book, "lady bird lyndon." later, conversation with defense secretary ashton carter. ♪ this week on q&a, betty boyd caroli discusses her book "lady bird and lyndon," and the marriage between lady bird and lyndon johnson. brian: betty boyd caroli in her new book about lady bird and lyndon. you started in the prologue. johnson started a slow, dignified dissent stairway

from the residential quarters of the white house state or, where guests were0 waiting." betty: it was a very important day for the john's. --johnsons. her daughter was getting married. the first two years were wine and roses, and the last were pure hell. this was the middle of what was a devastating. -- devastating period. i want to get the reader into her story, before talking about her troubled childhood. brian: what else was there about the wedding, you said, that was important? betty: for me, what stood out was she said in her unpublished diaries that as lyndon walked birdthe aisle, lady was not looking at her daughter,

but lyndon. she noticed his hair was grayer. patent forenormous her to make, that her eyes were not on the daughter, but the husband. brian: what was the symbolism that is a johnson left the reception the flight to texas -- fly to texas? betty: i found that very hard to explain, how a father could leave her daughter's reception at his daughter's reception a few minutes after it finished. can you imagine a woman who has just been married, and her father doesn't even a around to see the guests leave? it was for lady bird to see the guest and final couple off-- guests and bridal couple off. the nine talked about roosevelt women earlier. what if you spend all this time

-- why did you spend all this time and labor johnson? -- lady bird johnson? betty: she's always been to pick she's alwaysne-- one.to picdepicted as a plus she was the first modern first lady. she had a big staff and important project. she wrote a book estimate she left. -- as soon as she left. there was a mystery about how her mother died. there were a lot of things about her story where i thought i just wanted to write about her. after she died, many of the papers became available, her unpublished diary. she wrote a big 800 page book. she recorded eight times that

much. i was dying to get my hands on that. i got the final segment of this june. it was a very big help. brian: where did you have to go to find the diary? noty: remember, she did keep a diary in the usual sense of writing everyday. she did not type. she recorded. she did not record everyday. the base she could not get to it, she had a big brown envelope she could in--days not get to it, she had a big brown envelope. be transcribed. who transcribed it did not always understand her accent. i was told i would have to wait until it was re-transcribed.

it was told to me in the transcript that mrs. johnson looked at a picture and said, oh, it looks like a bull of owl of jelly. they listened to the recording, and what she said was it looks botticelli." i got the final segment this year. brian: did you ever get an interview? betty: i did not. i got a note back from her saying she was ill. i did not follow up. her office was good to answer. i would ask who worked for who and how many letters did her office receive. i always made sure they got answered. her love letters were on

website.ibrary's i went on there and got this one from lyndon johnson. where were they both in september? betty: they met september 5. -- september 5, 1934. she had graduated from university of texas. they went to the office of somebody they both knew. ,hey spent the next five days she was introduced to his family, to his boss, some friends. then, she took him back on monday to meet her father. andesday to monday, these those days together, and he was only asking her to marry him.

tuesday morning to drive back to washington. september 11 was the first letter shhe wrote her, from that hehis hotel, wished she had married him. maybe that's the letter? brian: they are all on the website. he said, "it was hard to leave you. it is always hard to feel that you have not quite won. i would hope that you would want to go with me. if you did, i did not understand it that way." he goes on to say, "you mean everything to me. i hope i may mean as much to you." was hard to tell you how much it meant to be with you in your home." that is five days after they met?

