CBS News and JFK (Reasonable Men) Parts 48-51

Parts 48-51

JFK’S ASSASSINATION (CBS-TV COVERAGE)(PART 48)

Now this weapon was found in the building. Perhaps we should say reportedly found in the building from which the shot was fired on the Sixth floor. The man who used the weapon had a clear line of sight to the President’s motorcade although he was located about a block away because he was on the sixth floor of the building he had a clear line of sight on him.

Around the window from which the shot has been believed to have been fired there were bits of fried chicken indicating the man who used that gun had had a chicken lunch while waiting for the President’s motorcade. Also there were some text books and some boxes stacked up in that same window indicating the sniper apparently or possibly rested his gun on some textbooks and some wooden boxes to study?/steady? (not sure which he meant to say) his shot as he opened up on the President.

The man obviously was an excellent shot or very lucky in that witnesses said that 3 shots were fired. At least two of them found their marks. One for the President, the shot that killed him. The other, the shot that wounded Texas Governor John Connally. There has been at least one report that there were two shots that hit the President which would indicate that all three of the shots found their mark.

Now, we’ll go back to Dallas Police Headquarters and KRLD Bill Mercer as he interviews policemen Gerry Hill who has been working on the case almost from the moment that the shot which killed the President was fired. Policeman Gerry Hill has been at the Police Headquarters and has been in the room some of the time, the room in which Oswald has been questioned.

On the left looks like John Travolta from Grease in the news lately having to do with massage shop vampire gayness or the Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Looks like either from the profile.

  Gerry: The shots were fired. Spent cartridges were found on the Sixth floor uh on the southeast window and we came back downstairs at this time after securing the scene to leave all the evidence with the crime lab.

When we got back downstairs and were talking to one of the officers on the street about what we had found upstairs we received notice by a citizen who was using a police radio that an officer had been shot in the Oak Cliff section of the city.

Q: That was uh Mr. Tippit.

A: That was Tippit. At this time uh Sargent Owens and I were instructed by the inspector in charge at the scene to report to Oak Cliff and begin the investigation out there. On our arrival we obtained a description of a suspect and we began tracing his steps through the aid of civilian witnesses. When we uh first received a location on him they said he was in one of two vacant buildings that were being used for furniture storage in the 400 block of East Jefferson. We reported to this location and uh called for some assistance to secure the buildings. And at that time we went into the buildings checked them out to determine that the suspect wasn’t there.

While we were still at this location we received word that he was in the library at Marseilles and Jefferson. We reported to that scene and then we uh found out this was also a bogus call.

But then the third call which proved to be the charm. Came out that the suspect had entered the Texas theater some 5 blocks away. When we arrived at this location uh we secured the building from the outside and Ray Hawkins and Eddy MacDonald, CT Walker, Bob Carroll, Paul Bently, KE Lines, myself, and other officers went into the building and we began a systematic check of all the suspects or all the people who were the in the theater.

As Officer MacDonald approached a suspect sitting on the third row in the back of the theater. The suspect jumped up and yelled, “This is it.”and took a swing at the officer. Officer MacDonald started to grapple with the man. As he reached for a gun which was concealed under his shirt. And uh the gun was fired one time by the suspect but luckily it misfired. The uh the pin hit the shell but it did not fire. MacDonald yelled for help. And the other officers in the theater and I managed to subdue the man, disarm him and hand cuff him.

At that time we brought him out of the building put him in a squad car and brought him straight to Homicide and Robbery and turned him over to Captain Fritz.

Q: Who were those officers Gerry?

A: Uh Officer Hawkins, MacDonald,CT Walker, Bob Carroll, KE Lines, Paul Bently, and myself were the ones that were actually in along with Bob Barrett from the FBI who was in on the arrest with us also.

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Back to Dan Rather in the studio

And now very quickly back to Dallas Police Headquarters for a videotaped live camera scene of Lee Oswald as he was brought into another room for questioning.

Against the wall…. Step back….

Here is the suspect.

Could we reroll it please.

REROLL IT? ACTION:

The suspect is…

Back against the wall…

All right you want to….

Oswald: give me a hearing without legal representation or anything

You shoot the President?

