Parkland (Movie Tie-In Edition)

by Vincent Bugliosi

  That the job of the president of the United States is the most dangerous elected job in the world cannot be too vigorously contested. In addition to the two attempted assassinations of President Gerald Ford in 1975 (by Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme in Sacramento on September 5, 1975, and Sarah Jane Moore in San Francisco on September 22, 1975), the attempted assassination of President Richard Nixon by Samuel Joseph Byck on February 22, 1974, and the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan by William Hinckley in Washington, D.C., on March 30, 1981, two other presidents were attacked before Kennedy, but the attempts failed. Additionally, attempts were made on one president-elect and even one former president. On January 30, 1835, an English-born house painter, Richard Lawrence, fired two pistols, both of which misfired, at President Andrew Jackson. Like William Hinckley, Lawrence was found by a jury to be not guilty by reason of insanity and died in a mental hospital sixteen years later. On November 1, 1950, two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to shoot their way into Blair House, where President Harry Truman and his wife were temporarily residing while the White House was being repaired. Torresola was shot to death by White House guards in a hail of gunfire (one of the guards was also killed). Collazo was seriously wounded and sentenced to death, but Truman commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was shot at in his car five times at a political rally in Miami’s Bayfront Park on February 15, 1933 by Giuseppe Zangara, a thirty-two-year-old bricklayer and stonemason. All five of Zangara’s shots missed Roosevelt. However, one of them hit Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was riding with Roosevelt. Cermak died of his wound on March 6, and Zangara was electrocuted on March 20, only thirty-three days after his attempt on Roosevelt. The former president who escaped was Theodore Roosevelt, who was running for president again as the candidate of the Progressive or “Bull Moose” Party. On October 14, 1912, a German-born New York bartender, John Schrank, fired one shot at Roosevelt as he entered his car outside a hotel in Milwaukee. The bullet hit Roosevelt in the chest, but a folded manuscript of the speech he was about to make and the metal case for his eyeglasses absorbed part of the bullet’s thrust, and he survived. Schrank was found to be insane and died in a mental hospital in 1943. (WR, pp.505, 509–513)

  So starting with Lincoln in 1865, approximately one out of every three American presidents either has been assassinated or had an attempt on his life.

  *Speaking of his early days in office to his biographer, Doris Kearns, LBJ said, “I took the oath. I became president. But for millions of Americans I was still illegitimate, a naked man with no presidential covering, a pretender to the throne, an illegal usurper. And then there was Texas, my home, the home of both the murder and the murder of the murderer. And then there were the bigots and the dividers and the Eastern intellectuals, who were waiting to knock me down before I could even begin to stand up. The whole thing was almost unbearable” (Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, p.170).

  *Marguerite told her biographer, Jean Stafford, in 1965, “I’m a mother in history. I’m all over the world…and my son’s the one accused. You know, here is Mrs. Kennedy, a very wealthy woman, Mrs. Tippit, a very wealthy woman, Marina, very wealthy [referring to the donations from the public Marina and particularly Mrs. Tippit received], but I am wondering where my next meal is coming from. It’s almost unbelievable” (Stafford, Mother in History, p.54).

  *Two other planes leave Love Field following Air Force One: Air Force Two, the vice presidential plane, tail number SAM86970, now occupied mostly by Kennedy staffers forced to leave Air Force One to make room for President Johnson and his entourage; and SAM86373, the C-130 cargo jet carrying the blood-spattered presidential limousine and other trappings of the presidency, such as the president’s seal and a special American flag (Holland, Kennedy Assassination Tapes, pp.48–49; see also TerHorst and Albertazzie, Flying White House, pp.210, 212).

