The Death of a President

by William Manchester

  The decision to move to Bethesda was made by her. Dr. Burkley, kneeling in the aisle, explained that because the President had been murdered there would have to be an autopsy. “Security reasons,” he said, required that the hospital be military. The option lay between Bethesda and Walter Reed.

  “Of course, the President was in the Navy,” he said softly.

  “Of course,” said Jacqueline Kennedy. “Bethesda.” It was then that Godfrey left to place his exasperating call stipulating an ambulance.

  “I’ll stay with the President until he is back at the White House,” Burkley promised, and he, too, left.

  Sergeant Hames made sandwiches, but no one could eat them; after a few nervous nibbles they were thrust aside for conversation, and the Irishmen made a rudimentary start on what was to be the chief topic of the next twenty-four hours, the site of the grave. Their unanimous choice was Boston. All three remembered Kennedy standing on the cemetery knoll after the rites for Patrick. They thought he should be there with his son, in the Massachusetts soil they all loved. It was, as O’Donnell put it, “the kind of feeling you have for a close friend.” He told Jackie, “He must be buried in Boston, and don’t you let them change it.”

  She nodded absently. In the syncope of grief her own thoughts were turning inward. She was vividly recalling a conversation with the President toward the end of their first year in the executive mansion. She had just returned there from the funeral of Tony Biddle, and she had brought up the subject of their own funerals.

  “Where will we be buried when we die, Jack?”

  “Hyannis, I guess. We’ll all be there.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should be buried in Hyannis, I think you should be buried in Arlington. You just belong to all the country.”

  Then he had looked at her with a gently mocking expression and passed it off with a light comment about great mausoleums and Pharaonic tombs. And she had thought he was so right. And, indeed, it had been absurd to sit there talking about where their graves should be when they were still so young.

  She turned toward Godfrey. “This is my first real political trip,” she said. She told him, as she had told Lady Bird, “I’m so glad I made it. Suppose I hadn’t been there with him?”

  She didn’t look directly at McHugh. She had always had a way of looking off in the distance as she spoke, and during the flight this cachet seemed more pronounced. Those who were with her blessed her for it, for if her deep dark eyes had met theirs, her words would have been unbearable. They were difficult enough as it was. She asked for Clint Hill. She had regarded him as the brightest agent on the White House Detail, and because, like her husband, she really cared about excellence, she had sometimes brought him up to the mark. “Oh, you know, Mr. Hill,” she said, “if I ever gave you a lecture—” her tears were falling now—“it was just because you were al-always just one of us.” Clint left stumbling. She collected herself and consoled the mafia: “You were with him at the start and you’re with him at the end.” Larry O’Brien thought giddily, She’s worrying about us. In his later words, “That frail girl was close to composure, bringing to the surface some strength within her while we three slobs dissolved.”

  At the time, Mrs. Kennedy did not contemplate a ceremonial funeral, but the ritual that was to come was to give the country a finer final last memory of her husband. His aides had perceived one side of him. They had campaigned and worked with the vibrant, shrewd young politician and President whose key had always been C-major. His wife had been closer to him. She had seen the dark star which had followed him through life. Since boyhood, she knew, he had been dogged by physical illness. The stamina which had sustained him was not the vitality of boundless health. It was a vigor of the spirit, an abiding vein of faith in man’s ability to determine man’s fate. In his bedridden childhood he had read the legends of valor; as a man he had written of courage. He had believed in heroes star-crowned and all golden, had fashioned a dream of leadership and fashioned himself to fit it. Perhaps another lonely little sick boy might read Marlborough and Sir Thomas Malory and become exalted as he had been. Afterward she would think: History made Jack what he was.

