Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Dr. John Lattimer, who studied the assassination for years, researched the entire brace issue and concluded it may have been responsible for Kennedy’s death. He writes that Kennedy had “bound himself firmly in a rather wide corset, with metal stays and a stiff plastic pad over the sacral area, which was tightly laced to his body. The corset was then bound even more firmly to his torso and hips by a six-inch-wide knitted elastic bandage, which he had wrapped in a figure eight between his legs and around his waist, over large thick pads, to encase himself tightly…He apparently adopted this type of tight binding as a consequence of the painful loosening of his joints around the sacroiliac area, probably a result of his long-continued cortisone therapy.” The result? When he and Connally were hit by the same bullet, the “corset prevented him from crumpling down out of the line of fire, as Governor Connally did. Because the president remained upright, with his head exposed, Oswald was able to draw a careful bead on the back of his head.” (Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln, p.171; Lattimer, “Additional Data on the Shooting of President Kennedy,” p.1546)

  Since the first bullet that struck Kennedy passed through soft tissue and did not penetrate any organ of the body, it was the opinion of Dr. Perry, Kennedy’s chief attending surgeon, that “barring the advent of complications, this wound was tolerable, and I think he would have survived it” (3 H 372). Writer James Reston Jr. captioned his article on this issue, “That ‘Damned Girdle’: The Hidden Factor That Might Have Killed Kennedy” (Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2004, p.B9). If this is true, the Japanese destroyer that sunk Kennedy’s PT boat in World War II and killed two of his crewmates, only injuring Kennedy’s already fragile back when he was hurled backwards onto the deck (Leaming, Jack Kennedy, p.139; O’Donnell and Powers with McCarthy, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, p.48), finally claimed Kennedy as its third victim twenty years later.

  If there is no certainty as to the role the president’s back brace played in his death, there is something closer to certainty that caused his death and which he himself was responsible for. As indicated earlier, President Kennedy did not want Secret Service agents riding on the steps attached to the right and left rear bumper of the presidential limousine. Gerald A. Behn, special agent in charge of the White House Secret Service detail, said that shortly after assuming his job in late 1961, President Kennedy had told him this. No fewer than five Secret Service agents gave statements to the Warren Commission that it was common knowledge among the White House detail that this was Kennedy’s desire, which he reiterated twice in the summer of 1963, once in Rome on July 2, 1963, the other time in Tampa, Florida, just four days before the assassination. Kennedy’s desire was not etched in stone, and since the Secret Service has the right to do whatever is necessary to protect the president, in Tampa, on November 18, Special Agent Donald Lawton was standing on the right rear step, Special Agent Charles Zboril on the left rear. Kennedy told Special Agent Floyd Boring, who was seated in the right front seat of the limousine, to have the two agents return to the follow-up car. When the limousine slowed through downtown Tampa about three minutes later, the two agents dismounted. (CE 1025, 18 H 805–809; “Kennedy Barred Car-Step Guards,” New York Times, November 24, 1964, pp.1, 33)

  The likelihood is high that if Kennedy had not been opposed to Secret Service agents riding on the back of his car—the agent standing on the right rear step would have blocked Oswald’s sight on Kennedy’s head.

  *Per the Warren Report, “As the President’s limousine sped toward the hospital, 12 doctors rushed to the emergency area.” The report named the twelve (four surgeons, one neurologist, four anesthesiologists, one urological surgeon, one oral surgeon, and one heart specialist), but omitted at least two doctors, Dr. Carrico and Dr. Charles Crenshaw. (WR, p.53)

  *The medical school, so often referred to in assassination literature, is the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School located right next door to Parkland Hospital. In fact, the first floors are connected by a long corridor. The two institutions are separately owned and governed but have an extremely close relationship, Parkland being the “teaching hospital” for the medical school. In fact, many of the doctors on the Parkland staff are professors at the school, and most of the school’s graduates do their residency at Parkland.

  *The femoral artery is the main artery of the thigh and can be felt in the pelvic area.

  *The bullet wound happened to be located in the precise place where a tracheotomy is normally performed.

  *The Parkland doctors chose type O RH-negative blood because it is safe to give to anyone, regardless of his or her type, as it causes no adverse reaction.

  *“KKB-364” is the radio call sign of the Dallas police radio station.

  *The city of Dallas was broken down into eighty-six police districts. Each day was broken down into three eight-hour shifts (“platoons”). Most districts only had one patrolman assigned to it, although “hot districts” (those with a higher incidence of crime) had two. The number “78” was Tippit’s radio call number because it was the police district, number 78, he was assigned to. (Eighty-six districts: “Dallas Police Department Squad Districts as of January 1, 1960,” DMA, box 7, folder 10, item 3; Telephone interview of Jim Bowles by author on March 25, 2004)

  ‡The author of the only book on the Tippit murder case wrote that “the initials [J. D.] he was known by didn’t have any particular meaning. To everyone he was just J. D.” Tippit’s brother, Wayne, told the author that reports that his brother’s initials stood for “Jefferson Davis” were incorrect. (Myers, With Malice, pp.28, 588 note 20) However, at least as to the first initial, a fellow officer who worked with Tippit for a while referred to him as John (Sneed, No More Silence, p.463).

