The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  “No, I’ve talked to the Attorney General, and it’s his opinion that I should be sworn in here,” Johnson replied. With each passing moment his version of his conversation with Hickory Hill was growing stronger. “I’m expecting a judge, a woman, a friend,” he said, and he added, “She’s a Kennedy appointee.”

  Then the realization hit O’Brien: This man is President of the United States. Larry’s opposition ceased. He closed his eyes, praying that the judge arrived before the police.

  O’Donnell was harder to shake. He couldn’t see why Kennedy people should be involved in a Johnson ceremony. In his opinion the presence of the two groups was a matter of pure chance. The new President kept insisting that he would have held the plane for Mrs. Kennedy. There can be little doubt that he had intended to do that from the outset, but Ken was skeptical. He was convinced that had the judge reached the airport before the hearse Johnson would have taken off without them. He kept remembering the struggle at Parkland, and his face tightened more; to Ted Clifton he looked wolflike. Clifton heard O’Donnell saying over and over, “We’ve got to go,” “We’ve got to get out of here,” “We can’t wait.” Each time Johnson’s reply was the same: “No, I have word from the Attorney General.”

  Later, when Clifton learned that Attorney General Kennedy disavowed advising a Dallas oath (a disavowal strongly supported by Kennedy’s opening words to Katzenbach: “Lyndon wants to be sworn in in Texas.…”), he concluded that the new President must have meant Attorney General Waggoner Carr of Texas. But both O’Brien and O’Donnell clearly heard President Johnson say “Bobby.” Bob Kennedy was the one man who could have persuaded O’Donnell to withdraw his objections. If Bob wanted the new President sworn in in Dallas—and the Kennedy people never dreamed that Johnson might have misunderstood the Attorney General (though he apparently did)—they would just have to sweat out the judge’s arrival. They only hoped she would hurry. They literally prayed for her swift arrival. To Clifton, as to O’Brien, the Parkland ogres had sprouted to colossal size. The possibility that the slain President’s body might be kidnaped seemed very real.

  President Johnson crossed the aisle, settled into the yellow upholstery of the Presidential chair, and ordered more vegetable soup from Joe Ayres. Kilduff was in and out, briefing him. He had been unable to find a Signal Corps technician who would record the oath, but the Dictaphone on the desk by the soup bowl would probably serve. He himself could hold its microphone near Johnson and the judge during the ceremony. Afterward the Dictabelt, transferred to quarter-inch tape, could be distributed to the networks. Cecil Stoughton had prepared two cameras, one a 35-millimeter Alpa Reflex, which did not require a flash, and his Hasselblad, which did. The Hasselblad was equipped with a wide-angle lens, nearly 90 degrees; with it, Stoughton could photograph the whole stateroom. The fluorescent light overhead was bad, but he had loaded his reels with extremely fast film—Tri-X, ASA 400. Development should present no problems.

  The soup craze had been succeeded by an ice water craze. Every throat was parched. The stifling air seemed thick enough to congeal. If they waited another five minutes, Johnson would have to change his shirt again.

  The bugbear of blackshirts obsessing the mafia was entirely hallucination. Only one Dallas man had come to Love Field from Parkland; Vernon Oneal was standing by Gate 28, waiting to reclaim his Cadillac. By coincidence the undertaker’s parents had once rented a duplex from Sarah Hughes, and he, not Chief Curry, became the first person to note her arrival at the airport. Oneal had overheard the chief and Jack Ready discussing her. He saw her gay sports car swerve around the “Spirit of Flight” statue and shouted, “There she is!”

  Curry greeted her and took her arm. “Barefoot Sanders wants you to call him about the oath,” he told her. “There’s a phone on the plane.”

  She nodded absently and hurried after him to the ramp. Jim Swindal took over there. He escorted her up the steps and introduced her to Ted Clifton. She said, “I have to use your telephone. The U.S. Attorney has the oath of office.”

  “Here it is,” said a voice, and a hand thrust Marie Fehmer’s 3 × 5 card at her. Pocketing it, Sarah followed Clifton through the staff cabin, into the stateroom. She embraced the President, Mrs. Johnson, and her fellow Texans, and Johnson said, “We’ll get as many people in here as possible.” He dispatched men to round up witnesses. Valenti, Youngblood, Roberts, and Lem Johns were sent into the staff area to extend a general invitation, and then he himself went in.

