The Death of a President

  Behind the office was a corridor leading past Kennedy’s private quarters, a bath and a bedroom. (There was no mistaking his bed for the First Lady’s; the inboard mattress was thin and rock-hard.) Aft of these quarters lay the final cabin, a galley and six chairs reserved for military aides and senior Secret Service men, and that Thursday noon Agents Roy Kellerman and Clint Hill were leafing through magazines in this tail compartment. The rear of the plane was quiet. The President had unbuckled his worn black alligator briefcase and spread the contents on the stateroom desk. His spectacles mounted on his nose, he was studying diplomatic cables marked “EYES ONLY, PRESIDENT,” a black briefing book on the Erhard visit, and intelligence reports from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. Across the aisle, his wife and Pam Turnure were working on a speech. It was to be the only one she would deliver in Texas, and would be quite brief. Since she was going to appear before the LULACS—the League of United Latin-American Citizens—she had decided to speak in Spanish. Some of the phrases were difficult. In the stillness of the stateroom her soft Castilian could be heard clearly: “Estoy muy contenta de estar en el gran estado de Texas.… La noble tradicián española que tanto contribuyo a Texas. Esta tradicián comenzá cien años antes de que se colonizara Massachusetts, el estado de mi marido.…” If she was trying to tease the grandee at the desk, he wasn’t taking the bait. He didn’t understand Spanish. He turned pages rapidly, speed-reading at twelve hundred words a minute, ignoring the familiar voice and its incomprehensible accents.

  In the staff area that would have been difficult. The aisle forward of the big door was in an uproar. Ralph Yarborough was embattled. In the last few days he had learned the details of the trap Governor Connally had laid for him, and they were harrowing. It looked as though Austin would be an Alamo for him. The senior Senator was going to be stripped of his dignity. He would be marched across the stage and curtly introduced like a visiting fireman, and that was all. No toasts. No words about his years of service, no place of honor. He had sold $11,300 in tickets to tomorrow night’s Austin dinner, and there wouldn’t even be a place for his wife. As the crowning insult, the Connallys were going to cut him publicly. They would entertain the Kennedys at a formal reception, and every little Panhandle legislator would be on hand, but the Senator wouldn’t be allowed to crash the gate.

  The more he thought about it, the more wrathful he became. He tuned up his great organ of a voice, and his Texas drawl thickened marvelously. “Everywhere” came out “ahverwhare,” “thing” “thang,” “right” “raht,” “something” “sawmthin,” “your” “youah,” “you” “yew.” Rustic vernacular crept into his speech until it became almost as alien as Jacqueline Kennedy’s Spanish. Connally and Johnson—for he held the Vice President guilty as a co-conspirator—were as black as a Republican heart. Well, the fear-makers had chosen parlous times to mobilize a political Wehrmacht. He was no longer a starry-eyed country boy from a kindly Texas hearth. He’d been a judge in the Lone Star’s Third Judicial District; he’d been a United States Senator for six and a half years, and he was going to rear back and come out fighting. In the end ahverthang would be fine.

  In other words, he was alarmed. Yet every poll taken that fall had shown that his popularity margin with state voters was five or ten points wider than those of Connally or Kennedy-Johnson. He was a bread-and-butter man, and bluebonnet Texas appreciated bread-and-butter issues. He could be fairly confident of surviving the long knives of Austin. His real concern was the President, to whose star he had hitched his wagon. In his present mood the Senator was highly skeptical of the Governor’s party loyalty. During a national campaign, he suspected, Connally’s support of Kennedy would be token support. Even if they all went all out, Yarborough told Mac Kilduff and Congressmen Joe Kilgore, John Young, Tiger Teague, and Henry Gonzalez, the outlook was bound to be cloudy. He invited them to take a look at the Mexican vote. Mexicans were volatile—Gonzalez nodded in agreement—and with himself and Connally on the same ticket, they would be asked to buy a very mixed bag. Some would shy away. A lot of others would split their tickets.

  Jim Mathias, a pool reporter, brought him back to the Austin reception. “What’s your reaction to that?”

  “I’ve had many telephone calls and letters from friends because Mrs. Yarborough and I were not invited to the mansion,” the Senator said.

  Mathias sharpened the question: “How does it feel to be slapped in the face?”

