UNEXPECTEDLY, WAR SHIFT PRIMED O'NEILL FOR POWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000404750005-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: May 18, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404750005-8
TICLE AI'AREp
WASHINGTON STAIR
18 MAY 1980
Gwendolyn Stewart
O'Neill was in right place at right time
Unexpectedly, mar hi
prime. O'Neill for power
tilt progress of ills tutuniuo treat tie
had called them "poisonous propa- would later personally give the
By Paul Clancy gandists."
y president of the United States. In the
and Shirley Elder
Johnson skipped over the rest of process, he became the most visible
the page. There didn't seem to be war opponent among the so-called
much good news. The Federal Re Establishment politicians
the first
,
serve Board warned of inflation; B -
to break with LBJ.
The last edition of The Evening 52s'bombed missile sites north of the His actions also had an unex-
Star came off the presses at about demilitarized zone in Vietnam. He J pected side effect: the younger con-
ld
b
4:30 p.m. on Sept. 14, 1967. Within a
few minutes, copies were delivered
all over town. Half a dozen were
dropped off at the White House; one .
was placed on a small cabinet just.
outside the Oval Office.
President Lyndon. B. Johnson
walked into the office at 5 p.m. He
was just back from a fast trip to
Kansas City where he had spoken to
the International Association of
Chiefs of Police and had visited
briefly with former President Harry
S. Truman in Independence.
wou
get
ack to the paper and the gressional activists who had paid 0'-
stack of wire-service clips later. First Neill scant attention in the past soon
he had to get a haircut. He -was to began to view him as a possible con-
meet the parents of daughter Lynda; tender for House leadership. His
Bird's fiance, Charles S. Robb, for
the first time this evening. new position showed them he could
Back in his office before the 9 n.m.. -
IF
resi 1
dinner
an aide called the
,
p
-
dent's attention to a four-paragraph
story on Page 6 of the Star. It had
been overlooked earlier. "O'Neill
Splits With Johnson Over U.S. Viet-
nam Policy." Headlines are always,
noisier than the small type in news
front page and noted with satisfac- the president. Sonofabitch! Not 0'-
tion that the lead story was based on
the speech he had delivered at noon:
."Johnson Blasts Negro Militants.".1
He had decided it was time to stieak
Neill, the good loyal Democrat, con-
sistent supporter of the' president?
He picked up the phone: Get me Tip
O'Neill.
Stokely Carmichael who were urg-
ing,lilacks to rise up in.violence to
asst~t their rights. In his speech he
that day. Two LBJ supporters took
the floor to deliver short speeches in
praise of the government's Vietnam
War policy, all part of the Johnson
administration's orchestrated re-
spouse to critics. ip O'Neill said
nothing. Less than a month earlier,
he had come to the decision that the
Vietnam War was unwinnable, and
that the U.S. should figure a way to
get out. He had sent this word out to
his constituents in a newsletter but i
had said nothing to reporters. Today
he was unaware than someone had
given the Star a copy of the newslet-
ter and that the story would run in
the afternoon editions of the paper.
Opposing the war had been a fate-
ful decision for O'Neill and a pro-
foundly difficult one for him to
make. He thought it would ruin him
among his hard-working blue-collar
constituents who dutifully sent
their boys to fight in Vietnam. Said
O'Neill's oldest son, Thomas P. 0'.
Neill III, "He felt he was absolutely
gone politically. That was the worst
time in his life." O'Neill's wife,
Millie, agreed. "The reception he ot
g
at home was very rough ... People
were furious to think that he would
do such a thing while their boys
were still in the service. They
the time."
As it turned out, his opposition to
the war did not ruin him politically.
Far from it. O'Neill began to try to
turn his constituents around on the
war, accelerating his already heavy
schedule of speaking engagements
around his district, cajoling hostile
audiences with the same report on
This is excerpted from the forthcom-
ing book, Tip: A Biography of Speaker
Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., to be published
next month by MacMillan.
Paul Clancy is a staff reporter for
The Washington Star. His biography of
former Sen. Sam Ervin, Just a Country
Lawyer, was published in 1974. Shirley
Elder, a veteran Capitol Hill reporter.
formerly on-the staff of The Washing-
ton Star, now writes for Media General
News Service.
Caryright (0 1980 by Paul Clancy and
ShirayElder.
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 A Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000404750005-8
blend loyalty to old politics with sen-
sitivity to new ideas. But to Lyndon
Johnson that day, he looked like a
traitor.
'['lie House session of September 14
dragged on until 8:45 p.m. Then 0'-
Neill went off to join a late game of
poker at the Metropolitan Club. As
O'Neill tells it:
"At home that night, Eddie Boland
(O'Neill's Washington roommate
and fellow Massachusetts congress-
man) answers the phone. The presi-
dent wants to talk to me. Christ.
Eddie called the University Club. He
called the Army and Navy Club. He
called (ex-congressman) Fisher's of-
fice. He called the Democratic Club.
We had never played before at the.
Metropolitan Club (they were duck-
ing a pal who had been on a losing
streak), so he never thought of call-
ing me there.
"I came in at three o'clock in the
morning and he said, Where'd you
put the car? I says, it's in the garage.
I had come straight up to the apart-
ment from the garage. He says, the
Secret Service is sitting downstairs
in the lobby. They been waiting for
you all night. I says, the what? He
says, about the: Star article. I says,
what about the Star article? He says,
Christ, Johnson's called 25 times.
