by Bryce Zabel
The question was: Lead where?
The Three Bad Options
After the review of facts and suspicions, it seemed clear to everyone in this discussion that the nation and the government were at a tipping point. While there was lots of room for improvisation within the options, there were only three basic ways to look at the big picture, none of them particularly good.
Option One: allowing the Soviets and/or Cubans to be blamed. This was deemed unacceptable because it was likely not true and, in any case, stopping nuclear war — not encouraging it — had now become the mission of the Kennedy administration.
Option Two: taking on the conspiracy directly. This could quite possibly lead to a military coup that might destroy the country and would destabilize institutions that control nuclear weapons.
Option Three: covering it all up, at least temporarily. This too was unacceptable, because it required the President and members of the administration to subvert a potential congressional investigation.
Since all the options seemed equally unattractive, the President and his trusted allies were forced to examine each of them more deeply. The first one involved examining incoming intelligence that indicated Oswald was closely aligned with not only the Soviet Union but also the pro-Castro Cubans. This was the line coming in from the CIA. The agency had even produced evidence of Oswald at the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico just the month before. Yet Hoover himself had just told the President that the FBI analysis confirmed that man was not Oswald; neither the photos nor the recordings matched the suspect sitting in the Dallas jail cell.
Given the poor relationship the Kennedys had with the military, the CIA and the FBI, the idea that the CIA intelligence was accurate was given about a fifty-fifty possibility. Just as likely, it had been cooked up by the agency to cover up something the CIA itself had done or been complicit in. The bottom line was that, true or not, following where the intel was leading would force an invasion of Cuba, followed by the real possibility of a full-on nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union.
The second option meant grappling with the strong possibility that the facts would lead to an inside job, conceived and created by members of the CIA and the U.S. military to remove the elected president through assassination in order to take a more hawkish position in the Cold War. The team considered this to be the cold, hard truth of the matter. After all, JFK was engaging in peace initiatives with both Fidel Castro and Nikita Khrushchev and had been privately talking peace and withdrawal from Vietnam. He was therefore not likely to be on Soviet or Cuban hit lists, but conspirators would benefit if the populace believed otherwise. The people would demand some kind of revenge against the Communists who had attacked our President.
It was a hard thing to swallow, this second option. It meant that high-level members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities had somehow hatched a plot that called for killing the President of the United States in a broad-daylight ambush and then blaming it on the Soviet Union and Cuba. This would give the plotters what they needed, a call to war, and it would remove the one man standing in the way of authorizing that war, the commander-in-chief.
To take on this cruel, awful reality would be terrible. If the first option placed the nation at war with the Soviet Union, this one placed the nation at war with itself. To push this fight out into the light of the public might tear the country apart as deeply as had the Civil War. It could lead to a classic military coup with tanks surrounding the White House. The men who had approved this plot, tacitly or not, would not go down easily. The gloves would come off, and they would fight to the end.
The third and final option was to buy time for tempers to cool and facts to be solidified by siphoning off the passion somehow, keeping a lid on the situation at least through the election, so it could be addressed out of strength in the next term. This one involved stopping with the arrest of Oswald, investigating in a way that the public knew was proper and dignified, and confronting the treasonous cabal that had done this deed in the shadows rather than in the headlines.
At the end, President Kennedy spoke. “Well, gentlemen,” he said as if summarizing the options on a dull farm support bill, “we seem to have a choice between nuclear war, a military coup or an illegal cover-up.” No one voiced disagreement.
“We have Chairman Khrushchev behind door number one,” began Bobby Kennedy, ticking off the possibilities on his hand. “Then we have the CIA behind door number two, and we’re behind door number three.” Everyone knew what he meant. It was a reference to a new game show on NBC and its young, agreeable host, Monty Hall.
“Uh, Monty,” said Dave Powers taking on the voice of a nervous housewife, “I’d like to take door number four.”
Alas, for the Kennedy team, there were just the three. To a man, everyone at this meeting preferred in his guts the second option of hunting down and putting on trial every single member of this unspeakable conspiracy. This contemplated hot war demanded that they strike back hard against the traitors — to protect the Kennedy presidency, yes, but also to protect the country from itself. These plotters who had so little regard for the Constitution of the United States had to pay a price. And yet once the floodgates truly opened, it seemed unlikely the President would escape being damaged in some way.
There was, first of all, the practical question of whether this situation could be held under control for the immediate future, specifically until the 1964 election, now less than twelve months away. After the next November, it would either be JFK’s problem or he could try to work with his successor by briefing him fully about what was going on.
President Kennedy had spoken only a few times in this discussion, but had listened carefully. He broke in with a call to “return to the issue of the Constitution.”
