The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  These were the technicians. In theory they would have followed identical routines if the President had been named Bert Lahr. In practice, as several of them were to discover that day, their loyalty to the man in Suite 850 had become surprisingly personal, and could not be transferred to anyone else. Officially, however, they owed their allegiance to an institution, the office of the Presidency. The politicians, with whom they coexisted, were a different breed. Political fealty was completely individual. As a group they were more colorful, more convivial, and less efficient than the technical staff. On principle they distrusted clockwork procedure, but they, too, were obliged to operate on tight schedules, and the baying from the parking lot gave them a special incentive. They had to rouse themselves and find out what was happening, and once they saw all those voters yesterday’s exhaustion was forgotten; they were ready to go.

  They were going to need a lot of inspiration. Charcoal would be highly mobile today. In 835 Ken O’Donnell, the man most likely to receive an early Presidential summons, ran his eye over today’s itinerary as he shaved. It would be another backbreaker; two speeches here; the hop to Dallas; the long ride to the Trade Mart; another speech; a flight to Bergstrom Air Force Base outside Austin, where the head coach of the University of Texas Longhorns would present the President with an autographed football; a motorcade through the city; a series of receptions; a valedictory speech at the Austin fund-raising banquet; a final motorcade; and a helicopter ride to the LBJ Ranch. There was enough for any appointments secretary to worry about. But O’Donnell’s cup hadn’t quite passed. He now had to cope with a politician’s most exasperating problem, inclement weather.

  Not all Texans were as rugged as the workmen in the square below. If the skies really opened, today’s crowds would dwindle, raining out the President. Furthermore, at any moment Ken would be expected to make a decision about the Lincoln in Dallas. Buckling the unwieldy plastic bubbletop on the convertible took time. It would be absolutely necessary in a thunderstorm. Suppose the clouds vanished, however. In a closed car Kennedy would be almost invisible to the waiting multitudes. O’Donnell squinted out at the gray drizzle. It was exasperating, and there was no way of telling which way it would turn; yesterday McHugh had shown how unreliable forecasts could be.

  Jacqueline Kennedy presented another complication. Alone, the President would shrug his way through a storm, but his solicitude yesterday suggested that he would object strenuously to a wet wife. Neither a technician nor a politician, she was an unfamiliar member of the team, a new cog in the apparatus, and they were all adjusting to her. Obviously she was worth it; San Antonio and Houston had convinced everyone with political awareness that she would add tremendous zest to the coming campaign. From their windows six stories above the lot the Connallys were discussing her as they studied the swarming square below. Nellie argued that she had seemed stiff on arrival; John countered that she had been enjoying herself by evening; both agreed that she was a priceless ornament.

  Her presence had other implications. Under peripatetic circumstances a First Lady inevitably creates plights for other ladies. None of them, for example, had been told what she was going to wear or which public appearances, if any, she would be making here this morning. Clint Hill, her own bodyguard, didn’t know until he reached the hall outside Suite 850. Learning that she would not be going to the lot, Clint settled down with a mug of coffee and a roll. Nellie and Lady Bird lacked even that information, and they were in a quandary. As the Governor’s wife Nellie felt that she must make an appearance. (At the breakfast, to her dismay, she would presently find herself wearing a pink wool suit, a twin of Mrs. Kennedy’s.) If Nellie was going, Bird decided she should, too. It was a matter of duty. She wasn’t in the mood for public appearances. The Second Lady felt out of sorts this morning. Dallas was very near now, and the thought of it oppressed her. She was a loyal wife and a staunch trouper, but this was one stop she didn’t relish. Dressing in the Vice Presidential suite, she noticed that her hands were trembling with anxiety.

