by Gus Russo
Air Force One landed in San Antonio, Texas at 2:30 p.m. Vice President Johnson and Governor Connally were there on the tarmac to greet it. The airport crowd roared, especially for “Jackeee!” Behind the scenes, the atmosphere was unpleasant. The feud between Texas Senator Ralph Yarborough and Governor John Connally showed signs of worsening rather than healing. When a Yarborough admirer in the welcoming committee warned the senator that Johnson was Connally’s ally in the vendetta against him, the prickly Yarborough refused to ride in Johnson’s car.16
There would be just two-and-a-half hours in San Antonio—essentially happy hours because this was a relatively liberal city, its press and political establishment attuned to the instinctive Kennedy constituency of the Latin poor. But the his-and-her Kennedy charisma produced a far greater reaction than expected in a huge, excited turnout on the streets. With the temperature even higher than predicted, the presidential couple were drenched with sweat, but exhilarated. Like politicians before and after him, Kennedy thrived on large crowds because they generated momentum for victory, especially when replayed on television.
Then it was on to the next stop, from a different airport to which Air Force One and the other planes had transferred. The presidential party landed in Houston at 4:37 p.m., local time. The temperature there was even hotter, and the banners and signs were less welcoming (reflecting Houston’s distinctly less liberal leanings). Still, the airport crowd was enthusiastic, and Jackie actually waded into it until she felt a frightening surge towards her. Desire to see Jackie— how she looked, what she was wearing—would continue to swell crowds at all of the stops in Houston.
To rest before the evening activities, the President and First Lady were installed at the Rice Hotel, Houston’s most prestigious, in its sumptuous International Suite. Kennedy was pleased by the First Lady’s remarks in Spanish to a full, cheering audience of Hispanics in the hotel’s ballroom, although he didn’t understand a word she said “What did you say?” he asked her. Teased Jackie, “I’ll never tell you.”17 (The good feeling continued the following morning, when Jackie told her husband she would accompany him on a trip to California two weeks later.) Next, Kennedy delivered a speech at the Houston Coliseum.
Later that night, the President had dinner in his hotel room with his wife and Marty Underwood, while the advance man briefed the President on the remainder of the Houston itinerary. JFK complimented Underwood on another great turnout. To that, Underwood replied, “It wasn’t because of me, it was because Mrs. Kennedy was there.”
“Great, I’ll never live this down,” Kennedy joked. The First Couple were clearly in a playful mood, and soon Marty was shown the door so the couple could be alone.
Later, Underwood accompanied the couple to the airfield for the flight to Fort Worth. He recalls that before Kennedy flew from Houston, the president, against the advice of the Secret Service, went out to “work the fences,” shaking hands with admirers in the dark. Underwood was concerned. Threats to Kennedy had been picked up and relayed to him. He told the president, “I’m worried about tomorrow.”
When the President climbed the staircase to the plane, he turned before entering the cabin and surveyed the crowd. Eager to show Underwood that he had made it safely, he yelled in his best Boston accent, “Where’s Maahty?” Then Kennedy turned to an aide, saying, “Marty worries too much.”
“I had been hearing from different agencies that the Dallas trip might be the site for an attack on the President,” Underwood recently recalled.18 One of his sources was his good friend, CIA Mexico Station Chief Win Scott. Although Scott may not have been specifically referring to Oswald, he clearly was aware of Cuban agents who had a history of operating out of the Mexico City Embassy and were known to move easily across the Texas-Mexico border.
Beyond these threats, Underwood had other reasons to worry. On arriving in Texas two weeks prior, Underwood had sensed the hostility himself. He even phoned Washington to demand that Kennedy’s limousine have the bubble-top on hand, though he knew Kennedy would probably not be convinced to use it.
The presidential entourage left for Fort Worth, landing after midnight and arriving at the Hotel Texas just before 1 a.m. Because of the motorcades between each stop and the endless solicitations of support, it had been a grueling day. The First Couple was exhausted.19 Johnson, too, was exhausted, but in a very different way, and for a very different reason.
