The friction between the Kennedy people and Johnson and his staff grew during the flight back to Washington as the two groups gravitated away from each other. As author Jim Bishop described the scene:158
The Johnsons pretended that the situation did not exist. The Kennedys—which is to say Mrs. Kennedy, O’Donnell, O’Brien, Powers, McHugh—sulked in the rear compartment as though Johnson had boorishly appropriated the President’s stateroom, evicting them all. They were desirous of making the President look bad. Mrs. Kennedy, having surprised the President in her bedroom, sat in the tiny breakfast nook near the casket, trembling with the vibration of the tail section. For two hours and twelve minutes, the two camps remained apart. They employed messengers to walk the corridor with whispered wishes. The alchemy of the hours had transmuted the grief of the Kennedy group to rancor; the assassination was a deep personal loss, but it was also a fall from power. The Ins were Out; the majestic were servile; the policy makers were beholden to a new man for a plane ride; a lucky shot had killed the President, but it had also paralyzed the Cabinet and the White House guard. Men who are appointed to high offices must please the man who appoints them. When he goes, they go; or they wait for the man they held in contempt to say, “I need you more than he did.” … Conversations began and stopped abruptly. The people turned to whiskey … The short fat glasses of scotch and rye and bourbon jiggled their ice as Air Force One swept northeast. The empty glasses were replenished. As the busy stewards swept by, the word became: “Do it again, please.” … There were two separate and distinct camps aboard because Mrs. Kennedy wished it so. (Emphasis added.)
O’Donnell later said,
I think Johnson sensed that he might be criticized for taking over Air Force One instead of going back to Washington earlier on his own plane, as we assumed he would do. This must have been why he later made a big point of insisting in his testimony before the Warren Commission, and in interviews with reporters, that I had specifically told him to take Air Force One when we talked before he left Parkland Hospital. He was trying to shift the blame for his being on Air Force One to me, just as he insisted that he waited in Dallas to take the oath on the plane because Bobby Kennedy had told him to do so, which was not true at all. I distinctly remember that when Johnson and I talked at the hospital there was no mention of which of the two planes he should use. Nor was there any mention that he was considering waiting for Jackie and the President’s casket to be on the same plane with him before he left Dallas Later a lawyer for the Warren Commission pointed out to me that Johnson’s testimony that I had told him to board Air Force One disagreed with my own testimony before the commission about our conversation at the hospital. He asked me, to my amazement, if I would change my testimony so that it would agree with the President’s. “Was I under oath?” I asked him, as, of course, I was. “Certainly I wouldn’t change anything I said under oath.” 159 (emphasis added)
The Newly Minted President Johnson Watching over Everyone on Air Force One
Not everyone sat transfixed to their own territory within the plane. The new president sauntered about both the main cabin and the private quarters housing the presidential suite, which he was certainly legally entitled to use now that he was the official president, regardless of what he considered the thin skins of “those Harvards and Bostons” in the previous president’s party. The fact that his presence on board this aircraft had created awkwardness, friction, and frustration amongst everyone else on board didn’t concern him as he went about shaving, combing his hair, and changing his shirt again in preparation for arrival at Andrews Air Force Base.160 Some things—arguably many things—about him had never changed since his childhood and his days at San Marcos.
For most of the flight, Johnson took over the president’s office and lounge where he sat with his assistants, Cliff Carter and Bill Moyers. According to Kenneth O’Donnell, “Johnson came back once to visit with us, and told Larry and me that he wanted us to stay on with him at the White House. ‘I need you more than President Kennedy needed you,’ he said. We heard later that he said the same thing in exactly the same words to everybody else on the White House staff during the next few days.”161 It was a pattern which suggested that a script had been laid down well before the events of that day unfolded.
As Air Force One flew on, tapes of the conversations—which were being transmitted on four different radio frequencies—were being recorded. Researcher Doug Horne estimated that only two hours out of seven to nine hours of unedited audiotapes (i.e., about 25 percent) have been released based upon the statement of the radio operator on board Air Force One, who said: “I … had three phone patches going simultaneously most of the time.”162 On one of the exchanges, an unidentified voice twice says, “ [unintelligible … or erased?]—is on 6970 …” Aircraft 86970 was the ex-vice presidential aircraft (Air Force Two), which left Love Field shortly after Air Force One, also flying back to Andrews AFB. Being much lighter, with only seventeen passengers and much less luggage, it reportedly overtook Air Force One and landed first. According to FBI agents James W. Sibert and Francis X. O’Neill, who had been ordered by FBI headquarters to meet the presidential jet and “to stay with the body and to obtain bullets reportedly in the President’s body,” Air Force One arrived forty minutes late. They stated that they were originally told the estimated time of arrival (ETA) was 17:25 (5:25 p.m.). The ETA was then revised to be 18:05 (6:05 p.m.).163 According to Theodore H. White, “The plane slowed down so as not to overshoot the preparations of reception at Andrews Base.”164 This may come closest to the truth if “preparations of reception” can be stretched to include the task of getting aircraft 86970 unloaded in advance of the arrival of Air Force One.
