 1963, the LBJ Ranch had already undergone a range of infrastructural transformations since the Johnsons purchased it in the early 1950s. In his first years at the ranch, Lyndon Johnson had found the Stonewall telephone exchange insufficient for his needs. He had only one telephone line, and in particular, he wanted better long-distance service. He contacted Ira W. "Stormy" Davis, a long-time Southwestern Bell Company manager who had supervised the installation of the private branch exchange (PBX) used at the "Johnson for Congress" headquarters in Austin during the 1946 campaign. This was the first instance of the use of a private PBX in Texas. Under Davis's supervision, Southwestern Bell provided a long-distance trunk line along the Pedernales River for Johnson, as well as a private toll line connecting the ranch with nearby Johnson City. Davis recalled that Johnson needed the new lines because there was only one line through Stonewall, and "people kept the [long-distance] line tied up to such an extent that the senator had great difficulty in making and receiving long distance calls." Johnson paid $36.63 every month for each of twenty-two extensions at the ranch.⁸

This first stage of communications development, in place by the middle of the 1950s, soon became obsolete as Johnson's responsibility grew. Improvements in company capability and Johnson's nomination as vice president created both the ability and the need to provide more comprehensive service. In August, 1960, Southwestern Bell offered the ranch four Austin lines and one Stonewall line to meet Johnson's long-distance calling needs, supported by a total of sixteen long-distance circuits from facilities located in the center shed of the hangar. Eleven six-button handsets and an emergency backup generator were also installed. The Southwestern States Company, a regional concern, provided local service for the ranch.⁹

Lyndon Johnson had been a heavy user of the telephone throughout his political career, and the limited capabilities of the ranch during the early 1950s barely slowed him. In every photograph ever taken of a Johnson office, a telephone is visible; in Johnson's world, telephones were located on desks, on mantels and dining room tables, under desks, by couches, on window sills, and even in the bathroom. Numerous photographs of the man show him glued to the telephone handset. As majority leader of the Senate, Johnson required eleven separate local and long-distance telephone lines at the ranch. These were in use most of the time, either by Johnson himself or by one of his ever-increasing number of secretaries and assistants. When he became vice president, he increased the number of phone lines at the ranch to fifteen to accommodate the growing demands of his office.¹⁰

The changing demands on the ranch during the vice presidency prompted the rearrangement of facilities. The Johnsons needed more space to accommodate visitors, staff, and official personnel, and they requested that the Southwestern Bell facilities be moved out of the hangar. A new structure, known as the "O" carrier building, was constructed next to the airstrip to house the telephone equipment. It remained in use for that purpose until after the Kennedy assassination.¹¹

During most of Johnson's vice presidency, six telephones were located on the first floor of the ranch house. Three of these were in Johnson's office at the west end of the house, with one each in the living room, den, and master bedroom. Two additional handsets were on the second floor: one in the upstairs master bedroom and the other in administrative assistant Mary Margaret Wylie's bedroom. The bath house by the swimming pool also contained a handset. Special telephone service was added for visiting dignitaries or during barbecues or other social events to which members of the press were invited.¹²

Johnson also used the television as a major source of information. He was notorious for having three televisions, each tuned to one of the three major networks, on at all times in the Oval Office and in his bedroom at the White House. But the ranch in Stonewall was well beyond the range of most conventional television signals, an ironic predicament for a family that owned a major media network in Texas. Until the late 1950s, television reception at the ranch remained poor. In 1960, Johnson ordered a fifty-foot-tall television antenna installed. "This tower—though highly functional," Lady Bird Johnson remembered, "was the bane of my life—aesthetically. Lyndon finally moved it for me." The tower was relocated to the Scharnhorst property in 1962 as part of a series of renovations, and it remained the basis for television reception at the ranch.¹³

Throughout Johnson's presidency, television reception continued to be a problem. After nearly two years of intermittent complaints about interference from other signals by the president, Federal Communications Commission officials sought to improve reception at the ranch. The White House Communications Agency and Southwestern Bell drafted a plan to install a new relay station on Hartman Hill, about fifteen miles from the ranch. The cost of the endeavor was estimated to be between $150,000 and $200,000 for the first year and $50,000 for every subsequent year, which dampened enthusiasm for the project. When the cost was coupled with the assessment that even the new relay station could not guarantee consistently better television reception at the ranch, further discussion of the idea was dropped. The effort was deemed unworthy of the bad publicity the cost would generate.¹⁴

Improving communications reception and transmission at the ranch became a recurring concern of the Johnson presidency. By 1967, efforts to enhance television and commercial and government radio reception and transmissions were again underway. A tower was installed at the ranch to improve both television and radio reception. A base station in Fredericksburg was built, and antennas were added to a Central Texas Electrical Cooperative tower located about one mile from Fredericksburg. A tower was removed from the LBJ Ranch and taken to Riley Mountain, near Llano, to provide coverage in that area. The Riley Mountain location was ideal for reception but unfeasible because there were no rural electric or telephone lines to operate the tower in the immediate area. Only the community of Llano had the appropriate utility infrastructure to support the project, necessitating a new tower location. When the installation was finally erected at Camp Bullis, radio coverage was completed from San Antonio to the south, Austin to the east, through Lake LBJ to the north, and to a line between Fredericksburg and Llano to the west. The television antenna installation was also completed, although occasional co-channel interference remained. Another effort to improve communications between the ranch and the outside world fell short of optimal results.¹⁵

The Secret Service also made demands on radio transmission in the area. Col. Jack A. Albright of the White House Communications Agency secured numerous written agreements for government use of several radio installations across the Hill Country and Central Texas. Albright made fixed-term arrangements for the use of a number of locations, including Packsaddle Mountain, Hartman Hill, Westley West Tower, the Fredericksburg Co-op Tower, and Camp Bullis, but Secret Service officials noted that the arrangement did not meet their needs. They preferred agreements made on an "indefinite basis," Thomas L. Johns of the agency informed W. Marvin Watson, a White House aide. "These communications facilities should be available to the Secret Service as long as the Secret Service has a responsibility compatible to this area." Efforts were made to accommodate the needs of the Secret Service.¹⁶

Before the Johnson presidency, transportation to the LBJ Ranch differed little from that to the rural ranch of any influential individual. The main road, which crossed the river by the Junction School, was a typical Texas rural road. Called "farm-to-market" roads, these were usually blacktopped by the 1960s, but they were designed for farm trucks and farm machinery. Most had slow-moving traffic, and negotiating them during planting, harvest, cattle roundup, or hunting season could be difficult. Yet such roads sufficed for Johnson while he served as senator and vice president.

After the 1952 flood, Johnson had considered adding an airstrip to the property. Not only would it save him time in his hectic political travel schedule, but it would also provide a means to rescue his family should a severe flood again occur. During 1955, a 3,570-foot asphalt landing strip to handle light aircraft was constructed, and after he learned to select aircraft of the right size to have piloted in, the airstrip became a significant time-saver for Johnson. He regarded transportation in the most utilitarian terms and was impervious to the dangers involved in riding in low-flying helicopters and small planes. Maj. James U. Cross recalled that Johnson expressed a curiosity about the technological side of flying but was more interested in rapidly reaching his destination. Even the death of two of his pilots in a 1961 plane crash in the Hill Country did not deter Johnson from his insistence on flying even the smallest of craft in the worst of weather.¹⁷

Security procedures prior to Johnson's presidency also reflected the combination of importance and marginality associated with the vice presidency. During Johnson's vice presidential years, Secret Service agents were not stationed at the ranch except during Johnson's visits, and there were no permanent facilities designated for their use. Agents would arrive a few hours before the Johnsons to assure that there were no unauthorized people on the property and that no dangers to the Johnsons' safety existed.
Initially, Secret Service operations were located in handyman Lawrence Klein's old shop, and in some cases, Secret Service vehicles served as temporary command posts. A General Services Administration (GSA) trailer for Secret Service operations was placed north of the ranch house during the first year of the Kennedy administration. Plumbing and sewer connections were added, and the trailer became the center of security operations during the vice presidency.¹⁸

In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination the ranch became the presidential residence, and the rules of its administration changed. Security of the roads, the infrastructure, the landing strip, and communications became preeminent concerns for those responsible for protecting the leader of the nation. At the ranch, this meant developments in each of these areas, upgraded facilities and management systems, and a full-time staff located at the Texas White House even when the Johnsons were not there.

