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"The President is dead, you know": in an excerpt from his posthumously published memoir, LBJ aide Jack Valenti relives the Kennedy assassination, from the chaos at parkland to the calm aboard Air Force One.

Article Excerpt
The Longest Day has begun. [paragraph] The street curved as we passed by an undistinguished building later described to me as the Texas School Book Depository. We were on Dealey Plaza. Suddenly, the car in front of us accelerated from 8 miles an hour to 80. I saw a policeman wildly waving us ahead, and buildings began to blur as we raced to keep up. Then we lost the car in front of us as we swerved to avoid people running across our path. [paragraph] The whole spectacle turned bizarre as we drove madly toward or away from some unnamed terror. What had happened? As if unwilling to know the answers, I found myself saying to our driver, "I think the president is late to his speech at the Dallas Trade Mart. Let's get over there as quickly as we can." [paragraph] We caromed through the streets and wound up at the Trade Mart. We drove to the back entrance to make inquiries. Surely someone could confirm what we eagerly wanted to hear, that the president had been a bit delayed by some security precautions but would soon make his speech. [paragraph] At the entrance, a distraught-looking-man raced past us, his coat and tie flying; to a payphone down the hall He was holding a transistor radio, and through the crackle of static we could hear the announcer's voice:

"The president and the governor have been shot ... Parkland hospital!" I yelled at a man standing next to a dusty Chevrolet. He looked up, startled. I grabbed him by the arm and said, "I have President Kennedy's secretary with me. Can you take us to Parkland hospital right now?."

He was a deputy sheriff, and he would take us. We raced to Parkland, siren screaming. When we arrived at the hospital, its entrance was cluttered with cars parked helter-skelter and blocked by a swarm of uniformed police and plainclothesmen. I ran down the hall and down the steps to the basement, where I had been told the vice president could be found. The basement was a mass of people, their stunned faces a collage of anxiety and grief.

Congressman Homer Thornberry was going to visit Nellie Connally [the wife of Texas governor John Connally], so I joined him. She sat in a small room, her eyes red, her hands in her lap, her face drawn and pale with anxiety. Lady Bird Johnson sat beside her. "How is John?" I asked.

She looked up, tears filling her eyes. "We don't know. We just don't know." Mrs. Johnson embraced her.

I wandered out into the hall again. As I entered the stairwell to walk upstairs, I bumped into Cliff Carter, one of LBJ's aides.

"The vice president wants you, and he wants you now." Cliff pulled at my...

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