The text of Spellman’s announcement:
more
“I’ve got Damon,” Melville told Klocky as the latter whipped the add out of his typewriter and handed it to the operator with only a cursory pause for copyreading.
“I can’t talk to him now. Just brief him on that announcement. He’ll know what to do. Tell him we need manpower but quick.”
Melville looked a little hurt at Klocky’s unaccustomed abruptness.
“He says he can’t talk right now, Mr. Damon. All we know is what I just read you. Klocky says he needs some help.”
At the other end of the line, Damon smiled wryly.
“I’ll bet he does,” he said. “All right, Roger—this is what I want you to do. Call DeVarian at home. Then get hold of Rod Pitcher and—let’s see—better check the work schedule and phone whoever’s on the day desk later today. Tell ’em all to get down there on the double. Tell Chris Harmon to go directly to the White House—we’ll staff State Department with somebody else.”
“Gotcha,” Melville said.
‘‘Don’t hang up. Call Mrs. Strotsky and give her the home phone numbers of every dictationist. Tell her to call them and get their asses down there. Her too. Don’t waste time giving anybody a complete newscast. Just supply the gist of what’s happened and tell everybody to move. One more thing, when you get our Senate guy—you know, Warner Goldberg—have him go right to Madigan’s apartment and stick with the Vice President until further notice. After DeVarian, better call Harmon first, Goldberg second and Pitcher next. Then the rest of the list. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Good boy. Tell Klocky I’m on my way.”
Damon hung up. The busty blonde who had been sharing his bed was wide awake, her eyes two big question marks. “Is it something important, Gunther?”
He looked at her, half regretfully because he was feeling horny again, and half in irritation because she represented a decidedly minor problem in the midst of a major crisis.
“President’s plane apparently is down somewhere,” he said. “Look, I’ve got to get to the office. I’ll leave you five bucks and you can take a cab home whenever you feel like it. Sorry, Janie, but I don’t have time to take you myself.”
“Sure, Gunther. I understand.” Then she added hopefully, “If you want, I’ll come back tonight and cook you supper.”
Damon shook his head.
“Janie,” he said, “I have a feeling I might not be home for a week.”
When the telephone jangled impatiently at Fred Madigan’s house, he was dreaming that Hester had slapped Jeremy Haines’s face at a Cabinet meeting. It being a dream, he did not challenge her illogical presence at that august assembly. The persistent ringing finally jarred him back to reality.
He stumbled out of bed and groped his way in the darkness toward the hall telephone in their Georgetown apartment. Always considerate of Hester, he remembered to shut the bedroom door and only then did he turn on a light so he could find the phone without crashing over furniture.
“Hello,” he muttered sleepily.
“Mr. Vice President, this is Bob Davenport at Secret Service. We’ve got some bad news.”
“Bad news?” Madigan was wide awake instantly.
“Yes, sir. The FAA has just told us Air Force One is overdue. We thought we’d better advise you.”
“Overdue?” Madigan asked incredulously. “You mean it’s crashed?”
“We don’t know yet, sir. There’s been no contact with the plane for an hour and we’re afraid it’s down. They’re searching around Winslow, Arizona. The White House asked us to keep you informed.”
“This is terrible,” Madigan said. “What should I do now?”
“Just stay put, sir. We’ve got two additional agents on the way over to your apartment.”
“Additional agents? What for?”
The Secret Serviceman paused as if he was having trouble disgorging the words, and also in disbelief that the Vice President had asked the question.
“In case . . . in case the President is dead, sir.”
Only then did the awful import of the moment dawn on Frederick James Madigan. In the same dawning of truth, there was a flush of abject shame as he recalled wishing for exactly what seemed to have happened. He was not an evil man and even as he thanked Davenport and hung up he said a silent prayer for forgiveness.
The bedroom door opened. Hester stood there, sensing that something had happened and confirming it with one look at her husband’s face—taut, gray with shock, frightened.
“Fred? What is it?”
“My God, Hester. They think the President’s plane has crashed.”
