by Bryce Zabel
He was there in the room for the reporters and there on the screens for the rest of America to accept the outpouring of emotion in a give-and-take that was cathartic for everyone. Unlike Truman and Eisenhower, presidents past their prime and not especially good-looking to begin with, this president understood what TV could do for him, the bond it could forge with the people who voted for him.
“I’ve never looked forward to taking your questions so much before,” said the President, and the reporters broke up. How could they help it?
The President said he had a brief statement before those questions, and continued:
Our country has been shocked and saddened by the events that took place in Dallas last Friday. I know the American people have many questions that demand answers, as I do. The United States government, however, is secure and operational. Our friends from around the world should know we have been hurt by these events but that we are a strong nation that knows how to rise to a great challenge. Our adversaries should take no advantage of these times. We are as confident today as we were last Friday before any shots were fired. Now I’ll take those questions.
“Mr. President!” Everybody shouted at once. A sea of hands flew into the air. Kennedy pointed to Kevin Brown, the White House correspondent from the Washington Post, who wanted to know if the President was as yet satisfied that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter.
“That certainly seems to be what the FBI believes,” said Kennedy, not using Oswald’s name. “They seem confident that the accused assassin is in the hands of the law. For myself, I am confident the truth will come out during the investigation and at this man’s trial.” His face hardened. “Political murder of any kind has no place in a civil, democratic society.”
The man from the Post got a follow-up. Why did the President refuse to say Oswald’s name?
“The Greek historian Herodotus tells of a man who burned a great temple to win everlasting fame. ‘I know his name,’ Herodotus said, ‘but I will not set it down here.’ And that man who burned the temple because he wanted to be remembered forever has been forgotten for twenty-five hundred years.” It was pure JFK. As it turned out, the story of the ancient Greek had been dredged up by his speechwriter Ted Sorensen, but Kennedy made the lines his own when he delivered them. That talent he had in abundance.
“Mr. President, maybe you don’t want to use his name because you think there are other names that should go along with his. Could he have been part of a larger conspiracy?” This question came from Helen Thomas of UPI.
“Helen, there you go again, always asking these easy questions.” Kennedy’s disarming grin and the subsequent reaction gave him time to collect his thoughts. He had some pretty definite ideas about who might want to shoot him besides Lee Harvey Oswald. His inner circle was already looking into them.
“If the evidence against the accused is strong enough, they’ll indict him,” he said. “If they indict him, he’ll go to trial. If he’s convicted, he’ll suffer the appropriate penalties under the law. If there were others involved, I expect that they will have the same treatment, but I do not have any personal knowledge that there are.”
“Do you expect to be called as a witness?” This came from NBC’s Chet Huntley.
JFK looked surprised, as it was not something he’d given any thought to yet. “I’m not sure a sitting President can be,” he said slowly. “I’d have to consult with the Justice Department before I gave you a firm answer.” He meant he would have to talk to his brother. He went on, “The courts might also have to speak to that issue. It’s an interesting question, Chet. I have already given a statement to FBI agents and, of course, I’ll cooperate with any investigation that might arise out of this.”
That statement took Kennedy into even more uncertain territory. The questions flew fast and furious. Who was investigating now? Would the President appoint a special investigatory panel of his own? What was the next step?
Before the news conference was over, President Kennedy found himself discussing the intricacies of jurisdiction, given that the crime happened in Dallas, and then supporting the FBI’s investigation, even though he personally had no trust whatsoever in any agents working for J. Edgar Hoover. His answer was a stall, one that he knew he could not let stand for long.
If the federal marshals had to stand in for the Secret Service, what agency or investigatory body could be called in to replace the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
This would need to be worked out and soon. The question of who would write the official record of what happened in Dallas, determine who was guilty and of what crime or crimes, had to be decided.
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Chapter 2:
Battle Lines Being Drawn
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November 28, 1963 - December 31, 1963
Giving Thanks
When Thanksgiving came on Thursday, November 28 in 1963, many millions of Americans at their holiday tables gave thanks for the survival of President Kennedy. Pope Paul VI, whom Kennedy had visited in the Vatican only in July, offered a special Thanksgiving blessing for the first Catholic president. In it, he called President Kennedy a “peacemaker” and implied that he had been spared by God to continue his mission.
Look magazine devoted more than a dozen pages and twenty-seven photos to that 1963 celebration. Despite its focus on average Americans, the most famous image from the Look spread was that of the President’s mother, Rose, as she took her son’s face in her hands when she first saw him arrive at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port and kissed his cheek. “The Lord is not done with you, Jack," she reminded him. "I hope you’ve said your prayers.” The President had done so, religiously, since Dallas. Now he was celebrating with the First Lady, their children, and both their extended families. Every cousin, brother, mother or anyone else related to the Kennedy name was there as a show of support for John.
