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There was an article from the The Atlantic website entitled “The Last Days of the President: LBJ in retirement” by Leo Janos from a July 1973 Issue and this is what was written:On the night before Christmas, 1971, Lyndon Baines Johnson played the most improbable role of his varied and controversial life. Protected from public view behind the gates of his Texas ranch, and no longer suffering the cloying presence of a battalion of White House reporters, Johnson donned a red suit and false beard, climbed aboard a small tractor, and drove to the hangar adjoining his airstrip. Assembled inside were the families of his ranch hands for what had become a traditional ceremony over the years: receiving greetings and gifts from LBJ. This time, they were so stunned at the sight of the former President ho-ho-hoing aboard a chugging tractor that they greeted his arrival with disbelieving silence. Undeterred, Johnson dismounted the tractor and unloaded a bag of toys for the children, sent to him for the occasion by an old friend, New York toy manufacturer Louis Marx, father of Patricia Marx Ellsberg."I'm going to enjoy the time I've got left," Johnson told friends when he left Washington in January, 1969, a worn old man at sixty, consumed by the bitter, often violent, five years of his presidency. He had never doubted that he could have won the 1968 election against Richard Nixon if he had chosen to run for another term. But in 1967 he launched a secret actuarial study on his life expectancy, supplying personal histories of all the males in the recent Johnson line, himself included. The men in the Johnson family have a history of dying young," he told me at his ranch in the summer of 1971, "My daddy was only sixty-two when he died, and I figured that with my history of heart trouble I'd never live through another four years. The American people had enough of Presidents dying in office." The prediction handed to Johnson was that he would die at the age of sixty-four. He did.He returned to the Texas hill country so exhausted by his presidency that it took him nearly a full year to shed the fatigue in his bones. From the outset he issued the sternest orders to his staff that the press was to be totally off limits. "I've served my time with that bunch," he said, "and I give up on them. There's no objectivity left anymore. The new style is advocacy reporting—send some snotty-nosed reporter down here to act like a district attorney and ask me where I was on the night of the twenty-third. I'm always guilty unless I can prove otherwise. So to hell with it." His press grievances were usually accompanied by favorite examples of anti-Johnson stacked decks—among these, the flurry of comment generated when he had lifted his shirt to expose ample belly and fresh surgical scar. He explained: "Rumors were flying that I really had cancer. I had to prove I really had my gall bladder taken out." By contrast Nixon, he thought, had intimidated the press into fair treatment. "The damn press always accused me of things I didn't do. They never once found out about the things I did do," he complained with a smile. One result of such self-righteous bitterness was that the man who had been the world's most powerful and publicized ruler was simply swept down a hole of obscurity, surfacing only occasionally at University of Texas football games or at the funerals of old friends such as Hale Boggs and Harry Truman. A logical surmise was that Johnson was brooding in silence on his ranch porch, pouting at the unfriendly, unloving world beyond his guarded gates. But LBJ's temperament was more complicated than that: relaxed, easy, and friendly for days, he would suddenly lapse into an aloof and brooding moodiness, only to give way to a period of driving restlessness. He was a seesawing personality for as long as anyone could remember.His first year in retirement was crowded with projects. He supervised nearly every construction detail of the massive LBJ Library complex on the University of Texas campus, which houses not only thirty-one million documents acquired over thirty-eight years in Washington, but also the LBJ School of Public Affairs. At one point, university regent Frank Erwin approached Johnson about an Indiana educator who was interested in running the LBJ School. Johnson frowned at the mention of the state which sent to the Senate one of Johnson's least favorite persons, and among the most vocal of his war critics, Vance Hartke. "Frank," Johnson responded, "I never met a man from Indiana who was worth a shit."There was fresh bitterness over a series of hour-long interviews, with Walter Cronkite for which Johnson had contracted with CBS before leaving the White House. The first show, on Vietnam, had been a fiasco. "I did lousy," Johnson admitted, and raised hell over what he claimed had been an unfair CBS editing practice—Cronkite refilming new questions to answers he had originally given during the interview at the ranch. "Cronkite came down here all sweetness and light, telling me how he'd love to teach journalism at Texas someday, then he does this to me," he fumed. The critical reaction to his television interview on Vietnam reinforced Johnson's conviction that his presidential memoirs should be divided into two separate books, one on domestic policies, the other on foreign affairs. In this way, he reasoned, the Great Society would be spared from the critical response he anticipated to his explanations of Vietnam policy. His publishers talked him out of separate books, and Johnson cautiously began unfolding his version of his presidential years. Assisted by two trusted staff writers, Robert Hardesty and William Jorden, he issued only one firm guideline, that not one word should appear in the book that could not be corroborated by documentation. To aid in this effort, Johnson threw open to his writers every file and document from his White House years, including telephone conversations he had held as President, which were recorded and transcribed for history. (Exposure to this material was largely for his writers' background information; few revelations or previously unpublished documents appeared in Johnson's book.) Jorden, a former New York Times reporter who had worked as an assistant to Walt Rostow, was particularly impressed with his research reading. "My God," he said, "I thought I knew just about everything involving Vietnam during my White House days. I discovered that I had missed a lot."William Jorden worked on the book's Vietnam chapters, which went to twenty drafts, and were read by McGeorge Bundy, Generals Earle Wheeler and William Westmoreland, and Abe Fortas, LBJ's pre-eminent confidant, among others, before receiving final approval. The result of all this effort was a fully researched but flat and predictable apologia of the Johnson years, most of its vital juices evaporated many drafts ago.Hurt and disappointed by the adverse critical reaction to his book, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969, Johnson found solace working the land of his 330-acre ranch, which he bought in 1951. Under a fiery Texas sun, the Pedernales River runs clear and full. Fat cattle graze languidly in the shade of live oaks. Johnson knew that he owned some of the loveliest property in Texas, and unleashed his energies as a working rancher like a restless child entering a playpen. LBJ installed a complex irrigation system (and was observed clad only in paper shorts helping to lay pipe in the middle of the shallow Pedernales), constructed a large hen house, planted acres of experimental grasses sufficiently hardy to withstand severe hill country weather, and built up his cattle herds through shrewd purchases at the weekly cattle auctions near Stonewall. On one occasion, ranch