WASHINGTON, D.C.
MIDDAY
The man with seven months to live is talking to Winston Churchill.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy stands in the White House Rose Garden before a large, warmhearted crowd. Churchill, the ninety-two-year-old former prime minister whose inspirational courage helped save Britain during World War II, watches live by satellite from his home in London. The purpose of this Rose Garden gathering is to make Winston Churchill an American citizen—the only foreign leader since Lafayette to be so honored.
“A son of America though a subject of Britain,” Kennedy begins his speech, referring to the fact that Churchill’s mother, née Jenny Jerome, was a U.S. citizen, “has been throughout his life a firm and steadfast friend of the American people and the American nation.”
Churchill’s fifty-one-year-old son, Randolph, stands at JFK’s side. Jackie Kennedy stands directly behind her husband. The Rose Garden is filled with diplomats and acquaintances from the United States and England. The president’s father, Joseph, who served as ambassador to Great Britain just prior to the Second World War, watches from a wheelchair inside the White House, the elder Kennedy having experienced a stroke two years prior.
But even as John Kennedy stands before this idyllic gathering, seeing the warmth and smiles that come with honoring such a distinguished and legendary world leader, his thoughts are never far from another “Churchill”—and another war that is gaining steam.
* * *
It was Dwight Eisenhower who first sent American soldiers to Vietnam to stem the flow of communism in Southeast Asia. But it was John Kennedy who ordered a gradual escalation in the number of troops since taking office, hoping to ensure that Vietnam did not fall to communism and thus perhaps begin a domino effect that would see other Asian nations turn their backs on democracy.
But Kennedy’s good intentions have gone awry. The handful of American “advisers” in Vietnam has now swelled to almost sixteen thousand pilots and soldiers. American pilots are dropping napalm firebombs from the sky to destroy the Viet Cong army that is now fighting the U.S.-backed Saigon regime. Thousands of Viet Cong soldiers have been killed—as have thousands of innocent Vietnamese peasants. “The charred bodies of children and babies have made pathetic piles in the middle of the remains of the marketplace,” the Associated Press reported after one such bombing incident.
American pilots fly hundreds of missions over Vietnam every month. A systematic process of defoliation has begun, with American airplanes spraying chemicals over the jungle to kill all vegetation that might hide enemy soldiers. Of course, the crops of many innocent farmers are destroyed in the process. This “scorched earth” policy will eventually come back to haunt the United States in a number of ways.
The CIA has joined in the fight in Vietnam, conducting covert search-and-destroy missions in the Communist north. Gunners aboard American helicopters have free rein to open fire on the peasants who turn and run when they see Hueys come sweeping in over the treetops. The assumption is that the farmers run because they are the enemy, not that they might be superstitious and terrified about aircraft that have suddenly invaded the skies above their primitive villages.
John Kennedy believes that America needs to end the Vietnam conflict—though he is not quite ready to go public with this. “We don’t have a prayer of staying in Vietnam,” he will tell Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charles Bartlett off the record. “Those people hate us. They are going to throw our asses out of there at any point. But I can’t give up that territory to the Communists and get the American people to reelect me.”
To safeguard his chances for reelection, the president cannot, and will not, pull U.S. troops out of Vietnam until after the 1964 election. The war is still popular with voters. In the meantime, he hopes to contain U.S. involvement, reading his briefing books each morning and praying that South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem doesn’t do anything stupid or irresponsible to inflame the situation.
Diem is a Catholic, just like the Kennedys. But his faith is almost fanatical, causing him to lose focus on fighting communism. He is now fighting a war on two fronts. The first is against the Viet Cong; the second is a holy war against Vietnam’s majority Buddhist population.
Yet it is Diem whom Vice President Johnson once famously praised as “the Winston Churchill of Asia.” The Kennedy brothers hate that gross exaggeration. Unlike the real Winston Churchill, Diem is not a firm and steadfast friend of the American people or the United States of America. He is a mass murderer, concerned only about his own glorification.
And that narcissism will soon doom him.
* * *
In the Rose Garden, Kennedy concludes his remarks. He now listens as Randolph Churchill reads from a speech his father has prepared. “Our past is our key to our future,” says Churchill, in words that make Kennedy and the British icon sound like two very similar statesmen. “Let no one underrate our energies, our potentialities, and our abiding power for good.”
* * *
But not every man believes in an abiding power for good.
John Kennedy is hardly a violent man. He dislikes guns and even abhors hunting animals. The same cannot be said for Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, on a hot April night, Oswald hides in the shadows of a Dallas alleyway. His new rifle is pointed at Major General Ted Walker, an avowed anticommunist.
Walker sits in the study of his Dallas home intently poring over his 1962 tax returns. The fifty-three-year-old West Point graduate is a closeted gay man and a famous opponent of communism. The date is April 10, and he is home alone on this Wednesday night, having just returned from a controversial trip around the country. The desk lamp is the room’s only light. A small window looks out into the darkness. Normally, Walker might crack the window to let in the sweet spring air, but it was a record-high ninety-nine degrees today. It’s still hot, even at 9:00 P.M. Walker is running the air-conditioning.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s hiding spot in the alley is just forty yards away. He watches Walker’s every move through the telescopic sight of his Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The hum of the air-conditioning unit drowns out the sound of Oswald’s carefully choreographed movements. He is now concealed behind Walker’s back fence, the barrel of his rifle poking through the latticework. There is a church near Walker’s home, where the congregants have gathered for a midweek service on this Wednesday evening.
