Killing Kennedy

by O’Reilly, Bill

  The two men casually banter as they are miked for sound and then sit quietly opposite each other as the final ten seconds before taping are counted down. Cronkite acknowledges an off-camera signal, and the interview begins.

  The broadcaster aims his questions at JFK in a delivery that alternates between baritone rumble and easy drawl. His interviewing style is disarming and even warm, no matter how sharp his queries. As a result, Kennedy remains completely at ease. The interview sounds like a conversation between two friends well-informed about American politics. And truth be told, that isn’t far from Cronkite’s mind-set. He is a devoted Democrat, although he skillfully hides that fact from his viewing audience.

  “Do you think you’ll lose some Southern states in ’64?” Cronkite asks.

  “Well I lost some in ’60, so I suppose I’ll lose some in, uh, maybe more in ’64,” Kennedy smiles wistfully, forced to reveal a painful political weakness. Cronkite is letting Americans in on a secret known only to pollsters and veteran politicians. “I don’t know. It’s too early to tell, but I would think we were, I’m not sure that, uh, I’m the most popular figure in the country today in the South. But that’s all right. I think we’re going to have to wait and see a year and a half from now…”

  There is now a fighting spirit in the president’s eyes. The mere talk of the next election excites him. He loves the thrill of the political battle. JFK also loves being president. He is an adrenaline junkie, relishing the rush of competing for power.

  Cronkite presses the president. “What do you think the issues might be in ’64?”

  “Well, of course, abroad would be the security of the United States. Our effort to maintain that security. To maintain the cause of freedom. At home I think it’s the economy. Jobs. Opportunity for all Americans.”

  The president, without consulting notes, then rattles off a long list of statistics. He presses for a tax cut, to ward off a recession, he says, and backs it up with detailed financial specifics about the way in which cutting taxes would stimulate the economy.

  Cronkite finally gets around to the touchy subject of Vietnam. With every passing day, Americans are becoming more concerned about U.S. involvement in that troubled nation. The ongoing and well-publicized oppression of the Buddhists has made some Americans forget that communism is the primary reason U.S. troops are in Vietnam. There are growing cries for America to leave Southeast Asia and let the Vietnamese fight their own war.

  “Everyone has said the administration would apply diplomacy in Vietnam,” Cronkite begins, emphasizing the second syllable with a short letter a (“NAM” as in ram). “Which I’d assumed we’d been trying all along. What can we do in this situation that seems to parallel other famous debacles of dealing with unpopular governments?”

  Cronkite has a soothing on-camera presence that television viewers have grown to trust. The president knows that convincing this newsman of his views on Vietnam is the same as convincing the voters watching at home.

  “The war is going better,” JFK begins. “But that doesn’t mean that the events of the last two months aren’t very ominous. I don’t think that if greater effort isn’t made by the government, that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it’s their war. They’re the ones who have to win it or lose it.”

  The president stops short of saying that U.S. troops should be removed, despite the fact that dozens of Americans have already been killed fighting another country’s battles. He voices his concerns that if Vietnam falls to the Communists, then so will the rest of Asia. JFK lists the countries that will topple, beginning with Thailand and continuing all the way to India. “We’re in a desperate struggle with the Communist situation,” he insists, “and I don’t want Asia to pass into the control of the Chinese.”

  Kennedy’s voice intensifies, showing his disdain for both Vietnam’s president Diem and those enemies that would spread communism around the world. This is not the John Kennedy whom some consider to be an affable young man who was elected based on good looks and his father’s money. JFK has grown into a true world leader. He combines discipline with a powerful work ethic, knowledge, guts, and compassion.

  The interview ends after twenty minutes. The president immediately pulls his sunglasses from his breast pocket and slips them back on. He and Cronkite make small talk about the cost of producing a half-hour television show, but their attention soon turns to a small sunfish sailboat skimming lazily across the water. It is a dot on a sea that stretches endlessly across the horizon. Both men are sailors, fascinated by the water.

  The weather in the bay is calm. Turbulence is not far away. Nevertheless, the interview has gone flawlessly. The president can now relax with his family for the rest of the afternoon, enjoying a time of peace amid all the sadness and turmoil of the previous month.