  On the aircraft, however, these reflections lay ahead—the riptide of anguish ran too strongly for coherence. Yet the implications of her still shapeless mood were to be vast. Jacqueline Kennedy was thinking of one President, but because the Presidency is a continuum her decisiveness affected the office itself, and therefore the nation. The Constitution, as Johnson had told O’Donnell and O’Brien, was putting him in the White House. It could not put him in the hearts of the people. That lay in the future, and in his hands. For the present the focus of public attention would be the widow of the slain Kennedy. Martyrdom, in transforming the country’s concept of him, had elevated her to a kind of temporary regency. How she behaved during the transition would have lasting implications for the United States. The power of the government had passed on to Lyndon B. Johnson, but Mrs. John F. Kennedy possessed a far greater power, over men’s hearts, and like Johnson she could not shirk it. By what she did or left undone she herself would write history.

  In the cramped tail compartment the men swayed and grasped at bulkheads for support while she, her eyes brimming again, gazed at the long, long coffin gleaming dully in the dim light.

  Slumped in his copilot’s seat, Hanson continued to radio position reports ahead as Air Force One climbed yet higher into the starlit night. The names on his flight chart read like an atlas of small-town America—Rockwall, Hope, Carthage, Stuttgart, Henderson, Hartsville, Paintsville, Louisa, Gassaway, Clendenin. The Presidential plane was passing above half the country, and on the map the route from Love Field looked like a dark blue curving scar. Unlike the passengers, who hadn’t the faintest notion of where they were, he had to know 26000’s precise location on the arc that swung up through eastern Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia, toward Washington and Andrews, in Maryland, although like Swindal—like everyone else aboard—the copilot gave no thought to the land eight miles down.

  But the people below were thinking of them, and only of them. Beneath Angel’s swept-back wings the United States was in the throes of an unprecedented emotional convulsion. As Air Force One climbed over the border states, pivoting slightly north of Murfreesboro for a three-hundred-mile leg which would carry it directly toward Cape Cod before Swindal swung right for the capital, approximately 110 million Americans knew it was aloft and would reach its destination at about 6:05 P.M. Its exact route, of course, was secret. This was an elementary security precaution. Even on normal trips the pilot’s long zigs and zags were clandestine. The directions were the subject of highly classified messages to key Air Force officers. On this flight the plane lacked the customary ground network of local Secret Service agents, stationed in unmarked automobiles to confirm its passage overhead with detection gear. Angel’s sole contact was Acrobat, which was monitoring the copilot with exceptional care and listening intently on other frequencies for reports of “unidentified, unfriendly” aircraft on the radar screening the southeastern quadrant of the country. If the assassination of Kennedy were the first blow in a Soviet or Sino-Cuban machination, the airborne Presidential aircraft would be a prime target for a second blow. Air Force One, its backup, and the Cabinet plane not only were unarmed; all three lacked escorts. The U.S. Government was exceedingly vulnerable. The Pentagon had placed every Air Force base along 26000’s route on stand-by, ready to scramble jet fighters; pilots were actually belted in and ready to go.

  Thus the American people knew only that President Kennedy and his successor were somewhere in the sky above. How many of the 110 million were following commercial broadcasts is a matter of speculation. Pearl Harbor, the last thunderbolt of comparable magnitude, belonged to another communications era. Radio was in its heyday then, but most radios had been large and cumbersome. Now they had been replaced by television and the transistor. The University of Chicago’s NORC study suggests that at t
he moment of Swindal’s Murfreesboro pivot only two-tenths of one percent of the population was unaware of the murder. Obviously, not everyone who knew of it was hovering over a loudspeaker. Some were in transit, some were too distressed to hear more, and there is always a subnormal minority which is genuinely indifferent—which would remain so in thermonuclear war.

  Many who were most deeply concerned simply could not spare the time to listen. In Manhattan Jean Kennedy Smith was packing a black dress. The president of Harvard was calling off the Yale game and accompanying functions; the students of Notre Dame had begun preparations to sing one hundred masses for the President’s soul. The Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company was preoccupied with its own plight, summoning over three hundred off-duty operators. On the Rio Grande, as the Presidential aircraft reached mid-flight, customs officials were sealing off the Mexican border to prevent any escape there by conspirators.

