Surrounded by Enemies
Page 27
Yet even through the dissolution of both his marriage and his political administration, John F. Kennedy found a way to give meaning to it all. He fought long and hard enough to ensure that all thinking people in the United States understood that far more importance hung on these matters than whether the President’s relationship with his wife was sound or his health perfect.
There is one matter on which all sources agree: On November 22, 1963, most of this nation admired John F. Kennedy and approved of his job performance. What has turned out to be so vexing about the post-Dallas revelations is how so many others could have wished him dead at a time when his personal popularity with the majority of the American people was authentic and solid. The collision of these two forces outside the Texas School Book Depository near the fateful overpass at Dealey Plaza reverberates to this day.
In the final analysis, the venal men who tried to kill President Kennedy with actual bullets in Dallas switched tactics to political assassination in Washington, D.C. They saw a chance to break his career into pieces with his own actions. This is not to make excuses for the President, or to argue for pardon, but only to state the obvious: He himself had given vicious enemies the weapons they would use against him.
John Kennedy survived his brush with death on November 22, 1963 and then suffered an almost unimaginable fate. He became a mere mortal.
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Acknowledgements
This labor began with a love of President Kennedy, whom I shed tears for as a student in Laura Braden’s fourth-grade class at Peter Boscow Elementary in Hillsboro, Oregon. All students came to lunch learning the President had been hit by gunfire, and we left knowing that he was dead. Mrs. Braden, a tough old cookie, cried at the table and didn’t force us to eat our vegetables as she normally did. Then we went home and watched TV with our parents all weekend.
My father, Harvey Zabel, worked as a high school history teacher and left me a treasured thirty-five-cent paperback edition of Profiles in Courage with its underlined highlights and his handwritten side comments. Through his eyes and his library, I’ve been able to see how history often springs from a series of close calls that, had they gone another way, would have had dramatic and profound impact. Equally important to this literary exercise, however, was the influence of my mother, Lucile Zabel, who gave me permission from a young age to think differently than all the other kids.
After years of laying out the structure of this book, I approached the gifted alternative history writer Harry Turtledove about collaborating to bring it to market in the mid-2000s. Harry and I briefly worked together but deadlines and commitments pulled us apart, and I’ve carried on with his blessing. I’m grateful to Harry for his continued support, particularly of this final version, for which he has generously contributed an important Foreword. If you’d like to dive deeper into alternative history, I highly recommend Harry Turtledove’s work.
Author Richard Dolan provided a wonderful Preface that made me remember what a true pleasure it was to write our book A.D. After Disclosure together. He is a grounded force of reality in the sometimes lawless UFO community of opinions. If you want to know the ground truth about UFO history, read Richard Dolan’s work.
The first person to engage my passion for an alternative version of the Kennedy assassination was Brent V. Friedman, my creative partner on the primetime NBC series Dark Skies. Back in 1996, Brent and I co-created that series and produced twenty hours of television drama that made Jack Kennedy’s death and Bobby Kennedy’s life central parts of the story.
My mentor out in Hollywood, Bill Asher, was a close friend of the Rat Pack and, by extension, the Kennedys. Bill directed JFK’s inaugural party the night before his famous “Ask Not” speech and Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” performance. He also told me about being at parties where the President-to-be acted in ways that seem wildly dangerous from today’s perspective. He gave me a clear understanding of how those times were so different from today.
My thanks also go to Kennedy assassination expert Don Clark, who has been my true north on the issues of the conspiracy to change the leader of the U.S. government. To all the other researchers who have written about President Kennedy and the circumstances of his death over the years, it can only be said that anything published today is informed by your work and dedication. In this group I include everyone from author Mark Lane to filmmaker Oliver Stone, two men whose pursuit of clarity, justice and closure in the death of John Kennedy has made it easier for others.
