From The Kennedy
Presidency An Oral History of The Era
by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober
by Deborah Hart Strober and Gerald S. Strober
[Note This book is an updated edition of “Let Us Begin Anew:” An Oral History of the Kennedy Presidency by the same authors]
page 450
ROBERT MANNING
We took off from
Several cabinet secretaries were with us, as was Pierre Salinger. I had been in the press, so I knew by the sound that there was a flash on the news ticker. I walked toward the communications area and the sergeant had a piece of wire copy in his hand. He said, “The secretary [Rusk] will have to see this.”....
It was a flash saying: “Dallas .
President Kennedy shot.” Then a bulletin. “Perhaps shot fatally.” We took
it to Rusk and he asked me to bring the Cabinet secretaries to his compartment.
We immediately got on the phone with the White House Situation Room. They
confirmed that something had happened and that the president had been rushed to
the hospital. Rusk got on the public address system and told everybody we
had some bad unclear news: President Kennedy had been wounded and we were going
to turn back.
Salinger got in touch with the White House and used his code
name. He said "This is Wayside.
What word do you have on Lancer?” At the other end the fellow said "Lancer is dead. Rusk then went back on the PA system and said "I am sorry to have to bring you this grievous news, but President Kennedy has been killed. We now have a new president. May God bless our President and the
page 449
PIERRE SALINGER “I was trying to find out what had happened. When we first got the news, we were not getting the information that he was dead but that he had been shot. That is why Rusk asked me to establish communication between the plane and the White House; there was a lot of confusion. When we got the news that the president was dead, there was some discussion on the plane as to who could be responsible. Rusk thought it might be an international affair, and we sent a message to all U.S. Embassies to see if they could find out anything.
The partial interview below is taken from
C-
Pierre Salinger: P.S., A Memoir
Program Air Date:
For more information about this program, visit www.booknotes.org
LAMB: How many times in your life have you been asked where you were the
night or the day that John F. Kennedy was shot?
SALINGER: Very often. A lot of people thought that I was with John F. Kennedy when he was shot, and they were always surprised to discover that I was on a plane flying with six members of his Cabinet and going to
LAMB: How many Cabinet officers were with you?
SALINGER: Six Cabinet officers: There was Rusk; there was McNamara; there was, well, I have all of them in the book, but they were coming for this economic conference, and that's why I was accompanying them.
LAMB: What happened after you got back?
SALINGER: Well, that was a long, long flight, as you know. We stopped in
Anyway, I went upstairs with Larry O'Brien and Ken O'Donnell, and we spoke probably right up till about
Biography: http://educationforu...showtopic=11299
Also on the plane was Edward K. Thompson, LIFE Mag managing editor & his wife Lee Eitongon. She told me this in a 6 hour 1999 interview. Ed Thompson was the man in control of the backyard photo of LHO holding a rifle at his home in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas.
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