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McHugh had always disliked Johnson, and this incident did nothing to change that; the tension felt throughout Air Force One continued unabated, leading to McHugh saying loudly enough for many others to hear, that his president was lying in a coffin in the rear compartment.127 It was a dramatic and emotional moment, and the story was quickly repeated to most of the others on board, including Lyndon Johnson; it would eventually cost McHugh his job and even cut short his military career.128 McHugh’s description of Johnson’s antics on Air Force One, as he told Robert Kennedy back in Washington, was “obscene. There wasn’t any other word to use and it was the worst performance he’d ever witnessed.”129 McHugh would have certainly emphasized Johnson’s nervous breakdown on board the airplane to RFK, but Bobby knew that he was in no position to use it against Johnson, especially given Johnson’s friendship with Hoover; he knew that his power as attorney general was over, that he would be cut off from below by Hoover, and above by Johnson. Katzenbach would have to fill in for him from then on as the “de facto AG.”
The communications gear on the aircraft recorded telephone calls but operated only when the plane was airborne. Although the technicians were able to set up the equipment to make calls, none were recorded between 1:26 p.m. when Johnson arrived and 2:47 p.m. when the airplane became airborne.130 Of the conversations which were recorded after the plane was in the air, according to author David Lifton, many are missing completely and others have been edited. “Attempts to locate the whereabouts of the original tape recordings—attempts made by several researchers, including myself—have so far proved fruitless.”131 Johnson made numerous calls and constantly had his secretary working on making more. Most were made to Washington, to talk to (among others who could not be identified because, as noted above, these records have disappeared) Jenkins, Bundy, and Robert Kennedy. One of his Washington calls was to Abe Fortas, to ask about the Senate Rules Committee hearings on his and Baker’s conduct, specifically regarding the testimony of Don Reynolds,132 which will be reviewed in detail in chapter 9. Other calls were made to Dallas, Austin, and Houston. He also spoke to his personal tax lawyer, J. W. “Waddy” Bullion, asking for advice on what to do with his stock portfolio, considering the market’s certain plunge following the assassination.133 Pat Holloway, an attorney who worked for Bullion, stated that he took that call and listened as Johnson began telling Bullion about his number one concern at that point—at 1:00 p.m. on November 22, 1963, just as Kennedy was being pronounced dead—and it had nothing to do with John F. Kennedy. As Holloway reported it, Johnson said, “‘Oh I gotta get rid of my goddamn Halliburton stock.’ Lyndon Johnson was talking about the consequences of his political problems with his Halliburton stock at a time when the president had been officially declared dead. And that pissed me off … It really made me furious.”134
He also called Irving L. Goldberg, another Dallas attorney, and tried to call Federal Judge Sarah Hughes. His secretary was trying to get through to her, but she had not returned from the Trade Mart; they had only gotten as far as her law clerk, John Spinuzzi. Johnson grabbed the phone from his secretary and told Spinuzzi, “This is Lyndon Johnson. Find her,” and hung up the receiver.135 Federal Judge Sarah Hughes had called in to her office shortly after Johnson had left the message with her law clerk, Mr. Spinuzzi, then returned the call and said she could be at Love Field within ten minutes. Secret Service Agent Youngblood continued acting as Johnson’s senior aide, taking care of a number of tasks, such as assigning agent Lem Johns the responsibility of identifying Johnson’s staff members for the crew and, more importantly, ordering the aircraft’s captain, Colonel James Swindal, to delay the departure until the arrival of the Kennedys.136
It is a reasonable and logical assumption, based upon Mr. Manchester’s original research on this point, that it was also Johnson who ordered the Secret Service to forcibly remove Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital before a thorough and professional autopsy was completed by doctors who were familiar with the proper methods of doing them. In fact, it is more than a reasonable conclusion: who else could have realistically done so? The Warren Report implicitly acknowledged that he had done so, according to the record of the hearings: “The president also requested that he be kept advised of the location of Mrs. Kennedy and the body of the late president and to inform him when the president’s body would arrive.”137 Moreover, SS Agent Kellerman’s performance at Parkland Hospital, where he stated he had “orders” to remove Kennedy’s body, could only have come from one man: Lyndon B. Johnson (even though Jacqueline, for her own reasons, may have favored that as well, she certainly had no authority to issue anyone “orders”). Johnson’s initial, and practiced, reaction to a number of people—Malcolm Kilduff, Bobby Kennedy, the policemen who escorted him back to Love Field—was to state his concern that the assassination might be part of some sort of Communist conspiracy. The first of these came at 1:15 p.m. in Dallas, when Assistant Press Secretary Kilduff asked Johnson to make a statement on what had happened. His response was “No. Wait. We don’t know whether it’s a Communist conspiracy or not. Are they prepared to get me out of here?”138 Skeptics might be forgiven for thinking that many of Johnson’s reactions in the aftermath—the hours, days, and weeks after the assassination—seemed to be rote and well practiced, anything but spontaneous.
