Mad Congressmen
Secrets of Presidents and the United States Senate - Part 1
Soon after bursting into the Democratic Cloakroom of the U.S. Senate, Senator J. William Fulbright angrily grabbed staffer Bobby Baker by the throat. “I ought to kill you,” Fulbright growled. Fulbright had been in Baltimore delivering a paid speech when Baker had summoned him back to the Senate. To ensure his return in time, Baker contacted the mayor and arranged for a police car to bring Fulbright back. “That guy was going 90 miles an hour and the wheels were going up and down off the road,” Fulbright complained. “You could vote without me.” Baker meekly responded: “I needed you.”
Most of the time U.S. senators needed Baker, sometimes in disturbing ways. He was once relentlessly pressed to supply a woman for a long-time Southern senator’s personal pleasure. The senator sounded as though he had been drinking heavily for days when he called one afternoon and demanded that Baker locate a woman to satisfy him. Baker refused, replying, “Senator, I just wouldn’t know how to go about that.” Minutes later the phone rang again; this time, the senator ordered Baker to bring a woman to his house in the suburbs, explaining, “My wife’s away and my dick’s so hard a cat couldn’t scratch it. I’ll pay real good.” Baker declined once more. As the calls continued, the senator escalated the threat, warning, “Bobby, I’m gonna keep on callin’ you ’til pussy shows up on my doorstep. And if you don’t bring me pussy, I ain’t bringing you no more votes.” At that point, Baker replied that he would see what he could do.
Baker walked to a hotel bar near the Senate, a place he knew well, where a young cocktail waitress worked; she was rumored to supplement her income with small-time hustling. He was accompanied by Wayne Bromley, a lobbyist and friend. Baker made his position clear to the waitress: “I don’t want to know anything about the arrangements, but I know where there’s a horny senator with money in his pocket.” She asked for a few minutes to arrange coverage for her shift. Soon after, Baker, Bromley, and the woman drove roughly twenty minutes from Capitol Hill to a comfortable suburban abode.
Inside, they could see the senior senator waiting in the dining room, bracing himself upright with both of his hands on the table. He swayed unsteadily, as if being moved by unseen winds. Baker made a formal introduction: “Senator, this is Miss Smith and she’s your date for the afternoon.” The senator barely acknowledged Baker, instead peering at the woman and commanding in his Southern drawl, “Honey, le’s me and you fuck.” Later, according to Baker, the woman told a mutual acquaintance that she left with $100 ($1,000 today) and cab fare. After sobering up, the senator kept his distance from Baker for a time. Even so, Baker observed that securing the man’s vote afterward proved easier than it had been before.
All of My Enemies Are Dead
Memories came flooding back to Baker when he revisited the U.S. Senate in 2009, walking through his old haunts. He found it easier to speak his mind at age 80, now that “all the people who disliked me are dead and I’m still alive.” Every room triggered some kind of recollection from his time spent as a Page and later, as Secretary to the Majority Leader. Seen by many as essential to the workings of the Senate, John F. Kennedy once called him the 101st senator (this compliment pleased Baker “to no end”). Returning to his former workplace for an oral history project in 2009, he revisited the Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) Room, in which Baker’s wedding reception had been held in 1949. When told that LBJ’s bathroom had recently been removed, Baker recalled that Johnson “could vent the loudest farts. It didn’t bother him one bit who was in there. Gosh, he was always letting gas off.”
There was also the Marble Room, where Baker had once watched JFK stare into a large mirror and ask, “God, why did you make me so beautiful?” Outside of the Senate Conference Room, Baker pointed to where a water fountain had once been. “This is where Senator Hoey—” he stopped himself short, leaving out the details of the crime. He continued with the memory etched in his mind of the phone calls he would receive in the cloakroom on a regular basis. Secretaries would have a treacherous route to complete in order to receive their pay and were eager to avoid the man who wore a swallow-tail coat. “So the secretaries would call me and say, ‘Is that old son of a bitch out there by the water fountain?’” In 1950, Senator Clyde R. Hoey chaired a subcommittee investigation, known as the Hoey Report. Its final conclusions included that intelligence agencies “were in complete agreement that sex perverts in government constitute security risks.” Hoey’s personal contributions to the subject were left out the report, which drove the secretaries’ ire and their reconnaissance request: “What he would do,” Baker revealed of Senator Hoey, “when a pretty girl would come by, he’d call her over and then he would try to play with her breasts.”
