The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  The Captain had sent a distress signal to Fort McNair, without luck. General Wehle was at Andrews, and his MDW deputies were awaiting his return. Canada had exactly twenty-four Marines. Frantic, he deliberately misled the press, announcing that the President’s body would be taken to the emergency entrance. Then he mobilized all off-duty corpsmen at the heliport. He expected the worst. As it turned out, he couldn’t have been wider of the mark. The huge mob was to grow huger, but it was docile. Like the three thousand at Andrews, those here simply gazed. After the first hour most of the insiders forgot they were there. Ben Bradlee, who didn’t, continued to regard them as ghouls “or the kind of people who show up at society funerals.” That was unkind. Like Ben they were here out of respect, touched by what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” They didn’t want to bother anyone, and they weren’t a bother. Not knowing how else to express themselves they just stood, some all night.

  Bethesda Naval Hospital was dominated by its soaring stone tower. Nancy’s hotspurs led them there, and they alighted, grateful to be in one piece. Captain Canada greeted them; officers in blues swarmed around and ushered them to the elevator. The hospital had two VIP suites, on the sixteenth and seventeenth floors. In 1949 James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, had leaped to his death from the first. They were taken to the second, a set of rooms shaped like a short-stemmed T. The stem was a corridor, separating a bedroom on the left and a small kitchen on the right. The T was crossed by a long narrow drawing room. Perhaps because it was unnautical—the only salty touch was an engraving of a sea serpent beset by four puffing winds—Bethesda was proud of the décor. It was certainly an expensive suite, generously equipped with air conditioning, wall-to-wall carpeting, and bedroom television, but it was drab; walls, furniture, jalousies, and carpeting were uniformly colored a shade of tan perilously close to institutional buff. Toni thought it “sanitized and cold.” On the brightest day the effect would be depressing, and this was not that.

  “Do you like it?” an officer inquired.

  “It’s nice,” Nancy replied, thinking it not at all nice.

  “This is where Forrestal committed suicide,” he said inaccurately.

  “Oh,” she said, understandably wondering why he had told her.

  He left, and Jean Smith nervously applied lipstick. Toni watched her and nudged Nancy. In an undertone she asked, “Do you think we should?”

  The social secretary looked despairing. “What does it matter now?”

  Jiggs Canada had once been George Burkley’s shipmate, and he should have known him better. Posting three teams of chaplains and nurses had been superfluous. Though Burkley made light of his rank, he was a rear admiral in the Regular Navy, and a stickler for form. “The President of the United States always enters by the main gate,” he firmly told Greer as they followed the Tuckerman race out Wisconsin. Even the team there was by-passed. “Don’t stop,” Burkley ordered. This time there were no flashing lights or orchestration of braying sirens, because those close to the President knew he had despised them, but there was a motorcycle escort. Greer accelerated, the policemen roared ahead, and the ambulance and its train of shadowing Mercurys swept up to the entrance. Canada saluted; a commander opened the door. Burkley struggled off Landis’ lap.

  There he found everything shipshape. On the blue-and-gold anchor-embellished welcome mat were the captain; Rear Admiral Calvin Galloway, the commanding officer of Bethesda’s medical center; and a fourth chaplain—Canada was the kind of seaman who carries spare anchors everywhere. He and the Attorney General helped Mrs. Kennedy out. Clint, Pam, and Dr. Walsh approached from the other cars, and in an uneven rank they crossed the marble lobby and vanished into the dark brown elevator.

  Admiral Galloway lingered on the walk, detained by General McHugh. “We’re going to the morgue for the autopsy and the embalming,” Godfrey said. “Mrs. Kennedy doesn’t want an undertaker.”

  “We don’t have the facilities. I highly recommend a funeral parlor.”

  Godfrey pressed him. “Those are the family’s wishes. Isn’t it possible?”

  “It’s not impossible,” said the Admiral frowning. “It’s difficult, though. And it might be unsatisfactory.”