  In Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin, individuals were picking up debris. Mrs. J. Lee Thompson III, whose art exhibition Jacqueline Kennedy had admired so much that morning, was crating it at the Hotel Texas; the suite had to be evacuated for a new tenant. At the Trade Mart a huge electric sign which had been erected to welcome the President and First Lady was being dismantled, and in Austin’s auditorium Mrs. E. D. Moore, the caterer who was to have managed tonight’s triumphal banquet, was confronting a staggering mass of food. Mrs. Moore saved the steaks by refrigeration, but the rest was beyond redemption, and she was supervising the dumping of six thousand rolls, four thousand potatoes, a half-ton of fruit cocktail, and a ton and a half of tossed salad.

  But even those who were distraught or preoccupied with urgent tasks checked with friends and colleagues from time to time for fresh news. Curiosity alone was an irresistible stimulant. The scene in the LBJ Ranch house was typical—according to Bess Abell, “the knob on the kitchen TV had been turned as high as it would go, and the kitchen was a sea of bodies.” These were the hours when, all over the United States, a parked car whose radio was audible was sure to draw a crowd—silent crowds, most of them, whispering among themselves. It was also the period when rumors and false reports reached a peak. On Capitol Hill George Reedy had quickly scotched the canard that Johnson had been injured. Reedy had seen the wire report that a “spectator” had observed Johnson “walk into the hospital holding his arm.” He knew it was part of the American mythology that a heart attack always starts in the arm, and after calling Walter Jenkins, who had talked to Johnson on the plane, Reedy convinced Congressional correspondents that this was just buzz. Other yarns were harder to put down. The German alert seemed especially ominous, hinting at massive troop concentrations throughout Europe. The linking of Oswald’s name with Cuba evoked memories of Castro terrorism; throughout the evening a great many people were to be under the impression that a Cuban had been charged with the crime.

  A certain amount of distortion was inevitable. Erratic individuals are eager to credit the incredible. A century after Lincoln’s death his assassination is still being laid at the door of a member of his Cabinet, and years after Kennedy’s death there would be those who would reject any information which did not fit their preconceived theories about the crime. These people did not want facts; they merely wanted to feed their own ravaged emotions. But that Friday stable persons were being misled, too. The erratic performance of the Associated Press was responsible for much of the confusion. The AP was an American institution. Deservedly, it was regarded as a pillar of accuracy. When it followed its twelve-bell confirmation of the assassination with the report that an unnamed Secret Service man had been killed and added cryptically that “no other information was immediately available,” Bill Greer’s wife, in suburban Washington, believed the worst. She knew that Bill always drove the Lincoln, and although a denial of the rumor from the Treasury Department was on the printer two hours later, she assumed throughout the flight that her husband was dead.

  There were other lapses during the afternoon. Most were inconsequential. Over an hour after 26000’s departure from Love Field, NBC was broadcasting that “LBJ is remaining in Dallas.” The flash that a red-shirted man with black curly hair had been arrested “in the Riverside section of Fort Worth in the shooting of a Dallas policeman” was quickly forgotten when the truth about Oswald began to pour in an hour later. An entirely inaccurate story of how the President’s parents had learned of his death from a Hyannis Port workman scarcely mattered; neither did a description of “the President… struck in the right temple by the bullet” or of the weapon as “a German Mauser.” But one account was to cause real mischief later. The AP, paraphrasing Mac Perry, reported the doctor as saying that Kennedy had been shot “in the front of the head.” It was this dispatch, put out scarcely an hour after the President had been pronounced dead, which became the chief source for the conviction of millions that all subsequent investigations of the tragedy were fraudulent.

