Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  The detectives begin piling everything on the bed for the trip downtown: clothing, shoes, a shaving kit; a city map of Dallas with some suspicious pencil markings on it, including some at the Texas School Book Depository and Elm Street; an address book, some paperbacks—A Study of the USSR and Communism and a couple of James Bond books—a Gregg shorthand dictionary, a copy of Roberts Rules of Order; a pair of binoculars; several pamphlets and handbills; a certificate of Undesirable Discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps, and a lot of other documents.

  The detectives are particularly struck and alarmed by the stuff in Russian and the left-wing literature. It’s not the kind of thing they find too often in Dallas. There’s a letter about photography from Gus Hall, leader of the American Communist Party, one in Russian from the Soviet embassy in Washington, and another from someone called Louis Weinstock of the Communist Party’s paper, the Worker. There are two letters from the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, sent to Oswald at an address in New Orleans, a letter from the Socialist Workers Party—a Trotskyite organization—regarding membership, and a Russian passport with Oswald’s photo in it. Alexander thinks to himself that there’s a lot of difference between a homegrown killer and someone who appeared, from what he could see, to be a card-carrying Communist with overseas connections. The possibility of a Communist conspiracy enters his mind. Even the thought of Russian military transport planes, landing in Dallas, flashes across his mind.

  Over the next hour and a quarter, they nearly strip the room, using the pillow cases and one of Oswald’s own duffle bags to carry everything to the waiting patrol cars. Only a banana peel and some uneaten fruit are left behind when they leave just after 6:00 p.m.702

  Aboard Air Force One, the flight back to Washington has been abuzz with a continuous and overlapping series of communications with the outside world, some to pick up the threads of the American government so brutally ripped asunder just hours ago, some to let profoundly worried officials and congressmen have a reassuring word with the new president, but most of the conversations are about the fallen president.703 As Air Force One zoomed through the sky to its Washington, D.C., destination at more than 600 mph, there are conflicting reports about the extent, if any, of the tension existing between the old and the new presidential administrations. At a minimum, the ride to Washington, as Mrs. Johnson says, was “strained.”704 And it’s clear that the aides to Kennedy and Johnson were separated on the plane, Kennedy’s aides in the rear of the plane with Mrs. Kennedy and the casket. A top Kennedy aide is said to have told a news reporter, “Make sure that you report that we rode in back with our president, and not up front with him [LBJ].”705 Was a lot more involved? Kennedy assistant press secretary Malcolm Kilduff was quoted as telling one source, “That was the sickest airplane I ever was on.” And he told the Los Angeles Times that there was friction between Kennedy and Johnson factions on the flight. “I think that there are things that happened that could be embarrassing to both the Kennedys and the Johnsons,” he said, though he would not describe the events referred to. Another passenger, wishing to remain anonymous, said, “They refought the battles of 1960,” during which Johnson and Kennedy had bitterly contested for the Democratic nomination. But, under the circumstances, much of this seems unlikely, and Jack Valenti, an LBJ aide, remembered no such discussion and acrimony, adding that the extreme grief of Kennedy’s top aides, Kenneth O’Donnell and Larry O’Brien, was “simply beyond anything as casual as hostility.” Charles Roberts of Newsweek, who was aboard, wrote, “As an unbiased witness to it [the transition of power], now that questions have been raised,…it was careful, correct, considerate and compassionate.”

  As far as President Johnson’s conduct on the plane, rumors abounded that he had been “rude,” “overbearing,” and “boorish,” one anonymous source even saying he had been impatient with Jackie when she did not “immediately come forward to witness the oath-taking.” However, the evidence from named sources contradicts this. William Manchester himself, who, in writing The Death of a President, probably interviewed more people, including all the Kennedy entourage on the plane, than anyone else, said, “I think Johnson acted in incredibly difficult circumstances. I think he behaved well,” particularly, Manchester said, in being solicitous and caring to Jackie throughout, a view which sounds much more believable to me. And Roberts of Newsweek said that although Johnson was very “capable of crudities,” the new president’s conduct during the four hours of flight was completely proper and “four of Johnson’s finest.” Indeed, even Kilduff, who spoke of hostility on the plane between the two camps, said in a radio-television interview on November 21, 1966, on the Westinghouse Broadcasting network, “I can’t help but feel that he [President Johnson] showed the utmost…personal concern for Mrs. Kennedy, all members of the Kennedy family, and the whole Kennedy party that was with us.”706

