by Gus Russo
17 Marty Underwood, interview by author, 10 May 1993 (who witnessed the exchange).
18 Marty Underwood, interview by author, 10 May 1993.
19 Henggeler, 56.
20 Horace Busby, interview by author, 7 October 1993.
21 Howard Burris, interview by author, 4 April 1994.
22 Merle Miller, Lyndon, 308.
23 Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson, 205.
24 Walt Perry, interview by author, 6 June 1992.
25 Baker, 117.
26 Ibid.
27 Davis, Mafia Kingfish, 301.
28 Documents released to author in 1998; esp. Director to Attorney General, July 17, 1962, Evans to Belmont, July 17, 1963.
29 Van Kirk, interview by Seymour Hersh, 12 December 1993.
30 Henggeler, 60.
31 Howard Burris, interview by John Newman, 21 November 1992.
32 Merle Miller, Lyndon, 309.
33 Ibid.
34 Harry Provence, interview by author, 8 October 1993.
35 Horace Busby, interview by author, 7 October 1993.
Madeleine Brown has long spoken of her illicit affair with Johnson during those years (she even says that she bore an illegitimate son by Johnson). Brown alleges that on the morning of the assassination, Johnson contacted her and fumed, “Those Goddamned Kennedys. After today, they’ll never embarrass me again. That’s no threat, that’s a promise.” Even assuming the veracity of the statement, it remains a mystery as to exactly what Johnson meant by it. Many, including Brown, assert that Johnson knew what fate awaited Kennedy in downtown Dallas. In the 1940’s and 1950’s, Johnson’s reputation was tainted by enemies’ frequent accusations of violent retaliation against them, but there is no evidence that Johnson had anything but high regard for John Kennedy (that was not the case with Bobby). Furthermore, Johnson’s behavior after the assassination is telling: witnesses speak of a frightened puppy, alternately crying, shaking, and hiding under tables thinking he was next—not exactly the demeanor of a fellow conspirator. The true meaning of such a statement, if made, is much simpler and innocent: by leaving the Vice-Presidency, Johnson would no longer be in a position to be humiliated by the Kennedys (Madeleine Brown, interview by author, 7 April 1992).
36 Howard Burris, interview by author, 25 June 1998.
Burris held the documents with him in San Antonio on November 22nd, in preparation for meeting Johnson at the ranch in Austin that night. When he received word of the President’s death, he was ordered by Johnson to head for Washington immediately. The military aide to the now President hopped a two-seater jet fighter with his sensitive cargo. Halfway there, the pilot slipped into unconsciousness, forcing Burris, a World War II Air Force pilot, to seize the unfamiliar controls and land the plane. He never learned what became of the pilot who, on landing, was transported away by ambulance.
37 CIA Dispatch summarizing AMTRUNK Operation, 25 April 1977, JFK Papers, National Archives.
38 Director to GPFLOOR, CIA Telex, 5 December 1963.
39 Marty Underwood, interview by author, 10 May 1993.
40 Kennedy had also missed a reference to himself in the previous morning’s edition of the same paper—more precisely, to the address he would deliver at lunch in the city’s Trade Mart. “If the speech is about boating,” a sports columnist had written, “you will be among the warmest of admirers. If it is about Cuber, civil rights, taxes or Viet Nam, there will sure as shootin’ be some who heave to and let go with a broadside of grapeshot in the presidential rigging.”
41 Manchester, The Death of a President, 126.
42 H. L. Hunt had most recently been involved in a letter-writing campaign to try to persuade prominent southern Democrats to block Kennedy’s renomination in order to “save the nation” (H. L. Hunt to Senator Harry Byrd, letter, 11 July 1963, Byrd Papers, University of Virginia). His son Bunker was believed to have been interested in training shooters to assassinate liberal politicians—some have said that he even attempted to launder money to have Kennedy assassinated. After Kennedy was assassinated, strong evidence suggests that Oswald’s widow, Marina, was taken to H. L. Hunt’s downtown office to have a private meeting with him (the author has interviewed a number of Texans who witnessed the Marina/Hunt rendezvous). Rumor has it that Hunt proffered financial assistance to Mrs. Oswald. Marina herself admitted to author Dick Russell in 1992 that “I was taken to somebody’s office, but I have no idea what I went there for. . . . Yes, it is very possible that I went to see the oil millionaire, but I can’t remember the face” (Russell, 602). All this would further confuse future attempts to discern who may have been behind Oswald’s act. In fact, the Hunts were among many powerful groups who hated Kennedy, some of whom casually discussed killing the President, and many of whom donated money to Marina after the assassination. The groups included the Mafia, Cuban exiles who felt betrayed, rabid anti-communists, pro-Castro Cubans, etc. The problem, as HSCA Counsel G. Robert Blakey has pointed out, is in tying one of these groups to the man who fired the shots, Lee Oswald. The consistent mountain of evidence linking Oswald to pro-Castro groups dwarfs the tenuous links some have drawn between Oswald and the other groups.
