The Day Kennedy Was Shot (56 page)

Mr. Isaacs could not think of dinner. He sat. He heard the solemn announcement that the networks would preempt their regular television fare for the rest of this day, perhaps until after the funeral. On the screen came a short shot of the third floor of police headquarters in Dallas, and Lee Harvey Oswald held his manacled hands up complaining. The shock on the face of Mr. Isaacs deepened into a stunned, bloodless expression. “That,” he said, “that's the man I helped get back to Texas last year.”

It was. The State Department had granted Oswald's request for a loan to bring his family back to the United States. They had traveled by train across White Russia, through Poland, and
on to Holland. They had boarded a Holland-America liner and Oswald had used the time negotiating the Atlantic Ocean to write a draft of his personal Marxist manifesto. They debarked at Hoboken and, after some travail, had appealed to the Department of Welfare to put them up overnight at a Times Square hotel and to see them on to Dallas by commercial aircraft. Martin Isaacs had been the official Good Samaritan.

The nation was becoming absorbed in the story. The cameras were again on
Air Force One.
It sat in its own halo. There was some movement in the front door and a commentator murmured, almost in an awesome whisper: “Here comes the new President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson.” Mrs. Johnson and her husband emerged. He stood in the doorway, glancing around grimly, the mouth compressed. They started down the steps.

The statesmen, still in small dark groups, remained immobile. The eyes, scores of pairs, were jaded. They understood the Washington power structure, and this man, tall and twangy had this day risen from a position of sufferance to take it all. The gentlemen had involuntarily swapped a gifted idealist for a party wheelhorse; youth for middle age; grace for awkwardness; adroit phrasing for hyperbole; a commander for a committee chairman; a Galahad for a hillbilly.

They knew. The heavy-lidded eyes watched him reach the foot of the ramp and the reassessment began. One perhaps, Defense Secretary McNamara, may have been overcome by personal grief and not been able to equate the new chieftain with the pluses and minuses of practical politics. The others turned from their several positions around the area of light to face Lyndon Johnson. McNamara, close enough to do so, shook hands with him. “It's terrible. Terrible,” the new President said. The rheumy brown eyes glanced around the circle of knots.

He nodded curtly to a few. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield had an arm around his wife, who was sobbing. Chief
Justice Earl Warren reached out silently and shook Johnson's hand. Arthur Schlesinger, who had been retained by Kennedy as a day-to-day journalist-historian, a Boswell to Kennedy's Samuel Johnson, stepped forward to grasp Johnson's hand at the moment that the President saw the row of microphones in the powdery light. His momentum carried him through the handclasp. It is doubtful that he heard Schlesinger's offer of assistance.

With Mrs. Johnson, he stood before the microphones and rustled a piece of paper. The spectacles were adjusted. Mrs. Johnson seemed to look, not at her husband, but toward the darkness and the red-eyed cameras banked in wooden tiers. There were no loudspeakers at the base, so that only the television audience heard the hushed and halting words:

“This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me it is a deep personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God's.”

It was the wrong voice; the tone was that of the supplicant when America hungered for a leader. The last few sentences made of Johnson an average man and those who feared for themselves did not want to hear “That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God's.” The irony of the moment is that Lyndon Johnson was not a humble man; politically and personally he was a boss and it suited his personality to arrogate to himself all decisions. Had he said: “Even in its grief, this nation, this leader of nations, must move forward and, toward that end, I have lifted the banner which fell in the streets of Dallas and will carry it honorably and forcefully, as he did . . .” he might have subdued the fears, infused confidence where confusion lay.

He took his wife by the arm and turned away. The big sleek head was bent forward. The stride was the step of the athlete, toes slightly turned in. He asked McNamara to come with him.
Then he saw the slight figure of McGeorge Bundy and nodded his head for him to follow. Acting Secretary of State George Ball watched, and the President asked him to join the group. Johnson shook hands with the congressional leadership of both parties. He had worked with these men well and truly, and they respected his judgment. The professional politicians had much more faith in Johnson than the electorate. To the people he was a twangy Texas braggart.

