AL TALIB: Please tell me if you would, Mr. President, what is the Domino Theory?

JOHNSON: An idea of William Westmoreland’s. Kissinger and McNamara weren’t enthusiastic about getting involved in a land war, but Westmoreland was all for it. His theory was that each piece of territory we took on the way to Texas would be like a domino falling, helping us knock down the next one, and by the time we got to Austin we’d have built up so much momentum that we could just keep going, all the way to the California coast. Bring the whole country under one roof like God intended.

AL TALIB: The whole country? Don’t you mean the whole continent, Mr. President?

JOHNSON: The country and the continent are one, Mr. Al Talib. That’s destiny.

AL TALIB: It would seem many of your would-be countrymen didn’t agree.

JOHNSON: You mean the Pentecostals? It was a mistake to pick on them first. People who believe the Holy Spirit grants them magic powers are inclined to be stubborn. Still, I wouldn’t be too sure about what they do or don’t agree with. You’re a man of faith, Mr. Al Talib. Don’t you find yourself fighting hardest against those things you know in your heart to be true?

AL TALIB: Yes. But the struggle you are alluding to is not one that can be won with violence. At least I don’t believe so.

JOHNSON: I regret the violence. I know history will regard me as a warmonger and that was never my intention. Everything I did was to defend my country.

AL TALIB: But you do feel remorse?

JOHNSON: Of course I do. How could I not? I have the blood of thousands of Americans on my hands. I’m going to have to answer to God for that, and soon, and I am not looking forward to it.

AL TALIB: And what about Arabian blood, Mr. President? What about the thousands killed in Baghdad and—

JOHNSON: There you lose me, sir.

AL TALIB: Do I, Mr. President? As you say, soon you must answer to God, from whom nothing is hidden. Why not make a full confession now?

JOHNSON: I can only confess to my own sins, Mr. Al Talib, just as I can only acknowledge my own faults. One thing I am not is a fool.

AL TALIB: I’m not suggesting you’re a fool, Mr. President.

JOHNSON: That’s exactly what you’re doing, when you accuse me of attacking your country. Why would I do that?

AL TALIB: As revenge for the Gulf War, of course. We stopped your dominoes from falling. Surely this made you angry?

JOHNSON: Yes, it did. And when I get angry at someone, I call him a son of a bitch. I don’t burn down his house and start a feud with his whole family. Especially a feud I know I can’t win.

“The prisoner remains adamant that he had no involvement in 11/9,” Al Talib wrote to his superiors in Riyadh. “When I suggested that the mountain Christians who claimed responsibility for the attack were too backward to have carried it off without help, LBJ replied that it wasn’t long ago that ‘the Ay-rabs’ were ‘riding around on camels,’ and yet only a bigot would argue that we were incapable of ‘both great and terrible deeds.’ I then asked him to speculate: If it wasn’t the mountain men, who might be responsible? He reminded me that the hijackers were all traveling on Texas passports and noted that the Evangelical Republic’s leaders were obviously pleased to see him out of power. ‘I’m not saying they did it, but that’s what I’d look for in a culprit: Someone who wanted to start a war, or a jee-had as you call it.’

“As to the other matter, I regret that I’ve made no better progress, though here the problem isn’t denial but rather the inability to have a coherent conversation. Johnson as you know suffers from incipient dementia. Though generally lucid, he has episodes in which he becomes delusional and believes that his dream of ‘uniting America’ has already come to pass. These episodes are typically random, but they can also be triggered, and the subject in question appears to be one of the most potent triggers.”

AL TALIB: I am sorry, Mr. President, but once again I must raise the subject of the WMDs.

JOHNSON: WMDs?

AL TALIB: [Sighs.] Yes sir, weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear, biological, and—

JOHNSON: Nuclear? You’re asking me whether America has nuclear weapons?

AL TALIB: Yes.

JOHNSON: Of course we do. What do you think a superpower is, son?

AL TALIB: And where are these weapons, Mr. President?

JOHNSON: Out west.

AL TALIB: West of the capital?

JOHNSON: No, west west. Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas—

AL TALIB: Montana? In the Rocky Mountains?

JOHNSON: —and Missouri.

AL TALIB: But how could that be, Mr. President? Missouri is Mormon territory, is it not?

JOHNSON: Mormons? What do the damn Mormons have to do with it?

At no point during the interrogation or in any of his communiqués with Riyadh did Al Talib give any sign that he thought Johnson’s “delusions” might reflect a broader mythology shared by others, nor was there any explicit mention of the mirage. But perhaps in response to the “triggers,” Johnson’s mental state began to deteriorate again, and as his statements became more cryptic and oracular, gaps appeared in the transcript.

The last interview took place following a five-day period during which Johnson was ill with a fever. The Riyadhis, having accepted by this point that they were not going to get a confession, and fearful of having LBJ die in their custody, decided to terminate the interrogation process after one final exchange.

AL TALIB: How are you today, Mr. President?

JOHNSON: [Inaudible.]

AL TALIB: “Bushed”? You are tired? Here, have some water.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

AL TALIB: I won’t stay long today.

JOHNSON: No, it’s all right. Sit down, sir. I know we’re running out of time. Or rather, I am.

AL TALIB: Has someone told you something, Mr. President?

JOHNSON: The Almighty and I have been in consultation.

AL TALIB: God spoke to you?

JOHNSON: After a fashion. Would you like to hear about a dream I had?

AL TALIB: If you wish.

JOHNSON: I was back in Stonewall, in a one-room schoolhouse.

AL TALIB: This is the school you attended as a boy?

JOHNSON: The schoolhouse itself was a set, from the LBJ Library in Washington. But in the dream it had been moved to Stonewall, and because there was no roof I could look up and see the sky that I was born under.

I was alone, sitting in a pupil’s desk. There were ten desks in all, arranged in three rows of three, with the last desk in the middle of what would have been the fourth row. I was directly in front of that one, in seat number eight. And at the front of the room was a blackboard with ten digits written on it, one through zero . . . Your English is so good, Mr. Al Talib, I assume you’re also familiar with how we Americans write our numbers?

AL TALIB: You call them Arabic numerals for a reason, Mr. President.

JOHNSON: Oh yes, of course. Well, I was sitting there, looking at the numbers on the blackboard, and the sky above got very dark and there was an . . . earthquake, I guess, only more than that, as if God had picked up the whole planet in His hands and was shaking it. My desk stayed put, and I myself couldn’t move, but most everything else went flying. The blackboard came right off the wall and went tumbling end over end, whirling around the room. Even when it went behind my head, though, I could still see it, as though it were reflected in a mirror.

Now numbers, when you do reflect them in a mirror, you know what happens to most of them? They look different. You can still recognize them for what they are supposed to be, but they become strange, alien.

AL TALIB: But not the number eight.

JOHNSON: No, not number eight. You can turn it on its head, write it backwards or forwards, it stays the same.

AL TALIB: Also zero. And one, if you write it with a single stroke.