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SALLY RUSSELL WARRINGTON: Good morning. I'm Sally Russell Warrington and this morning
at the Richard B. Russell Center for Political Research and Studies we are interviewing Charles
Campbell who was Richard Russell's last administrative assistant and who has been president of the
foundation --
CHARLES CAMPBELL: Chairman.
WARRINGTON: Chairman of the Russell Foundation for 17 years. He has stepped down from that
job and we're glad to have you this morning, Charles.
CAMPBELL: Thank you, thank you, glad to be here.
WARRINGTON: I would like to ask you to start with telling us when you came to work for
Senator Russell and maybe a little bit why you were a very young man. Were you only about
22 or 23 weren't you?
CAMPBELL: Well, it was in 1965 and I was born in 1942, so I would have been 23 but it really
happened quite by accident. In the fall of 1965 I was in graduate school here at the
University of Georgia working on a master's degree, getting ready to go to law school.
WARRINGTON: And your master's was in what?
CAMPBELL: Political Science. I graduated in '64 and an organization I had been active
in and an officer of my senior year, Blue Key National Honor Society was giving Senator
Russell a homecoming award at a banquet to be held in October of 1965. And it so happened
that my roommate at the time was then the president of the Georgia Chapter Blue Key
and so he asked me if I would be willing to introduce Senator Russell at this banquet.
I'd never met him. Of course, I'd heard of him but didn't know frankly a whole lot. I
knew he had a distinguished career and was a very powerful senator.
WARRINGTON: Can I just ask you to say where you're form?
CAMPBELL: Jackson, Georgia is where I grew up. My father was a county agriculture agent,
so we moved around a lot but most of my grownup years were in Butts County.
WARRINGTON: That's pretty much right in -- Jackson, is it middle Georgia?
CAMPBELL: Yes, between Griffin and Monticello, right near I-75.
WARRINGTON: That's where I'm picturing it.
CAMPBELL: But at any rate, so I introduced Senator Russell at this October 1965 banquet
and about a week later I got a call from his office wanting to know if I was interested
in joining his staff, so that was about it. And then I completed my coursework in December
of '65 and immediately went to Washington and joined his staff where I worked until
January of '71 when he died.
WARRINGTON: So how did you feel about giving up your idea of going to law school--you've
told me a little story which we'll get to in just a minute. But to give up that idea
and go up there, I mean, what attracted you more to this than what you were doing?
CAMPBELL: Well, of course, going to work for a United States Senator, any United States
Senator would have been a great opportunity, but going to work for Richard Russell was
even a greater opportunity and, of course, I'd majored in political science, so I had
an interest in politics and government. And I really loved the University of Georgia and
I was looking forward to going to law school here but it was, kind of a no-brainer. I thought
it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it turned out that it was. It was a real career
changing opportunity.
WARRINGTON: You said your father was a county agent, did he advise you any on that or --
CAMPBELL: No, I don't think I asked anybody about it. I think I immediately accepted on
the phone. There was a little complication because the congressman from my district had
offered me a job on his staff.
WARRINGTON: Who was that?
CAMPBELL: Jack Flynt and we had some miscommunication because later his officer claimed that he
thought that I was going to accept that and Senator Russell had, kind of, preempted it
and so forth, but I really had not planned to go to Washington to work in a congressman's
office. I was going to go to law school here. But I didn't have any long, deliberative process
about it and consult with a bunch of people. It seemed to me to be a wonderful opportunity
and, of course, I could go to law school at night up there. That was the other thing I
did talk to Senator Russell's staff about and they said, "Absolutely. That'd be no problem."
WARRINGTON: So where did you go to law school at?
CAMPBELL: I went to Georgetown Law School.
WARRINGTON: Would you tell us that story about some advice that Senator Russell gave you
that was good advice.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, Senator Russell was a very, shall we say, reserved person. He didn't get
into a lot of emotional conversation with you. He didn't express his inner sentiments
a lot. He's just a very reserved, some people would even say shy, sort of person. But once
he got to know you and was comfortable with you, you know, It was a completely different
personality. But the only advice he ever gave me -- I became concerned at one point that
I was taking on too much, that I wasn't doing a very good job in law school and I wasn't
doing a very good job in his office. So I went to him one time.
I said, "Senator, I'm thinking about dropping out of law school because I just don't think
that I'm doing justice to your office or to the law school." And he said, "You stay in
law school and you get married," very matter-of-factly, and that was that.
WARRINGTON: So how did you manage that then? Did you feel that you would stay in law school?
You continued to work, I know.
CAMPBELL: I mean, I could make passing grades but I was used to making A's and B's and Georgetown
was, you know, a pretty difficult law school. But yeah, I struggled through and it's probably
not a great way to go to law school because you're not focused. I mean, if you're working
all day. But the reason I had the conversation with him was I would have to leave four days
a week at 5:30 to go to law school and things were a lot of times cranking up then in the
office and I felt bad about that. So that was what prompted the conversation.
WARRINGTON: I don't know how you would have had any time to study.
CAMPBELL: Weekends. I would generally go four nights a week and Saturday morning, or five
nights a week depending on what courses I was taking.
WARRINGTON: Did your work in the government help with that at all? The fact that you had
some practical experience?
CAMPBELL: It may have helped a little but I don't think a whole lot and frankly, I took
what I considered to be the easiest courses in law school because that made it easier.
I didn't, for example, take any tax courses which was a mistake going into civil law practice
because that's one of the most important areas. But I took international law courses because
that had been one of my concentrations in undergraduate and graduate school and I knew
a lot about that area but it wasn't any good at all for me in the law practice. But it
was a matter of being able to satisfactorily do both of them at one time.
WARRINGTON: Well, lawyers have always had to learn on the job. I mean, that's the way
they learned to start with. They didn't even have law schools, so you're just carrying
out that tradition.
CAMPBELL: And Senator Russell was very understanding about it as the conversation that I've related
illustrates, he wanted me to stay in law school and get my law degree.
WARRINGTON: Right, and he spoke about getting married because he was always questioned about
being a bachelor.
CAMPBELL: Well, I was a young single person and he probably said that, you know, he's
probably enjoying the social life up here a lot and so forth. So I didn't really have
a lot of time to do that but --
WARRINGTON: Well, yesterday you told me a little bit about the different in the Washington
Russell and the Russell that you got to know when you were traveling some with him. Would
you tell us a little bit about that?
CAMPBELL: One of the most fortuitous things that happened to me was not long after I got
there, Proctor Jones, who was kind of his personal assistant and very close to him --
WARRINGTON: What was your title to --
CAMPBELL: I started off as legislative assistant for about two years. That was really a misnomer.
It was really a glorified mail answerer is what it amounted to. I didn't write any legislation
or anything of that kind. Senator Russell wrote his own legislation and then after two
years I became executive secretary and then I became administrative assistant, which is
now chief of staff. They changed the name of it--for about the last two years or year
and a half -- but he was --
WARRINGTON: He must have had a lot of confidence in you. You were very young to have those
positions.
CAMPBELL: Well, there was a lot of turnover on his staff. There were a lot of people that
had been there a long time and these were people that were committed to staying in Washington,
and so they could see that Senator Russell wasn't going to be there too much longer,
so some of them went to committees. For example, Bill Jordon went to the appropriations committee
and Proctor did eventually. But I was never planning on staying in Washington. I was always
coming back to Georgia to practice law, so that's one of the reasons I think that I rose
pretty rapidly. But getting back to your question about getting
to know him, the fact that Proctor went into the Marine Corp for almost two years meant
that I had the opportunity to travel with him a lot which I probably would not have
had if Proctor had been there and that really gave you the opportunity to get to know him
because in Washington it was a completely different environment. He was harried, had
way too much to do and, of course, he wasn't in the best of health in most of the years
that I was with him. So you didn't have a lot of time for joking around, you didn't
see a lot of illustrations, for example, of his great sense of humor. But when I would
travel with him away from Washington, either to Winder on weekends, or on a few campaign
events in '66 that we traveled to or to military bases, then you would get to see what I considered
to be the real Richard Russell.
WARRINGTON: How do you think his staff in general felt about him in those last years?
I know that there were some difficult times.
CAMPBELL: Well, one of the weaknesses of Senator Russell, and he didn't have very many, is
that he had very little interaction with 90 percent of his staff. He almost never walked
through the office. In fact, when I became administrative assistant, I started trying
to encourage him to do that more. And a couple of times it didn't work very well because
there was some nut in the office about the Warren Commission that accosted him and started
asking him questions. But he saw on a regular basis, Babs Raesly, his personal secretary.
