The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  Johnson was not J. Edgar Hoover. He was a man of tact and sensitivity. He began by expressing his condolences. But he had just become the busiest man in the world, and after a few compassionate sentences he plunged into business. The murder, he said, “might be part of a world-wide plot.” In Johnson’s statement to the Warren Commission seven and a half months later he suggested that the Attorney General had agreed with this interpretation and had “discussed the practical problems at hand—problems of special urgency because we did not at that time have any information as to the motivation of the assassination or its possible implications.” In fact, Kennedy was unresponsive. He was not among those who suspected a grand conspiracy, and he didn’t understand what Johnson was talking about.

  “A lot of people down here think I should be sworn in right away,” said the new President, moving closer to the point. “Do you have any objection to that?”

  Kennedy was taken aback. It was scarcely an hour and a quarter since he had first heard of the shooting, less than an hour since he had learned that the wound had been fatal. As Attorney General he couldn’t understand the need for a rush, and on a personal level he preferred that any investiture be deferred until his brother’s body had been brought home.

  “Congressman Albert Thomas thinks I should take the oath here,” said Johnson, citing support. There was no answer, and he pressed on. “A lot of other people feel the same way.” The phone by the pool remained silent. Kennedy did not dissent; he said nothing. Changing to another tack, Johnson again referred to the plot, and then he requested information. According to Youngblood he asked “questions about who, when, and how he should take the Presidential oath.” Kennedy heard, “Who could swear me in?”

  “I’ll be glad to find out and call you back,” he answered.

  He depressed his receiver and asked the operator for Nick Katzenbach. It was 3 P.M. in Washington, according to Katzenbach’s secretary’s log, when, for the first time since the assassination, Robert Kennedy talked to his Deputy Attorney General. According to Katzenbach, Kennedy’s voice was “matter-of-fact, flat.” He told Nick, “Lyndon wants to be sworn in in Texas and wants to know who can administer the oath.”

  Katzenbach said, “Bob, I’m absolutely stunned.” There was no reply. He said, “My recollection is that anyone can administer the oath who administers oaths under federal or state laws. Do you want to hold on while I check?”

  Bob did, and using another Justice line Nick called Harold Reis in the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

  “That’s right,” said Reis. He reminded Katzenbach that Coolidge had been sworn in by his own father, a justice of the peace, and he added, “Of course, the oath’s in the Constitution.”

  He was the man Johnson should have been talking to. Telling the Deputy Attorney General was not necessary, but telling the new President was. What was required was someone with a gift for explaining the obvious. Actually, it wasn’t as obvious as it appeared to be; a great many eminent attorneys, Robert Kennedy among them, were so shaken that they had forgotten where they could lay their hands on the oath. Reis’s instincts were better than he knew. It may have been like pointing out to the Washington Redskins that they were entitled to four downs, but if the Redskin quarterback forgot, somebody would have to come to his rescue. No one had come to Johnson’s, and waiting for the Attorney General to phone back he was using other lines in an attempt to find out what was in any copy of The World Almanac.

  As Kennedy talked to Katzenbach, Johnson had placed two more Washington calls. The first was Volunteer to Vigilant—Lyndon Johnson to Walter Jenkins. The former Vice President’s chief aide told him what he already knew, that he ought to return to the capital. Unhappily, Vigilant was uninformed about the oath. Drawing a blank there, Johnson phoned McGeorge Bundy. In each case the inquiry from the bedroom was oblique. Given the nature of the inquirer it could not have been otherwise, and an appreciation of his nature and special talent is essential to a grasp of the misunderstandings which were to be bred by his approach. To men who were accustomed to dealing with President Kennedy, it was like listening to a foreign tongue. Both in public and in private, Kennedy had been as direct as his pointed finger at televised press conferences. Johnson approached a strongly fortified position by outflanking it, or burrowing under it, or surprising the defenders from the rear, or raining down obstacles upon them from the sky, or starving them into submission. Rarely, and then only reluctantly, would he proceed directly from A to B. To him the shortest distance between two points was a tunnel.

  His supreme talents were those of the man behind the scenes. But his complexities do not even end there, for few men in public life have found less comfort in anonymity. When the circus catch was made, he wanted the fans to note the LBJ brand on the fielder’s glove. They noted it. It could not be missed. Yet the feeling persisted that bat, batter, and umpire had been stamped with the same brand—that the play had been set from the start. It was only a feeling. Nothing was ever proved. His critics called him a wheeler-dealer. They overlooked the subtlety of Johnsonian strategy, his use of wheels within wheels. Put him within reach of a console switchboard and he became an octopus, clutching telephone receivers like bunches of black bananas. As Senate Majority Leader he had made the legislative process work with the virtuosity of statecraft, often relying on intermediaries, who in turn engaged other go-betweens. Typically, a Johnson adviser called a colleague who phoned an associate who made an appointment with a friend, each of whom carefully covered his tracks as he went. Johnson always managed to be out there in center field at the finish, his mitt outstretched to snag the descending ball.