  Others remained preoccupied with Big D. Down the hall from the Johnsons, Tiger Teague was calling colleagues from 1302, taking soundings and expressing his misgivings about the city. Roy Kellerman phoned Agent Lawson at Love Field and asked, “Are we going to be all right in Dallas?” “Oh, yes,” Lawson assured him. “It is a good program.” With Dallas in mind, Rufe Youngblood inquired of another agent, “Anything new from PRS?” The Service’s Protective Research Section, which, in response to a request from Lawson on November 8, had spent ten minutes checking the city in which Adlai Stevenson had been assaulted less than a month before, had nothing to report, but the agent wordlessly handed Youngblood a copy of Friday morning’s Dallas Morning News, turned to page 14.

  The entire page was devoted to an advertisement, ominously bordered in black like an announcement of mourning. Under the sardonic heading, “WELCOME MR. KENNEDY TO DALLAS,” an organization styling itself as “The American Fact-Finding Committee”—a local coordinator of the John Birch Society and Nelson Bunker Hunt, the son of H. L. Hunt, it later developed, were the committee’s most prominent members—asked the President twelve rhetorical questions. He was accused of responsibility for the imprisonment, starvation, and persecution of “thousands of Cubans.” The ad declared that he was selling food to Communist soldiers who were killing Americans in Vietnam, hinted strongly that he had reached a secret agreement with the U.S. Communist party, and asked, among other things, “Why have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?”

  It was another “Wanted for Treason” broadside. But there were two differences. This denunciation was reaching a vast audience through the pages of a respected newspaper. And it was appearing within hours of the President’s arrival.

  “Mr. Kennedy,” the ad concluded, “we DEMAND answers to these questions, and we want them NOW.”

  In her drab quarters at 2220 Thomas Place Marguerite Oswald settled down for her daily six-hour television bout. She began, as usual, with NBC’s “Today” show, and at 7:08 A.M., as the first olive light of day brightened her damp windows, she saw Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry appear on her tiny screen, describe the elaborate precautions he had taken, and warn that immediate action would be taken against anyone who attempted to spoil the President’s visit.

  In Dallas Father Oscar Huber, C.M., a gentle, bespectacled priest, had risen as usual at 5 A.M. in his modest room at the rectory of Holy Trinity church, three miles from Parkland Hospital. After morning prayers and meditation he had begun his regular routine of parish activities, but he was keenly aware that the motorcade of America’s first Roman Catholic Chief Executive was going to pass within three blocks of the church. He tried in vain to interest his fellow priests in making the stroll. They intended to stay here and watch it on television. “Well, I’m going,” he told them. “I’m seventy years old and I’ve never seen a President. I’ll be hanged if I’m going to miss this chance.”

  U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders had also been up early, distributing the last twenty-five luncheon tickets allotted to Dallas Democrats. At this late hour they would have to be delivered by messenger, and some wouldn’t arrive until noon. Their elated recipients would be on the streets, fighting their way through the traffic around the Trade Mart as the motorcade reached its climax.

  Democratic National Committeeman Byron Skelton, lacking an invitation, was still feeling rather left out. As a loyal member of the party, however, he had bought two gold-colored, $100 tickets to tonight’s testimonial in Austin, and after lunch he planned to drive down with his wife Ruth, wearing black tie in the hope that he would be seated at the head table. To make certain that his desk would be clear, he was making an unusually prompt start for his paneled law offices in Temple’s First National Bank Building. As he strolled down the city’s
main street he saw a young Republican storekeeper motioning to him through his plate-glass window. The man was holding up a copy of the Dallas News ad and grinning.

  Joe Dealey, the son of the publisher of the News, was far from delighted. Joe had returned home from Miami late the day before. He opened his copy of the newspaper to page 14 and felt stricken. Normally the copy would have been submitted to him or to the paper’s advertising director. But the director had been out of town, too, so it had gone all the way to the top and had been approved there by Ted Dealey. Joe immediately called his father and reproached him. It was, he said, “like inviting someone to dinner and then throwing tapioca in his face.” Ted was unmoved. He had read the ad meticulously, and he argued that it merely “represented what we have been saying editorially.” That wasn’t the point, Joe countered. “The timing is bad,” he said. He thought of the time he and other conservative young businessmen had spent in their eleventh-hour attempt to polish up the blemished image of Big D and hung up, bitterly discouraged. It was too late now. The thing was in print.

