BRIAN LAMB: Tyler Abell, who was Drew Pearson in your life?
TYLER ABELL: Drew Pearson was my stepfather. He married my mother or my mother married him when I was four, and so he played a big role in my life. He died when I was 37. Very sad, but he was an amazing, remarkable man who did everything, just everything.
LAMB: For somebody that's never heard of him, what did he do?
ABELL: He was a remarkable journalist. He invented the Washington D.C. column, which is now occupied by I don't know how many people. And he wrote a column, unlike men today or women today, seven days a week, every day of the year he wrote a column.
Most about Washington, but all kinds of things. He flew around the world. Started out as a young man interviewing Europe's 12 greatest men. And that's how he actually started and made a name for himself.
LAMB: Where was he from originally?
ABELL: He was born in Evanston, Illinois where his father taught, was a professor of English at Northwestern. And his dad got a job at Swarthmore - Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, when Drew was about five or six, I think and they went east in a wagon, drawn by two horses. So lot of ground has been changed in his lifetime.
LAMB: And he lived what years?
ABELL: He was born in '97 and he died in '69.
LAMB: And he - what was he, about 73 or 74 then?
ABELL: He was almost 72. He lacked a few weeks of being 72 the day he died. He died September 1st, 1969.
LAMB: We ask you here because you have been responsible for the diaries of Drew Pearson. The second set just being published, but before we get into that, I want those watching who have never heard of him or might forget what he looked like to see a small excerpt from a Mike Wallace interview in 1957.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE WALLACE: You say that your predictions are eighty-percent accurate. How do you weigh the danger of a Third World War?
DREW PEARSON: Mike - at the moment I don't think there is too great a danger, because I think that the Russians and we both realize that another war would be catastrophic, and that no side would win. Furthermore, I think the Russians figure that they can get what they want without a war, by the Cold War, by psychological warfare, by economic warfare ...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAMB: Mike Wallace interviewing in '57, why would they - how big a deal was he in those years?
ABELL: He was a pretty big deal. He had a radio broadcast - weekly radio broadcast where he made his -the reference there to predictions. He was a very good predictor. And part of his radio broadcast was about five or six minutes of predictions.
He wasn't always right, in fact, he predicted that Dewey would win in '48. But he was right about World War III. And he talked a lot about that later on in the book that's just been published, "The Drew Pearson Diaries," which cover 1960 to '69.
In several places in there, he talks about the danger of war and how the Russians - he doesn't think the Russians really want war. He interviewed the biggest Russian leader of that era several times, and, Khrushchev. And the - Khrushchev works into his thoughts and dealings with the Russians frequently.
LAMB: There's a lot - I want to just lay down some of the things that he did or was reported to do and tell me if any of this is right or wrong. First to report General Patton slapping the soldier? (Charles Cole)?
ABELL: Yes, 1943.
LAMB: General Douglas MacArthur sued him for defamation, but Pearson threatened to publish love letters from his mistress?
ABELL: Yes. And that - and MacArthur backed off. And that - those letters are still around. I got a call about them several years ago from a guy who just researched them because they were, his lawyer at the time, when he died left all his papers to the University of Texas. So that - those letters popped up when Morris (inaudible) died.
LAMB: Senator McCarthy, what was his relationship to him?
ABELL: At the very, very beginning, he regarded McCarthy as an interesting source. But pretty soon he got very crosswise with McCarthy because McCarthy was promoting anti-communism with such abandon that he regarded almost everybody including George Marshall as a handmaiden of communism.
George Marshall was a secretary of state, the chairman of the joint chief of staff and one of Eisenhower's best friends, and everybody got mad at Eisenhower for not doing a better job defending McCarthy, I mean, attacking McCarthy for doing that.
And one famous occasion was when McCarthy attacked Drew in the cloakroom of the Sulgrave Club and of all the people that get credit for breaking up the fight, it was Richard Nixon, and later Drew sued McCarthy, but that suit didn't go very far.
LAMB: What moment - and I read these diaries and you're in them throughout as being around Drew Pearson, what personal moment do you remember the most of being his stepson?
ABELL: That's a question that I'd have to think about. He was - he and I were so close that it was, you know, he was a remarkable person and he really loved his family, and he was very, very helpful to me in so many different ways. And he was really very much a father. I can't think of one instance. There were just too many.
LAMB: And you - your mother married him when you were how old?
ABELL: Four years old.
LAMB: There is a moment in the book, in the diaries where he wants you and is recommending you to be a member of kind of a kitchen cabinet for Lyndon Johnson. What were those circumstances?
ABELL: Just one of the examples of how amazing Drew was. I mean, here he was, writing a column seven days a week, giving lectures, doing a radio broadcast once a week and running a farm. But he thought, you know, Johnson should have some extra help running his campaign.