Bill Jordon, until he left. Bill, kind of ran the office when I got there. Leeman Anderson
had the title of administrative assistant. He had been with Senator Russell since the
'30s but he was in very poor health and wasn't really functioning as running the office.
Of course, the press secretary, which changed a couple of times while I was there. Proctor
saw a lot of him, and myself and that was kind of it.
WARRINGTON: Well, he, kind of, had a reputation for keeping a small staff, didn't he?
CAMPBELL: Yes, we referred to it as--he and Senator Talmadge had a conspiracy to keep
staff salaries down, not only the size of the staff but the salaries. When I was administrative
assistant, Bo Ginn was administrative assistant to Senator Talmadge and we used to argue about
whether he was the 98th or 99th lowest paid administrative assistant and I was the 98th
or 99th. We referred to each other as 98 and 99. But he had a very small staff. He was
the last senator to hire a press secretary. I was the first legislative assistant that
he ever had and I think that was the last senator to hire a legislative assistant. So
he prided himself in turning money back in from the staff. He had a very small staff.
I'd say we probably had, at the top, probably 15 in the Washington office.
WARRINGTON: Did the staff resent that at all? Did they feel like they would like to have
had more help or --
CAMPBELL: I don't know about help. Of course, he was chairman of the Armed Services Committee
and ranking Democrat on the appropriations and those were huge staffs and he had access
to them so I would say the thing I recall the most, it was not funny at the time, was
I hired--this is after I became administrative assistant--I hired a young lady from Tennessee
who had worked for the governor of Tennessee who had then been elected to the Senate. He
was a new senator and even though she'd been working in the office for a year, she'd never
met Senator Russell and that just, kind of, tells you the lack of--and I was walking down
the hall one day with him and the new senator from Tennessee was walking down the hall with
this employee and the senator from Tennessee introduced the employee to Senator Russell
who she had been working for, for a year. That made me feel bad.
But he just didn't have time, frankly, and so he with exception to the ones that I identified,
he literally had no contact. Now, there was another lady in the office named Jane McMullen
whose family's from here in Athens and she saw him some because she'd been there a long
time and Marge Warren was a lady that had been there a long, long time, so they did
see him occasionally. But on an everyday basis in terms of a lot of contact the people that
I identified are about the only ones that saw him.
WARRINGTON: I just wondered if the staff, kind of, resented that at all. I mean, you
were young coming in there and if they \understood because it was the way he worked.
CAMPBELL: Well, not only that but to be able to work for Senator Russell, I mean, he was
without question the most powerful and respected member of the Senate. So it was, kind of,
considered to be a plum of a job. I mean, even these people that didn't meet him, they
were glad to have a job in his office.
WARRINGTON: Well, you spoke to me about the difference in the fact that he was respected
but not necessarily liked by the other senators. Not liked, but he was not loved.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, and that does seem, kind of, strange but again he was a reserved person
and he didn't go out socially a lot. Now, I'm talking about the five years I was with
him. In the '30s when he was a young man I don't know.
WARRINGTON: He did go out more then.
CAMPBELL: I'm sure he did. But he was very much focused on his work and he had good friends
in the Senate but they were senatorial friends. They were not warm, personal friends that
he saw frequently. I think earlier he had been pretty close with Lyndon Johnson and
his family because I know he went to eat with them frequently and became very fond of their
daughters. But that was, kind of, atypical. In the years that I was there, I'd say Senator
Stennis of Mississippi was a good friend. Senator Talmadge, of course. They got along
wonderfully which was surprising given that Senator Talmadge's father, Gene Talmadge,
ran against him for the senate in '36. Senator Henry Jackson of Washington state was close
to him. Senator Milton Young of North Dakota who was a republican, Senator Leverett Saltonstall
of Massachusetts -- he was a ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. So those
were good friends. No question about the fact they were good friends, but they were not
intimate friends is the way I would put it. And Senator Russell was -- this is probably
part of his personality that's probably not well appreciated. He was a very, very tough
politician. I mean, it's true he was a quintessential southern gentleman and very courteous to people,
but he could be tough as nails and if a senator crossed him on something, he didn't forget
it. I'll give you one example. He was not a vindictive
person, but he did not have a short memory and I remember one time Senator Edward Kennedy
was chairman of a labor committee sub-committee and they were holding hearings on the manpower
force in the United States and one of the things they addressed was the impact the draft
had on the manpower situation. Well, of course, Senator Russell considered the draft to be
within the exclusive providence of the Arms Services Committee so he got all upset about
these hearings and so forth and he actually introduced a measure that made it clear that
the labor committee didn't have jurisdiction over that. And it actually went to a floor
vote and I think there were maybe 22 or 23 senators that voted with Senator Kennedy.
You know, Senator Russell's position was upheld. But I saw several months later, I just happened
to be in his office one day and he pulled out of his pocket the vote tally on that amendment
and he was going through the congressional record seeing how people were currently voting
on issues. And so he didn't forget things.
WARRINGTON: Apparently that's really critical in the Senate. You've got to know how you
think people will vote.
CAMPBELL: Yes, yes.
WARRINGTON: Of course, they said Johnson was the master of that but he may have learned
it from Russell.
CAMPBELL: Yes, and also critical to be as effective as Senator Russell was you couldn't
be someone who the other senators felt they could run over without consequence. So very
few senators crossed him in the Senate on personal things that were of great interest
to him, very, very few. They might vote in a way different but --
WARRINGTON: But they wouldn't cross him. Tell us that story about the time the senator was
going to read a lot of bad statistics about Georgia prisons.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, this happened after he got real sick because I know he had emphysema
and had had it for years but it got much, much worse and so toward the end he had a
little scooter that had actually been developed by the space agency that he could scoot up
and down the Senate. He really couldn't walk without taking oxygen at that point. But at
any rate a senator was giving a speech on prison reform and in one part of the speech
he was criticizing Georgia's prison system. This must have been in '70 or '69 and that
wasn't the focal part of the speech but it was in there and somebody called that to Senator
Russell's attention. I don't know if it was another senator but at any rate he found out
about it. So he got on his scooter and went over there and he was sitting on the Senate
floor, because when he got to the Georgia part he was going to stand up and defend Georgia.
Well, I guess the senator saw him there so he simply skipped over the Georgia part, so
it never came up. But it was in the speech in the congressional record.
WARRINGTON: Well, that's one of the things that I've been impressed with in my work is
how much he loved Georgia and the South but the nation, too. I think he certainly had
the heart for all of those, but he didn't want anybody to criticize Georgia.
CAMPBELL: He was without any question the most patriotic person I've ever known. But
you're right, he was very defensive of Georgia. I think a lot of the reasons for his Civil
Rights stances -- and all this is my opinion. Not anything he ever told me or inferred,
but it's just my observation I think it had more to do with people outside the South telling
the South what to do. He was without any question an authority on the Civil War. I mean, I think
you would say that he could have been a professor. He knew every battle, every general, every
junior general.
WARRINGTON: I thought he knew General Lee and General Jackson personally.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, I mean, he was incredible and he, even as late as the time I was with
him, occasionally he would go to a battlefield in the Washington area. So I think he was
very defensive about people criticizing Georgia, especially if they were not from Georgia or
the South and my own theory is that accounted for a lot of his strong feelings.
WARRINGTON: I would agree with that, too. Do you think if anyone from--do you recall
any incidences where people from Georgia had criticized that, how he reacted?
CAMPBELL: Well, of course, when the Civil Rights--and this was largely before I got
there because in December of '65, of course, the '64 act had passed. The '65 voting rights
act had passed. There was a '68 housing bill but Senator Russell was largely -- he had
given up the chairmanship of the Southern senators by then.
WARRINGTON: Which must have been a relief I have to say.
CAMPBELL: Yes, but he didn't talk during the time I was there a lot about Civil Rights. I mean, it just
wasn't a conversation in the office. During that time the Southern schools were being
desegregated and so there were a lot of school superintendents that would come up there and
ask for his help with HEW and, you know, we would host meetings and Senator Russell occasionally
would attend one. I remember him joking one time and telling a school superintendent he
knew quite well, "Well, if they put you in jail I'll send you flowers," or something
like that. But there wasn't a lot of discussion about Civil Rights around the office.
WARRINGTON: Because he really was cooperative with that after it passed.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, and in fact one of the things that I think is worth noting, in his first
public speech in Georgia after the '64 Civil Rights Act signed by President Johnson, it
was a speech Rome, Georgia at Berry College. The speech wasn't about Civil Rights. It was
about economic development in northwest Georgia, but he departed from his remarks and said
and this was in an environment where there was a lot violence and unrest and some southern
politicians were encouraging resistance to the implementation of the act and Senator
Russell said that now that the act is on the books it's or duty as good citizens to obey
it as long as it's there and to avoid all unrest and violence.