foreman Dale Milenchek talked Johnson into purchasing an $8000 breeding bull. The massive animal impregnated only a few cows before suffering a fatal leg infection. Johnson complained, "Dale bought me the most expensive sausage in the history of Texas."No ranch detail escaped his notice. Once, driving some friends around the spread, LBJ suddenly reached for his car radiophone, which crackled just as much in retirement as it had when he was President. "Harold, Harold, over," he barked. "Why is that sign about selling the Herefords still posted? You know we sold them last week. Get it down." At the LBJ State Park, across the road, Johnson enjoyed escorting his guests to a slide show and exhibit on the hill country. On another occasion, I observed Johnson watching a preview of a new slide show with increasing annoyance as the bearded face of a local Stonewall character appeared in various poses, slide after slide. Turning angrily to his park supervisor, Johnson exclaimed: "Will you please tell me why we need six slides of Hondo Crouch?" Another must on a Johnson-chauffeured tour was the family graveyard, a few hundred yards from his home. "Here's where my mother lies," he solemnly declared. "Here's where my daddy is buried. And here's where I'm gonna be too." Then, a sudden acceleration and the white Lincoln Continental would roar to the cow pastures.Old friends invited to dine with the squire of the Pedernales would be advised that dinner was at eight. But not until ten or eleven would Johnson appear, happily tired and dung-booted, to regale his guests about the new calf or progress with his egg production. "He's become a goddamn farmer," a friend complained. "I want to talk Democratic politics, he only talks hog prices." Often, Johnson took friends to a favorite hill on his spread to watch the sunset. His Secret Service bodyguard, Mike Howard, unpacked an ice chest and glasses, and the group would relax and drink to the setting sun. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, cook Mary Davis, a keenly intelligent black lady, would begin pressuring Lady Bird to get Johnson and his guests back before dinner was ruined. "Another half hour and I simply cannot be responsible for this roast," Mary would complain. With a sigh, Lady Bird would begin the artful manipulation of her husband. Contacting him on the car radio, she would suggest: "Honey, why don't you take everyone over to Third Fork and show them the deer?" (Third Fork was only a quarter of a mile away, in the direction of home.) Such ploys often failed, however. "Damn it," Johnson would reply, "I'm not going to be pressured into keeping to anyone's schedule but my own."He was still very much "Mr. President" to the retinue serving him in retirement, including three round-the-clock Secret Service protectors, a Chinese butler named Wong, brought to Texas from the White House, two secretaries, a dozen former White House staffers, who worked at the library but could be tapped for other duties when the occasion demanded, as well as a dozen or so ranch hands who were kept scrambling. A phone call would dispatch an Air Force helicopter to carry him forty miles from his ranch into Austin, where a landing pad had been built on the library roof. For longer trips he used his own twin-engine turboprop. A visitor expressed surprise that LBJ could still summon a helicopter to fly him around the Austin area. An aide responded, "He was living this way when he was in the Senate."He took up golf, puttering around courses in Fredericksburg, and on trips to Mexico. One day, playing with a few aides and friends, Johnson hit a drive into the rough, retrieved it, and threw the ball back on the fairway. "Are you allowed to do that?" one of the wives whispered to a Secret Service agent. "You are," he replied, "if you play by LBJ rules."Each December 21 he would host a rollicking party at the Argyle Club in San Antonio to celebrate his wedding anniversary. The guest list was limited to his closest friends, including a Texas businessman named Dan Quinn, who on the day of the wedding had had to run out and buy a ring for Lyndon to give to Lady Bird, since the groom had forgotten that particular detail. The hired band was instructed to play danceable music only, and Johnson, a classy ballroom dancer of the first rank, would dance with every lady present into the wee hours.Each February Johnson would take over a seaside villa in Acapulco for a mouth's siege. The exquisite estate is owned by former Mexican President Miguel Alemán, a business partner with LBJ on several Mexican ranchland deals. Johnson would fly in family, friends, and aides, as well as his own cook, food, bottled water, and even air-conditioning units. He brought his own food, water, and liquor to Acapulco to avoid the embarrassment of his 1970 trip when nearly all of his guests developed classic cases of "Mexicali revenge" after being fed local produce. At night, films would be shown, courtesy of LBJ friend Arthur Krim, who would have the newest releases flown down. Johnson also loved to visit Alemán's ranch, Las Pampas, deep in the Mexican interior, enjoying the total isolation and rugged beauty of the place. He was moved by the poverty of some of the ranch hands, who almost invariably had large families. Using an interpreter, Johnson would lecture the wives about birth control and the need to have small families if you are poor. Back in Texas, he began sending the families packages of birth control pills, vitamins, clothing, and blankets. "If I became dictator of the world," he said, "I'd give all the poor on earth a cottage, and birth control pills—and I'd make damn sure they didn't get one if they didn't take the other."Each Friday morning, a White House jet landed at the LBJ ranch, depositing foreign policy briefing papers prepared especially for Johnson by Henry Kissinger's staff. On two occasions Kissinger himself arrived at Johnson's door for personal briefings on the peace talks; twice he sent his deputy, General Alexander Haig. In all, LBJ's relations with the Nixon White House were cordial, although he sensed that the briefing papers told him only what Nixon wanted him to know. His death canceled plans he had negotiated with the White House to entertain Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in Texas, following her February meeting in Washington with Nixon. Johnson thought it would be a splendid idea to have Mrs. Meir participate in a question-and-answer session with the students of the LBJ School. Through an old supporter, New York industrialist Abe Feinberg, he queried Mrs. Meir on the matter and received word she would be delighted to visit with the students and attend a Johnson-hosted luncheon in Austin. The White House arranged to fly Mrs. Meir to Texas. A few weeks before Johnson's death, Richard Nixon called to tell him that a cease-fire was imminent. Johnson got in touch with his veteran speechwriter, Horace Busby, and asked him to prepare a statement on the cease-fire. "Get this thought in," Johnson instructed Busby. "No man worked harder or wanted peace more than I."Johnson had decidedly mixed emotions about his successor. He was puzzled by Nixon's cold style ("Imagine not inviting one member of Congress to Tricia's wedding. If you don't respect them, they won't respect you") and aghast at some of Nixon's domestic policies. Shortly after leaving the White House, he remarked to a Texas businessman: "When I took over the presidency, Jack Kennedy had left me a stock market of 711. When I left the White House, it was over 900. Now look at it. That's what happens when the Republicans take over—not only Nixon, but any of them. They simply don't know how to manage the economy. They're so busy operating the trickle-down theory, giving the richest corporations the biggest break, that