Primetime television went back to regular schedules days before, although there were more news cut-ins — the greatest volume ever since the invention of TV news. As in the White House, three televisions were in the study of the Hyannis Port main house so that Jack and Bobby could keep an eye on ABC, CBS and NBC simultaneously during the network news block. As the botched assassination that had kept everyone spellbound began to loosen its grip on the national consciousness, the Kennedy brothers were wary and focused, shocked by their enemy’s brazen behavior. Should they strike back, surrender, or just go to ground?
Six days out from the ambush at Dealey Plaza, the Kennedys had to come to realize how many moving parts now existed in the management of what had happened there. There were federal and state investigations, a laundry list of potential suspects and a clear battle brewing over jurisdiction.
Massachusetts' newly elected Senator Edward Kennedy, or Teddy as the youngest brother was called, had been told by Jack and Bobby to stay clear of strategy sessions on the grounds that he needed “plausible deniability,” a term then gaining currency in the intelligence community. They had kept him at arm's length to this point, because they wanted Teddy to be able to hear what was being said in the shadows of the Senate without having to offer up any real insight from the White House. At his insistence, however, they relented and brought him into their conversations at Hyannis Port.
On Friday, the blood relations were joined by the political family. The White House team contributed Kenny O’Donnell, Pierre Salinger, Dave Powers and Ted Sorensen. This self-described group of “all the President’s men” was brought together to review the options that would be on the table when Congress returned from the Thanksgiving break in less than seventy-two hours.
It began with them all seated outside at a round table on a cold, dreary afternoon, looking out over the water. Federal agents had established a cordon around the property. They had advised against an outdoor meeting but had been overruled by the President himself.
Web of Suspicion
As the men gathered outside, the scoop from Washington, D.C. was that Senator Eve
rett Dirksen, the Republican leader of the Senate, was going to call for a congressional investigation of the botched assassination at an afternoon news conference. Teddy, being a United States senator, broke the news that everyone had been expecting. They knew Dirksen would try to “stir up his own unique brand of shit” and had been waiting for the moment.
President Kennedy made some small talk, then nodded to Bobby, who announced there would be two primary issues to be debated before dinner. First they would have a spitball session on the issue of what collection of killers had planned the ambush of last Friday afternoon. It would be free-flowing and off the record; no one would ever confirm or deny anything said today on this subject. O’Donnell stopped the conversation when he asked, “What if we were put under oath?”
“Well, Kenny, we would never allow that to happen,” assured the President. He turned to his kid brother. “Of course, the attorney general may have another opinion.”
Bobby assured everyone that no oath-taking was contemplated but that, even if it came to pass, this conversation was protected under the umbrella of “executive privilege.” Under oath, all participants would confirm that they were at a meeting, but any other questions would require them to invoke privilege and refuse to answer. “It is my opinion,” said the top law enforcement officer in the United States, “that this conversation as well as any other conversations you may have had on these subjects, both in the past and in the future, are protected by privilege.”
If there was anyone uncomfortable with accepting this legal strategy and supporting it for the administration, Bobby advised them to leave now. The choice was simple: Stay and learn everything going forward, or resign. Everyone stayed.
The middle Kennedy brother then explained the ground rules for the next hour. He would propose the name of an individual or a group, and O’Donnell, Powers, Salinger, Sorensen and Teddy Kennedy would speculate about what they knew. The President and the attorney general would only contribute after everyone else had spoken. They needed to hear independently what the others had to say. It was safer that way.
The following assessments have, over time, now been confirmed by multiple participants and represent the thinking of the Kennedy inner circle just one week after the shooting.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Hardly anyone in the post-Thanksgiving huddle believed Oswald had acted alone. The information they heard from internal reports and the media shouted otherwise. Emerging facts included Oswald’s working with U2 intelligence at the Naval Air Facility Atsugi in Japan, which was the CIA presence in the Far East. The fact that he had renounced his U.S. citizenship to live in the Soviet Union, then returned and was never arrested for treason seemed to be of key importance. His contradictory work with the violent anti-Castro Cuban community while making public appearances supporting Castro raised another red flag. There were already rumors that Oswald had been on the FBI payroll at $200 a month.
From his jail cell in Dallas, Oswald had found himself a fire-breathing New York attorney by the name of William Kunstler. Kunstler was making a name for himself by defending clients no other lawyer wanted to take on. Oswald phoned Kunstler — he was given free access to a telephone by the Dallas Police Department — and Kunstler agreed to defend him pro bono for as long as his case lasted. In conducting the Oswald legal update, RFK referred to him as “Kuntsler,” deliberately transposing the “t” and “s” in the attorney’s name.
The consensus among the group was that there was a great deal more to this Oswald than met the eye. The fingerprints of the intelligence community were all over him. Even so, it was clear that there was a powerful counter-narrative at work that claimed he had acted alone.