“When I ran the Democratic cloakroom, it was right inside here,” Baker said; the room where Senator Fulbright once choked him happened to still be there. Stepping inside, Baker commented on the technology now available to a current staff member: “You’ve gotten fancy. When I was here as the Chief Telephone Page in 1944, I didn’t have a machine like you have there. But I knew every staff member on our side.” The staffer replied: “Wow. I’d be happy to give you a tour, if you’d like.” Baker declined: “No, we’ll just wander.” He already knew the inner sanctums of the Senate like the back of his hand, having worked there for 20 years. He pointed towards the cloakroom’s couches: “So if a Senator had a hangover or something, they’d come in and take a nap.” Baker had many more secrets to share.
Bodies
Though content with his life and imagining a future rooted in Pickens, South Carolina, Baker was abruptly sent to Washington at age fourteen to serve as a U.S. Senate page after another boy declined the position. Baker dreaded the move, viewing the job as menial and fearing the loss of his social standing, but his father recognized it as a rare opportunity: “Son, it’s a chance for a start.” After a surprise party held in his honor, Baker left reluctantly, sensing even then that the departure would permanently sever his ties to the life he loved. Only 14 years old at the time, he was fearful at the sight of soldiers guarding the Capitol, brandishing their bayonets. “For a hillbilly from South Carolina, I could not believe the grandeur of the Capitol and Washington,” he recalled. When he was served potatoes for breakfast for the first time in his life, he thought, I’m really in Yankee country.
Baker was overwhelmed by homesickness and the shock of leaving his small Southern town. He initially believed tales of Japanese spies in the Capitol as he watched guards move about the unfamiliar city. Physically smaller and socially inexperienced, he endured hazing rituals at the hands of other pages. He also despised the page-boy uniform: “Years later, when I had the power, I ordered that page-boy knickers be replaced by long trousers.”
Over time, Baker adapted and began to excel. He learned the routines of the Senate, took pride in anticipating senators’ needs, and earned a positive reputation for hard work. His curiosity drew him to Senate debates, parliamentary rules, and the personalities of individual senators, sharpening his political instincts and ambition. The most important skill he learned was how to count votes. What first started as a hobby on the job turned into political acumen that both senators and the press could use: “I knew how, I would say, 98 percent of the Senators were going to vote before an issue came up, because I knew their geographical location, whether they were conservative, liberal, or a middle-of-the-roader.” When reports would ask him which way a vote would go, after he explained “what I thought the vote was going to be, they just said, ‘That’s the gospel.’” By the time he returned home from Washington, DC, Baker felt transformed by his experience of being a Senate Page. Publicly recognized at a local political gathering and unexpectedly asked to speak, he delivered his first brief speech to roaring applause. He was now hooked.
“Mr. Baker, I understand you know where the bodies are buried in the Senate. I’d appreciate it if you’d come to my office and talk with me.” At just twenty years old, Baker received a call from Senator LBJ that signaled his reputation as someone who understood the Senate’s inner workings. Though officially given the title of Chief Telephone Page, a role created specifically to keep him on the payroll, Baker had become deeply embedded in Senate operations, often knowing more about its daily business than many senators.
Baker immersed himself in Senate culture, studied personalities, and learned how power actually functioned; who mattered, why some senators rose while others faded, and how personal traits, egos, and relationships shaped outcomes. As a Southerner, he benefited from regional solidarity and seniority, gaining mentorship and access from powerful Southern senators who treated him like a protégé. Baker tailored his approach to each senator’s personality and mastered the art of selling legislation by simplifying complex bills so senators could grasp their costs, benefits, and political implications quickly. “If there were tricks to rising quickly, I did not perform them with mirrors but with the usual tools of the political trade: hustle, service, hard work, public relations, gathering intelligence and then acting on it,” he later wrote in his memoir. “To me this has always been the most natural and simplest of formulas, and I just don’t understand those who don’t understand it.” Central to his intelligence-gathering was the Senate Democratic cloakroom, a private space where senators spoke candidly, made deals, as well as revealed their vulnerabilities.