The Running Mate
“Nixon Predicts Kennedy May Drop Johnson”
—Headline of story in Dallas Morning News, November 22, 1963
For some Washington insiders, it was a fait d’accompli that JFK would jettison Lyndon Johnson from the ticket in the fall. Rumors of kickbacks had been nipping at Johnson’s heels to the point where he was now the target of a Senate Rules Committee investigation. The alleged key players with Johnson were Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes, and Don Reynolds. All the signs portended a major feeding frenzy, indeed a major scandal.
Kennedy, however, delayed acting, just as he did on other important matters such as Vietnam. The Chief Executive asserted that he had no plans to replace Johnson on the 1964 ticket. During the next five months, he would repeat that assurance, with greater and lesser enthusiasm. His last assurance was on the morning of November 22 in Dallas, with Johnson riding two cars behind him in the motorcade. But the assurances had begun to sound weak.
Kennedy most likely delayed aborting Johnson because, for all LBJ’s baggage, he still represented a tenuous connection to the South—which was virtually another country in terms of Kennedy’s political viability. Plus, the president was relying on Texas to feed a demanding campaign war chest. The hide-worn Johnson, the politician’s politician, knew how to stall and dissemble with the best of them. Reassurances notwithstanding, he was convinced that Kennedy was biding his time and would drop him at the moment most convenient for the president.
Johnson had hoped for much more when joining Kennedy three years earlier. Over the past months, he had been excluded from both White House meetings and 1964 campaign planning sessions. Johnson’s political intelligence network, which was as legendary as his powers as Majority Leader had been, told him what he already knew: his place on the 1964 ticket was anything but assured. For him, the final Kennedy humiliation was leaving him out of the planning for the Dallas trip. Even reporters saw the storm clouds, and believed the President, at the very least, had plans to review the matter of Johnson’s position on the ticket. The reporters were correct.
As longtime Johnson friend and aide Horace Busby remembers, “In the summer of 1963, Kennedy began consulting with Democratic Party Chairman John Bailey. He asked Bailey to draw up a list of [vice-presidential] replacements.”20 Busby’s knowledge makes it apparent that Johnson, too, knew the score. A number of Johnson friends have also confirmed that Johnson knew he was in trouble. For example, LBJ military aide Air Force Colonel Howard Burris said, “I was concerned in the summer of 1963 that LBJ was off the ticket in 1964. The Kennedy crowd didn’t want to hear our opinions on anything.”21 Burris, a fellow Texan and an LBJ friend since 1937, was told by a high-ranking Kennedy insider (whom he still declines to name), “Johnson served his purpose in 1960. He’s not going to be on the ticket.” Then-Senator and future vice-president Hubert Humphrey knew that a Kennedy administration group was holding secret meetings on the subject. “I got a full report on the meeting, and they were going to dump Johnson,” Humphrey later said. “I know [Presidential Special Assistant] Arthur Schlesinger was one of them. They had a meeting out in Georgetown.”22
According to JFK’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln, not only had Kennedy reviewed the situation, but he had made up his mind. “Who is your choice as running mate?” Lincoln asked Kennedy just prior to the Dallas trip. “At this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina,” came Kennedy’s answer. “But it will not be Lyndon.”23
Lincoln’s allegation has never been corroborated, and remains controversial. However, the recollections o
f a former investigator for the FBI add weight to Lincoln’s recollections.