When he later called Robert Kennedy, he expressed brief condolences but quickly turned to other matters, including his stated concern that the assassination might be part of a “worldwide plot.”139 Despite his words of concern to others, Larry Hancock observed that Johnson made numerous telephone calls and continued holding the aircraft exposed on the ground in Dallas for over an hour and a half. “Johnson was sensitive enough to his behavior over the oath that he would later make three different statements (including two of them in his Warren Commission affidavit) putting the responsibility for the delay on Robert Kennedy and Kenny O’Donnell. But Johnson’s statements in both cases were adamantly denied by those individuals.”140 In his call to Robert Kennedy, Johnson offered his condolences and commented, again, that the murder “might be part of a worldwide plot.” In his later statement to the Warren Commission, he said that the attorney general agreed with this assessment, although in fact, Robert Kennedy was unresponsive. Johnson said that “a lot of people down here think I should be sworn in right away … do you have any objection to that?” Kennedy was taken aback since he couldn’t understand the need for a rush and preferred that the formal oath be deferred until his brother’s body was returned to Washington. He did not respond to Johnson, so Lyndon kept talking about how he should take the oath, who would swear him in.141 Bobby said he would look into that question and call him back.
Shortly after that, RFK called Nicholas Katzenbach, telling him of his conversation with Johnson, including the fact that he wanted to be sworn in immediately, at Love Field; Katzenbach said that he was “stunned” by this. By the time Bobby called Johnson back, the new president had already talked to Walter Jenkins and was now talking to McGeorge Bundy about the oath questions. Just as his conversation with Kenneth O’Donnell was disputed by the only other party to it, Johnson’s conversation with Bobby was recalled differently by each of them. Johnson told the Warren Commission that Kennedy had advised him that he should have the oath administered in Texas.142 Kennedy denied ever saying that he should be sworn in immediately; it was his recollection that he only told Johnson that anybody can get the oath, it’s in the Constitution, and that any of the judges Johnson had appointed could do it.143 The only logical reason for his taking over Air Force One, setting off further shock waves to everyone in the Kennedy party who were already in obvious distress, was because Johnson was determined to have JFK’s body and Jackie accompany him back to Washington. It had to be something Johnson had mulled over for a long period beforehand, knowing how it would be perceived, but it would be the temporary discomfort of a few people he generally despised anyway. Their shock would be far outweighed by the unique opportunity to conv
ey to the world that he was now in charge of his country; the pictures showing the imprimatur of JFK’s widow acknowledging the transfer of power would ensure that the dramatic moment was flashed around the world: Lyndon B. Johnson was now officially the president of the United States and the most powerful man in the world, not to mention the universe. To forego this opportunity—even though he arguably didn’t need to be “sworn in” at all since he was by definition president the moment JFK died—would mean a lost opportunity to establish the defining point that he knew would communicate his “readiness” to the world. Besides, there were other reasons he wanted JFK’s body back on board the airplane and not on some autopsy table at Parkland Hospital.
