The Kennedy Half-Century (4 page)

In the meantime, the news from Dallas had begun to rocket around the nation and the world. “Here is a bulletin from CBS News,” said a tense announcer. Viewers who had been watching the soap opera
As the World Turns
suddenly saw letters flash across their screens at 12:40 P.M.:

CBS NEWS BULLETIN

“In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas,” the announcer continued. “The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” The voice belonged to the veteran correspondent and anchorman Walter Cronkite. Viewers could hear Cronkite in the studio fumbling with a piece of paper. “More details just arrived,” he continued. “These details about the same as previously. President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She called, ‘Oh no!’ The motorcade sped on. United Press International reports that the wounds perhaps could be fatal.”
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Remarkably—in part because the primitive TV cameras of the day needed time to warm up—CBS returned to
As the World Turns
after the shocking announcement. A short time later, however, all three networks canceled their regular programming to focus on the story
in Dallas, which obliterated all other news—including the deaths later that day of the famous novelists Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis.
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The early reports were confusing, making it difficult to separate fact from rumor. At one point, viewers were told that the president was still alive, in critical condition and receiving blood transfusions at a local hospital. Live footage from the Trade Mart showed stunned guests, an empty presidential podium, and an African American waiter dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief.
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The scene at Parkland Hospital was chaotic and frightening. At the emergency room entrance, the First Lady sat motionless in the limo, surrounded by a puddle of blood and brain matter, clinging to her husband’s limp body. A large piece of hair-covered skull lay on the seat beside her. “Mrs. Kennedy, let us get the president,” said Agent Emory Roberts in a soothing tone. Still in shock, unable to absorb the enormity of events, Jackie refused to let go. Roberts gently lifted her arm and looked at the president’s wounds; he knew no one could survive such massive head trauma. Turning toward Agent Roy Kellerman, he said, “You stay with Kennedy. I’m taking some of my men for Johnson.” Agent Clint Hill realized that Jackie didn’t want the press and public to see her husband in his awful state, so he covered the president’s head with his suit coat. Mrs. Kennedy yielded. Kellerman helped a grieving Dave Powers and two other agents hoist the president’s body onto a stretcher. “When Agent Paul Landis helped Mrs. Kennedy out of the car he saw a bullet fragment in the back where the top would [normally] be secured. He picked it up and put it on the seat, thinking that if the car were moved, it might be blown off.” Dallas officer H. B. McLain, whose motorcycle had accompanied the motorcade, also helped Jackie get out of the Lincoln and into Trauma Room One.
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Shortly after he escorted Jackie into the hospital, “an unnamed Secret Service agent asked Parkland personnel to clean the limo interior.” Photos from the period show a slop bucket lying next to the presidential car. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which is located in the former Book Depository building and is dedicated to preserving the history of November 22, 1963, calls it “one of the really strange stories about Parkland Hospital… The car, of course, was a crime scene, and here’s someone altering the crime scene! Is he sweeping up evidence? What’s he doing? We don’t know.”
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The cleanup removed vital, precise proof of the spray pattern of blood that could have helped determine the direction of the bullets. Afterward, Secret Service agents attached the bubbletop, drove the car back to Love Field, and loaded it onto an Air Force cargo plane for a flight to Washington.
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The president was received in Trauma Room One by a twenty-eight-year-old
resident physician, Charles Carrico. After checking Kennedy’s vital signs, Carrico ordered his assistants to make a small incision in the patient’s ankle as an entry point for fluids, blood, and medicine. Carrico then checked for additional wounds by sliding his hands along the president’s back; he did not find any more injuries using this method, but neither he nor anyone else at Parkland made a visual inspection of JFK’s back. He also inserted a tube down Kennedy’s throat to help him breathe. Other physicians soon arrived to lend a hand. Drs. Charles Baxter, Malcolm Perry, and Robert McClelland performed a tracheotomy and inserted a tube into the president’s chest cavity “since there was obvious tracheal and chest damage.” The tracheotomy widened the bullet hole in JFK’s neck. Had the doctors cut through an entrance wound or an exit wound? It wasn’t immediately obvious. Dr. Kemp Clark pumped the president’s chest with the heel of his hand, but he knew that he was fighting a losing battle. John Kennedy’s spirit was leaving—or had left—his body.
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Mrs. Kennedy had only reluctantly agreed to leave Trauma Room One to make space for the doctors trying to save her husband. She sat in the hallway with a blank expression, flanked by two Secret Service agents. She refused a nurse’s offer to help her tidy up. “Absolutely not,” said the First Lady. “I want the world to see what Dallas has done to my husband.”
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At the same time, in another part of the hospital, Lyndon Johnson was wondering what his next move should be. Agents Emory Roberts and Rufus Youngblood, the latter LBJ’s chief bodyguard, urged him to return quickly to Air Force One. “We should evacuate this hospital right away, get on that plane and get back to Washington,” said Youngblood. “We don’t know whether this is one man, two men, a gang or an army. The White House is the safest place to conduct the nation’s business.” Johnson knew that Youngblood was right. What was happening in Washington? Who was running the government? Was a nuclear attack imminent? Still, he did not know the full extent of JFK’s injuries, and there were a number of important political factors to consider. What would the American people say if he fled Parkland while JFK was fighting for his life? What would they think if he abandoned Jackie during her hour of need? How would Kennedy loyalists interpret a decision to fly back to the White House before anything certain was known about the president? Some might see it as evidence of Johnson’s overweening ambition. He had long coveted the presidency, had run against JFK in 1960 and planned to try for the White House again in 1968. Now he had the prize but couldn’t look pleased or eager.

