IN DALLAS, Captain Fritz had wanted to send Oswald downstairs for a lineup. Now was as good a time as any to do it. At 4:10 P.M., three detectives escorted Lee out of the Homicide and Robbery office and into the hall filled with reporters, photographers, and a television camera. No one had been searched. Anyone in that hallway, outraged by the president’s murder, could pull a pistol from a pocket or a camera bag and shoot Oswald. But they were satisfied to fire questions at him. “Did you kill the president?” one reporter shouted.
“No, sir,” Oswald said. “Nobody charged me with that.”
It was a classic Oswald response, one that harked back to his New Orleans radio interviews. That August, when asked whether he had tried to renounce his American citizenship, Oswald evaded the question and did not give a direct answer. Instead, he said people who renounced their citizenship were not allowed to reenter the United States. Since he was back in the country, wasn’t it obvious that he had not renounced his citizenship? Of course it was a lie. He had attempted to do that very thing as soon as he had arrived in the Soviet Union.
Now, in police custody, Oswald had just exhibited the same verbal and logical tic. Did he kill President Kennedy? He evaded the question. Isn’t the fact that he had not been charged with that crime proof that he did not commit it? An innocent man asked if he has just murdered the president of the United States will likely respond, “Hell no!” Oswald’s evasive response of “Nobody charged me with that” is his hallmark liar’s “tell.”
When the detectives got Oswald to the basement, they searched him. They found in his left pants pocket five bullets for his .38-caliber revolver. “What are these doing in there?” an incredulous detective asked. It was obvious that since his arrest Lee had not undergone a proper search. Of the bullets he was nonchalant. “I just had them in my pocket.” On his person the detectives also discovered his bus transfer, a few insignificant documents, and thirteen dollars and eighty-seven cents.
IT WAS dark when Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside the nation’s capital at 6:05 P.M. (EST). Crowds of mourners had flocked there to watch the jet land and to see Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin removed from the plane. It was not unlike the scene earlier that day when the president landed at Love Field in Dallas. This time the crowd did not cheer. Silence ruled. Television cameras broadcast live coverage of the event. Robert Kennedy, members of the cabinet, and senior government and military officials stood and watched.
The president’s brother rushed to the plane and boarded it through a front door. He ran down the aisle, brushing past everyone in his path, including the new president. There was only one person in the world Bobby wanted to see, and she was at the back of the plane, sitting by a flag-draped coffin. They found each other and embraced.
“Hi Jackie, I’m here,” was all he could say.
The American people were about to get their first look at Jackie Kennedy since the assassination almost five hours ago. A rear door on the plane opened. An elevated platform was put in place to receive the coffin. Then Jackie Kennedy appeared in the doorway. Standing next to her was her brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy. The image was confusing. He had not been in Dallas, so how was it that he was exiting Air Force One with Jackie?
All across the country, millions of people staring at their television screens gasped when they saw the bloodstains on her clothing. Jackie had still not changed out of the clothes she had worn in Dealey Plaza. She wanted Americans to see her pink suit. She wanted them to bear witness to the bloodstains on her jacket, skirt, and stockings. On television screens, as she walked to the navy ambulance, viewers saw that her legs were smeared with copious amounts of blood. She wanted to sear these images into the collective memory of the American people so that they would never forget. It worked. To this day, decades after the assassination, the mere sight of an image of her in that suit triggers flashbacks in the minds of every person who remembers November 22, 1963.
President Lyndon Johnson strode toward the lights, microphones, and cameras. This time Jackie Kennedy did not stand beside him as he made his first public statement as the new president: “This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s.”
On the night of November 22, President Johnson composed two handwritten letters. They were not orders to important U.S. government officials or communications to world leaders. Instead, LBJ addressed them to the two children who had lost their father. “Dear John,” he began his note to Kennedy’s son, “It will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was. His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief—You can always be proud of him.”
To the dead president’s daughter he wrote: “Dearest Caroline—Your father’s death has been a great tragedy for the Nation, as well as for you at this time. He was a wise and devoted man. You can always be proud of what he did for his country.”
IN DALLAS, another plane departed Love Field after Air Force One had taken off. It was the C-130 cargo plane that had ferried the president’s Lincoln Continental limousine to Texas. Secret Service agents had driven the car from Parkland Hospital back to Love Field. At the hospital, an agent removed the two flags—one bearing the presidential seal and the other the American flag—that had hung from the flagpoles on the hood during the motorcade. He handed them to Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln.
Upon the car’s arrival in Washington, agents drove it to the White House garage, where it was hidden from view. Color photographs taken of it there reveal bloodstains on the two-tone blue leather upholstery. The agents in Dallas had not been able to wash away all the blood.