Oswald: I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir.

Notice the man in the center of the picture who looks like a zombie in a daze. Not even looking at the subject of the picture and the center of everyone else’s attention …Oswald, but he looks like he is looking at the wall, I guess.

He kind of looks like George Wildman Ball,

a diplomat,

 7th 

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.

 Hmmmmm. That’s odd!.

Wikipedia says that George Ball was protecting others in Washington:

“Under Secretary of State George Ball manned the operations center at the State Department so that no incident happened.^[114]“

because of the plethora of dignitaries from all over the world

that were in Washington DC. attending JFK’s funeral.

The State Department is headquartered in the Harry S. Truman Building a few blocks from the White House and yet here he is in this picture with Lee Oswald.

Was he in Dallas or was he in Washington?

I have a post that tells a little bit about him linked below:

President Obama Spiking Hardball

As  you just heard Oswald says he did not shoot anybody.

You don’t have to push…..

Knock it off….

I’m being pummeled here.

Knock it off…..

I’m being pummeled very heavily. You just heard Oswald say I did no shoot anybody.

Whew.

A scene of GREAT CONFUSION, but it does seemed contrived.

IF THEY WANTED A SCENE WITHOUT THIS HYSTERIA

THEY WOULD HAVE EMPTIED THE HALLWAY.

Obviously it was convenient.

Lee Oswald has been charged with the killing of a Dallas Policeman. He has not been charged in connection with the death of President Kennedy. This is Dan Rather in Dallas, Texas.

Back now to Harry Reasoner in New York:

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Lets us go right away to the White House in Washington and a report from George Herman:

President Lyndon Johnson left his offices here almost exactly an hour ago. His old offices next door in the Executive Office Building his office which he occupied as the Vice President of the United States. Tomorrow morning he’ll be back in the Oval Office here in the West Wing, the Office of the President. Before he left tonight President Johnson conferred with the top advisors of the Kennedy Administration: Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Assistant Secretary of State George Ball other leaders, Congressional Leaders of both parties from the House and from the Senate. He talked by telephone with J. Edgar Hoover discussing the progress of the investigation into who who was the assassin of the late President Kennedy. He talked to Texas to talk to the doctors of Governor Connally. Was told that Governor Connally’s condition was good.

Tomorrow at 9:30 Lyndon Johnson starts his first full day as President of the United States. Meets at 9:30 at his office with the Secretary of State Secretary Rusk. Secretary Rusk has been flying all night. Is expected back here in Washington around midnight. He and five other Cabinet Officers were on their way to an important economic meeting in Japan when they heard the word in the Mid Pacific turned around and on on their way back to Washington.

Around the same time that President Johnson meets with Secretary Rusk, Mrs. Kennedy and the body of the late President will be entering the White House. The President’s body will Lie-In-Repose in the East Room, the gold and white East Room, of the White House where President Kennedy provided/presided over so many dinners, so many formal entertainments as President of the United States. Tomorrow the body will be seen by the family and by officials of the United States Government. After that it will be taken from the White House in an official cortege to the Rotunda of the United States Capital at 1:00 o’clock Sunday and there it will lie not in repose. but In-State for one day. Members in the President’s family, his Cabinet, and government leaders and members of the Supreme Court and Congress and Diplomatic representatives of the countries of the earth will be present at ceremonies placing the President’s body in the condition of Full-State-Mourning.

The public will be permitted to file past the beer (not sure what this is) in the Rotunda shortly after it’s arrival and until 9:00 Sunday night and once again Monday morning from 9 until 10:00 o’clock in the morning. Then the body will be moved Monday at 11:00 o’clock to St.Matthews Cathedral between 17th and 18th Street Northwest on Rhode Island Avenue for a pontifical requiem. A requiem mass at 12:00 o’clock noon. The mass will be celebrated by the late President’s good friend his eminence Richard Cardinal Cushing the Archbishop of Boston.

The late President Kennedy had once discussed the question of possible assassination with CBS News Correspondent Charles Von Fremd. Here are Correspondent Von Fremd’s recollections of that event.

