American newspapers seem to have a schizophrenic approach to American leaders. They want to expose their human frailties and they don't want to expose their human frailties. Gore Vidal was on a television program in London, and he explained why Jacqueline Kennedy will never relate to Lyndon Johnson. During that tense journey from Dallas to Washington after the assassination, she inadvertently walked in on him as he was standing over the casket of his predecessor and chuckling. This disclosure was the talk of London but not a word was mentioned here.

Of course, President Johnson is often given to inappropriate response — witness the puzzled timing of his smiles when he speaks of grave matters — but we must also assume that Mrs. Kennedy had been traumatized that day and her perception was likely to have been colored by the tragedy. This state of shock must have underlain an incident on Air Force One which this writer conceives to be delirium, but which Mrs. Kennedy insists she actually saw. "I'm telling you this for the historical records," she said, "so that people a hundred years from now will know what I had to go through."

She corroborated Gore Vidal's story, continuing: "That man was crouching over the corpse, no longer chuckling but breathing hard and moving his body rhythmically. At first I thought he must be performing some mysterious symbolic rite he'd learned from Mexicans or Indians as a boy. And then I realized — there is only one way to say this — he was literally fucking my husband in the throat. In the bullet wound in the front of his throat. He reached a climax and dismounted. I froze. The next thing I remember, he was being sworn in as the new President."

[Handwritten marginal notes: 1. Check with Rankin — did secret autopsy show semen in throat wound? 2. Is this simply necrophilia or was LBJ trying to change entry wound into exit wound by enlarging?]