At the end of the campaign he says, "Johnson did it all himself," which was really true. But he recommended that Johnson pick several people to work behind the scenes and do things that would help the campaign.
I was one. (Leonard Marks) was one, (Ernie Cuneo, Bob Martin). We'd go - we'd call ourselves the 5 o'clock club because we met at the White House upstairs in the back office at 5 o'clock every afternoon. And thought up how we could do something that would shake up Goldwater or be a plus for the campaign.
LAMB: How many newspapers published his column?
ABELL: He took credit for 650. And I'm not sure, there might have been more. I remember once, this is when I was a little boy. I said the farm workers think that you weren't spending enough money on the farm because you're in 600 papers. It says on your radio broadcast that you're published in 600 papers.
And, you know, if you just got a $1 a paper a day, you'd be rich. And he said, "Well, but some of those papers are weeklies and they only pay less than that, maybe only a dollar a week. And it was an interesting conversation and I've never forgotten it. And the number of papers, you know, went back and forth and up and down.
LAMB: One of the things, I underlined a lot in the book and a lot of quotes and these are out of context, but I'm sure you can put them in perspective. Here's one talking about Jacqueline Kennedy. It's early in the book and this is what he says, your stepfather writes, "This is a cold gal, who deep down doesn't have much sympathy for the aims of her husband and wouldn't know a social reform when she saw one."
ABELL: I remember that quote. He goes back and forth about Jackie as he does about a lot of people. And I remember once, him saying that his wife thinks that Jackie is just lazy and that's why the White House dinner wasn't a better dinner because Jackie was lazy. He doesn't adopt that himself. He described it to my mother, his wife. And he has a few cold things to say about Jackie from time to time. But I don't know the exact context of that quote.
LAMB: What were his politics?
ABELL: He was quite demonstrably a progressive, which I guess today you would say he was far left. In those days a progressive would be - a progressive of that era wouldn't be considered that far to the left, I don't believe.
I've been wondering how he would regard the current political situation with the division between the parties and I don't think he would have been for Bernie Sanders. I'm not sure how he would have felt about Hillary. Hillary has got so much money that I think that would have turned him off. But I don't know who he would have been for.
LAMB: The one thing that surprised as I read through it was how often he was involved in trying to get legislation passed.
ABELL: Yes.
LAMB: What was his - I mean, I'll read, this is from Monday, January 20th, would have been inauguration day for Richard Nixon, 1968. "This is ...
ABELL: '69.
LAMB: '69, absolutely. "This is the big day. I hated to see it come. I never could have imagined that Richard Nixon will become president. I was dictating a speech against Wally Hickel to be delivered by Senator Tydings and forgot to turn on the television to watch Nixon until after most of the prayers had been given."
Senator Tydings was a Democrat from Maryland, Wally Hickel was nominated for Interior secretary. As a journalist, what was he doing getting involved and trying to get somebody defeated for the cabinet?
ABELL: He did it all the time. He absolutely did it all the time. One of the - as a journalist he didn't think that those rules applied to him. He didn't advertise it, but he worked behind the scenes or what he thought was behind the scenes trying to promote different senators to make speeches, and he would write the speech for them about all sorts of different things. And it is - it is fascinating. How did he have the time to write the column or to travel to, you know, Minot, South Dakota to give a speech? It's amazing.
LAMB: When did you decide that - and I've got an old column here back in 1970, 1974, so you published the first round. It was between '74 and today that the two different diaries have been published?
ABELL: Yes. I should have done all three - I should have done three volumes and I should have done them right away. But I get backed up and short of time and one thing and another, so I kept postponing it. I'm a terrible procrastinator, unlike my stepfather who immediately did everything.
If he had a column to write he got up at four in the morning and wrote it before breakfast. I would figure out how to postpone it until the day after tomorrow. It was just remarkable all of the things that he did, and sometimes he would criticize himself in the diary, if you've read them that carefully, you must have come across different places where he says, "I think that column was too strong and I shouldn't have said it quite that way" or "Lyndon is going to get mad at me for the way I wrote that column, but he needed to be told what I wrote and I'm glad I wrote it."
LAMB: Who published the first volume?
ABELL: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
LAMB: And how did that volume do? How much interest was there in that?
ABELL: Not nearly what I thought there would be. I think that's one of the reasons I was a little, you know, kind of postponed the second volume.
LAMB: How many years did he keep a diary?
ABELL: He started in January, 1949. And he opens up and he says, "David Karr has told me I have to keep a diary. And I'm starting right now." And he kept on with the diary. The first few years, he skipped many more days than he did later on.
It's interesting that the 60s, he wrote almost every day and not every day is in that published volume. You can hardly pick up the published volume as it is. It's so heavy. If it could easily have been twice as big, just that's how much had to be left out.
LAMB: And you got a Republican to edit this.
ABELL: Yes. Very good friend of mine.
