But he also believed he was lucky and that luck had taken him all the way to the White House, where, at age forty-three, he was the youngest man ever elected to the presidency. On November 22, he was forty-six years old. He had been president of the United States for two years, ten months, and two days.
As John Kennedy spoke in the safety of his Fort Worth hotel suite about rifles and assassins, a man who wanted to kill him was already waiting for him in Dallas. That man had a rifle, and he was in a tall building.
ON THE morning of November 22, Lee Harvey Oswald woke up early and was out of bed before Marina. He told her not to get up. He went to the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. She did not see what he did next. He placed $170 in cash, almost all the money he had in the world, on the top of the dresser for Marina. He had less than $20 in his wallet. And in a porcelain cup she had brought with her all the way from Russia, Lee Oswald left his wedding ring.
He told Marina he would not be back tonight. Sleeping on the idea had not changed his mind. He left the house, went into the garage, and emerged with his package.
Oswald walked the half block over to Buell Wesley Frazier’s house. Buell’s sister, Linnie Mae Randall, lived there too with her husband and three daughters. Last night, Linnie remembered, her brother told her “that Lee had rode home with him to get some curtain rods from Mrs. Paine to fix up his apartment.”
Friday morning, after Linnie made breakfast and while she was packing Buell’s lunch, she saw Oswald cross Westbrook Street, then cross her driveway, and walk toward the carport. She noticed that Oswald had something in his right hand. “He was carrying a package in a sort of heavy brown bag, heavier than a grocery bag it looked to me.” Oswald held the bag in a vertical position. “It almost touched the ground as he carried it.”
Linnie watched Oswald go to Buell’s car, open the back door, and lay the package down. She could not see if he had laid it on the floor or the backseat. Then Oswald approached the house and peered through the kitchen window while Buell was sitting down eating his breakfast.
Frazier’s mother saw him and asked, “Who is that?”
“That is Lee,” her son replied.
It was the first time Oswald had ever walked to Frazier’s house and peered through the window. Usually Frazier just picked him up on the street while Oswald was walking to his house.
Frazier rose from the table and said, “Well, it is time to go.”
Oswald waited for him a few feet outside the back door. They walked together toward the car and got in the front seats. When Frazier turned his head, he saw the long paper bag. “I noticed there was a package laying in the backseat, I didn’t pay too much attention and I said: ‘What’s the package, Lee?’ ”
And he said, “Curtain rods.”
The blanket that Oswald used to hide the rifle in Mrs. Paine’s garage, the brown paper bag he used to carry the rifle on his way to work, and the disassembled Mannlicher-Carcano.
(courtesy of the National Archives)
Frazier replied, “Oh yes, you told me you were going to bring some today.”
Frazier didn’t think any more about it. “I asked him did he have fun playing with them babies, and he chuckled and said he did.” Buell noticed Lee did not bring his usual small paper sack containing his lunch. “Right when I got in the car I asked him where was his lunch, and he said he was going to buy his lunch that day.”
They did not discuss President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas.
Frazier had no way of knowing it, but Oswald did not need curtain rods. His small room at the boardinghouse was already fully furnished with blinds, curtains, and curtain rods.
President Kennedy, Governor Connally (second from right), and Vice President Johnson (far right) outside the Hotel Texas.
(courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
The men got into the car and drove to Dallas. Unbeknownst to Buell Wesley Frazier, he was chauffeuring an assassin—and his murder weapon—to the scene of a crime that had not yet happened.
Oswald and Frazier arrived at the outdoor parking lot located several hundred feet behind the Texas School Book Depository at around 7:52 A.M. They were early, so Frazier stayed in the car for a minute: “I was letting my engine run and getting to charge up my battery.”
Oswald jumped out of the car, reached into the backseat for his package of “curtain rods,” and began walking fast toward the Depository, getting as far ahead of Frazier as he could without breaking into a run. It was the first time Lee had ever walked ahead of Buell. They usually walked to the Depository together, but not this morning: “Eventually he kept getting a little further ahead of me,” Frazier noticed.