The oppression of the workingman courses through Lee Harvey Oswald’s veins. He finds strength in the ideals of communism and socialism. After almost a year back home in America, he has become even more enraged by what he perceives as the injustice of the capitalist system. He is angry enough to kill any man who speaks out against communism.
Which is why he is aiming his brand-new rifle with murderous intent at Ted Walker’s head. The former general is at the very top of the list of people whom Oswald despises. Eighteen months ago, Walker was asked to leave the army after telling a newspaper reporter that Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt were most likely Communists. He resigned his post rather than retire, a symbolic gesture of defiance that cost him his pension. Since then, the veteran of World War II and the Korean War has devoted himself to political causes. He ran for governor of Texas as a Democrat—an odd alignment for a man so politically far to the right, especially one living in Dallas, a violent city where Democrats are such a minority that many of them are wary of openly expressing their beliefs.
After finishing last in that election—which was won by John Connally—Walker traveled to Mississippi, attempting to block the integration of the University of Mississippi. Two people were killed and six U.S. Marshals were shot in the ensuing riot, after which Walker was temporarily sent to a mental institution and held on federal charges of sedition. It was Bobby Kennedy himself who ordered that Walker be charged for acts of violence against the civil rights of an American citizen.
But Oswald doesn’t care about civil rights. He has come to Walker’s home because the Worker, the Communist ne
wspaper to which he subscribes, has targeted the general as a threat to its beliefs. And because of Walker’s recent participation in Operation Midnight Ride, a Paul Revere–like barnstorming tour to warn Americans about the scourge of communism. The Mississippi grand jury’s decision not to press charges against Walker was Oswald’s motivation for purchasing a rifle. Since the Mannlicher-Carcano’s arrival, Oswald has traveled frequently by bus to the area around Walker’s home. He has walked the streets and alleys, studying and sketching and learning the lay of the land, memorizing escape routes and the church schedule. Oswald took several photographs of the area and developed them at work before being fired on April 6. All his intelligence is stored in a special blue loose-leaf notebook.
Oswald knows that Walker spends most evenings in his study. The short distance between the alley and that room makes Walker impossible to miss.
Oswald didn’t tell Marina where he was going tonight. But before leaving their apartment, he jotted down a note detailing what she should do if he is arrested. The note contains details about the bills he has paid, how much money he has left to her, and where the Dallas jail is located. Oswald wrote the note in Russian, just to be sure Marina understood every word. He left the note on his desk, in that small closet he’s converted into a study. She knows not to go in there, but if he’s missing long enough, Oswald is sure she will enter the room.
* * *
Back in the alleyway, Oswald quietly takes aim. Walker is in profile, viewed from his left side. The general wears his dark hair slicked close to the scalp. Oswald can see every strand through his scope. He has never shot a man before, nor even fired a gun in anger. But he spent hours on the firing range back in his Marine Corps days, and these last few weeks, he has been diligently working on his shot down in the dry bed of the Trinity River, using the levee walls as a backstop. It’s almost comical that a man plotting a murder takes the bus to and from target practice, and indeed to and from the murder scene itself. But Lee Harvey Oswald has no choice. He doesn’t own a car.
Walker sits, transfixed by the numbers on his tax forms. Oswald takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. He knows to exhale before firing, and to time the squeezing of the trigger with the end of that breath leaving his body. He also knows to gradually increase pressure on the trigger, squeezing it slowly rather than jerking it.
Back when he was in the marines, he rarely took practice at the rifle range seriously, openly laughing about the red “Maggie’s drawers” flag that was raised whenever he missed a target. But he can shoot extremely well when he wants to, as his Marine Corps “sharpshooter” qualification proves.
Now he wants to.
Oswald squeezes the trigger. He fires just one shot. Then he turns and runs as far and as fast as he can.
* * *
“I shot Walker,” Oswald breathlessly tells Marina. It’s 11:30 at night. She has already read the note and is worried sick.
“Did you kill him?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he replies in Russian.
“My God, the police will be here any minute,” she cries. It is an irrational fear, for the police have absolutely no idea who shot at Walker. “What did you do with the rifle?”
“Buried it.”
Oswald turns on the radio to see if he’s made the news. Marina, meanwhile, is terrified and anxious. She paces and frets, while her exhausted husband finally lies down on their bed and falls into a deep and immediate sleep.
* * *
The Walker assassination attempt is in the newspapers and on the radio the next morning. Oswald hangs on every word, though he is appalled to learn that he missed Walker completely. Eyewitnesses claim they saw two men fleeing the scene in a car, and Dallas police are looking for a gun that fires a completely different sort of ammunition than the kind Oswald fired. Oswald is crestfallen. He shot at Walker because he wanted to be a hero in the eyes of the Communist Party; he wanted to be special. Now not only has he botched the easiest shot he will ever take but the police are looking for a completely different man. Police will later surmise that the bullet ricocheted off the windowpane, missing Walker’s head by just three inches. Oswald’s telescopic sight, designed to look far into the distance, would have blurred the windowpane for Oswald, meaning that he didn’t even know it was in the way as he took aim and fired.