betty: yes. the letters are an incredible source for understanding the sort of man he was. now, we know his insistence on secrecy. he would write, "something's happening, i can't tell you what." the letters tell you a lot about his needs. "i need someone like you to nurse me and help me climb." i could never figure out why someone as cautious as lady bird would marry someone just a few weeks after she met him. it is hard to figure out how many days they knew each other before they married. they met september 5. halloween,me back on and she had already planned a visit to her aunt in atlanta,

georgia. she went off on a trip. they were writing hot and heavy letters. she marries him. they get into a car starting towards san antonio. she says he figured she could always get out in austin before she got there. she didn't even unpack before she got back from her aunt. that aalways amazes me woman who saw advice on every single topic before she acted married him in a hurry. brian: here's kirk douglas reading these letters. let's watch this. through an old

colonial mansion. veryways gives me a poignant feeling. there were the tallest angle he seen--magnolias you've ever seen. , this morning i am ambitious, proud, energetic. i am madly in love with you. , do thingsee people with the drive. if i had a box, i would make a speech. plans, ideas, hopes. i am bubbling over. >> lyndon, tell me as soon as you can what the deal is. [laughter] >> i'm afraid it's politics. i know i have not any business, not any proprietary interest. i would hate for you to go into politics. [laughter] betty: well, i think that letter

about not wanting him to go into politics has been taken out of context. she was political as a young woman. she was writing in the same letters, do you like to debate economics and socialism, religion? as a student at the university of texas, she would go to the legislature to listen to debate. that was taken out of context. she was interested in ambitious young men. she saw lyndon as one. if it was politics, she was willing to go. brian: the same thing that baffles a lot of people is her reaction to his womanizing. out -- toto focus pull this out. you say lyndon needed a "bevy of beauties around him, and bird made room for all of them."

betty: when you look at her background, her father, you look at the letter in which she tells him off about how he's out dancing with another woman, and later, he is dining with that woman. i looked for her response to that. she doesn't reply to anything about this. later, she says she knew the relationship was not platonic. there's a very complicated , what she wanted beautiful women around him. she says he did better work, with his ego. howhe book, i talk about lyndon always wants the most beautiful women beside him, and tonight it is, and the two names -- and then she names a woman.

when you read her history, you understand. brian: another quote. although you're telling a story from horse musace busby. "lyndon drove with one hand and use the other hand go under the seatedf the woman' between him and bird." betty: some people say, and i quote a woman reporter, that in a way, lyndon made a show of rile ladyto bird. whenever they were walking side-by-side, lyndon would take her hand, if she was in view, as -- as she was having

though he was having his sexual relation with the woman reporter. he flaunted his attractive. , he was anyn douglas actor, she was a congresswoman. i want to show you some video of helen douglas who ran against dick nixon and lost. the fear ofmned internal communism as a rational and the host of the distance of the house committee on un-american activities. politicians in both parties called the former actress a "bleeding heart liberal," a "do-gooder." john f. kennedy quietly gave nixon $1000 to defeat her. douglas was the perfect

target for nixon's style of campaigning. a unseeded campaign he waged against me. the essence of that kind of avoid thes this: to boguss, you work up focus issu issues. betty: the relationship with lyndon goes back to their days gather in the house -- days together in the house. when she came in the house of representatives from california in 19 the five, she was-- in 1945, she was gorgeous, hollywood-smart, and glamorous. she was the most glamorous woman in the house.

she stands out like a birth they take on the salad bar -- birthday cake on the salad bar. she is in lyndon johnson's -- thefirst issues there first day she is there. she was attacked on the house floor by congressman lincoln for the same thing set in the 1950's, being a communist. she stood up and said, "are you referring to me?" there was a scene. theen get-- lyndon gets speaker and gets rankin to answer helen's question. wasn't, which is not true. is interesting, how public

lyndon came to her rescue. ,hey would walk hand-in-hand his car would stay over at her house. brian: he was married at the time? betty: yes i'm a for 11 years-- yes, for 11 years. bird's here in ladyb len.y how much she liked he where do they go to commiserate? this was shocking to many people. we think of fdr as being sick for a long time. people knew he did not look good. lookedrd said he tired, but there was shock. this was the only president many

people had ever known, certainly in the johnson case. like asaid he "looked daddy to me." where do they go to commiserate? they go to the healtouse of heln douglas. brian: on the radio station, we ran phone conversation with lyndon johnson. in 1964, january 1. lady bird is on the phone. listen and see what you think. they never knew you the way i did. i said he might be one of the really great ones. >> hello. that is what i said. this might turn out to be one hell of a present.