43 Joe Dealey, son of the publisher, was also appalled. When he saw the startling page after returning to Dallas from a trip late the previous day, he told his father it was “like inviting someone to dinner and then throwing tapioca in his face.” Publisher E. M. “Ted” Dealey rejected the reproach, arguing that the ad merely represented “what we’ve been saying editorially.”
Anti-Kennedy sentiment was less pronounced in the Dallas Times-Herald, the city’s other major newspaper, which refused to print the ad. But the headline of a column published two days earlier made the same point about the local feeling. “Why Do So Many Hate the Kennedys?” it asked. The text stressed that the hatred was not only for the President, a man whose “money still stinks,” “but extended to his wife, father, brothers, daughter Caroline and to some extent, even the little tyke, John Jr.”
44 Manchester, The Death of a President, 121.
45 Buell Frazier, interview by author, 16 February 1987.
46 Jack Dougherty, testimony, WC, vol. VI, 377.
47 Memo For the Secretary of the Army/Attn: Jos. Califano, “Training of Cuban Refugees in Nicaragua,” 11 December 1963.
48 Hinckle and Turner, 251.
49 When Baker himself testified after the assassination, Johnson confided his own concern to House Speaker John McCormack. McCormack’s public relations manager Robert Winter-Berger describes the scene:
I heard the private door open [to McCormack’s office]. I immediately recognized the rather tall, broad-shouldered man in the dark suit. I had never seen such anguish on a man’s face before. It was Lyndon Baines Johnson, the President of the United States. A Secret Service man hovered behind him, but he remained in the hall as the door swung shut. Stunned, I froze in my chair. . . Johnson disregarded me, but I can never forget the sight of him, crossing the room in great strides. In a loud, hysterical voice, he said: “John, that son of a bitch is going to ruin me. If that cocksucker talks, I’m gonna go to jail.” By the time he had finished these words, he had reached the chair at McCormack’s desk, sat down, and buried his face in his hands. . . I could see he was crying. . .[Johnson said], “He should have known better. Now we’re all up shit creek. We’re all gonna rot in jail. They’ll get him in front of an open committee and all the crap will come out and it’ll be my neck. Jesus Christ, John, my whole life is at stake!” (Winter-Berger, 65-68).
If it wasn’t already clear, later in the conversation Johnson revealed that “he” was Bobby Baker. Johnson was frantic, even proposing a payoff. “Get to him. Find out how much more he wants, for Chrissake,” Johnson implored. “I’ve got to be kept out of this. You’ve got to get to Bobby, John. Tell him I expect him to take the rap for this on his own. Tell him I’ll make it worth his while. Remind him that I always have.”
50 Van Kirk, interview by Seymour Hersh, 12 Decemb
er 1993.
51 Merle Miller, Lyndon, 297.
52 Rolando Cubela, HSCA interview, 28 August 1978.
53 CCIR, 89.
54 CCIR, 88, fn. 2.
55 Heymann, 256.
56 Jackie Kennedy, interview by Theodore White, 29 November 1963, in “The Camelot Documents,” 26 May 1995, Kennedy Library.
57 It has been alleged that the turn violated Secret Service rules. The author inspected the Secret Service guidebook in use in 1963, “Principles of Protection of the President and Other Dignitaries,” and found this not to be the case. Rules 8 through 18 deal with motorcades, and are intentionally flexible, allowing the agents on the scene to define the amount of risk to take. There are very few specific rules, and none that prohibit any specific turning radius.
