End of Days

by James L. Swanson

  The two Secret Service agents in the front seat could do nothing to help the president other than get him to the hospital as fast as possible, reaching speeds of more than 80 miles per hour.

  In the jump seats behind the agents, Nellie Connally tended to her stricken husband. His wounds were painful, he was losing blood, and he lapsed in and out of consciousness. As Nellie held him in her arms, she promised him that everything would be all right.

  Behind the Connallys, the backseat was a tangle of intertwined arms and legs and bodies. After Clint Hill had saved Jackie from falling to the street and pushed her back inside the car, she grabbed the president and held him close. Hill sprawled on top of Jackie and the president to shield them from any further gunfire. In his awkward, spread-eagled position over Kennedy and his wife, it was hard to hang on as the car reached top speed. The wind blew the sunglasses off Hill’s face.

  As the car sped on, Jackie cried out, “They’ve shot his head off! I have his brains in my hands.”

  Then she was heard speaking to her husband: “Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack. Jack, Jack, what have they done to you?” He did not answer.

  Under Hill’s human shield, the Kennedys rode to Parkland in contorted, sideways positions, lying partly on the backseat and partly on the floor. Blood pooled in the footwells of the floor.

  Jackie tried to close Kennedy’s gaping wound with her hands. “I tried to hold the top of his head down, maybe I could keep it in . . . but I knew he was dead.”

  She remembered the puzzled, astonished look Oswald’s bullet had frozen on the president’s face. “His head was so beautiful,” she said.

  LESS THAN ten minutes after the third shot, the presidential limousine careened into the emergency-room driveway at Parkland Hospital, followed by the Secret Service trail car and the vice president’s vehicle. Agents leaped out with guns drawn. One agent brandished an automatic rifle.

  There were no medical carts awaiting the stricken president at the entrance. Some Secret Service agents ran inside and yelled for a cart. Hospital staffers rolled two to the car. They lifted the broken body of Governor Connally from his seat, and his wife exited the vehicle.

  The president’s bodyguards wanted to snatch him from the backseat as quick as they could and rush him inside. Time, they believed, was of the essence. Once Clint Hill got out of the car, the other agents got a clear view of the backseat for the first time. Other cars from the motorcade arrived at Parkland. Dave Powers ran up to the limousine, looked inside, and gasped: “Oh, my God, Mr. President, what did they do?”

  Jackie told him, “Dave, he’s dead.”

  Agents bent over Kennedy to lift him out of the car, but Jackie would not let him go. She had wrapped her arms tight around him and cradled his head in her lap. She curled over him in a protective embrace. She ignored the agents’ request. Please, they told her, they needed to get the president inside so the doctors could treat him. Clint Hill, the agent she trusted most, beseeched her to release her husband.

  “Please, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said.

  She would not budge.

  “Please,” Hill begged, “we must get the president to a doctor.”

  Jackie said no. “I’m not going to let him go . . . you know he’s dead. Let me alone.”

  Lyndon Johnson arrived at Parkland. During the wild ride from Dealey Plaza, the Secret Service had already assigned some of the president’s agents to Johnson. Emory Roberts said to agent Bill McIntyre, “They got him. You and Bennett take over Johnson as soon as we stop.” In the car, Johnson’s agent Rufus Youngblood told him, “An emergency exists. When we get to where we’re going, you and me are going to move right off and not tie in with the other people.”

  Johnson replied, “OK, partner.” As soon as the vice president’s car arrived at the hospital, Youngblood and other agents hustled him inside. JFK was still in his limousine, and the agents did not allow Johnson to approach the president’s car. They feared other assassins might be after Johnson. Lady Bird glimpsed a splash of color—a pink suit—as she was rushed into Parkland. Youngblood asked a hospital staffer to lead the Johnson party to a quiet, out-of-the-way room. When they got there, LBJ leaned against a wall and gazed into Lady Bird’s eyes. “Lyndon and I did not speak. We just looked at each other, exchanging messages with our eyes.”

  Ken O’Donnell came to the room. “It looks pretty bleak. I think the president is dead.”