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A casual conversation with John Kennedy about 12,000 feet over the Great Plains in early July of 19 hundred and 60 came back to haunt me today. On that July evening I was one of 4 newsmen flying with the Democratic Presidential hopeful in his family plane The Caroline on a flight back from South Dakota. The Primaries were behind the Senator. He had won them all. Earlier that day he had won pledges from 4 South Dakota Delegates to the Democratic Presidential Convention that was to start 10 days later. The Senator was confident and for the first time really thought  the White House might be his.

He knew that I had covered the White House during 6 years of the Eisenhower Administration and asked how living in the White House would differ from the day to day life of a Junior Senator from Massachussetts. Among other things I pointed out to Senator Kennedy the Secret Service would endow/allow (not sure if endow is the right word but sounds like it but it does not make any sense but then neither does allow!) to a great extent, that is, if he won the White House dictate how he moved about outside the White House. The President for instance was told by the Secret Service when and where he could take care of physical necessities while on the road: The food he ate, the highways he took had to be approved by the SS.

 The Senator slapping his thigh in a characteristic gesture said he thought the Secret Service while a dedicated and confident organization was really faced with an impossible responsibility. John Kennedy argued that any intelligent sharp shooter however mad could gun down the President of the United States if he wanted to badly enough and planned it carefully enough. He thought the Secret Service agents running along side the Presidential limousine in the motorcade only succeeded really in just blocking the view of the average public who turned out to see him.

President Kennedy did make some drastic changes in Secret Service rules. He frequently relegated the Secret Service driver to the back seat of his limousine and took the wheel himself. On his recent trip to New York City he drove the Secret Service Agents and the City Police to despair by dispensing with the heavily protected motorcade.

He often popped out of hotel suites minus a Security Guard. 

A slur insinuating nonsense. Give me a break!

How would Charles Von Fremd know?

End

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JFK’S ASSASSINATION (CBS-TV COVERAGE)(PART 49)

Like many men who have had several brushes with death and survived John Kennedy treated death with contempt.

It is ironic that when the assassin’s bullet came it came when he was under heavy security guard.

And in death,  John Kennedy proved himself a prophet (Licks). 

I can still hear him observe in that cool casual manner aboard The Caroline more than 3 years ago that an intelligent sharp shooter could gun down the President if he wanted to badly enough.

It was a risk that John Kennedy enthusiastically chose to take and it cost him his life today (Licks). 

This is Charles Von Fremd in Washington. (Licks).

(Of course, it wasn’t a sharp shooter it was Jackie sitting next to him that killed him.

Or her double.

The Zapruder film shows Jackie with a smoking weapon.) 

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Back to Harry Reasoner:

Here is a brief summary of the events of the day and those to come. Upon today’s assassination of President Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson became the new President of the United States. The body of President Kennedy will Lie-In-Repose in the East Room of the White House all day tomorrow Saturday. On Sunday a cortege will move the late President to the Rotunda of the Capitol where he will Lie-In-State Sunday afternoon and Monday.

The White House announced tonight that former Presidents Eisenhower and Truman will go to Washington this weekend to join the nation in it’s official mourning. On Monday at noon Boston’s Richard Cardinal Cushing a close friend of the family will officiate at a at a pontifical requiem mass in Washington St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

Throughout this coming weekend President Johnson will be briefed by the men who are now his Presidential Advisors as those Cabinet and government officials return to their posts in the Capitol.

In Dallas the business of bringing an assassin to justice continues. Police say they have a prime suspect in 24 year old Lee Harvey Oswald a pro Castro Marxist who once defected to Russian then returned to this country claiming disillusionment with the Soviet system.

For the moment Oswald has been charged with the murder of a Dallas policeman killed on a street near the assassination’s scene. Police say that Oswald was in the building from which the President was shot at the time of the assassination. Oswald has denied any involvement in the assassination.

Texas Governor John Connally the second victim of the shooting is reported in satisfactory condition at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, he is expected to recover.

