Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination
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Gordon Shanklin: Special Agent in Charge in Dallas at the time of the assassination. Agent Hosty said he ordered the destruction of a note from Oswald.
James Wood: agent who questioned George de Mohrenschildt in Haiti after the assassination
Individuals involved with Oswald and Cuba
Gilberto Alvarado: Nicaraguan intelligence agent whose allegation linked Oswald to Cuban diplomats in Mexico City
“Angel” or “Angelo”: Hispanic said to have visited Silvia Odio in the company of a man introduced as “Leon Oswald”
Manuel Artime: key figure at CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion who claimed President Kennedy approved Castro assassination plan
William Attwood: Special Adviser to U.S. delegation at the United Nations, who led secret contacts with Havana before the assassination
Eusebio Azcue: outgoing Cuban Consul in Mexico City, who met a visitor who used the name Oswald and said he came to believe he was an impostor
Carlos Bringuier: New Orleans representative of the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), involved in suspect street fracas with Oswald
Fidel Castro: Cuban Prime Minister in 1963—he later became President
Rolando Cubela (CIA cryptonym AMLASH): Castro aide who, the CIA came to believe, had turned traitor and intended to kill the Cuban leader. He may in fact have remained loyal to Castro.
Jean Daniel: French journalist for L’Express whom Kennedy used to sound out Castro—was with the Cuban leader on November 22
Manuel Antonio de Varona: vice president, then leader, of exiles’ Cuban Revolutionary Council
Hermínio Díaz García: Cuban anti-Castro fighter and associate of Mafia boss Santo Trafficante. He reportedly told his comrade Tony Cuesta, leader of the group Commandos L, that he personally took part in the President’s assassination. Died in a raid on Cuba in 1966.
Sylvia Durán: secretary to Cuban Consul in Mexico City who processed Oswald’s visa request
Loran Hall: worked with anti-Castro groups and the CIA and was linked to Santo Trafficante. His claim to have visited Silvia Odio sidelined a key indication of conspiracy.
Daniel Harker: Associated Press reporter in Havana who cited a remark by Castro that appeared be a threat to U.S. leaders
Lisa Howard: ABC-TV reporter who met Castro and later acted as go-between in contacts with Havana before November 22
Carlos Lechuga: Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations, involved with the United States in backchannel peace feelers before the assassination
“Leopoldo”: Hispanic who led the three men who visited Silvia Odio, introducing one of the group as “Leon Oswald”
Reinaldo Martinez: Cuban exile, said he learned in 1966 that his close friend Herminio Díaz had admitted having taken part in the President’s assassination
Alfredo Mirabal: the incoming Cuban Consul in Mexico City, also intelligence officer, briefly saw individual who said he was Oswald
Silvia and Annie Odio: daughters of wealthy Cuban activist Amador Odio, who told of a visit before the assassination of two Hispanics accompanied by a man introduced as “Leon Oswald”—who had supposedly spoken of killing either Castro or Kennedy
Orest Pena: anti-Castro exile in New Orleans who claimed he saw Lee Harvey Oswald with FBI Agent De Brueys
Carlos Quiroga: anti-Castro exile and associate of Carlos Bringuier who visited Oswald in New Orleans
Dr. Rene Vallejo: Castro aide who acted as liaison in U.S.– Cuba contacts before the assassination
Antonio Veciana: leader of the anti-Castro group Alpha 66. Claimed that his U.S. intelligence contact, “Maurice Bishop,” met with Oswald before the assassination, and later tried to fabricate information linking Oswald to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico.