  At the indoor birdhouse of the Trade Mart the last spoon had been laid at the President’s place, and outside workmen were erecting two flagpoles, for the Stars and Stripes and the flag of Texas. It was slow going. They had to vie with a group of youthful anti-Kennedy pickets carrying placards reading “YANKEE, GO HOME” and (in red letters) “HAIL CAESAR.” Appropriately they looked indignant; they were members of the Dallas Indignant White Citizens Council. They also looked out of breath. They had plastered their mouths with adhesive tape, “to show,” one scribbled on copy paper for a Times Herald reporter, “that we are being muzzled.” A policeman watched them narrowly. Backstage in the Mart a White House phone had been plugged in; beside it stood a rocking chair with a hand-quilted cover. Everything in the main hall had gone smoothly, with one trivial exception. Flowers had been a problem. Because of Texas pride in yellow roses, the hosts in the four other cities Kennedy was visiting had exhausted the supply of state florists. The Trade Mart had imported five hundred yellow blossoms from California, and two dozen of these now graced the head tables. None had been left over for the welcoming ceremonies at Love Field, however, so substitute bouquets were being prepared—white roses for Lady Bird, red roses for Jacqueline Kennedy. Mrs. Earle Cabell was to hand Mrs. Kennedy the red bouquet. Dearie hoped the First Lady wouldn’t notice the difference.

  Marina Oswald awoke before the bedside alarm rang at 6:30. She had been up twice with the baby, and her temper of yesterday evening had not improved. She nursed the child while her husband stood at the foot of the bed, dressing in a work shirt and gray trousers. He spoke; she looked up drowsily. His slender shoulders framed against the solid blue-green walls, he told her to stay where she was. He would fix his own breakfast. This could only have been an attempt to open a conversation, for she never rose for him anyway. Then he declared that he really wanted her to buy everything she wanted—clothes for herself, and especially shoes for little Junie. Marina made no response. Returning the baby to the crib, she closed her eyes and instantly fell into a deep sleep. He knew that they were through, and apparently he wanted her to know it, too. Before departing he slipped off his wedding ring and left it in the little china cup that had belonged to her grandmother. Yet he was as good as his word, or as good as his meager hoard of cash would permit. This was the day the chronic failure was going to demonstrate that he could succeed at something, that he was a man, and did not deserve contempt. In the bedroom he left $187 in bills. He kept $15.10. That wouldn’t take him very far. But he knew he wasn’t going far.

  In the kitchen he made a cup of instant coffee. Leaving the cup for Ruth to clean, he walked a half-block eastward on Fifth Street, carrying the rifle and telescopic sight in the brown paper wrapping he had brought from Dallas the previous afternoon, and thrust his thin balding head in the kitchen window of the corner house where Wesley Frazier, who lived with his sister’s family, was having breakfast. The young Alabaman’s mother had never met Oswald. Startled, she asked, “Who’s that?” “That’s Lee,” her son said. “Well, I guess it’s time to go.” After hurriedly brushing his teeth he donned his coat and joined Oswald outside. Frazier had a habit of glancing over his shoulder as he slid behind the wheel, and this morning he noticed the strange bundle on the back seat. “What’s in the package, Lee?” he inquired. “Curtain rods,” Oswald replied curtly. “Oh, yeah,” said Frazier. “You told me you were going to bring some today. Where’s your lunch?” “I’m going to buy it,” Oswald said. Frazier nodded, turned the ignition on, and shifted gears. There was grime on the windows of his old Chevrolet, and the drizzle was making it worse. “I wish it would rain or just quit altogether,” Frazier muttered irritably. “I wish it would do something to clear off the windshield.” The drops were growing larger. Forgetting about the buff-colored parcel behind him, he hunched forward and concentrated on the road ahead. He hoped they wouldn’t be late. They were supposed to be in the Book Depository at 8 A.M. It was now 7:25.