  *But there are five small windows in the room, all with venetian blinds and curtains connected to one five-and-ten-cent-store-type curtain rod. There is a single iron-rail bed, a large wooden movable wardrobe dresser drawer, a small plastic-top table, and a nightstand with a table lamp next to the head of the bed. Two small throw rugs are on the linoleum-tiled floor. (CD 705, pp.1–2, March 28, 1964; CE 2046, 24 H 460–461; 10 H 297, WCT Mrs. Arthur Carl Johnson)

  *The date that Oswald came to the FBI office is not known, although it is inferable from Ruth Paine’s testimony that Oswald indicated to her it was sometime during the week preceding the weekend of November 9–10, 1963 (3 H 18). Hosty, in his 1996 book, Assignment: Oswald (p.29), says it was “ten days before” the assassination. And in a July 15, 1975, affidavit given to the FBI, Nannie Lee Fenner, the FBI receptionist to whom Oswald gave the note, said it was around ten days before the assassination. But there seems to be little basis for this certitude. Indeed, when Hosty testified under oath about it in 1975, he said Oswald dropped the note off “probably November the sixth, seventh, or eighth,” which would have been sixteen to eighteen days earlier. And Fenner testified in 1975 that “I do not know the exact date…It would have been in November. It could have been before that. I have racked my brain up one side and down the other and I cannot come up with the date.” Fenner said Oswald, not identifying himself, came to the FBI office during the noon hour and said to her, “S.A. Hosty, please.” He had a “wild look in his eye” and was “awfully fidgety.” While she was checking to see if Hosty was in, she said the “bottom portion” of the note Oswald was holding was visible to her and she recalls “the last two lines” of the note, which said, “I will either blow up the Dallas Police Department or the FBI office.” When Fenner learned, and told Oswald, that Hosty was not in, he gave her the note to give to Hosty. After Oswald left, she decided to see “what was above” those two lines and said it “was something about [Hosty] speaking to his wife and what he was going to do if they didn’t stop.” Fenner said the note was signed “Lee Harvey Oswald,” and when Hosty came back to the office, she gave the note to him. Hosty, who disposed of the note following the assassination (see later discussion), did not recall the note being signed, and said the note did not contain the language Fenner recalls. When asked at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing in 1975, “It [the note] didn’t say anything about the blowing up of the office?” he replied, “No, sir, I would have remembered that.” Hosty characterized Fenner as unreliable and someone with “a distinct reputation for gross exaggeration,” saying he was “almost certain that Fenner had never even read the note. It is more likely that she heard about it and embellished her knowledge.” A coworker of Fenner’s, Joe Pearce, gave an affidavit on July 22, 1975, that Fenner had “a tendency to exaggerate.” Actually, Fenner’s testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee that when she saw Oswald on TV after the assassination and recognized him as the man who had given her the note, yet told no one at the office about this fact when she came in to work because “there was no one for me to talk to” and “what I didn’t know was none of my business,” throws her entire story about the contents of the note into question. And of course her recalling that the note said Oswald threatened to blow up the Dallas Police Department for a grievance he had against the FBI has no ring of truth to it. (FBI Oversight, December 11 and 12, 1975, pp.37–38, 40–41, 47, 53 [Fenner’s testimony on December 11]; pp.129–130, 145–146 [Hosty’s testimony on December 12]; Hosty with Hosty, Assignment: Oswald, pp.185, 195–199; Telephone interview of James Hosty by author on April 9, 2004; Joe Pearce affidavit: DOJCD Record 186-10006-10077, July 29, 1975; see also Church Committee Report, pp.96–97)

  *Ayres would later tell author William Manchester that he started to say “President” Johnson, but checked himself, apparently not wanting to further hurt Mrs. Kennedy with the declared reality that her son was no longer the president (Manchester, Death of a President, p.371).

