Fly Now, Tell Later

Thanks to some of the most elaborate security measures in memory, there were no crowds on hand to greet Lyndon Johnson last week as a six-car procession bore him down Stemmons Freeway on his first visit to Dallas since Nov. 22, 1963. At the Texas School Book Depository, on his route, shades masked the sixth-floor window from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the bullets that killed John F. Kennedy. As his aquamarine limousine passed within 200 yards of the building, the President also seemed determined to curtain his memories of that terrible day and spot. With Daughter Luci in the back seat, Johnson chatted lightly about his mongrel Yuki, perched on the ledge behind his head.

Inside Dallas Memorial Auditorium, delivering his first campaign stump speech of 1968, the President assumed the stance that he now apparently plans to maintain until Election Day. In a 27-minute address to National Rural Electric Cooperative Association conventioners, Johnson reached back to his own political youth and the New Deal, draping the cape of Franklin Roosevelt over his own presidency by reciting the Administration's record on Medicare, education, the war on poverty, and social security benefits. The Great Society, said Johnson--invoking a term that has been notably missing from recent presidential pronouncements--is "taking root. It is thrusting up; it is reaching out to banish need and to bring new hope into millions upon millions of lives."

Cold & Warm. Another emerging, and perturbing, pattern for the 1968 campaign is the prospect that violently hostile demonstrations will rule out the handshaking style of campaigning amid big crowds that Johnson likes. His secret journey to Dallas not only precluded large gatherings along his route but even took local lawmen by surprise. Police Chief Charles Batchelor received only one hour's warning from the Secret Service. Johnson intends to announce none of his trips in advance, will honor speechmaking invitations only at the last moment.

Even so, a handful of demonstrators found time to mount an antiwar picket line in Dallas. And in Austin that night, a soft-drink bottle was hurled at Johnson's car from the midst of a crowd of 200 hooting and cheering University of Texas students when the President came unannounced to Governor John Connally's 51st birthday dinner.

Secrecy was again the order of the day at week's end when Johnson flew out of Washington, his destination unrevealed until shortly before he boarded Air Force One. The first stop was Houston, where the President toured the Manned Spacecraft Center. Next, he dropped in at Beaumont, Texas, for a fund-raising dinner, then on to Marietta, Ga., to watch Lockheed Aircraft roll out the world's largest aircraft, the C-5A Galaxy flying freighter (wing span: 223 ft., height: 65 ft.), which can lift 21 times more cargo than any current U.S. air transport. "This would sure carry a lot of hay," marveled Johnson after touring the C-5A's barnlike cargo hold. Then he flew to Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico.

White House reporters were given no advance clues. Instead, they were told to bring clothes for cold and warm climates--and perhaps a pair of swimming trunks--but were warned not to tell anyone else. For his own safety, the President feels constrained to follow such hugger-mugger procedures, and he has told intimates that he in tends to emulate the Roosevelt campaign of 1944--when F.D.R., to conceal his failing health, eschewed most campaign trips and stayed at his White House desk, directing the administration of a nation at war.

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