Billy Don Moyers (June 5, 1934 – June 26, 2025) was an American journalist and political commentator who served as the eleventh White House Press Secretary from 1965 to 1967 during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. He also served as the de facto White House Chief of Staff for a brief period from 1964 until 1965.
Moyers was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1967 to 1974. He was also a onetime steering committee member of the annual Bilderberg Meeting. Moyers also worked as a network TV news commentator for ten years. Moyers was extensively involved with public broadcasting, producing documentaries and news journal programs, and won many awards and honorary degrees for his investigative journalism and civic activities. He was well known as a trenchant critic of the corporately structured U.S. news media.
Early life and education
Born Billy Don Moyers on June 5, 1934, in Hugo, Oklahoma, he was the son of John Henry Moyers, a laborer, and Ruby Johnson Moyers. Moyers was raised in Marshall, Texas.
Moyers began his journalism career at 16 as a cub reporter at the Marshall News Messenger. In college, he studied journalism at the North Texas State College in Denton, Texas. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson employed him as a summer campaign intern and eventually promoted him to manage Johnson's personal mail. Soon after, Moyers transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he wrote for The Daily Texan newspaper. In 1956, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. While in Austin, Moyers served as assistant news editor for KTBC radio and television stations, owned by Lady Bird Johnson, Senator Johnson's wife. During the 1956–1957 academic year, he studied issues of church and state at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as a Rotary International Fellow. In 1959, he completed a Master of Divinity degree at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Moyers served as Director of Information while attending SWBTS. He was also a Baptist pastor in Weir, Texas, near Austin.
Moyers planned to enter a Doctor of Philosophy program in American studies at the University of Texas. During Senator Johnson's unsuccessful bid for the 1960 Democratic U.S. presidential nomination, Moyers served as a top aide, and in the general campaign he acted as liaison between Democratic vice-presidential candidate Johnson and the Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy and Johnson administrations
The Peace Corps
The Peace Corps was established by President Kennedy by Executive Order in March 1961, but it was up to top aide Sargent Shriver and Bill Moyers to find the funding to actually establish the organization. The Peace Corps Act was signed by President Kennedy on September 22, 1961. In Sarge, Scott Stossel reports that "Peace Corps legend has it that between them Moyers and Shriver personally called on every single member of Congress."
Reflecting 25 years later on the creation of the program Moyers said: ”We knew from the beginning that the Peace Corps was not an agency, program, or mission. Now we know—from those who lived and died for it—that it is a way of being in the world." At the 50th Anniversary “Salute to Peace Corps Giants”, hosted by the National Archives, Moyers said, "The years we spent at the Peace Corps were the best years of our lives.” Moyers gave the same answer in the famed Vanity Fair Proust questionnaire in 2011.
Moyers served first as associate director of public affairs and then as Sargent Shriver's deputy director before becoming special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson in November 1963.
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Moyers was a key player in the creation of the public broadcasting system. In 1961, FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow labeled television "a vast wasteland” and called for programming in the public interest. Years later, the Johnson administration instituted a study of the issue. The Carnegie Corporation of New York established a commission to study the value of and need for noncommercial educational television. Moyers served on this committee, which released its report 'Public Television: A Program for Action' in 1967. Moyers said of the endeavor: “We became a central part of the American consciousness and a valuable institution within our culture."
Moyers was influential in creating the legislation that would fulfill the committee's recommendations. In 1967, President Johnson signed Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which states: "it is in the public interest to encourage the growth and development of public radio and television broadcasting, including the use of such media for instructional, educational, and cultural purposes."
On the 50th anniversary of the Public Broadcasting Act, Moyers and Joseph A. Califano, Jr. spoke about their experience with WNET.
The Kennedy Assassination In November 1963, Kennedy noted that Bill Moyers would be knowledgeable of the political climate in Dallas, Texas. He appointed Moyers to be the planner for his trip to the conservative and potentially hostile city. Bill had great difficulty with the assignment due to his lack of experience with the Dallas political climate; his presence was not wanted by the political elite, as he was an outsider more aligned to Austin than Dallas.HSCA Deposition of Elizabeth Forsling Harris RIF 180-10078-10272, House Select Committee on Assassinations, 1978-08-16
Two others had attempted to liaise with the Dallas political group that planned the arrangements for the trip with similar results. But with time running short, Moyers knew someone in Dallas who could work for the Kennedy advance team; someone who had been instrumental in the Peace Corps over the last few years and had married the Dallas clothing store mogul, Leon Harris, Jr. This person was Betty Harris. She had experience in writing and news media production.
