End of Days

by James L. Swanson

  But JFK’s car did not leave Love Field just then. The reporter said there was some kind of delay, but he could not discover its cause. Then he saw what was happening. “The president is not in his limousine. This is the moment where the Secret Service has its point of tension. As we have talked with many of these Secret Service men in the past few days—they say, when the president stops moving, that’s when we are concerned because that is when the possibility of trouble comes to the forefront.”

  JOHN KENNEDY saw that a few thousand people had turned up behind a chain-link fence at Love Field to greet him. Some carried flags and signs, most of which were friendly. Someone brought a Confederate battle flag, a possible sign of protest against the president. Kennedy, who was treating the whole Texas trip like a campaign stop in preparation for the November 1964 election, made an impulsive decision to work the fence line. Jackie, cradling the red roses, followed him.

  At that moment, a news photographer named Art Rickerby, who had gotten ahead of the Kennedys, turned around and took a series of color photographs of the couple as they walked side by side toward his lens. The president’s trim blue-gray suit and blue tie and Jackie’s bright pink suit and red roses saturated the camera’s color film. Behind them was the big red, white, and blue American flag painted on the tail of Air Force One. The decorative blue highlights painted on the fuselage of the plane matched the color of the bright blue Texas sky. When the people in the crowd realized the president of the United States was coming over to visit them, they went wild.

  “And here comes the president now,” radio listeners were told. “In fact he’s not in his limousine. He’s departed the limousine. He is walking.”

  Kennedy strolled right up to the crowd and plunged his hands and arms over the hip-high fence. In response, hundreds of hands grabbed his. “He is reaching across the fence, shaking hands, shaking hands, with many of the people who have come to see him. He is closely accompanied by Dallas police officers and of course the Secret Service.”

  Jackie, having just been presented a bouquet of red roses at Love Field in Dallas.

  (courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

  As Jackie walked the line, women begged to touch her and shrieked with delight if they succeeded. Jackie, who could be timid in crowds, smiled and shook hands with people too. Her big, genuine smile suggested that she was enjoying herself. Charles Roberts, White House correspondent for Newsweek magazine, asked Jackie how she liked campaigning. “It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful,” she said, and seemed to mean it. The limousine crawled along behind the president.

  The Kennedys and Texas governor Connally smile at the crowds as the motorcade makes its way from the airport. Agent Clint Hill, in sunglasses, is visible behind Mrs. Kennedy. Nellie Connally is on her husband’s left.

  (© by Tom Dillard Collection, The Dallas Morning News/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza)

  “Security is tense at this time but is going beautifully,” gushed the radio reporter.

  AFTER KENNEDY shook a last hand, he and Jackie turned to their car. The bubble top was off. They would ride through Dallas in an open car. Earlier that morning, the agents gambled that the gray skies and rain would disappear by noon. Their bet paid off. It was a bright, gorgeous, and sunny fall day.

  The president sat in the right rear passenger seat. Jackie took the seat to his left. In front of the Kennedys, sitting at a slightly lower level in folding jump seats that also faced forward, were the governor of Texas, John Connally, and his wife, Nellie. In the front seats sat the driver, Secret Service agent Bill Greer, and the head of the Secret Service detail, Roy Kellerman. Two other Secret Service agents trotted alongside the rear fenders. Behind the president’s car, the Queen Mary convertible was filled with Secret Service agents.

  Following behind them were several other vehicles, whose passengers included Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, several Texas politicians, members of the press, and White House staff, including the president’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln. As the motorcade got under way, preceded by a pilot car that drove ahead to spot any trouble, and followed by police motorcycles and a white car carrying the Dallas chief of police, Jesse Curry, a television news camera filmed the Kennedys’ departure from Love Field. Everything was in order. Then the camera caught something odd.

  It appeared that Secret Service agent Don Lawton, trotting behind the presidential limousine, was about to reach for the handholds on the back of the car and step up onto the footholds attached to the rear bumper. In that position, he could stand behind the president as the car moved at a slow speed through downtown Dallas. It would be an extra precaution that placed an agent closer to the president. If a spectator rushed the car, Lawton could leap off and intercept him. And if the agent stood erect on the bumper, he could stand between the president and anyone who might try to take a shot at him from behind.

  Then a Secret Service agent in the trail car, Emory Roberts, stood up and shouted to Lawton. He motioned him to back off from the president’s limousine. Lawton appeared to object to the order by shrugging his shoulders three times and waving his arms in the air, as if to say, “what are you doing?” But then he walked away from the car.

  The television camera captured it all. But this brief vignette was not what it appeared to be. It was just a joke between Lawton and Roberts. Lawton was not even assigned to ride in the motorcade through Dallas. He knew that JFK did not want any agents riding on the limousine, and Lawton thought it would be funny if he pretended to defy the president’s order. It was too bad that it was just a joke. The camera continued to track the limousine until it vanished from sight.