Frazier also noticed that Lee carried the package in an unusual manner, vertically, with one end tucked under his right armpit and the other end in his cupped hand. The billowing sleeve of Oswald’s jacket almost concealed the package, so that it was almost invisible to anyone—including Frazier—walking behind Oswald. By the time Lee neared the Depository, he was well ahead of Buell: “[He was] I would say, roughly 50 feet in front of me but I didn’t try to catch up with him because I knew I had plenty of time so I just took my time walking up there.”
Oswald opened the back door of the building and slipped inside. Then he went to the sixth floor, using either the staircase at the rear of the building or one of the two freight elevators. He probably took the stairs to avoid riding in an elevator with any curious coworkers who might ask questions about his package. Once he was sure no one was watching him, he hid the bag containing the still-unassembled rifle between stacks of book boxes on the sixth floor. No one knows for sure when he assembled it. It is possible he assembled the rifle that morning before hiding it, in case something later prevented him from doing so during the critical moments before Kennedy’s motorcade arrived. With a screwdriver it would have taken between two and two and a half minutes to assemble the weapon. But Oswald did not need a tool to remount the barrel to the stock—a thin dime would turn the screws and transform the rifle into firing condition.
With his rifle concealed from view, Oswald picked up his clipboard and began filling orders for books, just as he did on any other normal day at work. At least for the next three hours until the presidential motorcade approached Elm Street, he would earn his pay.
JOHN AND Jacqueline Kennedy were still in their suite at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth when Lee Oswald walked into the Book Depository with his rifle. The president dressed first. He was scheduled to go downstairs soon to deliver brief remarks to a crowd that had assembled in a parking lot across the street. He looked outside. It was a gloomy, rainy day. The Secret Service worried about the weather in Dallas. The president’s limousine had already been sent there ahead of Kennedy, so it would be in position when he landed at Love Field. The car was a convertible, and the agents wondered if they should install the plastic bubble top to protect the president from the rain. John Kennedy preferred to ride in an open car so the people watching the motorcade could get a better look at him. It created an intimacy with the crowd. Jackie did not like the open car—the wind would play havoc with her stylish hair.
While in Fort Worth, Kennedy would travel in a rented convertible. It was unarmored. If a madman jumped from the curb and fired shots, the bullets could penetrate the metal doors of the car. During Kennedy’s trip to Berlin, two women had broken through the security cordon and ran right up to his car in a motorcade. They turned out to be overenthusiastic but harmless fans.
The president went downstairs without Jackie at 8:45 A.M. to speak to the cheering crowd standing outside in the rain. “There are no faint hearts in Fort Worth,” he complimented them, “and I appreciate your being here this morning.” Some people began chanting “Where’s Jackie? Where’s Jackie?” JFK could tell they were disappointed at not seeing her, and he used wry humor to soften the blow and explain her absence: “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself. It takes longer, but, of course, she looks better than we do when
she does it. But we appreciate your welcome . . . here in this rain.”
President Kennedy greeting the crowd outside the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth on the morning of November 22, 1963.
(courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
President Kennedy speaks to the crowd outside the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth. Note the open windows in the background.
(Cecil Stoughton, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
Back in their hotel room, as Jackie got dressed, she was able to hear his voice over the loudspeakers.
At 9:00 A.M., the president returned to the hotel to speak at a public breakfast in the ballroom. But Jackie’s seat at the head table was empty. The disappointed guests wanted to see her. Kennedy told one of his Secret Service agents to call her room and tell her to get down to the breakfast as soon as possible.
“Where’s Mrs. Kennedy,” he said. “Call Mr. Hill. I want her to come down to the breakfast.”
She had forgotten. When Secret Service agent Clint Hill escorted her downstairs in an elevator, she thought he was taking her to the car. “Aren’t we leaving?” she asked. “No,” Hill replied, “you are going to a breakfast.”
On the podium, JFK stalled for time. Then he joked with the crowd: “Two years ago, I introduced myself in Paris by saying that I was the man who had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris. I am getting somewhat that same sensation as I travel around Texas. Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear.” Then a commotion began at the back of the room. Jackie had arrived, and the crowd shouted its approval as she marched to the podium.
Wall Street Journal reporter Al Otten took cynical amusement in Jackie’s service as a political prop. “When are you going to have her come out of a cake?” he wisecracked to Dave Powers, JFK’s Irish longtime top political operative.
Powers was not amused. “She’s not that kind of Bunny.”
She did not need a cake. Jackie did not disappoint. She was wearing a bright pink, nubby wool jacket (Jackie called the color raspberry) faced with dark blue lapels, with a matching pink skirt and a pink pillbox hat. She wore short, bright white cotton gloves, a fashionable accessory for women at that time. It was one of the most flattering outfits in her wardrobe, and she had worn it on several prior occasions. The colorful suit seemed almost to glow and created a striking contrast against her rich black hair and pale white skin. She looked radiant.
After the Chamber of Commerce breakfast, the Kennedys went upstairs to their suite to rest before leaving Fort Worth. Jackie offered to do more campaigning. “I’ll go anywhere with you this year.”
“How about California in the next two weeks?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Did you hear that?” the president asked his aides and laughed. They had an hour until their departure.
President Kennedy’s motorcade left the Hotel Texas for Fort Worth’s Carswell Air Force Base. It would be a short flight—just thirteen minutes—to Dallas. It was such a short trip that they could have driven. But that would have eliminated the ceremonial glamour of a presidential arrival of Air Force One at Love Field. The landing of the beautiful jet, the emergence of Jack and Jackie from the rear door, the welcoming committee, the crowds, the photographers, and the television cameras—all enhanced the excitement and appeal.
The president boarded the plane at 11:23 A.M. Air Force One took off from Carswell at 11:25 A.M. (CST) and touched down at Love Field in Dallas at 11:38 A.M. It was an hour later in the nation’s capital, and most officials in Washington were at lunch. Several members of the cabinet were out of the country, aboard a plane flying to Japan for trade talks with government officials.
At Love Field, reporters and television cameras prepared to cover the president’s arrival. While JFK’s jet taxied off the runway and slowed to a stop, one journalist, Bob Walker of WFAA-TV (Dallas channel 8), the ABC affiliate, broadcast a live report: “Security precautions at this luncheon they are going to attend range from the distance from the president’s car door to the Trade Mart entrance, and to how many doors and windows there are in the building, and even to the method of choosing the steak that the president will eat.”
But the reporter failed to mention how many windows—more than twenty thousand—the motorcade would drive past on the way to the Trade Mart, before the president would have the opportunity to be protected there from chewing a piece of poisoned steak. The Secret Service planned to select John Kennedy’s plate at random from among the two thousand meals that the kitchen prepared. To kill the president, an assassin would have to outdo the legendary poisoner Lucrezia Borgia. He would have to poison all of the steaks served that day.
The reporter glanced at the crowd at Love Field: “Handkerchiefs are being waved, the placards are being held high, and hundreds of tiny American flags are now being waved toward the presidential jet.”
The plane parked near a reception committee of dignitaries standing on the tarmac. The reporter, making no effort to conceal his obvious excitement, continued his broadcast: “And here is the presidential jet, U.S. Air Force Number 1 . . . the doors fly open and the loading ladders are being wheeled to the plane. . . . This is a split second timed operation for the Secret Service . . . nothing is left to chance, every possible precaution has been taken.”
But it was not true.
None of the people at Love Field had been searched, not even the suspicious ones displaying unfriendly signs. Anyone in that crowd could have been carrying a concealed pistol. All that separated the spectators from the president was a hip-high chain-link fence.
