Ronald Kessler: The First Family Detail

Johnson did not care if women were around.

“He was totally naked with his daughters, Lady Bird, and female secretaries,” MacMillan says. “He was quite well endowed in his testicles. So everyone started calling him bull nuts. He found out about it. He was really upset.”

“He had episodes of getting drunk,” George Reedy, his press secretary, told me. “There were times where he would drink day after day. You would think this guy is an alcoholic. Then all of a sudden, it would stop. We could always see the signs when he called for a Scotch and a soda, and he would belt it down and call for another one, instead of sipping it.”

Johnson’s drinking only fueled his outbursts. Air Force One steward MacMillan recalls serving roast beef on the plane. Johnson blew up because the slice his aide Jack Valenti had was rare.

Johnson grabbed Valenti’s tray and brought the food back to the galley.

“You two sons of bitches, look at this,” he said. “This is raw. You gotta cook the meat on my airplane. Don’t you serve my people raw meat. Goddamn, if you two boys serve raw meat on my airplane again, you’ll both end up in Vietnam.”

Johnson threw the tray with the meal upside down on the floor and stormed off.

Former agent Richard Roth remembers thinking, “If Johnson weren’t president, he’d be in an insane asylum.”

A champion of African-Americans, Johnson marshaled support from southern Democrats for his civil rights legislation. But his hypocrisy extended to regularly referring to blacks as “niggers.” On Air Force One, Johnson was discussing his proposed civil rights bill with two governors. Explaining why it was so important to him, MacMillan remembers that Johnson said it was simple: “I’ll have them niggers voting Democratic for two hundred years.”

“Johnson was in the limousine in Denver, and the microphone was on, and he didn’t realize it,” former agent Clark Larsen says. “They’re going down the street and he said, ‘Look at all those niggers driving around.’ The people on the street didn’t know where the voice was coming from. They were looking across the street and looking around the corner, and a couple of them were even looking to the heavens.”

Secret Service agents found Lady Bird—code-named Victoria—to be the opposite of her husband: She was gracious to and respectful of agents. Former presidents receive lifetime Secret Service protection. Unless they remarry, spouses of former presidents are given lifetime protection as well. After her husband died, Lady Bird had a total of eight agents—two per shift—protecting her.

“She had a southern accent and was very well spoken,” a former agent recalls. “Everything she said sounded rehearsed, because it was perfectly worded and perfectly pronounced.”

Former agent Robert Rosebush remembers driving Lady Bird to a friend’s house in Austin and missing a turn. Instead of correcting him, she said, “My, my. I don’t think I’ve ever been this way before.”

As first lady, Lady Bird—whose real name was Claudia—promoted environmentalism and encouraged Americans to plant wildflowers and native plants.

“Her eyes were failing, but we’d take her out and walk along certain areas at certain times of the year when the flowers were in bloom, and she’d just love to stop and look at Indian paintbrush or whatever the different flowers were, and she still knew them,” a former agent says.

In August 1993, at the age of eighty, Lady Bird had a severe stroke. After that, “she could barely speak,” the former agent says. “It sounded like she had a mouthful of marbles. So, from that point forward, it was never very easy to understand her, and she had to write things down, and of course, that was pretty hard to read, too. So, from that point forward, she could understand us and she could indicate yes or no, but she always had a health aide with her.”

Lady Bird alternated between using a walker and a wheelchair. Secret Service agents protecting Bess Truman in her last days faced a similar situation. She spent most of her time in bed.

“Bess Truman would get up out of bed every Wednesday and go down to the beauty parlor, and she’d walk so slow and hold her arm out, and then the agent would have to put his arm on top of hers, and then they’d go really, really slow,” according to former agent Lloyd Bulman. “It’d take them a long time to get out of the car, to put her in the car, take her down to the beauty shop, and she’d get out of the car, put her arm out again, and the agent would walk her into the beauty shop.”

Agents were amazed that neither the Johnsons’ ranch nor their home in Austin, Texas, displayed a photo of John F. Kennedy or Jackie Kennedy. Instead, they noticed a photo of the Johnsons with Ronald Reagan walking among California redwoods.

Lady Bird died on July 11, 2007, at her Austin home overlooking a lake.

“The agents knew she was going to pass, and they had an opportunity to say good-bye to her,” a former agent says.

Five days before President Obama was to appear at the 2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Secret Service advance agents began scoping out the Washington Hilton, where the April 28 talk would take place.

“The advance entails trying to know everything about the hotel from top to bottom, above it, below it, around it,” says an agent who was involved in the process. “You determine what streets you need to close off, all the vulnerability points. You want to obviously meet with White House staff and try to determine where the president is going to be, where he’s going to move, his footsteps, what time he arrives, the time he leaves.”

Agents located a suitable room where POTUS could relax if he wanted to or if he needed to make a secure call.

“You determine where we can put him if there’s an incident in the hotel, a place that’s hard, solid, strong, that we can throw him into and hunker down on top of him,” the agent says.

Agents carry protective hoods known as expedient hoods, to be placed over the president’s head in the event of a chemical attack.

“You need to make sure you have a couple of egress routes to the motorcade in case there’s an emergency,” an agent says. “A lot of logistical work goes into it, time lines, working with staff to determine guests of the president, who’s going to be there, who attends.”

On the day of the dinner, a technical security team began sweeping the hotel for bugging devices. Canine units swept the inside of the hotel, the parking areas, and the grounds. Including those in the motorcade, some seventy-five agents were on duty for the visit. They included counterassault teams armed with semiautomatic Stoner SR-16 rifles and flash-bang grenades for diversionary tactics. In addition, a countersniper team deployed by the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division was positioned at the Hilton’s side entrance, where Obama’s limousine would enter the hotel’s underground garage.

The countersnipers are there as observers and can respond to a distant threat with their .300 Winchester Magnum—known as Win Mag—rifles. The rifle is customized for the shooter assigned the weapon. Each team is also equipped with one Stoner SR-25 rifle.

A phalanx of Metropolitan Police officers on roaring motorcycles with flashing red and blue lights heralded the arrival of Obama’s motorcade. The motorcade consisted of eighteen vehicles. They included a specialized communications van for secure telephone and video connections, a truck operated by the National Security Agency that jams radio frequencies around the presidential motorcade and monitors possible threats, and a fully loaded ambulance equipped to handle biological or chemical contaminants.