She moved to him and took both his hands in hers. He loved her too much to see through the mask of simulated concern that had dropped over her face. He put his arms around her and hugged her as if the contact would give him strength.
“For God’s sake, Hester,” he blurted in an instinctive surge of honesty. “I don’t want to be President. I’m not fit to be President.”
“Nonsense, darling. Just take what comes and do your best. And remember, I’ll always be by your side, helping you however I can.”
She spoke those lines in a low, dramatic voice that would have sounded artificial on a bad soap opera. But her words penetrated Madigan’s befuddled mind with a ring of absolute sincerity, inspiration and comfort. She had said what he wanted to hear, what he had to hear, and in his overpowering gratitude for this lovely, understanding woman it completely escaped him that her eyes were bright, excited.
Command authority passed swiftly from Arthur Klockenheimer to Gunther Damon the moment the news superintendent entered the office.
The room already was crackling with half-suppressed excitement. Pitcher was there, rummaging through the contents of a thick manila file folder marked air force one —presidential flights. Sam Foley had reported, three hours ahead of his normal schedule. Lynx Grimes, looking slightly disheveled with no make-up and bloodshot eyes (she had been notified an hour and a half after sending a date home), was taking dictation from Chris Harmon at the White House.
Damon felt a throb of sympathy toward Klocky, who glanced wearily up from his mounting mountain of copy and greeted him with a fervent “Thank God, I’m glad you’re here.”
“Who’s dictating?’’
“Chris. Fuel exhaustion time will be at two minutes after six. The seven o’clock press conference has been moved from the White House to the FAA auditorium.”
“Sam, start doing a new lead based on that fuel exhaustion. We’ll bang it out at exactly six-oh-two. Wrap up everything we’ve got so far. That should hold us until the seven o’clock shindig.”
Foley nodded, calm as usual in the middle of crisis. He was the kind of deskman who would remain unperturbed if he was handling a story on his own impending death. Damon walked over to where Pitcher was scribbling notes from the Air Force One file.
“Pitch, we’re damned close to fuel exhaustion time. You think there’s much hope for that plane?”
“It’s down, Gunther. It has to be.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. We’ll start sounding the voice of doom the second we get the word on the fuel. What the hell are you doing?”
“Looking up some stuff on the history of Air Force One.”
“Good idea, Pitch. Bat us out a good sidebar on anything that’s ever happened to a presidential plane. We oughta have another on that Condor. Maybe you’d better do that one first.”
“I did one when Haines first got the plane. Lemme do the history piece and maybe Roger can rewrite my old Condor stuff. It’s right here.”
“Okay, I’ll give it to Melville. Be sure and include the time when Johnson had that Cuban bomb threat just before a flight—all the security precautions they had to take. This damned thing could turn out to be sabotage.”
Pitcher finished transcribing his notes and began to write, beating on the keys with his two forefingers in the fashion of so many newspaperme
n who never took the time or had the time to learn a touch system. He told of the only previous difficulty encountered by a President on an air trip—Franklin Roosevelt in the old DC-4 newsmen had dubbed the Sacred Cow. On a flight during World War II carrying FDR to Malta, the DC-4s wing flaps refused to come down. The plane had to be landed fifty miles an hour faster than normal, with Secret Servicemen bracing themselves around the President and hoping they themselves could survive long enough to carry Roosevelt off the Cow if she crashed.
The story went on to recall a routine flight by Lyndon Johnson to a Democratic fund-raising dinner in Miami. It was turned into a nightmare of tension when the FBI relayed to the Secret Service a tip that a Cuban pilot would try to ram or shoot down the presidential jet. The Boeing that normally was used as Air Force One was yanked off the trip and replaced by another 707, without the presidential seal and with all the markings including the aircraft serial number painted out. Fighters flew a protective cover above the transport and the landing was made at Palm Beach instead of the announced destination of Miami. The return trip involved a secret take-off at dawn from Homestead AFB. Possible sabotage, Pitcher added, would be a prime target in any investigation involving a mishap to Air Force One.