  When the first reporters arrived at Parkland, the president had still not been removed from the limousine. Merriman Smith was the first journalist to see the wounded John Kennedy. “We skidded around a sharp turn and spilled out of the pool car as it entered the hospital driveway.” Smith ran to the side of limousine. “The President was face down on the back seat. Mrs. Kennedy made a cradle of her arms around the president’s head and bent over him as if she were whispering to him. . . . I could not see the president’s wound. But I could see blood splattered around the interior of the back seat and a dark stain spreading down the right side of the president’s dark gray suit.”

  Bob Clark joined Smith beside the car. “They simply let us go up and stand as close as we could. We were standing literally a couple feet from the car, starring down at Kennedy. He was stretched out in the back seat. He was lying with the side of his head exposed and his head in Jackie’s lap. I was not conscious of any wound to the head, so that part of his head was hidden, probably deliberately by Jackie. It was just a frozen scene. Jackie was sitting there, saying nothing.”

  Smith spoke to agent Hill, who was still leaning over the back seat. “How badly was he hit, Clint?”

  “He’s dead.”

  CLINT HILL’S intuition and close relationship with Jackie told him why she was covering her husband’s head with her arms and her body. She did not want anyone to see him that way. Hill showed her he understood. O’Donnell knew too: “She did not want strangers looking at her husband’s broken and bleeding head.” Hill removed his suit coat.

  “Hill threw his coat over Jack’s head,” Jackie remembered, “and I held his head to throw the coat over it.” Now no one standing there would see the president’s horrible wound or his eyes fixed wide open in a stare.

  Jackie released her hold, and Secret Service men lifted John Kennedy’s unconscious body from the backseat. They brought him inside the hospital at 12:38 P.M. (CST). It was eight minutes since he had been shot.

  KBOX reporter Ron Jenkins had chased the president’s limousine from the Trade Mart to Parkland. By the time his mobile unit got there, police officers had blocked the entry. Still on the air, Jenkins reported that a policeman was shouting “No. You cannot come in here! You cannot come in here!” Jenkins tried to find a back way into the building.

  Back in Dealey Plaza, just a few minutes after the assassination, another local reporter broadcast his report: “This is Pierce Allman from the Texas School Book Depository building for WFAA News.” Allman summarized what he had just seen and heard: “Just a few minutes ago, the president of the United States turned from Houston Street onto Elm Street on his way to a scheduled luncheon appearance at the Stemmons Trade Mart.”

  The journalist sounded out of breath, as though he had been running. “And as he went by the Texas School Book Depository, headed for the triple underpass, there were three loud, reverberating explosions. Nobody moved. Everyone seemed stunned. A few seemed to look around, wondering ‘who has the firecrackers?’ Then suddenly the Secret Service men sprang into action. The convertible bearing the president and Mrs. Kennedy sped away and officers, both plain clothes and uniformed, seemed to spring from everywhere at once, guns drawn, ordering people to lie flat.”

  Allman chased down and interviewed motorcade spectators. “There are two witnesses who were near the president’s car at the time of the explosions who say that shots were fired—from which upper window we do not know. We do not and cannot confirm the reports at this time that the president has been shot. One witness says that he definitely was sho
t—that he was shot twice—that he saw the president slump in his seat. As I say, this is not confirmed at this time. From where I am the police have two witnesses. They are bringing them in now.”

  The journalist had managed to slip inside the building before police sealed it off. “I am in the Texas School Book Depository. . . . We will try to learn more and relay word to this station.”

  LEE HARVEY Oswald was on the run—and he did not have much of an escape plan. If he had owned a car, he could have driven himself out of the city and as far away from Dallas as he could get, possibly fleeing the country to Mexico. But he did not even know how to drive.

  Lee Harvey Oswald was no John Wilkes Booth. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Booth had a fast horse standing behind Ford’s Theatre, a planned escape route, and the names and locations of sympathizers who might help him during his escape south from Washington.

  Oswald had no one. He walked seven blocks on Elm Street, then at 12:40 P.M. (CST), he flagged down a passing city bus that was headed in the direction he wanted to go. Although Oswald was not standing at a scheduled bus stop, the driver opened the door and let him board anyway. Its route would take Oswald past the Book Depository, back to the scene of his crime. He might have enjoyed witnessing the chaos he had created. But before the bus could get near the Depository, heavy traffic slowed its pace to almost a standstill.

  Did he recall the last time he had tried to escape on a bus? The night he tried to murder General Walker, it was dark, and traffic was light. He had enjoyed a smooth ride home. That would not happen today.

  It was absurd. The man who had just shot the president of the United States was stuck in traffic, trying to flee on a public bus. Realizing the ridiculousness of his position, Oswald stood up, walked to the front of the bus, took a transfer, and asked the driver to let him off. Within a few minutes, at about 12:47 P.M. (CST), he caught a taxi to his rooming house. Oswald did not want the driver to know where he lived, so he did not give him his numbered address but had the taxi drop him a few blocks away from his rooming house. From there Oswald walked to 1026 North Beckley Street. When he arrived, the proprietor of the rooming house was watching news of the assassination on television.

  She told Oswald that Kennedy had been shot. He said nothing. He hurried to his room, changed jackets, picked up his revolver and some ammunition. Then, after a couple of minutes, he left at 1:03 P.M. (CST) without saying a word. No one knows what Oswald planned to do next. Perhaps he hoped to get to the bus station and buy a ticket to Mexico—he still had enough money on him for that, although not for much more. If he hoped to escape capture, he needed to flee Dallas.

  Soon a roll call of employees at the Book Depository would reveal that only one man could not be accounted for—Lee Harvey Oswald.

  AT THE Trade Mart, a rumor spread from table to table that President Kennedy had been shot. New York Times reporter Tom Wicker witnessed it. “It was the only rumor that I had ever seen; it was moving across that crowd like a wind over a wheat field.”

  AT PARKLAND, the Secret Service agents and hospital staffers rushed the president into trauma room one. Assistant White House press secretary Malcolm Kilduff watched as Jackie Kennedy, “her hair flying and dripping with blood,” helped push the stretcher through the halls. They lifted the president from the cart and laid him on his back upon the examination table. Nurses cut away his clothing. Doctors looked for his vital signs. He had no blood pressure. He was not breathing. His heartbeat was sporadic and weak. The pupils of his eyes were dilated and fixed. The doctors inserted tubes into his veins. They gave him blood transfusions. They cut a tracheotomy in his throat to improve his breathing.

  From throughout Parkland Hospital, doctors rushed to the emergency room. Some thought they could help. Others were unneeded voyeurs who wanted only to lay eyes upon the president so that one day they could say that they had been there.

  Jackie spoke to Powers and O’Donnell. “Do you think he still has a chance?” The longtime, faithful aides knew better but could not say it. “I did not have the heart,” O’Donnell recalled, “to tell her what I was thinking.”

  Merriman Smith found a telephone inside the hospital, called his office at 12:39 P.M. (CST), and dictated another bulletin: “FLASH FLASH KENNEDY SERIOUSLY WOUNDED . . . PERHAPS FATALLY BY ASSASSINS BULLETS.”

  Without official confirmation, Smith did not want to report what Clint Hill had told him—that the president was already dead.

  A radio station interrupted a program of music with this announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is a bulletin from the WQMR newsroom. An unknown sniper has fired three shots at President Kennedy in Dallas. Repeating this bulletin . . . received from the United Press. A sniper has fired at President Kennedy.”

  The announcer continued: “Now the remainder of the bulletin just clearing says that a sniper has seriously wounded the president in downtown Dallas. Repeating, the United Press says that a sniper seriously wounded President Kennedy in downtown Dallas today, perhaps fatally.”

  While doctors worked on the president, some of the Secret Service agents worked on the car. To prevent curiosity seekers from peering into the backseat or news reporters from snapping photographs of the blood and gore, agents mounted a top—a hardtop, not the clear plastic bubble top—to the convertible. Then they got steel buckets filled with water and towels and began to wash the backseat and the floor. Time magazine reporter Hugh Sidey watched. “It was an eerie scene. A young man, I assume he was a Secret Service man, with a sponge and a bucket of red water . . . was trying to wipe up the blood and what looked like flakes of flesh and brains in the back seat. The red roses were in the front seat.”