good as a hope i am president. ,> i ran into your friends right and left, and liked them all so much. >> tell them that evelyn's out here. she's running the big law office for wyman. >> i know them. i like them. >> keep your ear to the ground. california is a messy place, worse than texas. tosked her to keep her ear the ground. >> tell her to report to us every now and then. i like the women to like him, and i like him to like them. roz did well,

partly because of you. >> there are complications, but it's going very well. betty: that so typical for her to get on the phone and whose ooze charm. there's a later case where helen goes over to the white house and they invite her to stay. ladybird has breakfast with her and is so enthusiastic about how great she is. this is after 15 years of washington talking about lyndon's affair with helen. helen--id betty: it was a fairly open marriage at that point. brian: we might come back to that point. i want to go on to another part of the book, where you talk about lady bird johnson's business experience. you had figures on how much money was dispensed to her and

the children. let's start with this. morrison was.w. a trustee. two men did not speak for the remainder of lyndon's life." betty: he was a rancher, a neighbor. that was the first stop on most of their trip back to texas. when it came time to appoint a trustee to look after their holdings, when lyndon became , he was one of the people they could trust to do that. his family had lent money to lyndon to go to college. this was a relationship that went way back. this became complicated. a.w. was lending.

it was very complicated. when it came time to and the relationship, to settle the property after the presidency said-- lyndon said they decided to "split the blanket." they never spoke again. brian: though morsi cut him off-- bill morrissey cut him off. and tom johnson who was his vice -- who was hisn press secretary. betty: after the presidency ended, tom johnson wanted to give a book party for bill moyers. they call lyndon johnson and say they want him to come to the party. the phone was dead.

could noton said he sever the relationship. he went to lady bird, and she talked to lyndon. she said to him, just because thomas loyal to bill moyers doesn't mean he isn't also loyal to you. it was mended, a little. brian: back to business. out of their business start, and what was it? betty: lady bird had a journalism degree. she was the first first lady to have 2 degrees, and the only one to he t -- only one up illary clinton. she said she always wanted to own a newspaper, but it was too expensive. in boston station

came up for sale. it was losing money. she had money inherited from her mother, who had died a long time ago. it partly came from uncle claude, who she was named for. she could not buy it without doing research. she went to a member of the the and who had been a johnson friend. she said, do you think it is a good idea? he says yes. she buys the station and goes down there in 1943. i have evidence she washed the windows and dealt with programming and got into it. of course, that little station gradually became the basis of an empire. it didn't make money. of first money was in august

1943, profit was $17. amount to payire a dental bill. of course, when television became an option, that, i found interesting. one of the interpretations given to the broadcasting history of the johnson family is that lady bird had nothing to do with it. there is so much evidence to the contrary. their lawyer talks about a meeting, where they had to decide whether to go into television or not. it was expensive, so much equipment and programming. it's a bigger deal than radio. birdn holds back, but lady says it's a risk she wants to take. intohey going to tv-- go

tv. brian: there was a time when the when television asian austan -- television station in austin belonged to lyndon johnson. betty: it's impossible to think about a senator being on the commerce committee, in charter communications, the fcc, not having influence with the people making decisions. itwhat extent he actually, has never been shown, any concrete evidence that he influenced people. it seems to be absolutely clear that just being in that job was an influence. i compared it to the obama daughters getting into college. i bet they both go to their first choice. when you are the daughter of the president, you have clout. lady bird johnson was a person who people said, in the case of

getting a license for tb, he said, "i didn't apply." johnson's wife was applying." just the fact that he was on the theittee in the senate, committee in charge of the fcc, we don't have to say anything more. brian: the station was sold, and johnson worked for the los angeles times. the money that was distributed, how did you find it? betty: i use printed sources. there were some subjects that became to complicated to follow up individually, like certain gifts he gave the staff members.