Pitcher then went into brief descriptions of the predecessor aircraft used by Presidents. The Cow flown by FDR and Truman. Truman’s DC-6, christened the Independence. Eisenhower’s Constellation, the Columbine. And N-26000 —the Boeing that had served both Kennedy and Johnson. He also noted that the last plane to be called “Condor” was a twin-engine biplane transport flown by American and Eastern in the late twenties and early thirties. For background purposes, he dwelled heavily on the history of the First Air Force One.
. . . but the Cow, oldest, slowest and least plush of any of the presidential planes, was the most unusual. For one thing, it was the first aircraft to be designed and flown for a President of the United States.
Its fuselage number was 78. Its factory serial number was 7471. It entered the Douglas assembly line in Santa Monica, Calif., in October 1943—at first identical to the 77 DC-4s that had preceded it down the assembly line.
But one day that month a classified telegram was flashed to the Douglas plant. Fuselage 78 was removed from the regular assembly line and taken to a heavily guarded area. Workers quickly noticed that an unusual number of inspectors were on hand to watch Fuselage 78 metamorphose into a real airplane.
They also were curious about some unique blueprints which called for installation of a battery-operated elevator in the rear of the plane.
The elevator plus the special furnishings and private stateroom were, of course, expressly designed for President Roosevelt. The elevator was more than an item of convenience. It was the brain child of the Secret Service, which told Douglas that on previous air trips involving conventional planes it had been necessary to construct bulky, no-step ramps to aid the polio-crippled President in deplaning and emplaning.
Such ramps, the Secret Service felt, were a dead giveaway to FDR’s presence and in wartime this was intolerable. The elevator would make it not only easy to lift the President from ground to cabin level but would also eliminate the telltale ramps.
On June 12, 1944, AF-7451 officially became a member of the armed forces and also became the first airplane in history to be assigned to the White House. The Army tried valiantly to pin the title of Flying. White House on AF-7451, but reporters began calling it the Sacred Cow and the less-dignified name stuck . . .
Pitcher wound up with the observation that, “from the Cow to the Condor, presidential planes have had one thing in common—they have been the most scrupulously maintained, rigorously inspected and carefully flown aircraft in the world, which makes today’s events even more incredible and unbelievable.”
The hands on the bureau’s big electric wall clock moved inexorably toward forming the vertical line between the 6 and the 12.
A red light at the bottom of the clock glowed, a spot of carmine marking the hour. Sam Foley put a cigarette in his mouth but left it dangling from one corner, unlit.
The light went out. Damon cursed softly, under his breath, and it was more like a prayer.
The second hand crept just past the 12.
Pitcher had just finished typing his concluding lines when both the incredible and the unbelievable became confirmed reality.
The hog-caller tones of Evelyn Strotsky’s voice boomed through the office. “Bulletin, White House!”
A dictationist’s typewriter began clattering. Damon stood over his shoulder, hand poised ready to tear out the paper the second the youngster finished.
Bulletin
precede plane
Washington (IPS)—The White House announced today that the fuel exhaustion time for the President’s plane was reached at 6:02 A.M. EDT and the aircraft was presumed down somewhere in rugged Arizona mountain terrain.
more
Damon yanked and in almost the same motion was back sitting in the center slot of the half-moon news desk, stylus pen playing rapid hopscotch over the copy. He crossed out the “more” and handed the bulletin to the operator. In front of him was Foley’s new lead, pegged to what Chris Harmon had just phoned. Damon nodded in mute satisfaction at Sam’s opening paragraphs, wrote “urgent—A wire” at the top and began feeding the pages—“books” in wire service terminology—to the insatiable printer.
Urgent
3rd lead plane
Washington (IPS)—The President’s jet disappeared over Arizona today while on a routine vacation flight to Palm Springs, Calif., setting in motion the grimmest, most massive search for a missing aircraft in history.
