Transcript
Edited by Max Holland, with David Shreve, Ashley Havard High, and Patricia Dunn
See the daily introduction for 1963-11-29 [from the Norton edition]
Of all the congressional members on the commission, Ford was the least known to President Johnson. He had been first elected to the House in 1948, the same year Johnson won his Senate seat. Ford’s first and only intensive encounter with Lyndon Johnson had occurred in 1957, when both men served on a bipartisan House-Senate committee formed to draft the legislation creating NASA.
Yes, Mr. President.[note 1] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary. How are you, sir?
Happy Thanksgiving. Where are you?
I’m home, sir.
You mean Michigan?
No. No, I’m here in Washington—
You’re in Washington? Well, thank God, [there's] somebody in town! [Ford chuckles.] I was getting ready to tell [James] MacGregor Burns he’s right about the Congress.[note 2] See footnote 22. They couldn’t function.
I thought your speech was excellent the other day.[note 3] Ford was referring to the Joint Session address before Congress.
Why thank you, Jerry.
Jerry, I got something I want you to do for me.
Well, we’ll do the best we can, sir.
I’ve got to have a top, blue-ribbon, presidential commission to investigate the assassination [of President Kennedy]. And I’m going to ask the Chief Justice [Earl Warren] to head it, and then I’m going to ask John [J.] McCloy and Allen [W.] Dulles.
Right.
And I want it nonpartisan. I’m not going to point out I got five Republicans, two Democrats, but I’m going do that, and I’m just—then you forget what party you belong to and just serve as an American. And I want [Richard B.] Dick Russell [Jr.] and [John] Sherman Cooper, John Cooper, of the Senate—
Right.
—Dick’s on Armed Services [Committee] over there, and I want somebody on Appropriation[s] [Committee] who knows CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] over in your shop from Appropriation[s] angle, ʼcause I’m covering the Armed Services angle with Russell.
Right.
Want to ask [T.] Hale Boggs [Sr.] and you to serve from the House.
Well, Mr. President—
[Unclear] be McCloy, and Dulles, and Ford, and Boggs, and Cooper, and Russell, and Chief Justice Warren as chairman.
Well, you know very well I would be honored to do it, and I’ll . . . do the very best I can, sir.
You do that and . . . keep me up to date, and I’ll be seeing you.
All right. Thank you very much—
Thank you.
—and I’m delighted to help out.
Thank you, Jerry.
Thank you.[note 4] End of 2021 revisions.
Cite as
“Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford on 29 November 1963,” Tape K6311.06, PNO 1, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [The Kennedy Assassination and the Transfer of Power, vol. 1, ed. Max Holland] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014–). URL: http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/9010174
Originally published in
Lyndon B. Johnson: The Kennedy Assassination and the Transfer of Power, November 1963–January 1964, ed. Max Holland, vol. 1 of The Presidential Recordings (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005).