  O’Donnell and O’Brien came over, and the matter was laid before them. “You’ve heard the decision from the General,” Ken said curtly, and the Admiral left perturbed. They then headed for the elevator. Godfrey stayed by the coffin; as the honor guard, he meant to remain with the President’s body, wherever it went. To his dismay it went nowhere for five full minutes. Everyone seemed to have gone. Even the Mercurys had driven off. McHugh, Greer, and Kellerman and the coffin had been left among the motionless spectators. In the deflected lobby light their eyes shone like cat’s eyes. The General started counting them and then gave up. He looked down uneasily. He couldn’t move the coffin alone. He didn’t know what to do. He had been prepared for everything except inactivity.

  The muddle was the consequence of a failure in interservice communication. The Army had been as vigilant as the Navy; General Wehle had stationed himself beyond the cornerstone in a staff car, with Lieutenant Bird and his body bearers right behind him in a truck. They had observed Mrs. Kennedy’s arrival, but the darkness, the great blocks of silent people, and the many moving vehicles distracted them. It had confused two naval physicians, too. When an ambulance drew away from the curb they called, “That’s it—we’ll guide you to the morgue.” At the morgue Wehle, Bird, and the six enlisted men debarked and inspected each other’s uniforms while awaiting some movement from the ambulance. It was still as still. The Lieutenant crept up and peered inside. It was empty. Even the driver had gone. Panicky, they fled back and saw, among the shining cat’s eyes, the uneasy face of Godfrey McHugh. Wehle and Bird colored. The Military District of Washington was meticulous about ceremony; for a casket team to leave a Commander in Chief’s casket was an astounding lapse, and after casting about bitterly—and vainly—for the two doctors, they re-formed the tiny escort.

  The morgue was fronted by a concrete jetty approached along the left side by a short flight of cement steps. Since coffins were the most precious burden to pass this way the stairs should have been designed for them. They weren’t. They were too narrow, and a steel handrail was an impediment to bearers. The railing thwarted a gesture of McHugh’s. This once, he thought, it would be appropriate for a general to join hands with five enlisted men, and he relieved the Coast Guardsman in the team. But navigating the ponderous Britannia required exceptional dexterity on the left. McHugh was too old. He tried, and kept trying until his eyes filled with frustration. It was no use. He was holding them all up, and motioning to the lanky Coast Guard youth he capitulated. The others moved quickly then, inside and sharp left through double brown doors labeled “RESTRICTED—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” Lieutenant Bird decided that he wasn’t an authorized person. After his men had lowered the casket to a wheeled gurney he shepherded them into the corridor and mounted guard. Two Navy corpsmen passed, rolling a litter. Nothing appeared to be on it except a small lump wrapped in sheeting. “What’s that?” he inquired. “Baby. Born dead,” one mumbled. The Lieutenant whispered, “Oh.” It occurred to him that Bethesda wasn’t going to be at all like Arlington.

  Actually a morgue—any morgue—is starker than any cemetery, more forbidding than even an emergency room. Within its severe limits this one was a model of cleanliness and efficiency. The anteroom, from which Sam Bird had retreated, was furnished with eight reefers (neatly labeled “Remains”) and twin gurneys. The spotless tile walls of the main chamber were lined with specialized equipment: medical scales, a cylindrical sterilizer, a washing machine for rubber gloves, and a sawing machine which looked curiously like a hobbyist’s jigsaw. Dominating them all was the eight-foot-long autopsy table in the center. The table resembled nothing encountered in ordinary experience. It was high, constructed of stainless steel, and perforated with hundreds of holes. Tubes, faucets, and motors jutted fro
m the sides; enormous drainage pipes swooped down from the surface and disappeared into the cement floor. Such frames are so obviously what they are that some medical schools have adopted the practice of administering tranquilizers to students examining one in operation for the first time. The layman recoils, and long after he has left he remembers the stench of the chemicals.