  *The Parkland doctors had worked on the president in the emergency room for twenty-two minutes before he expired. (But see also New York Times, November 23, 1963, p.2)

  Dr. Charles Baxter, one of the many surgeons attempting to save the president, would later recall, “As soon as we realized we had nothing medical to do, we all backed off from the man with a reverence that one has for one’s president. And we did not continue to be doctors from that point on. We became citizens again, and there were probably more tears shed in that room than in the surrounding hundred miles” (“Surgeon Who Operated on JFK in Dallas Dies,” Associated Press, March 12, 2005).

  ‡In emergency medicine, injuries are described as one-plus, two-plus, et cetera. A four-plus injury is a worst-case scenario.

  *The few minutes leading up to Tippit’s murder were only known to Tippit and Oswald. (Witnesses to the murder were only aware of the previous minute, not minutes.) So we have to infer what happened from what little we do know. Looking at the map in the photo section, we know that to get to Tenth and Patton, where Tippit was murdered, Oswald had to have at least started out by going south on Beckley. [Images in this ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.] We also know that the last time we heard from Tippit was at 1:08 p.m. when he called the channel 1 police dispatcher twice to communicate but was never acknowledged. Since this time is so close to the time of his death, in February of 2004 I called the person I felt would be most qualified to confirm or dispel my suspicion that the 1:08 p.m. transmission by Tippit was related to his death, Dallas sheriff Jim Bowles, a fifty-three-year member of Dallas law enforcement—thirty years with the Dallas Police Department, twenty-three with the Dallas sheriff’s office, the last twenty as sheriff. Responding to my amazement over his fifty-three years in law enforcement, Bowles said, “Most police officers have starved to death [on their low pay] by that time.” Just as important as Bowles’s long experience in law enforcement is the fact that he was a Dallas police radio dispatcher supervisor in November of 1963. (Because of his father’s stroke, Bowles was off duty on the day of the assassination.) Indeed, it was Bowles who transcribed the recordings on the police radio tapes for the Warren Commission. “Oh, I don’t think there’s too much question the two 1:08 transmissions from Tippit pertained to Oswald,
” Bowles said. I asked Bowles when would the 1:08 transmissions have likely been made, shortly before the murder or earlier? “Most likely earlier, when Tippit first saw Oswald walking like the devil possessed, probably back on Beckley or Crawford, and he just slow-tailed him to Tenth.” (Confirmation of Bowles’s analysis that Tippit was slowly following Oswald comes from witness William Scoggins, who said that when he saw Tippit’s car cross the intersection of Tenth and Patton, Tippit was traveling “not more than ten or twelve miles an hour” behind where Oswald was walking on Tenth [3 H 324]. And Helen Markham also noticed that the police car was “going real slow…real slow” [3 H 307].) I asked Bowles, “Tippit wouldn’t have pulled his squad car over to the curb next to Oswald shortly after spotting him, and was calling in at 1:08 to let the dispatcher know he was leaving his patrol car [and radio, since in 1963 the Dallas Police never had walkie talkies] to approach Oswald?” Bowles, who worked for ten years in the Dallas police radio dispatcher’s office, said, “Possible, but that wouldn’t be the norm for an officer under these circumstances, particularly Tippit. I knew Tippit. He was a slow, cautious, deliberate guy. The norm would have been for him to call in for a further description of the suspect from the dispatcher. But not being acknowledged, after following Oswald for a few minutes he pulled over to see what this person [Oswald] is up to.” “You don’t think Tippit had enough PC [not as in probable cause for an arrest, but still used as a loose way of referring to a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity justifying a police officer to stop a pedestrian or driver of a car for questioning] to stop Oswald because Oswald vaguely fit the general description of the suspect sent out over police radio?” “Possibly,” Bowles said, “but his PC was probably the description coupled with some overt behavior by Oswald like walking too fast, looking over his shoulder, walking in some erratic, jerky way. Remember, Oswald had just killed the president. He probably wasn’t walking in a normal, casual way and a police officer would pick up on this more than someone else would.” (Telephone interview of Dallas sheriff Jim Bowles by author on February 23, 2004)

