Chicago:1968 © Len Kody and Jenny Frison
--Telephone Audio
So last week Lyndon Johnson's presidential library released snippets of audio from Johnson's telephone conversations during 1968.
It's a long list of audio files featuring the likes of Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and Teddy Kennedy. Two separate conversations with Richard J. Daley are also included--
9/7/1968 - Recorded just a week after the closing of the Democratic National Convention, Daley is already putting together his conspiracy case against the rag tag group of activists who would eventually come to be known as the
Chicago 7, even mentioning Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden and Jerry Rubin by name. The obvious purpose of Daley's call is to get Johnson to persuade the reluctant Attorney General,
Ramsey Clark, to indict the 7. But in spite of Johnson seeming to agree with Daley on almost every other point, the President is apparently unable or unwilling to force his progressive-minded Attorney
General's hand on the issue.
It wouldn't be until 1969, with the Nixon administration in the White House, when Daley would get the indictments he wanted.
12/4/1968 - Recorded in the final weeks of 1968, Daley is still pestering the President to work on Ramsey Clark.
The name "
Daniel Walker" is also mentioned several times. And Walker is an interesting figure in Chicago/Illinois history, especially in light of recent events--
--"What's the background of this fella Walker?"
When Johnson asks Daley for the skinny on "this fella Walker," Daley says, "He did a hellava hatchet job." The "hatchet job" to which Daley is referring is the book "Rights in Conflict," also known as "The Walker Report," which was the result of an official investigation led by Walker into the 1968 Convention disturbances. The conclusion of the Walker Report was that the disturbances were the result of a police riot. Paraphrasing Walker, isolated groups of policemen lost control and became excessively violent with the crowds of demonstrators. Walker's claims, of course, were a huge black eye for Mayor Daley and the Chicago Police Dept.
Since then, however, The Walker Report has been criticized by both the right and the left - those on the right maintain the police used appropriate force in apprehending the protesters, while those on the left claim that to affix blame for the police riot on a few isolated groups of officers is to deny a culture of corruption that leads directly to City Hall. Despite its flaws, I've found the Walker Report to be an excellent resource. It documents practically everything that happened during Convention Week almost down to the minute. There's lots of great pictures, too. Too bad the book's been out of print since 1969.
Anyway, back to this Walker fella. Thanks to his scathing report, Walker earned a reputation as a reformer in Illinois and was elected Governor in 1971. After he left office in 1977, he went into the Savings and Loan business. He used the money people deposited into his Savings and Loan to finance his own high class, jet setting lifestyle. In 1987, Walker was arrested, tried and convicted for these improprieties, becoming the first of three Illinois Governors in recent history to bring scandal to the office.
--Something rotten in the state of Illinois
Governor Rod
Blagojevich, our current Governor, was taken from his home in handcuffs by Federal authorities this past Monday. Illinois residents and those of you who keep up with national news should know by now that "
Blago" (as they call him), who alone holds the power to appoint a replacement to the Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Obama, was caught conspiring to sell that seat to whomever came to the table with the most campaign contributions. (As of right now it looks like the high bidder was Jesse Jackson Jr., the son of another high-profile figure in 1968.)
And that's only the tip of the iceberg, folks. In just the last few months Blagojevich shook down the Chicago Tribune newspaper (which also owns the Cubs baseball team), demanding that they fire certain unfavorables on their editorial staff or else he'd throw a monkey wrench into their attempts to sell Wrigley Field. And, hitting an all time low, even for Chicago, he put the squeeze on Children's Memorial Hospital for contributions by threatening to yank state funding.
And how did he get caught? Taped phone conversations where the the Gov.
says things that would even make a plain spoken man like Lyndon Johnson blush. The other major difference of course being that LBJ's conversations were taped for posterity.
Blago was bugged by the Feds.