i relied on other sources, like the wall street journal. i never heard those amounts were wrong. brian: you talk about president johnson having a falling out, after going out of the white house with alter cronkite-- with walter cronkite. what was the falling out? betty: when he left the white house, both johnson's, i think they were the first couple to do this, a signed -- they signed contracts to write books. by 1970, andot out lyndon's by 1971. their money goes to the obg library-- lbj library. yndon was to do an

interview with walter cronkite, but he felt the editing did not do him justice. it was not a fair presentation of the handling of subjects like vietnam. i have a picture in the book of lady bird and walter cronkite, after lyndon died. they were voting together off of martha's vineyard. remember, he was a classmate of lady bird. they were both in the journalism school. is interesting to see the way she keeps this friendship. johnson, after lyndon has broken off. role a fair he important she plays in his life while he

is alive, to mend the fences. he could be crude, cruel, make fun of them because of their weight or what they were wearing. there's a famous story of how he .riticized jill kelley sondra he would say he did not like the way someone's tie was tied. lady bird would say, maybe he likes his tie that way. she would say, you've been delivering that messages. sometimes, you confuse the message with the messenger. she was good when it came to mending problems. brian: these are your words. sits in during the walter cronkite interviews. "he went on and on about how communist controlled the three

major networks and dozens of other communication outlets. , herding to richard goodwin even named names. n is a lippman communist. you would be shocked by the things revealed by the fbi." he accused cronkite. betty: you are reading from the description of the ranch. richard goodwin let loose with all these names. it was lady bird who said, now think youn't you should think twice? some of those reports might not be correct? averted, sheat was would never confront him, but to lyndon.",

she called infiltration. "infiltration." brian: the interview we did with 1999, the first question was about a taping system. the answer was a surprise. >> did it bother you when you heard you were recorded? lady bird: no. not that i recall. it would not have bothered me. it happened. i knew vaguely that it was happening. i let it happen. some but he had been under the bed with a microphone -- someone

had been under the bed with a microphone. i wasn't hurt or shocked. this was thet knew real, raw stuff of what went on. betty: she was amazingly courageous to let those tapes the opebe opened. his recording system was created so he knew he would quote someone correctly. the recording system with the left on, because it always shocked me a bit to see he was recording his own wife. secretaries told me other people could turn that on. their work, i think, 800 hours of recorded conversations-- there were, i think, 800 hours

of recorded conversations. he gave them to his most trusted secretary, and he asked him not to open them until 50 years after his death. 2023.ould've been knew about the tapes and went to lady bird in 1990. he asked if they should open them. she said, yes. now, you can hear her telling him how bad a press conference was. you can hear her argue with him about how to treat the walter jenkins matter. brian: keep in mind, she does not know she's recorded. what happened to walter jenkins? since their top aide

1939, 25 years or so, the families were close. s went to the jenkins home. he was arrested on a moral charge one month before the biggest election of lyndon's life in a public restroom. when the johnsons heard about it, lady bird was in the white was in newlyndon york campaigning for bobby kennedy. she called him to say what they should do. brian: let's listen. betty caroli i would like to do -- lady bird: i would like to do two things for walter. i would like to offer him the radio two job at the

station. lyndon: i would not do anything on that line. bird: i don't think that's right. i think if we don't express , i think we will lose the entire love and devotion of all of the people with us.in witbeen lyndon: well, you can imagine what state i am in. i don't want to create any more problems. betty: of course, what she did wrote a letter

supporting jenkins. she said, my heart goes out to this man. this nervous breakdown deserves our prayers and attention. she called in the editor of the washington post to print it. she did not know she was being recorded. she took the right stand, and lyndon was really backing off. she says it was close to the election. we are talking mid-october. the election was in november. felt, any indication that his top eight was vulnerable to blackmail would be a death sentence for the election. that's the way she explained it. she sort of defended lyndon.