And I know President Johnson said at the time that that was the most important statement
made by any public official as they were trying to implement the act. And there were a number
of newspaper editorials around Georgia that called on other politicians to quit the agitation.
So he was a person of great principle and he stuck with those principals in good times
and bad times and whether it was popular or unpopular.
WARRINGTON: And that's very unusual today.
CAMPBELL: Yes, it is. It was unusual then.
WARRINGTON: That's true, you know, we like to think about that as something that's just
happened but it's really not, is it?
CAMPBELL: That's exactly right.
WARRINGTON: Well, there're so many things. Do you ever remember him saying anything about
Martin Luther King. King, of course, was on of his constituents. You know, he was a Georgian.
CAMPBELL: I remember conversations -- and it would usually be if somebody asked him.
Senator Russell felt very strongly that the sit-ins were illegal and --
WARRINGTON: Yeah, I've taken that from what you said he believed in obeying the law.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, he was in favor obeying the law whether you agreed with it or not and
whether it was just or unjust. I remember he was very critical. The ambassador of the
United Nations made a commencement speech in which he was praising the sit-ins and Senator
Russell castigated him on the Senate floor. But he was very measured in what he said generally.
It was very, very seldom he would lose his temper and even reading some of the Civil
Rights debates that happened before I got there, he was much, much more temperate than
most of the -- than almost all the Southern senators.
It's interesting, when he took over the chairmanship of the Southern caucus, there were a lot of
these powerful old-line segregationists that were still there and they were very powerful
senators and there was a lot of fighting in the Southern caucus, but Senator Russell's
position was that if you don't have something serious to say in the filibuster, let somebody
else do the talking. And he had a lot of fights within the caucus, but the tone of the debate
changed. And people used to read, for example, recipes, old Southern recipes or something,
you know, just totally irrelevant and the "N" word was used frequently in Senate debates
and after he took over you never heard that.
WARRINGTON: And he wouldn't let them read recipes and things.
CAMPBELL: That's right, that's right. Some of them still did because they did what they
wanted to.
WARRINGTON: He recommended that they didn't do that.
CAMPBELL: But in specific to answer your question, I don't remember him saying anything particularly
about Martin Luther King. I have a vague recollection that somebody referred to King as a rabble-rouser
and that Senator Russell agreed with it or something like that and it was in the context
of these sit-ins that he thought were illegal. But beyond that, I don't remember any conversation
about that.
WARRINGTON: Would you say that during the time you were with him that he did, sort of,
withdraw from the Civil Rights debate if there was any which there was still some going on.
CAMPBELL: I think the big fights were over by the time I got there.
WARRINGTON: Yeah, they were and so he saw that.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, I mean, I don't think he changed his views, but I don't think the occasion
-- I know somebody said one time, "Well, a lot of these Southern senators change their
positions." They cited Strom Thurman and others, but Senator Russell never did. Of course,
he died pretty early in the period when the transformation was taking place. But also
a lot of Southern senators demagogued the race question when segregation was in vogue
and then they went over to the extreme when integration became in vogue and that was not
Senator Russell. I mean, he was as far from a demagogue as you could get. So it was important
to him. He did not take positions based on whether they were popular or unpopular, at
least not in the period I was there or really in the immediate prior --
WARRINGTON: I don't think he ever did.
CAMPBELL: And so when he took a position for a long period of time, it would have been
very difficult for him to just suddenly, "Okay, well, now if people feel differently I'm going
to just do an about face and go the other way," because it wasn't a political issue
with him. Of course, he was very critical of Lyndon Johnson on that very issue.
WARRINGTON: Yeah, that he changed. You've spoken about all the things that he did. Maybe
could you name some of those things besides Civil Rights like the armed services, like
the agriculture.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, I think one of the unfortunate things about Senator Russell's career is that
because the Civil Rights thing has gotten so much attention and properly so. It was
an important part and it should not be ignored, but it was only one part of his career. I
mean, when you think back over his career just in the Senate. You know, forget about
being governor during the Depression and speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives before
he was 30 years old, forget about all that. When he went to the senate in 1932 he was
an avid New Dealer.
WARRINGTON: Which was a liberal position in that day.
CAMPBELL: He supported almost all of FDR's New Deal program. In fact he gave a seconding
speech for FDR at the '32 convention, at Roosevelt's first nomination and it wasn't until the court
packing plan where Roosevelt tried to increase the size of the Supreme Court to overcome
a couple of the New Deal laws that were declared unconstitutional that Senator Russell started
having differences with Roosevelt.
WARRINGTON: And that's really part of his integrity because that was a constitutional
thing with him. You don't tamper with the Constitution. It was done for a reason and
written that way.
CAMPBELL: But up until then, and that was after almost all the New Deal legislation
had passed and then, of course, his role in agriculture is often forgotten. I mean, for
probably the first ten years of his career, he was the most important person in the Senate
on agriculture policy and he didn't even serve on the agriculture committee.
WARRINGTON: Explain a little bit why that was.
CAMPBELL: He was chairman of the Agriculture Appropriation Sub-Committee. When he got to
the Senate, through kind of a fluke -- Huey Long was a maverick in the Senate at that
time harassing the leadership and disrupting things on the Senate floor and refusing to
serve on committees because they wouldn't let him on the committee he wanted on. So
when Senator Russell got there, the majority leader asked him what committee he wanted
to be on or committees and he said, "I want to be on the Appropriations Committee." And
the majority leader said, "Well, that's out of the question, Senator. I mean, we've got
senators that have been here ten years trying to get on the Appropriations Aommittee so
what's your second choice?"
WARRINGTON: He did say that Senator Harris had been on the Appropriations Committee.
CAMPBELL: Senator Harris, his predecessor, had died was on Appropriations.
WARRINGTON: He, kind of, had that little reason.
CAMPBELL: So Senator Russell said, "Well, if I can't be on the Appropriations, I'm not
interested in being on a committee at all. That was probably a bluff on his part but
in the context in the Huey Long thing, "Oh, no, we're going to have a second one." The
majority leader worked it out, so he got on the Appropriations Committee from day one
which was almost unheard of. And then through another fluke, the person
who should have been chairman of the Agriculture Appropriation Sub-Committee under seniority
which is the way it was done, the chairman of the committee didn't like, hated it. So
he named Senator Russell as chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Sub-Committee right
off the bat which was just absolutely unprecedented. So for about ten years, which was all through
the New Deal, Senator Russell was the predominant person on agriculture policy. And then he
also lifelong maintained an interest in it even after that, but certainly the military
area and national defense was a prime area. He was on the predecessor to the Arms Services
Committee, the Naval Affairs Committee, and then later a chairman of Armed Services and
that's really probably where he made his mark more than any other one single area. But there
were a lot of areas, the school lunch program. He was the father of it.
WARRINGTON: That was two things that he was really interested in, education and agriculture
because it became a way to use farm surplus.
CAMPBELL: That's right. He was the author of what was the forerunner to the food stamp
program, which most people don't realize. Of course, he was a leader in extending electricity
to rural areas. He worked closely with Roosevelt on that. He was very active in the space program.
He was one of the first members of the Senate Space Committee and he was one of the first
members of the joint committee on atomic energy.
WARRINGTON: Do you think he saw that as part of national defense?
CAMPBELL: I think, yes he did, I think both of those in a way. But he gave a number of
speeches on saying that the country in the long run was going to have to use atomic energy
to provide its electricity needs and, of course, that's turned out now that's a very current
debate that's going on. Atomic energy had a bad name for a number of years but now people
are coming back. I know Senator Nunn gave a speech recently very similar to that saying
that we just had to have a larger component of nuclear energy. So he did a lot of things
and then on top of all that I think his role in the Senate was probably almost unique.
He could have been majority leader on any number of occasions and instead he didn't
want to feel like he was committed to supporting any president's program and that the majority
leader was expected to support it if it was in your party, if it was in the White House
and he didn't want. So for example, he almost single handedly
made Lyndon Johnson majority leader when they were trying to get him to take it and which
is what got Lyndon Johnson started. But he, kind of, became a lot of the senators in their
eulogies when he died referred to him as a senator's senator or a mentor and I think
that is probably as important as any single thing he did and that's probably why the Senate
office building was named The Russell Senate Office Building to be honest with you, because
he took a great interest in senators of both parties.