  Stung, Yarborough snapped, “Well, I’m not surprised. Governor Connally is so terribly uneducated governmentally, how could you expect anything else?”

  The reporter wrote it down. Now the vendetta was on the record. Once 26000 landed the quote would be relayed to the press plane.

  Thus, with the party less than an hour out of Washington, rifts had already begun. Gonzalez, though less outspoken than Yarborough, was clearly unhappy. He told Teague his troubles. Here they were flying into San Antonio, his home town, and Connally had maneuvered affairs so that the entire visit would be nonpolitical. Even ceremonial opportunities weren’t going to be properly exploited. The motorcade would pass within a block of the Alamo, but no arrangements had been made for the President to lay a wreath there. Then there was the matter of the John F. Kennedy High School. At Gonzalez’ urging, a new school in San Antonio’s Edgewood District had been named for the Chief Executive. It was only two blocks north of Kelly Field. Dedicating it wouldn’t take more than five minutes. But O’Donnell and O’Brien had told Gonzalez that there weren’t five minutes to spare. The Congressman had just been checking the schedule. They were to spend two hours in San Antonio—and three hours in Dallas, the enemy camp. Whose side were they on, anyhow?

  Teague murmured sympathetically. And at that point the big door opened and the President himself strode into the staff compartment, puffing on a long, thin cigar.

  Henry Gonzalez smiled. He had never seen him smoke. He started to ask slyly whether the cheroot came from Castro and then, as the other Congressmen converged on them, he thought better of it. Henry’s instincts were sound. Unwittingly he would have touched on a sore point. The cigar actually was Cuban, though preboycott. The firm of H. Uppman had been using Havana tobacco since Edward VII became its client, and Kennedy was a confirmed Uppman customer.

  “Congratulations on that press conference, Mr. President,” Kilgore said. “The way you handled Goldwater—saying he was real busy selling TVA—that was something.”

  Kennedy sprawled in a seat across the aisle and swung his leg over the arm. “The damnedest thing,” he said, “is that Barry really means it.”

  Gonzalez turned the most recent issue of Newsweek to the last page and handed it to him. “Seen this?”

  The pruneface of Raymond Moley stared up at Kennedy. Under the head “TAMPER WITH AN IMAGE?” Moley exhorted the Arizonan to stand fast and offer “a real alternative to what the Kennedy Administration is giving us now.”

  The President laughed aloud. “Barry can do no wrong in Moley’s eyes,” he chuckled. In fact, the Barry boom was becoming the biggest joke in politics. The right-wing columnists were urging Goldwater to stick to his eighteenth-century guns, which was what Goldwater wanted to do—which was what Kennedy wanted him to do. If the Senator won the GOP nomination next summer, the President would clearly win the mandate he had missed in 1960. He read Moley again, rolled the magazine into a bat, and slapped his knee. “That’s terrific!”

  Observing his change in mood, Gonzalez said, “Mr. President, I don’t think it’s right to let Bruce Alger have equal time with me.”

  Kennedy looked baffled, and Larry O’Brien moved in. Since legislative liaison was Larry’s job, if a Congressman was making a pitch, he wanted to hear it.

  Gonzalez explained that their itinerary gave Alger’s city an hour more than San Antonio. “Mr. President, we have the only school in the country named for you. Even Boston hasn’t done that. You should drop in.”

  “We’re pressed for time,” Kennedy said un
easily. “We’ve had to cut some things out.”

  “Later, then,” Henry pleaded. “It’s a political problem for me—” He saw O’Brien signaling him to stop, and he stopped.

  The President batted his knee. “O.K., Henry,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll come back later.”

  “Is that a promise?” Gonzalez asked quickly.

  “It’s a promise,” Kennedy said, rising and shrugging as Larry’s lips silently formed an anguished When? The President glanced at his watch. They were on Central Standard Time now, and he moved the hands an hour back, to 1:15 P.M. “We’ll be in your district in fifteen minutes, Henry.”

  “Viva country,” Gonzalez smiled.

  “Bexar County,” Kennedy said professionally.

