The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  At the cathedral Bishop Hannan was overwrought. As a native Washingtonian he had known the importance of proper salutations since boyhood. Lists of the dignitaries who would be attending today’s Mass had been prepared by State, but none had been given to Hannan, the one man who would be addressing them. He decided to station himself on the steps outside and tick the celebrities off as they entered. (Halfway through his eulogy he would look down on Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and realize, to his horror, that he had omitted them; they had already been in their pew.) The bishop wasn’t alone in his frenzy. During the hours before the service the church was, in fact, a most unchurchly place. The Lord’s name was repeatedly invoked, usually in vain, for the chief problem was lack of space, and no one could do a thing about that. “My God, do you mean we won’t have a seat for Kenny O’Donnell?” Jack McNally yelled down the center aisle. Dean Markham found one, found another for Secret Service Chief Rowley (after moving him three times), and turned his last “emergency pew” over to Chief Marshal Jim McShane, who arrived unexpectedly with seven of Robert Kennedy’s eight children. But Markham was beginning to wonder whether there would be room for President Johnson. Though every worshiper had proper credentials, how some had got them was a mystery. Several Last Hurrah Bostonians were there, including an obscure entrepreneur who advertised himself as “the Leading Tomato Grower in the World.”

  The congregation had come to mourn a martyred President. In their distress it was too much to expect them to put aside all private animosity, however, and perhaps these conflicts provided a necessary diversion. Usher Bradlee avoided Usher Morrissey. Mary McGrory hung back when she saw India Edwards. The Kennedy liberals looked on critically as Harry Byrd and Richard Russell jockeyed for position. They watched with furtive delight as ticketless George Wallace hopped about trying to find a vacant space, and they observed, without compassion, a highly agitated Ross Barnett praying aloud. And all this, too, was somehow appropriate. Kennedy had been a politician; politics is contention. He had liked the battle lines sharply drawn. To efface them in the name of grief would have been hypocrisy.

  At the White House the tone was rather different. The chiefs of state examined the Mass cards Shriver distributed among them and heard Emperor Haile Selassie declare that Ethiopia needed no new Kennedy monument because the President’s memory was enshrined forever in the work of the Peace Corps. Kennedy friends quietly reminisced. The closest thing to an abrasive encounter was a comic misunderstanding between Jim Reed, the most courtly of the President’s acquaintances, and a small dark stranger. Jim thought he knew everyone who had been close to Kennedy, but he had never seen this man before. He whispered around an inquiry. The whisper came back, “That’s the architect for Atoka.” To Reed he seemed unaccountably rude, even for an artist. The man was crowding him and was oddly unresponsive. Finally he leaned over and said politely, “I understand you’re the architect for Atoka.” The stranger glared and said “Non!” It struck Jim that he probably spoke no English, and then the man handed him his card. It read, “Jean Monnet.”

  In a way Monnet’s presence was a global equivalent to the domestic tensions in St. Matthew’s. Mac Bundy thought it “a good stroke” to mark him among the marching acquaintances, and David Ormsby-Gore—who had taken the extraordinary step of deserting the diplomatic corps to be among the friends himself—reflected that Charles de Gaulle would have flown “into a passion of rage had he known that Jean was in there marching in the procession as a close friend of Jack’s.” Monnet was a symbol of a united Europe; the French President was its great adversary. De Gaulle was regarded with a mixture of awe and distrust. Averell Harriman believed that his very motives in coming to the funeral were suspect—that he was acting “shockingly, disgracefully, even treacherously.”2 Few would have gone that far, but nobody would have mistaken him as a marching friend either. Later, during the Mass in St. Matthew’s, he followed the French pattern of ritualistic responses, which meant that he was often standing bolt upright while the rest of the congregation sat and sitting when they stood. That evening the Kennedy sisters summed it up in one word: “typical.” And when Larry O’Brien first saw de Gaulle, the Frenchman was beside Haile Selassie. Both were in uniform. Larry, behind them, had never seen the Emperor and didn’t recognize him. If that isn’t just like de Gaulle, he thought, bringing a midget as his aide.