  Five minutes later in Fort Worth, the Chief Executive’s leisurely valet entered the Hotel Texas’ Suite 850 and tapped on the door of the master bedroom. “Mr. President,” George called gently. He heard a stirring of covers and crossed the threshold. “It’s raining out,” he murmured. “That’s too bad,” Kennedy said groggily. He thought about it a moment and then groaned.

  While he showered and shaved, George laid out his clothes: a blue-gray, two-button suit, a dark blue tie, and a white shirt with narrow gray stripes. The shirt was striking, the gem of George’s footlocker. During a conference with Ambassador Alphand the President had noticed that the French diplomat was wearing one like it. “Nice,” he had remarked with a puckish grin. “From London?” Alphand, springing to the honor of Paris tailors, replied that it was from Cardin’s, and the White House had placed an order with Cardin’s the next day. Kennedy counted on his wife to show Dallas what real style was, but he intended to prove that he knew something about good taste himself.

  While dressing he decided to have a look at the parking lot. It couldn’t be seen from where he was, so he impulsively crossed into Mrs. Kennedy’s room.

  “Gosh, look at the crowd!” the President cried, peering down. “Just look! Isn’t that terrific?”

  Excitedly telling his wife he would see her later, he darted back to George. A waiter had brought him a light breakfast. He hurriedly sipped coffee, chewed half a bun, and was knotting his tie when Dave Powers came in. The President greeted him with relish. “Have you seen the square? And weren’t the crowds great in San Antonio and Houston?” Dave acknowledged it. “Listen, they were terrific!” said Kennedy. “And you were right—they loved Jackie.”

  He had already discounted the rain and was eager to head downstairs. A President, however, can rarely move from A to B. The several hats he wears—the toppers of Chief Executive and Head of State, the shako of Commander in Chief, the bowler of political leader—are forever piled on his head in a giddy pyramid. Already Godfrey had entered the suite; it was time Kennedy turned aside for the CIA report. Spectacles in place, he swiftly read the situation estimates on Saigon, Cyprus, and Korea. At his direction, casualty reports from Vietnam were included each day, and there were precise accounts of formal and informal statements by Charles de Gaulle and Nikita Khrushchev. These were always a matter of intense interest. A Chief Executive’s major problem, George Washington had said, is “seclusion from information.” Reliance on the press was inadequate; heads of state, Kennedy had learned, are occasionally misquoted.

  Nevertheless the press was vital. It reached a somewhat larger audience than CIA summaries, and a President should know what his people are reading. Unlike Eisenhower, who had ignored newspapers, Kennedy scanned the leading metropolitan dailies every morning. Since he was on a political swing, he was naturally alert to reactions to the tour’s first day. He found them, and he found them dismaying. The Chicago Sun-Times was comforting: “Some Texans, in taking account of the tangled
Texas political situation, have begun to think that Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy may turn the balance and win her husband this state’s electoral vote.” But that was exceptional. Overnight the strife between Connally and Yarborough had become the biggest political story in the nation. Texas papers were giving it special prominence, and the Dallas News led the pack with two abrasive stories on the front page: “STORM OF POLITICAL CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND KENNEDY ON VISIT” and “YARBOROUGH SNUBS LBJ.” A third, inside, was headed: “PRESIDENT’S VISIT SEEN WIDENING STATE DEMOCRATIC SPLIT.”

  Kennedy angrily thrust the paper aside, missing, for the moment, the inflammatory ad on the next page. (He also overlooked a dispatch from the local soft-drink conclave: “NIXON PREDICTS JFK MAY DROP JOHNSON,” and a story on today’s Dallas schedule reporting that “the motorcade will move slowly so that crowds can ‘get a good view’ of President Kennedy and his wife.”) The bloodletting had become serious. Seizing the phone, Kennedy told O’Donnell that he wanted Senator Yarborough in the Vice Presidential car, and no excuse would be accepted. Maybe the Senator had been more sinned against than sinning, but enough was enough; the whole expedition was in danger of coming a cropper. Ken and Larry O’Brien must spell out the alternatives for Yarborough: either he rode with Lyndon today or he walked.