My appreciation for making this book possible in crisp, clean, readable form extends to graphic artist Lynda Karr, who assembled the striking images that grace its cover and inside illustrations, and editor Eric Estrin, whose facility with language equals his sense of drama, story structure and character development. Both have been my collaborators on the film review site MovieSmackdown.com for years. Hillcrest Media (Publish Green and Mill City Press) brought a powerful team of talented professionals to the race, and they took these materials and made them ready for market in beautiful form, and in record time. My close partner in the hard work of telling the world about this project in a competitive media environment has been Jerry Lazar, a man whose experience and knowledge helped us find paths to publicity that are sometimes audacious, but always effective.
Finally, I’d like to thank my family for allowing me to keep my collection of Time and Newsweek in all its pre-digital bulk for all these years. Jackie, Lauren, Jonathan and Jared have indulged this storage challenge and so many other peculiarities I’ve brought into their lives, and I am eternally grateful. They have given me the motivation to carry on whenever doubts have threatened to overtake me and, always, courage.
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About the Author
CNN correspondent-turned-screenwriter Bryce Zabel has created five primetime network television series and worked on a dozen TV writing staffs. A produced feature writer in both live-action and animation, he has written and produced for nearly all major networks and studios and collaborated with talents that include Steven Spielberg and Stan Lee. He has worked for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, HBO, Showtime, Syfy, Sony, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Universal, Paramount, Hallmark, USA, and Animal Planet, among others.
In 2008, Zabel received the Writers Guild of America (WGA) award for writing his third four-hour Hallmark mini-series, Pandemic. He has received credit on other produced films and miniseries that include Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Blackbeard and The Poseidon Adventure. He wrote SyFy’s first original film, Official Denial, and the first film in the Unsolved Mysteries MOW franchise, Victim of Love. His end-of-World War II true story, The Last Battle, is currently in active studio development.
Zabel served as the elected chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, the first writer in that position since Rod Serling. During his term, he was responsible for handling the post 9/11 Emmy awards, the negotiations which led to an unprecedented 250 percent license fee increase for the telecast, and the move to the Nokia Theater at L.A. Live.
He has been an award-winning on-air journalist for PBS (investigative reporter), CNN (correspondent) and NBC (local news).
In addition to the Emmy-winning Dark Skies (NBC), Zabel has received the WGA “created by” or “developed by” credit on Kay O’Brien (CBS), M.A.N.T.I.S. (FOX), The Crow: Stairway to Heaven (SYN) and E.N.G. (CTV). His other series work includes Steven Spielberg’s Taken, L.A. Law, Life Goes On and Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Besides two WGA nominations and one win, his work has been nominated by the Environmental Media Association, Mystery Writers of America, Golden Mike, Gemini and Emmy awards. He is a member of the DGA (Directors Guild of America), SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and the WGA. As an adjunct professor for the USC School of Cinematic Arts and the Marshall School of Business, Zabel taught “Produce or Perish,” a graduate-level class.
Zabel is an often-featured speaker, moderator, keynoter and panelist, who has appeared in numerou
s TV interviews that include The Today Show, CBS Morning News, Politically Incorrect, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and Extra, as well as being interviewed by news organizations that include Time, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Daily Variety, Hollywood Reporter and others.
His non-fiction book, A.D. After Disclosure, published by New York’s Career Press in 2012, was chosen by Barnes and Noble as a “New & Noteworthy” selection and was ordered to a third printing in 2013.
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Coming Up from alt.Worlds
Surrounded by Enemies: What if Kennedy Survived Dallas? is the first book published under the alt.Worlds imprint.
These are full-length books, combining the look and feel of non-fiction journalism and reporting with alternative and counter-factual historical concepts. This book you’ve just read, for example, uses the device of drawing on vintage newsmagazine coverage to write a fiftieth anniversary retrospective of the attack on President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas.
There are other books coming in this line, also from author Bryce Zabel, and we’d like to tell you about them.