  Now in the East Room le grand Charles was being his usual obstinate self. This time, though, he was in excellent company. The number of anonymous threats had increased alarmingly since daybreak, and the prey most frequently mentioned were de Gaulle, Mikoyan, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and Earl Warren. All refused to be intimidated. One of Johnson’s Texans quoted him as saying, “I’d rather give my life than be afraid to give it.” This wasn’t quite accurate. What the President really said—to his military aide, Colonel William Jackson—was: “You damned bastards are trying to take over. If I listen to you, I’ll be led to stupid, indecent decisions. I’m going to walk.” Bob Kennedy was equally decisive, if less earthy; when Nick Katzenbach and Ed Guthman pleaded with him to avoid exposure, he changed the subject. “Talk to someone else,” he said when John McCone called him. “I’m too involved.” Earl Warren’s answer to the forebodings of the District police was the simplest of all. It was no answer. The Chief Justice pretended he had heard nothing.

  In retrospect this is not very impressive, because it was all over quickly and nothing happened. At 10 A.M. Monday that outcome was by no means clear. Friday’s assassination had been preceded by warnings; so had yesterday’s murder; and now warnings were coming through again. Furthermore, the gunman this time didn’t have to be a marksman or a faker of credentials. If he missed one celebrity, his chances of hitting another were excellent. The eight blocks between the mansion and the cathedral were the most densely populated in the capital. Down that swarming canyon, in slow pace, would tread all the powerful men in the world except Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Tse-tung, and Khrushchev had sent his deputy. Security had done all it could. The Pentagon and the District police had over four thousand men under arms, including a detachment of New York policemen who were paying their own expenses; in the procession itself would be the White House Detail, 64 CIA men, 40 FBI agents, 250 State Department security men, and picked squads from each foreign secret police—12 French bodyguards and 10 State Department guards for de Gaulle alone.

  Still the dissatisfaction persisted. In the Blue Room Dean Rusk confided to the Cabinet that he was “deeply worried.” He cited the risks, beginning with de Gaulle, “four times the object of an assassin,” and Anastas Mikoyan, “a prime target.” Douglas Dillon agreed; he was “scared to death that Mikoyan might be shot at,” and Orville Freeman confessed he was “worried sick.” George Ball was so apprehensive that he had decided against participating in any of the ceremonies. He and U. Alexis Johnson were maintaining a vigil in the State Department building at Twenty-first and Virginia, preparing to cope with an emergency should shots ring out six blocks away.

  Attempts to get individual marchers into cars continued up to the last moment. Llewellyn Thompson reminded Russian diplomats that Mikoyan had an excellent reason for riding. Quite apart from his age, he was convalescing from surgery and postoperative hepatitis. But the First Deputy Premier was as adamant as the others. Even Eamon de Valera, whose physical condition was so precarious that young Eamon, a physician, would have to walk beside him with a syringe in his pocket, could not be budged. As anticipated, the key to their resolution was Jacqueline Kennedy. If she led, they had to follow. No leader of men could seek cover unless she did, and she remained inflexible. Jerry Behn approached Clint Hill and asked him if he thought she would share a limousine with Johnson. Clint shook his head. “You can try if you want to, but it’ll be a waste of time,” he said. “She really wants to walk all the way, and if it weren’t for the old men she would.”

  The last three warnings came from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Federal Bureau of Inves
tigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The RCMP had “received information” that an unidentified French Canadian with an unidentified grievance was heading south to shoot General de Gaulle. The FBI was even vaguer: “The Director” was “concerned” and “advised against” the march. This was too much for Sargent Shriver. Once more the precise businessman was confronted by the gray custard of bureaucracy, and once more he recoiled, emitting sparks. “That’s just ridiculous,” he snapped. “We’re all concerned. You don’t have to be the Director of the FBI to know it’s going to be dangerous—even the White House doorman knows that. It’s a ploy, so that if anybody gets shot the Director can say, ‘I told you so.’ It’d be a different story if he’d turned up hard proof that some famous gangster had taken an apartment on Connecticut Avenue, or if the best agent in the OGPU had checked in at Washington National. Then I’d have to do a double-take. But this is just a self-serving device.”

