DFU SONG: I'll Never Find Another You (Bill Moyers job to out Goldwater staff homosexual)

This is just too good. Years ago, the compassionate lib Bill Moyers was given an assignment to out a homosexual on the Goldwater staff after Walter Jenkins was outed. Hey, Bill, sing along with us.

From the White House they called...with words from LBJ
They said, "Billy Moyers, get over here today
There's a Walter Jenkins problem, so your assignment's clear
In the Goldwater campaign, go find a queer"

You can check out rest stops or fly off to San Fran
'Cause in their bath houses, you'll find them man on man
"There's a Walter Jenkins problem, so your assignment's clear
In the Goldwater campaign, go find a queer"

A few weeks till election...Bill's carrying the ball
He must do it or this thing could blow it all

This compassionate liberal would do the dirty deed
They were hoping he'd come through with the homo that they need
"There's a Walter Jenkins problem, so your assignment's clear
In the Goldwater campaign, go find a queer"

"There's a Walter Jenkins problem, so your assignment's clear
In the Goldwater campaign, go find a queer"

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FBI FILES

Hoover's Institution
Anecdotes from the FBI crypt--and lessons on how to win the war.

BY LAURENCE H. SILBERMAN
Wednesday, July 20, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

I recently completed a rewarding year as co-chairman of President Bush's commission on intelligence, and I propose to discuss our recommendations regarding the FBI in light of my own unique experience with J. Edgar Hoover.

Our commission recommended that the FBI be reconstructed--to create a separate national security service within the bureau that would combine counterintelligence, counterterrorism and foreign intelligence. We did so because we concluded that the tasks of agents performing these three functions were sufficiently different from traditional work that different training, incentives and career paths should be developed. Some in the bureau appeared to initially resist. They suggested that a separate national security service might induce those FBI personnel in that separate service to engage in questionable behavior. I found this concern especially ironic in light of past history and my own experience.

I became deputy attorney general in early 1974, after the "Saturday night massacre." Having seen printed rumors of the "secret and confidential files" of J. Edgar Hoover (who had died in 1972), I asked Clarence Kelly, the very straight and honorable director of the bureau, whether they existed. He assured me that they did not. If they ever did they must have been destroyed.

I was shocked then, when on Jan. 19, 1975, as acting attorney general, I read a front page story in the Washington Post confirming the existence of the files. The story pointed out that the files contained embarrassing material collected on congressmen. When I confronted Kelly, he was initially mystified. He then realized the Post must be referring to files in his outer office, in plain sight, which he had inherited but never examined. Sure enough, they were the notorious secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover.

The House Judiciary Committee demanded I testify about those files, so I was obliged to read them. Accompanied by only one FBI official, I read virtually all these files in three weekends. It was the single worst experience of my long governmental service. Hoover had indeed tasked his agents with reporting privately to him any bits of dirt on figures such as Martin Luther King, or their families. Hoover sometimes used that information for subtle blackmail to ensure his and the bureau's power.
I intend to take to my grave nasty bits of information on various political figures--some still active. As bad as the dirt collection business was, perhaps even worse was the evidence that he had allowed--even offered--the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes. I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends.

We attempted, without going into specifics, to explain to the committee the nature of Hoover's secret files. I intend now to be more specific because I see no reason why such matters should not be public. Indeed, from my subsequent vantage point as ambassador to Yugoslavia, I was rather surprised that the Church Committee, which had access to the files, largely ignored the FBI's misdeeds and concentrated instead on rather less objectionable CIA activities.

We told the committee that the bureau had sought, at the direction of a political figure, to gather unfavorable information on his opponent during an election campaign. Rep. Herman Badillo of New York pressed me to admit that it was an investigation of Allard Lowenstein, an antiwar candidate running against Rep. John Rooney, the powerful chairman of an appropriations panel with jurisdiction over the FBI. I repeatedly denied that and finally said it involved the presidential campaign of 1964. Shortly thereafter, Don Edwards, the chairman, terminated the hearing. But reporters dug out more facts.

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men's room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, "I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?" And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.

Other presidents, according to those files, misused the bureau, although never Truman and Eisenhower. But Johnson clearly was the most demanding. This discovery was particularly painful for me. Although I was a life-long Republican, I had not only voted for LBJ, I had signed an ad supporting him, which got me ejected from the Hawaii Young Republicans.

In 1968 the FBI, at the president's direction, actually surveilled Spiro Agnew, the Republican vice-presidential candidate. To be sure, as subsequent events revealed, Agnew might well have been under surveillance when, as governor of Maryland, he was taking bribes; but in 1968 it was for the purpose of determining whether he was in contact with South Vietnamese leaders. It was not for law-enforcement purposes. Incidentally, the FBI never determined that he was in contact with the South Vietnamese.