LAMB: Peter Hannaford.
ABELL: Peter Hannaford who was a big Reagan man. And Peter and I were in the army together and we maintained a friendship ever since.
LAMB: He just died.
ABELL: He just died. Very sad. He finished the editing and had just went out on a Saturday and signed books at the local bookstore where he lived in Eureka, California and came back, thought things were really good, that had been a good day. Sold a bunch of books. And he never woke up.
LAMB: How much of what was in the diary did you edit out for sensitivity reasons?
ABELL: Zero.
LAMB: Put it all in there.
ABELL: Yes. I mean, some of it might have gotten out, because it - it was - there wasn't anything about who slept with who or something like that that got left out because of, you know, we were bashful.
LAMB: As a matter of fact, there's an enormous amount of who slept with who in this. Why was he so interested in that?
ABELL: Isn't that the way our culture is? It's amazing. In one point, the other Russian say, "Tell him," I think the Russian ambassador tells him how, "Why is it that America is so into sex? It's all everybody talks about around here." But there is that comment that he makes, one page, he says, "I've got enough stuff to write a whole book about love being made in the White House. If I ever get around to, it'll be quite a book."
LAMB: Here's - "In the middle of the Johnson administration, Valenti," meaning Jack Valenti, "told me an interesting story about Bobby Kennedy." This is Drew Pearson writing this. "Who has been preaching morality around the White House but is not exactly a paragon of virtue himself. When Bobby went to France for the visit with de Gaulle, Valenti happened to be there and one of the motion picture companies which was shooting in Paris complained that their star Candice Bergen had disappeared from the set for four days. They finally traced her to a hotel on the East Bank where Bobby was staying. They tried to get her to come back to work, but she refused. In fact, she did not come back to work until Bobby had left Paris. The hotel's majordomo said, they were shacking up."
Has that been published before?
ABELL: I never read it before.
LAMB: She's still alive.
ABELL: Yes. And still beautiful.
LAMB: And what would - did you ever talk to him about - I mean, did you read his diary before he died?
ABELL: Yes. Oh, yes.
LAMB: And ...
ABELL: No, no, no, before he died, excuse me. No, I didn't. I'm very sorry. I misspoke.
LAMB: What was his attitude about having this published?
ABELL: He said - he obviously thought that it should be published because in his will, he said, "Tyler Abell should be the editor of my diaries." And so, I went around looking for the diaries. And there was a lot - just a lot to where -- I finally put them all into three ring notebooks, a standard notebook about that thick. And there were 24 notebooks. And a very small part of it was about sex, but that was there.
LAMB: One of the things I noticed is that he was having dinner or lunch all the time with somebody that is a well-known name. One of them - I'll just pick one of them now to ask you about her was Agnes Meyer.
ABELL: Yes.
LAMB: Who was she and why did they have so many lunches and dinner and trips on yachts together?
ABELL: Agnes Meyer was a wonderful person and a very good friend of Drew's. I knew her a little bit just because Drew knew her, I saw her rarely but enough to say hello. I called her Mrs. Meyer.
She was (Kaye Graham's) mother. (Kaye Graham) - her - Agnes's husband was Eugene Meyer. He is the one that bought The Post out of bankruptcy and made The Post into a going concern. He was a very good businessman. And he died. I never met him. I can't remember exactly when he died, but Agnes just sort of adopted Drew and my mother who was charming lady.
And they were good friends. And it is interesting to read at how frequently they were together. She took them on boat trips, but she took everybody. I mean the boat - you would have loved to be on that boat. I mean, there was the Chief Justice of the United States, Adelaide Stevenson, Drew Pearson, a couple of other interesting people. You would have loved it. And Drew enjoyed it.
LAMB: What's the story when Agnes Meyer and Drew Pearson went to see Khrushchev on the yacht?
ABELL: I can't remember all the details of that, but Drew had been angling to get another interview with Khrushchev, when he was on the yacht, it was his second one. And he was going back and forth with various Russian in-betweens to get another interview with Khrushchev.
And then finally, just as a surprise, they were on the yacht, in the Black Sea and the word came that "you have - you, Drew have to come immediately to see Mr. Khrushchev. He's waiting for you." And so, there was a - just a very fast auto trip to Khrushchev's place. And they spent a couple of hours and then came back, whereas before the first - the first interview Drew had with Khrushchev, they spent three days together.
And Drew and my mother slept there. They talked all the time. Had their meals together and just went swimming together, had a wonderful time together.
LAMB: I didn't count them, but I guess it's 25 times in this diary he's having lunch or dinner with Anatoly Dobrynin, the ambassador from Russia to the United States.
ABELL: Yes.
LAMB: Why was he so interested in Russia and why did they talk to him so much?
