LBJ's Tax Investigation Records Now Available

Lyndon Baines Johnson’s career may have taken a different turn in 1944 if it weren’t for the intervention of the Roosevelt White House and the cessation of an Internal Revenue Service investigation into tax fraud.

The details of this seldom-told story can now be found at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton University. 

The Mudd Library has acquired the records of Elmer Charles Werner, a regional IRS investigator responsible for investigating covert support to the 1941 Johnson U.S. Senate campaign by Brown & Root (now KBR Inc.).

These records, available to only one historian before now, document how in February of 1944, just as Werner’s investigation was gaining steam but before IRS agents had an opportunity to question key Johnson campaign staff, the IRS chief of intelligence instructed them to halt the investigation. Strong evidence suggests that this order was a result of an intervention from the Franklin Roosevelt White House.

In the end, Brown & Root received a minor citation and Johnson was never publicly questioned about the improper receipt of campaign funds.

These records were central sources for a chapter in Robert A. Caro's book "The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power " in 1981, many years before Werner’s daughter, Julia Werner Gary, gave them to the university.

The collection at Princeton includes Werner’s diaries from 1942-1945, several of which Caro did not have access to at the time of the book’s publication. These may be a fruitful resource to a future researcher.

“This is an incredible addition to the holdings of the Mudd Library,” said Dan Linke, university archivist and curator of public policy papers. 

Linke said the donor told him that her mother worried about the papers and the problems they might cause throughout her life--even discussing them on her deathbed in 1997.  This worry only increased as Johnson’s political career progressed from congressman, to Senate majority leader, vice president, and ultimately president. 

Gary said it wasn't a secret that they had those papers, but her parents instructed that no one should be told about them.  The papers were kept in the bottom drawer of her father’s dresser.

“The Werner papers document a virtually unknown but very important episode in LBJ’s career.  I am grateful to Mrs. Gary for entrusting the papers to Princeton," Linke said. 

The Mudd Manuscript Library is open to the public and welcomes all researchers. Visit the library online or see more about the Werner papers here.