Johnson phoned national security adviser McGeorge Bundy and his own chief of staff, Walter Jenkins, to set up meetings for that evening. He had hoped to have a cabinet meeting and was disappointed to learn that Secretary of State Dean Rusk and five other members had been on an airplane that was beyond Honolulu on its way to Tokyo, though they had now turned back.
Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington at 5:59 p.m. A hastily summoned group of government officials and representatives of other nations waited on the ramp. Johnson read his statement for them and, more important, for television:
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 that 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 your help—and God’s.
When they got to the helicopter pad, Johnson cupped his hands to Valenti’s ear against the roar of the engines and shouted, “Get in the second chopper and come to my office as soon as you land.” Evidently, he gave the same instructions to Moyers and Carter. In a few minutes they were on the helipad on the south grounds of the White House. The President was already talking to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Under Secretary of State George Ball. Valenti, Moyers, and Carter joined them. Johnson strode through the Rose Garden to the West Wing. Valenti was surprised that Johnson did not enter the Oval Office. Rather, he walked down to the basement and took the underground passageway to the Executive Office Building and then went up by elevator to his third floor vice presidential office. The Johnsons would not occupy the White House until Mrs. Kennedy and her children moved out on December 7.
That evening the President discussed international affairs with Senator Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Averell Harriman, Ball, and McNamara. The situation was, fortunately, calm and would remain so throughout his transition. He phoned former Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. He wrote letters in longhand to the dead President’s children, Caroline and John. He telephoned Edward Kennedy, the President’s younger brother. He met with the congressional leadership, asking for their help and counsel during this trying period. He talked to Sargent Shriver, the dead President’s brother-in-law and director of the Peace Corps, who was making the funeral arrangements on behalf of the Kennedy family. Johnson had a bowl of soup, his first nourishment since breakfast in Fort Worth that morning. The President and his assistants were then driven to the Elms, the Johnson’s house in northwest Washington.
After they had left Air Force One, Mrs. Johnson and Liz Carpenter went straight to the Elms. In the car Liz said, “It’s a terrible thing to say, but the salvation of Texas is that the governor was hit.” Lady Bird replied, “Don’t think I haven’t thought of that. I only wish it could have been me.” When she got home, Mrs. Johnson instructed the cook to prepare a lot of fried chicken.
After the President arrived he sat in his big chair in the library and sipped orange juice. He lifted his glass to a photograph of his late great friend and mentor, Speaker Sam Rayburn. “I salute you, Mr. Sam, and how I wish you were here now, when I need you.” Everyone went into the dining room for their first real meal since morning.
About midnight Johnson decided to go to bed. He led Valenti to a bedroom on the second floor and told Moyers and Carter to pick out bedrooms on the third. He told Valenti that he was going to be on the staff at the White House and that he should get some clothes from Houston and find a house for his family in Washington. He also told Moyers that he was going to work in the White House.
Valenti followed Johnson into his bedroom. The President got into his pajamas and lay down on his bed to watch TV. It was a program on himself, his background and fitness to be President. Moyers and Carter joined them. The President, Valenti wrote, “began to speak, almost as if he were talking to himself. He mused about what he ought to do and began to tick off people he needed to see and meetings he should construct in the next several days.” Valenti picked up a pad and began scribbling notes, soon more than 30 pages of what was to become the agenda for the Johnson transition. It was almost 3:30 a.m. when the President said, “Good night, boys.”
Moyers recalled later that Johnson had stressed three basic themes:
1. There must be continuity. There should be no hesitancy, nothing to indicate that the U.S. Government had faltered.
2. The programs of President Kennedy would be pushed.
3. The country must be united to face the crisis and the transition of power.1
The assassination of John Kennedy devastated the American people. Perhaps the murder of Lincoln was comparable, but there was no one about in 1865 to ask people how they felt. Among the memories of living people in 1963 there were only two vaguely similar events that were mentioned—Pearl Harbor and the death of Franklin Roosevelt—and each differed from Kennedy’s assassination fundamentally.
As an historic event it made up a bundle of four days, from approximately 12:30 p.m. CST on Friday, November 22, when Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots, through the end of the day on Monday, November 25.
Many millions of Americans would remember as long as they lived exactly where they were and how they learned of the assassination of John Kennedy. The news spread faster than proverbial wildfire. Radio and newspapers gave the event enormous coverage. But it was television that had much the biggest impact. CBS started its Dallas coverage within 15 minutes of the firing of the shots; NBC was on the air only a few minutes later; and ABC soon followed. They then provided continuous live broadcasting, with neither regular programs nor commercials intruding, for the better part of four days. The networks pooled their stories.
According to the National Opinion Research Center study, by 1:00 p.m. CST on Friday, when Kennedy was pronounced dead, 68 percent of adult Americans had heard the news; by 6 p.m. it had swelled to 99.8 percent (only 2 of 1,384 respondents said that they did not hear the news till Saturday). In previous disasters at least 10 to 20 percent said they did not learn what had happened until much later.
