Memories from the Pedernales

The second installment of Lyndon Johnson's televised memoirs was broadcast by CBS last week. One of the more knowing viewers of L.B.J.'s talk with Walter Cronkite was TIME Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey, who covered the White House during the Kennedy and Johnson years. Here is Sidey's assessment, weighing Johnson's recollections against those of his own:

FOR an hour, Lyndon Baines Johnson lamented a world that would not behave as he thought it should. Far more than his earlier interview, it was his own tragedy on film, the first national look at the man as he really was behind the White House scenes. Johnson's hero was his loyal Secretary of State, Dean Rusk; his villain. Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. In Johnson's account of how he ordered the bombing of North Viet Nam partially halted on March 31, 1968, it was Rusk--not Clifford--who suggested the idea. Rusk. L.B.J. related, first broached the point March 4, and it was Rusk who argued against Clifford's proposal to insist on some reciprocal action from North Viet Nam. According to Johnson: "Secretary Rusk said, 'Reciprocity won't work. We ought to just stop the bombing.' "

Initial Irritation. That is Johnsonian history. The ex-President ignores the long internal battle for Johnson's mind as related by Clifford and others. According to Johnson, there was no battle. He does not say that a draft of his March 31 speech as late as March 28 contained no mention of a bombing halt and took a hard line. Nor does he mention his three bellicose speeches given in March or his initial irritation at U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg's suggestion for a total bombing halt.

"Let's get one thing clear," he said, "I'm telling you now, I am not going to stop the bombing." The recollection of the men involved in the argument was that Rusk talked of the possibility of a bombing pause, but only unenthusiastically as one alternative. Witnesses of those days insist that it was Clifford, not Rusk, who raised the first effective doubts in those councils.

It is conceivable, of course, that everybody is technically correct. Rusk may have suggested the bombing halt but then not supported it in the discussions. Others who worked with Rusk insist that he took a position only after determining where Johnson stood.

Strewn with Longings. The former President also denied the contention of many--including Clifford--that a request for 206.000 more troops had come from the military in Saigon. Johnson said that he had initiated the request, but had asked only for "recommendations, not implementations." Again, the President's memory differs from that of people at the Pentagon, who do not recall directives to determine "if" new troops were needed, but only how many.

Johnson said that he had not believed that there would be a Communist offensive during Tet--an agreed truce --but the Communists attacked anyway. "That was just too much to even believe a Communist would do," Johnson said. The hour was strewn with this and other longings for a simpler time.

Johnson's familiar targets got another lick. Discussing the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which he used as authority to take the U.S. into war, Johnson said sarcastically: "Now it never occurred to me that Senator [William] Fulbright, this Rhodes scholar, didn't understand what was in that language." L.B.J. said that the resolution should have been named "the Fulbright Resolution, like the Fulbright scholars thing, because Senator Fulbright introduced it with his consent." Johnson is right about the origin of the resolution, but it came at a time when the President was telling everyone he was not about to send American boys to fight Asian battles.

As it did in the White House, Johnson's anger sometimes subsided into self-pity. One could feel the anguish of this amazing man as his hands chopped the air and the words rushed out in his insistence on writing the history of his years the way he wants it written. He has picked up a few pounds and his hair is a little grayer, but his eyes still form slits when he is pursuing his victims, and his features are intent.

These recollections reveal one other factor of those years: the internal secrecy and random communication that Johnson insisted on in his Administration. It was a flaw of monumental proportions. The confusion of his history must be a reflection of the confusion of those times.

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