FROM ANDREWS Air Force Base, President Kennedy’s body was not yet ready to go home to the White House. First, accompanied by Jackie, a navy ambulance took him to Bethesda Naval Hospital, across the Maryland border from Washington. There would be an autopsy to document the official cause of death. Kennedy had been a naval officer, so Jackie, even before Air Force One had touched down, chose Bethesda Naval Hospital.
When Jackie entered the hospital, she was taken to a waiting room on the seventeenth floor. As she settled in for a long night, the president’s brother Robert told her that a suspect had been arrested for her husband’s murder.
“They think they found the man who did it,” the attorney general said. “He says he’s a Communist.”
Jackie was aghast, and she said to her mother, who had joined her in Bethesda, “He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. . . . It’s—it had to be some silly little Communist.”
IN DALLAS, at 7:40 P.M. EST, (6:40 P.M. CST) the “little communist” was back in Captain Fritz’s office for more questioning. He asked for the lawyer John Abt.
At 7:10 P.M. CST, Oswald was brought before a judge to be charged with a crime. Judge David Johnston told him, “Mr. Oswald, we’re here to arraign you on the charge of murder in the death of Officer J.D. Tippit.”
“Arraignment! This isn’t a court. You can’t arraign me in a police station. I can only be arraigned in a courtroom. How do I know this is a judge?”
Alexander told him to shut up.
“The way you’re treating me, I’d might as well be in Russia.”
At 7:28 P.M., Oswald was questioned for ten minutes by federal agents, then was led out into a hall crammed with reporters.
“These people here have given me a hearing without legal representation.”
“Did you shoot the president?”
“I didn’t shoot anybody, no sir.”
In front of the cameras, Oswald remained evasive and did not give a direct answer. The reporter did not ask him if he had shot anybody. He asked if he had shot John F. Kennedy. But Oswald would not speak the words, “No, I did not shoot the president.”
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At 8:30 P.M. (CST), Oswald was back in Fritz’s office for more questioning.
Fritz asked if he kept a rifle in Mrs. Paine’s garage in Irving.
Oswald said he did not.
The detective asked if he brought one with him when he came back to Dallas from New Orleans.
Oswald denied it.
“The people out at the Paine residence say you did have a rifle, and that you kept it out there wrapped in a blanket.”
“That isn’t true.”
Fritz was closing in on Oswald. He tried again.
“You know you’ve killed the president, and this is a very serious charge.”
“I haven’t killed the president.”
Nonetheless, Fritz reminded him, the president “had been killed.”
Oswald retorted that the people will forget that within a few days, and there will be another president.
AT BETHESDA the president’s casket was placed on a cart and wheeled to the room where pathologists and technicians waited to examine him. The autopsy commenced at 8:00 P.M. (EST). Attendants removed his body from the casket, laid him on a table, and unwound the plastic wrapping. They photographed his face, which had been undamaged by the bullets, and his head, which had been ravaged by one. They photographed his neck wound, then rolled him over to photograph his back wound. Then they made X-rays of his skull. Doctors did not need to saw off the top of his head to recover what remained of his brain. They just reached into the wound and extracted it. After examining it, they sealed it in a stainless-steel container with a screw-top lid.
Hours passed, but Jackie Kennedy, still waiting on the seventeenth floor, refused to leave or to sleep.
IN BETHESDA, after the pathologists finished their work, the morticians arrived to prepare the president for burial. Not knowing whether Mrs. Kennedy would choose an open- or closed-coffin viewing before the funeral, the undertakers prepared the president’s corpse for an open-coffin viewing. They closed his eyes and sealed them shut. They concealed the tracheotomy incision that the Dallas doctors had made in his neck. Then they labored on their most difficult task, reconstructing the side of John Kennedy’s skull that the fatal bullet had blown open. A White House courier brought a selection of eight of the president’s suits, four pairs of shoes, plus shirts and ties for the morticians to dress him.
IT WAS close to midnight, November 22. Almost twelve hours since the assassination. As surgeons cut open President Kennedy’s corpse, Lee Harvey Oswald was giving a press conference in a hall in the Dallas police station. It would later become known as the famous midnight press conference.
“I was questioned by a judge without legal representation.”
“Well, I was questioned by a judge. However, I protested at that time that I was not allowed legal representation.”
“During that, ah, that, ah very short and sweet hearing. Ah, I really don’t know what this situation is about. Nobody has told me anything except that I am accused of, ah, of murdering a policeman. I know nothing more than that and I do request that, ah, someone to come forward, ah, to give me legal assistance.”
“Did you kill the president?” one of the journalists in the crowd asked.
Again Oswald denied his guilt. “No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question.”
It was a classic Oswald verbal evasion, followed by a lie.
“You have been charged,” one of the reporters told him.
“Sir?” Oswald replied. He seemed surprised.
“You have been charged,” the reporter repeated.
The expression on Oswald’s face changed in an instant, to an appearance of stunned despair. He lowered his head and bit his lip. The reporters kept firing questions.