ABELL: I think that's a question that I would love to answer myself. I just - it's amazing how much of Drew's time was spent with the Russians. And then the FBI was covering the Russian Embassy, so they knew when Drew went in and out of the Russian Embassy and at one point, he was accused of - by the President of the United States, spending all of his time with Dobrynin and you're in there at two and three in the morning.
And so, Drew goes back and he talks with his wife and says, "When did we ever go to the Russian Embassy at two or three in the morning?" And my mother said, "Well, they must have the date wrong, the time wrong. I bet the FBI said it was 2 PM and when it got transcribed a couple of times, it come out as 2 AM."
And Drew is not sure about that but he did spend an awful lot of time with the Russians and he was, of course, that Russia and the United States were the two biggest powers. Each had the nuclear capacity to blow the other one completely off the face of the earth. And had there been a war, it would have been terrible. And there was a certain danger of a war. One misstep and it might have happened.
LAMB: You made the connection earlier with Agnes Meyer and The Washington Post and (Kaye Graham) and all that. And his column was published in The Post, but as far as I can remember, it was in an unusual place where they put that column. Where was it and why?
ABELL: It was on the comic page. And Drew was always proud of the fact that it was on the comic page. Some people made fun of it, thought it should be on the editorial page and he said, "No." He said, "I am published every day and everybody reads the comics and that's a good place to be."
LAMB: It wasn't that way in every paper though, that it was on the comics.
ABELL: No, no.
LAMB: We have - there's not much video of him. And we did find this - Mike Wallace interview, so that people again can see what he sounded like. Here's another 20-second excerpt from that 1957 interview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DREW PEARSON: I predict that Mr. Nixon will become President of the United States, within approximately a year. I think Mr. Nixon will make a better President than Mr. Eisenhower. Now the reason I say that is, that Mr. Nixon has trained for this job.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAMB: It didn't work out so well for you on that prediction.
ABELL: No. No, that's two presidential elections he's been wrong on and there is - there's one in - later in the diary of where it's close - I think it's early 1968 when he predicts that if Nixon is nominated, he'll lose. He just predicts that in the diary. It was - as far as I know, it didn't appear in a column or in the radio (inaudible).
LAMB: In '64, in the diary, he did say this, "I had already come to the conclusion that Ike has no guts." Why didn't he like Eisenhower?
ABELL: That's a very good question. And I was with him in 1951, we were in Europe together. And he sought Ike out. And we talked for a while and anyway, that was the only time I think I ever personally met Ike. I was a freshman in college.
But - so there was a personal relationship, but as a president, he didn't do what Drew would have liked to have done. And I don't think there was one specific thing, maybe McCarthy because a lot of people criticized Ike for not taking it after McCarthy. And Eisenhower, I think had the opinion that the more he went after McCarthy, it just picked him up instead of the best thing to do with McCarthy was to ignore him.
LAMB: Today, this is an old story. It's been written many, many times, but back in that '57 interview, it's about John F. Kennedy and it's - we'll run it. It's only about 30 seconds. And he doesn't - at the time, doesn't even remember the name of the fellow that he's accusing of writing Profiles and Courage. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DREW PEARSON: I don't believe he should have a synthetic public relations buildup for any job of that kind. Jack Kennedy is a fine young fellow, a very personable fellow, but he isn't as good as that public relations campaign makes him out to be. He is the only man in history that I know who won a Pulitzer Prize on a book which was ghost-written for him, which indicates the kind of public relations buildup he's had.
MIKE WALLACE: Who wrote the book for him?
DREW PEARSON: I don't recall at the present moment, I ...
MIKE WALLACE: You know for a fact, Drew ...
DREW PEARSON: Yes.
MIKE WALLACE: That the book ...
DREW PEARSON: I do know.
MIKE WALLACE: Profiles in Courage was written for Senator Kennedy, by somebody else?
DREW PEARSON: I do. I do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAMB: Did you check to see how many times it - the diary reflects what he wrote or was the diary separate and distinct from what he wrote in his column?
ABELL: The diary was completely separate and distinct, but let me comment about what the little clip that you just showed because don't you find it interesting that fairly recently, the news has carried a lot about who wrote Profiles in Courage and Ted Sorensen was the person who clearly wrote a lot of it.
But since the Pulitzer prize-winning author and Ted Sorensen are both gone, I don't think anybody is ever going to know exactly who wrote how much.
LAMB: But Drew Pearson in the diary wrote the following statement. On December the 20th - I don't have the date here, I have to look up to see what year it was, it was during I suspect during the - when Jack Kennedy was president - Joe Kennedy had suffered a stroke.
He is 77 years old - Drew Pearson is writing this - it's a wonder he hasn't suffered one before this. It's also lucky that he was stricken on a golf course and not in a lady's bed. He writes a lot about Joe Kennedy and women and that his sons followed his example.
