Justice for All (83 page)

With Thanksgiving approaching, Warren led his Court on an annual trip that November. Together with their wives—Douglas had recently remarried and brought his third wife, twenty-four-year-old Joan Martin—the justices traveled down the hill to the White House, where they had drinks and dinner with the Kennedys. Earl Warren sat next to Jackie that night, charmed by her as so many older men were, awash in her coy sophistication, impressed, as usual, by the cool intelligence of her husband. She was just tentatively emerging back in public from a miscarriage, and her effect on Warren undoubtedly was amplified by his sympathy for her. Nina was stately in a royal blue dress, Earl big and broad-shouldered in a dark blue suit. Jackie wore red, her skirt just below the knee, her jacket open and modern. John enjoyed a drink before dinner and carried himself with grace. He looked ahead to later that week, when he was planning an early political foray to Dallas, a city that had voted against him last time.
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Warren knew a thing or two about politics, and offered his friendly advice: “Watch out for those wild Texans, Mr. President,” he called out from the sofa where he was enjoying his drink. “They're a rough bunch.”
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Chapter 22

THE LONGEST YEAR

EARL WARREN, ON THE DEATH OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
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THE UNITED STATES Supreme Court is an orderly place, one where customs are honored across generations of justices. It was only after long deliberation that Warren persuaded the brethren to move the conference from Saturday to Friday. Once he had succeeded, that new routine was steadfastly observed. So it was that on November 22, 1963, a Friday, the justices began their conference at ten A.M. They exchanged their traditional handshake and settled into their deliberations. Having recently heard arguments in a series of legislative apportionment cases, the justices now faced the question they had raised but not completely answered in
Baker v. Carr
. Where that case had established that voting districts could be challenged as a violation of equal protection, now before the Court were the natural conflicts about how much redistricting was required, how often, and by what criteria—in short, of how much equality of the vote actually was commanded by the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Without Frankfurter there to lead the voices of restraint, Warren pushed against an open door. Goldberg had given Warren his fifth vote, and as the justices announced their positions that Friday to one another, it was clear that a new era in voting rights was taking shape at the long table in the wood-paneled conference room of the nation's high court.

So sacred is the privacy of the Court's weekly conference that only the most monumental events are permitted to intrude. When news must be passed to the justices, it comes in the form of a knock on the door. All conversation ceases while the door is opened, a note is handed in, and the door is closed. So rare are those intrusions, so high the threshold for their acceptability, that on that Friday afternoon, Margaret McHugh fretted about whether to interrupt when she heard the news from Dallas. She asked one of Warren's clerks, Frank Beytagh, whether he believed the justices should be bothered. Beytagh assured her that it was important enough, so she sent in a note with a rap on the door.
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Justice Goldberg, the newest of the brethren, rose from his seat to answer it and took the note without reading it. Goldberg passed it to Warren, who then read it to the justices. Tears welled in Warren's eyes and the blood drained from his face as he relayed the reports that the president had been shot.
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He then quickly adjourned the conference, and the justices streamed out of the room. Most gravitated to Brennan's chambers, where they watched the news on his television set. Warren returned to his office alone, turned on the radio, and listened, hoping in vain “until all hope was gone.”
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A stricken Warren wrote a statement for the press, expressing his anguish but also revealing himself in an unintended way. “A great and good President has suffered martyrdom,” Warren wrote, “as a result of the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our Nation by bigots.”
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To Warren, who had been pilloried by racists for nearly a decade, Kennedy's death appeared naturally to result from its location—Dallas. It had been just two nights since Warren, sitting across a coffee table from the president, had warned him of Dallas's snarling reputation for hatred. Warren's warning had been offered in political jest, but now it seemed to have been proven all too true.

Those first hours after the shots in Dallas were terrifying as well as tragic. In Washington, the city's phone system buckled under the panic. Many callers found busy signals or no dial tones, confirming for some the fear that America was under attack, that the assassination was the first prong of a coordinated strike. Leading members of the Kennedy cabinet were en route to Japan when the shots were fired in Dallas; they had to be recalled, and their distance from shore fueled fears that the assassination was deliberately timed to take advantage of the scattered national leadership. At the Justice Department, headed by the now dead president's younger brother, aides leapt into motion to respond to Vice President Johnson's urgent inquiry about how best to formally occupy the presidency. One aide called the Supreme Court asking whether anyone there had a copy of the presidential oath. Told that it was in the Constitution, the tightly wound aide blurted out, “Do you have one there?” Yes, he was told, the Court had a few copies lying around.
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As the hours passed and no attack came, the mood of the nation and its leadership sank from terror to a crushing sadness. The death of the young and vibrant president, the widowing of his elegant bride, and the calamity to his young children moved millions of Americans—though few more profoundly than the nation's chief justice. The same president who socialized with Warren on Wednesday night now was hurtling home in a casket, his brains splattered across the presidential limousine, his blood staining Jackie's pink suit and matching pillbox hat, so carefully chosen for that trip, so indelibly marked by its tragedy.
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A new president, Lyndon Johnson, led the entourage that had fled Dallas that afternoon and now droned its way above a nearly hysterical country.
Air Force One,
carrying the nation's new president and the body of its fallen one, plowed through the afternoon toward Andrews Air Force Base, outside of Washington.

