Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  She wonders whether she should take the time to change out of her bloodstained suit. O’Donnell urges her not to go to the trouble.607

  2:38 p.m.

  Captain Cecil Stoughton, the official White House photographer, records the crowded scene on Air Force One as Judge Hughes reads the oath, from Article II, Section 1 [8] of the U.S. Constitution, with Johnson resting his left hand on top of a Catholic prayer book,* his wife on his right, John Kennedy’s widow, her Chanel suit stained with her husband’s blood and her white gloves caked with it, on his left. Mac Kilduff holds a microphone out to catch the words of the swearing-in ceremony on a scratchy Dictaphone.

  After the sixty-seven-year-old jurist tells Johnson, “Hold up your right hand and repeat after me,” he says, “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

  Judge Hughes impulsively adds the formulaic “So help me God”—not part of the prescribed oath—and the president, in a deep voice, repeats it. In twenty-eight seconds, it’s over.†

  The new president then turns to his wife, hugs her around the shoulders, and kisses her cheek. Then he turns to John Kennedy’s widow, puts his left arm about her, and kisses her cheek. As others among the group move toward President Johnson, he seems to back away from any act of congratulation. Instead, he says firmly, “Now, let’s get airborne.”608 In an oath-taking ceremony approaching, in the uniqueness of its setting, the one that Calvin Coolidge took by lamplight in a Vermont farmhouse in 1923, Lyndon Baines Johnson was now the thirty-sixth president of the United States, an office he had dreamed of attaining—he had even run for the office three years earlier, losing the Democratic nomination in Los Angeles to JFK—but not this way.*

  The pilot starts Air Force One’s engines as Judge Hughes, Chief Curry, and Cecil Stoughton, who will not be making the flight to Washington, deplane. Johnson and Lady Bird remain in the stateroom, and Jackie excuses herself, returning to her husband’s casket in the small aft cabin, where Ken O’Donnell, Dave Powers, Larry O’Brien, Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, and for awhile, Admiral Burkley, will keep her company.609

  Jackie sits in the aisle seat, directly opposite the casket, O’Donnell beside her in the only other seat available. When their eyes meet, she begins to cry hard. When she finally regains her composure, she cries, “Oh, Kenny, what’s going to happen?”

  O’Donnell knows that she is wondering what is going to happen to all of them now that Jack is dead.

  “You want to know something, Jackie?” Ken says. “I don’t give a damn.”

  When Admiral Burkley tries to persuade the young widow to change out of her bloodstained clothes, she says quietly, “No. Let them see what they’ve done.”610

  2:40 p.m.

  Over in Fort Worth, Marguerite Oswald, Lee’s mother, dressed in her nurse’s uniform, is driving to work at the Hargroves Convalescent Center, listening to the news on the radio of her old, run-down Buick. She had been sitting on the sofa at home watching the television coverage, but had to leave at two-thirty if she wanted to get to work by three. Now, just seven blocks from home, she hears that police have picked up a suspect—Lee Harvey Oswald. Stunned, she immediately turns around and goes back home. She must call Robert Oswald, the younger of Lee’s two older brothers. Robert works for Acme Brick, a Fort Worth company. He travels a lot, but they’ll know how to get in touch with him.611 She’s also going to call the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She figures there’s a way to turn this into cash. And maybe someone there can give her a lift to Dallas.

  Twenty-six-year-old Fort Worth Star-Telegram police reporter Bob Schieffer is lamenting the fact that he wasn’t a political reporter covering the biggest story in the world when he picks up the ringing phone on the city desk. A woman wants to know if there is anyone there who can give her a ride into Dallas. “Lady, this is not a taxi company, and besides, the president has been shot.” “I know,” the woman says. “They think my son is the one who shot him.” Schieffer and a colleague, Bill Foster, drive out to Fort Worth’s west side and find Marguerite, waiting for them on the front lawn of her small, white stucco bungalow. The short, pudgy woman in large, dark, horn-rimmed glasses gets in the backseat with Schieffer for the close-to-an-hour trip into town.612 En route, Schieffer is taken aback by Marguerite’s attitude. She not only seemed somewhat mentally deranged but for most of the trip he sensed that she was less concerned about Kennedy’s death and her son’s predicament than she was with herself. She kept railing about the fact that her son’s wife would get all the sympathy but no one would “remember the mother” and that she would probably starve.* However, she did cry quietly and her talk was punctuated with sobs. “I want to hear him tell me he did it,” she said at one point. Schieffer never did get around to asking her why she had called the paper for a ride but learned later that she had at one time worked briefly as a governess in the home of Ammon Carter Jr., the owner of the paper, but had been discharged because the children complained that “she was mean.” Schieffer ends up depositing Marguerite in what looked like some kind of interrogation room at Dallas police headquarters.613