“What did you do in Russia?”
“How did you hurt your eye?”
Oswald did not answer. Another reporter called him by name.
“Oswald, how did you hurt your eye?”
“A policeman hit me.”
LEE HARVEY Oswald’s first official press conference had lasted six minutes. It was odd that the prime suspect in the murder of the president of the United States was giving a press conference at all. Oswald was taken back to his cell, only to be called out again for a second fingerprinting session. Then, late in the night, Oswald was given a paraffin test to determine if he had fired a gun.
“What are you trying to do, prove that I fired a gun?” he said to the man performing the test.
“I’m not trying to prove anything. We have the test to make, and the chemical people at the lab will determine the rest of it.”
Oswald told him that he was wasting his time and that he did not know anything about the murders.
At 1:35 A.M., Lee Harvey Oswald was roused from his cell and taken to see a man on the fourth floor of city hall. It was Judge Johnston again, who had arraigned him earlier for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit. This early-morning summons could mean only one thing, and Oswald knew it.
He greeted the judge with sarcasm. “Well, I guess this is the trial.”
“No sir,” Johnston said. “I have to arraign you on another offense.”
The judge spoke in the formal language of the law. “Lee Harvey Oswald, hereinafter styled Defendant, heretofore on or about the twenty-second day of November, 1963, in the County of Dallas and State of Texas, did then and there unlawfully, voluntarily, and with malice aforethought kill John F. Kennedy by shooting him with a gun against the peace and dignity of the State.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s the deal is it?”
Johnston reminded Oswald of his right to an attorney.
“I want Mr. John Abt of New York,” the defendant said. He was told again that he would have the opportunity to contact the lawyer of his choice.
CHAPTER 8
“WE HAD A HERO FOR A FRIEND”
At Bethesda, the work continued. The morticians did not finish until after three A.M. on Saturday, November 23, but once they had, Jackie could take the president’s body home to the White House.
Jackie got in the gray navy ambulance and sat next to her husband’s coffin. Robert Kennedy joined her and sat on the floor. Clint Hill followed Jackie. The driver, Bill Greer, the Secret Service agent who had driven the presidential limousine in the motorcade in Dallas, was behind the wheel. The ambulance and a small motorcade left Bethesda at 3:56 A.M., making its way down Wisconsin Avenue to Massachusetts Avenue, then to Twentieth Street on its way to the White House. In the middle of the night, those in the motorcade were surprised to see people standing vigil on the sidewalks and cars pulled over along the route. The presidential casket team was in the last car of the motorcade. Lieutenant Sam Bird turned around and saw “hundreds of automobiles following us, bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see, their headlights flashing.” Impromptu as it was, this was the slain president’s first funeral procession, the first of several in the days to come. At the White House, the lights were on, and the staff was waiting. Across the street, in Lafayette Park, crowds assembled.
Taz Shepard, Kennedy’s naval aide, telephoned from the White House to the U.S. Marine Corps barracks at Eighth and I streets. He spoke to the duty officer: “Break out the Marines. The Commander in Chief has been assassinated, and I want a squad at the White House double-quick. You better move!”
At the barracks, a contingent of Marines awoke, donned their dress blue uniforms in record time, and arrived at the White House in seventeen minutes. Flaming torches illuminated their path as they marched through the gate and onto the White House grounds. They were in place before the ambulance carrying the president’s body arrived. At 4:34 A.M. (EST), a military honor guard carried the coffin up the steps of the portico, through the hall, and into the East Room, where the body of Abraham Lincoln had once lain in repose.
It was the first public clue about what kind of funeral Jackie Kennedy h
ad in mind. She watched the honor guard carry her husband into the East Room. This eerie scene, unfolding in silence in the middle of the night, was sad but touching in its simplicity.
JACKIE KENNEDY was exhausted. She had been awake for more than twenty hours. She needed rest. The president had been assassinated almost fifteen hours ago. In the morning, she would have much to do and many decisions to make. For now, she went upstairs to the family suite on the second floor of the White House. There in the privacy of her bedroom, she undressed, removing her suit, stockings, and other garments, stained by the tragedy she had suffered that day.
By this time, it was five A.M. Under normal conditions, the Executive Mansion would be dark and almost empty at this hour. But tonight a military honor guard in the East Room stood watch over a dead president through the night. Every guest bedroom was occupied by Kennedy family members or close friends. Jackie’s mother, at her daughter’s insistence, slept in the president’s bedroom. The president’s children had been put to bed hours ago knowing that their father was dead but without the comfort of seeing their mother. Cabinet members, military officers, and friends of Jackie roamed through the halls, held quiet conversations, took catnaps on furniture, ate sandwiches, or tried to do something. Some planned for the day to come. Others tried to record their memories of the day that had been.
End of Days Page 20