  With that, he vanished through the door and returned to his homework. It was several minutes later, and his cigar was a stub, when he became aware of a tightly corseted feminine figure tiptoeing back toward the bedroom. Mary Gallagher, his wife’s personal secretary, was starting her duties as maid. While he had been with the Congressmen the First Lady had finished her speech and changed to a fresh white dress and black leather belt. Mary had snapped up the back while Mrs. Kennedy critically inspected the black beret which went with it. The comb that attached it to her hair was on the back of the beret. She wanted it switched to the side, and had been waiting in the private quarters while Mary went into the staff area to change the stitching.

  “That’s fine,” said Jackie, fastening it in place.

  There was a light tap on the door. Her husband looked in.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  “Fine,” she repeated, beaming at his reflection in her mirror.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” he murmured, turning away. Apparently he was still apprehensive that she might not enjoy the trip.

  Sergeant Joe Ayres, 26000’s husky chief steward, appeared in the corridor outside.

  “We’ve entered our glide pattern, Mr. President.”

  They squinted out. The light blue wings were skimming over low, thinly grassed pichachos and sandy tracts of barren ground. Under an aluminum sky the city ahead shimmered brightly, a skyline on a plain. There had been no reprieve for Godfrey McHugh: San Antonio was going to be hot.

  Below, Lyndon Johnson had just emerged from the terminal barbershop and was lining up greeters. Usually Lady Bird was at his elbow on such occasions, but she had glimpsed her college roommate in the waiting crowd, and the two women were embracing enthusiastically, leaving him to cope. There was a lot to cope with. Because the ostensible reason for the Presidential call here was a visit to nearby Brooks Aerospace Medical Center, Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert had appeared, and he wanted to know where he should stand. Other slots had to be found for Mrs. John Connally, Waggoner Carr, Attorney General of Texas, and an Air Force lieutenant general. Then there were the members of the Vice President’s own entourage: Cliff Carter, Liz Carpenter, and Marie Fehmer, Lyndon’s young secretary. Behind them, perspiring and craning their necks, stood the twenty-six members of the Chamber of Commerce’s red-carpet delegation, and from behind them came sounds of an awkward row. Mayor W. W. McAllister of San Antonio, it developed, had run afoul of the Secret Service. He had brought his camera and had been sneaking pictures of the President’s blue Lincoln convertible and the Secret Service’s armored Cadillac, which had been flown down from Washington the night before, when an agent demanded to see his press pass. McAllister hadn’t one, and he let it be known that he had no intention of being pushed around. He was the Mayor, this was his town. Lyndon was at his best in such situations. The two men were urged to reason with one another, and everyone was assigned a place to stand. The press and backup planes were parking. The reception committee was almost ready. Only one man was missing.

  Unfortunately, he was the host.

  And now, with 26000’s landing imminent, the field was closed to other traffic.

  At the last minute the control tower received a frantic signal from a private plane hovering over the eastern horizon. “D.V. arriving,” it was warned—Distinguished Visitor meant the President—and the plane’s passenger radioed back that as Governor of Texas he was fairly distinguished himself. Connally had been in Houston, addressing a luncheon of the Texas Manufacturers Association in the Sheraton-Lincoln Hotel. Aware that he was perilously late, he had borrowed a white Jetstar from a friendly oil millionaire. The San Antonio tower immediately granted him an exception to the 26000 rule; he skidded in, jumped out, pumped the clammy hands of the twenty-six businessmen, spotted Nellie’s white dress, and slipped into the reception line beside her.

  “I’ve been holding my breath for you,” she whispered, fingering her pearl necklace.

  “There it is!” shouted a man, and there it was—the Stars and Stripes on Air Force One’s tail taxiing gracefully across a distant airstrip. “Jackie!” cried a woman, and the crowd took it up: “Jackieee! Jackieee!” The Governor relaxed and grinned. He had prophesied that she would be popular. He’d have to remind the President.

  A ramp was wheeled up, the rear door opened, and the First Lady emerged first, smiling her shy, hesitant smile. The mob roared. Lady Bird waved affectionately. Then the lithe, familiar figure appeared in the doorway, fingering a button of his jacket. Another roar. Ralph Yarborough should have been third, but Ralph, aware that Henry Gonzalez was the city’s favorite Texan, gently shoved Henry ahead of him. Everyone was baying now, and even the jaded officials burst into applause when the President wrung the Mayor’s hand, cut to one side, and waded into the Congressman’s huge family.