  Robert Oswald has not seen his brother Lee for a year and hasn’t even heard from him for about eight months. He had heard the news of the assassination just as he was leaving Jay’s Grill, a steak and seafood restaurant not far from Acme Brick’s new plant in Denton, Texas, where he worked as a sales coordinator linking the marketing and plant departments, scheduling production to meet orders, and following through on customer service.614 Now, Robert is back at the office going over some invoices and wondering whether Lee had taken a few minutes off to watch the motorcade. He goes down to the timekeeper’s office to get some of the invoices checked. The receptionist at the front desk has her radio on, and, as he passes by, they both hear a news announcer say the name “Oswald.”

  Robert stops. He thought someone had called his name until he realizes that the voice came from the radio.

  The announcer repeats the name, this time in full—“Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  Robert is paralyzed. “That’s my kid brother,” he says, stunned.

  He calls his wife Vada and tells her he will be home shortly, but before he can leave he gets a call from the credit manager at the company’s Fort Worth office.

  “Bob, brace yourself,” he says. “Your brother has been arrested.”

  “I know. I just heard.”

  The credit manager tells him his mother is trying to reach him. Robert calls her and arranges to meet her in Dallas at the Hotel Adolphus later in the evening.615

  At the Terminal Annex Building overlooking Dealey Plaza, a box clerk bursts into the office of U.S. postal inspector Harry D. Holmes to tell him it’s just come over the radio that police have arrested someone named Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of Officer Tippit.

  “I think you ought to know, Mr. Holmes,” the clerk says, “that we rented a box downstairs to a Lee Oswald recently. Box number 6225.” The clerk, who has already retrieved the original box application, dated November 1, 1963, hands it to Holmes and tells the inspector that he can’t recall what the applicant looked like, but he does remember one thing. The man definitely filled out the application himself.616

  The form lists “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” and “American Civil Liberties Union” in the space for firm or corporation. Under “kind of business” is the word “nonprofit.” No business address is given, but in the space for home address, the applicant has written, “3610 N. Beckley.” This is a variation of Oswald’s actual address, 1026 North Beckley. At the bottom of the form is the applicant’s signature, “Lee H. Oswald.”617

  Inspector Holmes telephones the Secret Service, who order a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock surveillance of the box to see if anyone attempts to retrieve mail from it.618

  2:45 p.m.

  Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels is beginning to r
ealize that getting Zapruder’s film developed is not going to be easy. The amateur movie camera takes 8-millimeter color film, something that neither the Dallas Morning News nor their companion television station, WFAA, can handle. Both are set up for 16-millimeter black-and-white newsfilm.

  While the WFAA television news department telephones Eastman Kodak Company, Dallas Morning News reporter Harry McCormick manages to arrange a live television interview with Zapruder, who provides a graphic description of the shooting to a stunned Dallas audience.

  Sorrels is told that the people at Eastman Kodak Company, located near Love Field, have the capability of developing Zapruder’s footage and are standing by right now to assist. Within minutes, the Secret Service agent, with Zapruder, Schwartz, and McCormick in tow, is speeding toward Eastman Kodak in a Dallas police car.619

  2:47 p.m.

  The wheels of Air Force One* clear the runway at Love Field as the pilot takes it to an unusually high cruising altitude of forty-one thousand feet, where at 625 mph the great plane races toward Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, D.C., in Maryland. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in office for 1,037 days, is going home.620

  2:50 p.m.