ABELL: And my mother recalls that she sat next to Joe Kennedy at dinner one night. If she told me, I can't remember where the dinner was and that the next morning, she got a very fancy bouquet flowers from Joe Kennedy.
LAMB: What was your mother like and what was her name?
ABELL: Her name was Luvie Butler Moore. And she married my father, George Abell. And she divorced him and several years later married Drew Pearson so she went by the name of Luvie Moore Pearson most of her life. But she got the message from Joe Kennedy that had she wanted to respond to those flowers, it would have been easy.
LAMB: Another entry on Friday, October the 23rd, again, the year is not on this page but...
ABELL: Yes, it is. It's at the bottom of the page there.
LAMB: Oh, you're right. Thank you. Sixty-four, I haven't marked off on the different chapters but I didn't know at the bottom. All right. Here's what he wrote. The Republicans are astounded over J. Edgar Hoover's report on Jenkins - that's Walter Jenkins...
ABELL: Right.
LAMB: ... saying that he had violated no secrets. What the Republicans are really up in arms about is the fact that Hoover - J. Edgar Hoover - sent Walter Jenkins a bouquet of flowers at the hospital with a card which he said could be prominently displayed.
The Republicans, of course, don't seem to realize that Hoover has been in the same category with Jenkins for some years only has been more careful or has been careful not to use the YMCA. What's the background on that story?
ABELL: I don't know. I don't know. I had heard those rumors and I guess for Drew, it was more than just a rumor (inaudible) he thought that J. Edgar was homosexual.
LAMB: Did you ever talk to him about his columns …
ABELL: Sure. And in fact, I worked for him for a while.
LAMB: What did you do?
ABELL: I was - I was elevated pretty quickly. He let me - let me investigate and write and when I had something that he liked, he published it. I wrote plenty that never got published but...
LAMB: When did you...
ABELL: ... it was quite an experience.
LAMB: ... when did you feel his power? When did you notice it?
ABELL: He was so different in person. If you didn't know him, you couldn't believe how different he was. There's a - There's a note in that book that you're holding in your lap, when he goes in to see like McGeorge Bundy and Bundy is telling him about Vietnam and things like that and Drew is critical of - is very critical of Bundy.
And as he talks with Bundy for some time and then he realizes he's been there long enough and he should leave. So, he gets up to leave and he quotes Bundy as saying, "Well, don't be in such a hurry to leave. You're so much more personable in person than you are in print."
And unless you knew the man you would think that he was just a demon because things he wrote about were pretty bad and he'd tear people up. But when you talked him, he was the nicest guy in the world.
LAMB: What was his relationship with Arthur Goldberg?
ABELL: Very close.
LAMB: And who was Arthur Goldberg?
ABELL: You know, that's a very good question because I guess a lot of people wouldn't remember Arthur Goldberg. I think of him as, you know, almost an uncle. He started life in the labor world and was the chief negotiator for the steelworkers. I think the steelworkers, one of the - one of the major unions.
And Kennedy made him Secretary of Labor and then later made him associate justice of the Supreme Court. He was Kennedy's second appointment to the Supreme Court, the first being (inaudible) (White) and then Johnson talked Goldberg into leaving the Supreme Court to become ambassador to the UN.
And Drew had known Goldberg when he worked as - I think he was General Counsel of the steelworkers and that's when Drew had first met him. But then they just became very close, very, very close. And it seemed like, you know, the day isn't complete unless he has Goldberg to breakfast, lunch, dinner or all three. It's amazing.
LAMB: In 1965 he was working with Jack Anderson, and what was Jack Anderson's relationship to your stepfather?
ABELL: Jack had started working for Drew in probably late '45, early '46 as a leg man, as a - Drew had several people that helped him gather news and Jack was one of those. Jack had worked his way up and became the top guy in the - of the leg man group and he was the one that inherited the column when Drew died.
LAMB: Here's a 1965, this is one of the Oval Office conversations with Lyndon Johnson and Drew Pearson about a piece that Jack Anderson wrote. Now, they're both writing at the same time, I mean, one day, one the next they called it merry-go-round, is that the way it worked?
ABELL: Yes. Well, sometimes Drew would give Jack credit and let him write under his own byline. But Drew was rather protective of that. Most of the time, it was Drew's by-line. And he wrote under the byline of Drew Pearson and also Washington Merry-Go-Round.
The Washington Merry-Go-Round was the book that he published which really got him fired and then since he was fired he started writing the column and it was - the column was always Washington Merry-Go-Round. But occasionally, Drew would publish a piece that was almost all written by Jack but Drew paid Jack and he used the column and it was Drew's name, but he would tell somebody like Lyndon Johnson well, that's a - I don't remember that column as well as I should because Jack wrote it.
LAMB: Well, here's another, I mean, he even admits in the diary of playing one off against the other but here's - let's listen to this conversation with President Johnson and Drew Pearson.
