Bill Moyers: How will I explain this to my children?

Quite an interesting article here. Laurence H. Silberman, currently chairman of President Bush's commission on intelligence and former Deputy U. S. Attorney General and ambassador to Yugoslavia, writes that he read all of J. Edgar Hoover's secret FBI files.

Among some anecdotes he is able to repeat, the most poignant concerns ultra lefty Bill Moyers. Silberman says that shortly before the 1964 election an important assistant to LBJ got himself arrested in a D.C. mensroom. LBJ, worried that Goldwater might use the incident against him, tasked another assistant, one Bill Moyers, to direct Hoover to launch an investigation of Goldwater's staff, searching for homosexual activities. In 1975, at the demand of the House judiciary Committee, Silberman found and read Moyer's 1964 memo to Hoover which was included in the files. When the press printed the story, an irate Moyers called Silberman. Moyers at first blamed the report on the CIA but when a sympathetic Silberman offered to investigate to clear Moyers' name, Moyers said,

I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?

And then he hung up the telephone.

There is no more stricter teetotaler than a reformed alcoholic. One must wonder if Moyers' shrillness over the past few decades is an unconscious attempt to cleanse himself of the things he did for JFK and LBJ.

Tags: J. Edgar Hoover FBI secret files Bill Moyers JFK LBJ Goldwater