The next disputed account with O’Donnell concerned Air Force One.
“I figured that Johnson, who had flown to Texas separately from the Kennedys on Air Force Two, the second 707 jet plane in our party, which was identical to Air Force One, would be taking off for Washington immediately,” O’Donnell recalled.7
In O’Donnell’s recollection, he and Johnson had agreed that LBJ would fly immediately back. It was Johnson’s assertion that O’Donnell twice insisted that the unseasoned president use Air Force One for the return flight to Washington, with Johnson’s qualification that he would wait for Mrs. Kennedy and his predecessor’s body before taking off.
To O’Donnell, this version of events was “absolutely, totally, and unequivocally wrong.”8
“He [Johnson] never suggested that he might wait at the airport for Jackie and the body of President Kennedy before he left for Washington. If he had made such a suggestion, I would have vetoed it … He never discussed with me whether he should use Air Force One instead of Air Force Two, a question which would have seemed highly unimportant at the time.”9
The importance in Johnson’s using Air Force One to fly back to Washington had nothing to do with the significance of the plane because whatever plane the active president flies is designated Air Force One.
“When the President was killed and we were going to fly him back, President Johnson refused to fly in Air Force Two because he said the communications were not the same as Air Force One, which of course was not the case,” said Kennedy’s Air Force aide, General Godfrey McHugh. “He just wanted to be on Air Force One. But they were identical.”10
One difference in the Boeing 707 that Johnson insisted on using was its interior decoration. Kennedy had used the Boeing known as 26000 as his personal plane for just over a year, flying in it for the first time in early November 1962 to attend the funeral of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in New York. The cabin was festooned with Kennedy family memorabilia.
“There are two things the president adores,” Jackie had told General McHugh. “One is ‘Hail to the Chief,’ he adores that song, and he adores Air Force One.”11
As uncomfortable as the surroundings must have been for Johnson, they were necessary. It was not Johnson’s desire to immerse himself in the personal effects of Kennedy or the adornment of presidency that made him use Air Force One. It was the necessity for oversight of the most important piece of evidence: the body of the dead president.
The Secret Service urged LBJ to rush to Air Force One and its security “because we don’t know if this is a conspiracy and the new president could also be subject to attack.” But Johnson was in no hurry because he knew that the only conspiracy afoot was the one he was directing.
At 1:26 p.m., President Lyndon Johnson left Parkland Hospital for Love Field. As he boarded the plane, he told James B. Swindal, the Air Force colonel who had commanded Air Force One for Kennedy that they would not leave for Washington without the remains.
Other key pieces of evidence were already in the process of being rendered unusable to investigators. Johnson aide Cliff Carter had collected John Connally’s clothes from Ruth Standrige, the head nurse of emergency rooms at Parkland. Carter then gave them to Texas Congressman Henry Gonzalez, who put them in his office closet in Washington, DC.12 The clothes were then given to Nellie Connally, who washed them with cold water. When found, they showed signs that they had been cleaned and pressed.13
SS-100-X, the 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine that carried Kennedy to his death, was also in the process of being intentionally destroyed as evidence at Parkland. First, a Secret Service agent ordered the top be put on the car to obscure interior viewing. An orderly was then asked to get a bucket of water.14
“A guard was set up around the Lincoln as Secret Service men got a pail of water and tried to wash the blood from the car,” said Time reporter Hugh Sidney.
After hurriedly cleaning up the body fluids and other bits of relatable evidence, the limousine was driven back to Love Field against the wishes of some Dallas Police investigators, loaded onto a cargo plane, and flown back to Washington to be parked in the White House garage.15
A few days following the assassination, the limousine was driven by Carl Renas, the head of security for the Dearborn Division of the Ford Motor Company, to Hess and Eisenhart in Cincinnati, Ohio to replace a chrome molding strip damaged in the shooting.16 Hess and Eisenhart was the specialty-car company that had a hand in the car’s original design and engineering. During the transfer of the vehicle, Renas noticed that the molding strip had been hit with “a primary strike” and “not a fragment.”17 He was told by the Secret Service to “keep his mouth shut.”18
Renas was not the only one who noticed the damage to the interior of the car. During the Warren Commission hearings, Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who rode in the front passenger seat of SS-100-X in the Dallas motorcade, used the example of the damage in an attempt to sway the commission into considering that there were more than three shots fired at the motorcade. He was responding to questioning from commission counsel Arlen Specter:
SPECTER: Do you have anything to add, Mr. Kellerman, on the total number of wounds in relationship to your view that there were more than three shots?
KELLERMAN: Well, let’s consider the vehicle.
SPECTER: Fine. What about the vehicle would you consider relevant in this regard?
KELLERMAN: The windshield itself, which I observed a day or two after the funeral here, had been hit by a piece of this missile or missiles, whatever it is, shell.19
Kellerman noticed an indentation on the chrome molding of the windshield upon examining the car on November 27 in the White House garage. He wanted to look at the car because the trajectory of the shots as he remembered them were different from the official record that was starting to form:
KELLERMAN: I wanted to look this car over for—let me go back a bit. When this car was checked over that night for its return to Washington, I was informed the following day of the pieces of these missiles that were found in the front seat, and I believe aside from the skull, which was in the rear seat, I couldn’t conceive even from elevation how this shot hit President Kennedy like it did. I wanted to view this vehicle, whether this was a slant blow off of the car, whether it hit the car first and then hit him, or what marks are on this vehicle, and that is what prompted me to go around and check it for myself.