  *Most of the nearly one and a half million telephones in service in the Washington metropoli
tan area on November 22 were used during the first half hour. A staggering quarter-million long-distance calls alone were made on Friday, resulting in overloaded exchanges, delayed dial tones, and intermittent service. Normal telephone operations were not completely restored until 4:15 p.m. EST. (Manchester, Death of a President, pp.205–206, 253–254)

  *When Boswell was informed that the autopsy would take place at Bethesda, he said, “That’s stupid. The autopsy should be done at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology [AFIP],” located just five miles up the road from Bethesda at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The AFIP was “the apex of military pathology and, perhaps, world pathology,” according to Boswell. However, his suggestion was rejected. “That’s the way it is,” he was told. “Admiral Burkley wants Bethesda.” (Breo, “JFK’s Death—The Plain Truth from the MDs Who Did the Autopsy,” p.2796; ARRB MD 26, Memorandum, Andy Purdy to Jim Kelly and Kenneth Klein, August 17, 1977, Notes of interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, pp.1–2)

  *In spite of all the planning for the landing, the ambulance is waiting there not by design but by order of Captain Robert Canada Jr., USN, commanding officer of Bethesda Naval Hospital. Canada, unaware of the role his hospital would play, had sent the navy ambulance to Andrews Air Force Base in case Lyndon Johnson, a navy veteran, whom Canada had treated after his massive heart attack in July 1955, had suffered another one. (Manchester, Death of a President, p.381)

  *In a large-sample national poll in March of 1964 by the National Opinion Research Center, an affiliate of the University of Chicago, an astonishing 53 percent of those interviewed said they had wept when they heard the news of Kennedy’s death (New York Times, March 7, 1964, p.11). This percentage is remarkable by itself, and becomes even more so when you factor in the number of people who, though grieving as much, cannot bring tears to their eyes.

  *Despite Marina’s suspicion that her husband had murdered the president, as she walked past the media at police headquarters upon her arrival, she said loyally, “Lee good man—he no shoot anyone” (JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly, April 2006, p.8).

  *Dr. Boswell said Humes was “afraid the sheets would end up in somebody’s barn on Highway 66 as exhibits” and immediately threw them into the morgue washing machine to be laundered (ARRB MD 26, Memorandum, Andy Purdy to Jim Kelly and Kenneth Klein, August 17, 1977, Notes of interview with Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, pp.2–3; ARRB Transcript of Proceedings, Deposition of Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, February 26, 1996, p.14).

  ‡FBI agents O’Neill and Sibert noted the following were in attendance at the beginning of the autopsy: Admiral Calvin B. Galloway, USN, commanding officer of the U.S. Naval Medical Center, Bethesda; Captain John H. Stover, commanding officer, U.S. Naval Medical School; Admiral George G. Burkley, USN, the president’s personal physician; Commander James J. Humes, chief pathologist; Commander J. Thornton Boswell, chief of pathology at Bethesda; Jan G. Rudnicki, laboratory assistant to Dr. Boswell; John T. Stringer Jr., medical photographer; John H. Ebersole, assistant chief radiologist at Bethesda; Floyd A. Riebe, medical photographer; Paul K. O’Connor, laboratory technologist; James Curtis Jenkins, laboratory technologist; Jerrol F. Custer, X-ray technician; Edward F. Reed, X-ray technician; James E. Metzler, hospital corpsman, third-class; and Secret Service agents Roy Kellerman, William Greer, and John J. O’Leary (who stayed only briefly) (ARRB MD 44, FBI Report of O’Neill and Sibert, November 26, 1963, p.2). Admiral George Burkley reported that Admiral Edward Kenney, the surgeon general of the navy; Captain Robert O. Canada, commanding officer of Bethesda Naval Hospital; and Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, air force aide to the president, were also present when the president’s body was moved to the autopsy table (NARA Record 189-10001-10048, Report of George Burkley, November 27, 1963, 8:45 a.m., p.7, ARRB MD 48). During the course of the autopsy Pierre A. Finck, chief of the wound ballistics pathology branch at Walter Reed medical center, arrived to assist Humes and Boswell. In addition, Lieutenant Commander Gregory H. Cross, resident in surgery, and Captain David Osborne, chief of surgery, entered the autopsy room. (ARRB MD 44, FBI Report of O’Neill and Sibert, November 26, 1963, p.2) At one point, Major General Philip C. Wehle, commanding officer of the U.S. Military District of Washington, D.C., entered the autopsy room to make arrangements with the Secret Service regarding the transportation of the president’s body back to the White House. Near the end of the autopsy, Chester H. Boyers, chief petty officer in charge of the pathology division, entered the room to type up receipts for items given to the FBI and Secret Service. At the end of the autopsy, John VanHoesen, Edwin Stroble, Thomas E. Robinson, and Joe Hagan (personnel from Gawler’s Funeral Home) prepared the president’s body for burial. Also in attendance at that time were Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh and Dr. George Bakeman, USN. (ARRB MD 44, FBI Report of O’Neill and Sibert, November 26, 1963, pp.2–3) The HSCA also noted that Richard A. Lipsey, personal aide to General Wehle, and Samuel A. Bird were also present at various times (7 HSCA 9).

