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American Morning

Accounts, Evidence Raise Questions Over President Johnson's Military Silver Star

Aired July 06, 2001 - 09:45   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Eyewitness accounts and evidence continue to raise questions over whether former President Lyndon Johnson actually earned his silver star. The key question is whether LBJ's plane actually did come under fire during World War II.

Our military affairs correspondent Jamie McIntyre has researched the events surrounding this incident.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (on camera): During his public life, Johnson rarely kept a diary, but he did on his Pacific tour. His own handwritten account of what happened is on display here at the LBJ Library, in Austin, Texas.

(voice-over): The diary entry for June 9 could be interpreted as indicating Johnson's plane was attacked, just after it turned back. The scrawled pencil notes say "generator went out. Crew begged to go on. For next 30 minutes, we flew on one generator. Due to drop bombs at 10:10. At 9:55, we turned. At 9:58, Zeros intercepted. Andy, leader, got three, and probably another. B-25 got two more, and fighters got four. Total: nine Zeros."

Longtime Johnson aide Harry Middleton is the director of the LBJ Library, where CNN was referred after several requests to talk to the Johnson family. Middleton puts a lot of stock in Johnson's contemporaneous account.

HARRY MIDDLETON, DIRECTOR, LBJ LIBRARY & MUSEUM: Obviously, it is close to the best source of information you can get. A lot depends upon what was in the person's mind as he was writing about his activities. But sure, it's primary material.

MCINTYRE: But the diary, like the citation, is ambiguous and open to interpretation. What appears to be an account of what happened to Johnson's plane, again, might simply refer to what happened to the other 10 planes that completed the bombing run.

That's what historian Barrett Tillman argues, that the timing doesn't add up.

(on camera): When Johnson's plane was returning to Port Moresby, at 10:08, where were the rest of the planes? BARRETT TILLMAN, HISTORIAN: The rest of the planes were just clearing the target area. Their time over target was within a few minutes of the 10:08 period, at which time the Heckling Hare landed back at Port Moresby.

MCINTYRE: So there's no way Johnson could have seen the Zeros attacking the formation and had bullets flying around the plane?

TILLMAN: No earthly way.

MCINTYRE (voice-over): There is at least one other eyewitness still alive. Albert Tyree was a radio operator on another B-26 that day. Now 80, and retired in California, he insists Johnson's plane turned around long before the rest of the planes encountered enemy fire.

(on camera): So you saw it turn around and go back?

STAFF SGT. ALBERT TYREE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Oh yes. Oh yes.

MCINTYRE: Were you under fire at that point?

TYREE: No, no -- none of us was. We weren't under fire until we got up close to Lae Air Base, the Japanese air base.

MCINTYRE: How certain are you that the plane Johnson was on didn't come under fire?

TYREE: I'm sure. He couldn't have, because we didn't get hit either until about right before we dropped our bombs.

MCINTYRE: And you're absolutely sure of that?

TYREE: I'm absolutely sure.

MCINTYRE (voice-over): While Tyree would have no way to know what happened to Johnson's plane after it turned back, there is other evidence. The Army's after-action report records the damage to all the planes that returned to Port Morseby after the June 9 bombing. Damage to the planes is listed down to the last bullet hole, but the list doesn't include plane 1488, the B-26 Johnson was on. In fact, Johnson's plane is recorded as landing at 10:08 a.m., with engine trouble, two minutes before the other B-26s are scheduled to be dropping their bombs on Lae, according to LBJ's diary.

But records can be incomplete or contain mistakes. For instance, a manifest prepared after the attack lists Johnson's rank as commander, instead of lieutenant commander, and it shows above his name a Sergeant Newhouse, a man who was replaced on the crew that day by Bob Marshall -- at least that's how Marshall remembers it.

STAFF SGT. BOB MARSHALL, U.S. ARMY (RET.): I'm telling the truth. I don't build up stories. I'm not selling a book or a story. I'm 100 percent right, in my mind, and in a lot of other guys' minds.

MCINTYRE (on camera): There are more than 45 million pages of documents here in the archives at the LBJ Library. They fill five floors. But as complete as they are, they don't definitively answer the question of whether Johnson's combat service is a myth. That's something that will remain a matter of debate among historians.

(voice-over): One of those records is a letter dated just over a month later, July 15, 1942, in which Johnson writes to the adjutant general of the War Department suggesting that he didn't deserve the silver star. It reads, in part, "I should not and could not accept a citation of recognition for the little part I played," which Johnson then describes as "watching the fighting crew of my ship save their crippled plane despite interception by hostile fighters outnumbering us." He concludes, "I cannot in good conscience accept the decoration."

But the letter is unsigned, and there is no evidence it was ever sent.

ROBERT CARO, LBJ BIOGRAPHER: I've always felt the silver star should have been turned back, that he should have sent the letter rejecting it because he didn't deserve it.

Johnson never endorsed the 1964 book "The Mission." He wrote the authors a brief thank you note, saying, "As soon as I have a few moments, I intend to begin reading it." But he never disputed the account of his bravery, either, and he would on occasion make reference to his combat experience, as he did in this 1963 recording of a phone conversation with then-Speaker of the House John McCormack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP -- 1963)

LYNDON B. JOHNSON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know foreign aid's unpopular. But I didn't want to go to the Pacific in '41, after Pearl Harbor, but I did. And I didn't want to let those Japs shoot at me with a Zero, but I did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCINTYRE: Was Johnson living a lie? It depends on who renders the judgment.

MIDDLETON: I don't think it's totally out of the question that he might have embellished on the story and used it for political purposes while he was campaigning, but as I said, I never heard him talk about it at all.

MCINTYRE: For Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Means of Ascent" Robert Caro, the eyewitness accounts published in "The Mission" outweigh the circumstantial evidence that suggests Johnson's plane may not have come under fire.

CARO: I think that the weight of the evidence at this moment is that the plane was attacked by Zeros and that he was cool under fire.

MCINTYRE: Historian Robert Dallek, who has also written several books on Johnson, says the evidence, while conflicting, buttresses his argument that the silver star was more about politics than bravery. ROBERT DALLEK, LBJ BIOGRAPHER: What I concluded was that there was an agreement, a deal made between LBJ and General MacArthur, and the deal was that Johnson would get this medal -- which somebody later said was the least deserved and most talked about medal in American military history -- and Macarthur, in return, had a pledge from Johnson that he would lobby the president, FDR, to provide greater resources for the southwest Pacific Theater.

MCINTYRE: History, it has been said, is argument without end. It is impossible to reconstruct with absolute certainty what happened some 60 years ago. Memories can be wrong, and records don't tell the whole story.

Still, Caro thinks if Johnson told the truth, he didn't tell the whole truth.

CARO: I would say that it's a tissue of exaggerations. He said that he flew on many missions, not one mission. He said that the other members of the Air Force group were so admiring of him that they called him "Raider" Johnson" -- neither of these things are true.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you like coffee, Bob?

MCINTYRE: Bob Marshall considers it a point of honor to tell the truth the best he knows it. My wife always tells me, Bob, why don't you forget the past, that's gone? I said, Betty, when you're in a position like we were in those old days, it's going to be there forever. And I like the truth about it, because I was there, because I was in a position to see everything. And if it happened, I'd know it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: That was our Jamie McIntyre putting together that report.

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