  The CIA was more specific. At 10:30 a courier with a direct line to CIA headquarters across the river handed John McCone a hot report. McCone became visibly excited. It was an “A-1-A,” agency jargon meaning “absolutely reliable.” Relayed through Central Intelligence’s nerve center in New York, it was from agents in Geneva who had positively verified an elaborate plot to murder General de Gaulle on the stretch of pavement outside the cathedral. McCone was convinced it was “ominous.” The General must be told at once. He sought out Angle Duke, whose French was better than his own, and Duke recruited Mac Bundy, whose command of the language was flawless. Thus, in Bundy’s words, “it fell to Angie Duke and me to approach the great man.” They explained the rumor and urged him to accept a limousine, explaining that “it would be a courtesy to Mrs. Kennedy if General de Gaulle would not endanger his life.” The response was inevitable, though those who were present have different recollections of it. Duke thought the General said that his “courtesy to Mrs. Kennedy” would be “to show disregard for his life.” Bundy merely heard him reply “ ’Non’ in his most distant and nasal tone.” At that, the CIA came off better than the FBI. There can be no doubt about his reaction there. To backstop McCone he was shown the earlier report. Shriver saw his lips pucker in disdain. Charles de Gaulle’s answer to J. Edgar Hoover was “Pfft.”

  On the floor above, Monday had begun with a small birthday celebration in the dining room. Miss Shaw had forgotten that young John would be three years old this Monday, but the realization came to her upon awakening, and she decided to make breakfast a little occasion. The boy had known that he had an anniversary coming soon. At his age dates meant very little, however. He didn’t know what to expect, or exactly when it would come. And Caroline had been told that since their birthdays were so close they would be celebrated at a joint party later in the week. So there was no sense of disappointment, no outward sadness. There was only the crowing exultation of a three-year-old listening to his big sister and Miss Shaw sing “Happy Birthday to You” and then opening two of his presents—a toy helicopter from Caroline and, from their nurse, a copy of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit.

  After breakfast Miss Shaw dressed them in their blue coats and red shoes. She put the black mourning band on Caroline’s hair, slipped her own black-and-white check coat over her white uniform, and, leaving John with Dave Powers, took the girl down to the Red Room. Agent Foster walked over. There was a sudden hush among the adults sipping coffee. That was the thing about the children: every time people forgot the stark reality of the murder and began translating it into the niceties of protocol or national posture they were confronted by these terribly vulnerable little figures. Robin Duke stepped up and said, “I’ll take your hand, Caroline.” But Caroline had her mother’s will. “No, I’ll hold Mr. Foster’s hand,” she whispered, and took it, making Foster feel, he said, “like Jello.”

  Her mother had remembered what today was to have been. One of her scrawled notes to herself began “Johns party—card.… Fos. to get pres here—.” At the bottom of one page she had written in large letters: “LEAVE 10—.” That was the deadline, and the whole family was racing to meet it. She herself was pinning her sister’s black beret over the long veil—it fell below her waist—that Lucinda Moran had fashioned. Lee was calling that Dr. Walsh had given her some blue “anti-crying” pills, “just in case.” Eunice had donned her best black maternity gown. All the sisters were wearing black stockings and gloves and worrying about their mother, who looked and felt extremely unwell. Joe Gargan had rented a full-dress suit for Ted, but it had arrived incomplete. He was missing a hat, gloves, and pants. Dressing with Bob, phoning furiously to retrieve the rest of his costume, and watching the creeping hands of the clock, the Senator had finally been forced to compromise. He would have to wear the President’s gloves and go without a hat. Bob agreed to go hatless, too (with the consequence that all the other men—heads of state, Cabinet, diplomatic corps—went through the funeral bareheaded; it seemed so right that no one even noticed it). That left trousers, an essential. The only available pair had belonged to their brother. He had worn them on inauguration day. But he had been slender, and Ted’s waistline was a family joke. He turned around and they were gone. The next he knew they were in Stas’s hands. Ted reclaimed them and tried them on—and they fitted perfectly. It was, he later told Jackie, “a loaves and fishes miracle.” In a way it was. George Thomas, whose languor was another family joke, had snatched up the pants and let them out in minutes.

