by Gus Russo
The president began by thanking his listeners for being there, despite the weather. When someone shouted out the question of where Jackie was, the president joined the general laughter. “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. It takes longer but, of course, she looks better than we do when she does it.” The President was using a microphone. Through her bedroom window, Jackie heard this beautifully delivered compliment, followed by whoops and cheers,. She wished the rain would continue so that the Secret Service would rig the bubble-top to the presidential Lincoln, saving her hair in the motorcade and perhaps hiding her tired eyes.
Jack and Jackie then appeared at the Chamber of Commerce’s breakfast for 2,500 guests in the hotel’s Longhorn room. As distinguished visitors, the president and First Lady were presented with gifts: ornate, hand-tooled boots that Jackie would never wear; a five-gallon cowboy hat that Jack declined to put on even for a moment because he had contempt for what he liked to call “baloney pictures” of presidents demeaning themselves in outlandish costumes. It took skill to finesse the moment of not donning the hat despite Texan calls for him to do so. Kennedy promised to wear his gift back in the White House.
The President’s speech followed: an undistinguished paean to Fort Worth for its historic and current contribution to the nation’s defense, together with a plug for the importance of American global commitments and the growth in military spending and strength. Defense appropriations, especially for aircraft, was vital to the economy of this city, which had its origins as a military outpost. Though Kennedy had little hope the Chamber of Commerce stalwarts would vote for him next November, he would highlight, in boldface, the very profitable Pentagon procurement orders, which were a boon to local banks and businesses. At a stop in the Houston Space Center the day before, his tongue had Freudian-slipped when he spoke of the world’s largest “payroll” instead of the world’s largest “payload.” Speaking to the business people that morning, he would return to the same point almost as bluntly.
First among the contemporary weapons he championed was “the Iroquois helicopter from Fort Worth, [which] is a mainstay in our fight against the guerrillas in South Vietnam.” With this segue, he went on to claim credit for increasing, under his presidency, the number of counterinsurgency forces engaged in Vietnam by 600 percent.
There was almost an hour between the end of breakfast and the departure for Dallas. Back in his suite on the hotel’s eighth floor, Kennedy was shown a page he had missed earlier when scanning the local newspapers. What he had noticed in that day’s Dallas Morning News was the hostile coverage: two frontpage stories devoted to the Yarborough and Connally-Johnson troubles, and an inside third one headlined, “PRESIDENT’S VISIT SEEN WIDENING STATE DEMOCRATIC SPLIT.”40
Now aides pointed to a full page advertisement entitled, “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.” In case a reader might miss the morbid sarcasm, the page was bordered in thick black, suggestive of mourning. “What kind of journalism do you call the Dallas Morning News?” Kennedy later asked an aide.41 The message in the advertisement was only slightly less crude than the “Wanted For Treason” handbills. The charges, couched as twelve rhetorical questions, were roughly the same: contributing to communist Cuba’s slavery, approving the sale of wheat to America’s communist enemies, ordering his brother, the Attorney General, to “go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration and your leadership.” The ad continued:
WHY has Gus Hall, head of the U.S. Communist Party, praised almost every one of your policies and announced that the party will endorse and support your re-election in 1964?. . . WHY have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the “Spirit of Moscow”?. . . Mr. Kennedy, WE DEMAND answers to these questions, and we want them NOW.
Kennedy did not know that Nelson Bunker Hunt, son of millionaire H.L. Hunt, was among the moving forces behind “The American Fact-Finding Committee,” the organization identified as the ad’s sponsor. However, Kennedy had long been concerned with the radical right’s militant opposition to him. Earlier that fall, he had commissioned a top-secret report on the dangers his presidency faced from such arch-conservatives as the Hunts.42 And this ad infuriated him. His ire was deepened by knowledge that the Dallas Morning News, the oldest newspaper in Texas, enjoyed wide circulation and substantial influence. “Can you imagine a paper doing a thing like that?” he murmured.43 Perhaps to distract himself or his disbelieving wife, he voiced speculation about being assassinated—this time, setting his imagination in the previous evening’s rain and jostling. He called it “a hell of a night to assassinate a President. . . Suppose a man had a pistol in his briefcase.”