  The basement garage of City Hall is an incredible hive of activity. Police cars swing in and out of the cavernous space, shouts and hollers echo over parked cars, and officers rush frantically about. FBI agent Jim Hosty jumps from his bureau-issued ’62 Dodge and heads for the elevator. Car doors slam to his right as Dallas police lieutenant Jack Revill and several detectives emerge from their autos and head briskly toward him.

  Although Hosty and Revill, a thirty-four-year-old veteran of the Dallas police narcotics unit who was recently promoted to head the intelligence unit, have disagreed and clashed a number of times over politics and police work, they have remained friends.621 Revill tells Hosty he’s got a “hot lead” on the Kennedy killing, an unaccounted-for employee at the Texas School Book Depository named Lee. Why Revill only knew Oswald’s first name when the full name of the unaccounted-for employee (Oswald) was known from the very beginning is not known. But in the frenetic exchange of information in these first minutes of the investigation, incomplete (and, indeed, incorrect) information was the norm.

  “Jack, the Lee you’re talking about is Lee Harvey Oswald,” Hosty blurts out. “He was arrested an hour ago for shooting Officer Tippit. He defected to Russia and returned to the U.S. a year ago. Oswald is the prime suspect in the Kennedy assassination.”622

  A look of doubt crosses Revill’s face. Revill, a conservative who saw Kennedy as being soft on Communism, can’t believe what he’s hearing, particularly that a Communist, of all people, had killed the president. Revill explodes as they get on the elevator that will take them to the third floor. “Jim, if you knew all this [about Oswald’s background], why the hell didn’t you tell us?”

  “I couldn’t,” Hosty replies, referring to the bureau’s long-standing need-to-know policy regarding espionage cases, in which local police were not considered by the FBI to be in the need-to-know group.623

  The third-floor hallway is in an uproar. Cameramen and reporters are crammed everywhere. The giant television cameras of the era are trained on newsmen as they broadcast live reports. Flashbulbs are going off continuously and people are moving quickly in opposite directions, bumping into each other. It’s a three-ring circus without a ringmaster.

  The elevator doors open and Agent Hosty and Lieutenant Revill wade into the chaos and make their way toward room 317—Homicide and Robbery Bureau. As they push their way inside, they find that Captain Fritz is in his private office, behind closed doors. Revill leads Hosty into Lieutenant T. P. Wells’s office across the hall from Fritz’s private door, introduces Hosty to Wells, and leaves. FBI agent James Bookhout is already in Wells’s office when Hosty arrives.624

  2:58 p.m.

  In Oak Cliff, Detectives Senkel and Potts and Lieutenant Cunningham bang on the door at 1026 North Beckley. The housekeeper, Mrs. Earlene Roberts, answers the door and invites the officers inside, where they meet the landlady and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur C. Johnson. The officers ask if they have a boarder registered under the name of Lee Harvey Oswald or A. J. Hidell.

  “No,” none of them had heard of either name.

  The officers ask to see the register. Earlene Roberts gets out the book and opens it on the table as Mrs. Johnson tells them that she has seventeen rooms and sixteen boarders at the moment. The officers quickly run down the list of names in the register. Neither name is listed. They run through the listings again, this time more carefully. Nothing. There is no record of either Oswald or Hidell.

  “Can I use your telephone?” Detective Senkel asks.

  “Sure,” Mrs. Johnson replies. The housekeeper leads him to a hall phone.

  “What’s he look like?” Mrs. Johnson asks one of the other officers. He describes the man they have in custody.

  “I do have two new tenants that fit that description,” Mrs. Johnson says. “Their rooms are around back, in the basement. Let me get the key.”625

  3:00 p.m.

  A telephone rings inside the homicide office. Lieutenant T. L. Baker answers. It’s Detective Senkel out on North Beckley.

  “There’s no one registered out here as either Oswald or Hidell,” Senkel tells him.

  “Maybe it’s under a different name,” Baker says.

  “She’s got sixteen boarders here,” Senkel replies.