at least, she did not attack him. brian: did they get him a job? betty: lady bird went to see the family about a month after that. she talks about it in a very hard visit. she continues to work for them and does their taxes right up until, as long as he was alive. brian: i am going to ask you about robert carroll. all, ande help you at to?many sources did you go betty: i tried to talk to his biographers, for example, bob carol. i asked him if she had changed his opinion.

there is a letter, saying in 19 six, i want to come to the library to do a book on lyndon. here it is, 40 years later. we're still waiting for the volume. he said to me, he does think lady bird was a mood stabilizer. he had extreme mood swings. could start down the stairs in a good mood, and arrive in a bad mood." diary,ld say, in her "he's in the dumps today. gloom." doom and then, "he's all better."

bob carol had interviews with lady bird. i tried to get interviews with historians who had talked to her, which i could not. brian: i wanted to get your take on this other affair. alice, i had to write at length about. i don't think the johnson people, they have never forgiven me. you could not write an honest book about him without making her a rather major. he was close to her for years. driving down to virginia, to her estate. betty: the relationship with alice glass was greatly

exaggerated. it is true, in the late 30's, she was a glamorous figure. ladybird talks about going to their home, the home she shared with charles marsh and thinking these were the most sophisticated people around. in the research i did, i could not follow a relationship and a close relationship between lyndon and alice after the early 40's. things did not line up. we may never know what happened. it's true she went and married five times after that. i make the point in my book that it's a good thing lyndon johnson did not divorce lady bird. it's a thing a lot of people in 1939.e would do i don't think we would've heard of him again. he needed lady bird.

brian: here's the roughest one. able-- you talk about a woman named madeline duncan brown. driskillto the hotel, and he's crying. to saying, i miss you. i blurted out that i was pregnant. she had a fit. it had a temper, no telling .hat he might do i >> he broke a lamp. he said, "it takes two to tango." i was relieved he said that. brian: is that true?

betty: she wrote a book. wh's the only woman with associateds name is for an affair. 48 andfair began in 19 resulted in a son. she says she continued to see him. there is documentation that many accepted. have she was set up in a house with credit cards and servan ts. arranged for that to continue after his death.

lady bird not believe that. he died beforeut it was settled. you have all these books about women who had affairs with john kennedy. on the lyndon johnson side, it is a sparcse record. brown was involved in all these conspiracies. she is a part of that, and that discredited her. so far, people have not been able to only discredit her -- to on this. her brian: what papers were you able to find? betty: there are a couple of interesting files.

remember, at pearl harbor, she was in alabama going over financial papers. she knew she would inherit land and money from her uncle. she heard about the pearl harbor report and the fdr speech. when he was back in washington, lyndon had signed up for active service. she took over the office for six months in 1942. i loved looking at her correction. she went over every letter, and there was one in which a person wrote to a constituent in texas, fighting the off wantshere the president

him to be. ladybird said that was not true. the president wanted him back, doing ledges of work -- legislative work. ,he letters she was writing "please send me any news you can." she gave every baby in the district a congratulations letter. she was a thorough person. that was, i learned a lot about how she operated. she was an authentic person. when she invited the women reporters upstairs at the white house, she said, "i enjoyed the visit." jackie kennedy would never have invited anybody out there. most of the first ladies, if you go back in the 20's entry, they seeing want reporters

what happened upstairs. she would invite them up and they, "i feel good about it. i'm an open person, but i will put away the books i'm reading." i don't think she was embarrassed about reading them, but she was embarrassed about which authors got mentioned. i heard she was a great reader, but in her diary, she does not say she likes this book because of that. she felt later that would favor a writer over another. she kept quiet. brian: is the unpublished diary available for anybody to read? betty: yes. as of june, the last ignorant is out.- last segment is nothing changed my view. there were a few comments. ae unpublished diary fills in