Individuals related to Jack Ruby or to organized crime aspects of the case
José Alemán: son of former Cuban government minister who quoted Mafia boss Santo Trafficante as saying President Kennedy was “going to be hit”
Robert “Barney” Baker: Hoffa thug who had two phone conversations with Jack Ruby shortly before the assassination
Edward Becker: casino employee, later investigator, who claimed that Carlos Marcello discussed having the President killed and setting up a “nut” to take the blame
Emile Bruneau: associate of Marcello aide who helped Oswald get bail after a street dispute in New Orleans
Judith Campbell (later Exner): woman who had a sexual relationship with President Kennedy and later with Mafia boss Sam Giancana
Joseph Campisi: owner of a Dallas restaurant who visited Jack Ruby in jail
Joseph Civello: man who reportedly represented Mafia boss Carlos Marcello in Dallas
William Hawk Daniels: federal investigator, later judge, who listened in on a phone conversation between Jimmy Hoffa and an aide in which there was discussion of killing Robert Kennedy
Sergeant Patrick Dean: officer in charge of the police basement security operation at the time Jack Ruby killed Oswald
Sam Giancana: Chicago Mafia boss and coordinator of CIA-Mafia plans to kill Fidel Castro
Jimmy Hoffa: Teamsters Union boss who was close to Santo Trafficante and reportedly wanted both President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy dead
Tom Howard: Jack Ruby’s first lawyer
Liverde: last name of Marcello aide named as having been at meeting at which assassination of the President was discussed
Carlos Marcello (born Calogero Minacore): Mafia boss in New Orleans and the southeastern United States, said to have discussed a plan to assassinate the President using a “nut” to take the blame and to have admitted the crime in old age
John Martino: linked to organized crime, U.S. intelligence, and the anti-Castro movement—his widow said he knew the assassination was about to occur. Reportedly said Oswald was “put together” by the “anti-Castro people.”
Lewis McWillie: friend of Jack Ruby and manager of Tropicana nightclub in Havana, in which Santo Trafficante had a major interest
Murray “Dusty” Miller: aide to Jimmy Hoffa whom Ruby called two weeks before the assassination
Edward Partin: Teamsters official in Louisiana who said Jimmy Hoffa wanted both President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy dead
Nofio Pecora: associate of Carlos Marcello who knew Oswald’s uncle Charles Murret. Jack Ruby called his office number less than a month before the assassination.
Carl Roppolo: oil geologist who, according to Edward Becker, was present when Carlos Marcello discussed a plan to murder President Kennedy
John Roselli: top mobster and go-between in the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro
Sam Termine: Marcello henchman who knew Oswald’s mother
Jack Todd: associate of Santo Trafficante whose phone number was found in Jack Ruby’s car after the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald
Santo Trafficante: Florida Mafia boss linked to CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro. He was reportedly visited by Jack Ruby in Cuba in 1959—allegedly said before the assassination that President Kennedy was “going to be hit.”
Jack Van Laningham: inmate imprisoned with Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, who claimed Marcello admitted having had a role in the assassination.
Irwin Weiner: financial adviser to Jimmy Hoffa who offered conflicting explanations of a phone conversation he had with Ruby less than a month before the assassination
John Wilson: detainee in a camp in Cuba along with Santo Trafficante in 1959. Reported after the assassination that a “gangster type named Ruby” had visited “Santos” in the prison.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted … but to weigh and consider.
—Francis Bacon
Chapter 1
Ambush
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And clos
e my eyes and quench my breath…
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
— battle poem by Alan Seeger, quoted by John F. Kennedy
In his office at the White House, President Kennedy looked gloomily across the desk at his press secretary. “I wish I weren’t going to Dallas,” he said. The secretary replied, “Don’t worry about it. It’s going to be a great trip.”
It was November 20, 1963. The President had received warnings about Dallas from all sides. Senator William Fulbright had told him, “Dallas is a very dangerous place. I wouldn’t go there. Don’t you go.” That morning, Senator Hubert Humphrey and Congressman Hale Boggs had advised him not to go, the congressman saying, “Mr. President, you’re going into a hornet’s nest.”
The President knew he had to go. Dallas, a thousand miles away, had voted overwhelmingly for Richard Nixon in the last presidential election. This time around, the state of Texas as a whole was sure to be tough territory for the Democrats, and Kennedy was determined to take the initiative.