Such a significant delay is congruent with the thesis that the backup aircraft, 86970, carrying the body of JFK back to Washington in a smaller, plain gray shipping casket, passed Air Force One en route, landing fifteen to twenty minutes earlier and that this casket was then flown by helicopter to Walter Reed Hospital. After the preliminary surgery described by David Lifton, it was taken via a black Cadillac hearse to the naval hospital at Bethesda five miles away, arriving there at 6:40 p.m. (This scenario will be examined further below; however, the remaining facets of the thesis being presented do not turn on the matter of which airplane JFK’s body was on; the number and kinds of anomalies related to Johnson’s behavior seem, however, to be congruent with his body being switched to a lighter casket, and that it was moved to the “backup” aircraft in order to allow more time for some preliminary work on the body before the autopsy began).
As Air Force One rolled up the tarmac into its unloading position, Captain Swindal saw that Robert Kennedy was waiting in a tense half-crouch, ready to spring aboard into the front entrance as all the attention and cameras were focused on the back hatch—the president’s entrance and exit. As soon as the ramp rolled into place in the front, Kennedy was inside the plane, sprinting through the staff cabin and into the stateroom. He didn’t notice anyone else, including the new president, as he raced back to the private quarters in the back to find Jackie. The chaotic situation that then ensued in the process of unloading the expensive bronze casket caused the new president extreme anxiety because he resented all the attention being given to the dead Kennedy and the complete lack of attention and deference which should have now been paid to him since he was the newly sworn president.165
The widely and well-respected author William Manchester—wittingly or not—left many other subtle clues about the atmosphere on board the aircraft from Dallas and brought clarity and insight into the inner thoughts and worries on Johnson’s mind at that time. At a time of extreme anxiety—the murder of Jacqueline’s husband and father of her children and the brother of Bobby—an outrageously heinous act that caused trauma for tens of millions throughout the nation, Lyndon B. Johnson had his feelings hurt because the Kennedys, in their selfish, unthoughtful actions, did not pay him proper presidential deference. He was beside himself with anger
.
According to Arthur Schlesinger’s account, “‘He [Bobby] ran,’ Johnson later complained, ‘so that he would not have to pause and recognize the new President.’ Perhaps some such thought contributed to Robert Kennedy’s haste. But a man more secure than Johnson would have sympathized with the terrible urgency carrying him to his murdered brother’s wife.”166 Johnson lacked that inner security. “I took the oath,’ he later told Kearns, ‘I became the President. But for millions of Americans I was still illegitimate, a naked man with no presidential covering, a pretender to the throne, an illegal usurper.’”167
As Larry Hancock showed, when Johnson returned to Washington, he was not actually concerned about the supposed Communist plot, which he kept pointing out to others. “Despite these expressed concerns, there is little to indicate that Johnson was acting as if this were a major concern of his. There is not a single record of Johnson’s attempting to contact the National Command Center, the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense. Nothing shows him asking about the location of the officer with the missile launch codes. Despite his initial remark, Johnson did not make a single call or contact that would indicate he was worried about a Communist conspiracy or national security … During the flight back there is also not a single record that indicates that Johnson contacted or attempted to contact anyone within the national security or command structure. There is no indication that he pursued any concerns or actions in response to a conspiracy of any sort, much less a Communist conspiracy suggesting an imminent atomic first strike against the United States”168 (emphasis added).
Curiously, the first person to greet Johnson and shake his hand on his return to Andrews Air Force Base was James Rowley, the head of the Secret Service, who beat Johnson’s other closest aides and members of the cabinet, most of whom had gathered there.169 According to Larry Hancock, “Johnson did not speak to the Secretary of Defense until approximately 6:20 p.m. EST at the airport in Washington. He had not summoned McNamara; rather McNamara had gone of his own accord. Johnson’s first remark to McNamara was, ‘Any important matters pending?’”170 Any important matters pending? If McNamara had answered in jest something equally inane, such as “No, just the same old, same old,” would Johnson have even heard him? Could he have possibly been less concerned about the actual “state of national emergency,” which he had portrayed in his public statements?