Next up will be Across the (Other) Universe: What if the Beatles Stayed Together? This work tells a powerful story of recovered memory from a mental patient who claims to have crossed over to our world from a parallel reality where the Beatles did not break up in 1969-1970 but continued to record and perform together through a large part of the 1970s. It will come complete with the albums and songs the band made famous that were not released as Beatles songs in our own world.
Following that Magical History Tour comes In the Shadow of the Saucers: What if Truman Disclosed Roswell? The historical pivot point in this work grows from the events of July 1947 where, in our timeline, a crash recovery in New Mexico was covered up by the U.S. military, and a policy of “deny and ridicule” regarding flying saucers was put in place. In this book, the military is twenty-four hours slower in responding to the fast-unfolding events, forcing President Harry Truman to confirm a saucer crash and turning the 1950s into an era of paranoia, not about Communists but about alien beings.
We hope you’ll continue enjoying the alt.Worlds brand for many years to come. It’s guaranteed to be a history course that you’ve never taken before.
We welcome your feedback. Visit our website: http://www.surroundedbyenemies.com
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Seven Days in November
November 22, 1963 - November 28, 1963
From the Editors of Top Story
"The Day JFK Dodged a Bullet"
Dealey Plaza
Hickory Hill
Parkland Memorial
Love Field
Dallas Police Department
Andrews Air Force Base
First Brothers
The Morning After
Ground Truth in Dallas
The Fortress at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
On the Record
Thanking God
Johnson Agonizes
Change of Plans
A Tale of Two Funerals
Another Profile in Courage
Chapter 2: Battle Lines Being Drawn
November 28, 1963 - December 31, 1963
Giving Thanks
Web of Suspicion
Lee Harvey Oswald
The Soviet Union
Cuba
Organized Crime
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Secret Service
Vice President Lyndon Johnson
All Or Some Of The Above
Fight for Jurisdiction
The Three Bad Options
Sounds of Silence
The Warren Omission
Oswald Casts a Shadow
Christmas Truce
Chapter 3: An Election With Consequences
January 1, 1964 - December 31, 1964
A Family Retreat
State of Whose Union?
Life in a Foxhole
To Run or Not to Run?
Parallel Tracks
Back Channels
Till There Was You
The Primary Thing
Rebalancing the Ticket
The State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald
Opening Arguments
Nowhere to Hide
A Plea to Leave
Stroke of Midnight
Choices and Echoes
All the Way With LBJ
Cursed
Split Decisions
Tiebreaker
Distant Thunder
General Anxiety
The Arguments
Now What?
Chapter 4: Proxy Wars
January 1, 1965 - August 23, 1965
Second Chances
Night Vision
Moving On
Shadow Voices
Whispers in the Dark
Justice Delayed
Flashpoints
Strangelove Leaks
Assassination Theater
Changing the Subject
Mission to Moscow
The Secret Life of the President
The Debate
The Final Hours
The Top Story at Top Story
Better Late Than Never
Ground Zero
The Day After
Blowback
Catch-25
A Tale of Two Committees
Chapter 5: Impeachment and Trial
August 23, 1965 - February 25, 1966
The War Not at Home
Impeachment
The People’s Grand Jury
House Politics
Blackout
Tale of the Tapes
The Case for Impeachment
Article One: Abuse of Power
Article Two: Obstruction of Justice
Article Three: Contempt of Congress
Coal for Christmas
Failure to Launch
Go Away, LBJ
Trial
The Winter of Our Discontent
The Century Club
Dallas on Trial Again
New York Stake
Clean-Slaters
The End
The Long Count
Fall from Grace
Chapter 6: Life After
Closing the Book
Justice Swerved
Lyndon Baines Johnson
The Conspirators
David Powers
Aftermath
The Ex-President and the Ex-First Lady
Politics Continue
End of an Era
Whodunit?
Strangelove’s Identity Revealed
Another Torch Is Passed
The Unmaking of the President
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Coming Up from alt.Worlds