  About certain things, everyone agrees. As author Relman Morin writes, as the plane thundered toward Washington it was “heavily freighted with grief and horror and memories and the aching sense of loss.” Also, that Johnson, with the levers of power now in his hands, started working immediately at his new job. He was on the phone to Washington calling for a cabinet meeting the next morning, requesting that Robert S. McNamara, the secretary of defense, and McGeorge Bundy, the special assistant to the president for national security affairs, be at Andrews Air Force Base when Air Force One landed so they could instantly bring him up to date on the very latest developments flowing from the assassination throughout the world, and so on. The transition of power was also filled with the unavoidable poignancies that strike at the heart. During the flight, in the Oval Office “a sad task was going forward. They were removing some of [JFK’s] most prized mementos: the coconut shell in which he had sent the message for help after the Japanese destroyer Amagiri rammed and sank PT-109, the framed photographs of his wife and of Caroline and John-John at different ages, the silver calendar that marked the dates of the beginning and end of the Cuban missile crisis, his famous rocking chair.”707

  During the flight, Rufus Youngblood and Roy Kellerman conferred frequently by phone with the head of the White House Secret Service detail in Washington, D.C., Gerry Behn, to arrange security and procedures at Andrews Air Force Base. Behn wanted President Johnson to come immediately to the White House, where both security and communications were best, but Youngblood told him that the president was adamantly against it. “That would be presumptuous on my part,” Johnson said. “I won’t do it.” Instead, Johnson instructs Youngblood to have the Secret Service secure the Johnsons’ Washington, D.C., residence instead.708

  A dispute over how and where to take the body broke out. Admiral Burkley advised Captain Taz Shepard, the president’s naval aide, to make arrangements with Bethesda Naval Hospital, while Ted Clifton informed Dr. Leonard Heaton, the army’s surgeon general, that the autopsy would be performed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the great hospital in the nation’s capital that since 1909 had treated grunts and generals, even presidents and Winston Churchill.709 General McHugh ordered an ambulance, but was informed that it was illegal in the District of Columbia to move a dead body by ambulance without a coroner’s permit. McHugh didn’t give a damn.

  “Just do it,” he snapped. “And don’t worry about the law. I’ll pay the fine.”710

  Eventually, the choice of hospital was left to Mrs. Kennedy. Dr. Burkley made his way back to the tiny rear cabin area where she held vigil next to her husband’s coffin. He knelt in the aisle beside her, and explained to her that the president’s body would first have to be taken to a hospital. “Why?” she asked. To have the bullet removed for evidence, Burkley improvised, not knowing if there was a bullet inside the president’s body. He was careful not to use the word autopsy, which would conjure up the image of a dissection. Burkley told her that he would be willing to arrange to have it done at any place that she felt it should be done, although for reasons of security it should be done at a military hospital. The president was,
after all, the commander in chief. That effectively narrowed the choice down to two hospitals in the Washington, D.C., area: the army’s Walter Reed or the U.S. Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

  “The president was in the navy,” Burkley said softly.