(AUDIO CLIP PLAYING)
LYNDON JOHNSON: Sir, I've got a problem. Did you see Jack Anderson's story yesterday?
DREW PEARSON: Yes, I did.
LYNDON JOHNSON: I never heard of that. Just never heard of it and not one (inaudible). And somebody must have planted that. They quoted what the White House felt and how I felt. If I were Mansfield I'd be mad as hell and if I were Long I'd be mad and on my word of honor I never heard of a word of it, just out of the clear blue and I thought that's awfully irresponsible doing that way.
DREW PEARSON: Well, I thought it was kind of a funny story, too. And I talked to Jack about it and I cautioned him a little bit about it. In fact, I say a little bit, I corrected him very definitely, but he claimed he had it right.
But I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll talk to him again. I was out of town part of - part of last week. I had to go out to California. And if it's not right we'll - I will definitely even if Jack doesn't like it, I'll write something to the contrary.
(END OF AUDIO)
LAMB: How close were those two men?
ABELL: Well...
LAMB: LBJ and...
ABELL: They were very close. They were very close. As a matter fact, I didn't realize how close they were even though I'd worked for both of them at one time or another, I worked for Lyndon Johnson and I also worked for my stepfather.
But in reading the diaries, it then came to light how many times they got together that I didn't know about it. I asked my wife who was social secretary at the White House if she could remember how many times Drew had come to a social function at the White House and it shows up a lot in the diary.
And she said she didn't recall exactly how many. And I said well, do you think it was a lot? And she said I really, you know, I don't think it was a lot but if you - when you read the diary -- I hope everybody listening to this program will read the diary, you'll see that it comes up time and time again, he and Drew and my mother go off to the White House for dinner or lunch.
And he's always saying something about Jack or about Lyndon in the book, in the diary, mainly he calls him Lyndon, sometimes he calls him Johnson, sometimes President. But frequently just says Lyndon is doing a wonderful job. He's working so hard. I wish I could help him more but he, you know, I had to write that column about him because he's gotten too far off on the - on the Vietnam thing and he really needs to get away from that.
LAMB: We have another tape and before we run it though, it's important for people to note that - and you can explain this that Drew Pearson helped write some of the State of the Union message that Lyndon Johnson gave back in - near the end of his term. See, the actual, it's wasn't, it was in the middle of his term, it was 1964.
ABELL: Yes.
LAMB: When he got - he'd just gotten re-elected and he had to give a State of the Union message in January, February '64 and before we run that though, do you - were you aware that he was...
ABELL: I was not. I was not. That would have been the type of thing that Drew would have made sure that it didn't get out.
LAMB: So, he…
ABELL: He knew that that diary wasn't going to get out until after he died so…
LAMB: Well, let's listen to this conversation so that you can hear - there's a little innuendo here.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
LYNDON JOHNSON: Drew?
DREW PEARSON: Good morning.
LYNDON JOHNSON: Did you...
DREW PEARSON: I was trying to read your speech but these benighted Republican papers won't carry hardly any of it.
LYNDON JOHNSON: But didn't you hear it?
DREW PEARSON: No. I've been travelling on the plane. I'm in North Dakota.
LYNDON JOHNSON: Well, I'll be damned, a great author like you and you run off and do that, you disappoint me. You don't know - you don't even know what's in it, do you?
DREW PEARSON: I heard you got a tremendous amount of applause.
LYNDON JOHNSON: I got 81 applauses and 2,900 words. It was a 25 minutes speech, it took 41 because of the applauses and the biggest one after the introduction and the ovation was, we intend to bury no one and we do not to intend to be buried.
DREW PEARSON: Good.
LYNDON JOHNSON: Do you ever hear anything like that?
DREW PEARSON: Oh, I think that's - I think that's wonderful.
LYNDON JOHNSON: Don't go home and go bragging to your grandson.
DREW PEARSON: I'm not bragging to anyone except about you.
(END OF AUDIO)
LAMB: How was he able to keep their friendship going but yet from time to time write negative things about Lyndon Johnson and then obviously some very positive things? How was he able to, you know, suffer the slings and arrows of all the people he wrote about?
ABELL: Well, that's a - that's a very good question. And you're asking about a personality of a man that is one of the most complicated that has ever lived, Lyndon Johnson. But Johnson, first of all, the friendship goes back to the very earliest days when Johnson first ran for Congress which was in 1937 - '36 or '37.
And it had extended, you know, all this time and Drew comments - it's one other little excerpt that is interesting when he - when he realizes that now Johnson is president, he says this is the first time I've ever really know a president as well as I know Johnson. And I'm going to have to stop calling him Lyndon and call him Mr. President. 45:00
But Drew would write something that he knew Johnson would like. Johnson was very thin-skinned but then Johnson also realized that Drew was doing him a lot of favors. And a lot of people would tell Johnson that in case there are excerpts there where (Leonard Marks) who was a good friend of both of them would call and tell Drew that the President is really down on you about the thing that you wrote a day before yesterday. But I told him that you are doing much more for him than he could ever appreciate and that he should appreciate the god things you do and not the bad things.
