The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  Stepping into the hotel corridor to join Congressman Wright’s party, the President was still frowning. He spotted Clint Hill and Muggsy O’Leary in the Secret Service post and stepped over to them. “Mary Gallagher wasn’t here last night to help Jackie,” he said tartly. “Mary hasn’t any business in motorcades. She’s supposed to reach hotels before we do, and so far she’s batting zero. Get her on the ball.”

  His flash of temper was over. He saw an elderly woman in a wheelchair, a resident of the hotel, and paused to speak gently to her. A few doors beyond, he paused again outside Evelyn Lincoln’s room. Evelyn, after breakfasting with three Texas friends, had lined them up outside in a stiff, self-conscious, Sunday-best rank. “More of your relatives?” he asked with a twinkle, gracefully giving her an opening for introductions.

  In the lobby his entourage swelled until, as he crossed the red-brick paving of Eighth Street outside, it included Lyndon Johnson, John Connally, Ralph Yarborough, several Congressmen, and Raymond Buck, president of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. The President waded happily into the crowd, disregarding the drizzle, which had now become a fine mist. Bill Greer had brought a raincoat for him and held it aloft on his arm. Kennedy shook his head. Laughing exultantly, he mounted the flatbed truck. Yet not everyone there felt so enthusiastic. Hugh Sidey of Time was struck by the difference between the President’s mood and the Vice President’s. Sidey wished Johnson a good morning. Johnson’s answering greeting, he noted, was “dour, mechanical, perfunctory.”

  “There are no faint hearts in Fort Worth!” Kennedy cried into the microphone. The union men cheered, and there were scattered shouts of “Where’s Jackie?” He pointed to her eighth-floor window. “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself,” he said, smiling. “It takes her a little longer, but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it.”

  Larry and Ken had moved into Dr. Burkley’s room to watch the speech. Both looked grave. They had already made their first pitch to Yarborough, and they had struck out. The Senator had argued that his behavior wouldn’t affect the Presidential party—that the desire of so many thousands of people to be near the President was solid proof of his popularity. The two veteran pols knew their boss wouldn’t buy that. Then they looked up. As he paid tribute to Fort Worth’s work on the TFX fighter plane, they studied the ragged, scudding clouds on the far horizon and prayed that they would go away.

  Organizing herself at her dressing table and listening to her husband’s voice booming over the PA system below, Jacqueline Kennedy was pleased that it was raining; she hoped the top would be on that car. She was concerned about her hair becoming disheveled. She knew she looked tired. She glanced into the mirror. To Mary she moaned, “Oh, gosh. One day’s campaigning can age a person thirty years.”

  The rain lifted as Wesley Frazier entered the outskirts of greater Dallas, and before parking two blocks north of the Book Depository he switched off his windshield wipers. The Hertz sign overhead revealed that he had arrived in good time, so he let his engine idle for several minutes, on the theory that he was charging the battery. Then Oswald impatiently got out, carrying his package. Frazier followed, but in the manner of youth he became diverted by the switching of locomotives on the railroad tracks which lay between his parking place and the back of the warehouse, and by the morning traffic whizzing past on Stemmons Freeway, to the west. He straggled farther and farther behind. By the time he reached the building Oswald had climbed the loading platform and vanished inside.

  Oswald’s movements in the next few minutes are a matter of conjecture, based solely on circumstantial evidence. Superintendent Truly later recalled meeting him by a book bin, saying, “Good morning, Lee,” and receiving the customary reply, “Good morning, sir.” But Truly was vague, and he had no recollection of the package. It is quite possible that he was thinking of another morning—that Lee had already ascended to the sixth floor, using either one of the two freight elevators or the enclosed stairway in the northwest corner of the Book Depository, to conceal his weapon near the site he had already selected.

  There, as in so many ways, blind chance had played into his hands. The old flooring had become oily. Truly, observing that books which had been stored there frequently became stained, had ordered it replaced with battleship-gray plywood. Half the floor was to be redone at a time. In preparation for the work, the rear, or northern, area had been largely cleared of cartons by doubling up in front. Thus the southern side, which would face the passing motorcade, was a crowded jungle of cartons and wheeled book trucks. Concealment was easy, and it was there, sometime during the morning, that Oswald built his sniper’s perch of boxes in the southeast corner, from which the President would be seen approaching dead ahead and then departing to the right front. One pile of boxes hid him from snoopers in the Dal-Tex Building on the opposite side of Houston Street, which would be to his left as he fired. Others would serve as props when he aimed; still others would be used to provide a backstop against which ejected shells would bounce as he worked the bolt for each fresh shot.