There were many men of rank who were not asked to join Mr. Johnson. They maintained their secure knots of topcoats and windswept hair in the night. Arthur Goldberg remained alone, the onetime labor lawyer cum statesman who was present, not to curry favor with the new source of power, but to say farewell to the old. Major General Ted Clifton, a mature mind with a sense of duty, stood at hand salute as his Commander-in-Chief walked by toward the idly slapping blades of a helicopter. He was no longer a Kennedy man; he had not been invited to join the Johnson Administration. He was alone in the light, the neutral soldier.

Another man stood alone. He wore a gray topcoat. The back of it was turned up against the sudden chill. James Rowley, Chief of the United States Secret Service, had lost a President. It did not matter that he had not been in Dallas; it was of no moment that, given a second chance, his men could not do more than they had done to protect the precious life; he had lost his man. He and Behn, Kellerman, Hill, Youngblood, Landis, Greer had failed one day out of a thousand. Mr. Rowley, the hair grayer, the eyes riveted on the man now walking out of the circle of light, had advised several Presidents and was accustomed to the abrupt and irritable “No!” Sometimes Rowley had felt like saying: “In that case, Mr. President, I cannot be responsible for you,” but the words had remained in his throat because Rowley
was
responsible. He was paid to protect. The study of many assassinations in many countries had taught him new techniques;
from each he had learned a little more. Today a mental misfit in a high window had crumpled all the techniques of protection and tossed them away.

Mr. Rowley stood alone. If, as often happened, the Congressmen on the Hill held an investigation and looked for a goat, James Rowley would insist on donning the horns. He would not permit Jerry Behn, head of the White House detail, or Roy Kellerman, the agent-in-charge, to assume the burden. The chief himself would be responsible, and he would be the first to say that, even if John F. Kennedy had allowed the bubbletop to be placed on the limousine, “it was not bulletproof.”

In the helicopter, the President sat wearily. The overhead light was on. He squinted up at it and flagged the others to be seated. Mrs. Johnson sat on the couch opposite. George Ball and McNamara and Bundy sat around the President. James Rowley stood inside the door. A crewman waited. The President said, “Go on” with his hand. The hatch was slammed and dogged. The President cinched his seat belt and leaned with elbows on knees. When tense, he made a chewing motion with his lips. He was doing it now.

The advisers leaned forward, as he was, and the fore and aft rotors sped until they fought gravity successfully and the people at Andrews Air Force Base saw the greenish craft lift straight up, bow its nose downward, and move forward in an awkward humpbacked manner. Johnson's hearing was never acute, and he leaned against the thwacking racket outside to hear better and to watch lips.

He spoke of Dallas as though he was talking to himself. The speech was disjointed. “It was an awful thing . . . horrible . . . that little woman was brave . . . who would have thought that this could happen . . . you fellows know I never aspired to this . . .” Below, the patchy darkness of Anacostia flats surrendered to the brilliant effulgence of Washington ahead. Mr. Johnson was going directly to the White House. “Kennedy could
do things I know I couldn't. He gathered a fine team of men,” he said, gesturing at the group. The deep-pooled brown eyes again moved from face to face as they had on
Air Force One:
“I need you. I need you more than he did.”

The chopper was moving past the Lincoln Memorial, ablaze with light, as it began to blink its way down to the South Grounds. “Anything important pending?” he said. It was a congressional phrase, one he had used many times in his career. No matter what the agenda, he had to know the acute problems, the matters which required a presidential decision today. The three advisers studied their own faces. This was a thought, a question which had occurred to each of them this afternoon. Each man had gone over the affairs of state and, to put it bluntly, a transfer of power could hardly have occurred at a better time: there were no important decisions to be made; there was nothing of consequence for the new President to consider for the next couple of days.

The helicopter turned sideward in the chill breeze, and the pale whiteness of the Executive Mansion was visible to Johnson. This was now his. Not really his; it had not been Kennedy's or any man's. It was the office, the home, the museum of the current President. He would have sole and exclusive responsibility for the conduct of American affairs; the fourteen Cabinet departments; the one hundred fifty-four bureaus, administrations, and departments; the entire military establishment; the execution of the will of the Congress.