the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket." Amused staffers recall that on the trip back to Texas aboard Air Force One, Johnson went up and down the aisles giving financial advice: "Keep all your money in cash," he urged. "Nixon will have us in an inflationary recession before his first year is over." (He had also, he told me, given his outgoing Cabinet members a different, if equally sobering, kind of advice: "Each of you had better leave this town clean as Eisenhower's hound's tooth. The first thing Democrats do when they take power is find where the control levers are. But the first thing Republicans do is investigate Democrats. I don't know why they do it but you can count on it.")Johnson gave Nixon "high grades" in foreign policy, but worried intermittently that the President was being pressured into removing U.S. forces too quickly, before the South Vietnamese were really able to defend themselves. "If the South falls to the Communists, we can have a serious backlash here at home," he warned. "When you think of what the South has been through, and what the government is up against, it is nothing short of a miracle that they have kept everything together for as long as they have. Thieu's no saint, but you have got to respect his ability to keep things together under the worst conditions imaginable." Over a lunch, at which I was a guest, a few days after the first installments of the Pentagon Papers appeared in the New York Times, Johnson ruminated about his own Vietnam policies. "We made a couple of key mistakes," he admitted. "To begin with, Kennedy should have had more than eighteen thousand military advisers there in the early 1960s. And then I made the situation worse by waiting eighteen months before putting more men in. By then, the war was almost lost. Another mistake was not instituting censorship—not to cover up mistakes, but to prevent the other side from knowing what we were going to do next. My God, you can't fight a war by watching it every, night on television."He then launched into a long defense of his policies against the allegations and implications contained in the Times's articles. "All the time, in 1964, I really hoped we could negotiate our way out of a major war in Vietnam," he said. "The Russians shared our hope." As the situation deteriorated in Vietnam, he said, he tried, by proceeding with U.S. troop buildups quietly and slowly, to avoid inflaming hawk sentiment at home and, perhaps more important, forcing Hanoi to call on the Chinese for help. "I told my advisers, 'By God, don't come to me with any plans to escalate this war unless you carry with you a joint congressional resolution.' I wasn't going to follow Truman's mistake in Korea when he went in without congressional approval. They claim I used Tonkin Gulf as an excuse. Hell, the Communists hit us there twice. The first time their torpedo boats hit the day before, I did nothing, hoping it was either a mistake or the action would not be repeated. But when they hit us again the very next day, I was forced to act. And just about every member of Congress was marching right along with me." He was particularly ruffled by the accusation that he had been secretly planning to bomb the North at the time of the 1964 campaign, when Barry Goldwater was calling for precisely such an act. "It is absolutely untrue," Johnson said. "On at least five occasions I personally vetoed military requests for retaliation bombing raids in the North. Only late in 1965 did I reluctantly agree to it. Not one of my principal advisers—Rusk, McNamara, Bundy, and George Ball—opposed my decision not to rush into retaliation strikes. We had contingency plans to bomb in the North for retaliation for terrorist raids in the South. But I didn't want to do this. Finally, they attacked our base in Pleiku in February, 1965, destroying many planes and killing a lot of our men. I was forced to act. I felt I had no choice. All of my civilian advisers, every one of them, agreed with me. Dean Rusk told me, 'Mr. President, this is a momentous decision.' I suppose it was."We were in a private dining room on the third floor of the LBJ Library. Across the hall was a replica of Johnson's White House office. A three-foot electric pepper mill sat at the head of the table, and butler Wong scurried in with a plate of steak and sweet corn. Johnson seated himself ahead of his guests, a presidential practice carried into retirement, and began to eat. Aides arrived to whisper in his ear about incoming calls. He either shook his head or left the table for many minutes. Secret Service agents haunted the surrounding corridors, walkie-talkies in hand. Déjà vu was a decorative theme: on one wall of the dining room were the framed photographs of heads of state whom Johnson visited during his years in office. "Here's my favorite," said Lady Bird, pointing to a photo of South Korea's President, General Chung Hee Park. "He was a real no-nonsense fellow." (Lady Bird was more conservative than the public ever realized.) LBJ laughed. "I remember our trip to Seoul. My God, I've never seen so many people lining the streets. I asked Park, through an interpreter, what would he estimate the crowd to be? The interpreter jabbers a bit and tells me, 'President Park, he say population of Seoul is one million. People on the streets is one million. That's all the people we have. So solly.'"During coffee, the talk turned to President Kennedy, and Johnson expressed his belief that the assassination in Dallas had been part of a conspiracy. "I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger." Johnson said that when he had taken office he found that "we had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean." A year or so before Kennedy's death a CIA-backed assassination team had been picked up in Havana. Johnson speculated that Dallas had been a retaliation for this thwarted attempt, although he couldn't prove it. "After the Warren Commission reported in, I asked Ramsey Clark [then Attorney General] to quietly look into the whole thing. Only two weeks later he reported back that he couldn't find anything new." Disgust tinged Johnson's voice as the conversation came to an end. "I thought I had appointed Tom Clark's son—I was wrong."Johnson rarely worked at the LBJ Library, preferring instead to do business at his comfortable ranch office, where on the wall opposite his large desk hung a painting of a Texas landscape by artist Peter Hurd. At Lady Bird's behest, Hurd had been commissioned to paint the official presidential portrait, resulting in what Johnson called "the ugliest picture I ever saw." Reminiscing, Johnson explained: "He didn't follow the strict rules about size and style laid down about those portraits. I like his scenes much better."In March, 1970, Johnson was hospitalized at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, after complaining of severe chest pains. Doctors reassured him that he had not suffered a heart attack; instead, the pains were caused by angina, a hardening of the arteries to the heart resulting in an insufficiency of blood to the body's most vital organ. Although there was little that could be done to cure the condition, Johnson was urged to lose considerable weight. He had grown dangerously heavier since leaving the White House, gaining more than twenty-five pounds and weighing around 235. The following summer, again gripped by chest pains, he embarked on a crash water diet, shedding about fifteen pounds in less than a month. But shortly before Christmas, 1971, he shocked his friends by suddenly resuming cigarette smoking, a habit he had discarded over fifteen years before, following his first, near fatal, heart attack. "I'm an old man, so what's the difference?" he explained. "I've been to the Mayo Clinic twice and the doctors