Lyndon Johnson Takes Command
The motorcycle patrolman who helped flank the presidential limousine, B. J. Martin,* later accompanied the new president Lyndon Johnson, said that “he seemed to be in total charge already … Johnson was in full control, giving orders and telling people what to do.”144 At the same time as he was using this scenario to scare everyone into following his orders without question; he had already ordered the FBI and the police (through Chief Curry, who had remained with Johnson on Air Force One throughout the period of waiting on Jacqueline and JFK’s casket) to begin guiding/coercing/threatening witnesses into the “lone assassin” story, minimizing any talk of a conspiracy. It was reported that Johnson was on the telephone barking orders to assorted people throughout that time and had also told Chief Curry to stay with him during this entire period when the police chief would have ordinarily been at the center of the emergency investigation and the dragnet that had suddenly been put over the entire city.145 Yet Curry seemed more interested in being photographed with Johnson inside the plane in several photographs; Congressman Thomas observed that, in Curry’s obsession to be photographed inside Air Force One, he “was standing on tiptoes and obscuring those behind him.”146
As the primary crime scene, the stretch Lincoln convertible known to the Secret Service as X-100 would almost immediately be compromised by its own custodians—who were also, at once, the primary investigators of the crime and deeply implicated in the events leading to the assassination—unwittingly or not. Secret Service agents had already washed most of the blood and brain tissue off the presidential limousine (i.e., the crime scene) while it was still parked at the hospital ER. On Johnson’s orders, Agent Greer drove the limousine back to Love Field and had it loaded into the cargo plane, flown back to Washington, and placed back into the White House garage within hours of the assassination. A few days later, the vehicle as a “crime scene” would be completely destroyed and rebuilt (more on this point in chapter 9).
None of the Kennedy group had imagined that anyone—including even the famously audacious Lyndon Johnson—would have had the impudence to take over their plane. This came as a shock, considering the trauma they had just experienced, as Mrs. Kennedy and the JFK aides returned to the airplane. The enormous stress they were under after the murder of the president and the subsequent battle with Dr. Rose to remove the body had left them all in shock only to be faced with the fact that Lyndon Johnson had expropriated their airplane. When Jacqueline Kennedy entered the airplane unaware of the changed arrangements, she turned toward the dim corridor and stepped softly into the rear compartment where the coffin had been placed; she opened the door to the bedroom and was surprised to find the new president lying on the bed, giving dictation to a secretary. Johnson got up and the two quickly left the bedroom.147
When General Godfrey McHugh had thought everyone was aboard and ready to fly back to Washington, he ordered Captain Swindal to start the engines; but, no sooner than engine No. 3 was started, Johnson ordered it shut down again, saying “I’ve got to be sworn in here. I’ve talked to the Attorney General.”148 Between Swindal, McHugh, Malcolm Kilduff, and Ken O’Donnell, there was mass confusion, each countermanding orders of the other. O’Donnell wrote in his book with David Powers that Johnson told him, “‘We can’t leave here until I take the oath of office … I just talked on the phone with Bobby. He told me to wait here until Sarah Hughes gives me the oath. You must remember Sarah Hughes, my old friend, the Federal judge here in Dallas. She’s on her way out here now.’ I was flabbergasted. I could not imagine Bobby telling him to stay in Dallas until he had taken the Presidential oath. This was no time to be waiting around at the airport for a judge to swear him into office. It was my understanding—shared, I found out later, by Bobby and by Nick Katzenbach [among others]—that Johnson acquired all the powers of the Presidency when President Kennedy died. Taking the oath is just a symbolic formality and there is no need to hurry about it. Johnson could have waited until he got to Washington and spared all of us on Air Force One that day, especially Jackie, a lot of discomfort and anxiety.”149 Johnson’s bags had just been dug out of the other airplane and transferred to Air Force One, his new plane, but there was still considerable confusion about who was in charge and what the orders were; in the chaos, Godfrey McHugh, whose allegiance had not wavered when his president died, was still insistent on getting Air Force One into the air while Malcolm Kilduff, under Johnson’s order, explained the multiple reasons for the delay to him and to Ken O’Donnell. The reasons included the need to wait for news reporters, the need to get the Johnson luggage switched from the other airplane, and the arrival of a Texas judge to administer the oath to Johnson.150
