Dallas 1963

by Bill Minutaglio

  Right now Surrey has other things to talk to Walker about. He can keep his growing obsession with the Nazi Party in check until there is a time when Walker might be even remotely receptive to the news. Today, Walker and Surrey are discussing Kennedy’s upcoming visit to Dallas.

  They regained the national headlines by preempting Stevenson’s speech. But Stevenson basically came unprotected and alone, relying only on Stanley Marcus and the Dallas police to keep him safe. Kennedy can count on a much larger force: the Secret Service, the FBI, and maybe even federal troops if necessary. The roiling, planned demonstrations against Adlai Stevenson in a relatively unguarded auditorium came off brilliantly. But attempting to picket or disrupt a high-security presidential event is something else entirely. And now, after the Stevenson event, even the often friendly Dallas police are on high alert.

  Walker briefly considered staging something with the help of those students from North Texas State, but obviously the police were tipped off. There are infiltrators afoot. And Kennedy would like nothing more than to catch Walker off guard—or to blame him for any disruptions in Dallas. Walker will be the most likely suspect for any anti-Kennedy action in the city.

  The general has made up his mind: He will make a strategic retreat from Dallas while Kennedy is allowed his parade in downtown Dallas.

  But still, something needs to be done to confront the president.

  Robert Surrey places a phone call to a friend from a printing shop where he once worked. Surrey asks if he is willing to do a quick printing order on the side. He knows his friend only makes $35 a week, and he offers him $40 in cash. The man agrees, and later that evening Surrey leaves his home in Highland Park and meets his friend after hours at a small frame building along a commercial strip not far from Walker’s house. Surrey explains that he has a customer who wants to print several thousand copies of a handbill as inexpensively as possible.

  The two men consider the various options and eventually select an assortment of “dodger stock,” cheap newsprint of various colors: green, orange, blue, yellow. Surrey agrees to pay an additional $20 for five thousand sheets.

  Surrey has brought along the material for the handbill: two photographs of John F. Kennedy clipped from magazines. One photograph shows the president, unsmiling, staring straight ahead. The other photo is a profile shot, taken from the side. Surrey provides the text, already formatted and pasted onto a board. His friend barely notices the headline accompanying the text and photos of President Kennedy:

  WANTED FOR TREASON.

  November 11, Veterans Day, dawns bright and sunny with above-normal temperatures in the nation’s capital. John F. Kennedy is on his way to Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the occasion. He decides to bring along his young son, John Jr., who will turn three years old in exactly two weeks.

  Members of his inner circle have noticed that the president has seemed unusually gloomy over the last several days. Maybe he is still affected by the murders of the Vietnamese leaders Diem and Nhu. And those closest to JFK know, too, that he is still haunted by the death of his two-day-old son Patrick back in August.

  A strange sense of deep contentment always seems to overtake Kennedy whenever he visits Arlington National Cemetery. He’s already told others that he would like to be buried here.

  John-John bounds out ahead of him, in a playful mood as they walk through the cemetery with their entourage. The president is wearing a dark blue pin-striped suit. John-John is outfitted in blue shorts and a white sweater trimmed with red and blue. Kennedy carefully places a red, white, and blue wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  John-John remains ebullient, even during the somber public ceremony with an audience of several thousand. At one point, he breaks away from his Secret Service minder and makes a mad dash for the stage to join his father. Later, he successfully darts between some of the presidential aides to reach for Kennedy. He hugs his father’s legs and lets out a series of happy yelps. Then he begins to walk backward, facing his father, hunching his shoulders in mock seriousness. Though the occasion is grave, the audience is charmed by the display.

  As the group leaves the cemetery, Kennedy tells Congressman Hale Boggs:

  “This is one of the really beautiful places on earth. I could stay here forever.”14

  The presidential limousine departs and the back window rolls down so John-John can wave good-bye to the spectators.