He pantomimed the killer using his revolver and suggested he could have melted into the crowd. To Jackie, whose comfort on this trip still concerned him, he spoke with disgust barely softened by humor: “We’re heading into nut country now.”44
“Nut Country”
At 7:15 a.m., Lee Oswald walked one block east from the Paine house, and poked his head into the back door of Linnie Mae Randle’s home, looking for her brother Buell Frazier for a ride to work. Both Randle and Frazier later agreed that they observed Oswald place a package in the backseat. Both were adamant that the package was far too small to be even a broken-down Mannlicher Carcano rifle—34 inches long. Buell Frazier told the author that both he and his sister were badgered by Warren Commission investigators to reconsider their memory of the object’s length. Frazier recalled:
They had me in one room and my sister in another. They were asking us to hold our hands apart to show how long the package was. They made me do it over and over—at least ten times. Each time they measured the distance, and it was always 25 inches, give or take an inch. They did the same with my sister and she gave the same measurement. . . But I don’t understand what the problem is—Lee could have taken the rifle in on another day and hidden it in the warehouse. Why did he have to take it in on Friday?45
Indeed, this is one of many unanswered questions regarding the movements of Oswald’s rifle. One possible answer to this conundrum: if Frazier had been the “mystery driver” at the rifle range, it could be that, in the Friday package, Oswald was simply returning Buell Frazier’s British Enfield rifle, which he might have borrowed from him, either with intent to purchase it or to test it as a possible murder weapon. If that were the case, few could fault the 19 year-old Frazier for withholding this information, to prevent being implicated in the crime.
For his part, Oswald later told authorities that he had merely taken his lunch with him to work that morning. Frazier said Oswald told him the package contained curtain rods for his apartment. The Warren Commission located only one employee who saw Oswald enter the depository after leaving Frazier’s car. That employee, Jack Dougherty, testified, “I’ll put it this way, I didn’t see anything in his hands at the time.”46
It is possible that Dougherty missed the rifle—34 inches long, broken down—but not probable. But is it likely that Lee Oswald, the same man who so meticulously snuck his rifle to the Walker shooting site, burying it nearby days earlier—would attempt the murder of the century by openly carrying the rifle, even wrapped up, to the sniper’s nest in full view of the other employees?
Whatever the modus operandi, Oswald’s rifle was at the ready by the southeast sixth floor window when the President passed by on Elm Street below.
The ride to work in the morning rain, according to Frazier, was unremarkable. Lee wasn’t particularly quiet or talkative, and gave absolutely no hint that anything was out of the ordinary.
Washington
In the nation’s capital, Bobby Kennedy was occupied at the Justice Department in meetings with his organized crime task force. However, documents released in 1997 show that Bobby was also scheduled to meet secretly this day with Manuel Artime, Roberto San Román, and Harry Williams, “Los Amigos de Roberto.”47 It is not known if this meeting had in fact occurred when th
e news of JFK’s death arrived. However, Bobby’s secret Cuban allies were known to have been closeted in planning sessions in Washington on the morning of the 22nd. The man referred to by the Cuban exiles as “Bobby’s Boy,” Cuban exile coordinator Harry Williams, recalled the scene for former FBI-agent-turned-author William Turner:
Harry Williams told the authors. . . that, on that day, he was meeting in a CIA safe house in northwest Washington with Richard Helms, Howard Hunt, and several other CIA agents. It was, Williams would say, “the most important meeting I ever had on the problem of Cuba.” He was buoyant. Plans for his invasion from the Dominican Republic were crystallizing. Manuel Artime was “ready with his things in Central America,” and he and Williams were about ready “to do a whole thing together.48
Across town, the Senate Rules Committee was threatening the future of Lyndon Johnson with its ever-tightening investigation of Bobby Baker. Baker, a former Secretary to the Senate Democrats, was one of Johnson’s right-hand men throughout his Senate career and LBJ’s 1960 national campaign. He had also run a number of scams, allegedly peddling Johnson’s influence. For example, LBJ reportedly lined up friends on Capitol Hill to purchase insurance policies from D.C. insurance broker Don Reynolds. In exchange for the business, Reynolds alledgedly would kick back a percentage of the commission to the purchaser, and then to LBJ for arranging the transaction.49
The talk about Baker seemed to augur a major, unstoppable scandal. Indeed, to many, Baker’s influence peddling had become so flagrant that the term “payola” re-entered the lexicon as the investigations unfolded. Yet to be established was the depth of Johnson’s complicity in Baker’s various schemes. But the influence being peddled, after all, was Johnson’s—the former Senate Majority Leader. And even if no legally damaging relationship could be established, Johnson’s reputation would never fully recover. On the basis of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” the reading public would never believe that LBJ had been ignorant of Baker’s wholesale milking of Washington’s legislative supplicants.