  “Of course,” Jackie said, “Bethesda.”711

  Then she thought of Secret Service agent Bill Greer, the driver of the limousine in Dallas. Greer had been remorseful all afternoon, feeling that somehow he might have been able to save the president if only he had swerved the car, or sped away before the fatal shot. Mrs. Kennedy felt sorry for him and requested that Greer drive the casket to the naval hospital.712

  There had been a steady stream of visitors to the cramped cabin in the rear of the plane throughout the flight, but, with the casket at their feet and so many seats removed, there was not enough room for them to stay long. President Johnson, otherwise closeted with his advisers Cliff Carter and Bill Moyers, came back for a visit, telling Kennedy’s men that he hoped they would stay on at the White House: “I need you now more than President Kennedy needed you.” Later Moyers came back and asked Ken O’Donnell, Dave Powers, and Larry O’Brien to join the president for a conference about arranging a meeting of the congressional leadership, but they didn’t want to leave Jackie.

  “We understand perfectly,” Moyers agreed.

  By then, a small Irish wake, full of melancholy reminiscences, had been unrolling in the rear compartment. Jackie recalled how much Jack enjoyed the singing of tenor Luigi Vena at their wedding, and decided to ask Vena to sing “Ave Maria” and Bizet’s “Agnus Dei” at the president’s funeral mass. Dave Powers and Ken O’Donnell told her about Jack’s meeting with Cardinal Cushing at the North American College in Rome a few months ago. Many U.S. cardinals attended the coronation of Pope Paul VI, but only Cushing was there when the president arrived. “They’ve all gone home, Jack,” the cardinal laughed. “I’m the only one who’s for ya! The rest of them are all Republicans.” It was decided that Cushing, who married Jack and Jackie, would say the low requiem mass, because Jack liked that better than the solemn high ritual.

  Powers told Jackie about the president’s last visit to the Kennedy family compound at Hyannis Port on October 30, when he spent the whole day with his crippled and speechless father. The next day, when the president’s helicopter arrived, Jack kissed his father on the forehead, started off, and then went back to kiss him again—almost, Dave thought, as though he sensed he would never see his father again. They told how they had accompanied Jack to his son Patrick’s grave in Brookline that same afternoon and how they heard him remark, “He seems so alone here.”

  “I’ll bring them together now,” Jackie said quietly. At first, Dave and Ken thought she was thinking of burying the president in Boston, but she had already decided on Arlington and planned to have Patrick’s body moved from Massachusetts for reburial beside his father.713

  They told her about their trip to Ireland in June, which Jack had described to her as the most enjoyable experience of his whole life. He was impressed by the drill of the Irish military cadets at Arbour Hill when he placed a wreath on the graves of the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916. Jackie decides to have them attend the funeral too, if they can, along with the pipers of the Royal Highland Black Watch Regiment, who performed for the president and his family only last week on the grounds of the White House.

  Now, as the plane begins its descent into Andrews Air Force Base, O’Donnell, Powers, and O’Brien learn that a detachment of military pallbearers is waiting to carry the coffin from the plane. Overcome with Irish sentiment, Ken O’Donnell speaks up.

  “We’ll carry him off ourselves.”714

  In a quiet Maryland suburb of the nation’s capital, Naval Commander James J. Humes strolls purposefully toward the entrance of Bethesda Naval Hospital. There is a cordon of marines and military police around the hospital, with additional guards stationed at all three entrance gates to the grounds with instructions to admit only employees, patients in serious condition, their relatives, and cars with White House clearance. The thirty-nine-year-old Humes senses that the president’s body must be en route.

  Earlier, around noon, he had left Bethesda, where he is director of laboratories of the Naval Medical School, and had gone home to help his wife, Ann, get ready for a dinner party they were having that evening for twenty-four people, almost all of them military colleagues. In addition to the dinner party, they were busy taking care of last-minute details related to their son’s First Communion, scheduled to take place the following morning at their parish church. Both Jim and Ann were far too busy to listen to the radio, and neither had any idea of the tragedy gripping the country until a couple of their older children—they have five in school and two at home—came home on the school bus and told their mother, “The president’s been shot.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” she scolded, only to switch on the television and find that it was true. Jim and Ann both knew the dinner party was off, which meant they had a lot of telephoning to do. But the Washington telephone system had given out, overloaded by thousands of people wanting to talk about and share their grief over news of the tragedy, and Ann was finding it impossible to reach any of their guests.* In the interim, Jim decided to take his son out for a haircut. They had just returned when his wife was finally able to get an open line, only to have an operator interrupt her for an emergency call from Admiral Edward Kenney, surgeon general of the navy. “Jim,” Kenney told him, “you better hurry over to the hospital.”

