Bobby Baker
Encyclopedia
Robert Gene Baker was a political adviser to Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...

, and an organizer for the Democratic Party.

Life

Baker was the son of the Pickens postmaster and lived in a house on Hampton Avenue. He attended Pickens Elementary and Pickens High School, until he achieved an appointment when he was fourteen years old as a page of the US Senate with the help of Harold Holder, great uncle of composer William Rowland
William Rowland
William Harold Rowland was a Welsh cricketer. Rowland's batting style is unknown, but it is known he occasionally fielded as a wicket-keeper. He was born in Llandrillo-yn-Rhos, Denbighshire....

, also born in Pickens and childhood friend and classmate of Baker's twin siblings. Baker resigned eventually due to allegations of misconduct and a well-publicized scandal involving government contracts.

In 1942, at the age of 14, Baker became a page
United States Senate Page
A United States Senate Page is a non-partisan federal employee serving the United States Senate in Washington, DC. Despite the non-partisan affiliation, Pages are typically divided to serve the party that appointed them.-Selection:In order to become a US Senate Page, one must first be nominated...

 for Senator Burnet Maybank, and quickly became friends with several important Democrats. When Lyndon Johnson was elected to the Senate in 1948, he was told that Baker knew "where the bodies are buried", and established a close relationship with him. Baker was eventually promoted to the Senate's Secretary to the Majority (which at the time was the Democrats); this was his highest-ranking official position, as well as the position from which he would resign.

Scandal

Baker frequently mixed politics with personal business. He was one of the initiators and board-members of the Quorum Club located in the Carroll Arms Hotel adjacent a Senate office building. The society was alleged to have been a place for lawmakers and other influential men to meet for food, drink, and women. Baker, and one of his colleagues, lobbyist Bill Thompson, are said to have arranged for Quorum Club hostess Ellen Rometsch to meet John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

. Rometsch was of East German origin, and had been a Communist party member prior to coming to the United States.

During 1962, Baker established the Serve-U-Corporation with his friend, Fred Black. The company was designed to provide vending machines for companies working for federally granted programs. Though a part of numerous other deals involving both politics and private financial affairs, this particular business venture would cause a scandal. Baker was investigated by the Senate Rules Committee for allegations of congressional bribery
Bribery
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or...

 using money and arranged sexual favors, in exchange for votes and government contracts.

In a biography of Robert Kennedy, author Evan Thomas
Evan Thomas
Evan Welling Thomas III is an American journalist and author. He currently teaches journalism at Princeton University.-Life and career:Thomas was born in Huntington, New York and was raised in Cold Spring Harbor, New York...

 described an arrangement in which the President's brother, and then Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, was able to arrange a deal with J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...

 in order to quell the Senate investigation of Bobby Baker. This prevented public scrutiny of Baker from causing exposure of President Kennedy's involvement with Ellen Rometsch. Hoover successfully limited the Senate investigation of Baker by threatening to release embarrassing information about senators contained in FBI files. In exchange for this, Robert Kennedy reassured Hoover that his job as FBI Director was secure and also agreed to allow the FBI to proceed with wiretaps that Hoover had requested, including wiretaps of political activists such as Martin Luther King.

The Serve-U-Corporation deal became the subject of allegations of conflict of interest and corruption after a disgruntled former government contractor sued Baker and Black in civil court.
This lawsuit eventually generated a great deal of news and a Republican investigation into Baker's business and political activities. Criticized increasingly, Baker resigned his job as Secretary to the Majority on October 7, 1963.

Conspiracy theorists have made much of the fact that Baker's secretary, Nancy Carole Tyler
Nancy Carole Tyler
Nancy Carole Tyler was personal secretary to Bobby Baker and a roommate of Mary Jo Kopechne. She was involved in a call girl procurement service in the early 1960s, which operated from a base at the Quorum Club, in Washington, DC. Ellen Rometsch disclosed details of this service...

, shared an apartment with Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne was an American teacher, secretary, and political campaign specialist who died in a car accident in Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts on July 18, 1969, while a passenger in a car being driven by U.S. Senator Edward M...

, an aide to Senator George Smathers
George Smathers
George Armistead Smathers was an American lawyer and politician who represented the state of Florida in the United States Senate for eighteen years, from 1951 until 1969, as a member of the Democratic Party.-Early life:...

 and later to Senator Bobby Kennedy. Tyler was killed in an airplane crash during 1965. Kopechne was killed during 1969, in an accident on Chappaquiddick Island in a car driven by Senator Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...

. Noting these women's unfortunate and untimely deaths, some conspiracy theorists have used this to associate the Bobby Baker scandal with the John F. Kennedy assassination. However, these theories are widely disregarded by historians and subsequent investigations due to Baker's role in the Democratic Party and well-known friendship with John F. Kennedy, as well as Ted Kennedy's involvement with the second death. Others contend that Baker did not have any relationship to these tragedies other than perhaps coincidentally knowing the people who were killed.
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