The NORC study showed that Americans were profoundly grieved by the assassination, and were also concerned about the impact upon the United States, both at home and with regard to its relations with other nations. During the four-day period Americans exhibited many symptoms of anxiety-depression, especially African Americans.
Johnson moved quickly to overcome these troubled feelings. His task was much eased by the enormous TV viewing over the assassination weekend. Until that time Lyndon Johnson was a familiar figure in Washington and Texas, but, excepting for a minority of the politically sophisticated, was, as Vice Presidents invariably are, little known in the rest of the country. But now documentaries aired on television and he made several appearances in which he displayed compassion and dignity. By Monday night the public recognized that their new President held the reins with steady hands. A study of college students concluded that it was “possible for people fully to indulge their grief only because of the smooth, automatic succession.” On Air Force One Liz Carpenter had comforted herself with the thought that “someone is in charge.” She recalled Lady Bird telling her, “Lyndon’s a good man to have in an emergency.” But among the college students there was an undercurrent of resentment, in part because Johnson was a Texan and also because he seemed “to be somehow usurping the presidential role.”
Johnson expected and understood this bitter reaction. He had not been elected President; he held the office by historical accident. He must legitimate his own presidency. A basic way to do so was by becoming the executor of the Kennedy legacy, wrapping himself in the mantle of the immensely popular fallen leader. He had, Johnson wrote,
a deep-rooted sense of responsibility to John F. Kennedy. Rightly or wrongly, I felt from the very first day in office that I had to carry on for President Kennedy. I considered myself the caretaker of both his people and his policies. He knew when he selected me as his running mate that I would be the man required to c
arry on if anything happened to him. I did what I believed he would have wanted me to do. … I was the trustee and custodian of the Kennedy administration.
The caretaker role took several forms. As suggested, Johnson was solicitous about the Kennedy family. He deferred to Shriver on the funeral arrangements. He immediately assented to Jacqueline Kennedy’s requests to remain in the White House with her children for two weeks and, by an executive order he issued on November 29, to rename the NASA launch facilities at Cape Canaveral the John F. Kennedy Space Center. In addition, Cape Canaveral with Florida’s assent was designated Cape Kennedy. On January 23, 1964 he signed a bill “with great satisfaction” renaming the planned National Cultural Center in Washington the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Johnson knew that Kennedy had been extremely well regarded by top officials of his own administration, of whom Secretary of Defense McNamara was an example. He greatly admired JFK and both he and his wife had become close friends of the extended Kennedy family. On the day after the assassination he instructed his aide, Joe Califano, to meet Bobby Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery. They paced the 3.2-acre site in a heavy rain. When Califano returned to the Pentagon, McNamara said, “Joe, I want to tie up that land for President Kennedy so that no one can ever take any of it away for any other purpose.” Califano pointed out that it was in the national cemetery. “I don’t give a damn. Get a title search made. Write a legal opinion nailing down the title to the land. I want to sign the deed that sets this land aside forever.” The papers were ready the next day and Califano took them to McNamara in the cemetery, who was checking to be sure that the site was right in the center of the view from the Arlington Bridge. He insisted on signing the order, which was not necessary. “He was so distraught,” Califano wrote, “that he had to do something to relieve his sense of helplessness.”
Johnson had to transfer this loyalty for the fallen President to himself. He not only invited but insisted that all members of the Kennedy administration stay on with him. This, of course, extended to the Attorney General, with whom he had a strained relationship. The White House staff, both the “Irish Mafia”—Larry O’Brien, Kenny O’Donnell, and Ralph Dungan—and the “intellectuals”—Ted Sorensen, McGeorge Bundy, Pierre Salinger, and Arthur Schlesinger—were old associates and devoted friends who were devastated by the assassination and many were expected to leave. Johnson was particularly anxious that O’Brien remain. He said, “I need you, Larry. I want you to stay and pass Jack Kennedy’s program. How can you better honor Jack’s memory than to stay and help to enact his program?” O’Brien agreed with him and stayed.
In inviting these people to serve, Johnson was motivated in part by the fact, as he wrote, that “by remaining on the job they helped give the government and the nation a sense of continuity during critical times.” And, as he later told Doris Kearns,
I needed that White House staff. Without them I would have lost my link to John Kennedy, and without that I would have had absolutely no chance of gaining the support of the media or the Easterners or the intellectuals. And without that support I would have had absolutely no chance of governing the country.
But there was more. Some of the Kennedy people, he noted, were “extraordinary men” and all had now had almost three years of experience in their posts. He could hardly have matched them. But he was insecure about the White House staff. Johnson did not know whether all of them would be able to transfer their loyalty to him, and in several cases, Sorensen and Schlesinger in particular, there could be little doubt that they would depart after a decent interval.