Risqué
Baker initially believed that the Senate was “a collection of nature’s noblemen come together to form a more perfect union.” He would eventually learn that this was far from the truth. Early on in his Senate career, Baker understood that when he was sent to locate one of these discreet offices and knock softly to summon a senator back to the chamber, he could not assume the occupant was alone. The likes of Alben Barkley, Estes Kefauver, JFK, George Smathers, LBJ, or Bob Kerr, might be entertaining female company. For years, Kerr maintained an affair with one secretary, who later told Baker she had been paid $50,000 ($500,000 today) to keep her memoirs unwritten. While he primarily dealt with Democrats, Baker also came to learn of Republican Senator Charles McNary of Oregon, that while “he treated the Page boys with great dignity,” he also “could not see a skirt pass by without compulsively chasing it.” In his 2009 oral history interview, Baker added more names to the list, including Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel, who “was having a relationship with his secretary, so he’d come over to me and ask me if I could send a Page to buy him some rubbers—true story!” There was also Republican Senator Jacob Javits, who like JFK, was a “sex maniac”: “One of the postmen went in and caught him on his couch having a sexual affair with a Negro lady. He couldn’t wait to come and tell me. He said, ‘Can you believe that son of a bitch?’”
Baker socialized with some senators and occasionally made casual introductions to young women who made no secret of their appetite for having a good time with the powerful. Baker came to appreciate that one of the most effective maneuvers in politics was identifying another person’s pleasures or fixations and then catering to them. He quickly concluded that Senator Barkley from Kentucky, despite his frequent biblical quotations, was “a randy old goat” with an intense preoccupation with sex. In particular, Barkley harbored a pronounced fascination with “breastworks.” One secretary’s figure in the Senate occupied an inordinate share of his attention; when he was not attempting to touch her, he was speaking about her in a longing fashion. “I saw to it,” Baker explained, “that Senator Barkley and I talked a great deal about mammary glands and exchanged risqué jokes.”
Cowboys
From Baker’s historical account, Senator Kefauver from Tennessee “had a bad alcohol problem and he also had a very bad record with wanting to go to bed with every woman he ever met. He got some of these young kids testifying, you know, before his juvenile Committee or something and then he couldn’t wait to go to bed with them.” According to Baker, Kefauver was always up for sale; he could be paid in either “coin or women.” He courted trouble by constantly trying to seduce new targets, including an attractive newswoman, using “tactics bordering on the strong-armed.” After Kefauver was nominated for Vice President in 1956, Baker remembered widespread anxiety within Democratic circles that one of these episodes might become public.
Baker himself once served as courier for an illegal $25,000 ($275,000 today) cash payment to Kefauver. He delivered the money to a member of the senator’s staff in a committee office in the old Senate Office Building. Legitimate campaign contributions were prohibited on government property, let alone outright bribes. The payment was meant to influence a Kefauver subcommittee finding that George Preston Marshall, owner of the Washington Redskins football team, operated an illegal monopoly through his Redskins Television Network, which broadcast games profitably throughout the South.
The money originated with Texas interests and was passed to Baker through an intermediary. Baker, in turn, handed it off to Kefauver’s aide. As with many such exchanges, little was said explicitly. Baker recalled receiving the briefcase from the courier, delivering it with the remark, “I hope you’ll get this to the senator with the compliments of some Texas friends.” The staffer accepted the case without comment and immediately shifted the conversation to Democratic politics.
Additionally, a group of Texans were desperate to secure a lucrative National Football League franchise, but they faced fierce resistance from Marshall, a founding figure in the league who wielded outsized influence. Marshall was determined to block a Texas team that would fracture Southern loyalties and cut into his profits; the NFL at the time had no team based in the South. Businessman Clint Murchison, Jr. was in the process of attempting to bring the Dallas Cowboys to the league, but was also encountering resistance from Senator Kefauver: he publicly declared that “Over my dead body” would Dallas be able to get a team over Memphis.