Johnson's dependence on communications made the development of these systems a primary concern. The president needed access to any and all available information at all times, but much of what he needed to know was in Washington, D.C. A secure, coded system of transmission had to be established for conveying information to the ranch. The installation of three trailers immediately following Kennedy's assassination served as a prelude to the creation of a White House communications complex at the ranch. This facility included a communications switchboard and the cryptograph section, as well as quarters for military aides and other personnel on twenty-four-hour call.¹⁹

Johnson's predilection for the telephone required one of the best communications transmission systems in the world. Despite the installations and upgrades accomplished during the senatorial and vice presidential years, the presidency demanded an entirely revamped telephone system. Southwestern Bell assumed responsibility from Southwestern States for all telephone service to the ranch; the company faced a "monumental challenge," Stormy Davis recalled, in order to have an adequate system functioning by December 12, 1963, the date planned for the new president's first return to the ranch.²⁰

Southwestern Bell raced to accommodate the new level of demand. Beginning on December 3, the company erected a steel structure on 4.73 nearby acres leased from Ernest Hodges even before formal arrangements for the property were completed. Within seventy-two hours, the site had been cleared, the foundation dug, and a building erected. A one-hundred-person crew arrived to install the sophisticated new telephone system. Three temporary microwave towers, sent from the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), were built—one on Hartman Hill, a second at the Sawyer Ranch, and a third at the new telephone communications building. The microwave system provided 120 channels to Austin. The switchboard was located in a trailer that was placed east of the "O" carrier building. A second trailer, equipped with teleprinters and cryptographic machines, became the communications center. This equipment linked the Texas White House with the White House in Washington, D.C. By December 10, two days before the expected arrival of the new president, the system was operating, albeit primarily from temporary facilities.²¹

A delay in the Johnsons' arrival until December 24 allowed Southwestern Bell to make its temporary setup into a permanent operation. New towers replaced the hastily erected trio. State-of-the-art telephone equipment was installed, including a two-hundred-pair cable "plowed" underground east of the ranch, even though the muddy winter conditions caused as many as eight vehicles to be stuck at one time during the work. Southwestern Bell also established an engineering office in the vacant Johnson City Variety Store building from which to administer its efforts.²²

By the time the upgraded system was completed, the telephone and communications structure housed enough equipment to service a small city. Power supplies—including a chrome-plated, fifty-thousand-kilowatt emergency generator that had been scheduled for use in the upcoming 1964 World's Fair—Wlled one-third of the communications trailer. The installation of this auxiliary power unit cost five thousand dollars, while the modifications required to keep the residence in compliance with national electrical code standards cost another two thousand dollars. Seventy-two telephones were installed at the ranch, including one in every room of the house, one in the president's bathroom, and another by the pool and the outbuildings. A radio system, replete with the requisite codes for staff and Secret Service personnel, was established; Johnson complained about the poor audio quality of the secret communications line until he became accustomed to it. A sixty-four "O" carrier line was added to the existing poles between Stonewall and Austin. A loudspeaker system was installed that allowed Johnson to give orders to anyone, in the house or in the pool, at any time. By the end of December, 1963, the Texas White House had a modern communications system that could support the activities of the president of the United States.²³

With the permanent system established, refinement of the various operations commenced. The Johnson City facility that Southwestern Bell used eventually became the press center for reporters in the Hill Country when Johnson vetoed the idea of such a site at the ranch. Stormy Davis, of Southwestern Bell, spent endless hours accommodating the needs of the president, assuring that the most up-to-date equipment and the best possible service were available and in place. Other equipment had to be kept current as well. Copiers that reflected the latest advances in technology were installed. The network of communications was widened. Johnson's cars and boats at Lake LBJ received radio-telephone capabilities, making it possible to communicate with the ranch switchboard from the water. The television networks volunteered equipment that would be kept at the ranch for broadcasting. Each of the five ranches—the Scharnhorst, Lewis, Haywood, Nicholson, and Jordan House—received underground telephone cable service. Each was also equipped with typewriters for the use of senior staff members who might stay there.²⁴

The new importance of the ranch created a range of transportation, traffic flow, and security problems. Before Johnson became president, the old low-water road was the primary means of access, although at low water Johnson himself often drove across the dam he had built just west of the house. The old ranch road was not designed to accommodate either the official or the visitor traffic that a president could expect, and a range of improvements had to be undertaken.