Author Noel Twyman interviewed retired Navy Admiral Taswell Shepard, one of John Kennedy’s top military aides at the time of the assassination and one of the first persons to brief Johnson when he returned from Dallas on November 22, 1963. Admiral Shepard stated that “there was no sense of an eminent nuclear war” when Johnson returned to Washington that night.171 Everyone who talked to Johnson upon his return from Dallas said that he was not concerned about the risk of a nuclear war, yet that is precisely the argument he would use over the course of several days to coerce reluctant men to accept appointments to the Warren Commission, as will be seen in the following chapters. Another purpose was served by this canard, which effectively trumped all the talk about a domestic conspiracy with the far more dangerous specter of an international crisis that might risk nuclear war. Anything to draw attention away from what really happened that day would buy him more time to bury the real evidence and fabricate replacements. While Johnson mouthed lame concern over a possible “worldwide conspiracy,” he was clearly not thinking consciously about it when he made his escape from Parkland and returned to the airport. According to Johnson’s handpicked author Jim Bishop, “The new President had overlooked The Bagman and Major General Chester V. Clifton, who understood the coded types of retaliation. If, at this time, the Soviet Union had launched a missile attack, referred to in the Department of Defense as a ‘Thirty-Minute War,’ it would have required a half hour for The Bagman and General Clifton to get to Johnson’s side.”172
The astonishing and bizarre contradiction between Johnson’s actions following the assassination juxtaposed to what he was telling others about the ominous circumstances of worldwide peril speaks volumes about his own inner awareness of the absence of such a conspiracy. He knew intimately what had transpired, and it had nothing to do with the bogeyman favored by his friends, “the international communist conspiracy.”
Oswald Fingered—U.S. Officials Overhear Air Force One Communications over the Pacific
Meanwhile, back in Dallas, the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald set off alarms from Dallas to New Orleans and Miami and beyond U.S. shores: from Mexico City to Havana, from Tokyo to Moscow and Minsk. But one of the oddest of these alarms occurred on an Air Force Boeing 707, originally destined for Japan with cabinet members and State Department officials before being rerouted back to Washington behind both Air Force One and Two. As it was described in Theodore H. White’s 1964 book, The Making of the President-1964, an announcement was made on board—even as all three jets were still in flight toward Andrews Air Force Base—that the sole assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been arrested and that it had already been concluded that there had been no conspiracy. “On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned of the identity of Oswald and his arrest.”173 This information was corroborated by one of the State Department officials on board the airplane, Robert Manning, in an oral history recording at the JFK Library, who said, after learning of the president’s death, “The news then came in that someone named Oswald who had been in the Soviet Union had done this.” That announcement came hours before Oswald had actually been charged with JFK’s murder; within an hour and ten minutes of the shots in Dealey Plaza, he was being questioned as a suspect, but he wasn’t formally charged with JFK’s murder until 1:30 a.m. Saturday.174 Doug Horne has analyzed this incident thoroughly and not only concluded that all traces of this information have been cleansed from what remains of the taped radio communications between the White House Situation Room and the three Air Force jets but that the information was inadvertently given to author White by an aide to Johnson.* Regardless of how he got that information, it is clearly an artifact that is connected to what transpired on Air Force One as Johnson made a decision to select the “lone nut” scenario in lieu of the “Communist conspiracy” option that had been developed by the conspirators as an option. The military and CIA rogues who had set up several fake Oswald trails to overlap with the real ones left numerous traces of an international conspiracy which had been developed to justify an attack on Cuba under the pretext of retribution for the murder of President Kennedy. These were simply traces of the original “plan B,” which would have been invoked if a “conspiracy” had become undeniable, and was the preferred option by most of the military, CIA, and exile participants. But Johnson was too afraid of a major war in the Western Hemisphere; he preferred one on the other side of the world.
When Johnson returned to “the Elms” on 52nd Street, according to a Time magazine report in the issue dated November 29, 1963, “The first thing he saw there was a framed color photo of his beloved friend Sam Rayburn. The President saluted, then whispered: ‘Well, Mr. Speaker, I wish you were here tonight.’” He probably wanted to have a toast with his departed mentor, thinking about how he had convinced “Mr. Sam” to support him three years earlier in his aggressive bid for the vice presidential nomination; he must have felt connected with Rayburn at that moment, knowing how the Speaker would have been proud of how Johnson had indeed secured his entrance into the Oval Office. Johnson phoned Hoover that evening at 7.25 p.m., according to William Manchester, and again from 9:10 to 9:25 p.m. that evening175 though there is no record of either call in Johnson’s official diary and no tape recording of either of these conversations has ever been made public. There were no doubt many other calls between the two during the next few weeks that would never be recorded in any diaries or audio tapes.
Johnson brought a few of his key aides—Busby, Carter, Moyers, and Valenti—with him to his house, and they talked until the early hours of the next morning about what Johnson sh
ould do the next day. According to Cliff Carter, the idea was that Johnson should address “the psychological factor that someone had picked up the torch, the country was not without its leader … the nation was in firm and resolute hands, this on the one hand, and not to be overdoing on the other … make everyone realize that he was going to move in and take over and yet not to appear that he was rushing in just power-mad like a scavenger that just scoops everything out of the way”176 (emphasis added). Johnson clearly had the presence of mind to realize that he had to control the very element that had driven him to achieve his lifelong dream lest someone connect his imperial bearing with some other inexplicable actions during the Dallas motorcade.
Saturday Morning in the White House
LBJ Page 61