Thus, Johnson began gradually to build up his own staff, starting with the young Texans, Moyers and Valenti, recruited on the day he became President. He would increase their number. He also began consulting immediately with three notable Washington lawyers with broad government experience who were now private citizens—Abe Fortas, Clark Clifford, and Jim Rowe. In the case of Rowe, this involved repairing a breach and, something extraordinary for Lyndon Johnson, offering an apology for causing it.
A myriad of questions swirled about the assassination, challenging the continuity and legitimacy that Johnson sought. Where had the FBI been when the plan for the murder had been laid? Was it significant that the event had taken place in Texas, particularly Dallas? The arrested Oswald had said virtually nothing and his mouth was now sealed forever by Jack Ruby, the night-club operator who killed Oswald two days after the assassination. What might Oswald have said? Did he have an accomplice? Was he the hit man for an international conspiracy? What about his strange visit to the Soviet Union and his Russian wife? Why was he so interested in Castro’s Cuba? These questions stirred up rumors and they, in turn, encouraged those who wanted publicity for themselves. As Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote,
The Dallas authorities fed everything, good or bad, to the news media. The attorney general of Texas proposed having an open hearing before a justice of the peace, which meant television, radio, and newspaper coverage, regardless of how disjointed or crisis-like this atmosphere for a trial might be. Several committees of the Congress were flirting with public hearings that would proceed in similar manner. The result would have been chaos. The world was ready to believe almost anything, and indeed it did.
A current Gallup poll showed that more than half the American people were convinced that Oswald had not acted alone.
On Sunday, November 24, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent word to Johnson through his friend, Congressman Homer Thornberry of Austin, that he was “very concerned that everyone know that Oswald was guilty of the President’s assassination.” He wanted to head off the gathering rumors. Katzenbach recommended an independent commission to make an investigation. He suggested two retired judges—former Supreme Court Justice Charles Whittaker and former court of appeals judge E. Barrett Prettyman—along with former Republican presidential candidate Thomas E. Dewey, “to make it non-partisan.” Implicit in this group of names was that no sitting judicial officer of the United States should serve on such a commission.
The next day, Monday, Katzenbach wrote a memorandum setting forth his ideas more carefully. He urged the President to act immediately “to head off speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort.” Katzenbach was convinced and wanted the public “to be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.” Two wild theories were now being floated: the Dallas police were saying that it was a Communist plot, and the Iron Curtain press was reporting that it was a right-wing conspiracy. Both “ought to be cut off.” Katzenbach was upset over the fact that the matter was being handled with “neither dignity nor conviction.” “We can hardly let the world see us totally in the image of the Dallas police when our President is murdered.” A “complete and thorough FBI report” might be helpful immediately. The alternative would be “the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions.”
Johnson brought in Abe Fortas. They both approved the proposal. Fortas then met with Katzenbach, who had consulted with the Attorney General, and they agreed on a seven-member commission of the following distinguished citizens: Chief Justice Earl Warren, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky, Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana, Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan, former CIA director Allen W. Dulles, and John J. McCloy, former president of the World Bank and high commissioner for Germany. Five were Republicans; only Russell and Boggs were Democrats.
Anticipating difficulty with Warren, Johnson first got the assent of the other six to serve if the Chief Justice would accept. On Friday, November 29, Katzenbach and Solicitor General Archibald Cox on behalf of the President went to the Supreme Court and asked the Chief Justice to accept the chairmanship. Warren replied that the President was acting wisely in adopting this procedure, “but that [he
] was not available for service.” The Court had discussed extra-judicial appointments, and, while there had never been a vote, he was certain that the justices supported his position unanimously. Warren thought that such service defied the spirit of the constitutional separation of powers. Going back to Chief Justices John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth in the early days of the republic and, more recently, with Justices Owen Roberts on the Pearl Harbor commission and Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials, outside activities had distracted the court. Finally, no one could predict the litigation such a commission would spawn, and, if a case reached the Supreme Court, he would have to disqualify himself. Warren told Katzenbach and Cox, “I must respectfully decline the honor.”
The Chief Justice considered the matter closed, but he underestimated Lyndon Johnson. He was immediately called to the White House. The President said that he was deeply distressed over the wild rumors arising from the assassination. Because Oswald was dead, there could be no trial. He then named the other members of the commission (“all of these men … distinguished and honorable,” Warren wrote), all willing to serve on condition that he become chairman. Nevertheless, the Chief Justice declined and repeated his reasoning.
Warren then became the object of the famous Johnson “treatment”: “You were a soldier in World War I, but there was nothing you could do in that uniform comparable to what you can do for your country in this hour of trouble.” Johnson went on about rumors circulating the world and the danger of nuclear war with a first strike taking the lives of 40 million people. “Mr. Chief Justice,” he concluded, “you were once in the Army. … As your Commander-in-Chief, I’m ordering you back into service.” Warren was a pigeon for an appeal to his patriotism. “Mr. President,” he said, “if the situation is that serious, my personal views do not count. I will do it.”
Guns or Butter Page 3