  Abruptly it was time to go; time, and past time. Outside, the family entered a caravan of limousines and drove to Capitol Hill, where the long parade had formed and was waiting. General Wehle again stood at the head of it; behind him ranged a spectrum of colors as familiar to Americans as the Stars and Stripes: the scarlet tunics of the Marine Band, the gray of West Point cadets, the Navy blue of midshipmen, the lighter blue of the Air Force. Behind the bands, behind the braided Joint Chiefs, riderless Black Jack reared his superb head, the varnished boots and sheathed silver sword glittering in the cold sunlight.

  In a well between the rotunda and the old Senate chamber Lieutenant Sam Bird had drawn the casket team around him in a tight circle. “Bow your heads,” he said. He closed his eyes. “Dear God,” he prayed, “please give us strength to do this last thing for the President.” They straightened, he glanced at his watch. “Let’s move,” he said. His orders were to approach the catafalque at 10:27 after receiving a signal, a curt nod, from a captain on the far side of the great hall. But though 10:27 became 10:30 and then 10:40, the captain remained immobile. The family was eleven minutes late arriving, and on debarking Robert Kennedy improvised a change in plans. He wanted a final moment of privacy with the coffin. “Let’s go in,” he suggested to Jackie and Ted. Therefore Lieutenant Bird saw, not the expected signal, but the President’s widow, flanked by her husband’s brothers, advancing upon the bier.

  The Kennedys knelt together, three heads against the flag, praying for ten minutes. Arising, they descended the marble stairs, and now the captain jerked his head. “Secure casket,” Lieutenant Bird ordered. In the plaza the Coast Guard Academy Band played “Hail to the Chief” in the slow measure which no longer seemed strange as Bird’s pallbearers moved into the sun and paused on the portico, between the columns; then, to the hymn “O God of Loveliness,” casket team and casket came down the thirty-six steps. But today there was no strain. The fantastic weight of yesterday was gone. The coffin seemed incredibly light, and since it seemed that way to each of the eight bearers, who could neither speak to one another nor even exchange glances until it had been lashed to the gun carriage, the power of suggestion must be ruled out. Last night’s lockstep torture at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers had been a success. It had broken their dreadful spell of fear, and they withdrew in wonder.

  The Joint Chiefs had stood at attention, facing Clifton, McHugh, and Shepard, while the sliding casket grated across the metal bed of the caisson and was buckled into place. Now they wheeled behind it. Far ahead a huge baton flashed. The President ha
d once banteringly referred to the Marine Band as “the only troops I command—the rest belong to McNamara.” Jacqueline Kennedy had not forgotten, nor had they; they thought of themselves as his. The drum major brought the baton down and the cortege moved off to the crashing strains of “Our Fallen Heroes.” In brilliant splendor, with that dash and flair which had marked his six years as Congressman and eight as Senator, John Kennedy left Capitol Hill for the last time.

  The marching was almost too good to be true. One was accustomed to precision from the Military Academy and the Marine Corps, but even the company of women from the various armed services and the representatives of thirty-two veterans organizations were keeping proper intervals and maintaining the unfamiliar hundred-pace step. They appeared inspired. Really their matchless formation, like the career of the man they were burying, was an act of gracefulness achieved through meticulous planning. General Wehle had established an elaborate command net along the avenue to correct errors. Colonel Miller was racing up and down back streets in a radio car, radioing coded instructions for “feed-ins” and “feedouts”—Lieutenant Bird’s body bearers, for example, were being transferred by bus from “Depot” (the Capitol) to “Victor” (St. Matthew’s).