The Lacey Confession Read Online Free PDF Page B

openly armed. And everywhere he saw signs of moving in. “No time for compassion,” he wrote. “The King is dead. Long live the King.” There was tomorrow’s funeral, but it was Thanksgiving the Thursday coming that was on his mind. Thanksgiving, a day of joyous celebration, the quintessential American holiday, he always felt. A tribute to those who began this noble experiment. A reaffirmation of our own survival, our success, our perseverance in a hostile, new world. Now, that day lay in ruins, victim of a cowardly ambush. For the Chief Justice and millions of Americans, the unimaginable, the unthinkable, the impossible, had all come to be.
    Immediately after returning to Washington from Dallas, Lyndon Johnson, the new American President, insisted on a full federal investigation. From the beginning he wanted a special commission. His mind was made up days before the official story was delivered to and devoured whole by a compliant American media. That account, given to the American people, had Johnson, a Texan himself, worried about the Attorney General in Texas, a man named Waggoner Carr. It was said that he, Carr, was about to start up his own inquiry. The murder had occurred in Texas. Carr was portrayed as an opportunist of the worst kind. The official story went on to say it was Abe Fortas, a Johnson crony and a man later nominated to be a Justice on the Supreme Court, together with Nicholas D. B. Katzenbach, a high-ranking member of the Justice Department, who presented the idea for the Warren Commission to Johnson on November 29. Still another Texas Democrat, Leon Jaworski, who ten years later would be among the most recognized people in the country, supposedly was assigned to take care of Waggoner Carr. Jaworski was to have him call off the dogs of Texas.
    None of this was true or ever happened. Instead, it was President Johnson, who was determined before he ever came back to Washington, who pressured Chief Justice Earl Warren to head the commission investigating the death of John F. Kennedy. Warren wanted no part of it. He made that quite clear, in great detail in those entries he made in the final weeks of 1963 in his personal diary. According to Warren, Johnson called him to the White House before Kennedy was even buried. Warren met with the President on the 24th, offered to help, but did not agree to serve. Late on that night, following his meeting with Johnson, he wrote: “It never occurred to me that anyone would question that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated the President of the United States—or that there would be any public speculation about some sinister motivation on his part—or that there would be widespread consideration he might be part of some larger plot or conspiracy. I never thought of it, that is, until today when President Johnson expressed such concern over the matter.”
    Earlier that Sunday afternoon the Chief Justice sat alone in the Oval Office. He could not help but speculate—the couch on which he sat must have belonged to the dead President lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol. Too sophisticated, too tasteful for Lyndon Johnson. It was an uncomfortable thought for him. One of many he said he had since this nightmare began. He’d seen the picture of Johnson being sworn in. He wrote of what he called the horrific sadness in Mrs. Kennedy’s eyes, the dress splattered with blood—her husband’s blood. That photograph had been on the front page of The New York Times, The Washington Post and newspapers all over the world. Johnson hurried Federal Judge Sarah Hughes out to the airport in Dallas. He didn’t wish to leave the scene of his ascendancy except as President of the United States. Who could blame him? Warren agreed that was the right decision. The Chief Justice heaved a sigh of relief . I’m glad it wasn’t me in that picture, he later wrote. It probably would be all I’d ever be remembered for. Sarah Hughes could