  Bernard Weissman and Bill Burley have only been in Dallas eleven days but already they’re beginning to regret moving here.

  Larrie Schmidt, despite his big talk, has had very little influence in Dallas. The Dallas Morning News refuses to quote him, ever. Schmidt talked up his connection to General Walker, describing how his brother “infiltrated” Walker’s group by becoming the general’s driver and handyman, but his brother seems far away from Walker’s inner circle, content to drink away the little bit of money Walker pays him. And meanwhile, Schmidt seems increasingly obsessed with his scheme to fund the conservative revolution by buying the DuCharme, the ramshackle beer joint where they spend their off hours. At least Schmidt is making a living selling life insurance—Weissman and Burley are failing at selling carpeting.

  Instead of the big plans Schmidt promised, the men often wind up after work just hanging out and drinking beer. Sometimes they are joined by the college students Schmidt has recruited—the ones who helped lead the attack on the Stevenson speech.

  To Weissman, the scene isn’t much different from their days as GIs in Munich—a lot of big talk and beer drinking, but very little action. And when Schmidt does take them out to a conservative political gathering, it is even worse: Weissman can feel the anti-Semitism throbbing when people hear his name.

  There is one thing that keeps them going: Kennedy’s upcoming visit. At one time they discussed how to unleash major disruptions. But they can see that the city is on alert, that people are being watched: Walker and other leading conservatives are making strategic exits from Dallas. Bruce Alger announced that he is canceling a banquet in his honor on November 22. And the U.S. Senate’s most staunch defender of General Walker during his battles with Kennedy, Texas Senator John Tower, has turned down an invitation to appear in the city when the president arrives.

  Schmidt talks to his contacts in the local John Birch Society—including an independent oilman named Joseph Grinnan, who is close to Walker, the Hunt family, and other powerful conservatives in the city. The oilman’s personal attorney is Robert Morris. There are whispers in Dallas that Grinnan keeps a full supply of arms and ammunition in his car at all times.

  The oilman has important news to share. He can get Schmidt financial backing for a major anti-Kennedy propaganda effort: a full-page advertisement in the Dallas Morning News attacking Kennedy that the paper will surely print.

  The strippers at his club are driving Jack Ruby crazy, and just when he is expecting a flood of customers to come during Kennedy’s visit next week.

  Jada—her real name is Janet Adams Conforto—has been working at the Carousel Club since the summer but now she is really breaking his back. They have been arguing over money, over her contract, which expires in January. She calls in sick one night and when she comes back the next night Ruby cuts the lights in the middle of her act. Ruby has grown erratic, threatening her, to the point where she is scared.

  People can see it; he is chattering and hustling maybe more than ever. He’s been juggling things—trolling the streets for new girls, making sure his headliner Tammi True is happy, scouting out locations for a new club, remembering to get his ads in to the Dallas Morning News, wondering if the drag queen who makes the costumes for the strippers is going to remain reliable.

  The old, wily gangster Joe Civello has met Ruby a few times and learned to avoid him. Ruby is clearly never as discreet as he should be. Civello is trying to stay in the shadows, as far from Ruby as possible. With Kennedy and his people coming, it’s simply not a good time. Ruby puts people on edge—and the city is alread
y edgy:

  A week before the president is to arrive, a man pulls out a fishing knife and plunges it two times into a friend’s stomach until he dies. And a woman shoots her husband dead in the heart. Another man punches a woman in the eye in a tavern—she pulls out a knife and stabs him twice until he dies. Another man turns a garbage can upside down, jumps on it, crawls through an apartment window, and viciously rapes a woman while her six-month-old baby sleeps nearby. She can’t tell if he is black or white—but she tells police that she has been active in “civic affairs” and the cops are left wondering if the rape is really also a warning for her to step away from things, to stand down from the big things threatening to overtake the normal order in Dallas.