A second looming stormcloud for the Vice President involved his Texan crony Billie Sol Estes. This time, the payments—in the form of government contracts—turned out to be for the storage of fictitious grain and for other fraudulent schemes. Some of the proceeds were said to have gone directly to Johnson and were rumored to be substantial. Johnson knew these allegations were also being investigated.
Washington insiders whispered about imminent disaster for the Vice President. It could reach as far as impeachment proceedings, they said, and possible criminal liability that could end, as Johnson himself believed, in a prison term. And on this very day—at the very moment of the assassination—Don Reynolds was testifying before the Senate Rules Committee, perhaps only hours away from implicating Vice-President Johnson in the Baker scandal. Rules Committee Counsel Burkett Van Kirk recently opined, “There is no doubt in my mind that Reynolds’ testimony of November 22 would have gotten Johnson out of the Vice-Presidency. ”50 However, Reynolds’ testimony was cut short when the news from Dallas arrived, and it would never resume.51
Paris
It was evening in Paris now and Cubela (AM/LASH) was meeting with his CIA case officer, Nestor Sanchez, and others. Cubela remembered the evening thus:
There were many officials there—several of them, three, four.. Among the things they pointed out to me, there was a pen that could shoot a bullet. . . He [Sanchez] did not give it to me, but actually he showed it to me. I did not accept it. . . It seems to me there was a kind of syringe which I was told contained poison.52
According to CIA documents, the agency recommended that Cubela fill the pen with the deadly poison, Black Leaf 40. The pen itself (a Papermate) had a protruding, micro-thin needle imperceptible to Fidel Castro as it pricked his skin. Cubela, however, balked. He had requested rifles and explosives. The CIA’s AM/LASH file contains the following entry: “The case officer assured AM/LASH that the CIA would give him everything he needed (telescopic sight, silencer, all the money he wanted).”53
When later investigating the CIA’s AM/LASH file, the Church Committee concluded, “AM/LASH intended to kill Castro, and the CIA knew his desire and endeavored to supply the means that he needed.”54
As President Kennedy entered his limousine at Dallas’ Love Field airport, the Kennedy brothers’ Cuban plans were accelerating. But in a few moments, Lee Oswald would achieve the only major success of his life. Using a $13 rifle, in an act taking just nine seconds, he would prevent the imminent implementation of OPLAN 380-63 and, perhaps, save Fidel Castro’s life.
Dallas: One Hour To Live
“President Kennedy should be awarded the Purple Heart just for coming to Dallas.”
—A Dallas resident who watched the Presidential motorcade
“We’re nothing but sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.”
—Jacqueline Kennedy, to a member of the Secret Service55
“Jackie, if somebody wants to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?”