CBS News reported earlier today that Senator Goldwater was reached with the news of President Kennedy’s death as he was flying to Muncie Indiana for a political dinner. This in fact was not the case. The Senator was on his way to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law. Senator Goldwater called the President’s death shocking and dreadful and asked, “how can a thing like this happen? The President’s death is a profound loss to the nation and the world,” said Goldwater. “He and I were personal friends. This is also a great loss to me. Mrs. Goldwater and I offer our heartfelt sympathies to Mrs. Kennedy and the President’s family.” That reaction from Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

In Washington if there is a hope and a sign tonight the new President of the United States has it. He has plunged head long into his new and monumental duties with full energy reportedly anxious to get the machinery of government moving as quickly as possible.

The CBS Television Network will broadcast no commercial entertainment and no programming until after the burial of the late President Kennedy which will probably be on Tuesday in Boston, Massachussetts. CBS will return on the network tomorrow and through the weekend to continue to report on the latest developments as President Johnson assumes his new duties and responsibilities.

At 6:03 P.M. Lyndon Baines Johnson age 55 returned to Washington aboard an Air Force jet as the 36th President of the United States.

Johnson remained aboard the plane until President Kennedy’s body had been removed. Then he and Mrs. Johnson walked slowly down the ramp and over to a group of waiting Congressmen. For 23 years of his 26 years in national politics Mr. Johnson had served with these men, first as a congressman, later as a United States Senator. These were his friends the men he knew and understood best.

Tammuz the Crab

President Johnson being led about by Chief Rowley of the Secret Service

(but not really the Chief Rowley)

at Bethesda Air Force Base. 

Please read both posts about the shepherd crab and about Billy Graham: 

Josephus and His Footprints

Billy Graham and The Synoptic Dilemma: The Beast

Johnson helped to pull Texas and Louisiana gack in to the Democratic Column. Both had voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1956. Mr. Johnson campaigned with his characteristic energy:

“……are against sweat shops in the Democratic Party and so are you.

We are for the working people in the Democratic Party and so are you.

We are for the working people in the Democratic Party and so are you.

We are for the farmer in the Democratic farmer and so are you.

We are against bigotry in the Democratic Party.

We are for equality before the law of all men regardless of race, religion, or the region in which they live and so are you.

And if you will give us your hand, and if you will renounce the  and the Coolidges and the Hoovers and the Bensons and the Nixons and give us your hand and your heart, your voice and your vote, on January the 20th we will give all the people of all the states of all the regions an Administration that will be of the people by the people and for the people.

Goodbye and God bless you!”

====================

Back to Harry Reasoner

The results of that campaign are now history. the Kennedy Johnson ticket squeaked through with a plurality of just over a hundred thousand votes. On a cold blustery day in January Lyndon Johnson stood before an inaugural crowd in Washington to be sworn in as Vice President by his old friend Sam Rayburn:

Sam Rayburn: I, Lyndon Baines Johnson….

LBJ: I, Lyndon Baines Johnson….

Sam Rayburn: Do solemnly swear….

LBJ: Do solemnly swear….

Sam Rayburn: That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.

LBJ: I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Sam Rayburn: That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

LBJ: That I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same.

Sam Rayburn: I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion

LBJ: I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation whatever

Sam Rayburn: And I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office upon which I am about to enter so help me God.

LBJ: And I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office in which I am about to enter so help me God.

==================

Back to Harry Reasoner

President Kennedy had decided at the outset of his Administration that Vice President Johnson was to be a working Vice President, not a ceremonial figurehead. One prime mission that Mr. Johnson undertook for the President was an around the world fact finding tour. A tour to sound out other chiefs of government and to access the wills of people in foreign lands.

In Germany Vice President Johnson went to the Berlin Wall.

And on the other side of the world a visit to Chiang Kai-shek

Leader of Nationalist China on Fermosa.

And then there was Mr. Johnson’s visit to the Vatican for a call on the late Pope John.

Late???

Was he late to show up or do they mean dead?

The Vatican outdid itself for the then Vice President’s visit. The meeting with the pope had all the appearances of a friendly formal visit. But all that went before and after the personal meeting with the pope was conducted with all the pomp and fanfare that one might expect for royalty.

President Kennedy had made his Vice President a member of the Committee on Government Contracts and at a meeting of Nation’s Industrialists attended by President Kennedy, Mr Johnson told them of their responsibilities as contractors for the government:

“…..all over the world but assuming he didn’t we demonstrated that Americans believe what they say in their Constitution and their Declaration of Independence and that uh no single American is black marked and hand cuffed and put over in a corner because of his religion.

