Leonard Harold Marks (b. Mar 5, 1916 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; d. Aug. 11, 2006 Washington, DC) was a director of the United States Information Agency.
He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. He first worked with the Office of Price Administration, then in 1942 for the Federal Communications Commission before going into the private practice of law in 1946. His firm (Cohn and Marks) specialized in communications law, and Lady Bird Johnson's chain of TV stations were one of his clients.
In 1965 he was named director of the United States Information Agency by President Lyndon Johnson.
In December 1967 Secretary of State Dean Rusk and US President Lyndon Johnson discussed Marks as a possible appointment to the United Nations as US Ambassador. [1]
He was a member of the National Security Council during the Vietnam War. During the Carter administration he was president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
He married Dorothy Ames around 1947 and had two sons, Stephen A. Marks and Robert E. Marks. He died of Parkinson's disease.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969, and previously as 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963. He assumed the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson was also a United States representative and later majority leader in the United States Senate. Johnson is one of only four people to have served, at various times, in all four federal elected positions.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident, also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved both a proven confrontation on August 2, 1964 and an unlikely confrontation on August 4, 1964 between ships of North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but the Pentagon Papers, the memoirs of Robert McNamara, and NSA publications from 2005, suggest that the dismissal of legitimate concerns regarding the veracity of the second incident by state department and other government personnel was used to justify an escalation by the US to a state of war against North Vietnam.
Voice of America (VOA) is an American international broadcaster funded by the United States Congress. It is the largest and oldest U.S. funded international broadcaster. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content in 47 languages which it distributes to affiliate stations around the globe. It is primarily viewed by foreign audiences, so VOA programming has an influence on public opinion abroad regarding the United States and its people.
James Edwin Webb was an American government official who served as the second appointed administrator of NASA from February 14, 1961, to October 7, 1968. Webb oversaw NASA from the beginning of the Kennedy administration through the end of the Johnson administration, thus overseeing all the critical first manned launches in the Mercury through Gemini programs, until just before the first crewed Apollo flight. He also dealt with the Apollo 1 fire.
Bobby Ray Inman is a retired United States Navy admiral who held several influential positions in the United States Intelligence Community.
Lawrence Francis O'Brien Jr. was an American politician and basketball commissioner. He was one of the United States Democratic Party's leading electoral strategists for more than two decades. He served as Postmaster General in the cabinet of President Lyndon Johnson and chair of the Democratic National Committee. He also served as commissioner of the National Basketball Association from 1975 to 1984. The NBA Championship Trophy is named after him.
Robert Clifton Weaver was an American economist, academic, and political administrator; he served as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.) from 1966 to 1968, when the department was newly established by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Weaver was the first African American to be appointed to a US cabinet-level position.
Roger Wilkins was an African-American civil rights leader, professor of history, and journalist.
David Leo Lawrence was an American politician who served as the 37th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1959 to 1963. The first Catholic elected as governor, Lawrence is the only mayor of Pittsburgh to have also been elected as Governor of Pennsylvania. He served four terms as mayor, from 1946 through 1959.
Richard Calder was a senior official at the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Paul Culliton Warnke was an American diplomat.
Lucius Durham Battle, known as Luke Battle, was a career Foreign Service officer who served with distinction in Washington, Europe and the Middle East.
The presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson began on November 22, 1963, when Johnson became the 36th President of the United States upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and ended on January 20, 1969. He had been Vice President of the United States for 1,036 days when he succeeded to the presidency. A Democrat from Texas, he ran for and won a full four-year term in the 1964 election, winning by a landslide over Republican opponent Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Johnson did not run for a second full term in the 1968 presidential election, he was succeeded by Republican Richard Nixon. His presidency marked the high tide of modern liberalism in the United States.
Joseph Abraham Mendenhall was a United States State Department official, known for his advisory work during the Kennedy administration on policy towards Vietnam and Laos. He was best known for his participation in the Krulak Mendenhall mission to South Vietnam in 1963 with General Victor Krulak. Their vastly divergent conclusions led U.S. President John F. Kennedy to ask if they had visited the same country. Mendenhall continued his work in the Indochina region after Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in wake of Kennedy's assassination.
The first inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson as the 36th President of the United States was held on Friday, November 22, 1963, aboard Air Force One at Love Field, Dallas, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy earlier that day. The inauguration – the eighth non-scheduled, extraordinary inauguration to ever take place – marked the commencement of the first term of Lyndon B. Johnson as President.
Harry Cummings McPherson, Jr. served as counsel and special counsel to President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1969 and was Johnson's chief speechwriter from 1966 to 1969. McPherson's A Political Education, 1972, is a classic insider's view of Washington and an essential source for Johnson's presidency. A prominent Washington lawyer and lobbyist since 1969, McPherson was awarded American Lawyer magazine's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He died February 16, 2012, in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dwight Johnson Porter was a United States diplomat.
The United States' Central Intelligence Agency made several unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro during his time as the president of Cuba.
James H. Rowe Jr. was an American lawyer and New Dealer who was selected by President Harry Truman to work on the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, commonly known as the Hoover Commission. He was a political strategist in the Democratic Party and is best known for his memo to Truman on re-election strategy. He was an advisor to both Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey.
The presidential transition of Richard Nixon began when Richard Nixon won the United States 1968 United States presidential election, becoming the President-elect, and ended when Nixon was inaugurated at noon EST on January 20, 1969.