At 12:35 A.M. November 23, the first full day of the Johnson administration, Aircraft 86972 ended the twenty-four-hour flight which had begun when the Cabinet plane left Oahu for Tokyo and taxied up to the MATS terminal. As the plane entered its glide pattern Dean Rusk walked the length of the fuselage, giving detailed instructions on the order of disembarkation. Cabinet members would leave first in a body, and he would make a statement in their behalf. Wives and lesser officials would follow; then assistants with security material. The scene at the wire fence might have been a rerun of Angel’s pantomime six and a half hours earlier. There was the gigantic 707; the dazzling klieg lights and microphones; the press in its pen; clusters of waiting Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries, and chauffeurs standing by cars. Many of the greeters were the same—Angie Duke, George Ball, Frank Roosevelt. But this time there was no crowd and, of course, no yellow truck lift.
Standing where President Johnson had stood, the Secretary of State said that he and his colleagues fully shared “the deep sense of shock, the grievous loss we have suffered. Those of us who had the honor of serving President Kennedy value the gallantry and wisdom he brought to the grave, awesome, and lonely office of the Presidency. President Johnson needs and deserves our fullest support.”
Ball whisked Rusk into a limousine. The Freemans rode home to watch television, the Dillons to their medicine cabinet—both the Secretary of the Treasury and his wife took sleeping pills and then lay awake through the night, listening to the sirens on Massachusetts Avenue, wondering where the fire was. At Andrews the Under Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries who weren’t needed dispersed slowly. Among them was Pat Moynihan. Moynihan was glum, and troubled by foreboding. Drinking black coffee in the MATS mess before the plane landed, he had overheard several other members of the subcabinet anxiously inquiring of one another whether anyone there knew George Reedy. One reminded the others that the Cabinet was meeting tomorrow; he expressed the hope that “some of the more important Under Secretaries will be invited.” Pat turned away in disgust. The conversation, he thought, confirmed his suspicions about the New Frontier’s second echelon. Too many of them were ambitious young men who were greedy for American power without understanding America itself.
He didn’t belong with them. It is difficult to say where he did fit. A child of New York’s worst slums, a self-taught intellectual and author with a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, he was a stranger to Washington’s elite. He was Irish but something of an outsider; no one had thrown him into a swimming pool or even invited him to Hickory Hill. Young, handsome, and highly articulate, he could have been mistaken for a Kennedy intimate, but he wasn’t one; he found Lyndon Johnson attractive because he felt that both he and Johnson had started from the bottom. Moynihan had been a Manhattan longshoreman, a saloon owner, a tough. He had been arrested on New York’s West Side and beaten up in a police station. He remembered several unpleasant encounters with Boston patrolmen, and extrapolating from experience he was entertaining grave doubts about the Dallas Police Department.
Before the arrival of 86972 he had spoken heatedly to Under Secretary Ball; afterward he talked to Secretary Wirtz. With each he made the same point. “We’ve got to get on top of the situation in Dallas,” he said. “American cops are emotional. They don’t believe in due process, and they are so involved in corruption that they overcompensate when they run into something big. You can’t depend on them. The most profound national interest can’t be left in the hands of policemen. The facts here are so confused that if we don’t move quickly there will be no trouble later establishing a case against the Communists, against fascists, against the President himself, against anybody. It might be an anti-Khrushchev faction, it might be a Chinese faction out of Cuba—you couldn’t construct a cast with a wider range of possibilities. But you can be sure of one thing. Nobody can predict what the Dallas police will do, and their saying a man is a Commie doesn’t make him one.”