  Gesticulating broadly, he announced, “If anybody wants to join in in the swearing-in ceremony, I would be happy and proud to have you.”

  There was no stampede. Johnson’s friends and allies excepted—and since he had just acquired possession of the aircraft, they were a minority—26000’s regular passengers hung back. Their aloofness can only be understood in the context of 2:35 P.M. Though the assassin had been caught, forty minutes would pass before the networks even announced that “a suspect” had been arrested. In the absence of information there was a general revulsion, not only toward Dallas, but toward the entire State of Texas. Lyndon Johnson, the most famous of Texans, was the innocent victim of that visceral reaction, and Cecil Stoughton’s subsequent negatives are stark evidence of what Larry O’Brien called “the tension on the plane.” The spectators who were to be framed in Stoughton’s lens were a lopsided group. Dr. Burkley stood behind someone else. There were two agents, there were Kilduff and his two pool reporters. There was Underwood, and there were three Kennedy secretaries—Evelyn, Mary, and Pam—each of whom was led in by Jack Valenti and Lem Johns. The new Chief Executive thanked them effusively, kissed Evelyn’s hand and Pam’s and called Pam “little lady.”

  Godfrey McHugh was beside John Kennedy’s coffin, standing rigidly at attention. O’Brien participated in setting up the ritual which Lyndon Johnson had said Bob Kennedy wanted; then he retreated behind Sarah Hughes. The feeling extended to members of the permanent Presidential staff. Stoughton himself wished he were elsewhere. In his prints two tiny points of light identify the spectacles of Ira Gearhart, but the bagman and his football had to be there; the thermonuclear threat was no respecter of tragedy. Gearhart was alone. The crewmen had quietly retired. Boots Miller of the baggage detail was in the staff cabin with his face averted, cradling in his arms a paper bag containing Jacqueline Kennedy’s ruined pillbox hat, and Jim Swindal recoiled down the aisle to Clint Hill’s side and pressed his face against Roy Kellerman’s broad back. As 26000’s pilot the Colonel should have been present. Nobody had known that he took politics seriously. But beneath his Milton Caniff air the dapper Alabaman had idolized John Kennedy. He had not known he could suffer so. He felt as though he had a stone in his chest. It would have taken every Johnson agent to drag him into the stateroom. As he explained afterward, “I just didn’t want to be in the picture, I didn’t belong to the Lyndon Johnson team. My President was in that box.”

  President Johnson did not deserve this. To a man of his hypersensitivity such treatment was deeply wounding. More important, it was an affront to the Presidency. But those who abstained from the ceremony meant no disrespect, and all Air Force One’s passengers were in shock. Martyrdom had transformed the John Kennedy they had known. The politician who had flown west to woo votes no longer existed, even in memory. The manner of his death had clothed him in romance, investing him with a magic more powerful than Prospero’s, so that

  Nothing of him… doth fade

  But doth suffer a sea-change

  Into something rich and strange.

  Prospero’s conjury raised a tempest. The coexistence of the two administrations in an oppressive airplane, and the fact that most of these same individuals had battled one another three years earlier in Los Angeles, made tempest inevitable here. There were no villains aboard. The villain was downtown at police headquarters.

  The public, poring over the print which Stoughton was to relay within an hour over an AP drum at the Dallas News, saw a hazy human frieze in the backgrou
nd and the Johnsons in the foreground, but the focus of attention was the classic, pain-torn profile of Mrs. John F. Kennedy. It was her presence that the man about to be sworn in had coveted most. He wanted her beside him and he said so to everyone within earshot. In the end she appeared, but the decision was hers. Three years in the White House had given her an abiding respect for her husband’s office. She understood the symbols of authority, the need for some semblance of national majesty after the disaster, and so she came.