few things left out of the published one. she talks about going to bobby kennedy's funeral. said jackie kennedy looked at her as if from avail at a attance-- as if from a veil a distance. what she really wrote was that jackie kennedy looked at her from a distance with hostility. it makes it different, to add hostility. there are some places i was able to fill in from blanks. brian: what year did you write your first book? betty: 1987. i was teaching women's history. i did not want to write a book about women who became famous because of

marriage. id i wanted to write a little about eleanor roosevelt. i was working at cambridge. every time i had to wait for a box of papers, i would pull down an encyclopedia and read about sarah polk or some of the first ladies. it struck me that they all married down, all of them. they married into families that were economically below there's,-- thieirs. why did the women marry down? i told my editor i would write the book in two years. it took four or five. lady bird johnson is the perfect

ample of the conclusion i came to, which is that these women felt something in those men, ambition, opportunity to really climb and make a mark in the world. father, he liked lyndon. he was not opposed to the marriage. he thought it was too fast. is a good example of that-- she's a good example of that. brian: what would you have thought of lyndon? betty: the most complicated person you could imagine. crude and cruel man, but will make a great president." when i tried that line on people

that met him, they would say he was most loving and supportive person. a parent orthat relative had never been into an airplane, he'd arrange it. he would make birthday parties for his staffers. lady bird loved that. he did not have the spontaneous generosity heated--- she did not have the spontaneous generosity he did. brian: we've got a whole movie of lady bird from camp david. weibel felt up on the screen-- will throw it up on the screen. look at them. there's john steinbeck on the right. there's mrs. johnson and the

president with someone's baby. the reason i show this is, how much did you watch? betty: it's all online. if you go to their website and aok at the home movies, maybe 35, i would suggest to watch the one of the 1941 campaign. movie gave her the aroundand she goes doing opposition research. they lost the election for senate in 1941. she said it was her favorite campaign. --ian: you write "plantations testy "vacations made him

, and their daughters-- ,etty: they went to disneyland and the girls, vacations were not on his of his favorite things. that is one thing lady bird did do after his death, she traveled the world. brian: you write, "as much as she loved him, she continued to be shocked by his acting out. she was not alone in failing to see how a grown man could grow such childish tantrums." betty: when he throws food or spits in a plate. she said, "i'm bewildered by his more thanbut no he is himself." bipolar?as he a

betty: several staff said he would be in a mannix age-- manic stage. they went through a bad. in 1965 -- they went to a bad period in 1965. that was the year of the higher education act, medicare, the voting rights act, the beautification act. it was a rich. --it was a rich period. the president had real highs and lows. the lawyers became alarmed and went to lady bird to see what could be done. she said she'd already acted. she called in his doctors, who examined him to see if there was something wrong. they called it the stress of

hard work. he was never diagnosed as bipolar. many people have concluded he was. ed--n: he said she liv you said you went to new york and vienna? york and venice. we decided we needed our own home. teach?do you betty: not for 20 years. up?n: where did you grow betty: ohio, in the center of this date on a arm, north of mount vernon, south of mansfield. i went to overland college.

state for ann masters in communication. i have not lived in ohio for some years. brian: will you do another book? betty: i promised my husband not to sign another contract. i have three in the basement. one is something i was working on in 1982. she's an important figure in the settlement house. has a name my editor said would be too hard for people to pronounce. like to finish it. i started a book about my great-grandfather, his uncle fiction book -- a historical fiction book. he was a captain in the virginia cavalry. i would like to do a book about venice. brian: here's the cover.

explained to us, who chose the us, who chose to the photography? betty: well, you have lady bird with her left hand on his back. you would not say she is pushing, but she is supportive. the photograph captures the sense of the book well. brian: my guest has been betty caroli. the book is "lady bird and lyndon." betty: thank you very much. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] ♪

>> for a free transcript or your comments about this program, visit us at qanda.org. programs are also available as podcasts. >> if you enjoyed this week's interview with betty caroli, here are other programs you would like. a two-part interview with robert caro. da;;el. amd-- dallek and evan thomas. watch the entire library at any time at www.c-span.org. >>