  “Sit tight, I’ll get someone out there with a search warrant,” Baker orders.626

  At the rooming house, Mrs. Johnson returns with a key to the basement rooms and offers to let the police look if they want. Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Johnson lead the officers out the back door toward a separate entrance to the basement. Meanwhile, in the living room, Mr. Johnson is watching television coverage of the assassination when the screen flashes the image of Lee Harvey Oswald.

  “Hey!” he hollers at his wife as she heads out the door. Mrs. Johnson hands the keys to the housekeeper, “Go ahead, I’ll see what he wants.” Returning to the living room, her husband tells her, “Why, it’s this fellow that lives in here,” gesturing to the little room a few feet away. “Go tell them.”627

  Mrs. Roberts has unlocked the doors in the basement, and the officers have just stepped in, when Mrs. Johnson comes running up. “Oh, Mrs. Roberts, come quick. It’s this fellow Lee in this little room next to yours.”628

  They run back upstairs to the living room, where images relating to the assassination continue to flicker across the television screen. For a moment, they all stand transfixed on the screen. Suddenly, there he is again—Lee Harvey Oswald.

  “Yes, that’s him,” Mrs. Roberts confirms. “That’s O. H. Lee. He lives right here in this room.”629

  Mrs. Roberts points to the two french doors off the main living room. There is no number on the door, just the designation “O.” The light, aqua-colored room, just five feet wide and thirteen and one-half feet long, is hardly more than a large closet.*

  The police return to the table and look back through the register. They quickly find the listing for “O. H. Lee,” now known to be Lee Harvey Oswald. He had rented the room under the fictitious name on October 14, 1963, and is paying eight dollars a week.630

  3:01 p.m. (4:01 p.m. EST)

  In Washington, D.C., FBI Director Hoover calls Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy at his home to inform him he thinks they have the man who killed his brother in Dallas, that the man’s name is Lee Harvey Oswald, that he was working in the building from which the shots were fired, that he left the building and “a block or two away ran into two police officers and, thinking they were going to arrest him, shot at them and killed one of them with a sidearm.”631

  Hoover may have been the head of the nation’s most famous law enforcement agency, but that doesn’t mean he knows what’s going on, in real time, in Dallas.

  3:08 p.m.

  Inside the inner sanctum of Captain Fritz’s private office, where th
e serious questioning of Oswald was just beginning, the telephone rings. It’s the Dallas FBI’s Gordon Shanklin and he wants to speak to Agent Bookhout. Fritz steps across the hall to Lieutenant Wells’s office and tells Bookhout he can take the call in Wells’s office, then quietly picks up an extension in his office to listen in.

  “Is Hosty in that investigation?” Fritz hears Shanklin say.

  “No,” Bookhout replies.

  “I want him in that investigation right now!” Shanklin says angrily. “He knows those people [the Oswalds]. He’s been investigating them.” Shanklin finishes by telling Bookhout what he can do if he doesn’t do it right quick, using language that Fritz would later tell the Warren Commission, “I don’t want to repeat.” Fritz slips the receiver back into its cradle.632 (Fritz was already aware that the FBI would be sitting in on the interrogations prior to the call from Shanklin. A few minutes earlier, Chief Curry had received a call from Shanklin requesting that they have a representative in on the interrogations. Curry had called Fritz and asked him to permit the FBI to sit in.)633

  Bookhout hangs up. “We’d better get in there,” he tells Hosty.

  Before they can make a move, Captain Fritz appears and invites the two agents to sit in on the interrogation.634 Fritz leads the FBI agents back into his office. Bookhout and Hosty pull out their identification badges and lay them on the desk next to Oswald.

  “I’m Special Agent James Hosty of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the agent begins, “and this is Special Agent James Bookhout.”

  As soon as Oswald hears Hosty’s name, he reacts.

  “Oh, so you’re Hosty,” Oswald snarls, clearly agitated. “I’ve heard about you.”

  “You have the right to remain silent,” Hosty says as Oswald eyes him. “Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.” Hosty can barely finish the words, when Oswald explodes. “You’re the one who’s been harassing my wife!”