  It was a squalid roost. The old floor was especially filthy here. The white-brick walls were chipped and scarred and covered with a patina of thick dust. Even after the window had been opened the interior was gloomy, and the naked 60-watt bulbs overhead merely washed the cramped scene with a sickly glow. But that was of no consequence to Oswald. He would be firing outside, not in. His bead would be drawn on a figure moving down Elm Street, to his right front. And by noon the daylight there would be broad as broad.

  Across Houston Street, Abraham Zapruder strode into the office of his garment business on the fourth floor of the Dal-Tex Building.

  “Sunshiny!” he chirped to his secretary in his stage Yiddish.

  “Where’s your camera?” she demanded severely.

  “At home,” he said timidly. They were good friends and often played this private game, pretending that she henpecked her boss.

  “Mr. Z., you march right back there. How many times will you have a crack at color movies of the President?”

  Zapruder fingered his bow tie and protested weakly, “I’m too short. Probably I wouldn’t even get close.”

  “The crowd’ll be light downstairs,” she shot back, and when he hesitated she said firmly, “Hurry up! You can make it in twenty minutes.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, he reflected. He turned back to the elevator on his short legs, grumbling, “Chased home by my own girl. It looks bad.”

  She feigned impatience, and he said, “O.K., Lillian, O.K.! So I’m going!”

  “We are going forward!” the President cried vibrantly, concluding his speech in the lot. As the union men whistled and stamped he descended from the truck, shook hands with the mounted policemen, murmured to Henry Brandon, “We’re doing better than we thought,” and re-entered the hotel. The formal breakfast was next on the schedule. In the elevator, however, Mac Kilduff persuaded him to make an unscheduled stop. Kilduff had read the papers and shared Kennedy’s concern. He had persuaded Connally to hold a press conference, and he thought the President should discuss it with the Governor first.

  In the Longhorn Room, down the mezzanine corridor from the ballroom, Kennedy reviewed Connally’s prepared statement. It was bland and rather meaningless. The Governor had always stood four-square for harmony in public. His own jarring notes were sounded backstage, and Ralph Yarborough’s present stonewalling was a result of them. Nevertheless the statement was something. Kennedy endorsed it and returned to the hall, where he ran into Yarborough himself and bluntly told him to ride in the Vice Presidential car. “For Christ’s sake cut it out, Ralph,” he snapped. The Senator, taken aback and upset by Yankee forthrightness, remonstrated that he had ridden to this very hotel with Johnson. Kennedy shook his head. It wasn’t good enough. That had been in the dark. If the Senator valued the President’s friendship, he would stick to Johnson like Duco. Nothing less would do; the President had no intention of being fobbed off with evasive action. Leaving the dismaye
d Senator, who had been searching for new evasions, Kennedy stepped into the kitchen of the Grand Ballroom, from which he would make his entrance. He glanced over his shoulder, the commander checking his troops. Behind him his entourage was wedged in a solid phalanx between stainless steel sinks and gigantic kettles. One member was missing. To Agent Bill Duncan he murmured, “Where’s Mrs. Kennedy? Call Mr. Hill. I want her to come down to the breakfast.” In a louder voice he inquired, “Everybody set?” There was a murmur of assent, and at 9:05 A.M.—the precise moment that American Airlines Flight 82, bearing Richard M. Nixon, departed Love Field for what was then called Idlewild Airport—he said, “All right, let’s go.”

  Jacqueline Kennedy did not appear for another twenty minutes. The opening formalities droned on. The Texas Choir sang “The Eyes of Texas.” Toastmaster Raymond Buck presented all the other guests, and in the back of the block-long hall there was a minor disturbance when a local panjandrum challenged General McHugh’s credentials. (“Do you know who I am?” God asked indignantly.) Now and then an agent glanced furtively at his wristwatch. Liz Carpenter, shifting impatiently, concluded that the President must be annoyed. Mrs. Kennedy knew what she was doing. Her husband wanted her to be elegant in Dallas, and she meant to be. But it did take time. Ultimately she came to the choice of gloves. She wavered over two pairs, long white and short white; she decided the short gloves were more restrained, and held up her wrists while Mary Gallagher buttoned them. Now she was ready for the Belle Starrs. In fact, she had become so preoccupied with Dallas that she had completely forgotten the ceremony downstairs. When the elevator stopped at the mezzanine floor, she was confused. “Aren’t we leaving?” she asked Clint Hill. “No, you’re going to a breakfast,” he said.