FORD: Had anybody told you of this indentation prior to your own personal investigation?
KELLERMAN: Not of the windshield. No, sir.
FORD: You were the first one to find this indentation?
KELLERMAN: I believe I am the first one who noticed this thing up on the bar.20
Later in his testimony, Kellerman, led by commission members to the conclusion of three shots fired, still believed otherwise, offering up a damning piece of evidence.
“Gentlemen, I think that if you would view the films yourself, you may come up with a little different answer.”21
In December 1963, the White House inexplicably approved plans to have the limousine rebuilt and reupholstered for President Johnson, destroying the evidence for future inquires.
The body of the former president would be harder to control.
The medical staff at Parkland Hospital had already discovered too much about Kennedy’s injuries in their futile attempts to resuscitate and stabilize him. When Kennedy was brought in into Trauma Room One on a gurney, Dr. Charles Crenshaw observed the wounds of the fallen president.
“I was standing at about the president’s waist, looking at his general appearance, still unbelieving,” wrote Crenshaw. “Blood was seeping from the wound in his head onto the gurney, dripping into the kick bucket on the floor below. Then I noticed a small opening in the midline of his throat. It was a bullet-entry wound. There was no doubt in my mind about that wound, as I had seen dozens of them in the emergency room.”22
Dr. Malcolm Perry performed a tracheotomy to aid Kennedy’s brea
thing and talked about the entrance wound at a recorded press conference hours after the assassination :
Q: Where was the entrance wound?
PERRY: There was an entrance wound in the neck.
Q: Which way was the bullet coming in the neck wound? At him?
PERRY: It appeared to be coming at him.23
The entrance wound in the throat was seen by more doctors at Parkland, including Paul Peters and Ronald Jones, but not mentioned on the official autopsy.
Crenshaw and other Parkland doctors also noticed a large wound at the back of the president’s head, above and behind his right ear, consistent with an exit wound.
Jim Sibert, an FBI special agent tasked with watching the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, maintained that the head wound was in the “upper back of the head.”24
Tom Robinson, the mortician who prepared Kennedy in the casket for funeral, when interviewed by HSCA staff members Andy Purdy and Jim Conzelman, echoed the claims of a large wound in the back right side of the head:
PURDY: Approximately where was this wound (the skull wound) located?
ROBINSON: Directly behind the back of his head.
PURDY: Approximately between the ears or higher up?
ROBINSON: No, I would say pretty much between them.25
More than forty witnesses described the exit wound in the back of the head; strong correlations existed in both the extent and area of the damage they detailed.26 According to the official record asserted later by the Warren Commission and the HSCA, the witnesses were mistaken in what they saw. The wound in Kennedy’s head had, according to the Warren Commission, “entered through the right rear of the president’s head and exited from the right side of the head, causing a large wound.”27
Upon re-examination by the HSCA with the aid of a forensic pathology panel, it was found that “President Kennedy was struck by two, and only two, bullets, each of which entered from the rear. The panel further concluded that the president had been struck by one bullet that had entered in the upper right of the back and exited from the front of the throat, and one bullet that had entered in the right rear of the head near the cowlick area and exited from the right side of the head, toward the front. This second bullet caused a massive wound to the president’s head upon exit.”28
This description was antithesis to most firsthand accounts. When photographs from the autopsy were later released, many would see different wounds from the ones that they had borne witness to. The questionable photographs showed that, at the autopsy, the back of Kennedy’s skull was intact.
“To virtually every eyewitness, these photographs are perplexing,” wrote Dr. David Mantik, a medical doctor who has studied much of the medical evidence produced from the assassination. “They show a completely intact right posterior skull, which is in absolute conflict with the medical records of numerous Parkland physicians. Even on the widely broadcast Nova television program on PBS in 1988 involving four Parkland physicians, the placement of their hands well behind the right ear to locate the large skull defect is in gross conflict with the posterior head photographs. This conflict persists in the memories of ancillary personnel at Bethesda and even with the measurements and descriptions of the pathologist themselves. The autopsy protocol specifically describes the skull defect as extending in the occiput. The photographs, however, show the defect far above the occipital bone. The pathologists were never asked if these photographs were accurate. In fact, on the one question they were asked based on the photographs (regarding the posterior entry wound), they disagreed by four inches!”29
The medical staff at Parkland anticipated performing an autopsy of Kennedy. Instead, the body was seized by the Secret Service. An autopsy at Parkland would be impossible to control and could not commence.
Agent Roy Kellerman, who moments earlier had watched the death of the man whom he was employed to protect, sprang into action. He was on orders from Director Rowley: The body had to be expeditiously transported to Air Force One. Johnson had maintained that he would not leave for Washington otherwise.
