10 The investigation was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) of the University of Chicago. NORC had the facilities for a nationwide flash survey. By Monday, November 25, the questionnaire was ready, and by the following Saturday 97 percent of the 1,384 interviews had been completed.
11 The number of long-distance calls climbed again on Saturday, reached a peak on Sunday, when Oswald was shot, and plunged 30 percent below normal on Monday, the day of the President’s funeral.
12 At 1:23 UPI identified Father Huber and reported that he had “administered the last sacrament of the Church to the President.” His actual words followed. At 1:32 the AP carried the flash, “Two priests who were with Kennedy say he is dead of bullet wounds.” Father Thompson had said nothing, and bullet wounds had not been mentioned.
1 Opinions of the Attorneys General, XLII, No. 5 (August 2, 1961), 9–10. Most of Kennedy’s scholarly research on this matter was the work of Nick Katzenbach.
2 The implication is that a Vice President’s loyalty may diminish during his service in the Vice Presidency. It is possible. But then, a President’s loyalty might shrink during his Presidency. If the country cannot assume that a man elected to national office will honor his sworn word, the foundations of the government are reduced to sludge.
3 During the Eisenhower administration there had been two bagmen, and in January 1961 Captain E. Peter Aurand, USN, Naval Aide to the outgoing President, briefed Captain Tazewell Shepard on the nature of the satchel which had accompanied Richard Nixon. Shepard packed a bag and sent it to the office of the new Vice President by courier. An aide returned it with the explanation that Johnson did not want it.
4 In both her statement to the author and again to Chief Justice Warren, Mrs. Johnson vividly describes ascending and descending flights of stairs en route to Major Medicine. This is a striking example of how shock can distort memory. There were no stairs.
5 From their point of view it was an excellent time. A week later the average had rebounded 39.02 points. The fact remains, however, that the instincts of Spalding, himself a man of wealth, were correct. Kennedy’s father had been a shrewd dealer in stocks, but he had never cashed in on the martyrdom of a President.
6 Here as elsewhere, the author is relying on his own research, not hearsay. The source for the remark is another officer who was present at the meeting.
7 Kennedy thought the caller was Clint Hill. It was Taz Shepard. This was another telephonic phenomenon of November 22. Men who had known one another for years had difficulty recognizing each other’s voices.
8 Robert Kennedy had worried about John Kennedy. Like the President, however, he brushed aside threats against himself. Therefore, Guthman, without consulting him, arranged sundown-to-dawn surveillance of Hickory Hill that afternoon. The Fairfax police guarded the estate until Monday, when they were relieved by U.S. marshals from the District of Columbia. The District had ninety such marshals. Ninety volunteered for the duty.
9 According to Johnson’s recollection—nine months older than Goldberg’s—the lawyer “advised” that he should be “sworn in at once, and undertook to locate Judge Sarah Hughes to administer the oath.”
10 Shanklin of the FBI was especially helpful in aborting Alexander’s folly. Alexander himself subsequently played a key role in the trial of Jack Ruby, Oswald’s killer.
11 This strains credulity, but there it is, on page 10 of the National Broadcasting Company’s program log of November 22–25, 1963.
1 Approximately ten minutes later a uniformed patrolman, C. E. Jackson, went ahead anyhow. At 1:44 P.M. he radioed dispatcher No. 2, “We need a justice of the peace at Parkland Hospital, Code 3.” Code 3—emergency, red lights and sirens—might have been of immense help, but here, as in so many other crucial moments, Dallas police communications broke down. The next message on the dispatcher’s tape is hopelessly garbled.
2 The judge believes he was more compassionate, but it is three to one; Ted Clifton also heard the exchange.
3 Conceivably this had been Vice President Johnson’s convertible.
4 It was closer to 2:15, though not as early as the new President thought. In his statement to the Warren Commission President Johnson estimated that Mrs. Kennedy and the coffin arrived “just after 2 o’clock.” The President was mistaken. At 2 P.M. he had been on the telephone with Attorney General Kennedy, and the calls to Bullion’s office and to Goldberg, Katzenbach, and Sarah Hughes were still to come.