But none of this matters to Lee Harvey Oswald right now. He is worse than a failure; he is anonymous.
* * *
Three days later, Lee Harvey Oswald burns his blue loose-leaf notebook. Walker’s house is being guarded around the clock, and a second attempt on his life would be almost impossible. Still, Marina knows that her husband is unstable and tenacious. His hatred for those who would oppose communism is powerful and real.
Deeply afraid, she suggests something drastic: she wants to move the family to New Orleans. She believes that the police will come knocking on their door any minute. Having grown up in the repressive Soviet police state, she lives in fear of being marched off to jail in the middle of the night and disappearing forever.
On April 21, Marina spots Oswald getting ready to leave the house with a pistol tucked in his waistband. It’s a Sunday. He’s wearing a suit. Marina furiously demands to know where he’s going. “Nixon is coming,” Oswald tells her. “I’m going to go check it out.”
The former vice president has just made headlines by demanding the removal of all Communists from Cuba. Like General Walker, Richard Nixon has been making a political name for himself by denouncing Communists.
“I know how you look,” Marina says. Her husband’s idea of checking out a situation is to fire a shot at a human being. It’s quite clear that Lee Harvey needs to be saved from himself.
Then, showing just how powerful she can be when pushed to the limit, Marina Oswald pushes her husband into their tiny bathroom and forces him to remain there. Her husband is a prisoner the rest of the day. By the time she sets him free, it’s clear that, for his own good, Lee Harvey Oswald must leave Dallas.
* * *
Five days after John Kennedy’s Rose Garden speech, the president and First Lady formally announce that she is pregnant. This marks the first time that a sitting president’s wife will have a baby since Grover Cleveland’s spouse gave birth in 1893.
Americans respond with warmth and enthusiasm—and more than a little surprise. For although she is four months along, Jackie still doesn’t show the slightest sign of expecting. The baby will sleep in the same white crib that John Jr.used as an infant. Drapes and a new rug will be added to a small room in the residence as it is transformed into a nursery.
With every passing moment, the Kennedys seem to be living an idyllic life, where everything goes right and each day is more glamorous than the one before it. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, whose shoulders sagged and whose face grew lined and weary from the strains of being president, John Kennedy truly enjoys the job—and it shows. Friends have noted how much he has grown as a leader during his time in office, and the vigor with which he tackles his work.
But America is changing rapidly. John Kennedy will soon be forced to use every bit of these hard-won presidential skills to manage turbulent times. The tense challenges that have dogged his presidency—Cuba, Vietnam, Mafia power, civil rights, and even his personal life—have not disappeared.
For now, they are merely simmering—and as spring becomes summer in 1963, these problems will explode.
11
MAY 3, 1963
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
1:00 P.M.
“We’re going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom … Freedom … Freedom,” the protesters chant as they march out through the great oak doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It is a Friday, and these young black students should be in school. Instead, they have gathered to march for civil rights. Some are less than ten years old. Most are teenagers. They are football players, homecoming queens, track stars, and cheerleaders. Most are nicely dressed, in button-down shirts and clean slacks for the boys, an
d dresses and bows for the girls.
The marchers number more than one thousand strong. All have skipped class to be here. Some of them even climbed over locked gates. Their goal is to experience something their parents have never known for a single day of their lives: an integrated Birmingham, where lunch counters, department stores, public restrooms, and water fountains are open to all.
The Children’s Crusade, as Newsweek magazine will call it, fans out and marches across acre-wide Kelly Ingram Park. “We’re going to walk, walk, walk,” they continue to chant. They are peaceful, almost spiritual. Yet electricity courses through the group, for what they are doing is completely illegal. “Freedom … Freedom … Freedom.”
The protesters plan to march into the white business district and peacefully enter stores and restaurants. More than six hundred students were arrested doing the same thing yesterday. The youngest was just eight years old. This earned the Children’s Crusade national recognition. About a thousand miles away, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy actually scolded the black civil rights leaders who had organized the children’s march, stating that “schoolchildren participating in street demonstrations is dangerous business. An injured, maimed or dead child is a price that none of us wants to pay.”
Even Malcolm X, one of the fieriest black leaders in America, railed against the Children’s Crusade, stating that “real men don’t put their children on the firing line.”
But these kids want to be here. Many have come against their parents’ wishes. Nothing can stop them. They know that if their mothers and fathers were to do the marching, their arrests could cause them to lose jobs, or days and weeks of income.
They know that this march is not just about public toilets; this march is an act of defiance. A few days before he took office, just four months ago, Alabama governor George Wallace made one thing crystal clear: “I’m gonna make race the basis of politics in this state, and I’m gonna make it the basis of politics in this country.” Later, at his inaugural, he proclaimed, “I have stood where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this cradle of the Confederacy, this very heart of the great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom … Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us … In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say, segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”
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