And we demonstrated something else that I think equally important and maybe more so that you can elect a Vice President from the South regardless of his region.

Uh so we’ve made a good deal of headway in these fields and we think we are improving our system. And you are here as one of uh some 100 men who we look as the Titans, the leaders the the uh ones that have gone up the rung of the ladder, and we want other people to learn much from you by both precept and example. And we don’t want to do it with a pestle at your temple. And we don’t want to say,  ”We have the authority. Here’s the Executive Order. Cancel out the contract. Let ‘em send their lobbyists and their lawyers down here. We just a we don’t like the report we got, because we’re not operating that way. And the thing that pleases us, particularly today, is that a good many of you have no defense contract and you are going to be a showcase for America and in each of these 104 nations that constantly hear this propaganda every day:

that we only grow babies for breakfast.”

I have no idea what he is talking about.

End

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JFK’S ASSASSINATION (CBS-TV COVERAGE)(PART 50)

Walter Cronkite has interviewed most of the nations leaders. He has had long chats with General Eisenhower, with President Kennedy, and during the last campaign there was this interview with Mr. Johnson.

Walter Cronkite: Why would a man who loves these hills and has this magnificent ranch and this vista you got here on the river want to uh ever take the time out to fight these hard difficult battles in the distant remote Washington D.C.?

Johnson: Well uh Walter uh I think that we enjoy the time that we spend here but all of my life uh I have wanted to be a public servant as my father ahead of me was and I grew up uh wanting to help people with their problems and I get a satisfaction and a sense of achievement from uh constructive efforts on behalf of human beings that you can’t get in almost any other profession. Uh I will have been in Washington 30 years come next year and uh I think I would just be lost if uh I didn’t work uh in some public field. If I couldn’t be on public life I would want to be a teacher as I was before I entered the public life because uh I could have an influence on the minds of the young people and lead them in the directions I would like to see them go. I’ve often said that if I had a boy I’d want him to be either a politician or a preacher or a teacher because they would have a sense of achievement that comes uh uh from few other professions.

Walter Cronkite: Well now, it took you a little while to find this way of your life. Uh you here at the ranch uh you wanted to get away early in life you you went away as a laborer before uh your disappointed father succeeded in getting you back and into teacher’s college. Uh why did you want to leave in the first place?

Johnson: Well uh Walter I didn’t want to leave, it was more of a necessity. I i worked all of my life. As a little boy I shined shoes at the barber shop. I was a printer’s devil I ran off the weekly paper on Thursday afternoon the Old Washington Press, I inked it. Uh that’s one I

Walter Cronkite: That’s Washington Texas press.

Johnson: When I uh When I uh That’s the name of the press. Uh when I uh graduated from high school at 15 I wanted a job and there were not any jobs to be had around here in 1924. So I took the old philosopher’s advice Horace Greeley and went west, young man and worked two years in california in the Platt Building as an elevator boy in San Bernadino and finally wound up in the lawyer’s office.But I came back and mother talked me into going to college and during the period I was in college I taught a Latin American School down in South Texas and it gave me great satisfaction and I thought I wanted to be a teacher. So when I finished college I went to Houston taught a year and then the great opportunity of my life uh came to me when Congressman Clayburgh one of the owners of the King Ranch asked me to go to Washington as his Secretary in the Hoover Administration in 1931 and uh except for a brief period of 15 months I’ve been in Washington ever since:12 years in the House, 12 years in the Senate, 5 years there as the Secretary.

Walter Cronkite: Had you given any thought to a political career before that appointment to go to Washington?

Johnson: Yes uh I assumed ever since they first told me of Grandpa’s uh prediction uh I had an ambition to be a United States Senator and uh I took the steps that I felt were calculated to prepare me for that work to make it possible for me to be elected. I was first elected to Congress when I was 28 in 1937. In 1941 Senator Sheppard died and I ran to succeed him. I was defeated in a very close race by the then Governor of the State W. Lee O’Daniel. He defeated me in 1941 by 13  hundred and 11 votes out of more than a million. And then I waited until 1948 and when Governor he then Senator O’Daniel decided not to run I ran for that place and had a uh very close race but was elected in November and have been in the Senate (not sure of the  words but I think this is what he said) since that time.