The President noted his oath of office called for him to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.” He reviewed the options as such. If the nation were to be destroyed in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, the Constitution would be rendered meaningless. If the military were to seize control of the government from its legitimate civilian authority, that would be a direct violation of the oath’s objective. The third option, however unpalatable, risked neither the destruction of the nation nor the destruction of the Constitution. “Indeed, if navigated properly, it might be possible to buy a year to tack away from the calls for war,” posited the President, “get elected on that platform and, in the end, simply postpone the day of reckoning for the conspirators by kicking it down the road.”
If their decision to choose the third option was an overreach or in any way adverse to the Constitution, said the attorney general, the Constitution itself provided the remedy of impeachment by the House, and trial and removal by the Senate. If that remedy were to be required, the system would survive and the oath would be maintained. Abraham Lincoln felt that way about many of the measures he implemented during the Civil War that some considered unconstitutional. Lincoln felt that could all be sorted out after the war was over and so could be ignored in the middle of the conflict.
“I'm with President Lincoln on this one,” said the President.
“Contain and maintain,” agreed Kenny O’Donnell.
They reassured themselves that they would still seek the truth in time; their actions now merely meant that the truth could be managed to the benefit of the country, particularly in an election year. The President needed a nonpolitical body quietly investigating in order to assure the public. Either a House or Senate committee (or, God forbid, both) would be a circus of the kind not seen since the days of Joseph McCarthy. Bobby, who had worked for McCarthy and retained some affinity for those memories of the man if not his ideals, knew this better than most.
A congressional investigation into Dallas, complete with massive egos dying to get on TV at any cost, simply could not be allowed to happen. It would open doors during an election season that could escalate into political gridlock and chaos. That situation could be exp
loited by the conspirators and might trigger a coup. Worse, it could inflame Cold War adversaries in both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to miscalculate. The Cuban Missile Crisis had been a terrible near-miss. “The world might not be so lucky a second time,” reminded the President.
Sounds of Silence
By now, the meeting at Hyannis Port was being fueled by a third pot of coffee. “How do we stop them?” O’Donnell asked. “How do we stop the U.S. House and the Senate from doing what they have a legitimate right to do without making them wonder why we’re stopping them?”
“National security,” Bobby Kennedy said at once.
John Kennedy lit a rare cigar and drew on it before speaking: “We can’t use that without scaring people and making them ask even more questions.” The statement hung in the air like cigar smoke, as people read between the lines: Asking questions in an election year was to be avoided at almost any cost.
Pierre Salinger could hold forth with reporters for hours on end but when he was in with the President and his men, he often held back. So it was surprising when he blurted out, “It’s simple. Congress can’t do the job right during an election, and the people will recognize that after we explain it properly.”
It was almost December, argued the Press Secretary. The 1964 election, just eleven months away, would feature a hotly contested presidential race, made even more unpredictable by current events. Therefore, the U.S. Congress could hardly be trusted to investigate the attack in Dallas. They would be reaching conclusions in the midst of highly charged partisan wars that were certain to exist. Impartiality would be impossible.
Kenneth O’Donnell agreed to that line of reasoning. “The administration has a moral obligation to set up an honest nonpartisan investigation. The matter is too important to be left to Congress. We need to form an independent committee.” It was quite an argument, given that Congress was exactly where the Constitution said important matters had to go.
Kennedy exhaled cigar smoke. “In the Navy, we’d call that a gun deck job,” he said, using a term usually reserved for an exercise that was bullshit from top to bottom. “But it’s probably the way to go.”
As a general rule, President Kennedy had little patience for committees and the meetings they liked to have. His back pain made sitting through them excruciating, and usually they had no real purpose and accomplished nothing of value. If you wanted something done, you surely shouldn’t ask a committee to do it. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he’d been happy to let Bobby run the ExComm and not just because those attending would speak more freely if the President wasn’t in the room.
In his own mind, JFK thought a committee would be no more competent at its work than most of the ones he had served on since going to Congress. It would, however, keep the work private until the election. Then, with a second term, the facts could fall where they may. In retrospect, it was an unusually optimistic position.
Everyone had his own opinion about what needed to happen next, particularly who should head any committee, but all waited for Bobby to go first. This happened often, and it was clear that he was speaking for his brother. “I’ve received some suggestions, but there’s one in particular we may want to explore.” He was asked where that suggestion came from. “It’s better for all of us if we keep the source confidential,” he said, ending that line of questioning.
The suggestion was Earl Warren, chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.
“We talked this morning. I asked him hypothetically if he would lead such a committee, and he said yes. He said he would be honored, as a matter of fact, if that’s the direction we decide to go.”
So there it was. “That’s not bad,” thought O’Donnell out loud. “But can we trust him not to go wandering off on his own?”
