Killing Kennedy

by O’Reilly, Bill

  In a far more frantic manner, President Diem and his brother sneaked out of the presidential palace during the coup, literally running for their lives. Like JFK, they went to Mass. Now the brothers are taking refuge inside the sanctuary of Saigon’s St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church.

  Shortly after 10:00 A.M. they are recognized, and the president and his brother prepare to be arrested and deported from the country. Diem has readied himself for this moment by stuffing a briefcase with U.S. banknotes.

  General Mai Huu Xuan of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) leads a convoy consisting of an armored personnel carrier and two jeeps into the church courtyard. Diem surrenders, asking only that the convoy stop at the palace before taking him and his brother to the airport. General Xuan refuses and orders that his captives be immediately taken to army headquarters. Soldiers then tie the hands of the president and his brother behind their backs, and the two are placed inside an armored personnel carrier—ostensibly for their own protection. Two ARVN officers join them in the back of the vehicle before the heavy steel door is closed.

  The convoy stops at a railroad crossing. One of the ARVN officers then calmly places his finger on the trigger of his semiautomatic weapon and fires a bullet into the back of President Diem’s skull.

  19

  NOVEMBER 1, 1963

  IRVING, TEXAS

  2:30 P.M.

  It is Friday afternoon, and a weary James Hosty Jr. rings the bell at Ruth Paine’s home. The burly thirty-five-year-old FBI agent has spent the day investigating cases in nearby Fort Worth. He is juggling almost forty investigations right now, taking small bites out of each one. But any case involving J. Edgar Hoover’s battle against communism gets top priority, which is why Hosty is stopping at Mrs. Paine’s rather than driving straight back into Dallas to start his weekend. The agent is looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. The bureau has received a tip from the CIA about Oswald’s visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City last month, and the Feds are now anxious to find him.

  Mrs. Paine opens the door. Hosty flashes his badge, explaining that he’s a special agent of the FBI, and asks if they can talk.

  These are hard times for Ruth Paine. Her husband of five years has left and is filing for divorce. Perhaps to mitigate her loneliness, Ruth invited Marina Oswald to live at her home, despite knowing that the young mother has no money to contribute. But the minor financial burden is nothing compared with the quirky behavior of Marina’s husband, Lee Harvey, who comes to visit on the weekends. Ruth Paine refuses to let him live in her house. She doesn’t trust him.

  Yet Mrs. Paine is very warm to James Hosty. She invites him inside and gushes that this is the first time she’s ever met an FBI agent.

  But Hosty isn’t just any agent. He’s a Notre Dame graduate and former banker who has worked in the Dallas branch office for almost ten years. He knows his way around Dallas and its growing suburbs. He is also a diligent investigator and thinks nothing of going out of his way to visit the home of Ruth Paine even as his Friday shift comes to an end.

  But most of all, Special Agent Hosty is the FBI’s expert on Lee Harvey and Marina Oswald. Back in March, he opened a file on Marina in order to keep tabs on the Soviet citizen. Later that month, Hosty requested that Lee Harvey’s file be reopened due to Oswald’s obvious Communist sympathies. The agent has tracked the Oswalds from apartment to apartment, from Dallas to New Orleans and back again. The New Orleans FBI office has kept Hosty apprised of Oswald’s arrest and pro-Cuba behavior. But now the Oswald trail has grown cold.

  Hosty asks Ruth Paine if she knows where he can find the man.

  Paine admits that Marina and her two girls live in her home. After a moment’s hesitation, she puts forth that she doesn’t know where Oswald lives, though she does know that he works at the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas. Paine gets a phone book and looks up the address: 411 Elm Street.

  Hosty writes all this down.

  Marina wanders into the living room, having just awakened from a nap.

  Speaking in Russian, Ruth Paine informs her that Hosty is an FBI agent. Marina’s face takes on a wild, fearful look. Hosty commonly sees this sort of behavior from people raised in Communist countries and knows that Mrs. Oswald thinks he’s some sort of secret police who has come to take her away. He immediately instructs Paine to tell Marina that he’s not there for the purpose of “harming her, harassing her, and that it isn’t the job of the FBI to harm people. It is our job to protect people.”