Walter Cronkite: Well that loss to uh Senator W. Lee O’Daniel must have been a rather bitter one for you, your first major State race. Did you uh, what did you ascribe your loss to then?

Johnson: No it wasn’t bitter uh. I think that uh Governor O’Daniel is a very popular public figure at the time and I was a very young man and had uh was unknown uh though out the state. I represented the uh district in Central Texas and uh I I would ra ….I ran rather surprisingly well uh well the uh at that age and with the resources at my command.

Walter Cronkite: Your technique of leadership is considerably different. Uh Uh If I may I’d like to quote uh uh from a chap here who one observers quoted one of your Being won over Johnson is a rather overwhelming experience. The full treatment is incredibly potent mixture of persuaion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages. Well that’s a technique for leadership obviously. Uh How does this….

Johnson: I would say I would say that uh uh the fellow was more interested in his sentence structure than he was accuracy. Grins

Walter Cronkite: Laughs

Johnson: Uh uh you don’t deal with Senators really that way uh I think the only thing uh that uh that is calculated to appeal to members of the Senate is a presentation of the facts and the soundness of your logic. Uh nearly every Senator that uh takes the oath of office is uh is elected on a platform of doing what’s right and uh your problem as leader is to convince him that uh the cause you represent is the right cause. Now uh uh there’s not any favors you can do for a Senator that you remind him of uh there’s no cajolery or flattery involved uh uh that doesn’t appeal to a man that’s capable and worthy of representing one of the great states in the Union. Uh they’re not school boys. Even though some of these fellows that uh write these things sometimes uh uh  make them sound uh that way. Uh I would say that uh I try to follow the old prophet Isaiah’s advice “Come let us reason together.” And uh that course of action uh always appeals to reasonable men.

I don’t want to sound unreasonable, but right after he said ‘reasonable men’ he licked,

which he rarely does in this interview.

I find this kind of odd… the timing, that is.

And most Senators are reasonable uh uh Republicans sometimes uh a little more difficult for us Democrats to reason with then the members of our own party but uh all of ‘em are patriotic uh uh uh members of the Senate and they want to do what’s best for their country. And uh once they’re convinced that the cost …the course of action that you present is for the best interest of America uh you’ll usually have a lopsided vote in your favor.

 Walter Cronkite: Senator uh since you were a protege in a sense of uh Franklin Delanor Roosevelt in in those early days of the New Deal with your NYA Administration here uh you were identified with the more liberal element of the Democratic Party in those days and I think in recent years the identification has been more toward the conservative side. Is is this uh the kind of the normal development of a man do you feel toward the liberal to the conservative and is this a tendency that’s likely to continue in your own life, do you feel or?

Johnson: Well, I presume that we all become a little more prudent uh as we uh grow older although I’ve never been much of a believer in uh labels. I’m a great admirer of President Roosevelt’s now just as I was then. Uh he hasn’t changed uh uh in my viewpoint any and uh as I engage in a little introspection I haven’t changed much. Uh uh my philosophy is that I’m a free man first and uh an American second, United States Senator third, and a Democrat fourth. In that order. Now, I’m a member of the Democratic Party because I think that uh through the vehicle of that party I can best uh see my philosophy translated into action. I believe my party cares more uh about the problems uh of the people of this country and is more concerned with helping them with their problems than the Republican Party and for that reason I’m a Democrat. But uh uh Im uh a free man and American and a Senator first.

Walter Cronkite: Senator uh uh

Johnson: I don’t go in much for the labels of the liberal and conservative. Uh I think you can be a progressive uh Senator and still be a prudent Senator. I don’t think you have to be a wastrel. I think we’ve demonstrated that in the Democratic Party by cutting 12 and half billion dollars uh from the President’s budget request. I think you can be a Conservative uh Senator without being a reactionary Senator/ Uh but labels don’t mean much to me what I’m interested in is is this peice of legislation or is this uh project or is this program good for my country? Is it the right thing to do? And if it’s good for my country, it’s good for my party, and consequently good for me.

