The Administration: L.B.J.'s Young Man In Charge of Everything

[See Cover)

On Nov. 22, 1963, Bill Don Moyers, the young deputy director of the Peace Corps, was lunching with Texas Democratic bigwigs at the elegant 40 Acres Club in Austin. At 12:42 a waiter summoned him to the phone. Minutes later, a somber Moyers returned to the table. 'The President has been shot and is believed dead," he said. "The Governor has been shot and is critically wounded. The Vice President is believed to have been wounded." Instinctively, Moyers, a longtime protege and former aide of Lyndon B. Johnson, raced off to a chartered twin-engine Cessna and flew to Dallas; in mid-trip, he heard a radio announcer declare solemnly: "The President is dead."

At Dallas' Love Field, Moyers hurried aboard Air Force One to join the new President. A Secret Service man, who did not recognize him, barred him from the forward compartment where Lyndon Johnson was about to take the oath of office. Moyers scrawled a note -"I'm here if you need me"—and sent it in. In seconds the forward door swung open, and Moyers was there to witness the swearing-in.

Efficient Normalcy. Johnson's door has been open to Moyers ever since. In the White House, the President has used his young aide as an organizer and expediter, speech editor and legislative coordinator. In times of trouble, the President has called on him repeatedly to take on new and ever more demanding responsibilities. Most of Moyers' work was done behind the scenes until, in another crisis last July, he stepped in to fill the vacant office of White House press secretary. Thus, it was not until the most recent emergency, the President's gall-bladder operation, that Moyers' smooth, owlish, utterly earnest face finally became familiar on the nation's TV screens. Day after day, Americans watched in fascination as Moyers read the complex, meticulously detailed summaries of President Johnson's operation and convalescence.

While he barely looked his 31 years, slight (6 ft., 158 lbs.), dark-haired Bill Moyers managed somehow to impart just the right air of efficient normalcy. For the first time, the country and the world began to get an impression of the young man who is closest to the President of the U.S.

White House Catalyst. Officially, Bill Moyers is only one of seven White House special assistants to the President. In practice, he is Johnson's No. 1 aide. He was the chief overseer in drafting Lyndon's 1965 domestic program, serving as the "catalyst"—his term—that got the task forces moving and helped turn their blue-sky proposals into concrete measures. He heads up "Project 66," Lyndon's domestic legislative program for next year. "Of every ten ideas that cross L.B.J.'s desk," says a colleague, "five must be Bill's." He is the editor who hands out assignments to several speechwriters and gives their efforts the penultimate polish (Lyndon, naturally, has the final say). As press secretary, he sees his role as that of interpreter of the President to the public and the filter of public opinion back to the White House.