  The Secret Service arrives in Dallas on November 16 to coordinate security for the president’s visit. Agents are meeting with Dallas police and the local FBI to review the situation. The Secret Service has only five permanent employees in the city, so it will need to rely on local law enforcement to protect the president.

  Kennedy wants a motorcade through Dallas. The plan calls for Air Force One to land at Love Field at 11:30 a.m. on the twenty-second. From there, the presidential motorcade will travel through downtown. Immediately after, Kennedy will attend a luncheon and deliver a speech before twenty-five hundred people.

  Civic leaders are insisting to the White House that they have the luncheon at the city’s showplace facility—the Trade Mart. The building, however, is a security nightmare. Four stories high with a million square feet, the Trade Mart is arranged around a giant indoor courtyard—and this large open area is the proposed site for the luncheon. Numerous balconies overlook the courtyard, and the building contains a maze of corridors and rooms where an assassin can lurk. Even worse, there are fourteen separate entrances to the courtyard, each of which must be heavily guarded.

  The bland, boxy building is on a highway heading north of downtown. The less-than-glamorous place gives the lie to the grand vision that Marcus has always wanted for Dallas—his view of a Paris on the prairie. In reality, the Trade Mart strikes closer to the heart of what Dallas is all about—it is a warehouse, a centralized place in the center of the United States where national, mainstream retailers can inspect and select massive quantities of off-the-rack merchandise to stock their stores around the country. It is, some say, a perfect metaphor for Dallas. It is big and efficient, but hardly pleasing to look at.

  The Secret Service grudgingly agrees to accept the site, but everyone realizes it will require intense planning and numerous officers. Inside the White House, Kennedy’s aides know that Dallas poses a unique security challenge—and not just because of the location for the president’s luncheon.

  Kenny O’Donnell has already received a confidential report on Dallas from the Department of Justice. Special agents have been requesting information from Dallas police and the FBI about “persons of interest.” The Dallas police offer several names: There’s General Walker, of course, along with Ashland Burchwell, the Walker aide who was arrested with a carload of ammunition on his way to the University of Mississippi. There’s also Robert Hatfield, the young man from Walker’s group who spat on Adlai Stevenson. There is Jimmy Robinson, who picketed Dr. King and then burned a cross on the Holocaust survivor’s lawn.

  Pushing deadlines, the various agencies try to create a working portfolio of political extremists in the city. FBI Agent James Hosty does not mention that a communist and former defector, Lee Harvey Oswald, is also in Dallas—and that he has just obtained a job along Kennedy’s prospective motorcade route. There is nothing, after all, in Oswald’s past, as far as the FBI is aware, to suggest a propensity for violence. He seems merely quirky, a self-absorbed ideologue. The guy can barely keep a job, let alone a marriage.

  Security preparations focus on the places where Kennedy will spend the most time: Love Field and the Trade Mart. At those sites, protection will be exceptionally tight. The Secret Service and Dallas police have reviewed film footage of the Adlai Stevenson protests, and they have made still photos of key Dallas demonstrators to distribute among police officers in charge of access at the airport and the luncheon.

  The security for the motorcade is a different matter. During these events, the presidential motorcades generally proceed at twenty miles per hour, though they are often forced to slow down considerably in thick crowds. The president will pass in front of hundreds of buildings and below thousands and thousands of windows. There simply is no way to inspect every single building along the motorcade route, despite what the Dallas Morning News reported.

  The security team drives along the prospective course. As the car makes its way through downtown, a Secret Service agent looks up at the skyscrapers surrounding them. He turns to one of the other members of the security detail and says:

  “Hell, we’d be sitting ducks.”15

  Stanley Marcus is in New York on business, and he’s pleased to get away from Dallas for a while. He loves his hometown, but he’s always energized by his visits to New York, where he enjoys taking in the shows on Broadway. There’s plenty to choose from: Neil Simon’s comedy Barefoot in the Park, which is being hailed for its breakout performance by a young actor named Robert Redford. There’s also Zero Mostel in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Edward Albee’s smash hit, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

  But even in New York, Marcus hears a lot about Kennedy’s upcoming visit to Dallas. Several friends have contacted him to complain that local Democrats are being frozen out of the Kennedy luncheon. Dallas’s conservative leadership—in the form of the Citizens Council—is allocating the seats at the event, and the invitations are going to their friends and colleagues, rather than the loyal Democrats who have supported Kennedy.

