Turn Every Page
During his monumental research into the life of President Lyndon Johnson, the biographer Robert Caro noticed a change in his political status in 1940 while reading through thousands of documents. At the time LBJ, then 32, was a raw inexperienced Congressman from Texas with no seniority or power. He had no real influence as befits his youth and rank. But then there was a dramatic transformation. Suddenly more senior Congressmen beseeched the young Texan for favours and sycophantically asked him for a few minutes of his time.
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As Caro delved deeper into the dusty archives, he was intrigued. “What was the reason for the change?”, he thought. “Was there a particular time at which it had occurred? The change had something to do with the elections in November 1940. But what?”. The mystery was solved by an ebullient Democratic Party fixer and fund-raiser called Thomas Corcoran. One day Caro asked about the change in the status of the former President. “Money, kid, money”, he replied. “But you’re never going to be able to write about that, because you’re never going to find anything in writing”.
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For some time the historian despondently thought Corcoran was right. As he poured through thousands of often tedious documents in the Presidential library, Caro thought he might be wasting his time. But then suddenly he noticed a Western Union telegram buried in a file and turned brown by the passage of time. Dated 19 October 1940, the telegram was sent by George Brown, CEO of the Texan construction and oil firm Brown and Root, to the Congressman. “You were supposed to have cheques by Friday”, he stated. “I hope they arrived in due form”. LBJ replied: “They have been received. The thing is exceeding my expectations. The Boss is listening to my suggestions”.
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The “Boss” was President Franklin Roosevelt and the cheques funded a secret funding operation by Brown and Root to preserve tax breaks and protect the oil industry from regulation. But there were gaps in the story. “What scale of money were we talking about?”, reflected Caro. “More important, what had happened to the money? How did Johnson use it?”.​
The answer lay buried in the boxes. Labelled “General – Unarranged”, the disorganised file appeared insignificant. “Is it worth it?”, thought Caro. But he recalled his former editor’s advice: “turn every page”. And so he persevered and found an incriminating note from a Brown and Root subcontractor to LBJ: “I am enclosing my cheque for $5000 payable to the Democratic Congressional Committee”. The “Unarranged” file contained other letters and $5000 cheques from five other businessmen to LBJ – a vast amount of money in 1940.
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In one month the future US President raised the largest amount of money from Texas businessmen for Democratic congressional candidates from a single source. And LBJ ensured the candidates knew the contributions came from him. Congressmen needed funds for their campaigns and they were grateful. It was a unique political power base and explained LBJ’s meteoric rise to the White House from such impoverished obscure origins.
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By digging through every document Caro discovered the source of Johnson’s ascent to the world’s most powerful individual. His method of “turn every page” resulted in an acclaimed multi-volume biography and twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Written on a Smith-Corona electric typewriter, Caro’s books have been the benchmark for investigative reporting and in-depth reporting.
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Today most, although not all, documents are digitised. But in my 40 year career as a journalist and author, the same principle of “turn every page” applies. In fact, the meticulous digging and checking into every claim and fact is even more important. We live in an online world where vast quantities of information are more readily available but published and disseminated in an endless flood of fake news, unverified disinformation and recycled data. Many people accept online stories at face value purely because they are on the internet. And so the need for carefully checked and sourced journalism has never been more important.
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‘The Armadillo’ is not a newspaper or blog in the conventional sense. Its role is to provide a platform and outlet for in-depth investigations, profiles and news stories which you will not find in the mainstream media. It has no commercial or political agenda. And its focus will be factual storytelling rather than opinion. After all, “Comment is free but facts are sacred”, as the Guardian’s first editor C.P. Scott said. Digging for the truth is a painstaking, difficult and time-consuming, as Robert Caro discovered. My experience is similar. My first substantial story exposed how MI5 secretly vetted and sometimes blacklisted employees of the BBC based on inaccurate information or if they held radical views. The investigation – in collaboration with David Leigh and Paul Lashmar at ‘The Observer’ – took several months. Most people did not want to talk about such a sensitive topic. It took time and a lot of digging. Nothing has changed. Journalists still need to turn every page.
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Mark Hollingsworth