Letter From Dallas
“The President Is Dead, You Know”
In an excerpt from his posthumously published memoir, LBJ aide Jack Valenti relives the Kennedy assassination, from the chaos at Parkland to the calm aboard Air Force One.
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There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end of the line. “Of course. Let me find it, and I’ll get right back to you.”
What I learned later was that Katzenbach, brilliant lawyer that he was, didn’t know where to find the oath. I sure as hell didn’t know. Some minutes later, he called back. “We have the oath. If you’ll get someone on the line to take it down, I’m ready,” he said.
“Fine,” I said, “but can you tell me where you found it?”
I could almost hear Katzenbach smiling. “In the Constitution.”
Of course.
Within seconds, Marie Fehmer, LBJ’s unflappable and superbly efficient secretary, had the presidential oath of office typed cleanly on white paper and ready for Judge Hughes. We looked around for a Bible. None was to be found, but we did locate a Catholic missal in the presidential bedroom.
Judge Hughes was now aboard the plane. LBJ asked one of the Kennedy aides if Mrs. Kennedy would feel comfortable coming forward to stand next to him as he took the oath of office. She agreed to do so. I saw her emerge slowly from the rear of the plane, walking as if in a trance. Her pink blouse was liberally spotted with her husband’s blood, as well as fragments of his brain matter that had sprayed her when the assassin’s bullet struck, but she had refused to change into another garment. While I marveled at her strength, she came to a stop at LBJ’s side. Her eyes were open but unseeing. I had read and heard of catatonic trances, but I had never confronted one until Mrs. Kennedy came forward to stand next to President Johnson.
The picture recorded by Army captain Cecil Stoughton’s camera is arguably the most famous photograph of the twentieth century. There it is, in black and white: LBJ, his right hand raised, with the top of Judge Hughes’s head in the foreground, along with Mac Kilduff, JFK’s assistant press secretary, holding a live mike. To Johnson’s left is Mrs. Kennedy, and to his right stands his wife, Lady Bird. Next to her is the tall figure of the late congressman Albert Thomas. It was Thomas who pulled me from my position behind him to his side for a better view of the most dramatic swearing-in of a president in the history of the nation, saying, “Come around here, Jackson, you have to see this up close.” I had no idea that as a result, my face would be frozen forever in that famous photograph, but there I was in the lower left-hand corner of that picture, my face distraught, incomprehension in my eyes as I stared at Lyndon Johnson.
Once Air Force One had lifted off and Mrs. Kennedy had retired to the rear of the plane, the new president roamed the aircraft. At one point, he motioned me to sit beside him, with aides Bill Moyers and Liz Carpenter in the facing seats. LBJ asked a steward for a glass of water. Why do I remember this? Because when the steward returned, LBJ reached past me to take the glass. His huge fingers were literally inches from my eyes. What I saw was astounding. The president’s hand was absolutely steady. “How could that be?” I thought. Later on as I got to know LBJ intimately, I recalled a line Winston Churchill had written about Henry II of England: “It was said that he was always gentle and calm in times of urgent peril, but became bad-tempered and capricious when the pressure relaxed.”
Then the president said, “I want you [meaning Moyers, Carpenter, and me] to put something down for me to say when we land at Andrews. Make it brief. We’ll have plenty of time later to say more.” When the president rose, the three of us began trying to create the statement he wanted. Finally, we reached a consensus. It certainly was short: 58 words, to be precise. The president read over our draft once, then twice. He nodded, took out a pencil, and changed one line. Where we had crafted the last sentence to read “I ask for God’s help and yours,” he switched the emphasis: “I ask for your help and God’s.”
Not long afterward, Air Force One touched down. LBJ and Mrs. Johnson stepped onto the brightly lit tarmac, and the air was chilly as they approached the cluster of microphones around a temporary lectern. Television lights stabbed the darkness. It was 6:10 p.m. eastern standard time when the president, his face somber, began his statement: “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 that 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.”
Once his brief speech was done, the president headed for the two helicopters sitting ready on the tarmac. He beckoned to me, and I climbed in after him, joining the Secret Service agents and others already onboard. We took off and several minutes later landed softly on the South Lawn of the White House. It was my first visit, and I had as my tour guide the new president of the United States.
We went inside the Diplomatic Reception Room, then walked through the basement to the portico of the West Wing. The president did not enter the Oval Office. Instead we strode across West Executive Avenue, a guarded private street for the use of government officials and special guests of the White House. We entered the Executive Office Building and took the elevator to LBJ’s vice presidential suite of offices on the second floor.
McGeorge Bundy was waiting in the LBJ offices when we arrived. Bundy briefed him on all matters that demanded swift response. Averell Harriman, then undersecretary of state for political affairs, and Senator Bill Fulbright, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were ushered in. The moment Harriman and Fulbright departed, the president got on the phone, calling first President Truman, then President Eisenhower, and then Sargent Shriver, brother-in-law to President Kennedy.
At 9:25 p.m., after various meetings and phone calls, President Johnson asked Bill Moyers, Cliff Carter, and me to join him in his limo, headed for his Spring Valley residence. There Rufus Youngblood, head of the new Secret Service detail, met us in the driveway. “Mr. President,” said Rufus, “we haven’t had time to put in secure phones yet. So just remember when you talk, you’re on AT&T. No security.” The president nodded and even managed a smile.
When we all got inside, LBJ greeted and talked with several dozen close friends and colleagues who were already there. He sipped orange juice. Finally, as midnight neared, he prepared to go upstairs. He nodded to Bill, Cliff, and me, and we followed him to the second-floor master bedroom. He had now been president for a little more than eleven hours.
Mrs. Johnson had apparently gone to another bedroom, leaving LBJ with the three of us. He changed into pajamas and sat upright in his large bed, his back leaning against the headboard. We watched the television set with morbid fascination.
We stared at the glowing screen while LBJ began to ruminate. “I’m going to pass that civil rights bill that’s been tied up too damn long in the Senate. I’m going to get that bill passed by Congress, and I’m gonna do it before next year is done. And then I’m going to get a bill through that’s gonna make sure that everybody has a right to vote. You give people a vote, and they damn sure have power to change their life for the better.”
Later on, he pointed to the TV set when the commentator made some remark about Harry Truman. “By God, I intend to pass Harry Truman’s medical insurance bill. Never again will a little old lady who’s sick as a dog be turned away from a hospital because she doesn’t have any money to pay for her treatment. It’s a damn disgrace.”
And he wasn’t through yet. As we watched the TV screen, he spoke up again, forcefully: “We are going to do something about education. We’re going to pass a bill that will give every young boy and girl in this country, no matter who they are, the right to get all the education they can take. And the government is going to pay for it.” I was beginning to feel like an intimate observer to an unprecedented historic moment.
Finally, sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m., President Lyndon Johnson suggested that we try to get some rest. Strange, but even after the day’s terrible events, and after going without sleep for almost 24 hours, I wasn’t tired. As I lay and turned on a bed belonging to Lynda Bird, I knew I would never forget a moment of that day. And I wondered if the man who lay not thirty feet from me, the new president in the next room, would sleep at all.
The Longest Day was over.
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