According to Bruno, the decision had been made by his going through Bill Moyers, who had deferred it to Johnson and Connally; Bruno made the following entry in his journal, noting that the feud had become bitter by this point:
November 15—The White House announced that the Trade Mart had been approved. I met with O’Donnell and Moyers who said that Connally was unbearable and on the verge of canceling the trip. They decided they had to let the Governor have his way.12
Moyers’s assistant, Betty Harris, testified that Secret Service Agent Lawson “seemed concerned primarily about … the time factor and only secondarily about the security factors.”13 It is odd that Connally was so insistent upon the selection of the Trade Mart, which was a prerequisite for the zigzag tour of Dealey Plaza, over the Women’s Building favored by all the security people and Kennedy’s aides. Given the obvious contravention of normal secret service standards for motorcades, it suggests the unseen hand of his mentor, Lyndon Johnson. When practically everyone who would ordinarily make that kind of decision is on one side and Johnson was really the only one—other than his assistants and longtime cronies—on the other side favoring the site uniformly rejected by the staff, there can be only one logical conclusion about how the Trade Mart came to be selected. One needs only to reread Jerry Bruno’s comment about Connally’s demeanor. As we have seen throughout this book, such a reaction is exactly what occurred whenever one of Johnson’s stooges was acting on his behalf: they mimicked the very same reaction they had seen from Johnson himself. To have delegated any of these last-minute matters might have jeopardized the entire plan since he knew his word would be absolute; anyone else’s would not carry sufficient authority to ensure that orders would be followed. From there, the orders of the chief of the Secret Service, James Rowley, and assistant chief, Floyd Boring, would carry down to every field officer as needed; they would be obeyed without question. The chief of the Dallas Police would similarly dictate the requisite orders to his men, expecting them to be fulfilled completely. The orders of both would turn toward a neutral “omission” rather than an active “commission,” which would further shield them from scrutiny. Likewise, Sheriff Decker’s odd orders, detailed shortly, for his men to merely watch the motorcade as observers would similarly be followed to a tee, except for one deputy named Roger Craig.
Johnson knew that there were hundreds or thousands of essential details that he personally needed to anticipate, in addition those being managed by the other planners. Among the many other points which he would need to factor in to his planning, which would explain all of the following actions he doubtlessly anticipated:
• Order Secret Service Agent Kellerman to take JFK’s body before it could be autopsied.
• Order other agents to clean the presidential limousine and have it flown back to Washington immediately, essentially destroying and removing the “crime scene” from the scene of the crime.
• Subsequently order the Secret Service to have the limousine flown to Detroit and then Cincinnati to have it thoroughly cleaned and repaired and subsequently rebuilt (as though there were a budgetary issue that prevented its replacement with a new vehicle, Rowley’s denials of the same notwithstanding).
• Switch airplanes. This would ensure Jackie’s presence and assure the nation of the continuity of government, that LBJ’s firm hand was on the rudder and the world was safe.
• Insist on holding the plane for Jackie to arrive with the body of JFK, thus ensuring that Jackie would unwittingly assist Kellerman in absconding with JFK’s body. The larger objective was to ensure that the autopsy was conducted under the control of his designated military men (it would not be unreasonable to suspect that they had been chosen well in advance, for aptitudes—or vulnerabilities—other than their forensic pathology skills or experience, which were practically nonexistent).
• Take over JFK’s quarters on Air Force One, immediately making the necessary calls from his desk telephone, knowing they wouldn’t be recorded until the plane was airborne (and subsequently causing many of those that were recorded to be erased or lost).
• Be sworn in before leaving Dallas. To set this up, he would first need to call Bobby Kennedy to put the question to him not so much for his permission but to be able to say later that he did so and that Bobby agreed with it. He would also need to remember to offer him condolences for the loss of his brother.
• Lie to Kenneth O’Donnell and others about having been told that he should be sworn in, as quickly as possible, by RFK.
• Make the call, personally, to get Judge Sarah Hughes to Love Field for the swearing ceremony.
• Ensure that the presidential photographer was on hand to record the event for posterity (even though he accidentally made a photograph of Johnson exchanging winks with Congressman Thomas, a photograph which survived despite the disappearance of the negative for that particular photograph).
The key to the assassination, according to Johnson’s plan, concerned the orders to the Dallas Police and Sheriff’s Departments to end their protection of the JFK motorcade at the corner of Main and Houston, under the disinformation that the Secret Service would take over at that point. Johnson would be in daily contact with his Washington staff, both the official one and the rogue group that was already finalizing the operational plans for the assassination. The real team in charge of Dealey Plaza that day had fake Secret Service identification, which they would successfully use to ward off any efforts by real policemen to investigate the source of the shooting.14 Johnson had specifically instructed Rowley and Boring that they were to advise the Dallas officials to end their protection at the intersection of Main and Houston streets; these orders were passed on to Agent Winston C. Lawson, as verified later through Sheriff Decker and Police Chief Curry.