58 WC, CE 295.
59 Carlos Bringuier, interview by author, 28 February 1994.
60 Ranelagh, 390.
61 Cortlandt Cunningham, WC testimony, vol. IV, 224.
62 Interview of Harold Norman, June 13, 1993 (FL).
63 Amos Lee Euins, interview by Gerald Posner, in Posner, 247.
64 Posner, 248, from Brennan and Cherryholmes; also Howard Brennan, WC testimony, vol. III, 143.
65 Hartogs and Freeman, 11.
66 Interview of Leonid Tsagoika, 14 April 1993 (FL).
67 Amos Euins, WC Testimony, vol. II, 204.
68 James Worrel, WC Testimony, vol. II, 193; also Posner, 247.
69 Ibid., 200.
70 Mike Howard, interview by author, 7 December 1993.
71 Malcolm Couch, WC testimony, vol. VI, 158; also Bob Jackson, vol. VI, 173.
72 Interview of Harold Norman, 13 June 1993 (FL).
73 Posner, 242.
74 Brennan and Cherryholmes; also Posner, 248.
75 The time is established because Oswald was given a bus transfer with the time stamped on it.
76 Dr. Robert Artwohl, interview by author, 9 September 1994.
77 William Manchester, The Death of a President, 187.
78 Posner, 291.
79 Journal of the American Medical Association, 27 May 1992, 2805.
80 For a good discussion of this controversy, see Posner, 304-316.
81 Manchester, Death of a President, 294; also Bishop, 187.
82 Guthman, 244.
83 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, 656 (Howard University is a predominantly African-American university in Washington, D.C.).
84 RFK Oral history, in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, 655.
85 Oppenheimer, 263.
86 Summers, Official and Confidential, 315.
87 Anthony Summers and Robbyn Summers, “The Ghost of November,” Vanity Fair, December 1994, 109; also Washington Post, 20 November 1983.
88 Evan Thomas, “The Real Coverup,” Newsweek, 22 November 1993.
89 Ibid.
90 CCIR, 89.
91 Rolando Cubela, HSCA interview, 28 August 1978.
92 CIA officer, interview by author, 8 December 1997.
93 Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, HSCA interview, 11 May 1978.
94 Marty Underwood, interview by author, 10 May 1993.
Underwood kept one copy of the speech and invitation as souvenirs, and graciously provided the author with a photocopy. Underwood also maintains many other mementos of his years with the White House, most notably a famous Kennedy rocking chair used at the president’s Camp David retreat.
Chapter Fourteen (The Suburban Net Closes)
1 Elcan Elliott, interview by author, 9 September 1994.
2 Belin, November 22, 425-428.
The question has never been answered as to what else Oswald may have attempted to do with the bus transfer.
3 Belin, Final Disclosure, 213.
4 Ibid, 215.
5 Jim Hosty, interview by author, 19 January 1994.
6 British author Matt Smith, in his book Vendetta, also talks of the Cuban Air Force and Redbird. In 1992, Smith received a phone call from “Hank Gordon” (pseudo.) of Arizona. Gordon said he hadn’t spoken to anyone in thirty years, in fear for his life. He stated that in 1963 he had worked for Roburn, Inc., an aircraft company that flew DC-3’s from Redbird. On November 18, he was asked to inspect the planes for a new owner, a Cuban who said he had served in the Cuban Air Force. Gordon continued his inspection until the afternoon of November 21st, when a pilot friend of the new Cuban owner told him, “They’re going to kill your President. They’re going to kill Robert too if he becomes President. They want Robert real bad.”
7 Interview of Wayne January, 19 January 1994.
Two days earlier, on November 18, a man named Billy Kemp was at work at a defense plant in Dallas, when a fellow employee offered him and a partner $25,000 for a “no-questions-asked” flight to take two passengers from Dallas to Mexico City on November 22. Highly suspicious, Kemp refused. “It was going to be a one-way trip,” recalls Kemp. “Leave the plane there, come back on a commercial flight.” (Billy Kemp, interview by writer John Moulder, 1974.)
8 Louis Gaudin, interview by author, 20 January 1994; see also FBI Dallas Field Office File #62-109060, 4755, 10 March 1967.
9 Merritt Gobel, interview by author, 19 January 1994.
10 CIA Headquarters to Mexico Station, cable, 1 December 1963; cited in CCFR, Book V, 60-61, and fn. 68.
A CIA memo on Casas’ biography bears the document number ““979-927AX.” The number “927” also appears on CIA surveillance photos of a man identified originally as Oswald entering the Cuban and Soviet Embassies. The man is clearly not Oswald. Research seems to indicate that the mystery man bears no connection to the assassination of the president. The CIA identified the man as either a Mexican national named Gutierrez, or a KGB officer named Yuri Ivanovich Moskalev (“Mexico City Report,” HSCA, 139, 179). The late Bernard Fensterwald, D.C. based attorney and assassination researcher, believed him to be Edmund Meunier, a mercenary based in Lieges, Belgium. Anti-Castro activist Gerry Hemming has offered the names of Cuban exile Tauler Saggue, or Johnny Mitchell Devereaux, as candidates.
