The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  Fritz said that Oswald would find a phone in the jail on the fifth floor. He would have to make the call himself, at his expense. The captain asked him why he lived on Beckley and his wife lived in Irving. Oswald appeared to be faintly amused, as though, a man among men, the incongruities of women were beyond understanding. He explained that Marina was living with a friend, Mrs. Ruth Paine. Marina was teaching Mrs. Paine to speak Russian, and in return Mrs. Paine gave Marina and the babies a room. Oswald suggested that it worked out all right for all parties; he stayed in town, except on weekends, because he worked in town.

  The men in the room—Fritz, Detectives Boyd and Sims, FBI Agent Bookhout—blinked at him. “Why don’t you stay out there with them?” Fritz said. “Well,” Oswald said, the Paines didn’t get along well. They were separated a lot of the time. “Don’t you have a car?” “No, I don’t. The Paines have two cars, but they don’t use them.”

  “What kind of politics you believe in?” Fritz said. Oswald required no time for a response. “I don’t have any,” he said. “I am a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. They have offices in New York, but I was a secretary of the New Orleans chapter when I lived there.” Fritz leaned back in his broad straight chair. “I support the Castro revolution,” Oswald said, without being asked. “Do you belong to the Communist Party?” “No, I never had a card. I belong to the American Civil Liberties Union and I paid five dollars dues.”

  “Why did you carry that pistol into the show?” “I told you why. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I bought it several months ago in Forth Worth and that’s all.” “You answer pretty quick. Ever been questioned before?” In a trice, the cipher felt himself become an intelligent man to be reckoned with. “Oh yes. I’ve been questioned by the FBI”—he nodded toward Bookhout—“for a long time. They use different methods. There is the hard way, the soft way, the buddy method—I’m familiar with all of them. Right now, I don’t have to answer any questions until I speak to my attorney.”

  “Oswald, you can have one any time you want.” “I don’t have the money to call Mr. Abt.” “Call him collect or you can have another lawyer if you want. You can arrange it upstairs.” “Thanks.” “Ever been arrested before?” Oswald nodded. “I was in a little trouble with the Fair Play for Cuba thing in New Orleans. I had a street fight with some anti-Castro Cubans. We had a debate on a New Orleans radio station.”

  “What do you think of President Kennedy and his family?” “I like the President’s family very well. I have my own views about national politics.” “How about clearing this thing up with a polygraph test?” “Oh, no. I turned one down with the FBI and I certainly won’t take one now.” The captain realized that this was not an easy subject. This man, whatever he was, communist, nut, socialist, malcontent, Marxist, was about to show off his knowledge of how to fence with the law without getting hurt. Fritz swung around to face the FBI man. “Any questions?” he said.

  The men in Love Field tower had a respite. The empty runways, with one long diagonal, looked like a crooked capital H. Air Force One had twice asked for taxi instructions, but the generator was still standing under its nose, breathing power into the bird. There was time to stand up and stretch. The men walked around the glass enclosure, commenting on the Dallas catastrophe and listening to the local gossip. There was a story that a Secret Service man had been killed with President Kennedy. No one had heard about it officially, but the story went that the government was keeping it quiet and had carried the body away secretly because the agent was part of the plot to kill the President.

  “Look,” one of the tower men said. An ambulance with red blinker showing was coming off Mockingbird Lane into the airport. It was followed by two cars, all at high speed. Two Dallas officers and some Secret Service men ran to the fence and watched the small motorcade return John F. Kennedy to the place where he had shaken many hands. The ambulance made the turn through the fence. So did the second car. The third was stopped by the bodies of the lawmen. Vernon Oneal, middle-aged and proud, got out to protest.

  That was his ambulance inside the fence. It was supposed to lead him to his own mortuary at 3206 Oaklawn. Something wrong was going on because the driver had come to the airport. It was his ambulance and he had a right to be inside the fence. The President was in an Oneal casket.* The Secret Service men glanced at him and walked away. They left him to the mercies of the local police. Mr. Oneal was told firmly that he could not get inside the fence. In time the ambulance would be returned. He could wait if he pleased.