• Chief Curry told his officers to end supervision of Friday’s crowd at Houston and Main, a block short of the ambush, on the ground that traffic would begin to thin out there. In fact, the real reason, he later revealed in his book, was that he was simply following the orders of the Secret Service. “The Dallas Police Department carefully carried out the security plans which were laid out by Mr. Lawson, the Secret Service representative from Washington, D.C.” In his book, JFK Assassination File, he added that, “in the midst of comprehensive security it seems a freak of history that this short stretch of Elm Street would be the assassination site, and that the Texas Book Depository Building was virtually ignored in the security plans for the motorcade.”15
• Sheriff Decker held a meeting at 10:30 a.m. on November 22 with all of his deputies, about hundred men altogether, including the plainclothes men and detectives. This was unusual given that his message to them was that they “were to take no part whatsoever in the security of that [presidential] motorcade.” Rather, their assignment for that day was “to stand out in front of the building, 505 Main Street, and represent the Sheriff’s Office.”16
The fact that Dealey Plaza had been selected as the scene for the crime of the century was due to the phantom organizer’s realization that it was the perfect location for multiple snipers. The tall buildings, the overpass, the fencing at the grassy knoll, and the “manhole” covers over the drainage pipes made it the best location for their operation. Their selection of the “zig and zag” turns onto Houston Street and then the hairpin 120-degree turn to Elm Street ensured the car would be going very slowly. All of this was recognized four days earlier by Agents Lawson and Sorrels as they made a “dry run” through the motorcade route in downtown Dallas with Chief Curry, and Sorrels remarked, “‘Hell, we’d be sitting ducks’; The other two concurred and shrugged,” as they drove away, filing the thought away for good.17
Johnson’s focus of planning the motorcade was minimal security throughout but especially at Dealey Plaza where it would disappear almost completely. The motorcycle escorts would need to be minimized, and the men told to ride well behind JFK’s limousine; the Secret Service would be instructed to keep any agents off the rear of the
car—they would all ride in the “Queen Mary,” the 1956 Cadillac convertible once used by Eisenhower. Johnson’s own car, a rented Lincoln convertible, would follow that car, safely back at least two to three car lengths. He had still not managed to have Governor Connally switch places with Senator Yarborough, who he had hoped might “inadvertently” be put in the line of fire even though the shooters had been told to avoid hitting anyone other than JFK if at all possible. He had even urged President Kennedy to allow Jackie to ride with himself and Lady Bird, an idea JFK quickly rebuffed.
The operation would require the focused use of “need to know” in order to survive the inevitable investigations that would surely follow. Most of the orders would also be couched in terms of ambiguities and secretively cast within the Secret Service as being a “simulated assassination” for training purposes to many of the agents, even though that would be denied to investigators. Later, orders would be issued to all agents to never discuss any aspect of these plans with anyone, for all time. Some of Johnson’s instructions, given at the highest levels of the Secret Service hierarchy had filtered down through the ranks and would later be revealed by Dallas Patrolman B. J. Martin, one of the motorcyclists in the motorcade. Martin would later recall, for example, that the Secret Service instructed them, at Love Field, that there would be no forward escorts, only one at each rear fender and that they were to stay behind the rear wheels of the car at all times. As Dallas Police Chief Curry would later acknowledge to the Warren Commission, there were many more motorcycles lined up to be with the president’s car, consistent with the routine practice for presidential motorcades, but the Secret Service had told him at the last minute to drop some of them. “We actually had two on each side but we wanted four on each side and they asked us to drop out some of them and back down the motorcade, along the motorcade, which we did.”18
All of the orders to “stand down” were to be presented to subordinates downstream as coming directly from JFK, who was allegedly irritated by the noise of the motorcycles and the presence of Secret Service agents who “came between him and the people.” (These were among the most publicized lies perpetrated upon the Warren Commission by the Secret Service and the Dallas Police and have been conclusively debunked by later testimony.)19 In fact, Kennedy was very accommodating to Secret Service recommendations and requests and had not ordered any changes in security, either in the November 22 motorcade or generally. This inconsistency may not have been entirely the fault of the Secret Service, after all; it is not beyond reason to posit that someone else, someone with the clout necessary to do so, had cleverly plotted the dissolution of any semblance of security for the president. Such a person who was uniquely placed, whose orders would not be questioned—who could have made certain specific requests, such as keeping Secret Service agents off the rear bumper of the Lincoln and/or eliminating some of the most critical motorcycle escorts—could also portray them as having come from the president himself. A simple explanation, such as “the president wants to be closer to ‘the people’” or “the president does not like the noise from the motorcycles,” would suffice from a person of high-enough stature who had the implicit authority to convey such an order, especially if he had also been serving as the chief organizer and planner of the motorcade. A simple, casually uttered directive given to his own staff people—all of whom had been trained since their first day on the job to obey him regardless of their own doubts—would achieve the desired results. That Johnson could, and would, interject himself in such a way is completely in keeping with his manipulative behavior, as amply demonstrated throughout this book.
