The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  Mrs. Randall did not know Mr. Oswald, but in a way she had gotten a job for him. In early October her neighbor, Mrs. Ruth Paine, had asked about employment for the husband of the Russian woman, and Mrs. Randall had said that her brother Wes worked at the Texas School Book Depository, and they were looking for people. It wasn’t much; if a man earned a dollar or a dollar and a quarter an hour, it was as good as he could expect. The work was digging book orders out of the warehouse on the upper floors and bringing them down for shipment to school districts in Texas.

  Lee Oswald got the job. He wasn’t at it long, but he didn’t like it. There was nothing to it but drudgery. He picked up book orders on the main floor, took one of two elevators to the sixth or fifth floors, dug out the proper number of copies of the right book from the right carton, and brought them back downstairs. Lunch was 12 to 12:45. A ten-minute coffee break could be worked into the afternoon. Mr. Roy Truly, the boss, expected all hands to be on time, 8 A.M., and he was a fair and firm man who expected a day’s work and no trouble.

  Oswald had been there six weeks. Mrs. Randall watched him walk toward her garage and she wiped her hands on her apron and opened the kitchen door in time to see him open the right rear door of Wes’s old car and drop the bundle on the back seat. He stood waiting under the shelter of the overhead garage door. He was alone, but not lonely; friendless and solemn. Wes had helped him get the job, and it was Wes who gave him a free lift to Irving on weekends and a free lift back to Dallas.

  Her brother was sipping his coffee and talking about some kiddie program that the little ones had watched earlier this morning. Wes was a tall, dark Alabaman with the twang of the back country heavy on his tongue. He took the easy way with people, work, and problems. He enjoyed getting along with people, and so he was often given to conversation in which he said what he thought the other person might want to hear. It didn’t cost anything.

  Mrs. Randall was peeking out her kitchen window when she saw that Mr. Oswald had changed his position. He was staring in at her. This irritated Mrs. Randall. “Wes,” she said. “Somebody waitin’ on you out there.” Her brother left the table, donned his jacket, snatched a bag of lunch, and went out to the car. He hopped into the driver’s side and turned the windshield wipers on as Lee got into the front seat with him. Frazier kicked the old car and it started. The battery was low, and the teenager knew that it would either start at once or die with a moan.

  Wes turned to look behind him. “What’s in the package, Lee?”

  “Curtain rods,” Oswald said, looking at the glistening pavement along Fifth Street. The drive from there to the Texas School Book Depository was about ten miles and required about a half hour in the morning flow of freeway traffic. “Oh yeah,” said Wes. “You told me about them yesterday.” Lee didn’t nod. Most conversations were closed abruptly. Yesterday, when some of the fellows had lain dozing on the ground floor counters at lunch time, Lee had borrowed a Dallas Herald and had read the story about Kennedy’s visit. He had seen the chart showing that the motorcade would end as it passed the Texas School Book Depository. After that, according to the newspaper account, the group of cars would go under the overpass, turn up onto the Stemmons Freeway, and get off at the Harry Hines cutoff for the Trade Mart.

  Two hours after lunch, Oswald had met Frazier in the rear of the ground floor at the Depository and asked if he could get a ride to Irving. Wes nodded. “Sure, Lee. But I thought you usually go out Friday.” Lee said he wanted to visit his wife to pick up some curtain rods for the little room he had in Dallas. “Sure, Lee,” said Wes. “Any time.” Oswald’s room at 1026 North Beckley, across the Trinity River in the nearby Oak Cliff section, had four small windows on one side. The landlady, Mrs. A. C. Johnson, had long ago equipped them with Venetian blinds and filmy curtains. She did not permit roomers to make changes.

  The car hit speed and swung east on Carpenter Freeway. As the traffic melted onto Stemmons Freeway, the two young men could see the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas. Wesley Frazier stared through the snapping wipers, and he tried to think of something to say. He knew he had to be careful, and he was aware that Oswald felt at ease with children. “Did you have fun with the little ones?” he said. Oswald nodded. “Yeah,” he said. Then he smiled. “Yeah we had fun playing around.”

  Lee always carried a little brown bag with a sandwich and an apple. “Didn’t you bring lunch today?” Wes said. Oswald said no. “I’m going to buy some in the lunchroom.” Wes did not understand Lee, and he was abashed by the total absence of male conversation. For example, he would not dare ask where Lee had a room. Nor did he understand how a man could have a wife and children living with a lady in Irving, while the man had a small place in Oak Cliff. It was none of Frazier’s business, and any allusions to Oswald’s private life would elicit a dead stare.

  Once, about a year before, Mr. Oswald began to write a book about Russia called The Collective. It was not finished, although he paid a typist to render one part of the manuscript into the printed word. At the time, he thought that it was “literary” to include a short biography of the author, and Wes would have learned more in the one written paragraph than in all the weekend trips to and from Irving:

  “Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Oct 1939 in New Orleans La.,” it read, “the son of a Insuraen Salesmen who early death left a far mean streak of indepence brought on by negleck. Entering the US Marine corp at 17 this streak of independence was strengthed by exotic journeys to Japan the Philippines and the scores of odd Islands in the Pacific immianly after serving out his 3 years in the USMC he abonded his american life to seek a new life in the USSR full of optimism and hope he stood in red square in the fall of 1959 vowing to see his chosen course through, after, however, two years and alot of growing up I decided to return to the USA. . . .”

  The sun was kind to the pale beauty of the White House this morning. The day was cloudy, but the yellow shafts of light poured through the holes and fingered the great building in Braille. The men in the Situation Room in the cellar of the West Wing worked on the next précis to be sent to the President through the military switchboard. The policemen at the East and West Gates stopped cars, counted and studied faces, examined passes, and waved the vehicles on. Two presidential assistants were in the barbershop. Others, young lawyers, worked at their desks on the multitudinous tasks of legislation, studying it, writing it, rewriting it, condensing it. For Bernard West, the urbane chief usher, it was an easy day in his between-floors office. The President’s personal secretaries—with the exception of Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, who was with him—had a backlog of letters to write, some to be stamped with Mr. Kennedy’s signature, others to wait on his desk for his personal scribble.

  The Rose Garden, outside the President’s office, dozed behind stiff, unyielding leaves, waiting for winter. The swimming pool remained heated at ninety degrees, even though no one, including the Kennedy children, would use it today. The long melancholy corridors, flanked with the faces of history in frames, were empty except for the stations where Secret Service men stood. The huge East Room was in semi-darkness, with an ornate grand piano at one end and a Stuart painting of George Washington at the other.

  A crowd queued up outside the East Gate. These were citizens. They would tramp through all the public rooms on the ground floor, and some would pluck a piece of gold fringe as a souvenir, and others would stare gaping at the deep rugs, the damask wall covering, the gold pen and ink sets, and the dishes of many administrations. The White House was, at this time, looking better. Jacqueline Kennedy had assumed the burden of calling in decorators and going over the White House warehouse inventory to see what furniture, what paintings, what bric-a-brac might be restored.

  She had brought such color and beauty and life to the old mansion that it was being compared to the elegant palaces of the Old World. The work had been arduous, and sometimes she was forced to beg an owner of an historical chair or bust to please donate it. She had even established a President’s personal library in a
small room on the ground floor, near the South Grounds. The magic of her work showed in the brightness and dignity of the rooms. There was an historical lift to the mansion; visitors who had once shouted carelessly now whispered. Guides passed out ornate pamphlets explaining the significance of the items in each room. President Kennedy so admired the result that, instead of holding all formal dinners in the state dining room, he now preferred to use the Blue Room for small parties and both for big ones.

  In the East Wing—“the female section”—a necklace of offices held ladies who responded to social mail and Mrs. Kennedy’s personal mail; here the invitations to White House galas were executed in script; seating arrangements were worked out with the care of a good chess game, and the First Lady’s ballroom gowns were on display in half-lifesize renderings. On the second floor, there were some men. Not many, but a few.

  This was the Secret Service office of the White House detail. It had a female receptionist, but this was the only concession to the frilly wing of the White House. Inside there were three desks. They were plain and uncluttered, unlike the men who used them. Gerald A. Behn, special agent in charge of the White House detail, sat here to plot the safekeeping of the First and Second Families of the nation with the care someone else might plot their undoing. His work began a full three weeks before each presidential trip.

  The moment the President made a commitment to go somewhere, Behn’s work was under way. In the case of Dallas, he followed procedure by pulling a PRS (Protective Research Section) file on the city, and this card, in Secret Service headquarters, would list any persons in the area thought to be potentially dangerous. All persons who were psychiatrically homicidal were listed; all cranks who wrote threatening letters; all persons who had been involved in political riots or arrested and detained for political violence.

  Every street the President planned to traverse in each city had to be “sanitized” long in advance by agents. Every name on the PRS list had to be checked for whereabouts and security. Every building Mr. Kennedy might step into had to be screened and searched. The day before the President arrived, men had to be posted at every entrance and exit to each of those buildings. Through Chief James J. Rowley of the Secret Service, liaison had to be established with other governmental investigative agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA so that, if they had any information which might augment the safety of the President, it would go into Jerry Behn’s hopper.

  The agencies worked well together. So well, in fact, that Chief Rowley often sent some of his Secret Service men to the FBI to take short courses in investigative procedures and the newer and more bizarre devices of detection. In late October 1963, the word that went out from Behn’s office was “San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas.” The PRS file didn’t have much material. The FBI and the CIA had very little.

  The name of Lee Harvey Oswald did not come up. Nor would it. He was a defector who had gone to the Soviet Union and had returned with a wife and child. The State Department had a file on him, but it was a file of insolent correspondence, closing with the department’s lending him money to come home. The Navy Department had a short dossier on Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a onetime Marine who, after fleeing to Russia, had been court martialled and his honorable discharge changed to a dishonorable discharge. The young man had protested to the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. John Connally, but the DD was allowed to stand. The FBI was aware of him, but only as a “Marxist” who appeared to be “clean.” He had never attended a Communist Party meeting, never consorted with Reds, never tried to get employment in a sensitive defense area, appeared to have considerable trouble with his marital life, and bounded from one cheap laboring job to another.

  Most of the people Behn had to worry about were emotionally disturbed. A history of assassins is a glossary of persons sick and obsessed. Lee Harvey Oswald never got drunk, never wrote threatening letters, and once told his wife that if the President was killed, he would be replaced by another man who “thinks the same and will keep up the same program.”

  What worried Gerald Behn was that the Secret Service has no authority over the actions of the President. They had the responsibility but could not make the decisions. Word had already come over the teletype that it was raining in Fort Worth but that Mr. Kennedy did not want the bubbletop on and asked that the Secret Service men remain on the follow-up car. The first part created no anxiety in the White House. The second part did.

  President Kennedy was becoming increasingly irritated with the Secret Service. Behn recalled that the Chief Executive had told him, forcefully, to keep his men away from the lead car. On another occasion, in the midst of a motorcade, he had excitedly waved off the men who trotted beside the car. It had reached a stage where Behn and his assistant, Floyd Boring, were no longer popular with the President. He saw them as the leaders of the intruders. Sometimes he almost bumped into an SS man outside his office door. He felt that he was seeing SS men everywhere.

  One afternoon, when the President’s eyes blurred, he asked to see an ophthalmologist. The Secret Service asked him to please remain in the White House until they could send men to the doctor’s office, clean out the waiting room, study the examining room, the doctor, and his nurse, and “sanitize” the sidewalk and the buildings on the opposite side of the street. After all this was done, Kennedy left the South Grounds with a Secret Service car ahead of him and one behind. For the President, it was beyond bearance. At the doctor’s office, he had had to sit in the car until the men in the sunglasses nodded to him that it was safe to emerge.

  Gerald Behn had been running beside the President’s car in Mexico City in June 1962, amid the din of a full-throated Latin welcome, when a “beatnik” broke the police lines and planted himself squarely before the President’s car. When he saw that it would not stop, he skirted the fender with a twist of the hip like a matador avoiding horns. As the car passed, the bearded one approached President Kennedy, and Mr. Behn had knocked him down with a punch. The man had been arrested by the Mexican police and was found to be an American with a police record. The President was angry. He told Mr. Behn that he should not have hit the man.

  In a Berlin motorcade, enthused youths broke police lines and the Secret Service agents dropped off the follow-up car to interpose themselves between the President and his admirers. This also incurred presidential wrath. In Seattle, Phoenix, and Bonham, Texas, in November 1961, Mr. Kennedy ordered the Secret Service to stop riding the rear bumpers of his car. Only four days ago, in Tampa, Florida, the President looked over his shoulder and saw Special Agents Donald Lawton and Charles Zboril on the rear steps of his car and he ordered them off. The motorcade was moving too fast, so Floyd Boring radioed the follow-up car and the President’s driver to slow down. The Secret Service men got off.

  It was not that the President did not appreciate the protection. He didn’t want it to be obvious. When he was in a good mood, he said: “Protection is Jim Rowley’s job. He has never lost a President yet.” Mr. Kennedy knew as well as the Secret Service did that 100 percent protection is impossible. “Any man who wants to trade his life for mine . . .” The percentage of protection decreases with the daring of the “boss.” If he waves his personal police force away, he hampers its work. If he departs from schedule, or stops the motorcade to shake hands, or leaves a welcoming group to walk along the edge of a crowd shaking hands, or even if he stands still in a street of tall buildings, his percentage of protection drops to the danger point.

  Now Gerald Behn had the news from Fort Worth. He could sit at his desk and worry. He could call his Chief and win understanding and sympathy. Or he could proceed with the small tasks of his office, knowing that Mr. Kennedy had always been proved right before, and the Secret Service wrong. Nothing had ever happened to him that could be called dangerous. In a dozen hours, the President would be at the LBJ ranch for a day or two, and the place was a cinch to secure. It was off the main road, and the entrances and exits were easily sealed. The nearest town,
Johnson City, was about fourteen miles away. The two families would rest up, enjoy a Texas barbecue, invite some of the Johnson friends over, then take a plane back to Washington. A simple and safe procedure.

  On the wall of Mr. Behn’s office hung a framed poem:

  Fame is fleeting, fitful flame

  Which shines a while on John Jones’ name

  And then puts John right on the spot;

  The flame shines on

  But John does not.

  The President took a call from the White House. It was Richard Goodwin, an assistant, who said that The New York Times was about to write an article about him. Goodwin had told the Times “No comment,” but he wanted presidential advice in the matter. Mr. Kennedy ordered his man to go ahead and write a release about him. At the same time, Pamela Turnure, the dark, attractive secretary to Mrs. Kennedy, was issuing a press statement in the name of the First Lady that Texas had turned out to be just as warm and hospitable and friendly as she had always heard. Yesterday had been “a wonderful day.”

  The White House press corps was stacked in rooms all over the big U-shaped hotel. The dean, gray-haired Merriman Smith of United Press International, had filed some overnight copy; Seth Kantor made notes that the crowd in the parking lot had started to collect “before dawn.” Charles Roberts of Newsweek; Tom Wicker of The New York Times; Robert Donovan of the Los Angeles Times; Jim Mathis of the Advance Syndicate; Jack Bell of the Associated Press; there were correspondents accredited from Washington, from New York, from Fort Worth, Dallas, Chicago, and there were newspaper photographers, television cameramen, radio and TV reporters, Western Union telegraphers and, in some cases, editors-on-the-scene to correlate the efforts of groups of reporters.