George Ball replied, “You’re right, I’ll talk to Rusk.” Yet Moynihan had the impression that Ball hadn’t understood what he had been talking about. Wirtz also promised to speak to Rusk, and he was equally hazy. Moynihan wouldn’t quit. At Andrews he cornered Bob Wallace, an old friend and the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of the Secret Service. Defensively Wallace replied, “We are in charge of the situation. My best man is in Louisville or Nashville, on his way to Dallas.” Unsatisfied, Moynihan pressed his case with others. Most of them misinterpreted his concern. They thought he was arguing the existence of a right-wing plot. He wasn’t. “I only want to know the facts,” he kept saying. “I have no convictions of any kind, but what keeps a republic together is procedure, and we have chaos in Dallas; we have to move fast.” One man replied, “That’s far out.” Pat exploded: “You stupid son-of-a-bitch! The freely elected President of the United States is lying dead in a box, and you’re telling me I’m far out! It’s the far-out events that make history. It’s far out to say that Caesar is going to be stabbed in the forum today.”
At the airport and back in the capital he kept trying, making a pest of himself without results. A few, like Ball and Wirtz, agreed that something must be done. Nothing was done, and from their evasiveness and the vagueness of their assurances Moynihan guessed that nothing would be. This, he thought, was the Achilles’ heel of most of the Kennedy team. They had been prepared for anything except this. They had everything but direct knowledge of the brutal side of the United States. Their grace and their airy flânerie had removed them from the world of police stations, trouble, and an understanding of how rough Americans could be to one another. Never having encountered it, they couldn’t believe in it. Pat had; he could; he did; and since he went on record with everyone who would listen to him, there is no doubt that he, like Byron Skelton earlier in the month, felt an uncanny premonition. He was convinced that unless the federal government acted vigorously the country must expect a second catastrophe in the Dallas jail.
At 7:10 P.M. Dallas time Lee Harvey Oswald had been formally charged in the third-floor office of Captain Will Fritz with the murder of Patrolman Tippit. Justice of the Peace David L. Johnston presided. At 1:30 A.M. (2:30 in Washington), following repeated parades before newspapermen, including his basement press conference, he was arraigned in the fourth-floor identification bureau for the assassination of John Kennedy. David Johnston was again the officer of the court; on both occasions he had come to the police station for the closed session. The definition of a star-chamber proceeding, it will be remembered, is one held in secret.
After the first arraignment Oswald told correspondents that he had protested to the justice of the peace (whose name he hadn’t quite caught) “that I was not allowed legal representation during that very short and sweet hearing. I really don’t know what the situation is all about.” It was a lie. Oswald certainly knew what the situation was about. Circumstantial evidence, the very best kind, convicts him ten times over. He was merely playing the scene for all it was worth. Thanks to local authority, however, it was worth a great deal, and what he may have really meant was that he could not believe petty officials anywhere could be this clumsy. Even the Russians had been smoother. Pat Moynihan, when he learned the truth, was aghast. He realized that he had been wrong to extrapolate from New York and Boston. Dallas was in another league entirely.4
Here was the greatest crime in the city’s history, and here were myrmidons in complete charge. The District Attorney was available for television appearances; otherwise he was out of touch, even for the United States Attorney. Friday evening a delegation of American Civil Liberties Union lawyers visited headquarters to ascertain whether Oswald was being deprived of counsel. Policemen and the justice of the peace assured them everything was on the up and up. But they weren’t permitted to see Oswald. Despite relentless pressure from the Deputy Attorney General in Washington—and the pressure of the Johnson men he enlisted—the Dallas Bar Association was inactive that night. Meanwhile the c
haotic questioning continued. Its casualness even exceeded the insouciant standards which are customary during the investigation of petty crimes in the Southwest.5 Oswald was being simultaneously interrogated by Dallas homicide men, county sheriffs, Texas Rangers, FBI agents, and the Secret Service. For all the wealth in Dallas, the city budget was niggardly. With a tiny fraction of the sum spent each year on the Cotton Bowl festival, Will Fritz might have been provided with a recording device, but his repeated requests for one had been turned down. (The department also lacked modern photographic equipment; each time officers wanted to see Abe Zapruder’s film of the assassination they had to go to his office.) For some reason which has never been satisfactorily explained the department’s secretaries had been sent home. Thus the historian is deprived of even a shorthand transcript of these vital sessions. The best we have is a composite recollection of the interrogators.