Walt Perry, an investigator for the Internal Revenue Service at the time, says that Bobby Kennedy was attempting to use Johnson’s legal problems as leverage, should Johnson not agree to leave the ticket voluntarily. Perry was brought in by William Webster (later to become the FBI director) to assist in the Billie Sol Estes investigation. He befriended Estes, who, in the course of things, told Perry that he had funneled $10 million in bribes to Johnson. He also related an anecdote about Bobby Kennedy. Perry recalls, “Estes told me that in 1963, Bobby Kennedy contacted him in prison. Bobby made him an offer: ‘If you testify against Johnson, you’re out [of prison].’ Billie declined the offer, saying, ‘If I testified against him, I’d be dead within twenty-four hours.’”24
Johnson himself remarked to Bobby Baker, “Jack Kennedy’s as thoughtful and considerate of me. . . as he can be. But I know his snot-nosed little brother’s after my ass, and all those high-falutin’ Harvards, and if I give ‘em enough rope they’ll hang me with it.”25 Johnson may have been overly kind to the President. Bobby Baker would write that the President himself seemed to desire leverage against his Vice-President:
I was leaving the Oval Office after the conference with the President [when] JFK said to me in a hearty and jovial manner, “Bobby, how about this damned Texas tycoon, what’s his name? Billie Sol Estes? Is he a pal of yours?’’ I sensed that the President was on a fishing expedition, attempting to find out what I might know of any connections between his vice-president and the Texas wheeler-dealer who’d just been charged with any number of crimes.”26
At the time of JFK’s Dallas trip, according to a high Justice Department source developed by author John Davis, Robert Kennedy had a thick file on his desk detailing Johnson’s alleged bribery by a bagman for New Orleans Mafia don, Carlos Marcello.27 Documents recently released by the FBI show that throughout 1962 and 1963, Bobby Kennedy sought to obtain a list of the Texas politicians compiled by Jack Halfen, a legendary payoff man. For two years, Bobby had been interested in an investigation of Halfen, which, he determined, could lead to dozens of organized crime convictions, and some juicy material on Johnson. This material was RFK’s chief aim.
According to information developed by Mike Dorman in his 1972 book Payoff, Kennedy first became interested in Halfen in 1961. His Assistant Attorney General at the time, a tough racket-buster named Edwyn Silberling, was given the go-ahead to launch an investigation. Halfen was serving his second year of a ten-year sentence—actually three years in Texas and ten in Oklahoma, running concurrently—for passing forged money orders, the core of a scheme to defraud the Las Vegas Western Union office of $500,000. At the time of the Siberling investigation, Halfen was 49 years old, having spent 34 of those 49 years in crime, beginning at the age of 15. He had been arrested many times, and had hinted that he might be willing to reveal incriminating information about high-ranking politicians who had landed him in jail.
When the pertinent FBI documents were released in 1998, Halfen’s politicians list was one of them, but of the forty names cited, thirty-seven were blacked out. The three names visible were all close friends of LBJ: Tom Clark, former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Supreme Court Justice; Albert Thomas, U.S. Congressman from Harris County, TX; and a former Texas Deputy Sheriff named Jake Colca.28 (As will be seen, RFK would revisit this allegation in the coming years.) In 1998, a high government official, on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Robert Kennedy had in fact instructed his Justice Department to initiate a “criminal investigation of Lyndon Johnson.”
Burkett Van Kirk, the minority counsel on the Senate Rules Committee in 1963, recently detailed Bobby’s disposition of the “dirt” he collected on Johnson. “Bobby gave the material to [Republican] Senator John Williams of Delaware,” who passed it on to Van Kirk. Williams kept the material in his Senate safe. “He told me it came from Bobby.” Other LBJ “dirt” began to be delivered “continuously” to Van Kirk by courier from a Department of Justice lawyer. Van Kirk explains that Johnson controlled the Committee’s Democratic majority (through his long association with the Committee’s chief investigator, Senator Everett Jordan of North Carolina), that he had “greased” the Democratic contingent on the Committee, and that Bobby was thus forced to deal with the Republicans to politically go after Johnson.29
Johnson’s Secret
“You don’t really have any idea how unhappy I am now.”
—Vice President Lyndon Johnson to his friend Bobby Baker30
“He was really down. 1963 was the beginning of the end for Johnson. He was cut out; they were not giving him anything, and the message was basically: ‘We don’t want you and we don’t want your opinion.’ He knew that he was going to be thrown off the ticket and that was going to be the end for him.”
—Colonel Howard Burris, Johnson’s Military Aide (1992)31
Although some still debate LBJ’s future with Kennedy, most insiders agree that Kennedy was at least reviewing his options. But what of Johnson’s plans? Little attention has been given to what he planned for 1964.
Oft-reported is the fact that Johnson had grown to hate the Vice-Presidential role, but few knew of his intentions for the future. The earliest rumblings were heard by Minnesota Governor Orville Freeman. Freeman remembers, “He hinted on a number of occasions that he was thinking seriously of doing something else. He had apparently some offers from colleges that he was interested in, that were asking him if he might be a president.”32 As far back as July 1963, Johnson had opened up an office in Austin to explore a possible bid for reelection to the Senate in 1964.