It was not only Republicans that Johnson targeted with the FBI. He must have been obsessed with the Kennedy political threat because he used the bureau to determine whether officials in his administration were too close to Robert Kennedy after Kennedy left the administration. Ironically, one of his White House assistants, whom he inherited from JFK and was a particular subject of this sort of surveillance, is now married to LBJ's biographer. I refer to Richard Goodwin, the husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Some of Johnson's suspicions of the Kennedys were rather amusing. He became convinced that the Washington Star was secretly owned by the Kennedy family and that is why he received less favorable coverage from the Star than from the Post. He insisted that Hoover unearth those connections. Hoover plaintively tried to explain that the Star was owned by the Kauffmann family and that they were Republicans.

But surely the most bizarre episode that I discovered (and can reveal) involves the investigation and trial of Bobby Baker, who had been LBJ's top Senate aide. To say that the president was apprehensive about this episode would be a dramatic understatement. The investigation and trial took place when Bobby Kennedy was attorney general and Jack Miller the assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division. During the investigation of Baker's Senate activities, Miller asked the FBI to wire a potential witness. To his astonishment Hoover responded with the ridiculous assertion that it would be improper.

Of course, Hoover promptly reported this to LBJ as he had many activities of the Kennedy Justice Department. However, Miller was not to be deterred. With Kennedy's approval he called a special assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler to gain help from Treasury agents. The assistant arranged the help and Baker was convicted. Much later, toward the end of the Johnson administration, Hoover discovered Miller's end-around and duly reported it to LBJ, who, furious, demanded that Fowler fire the assistant. Fowler refused. That assistant was Robert Jordan, my Harvard Law School classmate, subsequently general counsel of the Army and later my partner at Steptoe & Johnson.

Hoover's shenanigans may well be the genesis of Watergate. I noted in the files that he had an early private meeting with the new President Nixon. I surmised that he must have let Nixon know something of what he had done for prior presidents; it would have been too dangerous not to. I further suspect that Nixon, whose ethical standards were quite relative, would have concluded he should have the same services that were available to his predecessors. But he didn't trust Hoover totally, so he set up his own political intelligence gathering network outside the FBI--the plumbers. During Watergate, Nixon would occasionally mutter that prior presidents were culpable of secret political intelligence investigations. He even suggested that the Justice Department should substantiate that claim. We ignored him, but I am sure he would have seized on the Post's revelations of the secret files--if they had appeared earlier.
The notion that the FBI's purity would be endangered if its counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations were a more integrated part of the intelligence community seems laughable. If the FBI were to be corrupt, as it surely was under Hoover, no organizational structure would solve that problem. And if it is honorable, as it surely is under Bob Mueller (and has been for many years), then a separate national security service with a close relationship with the new director of national intelligence promises only benefits to the country's security.

Former Director Louis Freeh initiated the practice of taking new FBI recruits through the Holocaust Museum to show what can happen when the law enforcement apparatus of a country becomes corrupted. I have always thought that sort of extreme example was a bit farfetched for our country, but there is an episode closer to home. I think it would be appropriate to introduce all new recruits to the nature of the secret and confidential files of J. Edgar Hoover. And in that connection this country--and the bureau--would be well served if his name were removed from the bureau's building. It is as if the Defense Department were named for Aaron Burr. Liberals and conservatives should unite to support legislation to accomplish this repudiation of a very sad chapter in American history. Mr. Silberman was co-chairman of President Bush's Commission on Intelligence Capabilities. This is adapted from a speech he delivered recently to the First Circuit Judicial Conference.

MOYERS: I've been listening to debates in the United States Senate for over 40 years and I thought I'd heard it all. Until this week.

Listening to Senators debate a constitutional amendment to define marriage, you might have thought you were at a political rally or in a church.

SEN. JAMES M. INHOFE (R-OK): God said — and I'm quoting now Genesis, chapter 2: "He brought her to the man and Adam said, 'This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she is… was taken out of man. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.'"

SEN. JIM BUNNING (R-KY): Marriage is older than the Constitution of the United States. It's older than America. Only a man and a woman have the ability to create children. It's the law of nature. And no matter how much some might not like it or want to change it or push for technology to replace it, this law is irrefutable.

SEN. JIM TALENT (R-MO): Nobody has the right to marry anybody they want to. There are certain restrictions. You can't marry a close relative. You can't marry somebody who is already married. Is that discrimination if we tell people no, you can't marry somebody if they are already married? That's not marriage. And you can't marry somebody of the same sex. And why? Because marriage as an institution, remember, it's many things. Yes, it's an expression of love and commitment between two people and that's beautiful but it's also the institution that we in our society rely upon for raising our children.