On the left, in the glare of the lights, were the playground swings and slides belonging to Caroline and John-John. The lights were on in the office John F. Kennedy had left two days ago. Inside, harassed workers were completing the change of rug and decor which Mrs. John F. Kennedy had ordered as a surprise for her husband. No one had told these men to stop working and so they continued with a grisly surprise.

Somewhere among all those lights, Sargent Shriver was working. The Secret Service told him that the new President
was arriving, but no one moved to greet him because these men had much work to do with his predecessor. The director of the Peace Corps knew that he would receive many phone calls and orders tonight from Mrs. Kennedy, from Robert Kennedy, from both. The task was to translate the random wishes into action.

David Pearson, a minor public relations man, was among those who had been summoned and he was standing in the office watching the tides of ideas flow and ebb. Shriver heard the first word from Jacqueline Kennedy via Robert. He made some notes on a desk pad and turned that gray graven face to the young men, many of whom he had never seen before, to pass the order of battle: “I'd like you all to know,” he said, “in a general way, what Mrs. Kennedy's and the family's wishes are. Mrs. Kennedy feels that, above all, these arrangements should be made to provide great dignity for the President. He should be buried as a President and a former naval officer rather than as a Kennedy.”

There was nothing startling or new. Of course the family desired dignity in the obsequies. For Kennedy to be buried as a President of the United States, rather than as a private citizen, could also be anticipated. Those who listened asked no questions, but the matter of being buried as a naval officer probably meant that Mrs. Kennedy would have him dressed in the uniform of a senior lieutenant.

A priest from St. Matthew's Procathedral, a man who served as liaison between the Kennedy's and the Roman Catholic hierarchy—in this case Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle of Washington, D.C.—suggested to Sargent Shriver that the church celebrate a pontifical Mass of requiem. Shriver was shaking his head no, gently but firmly, as he listened to the priest. He glanced at Dr. Joseph English, a Catholic psychiatrist and friend of the family. “Let's take the low road, Sarge,” the doctor said.

No one consciously offended the Church. The collective will of the Kennedys was iron. “Look,” Shriver said, “he made it
a point to attend a low Mass himself every Sunday. Why should we force a high Mass on him now?”
^*
It would be a low Mass. Fresh problems accrued to Shriver. He and his capable young men thought of them, articulated them, cultivated the pros and cons, and made the decisions. The first tentative list of distinguished personages to be invited was already being drawn up. Angier Biddle Duke was on his way back from Andrews to request that the Library of Congress be reopened. Researchers would have to be recruited to sit inside the cavernous dark stone building studying every historic reference to the Lincoln funeral so that Mrs. Kennedy could decide which items would be appropriate to this one. It was already known that the catafalque on which the Great Emancipator's body had rested was in a dusty warehouse of White House treasures.

In a space of fifteen feet there was a soup bowl of faces. The word had been passed to the press that Oswald was on his way down from the jail. They crouched, stood, and, in the rear ranks, elevated themselves on chairs in the small space between the jail elevator and the office of Captain Will Fritz. In the Homicide office, an FBI agent studied a notebook to ascertain how much information the prisoner already had given to the law. The items:

He said his true name was Lee Harvey Oswald. His race was white; sex, male; date of birth, October 18, 1939; place of birth, New Orleans, Louisiana; height, 5 feet 9 inches; weight, 140; hair, medium brown, “needs haircut”; eyes, blue-gray; no tattoos or permanent scars; mother, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, address, unknown; her occupation, practical nurse; father was Robert Lee Oswald, expired two months before birth of Lee Harvey.

Refused to explain Selective Service card with name Alex James Hidell; denied shooting Officer Tippit; denied shooting John F. Kennedy; admits employment at Texas School Book Depository as order clerk; admits defecting to Soviet Union; says he has Russian wife, Marina Oswald, two small children, June and Rachel; lives apart from wife except for weekends. . . .