  *The Kennedy loyalists felt it was in the worst of taste for President Johnson to take the former president’s plane back to Washington instead of flying back on Air Force Two, the plane he had come to Texas in. And indeed, when Warren Commission counsel asked O’Donnell if, after he informed LBJ that the president had died, there was “any discussion about his taking the presidential plane, AF-1, as opposed to AF-2?” O’Donnell replied, “There was not” (7 H 451). And he reiterated this in his book (O’Donnell and Powers with McCarthy, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, p.40). But one wonders if O’Donnell found it convenient to deny the conversation when he thereafter heard the sentiments of his associates about Johnson flying on Air Force One. President Johnson told the Warren Commission that after O’Donnell informed him that Kennedy had died, O’Donnell “said that we should return to Washington and that we should take the president’s plane” (5 H 563). And Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, special agent in charge of the vice presidential detail for the Texas trip, testified before the Warren Commission that “O’Donnell told us to go ahead and take Air Force One. I believe this is mainly because Air Force One has better communications equipment and so forth than the other planes [Air Force Two and the cargo plane]” (2 H 152–153). U.S. News & World Report sought to confirm this and was told by a former White House official that, at the time, the three jet planes in the presidential fleet were being “regeared for communications of a classified nature. Naturally, the first plane to be re-equipped was AF-1. Most of the new gear had been installed in AF-1. The other two jet planes had not been completed” (“Fateful Two Hours without a President,” p.73).

  Another reason to believe LBJ and Youngblood on this point is that the weight of the evidence (see later text) is that LBJ was very sensitive to the feelings of the entire Kennedy camp following the assassination.

  *O’Donnell thought that he had convinced Johnson to depart immediately upon his arrival at Love Field; however, Johnson wasn’t about to fly back to the capital alone, with a dead president and a grieving widow on a following plane. He agreed to return to Love Field but was determined to wait for Mrs. Kennedy and the president’s body before departing for Washington. (5 H 563, WC statement of President Lyndon Baines Johnson; O’Donnell and Powers with McCarthy, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, p.34; Bishop, Day Kennedy Was Shot, pp.193–194; Telephone interview of Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Lem Johns by author on June 28, 2005)

  *Although the FBI and other members of law enforcement first suspected that the nation’s right wing was behind the assassination, Warren Commission chronicler and assassination researcher Max Holland writes, “For officials whose instincts were honed by national-security considerations, the Soviet-American rivalry loomed over what had happened and dictated what immediately needed to be done. The overwhelming instant reaction among these officials was to suspect a grab for power, a foreign, Communist-limited conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the U.S. government. The assassination might be the first in a concerted series of attacks on U.S. leaders as the prelude to an all-out attack…When Major General Chester Clifton, JFK’s military aide, arrived at Parkland Hospital, he immediately called the National Military Command Center and then switched to the White House Situational Room to find out if there was any intelligence about a plot to overthrow the government. The Defense Department subsequently issued a flash warning to every U.S. military base in the world and ordered additional strategic bombers into the air. General Maxwell Taylor [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] issued a special alert to all troops in the Washington [D.C.] area, while John McCone, director of Central Intelligence, asked the Watch Committee to convene immediately at the Pentagon. The committee, an interdepartmental group organized to prevent future Pearl Harbors, consisted of the government’s best experts on surprise military attacks” (Holland, “Key to the Warren Report,” pp.52, 54).

  *The conventional wisdom and that of the Warren Commission is that Tippit pulled his squad car over to talk to Oswald because Tippit must have heard the description of the suspected killer of the president, which was sent out over Dallas police radio at 12:45, 12:48, and 12:55 p.m., that he was a “white male, approximately thirty, slender build, height five foot ten inches, weight 165 pounds,” and Oswald’s description was similar to the suspect (WR, p.165). The argument of conspiracy theorists, seeking to link Oswald to Tippit before Tippit’s murder, that Oswald wasn’t similar enough for Tippit to have stopped him, is a very weak one. If there ever was a time when a police officer would stop someone if he even remotely resembled a suspect, surely this was it.

  *We will never know what words Oswald and Tippit exchanged that caused Tippit to leave his patrol car and start to approach Oswald. But we can safely assume that there was something about Oswald’s words, appearance, or demeanor that made Tippit want to check Oswald out further, but that was not suspicious enough at that point for him to have drawn his gun on Oswald.

  ‡Tippit had a bad habit, which his fellow officers unsuccessfully tried to break him of, of never looking anyone straight in the eye, looking down or sometimes sideways when he approached a person on duty. This may have accounted for how Oswald got the jump on him.

  *I have asked Tatum if he got “a good look” at the man who shot Tippit and whom he identified at the trial. “Very good look,” Tatum responded. I asked if there was “any question in your mind” that the man was Oswald. “None whatsoever,” he answered. (Transcript of On Trial, July 23, 1986, p.200)

  *Actually, Tippit pulled over and stopped his squad car on the street in front of the driveway between 404 and 410 East Tenth Street (CE 523, 17 H 229; photo of car parked on East Tenth: Barnes Exhibit D, 19 H 114).

  *Hulse has gotten the 510 East Jefferson address (the site of Reynolds Motor Company) from the call sheet passed through the conveyor belt to the dispatch room from the adjacent room manned by civilian employees of the police department taking calls from other
civilians—the result of the phone call made by L. J. Lewis from that location. The confusion resulting from the two addresses given for the shooting delayed the arrival of many police officers in getting to the shooting scene.