SEN. SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS): Giving public sanction to homosexual marriage would violate this government responsibility to safeguard the needs of children by placing individual adult desires above the best interests of children.

SEN. RICK SANTORUM (R-PA): We didn't pick this fight. We didn't start this battle. They went to the courts, not to the people. You, you, the elite of the east coast, northeastern United States of America, you take your isolated values and then sweep them across this country. You. They didn't go to Omaha, Nebraska. They didn't go to Peoria, Illinois. They go to San Francisco and they go to Seattle and they go to Boston and they go to New York, and they oppose the values across America.

SEN. EDWARD M. KENNEDY (D-MA): The rabid reactionary religious right has rarely looked more ridiculous. They know they don't have the votes to come even close to passing this amendment but they have sufficient stranglehold on the White House and the Republican leadership in Congress to force the issue to a vote anyway in a desperate effort to arouse their narrow-minded constituency and somehow gain an advantage in the elections this year.

SEN. MARK DAYTON (D-MN): "Thank goodness we have Senator so-and-so," they'll say back home, "to save us from the heathen hordes. Thank goodness we have the President saving us, too. We may not have jobs or health care. We can't afford prescription drugs or gasoline. They're bankrupting the federal government with deficits. They're destroying our credibility throughout the world. They made a mess of Iraq. They can't find weapons of mass destruction or Osama Bin Laden or whoever shut down Congress with anthrax or ricin, but they're defending marriage, again and again and again and again. Let's reelect them."

MOYERS: A political rally and church. The fight has just begun. Next week, Republicans in the House will call up a bill to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over definitions of marriage.

Conservative Christians vowed a push for the Constitutional amendment until, pardon my French, hell freezes over. Right now, they're aiming their sights on state Constitutional amendments to outlaw same-sex marriage. They'll be on the ballot in at least nine, possibly a dozen states this year alone. That should turn out voters in swing states that could decide control of the White House, the Senate, and the House. America's holy war seems here to stay. Let's talk about this now with Cal Thomas.

Forty years ago this summer when I was a young man working in the '64 election, Cal Thomas was a younger man covering politics for NBC News.

He went on to write a syndicated column for 540 newspapers, which at my reckoning, gives him one of the biggest op-ed readerships in the country. He's also a commentator and analyst for Fox News. You'll find his columns and the titles of his books on the conservative Web site, TownHall.com. Welcome to NOW.

THOMAS: Bill, nice to see you again. You have aged well.

MOYERS: You are still aging well.

THOMAS: I thank you.

MOYERS: I ask you here because we do have a past. I know you are theologically and politically conservative. I know we share similar backgrounds. We read the same Bible. We pray to the same God. And I'm interested in your insight over how two people like us come to opposite conclusions about an issue like gays in American life.

THOMAS: Bill, I can't speak for your faith. I can only speak for mine. So, let me speak of mine. I began with the belief in an objectively existing God, who exists whether I believe he does or not who has laid down his law and his grace for all who would partake of it.

MOYERS: In the Bible, you mean?

THOMAS: In the scripture, yes. That, for example, he has not only in marriage, but he has shown us the way back to himself through salvation in his son Jesus Christ, who said, "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the father but by me."

MOYERS: But I find nothing that Jesus said, nothing in the story of Jesus that would suggest that he empowers me to harm somebody who's not harming me.

THOMAS: Yeah. Well, look. There are two things at work here, and two different kingdoms. And they shouldn't be confused. Of course, the scripture, I believe, has to be taken in totality.

The apostle Paul spoke much about proper human relationships. But his message was to the people of God. It wasn't to the pagans. The Southern Baptist convention, of which you have been a part…

MOYERS: Which had its share of pagans.

THOMAS: Well, it's not the label of the outside, it's who you have on the inside. But it recently took a survey. And it found very interestingly that just as many evangelical Christians were divorcing as non-believers. So, I believe there's a lot to be done within the house of God before we, they, can go to the public and say, "You should be like we say, not necessarily as we do."

MOYERS: And you've written that in…

THOMAS: Yes, I have.

MOYERS: …your book. But the fact of the matter is, we don't live in a biblical society.

THOMAS: That's right.

MOYERS: We don't — two-thirds of the world — people don't read the Bible or believe in the Bible. It seems to me that the equal protection of the law, democracy, is what protects me from you and you from me. Would you like me to lead a movement to write my biblical views into the Constitution? Would you like to live in that democracy?

THOMAS: Well, somebody's gotta live under somebody's value system. Now, look.