I know one election day I was in Winder with him and he would get calls from these new
senators, some of them Republicans. They'd obviously been told by people that served
in the Senate, you know, "The first thing you need to do is you need to get in touch
with Senator Russell." And the story is told that, in fact, Senator Edward Kennedy told
it that when he was elected to the Senate he went to his brother, President Kennedy,
and said, you know, "What is the most important thing for me to do to get off to a good start
as a senator?" He said, "Go talk to Senator Russell." And Senator Russell spent a lot
of time with these junior senators. He would make himself freely available which
was very unusual and it didn't matter whether you were a Southerner or a Westerner or North-Eastern
or Republican for that matter.
WARRINGTON: I've read it somewhere that he never tried to pull rank on any senator no
matter how junior they were. He treated them as an equal, as a peer. Once you were in the
Senate, you were a peer.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, that's exactly right. In fact, some of the eulogies that were given on the
Senate floor make that point where senators would say that, you know, "He never pressured
me." And some of the senators said they would go talk to him about things where he was on
the other side, you know, Senator Russell was going to vote the other way but they would
talk to him about what was in the best interest in their state and so forth.
WARRINGTON: And I read he would say, "This is the way I think my constituents would look
at that, but yours are going to be different." And that was an important thing. Tell us about
Senator Edward Brooke and what you saw in his relationship with Russell.
CAMPBELL: Well, he was the only African-American member of the Senate during Senator Russell's
tenure.
WARRINGTON: And he was from Massachusetts.
CAMPBELL: Right, he was a Republican from Massachusetts. He had been attorney general
of Massachusetts and they hit off very well. I was reading just the other day Senator Brooke's
oral history here at the Russell Library and he said that Senator Russell came up and congratulated
him. Now, Senator Brooke probably knew something about Senator Russell because Senator Saltonstall
who I referred to earlier held that Senate seat before Senator Brooke. And he, of course,
knew Senator Russell very well because he was a ranking Republican on the Armed Services
Committee, so that probably may have paved the way, but they had a great relationship
and if you look at Senator Brooke's eulogy when Senator Russell died, it's one of the
best. The only thing I remember personally was that one day I went over to the Senate
to get Senator Russell to go to a constituent meeting and he and Senator Brooke were on
the Senate floor talking to each other, just the two of them and obviously it wasn't the
first conversation they'd had. So from all appearances they had a very good relationship.
And this is another thing about Senator Russell that's not generally know, a lot of people
assume that he was anti-black or anti-African American which is just not true. He felt like
the Civil Rights laws were bad policy and in the long run would not help the country
or either race and history has judged him wrong on that. But that was a sincere belief
he held but in terms of dealing with individual African-Americans, he dealt with them just
like anybody else. You know, Senator Brooke is an example.
I'll give you another example. I don't want to use the name because this person's still
living but a very prominent Civil Rights leader had a family problem. This was before I got
there but it was well-known and talked about in the office.
WARRINGTON: Was this person from Georgia?
CAMPBELL: Yes. And this person had a family problem and somebody in that family was not
going to be able to stay in this country. It was an immigration type issue and somebody
told them, "Well, Senator Russell is the only person that's got the kind of power that can
get this straightened out," and it was straightened out. And I'll give you another example now
that I think about it. The waitresses in the Senate dining room, most of them were African-American,
not all of them. He was probably their favorite. In fact, I remember they sent flowers when
he was in the hospital. So he was not a simple person to understand. You know, people tend
to stereotype people and say, "Well, you're this, so therefore you must be this," but
it's much more complicated than that.
WARRINGTON: I think probably his position was rather difficult for him, you know, to
say these races are not equal but we're going to keep them separate but equal.
CAMPBELL: Right, right, well, one of the interesting oral histories that I've read here was a woman
by the name of Tina Panetta. She was a waitress in the Senate dining room. She was from Italy.
She was born in Italy and she came to this country and her duty station was the table
Senator Russell ate breakfast every day. And she praised him to high heaven about how kind
he was, advice that he gave her with respect to her sons, one of whom was at Georgetown
undergraduate and, you know, reading things like that gives you a glimpse of why these
stereotypes are wrong. He's just a different kind of person than these stereotypes would
depict.
WARRINGTON: That's right. When we've talked about respect versus affection, I think he
wasn't trying to make people love him. He was trying to do something that he considered
could be respected and I think some of that has, kind of, worked in the opposite direction.
There're so many things I want to ask you. If you could speak a little bit more about
the -- if we want to talk about the Civil Rights and the segregation that you've told
me about, which has helped me put it in some perspective was that what was the law when
he was born and for so long.
CAMPBELL: Well, he was born in 1897 and in 1898 the United States Supreme Court decided
the case of Plessy V. Ferguson which basically said that segregation was constitutionally
legal so long as it was separate but equal. And that was the law of the land until the
Supreme Court decision in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education where they said that segregation
is inherently unconstitutional, illegal because it's not equal. It's inherently unequal.
Well, by then Senator Russell is almost 60 years old. I mean, you know, he'd lived most
of his life, 5/6th of his life.
WARRINGTON: And the thing I've noticed about that is yes, it wasn't equal but everybody
in the South was poor and there was a lot of --
CAMPBELL: And he had grown up talking to people that fought in the Civil War. The reason I
know this is that one of the things when I would come with him to Winder, he was, kind
of, a habit of routine and habit and in the afternoons we'd drive around either Barrow
County or some of the surrounding counties and I remember him telling me one time we
passed a general store and he said when he was a boy that he would be there and talk
to people who actually fought in the Civil War. These are not people that are, you know,
and I think -- and of course, his family was greatly affected because when Sherman came
through Georgia, his grandfather was a very prominent, rising, prospering businessman
in Marietta and they were completely burned out and he was a hired hand for the rest of
his life. So I think any fair-minded person would say
he was a segregationist and if Senator Russell were here today I think he would say that.
So there's no point in pretending otherwise. But I don't think that meant he was anti-black.
I think he had a view as to what the best policy was and that in the long run if things
were done gradually with the South onboard, that the adjustment would be better than it
being forced on them.
WARRINGTON: And there's really no way probably to judge that, but he thought that he had
slowed it down enough because even the things I've read have said that even the people who
were pro-civil rights felt that the fight the South made, made that law enforceable
where as if it had just been --
CAMPBELL: I think the weakness in that, of course, to look at both sides, the weakness
in that is that there was really no effort to make it separate but equal. The educational
system without any question in the South, I know, because I grew up in a rural Georgia
county and the black school didn't have anything like that facilities and the quality of the
teachers and the school books. So that was the big weakness.
WARRINGTON: The other side of that for me that I've seen is that Martin Luther King
was one of my heroes. I think he is one of the greatest Americans, but until we had a
black person who could lead the black people that way, it wasn't going to happen because
white people didn't have the motivation nor did they really have the trust of the black
people. And so when we got that great leader, see, it happened.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, somebody asked me one time, I can't remember when this was, what did I
think would have changed Senator Russell's view from being a segregationist and I said,
"Well, you know, I think -- we're all products of our experience," and the only blacks he
came in contact with were maids, farm hands -- he never really came in contact with blacks
that were the intellectual equal and maybe that's because they were deprived of opportunity.
That may very well be but the fact is -- and so I think back to one of my own experiences.
The schools were just beginning to be segregated but when I came to the University of Georgia
and was on the debate team, there were blacks on other debate teams around the country and
they would not infrequently defeat us fair and square. Well, you have a few of those
kind of experiences and it's more difficult to say, you know, that blacks are inferior.
And after I got in the law practice, there was a well-known black lawyer in Atlanta,
one of the best trial lawyers, you know, he beats everybody. So it's very difficult if
you have those kind of experiences, but Senator Russell didn't have those kind of experiences
and I think if he'd have been exposed to people like, say, President Obama or even Andrew
Young or Martin Luther King on any kind of sustained basis, that would have been more
likely, in my view, to change his opinion because he wasn't going to change it for political
reasons. In 1952 it was generally regarded that he had a legitimate shot at being president
and he was told that, "Look, if you don't change your position on Civil Rights and on
certain labor issues, you're not going to --." And he didn't.
So he wasn't going to change for political reasons. If he had been he would have done
it at that time.
WARRINGTON: Maybe you could speak to that a little bit in the fact that he did have
a perception of himself as a leader. I think you speak about that in your talk to the Russell
Foundation that his leadership, you know, that he had ideas and he had beliefs and so
you don't change those just because -- I mean, he spoke to me about that a little bit when
I was very young, how hard it is for a senator to balance doing what his constituents wants
and what he knows because of different things might be a better way.
CAMPBELL: Well, he said at one point that, "If I reach the point where my views are so
divergent from the people of Georgia's that I can't faithfully reflect their views then
I'll just resign and not serve. Now, you know, that's, kind of, self-serving in a way because
his views were pretty consistent with the views of the majority of Georgians.
