WaPo: Moyers tried investigating LBJ aides for homosexuality

posted at 2:30 pm on February 19, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Among media elites, no one has established himself as a person of the Left as much as Bill Moyers has, or at least not until Keith Olbermann switched from sports to hyperpartisan “news” at NBC.  Moyers regularly attacks conservatives and Republicans for their supposed human- and civil-rights flaws.  That makes the Washington Post’s revelation about Moyers’ activities in the Lyndon Johnson administration all the more compelling:

Previously confidential FBI files show that Hoover’s deputies set out to determine whether Valenti, who had married two years earlier, maintained a relationship with a male commercial photographer. Republican Party operatives reportedly were pursuing a parallel investigation with the help of a retired FBI agent, bureau files show. No proof was ever found, but the files, obtained by The Washington Post under the federal Freedom of Information Act, provide further insight into the conduct of the FBI under Hoover, for whom damaging personal information on the powerful was a useful tool in his interactions with presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon.

Johnson initially blocked the FBI from obtaining a sworn statement from Valenti or approaching the photographer, asserting that Valenti was “attracted to the women and not to the men,” files show. But under FBI pressure, the president relented and approved an investigation of his close friend. …

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover. …

Seven days later, DeLoach pressed Johnson again and he relented. In the same conversation, a memo shows, they discussed a request from Moyers, then a special assistant to Johnson, that the FBI investigate two other administration figures who were “suspected as having homosexual tendencies.”

Just noting it for the record.  When Moyers sounds off on alleged Republican bigotry, perhaps this will serve as a useful reminder that Moyers can hardly cast the first stone.

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