  The rear ramp of AF-1 was opened briefly and a host of Secret Service men performed a final service for a dead chieftain. They carried the bronze casket up. It weighed 400 pounds. The body weighed 180. The men staggered and stepped forward and tilted the big box and, halfway up, appeared about to drop it. Two crewmen came down the steps and tried to wedge themselves along the sides. At last it got to the top, and a group of Dallas citizens stood behind the fence, unable to contain the tears. Clint Hill saw a photographer, “I’ll get him” he said to Mrs. Kennedy. “No,” she said. “I want them to see what they have done.”

  The door slammed shut. The casket was dragged across the floor. O’Brien noticed that a space had been made for the casket. He told the agents to secure it on the left side of the plane barely inside the rear door. Mrs. Kennedy dropped into a seat at the breakfast nook opposite. She appeared to be spent. The woman slumped as though lifeless. Kenneth O’Donnell motioned for the rear door to be secured and guarded. He requested that the ramp be pulled away.

  At the moment, he was scared. O’Donnell was certain that official Dallas would protest the kidnapping of the President’s body. If they rammed through an order forbidding AF-1 to take off, the authorities could besiege the plane in their zeal to adhere to a local law. They could show up any moment in force and demand an autopsy. The President’s trusted assistant and friend was determined that this was not going to happen. The only way to forestall it, he was sure, was to get this plane the hell out of Dallas before anyone realized what had happened.

  He looked up, as the crew was tossing bracing straps over the casket, and saw General Godfrey McHugh. “Run forward and tell Colonel Swindal to get the plane out of here,” he said. McHugh went through the corridor as fast as he could. Coming up the front ramp were two associates of Johnson: Jack Valenti, a Texas press relations expert, and Bill D. Moyers, the bespectacled preacher from the small plane. General McHugh passed everyone without a glance. He told Colonel Swindal to take off for Washington at once. “The President,” he said, “is aboard.”

  The passengers were growing in number. There was no passenger manifest. Some, like Liz Carpenter, secretary to Mrs. Johnson, reported to AF-2 and were told that the Johnsons were now on AF-1. The Kennedy people were aboard because this was the aircraft they had arrived on. Malcolm Kilduff, standing at the foot of the front ramp waiting for the newspaper pool car, was astonished to hear that President Johnson wanted to speak to him at once. The assistant press secretary did not know that Johnson was on this plane.

  Few others knew about it. Larry O’Brien, still crouching over the casket, looked up to see the President and Mrs. Johnson coming down the aisle from the private stateroom. He was flabbergasted. The man was President. This was Air Force One.He saw the Johnsons move silently over to the breakfast nook. Mrs. Kennedy looked up and emerged from her reverie. There can be no doubt that she was surprised to see them aboard this aircraft. It is understandable if she felt resentful, because the trip home to Washington would normally be a “wake,” a private mourning.

  It might even seem, to her shocked gaze, that the Johnsons were “taking over” abruptly. Until a few hours ago, they would not even be invited aboard AF-1 because security dictated that the President and the Vice-President must fly on different planes. Normally, she was accustomed to seeing them perpetually at the foot of the ramp, welcoming the President and the First Lady of the land to each city. Sometimes there were three or four such welcomes
in a day.

  There were no welcomes now. The Johnsons were trying to find the proper words for a grief they felt but could not enunciate. The words came out soft and reassuring, but they were empty vessels. Mrs. Kennedy took Mrs. Johnson’s hand in hers. “Oh, Lady Bird,” she said. “It’s good that we’ve always liked you two so much.” It was a non sequitur, but this was a time for feelings, not the analysis of sentiment. Mrs. Johnson began to weep again. “Oh,” said Mrs. Kennedy, “what if I had not been there? I’m so glad I was there.”

