Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story

Chapter 1

AT 12:30 P.M. (CST) ON Friday, November 22, 1963, as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s motorcade approached the Texas School Book Depository at Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, a series of gunshots rang out. Six minutes later the Lincoln Continental limousine carrying the president and his wife, as well as Texas governor John Connally and his wife, lurched to a halt in front of the emergency entrance to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Cradling her dying husband in her arms, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy refused to allow the waiting medics to lift the president out of the backseat until Secret Service agent Clint Hill wrapped JFK’s gaping head wound in his own suit jacket.

Jackie’s clothes were so heavily splattered with blood and gore that the first hospital security guard she encountered thought she’d been wounded along with the governor and the president. Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, arrived at Parkland shortly after the First Lady and saw her standing by herself in the narrow corridor outside the trauma room where they had taken the president. Jackie looked more alone and vulnerable at that moment, Lady Bird later told White House chief of staff Ken O’Donnell, than anyone I’d ever seen. Embracing the First Lady, Mrs. Johnson asked if she needed a change of clothing. Jackie shook her head from side to side. I want people to see what they’ve done to Jack, she responded.

In the car, as bullets rained upon the open convertible from above, Jackie had clambered onto the trunk of the vehicle in what appeared to be an attempted escape, only to be pushed back into her seat by Clint Hill. The Lincoln rapidly accelerated from eight to eighty miles per hour. Now, with her husband close to death, she wanted more than anything to be with him. After trying to push aside the head nurse, she turned to Dr. George Burkley, the president’s personal physician, whose first impulse was to offer her a sedative. I don’t want a sedative—I want to be with my husband when he dies, she said. Although the doctors in the trauma room objected, Dr. Burkley insisted that she be permitted to enter.

Once in the room, which was filled with medical personnel, Jackie knelt on one knee to pray. Two priests suddenly appeared and administered the last sacraments of the Church. Jackie rose. A tall doctor stood before her. Mrs. Kennedy, your husband has sustained a fatal wound, he said. I know, she whispered. Dr. Burkley felt for the president’s pulse: there was none.

A trauma room attendant pulled up a sheet to cover the president’s body. It was too short, and his feet stuck out, whiter than the sheet. Jackie took his right foot and kissed it. Then she pulled back the sheet. She kissed him on the lips. His eyes were open, and she kissed them as well. She kissed his hands and fingers. She held on to his hand and for the longest time wouldn’t let go.

At 2:31 p.m., Mac Kilduff, acting press secretary on the Texas trip, made the official announcement of the president’s death.

I went to Ken O’Donnell, who had joined Jackie in the trauma room, said Kilduff. "I told him I would have to make some sort of announcement. There were too many reporters running around who already knew—or at least had deep suspicions. It was only a matter of time. Ken said, ‘Why are you asking me? Ask the president.’

I knew exactly what he meant, so I went and found Lyndon Johnson. They had sequestered him in another trauma room with Lady Bird and Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood. I didn’t know what to call him. I wasn’t going to call him Lyndon. I called him Mr. President, and Lady Bird let out an audible gasp. I said, ‘We have to announce President Kennedy’s death.’ I could see his mind clicking. He said, ‘I have no idea what kind of conspiracy this might be. They could be after me, the Speaker [of the House], the secretary of state. Who knows? We’d better get out of Dallas as soon as possible. I’ll wait until you make your announcement, and then we’ll leave.’

Godfrey McHugh, the president’s Air Force aide and a good friend of the Kennedy clan, ran into the First Lady and Ken O’Donnell outside the trauma room. Jackie looked frightful, recalled McHugh. Her pillbox hat, stockings, and pink wool suit were splattered with blood and brain matter. I handed her my handkerchief, and she handed it back without bothering to use it. After a moment or two, she removed her hat. It was the only attempt she made to tidy herself up.

Next Jackie asked McHugh if he would put through a call to Bobby Kennedy on the East Coast. She had always been close to Bobby, in certain respects closer than she’d been to Jack. McHugh asked a security guard for access to a private telephone. The guard led them to an empty administration office on the same floor.

I think Bobby’s at home, Jackie told McHugh. She recited the phone number for Hickory Hill, RFK’s sprawling family residence in McLean, Virginia, and McHugh placed the call. Handing Jackie the receiver, McHugh exited the office. Three or four minutes later, the office door opened and Jackie emerged. It’s so sad, she said. Bobby just celebrated his thirty-eighth birthday a few days ago. And now this.