tell me there is nothing they can do for me. My body is just aging in its own way. That's it. And I always loved cigarettes, missed them every day since I quit. Anyway, I don't want to linger the way Eisenhower did. When I go, I want to go fast." He quickly became a chain smoker.In April, 1972, Johnson experienced a massive heart attack while visiting his daughter, Lynda, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Convinced he was dying, he browbeat Lady Bird and his doctors into allowing him to fly home to Texas. So, late in the night of his third day in intensive care, a desperately sick LBJ was rushed to the airport and ferried back to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The departure was so sudden that the Charlottesville hospital director, hearing a rumor that Johnson might try to leave, rushed to the hospital only to find LBJ's empty wheelchair in the parking lot.Miraculously he survived, but the remaining seven months of his life became a sad and pain-wracked ordeal. "I'm hurting real bad," he confided to friends. The chest pains hit him nearly every afternoon—a series of sharp, jolting pains that left him scared and breathless. A portable oxygen tank stood next to his bed, and Johnson periodically interrupted what he was doing to lie down and don the mask to gulp air. He continued to smoke heavily, and, although placed on a low-calorie, low-cholesterol diet, kept to it only in fits and starts.Meanwhile, he began experiencing severe stomach pains. Doctors diagnosed this problem as diverticulosis, pouches forming on the intestine. Also symptomatic of the aging process, the condition rapidly worsened and surgery was recommended. Johnson flew to Houston to consult with heart specialist Dr. Michael De Bakey, who decided that Johnson's heart condition presented too great a risk for any sort of surgery, including coronary bypass of two almost totally useless heart arteries."I once told Nixon," he said, "that the presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hailstorm. You've got to just stand there and take it. That's what I'm doing now." But he was also busy preparing his estate for his death. During the four years of his retirement he had managed nearly to double his considerable estate, which included stock in at least nine Texas banks, television interests in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, a real estate and photographic supply company in Austin, 3700 acres of land in Alabama, and extensive property holdings in Mexico, the Caribbean, and five Texas counties.The flagship of Johnson's business empire had been the Austin television station, KTBC, which Lady Bird had launched in 1952, nine years after she bought radio station KTBC. In September, 1972, LBJ engineered the station's sale to the Los Angeles Times-Mirror Corporation for nine million dollars, a premium price which impressed several of Texas' shrewdest horse traders. The sale provided Lady Bird with $4.7 million, and the two Johnson daughters with $1.3 million each. Working with his most trusted assistant, twenty-nine-year-old Tom Johnson, who had served as assistant White House press secretary (and is the newly appointed editor of the Dallas Times-Herald), LBJ negotiated with the National Park Service to take over his ranch home as a national museum after his death and when Lady Bird no longer desired to live there. Most poignant of all, he began a series of tough bargaining sessions with a Tulsa land company to sell the working portion of his beloved ranch. Surprisingly, these financial moves were made without the assistance of his lifelong business partner, Judge A. W. Moursund. "The judge and I have split the blanket," Johnson said. And that is all he would say.Apparently the two had argued about the purchase of a bank, but, whatever the reason, Johnson and Moursund, a Blanco County judge whom LBJ had known since boyhood and who during LBJ's' presidential years had a direct White House line plugged into his hill country ranch, remained totally estranged for the last year of Johnson's life. The split-up offered a rare peek inside Johnson's complicated business empire. Holdings and liabilities jointly filed included more than $700,000 in loans from federal land banks in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. Dividing property, Johnson received a 4000-acre ranch and 214 subdivision lots along Lake LBJ in Austin; while the judge received 3200 acres in Oklahoma and more than 2000 acres in a nearby Texas county. All of the loans were listed in the names of Moursund and his wife.Sick and depressed, Johnson had hoped to attend the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, if only to stand up and take a bow. He needed some warmth and applause, but from Larry O'Brien and others the message filtered back that he had better stay home. The McGovern nomination disgusted him. Nixon could be defeated if only the Democrats don't go too far left," he had insisted. But to Johnson, party loyalty ranked with mother love, so he was far from pleased to find such old colleagues as George Christian, Leonard Marks, and former Commerce Secretary C. R. Smith working for Nixon against other old friends such as Liz Carpenter and Joe Califano, who campaigned for McGovern. Of John Connally, with whom his relationship had long been complicated, and who he thought would run on the GOP ticket as Nixon's running mate, Johnson remarked philosophically: "John sees a good opportunity." But when another close Texas confidant stretched his endorsement of Nixon to include active support for Texas Republican Senator John Tower, Johnson angrily called the offender and exploded: "You're a fat old whore."Johnson's choice to beat Nixon was Edmund Muskie. In his view, Senator Muskie was "crucified by the press. They zeroed in on him because he was the front-runner and pounded him out, just like they did to Romney in 1964." His disappointment was mollified slightly by his own estimations of the Maine senator, which he had discussed with friends a few years before. "Muskie," he had said, "will never be President because he doesn't have the instinct to go for his opponent's jugular." Prior to the convention, Johnson held long telephone conversations with both Muskie and Chicago's Mayor Daley on the strategy to stop McGovern. He advised Muskie to stand firm and hold out to see whether there would be a second ballot. But he refused to act on Daley's plea that he, Johnson, take an initiative and speak out against McGovern. "Johnson knows that if he takes such a stand it will be counterproductive," a friend said at the time. "If he goes against McGovern, it will only boost McGovern's stock. Lyndon just doesn't carry any weight in the party anymore, and he knows it. It's a miserable fact for a man who only four years ago was President of the United States. But it is a fact."So Johnson suffered the election in silence, swallowing his nitroglycerin tablets to thwart continual chest pains, endorsing McGovern through a hill country weekly newspaper, meeting cordially with the candidate at the ranch. The newspapers showed a startling picture of Johnson, his hair almost shoulder-length. Former aide Bob Hardesty takes credit for this development. "We were working together one day," Hardesty recalls, "and he said, in passing, 'Robert, you need a haircut.' I told him, 'Mr. President, I'm letting my hair grow so no one will be able to mistake me for those SOB's in the White House.' He looked startled, so I explained, 'You know, that bunch around Nixon—Haldeman, Ehrlichman—they all have very short hair.' He nodded. The next time I saw him his hair was growing over his collar."During the final months of his life he was suffering terrible pain. One of his last public appearances, his dramatic speech at the Civil Rights