A White House story. In my first few days at the White House I needed to get acclimated to my new home as it were over the next four tumultuous years. So I strolled around looking at the same floors and doors where once stood FDR and Kennedy and Nixon not to mention Harry Truman and Ike. A modern history unrolled before my searching eyes and an indescribable feeling that the past was compelling.

   

As I walked around the West Wing I opened a door to a small office which was barely furnished but with a woman who sat on an old straight backed chair with a pair of earphones furiously transcribing a text from a plugged in tape recorder. She glanced over her shoulder and said no one was allowed in that room and to please leave.

   

As I was leaving a heavy set man walked by with what I could tell was a large envelope stuffed with rolls of recorder tapes bulging out of the sides. He smiled and said, "you're new here do let me introduce myself". This well dressed man with a white shirt, dark tie and a white handkerchief in his right suit pocket said "Hi I'm Deke DeLoach from Director Hoover's office and so glad to meet you"!

When I went back to my desk in the west wing I mused over what I had seen in that closed room. What secrets did it hold?

Later I found out from an old friend named Lee White who was on the Kennedy staff and stayed on at the White House under Johnson. We were having lunch in the White House mess which was in the basement and served by Filipino mess stewards who were in the Navy.

Over a hamburger we talked about the transition from Kennedy to Johnson and how so many Kennedy staffers stayed on with the new administration. I asked Lee about what I had seen some weeks ago. He looked at me with some amusement and said let me in on a little secret. The lady typing the transcripts was Mildred Steagal who worked for Johnson for many years as a trusted aide. The transcripts were the secret recordings of Martin Luther King, Jr. based on Hoover's bugging of King's hotel rooms when he went on his civil rights cross country campaigns.

I won't describe what was on the tapes which were rushed by Steagal in person to Johnson's living quarters in the East Wing!