One of the first changes was the upgrading of the approach road to the ranch. The ascendance of the new president increased the number of people who sought to view his Texas home. Most of them traveled old U.S. 290, a stretch of two-lane road that passed in full view of the ranch house across the river. It had been turned over to the county when the new U.S. 290 was completed. Early in December, 1963, Texas Highway Department officials approached the White House about resuming administrative responsibility for the stretch of the old highway, and Johnson assented. On December 19, 1963, the highway department appropriated forty thousand dollars for the construction of a 4.5-mile secondary loop from just west of the Blanco County line to the proximity of the ranch. The loop funneled traffic to the ranch off the new U.S. 290, the main artery of Hill Country, and allowed visitors to drive by the ranch, seeing it from across the river. Designated Ranch Road 1, the spur was a valuable addition that helped alleviate security concerns. It funneled traffic by the ranch without allowing people to approach the property. The spur was "most excellent," presidential assistant Clifton C. Carter informed Texas State Highway Engineer Dewitt C. Greer on January 2, 1964. "I am sure [it] will be helpful to the tourists who are now frequenting the area."²⁵

The combination of easier access and Johnson's resounding popularity after the election of 1964 resulted in management problems on the new stretch of road. After a hunter tried to spot Johnson through a hunting sight, Ranch Road 1 was closed to the public for security reasons whenever the Johnsons were in residence at the Texas White House. A stream of requests to drive by the ranch while the Johnsons were present reached the White House staff. Typical was a letter from Larry Megow of Houston, who described himself as a "proud grandfather." Megow's son-in-law, an Air Force officer, had flown an escort jet for Johnson during a trip in the Far East and remained stationed there. The officer's wife and five children were visiting Texas during the Christmas holidays, and Megow wanted his grandchildren to see the president's home and take some pictures to show their friends in Florida. Johnson assented, a common gesture for him—particularly for anyone other than the press and during the holidays—and the Megow clan made their trip.²⁶

The ranch road also provided proximity for those who wanted to bring a cause or policy to the attention of the president and, via the ever-present press, the nation. An array of individuals used the ranch road and the ranch as a backdrop to promote their causes. In a characteristic incident just prior to Christmas 1966, four Syracuse, New York, protesters tried to camp on secured land near the ranch to complain about the implementation of Johnson's antipoverty programs. The four were members of a group called the James Geddes Organization, which sought to assure adequate housing for the poor. They protested the termination of their funding by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), headed by R. Sargent Shriver, a brother-in-law of former president John F. Kennedy. A Johnson aide, Jake Jacobsen, met with the protesters and explained that they should pursue the issue with OEO officials. The four continued their vigil and were later arrested when they refused to leave an area in which signs denying access were posted. The group was arraigned in nearby Fredericksburg.²⁷

The arrests initiated an uproar. Maury Maverick, Jr., the son of an old Johnson friend and a prominent San Antonio attorney who offered his services to the American Civil Liberties Union in Texas, entered the case. Within two weeks, telegrams were received from a number of prominent antipoverty advocates, including Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), denouncing the arrests of the members of the group, now renamed the Syracuse People's War Council Against Poverty. The incident gave the group press coverage, although the pressure applied through the media was not sufficient to alter any federal decisions.²⁸

Johnson remained wary of the press, and his treatment of it at the ranch reflected the often uncomfortable relationship. While he was quite at home with his friends in the media, such as Houston Harte of Harte-Hanks Communications, a Texas-based newspaper chain, the national media received more gruff treatment. In 1964, Chief White House Correspondent John Chancellor of NBC News sought permission to survey the ranch for locations from which the networks could provide improved television coverage. Chancellor proposed that the three major networks join to provide the best available signal and ambience from the ranch. This would entail scouring the property for the best location. On the memo requesting his approval, Johnson rejected the idea and angrily scrawled, "We don't want them at the ranch. We don't provide baby sitting." In contrast, in 1965, when Houston Harte requested permission to send photographers to the ranch to capture its springtime beauty, Johnson personally intervened after aides, wary of allowing even friends to intrude on Johnson's privacy, initially denied the request. Secret Service agents guided the photographers around the property. In accordance with Johnson's instructions, the photographers were kept out of the ranch house.²⁹

Johnson's decision to limit press access to the ranch reflected his view of the property. To the president, the ranch was first his home and only then a second White House. The press had no business in someone's home except by invitation, Johnson insisted, and the press certainly would not be allowed to run loose in the White House. The Hill Country had few other distractions for members of the press, and the president was their focus there in a way that he was not in Washington, D.C. This made Johnson even less likely to allow representatives of television networks to roam the property. It would take up the time of security personnel for what Johnson regarded as largely meaningless aggrandizement of the press.