—President Kennedy to his wife, in Fort Worth, 8 a.m., November 22, 1963
The presidential plane touched down in Dallas at 11:38 a.m. following a 13-minute flight from Fort Worth. At Love Field, the city’s outcast band of liberals was determined to be seen and heard—to demonstrate its loyalty to Kennedy and gratitude for his presence. But even amidst this good will, the ominous symbolism was manifest. Bobby had received the letter of warning about the Dallas visit. Jack had read the black-bordered ads (and left his protective religious medals behind). Now, it was Jackie’s turn. At every stop on the Texas trip, the First Lady was presented with a bouquet of yellow roses, the official state flower of Texas. Now, however, upon descending from Air Force One at Dallas’ Love Field, that tradition suddenly changed. “In Dallas they gave me red roses,” Jackie would recall a week after the assassination. “I thought how funny, red roses—so the seat was full of blood and red roses.”56
As the motorcade set out on its 11-mile route to the city’s center, the frightening predictions about the day seemed exaggerated. Early that morning, Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry had declared on television that the police department would tolerate no nonsense during the President’s visit. Without mentioning recent death threats received by his office, Curry made it clear that Dallas would be free of incidents and demonstrations by “extremists.” But what passed elsewhere as extremism was no more than an exercise in common sense and honest patriotism to some in Dallas. In their opinion, all politics and politicians to their left were traitors to a sacred nation under siege by communists. They believed the threat to be an inside one, and the President its proxy, especially because he had not only appeased the Kremlin, but even joined with the “Negroes” pressing for equality. (Dallas extremists tended to concentrate more on the enemy in Washington than the one in Moscow.)
As the Kennedys began their trip to downtown Dallas, some of the posters held up to the passing motorcade expressed outrage at the civil-rights movement. Some spectators—the sullen more ominously than the boisterous—waved Confederate flags. But the menace in the air seemed to come from something more substantial than the hisses of high school students and the ugliest of the posters and signs: “KENNEDY GO HOME!” “IN 1964, GOLDWATER AND FREEDOM.” “HELP KENNEDY STAMP OUT DEMOCRACY.” “MR. PRESIDENT, BECAUSE OF YOUR SOCIALIST TENDENCIES AND. . . SURRENDER TO COMMUNISM I HOLD YOU IN COMPLETE CONTEMPT.” And “YOUR [sic] A TRAITOR.” The anger in the air seemingly distilled all the resentment the people of Dallas, Texas harbored towards the young President.
Although such hostility later became more intense in the memories of some spectators than in reality, it was not invented. Seasoned observers, including Texan politicians who had joined Kennedy’s party, winced at what they saw in the streets and felt in the atmosphere.
The weather had improved, and the President’s car proceeded without its bubbletop, which, when screwed and bolted to the car, covered almost
the entire passenger section, from the back of the rear seat to the windshield. Together with Jack and Jackie, Governor and Mrs. Connally rode in the open dark blue Lincoln. It was followed by a large Secret Service car carrying agents in sunglasses, some of whom had spent much of the night before drinking at the Cellar, a late-night bar in Fort Worth. The third car was another Lincoln, this one rented for the Vice President and Lady Bird Johnson. (Senator Yarborough was, at last, ensconced with Johnson.)
Midway between the city’s limits and its heart, an increasingly cheerful Kennedy saw small children behind a sign asking him to stop and shake their hands. He complied, prompting shrieking delight, then stopped a second time to greet a company of nuns. In between, throngs responded to every wave of Jackie’s hand, gloved in impeccable white. “Jackeee!” Far more aware than she of the vote-power of being seen in person, the President twice asked her to remove her sunglasses.
Kennedy’s gloom had clearly begun to lift. The turnout for the motorcade was increasingly large and enthusiastic. The city’s official reception committee consisted of nine Republicans, two conservative Democrats, and a sole liberal from the Justice Department. This defiant assemblage was a calculated demonstration of conservative interests, purposely lacking sympathetic representation. Evidently, the city fathers wanted their message delivered loud and clear, but they had not counted on the Kennedys’ ability to capture a crowd. His charisma, and hers, appealed to the grass roots of Dallas, bypassing the civic leaders.
It was magic. To those predicting riots, everything seemed backwards. Dallas was swept up in the glamour of the moment. A reporter in the press bus behind the limousines referred to the turnout as “a whale of a lot of people.” The reporter’s colleagues concluded that Kennedy would surely be re-elected next year. Even Governor Connally, riding in the Lincoln, surprisingly conceded to the President that he could probably carry Texas in 1964.