JFK’S ASSASSINATION (CBS-TV COVERAGE)(PART 51)

Walter Cronkite: Senator Uh uh the darkest day I guess in your uh in your life came in 1955 when you had the heart attack, which we all know about. But I’m wondering how that uh experience affected your philosophy. I know that there are some who we in our researchers have talked to and they in the Senate to uh said that t before that they sort of thought you were a brash young politician but after that they thought you became the politician’s politician. That this was a turning point in a way. Do you feel that yourself at all?

Johnson: No, I don’ t think it had any uh uhappreciable affect on the course of my conduct at all. I think during the period of 60 days when I was uh uh away from the Senate Chamber that uh I had time to reflect and uh really appreciate all the good people that I had known and uh how unworthy perhaps I had been of their devotion and their friendship. Uh, I know that uh I never really recognized the fact that uh uh the Senators could be as good men as they demonstrated to me they were. Uh, I remember Senator Nowlin wrote me nearly everyday that I was in the hospital and I had communications from every member of the Senate except one. A good many of ‘em came to see me nearly everyday and uh it was their interest and in their prayers I think that sustained me during that period uh when I was somewhat distressed. But uh after the initial two months and I came back here to the ranch I haven’t observed that it’s affected my conduct of public business uh at all. As a matter of fact, I am sometimes amused when I think of the letter I received from President Eisenhower uh telling me that he had read in the papers of my activity and he thought I was uh uh going to work a little too fast and he hoped I’d slow down. And that letter was went to me without a signature by General Person. General Person said that it was the last letter dictated by the President the night before he had his heart attack and he was lecturing me on slowing down a little bit to just before he had his.

===========================

Tonight Lyndon Johnson is the new President. Our Correspondent at the White House George Herman has a report on the new occupant:

President Lyndon Baines Johnson like the man he succeeds is above all a political pragmatist.As the Leader of the United States Senate he often told us that he always counted the votes he thought he could muster before leading his party into a fight. He thought wasting his parties energy on a fight he could not win was not only wasteful but foolish and Senator Lyndon Johnson was wise, efficient, and able. He led all the many voices inside his party speak on every issue. He squelched no shade of opinion, but still the Senate under his leadership moved ahead steadily and with dispatch. President Johnson is not the lightning fast reader and talker as his predecessor was. He likes to talk slowly likes to slip in anecdotes and to make sure that his meaning is fully taken on any one subject before he moves onto another. President Johnson has a considerable streak of toughness in him and surprisingly to most liberal Democrats at least he has along liberal record behind him. He came to Congress in 1937 as a very strong supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. So strong and so vocal in fact that President Roosevelt brought the young Congressman to Washington aboard the Presidential yacht. He served as a Federal Youth Official in Texas. A Negro college President in that state has long since revealed that Lyndon Johnson kept their colleges going during the Great Depression by channeling federal funds in their direction. Unlike former President Truman President Johnson has not only been kept on the inside of the secrets of the Kennedy Administration he has also been sent as a spokesman around the world and has gotten a good taste of world problems and more important perhaps the way other nations view the United States and Washington. The big question of course in any sudden change of Presidents at mid administration (I think this is what he said, but not sure) is which of the members of the organization which President Kennedy so painstakingly built up President Johnson is going to feel comfortable with. He will of course review the entire administration man by man and in time the shape of his own new administration will begin to show. One historical and inescapable fact must always be born in mind the Presidency is an office of great weight. It has enormous momentum. And as every President since Franklin D. Roosevelt has discovered the office tends to mold and shape the man to a form that few of his friends would have guessed at beforehand. Tomorrow Lyndon Baines Johnson will sit at the desk of the President of the United States and the molding shaping process on our new President and his government will begin. This is George Herman at the White House now back to Harry Reasoner:

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We understand that Adlai Stevenson has just made a statement at the White House and we’re going to switch there

now for that statement by videotape.

The tragedy of this day is is beyond any instant comprehension. All of us knew him (licks) will bear the grief of his death until the day of ours and all men everywhere who love justice

Someone says: Louder?

and freedom and peace will bow their heads. At such a moment one can only turn to prayer

Someone says: Well we can’t move. What?