Yet Texas was a menace. Dallas, sweltering in its interminable summer, was dangerously overheated in a different way. It was a mecca for the radical right. Leading lights of the community included a racist former Army general, a mayor who reportedly sympathized with the city’s flourishing and furiously right-wing John Birch Society, and a vociferous millionaire obsessed with the Communist menace. Men of their ilk cried “treason” at Kennedy’s talk of racial integration, his nuclear test ban treaty, and the possibility of accommodation with the Communist world. It was only a year since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the President was now showered with accusations that he had gone soft on Fidel Castro. Right-wing extremism was the boil on the face of American politics, and Dallas the point where it might burst. But Kennedy had set his mind on going.
On November 21, the President flew south from Washington, DC, to San Antonio, his first stop on the Texas tour. All went well there, and Kennedy made a speech about the space age. “We stand on the edge of a great new era… .” He went on to Houston and talked about the space program again. “Where there is no vision, the people perish… .” Before the President arrived in Fort Worth, at midnight, he had traveled safely in four motorcades.
November 22 began with a speech in the rain and a political breakfast. Then, back in his hotel room, Kennedy read the newspapers. In the Dallas Morning News, he saw an advertisement placed by “The American Fact-Finding Committee.” Headlined “Welcome, Mr. Kennedy, to Dallas,” it inquired, “Why do you say we have built a ‘wall of freedom’ around Cuba when there is no freedom in Cuba today? Because of your policy, thousands of Cubans have been imprisoned … the entire population of 7,000,000 Cubans are living in slavery… .” The advertisement, whose leading sponsors included a local organizer of the John Birch Society and the son of H. L. Hunt, the Dallas oil millionaire, prompted the President to turn to his wife and murmur, “You know, we’re heading into nut country today.”
Four days earlier, when the President visited Miami, there had apparently been a security flap. A motorcade was reportedly canceled following concern about disaffected Cuban exiles. The Secret Service had information that a right-wing extremist had spoken of a plan to shoot the President “from an office building with a high-powered rifle.” Perhaps his personal escort had mentioned it to Kennedy, for now—in Fort Worth—he murmured to an aide, “Last night would have been a hell of a night to assassinate a president… . Anyone perched above the crowd with a rifle could do it.” John F. Kennedy even crouched down and mimed how an assassin might take aim.
Just before noon, the President arrived in Dallas. There were welcoming crowds at the airport, and then he was traveling to the city center in an open limousine. As Kennedy passed, one spectator said to her husband, “The President ought to be awarded the Purple Heart just for coming to Dallas.”
At 12:29 p.m., the motorcade was amidst cheering crowds, moving slowly through the metal-and-glass canyons of central Dallas.
For a while, there had been no talking in the President’s car. Then, with the passing crowd a kaleidoscope of welcome, the wife of the Governor of Texas, Nellie Connally, turned to smile at the President and said, “Mr. Kennedy, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.” The President, sitting behind her and to her right, replied, “That is very obvious.” With his wife, Jacqueline, beside him, he continued waving to the people.
Ponderously, at eleven miles an hour, the procession moved onto Elm Street and into an open space. This was Dealey Plaza, a wide expanse of grass stretching away to the left of the cars. To the right of the President towered the Texas School Book Depository, a warehouse, the last high building in this part of the city. Its far end marked the end of the urban ugliness and the end of likely danger to the President during the motorcade. Here there was a grassy slope, topped by an ornamental colonnade. In the lead car, an officer looked ahead at a railway tunnel and said to a colleague, “We’ve almost got it made.” It was twelve seconds past 12:30 p.m.
The several shots rang out in rapid succession. According to a Secret Service agent in the car, the President said, “My God, I’m hit.”1 He lurched in his seat, both hands clawing toward his throat. As Jacqueline Kennedy remembered it just a week later—in an interview partially suppressed at the time:
“You know when he was shot. He had such a wonderful expression on his face… . [Then] he looked puzzled … he had his hand out, I could see a piece of his skull coming off; it was flesh-colored not white. He was holding out his hand—and I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head… .”