WARRINGTON: I do think that was important to him though.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, that was important, but I think Senator Russell's leadership was more
by example than anything else. I mean, if you look at these oral histories these senators
have done that are here in the Russell Library, almost all of them say that it was by example.
It was exampley set.
WARRINGTON: He didn't preach one thing and do another.
CAMPBELL: He wasn't one of these glad hander's. He wasn't somebody that bragged about that
he did. He was very understated, very reserved, very modest and I think that was one of the
secrets to his success and one of the things I found interesting when was up there. They
published something that's called the congressional directory and it lists all senators and their
principle staff and the senators write up what they've done. Some of them have been
governor's of the state. Some of them have been attorney generals.
WARRINGTON: Like a senior yearbook.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, you know, and some of them just go on for several pages. Well, here Richard
Russell throughout his entire term in the Senate said Richard B. Russell, Democrat of
Winder Georgia and that was it. Nothing else and here he had accomplished more than anybody,
so that, kind of, illustrates his modesty.
WARRINGTON: I've been impressed with that myself as I've studied the continuity of that.
I think he genuinely didn't care whether he was remembered or not in that way, you know,
recognized maybe is the word I want. But he did, I think, in the later years, he wanted
to be known as the father of that school lunch program.
CAMPBELL: Yes, he said in an interview that WSB did toward the end of his career that
he was proudest of that of any other single thing that he did.
WARRINGTON: That, I think is consistent. If he had a blind spot or a weakness what would
you think it was? I mean, he did obviously, we all do.
CAMPBELL: Well, I've thought about that before and you'd be tempted to say the inability
to change, certainly on the Civil Rights issue you could say that, but on the other hand
he was very adaptable about a lot of things. For example, some of the Lyndon Johnson tapes
that have bee released now -- tape recorded conversations President Johnson had in the
White House. One of them is with Senator Russell about whether to recognize Red China and this
was probably before '68 because that's when Johnson went out and Senator Russell said,
"Well, of course, we're going to recognize Red China. There's no question about that,"
but that would have been poison at that time, so that just shows you even though he was
about as much of an anti-communist as anybody, that he was very adaptable on most things.
So I don't know that I would cite that as a weakness. I would say--and I read an oral
history that President Nixon gave that's here at the Russell Library and I hadn't thought
about this until then but if I was pressed to cite one thing I'd probably agree with
President Nixon that when you got into the television age and the media age, I said earlier
Senator Russell was the last senator to hire a press secretary. He very seldom gave interviews
to the news media. He very seldom went on the talk shows even though they were trying
to get him on all the time because again, he was reserved, modest, not a promoter and
Nixon cited that. If I had to cite one weakness I'd say that probably was a weakness and I
would probably agree with that, that'd be the closest thing to a weakness that I can
think of.
WARRINGTON: We can go from that and you might tell us that story you told me about how he
loved sports and he went down to the baseball game in Florida.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, this was '67 because he autographed a picture that was made at a banquet while
we were down there but in spring he would go to Florida to MacDill Air force Base in
Tampa ostensibly to be briefed on various military matters but part of it and a big
part of it, probably the biggest part was to go to exhibition baseball games. He was
a huge baseball fan. And we were at a Braves expedition game. They trained at that time
at Bradenton, Florida nearby and we were there and so he looked up and he saw in the press
box -- I can't remember which one it was, it was one of the principle sports writers
for the Atlanta newspaper. I don't know if it was Furman Bisher or Jesse Outlar or who
it was. He said, "I see so-and-so up there." Said, "Tell him if he's interested in my assessment
of the Braves this year to come down and I'll talk to him."
So I went up there and told him, so he came down, so the next day in the paper it said
Senator Russell is predicting this and that about the Braves. Well, in Washington the
reporters had been trying to get an interview with about something having to do with the
Vietnam War and he wouldn't grant them the interview and they were just absolutely livid
that he'd talk to some damn sports writer in Florida but he can't talk to us. But he
very --
WARRINGTON: Don't you think he recognized the humor in that situation?
CAMPBELL: Oh, yeah, and he had a good relationship with certain media people, Margaret Shannon
with the Atlanta newspaper. He had a wonderful relationship with her. There was a reporter
named Wayne Kelly. He got along well with Roger Mudd but he referred to Drew Pearson
on the Senate floor one time as a skunk and there was a reporter, a columnist in Washington
called Joseph Alsop. He referred to him as Al Slop on the floor one time, so but he just
didn't make himself available. He would occasionally go on "Meet The Press."
I remember one time he was on "Meet The Press," and this was during the Johnson administration
and they were asking him about the Vietnam War and he said, "Well, my guess is if you
had a truly democratic election through both North and South Vietnam with no coercion that
Ho Chi Minh would win." Well, the White House just went absolutely bananas and Johnson was
having a press conference the next day and a reporter asked him, he said, "I didn't know
Senator Russell was an expert on Vietnamese politics," or something like that. But he
very seldom went on those shows.
WARRINGTON: That actually proved to be true didn't it?
CAMPBELL: I think it probably was true. But he went on "Face The Nation" occasionally
but not very often. Not very often.
WARRINGTON: Well, there's so many things we could talk about. What did you see as his
view towards women? Was he conservative about that or --
CAMPBELL: Well, my impression was and this is based as much on reading, he had very much
an old Southern view of women which is really, kind of, an exalted position to be honest
with you. Of course, his mother was without any question the most important woman in his
life. She was the first lady of Georgia when he was governor because he was not married
and, of course, he never got married. In terms of senators I think Senator Margaret Chase
Smith of Maine who was a Republican, knew him well because she was on both the Armed
Services and Appropriations Committee for almost 15 years.
WARRINGTON: Was she the only woman senator at that time?
CAMPBELL: No, I think there was one other one as I recall. But if you read her eulogy
it's one of the best I've ever read anywhere and so he got along, you know, great with
the women senators, the few there were but I didn't ever hear him -- I don't recall him
saying, I recall him saying repeatedly that the finest woman he ever met was his mother.
And of course, he almost got married and his advice to me to stay in law school and get
married, I think, is probably an illustration that he thinks that was a mistake not to get
married.
WARRINGTON: I think at the end of his life he definitely said that but I think he was
a very traditional person and the way he was raised to think about blacks and whites, he
was also raised to think about men and women, but he had to make a lot of changes in that
way, too. I'd like to talk a little bit about the Russell Foundation. You were a chairman
of the foundation for 17 years?
CAMPBELL: That's correct.
WARRINGTON: And then you said you found that work very satisfying. Could you maybe tell
us a little bit about the history of the foundation, why it came into being and then what you found
satisfying about that work.
CAMPBELL: Okay, well, Judge William Norton from Gainesville, Georgia who was a long-time
friend of Senator Russell, his wife Adelaide had worked in Senator Russell's 1952 presidential
campaign and they'd known the family for a long time. I first approached Senator Russell
about the possibility of setting up an independent foundation that would house his papers in
some kind of suitable facility. This was probably in '69. The University of Georgia Dr. Aderhold,
the president of the university had previously talked to Senator Russell about giving his
papers to the University of Georgia and Senator Russell, of course, graduated from the law
school here at Georgia and loved the university and I think that was the direction he was
going in, but he had a concern that his papers would, kind of, get buried in a huge library.
He wanted them to be available for researchers. It was his primary interest. And so it, kind
of, dovetailed nicely. He didn't act on Dr. Aderhold's respect in any formal way. He had
a nice meeting with him but when the Judge Norton broached the idea of an independent
foundation that was attractive to him. So Judge Norton had been out and visited, I think,
the Harry Truman, or maybe a couple of senatorial as well as presidential libraries and so the
idea formed to setup this foundation that would be responsible for the management of
the papers and so forth, enter into an agreement probably with University of Georgia Library.
And as a part of that one of the important things that I guess Senator Russell, I don't
remember if he was the one that insisted on this or it was after Senator Talmadge was
named as the first chairman, but they wanted a library. Either a separate library or a
library with a separate entrance, again addressing Senator Russell's concern that it not be buried
in part of the big library. So that resulted in this facility that we're in today and a
board of trustees was appointed. Senator Russell selected most of them himself. Senator Talmadge,
I think, selected a few. It was agreed Senator Talmadge would be the first chairman, which
he was, and Senator Talmadge primarily was responsible for raising almost all the money
that was raised. I think there was $3 or $4 million was raised and then the Russell estate
would convey the papers to the foundation, who would enter into an agreement with the
university and that was done. And in addition to that, the foundation endowed a chair in
American history here in Georgia which is still here and gave some scholarships and
other things. That's, kind of, what got the foundation started.
WARRINGTON: Now, you know, Charles, the history of how that chair was endowed, where the first
money came from that?
CAMPBELL: Senator Talmadge raised that money.