And Arthur Goldberg would call and say the same thing. And Johnson was pretty smart. He knows that he can't have everything his way. And I think occasionally he would say that to Drew.
LAMB: What would you say that folks reason that they ought to buy this book and read this? What's the - what do they get out of it?
ABELL: You get a history lesson that is fascinating that's done by a man who was so remarkable who would remember everything and could put little pieces in context and remember something that he did way before that relates to something that's happening today.
And that makes a context that I think is - makes this history of the '60s is a fascinating history. Look at all the things that were going on, you know, civil rights and the war in Vietnam and the great society that Johnson was trying to get going. The cold war was, you know, up and down. All those things were happening and Drew put it in a context that makes it so interesting and very readable.
And you talk to - through Drew, you talk to all the key players. It's - and you can - you can open that book up to almost any page and find something interesting (inaudible).
LAMB: I'm going to do that right now. This is (1969) Winston Churchill died, Earl Warren is being sent as an official representative of the Johnson administration or the - to the funeral - I think it's the Nixon administration, yes...
ABELL: Right.
LAMB: ... by that time. But Chief Justice Earl Warren says the following - Eisenhower is probably the most selfish man I know. He appointed him to the court. The Chief remarked, he had no concern whatsoever for other people. You - when you read this (that was the first time) you knew that Earl Warren thought that way about Eisenhower?
ABELL: Yes. It was absolutely the first time I could think of as Warren feeling that way about Eisenhower. I had heard the Eisenhower - this was not in the diary but I'd heard that Eisenhower told people that the biggest mistake he ever made was appointing Warren. Maybe Warren heard that but Warren was quite a guy.
LAMB: And your father and mother spent a lot of time - your stepfather and mother spent a lot of time with Earl Warren and his wife.
ABELL: Yes, a lot of time. They were very, very close.
LAMB: He'd go to the court and meet with him, seek his advice. It seemed like …
ABELL: … to the farm. He'd be (at the) farm a lot. Drew - it's one of Drew's best - one of the things he really loved to do was to go out to the farm and get away from the city and he - but he take good friends out there.
LAMB: The farm is where?
ABELL: It's in Montgomery County, Maryland and not too far from Washington. It's quite close. It's on the Potomac. It overlooks the Potomac River and it's about 16 miles up the Potomac from the White House.
LAMB: And you mentioned that you were working in the Johnson administration. What were your jobs?
ABELL: I was very lucky. I was the first presidential appointment. He made me assistant post master general, a job that I had for several years. And then there's an instance in the diary where Drew goes in to see the President about something and the President is talking about this and that. The only thing he's in his pajamas in the Lincoln bedroom watching television.
When Drew comes in and he's talking about Moyers and then he switches from Moyers who's resigning to be head of Newsday and he said now your stepson, Tyler, is leaving, I got a very nice letter from him. And that's smart. He should get out of the government for a while and go practice law.
LAMB: Did you do it?
ABELL: Yes.
LAMB: How long did you practice law?
ABELL: And then he wanted me back. I became chief of protocol for a short time at the very end of his term.
LAMB: So, you were chief...
ABELL: Then I went back to practicing law after that.
LAMB: But you were chief of protocol when your wife was the social secretary...
ABELL: That's correct.
LAMB: ... to Lyndon Johnson. On the same page is a comment about President Eisenhower the following - Nixon is going to Florida over the weekend - your stepfather wrote - and Pat is remaining in Washington.
Luvie, your mother, says she has refrained from giving me a message from (Kay Hall or Halle)...
ABELL: (Halle).
LAMB: (Halle).
ABELL: (Kay Halle), that's a Cleveland (Halle).
LAMB: ... refrained from giving a message from (Kay Halle) t the effect that Nixon is (pansy). She told (Kay) I had enough problems without writing this. I don't believe the thing about Nixon. It's true that Nixon has been palling around with Bebe Rebozo and it's interesting also that Pat has not been with him at anytime during the recent campaign.
I mean, if you just piece together in here all of those kinds of comments about people you think that everybody that's in politics is - got a different - they're playing to a different rule book.
ABELL: I'm glad he didn't endorse that because I think he was right and (YKL) I would say that is interesting.
LAMB: But you didn't edit anything out of the diary?
ABELL: Oh, an awful lot got left out but it was, you know, as you pointed out there was an awful lot of that stuff in there some got left out but not because it was the wrong thing to say.
LAMB: So, how did you go about getting this volume published which is like 41 years after the first volume? How hard was it?