Call the White House regardless of
what time you come in."
The president had gone to bed at
11:45 p.m., leaving a message for 0'-
Neill with the White House switch-
board: Come see me in the morning.
turning on him for political expedi-
A Sorrowful LBJ
Johnson aides say it often was
hard to tell whether the president
was really angry when he started
shouting or whether he was. just
being his rambunctious, generally
profane, self. But for sure, he could
not abide the thought of someone.
dozens of times over the next few
years.
Early in 1967, O'Neill had "been
invited to address a meeting of the
Boston College Chapter of the Young
Democrats. A young man named Pat
McCarthy was there too. McCarthy
you, my friend, to come out against
me, I can't beieve it ... are you
going to tell me you know more
about this war than I do?"
O'Neill slowly explained the mak-
ing of his decision, a story to be told-
listened as O'Neill debated the Viet-
nam war with the students. O'Neill
repeated, as he had many times in
the past; that he had been briefed by
everybody he could possibly he
briefed by, from President Johnson
on down. McCarthy stood up: "Have
you ever been briefed by the other
side?"
After the lecture that night, O'-
Neill said he got to thinking. No, he
had not been briefed by the other
side, not by anyone who would know
anything about the situation. So he
set out to learn all he could about
the war.
A first stop was with Marine Corps
Commandant David M. Shoup. To 0'-
Neill's surprise, Shoup said he was
opposed to continued U.S. participa-
tion in the war. He said the U.S. was
fighting a war it couldn't win; what's
more, it had no determination to
win.
Next. O'Neill went to the Central
In e i ence encv. Actually, the
CIA sought 'Neill out. Someone at
Me agency a earl the congress-
man was rethinking his position on
Vietnam. So a high-ranking CIA offi-
cer (all involved contend they
remember no names) contacted a
man known as an O'Neill acquaint-
ance, John D. Walker, and asked him
to set up a meeting-with the con-
gressman. Walker was a senior U.S.
intelligence officer for the Mideast,
ostensibly assigned to the State De-
partment.
The briefing for Tip was set up in
Walter's home on P Street in George-
town. O'Neill described the partici-
pants simply as "all the head CIA
fellas." Whoever they were, they told
O'Neill a surprising story. They said
that despite public statements. from
U.S. government officials on the war
in Vietnam, it was, indeed, going
badly. The word "unwinnable" was
used repeatedly. But they said the
ency and with no forewarning. To big problem was that their messages
Johnson, it looked as though O'Neill assessing the war were not reaching
had done just that, He had been .. the president. They said reports sent
angry; but the next morning he was to the White House were snatched
sorrowful. "I can understand those off the president's desk by national
over on the floor opposing the security' aides who disagreed with
war," he said to O'Neill, "but Jesus, the gloomy warnings. Some others
argued at the time that itwas not the
CIA's. role to give advice; the agency.
was merely supposed to gather facts.
Still, O'Neill was bothered by the
talk that. day. Maybe the president's
military.' advisers didn't want to
admit defeat. '
Other such briefings and conver-
sations followed, and the case
against the war grew.
`Frightening Cost .
Back in his Boston office that sum-
mer, O'Neill sat down with one of his
young interns, law student Joseph
McLaughlin, and drafted a state-
ment to be sent to his constituents as
a newsletter. Citing the war's
"frightening cost"in lives and dol-
lars, he said, "I cannot help but won-
der whether this may not be too
high a price to pay for an obscure
and limited objective ... in an
inherently civil conflict." It was a
difficult statement to write. O'Neill's
political life had always been firmly
rooted in party loyalty and unswerv-
ing support of Democratic presi-
dents. On every Vietnam vote from .
that day forward, O'Neill voted with
the doves. .
I
O'Neill told President Johnson
that he was not bowing to pressure
from "crackpot students" who had
demonstrated against the war in
Harvard Square and burned Ameri-
can flags, nor to the academicians
(whom he called "acadamians") in
his district who had long been op-
posed to the war. In fact, he was con-
vinced that.the pro-war sentiment
was so strong in his area that he
could be defeated for re-election.
"Oh, Jesus," he said, "I ran through a
hard period of time. People would
cross the street when they saw me
coming." Polls showed only 15 per
cent of the voters on his district
agreed with him in opposing the
war. (The 26th Amendment, extend-
ing the vote to 18-year-olds, hadn't
yet been ratified.)
Right Place, Right Time
When he finished talking, O'Neill
remembers that President Johnson
put his arm around his shoulder and
told him that he understood, that in
spite . of O'Neill's decision, they
would always be friends. Johnson
would not quarrel with him once it
was clear that the congressman's
position was based on a conscien-
tious assessment of the issue rather
than on political expediency. "I said,
Nothing political to it," O'Neill re-
calls. "It hurts me. I never had the
academicians with me. I still don't
have them with me."
If, as O'Neill said, he expected his
Vietnam position to be politically
unpopular at home, it turned out to
be one of his more fortunate moves
in Washington. It extended his ap-
peal far beyond the. poker-playing
and big-city machine politicians to a
new crowd. of intellectuals and
doves. More building blocks of lead-
ership were fitting into place. It may
be a cliche, but true, that much suc-
cess in politics comes from being in
the right place at the right time. 0'-
Neill's stand on the war put him in
the right place at the right time.
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