  The president and First Lady were on the way to downtown Dallas. The route was ten miles long, and it would take about forty-five minutes to drive it. They were scheduled to arrive at the Trade Mart lunch by 12:30 P.M. Kennedy’s impromptu visit with the crowd at the airport had put him a little behind schedule. If the motorcade experienced no more delays, they should arrive at their lunch by around 12:35 P.M.

  THE PRESIDENT’S speech was ready. He would not deliver informal, off-the-cuff remarks as he did that morning in Fort Worth when he stepped outside into the rain to speak to the crowd. No, this was an important stop on the trip. Like the breakfast speech he gave inside the Hotel Texas, his words for the lunch at the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council—his third talk of the day—had been prepared in advance.

  He would speak about American exceptionalism—the nation’s role in the world, national defense, foreign aid, and the strength of American science, industry, education, and the free-enterprise system. He planned to criticize naysayers: “There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.” There was more. “But today,” he warned, “other voices are heard in the land—voices preaching doctrines wholly unsuited to reality, wholly unsuited to the sixties, doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons . . . and that peace is a sign of weakness.”

  The text of the speech echoed many of the themes from his Inaugural Address: “Our adversaries have not abandoned their ambitions, our dangers have not diminished, our vigilance cannot be relaxed. But now we have the military, the scientific, and the economic strength to do whatever must be done for the preservation and promotion of freedom.” Kennedy promised that America’s strength “will never be used in pursuit of ambitions—it will always be used in pursuit of peace.” The speech ended with a full-throated appeal for peace through strength.

  “We in this country, in this generation, are—by destiny rather than by choice—the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of
‘peace on earth, good will toward men.’ That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For it was written long ago: ‘except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’ ”

  THE PRESIDENT was scheduled to deliver another speech that night in Austin. Its text focused more on domestic issues: “For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. . . . So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause—united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future—and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.”

  At least these were the words he planned to say today. He was in the habit of revising his typewritten speeches with his undecipherable handwriting, often at the last minute. Later in the day, before he gave them, he might look them over once more at the Trade Mart, and on the trip to Austin.

  The cover of the glossy dinner program promised John Kennedy an unforgettable “Texas Welcome.” Inside, the brochure printed Governor Connally’s eerie introductory remarks: “This is a day long to be remembered in Texas.”

  BACK IN Dealey Plaza, the electric digital clock on the big, yellow Hertz-Rent-a-Car sign atop the Depository roof flashed the time. It was past noon. Buell Wesley Frazier had skipped lunch, and he was already standing near the top step of the Elm Street entrance to the Depository.

  Frazier was eager to see John Kennedy: “He was supposed to be coming by during our lunch hour so you don’t get very many chances to see the President of the United States and being an old Texas boy, and [he] never having been down to Texas very much, I went out there to see him just like everybody else.”

  While most of Lee Oswald’s coworkers came down from the upper floors for the lunch hour, he proceeded to the sixth floor. A few asked him if he was having lunch or planning to watch the president with them. He lingered behind and gave vague answers. According to what the newspapers said, Kennedy’s car should be in front of the Depository by about 12:15 or 12:20 P.M.

  Lee Harvey Oswald was now alone on the sixth floor. He retrieved his rifle, either in pieces from inside the brown paper bag, or already fully assembled. He walked to the southeast corner of the building and settled into his position at the window, behind stacks of book cartons. If anybody came up to the sixth floor, they would not see him now. If the lower window pane was not already open, he slid it up now and secured it in position. He inhaled the fresh, crisp fall air. The breeze hit his face. It was about sixty-five degrees.

  If he had looked down Houston Street, he would have heard no sounds nor seen any signs that the motorcade was near. No police motorcycles were in sight yet, and people on the street were not fidgeting or craning their necks the way excited crowds do when a president approaches.

  Perhaps Lee adjusted some of the boxes to ensure that no one who came up to this floor could see him as he hid behind them. He still had a few minutes. He checked his rifle. It was ready to fire. One round was already in the chamber. Three more rounds waited in the clip, if Oswald needed to use them.

  If he heeded the warnings drilled into him by his Marine Corps training, he would have switched the safety mechanism of his rifle to the on position. That device would prevent the weapon from firing a round accidentally if the shooter dropped and jarred it or snagged the trigger. As long as the safety was engaged, squeezing the trigger would fail to release the firing pin, and the rifle could not fire the chambered round. Once the president came within sight, Oswald could, by disabling the safety with the flick of a thumb, render his weapon lethal in an instant.

  He waited in silence. The only sounds were the occasional voices that floated up from the street below before they faded into nothingness.

  MINUTE BY minute, President Kennedy’s motorcade drew closer to the Book Depository. The journey through downtown Dallas was more of a parade than a motorcade. On the nation’s streets and highways, the president of the United States traveled at two speeds: fast and efficient to save time and minimize danger, and slow and leisurely to show himself to the crowds and wave to people as he drove by.