MOYERS: That's what democracy's about, is the give and take.

THOMAS: Right, it is indeed, yes.

MOYERS: How, then, can we have a conversation about democracy, a really genuine, political dialogue, if you, or people like you, invoke Revelation and say this is the revealed truth and I can't compromise it?

THOMAS: Well, I'm not invoking anything of the kind.

MOYERS: You're talking about the Bible.

THOMAS: Well, because you brought it up. I'm going to speak what I believe to be the truth. And we're talking about implementing that. I wrote in a recent column that I believe this battle is over.

Homosexuality, abortion, divorce, drugs, pornography, the long list of cultural ills that are properly trumpeted as indications of decay by many of my brethren on the right are not the cause of our decadence. They're a reflection of it.

MOYERS: I've been married 50 years. I have three children. I don't see how my marriage is affected at all by the fact that a gay couple live down the street who love each other as intensely as I love my wife and I love my children. You've been married how long?

THOMAS: Thirty-eight years.

MOYERS: And four children.

THOMAS: Yes, and eight grandchildren.

MOYERS: Is your love for your wife and your children in any way intimidated, changed, or frustrated by the fact that a gay couple is living three blocks away?

THOMAS: It's not about me, Bill. And it's not about you. Let me quote the…

MOYERS: It's about the people who want to be left alone in their own…

THOMAS: Yeah, but everybody wants…

MOYERS: …pursuit of happiness.

THOMAS: Well, if they wanted to be left alone, that would be one thing. But they don't want to be left alone. They don't want the freedom to do whatever they do. And I'm for that. I'm not for the police breaking down the door.

They want cultural approval. They want the schools to approve. They want the law to approve. They want to be able to adopt children when children need…

MOYERS: That's true.

THOMAS: …a mother and father.

MOYERS: As citizens of the secular democracy, they want the equal protection of the law. That is not a religious reading of marriage.

THOMAS: My question is, if we allow this and promote it as legitimate marriage, what is next? And that is a legitimate question. And if you say, "Well, we can't go any further than this," according to what and according to whom?

MOYERS: But I honestly, of course, don't believe that's a Christian view. I honestly…

THOMAS: So, you would tolerate everything. Polygamy, bigamy?

MOYERS: No.

THOMAS: Well, why not?

MOYERS: I believe that you have to have civil codes that protect you from me and me from you.

THOMAS: But what if I disagree? What standard do we appeal to? That's the question we're dealing with.

MOYERS: The conservative columnist David Brooks wrote in the New York Times recently, "Conservatives shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity."

"When liberals argue for gay marriage," he says, "they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan, or they frame it as a civil rights issue like extending the right to vote. Marriage is not voting. It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important moral case for marriage, including gay marriage." I think that's a Christian position.

THOMAS: Well, I don't find that in the scripture, Bill. And I don't know what he means by moral.

MOYERS: But I don't find Jesus saying anything about…

THOMAS: Well, you know, as I said, you know, that you have to view the scripture in totality. Jesus said, "I haven't come to cancel the law, but to fulfill it." And if you look at the law…

MOYERS: The Old Testament?

THOMAS: The Old Testament law is what he fulfilled.

MOYERS: But it's the New Testament.

THOMAS: Well, it is. But his first miracle, as you well know, is performed at a wedding. And he quoted that verse that Senator Inhofe quoted on the Senate floor. "A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. And the two shall become one flesh." That's…

MOYERS: Then divorce would be impermissible. Because if they cleave to each other, they shouldn't be allowed to uncleave.

THOMAS: Well, he was asked about this as well. And he said Moses allowed you to divorce because of the hardness of your heart. But Jesus, except for adultery and abandonment prohibited divorce. Now, the fact that many are doing it doesn't legitimize it.

MOYERS: Not long ago, I interviewed the Reverend James Forbes, the senior minister at Riverside Memorial Church, the historic church here in New York. Let me play you a small excerpt from that interview with Jim Forbes.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]
FORBES: I think that the God who understands that out of the created order that I have, there's some gay people and there's some straight people, and then there are some that are in between, bisexual and, you know. I think the God that Jesus reveals to me would prefer that special attention be given to the child that was different, especially if that difference had occasioned rejection, humiliation, and ostracism.
[END VIDEO CLIP]

MOYERS: Do you accept that he's speaking from a deep Christian conviction?

THOMAS: I noticed he said twice, "I think, I think." I don't say that. It's not what I think. It's what God says. And that's the difference. Ostracism, wrong. Bigotry, wrong.