  In the kitchen the chief chef, Otto Druhe, ogled her while Clint awaited a signal from the head table. Raymond Buck provided it. Like a ringmaster he called, “And now—an event I know you have all been waiting for!” Buck swept his arm toward the kitchen door. The introduction lacked only a stentorian roll of snare drums. She appeared smiling tentatively, and was greeted by pandemonium. Two thousand cheering Texans were standing on their chairs. The klieg lights and the fake candles in the ballroom’s huge candelabra were blinding, and for a moment she was really frightened; she had never been through anything like this alone; she felt sure she would stumble. Then she saw her husband smiling at her. He seemed far away, but he was beckoning reassuringly, standing steadfast as she moved toward him through the strange valley of clamor, her hand outstretched, her eyes on his. Their hands touched. The tumult subsided.

  It was time for presents. Their hosts had boots for her, a five-gallon hat for him. In O’Donnell’s suite, where Ken and Larry were watching the ceremonies on television, this was a moment of high mirth. They knew how the President always avoided queer costumes, how he had never forgotten the pitiful photograph of Calvin Coolidge in an Indian headdress; and they wondered how he would get out of this one. He sidestepped it deftly by announcing that he would put it on in Washington Monday. But his wife was hoping he would wear it sooner. As he began his address—“Two years ago I introduced myself in Paris by saying that I was the man who had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris. I am getting somewhat the same sensation as I travel around Texas. Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear”—she thought ahead to tomorrow at the LBJ Ranch. Lady Bird had asked her to ask the President if there was anything special he would like there. “I’d like to ride,” he had replied. She remembered now what a good rider he was, and how, during the summer of their engagement, he had galloped bareback through the fields of Newport on a work horse. That Stetson would be decidedly becoming when he mounted an LBJ horse, she reflected. She thought he looked silly in ordinary hats, but anything picturesque—his naval officer’s cap, the silk hat at his inaugural—was splendid on him.

  Although she had not seen the ranch, she vividly recalled her husband’s account of his visit there eight days after his election to the Presidency. It had been a singular experience, and in one respect a distressing one. The afternoon they arrived the Vice President proposed a dawn hunt the next day. To Kennedy shooting tame game was not sport, and he had tried to bow out gracefully. To him all killing was senseless. But how do you explain such scruples to a gracious host? You don’t. He would never understand. He might even think you squeamish, and that was the crux of Kennedy’s problem. As a national leader he was obliged to resolve any doubts about his mettle.

  Besides, Lyndon had been dogged. He was determined to be cordial, and this was the finest treat his ranch could offer. All that day he had gone to great lengths to assure Kennedy of his fidelity. Johnson lieutenants had been called in and told firmly that their personal allegiance to him must be forgotten. The Austin-Boston axis was about to be replaced by the capital in Washington. Starting now, they all had but one leader. They must obey his commands, anticipate his needs, please him in every way. He thought he himself was doing precisely that. Had he dreamed that his hunting invitation might give offense, he would never have mentioned it. To Johnson, Kennedy’s reluctance seemed a polite gesture, like demurring at a second drink or a second helping. It needed cajoling. This was a local custom, he explained, taking the new chief’s arm in his tactile way. This was something you just did. An eminent guest was expected to join in the ritual.

  So at 6 A.M. on November 17, 1960, they had turned out, yawning, by the ranch’s field-stone façade. Johnson wore the uniform of the occasion: a stained, shapeless cowboy hat and a weather-beaten leather jacket. Kennedy had donned a checkered sport coat and slacks—a fellow guest, peering at him sleepily, thought he looked like a football fan. As the dawn shadows withered away they piled into a white Cadillac and tooled along under a flawless sky to a site of breathtaking natural beauty, and there the guest of honor did what was expected of him. The mechanics were relatively simple. Hitting a bull’s-eye isn’t much of an accomplishment. You kiss the stock with your cheek, line up the sights, take a deep breath and let a little out, then hold the breath to keep an even strain, and gently squeeze. Changing a tire requires more skill.