  Kennedy and Cronkite shift the conversation to sailing until it is time to remove their microphones. Inside Brambletyde, just a few feet away, a grieving Jackie Kennedy hides from the cameras—and the world. The president has been spending more time not just with Jackie, but with Caroline and John, too, swimming in the ocean, allowing them to ride in the presidential helicopter, and attending Caroline’s riding lessons. The president has urged his wife to put on a brave face for the media, but she’s just not ready.

  However, Jackie will soon break her self-imposed seclusion. She has decided to spend a few weeks in Greece with her sister, Lee Radziwill, in order to ease her mourning. The mere thought of that trip, which is still a month away, brings a rare smile to the First Lady’s face.

  * * *

  Walter Cronkite and John Kennedy say good-bye. And on this perfect Labor Day afternoon, with the wind blowing in off the Atlantic and the sun warming their faces, neither man can possibly know that it will be Cronkite who will appear on national television in just twelve weeks to make an announcement that will shock the world.

  16

  SEPTEMBER 25, 1963

  BILLINGS, MONTANA

  LATE AFTERNOON

  November 21 and 22 are looming.

  Those dates reside in the back of John F. Kennedy’s mind as he stands in the rodeo ring at the Yellowstone County Fairgrounds, addressing an overflow crowd. Billings, Montana, has a population of just fifty-three thousand, and it appears as if every single citizen has come out to cheer on the president. A marching band only adds to the pageantry.

  “The potential of this country is unlimited,” Kennedy begins, and it’s almost as if he is talking about himself. In the past five days alone, he has helped Montana’s farmers by approving a massive wheat sale to the Soviet Union, brokered a global ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, cut income taxes, and even stood before the UN General Assembly promising to send men to the moon. JFK’s speech that day was so outstanding that even the Soviets applauded.

  The sunlight is fading but still warm as the president speaks in the open-air dirt arena, the Rocky Mountains towering in the near distance. The day smells like autumn. Kennedy’s coat and tie look stiff compared to the jeans and cowboy boots worn by many in the audience, and his Boston accent is almost jarring in this iconic western setting. And when Kennedy speaks about the wonders of the American West, he quotes Henry David Thoreau—a man from Massachusetts who never crossed the Mississippi.

  But the good people of Montana don’t mind a bit. They hang on the president’s every word, thrilled that John Fitzgerald Kennedy has come to their town as part of his eleven-state swing through the West. The president’s focus is on shoring up support for his upcoming campaign. Back in 1960, Nevada was the only western state Kennedy carried. Not only did he lose Montana and its four electoral votes, but Yellowstone County voted against JFK by a margin of 60 percent to 38 percent.

  But that was three years ago.

  Today, the president was mobbed when Air Force One landed at the Billings airport. Men and women of all ages pressed forward to shake his hand. Kennedy, much to the chagrin of his Secret Service bodyguards, put his life at risk by eagerly
wading into the crowd. He knew that nothing would make these people happier than to go home tonight and say they had touched the president. Thousands lined the motorcade route to the fairgrounds, including men on horseback.

  It would seem that JFK might just win Montana if the election were held tomorrow. And success in the West is a vital part of Kennedy’s reelection strategy. A victory in Texas, for example, would almost guarantee his victory in 1964.

  And so Appointments Secretary Kenny O’Donnell has selected November 21 and 22 as the likely dates of Kennedy’s eagerly anticipated Texas fund-raising trip.

  The president envisions a grand tour of the state, with stops in five major cities: San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Texas governor John Connally, the conservative Democrat who has been maintaining a discreet political distance from the president, is quietly in favor of a less ambitious itinerary. Dallas, for instance, is not Kennedy territory. It is a city where “K.O. the Kennedys” bumper stickers are displayed. And parlor games about “Which Kennedy do you hate the most?” are commonplace. Children boo the president’s name in classrooms, and a popular local poster of Kennedy designed to look like a mug shot bears the inscription “Wanted for Treason. This Man Is Wanted for Treasonous Activities Against the United States.”