It was a valid question. Earl Warren was a Republican. He’d been the attorney general and the Governor of California, and he’d run for Vice President with Thomas Dewey back in 1948 against Truman. He wanted to run for President on his own in 1952. After being appointed to the Supreme Court by President Eisenhower, Warren had, to many, veered left during his years as chief justice. Now the John Birch Society had him targeted. “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards dotted the landscape, especially throughout the South.
The President weighed in. “He understands that we can’t let a nuclear war start because a few congressmen need to distract voters from their own incompetence.”
Bobby nodded. “Warren will play ball. I’ll put Hoover in charge of the investigation. He’s already made up his mind about Oswald. We’ll just see that they don’t report until after November.”
The meeting broke up a few minutes later. The administration had a plan.
The Warren Omission
On Monday, December 2, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11130, creating a commission to investigate the assassination of Governor John B. Connally of Texas, the death of Special Agent Clint Hill and the death of Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit on November 22, 1963. The commission was directed to evaluate all the facts and circumstances surrounding the ambush, including whether or not it was specifically targeted against the President, and to report its findings and conclusions to the President for submission to the U.S. Congress with all due haste. Kennedy explained the mandate of the commission to reporters in the White House Briefing Room:
The subject of the inquiry is a chain of events that saddened and shocked the people of the United States and, indeed, the world. By my order establishing this commission, I hope to avoid parallel investigations and to concentrate fact-finding in a body having the broadest national mandate.
Then the President introduced Chief Justice Earl Warren, who looked like everybody’s kindly grandfather. Joining President Kennedy for the announcement, Warren addressed the assembled press in a dark blue suit instead of his usual judicial robes.
We will conduct a thorough and independent investigation of these tragic events. We will cooperate with the Dallas Police Department in any way we can. Obviously, they have a criminal investigation and trial to conduct. We do not want to interfere with Mr. Oswald’s right to a fair trial. If he is found guilty, we do hope to determine whether his role was of his own device or whether he acted as part of a possible conspiracy.
The chief justice announced the makeup of what was nearly instantly called the Warren Commission: two senators and two representatives, split evenly between the Republicans and Democrats; plus four members from outside the Beltway who were not actively serving in Congress; and of course, Warren himself.
The senators were Washington Democrat Warren Magnuson and none other than Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen. Kennedy and his team had decided that the devil they knew was better than the devil they didn’t. Dirksen wanted the status of being on the committee. But even his ego would not be enough for him to try to take over the spokesman’s position from the chief justice of the Supreme Court. With his own position in history secured, Dirksen was the first to condemn his own idea of a congressional investigation as “duplicative.”
As far as senators went, Warren Magnuson was deeply experienced, well liked and certainly of Dirksen’s stature, if not his prominence. Magnuson, it was also pointed out by a few news reports, had been the beneficiary of a 1961 fundraiser where President Kennedy had come to Seattle and gotten three thousand people to pay $100 each to hear JFK sing the senator’s praises. The two men had history in the club that was the U.S. Senate. The Kennedy team felt he would be loyal if they needed him on a particular issue.
The representatives were Democrat Hale Boggs of Arkansas and Republican Florence Dwyer of New Jersey. Boggs was the Majority Whip in the House and got the job after Majority Leader Carl Albert said he could not run the House and serve on the commission at the same time. Dwyer was one of the very few women in either the House or Senate. The Kennedy team liked her because she had sponsored the Equal Pay Act that had just passed. Looking ahead to the 1964 election, it would be good to have appoin
ted a woman who believed in equal rights and was from the opposing party. When President Kennedy had first met her, Dwyer had said, “A Congresswoman must look like a girl, act like a lady, and think like a man.” For Kennedy, she was the perfect Republican.
Even better, the thinking went, the four “politicians” could be balanced out with four others who could be presented as keeping the Warren Commission impartial. Appointed were former president of the World Bank, John J. McCloy; civil rights leader James Farmer; ailing news legend Edward R. Murrow; and New York City’s young superintendent of schools, Calvin Gross.
These four so-called “wild cards” were carefully calibrated so that none would stand out enough to cause Congress to reject the idea of the Warren Commission in favor of its own committee. McCloy’s reputation was unassailable. Farmer brought along the black community. Murrow had already received congressional approval for his Voice of America work. Gross was a wild card within the wild cards, selected for his can-do attitude on the front lines of education.
“This is one advantage an independent commission has over a congressional investigation,” Kennedy offered. “By the very nature of things, a congressional investigation is bound to be partisan. This commission will be anything but.”
The time estimated for the job was about a year, plus or minus. The public reaction to Oswald’s trial and whether any further arrests would be made were unknown elements in the equation. As for the hot potato that this could become, given next year’s presidential primaries and general election, both the President and the chief justice agreed the report would not be delayed or moved forward based on any political considerations, be they favorable or unfavorable to the administration.