11 CIA Dispatch (routing classified), 31 January 1964.
12 Deputy Director of Plans to FBI Director Hoover, CIA Memo, 23 December 1964.
13 Interview of Jim Hosty, 22 June 1993 (FL).
14 Transcript in CIA JFK Segregated File at the National Archives.
15 Slawson to Record, WC Memo, “Trip to Mexico City,” 24 April 1964, 24.
16 GPFLOOR to Mexico Station, CIA Telex, 6 December 1963. For more on Oswald and FPCC, see this book’s chapter “The Child is the Father to the Man.”
17 Nilo Messer, interview by author, 20 May 1998.
18 James Johnston, testimony before the House Committee on Government Operations, 17 November 1993.
19 Mexico to HQ, CIA Classified Message Cable, 19 March 1964.
20 HSCA Final Report, 141.
21 From combined sources: Earl Golz, “Cuban Rebels Told Ex-Envoy. . .”, Dallas Morning News, 10 May 1979; Summers, Conspiracy, 420-422; and Fonzi, 53-59.
22 Tippit was married, with two sons, the youngest having recently been born. Feeling the financial pinch, Tippit had been moonlighting at the Oak Cliff restaurant, Austin’s Barbecue. By many accounts, he entered into an affair with a young waitress there named Johnnie Maxie Witherspoon, who had been separated from her husband. Witherspoon reconciled with her husband two months prior to the assassination. However, when they finally divorced in 1968, her husband alleged that a child born to them in June 1964 was fathered by Tippit (some who have seen the child claim a strong resemblance to Tippit). It has been posited that it Tippit was attempting to call Witherspoon (some have even proposed that the jealous husband had killed Tippit, although the evidence is overwhelming that Oswald committed the crime).
23 Interview of Jack Tatum, 18-20 June 1993 (FL).
24 Oswald, 85.
25 Curry, 65.
26 Interview of Gerald Hill, 21 June 1993 (FL).
27 Henry Hurt,
157.
28 Interview of Gerald Hill, 21 June 1993 (FL).
29 Interview of Paul Bentley, 30 July 1993 (FL).
30 Interview of Lonnie Hudkins, 21 June 1993 (FL)
Chapter Fifteen (The Aftermath)
1 Steinberg, Alfred. Sam Johnson’s Boy, 608.
2 Wicker, JFK and LBJ, 229.
3 Clifford, 336.
4 David and David, 227.
5 Ibid, 147.
6 Navasky, 65.
When Miller arrived in Dallas, the FBI virtually ignored him.
7 James Johnston, interview by author, 27 December 1993.
A Counsel to the Church Committee, Johnston attempted, in vain, to locate these tapes at the Kennedy Library in Boston.
8 The Boston Globe, 31 March 1993.
9 Burke, 44-45, 61, 128; also Burke, interview by author with Seymour Hersh, 29 January 1997.
10 Beschloss, The Crisis Years, 673.
11 Manchester, The Death of a President, 349-350.
12 Ibid, 390.
Years after, some would allege a conspiracy that reached as far as the autopsy suite, where the conspirators allegedly altered the Presidential wounds, or intentionally lied about bullets retrieved from the body. The theory continued that the autopsy doctors burned their notes in order to conceal their crime. This theory ignores the obvious: Jackie chose the autopsy site, and as shall be seen, she and Robert Kennedy were the only ones attempting to exert any influence on the proceedings.
13 JAMA, 27 May 1992, 2796.
14 Manchester, The Death of a President, 419
15 JAMA, 27 May 1992, 2799.
16 Ibid, 430.
17 Livingstone, 179-190.
18 Memo of contact (Robert Karnei, interview by Kelly and Purdy), HSCA, 29 August 1977.
19 Manchester, The Death of a President, 427.
20 Brigadier General Godfrey McHugh, HSCA testimony, 11 May 1978.
21 HSCA Outside Contact Report with John Stover, 11 May 1978.
22 Memo of contact (Jay Boswell, interview by Andy Purdy), HSCA, 17 August 1977.