Without knowing the full extent of the president’s injuries, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had already notified the attorney general of the shooting. Bobby had followed up Hoover’s call (which he later termed dispassionate) by telephoning Clint Hill in Dallas. Is it serious? Bobby inquired. I’m afraid it is, sir, said Hill. Jackie’s telephone call a few minutes later had confirmed Bobby’s worst fears. The Kennedy administration had come to an unexpected and abrupt end.

As had Jack on August 1, 1944, with the wartime death of his older brother, Joseph Kennedy Jr., so Robert Francis Kennedy on November 22, 1963, stepped up to a new position in the family hierarchy: he was now patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy’s eldest son. With barely enough time to compose himself, Bobby was soon on the phone again, taking command of the clan’s response to the assassination. Rose Kennedy, the patriarch’s wife, at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, had already seen and heard the news on television. Mother and son agreed that the old man, having suffered a severe stroke two years earlier, should not be told just yet. RFK called his younger brother, Ted Kennedy, in Washington, D.C., and assigned the junior senator from Massachusetts the unenviable task of flying to the Cape the following day to break the news to their ailing father in person. Bobby asked his sister Eunice Shriver to join Teddy at the compound. He couldn’t reach his sister Jean, but asked her husband, Steve Smith, in charge of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation, to relay her assignment: since she was the Kennedy sister closest to Jackie, she would fly from New York to Washington to comfort the First Lady upon her return from Dallas. Their sister Patricia, the estranged wife of British actor Peter Lawford, would take the next plane to the nation’s capital from California. Stanislas (Stas) and Lee Radziwill, Jackie’s brother-in-law and younger sister, would fly in from London. And Sargent Shriver, perhaps the most reliable of the Kennedy in-laws, would help Bobby and Jackie organize the funeral.

As Hickory Hill began to fill with close friends and family members, Bobby remained the least anguished among them. Subdued and somber, he nevertheless tried to console those around him, including his wife, Ethel, and their children, by issuing words of confidence and comfort. CIA director John McCone, whom Bobby had asked to make the five-minute drive from Central Intelligence headquarters, later avowed that at the beginning of this ordeal, as severe a trial as a man can go through, Bobby never faltered. He remained steady. It was remarkable. Obviously he was seriously affected, but at no point did he lose his composure. RFK did not have time for his own grief on this particular day. At a near future point in time, the attorney general would ask McCone whether certain CIA operatives had somehow been involved in his brother’s assassination—and if not the CIA, then who?

At about 2:30 p.m., Bobby received a telephone call from Lyndon Johnson. The nation’s new chief executive had returned to Love Field, where he had boarded Air Force One instead of Air Force Two, the vice presidential aircraft. The rest of the Kennedy party, including Jackie and Ken O’Donnell, had also returned to Air Force One, bringing with them a vital piece of cargo: the casket containing President Kennedy’s body. Sounding harried, even frightened, LBJ told Bobby more or less what he had earlier revealed to Mac Kilduff—he suspected a worldwide plot of some sort, a plot so sinister it could result in the overthrow of the government. In no uncertain terms, Johnson felt that he should be sworn in as president at once, before leaving Texas.

Who can swear me in? Johnson asked RFK, whose position as attorney general marked him as the top lawman in the land.

Annoyed by Johnson’s impatience, RFK nevertheless said he would find out and get back to him.

The attorney general promptly contacted his deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach, who in turn checked with Harold Reis of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. According to Reis, the oath of office was a mere formality. The truth of the matter was that by virtue of JFK’s death, Johnson had automatically assumed the presidency. Anyone, added Reis, authorized to administer federal and state oaths could administer the presidential oath, the wording of which could be found in the Constitution. Johnson could safely wait until Air Force One reached Washington to be sworn in.

Katzenbach relayed this information to Bobby, but by the time the attorney general got back to Johnson, the new president had taken matters into his own hands. Having decided he wanted to be sworn in while still on the ground, Johnson—a diehard Texan—had summoned Sarah T. Hughes, whom John F. Kennedy had appointed to the federal bench. When no one aboard Air Force One could find a copy of the Constitution, Johnson suggested that a member of his staff contact Katzenbach. Katzenbach subsequently dictated the proper constitutional text to one of LBJ’s secretaries. As soon as Judge Hughes arrived, accompanied by a police escort, Johnson asked Ken O’Donnell to find Jackie Kennedy. I would like to have her come and stand next to me while I take the oath, he said.