  Humes could hardly have imagined at this time that he would someday be accused by many conspiracy theorists as being an accessory after the fact to Kennedy’s murder, and indeed, by necessary extension from their arguments, a part of a plot to murder the president.

  Now Humes bounds toward Admiral Kenney’s office, where the surgeon general gives the commander his orders: “Be prepared to do an autopsy on the late president.” As the words sink in, Humes is told that Commander J. Thornton Boswell, the forty-one-year-old chief of pathology at the Naval Medical School, will be assisting him. He can add anyone else to the team he deems necessary in helping him to determine the cause of death, but he’s instructed to limit the personnel as much as possible.715 Retiring to the solitude of his office, Commander Humes gets a phone call from his friend Dr. Bruce Smith, acting deputy director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), who offers whatever help he might need. Humes is grateful and tells him he may call him later.

  A short time later, Humes gets in touch with Dr. Boswell and together they decide that Dr. Humes should be the senior autopsy surgeon, considering that he was Boswell’s superior at the hospital.716 Both men have performed autopsies, although neither has been trained or certified as a forensic pathologist, a fact that will ultimately be used to great advantage by conspiracy theorists.717*

  4:58 p.m. (5:58 p.m. EST)

  At two minutes before the hour in the East Coast darkness, Air Force One, the superb blue and white plane of the nation’s chief executive, touches down at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, about fifteen miles southeast of the nation’s capital.718 The plane taxis into the glare of the reception area, now thronged with hundreds of government officials and other VIPs.

  The first person to board Air Force One is President Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who bounds up the ramp and races from the front of the plane to the rear, ignoring President Johnson’s outstretched hand as he passes. Johnson is miffed, but O’Donnell, realizing that Bobby’s only thought is to get to Jackie as quickly as possible, doubts whether he even saw the president’s gesture.719

  In the tail compartment, Bobby Kennedy rushes to Jackie’s side.

  “Hi, Jackie,” he says quietly, putting an arm around her. “I’m here.”

  “Oh, Bobby,” Jackie sighs. It is so like him, she thinks. He is always there when you need him.720

  Most of the civilized world is riveted to the live television
coverage of the arrival. A huge “catering bus”—an outsized forklift, roofed and painted a garish yellow, used to load meals aboard military transports—is brought to the left rear of the plane and attached to the exit twelve feet above. A military casket team moves forward to secure the casket but is pushed out of the way by the dead president’s friends and aides, who, along with the assistance of Secret Service agents, start to move the casket onto the compartment of the catering bus.721

  The compartment containing both the casket and the Kennedy entourage slowly begins to descend, then comes to a stop five feet above the ground. Not being designed for such uses, it’s the lowest the forklift can go. It is almost impossible to unload the casket from this height, even with two teams of pallbearers, one on the ground, the other on the lift. Television cameras relentlessly record the awkward scene in black and white. The men struggle to move the cumbersome burden into the rear of a gray U.S. Navy ambulance, its rotating beacon throwing flashes of light over their faces, and finally succeed after several minutes. Meanwhile, the men in the Kennedy entourage begin jumping off the catering bus to the ground below. Robert Kennedy, one of the first on the ground, turns back to help Mrs. Kennedy down to the tarmac.722*

  Jackie Kennedy walks toward the navy ambulance. Clint Hill assumes she’ll ride in the front seat, but she makes her way to the rear door. She tries to open it but can’t. Fastened from the inside, the driver quickly reaches back to release the lock. She and Robert Kennedy climb into the back with General McHugh. Secret Service agent Bill Greer takes the wheel, while Kellerman, Paul Landis, and Dr. Burkley crowd into the front seat beside him.723