Symposium at the LBJ Library, proved to be so exhausting that he spent the next two days in bed. He filmed a final interview with Cronkite, taking long rests between camera loadings. Against the urgings of his wife and friends, he attended the mass funeral of fourteen Austin youngsters killed in a bus crash. "Those people supported me when I needed them over the years," he insisted, "and I'm going to support them now."Lady Bird noticed that he was unusually quiet on that cold January morning, but nothing seemed wrong, so she decided to drive into Austin for shopping. At mid-afternoon, on January 22, the Secret Service placed an urgent call to her via the car-telephone, and Lady Bird, in a shaking voice, called aide Tom Johnson at the television station. "Tom," she said, "this time we didn't make it. Lyndon is dead."FOOTNOTE:One of the more secretive Presidents, Johnson nevertheless was unexpectedly willing to open up portions of his archives to scholars as quickly as possible. At the time of his death, he had arranged for the LBJ Library curator to meet at the White House with Nixon's then chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, to discuss declassification of Johnson's foreign policy papers. The basis of the meeting was Nixon's new executive order providing more flexible guidelines on declassifying documents. LBJ hoped his papers would meet these new guidelines.Copyright (c) 2018 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

Top Ten US GeneralsMiss Cellania •Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 4:05 AMThe following is an article from the book Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Salutes the Armed Forces. Presenting, in our humble opinion, our leading leaders of men and women at war.1. GEORGE WASHINGTON (1732-99)Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Washington grew up under the guardianship of his eldest brother. After a spotty education, he became a surveyor and eventually inherited his brother's prosperous estate, Mount Vernon. He joined the Virginia militia in 1752, advanced to major, fought during the French and Indian War (1754-60), and made it to the rank of honorary brigadier general. Washington didn't return to the battlefield until July 1775, after being appointed general by the Continental Congress.At Cambridge, outside Boston, he took command of the disintegrating Continental Army. The American Revolutionary War-Washington energetically and skillfully revitalized the militias at Cambridge and organized them into Continental Army regiments. Using cannons borrowed from the colonies, he occupied Dorchester Heights and brilliantly forced Sir William Howe's British army to evacuate Boston and retire by sea to New York City.Washington tried to drive the British from Ney York but failed, partly due to his own inexperience and partly due to untrained troops and clumsy subordinates. His masterful withdrawal from Long Island and Harlem Heights into New Jersey and Pennsylvania during the autumn of 1776 saved the army from extinction. General Howe captured most of New Jersey and made the mistake of believing Washington's army was militarily impotent. On the night of December 25-26, 1776, Washington's forces crossed the Delaware River in boats, drove Howe's Hessians out of Trenton, and on January 3, 1777, Washington learned that General John Burgoyne planned to invade the Hudson Valley from Canada.Though soon hard-pressed defending Philadelphia, the national capital, he sent many of his best troops upriver and, in October, defeated the British at Saratoga. Having weakened his forces defending Philadelphia, Washington abandoned the defense of the city on September 26, forcing the Continental Congress to move west to York. Not everything went well for Washington, but he managed to contain one British force in the north while sending forces south to fight another British force under General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown. The strategy worked, and on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered.What Made Him Great? Washington's unorthodox military education kept him from becoming an orthodox 18th-century general, which led to his boldness. The Continental Army never numbered more than 35,000 men, and Washington never had more than a third of it under his personal command, yet he managed to subdue, with help from the French fleet, Great Britain's professional army. Underrated by modern standards, Washington was a brilliant strategist and self-taught tactician. He also became a gifted statesman. He believed in civilian government and the rule of law, spurning attempts by his officers to make him a military dictator.2. WINFIELD SCOTT (1786-1866)Known as "Old Fuss and Feathers," Scott was born outside Petersburg, Virginia, and studied law until 1807, when he enlisted in a cavalry troop. At 6'5" and 250 pounds, Scott could cripple a horse-and did-so he transferred to the light artillery as a captain. Suspended briefly in 1810 for making inappropriate remarks to his superior, Scott rejoined the Army as a lieutenant colonel when the War of 1812 broke out, and led more troops into more battles in that war than any other officer. He suffered two wounds at Lundy's Lane on June 25, 1814, but 10 days later won an important victory at Chippawa, Ontario.Raised to the rank of major general for distinguished service, Scott became a national hero. For the next 30 years, except for two trips to Europe to study military developments, Scott fought Seminole Indians in the South and Plains Indians in the West. In 1845-46, when General Zachary Taylor's battles with General Santa Anna's army in northern Mexico were inconclusive, Scott recommended to President James K. Polk an amphibious landing at Veracruz as the fastest way to conquer Mexico City. Scott planned the massive operation, and on March 9, 1847, landed near Veracruz and 18 days later captured the city.On April 8 he began the march inland, routed Santa Anna's larger army on April 18 at Cerro Gordo, and occupied Puebla on May 15. He paused to collect supplies, resumed his advance on Mexico City on August 7, and after fighting decisive battles at Contreras, Churubusco, Molino Del Rey, and Chapultepec, captured the Mexican capital on September 14. He served as military governor there until April 22, 1848, when he returned to Washington. Promoted brevet lieutenant general in February 1855, Scott became the highest-ranking officer in the Army since George Washington.As general-in-chief of the Army, he tried to prevent the American Civil War by counseling presidents James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. He sadly became what his nickname implied, "Old Fuss and Feathers," a man obsessed with strict adherence to Army red tape with the out-of-date habit of adorning his military headwear with feathers. Though physically infirm, his mind was still sharp, but he could no longer take the field and, on November 1, 1861, resigned.What Made Him Great? Scott left a remarkable record as a strategist, a diplomat, and a brave and skillful tactician. His Anaconda Plan for strangling the South by keeping it from its sources of supply during the Civil War was first sneered at by Union generals, but was later adopted by Lincoln, and turned out to be the overriding strategy that eventually won the war.3. ROBERT E. LEE (1807-70)The greatest Confederate general of the Civil War, Lee graduated from West Point in 1829, second in a class of 46, and joined the engineers. A Virginian by birth, Lee claimed that he fought for his home state more than for the Confederacy. The Mexican War-During the Mexican War, Lee served with distinction as a member of General Scott's staff at Veracruz in March 1847, and at Cerro Gordo the following month. His eye for reconnaissance and