Warren was determined to be on hand to greet it, to demonstrate the continuity of government and to greet the nation's widowed First Lady. He called for his driver, Jean Clemencia, but discovered he was stuck in panicked traffic as he tried to drive Nina Warren home from a lunch in suburban Maryland.
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So Warren asked his clerk, Beytagh, to drive him to the base. As Beytagh navigated the busy streets, Warren reminisced about the young man whose presidency he had so appreciated. There were times when Warren enjoyed banter with his clerks—in their Saturday lunches, over an occasional football or baseball game, in the early mornings, or as the day's work wrapped up. But Beytagh recognized that this was no such time. Warren needed not to discuss but merely to unburden himself, to relieve his sadness and fear, to give voice to his broken heart. They drove together through the fading sunlight, the seventy-two-year-old justice speaking softly of what he and the nation had lost. His young clerk piloted the car in silence.

Arriving at the gate of the air force base, the two were stopped by a pair of tense Marine guards. Beytagh informed them that he was transporting the Chief Justice of the United States. The guard looked across Beytagh at Warren and saw only a white- haired passenger whom he did not recognize. The guard refused to let them pass. Beytagh, a veteran and member of the Navy reserve, was momentarily thrown. Then he reached into his wallet and produced his Navy identification card. The Marine saluted and waved him in. Warren allowed himself a brief grin. Under the peculiar circumstances of that night, Earl Warren's clerk was more trusted than he.
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Once through the gate, Beytagh shepherded his chief as close as he could to the waiting area, where dignitaries huddled in the lights, awaiting the plane. The clerk asked whether he should wait for Warren, but the chief waved him off, insisting he could find a ride home. Beytagh then departed, and Warren nudged his way into place at the chain-link fence, elbow-to-elbow with Hubert Humphrey and Averell Harriman, when the lights suddenly went out and
Air Force One
abruptly appeared before them in the darkness.
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The sight of Jackie Kennedy, with her husband's blood still caked on her dress and jewelry, staggered those who stood beneath the jet. Warren expressed his condolences to Johnson, then reeled away into the night; Beytagh never knew how the chief justice made it home.
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The next day, as the nation absorbed the body blow of Kennedy's assassination, Earl and Nina Warren watched with the rest of the country, following the developments from Dallas as police accumulated evidence and pandered to the press corps. Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested soon after the assassination of Kennedy, the wounding of Governor John Connally, and the murder of Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit—shot to death at 1:16 P.M. less than one mile from Oswald's rooming house in Dallas.
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Shamed that the assassination had taken place in their city and staggering under the scrutiny of the world, police and prosecutors now rushed to demonstrate their investigative competence, trotting out evidence as they gathered it and arranging for displays of their suspect during breaks in his interrogation. Warren was horrified.
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A prosecutor at heart, though one whose insistence on fairness had deepened appreciably from the vantage point of the Supreme Court, Warren was appalled at the unseemly release of information that would not have been allowed before a jury. (Authorities disclosed, for instance, that Marina Oswald had told them her husband owned a rifle, a statement that she could have refused to offer at trial by invoking the spousal privilege; similarly, reporters were informed that Oswald had refused to take a lie detector test, which would not have been admissible in a trial.) Led by District Attorney Henry M. Wade, authorities helped generate a climate of conviction around Oswald, and made a number of mistakes that would give rise both to legitimate questions and to outlandish theories concerning the assassination.

That Friday night and Saturday while the rest of the nation grieved, Oswald was questioned. He admitted nothing, but he acted like a guilty man: He lied about his purchase of a rifle, suggested he was a victim of police brutality, and even denied to newsmen that he had been questioned about killing the president. In its own way, this may have been satisfying to Oswald. During his small, violent life, he had yearned to be a grand historical figure. Now, at least briefly, he was. Oswald laid his head down in his cell while the nation drifted into a restless sleep.

In Washington, the jangle of the telephone interrupted Earl and Nina's crushing night. Warren put the receiver to his ear and was stunned to find Jackie Kennedy on the line. The president's widow was on the minds of most Americans. Few could shake the image of her devastated face and bloodstained dress as she made her way off
Air Force One,
supported by her brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy. Now Warren heard her voice for the first time since Friday's events. She was calling to ask a favor, to wonder whether the chief justice would deliver a eulogy for her husband the following afternoon, when Kennedy's body would lie in state under the dome of the Capitol. “I was almost speechless,” Warren recalled. He stammered out a reply, naturally agreeing.
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For Warren, that was the beginning of another long night, during which he struggled for words under the weight of the emotions piling upon him. For hours, he sat blankly pondering his remarks. Finally, at midnight, Warren gave up. He set his alarm and decided to try again when his mind was clearer.

Warren rose early and returned to work; he was nearly finished when his daughter Dorothy burst into the room to tell him that Oswald had been shot. Warren reprimanded her for accepting the latest rumors swirling around the case. “But Daddy,” she cried back, “I saw them do it.”
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Warren dashed into the other room, saw the replay of Jack Ruby's attack on Oswald, and then, in a rush to make it to the Capitol on time, asked his wife to type up his eulogy.

Under the circumstances, Warren had no time to ask others to review the comments he was to deliver. What poured from him was rawer than Warren's typical addresses, less carefully modulated, less thoughtfully crafted for its impact or audience. He delivered it on a day of profound mourning and despair, a day when the heavy rain that fell across Washington felt darkly appropriate to the national mood. Warren spoke in the rotunda of the Capitol, his thick voice barely under control. He stumbled only once, near the end of his short eulogy. Thousands of mourners listened in silence; there was barely a stir. Before Warren were Jackie and Caroline. Young John, about to celebrate his third birthday, had been taken aside. After greeting those present and acknowledging the nation outside, Warren moved to the heart of his eulogy, expressing his personal loss along with that of the country: