The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Kelly Bishop, my wife, my assistant, my life

  Contents

  Dedication

  For the Record

  THE MORNING HOURS

  7 A.M.

  8 A.M.

  9 A.M.

  10 A.M.

  11 A.M.

  THE AFTERNOON HOURS

  12 NOON

  1 P.M.

  2 P.M.

  3 P.M.

  4 P.M.

  5 P.M.

  THE EVENING HOURS

  6 P.M.

  7 P.M.

  8 P.M.

  9 P.M.

  10 P.M

  11 P.M

  THE MIDNIGHT HOURS

  12 MIDNIGHT

  1 A.M.

  2 A.M.

  3 A.M

  Epilogue

  Source Material

  Index

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Also by Jim Bishop

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  For the Record

  There is a lingering melancholy, mixed with suspicion, regarding the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and it is difficult to tell which is the harder to sustain. The shock waves which radiated from Dealey Plaza on that warm noon day seemed, like some cataclysmic sound, to pass around the world and back again many times, hardly diminishing in intensity as it bruised consciences. He had been a fair prince indeed, bringing youth and sophistication and an air of confidence to the throne. He had had his political triumphs and gaffes, but in either case he was facing forward when they occurred.

  His friends, his enemies, his aparthétiques had sharp memories for the thick brown hair, the square gleaming teeth, the sailor’s eyes, the frame of the dandy. They recalled his wife, too, as First Ladies are seldom remembered. They knew the dark slab of hair, the piquant, brilliantly lighted face, the modes, the moods, the veneer of the well-bred Georgetown girl. She had the clasped hands, white-knuckled ecstacy of a little girl at her first prom, and an appreciation of privacy. The world, it seemed, could conjure visions of little Caroline, fair-haired and sweet, and John-John, with a babyish face which had yet to make up its mind, an innocent in a white suit who could bow gravely from the waist without falling.

  The nation and the world had no trouble remembering. The problem was forgetting. Waves of masochistic guilt swept America. Many people felt that, in some vague manner, we had failed Kennedy. Everything about the funeral, including the stiff-legged march to the Pro-Cathedral with the muffled tattoo of drums, was calculated to reduce the nation to tears. President Johnson appointed a committee of distinguished men to investigate the assassination and the subsequent slaughter of Lee Harvey Oswald. The simple became complex; the obvious, obtuse. The death of Mr. Kennedy became the subject of lengthy newspaper articles, magazine series, books, pamphlets, tracts, theses. The more the people read, the more certain they became that they had not heard the facts.

  Some of the writers were irresponsible and sensational. These drew the most attention. A single hair could be split in several ways, and they split bullets, assassins, affadavits, and innuendo. There are—according to my count—16,500,000 words of research material on John F. Kennedy and the amount is growing. The tan smiling figure of the President began to take on the aura of a mysterious martyr.

  He became a bigger man than he was. A library was proposed. Donations were solicited. The father of the President donated a million dollars. A brother-in-law, Stephen Smith, was appointed chairman of the drive for ten million dollars. A train was sent on a tour of cities with Kennedy memorabilia. The people gave freely of their hearts, their tears, but not their money.

  On a warm day in 1959, John F. Kennedy had permitted me to remain at his side so that I might write a newspaper story called “The Day Kennedy Was Nominated.” In public he was self-assured, an eager fighter. In private, as we parted, he said: “I have to make it by the second ballot. All of our delegates are pledged for two. If I don’t make it by then, the votes will scatter. I’m going to watch it on TV.” I shook his hand and said he could make it on the first. “I hope so,” he said, and walked up an alley beside a small Beverly Hills apartment house. He hopped a fence to visit his father, who was in the home of actress Marion Davies.

  The last time I saw President Kennedy was at the White House. It was a month before the assassination. I was present to research an article for Good Housekeeping magazine to be called “A Day in the Life of President Kennedy.” He was cordial and helpful, and he seemed anxious for me to write a book rather than a magazine piece. At one point, feeling that he had not persuaded me, the President addressed Mrs. Bishop: “Kelly,” he said, “don’t you think he has enough material for a book?” I had, barely.

  Our last chat was held in the big Oval Office and he selected the topic. It was assassination. He was in his Kittyhawk rocker, the black shoes gleaming as he prodded himself back and forth, and he said he had enjoyed a book of mine called The Day Lincoln Was Shot.

  “My feelings about assassination are identical with Mr. Lincoln’s,” he said. “Anyone who wants to exchange his life for mine can take it.” The words were uttered with bland good humor. “They just can’t protect that much.”

  He expatiated on the subject without belaboring it. He told how he avoided church crowds by having the Secret Service drive him first to St. Matthew Pro-Cathedral. If the street was jammed with people, he would ask to be taken to St. Patrick’s, in downtown Washington. If that appeared to be too busy, he would go out to Georgetown, to the little church he and Mrs. Kennedy visited when they lived there.

  Sometimes, on Sunday, he would leave his pew as the priest left the altar, and genuflect in the aisle. Behind him, two Secret Service men—not necessarily Roman Catholics—would do the same. So would two in the pew in front. The five would turn to face the rear of the church, and, as they walked toward the church doors, the President would start to crouch. As his knees flexed a little more with each step, he would grow smaller and smaller. Then he would whisper to the two in front: “If there is anybody in that choir loft trying to get me, they’re going to have to get you first.”

  While I was at the White House, a blanket order had been issued to all hands to grant interviews and to take me wherever I desired to go. There were many people to see. The President asked, at least three times: “How did you make out with Jackie?” She had been gracious and lovely, as I knew she would be. Still the repetitious question made me wonder why the President asked it. Newspaper reporters in the West Wing had told me that Jacqueline Kennedy would not see me, and would not permit me to see the private quarters of the family.

  On the contrary, she did. If she was not friendly, she was a consummate actress. Many of her observations about her husband and children were directed to Mrs. Bishop. Her father-in-law was convalescing from a cerebral hemorrhage and she said she was “mad” about him. She had proposed several times to her husband that they bring Joseph P. Kennedy to the White House to live—”I could put him in the Lincoln Room”—but John F. Kennedy said no. Whatever reason she had for inviting him, her husband’s contrary wish was more adamant. At no time did she indicate that the invitation might include her mother-in-law, Rose.

  On another occasion, she said: “Next month I’m going to Texas with my husband. It will be my first campaign trip.” She did not appreciate or understand politics. She knew that her attractive presence would help her husband secure votes, and Mrs. Kennedy seemed to have feelings of guilt about not accompanying him. She said she was not happy in the White House and, even though she remodeled the interior of the mansion, she was fond of pointing out that, of more th
an one hundred thirty rooms, only eight were the private apartments of the President.

  She was a woman who was pleased and offended by small things. The President who often assured worried political friends, “I can control Bobby” was never heard to say it of his wife. To some observers, they seemed to live as separate entities. Mr. Kennedy applied himself to the hard world of politics; Mrs. Kennedy enjoyed yachting off the Greek Islands, or booking a ballet for the East Room. The connubial X intersected after dinner, when they sat alone in the living room on the second floor. He smoked a cigar, sipped a beer, and studied his “night work.” She puffed a cigarette, put long playing records on the turntable, and examined her correspondence.

  Dallas was her first political pilgrimage. It was a crude world of roaring voices, motorcades and inadequate quarters. It consisted of whispered conferences, resounding speeches, and damp, cold dinners. Mrs. Kennedy, I am certain, went to Texas to please her husband. The President was joyful. When she was irritated because of lack of assistance at her toilette, Mr. Kennedy upbraided one and all and yelled: “Get on the ball!”

  She represented votes. Many Texans who were not particularly fond of the President turned out to yell: “Hi, Jackie!” When the motorcade left Love Field at 11:50 A.M., the First Lady had reached a point where she seemed to be enjoying the attention. She waved and smiled out the left side of the car, and left the right side to him. The shattering impact of the shots, the slow turn to see the top of his head blown away, the numbing sag of death on her lap was an emotional shock beyond calculation.

  So, too, was Mrs. Kennedy’s recovery. Within a short time, the First Lady had steeled herself to accept her husband’s demise, and in a manner which can be described as the product of a masterful will, Mrs. Kennedy took charge. Nothing was too small to escape her attention.

  The funeral was Jacqueline Kennedy’s tribute to her husband. She was consulted about every aspect, from public parade to flickering torch. She refused sedation. She examined the guest list, made the determination about who would say the funeral mass, and who would preach. The funeral of Abraham Lincoln became an idée fixe.

  Before she quit the White House, she had her husband’s name and vital statistics chiseled on the marble mantle of the President’s bedroom. She approved a change of name from Cape Canaveral to Cape Kennedy, and she allowed Idlewild Airport to be renamed Kennedy International Airport, but she withheld permission to name hospitals and boulevards and bridges in honor of John F. Kennedy.

  My agreement with President Kennedy was that when the slender book about him was complete, I would send him a carbon of the manuscript and he would be free to correct errors of fact. Two months after it was ready, Mrs. Kennedy assumed the license I had given to the President and asked Pierre Salinger to phone me with sixty-odd corrections. So far as I could see, few of them involved errors of fact. She did not want me to say that she never met a politician she admired, which she had said. She did not want me to say that she went to bed in a nightgown. She did not want. . .

  I was surprised that a grief-stricken widow could bear to read the words of a book about a happy day. All of the corrections were made, as she requested. When I sent an inscribed copy, she held it between two fingers over a wastebasket and dropped it.

  A note arrived from Nancy Tuckerman, secretary to Mrs. Kennedy, beginning: “Mrs. Kennedy is so grateful to you for sending her the copy of your book, which you have inscribed to Caroline . . .” A similar note arrived from Robert F. Kennedy the next day.

  I returned to work on The Day Kennedy Was Shot. In February 1964, the word was out that I was working on such a book. Robert Kennedy, at a party, met Robert Bernstein and Joseph Fox of Random House and asked bluntly why they would want to publish a book about the assassination written by me.*

  At a luncheon, Bennett Cerf, the President of Random House, was distressed to find that he was sharing a table with Jacqueline Kennedy who begged him, sobbing, not to publish my book. I met Richard Cardinal Cushing and, in chatting, he said that the Kennedys did not want him to talk to me. George Thomas, the President’s valet, shook his head sadly and said he was not allowed to discuss the President with me. I was standing in a long corridor listening to doors slam.

  When I continued my work, Mr. Cerf became unnerved by a phone call from Mrs. Kennedy. Again she wept. Again she begged him not to publish my book. He told her that there would be many books about the assassination, and that it would not be in the interest of historical accuracy to sponsor one author to the exclusion of all others. He then addressed a letter to Robert Kennedy, stating in part:

  “I can understand that you would want to cooperate completely with only one author, but I urge you not to cut other writers off completely. . . .”

  A movie magazine appeared with a headline: “The Man Who Made Mrs. Kennedy Cry.” I was the man.

  A letter arrived from Mrs. John F. Kennedy. It was on mourning border letterhead written in her script: “I cannot bear to think of seeing—and seeing advertised—a book with that name and subject and that my children might see it or someone might mention it to them.” She feared never-ending conflicting books about that day in Dallas, she said. “So I hired William Manchester—to protect President Kennedy and the truth.” He would interrogate all who could contribute knowledge of the assassination. “If I decide the book should never be published, then Mr. Manchester will be reimbursed for his time . . .” In the next breath, she supposed that she had no right to suppress history.

  All the people were asked “not to discuss those days with anyone else—and they have all kept the faith.” It did not occur to her that, if all the sources had been shut to her husband, he could not have written While England Slept and Profiles in Courage.

  I wrote a flattering reply to Mrs. Kennedy and ended by saying that, with doors opened or closed, I would continue to research this book. Her reply was a flash of lightning: “None of the people connected with November 22nd will speak to anyone but Mr. Manchester . . . The Manchester book will be published with no censorship from myself or from anyone else . . .” The legal threats, the denouncements, the befouling of that man’s work were all ahead of her. The Kennedys, in effect, were trying to copyright the assassination.

  The reader will find ninety-two sources listed in the back of this book. I found hundreds of doors still open.

  The Kennedys tried to sue their author. Alterations were made in the work. The New York Times quoted Robert Kennedy: “Maybe we ought to take a chance on Jim Bishop.” It was too late for that.

  This book was not stopped, nor even slowed. The prime source for all the years to come is Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, volumes 1 through 26. It required two years to read and annotate the 10,400,000 words but within the maze of repetition and contradiction, there is a mass of solid evidence which, if used as a foundation, will help any author to build a book of fascinating credibility without rancor, bias, or censorship.

  The personal interviews are numerous and they embrace some people who are still friendly with the Kennedys. The most unusual occurred when Judge Joe Brown of Dallas County, with pipe in hand, took me to the fifth floor of the Dallas Police Department jail. I was introduced, as I recall, as a relative from Florida. The judge was so popular with the jailers that we got inside Lee Harvey Oswald’s cell and were given a running account of all that happened to him when he was there. The first interviews granted by President and Mrs. Johnson occurred in May 1968 when I was invited to the White House.

  An anonymous fan in Dallas sent me a copy of the Zapruder film of the assassination. Who or why, I do not know. I used it for study and, knowing that the original belongs to Life magazine, burned my copy. I consulted the books of Mark Lane and R. B. Denson and Josiah Thompson and dozens of others, including the friendly superficialities of Salinger, Evelyn Lincoln, and Maude Shaw, but for incontrovertible fact, I absorbed The Truth About the Assassination by Charles Roberts.

  This
book is as accurate as I can write it. If, anywhere in it, I have given someone eyes of the wrong hue, or if I have in any sentence uttered a wrong phrase or sentence, there is no malice intended—not even toward Lee Harvey Oswald. As it stands, this book comes as close to re-creating every minute of that day of November 22, 1963, as unremitting work on my part will permit.

  Jim Bishop

  Hallandale, Fla.

  NOVEMBER 22, 1963

  * * *

  The Morning Hours

  Throughout the book, all times given are Central Standard,

  7 a.m.

  The morning light was weak and somber, seeping in diffused grays across the north Texas plain, walking along Route 80 from Marshall to Big Sandy to Edgewood, not pausing, not hurrying, through Mesquite and between the granite headstones of downtown Dallas to Arlington and Fort Worth, inexorably scouring the night from Ranger and Abilene, walking westward always westward, bringing to focal life the clustered communities, the all-night lunchrooms, the laced highways with ribboned loops, jogging trucks, flat farms with tepees of corn shucks, the quiet, shallow streams swimming to bottomland, the pin oaks huddled in hummocks hanging on to old leaves, the land smelling spongy and good in the warm wind and a mist that matched its gray with the walking dawn.

  The clouds were low, kneading themselves into changing figures as they swirled in slate against the red clay below and the sandwich of electric lights between. It was a day that would be much rainier, or much brighter, a capricious time when the glimmering sky flowed on a well-muscled wind, and then, an hour or two later, might be sawed into shafts of sunlight.

  At the Continental Trailways terminal a big bus slowed, headlights glowing saffron along the shiny pavement of Commerce Street, and the brakes sighed as the vehicle inched into the terminal, on time. Some passengers slept. A few, sleepless, squinted drowsily at the tall brown-brick Hotel Texas diagonally across the street. As the bus inched into the terminal, the hotel disappeared and the driver said: “Fort Worth, Fort Worth. Fifteen minutes.” Time for an egg sandwich and a mug of coffee; time for a morning paper; time to return to the uneasy sleep of the traveler.