I knew how much Bobby had long detested Lyndon Johnson, recalled O’Donnell. As JFK’s campaign manager, he’d openly opposed his brother’s choice of Johnson as a running mate. The last thing Bobby would have wanted now was to have Jackie stand up for him. So I said to Johnson, ‘Please don’t ask me to do that. The poor lady has been through enough for one day. You can’t do that to her, Mr. President.’ Johnson countered by saying that Jackie had requested she be part of the swearing-in process. He also stated that Bobby had advised him to take the oath before leaving Texas.

Joined by General Chester V. Clifton, a military advisor to JFK, in addition to Larry O’Brien and Dave Powers, two of JFK’s most loyal aides, O’Donnell approached Jackie. Johnson would like you to be with him when he gets sworn in, said O’Donnell. Are you up for it? The former First Lady agreed to stand by her husband’s successor. At least I owe that much to the country, she said.

Jackie followed the men into the gold-carpeted midsection of the jet. She stood to Johnson’s left, Lady Bird to his right, as LBJ raised his right hand to take the oath as the thirty-sixth president of the United States.

White House photographer Cecil Stoughton recorded the impromptu ritual with his camera.

Though dry-eyed, Jackie seemed completely out of it, said Stoughton. She appeared to be in a state of shock. Only a few hours earlier she’d been First Lady. In little more than the blink of an eye, she had become a grieving thirty-four-year-old widow.

Following the hurried ceremony, Jackie returned to her seat at the rear of the aircraft next to her husband’s casket. Ken O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, and Dave Powers—affectionately known as the Irish Mafia—sat nearby. As quickly as she’d arrived, Judge Hughes departed the plane. Moments later Air Force One took off.

Twice during the flight, Lyndon Johnson sent Bill Moyers, soon to become a presidential assistant, to the back of the plane to ask O’Donnell and O’Brien to join him, and on both occasions JFK’s lieutenants declined.

We wanted to be with Jackie, said O’Brien. We needed her and she needed us. Finally Dave Powers went up front to see Johnson. When he returned, he said Johnson had told him he wanted JFK’s entire staff to stay on with him. Dave imitated Johnson with that Texas drawl of his. ‘You fellas can’t leave me now,’ he quoted Johnson as saying. ‘I don’t know a single soul north of the Mason-Dixon Line. I want all of you to remain on board with me.’

It was at this juncture that Ken O’Donnell asked one of the flight attendants for a bottle of scotch. I don’t know about you guys, he said, but I sure as hell can use a stiff drink. The others joined him, including Jackie, who had never tried scotch before. She didn’t care for it particularly, but she drained her drink in a single gulp.

All in all, said Larry O’Brien, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced the kind of courage Jackie exhibited, first at the hospital in Dallas and on that plane to Washington, and then during the three days before the funeral. She undoubtedly endured her private moments of grief, but on the whole she acquitted herself magnificently and became a symbol for all of us, a symbol of great nobility and character in an age of general impoverishment of soul.

During the flight, the former First Lady placed two calls. She spoke to Angier Biddle Duke, the White House chief of protocol, and also to Bobby Kennedy. Ken O’Donnell overheard a portion of the latter conversation. Bobby, how could this have happened? she asked. Then she said, Life has no meaning for me anymore.

Bobby Kennedy, meanwhile, had been picked up by the Secret Service and driven to the Pentagon, from which he would soon depart by helicopter for Andrews Air Force Base to await the arrival of the presidential jet. With him were Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Army General Maxwell Taylor, an intimate family friend. They arrived at Andrews at 5:30 p.m. and secluded themselves in a U.S. Army transport truck adjacent to the runway. Thirty minutes later, in the gathering dark, the aircraft bearing RFK’s dead brother touched down.

As the jetliner taxied to a halt, a ground crew began wheeling a yellow ramp toward the plane’s front entrance. With the ramp still in motion, Bobby raced up the steps and into the aircraft. Jack Valenti, a Texas Democratic Party advertising manager soon to become an LBJ White House aide, recalled the attorney general elbowing his way, darting down the aisle, looking neither right nor left as he headed for the tail section of the jet. He passed Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson without so much as a nod. He looked like a man possessed. RFK didn’t stop until he reached his sister-in-law. Hi, Jackie, he said softly, placing his arm around her shoulder. I’m here.