The result was a series of planned "adventures" at the ranch. These were designed to enlighten and entertain the press corps without allowing them free access to Johnson's world. Typical of such endeavors was a proposal from presidential aide Douglass Cater to hold a "reflective backgrounder" at the ranch as 1964 drew to a close. It had been a dramatic year, Cater noted, and an effort to "set the record straight" on the transition to the presidency, the genesis of the War on Poverty, the concept of the Great Society, and the many other issues of the year offered the president the opportunity to help shape the news reports of his efforts. Cater also planned to use this event to pit the White House regulars, the reporters on the capital beat, against their own bureau chiefs, "curbing the arrogance," he wrote, of the reporters. Again, control of physical access to the ranch and control of access to news and information were closely related in the Johnson worldview.³⁰

Other parts of the transportation infrastructure were also upgraded to accommodate the president's travel needs. During the presidency, the landing strip was paved and extended to 6,150 feet to allow the president and staff officials to reach the ranch in a Jetstar without stopping in Austin if they desired. Although the air strip was "beefed up a bit" by the improvements, Major Cross recalled, and was long enough for Air Force One, a customized Boeing 707, to land, the Caliche soil base under the runway was not sufficiently stable to support the impact of the plane. The presidential plane, therefore, never landed at the ranch. Cross, the president's pilot, flew a DC-9 to the ranch in place of Air Force One. A portable air tower and personnel to staff it were brought to the ranch from Bergstrom Air Force Base to assist in landing military and private jets during Johnson's stays at the ranch.³¹

Johnson also had a greater need for aircraft and a broader tolerance for the risk involved than did many civilian officials. During 1964, Johnson planned to privately purchase a Beechcraft Queen Air for occasional flights in the vicinity of the ranch. There was no precedent for the use of a private or civil aircraft by a sitting president. Franklin D. Roosevelt had been the first president to travel by air, and military aircraft and crews had been used to transport him and all subsequent presidents. As a result of Johnson's proposed purchase, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials sought to train and qualify his civilian pilots as if they were members of the military and wanted to add additional navigational equipment to the Johnson City Airport, the destination of numerous high-level visitors to the ranch. The planned improvements would be temporary in nature, similar to the ones added to the Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, airport during the Eisenhower administration. FAA officials were nervous about the consequences of a president flying in an aircraft piloted by individuals who did not hold military certification for the plane in question. With Cross's assurance that the FAA move was unnecessary, Johnson was typically cavalier about such demands on his staff.³²

Turning Johnson's ranch into a second White House required an enormous organization and a great deal of money to assure the safety and security of the president and of the ongoing flow of travelers. Every time Johnson went to Texas an entire retinue of aides and staff members went as well. Cabinet officials and dignitaries sometimes accompanied the president, and on some occasions it seemed to observers that the trips to Texas included a never-ending parade of people and equipment. Cross recalled that "coming to Texas, we'd have forty, fifty people" on the plane. During each presidential visit, the airstrip was busy, as some officials flew in to discuss new business, others departed, and couriers carrying a range of information arrived and left. Each time, government officials in several agencies in Washington, D.C., had to cease other activities and prepare for the movement of as many as one hundred people to the ranch. Johnson flew anyone he could on the presidential plane. Routinely clerks, stenographers, and three shifts of Secret Service agents were on board. "We'd load everybody on that Air Force One," Cross remembered, "and away we'd go."³³

The Air Force and the Secret Service began to set up the initial ground rules covering travel as early as November 28, 1963. Medical personnel had to be provided in case of emergencies, and helicopter support had to be arranged, along with numerous other details. The effort to assure that the people, information, and tools necessary to run the nation from a remote site were present at the ranch had to be comprehensive. This was a major undertaking. For example, fifty-five staffers flew with Johnson for the fourth of July weekend in 1965; in another instance, fifty-six members of the press boarded the charter for the January 14, 1965, flight to the ranch, seemingly leaving no one in Washington, D.C., to cover other federal affairs.³⁴

Devising economical traveling arrangements for such large numbers of staff proved to be a problem. Although Johnson was gracious about allowing staff on Air Force One and other presidential planes, the routinely higher number of staffers than places available compelled alternate arrangements. Initially, support personnel were transported on the press charter, but by 1965 the practice ceased after complaints of overcrowding by reporters. There was simply not sufficient space for support staff as well as newspeople. Reporters were often outnumbered by more than two to one by White House and military support staff. After June, 1965, a separate military aircraft transported staff, while the press flew on its charter.³⁵