  Ruth Paine translates. Marina smiles and calms down.

  Hosty stands to leave. The interview has lasted almost twenty-five minutes. Hosty has a couple more cases he wants to follow up on before going back to Dallas. But even as he writes down his name and phone number for Paine, just in case she has any more information about Oswald’s whereabouts, Special Agent Hosty now mentally assigns a low priority to the Oswald investigation. He’s concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald is just a young guy with marital problems, a fondness for communism, and a habit of drifting from job to job.

  There’s no need for urgency. Lee Harvey Oswald is bound to show up sooner or later. Special Agent Hosty is sure of that.

  * * *

  On November 11, the Monday after Hosty’s visit to Ruth Paine’s home, Special Agent Winston G. Lawson of the Secret Service’s White House detail is informed of the president’s upcoming trip to Dallas.

  Lawson, a Korean War veteran in his early thirties, specializes in planning Kennedy’s official travels. As with all such visits, his primary responsibilities are to identify individuals who might be a threat to the president, take action against anyone considered to be such a threat, and plan security for the president’s speeches and motorcade route.

  There is still discussion over whether there is to be a motorcade through downtown Dallas, which will be a security nightmare, thanks to the more than twenty thousand windows lining the city’s major thoroughfares. The more windows, the more places for a gunman to aim at the president’s limousine.

  But Lawson temporarily sets that question aside. He begins his investigation of potential threats by combing through the Secret Service’s Protective Research Section (PRS). These files list all individuals who have threatened the president or may be potentially dangerous to him. A check of the PRS on November 8 by Lawson shows that no such person exists in the Dallas area.

  Lawson then travels to Texas from Washington and interviews local law enforcement and other federal agencies, continuing his search for individuals who might be a threat to the life of John F. Kennedy. Of particular interest are the protesters involved in the Adlai Stevenson incident just a few weeks ago. Lawson obtains photographs of these people, which will be distributed to Secret Service and Dallas police on the day of the president’s visit. People who resemble those individuals will be instantly scrutinized should they come anywhere near the president.

  Lawson’s diligence is soon rewarded when the FBI comes forth with the name of a Dallas-area resident who might be a serious threat to the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

  Special Agent James Hosty Jr., however, does not provide that name, and it is not that of Lee Harvey Oswald. Instead, it is of a known local troublemaker who has absolutely no plans to kill the president of the United States.

  * * *

  Back in the nation’s capital, November 11 is a brisk day, marked by pale sunlight and a wind that straightens the many flags flying at Arlington National Cemetery, across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia. A crowd of hundreds of soldiers and civilians looks on as the president of the United States celebrates Veterans Day by placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. John Kennedy, a decorated war veteran himself, stands at attention as a bugler blows taps, traditionally the final musical movement at all military ceremonies. The bugler’s name is Sergeant Keith Clark. He is the principal trumpeter of the U.S. Army Band and knows this sad song all too well. Clark plays the solo beautifully, the lonesome notes echoing mournfully across the se
a of white tombstones and green grass.

  President Kennedy is touched by the history and drama of this setting. Arlington was once home to the family of Robert E. Lee and was turned into a cemetery during the Civil War by Union troops so that the Confederate general might never again be tempted to live in the family mansion that still dominates the grounds. Kennedy can see why this was such a great loss to Lee, for the rolling hills look out over the river to Washington, where the fast pace and backroom deals are a drastic contrast to the quiet and peace of the cemetery.

  “This is one of the really beautiful places on earth,” the president later tells Congressman Hale Boggs. “I could stay here forever.”

  That thought is not fleeting. Kennedy repeats the sentiment to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. “I think, maybe someday, this is where I’d like to be.”

  20

  NOVEMBER 13, 1963

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  LATE EVENING

  The man with nine days to live admires Greta Garbo as she takes off her shoes and lies down atop the mattress in the Lincoln Bedroom. There is a dinner party in Camelot tonight, and the famously reclusive Swedish actress is the guest of honor. Jackie Kennedy is self-admittedly “obsessed” with Garbo, in whom she sees a kindred spirit. But it is the president who has offered to take the fifty-eight-year-old beauty on a tour of what his schedulers simply call “the Mansion.”

  At dinner, a nervous Garbo has knocked back glass after glass of vodka. But the president has been the picture of abstinence, neither smoking a cigar nor taking a sip of alcohol. “I felt like one of the damned when I lit a cigarette,” Garbo will later remember.

  John F. Kennedy is enchanted by Garbo, as she is by him. Rather than sneak away from the party right after dinner to enjoy a few quiet moments alone before bed, as is often his habit, JFK lingers for “longer than I have ever done since I became President.”

  Kennedy and Garbo have never met before tonight but have quickly become fast friends, thanks to a practical joke at the expense of Kennedy’s roommate from his teenage years at Choate prep school. Lem Billings is JFK’s best friend in the world. The two men are as close as brothers, and Billings spends the night at the White House so often that he keeps a set of clothes in a third-floor bedroom. In 1960 the forty-four-year-old advertising executive voluntarily took a sabbatical from his career to help Kennedy run for president, asking nothing in return. But JFK offered him a job anyway, as head of the brand-new Peace Corps. Billings declined, fearing it would alter their friendship.

  Billings met Greta Garbo over the summer, while vacationing in the south of France. Upon his return home, the unmarried Billings boasted so frequently about how well he and Garbo had gotten along that even Jackie told him to stop talking about the movie star.

  The president couldn’t resist. A friendly practical joke at Billings’s expense would only add to the thrill of Garbo’s visit. He called the actress, making her a proposition: “My friend Lem boasts how well he knows you. So when he comes in, pretend you’ve never met him before.” JFK persuaded Garbo to arrive early to the White House dinner party in order to rehearse her lines for Kennedy’s elaborate ruse.

  “Early” in Camelot usually means sometime around 8:30 P.M. Tonight is no exception.

  This is because the president has worked yet another typically exhausting day. His schedule began with a 9:45 A.M. meeting with columnist Ann Landers about the 1963 Christmas Seal campaign and ended with a 6:30 P.M. meeting with John A. Hannah, head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In between there was a meeting with the president of Czechoslovakia; a South Lawn pipe and drums performance by the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), from Great Britain; a fifteen-person meeting about the poverty in eastern Kentucky; and a smaller foreign policy meeting with Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and former secretary of state Christian Herter in the early evening.

  The president took his usual midafternoon swim at 1:10 and had lunch at 1:40, but otherwise the pace never slackened. Meeting followed meeting, with Kennedy expected to be not just in attendance, but also knowledgeable about and decisive on each of the many varied subjects presented to him. All the while, in the back of the president’s mind, was the thought of next week’s trip to Texas.

  When JFK hit the pool for his second swim of the day, it was 7:15. By the time he toweled off and went up to his bedroom, it was 8:03 P.M. Garbo had already arrived. Kennedy took his time showering and changing, knowing Jackie would explain to the actress that he’d been delayed.

  Lem Billings was ecstatic when he saw Garbo. “Why, Greta! Oh, my gosh. How are you?” he exclaimed.

  Garbo stared at him with a blank expression, then turned her gaze to Jackie. “You must be mistaken. I do not recall that we have ever met before,” she said.

  When the president arrived, Garbo repeated her assertion that she didn’t know Billings. The president’s old friend grew more and more dismayed, ignoring JFK to remind Garbo over and over about where they’d met and some of the same people they knew. The more Billings talked, the more obvious it seemed that Greta had never met him before. Throughout it all, JFK unwound, setting aside the cares of the office as he reveled in the easy banter of this lighthearted dinner and his practical joke. Lem Billings will not realize he’s been had until tomorrow morning.

  Soon after dinner ended, JFK took the entire group on a private tour of the White House. Now a tipsy Greta Garbo doesn’t want to soil the bedspread in the Lincoln Bedroom, so takes off her shoes before lying down atop the mattress. The tour ends in the Oval Office. Unbeknownst to most Americans, JFK has a habit of collecting scrimshaw and often bids anonymously for these pieces of inscribed whale’s teeth. They are on display in a case in his office. When Garbo admires the collection, the president opens the case and offers her a piece as a gift. The actress gladly accepts.

  This is life in Camelot: a day spent solving the world’s problems, two therapeutic nude swims, celebrities at the table for a late-night dinner, and a tour of America’s most famous residence with a glamorous former movie star. Where else would such a thing happen?

  But the evening ends abruptly. “I must go. I am getting intoxicated,” Garbo proclaims before disappearing back to her hotel.

  Thus ends the last dinner party ever held in Camelot.

  But the memory of this magical evening will linger, and even someone as famous as Greta Garbo is not immune to Camelot’s allure: “It was a most unusual evening that I spent with you in the White House,” she writes in her thank-you note to Jackie Kennedy. “It was really fascinating and enchanting. I might believe it was a dream if I did not have the president’s ‘tooth’ facing me.”

  But Camelot is not a dream. It is reality—and that reality is about to take a turn that will alter America forever.

  21

  NOVEMBER 16, 1963

  DALLAS, TEXAS

  1:50 P.M.

  Thirteen-year-old Sterling Wood aims his Winchester 30-30 rifle at the silhouette of a man’s head. He exhales and squeezes the trigger, then squints downrange at the target. It is Saturday. Sterling and his father, Homer, have come to the Sports Drome Rifle Range to sight their guns for deer season.

  Young Sterling notices a young man standing in the shooting booth next to him. He is aiming at a similar silhouette. The teenager reads a lot of gun books and is pretty sure that the guy is firing an Italian carbine. It appears that the rifle’s barrel has been sawed off to make it shorter, but it’s still longer than Sterling’s Winchester, by a few inches. Judging from the number of scratches on the stock, the precocious Dallas teenager suspects that the weapon is army surplus. It’s even got a sling to make it easier for an infantryman to carry and a four-power telescopic sight to make the target seem closer and easier to shoot with pinpoint accuracy.

  “Daddy,” Sterling whispers to his father. “It looks like a 6.5 Italian carbine.”

  The man shoots. Flame leaps from the end of the gun, thanks to its shortened length. Sterling can actually feel th
e heat from the blast. The gunman removes the spent cartridge and places it in his pocket as if he doesn’t want to leave behind evidence that he’s been there. Sterling finds it unusual that the shooter does this after each and every round.

  The teenager is impressed that almost all of the shooter’s bullet holes are clustered around what would be the eye if the paper target were a real man.

  “Sir, is that a 6.5 Italian carbine?” Sterling asks the stranger.

  “Yes, sir,” the man responds.

  “And is that a four-power scope?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  The shooter stays just long enough to fire only “eight or ten” shots, in Sterling’s estimation—just enough rounds to ration his ammunition while ensuring that his rifle and scope are accurate.

  Sterling will later testify that this man is Lee Harvey Oswald.

  * * *

  On that November Saturday, the front page of the Dallas Morning News features a story on President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, which is just six days away. The paper speculates on the route Kennedy’s motorcade will follow through the heart of the city. Air Force One will land at the Love Field, and from there the president will travel to a large commercial center known as the Trade Mart, where he will give a speech. On the way, he will pass the Texas School Book Depository, the workplace of Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Oswald is an avid newspaper reader and has known for quite some time that John Kennedy is coming to Dallas. On this day, Oswald has decided to spend the weekend in the city rather than journey out to the suburbs to see Marina and their daughters.

  Oswald turned twenty-four just one month ago. He has little to show for his time on earth. He is losing his wife and children. He works a menial job. And despite his keen intellect, he has no advanced education. He doesn’t know whether he wants to be an American, a Cuban, or a Russian.