Jackie Kennedy’s ‘particular brand of silence’

Jackie Kennedy's private thoughts about Dallas

In a finely reported piece for Esquire last November Chris Jones recreated the scene on Air Force One on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.

Here’s the first meeting of now former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson, now the wife of the President of the United States.

“I don’t know what to say,” Lady Bird says. “What wounds me most of all is that this should happen in my beloved state of Texas.”

“To this, Jackie says nothing. She sits in her very particular brand of silence, her pink outfit stained with gore, flecked with fragments of her husband’s skull and brain. One of her stockings is almost completely lacquered in blood. Her right glove, white that morning, is caked and stiff with it. Her left glove is missing. Lady Bird asks her if she can get someone to help her change.

“No,” Jackie says. “Perhaps later I’ll ask Mary Gallagher, but not right now. I want them to see what they have done to Jack.”
Read more: John F. Kennedy Assassination Flight – What Happened on the Flight from Dallas – Esquire

JFK Facts exclusive: The Air Force One Tapes

“Audio engineer on the trail of a long-lost JFK tape” (JFK Facts, Nov. 6, 2013)

“Enhanced Air Force One tape captures top general’s response to JFK’s murder”  (JFK Facts, Oct. 19, 2013)

“What’s the most important piece of JFK assassination evidence to surface in the past five years?” (JFK Facts, Oct. 27, 2013)

Listen to the enhanced Air Force One tape from November 22, 1963, in four parts, as prepared by Primeau Forensics.

 

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