5 The myth of “the Catholic Bible” endures in Protestant America. Although such editions do exist, neither the obsolete (Douay) version nor the current (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) rendition differs to any discernible extent from the one familiar to non-Catholics. Ecclesiastical scholars could distinguish between them, but Sarah Hughes couldn’t. Neither, in the opinion of Bishop Philip M. Hannan, could John Kennedy, and it is unlikely that the question had ever crossed the President’s mind.
1 There was no fine. The District of Columbia did prohibit the moving of bodies in ambulances without coroner’s permits, but the D.C. Police Department acted as the coroner’s representative in the District and surrounding Maryland and Virginia counties, and the matter could have been cleared up without troubling anyone on the plane. As it turned out, the law was disregarded entirely. McHugh’s conversation merely demonstrates that there was more than one Earl Rose abroad that afternoon.
2 This is unclear. According to the pilot’s log, they departed Hickam at 11:05 Hawaii time (2105 Zulu). The likeliest explanation is that Freeman had become confused by the zones.
3 Scali, as ABC’s State Department correspondent, had quietly served as the President’s personal representative thirteen months earlier, persuading an official at the Soviet Embassy that Russian missiles must be removed from Cuba.
4 Protocol for the big four is State, Treasury, Defense, Justice.
5 Emergency planners have yet to learn the lessons of November 22. A study of that afternoon suggests that in any disaster on a workday commercial telephones would become highly unreliable. The public could be reached by television and radio, but the homes of all vital officials should be knitted into a government system similar to the White House Communications Agency. The Signal Corps has the equipment and the expertise to do this; it lacks only a green light.
6 Two weeks later, on December 6, the House Republican Policy Committee denied that “hate was the assassin that struck down the President.” Instead, it charged, the true criminal was “the teachings of Communism.” Expanding this theme, Senator Milward L. Simpson of Wyoming took the floor that day to attack people seeking “political advantage from warping the uncontestable truth” and blaming “rightists and conservatives.” The murderer, the Senator said, “was a single kill-crazy Communist.”
7 In Europe anti-American journalists seized upon the obvious readiness of the soldiers who were to parade in Monday’s funeral to charge that Secretary McNamara had been rehearsing troops for the funeral before the assassination.
8 And he didn’t. When Johnson reached Washington McCormack insisted that the Secret Service must discontinue all interest in him at once. Because of the Speaker’s political power his extraordinary demand was honored that Friday. Thus the man next in line was without security protection for fourteen months. It was one of the best-kept secrets in the government. Those who knew of it did not even mention it to one another until Hubert Humphrey had been sworn in.
9 That Friday Lyndon Johnson did not know that John Kennedy had ordered the taping of all Angel conversations while the plane was in flight. On April 21, 1964, this writer learned that the Love-to-Andrews tape still existed. Since security was not involved, it was first thought that a complete transcript of it would serve as a useful appendix to this book. Presidential consent was withheld, however. On May 5, 1965, the author was permitted to read an edited transcript at the White House. Doubtless the tape will be available to future historians.
10 All the five-star generals and admira
ls have been so designated and notified. Some, like the late Douglas MacArthur, displayed a keen interest in the arrangements. Only two have declined a state funeral, Omar Bradley and Chester Nimitz.
11 A slippery analogy. One criminal doesn’t make a penitentiary either. Madhouses and prisons are the places to which men are committed after the fact.
1 The author invited President Johnson to comment on this misapprehension. He replied that he had nothing to add to his statement to the Warren Commission.
2 The chronology here is interesting. Comparing the shift reports of the Presidential agents who were in the ambulance with those of the Vice Presidential detail, it is evident that the body of the slain President passed the mansion within minutes of the new President’s landing. The two events were almost simultaneous. Establishing which occurred first is, however, impossible.