  On November 22, John Kennedy did not want anyone in Dallas to miss seeing him because his car was traveling too fast.

  Accordingly, the Secret Service had slowed the limousine to parade pace of ten to fifteen miles per hour. This made the agents nervous. When the car was topless, as it was today, the agents preferred to ride the running boards—retractable metal shelves protruding from the side of the car. They would also stand on the two steps at the rear of the limousine. Metal bars mounted to the body of the car provided handholds. Having agents stand on the Lincoln gave the president at least some protection. They could try to intercept any objects thrown at the president.

  Once, on another trip, someone tossed a bouquet of flowers into the car. It was harmless, but what if had concealed a hand grenade? And the agents’ bodies could block gunfire. This was especially true of the two men assigned to stand on the back steps behind the trunk. The presence of these agents would make it almost impossible for a sniper to shoot the president from behind. Had a Secret Service man been standing on the right rear step when John Kennedy drove through Dealey Plaza, and had Lee Harvey Oswald chosen to shoot the president from behind, the agent’s body would have obscured Oswald’s sight line. The assassination attempt would have failed.

  But President Kennedy did not like having his bodyguards ride on the car because he thought it made him look less approachable to the people. On a number of occasions, he complained when agents did so. He often told his “Ivy League charlatans”—his affectionate nickname for them—to get off his car. Today in Dallas, all the men in the security detail knew they risked irritating the president if they rode on the outside of the car during the trip from Love Field, through downtown, through Dealey Plaza, and to the Trade Mart.

  The Secret Service hated that open car. But the president and the people loved it.

  Aboard Air Force One at Love Field, Dave Powers had given the Kennedys advice on how to behave during the journey: “Mr. President, remember when you’re riding in the motorcade downtown to look and wave only at the people on the right side of the street. Jackie, be sure to look only at the left side, and not to the right. If the both of you ever looked at the same voter at the same time, it would be too much for him!”

  The ride through Dallas was a triumph. There were no ugly incidents, and people cheered extra loudly whenever the president drew near. Jackie put on her sunglasses. “The sun was so strong in our faces,” she recalled. But her husband told her to take them off—the people wanted to see her face, he said.

  Ken O’Donnell was impressed. “We could see no sign of hostility, not even cool unfriendliness, and the throngs of people jamming the streets and hanging out of windows were all smiling, waving and shouting excitedly. It was by far the greatest and the most emotionally happy crowd that we had ever seen in Texas.”

  Kennedy was happy too. O’Donnell noticed that “the President seemed thrilled and fascinated by the crowd’s noisy excitement. I knew he had expected nothing like this wild welcome.”

  People waved and clapped. Many snapped photographs or took home movies, which in that era did not record sound. At one point along the route, JFK turned around and looked over his right shoulder in the direction of someone making a home movie. The president smiled, and with a playful hand gesture he beckoned the cameraman to follow along. “Come on!” the president seemed to tease as his car drove past the bystander.

  The motorcade made two unscheduled stops. Children held up a homemade sign that asked the president to stop and greet them. When Kennedy spotted the sign, he shouted to his driver to step on the brakes. In the middle of a motorcade surrounded by tho
usands of onlookers, the gleaming Lincoln limousine halted. The Secret Service agents went on high alert, fearing the president was about to get out of the car and stand up. Kennedy was famous for plunging into friendly crowds and leaving nervous bodyguards behind in his wake. If he did that now, then thousands of excited people would rush forward to try to shake his hand. At Love Field, at least there was a fence. On this street, no barrier separated the president from the throng, just feet away.

  The motorcade proceeds through downtown Dallas.

  (courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

  It was dangerous to stop a motorcade. In 1958, when Vice President Richard Nixon visited Venezuela, an anti-American mob intercepted his car, smashed the windows, almost tipped it over, and came close to murdering him and his wife. Kennedy had the good sense not to leave the car. In Dallas, the children were allowed to approach him.

  Then the limousine drove on. At a couple of points, Secret Service agent Clint Hill hopped off the trail car and stepped onto the back of the presidential limousine, assuming a crouching position behind Jackie. From that location he could leap off the car to intercept any pedestrian who rushed the Lincoln, and if he stood up straight, his body would shield her and absorb any bullet fired at her from behind.

  But Hill did not stand up, perhaps to avoid an admonition from the president or the head of the Secret Service detail. After a short time, agent Hill stepped off the car and jumped back onto the running board of the trail car. Farther along the route, JFK spotted some Catholic nuns standing curbside. He ordered his driver to pull over for the sisters. A fellow Catholic, the president wanted to pay them his respects. Kennedy remained in the car and soon bade farewell to the delighted nuns.

  LEE HARVEY Oswald was not able to see any of this. He never indicated later what was in his mind while, for the second time in his life, he prepared to kill a man. His sniper attack in April on General Walker was an absurd failure. That night he was certain he had his target fixed in the center of his telescopic sight, but his first shot struck the framing of the window screen and that deflected the bullet’s trajectory.