The White House announced at 6:02 A.M. EDT that the fuel on the giant Condor, only recently added to the presidential air fleet, had to be exhausted. The last known communication from the plane pinpointed its location at 45 miles east of Winslow, Ariz.
In that final message, Air Force One reported it was climbing to avoid a thunderstorm area . . .
“Pitch!” Damon summoned the aviation writer without looking up from Foley’s story. Rod already was standing by the desk, having just handed Klocky his sidebar.
“Right here, Gunther.”
“Hop over to FAA and help out with that news conference. Evelyn, break into that White House dictation a minute—I wanna talk to Chris.”
Damon’s fingers tapped an impatient, nervous tattoo on the desk. His phone rang. “Damon, Chris. As soon as you’re finished, catch the conference at FAA. I’m sending Pitch over too. I’ll get somebody to the White House as soon as I can—maybe Spartan if he hasn’t left town yet on his vacation.”
Al Spartan was the second IPS White House reporter. His own overdue vacation, which started the previous day, had been approved when Haines’s trip was announced. Nothing is duller than the White House beat when the President is out of town, and Damon had figured on covering the run with one of his smarter if less experienced men.
“You don’t have to call Al,” Harmon said. “He just walked in. Says he heard the news and you can give him his vacation later.”
“Tell him thanks—and there’ll be a few days added on, compliments of IPS,” Damon said gratefully. This, he thought, was so damned typical of most of his staff. They griped, bitched, complained, moaned and cussed at IPS parsimonious policies. At being outnumbered by AP and UPI most of the time, one IPS man being expected to compete successfully against two UPI and four or five AP reporters. But when a major story broke, they were like old firemen smelling smoke, wading into the coverage with the esprit de corps of a gang of Marines. At this moment, he was sentimentally proud of his troops and then the fleeting wisp of sentiment evaporated under the heat of what had to be done.
“Evelyn—has Goldberg checked in at Madigan’s yet? Goddammit, did he walk over there? Put him on as soon as he calls.”
The newsroom was filling up. Mobilization, wire service version. The teletypes never paused in their incessant pounding, beating out their uneven yet pe
culiarly rhythmic cadence with the cacophony of tribal drums.
A copy boy brought Damon a message off the C wire, a private teletype line between the Washington and New York bureaus.
GD/WA
FYI U BROKE TWO MINS AHED AP BUT ONE BEHIND UPI ON FLASH. POUR IT ON.
JT/NY
“JT” stood for Jules Tamborello, the New York overnight chief. Damon was used to New York’s habit of sending unnecessary pep talks when all hell was breaking loose. He was trying to decide whether this one required a polite or a nasty answer when the operator manning the B wire tore off a message from Little Rock and handed it to him without comment, a faint smile of anticipation on his face. He was rewarded instantly as Damon scanned the message.
WA
CLIENT ASKS GOOD COVERAGE SMORNING CAB HEARING ON PROPOSED NEW AIR SERVICE TO VARIOUS COMMUNITIES IN EASTERN ARKANSAS.
LR
Gunther Damon uttered, with exquisite emphasis and justifiable exasperation, that one word of profanity reserved for certain people, occasions and situations.
By coincidence, Rod Pitcher and Chris Harmon arrived in separate cabs at the Federal Aviation Administration Building almost simultaneously. It was a pleasant surprise for Harmon, who had never been inside the FAA. Like most reporters overly used to their own beats, walking into a strange government agency was the equivalent of entering a foreign country for the first time.
The IPS State Department staffer had the build and facial characteristics of Walter Pidgeon and the operating techniques of a New York City homicide detective. The combination came in handy at State, where dignity and digging were twin requisites. He could be and often was mistaken for an ambassador at some diplomatic function. He also had enough tipsters, blabby officials and outright stool pigeons scattered throughout the department and diplomatic corps to keep the DOS press officers in a constant state of confusion. When Harmon quoted some “high diplomatic official,” his source could range from the Secretary of State to a minor attaché at the Luxembourg Embassy.
The President's Plane Is Missing Page 8