Johnson's affinity for his ranch was well known before 1963 and became even more apparent during his presidency. Between November, 1963, and September, 1967, Johnson made forty-two trips to the ranch. Thirty-four of these left from Washington, D.C., while the remainder departed from a variety of locations, including New York City; Atlantic City; Houston; Philadelphia; and Newport News, Virginia. Each trip to Texas required a full presidential entourage, and almost every flight included cabinet officials and other dignitaries as well as members of the press. Typically as many as one hundred people traveled at official expense on each of the trips, requiring significant expenditures to cover transportation.³⁶

The cost of the frequent travel to the ranch drew some negative attention from the press and the public. Cost cutters everywhere noted the sizeable number of consistent travelers. Although the criticism was often muted, the expense of travel and the myriad other needs supplied to the Texas White House was high, ongoing, and—in the minds of some—of questionable necessity. Since taxpayers paid the bills, some watchdogs were critical of the White House. In one instance, a report in the Dallas Morning News at the beginning of 1964 that fifty new phone lines were to be installed at the ranch at the cost of more than $2.5 million generated complaints from a businessman. Such criticism kept Johnson and his staff fully aware of costs, and they strove to keep expenditures under control. In early August, 1965, the White House Communications Agency reduced its staff for the Texas trips from fifty-three to thirty-three. Switchboard operators were cut from ten to six, radio operators from eight to five, and the TelePrompter maintenance staff decreased by half. Later that month, a further decrease in staff went into effect. Permanently stationing one officer and fifteen enlisted personnel at the ranch allowed the decrease in traveling staff. The savings generated by the move amounted to ten thousand dollars per month in travel costs and sixty-four workdays in salary.³⁷

Still, the list of official personnel for each trip nearly always exceeded sixty, and questions about the wisdom of such expenditures continued. Approximately thirty-five of the regular travelers were military personnel. When the president's White House staff and their support personnel, family, and guests and other mandatory personnel were included, the government was still flying a large number of people to Texas on a regular basis. Newspapers commented on the practice in an indirect manner. Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News wondered where everyone slept and justified the expense of traveling such a "far piece" to the ranch by noting: "Mr. Johnson's friends and associates say it is one of the few places he can relax, if not the only one." The demands of the presidency, however, made the expenditures worthwhile in the opinion of most of the press, and complaints were generally muted.³⁸

The combination of the remote location of the ranch and the manner in which Johnson and his staff controlled access to it, and thereby to the president, led to ongoing disagreements with the press. In the early 1960s, the U.S. press was at the peak of its influence. With such names as John Chancellor, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley, television had become an important medium of communication. John F. Kennedy had held the first live televised press conference in January, 1961, and the various uproars in international affairs during the Kennedy administration, the Cuban Missile Crisis in particular, were covered by television. The Civil Rights Movement was transformed in no small part because television exposed the public to atrocities committed in the name of law and order. The public and the press were still charmed with the new medium, and almost no one was cynical about the impact of the press on the way people understood national and international events. The public did not yet seriously doubt the motives, manners, and so-called objectivity of the people who brought them the news.

Johnson had long been in the forefront of the technological revolution in politics. He had utilized the radio, the helicopter, and other innovations to assess public sentiment, spread his message, and develop his programs. He understood the impact of television more clearly than most politicians. But he also maintained presidential prerogative, closing his ranch to the press and the outside world except by his permission. The result was an uncomfortable truce and occasional skirmishes between the president and the press over the question of accessibility. To some in the press, the Texas White House was a castle to which Johnson retreated to hide from his detractors; from Johnson's perspective, it was his home, and his privacy was of greater significance than the press's right to any news story.

Some members of the press reacted with greater equanimity than others to Johnson's dialectical push and pull with the press. As New Year's Eve 1964 approached, members of the press sought to enliven their time in Texas. On December 28, 1964, the LBJ Ranch received a cryptic but warm telegram that played on one of White House staffer George Reedy's jokes: "The Society of Prudent (Or Imprudent?) Men and Women, White House Correspondents' Association Division, facing up to the happy prospect that we may be in Texas when the time comes to ring in the new year, is planning a New Year's Eve party in honor of your staff. We would be honored and delighted for you and your family to join us in the festivities . . . at the Driskill Hotel" in Austin. This gesture conveyed both the difficulties of the arrangements for the press, some of whom stayed in Austin, more than sixty miles away, as well as the need for access that Johnson so assiduously controlled.³⁹

