The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  Next came a rented Lincoln convertible, occupied by the Johnsons and Yarborough. In the front seat Rufus Youngblood, the Vice-President’s agent, sat beside Hurchel Jacks of the Texas Highway Patrol, who drove. The Lincoln was followed by another Secret Service car called Varsity. Next, a Mercury with Mayor and Mrs. Earle Cabell. Behind it was the press pool car. The majority of reporters were in a bus farther back in the procession, but this one consisted of four men who, if a news story broke, would get it on the wires as a “flash.”

  The President’s press representative on the trip to Texas, Malcolm Kilduff, rode in front on the right. A driver furnished by the telephone company manned the radio transmission set. Merriman Smith of United Press International sat between the driver and Kilduff, his knees hunched under his chin. In the rear seat were Robert Clark of the American Broadcasting Company, a Dallas reporter, and Jack Bell of the Associated Press. The ninth car was a Chevrolet convertible for White House motion picture photographers. It was impossible to take pictures in a position so remote from the President. Behind it were two more automobiles with photographers.

  Three cars were assigned to congressmen. Number fifteen, a Mercury station wagon, was for “unplanned guests.” Behind this was a huge Continental bus for the White House staff; then a second one containing the White House press. The nineteenth car was most important: this was White House communications, the traveling radio car through which the President, in his automobile, could address himself to anyone in the world. This one was the link between Kennedy and the Sheraton military board. There was a Western Union car, with operators who could take stories from reporters and get them on the wire quickly. In addition, toward the back of the procession, there were two Chevrolets for “unexpected developments,” a local press car for newspapermen and television, and, closing the ranks, Captain Lawrence’s specially assigned police car and motorcycles.

  The motorcade was spread over a half mile. Leading it was Deputy Chief Lumpkin with his “pilot car.” All drivers had been instructed to remain tuned to police Channel Two, which would be manned by the chief himself. All other police matters would be handled by Channel One. The press was displeased with its place in the parade. Some felt they could have reported a better story watching the motorcade from any of the buildings downtown. Even their wire representatives—AP, UPI, and American Broadcasting—sitting forward in a special car, were six hundred feet behind the Kennedys and could see little except the mayor of Dallas directly ahead.

  The Secret Service men were not pleased because they were in a “hot” city and would have preferred to have two men ride the bumper of the President’s car with two motorcycle policemen between him and the crowds on the sidewalks. Kennedy was “wide open,” but the SS recognized him as “the boss” and he dictated his protection. Had they been able to exercise power over his decisions, the Secret Service would have forbidden the parking lot speech in Fort Worth and the fraternizing at the Love Field fence. These were explosive situations, but Kennedy had survived many of them with a happy smile and, as always, the Secret Service was made to appear overly protective, overbearing in insulating the President of the United States from his people, and unduly alarmed.

  Dr. Burkley was unhappy. O’Donnell had relegated the President’s physician to the sixteenth car. It had happened before, and this time the admiral had protested. He could be of no assistance to the President if a doctor was needed quickly. He was reminded that this was a sunny day encompassing a friendly crowd. Mr. Kennedy was in reasonably good health, and no doctor would be required. In that case, Burkley felt, there was no need for a doctor to be present. Mr. O’Donnell sent Burkley back, and ordered Mrs. Lincoln back with him.

  No one was pleased, Kennedy was unhappy with the Dallas newspapers; Mrs. Kennedy, dressed for cool weather, was sweltering in a pink suit; the man who sat closest to Kennedy, Governor Connally, might have exchanged places easily with Dr. Burkley and felt better for it; Chief Curry was tired of the security burden placed on him and his city; Kellerman counted the minutes until they would all start the trip to the privacy of the LBJ Ranch; even the cop on the motorcycle behind the President’s left ear, B. W. Hargis, had been on duty since 7 A.M. and didn’t look forward to an additional hour of strain. This could also be said for B. J. Martin, the cop on the other side of the rear bumper, who watched Mrs. Kennedy wave. He squinted into the sun ahead of his bike.

  On that day, one man assumed an assignment without an order. This was Captain Perdue W. Lawrence, who got in his car and left Love Field before Chief Lumpkin. To Lawrence, the event suddenly appeared to be bigger, greater, more important than he had thought, and he wanted to precede the pilot car by a half mile to make certain that his sergeants and their patrolmen were holding the crowds back and blocking the cross-street traffic. The captain was a cautious and thorough policeman. He listened to Chief Curry on Channel Two. En route alone, Lawrence displayed himself to his men at the crossings so that they would be alert to their work.

  Lawrence became more and more surprised the farther he proceeded toward the Trade Mart. This was no average Dallas crowd. It was a metropolitan mob. The people were numerous even in the outlying area off the airport. At Lemmon and Atwell, the captain could not believe the number of people who waited. He recalled that, at some of these remote streets, he had not assigned a policeman to shut traffic off. Now the captain saw that it was not necessary: the pedestrians were stretched solid athwart all side streets.

  At the first turn off Mockingbird, Governor Connally grabbed the metal bar in front of him and raised himself up and then sat back again. He looked incredulous. Unless all the early signs were wrong, about a quarter of a million people had turned out to see Kennedy in Dallas.

  It was late in the season for a cookout. The sun was radiant over the lush hills of Virginia, and the men sat in the back of the big house, around the swimming pool. The beeches had shucked all but a few leaves from their branches, the red maples hung onto an assortment of shiny copper leaves, stiff russets, and some apple yellows. A mist hung over the hills, and yet it was not a mist. It was as though blue wood smoke had gathered in the low places to hang quietly, like old nets drying in a cove. The Attorney General was in a buoyant mood. He had broken up his Organized Crime meeting and had taken two of the visitors to his home in McLean for lunch. The thin, attentive face of Robert Morgenthau, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was at his side. At Morgenthau’s side was his deputy, Silvio Mollo. The lunch, according to Mrs. Kennedy, would be creamy New England clam chowder, some crackers, and coffee. This was a Catholic Friday—even for Morgenthau.

  The Attorney General was a vital wire of a man, a sort of combat Kennedy. He relished the prosecution of crooked union leaders and members of the Sicilian Mafia. The latter had grown rich in an era when America had enforced the Volstead Act, which prohibited the sale of spiritous liquor of any kind. Since the repeal of that act and the return of licensed liquor in the United States, the criminal element, still organized into “families” with assigned terrtiories, had worked their way into legitimate businesses. The Attorney General was fascinated with the notion that he could drive them out of business and into prison, or out of the country.

  He was a man who dared. His experience in matters of law was not extensive, but he was enthusiastic about his new role as the righteous prosecutor battling a world of evil. Robert Kennedy was designed to play the part of David.

  Someone remarked that the wives always looked bright and refreshed in the early hours. Perhaps it was the plumage, or the makeup, but they smiled and brightened a scene which, to the men, might be grim. The time was 6:55 A.M. at Honolulu, and the ladies had arrived from Washington the night before. It wasn’t often that they had an opportunity to make a trip with their busy husbands, and this one was going to Japan.

  The men had been in Honolulu for two days of conferences, at the direction of the President. He had been possessed of a suspicion that American military involvement
in Vietnam was beginning to stick to his fingers. Mr. Kennedy, as was the case with Mr. Eisenhower, his predecessor, would like to be out of Vietnam. Each day the military boots of the United States sank a little deeper in this Oriental rice paddy.

  Mr. Kennedy had become disenchanted with the Vietnamese President, Ngo Dinh Diem, and Diem distrusted Kennedy. The American military advisers complained that supplies sent to Vietnam were being diverted, that American suggestions regarding the conduct of the war were ignored, that Diem and his “dragon lady” wife, his brother-in-law, a Catholic archbishop, his brother, a general—all of them spent more time fighting the Buddhists than in ridding their land of Vietcong terrorists and North Vietnamese soldiers.

  Less than two weeks ago, President Diem and his brother had been assassinated in a military coup. The Catholic archbishop was out of the country; the “dragon lady” had fled, presumably to Italy. The situation, as far as the Americans were concerned, should have been good, but it wasn’t. There were whispered charges that President Kennedy had agreed to the assassination of Diem, that he had been aware of the palace plot and had kept the American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, from warning Diem. True or untrue, there was an odor of American chicanery in his assassination, and world newsmen spent the better part of a week trying to piece the story together.

  Kennedy had ordered five Cabinet members and his press secretary, en route to Japan for a state visit, to pause in Honolulu for conferences with Ambassador Lodge and General Paul D. Harkins, who flew east from Saigon. Pierre Salinger, the press secretary, sat in as an observer, and he felt that the Vietnamese generals who were not in control “were doing a good job.” To some of the other conferees, this was a secondary aspect of a larger problem. The United States was spending blood and treasure beyond its means in Southeast Asia. Further, it had lost the sympathy of the world.

  At the conferences were Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Secretary C. Douglas Dillon of the Treasury Department; Robert McNamara of Defense; McGeorge Bundy, presidential adviser on Foreign Affairs; Luther Hodges, Secretary of Commerce; Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture, and Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior. It is hardly likely that this much of the Cabinet, in effect, the United States government, had met in Hawaii to hear Lodge and Harkness tell how well the new regime was doing. They could appreciate that from the daily précis in the Situation Room of the White House. It is more likely that they were worried over public interest in Kennedy’s involvement—if any—in the assassinations and how best to divert attention from it. They may also have discussed how best to extricate the U.S. from Saigon; in fact, it was a probable topic and the President may have asked the military for a timetable of withdrawal.

  The conferences were made important by the status and number of the conferees. The meetings had broken up last night, and Secretary McNamara and McGeorge Bundy had taken a plane back to Washington. At 6:55 A.M., the remaining Cabinet members and their wives walked out onto the strip at Hickam Airport and boarded a presidential jet for Japan.

  In Tokyo, Rusk, Dillon, and the others would discuss trade agreements with their Japanese counterparts. It was a beautiful day. Pierre Salinger got aboard with his wife Nancy and remembered that a good breakfast had been promised on the plane. The press secretary had one additional assignment: he was to sound out the Japanese secretly on the possibility of John F. Kennedy’s making a state visit to Japan in 1964. The President didn’t want any of the student riots which had turned Dwight Eisenhower back from a similar visit at the halfway point.

  The Japanese would have to maintain public order if they wanted Kennedy. It was Salinger’s job to find out. The door closed and the wives were thrilled to be making the trip. It would take all day, even flying with the sun, and there would be one stop at Wake Island for fuel. From the air, Oahu looked like a fresh salad in mint aspic.

  * * *

  The Afternoon Hours

  12 noon

  The sun was high and steady and the few remaining edges of gray in the sky changed to snow-blinding white. This was a day to match the springtime of a man. All the threats of the heavens had been dissipated by a band of light which warmed the concrete of Dallas. The welcome had been hesitant; a little stiff, like offering the courtesies of the house to a policeman. From Inwood Road on, the faces old and young, stern, senile, congenial, analytical, and apathetic became infused with warmth and the smiling eyes all blinked the same message: “Hello, Mr. President. Glad to see you.” It was cordial and a little more than that. They looked upon him with favor. Their sound, provincial judgment told them that he was a handsome young man with a friendly grin and blue eyes that drifted from face to face, laughing and glad to be alive.

  His little woman was perky, too. Bright and sweet, a girl who didn’t have her hair all frizzed and was not so made up you couldn’t tell what she was like. Liked horses, too, this one. Rode some good hunters when she wasn’t busy having babies. And lookit that pink two-piece suit with the little collar and cuff trim. Couldn’t cost more than forty or fifty dollars down at Neiman Marcus. The President’s wife—nothing put on about her. Nice couple with no scandal running their marriage into the ground. Almost too young—wouldn’t you say?—to be the First Family of the entire United States. Like a couple of zippy kids ready to kick up their heels at the Grange.

  Dallas, slow to admire, to enjoy, to give affection; quick to suspect, to indict, to distrust; this giant of Texas which was the end of the South and the beginning of the West, which was neither and was both, this multiphrenic city sitting alone on a hot prairie like an oasis spouting a fountain of silvery coins gave its elixir to John F. Kennedy. The decision was made somewhere along Lemmon around Mahanna and the throats began to open with a continuous roar which spread from street to street and ran ahead of the motorcade. It swept over the sound of the motorcycles and made them run, as it were, silently. None of it affected the men with offices high up in the Southland Life Building or the oil men in the mahogany chambers with the deep pile rugs, the men with the cowboy boots and the pendulous bellies; none of it altered the opinion of the monarchs of Big D. They watched Kennedy on their color television sets and snapped him off. They had millions of dollars and they wanted additional tax breaks and write-offs and they wanted offshore oil drilling, too. They recognized the face of the man who would stop them.

  The people did not matter. Dallas could buy and sell people. The metropolitan area had a population of 1,125,000 and the cheapest, meanest millionaire had more money than that. The city was so new it squeaked. One hundred and twenty-two years earlier, John Neely Bryan had built a log cabin on the confluence of three forks of the Trinity River. It wasn’t a good choice, but the settlement was named after George M. Dallas, Vice-President of the United States. Dallas became the runt of the northern plain.

  It was a stop for pioneers; a railhead; a haven for wholesalers; a cotton broker. The state government, in 1908, passed a restrictive law making it mandatory for all Texas insurance companies to make their headquarters in Dallas. The city grew at once. Oil companies followed the insurance organizations. Banking followed both. The biggest commodity in Dallas to buy, to sell, to exchange or trade was cash. With riches and growth Dallas developed a constitutional inferiority complex.

  Everything it did had to be civically bigger and better than anywhere else. For the advancement of poetry appreciation, five Browning Societies were organized. It had more air conditioning per cubic foot than any city in the world. The rich women dressed richer; the Neiman Marcus store featured “His” and “Her” planes. The Symphony Orchestra, the Civic Opera Guild, the Museum of Fine Arts were oversubscribed annually.

  The city wasn’t crude. It was isolated. It was a wealthy hypochondriac looking away from himself; a kept woman living in a florist shop; a sultan with a hat full of diamonds begging for a glass of water; a tower in a tunnel. Dallas consists of five main sections, but North Dallas, lying between downtown and Love Field and Highland Park, was worthy of special attenti
on.

  To a Dallasite, the ideal was always to narrow everything to the ultimate. The best country is America; the best state is Texas; the best city is Dallas; the best section is North Dallas. Across the Trinity River to the south were the 280,000 people of Oak Cliff. One of them, in a rooming house on North Beckley, was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oak Cliff was used car lots and movie houses, supermarkets, filling stations, and unpainted porches; it was clerks, cops, and warehousemen; crooked flagstones, bargain stores, and buses. The damp dark bed of the Trinity might as well have been the Great Wall of China.

  West Dallas and South Dallas are slum areas. Shacks and unpainted tenements abound; automobile cemeteries line the expressways. Religion is fundamental Protestant; the churches of North Dallas are more sophisticated, but for old-fashioned Bible-whacking and brimstone, the outlying districts are preferred. Oak Cliff supported 215 churches. Sin was the secret pleasure of the rich. The ladies of North Dallas were expected to flirt with their friends’ husbands, but this was cocktail polo. The men all knew a motel clerk on the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike who specialized in keeping his mouth shut; each one knew an eager stenographer or an airline stewardess; the rich men exchanged gifts five feet five inches tall; a welcome stranger was always asked: “Want me to take care of you?” The question was asked of John F. Kennedy on his first visit to the area in the presidential campaign of 1960. Many men recalled the question; no gentlemen remembered the answer.

  Downtown Dallas supports all the others. The money is here. It consists of three parallel avenues: Elm, Main, and Commerce, which run from east to west, ending at Dealey Plaza. They are crossed by a dozen side streets. From the sky it looks like a broken banjo. Within this small embrasure are the tall office buildings, the courthouse, city hall, the library, the airlines offices, banks, insurance companies, county jail, hotels, smart shops, and fine restaurants. The freeways and viaducts lead into and out of Dallas within these three avenues and the power downtown is almost absolute. Any notions which are not approved by the powers are denounced as “creeping socialism” or “communism.” Here, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Earl Warren, was a traitor. The living thing, the treasured spirit was the frontiersman with his Conestoga wagon, his mules, his woman, his horse, and his rifle. The enemy, once the hostile Indian and the rattlesnake, was now the government in Washington.