Nation: THE MANCHESTER BOOK: Despite Flaws & Errors, a Story That Is Larger Then Life or Death

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Manchester sets up an intricate counterpoint between his story of the stricken individuals in Dallas and what he calls "the Greek chorus" of fear and mourning that quickly gripped the world in general. A stunned Associated Press operator, attempting to transmit the bulletin that Kennedy was shot, clattered the keys with a "tragic stutter" that resulted in O'DONNELL be coming "o";>9...30)," and BLOODSTAINED became "BLOOD STAAINEZAACRBMTHING," and HE LAY became a wailing "HA LAAAAAAAAAAAAA."

In Washington, so many people picked up telephones when they heard the first bulletins that—one by one—nearly every major exchange in the city went dead. Ted Kennedy raced desperately from house to house in Georgetown, trying to find a phone and to learn whether his brother was dead.

Sergeant Keith Clark, who regularly played the bugle at major Arlington Cemetery funerals, rushed out to get a haircut. Six members of Kennedy's Cabinet and White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, in a jet over the Pacific heading for a meeting in Japan, got the words of the shooting via an AP ticker. Some immediately began jotting down notes of their personal impressions—which triggered bitter anger in others. Salinger, stricken to "a semi-coma," quickly organized a poker game, played blindly and madly during the entire nine-hour flight back to Washington, wound up winning $800 and "was appalled."

The next night, during a dinner at the White House, including the Robert Kennedys, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, there was "puckish horseplay" as the mourners recoiled from shock. Everyone knew that Ethel Kennedy often wore a wig; during the meal, it was "snatched off and passed from head to head, winding up . . .on the slick pate of the Secretary of Defense."

Orphan Annie's Eyes Peripheral actors, too, play poignant roles in Manchester's panoply. The eight-man military casket team that carried Kennedy's coffin up the 36 steps into the Capitol rotunda on Nov. 24 was astonished at its weight and nearly dropped it. That night they were terrified at the thought of the next day's funeral procession, when they would have to carry it down again. The officer in charge ordered a coffin from Fort Myer, had it filled with sandbags, and at midnight took his team to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There, he marched them up and down the darkened steps. Later, the officer and a sentry sat on the lid to increase the weight, while the team made the trip again and again. Next day they had no trouble during the ceremonies.

Robert Oswald, brother of the assassin, recalled how, during his last visit with Lee Oswald in the Dallas police station, he suddenly realized that Lee "was really unconcerned. I was looking into his eyes, but they were blank, like Orphan Annie's . . . He knew what was happening, because as I searched his eyes he said to me, 'Brother, you won't find anything there.' "