November 21, 1963
At this point, during the evening of November 21, on the way from Houston to Fort Worth, Johnson had undoubtedly known that the plan by then was on autopilot. The operatives, tools, and tactical plans were in place; the designated “patsy” had been deluded into believing his entrée into the covert spy world was imminent—still oblivious to the real agenda; and the planning was subject only to any last-minute decision from him, and him alone, to abort the mission. Johnson knew enough of the details—the microlevel points developed by his rogue managers like Harvey, Morales, and Ferrie—of his grand plan to know that every contingency had been accounted for. As he flew into Fort Worth Thursday evening with the presidential party and then slipped out after arriving at the Texas Hotel to take a midnight trip in a private limousine the thirty-some miles over to the party in Dallas at Clint Murchison’s home, his confidence grew that the plan would work; it would not only work, but it would keep him out of prison and ensure his chance to become the great president that would fulfill his destiny. When he arrived at the Murchison mansion, his mentality would be simple, along the lines of, “Proceed as planned. It’s now or never.”
The purpose of the “Murchison Party” was to allow the principals of the enterprise—the key sponsors and facilitators or their representatives as being a “congruency of interests”—one last chance to gauge the operational readiness of its disparate facets. It was essential that its success be practically guaranteed; otherwise, they would all be put in legal jeopardy. Conducting it as a “party” honoring fellow plotter J. Edgar Hoover required the presence of a number of other randomly selected individuals, all of whom had vague personal or political connections to the principals; but it was merely a veil that hid the real intent of the meeting if word had leaked out that such a meeting occurred. But only when the most important of these principals—the one most critical to a successful execution—was present would they separate themselves from the others and meet in executive session “behind closed doors.”
Lyndon Johnson arrived very late at Clint Murchison’s mansion, but he felt he owed it to some of his best friends to attend since it was a party honoring their mutual friend, J. Edgar Hoover. The only thing liberal at the Murchison home in Dallas that evening was as a measure of how the drinks flowed. Also attending were John J. McCloy, Richard Nixon, H. L. Hunt, John Curington, George Brown, former Texas Congressman Bruce Alger, and Hoover’s lover, Clyde Tolson. Critics who have attempted to deny that this party actually occurred have argued that:
• Johnson would have arrived very late, well after midnight, thus making his appearance implausible; perhaps they were unaware that Johnson generally kept very late hours, often getting only three or four hours of sleep per night. It is acknowledged that he might not have arrived at the “party” until 1:00 a.m. or later. However, that does not make his appearance impossible; therefore, that argument is specious.
• Clint Murchison had suffered a debilitating stroke which rendered him immobile and therefore could not have made this appearance in one of his own houses. That argument is simply not valid as Murchison’s biographer (his former secretary) Earnestine Van Buren showed in her book Clint. He was completely mobile and traveled frequently at least through 1965; from then until his death in 1969, he was increasingly less mobile and more confined to his home at Glad Oaks.
• And finally, it is suggested that J. Edgar Hoover could not have attended because he was back in his office late the next morning and because he always used FBI agents to chauffer him around. This is the least persuasive counterargument because it assumes that Hoover would not fly back to Washington until the next day; of course, he had access to the best aircraft of the FBI fleet (e.g., a business jet like the Jetstar) that could have been parked at Addison airport, a mile or two from Murchison’s estate on Preston Road at Keller Springs, and could have flown him back to Washington before 6:00 a.m. And even Hoover might have relaxed his standards to allow Clint’s chauffer to pick him up and later return him to the airport, as it appears was the case. It should also be noted that Hoover’s calendar was completely open; no entries made on the day before the assassination, Thursday, November 21, 1963.
This party and meeting was first reported by Penn Jones Jr. in his book Forgive My Grief and confirmed by Harrison Livingstone in his 1993 book Killing the Truth.20 Lyndon’s mistress Madeline Brown wr
ote her own book, Texas in the Morning, in 1997, in which she recounts many details of her long-term relationship with Johnson, including gifts of a home, expensive jewelry, automobiles, and a full-length mink coat. Several other authors, including James Fetzer, Jim Marrs, and Noel Twyman, interviewed Ms. Brown and found her to be a very credible person despite the circumstances of her relationship with Johnson. She may have been guilty of embellishment and exaggeration of basic truths, but she had no reason to make up such a charge out of thin air, and her description of the event has been affirmed over the years by others who were there.
Ms. Brown remembered the tension before Johnson’s arrival. “There was a real atmosphere of uneasiness at that party. It was a social gathering, but as soon as Johnson arrived, at a very late hour, the men who were still there (it is not clear exactly which men had remained and attended that meeting) immediately convened in private in Murchison’s office, suddenly leaving the ladies where they were sitting or standing.” She recalled,21
Tension filled the room upon his arrival. The group immediately went behind closed doors. A short time later Lyndon, anxious and red-faced, re-appeared. I knew how secretly Lyndon operated. Therefore I said nothing … not even that I was happy to see him. Squeezing my hand so hard, it felt crushed from the pressure, he spoke with a grating whisper, a quiet growl, into my ear, not a love message, but one I’ll always remember: “After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again—that’s no threat—that’s a promise.”
November 22, 1963
LBJ Page 55
