He just had to start making decisions on the phone with (Attorney General) Robert Kennedy, on the phone with (Secretary of Defense Robert) McNamara, on the phone with the speaker of the house, trying to find out what was going on, and on the phone with the CIA.” ![]() “I felt for the president, because he never had a chance to swallow this and work it through his system. Even now, some 52 years later, the enormity of the day’s events were difficult to discuss. Kennedy who was sitting in the back of the plane by the coffin of her husband.” They were drowning their sorrow in liquor. So there were just four of us on the staff on the plane who knew Johnson,” Moyers explained. Moyers and the new president had little choice but to begin the grim task of crafting the first speech of the Johnson presidency. I had no time to think grand thoughts, because he immediately turned to me and said ‘We’ve got to have something to say when I land.’”Īmid the shock, sorrow and confusion, Mr. So I got aboard just before he took the oath of office. “Pretty soon this big secret service agent came and pulled me up. ![]() “I landed beside Air Force One and wrote a little note to LBJ that said ‘I’m here if you need me,’” Mr. Moyers was quickly whisked via small plane to Dallas’ Love Field, where just hours prior the youthful president had descended Air Force One’s stairs in bright sunshine, waving to reporters. ![]() So we were celebrating when the call came.” And I did, and I held hands and got the parties to at least agree to not fight until he got out of town. So when they ran into trouble, Kennedy called me and asked me to go down. “I had a reputation for getting along with both the Irish mafia and the Austin pols. “He’d asked me to go even though I was deputy director of the Peace Corps,” he explained. Moyers was 29 at the time, and was in Austin by request of President Kennedy. I was having lunch to celebrate the success of Kennedy’s trip and the maitre’ d came over and said ‘You have a phone call.’ And it was from the secret service agent Bill Payne. “It happened so quickly and we were thrust into it so tragically that there wasn’t time to think those thoughts,” he said, when asked if he was able to accurately assess what was happening that terrible afternoon in Dallas. Moyers wasn’t reporting the story: He was inside it. Bill Moyers, arguably America’s most celebrated living journalist, has been at the center of American news for more than 50 years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |