Dallas 1963

by Bill Minutaglio

  And, finally, the report probes Lyndon Johnson:

  He, of course, should campaign for the ticket outside of Texas. It is extremely doubtful if he can be effective in Texas. It is impossible for him to justify his adoption of the platform.

  In fact, the more he defends it in Texas, the more it will hurt.6

  SEPTEMBER

  Richard M. Nixon’s plane touches down in Dallas on the twelfth, a day before Kennedy and Johnson are due to arrive in the city.

  All day, Nixon’s aides have been whispering and eyeing him. He looks like a man possessed, not healthy at all. He is gaunt, down ten pounds in weight. He is limping from a nasty knee infection. He had a morning campaign event in Baltimore, flew to Indianapolis, and now is racing to Dallas—for just two frenzied hours before flying out to San Francisco. His doctors have been warning him to cut back on his schedule and regain strength in time for the first presidential debate, coming up in less than two weeks.

  Nixon ignores them.

  Dallas should be welcoming, invigorating. It’s impossible to think of a city that is more supportive. There are those powerful old friends from Washington who have decided to make Dallas their headquarters for anti-communist campaigns. And, best of all, waiting for him in Dallas, just as Nixon expected, is Ted Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News—who brags that his paper is the first in the nation to endorse Nixon for president.

  There is, of course, the mighty Reverend Criswell, who has been blasting Kennedy as an Irish Catholic minion who will remain on bended knee to the pope in Rome. And trusty Congressman Bruce Alger is on hand—and he will have the honor of introducing Nixon at Dallas’s Memorial Auditorium. There is also another powerful and wealthy man, someone named in that secret Dallas opposition memo given to Kennedy: Carr P. Collins, the insurance magnate and prominent layman in Criswell’s First Baptist Church, who is now the head of “Texans for Nixon.” He’s buying radio time all over the state to attack Kennedy.

  As he greets his allies, even the jaded Nixon is impressed at what Dealey, Alger, and the others have arranged for his two-hour September visit: A grand motorcade will take him through downtown Dallas, led by the famous Texas college drill team, the high-kicking Kilgore Rangerettes, who have traveled 120 miles for the occasion.

  Enthusiastic crowds gather to see the vice president, waving American flags, NIXON signs, and occasional Confederate flags. Confetti rains down on Nixon from the upper stories of the Adolphus Hotel. With his knee still not quite right, Nixon emerges from his car and wades into the friendly crowds, shaking hands. Dealey’s editors at the Dallas Morning News are already writing banner headlines touting Nixon’s visit.

  Nixon knows where he is, and what people in Dallas want to hear: The Democrats are drunk on “extremism”… and not faithful to states’ rights. The oil depletion allowance is in safe hands with me. “There’s nothing like a good crowd to cure a bum knee,” he says.

  Back at Love Field, as he limps up the stairs to his plane, he turns to offer a final promise to his fanatical supporters in Dallas:

  “We’ll carry Texas.”1

  As Nixon is embraced in Dallas, John Kennedy makes his way to Houston, where he has scheduled a live September 12 television appearance to explain his Catholic religion before three hundred highly skeptical Texas ministers, including fervent allies of W. A. Criswell.

  The speech can’t be avoided. Kennedy’s religion has become a major issue in the campaign, thanks in large measure to Reverend Criswell’s staggering attacks on Catholicism. H. L. Hunt’s reprints of the sermon may have come too late to deny Kennedy the nomination, but they are surely having an impact on the general election. By now, through Hunt’s efforts, almost two hundred thousand copies of Criswell’s sermon are circulating, making it one of the most popular pieces of campaign literature this year.

  In Texas, Carr Collins’s blaring pro-Nixon radio broadcasts are reaching hundreds of thousands of people, and anonymous flyers attacking Kennedy as the “Papist” are being nailed to telephone poles across the state.

  A few days earlier, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, one of America’s most prominent religious figures, led a group of 150 Protestant clergymen who issued a joint statement: “Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake.”2 The Baptist-dominated Solid South seems to be slipping away from the Democrats. Kennedy’s poll numbers are dropping fast. He has no choice but to come face the enemy.

  As he stands to address the somber ministers in Texas, Kennedy starts slowly.

  In truth, he is not nearly as well versed in the nuances of Catholic doctrine as the Baptist preachers staring at him. But he is a quick study, and he’s improving each day as a public speaker. His voice begins to ring with a fine, clear timbre as he reminds everyone that there were no religious tests when his brother died fighting for America in World War II.

  In a stroke of genius from his speechwriter Ted Sorensen, Kennedy brings up the Alamo, the cradle of Texas liberty—the most revered symbol of Texas independence, the very embodiment of Texas’s wish to chart its own course. He suggests Irish Catholics were among those who spilled blood to keep Texas free:

  “At the shrine I visited today, side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey—but no one knows whether they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test there.”3

  The Texas ministers burst into hard applause as Kennedy finishes his formal remarks. The question-and-answer session goes even better. He is graceful and poised, and his calm, rational explanations seem to assuage the men braced to resist him.

  Afterward, some of the preachers speak glowingly about Kennedy. Kennedy’s campaign aides are ecstatic. Maybe they have finally put the “Catholic issue” behind them.

  But not everyone is swayed. Criswell had wanted to be in Houston; he had been looking forward to throwing scorching questions at Kennedy. But he stayed behind in Dallas to meet with Nixon. And he had made a point of watching Kennedy’s appearance on Texas television. Criswell was fuming: It is all a farce, bordering on a lie.

  “The more I listen to him,” he tells Dallas reporters, “the more I [go] ‘Ha-ha.’ ”

  Leaning in, he unleashes his thunderous voice:

  “One, he is either a sorry Catholic, in which event he ought to get out of the Church. Two, if he’s a good Catholic, he shouldn’t be President.”4

  No one is quite sure what to expect as the Kennedy-Johnson caravan arrives in Dallas the next day, September 13.

  Kennedy and his team have been hearing nothing but praise since the candidate’s charm offensive in Houston—except, of course, from Dealey’s Dallas Morning News, which is arguing that Kennedy’s entreaties to the Protestant ministers in Texas will blow up in his face.

  House Speaker Sam Rayburn is traveling with the Kennedy campaign in Dallas, and today he has been busy trying to explain who Ted Dealey is to the Kennedy campaign—and where men like Dealey, Hunt, Criswell, and all the others in Dallas who despise Kennedy really come from: “Freedom of the press,” Rayburn huffs indignantly. “The people who were the worst broke, and got the richest under Roosevelt and Truman, hate us the worst. And that applies to a lot of people here in Dallas.”5

  The Kennedy motorcade leaves Love Field and pulls out slowly onto the city streets.

  Kennedy and Johnson are riding next to each other in the open air, each perched atop the backseat of a convertible for maximum visibility… so people can get close to them, maybe even shake their hands.

  LBJ is waving his cowboy hat. Kennedy, bareheaded as usual, raises his hands in the air and grins his wide, polished smile.

  The candidates point approvingly at the banners proclaiming BAPTISTS FOR KENNEDY.

  Almost instantly, it is apparent that the crowds in Dallas are huge and adoring. The roar can seemingly be heard for miles, echoing through the canyons of downtown skyscrapers as the motorcade progresses. There are thousands of women jumping, waving desperately at JFK, begging him to stop
. Some break into the street toward him, only to be restrained by Dallas police. People are surging toward the convertible. Kennedy asks the motorcade to pause and the crowd washes over them, radiating goodwill.

  Johnson is amazed. He’s never seen anything like it. LBJ certainly hasn’t expected this kind of miraculous reception for an Irish Catholic in deeply Protestant Dallas. No one has. Many in the crowd are so fervent, it’s nearly terrifying. Several seem frantic to touch Kennedy. Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry estimates that 175,000 people have turned out to see the Democrat—far more than came to see Nixon.

  It is the largest assemblage of people ever convened on the streets of Dallas.

  But already, some are saying that surely a large part of the crowd is there to put a face to the enemy’s name. Dealey’s Dallas Morning News downplays Kennedy’s electrifying visit. Nixon’s motorcade had received a front-page headline: 100,000 WELCOME NIXON TO DALLAS.

  But the 175,000 who turn out for Kennedy go nearly unmentioned. A day after trumpeting Richard Nixon’s parade, the Dallas Morning News headline reads:

  KENNEDY AUDITORIUM TALK CHEERED BY 9,500.

  OCTOBER

  The shoeshine boys and the security guards are wondering where the hell old man Hunt has gone. It is as if he has disappeared. He often has flights of fancy—hiding out for days, playing $1,000-a-hand poker in back rooms on the outskirts of town, driving off with one of his many pneumatic “secretaries.” His sexual appetites are often spontaneous, excessive, even after he has allowed himself to be dipped in the baptismal waters by Criswell at the big church downtown.

  He is no longer seen at the Mercantile Building across from Neiman Marcus. His old Plymouth with the LIFE LINE stickers no longer frequents the cheapest parking lot downtown. And now it’s not just the shoeshine guys and security people wondering what has happened to the billionaire.

  Justice Department and Senate investigators are trying to figure out who has been distributing thousands and thousands of copies of Reverend Criswell’s bristling sermons attacking Kennedy and Catholics. There’s no question that the sermon is Criswell’s. His name is listed right on the pamphlet. But the reprints are being circulated anonymously—and in violation of federal election laws.

  For days in October, Hunt has been carefully monitoring the investigations. He has former FBI agents on his payroll. He and some of the other oilmen in town have had J. Edgar Hoover as a special guest at their homes. Hunt has resources beyond the ordinary.

  As Hunt hides, Criswell tells investigators that the mailings have been paid for “by people who write in and send $5 or $10… Someone in the church will give some money now and then. But it’s not any kind of concerted effort.”1

  Investigators don’t believe him. There are far too many pamphlets in circulation to be explained away by nickel-and-dime donations. What about Criswell’s prized, wealthy parishioner, H. L. Hunt—the world’s richest man?

  “Mr. Hunt hasn’t given anything for the pamphlets,” Criswell insists.2

  Finally, the Senate investigators discover that at least a hundred thousand of the pamphlets with Criswell’s anti-Kennedy diatribes have been printed in New York by a company with a mailing list of two hundred thousand Protestant ministers.

  And the firm has a very good client: H. L. Hunt of Dallas. The investigators are closing the loop. Hunt, as it turns out, has paid for several anti-JFK pamphlets. The Criswell sermon is merely one of many.

  The news about Hunt’s involvement quickly leaks out. Reporters are calling all over Dallas—calling Criswell, calling Hunt’s office. A national manhunt begins for Hunt, with newsmen and investigators searching from coast to coast. His wife claims not to know where he is. His office will say only that the billionaire is “out of town.”

  As the drama unfolds and Hunt remains in hiding, a man from Dallas arrives at a Kennedy campaign office carrying two large suitcases. The staffers look gingerly inside the suitcases—which are stuffed with cash. The Kennedy campaign aides are not sure of the total. They are afraid to touch the piles of neatly stacked bills. They huddle, make calls, and await instructions. The obviously big stash of money remains uncounted.

  Workers are told to send the suitcases back to Dallas. The Kennedy campaign doesn’t want H. L. Hunt’s money.

  As the days click down to the increasingly contentious November election, Dealey’s reporters in Dallas are bringing him polls showing Kennedy within striking distance of Richard Nixon in Texas. Last month there were clearly tens of thousands of ordinary people in Dallas who not only supported Kennedy, but practically seemed to worship him when he came to the city.

  Dealey orders the Morning News to more aggressively embrace the anti-Catholic crusade and to again hammer home the notion that Kennedy will bend and sway whatever way the pope, cardinals, and bishops tell him:

  “In the opinion of the News, such a man ought not to be in the White House… The President of the United States should be a man who can be trusted to fear God and honor his oath of office, no matter what all the bishops in the hierarchy may presume to order.”3

  The October 30 editorial is passed around in Kennedy-Johnson circles, and Bobby Kennedy is livid about what is happening in Dallas: During his years investigating organized crime for Congress, he was surprised to learn that there had been a barely known, crooked underground in the city. And now he also believes that a religious zealot and an angry newspaper publisher are aligned against his brother in Dallas. The editorial is being picked up and dissected around the nation—just when he and Jack both thought the anti-Catholic bile had finally been defused.

  Dealey is whipping up last-minute resistance to Kennedy—and he will not let it go. The “opposition research” teams working for the Kennedy campaign are coming back with reports clearly showing that Dealey is friends with Nixon. And that Dealey is friends with Criswell. And that there is something deeper, intransigent, circulating in the upper levels in Dallas—something running completely counter to the fact that tens of thousands of exuberant Kennedy supporters had just lined Dallas’s streets.

  A few men in Dallas are seemingly in league against Kennedy—and they happen to be the most persuasive, most powerful men in the city.

  NOVEMBER

  His aides are watching him as election day looms. Lyndon Johnson has always been sensitive to the smallest slights from others, but campaigning for Kennedy across the South is spiraling him into a welling paranoia.

  He’s seen the big picket signs at campaign stops accusing him of being a traitor to the Southern cause. His closest ally and mentor in the Senate, Georgia’s Richard Russell, a leading segregationist, has flatly refused to campaign for the JFK-LBJ ticket. Johnson’s not sure if JFK will be able to win Georgia. Hell, he’s not sure he’ll be able to win Texas.

  During the campaign swing through the Lone Star State with JFK, Johnson often seemed so defensive, so jumpy, that Kennedy finally turned to him: “Lyndon, I believe you’re cracking up.”1

  Johnson possesses an uncanny feel for the politics of his home state. Polls show Nixon and Kennedy close, but he’s scared that the actual turnout for Kennedy will be much lower… all of it depressed by the anti-Catholic blitz that Dealey, Hunt, and Criswell are ramrodding with such vehemence.

  As election day zooms closer, Johnson suddenly turns to one of his aides. The pain is in his face and in his voice. Johnson rarely has doubts when it comes to political campaigns, and if he does he hardly ever reveals them. This kind of candor is rare.

  The aide listens as Johnson admits: “I am deeply disturbed about Texas.” And what if we win the national election… but lose Texas? He moans at the very thought: “Imagine how the new administration will look upon us.”

  For sure, he knows exactly what Bobby Kennedy will say. He has mocked Bobby in front of reporters, run his hands through Bobby’s hair like he was a little baby boy. And he once had the balls to curse Bobby out when he came to his suite and tried to talk Johnson out of running against his brother Jac
k. He knows what Bobby will say if Johnson doesn’t deliver Texas—and the goddamned election. Bobby says there was only one reason why Johnson was allowed on the Kennedy ticket in the first place:

  “We put that son of a bitch on the ticket to carry Texas.”2

  With only four days left until the election, Johnson makes a manic, last-ditch effort to carry his home state. The entire election hangs in the balance. Carry Texas and Kennedy-Johnson can win the White House.

  Johnson tells Lady Bird they are headed to Texas—and to the most difficult city of all.

  Dallas.

  Congressman Bruce Alger, his face defined by a soothing smile and deeply set and welcoming eyes, is appraising the three hundred women bobbing in front of him on November 4. He is impeccably groomed in a close-fitting business suit, tie, and well-shined shoes. And he seems utterly oblivious to the brisk North Texas winds whipping down the corridors along Commerce Street on this cold Friday morning. He’s concentrating on the well-dressed women and the big signs they are carrying.

  It is just four days before people vote for either John Kennedy or Richard Nixon in what some are predicting will be the closest presidential election in American history. Everyone knows that Texas will be crucial, and Alger has a wicked surprise in store for Lyndon B. Johnson.

  Alger’s bare-knuckled positions in Washington, DC, have made him a hero in Dallas—particularly among the crush of women who are here to follow his marching orders. He has beaten Democrats in every election thanks to these faithful women, and he has turned the city into a rugged Republican outpost deep in the heart of the Democratic South. There is, his colleagues grudgingly admit, absolutely no one like Bruce Alger in public office—even with those hothouse whispers about his private life, about the way he has treated his wife.