  “Happy birthday!” he greeted Bertha Gonzalez. Her eyes glistened. How had he known? Ted Clifton’s father-in-law, a retired colonel living in San Antonio, also started violently when the President paused to compliment him on his daughter. Hard of hearing, the Colonel asked those around him, “Did he say Anne’s name?” He had remembered her; his flypaper memory was his trademark, and as he moved along the line he had a personal word for every other greeter. Children were Jacqueline Kennedy’s specialty. Cradling a bouquet of yellow roses—the card, from Al Meyer, North Towne Florist, expressed “respect and gratitude for your contributions to the cultural advancement of our country and to the image of the American Woman which you have carried abroad”—she scanned the sea of eager faces for small spectators and saved her brightest smiles for them.

  Meanwhile the motorcade was forming. It was a set piece for the Secret Service, with variations to allow for the unaccustomed presence of the Vice President. The luggage truck and a pilot car, manned by local police, cruised a quarter-mile ahead, sizing up the route. The motorcade proper was led by a police car whose passengers included the Secret Service man stationed in San Antonio and the Washington agent who had advanced the city. Then came the feature attraction: the four-ton Lincoln, with Greer at the wheel, Kellerman beside him, the Connallys on the jump seats, and the Kennedys in the rear. The others might switch places, but the President always occupied the right rear seat unless he chose to surrender it to another chief of state. The Governor of Texas was not so regarded, and Kennedy would be staying put on this trip. The Secret Service liked that. Agents would know exactly where he was on all the Texas motorcades and could keep a watchful eye on him.

  Immediately behind the Lincoln, Agent Emory Roberts would be in charge of the eight-passenger ’55 Cadillac, a moving arsenal which White House correspondents called the Queen Mary. Two agents would stand on each of the Queen’s running boards, and Powers and O’Donnell would occupy the jump seats. Next came the Vice President’s rented convertible, with Agent Rufe Youngblood sitting beside the driver, and then, in order, the Vice Presidential follow-up car, Agent Lem Johns commanding; the Gonzalez limousine; Mac Kilduff’s pool car; two convertibles for still photographers and newsreel men; and a long caravan of exuberant Congressmen shepherded by Larry O’Brien. Toward the end, in front of the communications car, every motorcade had a bus labeled “VIP.” The VIP’s were not really very impo
rtant. They were staff who lacked priority: Mary Gallagher, Pam Turnure, Johnson’s people, and, for the present, God. In Texas, O’Donnell had decided, Evelyn Lincoln and Dr. Burkley would also ride in the bus. The decision was not appreciated by them. When crowds grew heavy, VIP buses were sometimes cut off—in Rome one had been lost for two hours. Evelyn felt that a secretary should be near her boss, and Burkley protested that there was always a chance that the President might be hurt. They had been marooned earlier in the year in Frankfurt. It had been disquieting. The likelihood that either would be needed here seemed remote, however, so they had been overruled.

  Among the staff O’Donnell’s word was law. He had personally approved each appointment, including Colonel Swindal’s, and he could transfer them if they grew unruly. But he was powerless in Congress, as Ralph Yarborough was about to demonstrate. The Senator was stalking toward the north side of the terminal on his short, powerful legs when a flock of local liberals surged up and told him they had heard about the Austin plot. Rather than face humiliation there, they suggested, he should leave the party in Dallas. He nodded vigorously; he had reached the same conclusion. “And don’t get in the same car with Johnson,” said a friend of their ideological leader, Maury Maverick, Jr., who, though he was a state Democratic committeeman, had been barred from the airport by Connally men. The man went on, “Every liberal here and in Houston knows what Connally and Johnson are trying to do to you, and they’re waiting to see if you’ll knuckle under to it.”

  Yarborough was perplexed. “Did you say Johnson’s car?”

  The motorcade was about to depart, yet he still didn’t know where he was supposed to sit. To a man with his trembling ego this was important, and he had tried very hard to find out. His instructions from the White House had been conflicting. Last June in El Paso he had ridden with the President. Early in the planning of the current trip he had been told that would be out this time. Then he had been assured that he would be with the President and the Governor. Three days ago the signals had been changed again; Larry O’Brien had suavely informed him that in each city he would share a car with the most popular local figure—usually the mayor. According to the Senator’s subsequent memory, however, at no point had the Vice President’s convertible been mentioned.