At the Texas School Book Depository, the lunch hour would begin soon. Most of the employees would start their noontime descent from the upper floors to congregate in the lunchroom on the second floor or the “domino room” on the first floor, or to go outside and watch President Kennedy drive by on Elm Street. The biggest crowds waiting to see the president—tens of thousands of people—had already gathered downtown, choking the sidewalks several bodies deep before Kennedy had even landed. Hundreds of people had perched in windows and now looked down on the route. The Secret Service and the Dallas police did not have the manpower—or the desire—to search every building, to scrutinize every window, or to analyze every face. It was impossible. “Every possible precaution” had not been taken. On the contrary—almost none had.
But here, in Dealey Plaza, where the motorcade would cover the last leg of its ten-mile route before it picked up speed and took the highway to the Trade Mart, the crowds were much thinner. It was easier for the scattered spectators to stake out a spot right at the edge of the curb and stand just a few feet away from where the president’s limousine would soon pass.
Indeed, people standing on the right side of the car would be closest to Kennedy, in some cases less than six feet from him. Things were much calmer and quieter in Dealey Plaza, in the vicinity of the Texas School Book Depository, than they were downtown.
AT LOVE Field, the president looked out one of the plane windows and saw the enthusiastic crowd. He told Ken O’Donnell, “This trip is turning out to be terrific. Here we are in Dallas, and it looks like everything in Texas is going to be fine for us.”
Jack and Jackie stood by the rear door of Air Force One, waiting for it to open. Dave Powers told them, “You two look like Mr. and Mrs. America.” The president and First Lady exited Air Force One and descended the portable stairs that airport workers had rolled out to the plane. Jackie came down first.
“There is Mrs. Kennedy,” exclaimed the reporter, “stepping off the plane, wearing a bright pink suit . . . and a matching pink hat.”
Mike Quinn, a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, was taken by Jackie’s outfit: “[I]t was beautiful, and the color seemed to reflect the sun. As she stepped out ahead of the president the crowd seemed awestruck, then started applauding and . . . squealing.”
Jackie and JFK disembark Air Force One in Dallas.
(courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidentia
l Library and Museum)
Waiting for them on the ground were a number of local dignitaries and politicians, including Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had flown to Dallas ahead of the Kennedys. Protocol dictated that LBJ, a Texan, would welcome the president at each stop within the state.
The wife of the mayor presented Jackie with a big bouquet of flowers. The yellow rose was the official state flower, but so many of them had been ordered for the various events the Kennedys were attending in Texas that local florists had run out of them. Instead, the mayor’s wife gave Jackie roses of another kind. “Mrs. Kennedy has been presented her bouquet of brilliant red roses,” the reporter told his listeners, “and they make a lovely contrast to the bright pink suit she’s wearing.” He was right. The bloodred crimson petals looked striking against the pink fabric. The combination of colors seemed to intensify the hue of each, rendering them almost fluorescent.
While the Kennedys greeted the members of the airport reception committee, the journalist encouraged listeners to throng the motorcade route. “The weather couldn’t be better, we have a brilliant sun. . . . Now those of you who are waiting along the parade route, just to be sure that you find yourself in the proper location, let’s give it to you again.”
Lee Harvey Oswald was not listening. He already knew he was in the proper location. He had not brought a portable, battery-powered transistor radio to his window perch. He did not need one to tell him when the president was coming. The crowds would do that for him. When the spectators one block away at the far end of Houston Street saw the motorcade coming up Main Street, they would begin to wave and cheer. Oswald would know the president was nearing Dealey Plaza.
The radio announcer continued: “The party is now ready to depart Love Field. It will go Mockingbird Lane to Lemmon Avenue, then travel south on Lemmon to Turtle Creek, Cedar Springs, through the downtown area to Main. West on Main to Houston, through the triple underpass to Stemmons Freeway, then on to the Trade Mart.”
End of Days Page 10