Marshall regarded the South as his personal domain and with millions of dollars at stake, the Texans approached Baker through an operative, a man he knew socially as a heavy drinker and gambler. Over drinks in Baker’s office, the man confided, “Bobby, my job and my ass are on the line. I’ve got to lock up that damn football franchise for Texas, and I’ve been told to leave no stone unturned.” It was after hours, the building was quiet. Baker’s voice broke the silence: “Have you got any money to spend?”
When the operative asked how much was required to get the job done, Baker admitted he did not know. Baker advised him to meet with Senator Kefauver and lay out the problem. “If I know Estes Kefauver,” Baker said, “he’ll play the ball once you put it in his court.” Baker arranged a meeting with the senator and the operative returned with a briefcase, handed it to Baker, and indicated, “There’s $25,000 cash in there.” Baker delivered the funds as instructed.
Pressure on Marshall came from other directions as well. At the suggestion of Murchison, Baker and his law partner in the private sector, Ernest Tucker, purchased the rights to the Redskins’ fight song, “Hail to the Redskins,” from composer Barnee Breeskin. Strapped for cash at the time, Breeskin eagerly accepted $2,500 ($27,000 today), unaware of the song’s strategic value. Marshall, ordinarily a shrewd businessman, had inexplicably failed to secure ownership of it himself.
The terms were straightforward: Marshall could continue using the song only if he withdrew his opposition to the Dallas franchise. Faced with the prospect of relying on “Dixie” as a substitute anthem, he relented. The Murchisons, who had supplied the $2,500, thereby secured a franchise that Baker estimated would later be worth at least $20 million. When Kefauver died in 1963, after cultivating a national reputation as a fearless crusader against organized crime and corporate profiteers, the public was surprised to discover that he had held roughly $300,000 ($3.2 million today) in stock in pharmaceutical companies subject to his regulatory authority. Baker, in contrast, given all of his experience was “not the least bit shocked.”
Baker later filled in more details in 2009, explaining how the Cowboys plot had worked and that a further bribe had been delivered to a U.S. House representative: “Kefauver…was always broke. And he was like Senator George Smathers and President Kennedy, he’d never seen a girl he didn’t want to go to bed with. You know, he had a Senate investigation of [juvenile delinquency, including “obscene and pornographic materials”], many of the young ladies would come in and he’d try to date them. I was very close to one of his secretaries…she would tell me how broke he was…I asked Murchison to have [lobbyist] Tommy Webb give him $25,000 and he quieted down. And I had the Murchisons hire Congressman Manny Celler, who was Chairman of the [House] Judiciary Committee. He was saying that the NFL was a monopoly and they were wrecking the country, and so the Murchisons paid his law firm $50,000…So he eased his criticism. That’s the way Dallas received their franchise.”
Quorum
From all that he had witnessed, Baker knew better than most the dangers inherent in becoming romantically involved with a woman from one’s own office. He nonetheless began an affair with Carole Tyler, his personal secretary in her early twenties. She was, in his telling, a former beauty queen with a sharp intellect and a natural instinct for politics. “Though I knew the guilt of a longtime family man with a loyal wife and five children,” he wrote, “I did nothing to discourage our romance once it began. I was proud of Carole and the things we shared, and did little to conceal it.”
Baker was in part copying the behavior of his superiors. Now that Baker was the Senate’s Secretary to the Majority Leader, Baker was able to observe firsthand LBJ’s affair: “one of the great, great love affairs in the history of the Senate was Senator Lyndon Johnson and Mary Margaret Valenti, his personal secretary. She is still one of my great friends.” LBJ, in Baker’s estimation, did not possess the relentless appetite for women that defined JFK. Johnson, however, delighted in hearing rumors about Kennedy’s sexual adventures and Baker was often well placed to supply fresh anecdotes.