  Even more ominous are the pro-assassination jokes—a situation made all the more troubling by the extraordinary murder rate in Dallas. More murders are committed in Texas than any other state, and more homicides occur in Dallas than anywhere else in Texas. The state does not regulate or register firearms, and 72 percent of the murders are by gunshot.

  There is no question that John F. Kennedy’s visit to the “Southwest hate capital of Dixie,” as Dallas has been called, is fraught with complications.

  The president will discuss this issue, along with other details of the trip, with John Connally next week at the White House. In yet another confirmation that Lyndon Johnson has no place in John Kennedy’s future plans, the vice president has been neither invited to that meeting nor even told it will take place.

  One statistic about the Texas trip is most glaring of all: more than 62 percent of Dallas voters rejected John Kennedy in 1960.

  But JFK loves a challenge. If Billings, Montana, can be won over, then why not the “Big D”?

  * * *

  Meanwhile, at the exact same time President Kennedy is speaking in Montana, Lee Harvey Oswald is already on his way to Texas—and beyond. Dressed in casual slacks and a zippered jacket, Oswald rides Continental Trailways bus 5121 bound for Houston. From there he will change buses and travel due south to Mexico City. Unlike the American forces (which included among them a young Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee) that took a year to make that journey during the Mexican-American War of 1846, Oswald will make the trip in just one day.

  Oswald is traveling like a man who is never coming back. He has no home, because he has just abandoned his squalid New Orleans apartment. When the landlady came around demanding the seventeen dollars in back rent, Oswald put her off with a lie and later sneaked out in the dead of night.

  The sum of Oswald’s worldly possessions are now divided among his wallet and the two cloth suitcases stowed in the bus’s luggage bay.

  As for a family, Oswald no longer has one. Two days ago he sent the very pregnant Marina and their nineteen-month-old daughter, June, back to live with Marina’s friend Ruth Paine outside Dallas. Marina has been Oswald’s unwitting pawn these past few months, her Soviet citizenship vital to his goal of returning to the Soviet Union. It is unclear if she knows he is traveling to Mexico—or that he had to leave the country to travel at all.

  But Oswald has hatched a clever new scheme—one that doesn’t require Marina. So just as he abandoned their apartment, now he also abandons his family. Every mile that Trailways 5121 travels past the pine thickets and swampland of the Texas coastal highway puts Lee Harvey Oswald one mile farther away from the shackles of his turbulent and bitter marriage.

  Oswald has temporarily abandoned plans to return to the Soviet Union. Instead, he dreams of living in the palm tree–fringed workers’ paradise of Cuba. But it’s impossible to attain a Cuban travel visa in the United States because the United States and Cuba have severed diplomatic relations. Thus Oswald is taking the bus to Mexico City in order to visit the Cuban embassy there.

  Lee Harvey Oswald never fits in, no matter where he goes. He is not an outcast because that would mean allowing himself to join a group before being rejected by it. Instead, he is something far more unpredictable—and ultimately more dangerous: he is a parallel member of society, a thin-skinned loner operating by his own rhythms and rules, constantly searching for that place where he can hunker down, for that identity that will allow him to be the great man he so longs to be.

  Oswald believes that Cuba is such a place. And in his mind he has done plenty to impress the Cuban dictator, Castro. Oswald’s time in New Orleans passing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was his way of proving his loyalty to Fidel. Marina Oswald will later claim that Lee Harvey even planned to hijack an airplane that would take him directly to Havana.

  At 2:00 A.M. on the morning of September 26, Lee Harvey Oswald changes buses in Houston, switching to Continental Trailways 5133. One day later, he arrives in Mexico City. Throughout the journey he is chatty, even boastful, desperate to impress his fellow passengers. He regales them with tales of his time in the Soviet Union and his work with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He even makes a point of showing them the Soviet stamps in his passport. Whenever the bus stops for a food break, the rail-thin Oswald devours heaping platters of Mexican cuisine. He doesn’t speak Spanish, which he’ll need to learn for his new life in Cuba. So, for now, he orders by jabbing a finger randomly at a menu item and hoping for the best.