  *This is a standard practice in professional photography wherein each angle is photographed three times at three different exposures—one slightly underexposed, one slightly overexposed, and one at the presumed proper exposure setting—ensuring that at least one of the three images will be perfectly exposed.

  *Oswald was referring to an antisedition law enacted in 1940 to combat the threat of global Communism that prohibited advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government “by force or violence.” Abt, himself a member of the Communist Party, won his biggest victory in 1965 when the U.S. Supreme Court held that the nation’s 1950 Internal Security Act (commonly called the McCarran Act), which required that all Communists and Communist organizations register with the federal government, was unconstitutional because it violated the Fifth Amendment’s right against self-incrimination. (Albertson v. Subversive Activities Control Board, 382 U.S. 70 [1965];Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1991, p.A14)

  ‡Despite Captain Fritz’s instructions, there is no record that Oswald made any attempts to contact Attorney Abt in New York on November 22.

  ‡When I asked Alexander if at that time he also believed Oswald had killed Kennedy, he responded, “Yeah. We felt it was clear that the same person who killed Tippit killed Kennedy. That’s why he killed Tippit, because he was stopped while in flight from Kennedy’s murder. It was pretty obvious to all of us—I don’t remember anyone that was thinking otherwise—that Oswald had committed both murders” (Interview of William Alexander by author on December 11, 2000).

  *No bullet, or significant portion thereof, was found in either Kennedy’s or Connally’s body.

  *The young lad Amos Euins also saw a gunman firing from the window, but his description of the gunman, as we have seen, was of little value, Euins first describing the gunman as being a colored man, and later, a white man.

  *Inspector Zarza checks the box and finds two copies of the Militant that had not yet been forwarded (7 H 296, WCT Harry D. Holmes).

  *Under the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case of Miranda v. Arizona, even if a suspect or arrestee has waived his right to have a lawyer present during his interrogation, and also waived his right against self-incrimination, once he indicates, at any time during the interrogation, that he does not want to answer any further questions, “the interrogation must cease,” and any statement he makes thereafter, even if apparently free and voluntary, cannot be used against him because said statement is deemed to be, as a matter of law, “the product of compulsion, subtle or otherwise” (Miranda v. Arizona, 86 S. Ct. 1627, 1628). Here, as we shall see, Oswald continued to be interrogated and continued to answer questions for two more days. But Miranda wasn’t yet in existence back in 1963.

  *Some of the military men present talked of bringing in metal detectors to expedite the search for any bullets in the president’s body (ARRB MD 19, Memorandum to File, Andy Purdy, August 17, 1977, p.10).

  *Predictably, the paraffin cast for Oswald’s right cheek showed no reaction, that is, no nitrates indicating he had fired a weapo
n (4 H 276, WCT J. C. Day), but the paraffin cast on his hands, also predictably, showed a positive reaction, indicating, though not conclusively, he had recently fired a weapon. Though, as indicated, there is no gap between the chamber and the barrel of a rifle through which gases can escape (resulting in no nitrate residue being found on Oswald’s right cheek from firing his Mannlicher-Carcano), there is a gap between the barrel and the cylinder on a revolver through which gases do escape; hence, nitrate residue was found on Oswald’s hands, most likely from his shooting Officer Tippit with his .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver (4 H 276, WCT J. C. Day). Indeed, the gun residue test was devised only for the firing of small arms, not rifles.