Johnson had anticipated the need to show the nation that he had taken the reins of power; the most immediate display of his taking command would be accomplished through the liberal use of photographs by the presidential photographer. This was accomplished by getting Captain Cecil Stoughton into one of the first cars to leave Parkland after Johnson left at 1:26 p.m. in a car he shared with Secret Service Agent Thomas L. Johns and Johnson aides Cliff Carter and Jack Valenti. Captain Stoughton was on the scene quickly, with two cameras and plenty of film. To add to his “instant gravitas,” the pictures would need to be made on Air Force One (aircraft 26000) and they would need to show that JFK’s widow, Jackie, was there standing with him as he took the oath of office, lending her grace and dignity to the moment and creating a sense of authenticity and continuity despite the hellish internal turmoil she was still dealing with. It was the description of how Johnson insisted on her presence at his swearing-in ceremony on Air Force One that Mrs. Kennedy successfully had reedited and softened in William Manchester’s book because it was still upsetting and distasteful to her.151
When Mrs. Kennedy did not immediately respond to his request that she join the rest of the party in the main cabin of the aircraft, Kenneth O’Donnell tried to urge Johnson not to subject her to the pain of the publicity of her grieving. Johnson was growing increasingly angry with her. “He (Johnson) 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.”152 When she stepped out of the bedroom, into the corridor, she looked toward the stateroom and saw everyone waiting; she was bewildered by that since Johnson had told her when she first talked to him that it would be an hour before the judge got there. She hurried toward them, wondering why Johnson told her it would take an hour for the judge to arrive.153 The anger and utter outrage felt by everyone throughout the cabin provoked by his intrusion into her privacy at this painful and agonizing ordeal, on the other hand, could never, realistically, have been foreseen or even understood by the narcissistic Lyndon Johnson.
One of the pictures which Captain Cecil Stoughton took was a bit more candid than Lyndon Johnson preferred. In the famous “wink” photo, Congressman Albert Thomas trades winks with the new president, as if to acknowledge a successful mission. Of the twenty-one photographs taken by Captain Stoughton (thirteen frames of 35 mm and eight of 120 film)154 only one of the 35 mm negatives is, mysteriously, not preserved at the LBJ Library; the missing negative is the twelfth of t
he series, the “wink” photo. Richard B. Trask, in his book That Day in Dallas, states that he believes “someone saw in this negative what they thought might be construed by others as an inappropriate gesture given the morbid nature of the circumstances surrounding the swearing-in, and an attempt was made to get rid of the negative.”155 (Emphasis added. It is left to the reader to determine who the “someone” was.) Cecil Stoughton admitted that he withheld judgment on the meaning of the wink, essentially giving Johnson another pass as hundreds, thousands, and millions of others would as well with this and other anomalies and behavioral oddities since it could not be considered as “direct evidence” of his complicity and could arguably be merely an innocent “good luck” gesture. And besides, it isn’t absolutely certain that Johnson was actually winking back to Congressman Thomas even though it was just as likely that LBJ winked first. File all of this under “Questions to Ponder.”
L-R: Congressman Albert Thomas, Lady Bird Johnson, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Jacqueline Kennedy, Lem Johns (back), Congressman Jack Brooks, Bill Moyers (back wearing eyeglasses)
Although the shared winks revealed in the photo may be meaningless, at the very least, the fact is that someone—in a high enough position to make such decisions—realized that it might have revealed sinister implications and decided to discard that particular negative. At the time, the only way to duplicate a good quality photograph was by reprocessing the negative and recreating the photograph, so the obvious intent of destroying it would have been to keep any copy of it from publication. Fortunately, printed copies remained and have since been duplicated, foiling at least one obvious attempt to manipulate evidence. Captain Stoughton stayed on for eighteen months as a White House photographer, but shortly after he accompanied Mrs. Kennedy and family and friends on a trip to England to record a ceremony honoring the fallen president in May 1965, the new president effectively fired him by having him ordered transferred out of the White House, thus ending his military assignment.156 It was reported that during the first few weeks after he became president, the White House photographer took over eleven thousand photographs of Lyndon B. Johnson.157 The reason for the upsurge has never been officially announced; however, it has never really been a mystery either.