  Jean Kennedy Smith took the 4 P.M. shuttle to the capital. Everyone who had been close to the President was anxious to be at his side, and during Angel’s flight a number of Kennedy relatives and friends were also aloft. The impulse had begun when they knew only that he had been injured; then, like the Attorney General and the Cabinet, their first instinct had been to race to Dallas. Theodore H. White, author of The Making of the President 1960, was among those New Yorkers who were on their way to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, prepared to hire a plane to Texas, when a taxicab radio broadcast Kilduff’s announcement from 101–102. White boarded the Washington shuttle instead and was followed by Chuck Spalding and Adlai Stevenson on subsequent flights. The Coast Guard prepared to fly Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Jim Reed to the capital. Arthur Schlesinger, Ken Galbraith, and Kay Graham came down on Newsweek’s Martin 404. Circling over Washington National Airport, Galbraith constricted his six feet, eight inches, fastening his seat belt. After a long silence he said to Schlesinger, “We let the Right inject this poison in the American bloodstream—and this is the result.”

  The swiftness of New York-to-Washington air service meant that the group from Manhattan landed first. Several arrived so early that they didn’t know when or where the President’s body would be returned; Jean Smith and the three from the Newsweek Martin went directly to the White House, and White cruised around in a cab for a half-hour before the radio in the taxi reported that Air Force One was heading for Andrews. He directed the driver out Suitland Parkway and met Mary McGrory at the MATS terminal. So much had happened since lunch that it was difficult to come to terms with the new reality. In one part of their minds men and women realized that John Kennedy was, in fact, no longer alive. Because the rest of the mind revolted, however, they reverted to the more believable moments when they had merely known that he was hurt. President Kennedy was hurt and they were rushing to his side. That was all they could absorb. Later—the exact time and extent of the reconciliation varied from individual to individual—they thought: The President has been killed, Jacqueline Kennedy needs help. That realization was eclipsing; any contemplation of Lyndon Johnson or the future was impossible.

  Flights from California took five hours and twenty minutes, and while the passengers from New York milled about uncertainly in the capital, those from the West Coast were passing the Rockies. Peter Lawford had been performing in Stateline, Nevada, with Jimmy Durante. He and his agent, Milt Ebbins, were on a chartered plane. Pat Kennedy Lawford and her daughter Sydney were standing by to board an American Airlines jet from Los Angeles—Sydney was Caroline’s age, and bringing her proved to be a brilliant stroke; throughout that week she was to give her cousin the kind of companionship no adult could have provided. On another eastbound airliner Red Fay was cradling his own daughter, and like Dean Markham he had to turn away from the devastating, unanswerable remark of a child. The President had participated in the little girl’s christening. Approaching the Mississippi, she looked up and asked, “Daddy, what happens to me now that I don’t have a godfather?”

  The savage, unp
redictable storms lashing the continent confined some Kennedy intimates to the ground. Bunny Mellon’s plane was in Manhattan, and despite the great Mellon wealth she couldn’t hire another to take her to Puerto Rico. In Antigua she paced the terminal frantically, looking out gloomily at the most ferocious cloudburst she had ever seen. Others, debarking at the capital, weren’t sure they should have come. At 3:30 P.M. Candy McMurrey telephoned her sister from Washington National to suggest that she and her husband return to Texas on the next flight. Joan Kennedy begged her to stay. The White House had just called to say that Ted wouldn’t be home tonight. Joan was in bed, prostrate, and she knew that the family would need all the help it could muster to cope with callers. The McMurreys immediately took an airport cab to Georgetown.

  High above Washington Lieutenant Sam Bird was riding toward Andrews in his H-21 helicopter with eight casket bearers from Fort Myer’s south drill field. Disregarding seniority, Bird had picked the strongest, most reliable enlisted men on the post. As the rotors chattered over Pennsylvania Avenue he peered down on the White House, the federal triangle, the memorials, the Roman complex of the Hill. This was the first time he had ever ridden over the city, and he thought its beauty breathtaking. He remembered all the tours he had taken, all the souvenirs he had bought and sent home to Kansas. None matched the splendor beneath him. The Capitol dome reflected the day’s dying light, and a million flickering reflections glittered and shimmered below. It was the most spectacular panorama the Lieutenant had ever seen. He wished this were some other day.