  That Friday there was no time. He was hard pressed, on an airplane, in unfamiliar surroundings. Even so, the refractional quality of his telephone conversations is striking. Bundy’s notes of twelve days later are revealing: “I talked briefly to the new President to say that he must get back to Washington where we were all shaky. He agreed, and I now know that he immediately reached the same conclusion himself.” The Johnsonian tactic—soliciting an answer which is already known—is familiar. It may seem pointless. It isn’t. It has the great advantage of putting the answerer on record.

  Johnson then confided that he was worried about the oath and uncertain where to take it. Bundy explained that he had his hands full at the moment; he was monitoring the eastward progress of the returning Cabinet plane. Furthermore, he did not lightly deliver horseback opinions, especially when the terrain was strange and, in this instance, extremely forbidding. Mac’s undergraduate major at Yale had been mathematics. He wanted life to be that exact. Presidential oaths clearly belonged on someone else’s desk spike. He politely suggested that Johnson “leave that to the Justice Department.” He was right. Oaths are to Justice what weapons are to Defense. Bundy’s counsel, like Bundy himself, was flawless. And although the Attorney General, like the new President, would have preferred to let someone else field the question, Justice had the answer. As Johnson talked to Bundy, Nick Katzenbach had checked back with Bob Kennedy and confirmed his earlier opinion.

  “Then any federal judge can do it?” Kennedy asked.

  “Anybody, including a District Court judge.” Nick added, “I imagine he’ll want Sarah Hughes.” Sarah was from Dallas, and he remembered Johnson’s vigorous lobbying for her appointment.

  Inside, in his library, Robert Kennedy signaled the White House operator, who interrupted Johnson’s Bundy conversation and connected him with his Attorney General. The crux of their exchange is unclear. This second Johnson-Kennedy colloquy, like the second Johnson-O’Donnell talk at Parkland, has two renditions. The facts are unclear, and a dispassionate observer cannot choose. According to the President’s subsequent statement to the Warren Commission, Kennedy advised him “that the oath should be administered to me immediately, before taking off for Washington, and that it should be administered by a judicial officer of the United States.” Youngblood’s memory is foggy. He tends to support his superior, with qu
alifications, but he explains—quite reasonably—that he only heard one voice. Kennedy, who was on the other end, does not remember recommending an immediate ceremony, and it should be noted that such a recommendation would have been inconsistent with his mood. It is his recollection—and that of Ed Guthman, who was with him—that he said, “Anybody can swear you in. Maybe you’d like to have one of the judges down there whom you appointed. Any one of them can do it.”

  He was asked about the wording of the oath.

  “You can get the oath,” he said. “There’s no problem about the oath, they can locate the oath.”

  “Fine,” said Johnson, and rang off.

  But it wasn’t fine. He still lacked a text.

  In the stateroom Cliff Carter said to Marie Fehmer, “You’d better go in, he’s making calls.”

  She saw Johnson on the bed and sat in the chair facing the door. The desk and telephone were between them.

  “Write this down,” Johnson told her. He dictated brief notes of his talks to Jenkins, Bundy, and the Attorney General and said, “Now. Let’s get Waddy Bullion.”

  J. W. Bullion was a Dallas lawyer who had been counsel to Lady Bird for twenty-three years. Marie carried a little book with the telephone numbers of the Vice President’s oldest friends and allies. Bullion was in it, and she dialed RIverside 1-4721. His secretary said he was in Shreveport on business.

  “Get Sarah Hughes,” Johnson said.

  At RIverside 8-2251 Sarah’s law clerk, John Spinuzzi, explained that she was out—the last he knew she was on her way to the Trade Mart lunch. The new President took the receiver from his secretary. “This is Lyndon Johnson,” he said tersely. “Find her.” Then, to Marie: “Try Irv Goldberg.”

  RIverside 1-6252 was the office number of Irving L. Goldberg, another local attorney and veteran of Johnson’s Texas political campaigns. He, too, was out. Like Sarah, he had last been seen driving off in the direction of the Trade Mart, and like her he was now at home watching his television set. The phone there rang; his secretary said excitedly, “The Dallas White House is trying to reach you.” Her voice faded and was succeeded by static—it was a very poor connection—and then a faint but familiar voice came on. “This is Lyndon. Do you think I should be sworn in here or in Washington?”

  Irv thought rapidly. Maybe Johnson was already President, but he wasn’t clear about the Constitution. It was best to make sure.

  “I think here.”9

  “Who should do it?”

  “Sarah Hughes.”

  “We’re trying to get her here. You try, too.”

  Goldberg wanted to be helpful. “The Dallas White House,” however, meant nothing to him. All he knew was that Johnson must be somewhere in the city. He asked cautiously, “Where are you?”

  “Love Field. And you’d better get out here.”