Oh, Bobby, she responded, and she might well have thought how like Bobby this was—he was always there when you needed him.

Despite the arrival aboard Air Force One of a half-dozen U.S. Army personnel, the late president’s casket was ultimately removed from the plane by JFK’s Secret Service detail. Lost in the commotion of crowds and cameras, the new president later complained that nobody had paid him the slightest heed. Nobody said a word to me, LBJ told Jack Valenti the following day. And here I am, the goddamn president of the United States.

Bobby and Jackie sat in the back of a military ambulance as they accompanied Jack’s body to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, for the autopsy. While en route, Jackie asked Bobby about Lyndon Johnson’s claim that the attorney general advised him to take the oath of office before leaving Dallas. When Bobby denied the story, Jackie said, The last thing Jack told me about Lyndon is that he’s incapable of telling the truth.

Jackie had asked Ken O’Donnell and Larry O’Brien to remain with her during the autopsy and then to stay at the White House as her personal guests. Dr. John Walsh, Jackie’s gynecologist and obstetrician, also joined her at Bethesda. He recommended that she rest for an hour or two while the autopsy proceeded, recalled O’Brien. To help her relax, he injected her with one hundred milligrams of Vistaril, which under normal circumstances would have enabled her to sleep for a good twelve hours without interruption. As it happened, the shot seemed only to stimulate her.

Robert McNamara, having likewise joined the group at Bethesda, listened for hours as Jackie recounted every morbid detail of the assassination. From the moment they reached Parkland Hospital, said McNamara, she remembered everything. Talking it all out over and over again became a kind of purgation for her, a way of unburdening her soul. Bobby, on the other hand, didn’t want to hear about it. If she felt more comfortable sharing her grief, he had to camp alone with his. Without comment or facial expression, he nevertheless listened to her describe the horror of Dallas, after which he turned and walked away.

At a certain point, Bobby left the room to make a telephone call. When he returned, he beckoned Jackie aside. They think they’ve found the man who did it, he told her. He’s a small-time Communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald.

Jackie stared at her brother-in-law. Oh my God, she whispered, but that’s too absurd. It sickened her that such a silly little man, as she subsequently referred to him, could actually murder the leader of the Free World. It robbed her husband’s death of all moral significance. It trivialized the act. If it had at least been for his civil rights stand, she proclaimed at a later date.

As the night wore on, others began to drift in. Ethel Kennedy approached Jackie. At least you have the comfort of knowing that Jack has found eternal happiness, she said.

I would have hoped for more, responded the former First Lady. You’re lucky to have Bobby—he’s here for you.

He’s here for you too, Jackie.

Jackie’s stepfather and mother, Hugh and Janet Auchincloss, arrived. As terrible as this was, Janet told her daughter, think how much worse it would have been had Jack lived and been maimed. Jackie urged her mother and stepfather to stay at the White House and gave them Jack’s bedroom for the night.

At 4:30 a.m., the autopsy completed, Bobby and Jackie brought the body, in a coffin of African mahogany, back to the executive mansion. Following a brief Catholic service in the East Room, RFK conferred with advisors and decided, in accord with Jackie’s wishes, to keep the coffin closed throughout all the ceremonial rites. At 6:00 a.m., Jackie retired to her bedroom. Bobby retired to the Lincoln Bedroom for a few hours of rest. After swallowing a sleeping pill provided by Charles (Chuck) Spalding, one of JFK’s most devoted friends, Bobby said, Why now, God? Why now?

As Spalding left the room and shut the door behind him, he heard the stricken younger brother of the slain president begin to weep. As much as I wanted to go in there and console him, remarked Spalding, I couldn’t bring myself to intrude upon his private grief. As I retreated down the corridor, Bobby’s sobbing rose in pitch until it became a wail.

It had been Maud Shaw, the stouthearted British nanny to Caroline and John Jr., who told Caroline on the night of November 22 of her father’s death. Caroline, about to turn a precocious six, fully comprehended many of the tragic implications of the moment. She cried so hard I thought she might choke, Shaw revealed in her 1965 tell-all book, White House Nanny.

It was left to Bobby Kennedy, the following day, to impart the sorrowful news to John-John, whose third birthday fell on November 25. Your daddy has gone to heaven to be with Patrick, he told the