  The president’s limousine at Parkland Hospital. Secret Service agents attached a hardtop and tried to wash away the president’s blood. Note the bucket on the ground.

  (Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

  It was a stupid thing to do. The car was a crime scene and full of evidence. Everything in it, including possible bullet fragments, should have been left as is and preserved for the investigation that was sure to follow the assassination. It was as though they believed, through some faulty logic, that if they could just wipe away the evidence of the crime, they could turn back the clock and pretend it had never happened. Try as they might, the agents could not wash away all the blood. It was like a scene from Macbeth, Shakespeare’s violent play of murder and revenge, when “all great Neptune’s ocean” would not “wash this blood clean from my hand.” Jackie recalled what else lay in the car. “Every time we got off the plane that day, three times they gave me the yellow roses of Texas. But in Dallas they gave me red roses. I thought, how funny, red roses—so the seat was full of blood and red roses.”

  JACKIE KENNEDY approached the trauma room and tried to enter. “I’m not going to leave him. I’m not going to leave him,” she told Dave Powers.

  A burly nurse tried to block her way. It was against hospital policy for family members to enter the room. Jackie told her she was going in and pushed the nurse. The nurse pushed back. “I want to be with him when he dies,” Jackie insisted.

  A navy admiral on the president’s staff rushed to her aid.

  “It is her right,” he commanded, “it is her prerogative.”

  The nurse shrank away. Jackie walked into the room where desperate surgeons worked to save her husband’s life.

  The appearance of the president’s wife, a haunting pale figure in the bright pink suit, shocked the doctors. One of them suggested that she might want to leave and wait outside.

  “But . . . it’s my husband,” she said, “his blood, his brains are all over me.”

  Blood streaked her face, saturated her white gloves, and stained her suit and stockings. She nudged one of the doctors, and without speaking she held out her cupped hands. She was holding a part of the president’s brain. Dazed, in shock, perhaps she thought they would need it. Maybe they could put it back inside his h
ead. She handed it to the doctor.

  If John Kennedy had been any other patient, the doctors would have already pronounced him dead, perhaps even dead on arrival at Parkland Hospital. But this was the president of the United States—they had to try everything. As a last resort, one of the surgeons began to massage the president’s heart, hoping to stimulate a rhythmic beat. It was too late. He was dead.

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Kennedy,” said one of the doctors, “your husband has sustained a fatal wound.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  THE DOCTORS recorded the time of death as 1:00 P.M. (CST). One by one, members of the medical team left the trauma room. A nurse handed two paper bags to one of the Secret Service agents. They contained John Kennedy’s suit coat, pants, shirt, tie, and other garments. The agent was also given Clint Hill’s bloodstained suit coat. As the room emptied, Jackie Kennedy approached the table on which her husband lay dead. She pressed her cheek against his still warm face. She kissed his body. Then she removed her wedding ring and slipped it onto one of his fingers.

  Assistant White House press secretary Malcolm Kilduff needed to find Vice President Lyndon Johnson to tell him that John Kennedy was dead. Kilduff went to the holding room where the Secret Service had hidden Johnson from view. LBJ’s bodyguards had kept him far from trauma room one, so he had no personal knowledge of the president’s condition. Kilduff spoke. “Mr. President . . . ”

  Stunned, Johnson did a double take. That was the first time he was called that.

  Now he knew. The president of the United States was dead.

  Kilduff asked Johnson if he should make an announcement to the press. No, LBJ told him, it would be better to wait until after he had left the hospital for Love Field and returned to the safety of Air Force One.

  “I think I had better get out of here . . . before you announce it. We don’t know if this is a worldwide conspiracy, whether they are after me as well as they were after President Kennedy, or whether they are after Speaker [John W.] McCormack, or Senator [Carl] Hayden [the two men who, after LBJ, were next in the line of presidential succession]. We just don’t know.”