Hate, wrong. No one should hate or beat or discriminate in the sense of barring them from housing or whatever, anyone for anything that I can think of. But there's a big difference here. What we're being asked to accept is something that is against not only thousands of years of history, a lot of common sense, biblical truth, and societal values. Overwhelming numbers of the American people believe that homosexual, same-sex marriage is wrong. They don't hate gays. Sure, there are a few who do, and they are wrong to do so.

MOYERS: But when you and I were in Washington in 1964, many states still prohibited interracial marriages.

THOMAS: Yes, well that's different.

MOYERS: Our ideas and insights about human beings change. And the extension of enfranchisement of rights is part of what the battle of democracy's all about. And…

THOMAS: Race and behavior are two different things. I've met many former homosexuals. I've never met a former African-American, unless you count Michael Jackson.

MOYERS: Let me come back to this. You are telling me, and I hear you saying that my opinions about homosexuality are based upon the Bible, the old Hebrew and the New Testament. Are we to accept a religious reading of the law for our governance?

THOMAS: Well, obviously not, or we would be a lot better in a lot of areas. I'm just telling you what I believe to be true. I am also telling you that I believe the battle is over. I believe that the gay rights people are going to win this battle. And I believe we're going to have same-sex marriage in America.

And I believe it's going to get a lot worse. I also believe there's going to be more terrorism. I believe there's going to be more divorce. I believe there's going to be more man's inhumanity to man.

MOYERS: Not because of gay marriage.

THOMAS: No. It's all part of the same package. Paul talks about this eloquently in the New Testament and his letters, that the world will grow worse. People will believe whatever they wish to hear. Jesus said many will come in my name, false gods, false prophets, telling you things that are not of God, have nothing to do with them. This is the prophecy of the end times. Now, the end times may be 1,000 or a million years. But we are not going to fix a corrupt and a passing away world.

MOYERS: But in the meantime, as a citizen of a democracy that is…

THOMAS: Republic.

MOYERS: Of an America that is based upon everyone's being treated equally under the law, aren't you glad that we have that Constitution which protects me from imposing my religious views on you?

THOMAS: I'm glad we have a Constitution. I just wish the federal judges would honor it.

MOYERS: That's back to the old argument that it's the judges.

THOMAS: I'm a strict constructionist on the Bible and the Constitution.

MOYERS: But once upon a time, judges said blacks are property. Judges said interracial marriage is wrong.

THOMAS: We had a standard to which we could appeal then. As Garry Wills wrote about Abraham Lincoln and his referral to the principles that Thomas Jefferson laid down in the Declaration of Independence about all being created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, the rights come from God, not from federal judges.

This is what the founders, even though many were deists, were not evangelical Christians, believed that rights had to come from outside of men and women to whom we would be accountable to this God, or we were all left to debate our own destiny and ends. Now, if you are saying, or if people who believe as you are saying, that we cannot have no boundaries, that we can't have no standard to which we can appeal that is immutable for all time, then we might as well eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow, we die. There is no right or wrong.

MOYERS: No, I disagree with that. I'm…

THOMAS: Well, on what basis?

MOYERS: I believe that one can arrive at a ethical point of view in life by simply reasoning what is the highest standard of all said by the person you follow.

THOMAS: What if it's different tomorrow, though, Bill?

MOYERS: It's not different.

THOMAS: But what if it is?

MOYERS: But it's not different if you follow the rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I don't think there's a higher standard. Do you?

THOMAS: No, I don't. But of course, that's part of a greater package. You just can't rip that out of context and say, "Well, we're gonna allow everything to happen, because I don't wanna make that person upset."

MOYERS: Some would say that's what theological conservatives do when they take just this little bit of scripture and that little bit of scripture…

THOMAS: I agree with that.

MOYERS: …and sculpt together a theology…

THOMAS: Yes. I agree with that.

MOYERS: …that discriminates against anybody.

THOMAS: That's right.

MOYERS: I appreciate very much your joining us. We will never agree. We'll never settle this. But in a democracy, I hope we can keep discussing it in a civil way.

THOMAS: Thanks, Bill. You do it better than anybody.

MOYERS: We began our broadcast with a report on the elderly and disabled at risk. But there's also news this week about America's kids.

This week the Children's Defense Fund issued its annual survey. It finds one in six lives in poverty; one in eight has no health insurance; seven out of ten fourth graders cannot read or do math at grade level; and three million children were reported abused or neglected.

BRANCACCIO: But the news about young people isn't all bad.

The federal government released a report today that shows teen pregnancy is down and young people are less likely to be involved in violent crimes.

But the report said that, overall, the number of children living in poverty increased for the first time since 1993.

That's it for NOW. Bill and I will be back next week.

Thanks for joining us. Good night.

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