Directly in front of the President, Governor Connally had heard one shot and was then hit himself. He screamed. For five seconds, the car actually slowed down. Then had come more gunfire. The President had fallen violently backward and to his left, his head exploding in a halo of brain tissue, blood, and bone. To Mrs. Connally, it “was like buckshot falling all over us.”
As the car finally gathered speed, Mrs. Kennedy believed she cried:
“I love you, Jack … I kept saying, ‘Jack, Jack, Jack’ … All the ride to the hospital, I kept bending over him saying, ‘Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack.’ I kept holding the top of his head down trying to keep the …”
She was unable to finish the sentence.
From the front seat the Governor’s wife heard the President’s wife exclaim, “Jack … they’ve killed my husband.” Then: “I have his brains in my hand.” This last Mrs. Kennedy repeated time and time again.
Half an hour later, in an emergency room at nearby Parkland Hospital, a doctor told the President’s wife what she already knew: “The President is gone.” Governor Connally, though seriously wounded, survived.
The dying of President Kennedy was brutally brief. Yet it took some time and care to write this summary of the shooting with integrity. Fifty years on, much has changed about our perception of the Kennedy era. Many no longer see the brothers as innocent martyrs of an idealized time called Camelot. A mass of persuasive information links their names to election tampering, to philandering that may have risked more than their reputations, to compromising contacts with the Mafia, and—by black irony—to assassination plots. A public that once revered the Federal Bureau of Investigation and trusted the Central Intelligence Agency has been made cynical by revelations of sins ranging from incompetence to unconstitutional malfeasance—in the CIA’s case, too, a sordid history of murder plots.
With the passing of half a century, much remains unclear about what happened in Dealey Plaza. Few murders in history had such a massive audience or were caught in the act by the camera, yet for millions the case remains unsolved. No assassination has been analyzed and documented so laboriously by public officials and private citizens. Yet the public has remained understandably skeptical.
Skeptical when, after one official probe proclaimed the assassination was the work of a lone gunman, another declared it
the result of a conspiracy—“probably.” Skeptical after a welter of media coverage and books, when much of the media work has proven inaccurate or biased, and when supposedly authoritative books have been unmasked as inept, or naïve, or cynical propaganda. The 1991 movie JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, misled a whole new generation of filmgoers with a hodgepodge of half-truth and excess masquerading as revelation about conspiracy. A heavily promoted tome called Case Closed, by Gerald Posner, hoodwinked its readers with its packaging of the opposite message—that there could be no real doubt that the assassination had been the uncomplicated act of a lone gunman.
Above all, perhaps, the public attitude to the Kennedy assassination has been tempered by all the scandals, all the exposés that over the years have eroded belief in government. Far from starting with the premise that the authorities tell the truth, a depressingly large number of people now accept as a given that the government constantly lies. If it does not actively lie, many are persuaded, it conceals the truth. Much of the material in this book was pried out of reluctant agencies thanks to the Freedom of Information Act—albeit a law long since seriously emasculated—and to the JFK Records Act, passed into law in 1992 specifically to enforce release of assassination-related records. Yet some records remain unreleased, many under the rubric of “national security,” the justification used by Chief Justice Earl Warren to explain why some material would not be released in the lifetime of his audience. Hence the title of this book: Not in Your Lifetime. What sort of national security concerns prevent us seeing all there is to see about the Kennedy assassination, a supposed random act by a lone nut, all these years later? It is a question to ponder while reading this book.
For all of these reasons, thinking people remain uncertain who was behind the killing of President Kennedy. Why the murder was committed, only the arrogant or the opinionated can pretend to know for sure. And weary though we may be after decades of controversy and nitpicking, any serious inquiry has to begin where life ended for John F. Kennedy—the moment the shots were fired in Dealey Plaza.