The following is an excerpt from Esquire magazine published a few years back. I was dumbfounded when I read it recently. The context is what happened on-board Air Force One just after President Kennedy was killed -- before take-off and during the flight back.
Jackie Kennedy, who had ridden in the back of the hearse with her husband's body, follows the casket up the steps and heads for the bedroom. She is shocked to find Johnson, Fehmer, and Youngblood inside it—with Johnson, depending on the account, either still on the bed or having just lifted himself off it.
In a 1969 interview with Bob Hardesty, Johnson seemingly confesses to the less graceful of the possibilities: 'He wasn't going to sleep in the bed, and I was trying to talk to [Robert] Kennedy and take pills and locate the judge and do all these things I had to do.'Read the whole thing.
In less than a minute, all four mortified people in the bedroom leave—Jackie retreats to the aft cabin, next to the casket, while Johnson and his company scurry forward, to the stateroom. Johnson finds Lady Bird and together they return to Jackie, convincing her to go back into the bedroom.