  Marcus sighs deeply. It’s just another example of small-mindedness in Dallas.

  The phone in his hotel suite rings. An operator tells him to hold the line for the vice president of the United States. After a few moments, Lyndon B. Johnson’s booming voice comes over the wire.

  Johnson explains yet another problem with Kennedy’s Dallas visit. The president is supposed to be fund-raising in Texas, but not enough people in Dallas are stepping forward to help foot the bill for the luncheon. Johnson tells him, “Stanley, we need more money to make proper arrangements, and that crowd in Dallas isn’t doing enough to get it. We need $25,000 and we need it right away.”

  Marcus sees his golden opportunity. Maybe the stinginess of the local welcoming committee will be enough to convince the president to change his plans.

  “I sure wish to hell you’d persuade Kennedy not to come,” Marcus says to Johnson. “It is a grave mistake to come to Dallas.”

  The vice president is impatient. He’s already heard too much of this second-guessing about the president’s schedule.

  “I don’t care what you think,” he tells Marcus, “nor does it make any difference what I think about the President coming down to Dallas. He is coming to Dallas, so go out and raise the money.”16

  Reverend W. A. Criswell often works on his homilies well in advance—and he has been carefully preparing a special one to deliver next Sunday, in the wake of President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas.

  He is going to call the post-Kennedy sermon: “For God and Country.”

  Now he turns to today’s sermon for the faithful in downtown Dallas, just a couple of blocks from Jack Ruby’s club, just down the street from where Lee Harvey Oswald has recently gone to work at the Texas School Book Depository.

  The preacher is still a loyal son of the South, as loyal perhaps as General Walker. And so he decides, this Sunday, to invoke the name of another uncompromising warrior general in today’s sermon. Walker is unbending, and so is First Baptist of Dallas. He is preaching about Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general:

  “A godly man, a man of deep personal piety and prayer… when the tide was turning against the South, Stonewall Jackson… led his forces in a mighty and courageous effort…”

  Criswel
l adds that his church is just like the Confederate general fighting to save the South and all it stood for. It is “like a stone wall” in the “heart of this great city” standing against “the floods of infidelity and iniquity and blasphemy.”17

  Bernard Weissman still hasn’t sold a single carpet in Dallas, but now he has $1,000 cash in his pocket. The money is not his—it’s a deposit for the Dallas Morning News to reserve the full-page advertisement for November 22. The money has been raised by friends and members of the Birch Society, including H. L. Hunt’s son.

  The full cost of the advertisement, if it is approved, will be $1,462. The copy, written by Larrie Schmidt, is aggressive. The ad also contains eleven questions, most of which have come from a John Birch Society memo given to Schmidt by the Dallas oilman who helped raise the funds for the ad. The oilman suggested that it would be easier to secure the funding if the John Birch questions appeared in the advertisement. Schmidt has complied.

  Weissman can’t help but be a little nervous as he meets with the advertising officers at the Morning News. Weissman is still coming to grips with how he suddenly became the point person for this effort.

  The oilman, Joseph Grinnan, said his name couldn’t be used since he is so closely associated with the John Birch Society—which doesn’t want to be publicly identified as the source of the advertisement. If Larrie Schmidt’s name is on the ad, the paper will almost certainly refuse to run it. The only choice is Weissman. Schmidt points out that having an obviously Jewish name associated with such a hard-edged anti-Kennedy indictment will confuse and demoralize the leftists. He solemnly notes that using Weissman’s name will inoculate conservatives from the usual charges that they are anti-Semitic.