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Seldom has there been a President more reluctant to hide beneath a bushel of protection than Lyndon Johnson.
Last week, during his New England tour, President Johnson joyously allowed himself to be inundated by waves of well-wishers. In Hartford, Conn., he ordered his car stopped several times, seized a bull horn and started speechifying, all the while standing in the back of his limousine, perfectly silhouetted against the sky for the shot of an assassin. He was not scared at all—but Secret Service men are still trembling.
In Providence the same day, agents had even more reason to worry. In the crowded hubbub of a presidential motorcade there, police mistook a 19-year-old college student, Neil Coady, for a Secret Service agent. They pushed the bulk of the crowd back, but allowed Coady to stay near the car in which the President's wife was riding. Young Coady then pitched in to help agents clear a path for the vehicle, finally wound up riding on the side of Mrs. Johnson's car when the motorcade arrived at the Brown University campus.