The following afternoon, when the Bar Association’s president drove to the station, Oswald declined his assistance, declaring a preference for John Abt, a New York lawyer celebrated for his defenses of political prisoners, or for an American Civil Liberties Union attorney. No one told him that the ACLU had attempted to see him the previous evening and had been turned away.
The Attorney General became impatient. At 10 P.M. Godfrey McHugh assured him they would be ready to leave Bethesda at midnight, but at midnight the embalming hadn’t even begun. During the delay several occupants of the tower suite roused from their stupor. Jean Smith told George Thomas to bring the President’s favorite suits and ties from the White House; he left for the mansion with two agents. Ken O’Donnell gave Bob Kennedy the President’s wallet. Then Ken said determinedly—it had been preying on his mind since Parkland—“Jackie, I’m going to get that ring back for you.” Down in the morgue he spoke to Dr. Burkley, who worked the ring free and brushed past him. On the seventeenth floor Burkley explained to the Attorney General, “I want to give it to her myself, so I can be sure she has it.” Wordlessly Bob Kennedy stepped aside, and in the little bedroom the Presidential physician handed her the ring and tried to voice his anguish.
The fact was that he had never been quite sure of his position with the Kennedys. Janet Travell had overshadowed him in the newspapers, and being Navy he had sometimes appeared preoccupied with fussy service routine and interservice rivalry. Last spring it had been assumed that the infant she was expecting would be delivered in Washington, and the issue was whether she should be confined at Bethesda or Walter Reed. Dr. Walsh had been in the Army, so Walter Reed was the obvious choice. But Burkley had been obtuse. He had set about reserving this very suite for the expectant mother until she, hearing about it, wrote him a sharp letter. Though the public never saw it, Jacqueline Kennedy’s temper could be formidable. Burkley therefore had maintained a respectful distance until today. But she was also capable of instinctive compassion, and when he handed her the ring and awkwardly attempted to express himself—he could think of nothing but clichés—she told him how much his attentiveness had meant to the President and her. Then she reached into her jacket pocket, took out one of the red blossoms the doctor had handed her in Oneal’s ambulance-hearse, and held it out.
Burkley bowed his head. He mumbled, “This is the greatest treasure of my life.”
The population of the suite reached its peak during Friday’s penultimate hour. At 10 P.M. Margie McNamara returned from the Boy Scout meeting. John Nolan, Robert Kennedy’s administrative assistant, came up. Ethel had called Charlie and Martha Bartlett, and with a score of occupants crammed into it the suite was approaching capacity. To Charlie “Jackie was poised, unreal. She was talking about the murder—I gathered she had been talking about it for some time. She told me about red roses and the new red rug they were to have put in the President’s study that day and the blood. She wasn’t sobbing. Tears were just a breath away, but they never came. Bobby was watching, silent, ready. He was terrific, low-key as always.”
The bedroom television was on, nobody knew why. There were the endless film clips of the President’s past, deep organ music, selections from a massive orchestra; a lugubrious encomium from Governor George Wallace of Alabama; a smug, infuriating video tape of Jesse Curry, made that morning, describing Dallas’ airtight security precautions; pictures of Oswald’s press conference; and, at 11:35, NBC’s announcement that “Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy and her two children went to the Naval Hospital and will remain there overnight.” The sensible thing would have been to switch the set off. Since no one knew who had turned it on, however, no one would take the responsibility. Instead the bedroom was evacuated.
The men and women tended to segregate, the men congregating in the kitchen, the women around the large drawing room table. McNamara leaned against the refrigerator and talked, as he had to George Ball, about how splendid Kennedy’s second four years would have been. Charlie Bartlett asked him whether he knew that he was supposed to be Secretary of State in that term—Charlie had heard it from the President. The Secretary of Defense nodded slowly. “I don’t know what I could have done about policy, but I could have helped with the administration,” he said. Jackie, at the big table with Martha, Margie, Toni, Jean, and Ethel, had stopped speaking of Dallas. She was trying valiantly to entertain them, to act as the gracious hostess while declining fresh offers of sedatives and shaking off her mother’s renewed suggestions that she change her clothes. Martha thought, It’s almost as though she doesn’t want the day to end.