The control of access to the ranch and the required travel to Texas exacerbated the already uncomfortable relationship between the president and the national news corps. Every one of the forty-two times Johnson traveled to Texas during his first three years in office, the press had to follow, often complaining about the short notice. At first, most found Texas entertaining, but the charm wore thin as reporters found themselves with a generally uncooperative president and a set of rules that limited their access, curtailed what the press perceived as its right to know, and sometimes seemed petty and insulting. When Johnson "came to rest, it was to Texas almost all the time," George Christian remembered. "And [reporters] got tired of coming to the same place." Transportation from Johnson City to the ranch became a focal point of press frustration. The White House Transportation Agency provided an air-conditioned bus from the Johnson City Press Center to the ranch. There was a five dollar per person charge for members of the working press, some of whom had to come from Stonewall to ride the bus. There was no other way for the press to gain entry to the ranch, for Secret Service officials would not admit anyone who did not ride the bus. Garth Jones, the Associated Press correspondent in Austin, vehemently protested this arrangement. "Is this really just a $5 admission charge to the ranch for the working press?" Jones wrote, implying a more sinister motive. Using a renowned Johnson phrase, he finished: "Come, let us reason together, and do something about this." But the difficulties in the relationship remained.⁴⁰

The problems stemmed from two factors. With the reporters kept first in Austin and then in San Antonio, they were far removed from any political action taking place. "On occasion we overworked them here, and they complained about that," Christian suggested. "Sometimes we underworked them, and they complained about that." The location away from the ranch also contributed to the problem. Reporters "complained enough about Austin," Christian continued; "they'd say, `well, let's go out and watch them paint the stripe in the street.'" Christian and the staff insisted that while the president was at the ranch, he was relaxing, and "if there was anything important he was doing, we darn sure tell them."⁴¹ It was an impasse born of different styles and cultures.

In the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, Johnson could easily invoke presidential safety as the rationale for such policies, and protection and security at the ranch remained major concerns. In addition to the heartrending sorrow and numbness it sent through the nation, the Kennedy assassination had provided a terrible shock to the security forces charged with guarding the president. Although there had been attacks on U.S. presidents since the days of Andrew Jackson, there had been no attempts on a president's life since the attack on the White House by Puerto Rican separatists in 1951; Harry Truman was staying at Blair House at the time, while the White House was renovated. No president had been fired upon since 1932, when an attempt on President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in Miami took the life of newly elected Chicago Mayor Anton "Tony" Cermak. In the immediate moments after the attack on Kennedy, security officials assumed that the assassination was part of a worldwide attack on U.S. leaders. No one knew the extent of what had occurred, who was behind it, or whether other political leaders might also be targets.⁴² A belated but intense vigilance, which came to characterize the Johnson presidency, followed.

At the ranch, security became a paramount concern. A swarm of new agents arrived to guard the ranch, and expanded facilities for their use had to be established. Guard shacks were set up "straight off the truck," Albert Wierichs remembered. New security fences were located at the perimeter of the property; later, electric entry gates were added. The Hightower residence, originally located south of the Pedernales River and now within the boundaries of the LBJ State Park, had been moved to the main property by the time Dale Malechek arrived to assume his duties as ranch foreman. The house had become the residence of ranch worker Albert "Pretzel" Rodriquez and his family, who had previously worked with the Malecheks at Boerne. The Secret Service took over these quarters, and the GSA took responsibility for converting the quarters into a Secret Service command post.⁴³

Security required its own infrastructure at the ranch. The Secret Service needed guard stations to augment the command post. Early in 1964, three small frame structures were constructed, one each at the east and west security check gates and the third at the cattle-guard opening south of the Pedernales River. These allowed control of the entrances to the ranch and, along with the miles of fence that surrounded the ranch, assured that the president's home was secure.⁴⁴

For the Johnsons, being the first family took some getting used to. It meant constraints on personal freedom and a tremendous lack of privacy, as secretaries, aides, military personnel, Secret Service agents, and others moved through the house. Although most tried to be inconspicuous, they were still ever-present. Even a road built for the workers was not sufficient to mask their activities. The strain of constant supervision was evident in the first family. Lyndon Johnson seized every opportunity to leave his handlers and staff behind. When Johnson finally arrived at the ranch on December 24, 1963, for his first visit after becoming president, he got off the airplane and hopped into the car with his friend A.W. Moursand, initiating the practice of eluding the Secret Service that Johnson so enjoyed. "There they went, away to get lost over the horizon," Lady Bird Johnson recalled. Secret Service agents were dumbfounded as the president disappeared from sight. They rushed to their vehicles and followed in hasty pursuit. Presidential affairs were forgotten as Johnson roared away for a little deer hunting and a lot of talking, pursued by the people responsible for his safety.⁴⁵

The presence of all these people was even harder on Lady Bird Johnson than on her husband. She had people traipsing through her beloved house, and changes that she found unaesthetic and unappealing had to be made to the property. On her first trip back to the ranch, she remarked on the "two enormous silver saucers"—satellite dishes for communications. Large searchlights probing the night, Secret Service agents bustling about, guardhouses located at the entrances, and other accouterments of security changed the feel of the place. To Lady Bird, it felt as if she had turned her home over to outsiders.