  In his wallet, Oswald carries close to two hundred dollars, a Mexican tourist card that allows him one fifteen-day trip to that country, and two passports—one from his Soviet days and the other brand-new, recently issued by the U.S.government. In his blue athletic bag, Oswald has wedged a Spanish-English dictionary, newspaper clippings that prove he was arrested while agitating on behalf of Cuba, his Russian-language work permit from his time in Minsk, and proof of his marriage to a Soviet citizen. Oswald also carries a pad containing notes explaining that he speaks Russian and is a devoted friend of the Communist Party.

  Like all true Communists, Lee Harvey Oswald is an avowed atheist, so he does not pray for his journey’s success. Instead, he puts his faith in that thick stack of documents he now carries.

  But Oswald knows that the journey is a gamble. He might get all the way to Mexico City and be denied. If that happens, the precious dollars spent on travel, food, and lodging will have been squandered. But it is a risk he must take.

  The bus arrives in Mexico City at 10:00 A.M. Oswald once again drifts, immediately separating himself from his new acquaintances. He checks in at the Hotel de Comercio, just four blocks from the bus station, at a rate of $1.28 per night. And though exhausted after the grueling twenty-hour bus ride, he walks immediately to the Cuban embassy.

  * * *

  John Kennedy is traveling west. Lee Harvey Oswald is traveling south. And Jackie Kennedy is traveling east. She and her sister, Lee, are off for Greece. There they will spend two weeks aboard the yacht Christina, owned by the shadowy womanizer Aristotle Onassis, a man who has been under surveillance by the FBI for almost twenty years due to his unscrupulous business practices. Among other things, Onassis has been investigated for fraud against the American government and for violation of U.S. shipping laws in the mid-1950s. It’s no wonder that, back in 1961, when the First Lady went abroad alone on a goodwill tour, President Kennedy issued very firm instructions to Jackie’s Secret Service detail: “Whatever you do in Greece, do not let Mrs. Kennedy cross paths with Aristotle Onassis.”

  The swarthy Greek shipping magnate is more than twenty years older than Jackie, and three inches shorter. He’s also one of the ric
hest men in the world. His yacht has been the scene of many a society function, and men such as JFK and Winston Churchill have been aboard it. The last time the First Lady was on board the 325-foot-long Christina, which is renowned for such opulent features as solid-gold faucets, was almost ten years ago, as a guest with JFK. At that time, Jackie Kennedy thought the boat vulgar and was particularly disgusted by the bar stool covers made of whale scrotums. But now her sister is pursuing Onassis romantically, even though the portly Greek is having an affair with opera star Maria Callas. Understanding the situation, Jackie is coming along to offer emotional support.

  The First Lady would never dare be photographed in a bikini on U.S. soil. The image of her in a revealing bathing suit would be scandalous, and perhaps even politically damaging for her husband. But Greece is half a world away from the restrictions and cares of being the First Lady.

  Jackie needs a break from all that. For the next two weeks she wants nothing more than to be pampered and free-spirited. The First Lady has lost all of her baby weight. It would be a shame not to flaunt her newly slim figure in the privacy of her opulent surroundings. So she makes sure her staff puts a bikini in her suitcase before she boards the TWA 707 for Greece on October 1.

  It has been exactly fifty-two days since she endured the tragedy of baby Patrick’s death. It is exactly fifty-two days until she will endure another unspeakable tragedy.

  17

  OCTOBER 6, 1963

  CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND

  10:27 A.M.

  The president of the United States is furious. John Kennedy steers a golf cart to Camp David’s military mess hall for Sunday Mass. The paved path meanders through a thick wood, taking him past the Hawthorn, Laurel, Sycamore, and Linden guest cabins on his three-minute journey. With him are five-year-old Caroline and John Jr., who will turn three next month. But it is not politics that is on the president’s mind—his trip to Texas is set. (After meeting with Governor John Connally two days ago, the much-needed political foray is a done deal.) Nor is it the pressures of the office. And it is certainly not his children who have JFK annoyed—the president is excited to be spending time alone with Caroline and John. He has even asked legendary Look magazine photographer Stanley Tretick to take some informal photos of them at play.