ABELL: It was very hard. I had a lot of trouble finding a publisher and I was very thankful that the University of Nebraska agreed to publish it. They've used their Potomac (imprint) rather than the University of Nebraska. But it is the University of Nebraska that is publishing that book.
LAMB: And why did they do it? Did they tell you in the end what was...
ABELL: No. They just - I wasn't asking any questions. I said let's go. I thought - I didn't think there'd be any problem finding a publisher but that goes to show how little I know about the publishing business which has changed dramatically since the first volume was published.
LAMB: You have marked up a lot of quotes in your book. Is there anything that you want to pull out of there that particularly you want to get into this discussion?
ABELL: I think you're doing great. I wouldn't interrupt you for a - for anything.
LAMB: There is a whole exchange on...
ABELL: And as you can see from this, if we did all those, you'd have to give me a couple more hours.
LAMB: But what is it that as you were going through this interested you the most?
ABELL: You know, I would ask myself that exact same question. I never got an answer because you can open to any page and there's something interesting there. And even though it was 48 years ago it, you know, you read and you say, gosh, that's fascinating.
LAMB: Well, James Forrestal was the Secretary of Defense and was asked to resign and was a sick man and was put in Bethesda Hospital and then committed suicide jumping off the 16th floor. What role did Drew Pearson think and what role do you think he played in James Forrestal's life?
ABELL: That's a - that's a great question and I wish that I could give you some real insight into it but Drew was very despondent about that. He was - he was really worried that he was being (accurately) accused of making Forrestal commit suicide which I don't think that that was the case at all.
I don't think you can write a column about anybody and say anything and have them commit suicide. But Forrestal was a strange fellow. And he got stranger and stranger and finally began quite literally having hallucinations.
So, he was put in Bethesda Hospital - Bethesda Naval Hospital, it was called then where he went off the deep end completely. And I think that, you know, what should have happened is that the military should have taken better care of him. They knew he was sick.
LAMB: Here's one last quote. We're about out of time. And this is on page 690 and it's 1969 Sunday, March the 9th. For the first time, we have heard (Marie) - that's (Averell Harrelman's) wife - criticized Jackie Kennedy.
She never liked moving out of her house for Jackie's occupancy in the winter of 1963 and '64 but she kept very quiet about it. Today, she let drop the fact that Jackie never once invited her around for tea. The secret service men did when Jackie was away. (Marie) made some interesting though sad comparisons between Ethel Kennedy who was terribly upset over the assassination but held her tears back and Jackie who was hardboiled.
How would you sum up the way Drew Pearson thought about the Kennedys overall?
ABELL: Drew was - the people that Drew was really close to and had real affection for, you can tell. I don't think he was close to or had real affection for the Kennedys. And it probably goes back to Joe Kennedy, Jack's father who did some things that Drew disapproved of. And he didn't - he admired Jack Kennedy.
But as he told Jack Kennedy himself he said, you know, you never would have gotten elected had (Stevenson) put you on the ticket in '56, you would have been just another defeated vice president or vice presidential candidate. And you never would have been able to recover and become president. I'm not sure he was right about that. It was interesting that he'd say it.
LAMB: Where do they keep the archives of all the columns that were written by Drew Pearson anywhere?
ABELL: Yes. Yes. Glad you asked that because I think that's very, very interesting. Anybody that wants to can get them online at American University. American University has them all digitized and you can go online and call up a column and they - the first column was November of '32 and the last column that he wrote was probably July or June or July of '69. But then Jack was writing them and Jack continued.
LAMB: And he died on what date again?
ABELL: September 1, 1969.
LAMB: Our guest has been Tyler Abell, stepson of Drew Pearson. The book is called Washington Merry-Go-Round, The Drew Pearson Diaries 1960 - 1969, published by Potomac Books which is a function of the University of Nebraska Press. And the introduction for this book is by Richard Norton Smith.
Thank you very much for joining us.
ABELL: There are also very good quotes from different people who had (inaudible) the book including (Bob Schieffer) and...
LAMB: (Cokie Roberts) (inaudible) (Dan Ritchie).
ABELL: Yes.
LAMB: Thank you very much, Mr. Abell.
ABELL: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.
LAMB: Did we cover enough? We're not - we're on the camera (inaudible) not on mike.
Male: The shortest hour I've ever spent in my life. It was great fun.
LAMB: Yes.
Male: You did a terrific job. Thank you.
LAMB: That is - that is - I've spent a long time with this book and been recommending it to everybody because it's - if you're interested in history, it's there.
Male: Yes. It's just amazing the way he did that. He's one of the most remarkable men I've ever known. And I've known some great men.
LAMB: You have.
Male: I mean, my - (Dessa's) father I don't think you ever knew.
LAMB: (Errol Klennex)?
Male: Yes. Just unbelievable guy.