According to longtime friend and aide Horace Busby, Johnson had also contacted his friend Harry Provence, editor of the Tribune-Herald in Waco, Texas. “I’m going to look into the newspaper business,” Johnson told Busby. Johnson had strong opinions about his next career move. Busby recalled, “He said what he thought he wanted to do was become a publisher of a progressive, forward-looking Texas daily [newspaper]. He said he’d be the publisher and I’d be the editor. He got very excited about the whole thing. He was going to reform the state.”33 Provence agrees that Johnson had put out such feelers, adding, “He was completely unhappy as Vice President, no question about that.”34
It is now clear that Lyndon Johnson was, like Kennedy, reviewing his options. But, unlike Kennedy—and probably unknown to Kennedy—Johnson had made his decision. The timing suggests that the secret October meeting between JFK and Connally, the one in which they planned the Texas trip without the vice-president’s aid, was, for LBJ, the final insult.
“I’m withdrawing from the 1964 ticket,” a weary Lyndon Johnson told Horace Busby. Busby recalls the night in October when Johnson dropped the bomb:
We all were aware of Schlesinger’s secret meetings with John Bailey. Johnson had also come to feel that he had just played out his string. He had thought about it [his decision] during most of the year and had decided. He felt he had accomplished more than he ever dreamt possible for a boy from a small town in Texas. He felt it was time to move on. He was going to tell the President when they got to the ranch in Austin that Friday night [November 22, 1963].35
Colonel Howard Burris recently added, “I was to be there at that [Friday night] meeting. Johnson had asked me to prepare a briefcase full of ‘Eyes Only’ documents for the meeting.” According to Burris, the documents were to buttress a Johnson confrontation with the President on foreign policy issues, especially Vietnam and Cuba.36
Friday, November 22
The day dawned in Cuba with AM/TRUNK infiltrator Modesto Orozco posting a “Secret Writing” message to his CIA contact. The message stated:
Castro recently expressed fear of the possibility of “Commando insurrections.” . . .So as to negate this possibility, Castro was undertaking an intensive propaganda campaign to give confidence to his troops and to limit the occurrence of any internal uprising.37
In Madrid, Spain the CIA reported
hearing from a Cuban journalist who claimed to have received a letter “stating that GPIDEAL [President Kennedy] would be killed today.”38
By the early morning hours, the streets of Dallas were festooned with 5,000 handbills headlined: WANTED FOR TREASON. The text declared that “This man is wanted for treasonous activities against the United States.” Among the charges were betraying the Constitution, surrendering American sovereignty to the “communist controlled” United Nations, betraying Cuba, promoting the Test Ban Treaty, upholding the Supreme Court’s “Anti-Christian rulings,” and telling “fantastic LIES to the American people” (including personal ones denying a previous marriage and divorce). The wanted man, the President of the United States, was pictured in full face and profile, as on sheriffs’ posters.
At 5 a.m., in nearby Irving, Texas, Lee Oswald was just dozing off after a fitful night of tossing and turning.
Less than 40 miles away, John Kennedy arose, showered, and prepared for his breakfast speech before the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. In his haste, the President committed one dramatic oversight: he took off his Saint Jude and Saint Christopher Medals and left them hanging on the shower head. When “sweeping” the room later, Secret Service agent Ron Pontius found the medals and put them in his pocket, with intentions of returning them to the President after the Dallas motorcade. Pontius eventually gave the medals to Marty Underwood, who still retains them.39
Just before nine o’clock in the morning, Kennedy addressed a gathering in the parking lot of the same Hotel Texas. It was composed chiefly of blue-collar working men. The talk was a last-minute concession to liberals, who had persuaded the President that union members and supporters of his policies would be all but excluded from the one public event of his Fort Worth stay, the breakfast sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. The size of this outdoor audience far exceeded all expectations, despite a steady drizzle. Kennedy was delighted—in contrast to Johnson, whose mood was brooding.