3 After the funeral a black band was added to Special Forces berets, signifying perpetual mourning for President Kennedy.
4 The author recalls a colloquy between three lawyers of the Warren Commission staff on June 27, 1964, when the Commission’s report was being drafted. Here are notes of it: “X: ‘How critical of the Dallas police should we be?’ Y: ‘We can’t be critical enough.’ Z (senior man): ‘That’s just the problem. If we write what we really think, nobody will believe anything else we say. They’ll accuse us of attacking Dallas’ image. The whole report will be discredited as controversial. We’ve just got to tone it way down.’ ” There was a spirited discussion, after which X and Y consented.
5 This writer once spent a year observing those easygoing procedures in the Oklahoma City Police Station. During that time the policemen there handled the most minor offender more carefully than Dallas treated the most notorious American criminal of the century.
6 Nor did he. After she moved from the capital he was the one Irishman who remained with her and the children.
7 Only Peking was consistent. The scrutable Red Chinese broadcast assassination news briefly and gleefully. Kungjen Jih Pao, their newspaper, published a cartoon of America’s murdered President lying on his face. The caption read, “Kennedy biting the dust.”
1 The President was invited to contribute his recollections of his Saturday morning conversations with Mrs. Lincoln and Robert Kennedy, and of the Attorney General’s subsequent arrival at the Cabinet meeting. He replied that he did not have any comment upon them.
2 Like Godfrey McHugh, the unfortunate officer was soon transferred.
3 It vanished almost as quickly. Two days later it was gone.
4 Rideau vs. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723.
5 Katzenbach took an exceptionally strong line on this issue, and like Fortas he played an unknown but vital role in the Commission’s investigation.
6 Reed recalls the time as 10:50. Beginning Saturday morning, shock and fatigue produced wild distortions in the impressions of many of the principals. A considerable number believe that the ten o’clock religious service was held at eleven, and for some all the days till Tuesday were to blur together. Agents’ shift reports and military after-action reports are useful here.
7 The President was not permitted to speak to the Governor, who lay all day in a convalescent’s semicoma. Instead, he talked to Nellie, who in reply to her husband’s groggy inquiries finally conceded to him that his suspicions were correct, that the President was dead.
8 Kennedy denies this. When the President’s interpretation was described to him, he expressed first amazement, then amusement.
9 In Greece a Gallup affiliate reported that by Saturday noon 99 percent of all Athenians knew of the slaying. When de Gaulle visited Athens, 25 percent weren’t even able to identify him.
10 It should be noted that the manner of the President’s death had permanently altered his countrymen’s concept of him. In 1960 he had been elected by 49.7 percent of the popular vote. Voters are constantly editing their memories, however. In June 1963 surveyors discovered that 59 percent claimed Kennedy had been their 1960 preference. After the assassination this figure leaped to 65 percent.
11 G. L. Engel, citing Freud and others, concluded that grief includes a phase “in which the sufferer attempts to deny the loss and to insulate himself against… reality.” Psychosomatic Medicine, XXXIII, No. 18, 1961.
12 Mrs. Kennedy had noted the dates, and as it later turned out, President Kennedy’s forecasts of October 1963 were correct to the month. He had anticipated a Tax Law in February, a Civil Rights Law in July. President Johnson signed the first on February 27, 1964; the second on July 2, 1964.
1 Technically, Lee Oswald had been charged with “Inv. Murder”—investigation for murder, a common catch-all. There were no entries on the form in the spaces provided for information about how the arrest was made, the location of the offense, the complainant, or witnesses. This is not odd. Policemen are not CPA’s. The arresting officers were M. N. McDonald, K. E. Lyons, and Paul Bentley. Under “other details” the essence of the report was scrawled: “This man shot and killed President John F. Kennedy and Police Officer J. D. Tippit. He also shot and wounded Governor John Connally.”
