"Historians Caro and Dallek consider Lyndon Johnson the most effective Senate majority leader in history. He was unusually proficient at gathering information. One biographer suggests he was 'the greatest intelligence gatherer Washington has ever known', discovering exactly where every Senator stood, his philosophy and prejudices, his strengths and weaknesses, and what it took to break him.[28] Robert Baker claimed that Johnson would occasionally send senators on NATO trips in order to avoid their dissenting votes.[29] Central to Johnson's control was 'The Treatment',[30] described by two journalists:
'The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours. It came, enveloping its target, at the Johnson Ranch swimming pool, in one of Johnson's offices, in the Senate cloakroom, on the floor of the Senate itself — wherever Johnson might find a fellow Senator within his reach.
Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat. It was all of these together. It ran the gamut of human emotions. Its velocity was breathtaking, and it was all in one direction. Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.[31]'
[31] Evans, Rowland; Novak, Robert (1966). Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power. p. 104."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._JohnsonNew York Times:
"War of the Weathers
By Lowell Ponte
April 17, 1976,
Section , Page 16, Column , words
[ DISPLAYING ABSTRACT ]
SANTA MONICA, Calif. 'From space one could control the earth's weather, cause drought and floods, change the tides and raise the levels of the sea, make temperate climates frigid,' then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson told a joint session of Congress in 1957. Like many other legislators, he accepted Defense Department fantasies that the United States was in a race with the Soviet Union to develop environmental weapons."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D00E5DC153BE334BC4F52DFB266838D669EDE#" (...) From Senator Johnson, speaking to the Senate Democratic Caucus on January 7,1958:
'Control of space means control of the world… From space, the masters of infinity would have the power to control the Earth’s weather, to cause drought and flood, to change the tides and raise the levels of the sea, to divert the Gulf Stream and change the climate to frigid… There is something more powerful than the ultimate weapon (speaking here of nukes). That is the ultimate position- the position of total control over the Earth that lies in outer space… And if there is an ultimate position, then our national goal and the goal of all free men must be to win and hold that position.' (...)"
http://universalfreepress.com/lyndo...weather-gulf-stream-and-climate-in-1958/