This feeling was driven home in an incident when Lady Bird Johnson found herself locked out of her own home. The Secret Service insisted that the exterior doors to the house remain locked at all times, and agents developed the habit of locking the doors the instant anyone left the house. During a visit by members of the media, Lady Bird served tea and cookies to the press on the lawn, intending to give them a tour of the house. When she tried to open an exterior door, she was embarrassed to find herself locked out. A chagrined security officer immediately opened the door, but the incident served as reinforcement of the reality that at least as long as Lyndon Johnson was in the presidency, the Johnsons' ranch would be public as well as personal property.

Military officials were keenly aware of the burden their presence placed on the first family. It was difficult to ignore the hardware—the helicopters, airplanes, vehicles, and communications equipment—that dotted the ranch, reminding the Johnsons and their military attachés that the ranch was as much a military installation as a family ranch. By the end of 1965, Cross, recently promoted to lieutenant colonel as part of his new position as Armed Forces Aide to the President, felt compelled to remind the many military personnel stationed at the ranch to be considerate of the first family. Soldiers had been far too visible on the property, and some had used objectionable language in the proximity of the Johnsons, a situation Cross found particularly abhorrent. In January, 1966, Cross strengthened his earlier cautionary words. "I would hope," he informed military personnel, "that all personnel would take particular care to avoid ever offending the privacy of either the first family or any one of the civilians associated with them." Yet their presence and the movement of vehicles continued to remind the family that as long as Lyndon B. Johnson remained in the presidency, their home was an unusual kind of public facility.⁴⁶

Yet despite sharing the ranch with the world, the Johnsons lived in a special place that had transformative qualities. The stunning orange Texas sun shone on the land, and as the light from the sunset twinkled across the Pedernales River, the beauty of the Hill Country calmed Johnson and charmed his visitors. "Out here, you don't think about missiles," Johnson apocryphally told a reporter in an oft-repeated quote. Reporters noticed how differently the president acted at his ranch, and many commented on the impact of the place on the man. "He has made a success here," wrote Arthur Hoppe of the San Francisco Chronicle. "He will leave his mark on this quiet land. Here, then, he is secure." Such reasoning, which swallowed whole the mythology Johnson had created about his youth and allowed reporters to feel that they knew the President in an intimate and personal fashion, was an important strategic tool for Johnson. On the ranch, the control he craved was still his, and it showed. "It is almost as though there are two Mr. Johnsons," Hoppe continued. "I, for one, like and admire this Texan far better. And late this afternoon as I walked along the banks of the Pedernales, flushing doves and armadillos, I couldn't help thinking what a shame it is, both for him and for us, that he can't govern the nation from here."⁴⁷

The creation of the remote White House sought to accomplish precisely what Hoppe wished for Johnson. The transformation of the LBJ Ranch into the Texas White House occurred quickly and decisively. The ranch became the site of a branch of government, and the numerous aides, support staff, and security personnel who lived on the premises, as well as those who traveled with the presidential entourage, confirmed the nature of the transformation. The communications system at the ranch was equal to that anywhere in the world, and with it Lyndon Johnson could both visit his home and conduct the business of state. The ranch created a new kind of presidency, one dependent on communications systems instead of proximity to national politics.

This creation of a remote White House was a product of the times and of the individual who demanded it. Johnson had never cared to understand how technology worked, but he could clearly see its possibilities and implications, and with the resources of the presidency at his disposal, he was determined to transform his ranch. What he accomplished only became possible in the 1960s, as the combination of widespread jet travel, improved communications equipment, and other technological advances allowed the transcending of the great distance between the Potomac and the Pedernales Rivers.

As he accomplished this transformation, Johnson again foreshadowed changes in American society. As a westerner, he utilized new amenities in an effort to fuse the demands of the White House with the security and reassurance of the place he loved best. As he brought the two together, he established a trend that later presidents and, after them, the American public would follow. From private jets to second homes to modems that allow access to faraway individuals and sources of information, the type of technological commuting in which Johnson engaged became a typical feature of American life.