November 1963 was set to be a year of tremendous change for the US Government. On Monday, November 25th, a House vote was scheduled, with the aim of electing a new Speaker of the House after the resignation of former Speaker John McCormack (aged 71) due to health reasons. The Senate too was set to vote on a new appointee, after President Kennedy had relieved Secretary of Treasury Douglas Dillon, a Republican, the week before following huge behind the scenes pressure from the Democratic Party.
Late Thursday night on the 21st, President Kennedy had another heated telephone conversation with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, which ended with the President exclaiming “You know what, Dean? I think I’m going to accept that resignation of yours after all”. Kennedy signed the resignation letter the following morning whilst on Air Force One en route to Dallas airport of Love Field.
Following Kennedy’s assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President that same day aboard Air Force One just before it departed Love Field, with Jacqueline Kennedy by his side, with the photo of the event later becoming famous.
14 hours later, Gerald Blaine – a Secret Service agent detailed with looking after the new president's two-storey house in Washington heard someone walking towards the house and loudly cocked his submachine gun, in the hope that it would act as a deterrent.
He firmly pushed the stock into his shoulder, ready to fire. He'd expected the footsteps to retreat with the loud sound of the gun activating, but they kept coming closer. Blaine's heart pounded, his finger firmly on the trigger. “Let me see your face, you bastard!” Blaine shouted, as the footsteps neared. The next instant, Blaine finally got a look at the would-be assassin – it was the new President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had just rounded the corner. Blaine, having the gun pointed directly at the man's chest freaked out for a moment and inadvertently pulled the trigger, instantly killing Johnson in the blackness of the night.
Half an hour later, President pro tempore Carl T. Hayden, aged 86, was woken up in the middle of the night by heavily armed and extremely agitated Secret Service agents who informed him that the new President had also been shot and that there might be a coup underway, with him as the next potential target. Upon hearing the news, Hayden panicked and suffered a stroke, from which he died several minutes later.
And so began the Presidency of Robert McNamara…