The Soviet Union
In the minutes and hours after the shooting in Dallas, suspicion had focused on the Soviet Union. The fear, not unfounded, was that the Soviets might try to decapitate the American government as a distraction for a nuclear showdown. After President Kennedy’s peace speech before the American University on June 10, 1963, both sides had feared that such an overt peace feeler could trigger a counter-reaction from hard-liners on either side of the Iron Curtain.
As the facts came in, however, and the Soviet leadership, particularly Chairman Khrushchev, seemed genuinely shocked, it appeared less and less likely that the Soviet Union was directly involved. There was Cold War suspicion, but the evidence just wasn’t there. With arsenals on both sides pushing toward fifty thousand nuclear weapons, the fact that the Soviet Union was not a prime suspect in an attack on a U.S. President was good news.
The Hyannis Port assembly gave Soviet involvement a very small likelihood and moved on quickly.
Cuba
Fidel Castro, however, was another matter. So was his country. And so were the Cubans who hated Castro and had come to hate Kennedy with the same vehemence. This island nation, just ninety miles away from the Florida Keys had become a centerpiece of Cold War sound and fury since the Cuban revolution had toppled Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
No one doubted for a moment that Cuba was involved in some way. Mutual antipathy and mistrust had dogged the U.S. and Cuba since the Kennedy administration's disastrous April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The only question was whether Cuban hostility was the organizing principle behind the Dallas attack or whether our Communist neighbor was being used as a smokescreen by other adversaries.
Certainly, Oswald’s membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee alarmed both John and Robert Kennedy. With covert help from the Mafia (which was highly involved in Cuban gambling before the Cuban revolution), the CIA had unsuccessfully sought to murder the new Cuban strongman. Was Castro trying to pay the Americans back in the same coin? Or were angry anti-Castro Cubans, based in New Orleans and Miami, the ones who wanted Kennedy to pay the price for not fully supporting the Bay of Pigs fiasco and for taking an invasion of Cuba off the table during the Missile Crisis the previous year?
As recently as the previous month, the administration had been sending out peace-feelers to Castro through back-channel diplomacy, to the great alarm of Washington national security hard-liners. While it was possible Castro wanted JFK dead, it seemed much more likely that he would know such a situation would be used against him, eventually as a rationale to end his own life and leadership in Cuba.
The issue had another level, however. In order to appease his hard-liners long enough to have a chance at making an accommodation over Cuba, the President had approved continuing a plan known as “Operation Mongoose.” It was aimed at de-stabilizing the Castro regime by any covert means necessary. There was no doubt that from a Cuban perspective, the U.S. was sending some mixed signals out of the White House.
Bobby eventually ended this debate saying “I’ll give this one top priority.” The President admonished him with a dry smile, “Not so fast, Bobby. We’re just getting started.”
Organized Crime
If the Kennedys had a challenging relationship with Cuba, they had no less of one with the powers of the United States Mafia. Despite — or perhaps because of — the common knowledge that family patriarch Joseph Kennedy had accumulated much of his wealth through illegal activity during Prohibition, Bobby Kennedy had chosen, in the late 1950s, to plant his personal and political flag square in the midst of the organized crime issue. He’d made his national debut as chief counsel for the Senate Labor Rackets Committee, squaring off mano-a-mano on national TV against Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa and other highly placed mob figures. He’d also written a 1960 best-seller, The Enemy Within, that attacked organized crime as a greater threat to America than communism.
Indeed, as attorney general, Robert Kennedy had told his fellow crusaders at the Justice Department that failure was no option — they had to crush the mob or the mob would run the country.
That antagonistic relationship alone made a mob hit a real possibility. Yet the thinking went that if the Mafia wanted to kill a Kennedy, they’d probably go for Bobby first. After all, the Mafia godfathers had expected len
iency from the Kennedy administration after their cozy friendship with Joe Kennedy, but instead they were the target of a declaration of war by his children, particularly Bobby.
Still, as with all the suspects, there were twists and turns that made thinking about the mob far more complex than could be seen at first blush.
There was the fact that Joseph Kennedy had convinced some organized crime members to help out with John Kennedy’s 1960 election, despite the fact that Robert's recent efforts to put them out of business were starting to border on obsession.
The greatest twist was that leaders of organized crime had been working hand-in-glove with members of U.S. intelligence to assassinate Castro in a classic “enemy-of-my-enemy” operation.
When President Kennedy excused himself to take a phone call, Bobby took the opportunity to alert the others to a “sensitive situation.” JFK had, from 1960 through 1962, an affair with the Los Angeles socialite Judith Campbell, who was also involved with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. Kennedy had used Campbell (later known as Judith Campbell Exner, after her 1975 marriage to professional golfer Dan Exner) as a messenger to communicate with Giancana, hoping to enlist support for the assassination attempts against Castro. Now the question was whether the mobster’s jealousy prompted him to try to rub out the President.
Bobby reminded the group of the need for discretion in this matter and stated that the only reason Campbell was even relevant to today’s conversation was her connection to Giancana. In other words, anything else in the area of “relationships” was none of the group’s business.
