Where Was O'Donnell?

Each new Look installment of William Manchester's The Death of a President seems half familiar, because so many episodes have already been published, and half fascinating, because the reader looks for new or nearly forgotten details--and for discrepancies.

Installment No. 3 describes a seldom reported scene at Parkland Memorial Hospital in which Kennedy aides argued and struggled to get J.F.K.'s coffin past Dallas County Medical Examiner Earl Rose. He kept insisting that Texas law required an autopsy before the body of a murdered man could be released. (Rose last week called the account "not consistent with events.")

The scene then shifts to the now familiar interior of Air Force One and what Manchester probably over-describes as the conflict between Johnson partisans and embittered Kennedy men accompanying their murdered President and his lady home to Washington. Once again there is that painful moment when Mrs. Kennedy walked into the presidential bedroom and found Lyndon Johnson reclining on the bed dictating to a secretary. Later in his narrative, Manchester introduces another vignette: Jackie, while keeping vigil beside her husband's coffin, had the first two drinks of Scotch in her life. It tasted like creosote to her, he says.

Johnson asked that Mrs. Kennedy stand beside him during the swearing-in to emphasize the continuity of the U.S. presidency. Jackie obliged, but Manchester emphasized that the gulf was now so wide that none of the photos taken of the ceremony by White House Photographer Cecil Stoughton showed "the presence of a single male Kennedy aide." Indeed, Manchester says that Mary Gallagher, Mrs. Kennedy's personal secretary, watched Kenneth O'Donnell "pacing the corridor like a caged tiger, his hands clapped over his ears as though to block the oath."

Or was he? Last week the Boston Globe published a Page One picture showing O'Donnell standing at Jackie's left during the swearing-in. And Stoughton says that other photos he took, which Manchester never asked to see, showed that Kennedy aides, Larry O'Brien and Dave Powers, were also present. Mary Gallagher now says she does not recall telling the story as Manchester reported it. O'Donnell himself asserts that Manchester never asked him about it.

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