  Irv knew he would never make it. He would make every effort, and he could reach the field quickly, but experience had taught him that he wasn’t adept at talking his way past policemen. (He was right. He and his wife raced to the airport and were stopped at a barrier.) Still, he thought, he could do something about Sarah, and hanging up he called Barefoot Sanders. To Goldberg, unschooled in the Florentine intrigues of the federal government, it seemed that a U.S. attorney with jurisdiction over one hundred north Texas counties ought to have sufficient authority to provide Sarah with an honor guard of Secret Service and FBI men. Even on a normal day it was more complicated than that. Sanders was without authority over either the Service or the Bureau’s Dallas office, which, although it was as much a part of Justice as he was, had a maddening habit of referring reports to him with notes explaining that they “might be of interest to the Justice Department.” And this day wasn’t normal. The U.S. Attorney had hitchhiked back to his office from the Trade Mart and was chest-deep in lawbooks, trying to put his finger on a statute under which the President’s murderer could be charged. U.S. attorneys in San Antonio and Fort Smith, Arkansas, were on the phone offering counsel, and Sanders had appealed for advice to both his Fort Worth office and Justice’s Criminal Division in Washington.

  He needed all the help he could get. Oswald had created a legal nightmare. In Washington J. Edgar Hoover was proceeding on the assumption that the sniper on Elm Street had violated a federal law. Thirty-seven years before, when an FBI man was slain in Illinois, Hoover had pushed through a statute protecting his agents. He hadn’t dreamed that Presidents of the United States weren’t already covered. The Director was in for a shock. Since 1902 every Secret Service chief had urged Congress to outlaw Presidential assassination, and all had failed. Threatening the life of a Chief Executive was illegal, but if the threat were carried out, if the bravo succeeded, the U.S. Code was silent. There was one exception. Should the assassin be part of a plot, the FBI could move in. This assassin had acted alone, however, and as soon as that became clear local authorities had exclusive jurisdiction. He was guilty only of a Texas felony. Technically, there was no difference between the shooting of the President and a knifing in a Dallas barroom.

  Barefoot was desperately trying to bridge this unbridgeable gap. He had already drawn up five separate forms of complaint. All of them were to prove invalid, but at the time he was hoping that one of them would put the killer in the hands of federal policemen. In his hands were three versions of 18 U.S.C. (United States Code) 2385, advocating the overthrow of the government; 18 U.S.C. 372, the general conspiracy statute; and 18 U.S.C. 1114, Hoover’s law covering federal law enforcement “officers and employees.” This would stand up if the AP’s 2:14 P.M. report of a dead Secret Service agent, which had just come in, were true. The FBI couldn’t arrest a President’s killer, but it could hold the killer of a Presidential bodyguard.

  This pettifoggery was interrupted by a call from Goldberg, who summarized his conversation with the Dallas White House, explaining that he had suggested that the oath be administered by Sarah Hughes and that Johnson had agreed.

  “That’s fine if we can find her,” Sanders said. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Her office was directly above his. He bolted upstairs and arrived just as Sarah, independently of Johnson, Goldberg, or himself, phoned in to inquire whether there had been any messages for her.

  He took the receiver. “This is Barefoot. The Vice President wants you to swear him in as President. Can you do it?”

  She said she could. At that moment her secretary started to wigwag frantically to him on the other line. A call was coming in from a Johnson aide on the plane. Sanders nodded. He knew what it was all about. He was handling it.

  “Where do I go?” Sarah was asking.

  “Love Field. I’ll clear you with the Secret Service. How soon do you think you can get there?”

  “Ten minutes,” she said rashly. “But what about the oath?”

  “I’ll have it at the airport when you get there.”

  Barefoot was promising more than he could deliver. His role in the ceremony ended with that call. The fact that he didn’t do more wasn’t entirely his fault; the general bedlam had hobbled everyone. The instant he hung up, the phone rang again. It was Rufus Youngblood, calling on Johnson’s order to offer Sarah an escort. Barefoot explained that she had already left for the field. An escort would have been of dubious value. Arranging a rendezvous would have just delayed her. The motorcycles might have gone to the wrong address, or, conceivably, to the wrong official. Three messages from the Dallas police tapes indicate the range of chaos. At 1:56 P.M. the police radio had put out an incorrect home address for J. D. Tippit, who was a member of the department, and whose wife needed the commiseration of his brother officers. At 2:24 a dispatcher broadcast, “A Mr. Bill Moyers is on his way to swear in Mr. Johnson”; correcting himself at 2:35, he told cruisers, “We now have information that Judge Sarah Hughes is en route from Parkland to Love to swear President Johnson in.” Moyers was ineligible to preside over the induction of a notary public, and Sarah wasn’t near the hospital. At the same time, both errors are und
erstandable. Even in Texas, members of the Johnson team were largely obscure, and it is a conspicuous weakness of the telephone system that the whereabouts of callers are easily confused. In Dallas and elsewhere that afternoon men took what they thought were long-distance calls when the callers were, in fact, just a few offices away. Similarly, the police department, learning that Sarah had phoned her office, had concluded that she was with the party left behind at Parkland.