Harris testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations in a closed deposition of the preparations, phone calls, and arguments she had establishing the route that the Kennedy motorcade would take through Dallas. She was on the phone with Moyers "every two hours ... for those seven days" as the planning and infighting went on.
Moyers in Washington and Harris in Dallas made several decisions about the motorcade: the choice of the route to the Trade Mart through Downtown and Dealey Plaza, the publication of the route map one to two days before the event, the assignment of cars and seating positions, and the removal of the bubble top on the limousine. Their wishes were frequently at odds with Texas Governor John Connally, who also rode in the Kennedys' limousine, and the pro-Connally operatives Sam Bloom (the PR mouthpiece for the Dallas businessmen) and Bob Strauss.
Johnson Administration
When Lyndon B. Johnson took office after the Kennedy assassination, Moyers became a special assistant to Johnson, serving from 1963 to 1967. Moyers was the last surviving person identifiable in the photograph taken of Johnson's swearing in. He played a key role in organizing and supervising the 1964 Great Society legislative task forces and was a principal architect of Johnson's 1964 presidential campaign. Moyers acted as the President's informal chief of staff from October 1964 until July 1965. From July 1965 to February 1967, he also served as White House press secretary.
After the resignation of White House Chief of Staff Walter Jenkins because of a sexual misdemeanor in the run up to the 1964 election, President Lyndon B. Johnson, alarmed that the opposition was framing the issue as a security breach, ordered Moyers to request FBI name checks on 15 members of Barry Goldwater's staff to find "derogatory" material on their personal lives.Hoover's men ran name checks on 15 of them, producing derogatory information on two (a traffic violation on one and a love affair on another) "Hoover's Political Spying for Presidents, TIME, 1975 " Goldwater himself only referred to the Jenkins incident off the record. The Church Committee stated in 1975 that "Moyers has publicly recounted his role in the incident, and his account is confirmed by FBI documents." In 2005, Laurence Silberman wrote that Moyers denied writing the memo in a 1975 phone call, telling him the FBI had fabricated it.Silberman, Acting Deputy Attorney General in 1975, says Moyers called his office and said the document was a "phony CIA memo" but declined Silberman's offer to conduct an investigation to clear his name. ""Hoover's Institution," The Wall Street Journal, 2005 " Moyers responded that Silberman's account of the conversation was at odds with his. "Removing J. Edgar's name, Robert Novak, CNN, 2005 " Moyers said he had a different recollection of the telephone conversation.
Moyers also sought information from the FBI on the sexual preferences of White House staff members, most notably Jack Valenti. Moyers indicated his memory was unclear on why Johnson directed him to request such information, "but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover."
Under the direction of President Johnson, Moyers gave J Edgar Hoover the go-ahead to discredit Martin Luther King, played a part in the wiretapping of King, discouraged the American embassy in Oslo from assisting King on his Nobel Peace Prize trip, and worked to prevent King from challenging the all-white Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
Moyers approved (but had nothing to do with the production) of the infamous "Daisy Ad" against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential campaign. Goldwater blamed him for it, and once said of Moyers, "Every time I see him, I get sick to my stomach and want to throw up." The advertisement is considered the starting point of the modern-day harshly negative campaign ad.
Journalist Morley Safer in his 1990 book Flashbacks wrote that Moyers and President Johnson met with and "harangued" Safer's boss, CBS president Frank Stanton, about Safer's coverage of the U.S. Marines torching Cam Ne village in the Vietnam War. During the meeting, Safer alleges, Johnson threatened to expose Safer's "communist ties". This was a bluff, according to Safer. Safer says that Moyers was "if not a key player, certainly a key bystander" in the incident. Moyers stated that his hard-hitting coverage of conservative presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush was behind Safer's 1990 allegations.
In The New York Times on April 3, 1966, Moyers offered this insight on his stint as press secretary to President Johnson: "I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies."
On May 18, 1966, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara gave a speech in Montreal before the American Society of Newspaper Editors entitled Security in the Contemporary World, in which he criticized many aspects of U.S. defense policy. Lyndon Johnson was reportedly furious with McNamara's speech, and the discovery that Moyers had cleared it was a factor in Moyer's early departure.
On October 17, 1967, Moyers told an audience in Cambridge that Johnson saw the war in Vietnam as his major legacy and, as a result, was insisting on victory at all costs, even in the face of public opposition. Moyers felt such a continuation of the conflict would tear the country apart. "I never thought the situation could arise when I would wish for the defeat of LBJ, and that makes my current state of mind all the more painful to me," he told them. "I would have to say now: It would depend on who his opponent is."Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets, 197f