  Only in hunting animals that isn’t all. There is one other matter, one fraction of a moment which to this hunter was anguish. It is the confrontation, when the killer faces his prey. In that instant, in the season before his inaugural, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had squinted down the barrel of a high-powered rifle and looked into the face of the life he was about to take. He had committed himself; he couldn’t flinch. He fired and quickly turned back to the car. Yet he couldn’t rid himself of the recollection. The memory of the creature’s death had been haunting, and afterward he had relived it with his wife, vider l’abcès, to heal the inner scar.

  Nor had that been the end of it. Early in the new administration Lyndon had had the trophy mounted—not just the antlers, but the head, too—and one morning after a legislative leadership breakfast he came loping across the South Lawn of the White House, lugging it under his arm. The President of the United States had felled this quarry on his ranch. That made him proud, and he assumed that the President was proud, too. After all, it had been a magnificent shot. Why not display it on the wall of the Presidential office? he suggested. Kennedy, feigning interest, was inwardly appalled. After the Vice President had departed he ordered the head put away and forgotten. It wasn’t forgotten, though. Lyndon telephoned a jovial inquiry from his suite in the Executive Office Building, just across West Executive Avenue from the White House. Where was that deer? When was it going up? Later he mentioned it again, and then again. Eventually the trophy, like any other gift that has been repeatedly declined, became an issue between them, and once more Kennedy acceded. A great man must walk softly. Presidents must yield little points to win big ones, and really, this point was very small, a half-forgotten fico. The specimen was hung, not in the oval office, but in the nearby Fish Room. The President had granted a favor—how great a favor only the First Lady knew—and his Vice President had been genuinely pleased. Give and take; win
a few, lose a few; that was the strategy of public office. In one version of his pet joke, the last line of which could be adapted to the occasion, he used to tell his friends that “The three most overrated things in the world are the state of Texas, the FBI, and hunting trophies.” Nevertheless the memory of the incident was distasteful.

  Gesticulating emphatically at the audience in the Hotel Texas’ ballroom, Kennedy finished his breakfast remarks. “A ripsnorting political speech,” a reporter commented to Ted Clifton, who was sitting with the bagman in an improvised lobby behind the last line of tables. Three New York newspapermen accosted Powers there. “Wasn’t Jackie sensational?” he asked them. “Did you ever see a greater ovation?” Doug Kiker of the Herald Tribune asked back, “Are you going to use her much in the campaign?” Dave was vague. He couldn’t be sure. Anything could happen. He wasn’t going to commit himself. But Al Otten of the Wall Street Journal pressed the matter. Like several other White House correspondents, Otten’s feelings toward Kennedy were ambivalent. He liked him as a man, yet resented him as President, and a Kennedy triumph disturbed him. He asked sourly, “When are you going to have her come out of a cake?” Powers looked him up and down. Sounding every vowel in his Boston accent, he snapped back, “She’s not that kind of bunny.”

  Dave’s vagueness had been unnecessary. The First Lady, whose nerve was stronger than anyone in the Irish mafia then suspected, was quite recovered. She felt buoyant, and back in the suite she decided to reassert her determination to make every political trip between now and next November. The President was on the phone, summoning O’Donnell. Hanging up, he told her they wouldn’t have to leave here until 10:40. “Do you mean we have a whole hour to just sit around?” she asked incredulously. “Oh, Jack, campaigning is so easy when you’re President. Listen, I can go anywhere with you this year.” As Ken came into the drawing room Kennedy said, “How about California in the next two weeks?” “Fine. I’ll be there,” she promised, and was rewarded with one of Ken’s rare smiles. She had always been in awe of this Celtic Calvinist, with his taut face, sardonic manner, and quiet, almost fanatical devotion to her husband. She really didn’t know him very well. The President lived his life in compartments and kept the walls between compartments virtually airtight. Ted Sorensen, for example, was even closer to him than O’Donnell, yet Sorensen was remote to both his wife and O’Donnell. The only man who spanned all aspects of the President’s life was the Attorney General. Sorensen had been called the President’s alter ego. John Kennedy’s true second self was Robert Kennedy. But even his brother, who had been O’Donnell’s teammate on the Harvard football team, sometimes found Ken silent and forbidding. O’Donnell was ascetic, tough, and inscrutable. He had only one passion, President Kennedy, and his devotion was inflexible. Unlike O’Brien, he wasn’t one of the merry Irish. This was the first time the First Lady had seen him beam. Startled, she burst into laughter. The President chuckled, and O’Donnell grinned openly.