  They were waiting for her. O’Donnell and O’Brien, prowling the corridor, exchanged solicitous looks. First one and then the other gently opened the bedroom door and peered inside. No sign of her; she must be in the powder room. They couldn’t venture there, and Ken went for Mary and Evelyn. Neither man contemplated a role in the ceremony for her. O’Donnell, in fact, was vehemently opposed to it. But they were afraid she might have collapsed. At the same time, Johnson was concentrating on the stateroom tableau which Stoughton would record. “How do you want us? Can you get us all in?” he asked him. “I’ll put the judge so I’m looking over her shoulder, Mr. President,” the photographer replied. The President told Sarah, “We’ll wait for Mrs. Kennedy. I want her here.” Stoughton suggested that she stand on one side of him and Lady Bird on the other. Johnson nodded. He was becoming impatient, though. Looking at his wife, he asked that someone summon her. He glanced at the bedroom door, glanced again, and said decisively, “Just a minute. I’m going to get her.” At that instant the door opened and the widowed First Lady stepped out.

  During this sequence of episodes—Johnson’s talk with Ken and Larry, the arrival of Sarah Hughes, and the posing in the stateroom—Jacqueline Kennedy had been out of touch with events elsewhere in the plane. This was possible, just as Johnson’s earlier camouflage from Godfrey had been possible, because the President’s personal quarters had been devised to provide him with a maximum of privacy. All Mrs. Kennedy had known was that she was supposed to wait an hour. She had no intention of spending any part of it changing into her Austin dress. Out of curiosity she sent for George Thomas, but her husband’s valet hadn’t laid it out; he left hurriedly, explaining that he was “too tumbled up” to talk. Really it didn’t matter. With a foresight which eluded all those who had urged (and would continue to urge) her to shed the violated pink suit, she sensed how utterly wrong that would be. To stand beside her husband’s coffin in that clean white frock would have been incongruous, a profanity.

  She paced between the beds, passing and repassing the hated Austin clothes, and then entered the powder room. There was an overhead light, a mirror tilted upward for the convenience of the beholder, a vanity shelf furnished with accessories, and a switch controlling the light, and, facing it all, a low stool upholstered in saffron leather. After washing her face and combing her hair with the precision of a robot she laid the powder room comb aside and gazed blankly at the result. She saw nothing; her thoughts were elsewhere.

  She was thinking about time. It was such a long time. If she were to follow Johnson’s suggestion and change, an hour might be appropriate, but inasmuch as she had no intention of removing this suit, it seemed interminable. Suddenly solitude was unbearable. She decided to spend the rest of the hiatus with someone who had been close to him: Ken, perhaps, or Larry. Probably they were nearby. She stepped into the corridor, looked toward the stateroom, and saw everyone waiting. Their expressions were expectant and then, when they saw her, relieved. It was unbelievable: they had been waiting for her. She hurried toward them, wondering, Why did he tell me the judge wouldn’t be here for an hour? I could have just stayed in there!

  Albert Thomas embraced her. “You’re a brave little lady,” he whispered. Jesse Curry told her the Dallas Police Department had done everything it could. Johnson pressed her hand and said, “This is the saddest moment in my life.” He leaned down, introducing her to Sarah Hughes, and then drew her to his left side. “Is this the way you want us?” he inquired of Stoughton. The little photographer, drenched with perspiration, was crouched on the seat directly across the aisle from the Presidential chair. He called out instructions, asking witnesses to move left, right, up, down. All the time his mind was racing. Doubtless this would be the most important picture he would ever take. He was naturally a worrier, and he had some cause for concern. He had failed with the Hasselblad before. In addition he was apprehensive about Ken O’Donnell. With the ambivalence of everyone aboard, he called Johnson “Mr. President” while looking to President Kennedy’s chief lieutenant as the man he must please. One sure way to displease Ken would be to photograph Mrs. Kennedy’s stains. Bloodwise I’d better be O.K., Stoughton thought anxiously.

  He was ready. The Chief Executive and the two First Ladies were ready. The first woman to preside over a Presidential oath was as ready as she would ever be—Sarah was shaking all over, but she felt certain she could make it—and Kilduff was holding the Dictaphone mike by her mouth, his thumb tensed to depress the control button. Then a voice from the semicircle of witnesses asked, “What about a Bible?” The Scriptures had always been part of the ritual. There was a pause in which everyone looked at everyone else, hoping that Lem Johns’s manifest included someone of exceptional piety. Then Joe Ayres reassured them. President Kennedy always carried his personal Bible under the lid of the table between the two beds in his private cabin, and Ayres went to fetch it.