More important, the process of succession was unclear. Although Article
II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that “In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President,” the clause had always been viewed as a loose set of guidelines rather than an ironclad contract. What was the vice president supposed to do if the president was temporarily or permanently disabled? First Lady Edith Wilson had run the White House for several months in 1919 after her husband suffered a debilitating stroke. During the early days of the Kennedy administration, Johnson and JFK had agreed that if the president was alive but had become incapacitated, the vice president would consult with the cabinet, and especially the attorney general, before assuming the powers of the presidency.
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And that would mean negotiating a truce with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, LBJ’s archnemesis.
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What no one at the time realized was that Johnson was already president of the United States. The transfer had occurred on Elm Street at precisely 12:30 P.M., when JFK had an estimated one third of his brain blasted away. JFK was brain-dead before he left Dealey Plaza. Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the last surviving physicians who treated Kennedy in Trauma Room One, agrees Kennedy effectively died instantly, at least as we conceive of life and death today.
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At any rate, McClelland and his colleagues at Parkland soon resolved any lingering succession questions. Dr. Baxter broke the news as gently as he could: “Mrs. Kennedy … your husband is dead.” Her brown eyes were filled with grief, terror, and bewilderment. Trying his best to comfort her, Baxter added, “We will not pronounce him dead until he has had the last rites.” Catholic clergy were soon on hand to administer the sacrament of extreme unction.
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In a hallway near the hospital’s main elevators, Darrell Tomlinson, Parkland’s senior engineer, heard a metallic clink when he pushed a stretcher out of the way. He was surprised to see a bullet lying on the gurney and reported his discovery to O. P. Wright, the hospital’s personnel officer. Wright in turn gave the projectile to a Secret Service agent named Richard Johnsen. Did the bullet drop from Kennedy’s stretcher, or Connally’s—or, as some would later insist, was it deliberately planted to be found there?
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A little over an hour after the shooting, CBS viewers watched as Walter Cronkite, hunched over a microphone and wearing a pair of thickrimmed glasses, solemnly announced, “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at one P.M. Central Standard Time, two o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago.”
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Cronkite removed his glasses and choked back tears. “Vice President Johnson has left the hospital in Dallas,” he continued, “but we do not know to where he has proceeded.
Presumably, he will be taking the oath of office shortly and become the thirty-sixth president of the United States.”
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America—indeed, most of the world—was frozen in place, unbelieving, uncomprehending, and unsure of the moment, much less the future.

In the blink of an eye, America had changed forever. The youngest elected chief executive in U.S. history became the youngest to die. A vigorous administration of 1,036 eventful days turned to dust in six seconds.
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A beautiful wife was widowed in a savage way in front of her eyes. Two young children were made fatherless in an instant. The tragedy overwhelmed the public’s senses and raised a host of painful questions. How could it happen? Why did it happen? Who did it? Was it a conspiracy? Were America’s enemies plotting a takeover? Could war be imminent? Was Lyndon Johnson a fit successor?

People could not absorb the news, too shocked to make sense of the nonsensical and find a way forward. There is film of unknowing passersby on the streets, drawn to the crowds around car radios and TVs in storefronts; as they listened, some jumped in adrenaline-spiked horror, their mouths agape. Americans hurried to surround themselves with friends and family for comfort and reassurance. Spouses were called in a panic and phone lines were jammed. Parents rushed to schools that closed early, eager to embrace their children. Pastors were flooded with requests for spiritual guidance, and churches were as crowded as for a Christmas mass, with parishioners weeping openly in the pews. The lives of people, the business of a nation, simply—stopped. For the first time ever, all-day television became the nation’s communal town hall. In ways that we have become accustomed to in times of great tragedy, viewers hesitated to break away from their TV sets. For four long days, they soaked up every word, every image, in the vain hope of solace.

Lyndon Johnson did not have time to watch television that afternoon. He needed to speak with Bobby Kennedy from the parked Air Force One at Love Field. Years later, the former attorney general remembered their conversation:

First [Johnson] expressed his condolences. Then he said … this might be part of a worldwide plot, which I didn’t understand, and he said a lot of people down here [in Dallas] think I should be sworn in right away. Do you have any objection to it? And—well, I was sort of taken aback at the moment because it was just an hour after … the president had been shot and I didn’t … see what the rush was. And … at the time, at least, I thought it would be nice if [President Kennedy] came back to Washington [as president] … But I suppose that was all personal … He said, who could swear me in? I said, I’d be glad to find out and I’ll call you back.
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After checking with his staff, RFK told Johnson that anyone who administered oaths, including a district court judge, could perform the ceremony. In a sad comedy that could be excused under the circumstances, neither the new president nor the incumbent attorney general could recall the presidential oath or knew where to find it. Johnson had one of his aides phone Nicholas Katzenbach, the deputy attorney general.
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“Katzenbach walked over to his bookcase and pulled out a copy of the Constitution and read the relevant sections of Article II.”
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Johnson then contacted federal district court judge Sarah Hughes of Dallas and asked her to administer the presidential oath aboard Air Force One. She declined his offer to send a government car for her—it would be quicker if she drove herself, Hughes explained. Her car sped onto Love Field at around 2:30 P.M. LBJ met her at the door to the president’s stateroom. “Thank you for coming, judge. We’ll be ready in a minute,” he remarked to the first woman who would swear in a president. He then told Larry O’Brien, JFK’s chief political strategist, to find a Bible and ask Mrs. Kennedy, who was already on board with her husband’s casket, if she would be willing to join them for the brief ceremony. Even though she was deep in grief, Jackie agreed, saying she owed it to her husband. Her bloody clothes, which she was determined to wear all the way back to Washington, caused some people to avert their eyes.
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