Goofs

When President Johnson is on the telephone with J. Edgar Hoover he makes repeated references to Alan Dulles as head of the CIA. Dulles had actually been fired by President Kennedy in 1961 and replaced by John McCone who served in that role until he resigned in 1965.

In the first scene of the film, LBJ is seen asking Mrs. Johnson if she called Rose Kennedy.

In fact both Mrs. Johnson and LBJ called and spoke to Rose Kennedy during that flight. The recording of this conversation is available publicly.

In the film the ages of Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman are misstated. Their ages were given as 25 and 21, respectively. In truth Schwerner was 24 and Goodman was 20 at the time of the Mississippi incident.

The disappearance of the three civil rights workers (Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner) is shown happening after LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act into law. In fact, they disappeared on June 21, 1964, and the Civil Rights Act was signed 11 days later on July 2, 1964. The disappearance catalyzed the passage of the law and the subsequent Voting Rights Act.

Throughout the movie, Bottles of Fresca, one of LBJ's favorite drinks are shown. Fresca did not come to the US market until 1966.

The movie shows MLK accepting his Nobel award before the presidential election. In fact the award ceremony is always on Dec 10th, the anniversary of Nobel's death - more than a month after the election.

Many words and phrases used in this TV movie were not in the common vernacular in 1964, including "tarmac" (popularized by John le Carre in the 1970s), "cut to the chase," and "reach out" which is used these days as a poor substitute for "contact."

Early in the film, in a scene set in early 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. looks out the window at a parked van. Driving past it is a 1965 Cadillac.

In the opening scene, a Secret Service agent is seen guarding a door while holding an M16. While the Secret Service was issued M16s before Kennedy was assassinated and well before the military adopted them, the improved version of the flash hider shown on the rifle in the movie was not designed until years after first issuance of the M16 to the military in 1969.

Johnson attributes Clausewitz to the quote "politics is war by other means". The correct quote by the Prussian strategist war "War is the continuation of politics by other means".