  Two laymen, Generals McHugh and Wehle, watched the Navy’s autopsy crew open the Dallas coffin and carefully lift the body of the President to the perforated table top. Godfrey couldn’t take it. Giddy, he sank to a bench, and Roy Kellerman tiptoed in and sat beside him. MDW’s CO remained, standing at attention at the foot of the table. Husky, jut-jawed, a 1930 graduate of West Point, Philip Wehle looked like a cartoonist’s concept of a brass hat. But labels are deceptive. General Wehle’s ideal had become a politician, a man younger than himself and a former naval person. To him John Kennedy had been a gallant officer, tried in combat. He had voted for him and enthusiastically approved of his foreign and domestic policies. Eleven days ago the General had pulled his rank to acquire a firsthand view of him in Arlington. He had watched the President stride vigorously at the head of the Veterans Day parade, his small son at his side, and that evening he had decided that everything he had learned on the Hudson about leadership and character had taken on new meaning.

  Now, he thought—and he thought of it that way—the nation’s Commander in Chief has been killed in action. He felt “a great welling love, an unendurable sadness, the cruelty of a personal loss.” He stood erect, shoulders back, thumbs tight along the seams of his creased trousers in the Academy posture he had learned at the Highlands, his eyes on the tall table’s punched steel surface. Two naval officers had sliced away Vernon Oneal’s rubber and plastic envelopes with flashing scalpels and stripped Kennedy entirely. The Chief Executive lay naked on his back. At this angle the throat was invisible to Wehle. He observed a slight discoloration over one eye. Otherwise the President appeared unmarred. The general became oblivious of the steel slab and its immaculate machinery. He saw nothing except Kennedy. He thought, What a magnificent body he had, the physique of a Greek god. From deep in his past, from over a third of a century, the strains of A. E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young,” memorized in a childhood classroom, came to Wehle’s mind:

  The time you won your town the race

  We chaired you through the market-place;

  Man and boy stood cheering by,

  And home we brought you shoulder-high.

  To-day, the road all runners come,

  Shoulder-high we bring you home,

  And set you at your threshold down,

  Townsman of a stiller town.

  He couldn’t recall it all. The lines came in disjointed fragments. But the penultimate stanza sprang to his mind intact:

  So set, before its echoes fade,

  The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

  And hold to the low lintel up

  The still-defended challenge-cup.

  Then, groping, he remembered the next couplet:

  And round that early-laurelled head

  Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead.…

  Four minutes after the ambulance’s departure from Andrews the unwieldy truck lift had been removed and President Johnson had descended the MATS ramp. The first man to greet him was Secretary McNamara. To Mike Mansfield, who was standing behind the Secretary, the new President said pensively, “It’s terrible, terrible.” He gave Jenkins and Reedy a nod of recognition and plodded forward with his peculiar stride, brushing by Schlesinger, who impulsively took his hand and blurted, “I’ll do all I can to help.” Hubert Humphrey, Earl Warren, and Averell Harriman also reached out, but several men hung back. Arthur Goldberg’s eyes met Johnson’s, yet he did not step up, because “I was not there for that. I had come to pay my respects to the body. I felt it was appropriate just to stand and be there.”

  At 6:14 P.M. the President drew up before a cluster of microphones in front of the press pen. According to his later recollection he silently asked “for God’s help that I should not prove unworthy.…” He wasn’t getting much secular help. The setting could hardly have been less auspicious. Though the truck was gone, the dreariness of Andrews remained, and he was competing with a clamor of discordant sounds. A few feet away Hubert Humphrey and Mrs. Mansfield were sobbing uncontrollably. Two turbojet H-21’s were whooshing away; with professional disapproval Colonel Swindal noted that one had both its fore and aft rotors going. Lady Bird at his left elbow, Johnson read his statement: “This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me it is a deep personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s.”

  The television audience, though baffled by the sound—the helicopters were off-camera—heard the President. Few at Andrews did. Even Mrs. Johnson didn’t seem to be listening; she was looking away, and her eyes had a veiled look.

  The Congressional leadership gathered around the President: Humphrey, Mansfield, Dirksen, Smathers, Kuchel, Hale Boggs, Carl Albert, Charlie Halleck, Les Arends. His quarter-century as a parliamentarian made the men of the Hill his natural allies; unlike Kennedy, who had never been a member of the Senate’s inner club, Johnson would lean on them heavily. Nevertheless he now headed a separate branch of the government. He needed friends there, too. McNamara’s welcome had touched him. As Vice President he had attended meetings of the National Security Council and the Cabinet, and he knew Kennedy’s two strong men had been the Attorney General and the Secretary of Defense. Summoning McNamara, he said he wanted him, Mac Bundy, and “someone from State” to accompany him to the White House.