  The President stood big and helpless. Like many men, he quailed in the face of grief and could not cry. Mrs. Johnson kept thinking, in horror: “This immaculate woman . . . this immaculate woman caked with blood, her husband’s blood . . . That right glove is caked. . . .” She suggested that she get someone to help her change. The iron returned to Mrs. Kennedy. “Oh, no,” she said. “Perhaps later I’ll ask Mary Gallagher. But not right now.” She was determined to appear in civilized Washington in these clothes and show the world what Dallas had done. Her clothing, her forlorn expression, were more eloquent than the bronze casket.

  ”Oh, Mrs. Kennedy,” said Lady Bird. “You know we never even wanted to be Vice-President and now, dear God, it’s come to this.” Mrs. Kennedy nodded. She was aware of the big fight in Texas between her husband and Lyndon Johnson—a dirty party fight in which both sides impugned the motives of the other—and of how, when Kennedy won his party’s nomination for the presidency, Johnson didn’t want the second position, even when Kennedy offered it. At this moment, the man who didn’t want the vice-presidency (“Why should I trade a Senate vote for a position with no vote?”) had backed into the leadership of his country because a nobody with a rifle saw an opportunity to become a somebody.

  The disparity between the Kennedys and Johnsons was apparent to both. The Kennedys were effete Europeans, in manner and address; the Johnsons were earthy Americans. It was not a detriment to either family to be what it aspired to be, to nourish its own style of living and its culture. The subtle bon mot was an effervescent joy to John F. Kennedy and his Jacqueline; it was lost on the Johnsons. The beauty of the hill country of Texas was lost to the Kennedys; to the Johnsons, a frame farmhouse, hard furniture, and cattle silhouetted against a sunset were matters which brought serenity to the heart.

  The latest book, the newest song, the gossip of high society, the galas at the watering places were daily food and drink to the Kennedys. To the contrary, it was said of Lyndon Johnson that he could ruin a good suit of clothes merely by putting it on; his humor was a rough Texas guffaw and his wife enjoyed buying dresses from a shop rack. Johnson was closer to the work-hard-and-fight-’em-all philosophy of old Joseph P. Kennedy than John Kennedy was. Mrs. Kennedy enjoyed her lack of knowledge of politics; Mrs. Johnson worked full-time as her husband’s assistant from the time he left Texas to take a seat in the House of Representatives. Lady Bird also found time to take her inheritance and build it into a television and ranch fortune.

  The meeting in the back of the plane was awkward for both sides. Suddenly the simple, blunt people were running the United States of America. The adroit, the charming, the sophisticated Kennedys were out. A single blow had reversed the roles, and no one was prepared for it. No one said: “Now the Kennedys must move out of the White House and the Johnsons will move in,” but the shock wave of probabilities moved through Air Force One as the passengers sat in gloomy meditation. When General McHugh said: “The President is aboard,” he assumed that there was only one. Many of the passengers could not acknowledge Johnson’s supremacy, even to themselves.

  The President and the First Lady retired from the aft compartment, and Johnson went into the private bedroom to make certain that Marie Fehmer had the oath typewritten correctly. He was barely in the chair when the door opened, and Mrs. Kennedy was in the doorway. She looked as though this was the final humiliation. The President jumped to his feet, asked Miss Fehmer to leave, and apologized to Mrs. Kennedy. He said he had been checking something—“there’s a little privacy here”—and was leaving at once. He got out, and went into the main stateroom, the area of desks and couches and television sets, and Mrs. Kennedy disappeared into the lavatory.

  The pool car arrived and Malcolm Kilduff waved to the men to get aboard at once: Merriman Smith of UPI and Charles Roberts of Newsweek magazine. A third man—Sid David of Westinghouse Broadcasting Company—was told that he could cover the swearing in, but could not return to Washington on AF-1 because there wasn’t sufficient room.

