I'm John Batchel with Bill Talbin, Professor Bill Talbot of Amherst College,

who with his brother Philip Talbman published a new book filled with information that we have not had before.

155 p.m. East Coast time, November 22nd.

McNamara is in a meeting with McGeorge Bundy and others,

and he's interrupted at a moment by someone who brings him news that the CIA

says the president's been shot and is dead.

That is not confirmed by anyone else,

so the meeting breaks up immediately.

Soon after, it's confirmed.

McNamara's first thoughts, Bill.

McNamara's first thoughts is what the hell is going to happen.

And he actually is summoned to Andrew's Air Force Base, where the president's plane has brought

his body back to Washington from Dallas, and where Jacqueline Kennedy, with a bloodstained

pink dress, has observed Lyndon Johnson take the oath of office, even before the plane left Dallas.

So McNamara is out there, and Bobby says, let's go in, let's go into the plane and greet them.

And McNamara is smart enough to say, no, you go yourself. I'm not close enough

to Jackie. But Jackie wants his presence. And after a visit home briefly, she summons him to

Bethesda Naval Hospital, where she spends the whole night sitting on a chair recounting and

recounting again the terrible day that has just passed in which her husband has been shot and

killed. And McNamara is sitting at her feet on the floor in front of the chair where she's recounting this and and

listening to her the whole night and realizing that she wants him present in her life, which is

what he becomes. And he begins to have a kind of double life. On the one hand,

...