WARRINGTON: We didn't speak about this before, but that Russell would always give back the
money in his campaigns if he didn't need it. And that's just unheard of but for the Democratic
nomination a lot of that money came in and he didn't know who had sent it and he had
just kept it in a bank account.
CAMPBELL: No, I think what you're talking about is, there is a chair in the political
science department here that's held by a Dr. Charles Bullock. I think this is what you're
talking about. That came out of the estate, the money came out of the estate and so my
guess is that's that money.
WARRINGTON: Yes, but is that the Richard B. Russell --
CAMPBELL: It's the Richard B. Russell either chair or professorship in the political science
department. The political science departments been renamed since then. It's The School of
International Affairs and Study or something. But this one, the history department was something
that was done exclusively, the chair, and that was again, they had a fund raising committee.
I don't want to say nobody did anything but Senator Talmadge, for example, got the Woodruff
Foundation to give, I think it was $750,000 and so most of the money was raised from foundations.
WARRINGTON: Because we hadn't touched on that I thought it was a good idea to bring that
in because education was also a big thing with Russell, always, and that money that
he couldn't say who it belonged to, he just then made it go into education.
CAMPBELL: That's right and Senator Talmadge served as first chairperson for about four
years and then Congressman Phil Landrum who was the congressman from Senator Russell's
home district and had known him very well, served as chairman for about four years. And
then Jasper Dorsey who had been head of Southern Bell in Georgia that I referred to earlier
in connection with the Russell funeral. He became chairman in 1978 and died in 1990 and
I became chairman in 1990 and served until 2007. And the way that happened -- in fact,
I was not originally on the board of trustees at all, but Jasper Dorsey and I became very
close. His son, Tucker Dorsey, and I became very good friends in Blue Key, really.
And at the very same time I was driving to Washington to join Senator Russell's staff
in December of 1965, Tucker was driving to have Christmas with his family. At that time
Jasper was head of a government relations of ATT in Washington and Tucker was killed
in an automobile accident in North Carolina. So Jasper and I became very close, almost
like a surrogate father/son relationship when I went to Washington. And so he became, kind
of, my benefactor, if you will. So he was the one that was responsible for me joining
the Russell Board of Trustees in, I think it was '80, and then he was chairman when
I was named secretary, so he was really largely responsible for my becoming chair of the Russell
Foundation.
WARRINGTON: So what did you find so satisfying about that?
CAMPBELL: Well, of course, I thought it was important that Senator Russell's legacy be
preserved and better understood and that was a large part of what the foundation did, but
beyond that we did a number of things. We endowed scholarships. The foundation now gives
three debate scholarships at Georgia each year and incidentally the Georgia debate team
is one of the top five in the country now, much different than when I debated here. We
give three teaching awards for outstanding young faculty members for high performance
in the classroom. Senator Russell though teaching was very important.
WARRINGTON: And blacks received these awards?
CAMPBELL: Absolutely. The awarded recipients are selected by a committee of faculty members
and one Russell Foundation Member. Then we do a --
WARRINGTON: Maybe this not exactly a fair question but would you say that the foundation
is in anyway prejudiced against blacks or is that --
CAMPBELL: No, not at all. No.
WARRINGTON: I would say it's definitely an equal.
CAMPBELL: In fact, one of the longest serving trustees of the Russell Foundation, Jesse
Hill, who was one of the ones named by Senator Russell originally, he's emeritus now. He's
probably 85 years old but he served through the whole time, so no, the University of Georgia
has been a wonderful partner for the Russell Foundation because we don't have to have any
staff. The university handles all the administrative things with these programs but, for example,
in addition to the ones I've already named we did a biennial program on national security
where you have people like Robert McNamara, Bob Gates the current secretary defense.
WARRINGTON: Russell Symposium. That's been an excellent --
CAMPBELL: When Dean Rusk came on the faculty here in the law school he joined the Russell
Board as a trustee and he inaugurated a series of lectures on constitutional law that the
foundation underwrote. So we just do a lot of different things, very worthwhile activities
that are justification in and of themselves but they also preserve Richard Russell's legacy
and his name.
WARRINGTON: That's why I brought that up. I wanted to just, kind of, make that clear
that the foundation has not been anything about a legacy of racism because that wasn't
an overall thing.
CAMPBELL: In fact, the second professor that held the chair, he's retired now, he was an
authority on Fredrick Douglas. He'd written three or four books, I believe, on Fredrick
Douglas. A professor named Gilbert Fite, who wrote the definitive biography of Senator
Russell, was the first one. Then there was McFeely was the Fredrick Douglas expert and
then Ed Larson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book on the Scopes Trial, was the third.
So they'd been distinguished holders of that chair. So I think --
WARRINGTON: I think in that way we can say that Richard Russell changed in a certain
light.
CAMPBELL: In other words, we don't run these programs. We provide the money. The university
runs them like they would run any other program.
WARRINGTON: And I personally do feel that he would approve of that 100 percent. I have
never felt that any of that would be something that he would --
CAMPBELL: I don't think Senator Russell probably could have envisioned that the Russell Foundation
would get into as many of the activities we have because, again, his primary interest,
he was really a historian and his interest was in being sure that his papers were preserved
here. But thanks to Senator Talmadge's effort to raise the money and the investment of that
money over time. At one time we had about $7 or $8 million.
Now, we have just given $3 million to a new special collections library building that's
going to house the Russell Library and the other two special collections libraries here.
And the foundation put a statue of Senator Russell in the Russell Senate Office Building
in Washington and we have bought books--bought your book on Senator Russell's father, your
biography, and circulated those to public schools and private schools in Georgia.
And I remember when Zell Miller was governor the Fite biography came out and Governor Miller
made state funds available and we supplemented them with Russell Foundation funds, so we've
done those kind of things as well. So it was a wonderful experience for me because I thought
it was worthwhile and I thought that I was doing something that Senator Russell would
appreciate.
WARRINGTON: Did you meet any of the students or teachers that got their awards?
CAMPBELL: Oh, yeah, absolutely because for 15 years I presented the awards each year
at what's called the Faculty Recognition Banquet in the spring. And so of course I participated
on the selection committee, so I guess is if you picked one thing other than preserving
his papers and making them available to researchers that Senator Russell would most be impressed
by it would be those teaching awards.
WARRINGTON: I would agree, too. Do you remember about the foot solider project? You told me
about that.
CAMPBELL: That's a project that a professor in the social studies program here, I probably
got the name of it wrong, but Maurice Daniels started and Sheryl Vogt, the head of the Russell
Library collaborated or is collaborating on and it's based on the idea of interviewing
foot soldiers in the Civil Rights project and preserving their recollections. There's
a lot that's been done on the Civil Rights leaders, but not very much on ordinary, common
people. And I know, for example, they did one on Horace Ward a video interview which
is great. I, of course, know Judge Ward and handled cases before him. He was a federal
district court judge in Atlanta, still is, and I thought that was great. And that project
is ongoing. It's not finished.
WARRINGTON: Yeah, I think that's an outstanding project and that it's come through this library.
I think it's worth noting. I was looking through your talk you made when you resigned from
the -- not resigned, but stepped down from the chairman --
CAMPBELL: Decided 17 years was enough.
WARRINGTON: And I want to point out that that is available at the Richard B. Russell Library
if people wanted to read that. I don't think you would get a better summary of Senator
Russell's career, but I would like for this tape to explain why you think that he left
a great legacy in national security because today we're so concerned about national security.
CAMPBELL: Well, as I said in those remarks, I, kind of, divide Senator Russell's legacy
into two parts; what he did and who he was.
WARRINGTON: You might tell us where that comes from.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, the way I got that idea, that didn't originate with me, but I guess it was
close to--well, it was 1974 I believe.
WARRINGTON: I believe it was '74. Might have been '75.
CAMPBELL: The postal service did a Richard Russell memorial stamp and the tagline on
the first day cover was not just what he did but what he was and that's what, kind of,
got me to thinking about that his legacy is what he did, certainly national security as
I said earlier was one of the predominant areas, but agriculture, the space program,
the atomic energy program, a lot of other things and then his personal traits and characteristics
of integrity, modesty, work ethic, devotion to the public interest.
WARRINGTON: I want to come back to work ethic at some point.
CAMPBELL: Family, you know, all those were important attributes of his and that's, kind
of, combined together that was the way I looked at his legacy.
WARRINGTON: But specifically in national security you had some good remarks about that.
CAMPBELL: Well, in national security that really dominated his career because from the
time he got on the old Naval Affairs Committee which would have been, I guess, in the late
'30s. For example, in World War II, he led the only congressional delegation that toured
all the major theaters. It was a six week around the world, basically, tour and they
went into literally all the European, Pacific -- all the war theaters. And he came back
and made an exhaustive report to the Senate. That's, kind of, what kicked him off as an
increasingly recognized expert in national security.