tactical improvisations led to Scott's victories reconnaissance and tactical improvisations led to Scott's victories at Churubusco, Chapultepec, and eventually to the surrender of Mexico City.Lee worked a desk job from 1852 to 1855 as superintendent at West Point, after which he became colonel of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry and served in the Southwest until shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Lee was offered but rejected a top command in the Union army and resigned when Virginia seceded. On June 1, 1862, he replaced wounded General Joseph E. Johnston and took command of the Army of Northern Virginia. The Civil War-Lee became one of those rare generals who thought strategically, broadly designed his tactics, and took chances. He understood the generals of the North better than those generals understood themselves. He came up with the strategy for Major General Thomas J. "Stonewall: Jackson's Shenandoah Valley Campaign during the spring of 1862, making Jackson the most celebrated officer in the Confederacy-until he was later eclipsed by Lee.In late June, Lee's smaller force bluffed Major General George B. McClellan's army into withdrawing, and two months later Lee outmaneuvered Major General John Pope and defeated the Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29-30. On September 17, with a force half the size of McClellan's Army of the Potomac, Lee repulsed the Federals in a drawn battle at Antietam. After President Lincoln replaced McClellan with Major General Ambrose Burnside, Lee bloodied the massive Union army on December 13 at Fredericksburg. Lee's aggressive instincts were never more evident than at Chancellorsville. He ignored the maxims of warfare, divided his much smaller force, and on May 2-4, 1863, decimated the right flank of the Army of the Potomac with a surprise attack. But his greatest mistake occurred on July 1-3 at Gettysburg, when he was overly aggressive at a time when he should have fought defensively. He admitted the error and withdrew into Virginia.By 1864 many of Lee's best officers had been killed and there were no more soldiers to replace those who'd been lost in battle. Forced to fight defensively, Lee held off Grant's offensive in the Battle of the Wilderness on ay5-6, at Spotsylvania on May 8-12, and repulsed the Union assault at Cold Harbor on June 3. Those battles cost Grant a third of his men, but Lee couldn't withstand the pressure and withdrew to Petersburg's trenches. It took Grant eight months to flush Lee out of Petersburg and force his surrender on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House.What Made Him Great? Lee's men adored him. In victory and defeat, they witnessed his great strength of character, his high sense of duty, and his humility and selflessness. Even Northerners accepted Lee as the greatest general of the Civil War.4. ULYSSES S. GRANT (1822-85)Born Hiram Ulysses at Point Pleasant, Ohio, the future general grew up on his father's farm. In 1839 he entered West Point and found himself listed by his middle name and his mother's maiden name. On that day he became Ulysses Simpson Grant, which in later years became "U.S." Grant and "unconditional Surrender" Grant.In 1843 he graduated 21st in a class of 39 and became a second lieutenant in the 4th Infantry.The Mexican-American War-During the Mexican-American War, Grant distinguished himself while serving under General Zachary Taylor in Texas and later under General Winfield Scott in Mexico, where he received two brevets (commissions of higher rank) for gallantry. Grant enjoyed fighting, but he found n pleasure in the peacetime army. In July 1854, he resigned as captain from a dismal post in Oregon and returned to his family in Missouri, where for six years he tried without much success to scratch out a living on the family farm.The Civil War-Grant Reemerged in June 1861 as colonel of the 21st Illinois Infantry. Promoted to brigadier general in August, Grant ran his own campaigns and on February 6, 1862, seized Fort Henry on the Tennessee River and 10 days later demanded the "unconditional surrender" of Fort Donelson. In April, after first being surprised by a Confederate attack at Shiloh, he repulsed the enemy. Privately, he feuded with Major General Henry W. Halleck and was accused of drunkenness, but redeemed himself on July 4, 1863, by capturing Vicksburg. When men like Halleck questioned Grant's ability, Lincoln countered with a brisk rejoinder, replying, "I can't lose him. He fights."After Vicksburg, Grant's stature as a fighting general bloomed. When Major General William S. Rosecrans's army was bottled up at Chattanooga, Grant took charge, broke the siege, and drove the Confederates into Georgia. Lincoln rewarded Grant with a promotion to lieutenant general and made him general-in-chief of the armies. Instead of establishing an office in Washington, Grant took the field with the struggling Army of the Potomac. With characteristic doggedness, he drove General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to its final defeat at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.What Made Him Great? Though the point is still argued, Grant was an effective strategist. He made mistakes and learned from them. His drive and resolution made him a first-class general. Grant's postwar popularity earned him the presidency in 1869, but he was a warrior, never a good businessman or a politician. In fact, his hapless presidency was marked by the corruption of unworthy appointees he trusted.5. JOHN J. PERSHING (1860-1948)Pershing grew up on a farm in Laclede, Missouri, and displayed a high level of intelligence as a child. He taught school for four years before getting an appointment to West Point in 1882.The Indian Wars-Commissioned a second lieutenant in the 6th Cavalry Regiment in June 1886, he served in the West during the Indian wars. In 1895 he commanded the famous African American Buffalo Soldiers, which is where he got the nickname "Black Jack."The Spanish-and Philippine-American Wars-During the Spanish-American War, he served with the 10th Cavalry at San Juan Hill, and he also commanded troops in the Philippine-American War from 1899 to 1901. He went wherever he could find action and eventually returned to San Francisco in 1914 to take command of the 8th Infantry Brigade.The Mexican War-When the Mexican civil war of 1914 spread across the border, Pershing led a 4,800-man brigade and for 10 months unsuccessfully pursued Pancho Villa's forces into Mexico, and experience that prepared him for his next move-and a big one. World War I-In 1917, after a short interview, President Woodrow Wilson decided that Pershing would command the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in Europe. Pershing arrived in France on June 23 to begin a massive buildup of U.S. forces. When France demanded that American units fight under French field commanders, Pershing refused. He preserved the AEF as an independent fighting force and directed three major offensives in 1918: Aisne-Marne from July 25 to August 2, Saint-Mihiel from September 12 to 19, and the final Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 26 to November 11.Pershing didn't use the same tactics employed by the French, which, after four years of war, had failed to dislodge the enemy. Trench warfare created enormous casualties. Taking a page from Robert E. Lee's playbook, Pershing operated on the flanks of the enemy. He was also the first to use air power to soften up fortified positions by bombing instead of relying entirely on artillery. While the French and British thought the war could be won by 1919 or 1920, Pershing said the AEF would end the war in 1918-and they did. His appointment as General of the Armies of the United States in July 1919 made him the first and only general to receive the rank in his own lifetime. He avoided politics and served for two years as chief of staff, retiring in 1924. He is seldom remembered because the AEF didn't contribute to major European campaigns until 1918.What Made Him Great? Like Lee and Grant, Pershing took the field with his men and was recognized for his personal bravery. A strict disciplinarian, he was also cold, distant, and demanding, which many of his subordinates disliked-but he was also fair, just, and tenacious, virtues that his detractors overlooked. Had any other general been sent to France to command the AEF, American units would probably have been propelled into the French army to fight poorly conducted battles under generals using ineffective tactics.6. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1890-1969)"Ike" was born in Denison, Texas, and grew up in Abilene, Kansas. He graduated from West Point in 1915, and played football there. Unlike most officers, Eisenhower rarely served in the field. After performing a variety of training duties during World War I, he graduated at the top of his class from the Command and General Staff School in 1926 and from the Army War College in 1928. He was on General Douglas MacArthur's staff from 1933 to 1939, and in September 1941 he received a promotion to brigadier general while serving as chief of staff to the 3rd Army.Attached to the Army War Plans Division from December 1941 to June 1942, Eisenhower advanced to major general and was put in charge of U.S. forces in Europe. World War II-Eisenhower assumed command of Operation Torch, the November 8 invasion of French North Africa, and the invasion of Tunisia one week later. It took Allied forces six months to drive the German and Italian armies out of Africa. On July 9, 1943, Eisenhower commanded the invasion of Sicily.Once the Allies secured a strong holding position in Italy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Eisenhower to England to plan the cross-channel invasion of France. Appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower directed Operation Overlord, the Allied amphibious assault on Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. It was at this point that Eisenhower's role became extremely political: he had to placate Great Britain and the other Allies while making decisions regarding the war in Europe. He also had problems with some of his generals and made political concessions that produced poor results. Yet he made extremely sound decisions when reacting to setbacks, such as the German Ardennes offensive (Battle of the Bulge) from December 1944 to January 1945. When the Allied offensive resumed in February, he planned and implemented the crossing of the Rhine and the push into Germany. After Germany's surrender on May 7-8, 1945, Eisenhower commanded the Allied occupation forces until November. He returned home and replaced General George C. Marshall as chief of staff, the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Army.What Made Him Great? Eisenhower became a man of exceptional ability. He retired in February 1948 to become president of Columbia University, but in December 1950 President Harry S. Truman made him the first supreme commander of NATO. Eisenhower retired again in 1952, ran for president, and won. Part of his foreign policy was to protect Middle Eastern countries from Soviet aggression and to avoid getting the United States involved in countries like Vietnam.7. DOUGLAS MacARTHUR (1880-1964)MacArthur was the son of Medal of Honor recipient Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur Jr., and followed in his father's footsteps. He graduated from West Point in 1903, first in his class, and began his career serving under his father in the Philippines.During World War I, he went to France and commanded a brigade at Saint-Mihiel and a division during the Meuse-Argonne campaign. After the war, he returned to the Philippines as a major general. He retired from the Army in August 1936 to become the Philippine government's field marshal. As war with Japan became imminent, President Roosevelt reinstated MacArthur as a lieutenant general commanding U.S. forces in the Far East.World War II-Though he was warned repeatedly that the Philippines could be struck by Japan, and was provided with B-17 bombers to defend against an attack, MacArthur believed the islands would not be invaded before the spring of 1942. This miscalculation led to faulty vigilance and would have resulted in the removal of any other commander but MacArthur. Instead, he was ordered to Australia to stem the Japanese advance, awarded the Medal of Honor for the defense of the Philippines, and became the supreme commander of Allied forces in the Southwest Pacific.Always a superb strategist, MacArthur stopped the Japanese drive on New Guinea and recovered western New Britain. In November 1942 he began leap-frogging forces along the northern coast of New Guinea to Morotai in the Molucca Islands, which reopened the way to the Philippines. On October 20, 1944, he led the invasion of Leyte, fulfilling his promise to return to the Philippines. President Roosevelt raised MacArthur to general of the armies and put him in charge of planning the invasion of Japan, which was preempted by Japan's surrender.MacArthur remained in Tokyo as supreme commander of the occupation forces and administered the defeated country with benevolence. He was still there when North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950.The Korean War-As supreme commander of United Nations forces in Korea, MacArthur conceived one of the greatest double envelopments in military history. Using a force strong enough to hold a perimeter in the southeastern corner of Korea, he sent a strong amphibious force to assault Inchon in the northwestern corner of the country. The resulting "pincers" movement virtually destroyed the North Korean army. He followed this brilliant move and stepped on the toes of Communist China. Neither President Truman nor the United Nations wanted China drawn into the Korean War, but MacArthur, mainly from arrogance, allowed it to happen. After he was recalled to the United States and replaced by Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway, MacArthur retired.What Made Him Great? Though egotistical and controversial, MacArthur was nevertheless one of the greatest generals of World War II and of history. His amphibious campaigns were masterpieces of strategy and boldness, and were noted for their efficiency and low casualty rates. Despite his flamboyance, MacArthur cared for his men and believed thorough planning would save lives -and it did.8. GEORGE S. PATTON (1885-1945)Patton was descended from an old Virginia military family but was born in San Gabriel, california. He attended the Virginia Military Institute and went on to West Point, graduating in 1909. After placing fifth in the modern pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics, Patton joined the cavalry when men still rode horses, and he never left the branch after it became mechanized. He learned a great deal about fighting while serving under General John J. Pershing, and during World War I he organized and led the 1st Tank Brigade during the Saint-Mihiel and Meuse-Argonna campaigns late in 1918.During the postwar years, Patton spread his time between studying and advancing tank technology (a series of tanks were named for him), serving on the general staff, and attending the Army War College. By April 1941 he had risen in the ranks to major general and was in command of the 2nd Armored Division. By then, Patton had earned the reputation of having a uniquely gifted military mind, immense energy, and a penchant for being blunt.World War II-Patton participated in the planning of Operation Torch and in November 1942 commanded