“Suddenly,” Ben Bradlee said later, “we’d been there too long.” He and Toni drifted toward the door. Mrs. Kennedy urged Evelyn, Nancy, Mary, and Pam to drive home and get some sleep. “Somehow we’ve got to get through the next few days,” she told them. Mary’s lips framed the question, “How?” “Be strong for two or three days,” she was told. “Then we’ll all collapse.” Of herself Jacqueline Kennedy said to Martha, “I’m not leaving here till Jack goes. But I won’t cry till it’s all over.” Dr. Walsh was also escorting people out. He had been worrying about “the big, nebulous, indefinite something—when they’d be ready downstairs.” The postponements were provoking. Given sufficient strain any constitution will snap. The widow, he decided, must have some rest. Only Bob Kennedy seemed reluctant to see the number of guests dwindle. “Why go?” he inquired as they moved in a group toward the big elevator. They murmured excuses; they fled.
Mrs. Kennedy had a special request for her mother and stepfather.
“Will you stay at the White House, Mummy?”
Janet Auchincloss said that she would be happy to stay.
“Will you sleep in Jack’s room?”
“Anywhere you like,” Mrs. Auchincloss said. But she felt it was sacrilegious. Tentatively she suggested they use a sitting room couch instead.
“No, I’d like it if you slept in Jack’s bed.”
“Of course.”
“Would Uncle Hugh stay, too?”
“Of course.”
Then it struck Janet: her daughter wanted company. The southwest corner of the second floor was very large. The President’s bedroom, the First Lady’s bedroom, the First Lady’s sitting room, and the passages linking them formed a separate apartment, cut off from the rest of the mansion by the Oval Room and the bisecting east-west hall. With the President gone, his wife would be there all alone; Miss Shaw, the children, and Bob and Jean might as well have been in a separate building. Mrs. Auchincloss said to her husband in an undertone, “We’ll stop in Georgetown for toothbrushes,” and they slipped away.
Ken, Larry, and Dave, like Mrs. Kennedy, weren’t leaving without the President. There was no discussion. It was understood. They withdrew from the apartment and stood behind Clint Hill. The nurse showed Ethel and Jean to other rooms down the hall. Dr. Walsh gave Jean a sleeping pill, and he, Bob McNamara, and Bob Kennedy remained with Jackie. An hour later Jean was back. The pill had been ineffective, and she had forgotten something. Bob went into the kitchen with McNamara, and the President’s wife and his sister wandered aimlessly t
hrough the drawing room, into the bedroom. The television was broadcasting a Mass. The two women knelt by the screen until the service was over. Abruptly the images altered and became unbearably familiar—the channel was starting one of those long sequences of Kennedy’s life. Mrs. Kennedy rose with one motion and twisted the knob. The light shrank to a square point and vanished, and Jean stumbled back to her room.
In the drawing room Dr. Walsh prepared a syringe; he detected signs of utter exhaustion in her. Considering the past two days, it was incredible that she should still be on her feet—Bob Kennedy and Bob McNamara were men of extraordinary stamina, but they hadn’t been in Texas—and while the doctor had no way of knowing how much more would be expected of her, he suspected that it would be a lot. At a bare minimum she needed one hour of complete relaxation. She hadn’t been able to talk it out. Just before Jean arrived Bob had suggested she return to the mansion; she had shaken her head and said she would lie down. Now she wasn’t even doing that. He loaded the needle with 100 milligrams of Visatril, a formidable dose, and showed it to her.
She eyed it dubiously, then wavered. “Maybe you could just give me something so I could have a little nap,” she said, holding out her arm. “But I want to be awake when we go home.”
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