And then of course he became chairman of the Armed Services Committee and was for 15 years
during the height of the Cold War when President Truman dismissed General McArthur from his
commanding career for basically insubordination, a joint committee of the Armed Services and
Foreign Relations Committee was organized to have a congressional inquiry and Senator
Russell was elected to chair that joint committee and received high praise for the evenhanded
way that he did that.
WARRINGTON: For people who listen to this now might not know, but McArthur was enormously
popular. I mean, he was just a hero to everybody and to have removed that--it was very delicate
thing.
CAMPBELL: When he came back from Korea he had a huge rally in San Francisco where there
were, I think, over 100,000 people and then he stopped -- he just had a barn storming
tour and the thought was he's going to be a presidential candidate. He addressed a joint
session of Congress when he got to Washington, but Senator Russell, kind of, diffused it
over time. He gave General McArthur all the time he wanted, you know, very respectful,
kept the political part of it out. Of course, the Republicans were wanting to attack Truman,
you know, and Senator Russell had had his differences with Truman, but he's generally
credited with saving Truman's presidency as a result of that. But finally after about
40 days of hearings, it kind of, died down and the joint chiefs of staff that testified
disagreed with McArthur on most of the critical issues and so he, kind of, receded into the
background.
WARRINGTON: It may be the reason that Eisenhower --
CAMPBELL: Yes, probably had a lot to do with that, exactly. But armed services from then
on was, kind of, his signature expertise, if you will, and one of the reasons for that
was they changed the rules of the Senate. This couldn't happen now because they divided
the committees up into A committees, B committees and C committees and you can only be on one
A committee. Senator Russell was on three A committees and at the same time he chaired
Armed Services. He was chairman of the Defense Appropriation sub-committee. So he chaired
both the authorization of military funds and the appropriation of military funds across
the whole government. So that was unprecedented power in the hands of one person and on top
of that, he was head of the CIA oversight committee. So that couldn't happen now. They
don't let one senator have that kind of power.
WARRINGTON: Do you think he abused that power in any way. My own personal feeling is that
it's probably not a good idea to have that much power in one person's hands. Like, the
CIA sub-committee is a good example. Back then Senator Russell basically solely provided
oversight of the CIA because they were so concerned there'd be leaks that Senator Russell
would meet with the director of the CIA and that was about all the briefing that took
place. Occasionally Senator Saltonstall would participate and there were not leaks. Now,
they have three or four committees that are responsible and you have all kind of problems
with leaks. So there's probably no perfect system.
WARRINGTON: I hope some scholar will really study that. There's a good book in that, I
think.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, there's been several books written actually about that, about the organization
of the CIA and its history.
WARRINGTON: Does he get press that? I'm not familiar with those.
CAMPBELL: Yes, absolutely. In fact, one of the programs the Russell Foundation had was
a program on the CIA where the authors of several of these books participated.
WARRINGTON: The other part of his legacy that I think is maybe not as well known is that
the area he promoted so much research -- scientific and agricultural, the nuclear, could you speak
about that?
CAMPBELL: Yeah, and this is one of the things that Senator Edward Brook that we were talking
about earlier mentioned in his eulogy of Senator Russell and in his oral history here at the
Russell Library. Senator Russell was a big believer in scientific research, medial research,
educational research. Of course, he didn't miss any opportunity to get the funds for
Georgia. That was also very important to him and I'll tell you a funny story. The Richard
B. Russell research laboratory that's here at the university still, they were considering
it in the Appropriations Committee.
WARRINGTON: That was agriculture?
CAMPBELL: Yeah, it was an agriculture sub-committee and a friend of Senator Russell, kind of,
said tongue and cheek he was going to vote against the appropriation because he knew
from past experience if the funds were appropriated Senator Russell would try to put the facility
at the University of Georgia and that he understood that Athens wasn't very close to the Atlantic
Ocean but that Senator Russell was putting so much money in here that he was afraid it
was going to break off and fall into the Atlantic Ocean and Senator Russell generally had a
pretty good sense of humor but he sad rather dryly and directly, "If the funds are appropriated
you're damn right I'm going to try to get them for Georgia," and he did.
And most people don't realize the role he had in establishing the Communicable Disease
Center in Atlanta. He was a major mover of that and The Woodruff Foundation contributed
property but Senator Russell got it located in Atlanta. And peanut research labs, water
research labs, there's all kind of research facilities located in Georgia and Senator
Russell would generally pretty consistently vote to increase those appropriations. He
is, as we said earlier, was very frugal, but in certain areas he would spend consistently
and research was one of them.
WARRINGTON: Would you like to comment on that as vis-�-vis our concern now about earmarks
for legislation. Isn't that pretty much the same thing?
CAMPBELL: I think it's, kind of, the quintessential earmark. I think the part of it that it's
done incognito or under the radar and it's not known who put it in. Senator Russell wanted
people to know he put it in, so they would name the lab for him. But he felt that -- and
I think he would feel if he were here today my guess is that his position would be that,
look, Congress is responsible for appropriating all this money. Nobody accuses the executive
of having earmarks and they're making decisions on all this money about where to spend money,
so why isn't that an executive earmark? So why should Congress forfeit its prerogative
to decide where some small percentage of this money is spent.
Now, he would certainly be opposed to the "bridge to nowhere" and wasteful projects
but I think he would have been a defender of the senate in the congressional prerogative
to decide where some of this federal money is spent.
WARRINGTON: Well, that's part of our system really is these are representatives from various
states and they're supposed to be trying to do those things for their state. When he went
up, the whole thing was so much more emphasized states rights than we do now.
CAMPBELL: And of course, his attitude was he was very conservative in most areas, research
being a notable exception. In most areas he voted for less expenditure but if Congress
decided they were going to spend in a certain area, he was going to do everything he could
to see that Georgia got a disproportionate. His kind of attitude was that if you're going
to spend the money, it's only fair that we get more than our fair share. That was his
attitude and he worked at that.
WARRINGTON: And he was so powerful he was good at it but that's the quote that he has
often said. He was "Georgia's man in Washington" and so he was going to do the best he could
for Georgia and he did quite a lot. I'm just looking through. I had a few notes here. One
thing that you spoke about, which I think is worth knowing is that Russell led a very
simple life, that he didn't try to enrich himself by his public office.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, when you think about it, he had a very modest estate when he died and
the two biggest things, I guess, in his estate was his condominium in Washington and it was
a one bedroom, one small living room kitchenette -- right across the street from The Watergate
Building by the way, in the foggy bottom area of Washington. That's basically the only thing
he really owned. I don't know if he had title to the home place
WARRINGTON: He did.
CAMPBELL: Or I think his parents left the home place to him.
WARRINGTON: No, they left the home place to the whole family and he bought out everybody's
parts and then left it open to everybody. It was always --
CAMPBELL: But other than that he didn't have very much but he was very, very frugal and
part of this was being a bachelor. I mean, that one bedroom condo was nothing to write
home about and the way it was kept up it was very junky and there'd be books lying everywhere
that he was reading. He'd read five or six different books at a time and I remember one
of the eulogies that was given by Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut who was a
very liberal--he was secretary of HEW under Kennedy and Johnson and then later was elected
to the Senate in Connecticut. And so he visited Senator Russell one time in Winder and one
of the things he noted in his eulogy was he was struck by the fact that the most powerful
member of the United States Senate was living in such simplicity.
And I thought to myself when I read that, I said, "He should have seen that condo,"
but there's no question about that. Senator Russell, it was not important to him. He was
very frugal. I'll tell you a couple of little stories that illustrated that are, kind of,
funny. When I first got up there, one of the first things I was asked to do -- he was going
to a White House reception -- was to go and buy him a shirt--a new white shirt. And of
course, I'd been here in Athens and gone to the clothing stores here and so what did I
know? So I go down to Woodrum and Lothram, which I think Bill Jordan told me that's where
I should go. And so I go down there and I buy him a shirt.