the landings in French Morocco. He replaced Major General Lloyd Fredendall following the defeat at Kasserine Pass on march 3, 1943, and assumed command of the 2nd Army Corps. Temporarily relieved of duty after a minor quarrel with the British, Patton subsequently took command of the 1st Armored Corps, which later became the 7th Army. His brilliant campaign in Sicily during July and August of 1943 was overshadowed by a highly-publicized face-slapping incident in a hospital on August 3rd. Patton despised cowardice, and when he found a soldier skulking in a hospital bed with no evidence of an injury, he called him a "damned coward" and slapped his face in the presence of reporters. After the incident made national news, General Eisenhower brought Patton to England and tried to keep him out of trouble until the Normandy campaign. Patton sulked for five months before Eisenhower gave him command of the newly formed 3rd Army.He landed in France on July 6, 1944, broke out of Normandy with his tanks, advanced east across France, wheeled suddenly north, and struck the flank of the German army. When the German Ardennes offensive in December 1944 threatened to swallow up a surrounded American division at Bastogne, Patton pushed the 3rd Army through mud and snow and relieved Bastogne on december 26, 1944. He pressed on to the Rhine under stiff resistance, crossded it on March 22nd, and pushed through central Germany into Bavaria. By May 8, when Germany surrendered, his spearheads had reached into Czechoslovakia. Now without a war to fight, Patton's inappropriate political comments once again put him at odds with Eisenhower. Removed from command of the 3rd Army, Patton moved to the 15th Army, which had few troops and existed mainly on paper. With one day to go before his return to the United States, a car he was riding in was hit by a truck. Patton was paralyzed from the neck down and died less than two weeks later.What made him great? Like many field commanders, Patton was a warrior and not a politician. His tactics were brilliant. By any measure, he became America's greatest leader of heavy-armor forces, as well of one of America's outstanding field commanders.9. MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY (1895-1993)Best known for saving the UN effort in the Korean War, Ridgway was also a celebrated leader in World War II. He was born at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and graduated from West Point in 1917. During World War I, Ridgway served with the 3rd Infantry Regiment but did not go overseas. During the postwar years, the army sent Ridgway to China and the Philippines. He periodically returned stateside to attend high-level military training.In December 1941 he joined the 82nd Infantry Division, which he later commanded as the 82nd Airborne, one of the army's new airborne divisions. In early 1943 Major General Ridgway brought the division to the Mediterranean and on July 9-10 made the first American airborne assault on Sicily. He led elements of the division during the September 9 amphibious assault on Salerno. On D-day, June 6, 1944, he parachuted into France with his troops.In August he moved up to command the 18th Airborne Corps, which consisted of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, and led his men in the airborne assault at Arnhem on September 17. He played a major role in stemming the German Ardennes offensive in December 1944 and later participated in the Rhineland and the Ruhr campaigns, during which he received his third star. The Korean War-Ridgway's greatest hour came during the Korean War, when the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent him to Korea to clean up MacArthur's mess. The Chinese had led MacArthur's UN forces reeling back from the Manchurian border in December 1950, recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul, and threatened to drive US forces completely out of Korea. Ridgway stopped the counteroffensive 75 miles south of Seoul and gradually reestablished control of the area, fighting his way back to the original border between the two Koreas.For the next several months, he fought a battle of containment, forcing the enemy to throw hundreds of thousands of men into his stubborn mincing machine before agreeing to truce talks. Ridgway's strategy of containment became the adopted policy of the United States throughout the Cold War. After serving briefly as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Ridgway returned to the United States in October 1953 to become the Army's chief of staff during the Eisenhower administration. Because of his personal policy of Communist containment, he probably kept the Unites States from becoming involved in the Vietnam War for ten years.What Made Him Great? Ridgway did not believe in massive retaliation to Communist threats, but he did sanction "flexible response", which is the strategy he followed that ended the Korean War. With the exception of Vietnam, it is the same policy American presidents followed until the Iraq War in 2003.10. H. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF (1934- )Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Schwarzkopf was an army brat whose father served on both World Wars. Like his father, he graduated from West Point, and in June 1956 he became a second lieutenant in the infantry.Vietnam War-The man who became known as "Stormin' Norman" served two tours in Vietnam, first as an advisor to the South Vietnamese in 1965 and later as commander of the 23rd Infantry Division, where he earned the first of three Silver Stars and Two Purple Hearts Promoted to colonel, he returned to the United States in a body cast due to war injuries. After reaching home, Schwarzkopf was shocked by the public's hostility to the war and considered resigning. He privately blamed the government for becoming involved in a war with unclear objectives and a misconceived strategy.Between the Wars-Schwarzkopf remained in the army and for the next twenty years worked his way up the ladder by commanding the 172nd Brigade in Alaska and the 1st Brigade, 9th Infantry Division at Fort Lewis, Washington. After serving as deputy director of plans for the Pacific command in 1978-80, he eventually became a major general and commanded the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He returned to Fort Lewis in 1986 as a lieutenant general and took command of the 1st Corps. With his elevation the U.S. Central Command in 1988, he was responsible for planning Desert Shield, which became Desert Storm in January 1991, the ousting of Iraqi forces from Kuwait.Desert Storm-In this capacity Schwarzkopf planned, organized, and executed the largest U.S. mechanized combat operation since 1945. Between August 1990 and and January 1991, he assembled 765,000 troops-of which 541,000 were American-from 28 countries, hundreds of ships, and thousands of tanks and aircraft. When a six-week aerial bombardment failed to bring Saddam, Hussein to the negotiating table, Schwarzkopf drew Iraqi forces out of position with a fake amphibious landing and performed what he termed an "end run" around Iraq's vaunted Republican Guard. He cut the enemy's communications, destroyed their supply lines, and in 1090 days forced Saddam to adopt a cease-fire. Total U.S. casualties were 293 killed and 467 wounded. Schwarzkopf could have marched into Baghdad with little resistance, and he expressed a willingness to do so. But UN resolutions did not include the capture of Iraq, so Schwarzkopf stood down. Somewhat annoyed by not finishing the job, he retired from the Army in 1992.What Made Him Great? Schwarzkopf executed a classic campaign and left no messes within the scope of his task. He understood his orders and performed them with few casualties and received much praise from the world community.__