David because of Colonel Sanford T. Felter. The red White House switchboard telephone on his desk had gone off—it was rigged so that it didn’t ring until a red light had flashed five times; the chief had caught it, he hoped, on the second flash—at half past ten that morning.
“Have you got heavy plans for this afternoon?” the President of the United States had inquired without other preliminaries.
“No, sir.”
No plan has priority over any plan of the Commander-in-Chief.
“Come over here so that we can take off for Camp David—say, quarter to twelve,” the President ordered. “Don’t come by chopper; the goddamn press will interpret that to mean we’re about to go to war.”
“Yes, sir.”
The phone had clicked off.
The chief and two aides-de-camp had arrived by Army sedan at the White House at a few minutes after eleven. The presidential helicopter had fluttered down on the South Lawn of the White House at twenty past eleven. At twenty to twelve, a Secret Service agent had come to the waiting room outside the Oval Office and told the chief of staff that it was time for the chief to board the presidential helicopter.
“Just you, General,” the Secret Service agent said.
“I’ll call when I know something,” the chief told his aides, who would now have to wait for God Only Knew How Long.
Lyndon Johnson boarded the helicopter last, just after the Secretary of State. He delayed takeoff long enough to walk, stooped, to where the chief was sitting.
“Felter will land in New York in about twenty minutes. By the time they can get him to Andrews, and on a chopper, it’ll be half past three before the sonofabitch can get to Camp David.”
“Yes, sir,” the chief had said.
The President had walked forward and taken his seat, impatiently waving away the crewman who wanted to help him strap himself to the seat.
The chopper took off and headed north-northwest toward the Catoctin Mountain presidential retreat that still bore the name of President Eisenhower’s grandson.
The Secretary of State got off the helicopter at Camp David only to immediately get aboard a Huey that was waiting, rotor turning, and before they reached the main guest house was already airborne and presumably headed back to Washington.
The President took lunch privately with Mrs. Johnson.
At two o’clock, a Secret Service agent led the chief of staff to the skeet range, where the President, in a windbreaker and blue jeans, was practicing mounting his shotgun to his shoulder.
“Regular skeet, a dollar a bird?” the President asked.
“Fine, Mr. President,” the chief said, wondering if the stock of the shotgun he was handed was going to soil the shoulder of his tunic, which was new.
“I’ve got Felter trouble again, as you may have guessed,” the President said. He had volunteered no further details, but the chief noted that the President had said, “It will be half past three before the sonofabitch can get to Camp David.”
When Lyndon Johnson heard the inbound Huey, he was on Station Three, about to fire on the low house. He turned to one of the Secret Service agents standing behind the firing line.
“If Colonel Felter is on that chopper, bring him here,” he ordered. “Only him.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the Secret Service agents said, and started to walk toward the helicopter pad.
“Pull!” the President called, and then, in one smooth movement, turned around and raised his shotgun—a Winchester Model 12 pump 12-gauge—to his shoulder.
After a moment, a clay pigeon emerged from the low house. The President fired and missed, and then quickly worked the action and fired again. This time the clay disc disappeared in a small cloud of black dust.
The President worked the action again, ejecting the fired shell, peered at the shotgun to make sure that there was no round in the chamber, and then turned and stepped off the station.
“I’m not taking that as a miss,” he announced. “The way it’s supposed to work is that when I call ‘Pull,’ you’re supposed to pull, right goddamn then, not when you come back to paying attention to what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Sorry, Mr. President,” the Secret Service agent who was “pulling” targets said.
“That all right with you, General?”
“It was a bad pull, Mr. President,” the chief said.
“Goddamn right it was,” the President said, and waved the chief of staff on to Station Three.
Colonel Sanford T. Felter, who was wearing a gray suit in need of pressing and who had a leather briefcase chained to his wrist, was led onto the skeet range as the President