I think it was $4 and something or $5 and something then which was not outrageous, I
didn't think. But at any rate I brought it back, well, he didn't say much after he saw
the bill. A day or so later a member of the staff told me that Senator Russell had told
them, "I'm beginning to question this Campbell boy's judgment. Do you know how much he paid
for a shirt?" And another episode that happened one time was involving President Johnson was
when Lady Bird would leave Washington, President Johnson would invite Senator Russell down
to the White House and just the two of them would have dinner and they'd have a couple
of drinks and have dinner. But on this particular occasion Senator Russell had been sick and
he's lost a lot of weight and there was a clothing manufacturer over in Bremen, Georgia
that gave Senator Russell three or four suits every year. They were very cheap suits. I
mean, when I was growing up I worked in a department store that sold those suits and
so I know how cheap they were. And probably most senators wouldn't be caught dead in them
but Senator Russell used them all the time. And when he was talking to Johnson he was
telling Johnson this time that he wasn't going to be able to use them because he'd lost so
much weight and they simply didn't fit and President Johnson apparently told him, "Well,
I know this great tailor and so you got to get in touch with him." Said, "I'll have somebody
call your office on my staff and give you the name and number." So the next morning
I got a call from somebody at the White House and they said that the president and Senator
Russell talked last night about a tailor that president's recommending and here's his name
and number. So he came down and he measured the suits and so forth, pleasant sort of fellow
and a couple of weeks later or ten days or so, the suits arrive and they fit very good
and so forth and everything was great until Senator Russell saw the bill and, of course,
the bill was about four times what the suits were worth. So I will never will forget Senator
Russell said, "No wonder this country's gone to hell if the president of the United States
hasn't got any better sense than to do business with somebody like this." And, of course,
I'm sure Johnson didn't pay a dime.
WARRINGTON: He didn't have any idea what they cost.
CAMPBELL: So he was very frugal not only with the tax payer's money but with his own money.
WARRINGTON: Right. But he was frugal with the country's money, too. He tried to keep
that down, I think, as much as possible. I believe you told me Charles that the last
time the federal budget was balanced before Clinton, before there was no deficit in spending
was when Russell was chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
CAMPBELL: I believe that's right.
WARRINGTON: I think we all feel a little reluctant for those good old days maybe. We feel like
we're missing those. We have talked about this a little, bit but maybe we could emphasize
a little bit more or discuss a little bit more how he was a workhorse as opposed to
show horse in the Senate.
CAMPBELL: Yeah, that was Senator Talmadge in his autobiography had a chapter called
Work Horses and Show Horses and he said about 90% of the members of the Senate are what
he would call show horses. They issue a lot of press releases and have a lot of press
conferences and talk about all the great things they'd done and there are work horses that
do all the work and he listed Senator Russell as a quintessential workhorse. And Senator
Russell was 65--well, when I went there he would have been 68 I guess or 67 because he
was born in 1897. I went there in '65. But even then he would be there by 8:00 or 8:30.
He would be there until 7:00 at night. He worked a half a day every Saturday and so
I can imagine what it would be like back when he was in good health, you know, in the 30's
and 40's and 50's and a younger man. And one of the secrets, I think, was he did his own
work. When you read these oral histories of senators
that are here at the Russell Library they constantly say that if he spoke on the Senate
floor he knew what he was talking about. He didn't get up and give a speech written by
somebody else that he didn't know anything about. He just didn't do that and I think
that's right. I think that in addition to integrity, modesty, devotion to the public
interest, I think work ethic would be right up there among the most important.
WARRINGTON: I think that's almost hard for us to grasp how hard he worked and how important
that was.
CAMPBELL: And you know, I mean, I think most public servants work pretty hard. I mean,
you know, most senators up there. But a lot of them now spend their time on PR. Senator
Russell spent his time substantive matters that he was addressing.
WARRINGTON: Several oral histories I've read spoke to the fact that in the committee meetings
he was always so prepared that he had studied the stuff, done his homework and he knew these
things and so he would dominate the discussion because he knew and a lot of other people
didn't know that and they learned they could trust him.
CAMPBELL: Well, one of the interesting things that's in one of these books that Robert Caro
has written about Lyndon Johnson and it had to do with Senator Russell's conducting the
hearings of the joint committee on Truman's firing McArthur. Senator Russell did all of
his own work and Johnson thought that was outdated. He said, "Look, you don't have use
them, but I've got two great members of my staff and so we've got certain witnesses coming
up tomorrow and they will have a series of questions and you don't have to use them,
throw them in the trash and burn them, do anything you want to with them." And so Senator
Russell finally agreed. And so he did start using the committee staffs more at that point.
But on the stuff he did in the office he did almost all of his own stuff and I'll give
you an example, responding to letters. Of course we got numerous letters. And Senator
Russell insisted all of them be answered. Every letter from Georgia was answered unless
it was what Senator Russell said should go to what we call the nut file.
Somebody said, "Well, the nut pile is becoming those that don't agree." But at any rate,
except for that small number that went in the nut file, they would all be answered and
the way they'd be answered was staff would draft answers but we had Senator Russell's
language from prior letters on say, social security, and when you are writing a letter
you don't wax eloquent and put Charles Campbell's language in there because if you do and he
happens to see that letter, it's going to come back with a note scribbled on it, "I
like my language better." So you were to use--and he would see probably 25 to 30 letters a day,
which was a very large number for senators. Most senators didn't pay any attention to
any of the mail. It was written by staff people, signed on what were called Robo Machines that
signed the senator's signature.
WARRINGTON: What would have been in that time that you were there a quantity of mail that
a senator would receive?
CAMPBELL: Several hundred letters a day. It was the single biggest activity was to answer
those letters. And what they do is you'd have staff people preparing them and then you'd
have either the administrative assistant, or Bill Jordan when he was executive secretary,
reviewing them and if somebody was a close friend of Senator Russell's that might get
into him and the way we knew that was we had a system of name cards by county and this
is the way you would address people. If that person's not in those name cards, it's Dear
friend or if it's out of state it's Dear Mr. or Dear Misses. If it's in the name cards
it's Dear Tom or whatever it is and if it was a close friend or if somebody that was
a dear friend that wasn't in the name cards wrote a particularly good letter on some subject,
then that might be sent in. And as a part of that process, Senator Russell would be
constantly dictating revisions himself and that would become the new language on a given
subject and that was the way the staff would prepare responses to letters.
I think far more attention was given to responding to mail in Senator Russell's office than most
of the other offices.
WARRINGTON: And that enabled him to keep up with his constituents in a way that he --
CAMPBELL: Yes, because you have to bear in mind that this was one thing and I don't know
that it was a weakness in Senator Russell or a deficit, but it was a fact, he saw very
few people, very, very few people did he see. By the time you take meetings with the secretary
of defense and other senators and director of the CIA, he probably didn't have more than
two or three constituent meetings a week and I felt, kind of, bad about that. I would have
liked to have had more constituent meetings because these people would come to Washington.
They'd been voting for him for 30 years and they would not see him at all.
WARRINGTON: I hate to close this down but I know people have got to go. Could you say
how he influenced your life in later times? What are things about that that you would
say to young people that you could admire and emulate and then maybe anything you would
not want them to emulate.
CAMPBELL: Well, being around him was very valuable to me in the practice of the law
because when I started practicing law I became a trial lawyer. And when I first went to work
there, it was a little bit difficult for me to understand what the source of his power
and influence was because he had just led the unsuccessful opposition of the Civil Rights
legislation which was the, kind of, big thing then so he was on the wrong side of that.
He was constantly against foreign aid to these countries. And he was, you know, I think it
would be fair to say by the time I got there he was outside the mainstream on most national
and international issues. The one exception would be national security but even there,
for example, he was opposed to the Vietnam War, so he was not with the 'in' crowd in
terms of position and so for a while I said, "Well, you know, this doesn't make much sense."
But as I worked there longer, I understood that his integrity and his absolutely saying
what was on his mind and not doctoring it or, you know, everybody in Washington's got
some agenda and they're shading things and so forth.
WARRINGTON: Spinning it.
CAMPBELL: And about that time I was taking a course in ethics at the Georgetown Law School
where a very successful trial lawyer was asking this professional ethics class, "What's the
single most important attribute of a successful trial lawyer?" And he said, "A reputation
for integrity." And so the more I thought about that, that was the secret to Senator
Russell's power, and so that helped me a lot in the law practice. It taught me that you
don't cut corners. And then the other thing I think that was very beneficial even though
in today's world I don't know frankly that this is as successful or could be as successful
and that is understatement, modesty, those are qualities that I think frankly that we've
lost appreciation for. Now people are expected to be very aggressive.
WARRINGTON: Self aggrandizing.
CAMPBELL: Exactly, but those are the things in addition to work ethic that I would cite.
Again, I would have liked for him to have seen more constituents. I would have liked
for him to have more interaction with all of the staff. I think President Nixon as I
said earlier was right that he was not the greatest with the media, but on the core issues
I think he was a very, very great man.
WARRINGTON: Well, thank you so much, Charles and thank you for all the work you've continued
to do. You've probably worked for Senator Russell longer than anybody.
CAMPBELL: Thank you.
[END OF RECORDING]