Prayer to comfort our grief to sustain Mrs. Kennedy and  his family and to strengthen President Johnson and to guide us in time to come. May God help us all.

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A lot of things are being said and wondered about the new President tonight but only he can know what it is to be called upon suddenly to take on the burdens of that office. The weight of grief of concern were apparent as President Johnson returned to Washington this evening.

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 that I can do. I ask for your help and Gods.

I don’t really know if it is possible but I heard him sayhumans so I went back to hear it again and he said again the word humans and then when I went back again to be sure that I heard correctly then in its place he said people all within a minute or so while transcribing this just now. Hmmm:)

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As the new President is being studied by the world the late President is being mourned. Throughout the country there will be services of grief and tribute. Tonight in Los Angeles a Memorial Mass is held for John F. Kennedy. Our reporter is Charles Coralt:

Kids singing a hymn.

This is Charles Coralt 

(whispering in some dark corner)

at the Our Lady Chapel in South Street in Los Angeles. Our father John Sheridan is officiating at a solemn Requiem Mass for the late President Kennedy:

I guess a hymn where they sing back and forth between the guy in a wrap/cape and the kids

in another language…probably spanish maybe latin, not sure cause they are singing it.

 

 Ask Almighty God in his mercy in the words of another martyred President.

Ask him to give us the strength to rededicate ourselves to a new

birth of freedom and family virtue.

The gover-ment of the people

and buy the people and for the people

shall not parish from the earth.

(He says severely.)

Um I  think he misquoted the bible, but Whatever.

Hurry get this guy some blood he looks very very thirsty! You should hear his voice like Boris Karloff. 

Maybe the actors in Hollywood are broke and are desperately trying to get work? I think something else is occurring and has been occurring to these actors that we were not aware of and if I knew what that was I would tell ya, but I’m only human.

This has been a high requiem mass from Our lady’s Chapel on South Flora Street in Los Angeles.

Several hundred people will have come to this chapel during the day to join millions of other Americans of

Whatever Faith in praying for the late President and his family.

This is Charles Coralt in Los Angeles we return you now to our CBS News Headquarters in New York :

Do they test these guys? He looks out of his mind. Really. 

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 As this day draws to a close here is a brief summary of its events past and to follow: Upon todays assassination of President Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson became the new President of the United States. The body of President Kennedy will Lie-in-Repose in the East Room of the White House all day tomorrow Saturday. On Sunday a cortege will move the late President to the Rotunda of the Capitol where he will Lie-in-State on Sunday afternoon and on Monday. the White House announced that former Presidents Eisenhower and Truman will go to Washington this weekend to join the nation in it’s official mourning. On Monday at noon, Boston’s Richard Cardinal Cushing a close friend of the Kennedy family will officiate at a pontifical requiem mass in Washington St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

Throughout this weekend President Johnson will be briefed by the men who are now his Presidential advisors as those Cabinet and government officials return to their posts in the Capitol.

In Dallas the business of bringing the assassin to justice continues. Police say they have a prime suspect in 24 year old Lee Harvey Oswald a pro Castro Marxist who once defected to Russian then returned to this country claiming disillusionment with the Soviet System. For the moment Oswald has been charged with the murder of a Dallas policeman killed on a street near the assassination scene and Dallas police say there will be no further announcement tonight on their inquiry.

Texas Governor John Connally the second victim of the shooting is reported in satisfactory condition at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. He is expected to recover.

The CBS Television Network will broadcast no commercial messages nor entertainment programming until after the burial of President Kennedy probably on Tuesday in Boston Massachussetts. CBS News will return on the network tomorrow and throughout the weekend to continue to report on the latest developments as President Johnson assumes his new duties and responsibilities. Our report from CBS News Headquarters will resume at 8:00 o’clock tomorrow morning Eastern Time. This is Harry Reasoner. Good Night.

This was a CBS News Special Report

This is the CBS Television Network

End

Harry looks a bit miffed too. An odd finale for the day. I really do think he is upset as I watched him in the earlier parts of this series. I am upset too. And it is upsetting to see other people upset and in a bad predicament. I think he has done a great job at his post. Probably the best he can do under the circumstances.

 

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