2 On September 23, 1964, this writer stood where Oswald had stood at the moment he was shot while a Dallas police inspector explained what had happened. The inspector concluded, “It was sheer luck.” He was asked, “Couldn’t there have been two sentries there?” He flashed, “That’s hindsight on your part.” Possibly, but under the circumstances doubling the guard would seem to have been a reasonable precaution.
3 Thomas J. Kelley, a Secret Service inspector who had been flown down from Washington, also saw “a man leaning over Oswald,” but Kelley thought he must be applying a stethoscope to the prisoner’s chest.
4 Note the repetition from the earlier crime. “They” were responsible for the shooting.
5 Minutes earlier Pat had concluded a brief WTOP-TV interview which, for millions in the national audience, became one of the weekend’s most memorable moments. He had opened by observing that at the end of Camus’ life Camus had decided the world was absurd, which, to a Christian, was unthinkable. Then he had mused of Kennedy, “We all of us know down here that politics is a tough game. And I don’t think there’s any point in being Irish if you don’t know that the world is going to break your heart eventually. I guess we thought we had a little more time.” His voice drifted off. Almost inaudibly he added, “So did he.”
6 Every professional opinion surveyor agrees that only under exceptional circumstances are more than 80 percent ever aware of any event. For example, only 88 percent of Americans listened to any broadcast during FDR’s three-day funeral. Contrast this with the 99 percent of Athens—not even an American city—in late November 1963.
7 Though not as upset as those for whom Oswald’s death came to overshadow everything else. That evening Schlesinger received a long-distance call from one of the country’s most distinguished women novelists. She proposed the formation of a national committee to prove that Oswald had been framed. He acidly observed that he hadn’t heard from her on Friday, and that if she and others gave the impression that they were more concerned about Sunday’s murder than Friday’s it would be “an incalculable disservice to the American Left.” (Actually, he later learned, she had wept when she first heard of Kennedy’s assassination.)
8 “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” words and music by Ed McCurdy, copyright © 1951 and 1955 Almanac Music, Inc., New York, New York. Used by permission.
9 A bullet came awhining.
Was it meant for him or me?
Away from me it snatched him,
And at my feet it stretched him,
As though a part of me.
10 “We Shall Overcome,” new words and music arranged by Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan and Pete Seeger, copyright © 1960 and 1963 Ludlow Music, Inc., New York, New York. Used by permission.
1 “If it had happened in Podunk,” Newsweek asked, “would any of the schoolchildren there have cheered?”
2
The quotation is included here at Harriman’s suggestion. De Gaulle had promised to meet Kennedy in the capital the following February or March. The funeral became his Washington “visit”; he refused to follow through with Johnson. Harriman also believes that if Kennedy had lived France wouldn’t have recognized Red China, though this, he adds, is not a criticism of Johnson.
3 All funeral plans had specified that after the Arlington services Mrs. Kennedy would be escorted to her car by President Johnson, and some had assumed that he would also ride to the rotunda with her Monday morning. Several broadcasters reported this as fact, but there was no contact between the two on Monday.
4 Tuesday evening in the oval office Johnson told Sorensen, “That’s great. I wouldn’t change a word of it.” Immediately afterward Rusk and McNamara reviewed the speech in Mac Bundy’s office. Johnson entered with Jenkins and Abe Fortas in time to hear Bundy object that it sounded “too much like JFK,” and despite Sorensen’s protests changes were made. Riding to the Hill next day to deliver it, the President sat with him and Salinger. Pierre remarked, “That’s a hell of a speech, Mr. President.” Johnson replied, “It’s Sorensen’s.” Ted said, “No.” “Well, 90 percent,” said Johnson. “Fifty percent,” said Ted. The President ventured, “The best 50 percent,” and found his consensus; Sorensen answered, “I agree.”
The Death of a President Page 100