Parkland doctor James Crenshaw thought it odd that the Secret Service was more interested in protecting the former president considering that he was dead. If an autopsy was performed without proper guidance and at a public hospital, the truth about Kennedy’s injuries would be harder to suppress.
An argument quickly ensued between Kellerman and Dr. Earl Rose, the Dallas medical examiner.
“There has been a homicide here,” Rose said. “You won’t be able to remove the body. We will have to take it down to the mortuary for an autopsy.”30
“There must be something in your thinking here that we don’t have to go through this agony,” Kellerman answered. “We will take care of the matter when we get back to Washington.”
Rose would not have it—it would be against the law for the Secret Service to take the body. The order, though, was coming from someone who now believed himself above the law.
“No, that’s not the way things are. You’re not taking the body anywhere,”31 Rose said.
John Kennedy’s personal physician, George Burkley, who accompanied him on all trips, spoke for the well-being of the former First Lady.
“Mrs. Kennedy is going to stay exactly where she is until the body is moved. We can’t have that … he’s the President of the United States.”32
“That does matter,” replied Dr. Rose. “You can’t lose the chain of evidence.”
Rose knew that moving the body from Parkland would compromise not only the autopsy, but the entire investigation.
He sought out Theron Ward, a justice of the peace, who tried to tell the Secret Service agents about the questionable legality of assuming control of Kennedy’s body.
Kellerman, though, was leaving with the body without regard of the law.
“You are going to have to come up with something a little stronger than you to give me the law that this body can’t be removed,”33 Kellerman said.
The Secret Service agents, by then brandishing pistols, made their way out of Parkland with the body.
Shortly before 2 p.m., as the Secret Service agents were forcing their way out of Parkland to expedite the return to Washington, President Johnson, with the body of Kennedy secured and en route, was in no rush to leave Dallas. The president felt the need to take the oath of office to validate his title.
A call placed by Johnson from Air Force One to Robert Kennedy became another bone of contention in the official story.
Kennedy had heard of his brother’s death only forty minutes before and only a few moments earlier he received a second phone call from J. Edgar Hoover.
“The president’s dead,”34 Hoover said apathetically before hanging up.
Johnson’s call concerned a different matter.
“First, he expressed his condolences,” Kennedy said. “Then he said … this might be part of a worldwide plot, which I didn’t understand, and he said, ‘A lot of people down here think I should be sworn in right away.’”35
Johnson wanted to know the particulars about the oath: who could administer it and how and where he should take it.
The attorney general was aghast. Not only were his brother’s wounds still fresh, but the man whom Bobby resented was quick to step in and on the Kennedy’s shoes. Johnson could have found someone other than Bobby to answer questions about the oath, but Bobby Kennedy served the same purpose that Johnson sought in his previous encounters with O’Donnell. If he had the approval of the attorney general, the slain president’s brother, Johnson would seem to the American people and perhaps to himself like less of a tyrant.
Kennedy was “taken aback at the moment because it was just an hour after … the president had been shot and I didn’t think—see what the rush was. And I thought, I suppose at the time, at least, I thought it would be nice if the president came back to Washington—President Kennedy … But I suppose that was all personal.”36
Bobby showed restraint. “I’ll be glad to find out and call you b
ack,”37 he told Johnson.
In Johnson’s skewed rendition of history, Bobby urged him to take the oath as soon as possible. According to Johnson, Bobby suggested “that the oath should be administered to me immediately, before taking off for Washington, and that it should be administered by a judicial officer of the United States.”38
In truth, the oath was a formality and could be administered at any time, but Johnson was not taking any chances. O’Donnell was certain that Johnson wanted to take the oath on the ground in Dallas because “he was afraid somebody was going to take the thing away from him if he didn’t get it quick.”39
Johnson chose Judge Sarah T. Hughes to administer the oath. Hughes had been waiting at the Trade Mart for the presidential motorcade and told Johnson she could be there in ten minutes.40 There was significance in this as well: JFK had blocked Hughes from a judicial promotion even though Johnson had pushed her.
As Johnson made phone calls to arrange the ceremony, Jackie Kennedy arrived with members of Kennedy’s staff and the former president’s body. O’Donnell was anxious to get the plane in the air and JFK’s body back to Washington. But this was not the intent of Johnson, whom the Kennedy staff assumed had left at least a half-hour prior on Air Force Two.
“Tell O’Donnell he’s not commander-in-chief anymore,” a press aide shouted. “President Johnson is on the plane.”41
Godfrey McHugh was bewildered by the holdup. “Mrs. Kennedy was getting very warm, she had blood all over her hat, her coat … his brains were sticking on her hat. It was dreadful,”42 McHugh said.
McHugh, pleading his case to pilot James Swindal, was told that the flight was delayed for reasons concerning the transfer of Johnson’s luggage from Air Force Two and the swearing in of the new president.
“I only have one president, and he’s lying back in that cabin,”43 McHugh yelled, referring to the body of President Kennedy.
“McHugh said that Lyndon Johnson had been—and I remember the word that he used—obscene,” recalled Bobby Kennedy. “It was the worst performance he’d ever witnessed.”
The Man Who Killed Kennedy Page 25