Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination Read Online Free PDF Page B

O’Donnell suddenly walks through the door. Ladybird was to write in her diary: “Seeing the stricken face of Kenny O’Donnell, wholoved him, we knew.” A moment later, another Kennedy aide, Mac Kilduff, runs into the room and runs over to Johnson and says, “Mr. President.” It’s the first time he knows he’s president. This is one of the pivotal moments in American history.
    Another Kennedy aide, Mac Kilduff, runs into the room and runs over to Johnson and says, “Mr. President.” It’s the first time he knows he’s president.

    I was a reporter for Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. I was in the middle of Arizona. Actually I was in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I was doing a series on elderly retirees who were trying to live on retirement homesites in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and we found out they were basically being gypped by their companies. The Senate had sent an investigator out with me. I had found that the elderly women who were trying to live there didn’t have water or anything and had to drive to get water. We were trying to get the names and addresses of these women so that the Senate could bring them to Washington. We were there all of November 22. We had been staying in Las Vegas and driving down to the Mojave Desert. You couldn’t get reception on our car radio. There was so much static early in the day that we turned off the radio. In the evening we were driving back to the main highway. I think it was Route 66. It went up to Las Vegas. As we got to the intersection and turned on the radio, the first words we heard were, “Doctors are operating on Governor Connally at this moment,” something like that.
    What is this about? and then there was static. All of a sudden we came up to Route 66, and there was a big truck—as I remember, a big trailer truck—with a driver sitting in the window. He was crying and said something like “Have you heard?” and told us the news. This was already evening or close to evening of that day, hours after the assassination. I didn’t hear about it until then.

    Johnson is transformed. The Kennedys had almost broken his spirit; he had changed in appearance from the mighty majority leader to this guy with a hangdog look. Suddenly he’s back in charge. The moment he’s addressed as Mr. President, he is giving orders. The Secret Service runs into him, and Youngblood says, “We have to get you back to Washington. The place we can keep you secure is the White House.”
    Remember, we’re only thirteen months from the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was Russia behind this? Was Cuba behind this? Who was behind this?
    They say, “We have to get you back to the White House.”
    Johnson says, “No. I’m not leaving the hospital without Mrs. Kennedy.”
    They say, “Mrs. Kennedy won’t leave the hospital without her husband’s body.”
    Johnson says decisively, “We will go back to Air Force One, and I’ll wait there for her to come with the body.” He directs them: “Get cars. Let’s go to the airport by a different route than the one they expect us to go. No sirens in the car.” They speed to the airport, and Johnson literally runs up the steps with the Secret Service onto Air Force One to wait for Kennedy’s body.
    Talk about scenes in American history. Johnson goes into President Kennedy’s bedroom [on the plane], and he takes off his jacket. According to different accounts, he either lies down on the bed, sprawls on the bed, or sits on it and calls Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson hate each other. Hatred is not too strong a word to describe the feeling between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. For three years Robert Kennedy has done everything he can to humiliate Johnson, and in a moment, in the crack of a rifle shot, the tables are completely turned. Now Johnson has the power. He calls Robert Kennedy and asks him, “Should I be sworn in here in Dallas before I get back to Washington?” and “What’s the wording of the