  The Secretary replied that George Ball was here; Ball came forward and presented his department’s memorandum and proclamation draft. In the front compartment of the H-21 there was a polite Alphonse-Gaston dispute over protocol. The Presidential chair was on the port side of the craft, facing front. The antipodal seat, facing the Chief Executive, was traditionally reserved for his senior adviser. McNamara suggested Ball take it; Ball suggested McNamara. After a colloquy the strong man capitulated and sat; Mrs. Johnson was led to a starboard couch, flanked by Ball and Bundy. Jenkins, Valenti, Liz Carpenter, Moyers, and the Vice Presidential Secret Service agents occupied the rear compartment, and then there was a scramble for the other helicopter. The winners were Reedy, Marie Fehmer, Cliff Carter, Kilduff, and the bagman. The big loser was Ted Clifton, who rode back to the capital alone.

  George Ball was under the impression that the new President was still in shock. Johnson’s face twitched; to the Under Secretary his movements seemed like those of a drugged man. McNamara, on the other hand, thought him “surprisingly stable—much more so than I would have been in his situation.” Certainly the President said all the right things. During the ten-minute ride over Anacostia Flats he suppressed any feeling that he had been slighted at the airport. Instead, he spoke of Mrs. Kennedy’s courage in Dallas. “I have never seen anyone so brave,” he said to Ball. He told the three of them that he admired them and then added a comment which Ball found especially moving. “Kennedy did something I couldn’t have done,” Johnson said. “He gathered around him the ablest people I’ve ever seen—not his friends, not even the best in public service, but the best anywhere. I want you to stay. I need you. I want you to stand with me.”

  He asked each for a report on what had been done and what decisions must be made. Bundy said he thought there would be nothing urgent for the next forty-eight hours. The President turned to the Secretary of Defense. “Any important matters pending?” he asked. McNamara outlined the disposition of American forces around the globe, their degree of readiness, and allied power available to the United States. Should the murder in Texas prove to be the prelude to any enemy strike, the military establishment was ready with an overwhelming counterstrike. Ball spoke briefly about the impact of the assassination on fo
reign governments.

  It was 6:25. They were over the White House south grounds.2 Earlier the big brown wasps had used the grass, but now the steel pad had been set up, and the first H-21, shining in the beams of lights held by servants and correspondents, eased toward it. Seventy feet away the passengers could see the tree house and young John’s swing and slide set. The children were first in the thoughts of those on the ground, too. They had always been the helicopter’s chief greeters, and as Lyndon Johnson stepped onto the lawn, arriving at the executive mansion for the first time as President, he looked about and discovered that no one was looking at him; as though in response to a silent command all had pivoted toward the balcony, where Caroline and John would normally have been. Three years ago, when President Kennedy had won his race, he had been borne here shoulder-high; now President Johnson was arriving in a tragic time of mourning. It was without doubt the most painful assumption of power in American history.

  Crossing the lawn he talked to McNamara and Mac Bundy. Even Bundy, the most precise man in the government, seems to have been unclear whom he meant by “the President.” He said, “There are two things I am assuming, Mr. President. One is that everything in locked files before 2 P.M. today belongs to the President’s family, and the other is that Mrs. Kennedy will handle the funeral arrangements.” Johnson said, “That’s correct.” He strode past the Rose Garden, past Evelyn Lincoln’s office and the Cabinet Room, through the entire West Wing and over West Executive Avenue to his Vice Presidential office on the second floor of the Executive Office Building. Juanita Roberts, his chief secretary, was waiting for him, and he went straight to work. Ted Clifton, arriving at the EOB fifteen minutes later, suggested to Bill Moyers that Johnson should use Kennedy’s oval office. Moyers mentioned it, and Johnson sharply vetoed it. “That would be presumptuous of me,” he said. He reached for his telephone, remembered that Marie Fehmer had the little book with all his numbers, and he asked Juanita, “Where’s Marie?”