During JFK’s Senate years, Baker had once sought Kennedy out in the Senate restaurant and found him seated with a mutual friend and railroad lobbyist, Bill Thompson, alongside one of the most striking women Baker had ever seen. Baker approached the table and Thompson exclaimed, “Bobby, look at this fine chick. She gives the best head in the United States.” Baker was stunned and embarrassed on her behalf. He tried to deliver his message to Kennedy while stealing glances at the smiling woman being so enthusiastically promoted. Kennedy noticed Baker’s discomfort and laughed: “Relax, Bobby. She’s from Paris and she doesn’t understand a word of English. But what Bill’s saying is absolutely right!”
Kennedy knew that Baker had caroused with Senator Smathers in the company of women who were not their wives; Baker had even smoothed the way for Kennedy to meet a couple of women who had clearly caught his attention. As a result, when President Kennedy occasionally summoned Baker to the White House to talk through pending legislation or political difficulties, those meetings frequently concluded with extremely candid accounts of Kennedy’s latest sexual exploits, to his shock and amusement.
On one occasion, after leaving such a meeting at the White House, Baker returned to his Capitol Hill office only to learn that Vice President Johnson, then presiding over the Senate, had called three times, insisting on seeing him the instant he arrived. Baker hurried to the chamber; Johnson spotted him immediately and motioned him forward. Baker felt the eyes of reporters, senators, and tourists on him as he approached the rostrum. Leaning in, Johnson whispered with studied intensity, “Is ol’ Jack gettin’ much pussy?” Baker relayed the latest JFK escapade and Johnson’s eyes danced with amusement, though his face remained carefully subdued, as if the two were conferring about nuclear strategy.
Within Washington’s inner circles, it was widely understood that LBJ had conducted affairs for years. Baker heard that Johnson had been involved with at least one attractive journalist and the wife of a congressman. Shortly after Johnson became Vice President, he reportedly urged President Kennedy to appoint that congressman to a federal position far from Washington, because rumors of Johnson’s involvement with the man’s wife had become too widespread to ignore. That reassignment was duly arranged. Johnson never confided such matters directly to Baker; the information came instead through the Hill’s grapevine. Johnson was far more guarded about his extramarital life than Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to relish recounting his experiences, offering up the details with a boyish bravado. Johnson, who was prone to toilet humor and was “extraordinarily proud of being well endowed,” joked broadly about sex without volunteering particulars. Baker made a point of not asking LBJ for more details, partly because he did not want to answer those same questions himself.
Baker helped found the Quorum Club, a private establishment in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill that became the focal point of a scandal involving JFK. Its members included senators, representatives, lobbyists, staffers, and other well-connected figures who wanted a discreet place to drink, eat, play cards, and talk. Baker regarded it as no more sinister than a neighborhood drugstore; while intimate affairs sometimes began there or political schemes were occasionally discussed, the same could have been said of numerous other Washington haunts favored by the powerful. The press later fixated on a nude painting and red draperies inside the club, treating them as evidence of moral depravity, much to Baker’s chagrin.
Baker recounted one memorable evening at the club with Ellen Rometsch, whom he called “as pretty as Elizabeth Taylor,” at his table. Married to a German Army sergeant stationed in Washington, she was ambitious and had come from West Germany with little money. Baker noted that “she really loved oral sex,” describing how she would often meet visiting benefactors—“90 percent of the people who give you money want to know if you can get them a date.” He remembered a $5,000 gift from a Dallas Cowboys board member and how Carole Tyler would coordinate Rometsch’s meetings with visitors: “They’re away from mama and their wives and they have a tremendous desire to party.”
Matters escalated when Republican Senator John J. Williams, ever eager for scandal and a devoted reader of Jack Anderson’s column, learned that Baker was an officer of the Quorum Club. The press soon picked up that Ellen Rometsch, who had once had an affair with a Soviet embassy attaché, had been seen there. Almost overnight, Rometsch was portrayed as a threat worthy of a Senate investigation. In addition, there were other political considerations: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy discovered a secret about her so damaging that he decided to have her kidnapped.