  In the President’s cabin, Johnson’s intimates sat watching television. They understood little of what had happened, and, isolated in the plane, the only avenue of information was television or radio. David Brinkley, in Washington, was speaking:

  “Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Eunice Kennedy Shriver arrived at the White House a few minutes ago to go to Andrews Air Force Base—perhaps to fly to Dallas. Robert Kennedy will fly to Texas. Congress has recessed, and several members of Congress have given their reaction to the President’s death. Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana is ‘shocked.’ Senator Alan Bible of Nevada calls it ‘one of the great tragedies of our lifetime.’ Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia is ‘deeply shocked.’ Similar sentiments are being expressed by all members of Congress.”

  On the other side of the airport, Mayor Earle Cabell had a complement of Texas congressmen who desired to return to Washington. In the distance, the brilliant blue and white of AF-1 appeared to be standing dead in the sun, but the mayor was afraid that it would take off at any moment, so he asked the nearby Southwest Airmotive Company to please contact the tower and ask permission to drive across the runways to the President’s plane. The tower sent a police car to escort the distinguished men, who got aboard before Judge Sarah Hughes arrived.

  Johnson knew that this inauguration would go down in history as one of the most somber. His impulse was to have it done quickly and secretly and to bring his dead predecessor back to Washington. He sent Youngblood for Kilduff. “Do we have to have the press in here?” he said. Kilduff had no doubt. “Yes, Mr. President. There should be press representation. Also Captain Stoughton should be here to make pictures of the scene.” The President rubbed his big hand down the front of his face. “All right,” he said. “O.K., Mac. If we must have them, then we might as well invite the other people to come in and witness the ceremony.”

  The President summoned O’Donnell and O’Brien. The Roman consuls left Caesar on his shield and sat with Johnson, listening. The new President admired these men. He wasn’t certain that they were superior to his own team, but he knew that Ken and Larry had spent almost three years at the font of power in the White House, and they had an intimate working knowledge of the executive branch of government which he lacked. Johnson asked both men to remain in government. “I need you more than he did,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the back of the plane. Both men glanced at each other and said they would give it some thought.

  Of the two, O’Donnell was the more unyielding. For him, it was Kennedy or nobody. He drew a grim joy from his intense personal loyalty to Kennedy. It was not a transferable commodity. He’d think about it. So would O’Brien, but O’Brien was an intelligent redhead who, in spite of his deep affection for Kennedy, could envision a world without him. He would like to continue in government, especially in the daily political herding of votes in Congress and the brawling atmosphere of the quadrennial campaign for the White House. Yes, he would give it some thought.

  O’Donnell didn’t want to discuss this thing. His concern was to get this airplane out of Texas, and he hunched forward, listening to the President, hoping every moment he would hear the plane move off the blocks to waddle to the head of the runway. He was still convinced, even in the sanctity of United States government property, that official Dallas would be pounding at the doors any moment. He asked the President about taking off.

  “I talked to Bobby,” Johnson said. “They think I should be sworn in right
here. Judge Hughes is on her way—should be here any minute.” O’Donnell gave up all desire to burden the President with his personal problem. They sat watching Cecil Stoughton, the White House photographer, try to line up his cameras in a corner of the stateroom. “I would like you fellows to stay, to stand shoulder to shoulder with me,” Johnson said. The Kennedy assistants did not commit themselves. They watched the photographer without seeing him. The loyalty of the OOP group—O’Donnell, O’Brien, and Powers—was innocent of patriotism; it was personal fealty to a man. The man was gone. They had no leader, no direction, no future.

  A. C. Johnson came up North Beckley, driving carefully. He made his swing into the driveway of his rooming house. His wife noticed the strange cars in front. It didn’t require much time to pinpoint the excitement. The Dallas detectives and two government men were in the living room, going over the roster of roomers with Earlene Roberts. The stout housekeeper said, “They’re looking for a Lee Oswald, but we don’t have anybody by that name.”

  Mr. Johnson, a tall lean man who earned his dollars the hard way at the little restaurant and in the rooming house, asked the men who they were. They identified themselves and said that they were looking for a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Johnson shook his head. His wife said she usually remembered the names, but they never had an Oswald. One of the policemen said: “We came out without a search warrant.” In a moment another one was phoning the nearest substation at 4020 West Illinois to get a warrant.