  It was an unusual copy, and very personal; even Larry O’Brien, to whom Ayres handed it, had never seen it before. The cover was of tooled leather, the edges were hand-sewn; on the front there was a gold cross and, on the inside cover, the tiny sewn black-on-black initials, “JFK.” On flights alone the President had read it evenings before snapping off the night light. Larry carried the white box in which the President had kept it down the corridor, and as he re-entered the stateroom and stepped behind Sarah Hughes she nervously began the oath. Her voice quavered, “I do solemnly swear that I will—”

  “Just a minute, Judge,” Larry said, slipping the Bible from the box and handing it to her.

  She regarded it dubiously. Kennedy, she remembered, had quoted the Bible a lot. This must be his—after all, this was his plane—and that meant it was probably Catholic. She hesitated and decided it would be all right.5

  “I do solemnly swear…” she began again.

  The oath lasted twenty-eight seconds, the judge leading and the new President responding, his right hand aloft and his big left hand resting lightly over President Kennedy’s black initials. His spruced hair, cut only the day before, his tie and his breast-pocket handkerchief were all correct, yet nothing could efface his rough bulk; he was clearly the tallest man in the cabin. Lady Bird looked birdlike. And Jacqueline Kennedy, on the other side, was a silhouette from another world. Stoughton held his camera high. The stains did not show. Stunned, defeated, she fixed her sightless expression upon the Dictaphone mike.

  “… that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States…”

  President Johnson’s audience was not rapt. The years edit memory, omitting awkward recollections, but the witnesses to this historic occasion are surprisingly unanimous. Their thoughts, they agree, were wandering. Most of them didn’t hear a word. The photographer, hunched on the seat behind Sarah, had good reason. Stoughton was almost drowning in his own sweat—his sport coat and slacks clung to him limply—because he had discovered that his misgivings were justified; the Hasselblad was defective. His first frame was a dud; nothing snapped. Recovering rapidly from the sickening silence, he guessed that a small pin inside had failed to make proper contact. He twisted the film advance lever forward and back, jiggled the works, and heard a click. Dancing on the seat like a dervish he took sixteen pictures, three of them with the Alpa Reflex. As he crouched for a closeup of Johnson, he could hear the leathery thump of his two camera cases; the other spectators, he realized, weren’t making a sound.

  They were thinking, though, mostly about each other. Albert Thomas decided Jesse Curry was a
lens hog; the chief, beside him, was standing on tiptoes and obscuring those behind him. Mary Gallagher and Marty Underwood were watching Ken O’Donnell, who was standing beside Mrs. Kennedy, his face twisted with pain. Ken was thinking of Jackie, She’s being used, she’s being used. Larry O’Brien stared at Jack Valenti. This was the first time Larry had seen Jack since yesterday’s wind-up conference in Houston before the testimonial dinner for Albert Thomas. He was the same Valenti—alert, intent, straining for some unseen bait—but there was a new zeal about him. He was Sammy Glick in Sammy’s graduation photograph, and O’Brien, noticing the throbbing veins in his neck, thought, Well, he’s on his way now. Muggsy O’Leary saw Valenti, too. At the same time it occurred to Muggsy that there had never been so many Texans in the stateroom. He thought, It’s all over for us.

  Everyone was suffering from physical discomfort. Although the ceremony lasted less than a half-minute, it seemed much longer. The pressure of dank bodies, the soaring temperature, and the stuffiness of the cabin gave it the oppressive atmosphere of a sudatorium. Under their shirts and slips they felt beads form and trickle. Lady Bird alone was unconscious of the humidity. Her reflections were elsewhere, and were fanciful. She was thinking, This is a moment which is altogether dreamlike, because the thing is so unreal; we’re just like characters in a play; this is the beginning of something for us that’s dreadful and heavy, and you don’t know what it holds. We’re stepping into a strange new world. It has the quality of a dream, she thought again, and yet it isn’t a dream at all.